So much had changed.
A lifetime ago, the world was so much simpler. Friendlier. Safer.
And then something happened. Somewhere, somehow, the Equestrian ideals of harmony, peace, and friendship were…displaced. Shoved out of sight by far more baser, uglier notions. Lust. Greed. Angst. Rage. Distrust. Malice.
And these notions weren’t contained to Equestria. They seemed to seep into the collective consciousness of every society in every parcel of land. Within a few short years, a concept most ponies could never fathom had arrived.
War. And when it came, ponykind was forever altered. Tainted. Taking a life was something so alien, so unconscionable to ponies, that such things had never even been discussed for generations.
Yet, to her eternal dismay, ponies proved more than willing students in the art of war. The Equestria of today was not the Equestria she’d read of in school. Vast cities of skyscrapers of glass and metal attempting to reach the skies themselves replaced the simpler wood and brick houses. Technology and knowledge progressed at such rates that its impact on the natural world was only just now being realized (but often ignored in favor of survival against the zebras and their allies). New, more terrible weapons were developed and deployed each year with surprising speed and efficiency. Even the more peaceful studies of levitation and conjuration magic gave way to the more straightforward and conflict-centered arts of widespread destruction and misery. Spells so powerful, so devastating in their effect as to be dubbed megaspells, the very name instilling a foreboding doom in the heart.
But the most gut-wrenching, damning thing to come out of all these horrors wasn’t some new method of killing or a world-defiling technology. It was the long-term effects of this new state of affairs.
The Equestria that was, wasn’t anymore. Where friendship, harmony, and understanding once united the unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi, deceit and conspiracy now began to drive them apart. Rumors had begun to spread that the zebras had sympathizers within Equestria, funneling to them intel, weapons, even unicorns willing to use their magic for the zebra cause. Princess Luna’s ministries were growing far beyond any one pony’s ability to control or contain—even for the Elements of Harmony themselves. Corporations grew to become almost as powerful as any ministry, bringing with them their own ills and poisons upon the souls of ponykind. The darkest of tales told that the zebras even had their own form of megaspells in the form of something called a balefire bomb.
In the bluntest of terms, the world had gone to Tartarus in a single generation, and as much as she hated to admit it, the pegasi were probably more accurate in their assumptions than anypony dared to believe. And she’d done the incredibly stupid thing of bringing a foal into this new Equestria. She did not want her only child to see the fear in her eyes as she read the morning paper, hear the terror in her voice as she spoke with her neighbors over the latest war news, feel the panic that sucked her lungs dry as the rumors of the power of megaspells grew more prevalent with each passing month. She wanted her daughter to know the Equestria that was, and that could be again, if everyone would just put their damned guns down and start working together towards a better future.
But most of all, she wanted her to live long enough to see that Equestria. She had to forcefully bite down on her own tongue to keep from bursting into tears whenever she took to the streets of Hoofville, scowling at all the war propaganda posters that marred the walls of the shops and businesses. She was most disturbed by the images of a pink-colored pony, whose silver-streaked pink mane reminded her of a fluff of cotton candy. Her message ‘Pinkie Pie is watching you FOREVER’ seemed to be the favored reminder of her ministry to ponyfolk, and was yet another reminder of the world she now lived in and wanted to forget.
She didn’t even notice her filly poking at her until the poor thing had to bite down lightly on her left foreleg to get her attention. As much as it stung, she didn’t bother to berate her for it. She had been awfully inattentive right then.
“Sorry, honey,” she murmured quietly, turning her head down behind her where her filly dutifully waited for her. “Got lost in my head again.”
“We should get you a map or somethin’,” her child responded with a touch of disdain. “You get ‘lost’ all the time. What’s wrong?”
Everything, she thought sadly. Aloud, however, all she was willing to utter was, “Just…thinking. Maybe I’ll get better at it if I keep doing it.”
“Hope so, you almost wandered right into that light pole!” her filly laughed lightly, bringing a rush of warm blood to her face as she swiftly hopped off to her right in time to avoid the aforementioned pole.
“Maybe I should leave the thinking to smarter ponies today,” she caved after a moment’s thought. Nearly beaning herself on a light pole she should have seen half a mile away left her wondering if the stress of living in this world was starting to get to her. Perhaps it was finally time to admit to her husband that she did need some help. Just a little bit.
“Now yer talkin’ some sense! We’re supposed to be relaxin’ today, remember? The park’s not far now, it’d be a shame if you missed out ‘cause you banged your head on something that stood still!”
The amusement her daughter derived from her misfortune finally proved to be enough of an annoyance to take her mind off the state of worldly affairs, and she promptly scooped the little filly within her left foreleg and brought her up close for a forced re-arrangement of her mane with her right hoof. “Speaking of which—”
How her treasure of the world got to be ticklish on her skull and crest was beyond her, but hearing the thing squeal and laugh as her morning brushing was ruined never ceased to lift her heart from her heavy chest. “Ahah-hahaha that tickles!” she cried joyfully, her struggle to escape her “punishment” doing little more than giving her mother a decent workout. “Mom that tickles stoppit!”
“Hey, it’s your fault banging your head on something that stood still!” the mare quipped briskly. Her filly’s token resistance to her teasing only prompted her to reach her hoof further down her neck, where the real ticklish spots were.
Her squeals and chuckles quickly morphed into loud, shrilly cries of laughter, drawing the pair a great deal of uncomfortable-looking stares (and a few light-hearted grins), but neither of them paid them any attention. “Aaaaaah! O-okay I’m so-hahaha I’m sorry quit it hahahahaaaa!”
Hearing her teal coated filly cave in, she promptly stopped her tickling assault and released her prey from her grasp, settling her forelegs back onto the sidewalk. The dark, brooding thoughts that had clouded her mind earlier had been completely forgotten—though she had this odd feeling that she’d been upset at something earlier, she couldn’t fathom what, and so long as she could her daughter’s laughter, she didn’t want to. “Apology accepted,” she said with a hint of smugness—
“But the great and powerful Star Shine will get you next time!” the daughter dared to challenge anyway as the pair began their trot once more.
“The great and powerful Star Shine may be missing her daffodil sandwich and hay fries later,” she laughed back. Oh stars the sky looked so beautiful today! Celestia’s gorgeous sun shined through like a beacon to higher lands, its rays piercing through the layer of stubborn clouds that tried to block it from everypony’s sight. She couldn’t believe she’d never noticed it earlier! What wonders her daughter’s laughter did for her mood!
“Not if she gets to her mother’s share of the picnic!” Star Shine schemed aloud, as she was wont to do when she was having too much fun pestering her mother. “A heist for the ages! Or…at least for the week.”
“For the week?” the mare poked back, her body slinking around to the right at the curb. “C’mon, you’ve got to set your dreams higher than that. You’ll never make it big this way.”
“Start small, win big!” Star Shine chimed proudly, no doubt reciting some words of wisdom she’d just gleaned off of a book at school earlier in the week. “You can’t shoot for the stars if you don’t know how to walk there!”
“Sometimes you have to run before you can walk,” the mare countered, briefly recalling how her bundle of life had come into the world—through a hasty (but enjoyable) evening with her coltfriend that would become her husband when she told him the end result. She hadn’t thought it at the time, but Star Shine was the best, brightest thing to ever come into her life.
Even if she’d just been barely old enough to marry at the time.
“That’s just silly!” Star Shine rebuffed. Having grown tired of walking, she’d begun to hop and bounce along beside her mother in a seemingly endless bout of energy, and it was infectious. “Runnin’s a lot harder than walkin’, ya can’t run if you don’t even know how to work your legs in the first place!”
She began to make small hops herself. She could easily outbounce her little star, but that wasn’t the point—she was just starting to feel as tightly wound as her filly, and she wanted to burn off some of that energy before it got to her and made her take off at the speed of light. “It means that sometimes big risks are the only way to get where you’re going. You can take baby steps all your life and never reach your destination, but if you take a chance and just run for it you might make it there before you know it.”
“And yet you tell me to be careful all the time,” Star Shine moaned derisively, though her hopping and bouncing didn’t abate any. “Always ‘Star Shine, watch where you’re going!’ or ‘don’t stand on your hind legs like that!’ or ‘don’t reach up so high on that step ladder!’ or—“
“That’s different!” she said with a slight edge, finally having something with which to focus her building energy—keeping her offspring in line. “I just don’t want you to hurt yourself doing those things. Like when you touched the stove after I turned it on and told you not to touch it. You touched it anyway.”
“Yeah, I remember,” the little filly reluctantly agreed in a grumble, her mood souring at the lecture that had just sprung up out of their back-and-forth playful bickering. She stopped hopping about like a rabbit and resumed her leisurely trot, but her gaze was focused more towards the sidewalk than anything else. “My hoof was sore for days, I could barely walk on it.”
“My heart was sore for weeks,” she continued, trying not to cringe at the year-old memories of Star Shine limping about on a bandaged leg. She followed her child’s lead and stopping leaping about herself. “It hurt me to see you like that, and I was always thinking of how much worse it could have been. I love you to death, but I don’t want that to be literal. I just want to go through the day and know you’ll be okay at the end of it. That’s all.”
“So what’s this talk of ‘runnin’ before I can walk’? How’s that bein’ careful?”
“Like I said, that’s different,” she repeated herself, wondering if she’d even get her point across. As smart as Star Shine was, she sometimes wondered if she was even qualified to be her mother. “Someday you’ll understand.” I hope.
An awkward silence grew between mother and child, and mother began to regret that the light-hearted, cheerful teasing had turned into a parent-knows-better lecture. Hearing her daughter’s squeals of delight was the only thing that kept her going some days, and she always felt guilty when she was the reason it stopped. She tried to think of something to get it going again, something to bring that blissfully ignorant smile back to her face so she could marvel at how much happier Star Shine was without knowing that something was wrong with the world.
But she never got the chance. Having mostly ignored the world around her up to that point, she finally had time to notice that many of the other ponies in the streets were in a rather big hurry to get somewhere. Some were shouting to their companions in high, panicked tones, while others simply raced along the roads as if their tails were on fire. But none of them seemed to be going to any one place in particular, resulting in a rather ugly mashing of bodies in the intersections streets as they began to run into each other in their blind rush towards….whatever they were trying to accomplish.
A few even bore looks of pure terror. As if someone had just told them dire, dreadful news and didn’t know how to deal with it.
“….Mom, what’s going on?” Star Shine asked her, her voice quaking as a general feeling of panic began to grow more prevalent amongst the townsfolk. “Everypony’s scared of something.”
As if it were trying to ensure that her upcoming lie would fail, the town’s tornado warning system began to wail at the world. Once used to warn townsfolk of a pegasi-generated tornado that had grown beyond their control in their efforts to re-hydrate their clouds, it found new use as an air raid warning when the zebra began getting help from the griffons and dragons.
Yet the zebra hadn’t been spotted anywhere near Hoofville for at least a month.
“I-it’s probably just a random test,” came the lie from her mouth—
“They don’t do random tests,” Star Shine continued, becoming both adamant and scared at the pretensions of her own words. “They test it on Wednesdays. Today’s Saturday!”
I know! But screaming the words wouldn’t help the kid calm down. And the town had drilled over what to do when the alarms went off, regardless of the actual cause. “C’mon, Clover Luck’s shop is just ahead, I’m sure she won’t mind us waiting out the drill in the back—“
A mare’s shriek of horror caused her to jerk her head back towards the intersection behind them, saw a bright teal coated pony collapsing onto her haunches as she stared out at something in the far distance.
Something terrible enough to leave her in a state of pure shock, her eyes locked wide open and unable to tear herself away from the sight that froze her.
“Mom, ma-maybe we should go home—“
She turned around and galloped back towards the curb, her heart unable to decide whether to keep pumping blood through her veins or seize up entirely, and she had to focus incredibly hard just to get a steady breathing rate going. Please just be a tornado please please please Celestia please—
She zipped around the hat shop at the corner to face whatever had terrified the mare into a living statue—
Found herself frozen as well, her eyes attracted to the large mushroom cloud of smoke and fire far beyond the horizon of the tall grass fields that surrounded the town, felt her lungs stop sucking in oxygen completely as a cold, bone-numbing veil of fear began to cover her body.
The only city in that direction was Trotpeka. Fifty miles away.
No, everything’s fine, j-just a wildfire—
A sphere of crackling of purple energy, concealed by the mushroom cloud, peaked up over the rising plume and sparked upward into the skies above, so bright and large that nopony could miss it.
Her eyes smashed themselves shut, her breathing turned ragged. I’m not here. I’m in the park. I’m watching Star Shine chase a squirrel to a tree—
Her eyes creaked open.
Another one, trailing off in a different direction and quickly being swallowed up by the distant skies.
Eyes shut, inner voice crying. I’m calling out to her for lunch, putting an apple next to her sandwich—
Eyes open, trying hard not to cry and barely breathing.
A third sparkling sphere, this one in red with a trail of arcane tendrils in its wake, coming downward in a trajectory that suggested it came from lands far beyond the other side of town, barreled straight towards that distant horizon ahead of her at the speed of a pegasus trying to break the spectrum barrier—
Eyes shut again, her mind screaming and begging. I’m showing her the difference between an oak tree and a maple tree, showing her the pecan tree Sugarsweet planted last spring—
Eyes reluctantly open, hoping to see trees, heart refusing to work as intended.
The red crackling spark dipped down beneath the hills beyond the town, and though it was no longer so easily visible, its brightness still splayed its ominous glow upon the straw-colored earth.
Eyes sloshing shut a blurry vision of the street, drowning her vision in pitch black. We’re walking home, orange skies and a gorgeous sunset, blue jays and robins building nests in the trees by the library—
Eyes begged open, pleading to Celestia and Luna for the sunset through an endless wall of tears.
A flash of intense sunlight engulfed the sky for a few seconds, but the line of shops beside her spared her eyesight from any pain.
Only then could her mind finally smash through her denial to acknowledge what she was seeing. No. Oh dear Luna NO—
The screams came again, from another mare somewhere behind her (or a stallion), and she was dragged out of the surreal scene playing out in the skies above just long enough to notice a second mushroom cloud had appeared in the horizon.
That was the point when everypony else figured out what was happening. And then the real screams began. The high-pitched, sorrowful screeches of ponies staring death itself in the face, and finally realizing that this was it. The end of the world as they knew it.
She would’ve screamed with them until her voice went hoarse in complete denial, if Star Shine hadn’t bit down on her hind leg to jolt her out of her stunned stupor. When she inched her neck down at her filly, she saw large eyes, dilated in terror and soaked with salty tears that could’ve come only from knowing what they were seeing. And it broke her heart.
“M-mom…I’m scared,” she cried. “I don’t wanna die.”
A mild breeze helped dry out her watery vision, her only child’s terrified voice becoming her best tool in helping her focus her own fears into something somewhat more useful than ruining her lungs with fruitless screaming.
“You are not dying!” she snapped sharply, hoping to shock the filly out of her quiet crying. “You understand? I won’t let you! You’ll make it through this!”
“H-how?!” Star Shine heaved, choking on her own gasping sobs. “Mommy, I don’t know what to do—“
She hasn’t called me Mommy in years, the mare realized almost immediately. Hearing her filly utter those words began to make her realize just how crippling an effect the mushroom clouds were having on her emotional state of mind—and honestly, if such a young thing could fathom and understand such a concept as a pony-wrought cataclysm, what could she possibly say that would be any good? How could she stand there and tell her little star that despite what was about to happen that everything would be all sunshine and roses?
Worse still, mindless destruction was not the day’s only planned horrors. In her search for answers she dared to look up past her filly, to the horizon on the other side of town in hopes that she wouldn’t see any mushroom clouds in that direction, only to spot a barrage of small rapid moving, rapidly growing green sparkles of arcane energy barreling towards the town from the hills near the creek. And as the pulsing spheres began their final descent, one of them peeled away from the group and veered off towards the crowded intersection of ponies just a few yards away from her.
Her motherly senses subconsciously urged her into motion, pulling Star Shine across the pavement until her body stood between the filly and the coming destruction, and managed to push the terrified thing along for about a dozen steps before she threw herself over her child—
—thunder erupted in the streets behind her, and she only heard a snippet of concrete forcefully crumbling apart before the world vanished into oblivion.
Fallout: Equestria
Old World Dreams
By K. Darkwater
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic © Hasbro, Inc. and created by Lauren Faust.
Fallout series © Bethesda Softworks.
War. War never changes.
Ponies have struggled for survival since the first days of known history, when unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies lived apart in uneasy alliances of convenience. The unicorns, with their magic, brought about night and day. The pegasus ponies, with their wings, brought about the weather. The earth ponies, with their hooves and earthly knowledge, brought about sustenance. Their differences were many, their struggles long and bitter, eventually rendering their homelands inhabitable. Forced to resettle elsewhere, their reunion in a new land was, as expected, unpleasant. But the disaster that claimed their homelands crept behind them, forcing them to acknowledge the futility of their infighting. They sought to reach out, to mend ties which they had neglected, and newfound bonds of friendship defeated the coming storm.
To honor the strength of their new ties, the tribes named their new home Equestria, and spread out across its vast, fertile fields and forests, settling new villages and re-establishing the status quo in a symbiotic circle of self-nourishment and replenishment. In time, two alicorn sisters would come to lead their little ponies, overthrowing an ancient force of discord to ensure their kind could prosper. Peace and harmony reigned across Equestria for many centuries.
In these new lands lived other races—griffons, zebras, dragons, and others untold, lost to the stoic, unforgiving passage of the eons. History, as always, was doomed to repeat itself, and so it was that new differences between the ponies and their neighbors led to the destruction of much of the world, burned in a hail of megaspells and balefire in a total war never before seen by ponykind.
In those dark hours, when distrust and chaos destroyed harmony and balance, those who could took shelter from the destruction in great underground Stables. And when the danger passed, they were to emerge to begin anew, to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors and build a new home from the ashes of Equestria That Was.
But Stable 115, built in the verdant prairie lands at the edge of Equestria, never received the signal from Stable-Tec to begin their exodus, and in the chaos of the Last Day, their communications with the outside world were hopelessly crippled. Thus, each generation a scout is chosen from amongst their numbers to venture out into the world, to discover Equestria’s fate…and its potential future.
None have ever returned.
Darkness. Silence.
Now a faint, steady thrum in the air.
Head swimming in empty, wordless thoughts, desiring only to return to nothingness.
But a spark refused to yield to the darkness, and began to ignite into a flame. Neurons and higher brain functions began to stir from rest, and the ignorant oblivion of deep sleep began to recede from her mental grasp. Slowly, reluctantly, her body began to respond, legs sliding about beneath the comforters in aimless stretches as their aches and tension became too much to bear. Her head, still desperate to escape the coming of the light, began to burrow into her pillows.
In an instant a blinding white light attacked her eyes through her eyelids, a sharp stinging prick that reached back into her brain and quickened its awakening. Her revitalizing thoughts began to take coherent form, carrying words into her subconscious. Bed. Slight rattle in the air vent. A misfiring stream of energy in the light panel above. Mane frayed and rustled through a night of her body tossing about in her sleep.
Now she was awake. Sort of.
Her mouth cursed the timing mechanism of her bedroom with unkind words as she oozed herself out from beneath the warm embrace of her blankets, fell to the carpeted floor with a soulless thud. Though awake, her body still refused to submit to the commands and desires of her energizing brain. Only with great effort was her nervous system able to get her rear legs to prop themselves up and began pushing the rest of her uncooperative body along the floor. A meek voice wondered silently how silly she must have looked with her rump being the only part of her actually standing up.
The door whirred open with a hiss of hydraulic pressure, and her muddled senses barely acknowledged the slotted recess in the floor as she scooted through the doorway. They only knew that her brain desired to move in this particular direction, and that something good waited for her if she got there. So her legs pushed onward, shifting to the left to make a crude right turn, and then shifting back behind her to continue the journey. A steamy thought strayed from her enclosed memories, recalling several rather enjoyable minutes of her life the last time she assumed this position when she was awake enough to do it willingly.
Within moments, however, even this raunchy effort by her brain to rejuvenate her body was stifled by her arrival at her destination. Her nose touched upon the cool, thick cushioning of a large bean bag chair, and then her body was tumbling itself over onto its side in order to land in the middle of the bag. The bean bag chair’s magic touch began to turn her body into weighted lead once more; pulling her brain back into the dulled, quiet mass of organic matter it had been five minutes earlier. Her limbs felt the release of relaxing chemicals seeping into the rest of her body, and her mind finally succumbed to the incessant, physical desire of her body to ignore the world for just a while longer.
Just five more minutes…
Her ears flicked wildly the moment they heard the door pull itself open behind her.
Holy stars Mom was awake!! This was so cool and so strange, Mom never woke up when her room lit up at the pre-programmed time every morning! Never! She thought she’d have to go and wake her up with the pans again, but now she could just put the things up and surprise Mommy with her favorite blueberry pancakes and apple juice and fresh buttered toa—
WHUMP!
…nevermind, she corrected herself, feeling her excitement die almost as suddenly as the sound of a pony’s body hitting its favorite napping spot. With a disappointed sigh she refocused her telekinesis spell, the effort itself little more than a half second’s afterthought, and soon two well-worn sauce pans were in her magical grasp. Sometimes it was funny, but this morning it was just…sad. She wanted to see Mom’s face light up with glee when she saw her favorite breakfast waiting for her at the table. She did not want to see that confused, terrified, wide-eyed stare that popped up when she had to be scared into waking up, even if it made her laugh.
And she calls me lazy?! She huffed mentally as she silently shifted around and began creeping up towards her mother with the two beaten sauce pans.
As was the case every time she had to do this, she found it hard to resist the urge to just put the pans up and let Mom sleep. She looked so happy when she curled up in her bean bag chair like that, even had her face buried into it this time. Her indigo mane was such a mess, but her teal blue coat was barely ruffled. And she looked soooo comfortable…
Any other day, the urge to just give up and let her be late for work might have won out, but the warm, sweet scent of the blueberry pancakes gave her enough incentive to go ahead and do the cruel thing. And so she sat down on her hindquarters and with one slight alteration to her levitation spell, swiftly smashed the sauce pans into each other about an inch away from Mom’s head.
It was hard not to be amused at the reaction, so she didn’t fight it. Her squealing laughter echoed off the steel walls alongside the harsh clang of the sauce pans as her mother’s body went from slumbering to shooting straight up and off of her bean bag, crying and shouting in garbled words for about four feet before coming back down—
WHUMP!
--and the look on Mom’s face was, as always, simply priceless. The frightened eyes, the heavy, terrified breathing, the rapidly swishing tail made it too easy to laugh at her misfortune in her presence. It helped that Mom liked hearing her laugh and enjoy herself, but usually not at her expense.
And she was always quick to point that out. “El-Tee!! How many times now?!”
Even Mom’s angry roar couldn’t dull the volume of her high-pitched chuckles. “Two hundred and sixteen!” she announced with a massive grin, promptly trotting back to the cabinets to put away her “Wake Up Mom” tools. “Ya flew higher than Miss Teakettle’s cat that one time when she stepped on his tail!”
“Then you are grounded for the two hundred and sixtee—“ Mom began to threaten ominously, her bean bag muffling the sound of her four legs pushing her body up into a standing position. They stopped moving entirely once her nose began sniffing at the air and picked up the scent of the one thing that would make her stop in her tracks. “…are those…actual blueberries? In a pancake?”
“With fresh toast and apple juice!” she answered proudly. By then she’d deftly slipped the dinged, dented cooking pans into the cabinet and slid the door shut, and began hopping over to her side of the gunmetal gray table. “Was gonna get some buttered hot rolls to go with it, but we didn’t have the ingredients for it, so…”
As usual, however, Mom was not paying particularly close attention to her, but rather to what was in front of her. She had managed the impressive feat of slithering from her bean bag chair to the pile of cushions on her side of the table, grabbing hold of a fork with a levitation spell and poking at the warm pancake and the slice of melting butter sitting atop its doughy surface to ensure that it was real.
“….I guess the lack of hot rolls can be your punishment this time,” Mom relented at last, setting the fork back onto the table, next to her plate. “Stars, it’s been six months since I got to nibble on a blueberry anything.”
Lie, she knew almost immediately. Her mother would probably tell her she couldn’t have that apple snack she liked to have every afternoon after school. But sitting here on her plush cushions, watching Mom’s face light up as the scent of the baked blueberries wafted up into her brain through her nostrils, watching all the monotony and stress of the daily life of a grown-up in a Stable fade away with the simple scent of a decent breakfast, she got this odd feeling of contentment and decided that missing an apple a day for a week was probably worth it. Now all she had to do was figure out how to stay a filly so she wouldn’t need pick-me-ups all the time.
“Well, dig in then!” she prodded gently from across four feet of table, matching words with action as she delicately lifted a butter knife and a fork to her own breakfast. “That pancake won’t eat itself!”
One scrumptious breakfast later, she was seeing her filly off to the one-room school on the eighth level of the Stable, mildly distracted with the incredible ease at which the child could escape punishment by making one feel like complete dirt for doing it. She could still taste the sharp, hot blueberries in her mouth. The kid could cook! Better than she could, sadly. How could such a smart little filly be so content to stay in a classroom where she was probably three grade levels ahead of all the other children and bored to death for nearly eight hours at a time?
The answer’s obviousness smacked her in the snout when she got to watching her Light Tail bounce away down the hall with nary a care in the world. Why, because she sees how miserable I am coming back to quarters from work every day and realizes growing up isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
“Be good this time!” she called out after her only daughter, her eyes briefly overwhelmed by the streak of electric blue in the little filly’s indigo tail as it swished upward in a wild arc. “Another stunt like last week and I’ll never hear the end of it!”
“Bye, Mom!” the child shouted back over her shoulder, likely purposefully ignoring her warning. “Try not to go mad at work!”
“Insufferable child,” she muttered under her breath as she set the lock code for her living quarters. Still, the kid wasn’t all bad. Blueberry pancakes and muffins. Couldn’t beat that.
And she worries for my sanity when everypony else just takes it as the way things go.
But then, that was Stable life. Living in a massive underground fallout shelter with no contact with the outside world had taken its toll over the decades. Air recyclers that once ran quietly without a hitch now sputtered and rumbled loudly as the maintenance techs salvaged every usable piece of scrape and metal possible to keep them running. Their steady supply of water purification talismans had dwindled to a small fraction of their former numbers; there was talk of more extreme rationing measures being discussed or contemplated within the next two years to stretch out what was left. The number of repair bots had dwindled as replacement parts were used up—only two were left from the Stable’s original twenty-five roughly two centuries earlier. The ones that broke down beyond repair were taken apart and used to keep other vital systems going.
Keeping oneself amused was also rather difficult. She’d read all the books in the tiny library several times over, even the boring ones. And one could only take so much chess, poker, and blackjack before losing interest in it for a time. She wouldn’t even get started on the in-Stable broadcasts of the same thirty-odd songs it started with when its massive door sealed shut.
This left procreation. But the first time she’d indulged in it during her last year of school, she ended up bringing her filly into the steel gray world of the Stable, and she learned the hard way why one shouldn’t be so carefree and wild about it. Still, it turned out to be the best blessing she could ask for in this depressing life. At times she felt more like an older sister than a mother, and she couldn’t decide whether that was wrong or not.
But as long as Light Tail kept making her laugh and smile just by existing and doing the things she did, she didn’t really care in the end. So what if half the Stable thought she was a terrible, undisciplined mother with the mating morals of a whore? The little filly behaved herself quite well most times—the only trouble she got into was when her “cutie mark crusading” got out of hand and wrecked stuff. Like last week when she thought her destiny might’ve been as the Stable clown and tried to prank Wheat Hooves’ colt with a firecracker in the boys’ lavatory (with predictably messy results). Or two months before that, when her attempts to re-arrange the library in record time wound up misplacing two-thirds of the unicorn history section into the fiction section and mixing up the earth and pegasus history sections so badly that the library index actually had to be dragged out to begin the arduous process of putting everything in place. Parchment was still looking for that book on herbal and natural remedies and two of the three books they had from the Daring Do series. Light Tail’s favorite books, no less.
And she had to admit, despite the problems that sprung from Light Tail’s antics, she was always looking forward to hearing the next crazy thing she’d no doubt be doing at some point in a week. And her job as the Stable armorer and quartermaster was about as unexciting a position as one could get in the security department. Mind-numbingly boring forms and “paperwork” whenever guards checked their gear in and out using terminals with barely functional commlinks to the central mainframe, sporadic drills with “snap caps” in their small arms arsenal because they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition for mere target practice, time-consuming detail stripping of weapons for function inspection and replacement of worn or cracked parts, or periodic inspection of their ammunition stores for aging or corroded rounds to take out of duty rotation.
Oh stars, how she wished for something that would actually offer an interesting change of pace from one day to the next. As it was, life in a Stable was all about monotony and lack of change. Because changes usually meant something had gone horribly wrong, thus endangering the Stable’s ability to sustain its population.
So if she lived the rest of her life without some major change affecting the flow of things, she could at least die in the knowledge that she had actually lived. Maybe not an exciting or important life, but a life all the same.
So secure and orderly was her routine that she’d even managed to make it to the armory without ever really paying attention to where she was going—before she knew it was happening, she was stepping through the door with an absent-minded telekinetic tapping of her entry code into the terminal on the wall. The front room of the “armory” itself wasn’t much bigger than the living room/kitchen of her own living quarters—the counter three feet away from the door was enclosed with high-grade security grating, with a slot in the bottom at the counter where armored barding, batons, and ammmunition (only by the Overmare’s order) could be slipped between guard and quartermaster. Imbedded beneath the counter was a drop box where sidearms would be deposited once the guard had signed for his gear if a pistol was handed out, and where they were returned when he checked them back in. Ammunition and sidearm were never transferred across the counter together. She never thought to ask why—these were simply the procedures she’d been taught by the previous quartermaster, and that’s what she went with.
She trotted around the counter to the side-gate entrance, stopping just long enough for her telekinesis to slip her iron key into the lock and twist it sideways before pushing the fenced door open with a light push of her head. Once inside the enclosed alcove the door clicked shut behind her, and she dropped the key back into her Stable suit pocket and took a few moments to give the Stable’s arsenal a quick visual inspection.
Four racks of 10mm semi-automatic pistols near the front of the counter, ten per rack for a total of forty sidearms, one for every guard in the Stable. None of them had any serious issues beyond the unavoidable effects of time and holster wear on their exterior finishes, though pistols #15 had a rather large crack in its age-hardened wooden grip when Stick Shift dropped it down a flight of stairs last month chasing down “Crazy” Moonshine again. Rose Glade thought #4 had a bad recoil spring the other day when she ran a function check on all thirty-two 10mms, but a detailed field stripping found the culprit to be little more than accumulated debris that required about four minutes to clean off.
Four racks of 9mm pistols right next to the 10-mils, ten per rack for a total of forty. Enough to hand out to a few civilians if they needed to, but if it ever came down to that they were probably better off flooding the Stable with noxious fumes and suffocating themselves. They were rarely used and still in excellent shape, though #31 had shown a drifting point-of-impact the last time it was test-fired. The problem had been narrowed down to a loose rear sight—the mounting screw had gotten loose and refused to be re-seated in a tight manner, forcing her to requisition a new one from the maintenance department…eight months ago. She was still waiting for it.
Two racks of pump-action 12-guage shotguns a couple of feet away from the pistols, five per rack, with extended magazine tubes installed for an 8-round capacity. Their synthetic forends and stocks held up to the passage of nearly two centuries’ worth of time much better than wooden materials might have, and had no discernible or distressing cracks and stress marks as they’d barely been fired in the last thirty years. The forends weren’t silk-smooth, but the action bars had yet to bind in manipulation drills, and the magazine tube followers and springs never failed to work as intended when using dummy rounds to practice shell changes and unloading/loading drills. Two were missing their front bead sights, but they weren’t meant for long-ranges anyway. She was planning on soldering new ones in place regardless.
Two racks of R-series automatic rifles near the back of the enclosed armory, 5.56x45mm, six rifles per rack. Introduced mid-way through the war that eventually rendered Equestria asunder with megaspells , these were considerably more difficult to keep running and maintained, and it showed when the entire battery had been taken out for test-firing last year. Rifles #5 and #11 had rather terrible accuracy problems that were eventually traced to large knicks in their muzzle crowns, #7’s gas piston had to be completely taken apart for a detailed cleaning and replacement of a piston rod before it would run reliably, and #3’s bolt never properly ejected spent casings. She suspected either an aged recoil spring or a bad claw extractor—all the magazines tested out just fine in the other eleven rifles—but getting maintenance to manufacture new parts for firearms was pretty low on their list of priorities compared to, say, indoor plumbing or power flow. So #3, 5, and 11 were out of duty rotation, and would probably be broken down for spare parts for the remaining nine if she could get a pass from both the security chief and the Overmare. She wasn’t confident that they could get #5 and #11 re-crowned, and #3 was probably in the best shape out of all twelve rifles (notwithstanding the suspect parts). And it would give her something different to do for a couple of weeks, even if it was just more boring paperwork cataloging and filing lists of new replacement parts.
Two racks of .308 rifles on the other side of the armory and directly opposite the rack of R-series rifles, five per rack. Once fielded in the war with the zebras, their .30-caliber diameter bullets left rather large and destructive wound channels in their targets, but could hardly be controlled in full-auto fire. They were eventually rotated out of the front lines in favor of lighter-recoiling 5.56mm rifles like the R-series, but the .308 rifles hung around in town militias and the round even found a new life in a sniping role. These battle rifles were one of the most reliable long arms one could get their hooves (or horn magic) on—even two centuries after their manufacture, these ten rifles had few issues beyond the expected weathering and wear on their paint and exterior finishes, and their wooden furniture had been replaced with hard synthetic materials long enough. The carrying handle bits were mounted in slots machined into the upper receiver, but almost never used—the rifles themselves were either mounted in battle saddles or fitted with slings for unicorn users. #6 had a wider spread than the other nine rifles as its bore was considerably more worn, suggesting it had actually seen service in the early years of the war before being retired to militia garrison duty. But the rest had easily kept their hundred-yard groups within two inches when they were test-fired six months ago. Probably the best weapons in the Stable arsenal.
These thoughts crossed her mind in the twenty seconds she spent inspecting the collection of firearms, and when she was content that no other issues were apparent she moved on to the suite of armored barding in a separate room, accessed through a door in the back of the armory. As the armor was checked in and out only when a need for it arose, the wear and tear was considerable light—a few tears in the outer cloth, a missing button or rivet here and there, but for the most part intact and fully functional. There were just enough sets to outfit every guard in the Stable, with twelve left over. The same couldn’t be said for the ballistic helmets—only twenty, but never used and well maintained.
Batons, they had enough of to pass out three to every resident in the Stable and still have spares, so keeping the security armed with something was never an issue. Pretty difficult to repair a one-piece impact weapon, though. When one broke, the usual response was to either apply one-fourth of a roll of duct tape to piece it back together, or send it to maintenance where it could be recycled and re-purposed for other uses. She usually did the latter. Boring paperwork, but ultimately more useful to the Stable as a whole.
It never crossed her mind that it took her less than thirty seconds to assess the entire armory’s contents of weapons and armor. Ammunition stores were next on her list, but that could wait. The shift change for the security mares (and four stallions) was coming up in a few minutes, and she needed to get the terminal booted up and hopefully in a cooperative mood by the time the graveyard shift ponies came by. Yet another morning filled with the endless monotony of a drone’s paperwork. And tomorrow would be the same. And the day after that. And the one after that. No new wonders. No changes.
How I wish I could be a filly again….
Uggggggh. So BORED.
And it was only….
A quick glance at the analog clock above the chalkboard made her wish it had been put somewhere else. Eight-thirty?! Oh stars, today sucks already!
Outwardly, she looked about as bored as she felt, but made sure that her attention shifted from the hundred-year old re-printed book on her desk to whatever Miss Amethyst was doing on the chalkboard (amazing that they still had usable chalk!). She could have skipped school for at least two years, come back, and still not learn anything new that she didn’t know already. But she didn’t want to grow up that fast. Not when she saw how miserable Mom was every day after work. Being a grown-up sucked.
No, what she really wanted to do was go back to the library one floor up and check out all three of the Daring Do books it had. If those books were even halfway based on reality, Equestria That Was must’ve been a really neat place before the War. Nothing like this stupid Stable. Never mind that she’d read the books so much she had them memorized word for word. It wasn’t the same as actually holding the book in her levitation spell and soaking in the words from the aged pages, letting her imagination color in the world piece by piece until she had every detail laid out in her mind’s eye. When one lived their entire life in a metal construct in the ground, just imagining what the world outside looked like was the only viable escape from the maddening sterility of it all.
And Daring Do herself was awesome! Always going to exotic places and discovering new things, and learning all sorts of neat stuff about ancient pony and griffon civilizations! She even knew things about the zebras that nopony else knew (which wasn’t hard). And she looked so pretty too. She dressed funny, but she still looked pretty. She went so far as to have her mane and tail styled after Daring’s, even if she couldn’t dye it gray and white. Daring Do was that awesome. She did look like the Ministry Mare of Awesome herself, after all. Why wouldn’t she be awesome?
She just wished they had more than those three books. She knew there was a whole series of them, but for some reason the library only had the first three. Not cool. Did any copies of the others even survive the War? Did any of the Stable’s first dwellers even write down how many books were in the whole series?! Did anypony even know wh—
A sharp, ear-splitting ram of a hoof into her desk snapped her out of her daydreaming so suddenly that she leapt straight up off her hindquarters and landed on the floor nearby, much to the amusement of all the other kids in the classroom.
If only Miss Amethyst could be just as amused….
“Light Tail, are you zoning out on my class again?” the amethyst-shaded earth pony mare inquired sweetly, a light undertone of suspicion and impending doom still managing to get through.
Light Tail did her best to ignore her aching rump and re-settled herself onto her rear hooves, trying (and failing) to look back at her teacher without fear and without being blinded by those overhead lights in the ceiling that never seemed to go out. “U-uhhh….k-kinda…sorta, maybe?”
Miss Amethyst’s head began to hang limply upon hearing her wishy-washy excuse, a sigh of exasperation heaving out of her lungs. “I’ve told you a hundred times to pay attention in class, young lady. This is very important, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”
Actually, you’ve told me two hundred and forty-three times, Light Tail almost blurted, but thankfully her teeth clamped down on her tongue before it could betray her and get her in even more trouble. She shrank back into herself in a show of submission to her teacher’s words, hoping it would get her out of this mess a little faster. “…I-I know, it’s all that’s left of Equestria That Was. We’re all that’s left. We gotta learn to do it right again someday.”
“We all do,” Miss Amethyst agreed, her tone becoming slightly more sympathetic at the mention of Equestria. “And that starts here, in class, paying attention. So can you tell me what I was just discussing with the rest of the class?”
Oh crud, of course you’d make this difficult! the light teal-blue filly cringed mentally, her hunkering down now an actual genuine reaction as the other fillies and colts began laughing again. She stole a quick glance at the chalkboard when she noticed that Miss Amethyst was looking away from her, probably at Sun Star or Lumberjack on the other end of the room—
—perked up when she saw the crude, but unmistakable image of the original unicorn pony tribe’s flag alongside the pegasus and earth pony flags, forming a triangle of sorts around the image of the old Equestria flag, and took a shot at her teacher’s question—
“You were talking about how Equestria That Was came to be,” Light Tail answered meekly, watching Miss Amethyst’s head turn back to stare down at her as she continued. “About how unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies used to hate each other, and how it destroyed their original home.”
Miss Amethyst’s eyes betrayed a brief flash of surprise before her neutral, smiles-and-sunshine stare came back to her, and Light Tail knew she’d nailed it correctly. Everypony had stopped laughing at her. “And how did that happen?”
“….when a blizzard started and wouldn’t stop, they all blamed each other. Nopony trusted each other, the earth ponies had to give food to the pegasi and unicorns in return for them controlling the weather and bringing about the sun and moon. In the end they had to leave ‘cause the blizzard never stopped. ”
The mare’s eyes had a little more trouble hiding their surprise, but at least no one else in class noticed it. “Very good, Light Tail,” her voice beamed with pleasant approval. “It seems you were paying attention. Just…try to stay awake, and go to bed earlier from now on.”
Yeeeeees! Scott free!! “Workin’ on it, Miss Amethyst,” she yawned instead, quickly climbing back into her desk chair with an awkward leap (but still favoring her sore butt, that solid metal floor hurt whenever she hit it!).
And just like that, class slugged along without a hitch. She didn’t dare go off daydreaming about Daring Do again, which made the morning drag on for far longer than she’d ever thought was possible. She kept her eyes off the clock for a while, just to see how bad it was, and when it felt like an eternity had passed by she glanced up again and felt a little pin popping the bubble of hope inside her chest.
Eight-fifty one.
Her head slumped over onto the desk, begging for relief from this endless torture by the gods. I hate Mondays…
Lunch time. Forty-five minutes of blissful release from the brain-draining imprisonment of grade school. Forty-five minutes of wondering how the Stable was able to keep growing new crops every year with artificial light. Forty-five minutes of chowing down on her wheat bread and two carrots.
Forty-five minutes of plotting her next prank with her two best friends.
“Light Tail did that last week and it was funny, but gross!” Emerald snarled quietly, moments after last week’s spectacular firecracker prank was suggested yet again. The red-apple coated earth pony filly was not one for the gross stuff, and for once Light Tail had to agree with her. That firecracker was probably the worst idea she’d ever had. “Plus all the firecrackers got locked up after that, there’s no way we could get ahold o’ one again so soon.”
As Light Tail chomped another piece of her carrot off, the purple-coated pegasus filly beside her spoke up once again. “I still have one left,” she said softly, keeping her voice to a soft whisper so as not to allow anyone else to overhear her and ruin whatever plan she’d had as a back-up. “We could—“
As amusing as exploding objects could be, Light Tail didn’t want to push their luck using them two weeks in a row, and quickly moved to put an end to the idea of a firecracker anything. “No, no firecrackers. Wheat Hooves really didn’t like it and if we use another one we might end up in a lot more trouble. I nearly got thrown into the Overmare’s office for that stunt, y’know.”
The mere mention of the word “Overmare” was enough to make Grape Jam stick her firecracker ideas back into the depths of her brain. “Oh, crud, I didn’t know that! I didn’t mean—“
“It’s fine,” Light Tail assured the panicking filly quickly (even though it wasn’t). “We just gotta be a lot more careful this time around. Like, stop planning these things here in the diner, even. How ‘bout we just wait ‘till after school and meet in the library?”
“Parchment’s still miffed at ya for tryin’ to re-arrange the whole library for her!” Emerald reminded her sharply over another crunchy bite of her carrot. “She still hasn’t found those Daring Do books you love so much!”
That stung more than getting her hoof burned on an open stove. She hadn’t read The Griffons’ Goblet in almost three months and she couldn’t stand the thought of it lying unnoticed in some dark shelf corner, ignored and overlooked by everyone in the Stable. Those three Daring books were probably the most popular, judging by how often they got checked out.
“Well, maybe we could help look for ‘em!” Grape Jam suggested next, nudging her empty plate forward to the center of the table while shooting an irritated glare of her eyes in Light Tail’s general direction. “So long as somepony promises not to try getting a librarian cutie mark again.”
Jeez, I’m getting more grief over that than I am over that firecracker in the boys’ bathroom! “Okay, okay! Relax, I don’t think she’d let me help her again anyway!” she shot back defensively. “I don’t wanna find out if she really would clip my tail off!”
“She’d probably just take half of it and mount it over the door as a warnin’!” Emerald giggled, her eyes shut tight as she no doubt began to imagine what such a tail mig--….no, scratch that, she was imagining it, that grin on her face was one of pure satisfaction. “Ah can almost see the tiny little thing now, bobbin’ up and down with every step you take and looking really, really stubby and short—“
Grape Jam couldn’t hold back her snickering any longer, and even though it annoyed Light Tail to no end to hear her friends having a good laugh at her expense, she remembered when she was laughing at Mom’s misfortune earlier in the morning. Complaining about it happening to her seemed a little hypocritical—
She snorted a mild laugh through her nose herself when she found Emerald’s mental image jabbing itself in front of her eyes without invitation…and discovered their next prank. “…yeah…that’d be pretty funny-lookin’. And I just happen to know a pony in need of a new look!”
“Besides Sun Star?” Grape Jam muttered amidst her quiet snickering. “Do we even keep a list of pranked ponies, Emmy?”
But Emerald shook her head in a sharp sweep, her amusement dying in an instant. “No, not here,” she rebuffed with a raised hoof. “El-Tee’s right, we shouldn’t be talkin’ ‘bout this stuff where everypony could hear us.”
Yeeeessss! Light Tail cheered loudly inside her devious mind, finishing off her carrot with one final gulp. “Library, then. And if you guys find the Griffon’s Goblet or the Sapphire Statue I’ll be your personal slave for like, a week.”
“Oh, will you?!” Grape Jam’s voice cooed with an exaggerated sweetness, killing the unicorn filly’s joy at the impending antics of the afternoon. “I could use an extra set of hooves to clean up my room later!”
Oh crud, me and my big mouth, she thought darkly, but answered the pegasus’s faked happiness with a sugary smile of her own. Can’t be worse than what Mom’s day must be like though….
Noon.
All necessary paperwork filled out, filed onto the terminal, and submitted to the central mainframe. No e-mails from the security chief down the hall on potential clerical errors this time around that needed editing/correcting. No e-mails or orders from the Overmare authorizing the issue of a sidearm. No security issues reported by the 3rd shift ponies, as usual. No current issues reported by the 1st shift ponies. No impending fights with maintenance over limited resources and energy. No authorization to solder on those new front bead sights on shotguns #2 and #9. Her inspection of the ammunition stores showed no new changes in the preservation talismans keeping the rounds safe from the ravages of age and environmental corrosion. She didn’t even have a broken baton to tape together from her last half-roll of duct tape for the month.
She was literally left with nothing to do but stare at the walls for the next three and a half hours, until the next shift change. And even then she would have everything sorted out in fifteen minutes. And so she simply sprawled out across the cold floor, her sense of direction and sanity dulled and lessened by the sheer power of complete and utter boredom. She couldn’t even think in clear, concise sentences, her mental musings coming across in broken fragments and extreme displays of emotion.
Am so. Freaking. BOOOORED!!!! Must stay awake!! Stay awake…
And just like that, her mind began to drift away into a state of semi-consciousness. To stimulate it, she attempted to raise her right foreleg and swipe at the back cover of a repair manual, opened up and set down next to the terminal at the counter. She struck the dangling hardback cover with the tip of her hoof, jostling it slightly and setting it into a half-second swing before it came back to a stand-still. But that movement alone shifted the book across the counter, bringing it a tad closer to the edge….and allowing that back cover to drift down a tad. Just enough to allow her to give it a good smack with her hoof, rather than just the edge of it. So that’s what she did.
The impact pushed the book off the counter and sent it tumbling towards the floor, only to be caught in a field of indigo magic as her horn mindlessly released a minor levitation spell. With practiced ease she floated the book back up onto the counter and set it back where it was, already bored with smacking it about the room. And she honestly shouldn’t have been hitting it to start with; there were only three copies of it.
And so she was back to simply lying on the cold floor, with absolutely no other job critical tasks to complete or tend to. Scheduled cleaning of the firearms was next week, not this week. What had she done in a previous life to deserve being afflicted with such astounding levels of boredom and inactivity? If not for her Light Tail, she might’ve offed herself by now, unwilling to live an entire life of doing nothing but this six days a week.
But there, at least, was the saving grace of her sanity. At the end of her work shift, she could saunter on back to her living quarters and be amused and uplifted by the company of her daughter for the rest of the day. Was it wrong to want to spend all her free time with her kid? Was it unhealthy?
Did it even matter?
With the detached demeanor of the condemned, she finally bothered herself to rise from the floor, using her listless limbs to steady her lead body as she thumped back towards the terminal. At this point her mind had begun to blank out, becoming little more than empty space as what was left of her consciousness sought out a random task to carry out. A gentle flow of cool magic through her horn began to press at the keyboard, bringing up the morning’s shift change report for the fifth time for no real reason other than to give her eyes something to read for a few minutes. But the cold, monochrome green letters and numbers barely registered to her, and within moments a second flow of magic returned the report into digital oblivion.
A line of text in the lower right corner blinked, morphing into a slightly different number for her viewing pleasure:
12:01 P.M.
Her skull collapsed onto the counter with a soft thud. Time itself seemed almost frozen, her sense of the world around her feeling as though it were stretching out to make itself appear much larger than it actually was. All it did was depress her.
Hate. MONDAYS. SO. MUCH.
Her plans to get back at Lip Jam for calling her mother such a horrible name the other day got put on hold.
School had barely let out for the day when Grape Jelly’s mother swooped in and took her away to the infirmary level two floors up. Emerald’s dad was likewise really quick to collect the little green-eyed filly before she could escape from the hallway. And a disappointed and disheartened Light Tail had no choice but to walk back to her quarters on the ninth floor. There was no way Parchment would let her into the library by herself, not after how badly she’d screwed up all the shelves and stuff.
Her saddlebag was quickly slung off of her body and tossed onto her favorite spot on the couch as she strolled through the door, her stomach grumbling for sustenance in any available form. Yet even as she latched onto the refrigerator door with her jaws and pulled it open, she felt almost no joy at the impending snack of sliced apple.
It was hard to be excited about coming home when no one was waiting for you.
Mom wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. And really, Mom had it worse. School was boring, but at least she got to do something. Mom didn’t even have that most of the day. She always came home so…lifeless. So brain-dead. Like her body was dragging itself along without the help of input and direction from her head. They wouldn’t even let her bring books to work, just stuck her behind a cage for eight hours and hoped for the best. So when Mom came home, she was getting pounced and tickled and gently gnawed on. And then maybe she might feel like teaching her a couple more spells out of that bookcase stuffed with entire tomes of them.
Until then, she was on her own, no matter how much she hated it.
She nudged a pair of milk bottles aside on the top shelf, revealing a plastic container in the back of the fridge which held six red apples. She picked out the healthiest one of the bunch and floated it up to the counter in a levitation field, along with a sharp-edged knife and a small plate, and had it sliced up into eight pieces in about as many seconds. With no homework for the day, no friends to hang out with, no mother to pester and play with, and no Daring Do books to read, she settled for the fifth best thing she could find to kill the time until Mom came home.
Gently cradling the plate of apple slices between her teeth, she trotted back into the living room while simultaneously focusing a levitation field towards the bookcase against the wall to her right. When the field began to waft over the books she refocused her hold on it, picking a book off of the shelf at random and pulling it along behind her as made her way back to the couch. She stopped just long enough to set the plate down on the coffee table before leaping up onto a well-worn depression in the couch, and brought the book up closer to see what prize she’d claimed:
A Song of the Night: The Mare of the Everfree
By White Quill
A childish squeak escaped her throat as she flicked the book open to the very first page. Somehow she hadn’t read this one yet, and now was as good a time as any. And sometimes this epic fantasy stuff could be pretty darn cool. Daring Do was still the best, though.
The book immersed her in its intricately crafted world, absorbing the entirety of her attention for the next two hours. The tale was one of a unicorn pony, drawn to the ruins of the old royal castle in the Everfree Forest in search of an ancient artifact once guarded by the alicorn sisters from all who sought it. Long forgotten in the chaos of Celestia’s battle against Nightmare Moon, it had come to the attention of a guild of sorcerers and brigands who worshipped Discord and wished to free him from his petrified state. It was said that this ancient artifact held the power to undo the effects of the Elements of Harmony, and a guild of unicorns known as the White Lily Society had sent one of its own to retrieve it on behalf of Princess Celestia.
Like any good story, it wouldn’t have been a very exciting one if everything had gone as planned. From the moment the heroine Starlight had waltzed into the Everfree around chapter five, her adventure took one wrong turn after another—first her enchanted cape and dress were mauled to pieces by a pack of timberwolves, forcing her to begin her mission without the aid of their magic-enhancing effects. Then she’d stumbled into a patch of poison joke and found that it turned her voice high and tinny, ruining many of her verbal-based spells until she’d stumbled upon the shack of an earth pony stallion who was able to brew a curative potion. She was so taken in by his kindness and gentle demeanor that she decided to stay in his shack for the evening.
The story picked up from there in the morning hours, where the heroine found the majority of her supplies gone and the stallion nowhere to be seen. Her fury shook the ground for three miles as she began to hunt for the thief with the use of a scrying spell (easily attuned to the stallion thanks to her…intimate familiarity with him, as the author put it), eventually tracking him to a riverbed where he was discovered to be meeting with agents of the cult of Discord. Though the magic-heavy battle that ensued was lengthy, her possessions became hers once again. Light Tail’s mind even briefly sketched together from scratch an image of the silver-coated mare standing in the river, soaked to the bone, as she turned the water around her into a watery visage of Princess Celestia herself and charged it straight into the trio of cultists. Afterwards the stallion learned the hard way why it wasn’t a good idea to get on a unicorn mare’s bad side, and the telekinetic vengeance of the mare gave her the shivers all over. Ouch! That even feels painful…but….why hit him there? I don’t get it.
Still, it had served the purpose of fulfilling Starlight’s desire for payback, so she left it alone without further thought. Someday, though, she was going to make Mom explain why it hurt colts so much to be smacked there.
Chapter nine ended with the unicorn leaving the stallion to writhe and twitch in agony by the river, and that was as far as she would get in the story today. Her ears perked up at the sound of the door’s massive pistons engaging to retract it inside the doorway, and she quickly set the attached bookmark inside the tome’s pages before setting it down next to her empty plate—
—hopped up to her feet and crouched down as Mom’s body began to stroll through the doorway, exhausted and drained from the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in a cramped room for eight hours—
—the second the door dropped back down, Light Tail leapt off of the couch, using her hind legs to give her pouncing attack the extra distance she needed to reach her mother—
“BOO!” she screamed out as loudly as she could—
—she broke into a fit of maniacal laughter as her mother’s body jolted in place, the mare shooting her a look of complete shock and surprise just before the little filly collided into the side of her body. While Light Tail didn’t really have the strength to knock her over by herself, her scare tactic gave her all the leverage she needed. Mom wasn’t standing on four legs anymore, and when that was combined with her flying tackle, the much larger pony was soon tumbling down onto the carpeted floor with a meaty thud, ripe for further torture with a tickle attack to the neck—
—Mom’s screams turned into frantic shrieks of laughter as the filly’s little hooves found those two ticklish spots along the side of her neck and the one underneath her right foreleg, and Light Tail knew immediately that any evils and foul moods had inhabited her mother’s mind were no longer there.
“Ahhhh!! That makes me so squeamish and girly—“
“Good! Makes ya easy for a little filly like me to handle!”
“Ahahahaha stoppit that tickles really bad—“
“Not ‘till you surrender!” And just because she could, she decided to reach over and attack another ticklish spot on her stomach—
Her mother’s legs began to kick against the ground, losing almost all control over herself and left at the mercy of a filly about a third her size—
“Eaaaahhh okay okay stoppit you win hahahahahahhAHAHA—“
The moment Mom surrendered to her tickling assault, Light Tail halted her torturous efforts and clambered off of her, grinning madly at the results of her hastily planned attack. “The great and powerful Light Tail wins aga—“
Almost as soon as her hooves touched the floor, however, her entire body began to grow warm with the touch of an all-too-familiar levitation spell, and she was being lifted up into the air before she could even attempt a counterspell—
“—aaaaiggghhhh wait wait this isn’t how it goes—“
Mom’s body scuffled against the carpet as she rolled over into a sitting position, her face now sporting the same evil grin that had moments ago adorned the filly’s visage—
Uh-oh. “W-wait Mom! Can’t we talk ‘bout this like civil ponies?!”
“No,” Mom answered flatly, but that evil, evil smile never left. If anything, it became even more insidious. “In fact, I think I’m going to reward your treachery with some of mine.”
Oh crud not th—
The attack came even as she realized what was about to befall her. All at once, every ticklish spot in her tiny body was attacked by what felt like a dozen separate telekinetic spells, all masterfully controlled and manipulated as though the feat was mere child’s play. As cool as it was, it didn’t make it any more bearable. Her body was paralyzed by sharp, contracting waves that slammed into her nerves and seeped into her deepest bones. The funny, fuzzy feelings washing over her even hit her in places she didn’t know she could be ticklish in. It was all she could do to keep from turning the carpet yellow, and even that was getting harder every second.
Not that her screaming laughter allowed her any space to complain about it. Yet.
“How do you like me now, ya sneaky little devil?!” Mom’s voice laughed darkly, filled with sick amusement.
“Ahahahaha oh stars I can barely breathe—“
“Really? Must’ve missed a spot.”
Now she was really doomed. A thirteenth telekinetic spell began to apply its subtle pressure on one last spot, right between her shoulders, and now all she could do was laugh herself hoarse and feel her legs bucking and kicking in just about every direction physically possible. It didn’t take very long for her to start feeling a loosening of pressure, and the slight panic it induced gave her enough self-control to at least start begging for release through her continuous laughing.
“Hehahahaha okay okay you win I give up just—hehehe—just let me go already hahaHA!”
“I fell for this trick once before, squirt!”
She wasn’t sure if it was the word ‘squirt’ that did it, or the relentless assault on her tickle spots, but she thought she felt a very slight wetness begin to creep out, and her panic doubled. “Hahahaha no Mom I’m serious I’m gonna pee myself if you don’t stop—“
Mom’s hold on her fourteen separate spells died almost immediately, allowing the little filly to plummet to the floor free from further tickling. The fuzzy, funny waves bleeding into her bladder rescinded, but she didn’t want to wait to see if she’d retain control of her biological urges for much longer.
She pushed herself back up to her feet and began trotting (quickly) towards the door into the hallway, still chuckling away from Mom’s tickling. “The great an—heheh—the great and powerful Light Tail will get you next time—SNNRKK—hahahaHAHA!”
Light Tail hopped and laughed all the way out into the hallway and turned right towards the lavatory/shower room in the center of the floor, and all at once the brain-draining despair of a monotonous Stable life drifted away into nothing. She was home, where she belonged. Where somepony she loved more than her own life had been waiting for her. Where she wished she could stay. As it was, she only got a few hours with her daughter every day. She spent the rest of it working or sleeping. It didn’t seem fair to her.
Like most things about life in this Stable.
With one last snickering laugh she finally got back onto her hooves and walked over to the couch where Light Tail’s sneak attack had originated. An empty plate tainted with the faint smell of Stable-grown apples was the only real mess left behind, and likely left there because the filly had been too engrossed by the book right beside it to bother putting it away when she was done with it. What was her little bookworm reading no—
Oh, this is a good one! The mother beamed with delight upon seeing the title printed on the top half of the cover. Maybe not quite up to the more adventurous tone of a Daring Do book, but still good, and it definitely had its fair share of action and intrigue. There were even a number of spells in it she wanted to try out just to see if they really could be done. She couldn’t think of a reason why they couldn’t be done, at any rate. She simply lacked a natural environment to toy with as the book’s heroine did. But one could dream.
Unfortunately for Light Tail, she also remembered enough of the last two chapters to decide to apply a localized censoring spell on its content (primarily involving rather….raunchy moments between the heroine and her lover). It took her a couple of minutes to find the paragraphs in question and set the spell upon them, but once it was done the magically-imbued runes sealed themselves into the paper in place of the questionable paragraphs, which quickly faded out of existence. The filly wouldn’t like it when she got to this point in the story, but there were some things she didn’t want her daughter reading or learning about just yet. And once the squirt was old enough, it was a simple affair to remove the spells and restore the paragraphs.
She never got the chance to tell her about it, however. Light Tail had just waltzed back in from the restroom when the Stable PA speakers fizzled to life, its static-laced message carrying with it a foreboding sense of doom and unease.
“All adult Stable residents, report to the auditorium by eighteen-hundred hours,” the Overmare’s voice dutifully requested. “Attendance is mandatory, as this is very important.”
The auditorium was the most lavish (and comfortable) space in Stable 115. While built of iron and steel like the rest of the Stable, it was given incredibly well designed carpeting that was still comfortable to the hooves even after nearly two centuries. In addition, the three hundred mahogany-framed, two-cushion sofas arrayed in front of the elevated stage were also designed so that the pony occupying it could simply lie down rather than be forced to sit on their hindquarters. For “town hall” meetings such as the one about to get underway, these sofas allowed the five hundred and eight-six adult ponies of the Stable to be comfortable for the proceedings so long as nopony minded being crammed onto a sofa with another pony.
Without Light Tail to keep her company, she was forced to make do with the presence of a pegasus mare named Cloud Wind, who bore the distinction of being the only friend she had left from her childhood. And despite the roar of a hundred-plus conversations happening at once around them, the sky colored pegasus showed a remarkable interest in trying to get her hooked up with somepony. Again.
“So I hear Quill Point is on the rebound,” Cloud teased when it was clear that nudging the unicorn with her hoof wasn’t going to get her attention. “Buttermilk apparently wasn’t his type, but she was impressed enough with his bedside skills to talk to me about it He could be just what you need to get you out of your quarters once in a while.”
