Fallout Equestria: Hearts on the Eve
AE----.06.13.1347
“So you want to hear a story, eh?”
She called the two of us down to her chamber, Rain and I, to discuss matters that I had assumed were rather important at the time. The “Seer,” as her followers called her, has something else in mind entirely as we would soon find out. With Rose Roulette out and about taking care of a few errands for the Lyrans, Rain, myself, and Jack had been left to our own devices inside the Sons of Lyra’s supertech bunker. There’s more to it than that, more to the Sons than I could ever bare to explain, but the Seer told me that I was not to record any more about them at the time than simply what is here in this specific document because it apparently happened before I actually met the Seer of even knew of the Sons. Apparently, the action of the Seer telling me this story happened before I even met Roulette, which I find impossible to believe and harder to understand, but somehow it happened at the time that it was supposed to happen at, all at the same time.
Point being: The Sons of Lyra were bucking weird, and the Seer was the weirdest of all.
“They’re not weird, Shield.” Red Rain argued excitedly for the umpteenth time since our stay with the Sons, “They’re ascended. The Sons are channelers of the Aether, the very fabric from which our world, our universe is made, bro.”
I sighed, “Yeah, you’ve told me that once already. In fact you’ve told me about a thousand times.”
Rain darted his eyes about wildly for a moment, smiling and scantering about happily, “Because it’s true!” he insisted, stopping to catch his breath, “Doncha realize what the Seer is capable of?”
I considered it as we walked down the gray, tiled floor. Everything was still dark inside for the most part, because… Well, just because. The Lyrans were unusual, and displayed an even more unusual aptitude for prediction, but were also as temperamental as Tartarus itself, and made decisions seemingly on a whim. The fact that the hallway was dark in the middle of the day was just as likely to be one of those decisions, similar to last week’s decision to paint the bathrooms a bright, vibrant teal.
“Look, Rain. I know that they’re… different… but channelers of the Aether?” I asked him, “Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”
Rain laughed in a way that nearly dripped with “pity the poor non-believer” smugness. I let it slide. A lot of what Rain had been saying for years was correct. Between the return of…
… Well actually, I can’t say anything about that either. Not yet at least.
“You’ll see someday, Shield.” Rain offered, “Think of the Centaurian Guard. That should be enough proof for anypony.”
“That’s true. Technology like that…”
We had reached the door down the long hallway to the Seer’s chambers. I looked back at where we had come from. The hallway’s length was… nonexistent. The door we had come through was right behind us. It stood starkly white against the gray tiling and bland walls, and was etched with an inlay of blocky, multi-level greeble that spoke of an insane eye for detail by the metal-worker.
“Rain, didn’t we just walk for like… ten minutes to get here?” I asked.
Rain nodded.
“And isn’t that the door we came through?”
Rain nodded again, “Yeah, it is.”
I glared at the door from over my shoulder. “Then how is it that the door we walked away from is right behind us now, when it was so far away fifteen seconds ago?”
“Channelers of the Aethor.” Red Rain chided in a sing-song voice.
Maybe there really was something to what Rain had been insisting. How else could a pony walk the length of two or three football fields to get somewhere, only to find the door they entered from was right behind them when they arrived?
“This place is a madhouse.” I snorted, likely looking at least a little sheepish.
An unsteady grin spread across Red Rain’s snout, making him look as if he was almost unable to contain his delight, “I know, isn’t it?! It’s all so interesting and crazy. How can you not be fascinated?” he asked, almost sounding as if he were scolding me.
I continued to stare at the door behind us, “Well, when doors sneak up on somepony in an unfamiliar place, it tends to put most of us on edge.” I reasoned, figuring that I was right, since doors that moved from one place to another was likely not something that most ponies had to worry about on a daily basis.
Rain rolled his beady pupils around in his skull and pushed the door in front of us to no avail, which was a lot more detailed now than it had been a moment ago, as it was previously simply stone before, whereas it suddenly looked to be made of an elaborately cut reddish wood. Gold inlay flowed around the bumps and grooves of the high definition doorway where once it was flat and indisputably gray. I marveled at the creation for a moment, and almost conceded to Rain that the Sons of Lyra really were more than just cyber-crazy ponies.
The door opened of its own accord as soon as Red stopped messing with it.
“Welcome, dears.” A voice whispered sweetly in my ear. “I trust everything is going well at SR-15.”
“I… wouldn’t know. I haven’t been back home since they forced me out.” I mumbled as Rain and I entered the room.
There was nopony around, and very little within the room itself, except a pile of wires and computer monitors in the middle of the floor. The space behind the door was dark, and illuminated only by a slight amount of light that emanated from the computer screens that were intermixed within the pile of electronic scrap and copper wiring.
