Chapter 3: Expendable Youth

The Moojave Territory had been a hard place to live even before the bombs. Gardens of Equestria had helped, but even a megaspell could only do so much. The Territory was still a dry, arid land, with rocky terrain and sandy soil that many plants and crops refused to take root in. The hated sand was coarse and rough, and got everywhere. Water was a precious commodity. Most of the native plants were thorny and difficult to eat, and some were poisonous. Venomous insects had mutated into larger, more dangerous versions of themselves. Violent winds sometimes buffeted the landscape, becoming storms of whirling, blinding sand. Even just being out in the midday sun could kill a pony in a few hours if they were unprepared, and there were vast stretches of open desert to be crossed between pockets of civilization. And then there were the buffalo tribes. Most were ok, but few were anything resembling ‘friendly’, and some still openly bore the old grudges and saw ponies as nothing but invaders in their lands. Sometimes ‘not hostile’ was the best you were going to get.

Considering all this, you may well be asking why, why in Celestia’s name would any sane pony want to live out here? Well, I’d always suspected (hey!) that we were all just a little crazy from the heat. The truth was that the Far West had always been a land of dreams for ponies looking to make their fortune. Between gold rushes, coal rushes, and rare ores for the megaspells, mining had been big business in the Far West for hundreds of years before the war, and ponies of the old world had been coming here looking to extract a fortune from the ground for centuries. And then with the war came the great military-industrial complex. The open desert provided safe testbeds for megaspells, bombs and other wartime technologies, which brought scientists, engineers, military personnel, and all the infrastructure needed to support them.

And in the midst of all of this were the great casinos of Las Pegasus - monuments to the force that had driven those prospectors out here: dreams. Oh, and greed. The idea of risking everything on games that mixed luck and skill, and coming out ahead. For the poor and working class, it was the idea of ‘striking rich’ and being able to live without working like the nobility did. For the rich, it was something exciting to do with all their wealth. It was an idea that blinded them all to the reality that the odds were always against them. In a larger sense, what Las Pegasus offered that was so attractive was the sense of freedom. Anything went there. Every vice; every pleasure that was illegal, immoral or just frowned upon in the rest of Equestria was freely available there, encouraged, even. Gambling, chems, prostitution - you name it, it was on offer.

Beyond all that, though, there simply was a serene beauty to the desert that couldn’t be found anyplace else, especially in the overdeveloped East, where there were places you couldn’t tell where one city ended and another began. At any time you could just walk off the road and enjoy the tranquility of just being nowhere, with nothing around you for miles. It was quite the paradise for those who treasured their solitude.

There was plenty of that for me currently. Since I was the only flier among the caravan’s guard, my job was to both watch them from the air and scout the area around them for potential trouble along the road. Well, I say ‘guard’ but in reality it was just Cherry Bomb and me. The caravan wasn’t much of one either - apart from a pair of overworked pack brahmin and the cart they pulled, there was a trader who’s name slipped into one of my ears and directly out the other, and what looked to be his pregnant wife, neither of whom seemed too keen on speaking to me despite Cherry Bomb’s coaxing, and my allowing them to charge me fifty caps for a pair of mirrored sunglasses I was certain weren’t worth more than ten. I wasn’t particularly bothered by that even though Cherry was, and I was at least grateful to her for being so concerned on my behalf. I remembered enough to know that there were just some ponies who wanted nothing to do with a black-coated mare, and there was just nothing you could say or do about that. If they wanted to cling to old superstitions and prejudices it was no skin off my nose, as long as they paid me.

It was a job I felt like I’d done at least a hundred times before, though I couldn’t recall any specific time I had. The pack brahmin and wagon were loaded to capacity with the traders’ wares, and so they were forced to keep to an agonizingly slow pace along the road. Even gliding as slowly as I could around them, it was a difficult pace to keep to, and several times I found myself getting too far ahead and having to hover and wait for them to catch up. Honestly, though the work was boring as hell I was grateful, both to have the extra caps in my purse and to not have to make at least this leg of the trip completely alone.