“Cut it out, Windy,” she growled darkly, refusing to even acknowledge the pegasus’s touch. “This isn’t the time or place.”
Cloud refused to pull away from her, though the teasing, playful tone in her voice was noticeably lessened. “Oh come on, I’m serious, for once. You haven’t gone near a stallion since the last one you went to bed with knocked you up. That’s the reason you’re going insane, not your job.”
“I don’t need a stallion in my life.”
Cloud’s flank pressed up against hers until their cutie marks were mashing against each other. “Cute,” she whispered through a sadistic grin. “So you’re saying you’re into mares now? ‘Cause if you are, then I’d just like to say that I’ve always liked the way you swish your tail back and forth when you walk…”
A rush of blood and heat swelled up in her cheeks as she scooted herself away from the pegasus and into the side rest of the sofa. “By Celestia, you’re insatiable. And they call me a whore.”
Cloud’s gunmetal gray mane was brushed aside with a hearty laugh. “I’m just having fun with you! It’s just kinda sad to see you cooped up in your quarters all the time. Your kid can do fine without you for a few hours now and then. When was the last time you had some “you” time? Or the last time you even had a date?”
“The day I got pregnant with Light Tail,” she muttered back with a flat voice. “On my couch, no less.”
Cloud’s face scrunched up in mild disgust as she withdrew herself to the other end of the sofa. “Ewww, a little too much information there. Wait ‘till the squirt finds out.”
“I washed it afterwards!” she hissed quickly. “And you’re the one who asked.”
“I only asked about the last time you had some “you” time or the last date you had, not where you got laid! A mare shouldn’t kiss and tell.”
“Then don’t ask. If anything we ought to be asking how much longer we’re going to be here.”
They weren’t forced to wait very long for their answer. Just moments later the familiar red-apple mane of the Overmare emerged from behind the massive show curtain behind the speaking podium, trotting forward in her 115 jumpsuit with a look of weariness in her eyes. Either she had terrible news, or she’d spent another night doing just about anything but sleeping.
At the Overmare’s appearance, every voice in the auditorium promptly shushed themselves, filling the room with an eerie silence in which the Overmare could speak clearly and concisely.
“Thank you for being so prompt in your arrival,” the Overmare’s voice greeted the Stable. “As we all know, with our communications capabilities ruined on the day this Stable was sealed, we have no way of knowing the status of Equestria That Was without sending somepony out there to find out. Roughly thirty years after that horrific day, we began our tradition of doing just that. Each generation, we send some of our own to leave the safety of our Stable and try to discover what’s happened out there. To this day, sadly, none have ever returned home.”
The tone of grief in her voice caused most ponies in the room (herself included) to bow their heads in a silent prayer to the royal princesses. None dared bring up the fact that the last soul to embark on the Last Journey was the Overmare’s own mother, who had left the Stable in her daughter’s capable hooves before leaving five years ago.
“While this tradition keeps our numbers from being depleted beyond sustainable levels, it also means we end up waiting a minimum of twenty years between each Selection for news from the world beyond,” the Overmare continued after a few moments of mournful silence, her tone becoming steady once more. “And as we approach the two hundred year anniversary of this stable’s sealing, it’s become apparent to me that we can’t afford to wait this long anymore. We need to speed things up. And with that goal in mind, I’ve made the decision to initiate the next Selection this week.”
For the first time in her life, she heard the sound of complete and utter silence fall over her hearing, all rational thought brought to a brain-numbing halt. Even the oxygen in the room seemed to sit still in the air. Everypony dreaded Selection, dreaded being the one to have their name drawn from a flimsy cardboard box, condemned to the mysterious outside world where none of their predecessors had ever managed to come back from. The previous Overmare had sidestepped the process by actually volunteering, but the end result was still the same. She stepped out through the Stable door…and never came back.
Just like the nine Wanderers before her. Nopony wanted that fate. To leave their families behind to vanish in whatever cruel world waited beyond, to be gobbled up in its terrible maw. The Last Journey was a suicide mission, and they all knew it.
As the Overmare likely expected, the hopeless silence didn’t silence. Almost as quickly as it had died, the noise of hundreds of voices returned, their fears and horrors realized despite their hopes that they would live out a good portion of their lives without seeing the wheel of Fate spin again. The message from the Stable’s population was clear.
No.
“Are you crazy?!” a young tan-colored stallion at the front yelled up at the Overmare. She couldn’t see his cutie mark from where she was, but it sounded like Deck. “This stable’s lost ten ponies across a hundred and seventy years to this “tradition” and for what?! What have we ever gained from it?!”
“Deck’s right!” a second stallion joined in, confirming her suspicions about the first one’s identity, but she could tell where this new dissenter was speaking from. “We’re all safe and sound down here, there’s no need to put that at risk! Whatever’s out there isn’t worth any of our lives!”
The Overmare’s hoof slammed down onto the podium in front of her, the sharp echo thundering into everypony’s chest as though she’d smacked them herself, and the shouting died again. “We’re safe now, yes,” she said in a loud, authoritive voice. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? Our families and ancestors have lived in this underground shelter for nearly two hundred years, and it’s remarkable that we’ve been able to keep it running fairly smoothly for so long. How much longer can that last? Ten years? Twenty? Fifty? I know for sure we can’t do it for another two centuries.”
“What if we’re all that’s left of ponykind?!” a mare in the back screamed out over the crowd. “What if all the Wanderers walked out into a world that can’t even support life anymore?! We’d be better off dying out in here than choking to death up there!”
“If that were the case our oxygen recyclers wouldn’t have had anything to suck in from the outside for two centuries, and the First Families would have suffocated in the first three hours,” the Overmare barked back sharply. “The environment outside has survived, somehow, even if Equestria That Was died in the last day of the war. If nothing else we should at least be seeing if it’s possible to re-settle the land around us. There will be a day when this stable won’t be able to support life anymore. We owe it to our children to give them the best chance we can.”
Bringing up the possibility that everypony’s little filly or colt could face a bleak future seemed to dampen much of the combative attitudes that had been threatening to boil over the poor Overmare. But it was also obvious that very few souls present had ever even thought of the possibility that the stable wouldn’t last forever. It was as though they preferred the illusion of safety to the reality of keeping an underground shelter running with only the parts and supplies it had started with two hundred years ago.
When no further voices of discontent aired themselves to the Overmare, she took it upon herself to close the matter before anypony else could get the nerve to speak out. “I don’t expect any of you to like it, but if we want future generations to survive we have to do this. I’ll make my final decision on who to send out by Thursday. That’s all for now. Security department, stay behind if you would, I’d like to discuss some other matters with you while you’re here. That includes you, Sling Shot.”
Great, the teal-blue unicorn bemoaned to herself as the crowd began to file out of the auditorium while the security ponies remained seated. More bad news. As if Selection wasn’t bad enough on its own.
“Ever notice that no one’s called you by your actual name for the last eight years?” Cloud Wind whispered in a seditious manner. “I thought your special talent was spell mastery, not guns.”
“And who says a mare can’t be good at more than one thing?” she whispered back, though she couldn’t shake off an ominous feeling dread that seemed to linger at the Overmare’s eyes.
Once everypony that wasn’t security had departed and sealed the doors behind them, the Overmare dropped any pretenses she might have been holding up about the nature of her next topic. “Starting immediately, every one of you is to be armed with at least a sidearm at all times,” she said quickly. “Earth ponies and Cloud Wind may opt for a long arm if they prefer. Maintenance is worried that another radroach infestation in the vents may be coming our way.”
“Did they find a nest?” Chief Farsight asked almost immediately, alarmed that such a security risk had not been brought to him already.
The Overmare nodded once in his direction. “Level two, just above the atrium. They’ve already put fire to it but several of the eggs had already hatched by the time they found it, and the vents in the atrium lead down to both floors on level two as well as level three. From three they could get into half the Stable. School will be shuttered until we have confirmation that the threat of infestation is past us, and I’m instituting a night-time curfew for all ponies and departments except security since radroaches seem to be more active during minimal lighting hours. Third-shift security will be authorized to detain any pony caught outside quarters, but I’d much prefer it if you just walked them back to where they’re supposed to be. Be nice about it, if you would. In the meantime, if maintenance team members should happen to ask for sidearms during their search of the vents, oblige them with an escort instead. I don’t want panicky ponies roaming our vent systems with guns they aren’t trained with.”
“Might be a good idea to get them trained,” Cloud Wind suggested politely. “There’s only ten to twelve of us per shift at any one time. We can’t be everywhere at once, and if the radroaches start making personal appearances in the hallways we’ll have our hooves full. We can’t afford to be even one pony short. Teaching them how to shoot will free us from having to foalsit them.”
“Or we could all just pull twelve-hour shifts until the infestation is handled,” Farsight added with a business-like tone, much to everypony’s disappointment. “That would double our numbers on patrol and give us a much better chance of containing an outbreak before somepony gets hurt, or worse. And I’d rather save the nine millimeters for the militia force if things get out of hoof anyway.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” the Overmare snapped briskly before anypony could object, and just like that, Sling Shot’s chance of spending any time with her daughter was scuttled into an airlock for the foreseeable future. As important as it was to keep the stable safe, she couldn’t help but feel hurt at having her time with Light Tail cut short like this. “Ten millimeter pistols for unicorns, and as I said, Cloud Wind and the earth ponies may use long arms mounted on a battle saddle if they find it easier to work with. No long arms on unicorn security unless we find enough nests to warrant the extra firepower. And if that happens, the entire Stable goes on lockdown and every resident will be handed a baton. It’s not great, but it’s better than being left to fend for themselves with just their bare hooves and rudimentary levitation magic. We’re not all at Sling Shot’s level, after all.”
“Oh ho, praise for the resident ‘immoral whore’,” Cloud Wind jested lightly in her ear. “Now I know we’re in trouble.”
“Third shift, consider yourselves on duty immediately until six o’clock tomorrow morning,” the Overmare continued, oblivious to Cloud Wind’s side commentary and the small murmur of discontent amongst the security department in front of her. “Half of second shift is also on duty until that time. First shift and the other half of second will be on duty from six in the morning to six p.m. Second shift, you have about two minutes to decide which half of the day to work. If necessary Chief Farsight will make the shift assignments himself. Stay in contact with maintenance and keep a close eye on the ventilation systems. I’ll make the announcement to the Stable at large in a few minutes. Stay safe, and keep us safe.”
“Hey, cheer up,” Cloud’s voice consoled her gently as they trotted back towards her quarters. “At least we’ve finally got some excitement going on here. Who knows, you might even enjoy work for a while.”
But Sling Shot was having none of it. What could possibly be exciting about giant mutated cockroaches with a taste for pony flesh? They were easy kills with a BB gun, so anything more than that was overkill, but if there were enough of them they could do a lot of damage very quickly. She still had nightmares from the last infestation three years back. That poor colt…
“I wanted to enjoy some time with my kid,” she growled back over her shoulders. “Now I may not even get to see her for more than a couple hours a day.”
“It’s not permanent,” the pegasus reminded her tiredly, growing slightly frustrated with the unicorn’s unhappy disposition. “And by Wednesday I’ll be on the six-p.m.-to-six-a.m. shift, so I can keep her company while you’re on duty. I was lucky that Rose Glade was willing to trade shifts with me for today.”
I guess that’s something, she admitted silently as she turned into the left hallway at the t-section for the final stretch to her living quarters. At least the kid won’t be left alone all day. And that thought alone began to make her feel guilty for being so harsh a few seconds earlier.
“…thanks for that,” was all she could think to say, her foul mood becoming lost in her guilt. “I’m moody, but it’s no excuse for taking it out on you.”
“It’s just that time of the month for you, I’m sure,” Cloud uttered casually, dismissing the matter almost effortlessly and with zero fanfare. “Come on already, you still got a couple hours you can use to pester the squirt before bedtime.”
That, ironically, was what she was afraid of. The Overmare’s announcement on the PA would leave the curious thing full of questions for her mother, and she wouldn’t like hearing about her new working hours. But she was smart enough to hopefully understand that it was necessary.
Hopefully.
The two mares had barely reached the door when it slid open, revealing the light teal-blue filly on the other side with what looked like blotches of flour and margarine on her face and the front half of her body. “Awwww yeah!!” she exclaimed happily at the sight of Cloud Wind, shooting her left hoof forward and up. “Whut up, Aunt C?”
“Nothin’ but the rain, El-Tee!” Cloud Wind squealed back, shooting her own left hoof out and tapping it into the filly’s. At the moment of impact the two childish ponies promptly jerked them back towards themselves, their mouths mimicking the noise of a small explosion before bursting into a short fit of laughter.
“Got some grub goin’, won’t be long!” Light Tail announced with gleeful cheer once their customary greeting had been concluded, and promptly turned around and hopped her way back towards the kitchen space. “You two lovebirds just chill out on the sofa. I won’t watch, I promise!”
A flustered Sling Shot growled at the world around her as Cloud Wind laughed heartily at the filly’s brave (but foolish) teasing. “El-Tee, have you been talking to Hayseed again?!”
“Oh calm down, Sling!” Cloud chuckled in the filly’s defense, subtly brushing their flanks together as she passed by the unicorn. “The little joker’s just trying to lighten your mood.”
Her face still warm with fresh blood, Sling Shot sighed in exasperation and followed the sky blue pegasus inside. She liked to tease her this way now and then, but this time she’d followed it with actual physical contact. And not the kind that could be dismissed as simply trying to pass through a narrow space, she’d meant to cross their cutie marks together like that. It was enough to make her wonder if she was just taking her teasing up a notch or if there was something more behind it.
“So whatcha cookin’ up this time?” Cloud asked the budding child chef as her wings unfurled from her sides and began to stretch themselves out. Being a pegasus in an underground fallout shelter didn’t leave a lot of room for flight practice outside the three-hundred yard room at the bottom of the stable.
“Got lucky today, Wheat Harvest came by with our weekly ration of grain and flour before goin’ to that meetin’ you all had!” Light Tail replied with that same cheerful glee in her words. “So I’m whippin’ up those fresh hot rolls Mom and I couldn’t have this morning to go along with the chopped lettuce salad, annnnd for kicks I sliced up a carrot and put a cube of that block of mozzarella to the cheese grater. Think we still got some grape juice left too, if it’s in the back of the fridge like I hope it is!”
Sling Shot’s mouth began to water and drool at the thought of the meal her filly had thought to start cooking while she was going, and even Cloud couldn’t hold back an appreciative whistle. “Dude, even telling me about it satisfies my hunger pangs! How do you not have a cutie mark in cooking, kid?”
“It ain’t for lack of tryin’!” Light Tail giggled sweetly, preparing to take a ladle into her mouth to pepper the salads with shredded mozzeralla the moment she finished talking. “And I had a funny feelin’ you’d be coming so I’m makin’ enough for three! Like I said, just chill out and pretend I’m not here, if you can!”
Hearing how happy and upbeat her child was pushed her into postponing the ‘bad news’ part of the day, for the moment. There was no need to ruin a good meal by raining on the kid’s parade jus—
“Oh, wait, don’t pretend, I gotta ask you somethin’ about that meetin’!” Light Tail changed her mind in the next instant, spitting the ladle out of her mouth and into a waiting levitation field, and began peppering the salads with cheese by the magic of her horn instead of by hoof. “The Overmare said there’s a night curfew on ‘till further notice, and that security would be doubled up and armed. Does that mean you two are gonna be workin’ extra hours for a while?”
Sling Shot’s face fell into a deflated posture, unable to keep up the weak charade of contentment she’d just started to put up. Sometimes the crazy child was just too smart for her own good. “I’m afraid so,” she answered, slouching her neck in a sign of disappointment. “I’m sorry…”
Light Tail’s cheerful outlook faded away in an instant, and she sighed to no one in particular as she set the ladle back onto the counter, having finished preparing the three salad bowls. “It’s not your fault,” she tried to console, but her dejected voice made it clear she was still mildly upset at the prospect of not having her mother’s company as often as she was used to. “Just wish this hadn’t happened now that I got to readin’ that awesome book. I was gonna ask you to teach me some spells…”
Hearing the filly’s mild request made her heart skip briefly. She’d never really complained about the lessons on the levitation spell, but she’d never really shown any further interest in magic studies. Even if it was just another one of her “cutie mark crusades”, it would be worth the effort and energy to see if the family talent for magic had successfully passed on or not. “We’ll work it out once things get back to normal,” she promised.
Light Tail’s body perked up slightly at the promise, and though she didn’t return to her overly joyous mood, she wasn’t moping about anymore either. “No rush,” she said. “It’s not like ya got picked for the Last Journey or anythin’, right?”
Sling Shot’s heart screeched to a terrifying halt, having almost completely forgotten about the subject up until that point. It was true that the Overmare hadn’t chosen anyone just yet, but she’d also neglected to say anything about it on the PA system, most likely to keep from panicking the children at such a late hour. And she wasn’t about to ruin dinner with such a subject. So long as Light Tail didn’t suspect anything, she wouldn’t do or say anything to bring such suspicions to the surface.
And if Cloud Wind’s dipped wings were any indication, the pegasus had been thinking the same thing. She even betrayed a brief glare of dismay as she turned back to look at her friend in the eyes, as if trying to silently ask how they were going to even tell the kid that Selection was coming over two decades earlier than it was supposed to.
All Sling Shot could come up with was a weak, half-hearted smile, one she hoped would be mistaken for being disappointed at her new working hours rather than the possibility that this week would be the last one she’d ever spend with her daughter. “Yeah….that’d be pretty awful.”
This wasn’t funny anymore.
It started Tuesday morning. Mom never bothered to reset the timing on her bedroom lights and nearly overslept; she made it to work on time only by the barest of margins. It was kinda funny to watch, actually—her eternally morning-shy mother, up and zipping about the kitchen/living room in a high-pitched squealing panic as she tried to make herself something edible to munch on before rushing out the door in her Stable suit and holstered pistol at speeds she’d never shown herself capable of in the morning. Since school was out until the Overmare said otherwise, Light Tail spent the rest of the dawning morning hours cleaning up the mess left behind and trying to figure how to set the timing mechanisms on Mom’s room lights so that they’d wake her up two hours sooner than usual. Then she set her own room lights up for the same time to make sure Mom didn’t try to ignore the lights and sleep through them like she usually did.
Wednesday morning came, and Mom was so difficult to rouse out of bed that breakfast had grown cold by the time she’d crawled out from under the blankets. Mom didn’t like cold breakfast. She didn’t either, but she’d tried so hard to get her out of bed in the first place that she escaped punishment that time. Aunt C didn’t care either way. She was weird like that.
Thursday morning, it appeared at first glance, was going to be a repeat of Wednesday if she didn’t try something different this time. And after three days of being the one to kick her own mother out of bed when it should’ve been the other way around, she was starting to get irritated with the entire process.
“Rise and shine, Mom!” Light Tail announced in a high, loud voice, purposefully ignoring the suffering the bright lights inflicted on the slumbering mare. “A new day of excitement and adventure awaits!”
Mom’s only answer was to shove her head under her pillows and fling her blankets over herself in a vain effort to hide from the light and the tiny filly that had so rudely awakened her.
With a growl, she began to pull at the top comforter with her teeth in an effort to stir her mother from her slumber. “Come on, I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing this! Get up!”
One of Mom’s forelegs snaked over the edge of her blankets and bent inward at the knee joint, trapping them within and allowing her to pull the blankets back over her body. “Don’t wanna,” her mouth slurred quietly. “Go away.”
Arrrggh!!! How’d you get a job in security?!
Since asking wasn’t working (nor were her pathetic attempts to outmuscle a pony over three times her size), she decided this morning was a good time to try something a little nastier. “Then I guess you don’t want that delicious strawberry-flavored oatmeal and a helping of grapes,” she said with exaggerated flair, slowly turning around and walking back out of the room. “Oh well, guess that means more for me, then—“
Mom’s bedsprings creaked as she finally forced herself to at least attempt to leave the supreme comfort of her mattress and fluffy comforters. “….you wouldn’t.”
The taste of victory was bittersweet. It was kinda sad that the best way to get Mom’s attention was with a plate of food. “Wouldn’t want it goin’ to waste like yesterday’s biscuits and hash brown casserole. And I loooooove strawberry!”
The bedsprings creaked again, and Mom’s hooves thudded onto the carpeted floor with the enthusiasm of the doomed. “You are an evil, evil little filly.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘mission accomplished’!” she squealed with delight, and promptly trotted back out into the living room. “Hurry up, slowpoke!”
She wasn’t sure, but she swore Mom was mumbling something unkind under her tired breath as her body lumbered along behind her. Well, whatever! At least she was up and awake. A little. And she kept hoping against long odds that if she did this often enough, Mom would get the idea and start doing a better job of getting herself out of bed every morning. Not likely, but one could dream.
As was the case the last two mornings, breakfast was a rather quiet affair, mother and child content to munch away in silence and simply enjoy the warm, sweet strawberry oatmeal and the sharp buttered toast. In time, the meal was finished and the used dinnerware set aside in the washer, and the first real surprise of the day came not long after. As Light Tail pulled The Mare of the Everfree back out of the bookshelf for another morning reading session, Mom strolled out of her room in her stable suit, complete with a holstered sidearm on her left side…
And a small, black canvas bag floating beside her in a field of magic. Not her usual morning routine.
“Gonna do something a little different this morning,” Mom explained to her curious glance as she set the book down on the table. “I think it’s time I showed you how to shoot.”
Most children were not as smart as her little night light. Foalsitting on the side here and there earlier in her life had taught her that the hard way.
I’m hungry, a filly would say. Be patient, she’d answer. I wanna eat something now, would be the very next thing she’d hear. No, not now, later, she’d insist as per the parent’s instruction. I wanna eat now! Daddy would let me eat something right now! the filly would yell. Insolent little pest. Daddy’s not here right now, and he told me not to spoil your dinner, she’d explain. The argument would go back and forth, eventually ending in a mess when the father came home to find his little girl in tears from arguing with the stable’s “immoral whore”. And then another, shorter argument would follow concerning her lack of parenting skills in dealing with a child.
Don’t run through the hallways like that, she’d admonish a rambunctious colt. You’re not my mom, you can’t tell me what to do, the irritating child would bite back. I’m telling you for her, ‘cause she’d say the same thing. Don’t run in the halls! And the colt would ignore her, and speed on until he tripped on his four left hooves and cracked a leg bone, or bowled over a stable resident exiting their quarters. And then the mother would be rushing up to the infirmary ward, sick with worry at her child’s self-inflicted injury, and yell at the stable’s “immoral whore” about how kids were more than just the end result of sleeping with the first eager stallion that came along, and that she needed to be responsible for once in her life.
Do your homework, kids, she’d tell a pair of twins, brother and sister. We’ll do it later, the sister would half-promise with a dismissive demeanor. “Later” turns into “oops, sorry teach, forgot to do my homework last night”, she’d say. We’re busy right now, we’ll do it later, the brother would repeat for his twin. The checkers board will still be there when you’re done, if you do your homework now you can play the rest of the day, she’d try, hoping to appeal to their desire to be free of impending responsibility. They’d shrug and ignore her, mutter something about how mom and dad told them to try and be nice to her even though she wasn’t exactly an upstanding mare herself. She’d get mad at them, and let them waste away their evening. And then the parents would come to her a couple of days later and berate her for not making sure the little bug bites had done their homework because they’d just failed a surprise mid-week test that included their missed homework as part of the grade. They’d wonder aloud if the stable’s “immoral whore” had ever had an education in anything higher than sex ed because she didn’t seem to know how to keep her own child from causing trouble in her “cutie mark crusading”.
She finally put her hoof down. Fine, find another foalsitter, I’m done looking after your little demons, she’d told the parents of those lazy twins. It’s not like you ever wanted the “stable slut” anywhere near them to start with! A slap of her tail against their noses cemented her anger with them, and that was the one time her being in security came in handy. Nopony ever laid a hoof on a security pony and walked off without help. Their angry talk was just that—talk. She never looked after another pony’s kid ever again. Her own child needed her attention.
And she was much more intelligent than the others. Where other children wanted to just play all the time, Light Tail wanted to play and learn on her own time. Where other fillies wanted to play with dolls, Light Tail preferred to play with other fillies and colts. Where colts would see a filly with “cooties” and want nothing to do with her, she would see a colt that was being teased or bullied and stand up to the tormentor simply because she felt it was the right thing to do regardless of how it ended. Where other children were unsure of whether or not you actually could subtract three from two and end up with a viable number, Light Tail was already mastering the concept of geometry and advanced algebra. Where most children were reading books appropriate to their age and level of intelligence, Light Tail had already read most of the books in the library and learned something from every one of them. Where other parents had to cook meals for their kids, her own child could probably make better food than anypony else in the stable and frequently cooked their breakfast and dinner for no other reason than because she could. It was, at times, more like dealing with a yearling that was nearing marehood than anything else. The kid simply required less energy to deal with, fewer “Because I said so!” approaches to ensuring her wishes and commands were obeyed. There were times when a child’s mind would emerge for brief moments, but they were far less frequent than what she’d dealt with foalsitting other children. She was forever grateful for that.
So when Chief Farsight had debriefed the entire security department about a potential outbreak near the spark generator yesterday afternoon, she’d decided that she’d put off testing that intelligence long enough, and that it was time her filly started learning more concrete and usable skills in the event that she was ever left on her own. Her first order of business: learn to shoot.
And Light Tail didn’t like it one bit.
“I don’t wanna learn how to shoot somepony,” she pouted somberly, lagging behind her mother at a slow, leisurely pace that was killing her plans for making it to the shooting range with time to spare. “Equestria That Was died ‘cause that’s all anypony would do to zebras. Nopony wanted to talk about why they were fighting in the first place.”
Why couldn’t it be something as simple as ‘I’m scared of it’? “You shouldn’t want to hurt another pony at all,” she agreed solemnly. She didn’t like the kid’s stalling, but she couldn’t fault her reasoning for it. “But that’s not what this is about. Remember the radroach infestation the Overmare’s afraid of?”
“The one that’s got you and Aunt C working twelve hours a day? Yeah, what about it?”
“We think it’s gotten worse, and those things are usually about the size of Teakettle’s cat,” she answered. Terrible as it was, scaring her would probably make her less resistant to the idea of pulling the trigger on a gun. “But I’ve seen some bigger than that. We went to twelve-hour shifts to double our numbers on patrol, but I’ll feel a lot better if I know you can look after yourself until I get there. I don’t want to teach you how to hurt somepony, but I do want you to be safe. And this is Stable 115. You’ll never shoot anything more than a paper target or a radroach in your entire life. Nopony’s hurt each other here in two centuries.”
“Can’t I just levitate it out of the way?” Light Tail surmised in the next moment, just as the lettering on the shooting range door grew into a legible form. “Or push it with a telekinesis spell?”
“You could if you were just dealing with one radroach. We’re talking about dozens, all of them with a hankering for the flesh and meat of little ponies like you and me. Think you can control that many at once?”
The thought that she might end up cornered and trapped, facing death at the pincers of giant bugs was all Light Tail needed to stop resisting her mother’s efforts to teach her more practical methods of pest control. “….I…wouldn’t wanna try,” she admitted with a terrified gulp. “Guess I’d rather shoot it. I’m okay with shootin’ a bug, at least.”
The critical issue settled for the moment, Sling Shot continued on through the hall, eventually reaching the entrance to the shooting range where the magic of her horn compelled the door to retract into the doorway and allow her passage. Being the quartermaster of the armory, she was almost immediately recognizable to the poor pony stuck with manning the desk in the reception room during the graveyard shift.
“Oh stars, am I hallucinating again?” the pastel purple earth pony mumbled tiredly. Her seemingly aimless gaze had trouble focusing on anything in particular except the unicorn in front of her, and even that seemed to be a challenge. “….that you, Sling?”
“Lavender, you look terrible,” she spoke, growing more concerned with the range officer’s physical condition now that she had the time to take a good look at her. “….please don’t tell me you’ve been covering Butterscotch’s shift again. Because I told you not to do that anymore.”
“….he never came,” Lavender answered, but only after she’d taken a moment to think it over. “Nopony else came. Nopony came, so I had to stay. Farsight said he’d send somepony…was that last night? Or yesterday, or…oh crap, my brain hurts, no more thinking….I think, I need to…”
Lavender wasn’t done talking, but she seemed to lose track of her own thoughts, and as her body began to give in to its exhaustion and tip over, Sling Shot loosened a light levitation spell from her horn that enveloped the poor earth pony and lifted her over the counter, towards a more comfortable position on a lounge sofa in the corner of the room.
“Wow, she’s soooo wasted,” Light Tail blurted, taking a few steps forward to poke the response-challenged Lavender with a hoof. “Kinda like you in the mornin’, Mom!”
“Very funny,” she bit back, but pushed aside the rest of her barbed response and settled for activating the intercom to Farsight’s office. Even though he wasn’t due on duty for another hour, the night shift chief should still be there. “Hey, Daffodil, you still there?”
A momentary pause accented the response. “…Sling Shot? What are you doing in the shooting range, you’re not on duty ‘till six a.m..”
“I just came here to teach my kid some basic firearms handling, but Lavender is really out of it,” she answered quickly, taking a quick glance at the dazed earth pony and cringing as she began to swipe at the air around her, as if reaching for something she thought was right there in front of her. “She said Butterscotch never came in for his shift yesterday afternoon, so she’s probably been here for over a day and a half. I’m not even sure she knows where she is.”
“Never really does,” Daffodil’s voice snarled, but nonetheless she sounded very concerned by the situation. “But yeah, Farsight mentioned that when I punched in for my shift, said he’d sent Slipknot out to check on his quarters in case he was ill. He called me back a few minutes after the Chief left, said his quarters were empty. We’ve been looking for him since, not sure what’s going on. His Pip-Buck’s not transmitting his location, though. Our best guess is that he either turned it off or broke it.”
“What about Lavender?!” she shot back, miffed that Farsight would have overlooked the fact that the earth pony had essentially no relief from her duty station for over a day. That level of monotony for such a long time would drive anypony mad. “Did anypony ever think to come relieve her so she could get some sleep?!”
“H-he probably thought she could handle it,” Daffodil’s voice muttered weakly. “…um…since you’re already there I’m gonna go ahead and mark you as punched in for your shift, so I guess you’re her relief until the Chief can get somepony else down there to cover Butterscotch’s next shift. They’ll see her to the infirmary.”
Fu….why do these things happen to ME? “…ugh, can’t you send anypony else?” she protested loudly, her blood beginning to bubble with anger. “I don’t really trust Rose Glade or Sunflower to handle the paperwork for the armor transfers, not with the entire department crossing paths all at once—“
Daffodil’s tone was rather dismissive of the affair—or perhaps just of her. “Sunflower will be fine, the Chief said to forget the paperwork last night after maintenance found a second nest near the spark generator, not far from the first one they found. He doesn’t want our response time lagged because you’re too busy filling out a two-page form every time armored barding gets traded around. Look at it this way, if you went to the range to teach your squirt how to shoot, you’ve got plenty of time now. Those shooting lanes need testing anyway.”
She came within a second of loosening a barrage of hateful curses and disparaging questions concerning Daffodil’s parentage onto the unfeeling intercom that separated the quartermaster from the deputy chief. Only Light Tail’s nearby presence stalled her tongue inside her mouth, leaving her breathing in sharp rasps as the unspoken implications piled up. She was just the quartermaster. The “immoral whore”. Nopony wanted her in the halls safeguarding their lives, or watching after their fillies and colts, or doing much of anything beyond keeping their weapons and armor working for themselves. The last time the Stable had a radroach infestation, fifteen ponies got hurt before the bugs could be put down. One poor little colt eviscerated in a dark corner of the commons level, backed up into a dead end hallway with no escape.
And she’d been stuffed in the armory, told to stay put and guard the weapons and armor while everypony else—the Chief included—went out and did their jobs without her. And now that they were getting radroach nests near their power source, she wasn’t even getting the chance to do her job. Was she that unnecessary to the security and safety of the Stable? Were they just throwing her there to put her out of their way?
Did they even want her in security at all?
“….fine,” she hissed back, though her angry tone suggested otherwise. She slapped the intercom off before Daffodil could shout back, and promptly turned her attention to Lavender’s state of mind—
—Light Tail’s face stared back up at her, her wide eyes glimmering with the sense that she probably understood more of that conversation than she would have liked.
Why was she the only one who cared?
“….do they always treat you like that, Mom?”
Not this. Not now. “Let’s not talk about it right now,” was the only answer she felt like giving, trotting past her and up towards Lavender’s dazed, listless form. She nudged her hind legs up onto the lounge sofa in an effort to make the earth pony a little more comfortable, then pushed her body up against the backrest to ensure she wouldn’t slide off and hit the floor without at least rolling around a little first. “Just rest here, Lav. No wandering around, somepony will be down in a bit to take you to the infirmary. Okay?”
“Nuuu wanderin’,” the aloof mare mumbled back softly, curling her forelegs in towards her body as she settled her head down onto the cushions beneath her, her dark blue mane splaying out into the backrest. “Okies then just gonna lay here a bit, buh-bye…”
In a few moments the seductive allure of sleep tugged her mind into its grasp, and soon Lavender was slumbering soundlessly, her breathing slowed to a crawl. Sling lingered there for a minute just to make sure the poor thing didn’t have anything else wrong with her, and then finally turned back around and walked towards the door leading into the shooting range. A simple nudge with her left foreleg had Light Tail falling in behind her.
The shooting range’s door opened before her, revealing a row of eight shooting lanes, each separated by a divider and given its own bench rest for a user’s equipment. Behind the booths were two large steel-gray colored metal tables, measuring around ten feet in length and four feet wide, which came up level with her chest. She set her black canvas back onto the closest table and tugged the zipper open with a slight telekinetic pull.
“Before we even start I want to make a few ground rules perfectly clear,” she stated aloud, slipping into the best “stern mother” voice she could muster in her lingering frustration. “One, always make sure and check whether the gun’s loaded or not every time you get ahold of it. Two, treat it as if it’s always loaded no matter what. Three, never ever point it at anything you aren’t willing to shoot, and always point in the safest direction possible. Four, be sure of your target and what’s behind it. Five, don’t put any pressure on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Six, shoot only if you’re absolutely certain that nopony else will be hurt in case you miss. Clear so far?”
Light Tail’s wide eyes betrayed the tremor of fear filtering through her mind at her mother’s demeanor. “…j-jeez, that’s a lotta rules…but yeah, I got it.”
She narrowed her eyes as she stared back at the slightly trembling filly. “Are you sure?”
Light Tail wasn’t used to her mother snapping at her like that, but it seemed to bring her into a sharper focus for the task ahead, and she straightened her body up into a firmer stature. “Y-yeah, I’m sure!”
Guess that’ll have to do. Not wanting to start a fight before the lesson could even begin, she turned back to her bag and reached inside until her magic enveloped itself around the heaviest object it could find, and then slowly drew it out.
Compared to the arsenal she was used to working with in the armory, the pistol in her magic grasp was rather homely in appearance—a lightweight stainless-steel revolver, small-framed, five-shot cylinder, with a four-inch fully-shrouded barrel and a solid walnut wooden grip. There was no provision for mounting a mouth bit grip into the lower frame, as the revolver was designed for the talon of a griffon, not a pony’s mouth. Yet she found this style of revolver easier for her unicorn magic to grasp and manipulate, and came to prefer it over the pistols squirreled away in the armory. The rear sight was fully adjustable for windage and elevation, while the front sight ramp featured a brilliant green arcane crystal, cut into a perfect cylinder and sealed inside the black metal sight. Day or night, that sucker’s glow was bright and crisp, impossible to miss and easy to focus on. She loved it.
With a mere thought, the cylinder release button was pressed down, popping the cylinder loose from the frame and allowing the crane lock to swing it down for her inspection. Pleased with the five empty, polished chambers, she turned and promptly trotted off towards shooting lane #3, keeping the barrel pointed upward the entire time. She set the pistol down on its right side onto the booth’s knee-high bench rest (which was about chest high for Light Tail), barrel oriented downrange, and gently eased the filly forward with a tap to her flank.
“There’s two ways of lifting and using a gun,” she said. “Levitation, and telekinetic. For right now, just use a telekinetic spell.”
“Levitation would be a lot easier,” Light Tail complained immediately, as she expected her to.
“It would, but this isn’t a book or that pair of sauce pans you like to wake me up with. When a gun fires, it generates recoil. If you use a levitation spell to lift it, you’re tempted to use less telekinetic force to hold and use it, and if you’re not careful it’ll buck right into your face. By using just telekinesis you’ll generally be using enough force to properly control it during firing. It can be harder at first, but safer.”
Don’t want to give the Stable anything else to taunt their “immoral whore” with, either, she didn’t add.
She heard what sounded like an irritated whimper as her night light’s horn began to shimmer with a bright, opaque indigo glow, followed by an identical glow that morphed over the revolver. With focused effort and patience, the revolver slowly began to peel off of the bench rest and into a steady ascent—
—which became a rapid, panicked flight when she found the initial ascent too slow for her liking and tried to lift it up faster. The pistol came within a hair’s length away from Sling Shot’s nose before its flight path was halted, causing the mare to jerk away from it.
“Whoa, easy there—“
“S-sorry!” Light Tail cried quickly, going so far as to set the pistol back down on the bench rest, barrel aimed downrange. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this—“
“Mistakes are fine so long as you learn from them,” she assured her quickly before she could squirm her way out of this. She was not leaving until she learned how to do this right. “Try it again.”
Given little other choice in the matter, Light Tail simply huffed in resignation and did as she was told. Her telekinesis spell once again took hold of the revolver, but this time she took quite a bit more care in the amount of force exerted in lifting it from the bench. Its ascent was steady but measured, eventually coming to a hovering stop in front of her face where she began to fight it into a fairly steady and upright position, keeping it pointed downrange the entire time.
“How does it feel?” she asked when the revolver’s constant shaking calmed down into a gentle wavering.
“Feels…weird,” the filly answered quizzically, her tongue unconsciously poking out of her mouth as she continued to toy with her control over the weapon. “Like there’s somethin’ tuggin’ on my horn. It’s what threw me off the first time.”
“That’s a feedback loop from your spell,” the answer came almost immediately. “Density of weight can affect the flow and sensory input you get from the spell field. Move an object up, and you sorta ‘feel’ it pulling up on your horn. Down, left or right, forward or backward, every movement you will it to make will be felt through your horn. The heavier the object, the more you’ll feel it. Lightweight stuff like that pistol won’t bother you too much, but bigger or heavier objects can really tax the spell’s limits—and by extension, yours. Your ability to compensate for the weight and size will determine how much you can pull around.”
As if to confirm or disprove what she was being told, Light Tail began to shift the telekinetic forces at work within the field, and the revolver floated about in tune with her experiments. “Whoooa, you’re right…now this is stuff I wish I could learn in school. Already got three years’ worth of a head start on all the other kids, at least.”
“The biggest objects you can think of to lift can only be lifted by telekinesis,” she added after she began to think of the potential damage the little filly could do trying to find out what she could or couldn’t lift in yet another one of her “cutie mark crusades”. “A levitation spell works best on lightweight objects. About the heaviest thing you can cast it on is another pony. And all the levitation spell does is make something float. If the object is too heavy the sheer weight will overpower the spell and dissipate it before it even has a chance to work. Telekinesis, on the other hand, is dependent on your force of will. A determined enough pony can lift almost anything with that spell, but only a few have ever mastered it that well.”
“Like Twilight Sparkle,” the filly stated firmly. The revolver in front of her began to steady itself into a still form, no longer bobbing or tilting off to the side as she struggled with her control over it.
Quick learner. “Or the Princesses,” she added needlessly. Now that Light Tail was showing decent control over the weapon, it was time to move on to the next lesson. She glanced back at the bag on the table, reaching a telekinetic spell into its confines until she felt the field enveloping itself around a fairly weighty object (and an extremely feather light trickle right next to it), and then pulled the offending objects towards her—a cardboard box of ammunition and a few “dummy rounds” for dry-firing practice. “Okay, then, part two. Load these five dummy rounds in the cylinder and practice pulling the trigger a few times, then we’ll move on to live fire.”
She floated the five practice rounds out towards the filly, and quickly found them wrested from her telekinetic grasp and carefully slipped them into the empty chambers. And here her child encountered her first real problem—how to articulate the telekinetic field in a way that would pull on the trigger and nothing else. Her first attempt simply pulled the entire gun back towards her. Her second attempt barely budged the trigger, and her third attempt caused the weapon’s barrel to dip down towards the floor.
“…hunh,” Light Tail muttered aloud. If she was getting frustrated with her repeated failures, she was hiding it very well. “You make it sound easier than it actually is.”
Her own first-hand experience in learning this very trick allowed her to identify the issue almost immediately. “Your hold on the rest of the weapon slacks when you try to pull the trigger, doesn’t it?”
Light Tail’s fourth attempt to pull the trigger was met with the same result as her third attempt, though this time the barrel only dipped down to about a thirty degree angle rather than ninety. “Never had to change just one small part of a spell field before. How do unicorns get the hang of this?”
“With practice,” she answered. At the rate the kid was improving, it wouldn’t be long before they could actually start live fire practice. “It’s actually a lot easier than you think. There aren’t very many objects in this world that require you to fine-tune a telekinesis field this way, so once yo—“
She didn’t even get to finish her encouragement—at that exact moment, the revolver quickly righted itself upward until it was pointed at the back end of the range, and the trigger went through its complete double-action stroke before releasing the hammer. Light Tail seemed surprised at how quickly the hammer itself could snap back forward, and her flinch was transmitted to the weapon, which jerked forward and up.
“There, you see?” she finished casually, although she secretly wanted to start leaping about like a five-year old finally getting the birthday present she wanted all along. “Nothing to it. Just takes practice. You can cock the hammer first before you shoot, which makes the trigger a lot easier to pull. Practice both ways while I set up the target, and then we’ll actually start shooting.”
Increase in radroach nests. Butterscotch gone for over a day, if Slipknot wasn’t just covering for the fool. New reports from maintenance about altered air flow and oxygen quality on all three agriculture levels in addition to the spark generator level. And just a few minutes ago, complaints from residents on level eight about rattling environmental vents that kept the place cool and comfortable.
Things were going to Tartarus real fast. She didn’t care what Farsight said, the skin underneath her coat was itching and crawling with bad vibes all over. Now was not the time to be keeping the stupid shooting range open. Sling was of better use in the hallways, regardless of what everypony thought.
One emotionally-charged bad decision in the throes of passion did not make her a bad pony. Or an immoral, irresponsible “whore” of a mother. It just meant she made a bad call and paid for it with a foal before she was emotionally ready for the responsibility. And really, the kid was turning out all right despite all the odds against her. Any filly that called her “Aunt” with true affection despite there being no actual blood connection between them was okay with her.
So when that idiot Daffodil told her to fetch Lavender from the shooting range and take the squirt away from her mother to escort her back to quarters, she was very eager to carry out the task. Not out of malice, but because she didn’t want anything bad to happen to her or her mother. And as the designated safety officer for the security department, she could make decisions that nopony, not even the Overmare, could override if she could prove it was made to reduce or eliminate a potentially hazardous or dangerous situation. And she was pretty confident that leaving a single pony in the shooting range with no backup and no viable escape route other than the door in the face of an imminent radroach outbreak qualified as a dangerous situation.
She found Lavender exactly where she was told she would—on the lounge sofa, dozing away with nary a care in the world and a tiny smile on her face that suggested her dream was going fairly well. Since the exhausted and overworked earth pony was obviously going nowhere, she went straight towards the range door and pressed down on the large button labeled “BELL”, which would activate a warning bell inside the shooting range itself to warn occupants to hold their fire until the incoming guest could get their hearing protection ready. She waited for about four seconds before hitting a second button below it labeled “DOOR”, opening the way into the range and revealing a visibly stunned Sling Shot and her preciously smart daughter.
Predictably, Light Tail’s face perked up at the sight of the pegasus, and she promptly trotted away from her mother’s protective reach to greet her favorite “aunt”. “Hey, whut up, Aunt C?!”
Someday you’re going to learn how that pegasus greeting really goes. But until then, she would just go along with it. No need to ruin the kid’s good intentions. “Nothin’ but the rain, El-Tee!” she greeted in return, though this time the hoof-bump was omitted, as she really wanted to get the squirt back to quarters where she was safer. “Hey, I hate to break this to ya, but I’m shutting this range down.”
“Only the range master or security chief can make that call,” Sling Shot quipped from memory, surprisingly resistant to her friend’s efforts to get her out of this place. Such a stickler for rules at the worst times! “And you’re neither.”
“No,” she shot back sternly. “What I am is your friend and more importantly, the safety officer for the security department as well as the Stable in general. And as we’re about to have a real fracas on our hooves before the day is over, I find that keeping a pony squirreled away in the back of a shooting range that won’t see any use and with only one escape route is about the worst idea that one can get. Therefore, under Stable-Tec security regulations, chapter four, subsection E, concerning imminent breach of the security of the Stable, you are hereby ordered to shut this range down and report to the Chief for immediate duty reassignment. This is not negotiable by anypony, even the Overmare. Got it?”
For the first time in the five years that she’d known the kid, Light Tail actively stepped away from her, her eyes locked open in shock at the strong, commanding tone she’d laid down. “…whoa, Mom, you ticked her off…that’s never happened before…”
Cloud Wind’s ears drooped low almost instantly, her fiery attitude wilting away in the face of a terrified filly she hadn’t meant to terrify at all. “N-no, wait—“
Sling Shot saved her flank with a hearty laugh that bounced off of the steel walls and into her ears. “She’s not mad, squirt,” she assured her child gently. “She’s just being serious for once. Fine then, Miss Safety Officer, but only once I’m finished here. It wouldn’t do to leave without showing my one and only daughter how to protect herself when her mother isn’t around, would it?”
The sly, almost mischievous glint in the unicorn’s eyes did not combine well with that innocent smile she flashed whenever she was trying to use a pony’s own logic and reasoning against them. It was if as she was making her intentions plainly obvious to her adversary. Funny thing was, nopony ever called her on it.
Either because she was usually right, or because there really wasn’t time to argue over it.
“Five minutes,” Cloud huffed indignantly. “And I’ll be counting them with you. I’m serious, the sooner the kid’s back in quarters the safer she’ll be.”
Sling Shot was, if anything, efficient when it came to managing her schedule when pressed to keep to a timetable. She immediately turned her attention back to the shooting lane and the paper target that was set up at about seven yards away. “You’ve got fifteen shots,” she told the filly, withdrawing the stated amount of ammunition from their box and laying them out on the bench next to the stainless steel revolver. “Keep a good hold on the weapon when you’re firing. Line the bright front dot up inside the square notch in the rear sight over the spot you want to hit, and then squeeze the trigger. Don’t jerk it or pull it or you’ll mess up the shot. And don’t flick the cylinder shut or I’ll ground you for a month. That ruins the cylinder-barrel alignment over time.”
The sternness of her warning made it clear to both filly and guest that the unicorn mare was not making empty threats. With a nervous gulp the streak-tailed kid took the revolver into her telekinetic grasp and carefully loaded five rounds into the open cylinder, and then gently (and slowly) pressed it back into place inside the frame, and took aim at her target—a simple scoring bullseye, meant to be used at twenty-five yards instead of seven, but for a filly shooting for the first time, even the seven-yard distance would be challenging to hit accurately.
The ambient noise of the vents and glowing light panels died out, in tune with Sling’s magic shimmering over her horn, just before the kid took the first shot of her life—
--the hearing protection spell turned the ear-splitting sound of the gunshot into a tolerable, muffled crack, but did nothing to lessen the filly’s surprised shriek at the suddenness of the report. The gun in her magic grasp jerked up momentarily before being forced back on target, but it was already too late. All three ponies in the range could hear the bullet smacking off the ceiling, then ricocheting off the floor on its new downward trajectory. It finished its short flight with a final clink into a light panel near the back of the hundred-yard range, which amazingly remained largely undamaged from the impact.
Sling Shot was understandably displeased. “That is why you keep a good grip on the weapon when you’re firing,” she snapped calmly. “That bullet can easily bounce back and hit us. Try again.”
Her mother’s unusually strict attitude was startling for the kid, who wasn’t used to being talked to like that. It did much to keep her quiet and under control, but she wasn’t smiling or smirking. If anything, she looked a little upset, as if she didn’t understand why her mother was being so strict with her all of a sudden. Something to talk to Sling about later.
Shot two was much more controlled in the sense that she didn’t flinch and send the bullet into the ceiling, but it still missing the scoring rings completely and instead punched a clean hole in the top left corner where a two-century old logo had been adorned. Said logo was, naturally, no longer present. But her souring mood actually helped her to focus better. Desperate to avoid being scolded for messing up again, Light Tail took careful aim and squeezed off a third round, and finally succeeded in at least hitting the outer scoring ring at the top. Her fourth shot was further down in the eight ring, and the final round came close to nicking the center bullseye.
Impressive for a ten-year old filly.
“For the next five shots, cock the hammer before squeezing the trigger,” Sling instructed next, not even bothering to comment on how close her kid came to scoring a bullseye in just her first five shots. A little encouragement wouldn’t have killed her, would it?
But El-Tee didn’t complain (out loud, anyway). She simply opened the cylinder and ejected the spent cartridges, though it took her a moment to figure out that that was what the ejector rod was for. As she slipped her next five shots into the chambers, Sling quietly drifted the five empty shell casings out from underneath her filly’s hooves and tucked them away inside a pocket on the right side of her stable suit. Fired casings could be reloaded later, or melted down to be used as scrap metal for maintenance if they were too damaged to be used again.
The revolver reloaded, El-Tee took to firing once more. This time around, she did much better—three of her five shots landed in the center bullseye, while the other two pockmarked the eight and ten ring. The kid could really shoot.
“Nice shooting!” she shouted to ensure she could be heard clearly through the hearing protection spell.
“Good shooting,” Sling corrected the pegasus quickly. “There’s no such thing as ‘nice’ shooting.”
“Same sentiment!”
“Do you two need to go sit in the corner?” Light Tail berated both mares derisively as she unlatched the cylinder again and dumped the empty casings onto the shooting. The surprisingly motherly comment—coming from a kid, no less—tickled her brain into a short burst of laughter, which washed away the burgeoning anger that was beginning to cloud her better judgment. Even Sling couldn’t keep from chuckling. Seemed like the kid got fed up with their arguing just in time.
Or maybe she’d meant to calm down them to start with.
Rather than revisit her kid’s words and bring up the potential fight again, she simply went back to her task as though nothing had happened. “Trigger was a lot lighter that time, wasn’t it?”
“’Cause the trigger didn’t have to cock the hammer first, right?”
“Exactly. But it’s a lot slower to fire a revolver that way. The first revolvers, in fact, could only be fired that way. That didn’t work out so well the first time they went up against the zebra in the war, so somepony found a way to make the trigger both cock and release the hammer. Faster, but takes more pressure which means more force is exerted on the pistol that can affect your aim. Not as accurate. At ranges like this, though, you won’t have much time to aim carefully. Shoot five more rounds, however you like, and we’ll call it a day.”
Light Tail preceded to do just that—having already gotten the hang of single-action firing, she simply went back to practicing the double-action stroke with careful, deliberate trigger pulls. Which was actually not the best way to practice that method of shooting, because if one didn’t have the time to cock the first it was usually because something very dangerous was coming their way and their nerves would be jacked up with terror and adrenaline. Most combat shooting was done under stress, which translated into much larger shot groups than one would normally shoot. The best practice was stressful practice.
But not this time. This time, just getting used to the trigger pull was important, and even that would take several sessions. But the kid still managed to impress—this time around, all but one round stayed close to the center of the target, with one clipping right between the bullseye and the ten ring, and the other three landing inside or near the outer edge of the ten ring, forming a loose cluster of four holes. The one stray round—her third—smacked through the top of the eight ring.
Only then did Sling have anything positive to say—when Light Tail asked, anyway. “So how was that?” she quipped with a smirk, the revolver’s cylinder already falling away from the frame to dump the empty shells out.
“Considering this is your first time shooting, very good,” her mother replied, finally allowing some pride into her demeanor. “Most of the security department took weeks to get shot groups like that and we haven’t had the ammunition to practice on a regular basis for over two years now. If we had enough ammo in the Stable to allow it you could probably end up out-shooting them in a month.”
The revolver froze in place, hovering at about a fifty-degree angle with the barrel in an upward direction, as the filly processed the idea of just how regularly trained the armed security ponies were at a time when their skills should have been up-to-date. “…that’s…not comforting,” she wailed softly. “Not comforting at all.”
‘Comforting’ was not the word she would have used, but the message was the same. For such a serious situation to have to be shooting in, the fact that almost everyone in security had not actually fired a weapon on a monthly basis for two years was not ideal. Skills of any sort diminished or outright died without regular practice, and shooting was the one skill that needed to be a regular habit to do it safely. She had not personally pulled a trigger on anything outside of the last function check on the stable arsenal months ago! And she still had the gall to silently complain about not being able to roam the hallways with a loaded gun she wasn’t sure she could hit with? What a wi—
What a stupid mare I am for having an opportunity to test myself five minutes ago and wasting it!! she screamed at herself in the private confines of her brain. Just…just great! Stupid stupid STUPID.
Too late now. The Safety Officer hath spoken, and such. Sometimes Windy could care a little too much. Still, more than she ever got from anypony else in the Stable, save perhaps her daughter. It was almost sad, actually.
She parted ways with Cloud Wind when the elevator reached the eighth level—the first of the residential levels—and silently escorted Light Tail all the way back to their quarters, her ears and eyes attuned more to the vents than to whatever was in front of her. Fortunately, very few ponies were out and roaming about at this hour, so the journey was brief and relatively painless. Once inside their ‘home’, she was quick to lay down the law of the impending lockdown. It hadn’t happened yet, but judging by how anxious Cloud Wind was to get the kid somewhere safe, it wasn’t far off.
“The Stable may go into lockdown in the near future,” she said the instant the door whished shut behind them. “Whether it does or not, though, I want you to stay here. No wandering off to the library or your friends, understand?”
Most children would have complained and whined. ‘But why, Mommy? I wanna play with my friends!’, or ‘That’s not fair!’, or something with similar self-interest. Most children were not her Light Tail. “….it’s really that bad?”
“It could be,” she answered, trotting past the light teal-blue filly towards her bedroom. “So I’m leaving the pistol out of its safe where you can get to it if you have to use it. Don’t touch it otherwise, I will find out if you do.”
“O-okay,” Light Tail squeaked in a shaky voice, and Sling’s heart tore at itself. She’d never acted like this towards her before today. Even during the last radroach outbreak she’d been calmer and more collected. Today, she’d been more insensitive than anything else, lording over her night light like an overbearing boss. She wanted to chalk it up to stress—the stress of the largest radroach infestation in twenty years, the stress and monotony of being little more than a desk clerk in a two-century old underground fallout shelter, the stress of being the one pony in the Stable that was shunned and pushed away by the population at large, the stress and loneliness of having only her daughter and a pegasus mare to socialize with…
…the stress, and terror, of not knowing if she was going to be picked to leave the Stable and her daughter forever, to venture out into a world that would likely be her grave.
But truthfully, it was mostly her frustration at being so powerless to do anything about it that was getting to her. And that was no reason to take it out on the best thing to come along in her sad, lonely life. She would have to make it up to her later, somehow.
Today, she had to be overbearing and protective so that she could get a chance to apologize later. She couldn’t even bear to think of the possibility of life without such a bright and loving soul.
She deposited the canvas bag onto the coffee table where Light Tail would likely be able to get to it in a heartbeat from the couch, and hurried along into her room. Ignoring the crumpled, unkempt state of her bed and scattered wardrobe across the floor, she dove straight into her storage closet and dragged out a pair of leather-harnessed, thick canvas saddlebags, complete with pony-sized bedrolls and an assortment of holsters for storing pistols of various makes and models. Ever since the last radroach infestation, she’d taken to keeping these saddlebags packed and ready for a trip into the outside world in the worst-case scenario of the Stable becoming incapable of supporting life for one reason or another. Designed by a long-dead outdoors outfitter company from Equestria That Was, the amount of gear their spell-matrix treated bags could contain was nothing short of impressive, and was designed to work in tandem with a Stable-Tec PipBuck 3000-A to keep it organized. Her survivalist approach to the contents of each saddlebag set made good use of the generous storage—two months’ worth of MREs (Meal-Ready-to-Eat, though there were less flattering names for it), three canteens for water, enough water purification tabs to last four months if properly rationed, a first-aid kit with enough supplies to allow a properly trained medic to perform emergency field surgery if necessary, five healing potions, three soap bars, a flashlight with spare spark battery cells, a lensatic compass and a map of the region surrounding the Stable, a small tool kit with a screwdriver, an adjustable wrench, and an eight-piece set of hex keys, and a repair kit for her PipBuck.
And the weight limit for the saddlebag’s spell matrices still had enough capacity for another hundred and twenty pounds of gear. Now was a good time to add to it.
She lifted her saddlebag set up onto her bed and walked over to the wall safe on the other side of the room. It took her half a minute to input the combination on the dial lock, and a gentle tug on the handle unlatched the door and allowed it to be pulled away, revealing the contents inside.
The big brother to the lightweight revolver she’d brought to the range earlier, and an assortment of ammunition and speedloaders. The big revolver was nothing like the one she’d let her little girl shoot. This one was much larger, chambered for .44 Mag, and was likely from the same griffon company that had built the lightweight revolver as it shared many design similarities—thick, solid sidewall frame, longer overall cylinder with thicker chamber walls, and additional steel along the top strap and the barrel-to-frame junction. The checkered wooden grip itself had a strange-looking curve bump along the top that arched down towards the trigger guard, and the full underlug barrel shroud was designed to hold small weighted cylinders to alter the weight balance as the shooter desired. Along the top of the first five inches of the seven-point-five inch barrel sat a set of strange—and aggressive-looking—cross-bar slots, presumably for attaching a griffon-designed scope of some sort, as nopony in Equestria That Was had ever designed a mounting system such as this. The front sight ramp had a red crystal insert instead of a green one—still easy to pick up in the dark, but she was worried if it would be harder to see in the daylight if she was ever forced topside. She hoped she’d never find out. Still, an impressive weapon, far stronger than the Ironshod .44 Mag that likely inspired this design. Its dulled, satin stainless steel construction even lent it its own unique nickname—Grayhawk.
She carefully pulled the weapon from the safe along with its weighted discs, and then retrieved eleven speedloaders—five of them built for the lightweight revolver in the next room—and two separate boxes of ammunition. One, labeled “.357 Mag”, contained twenty-eight rounds, while the other one labeled “.44 Mag” contained forty-two. She took a little over four minutes to load all the speedloaders, and then set the .357 loaders and the last three spare rounds into the filly-sized saddlebag set on the floor, and the .44 loaders into hers on the bed. Lastly, she nestled Grayhawk into a large holster set into the harness along the edge of the right-side saddlebag after loading the last six rounds from the box into the cylinder and latching it shut. This routine was one she practiced roughly six times a year to ensure all the gear was ready to go at a moment’s notice, or during emergencies such as the one currently looming over the stable.
What wasn’t part of the routine was the short, silent prayer she offered to the memory of the Princesses in the hopes that she could put the stuff back up at the end of the day. The act itself made her worry that she’d just jinxed that plan all the way to Tartarus.
Too late now. As usual.
Her preparations complete, she took a few moments to calm her staggered breathing before trotting back out into the living room. Seeing Light Tail perched on the couch with the Mare of the Everfree open in front of her gave her the first real sense of relief she’d felt all morning….and the dreadful feeling that it might be the last, as well.
“….the vents are screwed in pretty tight, so you’ll know if anything crashes its way through,” she said to the worry-faced filly as she headed straight for the canvas bag on the coffee table. One last thing to do…
When she reached the table, she bent her neck down and touched the bag with her horn, then channeled a stream of magic into the bag that coalesced around the revolver still tucked inside. “This is how I’ll know if you’ve been playing with the gun while I’m gone,” she explained. “If you pull it out, the spell on the gun will leave a mark on your face through the feedback loop that only I can remove.”
“You don’t trust me to leave it alone?” the filly grumbled bitterly and not entirely without reason. She’d never honestly lied to her about anything before, but…
“This isn’t a plate of cookies, this thing could kill somepony if it’s mishandled,” she replied defensively. “You’ve never lied to me once in your life, but I have to be certain it won’t be used unless you need it. Just stick to that rule and you have nothing to worry about. If Cloud Wind isn’t held past her shift and decides to crash here again, just tell her not to touch it.”
“Might be worth lettin’ her just to see the look on her face when she finds out she can’t scrub the mark off with soap and water,” Light Tail said with an evil little laugh, likely having gotten the idea just now to try and make herself feel better.
Sling snickered a little herself. She could use a good laugh right about now, and seeing the sky blue pegasus panicking trying to get that magically-imbued mark off the left side of her face before the start of her shift would be just the ticket. “…I might actually let you do that,” she chuckled. “The spell lasts a couple of days no matter how many times it’s triggered.”
That bit of information was enough to tear the scheming filly away from the book and onto all fours with an excited leap. “Teach it to me when you get back?!” she begged almost immediately.