The voice spoke again, calmly. “It was not a question, dear. Everything does go well there.”
I squinted at the pile of wires, cables, and computer scrap. Something was moving within, I could see it. The pile was moving up and down slowly, as if it was breathing. I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Just who… or what was the Seer? Was this it?
“Who are you?” I asked, “We were called here to speak with the Seer, are we in the wrong place?” I called to the voice, hoping to pinpoint it this time.
The voice only laughed.
Rain laughed a little too. I glared at him.
“Shield, dontcha get it? This is the Seer. Or actually, she is.” He was grinning like an idiot. Maybe my best friend was crazier than I was, after all.
I’d have to ask Rose Roulette about that when she returned. She had always thought Rain was more unstable than me, or at least that’s what she always told me when he was acting out in some way or other. I shook my head. None of that mattered at the moment, because I was in a room with an invisible pony that I did not know.
Not that I knew any usually invisible ponies.
“He is correct, young Shield.” The voice crooned, turning sultry and playful, almost exotic. “I. Am The Seer.”
The monitors flickered for a moment, and then dimmed completely, leaving Red and I in complete darkness. I stood, rooted to the spot until two blue, shining eyes appeared before us.
I jumped back a few feet, “What the buck!”
Casting a shaped shield spell, one with spikes that an enemy might impale his or herself on, I took on a protective stance between Red Rain and the new… thing. A sudden smack to the back of my head broke the spell.
“Ouch, what the hay, Rain?” I asked angrily, “We don’t know what it is!”
Rain scoffed, and then addressed the eyes with confidence borne of either ignorance or courage, or maybe both.
“Seer, it’s an honor.” He bowed into the light the bathed us both.
I heard movement. It was hard to describe. Like stretching, scratching, and plinking all at once. I assumed it was the pile of scrap in the middle of the room.
“Gah!” I cringed, blinking back tears as my irises were assaulted with white light that had unexpectedly filled the room.
There before me stood The Seer. Mint-Green in color, with gold eyes for the most part, but in all the time I had spent in the Wastes, I had never seen anything more terrifying or beautiful that I’d ever seen than what the Seer was… or is. Except for maybe Rose, but she’s something I can’t talk about at the moment. Regardless, what I saw was both an abomination as well as a work of art. The Seer was a part of the machines that had been in the middle of the room, or maybe it was the other way around. The piles of gadgetry and green terminal screens flickered about and moved with her, trailing behind The Seer like a great mane and tail which, upon closer inspection, was pretty damned close to the truth. Wires snaked into her body, coupled with little bumps and ridges that covered her spine all the way up to her head, where a large conduit was fused into her skull, surrounded by other connected wires and hoses. As she stepped forth from the mayhem, the wires lifted her from the floor, eyes still glowing, and wrapped around her body, conforming to the equivalent of muscle and bone.
“Dear Celestia…” I gasped, looking over at Red Rain, who only watched in awe as the mare became something… more.
By the end of her transformation The Seer didn’t even look like a pony, but instead a bi-pedal machine. The wire-muscles bulged and twisted as the final conduits released from the ceiling, making up whatever counted as a main on the bipedal mega-cyberbeing. The only thing that looked remotely pony-like after it all was her face, which remained exposed between the new structures that encompassed her form.
“Again, children.” She began, her voice loud, clear and seductively exotic, “Welcome to my Chambers.”
My eyes were wide, my hair on end.
“What do you want from us?” I managed to choke out.
The Seer only smiled, reaching out with an appendage that had formed to allow for a hand at the end of it, a functional one, and rode her index finger along my jaw, “ ’Tis simple, Crusader Shield. The Aethor has seen fit to allow your ears to hear a story before the time has come.” The cyborgian pony grinned airily.
She beckoned with her fingers and strode across the floor with a form and grace I would not have expected from such a creature.
“You need only listen, dear Shield. Today is Heart’s Warming Eve.”
I thought for a moment. That was impossible.
“It’s the middle of Summer, uhm…” I stopped, realizing I had no way to address her.
“You may call me Heartstrings, my dear.” she answered looking back through the doorway that had materialized from nothing on the wall opposing our entrance, “Or just Seer… if you prefer.”
“Shield is right though…” Red began, “Seer, it’s only Summer right now.”
She smiled again, the blue glow returning, “Children, come. From all the things you have seen within these walls since your arrival to this facility five minutes ago… have you learned nothing?”
Five minutes ago?
“Seer Heartstrings… we’ve been here for days… what are you talking about?” I asked, confused more than I had ever been before, “In fact, it seems that most of the ponies here don’t have a concept of time!”
