FALLOUT: EQUESTRIA
JACKNIFE DAYS
By Cascadejackal
"GOOOOOD MORNING LITTLE FILLYDELPHIA!" A sandy-coated young mare burst through the front door of her home, striking what she considered an awesome pose as she called out her habitual greeting, not to the filthy ponies around her, but to the ruined city itself, reaffirming her love for the place she had grown up in. Such was the morning routine of our heroine, the earth pony mare called Jacknife, and it was immediately followed by her pre-work checklist.
"Hat?" She bopped herself on the head, making sure her treasured hat, a much-loved and well-worn relic from before the war, was still stuck firmly down on her messy chestnut mane. "Check! Bag?" A shake of her body confirmed that her heavily patched saddlebag was tightly strapped around her body. "Double check! Shoes?" She started trotting in place, listening to the clacking of her worn metal shoes on the cracked and filthy sidewalk beneath her. "Super check! OKAY! First stop, Doc Needles! Chugga-chugga VROOOOOOOM!"
The young mare made exaggerated engine noises, pounding her hooves against the pavement for a moment before taking off at a speed most pegasi would have been envious of.
It was a familiar sight to many of the residents of Little Fillydelphia, a small suburb on the outskirts of Fillydelphia proper, far enough from the city center to have survived the war more-or-less intact, and few gave the pony-shaped blur a second glance as she bolted past them. Much like the assorted junkies, chem dealers, small-time gangs or occasional wayward bloatsprites, the young mare careening wildy through the streets was just another part of everyday life... But to Jacknife?
It was the only kind of life.
She lived to move, and move fast. Even her thoughts were fast, coming and going in the blink of an eye, mind leaping from idea or concept to plan or scheme like a deranged bloatsprite on Dash. Her need for speed and constant movement may have made her seem skittish at times, but she didn't care; the only thing that mattered to her was moving.
Now, some less charitable souls may have been inclined to call her simple, and they couldn't have been further from the truth. You see, Jacknife was extremely intelligent, albiet easily distracted. New ideas were grasped as fast as they were presented, torn apart and digested by the hyperactive blender that was her mind, before being shunted aside for later by the constant, inescapable need to keep moving, both mentally and physically.
There were few things that could hold her attention for any length of time, and only one thing from that very short list was on her mind at this point: Her job.
In any town, there is a need for couriers. Packages, urgent messages, they all need to be delivered, and usually need to be delivered quickly. In Little Fillydelphia, packages were often chems or caps, sometimes bullets, and when the gangs got out of hoof even the occasional severed ear, but Jacknife made a point of not asking what she was transporting; just where it was going, and how fast it had to be there.
It was, to all concerned, a good arrangement. Things got where they needed to be, and Jacknife earned enough caps to not only survive, but splurge on small luxuries like almost fresh food from the occasional caravans and travelling traders. Nopony was willing to try and harm or rob her, in part because she was almost impossible to catch, but mostly because she was a reliable and neutral courier, liked and protected by every important group or pony in town.
Not that Jacknife was thinking about these things as she ran, of course. The only thing on her mind was getting to her first and most important client of the day, Doctor Needles, and her shoes kicked up sparks as she took sharp corners to avoid places where trouble was brewing.
It's important to note that, while unicorns channel their innate magic through their horns, and pegasi through their wings, earth ponies have only their hooves, resulting in a much more physically oriented kind of magic. In Jacknife's case, she was deeply connected to Little Fillydelphia, to the point that she half-believed the ancient streets were alive.
The town seemed to sing to her, the wind in her ears and the sound of her hooves upon the shattered concrete carrying messages only she could understand, warning of danger or changes in the path ahead. She ran instinctively, trusting her hooves to carry her safely across the town in which she was born and raised, not stopping until she came to a screeching halt at her goal, the clinic belonging to her good friend Doctor Needles.
"DOC! I'M HERE!" She bashed her hoof against the clinic door, impatient and frustrated that he was taking so long. Almost an entire minute passed and she was hopping from hoof to hoof by the time the doctor opened the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes and groaning.
"Jacknife... It's too early for this..."
"Is not! The sun's up, see?!" The sandy mare froze for a second, pointing at where the distant clouds were beginning to glow with the light of the rising sun they hid so well, but quickly resumed her hopping, much to the doctor's chagrin.
"You had a candy bar for breakfast, didn't you?" The old colt gave the hyperactive mare a harsh glare, since she wasn't meant to eat sugary foods so early in the day, but she just shrugged.
"Nope. Kinda. Does a half one count? It wasn't that good really 'cause it was sorta stale but I did have a couple of sodas to wash it down and they were really good and I-"
The doctor automatically tuned her out, looking her over as she went on and on in a rapid-fire stream of words. He was pleased to see that, as always, she looked as healthy as could be expected despite living in a town that could be politely referred to as the unwiped arsehole of the Equestrian Wasteland.
Now, most doctors would have dragged young Jacknife into their clinic and treated her for Dash addiction after spending even a few minutes near her, but not Doctor S. Needles. He knew that it was just the way she was and that no amount of treatement could possibly hope to slow her down, as the problem was not with her taking chems, but with what chems had done to her mother.
While Jacknife continued speaking, almost certainly forgetting what she was talking about in the first place, Doc Needles allowed himself a small sigh. The young mare's mother had been a prostitue with a severe Dash addiction, and she had continued to take the drug even after falling pregnant, despite his warnings... She'd overdosed a few years later, leaving the doctor to care for her foal, who would eventually grow into the hyperactive mare before him.