She’d learned long ago that that usually mean somewhat sinister purposes behind the request. “And get run down by my boss the next time you prank one of your classmates with it? I think not, you evil little demon,” she teased with a laugh. A tiny laugh, and yet even that little bit was working wonders on her tight-knot stomach, loosening up the tension and filtering the fear out of her nerves. Oh stars, why couldn’t she stay?!
“Demon?!” the filly shot back with faux shock…but then followed it with true, actual anger. “Say that to Sun Star, he deserves it! He called ya a slut and a—“
At the word ‘slut’ her brief moment of joy was crushed, disheartened at hearing such a filthy word come out of her kid’s mouth, and she spun back towards the filly with a mind to put some soap to that snout. “Where did you learn that kind of language?!”
“Sun Star!!” she yelled back, somehow growing even angrier as she recalled how she’d come to learn the words she was about to be punished over. “He pushed me into the wall on my way to the filly’s washroom last week, said I was a mistake!! Called you a slut and the dirty whore of the stable, and it’s not right!! I don’t know why it’s not right, I don’t even know what it means, but it’s just not right!!”
The tail for which she was named flicked wildly as she let loose a week’s worth of pent-up rage and hurt, blinding her mother with its electric-blue streak as it swished through the air, but even that failed to stir her from her stunned stupor. Nothing in her tiny world, not even the violent arrival of radroaches ripping their way through the vents into the room, could have hurt her more than what her night light had just told her. That the stable’s residents were less than receptive towards her was bad enough….but Light Tail had done nothing to deserve it. And now everypony’s opinion of her was filtering down to their children, some of who seemed to see fit to share it with them. And if this was the first she was hearing of them bullying her kid like this, how many other times had it happened before?
These were questions to be answered later. Her kid was hurting, and she had no idea how to deal with it. She couldn’t exactly slap a bandage and a mild healing spell on it to make it all better. The only thing she could think to do was scoop the poor thing up in one of her forelegs and nuzzle her. “….I’m sorry you had to hear those things, honey. But hurting him back just starts that vicious cycle that turned Equestria into a memory. We’re supposed to do better.”
“They could start by not treatin’ you like this!” she huffed through her clenched jaw, still refusing to let go of her fury now that she’d found it. Sling did not like hearing this kind of rage in her little girl’s voice. “If we’re supposed to do better, we’ve failed already!”
A wistful sigh left her lungs, rustled her child’s mane with tinges of sadness. “Nopony’s perfect. The fact that they say those things to my face at all is proof enough. But the Princesses taught our ancestors of love and tolerance, and every day is a chance to set ponykind back on the path of harmony. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Equestria enjoyed over a thousand years of peace in a virtual utopia because of Celestia’s guidance and the willingness of her little ponies to make it work. We can’t let her teachings be for nothing.”
“I’m not the one who needs to be told that,” Light Tail sniffed. “And I don’t wanna hurt Sun Star, much as I think he deserves it. Just embarrass him more than he’s ever been embarrassed before!”
“After that firecracker prank you pulled last week I doubt that’s possible, you little joker,” she teased, ruffling the squirt’s mane with a hoof and thankful she finally had something to work with to try and brighten both their moods. “I’ll track down Sun Star’s dad during my shift, trade some words with him. Get you and Sun Star to stop fighting like this, ‘cause you two will tear the Stable apart otherwise.”
The filly tried to shake off her mother’s re-arrangement of her mane, with little success, and simply stopped fighting it after a couple of seconds. “Suppose the big jerkface don’t wanna listen, then what?”
“Then you learn a new spell to embarrass the brat with when I get off duty,” she replied with a slightly sinister tone. “One more imaginative than whatever you were just planning with that marking spell you were asking about.”
That got a rise out of the filly, who snorted at the idea (and just thirty seconds ago she was suggesting it). “What happened to ‘love and tolerate’? Princess Celestia practically ran a peace train.”
“Celestia wasn’t above fighting if the situation was dire enough,” she answered. “Even a peace train comes to a stop sometime.”
Light Tail was finally back into a somewhat cheery mood, laughing quietly at the euphuism for reasons only the squirt knew. “Stars help the poor souls when it does.”
Now it was her turn to laugh—what would happen if a train full of peace-loving hippies suddenly hit the brakes and stepped off of it? “We’ll talk more when I come back. I don’t think I’m going to try to explain what those words mean until you’re older, but…we’ll talk.”
Her night light, her eternal bundle of joy and love, picked up on the subtle unspoken message, and gently freed herself from her mother’s grasp, but not before leaving a parting nuzzle across the cheek. “…thanks, Mom. Be careful, okay?”
She couldn’t bear to leave right then…and yet she had to. Still, she stole another moment and left her with a light kiss to the forehead, and then finally turned back around to return to her original journey. “I will. See you soon.”
Her good mood held up until she’d left her living quarters and trotted down the hallway, turned right at the four-way cross section just past the washrooms, and then she finally allowed her own rage to return to her blood. And this time, she didn’t want to let go of it. Ponies had been slinging barbs at her for far too long, and now their attitudes were starting to rub off on their own demonspawn and tormenting her only child. If she’d done something about it much earlier that entire episode El-Tee had suffered could have been avoided. But ignoring them had proven to be so much easier that she just stuck with it. And now her kid was paying for it. That incident was as much her fault as it was Sun Star’s. Or Comet Star’s, for that matter. She wanted to scream, to cry, to find something fragile and utterly shatter it as violently as she could manage.
And Princess Celestia’s ancient words of wisdom were all that stopped her. Love and tolerate, my little ponies…
…well, that, and the fact that Cloud Wind was stepping out of the elevator at the end of the hallway. Wouldn’t do to freak out and trash stuff in her sight, the pegasus might think she’d finally gone off the deep end—
--her attitude faltered once more when a spherical shape slowly floated its way out of the dimmed lighting of the elevator’s interior and into the more brightly illuminated hallway, revealing a trio of mechanical arms—one with a buzz saw tool attached to the end, a second arm fitted with what looked like an arcane energy weapon, and the third arm featured a clamp that was fixated on a bent sheet steel panel, dragging it across the floor as the robot hovered out of the elevator and fell in line behind the pegasus.
Oh gods no, not now! She had to find another way up, this damn robot recognized her on si—
“Good morning to you, Sling Shot!” the robot’s synthesized voice modulator spat out, its accent replicating that of the Trottingham region from before the war—as did all the Mister Handy bots, for some reason. “It’s been three weeks, four days, six hours, forty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds since our last encounter, oh how have you been dear?!”
She stopped cold in the hallway, turned towards the wall, and promptly dropped her head against it, crying softly. “Why now, Celestia, why? Why do you hate me so?”
“Oh come now, dear, that’s no way to greet a friend!” the robot admonished her gently, firing off its thrusters to reach her at a faster pace. “Where’s that unflappable spirit of yours?! That smart aleck wit you bear to the hateful residents that tarnish your name?! Because I don’t seeeee heeeer.”
“Give me a clue, Windy,” she begged of the pegasus who loved to torment her with blind dates. “When did this damn robot start calling me a friend?”
“I believe it was when you found that spare spark battery we needed to keep him up and running when his old one blew itself out,” Cloud Wind snickered with delight, amused at how the robot had doted on her ever since that day. “A good thing, actually, this is the only unit that’s authorized to repair the spark generator without pony supervision. He’s armed, even. He could probably handle this radroach problem on his own if Farsight would let him.”
“Oh fiddlesticks, I’ve no time for that!” the robot spat back, almost sounding offended by the prospect of combat. “I’ve duties to attend to! Speaking of which, could one of you little ponies kindly direct me to Hacket Wrench? I’ve found the replacement wall panel he requested in storage, but it’s in a slightly off shape and in need of some straightening. And he seems to have blocked my tracking software, I can’t trace his PipBuck tag. How rude.”
Suddenly the robot’s presence wasn’t quite as unwelcome. She’d been pining for something to smack the living daylights out of, and that bent piece of metal was just weak enough to do the trick without breaking her legs. She pulled away from the wall and pushed her head past the robot’s buzz saw arm to take a closer look at the wall panel. “Is that all?”
The buzz saw arm promptly lifted away from her neck, and the robot spun itself around to properly present the panel for her inspection. “I should think so! All of its mounting holes are properly threaded and the preservation talisman was still intact when I ripped it off of the storage crate! Should be an excellent replacement for the damaged power relay cover just over yonder! Remember? The one that spontaneously exploded last Saturday when somepony shut down the power relay for level seven and just shunted all the energy down here instead of PROPERLY re-routing it across the Stable so as not to overload a single floor?!”
“I remember the lights flickering on and off for nine hours before Socket actually answered repair calls,” she grumbled at the recent memory…and the lack of sleep she’d gotten that day. “Ruined Paint Splotch’s latest work too. Just lift the thing up a bit for a minute.”
She didn’t know how it was possible, but the robot seemed a mite confused over her order. “…umm…well, since it’s you, all right, but what do you plan to do exactly?” the machine questioned as it carefully lifted the panel up until it was barely off the floor. “You’re not really qualified for maintenance repair.”
Cloud Wind wasn’t quite sure what to make of the request either. “…yeah, he’s actually got a point Sling, maybe you should just let Hacket deal with it.”
She wasn’t listening to either one of them. The moment the robot had pulled the panel upright, she turned around and swiftly bucked it along the bottom as hard as her two rear legs could manage, putting all the rage and boiling hatred she’d been holding back into her kick. The impact reverberated through her bones and into her flank, and the packed nature of the hallway ensured that the hard clang would leave an echo in her ears for a quarter-hour. But when she turned around to inspect her work, she was pleased that not only had she left a pair of hoof prints imbedded in the exterior, she’d put enough power in her blow to bend the panel back into a fairly straight-looking piece of metal again. She didn’t doubt it wasn’t completely level, but it was straight enough for its impending new home. It was strangely cathartic, even if only for a moment, to know that her directed violence had actually had a positive impact for once.
The robot was ecstatic. “Oh, excellent work!!” it cried cheerfully, even “hopping” in place by putting a little extra power into its thrusters at regular intervals. What a strange machine. “I shouldn’t even have to bother maintenance to get it properly modified for the relay piping now, your hoof prints should be just deep enough to fit over the conduction coils!! Oh thank you my dear!! A thousand times, thank you!! Domo arigato and such!! Ah, you are always such a boon to my continued existence in this hellish hole in the ground!! I shall await our next meeting with baited photonic mana particles! I’ll be counting the seconds!!”
I don’t doubt it, she didn’t say. Instead, she simply let the slightly psychotic robot move on with its day, watching it float past and on down the hall—
--and without warning, the robot broke out into song as though its programmed happiness was not satisfied with the fact that its commanded task could be accomplished more efficiently.
“A griffon tar is a soooaring soul, as free as a mountain bird, his energetic fist should be ready to resist—“
His impromptu song continued on as it slipped around a corner in the hallway, disappearing from sight but not, unfortunately, out of hearing. She didn’t think there was a pony alive down here that couldn’t hear that thing’s racket now.
“…congratulations, Sling Shot,” Cloud Wind’s stunned voice finally found the strength to say. “You’ve given Stable 115 the gift of a singing robot. Now I actually want to hate you.”
“—orial wooooord! His nose should pant, and his beak should curl, his cheeks should flame, and his brow should furl—“
Something was so terribly, horribly wrong. Chief Farsight wasn’t yelling at her. Well, not loudly, anyway.
“Only you would have the guts to try and slap me with the rules,” he said tersely, turning his face down to the intercom imbedded in his desk. “But today’s a bad time to be playing this game with me.”
He tapped the intercom on, which linked directly to the Overmare’s office, and was about to utter his wishes to the pony on the other end when the door whished open and filled the room with a brief waft of the slightly cooler air in the hallway before it snapped shut again. All eyes turned to face the crude interruption—
—and Cloud Wind’s face fell in on itself at the sight of the poor mare’s eyes. No, not now, you idiot—
The bright yellow earth pony’s voice was trembling, as if on the verge of breaking into a shrill wail. “C-chief, where’s my brother?”
Farsight’s brown-coated face did its best to maintain a calm façade even though he probably felt like trying to strangle a certain pegasus right then and there. “Calm down, Stick. I’d told you we’d find him.”
“Y-yes, you told me you’d find him in a couple of hours,” the earth pony cracked back through glistening eyes. “That was yesterday afternoon! You’ve never lost track of anypony before, what happened?!”
The awkward, tense silence that followed forced Sling Shot to answer the question when Farsight couldn't—or wouldn’t—bring himself to do it. “….if what Daffodil told me is right, then he never got back to quarters after his shift,” she sighed. “His PipBuck’s not transmitting his locator tag either. Either it’s damaged or he got somepony in maintenance to turn it off, but why he’d do that is beyond me. Since he does the night shift at the moment, that would mean he’s been gone since yesterday morning when Lavender relieved him.”
Farsight’s eyes narrowed into an icy glare when she’d mentioned the likely true length of his disappearance, and the teary mare’s shocked gasp further cemented the mistake her friend had just committed. “…you don’t think the bugs got him….do you….”
Farsight saw an opportunity to settle the issue of what to do with Sling Shot (and punish her for speaking out of turn at the same time). “I’m sure he’s fine. And since you seem to be up to speed on Butterscotch’s disappearance, Sling, you can spend your shift looking for him. When you find him, let me know right away and what his status is, and report back here for re-assignment…”
His eyes shifted over to bring their intimidating fire upon the pegasus before continuing. “One of my choosing, not yours.”
Cloud Wind did not like being challenged by a stallion in that tone. Or being challenged in general, for that matter. Unfortunately, he hadn’t said anything she could actually use to start an argument she could win. She hated it when he did that (which was often). “Shoving somepony in a room with only one way in or out is a death trap and you know it! The last time you did this we had to beat the damn things off the armory door ourselves ‘cause you locked out Sling’s access to the weapon racks right before you left her in there! Residents can at least seal themselves in other rooms in their quarters! The bugs could’ve easily found their way inside through the vents and left her kid an orphan, we are not risking this again! Put her somewhere else—“
“No,” he refuted her “order” immediately and with zero empathy. “The security of our weapons and munitions stores is more important in this situation. Under Stable-Tec regulations, chapter four, subsection E-point-one, the armory is specifically stated to be under my direct control in a potential security breach. Only the Overmare can give me orders regarding that. Surely you recall that part of the subsection you just quoted to me a minute ago.”
I’ll “quote” you something else in about three seconds!! she wanted to scream back and pound into the thick-headed stallion’s skull with the blunt, hard metal of his own desk. The fight that almost ensued was, to her disappointment, headed off by the one pony that had every right to expect better from them.
“Will you foals quit your pissing match and help me find my brother?!?” the earth mare screeched into their brains, no longer trying to hide her tears or her pain. “He’s just a stupid kid, I promised Daddy I’d take care of him before he died, don’t make me beg! Do better!”
Her indignant anger bled off into oblivion, a wash of red hot shame flowing into her bones. She’d often forgotten that Butterscotch was still technically a security pony-in-training; six months shy of becoming a full-blown stallion in legal status, if not by behavior. He’d put in the extra work to graduate from his class a year early and take his departed father’s place on the security force, put in the time to really learn the Stable’s layout in daily walks around the fourteen-level shelter, put in the effort to try and know the other ponies in the security force. He even put in the time to learn about the shooting range’s mechanical controls and the joys of their maintenance routines.
And here she was, trying to huff and puff and blown down the big, bad security chief because she felt her friend was still being slighted by a stable that saw her as little more than their resident “slut”, when Butterscotch’s big sister had a much more reasonable and compelling need to vent and ask them to what they’d promised to when they took on the security oath.
The uncomfortable silence that fell on her ears was thankfully brief, as Sling Shot seemed eager to see herself out the door before things could get any worse. The unicorn spun in place and walked away from the desk, not even bothering to acknowledge anything that their boss had said to them. “Walk with me,” she said, then added with a sharp edge, “You too, Windy.”
Cloud felt her ears go limp as she meekly fell in step behind Sling’s indigo tail, but said nothing. She’d earned the disrespect to be commanded about like a rebellious child. Stick didn’t even flinch. She just seemed grateful that the search could carry on as she’d thought it ought to. She didn’t even care that it was Sling Shot doing the searching.
How quickly ponies would forget the way they treated her when they actually needed her for something….
“The last time you saw Butterscotch, what did you two talk about?” the unicorn asked loudly once they’d escaped the confines of Farsight’s office. Interesting question to ask right off the bat…
“...I…I….ummm,” Stick stammered. Now that she’d gotten the search to continue, she was back to fretting and freaking out over a kid brother that might possibly have become a large snack for giant, mutated insects, and she wasn’t doing as good a job hiding it as she was earlier. “I…when Daddy died…Butters was just starting to ask about…um….mares. Why girls lack some…certain male qualities. At first I was still too broken up to tell him…and it was easier to just avoid it, so that’s what I did, and he stopped asking after a while. It wasn’t until last year when Amethyst cornered me and told me to explain it to him because he’d skipped everything but the core subjects in order to graduate early and start training for security—”
An unmistakable groan of despair filled the air from Sling’s lungs as she stopped herself mid-step and whipped around to stare down the earth pony. “Get to the point already!”
Butterstick wasn’t expecting such a harsh reprimand from the “immoral whore”, and she visibly shrank back from the unicorn’s fiery gaze. “A-aaah! D-don’t make this more embarrassing than it already is! I’m his sister, how was I supposed to tell him something like that?! It took me a whole freakin’ year to work up the nerve! He should’ve learned it in school—“
Sling’s eyes grew harder and angrier, trying to bore a new hole in the earth pony’s skull with her impatience, and Butterstick finally stopping stalling. “Wa…w-wait, don’t hurt me! I…I told him the other night and he just…he just took off! He just took off and he never came home and I’m trying not to think of him being eaten alive by mutant cockroaches with eggs the size of a dinner plate and oh gods Daddy I’m so sorry I tried—“
Butterstick’s body crumpled onto the floor in a curled heap, and it took all of Cloud’s willpower not to smack herself in the face, now that she knew why Butterscotch had just up and vanished on everypony. For such a bright guy, he was being incredibly stupid right now. She’d never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own two eyes.
“Wow,” she muttered over the crying earth pony’s wails. “A singing robot and making a grown mare cry like a little filly. And all in less than an hour? You really bring out the best in us, Sling. Truly, where would we be without your constant guidance?”
“I hate you all,” the unicorn grumbled to nopony in particular as she stared down at the bubbling mass of yellow fur at her hooves. “Basket cases, every last one of you.”
“So where would you go if you were three months away from being declared a full-fledged stallion and just now found out how babies are made?”
Sling took a few moments to respond, still somewhat preoccupied with getting Butterstick’s attention by tapping the crying pony’s body with a forehoof with no success. After her fourth attempt she finally gave up and left the pathetic thing where she was, and started strolling away along with the pegasus. “In the deepest, darkest corner of the Stable that I knew of. And Butterscotch knows a lot of those. He could be anywhere!”
“He can only be in one place at a time,” she countered calmly. “We did a sweep of the residential and agricultural levels six hours ago, so we can rule those out. Levels two through seven don’t have very many places a pony can go if he doesn’t have any business being there, except for the commons areas and we’ve got those locked down until the alert passes. We haven’t done a thorough search of levels fourteen and fifteen yet but that’s only because maintenance gets pretty irate if us dumb security types come barging through during inspections. They tend to just block the halls and doors with their bodies so we can’t walk through.”
Sling’s excessively eager response was swift and tinged with lingering frustration from the week’s stresses and emotional abuses. “I don’t have the time or the patience for their bullshit today,” she howled angrily, her hastened pace overtaking the pegasus’s in a display of slightly unbottled rage. “If they can’t make a hole when I come through, I will.”
They always laughed.
For some strange, inexplicable reason, whenever she allowed herself to get angry enough to show it, they always laughed. Like she’d uttered the punch line to a joke that everypony but her was a part of.
And today was a bad day for jokes.
“Hey guys!” Socket’s cream-colored body chuckled as he turned his hazel eyes away from her and motioned his head in her general direction, eliciting a similar roar of chuckles from the ten-strong crowd of earth ponies and mares behind him. “Check this out! She—hehehaha—she sounds serious! ‘Get out of the bucking way’ my tail—“
“Oh crap,” was all Windy would have time to whisper under her breath. In the next instant Sling Shot’s horn erupted into a brilliant indigo shimmer, and Socket’s body was flung straight up into the ceiling with enough force to bruise his skull on it, cutting his surprised shout short with a muted grunt of pain before he was dropped back to the floor by gravity.
Stars alive, that felt good.
“Let me make my position a little more clear to you,” she seethed in hot, heated breaths, her mind’s eye focusing her arcane energy flow into a second telekinesis spell in the event that she needed to do exactly what she’d threatened to. “Somepony’s been missing for over a day and I’ve already had all the BS I can stand today. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. MOVE.”
Ten bodies immediately parted to the sides, their laughter dying in their throats at the sight of Socket writhing on the floor, his forelegs grasping at the pain in his skull. What were once stares of distaste and disdain now bore signs of confusion, fear, and even anger, as if they couldn’t understand why a security mare would resort to physical force to do their job when words weren’t enough. And maybe she had gone a tad overboard with Socket.
But they weren’t laughing at her anymore. At that point, that was all that mattered to her. That and the immense feeling of vindicated relief that flowed through her blood and invigorated her muscles. Whether it was rightfully deserved or not was another story. One Farsight would probably be hearing about later.
Since that time wasn’t here yet, she pushed it out of her mind and strode forward through the maintenance crew, Cloud Wind never more than four steps behind. She had no doubt that they were already planning to tell Farsight before she could even get back to his office, but that was a problem for later. Butterscotch was missing, Butterstick was probably still sprawled on the floor on the fifth level bawling her eyes dry, and she still had eleven and a half hours left to go in her shift. To Tartarus with what anypony else thought of her.
Even if that pony was a friend. “U-uhh, maybe you should call it quits this time, take a sick day or something,” Windy suggested softly as they strode through the corridor, bending around the wall as it bent to the right and funneled off into an intersection ahead. “You went over the line with Socket—“
“I told him he could move, or be moved,” she snapped back quickly, wanting to settle the issue and get the search over with so she could get back upstairs for whatever chewing session Farsight wanted to have. “He chose option B, so that’s what he got. You take the left side, I’ll search th—“
“Sling, I’m serious, you’re not thinking straight!” Windy protested still, ignoring her instructions entirely and instead focusing on whatever she’d decided for the unicorn. “Go practice your magic, take an hour in the gym and work it off, I don’t care, just stop—“
Just get to work, please, Windy! “Not now, ‘Scotch is sitting around somewhere and we need to find him. Now, take the left side—“
Her instructions were ignored a second time, the pegasus more concerned with whatever she’d decided was important rather than the task of finding somepony that could very likely be dead or dying right then and there. “Yes, now! What the hell’s wrong with you?! You’ve never lost your cool like that before, you could have seriously hurt him!! I know everypony treats you like scum to be scrapped off their hooves and it’s not fair or right, but you can’t just go slapping them around like that! You said it yourself, it’s just words to you! Why are you acting like this?!”
She tried. She tried so very hard to keep her mind on task, to just get on with the search and push it away, but the longer Windy yelled and berated her, the harder it became to not think of what Light Tail had screamed at her earlier. At how Comet Star’s colt had treated her, the things he supposedly said to her, about her own mother. And then….
And then she felt the dam holding back ten years of emotional abuse shatter.
“Alright, fine then, ‘MOM’, since you’re so gods-damned interested!” she screamed back, spinning around on her hooves to face the pegasus down. “I’ve been called a slut and a whore to my face for ten bucking years!! All because I had a kid when I was fifteen and still a year away from the G.O.A.T. exam and the three years of job skill classes afterward!! And why?! It’s not like I was the only one getting laid in her free time out of school, I was just the only one stupid enough to get caught at it!!”
Cloud Wind’s eyes shrank back into themselves, perhaps finally realizing that she might have been better off just leaving the matter alone, and she began to put some distance between them in the hopes that she might be able to avoid getting what she asked for. “Wh-whoa, wait a tic, stop—“
“NO!” she shouted into her face, her body stalking forward. “You wanted to know, and now you will!! It’s bad enough that I get treated like a used rag!! I’m yelled at, cussed out, or insulted to my face and I have taken every bit of it and said nothing!! I have not touched a stallion in a decade, and I’m called a dirty whore today regardless, but I take it—“
Cloud Wind’s shock did not last long—she soon squared her body and firmly planted herself onto the floor, her face staring back at the ranting unicorn with the stoic determination she was occasionally capable of showing. “And you shouldn’t have to, but this is not the time for a snit-fit—“
“My daughter should not have to take it!!” she went on, ignoring the tingling in her horn as she began to lose her hold on her anger. “I have let these stupid ponies drag my name and my reputation into the sewage lines for years, and it’s rubbing off on their children and hurting mine!! She should not have to walk these halls and hear other children call her mother the same things their parents do!! She should not have to catch everypony’s distaste and hate for me for one stupid evening I spent on my couch with a coltfriend!!! She has done nothing!!! She deserves better than what everypony’s giving us!!!”
Cloud Wind’s eyes began to lose their fire as she struggled to process what had just been bellowed into her ears. “….what are you talking about?”
A primal, almost animalistic growl vibrated through her throat and into the echo-friendly corridor as the unicorn’s mind fought off the urge to splatter her only friend across the floor. “You know what? Why don’t you go ask her, since you’re more interested in our business than in finding some poor lost kid?!”
If Cloud Wind had anything to say to that, she didn’t get to say it. The minute Sling’s voice stopped speaking, the world was plunged into blackness alongside the plunging, dying sound of hundreds of power conduits suddenly losing all of their energy at once. After that, any pretense of continuing their fight was long forgotten (if not the ill feelings that still lingered).
“…that’s twice this week,” Windy’s voice grumbled darkly, her head ducking down to pull the firing reins of her battle saddle up and locking it in place with a swift tap from her left forehoof. “The damn bugs are probably building a nest right over the exhaust pipes below us.”
The back-up generator began humming to life, and its associated back-up lights slowly began to energize and illuminate the hallways with just enough light for everypony to see where they were going. It would take them a half hour before they really lit up fully, but for now it was still better than shooting blindly in the dark.
And for once, she was actually looking forward to the coming violence. A good chance to work out her rage on something that deserved it. Her issued 10mm pistol cleared its holster in a flash, her magic already grasping onto the slide and pulling it back for a chamber check—
—the dull brass casing of the 10mm jacketed hollowpoint round nestled inside the firing chamber glinted slightly even amidst the dim lighting offered by the back-up lights, and she let the slide snap back forward with a slight tingle of satisfaction. “We’ll check it out while we search L15, then. If those things break the generator we’ll all be taking the Last Journey.”
--------------------------------------
She was right on top of the beginning of chapter twenty-seven when the world went to sleep. Her vision was plunged into darkness, the environmental unit stopped humming cool air into the living room, and the air vents were noticeably quieter than they usually were. Thank the stars the oxygen ran on its own separate back-up system designed to kick in if power went out.
That didn’t, however, make up for the fact that she was stuck in the dark, right when the story was getting to this really great part where Starlight had finally found the Princess’s old royal castle after an agonizing three weeks in the Everfree Forest—and had an impending fight with yet another group of cultist ponies. And Mom had never gotten around to teaching her any other spells aside from levitation and telekinesis. A light spell would have been really nifty right now.
With a frustrated sigh, she looped the cloth bookmark back over the binder, sliding it inside the first page of chapter twenty-seven before clasping the book shut and setting it down on the coffee table. The back-up lights were starting to come on, but they weren’t going to give nearly enough light for her to pick up her reading again for a while. And she needed to go to the bathroom anyway.
When there was enough light in the room for her to avoid bumping into stuff, she hopped off the couch and walked over to the door, concentrating her magic on the door controls, aaaaaand—
Nope, not opening, she spat to the stars when the door remained in place after four button presses. Perfect. Now I’m stuck in here.
She refused to accept that. No stupid door was going to keep her penned up like an animal in her own home. She was going to find a way to get it open. It might have been smarter to let the door stay put in case those bugs started swarming through the halls, but if they got in here then she’d stuck. She’d rather have a way out than be sealed in with pony-eating roaches.
She crossed over into the kitchen as quickly as her four hooves would move her, retrieving a flashlight from a cabinet over the stove before dashing back to the door. Her magic flicked across the on switch as she approached, bathing it in white light and affording her a much clearer view of the doorway and the useless controls.
Control panel mounted next to doorway, door moved by big gears and pistons and Celestia knows what else, her brain surmised in quick bursts of thought as her eyes scrutinized the door and everything around it. Door supposed to take explosions and still work, power cables routed to door under the floor…Stable built to outlast pony-wrought Endtimes so Stable-Tec musta counted on power going out now and then….bet it’s got manual controls somewhere—
Her flashlight started poking about the wall surrounding the doorway, looking for any latches or wall panels that she would have otherwise ignored entirely in a typical day—
Presto! she squealed mentally when the light beam fell over a section of wall marked with a pale yellow triangle, with a black exclamation mark in the middle and accented with a red outline. Beneath the mark lay the words “EMERGENCY USE ONLY.” She was pretty sure a power outage and impending biological urges counted as emergencies.
She quickly unscrewed the rubber-coated lens cap of the flashlight until it popped off, allowing the bulb to throw its light out into a general area rather than being focused into a singular direction. She set the cap down on the floor, focusing lens down, and set the still-shining flashlight inside the cap where it could stand stable and give enough light to let her see what she was doing. She then planted her hooves onto the floor in a firm, steady position, and began to tear at the panel with her telekinesis spell.
And dear Luna it was tough! Her first try failed completely, and she smacked herself in the face for forgetting to take the screws out first, but even after that, the panel simply refused to be budged easily. Her next four attempts lasted all of three seconds before it snapped out of her spell field and back into its crevice in the wall. On her sixth attempt she thought she had it as she managed to get one corner out of the hole, but something on the right side kept catching onto something inside her spell’s grasp and keeping the panel from moving any further.
C’mon already, get out! she demanded of the slab of metal, giving it an extra hard tug out of frustration, which was apparently enough to coax it free of its restraints. The cover popped off with a loud crunch, startling her into sending it flying across the room, eventually clanging harmlessly into the kitchen floor.
“…oops,” she mumbled over a nervous laugh, turning back to the hole she’d revealed and enveloping the stick lever within with a telekinesis spell. It proved to be nearly as frustrating as the wall cover, with the added downside of roughly two centuries of age, minimal attention from maintenance staff, and the arduous task of having to engage an untold amount of weight and pressure by sheer force without the assistance of power and hydraulics. It took her roughly four minutes to lift the door up enough for her to consider crawling across underneath, and by then she felt like she’d been running a marathon up and down the stairs. She simply wanted to collapse to the floor and be allowed to die right there.
And yet that annoying detail of a full, pressured bladder begging to release its contents in an acceptable and dignified manner kept her strained, exhausted mind focused on at least finding her way to the washroom before it chose to disregard dignity. And though the space between door and floor was not quite ideal, she was able to squeeze through and enter the slightly brighter confines of the hallway. Now it was just a matter of—
Of telling Grape and Emmy to give me some privacy, she amended her unconscious checklist. Even with most of the hall lights giving off only dim glows, she could easily make out the distinctive outlines of Grape Jam and Emerald’s manes and tails as they gingerly trotted towards her. Grape Jam’s head cocked to one side, likely studying the unicorn filly in front of her as though she wasn’t sure who she was staring at, but Emmy was quicker to recognize her and broke into a light gallop.
“Whoa!” the earth filly squealed in delight as she reached the unicorn and finally got a good look at the door she’d spent the better part of ten minutes prying open. “Figures ya’d find a way to get a door open when ya want out! What’s th’ rush, you coulda made it easier on yerself if ya’d just waited for the power to come back!”
“Can’t wait,” she huffed through a heavy breath as she stumbled around her friends towards the washroom. Still winded out. “Gotta go. Gimme a minute.”
For once, her friends seemed content to give her the space she asked for and simply continued forward. “No biggie,” Grape assured her as she drew close to the door of her home. “We’ll just wait in your living room—“
Light Tail’s heart stopped inside her chest, cold tendrils growing out into her lungs as she imagined the worst possible outcome of the two of them finding Mom’s gun on the coffee table and inadvertently setting it off, and then she suddenly thought better of them trailing her all the way to the washroom entrance. “W-wait, I didn’t say nothin’ about stayin’ put, just…what’re you guys doin’ here? Didn’t anypony tell you we might end up in lockdown ‘fore long?”
“Yeah, we heard,” Emmy’s voice sputtered, dripping with scorn at being told to stay put in one place instead of hanging out with her friends. But her hoofsteps stopped growing distant and began to grow louder and closer, and Light Tail’s heart gradually warmed with relief as Grape’s hooves fell in step behind the earth pony filly. One potential disaster averted. “But we ain’t locked down yet, and ah’m tired of bein’ cooped up alone. Ah’d rather be bored with my friends. And Grape wanted to talk to ya anyways! Ain’t that right?!”
She could almost imagine Grape’s face flooding with embarrassment underneath her coat. “Emm-meeee!” the pegasus whined in a sharp hiss. “I told you not to say anything!”
“Oh, come off it, wouldja?! Ah’m just makin’ sure you don’t forget!”
Their hushed, angry argument carried on in the background, pushed out of her conscious hearing by her own wandering thoughts as she realized that she’d never known Grape to be shy about saying anything to either of them before. She couldn’t imagine that changing now, unless it concerned her on something really important or personal.
And the bathroom was the last place she wanted to be asked any kind of questions like that.
“Well, whatever you wanna ask me, can it wait a minute?” she pleaded again as they reached the washroom door at last, but she didn’t regret enticing them to follow along behind her. She’d rather be embarrassed than heartbroken over seeing them hurt, or worse. “This ain’t exactly the kinda place for important stuff.”
She turned her head towards them, just to see if they’d finally get the unspoken message, and their wide-eyed stares as they realized (belatedly) where the unicorn had led them caused them to shuffle away from the door in a mad dash of embarrassment. “Uhhh yeah!” Emmy agreed with a chipper voice, desperate to look anywhere but at her. She seemed especially interested in the floor right then. “Yeah! Important stuff’s for…important places! Like a couch! Go on, we’re not even here! Right, Jam?!”
“R-right!” Grape sounded off in unison. “Not here! Not here at all! Just…chillin’ out!”
Light Tail allowed herself a few moments of laughter at their expense as she strolled through the doorway, thankful that somepony had neglected to close it before the power went out. Sometimes those two could be as dense as the walls around them. She loved them so regardless. What were friends for, right?
“Friends are not for use as battering rams,” Cloud Wind growled testily, refusing to come within twenty feet of the unicorn as she tried yet again to get the plate covering for the manual override lever off. And failed.
“We need this damn door open and your skull is the only one thick enough to take the abuse,” she snapped back, her fight with the protective covering giving her voice an added dose of hateful venom. “You won’t feel a thing, I promise.”
“No!” the pegasus bellowed, her voice amplified by the tight confines of the stairwell’s corridor. “Keep your fancy horn magic offa me! I like my skull the way it is!”
For the tenth time, she repeated the silent mind incantation for the telekinesis spell, willing the spell field into existence over the covering, and began to pull at it once more. “I’m not shooting this cover off! Or prying it off with the gun, for that matter, the barrel is worth more than these PipBucks on our front legs! It gets bent and the gun’s useless!”
“Better the barrel than my brain!” Windy shouted back, from what sounded like twenty-five feet away now. “Back! Back I say!”
At last she began to feel a smidgeon of success—the covering’s two left corners actually came away from the wall for about two seconds before the safety latch, long ago rusted into place, became too much for her hold on the spell, and the covering snapped back into place with an almost taunting flair. Her frustration began to boil over into physical actions as she slammed her right front hoof against the covering in despair.
“By Celestia, this is ridiculous!” she screamed to the uncaring Stable walls around her. “Has anypony in maintenance actually maintained any of these manual controls?!”
“Just rip it off, ya wuss!”
“I’m trying, dammit!!” she howled, grabbing at the covering with her front hooves in a fit of rage and beginning to physically pull on the thing in a bid to relief this overflow of anger. “This bucking thing—unnnggh!—is pissing me off!! I can….unnng—I can barely concentrate!!”
Cloud Wind had finally had enough of sitting and waiting for things to happen…that, or she simply didn’t believe that the latches for the covering had rusted over and frozen into place decades ago. She promptly stomped forward and bumped the unicorn aside with nary a care in the world, and began trying the exact same thing that Sling had just been doing. “Oh, by the unholy—step aside and let a real mare handle this, will ya? Wouldn’t want you chipping a hoof.”
Now Windy was beginning to frustrate her almost as much as that stupid plate of metal. She fought her way back into position, but wound up having to share the space with the sky-blue pony as she grabbed at one half of the covering’s edges with both front hooves and her magic, while the pegasus pulled on the upper and right sides. “A real mare?! You’ve been hanging around Steel Side too long, girl! Or do you even notice the lack of certain male body parts between your haunches, you thick-headed mule?!”
“Mule?!?!” Cloud Wind screeched, finally and truly enraged at her friend as she began to double the strength she was putting into her pulling efforts. “That’s it, when I tear this damn thing off I’m shoving it up between your legs!!”
“I’d like to see you try it, you flightless heavyweight!!!”
—SCREE—
“You just wait, hermit-girl!! When I’m done with you you’ll feel pain in places that never see light!!”
“Yeah, well, at least they’ve felt pleasure before in my lifetime—“
—SCREEEEEEEE—
Windy’s body began to drag across the floor as her pulling inevitably drew her closer to the panel. “Oh, now I’m honor-bound to hit you in low places!“
“You wouldn’t even know where to aim back there, feathers-for-brains!!”
—SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—
“How could I miss what I’ve been trying to tap for three years!?!?”
Her mounting rage flashed away, overridden by a shock that not even a power overload could have produced into her. “WHAT—“
—SCREEEEEEECCHHH!!!!!!—
The cover plating popped off, and in her stunned stupor she’d been totally unprepared for it—her spell field didn’t even register that its target was no longer within its radius, and exerted its full force on the manual lever she’d been trying to reach for the last five minutes. The physical exertions of both mares sent them tumbling backward head over tail across the twelve feet of level flooring and into the first several steps of the stairs behind them as the door slammed open and sent its ear-screeching echoes into the halls around it. The metal plate flew free from their grasp and clanged its way up the stairs as their bodies collapsed onto each other—the pegasus fell on her back, wings spread wide, as the unicorn was plopped down on top of her by inertia and carelessness. Their faces were less than an inch apart, but could not have been more different. Where Sling Shot’s face bore a look of extreme horror and uncertainty, Cloud Wind’s face bared teeth and hate…
…for all of three seconds, before the anger in her eyes gave way to tear-filled glee and school-girl antics as she began to laugh hysterically to the point of having trouble breathing, her saddle-mounted rifle clicking across the floor in tune with her shaking body.
“Oh my stars this is the best prank I’ve ever pulled over your naïve little eyes!!!” she howled with joy, when she finally could speak for a few seconds. “Holy cow you really thought I had the hots for you all week hahAHAHAHAHAAAA—“
But Sling Shot could barely process this confession—her mind was still locked on ‘trying to tap for three years!?!?’, and with their haunches so close together she felt more than small. She felt….
….non-existent. “….y-you…wha…”
The pegasus continued to roar with laughter and shift beneath her, oblivious to the world in general and Sling Shot in particular. “Oh gods—hahahaha—oh gods wait ‘till I tell El-Tee hehehahHAHAHA!!! She’ll just DIE—“
She would later come to believe that some ambivalent, bored deity in the stars above had been watching them all through the morning, waiting for just the right moment to begin alleviating his boredom with a heavy dose of irony, because right at that moment both mares heard amidst Cloud Wind’s non-stop bellowing laughing a terrified, hair-curling scream from somewhere beyond the open doorway that made the hairs of their manes stand up on end. Quite a feat, since Sling kept hers in a braided ponytail.
Cloud Wind’s laughter died as promptly as the bone-chilling scream, and she shifted over onto her belly and scooted out from underneath the unicorn. “…oh gods, I think that was Hacket Wrench…”
Her mind still trying to get past her friend’s raunchy comment that had deflated her bubble of fury, Sling could only steady herself upright and bring her 10mm pistol and flashlight back into her telekinetic grasp as she followed the pegasus through the door and into the fifteenth and final level of the Stable. Windy turned down the right corridor almost immediately, bounding down through the passage as it curved off leftward a hundred feet later, before the gravity of the situation had seeped deeply into her psyche and gave her the incentive to focus on her assigned task once again. “....I’m not seeing any red marks on my EFS—“
“You won’t down here,” Cloud Wind explained quickly, her pace slowing to a quick but careful trot as her rifle locked into place and began following her head movements. It was limited to a thirty-degree field of aim, but at least she could actually aim it instead of having to settle for awkwardly positioning her body to get the bullet to hit in one particular spot. “This is where all the spark generator’s exhaust is funneled and recycled, as well as the water used to keep the arcane rods cool. The pipes have to be shielded with containment talismans pretty heavily to contain the radiation, which wreaks havoc on the PipBuck’s EFS matrix to the point of uselessness. There’s a reason we call the generator levels “The Dungeon”.”
A spark of intelligence finally came to life within her addled neurons. “…that would also block locator tags…and Butterscotch’s has been offline since…Tuesday night? Wednesday morning?”
Sling’s observation caused the pegasus to screech to a halt as the obviousness of it all finally became clear. “…and Spiner said he couldn’t find Hacket’s too…oh stars, how did we overlook this?! That idiot’s been down here the whole damn time!”
The unicorn’s mouth began to part, to utter a warning about keeping silent, and a sharp, rapid set of clicks began to scratch at her ears from the darkened depths of the corridors ahead…and then another set joined in after it, their off-beat crescendo promising grim and violent futures. She didn’t even remember thinking to cock the hammer on her pistol, or slinging the tall, orange crystal-insert iron sights up into her vision.
She would never, ever forget those sounds for as long as she lived.
And neither would Windy. Her belt-fed rifle began to strain against its mount as it sought to accommodate her frantic head movements. “Guess we know what Hacket was screaming about now….”
“Don’t forget about ‘Scotch,” Sling said quietly, her heart beginning to fight with her ribcage as it tried to beat its way out. “We’ll swing by the exhaust pipes, see if they’re jammed up with bug resin or whatever they use to build nests out of, but we’re not leaving until we know for sure if he’s here or not.”
For all the pranking and jesting Windy liked to get up to, she could set herself to dead-serious tasks with robotic precision and dedication when she had to. She trotted past the unicorn, firing rein less than an inch from her open mouth, and began to creep forward at a careful pace. “Taking point,” she whispered back. “Watch our six.”
Sling swung her body around to the other direction, her eyes and flashlight focused more on the vents along the floor and in the ceiling, and after a quick check of her weapon she flicked the pegasus’s rump with her tail to indicate that she was ready to move. Windy’s hooves began softly clomping against the metal beneath them, and Sling Shot was never more than a step behind as she followed along in an awkward walk backwards. All the while, that foreboding sound of chitinous legs skittering about in the darkness continued its song of doom, adding more sets to its step and from more distant places. She was starting to think they were emerging from every conceivable hole in the halls, and she was having a very difficult time getting her heart to do anything other than try to tear itself apart. Her legs began to grow hollow and cold, her fear becoming almost a physical ingredient in her blood as it zipped about within her blood vessels—
—her muscles slacked into pudding, collapsing her to the floor, her hooves pressuring against her ears as dozens of insect legs scratched and scorched against the door beyond the meshed-in security desk—
Stop, brain, she begged of her resurging memory as the darkness began to grow along the hall. Don’t need this right now stoppit—
—their ravenous, guttural chirping billowed through the overhead vent, filling the room with their cries of hunger as she began to cry at the prospect of being slaughtered with nothing more to fight back with than her own hooves and limited combat magics—
Sling felt her rear legs begin to tremble, unconsciously backing herself up against Windy’s backside as her lungs began to struggle for oxygen—
—the walls began to squeeze inward on her, promising her no escape from the razor-sharp mandibles stretching apart at the thought of her flesh beneath her teal-blue coat—
The walls at the corners of her vision began to bend and curve inward, at once stretching and constricting themselves around her into what she swore was a tunnel—
—her lungs stopped working entirely as the thought of her night light’s future without her began to take hold in her broken thoughts—
Her shaky hold on reality was snapped back into sure footing before her memories could overwhelm her entirely with the timely—and emotionally confusing—intervention of Cloud Wind and a strong, enveloping hug that trapped the unicorn within her front legs and pressed their bodies together—
“Bookie, listen to my voice!” Windy’s voice rumbled into her right ear.
Her brain stopped mis-firing its commands at the sound of her old pet name, and her lungs began to work in concert with each other rather than fight with her for what they needed. Her legs, while still buckling, no longer felt as though they would snap in two with a mere brush. And her heart, while still anxious, no longer sought a bloody and fatal escape through her ribs.
“Just breath,” Windy continued to plead, refusing to release her friend from her grasp. “Take a minute, just breath—“
Her lungs obeyed the worded urging, sucking in recycled oxygen from the air and filling her with its cool relief. Once rapidly, then twice in a quick gasp, and then a third time…
….and a fourth, calm, relaxing breath later, she was back in control of herself, if not her wildly running emotions and fear.
“You’ll be fine,” Windy’s voice soothed in as assuring a voice as she could manage. “You’re not in a one-door room, locked up like a misbehaving pet with no way out. You’ve got a gun this time, and I’m not going anywhere. We walked into this mess together, and that’s how we’re leaving. Just focus on my ass, if that helps.”
Windy’s lame attempt at humor broke at least some of the tension in her limbs, but she still couldn’t shake off the sheer terror afflicting her. “Thought we went over this already,” she chuckled back nervously. Her hold on her pistol was firm again, and by the stars if she saw even a hint of those damn things she was squeezing the trigger, subtlety be damned. She felt she needed to see one of them split in half from a 165-grain hollowpoint traveling fourteen hundred feet per second. Maybe then she’d feel safer.
“There you go,” she muttered softly, finally unwrapping her forelegs from the unicorn and returning to her point-mare position. “Back to your old celibate self, that’s better. Just stay calm and focused.”
How can such a carefree pony be so fearless when it counts…
“Easy to say for one whose name pops up in a dictionary when the word ‘courage’ needs an example,” she derided gently, her tail feeling Cloud Wind’s body stalking away from her. She followed along in a backwards walk again, this time keeping her mind from zeroing in on the constant patter of insectoid feet in the dark by thinking of just about everything else. Light Tail, The Mare of the Everfree book she read once a year, the ballistic table for the 10mm’s various loads—
“Everypony gets terrified shitless when the chips are down,” the pegasus muttered back, finally allowing what sounded like apprehension to creep into her voice. “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway.”
Windy stopped talking after that and simply slinked along through the halls, leaving Sling Shot to ponder the unusually thoughtful words her friend had just uttered…and how much better they made her feel when she began to count each step she took in spite of the fact that she was surrounded by carnivorous bugs and had seen first-hand what they were capable of doing to ponies like herself. Every hoof forward (or backward, in her case) was in direct defiance to what her fear and bladder-emptying urges were telling her to do, and the longer she did it, the more clearly she could concentrate on her task.
Even if she was scared to death to do it.
With her initial terror squared away, they strode through the hall, stopping at each room for a quick peek inside before moving on. Neither of them saw any sign of anypony being attacked, but they held no illusions that such luck would last. In time they came to the end of the corridor, which split off into two more in the left and right directions—
—Windy’s body turned down the right corridor, and Sling curved her body around to her left as she followed along, continuously lashing her tail outward to keep the pegasus within touching distance and to keep her oriented. They’d practiced this routine ever since the last radroach outbreak, and it was paying off already in terms of emotional relief as well as actual security—
—her light flashed across a vent in the corridor across from her, just in time to spot the antennae of a radroach emerging from its crevice, followed quickly by the rest of its chitinous and creepily oversized thorax and body—
—a warm, tingly stream began to flow within her horn as she silently discharged her hearing protection spell, and when that same feeling stretched out to her ears and Windy’s she settled her pistol’s sights on the disgusting bug’s body and squeezed down on the trigger—
—the muffled boom of the gunshot was overshadowed by the brilliant muzzle flash erupting from the barrel, and she immediately regretted not fetching a suppressor from her armory before coming down here as she noted several minute details of warning signs and lettering along the wall that she could no longer see in the dim lightning. Even hearing the bullet crack through its exoskeleton and tear meaty chunks out of the disgusting bug little to re-assure her over the loss of her low-light adjusted vision. Had she been aiming for its head and missed, she wouldn’t have been able to see it well enough to try a second shot. Fortunately, its terrified shrieks of pain were brief, and she didn’t hear it moving or chirping afterward. One down, hundreds more to go.
“Was going to ask about that fancy spell of yours,” Windy’s voice chimed in, swelled with relief. “That thing would have made us both deaf without it.”
“Should have grabbed a suppressor, my night vision just got shot to hell,” she berated herself darkly, taking a moment to study how well the orange-crystal inserts glowed against the dark background in front of her, though with a flashlight in her grasp as well they were likely overkill. “Thank the stars for flashlights and night sight inserts.”
“You’ll need them in a minute, that shot will probably bring the swarm right down on us,” the pegasus countered. “I got two hundred five-five-six rounds in my ammo belt, what have you got?”
“Sixty rounds across five mags, including the one in the gun,” she answered bitterly after a quick mental count of her ammunition. “Enough to sweep this level if we watch our shots, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Shoulda brought Grayhawk with you, that handcannon could kill three with one shot if you aimed it right.”
The thought of her family heirloom nestled in its holster on her traveling saddle, instead of at her side down here where she’d wished it was, brought her a pang of regret, but the logical part of her brain that still worked quickly assured her otherwise. “No, too much recoil and muzzle blast for what we’re shooting at. We oughta be working with what we have instead of wishing for something else.”
“…good idea,” the gray-haired pony agreed as her body slung around a corner to Sling’s right, and then halted in place. “Speaking of which—“
—Cloud Wind’s rifle began barking in carefully aimed, semi-automatic shots, cutting off her own speech as its twenty-two caliber bullets soared across the hall and tore into the hard outer shells of her targets. Despite their small size, the rounds did an impressive amount of damage, often tumbling over inside the insect and shredding it apart from the inside out. From her rearguard position, Sling’s flashlight spotted a second radroach emerging from the vent, pushing its slain swarm mate out of its path as it turned towards the unicorn—
—a second shot from her pistol pinged off of the floor directly in front of it, but portions of the jacketed hollowpoint still managed to find and sever one of its antennae—
—a slight nudge of the sights brought the three glowing orange dots directly beneath its head before the gun roared again, and the bullet obliterated it and continued on directly through the body, her flashlight revealing an explosion of fluids from the rear end of its abdomen—
—a third radroach skittered out into the hall of death, apparently eager to join its brethren in the insect afterlife, and she obliged it with a single shot to its thorax as it somehow managed an awkward stand on four of its rear legs. Her flashlight revealed a ragged, gooey hole in its front as it collapsed to the floor—
—Windy’s rifle went click! after its tenth round, proving the ancient adage that such a sound would be the loudest one would hear in a gunfight.
“Frig, jammed!” the pegasus shrieked in a panic, and immediately backed herself into the corner, brushing Sling’s rump with the side of her body on the way. “Cover me!”
With no other insects immediately eager to leap out into certain death, Sling twisted her body around ninety degrees to her right—
—her flashlight revealed a sight that made her glad for the mere three bugs she’d had to dispatch, as she saw close to a dozen of the things a hundred feet down the hall, crawling over the seven corpses that Cloud Wind had created in roughly four seconds of firing.
Calm down, saddle up—
—her first shot rang true, completely separating the head from the thorax and creating another obstacle for the remaining eleven insects to clamber over. Her next round was less true, but found the backside of a radroach that had made it over the pile and split its hard-shell abdomen down the middle as it died in place. Her third shot missed its intended target but managed to smash into the underside of another one as it attempted to fly up and over its comrades, sending it into a spinning backflip and a soundless demise—
— Cloud Wind’s hooves smacked the side of her rifle out of frustration as the bolt slipped off and back into what sounded like a jammed chamber. “Godsdammit, I swear all these guns were built by unicorns, all these stupid small moving parts—“
--her fourth and fifth shots whacked into one bug each as they cleared over their dead and managed to make it three feet beyond the pile, splattering one’s head and leaving the other with its left side so badly mangled that it would likely die where it lay paralyzed in a minute or two anyway. Any other sentient beings might have taken the death of half their number as a sign that their plan wasn’t going too well and head for greener pastures, but radroaches were not terribly concerned with their own self-preservation. The remaining six—no, seven, she amended—simply continued with their goal of reaching the two ponies they’d found, intent on feasting on their lightly-coated flesh even if it killed them.
She indulged their fatalistic desires with the last four rounds in her weapon, taking out two with one shot each, blowing the head and part of the frontal thorax off of a third and completely missing her last target. The round ricocheted off of the floor, but thankfully sailed on down the hall and ultimately smashed itself apart against a storage crate that had been left out.
Still left with four threats rapidly approaching with renewed vigor (or anticipation at an impending meal), she shifted a small portion of the spell field holding the pistol and hit the magazine release with a solid tap—
—flicked the gun off on its side to help sling it out of the way, as this particular pistol had a rough magazine well and didn’t always like to release magazines properly—
—floated a fresh magazine of twelve rounds up and into the grip as it tilted back upright, and then shifted the top rear of the spell field over the slide and racked backwards on it, causing it to snap back into battery and strip a round into the chamber. One of the four radroaches chose that moment to unlock its wings from its backside and attempt to leap across the remaining forty feet of floor and sink its mandibles into whatever part of her it reached first—
—she snapped off a quickly-aimed shot, not even waiting for her grip to settle before squeezing the shot off, but was rewarded with a particularly gruesome effect as the bullet sailed right into the center of its head and blew it into dozens of nasty little bits. The bullet continued on, bouncing off the ceiling and then into the floor, even as the sights swung over to the next target—
—her shot was off-center, taking out a chunk of its rear abdomen rather than the back of the thorax, and the creature responded with an aggressive screech as it quickened its pace in a dash to attack her before it died—
—Windy’s rifle finally clacked shut into full battery, and the pegasus rushed forward to join her beleaguered friend in finishing off the stragglers, putting one round into each of the remaining three bugs in roughly two seconds with expert timing and aim, splattering their innards into starry patterns across the floor and ending the shooting gallery…for the moment.
With Windy back in action, Sling swung her attention back to the hallway on her left, and was only briefly relieved at the lack of additional living radroaches her flashlight found. If just the two of them had just run into almost twenty of the things already, how many where there in the rest of the Stable?
“Hell, even the last outbreak wasn’t this bad starting out,” Windy heaved in heavy breaths, lightly exhausted from her panic attack in having to clear her rifle malfunction with her bare hooves. “Surprised level 14 isn’t flooded with the damned things, that’s the warmest place in the entire stable. I really miss my EFS right now.”
“Let’s just find Butterscotch and get him upstairs to the infirmary,” she snapped back, not willing to trust that those three bugs were the only ones hiding in that particular little vent. “We can wipe these things out afterward—“
Their luck finally took a turn for the better for once today. As Windy began to canter down the corridor of bug carcasses they’d created, the earth pony they’d been searching for finally popped into the cone of light shining out of her saddle-mounted flashlight from a room in the far distance. Sling’s ears picked up his heavy, pained breathing and briefly took her eyes off of her fire zone to see what was ailing him.
His right rear leg was hastily bandaged, the result of having to work with hooves and teeth and without the benefit of a unicorn’s magic, and the bandage itself was heavily stained with crimson which streaked down all the way to his unshorn fetlock and even managed to cover a portion of his butterscotch sundae cutie mark. His hobbled walk, despite the fresh injury, was quick with fear and panic, desperate to escape the hell that his hiding place had become.
“I…I had this epiphany all of a sudden,” Butterscotch’s shaky voice huffed as he eyed the pile of mutilated insects in his path. “That maybe I might…I might be a trifle safer if I try not to piss you girls off anymore and apologize for you having to come grab me….”
A piece of his hide missing, bleeding, terrified, and afraid of his sister, and he still manages to crack jokes, she thought to herself, unable to keep from snickering at his words. “Worry more about what your sister will do to you in a few minutes. All this, because she finally got the guts to tell you how ponies make babies?”
That thought gave him pause, as his legs froze in place with one leg gingerly hovering over the first of the slain bugs…and then carefully cleared the remaining space and touched down onto the floor. “….nah, still safer than you two. Just…give me a gun before you leave me with her? So I can end my suffering on my own?”
Windy had little time for his jesting. Now that they knew he was alive and in relatively okay condition, there was still one other pony to account for. “Where’s Hacket Wrench? We thought we heard him a minute ago, did you see him down here?”
His face shifted into a veiled sadness at the mention of Hacket’s name, and his stumbling gait slowed considerably. “…y-yeah. He was walking me upstairs when the power went out. Those damn bugs started pouring out of the floor vents, took a bite out of my leg. He shoved me into a supply room, locked the door….even with all those things leaping on him like fleas, he managed to save my life by trading his, they…they were tearing him up bad. Took a minute to dress the leg, was working on the lock when you started shooting. There were a lot more of these things before he locked me in, they musta taken him off somewhere…”
“….shit,” the pegasus hissed through her clenched jaw, her eyes pressed shut to block out what Sling assumed to be tears of anger. “…let’s get out of here before they come back. Nothing we can do for him now…”
Another widow, none of them added, lest the air of dread grow thicker and harder to bear. Another kid without a father…
Sling almost didn’t hear herself speak, but her cracking voice made the pain clear regardless as her memories began to conjure up those distant images of a poor colt she’d found in four bloody pieces. “…by Celestia, not again, why….”
The call of nature answered at last, she washed up as quickly as she could manage in the dark, and then made for the open door. She stopped just short of actually going through, though, when her ears picked up the familiar voices of her friends in the hall chattering away with each other. One wasn’t really supposed to eavesdrop on their friends, but she had a gut feeling that she’d get something useful out of it if she stayed put for a few seconds, so she simply lingered beside the door, careful to keep inside the shadows so that her own wouldn’t show up in what little light there was.
“—an’t do it, Em,” Grape Jam’s voice pleaded bashfully. “It’s a stupid question anyway.”
“It’s only stupid if ya keep it to yerself,” Emerald’s voice insisted in return. “It ain’t like we already know the answer anyway.”
“What if her mom never told her?” the lavender-coated pegasus continued to protest, and now Light Tail had a pretty good idea what they were talking about.
She’d asked that question before herself, once. She was still waiting for an answer three months later.
A pretty good sign that she wouldn’t get one.
With an exaggerated sigh to hide the stab of guilt that was inching into her heart, she casually strolled onward into the doorway where her friends could actually see her. “Hey, whatcha talkin’ about?”
“Eeehhh…nothin’, really,” Jam offered as a convenient lie after a couple of seconds’ thought.
But this time Emerald wasn’t letting their confrontation-shy friend off the hook. “…ahh, fine, then, I’ll ask, ya big baby,” she grumbled to herself. “You uh….you ever ask your mom about your dad?”
“Emmy—“
“Nope,” she lied swiftly, before Jam’s admonishment could even get started. “Get the feeling Mom doesn’t wanna talk about it, so I don’t ask. You shouldn’t either.”
Her sharp tongue caused Emmy to shrink away from her along the wall, her eyes betraying the hurtful sting she’d inadvertently delivered. “H-hey, ah didn’t mean it like that—“
“It’s Sun Star,” Jam interjected quickly in an effort to smooth things over. “And Lip Jam, too. We heard them sayin’….things, about your mom. Things we never heard them say before—“
“That’s she a slut and a dirty whore?” Light Tail heard a voice from her throat roar in a fit of quiet rage that made her wonder if it was her voice or somepony else’s. “That I’m a ‘mistake’? Those kinds of things?”
Now it was Grape Jam’s turn to be afraid of the unicorn filly. “…y-you know?”
“Sun Star couldn’t help but share it with me last week when he “bumped” into me,” that angry voice continued, unabated by her friend’s growing apprehension towards her. “When I was tryin’ to get to the bathroom, the little creep. Either of you know what those words mean?”
Neither of her friends could bring themselves to answer her right off, and for a moment she allowed herself the illusion that she might finally get an answer to a question that was burning her for over eight days.
And then the illusion was broken by the reality that she was actually quite a bit smarter than most every other filly and colt in her class, and that it was silly to think that her friends would know something that she didn’t. “…we was kinda hopin’ you would,” Emmy said with trepidation. “Yer a lot smarter than we are, we’d thought ya know…”
“’Cause if we’re gonna get back at ‘em for it, it might be good to know what it means first, right?!” Jam added next, trying to change her facial expression into something placating and failing. “…r-right?”
Her slight disappointment at having her question evade the answers she sought was short-lived—hearing how much that angry, low voice was scaring them was enough to make her will it away now that she realized that it was coming from her, and not some invisible dark spirit lingering in her shadow. She shoved the last of her rage back into the depths of her brain, her eyes no longer willing to look into theirs out of shame. “….sorry, guys,” she sighed heavily. “I just…it ain’t right. It makes me real mad just thinkin’ about it, and I don’t even know what it means. But I feel like I ought to. Nopony ever treats my mom right, ‘cept Aunt C. I’m startin’ to wonder if SS and LJ are just copyin’ whatever the adults are sayin’.”
