Fallout: Equestria - "Kiss Equestria Goodbye"

Chapter One: Out of the Cradle

“... all under the watchful care of loving, approved mares and stallions.”

Free.

I breathed deeply, resting on the cool, bare concrete of the skeletal remains of some Pre-War office building beyond the Wall. I ignored the smoky, industrial pollutants that wafted lazily through the air; ignored the red sky that bore tirelessly down upon me. My euphoria surged, eclipsing my fear for a brief moment before it was quickly quenched by the cold prickling of sweat beneath my mane. I’d done the unthinkable.

I was free.

Slowly, quietly, I got to my hooves, suppressing the urge to jump up and buck the air for joy. There would be a time and a place for that. Later perhaps, when I was less worried about being tracked down by a griffin aerial patrol. As it was, my escape from the high-rises that “our illustrious leader” Red Eye had repurposed for the “education of our nation’s youth” would not go unnoticed. To quote him, “Every child is precious.”

Horseapples. Children to Red Eye were like any other thing: resources to be exploited and, when they had exhausted their usefulness, discarded. I looked back at the leathery, hairless patch of tissue that had been my cutie mark. Unity was liberation. Freedom from the shackles of cutie mark tyranny.

We’d loved him like a father. A thousand colts and fillies, filled with loyalty and admiration for this powerful, charismatic stallion who had rescued us; leader of a thousand and more. I had wanted to be just like he was. Strong like he was. Needed like he was. To that foal in that room high above Fillydelphia, pain was a small price to pay for control in a world where control came at a premium. Eventually, the time came for him to ask. We gave freely, and without hesitation.

Those who had spoken out, or who had declined Red Eye’s offer to remove their cutie marks “in the hope of a unified Equestria” had disappeared over the course of a few weeks. We, the scarred, hopeful majority, remained, drinking in his words like water. I never did learn what happened to them.

I took a long pull on my canteen to steady my nerves. Feeling much recovered in spite of the poor air quality, I slipped it back into my tiny saddlebags, deciding to do a little gear check. Looking at my right hoof, I examined the aged Stealth Buck that gripped it. Every time I looked at the old piece of Pre-War magitech, curiosity needled me. Its insides had been a mystery for a long time now, and, unfortunately, they would remain that way for a while yet. I couldn’t risk breaking or damaging the delicate and extremely old Ministry of Arcane Science technology that comprised its insides, not when it was the only thing that made my escape from this hellish place possible. I wiggled the makeshift magical interface in the side to make sure it was secure, then turned my gaze elsewhere.

Grasping the laspistol on the ground next to me with my magic, I levitated it up to eye-level and checked the small pair of green crystals that glowed softly within the guts of the machine. Using the same magic I had used to breathe it to life in the first place, I reached out to the gems, a small spark jumping from my horn to them and back again.

Hmm, I thought to myself. Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Lightly huffing, I hoped that would be enough.

Trotting down the stairs, I moved as silently as I could to the nearest open window before flicking my Stealth Buck on and darting to the next building.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Red Eye’s organization finally decided to take me off the barracks rotation schedule, the idea of a “Great Escape” was little more than a wispy student’s fantasy in my head only just beginning to reemerge from beneath the layers of indoctrination it had been buried under. I knew perfectly well that I was trapped here and that a single seditious movement to change that state of being would, in all likelihood, result in my death. Even with that terrible deterrent hanging over my head, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try. I’d spent much of my time gathering the relevant skills and items. Things like small, damaged radio-crystals, bits of quality concealable notebook paper, almost exhausted pencils, and whatever spare string I could find. String was actually quite useful to have in a pinch. For all of these useful little things, I made use of bobby pins to store them in my mane or tail.

These small items went completely unnoticed by those “loving, approved mares and stallions” who were our supposed mentors, friends, and foster-parents all rolled into one. It was only now, when Red Eye’s ever watchful organization was sure of my loyalty, that they allowed me and those who had done as I had to set-up shop in one place for any length of time.

That was their first mistake.

