The stream was live, but the camera wasn’t quite yet rolling. A gradient background had the silhouette of a hippogriff off to one side, and the words “Tour of Ponyville Stream Starting Soon!” were in bright, eye-catching lettering. The chat was open, and strings of excited emotes filled it as viewers poured in to be serenaded by bouncy instrumental royalty-free music.
Then it began.
The camera on the drone took a moment to focus, and so the livestream audience took a while to see the star of the show clearly after the graphic was swept away. The viewers were used to this quirk as part of the show’s charm, and so only about a third of them felt the need to start spamming “blurry” in the chat, the rest simply sending lines of the fuzziest-looking emote in their arsenal, which had long been drafted for this purpose.
Soon enough, the cheerful face of the hippogriff of the hour was in sight, soft green fading into pastel pink on her beak, hooves, claws, and tips of her wings. An interface bud was perched on one of her feathered ears--it had started life as one of the infamous FFB Brand Super Streamer Setup pieces, and then had had its software gutted and replaced with a custom system--allowing her access to her chat and all of her stream-related tools, and a costume crown was perched on her seaweed-coloured mane. Tiara emotes followed the fuzzy ones when they saw that their “Princess of the Wasteland” was dressed the part today.
Her surroundings were much less colourful, however, the workshop walls she was posing in front of a dull, industrial grey, with the heaps of scrap and miscellaneous gadgetry no more interesting in their hues save for the metallic sheen catching the light. It never dampened her enthusiasm, and she waved her talons as she saw the shift in the chat and knew that she was visible at last. “Hey there all my Sea Creatures, it’s Seafoam coming at you live from good old Ponyville, my home sweet home!”
She gestured, and the camera obediently turned, focusing in on the griffon whose naturally snow white pelt and plumage was carrying several layers of grease. There was tool-glove over one of her forelimbs, whirring and clicking as it cycled through attachments, and she continued taking apart the device in front of her as Seafoam kept chattering. “And this time we’re here in Ponyville’s premier workship with my sister, Galeforce! Say hi to everyone, Gale.”
The griffon finally lifted her head slightly, but only to glance at the camera and roll her eyes. “Ugggh… Do you have to stream right now? We’re tinkering.”
Before Seafoam could retort, a shape leaped out of a pile of scrap, and the camera shifted to focus on the shimmering blue-purple gradient of the changeling who was triumphantly holding up a data chip in flickering telekinesis. “Hiiii, everyone!” She dropped her prize as she scampered toward the camera, causing it to automatically pull back to limit the extreme closeup of compound eyes. “I’m Luna Moth, but everyone calls me Looney.”
A giggle escaped Seafoam from off-camera. “Hey Looney. Since my sister’s determined to suck the fun out of everything–”
“Hmph.”
“--Why don’t you tell us about what you’re working on?”
Luna Moth lit up like someone had declared a new holiday, wings buzzing. “I’d be happy to, Sea!”
Galeforce sighed. “Looney, the chip.”
“Right, right.” It was surrounded by flickering light again, and Luna Moth carefully brought it over to the work table, even while she continued to focus on the camera. “Well, for all you Canterlot city folks, have you ever wondered where all that tech goes once it’s broken or obsolete?” She dropped the chip into Galeforce’s ungloved talons. “The truth is, a lot of it ends up right in our backyard as Ponyvillians, and that’s where tech wizards like me come in! There’s a lot of parts in these that may not be top-of-the-line, but still work, so we salvage what we can and turn them into gadgets to make our lives a little better out here. And in this case–”
“In this case, we’re working on some single-passenger flying devices for winged creatures who don’t have enough personal magic to lift off on their own.” Galeforce looked up from her work, glaring directly into the camera. “Since not everyone has the luxury of a private airship, or whatever they’re marketing as the next magic-enhancer that’ll turn out to be snake oil after a few months.”
The chat went crazy following that, and Seafoam whistled, signalling the camera to turn back onto herself. “Harsh.” She tilted her head, opening her beak in something that would be read as a smile to most species. “But you’re not wrong. After all, we all remember those little Gro-brand bells they had us wearing a few years back. Fashionable, sure, but not about to get a griff off the ground.” She made a beckoning gesture. “Come on, let’s leave these two to it and hit our next stop.”