She couldn’t see their faces, only the floor, so she couldn’t read their eyes and their expressions and tell if anything she said was making them feel even slightly better about how she’d just treated them. But when Emmy started talking again, the slight apologetic tone in her voice made her feel a little better. “…ya might be right ‘bout that. Ah remember when yer Mom still foalsat for some ponies, ‘fore she stopped last year. This one night she was foalsittin’ Softfeather for Missus Pillow, didn’t work out too well since Softie didn’t want to do a durn thing yer Mom told her to. Pillow came back, saw her livin’ room wrecked, and started callin’ yer Mom the same things we heard Sun Star and Lip Jam say. Said she’d had no clue ‘bout kids other than havin’ ‘em, and that can’t be right ‘cause you don’t get grounded near as much as the rest o’ us.”
“That’s only cuz I listen,” Light Tail muttered back, still not willing to face her friends in the eye. “Amazin’ how many problems that keeps you out of when you do it. You oughta try it sometime.”
It had been as a simple statement of fact and honest advice, but Emmy seemed to take it as an intentional—but light-hearted—insult, and her apprehensive voice vanished with the return of her boisterious, fearless self. “Hey, ah coulda fixed that enviro mental box!” she shouted back defiantly. “How wuz ah supposed ta know crossin’ two stupid wires could make it explode?!”
“You could’ve tried listenin’ to your dad when he said ‘stop’, silly,” Grape Jam laughed, the memory helping to soothe much of the fear and hurt that Light Tail had unintentionally inflicted. “He fixes the things for a living.”
“He coulda said somethin’ ‘bout it instead of just yellin’ at me!”
Now Light Tail was starting to laugh with Jam at the memory of how Emmy had shown up at school the very next morning with her singed mane cut almost down to the coat and her two forelegs wrapped in gauze bandages. “Yer both too darn stubborn to listen to anypony, I don’t know why he even tried!”
“That ain’t true!” Emmy challenged back, but she was far from insulted. If anything, she seemed to be getting a kick out of being the butt of their teasing this time around. Maybe to try to make up for making her mad earlier, which wasn’t even her fault in the first place. Kinda made her feel even guiltier, actually. “Ah listened to ya when ya said we ought not to plan our pranks and stuff in the diner no more, right?”
“That was three days ago, of course you’d say that after all the trouble we got into over those firecrackers!” Jam shot back with a gleeful chuckle as Light Tail began to walk back to her living quarters. “I learned more about boys’ anatomy than I ever wanted to! Just GROSS!”
“Hey, at least we know he ain’t gotta squat to pee anymore!” the red-coated earth filly squealed evilly. “Ah wuz startin’ to think he was a girl, the way he went on and on ‘bout us that one time last month! “You girls do nothin’ but giggle all the time and you get cooties on everything and you get your own bathrooms and everypony keeps tellin’ us to be nice to you fillies!” Or did ya forget that little talk of his already?!”
“I remember the creepy doofus following me all the way to the bathroom while he was saying it, uuuggggh!!” Jam shrieked with an audible shudder of her tiny wings. “I swear there’s something wrong with him, it’s like he’s obsessed with seeing what the filly’s washroom looks like!”
“Ya might be right, he followed you two clowns there and that takes all kinds of crazy ta start with!” Emmy laughed heartily, her hoofsteps close behind her. “He just avoids me like th’ plague, maybe he’s got your cooties!”
Her face burned with embarrassment for reasons she couldn’t even fathom, and she wanted to get off this creepy subject before it could get really weird. “Hey, if we’re gonna talk about Sun Star, why don’t we try and figure out what we’re gonna do to him this time?” she suggested as the trio finally reached the door to her living quarters, and she quickly squeezed herself back inside underneath the partially-raised door. “Oh, and watch yer wings, Jam, this door’s a tight fit. It was hard enough makin’ it move at all.”
“Bah, she’ll be fine,” Emmy dismissed her concerns, her voice shifting downward and under the door as she dropped to the floor and scooted herself through. “She’s like a cat, real limber and athletic and stuff. Ah bet she’s more earth pony than pegasus.”
“It’s called ‘working out’, Emmy,” Grape Jam snarled back, unknowingly aiding her friend’s argument by scooting down underneath the door, and emerging into a standing position on the other side in a single stride within the glow of Light Tail’s upturned flashlight, whereas her friends had to scoot over completely before standing up in a separate movement. “You—unngf—you earth ponies might be naturals at this stuff, but the rest of us gotta work at it.”
“….ummm…yeah, sure,” Light Tail’s dumbfounded voice spoke a moment later. “…whatever you say…cat.”
The pegasus blinked in confusion as she began to scrutinize herself in search of whatever it was that her friends were staring at. “…what, is there somethin’ wrong?”
“Yeah,” Emmy answered calmly, but then started to snicker in short fits as she continued. “Where’s that can of crazy ya drank this mornin’?! Ah want some!”
“What?!” Grape Jam asked again, still confused at their reaction to her graceful entry through the door, and Light Tail decided on a whim to start searching Mom’s bookcase for a couple of books for her friends to read while they waited for the power to come back on. Their reading level wasn’t quite on par with hers, but she was pretty certain there was still something on those shelves they could dig into and stay out of trouble.
And away from Mom’s gun on the coffee table…
…and I bet I could find out what those ugly words mean in that thick dictionary! she realized in the next moment when her eyes fell upon the faded leather tome stuffed away at the top of the bookcase, near a section of the top shelf marked “References”. Crud, why didn’t I think of that sooner!?
She reached up with her telekinesis spell and plucked the heavy book out as a short test of whether Mom was truly right about how weight could affect a spell, and was rewarded with what felt like a hoof or a griffon’s claw tugging softly at her horn as she flitted it about above her. But it wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t that much heavier than Mom’s gun. Maybe I oughta start using telekinesis more often…
Her delighted skip towards the couch didn’t go unnoticed. As Emmy’s mouth bit down on the lens cap holding the flashlight upright, Grape Jam’s hoofsteps began to follow along behind the unicorn. “….uhhh, El-Tee, that’s a dictionary, not Daring Do. It might actually make this blackout more boring, if that’s even possible.”
“A dictionary defines words, dodo,” she huffed as she leapt up onto the couch and dropped the dictionary down in front of her. “Words like the ones everypony keeps calling my mom, and I’m gonna find out what they mean so I can have a reason to be mad at them.”
Jam followed her up onto the couch without hesitation, ignoring Emmy’s epic struggle to keep the flashlight from slipping out of its lens cap as it teetered between her teeth. “….that really bugs you, doesn’t it? Can’t you let it go for a bit?”
“You’re the one that said we oughta know what they mean if we wanna get properly mad,” she reminded her tersely, flipping the dictionary open—
—and silently cursed herself as she found the words on the paper difficult to make out. It was still too dark to read much of anything without that flashlight! Stupid stupid stupid! “Hey Emmy, bring that flashlight over wouldja?”
“Ohm rhyin’!” Emerald’s occupied mouth tried to complain, but the badly garbled words only made them laugh instead. “Annn—“
Emerald’s voice was drowned out by a sharp, guttural screeching from the hallway outside, and Light Tail’s ears flinched as it tore at her brain. She slapped the dictionary shut and rose up from the couch, intending to hit the floor running and give that ‘bot a piece of her mind and a swift kick to his chassis. “Spiner, quit draggin’ your arms on the floor, Hacket Wrench hates buffin’ those scratches out—“
—her shouting voice promptly died in her throat as her eyes fell across the slab of dim light protruding in front of the door, and on the hideously massive (and hideous looking) bug that effortlessly skirted through the door she’d left open in an ironic attempt to escape the disgusting things if they’d gotten in—
—Emmy was the second pony to see it come through…and the first pony that the bug fixated its attention on. Its pincer-ringed maw screeched again as it began to close in on the red earth pony, almost as if the sight of her had enlivened its tiny brain.
Emmy’s proper and dignified response was to shriek at the top of her lungs like the little filly that she was, dropping the flashlight in her terror and allowing the light beam to roll about the room as she began to backpedal away from it as quickly as her four little legs could take her—
—but the bug was quicker. Even as Emmy had almost reached the kitchen behind her, the bug had managed to close the distance, chirping and screeching the whole way, and Light Tail’s lungs began to shut down as she leapt across the gap onto the coffee table, furiously tearing at the bag Mom had left in her care—
“Emmy!!!” Jam screamed, bounding off of the couch and rushing towards her imperiled friend—
—the bug’s chirping reached a crescendo as its wings snapped up in anticipation of its kill—
—Light Tail’s breaths came in short, terrified gasps as she unceremoniously dumped the bag’s contents onto the table and tossed it aside, her magic grappling with the gun an—
—Mom’s marking spell surged through the spell field and through her horn, leaving a lingering chill on the left side of her face as she swung the gun’s cylinder open and started jerking spilled bullets into its holes—
“Holy crap it’s hideous!!!” Emmy finally managed to scream once she’d gotten over her wordless shrieking, and she could hear the filly smashing her way over the dinner table to get at something from the cabinet. “An’ it’s bigger than Teakettle’s cat—“
“Emmy, RUN—“
Light Tail’s control over her magic was beginning to falter as the bug screeched again, and its feet continued to scratch its way across the carpet in its mindless trek to ki—
—Emmy’s red coat, stained in a darker shade of crimson as the bug’s pincers tore at her throat and cut her shrieks short into a bubbling, dying gasp—
“No,” she cried softly amidst her frustrated attempts to get her own spell under her control. The darn spell wouldn’t grab the stupid bullets like she wanted and she could only get one in the cylinder and she needed more or her friends were going to di—
“No no no no c’mon C’MON—“
—her spell faltered further, no longer able to concentrate on multiple objects, and the bullet fell back onto the table with an almost taunting flair. A horrified howl escaped her throat as her mouth shot forward and bit down on the back of the bullet—
“Too slow sucke—oh Luna it can JUMP—“
“Shut up Em just RUN—“
“Screw that, GJ, ah’m gonna KILL IT—“
Her eyes began to grow slightly blurry, her mouth struggling to find an empty hole in the cylinder as her friends tried to get away from the bug—
—something from the kitchen banged off of the stove and smacked against a cabinet on its way down—
—the bullet in her mouth dropped into the cylinder at last, and she nudged it shut with her snout and lifted her head up towards the kitchen, the gun’s green sights sliding up into place almost without thought—
—the vent over the coffee table tore loose from the ceiling, crashing down onto the table and startling her into losing control of her spell completely—
—a second bug dropped into her tiny world through the new opening, coming down on her back, its legs slipping and sliding down her flanks as its pincers began to pinch down on her neck—
—her body took control of itself after that, jumping and bucking about like a wild animal, her throat turning itself hoarse as it shrieked and screamed in wordless, bloodcurdling terror, her mind losing all focus on higher thinking functions and desiring only to put as much distance between her and large, hideous bugs as she could, as quickly as she could manage—
—the bug’s sickening carapace vanished after her fourth buck, though she could still feel its squirming, tendril-like legs along her sides as she attempted to jump down to the floor—
—and ended up tripping herself before she could even get airborne, tumbling over the edge instead and hitting her head against a table leg on her way down. An incredible and deep-reaching ache began to pound at her skull, turned into a sharp, hot pressure that forced her eyes shut as she stumbled away from the table in clumsy rolls and half-steps before giving up entirely and sinking onto her back.
When she dared open her eyes again, the bug had managed to find its way on top of the coffee table, and its head cocked off to one side for a moment as it studied her writhing, heaving form—
—it leapt forward, its chirping searing through her ears and into her pounding brain, and her eyes snapped shut and plunged her back into a willing darkness as her screams became the only sound in her world.
They’d barely made it past level ten before Sling simply froze, her insides beginning to tingle with a cold itch she could not explain or even remember feeling before in her lifetime. For some inexplicable reason, she simply felt that something in her world was not right.
Gun’s fine, she began to rattle off in her mind as she tried to force her legs to start moving again. Don’t feel like a canned meal anymore, don’t hear the bugs in the vents or the halls, Butterscotch is breathing and walking on his own…why do my insides feel like ice…
Cloud Wind’s hoofsteps came to a halt as she sorted through her thoughts, and her head craned around to the side once she’d noticed that only one pony was following along behind her. “….Sling?”
“….something’s wrong,” the unicorn breathed slowly in reply, her legs beginning to respond to her mental demands for movement. “Like…gut-level wrong, like there’s something I ought to know right off, but I don’t…”
Windy and Butterscotch each gave her a face of utter confusion and uncertainty as they tried to make sense of what she’d just uttered. “….I’m sorry, I don’t speak your crazy moon language, could you try that again in plain Equestrian?” Butterscotch asked with a flippant pitch.
For his sarcasm, Windy rewarded him with a slap to the back of his head that sent him crashing onto the floor, clutching at his new headache in vain. “Ignore him, that’s the concussion talking,” she grumbled derisively. “What ar—“
“Aaaaaoooowwww,” his grunt of pain interrupted her briefly. “What concussion—“
A second THWACK! sounded off as she trotted past his body, likely from one of her rear legs that had just jerked out behind her, and aside from a painful yelp they heard nothing more from him as they talked. “The one I just gave you, smartass.”
Sling couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with her for roughing him up like that, or to be laughing her tail off at the whole thing. She didn’t even know why she found it so funny right then when they were supposed to be trying to get him to the infirmary in one piece, but she did.
And yet she still felt like something was just not right.
With Butterscotch’s sarcasm muted for the moment, Windy was free to press the unicorn for a clearer message. “What are you talking about?” she queried with a quizzical glare. “I know it’s weird not hearing the air vents and environmental systems humming all the time bu—“
“That’s not it,” Sling butted in before she could finish. “I just…something’s wrong and it’s scaring me to death. I don’t know what it is, but…something’s wrong, I just know it. I don’t know what, but…oh gods, maybe I need a new job…”
The pegasus’s gray eyes studied her for a few moments, lost in her own mental musings. “…your quarters aren’t too far out of the way,” she said at last, turning back around and stepping over Butterscotch’s twitching—but breathing—body. “We’ll budge the door open, brighten the kid’s day up a little. That always sets you straight.”
--------------------------------------
She’d never imagined the sound of an angelic savior could be so…disgusting. Even with her shrill, deathly screams of terror, it was impossible to miss. The bug’s gleeful, terrifying chirps came to an incredibly brutal end courtesy of a thick frying pan, and though the harsh clang of metal helped alleviate her rapidly beating heart, what made it truly stop was just how hard the thing had been smacked.
Her eyes shot wide open to the sight of Emerald’s mouth clenching the frying pan in her jaws in a death bite, slamming the pan into the bug’s head with all the strength her tiny earth pony body was capable of. And it was enough to shear the bug’s head off of its body with a wet, sharp crunch that caused a surge of bile to shoot up into her throat. Only her fear kept her from upchucking all over her friend.
Emmy wasn’t satisfied with the bug’s instant death—or didn’t notice that she’d taken its head clean off. She followed it as its course shifted off to the right, onto the floor near the unicorn, and brought the pan down on its back with another hateful swing and a wordless grunt. That same stomach-churning crunch rang out again, and again, and again, until Emmy had squeezed its innards out onto the floor beneath it.
And then she hurled.
“Oh Luna, Emmy STOP!” Grape Jam’s voice shrieked with horror, her forelegs pulling the stunned unicorn away from the bug’s beating and her small pile of vomit. “It’s dead already quit it you’re making a sick mess!“
The red-coated earth filly finally stopped her savage act, momentarily baffled as to why her friends would ask her to stop trying to save their skins. “Bwuaf!?” her muffled snout uttered, shooting her head back behind her, and then back at where Light Tail had been lying moments earlier—
—her eyes shot wide open, and she quickly scrambled backwards away from the bug carcass and the mess that the unicorn had unwittingly created. “O’ crad!! ‘Orey—“
She stopped speaking when she heard how mangled her words were when she was trying to talk with a mouthful of iron, and spat the pan onto the floor. “Sorry El-Tee!!” she squealed. “Ah didn’t mean it ah just was tryin’ ta kill th’ stupid thang—“
“Just…get the door shut!!” Jam’s voice screamed back, her forehooves keeping Light Tail’s head from turning back towards Emmy’s creation of violence. “El-Tee, I know your head hurts but you gotta get that vent shut before more of ‘em come in—“
Now that her brain remembered that it had been smacked around, that pulsing, pounding ache returned to her with a vengeance, reaching deep through her skull into what felt like a slug-sized portion of her frontal lobe. But the thought of more of those bugs dropping into the living room with little to resist them except gravity gave her the adrenaline to fight through it and focus her magic into her horn once more—
But the presence of magic in her horn seemed to double the pain, making that pulsing section of her brain feel like it was being over-inflated like a balloon. Oh Luna this hurts!
Her eyes opened to give her magic a focal point—the displaced vent cover that had nearly beaned her when the bug had crashed through—and with considerable effort she was able to wrap her levitation spell around it and allowed it to float up from the table of its own accord. With the weight of the covering taken out of the equation, her telekinesis spell took much less effort and therefore didn’t hurt nearly as much, allowing her to slap it up onto the exposed air vent with little more than a flick of her will. The screws had never fallen loose from the grating, and forcing them back into their screw slots proved a little trickier, but doable. For added measure and a peace of mind, she overdid it until the things started fighting her efforts to tighten them in further, and only then did she quit the magic tricks entirely and allowed her head to fall back onto the carpet.
With all of her concentration focused on re-fitting the vent cover—and her headache—she’d never even noticed that Emmy had just now gotten to fighting with the manual door controls until she heard the door slam shut with an echoing, chest-thumping shudder. Or that the earth filly had that kind of strength to start with—
“There, ah shut it!” Emmy gasped heavily amidst her heavy, frantic breathing. “And ah even…tossed the dead bugs out….’fore ah did!”
Upon hearing the words ‘dead bugs’, Light Tail’s mind replayed the heated, rage-fueled violence that Emmy had unleashed upon the thing with her second-best frying pan, and if she hadn’t already lost her breakfast, she’d have tossed it up right there. Her gagging was brief, but clean. This time.
“….I hate bugs,” she moaned weakly into the floor, her front legs wrapping around her skull in some vain effort to try and rub the pain away. “I’m never cooking with that pan again…”
“Ahh, don’t worry none, just need ta wash it real good first,” Emmy’s voice bounced into her ears, inadvertently causing the pounding in her head to get even worse. “Ah’ll…umm…ah’ll clean the place up, kinda my fault it’s messed up….hey Jam, see if that first aid cabinet’s got anythin’ for her head, her mom’ll freak out if she sees her like this.”
Shutting her eyes seemed to make the pain a little more bearable (and kept her sense of balance from getting whacked out), so she allowed them to stay shut and immerse her in darkness. She got up to her hooves and shakily stumbled her way around until her nose tapped into the coffee table, and then started to feel her way around it to the couch, where she carefully pulled herself up onto its cool, invigorating cushions. “…just don’t touch the gun,” she warned weakly as her forelegs reached out to draw a small pillow towards her.
“Yeah, I saw what it did to your face when you grabbed it with your magic!!” Jam’s voice rang out, rising to a shriek at the end as she invariably discovered the object in question. “What’s it doing out of your mom’s safe in the first place?!”
Jam’s shrill voice made the pain spike upwards briefly, and she clawed at her forehead to suppress it. “Don’t shout,” she pleaded through her suffering. “….she took me shootin’ this morning, left it on the table….’n case those bugs got in. Forgot to load it first…”
“Does she usually put a curse on ‘em first?!” Emmy’s voice yelled out, completely ignoring the little unicorn’s request, and she groaned into her pillow as the pulsing aches reached into her eyeballs. “How’d sh—“
“Eeeeemmmy…” Jam’s voice growled darkly—
“Oh! Sorry…..ah mean…what’s wrong with ya? That stuff on your face don’t make the blood look any better.”
She heard Grape Jam’s hooves began to scrape against the first aid cabinet mounted against the far wall on the right, and prayed that the pegasus would find a good-sized healing potion inside very soon. “…what blood, I feel fine…’cept for this freakin’ headache, ooowww…”
It wasn’t very long after before she began to feel a slick, sticky wetness on the cushion beneath her head, and before she could say anything Emmy had somehow darted across the room to her and began to press a dampened, cold rag onto her head where the pain was at its worst—
“Ya must’ve cut yer head on that table when ya fell off,” the earth filly whispered, her strong voice faltering slightly. “Just stay still, Jam an’ I’ll find somethin’ real quick…”
Now that she was aware of a head wound, her headache’s pulses began to synchronize in an attempt to make her feel every drop squeeze out, but Emmy’s stubborn hoof refused to allow it and kept enough pressure on it to keep it from escaping. Still, she couldn’t shake off this gnawing touch of light-headedness that was starting to make the room feel….bigger? Denser? No, wait, that didn’t sound right…
No, scratch that, it’s not right period, she amended when the feeling got stronger, and the room around her began to seemingly enlarge itself and muddling up what few senses she had left. “….think we oughta just skip the first aid, go right to the doc…”
She thought she heard Emmy’s lips smacking wordlessly at her, or maybe it was all the blood on the rag as she turned it around in her hooves to get an unsoiled portion of it on the wound—
“...y-yeah, screw the box on th’ wall,” Emmy agreed, for once simply going along with the unicorn’s idea instead of arguing over it. “Jam, keep some pressure on ‘er head, ah’ll get the door open again.”
There was a slight shift in pressure as hooves switched places and Emmy made a mad dash for the door, but oddly enough she could barely hear it this time. Everything around her just seemed to be moving away from her, strange as it sounded to say. Even her brain felt lighter, didn’t hurt as much now. Everything was so much….
…so much…softer? Ah, jeez, really don’t feel good now…
“E-Em, something’s n-not right,” she thought she heard Jam croak fearfully as one of her hooves pulled away from her head and started pressing into her side. “S-she shouldn’t be like this, not from just a scratch to the head—“
She supposed she should have been scared to hear her friend say that, but the only thing she could feel right then was…disconnected. Separated from everything around her, like it was being pulled away from it. The kitchen felt like it was miles away. The coffee table where Mom had left the gun might as well have been at the bottom of the Stable. Even Jam seemed out of reach despite the fact that she was touching her and poking her.
…was this what dying felt like? Should she feel so…okay with it?
She didn’t get to ponder these thoughts for very long. A metallic part of the world screeched in agony, jolting some sense of liveliness into her nerves and filling the air around her with a gentle intrusion of cooler air—
“Whoa watch it—“ Emmy’s voice cried out in surprise, only to have her shouts (and body) trampled by what sounded like another pony—
“El-Tee!?” Mom yelled into the world, unknowingly spiking her headache into another sharp series of pulses with her frantic shrieks. “Honey, are you—“
She seemed to have found the answer to her question with just a quick look around, because her voice went from frantic to some form of controlled hysteria and panic. “…o-oh gods, El-Tee?! What happened?!?”
She knew Jam was going to try and answer right away, but the poor thing barely got a word out before Mom’s body did the same thing to her as it did to Emmy—bumped into her and bowled her over in a crazy dash to find herself a spot beside the couch.
“…hit my head,” Light Tail mumbled through the growing fog in her mind and body. “Don’t think it’s going well….”
Mom’s forehooves went and did the same that Jam had been doing, one keeping pressure on the rag while the other carefully poked about her lungs and neck. Funny enough, Mom’s hooves were more ticklish than her magic, and she couldn’t help but giggle softly as she pressed into her sides for whatever reasons she had—
Mom’s head joined her hooves, pressing one ear close to her chest and letting it lie there for several moments, as if listening intently for something inside that might tell her whatever it was she was looking for.
And she found it. “…oh thank Luna, normal heart rate,” her soft voice cried softly in relief. “Honey, do you feel lightheaded? Sick? Tired, anything like that?”
Well, now that she mentioned it… “….wouldn’t mind a nap, if this headache would just go away,” she moaned into the pillow. “And it feels like I’m shrinking, or somethin’….”
Mom’s presence faded from her side, and for a minute she thought she’d been left alone, but a sharp, clean click of metal nearby amidst the faint song of an extended telekinesis spell quelled the brief surge of panic. More than likely, Mom was just picking up the gun from the floor—
—the ghostly, tingling touch of a telekinetic spell washed over the soaked rag, pressing lightly onto her head as Mom’s body began to dig underneath her and roll her onto the larger pony’s back. It became something of a struggle to find out exactly where she was at, but her forelegs found Mom’s neck quickly enough and wrapped themselves around it so she wouldn’t fall off. Oddly enough, the effort seemed to revitalize her sleeping nerves slightly, though her mind was still fogged and struggling to keep the world around her straight. If anypony else was around or saying anything around her, she didn’t hear it.
“We’re going to get you to the infirmary,” Mom’s voice cried quietly to her left ear as her head began to droop down past the mare’s neck. “I want you to count backwards from a hundred, slow and steady. Can you do that?”
She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why Mom would ask her to do something that silly, but if counting numbers could help take her mind off of this headache, she’d give it a try. Heck, she’d give anything a try at least once. “…hundred….ninety-nine….”
Mom’s body began a gentle trot, doing her best not to rock about too much lest the filly loose her grip or her sense of balance. “Thatta girl, keep going, we’ll be there before you know it…”
If you say so…. “Ninety-eight….”
Mom’s attention split off from her for a moment to start barking orders at her friends, but she was a little busy focusing on her counting to care. “You girls come with us. You can tell me what happened later, but we need to get upstairs. C’mon—“
“Ninety-seven….ninety-six….”
….what came before…oh right… “Ninety-five….”
….weird. She never got sleepy counting before….
“…ninety-four…”
….could she do this the whole way?
“…nine…ninety-three…..”
Her hold on her Mom’s neck began to slacken. Her muscles went from taut to rubbery as she tried to keep up her count….
“….ninety-two….”
The fog in her mind began to draw her consciousness away, calling her into its dark recess.
“……nineyone….nine….ni…”
And she followed it all the way into oblivion.
--------------------------------------
Her brain was always reluctant to follow her body when it stirred from deep sleep. And this time she’d really been out of it, because as her mind began to pull itself out of its cave in her skull, she couldn’t even recall what time she’d gone to bed, or even any snippets from whatever she might’ve dreamed about. It was as though the world had skipped a couple of days and forgot to plant its events into her brain so she’d remember.
Perfect excuse to just stay put and go back to sleep. ‘But Mom, I don’t even know what day it is’, she’d say once said mother barged in and demanded her to arise from the seductive pull of her blankets….
…no, wait, that sounded gross just now. Who in the world called their bed seductive? She was in no shape to be awake, not with a thought like that coming out of her head. Time to go back to sleep, she needed another four hours or so. Maybe even a whole day. Yeah, that would be fine with her.
….except that her body didn’t agree. Nerves and tendons began to scream in agony, crying for the release of tension and aches from a night of absolute stillness, and to make them stop (and hopefully coax herself back to sleep), she began to stretch her four legs out and about, ruffling the blankets draped over her….
…wait a sec, my bed only has one blanket…
Her brain responded to this additional stimulus, forcing itself further awake in order to clarify that she was, indeed, covered by more than one blanket. And when that was done, she began to take greater notice of everything else touching her body at that moment.
The mattress was not hers. There was too big a depression in it, for starters. This was the bed of a larger pony, one addicted to comfort and warmth if the chilly air around her head was any indication. And there was something wrapped around her head, keeping a larger…something, pinned to her forehead above her left eye. A quick brush of a forehoof revealed it to be gauze padding and wrap, with a bandage applied underneath for added security against whate—
—her body tumbled off the side of the table, her head smacking into a metal table leg on the way down and drilling her brain with an invisible sledgehammer—
She snapped herself out of her memory flash before it could finish, her senses becoming far more alert with the realization that she hadn’t gone to bed in the same shape she’d been in when she left it. In fact, beyond that little mishap, she couldn’t even remember what happened the last two days, save that she’d hit her head on the table, for some reason.
But what she was doing on the table in the first place?
She’d made up her mind to force herself out of this strange bed when the door opened wide, bringing with it an explosion of blinding white light that pierced straight into the front of her brain through her eyeballs, and she reflexively closed eyelids she didn’t remember opening—
“Ahhh, shut off the light it hurts—“ she begged of whoever had just barged in—
The lights dimmed considerably upon her request almost immediately, and then a set of hooves galloped across the carpet to be at her side—
“H-honey, you’re awake!?” Mom’s cried excitedly, her voice practically gushing with relief (and a few tears), and in the next moment the filly found herself trapped in a tight, life-crushing hug from the one that given her life to start with. “Oh thank the stars you’re awake—“
“I….might not be….if you don’t let go,” she gasped between the three breaths she was able to steal from the world and no more. She swore she heard her Mom’s throat squeak with embarrassment as she relaxed her death grip into something softer, but still clingy.
“Sorry!” she choked after taking a deep breath herself. “Sorry! Just…just had me freaked out these last two days, I just….when did you wake up?”
…two days? “….just now,” she answered hesitantly, only opening her eyes when they were assured by her brain that it wouldn’t hurt this time—
Mom’s teal-blue coat was a mess, she noticed right off. Her mane too. She usually kept it tied up into a braided ponytail (a cool pun if there ever was one) and brushed down, though this time the individual knots were considerably more frayed than she was used to seeing. Like she hadn’t taken a brush to it for a couple of days. “….what’s going on? Where am I?”
Perhaps sensing the unaired fear growing in her tiny chest, Mom sought to answer not just that question, but the next two she was already cooking up. “….you’re in my bed. You took a pretty hard hit to the head...do you remember anything?”
“….just the part where I hit my head,” she said, growing uneasy with herself as she began to take fuller stock of her situation. Hit on the head—and badly enough to not remember anything else about it other than that it hurt. Stuffed in her mother’s bed, which made sense since Mom liked to keep her room at autumn weather temperatures when she slept so that it made her three comforters really cozy and warm. And then there was… “….what are you talking about? These last two days? What happened to me?”
Mom finally let go of her and allowed her to settle back under the sea of blankets. “….you really can’t remember?”
“Would I have asked if I did?”
Mom’s face didn’t seem to like her snappy comeback, but whatever had happened to her must have been bad enough to make her let it go so easily and not punish her or anything. “…sorry,” she mumbled, suddenly too ashamed to look at her directly and settling for the floor. “….we had an outbreak. Radroaches damaged some major power relays and camped out in the generator levels. You managed to get the door open so you could get to the bathroom and your friends followed you back. Emerald was trying to get the door shut when one of the bugs waltzed in underneath….”
“….that’s what knocked me off the table?”
“No,” Mom said quietly. “I…I’d left one of my guns on the coffee table, in case you needed it. I put a marking spell on it to keep you from playing with it needlessly. Your friends said another bug managed to break through the air vent covering and fall right on top of you while you were trying to load it and get a shot off, and when you bucked it off you lost your balance and fell off the table. Hit your head on one of the legs. Emerald wound up killing both of them with a frying pan….think the sight of it made you sick to your stomach or something, or it could have been the concussion. This was all yesterday morning, and you’ve been asleep since then. It’s Friday afternoon. Five thirty-two, I think.”
Light Tail couldn’t bring herself to think clearly for a couple of seconds, trying to process how or why she would have gotten the inclination to pick up a gun and try to use it since she couldn’t even remember Mom showing her how to do it….or maybe she had and that was one of those things she couldn’t remember now.
“….I’ve been asleep almost two days?”
“…day and a half, but close. When we brought you to the infirmary you’d already slipped out, and Nurse Tender Mane went right to work on you. Wasn’t as bad as the blood suggested, but the concussion had us all worried. No permanent brain damage, but since you were out that’s all she could tell us. She put you under an anesthetic spell to keep you asleep and let her healing spells work. She’s been in and out of here every four hours since. You got off real lucky.”
She didn’t know exactly what a concussion was—only that it was a head injury and that one’s brain could get scrambled because of it. Memory loss and headaches were just a couple of the nasty side effects one could get from it. She supposed that if those were her biggest issues, then yeah, she got lucky. The way Mom was saying it, though, there were ponies that weren’t quite as fortunate. She wasn’t sure she wanted any details.
Fortunately, Mom wasn’t interested in giving any, and quickly changed the subject. “You feel okay enough to eat something?”
The mere mention of food brought her empty stomach to life. It growled with the fervor of an angry cat, and she swore it actually caused ripples to spill out over her flesh in the process. “….long as Aunt C ain’t doin’ the cookin’.”
Mom’s light chuckle seemed so much louder when she was right next to her. “Nothing extravagant like what you might whip up,” she laughed. “Just some daffodil sandwiches and the last of our grapes for the week. I wouldn’t let you cook anything anyway, you’re supposed to be resting.”
“Think I’ve done enough of that,” she whined as she began to crawl towards the edge of the mattress. “And I can’t stand to do nothin’ all day—“
She had more complaints about not getting past chapter 27 on The Mare of the Everfree yet, or trying to find out why Grape Jam was acting so funny around her yesterday or—
Er…I guess that would be Wednesday, actua—
Her journey through Mom’s bed ended quite abruptly when the forward half of her body unexpectedly ran out of mattress and stuck itself out into the chilly air, and before she knew it she was sprawled out on the floor at Mom’s hooves with the dignity of a four-left-footed cat—
“….smooth, El-Tee,” she grumbled to herself as she forced her legs to stand up for the first time in what felt like days. They didn’t want to completely cooperate and felt more like rubber sticks than organic limbs of bone and muscle, but at least she could actually stand. And walk without the world trying to spin itself in every direction when she moved, though she still looked like she’d been hitting hard cider for a half hour.
And through it all, Mom just snickered and kept pace behind her, never letting her get more than a few feet away. She had to side-step back inside her chosen path once or twice to get through the bedroom doorway, but she did eventually make it out of Mom’s room and into the warm interior of the kitchen and living room space—
Tender Mane’s snow white coat was there to greet them in the living room, her medic’s bag settling down onto the coffee table with the delicate touch that only a medical unicorn pony could impart in their telekinesis spell. Cloud Wind was milling about the kitchen, setting out plates and hoof-friendly drinking glasses but was oddly quiet for some reason.
“Well, look who’s struggling to walk in a straight line,” Tender Mane laughed at the sight of the filly stumbling about in her journey to the kitchen table. “Yeah, that settles it, concussion.”
“You were guessing?!” Light Tail choked incredulously, stopping in place when her right rear leg couldn’t seem to find the floor like her other three legs could.
Tender Mane’s snout dipped into her bag and began pulling various medical instruments from its tightly-packed interior, much to the little filly’s dismay. “I prefer to call it guesstimating. All the things your friends pointed out seemed to fit the symptoms—headache, nausea, disorientation, vomiting. Your lack of direction is just one more sign that I’m right—“
“Memory loss, too,” Mom offered freely and perhaps a tad too quickly. “She doesn’t seem to remember anything about the last day or two other than when she hit the table.”
Tender Mane paused in place momentarily before resuming her search through her bag for whatever she thought she might need in the next few minutes. “….okay, then, six signs that I’m right. Don’t worry, dear, memory loss isn’t uncommon with a blow to the head. What’s the absolute last thing you can remember, aside from the hit that put you down for thirty-plus hours?”
Light Tail had to rack her memory pretty hard to answer that question as she was inevitably re-directed towards the white-coated unicorn nurse, and by the time her unsteady body finally managed to bump into the couch next to her the only memory she could latch onto with any degree of certainty from…Wednesday afternoon? Evening? So hard to remember….
“….I think the last thing I can remember is bumping into Grape Jam in the shower section of the washroom, but I can’t remember when that was,” she answered tentatively, her forelegs trying to find enough purchase on the couch to pull the rest of her up onto it. And failing miserably, all she could manage was to look like a floundering fish. “…now that I think about it it’s kinda weird, the washroom on her end of the level is closer. If it was broke I don’t remember that either…”
Tender Mane’s magic enveloped her body and lifted her up onto the couch before she could embarrass herself any further, and the cold touch of her steth….ste….that cold-metal thingy that she used to listen to heartbeats and lungs and stuff, gods why did medical equipment have to have such obtuse names?! “Do you recall anything about it? What you might have talked about?”
“I don’t remember that thing being so cold before!” she squeaked in protest when the instrument prodded her side, even going so far as to scoot away from it before it could defile her body warmth any further.
Tender Mane’s solution was to simply huff a breath of warm air onto it before sticking it back onto her side, and it no longer felt like a cold pin prick in her coat. “Better?”
“Much.”
“Good, now you can answer my question.”
Crud, almost worked. “…no, I don’t know anything other than that we met there,” she sighed in defeat. “Ask her about it.”
“I might if she becomes another patient,” Tender Mane muttered quietly. “Which reminds me, your friends are fine, physically. Psychologically, it’s a wait-and-see kinda thing. Not ideal, but at least they’re breathing. Their sneaking away from their parents actually saved your life, so of course they’re squirreled away in their rooms like scolded pets. Gotta talk to those numbskulls about that…”
There was blissful silence afterward, Tender Mane content to simply do whatever it was that medical ponies did to make sure those under their care weren’t going to drop off and die on the spot. It took her about two minutes and two additional instruments, a tiny flashlight that was poked in her ears and a thermostat that thankfully went into the ear, and a slight satisfied grunt signaled the end of her routine.
“Sweet, I love it when these visits end painlessly,” she chuckled deviously as she swiftly re-packed her bag. “By the time you’ve washed up and had dinner, that silent healing spell I just cast should be taking hold. Another night of deep rest and you should be able to use your magic again without risk.”
Light Tail’s body jerked slightly, her mind racing through the last three minutes of her life and couldn’t figure out how a spell had been cast right next to her without her knowing it. “…s-silent? You mean you were casting a spell on me the whole time and your horn didn’t glow or nothin’?”
“Oh, it was glowing, you just weren’t looking hard enough,” Tender Mane’s voice assured her in that same devious laugh. “It doesn’t make noise or require any degree of concentration on my part. And with your attention focused on ignoring me you never noticed what little sign there was of the spell. Therefore, ‘silent’.”
Wonderful, Light Tail groaned to herself at Tender Mane’s exaggerated grin. Of all the medical ponies in the Stable, I had to be visited by the comedian. “Funny.”
The snow-white mare flashed a forehoof across the air in front of her as she floated a roll of gauze and a clean bandage pad out of her bag. “Pffft, naww. You should see the show I put on every Wednesday evening at the diner, now that’s funny.”
Light Tail simply groaned in despair and allowed her face to plop down into the couch beneath her. “I should have stayed knocked out…”
--------------------------------------
The squirt was getting her wish a quarter-hour later.
Dinner was a quick five-minute affair, thanks partly to the kid’s ravenous appetite after a day and a half of unconscious slumber, which helped mask the mild sleep-aid additives they’d snuck into her meal. She knew her daughter well enough to know how to help the stuff kick in even faster afterward—a hot shower. For some reason, heat seemed to lull Light Tail into a dazed, lazy stupor and made it easy for her to just conk right out if she closed her eyes long enough.
And even as the first streams of hot water began to pour down upon the trio, Sling realized that this time she probably didn’t even need to do that. El-Tee was struggling just to stand in the first place, and her drowsiness made it almost impossible to do much of anything except topple over onto the tiled floor and lay there.
“….you guys drugged my food, didn’t you?” she moaned sleepily, even managing a massive yawn as her mane and tail were quickly becoming soaked down to the last hair.
“Caught red-handed, darn,” Cloud Wind deadpanned, her voice holding none of the fear or frustration at having a devious plan ousted before it could even begin. “Whatever shall we do.”
El-Tee’s answer was a second yawn, somehow even bigger than the first, and her eyelids began to slide shut over her electric blue irises. “’xplain yerselves, fer a start…”
“Healing spells work best when you’re asleep,” Sling replied unapologetically almost immediately, dipping her head low to allow her shower head to soak the rest of her mane fully. “And like Tender said, you need the rest.”
“Not that,” her night light groaned through her sleep-addled speech, rolling up onto her unsteady legs. “…thought youse guys had twelve-hour shifts, what happened…”
Sling’s eyes snapped open, tracing a stream of water as it rolled down the side of her head and into the soulless gray marble beneath her, becoming part of the shimmering pool of water forming a thin layer beneath her hooves. She’d almost allowed herself the illusion that the kid wouldn’t remember the change in her working hours, but her memory gap only seemed to stretch back to some part of Wednesday afternoon. So of course the intelligent little bugger would wonder why they were off-duty instead of slaving away in their extended hours.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cloud Wind tried to reassure her, stepping forward slightly to shower the back half of her body with water in preparation for a lathing of coat shampoo. “We’re just glad you weren’t hurt that bad.”
Windy, do not give the kid any kind of a hint—
Light Tail’s nagging sensation that things weren’t quite right kept her from succumbing to the effects of the sleep aid drugs and gave her enough clarity to see through the pegasus’s desire to steer away from the subject. “What? Happened?” she repeated again more insistently.
Her parental instinct to admonish her child for such a forceful tone towards her elders flared to life, but at the last second stopped short of actually saying anything. Instead, she found herself only capable of staring down at the floor, watching the water flow around her head and into the floor....
….watched, and began to wonder at how similar it looked to the flow of fresh blood….
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“WHAT? HAPPENED?”
Sling’s head shook away the ghastly images floating in front of her, forcing her gaze away from the gray floor and the streaks of blood that had dabbed up around her forehoof….
….her daughter’s blood….
The sight before her wasn’t much better. Chief Farsight’s furious scowl was a rare sight, and one that never brought good tidings. His body was practically seething behind his desk, and with what she’d just seen earlier in the morning, she didn’t have the capacity to even think of a reply. All she could do was stand there, her forehooves coated in crimson, and stare back at him in disbelief at just how wrong her morning had been.
And they hadn’t even had lunch yet.
Cloud Wind was no less shaken, but her more disciplined quality of training allowed her enough clear thought to try and answer an unreasonable pony’s question with a logical response. “You’ll have to be more specific, Chief, a lot happened this morning.”
“Down there,” Farsight bellowed, his left foreleg swiping downward over his desk. “In maintenance! Two-thirds of the first shift crew heard a gunfight down there! Where all of our generator’s waste exhaust and coolant water is funneled through, you idiots! What were you thinking?!”
Her memories flashed across her eyes again, this time with the flare of a 10mm muzzle blast as she saw her pistol sights floating from one target to the next with every squeeze of the trigger—
“We were thinking of taking out a swarm of radroaches that had just ripped Hacket Wrench apart!” Windy bellowed right back. “And they would have done the same to Butterscotch if we’d turned tail and ran off!!”
“By opening fire in the one section of the Stable where our EFS and S.A.T.S. systems don’t even work?! What if one of your rounds hit the ingoing supply pipes, or the outgoing waste pipes?! What about the power relay conduit at the other end of the hall?! Have you forgotten that we haven’t had the ammunition to afford to practice for the last two years?!“
“No, we haven’t,” the sky-blue pegasus answered back with a combative tone. “Which is why we rehearse drills and routines with snap caps during off-duty hours, and which we have suggested time and again for the rest of the department! Some practice with trigger manipulation is better than not touching the thing at all!”
Farsight’s body quivered with rage at her words, as if he’d only expected the words “Sorry sir!” or “You’re completely correct sir!”. “By Celestia, you two are beyond controllable. You could have displaced the entire Stable onto the surface! We have enough problems with the bugs popping up all the way up to level five!”
Sling purposefully tuned out the shouting with a subtle application of her hearing protection spell, turning the words into muffled throbs as mare and stallion battled it out with words and lung capacity. She just didn’t care anymore.
The only thing she cared about was getting back to the infirmary. Butterscotch’s leg wound was deep, but not grievous or mortal, and his timely first aid ensured that the healing potions and spells would leave minimal scarring and that he wouldn’t be walking with a limp. But Light Tail…
Just thinking of her name stopped her heart cold. The blood, from her little girl’s head, on her forehooves and face and she’d not even had time to wash it off. Her listless, limp legs, the way her brain seemed to have trouble keeping up with simple speech….
…o-oh stars is she even gonna be the same Light Tail if she wakes up—
“—nd you, Sling Shot!!” Farsight’s voice blared through her protected hearing somehow…at least, it was a “somehow” before she’d been snapped out of her wandering daze. The light, muffled tingle of her hearing was gone, bringing full sound back into her world. She was so distraught that she couldn’t even focus on her most ingrained spell….
“What the hell were you thinking on level fourteen?!” Farsight roared at her when she thought to turn her head towards him. “Socket was brought in with a mild concussion less than ten minutes after you passed through! Toolbox and Torque had to carry him up to medical and I have ten eyewitnesses that all say you flung him into the ceiling without warning!”
Her answer was so automatic and instant that the damage was done before she regained her senses enough to realize it. “I told him he could move, or be moved. I moved him.”
“So that’s what you call unprovoked assault?!” he yelled back, his body shifting around behind the desk to take her in more fully—a sign that she’d just garnered his complete attention. “Is that how we trained you to perform your back-up job?!”
“Chief, not a damn pony in that department ever listens to us—“ Cloud Wind began to fight back.
But the chief would not hear it. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that I was speaking to Sling Shot! Is that you?!”
The pegasus, for once in her life, had no counter to the screaming male in front of her. Her second and a half of silence was all he needed to turn his attention back to the unicorn.
“Is that how we trained you to perform your called-upon duties as a reserve security officer of this Stable?! Are you expected to allow your personal issues to affect your job performance?! Are you instructed to assault Stable residents without due cause or provocation for not understanding your directions?!”
Even in the disheveled emotional state she was in, worried almost to the point of vomiting about whether or not her only child was going to be okay or destined for a worse fate, she could already see the signs of something much larger behind his “drill instructor” behavior. This was not a mere after-action review, or a spoken reprimand to be added to a written demerit. This was a career-altering—perhaps even ending—attitude, the kind of threatening, verbally bullying approach a boss might take towards a worker that had willingly broken and flaunted the rules and regulations they were expected to adhere to. He wasn’t testing her, he didn’t even care about any potential answer she might have had. He just wanted to throw his fit in front of her, in front of her best friend, so that the rest of the department would know not to ever dare risk a similar outcome to their jobs if they wanted to stay clear of his wrath.
She was a sacrifice. He would do whatever he’d already decided he wanted to do when she and Cloud Wind had walked in here, no matter what she said or did. And that was not a fight she felt worthy of her time.
With deliberate and swift thought, she practically willed her 10mm pistol out of its holster, the steel scratching across the leather as she snapped down on the magazine release and flicked the falling magazine out towards the desk. As it landed and skipped across the surface to smack into the Chief’s chest, her spell field gripped onto the slide and yanked it back so hard that the chambered round flew out over his head and clattered against the wall. And with one final mental command, the unloaded and locked-open pistol was slapped down onto the desk, next to the magazine, with the barrel pointed out to the right side….
—Light Tail’s slumbering body was splayed before her on the nurse’s table, blood spilling down onto the worn padded mattress as she struggled to answer the nurse’s questions—
…and her security I.D. badge following right behind it just as the unchambered round clanked onto the desk and rolled to a stop against the chief’s desk light.
Now she had his attention. Angry, and slightly confused attention, but she had it.
“I’m done,” she spoke, her voice and emotions becoming surprisingly crisp and calming, even emotionally invigorating despite the unknown terrors awaiting her in the infirmary. “An entire stable that calls me a slut and a whore to my face is not worth laying down my life for. The whole lot of you can burn in Tartarus.”
She’d barely even turned around on four amazingly steady legs when Farsight’s familiar growl of authority curled up over her back and into her ears. “Don’t turn your back on me, Sling Shot, we’re not done yet. You don’t get to go back to slutting around, not on my watch. You will not abandon your own in a time of crisis like this so casually—“
She thought she heard Cloud Wind utter something very profane and vulgar beside her, but she’d stopped listening to anything anypony had to say to her after the chief of security had so callously disrespected her in the very manner she’d just described as her reason for quitting on him. Her anger obliterated her self-control as her rear legs bucked out behind her, taking an upward motion as they connected with the desk and sent it into a tumbling jump upward—
—a gray whirl swished across her vision, her body seemingly teleporting itself back towards the chief as her magic callously slammed the flying desk out of her sight—
—Chief Farsight did not even have time to completely process what had just occurred in front of him when she tackled him up against the wall behind him, her front legs pinning him up and into the wall—
“I look out for me and mine,” a dark, insidious voice from her throat throttled out into his shrinking pupils, the drying blood of her night light becoming smeared into his coat. “That don’t include anypony I don’t conjure it to.”
As quickly as she’d assaulted the chief of security, she ended it, unpinning him from the wall and letting his shaken body slide onto the floor as she walked away. She wasn’t aware of her own magic reaching out and putting back into place everything she’d just tossed aside in her fit of madness, only that one level down was a daughter that she’d once thought invincible, laid out on a nurse’s table with a bleeding head wound that had shaken her small world into scattered pieces.
Her eyes blinked the fresh memories away and returned the wet floor of the showers to her vision, and she allowed herself a small, hopefully unnoticed breath before she took a couple of steps forward, shaking the water out of her face as the warmth began to spread across her back and flanks. “I don’t work in security anymore,” she answered quietly.
If anything in the world could make her night light shrug off pharmaceutical effects like insects to be flicked aside, it would be anything that involved her mother’s life. “What?” the little one wondered aloud, forcing herself upright in a battle against her drugged body that splashed everything around her with a quarter gallon of water. “You…you didn’t get fired, did y-you?”
“No, nothing like that,” she answered, truthfully and as calm and collected as she could manage. “I…I can’t explain what happened. Not until you’re older. But I’m happier this way. I never liked my job to start with.”
As her levitation spell took hold upon a bottle of coat shampoo, Cloud Wind’s voice broke into what had been a mother-daughter conversation with some less-than-desired reality. “I don’t know many ponies in the Stable that likes what they do to keep it running,” the pegasus muttered over the running shower heads. “But we all do our part. It’s how we’ve survived.”
“And I’ve decided my time is spent better elsewhere,” the unicorn mare returned evenly, floating the shampoo bottle up to her chest and squirting a portion of it onto herself. “Parchment has been asking for an assistant librarian for years after Quill Scent passed away and left her to learn the rest on her own.”
The mere mention of the squirt’s favorite after-school nesting grounds was enough to make her not ask about her previous job anymore, even though she was likely still worried about how it had become “previous” to begin with. “…the library? Really?”
Stick with it, make it conversation topic number one ‘till bedtime. “Not yet, but I’m the first pony to become available for the job,” she said softly as her telekinetic touch began to lather the shampoo gel across her coat. “And the library’s been a one-pony department since Parchment took over, so she can just go right to the Overmare about it. In fact, she was supposed to have done it yesterday afternoon. I’ll need to pay her a visit in a few minutes to see how that went.”
“Well, you go on and do that when you’re done here,” Cloud Wind’s voice suggested hastily, before Light Tail could start going on and on about whether or not she’d find those Daring Do books within the next week. “I got the kid covered.”
The unicorn’s only response was a muted grunt of approval as she continued to spread the foaming shampoo across her sides and back, absently dabbing Light Tail with a second streak of gel across the length of her spine and neck. The sooner she got everything out of the way and back to quarters, the sooner she could get some much needed sleep.
And hopefully not see the constant recurring images of a broken, blood-covered daughter in her dreams…
She hated these stupid drugs FOREVER. Ponies weren’t supposed to be taking pills or icky-tasting liquids to sleep. She was supposed to wait until her body said “STOP MOVING”, and then she could fall onto whatever looked comfortable and snooze away right there.
When said body wanted to drop to the floor without reason with every step, it got a lot harder to think or do things, because all she wanted to do was close her eyes and let the emptiness of sleep claim her. Didn’t matter if it was a cold, wet floor or a carpet, she just wanted to sleep.
At least, until Mom said, “I don’t work in security anymore”. Just like that, no drama, no remorse, no nothing. It was like she’d just been talking about what their next breakfast would be, or the next play or concert act going on in the auditorium. It might’ve taken her a few seconds to actually answer when she got entranced by the water dripping down past her face, but she’d have expected an announcement like that to come with a little more fanfare. Or a warm-up sentence, something like “Honey, I have something important to tell you”. And the last time she checked, losing your assigned job was pretty darn important!
And Aunt C was a better bet for a clear answer than Mom. As soon as she stopped poking her in the flank to keep her moving across the living room floor, anyway.
“Hey, keep moving,” Aunt C prodded firmly. “You’re going to need another bath at this rate and I’m too tired to put up with it again.”
“Not my fault my legs don’t wanna work,” she grumbled darkly, pulling her slightly dampened body across the carpeted floor with her forelegs while trying to her rear legs to do something for once. But every muscle in her body was just so freaking tired, she was impressed she was moving at all. “So what really happened? How’d Mom lose her job?”
“She told you already, she wasn’t fired,” Aunt C’s voice answered dismissively, becoming slightly irate with the filly as she began using two hooves to prod her along instead of the one. “This is grown-up stuff, you don’t need to worry about it.”
A flare of anger rushed throughout her body and finally enlivened her legs enough to plant their hooves onto the floor, though she still didn’t have the strength to stand. “It’s my mom, I’ll worry as much as I want!” she hissed back. “What? Happened?!”
Aunt C must’ve been really tired, because she didn’t try to answer or be friendly and stuff. She just went and acted like most adult ponies would have. “You raise your voice at me like that again and I’ll—“
“You’ll what?!” she snapped, cutting her ‘aunt’ off before she could finish her grown-up threat and probably ensuring she’d get an earful from Mom later, but whatever! This was important! “Everythin’ around me’s gone crazy, last thing I remember is seeing Grape Jam on my way out of the washroom, hitting my head on a table leg and when I wake up I find out I’ve been out almost two days and Mom looks like she ain’t slept for none of it! Then she tells me she don’t work security anymore and she ain’t the least bit worried or angry over it?! Or did you even notice that?! It’s like her mind’s snapped or somethin’! What’s going on?! Why is my mom acting so weird, it’s starting to scare me!”
Aunt C’s eyes stopped glaring down at her, her scowl quickly fading into a look of pity as her shoulders began to slump. “….I…I didn’t…”
And then, before she could make her futile attempt to escape it, Aunt C had her swept up in a one-legged hug, ruining her strenuous efforts to get up on her hooves. “….sorry, El-Tee,” the pegasus whispered sadly. “I…I didn’t think how things must’ve looked like to you. Being out almost two days and not remembering the day before that…your mom’s been stressed out all week. Like, more than usual…”
With her limbs and body numbed into near submission by sleep-inducing chemicals, she could barely muster the strength to put up any kind of meaningful struggle, but if Aunt C’s grip of pity got her an answer or four, then she’d put up with it. “Define ‘usual’.”
“I meant…I don’t know,” she sighed in defeat, her wings opening out and dropping down to the floor as her mood continued to sour. “Butterscotch went missing, we had to put down curfews for non-working hours, we kept expecting radroaches to start skittering out of the vents everywhere we went…and I think she heard something yesterday morning that just pushed her over, she blew up at me when we were searching the Dungeon…”
That, she could believe. Sometimes it seemed as if Mom was always just one misplaced word away from exploding and taking out everything around her, and yet she always seemed to have this last measure of control she needed to keep it from happening. But the threat of a radroach outbreak would push that stress past those limits at some point. And if what Sun Star said to her last week was any hint of how everypony actually treated her Mom….
“What kind of something?” she asked gently of the leg trapping her onto Aunt C’s chest.
“….I didn’t understand it,” the pegasus dodged uneasily, and Light Tail began to doubt that she’d get any clear answers from her as well. “….but right before we found Butterscotch, when we first started hearing the bugs crawling around us, she froze up on me. Scared to death.”
“I thought you security types were fearless.”
“It’s not like that!” Aunt C shouted defensively, but quickly changed her tone to a more apologetic one as she explained, “Look, the last outbreak we had, five years ago…your mom wasn’t out with the rest of us. The chief had her locked up in the armory, to “guard” it, while the rest of us took care of it, and he even locked out her access key to the weapons. The bugs were all over that armory door, scratching and clawing and screeching at it. When we polished them off and got her out she was a mess, darted right out the door and kept going until she hit a dead end….and found what was left of Kick Start’s kid….”
The schoolroom tale of “Bloody Hoofprint” suddenly didn’t sound so farfetched. “…y-you mean…Hoofprint? The story every kid in school tells all the time? That really happened?”
“….the story is kinder than the truth, but…yeah. It happened. And your mom was the first to find him. She wouldn’t come out of her quarters for a month, you’re probably too young to remember it. And then yesterday morning when we came by to see if you were okay, and she found you covered in blood and with two dead bugs shoved out in the hallway….I think it all just came down on her. The stress, the fear, the….everything. I seriously think she needs help, and not just from a friend. I haven’t told her yet, but…I think your mom’s going to need some counseling. Compulsory, if we have to, she hasn’t been herself since yesterday morning.”
“….yer holdin’ up just fine,” was all the little one could think to squeak out loud, apprehension growing in her chest as implications began to run wild within her muddled imagination. What if they decided her mom wasn’t fit to work and kept her penned up and drugged? What if they decided she wasn’t fit to be Mom and took her away?!
“I have ways of coping,” Aunt C countered calmly. “But your mom isn’t coping well. She hardly has any friends besides me, she’s gotten obsessive with you—“
“After what you just told me, she’s got a right to be,” she shot back sharply, her fears giving her words the bite they needed to be heard. “C’mon, admit it, if I looked as bad as you say you were freakin’ out too. Mom’s just takin’ it worse ‘cause of what she saw happen to Hoofprint.”
“Exactly why I think she needs to get some help—“
You can help her, you dodo! “So what’s stoppin’ you? You said even one word to her about it, or were you just gonna go behind her back and get her thrown into the counselor’s chair by force—“
She felt Aunt C’s lungs briefly hold her breath inside them, very briefly, before they continued their rhythmic cycle of in-out, inhale-exhale, but that tiny pause gave it away. “…you haven’t.”
The pegasus’s grip on her faltered, and even the coordination challenged filly had no trouble pulling herself free from the older mare’s reach to give her that patented (pending) “You know you should” stare.
Aunt C’s will to resist collapsed within just three seconds, her eyes no longer willing to look down at the glaring child before her. “….o-okay, okay, I’ll try,” she conceded. “I don’t even know what to say, but…I’ll try, at least.”
Works every time, Light Tail’s triumphant mind squealed silently, and she began to stumble off towards bed as best as she could manage. Now if I could just get my stupid legs and body to MOVE…
--------------------------------------
Parchment was in tears when she caught up with her outside the library. The exact words and sentences weren’t quite that clear, but the general message was hard to miss amidst all the cries of “Thank Luna and Celestia” and “FINALLY!!”. Come Monday morning, Sling Shot was going to be the new assistant librarian and learn (with little difficulty as she was already familiar) the indexing and number system for the library’s collection. Not vast compared to say, the ancient libraries of the big cities in the time of Equestria That Was, but considering that the Stable’s library took up three quarters of level seven it wasn’t anything to sneer at either. She didn’t remember the exact number of books—just that Light Tail managed to read most of the ones she found interesting by the time she’d turned ten five months ago. And that Parchment was still trying to get them all back in their proper place after said child had managed to dismantle the place trying to get her cutie mark. Someday she was going to get the whole story from one of them about how such a thing could happen.
For now, the only thing on her mind was making sure her child was well and truly okay, and not breathing funny or bleeding from the head again, and able to sleep comfortably, and then she could try and get a nap in for herself. Not a long one, just enough to get some energy back in her so she could keep an eye on her a bit longer. Until she was up and moving on her own without looking drunk, she was never going to rest easy.
Maybe we shouldn’t have drugged her food, the train of doubt began as she trotted through the corridors on muscle memory alone. What if it throws off Tender Mane’s spell and her head doesn’t heal all the way? What if it makes her memory problems worse or starts eating away at that blessed mind of hers?! Wh—
No. No no no. Not like this, couldn’t be thinking like this. Had to look like everything was going to be fine, couldn’t let the squirt know she was deathly worried at every turn or she’d just catch on and bug her about it for eternity plus one. By the gods, sometimes that kid’s intelligence was a curse! Sh—no, no, bad thought, there was nothing wrong with her daughter’s brilliant mind. It just meant she had to be real careful what she said or did, and hope that she was smart enough to understand any explanations she gave or why she wouldn’t give certain ones just yet. Although…
…..although it would be nice if she never remembered that conversation yesterday morning. Her heart ached just wishing for it, her ever-vengeful brain always eager to make her recall snippets of it as though it were happening again. Never again did she want her daughter to hear anypony call her mother such things with impunity. Or hear it herself, for that matter. One way or another, this constant shunning and slander was going to stop. It was just the one night, ONE! And they talked like she did it all the time! What was wrong with everypony?!
Burn in Tartarus, indeed…
In short order, her dark thoughts melded into gentler musings and the desire of enveloping warmth from her three thick blankets as she found herself swishing through the door to her living quarters, passing by a swiftly-moving Cloud Wind without so much as a word spoken between them. Another mindless flare of her magic set the lock on the door, her attention focused solely on a quick—but thorough—checkup on the air vents above her as she trotted towards her daughter’s room. The initial outbreak of the radroaches yesterday had subsided quickly, and by the time she’d quit her job and stomped out over a hundred of the suckers lay dead across the hallways. But until a proper sweep of the vents and maintenance tunnels could be conducted, an all-clear was not forthcoming, and she didn’t want the things getting in again.