Having gotten tired of ruminating over the few things I knew about what was going on in the world around me, I decided to take a closer look at my Pip-Buck. I hadn’t really felt like I’d had the time (or patience) to explore its functions back in Sweetsprings. Activating the screen, I took a look over the first main section. First, there was the health monitor screen I’d seen Xinnia use when I was laid up. Overall health, heart rate, blood pressure and rad count I understood, even poison and toxin sensors, but how in Equestria did it know when I was hungry, thirsty or needed to sleep?

Things became even more surreal as I tabbed through the other sub-headings under Status. I’d thought it was amusingly clever at first, when I’d looked at the Stats screen and noticed the names of the statistics it tracked spelled out “SPECIAL.” And then I noticed the individual stat names. Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Where was it getting this info from? I agreed with its assessments of low scores for Strength and Endurance, average Perception and high Agility, but I’d never felt like I’d earned the high marks it gave me for Charisma and Intelligence. And Luck? Pfft. If my Luck was that high I’d have never have gotten into this situation in the first place. And what was all this about, anyway? Had my life become some kind of role-playing game?!

The RPG theme continued on the next tab, called “Perks.” It was a fairly short list, but I didn’t understand most of them. Black Widow, Cherchez La Femme… And then I ran across a strange one called Magic Fingers. On its description, the cartoon pony mascot grinned as he held out a hoof and mysteriously extended fingers from it, accompanied by a tiny rubbery squeaking sound as he flexed them. “You’ve discovered the secret Earth Pony magic that allows you to manipulate small objects with your hooves almost, but not quite, as dexterously as if you had human hands! What’s a human? That’s a story for another time...” Had I? When had I learned that?

“Bullshit,” I said quietly to myself, scowling in disbelief at the screen. But then, what was the harm in trying? I folded a foreleg across my chest as I glided along, and to my surprise I found that I could pull Lily from her holster and put her back, and even hold her out without dropping her. I was even able to draw out and connect her suppressor without too much difficulty. Oh, this was going to make shooting so much easier!

I was aiming down Lily’s top sight, about to squeeze off a test round, when the thought occurred to me to look back, and I noticed with a sigh that I had gotten too far out ahead of the caravan again. I was about to put Lily away and circle back when I caught sight of a pair of bucks below me. They were dressed in strange, ill-fitting denim jackets with strings of numbers crudely etched on the back, and were suspiciously pressed up against a pair of boulders that flanked the cracked and damaged highway. They kept peeking out, looking at the approaching caravan. Ambushers. Had I been paying attention to my Eyes-Forward Sparkle, I might’ve noticed their red bars sooner. Fortunately for me, nopony ever looks up. Not unless they see your shadow cross over them. And sometimes, not even then.

I landed silently behind them, holding Lily out and folding my wings. They didn’t even notice me until I cleared my throat at them. “You know,” I said, smirking, “if a mare didn’t know any better, she might think y’all were up to no good.”

They both whirled around to face me, obviously startled by my sudden appearance, though their pride wouldn’t let them admit to it. The Earth Pony on the right growled at me around a brown paper tube that had a piece of thick cord hanging from one end, while the unicorn on the right levitated a similar brown stick threateningly at me. “What’s it to you?” he demanded.

My smirk widened as I watched them, and simultaneously discovered that with this new ability I could dangerously cock Lily’s hammer back, to emphasize what I said next. My eyes bore holes into them over the rims of my sunglasses, but I continued in my flippant tone hoping that I actually sounded as both playful and dangerous as I imagined. “Oh, nuthin’,” I said, “Just was passin’ by and figured in the spirit of Generosity I might give you boys to the count of, say, three, to rethink whatever it is you’re doing here. Maybe reconsider some of your life choices.”

The idiots didn’t even wait for me to start counting. I saw the sparking at the end of the cords on those sticks they held and recognized what they were. Dynamite. I activated SATS and watched the color drain from the world momentarily as the flow of time turned from water to molasses, making everything seem hazy and dreamlike. I watched the two ponies slowly rearing back to throw as I lined up a pair of headshots for each of them. At 95% hit chance there was no particular need to double up, but, better safe than sorry.