Their second mistake was allowing us relative freedom in the fields of study we were allowed to pursue. I think their line of reasoning behind that was to show us that there was now a chance to build a bond of mutual trust between us and the organization. Of course, I abused that trust in a way that made it seem as though I were honoring it. I absorbed every scrap of knowledge on Pre-War arcane science, earth pony mechanics, and spell-matrices that Red Eye’s student libraries contained.

As a matter of course, I was noticed almost immediately.

When asked, I told them that I did have a vested interest in the lost arts of the days before the megaspells had scoured Equestria. They believed me. There was no reason for them to doubt me or my intents. I was a perfectly loyal pupil of Red Eye. There was absolutely no cause for them to be unduly suspicious, even though the knowledge I was arming myself with might make it possible to escape. Even though they had what my cutie-mark had been on file, I’d deceived them into thinking that my talent was understanding magical weapon theory. Just theory. Not the personal application of said theory. To them, I was the perfectly loyal lost cause. Weak willed, but intelligent.

They didn’t know I was capable of gem enchantment.

I pored over Applied Gemstones and The Big Book of Arcane Sciences, extracting precious knowledge on how to make use of my concealed special talent. I learned the basic theories behind the spell matrix and how gemstones were integral to the manufacture of magical energy weapons and other devices that ran off of stored magical energy. Tender Love and Care for Totally Lost Causes was my bedside companion for months. I made light annotations in the margins of each book, often forgetting to erase them when it came time to return them to the library. I was certainly remonstrated for it, but I still can’t determine whether it was this that got me noticed or my damnably predictable patterns of research.

Either way, about a month later I received a letter from what appeared to be Red Eye himself.

My Loyal Student Lucky Charm,

It has come to my attention that the books you have been checking-out from the Student Library are of a interestingly old nature. Things related to the arcane sciences, earth pony mechanics and such. As I do with all my students who show an interest in the repair and maintenance of Old World technology, I am organizing a little demonstration of your learned abilities for a month from now. It will consist of a small test of your ability to understand and evaluate various pieces of Pre-War technology. It is imperative that you study hard and make sure to pace yourself for the upcoming evaluation as it would give me great pleasure to see you succeed.

Your Loving Mentor,
Red Eye

… it was typed, of course.

In retrospect, I know it was an automated response to actions of my kind. I should have remembered that Red Eye had been at this a long time. Long enough to have had quite a few waves of his “Loyal Students” pass through and graduate into his “Army of Unity”.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the brain of a young stallion works. The request was so sudden -- what kind of pony gets a message from Red Eye directly? -- that the wits just flew out of me faster than I could grab them back. Immediately, I checked out as many books as I could get my hooves on. I was determined to learn enough to intentionally succeed with only the bare minimum necessary to be considered ‘still useful’ and, hopefully, return to my futile planning and dreams of escape.

It looked like I was about to become a victim of my own success.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Back when I’d first stolen the Stealth Buck, I was under the impression that being invisible would be an oddly cold experience. Trotting into the lower levels of what looked like a largely-intact residential high-rise, I flicked my Stealth Buck off. Now I knew that being invisible felt no different than being visible, save for the fact that no one else could see you. Invisibility was just another perception altering spell; the only thing it changed was the way others reacted to you.

As I moved about the moderately damaged foyer that made-up the lowest level of the residential building, I noticed several things. Foremost among them were the skeletal pony remains that littered the floor. Morbid reminders of what had taken place two-hundred years ago, preserved by the very balefire which had slain them.

Second was the prominence of the scorch-marks that seemed to dance across the walls and floor of the foyer, originating from the main entrance. If it hadn’t been so deeply unsettling, it might have struck me as almost artistic.

Third was the presence of a floor above the first that hadn’t been rendered unreachable by architectural damage. The past ten buildings had precious little in the way of areas to explore and I decided it might be prudent to satisfy my curiosity and explore some of the abandoned residential apartments.

Maybe I might even find something useful.

It took me about ten minutes or so to get up the stairs. Down near the bottom there’d been a wrecked elevator, but despite its potential utility, I hadn’t had time to investigate very thoroughly. When I finally reached the first residential floor, I was surprised at how intact it was. Sure there was a collapsed wall or two, but the carpeting looked no worse for wear for having had to endure two-hundred years of weather damage.

