Fallout Equestria: The Ajax Directive

I filled my lungs with the early morning air. The eternal cloud cover and surrounding mountains made it hard to discern the exact time of day, but it was undoubtedly early morning.

The main street was lined lengthwise on both sides with the ponies of 'Our Town'. When the 'Ministry Mare', who I was told was the leader of the town, had told me that was the village's name I had thought she was joking. In one of my brief talks I had with the doctor yesterday I learned that the town's name really was just that. A name that didn't really fit with what little bits and pieces of the world I could remember.

The names of other places, 'Canterlot', 'Manehattan', 'Baltimare' passed through my mind when thinking a bit more about such locations, but they were just that. Names and the passing realization that they were places that ponies lived in.

“Heads high Everypony!” Glowing Ether shouted down the road, breaking the focus on my fuzzy internal thoughts. “We have a new pony looking to join our ranks, so let's give them the best reasons to partake in friendship with us!” It was only the second time I had seen Ether since when I woke up two days ago. She was able to maintain that same energetic drive that let her command the direction of our conversation the other day but turned it up to 11, carrying her voice down the main road of Our Town so everypony could hear her with almost no issue. While Soothing Constant had told me that Ether would get me pointed in the right direction for the first day of work, nothing had been said about how loud or commanding she was in the early morning.

At the far end of the street was a solitary house that stood out from the others that lined the road, differentiated by two important factors. For starters, it was not parallel with the main road, sitting at a right angle to said houses while its' face looked down the road, and secondly, in front of the face was a large platform of wood and metal, probably the same grainy metal that roofed the houses.

My gaze at the village surrounding me was interrupted, this time by the same noise that had awoken me the last two nights. Though maybe 'noise' was a too harsh of a term to use. After reverberating through the grainy iron and wood that made up the houses the music that was now playing might be terribly distorted, but outside it was considerably smoother to the ears.

Now down in the mountains

And high above the land

Lay Our Town free from envy

For those who understand

All at once, everypony in the streets joined in with medley, everypony holding steady in the orderly line and reciting the words in tune with each other

Great Starlight, now we thank thee!

For now we understand

In true friendship we became

A truly in-tune band!

The entire song seemed very simple to stay in tune with. Maybe it was out of necessity? There wasn't any instruments or other ques to take, so perhaps the incredible simplicity was due to the lack of tools available?

The great Starlight Glimmer

Forsook laws of the land

Shook off her prison markings

And found friendship truly grand!

Great Starlight, now we thank thee!

For now we understand

In true friendship we became

A truly in-tune band!

So we bear her message

That last line was different. Only one voice, Glowing Ether's, was singing out now.

She overcame the land

Nature's marking hold us no more

In Friendship we shall stand!

Her voice rang out way differently from everypony else's. It was as if she had reached down into her lungs to chime out this stanza, coming out incredibly rough and almost grating to the ears without the other ponies to hide her voice.

“Ok everypony all knows their roles! We'll be coming out to see how everything is going today!” The once-organized lines of ponies soon lost their organized rows, dissolving into a large throng of equines.

“As for you.” Mare Ether had made a beeline straight to me, and now she was . “Since it's your first day, let us point you in the direction for today's work.”

The branches of a long dead tree stretched towards the sky, it's warped visage casting a faint shadow atop the lines that had been dug in the ground behind me. The bark had peeled off of the majority of it, leaving the sickly yellow exposed except for a small few pieces of brown bark still wrapped around the base.

“The Tree of Woe. It's old and leafless, and the only one of it's type here in the valley” With that she had pointed out in the direction one of the groups of ponies began heading towards, and sure enough, several minutes of walking lead me to this point.

Mare Ether had neglected though to elaborate on the Tree's decorations, if such a word could even describe the threatening tone it held. Hanging from one of the outstretched branches was a severed measure of rope, frayed at the end. Opposite of the branch with the severed rope was a board hanging from two ropes, an inscription carved into the wood. 'Woe to those who forsake their friendship.'

“Strange Flank!” A hoof smacked me on my thigh and broke me out of my focus. “Get to work. We don't have all year, and this land won't till itself.” The blue unicorn mare continued walking on, already her focus turned to somepony else.

