Zephyr
The rest of the journey is a blur—an indistinct haze of events that come swift and immediate, only to fade the moment they pass. Berry leads us through the tunnels to a security door, and we sit down to wait. Green falls asleep as soon as she puts her head down, and when I nudge her, she doesn’t wake up. I shake her as hard as I dare, poke her, yell, try to do anything I can to rouse her, but there’s no response.
I ask Berry to help, but she ignores me. That just makes her the target of all my anger and worry. I bellow at her, command her, scream every insult and profanity I know, threaten what Trixie will do to her if Green dies, but she doesn’t so much as blink. Eventually, I scream myself out, and there’s nothing I can do but kneel by Green’s side, hold her head, and hope that she’ll wake up again.
I don’t know how long we sit there. There’s no way to tell the time, and Berry never moves or says a word. It’s like I’m the only living thing in these halls. At first, I try to keep time by listening to the water drip, but then the count runs too high, and I lose track. My head is empty, and my mind distant. I’m apart from it all, watching from far away, my thoughts a bizarre and indifferent commentary. It’s like I shouted all the energy out of me, too tired to act, too tired to think, and there’s nothing left I can do but wait.
Water rushes out from under the door when it opens. It’s not the pressurized spray of a space open to the sea, but the release of a stagnant pool, the smell of brine heavy in the air as it washes around the three of us. I rise before it hits me, and it sloshes around my hooves, barely high enough to come to my ankles. It’s freezing, and the splashes alone send a shiver through me. I can’t imagine what it’s doing to Green, and I want to pull her out of it, but I don’t think you’re supposed to move a pony with a head wound. As if I could even lift her right now.
There’s nopony on the other side at first, just a dark space that my horn won’t light. I can see nothing, but senses old and instinctive rise to the occasion—things more primal than sight. There’s only blackness on the other side of that door, but I can sense motion: rising, falling, writhing, twisting. I can feel the floor shake with the movements, and a thick scent washes over us like fog. Sweat. Blood. Urine. All the smells of ponykind in concentration, mixed in with that aroma of dead and rotting flowers. The motion in the darkness oozes forward with that scent, sliding out towards us with the cloud.
It’s a pony—a tan pegasus stallion—and two others behind him. One is a unicorn, dressed in a filthy white labcoat and balancing a stretcher between them. The other is a mauve pegasus mare with a belt full of tools. Both pegasi are covered in a sheen of sweat, and the stallion’s wings are crippled like Golden Palm’s were—withered and deformed.
“You three Siren Song, Berry Punch, and Green Apple?” the first pony asks, and Berry nods. “Then we’re your ride out of here. I’m Red Wall, the mare is Zephyr, and that’s Bolt, our doc. Stretcher her up, would you?” He gestures the other two forward, and they move up to Green.
“She hit her head,” I say as they approach, glancing down at the wound. I cleaned it up as best I could, but her coat is still sticky with blood all down one side of her face. It’s coming from cuts, punctures, and out of her ear, oozing steadily down her cheek. “She was fine for a bit after, but then her eye started twitching, and when she went to sleep she wouldn't wake up. Is she going to be okay?”
The unicorn doesn’t answer me, but his horn glows, shining a bright crimson light down onto her head. It’s the same spell Doctor Stable cast on me, and it’s only belatedly that I realize that labcoat could hide any number of cutie marks. The other two are covered in them head to hoof, so many that I don’t bother counting them.
“Yes,” the doctor answers, but his words are clipped, his throat tight, and in the dull magenta light from my horn, I can see he’s biting his lip. “But she needs surgery. Soon. Zephyr, get ready.” The mare holding the other end of the stretcher braces, and his horn’s glow changes from crimson to a dull blue as he levitates Green out of my grasp, grunting with the effort of moving her to the stretcher.
“What? Why? What’s wrong?” I ask, close to the doctor’s side as they make their way through the door. He doesn’t answer me, focusing on holding the stretcher steady, and my horn illuminates our path as we go. There’s no hallway here, just a tiny, cramped, hot room that reeks of brine, rot, and every bodily fluid I can think of. It’s empty save for a bulky mechanical device in the center—a mass of cables, chains, and gears—and a large window at the far end, some levers in front of it. I don’t understand where we’re going. There are no other exits to this room, and he’s not going to perform surgery here, is he? I could get tetanus just looking at this place—the floors and walls are metal and covered in rust.
“And, down...” the doctor says, and he and Zephyr lower the stretcher down to the floor. Behind us, I can hear the clank and hiss of the door as it slides shut behind us. Zephyr steps over Green, squeezing past Bolt to sit beside me. Red Wall shoulders his way to the window at the same time, the three of them struggling to fit through the tight space at the same time. At first, I think the doctor is going to operate while they keep watch, but he steps away from her too, moving to the back to sit next to Berry.
“Doctor? What’s wrong?” I repeat, the glow from my horn casting long, twisted shadows in the tiny space. The air here is already getting stale, my lungs burning when I draw breath. “Doctor!” I snap, and he shoots me a curt glare.
“Her skull is cracked,” he answers me. His voice raises a little, words clipped and snippy. “She needs surgery and I can’t do that here.”
“So why are we just sitting here!?” I yell, in the hope that it will maybe occur to him that he’s leaving Green on the floor to die in this filthy place!
Somepony’s hoof touches my shoulder, and when I turn to look, Zephyr is there. “It’s okay. We’ll be back home soon,” she says, catching my gaze and giving me a reassuring nudge. She’s calm, comfortable, trying to tell me with body and face that it will all be okay. A loud mechanical thump carries through the room, and I hear a rush of water behind us.
“Rear hatch sealed,” Bolt calls forward. “Animating.” Scarlet light courses through his horn, traveling up the grooves towards the tip. The light builds there into a single bright point as Bolt squeezes his eyes shut in concentration. He tilts his head forward, and the light lances out, striking the strange assemblage in the center of the room. At first nothing happens, but then, like a creature rousing from its rest, the device stirs. Cables and chains go taut like stretching limbs, gears groaning as the first hiss of escaping breath, and I realize I can feel the room tilting, twisting to one side.
“Knee tension is holding at thirty thousand newtons,” Red Wall calls back to us, reaching out to grasp one of the levers in front of him. “Moving.”
The entire room lurches to one side, and it’s not until I feel us pulling forward that I realize it’s not a room at all. Of course maintenance would need a way to get around outside—they can walk us to Neptune’s Bounty! I check on Green to make sure all this motion isn’t rocking her off the stretcher, but she seems well supported, and I eventually notice there are straps on the stretcher holding her down. For just this reason, I guess. Hang on, Green, we’ll be out of danger soon.
I’m starting to feel the burn from keeping a light going this long, so I let my horn go out. Without it, there’s hardly any light in here at all—just the dull red glow from Bolt’s animating spell, and the city lights coming in through the window. Combined with the smell in the air, it makes this place feel... primordial, the ponies around me vague impressions in the shadow. I can tell why it’s so hot; with six ponies packed into this tiny space, I’m already starting to sweat, and I have to shrug my jacket off. The air is beyond stale, the burning in my lungs persisting no matter how much I try to clear them.
I’m about to ask how bad the air gets when there’s a sound like bellows behind me, and a wave of fresh air washes across the room. The new air is as hot and damp as the rest of the space, but it’s still a palpable relief from the stifling atmosphere—a warm wind that blows the burning vapors out of my lungs. It’s actually really relaxing, the tension I didn’t know I was holding letting go as I realize I’m not about to suffocate. The bellows stop after a second, and then reverse, sucking in a wave of the stale air. The room still stinks, but the primordial swamp around me doesn't feel quite so hostile anymore, and I lean over to be a bit closer to the machine.
My head bumps Zephyr’s, and I start a little bit, pulling away from her. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, turning to face her as I apologize. “I didn’t...”
The words die in my throat as I try to take in what’s in front of me. Zephyr is sitting down on the floor, legs folded under her, her eyes shut. She’s stretched her jaw wide open, like a serpent, neck craned out into the cabin. As I watch, she draws a deep breath—deeper than any I’ve even seen, her barrel swelling out with the motion. One of her cutie marks glows a dull red when she finishes the breath, the tree and mouse depicted on her chest briefly visible. Then she lets the breath out, and warm, fresh air washes over my face.
