Fallout Equestria: Ashes to Ashes

by Tango

Chapter 7: Melodies

The next morning we ate our breakfast in silence before heading back on the road. I think neither of us knew where we were going, except for the fact that it was away from Saltash and Neighvac. After half an hour I was the first to break the silence. “Shouldn't we head back to Neighvac?” Right now that was the only place where I knew I would be safe.

But Lazuli shook her head. “They will be expecting that, meaning that every slaver and raider between us and Neighvac is waiting for us to pass by. And considering what we did to Silver Tongue I think we may have a bounty on our heads. The only way to make sure is to find a radio somewhere though.”

I shrugged. “All right, how long do you reckon it will take for them to give up?”

“I have no idea honestly, but at least a couple of weeks. Until then it would be smart to stay out of the area, lay low.”

“We're gonna need to trade sooner or later,” I pointed out. “Our supplies will last about a week, but if we keep going longer than that we will be starving.”

Lazuli nodded. “You're right, if we find a town we'll go in to gather more supplies.”

I nodded as well. “All right.”

That concluded our only conversation for that morning, neither of us made an attempt to start a new one. Normally I didn't have any trouble walking, I would just zone out and keep going, just letting my thoughts float free in my brain. Every time I tried that now though, my mind went back to my bedroom and the doctor's office. I had to actively block those thoughts to prevent reliving those memories.

So I decided to train my horn a bit, see if that would distract me enough. Over the night my headache had subsided and allowed me to use magic again, though it took effort. So I started levitating random rocks from the ground and moved them around in as intricate patterns as I could, which would be circles. As I had demonstrated before though, me not paying attention to where I put my hooves often ended poorly. This was no exception.

As we rounded a corner, I astonished myself by managing to take down three ponies: myself by tripping, Lazuli by causing her to laugh so hard that her legs collapsed underneath her, and the pony I literally bumped into by sheer surprise. I was happy to note that the pony's tail smelled and tasted as if it had been washed very recently, though that wonderful smell quickly disappeared as my head continued its descent towards the hard dusty wasteland. It was disappointing to notice that the wasteland hadn't been washed recently on the particular spot where my muzzle made contact.

While I was busy scraping the dirt of my tongue, Lazuli had helped the other pony up. It turned out to be a stallion. A teal earth pony with indigo hair and a very annoyed look on his face. Also mud, a lot of mud decorated his features as well. Apparently he had fallen face first into a large pool of the stuff that was covering most of the road. “Uhm, sorry?” I gave him my best apologetic smile.

Strangely enough my smile did not help calm him down. Perhaps I had to work on my smile, or maybe it would have helped if Lazuli would stop rolling and laughing. She did have an undeniable point though: the sight of the otherwise spotless stallion with his face covered in mud was pretty funny, especially since he started opening and closing his mouth repeatedly, like a fish out of the water. Or at least that's what fish did according to my old teacher. And I must say that his enactment looked pretty much exactly like what the strange buck was doing.

“Ow come on, lighten up! It's just some mud.” I tried to cheer him up.

“Just mud?!” I nodded in confirmation, he probably had some mud in his ears and hadn't heard me well.

“Just mud?!” I kept nodding, he seemed to be a bit slow in understanding me.

I was just about to lift my chin again to complete yet another nod when he tackled me and pinned me to the ground. He brought his muddy face near mine and started yelling. “Do you have any idea how long I've spent getting cleaned up this morning? Do you?” Honestly I had no idea and the fact that there now was a fully grown stallion sitting on top of me didn't really help me focus.

“Four bucking hours! That's how long!” That confused me thoroughly.

“Why would you even want to do that?” I asked while scratching my head. “We're in the wasteland! What's the point in getting clean if something's gonna try killing you later?” Sure, getting clean was nice and necessary from time to time. But it was a luxury and a shiny coat was a poor investment choice since it would get dirty again the very same day. Over the years I had come in contact with lots of types of filth: dust, mud, weird sludge that made your skin peel off (luckily only a couple of drops), blood, rain, organs, and pieces of brain. Hell, I probably still had bits of Asshole on me. And in me... I smacked my head to punish my brain for bringing that back up. Instead I pictured how good it would be to get a bath, I probably deserved it too.

