Fallout Equestria: The Last Crusade

by Cynewulf

Rating: mature
Tags: Other, Romance, Adventure, Crossover, Dark, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery, Science Fiction
Length: 36174

A lone collector of stories travels to Equestria's most isolated frontier city to uncover the truth of its mysterious hero, and the terrible secrets he found beneath the frozen earth.

The Crusader of Lunangrad is as mythic as the harsh land he called home. Everyone knew his name, but none knew him. Who really could recount the real tale of his miracles in the loneliest of Old Equestria's northern cities? Did he fight dragons and wrestle Steel Rangers? Did he truly wed a Changeling queen or fly without wings? Did he divert a river singlehoofedly and call upon the Goddess Luna to banish the day?

One cartographer and story-collector from the New Canterlot Republic doubts it. He'll uncover the true story, even if it kills him.

Art by the illustrious backlash91, who also writes here on FimFic

Published 2016-04-30 00:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-05-16 18:40:30 UTC

Introductions: First Words

I first saw the stranger drinking in a little bar overlooking the Lunaga called the Dashite’s Head.

Why the name? I was curious too, until I saw the actual Dashite’s mummified head on a pike behind the bar. After that, I learned one of the first rules of Lunangrad’s surface: questions are usually not necessary, and when they are, it’s best not to ask them. Every city in the wasteland has secrets worth seeking out, we all know that. There’s always one more bunker or one more locked strongbox to break into. Ponies will probably be digging through the old world’s detritus for at least half a century more before we’ve really gone through it all. It’s the food that runs out, mostly, but that was never a problem for Equestria’s brooding northern sentinel.

I had come to Lunangrad for two purposes. The first was to research the area on behalf of the New Canterlot Republic’s nascent cartographer’s office. It was a new project, offering caps and more for reliable map information. Give them a good rundown on what the local trade is like and which ponies like to greet newcomers with assault rifles and which just want your caps, and you might win yourself a cozy home in one of their new settlements. Mostly, I needed the bits.

But that was just to cover my expenses. It wasn’t the real reason. The real reason I came to Lunangrad was for a story. In particular, a story that been ignored too long. It wasn’t grand, perhaps, as most of the others that were circulating. It was no Tale of the Lightbringer. This pony was no Security, if she was even real—who the hell believes anypony stupid enough to live near the Hoof?—or slave rebellion leader. In fact, he came in halfway through the great upheaval of our times and the radio that hailed so many other heroes just… seemed to forget about him.

Which is strange, considering I’ve found the original recording that first announced the Lunangrad Crusader’s explosive entrance onto the scene. In a very, very low point during the chaos of a few years ago, he received a report about a brave stallion in this very city, and the tone of his voice was not merely excitement but a hope that was slowly being revived, that wanted so desperately to believe…

Sorry. Save it for the book.

I knew the stranger, though he did not know me. Or, I knew of him by the word of others on the outskirts of town. I knew his name, cutie mark, and as much of his history as anypony knew, which was essentially nothing beyond what was obvious within seconds of seeing him.

This stallion in a duster and worn drakeling scale hat could kill me before I even saw him move. Probably without even blinking.

So, I sat down across from him at the open air table with at least some trepidation.

He spoke first.

“Now, there are plenty of tables, partner,” he began. His voice did not change throughout—it kept a flat, painfully false friendliness. “And you happened to sit at mine, and in this place of all the gin joints in the city. All of that, and you ain’t asked me somethin’ neighborly-like. You know, ‘hey, can I bum a light?’ or ‘round on me’.”

“I’d be happy to get a round on me, actually,” I said.

“I’m sure you would, little sack of shit. Now, you ain’t asked my name and you’re still here, so that confirms it. Who are you with, hm? Take your time. I wanna finish this.”

He started chugging the vile brew the locals call Lunaga Lightning, which is a wonderful name for the worst of poisons. I knew what this was. He was giving me a chance to leave. I didn’t leave. Swallowing, I sat at attention, hoping I appeared as nonthreatening as I was.

He finished, sighed, and looked me over.

“You’re a stupid son of a gun, ain’tcha?”

“I’ve been told that,” I admitted with a smile. A nervous smile. “Mr. I—“

“Say my name and you die. In fact, say any of my names, and you die.”

I shut up.

“If you’re willin’ to just… Luna, kid, you know what? I don’t think you’re from anyone I care about. You an’ me are gonna go on a walk, understand? I ain’t gonna shoot you. Get up, walk out that door. I’m behind you.”

I was, at this point, fairly convinced that I had already been killed. Everything left was just details. I was numb with the shock of how quickly this stallion had decided to kill me. His eyes, red as blood, stared at me dully. He lit a cigarette.

“Well?”

I rose and left automatically. I heard him right behind me. As soon as I was out of the gate that led to the Dashite’s little patio, I began to shake. Out in the street, he was on neutral ground. Authority wouldn’t care about an out of towner dying, and they were skeptical of the NCR. He would murder me in an alley somewhere and that would be it, no more. No book. No me. All I had on me was a flimsy .22 revolver and my magic.

But he didn’t pull any wingblades or gun or anything. He simply puffed on his cigarette and gestured with his head down the street.

We walked past an old carriage wreck and once we were half a block from the bar, he spoke again.

“First, I thought you might be one of Black Betty’s. She’s been lookin’ awhile. I don’t kill those, on account of they ain’t gonna hurt me. BB jus’ wants a friend back, but she needs to grow the fuck up and learn when to quit on ponies. Who else? The raiders send some of their raw meat my way sometimes for shits and giggles, but none of that is serious. They like me. It’s like a gift. Fuckin’ monsters. If they would just leave the rust belt I might could pop some of ‘em.

“I thought the Dashites might be lookin’, in which case I ain’t sure what we would even say to each other but I might actually listen to one of them. But they wouldn’t trust a hornhead, I don’t think. Steel Rangers have, what, like eight ponies in the city? Yeah, and they wouldn’t trust a traveler with the survival instinct of a feral ghoul. ‘Sides, they don’t care. Enclave? Enclave hardliners, what’s left of ‘em, care a whole fuckload of a lot but once again, unicorn, and they woulda just dropped a bomb on the bar. Army or the Lost Legion? Not sure what they would want with me, I never did them a wrong or a right. Slavers have more grit than you and you ain’t no slave. Authority? Thought that but they’re scared shitless of all of us that walked with him. So who are you?”

I blinked in the failing light. The smoke from his cigarette curled up around the brim of his hat and I watched it for a second, trying to parse even half of what he had just said.

“I’m from the NCR. New Canterlot—“

“Republic, yeah, we get the news here. Whoop-de-doo. For what it’s worth, hope it goes well, but it ain’t got much to do with us.”

“Perhaps. The job is just to provide a map for caravans and maybe some information on what ponies here want and need and what they have to trade. I’ve already gotten that.”

“Heh, bet you have,” he said. Something was strange about the way he said it. I shivered.

“Right. Um… well, the other part is for myself. I want to know the story. I want to know about the Crusader.”

“Of course you do, chickenshit.” Another long draw, another dragon-like smoke plume. “Course you do. Why should I tell you anything about the kid? Don’t you have the Stable Dweller or the police filly or whatever?”

“Security. If you believe any of it.”

“Says the one from the Lightbringer’s neck of the woods.”

Hyper-aware of how deadly this stallion was, I grit my teeth and spoke slowly. “There is a lot of proof and her companions are willing to tell the story, as did she herself. There’s a book now, you know. And I’m not interested in her, she’s already been written about, she’s done and told. It’s a wonderful story, but it’s not the one I’m after. The Crusader waltzes into the shared consciousness of Equestria for a month or two and then vanishes. Where did he go? What did he do? He was perhaps one of the strangest heroes that DJ PON3 reported on, if only because he seemed to have turned a whole town upside down and yet there was so little information on him.”

I took another deep breath, prepared to continue, but he stopped me.

“Why?”

I blinked. “Why?”

“Yeah. Why tell the story? We all know it, and we all are the ones who really need to know it. Everypony in town has a story about him. Half the stories are bullshit and the other half are only a little right. If you say that it’s because he’s a hero, I’ll tell you to go fuck yourself with a HE grenade and be on my way. There’s bein’ a hero and there’s bein’ a pony worth givin’ a damn about, and between those two there is a hell of a lot of space. I would know.”

I wouldn’t. I licked my lips nervously. But… how do you explain to somepony willing to walk in a heartbeat?

“Is he a hero? Yes, I suppose he is. That’s what everyone I’ve asked has said. The Crusader is a hero. He saved so and so and killed so many raiders. He stopped a flood and rescued foals. He dug deeper than anypony dared and soared without wings. No bullet ever touched him and no fire could scald his flesh. Sometimes he appeared in pony’s dreams to warn them against some evil action. One pony told me very seriously that Luna and Celestia flew at his side in battle and that they spoke through him sometimes.”

The stallion snorted. I continued.

“One told me that he was really rather gentle when he wasn’t trying to save ponies from imminent death. One told me that the Crusader was a heartless sort who did good because it was a way to kill that other ponies wouldn’t care about. One told me he loved three mares and married them all in front of two armies. One told me he was into colts and that he ran off with a ghoul zebra. Fighting a dragon. Haunted trains. Taking down a whole Enclave patrol singlehoofed in ten seconds. Racing a Steel Ranger for the privilege to wear his armor. Starting a war and ending one. Losing friends or killing them himself. They couldn’t agree on his weapons, his species, his height, or even his age. I’ve heard everything from barely out of his colthood to ancient and even a few that insisted he was like some sort of ageless angel of Luna herself.”

“I’ve heard all the same.” The stranger grinned at me but it was not a nice grin. "And I gather you figured out pretty quick that nopony knows a thing about him."

“It’s a load of bull is what it is,” I said, and I knew my frustration shone through. “And it isn’t right. Is he a legend? I guess. Legends grow and they belong to everypony in the end, and to time itself. But he was a pony, wasn’t he? Doesn’t he deserve for somepony to know his story, his real story, without all of the other added garbage? Doesn’t he deserve to have at least that, in the end? Soon, no one will remember the truth, and all the good and evil he did will just be fairytales and myths twisted to justify or inform every fool with an idea about the world.”

“And you want the truth.”

“I want as close to it as I can get. Everypony deserves a chance to be a real pony and not just a shadow, even heroes.”

He stopped. I stopped.

“Then come with me. We’re headed to a little station town, other side of the river. I’ve been walkin’ there all along, just in case. Lucky for you, I’m gettin’ tired of ponies bein’ wrong all the time. You write your book and you don’t breathe a word of where you got what you know unless you gotta, and I’ll help you trace his every step. But first, it starts in the station town of Mosaic on the eastern shore of the Lunaga. And it all began when he saw something that he shouldn’t have seen.”

Author's Note

First Arc

MOSAIC

Mosaic I—Blind

“You need to know three things before we wander in there. First, the Crusader was a kid. Almost a stallion, but mostly a kid. He always complained when I told him that, but being a stallion is more than age and it’s more than having the heart. Second, you may already know this, but Lunangrad is both similar and completely different from the rest of the Wasteland. The similarities are mundane and don’t matter, but the differences are deep and all hidden away, guarded by things scarier than guns. Third? Third is that the kid was the smartest pony I ever knew, but also the stupidest.”

Mosaic was a beautiful town, despite being quite literally a hole in the ground. If I had not been raised in the belly of this station, I never would have believed that an old metro stop could have been anything but rundown and bleak, but the ponies of Mosaic have created a settlement which is the height of beauty. Even as they live in relative ascetic simplicity, their walls brim with art and their common areas are filled with iconography of the Goddesses. Everything is orderly and well-maintained. Lights hang here and there in the commons, shining in bulbs recovered from the urban tangle.

In this isolated settlement at the edge of the city, one found a peculiar sort of pony. They kept to themselves beyond even the expected insularity of metro residents. Mosaic was the last bastion of the Goddesses, or so its residents believed. Even if the world had fallen to unrighteousness, they would hold fast. I had my own opinions on that, but I let it be. For what it was worth, they seemed to believe it all sincerely.

There were worse places to grow up, I suppose.

I found Sparkler in the commons, and she was as beautiful as ever. She waved at me and I hurried over.

“Hey, Balm,” she said. I beamed at her. Sparkler was the most beautiful filly in Mosaic, and nopony would deny that—and that isn’t just my opinion. It’s the common one, agreed upon across the normal divides of public sentiment here in our cozy town.

“Hey, Sparks. Haven’t seen you in awhile! How’ve you been?”

“You saw me yesterday, dumb butt.”

“Well, yes, that is technically accurate…”

She rolled her eyes. “You really need to get you some friends. You know, besides me. I can’t be with you all the time. I have to sleep eventually!”

“I do have friends. Lots.”

To be fair, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. It was just more difficult than she made it out to be. I have disadvantages that Sparkler does not, and she has advantages far beyond anything I’ll ever claim. Not all of us can be beautiful or have a wonderful voice. Or be a unicorn with an actual talent. And only I have to be from a disreputable place.

She just chuckled and moved on. “Got any plans?”

“Same as yours,” I said, and looked through my right saddlebag. I pulled out the duty roster and then let go as I felt the tingle of her magic envelope the flyer.

“Oh. Yeah, that’s where I’m headed. I didn’t see your name on there before,” she said, and looked at me for a moment. I smiled at her again.

“Hard to believe, I know, but I actually asked for today instead of tomorrow before I knew you were on this shift.”

“It’s a little hard to believe, yeah.” She sighed, and then shook her head with a little smile. “Come on, clingy. Maybe we’ll find you a friend in the tunnels.”

“Hopefully one who does not use magic to cheat,” I replied. She rolled the flyer up into a little flying paper baton and swatted me. I laughed but lightly skipped aside. Avoiding injury was perhaps my only talent. Considering my father’s work, it was ironic at best.

In Mosaic, everypony pitched in for the good of the settlement. We survived on the salvage that came from the old maintenance tunnels and the Warrens below them. What little we could scrounge from below and from the surface is funneled back into buying food from the Authority. What they wouldn’t buy, we sold to the few merchants who bother coming this far down the river. Only two or three ever wander into Mosaic, except perhaps to rest. Every few years, a trader from down south arrived and found that the nearest settlement with a warm bed was ours. Those were the best kind of visitors—they always brought news (much of it awful, but news is news) and the caps they spent fund our continued peace.

Because the warrens and the tunnels were dangerous, nopony had to go down into them more than once a month unless they volunteer, and even then the Godspeakers are loathe to send a pony into the darkness more than twice in a month. They reward bravery, not stupidity, and certainly not suicide. Recklessness is folly, and folly is sin in the eyes of the Goddesses. So it goes.

Another reason, perhaps, to cling so close to Sparkler: she didn’t care that I was Authority. This meant she didn’t care that I was skeptical at best about the divinity of the old rulers of Equestria. I knew enough to make it not so much a certainty as a healthy skepticism, but even a shred of doubt was usually enough to trouble a Mosaic pony.

We left the commons behind, headed down towards the old rails. Ponies lived in the bodies of the ancient trains now, and over the years they too had been built over and painted. A mare hanging up laundry on a line between two train bodies saw us and waved. We waved back.

From the rails we skipped through the market and past the always open maintenance door that led down into the rest of the town.

In the commons and market, there was natural light from the great doorway mixed with warm white and yellow. But through the great bulkhead door that led down beneath the city itself, the light changed. This hallway was bathed in a sickly green and was only big enough for a single pony on a diet to squeeze through. It was like a great green throat that was swallowing you.

I shivered, and was glad when Sparkler didn’t seem to notice as she walked in front of me.

Except she spoke softly as we came to the end of the hallway, where the path branched off in two directions. The stairway to the left led up to the dormitories and storage rooms and if you kept going up eventually you got to the old world maintenance offices. To the right was a stairway that meandered down into the deeps.

“Staring where you’re not supposed to, or does it still bother you?”

I know my face is flushed. “It never bothered me.”

“Bullshit, Balmie,” she says. Her voice was quiet, but she didn’t say anything else. She just looked back at me and then stepped off into the darkness as the rest of her seemed to slide out of the green light. I ground my teeth and followed.

The stairway downwards was dark but not impossibly so. There were lights along it and the green glow from behind us. Below there was only the Workshop, and then the winding dark ways, and neither of those had much light to spare. Power was a blessing of the Goddess, yes, but it was as expensive as it was vital to survival in Lunangrad.

The Workshop below was actually not a part of the original metro system at all. Mosaic is down the street from one of the city’s maintenance offices, and like just about everything else, they built down instead of out or up. I guessed it had been used for storage, but who could be sure? Maybe it was an old locker room. It was neither now—it was a storehouse for anything that needed to be cut open or disarmed before being carried out of the warrens.

We weren’t late, but after a quick headcount, I knew we were the last ones to arrive. I sighed and found the overseer so I could give him my duty token.

Salt Lick raised his eyebrows at me—or us, I wasn’t sure—and then sighed. “Well, there you are. Taking your father’s shifts.”

“Yes sir,” I said. I kept my eyes on his and offered him the token.

“They did tell you that you didn’t have to do this, yes? Your father—“

“Is dead,” I said and swallowed. “Please take my token, sir, so I can get ready.”

Salt Lick pursed his lips. I knew he had a point. I didn’t have to do this at all. Technically, I was sto;; a few months from my birthday, and so a few months from when my name enters the rotation. On top of that, the idea of filling in for a dead or injured loved one was respected in Mosaic but no one expected it of me for a lot of reasons. Most of those reasons were good reasons, honorable reasons. Some of them were not.

I was tired of the latter following me around.

He sighed. “Your dad was just as insistent during the Blight,” Salt Lick noted and looked away from me. “Almost the same words. Go on. You’ll be pairing with Sparkler, then?”

“As always,” she said, and chuckled. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. I winced slightly, glad that I faced away from her.

Ponies walk on eggshells around me. If anyone says anything even vaguely about fathers or dads, they either backpedal hard or they just go quiet. And I get it. My father is gone. I understand that. Bloody hell, I know that people revered him and I’m not the only one missing him… but sometimes you just want ponies not to freeze up because they’re worried you’ll burst into tears. It would be nice to feel on the inside of the circle that was Mosaic.

Salt Lick took my duty token, and Sparkler and I waited with the others. There were some whispers, a few soft questions, a little gossip. I heard someone mention the spritebots being more active near the river, but not much else. Spritebots are interesting, if you don’t mind canned music. Rumor has it that they’re Enclave, the pegasi in the sky, but nopony has seen Enclave in Lunangrad in two centuries. For that matter, the cloud cover the tradesponies talk about covering the south doesn’t reach all the way here. The clouds are thick, yes, but we see the sun and the moon. They never left us.

Sparkler was digging through her bags for something. I sighed and think about Spritebots. I’d only seen two. I liked them, honestly. I enjoyed most things that fly.

I wish I could, myself.

Salt Lick checked the time on his little chrono and cleared his throat. “Alright. Let’s move. You all know the drill by now. Stay in pairs, don’t bunch up, don’t draw too much attention… don’t get hurt, please. Don’t be a hero, and don’t be a coward. It’s just a job.” He smiled at us and moved towards the lockers on the far wall. He opened them all and then turned back to us. “We have a few newer workers today. Four of you are kids… well,” he amended when Sparkler huffed, “Sort of. We’re not expecting miracles, alright? If you run into something bad, just run. Don’t go as far as the rest of us go. You’ve still got a lot to learn. Blessings of the Goddess.”

“Blessings of the Goddess,” we all murmured.

“Alright. Daylight and… ah, Rust, you two are first…”

Two by two, we received our equipment.

Salt Lick hooved over the folded up barding. As I fumbled with it, Sparkler had already taken hers with magic. I wish that I had magic—I wish a lot of things—but wishing takes time, and I have to take my light and the pistol.

The barding is a heavily modified radsuit. A long time ago, it was probably orange but now it’s faded to a saddish brown. The suit clings to the skin, so that you’re always feeling it hugging you tightly. Over the radsuit they’ve added padding, and some piecemeal metal armor plates. It’s terrible, frankly. Breathing feels strange… and that’s before the mask. I finished clipping the flashlight to my suit’s front when I looked up to see Salt Lick holding my mask out with a strange look on his face.

I took it, licking my lips. I hated the mask. I hated it so much. Anypony would. It’s tight and you couldn’t really adjust it very well and the glass is always foggy or scratched so you can’t see well and…

I slide the mask on my face. The earlier pairs are probably gone now.

“Ready?” Sparkler asked me. Her voice sounded strange, as if she were worried.

