Fallout Equestria: The Ashlands Timeline

Long ago, Tuesday, 1/14/2127
POV: Dinky Doo
Daybreaker's School for Gifted Unicorns

Dinky looked over the equations she’d scribbled on the board using the last bit of chalk. She’d have to use rocks or rubble after running out. She held the chalk with her magic, glowing dark gray as it had since she died.

The other ghouls’ magic also became gray, though they rarely used it. When they did, they picked up objects at random and moved them around. It was a constant annoyance because Dinky’s equipment was often not where she left it.

She turned and pulled the mechanical harness around Spark Light’s head. Spark Light was one of two dozen classmates that turned, but none spoke. All the ghouls came to the same classroom every day now that she blocked off the others. Initially that gave Dinky hope, but so far that was as much intelligence as they had shown.

She usually avoided working with Spark Light, but this was a test she wanted to run on all the ghouls to compare results. Dinky had a crush on him when they were alive, which made it awkward to experiment on his animate corpse. She also wasn’t proud of what she’d done with him when her loneliness reached critical levels.

Dinky connected the cable to his helmet from the computer screen and fired it up, using a Glimmer cell she’d scavenged from a neighboring warehouse as a power source. It provided a 3D image of the ghoul’s head, including neural activity.

The same as the others, more or less, but it still made no sense. She had expected brains devoid of activity or only showing instinctive lower brain functions, but they looked fully conscious. It was subdued enough that a standard spell or helmet scanner wouldn’t have detected it, so Dinky only found out after scavenging better equipment, but it was clearly there.

But there was one thing different. Dinky had studied brain activity and what parts lit up for certain emotions, and she saw a peculiar one lurking in this brain. Love?

She walked across the room to pull out the book with examples in it to make sure she was right. But before she found the page, she stopped, looking back at the brain monitor. Once she left his line-of-sight, the emotion faded. She kept her eye on the monitor and slowly moved back into Spark’s field of vision.

And there it was again. He was reacting to seeing her. That meant he was conscious enough to register who she was, and that he liked her. But then why didn’t he respond to attempts to communicate?

A horrible thought occurred to her. Were they still conscious but unable to control their actions? She shook her head; that was too terrible to consider.

Either way, the kindest thing would be to put them out of their misery, yet she couldn’t. It wasn’t even a sense of decency that prevented it. The trotting dead weren’t much company, but they were company all the same.

Besides, she wouldn’t stop. If any chance existed for Dinky to bring her friends and Mommy back from the void of their undeath, she had to pursue it. If it was just her, she would have simply tried to end herself, but she had to save them.

Dinky sighed as she pried the brain-scanning hood off and placed a military helmet on his head instead. That was something she’d begun recently: putting combat helmets on all the ghouls’ heads and turned the radios up so she could hear where they went. It allowed her to keep track of their movements since she wanted to be aware if one of them stopped following their normal routine. Any deviation could be important to her studies.

The magic bell sounded signifying the day’s end, and Spark Light stood. Without a word, the others followed. They went toward their dorms as they did every day where they’d stand doing nothing until time to return to class and do nothing.

Dinky flicked the screen off and put on her own helmet. The radio played the same propaganda that never stopped after the war, but it beat the unbearable silence of this city. She followed her friends back outside, the Equestrian national anthem playing on their radios.

She walked with the group as far as the courtyard, but from there, she’d go toward the front of the school instead of to the dorms with them. Mommy waited out front every day for Dinky to finish class.

As she walked through the courtyard, she thought of everything she’d studied so far, but the experiments hit a dead end long ago. She had tons of data, but it still led nowhere.

“Run!”

The voice sounded distant, but it brought Dinky to a stop. She paused and looked around the courtyard.

“I’m in the sky!” the voice called out. “If you still have a mind, run!”

Dinky looked up and watched as a group of a half-dozen pegasi ghouls in Enclave armor dive-bombed towards her classmates. The students were both mindless and without military instincts, so they continued to walk as the aggressors approached.

There was no time to escape the courtyard before they were on them, so Dinky dove beneath a toppled statue of Celestia. She crawled into a crevice of battered stone where she barely fit, and could only watch as the pegasi tore into her friends in a murderous rage. Well, not murder, but they sure as Tartarus rendered them inanimate.

