Fallout Equestria: The Ajax Directive

I wasn't cold. And I was off my hooves. My eyes were adjusting, slowly, to the limited light. From the faint breeze and the sight of the stone and plaster walls around me, I was inside a poorly insulated dwelling.

The noise of hoof-falls behind me took my full attention. Swiveling my head around, I couldn't help but take notice of the pair of candles on the wall, shielded on all sides but the top by glass. There was a open doorway to another room, and after shifting my sore body to look behind, the owner of the hooves could be seen. Off brown fur with an unkempt black mane, heavyset body type but the muscles on his body were a bit off, his skin and fur seemingly stretched and wrinkled over him from what was likely a long and hard life. Looking at his back it wasn't possible to see his face or what he was doing with his front hooves, but he was manipulating something on a small desk against the far wall. A dingy coat with some stains on it draped over his shoulders, and as he shifted just a bit I could see a few pockets that might hold any number of contents. The angle of the lighting kept me from seeing his cutie mark, leaving me with even less to work with.

Trying to balance speed, silence, and the ache in my muscles, I slipped off the table that I had been sprawled stomach-down on. Quickly I looked down into the doorway, the hall was darker but I could see a window to the outside and a door beside it. The way out. But out to where? Where was I?

A clink of metal turned me attention back to the other pony, and I could see what looked like a small surgical knife having been placed on the desk off to the side. If he had sat that aside while I was in his dwelling, he probably had something worse. Quietly I moved my left fore hoof to head towards the doorway, feeling winded just by that movement alone.

I had no idea what was out there. I was exhausted. And I didn't know where I was. Or who. Another small noise as the earth pony set a cap down, turning slightly towards a desk lamp and holding a needle and bag up to it with his hooves. Either I tried to fumble out the door into a great unknown, or I could subdue the house's owner and try to get some information on the current situation.

Pushing through the ache and fatigue, my whole body lunged forward at him. Without giving him a chance to react from the louder impact of my hooves hitting the wood-covered floor, I carried my momentum into him, my slightly smaller bulk pushing him forward into the desk, the edge of it pushing the wind out of his stomach. With my left fore hoof I wrapped my leg around his neck, my right pushing the lamp to try and obscure some of the light to maintain some surprise.

“whe-” My voice felt weak as well, and I needed noise to back up my show of force. I coughed quickly, and “WHERE AM I?” Now my voice was carrying right into his ear. “WHERE IS THIS? WHO ARE YOU!?”

He sputtered something, so I loosened my grip around his neck a bit. “Doctor!” Now it was his turn to wheeze out, this from him trying to get his breath back. “I'm a doctor! We found you in the mountains! You're in our town!”

“WHAT Is the name of-” The world was starting to fade out around the edges now. “-of-”

“We think you've been in a coma.” He pushed back a bit and shrugged me off, the combination of his larger bulk and my fading consciousness giving him an easy advantage. As my forelegs once more made contact with the ground I stumbled once, then twice, and found stability. But focusing on him was difficult. “You need to lay down. You need to rest.” I stumbled back, holding my left hoof out to try and keep distance between us, even the illusion of force might make him hold back while I tried to focus again.

“We're a friend.” He said once more, stepping forward and putting one of his hoofs on the joint of my left foreleg, putting the smallest amount of pressure on it as I dropped it to the ground. “You need to lay down.” He reiterated. The world was still fading out into black, even the candles on the wall becoming hard to make out from the encroaching darkness. “We're friends, see?”

“Needle...” I hoarsely forced out as he gave me a push back onto the metal table I had just been on mere moments ago.

“An IV drip. Some saltwater and electrolytes to get you moving again.” Gradually he laid me back down, bringing a stop to the encroaching darkness of unconsciousness. “Do you know how you got here?”

I tried thinking for a moment, the world stabilizing into small circles of light and blurry vision. “Mountain?”

