The Unraveled World

“He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a life-time is unraveled.” William Ellery Channing

* * *

The zebra’s throat was as dry as a paper bag as he struggled to catch his breath in a dark corner of the long-abandoned shopping plaza. He huddled behind a dusty stack of shelves as his ears swiveled, trying to relocate his pursuer’s hoofsteps.

They were persistent bastards, Ekon thought. He quietly unscrewed the lid off of his canteen as he caught his breath. Nearly caught me in the sunken ruins of Palomino Ports, he thought while he drank. The farther I run, the faster they locate me, it seems.

There were lots of places to hide here, he knew, but the problem was they were tracking him in the middle of the day. All that daylight from the large, shattered windows made it easy for them to spot his movements. The summer heat was making him pant, but he learned to suppress that sound.

Ekon’s pointed ears stopped casting about as a distant thumping shook thin streaks of dust from the tiled ceiling. Two of the three hunters were above him. Where was the third? Still in the plaza’s food court? The restrooms? Ekon hated not knowing all the details. The last pony to get the big picture was usually the first to die. He figured that out in his first year in the wastelands.

Slipping his canteen back into his backpack, he frowned as he tried to formulate a plan to break out of the place without alerting anypony. They had short and long range guns, he knew. They also had body armor. Not so much that they couldn’t outrun him, however.

The plaza’s stores had been picked clean years ago, Ekon knew. That meant even the scavengers didn’t bother coming here anymore. Since this dilapidated building was near the edge of the recently formed crevasse, he thought it would be a good hiding spot for a long overdue rest.

Ekon’s searching party wouldn’t leave him be, however. The steps stopped right above him as they talked.

The zebra stood up slowly, his weary muscles grumbling at the strain. As he walked past an overturned shopping cart, his striped tail brushed against a drinking glass on a shelf. It slid off and broke with a teeth grinding crack.

The ponies above him suddenly went quiet. A moment later, they charged away from him. He followed the rapid thumping and realized that they were heading for the nearby stairs.

“Time to go,” whispered Ekon. Trying to navigate around the piles of garbage that five years of aggressive scavenging and vandalism produced, without making more noise, he slipped out of the store he was hiding in and ran down the newspaper covered hallway.

One of the ponies yelled, “He’s heading for the south exit!”

“Stop running, you little bastard!” yelled his partner.

They were getting closer. Ekon broke into a full gallop as he turned a corner. Past a few shattered display windows was the food court. Okay, he thought, I can do this. There’s an open door just past the tables. I just need to keep . . .

An arrow suddenly twanged into the wall in front of him. He skidded and stopped. That came from the window! Ekon took a moment to track the arrow’s trajectory and saw his third pursuer. The griffon was waiting for him on the parking lot’s roof. She was pulling another arrow from her quiver as she held up her crossbow. The problem with crossbows, he knew, was that it took at least a minute to reload. The shooter had to know that. So why did she bother to fire?

The clopping behind him was getting louder. Oh, that’s why. The arrow was only supposed to slow me up, not kill me. Maybe they just wanted to see me beg before they blew me away.

Running around the arrow, he heard, “Shoot him!”

The first deafening shot made his ears flatten. Ekon ducked instinctively as his escape route drew closer.

His right shoulder caught on fire as his ears began to ring from the second shot. The zebra screamed as he fell sideways.

“Don’t move!” bellowed one pony as they got closer. “Don’t you . . .AHHH!!”

Dizzy from exhaustion and from the blinding pain in his shoulder, he struggled to get upright, only dimly aware of the sudden thumping sounds and the screams. The copper scent of his blood filled his nostrils as Ekon shook his head, trying to regain focus.

A mare shouted in a cheerful high-pitched voice, “Hey, guys! You like guns? How do you like my party cannon?” A dull WHUMPH noise filled the air. “I’m having a blast, so why can’t you guys have two?” Another shot sounded behind him.

As the pain slowly ebbed away, Ekon’s mind raced. Was someone actually helping me? What in Equestria was that mare using? Every instinct he had told him to keep running, to not look behind him and get slowed down again. But he had to see.

It was a giant pink metal pony head. The head was topped with a large hairpiece, which looked like several magenta-colored marshmallows mashed together in a row, both ends curved into sharp spikes.

