Chapter 1: Lee
Chapter 1: Lee
"I named you after someone I read about in some very old log files."
Something was definitely odd, I thought as I lay here, eyes shut. The first big question was - where was I? The surface I was lying on was rough, irregular and not particularly comfortable. If this was my floor, it was damaged beyond belief; gone was its silky smoothness. And there was the air - cool, dank, and somewhat odorous. It smelled of decay. Nothing in my ship should be capable of making those odors.
I could remember the fight, the crash, and the invasion, if three heavily armed soldiers could be considered an invasion. Those soldiers were unlike anything I had seen before, and I had been totally outclassed, which was saying something. Neither my sharpshooting skills or my usual energy weapons had been effective against them. Two of the soldiers had eventually fallen, taken out by an all-out attack by my remaining crew. Moments later they had been slaughtered by the third soldier, and then that soldier had turned her weapon on me. Pain had exploded out from my chest as the slug blasted its way through, shattering or destroying whatever was in its path. My armor had counted for nothing. My body had became unresponsive, and my vision had lost stability, then focus, as oxygen starvation shut down my brain. After that was nothing. I hadn't felt it. Time hadn't crawled past. There had simply been nothing between then and waking up now, in this unfamiliar environment.
Gasping with shock, I sat bolt upright, feeling for the wounds on my chest with my hoof.
Hoof?
What the?
My train of thought was completely derailed, as I dangled the offending appendage in front of my face, contemplating what it could mean. It was dark brown, chipped, a little grubby, with a worn rubber shoe attached to the sole, but generally in good condition. And there was no blood on it. I felt my chest again. I felt hair - a little sweaty, and needing a good brushing, but that was all. There was no pain, or for that matter, any sign whatsoever of the fatal wound. That was good: confusing, but very good.
"Oh Mum, you had that dream again, didn't you?" a voice to my right asked.
I quickly looked around to locate its source. A younger unicorn pony lay there, beige with a chocolate mane and tail, and only three legs: three and a half to be exact. Her right hoof and fetlock were missing. I tried moving my head from side to side to see if it was an illusion caused by the way the younger unicorn was sitting, but decided that the hoof was indeed missing.
"Yes, you had that dream again. I can tell by the look on your face," the younger unicorn stated, nodding to herself.
"But... but this isn't right..." I stammered, holding up my hoof as if it were an exhibit.
"Clearly we are not bipeds. We are quadrupeds, or a tri-ped in my case, anyway," the younger unicorn stated, proving that she did indeed have some idea about what I had been dreaming, and that she only had three hooves. That was the sort of thing I expected to happen... in a dream. Well, that would explain why I was a pony. I was having a dream within a dream.
"This isn't the first time you've had that dream about being a human. You've told me about the dream before. And then we go through this again," she explained. "And trust me, you are awake right now."
Well, so much for that theory. I had to admit this world seemed a little more stable and consistent that I would expect of a dream. I lowered my hoof. Looking at the younger unicorn, I could see that the coloring of my leg matched that of her coat, and what I could see of my own mane, dangling before my eyes, also matched that of the younger unicorn. I shook my head, hoping that would somehow make things clearer - it didn't - and took a deep breath before clambering to my hooves. Okay, so I appeared to be some sort of unicorn pony, and I had suitable motor skills. First things first though. I felt sweaty, and grubby, and altogether not nice, so I shook my whole body hard, willing the tangles, sweat and grime away. Surprisingly, with a gently glow, they obliged, leaving me feeling fresh, clean and neat.
"Best magic ever," I heard the younger unicorn quietly comment, as she too clambered to her hooves.
I watched, wondering how well she would manage with her handicap, and was slightly surprised to see the same glow I had experienced a moment ago emanating from the younger unicorn's horn, wrapping around her shortened foreleg, as if she were lifting herself by her own bootstraps. Even if it looked unlikely, it worked, and she stood. Her horn's glow spread to cover her whole body and she too shook, transforming as she did from a ruffled bed-head to a runway model.
"How other ponies manage without that magic, I will never know," she commented, then after a moments thought added, "well, a lot of them don't, do they?"
"How did I do that?" I asked, puzzled. "I didn't use any magic. It was... instinctive."
"Oh Mum, don't be silly. Of course it was instinctive. We don't need to wave around wands like those show ponies. It's part of being a unicorn."
I shook my head, not to disagree, rather to try and shake some sense into it. It still didn't work. This whole world just didn't sit right.
"Why do I have these dreams?" I asked. "Why don't I remember this world?"
"Because..." The younger unicorn paused. "I really hate this. Every time it happens... Sorry Mum, there is no nice way to say this. It's because you were shot in the head. Sometimes your memories get disconnected."
"Oh," I murmured. "That would be unpleasant."
The younger unicorn sighed with relief. "You seem to be taking it in your stride today. Thank goodness. Okay Mum, here are a couple of easy questions to help things along. Who am I, and where are we?"
I looked around the dimly lit room twice before I realized the dimness was not due the walls, which had significantly more openings than when the room was built, but rather the cloudy gloom that pressed down all around us. We were obviously sheltering in a decaying building, the wooden floor rotten, and covered in assorted grime and gravel. That would explain the roughness I had felt when I woke. That we were sheltering in such a horrid place at all told me we had nowhere better to sleep.
My eyes moved to my companion. The three legged unicorn was no foal, but she had that youthful freshness of one in her early to mid teens, attractive, and thanks to her magic, well groomed. Her hooves also showed signs of wear and chipping, though it was more obvious on her sole remaining forehoof. Her cutie mark was a spanner crossed with a screwdriver - obviously she was technically adept. I risked a quick glance back at my own flank, only to discover that I also had a cutie mark, and that it was identical. This filly really did take after her mother... and I appeared to have some concept of this world after all.
"Okay..." I drew it out. "You are my daughter...." That much seemed obvious. I focused on the younger unicorn again, and for a moment a secondary image pushed itself into my mind - one of the people from within my dream, my trusted and constant companion. It couldn't be her, but... what else could I have called her? "You are Anne! Hmm, that doesn't sound like a name for a pony."
"Don't blame me," she said, shrugging. "You named me after all."
That was a good guess. Now what of my own name in this strange world? Could it be... my name in the dream?
"My name, it's Lee, isn't it? If Anne is unusual for a pony, it would be too, right?"
"Again, your doing. It's not your birth name. It's the name you chose after... you know... after your second life started, not that your original name, Teresa, was any less odd," Anne stated.
That was odd. My old name in my dream had also been Teresa. I was beginning to see strange parallels between the two worlds. Perhaps my dream world really was just the creation of a damaged brain, but then, what were those memories tugging at the edge of my consciousness? A diary? A familiar computerized log file telling a story from long, long ago? The memory blossomed. It was something my pony mother had shared with me when explaining why she had chosen my name, and I had done the same when explaining to Anne my choice of name for her.
"So where are we?" Anne prompted.
I thought for a few moments, grasping at shimmering memories and vague facts. "This is Equestria," I stated. That was about as helpful as saying 'the universe'. Suddenly a wave of clarity washed over my mind, making me wonder where my dream reality fit in. "Oh, I know! This is Ponyville - or what is left of it." And what a mess it was. A coat of paint... and a bulldozer would do it the world of good.