For a moment, I’m not sure how to react. She is a pegasus, so I guess air magic isn’t unnatural for her. I suppose it doesn’t matter much, since we need air to live.
“I didn’t mean to bump into you,” I say to her, finishing my apology. She doesn’t react.
But, I guess she’s busy.
I end up spending most of the trip watching Red Wall pilot the machine. He’s the only one here other than me who seems alive; Berry and Green are both still, and Zephyr and Bolt only move in time with the machinery, like they were parts of the vehicle themselves. Red Wall never so much as looks at me, but it’s oddly comforting to watch him struggle with the levers, cursing under his breath every time one gets stuck or he makes a mistake.
I’m not sure how long it’s been before the view outside the window changes—half an hour maybe. I can see some kind of metal archway above us, then another, then another, and soon the city lights are obstructed completely, our vehicle nestled in some kind of steel cave. That whistle I heard before lets out three sharp blasts, and a rhythmic pounding echoes through the hull. Red Wall keeps at his station even though we aren’t moving anymore, and it’s not long before the water outside the window starts to churn. I can see a surface now, the water level dropping, leaving little rivers to run down the glass.
Glass. It didn’t occur to me until just now. That’s a window. It’s a real window. I watch the little patterns the water makes as it drains, until Red Wall gives one of the largest levers a pull, and I hear a sharp clatter outside.
“We are locked in place,” he calls back into the room. “Drainage complete. Leg tension released. Animator may open the hatch at will.”
Bolt doesn’t seem to move, but I guess he does something, because the door at the back suddenly slides open. He releases his spell, and the gears haven’t even stopped turning before he’s moving towards the stretcher. For a second, over the sound of the gears, I can hear the oddest feminine giggling coming from the front of the craft—but when I look that way, there’s nopony there, just my reflection in the wet glass. Red Wall has already left his post, moving to help Bolt with the stretcher. Zephyr is staying put this time; she’s raising her wings, beating them like a fan to push the bad air out the open hatch, her mouth still craned all the way open. That’s part of her job I suppose?
“And up!” Red Wall calls. There’s a strap on the end of the stretcher poles so that earth ponies can carry it around their shoulders, and he and Bolt easily lift Green, maneuvering her towards the exit. I step after them, but Berry blocks my path.
“Berry, get out of my way,” I say, stepping to the left, but she takes a step of her own to match me. They’re already out the door behind her, moving onto some kind of gangplank. “Berry!”
“We should report to Trixie first,” Berry answers, bored, flat, dull.
“You go ahead; I’m going with them,” I say, trying to cut to the right. It’s no good though. I’d have more luck fast-talking a stone wall, and no matter how I move, she’s right in front of me, muzzle to muzzle.
“I am not leaving you alone,” she replies, her quick motions juxtaposed by her slow speech. “Your presence will not speed her recovery.”
“Berry, get out of my way!” They’ve carried her out of sight now, around a bend, but if I hurry I might still be able to catch them!
“You are becoming emotional,” Berry says, displaying her astounding mastery of the obvious. Of course I’m becoming emotional! Somepony is dying and she’s getting in my way because she can’t wait five minutes to have her stupid wire with her boss!
“Oh you think so, you—!”
“Hey, hey!” Zephyr’s voice cuts in. I’d forgotten she was still in the cabin with us. When I glance back over my shoulder, she’s alert again, mouth closed and wings folded by her side. “I’ll watch the filly. You go ahead and wire your boss. I promise, she won’t get in trouble.”
I am not a filly! Hooves, I look older than she does! But... whatever works. Berry takes forever to think about it, the seconds dragging on impossibly long as she blankly stares at us. Finally, she takes a step to one side to let us pass. I dart ahead before she can change her mind, ignoring the burning in my legs as I look left and right.
I can’t see Green. I’m on some kind of metal catwalk that swings out on a huge joint, connecting to the white stone and steel cavern around us. There’s an enormous door past the end of the catwalk that I assume must be what we came through, but it’s not the time to sightsee. There must be dozens of doors, passages, ladders and stairways running all over the space around us. She could have gone anywhere!
“Hold your horses,” Zephyr says, stepping out after me. “It’s Siren Song, right?” she asks, forcing a little upbeat energy into her voice. I can tell that she’s just doing it to reassure me, but it still kind of works, and I nod. “Alright, they’re going to be rushing her to the doc’s office. I’ll show you the way, come on.” She starts down the catwalk at a brisk trot. At first, she seems infuriatingly slow—but when I stretch out my legs to take off after her, I can feel something about to rip. On pure instinct, I yelp in pain and instinctively come to a halt. She stops at once, turning sharply to check on me. “You okay?” she asks, quick, and a tad worried.
“Fine.” I manage to keep my tone even when I answer, but it does make me realize that perhaps galloping after Green wouldn't be a good idea. “I pulled something earlier. Let’s just walk.”
She nods, and leads me on at a slower pace, down the catwalk and into one of the tunnels. The walk gives me more time to evaluate her in a good light; I’m not sure I’ll need the information, but old habits die hard. She does seem a little younger than me—if I didn’t know this city, I’d put her at sixteen. She has a soft mauve coat that clashes with her fiery red mane and tail, her wings sleek and tufted with streaks of orange. She has a half-dozen cutie marks that I can see—a smiley face on her flank, the tree and mouse on her chest, a hammer and woodsaw along her barrel, three interlocked gears on her cheek, and a lightbulb on her back. No pony biting its own tail? Maybe it’s on her belly or something.
She doesn’t say much, but I think that’s because she knows I’m not in the mood for conversation—she certainly isn’t afraid of saying little things, telling me to watch my step when we go up stairs or come across a particularly deep puddle. This place isn’t as run down as Artemis Suites or Serpent’s Wharf, but the signs of decay are visible; we pass more puddles than dry floor, and the metal fittings on the walls are often rusted. There are lots of signs of recent habitation, ranging from coffee cups left on the steps to wet hoofprints, but the corridors seem to be abandoned now.
“Here you go,” Zephyr says, pushing open a door with a large red cross on it. We’re in a brilliantly lit antechamber of some kind, a small room with three large windows on the far side that look out over a larger space, a door to our left providing access. It’s an operating room, and I can see Green sprawled out on the table, surrounded by three ponies in... mostly clean labcoats. There’s a glass shield of some kind over the operating table, and I don’t understand what it’s for until I see the buckets scattered around the room to catch the water that drips out of the wide cracks in the ceiling. The glass blurs and distorts Green’s image so I can’t see her clearly, but... maybe that’s for the best. The doctors seem calm, at least.
“Can we go inside?” I ask, but Zephyr shakes her head.
“Let’s let them do their work,” she says, keeping her tone casual and pointing to a corner of the room with an old, soggy couch. “Come on, sit down. We can watch and wait.”
I drag the couch over to the window, which I sense isn’t quite what Zephyr had in mind, but she doesn’t complain. The couch isn’t big enough for two to sit end to end, and is a hair short of deep enough to let you sit back to front, so we end up in a fairly uncomfortable arrangement with Zephyr sitting lengthwise and facing me, and me sitting forwards with my forehooves on the floor to support me.
“Yeah, this couch is pretty terrible,” she mutters, and I nod.
Frankly though, I’m not paying her much attention. The surgery isn’t what I expected. I’m not sure what I was expecting, other than maybe a spray of blood and panicked shouting, but it’s just three doctors standing around her and muttering to each other. You can’t even see anything—they usually block the view, and when they don’t, the glass distorts the image.
“She’ll be fine,” Zephyr says. Her tone is reassuring, but more than that it’s genuine. She’s a bad actor, and I can hear every little stiff hesitation in her voice when she tries to make herself sound calm. Mostly though, she doesn't have to try, and her tone smooths out as she continues. “Bolt can be a little gruff, but he knows what he’s doing. Once, one of the unicorns here got caught in the bilge pump, and it ripped her horn right out of her skull. We were all sure she was going to die, but he had her back on her hooves in a week.” I just nod, and she takes that as a cue to continue. “Not even any brain damage—she woke up and saw us and asked if we’d all died too. I got to give her the good news,” she says, with an earnest little smile. She really thinks that’s going to cheer me up. “Of course, learning to use her mouth and hooves was a bit harder. She’d keep trying to use magic and then pee herself and forget who she was for a half hour or so.”