Under the head were three mechanical arms. One four jointed arm was outfitted with a comically huge red boxing glove. Another arm wielded a blue cannon. The third had a simple two fingered claw.

A silver jet engine under the arms kept the robot afloat like a bubble. He looked up past the smile-shaped grill and saw two large blue tinted camera eyes mounted on two-pointed stalks staring at him. This was the oddest looking robot he had ever seen. Why didn’t it have a monotone voice like other robots?

The two ponies in body armor were now plastered against the wall with large wads of multi-colored confetti. They thrashed and strained, but couldn’t budge.

“Hi, mister!”, the robot chirped. “Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner, but I can’t fit through regular doors.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“We is me, silly!” The robot giggled as a third arm pointed its claw toward the griffon’s rooftop. “We is her, too!”

Ekon heard a startled squawk. A pegasus mare had flown down from the plaza’s roof and landed on top of the griffon. Since the zebra’s vision was blurring from blood loss, he wasn’t sure if he really saw the mare wield two crowbars as she bashed the Griffon so badly that feathers and blood flew up and around them. Did that mare really have black bat wings?

One pony yelled, “Gretchen! No!”

“Okay, guys,” said the robot, “It’s time for you to take a nap.” The ponies were both knocked out by two punches from the boxing glove.

After a few frantic moments of violence, the screeching from the griffon ended in a loud coughing gurgle. The pegasus stood up and turned towards the robot.

“It’s all right,” shouted the mare. “She’s dead! Is the zebra okay?”

“Uhm, nope. He got shot.” replied the robot. “And it looks like he’s gonna pass out.”

True to her word, that’s what Ekon did. He didn’t even feel his head hit the floor.

* * *

It felt like he had slept for two days when Ekon heard the robot say, “Hey, he’s awake. His pulse sounds pretty good, so I guess he didn’t lose too much blood.”

Ekon opened his eyes and saw two bright orange eyes staring back at him. “How are you feeling, pal?” asked the mare. She stepped back and smiled. “Glad we got to you in time. Those bandits almost blew you away.”

The zebra sat up from the sheet-covered mattress and looked at the pegasus.

The mare had a short-cropped black mane and dark brown fur. She was wearing a tight-fitting blue shirt with a yellow lightning bolt on the chest. The bat wings he saw earlier were folded over her true wings. A small backpack had a cord draped over the mare’s right shoulder. He blinked when he saw that her legs all ended halfway into what looked like thin aluminum crowbars, the tips pointing forward.

“You’re not dreaming,” the pegasus said. “I really have four metal legs. And bat wings.” She pulled at the cord with her teeth. With a twang, all four wings sprang out. He saw that the black wings were strapped to her natural wing’s carpal joints. When the cord was tugged again, the wings folded up just as quickly.

“The springs in my artificial wings help me glide without tiring my real wings. My metal leg implants are bolted to my forearms and cannons. Can’t have my legs popping off in combat, you know,” she said casually.

As Ekon sat up, he felt a sudden tight pain in his shoulder. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to stare.” His ears flattened in cheek-burning embarrassment.

“Heh. You’re cute,” said the mare. “Don’t move around too much, okay? Those stitches need a chance to heal a bit before we go home. My name’s Spring Step. Nice to meet you.”

Spring Step held out a leg. Not wanting to look silly twice in one minute, he held out his right hoof and shook the metal hoof.

Wait, he thought, this mare beat a griffon to death with these legs. He put his hoof down and wiped it down on the bed sheet in what he hoped were subtle moves.

“Don’t worry, I washed it. It’s hard to stay as clean as I’d like in this place.”

Ekon looked around. They were in an apartment’s living room. Even with most of the furniture missing, it still looked fairly livable. There wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere. Was that a scent of lemon air freshener? Since he was used to seeing a film of grime and rust everywhere he went, it felt strange to be in a place where you could lay your head down and not feel like you were wallowing in a dumpster.

He asked, “You people live here?”

“It’s our safe house,” the robot answered. “We have a few of these all over Equestria. This one’s a penthouse suite in the middle of the city.”

Ekon ignored his complaining muscles as he stepped out onto the patio. The sun was setting, it’s orange light making the nearby dust storm glow as it slipped past gutted warehouses. The mile-deep chasm was on his left, and the city park was on his right, so that meant he was on top of Clydesdale Towers.