With her attention occupied on security, she didn’t notice the absence of a filly’s body in the bed until she’d bumped into by accident and tried to apologize, only to find nothing in front of her to apologize to. Panic and terror gripped her thoughts, freezing them into the singular notion that she needed to find her precious treasure right now, and barreled out of the bedroom at blinding speed. A quick check of the couch showed nothing but bare, freshly-washed cushions and pillows, nor did she see anything nestled into her bean bag chair that she’d moved next to the coffee table.
Only one other place to put a filly to sleep.
She tepidly sauntered to her bedroom door, surprised to find it open and inviting the warmer air of the living room into its walls, and sure enough Light Tail’s head was plopped down upon the dark-blue cushioned pillows once she’d flicked the lights on. With three blankets covering her body she couldn’t tell if the poor thing had already fallen, but the child was quick to answer that lingering question as the door swished shut behind the approaching mare.
“Ooooooh, yer blankets….so warm,” her high-pitched voice whispered tiredly, her eyelids not even capable of opening. It was quite possible she could have fallen into deep sleep had the mare not walked in when she had. “….bed too….so nice….”
“Y-yep, that’s definitely my bed you’re in,” she sighed heavily, drawing closer to the edge of the mattress, a levitation spell already beginning its mental incantations within her mind. “....why don’t we get you to your room? I’ve been selfish enough with where I put you.”
Her night light’s answer was slow, her fight with her drowsiness quickly becoming a lost cause, but she was not out of it yet. “…fine right here. Thought you’d sleep better if I weren’t so far away…”
Truthfully, she would, but keeping her little girl close to her just because she was deathly afraid of the shadows themselves dawning upon her was borderline possessive. No matter how much she might’ve wanted it. “I’ll sleep fine as long as I know you’ll be okay. That’s all I need.”
Light Tail’s answer brought her nearly to tears, for all the right reasons. “…just wanna know you will be, too. Lemme stay this once, Mommy….”
Sling could not find her voice for a moment. And when she tried, her vocal cords simply refused to vibrate and flex in any manner of recognizable speech. She had to suck in three large, cold-air breaths before they would work properly. “O-kay, then, honey. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Light Tail’s head burrowed further into the pillow, shifting around to either a warmer or a more comfortable position. “Not goin’ anywhere.”
She managed to make it to her daughter’s room before a single salty tear found a way down the side of her face, which she wiped off with her left foreleg as she quickly scanned the squirt’s unoccupied bed for—
Gotcha! She cheered silently upon spotting the snow-white, filly-sized plush toy of a white fox, a family heirloom since the first days after the Sealing. Perhaps the only remaining visage of the arctic wild animal in the world, it was continually handed down through her family over the last two hundred years to each newborn child, and was now one of Light Tail’s three personal and highly prized possessions. One which was always within reach of her whenever she slept.
She carefully seized it from the bed with a gentle telekinetic touch, and floated it out in front of her all the way back to her own room. A second spell lifted the layers of comforters up enough for her to slip in beneath them, and she’d hardly settled down into the mattress before the little one curled up against her chest and pulled the plush toy down into her forelegs.
“….oooh yeah, now I can sleep for half a day,” Light Tail murmured, and by the sound of it she was already drifting away into a better world than the one she lived in. “Nighty-nite, mommy…”
This close together, Sling could feel the faint pounding of her night light’s heart as it fell into a slow, gentle crescendo, her lungs synchronizing themselves to the same beat as sleep claim her senses. Even the soft crinkle of gauze and bandage became a ritual, her light breathing shifting her head slightly with every breath taken.
It was hard to hold back a joyful tear or three, so she didn’t bother. She just flicked the light switch off as silently as possible, allowing her right foreleg to find a home around daughter and plush toy and draw it ever closer to her. And for the two and a half minutes it took for her own body to succumb to its exhaustion, she could have believed that the world beyond the door was not one of steel and wire, but of the Equestria That Was that she dreamed of on a regular basis.
It was those old world dreams that finally lulled her into a painless, blissful slumber, and into the hope that for the first time in ten years, her life was finally starting to brighten up.
Darkness.
Heat, strobing her senses and leaving a wake of cold tendrils as it grew and waned to its own rhythm.
A chatter of crisp snaps and a low, steady roar.
A jolting of her senses, rough tilts and yaws that signaled movement despite the darkness before her.
The movement subsided, and her senses began to shut down once more.
A brain-freezing cold took hold on her, snapping her brain into a state of shocked numbness as her eyes immediately tried to locate the source of her discomfort.
She instantly regretted even trying. Every shape before her wore a blurred outline, masking finer details but leaving enough clues for her imagination to fill in the blanks. Chunks of charred concrete littered the ground in front of her, and that steady roar was revealed to be a growing, hungry fire that was gradually consuming the set of shop stands arrayed across a sidewalk. A harsh, teeth-rattling ringing in her ears overwhelmed most of her hearing, leaving her able to hear only snippets of the dying world and muted, almost dream-like voices.
Her body began to slide away from the fire, pulled across the broken asphalt by an unknown savior or opportunistic looter (or worse), but in her dazed state she could offer no resistance or warnings. Cold lines began to trickle down her face and neck, and her mane stuck to her coat instead of flowing about around her head. Gradually, the street began to recede from her vision, pushed away by an approaching darkness, and the few sounds she could hear grew muffled and stuffy, as if blocked by solid matter—
A second helping of that skull-killing cold sloshed over her head, some of it spilling into her dazed mouth, and what was left of her natural instincts swallowed it almost immediately, recognizing it as ice cold water. The liquid spread its rejuvenating temperature through her throat and stomach, quenching her dry tongue’s thirst for nourishment and allowing her brain to begin processing more complex details and events around her.
A small, plastic tube briefly intruded against her snout before finding its intended destination through her mouth, and as she began to suckle its cool, refreshing contents into her body, a throbbing ache began to press itself against the back of her head—
“Don’t move,” a pony’s voice whispered quietly, just before a rumble of thunder thudded across the world. Even in her present state, however, she could recognize it to be far too loud to have come from a thundercloud. “Just keep drinking and don’t move your head.”
The strawberry-flavored liquid’s rejuvenating effects made the advice a rather moot point. In fact, with each sip the pain in her head seemed to lessen and fade, so she continued to drink at her present rate. Quickly, her senses began to improve. The darkness began to brighten, revealing faint outlines of glass counters with unknown goods sealed within. The ground beneath her began to resemble a dark brown carpet, its rough texture pressing against the right side of her body. Her brain gradually recognized the cold, slick sensation on her face to be cold water, her mane slickened and hugging her neck. Even the ringing in her ears was waning out into a faint tingle.
The pressure in her head eventually faded into a barely noticeable buzz by the time the liquid began to travel in broken segments, her suction efforts beginning to bring in air as much as the tasty treat.
“Feeling better yet?” the mysterious pony asked as the scattered bits of liquid quickly fell onto her tongue, abruptly cut off from their source as it was taken away.
“…much,” she moaned in reply, shifting the tube around until it was clamped down inside her mouth at the side. “….got another one?”
Her request was swiftly answered—the tube in her mouth was physically re-positioned until it had returned to its previous spot, and upon sucking upon it a fresh stream of the liquid was invited into her belly. She said nothing more as she sucked the fresh container dry over the course of a short, blissful eternity. By the time she’d finished it off, almost all the pain in her head had vanished—only a miniscule scratch remained, tickling the soaked skin beneath her mane on occasion. Her eyesight had vastly improved, allowing her to finally recognize the interior of Clover Luck’s general goods store and the glass case of outdoor camping gear against the wall, right beneath the main window pane that showed potential customers a glance at the wares within. That faint, tingling ringing in her hearing vanished entirely, allowing her to at last take in the sounds of the world beyond.
It was, then, to her great embarrassment that she only now recognized the weight and pressure clinging to her side when it shifted about to get a better grip on her body. “Mommy?” her daughter’s voice cried quietly. “Are you okay now?”
She instantly spat the tube out of her mouth and began to roll herself over into an upright position, tucking her legs in beneath her as her muscles began to seep relief into her tired senses. “…I’ll make it,” she gasped as her little girl’s forelegs found a new home around her neck and briefly interrupted her oxygen supply. “….how did we—“
“I found you in the street,” the pony’s voice answered before she could finish her question, and she carefully turned her head until she saw the mare’s body sitting several feet away to her left. A second clap of thunder shook the store, rattling glass and overhanging chandeliers of lights, and she began to recall the last few minutes of her life before now. She and her daughter, walking to the park, her saddlebags stuffed with their afternoon picnic lunch and blanket—
—a massive mushroom cloud of flame and ash, a spherical crackling of energy whipping through the smoke and tainting it red with its deathly glow—
“….it wasn’t a nightmare?” she managed to ask when the initial shock had taken its leave.
“Oh, it’s a nightmare all right,” the purple mare disagreed sharply, her watery eyes ringed with red. “Specialist Midnight Showers, Second Medical Regiment, Third Battalion, D Company.”
Medic pony, she noted with light relief, finally catching sight of the purple mare’s red cross leg band wrapped around her left foreleg, just below the cuff of her uniform’s sleeve. “….sorry, stupid question…”
“With the hit you took, no, it’s not,” Specialist Midnight replied, her voice strangely calm and devoid of the panic she was beginning to recognize again in the streets outside. “Your kid’s got some spunk in her. Bit me until I chased her around the corner when I wouldn’t listen to her. Good on you, squirt.”
She felt Star Shine’s hug grow tighter at those words, and her left foreleg managed to return the gesture with an awkwardly angled squeeze. “….what’s going on? I thought the battalion was out on training maneuvers this week.”
“We got orders from the brass at Fort Wiley to pull back into town,” Midnight answered with crisp tones. “Right before….right before things got bad. We arrived right before we heard the explosions, got split off by company to sweep the streets for casualties and damage. I was a block east, setting up a casualty collection point with my squad when your kid found us and led me here.”
Thunder rolled across the streets once more, but thankfully wasn’t quite as close as the last one had been. Only a thin layer of dust managed to flitter down onto the floor, eliciting a sneeze out of Star Shine’s tiny nose.
Any other day, she’d have laughed at it. Today, though….she didn’t know what to do about today. She wasn’t even entirely optimistic that she’d see tomorrow.
Midnight Showers, at least, was a better thinker under pressure than she was. Without waiting to be prodded or lingering to try and answer more questions with time they didn’t have, the military mare simply rose up to her hooves to resume her duties. “You guys wait here while I report back to my squad sergeant on Chester Street. I should be back in a few minutes.”
“And if yer not?” Star Shine blurted in a burst of fear, turning in her mother’s grasp to keep Midnight in her sight. “What do we do then?”
Midnight Showers’ trot to the broken doorframe paused for a moment, as if unsure if she should say something or simply keep going—
—and went with a few words of advice, her amber eyes finally showing a hint of terror and absolute fear in the mind behind them. “….whatever you have to do to get out of here.”
And without another word she broke into a brisk gallop, dashing out the doorway and into the ruined world beyond.
It was Midnight’s stark terror that finally spurred her into motion, her legs aching in protest as they assumed the weight of her body. “C’mon,” she commanded of her offspring in a firm tone—at least, she hoped she sounded firm and commanding. “We have to go, now.”
She should have known better than to her expect her intelligent star to know how to deal with this kind of stress right away, even after apparently rushing through shelled streets to find a medic pony. Star Shine’s forelegs wrapped around her mother’s left hind leg in an attempt to anchor the mare to the floor. “W-wait, Mommy!” she pleaded, her body scraping across the floor as her mother’s pace continued forward. “She wanted us to wait for her! What if she comes back and we’re not here?!”
The scenario played out in her mind in less than two seconds, alongside other less pleasant outcomes of staying in a place that had already been bombarded once before. “We can’t wait,” she said, coming to a stop at the door and poking her head out past its splintered, pointy edges. “We have to go. This street was already attacked once, it could happen again. We need to get home.”
“H-home?” Star Shine’s voice wavered briefly in disbelief. “W-what could we possibly need there!? We gotta wait for miss Midnight liked she asked us to!”
A muffled whump! in the far distance preceded another round of deep thunder, somewhere off to her right, and she began to wonder at the sudden change in volume in the explosions. What little she remembered of the thirty seconds before she’d been knocked out hadn’t been much, but she thought she could recall the megaspells being quite a bit more….enthusiastic, for lack of a better term. Their power was immense, considerable, and immediately familiar. But these last few explosions lacked that level of oomph!, and perhaps most importantly, she and everypony around her were still alive. A megaspell would have simply vaporized them and flattened everything in its blast radius.
“We have to go!” she insisted again, putting a more forceful emphasis into her command as she cocked her head right, down the other side of the street, as her ears picked up the clomping of several sets of pony hooves running their tails off in the streets. Their rumbling, panicked stampede quickly rose into a deafening orchestra of fear as they popped out into view from the intersection several dozen yards away, their faces wild with panic and confusion. She thought she spotted a couple of armed unicorn ponies in police uniforms trying to herd the small group of nine into a directed gallop, but they were failing miserably. Nopony seemed capable of even comprehending the two mares in their current state of mind—the instinctive “fight or flight” response. And their minds had chosen “flight” to the exclusion of everything else.
Star Shine was not encouraged. Not one bit. “….mommy, can we please just wait…”
Yet another explosion lashed out, somewhere close by—she could hear the concrete being ripped from the ground and the windows shattering from the shockwave of the blast. The event only spurred the panicked herd even harder along, and even began outpacing the two cops who had tasked themselves with trying to knock some sense into their charges. If they’d thought they had a challenge before, they were likely cursing at themselves for just how much harder their work had become.
She couldn’t comprehend the yelling and screaming with complete clarity. She could only make out parts of it amidst the explosions and their galloping hooves upon the concrete, but several variations of curses involving the Princess Sisters’ backsides were definitely among the words she could pick up in-between the expected cries for help, mercy, or simple wailing at the end of things to come.
She stayed inside the doorway, intending to let the wild herd of ponies rumble by so as not to get trampled by them in their mad quest for safety from wherever they wanted to be away from. One of the mare cops finally trotted to a stop, exhausted beyond immediate relief and fighting to get some air into her lungs—
—pink and red beams of light lanced into the street around her, taking the cop completely by surprise, and not even a moment later a rapid series of thunderous booms followed behind them—
—the stallion at the head of the herd crumpled into the asphalt, his body tumbling over itself as red splotches began exploding across his sides—
—she dove back into the shop, shoving Star Shine onto the floor and against the wall beneath the shattered window pane before throwing herself on top of her, throwing her back into the wall and pulling the filly into her body with her forelegs. The little one clamped her forehooves down over her ears to drown out the sound of the gunfire as it erupted into a deafening shower—
—amidst the screams and wails of pain, the bullet ricochets and the M.E.W. fire, the clunk of a hand grenade falling onto the street somehow managed to announce itself in the chaos a split second before it went off into her dampened hearing—
--a head-sized chunk of concrete tore through the wall right in front of her face and sailed on by, smattering her with bits of wood and plaster and nearly scaring her into emptying her bladder onto the floor behind her, but she thankfully maintained enough self-control to avoid such an embarrassing—and messy—give-a-way of her position.
She began to inch forward across the floor as the dying screams faded and waned in the murderous hail of bullets, to see who or what could possibly be interested in waging a street battle in such a final, apocalyptic exchange of megaspells around them….and whether or not they saw Clover Luck’s shop as an inviting looting opportunity—
She managed to get an eye out in front of the hole and stopped, keeping Star Shine pinned to the floor beneath her, though she worried that her rapid heart rate would quickly beat the little filly up if it didn’t slow down. Breathing became a mentally taxing exercise as she sought to slow her lungs down into a quieter rhythm and not gasp out every third breath she took—
—and then sought to simply get them to work again as they were shocked into stillness at the horrific sight the hole revealed. Four ponies were strewn about in a cluster, their blood slowly seeping out into pools beside them. One had lost a foreleg and wasn’t even breathing, a terrible, ragged chunk of his face having been torn off in the explosion. Another lay gasping and wheezing, his side riddled with torn pieces of his flesh and coat spilling crimson rivers down across his belly. What little she could make out of a pastel green mare made her thankful she couldn’t see the rest—all she could make out was the front half of her body, blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth as her lifeless eyes gazed slightly upward towards Clover Luck’s store sign.
The fourth pony, the blue-coated police mare that had been targeted by arcane weapons fire, was struggling across the street in a will-fueled crawl towards her pistol, her left foreleg now little more than a blood-ringed, cauterized stump just above the knee joint. A second cauterized burn in her left hind leg made moving it painful, forcing her to pull herself forward with one good foreleg and one that was barely there. For whatever reason, she was having trouble focusing her telekinesis spell on her pistol and was trying to get closer to it so it could take better hold.
The poor thing was dying, right in front of her, and all she could do was watch her struggle to strike back at her killers—
—one-and-a-half feet later her spell finally had the pistol in its hold, and the mare turned over onto her back, the large gun hovering above her head as it rapidly tracked its target in the skies above her—
—she managed to get off one shot before her attacker swooped down on top of her—a griffon almost twice her size, bearing a large, dull stainless revolver in one talon while the other casually slapped the mare’s pistol out of the air before lashing down into her chest, digging its claws into her flesh.
Her pained howl echoed into the store, forcing a gasp out of Star Shine’s mouth that the mother quickly smothered with a hoof lest they become this griffon’s next victim. The cop continued to scream and cry as she was tossed back onto the ground, behind an overturned and smashed shop stall that had been thrown off the sidewalk, and the griffon strode forward, his right talon cocking the hammer on the large gun and lowering it down at the helpless pony below—
Even at the end of her life, the cop still had fight in her as she fought back her tears for whatever life and loved ones she was about to lose. “I-I hope you burn for this, motherfu—“
—her curse was cut off with the massive, window-rattling boom from the griffon’s gun, the muzzle flash illuminating the front of his body for a brief instant. A splatter of blood exploded from behind the overturned shop stand, leaving little doubt about the mare’s fate.
As the griffon bent down behind the stall, disappearing from sight, two more griffons touched down onto the street around him clad in black armor covered in magazines, grenades, and other assorted gear. One carried a blocky-looking SMG, complete with a ribbed barrel and wood furniture, which he quickly leveled on the dying stallion and fired twice into his head, turning it into a bloody pulp and creating a ragged, meaty exit wound just behind his jaw. The other carried a weapon somewhat similar in appearance, but heavily modified with M.E.W. technology. Amidst the new ringing in her ears, she could make out soft thuds as more griffons took to the ground, out of sight, and three more singular gunshots announced their executions in brief, chest-shaking roars.
Now frozen in place by fear rather than desire, she couldn’t bring herself away from the hole and the small view of the massacre in the road as the griffon with the revolver rose back up from behind the stall, the mare’s barding in his left talon as he pocketed its gear for his own use. “Start pickin’ these mucks clean, one of ‘em might have one of those Stable-Tec letters about where they were supposed to go.”
Her heart turned to stone inside her chest, lodging against her ribcage and lungs. If these griffons were hunting for ponies with Stable passes….
….oh Luna, this is bad—
A set of paws and talons began making their way across the ruined streets, growing louder and firmer as the seconds passed, and a new, different kind of fear jolted her insides all the way into her intestines. “Hey, look at this place,” a griffon female’s voice exclaimed with joy. “I bet there’s tons of good stuff in there. MREs, ration bars, water purification tablets, I think we just hit the jackpot here!”
“Forget that shit, we got a mission to complete!” the griffon with the revolver roared with the grace of his lion half, tossing the barding behind him once he’d stuffed three pistol clips into his armored vest.
“Yeah, and what do you think happens to us after we’re done!?” the female roared back, stopping her progress and turning towards the revolver griffon. “You think those damned zebras got a fallout shelter all ready for us!? We’re mercs! We’re tools, we’re being used in some last-ditch petty effort to stick it to these lame-o ponies while they all burn the world to ashes! The war’s OVER! It’s time to take care of ourselves!!”
The revolver griffon’s reply was to turn his gun on his compatriot and squeeze the trigger, the tongue of flame obscuring his face and the gunshot mercifully drowning out the impact of the bullet into his latest victim. The female griffon’s body slumped onto the ground a few feet away from the storefront, her angry voice now a gurgling, pained mewing of confusion—
The revolver’s aim shifted lower, and flared again with a second shot that ended the female’s suffering and drove home the rapid new reality of the world even as it died around them.
Beneath her body, Star Shine’s quiet sobs began to seep into her chest cavity, her tears soaking into her mother’s forelegs.
“We have a mission,” the murderous griffon declared furiously, stuffing his revolver into a holster strapped to the left side of his body. “We complete the mission or our word as griffons is worth nothing. Anybody with objections to that had better get the hell out of my sight before I can get a bead on ‘em. Otherwise, search these worthless heaps of meat for any clues about the Stables!”
Talons and paws began to pilfer through the corpses in the streets, pulling at pockets and tearing off shirts and dresses in search of their prizes as their leader began to stomp his way out from behind the stall to collect the policemare’s pistol. The SMG-armed griffon kept his eyes on the road out to the right and his weapon ready, as did the M.E.W.-armed griffon—
—her eyes locked onto a pair of dangling, pineapple-shaped objects hanging from the front of their vests, each topped with a metal cap and a ring pin that rattled against each other, and her ice-cold fear was suddenly a distant memory as she began to focus almost exclusively on the grenades—
—a fourth griffon walked into view, his bolt-action rifle slung over his back between his wings as he started poking at the corpse of the lifeless-eyed mare. His grenades dangled from a belt that hugged the back of his body, near his hind legs—
—she added his explosives to her attention, reaching out with a multi-pronged telekinesis spell and latching each spell field as gently as she could over the arming pins—
Don’t look down—
—the first pair fell into her mental grip, barely a tingle in her horn, but the SMG Griffon’s focus on providing security blinded him to her efforts—
—Luna’s grace don’t look down—
—the M.E.W. Griffon’s focus was likewise occupied. Four down. Four left—
—Celestia help me don’t look DOWN—
—Bolt-Action Griffon’s brow furrowed, slightly puzzled at what felt like movement on his belt, but a saving grace of wind blew through the street at that exact moment, and he shrugged it off as mother nature’s touch and went back to his grim task—
—One more left, by Celestia please let this work—
—the barely visible glow of her spell fell over the leader’s grenades, tugging the arming pins in a snap test of their hold—
—his head cocked downward, having felt a slight tug on his vest, just in time to see the pins yanked free of the fuse cap—
—three other pairs of arming pins sailed into the air, the popping clicks of the spoon handles flying off finally drawing the four griffon’s attention to the grenades she’d taken possession of—
—she yanked four of them free from their owners and tossed off towards the left, hopefully towards the other griffons, and left three nestled against SMG Griffon, Bolt-Action Griffon, and M.E.W. Griffon. The last one she let clatter onto the street, right next to the leader.
“Oh SHIT!” Bolt-Action screamed in horror, rearing up on his hind legs as his arms scratched at the grenade still tucked into this belt—
—she threw a second telekinesis spell around her daughter, bolted up from the floor and zipped across the floor towards the counter—
“Stars-damned BITCH!!” the leader cursed at her back, his rage drowning out the terrorized yells of his compatriots—
—she leapt up and over the counter in a single bound, taking Star Shine into her forelegs and once more shielding her little body with her own as they came down hard onto the floor—
—six explosions filled the world, sending concrete, shrapnel, and what sounded like griffon limbs out across the street like confetti. Two more followed behind almost immediately, somewhere in front of the store, bathing the interior with rock and blood in their destructive wake.
Had she not been staring at the griffons for forty terrifying seconds, she would’ve mistaken the screams of the mangled survivors for those of the ponies they had callously slaughtered a minute earlier.
When the last grenade had performed its horrific purpose, she released her daughter from her grasp and bolted off from behind the counter, straight towards the back door leading into the alley behind the shop. “RUN!!” she screamed as loudly as she could manage. “Don’t stop, and don’t fall BEHIND!”
Adrenaline in her veins allowed her to crash through the door with the strength of three stallions and brush off her collision with the brick wall of a bakery shop behind the store with nary a loss in her step as she burst through the twisting alleys, desperate to escape the hell behind her.
Star Shine was never more than four steps behind her.
Hearth’s Warming Eve was a time forever reserved for exclusive consumption of hot chocolate. The cold winter chill, the ever-constant presence of falling snow, and the alluring approach of twilight as the last light of Celestia’s sun faded from the world, all of it combined made for an exemplary sight in the countryside horizon. She would plop herself onto the couch, a steaming mug in her magical grasp and the fleeting kiss of the winter chill slipping through the pane window, and sip at the sweet beverage as she watched the pink sky grow darker and darker as the sun moved about its merry way in the celestial skies above Equestria, losing herself in memories of years past.
A perfect example was last year. The holiday had been spent in Canterlot to attend a royal-sponsored play of the founding of Equestria, with the Princess’s own protégé and her entourage of friends playing the major roles to boot. It had been an excellent performance, one worthy of the harmony and unity of Equestria’s ponies and a testament to Celestia’s impeccable wisdom and guidance. She even got to talk to her for a few minutes! She’d been surprised to find the co-reagent of Equestria a far more laid back pony than her royal title would have suggested. She’d even found a moment to ply a short, amusing prank upon a mildly bickering couple nearby by subtly shifting a sprig of mistletoe onto an overhanging decorative curtain above them, and then loudly suggesting the two “kiss and make up” according to the ancient earth pony tradition of finding oneself and their lover beneath the plant amidst a winter snowfall.
Naturally, it worked to a brilliant T. None could bring themselves to challenge the advice of the Sun, and the two admitted afterwards it had been silly to bring up such a minor conflict at a royal play, of all times. The princess was amused, and perhaps even elated, to see that her teasing had brought about a more joyful ending to the argument than what might have otherwise transpired. And she’d even drawn a passing waitress to her with no less than eight freshly brewed mugs of hot chocolate. It had been among her most treasured moments of the year.
This year, no such extravagant or high class events were sought or wanted. This year, all she wanted was to stay home, enjoy the company of family and friends, and continue her yearly tradition of drinking habits.
A tradition often challenged, unfortunately, by the housecat’s antics.
"Quit it, Sparky," Sling growled at the fourteen-pound, orange-furred feline pouncing at her swishing tail. As cats were wont to do, however, the animal simply ignored her and continued to bat and claw at her tail whenever the mood struck him, which was fairly often.
Could be worse, I guess, she sighed in defeat, this being the third time she’d repeated the command to the same indifferent effect. Could have a hole in the roof, or a—
The mere act of imagining less desirable outcomes seemed to make them become reality rather than wild imaginings. A high-pitched squeal pierced its way through her eardrums from the kitchen, followed very quickly by the sound of a hoof smacking into flesh and bone—
"By Celestia’s mane, wait!" El-Tee’s voice commanded, but the girlish, laughing squeal of her words did not give her words much weight.
"What for?" Windy’s voice countered sweetly. "They’re already done, quit fussing over them and let’s chow down."
An evil thought quickly took hold in her mind, one she was willing to indulge in. "Sparky, go bug El-Tee!" Sling Shot shouted at the cat’s twitching ears, and the massive, bushy-tailed feline did listen to this particular command, darting away from the couch and into the kitchen to begin tormenting his second favorite pony to his heart’s desire. El-Tee’s admonishing cries soon turned into surprised and slightly terrified shouts as the cat’s claws began to find purchase in her mane and coat.
"Ow quit it ow ow ow stoppit—"
Sling Shot filled the living room, and likely the entire house, with an evil, demented cackle befitting an evil and demented sorceress and resumed sipping at her mug of hot cocoa, turning her eyes back to the dwindling pink horizon of the world outside the window and bemoaning its short existence. In a few minutes the pink shade would darken into a lavender underbelly in the dark blue sky, and soon after that the sky itself would become a dark cobalt blue canvas upon which the stars would begin to appear. Contrary to most ponies’ beliefs, Luna did not move and create the stars above, though she had little doubt that the younger alicorn princess often envisioned such abilities in her dreams.
A rapid series of hoofsteps scoffed across the carpeted floor in the living room in the middle of her misty-minded longings, drawing her attention away from the window at last—
—Light Tail’s body was zipping out of the kitchen in a fast-paced backwards run, constantly rising up on her rear legs to bat away the cat’s lunging pounces with her forelegs in a wild display of panic that drew her into a prolonged bout of laughter. Her own daughter, terrified of a cat (admittedly, a fairly big one) and play fighting with it as if her life depended on it? Too much. She had to set her mug down on the coffee table, her hold on her magic was faltering with every passing moment.
Sparky was not about to let his prey (playmate?) escape so quickly. With the speed that only a feline could make look easy, he dashed around her to cut her off from her intended point of escape, and for good measure leapt up and slashed at her hindquarters to make sure she knew it. With a yelp the filly spun around to face her tormentor, her forelegs constantly rising up briefly to ward off potential strikes as the cat lashed out at her in quick swipes. It was much like watching wild deer bicker and fight over a pile of crushed acorns.
Eventually El-Tee began to circle around to her left in short, quick hops, blocking two additional strikes to her chest with her right foreleg, and that was when Sparky decided to start fighting dirty. His next attack was not at her body, but the forelock of her mane, part of which was hung out off to the side of her left eye. The additional fourteen pounds of weight pulling down on her mane brought Light Tail to a halt almost instantly, and within two seconds she’d fallen to the floor, yelping and yelling in pain as the hair was nearly pulled from her crest—
—Sparky’s body quickly bounded around her head to the back of her neck, where he quickly grabbed hold of her with all four legs and began kicking the living daylights out of her with his hind legs, lightly gnawing and swiping at the back of her head at the same time. Light Tail’s resistance faltered quickly.
"Ow ow OW okay okay you win you win stoppit—"
His goal of the moment completed to his satisfaction, Sparky promptly halted his attacks and pattered away on four amused and haughty feet, purring loudly in satisfaction as he made his way towards his favored cushion in the corner of the living room. Light Tail dared to do little more than glare at the retreating cat as she rolled upright onto her belly, tucking three legs in beneath her while her right foreleg went to work dusting off her mane and neck (and probably checking for unintentional cuts or scrapes).
Sling could hardly breathe, she was laughing so hard. She wasn’t even aware of her left foreleg tapping the couch pillow in her aimless, uncontrollable joy. Oh, how she loved to see her night light overpowered by a simple housecat! Particularly given how much pain and effort she endured to birth her into the world! Tears slid across her cheeks as she howled and cackled in her daughter’s general direction, and soon she couldn’t even breathe correctly.
Even Cloud Wind had a chuckle at her expense as she sauntered into the living room with a plate of freshly baked walnut brownies and chocolate chip cookies. This many sweets weren’t the usual after-dinner dessert affair, but Hearth’s Warming Eve was a special night of the year. And the brownies in particular were so very scrumptious looking….
"Wow, he even scratched your butt this time," she snickered, taking more careful steps as she came near El-Tee in the event she decided to lash out at him in vengeance. "My kind of cat."
"Traitor," El-Tee growled back, shifting her body about so that her hindquarters were no longer touching the floor. "Why didn’t you help me out back there?!"
"Hey, I had other things on my mind," she said with a laugh, gingerly stepping past her with care and continuing on to the coffee table, and gently slid the plate off the top of her skull when she reached it three seconds later.
"I swear, you’re only here for the brownies every year," she sneered back, slowly scooting herself across the floor to join the two mares near the table.
"That is not true!" Windy rebuffed with a feigned veil of hurt. "Why, just the other day I was talking with your mom about how awesome it would be if the cat actually knocked you out this year—"
"And did you two even clean up in here?!" the child continued to ramble, as if purposefully ignoring the pegasus as her forelegs began to swipe at the scattered pieces of paper wrapping and empty cardboard boxes strewn about the living room. "And you whine to me about my room?!"
With her daughter’s attention more focused on chewing out her mother and friend rather than keeping an eye on her plate of baked goods, both Sling and Windy took the opportunity to lift a brownie off the top of the pile. The mere presence of Sling’s magic encompassing the snack drew Light Tail’s attention back to the table, but by then it was already too late to stop it—Sling merely floated it back into her eagerly-waiting maw and bit half the brownie off in a single gulp.
"Hey!" the filly protested loudly as the mares quickly scarfed down their first treat. "Just once, could you guys wait a minute, is that so hard!?"
"Oh dear Celestia, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been asked to do," Windy answered promptly, even going so far as to snap her jaws down on a cookie at the edge of the plate and slurping it up in a single movement. "Seriously, I struggled for all of like, twenty seconds just carrying the plate. You’re lucky it made it here at all."
"And you bake an absolutely sublime layer of fudge on these things," Sling added, just before she broke off another quarter-piece from her brownie and swallowed it. "I swear it’s almost like some thick chocolate milk you slathered on. The walnuts are rather crunchy this year too. I still think you should’ve gotten a cooking cutie mark by now."
Seeing the folly of further arguing on a day that was supposed to celebrate the unity and harmony of Equestria’s ponies, Light Tail finally gave up and allowed her head to slump onto the coffee table as she mindlessly levitated a brownie towards her. "I think you only get those for a talent you’re naturally good at. It took me a year just to stop burning stuff in the oven."
The last piece of Sling’s brownie popped into her mouth as she mulled over the squirt’s words of wisdom. It wasn’t exactly a secret, per se, but fillies and colts were not among the most patient of life forms in Equestria. Desperate to find a part of themselves unique from everypony else, they would often destroy entire swaths of ponies’ sanity and patience trying to find it. It took time for the message to sink in and calm them down, and by then many had already discovered their latent special talents.
"You’ll find your niche someday," she promised her offspring when she’d consumed the last of her brownie into her stomach. "But there’s nothing wrong with getting good at other pursuits in life. Some ponies have even gotten their cutie marks that way, by finding their special talent while they were trying out something completely different."
Light Tail’s answer was delayed considerably by the baked brownie she was chewing on, and whatever she’d intended to say in response was never uttered. By the time she’d swallowed her bite, Sparky had gotten bored with lying about on his cushion and began prowling about the living room. He first leapt up onto the back of the couch where he could then step onto the windowsill and block Sling’s view of the fading twilight’s glow upon the flat countryside, but he never intended to stay there. Instead he began to climb up the window drapes, which somehow managed to shrug off the weight of a fourteen-pound cat sinking its claws into the fabric. His ultimate goal was quickly determined to be a length of overhanging tinsel that stretched from above the window to the other end of the living room—
He reached the top of the drapes and leapt onto the length of tinsel, and despite the size and weight of the animal he never lost his footing, nor did the nails give way or the tinsel itself snap beneath him. For all intents and purposes, the housecat was now essentially tightrope walking across the living room.
Try as she might to find the scene before her physically impossible, all she could scrounge up in response was laughter as she watched the feline slowly inch his way across the room above them, his wide eyes taking in the ponies below them as though he were sizing them up for a potential attack. When he was directly above them he stopped, his attention drawn to a pile of shredded wrapping piled up inside a box near the couch—
"Watch out sports fans, this kitty’s all riled up!" Windy’s voice laughed heartily—
—the cat indulged in his curiosity and leapt off the length of tinsel, directly into the box beneath him, and the resounding WHUMP! of his landing sent the shredded contents flittering out in just about every direction. Their motions in the air also caught his attention, as within a split second of landing in the box he jumped right back out, pouncing upon the closest piece of paper he could find.
The comical sight was too much. Her lungs began to bellow with laughter so intense that tears were streaming from her eyes, and she slid them shut to stem the salty flow down her cheeks—
—the room temperature shifted southward in an instant, shocking her senses into full clarity and causing her eyes to snap open to a pitch-black room. The warmth of a running fireplace was replaced by the hugging touch of multiple sheets of thick comforters layered atop her, her forelegs hugging a small, warm package to her chest….
…and she was still laughing at the dream.
A dream. Just a dream….
The small package in her grasp shifted about for a moment, and a flood of dim light from her bed stand’s lamp flashed onto the bed—
Light Tail’s eyes shut her laughing down with one clear look of fear and worry. The squirt seemed almost…afraid….
"….Mom, are you okay?"
Sling Shot had to forcibly shift her focus onto the present rather than the dead dream world she’d just left, though she couldn’t help but marvel at how much more appropriate it would have been to have this little scene play out in Equestria proper and not the cold, sterile Stable they called home. Her short, tiny legs hugged the white fox plush to her even in her sleepy state of concern for her only known parent, and she had to pin the plush’s head down beneath her own just to be able to see past it.
A brief shower of sadness came over her, and she quickly tightened her sleepy hug on her offspring in the hope that the contact would lull both of them back to sleep. "….just a dream, honey."
El-Tee, however, refused to do anything but what she wanted. She began to push back against the hug, trying to free herself from her mother’s emotional reach. "No, seriously, Mom, what’s wrong? It’s almost eight-thirty in the morning, I’ve been awake for the last five minutes and you wake up laughing. That’s not normal."
Sling’s face hardened with worry as her eyes began to search about the dimly-lit bed for the clock mounted on the far wall, and sure enough the ticking hands of the device bore forth the time of the day at around 8:27, with the second hand quickly clicking towards the bold-faced 12 at the top. The rest of her body chose that moment to begin assailing her brain with intense feelings of laden weight and tension in her muscles, even down to her rump and underbelly. Her attempts to work the stressful aches out of her hind legs failed miserably as she was barely able to even move them, so tired and unresponsive that they simply laid still.
"I was serious," she sighed back into her pillows, closing her eyes. "Just a dream."
"And were you laughing in this dream too?"
"Actually, yes," she responded with pointed pride. "Yes, I was. And if you’ll let me go back to sleep I might get to go back…"
"Dreams don’t work that way, Mom.
"….you’re such a killjoy."
El-Tee’s body finally wriggled free from her mother’s forelegs, though the bed merely shifted a half inch away from her as the filly rolled herself onto her belly. "So what kind of dream was it? Must’ve been awesome if ya woke up laughin’. I wanna know what it was!"
Two days ago I was freaking out about brain damage, and today she’s back to her inquisitive and boisterous self, she mulled silently to herself in relief. Most mornings, she would’ve fought and protested every effort by her daughter to rouse her from bed.
Today was not one of those days.
"I was dreaming about Equestria That Was," she replied with a wistful sigh, rolling off of her side and pulling her head away from her cozy pillows. "Hearth’s Warming Eve."
"No way!" El-Tee balked with disbelief. "Nopony even knows what the old world looked like, except for all those ancient photos the First Ones brought to the Stable with them."
A brief shake of her head flung her mane back behind her ears, though she could feel the hairs standing out and curling about in some of the strangest ways. Gonna have to fix that. "Yes, but so many books in our library are so descriptive, so….so mesmerizing at times, at the way the authors describe the world they’re writing about. You can get lost in it, see it take shape in your mind, and you see that world instead of the pages that it exists on. You read those three Daring Do books so much I thought you might’ve known that by now."
"I do, actually, but Daring Do is different! She’s awesome, she’s brave, she’s smart and pretty, and she always finds a way to get things done even when it looks hopeless! How could anypony not imagine that in their head?!"
The hero worship is almost cute. "And if you’d bothered to read any of the old world adventurers’ memoirs we have in the library, you’d find one thing they all have in common between them. Something even Daring is drawn to."
"The adventure?!" the pipsqueak answered immediately, her body beginning to get caught up in her swirling emotions as she began to act out her very words. "The thrill of danger at every turn?! The priceless rush of discovering some ancient and lost artifact from the times before them?! The adrenaline rush as their wits and quick-thinking see them through things nopony thought they could handle—"
Sling couldn’t help but chuckle when Light Tail’s forelegs reached up in front of her as she spoke, as if to grab hold of an object in front of her, and then jumped forward, swinging the back half of her body outward to mimic the act of swinging from a rope or thick jungle vine, and plopped down on the other end of the bed with the flair and grace of a three legged pony. "All common traits of the classic adventurer stereotype, but no," the mother replied, quieting her laughter as she shifted her body about to face the filly and displacing the comforters over her body. "Sit still and close your eyes, I’ll demonstrate."
"….how can you demonstrate somethin’ if I can’t see it?" the little one asked, one eye curling up in confusion.
"Just close your eyes," she insisted gently. "Clear your head, blank slate. Shouldn’t be that hard considering all the notes Amethyst sends me about your daydreaming in class."
Light Tail’s throat grumbled darkly at the cheap shot to her attention span, but did as she was told without any further protests or stalling.
"Now then," she began, following suit and closing her own eyes to better focus her attention to the task at hand. "You’re in a wheat field—"
The filly’s snickering broke up her thoughts before she could get going. "Hehehe, Haystack’s really behind on his wheat crop this season—"
"Focus!" she barked back sharply, and the snickering halted. "You’re in a wheat field, stretching out across the land as far as you can see. It’s winter, and the chill in the air caresses your coat and bites into your skin. Princess Celestia’s sun is arcing down across the sky towards the horizon. A breeze of wind brushes against you, and it tickles, but Celestia’s sun warms you right back…."
And oh gods I’m good at this, she didn’t say out loud, as she found the pitch black of her closed eyes slowing morphing into life—row after endless row of wheat stalks began to take shape in front of her, swaying about slightly against that breeze she’d just mentioned, and a bright, blue sky littered with patches of white clouds spread out above her—
"The sky is like water, bright, blue and clear, and puffs of white clouds stick out like marshmallows. The air is so quiet around you that you can hear all the wheat stalks rattling in the wind—"
—her hearing was the next sense to be affected, as she began to hear those endless golden rows flitter and crinkle in the wind she’d made up—
"The harvest is close, you can smell it from the stalks shoving their way into your nose—"
—and though she’d never once in her life smelled what organically grown wheat smelled like, her sense of smell began to simulate something to that effect, but couldn’t for the life of her describe it. She didn’t even know what it was supposed to smell like to start with.
A tear began to creep through her closed left eyelid, but she ignored it and pushed onward. "You stand there and just soak it all in. The skies, the sun, the wind, the wheat, even the clouds. You just stand there and watch it all."
A soft, exhaled gasp briefly broke up the auditory half of her illusion, but despite the disruption, she smiled.
"Now you’re at home, on your couch and staring out the window. It’s the hour of twilight, and the sky is dark. At the horizon, Celestia’s sun has turned red as it sinks down below the horizon for the coming of the night. The sky around the orb is orange, but beyond that it grows pink, and further out than that it’s a dark blue, like Princess Luna’s coat. The night sky seems to be chasing the sun away to make room for the moon."
And as quickly as she was speaking it, the illusion before her shifted in appearance, returning her to that darkening sky and the fireplace-warmed living room she’d been dreaming about minutes earlier, that cup of hot coffee swirling up into her nose—
"You have a porcelain mug in the grasp of your magic," she added, ignoring the second tear to flow from her closed eyes. "It’s close, so close you could just lap your tongue out and lick it up, and the sweet, sugary smell of hot chocolate flows into your nose. A fresh flame in your fireplace envelopes the room, basking you in its heat—"
Another outside noise interrupted her hearing, this time one of a contented and bewildered moan—
"Celestia’s sun finally vanishes. The tip seems to burrow into the horizon, and that orange hue starts to fade, as if the warmth of the sun itself is leaving the sky. It grows to a cool pink, and the pink beyond dies down into a cold cobalt shade. Directly above you, the stars begin to emerge, dim specks peppering the dark with an entirely different kind of life. Before long, the horizon on the countryside fades away to the night, and the sky begins to lighten up with a thousand tiny sparks—"
In her vision, the sky followed her words, transforming into a blanket of star-studded cobalt blue, as if Luna herself was tucking in all of Equestria for a night of well-deserved rest—
This time, the tears were welcomed. "The wheat field outside your house begins to glow with a pale white, and your eyes are drawn up. Luna’s moon is settling into the sky to your right, and a halo of light flows around it, like a magnifying lens, shining down on the land and basking it in a dim glow that matches the moon—"
She was barely aware of her horn flaring to life, the flow of magic filtering through like a trickle of warm water as it felt the need to directly simulate the necessary light for the illusion to have its most dramatic and realistic effect. But the end result was breathtaking. Luna’s moon, in her vision, began to radiate with that pale, white light, the kind of light a pony could look at without hurting themselves, and soon enough the imaginary wheat field outside her imaginary window glowed with that same light—
"If you were outside, you could almost feel the moonlight’s cool, refreshing touch upon your coat. The moon seems intent to show beauty and majesty, of both itself and all the lands of Equestria and beyond. To shine a new light on ponies’ lives, a side of themselves they wouldn’t see in the sun. In the sunlight you can see every detail in all its physical beauty, but in the moonlight you can see past it, see the sweat and tears of your hard work that are dried up by the sun. In the moonlight, you can see yourself."
No outside sounds this time. No nothing, in fact. Both of them were lost in their own separate visions.
"You stare out at your field, and the far away fields of your neighbors, and you can feel a sense of balance and harmony between all the fields of the prairie. You feel a unity of peace you can’t describe, and so you just sit on your couch, with that sweet cup of hot chocolate, and stare at the night sky until you’ve sipped the last of the cocoa, its warmth having faded into a watery coolness long ago.
"You let the cup settle down on a table, and cover yourself with a worn, thick blanket. The fleece enhances the heat from the fireplace, and you snuggle into the couch. Luna’s moon shines its light into the living room, lulling you into a well-deserved rest for a day’s hard work. The light is Luna’s promise that no harm will come to her little ponies as they sleep. Her moon is her vigil, its light her shield. You sleep soundly, secure in the thought that you will see the night again…."
The vision began to darken once more. The roaring fireplace, the couch, the empty cup on the coffee table all gave way to the oblivion of darkness….
"….and then you wake up."
With the illusion having run its course, Sling Shot opened her eyes once again, and had the fortune to be staring directly at her little girl as she too was roused from the grips of her imagination…
…and the bewildered stare of wonder in her eyes warmed her insides better than any cup of hot chocolate ever could. The thing was too lost for words right away, but managed enough thought to utter something after a few seconds of staring at her mom with her jaw hanging low.
"….wow….that was just…I never felt anythin’ like that before."
That warmth in her body spread out to her smile as she finally found the strength she needed to get out of bed. "And that, dear, is the thrill that every adventurer strives for."
“You can’t do this.”
The Overmare’s voice sighed, already exhausted from this short argument. “I can, and I have. And as I recall, she quit her assigned job on account of knowing you were never going to allow her out of the gun cage after how she handled Socket.”
Farsight’s face furrowed with silent rage—how he kept it from showing in his voice was beyond her, because she was certain he was absolutely seething at how things were playing out around him. “We do not reward insubordination and callous disregard for a pony’s state of being! She should be disciplined and punished according to our very laws and regulations! You’re the Overmare, for Celestia’s sake—
Mistake, Cloud Wind noted, quietly stepping away from the desk now that he’d made the error. She wanted some distance from what was about to follow.
“That’s right, I’m the Overmare, not you,” the mare’s voice on the other end of the intercom reminded him sharply, dropping all further attempts at politeness and courtesy. “I have decided that in light of her resignation, the manner in which she delivered it to you is conduct unfitting of a security pony and would be grounds for removal from the department regardless. I have also watched nearly everypony she ever knew and trusted turn on her when she was stupid enough to get knocked up at fifteen instead of helping and supporting her. I have kept tabs on how her talents and abilities were utilized within your department and found her time to be grossly wasted on tasks that several of your other subordinates could learn to carry out in-between their patrols. I have found records detailing no less than five submissions on the mainframe from her terminal in the armory requesting to be allowed to assume patrol and security duties of her own when her primary work was completed, and I have found no less than five refusals to such requests from your terminal in your office admonishing her to ‘learn some responsibility first’. Am I missing anything else?”
Farsight’s body trembled slightly behind his desk, his colossal efforts to contain his rage beginning to fail. But still he held his ground, and (perhaps wisely) kept any words he might’ve wanted to shout back in check.
“Between her estrangement from the Stable population and your squirreling her away behind a locked cage for most of her career, quite frankly I’m surprised she didn’t snap sooner. My decision stands. She is re-assigned to the library as Parchment’s assistant and subordinate, and I’ll chalk up her unusual behavior to the stress of over ten years of having everypony accuse her of spreading her legs for a living. Her security clearance was revoked yesterday afternoon, if that makes you feel any better. Compulsory counseling for her anger management issues may be forthcoming if these outbursts prove to be just the first of many, but for now I’m simply hoping that a change in occupation will give her the stress relief she needs. Now stop wasting my time and get back to work, we still have an infestation to clear out and I’m seriously considering a mandatory lockdown by fifteen hundred hours if you can’t give me a solid confirmation that we’re out of danger.”
The intercom crackled off with a sizzling hiss, and it took all of Farsight’s willpower to not transmit the entirety of his rage and embarrassment towards the lone pegasus in front of him. “You’d better have some damn good news for me.”
I am so kicking Sling’s ass the next time I see her. If she hadn’t up and quit on him like she had, these last two days would have gone so much smoother on the pegasus. Without being able to take out his frustration on the unicorn in question, however, he’d settled his rage on the next closest (and in his eyes, responsible) pony to pay for her transgressions.
Her only friend.
“Maintenance is still in shock over Hacket Wrench’s death,” she reported flatly, keeping as much of a neutral tone as possible. Today was not the time to be her usual “bite-back” self. “Particularly after Torque found what was left of him in the vents on level fifteen. I don’t think she’s up to the task of heading her department even if it’s just temporary, maybe Spanner or Sledge sho—“
“Torque’s gonna have to suck it up,” Farsight shot back, turning his attention to a small pile of papers scattered across his desk. “I want to know if they’re any closer to clearing the infestation.”
“They’re working on it—“
Bad thing to say to an impatient and ill-tempered stallion. “They’ve been ‘working on it’ since Monday, they need to work faster!” he roared across the room in fury. “They’re not being paid by the hour!”
“They only have six ponies small enough to fit into the vents and air ducts, and they won’t go in without a security escort,” she countered calmly. Oh ever so calmly. Must not shout, must not yell. “And only four ponies in security are small enough to go in with them. This isn’t a simple process either, it’s slow work and we’ve never had an infestation this bad in the Stable’s history.”
As she expected, her attempts to rationally and logically point out the problems they were encountering in their clean-up fell on mostly deaf ears. “Get back down there and tell the ten that can fit in the vents to start working by themselves. If they split off and put two each to the last five levels we need to search we can finish this up before noon.”
He can’t be serious! “Chief, that puts all of ten of them at incredible risk—“
Farsight had finally had enough of bottling his frustration at the way things had been going down around him, and began to channel it into his voice as he cut her off. “This entire Stable is at risk and I’m done with everypony’s BS! If I didn’t need you you’d have joined your whore of a lover out the door, and you still might if you don’t get to work and get a handle on these damn bugs right now!!”
It took every ounce of her remaining self-control to not leap at him from the other side of the room and do what Sling Shot should have done the other day, even though she knew she would end up regretting it later. But standing in front of the jackass as he slandered her sexual orientation and that of her friend’s in the middle of a security crisis, it was so very, very difficult to want to do anything but drill out the middle of his desk with his own skull.
So she simply turned and quickly saw herself out of his hateful gaze, into the hallway, where she was free to finally let a little bit of anger loose when she saw Lavender and Sunflower waiting for her right beside the door.
“….how’d it go?” Lavender asked meekly, recoiling slightly as the pegasus’s gaze fell upon her.
“How do you think?” Cloud Wind hissed back, stomping past the pastel purple mare as she fell into a quick jog for the elevator at the back end of the level. “He wants our ten tunnel rats to split up and work alone just to keep from being the first security chief in seventy years to have to oversee a Stable-wide lockdown. That idiot’s too pissed at Sling to see the danger he’s putting them in!”
“Some friend, hunh?” Sunflower’s mouth blurted without thinking, and Cloud Wind felt her legs go stiff as she turned her head back to face the pale gold-coated pony in a new, darker light.
“What the hell did you just say to me!?” she snapped at the blubber-mouthed mare, who only now realized the stupidity of what she’d just said.
“…w-wait, forget I said anything, I’m sorry—“
No. No more of this bullshit! “Like hell I’m going to forget!” she hissed quietly, trying her best despite her bubbling anger to keep from drawing a bigger scene through heightened shouting. “You just proved why she quit in the first place, you all treat her like shit to be scrapped off of your hooves!!”
“Well, can you blame anypony?! Whoring around and foaling before she turned sixteen, and then up and quitting on us in the middle of the largest radroach outbreak we’ve seen in a century when we need everypony at their posts the most?! How is that closet nympho still your friend after that?!”
Her anger was subsided—briefly—by Sunflower’s sharp, biting criticism, and even Lavender seemed taken aback by her barbs. “…Sunny, that’s cold, even for you…”
“That “closet nympho” is a better friend to me than you’ve ever been,” Cloud Wind fired back once her fury had returned to her. “And she wasn’t the only one getting some on the side. We all know it.”
“This isn’t about us!” Sunflower bit back sharply, her ears flattening backward in anger. “It’s about our responsibility to the Stable and our duty as security ponies to protect our own and she has never had the stones for this line of work! Why do you think she was stuck with gun cage duty all the time?! She choked and locked herself in her quarters for a month the last time we had an outbreak, or don’t you remember that?!”
“I remember Farsight taking her keys to the armory and locking her in before the rest of us went bug hunting! I remember running my rifle down to two rounds from the forty-nine I had left when we went back to check on her!”
“And do you remember what she did when we broke her out?! She bolted out like a terrified little filly—“
“And ran straight into what was left of Kickstart’s son in the northwest corner of L5!!” she finished for her, to try and drive into this thick, broadsided mare’s skull exactly what that little discovery had done to her friend. “You know, the corner you were supposed to sweep and clear for stray ponies before you joined us in the agri levels?! The corner Sling could have covered for us if she’d been allowed out of the damn armory to begin with?! You remember all the blood we had to scrub off the walls?! You remember how Kickstart cried herself hoarse and near-to-death when we had to break it to her?! You remember why she got she fired from security and is on constant suicide watch even today?!”
Sunflower’s ears stopped flaring back, and began to droop downward in despair. “….he wasn’t even supposed to be there…”
“That’s why we check our patrol coverage areas!” the pegasus continued to tear into her verbal sparring opponent. “To make sure ponies are not in places they aren’t supposed to be in! If you’re going to slam somepony about responsibility you ought to learn some of it yourself! Sling’s only thought after being locked up and stripped of weapons by her boss, nearly swarmed by flesh-eating mutant insects, and falling into an eviscerated colt was to make sure her own daughter hadn’t suffered the same way! She has raised that kid by herself for the squirt’s entire life without complaint! And the worst part of it all is that she tears herself up over Hoofprint and she wasn’t even the one who screwed up! You did!”
By the time she’d run out of breath with her quiet screaming, Sunflower had succumbed to her own shame and guilt, falling onto the floor and breaking out into quiet, gasping sobs. “H….he wasn’t supposed to be there….”
Cloud Wind had not finished with her, but before she could go any further Lavender’s body had made its way between her and the emotionally-broken unicorn, settling a harsh (yet slightly pitied) glare on the raging pegasus. “That’s enough,” the pastel purple mare commanded of her superior. “Or did you forget that we still have a job to do?!”
For the second time this week, Cloud Wind felt a rush of warm blood flow into her cheeks at how quickly she had tossed aside her own duties at the drop of an insult towards her closest friend, and her large reservoir of anger faded back into obscurity.
Is there anypony in security that’s actually fit for the job anymore?
Part of her told her an apology was in order—right or not, she’d gone too far, and it wasn’t supposed to have gotten so out of hand in the first place. And yet she was too ashamed of herself to even contemplate it on a serious level right then.
So the job would become her escape. As usual.
“….get back to L11, see how the sweep is going,” she heard herself say calmly and coolly, as though the last two minutes of her life had not even occurred. “And whatever the chief tells you do not split anypony up to make things go faster. Losing Hacket was bad enough, I don’t wanna see anypony else go before their time. Got it?”
“We’ll get down there as soon as I can get your mess here cleaned up,” Lavender responded coldly, turning her back to the pegasus as she lay down in front of Sunflower. “Maybe you should get going before you say anything else you’ll regret later.”
Cloud Wind was too fed up with herself to bother snapping back at her. She just did exactly as suggested, and left via the quickest manner possible—back towards the elevator at the far back end of the floor, and she barely remembered tapping the button for the fourth floor. She was too distracted by her thoughts and self-pity to care. Five days of twelve-hour shifts with little rest, constant readiness drills and spot checks of air ventilation ducts, hundreds of ponyhours of work meticulously securing each duct, vent, and maintenance tunnel, and what did they have to show for all their efforts to secure the Stable? Hacket dead, Sling on the verge of a mental breakdown, a security chief that was already there, a hundred dead bugs, untold numbers more still in the dark waiting to swarm again and no guarantee they could even find all the nests in time to stop the next outbreak.
This week has been pure shit…
The elevator pinged to a stop the instant the thought came to mind, and Cloud Wind’s musings came to a halt as she galloped out onto the fourth floor. Having memorized the path so many years ago, it had come as something of a natural response anytime things with the chief started getting heavier than she could deal with.
Go straight to his boss. And everyone’s boss, in a sense. The Overmare’s office sat in a corner, at the back end of the floor, which allowed for a more defensible position in the event of an outside invasion or an internal insurrection. And at the moment, it also imparted an overwhelmingly comforting sense of isolation from the rest of the Stable proper, from all the stress and exhaustions of the day. In that office, the familiar hazy cloud of uncertainty and worry was washed away.
She could almost feel like herself again.
As she was wont to do when she was pressed for time, she simply tapped the door open with a push of her snout against the controls and strolled right on through without waiting to be invited in. Fortunately, the Overmare was not a particularly busy pony every day of the week, and had apparently been lounging about on her office couch on her back when Cloud Wind had chosen to pay her a visit.
And when Cloud Wind paid a visit, there was usually only one topic that was ever discussed.
“….oh, in the name of Celestia what’s your problem this time?” the Overmare muttered bitterly at having her R&R time interrupted. “I just talked to him, I know he’s angry—“
“He’s not thinking rationally,” Cloud Wind answered immediately, wanting to get this unpleasant business over with. She’d never quite brought up a complaint this serious before…and if it backfired she probably would end up fired and re-assigned to janitor detail for the rest of her natural days. “He just ordered me to split up the ten ponies on our sweep team clearing the Stable of radroach nests. Two per floor for the last five levels we’ve still got to search, and he specifically told me that if they worked by themselves they could finish the search before noon.”
This got the Overmare’s attention. She quickly rolled herself over in the couch until she was back upright with her legs back beneath her body, her disappointment replaced with worry and concern. “….that’s insane, that would leave them dangerously alone in extremely cramped conditions if they run into trouble in those vents. He made those safety protocols after the last outbreak, for Luna’s sake. He can’t be that upset at Sling Shot.”
“I doubt that she’s the sole stress factor, even if he won’t stop screaming about her and her “whoring” ways. He lost Hacket on his watch, we’re in the worst radroach outbreak we’ve seen in the Stable’s history, and now you’ve told him you may be implementing the first mandatory security lockdown in seven decades and he’ll have to oversee it if it comes to it. His efforts to try and keep from bullying ponies into their quarters may just end up getting some of them killed.”
“….that again,” the Overmare mumbled softly, mostly to herself.
“I know it’s not pleasant, but it’s better than speeding up our sweep and risking us missing a nest—“
“I meant Bookie,” the earth pony mare corrected quickly, raising her head up from the cushion it had been resting on moments earlier. “Gods alive, it was just one night with her coltfriend from school, and we all know she wasn’t the only one in class doing it! How did everypony end up thinking she’s some kind of…prostitute?! I don’t think she’s touched anypony ever since she got pregnant! And it’s not like the kid’s doing that much damage, if anything she could be the youngest filly to ever take the G.O.A.T. exam if Amethyst’s reports are even halfway true. What happened here? Who started it?!”
“I couldn’t tell you that,” Windy replied, slightly confused as to the sudden change of topic. And on the use of Sling’s old nickname, to boot. She didn’t think anypony else even remembered her real name anymore. “That’s something she won’t tell even to me. And her parents have been virtually silent anytime their own daughter’s name comes up. It’s like she’s dead to them.”
The Overmare’s face kept its collected calm, unwavering and unflinching even in the midst of such an emotive subject. “….I’m beginning to have my doubts about initiating Selection. If this Stable of ponies is the best we can do after two centuries, then maybe we need to decide if we deserve to re-join the surface at all.”
Before today, Cloud Wind would have been horrified sick to hear the Overmare say anything of the sort. Before today, she would have physically recoiled from her, desperate to escape the range of her poisonous voice and spread the word to the Stable at large that their futures were not quite as secure as they’d thought.
Before today, she’d never been called a whoring lesbian to her face, either.
So all she could think to ask, was….
“Why, then?” she dared to ponder aloud. “Why did you start a generational tradition twenty-odd years early? What do you know that the rest of us don’t?”
“I explained that Monday evening when I made the announcement,” the Overmare rebuffed quickly. “We have the supplies to last now, but thirty years in the future that could be a different story. The sooner we find out what happened to the world above, the sooner we can we start planning about our Stable’s future. But I’m wondering now if we’d just re-introduce the same poison that killed Equestria That Was if we left.”