“That’s kind of grim,” I reply. I should be offended, or disgusted or... something. I don’t feel it though. Zephyr at least has the decency to look embarrassed.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” she admits, reaching up to scratch behind her head with a hoof. “But life can be grim. You need to find the fun in it. Laugh. I know, seeing her get hurt probably scared the stuffing out of you, but she’ll be fine.”
“I guess,” I say, turning away from the glass for a moment to look at Zephyr. “You mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead,” she says, overdoing it a little with the upbeat manner. Really, she stops just short of a hoof-pump for emphasis, and a deaf pony could hear the tension in her chest. Oh well, she’s trying.
“How old are you?” It’s a little blunt, but, I don’t think she’ll take offense. Right now, I don’t have the energy to do something clever anyway. “You look sixteen, but you have wings like a pegasus from Equestria and you called me ‘filly’ earlier.”
“I am sixteen—but the new mare is always ‘filly,’” she explains, smiling a little as she turns her head up towards me. “And you do kind of have that air about you.”
“What air is that?” I ask. I wasn’t meaning to project anything, but then again, between the stress and the fear and the worry, there are times when I’m not even thinking about what my body language is saying. It’s sloppy form, and just the thought makes me sit up and look a little more mature and alert.
“That you’re still kind of figuring things out. You’re, you know, youthful,” she says, with a little waggle of her wings in my direction.
“Did you just call me a child?” I’m not really offended, but the conversation is a nice distraction from what’s going on in front of me, and I take her up on the offer. “I’m nearly two years older than you.”
“Yeah, but I had a job when I was six. You’re still reeling from getting out of your parents’ place, right?” Celestia is not exactly my mother, and Vision is not exactly the normal world, but the palace is my home, and so the comment stings a little more than I think she meant it to. I don’t show it though, and I nod with a trace of reluctance, “admitting” to the fault.
“You had a job when you were six?” I ask, feeling a change of subject is in order.
“Uh-huh!” she answers with a more genuine cheer, reaching up to tap the three interlocked gears on her cheek. “I was a mechanic for the Rainbow Tram. Cargo cranes, station clocks, all that. It’s hard for full-grown ponies to crawl into the machines, you know? It’s good work for a filly.”
“You got that when you were six?” I gesture to the cutie mark on her cheek with my muzzle. That would have to be before she got her real cutie mark.
“Yup! My dad’s a mechanic. He always wanted an earth pony son to pass the business on to, but Mom gave him three pegasus fillies who were about as sharp as marbles. He loved us to death anyway, but, you know. You could tell he was disappointed.” She’s a bit of a storyteller it seems. For now though, I want a distraction, so her inability to get to the point is actually an asset. “So, one night, I stole some money from the cashbox, snuck out, and got a bottle of Grease Monkey from the store down the street. Drank the whole thing without reading the instructions, got completely wired, spent the whole night fixing everything in Dad’s workshop, and then threw up and passed out.”
“How’d he take that?” I ask, trying to picture a stallion walking in on his daughter, passed out on the floor with that unnatural brand on her cheek.
“Well, first he was terrified, then he was relieved I was okay, then he was furious. I’d gone and spent money we didn’t have, not to mention the doctor’s bills from when dad rushed me in, convinced I’d poisoned myself.” She laughs a little at that, tapping the tips of her hooves together as she glances down at the floor. “But then he was... proud, you know? I stood up and said I’d get a job to pay for it and that I wasn’t going to let him and Mom down. He told me I didn’t have to do any of that and that he loved me anyway, but I was pretty stupid back then, and even I could tell he was so proud he was trying not to cry. That’s when he started calling me ‘young mare’ instead of ‘filly.’”
“And that’s why I’m ‘filly’ now even though I’m older,” I summarize, and she nods. “So are you going to take over the business then?”
“Oh, probably not. One of my sisters maybe,” she says, and even though she keeps her tone casual, I catch the little awkward glance down. A falling out with her family? Or the business not doing so well? “I still keep in touch with Mom and Dad of course, but Maintenance is family now too. Considering how much you get injured on this job, there’s probably as much of my blood here as in Mom and Dad.”
“It’s really that bad?” I ask, though considering this city, I’m not surprised.
“Well, I exaggerate a little. It’s usually pretty safe, but there are times we have to go into bad parts of the city—even the Wharf. You can expect a few injuries then. Plus, equipment failure, drowning, flooding, you name it.” She rattles off the list casually, without any trace of fear or concern. “It’s really rare that anypony actually dies though; we know what we’re doing, and the Pavilion gives us all the doctors we ask for.”
“Wait, they’re Pavilion doctors?” I turn back to the glass, my body tensing reflexively. They don’t seem alert, so I should let them finish, but I’ll have to stop them from reporting back. The last report was on paper, so if they don’t wire it in, maybe I can intercept it before it gets out.
“Relax, Siren,” Zephyr says, reaching out to gently push me back to the couch. “They’re friends. This one’s off the record.”
“Oh.” It takes a few deep breaths for the tension to leave my body, but I manage to settle back into the couch. “So Trixie paid you, or...”
“We never take bribes,” she answers, curt and quick. She keeps it in check, but I can tell from the way her mane bristles a bit that I’ve genuinely offended her, as if her tone didn’t make that clear enough.
“I’m sorry, I knew that,” I say, betting that it’s common knowledge. Combined with a sigh and a little slump of my head, it perfectly conveys how bad my day has been for me to make such an obvious mistake. That mollifies her fine, and she rewards me a reassuring smile.
“It’s okay,” she says, softening her tone to show all is forgiven. “I’m not in on all the details, but this is more of a ‘one good turn deserves another’ situation as I understand it. Trixie did us some huge favor and we’re settling accounts.” That sounds an awful lot like a bribe to me, but I somehow think it might be imprudent to say as much. “So uh...” She smiles, perking up her ears and nudging my side. “Friends in high places, huh?”
“I wouldn't call us friends,” I answer, with a little shake of my head. It’s probably not prudent to discuss this, but it feels good to say. “She’s pulled me out of a few fires though, yeah.”
“So, what’s the mare of mystery like?” she asks, leaning forward intently. She seems so eager, I almost want to make something up just to delight her—but in the end, I shrug.
“You’re the one who lives downstairs from her—you tell me. We’ve never met face to face.” I meant it as a brushoff, but the confused stare she gives me alerts me at once that I said something wrong. “She... does live here, right?”
“Nnnnot that I’m aware of,” she drags the words out, giving a firm shake of her head. “Last I heard, she lives in Neptune’s Bounty.”
“This isn’t Neptune’s Bounty,” I say, as the hope that this awful journey is at an end tumbles down around my ears. It’s all I can do to keep my expression something like neutral.
“This is the Tethys Industrial Center. Neptune’s Bounty is halfway across the city.” Just for a second, my poker face slips—my eyes going down to the floor. I realize I’ve given myself away, and I let it come, sighing through clenched teeth as I shut my eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. And it is fine. It’s a bit disappointing, but it was probably prudent to stop at the closest location to get Green her surgery, and we can always get back in the vehicle later. “I’m just... fine.” She’s not going to let it go at that. I need to change the subject. “So you got too big to be a mechanic?”
“I’m still a mechanic; I just work on other things now,” she explains, kind enough to pretend she didn’t see what just happened. “We’re so understaffed, you won’t find anypony here with only one job. Everypony does everything.”
“I was wondering why your doctor was powering the... vehicle,” I say, prompting her for the name with a little gesture of my hoof.
“Crawler,” she names our peculiar steel chariot. “And, yeah. It carries six ponies maximum, so for big jobs, it’s really helpful to have the repair team also crew the vehicle. And frankly, six ponies is pushing it a little further than is really safe,” she explains, making a faint, flicking gesture with a hoof, as though to urge somepony on. “I was wheezing pretty hard there at the end.”
“Yeah, that... thing you did.” Where you turned yourself into a living accordion that sucks down stale and putrid air. I’m struggling to think of the right emotion to show in this situation, so I settle for a moderate uncertainty, uncomfortable enough that she’ll get the idea but won’t be offended. “With the air.”