He considered Jacknife to be quite lucky, all things considered. The higher-than-normal background radiation (a hazard of the Fillydelphia crater, even so far from the city proper) and her mother's habit hadn't done too much damage, other than a minor mutation that caused her body to constantly produce a chemical similar to Dash. Over the years he'd spent raising her, he had learned that, because of the mutation, she saw the world in slow motion compared to how normal ponies perceived things, and that her constant motion was an effort to release some of her almost endless energy.
He allowed himself a small smirk as he remembered when he discovered the consequences of not letting her run free; the single time he'd grounded her for coming home late.
She'd spent an entire day running in circles in her room, actually wearing the floor down with her repeated passage, and had been bouncing in place all through dinner, complaining about being cooped up. That in itself was not too unusual, even when she was a filly. The real consequences had been when she finally cracked and ran through the front door to their home, leaving a Jacknife-sized hole in it. For the rest of the night, she'd streaked through the town like a bolt of sandy-colored lightning. While several ponies claimed to have heard a small explosion and felt a shockwave coming from the main street that night, they were less-than-trustworthy sources, having been under the influence of various chems at the time.
He'd never tried grounding her again, though.
"-and I've gotta get everything done super quick today so I can get my ticket for the fight tonight 'cause Bloody Mane is going up against the champ!" The young mare smirked, bouncing up and down as she finished her explanation for starting work so early. The doc sighed again.
"Jacknife..." He briefly considered telling her to calm down, but it would have been pointless. For her, this was calm. "Come inside, and just wait a little while, okay? It's too early to bother anypony and I'm up now anyway, so I'll make you a proper breakfast."
The mare froze mid-air, in defiance of all known laws of physics, her eyes wide and eager. "Can we have sugar apple bombs?"
The old stallion groaned at the thought of the sugar-loaded food, but nodded. "Yes... But only if you wait until I say it's okay to go to work, alright?"
"Yep!"
"Okay... Come on, then." As he stepped back and held the door open for her, Jacknife finally realised that gravity was more than a good idea and dropped, bolting into the clinic the instant her hooves hit the pavement. The doctor chuckled, shaking his head as he closed the door and went to have breakfast with his adopted daughter.
"Sign here, here and here! Thank you!" Jacknife grinned as she finished her final delivery for the day, a small shipment of weapon parts to one of the larger stores in town. Having finished her deliveries early, she had the afternoon off, and there was just one thing she wanted to do with her spare time:
Get a ticket for the Prize Fight.
The young mare was a boxing fanatic, and even had a promotional poster of her favorite fighter in her bedroom, although the badly drawn image failed, quite badly in her opinion, to capture the awesomeness of that unbeatable fighter. Despite the poor quality of the picture, she'd often fallen asleep staring at the face of the mare she practically worshipped: Bloody Mane.
Jacknife had seen every single one of her idol's fights, and longed to meet the pale pony in person, or maybe even get an autograph! With thoughts of the red-maned fighter running through her head, she trotted at an almost-sedate pace to the middle of the road, and prepared herself for the journey to the Jungle Gym, where the fights were held and the tickets sold.
"Hat still there?" She bopped her head for the second time that day, squishing the faded red fabric with her hoof. "Check. Bag empty?" A quick shake confirmed there were no more packages in her bag, just a small packet of sweets and an apple that was only kinda mouldy. "Check. Shoes?" Her hooves clattered against the asphalt, and she grinned. "Check. Okay... ReadysetGO!"
The hyper courier was in her element. Her goal, the Jungle Gym, was clean on the other side of town, and she would only have to take one corner to get there. Because of this, she went all-out, reaching a speed that was only possible because of her mutation and the adrenaline-like substance it constantly flooded her body with.
Those who happened to be on the main street as she ripped down it saw only a blur, gone before they could get a second look and sometimes before they even could get a first look. Jacknife, though, saw only the path before her, the world slowing to a crawl as she ran, until everything else seemed to stand still.
Of course, cornering was impossible at those speeds... For normal mares, at least. Jacknife, with her hightened reflexes and years of practice, knew exactly what she had to do as she approached the turn that would lead her to the gym, a sharp, ninety degree corner.
Grinning like a maniac, she gave a small hop and twisted mid-air, travelling almost fifty feet before touching the ground again, but her hooves never once stopped or faltered. She hit the ground running, inertia carrying her along her original course even as her legs worked tirelessly to change direction, steel shoes throwing a shower of sparks with every impact.
Something had to give, and when it did, it did so in spectacular fashion. Scientists throughtout time and space felt a sudden, soul-jarring quake as the young mare somehow managed to shatter all conceivable theories, laws or concepts of physics, inertia and motion. In defiance of common sense or even the rules of reality, she not only made the corner in an impossible way, but ground to a halt in front of the gym in the space of ten feet, grinning before realizing her hooves were hot.
"HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT!"
She began to hop from hoof to hoof, yelping and waving her legs wildly, trying to cool her red-hot shoes even as smoke rose from the road behind her, where gouges were slowly cooling in her wake.
After several minutes, her hooves and shoes had cooled enough that she could trot into the gym to purchase her ticket, grinning like a madmare in anticipation of the spectacle that was scheduled for that very night.
The reigning champion, Ironchops, against the unbeaten challenger, Bloody Mane.
It was going to be awesome.
A/N Jacknife is a blast to write, and this was just so much fun to do! ^_^
See the fight and what happens next in FoE: Wasteland Bouquet!
Thanks to KKat for creating FoE and giving us such a wonderful sandbox to play in!