Softly, putting one hoof in front of the other, I made my way over to the first door. Grasping the doorknob with my telekinesis, I turned it to the right and wound-up wrenching the already loose thing from its socket with a soft squeak.

Okay. Maybe my initial assessment had been a bit presumptuous. Erring on the side of caution, I decided to peer through the small eye-sized hole I’d left in the doorknob mechanism.

Rubble was what stared back.

I sighed a little, the mix of apprehension and disappointment rushing out of me. I was almost hoping that, on my first try, I’d run into something special. Now I supposed not. Moving on to the next door, I tried the doorknob. The knob jiggled back and forth, but wouldn’t budge any further than a centimeter or two. Knowing what I’d have to do, I set my laspistol on the floor close to my left hoof.

This called for a little lockpicking.

Reaching out with my magic, I plucked a bobby-pin from my tail. I’d learned a little bit about picking simple locks by reading books (abridged, of course. Red Eye was encouraging, not stupid.) Apparently, the simpler ones could be picked with just a bobby pin and a light application of pressure. I figured my telekinesis could function as the torsion wrench and apply pressure while the majority of my concentration would be devoted to raking the bobby-pin across the two or three tumblers present in the rather cheap-looking lock.

On the first two attempts I failed, applying too much pressure on the bobby-pin while raking it across the tumblers, breaking it. On my third attempt, however, I was successful. It was a satisfying feeling, knowing that you’ve solved your problem by the work of your own hooves. Center of gravity low, I pushed the door inward and walked into the room as quietly as I could, levitating my laspistol back to my side.

That’s when I heard the growl.

It was a low, crackling thing. Like it was emitting from something that didn’t have the right kind of vocal-chords to pull-off a growl. Unfortunately, that made it much more frightening than if it had been a low, uninterrupted predatory thing. No, this growl was almost like a pony’s imitation of a growl.

I froze.

What kind of crazy pony would try to imitate a growl?

That was when the abomination strode out from around the corner and turned to face me; it was a sickening thing; a mockery of the equine form; it held its head low, forelegs bent, with a spinal curve that wasn’t the natural downwards slope of a healthy, adult pony; no, this thing had it in reverse; hind legs tall, forelegs and head down, tail in the air, all wrapped in the rotting tatters of some sort of metallic barding.

Milky white eyes locked straight on me, disgustingly rotted teeth bared and looking ready to poun--

… why wasn’t I running yet?

I reversed direction at what I was sure was record speed, levitating my laspistol close and galloping down the hallway. The pony-thing was in hot pursuit, its strange three-beat lope-jump carrying it towards me with alarming speed.

Turning my head for a moment, I fired my laspistol at it, green beams of magical energy flying at its rotting, mangy hide.

As was damnably typical of my luck, not a single one connected.

Turning to run again, I noticed an open door coming up and altered my course so I could dash in and close the door behind me.

Everything went exactly according to plan. I rushed in, closing the door behind me with my telekinesis and locking it. Turning, magilas pistol levitated menacingly, I faced the door. Beyond, I could hear the pacing hooves of the horrendous not-pony on the hallway carpeting.

I breathed a deep sigh of unabashed relief. What was that?

Slowly, my brain emerged from “runrunrunrunrun” mode and settled back into the much more comfortable “ponder past occurrences logically” mode. I began to think about what I had seen. Equine form, tattered clothing, lack of hygiene; briefly, tidbits from conversations I’d eavesdropped on flitted close, but...

… nope.

I hadn’t a single idea as to what was pacing on the other side of that door and, honestly, that seriously bothered me. In the books I’d read there hadn’t been a single mention of anything even approximating this; not even in Celestia’s Codex Equestria, which was supposed to be the compendium of all pony knowledge. I was fairly sure I would’ve remembered something like that. Yet, somehow, it existed. If it existed, there had to be an explanation; a reason for why it walked the world and did what it did. Nothing walked without reason.