While my brain was rambling about, the stallion had gotten off of me, Lazuli's pistol pointed at his skull might have had something to do with that. I got up and nodded at her. “Thanks.” Then I turned back to the stallion. “Look, sorry for running into you, but you were gonna get dirty one way or the other out here.” I shrugged and gestured for Lazuli to lower her gun.

Then the buck did something I wasn't expecting: he broke into tears, they were streaming down his cheeks and mixing with the mud.

Lazuli was the first to react. “Uhm, are you all right?” He shook his head and continued crying. Needless to say, it was a rather awkward situation.

I decided it was my turn to do something, considering that it was more or less my fault for bumping into him. So I asked. “Can we do anything to help?” I may have been hoping that he would invite us to help him bath again, so that I might have the chance to get clean as well. It wasn't fair that this good smelling stallion was complaining about how filthy he was from some mud while I probably still had pieces of brain in my mane.

To my utter disappointment however, he shook his head and whined. “It's too late! It is of no use anymore, all is lost forever!” He flailed his hooves and head around pretty dramatically, causing me to feel a whole lot of things at the same time: jealousy for his shiny coat and good smell (except on his face and were he had made contact with my body), pity for his situation for which I was responsible, wariness for the hooves that were spinning around and annoyance for the fact that he just gave up like that.

So in a fit of brilliance I trotted over to him, dodged his legs and grabbed his shoulders before yelling in his face. “Calm down! Get a grip on yourself! We are gonna help you whether you like it or not!” From the look in his eyes I concluded it was going to be the latter. At least he stopped crying and throwing his legs around.

I stared into his bright azure eyes. “You are going to tell me what the hay is wrong with you and then we will fix that, understood?” He slowly nodded and sighed.

“Fine. I guess that's the least you can do after ruining weeks of preparation.” I shrugged, letting him know to get on with it. “There's this mare...” He paused and I nodded impatiently, I was a mare too, but did I put dramatic every time I told ponies that?

He sighed again and continued. “Her name is Siren and she's the single most beautiful creature in the world. I want to spend the rest of my life by her side, and today I planned to ask her. I've been saving caps for months now so I could buy her a gift and make myself worthy of her presence. That is, until you came along and ruined all of my preparations.” I wasn't sure whether to vomit or feel bad for him, sure vomiting seemed only natural after hearing the way he spoke of her, but my breakfast hadn't been that tasty the first time and I wasn't sure if it would become better on the way out. I decided to just go with feeling bad for him.

“I'm sorry and I will do whatever I can to help you get noticed by her, promise.” I rehearsed the old rhyme I knew from when I was still a foal and crossed my heart, hoped to fly and jammed my hoof into my eye. Upon the incredulous look from both Lazuli and the teal buck I shrugged. “What? I learned that from Coal.”

Lazuli smacked a fly on her forehead and the stallion just stared at me blankly. “You're kidding right? Surely you must be kidding.”

I shrugged and offered a hoof, which he suspiciously looked at before shaking. It was a bit difficult to connect our hooves since one of my eyes was tearing profusely, but we managed. “I'm not kidding, and my name is Ember. And that,” I pointed at the turquoise mare who was giving me an incredulous stare. “is Lazuli.”

“...I see...” The stallion said before clearing his throat. “My name is Pump and I need to go back as soon as possible, but I can't appear in front of Siren like this. So, what do we do now?”

“How about we get you cleaned first?” Lazuli suggested while fishing a water bottle out of her saddlebags. Before Pump could protest she had emptied the bottle over his head, washing off the mud and revealing the annoyed look on his face.

“Great, now I'm all we-.” He was cut off as his mouth was stuffed with towel, expertly thrown at him by a smirking Lazuli.

“Here, dry yourself up and stop whining.” The surprised buck quickly complied and soon his face was dry again. It was probably nowhere near as clean as how it had been before I had bumped him into the mud, but it was better than, for example, my own face.

Lazuli also seemed pleased with the result as she took the towel back and stuffed it into her saddlebag. “Never leave without one.” she muttered before closely inspecting Pump from all angles, from his muzzle to his hooves, as he stood there absolutely still. When she was done she smacked him on his cutie mark: a drop of water falling towards a pipe. “You're clean.”

The teal buck gave a loud yelp and jumped in surprise. When he came down again he turned back at Lazuli and glared daggers at her. She just grinned back at him. Pump sighed and turned away from his chuckling competitor and faced me, looking a bit nervous. “Well, I guess I'm off now. I wouldn't want to keep Siren waiting.” He gulped and carefully inched his way around the mud pool. Me and Lazuli looked at each other and shrugged.