The camera drone worked to keep up as Seafoam wove her way through a rainbow of different fruit trees. It bobbed and weaved, struggling to keep focus on her and not randomly focus on the branches that came into its path. All the way, Seafoam was humming the latest hit song under her breath as she dodged roots and branches alike.
“And here is Sweet Stuff Acres, where we grow the food to keep our community alive.” She leaped over a particularly big tree root, her wings flapping furiously on instinct while generating no lift.. “There’s no fancy hydroponic greenhouses out here, my Sea Creatures, just a lot of land and agrimony know-how put to work. Ah!”
Her excited outburst came with the drone turning and focusing in on the minotaur next to an apple tree. Her fur was a mixture of pinks and oranges that brought to mind a sunset, and there was a gleam from cybernetic implants showing through the skin and fur, the metal spider webbing from the side of her head down along one arm. However, rather than being anywhere near a device that she would be able to interface said implants with, she was currently showing off the advantage that hands and bipedal posture had as she plucked the rosy-red apples, looked them over, and placed them into one of several nearby baskets.
The minotaur didn’t seem to notice she was being filmed, until Seafoam got her attention with a cheery greeting of, “How’s the harvest going, Nova?”
She startled, nearly dropping the apple, and then spotted griff and camera alike. Waving at the latter, she replied with similar cheer, “Pretty good!” She set the apple in her hand into the basket, and rocked forward onto the tips of her hooves to reach for more, further up. “ It’s looking like we’ll have some left over to make some cider this year.”
“You heard it here first, folks, right from my buddy Supernova!” Seafoam grinned as she took up the screen again. “We’re doing so well that we’ll have some extra food this year! We’re living the dream. And look!”
The camera whirled away again, and the deer, pulling a cart made of apparent scrap metal, froze at the sudden attention, staring wide-eyed. Some confusion rolled through the chat, on whether the buck was particularly strong or if the cart was made of lightweight alloys, though it was also punctuated with the text equivalent of wolf-whistles from a segment of the viewer base, with a few “helpful” comments that if he turned around so that they could see the muscles of his hindquarters, it would answer some questions.
If Seafoam noticed his obvious discomfort with the camera, she didn’t show it. “This is Cedar Grove, the leader of our little town, who still takes time for a little manual labour to help everyone out.” The camera started to zoom in on his wide-eyed expression. “Mind telling all my Sea Creatures out there how you’ve managed to make our little slice of paradise at the Acres, Cedar?”
“Well um…” He glanced at Supernova as she placed a basket in the cart, then back at the camera drone, and cleared his throat a little. “The most important part is getting nutrients into the soil. We do a lot of composting, turning things like leftover cores and peels into food for more plants.” He shifted his weight, looking increasingly uncomfortable and restless. “Plus there’s irrigation. We’re outside of the weather control zones, so when rain does fall we’ve got to do our best to gather it up so we have some to water the plants with in the dry spells…”
Cedar suddenly jerked his head, as if gesturing to something off-screen with his antlers, then twitched his short tail a few times. Seafoam immediately whistled for the camera to focus on her again. “See folks, it’s not all dead wasteland out here. You just need to put the work in. We’ll be back in a sec with a tour of Mane Street.”
With that, the camera feed cut, leaving viewers with only a similar graphic with “We’ll Be Right Back! Don’t Panic!” to look at while they waited.
Seafoam yanked the interface bud off of her ear as soon as the camera turned off, and she looked at Cedar, who only looked moderately less perturbed. “What’s wrong?”
“You mean besides the fact that we’re growing illegal seeds out here?” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “If Agri-Corp recognizes their products on our trees we’re going to be in deep horse apples.”
“Pfff.” Seafoam waved her claws as if swatting away a fly. “You guys already bred out the tag genes. If they can recognize their apples without the stamp of authenticity written in the skin, I’ll be shocked.”
“I just don’t like taking that chance.” Cedar flicked an ear as Supernova loaded another basket onto the cart. “It’s already risky putting footage of our community on the net…”
“We’re not going to get any new blood unless creatures know we’re out here, Cedar,” Supernova pointed out as she hauled up the last of the baskets, but rather than load it onto the cart as well, she let it rest on her bicep as she headed toward another tree. “We wouldn’t have met Alfajiri if she hadn’t known that there was a safe haven for her.”