Anne nodded. "And it looks rather like someone went through here with an army recently, or we wouldn't be sleeping in such an insecure place."
I was suddenly worried. "Status. Sweep." I voiced, and my Eyes-Forward Sparkle activated, the glowing information screen floating in my field of vision. It was free of any of the glowing dots that indicated other creatures. Even the extended sweep failed to detect anything. Thank goodness for that. "We are still alone. I really would not like to meet whoever did that to the raiders!" I stated emphatically, then added as an afterthought, "I wouldn't have wanted to meet those raiders either, for that matter, not while they were still alive."
I shuddered, recalling the mess we had encountered while looking for any signs of inhabitance the evening before. What externally appeared to be the old library had proved to be more of a slaughterhouse, most of the former occupants killed by either gunfire or high explosive. Some of the dead had been victims of the raiders, the remainder, the victims of the walking war zone with the delicate hooves. Anne and I had considered setting the place alight to burn the horrors within, but decided against trying when we realized the explosives had already failed to do so, so our meager supplies would have no chance. Surprisingly, whoever had turned the place over had left the currency. We did not make the same oversight. A little unicorn magic had freed the bottle caps of their coating of gore.
"Hey, what do you know, my brain is working again!" I suddenly exclaimed.
"Welcome back, Mum!" Anne chimed. "It's good to have you playing with a full deck again."
"We are a fine pair of walking wrecks, aren't we," I commented. "Come on, let’s get going before these bodies fail on us again."
I tapped the metallic blue bracelet on my left foreleg, putting my Pipgirl into standby. I could have done it through the virtual head-up interface, or Eyes-Forward Sparkle, as it was known. That worked using "Look and Think" technology, so was totally hoof free. You didn't even need unicorn magic to make it work. The Pipgirl was probably my greatest invention. It was the next generation beyond the Pipbuck, and unlike the former, I thought it was attractive to look at. It was even available in several colors! Back at the stable it had become quite the fashion statement, with all the fillies and mares rushing to trade in their old Pipbucks as soon as the Pipgirls became available. The stallions wanted the extra functionality of course, but chose to preserve the aesthetics of their trusty old Pipbucks. Many of them had been retrofitted with the newer circuitry. Why had I called them Pipgirls? It wasn't as if Pipbuck referred to the male of our species, and Pipdoe sounded awful!
I levitated my barding from where I had draped it across the remains of an old table the night before, dropping it over myself. I used my magic to fasten its securing its belts around my chest. The battle saddle was next, a nice metallic grey-green saddle which had been fitted with two weapons - a Cybercorn carbine to the left, and a combat shotgun to the right. Also part of the saddle were the auto loaders for the two guns, and compartments for spare ammunition, medical supplies, food and tanks for water, none of which were present in particularly significant amounts. The wonderful saddles managed to store all sorts of things inside, as long as they fit through the opening, and even that could be expanded for larger items. The length didn't matter, as the magical storage matrix seemed only to care about total mass. Anne's sniper rifle was testament to that, tucked safely away in her own battle saddle, though it hadn't seen light of day since she had lost her hoof. My tools were also in my saddle, in a kit that could easily be extracted when needed.
When I was happy with how my equipment was sitting, I checked on Anne's progress. She too was almost ready, needing a few moments more to adjust the balance of her load. Anne's saddle was much like mine, apart from being a little smaller to accommodate her slighter build. She was armed with a single saddle mounted Cybercorn carbine, and an automatic pistol which she would manipulate with her telekinesis as needed. When not in use, it was holstered to the left side of the saddle, close to where the carbine was mounted. Their combined weight helped to move Anne's center of gravity over her remaining forehoof. The Cybercorn carbines were another invention to come out of their stable. Unlike regular guns, they relied on telekinesis instead of gunpowder to propel the projectile. Usually they fired slugs that were essentially the same as used in regular bullets, and were available in the same basic types - armor piercing, hollow point, explosive tipped and so on. In desperation, they could fire just about anything you could get to fit down their bore. Balls of soft clay worked well for non-lethal ammunition, a foal's glass marbles made for a nasty slug against those with minimal or no armor, and ball bearings were a good all-round choice. Cybercorn weapons had the advantage of being silent to operate. Their disadvantage was that only trained unicorns could use them. They used channeled pushing magic.
In the case of Anne and myself, the pushing magic was derived from the magic we used to groom themselves, and that particular magic was native only to the technicians of the stable from which we had originally come, and not, as some wished, to the glamour set in administration. That particular magic was used when we needed to be perfectly clean for working in the sterile environments of the clean rooms, or to clean ourselves of the toxic muck or regular grime we sometimes had to expose ourselves to while doing maintenance or repairs around the stable. Trust me, it sure beat coming home at the end of a hard day repairing the plumbing, smelling like the stable latrines. No amount of washing ever seemed to get rid of that odor quickly, but with the magic it was gone from your body instantly, though filters were required to flush the resultant particles from the air. There were other unicorns who wielded similar magic, but not from our stable. It was always great that we could turn up to formal events better presented after a few moments of magic than the glamour set was able to manage after a day's preening. They would complain about workers being so out of place amongst the administrators, and we would counter that the magically handicapped had to work in administration because they were of no use for anything else. And if they were really annoying, they would find the toilets in administration blocked the following day, with us too busy to attend to them, of course.
"We get ourselves all fresh and pretty, then hide ourselves under all of this ugly barding," Anne complained, interrupting my reverie. "It's a sad life."
"Even with all the discomfort and difficulties, it is still much better than being trapped in that stable though," I reminded her.
Anne nodded. "At least there are breaks between the hell out here, even if the general level of unpleasantness is fairly high."
"If you are ready, we should get moving," I responded, "before any of that general unpleasantness decides to come visit us. Who knows who or what usually sleeps here."
Bringing my Eyes-Forward Sparkle back online, I walked cautiously through one of the larger holes in the wall, checking for any movement. There was none. Whoever it was that cleared out the raiders nest the day before had either got them all, or scared the remainder so badly they weren't planning on returning any time soon. An arrow on the displayed compass indicated the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. It would not take us too long to get there, and we would be able to investigate the rumors of a Stable-Tec stable being hidden somewhere in the area.
Stables were the best places to raid for old technology. Many were afraid to go into them, so more items survived in them than did on the surface. Added to that were the lesser seen areas of the stables - the service tunnels, junction boxes and so on. Some were well hidden enough that only stable technical staff knew where they were. The general stable populace had no need to access them, and being hidden stopped the foals from playing hide and seek in them - well, mostly. In my foal-hood I had soon worked out how to gain access to them, and like me, Anne had done so too. When two security stallions brought Anne home after she was caught playing in them, I had waited until they had gone before turning to my daughter. Anne had obviously expected a lecture, but instead had to contend with a mother that wanted all the gritty details of her adventures. Once the story was shared I had made it clear that no punishment was coming because I had enjoyed doing the same as a foal myself, and saw nothing wrong with doing so. As it turned out, it was not long after then that Anne gained access to them officially.