Five minutes later, when he arrived on the other side and finally looked up again, he found himself face to face with both me and Lazuli. He scrambled back a few steps to the edge of the brown goo before staring at us in disbelief. “H-How did you two get here?!”

In unison, me and Lazuli grinned and showed our muddy hooves. “We took a shortcut.”

Pump shook his head in disapproval. “If you are to come with me, you must clean yourselves. I will not allow anypony to defile Siren's surroundings with such filth.”

Lazuli blew raspberries at him. “Oh lighten up. There are much worse things than having a little mud on your hooves. It will dry and crumble off before we're there.” With that, she turned around and trotted away. I quickly caught up with her, and we went on our way. Pump followed closely behind, shouting arguments for why we really should get cleaned.

Roughly twenty minutes later Pump had gained my respect. Not only for his determination of convincing us, but also for his stubbornness; even when the mud had crumbled off our legs he still insisted that we were way too filthy and that Siren would faint from our stench. The latter part was admittedly pretty annoying as well and I could see that Lazuli didn't like it either, so we both ignored him.

After about fifteen minutes he gave up and instead started humming a strange tune. It was then that I noticed a weird cord hanging from his ear. When we asked him about it he told us that it was an earbloom, connected to a tape recorder, and allowed him to listen to music. Before we I could ask if he would be willing to share the music, we reached the top of a hill and looked over a gentle-sloped valley and Pump promptly shut up, growing a big grin on his face. “Sirenville.” he said in awe.

On top of a small hill on the other side of said valley stood a large and impressive looking villa. It seemed to be very well maintained, even now several ponies were busy carrying out repairs and repainting the bright white planks. The villa itself wasn't the most interesting part for me though, since around it was something I only knew from pictures: actually green trees, grass, bushes and even flowers! The whole hill was a patch of colour in the otherwise dull and grey wasteland and it was beautiful. Throughout the gardens even more ponies were moving around, tending to the astonishing plants.

I found my mouth was still hanging open as we trotted to the foot of the hill, were numerous shacks and hovels were scattered around. The ponies roaming the street all seemed so happy, though about a quarter of them were dressed like raiders. It was a strange sight, seeing such menacing looking ponies smile so broadly. In fact, their joy seemed contagious. On our way to the mansion I couldn't help but smile at the discovery of this incredible place. It seemed so nice here, so colourful, so lively. Faintly, I heard a mare singing an amazing song. I was drawn to the melodies that seemed to be coming from all of the houses, but the loudest source was the hill. Impatiently I increased my pace until I arrived at the garden.

Around the garden a fence was built and the gate was guarded by half a dozen guards. Upon seeing Pump they smiled even wider and stepped aside, granting us access to the villa. As we walked through the garden I occasionally stopped to simply stare at the wonderful display of life. All the ponies smiled and nodded at us as we went past them, and I waved and smiled enthusiastically back. I took in the scents from the grass, the trees and the flowers and I was happy.

I also was right in the assumption that the voice came from the villa. As Pump knocked on the door I could hear it clearly. The song wasn't made out of words, but rather soothing melodies. As the sounds entered my ear they hugged my brain and told it that everything was going to be okay. That I had nothing to worry about and that I could shake off all of my sorrows. I happily obliged and let my mind relax as I followed Pump through the door opening. While entering, a part of my brain protested and yelled that I was forgetting something or someone. The music smothered that part though and assured me that I had nothing to worry about.

Trusting the music, I walked inside behind Pump, doing my best to be as silent as possible. I wouldn't want to pollute the music with the sounds of my hoofsteps would I? As the teal stallion lead the way, a warm feeling spread in my heart. The music became clearer and clearer as we continued through the hallway to a pair of large doors.

Without hesitation I entered the room, eager to find the creator of the mesmerizing notes.

I was a bit disappointed to find out it was a tape recorder on repeat. It was standing in the middle of a large living room, filled with beautiful, antique furniture. The wall on the far side had a pair of windows in it, running from floor to ceiling and overlooking the garden. All of the other walls were decorated by numerous life-sized paintings of a stunning beige mare with a swirling chocolate brown mane.