“Yes, yes, we found you in the Mountains.” His voice faded just a bit as did his hoof falls, “This might hurt a bit.” The earth pony said upon returning to me. “But you've been in and out of consciousness for the last two days and you've not eaten anything for Celestia knows how long.” The prick into the side of my upper neck made my front hooves raise from the pain, but only slightly due to my lack of energy. “Just rest a bit, let it circle through a bit, and try not to move too much.” My world had stabilized away from unconsciousness, but just barely. “If you feel like your going to fall asleep again that's ok. We're right here, and we won't let you die on us after all you've been through.”

With that the tension drained from my body, and my eyes closed as I let the world fall away.

“He's coming along bit by bit.” I could hear the doctor's voice on the edges of my subconscious.

“So what's he like?” This chipper voice belonged to a mare. I forced myself to open my eyes a bit, looking at the doorway but due to my angle on the table it wasn't possible to see either of the two.

“Thus far, nothing. I think he's probably a hired guard.” Now the doctor came around the corner of the door frame. “He woke up last night and immediately tried to attack me.”

“And?” The mare came around the corner now, a lemon yellow pony with a faded pink mane, part of it falling over the back of her neck and towards her shoulders, part of it hanging like bangs over her face, and the more central part curled back on itself like a roll at the top of her head behind her horn.

“And that's about it. He's not shared a name. He has a few scars but nothing excessive, and most of the scarring is well healed.” The doctor now trotted behind her through the doorway.

“Welcome!” She seemed more excited at me being awake then shocked. “Our name is Glowing Ether! And this is our doctor Soothing Constant!”

“The pleasure is ours.” The stallion remarked, lowering his head a bit and curving his front left leg inward a bit.

“Indeed it is!” Ether cut in. “We can't believe our Good Doctor didn't ask for your own name!”

I was silent for a moment. “I...I don't know.”

“I've never heard of a name like that before.”

“Actually Mare Ether, we think he means he still doesn't remember.” I gave a small nod in response.

“Well, in that case-” She beamed a massive smile at me. “-what can you tell us about yourself?”

Nothing. I took a moment to think, or...try to think. There was nothing. It was like trying to peer into a rush of white, gray, and black. Like static.

They must have noticed my struggle to give an answer, both of them peering at each other for a second before looking at me once more.

“Maybe your Cutie Mark will shake your memories?” The doctor asked, ending his sentence just before biting the top of the thin blanket that had been placed over me, and pulling it down my body and the metal table.

“Of course! It's the ultimate summation of who we are as a pony and is one of the most important moments of our entire life!”

With the sheet off I pushed off of one of my hooves to turn and gaze at my flank. Emblazoned on it was a knife pointing straight upwards, it's mouth guard at the base of the blade made of four golden sticks matching the color of the blade, the end of each stick resulting in a different letter.

“It's a Weather-vane!” The yellow mare remarked with a beaming smile. “Maybe they checked the weather for some other fortunate ponies!” She pointed to my flank with confidence. “N for North, E for East, then South and West.”

Her smiling face changed focus from my flank to my face, as if they were expecting a great revelation. I could only shrug.

“We think our book knows what their problem might be!” The Doctor trotted back over to the desk that he had and bit down on the spine of a thick and weathered looking book. With a toss of his head it landed on top of the desk he had been hunched over the previous night, and he began flipping through it page by page. While he began shifting through his tome I decided to try once more to get off the table and onto my hooves.

The light from the windows both in my room and in the adjacent rooms let me see a lot more then the last time I was awake. My hooves stepped on slightly splintered wooden floors, the walls themselves a mixture of wood, large stones, and some form of plaster. The ceiling was similarly wooden and flat, maybe suggesting a second floor?

“I'm sure once Constant has our new guests all fixed up they'll come to love it here!” She remarked once more, a bright smile over her face. “And their name will come about soon enough. We'll find a great way to integrate you into Our Town!”

“Where am I?” I asked, cutting off her train of thought.