“Of yeah. Of course,” I said. I smiled at her before remembering that my smile was hidden by the rebreather. I lifted the mask so she can see me smile, but also so I coulde adjust the strap holding the little pistol to my chest, ready to be drawn. Wanted it to be easy to grab with my teeth if I had to.

She pursed her lips at me, but then her mask went down and so did mine, and then we were headed through the open hole in the wall that led towards the barricade. And past the barricade, the warrens began.

My mother was a warrior.

It’s not how you usually heard ponies living in Authority or Authority-protected station towns described. The Authority didn’t have warriors; it had soldiers. No warbands but squadrons and companies. Raiders have clans and raiding parties.

Mother was from highlander stock. Somehow, her own mother had come down from the mountains and had a foal in the streets. My mom didn’t remember why or how or where, only that her earliest memory was in an Authority orphanage. At least, that’s what she told me when I was very young. I’ve always thought there was more that she didn’t want to share.

But she was a warrior. She was a drifter who saved my father from a whole gang of raiders by herself just because he was in danger and then carried him all the way back to the nearest station town. She guarded Authority caravans and chased down slavers on the surface when I was young. She didn’t care that others saw her and shrank back, because she always had a smile for every situation and never seemed to worry.

She was a highlander, which meant she wasn’t… well. She wasn’t like everypony else.Thestral. Batpony. Whichever name you want, some say leatherwings of all things, but it doesn’t matter. She never cared. And she was comfortable in absolute darkness.

I am not a warrior, but I am comfortable in the dark. Just… not this particular dark. It was too much like the outside dark, where the... Where there are Things. Hell, it wasn’t the dark that scared me so much as it was what could be lurking around the corner.

Sparkler was ahead of me, trying to squeeze through a crack in the tunnel wall. I looked away, a little embarrassed at the idea of staring at her rear, but mostly it had been an hour at least and I felt like we were horribly exposed. The tunnel we had found in the warrens was hard, jagged rock, wet from some underground stream that we hadn’t found yet but probably would in a few moments. I hadn’t drawn the pistol. My mother yelled at me only once in the entirety of my life: when I was a foal I tried to touch her battle saddle.

Don’t touch a gun unless you’re going to use it!

“Hey… are you through yet?” I say, trying not to raise my voice.

“Hrm?”

I groan softly. “Are you through? I’m kind of a sitting duck here.”

“Ah, lighten up, Balm. It’s not like you’re gonna get torn to shreds by horrorterrors or eaten by raiders or anything. It’s just the warrens.”

“It’s just the warrens,” I groused. “Even the name sounds kind of ominous. Yes, let’s go down into the dark and wander around looking for trash. It’s not like it’s full of magic radiation and twisted abominations. Nothing frightening at all really.” I sniffed. “Just hurry, please.”

“I’m almost—there. Now lemme…”

She didn’t finish. I waited for a moment, and then turned around to find her gone. I crossed over to the crack and peered in. Faintly, I saw the beam of her flighlight as she worked it over thing from the side.

“Sparkler?”

“Holy… Goddesses, there’s so much down here. This is old! This is super old. Balm! Can you fit?”

I looked both ways down the yawning cavern’s way. There was, of course, no movement. I turned back to the hole and grinned. “I think so. Give me a bit.”

“Hurry! You gotta see this, for real!”

I squeezed through in half the time. My mother gave me two things, and one of them is a small, thin frame. I hate it, but occasionally it’s useful. This is one of those times.

“Ugh… hurry, slow pony,” she said, and I roll my eyes.

When I can got my light working and pointed in the right direction, I saw what caused the excitement.

The only way I could describe what little I could see was in terms like ancient and forgotten. This was not a cave at all, but a room, with flagstones for floor and columns for support. My light danced from column to column, seeing mostly broken walls and potshards between them. I advanced into the room, Sparkler hot on my heels, humming.

I tripped, but caught myself, dancing around the obstacle in the darkness. After a few heartpounding seconds, I regained enough balance to shine my chest light on the offending thing. An old… rock? No! Not just a rock. I leaned in, a huge smile blossoming on my face.

“Sparkler! I think this is a statue. Or was a statue or… Come see!” I tried to move it to see if I could identify the face… obviously, it had been a pony… the structure was enough to tell. What race? I sighed. “Bloody hell, can’t even tell if this is the face… Sparkler? Sparkler, you have a light spell, don’t you? I know it’s a bit chilly but…”

I stopped. The air was still. Sparkler hadn’t said a word since I squeezed through, had she? And I hadn’t… heard her move at all. I just assumed she had. I didn’t look up. I didn’t make any sudden movements. Very slowly, I dipped my chin and awkwardly took the pistol from its flimsy holster. It tasted awful, like ash and cold metal, and that’s what it was, wasn’t it? I tried to swallow to force the lump forming in my throat back down but I couldn’t. My whole body felt stiff.

Maybe it was something in the air. I didn’t know. I just knew that it was so very, very quiet. Unnaturally quiet.

I raised my head and looked the way I came, the gun sight in my eyes. My light showed nothing.

I was never a warrior. My mother was a warrior.

I tried to jump right on an impulse, spinning as I did so to see what was behind me. My light flashed over something huge just as I hit the hard ground. My shoulder took the majority of the fall but my head bounced and when it did I tried to squeeze on the gun so it wouldn’t fly out of my mouth—

And it ROARED.

The sound of it firing echoed off the close walls over and over again, and my ears were already ringing. I tried to get back up on my feet so I could meet whatever it was but Sparkler was on top of me, pinning me to the floor.

“Calm down! It’s me! Don’t shoot! It’s Sparkler! Balm? Balm?”

Only now do I realize that I’ve broken out into a cold sweat. My vision swims. In the half-light of the flashlights, hers and mine, I see only the suggestion of a face above me. Her light shines right into my eyes and then I feel something slap my face. The gun goes flying from my grip and I open my mouth to scream and then she is hugging me.

“Calm down! Calm down! There’s nothing here! It’s nothing. You had one of your… you had one of your attacks. It’s okay. Come back to me, alright? Balm? Balm?”

I try to breathe normally but I can’t. Because I see it behind her shoulder. I tried to look away but I felt like I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t respond. It felt like I had died and my body had given up on me, and yet my heart beat in my ear furiously, drowning out Sparkler’s voice. I was only dimly aware of her gripping me tighter, trying to talk me down.

A great statue… no. An idol. A terrible idol of something more reptilian than equine, six ponies high at least with an open mouth filled with stony teeth. A great horn sprouted from its head like a spear, and I could almost hear the sounds of ponies impaled upon it and I smelled their blood and it was so dark, so dar—

I recovered in the cavern outside the temple. When my legs worked, Sparkler had all but force me back through the crack before squeezing through herself, and then cast her light spell. The little shining ball of illumination now sat a hoof’s length from me, flickering slightly.

Again. It had happened again. I panicked, and I couldn’t stop panicking. It wasn’t always in the dark. Sometimes, if I lost control enough, it could happen in brightly lit places. It was hard to tell what would set it off because almost anything seemed capable of turning me from a clever creature into a sobbing, shivering animal.

“Up for some food?”

I look up. Sparkler is smiling at me with a packet of crisps floating its way over slowly. It meanders in its flight, first one way and then another, and with each little turn she makes a “whoosh” noise. I snort and then laugh. When it finally reaches me, I take it in both hooves.

When you’re an earth pony, some things are hard to open. You learned to make do. Mostly, this involved a lot of mechanics. Why did earth ponies make great technicians and mechanics? Because when opening a packet of chips takes more than two steps, you started figuring out how to do everything better because the alternative is madness. But even a weird earth pony like me could do this much. There’s a pop and then delicious salty potato goodness. I imagine I can taste a little bit of warm rad on it, keeping it nice and fresh or something. It actually does preserve things but… it’s complicated. Burying my nose in the bag and eating without an ounce of shame? Less complicated. So I stopped thinking about it.

“Do… do you wanna talk ‘bout it?”

I look up at her, bag of crisps still quite securely around my snout. She snorted and put a hoof over her mask before remembering it was still on.

Mine? It’s a miracle I hadn’t broken it, but as soon as she could, Sparkler ripped it off me so I didn’t choke myself trying to bite my way out. Masks or anything that covers the face are triggers, I think. Without testing the hypothesis, I can’t be sure, but I’m honestly not really up for testing it, scientific method be damned.

With every ounce of Authority dignity I had, I removed the bag from my face. “I’m not sure I do,” I said. “I thought there was something in the room, I saw the idol, I panicked. Beyond that…” I shrugged. “I’ve dwelt long enough on my infirmities. It gets tiring to remember how pathetic you are.”

She frowned. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“Reality is harsh,” I said, and then went back to eating.

After a moment, she sighed and then began to dig through her bag with magic. I shook out of my own saddlebags and pushed them over. I finished and spoke again. “If you’re taking stock,” I said, pointing down to my bags.

“They don’t expect as much from us, but I still want to be useful,” she said. Her voice seemed sadder, and I knew I had hurt her feelings by not wanting to talk. I was sorry for it. Very sorry, in fact. I just don’t know what I could say that wouldn’t feel either uncomfortable for both of us or drag up something I don’t want to talk about. And now that the moment was gone, I didn’t know how to fix it.

“Hey, Sparkler?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” I said, and laid my head down.

“Sure,” she said, her voice soft. “Now, the scrap electronics you found are decent… if we could find some energy cells, Spark Plug would be pretty happy.”

“I thought you found some earlier?”

“Nah. They were all used up. I poked at ‘em with my magic.”

I sighed. “Great. We’ve collected a lot of the edible lichen, though, right? It’s not impressive, but…”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, to cut the conversation off. I nodded. We were fine.

Salt Lick was not impressed. Scrap Electronics and some energy cells that probably could be recycled that we had dug out of a train that had fallen into the warrens and two whole pounds of the edible cave lichen that kept us healthy. It tasted bitter but it was nutrient rich, and it was a sort of radiation scrubber. A story about a spooky ruin. But the lichen was useful and the electronics would indeed make Spark Plug, the town’s engineer, happy indeed. He always needed scraps.

So with a nod and a little grunt, he gave us each a few caps and the daily ration of lichen-mix. The older stallions’ eyes lingered on me for a second longer than was normal and then he simply walked away. I shrugged it off, and followed Sparkler back upstairs into the station proper.

“So, got any plans for the day?” I asked with a smile. “I mean, I’m rather beat, but we could totally grab lunch down by the river. I’ve got some caps and I’m kinda in the mood for—“

“Not today,” she said, and then shrugged helplessly. “I’m a little busy today. But we can go later this week!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Balm. Wait—no, don’t go today. Somepony down the road at Mondale came by when I was on my morning walk. There’s a raiding party nearby.”

I grimaced. “Oh, great. Won’t have another merchant for a while, then. That’s alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She left me with a side-hug and a wave, and then I was alone in the commons. Ponies milled about, talking to each other. Some were buying from the stalls, but most were just enjoying the day. Mosaic was a good town. Stuffy? Very, sometimes. A little too religious for my tastes? Often. But it was a good place and I liked it.

Just… not right now.

I hadn’t expected to be free so suddenly. I had planned everything out to keep myself from exactly this situation. I like to be alone, but hate very much to be lonely. And now I have all of tomorrow on top of the rest of today to revel in my own thoughts.

With as much dignity as I could muster, I straightened up and started walking towards home.

I passed a few ponies I knew, and a few I didn’t—not that I hadn’t seen them before, because I had. There weren’t that many ponies in Mosaic. I just hadn’t had the chance to meet them all. In fifteen-plus years. It wasn’t as if I hid. It was…

And there they were, as if they could hear my thoughts and knew exactly when not to appear. It was because of these two, walking towards me from the gates that led up into the streets. Walking purposefully.

Authority ponies encompass all three major tribes: earth, pegasus, unicorn. Earth, Sky, and Magic. They made a big deal out of that, actually. So how did you tell them apart? Simple. You waited for them to talk. Because they talk. It’s the first thing they do. I should know, because I am one, in a way. Authority ponies talk with a clipped, exact accent, drilled into them when they are young. In the old world, they might have called it an aristocratic voice, but in the now it’s just a way to distance themselves. I hear myself use it, and I wonder if they share the disgust I feel with myself.

The other way? Authority ponies never fit in. Look for the odd-pony out. The stallion who looks unsure of everyone around him. The mare who looks like she’s on a particularly bad date no matter who she’s with. Outside of the warm lights of the Authority, everypony is a noble savage at best and a profligate at worst. So it was that the two Authority tithe-takers would be obvious even without their clean uniforms. Black and tan, all straight lines and tiny insignia of Equestria.

“Ah, excuse me!” I kept walking. If anything, I sped up. Father raised me to be polite to a fault, but he also was clear that it was up to me how long I was willing to suffer fools.

“Sir! Excuse me, it’s Mr. Balm, correct?”

I ground my teeth and kept walking. They were right behind me now.

“If you would wait a moment… I know you might not…”

The other one tried. “We aren’t here to demand anything, young master Balm.”

I stopped. I turned. “Then what do you want?” I asked them. Did I keep my voice level? I tried. But how could anyone, knowing exactly how this conversation was about to play out? I could draw an entire flowchart of where this conversation was going to go. There were only a few avenues. It would begin, of course, in the obvious place.

They looked at each other for a moment. Both were unicorns, taller than me by a head and a half, not counting the horn. Both stallions, both with longer manes full of curls, one with eye-glasses. Yes, that’s right, I knew these two. I had thought it would be them. Which meant that I could cross out some of the expectations I had and settle on the stupider sort.

“We wanted to express our condolences regarding your father,” said the one on the left.

“Thanks,” I said, roughly. When he seemed taken aback, I sighed. “I’m sorry. Just…”

The second unicorn nodded. “We understand. I also perfectly understand why you would not wish to speak to us, of all ponies.”

“If you’re that perceptive, maybe we can skip the inevitable part where you try to get me to go back.”

And, miracles do occur in Mosaic, the second unicorn smiled faintly. “I actually had no plans to coerce any sort of return out of you, young master. Do you remember who we are?”

I blinked. “Really? No call to take up my father’s mantle? No self-aggrandizing speech on the glory of subterranean civilization and the common good?” I asked, a bit incredulous.

It wasn’t that I hated the Authority so much as I was frustrated by them. Because, even as I said this, I felt bad. A lot of those speeches were in earnest and I knew that. But some of my regret was tempered by both of them chuckling.

“No, not at all,” said the first. “We were students of your father’s. As much as it hurt when he left us and the movement…” He sighed and shook his head. “No, we understood.”

“Trying to convince you to come back with us, especially right now, would dishonor his memory,” said the other. “If you wished to return, we would of course sponsor you in a heartbeat, but you don’t. It’s fairly plain. We mostly came to offer our condolences and to ask of you a favor.”

I thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Notes.”

“Yes,” they said almost together. I chuckled, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I didn’t want them in my home. I very much did not want them to cross my threshold and touch my father’s things. The thought of them seeing my mother’s framed portrait or of them asking me about the Sword or sitting at our table for even a moment…

I swallow. “Come with me.”

My father was a doctor. His name was Gilead Balm, and he was the best at what he did.

That isn’t an exaggeration. The name Balm gets you places in Lunangrad and even beyond. Gilead Balm had been calm and collected in the face of death and disease. He had treated every sort of pony under the sun from Steel Rangers to raiders. Ponies in the Authority still talk about him sometimes. Graduated their Academy when he was still a colt, apprenticed to a surgeon on the cusp of adulthood. By the time he was old enough that no one questioned his maturity, he had seen more of the failures of the physical form than most ponies see in their lives. He came out the other side not only whole, but filled with a firm conviction.

Ponies had to do better.

My father became more than just a doctor. He became a leader. An icon. And then my mother died. And then he worked his last miracle here in Mosaic. And then he died.

And all that was left of Gilead Balm was myself and the lodgings he had paid for in advance that would keep me for a decade. All I had, besides for his notes and data and the few relics that he had saved. There weren’t many. He was not the kind that collected useless knick-nacks.

I showed the two Authority doctors—they both worked in Central Station, apparently—my father’s old terminal and then began making instant noodles. I had a lot of instant noodles. They were plentiful, cost about ten caps a packet, and easy to store. They also required a little preparation, which was fine. It gave me time to think. Or rather, to avoid thinking at all costs.

The two doctors whispered over my father’s data. I tried to tune them out.

When I was done, I sat down at the table—which was empty except for me—and briefly considered mimicking the grace that most ponies in Mosaic said before a meal, if only to see the looks on their faces. I didn’t. I just ate and didn’t look at them.

I looked at mother instead.

Not even these well-meaning intruders could change the feelings that swelled up in me as I looked up at her picture. We’d put it in the middle of the left wall, so that you could see it when you came in. You could turn at the computer terminal and see her there, framed and smiling down on you. That’s why he decided to put her picture here instead of his room, I think. On either side, there are smaller frames with clippings from the official government paper, the one the Authority brought in bulk every month even as far as Mosaic. Mother saved some of them, the ones with pictures. Dad had saved the rest. He would read them to her when she asked. He told me, when he was still healthy, that it had been a bit embarrassing but she had insisted that she hear every article they wrote on whatever miracle he’d worked last. I had read them all many times.

Mother herself? Mom. She would have preferred I call her that, I think. She was no Authority pony, regimented and certain. Her bright crimson eyes almost seem to sparkle, even though I know they don’t. Her coat is a blue-ish gray, and her mane is a electric blue. She smiled. Of course she did, and father would never have chosen a picture that didn’t have her smiling. It would have been hard to find one, anyway. He’d said once, when in a strange mood, that she rarely ever frowned. I’m old enough to know that can’t be true, but it’s nice to think about, isn’t it? The painting was done by a friend in Central, where they have the safety and the luxury for portraits. He’d managed to find a way to keep the small fangs out of sight. I didn’t blame him. True differences in Central? My mother had been loved, but in a different way.

Beneath the smiling batpony mare was the Sword. As always, it was locked firmly in place in its display case.

“By Celestia’s Ghost, he was still working on…” I couldn’t hear the rest. I ate a little faster, as if that would make them leave. I kept thinking about the memorial in front of me.

Curiously named, the Sword, as it wasn’t one at all. The Sword was a battle saddle of a custom design, one not based on the old world’s standardized designs. It had but a single gun, a long rifle that slung over the right shoulder and could swivel a bit. Only a few degrees, but I suppose it was enough. I wouldn’t know—I couldn’t operate the thing at all and had no real desire to learn. It was painted with the black and tan stripes of the Authority, but only in the front. The rest was honestly breathtaking. Below the stripes, there was a metal crest of Celestia and Luna chasing each other in the sky. It was actually almost identical to the mosaic at the entrance to the station that was the town’s namesake. Luna was on one flank and Celestia graced the other.

The resemblance of Mosaic’s mosaic to my mother’s sigil was part of the reason why we moved here, when I was young. I couldn’t help but stop by the image on the rare occasions I went up into the city. I would stop and lay my hoof on the flat, weathered stones, and wonder if my mother had ever lived here. If she had, dad didn’t say.

Sighing, I realized that I was done eating and my “guests” hadn’t left.

“You know, you can just download it all,” I said.

They jumped and turned to look at me. “Wh-what? Are you quite sure? We wouldn’t want to—“

“What? Find dad’s diary? If you do, read it if you want. If you really respect his privacy, you’ll know what to touch and what not to. I just…” I purse my lips. “It’s fine.”

The second one looks uncomfortable as he produces a holotape from his uniform pocket. “If it’s alright, we will. Are you sure? We could take notes manually.”

“No. Just take it all. If it helps, it helps. If it doesn’t… well, he would have wanted someone to try. I’m certainly not going to be able to,” I added. “Just take it.”

So they did. They left pretty quickly after that, probably sensing my mood. When they left, I wandered back into my room, found my radio, and hugged it. I was glad that the little bulb in my room had gone out. When I had the energy to move again, I would turn the one in the other room off. But for now… I just needed to lie here.

I turned on the radio and listened.

When my father died, I drifted. I was more than just distraught—I was hopeless. I had nopony else. Well, no, I had Sparkler. But that was it. No family that I knew of, really. My mother’s origins are mysterious and my father was an only child of parents who were long dead. Ponies in Mosaic loved my father for curing the Radplague after so many others had tried, but they also were wary of him. He was Authority, and outside of the Authority stations, that isn’t a good thing. Mosaic payed its tribute and got the minimal promise of protection from raiders and a couple of guards for the rare caravan it sent towards Central. The Authority was a force for good… probably. But no one liked it very much, and at the end of the day, that is what he was. It’s what I am, whether I want to be or not.