I gave a nod, biting down on the handle of the shovel. This had been the first time I had been caught staring at the tree, and I didn't have much desire to bring extra attention on me by staring off a second time. I put my entire bodyweight behind the tool, and then jammed it into the earth, the muddy soil giving easily to the edges of the shovel's head, not all that much different to how it was slowly squeezing out from my hooves in a very slow sink downwards. Twisting my neck and upper body, I flung the large clump of mud off to the side. Thankfully some other ponies had already started work on these large trenches, at least a good hundred hooves worth had already been dug out, with a few breaks every 20 hooves or so. It did a simple job at giving a point of reference for the trenches.

The next several shovelfuls of mud went by without too much issue, seeing the hole infront of me gradually growing longer and deeper. The biggest problem was keeping any sort of good footing on the mud, which frequently liked to slide out from under me and into the widening holes.

“Ah!” A mare's panicked voice beside me broke my attention from the trench digging, and I looked beside me in time to see the pile of mud sliding into my neighbor's trench. But no mare. Instantly realizing the circumstance at hoof, I leapt out of my forming trench and quickly tried to shovel the mud off the collapsing trench.

That wasn't fast enough. Not only did I not know where she was buried in the shallow mud, every shovelful I tried to spoon off only seemed to slide back in gradually a bit later. Tossing my shovel aside, I just let instinct take over, digging my forehooves into the slippery mud and just pushing it side to side faster then the shovel, and in turn faster then it was sliding back in.

Finally a kick from below. I stepped back a bit and jammed my right hoof into the mud, feeling the solid chest of a pony. Now that I knew where my neighbor was, it was just a mater of freeing their head so they could breath air rather then mud. Kicking and pushing at the mud more, two hooves pushed out of the grime and stretched to the sky. Immediately wrapping my left leg around one of the outstretched ones, I gave a mighty pull and yanked the mare out of the ground.

A small torrent of mud and saliva poured out of her mouth as she broke back into the air, gradually reducing into a bout of spitting and coughing once she took to her own hooves again. “Are you alright?”

The mare gave a short nod, trying to wipe some of the mud away from her eyes and nose with a hoof. “Thanks for that.” She finally spoke once the coughing cleared a bit. “We thought we were a goner.” She began trying to fan her wings out, flapping them aggressively to try and throw mud off the feathers and onto the ground. Once satisfied with the majority of it being removed she turned towards me, a smile coming through her mud-covered face. “Our name's Fair Smiles, what's yours?”

“Well...I don' t know.”

“That's terrible! How else can we discern ourselves without our name?”

That seemed like a silly question. Sure, there were plenty of earth pony males besides myself, but we all had different mane and coat colors, some of us walked differently, and I was the only one who didn't have a equal sign for a cutie mark.

“Strange Flank, what's with the slacking off?” Before I could even respond to Fair Smiles question, I turned to the harsh faced unicorn mare standing a bit away. “We have a quota to hit! This is no time to be trying to get a fling!”

“She fell in-” The crack of a whip sounded above us, the noisemaker held well above both of us in his magic.

“We don't care! If they got themselves in their they can get themselves out! Now get back to work!” Obviously this wasn't going to be a winning argument, and while I could probably take her in a fight just off of my heavier body, it would be unbecoming to start brawling with a member of the town that took me in while I still didn't know who I was.

And with that I hopped out of the half-collapsed trench that nearly became a tomb, and turned my focus once more to my own trench. So I bit back down on my shovel and went back to work to the trench.

“Hey. We do appreciate the help. We don't know if we could have crawled out of that.” Keeping the handle of the tool in my mouth I gave a quick glimpse at the mare beside me, as she fanned her wings out and was trying to shrug off the mud that was caught between her feathers. Now it was her turn to bite her own shovel and remove a bit more mud, so after giving a passing grunt I did the same. “It is possible to talk a bit if we're just willing to do it between shovels.”

Obviously she wanted to hold a conversation, but there wasn't much to talk about for someone who didn't remember anything...except.

I spat my shovel out. “Why the trenches? I thought we were preparing to plant?”

While I grabbed my next shovelful of dirt she brought an answer. “It was something that Starlight thought of. Plant your potatoes deeper in the ground so they can be stronger.”

I stared at for a few seconds, expecting her to laugh at the joke. When she instead began another shovel, I had to ask a simple “What?”

She nodded. “We can make stronger crops if you planted them deeper into the ground, like how we are stronger when surrounded by more friends.”