“I just said it silly. This is Our Town!” Her leg was thrust into the air as if using it to point to the entire room and what laid beyond. “Our ancestors found a nice hidden valley in the mountains to keep us safe from selfish ponies before us, and they taught us true friendship to keep us safe from the bad ponies out there. She threw the outstretched leg around my neck. “You might still be too weak to actively partake in Our Town, but there's plenty you should catch up on for your new life.” She led me out of the room that had been my entire remembered life and into the more open room beyond. A staircase was adorned opposite of the front door, confirming my earlier guess that there was a second floor to the building. Two windows were split by the front door, and another room similar to the one I had come out of was opposite of it, making the entire building feel like a mirror image of itself, the only non-mirrored bit being the staircase running lengthwise at an angle against the wall.

“This here-” Glowing Ether pointed to the large image frame which would have faced a pony the moment they stepped into the door. “-Is Our Town's founder, Starlight Glimmer! Before the bombs dropped, she found a way to live without war or fighting, the true magic of friendship!” It was a fully body portrait, slightly faded but not so much to take away from her lilac body hair, purple and teal mane, or the wide strange smile that adorned her face, making it look as if she was staring down at us.

“And we give all of our thanks to her for our lives, and we thank all the ponies that came with her to resist the unequal world beyond.” And with that, she bowed toward the picture with eyes closed. Right afterward she cracked one open, and raised a leg to the back of my neck and pushed me down, implying I should bow similarly.

“You said something about bombs?” I asked once the two of us went back to standing normally.

“Oh Yes. Ponies had been fighting each other and other creatures for years, maybe even centuries before. And about 200 years ago they made a bunch of really big bombs that killed nearly every pony.” Once again she held a long, uncomfortable stare with me, obviously expecting this to trigger a memory. “You really don't remember anything, do you?” I shook my head to the negative. With a sigh, she continued with her simplified history lesson. “Under Starlight's guidance our ancestors hid in the caves in the mountains around here, only to come out a few days later and realize that the mountains protected us from their effects. And so we lived on, following Starlight's magnificent guidance until this very day.”

Nearly every pony? So we're in a valley surrounded by lots of mountains, and everything outside is poisoned. But it surely isn't too bad, after-all, she did say that nearly every pony, not every pony, had died, and if the mountains protected them that well then they wouldn't have known about these giant bombs unless ponies from beyond talked about it.

“We implore that all of our new friends take and study one of these.” She levitated a small lilac-colored book in front of my face. “Only then can new friends understand how true our friendship is.” It was pushed a bit aggressively towards my face, so I merely leaned forward and grabbed it in my mouth, my teeth leaving faint imprints into it's plastic.

“Retrograde Amnesia.” The other male in the building cut into the conversation. “The medical book suggests our guests saw a bad event or got hit on the head real badly, and because of that they can't remember anything before waking up.”

“Oh dear.” Ether looked between Constant and myself. “Is there any cure to it?”

“The best it recommends is to have them spend some time with support and stay active and healthy. It should come back to him as time goes on.”

“Well our new friends won't have to worry too much about that!” Again she wrapped her leg around the back of my neck, this time aggressively pulling me into her and making me stumble on my still weak legs. “You can't find any better friends then here!”

“Yes, but we recommend that he spend another day or two inside until they're properly rested and able to do work.”

“Well if that's the case, we should be going now!” The yellow and pink mare remarked. “We'll all look forward to you coming outside and experiencing Our Town and the great chance it offers!” And with that she let go of me, and opened the front door and went back outside.

“Why?” I turned and looked at the doctor after the two of us were left alone. “Why did you not tell her that I attacked you last night?”

“Starlight Glimmer wrote in her Friendship Guide that we should always give ponies a second chance.” He closed his eyes and titled his head upward, as if trying to recall something. “It's not the first impression that's important, it's about what guests and friends are willing to give to each other.”

Realizing it was a quote, I looked to the book and back to him. “You liked it that much?”

“Every pony has a quote they have to like that much. After all, Starlight's words has kept peace in this town for a long time.” He looked down at my legs for a moment, a puzzled look coming over his face. “So, what did you think of our ministry mare?”

“She...” I trialed off and looked through the window, spying a pair of drab looking houses on the other side of a rock-and-dirt road. “She's very enthusiastic.”