So I was alone. Nopony disliked me so much as I made them a little nervous. My father was dead, ironically, of disease he could not cure. My mother died of much the same. And that was when I started listening to the radio all day to fill the awful silence.

Then She appeared. The Stable Dweller, the Mare of Stable 2, the hero. The bringer of light and the last hero of Equestria. It was a heady draught, and I couldn’t help but see my mother in her, fighting the “good fight” out in the wastes. Saving ponies much like my mother had saved my father in the dark tunnels. I had begun to soothe the ache of the dual absence with the DJ’s tales of the Stable Dweller.

The music ended, and his voice came on. I smiled on reflex.

And then he started to tell a story. A very, very different story.

He told us all, his faithful listeners throughout the wide wasteland, about the mare who had stormed out from her stable to do battle with the evils of the world… and a little town called Arbu.

Author's Note

Footnote:
Level up! Perk Earned.

Gun Nut.
Just because you don’t know how they work doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the feel of a nice assault rifle in your hooves! +5 Small Guns +5 Repair

Mosaic II—Lost

“This is where it began. This is where it started. Mosaic ain’t much. It’s dumb town full of dumb ponies who stick their heads in the dirt and pray as hard as they can. Of all places for a poor, dumb kid to wind up… it was probably the worst. If they had been assholes, maybe he wouldn’t have done any of it. But they weren’t. They were nice about it, and that was drove him to start the whole damn crusade.”

Since losing my last parent, I have woken up most nights clutching my radio with DJ PON3’s station still playing softly. An alarm on the far side of my room, on the ground in a corner, goes off. I crawl out of bed, set the radio back on its table and turn it off. Turn the alarm off. Have a morning chug of apparently clean water. That has been my morning, almost all of it silent.

This morning, I wake up with my radio on the ground, sputtering. My alarm was going off, but it isn’t what woke me.

What woke me was the shooting.

I fell out of bed, blinking owlishly, trying to comprehend what was happening. Who the hell was shooting this early in the morning? Was it the militia’s training day already? Dammit, somepony should have told them to do this later in the day…

I shook myself off and hurried outside, furious. Who thought it was a good idea… to… to train…

Mosaic was in chaos. The tight hallways of the dormitories were filled with ponies carrying foals or weapons, one hauling sacks on his back. I had to duck back into my home to avoid being run over by a panicking mare.

Nopony stopped to say anything to me. None of them explained themselves. They just ran.

It occurred to me then, half-fallen in my own doorframe, that something was wrong. This wasn’t militia rallying come early. It wasn’t some sort of noisy display.

There were more gunshots. And then the walls hummed slightly as the distant sound of an explosion filled the hallway. It wasn’t enough to shake me off my hooves, but a unicorn mare who had just come up from the storerooms was startled into falling.

I hurried to her, pulling her up. “What is happening?” I asked. She stared at me with wide eyes.

“Celestia save us,” she muttered, panting. “Luna protect us…”

And then she hurried about gathering what I now saw were ammo boxes from the deep storerooms. I gaped at them, even as she pushed past me, still praying.

I followed. I had to.

There was no way. Nopony would ever attack Mosaic. Why would they? There isn’t anything to take and ten dozen places that any of us could squeeze out and make a run for it with any salvage worth stealing on our backs. Nopony would attack the home of Gilead Balm, not while he was alive. And those who might didn’t want to deal with the Authority backlash. Mosaic wasn’t Authority, but it paid the tithe.

I came out into the commons and found it swarming with ponies. Some of the militia had their barding half-on, guns pointed towards the gates. Others were trying to erect barricades around the old metro trains. The priest was there among the militiaponies, yelling at them to do something.

I just stumbled forward, eyes wide, mouth gaping in shock. What was this? Who was this?

Salt Lick ran past me, then stopped and turned to face me. I backed up as he advanced.

“Get back into the dormitories, now!” he yelled at me. “For Celestia’s sake and your father’s! Get out of he—“

There was another explosion. This one was at the top of the entrance ramp, and I felt the ground beneath me shaking. Somepony up above, on the mezzanine, screamed and then there was a quick burst of gunfire. Salt Lick charged me, roughly pushing me back the way I came.

“I can—“ But he was already screaming.

“Go! Get out of here, you foal! Move it!”

I heard the rapid chatter of automatic fire and then past Salt Lick, I saw them. They poured down the entrance ramp, a half dozen of them with as many kinds of weapons. They weren’t ponies at all but monsters, painted and torn and covered with unidentifiable bits of armor and gore. I thought I heard one of them laughing. I thought one of them looked right down at me.

Salt Lick turned, a curse on his lips. I tried to back up, but my legs wouldn’t move. There was no way to tear my eyes away.

It was only a second, maybe two. It was enough. Raiders. Raiders, in Mosaic. It wasn’t possible. Not here! Never here! We didn’t have anything worth taking!

One of them threw something that sailed over the heads of the assembled militia ponies, heading our way. The defenders fired up at them with pistols and old hunting rifles. One of the raiders’ heads exploded into red mist as a hunting round took his head away and his body lumbered off the side of the walkway. The rest began to charge down the stairs, shooting and laughing. The one in front had a sledgehammer in her teeth, and the end dragged and she tripped over it. She rolled down the stairs giggling even as the militia ponies shot at her.

The thrown thing landed right in front of me. I stared down at it, confused for a moment.

Then Salt Lick filled my vision, shoving me away. “Run, you idiot! Run!”

And then Salt Lick exploded as he tried to throw the grenade back.

When I fell asleep last night, I fell asleep to the DJ talking about the Stable Mare. The Stable Dweller. The Hero of the Wasteland. The Lightbringer.

She had scoured the ruins for raiders and treasure. She saved ponies for no other reason then that they needed rescue and she still breathed. Steel Rangers feared her. Raiders saw her in their drug-addled nightmares. Slavers trembled at the very thought of her. She was a warrior. She was like my mom.

She slaughtered an entire town in cold blood yesterday. Arbu, and remember the name.

I kept thinking about Arbu as I lay in the makeshift infirmary. When I close my eyes I see the giggling mare rolling down the stairs. I wonder if the Stable Mare was like that when she murdered them all. When she lost it. Finally lost it out there in the big empty sky.

The militia killed the intruders, but there are a few dozen more outside, taking potshots. The entrance is barricaded now, but eventually they’ll still shoot their way through. The Authority will be here in an hour, and ponies are buzzing about it. They’ll save us—that’s what they’re saying. They cast furtive glances at me that I pointedly try to ignore. They have to save us. He’s here. Isn’t his dad important? And they promised. That’s why we pay the tribute. The taxes are for things like this.

They’ll see soon enough.

The nurse comes around again. She looks me over with a grimace. Her name is Waning Moon, because of course these Goddesses-crazed ponies name their foals after religious things. She’s a unicorn, and I watch her horn light up as she examines my paltry wounds with a bit of envy. I wish I had magic. Or wings. Or even real earth pony strength, because if there really are Goddesses who yet watch over ponykind, I was a joke they played upon my parents.

“I think you’re going to be fine. The shrapnel is all removed,” she said as her horn lost its glow. “I’ve done the diagnostic spell twice and we got it all. You’re very lucky, Mr. Balm.”

“Just Balm,” I replied softly.

“It’s not enough to warrant Med-X, and our supply is low so I wouldn’t have any to give you regardless.”

I shook my head. “I’m not comfortable with chems,” I said. “Thank you for thinking of it, however. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Can you do anything medical like your father?”

Ah, of course. I winced. “No, ma’am.”

“Then I don’t think so,” she said, but then her look softened. “Thanks for asking. Just stay safe and pay attention. You know where all the exits are, right? The rally point?” When I nodded, she sighed. “Just listen for the evacuation order, then. I think the mayor is holding off for reinforcements. Be careful, alright?”

I stood and shook myself off. “I’ll try.”

“Do you have any weapons or ammunition? The militia could use some, I think. Anything that would help.”

I opened my mouth, thought better, and then averted my gaze. “No, nothing that would help.” Just the Sword, and I would die before letting another pony use it. I wouldn’t even touch my mother’s last legacy.

I left quickly after that, glad to be out of her mane. I could imagine her relief at being free of me, as well. Because I was a reminder of who really ruled in the underground, wasn’t I? Just a constant bloody reminder.

The infirmary is deep in the station, near the dormitories. All of this was carved out over the decades by settlers. Most wasteland communities on the surface were ad hoc affairs, where ponies drifted in and out, and few, if any, lived multiple generations in the same place. They were watering holes for scavengers and prospectors. But station-towns were stable. The Authority protected them, all that paid the tithe, and had since not long after the war had ended in fire.

Protected them. I snorted. I supposed it was technically true.

Between the infirmary and the dormitories are the main storage areas, for things that aren’t dangerous—food, personal lockers, medical supplies in lockboxes. In Mosaic, they believed Luna and Celestia watched over all, and saw all, and so they weren’t so concerned with ponies simply making off with boxes or bashing in lockers. The Goddesses watched all, after all, didn’t they? Just like they were watching this siege unfold. I just wanted to go home and wait for the evacuation. Others would be huddling together in the smaller common areas in the dormitory, where foals usually played. They would be all together, waiting for the go ahead to flee. I had no stomach for waiting with them, not after Salt Lick. Not after Arbu. Not with their hopes for salvation from the Authority about to be twisted.

I passed through one of the bigger storage rooms and existed into a dimly lit hallway that connected it to the dormitories. On either side, doors left over from the old maintenance department with old world markings greeted me. Like many of the smaller passages in Mosaic, it was a strange mixture of unsettling and cozy.

And then I heard somepony sniffling. Then I heard their voice. Not just any voice, but Sparkler’s. In an instant, the malaise falls away. If there is anypony in whose company I can find just a moment of peace, it’s hers. I smile and trace the sound of her voice. There’s another voice, sure, but I know she’ll be able to talk. We’re all in this together. She knew what happened.

Relieved, I found one of the doors slightly ajar and pushed it open just a bit.

Sparkler and another unicorn mare our age were sitting together amongst the piled containers. The other one, the one I didn’t know very well, was hugging Sparkler as she cried. I struggled to remember her name. Sea green… sea green… I’d seen her plenty of times. What was her name?

I stopped, not saying a word, not knowing what to do. If she was crying… Oh no. No, please not that. Her mother was in the station militia. Had she…?

The other mare kissed Sparkler’s forehead. “It’s okay. She’s fine, Sparky. I know she is.”

“I just…” Sparkler pushed away slightly, just to wipe her eyes. Neither had seen me yet, and I suddenly felt paralyzed. “I’m just worried. Salt Lick’s dead, you know?”

“Yeah, they say he jumped on a grenade for the Doc’s kid.”

I trembled. She was right. It was my fault. Another pony was dead because of me. I hadn’t… I hadn’t had time to think about it before, but she was right. I was safe and whole. He was… He was just gone.

“Oh goddesses… I can’t imagine. Salt Lick gone… Swift Balm could have died, and so soon after his father… it’s just too awful, Rail.”

“That stupid colt shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Rail said with a grunt. “Salt Lick’s dead because of that useless—“

“Don’t say it,” Sparkler said, and my heart leapt. “Please don’t say that. Balm respected Salt Lick, and Salt Lick would never have abandoned the son of the pony who…” She coughed and Rail offered her what looked like a well worn hoofkerchief. Sparkler laughed, her voice musical and wonderful even now, and blew her nose. “Luna save me, I look terrible.”

“Not so bad,” Rail murmured, and then when the hoofkerchief was out of her way, leaned in and kissed Sparkler gently on the mouth.

My brain simply stopped. Thoughts died. I didn’t think about Salt Lick dying or about how Sparkler would have the right words to make everything better. I didn’t think about the Authority or Mosaic or the raiders outside the barricade.

I just stood there, blinking. I forgot I had a body for a moment. I’m not sure I would have remembered had I not backed away without thinking about it and clanged my hoof against the door.

Rail’s ears twitched at the sound. She jerked away, horn already glowing. She was ready to fight. And for a wild moment, so was I. Because I was furious. I was betrayed. I was a fool and she was the one that made me that way.

“What the shit? Come on out, Lunadamned… oh.”

She blinked at me, then looked at Sparkler, then to me, and then back to Sparkler.

Sparkler turned, wide-eyed. She saw me.

“Oh Celestia… Balm? Balm, they let you out?”

The anger left me. My legs felt like noodles. “Minor lacerations,” I said absently. “Nothing broken. Minimal blood loss. Fit as a…” I blinked. “Fit as a fiddle, that’s… that’s me. I’m going to go,” I added, taking another step back. “I need to go now.”

I turned and fled. I could hear her calling after me. I know she tried to grab me with her magic when I reached the end of the hall but I was going to fast. Even with my puny, pathetic strength I still slipped out of her hold and tumbled into the dormitory hallway. The only pony left to see was an old stallion who stared at me in confusion. I ran past him, even as Sparkler’s voice chased me.

“Balm! Balm, wait! Please come back!”

“I have to go,” I kept saying to myself. “I have to go! Go away! I’m fine!”

I didn’t look back because there was no need. I could hear her and her marefriend’s hooves against the old concrete and recycled metal floors beating behind me. Rail, the other one, shouted at me.

“Hey, kid! Slow down, colt! She just wants to talk to you!”

I felt anger rising up in my chest. “Then you tell her to leave me alone!” I screamed as loud as I could. I knew that other ponies could hear. Suddenly I didn’t care. I didn’t care what any of them thought. Let them rot. The Authority would come and sit on their asses and do nothing but take up space and demand food! Let them find out on their own! They could take their whole f-fucking evacuation and… and…

I reached my own dwelling, with the security door my father had installed by Authority ponies, and I slammed it shut. I set the locks, even though I barely remembered the passcodes, my hooves moving as fast as they could. When I want to be, I’m fast. Nothing can catch me short of a Dashite on chems.

As soon as the tone announced that the door was locked magnetically, I slumped down to the floor. All of the lights were out and all I could see was the eerie green light from the numberpad.

They arrived a few seconds later. One of them banged on the door. “Balm? Balmy?”

I stared at the door. My chest heaved.

“Balmy? Please… please talk to me. Please open up. I…”

“You should have known I—“ and then I physically kept myself from speaking with a hoof. No. No explanations. I didn’t want explanations. I just wanted her to go away. I wanted to be alone.

“Balmy, please. I’m your friend. I didn’t want you to feel like I was going to leave you alone… I was going to introduce you to Rail Line today, before…”

“Luna’s light, kid,” groused her marefriend. “I know it was awkward, but… I mean, you had to have known.”

“Rail, please,” hissed Sparkler. Their voices sounded so strange through the door. “You’re not helping.”

“Sparky, you need to be straight with this buck. If he didn’t know which way you swung then he’s delusional. Yeah, it’s really awkward, but that’s no reason to run screaming through the hab.”

“His father just died and he almost got blown to bits. He’s in shock, Rail.”

“Go away,” I groaned. I scooted back from the door.

“He wants space, Sparks. Let him have it. I know you don’t want to, but you can’t badger him.”

Sparkler’s voice broke. “Damn it. Damn it, I can’t just… not like this. Rail, this is bad, please just help me.”

Rail banged on the door. I knew it was her because the blows were more forceful.

“Ki—Balm. Swift Balm. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said, automatically.

“Will you unlock this door? Sparkler really wants to talk to you.” She hesitated. I waited. “She’s your friend. I’m already pissed that you’re making her sad, but that’s not the point. If you’re really her friend, you will get your scraggly ass out here and talk to her. I think you owe her that. Don’t you think so?”

I was quiet.

Was she right? Yeah. Was that something I could do? No.

I walked towards the door. I stepped back. I reached for the numpad…

And then with a frustrated growl I threw my hoof away, knocking over something heavy on the counter. I couldn’t see what happened, but there was a crash. I thought I heard something shattering and I cried out in alarm.

“Balm? BALM! Are you alright?”

“I… I tripped,” I said, holding my hoof. It hurt, now. “Sorry. I’m… Sparkler? I’m fine. It was just a shock,” I said, trying to fake a smile she won’t see. I can hear my own voice break, and I know it sounds stupid. “I’m fine. I swear. Just want… I just want to be alone right now, alright? It’s okay.”

There were some whispers on the other end of the door. I almost wondered venomously if they were out there, reenacting the horror from earlier. Then Sparkler answered.

“I’ll be back, Balmy. Please just… Please remember that I’m your friend. Please?”

“Yeah,” I croaked.

I fumble for the lights in the dark. I’m an idiot. An utter idiot. An absolute, irredeemable fool. Thinking that Sparkler was interested in me. I was, and am, a pity project, something to be fawned over and bandaged up. I’m not a pony, but a receptacle for other’s to pour their unwanted miserable—

I finally found the light switch and flipped it on and saw the damage.

My father’s terminal had fallen. But that was the least of the damage. I didn’t care about the terminal at all, because in front of me, I saw what it had hit. The wall. The memorial wall.

Trembling, I approached it. I had knocked the portrait of my mother and one of the clipping frames loose. The Sword hadn’t moved at all. As I approached, my hooves crushed little shards of glass into the floor. I didn’t notice them.

I picked up the portrait of mom. The glass was shattered. The canvas sagged out of the frame like a sick animal.

My breathing picked up. I ground my teeth together. Bit my lip to keep from saying something until I drew blood.

Raiders. Arbu. Sparkler. Mom. Dad. The Authority.

I hated it. I hated everything. I hoped those raiders came and murdered everypony in this miserable superstitious hole. And then I wanted to kill them myself. Every last giggling, filthy raider dead with my hooves beating their skulls into jagged little pieces. I wanted to shove their sawed-off shotguns in their mouths and make them whine for mercy. Or else, I wanted to die trying. Right then, I didn’t about anything but being far, far away from where I was.

I didn’t want anyone to die. No I didn’t. I was angry. I was hurt. She would never want me to say something like that. Her eyes stared up at me. She smiled up at me with that eternal smile, like she could say—Don’t think that. It’s not true.

I just didn’t want to be alone.

I held the portrait to me and wept.

I didn’t notice the folded paper at first. It was only when I could breathe normally again that I saw it.

There had been noise outside, but nothing important enough to draw me away from the shattered frame and the picture. Just ponies moving outside, talking. The Authority had finally arrived on their power-carts to save the bloody day. Which they wouldn’t. Risk losing actual Authority citizens? Not for these wretches, obviously not. They would just try to intimidate raiders. I’m sheltered, and I know that intimidating madponies is foolish. What does that say of them?

When I finally noticed the folded paper, I removed it from the ruined frame and carefully set the painting on my table, with my mother facing up towards the ceiling. I swallowed, and then opened the message up.

GBDL13

And that was all it said. I blinked at the message, written in my father’s neat hornwriting. It was obviously his, perfect and studied. I turned the paper over with a frown.

REDEEM.

Frustrated, confused, unsure, I put the paper down beside my mom and stepped back. The first I could understand. Gilead Balm, Day Lilly. Their names. Thirteen? I could only guess. Perhaps whatever it referred to had been made when I was thirteen. Perhaps it was an old reference I would never understand. A random number, even. But the whole thing was obviously a code of some sort. Probably for the terminal I just accidentally trashed.

The second message eluded me utterly. Redeem. I had only ever seen that word used in two ways: debt, and the priest’s talk in the sanctum. It implied something owed either way—your money or your life, either forfeit for transgression or by agreement. You redeemed property condemned in some wrongdoing. You redeemed a pony through sacrifice after some terrible sin.

It wasn’t a word that inspired much confidence.

And the frustration grew. What the hell did this mean? My father leaves this message, obviously, and then… and then nothing. Because he was dead.

Who is going to tell me what the hell this means? Who is going to tell me anything, now? My last message and it’s just… just garbage. A passcode for goddesses know what and a cryptic one word missive. Perfect. Perfect!

I snapped. I took the slip of paper, folded it up awkwardly with my clumsy hooves, and bit down on it. Dad had a safe, didn’t he? Well, if he didn’t want me trying to figure out his stupid bullshit message, maybe he shouldn’t have hidden it behind the portrait. Obviously, this thing was meant to be found. And obviously, it was meant to be used. I was going to oblige the old man his last stupid dying wish, and I was going to be happy about it and I really, really hoped that he was too. Because if he wasn’t maybe he should have left me something valuable, like a pony to talk to that wasn’t intimidated by my birthplace.