It sounded ridiculous to me, planting potatoes or anything else a full pony's depth into the ground, especially in such grimy mud. “How did she find that out?”

A groan was muffled from around the shovel handle coupled with a small shrug. “Who knows? It's something in the Glimmers of Truth, but Starlight didn't elaborate on when she found it out.”

Ah yes, the lilac book. While it wasn't terribly large, it was dense with enough repetitive and grand sounding claims and statements that it made it hard to really memorize anything of value. I guess I had just forgotten the bit about the planting thus far.

“I think that it's because we bury this deep also.” She remarked after the two of us got two more shovelfuls moved. “Anytime one of us die, we bury them roughly this deep. Something like-” The pegasus made a motion with her wing as if spinning her outer most feather around a stray thought. “-like the food the potatoes gave you, you give back to them.”

It sounded more like it was just compiling more heartache into planting. “You ever come across corpses then?”

“Mm-hm.” Another shovelful of dirt off to the side. “When that happens, just stick them back in.”

It sort of made sense? In this low plateau, more like a flattened valley in the mountains, there was a limit in space. But it wasn't anywhere close to being that cramped, especially for the maybe 250 ponies living in the valley.

“HEY!” The same mare called out again. “Unless that flank mark is just for yammering on, get back to work! Nopony here wants to starve!” Well, if my cutie-mark stood for talking, it sure wasn't representing quiet and inconspicuous talking.

The earth beneath me then started giving way, but unlike the mare beside me I was able to anticipate the sliding earth before it sucked me in. The mudslide wasn't as dramatically bad as hers either, but that was a significant amount of work undone.

Obviously, trench digging and deep planting wasn't the purpose behind my cutie mark either.

The line of ponies for the end of day meal moved quite quickly, considering that there was about five dozen of them in line. I had lined up about midway in the formation, a few ponies between myself and Fair Smile. After spending the entire morning and afternoon without break on the trenches for the planting I had picked up a lot from conversations, both between myself and Fair Smile, and also from listening into the bits and pieces I could catch from the other ponies.

Wordlessly I stepped closer to the blue mare who stood ontop of the counter, a large drum of lightly steaming stew sitting beside her as she coldly looked down at the line, her horn and the handle of her ladle alight with her signature faint glow as she distributed the food. And unlike while we were all digging trenches, no one in the line was talking, order talking hold while awaiting the daily stew while talks slightly above whisper level began forming amongst the ponies who had already sat at the long table with their food served.

The unicorn mare didn't even blink or move her eyes as I stepped to the head of the shrinking line. She merely dipped her ladle into the iron barrel and served.

“Strange Flank!” Fair Smile's familiar voice broke over the crowd, her wings waving into the air to focus my attention.

'The best thing for somepony with amnesia like yourself is friends.' The doctor's words echoes in my mind. While I don't know if I could call the pegasus a friend yet, she was willing to talk and sit next to me at meal time, which was more then anyone else who just ignored my existence.

“So this is the newbie with no name and no past.” A lanky unicorn remarked beside me as I took a seat opposite of Fair Smiles. “What did you think of the first day in paradise?”

“Fine.” I remarked.

“We're sure they'll be looking forward to the Remarking more then anypony else. You see how slow they were out there?” Sitting opposite of the lanky unicorn and alongside the pegasus mare was a average sized earth pony stallion. “Shit, we bet when they're one of us, it would actually be an improvement for him.” On second look at him, while he was averaged sized, compared to everypony else in the communal kitchen he actually seemed to be relatively large, most of them mimicking the unicorn or pegasus with the thinner body.

“What's the Remarking?”

“You've been reading the Glimmers of Truth, right?” The unicorn smacked the small satchel tied around my midsection. “If you want to really be friends, you've got to be willing to give up and share whats most important to you.”

“What he's talking about is the-” The pegasus leaned forward a bit towards me, but was cut off right afterwards.

“Hey, hey hey. If he's not been told yet, let's not spoil all the fun for him.” The unicorn looked at both of us. “Besides, you better get to eating. While I wouldn't mind having a double ration off of you, Smiles here thinks that you'd be a good addition to the group, and you won't be a very good addition if you start wasting away from hunger after the first day.” I looked back down at the runny soup, a few diced pieces of potatoes floating in a watery broth, not the most appealing meal but way better then nothing.