Coming to a standstill, I surveyed the mess at the bridge we needed to cross. Broken barricades, the bodies of ponies and the occasional crude weapon were scattered about. Raiders often didn't take the time to bury their dead, but they usually did clear them out of an area they wished to use, if only to hang them from chains above them to advertise their presence. Foul creatures they were, and I was reluctant to consider them as part of the pony race. A bridge like this would be of some strategic value, if for no other reason than to extort tolls from any trying to cross it, or just to prevent others crossing for the sake of being perverse. Noticing the freshly splintered railing I looked closer, seeing the scoring of a bullet. Estimating its trajectory, I looked in the direction from which it had come, and activated the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting System (S.A.T.S.), to see if it would locate any hidden signs of life. It didn't, but what I did see was the library balcony, an ideal spot for a sniper to set up. Fortunately the location was vacant at the moment, or we would probably have been hiding or dodging about now.
"Oh. Well, I guess we know what happened there then." I muttered to myself as much as anyone, wondering what sort of unstoppable force had come through in the opposite direction in the days before. I returned my attention to the railing. The slug was still embedded there, and not too firmly. Using my magic, I worked it around the slug and pushed it back out of its resting place. When it popped free, I levitated it up before my face, rotating it. It wasn't perfect, a little distorted by its impact with the wood, but it would fit down the bore of my Cybercorn carbine with no trouble. I flipped open a pouch on the battle saddle and dropped the slug in with the collection of slugs I had salvaged from the library the previous day.
My horn gently glowed as I lifted each of the crude weapons that were scattered about the bridge. Sports bats, sticks with nails hammered through them and kitchen knifes tied to old broom handles were all tossed over the side and into the murk that flowed under the bridge. Nothing of real value was here though. Any ammunition, guns or caps that these raiders had been carrying had already been taken. I bucked their corpses through the gap below the railings, and into the murky water below. It wasn't that I particularly cared about the dead raiders and was giving them any sort of send off. I just didn't like the idea of them fouling up the bridge for the next poor pony that had to cross. Some pony had to do it, and in my experience, there were not many who were willing, considering the number of skeletons that littered the wasteland. Some ponies were living in buildings with the skeletons in there with them. Eww. Such poor taste, and extreme laziness. I returned my attention to the bridge. Even with the bodies gone, it would smell bad enough until a few day's rain had managed to wash away the bulk of the remaining gore. That left the shattered barricade to deal with. I began to levitate it.
"Mum, you are being too tidy again," Anne commented.
"It's not like we are on a timetable," I responded to my daughter, who had now made it to the other side of the bridge. "Besides, you had to catch up anyway."
"If you haven't noticed, I've actually passed you," she stated. "Oh, come on, I'd like to look for this stable in the light, if you don't mind. Unlike you, if I trip in the dark, I'm guaranteed to face-plant."
I laughed as I let the broken barricade I was moving drop where it was. "As you wish, as you wish."
Turning our backs on the river crossing and former toll-way, we headed in the direction our Pipgirls indicated Sweet Apple Acres lay. We passed the remains of more ponies as we left, raiders and slavers, both, judging from the scattered equipment, but of any slaves there were no signs, apart from some hoof marks left in the mud. A stallion and a filly, by the looks of it. Perhaps the unstoppable force had freed them on their way through, unless this filly was actually that unstoppable force. Her delicate hoof prints looked rather like those in Ponyville. That would be nice - somepony out here who thought of somepony other than themselves for a change.
After a while of trudging and hopping along a former road that had degraded through time into a rough and broken path, we found ourselves passing through orchards of apple trees, none of which looked healthy enough to risk eating their fruit. How the trees managed to bear fruit while sucking up radioactive water was anypony's guess. Not long after, we found ourselves staring at the somewhat substantial remains of a former farm building. Bring my Eyes-Forward Sparkle online, I scanned the area, finding no signs of life, hostile or otherwise. I scouted around to be sure, again finding no signs of significant life, either friendly or hostile. I switched off the Sparkle, looking down at the ground, searching for tracks. There were two sets. One set looked like those of the filly we had seen up near the slavers' corpses, not that long ago, perhaps our walking war zone, while the others were of an older pony, probably a mare. Those prints appeared to be older than those of the filly. Both had come from the barn, or mansion, or whatever it was meant to be. Following them to the doorway, I saw the tracks passing both ways, the filly's going over the top of the mares in some places. I followed them into the building, Anne hopping along behind me.
Anne took one look at the steps and balked. "I'll take downstairs, thanks!" she stated, then hopped away to investigate what little clutter remained. "Besides, I don't think this place is strong enough to support both of our weights at once."
She had a point. It creaked and groaned every time there was a significant gust of wind. None the less, it had survived a couple hundred years, so I didn't think collapse was imminent. I headed up the stairs, trying to ignore the creaking of the boards under my hooves.
Upstairs proved to have only one item of interest, unless you found dust and garbage interesting, and that was a functional terminal, both a monument to how tough these things had been built, and the random stupidity of the wasteland where something like this could somehow have remained functional out in such a remote place. I devoted a couple of minutes to it, and was surprised to find a recent entry from someone called Velvet Remedy.
"To any pony who has left Stable Two in search of me:" it read. Was Stable Two a functional stable? If it was, why was there so little evidence of it up here. Surely it wasn't still sealed? I thought about it for a moment. Okay, evidence was that at least one, perhaps two ponies had left it recently. Obviously it had been opened, but the message implied that leaving it was frowned upon. That I could understand from experience. Anne and I had escaped from our own stable, after all. Now I suspected Anne and I were the only two survivors from that stable. There were others like us that had hated the place, and rumor had it that some of them had chosen suicide as the way out, taking everyone else in the stable with them. I had talked to a travelling merchant, who had described what he had found the last time he had approached the small trading settlement that had hidden the stable - a new sink hole where the settlement should have been. It must have been a big blast. I had not been back to investigate.
Concentrate on the present, concentrate on the present, I chided myself, abandoning the terminal and climbing back down the stairs. I hated stairs. Going down them was always uncomfortable, and it left your butt stuck up in the air, which was hardly dignified. Worrying about them collapsing with every step didn't help either! I emerged into the main room of the building to find Anne looking somewhat amused.
"Would you believe, I found some soap!" she exclaimed. "It's a bit old though."
"It's not a lot of use to magically groomed ponies, is it?" I frowned.
"Maybe not, but if we ever find ourselves needing to keep company with the usual unwashed sorts out here, it may come in handy!" Anne explained.
"Pfft." I responded. "You know as well as I do that we could easily blow the muck off them too." I turned and walked towards the exit.
"Oh, you're no fun, Mum," Anne complained, lowering her one salvaged cake into her battle saddle's storage compartment before following me out of the building.
We tracked the hoof print trail back to an open horizontal cellar door in the ground, reminiscent of those used on storm shelters. I created a luminescent ball with my horn and lowered it through the opening. More stairs. "The vault must be down this way," I told Anne, "though I suspect we have wasted our time coming here. I found a message up there that implied Stable Two is still occupied, and does not like its residents leaving."