“What, the arcane-powered technology that gave us the megaspells and the spark generators?”
“That would’ve come in time no matter what. I’m talking about us. We used to live in harmony with each other. Now we can’t even go a week without breaking down into heated arguments with each other. Living with others is not easy, but we never killed. We never sold ourselves for a price, we never intentionally hurt others out of rage and hate, or for our own sick and twisted pleasures. We were never this…this ugly, inside. What happened to us?”
….wow, that was actually a good question, Cloud Wind had to admit after she’d taken a few seconds to try and find a quick response, and found herself wanting. A good, deep question. What happened indeed…
“If we knew the answer, our ancestors wouldn’t have spent the last two centuries living in a fallout shelter, would they?”
Now the Overmare’s face finally began to crack apart, her eyes softening and furrowing into a wistful, sad stare. “….no, I suppose not….go on back to work, forget whatever the chief told you, just make sure we don’t lose anoth—“
The room was plunged into a darkness of endless oblivion before she could finish, the steady hum of the environmental unit dying down into silence alongside it. In its place, a dull red haze of light began to brighten up the room, but it did little to ease either of their fears.
If anything, they only felt worse.
“….oh shit, the emergency lighting this time, not the back-ups….”
They’d barely finished breakfast when darkness claimed the room for itself. The alluring touch of the light was extinguished, plunging both freshly-washed ponies into momentary blindness.
“…..oh, wonderful,” Light Tail’s voice quipped dryly. “Because once this week was just not enough to scare the hair off a pony’s tail.”
“Twice, actually,” Sling amended politely, tendrils of magic already coming alive within her horn and coalescing into the tip in a concentration of energy. “The second time was the morning you got hurt. The bugs came out not long after.”
“….oh….”
When the last of the needed mana had been compacted into the tip of her horn, she turned her mental focus into bringing the spell to life, packing it into a perfect sphere and allowing it to activate at about two-thirds of its normal power. The washroom interior soon lit up with the bright white glow of her illumination spell, spilling its reach outward until it touched upon the couch in the living room.
“Might as well settle in and find a book or something,” she sighed disappointedly. “We could be in here awhile.”
She needn’t have bothered with the suggestion—Light Tail had already hopped off of her chair and quickly trotted over to the bookcase in the living, stopping only long enough to rear up on her hind legs and pull her desired tome from the shelf with her teeth before continuing on to her favored nesting spot on the couch. “At least we got light. Hard to read in the dark—“
The filly’s words stopped mid-sentence as she flipped the book open to where the bookmark had been set, her eyes beginning to stare into the pages in relief rather than anticipation. “…..aaah, right where I left off Wednesday afternoon, I think. Guess I didn’t get through twenty-seven after all.”
That’s a rather odd reaction to a bookmark reminder. “And you’re relieved…why?”
“’Cause I was afraid I’d actually read through it and didn’t remember, just like everything else about Wednesday night and Thursday morning,” she sighed as her eyes began to flitter back and forth, dancing across the words in the pages. “Kinda comforting to find something right where I last remember leaving it. Is this memory loss gonna be permanent?”
“….probably,” Sling decided to reply after a brief pause, her eyes scouring the ceiling vents for signs of loose screws or slightly jostled gratings. Something that she neglected to do Thursday morning, thinking they were fine as they were. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice. “It’s possible you might start to recall some pieces here and there, but most of it is probably gone for good.”
“….great,” the little one huffed back, torn between her own lingering despair over her memory gap and her desire to escape it by diving into the book’s pages. “’Cause now I’m kinda hopin’ I might remember why Jam was in the washroom on our side instead of hers Wednesday night. I get this ugly feeling in my gut that it’s something important, but I can’t remember! I hate bugs!”
“Join the club, squirt,” Sling muttered back absently, that cold, creepy itch beginning to seep through her spine again. While the vent gratings were well and truly secured, she couldn’t help but notice that the back-up system for the lights still hadn’t kicked in, even after thirty seconds. They remained dark and lifeless, with no hint as to why they were refusing to even sparkle dimly as they normally did on back-up power.
Her half-hearted comment didn’t go unnoticed…and neither did her observation of the lights. Within a few moments, Light Tail had taken her attention away from The Mare of the Everfree to see what it was that had her mother’s attention, and it didn’t take her very long to reach the same conclusion. “….shouldn’t the back-up systems have kicked in by now?”
By Luna’s moon, why does she have to be so smart all the time?! “Power’s been a pain all week,” she tried to lie, knowing it was likely for naught but hoping it might work anyway. “The back-up system’s been turned on twice this week, it might just be taking longer to kick in this time.”
“….mom, the back-ups are charged by the generator,” the filly replied with a touch of nervousness. “Even I know that.”
Left with no other plausible excuses for why the back-up lighting had failed to work as designed, Sling could only watch on in growing horror as another sign of foreboding doom began to appear. The innocuous oval-shaped light bulbs imbedded along the top of the ceiling began to glow red, quickly bathing the room in a terrifying crimson and bleeding into the natural white light of her hovering illumination spell. Her legs began to feel like icicles, her brain no longer capable of assuring itself that everything would be all right in the end.
“….oh shi—“ she almost squeaked, catching her tongue at the last moment before the curse could be completed. “….the tertiary lights…”
The red lights began to pulse, growing brightest at the top of their rhythm before fading backwards into a dim glow and then repeating the cycle in a four-second cycle.
Very, very bad news. And her night light was observant enough of her mother’s reaction to realize just how bad it was.
“….m-mom, what are we supposed to do?” Light Tail stammered, shutting her book and sliding off the couch. “W-we never talked about this…”
What are we supposed to do? Sling repeated the question to herself, finding some small comfort and certainty of self in having to focus on the request. First off….
“…come with me,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel, quickly trotting back towards her room and now thanking herself for leaving the door open. Light Tail’s tiny hoofsteps were much easier to pick out behind her now that the environmental systems weren’t running, softly compressing the carpet beneath her with each hurried movement. She pulled her illumination spell along with them, tugging it with a mindlessly chanted telekinesis spell and throwing it out ahead of her until it illuminated the entirety of her room.
She spotted her set of saddlebags piled against the far right corner just after passing through the doorway and, uttering a silent rebuke at herself for praying she’d never need them in the first place, began to pull them towards her with a pull of her magic.
“Come on up here and stand still for a minute,” she said, taking extra careful note not to accidently swing the barrel of the holstered revolvers anywhere near herself or El-Tee. “This may be a little heavy.”
El-Tee’s body, which had been moving along at a consistent pace, stopped dead-still two feet in front of her when her eyes fell upon the massive frame of Grayhawk resting in its holster and began to back away from the saddlebags. “W-whoa whoa Mom wait a tic, what are you doing?!”
“Just stay still,” she pleaded in vain, separating her saddlebags from her child’s and slowly floating the smaller set out towards the filly.
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing!” El-Tee screeched back, quickening her retreat from the saddlebags and their holstered sidearms. “It looks like you’re planning on leaving the Stable!!”
Frag me, how does she do this?! “I just want us to be prepared if we have to!” she shouted back, fighting back her own fear to avoid scaring her child any more than she already had. “I didn’t say anything about that being my first choice!”
“But you’ve thought enough about it to have this stuff ready ahead of time!” Light Tail continued to protest. Having run out of room to retreat, she began to resort to physically pushing the saddlebags away from her with her forelegs each time they drew close to her. “I know you hate it down here sometimes but this is ridiculous—“
The unspoken accusation cut through her wavering calm and began to sting her in ways she’d never thought her daughter could inflict upon her. “I never planned on leaving!!” she screamed in a burst of anger. “I don’t hate it here, I hate all the stupid ponies around me that cut me off from them for something that happened eleven years ago!!”
Her brief snit fit made it hard for her to feel sorry for being so hateful towards her little girl, and she would count herself forever lucky that Light Tail didn’t seem to take much offense over it. “Does it have anything to do with what Sun Star said to me last week? When he followed me all the way to the filly’s room and roughed me up and called me a mistake? Said somethin’ about you being a slut and a dirty whore? ‘Cause I’m gettin’ this ugly feelin’ this is a conversation we’ve had before and I don’t remember it.”
Sling’s hate crashed in an instant, overwhelmed with flashbacks of the last conversation they’d had on the subject Thursday morning and her fervent belief that it would be something they wouldn’t go through ever again. She was growing torn between bawling her eyes out and trying to find some way out of this mess that didn’t involve transmitting over a decade’s worth of bottled emotions onto a filly that hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve any of it.
“….I….I’m sorry,” she gasped through a choked sob. “I’m sorry you had to hear that…..but this isn’t—“
“It is,” the stern-faced filly snapped back, taking an unusually combative approach. “It is the time, and it is my business. Sun Star didn’t come up with those things, he’s just repeatin’ whatever he’s heard grown-up ponies call you to your face or behind your back. And I bet it’s gotten so bad that you packed these things for us so that we could leave if the chance ever came up, even if you don’t know it yet.”
Why, Luna? she cried to herself, staring down at her daughter through slightly blurry eyes. Why is my daughter, the end result of my screwing around that’s gotten me so shunned, one of the only two ponies that care what happens to me?
“I don’t know what those words mean, and I don’t wanna know if they hurt that much,” El-Tee went on when her mother could only stare back in teary silence. “I do know that when this is over you’re gonna talk to somepony. Me, Aunt C, that scary shrink at the medical ward, whatever, but yer keepin’ all that hate inside and it ain’t healthy. I…I don’t want anypony taking you away ‘cause they think you’re not doin’ well….ya just blew yer top at me, that ain’t like you at all…”
Now she’d begun to realize what she’d done, and she couldn’t bear to relive it or remember it in any great detail. Her little girl…wasn’t quite as little as she’d seemed moments earlier. Was she growing up that fast? Or simply smart enough to see what her mother had been denying even to herself?
She could, at least, bear to look at her, at the saner voice of the two in the room at that moment, and declare to herself that for all the bad that had come out of that night of careless sex, it at least had given her her night light. She was a blessing—one she’d go back and have again if given a chance to go through that night again, just to have somepony in her life that cared this much.
She couldn’t decide if that was pathetic, sick, or heartwarming.
“….won’t be you,” she whispered in the silent, red-hued room. “Don’t think you’re ready for that talk yet…but I’ll talk to somepony, at least.”
El-Tee’s serious face finally began to disappear from her cheeks, and she pressed her small frame against her mother in a quick hug. “…I’ll take that. Now c’mon, what are we supposed to do now?”
Still broken up over how she’d blown up at her daughter half a minute ago, she no longer tried to whitewash or gloss over what she’d been preparing for. “In about a minute we’re going to hear a pre-recorded message over the PA system,” she answered softly, bringing the small set of saddlebags back towards them. “It’s tied into the tertiary emergency systems. We have fifteen minutes to get to one of four designated safe zones in the Stable—the agri rooms, the auditorium, the medical ward, or the library. After that, the environmental control systems will start to suck all the oxygen out of the Stable outside the safe zones. Anything outside a safe zone will be suffocated.”
She felt Light Tail’s body go stiff with fear at the information she’d just been given, and she began to eye the saddlebags with apprehension. “….s-so….if we don’t make it….does that mean you know a way out anyway?”
“….through the Overmare’s office,” she answered, bidding her offspring to let go of her with a gentle prod of her foreleg. “There’s an escape shaft underneath her desk that leads up to the surface level. It’s the only way we can reach it in time if we don’t make it into one of the safe zones on level seven. That’s why I kept these saddlebags ready when we first got news of the outbreak, in case something like this happened. If we have to take our chances on the surface I want us prepared.”
Light Tail eyed the filly-sized saddlebags and strappings with wide, wild eyes, her mane and tail shaking slightly as her body began to react to the possibility that her life could be a very short one if things didn’t go exactly as her mother had planned. “….fine. Just hurry up. I cost us enough time as it is.”
In truth, she had, but Sling wasn’t going to be so cruel as to say something like that now, not after how she’d just behaved towards her. She floated the saddlebags up and over the filly’s back, settling it down gently and then pulling the strappings down her sides and underneath her belly until she’d secured them in place. A quick nudge test with her forelegs budged the saddlebags only slightly, and after a second adjustment of the strappings the set refused to move at all.
With that task done, she set to work securing her own saddlebags to her person, grunting slightly as she found the additional weight dragging down along her back and sides to be greater than she remembered it being the last time she’d tried the things on. Either she was getting out of shape (very likely), or she was mistaken about how heavy the things were to start with. Her stable suit at least made for a good cushion between herself and the security straps encircling her body, and the weight of Grayhawk along her left side was unexpectedly comforting despite its overkill factor.
And she still had to force herself to take several steady breaths to calm her nerves enough to even speak.
“O-okay, let’s go,” she squeaked, willing her body to move out of her bedroom one leg at a time. “Library, just one level up—“
The PA speakers embedded into every room and hallway in the Stable crackled to garbled life with the subtlety of a drunken bear in a china shop, causing her to leap in place for about two feet before coming back down on her hooves—
“ATTENTION STABLE ONE-ONE-FIVE RESIDENTS,” a computer-generated female voice blared out, its ghostly voice echoing throughout the metal corridors as it slowly sounded off its pre-recorded warning of doom. “EMERGENCY PROTOCOL “LS” HAS BEEN INITIATED. ALL RESIDENTS HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES TO REACH A DESIGNATED SAFE ZONE. PLEASE PROCEED TO A DESIGNATED SAFE ZONE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. MESSAGE REPEATS—“
“Gah!” El-Tee screeched in surprise, her forelegs clamping over her ears to deafen the noise level. “So loud—“
She’d barely had time to complain before her stressed-out mom threw out her hearing protection spell, and that high-pitched robotic voice stopped scratching the inside of her ears out. Now everything was only slightly less bad. At least they could walk to the library without wishing for earplugs.
Not wanting to waste any more time than she already had, she quickly trotted out of Mom’s room and towards the door to the hallway, taking a moment to swing by the coffee table and pluck The Mare of the Everfree off the surface and stuff it inside the saddle….ba….
….oh, wow! That’s neat! she wanted to squeal in delight at the sight of the inside of the bag on her left side. She’d thought the bags had some sort of powerful magic enchantment to them, the way her horn was tingling through her head, but looking right in it was something else! She swore she could see a ton of stuff crammed in there! Dull-looking olive drab packages the size of granola bars labeled “MRE”, a map and compass, two or three small tool kits, a first aid kit, some water canteens and funny looking tablets, a flashlight, some healing potions, bars of soap…a pony could live off the land for a couple of months with this stuff! And the bedroll resting atop her loin was probably about her size, or bigger. The only thing this saddlebag set was missing was a saddle to go across her back so that the bedroll wouldn’t roll forward, but it was strapped down pretty tight and there was a good-sized stretch of hard leather to cover her back and sides anyway, so no biggie. She wished she’d actually had her stable suit on, though. She never liked it, but the cloth would have made all the straps more bearable.
And for all the stuff in the bag she could see, it didn’t feel as heavy as it probably should. She was willing to bet there was more of this stuff inside the right bag. She was so going to get Mom to explain how come she had all this stuff. It had to be enchanted to feel as light as it did. How much more could a pony stuff in these things—
Oops, getting sidetracked, she realized, and stuffed the book inside the bag and snapped it shut with a hoof before her thoughts got any further. Safe zone now, bug Mom later.
As quickly as she’d thought of her, Mom came strolling past her, her magic stuffing a book of her own to read inside her left bag and snapping the one on her right shut with a solid click of the button clasp. “When I open the door, stay as close to me as you can, and try to keep up,” Mom commanded…or tried to, anyway. She was still shook up from that harsh talk she’d had to give (to her MOM of all ponies), and she felt bad about having to talk to her like that, but she needed some sense slapped into her. She was gonna snap, and then they’d take her away and she’d never see her again….
No! No, Mom’s not gonna snap. You got Aunt C to promise to talk to her, and you got Mom to promise to talk to somepony, it’s gonna work out! Mom’s gonna get some help and she’ll feel better, and she’ll love her new job in the library and I’ll love her new job at the library holy Luna I wish I hadn’t messed the place up now—
Mom’s horn began to glow with the shade of her coat, quickly tearing off a section of the wall next to the doorway before enveloping a hand crank sitting in the recessed, hidden compartment, and began to tug at it with all the effort she could muster in her telekinesis. With each pull of the crank, the door would shift upwards about three inches or so, and then stop. Within a minute there was enough room for both of them to pass through comfortably—
—and Mom broke off into a sharp, quick trot, forcing the filly to gallop along behind just to stay within three feet of her like she wanted. Well, okay, maybe not three feet but Mom said ‘stay close’ and three feet was pretty close, so three feet it was. And if Mom hadn’t thought to keep pulling her light spell along with them she’d have lost her if she’d strayed any further than that. She’d never seen the halls like this before! She was so used to the white light that she could hardly see the walls in the pale red emergency lighting that now lined the ceiling. It glowed and paled in long, predictable pulses, the shadows receding in its reach and growing back in force when the red light retreated and dimmed into barely-noticeable dots inside the large, oval-shaped bulbs along the wall. She could count down to the quarter-second exactly how long each pulse lasted, and how long it would take to cycle back and forth between bright and nearly dead.
It was the only sane, calm thing she would ever see in the Stable that day.
The pair had barely made it past the western-side washroom when Mom’s body jerked to a halt, her head swiveling around and seemingly studying the walls around them, her ears twitching at the distant touch of scratchy clicking sounds bouncing down the halls….and then swiftly pulling a big revolver from its holster near her left saddlebag.
“M-mom, wait—“ she started to say, to try and calm her mother down before she could start shooting at things that weren’t really there—
“Stay close,” Mom snapped sharply, a slight rattle in her voice as she began moving forward again in slow, cautious steps, her head continuing to jerk from side to side. “They’re loose in here again.”
“….loose? What’s loose?”
“Radroaches,” Mom answered, taking her attention off the walls just long enough to fiddle with a dial on her PipBuck. “That sound….like hooves scratching at a chalkboard….”
El-Tee’s heart began to have trouble working properly—beat, beat, a pause, beat beat beat, pause. Her brain had to fight to string enough words together into a coherent question. “…w-where?”
“Not sure,” Mom heaved with a heavy sigh, slinging her body around ninety degrees to face down an adjacent hallway as they strode into an intersection. “I don’t wanna find out either, let’s just get to the library.”
Moving forward with shaky, hollow legs was beginning to make her feel like a foal learning to walk, but somehow she still managed to get one hoof out in front of another in a continuing drive forward, despite the chill touch of terror in her lungs. “No argument here—“
A sharp, chest-pounding bang rang out into the hallways, amplified by the metal walls, and if not for Mom’s spell she was almost certain her ears would have been ringing from it. An animalistic, shrill screech managed to follow along behind the sound of the loud bang for a moment before several more of the bangs cut it off in a rapid rat-tat-tat. She heard three more such bursts of bangs before she figured out what she was hearing.
Gunfire. And only then did she start to hear screams.
“Oh gods they’re here!” a mare’s shriek cried out from around a corner, or maybe even from a hall two hundred feet away. Voices could carry quite a ways through a Stable corridor. “We’re cut off—“
“No we’re not, we just need to keep moving forward!” a stallion’s voice boomed back, desperate to maintain calm in the presence of uncalm things. “The stairs are only fifty yards down the hall, we can make it—“
Another burst of gunfire, this time from somewhere off to her right and much closer, and when she looked down the hall she could see bright, blinding flashes of yellow lighting up the wall of an adjacent parallel hallway, and a broken silhouette of an earth pony inside each flash—
A third burst, from somewhere behind them, but in a much more uncontrolled fashion. It lasted at least two and a half seconds, and she wasn’t quite sure but she thought she could hear a stallion crying out in broken gasps of terror amidst the gunfire.
Another short burst echoed into the walls as Mom’s voice began to resemble that terrified mare’s. “H-honey….don’t….don’t freeze. Keep moving, quick as you can.”
El-Tee jerked her gaze back to her mother, to the mare she’d held up as a pedestal she could lean on if things got really bad….and saw a pony that offered a mirror image of her own fear. Her body seemed to tremble in short fits, her eyes kept darting back and forth inside their sockets in search of anything that wanted her as a meal, her tail swished and jerked in an erratic pattern, and her rapid breathing made her coat and muscles seem to ripple across her body.
Mom wasn’t taking this any better than she was.
Gunfire. Then muzzle flashes so large and bright that they lit up entire halls. Ponies beginning to stream out of their quarters and right into the crossfire of terrified security officers with full automatic weapons. That horrible, endless shrieking of radroaches and their disgusting array of legs digging into the floor as they swarmed out from whatever dark crevice they’d been nesting in. She knew what she looked like to her little girl against all that—scared senseless, hyperventilating, terrified of the dark and expecting the shadows to grow and latch into her coat. And it was all true.
It was also true that the fear of seeing Light Tail even slightly bitten by the nasty things was the only thing keeping her from shutting down completely like she nearly had the other morning. All she had to do to keep some sense of order to herself was to imagine the sight of her filly in the same shape she’d found Hoofprint, and the heartbreak that tugged at the inside of her chest would spur her into making sure she never, ever had to feel anything like that again.
She didn’t want to end up like Kickstart.
.44 Mag being far too loud and powerful for the bugs they were facing, she slid Grayhawk back into her holster and went for the .357 on Light Tail’s saddlebags instead, along with the speedloaders stuffed into a pouch right beside the small revolver. “Do you understand?” she called out to her child, instantly admonishing herself at how panicked she sounded in the process. Idiot don’t shriek like that—
A quick push of the cylinder release button unlocked it from the frame, and she counted off five .357 rounds in all five chambers before Light Tail could get her mouth to answer. “….do you?”
Buck me, she’s about to freeze—
“Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway,” she blurted, latching onto the only response she could think of in such short notice. “….’least that what Windy told me. I don’t care if you’re ready to pee all over the floor, but we have to get moving. I don’t wanna lose you…”
That seemed to get the little one moving again. She even went so far as to nuzzle her mother’s side as she drew close, as if hoping the contact would bring her enough courage and comfort to do what she was asked. “....just don’t get away from me.”
Better, she sighed in relief, finding a strange sense of security in her daughter’s touch that calmed her breathing a little. “…try to keep up, stairs are close. We’ll just shoot straight up to L7, we’ll be in the library in about three minutes if we don’t stop. Okay?”
“The sooner, the better.”
She expected her legs to procrastinate or lock up on her, keeping her pinned to the floor and fighting to get herself moving, but amazingly enough they actually began to move and speed up into a light jog without too much effort. She could have gone much faster, but she didn’t want to outrun El-Tee and moving slower would let her see danger and still have enough control to avoid it. And if she couldn’t, the .357 was more than enough for a radroach.
The stairs she sought were at the north end of the level, necessitating a trip down at least one of the leftward corridors in order to reach it, but with her EFS so flooded with red marks and locator tags it was impossible to sort them out and guess at which one had the fewest threats. She settled for the very next turn down the hallway, slipping around the corner and flinging her light spell out ahead of her to chase away the darkness.
Thankfully, no bugs. And at the end of the hall was a straight path to the stairway—
“ATTENTION, STABLE ONE-ONE-FIVE RESIDENTS,” the manufactured mare’s voice chimed soullessly. “YOU NOW HAVE TWELVE MINUTES TO REACH A DESIGNATED SAFE ZONE—“
A four-shot burst of rifle fire finished the PA’s countdown to doom, and a pair of high-pitched chirps curled the hair of her mane up on end—
—and the hair of her tail followed with it when she reached the end of the hall and ran smack into a throng of radroaches fearlessly advancing against a lone unicorn stallion and his 5.56mm rifle, his magic desperately trying to clear the ejection port of a stovepipe jam—
—Sling’s magic reached out to his web gear belt, unlatching the 10mm pistol from its holster and flicking the safety off before she began to squeeze off carefully aimed shots as quickly as she could manage. After four shots and two dead radroaches, he’d finally fixed his rifle and resumed his shooting, sweeping the weapon from side to side in hopes of catching at least one bug with each spray of bullets—
“Idiot, use the sights!!” she screeched at him over the gunshots as she let loose with two more shots, taking out one bug with a headshot and another with a shot that buried itself inside the bug’s body. “Misses are nothing but loud noises!!”
But he didn’t listen—or more likely, firing at least two magazines’ worth of high-velocity slugs in such a confined and amplifying environment had temporarily deafened him. He continued to spray his shots about with little concern for proper aiming, missing far more often than not. It took a firm hold of her own telekinesis spell to bring the rifle’s sights out in front of his eyes before he even knew there was another pony behind him, and his body jerked in place at the sudden intrusion to his personal space.
“Line the sights!!” she screamed into his right ear, quickly trotting up next to him and demonstrating with careful use of the 10mm pistol’s sights to take out two more bugs eighteen yards away. “Squeeze, aim, squeeze, repeat!! You’re hitting nothing but air with that crap you’re pulling!!”
She felt his spell field attempt to overpower hers, and she dialed her spell back to its previous range and allowed him to resume his firing. To her relief, he began to take more careful deliberation with his shots, allowing only two or three rounds per aimed burst before tracking onto another target. Though the swarm of bugs drew closer with each step, their numbers were quickly dwindling, and the pair were able to finish them off just as the last two had gotten within lunging distance.
The 10mm now at slide lock, she punched the mag release and let the empty magazine clatter to the floor as she yanked a fresh one off the stallion and slapped it into the grip—
“H-holy sh….hoo man I need a minute,” the stallion began to blubber helplessly, his shaking body beginning to sink to the floor as he laid his rifle down in front of him. “Need a minute gotta breath—“
“Reload while you’re breathing,” she snapped back, flicking the safety back on and stuffing his pistol back in its holster as she eyed the three empty rifle magazines littered amongst the slain bug carcasses. “And don’t fire in full-automatic, you’re wasting ammo and putting ponies at risk with every shot you don’t hit with.”
“Y-y-yeah, sure thing,” he stammered with heavy breaths, now tasking himself with fighting the magazine out of the mag well and exchange it with a fresh one. “N-not a problem, breathe, dude, breathe, reload, breathe…”
Light Tail had been content to simply follow along behind her mother, but the sight of a grown stallion shaking like a leaf before her proved too tempting a prank target to pass up, even at a time like this. The little one inched to within three a few centimeters of his ears and eyed him with a critical, careful gaze for a few moments before launching her assault. “….you want to bake me a plate of homemade cookies for dinner.”
“S-sure thing, whatever you say….”
Light Tail’s dead-pan face broke into a fit of barely-contained laughter as she trotted away from the suggestion-prone security pony, and even Sling found herself choking back a snort at the sight. “Wow, you could tell him anything you wanted and he’ do it,” the filly laughed quietly. “Can we keep him?”
Her choked snort became a nose-bursting chuckle, eliciting a jolt out of the stallion as she turned back down the hall and made a run for the stairway door. “No. You don’t want Flashlight, you don’t know where he’s been.”
“We could clean him up,” El-Tee suggested with a squeal, gleefully hopping over a pile of dead radroaches as she went. “Get him straightened up and back on his hooves, maybe tie a bow in his tail!”
More gunfire erupted from the halls of level eight as they reached the stairwell and began the short flight up to level six, and the brief joy and elation over the jesting died as quickly as the sound faded. She wanted to feel ashamed for even making light of Flashlight’s turmoil to begin with. “….let’s just get to the library. We’ll worry about Flashlight later.”
She could barely hear the bolt of his rifle clacking shut in the hall as she ascended the first flight of stairs and bounded over to the next set with nary a lost step.
The way Mom just talked made her feel like she’d just done something she shouldn’t have, and she had a pretty good idea what it was. She hadn’t meant to put Flashlight down, but she wanted Mom thinking about something other than just having faced off with death and chaos without going mad, and making her laugh at something seemed like a good idea. Now she wished she hadn’t said anything.
Without another word she followed her mother up through the stairs, glancing back down behind them every fifth step to make sure the bugs weren’t following them, or that a throng of terrified ponies weren’t going to trample them in a mad dash for safety. It would have sucked to have come all the way up just to get squished from behind at the library door.
She amended her definition of “sucked” the second they reached the seventh floor and dashed out into the hallway. She’d thought things were bad when they came out of quarters, but it turned out she knew nothing of bad.
Things were even worse up here. The gunfire was constant now—short bursts like what she heard back on level eight, as well as single shots, and those bug chirps were like a choir, always shrieking and crying either at each other or as they died where ponies were shooting them.
And the ponies themselves….so many were shouting at each other, scared to death as they piled up into the corridors and tried to squeeze themselves through. Others were just screaming wordlessly, likely lost or cornered….or worse. The constant flashes of yellow and gunfire weren’t helping her night vision, nor were the strobing pulses of red light. In fact, it was starting to scare her. It was like the Stable itself was panicking.
She didn’t even hear Mom talking to her until one of her forelegs began to shake her loose from her stunned stupor. “—ey, I’m right here! Do you hear me, I’m right here!!”
“I…I’m here,” Light Tail heard herself gasp back, desperately trying to blink away the sights before her despite the knowledge that she wasn’t having a nightmare. “….in denial, but I’m here…”
“We’ll make it,” Mom assured her in the best, soothing voice she could muster, which was not really that soothing or collected, but at least she was trying. “Just—“
A pony’s screaming somewhere to their right began to grow louder, and closer, and Light Tail’s head naturally followed the screams. But that wasn’t what stopped her heart and lungs cold.
It was the four radroaches clinging to his body, chomping away at his neck and sides as he tripped on his own hooves and collapsed to the floor. And even as Mom raced past her and began flinging the nasty things off with telekinesis spells, a cold, ugly part of her gut told her that it was probably too late. And she couldn’t look away.
It happened so fast. Mom was tearing the bugs off and blasting them in mid-air with her pistol, but the pony was choking and gurgling, unable to talk through his neck wound, and the blood just started to pour out and bubble inside the ragged, bloody hole….
Mom was shouting at him as she wiped the last bug out of existence with a single blast from her gun, shouting and trying to plug that hole in his neck with a hoof, then with a torn piece of his stable suit, trying to stop the blood flow, trying something, while she just stood there frozen to the floor and staring at the blood—
Now Mom was jumping over him, hooked one leg over his neck wound and pulling at his stable suit with her teeth to tear more pieces of cloth for some kind of bandage. Her gun floated out past them, fired one more time, a huge tongue of flame spouting out of the barrel on the second shot—
She was saying something, to somepony. Maybe the stallion, maybe her, may—
Maybe I should just do something instead of standing here!
Without being bidden or commanded, the filly dashed forward, biting down on her tongue to choke back a gag as her forehooves came down on the stallion’s wound. A thin spurt of blood curled out from its depths and splattered her face, but also showed her where best to put on the pressure to cut down the blood flow—
—his body began to lift up off the floor, enveloped in Mom’s levitation spell, and it became a struggle to keep the pressure applied to his bleeding neck as she hopped backwards on her hind legs, pulling his floating body along with her. Her tail began to swish back and forth to help maintain her balance, but it would have been a lot easier if Mom would just help her out a little—
“Turn left!” Mom shouted, just as a metallic object clicked into place—
—she jerked her body around to her left without even looking behind her, thankfully running into little more than more open hallway—
—her hindquarters bumped right into a pony’s legs in the next moment, and despite everything that was happening all around her, she felt an immense rush of relief flow into her limbs at the sound of Aunt C’s voice. “Hey El-oooooh hell what happened to him?!”
That relief gave her back her voice, for the moment. “Hurt bad!” she shouted back as the pegasus began to shove her way through the filly’s front legs to see the injury for herself. “Real bad, bugs got all over him—“
Mom’s gun went off again, but with so many bugs chirping and shrieking and stuff, it was hard to tell if she’d killed one or not. She fired again as she came into view in the hallway, walking backwards and keeping the gun aimed out ahead of her—
“Sling, get Ballast to the medical ward!” Aunt C hollered out, brushing against the stallion’s body as she zipped out past her and took her mother’s place in the hall. “I got these ugly mothers—“
Whatever else Aunt C had to say was lost in a blaze of gunfire that erupted from a rifle mounted to the side of her saddle. She couldn’t tell how she was even shooting it, but she had this funny looking rein and bit stuck in her mouth that seemed to hook up to the mounting point that held her rifle—
—Mom’s spell field began to grow stronger, the telltale touch of her telekinesis spell pressing down on her hooves, and she drew her forelegs back onto the ground and let the spell take over the work of keeping pressure on the wound. Mom had no trouble keeping the stallion in tow as she took off down the hall as fast as she could safely manage, and the filly did her best to keep up. That little body chemical called adrenaline was a great boost, she didn’t know she could run this fast.
They had to weave their way through a smorgasbord of ponies crammed against each other a couple of times, and even leapt over another pair that had tripped over themselves in their mindless panic, but in short order they found themselves standing behind the crowd of ponies trying to force their way into the medical ward (as opposed to calmly filing inside in a dignified manner like the PA was asking them to), and Mom got the stallion past them by simply shoving them all apart from each other with a quick extension of her telekinesis spell before zipping inside—
“I got injured!” she screamed out on her way in, floating the stallion out in front of her, who by now was beginning to look less….alive. Still breathing, but barely, and the reception hall was stuffed full of hurt souls. None quite as bad as Mom’s haul, though. “Deep neck wound, pulse is dropping—“
Nurse Tender Mane happened to be the one trying to sort through all the injured when Mom burst in, and the white-coated unicorn mare wasted no time shifting her attention to the new patient being delivered to her. She rushed towards Mom and took a quick peek at the stallion, pressing one of her forehooves against his neck for a couple of seconds, and then reached out to a waiting stretcher shoved up against the reception desk and pulled it towards her. “Get him on the gurney and keep pressure on the wound. We’ll take him right to the ER.”
Mom’s resolve started to fade, probably at the thought of being pulled away from her, and she started to say as much. “Wa….wait, what about my da—“
“Go, Mom,” Light Tail squeaked back loudly before she could try to find somepony else to do what she was doing. “I-it’s fine, now, right? We made it here, we’ll be fine. Go on, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
….well, actually, she was, but what Mom needed to hear was that yes, little Light Tail was going to be fine now and that it was okay to keep helping the poor soul she’d brought in to help in the first place. And even if Mom looked like she didn’t want to be more than five feet away from her right then, she wasn’t going to say no and take her attention off the hurt stallion right in front of her. Mom started to move along with the rolling stretcher when Nurse Tender Mane took the silence as her cue to take Ballast off to the ER, and soon both mares disappeared through the open hallway entrance and into the medical ward’s interior.
And then Light Tail booked it into the mare’s bathroom as quickly as her four short legs could carry her. She was safe now, even if the security ponies outside were still shooting and other residents were still trying to get inside a safe zone. She was safe, the bugs weren’t getting into the medical ward, there were at least two security ponies in reception if they did scuttle their way through the entry, Mom was safe….
….and everything that had happened in the last two minutes was finally starting to catch up with her.
She barely made it through the door and into a stall before she lost it, but thankfully hit the toilet bowl instead of the floor. It was a fight to get her lungs to breathe all of a sudden, and she couldn’t bear to look at her forehooves anymore. They were absolutely soaked with that stallion’s blood. From his neck, and he was choking on it and hardly breathing and…and….
…..and oh stars had she just witnessed a pony’s last moments of life?! Was he dying right in front of her while she plugged his torn-up neck in some sick vain effort to keep him alive and suffering a few seconds longer?! Oh stars what if there were other ponies out there that were dead, what if—
—her forelegs came down on top of her snout, choking back an upsurge of bile, at least until her bladder had finished relieving itself of its own accord, and one of her hind legs kicked at the flush lever as she turned around and hurled into the swirling rush of tainted water. Her entire body was starting to shake now, probably because she had a moment to process what had just happened, and—
—a second gag reflex tossed up the last of her breakfast, and a second flush of the toilet washed it away alongside a hoof full of used dry towelettes . How the plumbing systems were still working with the power out, she didn’t know, so she was just thankful that they were working. Her shivering form began to stumble out of the stall, bumping the door open with her head, and walked the six steps to the row of sinks mounted into the wall. With some considerable effort she was able to get a hoof up and over a basin sink mounted low to the wall, for little fillies like herself to make use of, and shoved her forehooves underneath the faucet as it began to spill warm water. Despite how sick it made her to see all that blood on her, she forced herself to look at it and make sure she got it all off of her, as quick as she could.
It became yet another fight for her struggling body, barely able to muster any kind of finite control over itself. Either her limbs wanted to smash their way about, or barely flinch at her mental commands. Either she wanted to shake like a leaf, or freeze where she stood. Either she wanted to breathe in loud, sharp gasps and hyperventilate, or struggle to even suck in a tenth of the oxygen that she normally did. And all she could think of was that bloody, pulsing wound she’d tried to keep from spraying blood all over he—
—she didn’t know why it took so long for her to remember that she got some of his blood on her face, but now that she remembered that little squirt she was in a near panic, sticking her head under the faucet and swiping her left foreleg over her face to scrub it off. Her eyes kept trailing it as it slimed its way through the running water and swirled about in a circular pattern in the sink, stretching out in a thin, red line as it ran into the drain, hoping she’d see it end in the next instant and panicking when it didn’t. The ten seconds it took for the water to start running clean and clear instead of crimson felt like a lifetime.
With a gasp she drew her head back, shook off the excess water and not caring how much of it splattered up against the mirror as she stared back into the foreign face it showed her. She knew deep down that it was her, but she could hardly recognize herself. She never looked so…
….so ragged looking, she wondered fearfully as her body shakes began to grow stronger. Stars, my mane, my body….it’s all a mess, oh Luna I hope he makes it I hope he makes it—
The chant, the silent plea to a departed alicorn, became something of a stab at her sanity. What if he didn’t make it? What if she’d just watched him live his last moments in pain, unable to even say good-bye or thank-you to the ponies that had tried to help him? What was his kid gonna do, or the mom? How many more were suffering like that? Had anypony actually died already and she just didn’t know it yet?
She’d never wished so hard for school to come back. Wished for everything to just go back to normal like it was supposed to, so she could sit at her desk and be bored to death by Miss Amethyst teaching stuff she already knew. Wait for school to let out so she could rush to the library and try to find those Daring Do books she’d misplaced by accident, play with her friends and hang out, and bug Mom when she got home and just sit on the couch and read something with her. And wish that things could stay that way, forever.
She wished so hard she didn’t even hear Aunt C barge into the washroom, calling her name, until the pegasus had to resort to shaking her out of her panic attack—
“—y El-Tee, you okay?!” Aunt C’s voice cried softly through her ears, her forelegs encircling the filly until she’d become trapped in the mare’s grasp.
Her voice became an anchor in the sea of intense emotions, and she practically willed her body up against the pegasus in some instinctive effort to find a source of physical comfort alongside the emotional one. “Aunt...Aunt C, I…oh Luna the blood is he gonna—“
“Don’t think about it!” she snapped back, her forelegs now encompassing the filly into a tight hug against her chest. “Don’t think about it, just listen to my voice, you’re gonna be fine now—“
“I can’t…I don’t….oh stars what did—“
“Light Tail, listen to me!” Aunt C’s voice blared, stunning her with the use of her actual name instead of just the letters. “You’re gonna be fine, you’re safe in here. Don’t think about it, just listen to my voice. Think about your mom, or that book you’ve been reading all week, anything but what you just saw. Don’t think about it, just calm down and breath slowly, and think of something else.”
She gasped in another three breaths before the touch of the pegasus’s hug and coat began to calm her shaking nerves, and her tail stopped twitching and zipping about in random directions and patterns. Her lungs began to work towards a normal, soft breathing rhythm, and like Aunt C suggested, she started to think about—
—Starlight’s horn blazed with her magic, shaping the water of the river into a sparkling visage of the Princess of Equestria, and willed it into motion with a breathtaking charge towards the surprised cultists of Discord that had sought to end her journey at the creek—
Light Tail’s gasp was now one of awe and wonder rather than desperation, and her mind’s eye sought to further the daydream a tad longer as her heartbeat began to wind down—
—her spell shattered into a brilliant shower of crystal blue sparks, the cultist’s shield shimmering from the impact even as she began to draw out a flow of red mana into her next attack spell—
“There, you see?” Aunt C soothed into her ears, her whisper clearly audible now that her lungs were no longer trying to suck in half the stable’s oxygen every time she inhaled. “You’re gonna be fine, breathe slow, keep thinking of that awesome thing you’re thinking—“
—Starlight’s eyes drew up towards her namesake, mesmerized by the otherworldly glow of the celestial night sky as it illuminated the ruins of the alicorn sisters’ castle—
“All better now,” the pegasus whispered with relief, and Light Tail felt a drab of wetness trickle down the mare’s face as she spoke. “Breathe, girl, just breathe easy. You’re fine now…”
Snippets of The Mare of the Everfree continued to play out in her head as she began to recollect herself. “….ahhh….Aunt C, I….I think….I know what I won’t be when I grow up.”
Somehow, even though she didn’t clearly explain what she meant, Aunt C seemed to get it right away. “’S okay, not everypony’s cut out to be security,” she assured her gently. “But don’t sell yourself short, you did great back there. Not many ponies rush to help without thinking about it, and even if you had to tell yourself to do something instead of standing there frozen, you still did something. Don’t let anypony tell you different.”
Her calm, slightly more collected mind began to freak out slightly at the mention of what had caused her to lose her nerve in the first place, and the sickening pulse of the stallion’s torn flesh began to creep back into her forehooves. “….is he gonna—“
“He would have if you two had done nothing,” she answered the question, tightening her hug and even nuzzling her head a little. “He at least has a chance now, and that’s more than he would’ve had otherwise. You did everything you could for him. Everything, you hear?”
That wasn’t quite true. She could have done something sooner, faster, better. “I-I shouldn’t have been standing there like a foal—“
“You didn’t,” Aunt C’s voice continued to coo into her ear. “You did everything you could. You’ve never seen anything like this before, and I’m sorry that you had to, but you can’t second-guess yourself like this. You did something, the right thing, when somepony needed you even if you had to fight with your own fear before you did it. Very, very few ponies can do that.”
“I about peed myself just now!” she howled back, growing both angry and ashamed with herself. All the days she’d spent so confident and sure of herself, and the one moment she should have been that confident she’d just stood there and gawked as her mother tried to fight off a swarm of bugs and keep him from bleeding out at the same time! “I couldn’t stop it, and I just puked up my breakfast and my body won’t stop shaking I’m so freaking terrified—“
“And that’s okay,” the pegasus kept on going in that soft, caressing voice that almost made her a second mother. “It’s like what I told your mom the other day, courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway. Your body is just trying to deal with it all now that it’s over. And…and sometimes that means a pony will lose control over things and mess themselves, or throw up. And your shakes are nothing to be worried about, it’s just your adrenaline being bled off now that your body doesn’t need it. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, okay? You did everything you could for Ballast. You’re a good, brave pony. You’re fine, just breathe and don’t think about it. Just breathe.”
She wanted to believe it, badly….and as her shakes began to fade and break up into short pulses instead of a constant running thing, Aunt C’s body warmth began to spread through her coat and envelope her as tightly as her physical hug. Oddly enough, the warmth was even more comforting than the physical contact. Like she could just close her eyes, and be protected in both body and mind if she just sat there and basked in it, and did like Aunt C asked.
So that’s what she did. She just closed her eyes, and let it all be.
And breathed.
One…
Inhale. Slowly.
Two…
Exhale, steady.
One…
Inhale, again. Calmer this time.
Two…
Exhale, like a sleeping foal.
The tremors finally stopped.
Sling finally allowed her eyes to open, and the dim lighting for once proved to be a blessing as it failed to sting her eyeballs like an angry hornet. Had she not been shooting .357 rounds in the Stable corridor a minute ago, her vision would have been able to make out the lettering on the heat exhaustion advisory poster ten feet off to her left. But at least she could see well enough to not knock her head against a wall, and quickly saw herself away from the ER room where Tender Mane and Dr. Straight Jacket were furiously at work trying to save Ballast’s life—
—the screeches of a thousand bugs wailed at her ears, the lightweight revolver emptying the fifth and final round in the cylinder as her left hoof tried to find purchase atop his ragged neck—
Her legs stopped six feet short of the door to the reception lobby, her lungs once again repeating its previous calming ritual of inhale, exhale in four second metered intervals. After the third exhale the events stopped flashing before her, and her limbs no longer felt like giving out beneath her.
And she hadn’t even gotten to her daughter how. How was that poor thing faring after what she’d just seen? What she’d done, and felt, as her little hooves pushed against his pulsing, flowing wounds, as her ears were assailed with all those horrible screams and gunfire? How long was she going to have to keep both bedroom doors open so she could hear whether or not her nightmares were getting too intense? Six months? A year?
Forever?
Once, Celestia, she prayed silently, her legs once more moving forward and into the lobby. Just once, I’d like a week where something doesn’t go wrong.
Her eyes began searching the lobby in quick fashion, ignoring the twenty-odd ponies in various states of dishevel and injury when she was certain they weren’t going to die in the next few minutes. She spotted at least one of her neighbors from her quarter of L8 huddled near the wall, nursing a bandaged foreleg with an ice pack, and by sheer luck the corner of her vision caught sight of Cloud Wind’s grayscale tail—
—spotted her night light walking right alongside the pegasus, quickly making way towards an empty lounge sofa on the other side of the room, and felt her heart flutter as she studied her face. Damp with moisture, a partially-slicked mane and forelegs, but otherwise unchanged from the last couple of minutes. Downcast, sullen….but alive.
It was Windy’s face that told her the tale. Even in such dim, red-hued lighting, it was hard to miss the glint of tears in her eyes, and her snout looked like it was never more than just two seconds away from crying, and she knew then that her suspicions about her El-Tee were right.
She was anything but fine.
It was a simple affair to separate the two. El-Tee seemed happy enough just to get the lounge sofa to herself and let the two mares walk away without a word, and Sling dragged her friend off to a corner with about six feet of empty space around them where she could despair quietly in somewhat more private circumstances.
“….how hard did she take it?” she asked softly. It wasn’t even a question of “if”, and at such a time as this it seemed a little silly to say “Is she okay?”.
“….not as hard as I would have at her age,” the pegasus mumbled, her voice broken and quiet. “Still….just a kid, she kept wondering if Ballast was going to die, hyperventilating most of the time. Amazing how well a hug and a soothing voice works on you two. Just wished I’d dried her off first, my stable suit’s half soaked now.”
Sling was almost ashamed to acknowledge that her little girl seemed to be handling her first radroach outbreak better than her mother had. “….wished I was that strong, the first time….you think she’ll need—“
“Counseling? Definitely,” Windy answered the question quickly. “You can try talking to her if you want, but I think she’s better off with Doc Heart Tone or Doorbell.”
The indigo-maned unicorn almost allowed herself to leave the conversation there, but Windy’s voice hung up at the mention of Heart Tone very briefly, enough to catch her attention to it and notice that the pegasus seemingly had to force herself to sound calm and sensible.
And she knew why almost immediately. “So what about you?”
There was the briefest of whimpers from Cloud Wind’s throat as she choked up, eventually tearing her gaze away from the filly on the lounge sofa. “…..I never want to see her like that again…just a kid, it’s not fair….”
Despite the fact that she was altogether grateful that somepony had been there for her squirt, she never expected Windy to let herself get this beat up over it. Cared too much, some might say. “….you were there when she needed somepony. And I feel better knowing somepony will take care of her if anything ever happened to me. She calls you “aunt” for a genuine reason, not because she thinks it sounds cool.”
Windy’s wings shook in place, one of them eventually unfolding from her side to stretch itself out in a desperate effort to wring her despair out of her psyche. “I know. That’s what makes it so hard to see her like this. Oh Luna does it hurt…”
In the blink of an eye she found herself hugging the pegasus with one foreleg, faintly recalling the mare’s ironic statement of how well they seemed to work for the unicorn and the squirt. “You see you and yours hurting, and you care so much it hurts you too. That’s not stress or psyche issues, it’s family. And who’d want family that’d let you carry it all alone?”
For once in their long, storied friendship, the pegasus couldn’t come up with anything to say to her, and simply laid there and allowed the emotionally unbalanced unicorn to be the one to give a comforting shoulder to shudder and sniffle into.
It wasn’t to last, fortunately. In short order Windy managed to pull herself back together, and while she wasn’t quite the collected and sensible pony she knew her to be, she was at least done moping around and despairing in vain. Her thundercloud grey eyes showed only trace amounts of tears behind them as she forced herself out of her friend’s reach and back to work. “O-okay now, get back to the squirt before she starts wondering about the birds and bees, wouldja? Don’t want that talk muddled with confusion about how mares might do it and I gotta talk to the Overmare anyway.”
Of course you’d brush it off with a joke like that, Sling snorted to herself. “One of these days you’re going to find yourself that special somepony and finally have a reason to stop pestering me.”
“And miss that delightful shriek of horror that amuses me so? I can only hope you’ll put up with my “pestering you” to the end of your days.”
She answered the pegasus with a telekinetic slap across the back of her head, though she knew it would ultimately do nothing but encourage further teasing. “Maybe if you didn’t pester me so much everypony wouldn’t be whispering about us “closet lovers” when they think we aren’t listening.”
Windy’s left foreleg began to rub tenderly at her abused skull as she pondered the wisdom imparted to her, and her subdued whisper caught the unicorn off-guard. “…..you may be onto something, there….”
“….somepony said something like that to your face this morning, didn’t they?”
The pegasus shrugged her withers, deciding that now was a good opportunity to move on with her duties before she got dragged into a talk she wasn’t ready to have. “…we’ll talk later, when this is all over.”
“Yeah,” Sling whispered back quietly, though she was certain she wasn’t quite loud enough to be heard by the departing pegasus. “….later….”
A quick glance around her alleviated minor fears about unwanted eavesdropping ponies lingering about, as everypony was too caught up in their own affairs to bother paying attention to hers. With a sigh of relief she wandered her way back to her lounging child, who was now tapping the front of the lounge sofa with a forehoof and an apprehensive taint on her face—
“Is he…is he gonna make it?” Light Tail blurted, stumbling over her words as though she were still struggling with the concept that she might have just witnessed a pony’s last painful moments of life.
“He’s with Doc Straight Jacket now,” she answered with a solemn touch. “We’ve given him the best chance we could.”
Light Tail’s eyes were glued to the wall across from her, unwilling to tear themselves away from whatever mental images she was forcing herself through at that moment. “…I should’ve done something. Something other than—“
Sling was beginning to get this ugly, gut feeling that her daughter had already gone through this with Cloud Wind, and despite whatever “Aunt C” had told her she was clearly still struggling with it. If this was a conversation the squirt had had before, well, it looked like she was going to have to go through it again, this time with her mother. “Honey, you did more than I asked of you. I was yelling at you to find me somepony to help me with him, and you jumped right in to do it yourself.”
The filly flinched in place slightly as a distant stattaco of rifle fire echoed through the walls, but she was too despondent with herself to bother caring about it. “I should have gotten help—“
“You helped,” she cut in, not willing—or able—to hear her night light degrade herself like this. Even now, looking back at the horrible notion of her little girl plugging Ballast’s shredded neck with her own hooves to stem the bleeding, she felt a rush of pride, of unrepentant love, for the little filly she’d labored to give birth to for the five most incredibly painful and exhausting hours of her life. “There were two dozen of the blasted things in front of me. If you had taken off to find help like I’d told you, there wouldn’t have been anypony left to save by the time you came back. I know you were scared to death, but you still did something. You did what another pony would’ve done, and gave me the time I needed to get that gun reloaded and a levitation spell on Ballast. You dragged him out of harm’s way until Windy could give us a hoof. You are the reason he has any chance at all in that operating room. I know Windy’s been through this with you already, so don’t tell me you don’t believe it.”
“That’s just it,” El-Tee mumbled darkly, still staring at that wall and tapping at the sofa. “I don’t. I keep thinking I should’ve gotten somepony smarter, or taken that first aid kit outta my bag and used it—“
“Do you know what to do with any of that stuff in there?” she asked next. If El-Tee was going to be all analytical of herself, she might as well make sure her daughter didn’t miss anything in the process. “How to apply the antiseptics or how to use the hemostatic clamp when you need to control the bleeding while you tie off severed arteries? How or when to use the collagen agent to induce blood clotting, or the suture kit to stitch a wound? How to set a broken bone and secure it with a splint?”
Light Tail’s eyes finally tore themselves away from the wall to look her mother in the eye, wide with confusion and surprise at just how much work was actually involved in simple first aid. “….w…well….no. Not really, now that you’ve gone and told me how much work it is….”
“Do you think anypony you could have found outside of medical could have done any of that?” she asked next, her mind already anticipating El-Tee’s rebuttal—
“Aunt C?” the filly quipped immediately…and just as Sling predicted, though she grew more concerned when a series of pistol shots rang out somewhere in the halls outside medical without getting even a startled jump or a flick of the ear out of the kid. “I mean, if you know all that stuff, then most of you security ponies probably do too.”
“They do,” she answered. “But in a situation like this, their job is to secure the stable and keep ponies safe. And if you think about it just a little harder, you’ll realize how incredibly unsafe it would have been to have even tried to do anything but what you did. Staying there was suicide, he needed help, and the best place to get him help was right here. So when Windy and I tell you that you did everything you could, we really mean it, because it’s exactly what we would’ve done if we could have. Windy took my place in shooting those bugs so I could take over for you, but until then you were absolutely needed where you were and what you were doing. I was too terrified to concentrate on shooting and putting pressure on his neck at the same time. You understand now? You did what you should have, when you should’ve, and nothing else you could’ve done would have made any more of a difference no matter what you tell yourself.”
El-Tee’s eyes gradually lost their bewildered glint, and her face grew sullen once more as she went back to staring at that damned wall, as if she were almost ashamed of herself. And it was infuriating. “….that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I can’t stop seeing all that blood and…and how my stomach folds in on itself whenever I see how his neck looked when I saw it—“
—Sling’s heart tugged in place, her left eye tearing up and her tail flicking at the sound of a shotgun blast, maybe forty feet from the front door—
“—or how it felt under my hooves when I tried to slow down the bleeding. And I can’t stop wondering how it musta felt ta him. To feel that kind of pain, not able to tell anypony what hurts, or talk to ‘em….or….or say any kind of a good-bye…just…choke on his own blood and air...”
Another tear dropped, and a third began forming in her right eye but held itself back. Her entire ordeal was beginning to sound exceptionally familiar to her. Oh dear Luna, my poor baby…. “….I know it hurts,” she croaked, her voice slightly hoarse as she forced away a brief flash of Hoofprint’s eviscerated remains and the unholy splatter of blood that had turned the walls to a slick crimson. “It hurts you in the stomach, like your heart’s going to get sucked into it, and you keep going back to that moment. You’ll look at it, at what you’ve done, and keep asking yourself…why? Why me, why him? Why did it have to happen, why couldn’t it have turned out better…”
El-Tee’s eyes shifted away from the wall again, glimmering with tears and….and something else. Something in her eyes that tried to speak to her without words, and that did not even register or acknowledge the three short bursts of automatic rifle fire down the corridor at that instant. “…why’d you have to be the one to find him. To see what you saw….and not be able to do anything to change it….”
A sputter of a gasp gurgled through her tightening throat, frozen in shock at the subtle—but unmistakable—allusion to Hoofprint aired to her ears. How….how did this child even know that she’d been the one to find him?! How….
“….I think, more than anything, we wish we could’ve been there sooner so that nothing would’ve happened at all,” Light Tail continued with those glittering orbs of tears and pity. “You were locked in the security armory. You couldn’t even get yourself out. And that’s what hurts. That you were cooped up like that and safe, while he was cornered. You think you could’ve done something, that you could’ve saved him and instead you were stuck behind a locked door while he…while he died alone, and scared. I think I could’ve done something if we’d gotten up the stairs a few seconds earlier instead of messing with Torchlight’s head...”
Yes. No mistake now. Intricately, exceptionally familiar to her. “….I….I think we oughta talk about this later,” was all the mare could muster in response. “When all this is over and things go back to normal. We both need it.”
Light Tail’s body heaved heavily, a sigh of exhaustion bellowing from her small lungs. “….tell me that story again, from after we woke up. About those wheat fields and the moonlight….take me out of here…."
Gladly, the mother agreed silently, thankful to have something other than bloody corpses or a gravely-wounded pony to focus her mind’s eye on. She titled her gaze up to the wall behind her night light, clearing every wandering thought process out of her head as quickly as she could manage—
A second shotgun blast outside disrupted her attempts to initiate her daydreaming, and a slight growl of frustration slipped through her throat as her eyes snapped back open out of reflex—
—a splinter of light curled out into the air out of the corner of her eye, and her gaze darted off to the side to track it to its source—
—tendrils of blue energy peeled out through the cracks between two wall panels a few feet away, extending their reach with every passing moment and beginning to crackle ominously as they drew near. Several other ponies that had been right in front of this wall had somehow vanished entirely without her noticing or hearing them (and she noted with disdain that none of them had thought to warn her or her daughter either). Many of the injured and wailing in the lobby had by now begun to take notice of the energy build-up beginning to take place at other sections of the room, and took steps to expedite themselves away from the danger and piling into the center in one large concentrated mass.
Sling only had enough time to grab Light Tail and yank her off the lounge sofa, and had barely thrown herself over the filly before the room exploded in a roar of thunder. There was the briefest flinch of an impact to her back….
….and then nothing.
She couldn’t recall if she’d been dreaming, or sleeping. She only remembered talking to her daughter, trying to soothe her injured psyche, and….
….and that was it. Her mind was too addled with pain and….
….and the sharp crackle of fire.
Her eyes snapped open, her senses revitalized by the sharp fear and terror of a fiery death, and wished that she’d been having a nightmare.
Most of the floor of the lobby was slick with water, pockmarked with small puddles in a seemingly random pattern throughout the room. Her head, forelegs, and much of the forward half of her body were all soaked, though the heat of the nearby fire consuming the lounge sofa on the other side of the room had already begun to dry her. She felt something heavy—but cushioned and comfortable—pressing down upon her body, pinning her to the cold floor of what looked like the reception lobby of the medical wing. Several sections of the walls were shorn and ragged, with outward-pointing shears of scorched and warped metal suggesting an explosion had occurred somewhere within the power conduits behind them. The ceiling above the fire was slowly being obscured by a growing cloud of black smoke, but so far she could still breathe without getting any of it in her lungs. The red lights that once pulsed and waned in a predictable cycle now remained bright and constant—a final fail-safe built into the tertiary lighting system in the event that main power failed completely, to ensure ponies could see well enough to get out.
And not one single soul was in sight. Nor could she hear anypony out beyond the broken, half-open doorway. She couldn’t even see any sign that they’d been there at all. The only thing she could find that didn’t belong was a pair of shattered flasks a few feet in front of her, with several shards held together only by the adhesive label identifying the flasks as….
….healing potions?
She slapped her tongue about inside her mouth, probing along the roof and the insides of her cheeks, and quickly tasted a lingering sensation of strawberry, one of the most common flavors of healing potions she knew of. Now she was beginning to understand why she couldn’t remember how she wound up on the floor—whatever had injured her had likely knocked her out on impact, and somepony had been kind enough to force a couple of potions down her unconscious throat. It was a miracle she hadn’t choked on it. An injection stim potion would have made better sense, but it was entirely possible the pony in question had no idea where to find them.
That still left her pinned to the floor by a couch. Damn thing might have even been the reason she needed the potions in the first place. Had she come to on her own, without the aid of restorative potions, she wouldn’t have dared to risk aggravating a potential head injury with even the simplest of spells. But with only the weight of the couch giving her any degree of pain and given her current situation, she felt quite a bit more comfortable with the idea. And she didn’t really have much of a choice.
Damn Stable ponies had turned their back on her. As usual.
A surge of magic began to flow through her horn, bringing a pleasant tingling to her head, and with a few simple mental alterations to the pattern flow a telekinesis spell took shape and enveloped the couch. With the couch in her grasp, she willed it to be flung across the room, out of her way, and felt its weight tug hard on her hold as it flew away from her and crashed onto the floor to her left. Momentarily disoriented by the effort, she released the spell and allowed the mana flow to settle down back into her horn, shaking her head as a bout of nausea began to sneak its way into her. Heavier than it looks….can’t let that wind me out, gotta focus, gotta find my baby oh gods El-Tee where did you get to—
A frantic set of hooves broke up her tearful thoughts, clomping against the floor in the depths of the medical wing, and their rapidity and lack of weight gave her a shock of hope—
And for the second time this week, her prayers were answered in the way she wanted them answered—by the sight of her little girl, healthy and moving on her own, as the poor thing came dashing into the lobby, slipping on the water as she went and clutching a small leather pouch in her mouth. The instant she spotted her mother upright and staring back at her, she skidded to a stop, splashing thin wakes of water across her legs and belly as she gently set the pouch and its fragile cargo of fresh healing potions onto the floor.
“Holy L….Mom, you’re okay?! You—“
Sling couldn’t remember re-activating her horn’s magic, or conjuring her telekinesis spell once more. All she would remember was that she was so ecstatic to see her little girl that she literally willed her to be drawn into the tightest, most secure embrace she could give, and it was so. El-Tee didn’t even notice the spell herself until she was being flung towards her mother in a seemingly uncontrollable flight into her waiting forelegs.