I entered his room for the first time since he died, five months ago. The safe is behind his bed, except that it’s much bigger than you’d expect. You could keep a pony in there, if you wanted. The air is stale and smells of neglect and the beginnings of mildew. Dust covers everything in a fine layer. The force of my entrance unsettles it all, and I back out again, coughing roughly.

When that was done, I re-entered, somehow even more angry than before. The very air was mocking me now, wasn’t it? Right that it should. Least son of a great father, except he obviously wasn’t that great because he left me a bloody orphan in a backwards little town with cryptic bullshit as his last testament.

I bent down to the safe and looked over the keypad. Numbers and letters, check. I laid out the paper and began punching in the combination.

I looked high and low the month after he died for some sort of… anything. A last message, a last lesson—he was fond of lessons. A book. A will or testament of any kind. Nothing. There had been absolutely nothing.

The combination worked, and suddenly I wasn’t sure of myself. I had been so worked up… but it here it was, glowing green, saying that the door was unlocked, and now I wasn’t sure I wanted to see. What would be in there?

I knocked it open with a hoof and didn’t get any closer. As I drew out each item, I was silent, staring.

I found two thin green boxes I recognized immediately as old Equestrian army ammunition boxes. Both were heavy, filled to the brim. These I put gingerly to the side, a little afraid of them.

Two grenades. A strange metallic contraption that I suspected unfolded somehow.

A holotape. A pipbuck. A silvery key on a string.

I slipped the holotape into the pipbuck, not sure what it would say. At first, it did nothing. I just kept waiting for it to do something… until I facehoofed and realized that it wasn’t even on. Finding out how to do that took a second, as did waiting for it to boot, but I was familiar with computers.

From the tiny speakers, my dad spoke.

“If you’re hearing this, then I was right. I’m sorry, but I’ve left you alone…”

“Damn right,” I whispered.

“But not without a final parting gift. I do not know what you will make of your life, Swift. You are very different from both your mother and myself. You’ve some of her temper and you were blessed with some of my acumen, and I have always believed you could be anything, do anything, if only you would try.

“But I know what the wasteland is like. You don’t, not really. You’re used to Mosaic and that little trading post down the street. The wasteland is a bad dream for you, I suspect, nothing more than pictures in your mind. You haven’t delved into its underbelly or walked for days on end in the featureless voids. You haven’t yet seen its sunless places. But one day you will. You’ll have to, for one reason or another.”

There was a pause. I slipped the pipbuck on and lay flat against the floor, staring at the little green screen as the seconds rolled by.

“I left so many things undone. If you’ve found this, you might have an inkling of some of them. I’m sorry. I probably won’t have to give you some foolhardy last task. Even if I leave it undone, I’ll find somepony else, I think. I’ve done enough to rob you of a good foalhood. The least I can do is spare you the horror of the wasteland. Take the Sword, though. Consider it your mother’s and my last gift to you, because it is. The Sword is… it’s a work of art, Balm. A labor of love. I could talk about it for a long time. There is probably a file on it on my terminal, and I suggest you search. It will never fail you. It makes the weak strong and it breaks the proud, remember that. Remember your mother when you unlock the case.”

He began coughing, and I feared that the message might be cut short for a moment. The sound of his coughing rattled me. I had heard it for a month before he… before he died.

“Send word to Zebra Town. It’s on the other side of the river, close to Lost Legion territory but not quite in inside it. They’re a friendly bunch, if you’re respectful. Very strange, but so it… ugh. But so it goes.” More coughing. “I’ll have to make this quick. Send word to Zebra Town when I die. A zebra named Xylon will want to know. It’s important. I’m sure he’ll find out regardless, but it’s better that he know sooner than later. I’m sorry, again. I couldn’t… I couldn’t save her. I’m not sure I can save myself. I’ll try. I hope to any goddesses that might be that you’ll be safe. Be good, Balm. I love you.”

I waited. There was nothing more. I picked up the key in my mouth and carefully put it on like a necklace.

Feeling numb, I walked back into the main room and sat in front of the display case. I held the key up on the bottom of my hoof and just looked at it, dumbfounded.

There was no question as to if I was going to open the case. I had to open the case.

So I did. The key slid in. It turned. The case fell open, and the battle saddle sat secure. I took a deep breath and slowly extracted it, trying to stay off of the broken glass.

It was beautiful. I was frightened of it and what I knew it could do, but it was still beautiful. It was more barding than saddle, big enough to fit over a mare’s upper body and cover her sides and chest. And… big enough for me, probably. For once, my small frame would come in handy. I licked my lips, for no other reason than my whole mouth felt dry. The single gun, devoid of bullets, and now I realized that the folded up launcher from the safe would fit perfectly into these grooves…

And on the front, of course, the stylized motif of Celestia and Luna, chasing each other in a circle for all of time. Day and night.

As I sat clutching it, I finally noticed that there was movement outside.

The story stops.

I realize only now that I’ve been leaning in, hanging on every word that the strange stallion has been speaking as we sit before the great mosaic for which this station was named. Absently, he touches it.

“Crazy world,” he says, quietly.

“So… what? He gets his heart broken, he finds a weapon… This is how it begins?”

He doesn’t look back at me. “Yeah, kid, that’s how it happened. I’ll skip ahead a bit. You don’t need to know the next part. I’m not sure I really know all that much except for the basics. The kid didn’t leave his room much. Authority sat on its ass at the barricade. It took a few pot shots, but that’s about it. The scouts the mayor sent out? All that evacuation stuff? Authority flat out said that if the town bailed, they went home. Nothing would keep the filth out. On top of that, it weren’t just one little band.”

He let his hoof fall and spat off to the side. Casually, he leaned against the ruined beauty and fished out another cigarette. “Want one?”

I shrugged and nodded. He held out the pack and I used my magic to retrieve one and light it in my mouth.

“Didn’t see much of that filly, because while the kid sucked ass at fightin’ and talkin’, he was just fuckin’ fantastic at not being seen. Heh. Learned that for myself the hard way.”

“Seems a bit childish,” I said, and looked at the wall. I winced. “It’s a shame about this.”

“Yeah, it is. And yeah, he was.” He breathed out a veritable cloud of smoke. These things were hoofrolled, I suspected. They tasted foul. I kept going.

“So. How does he go from lovesick colt to wasteland crusader?” I asked with a smile. “That’s what I want to know.”

“How? I’m leanin’ on it. Straight from the pony himself: sometimes, a single idea can keep you alive when you shoulda died. The raiders got bored and some of ‘em went up the street. Practically wiped out Mondale, that little tradin’ post. They came back here, and then they made a pretty great mistake. They fucked with the kid's home. They made him mad."

I crawled through the exit hatch and saw the sun shining through the mustered clouds. The cloud cover the Enclave keeps on Equestria grows thin in the far north, and there’s sun more often than not. Good light for a day’s work.

My father chose this place for one reason. It was because of the mosaic at the station’s entrance, finished during the early days of the war. It was supposed to be something beautiful to lighten up people’s lives during a trying time. For the ponies in this stupid town it became something greater, but for me it is only one thing. It’s my mom, wearing the Sword, that same symbol showing prominently.

He told me once that it was one of the only things left of her that he had. Guns didn’t count, because he hated them. Armor wasn’t a proper receptacle for a soul. Life may be short, he had said, but art is long. It was one of those strange aphorisms he would spout and then expect me to learn something. Perhaps I did. I remembered them all, or most.

I tried to offer my services to the militia holding the commons but they sent me away angrily. The Authority was just waiting the enemy out and living off of Mosaic’s local stores. I was Authority. None of those ponies would touch me, but they wouldn’t welcome me either. That was fine, because I realized I didn’t need them and I never did.

Because this is a good place, but it isn’t my place. It can’t be. I don’t think I have a place…

But I won’t let these bastards destroy someone else’s home. I won’t let them ruin the last place on earth that Dad could find a piece of my mother. I won’t allow it. I’ll burn them off the face of the earth before I let another pony take anyone else from me.

I was arguing with the militia when it began. Some of the raiders started chipping at the mosaic, destroying it bit by bit. The whole thing was a game to them. To the rest of the city, it’s just a picture. But to Mosaic, that picture is sacred. The whole militia panicked. Only the Authority kept them from rushing out there and saving the only treasure they had.

They fired a few shots, enough to make the raiders back up, but it didn’t stop them. They’d found something that hurt and they were going to keep twisting until it wasn’t fun anymore.

I saw the visages of the old world’s rulers breaking under shotgun fire. I saw my mother’s symbol destroyed. And I realized that I couldn’t stay here another moment. I would rather die then wait for the end like everypony in Mosaic seemed so content to do.

The Sword was easy to put on and fit perfectly, like my mother carrying me. It was weighted perfectly, so that I hardly felt it on my back. The gun felt right on my back. The launcher fit perfectly onto the barding.

It all fell into place. Sneaking past the frustrated militia had been harder than sliding past the bored Authority reinforcements. Finding the hatch that led up above? Easier.

And now I lay flat against the top of the station, crawling towards the noise of raiders jeering at the ponies inside. There were a few potshots, and then somepony laughing. That laughter was like knives in my ears. I just wanted it to stop.

The station, on the surface, is shaped like a shell, all concrete and curved. It’s like a small hill, and I’ve reached the top.

There were two dozen of them at least, most staying just out of sight. The entrance that leads down into my home branches out so that the “hill” has walls along it with a few old shops or restaurants that were picked clean a century ago. I try counting them but every time I think I’m done, another wanders into view.

I’m going to die.

I can’t go back. Not after all this. I’ve come too far and done too much, and they’ll probably notice me. It’s a miracle they haven’t already!

What are you supposed to think about, right before you die? Are you supposed to see your life flash before your eyes? I always expected that something like that would happen. I thought that in the moment before I shuffled off the mortal coil, I might see the faces of my parents or the home I was born in, or the fuzzy memories I have of riding on somepony’s back through a well-lit, clean tunnel. Every little memory I had never been able to let go of coming back to me all at once like a flood… and then what? And then death, I guess. And then nothing.

The longer I wait, the more angry I become. Angry at myself, mostly. Here I was, ready to fly off this roof with grenades and gunfire, ready to drive these insane clowns off, and I couldn’t even move. Weak! I was always so weak!

You know what? Fuck it.

I stood up and stared down at them all, laughing and shooting and breaking apart the old shopfronts. A few looked up at me with blank expressions. I grinned at them.

“Afternoon, profligates! The Godesses send their regards.”

The launcher made a strange, muted “pumf” sound as I reached down and bit on the trigger to my left. Once. Twice. All the explosives I had.

And everything exploded!

The two grenades tore the ground up effortlessly. Ponies disappeared in the pillars of fire, and others began to run in all directions, screaming. I screamed—because holy hell those weren’t frags at all but HE grenades. The heat on my face is unbearable for a second and I tried to back away, but something punched me in the shoulder and I lost my balance.

I fell from the lip of the station’s roof, hurtling down towards the concrete.

Except that I didn’t, because there was a pony there, and my shoulder fell on his back.

I rolled off, feeling dizzy, and stumbled forward. Somepony fired a gun, but I didn’t think it was at me. Why would they shoot at me? Besides, I felt fine… and also the ground kept moving. I stumbled.

And narrowly avoided a swinging rebar club. I saw the earth pony holding it sailing over my head, screaming through the club in his mouth, and snapped out of my daze. I fumbled for the right trigger, and found it as the raider turned to me. The Sword fired as I squeezed, bringing him down immediately.

Another one, a unicorn lifting a sawed-off, sprang into my vision, screaming at me. “The fuck are you?”

I didn’t answer, only letting my body fall flat to the ground as she fired. The buckshot filled the air above my head, and the Sword barked back. She twisted like a dancer and then collapsed.

There were others all around me, screaming. Some screamed at each other, some at the barricade, some at me. There were ponies behind me now, and more gunfire, but I couldn’t turn to face them. The raiders in front of me broke and the ones behind me were shooting.

I gave chase, yelling at them to come back and taste bullets, voice hoarse and legs light.

They kept running and running, and I just followed them. I didn’t know how long we ran. I just knew that eventually, they turned and ran towards the river and I followed them. One moment we were in the normal Lunangrad streets, somewhere near Mondale, and the next we were in hell.

I didn’t know it was Mondale until I tripped over the burning sign.

More gunfire. Something punched me in the side, knocking the air out of me and throwing me back. I rolled in the ash, and then fell on a pony.

Body. Not a pony.

The raiders had turned and rushed back into the smouldering ruins of the little trading post. I didn’t have time to count them or find them all. They were in the street already, rushing with melee weapons and firing cheap, cobbled together guns over the heads of their companions. Bullets pinged off the walls and street around me. A charging unicorn threw a half-held together spear.

I cowered and it passed right over my head. I shot at the offending spearthrower and missed wide before turning tail and running into the old mall that Mondale had occupied.

Smoke filled everything. It clogged the air and burned my eyes, even as I tried to keep it from my lungs. I pushed through the old clothes racks and ponnequins, weaving to avoid the occasional gunshot. I could hear the charging raiders howling as they dove into the smoke, stirring it up. The fires that breathed the smoke into the air continued on, set upon piles of old-world finery and new-world flesh.

Stars, I couldn’t breathe! Stupid Balm! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Don’t run into a burning building!

We left the department store behind and came out into an open courtyard area. I gasped in the cleaner, less smoke-filled air. I had to find a place to run. No, no, first escape. I had to find a way out and then I could find somewhere to hide.

In front of me, a burning pile rose and flung itself out of me without warning.

“Holy—back! Go away!” It charged me and I reared to kick at it.

“End of the line, bitch!” howled one of them, and then the pile wrapped around me and the raiders caught up.

I was blind. I couldn’t see what I did but I did it anyway, kicking at nothing and yelling. Somepony yelled in my ear and I yelled right back. I think someone tried to bite my legs and I kicked them in their miserable teeth. All I had was sound and touch.

“Fuck! Get a fucking knife in him you idiot!”

“He’s squirming!”

I kicked one, I thought, and heard him curse. But I’d overextended.

Something sharp and cold slid between the plates and cut into my shoulder. I screamed, trying to get away from it, but he pushed it in deeper. Whatever they had thrown on me came off, and I saw the raider with his mouth around the hilt, forcing the filthy, serrated blade deeper. I couldn’t move my right leg, but my left was still working and now I could see my attacker. I hit him on the side of the head, but didn’t have the weight or strength to do any damage.

But it was enough to knock him off the knife. In the second that he was dazed, I got my hindlegs beneath him and pushed him back. He growled and regained his balance.

But it didn’t matter, because I had the Sword, and I had it pointed right back at him. I fired, and he dropped like a stone.

The other one was gone. All around me, Mondale burned. The mall was finished—Mosaic had been lucky. Or would be lucky. We had a barricade and only one obvious way in. But these ponies… I doubted they had been able to flee in time, and I knew they hadn’t fought.

I tried to walk but the knife twisted and I dropped, cursing. I had to pull it out with my teeth, which required a lot of twisting to reach my shoulder, but at last I forced it out. It hurt. It hurt a hell of a lot. Everything hurt, for that matter.

I got up and found I could limp, if very slowly. As soon as I was up, the Sword shocked me back onto the ground: it began to glow lightly, just enough to catch my eye.

“Oh hell—“ I lost balance again as I felt a weird numbness in my shoulder. The suit suddenly felt warm, comfortingly so, and the wound on my shoulder… I was glad it felt numb, because there was a distant feeling of something rooting around in it and I didn’t want to feel that.

I whined, horrified. I didn’t know what was happening! What was this? What the hell was wrong with me? A quick look around revealed no unicorns manipulating me with their horns. The point was moot after a moment. The feelings faded. The numbness wore off, and even as I braced for an onslaught of pain, I found that my shoulder felt fine. Normal. New, even.

I didn’t have time to understand it. The old world mall was burning around me and I needed to go. I picked myself up and looked around in the deepening smoke for the exit. I would take raiders over fire. I could shoot raiders. I just wanted out of the fire!

So I picked a direction and ran.

Something roared behind me. I didn’t have time to see what was happening because the building was going to fall because that’s what burning buildings do and I was in another department store. The raiders had left, because they were smart ones, weren’t they? No, no they fought in groups and when burning buildings were fucking falling down they left! Because this one time the drooling gibbering idiots were the smart ones!

I tried not to breathe but it was hard, and eventually I took in a lungful of smoke. I didn’t have time to cough. If I stayed in one place and coughed then I wasn’t going to leave this place. So I kept hurtling forward, coughing and sputtering, eyes burning.

And then I hit a wall, which was next to a door, and then I was rolling out into the street. I was alone. Nothing attacked me. Nothing moved but me and the fires behind me.

So I crawled to the other side of the street and lay there coughing.

Physically, geographically, the walk back to Mosaic wasn’t that long. Just a few blocks. But those blocks felt like an eternity underneath my hooves. Every crack in the filthy sidewalk, every divot or crater I walked around was an inland sea to be circumnavigated.

Once, when I was younger, I asked my father about the city’s history. I wanted to know if it was all true—the beginnings of the Long War, the artillery and the smoke, the fire and the hiding. Despite his assurances that it was all absolutely true, somewhere in my little head I doubted. Somewhere in my little foal’s heart, I suspected that it was all a trick. I wish that I could say something along the lines that I believed in the goodness of Equine hearts, or that I distrusted tales of violence because they were simply not believable… No, like many other colts, I simply suspected off and on that the grown-up ponies were trying to put the wool over my eyes.

I stop at the corner of Halcyon and Temple. Mosaic is only a block away now. I’ll be able to see it soon.

I don’t know why that old memory comes back to me. Of all the memories that could climb out of the back of my brain, it seems an odd choice at best. It isn’t as if I placed much significance on the event. I only barely remembered it, and my suspicion is the only really clear part of the whole recollection.

I purse my lips. Actually, this was about where I asked him. I supposed that was why I thought of that conversation. Just an association of place and time. Nothing more. We were on our way to Mondale’s—Dad had to give a letter to the pony express office in Mondale and he had promised me some inane treat or other. Mondale always had… had nice things. It was a wonderful place.

They’re all dead now. All of those bright, beautiful ponies in Mondale. Sometimes, when the weather was nice and the city was calm, my father and I would go and he would check his mailbox at the post office and reward my good behavior with a few caps. I knew it all by heart, every store and every pony who manned every stall. I knew what every store sold. I even knew which store sold Mintals, but dad wouldn’t let me have any.

It’s strange, how sometimes things just seem to happen on their own. One moment you’re walking along and the next, you’re sitting at the corner of two old streets breathing faster than normal and feeling like you want to crawl out of your skin. I recognize these signs, of course. I’ve lived with them a long time.

Breath. One. Two. Three. Exhale. Again.

Calm. I needed to be calm. Going back to Mosaic after all of this was going to be uncomfortable enough as it was. Sneaking back through the top to avoid the attention would be frustrating at best and downright nightmarish at worst, with everypony on high alert. But it had to be done. I needed to get back home, and I needed to do it without anypony drawing a connection between the pony in the Sword and me. In fact, it was best if I got the sword back in its case as soon as possible. Too many ponies had seen it today, and too many still remembered it.

I missed Sparkler intensely right about then. Sparkler also knew how to calm me down when it was hard to breathe. She always knew what to say.

I fouled it up. That was the only conclusion to make. I was an idiot and now… Now nothing. One friend before, zero now. Wonderful. Magical. I deserved it.

But overall? It was going to be okay. I knew that, objectively. The raiders were gone and in all of the chaos nopony inside could have identified me. I’ve won, if you call it winning, and all that’s left is the victory lap.

And yet, as I stood and walked down Temple Street, why did I feel so anxious? So lost? Because lost was exactly how I felt, and there was nothing poetic about it. I knew these streets, but they felt alien, as if I had never seen them before. Was it the lighting? Was I just on edge?

Idly, I considered reloading the Sword’s gun, but figured that I didn’t want to go sneaking around in tight confines with a loaded assault rifle. Maybe… maybe if I got used to the strangeness of it, I could try something like that. Not that I would need a reason to.

No. No, I was done with this. No more. I proved what I could do. I proved I could help. I just wanted to hide in my room again. I was done. I think I lost all of my motivation to play hero somewhere between almost suffocating to death in a burning building and being stabbed repeatedly.

From Temple Street, you turn right and hit Mosaic. They named the street after the station when the art was put in, or so the old priest had told me years ago. Just beyond the bridge between the two halves of the Palomino building, and then…

And then armed guards in barding roaming the street and the empty lot across from the station, guns waving in the air. I pulled back behind the corner, eyes wide and heart punching me in the throat. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Goddesses, if they even existed, I couldn’t panic here and now.