Anne froze solid where she stood. I could feel the fear radiating from her. I turned to face my daughter. "No?"
"Never into that hell again." Anne insisted. "I won't even risk being caught."
"I'll just be a moment then." I said as I swiveled and descended down the stone stairs, creating another luminescent ball with my horn as I did, the previous one having gone out when I had stopped concentrating on it. I found myself in what had clearly been an old apple cellar; this place was Sweet Apple Acres after all. The air was foul, the combination of years of rotting support timbers, damp, and hints of the long dead. My integral nasal filters kicked in, sparing me from having to breathe the stuff. There was a second doorway in the room, so I headed for it, finding myself in a long dark tunnel, no doubt leading to a point of greater ground depth under a local hill or some such. The further along I got, the greater the number of bones I found, until I eventually reached the maximum concentration of them. Pony skeletons were congregated around the great steel door of the stable, still firmly in place. There were marks on the door from where the poor ponies had seriously injured themselves desperately pounding against the door in the vain hope of getting inside. The remains of smashed hooves and fractured leg bones showed their desperation. And finally, when they could pound the door no more, they had laid down and died, too injured and irradiated to even attempt to look for another safe haven.
Again I found hoof prints of the mare and filly in the dust weaving between the skeletons as they made their way out. I did not even try the door controls. Clearly we would not be salvaging anything from this stable, so our search for parts to fix Anne's leg would have to continue elsewhere. I turned my back on the door to Stable Two, and walked back along the dark tunnel.
Soon I emerged back into the relatively fresh air of the outside world, briefly recalling the first time I had emerged from a stable. I had heard stories of ponies who couldn't handle the lack of a ceiling, being overcome with the fear of falling up. Both myself and Anne had already been trained to handle the situation before we escaped, and at the time we were concentrating too hard on getting as far away as we could to have time to worry about the strangeness of the world outside our stable.
With a kick, I flicked the old cellar door shut behind me.
"Come," I called Anne. "There is nothing here for us."
She followed enthusiastically. When we had walked a few paces from the cellar door, I used my telekinesis to obliterate the tracks around the door. The stable dwellers clearly wanted their privacy. They didn't need a stream of hoof prints advertising its location.
Turning to Anne I said, "It's a tomb down there. The stable is locked up tight. It does appear a couple of ponies escaped recently, but beyond that, it's the same as it has been for many years, skeletons of those who didn't make it inside in time and all."
"A private universe," Anne mused. "Let's hope it's a happier one than ours was."
"They'll need to come out soon though, or we'll have a breed of two headed ponies to go with the two headed cows." I smirked.
Anne snorted.
The two ponies clad in their black armor appeared rather menacing, The one behind us had a mini-gun and a rocket launcher fitted to the battle saddle that was integral to his armor, while the one to our front had grenade and rocket launchers. Either these guys relied on intimidation through overkill, or they simply didn't care that their weaponry was useless for precision operations. I could picture it: "Sure Ma'am, we killed the perp. No, there are no witnesses. There are an awful lot of bodies though!" It was hard to decide, given the chance, if I would rather take down their kind with a single, efficient bullet to the head to show them how it should be done, or with a very messy tactical balefire bomb, to demonstrate to them their foolishness. The latter, of course, would work really well at a gathering of them. So much for fantasies, this pair were quite real and just as annoying. What they were doing in New Appleloosa, I had no idea. As to why they had approached, I thought I knew. Steel Rangers were notorious for gathering technology, after all.
"I am sorry, ladies, but you are not authorized to carry this sort of equipment," the armored pony stated, in his boomy, military voice as he eyed the Pipgirls we were wearing. I wondered if his suit was amplifying his voice. Clearly, to his eyes, us being remarkably clean and well groomed made him think we had just crawled out of a nice safe burrow, and that made us ripe for the picking. Our Pipgirls and Cybercorn carbines were something he would not have seen before, and that would make them desirable to him and his kind. He was also eyeing our battle saddles, even though they were more common.
"Not authorized? Says who?" I responded, my tone showing my contempt for them.
"We do - the guardians of this land. We cannot afford to have civilians wandering about with unapproved technology, endangering others."
I laughed in his face. "Do we look like we crawled out of a stable yesterday?" I asked snidely, while glancing across at my beautifully presented daughter. "Hmm, I guess we do at that."
The Steel Ranger looked at us expectantly. Damn sneaky bastards, I thought, cornering us like this. Because this town was enclosed it meant we couldn't scout around it from a distance to determine if there were any undesirables inside. The view from the gateway was restricted, and all we had seen were fairly ordinary ponies going about their day to day activities. We were here to do a little trading, hopefully find odd job the residents needed help with so we could earn ourselves a few caps. The two rangers had remained out of sight until we were near the store, one appearing ahead of us, and one behind, moving to corner us.
I glared at the helmeted head of the bastard. "Do you think we are fools? You have no authority here. Now if you and your canned buddy would kindly get out of our way, we will be going on with our business." I growled.
"Please ladies, let us not make a needless scene. All we ask is that you remove those bracelets and weapons and give them to us," the Steel Ranger tried again. His companion had moved right up behind me, effectively pinning me between the two of them. Clearly they considered Anne, who had simply remained quiet and immobile since the beginning of the encounter to be of little threat and an even lower escape risk. That they were so close to me definitely showed their overconfidence.
I lowered her head, hunching, pretending to reach for my Pipgirl, but in reality I was preparing for my first strike. I really hated fighting and avoided it when possible, but sometimes there were blockheads like this pair of low ranked Steel Rangers that simply left me no choice. "Do you honestly think you are the first Steel Deranger that has tried to get this from me?" I growled, raising my head again. "By the way, there are some things in life that are best left unknown. And I just happen to be one of those things. If you are smart, you will turn and walk away now. NOW. "
The rangers pressed closer, heedless of my warning, so I unleashed myself. My horn flared as I brought up my magic in its crudest form, the basic push. The Ranger in front of me only rocked a little as he held against its force, but I really didn't care, as I was only leaning on him, using him as an anchor for my first strike. Simultaneously I lashed back with both rear hooves at a speed and power greater than any ordinary pony could ever hope to match, my hooves striking the chest of the armored pony behind me. My break-away protective hoof walls sheared off, exposing the armor piercing edges of the duralloy cores below. That's right, my hooves contain integral weapons. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the hoof blades were just part of a much larger weapon system, and I was that weapon system.
As my hooves struck, a pair of almost simultaneous cracks echoed off the walls of the nearby buildings, causing the more wasteland-wise to flatten themselves against the ground, or duck for cover. The rest, panic in their eyes looked for the source of the sound. What they saw was a mare stretched out, her front hooves firmly on the ground, and her rear hooves buried deep in the chest of the Steel Ranger behind her.
I was at a disadvantage now, with both of my rear legs hock-deep in the body of the collapsing ranger behind me, but at least our odds of winning had just doubled. I released my magic from the Ranger, and was pivoting it around to push the body clear of my legs when the fellow in front of me struck, his forehooves smashing into my right shoulder. Pain exploded through my body as his armored hooves cut through hide and hair, and ripped the flesh below, the force of the impact spinning me, and throwing me against the nearby wall of the store. Blood sprayed, both from my massive injury, and from the dead Ranger behind me as my rear legs pulled free.