“—oooooawwwoooah wait wait too fast—“
The spell field around her tiny body dissipated, leaving her helpless to avert her fate, but Sling didn’t care. She just wanted some physical assurance that she wasn’t hallucinating, that this was Light Tail and that yes, she was going to be okay—
“Oh gods oh gods honey so happy you’re not hurt!” she sobbed into her daughter’s mane, her forelegs wrapping around her tightly and hugging her close to her chest. “You’re not hurt, right I—“
She shouldn’t have said anything. The mere mention of the possibility of injury brought a warm, slick wetness to the attention of her chin, and she pulled her head away just in time to see the gauze padding and bandage wrapped around her little baby’s head stained red with fresh blood, and a trail of red creeping down the side of her face.
Her shriek of terror, while soft, was unmistakable, and that cold, hard panic began to creep back inside her. “O-o-oh Luna not again—“
Light Tail’s legs began to push against her in an effort to twist herself out of yet another death hug. “M-mom, quit it, I’m okay—“
But Sling barely heard her. All she could think about was Thursday morning, when she’d found her lying in a daze and covered in crimson, barely capable of speaking, and all the fears and night terrors she’d suffered at the thought of her daughter never coming back to her. “Where are those stupid potions?!” she shrieked in a huff, frantically grabbing at the pouch left behind on the floor and pulling it to her with a mindless fling of magic. “Just stay s-still, t-these’ll fix you right up—“
“Mom, stop, calm down I’m fine—“
“You’re not fine! You’re bleeding, just hold still—“
This. Was. Getting. RIDICOULOUS.
Every hour she was getting sucked up into a super hug of love and tolerance and death and it was ridiculous! She wasn’t that cute!
….well, okay, maybe she was, but it was still crazy! And now Mom was having a panic attack after just seeing the cut on her head she’d wound up re-opening when she banged it on the cabinet door where she’d found those extra healing potions. This had to stop!
And what better way to snap a stupid adult pony to their senses than to slap it into them? So that’s what she did. She reached up with her left foreleg and smacked her mom across the snout with a light-hearted but firm swipe, and all of a sudden Mom’s blabbering and crying came to a sudden and abrupt halt….
…..as did the pouch she’d stuffed full of potions. Mom’s spell died out the instant the shock of the hoofslap hit her, and now that pouch was falling to the floor and it was going to break every single flask if she didn’t catch it! Ponies needed that stuff!
The jingle of glass was close, and on a whim she squirmed her way out of Mom’s forelegs, twisting herself back around as she fell—
—was shocked at just how close that flying leather pouch really was—it was barely three feet away from them when she’d broken free, and closing fast. She barely had time to process it, but she had to catch it before it could get by her—
—on a whim she jabbed her head out, snapped at it with her teeth—
—caught it by its closure string just as her hooves touched down on the floor and her horn inadvertently flaring to life with a telekinesis spell to try and cushion the pouch’s flight so that it wouldn’t tear free and keep going. It worked, barely, and though the string tugged at her front teeth it remained in place, and she gently shifted the pouch down until it was dangling from her mouth of its own weight before releasing her spell.
The look on Mom’s face when she turned back around was priceless, and she couldn’t help but giggle and laugh at it despite the surreal and terrifying things that had been going on for the last four minutes. Mom was just sitting there on her haunches, her eyes wide open like she’d just been shocked, her forelegs now holding onto the empty space that had once contained a little filly, and her jaw just…hung there, wide enough to catch bugs if she stayed that way for much longer. But at least she wasn’t hyperventilating anymore.
“Hey, Equestria to Mom!” she squealed with a snicker, waving a hoof in front of her mother’s eyes, though she had to rear up on her hind legs a bit to do it. “I’m down here now!”
Mom’s eyes finally blinked. Once, at first, and then again, and then began resuming their natural involuntary blinking rhythm as her forelegs settled down onto the floor, her neck craning down to stare back at her with a slightly bewildered stare.
Oh crud, she’s gonna ground me if I don’t do somethin’ quick—
“I’m fine,” she said, putting extra emphasis on ‘fine’ in case Mom needed a little extra clarif….extra assurances! Stupid brain, you know the word you were gonna say, work! “I just banged my head a little running around back there! I got these for you.”
The front of Mom’s mane began to slide down across her head, soaked and flattened down into three large separate bangs, one of which began to fall over her left eye. “….wha….”
….oh Luna, maybe I shouldn’t have smacked her—
“I-I’m sorry!” she stammered quickly in apology, quickly setting the pouch down and plucking one of the potions out with another telekinesis spell. “I just…you got hurt. Somethin’ exploded right behind us, knocked the couch right into you and put you out. I didn’t get hurt ‘cause you practically shoved me under you. I tried to get somepony to help me get you out but they all ran off when the red lights went solid. Tender Mane and Straight Jacket barely got any help movin’ Ballast, I didn’t wanna get in their way but…but nopony else even listened! I couldn’t find Aunt C anywhere so I just started shovin’ these things down your throat! And when the second one didn’t wake ya up I went and found more, but I guess it was enough and—“
Trap. Mistake, whatever you wanted to call it, she’d made it, because she was back in that death hug before she knew it, and it was getting OLD. She wished everypony would quit hugging her so much! So emotional! So—
“No, no, don’t apologize,” Mom’s voice cried quietly into her mane. “You did good back there, okay? Very good. Just…just where did everypony go to?”
This time, getting out of Mom’s grasp wasn’t that much of a fight, she let her go willingly. She set the potion back into the pouch and flung her mane back out of her face when it began to flop around in front of her. Still wet and all. “I dunno,” she croaked back. Now that Mom was okay, and she was okay, the harsh reality around her began to come back to haunt her, and she was suddenly aware of how dangerously close to…no, no don’t think about that think good stuff—
“Everypony just left. Down the hall, back towards the library, but when I went down there it was locked. I think they might’ve tried to get to the agri levels. Thing is—“
The PA system—which somehow, someway, despite the lack of power, was still working—fizzled to life, and it did an excellent job of explaining things for her. Complete with a really loud klaxon alarm and everything.
“ATTENTION,” the robotic, disembodied female voice bellowed out. “EMERGENCY. SPARK GENERATOR FAILURE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. REPEAT: EMERGENCY. SPARK GENERATOR FAILURE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY—“
Mom’s eyes shrank into pin-prick sized pupils with a sharp gasp of terror. She even started to tremble a little. Her tail tried to flick itself around, but only managed a pitiful jerk here and there, and shook a little itself.
Which was fine, because that wasn’t what the stupid thing was saying five minutes ago. Five minutes ago it was telling everypony to evacuate level seven. “…..that’s….new….”
Mom’s body began to lay down, her head collapsing into her forelegs, and only when she started crying and sniffling did it finally strike the little one just how serious things were now.
She’d never seen Mom cry like this before. And it was scaring her.
“….m-mom, what’s wrong?” she dared to ask, though she couldn’t muster much of a confident or cheery tone. She sounded as scared as she felt, and that couldn’t have been doing Mom any favors at all. “….mommy? Talk to me, please? What’s going on?”
Mom’s body heaved, her lungs sucking in a hard breath of air, and she did this twice before she could bring herself to come out of her little impromptu hidey hole. Her eyes were….what did they call it? Bloodshot? All those red veins that crept up around the edges?
….o….oh, Celestia, NO—
“I’m….I’m sorry, honey,” Mom gasped tearfully, barely able to bring herself to say what she was saying. “….but….we have to leave.”
No no NO we can’t leave we CAN’T—
“….w-whaddya mean, leave?!” she tried to stall. They couldn’t leave! Not without Aunt C, or Tender Mane, or Paint Splotch or Spiner or….or everypony. “We can’t just up and leave everypony!! It says everypony evacuate—“
“Honey, listen to me!!” Mom’s voice boomed over her, somehow finding strength and sternness to speak to her like the mother she was supposed to be, and it stung enough to make the filly shut up and listen. “In ten minutes the blast door to the surface won’t have enough power to work. If we don’t get out of the stable by then, we never will!”
Light Tail felt her heart go cold and still at the unspoken prospects of how that was going to turn out. “What?! That’ll trap everypony inside with these stupid bugs!!”
“I know!” Mom screamed back, struggling to fight back her tears and failing miserably. “And we can’t stop it! With the power gone we can’t stop it!! We’ll….we can’t stay here anymore. We have to go. Now!”
She felt her legs begin to tremble, worse than Mom’s, and suddenly the world was getting a little blurry and wet as her eyes welled up with fresh tears. “….but….we can’t just leave everypony here….not Aunt C, not Jam or Emmy, or Spiner or….we can’t leave them here….”
For the third time in two minutes she was wrapped in another one of Mom’s hugs. But this time she didn’t care. She wanted Mom to hug her and tell her that everything would be fine, that everypony would find a way out in time even though she knew otherwise, she wanted Mom’s closeness and body heat to chase away the growing cold in her gut, she wanted to know that unmistakable feeling of unconditional love and security she’d taken for granted her whole little life.
She got some of her wishes, at least. “I’m sorry,” Mom’s voice tried to soothe her. “I’m sorry I can’t make any of this better, or that we can’t find Windy in time. But I want us to make it through this. I don’t know what’s waiting on the surface, or if it’s any better than things are down here. But if we don’t leave, we….we may very well die down here. I want you to live.”
There. She said it. Said the last thing she wanted to hear. That if they didn’t leave they’d….they’d die. They’d die, and Aunt C would too, and Jam and Emmy and Miss Amethyst and everypony else she knew and cared about….all gone. Just like that.
And no matter how much she felt like bawling her eyes out into her mother’s wet chest, howling and crying at how terribly unfair life was all of a sudden….
….she couldn’t.
Because she suddenly refused to believe that Aunt C would just roll over like that, or let anypony on her watch go so easily without a fight. Mom might’ve believed otherwise, and she had a good reason to, she was her mother. The only thing she ever wanted in her life was to see her happy and safe. If that meant leaving the stable….then it was probably the safer thing to do, in the off chance that she was wrong and things didn’t turn out for the better. But if anypony could save the stable and keep them alive….
It was Aunt C. She was that awesome. Daring Do-level awesome.
“ATTENTION. EMERGENCY. YOU NOW HAVE NINE MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY—“
….nine minutes to leave. Nine minutes to fight their way through a horde of disgusting bugs, crack open the stable door that opened only once every thirty years, and get out.
They could do that.
She fought back a sniffle, withdrew a foreleg she’d not even known she was hugging back with, and nuzzled her mother’s neck in a gentle caress before drawing back. “….ya don’t have to be sorry,” she mewled through a tight throat. “It’s not your fault.”
Mom’s face was as close to breaking down as hers, but she was strong enough to fight it off and steel herself for the biggest decision she’d made in her life. “….we’ll need to run the whole way,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with sorrow. “Stay close, don’t fall behind. Any bugs you see, push them aside and plow through. We don’t have time to fight our way out. Understand?”
“….let’s just get this over with,” she squeaked back, wiping a tear from her eye as she took the pouch of healing potions and floated it back over onto the receptionist’s desk. With all that was going on around her right then, she didn’t even notice the weight of the things.
With one last, confidence-killing sigh of despair, Mom stood up on all fours and began to gallop out of the lobby, her horn flaring to life with a ball of light and flinging it out ahead of her as she banked around the door and darted into the hall on her right.
She kept pace with her as best she could manage, and to her surprise she found it rather therapeutic to have such a simple act as running take her mind off of the enormity of what she was doing. When she was running at break-neck speed, trying to keep up with her mom and putting every ounce of mental effort into it, she wasn’t thinking so much of the fact that she was leaving behind the only home she’d known her whole life, her friends, her favorite after-school nesting grounds. Before long, the task took up the majority of her attention, and her sorrow and tears were rapidly fading to a sharp pang of sadness that she could manage well enough without hugs and kisses and soft voices.
And that stupid, loud klaxon wouldn’t stop blaring into the halls, which helped take her attention off of their faces.
Mom wasn’t the fastest pony in the stable, but she could still book it along at a pretty hard pace with enough motivation. Within thirty seconds they’d already begun dashing up the stairway at the back end of L7, skipping the door to L6 altogether in a straight shot for L5. It was taking all of her energy just to keep from falling behind more than a few feet at a time, but as they emerged from the stairway and into the administration level she found her mother beginning to pull away from her as she broke into a hard run. This hallway was a straight shot all the way to the other end of the level, and the Overmare’s office was tucked away into a little corner on the right side. Before she knew it, she couldn’t make out the bands that made up Mom’s braided ponytail anymore, and she was getting further away with every step.
“Mom, wait!” she shouted at the shrinking mare’s backside. “I can’t—“
—a vent grating popped off and clattered onto the floor between them, and an insanely large and hideous cockroach the size of Miss Teakettle’s cat skittered out from the vent, chirping wildly at the sight of a fresh pony galloping towards it.
Light Tail’s natural and totally lady-like response was an incredibly high-pitched shriek, her eyes locked onto its massive mandibles as they clicked together in anticipation of its meal, and without conscious thought her horn fired off a telekinesis spell, wrapping around the vent grating and slamming it into the bug as hard as she could. The adrenaline boost helped a great deal, squashing it against the wall with a disgusting wet crunch…
….and suddenly Mom wasn’t that far away anymore. In fact, she could reach out and touch her flank if she wanted.
Too bad that bug wasn’t alone. Not even two seconds later she heard more chirping and screeching behind her as she passed by the vent, and the adrenaline began to boost her running speed at a much stronger rate. Now it was Mom who couldn’t keep up—
“Oh shi—RUN!!” Mom howled in terror, her hoofsteps beginning to match those of the filly in pace and speed. “I think you made them mad!!”
“They can eat poison and DIE!!!” she shrieked back, not even thinking about where she was going anymore. Just wanted to get AWAY—
“Turn right at the end of the hall!!” Mom shouted after her, just as she leapt over what looked like a discarded gun belt and a thin, tall object next to it.
Right! Right! I can do right!
The bug chirps grew more numerous and closer, from other places on L5, which only furthered her desire to beeline it to the Overmare’s office before they could find her and feast on her delicious hind legs an—
Oh gross, I’m not delicious! she admonished herself in horror as she slowed herself down at the end of the hall so as not to run right into the wall. Why would I even think of myself like that oh Luna that was just sick—
She’d barely pulled away from the wall and started running again when she heard—or felt, rather—Mom’s cool hearing protection spell wash over her ears, dampening every imaginable sound around her—
—three rapid gunshots rang out behind her, accompanied by a pair of grotesquely satisfying screeches that sounded like a radroach’s dying screams—
“—YOU NOW HAVE SEVEN MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“
Her mounting frustration at the stupid alarms and the stupid voice finally got the better of her. “I know, I know, you won’t shut up about it!! You’re not helping!!”
“Quit fighting with the stupid computer and watch yourself!!” Mom’s voice yelled back at her, quickly growing closer as the Overmare’s open office grew larger and more inviting. No bugs in there, at least!
“I am watching!”
“No, honey slow down—“
“I’m fine Mo—“
Her hooves bumped into each other as she slipped through the doorway, sending her tumbling through rump over hoof and straight towards the Overmare’s desk face first—
—Mom’s magic encased her body and caught her just before impact. She felt the entire back half of her sling up and overhead for a couple of seconds as her momentum shifted it forward, and allowed her body to slump back down onto the floor with no resistance or attempt to soften the landing as Mom began slamming the door to the office shut.
“…..w-w-whoa,” she murmured in a broken voice, her brain momentarily scrambled by the near-miss with the desk. It was sorting itself out pretty quick—in short order she remembered where she was, what she was doing, how she got here, and how much it would’ve freakin’ HURT to slam into a two-hundred year old wooden oval desk like that—
—the door clanged shut, and Mom’s magic left her body, allowing her to stand up under her own power once more. “That’s what I meant!” Mom hissed sharply as she trotted past her, her horn flaring to life and tapping away at a console behind the desk. “You gotta be careful running like that, you nearly tripped yourself right into the desk!”
She felt the flesh beneath her coat begin to burn in shame, and her ears instinctively dipped down as she hunched away from the desk. She didn’t mean to blow Mom off like that, she was just…. “….s-sorry….I didn’t know…”
—felt her body leap backwards as the desk shuddered free of the floor in a sudden jolt, then began rising up on several gear-driven pistons, revealing a hidden staircase beneath it.
“—OW HAVE SIX MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“
Her heart climbed out of her stomach and back into her chest where it belonged, and she allowed herself a brief snit fit at her mother to calm her startled nerves. “Jeez, would a little warning have killed ya?!”
Mom’s subdued laughter as she stepped back from behind the rising desk wasn’t quite as comforting as she’d wished it could have been—not when she was busy looking over the gun she’d picked up in the hall as if she were preparing for imminent combat. “Call it payback for getting the jump on me Monday evening.”
Light Tail mumbled something, but between the hearing protection spell, the motorized desk lifting up, and the hidden floor panel sliding out of the way to reveal the stairwell underneath, she couldn’t make much sense of it. Much of her remaining attention was centered solely on the 10mm pistol she’d picked up off the floor in their rush to the office (she absently remembered it as #28 in the inventory list), inspecting its slide and hammer, its safety and magazine release, its finish and the brightness of its orange, diamond-tube encased arcane crystal inserts embedded in the iron sights, the condition and exterior feel of the four magazines that had been stuffed inside the gun belt’s two mag pouches.
Because if she stopped thinking about it, she wasn’t sure she could go any further. Her heart was shattered, her resolve to vacate the only home she’d ever known faltering with every step upward. She’d personally never been any further up than L5 her entire life. With every movement forward (and up), she’d be going further away from her home than she’d ever been. It was more immensely terrifying than she could have imagined, and she didn’t want to contemplate it or she’d lose her nerve and stop moving.
Even the thought of losing Windy couldn’t compare to that. How terrible a pony was she to consider the life of her only friend less of a tragedy than the idea that she was about to leave her life behind her, even as she cried inside at how the pegasus’s would end up? That she valued her comfort zone and her daughter so much that she didn’t care what happened to anything else around her, so long as at least one of those things could survive? Would Windy understand? Would she be mad at her as her lungs ran out of oxygen? Would she cry as she lay suffocating, thinking her “niece” and friend were suffering the same fate and had no way to comfort them in their last seconds of life? Would she cry for somepony to hold her just so she wouldn’t die alone?
Was she ever going to live this down if she made it out of here? Did she want to?
She slapped a fresh magazine into the pistol’s grip and ripped the slide back into battery before her thoughts could stray any further down such dark paths. She put them out of her mind, wiping away the tears they’d inflicted, put every future thought and action into doing anything but standing here and thinking about what she was leaving behind. She still had her daughter to look after, and El-Tee would not survive up on the surface without her. Anything she did now, would have to be for her.
She damn well didn’t feel like doing anything for herself.
She pulled the ball of light from her illumination spell towards her, whispering a silent enchantment upon the recessed accessory rail on the pistol’s dustcover and then embedded the light ball into it. She watched it seemingly melt into the metal and coalesce the majority of the mana at the front of the frame, just below the barrel, projecting a tight, white beam of light outward like a flashlight, allowing her to search the darkness without having to drain battery power from her flashlight. When the beam showed no dangers lurking about in the dark, tight corridor beneath the Overmare’s office, she picked up the partially-expended magazine off of the floor and stuffed it into a mag pouch mounted ahead of her right saddlebag. Where she was going, she wasn’t sure she’d find any more of these, and she would need every piece of equipment.
“T-this hall goes to a set of stairs a hundred feet up,” she heaved in a single breath. “They go all the way up to the surface level.”
“And the door to the stable?” El-Tee asked as the mare began the short trek down the stairs. Only a dozen steps down.
“What about it?” Four steps down already, and the filly was right on her tail. Literally, the thing’s face was actually touching it.
“How are you gonna get it open when we get there?” she pressed gently, her snout batting the mother’s tail aside, only to have it return to her face.
“….when the spark generator’s about to go out, the control systems send a signal to the door to wipe out the access code and unlock itself,” Sling answered after a moment’s contemplation. No harm in telling her any security secrets now. “The PA is telling us how long we have before we run out of power to work the controls and get the door open. The door was specifically designed to withstand a direct, point-blank detonation of a megaspell, and our particular stable door has enchantments in place to keep a unicorn’s magic from interacting with it. No power, no way out.”
Bottom of the stairs. The embedded light spell in the pistol began to fizzle, and she injected a burst of mana into it to keep it going another few minutes. Still no threats in the hall, and she could even make out the door at the end that would lead them to the surface level.
She hoped the door had been serviced recently.
“….is…is there gonna be anypony up there?”
“Only one way to find out,” she answered, not willing to extrapolate aloud on why they hadn’t seen anypony else since they’d left medical. Either they’d already piled up in the “Gate Room”, as she liked to call the stable door chamber, or everypony up past L7 had evacuated down to the agri levels when the power started to fail and had yet to make their way up. Or were trapped.
Either way, she couldn’t help them.
Thankfully, Light Tail chose not to pester her with question after question, allowing them to traverse the hall in relative peace. It took her half a minute to fight the door open, unfortunately, and she might have cursed the maintenance crew for their lack of oversight had she not been aware of how hard they’d been pressed just to keep anything running for the last two months. Paperwork SNAFUs, or requisition forms getting lost somewhere in the system between the work terminal and the mainframe. Or just plain not having enough ponies to see to all the repairs and upkeep all the time.
She did, however, curse the designers who thought five flights of uninterrupted stairs didn’t need a set of lights to illuminate the path upward. And for an escape route built for the Overmare in the event of a violent rebellion, something like a working light bulb might’ve been an awfully good idea to invest in. Her only solace was that the idiots who designed the place had long since passed from this mortal realm, and that she had an illumination spell she could use to light their way up. A second ball of light formed at the tip of her horn, tethered to it and shining its light in every direction except directly into her eyes, giving mother and daughter all the light they needed to make the ascent a quick one. Within three minutes they reached the top of the stairs, the exit door ominously lacking any lettering or indication that they were about to depart onto the surface level. A twist on the circular hatch handle rankled her ears with its bone-shuddering screech, but otherwise gave her no trouble or resistance as she swung the door open—
—her EFS blipped three red hash marks at the bottom of her field of vision, offset to the left but barely moving, indicating either unaware or distant threats, and she wanted to keep them that way. The sounds of the evacuation klaxon were back in full force, but there was no guarantee that it would be enough to mask any sounds they made.
“Move quietly,” she whispered back behind her, her body lowering down as she began to creep through the door. Her horn drew the light spell in the pistol back into itself, killing the light beam to ensure that it didn’t prematurely announce her position. There was enough tertiary lighting that she didn’t need it anyway. “Talk quietly if you have to talk, otherwise stay silent. Stable door’s close.“
A tug on her tail—with teeth, no less—was as good an “okay” answer as she could ask for, and she began to slink through the living-room sized transfer block, her eyes settling on two separate doors, one to her left and one immediately ahead. The mental map in her head wasn’t quite as clear about the layout of the surface level as it was about the hidden path that got her up here, but with the red marks on her left she could at least rule out that general direction for the moment, and she went straight for the door ahead of her. This one didn’t screech or complain nearly as much, its hatch-operated locking bars creaking softly as she tugged it open and pushed the door aside with her head. A simple peek through, however, set her hopes back.
The room beyond was a dead-end. Littered with empty, rusted storage bins and a few rotted wooden crates, there was nothing else to indicate that this room had seen a pony’s visit in decades. With a silent curse she tucked her head back through and went for the other door, ignoring the red hash marks as they slid over to the center bottom—
“—GENCY. YOU NOW HAVE FOUR MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“
Her race-track heart began to beat harder, though it was already working itself half to death with all the fear and adrenaline coursing through her. Four minutes was not that much time if one wasn’t paying attention to it. She let her telekinesis pull down on the hatch, twisting it open and cringing at much louder the locking bars were—
—the three hash marks began to shift about, one sliding away from the other two at a slightly faster rate. What it meant, she couldn’t say. She hoped it was just milling about and not actually trying to search out the noise she’d just made.
This door, thankfully, led to a short hall, forty feet in length, with no obstructions or damage that might slow their progress. She let herself trot forward a little, momentarily surprised when she heard only her own soft hoofsteps and jerked her gaze back behind her—
—Light Tail was right where she expected her, no less than two feet away from the tip of her tail, and her little hooves barely made a sound as they tip-toed forward on slightly shaking legs. Good girl, easy does it—
—eyes forward again, and that faster hash mark began to grow further away from its two friends….and with much more noticeable shifts in its position. Very close. Possibly even in the next room.
Please let this be the door to the Gate Room, please please please pretty please—
End of the hall. A subtle, soft pull of the hatch—she didn’t want to alarm that moving threat any more than she already had. Happily, the door was as soft as the first one she’d tried, barely squeaking, and she stuffed her snout into the opening crack and pushed the door off to the side—
—her ears felt a lessening of air pressure as her body slinked through into the much larger and cavernous room beyond. Bathed in bright red from a row of overhead crimson light bulbs, there was little mistaking the room’s identity.
Gate Room.
Coming in from a hidden side path rather than the main stairway, the view wasn’t quite as…majestic as it might have been. She emerged into the room on a raised platform, a short set of stairs in the middle leading to the grated floor four feet below. Ahead, she could see a small security station at the other end of the platform, its glass window long broken and the ravages of time eroding at the metal walls within.
To her right, embedded into the solid steel wall, was the “Gateway” to the surface. A massive, mechanical arm hanging from the ceiling stood ready to press itself into the open port at the top of the gear-shaped stable door and pull the door inward and off to the slide along a set of recessed rails spanning the length of the wall. Inset in the center of the stable door, in faded but legible black lettering were pony-sized numbers:
“—AVE THREE MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE—“
Light Tail’s body bumped into her hind legs, distracted by her first sight of a world beyond level six, and somehow, despite the trauma and horror of losing everything she’d ever known, she still had the capacity to be awed and floored by things she’d never seen before. “…..oooooh, wooow….it’s huge….”
The overwhelming sense of wonder in her voice made Sling wonder whether she even wanted to tell her little girl the gravity of what they were about to do. “It’s our only way out,” she said in return, creeping forward once more and scanning the room with her attention focused specifically on where those red hash marks could come from once she entered the command to open the stable door. “And when it opens, any bugs on this level will know it and come looking for a meal. Be ready to run through the second you have room.”
“How long will that take?” El-Tee pondered, going so far as to inch past her mother to a place where she could get a better look at the door. “It’s….huge. And only opens once every generation. Not like it gets used a lot.”
How eternally grateful I am that you continue to use that brilliant mind of yours to completely derail my nice fantasies with a dose of pesky reality! “….good question. Like I said before, only one way to find out. See that console off to your left?”
Light Tail’s red-hued body shifted slightly as her head twisted around to the podium-mounted console right next to the stairs. Though its monochrome green monitor was dusty and well-worn, she could still hear its internal components buzzing with energy and the computer systems humming in anticipation of commands to carry out.
“The one I can’t reach ‘cause I’m too short?” the filly mumbled derisively.
“Oops,” she squeaked sheepishly. “My bad. Watch the doors.”
Light Tail reluctantly pulled her gaze away from the sight in front of her and did as she was told, moving out of her mother’s way as the mare quickly stepped up to the console and huffed at the controls, blowing ungodly clouds of dust off that swirled away into oblivion. Dirty as hell up here, she noted with slight concern. Like nopony ever comes up here unless they’re Selected. No reason to…
“….wow,” Light Tail’s voice whispered again, but this time there was no hint of wonder or amusement to her words. Rather, a tone of sadness. “….I guess, we’re the only ones that made it up….”
Her lit, flared horn paused just short of pressing the telekinesis spell field into the pull-out keyboard, her mind suddenly rushing back to—
—Windy’s face, beaming back at her in mid-laughter as she walked ahead of her—
“—OU NOW HAVE TWO MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“
—a tear dripped through her right eye, rolled down her cheek as she resumed poking at the keyboard, no longer willing to look at the keys as she punched in the commands that would suck up the last vestiges of power in the stable. Hesitated just before the “ENTER” key, a slight resistance to her escape plan still compelling her to…
….oh gods, I’m really….
Her spell field slapped the key before the thought could finish, and allowed the consequences to quell her hesitation. With a loud, brain-rattling groan, the massive arm began to crunch forward, its torturous movements echoing through the metals with such agony that she almost felt sorry for it. It was like listening to an aged, decrepit pony trying to walk without the assistance of others or a walker and hearing their brittle, old bones crinkle and crack under the effort.
She lost all sympathy for old metal constructs when her EFS began adding more red hash marks than she could count, quickly. She began to wonder if the things were nesting up here instead of at the generator, and they would not be happy with the silly little pony that had just woken them up.
“Oh snap,” she huffed loudly, whipping around to scan through the doorway leading towards the main elevator in the room behind her. “El-Tee, get behind me!”
She needn’t have said anything—the disjointed chorus of shrieking radroaches was enough to send the filly dashing behind her mother. Between the mechanical piston above them slamming into the door and the evacuation klaxon it was impossible to tell how close the bugs were now. Didn’t matter in the end, she didn’t have enough ammo to kill them all if this door didn’t open fast.
Mother and daughter inched down the platform stairs to the floor, Sling swinging the pistol about at every conceivable point of entry for the bugs—an air vent, the room with the main elevator, the security office that was now up and to her right if it had a vent anywhere in there. She didn’t even bother watching the hash marks, they were flooding her vision. She eventually shut the EFS off entirely just to keep from getting sick.
Just as the door controls began pulling the stable out with an agonizing screech of unlubed metal grinding against each other, the first of the bugs emerged into view in the main elevator room.
And it brought TWENTY friends to the party.
“Sh—“
Her magic squeezed the trigger, cutting off her swearing with an intense—but sound-muffled—boom and a flash of orange flame, then squeezed again, and again each time the sights came back down into alignment from the recoil—
—the muzzle flash obscured much of the gruesome effects of her shots, though the dying shrieks and shrill cries were enough to signify her success—
“—YOU NOW HAVE ONE MINUTE TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“
—two more shots, another shriek that somehow brought a sick grin to the side of her mouth. Cathartic to hear them scream like that, after all the damage they’d done. The massive door began to roll along the rails, whether aided by the mechanical arm above them or another mechanism she didn’t know about—
“Mom, it’s opening!!!” Light Tail screamed as high as her voice could manage, her words growing more distant with each passing moment. “Hurry up!!!”
She ceased shooting, turned and bolted like a rabbit—
—shrieked in surprise as the door, barely pulled off of the entrance, was already beginning to tumble back over the exposed hole—
—her tail was the last thing to come through the entrance. Barely a moment later, the gear-shaped door slid back into place, shaking ages of dust and—
—and rock….
Sling skidded to a stop in the excavated tunnel, barely acknowledging the noise the door made as it shuddered into place and rumbled the walls of rock around them. Actual, solid, rock. With stalagmites hanging from the ceiling and jutting up from the ground. Her nose, tickled by the falling dust, instigated an instinctive sneeze to blow it away, allowing her to take her first, unobstructed breath of fresh air in her life. And it was like nothing else she’d ever inhaled. She’d never realized how…stuffy, how stale the air in the stable was, because she’d never known anything else. Now she did.
And when the last vestiges of ancient metal finished their echo through the caverns, she was introduced to an entire new sensation, one even an unpowered stable had not provided.
Natural silence. Save for the crumble of bits of rock as they clanked down the wall and the sound of her own steady breathing, she couldn’t hear a damn thing.
It took her less than ten seconds to forget all of these new sensations, once she began to realize she was now standing outside the stable door. With the giant “115” numbers facing outward now….
….and everything she’d ever known now locked behind it. No longer able to take the way out.
Her throat clamped down on her wind pipe at the thought of Cloud Wind, choking her of its own volition as she began to wonder what was happening to her right now. Maybe surrounded, maybe stuck in the agri level with the rest of the stable, suddenly aware of the dying power and the oxygen recycling systems with it….
A gentle, tentative poke in her side brought her gaze downward, and she remembered again why she’d just abandoned her home. Light Tail’s electric blue irises gleamed with wetness and understanding as she nuzzled her mother’s foreleg, as if hoping the contact might physically ease the heartache she was being hit with right then.
“Aunt C’ll be fine,” the little one said, full of quiet confidence that the mother didn’t feel. “She’s too awesome to let a little thing like lack of power keep her down.”
Sling’s eyes, though beginning to fill with tears, refused to allow them to bubble forth, instead bringing back to her a distant memory—
—Windy’s hoof poked at her hindquarters, at the mark of a shooting star streaking across the front cover of a closed spell book, and she couldn’t help but start to squeal like the nine-year old filly she was at the sight of her totally awesome cutie mark—
—the memory faded, and somehow Sling’s eyes had fallen upon the cutie mark emblazoned on her left hind leg, and now the tears began to trickle free. “….h-honey, it’s not—“
“It’s okay, Mom,” the filly insisted, nuzzling her leg again. “Aunt C won’t croak like that, she’s too awesome. She’ll be okay. But if we’re gonna help anypony now, we gotta find us a new place to live. I don’t know how much longer the stable can stay in there after all that, but it can’t be long.”
Her breath hung up inside her lungs, unable to break the hard truth. And hearing how much…calmer, and steadier Light Tail seemed to feel when she said that…it was almost as if she believed it, and that the thought was what gave her the strength and courage to even contemplate walking out of this tunnel of rock. How could she bring herself to do something so cruel as to shatter that hope with the cold reality going on behind that door? That without the spark generator to keep the stable going, there was no air either?
—a bout of laughter bounced off the walls as Windy’s latest prank came together in a single, spectacular blast of ice cold water sprang forth from the shower head, her spell field around the hot water faucet winking out from the sheer shock to her nerves—
Her tears were blinked away out of necessity rather than heartlessness. If believing that Cloud Wind would save the stable from asphyxiation in a matter of seconds gave her night light the fuel to keep burning, then she would let her believe it until her mane and tail lost their colorful luster. She didn’t have it in her to break her heart. Even if it would have been the wiser thing to do.
And they would need to find somewhere else to live now.
“…t-then I guess we’d better get moving,” she somehow managed to say. Even in this dead, natural silence, her voice was a mere whisper, her light-hearted nuzzle across the filly’s crest being her best signal that she was ready to start moving once more.
Light Tail took the hint and started walking down the tunnel, her indigo tail flashing about and turning that dazzling streak of electric blue in the middle into a light show that had inspired her name. And Sling Shot still lingered, her weary, wet eyes looking back at the steel door and its faded “115”, looking at it now as a tomb, rather than a guard against the unknown, wishing now that she were still on the other side, letting that door be her shield against everything beyond her world and keeping what she knew as close to her as she could manage.
She never thought she would have been so devastated to leave it all behind.
“I’m sorry, Windy,” she cried to the tomb. “I wish I could’ve done better by you….good-bye…”
Sling Shot tore herself away from the door, and her world….
….and into her new one.
To be completely, totally honest, neither of them were expecting a land of sunshine and rainbows. Thus, it was with relief and mild trepidation that their initial expectations of what the surface was like was not so far from what they’d reasoned.
A massive, overhanging carpet of gray clouds obscured the skies as far as her eyes could see, distant patches flashing white and blue as random lightning strikes came alive within the clouds. The accompanying thunder rolled gently across the barren landscape, pockmarked in seemingly random patches with shriveled bushes and small clumps of prairie grass. Much of the ground in front of them, however, looked dusty and dry, and a cool wind whipped about the land in a seemingly random pattern. Clouds of dust occasionally rose from the ground and spread out in a misty fashion, and her damp mane began to grow cold from the touch of the rushing air.
More disturbing, however, were the rows of ancient sky wagons scattered about, many of them twisted and broken into barely recognizable heaps of metal. Nearly two centuries of exposure to the elements had ruined them—most were rotted out by rust, a combination of sickly looking brown and dark red, and the few baggage cases and storage boxes that looked intact had been looted long ago. Several contained remnants of the bones of their former passengers, and she was surprised that were any to begin with. Even so, there was little left inside the two closest sky wagons for anypony to be able to tell if they had once been mares, stallions, or little fillies and colts. She honestly didn’t want to know.
Aside from the bare earth and dead shrubbery, she saw only one husk of a tree masked by the field of debris and ancient machines, its trunk whittled down to the height of the Princess Sisters. But what remained was at the very least, still standing.
A perfect target.
Thankful to have a task to take her attention away from her lingering grief, she slowly nudged Light Tail out of her stunned daze with a quick tap of her snout. “C’mon, I need to teach you something before we get moving.”
Without waiting to see if the little one would respond she walked on past her, her route taking her near a rusted sky wagon that unfortunately did have a fairly intact skeleton still inside its passenger berth, and she did her best not to let her eyes linger on it as she hurried past.
“….t-teach me what?” Light Tail asked, her hoofsteps beginning to tap along behind her in a quick trot to match the larger pony’s casual walking speed. “And….and where did all of these sky wagons come from? The First Ones never mentioned any of this in their journals….”
This earned the filly a quizzical look from her mother, who was momentarily surprised by the fact that her daughter had shown any interest in the Founding Journals at all. “How much of them did you read?”
“Only the ones Miss Amethyst had us read in class,” El-Tee answered quietly. By the sound of her voice Sling presumed her to have moved past the rusted sky wagon, and the lack of terrified shrieks at the sight of a pony’s skeleton was welcome. Probably too short to see over the railing and inside the passenger deck. “None of ‘em ever mentioned these things bein’ out here, only that they crossed a field to get to the Stable.”
She briefly pondered how best to answer the question in a way that would get the point across without being overly detailed or descriptive of the fates of the souls the wagons had once borne. “…..what little I’ve read on the megaspells suggests they’re capable of emitting a secondary backlash wave of residual mana energy that can disable anything more advanced than a steam engine within a defined radius of the blast. Sky wagons, arcane energy weapons, spark generators and portable batteries, even the armor of the War Ministry’s Steel Rangers. My best guess is that these wagons were trying to escape the megaspell exchange when one detonated nearby or above them. Shut down the engines in mid-air, and their pegasi drivers don’t have the strength to pull them along behind them without the support of the engines.”
She didn’t finish her exposition; she didn’t have the heart to. And Light Tail was smart enough to figure out the rest from there on her own regardless. “….oh…”
They spent the next minute and a half in solemn silence, the filly now realizing they were essentially walking through a gravity-built graveyard and having little interest in conversation of any kind. When they’d come to within fifteen yards of the decaying husk of the tree trunk, however, Sling was forced to break that quiet and sanctity with the cold, indifferent necessity of reality. “I showed you this once before the other day, so you’ll probably get some vague feelings of déjà vu. You’re gonna learn how to shoot that gun on your traveling saddle.”
She stopped walking and looked back towards Light Tail, who had stopped herself cold mid-step to the point where even her right foreleg had halted its downward motion towards the ground. She took a slow, hard look at the lightweight .357 revolver tucked into a holster along her left side, and then sat down on her haunches with a heavy sigh. “….yer right, it does sound familiar. An’ I don’t like it. I don’t wanna shoot anypony.”
“You said the same thing the first time, too,” Sling answered back calmly, more than slightly afraid that the future might have other ideas about that particular statement. “You shouldn’t want to shoot other ponies, but that’s not the point. I want you to be able to look after yourself if we get separated, or….or worse. And not knowing how the gun works can actually be more dangerous. At least if you know how to handle it you can do it more safely. You saw how crazy it got in the Stable with all those bugs running around, right?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” El-Tee blurted suddenly, her unusually sharp tone catching the mother off-guard. “I just said I don’t like it.”
“I’m not asking you to like it,” Sling bit back, letting her “Parent mode” slip into her tone. “But you will learn this. It’s important, especially now. Those bugs came from the surface and there’s no telling what else is out here.”
The little one’s response was simply another deep, resigned sigh, as if she were forcing herself to go through with the task ahead out of necessity. “….I know…”
Her daughter’s subdued, sullen mood took some of the bite out of her voice, and for the next ten minutes the lesson went largely as well as it had the first time, and even expanded a little as she showed her how the 10mm pistol worked as well—loading, unloading, the safety and magazine release, how hard she needed to work the slide to get it to snap forward after locking back on an empty magazine (it turned out the squirt’s magic pretty much maxed out at that particular trick). One particular caveat of interest did not escape her notice—it seemed as though merely repeating the lesson had done something to trigger El-Tee’s first memory of it, even if she could no longer recall it directly, and her first round of 125gr .38 Special fired from the lightweight revolver smacked right into the middle of the tree trunk. It was hard to tell at fifteen yards, but she noticed it largely because she was merely watching while El-Tee did the shooting.
“Wow,” her lips breathed of their own accord, her eyes locked onto the deadened chips of bark that had split away from the impact point. “Dead center, first try. Good shot.”
The lightweight revolver floated down below Light Tail’s face as she spied her own handiwork for herself. “I couldn’t tell from here with the gun in the way,” she said quietly, though much of her earlier disdain for the task was disappearing now that she was getting to the actual shooting. “…but this all feels kinda familiar to me anyway. Like I’m just re-learning somethin’ I already knew.”
“It definitely took you a couple of minutes to figure out to pull just the trigger and not the entire the gun the first time we did this,” Sling agreed, her mind already revisiting that Thursday morning and recalling another aspect she’d overlooked the first time. “Since you’ve already got the single-action pull down, just practice firing on double-action for the next nine shots. That takes more effort to shoot accurately and you won’t have time to keep pulling the hammer back if you ever need to draw that thing.”
With no protest (at least none that she could hear), the filly proceeded to do just that, peppering their spell-protected hearing with carefully-deliberated shots over the next twenty-five seconds. It quickly became apparent, however, that Light Tail was not going to get the hang of the ten pounds of pull pressure it required to pull the trigger and fire the weapon in a single session, as her shots were grouped all over the tree trunk. To be fair, though, fifteen yards was asking quite a bit of a weapon that was designed more as a trail kit gun than an implement of battle. And .38 Special wasn’t exactly a powerhouse round either.
Which the squirt was quick to notice when she’d fired her tenth and final round, taking out the tip of a jagged splinter of trunk at the top. “….so what’d you load it with? It’s not nearly as loud as it was in the Stable thirty minutes ago.”
“Those hallways were tight, cramped, and filled with metal,” she pointed out, finally giving in to her inherent curiousness and drawing Grayhawk from its holster on her left side. She already knew she could still shoot the 10mm just fine, but she hadn’t fired this hoofcannon in three years. “That amplifies the sound immensely. Out here there’s nothing to stop the sound and reflect it back at us.”
“I know that,” Light Tail bit back bitterly, turning the revolver upward to dump the empty casings free from the five-round cylinder. “I can still tell a difference in how this thing sounds. What were you shootin’ in the stable? Special bug-killin’ bullets?”
Sling snickered slightly at the remark, but it still stung hard to think back to such recent events and so she simply pushed the fresh memories out of mind for the moment and focused more on the present. “In a way, I guess. You wanna try one?”
As Sling pressed down on Grayhawk’s cylinder release to check the rounds inside, she could almost hear the gears in her night light’s head grinding to a sudden halt as she tried to contain her sudden rush of childlike glee. “Would I?!”
Sling kept her sinister grin mostly to one side of her mouth as she reached into the squirt’s saddle bag and slipped one round of .357 Mag out of its box, floating it out to her daughter in a teasing invitation. If nothing else, the prank would help take her mind off of what had just happened five minutes ago. “Here, I’ll give you one. Don’t have many to spare.”
Light Tail had the lightweight revolver back out in a flash, carefully guiding her mother’s offered ammunition into an empty chamber. With a careful press and indexing of the cylinder she ensured that the .357 round would be rotated into firing position when she cocked the hammer. Not something she’d taught the kid at all.
With her daughter’s attention focused on the upcoming shot, Sling was free to allow her grin to spread unsuppressed, stepping backwards as she sought to get the best view possible of the upcoming calamity. Still, her motherly protective instinct compelled her to keep her prank from being unnecessarily cruel. “Keep a good grip on it, it’ll kick some.”
“Yeah, I saw how you handled it,” El-Tee waved her off with a forehoof. “I’ll be fine, Mom.”
Suit yourself.
A quick glance at Grayhawk’s cylinder confirmed that all six chambers were loaded before she nudged it back shut, and her attention shifted back onto Light Tail as she focused on making the perfect shot—
—El-Tee squeezed down on the trigger, probably a little sooner than she’d expected to, and the resulting sheniagans gave her a good laugh. Even over the sound of the gunshot she could clearly hear her little girl’s shriek in surprise as the gun bucked its way free of her spell field and smacked her in the face, and the backlash of recoil knocked her off-balance enough that she wound up stumbling down on her butt a couple of seconds later when she couldn’t get her balance back. Her shot, surprisingly, managed to blow off the top of a jagged chunk of bark sticking out of the dead tree, but El-Tee never noticed.
She was too incensed over her mother’s sudden burst of laughter. “….you knew that would happen!!” she howled angrily once she’d gotten over her shock (and embarrassment).
She suppressed a snicker into a short snort long enough to answer clearly. “Hey, I warned you. And you said you’d be fine, remember?”
Light Tail’s answer was to simply growl and glare at her mother as she quickly picked the revolver off the ground and opened the cylinder, unceremoniously pulling the fired casing from its chamber, and then flicked it over her back and onto the ground beside her. “Fine, then, let’s see how you handle that monster you’re holding.”
Sling Shot’s grin only got wider as she brought Grayhawk’s sights upward and lined up the red-crystal front sight on top of one of Light Tail’s hits on the tree, and a slight shift in the spell field enveloping the revolver squeezed back on the trigger—
—Grayhawk roared to life for the first time in three years, and the sound and muzzle flash overwhelmed her with its abrupt eruption. Had she not remembered to keep a death grip on the weapon it could have very well bucked back right into her snout just as Light Tail’s gun had. Even with the hearing protection spell, the sound itself thumped its way into her chest and briefly made her heart feel as though it were being grabbed by a griffon’s talon. She swore she even felt the front of her mane being batted around by the back-end of the muzzle blast.
But this heavy price of recoil and noise was rewarded with the explosive deconstruction of the target—where Light Tail’s shot had merely split open a few pieces of dead wood, Sling Shot’s .44 Magnum absolutely obliterated the impact point and sent two-inch pieces of the trunk flying outward in several directions. The ancient tree, rotted out from the ravages of time, proved a much more fragile construct than she’d anticipated, for she could see much the same result exploding out from the back end of the tree trunk as well.
It took a few seconds for the two ponies to shake the noise of the gun out of their heads, and Sling resolved to work on amplifying the strength of the spell later when she began to hear a very faint ringing at the edge of her range of hearing. No more shooting for her, but at least she’d found out if she could still handle the weapon.
And it brightened Light Tail’s mood into one of stunned acceptance, which she preferred over a brooding demeanor. “….holy LUNA,” she shrieked, her rump sitting back down onto the ground as she soaked in every last detail of her mother’s shot. “….what is that thing?”
“Family heirloom,” she answered, unlatching the cylinder just long enough to replace the fired round with a fresh one before slipping the massive revolver back inside its holster. “Our ancestors brought it in with them before the Sealing. Passed down through the generations ever since. Same thing with the one you have, too.”
Light Tail’s gaze fell upon the lightweight revolver resting against her side in its holster, her eyes holding a mixture of fear and wonder. “…you….you mean these guns are over two hundred years old?! How are they still working after all that time?!”
“A properly maintained firearm will last for centuries,” she quoted from memory, recalling the opening line of the firearms chapter straight from the quartermaster training manual with which she’d become innately familiar in her eight years of security service. “That was my job in the stable, until Thursday, anyway.”
“Sounds pretty important,” El-Tee noted needlessly—
Trap, she recognized in the next instant. Something to get her to answer and draw her out of a comfort zone, into a place where she’d be forced to either answer the next question or make it obvious that she wasn’t comfortable answering it by shifting the subject.
Sometimes the kid was just too smart for her liking.
With no real polite way out of the mess, she went ahead and sprung the trap. “It was,” she offered as a reply, lifting her PipBuck up for a better view of its screen as she focused her telekinesis spell onto the mode switch and began flipping through the device’s various functions. With the short weapons lesson over and done with, it was time to get moving, and the first thing she needed to know was which way to go. At the very least, they could at least try to find the final resting place of some long-dead town or village, or whatever remained of the road system.
“So why’d you quit?” came the question she’d predicted would come, and feared answering it. Not just right then, but potentially forever. She’d talked and talked about staying true to Celestia’s words of wisdom, of refraining from violence for the sake of satisfying one’s rampant rage or anger, and the last thing she wanted was to admit she’d done exactly what she’d scolded her daughter for doing more than once when she gave Farsight her short “I quit” message.
Fortunately, when she switched the display to the local area mapping spell matrix function, she found an excellent way to squirm out of the situation even if the new one was potentially worse. “Oh, fu—poke me with a ten-foot pole!” she spat at the monochrome green miniature screen, catching herself before she could drop a rather uncouth curse upon her ten-year-old’s filly ears. “Of course this thing would have to draw itself a new map to replace the one it’s programmed with!”
“….what made you think a map from two hundred years ago would be any good now?” Light Tail inquired politely, likely deciding to forgo the hunt for her mother’s recent troubles in light of the fact that she’d just now admitted they were basically lost.
The simple logic of her reasoning almost caused Sling to slap herself in the face the moment she processed it. “Look behind us,” she replied with a touch of grief, her hoof slipping back down onto the ground as she reached into her bags for her binoculars. No use in messing with the local mapping function if it was just going to start drawing a new one. “Wherever those sky wagons came from, nopony’s been out this way to at least bury the dead ever since the war ended. The road systems and cities on the map might be in ruins but something of them could still be there. I was just hoping to find something that might show us the way to the closest road and we could go from there.”
With the binoculars in her magical grasp she lifted it up to her eyes and began scrutinizing every magnified detail the ten-power optics offered to her. The field of broken, rusting sky wagons and their skeletonized former riders only went out for a further forty yards, and the tree trunk they’d been shooting at sat atop a small hill, giving her a decent vantage point for surveying the immediate area. So far, however, she saw nothing else ahead of them except more patches of dry, dying tallgrass and cracked earth. What about to the right….
“…well, the stable was built near a town, right?” El-Tee suggested next.
“And that helps us, how?” she shot back as she swung the binoculars to her right…and saw much the same thing in that direction as well. Just more empty, barren land. “We still don’t know which way to go to get there.”
“It’d be in walkin’ or runnin’ distance,” the filly continued insistently, but her tone grew quiet and contemplative as she went on. “…y’know, since the First Ones woulda had to get here quick once the world started blowin’ up without warnin’….”
When she put it that way the idea sounded less stupid and wasteful. She held no illusions about what they would find, save that it wouldn’t be anywhere near as comfortable as their stable quarters and probably lacking a running plumbing system. She was already beginning to dread the next couple of days ahead.
With resignation she stopped scanning the lifeless landscape and slipped the binoculars back into their case inside her saddlebags. “….so your idea is to wander aimlessly in a circle until we find whatever’s left of this town?”
“Yup,” Light Tail quipped proudly. “It’s not like we got anythin’ better to do anyway.”
Sling stalled for a few more moments as she took the 10mm pistol out and made a quick round count. The gun belt had two full magazines in it, plus one empty one and the partial mag of five rounds she’d swapped out back in the stable. She’d picked up one empty magazine off the floor as well for a total of five spares…pop the mag out of the gun and scan the witness holes—
Terrific, she snarled bitterly as she counted nine rounds through the witness holes. With one I the chamber as well that left her….thirty-nine rounds of 10mm? Hardly encouraging considering how quickly they could be fired off from a semi-automatic weapon. She pulled the partial magazine out and stripped three rounds from it, and then stuffed them in the magazine she’d taken out of the gun to top it off before putting both mags back where they’d been earlier. She didn’t want to be caught with an empty weapon in the first two seconds of a fight if she needed it. She’d just have to remember not to grab the partial magazine for a reload until she had nothing else left.
She was pretty much carrying everything she owned now. “….guess we’ll start out going straight ahead for a few miles, then.”
“I don’t suppose that PipBuck’s got any music on it, does it?” Light Tail inquired innocently as the pair began their aimless trek.
“Not one iota of it,” the mare answered, distracted by her hounding thoughts of the stable they were leaving behind.
She only realized her mistake when the little filly began clearing her throat in preparation for a vocal task, and by then it was too late to talk her out of it. “Well, then—“
“No, wait—“
“One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beeeeer—“
Sling’s hearing protection spell flared to life, muffling the little filly’s high-pitched singing….but unfortunately, there was really no way to tune her out completely or convince her to shut up. She knew—she’d tried it countless times, and failed. She was doomed. “Oh dear Luna, this is gonna be a long morning…”
“—ss it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the waaaall—“
She got down to sixty-two before they came across their first hopeful sign that some remnant of civilization still existed.
It was a pretty lonely looking thing, perched atop the crest of a slightly-upward incline of ground. Despite two hundred years of time and weather, the wooden house was somehow still standing, though parts of it had long ago fallen apart. One corner of the front had collapsed some time ago, and judging by the haphazard planks of wood nailed over the hole, the soul that lived here was not a pro at house building. The planks were probably just meant to keep nasty critters like radroaches from getting in for lack of better options and skill. Nothing wrong with that.
She had enough sense to stop singing and let Mom slowly creep forward, keeping a sharp eye on how she regarded the rickety house before them. Every few seconds, Light Tail would take a short look around them to make sure nothing was trying to sneak up on them while they weren’t looking, but all she saw was an endless, dusty wasteland. Barely any plant life to sustain the ground and keep the wind from eroding it, which meant that whatever survived up here had little to use for hiding spots when stalking prey. It was kinda sad, really. She already missed the familiarity of the stable, its cool air, her…
….her friends….
Oh stars, I hope they’re okay…
“H-hello?” Mom’s voice called out suddenly, breaking her out of her brief pang of homesickness and causing her to look back up the tiny hill towards the house ahead. “Is anypony there?”
She quickly trotted up to her mother’s side, and Mom sidestepped out in front of her to keep her from going any further up. She wanted to be annoyed, but she knew Mom was probably just trying to keep her from getting hurt if something happened. She probably shouldn’t have been running forward like that to start with. Mom was stressed out enough as it was.
The dead silence that answered them did not make either of them feel any more comfortable about it. Mom called out again in a louder voice, but still got no answer from any living pony. Only the hollow, haunting howl of the wind greeted them.
Mom seemed frozen in thought, torn between one thing or another, trying to make some sort of decision. Yell again? Forget the house and move on with their day? Stick around an—
A quick dust-up of wind rushed across them, scraping the front of the house and rattling it some…and pulling the door open slightly as it passed, allowing an incredibly stout stink to escape from the interior. The mere whiff that she got was enough to make her reel back and wish she’d been standing a lot further away.
“Whoa,” she half-heaved, trying to pinch her nose shut with a small telekinesis spell. “Umm, I don’t think anypony’s home, let’s just go—“
If the smell bothered Mom any, she did a really good job of hiding her distaste, but the second she pulled the black gun out and flicked the safety off she stopped wondering about bad smells entirely.
“Stay outside,” Mom barked at her as she began to saunter towards the door, her tail flicking and twitching about. “Let me know if you see anything. Anything at all.”
Light Tail felt her little heart start to tighten up, beating faster and harder as she began to wonder what had Mom so spooked all of a sudden. She didn’t want to be out here all alone if it was that bad. “M-mom? What is it—”
“Just stay outside,” Mom repeated fiercely as she snapped her head back towards her, now less than a foot away from the door. “I mean it.”
Light Tail’s ears drooped, unconsciously flinching at the sudden change in her mother’s voice, and slowly stepped back a couple of feet. “O-okay…”
She thought she saw Mom’s left eye wince a little, probably just now realizing how much her tone of voice had hurt her, but she didn’t say anything else and looked back towards the house, slipping through the open crack in the door with the gun out in front of her. A moment later the last of her tail followed her through, and Light Tail’s ears couldn’t make out any hoofsteps after that.
Only then did the filly allow herself a few tears.
Jeez, she didn’t have to yell at me like that, she sniffled, wiping at her eyes with a forehoof as she tore her gaze away from the house. Just wanted to know what she was doing, I can’t help her if I’m stuck outside all clueless.
…still, probably better that she wasn’t following her, if that was the kind of mood she was in. Maybe she shouldn’t have been singing as long as she had? Or maybe Mom wasn’t sure what was in the house and didn’t want her getting in the way until she knew it was safe? Whatever the reason, the filly couldn’t help but feel stung. Twice now Mom had bit her head off for asking a simple question, and now that they couldn’t get back into the stable she didn’t really have anypony to talk to, or help her with everything that was stressing her out. And Mom made it pretty clear she didn’t want to talk to her about any of it. Not old enough, or something like that.
So how was she gonna change her mother’s mind? The blatant-but-logical-question trick hadn’t worked so far, and she wasn’t sure she could get away with a more subtle—and time-consuming—approach with Mom like she could everypony else (even Aunt C). Still worth a try, just for the sake of trying. She couldn’t just stay back and watch her mom fall apart trying to deal with all that stuff on her own. It was already hurting her.
Stupid ponies, she hissed in her mind, laying her head down on her crossed forelegs as she stared out at the vast, dry wasteland before her. I bet if everypony that ever said mean things to her saw how she was blowing up at me from all the stupid stress they’d cut it out…
….or maybe they wouldn’t care. One had to be pretty ambvi….darn it, what was the word she was trying to think of?! She was supposed to be smarter than this! She was….
….was now entirely transfixed by the growing black dot on the horizon. It was so far off that she could only describe it as a dot, but it was definitely moving because it was getting bigger and bigger. Maybe it was another pony, possibly even one that lived in this house that Mom had just broken into!
….okay, she hadn’t really broken into it, she just kinda invited herself in when she smelled that awful stink. Still, this pony wouldn’t take kindly to strangers in his home—
—oh Luna, does he have a gun too?!, she thought suddenly, startled into action by the potential danger and standing up on all fours after rummaging through her saddlebags for some binoculars like Mom had. She floated them out and up to her eyes, barely noticing the mana flowing through her horn and empowering her telekinesis spell, too focused on figuring out what to say to the pony when he got to his house and saw a little filly parked on the bottom of the gentle hill. She didn’t want anypony getting hurt over a misunderstanding, not with the mood Mom was in. Still, she couldn’t help but get excited to finally meet somepony else, her first contact with a pony on the surface! That black dot couldn’t be anything else but another pony!
The black dot was not a pony.
She blinked her eyes, hoping she’d seen wrong or that the lenses on the binocs needed to be cleaned off or something. The subject of her viewing, however, refused to morph into the shape of a pony.
With a gasp she flipped the binocs over until she was staring down at the objective lenses, hoping she’d see some big scratches or damage that would explain why she wasn’t seeing a pony. But the lenses were fine. Eyepiece lenses were fine, too.
She had to tell her lungs to breathe when they started to complain about the lack of air she was getting, and she brought the binoculars up to her eyes again to make sure that this dot was a pony.
The black dot was still not a pony. No pony could be this big, except maybe Luna or Celestia, and they were alicorns. And this dot was not an alicorn, either. In fact, she didn’t know what the dot was. She didn’t know of any creature from the textbooks in class that looked anything like what she was seeing.
It was very large, and walked on four legs like a pony, but it was not a pony. And as it grew larger (and thus closer), she began to wonder if it was even alive. She was finally able to start making out some concrete details. The kind that made her insides quiver and churn, because to be honest it was terrifying her. It didn’t have a lot of fur, or hair, or whatever, and it looked like it’d been in some fights because it was missing chunks and long, ragged strips of its hide. And the creature’s hide itself was like some….grotesque and hideous jab at an animal’s body structure, it looked massively powerful. Way more than even those bears in that nature book in the library—
….o-oh dear Luna is that what it is….
….no, was. Now that she thought about it, it did look something like a bear. A really big, ugly bear with mange that probably made it really mad—
—it cocked its head in her direction, and stopped moving entirely.
She froze still, not out of any intentional effort to not attract its attention, but because she was so terrified that she couldn’t even bring herself to breathe. Whatever this…this bear used to be, it wasn’t anymore and it was looking right at her—
—its body began to turn towards her, no longer walking along its path. But running.
At her. And something that sounded like a heavy, snarling, hungry grunt managed to make its way to her ears even at the distance that this thing was at, and she was finally spurred into doing something other than wetting herself. She stuffed the binoculars back into her saddlebags, turned around, and high-tailed it back up the hill, back to Mom, as quickly as she could.
Not even the sheer stench of rot and….and other stuff, could upset her anywhere as much as the look on her little girl’s face when she’d snapped at her like that. It wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch to say that she’d practically slapped her across the face. The end result was pretty much the same.
Nice going, you stupid bitch, she admonished herself harshly, feeling a slight wetness in her left eye as she inched through the grime-layered living room. As if losing everything she’s ever known and loved isn’t bad enough, now you have to start yelling at her when you leave her alone for more than a couple of minutes and she wonders why? Why did I bite her head off like that, WHY? I’m just scared to death that she’s going to find the dead body I smell in here and I can’t explain that?!