“Isn’t it awesome?” She didn’t get the idea. “This one time, I held my breath for thirty hours straight just to see if I could—I only had to let it out because I was so tired I was about to pass out.” She seems so animated by that, so full of energy. “Ponies keep daring me to go for a swim and pretend I drowned, but, I don’t think those jokes are funny, you know?”
“That would be tasteless,” I blandly agree, hoping she’ll pick up on the hint. She doesn’t.
“Oh, totally. The only downside is I can’t walk on clouds anymore—” Wait, what? “—which sucks whenever I visit the flight school. Mom’s really cool with it though. She’s always been very supportive.”
“Your mom works at a flight school?” I ask, deciding it might be better to approach the subject obliquely than to just blurt out how wrong that is.
“My mom owns a flight school: Cloud Chaser’s Flight Academy.” She says it with a fair measure of pride, pressing a hoof to her chest. “You might have heard of it? Business has been slow lately, but it used to be kind of a big deal.”
“Um... yeah, I’ve heard of it,” I say, neglecting to add that the last graduate I met couldn’t fly if his life depended on it. I’m not sure I think much of her mother’s skill as a teacher. “Is that why your wings are in good condition even though you grew up here?”
“Mmmhmm. I got plenty of exercise growing up whether I wanted to or not,” she says, giving a little cheerful flap of her wings, the gust blowing my mane back behind my head and making me squint. “I actually hated it when I was growing up. None of my friends could fly, which made me the weird one—I got bullied a lot. But, now I’m really glad Mom did it. Being able to fly is so useful when we need to get at ceiling cracks, and it does make me look good.” She stretches her wings exactly the way Swiftwing did, so that the tips of her primaries touch behind her head and give her a halo of feathers. That can’t be a coincidence, but it at least means I know what response she’s fishing for, and my expression is suitably admiring.
“I could totally look that good if I wanted to. I just don’t want to,” I say, playing the part she wants me to play. She giggles right on cue, glancing down at the floor as a little blush touches her cheeks. “What was that about not being able to walk on clouds?”
“Oh, yeah. For some reason, mantles that let you do air magic inside your lungs take away your cloudwalking. Bolt explained it to me once, but I didn’t really get it. Something to do with the noves and reconfiguring the whosawhazit—you know, doc talk.” She shrugs, seeming indifferent to the whole notion. “I miss it, because being able to push around clouds was great, but this is awesome too, so I can’t say it wasn’t a good deal.”
“Being able to hold your breath for a really long time?” I ask, making sure my tone doesn’t slide into outright skepticism, only lightly curious. It’s easier than I thought it would be. Once you get over the horror of the idea, it does have a sort of bizarre fascination to it—a pony cheerfully talking about mutilating herself.
“No. Yes. I mean, that’s fun too,” she says, stumbling through the words. She reaches a hoof up to make a wide circling gesture, searching for the right way to express herself. “But, being able to do something I never could before. I always imagined that it’s a little bit like being a unicorn. Pegasus magic is very physical, you know? Pushing things around, jumping on clouds—now I can do something useful and weird just by thinking about it. It’s a lot like when I got my first cutie mark. Suddenly, stuff that used to confuse and upset me was fun and interesting and I was good at it. I think that’s why I like Maintenance so much. Pinkie Pie says that every cutie mark is for laughter because everypony can find something in their job that makes them smile.”
“That’s—” Cliche? Trite? An obvious attempt to cover up what a nightmare this city has become? “—inspiring. Have you met her in person?”
“Yeah, once!” she chirps, smiling at the memory. “She’s crazy busy, of course, but she makes an effort to get to know every pony in Maintenance personally. She showed up to my cuteceañara and my dad about had a nervous attack. My mom knew her from when she was only the baker down the street, so she didn’t get quite as wound up, but everypony was still really excited. She breathed a lot of life into the party,” Zephyr says, giggling as she adds “and, fixed our leaking faucet while she was there. She’s a little weird.”
“Yeah. I can imagine,” I say—a bit of a non-answer, but I can see one of the doctors moving away from the operating table, heading up towards the door.
It’s Bolt, and soon enough, I can hear a latch sliding away on the door’s far side. He steps out and nudges it shut behind him with a hoof before he nods to the two of us. His lab coat is a little dirtier than it was before, marked with fresh bloodstains, but I can tell at once he has good news. He’s not smiling, but his posture is... satisfied. It’s a little hard to explain how, there’s a thousand little things in the way a pony holds themselves, but I’ve got a good instinct for these things.
“I wanted to let you know your friend will be fine.” He confirms my observations, and I mean... I already knew he was going to say that. So it’s fine. Green will be fine. She’s tough like that. I still let my shoulders slump to show suitable relief, of course. I bet he’s the type to take pride in his work; he’ll appreciate it. “It’ll be another hour or so before she’s out of surgery, but at this point, we’re patching up the secondary injuries; we were able to soothe her concussion and knit her skull back together just fine. She’ll have a nasty scar, but no brain damage.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I say, and maybe that relieved slump isn’t entirely fake. Green is going to hate having a scar on her face, but, she’ll get over it. She can let her mane fall down over the other side of her face—it’ll be totally invisible. “Can I wait here until you’re done?”
“If you like, but there’s not going to be anything to see,” he says with a shrug. “We’re just going to sew her up and then move her to a bed. She’s out of danger, but it’ll be at least a day or two until she’s awake.”
Two days? We’re going to be stuck here two days? I start to object—we’re wanted fugitives, we can’t stay in one place for two days—but Zephyr reaches out to touch my shoulder again. “It’s okay,” she assures, catching my eyes and smoothing out her words. “You’re guests here for as long as you need. Security never bothers us. You’ll be safe.” I don’t answer right away, and she evidently takes that as a sign that I need more reassurance. “Besides, you look like you could use some time to recover yourself. You should stay with us—it’s a real party here once everypony gets back from their work details.”
Somehow, that’s not the first thing on my mind, but I doubt I’d get very far arguing the point with either of them. I nod, and they both take that as an indication of surrender. Zephyr unfolds herself from the couch, stepping back onto the floor as Bolt steps back towards the operating room.
“Come on then. It’s only an hour or so until the day shift ends. Why don’t we catch up with your other friend, and then you can help us get ready?” Zephyr says, and I almost agree, but something makes me stop halfway through forming the first word—an instinctual fear.
I really don’t want to be alone with Berry right now.
“Berry can wait. She and Trixie always talk forever anyway,” I say with a little dismissive wave of a hoof. “Why don’t we go get ready? It’ll keep my mind off things.”
“You’re sure?” she asks, and I nod.
Our trip through the corridors is fairly quick. Zephyr makes some polite small talk, but nothing much comes of it. Now that I’m less distracted, I’m starting to get a feel for the outline of this place. The dock for the crawler seems to be the center of the building, and we keep catching glimpses of it as we maneuver our way up the stairs and across a number of the catwalks. It’s an ugly contraption, resembling nothing so much as a ladybug the size of a small building, balanced on six giant spindly legs made of steel and cable. It’s half-submerged, but I can see there’re quite a few gems studded into its surface below the waterline, though I have no idea what spells they might be powering. Somepony has even painted big spots on it to make it look more like a real bug. Or maybe that’s rust. Zephyr doesn’t say, and I don’t ask.
The building is more than a bit of a labyrinth, but eventually, our course takes us up and above the crawler dock, and we emerge out into a large storeroom. It’s as wide across as the dock was—a hundred paces at least—but the ceiling is lower, and it’s filled with stacks of crates, lumber, metal beams, tools, and every other mechanical bauble I can imagine. Maneuvering between those tall stacks makes the room feel a little claustrophobic despite its size, but Zephyr obviously knows where she’s going, and soon we emerge into an open space. It’s a little clearing amongst the crates, full of tables, couches, and pillows. I’m pretty sure we’re in the center of the room, though with the stacks all around us, it’s hard to tell. The space is festively decorated, festooned with banners and ribbons, and full of bright balloons straining at their strings.