As I collapsed, stunned, I noticed Anne had used the distraction to her advantage, and had turned tail and rapidly bounced a short distance, swinging back to face the Ranger at her selected range, just a little further than what I realized in retrospect was just a outside the estimated blast diameter of one of the ranger’s missiles or grenades from where I had fallen. As the Ranger had stepped closer to me and was readying himself for a final blow, I realized why they weren't concerned about carrying only area effect weapons such as grenade and rocket launchers; they were a melee weapon in their own right. That was when Anne fired. She didn't stop, keeping up an ongoing bombardment of whatever ammunition was loaded into her Cybercorn carbine, peppering the enemy pony in various places, some carefully chosen, others, seemingly random, in the hope that he would just assume her a poor shot with a second-rate weapon. Glass marbles shattered when they hit, leaving little white marks of powdered glass. Steel ball bearings made a very annoying "crack" as they bounced off his armor. The odd salvaged slug fared little better. Finally annoyed at the bombardment that was little more than an annoyance, he decided to deal with her before finishing me. He stormed towards Anne. When he was half way between us Anne fired one of her two remaining genuine Cybercorn armor piercing rounds, aimed directly at the Ranger's visor, and at the maximum output of her horn, if the bright glow was any indication. The slug failed to make it all the way through the material, but I knew the rear of the visor would have exploded inside the Ranger's helmet, peppering one of his eyes with fragments, blinding him in that eye.
Screaming in a rage, he aimed one of the rockets from his twin tube launcher at Anne and fired, and that was his fatal mistake, the one Anne later told me she had been planning on. The rocket failed to make it out of the launch tube before becoming wedged against the shrapnel Anne had deliberately fired into it during her bombardment of him - pieces of gravel embedded in sticky clay. The blast from its engine cooked off the second rocket in the launcher, and with an ear-damaging boom, the ranger was thrown violently to one side, fortunately away from both of us. He crashed to the ground a number of paces from where he had been standing, where he lay there unmoving. The concussion knocked me back against the wall, and flipped Anne from her hooves, but neither of us were hit by shrapnel.
Finally starting to think little more clearly, I activated my S.A.T.S. and noticed with some pride in my daughter that it had changed the Ranger's status from red to amber - no longer an immediate threat, and possibly no threat at all. I watched as Anne stood, and cautiously hopped over to where the Ranger lay, keeping her weapon aimed directly at the hole clearly visible in the side of his armor; the rocket launcher was no longer anywhere to be seen, parts of it scattered around, and fragments of it buried deep in his body. Clearly he was beyond fighting. Anne parked her weapon, and looked across at me. I nodded to her, and struggled to my hooves, somewhat hampered by the pain in my shoulder. I glanced down at it only to find how much damage the Ranger's strike had done. The alloy of my cyber frame was quite visible through the massive hole the ranger had ripped in my flesh. The chunk of flesh he had torn off was still attached, dangling from the bottom of the wound. My barding would need some serious repair.
"Bugger," I swore. If I had been a regular pony instead of a cyborg, that strike would have ripped my leg clean off, if it hadn't killed me outright.
The fallen Ranger coughed a wheezy, gurgling cough, drawing our attention. I wondered how long he was of this world. Anne bent down a little to examine him. "Silly boy," she reprimanded him, as she stared at his damaged body through the missing section of armor. As I got closer, I could see the erratic rising and falling of his rib-cage as he struggled for breath. Death would not be far away. His powered armor was no longer in any condition to administer medical aid, and neither Anne or I had the medication needed to even try to stabilize him. Neither of us were healers either. Our magical skills were in the field of technology.
"How?" the Ranger managed to gurgle. "did you... did she?"
Anne looked at him with scorn. "Your technology is centuries old, its weaknesses well known. To assume you are still superior is arrogant, and stupid," she explained as I moved along side her. Anne turned to look at me, but was unable to see the damage to me as the wound was on the side away from her. We tenderly touched noses with each other for a moment. "Are you okay Mum?"
"There is some damage to the mechanics of the shoulder," I muttered annoyed, "so now I have a limp. I must get this mess attended to immediately if I don't want necrosis to set in." The rate of blood escaping from the wound was nothing more than a slow ooze now, my cybernetics already rerouting the flow to bypass the damaged areas. That would preserve my blood, and thus my life in the short term, but unless the damaged areas had blood flow restored soon, they would die, and that could be just as fatal in the long term. "And I have to repair my rear hoof walls."
Another gurgle drew Anne's attention back to her previous conversation, or perhaps more accurately, lecture. She faced the Ranger again. "As I was saying, your tech is old. We, on the other hoof, are both combat cyborgs, and were made a mere twenty years ago, using leading edge technology, with the Steel Rangers as one of our intended targets, though fortunately for the Steel Rangers, neither my mother or I will do any pony's killing."
"But you... cough... just...," the Steel ranger managed.
"We merely defended ourselves from a couple of thieves," Anne informed him, "and if you don't like how that sounds, I suggest you spend your last few minutes doing some deep soul searching."
Anne turned away from the dying pony, glancing around at the ring of onlookers that was forming. "Is there a doctor here? My mother needs assistance," she stated. Another gurgle returned our attention to the fallen ranger. "And so does this guy, I guess."
No one answered, but most looked away as Anne's gaze came to rest on them. One eye remained looking directly at Anne - a sickly looking yellow eye. Its counterpart was wandering. The eyes belonged to the ghoul pony who owned the store, Ditzy Doo. We had met her last time we had shopped here, though I couldn't place exactly when that had been, probably several years ago. The ghoul reached down and nudged the ear of the violet filly who was standing next to her. The filly looked up at Ditzy and their gazes met, Ditzy's second eye actually facing where she wished momentarily. The filly tilted her head, and the old ghoul nodded. Understanding Ditzy's meaning, the filly took off.
I set about freeing the wounded Steel Ranger from his armor, to give the doctor better access when he eventually arrived. Fortunately, it did not take long, and now the pieces I had removed lay about us, leaving the wounded pony lying like an oyster in a half-shell. His breathing was shallow, but somehow he had not succumbed to death yet.
"Just hold on for as long as you can, you idiot," I told him. "We've sent for a doctor, so you will at least have a chance."
It was several minutes before the filly returned. Several paces behind her was a grey-coated earth pony with black mane and tail, a candy striped nurse beside him, and several other ponies behind them. The doctor paused when he saw the gaping wound in my shoulder, and the dangling flesh that should have been in its place. He bent forward to examine the wound closer. On noticing the metal of my skeleton within the gory mess, he turned from me to the Ranger. "Lady, you are in no immediate danger, are you?" he asked as he began examining the other pony.
"I'll live, though a sterile location to repair the damage would be good. Once that has been dealt with, I'll be needing the assistance of yourself or one of your staff to stitch the flesh back together." I responded. "But what about this fellow here? Does he have a chance?"
"Weren't you and your friend the two who put him in this condition?" the doctor asked. "Why would you care what happens to him."