I didn’t, not right away. I counted and caught my breath. Right—armed ponies with barding? It had to be Authority, and they would be mopping up, no doubt. All I had to do was make it obvious I wasn’t a raider and I’d be fine. No hiding, no sneaking, nothing threatening. It would be fine. Absolutely… fine. So why did I feel like I was about to walk into a wall of bullets?

Deep breath—go.

I turned the corner and waved to get the attention of the nearest one. And, as I expected, he turned his gun on me with a frown. I tried to smile back but it died on my face. “I’m out in the open,” I said. “I assure you, I’m no harm to you and yours. I merely wish to be on my way home.”

He looked me over, silent. If anything, my voice only seemed to make his frown become more of a glare. Instinctively, I licked my lips and tried again.

“Ah… I’m sorry, I know things have been a bit tense around here, but I recognize that uniform. I assure you, if you would just—“

He leaned his head down ever so slightly towards the firing bit on his battle saddle. I tensed, but he simply spoke with his eyes boring into me. Only then did I see the radio on the front of his armor.

“Lieutenant, this is Gleam. I’ve found him.”

“Where, damn your eyes?” The radio crackled, and I just stared at it in bewilderment.

“Palomino,” I said, my voice sounding hollow in my own ears. “That’s… that’s the building. This building. It’s down the street.”

“He says that it’s a building called Palomino, sir. I am down the street from the station, heading north, in plain sight. He just turned the corner, sir.”

The radio hissed. Or the officer on the line hissed, either way. “Hold him.”

With that conversation over, it was just me and the Authority.

He was tense—very tense, and I nervously watched his mouth linger near the firing bit of his saddle. It had two assault rifles, unlike mine. I wouldn’t last more than a second at most if I tried to run. Earth pony, like me, except unlike me he probably deserved to be called such. I quite doubted that he needed the guns at all. A few kicks from one such as this and I would be quite destroyed, thank you very much.

So, I grinned my most sincere and disarming smile. He didn’t react at all.

“So… I don’t suppose I could…” I began, but he shook his head.

“I’m not authorized to speak to you myself, sir,” he said, hesitating before he added the last bit. Stupidly, it made me feel a little better. He didn’t sound hostile so much as serious. Maybe this was all a misunderstanding.

It had to be. I hadn’t done anything to these ponies! If anything, shouldn’t they be thanking me?

The Authority soldier and I stared each other down. Were it for the fact I was in no condition to fight and doubted my completely inability to do much more than spray bullets randomly, it might have been a real standoff. But I am sadly ignorant of guns and sleight of hand is a bit harder when one is in the open, in broad daylight, right in front of a wary trooper.

So instead, I thought. I saw the others securing the block approach us now, no doubt having heard on the radio. They all had their guns pointed squarely at m, as if daring me to even dream of moving. I did not feel it unbecoming to admit that I was beginning to be terrified. This was going to be bad. This is how firing squads started.

Finally, I saw him. It was hard to miss—even if I hadn’t seen the boss of this cadre beforehoof, there was no mistaking that arrogant, self-sure gait. He was perhaps the only one in Authority barding without an automatic weapon pointed at my head, but he was also the only one who looked like he really, really wanted to shoot me. If those eyes had been cannons I would have been paste and memory.

He pushed his way through and began barking orders to the assembled ponies. They scattered like leaves before a gale and then he was right in my face. I noticed two things in rapid succession: first, he was a unicorn. Second, he was levitating a revolver beneath my chin, aimed straight up.

My body froze up. A wave of nausea washed over me and for a horrible moment while he just stood there with heaving chest, I thought I might actually vomit all over him in terror.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, pushing the revolver against my soft neck.

“B-balm. Balm. Swift,” I said, staring straight ahead a little to the right of his face.

“Fuck. Bloody hell, I knew it.” He growled wordlessly. “And where are you going?”

“Home. Home! Just going home.”

“Like hell you are, worthless deserter’s son.” His voice grew slower, softer. “In fact, I think you’re a drifter that someone hired to make a mess of things. Got in the way of an official Authority military action, putting lives at risk. Sound about right? You’ve never been to Mosaic, and you won’t be there again because it’s Authority.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

But suddenly I did. It all made sense to me in a flash. I just couldn’t accept it was happening.

When your power rests almost solely on your ability to protect, you perform or you lose that power. The Authority worked with the threat of tribal incursions or raider attacks, and promised to be a shield, a candle to keep the darkness out. And I had shown up with a flashlight.

And then I had resurrected her. I had reminded them, for a moment. Mom.

“You had better hope you understand rather soon,” he told me. “Don’t come back here. Guards will be watching for you at every single gate, do you understand me? No Authority station, no tributary, no one will offer you succor. You’ve made fools of us, you bastard, you and your bitch mother’s little symbols. Ponies saw you. Well, they won’t anymore, or you’ll be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of your life. I’m only not executing you because it would be unseemly.”

He pushed me and I fell, shocked. My legs refused to cooperate, and so I stayed there on the hard ground.

“I… but I live…”

“Nowhere. You could have just stayed still and stayed quiet, you fucking disgrace. Your family is a dead end, and now you’re a vagrant. Your father would be proud,” he added. “Maybe you can go live with the savages. Anywhere that isn’t here. You have sixty seconds to leave my sight, or I’ll make absolutely sure you never humiliate me like this in front of High Command again.”

The gun cocked.

“I don’t…” I tried to protest and he shoved the gun in my face.

“Run, little rabbit. Run before I decide killing children is worth my time.”

So I ran.

By the time my panic had subsided, I couldn’t even summon the energy to slow down. I just collapsed in an empty storefront.

What had this place sold before the war? Books, apparently. Scorched, ancient books lined old shelves, like a lost herd of sad little faces. I got up and trudged over to be among the shelves and then laid back down.

The floor was disgusting, yes, but it was cool and somehow that coolness was relaxing. I cared for my appearance, but not enough to pass up what comfort I could catch. And I would have to do worse, wouldn’t I?

Because I was effectively homeless.

It made sense, didn’t it? Only panic had kept me from seeing it earlier.

The Authority was itself only four or five stations and a few dozen small outposts with perhaps a dozen ponies each in them. The rest of their suzerainty was just that. They had the guns, the caps, and the technology. They had the medicine and the greenhouses. The stations of Lunangrad had submitted to their rule as tributaries, exchanging freedom for protection.

Protection only mattered if you actually were protected. If they could survive without you… then you weren’t very useful anymore, were you?

I had shown them up. Embarrassed them.

I looked down at my barding and cursed. I wiggled out of it, disgusted with myself. Of course. My mother’s armor had made it even worse. I might still have a home were it not for that accursed symbol—Luna and Celestia flying in harmony emblazoned prominently on my sides and chest.

Who didn’t know about the Sword? Nopony who’d been in the city in the last decade. Most ponies knew more about my mother than I did—my bitterness over that still stung—and her distinctive armor had been a part of that.

I knew my parents had… were exiles. They’d lost. Dad hadn’t wanted to discuss it, though I had tried. The Authority had been at a crossroads and they chose to go against my father, and so he had left as soon as my mom died. I could piece some of it together from what little he would say.

Gilead Balm had wanted to help ponies. He wanted to help them without controlling them. It was the opposite of what the Authority was these days. I wish I knew more about those times, but I was so young and they kept so much from me, I know they did. Mom didn’t want me to know what happened, and my father helped her because he could never say no to Daylily, could he? It seemed no one could. She was a hero… and maybe a dangerous example of what ponies could really do if they just tried.

I certainly wasn’t. Heroes get to go home again. Sorry, mom.

My stomach rumbled and I lay next to my barding, staring at it dully until I heard the radio crackle.

“So… what happens now?”

I jumped for my barding, trying to get it back on but only succeeding in getting myself tangled.

“Whoa, whoa,” said the voice, somehow managing to sound soothing through the tinny electronic quality. “Calm down. Sorry, I should’ve expected you to startle after all that.”

I lay there, one hoof in the Sword and the others out of it and just waited.

“You… are you alright?” The voice asked. It was hard to hear it--belatedly, I realized that it wasn’t in the room with me.

“Well, I’m alive,” I said. “Where are you?”

“In the back. I’m surprised you didn’t hear the music earlier.”

“I was a bit…” I sighed. “Who are you? I am not a veteran of the surface, but I know enough not to walk into a trap laid by a stranger, thank you..”

I heard the tell-tale hum of a spritebot. It was hard to miss, even if they were rare in Lunangrad. I thanked my mother’s genes, which was pretty rare. I’d been born a runt, yes, but a little bit of that thestral hearing was a nice bonus.

I stood and saw it come around the bend. I tensed, waiting for it’s small magic laser to glow, but the odd robot did not seem to be up for a fight at all.

“You can call me Watcher,” it said. Or rather, whoever had obviously hacked it. Nopony I had met had ever heard the Spritebots play anything but old Pre-War standards and patriotic hymns. Certainly none of these lonely wanderers had ever spoken to anypony. So either one of them had decided to break over a century of silence, or…

“How did you break into the spritebot?” I asked, stepping closer.

There was a short pause. “You know, usually I have to explain that I’m not a robot first. It’s actually not hard to do if you have the right equipment and the time to learn how to use it,” Watcher said. He almost sounded smug.

Bizarre as this conversation was, I couldn’t help but smirk. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. My father’s rule was that no science was beyond a truly dedicated mind with plenty of time. Of course, he never really appreciated the irony of a protege, genius one-of-a-kind doctor saying that.” I squinted at the spritebot, inspecting one up close for the first time. “It’s a fascinating machine,” I murmured. “We don’t have many up here. Are you here in Lunangrad?”

“No, and I can’t tell you where I am. Sorry about that.”

“Quite alright,” I said.

“Your voice… the way you talk reminds me of somepony that I used to know,” Watcher said, sounding… sad. “What’s your name, colt?”

I bristled. “I am a stallion, thank you kindly. Grown. My name is Swift Balm.”

“Er, sorry. I don’t exactly have a great camera…”

I sighed and looked away. “It’s the least of my worries. Once a runt, always a runt. What did you mean, earlier? ‘What now?’”

“So what happens now? I saw most of what happened by chance… I’m not really sure what the story is, but it looks like you’re on your own.”

“Yeah. Yeah I am.” I didn’t want to look at him, or the camera he was using (if it was a he, truly) but it felt rude not to. So I tried to lock eyes with something that possessed none. “I embarrassed the Authority, I think. I went out and got lucky wearing my mom’s barding. I showed them up, and I did it while also bringing up my parents. Ponies… I don’t know. I don’t know what they really did. My father was a doctor, and she was his bodyguard. Somehow in the midst of all that they got on the wrong side of ponies with power and guns. They were willing to let him go if he left, that’s as much as I know. I guess I went back on the deal.”

“Ah.” The Spritebot was quiet, so quiet that I thought for a moment that Watcher had stopped tapping into it. But eventually his voice returned. “That doesn’t answer the question, though. So you’re on your own, in this crazy city, with nowhere to go and no goals. What kind of pony are you going to be?”

“Ridiculous question,” I said with a snort. “I’ve not much of a choice. I have a gun, yes, but I have little idea what to do with it. Armor that will only save me for so long. I lack my tribe’s general strength and endurance, living sheltered in Mosaic ill afforded me the experience with savagery I’m sure to encounter…” I sighed again. “I know what you’re asking of me, Watcher. I’m just not sure it matters. I’m not even sure why I am talking about this at all, except that I am exhausted and exhaustion does tend to lower one’s inhibitions.”

Mirthless laughter, more static than expression, filtered out of the spritebot. “You really do sound like her. It’s the accent.”

“All Authority born ponies have it,” I said, idly. I pushed at the ash on the floor. “It’s a holdover from the early days, when the first Authority thought it could be a new aristocracy. It’s artificial. My... “ I sat up. “Why do you wish to know?”

“I’ve been searching. I’m Watcher--it’s not my real name, and I won’t tell you my real name. But watching is what I do. I’ve seen a lot of ponies where you are right now. I don’t mean this shop. Down and out, exiled. They all had their backs to the wall, and the ones I talked to said a lot of what you said. I’m not good enough. I’m not strong enough. Some of them I talked to, looking for the right sort of pony.”

“And what is that sort?” I asked, smirking at the little robot.

“A special sort. Someone who can embody virtue, or a virtue. The kind of ponies the wasteland needs.”

I blinked. “That’s… that’s more idealistic than I’d expected of a hacker.”

“The world is bad. Someone has to care.”

“I don’t disagree,” I said quickly. “Gilead Balm was my father, and it was what he would have said. Somepony has to care, has to do something. There’s just not much I can do. I’m no doctor. I’m no action hero, and my command of computers is useful but not revolutionary. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“You could start by making friends.”

I snorted, and then laughed. “Friends? Seriously? Watcher, I just burned the only bridge I had with the only friend I had. I’m not even sure how badly I overreacted or if I did or… I don’t know. I can’t go back anyway, so it’s a moot point. As if I knew where to begin making them.”

“Also not unlike a mare I knew once,” Watcher said softly. “So you’re not a fighter, and you’re not a healer. You’re smart, I can tell that. You’re not strong, but I know you’re fast. I just watched you sprint down the street. You can work with computers, and I bet that intelligence could be put to good use elsewhere too.”

“Perhaps.”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Watcher said. “I can only tell you that the Wasteland needs good ponies. It needs smart ones who care. It needs them now more than ever. Just… think about it. In the meantime, find a settlement. I think there’s one not that far from here.”

“Southmarket,” I said. “Southmarket is close.”

“Why don’t you go there? You’re still alive, Balm. And I think you can do great things, if you try. Just remember that, o--”

The voice vanished. The Spritebot turned and bobbed away, blaring its tired patriotic marches. I stared at its retreat, confused. Locked out, I guess. Perhaps he had only limited access. Either that, or his patch-in was shoddy. I couldn’t know for sure. I guess it didn’t matter.

I crawled over to my barding and looked down at it. The rifle slumped by the floor, and I felt a little bit of shame. My mother would have been furious that I’d let it touch the ground. This was her’s. It wasn’t mine. I had to treat it like it was loaned.

So I put it back on, took a deep breath, and headed towards Southmarket.

Author's Note

Next Chapter

Mosaic III--Exile

Mosaic III—Exile

“What did the kid know? Jack shit, that’s what. Coulda sold him radiated water for eighty bits when he came out out of that hole in the ground. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside. Shoulda died, but he didn’t. Why? I think it was luck. In fact, I know it was luck. Damn that kid was lucky. But I also think it might have had a little bit to do with who he met.”

I’d never been to Southmarket before, and wasn’t sure what to expect. Merchants, I guessed. Maybe some two-headed brahmin from down south, they always ran in the caravans. What I hadn’t expected was a wall constructed of scrap metal and a surly looking mare on top of it pointing yet another gun at me.

“State your business!” She shrieked for the third time. “Your real business! I know your type! You look like all the rest. We don’t have any quarrel with you hole-dwellers but I’m not letting you in spies. We have enough problems.”

“It seems you’ve already determined my business,” I said, blinking. This was stupid. It was so incredibly stupid that I couldn’t make myself feel threatened at all. “Look. I’m tired. I would like to find a place to trade bullets for water, is that alright? I’m not here to spy on you. I don’t even know who I would be spying for.”

She glared at me.

“I’m not leaving my armor with you,” I said flatly. “But I can surrender my gun if you’ll promise to take care of it, alright?” I glanced over at it, and bit my lip. “Will that be acceptable?”

She squinted. I stared back.

“Fine,” said the surly mare, and I started to detach the gun from my back when a third interrupted us.

“Are you harassing ponies again?”

Up on the battlements, I saw another earth pony walk to the angry one and fix her in a glare. The guard’s ears drooped, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her for a fleeting moment. “Bushel, we can’t be too careful… you heard what happened to Mondale yesterday. That colt showed up yelling all about it.”

“Mondale is gone,” I said, and they both looked down at me. “I saw it on the way here. I’m surprised news has gotten out already.”

The first guard shrugged. The newcomer sighed and turned around. “Open up, would you? Thanks.” She looked back at me. “Weapon comes off if it can, and if any of the guards even hear what sounds like you loading that thing…”

“I understand,” I said, and tried smiling disarmingly. She didn’t seem impressed, but didn’t really glare either. I kept my smile wide and friendly as I walked into the most motley settlement I’d ever seen. Also only the fourth I’d ever seen.

How to describe Southmarket? Well…

Southmarket is a dump. That’s verbatim how the locals describe it. Also popular are “burnpile that time forgot” and “slagheap” and other such names. While these convey the feeling of the place after the first five minutes, they didn’t quite capture what Southmarket really was.

The first thing a visitor coming by the east gate sees is the market itself, which is a nicer thing to say then “menagerie” but not quite as accurate. Stalls lined the single street on both sides, and ponies crowded in between. Everypony was trying to talk all at once in a long, loud bedlam of noise and chaos.

I wasn’t just overwhelmed. I was something more akin to shellshocked. Crowds I could handle--Mosaic held eighty seven souls. Well, eighty now. But Mosaic was a quiet place, a peaceful one. Southmarket was all movement all the time. I stood before the milling crowd and licked my lips.

And then somepony noticed me.

He looked me over, seemed to recognize something, and then pulled away. A few others did too. But most just seemed to be watching me. I could tell. I could hear them as I slowly walked through the parting sea. “Look, you see the flanks?” “Chyort, you think…?”

I sped up and scrambled away from the crowd.

The rest of the settlement was a lot more empty. It was just a neighborhood where the streets had been barricaded off to form a little township, really, and outside of the market street the rest was mostly empty. I wondered how many ponies actually lived here permanently.

It only took a few minutes to find an alleyway to slip into as I slowly detached the gun apparatus from the barding and took stock of what I had.

A hundred more of these longer, pointed bullets. I was out of those rather impressive grenades. Were they grenades? I hadn’t the foggiest idea. They exploded well. Spectacularly well. Had I more caps or, well, any caps I might see if I could find some more. I refused to sell the assault rifle, as it was a part of the Sword, and I supposed that went for the launcher.

So it was bullets then. They were the only medium of exchange available. Wonderful. I just hoped these kind were valuable. I needed water and food immediately. The rest I could work on. Just had to put this contraption back on my back, carry the ammo box from the saddle…

It took a little bit of work. Most everything does, when you’re an earth pony. It would be harder to resent that if I were possessed of the customary size or strength of my tribe. As it was, I envied the late great Gilead Balm his magic.

But I made do. I always did--that was what you did when you had only your hooves to rely on. You found a way.

One of the merchants locked eyes with me and I decided the rather intimidating rocket launcher behind him was a good enough sign that he was the one I needed. I approached and he grinned at me.

“Welcome, welcome!” His voice was thick with that thick Stalliongrad accent. It wasn’t that surprising. Nopony else bothered to make the trek north. “I can help you, yes? What would you like? Can give you bigger guns, better guns, guns that shoot lasers! You like lasers, da?”

I pursed my lips. “Nyet, drug. Podozhdite, pozhaluysta…” I carefully pushed the ammo box onto the table in front of him. I would be the first to admit that my Northern was rusty at best, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. “I’m trying to sell some munitions, if you don’t mind. Half of these.”

He squinted. “You know the mother tongue?”

I sighed. “Nyet. Not well enough to converse at length,” I said. “It’s fallen far out of favor in the metro.”

“Bah, holes in ground. Still…” He sized me up. “Just five-five-six?”

I blinked at him.

“I have no idea,” I said.

He blinked back at me.

“Ah. In that case, will give you a cap for 3, how is that sound?”

It sounded awful, frankly. “Two for one?” I asked, hopeful.

He made a great show of sighing over this. “Two for one, for the colt who knows my mother’s tongue, da, I will do this. Though it is a great sacrifice.”

We exchanged caps for bullets, and I looked down at the growing pile of Sparkle-cola caps as he counted them out. It ended up being thirty caps, actually. I’d underestimated my own stock.

Thirty caps. Enough for… I had no idea.

It was at this moment that I began to truly understand my predicament. I had a total of thirty caps to my name, guns that I couldn’t use effectively, and no food or water. I had nowhere to call home. I wasn’t even sure they would let me sleep in the alley. Did ponies on the surface care about things like that? I had no idea! I’d never been out of the metro for more than a few hours at a time.

I started walking, then, back towards the center of the walled-off neighborhood. My mind raced around in circles, getting nothing done. It all came back to thirty caps and nothing.

