Inheritance · 7:35am Oct 2nd, 2023
If your mother was a monster, who was killed because she deserved to be killed, how long would it take you to come to terms with that? How long would it take you to be able to face her executioners without hating them? Could you ever?
These were questions Gritt had pushed into the recesses of his mind for six years, but he was about to finally confront them.
***** ***** *****
I was eighteen, and had already gained a bit of notoriety in my field. Killing for caps. After four years spent in the Bloodfeather Talons, killing those who deserved it had become as easy as breathing. When I turned sixteen, I was ready to go into business for myself. Two years into it, I was certain I made the right call. The flexibility of freelance work gave me a freedom I'd never known before.
It also made it easy to respond to something urgent. I'm not sure the NCR patrol was looking for me specifically, they were just looking for anyone who could help as quickly as possible. A massive force of raiders, over a hundred of them, were marching from Galloping Gorge. Glyphmark was the first settlement in their path. I happened to be nearby.
Apparently, Deadshot Calamity had gotten wind of it as well. I could imagine how that conversation went. Killin' raiders? Where do ah sign up? Ah don't care how many there are! Jus' point me at 'em! I'd encountered him before, in similar circumstances. Just not on this scale.
There wasn't any talking between us. I'd found my own perch on one end of the Angel Bunny veterinary pharmacy, and he'd found one on the other. The little zebra town below us was mostly kids. Some were my age, and there was a minority of adults. They had some weapons and training, but not enough to repel the incoming attack. The legendary pegasus sharpshooter, a handful of NCR soldiers, and I were desperately needed.
The majority of the raiders were going to be common scum. Cannon fodder. The real problem would be their leaders. A rogue Steel Ranger named Atlas, and an Enclave war criminal named Achilles. Strange bedfellows, to say the least. Dangerous, too. Neither could be allowed to reach the town. None of the raiders would step a single hoof past its border.
*****
The army of diseased, bloodthirsty trash approached from the west, the sun setting behind them. They must have thought that would give them an advantage.
Crack!
The first raider, a dingy dirt mare, dropped as she trotted within two thousand yards. The others gave brief pause, then charged at the boom of Atlas's cannons. Calamity and I dropped them as they galloped. Once they were within a thousand yards, the NCR soldiers opened fire as well. At five hundred yards, the zebras added their bullets to the fray.
Less than half of the raiders remained, and their fear of us was beginning to overrule their fear of their leaders. Atlas finally made his presence known by turning those who attempted to flee into meaty chunks. His armor was barely recognizable as that of a Steel Ranger, with the abundance of bones and junk adorning it. The raider camouflage had effectively made him hard to pick out from the crowd. I had to assume his second in command had adopted the same strategy, which would explain why I hadn't seen her in the air.
Now that I had Atlas figured out, he was done for. First, an armor piercing round through his visor. He dropped, and became still. That didn't mean he was dead, since that armor had all sorts of ways to keep its occupant alive. To guarantee the kill, I followed up with an explosive round, straight into the hole I had already punched. The contents of his helmet exploded out the back.
"R-Retreat!" A shrill voice sounded from the raiders' back ranks. I briefly saw Achilles' wings unfurl, but she stayed on the ground, with a number of meat shields between us and her. Coward.
"That was it?" I muttered as the last of the surviving raiders vanished over the horizon. "A braindead frontal assault was the best they had?"
Calamity flew down with me as I got down from the roof. "What 'cha expect? Ah reckon they didn't think we'd have a defense ready fast enough to stop 'em."
"Fair enough." Raiders typically weren't the brightest, but I expected more given the leaders' backgrounds.
*****
We helped the town drag the bodies into a pile to be burned. I wrenched Atlas' helmet off to keep as a souvenir. After a gag-inducing momentary glance inside, I flew to the river to wash it out. Whatever brains the stallion had, they were gone now.