"I care because he is a living being," I responded. "A stupid, arrogant and greedy one, perhaps, but I will not hold that against him. Maybe he can learn from this and live a better life. It was my daughter who dealt with him, for doing this to me."
"And the other fellow?" the doctor asked, glancing at the other fallen Steel Ranger, still fully dressed in his armor, lying in a large pool of darkening blood.
I shook my head sadly. "Unfortunately, I was the one who dealt with him, so he won't have that opportunity." I really hated killing, and always had. Since our escape from the stables, it had become more of a problem, with all the horrors of the wasteland seemingly out to either rob us or eat us. I did my utmost to avoid confrontation when I could, though it wasn't always possible in world as foul as this. Several raiders and slavers alike had met their ends in confrontations with Anne and I. Anne's missing hoof was testament to one of the more recent encounters with a group of raiders who had lost all contact with decency. They had degraded into nothing more than depraved animals driven by sensual desires, by drugs, sex, and the thrill of killing. They may have had the bodies of ponies, but that was all. That time, I had chosen to save the lives of ponies who had not yet fallen victim to them by killing the raiders there and then. Despite what they had done to Anne, it had not been an act of revenge. When the fighting was all over, we had been unable to recover the missing part of Anne's leg, despite me searching for it for several hours. In our subsequent travels we had yet to find anything we could use to repair or replace the leg. That was one of the reasons behind our recent visit to Stable 2.
"Excuse me, I have a patient to save." the doctor said me. "We will speak more later. Candi can assist you shortly." He indicated to the other ponies that he had brought with him, towns folk by the look of them, that this was going to be the operating theatre, if the Ranger was to survive. Rapidly they converted the area into a makeshift surgery, and the doctor began his work.
In the surgery a little while later, I lay on the operating table while Anne adjusted the repaired parts she was fitting back into my shoulder. Candi had already cleaned and sterilized the wound, and was now assisting Anne with the procedure. I must admit it felt rather weird having parts of my shoulder removed then replaced. Med-X was taking care of the pain, but that didn't stop the whole procedure from grossing me out, because I could still feel everything they did.
"Tell me," Candi began, "how did you two become cyborgs? You are both cyborgs aren't you?" she suddenly added glancing at Anne.
"We are, and we are also mother and daughter," I replied. "Until about fifteen years ago, we lived in one of the Ministry of Awesome's research and development stables, a stable populated by the descendants of a hand picked selection of scientifically inclined unicorns...."
"Ministry of Awesome?" Candi queried. "But I thought it was the Ministry of..."
"Ministry of Awesome," I confirmed. "Our stable was not one of the civilian ones. It was quite secret. In fact, I'm not sure Rainbow Dash was involved, or even knew it existed."
I began to recite the story of the two ponies long since in our past.
"This place has the worst safety record," I thought to myself as I read the daily notices. Another unicorn had been critically injured while moving stores in the stable warehouse. Luckily for them, this stable had a well advanced cybernetics division, and so far every critically injured pony had been saved. Occasionally they only needed a new limb to be able to return to a satisfactory life, but usually their injuries were far too great, like this pony's. She had been crushed under a heavy crate, shattering shoulder bones, hip bones, and breaking many ribs. The only way to save her would be to go full conversion, a new cyber frame replacing all of the ponies bones and muscles. Inside the alloy frame, the pony's own vital organs would be placed, and there those organs would be much safer than in the pony's original body.
Once healed, these ponies underwent rigorous physiotherapy and training, after which their body movements could not be distinguished from those of any ordinary pony's. They were, however, capable of so much more. They could run faster, jump higher, and excelled in martial arts, which was taught to them as a part of their rehabilitation. Many of them went on to take what could only be described as military training, citing the defense of our stable as their reasoning, not that we ever opened that massive steel vault door. So successful were these conversions, many others expressed a desire to join their numbers, and a volunteer program was introduced to allow them to do so. One entire graduate year of colts, and a number of their filly classmates had taken that option. After this, very vocal protest group objected to the practice, so after a year of constant rallying, they managed to get the bulk of stable residents behind them, and as a result, the Overmare was forced to have the volunteer program was scrapped. Teresa wondered how many of the accidents that had occurred since then were from ponies who were denied the chance to volunteer, and had taken the matter into their own hands.
I was a successful scientist and inventor in my own right, being happily married to one of the senior stable administrators, Red Tape, and together Red and I had a wonderful teenage daughter. From this perspective, I could not imagine why these ponies were doing such a thing to themselves. So far none of the female conversions had maintained their ability to have foals. Perhaps their former lives were not so happy, but to sacrifice so much for physical strength? I sincerely hoped the way I had brought up my daughter, Anne would not voluntarily take part in such a program, either officially or "by accident".
That evening my near perfect life became the perfect nightmare. After work, I met up with Anne and the two of us headed around to my husband's office to see if he would be working late that night, or if he was free to eat out. It wasn't that eating out resulted in much difference to the available cuisine, but the change in atmosphere was always great. While we walked Anne and I swapped stories of our days, Anne delighted that she had found a fault in the stable's wiring that no one had been able to solve previously. So what about it? Why was it so exciting to find? Anne insisted that it went past the stable walls we knew, somewhere deeper where there should be nothing but rock. Someone had slipped up. Anne had managed to magically reach into the top secret lower levels!
When we arrived at my husband's work place it was mostly darkened and relatively deserted, which was not unexpected for that time of day. I could hear shreds of conversation coming from my husband's office, so Anne and I walked over the outer office to wait for him. As we got closer, the words became distinguishable, even if the voices were still a little muffled.
"... but I say it again," a male's voice stated, "if we don't overturn the ban on conversions, we will fall irrevocably behind schedule. We are meant to have produced an army of cyborgs by now - not a bloody Pony Scouts group."
My eyebrows shot up at that. I had never heard my husband ever mention such a schedule before. In fact, I'd never heard him express much of an opinion one way or the other on the matter, other than to complain about processing all the paperwork the protestors had generated.
"We will have to ramp up surreptitious harvesting of donors again," the second voice responded. I was pretty sure I recognized it as the Overmare's voice. "Perhaps an explosion at the next meeting of 'concerned citizens' would do the trick. And then we save their sorry asses using the very technology they object to."
What? I did not like what I was hearing. The Overmare too? It seemed the Overmare and the male were plotting terrorist activities in my husband's office. Surely it couldn't be Red in there now! And who else was involved? Were these accidents really being orchestrated? It would certainly explain why they happened so often. I sincerely hoped that what I was hearing was out of context, and that it wasn't Red in there. I really hoped it wasn't Red in there, but....
I looked around at Anne, who was standing there, frozen, wide eyed. Damn. Her face was telling me that we had both heard the same thing, that we were fighting coming to the inevitable conclusion. It was time for us to get out of here! I gently nudged Anne with my nose, trying to get her to leave. Anne didn't respond, still transfixed by what we had heard. I tried pushing harder, whispering "We must get out of here now, Anne. Quickly!"
"That will take a little while to organize, Honey," the male voice stated. "If you were to announce that the policy was going up for review, maybe we can force the protest group to meet again soon."
"That I can do. I will leave it to you to arrange the rest of the details," the Overmare stated.