After staring at the closest work of art for a couple of seconds, a sudden stirring in the middle of the room made my attention focus there. From a comfortable looking bench that was facing the windows, a familiar pony had stood up and was now looking at me with the same emerald eyes that decorated the paintings.

“And who might you be?” the stunning mare asked with the most mesmerizing voice I had ever heard. Just listening to her simple question caused my jaw to fall wide open and left me at loss for words. Not that I needed any, since before I remembered that she had asked me a question, she already cut me off. “Never mind, do not bother telling me. I would not be able to remember all the names of my admirers anyway. Of course you must be dying to acquire my name.” I found myself nodding fervently and leaning closer, which was a bit strange, since I already figured out that she was Siren. It was no rocket science.

The beige mare whipped her mane and struck a pose similar to the largest painting. She looked at me en profile from the corner of her eyes and gave me an alluring smile. “My name,” she paused dramatically and caused me to hold my breath. “is Siren.” She turned her head back to face me. “And this is my lovely piece of paradise.”

I couldn't deny that Sirenville was lovely indeed. Or at least the fenced off part. The area without the slums and the ponies who, I suddenly realised, looked unnaturally happy, especially in their raider clothing. It also seemed a bit unfair that Siren lived in a mansion, while all the other ponies worked for her. What did she give for compensation? The music? Speaking of which, the recorder seemed to have stopped and Siren was rewinding the tape, I think. I wasn't really an expert on how tape recorders worked. Where was I again? I looked around the room, my eyes stopping at the numerous paintings. It seemed strange to me, why would anypony want that many paintings of herself? All she really needed was a mirror. Oh wait, there were at least eight of those. She really did seem to like herself. And beautiful stuff, like the garden. I wondered where she got the water from. Then I wondered why she would waste perfectly fine water on decorative plants. I kinda started to dislike the mare with several musical notes, swirling around the head of a stylised pony, for a cutie mark. Actually, I should probably tell her what was on my mind. Yes, that seemed like a good idea, I opened my mouth and stepped forward, just as a delicate click sounded from the recorder and the astonishing music filled the air once again.

“Siren, I...” What was I going to say again? I remembered something about her cutie mark, had I been staring at her flank? As fast as I could I stepped back and lowered my head in shame, a large blush on my cheeks.

Siren paid me no attention though and instead focused on Pump. It made me a bit envious to see her smile at him, talk to him, but at least she hadn't noticed how I had been looking at her. “So, am I correct to assume that you have solved the problems with the water supply?” she asked Pump.

In response, the teal buck nodded so fast that it was almost impossible to keep track of his muzzle. “Yes my love, everything is fixed now. And as you have seen, I brought these two mares, who helped me clean myself after the red one bumped me into some mud.” He pointed his hoof at me and... Strange, I could have sworn there should be another mare next to me, if only because Pump said so. The thought was quickly carried away by the playful notes from the recorder, the fact that Siren seemed to burn her gaze into my soul also helped to bring my focus back.

Incidentally, the stare also caused a warm trickle to flow down one of my legs.

Deeply embarrassed by the leak and frightened to death by the look in Siren's eyes, I stumbled back. She closed in on me, horn flaring and giving the small puddle a wide berth. “Where is the other one? He said there were two of you, but I only see you. So I ask you. Where. Is. She? Where is the mare that defies me?” Her words hurt. Literally. It felt as if she was punching me with each syllable.

Within moments I was lying on the floor, rolled up in a ball. “I don't know!” I answered truthfully. “I didn't even remember her! Please, anything, I'll do anything for you! I will make it up to you, I swear!” Every fibre in my body wanted to help Siren find the other mare. To bring her to justice so that my love's wrath would be calmed.

What? 'My love'? Where did that come from? I hardly even knew what that word entailed! Yet, it felt right somehow. Yes. Siren was my love!

I crawled over to her and kissed her hooves, which seemed to ease her anger somewhat. More importantly, she directed it to Pump instead of me. “You, water caretaker. How did you lose her?”

Pump whimpered and held up a hoof defensively. “I'm sorry! I have been careless. She must have slipped away while we were hurrying through town, restless as we were to bask in your glory.” I only understood about half of what he was saying but nodded to back him up nevertheless.

Siren let out a dramatic sigh. “Very well then, let the guards keep an eye out for her, and show the other one around and find an appropriate job for her. Oh, and send somepony to clean up this mess!” She pointed at the result of my fear with a look of disgust on her face. I was rather glad that I hadn't been standing on the rug, but instead on the stone floor.