“Here we are!” Zephyr announces cheerfully, her voice echoing around the room. “Ponies will start getting back soon. It takes a while for them to filter in, so whoever gets there first gets things ready for everypony else. We’re a little early, but no sense in wasting time, right?” It’s the sort of excessively cheerful question that leaves the mind grasping for any response but a dull nod, and after a moment, I decide to bow to the pressure. “That’s the spirit. So! Why don’t we start by replacing the popped balloons? I’ll blow them up, you tie them off?”
“You can, uh...” I really don’t want to see that. I just know she’s going to have fun with it too, cheerfully giggling about how squeaky her voice sounds while I have to pretend what’s happening to her barrel and chest is normal.
“Blow them up with the helium tank, Siren,” she says, rolling her eyes before she turns to trot off, heading back into the stacks to retrieve the tank. “You’re kind of a prude, you know that?” she calls back over her shoulder, teasing.
I laugh, but I don’t think she hears me. That’s probably for the best. It wasn’t a very good laugh.
Soon enough, she comes back with a helium tank on a rolling cart, and we set to work. It’s not bad; I could really use a distraction right now, and there’s plenty here to occupy me. It always shocks me how dexterous earth ponies and pegasi can be with their mouths—I still have to tie the balloons off, but she’s able to get them inflated just as fast. Of course, she does do the squeaky-voice bit, and I have to pretend that is or was ever funny.
There’re other things too—like the poster somepony has tacked up to a stack of lumber. Bright blue writing across the top reads, “Race to the Ocean Floor,” and perhaps twenty long columns have been drawn down it. Each column has a little cardboard cutout of a pony stuck to it somewhere along its length, and I recognize Zephyr as one of them, depicted with a smile on her face and her wings outstretched. Each column has a little silver “0” written along the top, and a golden “1000” at the bottom, nestled amongst little sketches of fish and city towers.
“It’s for leak repair,” Zephyr says, unprompted. She must have caught me staring. “First pony to patch a thousand leaks gets a party. I mean, we all party anyway, but it’s fun.” She keeps talking, but she also leans down to inflate a balloon as she says it, so all I hear is an extended string of mumbles and the hiss of gas. As soon as is tactful, I take it from her and tie it off, letting her draw a breath before she goes on. “It usually takes about two and a half months for somepony to win, and then we start it all over again.”
“That would imply you patch—” I glance at the chart, gauging how far down they’ll all be when the leader hits the end “—about six thousand leaks a month.”
“About that, yeah. You know the joke: you can tell Vision was made by a unicorn because it was falling apart the day it was finished, and you can tell it’s kept up by an earth pony because it darn well stays that way.” That’s a little funny, I guess, and I do smile. She giggles a bit harder than the joke deserves though.
“And what about pegasi?” I ask, nudging her on.
“We thought the whole underwater city idea was dumb in the first place.” She grins, leaning down to fill another balloon. “Fuf fu ho. He hent hahong huiff it.”
“Well, thank you for indulging the rest of us.” A good follow-up can salvage even the worst joke, and I put enough dry humor into my words that even I’m smiling a little at the end. Zephyr is giggling clear through the next three balloons, until she finally gets it under control, leaning away from the tank.
“Alright, I think that’s enough. Why don’t you finish tying them up while I go put this away and find the punch bowl?” Her enthusiasm is a little irritating, but it’s also kind of comforting. It’s such a normal, not-trapped-in-a-living-nightmare request that just hearing it feels kind of nice, and I nod before she’s even finished standing up. “Great. Don’t wander off!” she says, sing-song, before taking the handle of the rolling cart in her teeth and dragging the helium tank away.
It’s relaxing, tying up the balloons. I’m not very good at it—servants did this sort of thing back in the palace, or I talked my friends into doing it. My knots are ugly and crude compared to the beautiful, intricate bows the other bits of string are tied in, and I can’t get the ribbons to curl in that elegant way the others do. But, it’s still a balloon on a string, for a party where there will be punch and stupid games, and where the ponies will be friendly and make nice conversation. They’ll probably be markers too, but as long as they’re like Zephyr, I think I can deal with that. It’s a little disturbing, but I can deal with it.
I mean, she’s not really a monster—not like Trixie or Berry or Green. Each of them has a shriveled or rusted or rotten soul. Zephyr’s body may be a little... disquieting, but she has a family she loves, friends she hangs out with, a tendency to laugh a little too hard at her own bad jokes. She even has a cutie mark story—granted, it was about the mark on her cheek instead of the one on her flank, but that’s only a detail. Once you get around that, she’s very normal.
Though I suppose she’ll go into withdrawal eventually. She probably won’t be so normal then.
I guess I get a little lost in thought, because I have no idea how long it’s been when I’m snapped out of my reverie by the sound of a door swinging open. There’s the squeak of hinges, and the clang of metal, and the steady clip-clop of hooves on stone—echoing back and forth amongst the stacks. It’s a perfectly normal sound, but I can feel all the little hairs of my coat going stiff.
Was that the door Zephyr went through?
“Zephyr? Is that you?” I call out, raising my voice so I can be heard clearly over the stacks. There’s no answer, but for a moment, the hoofbeats pause. When they resume, they seem louder, and my ears perk up to follow the sound. Moving towards me.
Throwing your voice is a cheap trick, but a surprisingly useful one. My horn shines as I cast my spell, lifting my head up to the ceiling. It’ll be a bit challenging to bounce it down into the stacks, but, all that training wasn’t for nothing. “Hello?” I shout, and the sound seems to come from behind a pile of timber across the way. “Who’s there?” Again, there’s no answer, but the hoofbeats shift to move that way.
My breath catches in my throat.
Okay. I can’t panic. If I run, I’ll rip every muscle in my legs and maim myself. I need to walk in the other direction, slip out the back, and find Zephyr. I turn and start into the piles, keeping my pace slow and my hoofbeats quiet. “Did you bring the punch?” I call out, throwing my voice across the way again, bouncing it off the ceiling so it seems to come from somewhere near the far wall. The hooves change direction again, and I take the time to slip between two giant rolls of cable, escaping out the far side. The door Zephyr and I came in is right where I remember it, and I reach out to grasp the handle, slowly and carefully pulling it open. The hinges squeak, and then let out the single, longest, loudest groan I have ever heard a door make.
They didn’t do that last time.
Suddenly, the hoofbeats change direction—moving back towards me and breaking into a gallop.
“Ponyfeathers!” I hiss, hurrying through the door and slamming it behind me. Even that little start has my legs sharply tingling, and of course this door has no lock! The hallway outside runs in three directions: stairs up, stairs down, and a corridor straight ahead. I don’t have much time to chose, so I chose to go down—it’ll be easier on my legs and that’s the way Zephyr and I came, so I at least sort of know where I’m going. I take off as fast as I can, a little jolt of pain shooting through me with every step. Going down helps, but I’m still managing a fast walk at best.
“Zephyr!” I bellow at the top of my lungs, taking a hard right out of the stairwell and onto one of the catwalks over the crawler. The metal clangs under my hooves, and I bite down on the pain to speed up to a trot, but I’m still barely two thirds of the way across when I hear another set of hooves behind me. I whirl around in place. It’s Berry, moving after me at a brisk trot, eyes focused in on me. I can’t outrun her and I can’t fight in this condition!
That water looks pretty deep.
When she sees me put a hind leg up over the rail, she breaks into a sprint, tearing towards me. A sharp shiver runs through me, the metal railing pressing up into my gut, but I roll off just as she lunges for me. She leaps the last five paces, her forelegs outstretched, and I see her fly past me, missing me by half a hoof’s length. Then the world spins, tumbles around me, and I’m looking at the ceiling instead of Berry. White stone fills my vision, but then it shrinks away, growing more distant, catwalks and lights and pipes crowding it out as it retreats from me. They mar that empty, sterile perfection, but they also make it seem more real, more alive. It’s beautiful, and tumbling away from it, I feel... serene.
Though, it does occur to me that my time in the air would probably have been better spent trying for a good landing.
I hit the water in a perfect backflop. The impact slaps against my back, burning me, knocking the wind out of me, but it doesn't have the strength to stop me. By the time I realize my ears are ringing, I’ve dropped right through the surface, and water rushes in around me. It washes over my belly and head, and suddenly, I’m drowning. I’m drowning! It’s like being trapped in a block of ice; my skin goes numb nearly instantly, but I can still feel the cold stabbing down through me, and where the knife points hit my muscles, the flesh feels like it’s burst into flames. I open my mouth to scream, but water rushes down into my lungs, burning and freezing at once as it pours into my throat. My gag reflex kicks in. I spasm, I kick, I fight, trying to get up, trying to get the surface.