Trotting back, I noticed Calamity speaking to a specific pair of zebra mares. They had been giving me weird looks ever since I arrived. In fact, as soon as I got here, they both looked like they'd seen a ghost when they laid eyes on me. Their expressions now, as the pegasus spoke to them, looked like... guilt?
I unfurled my wings and closed the distance. Whatever they were saying, they stopped and turned to me as soon as I was in earshot. All of their ears laid flat, and their expressions looked worried.
Calamity stepped forward. "Gritt, could you... Could you set your guns on the ground?"
My head rotated almost ninety degrees at the absurd request. "Huh?"
"Just... please." The worried sincerity in his eyes formed a pit in my stomach. What was this about?
"Oookay?" I did as he asked, laying all my guns on the ground in front of me. I felt extremely vulnerable without them, but I trusted the famous wasteland hero.
He rubbed his neck, then took off his hat. "These two are Xenith and Xephyr. They... They, um..."
The younger of the two mares stepped past him towards me. "We are the ones who killed Stern."
Her lips continued to move, but any sounds they made became droning white noise. I couldn't move, my veins turning to ice and my limbs becoming numb. My tongue became cotton, and every breath became a conscious effort that stung my throat.
They were the ones. They killed my mom.
I took a step toward my guns.
*****
Calamity had a hoof pressed to my chest by the time I had a grip on my revolver. His wings were unfurled, shielding the zebras who turned me into an orphan. He could feel how badly I was shaking. I could barely see him through the tears welling in my eye.
Neither of us spoke a word as I stowed each of my weapons.
I turned and flew away into the night.
That's pretty sad, but everyone has family and it can be surprising how it comes back around to affect characters like this. I'm sure it also hurts for Gritt to know that he's probably the only person who was upset at her death too
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Being alone in mourning her was definitely painful for him. In spite of everything, he loved his mom.
If Calamity hadn't been there, he would have killed Xenith and Xephyr, or at least tried to, and would have regretted it for the rest of his life.
Imagine if Liese had been as evil and monstrous as Stern. Would Kaz still have tried to kill Brimstone?
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Gritt's attitude towards Xenith and Xephyr eventually mellows out. He never likes them, but he stops hating them. He gets it. He knows what kind of person Stern was. He knows she had to die. He knows she deserved to die. He will also never completely forgive them, because he didn't deserve to lose his mom.
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That's understandable, since it would be very difficult for anyone to accept, forgive, or forget something like that. On the other hand, Gritt really would have to learn to live with it, and it's hard to blame them for trying to kill Stern when they're fighting for their lives.
As for your earlier comment that I missed, relatedly, Kaz would have been quite conflicted about Liese dying if she'd been such an irredeemable monster even if he'd have probably wanted to kill Brimstone anyway since he'd caused so much suffering, but he wouldn't have pushed his luck like he did.
His relationship with Liese was difficult because in a lot of ways he did view her as a sociopathic bully when they were younger, particularly when she willingly joined Talon Company, but he had to learn to judge her more fairly after experiencing it himself. In the end their reasons for joining weren't so different. She joined to gain a semblance of control and power over her life again, and he joined to get out of desperate poverty, which is a sense of powerlessness on its own. He realized she wasn't beating up or killing people for fun or because she simply didn't care.
If she had been like that, he'd have probably still been shaken and angry over her loss, but not as much. But then, she was his sister, who he hadn't really seen for a few years before Longtalons started, and not his mother.
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Gritt's learned to live with a lot of things. A lot about his unique situation makes him feel like an outsider, even among other former Talons. He didn't get trained alongside other cadets and he was never part of a squad. Stern and Jade were really the only people he was around aside from occasional interactions. Though he does enjoy seeing the people he recognizes. When Filly fell, everything he had for the first 12 years of his life ceased to exist. Anytime he finds a sliver of that past still intact, something good from it, he clings to it.
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If he wasn't born a Talon, he never could have been one simply due to his lacking physical stature. He never stopped being smaller than most ponies. Even if we was still born a Talon, but not Stern's kid, he'd either have been dismissed or delegated to non-combat support roles.
