Los Pegasus’ towers were not ruins. They were not relics. They were not even half-repaired, barely functional dwellings. No, the blocks upon blocks of soaring skyscrapers were all homes.
Apartments, mostly. Or rather “tenements” as Silverlight insisted their proper name was. I didn’t really understand the difference. So what if it was up to the residents of each tower to renovate it into a dwelling suitable for themselves? So what if they paid rent to a state appointed landlord who in turn passed that money to the crown as a form of taxation? It’s still a place where you pay monthly to have a few rooms as a home.
Each steel and glass tower held enough ponies on its own to make a small settlement outside the city. Enough for there to be ponies active in the streets this late at night. There was a nightlife!
Thanks to which, I found out what the Pegans ate.
“Replicated meat?” I asked for the third time.
“Yes,” Silverlight replied as he led the way down the street. “That’s what you’re smelling.”
Wander hummed. “It’s kinda crazy how many ponies died in the early days because they couldn't stomach meat… Far more interesting how many died unable to understand why they couldn’t survive on just carrots and other common vegetables. Heh, you’d think they would know pre-war everypony was basically vegan had been thanks to processed foods and easily available soy and lentils. Almost all the protein rich grasses went extinct real quick.”
Prince Silverlight turned to look at Wander. “Really? I’m more than aware of our species’ omnivorous diet, clearly, but it seems we should be able to survive on either of those things alone.”
Wander shook her head. “Nope. Not without processing foods to contain every nutrient we need, or a mix of exotic plants not native to Equestrian climates. Or having some nice fertilized non-poisoned soil to grow the old plants our ancestors survived on. All rare things after the bombs.”
“Then how are we surviving on meat and grain?” SIlver asked with a confused frown.
Wander snorted and shrugged. “Whatever meat you’ve got in those things either isn’t a pure meat and is some prewar meat blended with various vegetable products… Like Cram. That stuff was designed as a survival food. That, or the grain you’ve chosen has everything else you need. Biologically, we’re supposed to eat both. Our wild ancestors ate fish, small birds if they could catch them, lizards, field mice, and whatever bugs were in with the grass…”
Speed shivered. “Bleh… vegetation…”
I couldn’t help but giggle a little at our vampire bat.
Wander shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Sorry… I just find it funny how many ponies insist we’re supposed to only eat vegetables since that’s what was common pre-war.”
“Why was it?” I asked with a frown. “I mean, scientists had to know back then, right?”
“Well, they’re cheap,” Wander said simply. “Earth ponies can bamph out a crop of carrots every month. Also, some ponies thought keeping animals for food was cruel. We really only raised animals for their produce, or to export to griffon nations, and for our own carnivorous citizens… That said, most ponies did eat it sometimes. Like a treat.”
Silverlight nodded in satisfaction. “I see. That makes sense. I wonder what they would think of our means of sustenance.”
“They’d be disgusted and self-righteous,” Wander laughed, shaking her head almost violently. “Those eco-nuts looked down on anyone who ate any meat, no matter how that animal lived or died, all while wearing designer leather saddlebags and reading leather bound books, all of which they’d insist was faux leather, except it wasn’t, because you can’t actually permanently enchant pleather. Or if it was actually fake, after a few months the protective enchantments would wear off and it just falls apart after a few months of use…”
Wander made a disgusted look and sighed. “It’s the way they insisted fake leather was better that really pissed me off. “It’s better for the environment, you monster!” Please… If they wanted to be actually environmentally friendly, they’d have recognised that a real leather saddlebag that will last a pony a lifetime is much less wasteful than needing to buy a new one every six to eight months as it just falls apart.”
“You have pretty strong feelings on that,” I noted with a shy smile.
Silverlight nodded in agreement with me. “Very strong feelings indeed.”
“Of course I do!” Wander grumbled as she looked at the ground. “It’s sanctimonious-emotion-first, logic-last ideologies which drove us to the point of having resource shortages bad enough to go to war over.”
