//------------------------------// // Chapter Three: FINALLY! The Last Issue of the Origin Story // Story: Fallout: Equestria - Records of Bone // by Philosophysics //------------------------------// Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Charles R. Swindoll You know...I think I would have stayed inside the laboratory forever had the Smooze never tried to kill me. I remember my time in that laboratory as some of the best moments of my life. I had a safe place where I didn’t have to worry about some random asshole trying to steal my skull. I had a state of the art computer that could run Pac Pony and other arcade games in great graphics. I had comic books! The complete collection of Power Ponies and the Collector’s Edition of the Daring Do novels including the little known Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring. That last one was probably forcibly forgotten for good reason, but still! It was a nerd’s paradise! I didn’t even need food or water. I’m a bollocking bone pone. What organs do I have to feed? Nothing but bones here. Hydration? I’m bone dry all the time. Sex? I was a perpetual boner. Yes. I find myself very humerus. Back to the point, I had no reason to leave. Outside was a shitty place to be as proven by my encounter with a crazy, trigger happy gryphoness. If you disagree with me, you’re either delusional as fuck or you’re being a dumbass. No sane being enjoys living in the Equestrian Wasteland. Not a one. Unless you have a confession to make? Life was simple for me. It was hedonistic in nature. Whatever I felt like doing, I did. Read a book, grow bored and put it away. Write fanfiction. Remake cool shit in the workshop. Craft a weapon or talisman to replicate an ability from the story. Just things the average nerd did before the Last Day. I would have stayed forever inside that lab if the black slime of hatred that was the Smooze hadn’t dropped in on my sixth reread of Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring. Before you judge me, I would like it to be known the novel, Daring Do And the Dildo of Derring is more than mere smut and has an engaging storyline with an actually interesting side character in the form of Spirit Shaft, a disgraced Zebra shaman who travels with her- Okay. Fine. I’ll focus. I was sitting in a corner of the biggest office where the library was. Owned by one Scootaloo. A name that had a passing familiarity as it should, since she was one of the chief designers of my project. At one point, it had been somewhat clean and orderly.After I had, for lack of a better word, lived there for a few months? I’m guessing. I never kept track of time well. I lived there for a while and it became a bit… messy what with all the discarded papers that I had used to draw, write fanfiction, and doodle designs on. I guess you could say that I was living in my mother’s basement, eh? The background ambience was a tad bit melancholy though. A soft electronic violin that whispered fond memories of a time of innovation. Thaumic senses let you observe the magical nature of things as mentioned before. Pony kind’s magic has always been intrinsically tied with our emotions and magic lingers. When I use Thaumic Hearing, I listen not to the physical sounds of the world, but the magical sides of things. It basically means I get a nice background music thing going on all the time along with hearing the true intonation behind the words that ponies say. Looking back now, I can see why my first home had such a sad song of reminiscence.. I hadn’t gotten around to creating a proper set of ears and thank gods that I didn’t, because if I had grown dependent on them like I had with my amazing Coke Eyes Mk. 1. Thaumic senses are completely broken and I love them. One of the… surprisingly many good things of being a bone pone. My first inkling something was wrong when a cheerful rhythm began playing. There was no logical reason why it sent a shiver up my spine, but it did. It was a very peppy song, with a simple repeating harmony to keep with the slight variations on the melody. It was a very happy song and it completely terrified me with good reason. It played as though it was all encompassing, spreading everywhere and echoing inside your head. Invite me in, it said. Invite me in and just let me take over and I’ll do all the hard decisions, so why don’t you let me in? Tad bit rape-y, wouldn’t you say? I was getting ready to get the hell away from the music when black sludge began dripping from the vent. One of my many, many readings was a graphic novel rendition of the infamous Aliens series. Naturally, I got the hell out of there. Breaking the door in my hurry to get away, I ran down the corridors to get away from it. Black sludge cut off my path though, forcing me to change it accordingly. Classic herding strategy, especially in a small, labyrinthian complex such as the Red Racer laboratories. Had I taken the time to think, I would have realize that I was being sent away from the only exit, the way I came in. since I was an idiot, I didn’t and ran towards the last safe place in my mind, the workshop where I worked on my Coke Eyes Mk. 1 and other projects. As soon as I opened the door, the black sludge leapt forward and caught my entire body, pulling me into its gelatinous masses. Of the colors I hate the most, black holds a special place in my soul. I’m fine with it when it is accompanied with other colors. But alone? I hate it. I try not