I pondered the question for a little while longer, my mental strokes growing broader and broader as the scratches and huffs of the rotted pony’s hooves finally disappeared, tired of its futile door-scratching. Finally, I decided I’d better just make a note of it and return to the issue later on. As it stood, the real problem was escaping my ill-fated expedition into the higher levels of the Fillydelphia ruins.

Apparently it was a jungle up here.

Deciding it was probably safe to turn my back on the door now, I strode out of the entryway and into the apartment proper. It was a rather small thing, space wise, but it had been warmly personalized by its former occupants. Well, I assumed it had been warmly personalized by its former occupants, judging from the erratic fire damage and various silhouettes burned into the walls and ceiling.

As for rooms, this was the only room. The layout was actually quite similar to the barrack rooms I’d seen and lived in for most of my life. Bed near the window, small table in the center, refrigerator, and a small water closet for one’s more personal biological functions.

I felt a little bit of nostalgic dissonance as I walked into the kitchen-area. Sure I’d had some good times in a room like this, but Red Eye cast a long shadow. Recalling those memories stirred bittersweet feelings and always brought the unsettling truth about the Academy to the forefront of my mind.

There was a soft schunk as the seal on the refrigerator opened and allowed me access to whatever rotted horrors lay within. Much to my surprise, the thing was filled not with food but with various alcoholic beverages. Applejack, vodka, brandy and even a bottle of summer wine.

Huh, I chuckled to myself.Someone had a drinking problem.

I had no use for alcohol. I had no need of its disinfecting properties, nor did I want to ingest it. This was hardly a time to become intoxicated.

A little bit disappointed and, understandably, a little hungry, I closed the refrigerator and turned towards the bed near the window. The blankets and pillow (and even a little bit of the mattress itself) looked like they’d been torched away by balefire. As I moved closer, I realized where the skeleton of the resident was. There, piled on top of the bed in a charcoal black crater, were the charred remains of the previous resident of the apartment.

I said a mental “Sorry” as I started rifling through their stuff.

The rather modestly sized dresser hardly looked, at least at first glance, promising. Fortunately, my undying desire for clothing more useful than the rapidly dirtying Pre-War vest I was wearing pushed me to open all three drawers. The first and second yielded no returns. The third, however...

Jackpot.

Inside was a set of military saddlebags adorned with Ministry of Peace colors. The way the jungle green canvas clashed with the curving pink and yellow streaks down the sides and the iconic three pink and yellow butterflies in the middle was... iconoclastic. Silently, I wondered just a little.

I dispelled that swiftly, though, telling myself I didn’t have time to question what Ministry of Peace saddlebags were doing in the top drawer of some random pony’s dresser. Sure, I was the first pony to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but that didn’t mean I had to do it every single time. Marveling at this small token Lady Luck had left as an apology for spurning me all these years, I levitated it up over my head, dropped my ratty old schoolcolt sized bags, and firmly fastened it to my midsection.

That’ll do, I nodded to myself, satisfied with the snug fit. That’ll do nicely.

Popping them open, I had a brief peer at their contents. Bah. Spurned again.

They were empty. That was fine, though. I supposed that, if there had been anything inside the saddlebags, it probably would’ve gone bad with age. The way I looked at it, I’d been saved some clean-up time.
Quietly, I transferred the meager contents of my previous saddlebags, canned goods, canteens and bandages all finding their own pouch or section in the bag. Done with it forever, I placed my previous saddlebags in the drawer and shut it. Hardly a fair trade.

Still, though, I thought. A healing draught would’ve been nice.

… speaking of healing draughts.

I ambled over to the water closet. I knew that they actually had fold-out mirrors (the kind that you could use to get an almost three-hundred and sixty degree view of your head and mane) over the sink that doubled as small reflective medicine cabinets. Opening the door, I was surprised to find a totally smashed toilet. My initial reaction was that of confusion. What reason would anypony have to do that? My secondary reaction was that of caution. The floor was strewn with shards of broken porcelain and pools of rancid Fillydelphia water.

If I had suddenly lost every bit of information I had gleaned by eavesdropping on mercenary conversations from The Wall, I would have remembered this one, small tidbit of information about untreated, unfiltered Fillydelphia water.

Prolonged contact could kill you.