“That’s another thing to worry about. If someone recognizes her…”
“Re-lax, Cedar. I’d never put her at risk by pointing my camera at her.” Seafoam opened a wing, patting at the cobbled-together drone with it. “I’m just trying to drum up interest in coming to join us. Remind everyone that they don’t have to cram themselves in corporate-owned apartments to live, because there’s a whole world out here.”
Cedar gave her a flat look, and Seafoam could practically hear the lecture to come. Him telling her that, yes, there was a world out there, but it was largely lifeless desert suffering the aftermath of the ecological collapse that came from mass extinction of magical plants and animals. That most who survived out here were roaming nomads scavenging the bones of long-abandoned cities, and they’d managed to get a hoofhold here in the remains of Old Ponyville more due to luck than anything. And that, most of all, trying to invite half of Canterlot to move here, or worse, play tourist, was not going to be sustainable when they were only just starting to see a surplus of food.
She had heard it all before, many times. She and Nova both had, whenever they started talking about the future. Cedar was focused on getting through the next winter, while things like the livestreaming were about hope for beyond that.
Thankfully, the latest scolding-slash-argument was interrupted before it could begin by the sight of a familiar, striped face. “Guys!”
“Hi Alfy!” Supernova waved one large hand. “We were just talking about you.”
“Oh.” Ears twisted with discomfort. “Uh…”
“Nothing bad, we promise.” Cedar’s tone was gentle as he unhitched himself from the cart and took a few steps toward her. “What’s going on?”
Ears continued to shift, her front hooves pawed at the ground uneasily, and her tail curled against her hip as she eyed the camera drone, every motion accompanied by faint buzzes and whirs of the joints beneath her synthetic flesh. They all recognized the posture, because Alfajiri most often did it around newcomers to town, trying to conceal her mark, or rather her lack of one.
She felt that it made her stand out among other creatures, as an obvious signal of her artificial nature. Several generations back, that may have even been true, but as it was, Ponyville only had one creature to its name with a cutie mark, and that was Fruit Pie, the ancient earth pony who had helped get the Acres started.
Magic was nearly gone, and so marks were nearly gone as well. And Alfajiri was among creatures who’d never been able to get them in the first place.
“Don’t worry, it’s off,” Seafoam said, shifting her wing to cover the lens entirely for extra assurance. “Did something happen?”
“Um. Yes? And no.” She paused and took a breath that no one was sure she actually needed but had never wanted to pry enough to ask. “Discord wants to see us.”
Cedar’s ears perked. “Us?”
Alfajiri nodded. “The four of us, plus Gale and Looney. He said… he’s got a score for us.”
All three looked at each other.
Nova was the first to speak. “Well, after he led us to those seeds and helped us rip the tags off them, I’m interested in hearing what he’s got to say.”
Cedar nodded. “Agreed.”
“I’m in.” Seafoam placed her bud back on its perch. “I was just at the workshop, so I’ll let the viewers know there’ll be a delay, then circle back and grab the gearheads.”
This place had been the Everfree Forest, once. Now only he remembered that there had ever been a forest at all.
The serpentine body stretched along two thrones, and a form that had once floated in the air with ease, as if it had no weight at all, now felt weighed down at every turn. What wasn’t held up by the stone thrones dragged downward, be it the comparatively small limbs, the tufted tail, or the horned head now host to a thick, shaggy mane.
He’d become more solid over time, more alive, no longer able to shuffle, rotate, and juggle parts of his body with a mere thought. And with that steady grounding in the physical world had come mortality, his body now real enough to have an expiration date.
He would see his friends again, before long. Including his first, oldest one.
For now, however, he still had work to do, and no longer being able to snap himself in and out of anywhere he wanted, he would need help.
Two winged orphans who couldn’t fly. A changeling who couldn’t change. A minotaur who exercised her mind first, body second, and had interwoven wires with her muscle. A deer who hadn’t seen trees before, until the orchard grew. And a zebra with cables and current instead of sinew and blood. The kind of assemblance of creatures that would be unthinkable during his day.
And yet.
This was what Equestria had become. A city in a sea of wasteland, the last drops of magic fading, a world that had nearly given up. But there was a new generation of creatures who had known only this, yet still had hope sparking within their hearts.
He’d led the first few creatures to Ponyville, years ago. He’d told them what it used to be. And now it would be the start of something beautiful.
His final, glorious act of chaos.