My head breaks the surface of the water, and I gasp for air, hacking up salty waves when I do. There’s an alarm blaring all around me, and I can hear Berry’s voice booming, amplified by some magic or mechanism: “Medical emergency in the crawler bay.” Somewhere between struggling for my life and trying to ignore how much pain I’m in, there’s some part of my brain that notes she manages to sound disinterested even when shouting. Another gasp of breath and I can lift my head to look around.
Sheer stone walls surround the crawler, but there’s a set of stairs rising out of the water across from me, and I make for it. The cold is sapping what little strength I have, but the water is calm, and I manage to make it across. The stairs continue far under the surface; all I have to do is walk out. My hooves touch the slick stone, and I manage to take one, two good steps up the stairwell. By the third, I’m mostly out of the water, and my legs are quaking so hard my knees almost knock together. Water slides off me as I climb, but I’m feeling heavier with every step, my vision blurring as my view swings back and forth. On the fourth step, my left foreleg buckles under me, and I twist down to the steps, collapsing against them as I hack and wheeze, my rear legs still dangling in the icy water.
Berry is there.
She’s standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at me. I try to push myself up, but my foreleg trembles and then collapses without so much as budging me. It’s getting harder to breathe, and the pain in my rear legs is gone—the cold, the burning, all of it. They just feel numb.
And all she does is stand there and look at me.
“Don’t just stand there!” I hear Bolt’s voice a few seconds before I hear the pounding of his hooves. “Grab her other shoulder. One, two!” I assume he must have another pony with him, because Berry never moves, but I feel two sets of hooves grab me and haul me out of the water. They let go, laying me out on the stone floor. I feel one of them press their muzzle to my neck, and there’s a funny clattering sound behind me.
“One, two, three, four, five, six...” Bolt mutters under his breath behind me. “One hundred and thirty BPM. She’s going into tachycardic shock. Get her on the stretcher!” A strong set of forelegs hooks under my own, and I feel air rushing around me, wings beating. Berry only watches as they drag me onto the stretcher, pinning me down with those straps. I can see Bolt now, filling a syringe from a bottle. I try to say something, but no sound comes out. There’s this weird drumming in my ears. Bolt’s horn shines, and he stabs the needle right down into my barrel between two ribs, forcing the plunger down.
I feel a little funny for a second. Then, it’s dark.
Chalk scratches on stone, moving up and down the board. It draws out long lines in smooth, flowing motions, and it taps up and down with the short little dashes and squiggles of letters. It turns, curves, growing a sharp point only for that point to be worn down, the golden glow that drives it against the blackboard slowly grinding it away to nothing. That’s an advantage to unicorn magic I suppose—you can use the chalk all the way down to the little nub.
“Now, Siren,” the Princess says, turning to look at me. She’s beside me, not at the front of the room as a traditional lecturer would be, both of us curled up on a wide, soft mat on the floor. It lets her glance over my shoulder at my work materials: some paper and a little chalkboard spread out in front of me. “How would you solve for the mass of the object being teleported?”
“I wouldn't,” I mutter in response, using a hoof to roll one of my pencils back and forth along the mat, twisting and flexing my ankle to make it slide. I know I’m supposed to be paying attention, but my eyes are on the pencil more than the board. “The equation is wrong. You intentionally made a mistake to see if I’d notice.”
“Mmm. That doesn’t sound like me,” she answers, keeping her tone light to try to encourage me. “Could you point out where I made a mistake?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t really get it.”
“Then what makes you think it’s wrong?” Princess Celestia asks, leaning around to try to get a glimpse of my face as I focus on rolling the pencil.
“When you looked at me, after you finished writing it,” I answer. Back and forth, back and forth. I press lightly so that the pencil tip won’t snag on the fabric. “Your eyes hesitate just for a moment when you lie. It’s how I always know when you’re asking a trick question.”
The Princess doesn’t answer at first—I suppose her eyes aren’t the only things that hesitate. She has so much experience that the lines are always delivered perfectly, but she’s an honest pony by nature, and it shows. “Well, I shall have to ask trickier questions in the future then. You’re growing up to be a very perceptive young mare.”
“Thank you, Princess,” I say. She doesn't reply at first, but this isn’t a pause while she thinks— she’s waiting for me to go on. It’s hard to explain what makes one silence different from another. It’s not like she’s saying anything, and I’m not even looking at her—but it is different. I just know these things. “Why does Princess Luna hate me?”
Princess Celestia sighs, reaching out to put a wing around me. I’m a little old for this now, but I don’t want to seem like I’m snubbing her, so I lean in against her shoulder. It’s still kind of comforting, and I know she likes it. It reminds her of when I was a foal. “Luna doesn’t hate you, Siren. She simply values her privacy, and you have a way of seeing through ponies—like now.” She rests her hoof over mine, trying to reassure me with that even touch. “It makes her a little uncomfortable sometimes.”
“If I could see through her, I wouldn't keep doing things that make her dislike me,” I say, leaning against the Princess's shoulder a little more. Just so she’ll feel like she’s helping. “Like that stupid sapling.”
“Siren, you can’t keep blaming yourself for that,” Celestia insists, one of her primary feathers brushing my far shoulder. “It was a very thoughtful gift. You went through an enormous effort to try to find something that she would treasure, and she knows that. It was very personal, that’s all. Luna thought she was the only pony in the world who even remembered there used to be a tree in that section of the garden.”
“I think I figured that out about when she accused me of prying open her heart so I could peddle her tears,” I mutter. “Princess Luna has some very memorable insults.”
“She apologized for that,” Celestia points out, trying to tilt my chin up with the tip of her wing. “She was emotional and said things she didn’t—”
“You made her apologize for that,” I say, looking down between my hooves. “She meant every word.”
Princess Celestia lets out a breath. “I can’t slip anything past you these days, can I?” she asks, and somehow, I find myself smiling a little. Not because she made it all better, but... because she didn’t have to. I can hear the trace of pride in her voice. Even with all of this, even when I’m frustrating her, she really is happy for me. “Oh for the days when you were cute and gullible.”
“I was never gullible,” I insist, but that smile isn’t going away. “And I’m still cute.”
“So you are,” Princess Celestia says, her tone warm, leaning down to nuzzle the top of my head. I let myself relax, shutting my eyes for a moment as I tuck my head into her shoulder. “There are many ponies in this palace who adore you, Siren, but also some who dislike you—even a few who dislike you greatly. Yet you do not crave their approval the way you do my sister’s. Why is that?”
“Because they aren’t royalty,” I answer. Something sharp jabs into my side, and I jump, my eyes flying open as my heart starts to race.
I hear Celestia’s giggling before I realize what it was, and she wiggles her hoofboot playfully. I glower at her, fume at this intrusion, but she smiles and asks, “Is that the real reason?”
That was kind of an obvious fib, I suppose. I shake my head a little. “Because they aren’t your sister, Princess.”
“Do you think my affection for you is predicated upon my sister’s feeling the same way?” she asks gently, and of course I shake my head. “Then, do you think I can’t decide for myself if you’re the sort of young mare I approve of?”
“No, Princess, but... I know Luna’s opinion means a great deal to you. You respect her judgment, and in her judgment, I’m...” I turn away from her, staring down at the floor. “You know.”
Of course she knows. We both know.
“I am curious what a cutie mark for tear-peddling would look like,” Celestia says, like nothing was wrong, and when I stare silently down at the floor, she only smiles. “Siren, my sister may think what she likes, and you may try to change her mind if that is your desire, but do it because you care about her opinion—not because you believe it influences mine.” She pulls me close against her, tucking my head in against her neck as she nuzzles hers between my ears. “I will always be there for you, Siren. You’re my faithful student, and I love you.”
For a moment, I want to pull away. I don’t know where the impulse comes from, but some dark part of my mind wants to look her in the eye and tell her to say that again. I think she feels me go stiff, because she tilts her head down, trying to look at me. But... no. No. I push that thought away. I push it away, and I pull against her.