With that in mind, I carefully angled my neck so as to have a clear line of sight to the cabinet and started manipulating it with my telekinesis. It was slow going at first, but, finally, I pulled back on the rusty hinges and opened the damn thing. Inside, I found a rather interesting assortment of items.

Lifting the used syringes, I placed them in the medical-waste pocket of my saddlebags. Taking them was probably safe, seeing as they’d probably been thoroughly sterilized by two-hundred years of radiation. As for the other objects...

… well, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.

Most of them looked nothing like the universally recognizable healing draught beaker or radiation-purging brew flasks. They were these complex hypodermic delivery systems, all linked together so that the contained chemicals only mixed right as they entered the bloodstream. There was also a tin of Mint-als. That, at least, I recognized.

I read the bottom of the tin, the words spelled out in small, slightly dirtied white letters:

Improve perception and cognitive processing ability!
Take two a day and feel your fears melt away!
HEAD MEDICAL ADVISOR’S WARNING:
Do not ingest any more than the recommended daily dose.
Mint-als have exhibited signs of forming physical and psychological dependency.
If symptoms of psychological or physical dependency manifest,
cease taking Mint-als and see your physician right away.

If there were Mint-als here, then all these other things were probably performance enhancers too. I mentally sifted through the names of the drugs I was familiar with: Mint-als, Buck, Dash, Med-X. The strange hypodermics dredged-up no memories, though. I wracked my brain, finally deciding on the only solution that made sense. These were probably combat drugs.

I now saw the Ministry of Peace saddlebags in a completely new light. I began to draw conjecture based on very little information, styling the previous owner as a drug smuggler siphoning useful chems away from the war effort for personal use and profit (or at least a pony psychologically and physically dependent on drugs to keep themselves in a semblance of mental stability). The whole thing smacked of lost hope and utter tragedy.

I need to get out of here.

Placing the assortment of what I was now certain were valuable psychoactive chemicals in my saddlebags, I turned towards the door and considered my options.

Option one was, of course, unlock the door and face the creature on the other side. This I might have considered for longer than a brief moment had I any sort of healing potion or magical bandage. As it was, I had no way of repairing myself in any sort of timely manner. Facing the nasty thing head-on was to be a last resort, then.

Option two was wait the creature out. If it really couldn’t get in, eventually it would get tired and frustrated simply waiting for me to come out and would move on to better, less intelligent prey. Maybe a radroach or something. This option was, in my eyes, little better than the first. I needed to capitalize on the carnage wracking the world behind The Wall. If I listened closely, I could still hear a faint explosion or two. It most definitely wouldn’t stay that way forever.

Option three was, by my approximation, probably the best of the three options I’d come up with. I was only on the second floor of the building and there was a window I could climb out of. In all likelihood, most of the Talon mercenary patrols that Red Eye usually had combing the area were embroiled in combat with the mysterious intruder -- maybe even intruders, if anyone could possibly be that death-seeking -- whose ballsy assault had disrupted the day’s blood games. Even if I couldn’t find a way of mitigating the damage a fall from this height would incur, the damage inflicted would, in all likelihood, be considerably less than lethal. No internal bleeding or broken bones, at least.

I hope.

Walking over to the window, I took a brief peer out at the ground below and reminded myself that falls often looked much higher than they actually were. Still, the idea of falling from this height still gave me the willies. Mustering my courage, I grabbed the blackened drapes near the edges of the moderately sized window with my teeth, cringing a little at the taste, and tore them down.

Hopefully the fall wouldn’t be too far.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was the day of the examination and I was freaking-out on several-hundred different levels. My own penchant for considering the different scenarios that could arise from a single situation had gone haywire, assaulting me with contingencies ranging from having to disassemble then reassemble a A93 Magical Plasma Caster to having to program a Security Automaton right then and there without the assistance of even a small notecard of programming prompts.

“Mr. Charm, the Board of Pre-War Studies will see you now.”

I did a quick check and recheck of myself in the mirror: Same dark brown mane with that one feisty tuft in the back sticking up; same slightly unkempt light-blue coat; same unassuming brown eyes. I sighed at the number of bags that had accumulated under them.