Gritt's range performance vs his field performance and physical.
For better or worse, Stern found something he was good at and obsessed over making him the best at it. She was not going to allow her child to be a useless embarrassment. It kept him alive, but also stuck with only having one marketable skill for the rest of his life.
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Crimson was the only person Gritt could talk to about Stern, and he's where he got a lot of his disillusionment about her from. Crim was not shy about discussing what an awful person she was.
One such conversation was about whether Gritt would ever see her again. He became somewhat religious just to cling to that hope. Crimson did not sugarcoat his response.
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That makes a lot of sense from Stern's point of view, and I'm sure it was a difficult thing for Gritt while he was younger, knowing that he was objectively a bad fit for Talon Company but having no real say in the matter. At least he was an excellent shot, otherwise he'd have had an even more miserable time.
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If Gritt did turn out to be "worthless" in Stern's eyes, and just got some kind of clerk job, at least he'd have gotten to spend more time with Egon. He probably would have had a childhood crush on the purple griff.
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I always imagined that's how Egon and Zella got the jobs they did. They were judged to be less fitting for combat, but both were smart so they got put to work in clerical jobs that suited them well and made good use of them.
Incidentally, I always imagined that Heidi "rescued" Egon in that sense, though it's not something I ever planned in any detail. She probably personally picked him from a group of physical underperformers to be her assistant, and after getting to know and deeply appreciate his efficiency at bureaucracy and ability to keep a lot of people from bothering her personally, she almost came to look at him like a son.
It was probably an open secret or speculation that Egon was bisexual, though it's again something I never explored in the story aside from hints. It's the sort of thing the soldiers knew better than to bring up or make fun of, since Heidi protected Egon fiercely and nobody wanted to incur that wrath. Egon might have entertained any proposals from Gritt, depending on the circumstances, but if he knew he was related to Stern that would have made him nervous at the prospect. Gritt at least wouldn't have had anything to fear from Heidi if she knew about it, and as long as he didn't hurt Egon in the process. Physically or otherwise.
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I wonder how leave works for the Talon kids, or if they even get it. They probably can't go anywhere, at least not without a chaperone. Gritt definitely couldn't. If he got a couple weeks of vacation from training, he'd pretty much have to spend it at the Fun Farm, and hope he got it at the same time as another kid so he'd have someone to hang out with. At least there were some scavenged pre-war films he could entertain himself with, his favorites being the Bits Trilogy.
Six-shooter gun slinging wasn't ever part of his training. I doubt Talon would ever consider equipping a soldier with a single-action revolver over standard 10mm. Watching those movies just inspired him to teach himself.
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I guessed that they probably had "classes" like a grade school and would have short off periods together, but that would be subject to however many hatched at any given time and I doubt they were allowed to leave the bases.
That said, I'm sure prewar movies would be very popular if they could get the equipment working, so that's totally possible.
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As painful as that interaction would have been, Heidi is the most likely person Gritt would learn Egon's fate from. He'd track her down, assuming he'd be with her, see that he wasn't, and put two and two together.
If there's one thing Gritt shares with his father, it's a tendency to get lost in nostalgia. Having a hard time letting go of the good things that are gone forever. That's why Gritt would have such a desire to connect with people from back then. A vain attempt to get those things back.
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Which makes sense, and I'm sure a lot of Talons or even slaves from Fillydelphia would do the same. The hardships forge a lot of bonds.
I'm sure Egon would be a very sore topic for Heidi, but she'd probably at least be willing to tell Gritt that Egon was killed during the Enclave attack if he managed to get her to talk about the subject. She didn't want to forget him, so that would probably be a good avenue to convince her to talk about it at all, really, though she'd be cagey about details regarding Fillydelphia as usual. Other than her, Kaz's squad would be the only ones who could even tell him what happened to Egon, but of course none of them saw what happened.