He chuckled for a moment. “Yes, that's one way to put it. But that's how all the Ministry Mares have been since Starlight Glimmer. After all, it's friendship that keeps us together.” He motioned to the lilac book I had set on the floor. “It's would be good for you to get familiar with that. You didn't grow up here, so it will be a good chance to test how well you can remember new things. Until then.” He turned around and walked back to the room I had been sleeping in. “You can keep using the operating room as a bed for now. In a few days we're sure one you'll get moved into a real house with other ponies.”

I nodded, then turned to look out the window. Stepping up towards it I could see a lot more of the town. It looked like a row of about six houses from, all side by side, and a bit more focusing showcased that there was a second row of double-storied houses directly behind that one. In fact, it seemed like they all were constructed exactly the same. Maybe this house was the same?

My eyes were caught by a small group of young fillies and colts walking by, led by an adult mare with her dull yellow mare pulled back into a pair of pigtails. There was also a lone stallion on the opposite side of the road walking the other way, the two adults smiling and nodding at each other wordlessly. But something seemed off about them. Looking at their flanks, they had the exact same branding on them.

A pair of gray parallel lines, like an equal sign. While I couldn't remember anything beyond waking up the prior night, that struck me as being...wrong. Quickly I turned my head back to the operating room where the doctor still was. I could only see his flank, but that was all I needed to see to notice that he too carried the same equal sign mark. Spinning opposite of the window, I looked at the full bodied portrait of the mare that founded the town. Sure enough, even if the angle wasn't perfect, she bore the same equal sign.

I stared a bit longer out the window, the light from the cloud-obscured sun slowly fading out. Over the last two days I had regained most of my strength, being able to walk and trot around the house without issue, even the stairs to the second floor weren't that much of an issue. 'You seem to be in top condition, it's just a matter of getting some food in you and restoring some muscles.' Doctor Constant had remarked about my physical condition.

But that was only my physical condition.

“Hey, come on in if you want to eat.” Soothing Constant called out, poking his head around the corner of the door frame into the operating room-turned-bedroom.

“It's not coming back.”

The stallion let out a small grunt as if mulling the statement over in his head. “I'm sure it will come back at some point.”

I shook my head and turned around. “Nothing. There's so much that I can tell you. I can tell you where to smash my hoof in that window.” I merely flipped my tail to reference the one my gaze had just been staring out of. “And do it without cutting myself on the glass. I can read this.” with my right hoof I palmed the plastic book I had been given. “And can tell you that in about 6 hours we'll get another long sprinkling of rain as the clouds overhead cool down.”

“Good! That means it's all coming back then!”

“No, No!” My voice raised, reflecting the aggravation I was already having. “You don't get it. I don't remember THINGS, I just remember HOWS.” Taking a deep breath, I composed myself, raising a hoof to my chest. “I still don't know my name. Every now and then there might be a word, or a concept. Like the name of something called Canterlot, but I don't know if that's a house, a pond, somepony's dog...” I trailed off, my frustration having already faded as I drooped my head and stared at a distant wall. “I still don't know my name, or even what my cutie mark means.”

“An old city.” The older stallion responded flatly, getting my attention back. “Canterlot was the old capital city of Equestria until the bombs fell.” He merely stared at me with locked eyes as a moment of silence passed. “Well, you should come and eat anyway before it gets too cold.” Realizing that the information he shared with me wasn't unlocking anything new in my head, my host turned around and began trotting to the other end of the house where the kitchen was. Without putting too much thought into it I bit down on the plastic book's binding and the pen that I had been given, trotting after the doctor for the final meal of the day.

“Well, how is your new memory working?” He asked before taking the lid of the pot sitting atop the indoor wood stove.

“In the same way that the masses of ponykind can only obtain friendship is by sacrificing that which is core to them, they can only respect friendship by being reminded of what they sacrificed. Page 17, Chapter 2.”

The stew from the doctor's ladle pooled into the bowl, and with some simple balancing he three-legged walked it over to the table I had already taken a seat at. “Well, physically you are ok. Before you woke up I made sure to massage and move your limbs every so often so muscular atrophy wouldn't set in.” He took I already told Mare Ether that you were in good enough condition to start working tomorrow. She'll be even happier to know that your studying isn't being hampered by your memory either.”