But why? Whenever ghoul soldiers from opposing sides met, they would fight, but Dinky had never seen either side attack civilians, much less foals.

It was hard to think as her friends were ripped apart, despair swelling inside her, but she concentrated. Somepony had called to her to run, which meant somepony else here had a mind intact. As she looked at the soldiers, it became obvious who.

It was a glowing pegasus with spots of flame orange mane on one side of her head, the other side covered in a cybernetic metal plate, both eyes replaced with magitech replacements. She also had metal wings, making her look less like a plucked chicken than the average pegaghoul.

Her whole body glowed red, like her bones irradiated the light from within her. Dinky recognized the glowing condition as what happened to certain ghouls that had been near the epicenters. She'd gotten a close look at a few, but could never coax one into the school for studying as they weren't as easy to tug around on a leash.

The ghoul called out apologies even as her body ravaged the foals, but her snarling muzzle wasn’t moving in sync with her words. Instead, her words came from the speaker in her head. Dinky learned about positronic brains in school, so assumed it allowed her the ability to speak but not to control her movements. Dinky couldn’t imagine that hell; trapped watching herself and not even allowed the option of suicide.

Dinky felt sick, knowing this implied her previous fear was true. Still, if a positronic brain allowed communication despite that… Dinky would need books on magitech and cybernetics. If she figured it out, she could communicate with Mommy’s mind even if not her body.

Dinky ducked back beneath the statue as the pegasus headed towards her hiding place. Once she got a better look, she saw that the pegasus had a high-ranking general’s uniform, the name ‘Spitfire’ emblazoned on the patch.

“Take off the helmet!” Spitfire called to her even as her ghoulish body reached a hoof into Dinky’s hiding place, touching her but unable to pull her out.

“What? Why?” Dinky asked, pressing back into the crevice further.

“I think my body registers you as a soldier because of the combat helmet playing the anthem!” Spitfire called back.

Dinky tugged it off her head, tossing it out from the hole where she hid. Spitfire smashed the helm beneath her hooves until it shattered, the radio broadcast disappearing into static before going silent.

Afterward, the body turned, taking flight again with the rest of her undead flock. Spitfire called back one more apology before she was gone.

As soon as they seemed like they weren’t turning back, Dinky squirmed out from beneath the statue and galloped to the bodies of her fallen friends. She stared down at their mangled corpses, leaning next to Spark Light and staring at his shattered head. She felt more alone than ever.

Worse, this was her fault for putting the combat helmets on them. Dinky should have recognized the peril. She’d have to be more careful dressing up ghouls, not that she had more to dress up now aside from Mommy.

Mommy! She galloped toward the front of the school, leaping over her fallen friends, and didn’t stop until she got to the front.

Relief washed over her as she found Mommy there, waiting for her as she always did and not yet seen by the pegasi. She rushed to her, removing the helmet she’d put on her and throwing it across the street. Dinky then turned and hugged Mommy’s cold body close to her.

“Mommy!” Dinky said. “I was so worried.”

Mommy didn’t respond, though somehow Dinky thought she sensed relief, as if Mommy heard the commotion and worried. She stared forward as always, waiting for Dinky to climb into the wagon, at which point she would trot home. Dinky was never sure if she did it on purpose or if it was just the last thing Mommy was thinking about when she died.

Every day, she’d cart Dinky to the schoolhouse, every day Dinky promised her she’d find something useful in her studies to help her. Every afternoon she’d carry her back home. Between those times, Mommy would trot her rounds through Canterlot, but she was always on time to pick up Dinky.

Dinky didn’t like the thought of experimenting on Mommy but realized she should do the brain scan on her. Or maybe she didn’t need to. Even though she never spoke, Dinky already knew Mommy was aware, and that she loved her.

As they headed off towards home, Dinky stared at the floor of the wagon. Usually she’d tell Mommy what she did that day, even if it was more of the same, but now she was too ashamed to.

She’d read some books back at their home, but there would be no research tomorrow as she’d want to give her schoolmates proper burials before continuing. Afterward she could herd other ghouls in one at a time to experiment on, not that it would be the same. They’d left a hole in what remained of her soul. She’d start using the library, since the classroom would just make her feel guiltier.