Those shots made bloody work of them as expected, leaving a pair of corpses to slump against their respective boulders as time and life returned to normal. A flash of panic came over me shortly as I realized those dynamite sticks were still rolling along the mostly smooth patch of road, heading right toward me. I jumped back as quickly as I could, with a hard flap of my wings to push me further as I turned my face away. The double explosion knocked me hard onto my rump, but fortunately that was all it did. I took a moment to dust myself off, and let myself just breathe as the tension of the moment passed.

Now, if this is the moment you’re expecting me to get all maudlin and remorseful over my first murder, I’m afraid I’m about to deeply disappoint you. Unlike some of my heroes, I was not some sweet, innocent Stable pony, nor some sheltered Enclave ingenue. This, as the saying goes, was not my first rodeo. Amnesia or no, I was born into this world, and I had no illusions about how cheap life was here. Ponies killed each other constantly, for the pettiest of reasons, sometimes for no reason at all. Those who weren’t able to accept that, who weren’t willing to bloody their hooves to ensure their own survival and to safeguard what mattered to them… well, the wasteland had a name for them: Victims.

I was no victim. I refused to be. But I knew there were plenty of folk more evil than I out here who would enjoy making me one, just as Aces had. So whatever I had to do to prevent that, I knew was justified, and there was simply no point in crying over it. Even though I couldn’t remember the things I’d done previous to today, there was a feeling inside me that if I had taken the time to weep over every one of those sins of my past, my tears would’ve flooded the Territory.

Besides, I’d given them a chance to walk away from this. That was more than they’d have got from most ponies. Hell, that practically made me a saint ‘round these parts. That they hadn’t taken it was their own fault, not mine.

At least, I needed to believe that.

Seeing that the caravan was finally catching up to me, I lit one of the cigarettes I’d pulled from the corpses and decided to take a break and wait for them in the cool shade of one of those boulders. The pair hadn’t had much on them besides those, a few more sticks of dynamite which I had no idea how to use and didn’t feel safe experimenting with, and their clothes, which my Pip-Buck had identified as Prison Garb. The 250-year old tobacco tasted every bit as shitty as you’d expect, but its nicotine had a pleasantly gentle calming effect that soothed my nerves and helped me relax. Cherry Bomb had the twin carbines on her battle saddle ready for action - there was no way she could have missed the explosion and smoke. But as she cautiously passed between the boulders and saw me there, finishing a smoke next to the pair of ruined corpses, she relaxed visibly and chuckled to me. “Trouble?” she asked in a slightly playful tone.

“No trouble,” I replied with a grin and shake of my head. I tossed the spent butt of my cigarette aside and took to the air once more, resuming my patrol.

The rest of the day passed without incident, leaving me with more time to explore my Pip-Buck, and more time to be disturbed by just how much it knew about me, down to a measure of my karma. And yet, even though this machine strapped to my leg could tell me whether I was a good pony or not, it couldn’t tell me anything I really wanted to know about myself. It couldn’t tell me who I was.

As the sun faded over the horizon, painting the sky in its gorgeous palette of reds, oranges and purples, we pulled off the road to make camp in a safe-looking clearing surrounded by rocks. We built a fire together and the four of us ate around it, and even though it stuck in my craw slightly that I was being charged for the food I ate, I felt it’d be rude to ask if Cherry Bomb had similar arrangements. I found myself eating alone - the traders had said as little as possible to me during our brief transactions and were keeping to the direct opposite side of the firepit from me. I smiled, though, as Cherry Bomb came to rescue me from that lonely position. She sat herself down right next to me in a huff, and together we shared a dinner of fresh carrots, an ancient pre-made dish called “Salisbury Steak”, and Sunset Sarsaparillas - warm but still refreshing.

“I really don’t understand what their problem is with you, Six,” Cherry had said between muzzlefulls of food. “I mean, we’ve only known each other a day or two now, but you seem like a good pony to me.”