The Seer laughed softly, “Dear Shield… While you yourself feel as if you have been here for days, the Aethor sees time differently. I, myself did not truly exist until fifteen minutes before you walked through the door. And you, you have not even arrived. According to the Aethor, what is happening now…has not happened yet. In time, you will understand.” She stepped completely through the door, hips sashaying as she did so, “Come, that is not why you are here though. Not today at least.”
“Then… what are we here for?” I asked with an incredulous tone, ignoring the oncoming headache from trying to figure out what exactly the Seer was talking about, “If we’re not supposed to be here, then why are we?”
Rain punched me in the shoulder.
“Quit doing that!”
“Children, stop and listen.” The Seer spoke.
I found myself in a new room all of a sudden. Had we been walking? Was it another trick of the mind?
“I brought you here. In this place, time and location mean nothing. You are here to hear about Jack and Opal Tulip.”
A catlike grin spread across Heartstring’s face.
“How do you know about them?” I asked, almost demanding.
The seer sat on a chair that had not been within sight a moment before, and gestured with her hands. The room filled with images, static, and holograms.
“Within the Aethor, time is different. Within the Aethor, it is Heart’s Warming Eve.” She began.
“Hey, how do you know-?!” I began to ask again angrily.
“Shh!” Rain hissed in my ear, and began to watch the swirls of color and image play across the entirety of the room.
I shook my head. This was one of those rides that a pony couldn’t stop. I knew it, even if I didn’t like it.
“And because of that… the Fourth Wall breaks! Aethor demands!” she bellowed without warning, opening her arms as a flash of color, and what could only be described as time waves, crashed through my skull. My lungs seized, and I watched as Rain disintegrated before my eyes.
And then it stopped. I found myself heaving and…
“Floating?”
“This is buckin’ awesome.” Rain grinned next to me, “Dude. Watch!”
Rain looped around and spun. In midair. The real kicker was that I could see right through him.
“Are we… dead?” I asked worry spreading across my face as I looked around and noted a familiarity about the place we had appeared in.
“Nay, Crusader Shield.” The familiar voice of The Seer called out inside my head, changing to some strange accent for a moment, appearing next to us, also floating. “Thou art within the Aethor! Come!”
Like most things that happen when one is around an interdimensional being, I was jerked unexpectedly to a new location, passing through walls, dirt, concrete, and even other ponies… which made me feel really dirty. I saw things I wish I hadn’t.
“The playing field…” I mouthed, when we finally stopped moving, hovering above the clouds that floated and whirled lazily below the tip of SR-15.
“Down below is Jack and Opal. The year is After-Equestria zero-zero-seven-four, the twelfth month, the twenty-fifth day, early morning.” Notably, she had changed her voice to a more modern, almost mechanical tone.
I was beginning to think that Heartstrings was not just one pony, but an amalgamation of many personae.
“Let’s take a closer look, it’s not in a book!” she added with almost musical glee, and invisibly dragged our incorporeal hinquarters within viewing range of Jack.
I could swear I heard something like “reading rainbow” in the back of my head.
“There he is!” Rain exclaimed. “… guess he was always as big as he is now.”
At first, I was afraid that someone might freak at seeing three interdimensional beings floating around the festival grounds, but then I remembered all those stories and movies I saw as a young colt. I Guess there was some truth to the whole “can’t see us because we’re not really here” mumbo-jumbo.
Looking below, I did see Jack. And a festival that would have put Nightmare Night in ’87 to shame: Balloons, stands, ponies everywhere.
“Do you see all those cider barrels?” I asked Rain, pointing at a stack of them at least three high and six-by-five longwise, “There’s so MUCH of it!”
“Daaamn… yeah, you’re right. Where were we?” he asked, flipping around in place, clearly enjoying the freedom that flying brought him.
I shook my head and smiled a little at his antics. Personally, I had decided that flying was likely not something that I wanted to do a while ago, so I floated in place, watching Jack.
Our Squad leader looked a lot like he did when we met him. In fact, he’d changed little since then. He still had a yellow mane, and was tall and over muscled to the point of ridiculousness. He charged around a whole group of ponies, nearly knocking them over. He wore a tuxedo, with a white rose dipped into the pocket of his top. For the first time in my life, I saw that his hair was actually styled, instead of short or messy.
“Opal!” he called, “Opal, where are you?”
It was then that I spotted Opal Tulip. Red Rain whistled.
“All the monsters in Tartarus, Shield!” he exclaimed in surprise “The Elder was hot!”
Celestia be damned if my best friend wasn’t right. Elder Opal Tulip was lithe, with a cropped mane and was wearing a gown that made a lot of ponies around her look underdressed for the occasion. It was embroidered with blue flowers, and shone white in the waning sunlight of the evening atop SR-15. The soft reds and oranges of the sun changed the hue of the playing field’s normally blue grass to a deep purple, accentuating the shine of silk on her dress with lavenders and pinks.