Pump nodded and quickly left the room with me hot on his tail. We stopped by a bulky, lemon-coloured stallion who looked like he could crush either one of us by simply looking at us. The only thing that made him look slightly less tough was the stylish butler uniform he was wearing and the fact that it seemed to be two sizes to small for him. The muscled buck didn't seem bothered in the slightest by it though as Pump exchanged some words with him. Occasionally they shot looks in my direction, and by the stare the stallion gave me, I suspected he would be the one to clean up my mess. That was incidentally the main reason why I didn't want to come any closer to the pair.

After a couple of minutes they broke up and the lemon buck went his own way again. Pump looked back at me and gestured for me to follow him throughout the hallway. Neither of us spoke a word as we trotted outside, back through the garden and the gate, where Pump informed the guards to look out for... Lazuli. That was her name! She was my friend, but at the same time Siren didn't like her, which meant that if I saw her, I could bring her to Siren. That way she might forgive me for my stupid behaviour! Way to go brain! You're awesome!

When we were done dealing with the guards, my guide brought me to a tall, uhm, structure directly at the base of the hill. It was a bit difficult to describe since it had no obvious shape, except for it being tall and thin. It appeared as if somepony had decided to take some giant steel toothpicks and placed them vertically, leaning onto each other. For good measure some ropes were tied around the long beams while pieces of junk were attached to the at seemingly random locations. When I looked closer, I saw that the planks, tires, shopping carts and other things were not placed randomly; instead they made up a stairs around the outside of the tower. All in all I felt like I could bring the whole thing down by sneezing in its general direction..

Pump smacked me on the back. “Congratulations! You're on guard duty, now get up there and do your job.”

Half of my brain screamed that climbing up that thing would be my worst idea to date, but the other half argued that this job would keep Siren safe and that that was all that mattered. The tunes that drifted from the manor shushed my panic by assuring me that the tower was completely safe and confirmed my suspicion that keeping Siren safe and sound was the most important thing in my life.

So I nodded an impatiently looking Pump and started my ascension. Even though I had some experience with climbing onto really tall structures, at least the dragon hadn't been swaying slightly in the wind. And I never had to actually make small jumps between platforms to get up Fifty's sniping post. The only things that kept me going were the fact that I never looked down and my resolve to never let Siren down.

It took me the better part of an hour to complete my heroic climb, but when I got to the top I was happy to find a platform with safety rails on all sides of a small platform. Besides a chair, there were several crates, some filled with food and drinks, one with only empty bottles and a mattress. Onto the five corners of the safety rails, umbrellas were strapped, creating a small roof. The fabric of the umbrellas was only slightly perforated and would probably hold most of the rain, though due to the way they were positioned most of the water would flow to the middle of the platform, which was unfortunately the location of my mattress.

Besides all the luxurious accommodations of my watchtower, there was also a small speaker box which, judging by the lovely sounds coming from it, was directly connected to the tape recorder in the villa. “How nice of Siren to have them install it.”I thought with a wide grin on my face.

No sooner had I thought those thoughts, or I panicked. And with good reason, since the whole platform tilted slightly. Looking around for the source of the goddess-forsaken movement, my eyes found a rope which was attached to the floor and held up by a crane. The reason why I hadn't spotted it sooner was probably because it was A: at the edge of my safe zone and B: more like a single H-beam with the rope held between the flanges. I had little interest in having my platform pulled over so I grabbed the rope and pulled it up. It took a while, but in the end I discovered the gift basket on the bottom.

Ah, so this was how I would get supplies up here. It was actually pretty smart, since I did not want to use the 'stairs' more often than necessary. After dumping the basket's contents onto my mattress, I slowly lowered it back down. Once that was done I went to see what goodies Siren had bestowed upon me.

The most obvious thing that lay upon my bed was a large rifle. It was not as big as Fifty's, but up here it was a definite improvement over my three shotguns. Besides the gun, the basket contained fifty rounds of ammunition and a note. Curiously I grabbed the note and started reading:

Dear [insert name here],

you are bestowed upon the honour of serving the amazing Siren.
For this prestigious duty we would like to congratulate you and wish you the best of luck.
Do your absolute best in our collaborative effort to rebuild Equestria's former and you will be rewarded generously.
With this note you will find the equipment necessary to do your job. Use it well.