“I’ll... I’ll be right there.”

The walk over to the examination room was a lot more stressful than it had any right to be. I fretted needlessly, plucking at small fibers in my vestment and other things of superficially small consequence. I knew it was all just a futile expression of stress at an examination that could make or break me in the eyes of the organization, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to tread the line very, very carefully if I wanted to maintain the level of lax observation that I had enjoyed for so long.

The earth pony mare that I’d been following down the hallway stopped in front of a familiar door. If memory served, this was where some of the advanced lectures on the Arcane Sciences were held. I supposed that there was no more fitting place than a lecture-hall in which to conduct an examination.

“If you would, Mr. Charm,” she intoned, motioning for me to open the door and enter.

I thanked her briefly, but sincerely, for her time and pushed the door open with my telekinesis, walking into the room beyond.

The lecture hall itself was actually rather small and more than a little bit homely. There were enough desks to seat about twenty or twenty five ponies, and several aged chalkboards, which had been added in after the room had been restored, were positioned behind and to the right and left of the main lecture pedestal and professor’s desk.

Along with a set of implements for firearm servicing, I noticed there were three magi-beam pistols on the professor’s desk. Considering the nature of the test, I was probably going to be evaluated on my knowledge of some quality of theirs.

“Ah,” I heard a mare from the back of the room say, drawing my attention away from the exam desk. “Mr. Charm. Please, step inside.”

Positioned in the sea of desks, as though they had been talking amongst themselves, was a rather odd interspecies trio. Off to the left was a rather old looking, brick-red, gray-maned earth pony stallion wearing a labpony’s coat with “101”’s emblazoned on its sides. He regarded me rather coldly and I tried to make it seem as though I wasn’t staring at his bionic forelimb by examining his rather tired looking face. To the right was a sleek, stoic looking griffin in Talon Company combat armor with two white bands on each of the pauldrons; likely some sort of designation of rank. I couldn’t make a proper estimate as to age, but judging from the plumage, I was fairly sure the pronoun ‘he’ did apply. The spellfire pistol jutting from his holster suggested he was resident weapons expert.

In the center was the earth pony mare who’d spoken to me.

There was something oddly familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Maybe it was something about the cold way in which she looked at me. I still couldn’t recall. It definitely wasn’t her physical appearance, though. She was wearing a crisp and clean-cut Pre-War suit and a pair of reading-spectacles. Neither of those attributes rang any bells with me.

“Ah, yes,” I assented, moving further into the room. “I’m... er... here for the examination. The Board of Pre-War Studies, I presume?”

“You presume correctly, Mr. Charm,” she assured me. “I am Petunia Bitt, and these are my fellow board-members. To my right is Dr. Thurgood Hoofson, our Chief Arcanist. To my left, Captain Gallows of the Talon Company, our resident Applied Gemstones specialist. We will be the ones to evaluate the progress you have made with your learned and inherent skills while under the tutelage of Red Eye and his teachers.”

There was a brief pause as I waited for her to continue.

“As you may have noticed, there are three low-grade magical energy pistols and a set of maintenance tools on the desk to your right. We will be evaluating your ability to restore one or more of these non-functioning weapons to a usable state without the use of reference materials. When I finish speaking, the test will have begun and you will have an hour and a half to use the materials present on the desk to reach your objective.”

“If you have any questions, ask them now.”

The objective was fairly straightforward. I didn’t have any questions that I thought were worth voicing, so I didn’t bother.

“Begin.”

The ninety minutes period that followed was the most harrowing span of time that I’d ever experienced. It was obstacle after obstacle, nerves against ability to stay cool-headed under pressure. All three of the magi-beam pistols were in horrendous condition. Rusted transistors, brittle energy-transfer tubes and two broken firing mechanisms were some of the horrors I’d encountered. Eventually I’d decided that I could only save one of the three pistols and began completely cannibalizing the other two for spare parts, carefully removing circuit-boards and pliable energy-transfer tubes to restore the one magilas pistol to working condition. It was only in the last twenty minutes that I realized one of the main firing systems in the almost fully-functional magilas pistol was about three shots away from shattering irreparably.