I was more surprised at the dress, myself.
“Never figured the Elder for frou-frou.”
Red snorted, laughing a little.
“There is much you do not know about your leaders. Most of it is things like this.”
“Why are you showing us this again?” I asked, more curious this time than angry, “Is it important?”
“Not necessarily.” Our floating tour-guide admitted, “But the Aethor has seen fit to have this shown to the Audaeus.”
“Audaeus?” I asked, but was quickly ‘shushed’ by the Seer.
“Watch. You will bore the Audaeus if you do not.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked quietly, but the Seer ignored it.
I turned my gaze back down to the scene below, where Jack had finally found Opal Tulip… only after knocking over a waiter or two. Other than Jack’s actions, the whole function seemed very high-society.
“Wonder what happened to stuff like this…” I mumbled under my breath.
We floated closer, getting a better view of the two.
“Opal! Finally!” Jack heaved, the two waiters he had knocked over eying him angrily from a distance, apparently not willing to tangle with our then younger squad-leader, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Opal Tulip turned around, her dress flashing in the waning sunlight to greet Jack. She was blushing.
“Jack, dear… You know I hate being called Opal. I don’t know why, but it always seemed like a name someone might give their cat.”
She was blushing, still. Jack smiled a little.
“I like it. Besides, you always kind of did remind me of a cat, anyways.”
Opal Tulip rolled her eyes and put on a perturbed face, “So you think of me as a pet?” she teased.
I guessed Jack hadn’t seen that coming, or maybe he was just dense back then. I got the feeling he had been trying to compliment her, and though she’d taken it as one, the younger version of our Elder had decided to play with Jack a little more. This Elder reminded me a lot of Rose Roulette. I turned to glance at Red Rain, to gauge his reaction, only to find him watching the scene like a housewife might watch a daytime soap opera.
Wait… what?
The Seer raised an eyebrow at me, as if to ask me the same question. Could she hear thoughts?
Jack lowered his ears, and actively took a step back.
“I didn’t mean it like that… I-it was supposed to be a compliment! I swear!” he stammered.
Opal Tulip, to my surprise did not let up on the charade. She kept playing him like a lyre. Stranger still, when I thought that, Heartstrings coughed a little, shivering visibly. My suspicions grew. I wondered though: Why would that thought specifically cause our ethereal tour guide to lose her composure, even in the slightest?
Nevertheless, I turned my attention back to the scene below.
“There’s a simple way you can make it up to me.” She continued, walking around to his flank, and flicking his muzzle with her tail in a way that would topple most stallions, “You can get me an amazing present for the Ceremony of Exchange tonight.”
Jack’s ears perked at that. I could see it in his eyes, the same look that Red Rain said he caught in my eye whenever Rose pulled the same stunt. It was the same look that I personally caught in Red’s eye as well, whenever his mare did something like this to him. He was about to go on a tangent to find the best gift he could find, just for her.
“Do all mares have this power over us?” I wondered aloud.
Red nodded, “I’m afraid so, bro. Isn’t it amazing?” he asked, his chin cradled in his hooves as he floated next to me.
“That’s one thing to call it…” I mused, remembering all the times I’d seen mares absolutely destroy a stallion in the same way, “… I’m just glad mine isn’t like so many others…”
Red nodded in an absent-minded manner, “You and me both.”
Younger Jack-Hammer started speaking again.
“You make it easy.” He answered Opal Tulip with confidence, “I’ve already got the most amazing, awesome gift you’ll ever see.”
I was pretty sure he wasn’t fooling her, but Opal continued to play along with the kind of sly smile you might expect from a southern belle… how did I even know what that was? Seer Heartstrings smirked and giggled just enough for me to hear.
“Oh?” Opal asked, “Then I can’t wait to see it.” She prodded Jack’s side, “Shall we meet back here when the festivities really get started?” she asked.
Jack nodded fervently. Yep. He didn’t have squat. I knew it. I was a little surprised that Opal hadn’t asked to see it right there just to mess with him and watch him flounder around for an excuse.
“I think Opal’s got something more up her sleeve than we’re seeing.” I mused.
Red Rain looked over in my direction, his incorporeal-looking form floating upside down now.
“Whaddya mean?” He asked.
“I’m not sure just yet…” I admitted slowly, “Something’s off though.”
Before I knew it, Jack took off in the direction of the tunnel leading back into SR-15, leaving Opal Tulip smirking well-manneredly alone atop the mountain. She maintained that smirk, until he was out of sight, and then took off in a panic. Red and I followed. I knew it would take some time for Jack to reach the Outpost Exchange, so we had at least some time to figure out what Miss Tulip was up to.