Away from the market street, there wasn’t much to find but old apartment buildings and a bar near the center of the town. I heard the soft strains of music, and stopped in the middle of the street to listen. I thought I recognized the voice, but… who cared? DJ PON3 had been playing the same four dozen or so songs for years. The last time he got his hooves on something new was years ago. There was no doubt I’d heard that same voice before. I just couldn’t afford to care about it.

I kept walking, trying to put together a plan. Or really just any sort of goals would be nice. I sent a silent and slightly bitter thanks to Watcher for being thoroughly useless in all respects. Make friends? Delightful. Just delightful.

I just… needed to clear my head.

The water was slightly misty and tasted vaguely alkaline. I could not drink it without a grimace. But it was water, and I couldn’t afford to be choosy. The snack cakes were not filling, but yet again, I had little choice. My caps were spent and once again I was penniless and directionless.

So I took to walking. And that was how I found her.

She was immediately strange--not in the least because she was a pegasus, and I had seen only one other in my short life. Her mane was cut strangely, all shaved on one side with the rest flowing like a waterfall down the left side of her face. Her ears were pierced--in and of itself? Not that strange, but I cringed at the sheer volume of piercings, running all the way along her ear. A small ring through a mouth that never seemed to stop smiling. She was the color of the foamy seas in the books they kept in Central Station.

And she accosted me in the middle of the street just as evening began.

“Where did you get that, eh?” She asked, stopping my progress with a hoof on my chest. I blinked, startled out of a reverie, and noticed her face first. She smiled, yes, but I wasn’t sure how much of that smile was mirth and how much of it was reflex. Her eyes did not seem to share in the humor, and it was hard to miss the long rifle slung on her back.

“Pardon?” I asked, bewildered.

“Barding. Not yours,” she added, still smiling.

I grit my teeth. Great. The last thing I needed was for somepony to start prying. “My mother,” I said, trying to glare down a pony who was a head taller than I was.

Her grin grew wider. “You are my lily’s colt?” She cooed. Cooed was the only way the sound could be described. Before I could react, I found myself wrapped in an iron hug as the pegasus--clearly without much in the way of sanity--did her absolute best to murder me by asphyxation. “Oh, you have her ears! Coming with me, da, I must know the news of your livings. Come, come!”

She dragged me off through the streets, chattering on about “her lily” and my stupid ears and how she’d known--

“You knew my mother?” I managed as soon as her grip loosened.

“Tradewinds knows all the ponies,” she said, practically glowing with pride.

“Right.”

She hauled me down to the street of merchants and I found myself firmly but cheerfully herded inside of one of the run-down buildings.

The inside was cozy, smoky, and filled with ponies drinking at tables. The bar I had seen earlier was lighter and far more inviting, but after the immediate entry, this new one was not so sinister. Just not quite as open. If it were a pony, I imagined that pony would be a gruff sort, but not a bad one.

I wasn’t sure what to make of her yet, but as soon as she blithely chatted with the barkeep--an earth pony with a frown more firmly entrenched than the Last Legion on the west bank--there was talk of food. My stomach growled, and suddenly this crazy mare sounded like a wonderful friend.

We ended up in a little booth in the corner, and while she she was distracted at the bar ordering drinks, I took a closer look at my surroundings. This place must have been some kind of diner, before the war. It was amazing, really, how sometimes life just continued. Megaspells blew it all up, and then we crawled out of the muck to rebuild it all the same. We built diners and bars and shops and walls just as we always had. Yes, caps over bits these days, but was there much diference between today and ancient history in this dingy little place? Aside from the chairs and tables, which had seen better days. Literally.

The mare returned and deposited a little glass before me. She laid a pickle atop it, giggling as she cautiously balanced it along the top. And then, finally, she placed a bottle of clear liquid in the center of the table.

I stared, once again feeling as if I had missed all but the tail-end of a conversation.

“What?”

“Is drink, then bite. Well. Not yet. Second time. After that,” she said, as if this explained everything.

“Is this…” I turned the bottle around. “Seriously? I… I haven’t--”

“Is late enough,” she said, waving a hoof as she settled down in the seat. “And you and I have things to talk about.”

“We… do?”

“Da. Several, I am thinking. Foremost…” She sighed. “You will be telling me of your parents, yes?”

“Mom and… ah. Well…” I eyed the bottle, unsure. “Um, should I… like, should we pour this already? I’ve not really… I mean, I’m not sure I really have the constitution for this.”

“Your mother, she also did not, but could last longer after I taught her,” Tradewinds said with a little smile. “Here, pour glass for us both, and you will tell me how my precious lily’s seedling comes to visit the lands of daylight.”

I poured the alcohol carefully. The packaging said vodka, but it was all the same to me. I’d had wine… once. Well, twice, if one were to be technical about it. The first time didn’t exactly count, in my opinion, as it had really been more of a sip taken when my father hadn’t been looking.

She clasped the glass between her hooves gleefully, winked at me, and then raised her little glass up. “I knew your mother for many years before she met her strange unicorn, and I see her in your eyes. Once, when we were younger, my softest lily and I met scavengers that come from the south looking for treasure. When she sees them hungry, she gave them half of her food. I ask why, and she says--do you not always drink to health? What more than could I do when I see these nuzhdayushchiysya, lost little ones. So, zemlya pukhom.”

And she tipped the little glass back. I did the same, and almost instantly gagged.

Tradewinds chuckled. “Is good.”

I wheezed. “Oh goddesses, that was awful.” When she simply giggled, I glared at her. She sobered a bit and smiled at me sadly.

“My little lily said the same,” she said with a shrug. “Pour a second, and then eat your pickle, and then you will be telling me stories.”

I did it--Luna and Celestia, if they were actually Goddesses, would have saved me from this--and then bit into the pickle. I was surprised to find that it took the bite of the vodka away.

I sighed, still tasting the bitterness of alcohol on my tongue as I began to recount my tale. My father had moved us to Mosaic when my mother had died, and we’d lived there until he took ill a few months ago. He’d died over the course of two months, wasting away. He tried to understand his own illness but came up short. It was rather ironic, all things considered, and I said so with a bit of a chuckle born mostly of anger. He had won the eternal gratitude and love of our neighbors by successfully curing the Black Cough years ago, that old recurring plague of the station towns.

“Physician, heal thyself,” I groused. Tradewinds clicked her tongue and poured me a shot. I eyed it dubiously. “Isn’t this a bit much?”

She shrugged. “Is normal night,” she said, but then sighed. “Is also, I think, to be bad night for you. Best to have a friend, yes?”

I thought of Watcher. “I suppose.”

She gestured for me to continue, and then raised her glass. Another toast--I actually recognized this one as being something akin to “To good company!”--and I continued.

Parents dead, I’d been alone for some time. I worked my shifts gathering, had my one and only friend, and generally drifted. I told her about the raiders, and she nodded seriously. Mondale’s fall had spooked the settlement, she told me. Southmarket, Mondale, and even Mosaic were right on the border of real raider territory, but rarely did the lunatics cross over. Usually they were too busy fighting the tribes downtown or harassing the farmerponies in Sunnydale. I’d never heard of the place, but it sounded pleasant. Apart from the raider threat.

She looked… well, a bit crazy when I told her about the Authority showing up. I hesitated to continue, but she insisted. I told her about how they didn’t run the raiders off to avoid having to actually fight them, and then eventually I got to my own suicidal stupidity. I expected to be told that I was an idiot.

I did not expect her to lay a hoof on my shoulder and shake me. “Your mother, she would be proud of you, my little friend. Very proud. Would be what she would be doing!”

I flushed. “I… well. I’m not like her,” I said. “I had no idea what I was doing. I barely know how to fight. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Fighting is learning and going crazy,” she said, settling back. “You learn. Have good ears, mother’s eyes and spirit, father’s brains. You will learn.”

“Honestly, I would rather not,” I said. “I… well. I killed ponies. I know I did. I can’t… I can’t remember actually k-killing them.”

Saying it aloud was hard. I hadn’t had much time or space to reflect on it all, really, but now that I tried I found the memories sore to the touch and fragmentary. I remembered the heat of the explosives… the rattling of the Sword. I remembered the awful smell in Mondale and running. Lots of running.

I swallowed. “I… I’m going to have to live with that,” I said, quietly. “And right now it’s easy, because I’m sort of running on autopilot. But I know it will catch up with me presently. I’m not prepared for that. I don’t want to remember that better. I would rather be done with killing for good. Being a dismal shot is a blessing.”

Tradewinds looked at me strangely, as if trying to parse what I was. I shrunk before those eyes, and then dropped my gaze to the empty glass. I had had three.

She gently took it, and poured another before I could insist that three was enough, thank you, and when I tried to shake my head, she pursed her lips. “Drink, and then I will speak.”

I sighed. “I can’t really afford to be… not sober,” I said, struggling a bit to find a suitable word.

She’d ordered something earlier, and now it arrived. A unicorn mare came by and smiled at me, and I smiled back like an absolute idiot. She was rather pretty, I noticed. She had said hello, but before I could answer, Tradewinds had chatted her up in the Northern tongue and made her blush not once but thrice before she scurried off with an even bigger grin.

She set a spread before us, and smiled at me again. “Is it true?” She asked me.

“Is… um, is what true?” I said, with utmost poise. Because I did not feel in any way compromised or fuzzy.

“Your mother was Daylily?” asked the mare. My stupid smile, plastered on my face, wilted.

“Yes,” I said. “She was.”

Her look turned sympathetic. “I knew her when I was a foal. She was a wonderful mare. And you look very much like her, even without her armor. That… that is it, right?”

I nodded. “Yes ma’am,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not that much older than you, silly pony. What’s your name?”

“Swift Balm,” I said, and she smiled again.

“A good name,” she assured me. Then Tradewinds broke in with her native tongue and I only caught every other word. I caught enough that both the waitress and I were mortified by her forwardness. Or, well, I was mortified. She had a gleeful glint in her eye as she sauntered off.

“She is good friend. We play this game every time I am coming here,” Tradewinds said with a laugh.

“I forgot to ask her name,” I said, frowning.

“Helping Hoof,” she said, and chuckled. “Now, I will speak, for is my turn. You have been forced from your home.”

“Yes,” I said, frowning.

“You have killed,” she said, and despite not being surprised by it, her bluntness still felt like a kick in my side. “Several ponies, bad ones all and full of madness. Your beautiful family is dead, may memory preserve them. Mosaic is closed to you.”

“Apparently,” I murmured, feeling warm. My mouth also felt dry. Also it tasted kind of terrible and bitter. I swallowed.

“It is sounding like you must start over,” she said, and before I could speak she held up a hoof. “Nyet, listen more. You must be starting over, and this is not a bad thing. It may be, but does not have to be. Do you understand?”

Looking down at the little shotglass, I sighed. “Yes, I know what you’re saying.”

It was about that time that I looked up and happened to glance out the doorway as somepony entered. The sun was sinking. Night was coming.

A little bit of panic wormed its way into my heart. I tried to grab the bottle shakily, remembering something about it being liquid courage, but I could feel the bile of anxiety. Not here! Not so close to…. Night. Not so close to them. I couldn’t afford to panic even a little. Sparkler wasn’t here to--

Tradewinds laid a hoof over one of mine and eased the bottle down to the table. I stared at her leg. She leaned in and spoke very, very low. “You are alright?” She asked, and I shook my head. “Breathe, little friend. Breathe. Shh.” She stroked my leg, prying me from the bottle. “If you wish, I will pour you some, but first you will stop your move and shakes. What is wrong?”

Why the fuck was I trusting her? I could hear my heart beating even faster, right in my ears, even as she spoke in her strange and musical voice. She “knew my mother” but how did I know? I couldn’t remember if she’d ever mentioned a Tradewinds! I…

“You are not a bad pony for defending your home,” she told me. “Come, let us go, I can find you a better place than this. You must be--”

“Do you have lights?” I asked, trying my best to at least appear in control of my own heartbeat. My voice was almost a hiss. She paused, confused for a moment, and then nodded.

“Da, little friend, we do. Southmarket scrounged or built floodlights that keep everything bright and save in the night,” she said. “And the lights are even guarded from the demons, by spikes and barbed wires and ponies with guns. The raiders do not dare to attack us in the dark, for they cannot see traps.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Really? Lights--you’re sure?”

“Very. Very, little Balm. They will be turning them on soon. Silly earth ponies, never looking up,” she added, and I couldn’t help but choke out some approximation of a laugh.

“I just… I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “I was so tired, and then... “

“It is alright. When the lights come, we shall go. Will you stay with me tonight?”

“I don’t have anywhere else.”

She smiled at me when I opened my eyes again. “Yes, you have said. Tradewinds has a few ideas.”

Lunangrad was strange to strangers, or so I’ve been told. But I grew up within its bowels, and so for me it is simply home.

Darkness was always something that made ponies at least a little uneasy. Even those who enjoyed the nighttime and stars shared in this feeling. Beneath all of their wonder, there was a baseline fear of the unknown and the unknowable. What was in the dark? Most didn’t know. Thestrals, batponies, whatever you wanted to call them--they knew, but how much? Not as much as I thought, my mother’s singing voice explained in endless music. They saw but not as I thought they did, and they heard but hearing everything is not always a blessing.

My mother was beautiful. I remember that, even if I’ve lost so much of the rest of her. I remember being a foal still, when we lived in Central Station, where there were always lights and everything was safe. She was home alone with me, working on something mechanical.

I was in the dark, in my own little room. Even in the safety of my own bed, the darkness worried me. Normally, I could bear it. But that night I woke from a terrible dream, and even as the details faded the feeling remained, and I cried in fear.

She was barrelling through the door in a heartbeat, wings flared to give battle. But she found only me. She cooed at me, which she knew usually I hated but in that moment it worked. I didn’t care about how I appeared. I cared only for her embrace and for light. I asked her to turn the lights on. She held me, and turned to do so, but then stopped.

“Balm?”

I nuzzled into her soft chest coat and mewled a little affirmative. Beneath me, she took a deep breath, and I noticed her shiny necklace was gone. Suddenly, she stopped moving towards the lightswitch and squeezed me tight, nuzzling me fiercely. I squirmed.

“You hear, don’t you? Without… you hear me.”

My mother hummed, and at last I noticed that her voice sounded different. I knew it was still her: it smelled like my mother and she nuzzled like my mother. But her voice was different. I liked this voice. It was strange but beautiful. Why didn’t she always sound like this? And why would she ask if I heard her?

She carried me to bed and sat down on her haunches so that I rested in the hollow of her body’s natural curve, my head just touching her chin. She hummed, and I listened. “Do you hear that?” She would ask sometimes, and I would nod. She would nuzzle my head each time. “What does it sound like?” Was the question sometimes, or “do I sound different, Balm?”

At last, I asked her why she hadn’t turned the lights on, and she told me that the darkness wasn’t bad. I said it was scary, and she chuckled musically and said that yes, it could be. It could be very scary. I was never to be without a light. But the darkness could also be wonderful.

“But you can’t see anything. What if you trip?” I asked her, trying to look up. But her head rested firmly on top of mine, so that her voice came spilling out all around, as if she were everywhere.

Her wings made a strange leathery canopy and I saw their suggestive shadows. And yet, for once, I was not afraid. I knew what was there. I did not have to see to know my mother loved me.

“I can see for you,” she said. “I see everything that moves in the dark, my sweet colt. When you are afraid, I will always be there to show you that you need not fear the night. How does that sound?”

“I like it.”

“Good.” She kissed the top of my head. “And perhaps, one day, you too shall be able to walk in the sunless places.” Her voice was so low that I only barely heard it. “And sing the old songs.”

I didn’t ask what sort of songs. I was sleepy. Mom was soft and she hummed and everything felt--

I woke up with a massive headache in Southmarket.

Yesterday came back to me in stages. After Watcher, I came here. The street market. Tradewinds. Drinking and storytelling. Panicking. She had dragged me to the building she’d claimed farther away from the gate and against my increasingly sleepier protests proceeded to strip me of my barding and force me to bed.

The embarrassment from that took a few minutes to come to grip with.

But eventually, I smelled something cooking--actually cooking--and my stomach growled at me in a way that almost sounded accusatory. No amount of humiliation would keep it from its reward below. If… If any of it was for me. That brought me up short as I was halfway escaped from the surprisingly-comfy bed. I didn’t know Tradewinds well. For all I knew, she would expect me out the back door before she was done with breakfast. I’d never really known… well. Anything, really. Not about the surface or the ponies there.

But she’d been nice. Nice in a rather demanding, forceful, and perhaps slightly unbalanced way. But still nice. I knew little of the surface, and less of the wasteland beyond it. But I knew that kindness was precious, and I knew generosity was rare. She had both.

So I walked out of the room and slowly made my way downstairs. The upstairs was really more like a long hall of doors. I supposed the rest were other bedrooms and bathrooms. I wondered idly if any of them had working water. The Authority’s inner ring did. Mosaic hadn’t, but Mosaic valued a luddite existence. Except for lights. Lights were different.

Down below, I found a store and blinked. Shelves lined with a little of everything: healing potions, radaway, packaged old world foods, barding. This place had something for just about everypony, and some of the old world living room feel had survived. It all felt comfortable and welcoming.

I wandered through the store, confused. Here I found a whole display case of weapons, and ogled shamelessly. One of them looked a lot like the assault rifle attached to the Sword. Was it the barding or the gun that was called the Sword? If it was both, when separated was there no Sword or did… it didn’t matter. Also I didn’t know. I shook my head. I knew enough to recognize that the magic laser weapons here were good ones and in good condition. I studied them through the glass.

But I moved on eventually. The smell of something--and I still did not know what--cooking drew me towards the back of the store.

In the far back, I found a kitchen with an open door leading out to somewhere. Tradewinds was outside. I could hear her singing softly to herself, and by singing I mean that I could hear her attempting to sing. I poked my head out the door.

“Hello?” I called.

She was next to a little firepit, stirring a pot of… something. I blinked at it.

Tradewinds turned and smiled at me. “You awake, sleepy one! How is the morning?”

“My head smarts a tad,” I said with something like a grin. “But aside from that, I seem to be doing well. I didn’t notice the merchandise last night. You run a store?”

She glowered at me. “Store? You think Tradewinds runs tiny store? Ya, ebal--I am running Emporium! Tradewinds Petrhoofan Emporium!” Her glare turned into a sort of giddy dance on the dusty almost-lawn behind the townhouse. “What do we not sell? Bullets and noodles and chems! We sell you the useful and the useless, the good and the bad and also of the ugly! What could you not be having? I sell the one thing everypony needs. Civilization.”

My stomach growled again. “Well… I was hoping I might persuade you to part with some breakfast,” I said with a sheepish little smile. “Also, water, if you have some.”

She chuckled and checked her concoction one more time. “Yes, yes, breakfast for you. Am having bread from Sunnydale that will do you well, and can save the rest.”

I cocked my head. “What is that, then?” I asked, pointing to the pot.

She simply grinned. “Is… important,” she said, and went back to singing. This, of course, drove me back inside to the kitchen, where I found a small table and waited.

As I looked over Tradewinds’ little kitchen, I began to realize a few things. Primarily, I had underestimated both her competence and her madness. Outside, the rest of the ground floor was an immaculate, if cluttered, storefront. I knew little of bits and shops beyond how to find food… but even I could tell that Tradewinds had a deep inventory. And yet, this kitchen was an absolute mess. It wasn’t dirty in the sense of not being given a good wash. No, if I were honest with myself, I imagined now that she kept the place free of contamination. Her kitchen was cluttered to the point that I began to worry for the structural integrity of her carefully placed assemblages of pots and pans and beakers and strange devices. There was a door at the other end of the kitchen, but I wasn’t sure where it led. Unless, of course, this wasn’t the kitchen at all. Which honestly I wondered about.

Tradewinds had a shop, and what I suspected was a makeshift labratory. No doubt she had a workshop somewhere as well. She had a life here, and I think she had a secure one. A home.

There was a sudden lump in my throat that I tried to ignore. All at once, I wanted to stay. I hadn’t the foggiest what “staying” would look like, but I wished for it rather fervently. I would do anything to have a place to call home. I wanted to convince her.

But at the same time… I couldn’t be a burden. What need did she have of somepony who was useless? I could fiddle with computers, yes, but not well. Given a few moments to figure it out, I could take some tech apart and put it back together again. I could read and write. I was good with sums. But there was nothing I had that I’m sure she didn’t already possess in spades.