Sincerely,

your beloved Siren.

P.S. Do not turn off your designated speaker box in your living area. Punishment for disobedience of this order is severe.

A personal note from Siren! Sure, it was not directed to 'Ember', but since I never got around to tell her my name that was hardly her fault. I was so excited that I had contain myself to not jump around like a maniac. She actually cared for me, this meant she probably forgave me for leaving my mark on her floor too!

The note gave me enough determination to do something I hadn't done so far, and that was a crucial part of my job too: looking around. I scurried carefully towards the edge of my little platform and got familiar with my surroundings. My tower was slightly higher then the villa, even though it was standing at the foot of the hill, and this meant I had a perfect view inside the closest rooms. Slightly left to the villa I could make out the mountain range separating Neighvac from Saltash on the horizon. Slowly spinning counter-clockwise, I spotted a couple of the lone towers that littered the wasteland randomly, the ruins of a small town several kilometres away, smoke coming from a city on the horizon and dusty dirt, lots and lots of it.

The most interesting part was probably Siren's villa, or perhaps the burning city. I kept looking in between the two when I realized that my job was to look out for threats, not architecture. It was a boring job, really. I had a pretty clear view on the area around the town, and it was completely devoid of life. After staring at the dirt and rocks for several hours, night was beginning to fall and I was severely bored. At least the music from the speaker kept me from falling to sleep.

As the light from the obscured sun slowly faded away, I briefly wondered when Siren would go to bed, and if I could see her from my venture point. I looked at the villa, trying to determine what room she could be in when I saw it: a turquoise mare opening a window, trying to break in. Without hesitation I aimed my rifle at her and readied it to fire.

I hesitated.

I knew this mare and my mind was screaming at me not to shoot her, to let her live. As my brain revolted though, the music seemed to grow louder and more threatening until it drowned out the resistance. I was convinced. Siren regarded the turquoise mare as a threat, and thus she needed to be removed.

My sights lined up with her head and I held my breath.

I bit the trigger and the world slowed down.

The bullet was launched forward by a jet of hot gasses that quickly dispersed after leaving the rifle's mouth. The small piece of streamlined lead flew towards the mare's head, leaving a blast of sound in its wake that extremely briefly cleared my mind. If it was by instinct or pure luck I do not know, but Lazuli had managed to pry open the window's lock just moments ago and bended slightly downward to open it, allowing the bullet only graze her mane before shattering the glass behind her into thousands of little pieces.

Time stopped being silly and went back to normal again as hell broke loose. From all around Sirenville, shouts and yells echoed as ponies were looking for the source of the gunshot. I myself had never fired a proper rifle before and had not been suspecting it to kick back so strongly that it would sent me flying to my mattress. Lazuli, to her credit, was stunned for mere seconds before turning around to see where the shot had come from.

As I scrambled back up my hooves I panicked. Not only had I damaged Siren's villa, but I had left the source of her frustration alive! I brought my rifle back up and started firing at the offending mare. As it turns out, shooting at a zigzagging target while being in a state of hysteria does not improve accuracy and within moments she was at the base of my tower.

I briefly wondered about what she was planning to do, since getting up to me was hardly an option. The way she ran away from the tower again, which was much like the way she backed off from Asshole after slipping a grenade into his bags left me with a fairly good idea of what she was doing.

In an amazing epiphany I jumped back onto my mattress and wrapped it around me as tightly as possible.

It was not a moment too soon as I felt and heard a loud explosion, coming from almost directly underneath me. The shock waves sent the whole structure shaking, but that was far from the scariest movement. Veeery slowly my tower started to tip over, in the direction of the villa. Soon however, that veeery slowly turned into regularly slowly, then into trotting speed, galloping and finally holybuckI'mgoingtodie!-speed, which was admittedly the most frightening of all.

As I made my way towards one of the side rooms of the villa I kept myself wrapped as tightly as possible in my my protective mattress, which turned out to be made out of a highly absorbent material. Maybe drinking those three sparkle cola's during my watch hadn't been a good idea. Also I screamed. A lot.

The sound of my screams was dwarfed by the immense noise that sounded when the metal construction made contact with the wooden building. I only knew what margarine looked like from school, but I could suddenly picture the phrase 'like a knife through hot butter' very well.