Honey? The Overmare was his Honey? Could this get any worse? I was wishing even harder that I was mishearing things, that it wasn't my husband in there or that they were practicing for some unheard of play they intended to put on, anything but what appeared to be the truth. After all the voices were a little muffled... but why meet in his office? I really had to get Anne out of there, and now!
"Allow me to see you out, Your Loveliness," the male voice offered, opening the office door. The look on his face clearly showed his surprise at finding Anne and I standing there, as if frozen, staring at him with unbelieving eyes. "Horse apples," he said.
My mouth dropped open, but no words came out. It was too late to run. Would my husband try to buy my silence? No, he knew me better than that, I realized. And just now, I had finally come to know him for who he really was. Internally I cringed momentarily dreading my own inevitable fate, before I realized there would be no mercy for our daughter either. That realization brought untold sorrow. "Sorry Anne," I whispered.
Not even moving his eyes from us, my husband used his unicorn magic to open a desk draw and levitate a small, silenced pistol from it. He fired twice.
What happened after that, I do not personally remember, but I had later been able to view the scene from Anne's point of view. They had ripped her memory of the event from her mind, transferring it to a memory orb. Why they kept that orb, I don't know, but they did. Perhaps the Overmare was the one to keep it, just in case she needed leverage over Red at some time in the future. Whatever the case, I had found it and viewed it. I had not viewed a memory orb since.
Trapped in that orb, I could only watch and feel what was happening, Being a recording I could not act. It is a terrifying thing to be forced to experience someone's horror like this, and horror it was. I could feel the terror in Anne's heart as she saw me fall, a bullet having pierced my forehead, going into my brain. The light instantly left my eyes, my personality forever destroyed. Poor Anne. Having this memory torn from her mind would have been merciful. As I said before, that bullet switched me off, killed my old self, Teresa, permanently. Teresa never had to experience the horrors that happened after that, and when I finally regained awareness a very long time later, I was no longer that mare, no longer Teresa, either mentally, or for a large part, physically.
The memory continued to play, and moments later I was subject to the physical trauma Anne had suffered as her neck exploded in pain, the second bullet severing her spinal cord. I felt her lose all feeling and all control of her body, to slump forward onto the body of Teresa. From there I had a good view of the blood that was trickling down Teresa's nose and onto the floor. Anne's eyes turned away from the horrific sight, coming to rest on her father, my husband, as he returned the gun to his drawer, then approached us, the Overmare beside him.
"Horse apples." he said again.
The Overmare poked Teresa with her hoof. "This one is still alive too," she stated, somewhat surprised. "That should temporarily deal with the shortage of appropriate ponies to convert." Then with a giggle, she added, "Now there is no need to worry about a messy divorce either!"
"I'll send them down to the doc," Red Tape said. "He's been wanting to try out some brain implant, and Teresa will be just what he needs."
I finished my story as I watched the candy striped nurse wrapping bandages around my injured shoulder, well, around both my shoulders and a good portion of my chest to be a little more accurate. It had taken a combination of Anne's unicorn magic and Candi's skill for the blood vessels in my shoulder to be reconnected. Somehow Anne had managed to convince her magic to fuse each major blood vessel and nerve as Candi matched them up, which was pretty amazing considering that Anne's fusing skills usually did not work on living matter. The poor thing was sweating like crazy by the time she finished. Admittedly a doctor would usually have been called on for the procedure, but he was still busy with the fallen Steel Ranger. Now it was just a matter of allowing the healing potions to do their work in binding my flesh back together. I didn't have enough caps to justify using a fast potion either, so I would just have to wait while the lesser potion did its work.
"So how did you get out of there?" Candi asked, "and how come you didn't reveal what was happening to the others in the stable?"
"We went through the whole conversion program and then into the full training program along with several other ponies that had become victims around that time - the members of the protest group, actually. They had ramped up the program somewhat, and they went for full military, special weapons and training," I explained. "At first none of us could talk. It wasn't physically possible - or in my case, even mentally possible due to brain damage. I was starting out fresh - a blank slate. By the time we were rehabilitated enough to use our bodies, Anne had been brain washed. As I said, they'd sucked out her memories of our betrayal and stuck them in a memory orb, implanting a false loyalty program in their place. After the training programs, we were good little cyborg soldiers, just like all the rest of the unwilling conversions. The volunteers of course were not subject to that much control, and went on to become the officers. And that was when my brain decided to reconnect my missing memories. I was able to get through to Anne, and a few of the other victims. When the opportunity arose, Anne and I escaped. That part was relatively easy - they didn't expect it. And for the last fifteen years we've been wandering around the wasteland doing odd jobs."
"And your husband?" Candi asked.
"I don't know. He may be dead by now. Last I heard, someone blew up the stable." I shrugged, immediately regretting the action. "Ouch." The Med-X was obviously wearing off.
"You talk about it so casually," Candi observed. "Most ponies would be seething, plotting revenge, or bemoaning the unfairness of the world."
I shrugged again. "Ouch. Damn, I must stop doing that. Sure the world is unfair. Every pony should already know that from their own experiences. Whining about it won't change anything for the better. As for revenge, it wouldn't get back what was taken, would it? I prefer to get out there and try to make life better for others. Life is so much happier that way! By the way, where's Anne got to?"
Anne had vanished as soon as her input was no longer needed with my repairs.
"She said she had some spoils of combat to collect." Candi explained.
I face hoofed - with my left forehoof. Two shrugs had already alerted me to the sensitivity of my right shoulder. If I recalled correctly, the other party involved in Anne's combat was still lying in half of his armor undergoing surgery, and what Anne could possibly want with damaged magical power armor was beyond me. We couldn't use it. We hadn't been trained in its operation. I eased myself off the operating table with Candi's assistance, and carefully limped out of the surgery. Not only did I have to mind my healing shoulder, but my two rear hooves were currently exposed cutting edges, and I was trying not to damage the floor, well, not damage it any more than it already was, being made of typical wasteland salvage, in this case, old railway cars. Exiting the building, my pace picked up slightly as I returned to the scene of the battle. The occasional local pony would nod their acknowledgement, which was a significant improvement from the indifference or disapproval they had been displaying immediately after the fight.
Arriving at the scene, I could see Anne was talking to the yellow eyed ghoul, Ditzy Doo, as both were munching on something that was sitting on a small table between them. Nearby, the Doctor was directing his assistants, a few local unicorns, as they carefully levitated the injured Steel Ranger, and began slowly walking in the direction from which I had just come. The Ranger's armor still lay in pieces about the place, though the second Ranger was no longer anywhere to be seen.
"How is he, Doctor?" I asked as the grey stallion passed, my eyes following the heavily bandaged Ranger's progress towards the surgery.
"I was able to save him. He had broken ribs, a punctured lung, and severe bruising and burning to his side as well as numerous shrapnel wounds, some quite serious," the doctor explained. "It was a near thing though."
"Well, his rockets did blow up in their launcher, so that is not surprising," I responded. "What about his eyes?"
"He's lost one, but the other is uninjured. He'll be on his hooves in no time. You may not wish to be here when that happens."