I stiffened slightly as she used that name I was growing to loathe, but I didn’t bother to correct her. “It’s because I’m black,” I replied, giving a gentle shake of my head.

Cherry looked at me pointedly, sky blue eyes narrowed in disbelief. She was a rather cute earth pony around the same age as myself I’d guess - if I knew how old I was - with a pink coat and darker red mane, wearing a black leather jacket over a white undershirt. On her flank was the mark of a pair of exploding cherries connected by their stem. “Wha? That’s… that’s just stupid,” she said finally.

I nodded, not denying that. But I tried to explain, “You’ve been places, you’ve seen lots of ponies, right? Now think of all the ponies you know, have met or have even just seen. How many of them have been all black?”

She looked to the sky, thinking a moment, rubbing her chin with a hoof. “Um… well… none of them, actually,” she replied, then after a moment more pondering, added, “I’ve seen ones with black manes, but… not their body color, no.”

I nodded again, and continued, “Right. Ponies come in all different colors, any color you can imagine, sometimes even very dark colors, but never pure black. It’s by far and away the rarest pony color. Black was Nightmare Moon’s color, and Queen Chrysalis’ color. And because of that, there are still ponies out there who believe that we’re touched by them; marked by them. That we are their children somehow. That we’re cursed, bringers of misfortune, or at the very least not to be trusted.”

“But you’re not all black,” Cherry protested. “Your mane-”

“Doesn’t count,” I interrupted, shaking my head.

Cherry’s look turned pensive, and she hesitantly asked, “So… well… are you? The… cursed child of Nightmare Moon or whatever?”

I laughed, snorting derisively. “Pfft, no. Come on, you just said yourself that’s all crap.” I sighed heavily as my mood turned more somber, and I gazed into the orange flames of the campfire. “There’s enough real monsters out here. Enough real dangers. We don’t need to dredge up dead ones from the past as well.” But even as I said those words, I wondered. Could it have been true after all?

I needed a quick change of subject. “Anyway,” I said, “that’s enough about me, let’s talk about you. What’s your story?”

She chuckled, and I smiled along. Joining me in watching the dance of the campfire’s flames, she said, “Not much of a story to tell, honestly. I grew up in Angel City on the coast, served my required two years in the NLR military and found that shooting stuff was about the only thing I was good at. But, like a lot of NLR ponies I guess, I wanted to head east and see what was out here. See what I could find.” She shrugged a bit, “What I found was mostly work like this, guarding these little mom and pop caravans. But it’s not bad work, and I have a nice little home in Sweetsprings to come back to.” She looked at me with an impish grin and added, “And now I’m traveling with an amnesiac heroine who doesn’t know it yet but is destined to save the world as she discovers her tragic past!”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the last part, and we shared a good, long laugh.

As the fire died down to embers, I was alone once again. The traders had turned in early, and Cherry Bomb had collapsed herself after splitting a small flask of whiskey with me. She’d done her best to try to massage my sore wings, and though the touch of her hooves had felt good, she ultimately did little to relieve their pain. I tucked them in against myself, rolled myself up in Xinnia’s saddleblanket and tried to will myself to sleep, to no avail. The spot where my wing had been shot ached and throbbed as if the wound were still fresh, and my head was starting to join it. And so, I finally broke down and reached into my saddlebag for that shot of Med-X.

A sharp stab of pain, a hiss of the auto-injector, and seconds later I was blissfully floating between here and the Everafter. Nothing hurt anymore, and nothing could hurt me - I felt only the soothing, comforting warmth of the chem embracing my very soul. My invisible lover held me close, and whispered to me that everything would be all right. He helped quiet my racing thoughts; he shielded me from the memory of that night in the rain, of two ponies’ heads exploding in slow-motion, and even from the trivial hurt of two ponies I didn’t know and cared nothing for shunning me because of my coat. And finally sleep came. Peaceful, restful, dreamless sleep.

Author's Note

I'd always thought the mouth-gun thing for non-unicorns established in the original FO:E was... kinda lame. So, I came up with what I thought was a clever alternative.