I needed to recalibrate the focusing crystal.

I smacked my right forehoof into the desk in futile anger.

I heard someone put their pencil down.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Charm?” Petunia asked levelly.

“Oh! No,” I responded nervously. “Just thought I’d do a little... percussive maintenance.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why did I say that?

“If you felt it necessary,” she replied in the same level tone. “There are fifteen minutes left until the exam is concluded.”

Fifteen minutes. I had to work quickly.

Levitating a screwdriver, I levered the damaged crystal out of the focusing alcove and placed it down near the mound of useless bits I’d torn out of the other two pistols. Using the screwdriver to chip the other focusing crystals out of their rusted alcoves, I inspected them for cracks or internal impurities. One was full of energy, but had cleaved along a fault-line. The other was in perfect condition save for the fact that it was without any magical energy.

I ground my teeth in thought.

While I was more than capable of transferring the energy of one crystal, damaged or not, to another, the effect this would have on the examination board would most-likely be profound. I was now dangerously close to revealing my hidden talent to them. That would most certainly put an end to my dreams of escape.

… but there was no other way.

I had to chance it.

Levitating the two gems up, I touched them to my horn. Using my horn and inherent magic as a conduit, I transferred the energy from the damaged crystal to the undamaged crystal, filling it with a green internal luminescence.

I placed the exhausted crystal in the junk pile with the improperly calibrated one and levitated the now properly calibrated and charged crystal into the focusing alcove of the restored magi-beam weapon. Levitating the screwdriver back up, I re-affixed the chassis, covering its relatively delicate insides.

My repair job was done.

“That’s time, Mr. Charm,” I heard a deep-timbered stallion, presumably Dr. Hoofson, say. “Now it’s time to evaluate your performance.” “

“If you would, Gallows.”

There was a slight creaking as Captain Gallows stood up from his desk-bench and stretched. I noticed that his footfalls were much softer than those of an equine. Lacking hard keratinous hooves apparently did wonders for the volume of your steps.

Reaching out with my magic to the laspistol, I levitated it to Gallows handle-first. Muzzle discipline and whatnot. Grasping it with his-- I uncharacteristically struggled for terminology. Claws, perhaps? He opened the munitions slot and inspected the contact-points for corrosion damage. Making a satisfied grunt, his tail reached up to a small ammunition pouch located near his left forelimb and plucked a small spark-pack from within. After a brief pause during which he inspected the contact points again, he inserted small spark-battery and took aim at a moderately-sized target that had been set-up for the occasion.

Zwip, zwip, zwip, zwip.

The beams left four glowing holes neatly clustered along the neck base of the pony silhouette that made-up the center of the target.

Transferring the laspistol from his front... talon to his tail, he whipped it around and placed it neatly on the corner of the desk behind me.

“Good job,” Gallows curtly congratulated me in a rather mild-sounding tone.

I felt a little intimidated that Gallows could make such precisely clustered shots with such a poorly repaired weapon.

Turning to face the Board of Pre-War Studies, I awaited their final decision.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sighing with relief, I watched the charred mattress hit the ground below the window with a cushy fwump.

Good. That’s well within my range.

Now, I would have to aim this just right. The mattress was remarkably well cushioned for something that’d come within a hair’s breadth of being incinerated, but if I hit it at the wrong angle the springs inside could definitely cause me some serious distress. Gauging the angle of my decent and the arc in which I would have to travel to hit the mattress, I figured that needed to fall rather than jump.

Oh.

My nerves frayed a little at the thought of having to fall onto a mattress from the second story of a building. Deep breaths, Lucky. Deep breaths.

Hop.

Skip.

… and I was out the window and in the air.

“... aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGUH!”

Thud.

I groaned, my side and limbs aching. Certainly not the most graceful fall I’d ever taken, but the mattress had certainly done it’s job. Reaching my right forehoof up, I checked my Stealth Buck to see if it was still in one piece. Yep. No sprockets jutting from the sides or sparks leaping out.

Standing, I winced slightly. Whiplash hurt, especially when it was from hitting the ground at an odd angle. Reaching out with my telekinesis, I flicked the Stealth Buck on and watched my whole body flicker out of the visible spectrum.