“I tried to get into this place once, but three flights of stairs were smashed. I didn’t think anypony lived here.”

Spring Step chuckled. “That’s the whole idea, buddy. Say, what’s your name, anyway?”

“Ekon. Ekon Madaki.”

“I understand that zebra names have meanings to them, just like with ours.”

He blinked, not expecting to hear that. “Right. Ekon means strong.”

The robot floated over to him. “Name is destiny. Bed Spring here can hop higher than even I could. No wonder she was a Wonderbolts captain.”

“Speak for yourself, Tin Mare,” said Spring Step, smirking. “You’re lucky you didn’t get stuck with kitchen duty instead of this job. Lobbing pies don’t mean much in a firefight.”

“I prefer cupcakes, actually.”

Ekon tilted his head at the robot. “What do you mean, you prefer cupcakes? I thought you were a robot.”

“Yeah, a lot of folks think that. I have something to show you.” The back of the head popped loose, like a suitcase. “Try to not get too freaked out, okay?”

While the robot turned around, a round door hidden under the robot’s metal hairpiece hissed open. “Go ahead and grab an eye full. I won’t bite you. I don’t have very many teeth left.”

He cautiously peeked into the head. The pink pony was curled into a fetal position, facing away from him. Dozens of plastic tubes surrounded her like twigs in a bird’s nest. Some of those tubes were connected to plugs on her body. A steel helmet bristling with wires and blinking lights completely covered the head. A feeding tube was strapped onto her throat.

“W-what happened to you?”

Her shoulders shrugged as the door closed. “Sugar Cube Corner fell on me. It’s a good thing I was in Ponyville when the unraveling hit, otherwise I’d be a goner.”

“The unraveling?”

Spring Step said, “That’s what we Equestrians call the disaster. When the thread of magic that held the world together and gave us the two princesses unraveled and slipped away, everything went bad. Everypony’s cutie marks disappeared, too.“

“My real name was once Pinkie Pie, but when I got this body, I decided to use a new name for my new life. Nowadays, I call myself Pinksworth. Because I’m trying to prove my worth by helping people like you. Get it?”

Ekon nodded. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you choose this body on purpose?”

Pinksworth snickered. “Well, I drew up a lot of ideas for the eggheads at New Canterlot, but the only design they kept wanting to do was a four-footed pony-bot that looked like a creepy pizza parlor mascot.” She shivered, her arms rattling from the effort. “Forget that! I wanted something fun! That’s why I’m driving a giant pony head that has a cute boxing glove that knocks bad guys out, a party cannon that sticks them to the walls like SpiderMare’s webs and a cupcake dispenser claw for the nice ponies we find.”

Spring Step chimed in. “Pinks doesn’t have the stomach for my more . . . direct methods. However, Pinks can fly and is built like a tank, so she comes in handy in the field.”

Pinksworth’s camera eyes looked away from the Pegasus. “Well, I hover and can lift both of you guys up to this penthouse room, but I can’t glide around like you, Springy.”

Ekon snuck a glance at Spring Step’s legs, feeling as ashamed of the act as if he were gawking at her plot. “I had heard a lot of pegasi got injured when the magic went away.”

“Not just injured, Ekon. When the unraveling hit, Cloudsdale crashed into a valley. Did you know that most Pegasi used to spend seventy per cent of their lives in the air? That means that in one day, nearly two million of my kind died from falling a mile or more. Most of Cloudsdale’s residents perished in the crash.”

She sat in a chair, sighing. “I was on a patrol with my Wonderbolt team mates. I had just gotten a promotion to Captain and it felt so awesome to finally lead my guys anywhere I wanted. I decided to give Ponyville a thrill and make a fly-by over the town. We were probably a quarter-mile over the place when we all saw a bright flash of light. That’s when I felt a lot more gravity than usual.”

Spring Step’s ears flattened. Pinksworth hovered over to her and patted the pegasi’s back with the boxing glove. “At first, I thought I wasn’t flapping my wings hard enough, but then I heard my team screaming. I turned around and saw them flailing and panicking. None of us could fly anymore. I told everypony to stick their wings out straight and wide so that we could simply glide to safety. But it was like trying to fly a boulder. All I could do was watch my team smash into the landscape. I hit five trees before I landed.”