Tradewinds chose that moment to return, still singing in Northern. I wasn’t up to find much humor in the poor quality of it, but I did say a soft “good morning” that was met with a grin as she danced between her various works. She loomed over the table with something like a feral grin, but merrier.

“Soon, soon, soon, my young Balm! We shall be making our own balms!” She giggled. “All is good that goes good. Now! Foods. For you and for me, a fine breakfast.” She paused then, wearing a puzzled look. “Why are you in here?”

Ah. So I’d been right. “I’m assuming this isn’t the kitchen, then?” I asked.

“Nyet, is little lab. Big lab below, next to forge,” she said in a conversational tone.

“Forge? Like, hammer and anvil, you mean?”

She hummed and then nodded. “Yes. Also machines. Come! Is time for breakfast.”

I followed her through the little door and through a short narrow hallway. The real kitchen was smaller, but far less cluttered. I sat down at the table and Tradewinds hummed while she collected food.

My mind was filled with questions, pushing my earlier concerns aside. A forge, or foundery of some kind? Labs? What was she working on? Furthermore, where had she found the equipment and the time to assemble it? A forge or workshop of some sort I understood. A shopkeeper selling guns and ammunition would want to be able to offer repair work or even commissions, perhaps for barding.

My reverie was broken by Tradewinds. “Are you liking eggs? Bah, of course you are liking eggs. My lily enjoyed eggs, especially scrambled. Always scrambled.”

I looked up to find her humming next to a little gas stove. I was stunned. Gas is precious in the underground. She was just… just using it freely? For eggs. “Hm… no, how about…”

I swallowed. I couldn’t pay for this. I couldn’t just be a parasite here, not to someone who had been kind to me already. “Miss… Miss Tradewinds, it’s really alright…”

“Hm, it is,” she said, not looking back. “Ah, I have good idea,” she said, returning to her tuneless little song. “You are not wanting me to help,” she noted.

I swallowed. Her tone hadn’t changed, but suddenly I was worried. “It’s… I just don’t want to be a burden,” I said.

“Is a good thought, perhaps,” she answered. A few more seconds of silence while she worked and I wondered what she was making. “But is also good to accept the kindness of friends. Will live longer, be healthier, maybe have one more gun on your side of the table.” She looked over her shoulder and flared her wings slightly with a little smile.

“I suppose. I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful,” I said.

“Not at all. Your father was always being so…” She hummed again, as if searching for a word in the tune.

“Recalcitrant?” I supplied.

“That will work,” she said with a grunt. “Yes. Anyway, if you are my lily’s child you might as well be mine!” She laughed, but then the sound faded. “Was to meet you, but…”

“Why didn’t you?”

She sighed, but kept working. I heard the gas burning and marvelled still at it. The silence between us stretched on, and I worried that I’d offended her. The wasteland is dangerous. Lunangrad doubly so. I didn’t blame her for not visiting.

“It is a long story,” she said at last. “One day, maybe, I will tell you. It is not a happy story.”

I winced. “I’m sorry.”

She waved a hoof at me over her shoulder. “Do not be apologizing. It is not your fault, little Balm, and I have come to be at peace.”

I looked down at the table as she continued working.

I didn’t know a lot about my parents. Hard to believe, but the ponies whose choices had shaped my entire life were just… a mystery to me in so many ways. Mom died when I was small, and I remembered so little of my life from when we still lived in Central. Just flashes. Sometimes, I worry I don’t remember because I’m trying not to uncover something. But mostly, I know that it’s just being a foal that’s caused it. Foalhood memories fade. The strangest things, one remembers forever, while the rest go strange or vanish.

I knew their professions--guard and warrior, doctor and scientist. I knew the sounds of their voices, even if that too would fade away completely. I knew that they’d made enemies. I’d seen some of that enmity myself, up close.

But what did I really know beyond the obvious? I knew my father loved me, and that he was determined to teach me as much as he could. I learned everything he knew. I was learning bits and pieces of medicine and computer science and physics and chemistry when colts my age were usually playing pick up games of hoofball in the commons. I missed out on a lot, but I gained other things. If he hadn’t died, perhaps I’d be more useful out here on my own. If he hadn’t died, I probably wouldn’t be out on my own.

I didn’t know why we’d really left Central. I’d always assumed that we were trying to get away from the memory of my mother, and I understood that. I remember having nightmares a lot soon after she died, even if I don’t remember what those nightmares were of--anytime the lights went off, I would shake. I took her death hard, and who could blame me? The late great Gilead refused to talk about how she’d died, or really about much of anything from before we’d come to Mosaic. The few tidbits I had been able to get out of him in quiet moments had been vague at best. Just cryptic comments about how he’d not been loved by everypony, and how my mother had been too good for the lot of “them”. Whoever them was.

Perhaps everypony. He got more bitter with age, really. It was… sad.

Tradewinds returned. Breakfast consisted of syrniki--fried cottage cheese pancakes--garnished with honey. She told me sheepishly that the brahmin hadn’t been back in some time and she was low on sour cream, but I didn’t really care. I was just glad to have warm food.

We ate in silence, but it seemed to be a pleasant one. The water Tradewinds had on hand seemed clear--she probably had her own purification system, at this point. If she could cobble together a lab and a workshop, why not?

When we were done, she washed the dished despite my protests. There was a radio on the counter, and she turned it on.

“Standin' on my doorstep, waitin' for a package
Hopin' for that blissful moment when
That blonde-haired angel falls out of the heavens
With a bag full of bills again.”

Tradewinds sang along with the radio, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t the music, because I enjoyed the stallion’s voice and the guitar. The song was a nice one, about a crush on the mailmare--I knew what those were from my days in Central, but I wondered if there were mailponies in the wasteland. Could you get from one city to another on your own? It seemed crazy to think about lone couriers with their saddlebags brimming with letters flying off into the darkness outside Lunangrad.

When the dishes were put away, Tradewinds sat back down and looked me over. I wilted a bit in her sight.

“So,” she said.

“So.”

“What will you be doing?” She asked me. “You did not mention a trade before.”

I winced. “I don’t really have one. I have skills, but my job was mostly learning whatever my dad had for me to learn.”

She hummed. She did that a lot. “And you mentioned that you left your things behind.”

“Yeah.” I sighed, and looked away from her. “All my caps, except what I got from selling ammunition. Apparently the Sword’s bullets aren’t worth much.”

She snorted. “Five-five-six? Not worth much? Surely you--no. Who were you selling to?”
I thought back. “I don’t remember if I ever caught his name. He had a strong accent--Stalliongrad, perhaps? I spoke to him a bit in Northern, but my grasp of the language is a tad weak.” I was about to continue, but trailed off as I caught her expression. She looked… furious. I swallowed. “He offered three for a cap, but let me have it at two a cap--”

“Cyka blyad, I will…” She stopped, and rubbed her temples with her hooves. Her wings had flared out and I watched them, a little worried but fascinated despite myself. “No, no Tradewinds, is rude to incapacitate neighbors. He did not give you good price. That gelding knows five-six is valuable, you see? Is very valuable, and ponies use it like water and they piss it all. He cheated you.”

I blinked back, horrified. “But… but…”

“There is no rule against it,” she continued, her voice flat. “Probably could get that other places, but other places do not have Demons or the tribes or the Legion. More assault rifles, more bullets, use them faster too. It is hard to explain. Let us keep moving. You do not have many caps.”

“No,” I said, suddenly miserable. Idiot. I was an idiot. The fact that I couldn’t even begin to see how far out of my league I was...

“What about your father? Gilead was always having caps,” she said. “Surely you had some.”

“I did,” I admitted. “But it’s all back in Mosaic, and I can’t get to it.”

She looked at me. And then she started to grin. When I furrowed my brow at her, she laughed. “I am thinking of a plan, Balm. Listen: you cannot go, but I can go. But I need you--I could not enter your home without being thief, and you mentioned that you are good at hiding. You do not think you could play the clever infiltrator?”

“Yeah, I could sneak around if I could get in,” I said, with a sad little wave of my hoof. “But I would need a way into the station. Dad paid the Godspeaker for our room for years in advance on the first day, got the lock brought in, bought things from Authority merchants, and we still had a small mountain of caps. But… won’t the Authority have taken it? I don’t think Mosaic ponies would steal it, unless they thought I was dead. If they thought I was dead, the Godspeakers might put it in the community’s common pot.”

She pursed her lips. “Ah, yes. Well…”

But I wasn’t finished. “No! No, I mean… if the Authority didn’t do it, the ponies of Mosaic would never have gotten in. None of them know the passcode and none of them are any good with computers. I doubt that Authority thugs would have anypony with them with the requisite skills. The mechanical aspects of my father’s door are hard enough, but an attempt to use the computer would be laughable. He had a friend built it based on a pattern from…” I blanked. I thought for a moment, and shrugged. “I can’t remember. But I doubt any of them could enter.”

Her face brightened again. “Then you would be wanting to try?”

“If it were possible, yes.”

“Then it is possible,” she declared. “You see, the Emporium has not done any business with Mosaic because of personal matters, but no more personal matters shall restrict the movings of Tradewinds, mare of Petrahoof! You and I shall go. I shall pull cart, and you shall ride cart. And by ride cart…”

By “ride” the cart, Tradewinds had meant that she was going to stuff me into a crate of water bottles.

It was beyond uncomfortable. Cramped, dark, and every few seconds the whole assemblage would rattle, and my crate and I would rattle along with it. The walk from Southmarket to Mosaic wasn’t a terribly long one, but it was a little surprising how much longer it took with a cart. It made sense--I could clamber over rubble, but wheels couldn’t. Tradewinds had adamantly refused to fly the thing. I was subjected to a length lecture on the nature of natural pegasus magic delivered only mostly in the common Equestrian tongue as I helped her load various trade goods into the back of her cart. Apparently, winged ponies couldn’t just make anything fly. In my defense, there weren’t a lot of them on the ground.

The Authority had a few, sure. But only a few. They had some of almost every race left in the Wasteland, from pegasi to crystal ponies. But it wasn’t as if you saw many of either of those around all the time. Token minorities were just that.

And, to be honest, I didn’t remember a lot of my time in Central. I was a foal, after all. They forget things.

Tradewinds had a rather simple plan. She had not visited Mosaic in all the time we’d lived there, and so she would need to make nice and go through formalities with the Godspeaker and the community before she could set up shop. New merchants had to barter for preference and space, and sometimes it could take almost an hour. She suspected that with what she had brought, it wouldn’t take nearly that, but she would delay as much as she could for my sake. “Also, would be nice to have not to pay even pittance for space,” she’d said with what could only be called a cheeky smile.

I’d seen enough merchants come through to fill in the rest. I’d described the inside and drawn a crude map of it for her. She couldn’t bring it in--somepony saw that so soon after the raiders and there would be a lot of awkward questions. But she could memorize it, and she could also find a safe darkish place to unhook herself from the cart. After a moment hesitating over her wares, she would shrug and leave… after having opened my box just slightly.

If anypony peeked in, which was possible, they would open the box from the top and see only water. They wouldn’t see the secret compartment that took up half the space. Hopefully. Nor would anypony in Mosaic be clever enough to see through the hidden entrance on the side. Hopefully.

Regardless, once I was out, I could use the vents. I didn’t know them well, but I wouldn’t need to. Time wasn’t the issue once we were in. Tradewinds planned to be there all day. She’d even given me a key for when I got home. I’d stared at it with awe, suddenly shy at her trust, but my new friend had just laughed and told me cheerfully that everything important was boobytrapped anyhow.

I’m mostly sure that she wasn’t joking.

The journey gave me a lot of time to think. I knew the basics of the plan. I knew what I needed. Caps and memorabilia. I wanted the pictures and the money, and then I was gone. I wasn’t sure there was anything else I could take without being caught. I had to be able to fit in the vents. Sometimes being small is helpful.

But… the problem of what came after still loomed. Even if I succeeded in absconding with my father’s fortune, I would still be without goal. I had a potential home, if I could offer Tradewinds something in rent. Once I had the caps in hoof, then I would ask. Maybe I could find some work with her? Or somepony else in Southmarket.

Would it be so bad to live there? It hadn’t seemed like such a terrible place to live, not that I’d been there long. They had some basic water purification, a market, trade with the farmers out on the plains and with the other settlements. They had light and generators.

The last bit was the most important part.

I supposed I would have one last look for anything else my father had left behind. His message… I hadn’t thought about it all.

I sighed. What was there to think about? It hadn’t made me feel any better. It hadn’t filled some sort of hole in me. My parents were dead. My home was off-limits. It had been nice to hear his voice, but he had sounded so tired and so… hopeless. I didn’t know any zebras, and certainly not one named… Xylon? Or whatever the fellow’s name had been. I supposed I could see if they had couriers in Southmarket and try to send him a missive, but otherwise…

Well. We’d seen how good I was at surviving. If I almost died that many times just trying to make it nine or ten blocks, how was I going to survive going into downtown? I wouldn’t even make it that far before I was shot. Or blown to pieces, maybe. Eaten by ghouls if I were unlucky. Lunangrad had a lot of them.

Ghouls were something of a local specialty, in fact.

We slowed. I could feel the bumps grow bigger and the progress of the cart grind to a halt. I was silent. It occurred to me then, as I waited for her or someone else to speak or make some sort of move, that if I panicked in here it would likely be the end of me and her both. I took a deep breath and held it. No, no I felt fine. I felt fine. I couldn’t do that to Tradewinds, not after how she had taken me in and listened to me and fed me. Why hadn’t I mentioned anything?

Oh, right, because then I would have to explain how I was a failure.

But the waves of fear that drove me over that cliff didn’t come. There weren’t any voices. All I could hear in the box was my own breathing growing steadier and steadier.

I actually saw rather well in the dark, and so to be in total darkness was… strange. Unnerving, even. It was like being blind to not be able to make out anything at all. Sparkler had told me that she couldn’t see much of anything when the lights got too low, and I’d wondered what it would be like to be that way. It seemed frightening.

The cart began to move again. Soon, I could feel it start to tilt, but before I could begin fretting I held my head in my hooves and repeated fervently in my mind: that’s the ramp, that’s the ramp, that’s the ramp. The box slid a little, but not much. I’d been tied in place.

I imagined what it must look like out there. Tradewinds talking her way through the entrance, throwing out salutations and waving to bemused Mosaic ponies, loud and boisterous in all of the ways they never were. I could see the Godspeakers coming up, or maybe only one of them with a serene face. They would greet each other, and then Tradewinds would ask to park her merchandise for a moment so that she might converse more freely…

Yes, she was backing up now. I could feel it, or convince myself that I could tell that was what she was doing. Either way, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long now.

I tried counting, but after trailing off in the high forties more than once, I gave up. Where was she? What was she do--

The false facing creaked. I jumped, startled by the sudden sound.

Not much light came through, but I heard Tradewinds voice in the crack. “Will be buying time. Mayor is very strange, you know this? Mosaic has strange ponies. Am going to offer reasonable twenty cap price for having upper level to myself. Will try to talk about nothings and nonsense. There is vent in front of you, on wall. Hope it is good enough. Good luck, little shadow.”

And then she was gone. I counted to ten, and then pushed the false facing off a little more.

Mosaic was how I had left it, and yet it felt like a foreign country. The upper levels were poorly lit, as they were before, with the station town’s resources better spent keeping the lights strong where there were ponies to protect. I heard rather than saw Tradewinds as she talked somewhere in the gloom. She’d left me facing the half-destroyed ticket counter. Perfect.

I snaked out of the box, replacing the false front as I lay flat on my belly amongst the crates. Great. Silent as a shadow. Now to just… there it was. I saw the grating on the wall. Not all of the vents would be useful. I knew several of them were clogged up, and I knew some of them were too small, even for me. But I had to try. The tiny saddlebags Tradewinds had given me had a lockpicking tool and a screwdriver with a little enchantment. If I could slot it into the groove, it would do the rest. Nice to have, and impressive to watch. Also a subtle reminder of how terribly lame not having magic or wings was, but for this once I didn’t mind.

I set the screwdriver to each screw keeping the grating in place and watched it turn each screw, catching the handle again before it fell to the ground. By the Princesses, but it was satisfying. For just a moment I felt like I actually had magic at my call. I imagined it was but the smallest taste of what it felt like to be Sparkler.

I squeezed through the gap left behind by the removed grating and found myself in luck. It was a tight fit, but I could still worm my way down. I’d just have to try and keep my bearings, and I had good vision to do it with.

It took forever.

Vents are inherently unpleasant things. They are, in fact, the sordid realities of the old world which had allowed everything else to be so much more pleasant. They were what delivered cool, refreshing air. They kept the cold of winter at bay. They controlled the flow of the internal atmosphere of the pre-war temples to industry and empire.

When one was small and lived in a community where everyone had a part to play, squeezing into small spaces to explore them and search for anything of value. It was amazing what a pony could find in tight crawlspaces. When I was nine, my father had grudgingly let me help Salt Lick by climbing into a partially collapsed maintenance tunnel to collect spark batteries. It was a fond memory--the look on Salt’s face when I returned with a saddlebag full of… spare electronics…

I didn’t want to think about him in here.

Finding my way blind was difficult. What little vent-climbing and crawlspace exploring I had done was mostly below, in the warrens, and so I had only my memories of home to guide me. It did help to find the occasional grating and get my bearings, but it still took an hour to find the way down towards the living quarters.

The slow beat of the great fans was my only companion. The closer I got to the living areas, the louder they became. They weren’t pre-war at all. Salt Lick’s grandfather had made them himself with metal taken from the trains not long after ponies had begun to branch out into the furthest station towns. Central might not think of the ponies of Mosaic as being equal to “true” Authority, but once all of these ponies had been part of the only group that mattered: survivors.

My progress took on the character of a fever dream. Conversations would drift up from below me, in voices I could almost recognize. What sound reached me seemed hollow, echoed. It blended with the thump of the fans into gibberish. Only the occasional word made it through.

Sometimes, I stopped and waited for ponies to leave before I crawled carefully over a grate. I would watch them talking or laughing. Life had gone on without me.

I was close. I knew that my father’s room had a ventilation grate in it. If I could just find it, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the door at all.

It was as I was searching that I found her.

I’d found a vent that paralleled the hall in front of my old door, and had been working my way up towards our room when I looked down and saw Sparkler and her… marefriend. Sitting in front of my door. Rail leaned against it, practically slouching. Her forelegs were folded. It was hard to read her expression. I couldn’t see Sparkler’s face.

Time stopped for me, just for a moment. I wanted her to turn. I so desperately wanted her to turn and look up and find me. Just to see her face.

I’d left her here. I’d never said goodbye, and vanished. The fact that I’d not once said a proper goodbye to anyone hadn’t fazed me until that singular moment when I realized everyone included Sparkler. Sparkler, my only friend.

I couldn’t hear them well enough. I almost kicked the grating out and tumbled down into the hall just to hear her voice again. Rail seemed troubled. She shook her head, and sighed. She spoke, but it was muffled. The fans! Damn them. Damn them for taking this from me.

Rail looked at my door and then back to Sparkler.

Of course I wouldn’t hear their conversation. Intimate, between lovers, wasn’t it? Of course I was on the outside. I wanted to snarl.

And then Sparkler hung her head, turned, and walked off. But Rail remained. I took a deep breath, frozen still in the same moment in time… and then she looked right at me with a baleful stare. She walked until she was underneath the grate, and I didn’t breathe. I couldn’t keep it up, but there was no way she’d seen me. It was impossible. The lighting wasn’t good enough, not even--

She mouthed something. I see you.

I shook my head.

She snarled, and then looked away. When next she met my eyes, her expression was more neutral. I see you, she seemed to mouth again.

I… didn’t know what to do. At all. So I shrugged. Shrugging helps. I expected some sort of normal response, but instead she just stared at me for another few beats and then looked in both directions. And then her horn lit up.

I caught on to what she was doing just a second to slow to stop it. I had been leaning on the grate, hoping to hear anything of their conversation, and as I tried to pull away it fell out from under me.

Only by luck did I not scream. Rail had already cushioned my fall enough to avoid injury. But it hurt like hell. I lay flat on the ground, my body aching and my heart drumming furiously in my ear. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful or not that Tradewinds had insisted I leave the barding behind. More weight when I fell, or extra padding for when I hit the ground? I suspected that it wouldn’t have mattered at all.

To her credit, my rival in love didn’t badger me as I recovered. I sat up, and met her eyes. Sea-green, I thought faintly. Just like her coat. Her short, unkempt mane was white. I don’t know why I took the time to notice these things, but I did.