Time to move on.

Trotting out onto the sidewalk, I looked back in the direction of The Wall and almost had my jaw drop off at what was occurring in the skies above the crater. There, floating near the high-rises, was what looked like a giant shield-spell. I squinted, staring up at the... battle, maybe? Attempting to get a better look, I stepped a little further out into the street.

As it turns out, changing your viewing angle can really improve the clarity of far-away details. Now that I was up and no longer bleary-eyed, I could see the faint silhouette of a pony inside the shielding. An equine form that large could mean only one thing.

An alicorn.

Nopony that I’d talked or listened to knew precisely what the alicorns were, aside from “Children of the Goddess”. All that we knew was that they were damn tough, came in several different flavors, weren’t prone to small talk, usually served as Red Eye’s personal escort during public functions, and got fucking huge when exposed to large amounts of radiation. Where they came from, however, was far less of an intractable mystery. Every so often a cart of unicorn slaves would depart from the crater, returning empty. This, Red Eye said, was the price paid to the Goddess of the Unity.

It was a pretty steep price, if you ask me.

As I watched the super-alicorn do battle with what I assumed was the infiltration team (who I wanted to thank quite profusely later), I felt a little bit of dread. Call it a premonition, if you will.

When the giant, glowing shield-bubble crested a second-time over the rooftop of one of the many nondescript Fillydelphia high-rises that dominated the skyline, I felt the faintest itch beneath my right hindhoof.

One-onethousand.

Two-onethousand.

Three-onethousand.

Four-onethousand.

Ding.

There was roiling flash of green and gold inside the shield. It boiled and frothed almost like a living thing before breaking the shield open like a wet paper bag and sending its green tendrils out into the sky, igniting the wispy industrial pollutants that wafted above the crater.

Then came the sound, rolling like a clap of thunder smug in its own ability to scare young foals.

The MEP hit afterwards.

I looked down, feeling oddly drained and...

… visible?

“Oh shit.”

I tapped my Stealth Buck with my left forehoof repeatedly, hoping that, somehow, through sheer force of will, I could make the jury-rigged PipBuck peripheral come back on again. I knew it was futile, though. The words of the Big Book of Arcane Sciences echoed through my head:

“Balefire matrices, as side-effects of their detonation, produced amounts of magical radiation so vast that they affected nearby, unrelated spell matrices (...)” - Chapter 26: Balefire

Apparently, the radiation had been enough to short-out the gem-based spell matrix inside my Stealth Buck. Throwing some numbers around in my head, I reasoned the detonation had been produced by something like... uh.

Shit.

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t have estimated the number of balefire eggs detonated if I’d had a convenient reference book! I hadn’t actually been paying attention to the section on balefire detonation magnitudes when I’d read it. Hell, I’d barely been able to slap together the rudimentary magical interface that allowed me to use the precious spell-applying device wrapped around my wrist! Honestly, I couldn’t even hope to perform the proper bypasses and recalibration necessary to get it back in working order. Probably end up causing a critical system failure and have it blow-up in my face.

In laypony’s terms, I was fucked.

I’d been counting on my Stealth Buck to keep me reasonably well hidden until I reached the outskirts of Fillydelphia. Now those plans were, summarily, in the shitter.

Faintly, in the distance, I could hear the unnatural growling noise similar to that of the aberration I’d faced earlier.

… save multiplied a hundredfold.

I was up the proverbial river without a paddle.

Opening my saddlebags and removing my laspistol, I mustered my flagging courage. Right about now would have been a good time for a little bit of ordnance.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: “Sleight of Hoof” 1 Rank Prerequisites: AGI 5, Firearms 35 or MEW 35: Wait. How did you do that? You reload your weapons 15% faster and make less noise when doing so.
Trait: “Pariah Pony” 1 Rank: You live a cursed life and, as such, you’re more-likely to suffer from failures of spectacular magnitude. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), your luck is so bad that sometimes those around you fail spectacularly too. If LUK > 1 then LUK = 1.

(To the Chapter Hub.)