“You should thank your lucky stars.” The earth pony remarked. “Slight over there would take anything he could normally. And the first few days rations are always the best.”

“Shut up Margarine.” The Unicorn, Slight, and Smiles remarked at the same time. “No need to tell him everything yet.”

“I'm just saying. They'll want to see if your talents are better matched with this, working in the factory, or as a guardspony.”

Factory? They had a factory in this village? I hadn't seen anything of the sort. Every second in conversation seemed to lead to more questions.

“I bet Woe wouldn't bother with cutting your rations down to size off the first day alone though.” Smiles mentioned, setting her now empty bowl down.

“Woe?”

“That mare serving up the food.” She motioned with her head back towards the line, or where it had been, considering that the last pony had just taken their piece. “Woe Tree. They're the one that delegates everything regarding planting, harvesting, and burial.” I also couldn't help but think about how strange it was that the name of the mare was basically the same as the name of the dead tree that stood at the edge of the planting fields.

“Not Mare Ether?”

A chuckle from the two males. “You think Glowing Ether is clever enough to dictate harvests? They just dictate how to keep everything running in paradise.” Slight leaned back in the bench as Margarine took over the train of thought.

“Besides, they've only taken over in the last year. Ministry Mare or not, if Ether made a silly enough mistake, the three of them would change the Ministry Mare position in a hoofbeat.”

“Three of them?”

“You're full of questions aren't you?” He moved his gaze to the mare. “They're your new friend Smiles, why don't you stimulate their mind a bit.”

“There are three...” She trailed off for a moment. “Ok, really five if you count the Town Doctor and Town Educator, but there are three ponies that direct all the work that we do. Woe Tree directs the harvests and public punishment, Tempered Iron runs the factory and prison, and Water Margin runs the guards and water supply. Our Town is split into thirds, with each third working under one of the three for a day before rotating to another one the next day, and the end of each three day week we start the cycle all over again.”

I set the now empty bowl back down onto the table. At the very least this explained what my next few days would look like, but there were still lots of questions. Factory? What would you need to guard out in the mountains with nothing around? And that was just on top of all the other questions regarding me. How did I get here? Who am I? Why did I not remember anything but could recall incredibly niche and bizarre things?

“Well, we'll see you in the factory tomorrow. But I can't wait to see how you'll deal with the hardest day on the fourth.” The earth pony stood up and began trotting away from the table.

“What does he mean the fourth day is the hardest?” At that point surely I'd understand what was expected of me anyways.

“Oh, you think that today was your hardest day?” Not exactly, but the unicorn beside me stood up anyways at that point and flipped his tail in my face. “Nah, this first week will be your best one. Today there was all the excitement and newness. By day four, all the fun wears off. After all-” He walked slowly behind me, hooves clopping off the packed dirt floor. “-Every Earth Pony in the world dreams of digging a fifty thousand foot hole to the Zebra lands.”

“Where do Zebras want to dig to?”

He gave the pegasus mare a brief frown of annoyance before looking at me. “No, the fourth day will be the hardest. Sore from the digging and planting, not to mention eventually the moving of the fertilizer every day. Your lungs full of smoke from the factory. And every joint crying out from the beating that the guards-ponies will give you. Wake up sore, move sore, go to sleep sore. And like all of us, you'll be toiling for paradise each and every day. Digging, smelting, fighting. And each week afterwards gets easier and easier, until you find the day you dislike the least and don't care for anything else.”

And with that, he was done, standing up and trotting away from the table. The communal dining hall was slowly emptying out already, so I took the que and stood up to leave as well.

“Don't let Slight or Margarine get on your nerves too much. They both have their...oddities.” The mare took a brief flight over the table to land beside me. “But Margarine is pretty good at getting enough food for us to share, and Slight...” She turned her head and gazed away from us for a moment. “They're fine enough.”

“Everypony's got to have friends, right?” I half-asked, half-replied.

“Yeah.” She briefly looked down at the ground as we stepped out into the cloud-covered late evening. “Tomorrow we'll be working in the factories under Tempered Iron. He probably won't care that much, but if you'd like we can put in a request to have you moved in with us for the nights. Doctor Constant probably won't want you crashing on his operating room forever”

While I was still very interested, almost incessantly so, about the mysterious conversation that the Doctor was having with seemingly nobody last night, the mare was right. A more long-term place to sleep was a better idea anyways. Though...did I really want to stay here forever?