Pinkworth said, “That’s when the earthquake hit. It was the first one Equestria had in two thousand years, according to the eggheads. Earth pony magic wasn’t just for super strength and making plants grow, it turns out. It also kept the world’s surface quiet, too.”

“I was the only Wonderbolt to survive. The trees broke my fall, but they also destroyed three of my legs. Thankfully, the local hospital wasn’t trashed. That’s where Pinksworth and I met.”

Ekon asked, “I bet you two gave each other a lot of support, huh?”

Spring Step nodded. “Pinks resembled a wad of chewed bubble gum and I looked like a busted chair. When New Canterlot was getting built, some scientists offered us a chance to help rebuild Equestria. No way either of us could say no.”

He scratched his head. “Why did they take your last leg?”

“They didn’t. I gave it away.”

Ekon tilted his head at her. “Huh?”

Rubbing her temples, Spring Step grumbled, “Look, I hate odd numbers, all right? That’s just something my OCD does.”

“OCD?”

“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Odd numbers drive me nuts as much as filth and a lack of discipline. That helped me to be a Wonderbolts captain, but it’s hard to keep it under wraps now that the world’s turned rotten.”

Ekon asked, “Didn’t you feel kind of dirty when you beat that griffon to death?”

Spring Step snorted in disgust. “I call that cleaning up the world. She tried to kill you, after all. Those bandits were probably going to murder you for your backpack. That makes them the filthiest people I know. The world is better off without them.”

He gulped. “So killing a killer doesn’t bother you?”

“People kill for all kinds of reasons, Ekon,” said the pegasus sternly. “If you don’t have a damn good reason for ending someone’s life, you are part of the problem. Street justice is messy, but it’s effective.”

“Uh . . . okay.”

“I didn’t just lose my Wonderbolts team, I lost the best friends I ever had at the time. Five years down the road and it still hits me in the heart as if it happened yesterday, because they would have done anything to help rebuild Equestria.”

Spring Step patted Pinkworth on the muzzle with a faint metallic clank. “Life only has value if you use it to help others. Bandits don’t value anypony’s life. Not mine. Not Pink’s. Not yours. That’s why I seldom think twice about bashing a bandit’s brains in. Sometimes I let them run off if I think I knocked some sense into them.”

“I see your point,” replied Ekon. I’m going to hear that brain-bashing line in my nightmares, he thought.

Pinksworth pointed her claw at Ekon and asked, “Well, you’ve heard our back stories. What about yours?”

He looked away, pawing at the bed sheets. “I . . . uh . . . don’t have much story to tell.”

“Can’t you tell us just a teensy bit?” implored Pinkworth. “A little story is better than nothing. I’ve had nothing. It’s boring.”

Spring Step smiled at Ekon’s confused look and shook her head. “Don’t engage her. Can you at least tell us what you were doing so far from civilization?”

“Well, I used to have a real job before the bad times. I was part of an archeological crew in a distant Equestrian mountain. The Canterlot Historical Society funded the job. My parents ran the dig site and my little brother Azi helped. It was tough and dirty work, but we found some pretty cool magical relics. Wizard staffs, a large hat with stars and bells, stuff like that. One day, we were all near the mouth of the cave when the unraveling hit us. We also saw a blinding flash.”

Ekon found himself slowly wrapping his front legs around his chest, as if to protect him from the dark, grinding memories.

“Next thing I know, the cave starts to collapse. My family and I ran as fast as we could through the falling rubble. I got out in time, but no one else did.”

Spring Step sighed in sympathy. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Were you able to get help?”

“Every town that might have been able to help me had either collapsed in landslides, swallowed by giant rifts or were underwater. I tried to get back to my country, but I was told by the border guards that it’s . . . mostly gone. Between the flooding and the volcano eruptions, I don’t think I’d recognize the place.”

“So there I was, the same as I am now. No family, no homeland and no prospects. For the past five years, I’ve been eking out a meager existence selling any kind of junk I can find to vendors. Sleeping with my back to the wall and trying to stay away from as many ponies as possible. You saw what those guys tried to do to me. So I hide and hope that the world gets better before somepony squeezes off a lucky shot and I die.”

Spring Step said, “Manehatten got flooded pretty badly, but it mostly functions. Why didn’t you try to find a home there?”