Besides rediscovering old words, I also found out that even though my cushion of safety did soften my fall, it did not prevent the bones in my right shoulder from snapping and tearing through my skin. And I can tell you that though that sound sickening, it was nowhere near as bad as the feeling it left me with. I continued the tradition of expelling bodily fluids by vomiting violently from the pain. And yes, the stuff that came out was more or less a fluid if you must know, so my previous sentence stands.

A side effect from crashing into villas was, besides a world of pain, a loud ringing noise in my ears that blocked out all other sounds.

It left me somewhat confused. Why was I here again? More importantly, why was there a bone sticking out of my shoulder? The feeling of excruciating pain did not help me think clearly, and neither did the fact that the ringing noise lessened and the music came back. Hey! The music! That was the key, that was the thing that made me act so weirdly. I wanted to facehoof to express my disappointment in my brain's capability of deduction, but with only one functional foreleg I decided against that. Instead I was content with lying down, still on my warm mattress. It was obvious that I couldn't fight the music if it had made me shoot Lazuli, so I just made myself comfortable while the noise in my ears subsided, waiting for the melodies to entrance me again. Maybe they would take away the pain.

Except they didn't. In fact, the whole 'music taking over my mind' thing didn't happen. Undoubtedly it had something to do with the earblooms that were jammed inside my ears and then held there by a piece of cloth that was wrapped around my head tightly. From the earblooms a loud crackling noise sounded, blocking out any and all other sounds.

Surprised, I lifted my head and looked behind me at a weirdly looking Lazuli. She had the same set-up around her ears and was staring at my shoulder. Oh right, loads of pain. With my newly cleared mind I remembered that I had something for that: Med-X! Glad that my magic allowed me to grab a syringe without moving a muscle. I hardly even felt it when I stabbed the needle in my shoulder and emptied the pain relief into my bloodstream.

Then I stood up on three legs, my fourth limply hanging from my side and was glad that there were plenty of planks lying around. In no time I had made myself a splint, though now came the hard part: putting the bone back in the right way to ensure that it would heal properly.

I looked from my shoulder at Lazuli, hoping she would get the hint. She slowly nodded and trotted over. I closed my eyes after jamming another Med-X in my shoulder.

One crunch later I could set the splint and I was able to walk relatively normal again. I remembered the machine that Siren had been using control my mind amongst others, so I lead the way to the living room.

We arrived at the double doors and stopped. Lazuli grabbed a grenade and I floated out my three shotguns. My turquoise guardian angel carefully opened the doors enough to fit the grenade through and lobbed it into the room. She quickly closed the door again and we waited a couple of seconds. The shaking of the ground indicated a successful detonation and immediately she bucked the doors open.

I limped into the room, my shotguns flaring at anything that turned towards us. I was pissed. Because of the brain-washing music, my broken shoulder and peeing myself way too much. My conscience yelled at me that the ponies in the room were just as mind-controlled as I had been, but stinging pain in my chest, followed by a much worse, burning pain in my lungs shut up that voice for good.

As it turned out, using three sawed-off shotguns at once was a pretty effective way to deal with anything actually. Combined with some more precise shots from Lazuli's pistol it was even more devastating and the room was cleared out within moments. As the dust settled I counted five ponies on the ground, three of which were not moving anymore at all. The big pony in butler costume was one of them, another was still a colt, a blank flank.

Fuck.

I stuffed my regret away in a corner of my mind and got back to the task at hoof. I could have some nightmares about it later, probably together with the stuff that happened in Saltash. Right now, the sooner we would stop the music, the better. Then I could worry about why I should really listen to my conscience. Oh, and it might also be smart to drink a healing potion, to stop the bad cough I had developed. And with bad I mean that there was quite some blood involved.

As soon as the potion was down my throat I made my way over to the tape recorder and pointed at it while mouthing 'boom' to Lazuli.

She was a smart mare and gestured for me to stand back, which I quickly did. The last two times she made something go boom, I had been close enough to know that I didn't want to be anywhere near this explosion.

I limped out of the door, but not before putting some tables between the two still breathing ponies and the incoming explosion. So far the antique wood had withstood over two hundred years of deterioration and one other grenade blast. I hoped it would be able to survive another one.

The turquoise bomber mare quickly joined me and we waited until the ground shook yet another time before coming back in. Both the grenade and the tables had done their respective jobs, leaving the machine in rubble and the injured ponies unscathed.