I stared down at the blank pages. Glimmers of Truth laid open on the table I had been sleeping on for the last few days, the last dozen of pages at the back being empty and yellowed on the edges from the passage of time.

“Try writing down anything that comes to mind.” The doctor recommended to me, having left a chunk of graphite on the table after welcoming me back into his home. “Even if it's just the dreams you have overnight.” There had been no dreams while I was sleeping, though I hadn't told him that. And while there was lots of oddities in the village that had taken me in, I doubt that is what he was referring to.

My gaze went out to the window, the clouds taking on their darkest hues as the sun behind them had set for the day. I recalled what I had been told about the sky, sealed up in clouds by the Pegasi after the bombs fell. The sun and moon eternally closed off to us, only the faintest hint of warmth and light from the sun cut through the sky and the darkening of the clouds signaling the night.

I rolled the chunk of graphite between my lips once more, pondering about the strange inclination I had, driven to write about the passing of the clouds above, as if there would be some record of their change. While I had only spent one day outside of Soothing Constant's abode, I had taken keen note of the subtle changes of the clouds as the day passed, and if asked I could compare the subtle differences in the thickness of the clouds and the rain that had fallen yesterday morning.

My eyes closed and I bent down toward the empty pages, graphite coasting across the old pages. Thinking about the desire to record the weather wasn't going to help me any, but maybe writing itself would. Ignoring the taste of the rock in my teeth, I completed a short list of sentences.

Day 1: Thickest cloud cover. Sun light declined sharply after midday, sunset hard to determine.

Day 2: Rain in the early morning, cloud-cover lightened a bit before midday. Sunlight at it's strongest point shortly before sunset.

Day 3: Clouds at their thinnest in the early morning, light gray, gradually darkened as the day went past. Sunlight peaked shortly before midday, sunset hard to determine.

I bit the graphite a bit tighter, pulling back from the book. It was only three days, would that be enough to make a reasonable prediction of tomorrow's weather forecast?

Day 4 prediction: Light Rain in the morning, potential break midday, likely will rain harder in the afternoon or evening.

For 200 years it had just been alternating between cloud cover and rain. It's not like anyone besides me would look inside the book anyway. Though there was still something else that I felt compelled to record, turning a single page back to write on the backside.

Our Town

Cutie marks: Two lines, akin to an equal sign.

Population: 200-250, split into three shifts. No significant interaction between these shifts outside of morning singing and evening meal.

-Glowing Ether (Unicorn, female)

-Woe Tree (Unicorn, female)

-Tempered Iron (Unknown, assumed male)

-Water Margin (Unknown, unknown)

~

It was both automatic and short, an easy summary of what little I understood about the oddities of the town. But all it really did was just reinforce my lack of knowledge regarding anything, even the village I was currently residing in. Other then Doctor Constant, I had only seen everyone for a single day and while Fair Smiles and her friends were nice, a single day was hardly enough to make any assumptions off of.

I leaned back on the bed, staring up to the ceiling. Silence overtook the building once more. There was no clicking like yesterday. In the business of the day, I had totally forgotten anything regarding the late night noises. Quickly I slung myself off the makeshift bed almost right after having settled onto it, my hooves making just the slightest of noises along the way. Just before stepping out I bit down on the strap of my satchel, tying it around my midsection as I silently trotted toward the stairs.

It wasn't until I had silently made my way back up to the top of the stairs that I had a second thought about what I was doing. Unlike yesterday night, where it was out of active confusion, now I was just snooping around, careless of my hosts' goodwill toward me. Despite this hesitation I pushed on, turning my focus once more toward the locked door. Placing my ear next to the door, I listened carefully for any sound coming within.

There was nothing but dead silence. Once more I turned my focus to the handle and the lock it was matched with, my brow slightly furrowing as I looked at it. Keeping my ear to the door I reached a hoof out and touched the handle, gradually applying pressure. It was a bit sticky, but the real resistance was that the lock was engaged.

At this point I pulled my head back away from the door, looking around in the hallway, using the extremely dim lighting from the cloud-obscured setting sun to try and figure out some way through the door. I couldn't see much, and it was depressingly obvious that the key wasn't exactly laying about on the floor.