I almost shrugged again, stopping myself just in time. "He made a bad call he has to live with. If he didn't learn that this time, I will gladly give him another lesson, though preferably verbally. What about the other ranger?"
"He's been taken to the morgue until such a time as his friend or other Steel Rangers either collect him or make their wishes known."
With a slight nod of my head I indicated the doctor was free of our conversation, if he so wished. He nodded in return and walked off after his receding entourage. I quickly scouted around the area of the fight, locating the remains of my break-away rear hooves. There was enough left of them that I would be able to repair with some epoxy, which if Ditzy Doo's store name "Absolutely Everything" was accurate, I could buy from her.
I returned my attention to what my daughter was up to, walking the short distance to where she and the ghoul were picnicking. "This is a somewhat unusual choice of pass time," I commented to Anne.
"Oh, Ditzy prepared us this victory feast of muffins." Anne explained. "Those Steel Rangers had been pestering her for some old stable-tech that she has been saving up for the right moment. As far as Ditzy is concerned, old treasures are be to saved until they can help someone when no other alternative is possible, and not locked up as sacred artifacts by greedy museum keepers."
"Uh-huh." I said, nodding towards Ditzy. "And what is this I hear about spoils of combat?"
"The muffins!" Anne responded.
I let out a stifled laugh. As I did, the world began to fragment, images collapsing in on each other, sound degrading to bursts of white noise. Cybernetic failure? Help me. Help me please, I begged mentally as the world degraded into blackness.
"Welcome back to the land of the living dead," Anne greeted me.
"Wha?" I managed, reaching up with my hand to.... hang on a moment? Where did my hoof go? For that matter, Anne appeared human now. "Oh, what the hell? First I think I'm a human that has just had her chest blown through, then I think I'm a cyborg pony. Now what?"
"Sorry Lee," Anne apologized, "You were seriously wounded in the attack. I was scared you were going to die, while..." Anne looked somewhat flustered.
"While what?" I demanded.
"While I transferred you to a new body - again." Anne admitted to her cyborg friend.
I glanced around at the damaged equipment that surrounded us. Our ship was obviously in a very bad way. I wondered if it was still even space worthy. Those invaders had really made a mess of things.
I groaned as the world destabilized, then derezzed again.
I opened my eyes to find myself lying in a heap on a rusty ramp fashioned out of scraps of junk metal. Two ponies were leaning over me, well, one pony, and a gruesome looking pony shaped corpse, and they looked quite concerned.
"Mum, are you okay?" the smaller one asked. The corpse said nothing.
Talking ponies? What next? I stretched out a hoof to try to rise. What? A hoof? And what was that pain? My brain kept trying to superimpose the image of a hand where the strange limb ended.
"Anne?" I questioned.
"Yes?"
That was something. At least Anne was still with me, even if she looked odd, and was referring to me as her mother.
"Anne, why are you in a pony outfit?" I asked.
"Mum, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are in one first," she retorted.
I lifted a forehoof and studied it again. "Hmm. Interesting, but I want to take it off now."
"That would be a little hard, Mum," she stated. "We can't take off our bodies! There would be nothing left but an ugly cyborg frame!"
"But I am a human." I stated.
"We are ponies, Mum. That should be fairly obvious if you look at us."
I didn't know this Anne. I didn't know this world. What had happened to me?
Footnote: Maximum Level. New perk: Total confusion. You no longer know quite who or what you are. Welcome to a voyage of discovery as you try to work out your place in this world.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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This is a significant rework of my older fiction "Fallout: Equestrian Adventure".
yo the story image, how did you do that.
47210
I used a 3D rendering program called DAZ Studio. I assembled the scene from dozens of different commercial 3D models, a lot of them adapted to suit my purposes.
At first I was like "Oh God not the "I'm a human!" cliche", but then I was like "Oooooohhh, subverted via brain damage.". Good save.
A few slip-ups here and there, but overall this is the level of quality I expect from a FO:E fic. Interesting dynamic between the two main characters, mother and daughter is new. I can't help but feel you revealed a little bit too much about them at once though. Although perhaps establishing their characters early on gives them more time to grow. Hmm hmm.
You have my attention. Take these stars before I rob you.
Eh even better than the first time i read it are you thinking of writing more to the story?
interesting concept.
47251
Yes, I am writing more. In fact I'm working on chapter 5 at the moment.
Interestng. Tracking nao.
So, pacifist battle cyborgs? Cool. I hope that guy, Steel Ranger, will join them. :D
Tracking and 5 star.
47651 Great to know your a great writer
Interesting first chapter. Will read more later.
Amazing so far!!!! i look forward to reading more!
Dammit... I read the first chapter and now I'm hooked. Thanks.
This is really going to impede work on my own FOE fic.
That is a very interesting concept: pacifist cyborgs in the Equestrian wasteland, on of whom sometimes thinks she's a human due to brain damage caused by a bullet to the head.
Fave, Follow & thumbs up!
Decided to reread this, see what errors I can smooth out
btw, it's odd how Lee turns her EFS on only to scan the surroundings. I had the feeling Littlepip simply left it on all the time, simply to avoid surprises. Then again, pacifist...
Notes and corrections:
> to locate it's source
"its"
> on her sole remaining fore hoof
"forehoof"
> Come on, lets get going
"let's"
> from which we had originally come not, as some wished, to the glamour set in administration
Think that should be "come[, and] not, as some wished,"
> was any one's guess
"anyone's"
> and does not like it's residents leaving.
"its"
> sparing me from having to breath the stuff
"breathe"
> a couple of ponies escaped reently
"recently"
> Do you honestly thing you are the first
"think"
> My break-away protective hoof walls sheered off
"sheared off"
> his fore hooves smashing into my right shoulder
forehooves
> The blast from it's engine cooked off
"its"
> blood escaping from the would
"wound"
> I face hoofed
"facehoofed"
>with my left fore hoof.
"forehoof"
> not damage it anymore than it already was
"any more"
btw, I could just add them as comments them in GDocs, if you got links to the GDocs draft versions.
oh my goodness!!!
New favorite story!
that dream segment reminded me of a weird book i read a long time ago: there were lots of people who had weird dreams that were actually things that really happened in alternate realities...and the ruler of a kingdom had managed to make lots of high-tech weapons and advances by gathering lots of those people and analyzing their dreams.
and how did he repay them? by planning ways to "improve" them, like drugging them so they should sleep more, or cutting off their legs so they could "concentrate better"...AND this "high-tech" society practiced HUMAN SACRIFICE, once a year they would murder THOUSANDS of people!
oh, and the main protagonist was an amateur scientist who had a sword for a hand because of the anti-science cult that ruled his EXTREMELY primitive home village...seriously, they thought something as simple as a SWORD was "work of the devil" and murdered his whole family for it!
oh, and his girlfriend was one of those Dreamers...it was quite annoying how much of the book was about her dreams, many involving fighting and dying.
oh, and THAT reminded me of one of John Ringo's recent novels involving a Zombie Apocalypse: a team of sailors on a submarine rigged up a fancy weapon that used compressed air (easy to come by on a submarine) and ball bearings. they could surface near the shore and slaughter zombies with it.