They arrived home, or at least to the closest thing she had to home. It was a tower where refugees huddled together on the final day, and a few ferals huddled in corners there even now. Fortunately for Dinky, the tower had a nice library in it, perhaps with better books on magitech to take back to school.

Dinky hopped off the wagon, walking around to give Mommy a kiss on the cheek. Mommy always waited for Dinky to give her a kiss before leaving again. It was something that gave her hope of a resolution, and maybe now she had a little more. As lost as her soul might be, Mommy still loved her.

Recently, Wednesday, 10/26/2287

Dinky shoveled the last bit of dirt onto the shallow grave of her most recent ‘patient’. Trotting out of the Magic Academy’s courtyard, she headed to her lab in the library. She was out of ferals and would go find more tomorrow.

Even after dozens of botched attempts to reach a ghoul’s mind with cybernetics or magitech, she felt horrible every time. Dinky wondered who this poor mare was that gave her unlife for a mad attempt to communicate. It had taken Dinky a long time to become desperate enough for such attempts, but she was far past it now. Dinky tried to tell herself that she at least put these ghouls out of their misery.

She would talk to every patient, knowing most could hear her even if they couldn’t respond, and tried to make the experiment chances sound better than they were so the patients would feel hope. A few times she had brain scans attached as she talked to them to verify that they felt emotion in response to what she said, and now more than ever she was convinced they were fully aware.

Even after centuries of her own awareness, Dinky still feared becoming feral. If she lost her mind, all hope for saving or at least speaking to Mommy would vanish.

Dinky had an hour before Mommy came for her. Dinky had fewer classes on Wednesdays, so Mommy came earlier that day. The ability to recognize week days was another thing that gave Dinky hope that Mommy was still somewhat in control of her body, or at least allowed her to rationalize it.

She looked over the countless piles of parchment, books, and mad equations on the chalkboards in the library, and the book on energy shields she had been studying to get her mind off her other studying. For once, she ignored them all. Instead, she went to the section of the library for the youngest foals, finding her favorite book of nursery rhymes, the same one she’d been reading when the raid sirens went off 210 years before.

The filly corpse sat down at the table and opened the book, but she didn’t get far before she spaced out. It wasn’t the page she spaced out on, but on her reflection in a nearby glass flask.

Dinky missed being a foal, but staring at her reflection reminded her of what she really was: an old and wasted mind inhabiting the decayed body of a long-dead filly. She longed for her unlife to end, but couldn’t when there was any hope of giving Mommy a normal existence.

When she recovered from her catatonia, it was time to go. She left the book where it lay, hurrying down the stairs and to the front entrance. Dinky reached the door about five minutes late but wasn’t worried. Mommy had waited far longer for her when she fazed out, which happened more often every decade.

But Mommy wasn’t there.

Dinky looked at her watch, then to the road. She was late. Mommy was never late. She was usually fifteen minutes early at latest.

She galloped across the courtyard towards their tower home. Fifteen minutes later, she came upon their tower, but there was no cart there either.

Panicking, Dinky dug through the parchments. Mommy gave her a map of her route so very long ago, but buck if she knew where it was now. She screeched in frustration when she didn’t find it, a sound that would have been terrifying were a living creature nearby to hear it.

Dinky gave up after half an hour, and ran back outside. She’d have to follow the wagon tracks instead and hope she could make out the route from there. She galloped towards the academy, her bones creaking as if near breaking from the abuse, but she wasn’t stopping.

Several hundred hooves from the academy, she saw a wagon parked out front and raced towards it.

As she drew closer, she realized that the cart had nopony hitched to it, but there were several ponies standing in the front of the wagon. Living ponies in new-looking uniforms. It didn’t even register to Dinky that one of them was pointing a large pink gun at her until she was almost there. She skidded to a halt, collapsing onto the ground.

“Wait!” Dinky called out. “I’m not mindless!”

The pink pony lowered her gun and tilted her head to one side. Another pony had been peeking over the edge of the wagon with a gun in her muzzle but lowered it too. That one looked as if she’d been severely burned, mostly furless, but her bright eye told Dinky that she wasn’t a ghoul.