Curiosity burned through my mind, as I stood against the wall while climbing back down the stairs, keeping my noise low. I hadn't seen Constant carrying keys, or even heard the shaking or jingling of keys around him either. If he wasn't carrying the keys on him, they were probably somewhere else in the house. Briefly I thought of waiting until a more opportune time and checking in his room whenever he wasn't in it, but considering that Fair Smile had mentioned something about moving in to a different house, it was a bit smarter to assumes that I could snoop in the rest of the house and find something instead of trying to sneak into the house at a later time.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs I again cast my glance across the entire house. Like above, there was nothing on the floor beyond the legs of furniture. Frankly, there wasn't much of anything beyond that. I looked at the large painting of the first Ministry Mare on the wall, the encroaching darkness not doing much to offset the faint eeriness of her downward stare. I stepped up towards it and pushed it a bit with my hoof, the entire frame shifting in response around the point it was attached to the wall. Gently I pulled my hoof back as it swung back into place.

A new idea came to mind, leading me to bite down on the frame and gently pull it off the wall. Sure enough, it had been hanging on the wall by use of a single small nail. After sitting the frame down I went ahead and put my underside right against the wall to grab the object. The nail might have been out of reach of my mouth, but I could stretch my hooves out to try and reach it. It was the faintest of touches, but I could wedge the edge of my hoof underneath the head of the nail, gradually exerting pressure to ease it out.

The object of my desire flew out of the wall after several seconds, upsetting my balance and forcing me to brace against the wall. Turning my head I could see the nail bouncing against the floor from the corner of my eye. Quickly I jumped back onto all fours, watching the nail come to a rest a few paces away. I gave a short trot over to the piece of metal and grabbed it in my teeth. The width was perfect for what I had in mind.

Silently trotting back up to the top of the stairs I turned my focus to the lock once more. There was no sound from Soothing Constant's room, so it was reasonable to assume he would still be asleep. Hoping that the trick I was going to pull wouldn't wake him, I slunk up to the door, holding the head of the nail right behind my teeth with the point sticking straight out. It was easy lining the nail up, pressing my tongue against the nail's head while feeling the very edge of it drag against the metal of the lock, pushing the very tip of the nail to the lock.

I gave a slight exhale in preparation, and slammed my entire face forward, hearing the pins inside the lock jump from the force. I matched the jump with a twist from my teeth and a hard pull down with my hoof, the door unlocking and unlatching. It was a risky maneuver, there wasn't any real guarantee that the pins would jump into place from the first push, but it paid off.

The door gave a slight creak as it opened, and I took a look into the darkened room. Right off the bat I could see a few differences compared to Doctor Constant's personal room. For one, on the nightstand besides the bed lacked a candle, though there was the small plate that would hold a candle if one was used. Something that stood out more notably was a short bookshelf to the left of the room, though it was devoid of books except for a copy of Glimmers of Truth sitting beside a smaller book, and the rest of the two shelves were filled with various nothings. A rock here, a canteen not unlike the one I had been gifted, a small bag tied shut with a drawstring.

I threw a hoof to my mouth, deadening a sneeze that rang out. That was the other big difference from this room to any others in this house. The dust that was blowing around just from me stepping in was ridiculous, strongly suggesting that nopony had stepped into this room for months, if not years. It was pretty obvious that the clicking I had heard probably hadn't come from in here, unless it was automatic like from a machine. There was still the possibility that the source of the sound was something that Doctor Constant had been keeping in his room beneath his bed, but I didn't feel confident enough to try sneaking in and looking right underneath the mattress he was sleeping on right now. It would be better to look over what was available then idly ponder on what wasn't available.

Instead I contented myself with looking at the oddities in the room. The shelf itself didn't have much special about it, I found myself tapping the sides lightly, half expecting to find something suspicious. So my focus went to the wall behind it, which appeared to be just the same as the surrounding walls, not suggesting anything unique.

I brought my gaze to the actual contents. This copy of Glimmers of Truth seemed a bit thicker then my own copy, and I disturbed the dust to look inside, flipping it open and going straight to the back. This confirmed my suspicions. There were more pages near the back compared to my own copy, most of these pages having been written in. While it was only the second copy I had been able to get a hooves-on look at, the other one being my own, it seemed like these initially were printed with lots of blank pages in the rear, but they would get pulled out and removed as they were scribbled in. Curiosity naturally overtook me as I looked at the personal scribbles.