I looked aimlessly down at the mystery stew that I and my host was sharing. He tossed a piece of rock-hard bread at me, and instinctively I stopped it with my hooves, it's trajectory instantly altered straight down into the stew, the liquid inside hopefully making it a bit easier to bite into, even if it meant that the under cooked beans and lentils would be harder to make go down.

“Maybe some hard work will shake the cobwebs loose in your mind.” His hoof pushed his black mane back, probably trying to ensure he wouldn't end up with hair in his stew. “But the best thing for some pony with Amnesia like yourself-” A hoof point towards me as I picked up the bowl to try and slurp the evening meal. “-is friends. Doesn't matter where in the wasteland you are, finding some friends and getting their support helps the brain relax and settle down. And I don't mean friendships like this whole town.”

I sat the bowl down, the slightly soggy bread caught between my jaws. “What do you mean then?”

“This town offers friendship aplenty, yes. But there's a difference between every pony sharing cutie marks, housing, and a work schedule, and some pony being willing to confide their honest thoughts and feelings with another without having to lie.” Now it was his turn to start eating his dinner.

“I don't have anything to lie about. I don't even know my own name.”

Now his bowl was set down, empty contents matching mine, though he had eschewed the rocky bread for the moment. “You're thinking of it wrong. What if they want to be honest with you? Well, can you be loyal to their truths and help them keep it? How about if they've sprained their leg but are concerned about their job. Can they trust you to be kind and not rat them for their inability to work? Would you even be generous enough to help them out?”

“I...I don't know.”

“Those are the kind of questions where the answer comes naturally for true friends. And that.” The doctor stood up, smacking his hoof on the table hard enough to make his rocky bread jump up and toward his mouth. “That is where the fun and laughter begins. And with some fun, the real magic happens.”

“How does that go with the book?” He had already stepped away from me, his tail swishing while he hummed some tune while trotting out of the kitchen. It was plain that he had no interest in trying to relate his short ramble to the long winded ramblings in the Friendship Guide. Maybe this was just another mental exercise to try and get my memories back? I looked once more at the plastic book, leaning over to stuff the last of the bread into my mouth while flipping it back open to pick up where I left off from the long gone mare's ramblings about friendship and sacrifice.

Twice a day.

I stared up at the ceiling, slightly annoyed. There was some type of rhythm and singing going on outside of the walls, awaking me from my sleep. This was the second time in a day this had played, the other times being once early in the morning, and now again in what was probably sunset, based off the lack of even faint light through the window.

The frustration of being awoken just after going to sleep for the second night in a row overpowered the urge to block the noise and try to go back to sleep, though that wasn't helped by the dry mouth I had. I rolled over, my hooves landing on the floor with a silent thud. A dry mouth and the noise from outside was enough to ensure I wouldn't fall back asleep easily.

A short trot to the kitchen meant that I could at least satiate the dry mouth. By the time I had made it into the kitchen the noise had stopped, and my glances out the window showed a variety of ponies all mulling in the main street, a few heading inside the varying houses lining the street. I had yet to see a single pony not wearing the parallel lines on their flank, as if the entire town shared the same special talent.

Leaning into the kitchen's water barrel to quench my thirst, I couldn't help but look at my faint reflection in the water. It had been two days, and it felt like I could tell more about myself from looking at the nearly invisible reflection then from any memories. Two days inside of Doctor Constant's house, never having left. There had been a few other ponies that had briefly stopped by in those two days, one of them needing a splint made for one of her front legs, while two others were basically given the recommendation to be careful with a concussion. They didn't engage in conversation with me, almost ignoring my presence outside of the barest of courtesies, a mere 'Welcome' before going back on their way. No pony had shown any familiarity towards me, and I didn't recognize any of them either.