One of the other two, a unicorn mare with a yellow coat and gray-white mane, had picked up a pistol from the wagon, but when Dinky spoke she looked like she felt bad for getting a gun and put it into her saddle bag. Instead, she hopped out of the wagon and walked to Dinky with a grim expression.

Dinky stared at the mare as she approached. She was real; a real living pony! There were still living ponies!

“Who are you?” asked Dinky. “Are you here to rebuild?”

“I’m Mercury Shine,” the pony said, tears in her eyes. “Um, no, we’re not here for that. We’re on our way out, actually.”

Dinky looked at the wagon. “That wagon looks like Mommy’s. Where is she?”

“I’m so sorry,” Mercury’s tears quickly escalated to sobbing. “I didn’t mean to, I swear!”

Dinky didn’t need to ask what that meant. She looked downward, spacing out again, and stumbled back to the ground. She lay on her side, too numb to express her rage and despair, more like a real corpse than she ever had been.

“Why?” Dinky asked.

“The adoracute corpse may not be aware,” said the pink pony. “Feral ghouls attack living things on sight. The alchemist was forced to defend herself, yes.” That one needed to work on her bedside manner, but at least she said it like it was.

Mercury leaned down and pulled Dinky into a hug. Despite her anger, Dinky pulled closer, unable to resist the warmth of a living pony against her own cold flesh. Mercury continued to cry as she pulled the pistol back out of her saddle bag. Dinky stared as Mercury put the gun up to Dinky’s muzzle for her to take, then pulled the barrel to point at her own head.

“Stop her!” the burned pony called out.

“Pinkie has informed the Empress of the adorable corpse and our alchemist’s meltdown,” the pink one added.

A flame colored pegasus leaped out of the cart, flapping her wings to move faster but looking as if she barely knew how to use them. She pulled Mercury away and snatched the gun out of Dinky’s muzzle with a wing.

“It’s what I deserve!” Mercury said, trying to pull the gun back away from Solar.

“Stop it!” Dinky screamed, grabbing the gun away with her magic and tossing it away from them. “I’m not killing anypony! Where’s Mommy?”

“In the cart,” Mercury stammered. She tried to follow her to the cart, but the flame-colored pegasus held her in a hug instead.

Dinky ran around to the back of the cart, hopping inside. She froze for a moment when she saw the burned pony from a full angle, realizing that she didn’t have limbs. It took a moment to recover from that, then from the realization that there was an unwrapped earth pony soldier’s corpse next to the pink one. Finally, she looked around the rest of the wagon.

Most of the things that had been in the cart had been replaced with their own supplies, but it was easy to pick out the limp form of a mare wrapped in a tarp and secured to the floor, right next to a smaller wrapped body. Dinky started to unwrap the larger, but stopped when she realized that the head was crushed or missing. She folded the tarp back onto it, wanting to remember Mommy’s loving expression as it had been.

She sat down again, staring at the floor of the wagon she had rode in so many times, unable to come up with any response for what she felt. A moment later, Mercury drew close again, giving her another hug.

“I guess you did what I couldn’t,” Dinky sighed. “You put her soul to rest.”

“You forgive me?” Mercury stammered.

“I didn’t say that,” Dinky glared at Mercury, who wilted, ears flattening and stepping back.

“I missed Mercury’s melt down, didn’t I,” another pony’s voice said as if disappointed.

“You will be missing your head if you do not act respectfully,” the most dead-pan voice Dinky had ever heard added.

Dinky looked up as more ponies approached the wagon. It took little time to note that many of these ponies looked or sounded familiar. Not like she knew them, but like she’d seen them in photos or heard them over the propaganda broadcast before she gave up on listening to the radio.

A round of explanations later, she was only more confused.

“So,” Dinky tried to get it straight in her head. “Daybreaker’s protégé, the Minister of News, a princess from another timeline, soldiers, stable residents… thanks for not letting me in by the way… and the pony responsible for the plan to murder all my friends in Canterlot. Can I have that gun back?”

“If I could point a gun at myself, I’d do it myself, Squirt,” grumbled Kamikaze.