….well, that settled that, then. The instant she was certain the house was safe, she’d go right back outside and apologize. And try not to cry in the process. She was a hair trigger away from bawling herself into dehydration as it was. No more fresh food and water, no more warm bed, no more library, or…or watching El-Tee and her little cadre of friends wreck things around them trying to find their cutie marks, or…
She pushed the mood-killing thoughts of the stable out of her mind when her throat began to grow so tight that she could barely breathe. Hard enough saying good-bye to a door. And by the looks of the surface, she might very well be wishing they’d stayed in the stable and died with all the others. But right now, she was too focused on making sure her only child would stay in one piece from one day to the next.
She hoped, and prayed, that she only smelled the remains of some predator’s latest catch.
The living room was not what she would have called homely. A single couch sat against the wall to the left, sitting on one broken leg and covered in dust. Aside from missing a good deal of its upholstery there also looked to be rust-colored stains across the one single cushion that was in decent enough shape to sit on, and she didn’t want to know where they’d come from. An equally dusty coffee table sat in front of the couch, with what looked like a burnt, black shell of a book that could have crumbled to dust with a simple touch of her breath. A pile of plaster, broken wood, and rubble sat in the far left corner, beneath the hole she’d seen outside that had been patched up with crudely made wood planks. A stairway along the wall in front of her with a broken railing led up to the second floor, and attached to the side of this stairway was a picture frame, but its glass had been shattered long ago and the picture inside ruined beyond all recognition, leaving only faint patches of various shades of gray and black.
Most tellingly, on the floor lay what looked like two empty 9mm casings a few feet away from the door, but she could see no evidence of a bullet hole either in the ceiling or on the wall surrounding the doorway behind her. Embedded in the wall ahead was an open doorway, leading into a kitchen of sorts—from where she stood she could make out part of a rust-covered stove, missing the handle on its oven door and two hotplates on the cooking surface. To her right was a hallway to the other half of the first floor.
Her nose was so overwhelmed by the stench that she couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from, so she chose to climb up the stairs and check it first. So far her EFS had not found any hostiles within the range of its spell matrix, but she wasn’t going to trust it entirely. Not now that she was the only thing left in Light Tail’s life.
The stairs creaked precariously beneath the weight of her hooves, and at least one step cracked under her right hind leg as she pushed upward, causing her to freeze mid-step and cast her gaze downward, waiting for a red hash mark to fizzle into view and start dancing about her vision. But when nothing happened for several seconds she allowed herself a quiet sigh of relief and resumed her journey, eventually reaching the top of the stairs and stepping into the hallway beyond.
The second floor was in no better shape than the first, but now that she was up here she could definitely tell a significant drop in the strength of the stench, so whatever had died in the house wasn’t up here. Paint was peeling off of the walls or gone entirely, and large sections of plaster were torn or rotted off, revealing the wooden frame beneath. More dust covered the rusted doorknobs on the three doors in the hall. The door to her immediate left led into a small bedroom, empty save for the bare frame of a bed and a mattress with nothing more left than its bedsprings and a few tatters of its fabric clinging to one corner. The next room down the hall was better decorated, with a wooden frame bed and an intact—but heavily stained—mattress, which she guessed to be mold or…
…no, you know what? It’s mold. Whatever else it could be, you’re gonna believe it’s mold.
With that queasy and unpleasant possibility pushed out of her mind (and no slumbering threats in sight), she continued on to the end of the hall, pushing the door to the third and final bedroom aside and sticking her head through for a quick look.
Master bedroom, she surmised almost immediately once the size of the room was quickly shown to have dwarfed that of the other two. In fact, it seemed to take up half the second floor’s space, just above the other half of the first floor that she’d yet to inspect. The bed itself was large enough for three ponies to sleep comfortably, with a dresser and bed stand to its left and right. A wardrobe the size of two ponies sat against the right wall with its doors closed, and what looked like a lockable long cabinet was right to the left of the wardrobe. To her left, just beside the doorway, was a chest of drawers, but instead of resting against the wall, it looked as though somepony had pulled it away in search of the embedded wall safe behind it. The safe itself, while missing some of its exterior finish, was in much better shape than she would have expected, and its hinges appeared to be intact. A quick push against its door handle with her left forehoof confirmed that the locking mechanism was still engaged, and the combination dial was a tad loose but still moved in distinct clicks when turned. Whoever had been here had not been able to get into it.
With the second floor cleared of threats, she retraced her path back to the stairs and the living room, where the stench returned with a vengeance, filling her nostrils with its foul and loin-wrenching touch. She sorely wished for a smell suppression spell she could cast to mitigate the ill odor. Her only hope, however, was to find the source and pray she could close a door to at least mask the stink a little.
She pushed the smell aside as best she could and quickly trotted down the short hall, taking note of a room on each side of the hallway for a later search once she’d found the decaying corpse. At the end of the hall was a second door on the left that led into what looked like a bathroom, and a second door on the right that led to a small bedroom.
It was in the bedroom that she would see her worst nightmares come back to her.
Dangling from a hook tied at one end of a rope, was a sight unfit for any pony’s eyes. The stallion’s corpse was horribly mutilated in ways she could not bear to make herself remember in any great detail. He was missing a hind leg, most of his tail, his….his male parts, oh dear Luna…even his insides were….
….his eyes too….
No more. She couldn’t stand to look at him any longer.
The poor mare on the bed….she couldn’t say the girl had gotten off easy, even with the dangling body offering strong evidence otherwise. Splotches of blood splattered the space between her legs, and down the inside of her hind legs, and there was enough blood beneath her neck to give a clear indication of how she’d been….
….murdered?
Violated, and murdered….in this rotting, ramshackle excuse of a home…and what had been done to the stallion….
….Light Tail could not see or hear of this. Ever.
Sling backed out of the room after holstering her pistol, clamped on the doorknob with her magic and pulled the door shut—
—it stopped half an inch away from the doorway, blocked by an object on the floor she’d neglected to spot on her way in. When she shifted the spell field downward to pick it up, the heft of the object’s weight tingling the bottom forward half of her horn triggered an instant sense of familiarity, and she quickly brought it up to eye level.
9mm pistol, specifically the Mare & Alicorn Manufacturing model that had proven so popular in local law enforcement service during the war. Probably the one that had been fired in the living room, to no avail. The left grip panel was cracked and held together with what looked like two hundred year-old duct tape that had turned fuzzy along the edges, and the firing hammer wasn’t much better off with a noticeable crack line running up one side. Its exterior finish was in terrible shape—most of the matte black bluing had been worn or scrapped off, leaving the ordnance-grade steel beneath exposed to the elements. Pits of rust dotted the slide and frame, and most of the front sight had been broken off, leaving only a jagged splint as an aiming point.
Had the circumstances been any different she would have taken a couple of minutes for a full inspection. Right then and there, though, all she wanted to do was shut that door and get as far away from this place as she could. She pulled the door shut with her left forehoof and stuffed the pistol into an empty holster right beneath Grayhawk, for a grand total of three pistols and one remaining empty holster for a fourth if she ever found one. The saving grace of the 9mm was that it was light enough that she barely noticed it. She did take a couple of seconds for a quick peek into the first two rooms she passed up, and caught sight of two spare magazines on a workbench, one loaded with FMJ rounds and the other with jacketed hollowpoints. She’d barely dropped them into a storage pouch on the left side of her stable suit when Light Tail’s body flew into the living room, hyperventilating as she slammed the door shut behind her.
Having just walked away from one of the most horrific things she’d ever seen in her life, her only concern was making sure her filly never found the sight in that bedroom, and she trotted into the living room and began to open the door again. “We’re leaving—“
Light Tail wasn’t having any of it. “Outside!!” she yelled frantically, as if struggling with herself to even speak properly as she backed away from the door. “It’s….oh crap it saw me it’s outside—“
Sling’s muddled confusion lasted only as long as it took her to mutter a bewildered, “What?”, before the object of her little girl’s fear made itself known with a deep, booming roar that rumbled through the door and the walls—
—El-Tee’s shriek was brief, but loud and shrilly, and Sling stopped pulling on the door and pressed herself up against it, peering through the peephole to see what kind of beast waited outside.
Waiting, however, was not in this creature’s vocabulary. In the two seconds that Sling was able to stomach looking at it, it had climbed up much of the hill and was only twenty yards from the front door, and it was an absolutely horrifying beast. It looked kinda like a bear….if one had taken that bear, shaved off most of its fur, and doubled its muscle mass before throwing it into a fight pit. Its claws were easily as long as her ears, and as far as she could tell, its eyes had no visible pupils and were a solid, cloudy-looking white.
And it was charging straight for the door as though it weren’t even there.
It was something akin to a miracle that she didn’t shriek or cry like El-Tee had, but in her defense she was simply too frightened to bother. The most she could consciously recall doing was using her magic to pick her filly up off the floor and pull her along behind her as she raced back up the stairs, completing forgetting how careful she’d been in traversing them the first time. She’d barely made it to the top of the staircase and into the second floor hallway when she heard the wooden door crashing and splitting apart from a violent impact. The hungry roar of the not-bear thing, however, sounded much more important, because it seemed to have caught their scent.
Run run run RUN—
—she made it inside the master bedroom, unceremoniously flung her daughter onto the bed and spun around to close the door—
—felt her heart trying to leap up her throat as the not-bear thing appeared to have skipped the stairs entirely by leaping up and through the guard rail at the top of the staircase to land directly inside the hallway—
“Oh fu—“ was all she heard of her own curse before she slammed the door shut, overpowering her foul language enough that even she couldn’t make out what she was saying. For added security she wrestled the chest of drawers away from the wall safe and shoved it right up against the door, the effort barely draining or taxing her in her heightened stress levels. Adrenaline was a powerful thing….
And so was this not-bear thing. She’d thrown herself against the drawers, trying to mash the heavy furniture up even closer to the door, when the beast rammed itself into the door. The impact caused the door itself to crack along the top, and she wasn’t expecting the blow to be this strong to start with. It toppled her over and caused her to hit the floor, and a sharp, tiny cracking sound accented her fall. At the moment of impact she was afraid she’d just broken a rib, but when her chest and lungs failed to set themselves on fire in searing pain her worries were transferred to the two holstered guns on her left side. Grayhawk’s grip seemed undamaged, but….
….but the nine was damaged to start with, she snarled in anger when she pulled the 9mm pistol back out of its new home, the damaged grip panel now split in two entirely. The tape holding it together was far too old to have any strength left, and the threading on the grip screw was so blunt and worn that it actually slipped right on out when she pulled part of the grip panel off the gun, causing the other piece to fall to the floor. Judging by how quickly and easily it had just broken on her, she was surprised its former owners had even managed to fire off a couple of rounds without getting the same result.
A second crash into the door split the crack open further, but the door remained in one piece and the chest of drawers didn’t budge. Much. The not-bear thing beyond the door stopped attacking the door and began to paw at it, grunting and huffing as it tested the impromptu barricade. After a few moments it gave a final, disgruntled snarl of disapproval at its luck, and muffled, heavy thuds began to sound out as it slowly walked away.
She didn’t trust this sudden turn of luck one bit. And neither did Light Tail.
“N-n-no w-way,” the terrified child stammered through frightened gasps. “N-no way s-something that b-big is just w-walkin’ off….”
Hell no, she agreed silently as she stowed the pistol away once more. “See if there’s anything sturdy enough we can use as a rope,” she cracked with considerable effort as she turned the broken grip panel over out of habit. “We can….”
She stopped talking as her eyes caught sight of a crude hoof-scrawling of what looked like two digit numbers along the back of the grip panel, with a dash between each number and a….
….a letter? An upper case “L” right next to the “36”—
—Oh Luna, is this what I think it is?!, she realized in a brief moment of brilliant insight, picking up the other half of the grip panel off the floor—
—the remaining portion of the third number was etched inside the back, and when combined with the other half of the grip panel formed a complete sequence of numbers and letters: “47L-15R-26L”.
Was this what the murderers of those poor souls downstairs had been looking for?
The thought to raid the safe herself came so freely and quickly that she almost didn’t believe she was the one twisting the combination dial until the lock clicked open upon hitting the last number, and even then her resistance to her first theft was surprisingly….numb. Like a part of her had already begun to accept that with the former owners dead, the safe’s contents belonged to whoever could get them first.
And she supposed that in the end, she would rather her own things be taken by somepony who needed them, rather than the monsters that had done…whatever they had done to those two.
Her mood swung southward, however, upon discovering the meager contents of the unlocked safe. Aside from a partial box of nineteen 9mm rounds all that awaited was a broken revolver with a dented and bent barrel, a large, thick pouch that jingled when she moved it, a ruined book, and a rusted hammer.
But she didn’t get to scowl at it for very long. Even as she was stuffing the ammo and the pouch into her saddlebags the not-bear thing returned with a thunderous desire for the two living ponies in the room. Its footsteps were quick and heavy, and it rammed itself into the door with sufficient strength to turn that crack in the door into a complete split, and one of its massive, long-clawed forearms wasted no time in shoving itself through for a quick swipe at the drawer chest pinning the door shut.
The re-emergence of a deadly threat brought her focus back where it should have been—on getting out of that house before it killed them. With little time to find a better alternative and Light Tail frozen stiff on the bed, she simply began pulling the stained, dirty bed sheets out from under her as she raced for the window near the bed stand—
—sixteen feet to the ground, she guesstimated the moment she poked her head out and stared straight down at the earth outside. Gods I hope these sheets don’t shred apart from the weight!
She quickly sorted through the sheets, picking the strongest and thickest looking blanket and tying one end around the closest bed post, and then began tying the remaining sheets together end-on-end to make an impromptu rope—
“Light Tail, get over here!” she snapped when she looked up and saw her night light still sitting on the bed, her body frozen stiff and her eyes locked on the splintering door, and the hideous, wasteland-spawned beast destroying it. “Now!!”
Being commanded about like that always seemed to get the little one to move, no matter what state of mind she was in. El-Tee remained on the bed for only a moment longer before she began to scramble away from it, and Sling hoisted herself through the window, hooking one foreleg inside the window sill to hang herself from it and sticking the other one out towards her daughter—
—but when El-Tee took hold of it and began to find herself being pulled up and over the window sill, she finally had a reason to take her eyes off the door and saw where they were going, and shrieked in terror as she began to pull away from her mother.
And the last thing she needed to happen right then, started to happen.
She saw Hoofprint again.
“O-o-oh Luna no, I don’t wanna fall!!!” El-Tee cried fearfully, her face streaked with tears. “I can’t do this!!”
—white-lit halls of steel began to morph into slick, crimson slabs as she rounded the corner, slipped on the floor and smacked into a thick, wet pool—
“Yes you can!! Just grab my leg and climb on, you’ll be fine—“
The door cracked apart with another violent slam, and the chest drawer began to jolt as the beast heightened its efforts to get inside—
—a tiny, severed limb five feet from her face oozed the last of its blood through its severed veins—
“N-noo! Please, can’t we think of something else—“
A futile attempt by her horn to release even a simple levitation spell fizzled as her insides began to quiver, her own fear overpowering her mental control over her magic. “This is something else!! Just grab onto me—“
—she didn’t hear herself screaming at the sight of four radroaches hunched over the poor colt, tearing into his body in a vomit-inducing feeding gorge as they splattered themselves and the walls with his blood and bits of bloody flesh—
“Gr-grab me with a spell or somethin’—“
“I can’t, I’m too scared to concentrate!!!” she howled back in a mixture of rage and pure terror. “Just….just grab hold of me!! Please!! You’ll be fine, I know you can do it, just please grab onto me—“
—the chest drawer bounced away from the door, giving the not-bear thing the last bit of room it needed to shove its forelegs through the broken door and begin to dislodge the drawers entirely—
—tried, desperately, to get to her hooves as the bugs feasted on their catch, and merely wound up getting herself soaked in crimson as she flailed about like a newborn foal—
—stuck with either a newfound fear of heights or an excruciating death at the massive paws of a not-bear thing, the filly finally came to a decision and leapt at her mother, grabbing onto her neck with her little forelegs and nearly choking her as she sought safety on her back—
—the bedroom door broke off of its upper hinge the moment the beast had pushed the drawers aside enough for brute force to finish the job, and Sling let go of the window sill and grabbed onto the length of bed sheets she’d tied together into a rope after falling roughly two feet—
—the beast’s roar became one of anger as it watched its prey vanish from the window….but instead of chasing after them, it instead turned around and dashed out of the room, as she could hear its heavy footsteps thundering through the walls even though she was now outside—
Oh SHIT it’s coming back outside—
—she abandoned her plan for a gentle descent and simply let go of the bed sheets, and then grabbed at them again after exactly one second to slow her descent. Even with El-Tee screaming in terror, however, she could still hear the two-century old cloth tearing apart at the sudden tug of a pony’s weight upon it, and mother and daughter jerked in place for only a split second before the bed sheets came apart and sent them crashing into the ground.
But that brief stop was enough—by then they were only three feet away from the ground, and while the pain from the impact was sharp, no lasting harm was done. Unfortunately, it also meant she didn’t have enough time to recollect herself and dash to the front door before the not-bear thing could reach it.
….but if it was a meal it wanted more than anything else….
She bucked the filly off of her with a gentle roll of her body and dashed up the side of the house, to a window that led into the first floor bedroom with the eviscerated stallion and the poor violated mare, her desperation giving her enough control of her telekinesis magic to break through the window and pull the bedroom door open. She then turned the spell on her daughter, pulling her back to her previous home along her spine and allowing the filly to grab onto her neck as she broke into a hard gallop away from the house, being careful to avoid tripping herself in her panic but otherwise paying little attention to anything else other than what was in front of her. Even El-Tee’s death grip around her throat barely registered to her nerves.
She just ran, faster and harder than she’d ever run in her life before.
And she hadn’t even been out here for more than an hour, to boot.
She didn’t dare look behind them until Mom’s body finally began to slow down into a terrible, disoriented stumble as exhaustion caught up to her, and felt a mixture of terror and relief flood her chest.
The house was nowhere in sight. She didn’t think she could find it even with those binoculars now—she couldn’t even find any hint of that small hill in the horizon. But the….the thing that was so eager to gobble them up wasn’t in sight either, so she supposed it was a fair trade. Better to be lost than to be a meal for some mutated monster bear.
“I…I think it stopped chasing us—“
Mom’s body collapsed onto the ground without warning, an exhausted groan of pain coming out of her snout on impact, and Light Tail tumbled off onto her flank alongside her mother in a similar undignified manner. The little filly quickly fought herself back to her hooves and began poking at her mom, desperate for some sign that the mare wasn’t in dire straits.
“M-mom?! Are you okay?!”
Her heavy, labored breathing made her reply torturously slow. “…..water….please….”
El-Tee stopped prodding her mom with her hooves and starting digging into the mare’s saddlebags for one of her canteens, pulling it out with her magic and twisting the cap off as she hoisted it to her mother’s waiting maw. “H-here—“
Mom’s magic took over, but in her exhausted state its hold was shaky at best, so El-Tee merely dialed back her spell’s hold to one of gentle support as Mom began to suck the chilly water from the canteen. She only took three gulps before she stopped, though, and then began to peel part of her spell field off to encompass the dangling cap and re-seated it onto the spout. With all the running she’d done just now she’d have thought Mom would’ve wanted to drain the entire thing….but who knew if they’d find fresh water anytime soon? Probably best not to get greedy with the stuff.
With her parched, sore throat slightly abated, Mom was content to lay there for a few minutes under Light Tail’s worried glare until she was breathing normally again, and then began the arduous task of standing on four wobbly legs. Only when she managed to stand for more than a few seconds without stumbling did El-Tee finally start allowing herself to relax a little.
At least, she relaxed until she noticed that her Mom’s eyes had become focused on the space in front of her, transfixed into a state of open shock and….
….despair….
El-Tee dreadfully turned to her left and followed her mother’s gaze, her magic refocusing itself around the lightweight revolver’s grip…
….and let it vanish into nothingness as she too stood frozen in place, her right foreleg falling slack onto the ground.
Neither pony had ever taken notice in their zealous desire to get away from the monster in the house, and now they could see how they’d gone so long without ever recognizing it. Dust matching the ground beneath them coated the maze of ruined, crumbling buildings in the near distance and unintentionally camouflaged them from the casual glance that one might give from a distance, as they’d done. Some had already collapsed into a pile of rubble from age and untold damage from distant times—others still stood but made one wonder how, as entire sections of wall were gone, exposing flights of stairs to higher floors and collecting into a pile of debris at street level. One building now and then would look mostly intact, save for a hole where a window used to be.
But not one sign of life could be seen anywhere in sight. Even the sign that marked the outer marker of its borders had succumbed to the touch of time, broken free of its mounting posts and partially buried in the earth at an angle. Amidst the dust that twisted and smoked away from the wooden board in the wind, Light Tail could only make out a handful of words. Some letters had vanished entirely or covered by a thick coating of dirt and grime, while others were barely readable:
Mom was the first of them to break free of the trance with a soft cry of despair. “….oh, Luna…”
El-Tee didn’t bother to ask why she was so upset, because she already had a pretty good idea. If this was all that ponykind could accomplish in rebuilding efforts after two centuries….what did the rest of Equestria That Was look like now? Could it even be called Equestria anymore?
….are we ever gonna find a new home for the Stable in a world like this?
Mom’s voice croaked again, barely louder than the wind that began to howl around them. “….we should keep moving. There might be somewhere we can wait out the storm. Stay dry, at least.”
El-Tee’s legs stayed put, suddenly unwilling to creep even an inch further towards the silent town that had probably become the resting place for hundreds of poor souls in the last day of the war. It felt wrong…sacrilegious, to be stepping into such a place. “Wh…in there?” she squeaked, trying not to think too much of all the skeletons they’d walked past in their first minutes outside the stable. “….m-mom, ponies…ponies probably died in there…it feels like walking into a graveyard….can’t we go someplace else?”
“It was your idea to find this town in the first place,” Mom reminded her, her voice slightly terse. “….and I don’t know that we’ll find anywhere else to stay before that storm gets here. Just stay close and don’t look at anything you don’t have to, okay?”
A not-so-subtle poke at her hindquarters from Mom’s magic made any further protest an exercise in futility as the mare began moving forward—once she was startled into a quick trot she found it impossible to want to stay still. If she did, Mom would get too far away. And she didn’t want to be very far away if she could help it.
One small comfort—the gun. Even as she began to follow along in her mother’s wake, she felt the heft of the lightweight revolver inside her spell field as she drew it out and kept it close….and feeling its weight, its potential power just waiting to be utilized, made her feel far more comfortable than the gun had any right to make her feel. She was well aware of the irony at play here—an hour ago she was literally sick with the idea of using it on any living creature (except bugs), necessary as such an act might have been now.
Now it was the most comforting thing she had, next to Mom.
Except maybe Snowy, but…that was back home in the Stable, still on Mom’s bed where she’d left it.
Oh wow, what a grown-up little pony you are, she sneered at herself as they crossed over a decrepit-looking bridge that had been built over what was probably a creek bed before the war. Giant bugs, huge mutated bears trying to peel you apart like a banana, and huge crumbling ruins of a town and you’re crying over a stupid stuffed plush…Sun Star would have a field day with you if he saw you like this you idiot, toughen up a little.
A distant bang of thunder rolled over the decaying town, breaking her out of her hateful self-monologue and back to the unreal situation before her. Her hooves began to clop loudly as they touched down upon the broken, wind-eroded asphalt of the streets, and she shifted her leg muscles mid-step so that said clop would be much softer from here on out. She didn’t want to attract anything in the ruins that might be hungry. Like that mutant bear. Or…or whatever else lived and hunted around here.
She took her mind off the panic-inducing thoughts of huge predators by looking at all the buildings around her, and was surprised to see that quite a few of the standing structures still had their signs attached to them. Most of the lettering was faded, with some letters gone entirely just like that big welcoming sign at the town border, but it was still kinda neat to play the guessing game and try to figure out what the buildings had once been.
For instance, the one at the very edge of the town, the first building to her left that they passed, had a sign that said, “G LD SLE V S’ PRO PE TING O I E.” With about ten seconds of thought she came up with “GOLD SLEEVES’ PROSPECTING OFFICE”—it also kinda helped that the sign had a picture of a very faint-looking pile of gems with a miner’s pick underneath the words. Given that the Stable had been built underneath a nearby mountain, it would have made for a good front cover for a Stable-Tec office trying to operate discreetly—
I-Deeeeaaaa! she thought instantly when the spy-novel level wondering struck a chord within her brain. “Hey, Mom, can we look in there real quick?” she whispered quickly, tapping her mother’s left cutie mark with her right forehoof.
Her mom’s head turned and followed along the direction she was pointing in with her left foreleg, but her face showed no hint of interest in the building. “Not now, honey. Maybe later—“
“Pleeeeeaase!?” she begged (just a little). “I got this funny feelin’ about it!”
“What are you talking about?” Mom asked, her voice already starting to grow a little annoyed with her. Not good!
“Just…please? One minute, that’s all!” she begged again, for real this time.
Mom looked like she was about to say “No!” in her Stern Mom voice and physically drag her along, but at the last minute her face lost its hard edge. “….one minute,” she relented, turning towards the building and trotting towards it. “And what possessed you to beg for this in the first place?”
She had to suppress a giddy squeal as she bounced forward ahead of Mom and reached at the door handle with her magic. “I dunno, I just looked at it and—“
Her mouth stopped working as the handle firmly resisted her efforts to pull it down, refusing to move for more than a few millimeters before stopping cold no matter how hard she tugged on it. “…..aaaand it’s locked….wow, that sure killed that idea….”
“Not a surprise,” Mom grumbled, continuing to walk towards the door as her horn’s magic flared and withdrew a small pouch from her saddlebags. “Locking mechanism probably froze after two centuries of rusting. That or nopony ever bothered picking the lock for all this time.”
El-Tee wasn’t quite sure about that—after all, if all that was left of Equestria That Was after two hundred years was whatever had managed to survive the megaspell exchange, how many freakin’ locks could possibly be left untouched? Wouldn’t ponies have scoured every last inch of ground for supplies and stuff in the immediate aftermath? “Two hundred years is a long time for a lock to stay….locked. It don’t make any sense.”
A pair of precision tools floated out of the pouch and came up to the lock embedded inside the door handle, swiftly slipping inside in the next moment as Mom began to fiddle with them. “It would on this door. I can’t make sense of the letters but the picture on the sign suggests this was a—“
“Prospecting office!” she finished for her mother proudly. “Gold Sleeve’s Prospecting Office, I think!”
Mom’s head came up and away from the lock, and amazingly the little tools she was using to pick the lock continued to work as though she’d never taken her mind off of the task. “Is that what you think that sign says?”
“As a matter of fact, yes!” El-Tee answered. “The first two words are just a guess, but the third one’s pretty easy, most of the letters for it are still intact. And the only word I can think of with the letters oh, eye, and ee in the first, third and sixth letters in a six-letter word, is “office”.”
Mom’s face seemed to grow a little brighter—a small grin tried to force its way onto her face, and her eyes looked like they wanted to cry a little. The lock to the door clicked open a moment later, and Mom floated her tools back into her pouch as one of her forelegs pulled the door handle down and nudged it open. “Guess it’s time to find if you’re right.”
This time around a little part of a giddy squeal managed to leak out through her throat despite her best intentions at keeping it to herself as she dashed through the open door and into the interior—
—and promptly sneezed as a waft of dust floated down from the door and touched her snout. That settled that question, at least. Nopony had been in here a long while. Perhaps even since the day the megaspells were dropped! Being the first souls to set foot in here in centuries was awesome!
With a soft giggle, she brushed off her encounter with the dust and set about examining the room. A simple metal desk with a very old, very worn out terminal sat in the middle of the room, with a door at the back leading into another room. A table rested along the right wall and there was a large, black safe beneath, but she was too short to be able to see if there was anything on the table itself. A pair of filing cabinets in the far left corner looked like they’d seen better days, but they definitely looked a lot better than that field of sky wagons right outside the stable. Other than that, however, there was little else to the room to give any hint as to what it’s purpose was.
That settled it. Office. Offices never looked very useful. Or exciting.
Mom’s attention, naturally, seemed to gravitate towards the safe under the table, and she trotted right towards it without saying a word as the filly clambered around the desk and hopped up onto the chair where she could get a better look at the terminal—
“Oh, wow!” she squealed when she saw the screen come alive at the press of one of the buttons on the keyboard, and the terminal itself began to whir to life as it booted up. “I didn’t know these things could work this long!”
“That is impressive,” Mom agreed, the sound of her hoof pulling at the safe handle resulting in a soft thump!, and then a second one, before she gave up on trying to open it. “I didn’t see any kind of a back-up battery or a power source attached to it when we came in, it shouldn’t be working at all.”
“Well, it is! And it’s even booting up into a….uhhhh….”
The screen’s dull green background flashed to life at last, and in the upper right corner a pair of words in bright green letters became the only thing that stood between her inquisitive mind and the secrets buried inside this machine:
PASSWORD:
“….oh crud,” she snarled at the dimly-glowing screen. “Ummm….it’s passworded….”
“Standard computer security one-oh-one,” Mom said, trotting up to the desk to search its retractable drawers, where several tattered remnants of papers lay. Most were too dusty and faded to read, though. “….I got an idea, scoot aside for a minute.”
The cushioned leather of the seat had aged remarkably well, still comfortable to the hindquarters and belly, and so she opted to stay in the rolling chair but pushed it along the desk to the side with her forehooves so Mom could get behind the terminal and start working on it. And to think she wasn’t event that interested in this place to start with. Funny!
“What’re you doin’?” she asked as Mom’s horn began to glow, enveloping the keyboard in the hold of her telekinesis spell.
“Trying to remember the command line for the debug matrix,” Mom answered, staring down at the keyboard.
“…..the what?”
“Something I learned sitting behind a desk with a terminal for eight years with nothing but the operating manual to pass the time,” the mare said, still staring at the keyboard and not moving. “All of Stable-Tec’s terminals use the same basic operating system and interface, and there’s a backdoor program built into it that lets technicians in if they happen to need to get access to it but don’t have the password. I got to playing around with it whenever I was really bored and stumbled across it, and found out I could crack passwords with it. Just trying to remember how it…wait, it’s coming back to me….”
True to her word, Mom’s magic began to peck away at the keyboard, and within moments she had those pesky “USERNAME” and “PASSWORD” lines whisked away in favor of a….
…..a whole freakin’ screen-full of absolute garbage! Tons of characters mashed together into an insane soup of the Equestrian alphabet and numerical system, along with lots of symbols like “#”, “%”, “@” and such!
“…..and this is an improvement, how?” she wondered aloud as she scooted the chair back towards the terminal for a better look. “It’s a total mess now!”
“Look closer,” Mom replied, and the lack of concern or panic in her voice led the little one to give the screen a second glance….
….and spotted the word “LACKY” in the second line of useless text. Scrolling her eyes down the left side of the screen, she spotted a second word in the fifth line, “FIGHT”, and a third word in the seventh line, “MIGHT”. At the top of the screen above the scrambled lines of characters was a short, but telling line:
She had it figured out in an instant. “You’re hacking the password out of the system!”
“Eee-yup,” Mom snickered, tapping the “DOWN” arrow key until the word “LACKY” was highlighted and then hit the “ENTER” key, causing a message to pop up along the right side of the screen, right beside the screen-wide lines of scrambled code:
>ENTRY DENIED.
>0/5 CORRECT.
“….well, that definitely narrows things down,” Mom muttered darkly. “Let’s try….”
>ENTRY DENIED.
>2/5 CORRECT.
Mom’s mouth sputtered in disdain. “Better, but still not great…”
“How does this work out, exactly?” Light Tail asked, though she was already coming to a conclusion about the subject just watching Mom fight with it. “You pick a word and see how many letters are the right ones?”
“You got it,” the mare confirmed her suspicions, moving the flashing cursor down the page to highlight the words “MIGHT”. “It can be a bit frustrating, though. The debug program won’t tell you which letters are right, only how many of them are. You have to guess at it, and it only gives you four chances. If you get it wrong four times the program will kick you out and lock up the system entirely. Only Stable-Tec technicians know the process for re-setting it, it wasn’t covered in that dusty operating manual.”
“Why would they make a program that could break a terminal that easy?”
Mom’s hind legs started to flex and stretch themselves out as she flicked the cursor further down the screen. “I’m honestly not sure, but there’s a way to reset the program to keep it from locking you out. Just try three times and if you don’t get it by then, just cancel out back to the login screen and boot the debug program up again, and it resets. You can keep doing this until you get the password right.”
“Neat-o!” El-Tee laughed, momentarily dazed at how Mom knew of such crazy and useful stuff a mischievous pony could use to stir up trouble with. “So how many times did you break into the stable’s network with that?!”
“What are you implying, young lady?” Mom’s voice questioned sharply, her tone suddenly one of dark, foreboding warning. That kind of “don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say” warning.
Which meant nothing to her, naturally! “I’m not implying anything,” she said confidently. “I mean….nopony was ever that nice to you, except Aunt C or Tender Mane….just figured you’d have used it to get back at some of ‘em once in a great while, is all….”
Mom’s head snapped towards her so suddenly that the filly nearly leapt out of the chair, and those hard, angry eyes bore down into her soul with such intensity that she began to fear that this was probably the one time she should have taken that unspoken warning to heart and shut up…..
…..and then Mom’s face melted into a sort of sad, wistful state as she laughed quietly, turning back to the screen in front of her. “…..okay, so there was a time a couple of years back when Sunflower was getting on my nerves. She kept stepping on my tail whenever my shift met for a monthly safety seminar in the classroom on L5. Sometimes she’d pass on a complaint to Farsight about my record-keeping in the armory when she covered my duties while I was on break or lunch, and I’d get chewed on for a quarter-hour about how I lacked responsibility and needed to get my act together or some such….”
Whoa, El-Tee thought sadly, watching her mother’s face as she tried a third password without success and began typing at the keyboard to reset the de-bug program. Of all the things I coulda done to get to her talk to me and this is what ends up working? A story ‘bout how she got back at somepony for hurting her? ….w-why were they so mean to her….
“…..so one morning when I punched in for my shift, I finally got the nerve to mess with her day a little. I had to drop by the mainframe room on L6 to do a hard reset for the armory terminal, and hacked into her user profile, and just had all her private messages sent to everypony in the Stable. Oh Luna the things in some of those messages were….um, let’s just say they weren’t fit for the eyes of little colts and fillies. Nopony ever did figure out that I’d done it and she spent most of her time after that trying to do damage control. Even Windy couldn’t stop laughing at her at times….”
“….that’s it?” she prodded with a gentle nudge of her snout after scooting herself to the edge of the chair and within foreleg’s reach of her mother. “You just embarrassed her to near death and never let her know it was you?”
The terminal’s screen flooded with that page full of garbled text again, and Mom went back to work flashing the cursor through the mess to try and find the right word to crack the system open with. “I knew. And I wasn’t trying to get recognized for it because I would have been fired and locked in the jail on L4 for three months if I had been found out. I just wanted her to stop bothering me, and the best way to do that was to make her more worried about herself. I don’t think she ever said another two words about me after that.”
Here Mom stopped, because by then she’d found the correct password—“OUGHT”—and the login screen brought itself back up, the username and password automatically entering themselves into their appropriate lines:
]USERNAME: gsleeve
PASSWORD: *****
“Finally,” Mom heaved with relief as the screen filled with what looked like data entries for some sort of message file folder. Most of the subject lines were all messed up and garbled, and whenever Mom tried to access them the system spat out a “CORRUPTED DATA” error, but a few entries were still intact, and there even seemed to be option for the terminal to unlock the safe under the table nearby. She moved the cursor down to the second one up from the bottom and tapped the ENTER key, and the screen began filling with text, which her eyes scanned through almost as quickly as the letters were being spilled onto the screen:
“Entry #5: “Gold Sleeve’s Prospecting Office” has been established without a hitch. It sounds crazy, but it just might work to keep the construction project a secret, for a while at least. Tomorrow morning I’m meeting with the forepony, Jack Hammer, from the excavation crew we’ve hired on from Baltimare. As far as they know it’s another wild goose chase for coal and arcane gems, but this is too big a project for it to run effectively by keeping them all in the dark. The MoM is still doing background checks on the crew, but Jack Hammer and some of her supervisors are already vetted, and I’ll need their help and cooperation to keep things under wraps until the job is done. And judging by the size of the Stable requested by the local communities, it’s going to be a long time before I see home again in Vanhoover.
I miss it already.”
Excitement filled her heart with every word she read. She was actually right! Totally, completely right about the whole thing being a big cover for the Stable construction way back in the days of Equestria That Was! How long ago was that?! Two hundred and ten years?! Two hundred and fifteen?!
“….oh, wow,” Mom’s voice whispered in awe as she soaked in the words on the screen. “This is…wow….nothing in the Stable ever mentioned how it was built or organized….”
Light Tail’s grin threatened to split her face in half as she hopped up onto the desk and started nudging the chair over into her mother’s side to encourage the mare to take a seat in it. It was big enough for the both of them, saddlebags and all, if Mom got in it first—
The back end of Mom’s body hopped up as she drew the chair in behind her, plopping back down onto the cushioned leather and leaving just enough room on the side for Light Tail to squeeze in beside her, and soon mother and child were pouring over the next few legible entries in the terminal:
“Entry #27: Eight months in, and this “prospecting” cover turns out to be a legit operation after all. We found a cache of arcane gems in the mountain two weeks ago, and whaddya know, finding the origin point requires us to dig deep down under the ground. We’ve already placed the industrial drilling units on order, and they should arrive next month for inspection and set-up. We should be ready to start digging just after Hearth’s Warming Eve. Perfect time for an operational shutdown, let everypony get home to their families for the holidays so they can come back charged up and ready to split rock with their bare hooves. Got my own plans for the time off as well.
As discussed with HQ, the proceeds from the gems will augment the locally-collected funds for the Stable project to help offset unexpected cost overruns. The excavation crew will get a good bonus as well, help keep them loyal to the project for as long as we need them here. Jack Hammer also runs a construction firm as well, and considering her exemplary work here, I feel confident in recommending she get the first bid for the construction project once we’ve drilled out the tunnels we’ll build into. She runs a tight crew here, firm but fair, and so far they’ve only had three accidents in the two years they’ve been running.
“Entry #64: Excellent progress made today. Now have the tunnels for the ground level, as well as the first three levels for the Stable. Seven caches of gems found, three imbued with massive amounts of arcane energy.
“Entry #81: Levels four through six excavated. Five caches of gems. Had an accident on level five yesterday, still investigating but it looks like a chunk of loose rock wasn’t cleared from the tunnel ceiling before the prospecting team went in and it broke a junior member’s back leg when it fell. Jack Hammer’s not happy, it turned out to be a first cousin of hers.
“Entry #125: Excavation is done. We’ll still need to drill out tunnels for the oxygen ventilation systems when we begin Stable construction, but the vast majority of digging work is complete and all the gems that could be found were extracted. Bittersweet moment when Jack Hammer announced it, most of the work crew have been here for over four years and they’ve grown attached to the area. Some even started families here, and those are the ones with the most to lose. Even Jackie seemed a little disappointed. There’s not much work out here for rock diggers, unless you like the life of a farm hand. JH’s construction firm is having a much harder time for the project bid than I anticipated. She knows some of her crew got settled down with a lucky mare or stallion, that they need some employment to keep their new families rooted here where they’re comfortable. I want to help, but my….personal involvement with JH makes that impossible without appearing to show favoritism. We’ll talk tonight.”
“Personal involvement?” El-Tee broke the silence once she’d read through the last of #125. “Ya mean like, coltfriend and fillyfriend?”
“Probably,” Mom said as she flicked the cursor onto the next data entry…sadly, one of only three left that were still intact.
“Entry #126: Fight with JH at her house last night, didn’t go well. I should never have gotten into that mare’s work pants, she was livid that I wouldn’t back her up for the contract bidding process HQ had last week in Canterlot. I told her I couldn’t show any favoritism for her on account of our relationship, and she said, quote, “You bloody well oughta show some favoritism if you want me to stay here!”. Mares.
I left a short while later. No use arguing with her, we’ve gone over it before and doing it again won’t do any good. If I show any favor for her, no matter how much I want to, I could lose my position and my job here. I’ve been overseeing this Stable project since the beginning, I have to see it through to the end, make sure it stays hidden from the zebras. That’s too important to put at risk….even for the sake of staying with loved ones. She has to know that. Why is she so adamant about this?”
Get into her work pants? Light Tail mused to herself, wondering why this stallion would even want to dress in a mare’s work clothes as Mom pulled one of her water canteens back out for a drink. Grown-ups can be really weird.
“Entry #127: Oh Luna and Celestia I should have known. The way she was acting lately, how much less like herself she’s been…she’s with child. Our foal. Oh dear Alicorns I should have seen it coming a month ago. She told me this morning before she went to work, and she was still mad at me to boot.
Too late. The bidding stage is over. JH will know within the week whether she gets the contract or not. And if she doesn’t, she said, she’s heading back to Baltimare, with or without me.
Oh dear Luna what I have done….please let everything work out.”
El-Tee wasn’t quite sure what to make of this one. With child? “Our foal”? How did grown-ups get to having kids, come to think of it? “….mom, where do foals come from?”
Mom’s immediate response was to choke on her water canteen and spit out the water that hadn’t gotten into her lungs in a sharp cough. It took her a few moments to get the rest of it out before she could answer….
….and predictably, she avoided the question entirely. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she gurgled, coughing up a slight wet mist as she quickly opened up the last entry in the system.
“Entry #130: It worked. I can’t believe it, it worked!
I had some suspicions about the Los Pegasus firm that won the contract and did some quick digging through some friends I still have in Vanhoover. Turns out their last three contracts are under investigation by the government for lax workmanship, and several of their executives are suspected by MoM to be funneling minor material aid to the zebras. As soon as I found that last bit I sent the information to my liaison at HQ, asking how such information could have gotten past the company’s own investigators who are supposed to be watching for exactly this kind of thing! The district supervisor for the prairie projects is absolutely seething. Now half the stables in the prairie are on hold until the other excavation and construction firms have all their employees re-vetted. That will slow progress considerably. No word yet on whether the Los Pegasus firm was ever told the truth about the project they bid for.
But none of that matters. What matters is that Jackie got the contract afterward for the stable she just built the tunnels for, and with additional bonuses to make up for the lackluster vetting on Stable-Tec’s behalf. She’s still not happy with me, but we can work that out because there’s no way I’m letting my mare and our foal go, now that they can stay here. Whatever it takes will be worth the effort tenfold. It’ll all work out.
Everything will work out. All of it.”
The safe turned out to be a letdown, materially—only a couple of old, drained spark cells for a pistol-sized MEW, a cracked clipboard, and a small stack of papers that had not weathered two centuries’ imprisonment in a safe very well. A surprisingly well-preserved journal inside, however, piqued her interest and she quickly found its survival to be a result of a spell enchantment once she’d applied a quick scrying spell of her own to it. The faint tingle she got from the feedback loop was not as strong as she would have liked, but it was a moot point as the enchantment had done its job.
What puzzled her was how it had gotten there to start with. Most preservation enchantments didn’t last more than a few years (the specialized talismans in the Stable being the exception), particularly if they’d been applied solely through a unicorn’s horn or an enchanted scroll, and she knew the difference between a preservation talisman and the simpler spell variant. The only immediate logical explanation she could think of was that the journal belonged to a surface pony that had used the prospecting office as shelter for a time, and had been careful to avoid leaving any sign that they’d been there by re-locking everything before leaving.
She deigned to allow the illusion to remain by leaving the journal and the safe’s contents intact, and locked it back up through the terminal before logging it off and ushering her filly out the door. After locking it behind her, however, she began to think they might have been better off staying inside.
In the span of a few minutes the approaching storm had grown close enough to belt the abandoned town with strong, consistent gusts of wind that carried a moist feel to it through her nose. Lighting now visited the town proper in white, split-second sheets of light, and the thunder that followed was at times almost as deafening as a gunshot. Her hearing protection spell flared back to life after the first such thunderclap, when Light Tail’s forehooves came down upon her ears in pain, and afterward the thunder was not a bother.
If only her little girl could follow suit.
“Maybe we’d be better off back there,” the filly suggested loudly roughly two minutes after they’d left the office and turned down an intersection seventy yards into the town. “Y’know, that place of shelter you’ve been looking for?”
“Somepony else is using it,” she answered back, nudging the filly along behind her with a subtle push of telekinesis to her hindquarters. After what she’d found in that house, she wasn’t going to trust anything out here. “I don’t think they’d take kindly to a couple of strangers breaking in when they come back.”
“And how do you know that for sure?” was the next logical protest to the mare’s decision. By Luna’s moon this child’s brain could be aggravating at times.
“I don’t, but that journal in the safe is too well-preserved,” she replied, trying her very best to keep a level, pleasant tone with the filly. “It’s a few years old at best, not two centuries. Whoever left it went to the trouble to lock everything back up before leaving.”
“It’s still a better place to be than out here,” El-Tee continued to press as they grew closer to a second intersection further ahead, maybe forty yards. “That place has a lockable door, it’s sturdy, and isn’t surrounded on all sides by other houses and stuff. It’s perfect—“
“It’s a fallback if we can’t find somewhere else in time,” Sling cut in, stopping the filly’s words mid-sentence with a sharper, more insistent tone now. “The last thing I want is to be dealing with an angry pony with every right to be upset with us for breaking into his shelter for our own use.”
Especially if they turn out to be the ones responsible for that….that slaughter….
“You’re assuming he’ll mind—“
“And you’re assuming that anypony up here will behave like the Stable ponies we grew up with!” she snapped back, and instantly regretting the harsh rebuke when she looked back and saw her filly’s ears flattening down out of fear.
“H-hey, okay, okay, stop yelling at me I get it I-I’m sorry—“
All of her sharpness, her fear and rage, vanished at the sight of her own daughter physically flinching away from her in such a fearful state. Again.
How many times now? How many times had she let her own personal stress and grief get the better of her like this?
How many times had her little girl suffered for it?
A push of telekinesis gently stopped the filly’s backtracking and nudged her back forward, and El-Tee’s immediate reaction when she came to a stop was to plop her hindquarters onto the ground and wait to be punished.
It never came. “…I’m so sorry, honey….I’ve been a real jerk to you lately, haven’t I….”
El-Tee’s eyes still bore fresh tears, but they were at least willing to stare back her now. How well a sincere “I’m sorry” could work was nothing short of astonishing. “….more than once.”
“I shouldn’t be.”
“….no. But until last week you weren’t being chased by mutant insects or bears….or quitting your job to start a new one in a library where you could hide yourself from everypony a lot easier. And you weren’t worrying about just getting by from one day to the next, like we might have to up here—“
“That’s no excuse for taking it all out on you. And it’s not just dangerous wildlife or harsh country living I’m worried about.”
El-Tee’s perceptive nature was quick to cut to the root of her intended words, as usual. “You found something in that house. Something you don’t want me to see or know about, because it scares you.”
She wasn’t going to ask how Light Tail came to figure that out. She didn’t want to have to explain it either. “I did. And I’m worried that ponykind hasn’t changed one bit since the war. Or gotten worse. I know you’re smart enough to have figured some of that out with just what little we’ve seen of the surface in the last couple of hours.”
“It can’t be that bad as how everypony treated you back home,” the filly suggested softly. And not without reason, that had been the kid’s sore thorn in her mother’s side for most of the morning. “This isn’t the stable anymore.”
“That’s just it,” she corrected for her. Much as she didn’t want to go into what she’d found in that bedroom, she did want Light Tail to know how potentially dangerous this new world of theirs was. “We just don’t know what kind of world we’re in, and I’m not going to trust that things will somehow work themselves out just because we’re in a new place. I need you to trust me when I do things that don’t make sense to you, because as logical as it is to go back to that office I don’t want to because I don’t feel safe there. I want—“
Sling Shot’s little lecture came to an abrupt end when El-Tee’s left foreleg poked her in the chest and pointed behind her, her little eyes becoming fixated on a distant object. She almost asked that cliché question of ‘What?’ as she turned round to see what had captured her night light’s attention so quickly—
—a tan earth colored earth pony stallion was coming to a stop twenty feet away from her, far closer for her tastes than she was comfortable with, and her instinct was to put a few extra steps between them as she pushed the filly along with her with her back legs. His mane was a wild, chaotic mess, fixed into several mohawk-shaped braids that exposed much of his skull, and what looked like a miss-mash of torn leather barding adorned his torso and withers. Several ring piercings in his ears and left foreleg flittered in the wind, and his coat was unkempt and dirty-looking, with tiny scatterings of scars along his forelegs and face.
And across his back was a metal pole, with what looked like a chunk of concrete at the end of it, as if he’d simply pulled a street sign straight out of the sidewalk for use as a blunt weapon—there were certainly plenty of pale, reddish stains on it.
A couple of feet behind him was an equally outlandish-looking earth pony mare, her light pastel blue coat clashing with her purple mohawk mane and multi-braided tail….and the rusted, but sharp-looking machete she clenched between her teeth in a death grip.
But most disturbing of all….their cutie marks. The stallion’s was horrific—a heavy-looking sledgehammer head, with a pool of blood underneath it and what looked like the broken pieces of a creature’s skull scattered around it. The mare’s mark was a crisscrossed pair of machetes, coated crimson with dripping blood—
“—three more behind us,” Light Tail’s voice whispered as quietly as she could manage, adding to her growing despair and her list of things to change on her hearing spell. She had not even heard any hoofsteps around her, but then, her attention hadn’t been that well focused on her surroundings a few seconds ago.
They damn well had her full attention now.
“Whoooo-wheeee, lookie here!!” a stallion behind her whooped loudly, a slight maniac shrill in his voice. “Have you ever seen such clean-lookin’ souls in yer whole miserable lives, I mean look at these two!! I bet they crawled right out of a stable this morning!”
Oh, shit—
“They did, ya brainless sack of oats!!” the stallion in front of her roared back, his eyes searching her over much as a predator might survey a potential meal. “Can’t you see the damn suit she’s got on?!”
“Oh, I’m not lookin’ at her suit!!” the whooping stallion hollered back, and Sling unconsciously dropped her tail down between her legs before they could get any more ideas. “Such a fine little specimen of the fairer sex—“
Her heart began to beat harder against her ribs. Oh shit this is bad—
“Hey, if they came out of a stable maybe they can get us in!” a mare behind her shouted out, her voice shifting as she moved around to box them in from her left. “Must be all kinds of shit in there, we’d be like kings and queens for life!”
“Yeeeeaaah, now there’s an idea I can get behind!” the sledgehammer stallion cooed, still not taking his eyes off of her as he began to scrutinize specific things in detail…like her holstered guns. “Judgin’ by yer getup ya came from the one-one-five in that mountain near here, so we already know where it is. Just tell us how we get through the damn door.”
She hoped her legs weren’t shaking as badly as she thought they were. “You can’t,” she answered calmly, trying to instill a fresh telekinetic spell in her horn as subtly as she could. “We left only because the power failed and we were being swarmed with radroaches. We were the only ones that got out alive.”
There was an unfortunate brief silence that did little to comfort her about the next two minutes of her life ahead. “….shit, thought it was weird that bug swarm vanished all of a sudden. Guess we know where they are now.”
“’Least we can scour around that mountain now,” the flanking mare sneered darkly. “Those bugs will be feasting for weeks.”
Her heart grew heavier, and beat harder. Now her lungs were starting to work erratically. Her options were starting to grow slim in her panic. Fight. Flee. Beg. Give up. The latter two were suicide, her mind’s voice told her.
The four options became two when the sledgehammer stallion’s eyes diverted downward, off to her side, where El-Tee had huddled herself to stay as close to her mother as she could manage. “You checkin’ out my flank, kid?”
No no no no—
“I think she is!” the flanking mare cooed in agreement. “Daaaymn they must start ‘em out young in those stables!”
You sick, depraved lunatics no NO NO—
Sledgehammer stallion began to stalk towards them, and she began inching backward, scooting El-Tee along with her back legs as she turned her back towards the crumbling building beside her to keep any of these savages from getting a free shot at her from behind. “S-stay back—“
“Tell ya what, you just go along quietly and things’ll go smoother for alla us,” Sledgehammer said, a menacing, sickly grin beginning to grow on his face. “I mean, there’s a big storm comin’, and we’re gonna be cooped up out of the muck for a while. We’ll need some entertainment.”
El-Tee’s body stopped moving despite Sling’s most insistent efforts to push her into doing so…and she started to cry. “M-mommy…I’m scared—“
Her heart stopped. Her lungs stopped fighting with her to breathe normally. Her trembling legs stopped shaking and became stout, firm pillars of strength. The two muddled options left to her became one very clear, very sensible path dictated by an enraged inner voice, one she had no trouble agreeing with.
Kill. Them. All.
Her 10mm pistol scratched against its holster as it flashed out and leveled squarely upon the flanking mare’s chest, who turned out to be a pale green unicorn wielding the only firearm among the group of five savages, but she seemed oblivious to its presence. “…bitch, you ain’t the first to pull an empty gun on me and even if it were loaded you don’t have the ba—“
It was just like live fire practice. Aim, careful breath, smooth squeeze and follow-through—
—BOOM!—
—the low-light conditions of the raincloud sky made the muzzle flash stand out, its bright orange tongue of flame roughly half the size of the gun itself and obscuring the results of the shot, but her pained cry of surprise told her all she wanted to know. She didn’t even wait to get a second sight picture, but fought the gun back down as close to its previous position as she could, as quickly as she could, and squeezed off a second shot so close to the first that one could have mistaken it for an automatic weapon.
She stumbled back, choking on her ruptured lungs as her pistol clattered to the ground, and Sling swung the sights to the right, on the sledgehammer stallion, his eyes widening in shock at how quickly their prey had turned on them—
—Sling fired another two quick shots from a single sight picture, managing to put one round on her target’s torso but missing with the second, just as the sky finally began to rain down on the land below.
Somepony, somewhere, starting screaming. She knew it wasn’t her, but beyond that it was a mystery she didn’t have time to dwell on, because now she had three fresh savages and one wounded one all charging at her, promising exceptionally obscene and unpleasant acts upon her corpse once they were done, and she didn’t intend to let them molest anything, ever again.
Sledgehammer stallion was the most motivated and therefore the first to reach her, his jaws snapping onto the metal pole and tearing the makeshift weapon free of its carrying strap as he brought it up in a rearing charge for a downward swing—
—she intentionally dropped her sights down below his exposed belly and squeezed off a fifth shot that brought him back down to the ground, his cries of rage turning in shrilling shrieks of agonizing pain and tears—
—the machete mare closed in before Sling could get a good bead on her, so the teal blue mare did the only thing she could think of in the half-second she had and darted forward, leaping over the screaming stallion and turning around for a better shot—
—two stallions with cropped, short manes and a bad case of mange on their dark red coats were splitting off from each other, one going straight for her night light and the other coming about to cover the machete mare as she skidded to a halt now that her target had moved. The charging stallion wore no barding or armor of any sort, but his mouth bore a very sharp looking and partially serrated knife—
—El-Tee’s revolver came up in front of the filly and fired off a shot at the stallion approaching her almost instinctively, and Sling joined in with a shot of her own that tore through his left side and made him forget about her little girl—
—the knife stallion closed the distance faster than she’d expected and bowled her over onto the broken street on her back, the knife in his jaws coming down towards her neck—
—she jammed the pistol’s barrel up against his lower jaw and squeezed the trigger once, his skull muffling much of the 10mm blast that obliterated the brain inside. His lifeless body collapsed onto its side next to her, mercifully giving her a good view of Machete Mare and the two seconds she had left to get out of her way—
—at the last second Sling rolled over to her left, the machete-wielding manic missing her head by about two inches but startling her hold on her pistol, and it clattered onto the pavement before she could fix her misfiring spell—
—Grayhawk’s weight left her side as she rolled over onto her hooves, the massive revolver’s red front sight swinging up onto the Machete Mare’s chest just before she pressed back on the trigger—
—the shot tore straight through the savage mare, caving in a ragged, bloody hole through her chest and expelling an unholy amount of blood out through what she prayed was one of her back legs, and Machete Mare dropped to the ground in a bloody heap without so much as a gasp—
“S-S-SHIT!” the last remaining stallion shrieked. Having been shot at by a ten-year-old filly and watching the mother ventilate one of his friends with a through-and-through shot, he’d become convinced that his only salvation was to charge straight for her with the straight razor he had tied to his left foreleg.
KILL. THEM. ALL! The red sight rose again, water droplets splattering all across the top of the barrel and the frame, obscuring the trail of smoke sifting out of the barrel—
Grayhawk roared again, the sights settling just slightly ahead of the stallion’s path when she fired, and when the revolver bucked up she bore witness to a sight almost as gruesome as Hoofprint—his head came apart like a melon, and his body tumbled over in a forward roll of flailing limbs before coming to rest near the sledgehammer stallion.
The screaming stallion had by then becoming a weeping, gasping shell of a gelded colt as shock began to set in, his blood becoming diluted into the growing pool of water collecting on the streets. “Y-y-you..you c-castrated me ….”
Grayhawk slid back into its holster, and her 10mm pistol came back into her grasp as she trotted towards the dying savage. “I told you to stay back,” she snarled back angrily, taking careful aim at a very specific spot between his eyes. “You should’ve listened.”
His glassy eyes began to shrink as they stared down the business end of the 10mm barrel leveled in their direction—
And El-Tee’s tiny body crashed into her legs. “Mom, stop!”
Her spell field stopped mid-stroke on the trigger, her aim unwavering. “Don’t look honey—“
“No, please!!” Light Tail’s voice cried, even going so far as to start pulling on her forelegs to try and move the larger, stronger pony. “Stop! They’re not gonna hurt us anymore!”
KILL! THEM! ALL!! the angry voice in her head repeated. “I’m just making sure of that—“
“This isn’t you!” the little one begged harder, her tugging becoming more frantic. “You’re better than this, I know it!”
Her pressure on the trigger tried to press back, to send a bullet into this savage’s brainpan, to keep him from being able to do unspeakable things to her and her little girl. “I said—“
“Are you listening?!” Light Tail screamed through her hearing protection spell. “Or are you so mad at everything that you’re gonna go ahead and take it out on anything you think you can get away with?!”
“What do you think this sick filth has been doing his whole life?!?! He’s getting off easy—“
“You’re not like them!!” El-Tee howled, her voice beginning to crack with tears. “You’re my mom and I don’t want you to do this, this isn’t you!! You’re not a murderer, so STOP IT!!!”
She had a sudden flash, back to that house they’d been in not even thirty minutes earlier, and to that poor stallion whose entrails had been allowed to hang from his split stomach, and to the poor mare who suffered unspeakable abuse before she was—
…..murdered….
Murdered.
And here she was, standing in the decaying ruins of a dead town, amidst a pile of corpses she’d just made, with a ten-millimeter, one-fifty-five grain slug sitting in the chamber ready to spray this helpless savage’s brains out all over the slickening streets right in front of her most treasured possession in the world, because all she could think about right then was how much hate and anger she had grown to harbor over the years.
Murderer….
The slide-mounted safety clicked on, snapping the hammer down into its uncocked position just behind the firing pin, her stoic hold on the pistol beginning to waver as she stepped away from the whimpering stallion. It took her three tries to stow it back in its holster—the cold rain didn’t help matters any.
Murderer. Sick as the rest of them.
Her ears never registered any of the thunder that sounded out with every bolt of lightning. She put all her effort into getting as far away from the slaughter she’d indulged in, delaying just long enough to appropriate the single pistol from the remains of its former owner and as much ammunition as she could fumble into her stable suit pockets in five seconds—a paltry seven rounds of ball-round 9mm. She deigned to allow Light Tail to take the lead when it became apparent she was losing the concentration needed to find a safe, dry haven, and the child chose the only singular safe place she knew of—the prospecting office they’d broken into when they’d first arrived.
It took her three minutes to fumble through the lock and pick it open, breaking four of her twenty bobby pins in the process, and another three minutes to fight her wet, rain-slicked stable suit and traveling saddle off of her body. It only took her a minute to find a dry towel from the saddlebags and begin to dry herself off with it.
A sick, sad angry shell of a mare that can’t stop blowing up at her own child even when she’s trying to save your conscience.
She began to shake and tremble. From the adrenaline bleed off, from the cold touch of the water, from her own growing horror that her daughter was more right than she’d ever realized. And that it was only by her night light’s intervention that she avoided poisoning her soul forever. To say nothing of the other four ponies she’d shot dead when she felt herself backed up into a corner by lustful savages with no care for anything but their own selfish desires. The only saving grace there was that they had all been trying to kill her.
It started as a gasping, choking sob as her coat and mane became frizzled from the remaining moisture that the towel couldn’t soak up, and before long she had broken down into a quivering blob of fur and hair as she cried in horror over what she’d nearly become. Not even Light Tail’s nuzzling hug could make things better.
And in the sickest of ironies, as the filly’s forelegs found purchase around her mother’s neck, the perceptive thing’s endless optimism still sought to comfort her with two-hundred year old words.
“It’s okay mom, it’s okay,” El-Tee murmured softly. “Everything will work out. All of it.”