“I love you too, Princess,” I say, and all is right in the world.
Music. I hear music. I’m too... something... to understand it. The thing, with the fuzz and the thoughts and the hard to focus. It’s a simple word. I know this. With the rest and the beds and the pillows. There’s a nice pillow under my head.
Tired. That’s it. I’m too tired to understand the music. The words rush in one ear and go out the other. It has a nice beat, though—simple, nothing fancy, but easy to listen to. And I do listen to it for a while, letting it wash over me. There’s a fiddle and a guitar, and a harp, and a lot of singing. That’s nice. They sound like they’re really having fun with it, pounding their hooves on the floor.
I feel kind of nice right now. I can’t move, but I don’t have to move. There’s a soft bed under me and a big heavy blanket over me—I’m warm and comfortable, and even if the music is just ponies pounding their hooves and fumbling for decent lyrics, it’s still music. It’s like I’m back in my room in the palace, listening to the phonograph as I drift off.
“Is anypony here?” I ask quietly. I don’t feel like opening my eyes right now.
“Berry and I,” Zephyr whispers back. She’s close, probably sitting by the bedside. “How you feeling, Siren?”
“Sleepy,” I murmur, and a thought flickers in the back of my mind. “Is that the party upstairs?”
“It is. It’s a really good one tonight too, and you’re missing it. Serves you right for nearly dying on us,” Zephyr answers, and I frown.
“I’m sorry, Zephyr. I didn’t mean for you to miss your time with your friends.” It seems really sad, when I think about it: she’s lived in this awful place her whole life, gotten injured more times than she can count, she’s probably going to die or mutate or go crazy, and she gives up her time with her friends to take care of the mare from Canterlot Palace. “You’re really nice.”
“Hush. We do that every night; you’ll catch the next one,” she promises. I don’t know why, but that makes me frown more. It seems wrong, somehow. Not like that thing she does with her lungs is wrong, or White Wash or Berry are wrong but... wrong. Berry. She’s in the room too.
“Please don’t leave me alone with Berry,” I say. My head feels like it’s filled with cotton, and the bed seems to tilt back and forth very faintly, as a raft upon the sea. “She’s evil. She wants to drug me so I can go back to Trixie in a box. She wants to turn me into one of those things.”
“Siren—” Zephyr starts to speak, but then she stops abruptly. I hear something. Motion. The rustle of saddlebags. Ponies moving.
“Wait outside,” Berry says, and after a moment, I hear hoofsteps moving away, the squeak of a door hinge, the clap of metal in its frame.
That’s it.
I’m too tired to panic—but I am afraid. Tense. I can’t move, so I lie there, listening for the sound of her motions, her breathing, the rustle of her saddlebags. Anything to mark when it’s about to happen.
“Does it hurt?” I ask. It’s foalish to care about that, like worrying that the needle full of poison might sting going in—but it does bother me. I don’t want it to hurt.
“No,” she says, and I hear her step up to the bedside.
“That’s good,” I murmur. She’s reaching into her bags now—I can hear the rustle of cloth, and the faint click when her teeth settle around glass. Fabric swishes gently, and there’s a distinctly wooden thump near my head. A table by the bedside.
I don’t want to listen to that, so I listen to the music. I don’t think I’ll be able to appreciate music after. Berry did have that record player in her apartment, but... I should enjoy this while I can.
It’s pretty bad. Trite, cheap, poorly performed, full of repeating verses. It even rhymes words with themselves a few times, when the composer couldn't think of anything else to say. It’s the sort of thing you hear when somepony throws together a big group sing at the last moment—a bunch of generic verses about sticking together the pony way, and patching leaks and whatever else comes to mind. None of that really matters though, if the singers are into it and feeling the mood.
I’m not sure they are though. They’re shouting, and pounding their hooves, and singing and laughing, but the tone is wrong. It’s too loud, and too quick, and everypony laughs too hard, even when the verse isn’t funny. Perhaps they’re having fun, but they aren’t relaxed. I can see it. They’re eyeing each other, watching who is laughing when, making sure to stay in the spirit of things. They aren’t being spontaneous. They’re singing, but the song isn’t in their hearts.
That’s not right. Music should be something pure and beautiful—an expression of feeling. I don’t want that to be the last piece of music I ever really hear.
But what I want doesn’t matter—does it?
Why hasn’t she done it yet?
“This is Daring Do,” Berry says, even though I can’t see what she’s talking about. I suppose I don’t need to see it, though. “It is a classical mantle that bestows a compass rose cutie mark, usually on the back or cheek. The primary benefit is enhanced bravery, alertness, and composure in the face of stress or danger.”
I’m not sure why she’s telling me this, but I nod anyway, a weak little motion of my head that makes my ears twitch. Then, there’s a long lull in the conversation, the music carrying down around us.
What is she waiting for?
“If I put this in your belt, will you promise to drink it if you start to panic again?” she asks, and I don’t understand what’s happening.
“Why?” I ask, my brow furrowing faintly as I squeeze my eyes tighter.
“Because this is the third time panic has nearly killed you.” That’s an answer, but not to the question I asked. I think about pushing the question, about asking again, but... no. What would the point be?
“Yes, Berry,” I say, and much as I know I can always go back on that later, the words feel final somehow. Like I was putting my name to a faustian pact. “Yes, I promise.”
I can hear her picking up the bottle with her teeth, and the rustle of fabric. There’s a crinkle—that must be her pulling some of my pep-bars out to make room for the mantle. I hear something scraping over the wood, and then Berry stops moving, and there’s only the music.
That lasts for a few minutes, just me and her and music, before I ask: “You said you used to like Pinkie Pie’s parties. Are you going to go upstairs?”
“No,” she answers.
“I guess they aren’t really your thing these days,” I say, tucking my head down into the pillow.
“No,” she repeats. After a moment she adds, “Pinkie Pie’s parties in Vision were never as good as her parties in Equestria. Everypony is trying too hard.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I got that feeling too.”
She doesn’t answer, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say, so I listen. The music isn’t any good, but I can hear her breathing. It’s so regular, it keeps a time of its own, and when I listen to it, the music fades into a pleasant background noise. I’m tired enough, or just distracted enough, that I stop hearing the pauses and the false starts and the subtle tension, and all I can hear is a good group sing, with laughter and dancing and stupid jokes.
It occurs to me that for all I’ve suffered since I left Equestria, I seem to always have this luxury. Music when I’m falling asleep—that strange song in Green’s room, and the phonograph in the doctor's waiting room, and Green’s lullaby before, and this now. Isn’t that a funny thought? I wonder why that is.
“Hey, Berry?” I ask, squirming in place to get comfortable. “You’re smart. Is there some reason there’s always music when I sleep?”
“There was no music in Doctor Stable’s examination room,” she answers, flat.
“Oh,” I say. “That’s right. Darn. I thought I’d found something really poetic.” She doesn’t say anything. I guess she’s thinking I’m weird. “It’s an art thing. You wouldn't get it.”
I’m still mulling it over when I fall asleep.
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I've been plowing through this story for the past week, gripped with horrified fascination. You've made this ill, decaying world you own and populating it with Ponies has made it more resonant that the original for me.
Also: Siren, why are you so damn broken, kid?
2418932
Insufficient hugs as a child.
No, wait, she was raised by Celestia... mmm.
Excessive hugs as a child!
2199820
Needs more Columbia.
2419978
Mmm, well, that should be easy enough. Vision is already unbearably pretentious. Now all I have to do is put it in the sky and make sure that the ending makes no freaking sense.
Yeah, that's right, I went there!
2419987never got that far. As bad as mass effect 3?
2420196
Okay, not that bad.
The ending of Bioshock: Inf isn't really bad in a storytelling sense. It feels epic and grand and you will be going "holy shit!" for the entire thing. It does feel like a very satisfying conclusion to the story and it does fit the narrative.
But then you stop and think about it and go, "Wait. Hold on."
2419987
I think a flying city would lose some of its ... impact in a world where pegasi live in clouds as normal.
Is it wrong of me that I'm still expecting horrific sea ponies to show up?
2420232 I heard picking either the Bird or the Cage doesn't matter. Hopefully we get some DLC that makes that choice relevant.
Also damnnnn why isn't this as popular as FOE.