It was a strange moment. Neither of us said anything. She looked at me. I looked at her.

“You’re really fuckin’ stupid,” she said at last.

I blinked. “Yes. Yes, I do believe I am,” I croaked. “How was it you, ah, located me?”

“Caught my eye. Accident, really. Also…” she stepped closer and grabbed onto my little saddlebag. I made to protest, but she’d finished before I could and showed me the screwdriver. “Felt this. I’m good with catching onto the subtle kind of passive magics.” She paused, looking it over. “ ‘S kinda neat, actually. Good for you.” She returned my tool.

“Why did you pull me down?” I asked.

She stared at me like I’d grown a horn--if only. “Wow. Wow. Seriously?”

I took a deep breath. “Can we cut to the point where you communicate like a normal pony?” I asked, trying to keep calm. Somepony could walk around that corner at any moment. I didn’t have time to be mocked. “Yes, I am an idiot. You’ve established this. In fact, you have done so in both of our meetings. Can you explain why you say so this time, and then perhaps I can be on my way?”

She snarled and I felt her magic grab my and push me into the wall. I cried out, but then she covered my mouth with a hoof. Before I could start to break free, she was looking down the hall and then back at me.

“Shut the fuck up! You want somepony to hear you? You’re bein’ secretive for a reason, ain’tcha? Where are you going?”

She moved her hoof and I whispered back fiercely. “I’m not taking you and I’m not telling you.”

“Gonna do both, kid.”

Kid. Colt. Foal. “If I’m a colt, then you’re a child yourself,” I said, acidly.

“Does it really matter? We need to talk, you an’ me, and we’re gonna.”

I didn’t have time for this. She knew that. I bit back a curse. “I’m getting into my old room. How do I know you won’t call anypony?”

“Two reasons. First, if I was gonna, I would have already.”

“And the second?” I asked as she released her magical hold on me. I rubbed my shoulders, still aching from my fall.

“Sparkler,” she said simply. I winced.

I didn’t say anything. I walked back to the door and she followed behind me. It took a few seconds to enter the code, and then another to get both of us inside. A few more seconds of silence between as I fumbled for the lights, and she banged her legs against my table. A few muffled curses.

Then the lights came on.

Everything was how I had left it. The broken glass on the floor. The pilfered shrine to my mother’s valor. The destroyed computer. My father’s open door. My radio would be in my room, also gone, never to tell me again of the Stable Dweller’s fall from grace or sing me to sleep.

It was almost too much. The reality came rushing back to meet me all at once--this was my home. This was where I had spent so many years, just my last bit of family and myself, and now it was going to be taken away from me forever. I could never come back here. If any of the Mosaic ponies saw me, I would be reported and the Authority would hunt me down. They were cowards and what was I to them? A loose end. Somepony that wasn’t inside of the circle. The whole world was just a damnable series of circles and I was always outside of them, looking in. They were going to take it all away.

I moved over to the wall with determination in my breast. Or anger. Or… or something. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that it hurt and it was hot to the touch and I was going to tear this place apart to keep it from being used against me even passively. I would take it all back if I could. Every last important thing. They couldn’t take home from me.

Rail started talking when I took the pictures down. “You’re not going to see her, are you?”

I didn’t stop. I didn’t even slow down. “Sparkler?” I asked, knowing the answer. “Of course I’m not.”

“Why the hell not? What the hell, even?”

“Think about it for a bit, and you’ll figure it out,” I said, sparing her a glance over my shoulder. “If you’re such a smart pony. Remember, I’m the idiot.”

“She’s your friend, dammit! What is wrong with you?”

“Lots of things,” I said softly. I found my father’s old saddlebags hanging in his closet. They would work nicely. And yes, there were the bits. I started to collect them from the safe. Sparkler stood in the doorway. I could almost feel her presence hovering over me.

“No, I want a damn answer,” she continued. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. It didn’t matter unless she was going to give me away.

“Why should I tell you anything?” I asked flatly. “Really, why? I’m honestly curious what I would ever owe you, and what would make you think I would ever tell you a thing about myself or about my reasons.”

“You’re hurting her.”

That did it. I stopped. I stood up, letting the saddlebag fall and stared ahead. “Get out.”

“No. I’m not going anywhere. You are hurting her. She was terrified you’d gotten yourself killed, you idiot. And then--”

“Get out.”

“And then the black an’ tans told her you weredead and she cried the whole day because she thought you’d done it because of her. And you know what? I was sorry too, but now I’m sure as hell not. Because I think you did. Stallions are all the same. Gotta go prove how macho you are. Bullshit. You don’t care about her. If you cared about her, you’d--”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. I tried to turn but lost my balance and slumped against the wall. “Why? Why would you tell me any of that?”

“Because even trash like you should get to say goodbye. I was just unimpressed before, but you were really going to leave without saying goodbye? No explanation? Just let her think you were dead? Did you ever care about her at all?”

“Yes,” I said, hollowly.

“Yeah, well, ain’t doin’ a good job of showing me.”

“I was afraid,” I said. “Okay? I killed several ponies and I’m not even sure how long ago it was. I was exiled from my home, had my hopes dashed in literally every way imaginable to me before, and now I have nothing. So yes, I’m an idiot. Yes, maybe I wanted to go prove myself. Do you think I know? Does it make you happy or satisfied to think that maybe, just maybe, I thought I could just go out and be a hero and she would love me? Of course I thought that. You would have to. It’s got nothing to do with what’s twixt my legs,” I added.

She sat. We looked at each other.

“You have to talk to her.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

“Then I’m right, and you’re trash and she’s better off thinking you got shot and raiders ate your eyes for fun.”

I laughed and it tasted like bile. “You’re right. She probably is better off thinking it. There’s a chance it’ll be true.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Seriously? You’re gonna try and guilt me?”

I sighed. “You’re right. I’m trash. I’m a failure who hyperventilates himself into blacking out at least once a week and who can’t even go home without ponies he doesn’t know cornering him in his parent’s sepulchre to tell him just how miserably pathetic it is. You won. You win everything. You have everything. You have home, you have safety, you have friends, and you have Sparkler. I have none of those things. We’ve established your dominance, can--”

She growled. “This isn’t about me. You know what? It ain’t about you either. It’s about her. You dyin’ is tearin’ her up inside. I don’t care if you don’t like me or not, on account of I figure you were always bound to dislike me and I think you’re a bitter little cuss. But if there’s any part of you worth having ever been her friend…” she didn’t finish. I looked over and she shrugged.

I was quiet. She was quiet.

“I’m afraid,” I said, not knowing why I said it. “I killed ponies. They were bad ponies but I killed them. It hasn’t… it hasn’t caught up to me yet, I think. But it will. I feel it creeping up on me, stalking, waiting, and then when I’m at my lowest it will pounce and I’ll really feel just how much of a murderer I am now. I’m afraid that if I see her again, that’s what she’ll see. That I killed ponies.”

“Raiders,” she said, but she didn’t sound confident about it.

“Ponies,” I said again. “Ponies with horns like you and… and nothing like myself, I suppose. Ponies who had problems, or were so hopped up on chems that they didn’t know any better, or maybe even simply evil ones… and I feel like it’s natural to be okay with it in some way but I know I shouldn’t. I’m not making any sense,” I said. “I just… I just hoped I couldn’t ruin what was left of me for her even more, and now you’re telling me there’s no way to avoid that. Really think, for a bit. Wouldn’t you be afraid, if you were me? With how everypony in Mosaic is about violence? Bet you the milita had to be in ritual isolation, didn’t they? I’m already… I’m already an outsider. Just think about it. Wouldn’t you be afraid?”

She didn’t answer, which was as good as confirmation. I looked at her.

“I can’t go wondering,” I said. “If you can bring her here, I’ll… I’ll be here.”

She looked at me, her ears flat against her head. “Shouldna called you trash,” she said.

“Don’t apologize for the truth, or you’ll never say it,” I replied with a snort, and went back to gathering.

She left.

I gathered up the caps. I gathered my photos of mom and dad, of myself, of anything I could find. I stuffed some clothes in my saddlebags, but didn’t have enough room in the old ones. I’d be able to sneak out through the top entrance tonight, if I waited. The lights would be dimmer, and I wasn’t brightly colored, was I? Being gray was boring, yes, but it could be surprisingly useful.

When Sparkler arrived, I was waiting in my living room.

I heard three knocks, then a pause, and then another three knocks. It occurred to me only now that we’d worked out no signal, but before I could call out to see who it was, the door was open.

The door was barely open before she’d bowled me right over, babbling. Sparkler squeezed me tight, evacuating the air from my lungs so that I could only flail beneath her on the floor.

“You’re alive! You’re alive, I can’t believe you’re alive! I thought you’d run off and got yourself shot or blown up or burned alive or eaten by demons or…”

I squirmed and pushed her off so that I could breathe again. Air! Beautiful air.

“Yes! Alive, please, would like to stay that way,” I said, and she moved back a pace. I caught my breath and tried to smile, and she grinned back at me. “I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I’m… I’m also sorry I scared you, and for not saying goodbye, and for--”

“It’s okay,” she said.

I looked at her then, really looked at her. She had been a flash of color before, movement and sound, but she was a pony. She was a creamy white color, with a mane the color of coffee, eyes bluer than any sky I’d seen. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, threatening to escape at any moment. There was a part of me that wanted to reach out and try to banish them, and perhaps if I had been less shocked, I might have. She had been afraid. I saw it in her eyes--wide, like a foal who thought she’d seen a ghost.

If I wanted to reach out and reassure her, I thought she might wish to reach out and make sure that I was real.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” I said again, because I had nothing else to say.

“Don’t be,” she said. “You came back, didn’t you?” And she hugged me again. And then I heard the faintest thrum of her magic as her horn lit up, and then I found a moderately displeased Rail joining us. “You’re back. I know you can’t stay, but now I know that you’re alive, Balm.”

She let us both go and we stood awkwardly beside each other. Rail was lucky. I would give just about anything to be her.

“I’m living in Southmarket for now,” I said. “The merchant who showed up today is… I guess she’s sort of my crazy aunt. Maybe? She knew my mom, and they seem to have been rather close.” Close. Ignoring her uncomfortable insinuations that they had been lovers, close was as, ah, close as I could get.

“You have a place to live? What will you do?” Sparkler asked me.

“I…” I shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. I might help Tradewinds in her store, perhaps. Find a new case for the Sword, rebuild.”

Rail was nodding slowly, but Sparkler had a strange light in her eye. “That’s all?”

I blinked. “What else could I do? I’m useless, Sparks,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done any of this, but I…” And just like that, my throat closed up. I attempted to speak, but only a sad, little wheezing sound came at first. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I made my bed. I’m due to lie in it.”

It was hard to manage even that. I couldn’t read the look on her face. Suddenly, as if it were fresh, I realized that I truly had made my own bed, and I would definitely have to lay in it. Last time here. Maybe… maybe if somepony came out to me, but Mosaic ponies almost never leave.

And I knew then why I didn’t want to see her. Because I would leave, but she knew where I was now. I was so close, but I was much too far over the surface for the liking of a Mosaic-born pony. She wouldn’t come to me, and I could not go to her. I didn’t want to see her now, and I hadn’t then, because I would have this moment of realization: even the only friend I had was going to choose to have nothing to do with me. It wouldn’t be because she had no choice. It would be because she chose not to risk the surface.

I already blamed her. But I couldn’t.

“Why did you leave in the first place?”

Her voice snapped me out of my reverie. Rail had stepped forward and stood beside her. She didn’t nuzzle Sparkler or go out of her way to make any affectionate gesture… and yet their bond was obvious. How had I not noticed before? But I thought she did it for me and for her, to make this conversation easy. “Curious about that myself,” Rail commented.

“The mosaic outside,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t really believe in the goddesses…” Sparkler began, but I cut her off.

“I’m not sure I do.” I sniffed and let out a hissing breath through my teeth. “It’s just… well, it’s my home,” I said, and had to fight to keep my voice steady. “Or it was. Everypony here loved it, and it meant something to them I knew it would not mean for me, but it was a part of our town. But I think what really set me off was my mom.”

“Your mom?” Rail prompted, tilting her head at me.

“Yes. My mother had a special barding with a built-in saddle called the Sword. It’s what I wore when I charged out there. Balanced, perfected. If my father is to believed, it is probably the greatest of its kind, short of power armor. But mom wanted it to be beautiful. She’s the one who put the motifs on it. Celestia and Luna.”

“Just like the wall.”

“Yes. And I lost her, and my father and I moved here. I suspect he did so because that mosaic reminded him of her, and now…”

“I understand,” Rail said. Her rough, gravelly voice seemed even rougher. Her ears were flat against her skull, her whole posture aggressive. “Fuckin’...”

Sparkler put a hoof against her withers, and that seemed to calm her marefriend down. She looked at me and nodded. “I think it was brave. I think you can be a very dumb pony, Balm, but it was a brave thing to do. You knew the Authority wouldn’t risk themselves for us.”

I shook my head. “For anypony who wasn’t in their central stations, really.”

“I think I would be happy just settling down in Southmarket. But you?” She shook her head. “Balm, I don’t think you’ll be happy with that. You weren’t happy here. You weren’t made for a quiet life.. And that’s okay.”

Sparkler strode forward and hugged me again. I hugged her back.

“I’m sorry I overreacted,” I said, feeling stupid and wonderful at once.

“I’m sorry you found out that way,” she said and squeezed me tighter, and then let go. We stood face to face again. She smiled, but it was a sad smile.

“You can do great things, Balm. The wasteland… up there in the city, it is so bad. Maybe it needs somepony like you, who is smart. Somepony who hasn’t lived his whole life learning how to be awful. Your parents were good ponies, Balm. You could be a good pony. I know you can be… even if it’s hard. Will you do that? The commander told us you won’t be coming back, and I know he was lying about you being dead, but--”

“--and I might wanna make sure he weren’t bullshitting you,” Rail grumbled underneath her.

“But I know you can be a good pony. Don’t just hide again, like you did here. Don’t sit around in some little room and do nothing. The goddesses made you to do good works. Go do them, and I know that one day they’ll let you come back home. And we’ll be here, waiting for you.”

Quickly, she turned to Rail and wrapped her up in a hug. She smiled back at me as she held the two of them cheek to cheek.

“And if you die and make her sad, I’ll kick your ass,” Rail grumbled.

I laughed, even though my throat was tight. The idea of leaving home forever fell away. Wherever she was, that was home, and nopony could take that away. I had a bed in Southmarket and a mission. I had my mother’s barding and my father’s mind.

I could face what the city had for me up above.

Author's Note

End of Mosaic Arc
Next Arc: Minefield

LEVEL UP

Interlude: Tradewinds

The Writer

My first impression of Southmarket was that it was the very definition of a hub. The guards had not questioned me as they had the subject of my inquiry. One look at the Regulator had sent them back below the junk battlements to hold fierce council with each other.

Ponies did not approach him. Their eyes followed, but never long enough for me to catch them at it. My companion is known here, and I cannot tell if it was respect for his grim countenance and skill or fear of his capacity for violence that kept them from stepping close.

When we were in the town center, he turned to me. “I’ve told you the first part. Is it what you expected?”

I shook my head. “Honestly? Not at all. But that isn’t a bad thing. It’s the truth--it feels like the truth where much of the other accounts felt like only a story.”

He grunted and turned. “Well, the next part is her’s, I think, and I was headed to Southmarket anyhow. You know anything about this place?”

“Not really,” I said, as he strode off through the old streets. “Just that it’s a trading hub in Lunangrad. It’s the only major settlement in the southern part of town.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘bout right. Now that Mondale is gone, double-right. Southmarket, Northmarket, they’re sister cities just shy of bein’ the real thing. They got walls and lights and generators and coal they buy from tribals and pilfer from the ruins. Water they pull up from the warrens and purify twice. Hooch they brew in basements. Short way of sayin’ that this is civilization.”

“So this became the Crusader’s new home.”

“More or less. Whenever he could, he came back here.”

“I’m curious about the timing of the DJ’s broadcast,” I said, frowning. “Had he not heard it at all? Truly?”

“Nah, he didn’t hear it until later. But he knew it had happened. It was Tradewinds who told him the next mornin’, and let him hear it the second time when that crazy bastard repeated his loop.” The Regulator spat. “Idiot. Not her, him. That voice on the radio that thinks he can just make up anything he wants and ponies’ll move like puppets on his string. Fight the good fight? Bullshit. Ain’t nothin’ good about it. Stories about heroes. Heroes ain’t worth a pile of shit, but ponies just might be sometimes. If they’re tryin’.”

He refused to speak after that. We walked until we came to the shop of Tradewinds.

Tradewinds Petrahoofan Emporium. The sign boldly declared its business to the world, or at least to the street, in dark red paint. The storefront itself had been partially restored, and brimmed with a wide variety of goods. I saw everything from Old World guns--Ironshod, of course--to radio units that looked new. The radio unit was more surprising than the guns. Guns were a dime a dozen in the Equestrian wasteland, but radios? Technology that didn’t have it’s end in murder was a treasure.

It was even more impressive on the inside. The Emporium on the store’s sign hadn’t been merely a boast. I found almost everything one could think of: old-world toys, cleaned and set in rows. Guns I had never even heard of, ammunition for every single one I had. Barding, clothes, and the material to fix both. Tools. Computer terminals and food. Tradewinds traded in the wide desires of civilization.

The mare herself sat behind one of the counters, staring holes through Regulator.

“Tradewinds,” he said, and removed his hat.

“Mu’dak,” she replied, with her teeth grinding. I took a step back, suddenly nervous.

“I know you don’t like me none, but--”

“Is not for your sake, kinslayer. It is for sake of Balm that I hold you over the fire,” she growled, cutting him off. “What need? Tired of murder yet? Tired of lying yet?”

The Regulator did not answer her right away, but when he did, his voice was even. “I’m here to deliver this one to ya,” he said, and gestured to me. Those baleful pegasi eyes moved to me, and I cowered. I had heard that pegasi were ferocious, that they were protective of their own, but never before had I seen such restrained rage. This was not just anger. This was murder held back only by… by Balm, I supposed. Balm alone stood between me and being shot full of holes.

“I-I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, trying to keep myself from bolting. “I came from B-Baltimare. I wanted to know the truth about the Crusader…”

“You have come to see if the stories are true?” she asked me with a grin that had absolutely zero mirth in it.

“I came to find out the real truth underneath them. I wanted to know who the Crusader really was. Who Balm really was.”

She stepped out from behind the counter and kept walking until she was close enough to reach out and touch. Her eyes skewered me like a bug on a pin, and then she sighed.

“I will be telling you, then. Iron, will you change sign to closed? Would not be wise to greet customers as I am.”

He obeyed silently, and I found myself led through the store into a strange little laboratory. I wondered what it must have been like for Balm, when he first entered.

We passed through a small door and came into a small, reasonable kitchen. I sat, and she made coffee. The Regulator arrived a few seconds after we did and stood by the wall. Tradewinds looked at him.

“Do you think about it, ever?” she asked him.

“Every damn day,” he replied.

“Come and sit at my table.” She gestured, as if to ensure him that the invitation was sincere. “I am not liking you, and I think that you are izmennik, maybe. Traitor, ne’er-do-well. Bad pony. But Balm was your friend. He said you were his friend.”

“He was right about a lot of things. I hope he was right about that one,” the Regulator said, and sat beside me. Tradewinds served coffee and then sat herself, preening her wings. I wondered if it was a nervous reaction with pegasi. I had seen so few of them in my life. What did I know, really, about their tribe?

“Ma’am, I’m sorry for coming unannounced,” I said as she worked. “If this is unpleasant…”

“Life is unpleasant.” Tradewinds stopped preening and straightened herself. “How much do you know?”

I told her. She corrected a few points, blowing softly on her coffee, and filled in a few gaps. She commented without looking at him that the Regulator had done a decent job telling the tale, to which he made no meaningful reply. I found their interaction… ominous. Balm’s friends having such enmity at each other, staying that wrath for the sake of… of what? His memory? Himself? I had found nopony who could say where the Crusader was. I began to wonder if he might truly be dead.

Neither had ever explicitly said that Balm was gone forever. Yet a sort of hopelessness hung over them as we talked of the Crusader.

It was troubling, to say the least. At the end of the Regulator’s tale I had felt a stirring in my heart. I’d seen the myths and legends already forming and thought--here! This is where it begins.

Author's Note

Second Arc--Minefield