Their behaviour had also changed. When I had covered them with the table, they had still made very poor attempts at assaulting me. But now that the music had apparently stopped, they were just lying there, blinking and looking around, as if they had just woken up.

Lazuli and I left them to get their wits together while we went to search the other rooms. Though we had freed the town from Siren's grasp, we still needed to take care of her, lest she would escape and rebuild later. Remembering how her voice had actually hurt me, I kept on my ear protection, hoping that those attacks worked similarly as the recorded music.

Five minutes after we stared our search I determined that being crippled sucked. Fifteen minutes after that and my conclusion had been reinforced thoroughly.

So I was very glad when we entered a large bedroom and finally found Siren's beige shape huddled up on top of the bed. Upon seeing us enter she jerked up and slowly trotted towards us, her horn glowing brightly and her face radiating her wish to destroy us. I had been a smart pony though and our ear protection left me and Lazuli slightly chuckling. Or at least me, I didn't exactly hear Lazuli and wanted to keep an eye on Siren.

Meanwhile the normally beige mare's coat started to look a lot like my own red one. The look on her face made it look like she wanted to cut us to pieces, feed us to radroaches, then stomp those to a pulp and feed it to a brahmin which she would like to burn and spread over Canterlot. And then she would like to drop a couple of balefire bombs on it for good measure. That, or she simply wanted to strangle me.

Either way, I was having none of it and used my shotgun as a club to knock her out. While I kept the slightly dented gun pointed at her head I removed my ear protection and enjoyed my hearing without having to worry about stupid mindstealing music.

Then, without warning, Lazuli grabbed the shotgun from my grasp and pressed it against the base of Siren's horn and shot.

Surprisingly, it was not very bloody. Apparently horns don't have much arteries running through them and are made mostly out of... horn. Right, nevermind that. Everypony probably already knew that. Anyway, the point is that Siren now had been turned into an earth pony. I remembered how it had felt when Asshole had been stomping at my horn and could only imagine the massive headache Siren would get if she ever woke up again.

Considering that she had made me shoot Lazuli, I considered the chance of her waking up to be rather slim. I took back my shotgun and aimed it at Siren's temple. Before I could fire it though, Lazuli smacked it aside. “No, don't kill her.” Her tone was soft but serious. I knew that tone, she used it too when we talked that morning in Saltash. It meant bad news to me.

Still, it couldn't hurt trying. “Why not?” I asked. “She mind-controlled me, made me shoot you! And she did the same to this whole town. We let her go and she'll do it again!”

Lazuli's answer was simple. “She won't, not without her magic. So there is no need to kill her.” She trotted a little closer and stared me in the eyes. “And I will not let you do to her what you did to Silver Tongue. Do you understand?” The look in her eyes showed that I really didn't have a choice but to nod, so I did.

She looked at me with a triumphant gaze and petted me on the head. “I knew you would understand. Now, just because we're not killing her doesn't mean we can't get a bit more even...” With that she disappeared underneath Siren's wide, luxurious bed and returned moments later, dragging a large chest with her.

With a wide grin she opened the chest. “These sorts of ponies always keep their caps underneath their beds, see?” Inside the chest was, as the turquoise mare had predicted, bottle caps and a lot of junk. A grand total of four friggin bottle caps to be precise. The look on Lazuli's face was priceless.

I chuckled and gave her a nudge. “Come on great treasure finder, let's get out of this town.”

Lazuli looked very sad as she supported me while trotting back outside. Sirenville was in a state of complete disarray. I concluded that the ponies, when released from the spell, went back to their old states, but with the addition of being really pissed off. And since about a quarter of the town's inhabitants seemed to be raiders, things got ugly.

The quality of the watchtower was a good indication for the rest of the town, which is why it wasn't surprising that within an hour after shutting down the signal, over half of it was flattened to the ground and the other half on fire. It was nice and warm and would have calmed me down if it weren't for all the screams coming from that general direction. Those were a real mood breaker.

When we were a good distance away from the town we turned and looked back for a moment. We were now far enough to not hear the screams anymore so we sat down and rested while enjoying the view. While looking at the flames that had rushed their way through the garden and were licking at the house I started feeling drowsy. With a smile on my face I slumped against Lazuli and drifted off to sleep.