We did deep plowing yesterday. Had to be careful not to disturb our plant, so I was a lot slower getting to the fields and back. Whispering to our plant might seem like a silly trick, but we're sure it will be helpful for them longterm.

The iron factory was a mess yesterday.

Wait, what? I raised an eyebrow in confusion. While it had been made abundantly clear to me that guard duty, planting, and working in a factory was something done by all ponies here, it seemed ridiculous to be visiting both the factory and the fields in the same day. Even Woe Tree hadn't done so today, and I didn't see anypony who struck me as potentially being Tempered Iron or Water Margin. Speaking of the former.

That stupid colt, Tempered Iron, thinks that just pouring the waste from the smelting process wherever is fine. They may be right that Glimmer's old book encourages us to overpower nature, but they take it to an extreme and applies to everything beyond cutie marks, and they also think that overpowering nature is the same as destroying it. Hopefully somepony wisens them up with a swift buck to the face. Their remarking was neigh four days ago so they should still be young enough to whip into shape. If we didn't go to the field today there would have been no telling how close we would have been to snapping.

I narrowed my brow a bit more. There was a distinct break to the next bit of written text, which also talked about working in the fields. The entire recounting of doing deep planting and whispering to plants probably took place on the same day that this pony had their experience with a young Tempered Iron. I flipped forward and backwards a few pages, each entry specifying about the plant along with an entry about the job beyond that.

We just worked on close planting today, it was a bit difficult with the size of our plant.

Our day was filled with whispering, we can't wait for the harvest, and we'll continue whispering afterwards as well.

Well, Slight Pique had mentioned that everypony had a preferred job of the three. But it seemed wildly inconsistent what job this pony did alongside the fieldwork. That didn't explain the few days where they put down two different tasks in the field, as if whispering after harvesting made any sense. While I couldn't remember doing anything with plants before, that seemed even more ludicrous then close planting.

Harvesting took place today. Their time was up. We'll have to take special care of our plant now.

What? That was the next-to-last entry, and by far the shortest.

My hoof turned to the last scribbled page. The owner of the book hadn't filled a large amount up, of the 20 or so blank pages about 7 were filled, each with varying accounts. The original owner hadn't spent that much time filling the entries in, though without any proper dating it was hard to tell if these were daily, once every three day, or even less random recordings. Out of curiosity I flipped to the last entry, on a page all by itself.

To our young one

your father and I will always love you, no matter what they tell you. Him and I know that you will grow up and be strong just like him. And I'll never judge you for anything you wish to do. The cave overlooking Our Town will hold the knowledge for you to make your final choice.

Love, Rooted Soil, Roaming Gaze

I blinked before shaking my head to try and ward off another dust-induced sneeze. The writing was in the same style as far as I could tell, so it seemed that all the entries were by the same pony, likely a mare, a mother to be at that. It was a small love letter to her child. More interestingly enough was the crude drawing beside it. A tube that was tapered from back to front, the larger end bowing out like a bubble was sticking out of it. It was like a crude spyglass, or some other short telescope.

Gently I sat the book back down on the dusty shelf, turning my focus to the more unique and smaller second book. Age had yellowed out the pages significantly, and as I pushed it to the ledge with my hoof it felt like the edges of the paperback would crumble from even slight handling. Deciding against trying to actively flip through it, I decided instead to squint hard at the cover in the darkness. Your New Foal and You. While it was tempting to flip through it and try and find some other written notes, my main goal was finding the source of last night's clicking, and it plainly wasn't going to be in the thin old booklet.

Stepping away from the bookshelf I looked around the room again. There might have been a possibility that the clicking was automated, either mechanically, magically, or through a natural system like water dripping from the edge of a roof. There was nothing standing out in the open, so I tapped against the walls faintly with my hooves. The thought of false walls and hidden compartments came to mind, but the sounds were pretty consistent with the house's layout and deterred those thoughts.

I sighed. “Clicking?” I silently spoke out loud to myself. “What would make clicking at night?” I took a look underneath the bed, dusty but devoid of objects. Undeterred I reached out with my right forehoof and tapping against the ground for the possibility of a false floor.