to, because that’s what the color itself wants, but… it takes a stronger will than mine to not hate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I only had a full body for a day, so I didn’t experience all the sensations that one with a full body can. I can make imitations of taste and smell, but I’ll never know if I have them accurately. Sexual pleasure is something I can forever only fantasize about. But pain is something I know intimately. As soon as I was pulled into the Smooze, the cheerful music took a more oppressing beat. It hummed, let me in. Let me control. No worries, just let Mr. Smooze in. I struggled in the mass, occasionally poking my head out of the mass, taking in the bright light as a reminder that I was still here and not There. The Smooze being the dick it was pulled me back each and every time. It’s black ooze filled the inside of my skull, the ribcage, and yes… Even there. I hadn’t figured out how to mimic touch yet at that point and I am FOREVER thankful for that. It used to be a joke, but in this case, it is remarkably apt. It popped out one of my Coke Eyes Mk. 1, the right one, and took advantage of the Runes of Connection to force a direct connection between itself and my innermost magic, my sense of self and then began molding me to better suit itself. Up to this point, I could safely call myself innocent. Though I had the skeleton of a full grown earth stallion and connection to the largest library of knowledge Equestria has ever known, I had no fear but the child’s fear of the unknown, no hate save that of those cartoonish villains in comics and novels, and anger was something I played pretend with. When the Smooze began its modifications to my soul, I shot straight past the angstiness of being a teenager, past the mild despair and apathy of an adult, and straight into the depths that is the mind of an immortal. For reference, the Smooze is this really old monster from a foal’s tale that was taken from folklore that was taken from legends written on the caves of a forgotten civilization. Long and short of it is that the Smooze is the culmination of all the bad crap in life, the hate, the feat, the apathy, the anger, all that jazz. It’s main goal is to feed itself and when you feed on crap like that, what do you do to make more of it? Natural enemies to it are, you guessed it, the good things in life such as joy, friendship, family, and oddly enough, knowledge. It’s hard to fear what you know. It tried turning me into a duplicate of itself, wanting me to use my connection to the Library and its knowledge to create more hate, create more anger, create destruction, and become a monster that would completely destroy the rest of Equestria. Failing that, destroy me and ensure that Equestria is thrown back to the dark ages so it can feed on all and live forever. Or something. I don’t know. I do my best to forget all megalomaniacal goals since they’re all so stupid and petty. It’s either become a god among mortals, live forever, destroy something, conquer something, or blah blah blah. Who the fuck cares, am I right or am I right? They all do terrible things, they all justify it in some way or just don’t give a flying crap, and they’re all mad little monsters running around, uncaring of who and what and anything they destroy and twist for their own amusement. It succeeded in a way. It took my body as a puppet and left vague imprints of itself all over the knowledge that I failed to protect. I was taken on a joy ride where I was taught all the lovely intricacies that went behind the mind of the Smooze. Or what passed for one. I learned that it saw me as it worst enemy. The Smooze hated everything as mentioned before, but it was a special kind of hate. The kind where you don’t want the thing you hate to disappear, you want it to suffer, you want it twisted, you want it broken. Knowledge was its natural enemy. To know something intimately, such as your family and/or friends, even a stranger, it becomes difficult to hate. Seeing as I was theoretically knowledge incarnate, knowing most of what Equestria has ever known, I was its enemy in its mind. And I would surely try to kill it and fix everything that it had ever broken. Kind of funny really. I was all set to hide in my little laboratory, all set to hide from the world. Fear had already kept me locked me up tighter than any chains. In possessing me for that period of time, it taught me how to hate. And I hated the monster who tortured me. I hated it harder than it hated the world and it latched  on harder and then bleh. It goes black and I wake up surrounded by dead bodies, one working Coke Eye, and a deeply unsettling urge to hurl despite never having eaten anything. What? Expecting some deep realization? This is wrapping up the origin bit. Everybody knows you don’t really have the deep realizations in the origin bit of a shitty spinoff story. This is what my story is. Just a crappy spinoff story of the tragedy that is the Equestrian Wasteland. But I’m not going to let that stop me. In case you’re wondering exactly what I did next, I just ran off aimlessly, trying to get away from the pile of dead bodies as one does from their very first mass murder. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perk: Soul Sucker: Anything with a soul is under you necromantic domain. They’re nice, filling, and oddly tasty. 5% increase in crit damage and 50% of all magic damage dealt to a target is returned as health.