“Kamikaze did things against her will,” Starlight said. “Midnight Sparkle tampered with the programming in her positronic brain.”

“Don’t,” Kamikaze sighed. “I deserve the hate… though I forgot I told anyone about the errors I got trying to attack Midnight.”

Dinky wondered if Kamikaze forgot, or if Starlight made a clever lie that turned out to be true. It would have been easy for Starlight to assume that Dinky understood positronic brains if she saw her research.

But it didn’t matter, because she couldn’t forgive Kamikaze. Dinky knew how hard it was to tamper with a magitech brain, so Kamikaze had to be stupid enough to allow access.

“Dinky,” Limestone said, leaning down and putting a hoof on Dinky’s shoulder. “You don’t have to come, but we can take you somewhere safer, maybe give your mother a proper burial there.”

“We should cremate her,” Dinky sighed. “I don’t want to risk her soul being trapped in her body.” Dinky had always buried ferals, but somehow Mommy dying brought to mind many more horrifying scenarios. She looked back at Limestone. “You knew her?”

“I did,” Limestone suddenly had trouble making eye contact. “I’m sorry I never followed to see where she went to find you before. I was guarding the anomaly we told you about.”

“Yeah, for your family. That I understand,” Dinky knew she’d have done the same.

“I can use my magic to cremate her,” Starlight added, then turned to Twilight, who apparently was totally not Midnight, speaking just as gently to her as Limestone had to Dinky. “Twilight? Should we bury Spike in Canterlot? Or take him to Holder to bury there?”

“I should take Spike with me when I return to my timeline,” said Twilight. Dinky assumed that was the smaller wrapped body, and sighed knowing how she felt.

“Twilight, I don’t think…” Starlight started, but paused. “Never mind. We’ll do as you wish.” She turned to Dinky and asked, “Was there anything at school you needed to get now? If possible we’ll send someone to get the rest of it later.”.

“No,” Dinky shook her head. Taking any part of her experiment would only be a raw reminder of her failure. “I have a few things at home, I’ll go in on my own and get them.”

“What things does Living Dead Filly keep at home?” Crimson asked.

“Keepsakes, a few favorite books, and some Horngasm magazines,” Dinky said, ignoring the unclever nickname.

“I got porn too,” Solar said. “We can trade!” It sounded insensitive, but it was likely meant to cheer her up.

“Don’t see why not,” shrugged Dinky. “Be nice to have something new if I’m ever in the mood to look again.”

“We can do more than trade if you like!” Solar said.

That definitely passed the threshold of what Dinky considered appropriate ways to cheer someone up. Dinky stared at her for a moment, but Solar tilted her head as if not understanding the reaction. Though, despite the unwanted comment, Dinky at least appreciated Solar's lack of fear towards her.

“Solar,” Twilight sighed. “Please contain yourself.”

“What?” Solar asked. “I thought you were the Princess of Friendship.”

“Yes, friendship,” Twilight said. “Not friendship with benefits. Besides, she’s a… well I mean…”

“Still a foal?” Dinky rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “I’m four times older than the oldest breather here, but I figure I’ll get that annoying misunderstanding a lot.”

“I’m older,” Crimson added.”Slightly.”

“Yeah I’ve studied that thing in your neck,” growled Dinky. “But switching bodies doesn’t count, not to mention living in a comfy stable that wouldn’t let me in.”

“I apologize, Dinky,” Twilight sighed. “Um, and I have something for you.”

“For me?” Dinky tilted her head.

Twilight retrieved a photo from her saddlebags and held it up for Dinky to take with her magic. It was a photo of Dinky with an award from Daybreaker’s school, with her proud Mommy standing beside her. Dinky sighed, hugging the photo close.

“Thank you,” Dinky said quietly. She wasn’t sure where they found it, she didn't even remember having it taken after so long, but was grateful.

“Dinky,” Starlight said, prying gently back into the conversation. “Do you know the safest route out of the city?”

“I know the same route you probably know,” Dinky said. “It’s not like there are many, and no route is safe for you if ferals attack breathers.”

Dinky took one more look at the school and sighed. This was it. It was time to go. She supposed she could put off suicide long enough to see if other cities fared better.