Bingo. It was faint, but I could feel two wooden boards sliding about independent from the rest of the floor. After giving the half-open door and the darkened hallway to verify that none of the wall-checking had awoken Constant and brought him into the hall, I pushed my upper body beneath the narrow bed. The edges of my hooves struggled to get proper traction against the loose wood, and the cramped space didn't make it any easier. But my patience outlasted the challenge and soon the boards were angled up. I fished my other hoof inside, feeling around for anything.

A large rock and what felt like a metal sphere were all that greeted me. The rock was the easiest to move out, but as I rolled it out I could faintly feel something wrapped around it. I bit down and pulled it into the slightly-less-dark room itself, fighting to hold back another series of sneezes after disturbing so much dust. It was a band, some sort of rubber that was showing a significant amount of wear, keeping a piece of paper attached. Biting down on the slip, I pulled it out, only to be smacked in the nose as the band snapped.

I'll always be looking down on you.

This writing wasn't the same as what was in the personalized Glimmers of Truth. It was a bit more stylized with larger loops, not to mention the two dots and curved line meant to represent a smiley face at the end. Cute, but it was sure a strange to place this in a hidden floor compartment. I went ahead and pushed the stone, snapped rubber band, and the paper back into the hole, now attempting to fish the metal sphere out.

It rolled out, the item not quite sphere shaped, but more apple. At the top of the metallic apple was a metal pin slotted sideways into a very short and stout metal cylinder, the angle of the pin keeping the cylinder from sliding into the apple.

Grenade. The name and use for the object easily shifted into my mind, and I gently balanced it in my hoof before sliding it into my pack. While I hadn't encountered anything that might be a threat thus far, having the weapon available instinctively seemed better then being unarmed in an area I didn't know.

Satisfied with the looting, I pushed the wooden boards back over the hold, pushing myself out from under the bed afterwards and looking around once more. There wasn't anything else that beckoned my interest in the room, so I slunk back towards the door, hooking my hoof on the handle and closing it shut behind me.

The nail was still sitting inside the door's lock. While it was tempting to take it with me and try using it if I came across any other doorlocks that could take a rough shove to force open, the nail was originally holding up the painting downstairs, and I had no real interest in leaving any evidence of my snooping around. I bit down on the head, gradually pulling it out and ignoring the faint sounds of metal grinding on metal inside. Once it was fully out, I spat it out onto my right hoof, looking down on the small implement I had used.

It was bent. I put it back in my mouth once more as I silently crept back down the stairs, now starting to hold a bit of concern. It was going to be hard enough to get the nail back into the hole, requiring a level of hoof dexterity that would be a bit extreme.

Once back on the ground floor, I took a look at both the picture frame leaning against the wall of the staircase, and the wall that it had came off of. In the black of night it was almost impossible to see where the nail had originally came from, and now I'd have to struggle just to get it back in to hide the evidence of my snooping.

Like earlier, I got up on my rear legs, leaning my body against the wall, using the edge of my hooves to try and feel out where the original hole for the nail was. All I could feel was old wood, and I could feel the edges of splinters against the frog of my hooves. The original nail hole, while obviously somewhere on the wall, was out of my ability to find.

Coming back onto all fours, I looked at the frame once more, barely standing out from the darkness the room was engulfed in. Flailing against the wall looking for a hole that might be out of reach wasn't ideal or practical, but returning the picture frame with it's night-shrouded gaze was pretty important.

Keeping the metal nail between my teeth, I jumped back up against the wall, settling on a different idea. It would be risky, but it would be significantly easier to just make a new hole for the nail, ideally in a way that wouldn't make much noise, such as wedging it between two of the planks. This took no time at all, and at the upper limits of my reach I could feel just enough of a gap that it could fit in, but not so much that the nail would slide out easily of it's own accord.

Carefully I took the nail between my hooves, and forced my upper body weight against it, forcing it into the desired space. After that it was just a matter of hooking the picture back up, and stepping back to ensure it wasn't going to fall off on it's own. It seemed to be slightly off-angle due to the bent nail, but the shift surely wouldn't be noticeable for Soothing Constant.

Right?

Achievement Unlocked – The Bonds that Break Us – Have your first interaction with either Slight Pique or Fair Smiles. This could be the start of a great friendship, or even more!

Achievement Unlocked – Binding on Three – Learn how to Kamikaze unlock. To prove it's not a fluke, maybe you should do it again?