I stepped back into the living room, thirst quenched. The silence of the early night had settled across the entire town, matching the silence inside the house-

Except it didn't. Faintly I could hear a clicking from upstairs what sounded like a short series of clicks. I looked up towards the stairwell, not able to see anything. The clicks came to a stop as I cautiously and quietly walked to the foot of the staircase, still looking up towards the top. NO more clicks, but a soft thud did sound. Driven by curiosity, I swiftly began hoofing it up the steps, staying on the side of the staircase by the wall, keeping the wooden stairs from flexing much under my weight.

Upon reaching the top the sound had changed once more. It sounded like dragging. Carefully I walked towards one of the two doors at the summit of the stairs, light faintly shining out from underneath it. My hoof touched the center of the door, before pushing on the handle. The latch was silent as it pulled back from the socket in the doorframe, and it swung inward a small amount, giving me about two inches of space to look in with.

“Stupid thing.” Soothing Constant muttered to himself, his voice very silent and muffled by the bed he was half-under. Carefully he began pulling himself out from under the frame of the bed, his front legs and head still underneath. Upon finally getting out the doctor stood up on all fours, shaking some dust from his head while holding what looked like a satchel in his mouth. My eyes stayed focused on that as he spat it onto his bed, unhooking it's buckle with his teeth. A bit of manipulating and he pushed out a small metal canteen with a sheen that was heavily dulled in the room's candlelight.

I took a halfstep back from the doorframe. Something didn't match up. Doctor Constant had been getting something out from underneath his bed, and was obviously making too much noise to have been the source of the clicking. I turned to the other door, stepping towards it and gently trying the handle. Unlike the one for Constant's bedroom, this one was held shut, and with my eyes having long adjusted to the darkness after having been up for so long, I could make out a simple keyhole beneath the handle. I leaned near towards the door, placing my right ear against the wood.

“What are you doing up here?” The doctor's voice broke my concentration on the dead silence in the locked room. “I thought you were supposed to be asleep.”

I snapped my head away from the door, turning to face him. “The noises outside woke me up. And then I thought I heard something being dragged upstairs.”

He gave a rough sigh. “That would be me.” He bent his neck behind him, grabbing and untying the satchel I had seen him with off of his body. “Since tomorrow will be your first day working in Our Town, I figured I might as well give you a bit of a gift.” He tossed it over towards me, and instinctively I deflected the satchel itself with my right hoof, the strap that had kept it around his barrel wrapping around my outstretched leg.

“What is this for?” I asked, giving the worn leather a look in the faint candlelight emanating from his room.

“It's a Satchel, so you can keep your copy of Glimmers of Truth near you at all times and keep studying it whenever you wish.” I gave the satchel a small shake, hearing the metal canteen inside jiggling against the worn leather as well. “Also a canteen. You're still new here, it would be no good for you to dehydrate in the middle of working. Most of us are used to being dehydrated while working, but if anypony gives you any grief over a minute break to get some water, tell them it's a prescription from me so you don't faint on the job.”

My gaze turned back to him. “Thanks.”

“Ah, don't thank me. If you weren't up and trying to sneak into old locked rooms, I would have probably forgotten to give it to you in the morning before you left.” Now the Earth Pony took a few strides toward me, giving me a light smack on the side of my body. “Now you should go downstairs and get some rest. You might not be from here, but they aren't going to work you any lighter because of that, so you better get some good sleep in now while you can. After all, sleep is the best medicine!” Another pair of taps on my side sent the message across, and I turned around, satchel still wrapped around my leg and made my way towards the stairs.

Just before laying back down on the operating table I sat the satchel and it's content beside my makeshift bed, laying atop of the plastic-covered book. Tomorrow I'd get a view of the world beyond these four walls, and hopefully start finding answers to the mystery of who I was. But now on top of that there was a new mystery. What was that noise I had initially heard? After pulling the sheet up over my body I blindly stared up towards the ceiling, listening intently for any similar noise. The sound of Doctor Constant shifting around could be faintly heard, but even that faded after a bit, as he was likely trying to go to sleep as well. No other dragging or faint clicking could be heard as silence completely overtook the house once more. Enough silence that sleep eventually became inevitable.

Achievement Unlocked – Awakening – Receive your satchel. It's a gift to hold more gifts with, what could be better then that?