*mar
Berry Punch, the cause - and solution to - all life's panic attacks. (Well, besides that one with the knife ears.)
I can see the markers now, chanting "One of us... One of us..."
I have a feeling Siren Song won't be leaving this city without an addiction to Poison Joke.
2420973 Nice call. She's been thinking of them as Freaks and monsters, after all.
2419881
You know, that strikes me as entirely plausible. I can totally see Celestia becoming a little too forgiving and permissive after what happened with Twilight to work out the flaws of a filly like Siren.
2420343
Sadly, I think Vision has just come at too different a stage in the MLP fandom to ever be as popular Fallout: Equestria. This website didn't even exist when it first came out, and it was much more of a novelty then. I'd love to be proven wrong though. Here's hoping for a hardbound, printed version of this story one day.
Anyway, I don't think any chapter will top the effect White Wash had on me for quite a while, if ever, but Zephyr was really good as well. Berry Punch putting the Daring Do in Siren's bags instead of forcing her to take it was the emotional high point of the chapter, I think. It was so touching, in such a creepy, depressing way. I gobble that stuff up.
2395301
Swiftwing may get her own side story soon. "Swiftwing Has a Nice Day." Nothing long, but, I just liked her so much as a character that I felt bad she gets completely screwed by Siren.
2421461
Shoo be doooo~
2422858
Okay, so, confession time. I may have spent the last two days thinking: "Mmm. Bronetheus didn't comment on the new chapter. He always on the new chapter... it's probably nothing. No reason he'd read it right away.
Unless he thinks the chapter is bad.
"
Anyway, awesome. Glad to see it landed. Although... the next chapter may exceed White Wash on the emotional spectrum. If I did it right, it'll be a doozy!
2424957
I want to see that too. Swiftwing was a sweetheart.
2424989
Oh geez, the pressure's on now!
Sometimes I like to let a chapter simmer for a day or two before I comment on it, maybe catch some other comments I can respond to. Other times, I just feel like what I have to say has either already been said, or is generic praise that could be summed up with a thumbs up.
I hope you're right about the next chapter though. Either way, I'll make sure I comment. Can't let one of my favorite authors down.
Have a TvTropes page!
Hopefully it will help get Vision the attention it deserves.
It's still a mite unpolished, but I'll get to that after a nap.
EDIT: And by "after a nap", I meant "after I walk to a Chinese restaurant and get blasted out of my skull on scorpion bowls." Either way, it all leads to a nap in the end.
2426374
*sniff*
This shouldn't make me as happy as it does. But it does.
You guys are awesome.
2426642
I will flatten you.
Why does writing have to take so long T_T waaa
2435298
Oh hush you. I update weekly.
This has to be my favorite crossover story. I don't like the grimness or the main character, but they fit the story so perfectly that it doesn't even matter.
Great chapter ^^
Huh, so Siren was always one to try and play people rather than the game. That's interesting, since so much of what we see her do is obviously effected by her experiences in this well-crafted dystopia, I'd say we needed the flashback to establish which parts fit her original baseline behavior. Sure there was the adoption thing but some desperation in that situation is expected. This is her in a more relaxed situation and, while she's still manipulative, wanting people to like you is different from making people's hair fall out or tearing down their egos.
You make Berry astonishingly sympathetic for someone nearly dead inside sometimes, with her small acts of kindness and the way she volleyed back perfectly from Siren's assault earlier.
Also, given that pony names are generally descriptive, sometimes prophetically so Siren Song may be more dangerous than anyone realizes.
Missing word?
Well ladies and gentlemen, we have progress! She finally gives two bits for another character enough to stick with them. Though she still calls the higher ups monsters and freaks, she at least realizes the lower class characters weren't born with silver spoons. At least Berry apparently trusts her enough to hand her a mantle, rather than force it down. I've got a feeling that she won't be using it though, at least not voluntarily. Really nice scene with 'Tia, though it seems that once again she's a litle too lenient, which is why Siren is so arrogant at this point. She tries, bless her kind heart, but sometimes the old adage "Spare the rod, spoil the child" really applies. (don't mean punishment, more like more guidance is necessary, like a shepherd).
This was your plan all along, wasn't it? Make an unlikable protagonist and have the readers latch on to the sattelite characters in the chapter, and with enough of them, that will make the protagonist have character development? Brilliant, you evil mastermind!
Well the new year is here, the family has left, and my hours have been cut back to normal, so I once again have that most vauled of resources: TIME!
Not a lot happened in this chapter, mostly we were just introduced to another new character, but I have a few things that I want to say:
1.) I didn't think much about this at the time, but Diamond Tiara had the NEWER VERSION of Green Apples mind-control mantel. This means that HOLY CRAP! They're not still just making mantles, they're actively improving them! For all of Vision's seeming decay, there's still some thriving industry going on.
2.) Zephyr the air purifier. This was a wonderful little take on the somewhat uncommon trope of pegasi as airbenders. Also, are we ever going to see a Vision analogue to the tea garden in Bio-Shock? I would very much like that
3,) I feel like an idiot for not realizing this earlier, but all the mantles are named after ponies! This brings some very interesting questions to mind as to how exactly they get made . . .
4.) And finally, Zephyr. Zephyr feels like the most fleshed out of all the secondary characters so far. I'm not sure if I care for her all that much, but I do appreciate being given enough information to actually make that decision.
P.S. I saw that you're one of the judges for this newfangled "Dangerous Game 2" contest. I actually sighed on as a preditor for an entry. Small world.
A-ha! So Siren's seventeen.
...
Or so she believes. I had been prepared to jump you about the supposed age of Vision and the characters within, but then I remembered my theories about Siren herself and all my arguments became moot. So I now really hope my theory is correct, otherwise there's a chronological progression issue at work here.
Unrelated: I find it particularly curious that after how much she's been shown to outright hate Green, Siren's so incredibly worried about her. I guess when the only friends you have are your presumed enemies...
Man, Siren's paranoid. I get that she's scared of Berry, but for Pete's sake, she could have forced her to take the tonic at any time while they were stuck in the hall waiting for the mechanics to show up. At the very least, she could have hidden nearby and waited to see who it was before panicking.
Ah, so Luna got a mention. That's something, I guess. I can see why she wouldn't like Siren, though – I'm still not certain I do.
Interesting, I really thought Berry would make her drink it. She reminds me more of Maud now than ever before.
I completely forgot I uploaded this.
I feel that she feels...defeated.
It's inevitable that she will have to betray what few morals she has left and use that irreversible mantle at some point.
She'll become what she abhors, and have little decision when she uses something she can't reverse.
So she’s always been manipulative it’s not a new development. I guess Luna picked up how rotten she really is inside and that’s why she wants nothing to do with her. Celestia should have been harder on her to knock this arrogance and pride out of her. I guess one of the key things that separates her from twilight as a student is that she never got real friendship lessons as cxheesy as it sounds.
She's more...subdued, and nearly resigned at the end of the chapter. Not that that's a bad thing...she keeps getting scared all the time. She flipped out and took a fall because she heard Berry coming towards her. There are monsters down in these tunnels, but there are good ponies too. Zephyr is clearly one of them...and Berry Punch, in her very subdued way. Suppose trust is something that comes with time and all.
10091454
Berry Punch and Green are her only two friends in the world right now! Zephyr might make three.
10091469
Just an observation from an armchair history nerd, but Berry's behavior reminds me of a thing I read a while back about the old time practice of lobotomy. Granted here it's via magical drugs but the result is similar she is distant and has little to no emotion. Even her passion for distillation is delivered in a robotic monotone.
As to Green and Zephyr, it is incredibly sad to think that in a few years time and who knows how many doses to keep their secondary and tertiary talents they will be like White Wash, a broken wreck of a pony just to end up a veritable zombie like creature like those that apparently call the wharf where Siren first woke up home. That is the real tragedy of this place.
If I understand things correctly this "Vision" was meant to help ponies who were tired of Equestria's status-quo, not exactly a utopia or anything but a society where an Earth Pony could do more than grunt work or farm simply because they weren't fancy-dancy unicorn butts. But the cost is incredibly steep.
Siren try not to go into shock every chapter challenge (impossible)
11748474
I'm a strong believer that something exciting should happen in every chapter. :D