“I . . . uh . . . keep hearing that zebras don’t get much respect out there. A lot of ponies keep thinking we all speak in rhyme for some reason.”

“That’s silly!” said Pinksworth. “If zebras only spoke in rhyme, how would they sell oranges?”

He blinked. Then he started snickering. “Oh,brother. I’m beginning to see why you two get along so well. Pinkworth’s humor definitely comes in handy out here.”

“You gotta laugh to keep from screaming, that’s my motto,” replied Pinksworth.

Spring step yawned.”It’s been a long day, kiddo. I’m hitting the sheets and the iron pony’s got to recharge her batteries. I’m assuming you want to follow us back to New Canterlot? It’s a great place to start over.”

“Everypony’s welcome there!” said Pinksworth cheerfully. “No bigotry and no bandits. That stuff I sprayed those ponies with will break apart pretty soon, so you need us to watch your back on the trip anyway.”

Ekon took a deep breath and thought as carefully as he could. Five years of running and hiding. Those guys got too close to me today. Close enough to shoot me.

He looked at his rescuers. They don’t know everything. If we get out of town before we’re found, they won’t get a chance to know anything.

They’ll never know what I really did.

He nodded. “I’d like to actually live somewhere as a citizen and not just a scavenger. I hope travelling as three doesn’t aggravate your OCD too much.”

She smiled. “Nah, not really. I like you, Ekon. You’re shy and cute.”

You see only what I want you to see, Spring Step, Ekon thought. You’d hate the real me. Almost as much as I do.

* * *

The ponies that Pinksworth had immobilized had broken free of her bonds. Pulling the remaining colorful strands from his brown fur, Path Finder looked down at the pulped, bloodied remains of the griffon.

Sure Shot, a gray pony, had wrapped his hooves around the limp griffon’s body. He sobbed as he rocked her back and forth. “Oh, babe,” he whimpered. “ Sweet Celestia, I’m so sorry.”

Wiping his nose, he looked up at his partner. “If that stupid robot hadn’t interfered, I’d have shot that pegasus instead of the zebra. I swear, I feel like we got beaten up by a parade float.”

Path Finder stamped a hoof in frustration. “You shouldn’t have used a live round on Ekon in the first place! I told you to use either the tazer or the rubber riot bullets on his legs. I thought your name was Sure Shot, not Crap Shot!”

Sure Shot almost yelled at his partner. Suppressing the urge to scream in frustration from the death of his lover, he instead took a deep, calming breath. “You’re right, Path Finder. I guess chasing this slippery bastard for so long made me careless. Now he’s going to think we’re bounty killers, not bounty hunters.”

“We can’t afford to screw this up,” implored Path Finder. “Not with the bounty Azi’s offering us.” He rubbed his chin. “That robot seemed pretty sophisticated. There’s only one place I know where that kind of tech could come from.”

“Where?”

“New Canterlot. That’s where the all the best scientists have gone.”

Sure Shot groaned. “Great! If he reaches that walled city, We’ll never get him. Now that Ekon’s got protection and Gretchen’s dead, we need to get more muscle fast if we’re going to grab that zebra.”

“Don’t stress out. I know where we can get some serious muscle.”

“Great!” said Sure Shot. “Just let me have a crack at that psycho pegasus. I want her to suffer as bad as Gretchen did.”

As he collected the griffon’s weapons into his satchel, he said, “I want her to suffer for days.”

Path Finder smiled as he watched his friend seethe with anger. Sure Shot had been getting careless lately. The live round he had fired at Ekon was from a clip he had used to kill a bandit that attacked them yesterday. When Gretchen told them that she had spotted the zebra, Sure Shot should have changed to non-lethal ammo. Sloppy. Almost unforgivable.

Path Finder was willing to forgive his friend for this. But the wastelands had no room for luxuries such as forgiveness. In the past five years since the unraveling, they had both had to kill ponies.

Even when the ponies tried to crawl away, even if they begged for their lives, they had to die. When his partner hesitated to kill them, he stepped up to finish the job. Some would say that was cold hearted.

But the world didn’t allow anything but a cold heart. Maybe now that Sure Shot had lost his lover, he would soon be as merciless as his fellow bounty hunter.

Path Finder felt a warm surge of optimism about that distinct possibility.

Where there’s life, there’s hope.