I raised an eyebrow at that statement. Not because I objected to it. Building to last is certainly a good philosophy. Rather… if that’s how Wander’s thought process worked…
Logic first, emotion last. That’s how I work, sometimes when I’m being more Sprity than Zeeby. Yay machines!
I smiled to myself as a rather devious idea began to take form in my mind.
“Huh… Gears, that might actually work.”
Thanks, imaginary dad!
☢★★◯★★☢
We left the residential district rather abruptly. The ancient Pegans had built their towers right up to the edge of the district. Stepping out onto the Resort Strip was like stepping out of a narrow canyon set into a cliff face… directly into an amusement park.
The street split in the middle with a single kilometer long fountain running between them. I could see iron planter pots where trees had once grown alongside the fountain. The cobblestone city streets gave way to time worn marble tiles which interlocked to form a tesselating pattern which flowed down the avenue, making it kind of look like running water under the bright electric lamps.
Along either side of the split street were three resorts, six of them in total. Each looked entirely unique. The closest on our left resembled a futuristic space colony, complete with metal dome buildings covered in big crystal windows, shiny chrome details, and plenty of pointless blue glowing lights. The left middle resort was styled after what I believed to be a Prench palace circa their Late Imperial Era, lots of white, blue, and gold, hundreds of gilded statues, stained glass windows, lots of sculpted details in the building’s every feature! The furthest on the left was the most boring of the lot, a simple eight story modern designed tower with an L shaped bottom three stories and what must have been a very nice garden atop the short part of the L, back in the day.
The right side of the street was home to a huge building with a vaguely Apploosan Frontier theme of big rough cut timber logs, sand and desert plants which were actually alive decorating its yard, and all kinds of Pre-Ministries frontier brick-a-back arranged in decorative clutter-piles. The next past it was a soaring tower which rose from the ground like a needle, topped by a huge artificial cloud which, craning my neck, seemed to support a Classical Era Pegasi city themed hotel in full Hayllenic-Romane inspired glory. Then, almost understated by the grandeur of the other buildings, was a simple pink cube with a single door which managed to appear artfully minimalistic rather than boring, though I had no idea how.
All six of the resorts appeared brand new. They were clean. No visible damage. Each of them had a squad of soldiers standing out front on guard duty, greeting well dressed ponies as they came and went.
So this is where Los Pegasus’ elite lived. Suddenly, I had a fraction of an idea of just how the truly wealthy pre-war ponies had lived…
Not like this. Oh buck no. Theses would have been the ponies pretending to be wealthy. The truly wealthy would have lived in something like the seventh resort.
All of the other resorts paled in comparison to the seventh, which sat at the very end of the street. The two lanes merged back into one to pass through a gilded wrought iron gate, only to split again into a circular courtyard around a large fountain containing a statue of the sun and moon, stylized to fit the Princesses’ cutiemarks. Beyond the courtyard was an artificial mountain, studded with windows showing the fake mountain was in truth a conical tower with twenty eight floors…
Twenty eight floors before the palace, that is. Attached to the side of the artificial mountain, supported by pillars disguised as water falls, was a full sized replica of the Palace of the Sun and Moon in Canterlot. The mountain held the palace replica aloft just as Mount Canterlot had once supported the city of Canterlot.
I knew the palace well from illustrations, photographs, and even film strips which I had seen in history class. Not a single detail had been left out of this replica… Nor was a single detail being left out!
Even now I could see a small team of Pegasi working to install more gold tiles on the roof of one of the towers, a small group of unicorns were levitating each tile up to them. If the Palace Casino hadn’t looked just like the real thing pre-war, it certainly had been made to in recent years.
Wander and I stopped in our tracks staring up at the building. I stared in awe, Wander stared in a mix of nostalgia and regret.
“What?” Speed asked over her shoulder as she kept walking. “It’s a big shiny building. Come on, we’ve all seen cooler things!”
“No, not really,” I disagreed.
“I— It’s… It’s exactly…” Wander stammered before shaking her head. “Silver! Why?”
Wander stepped in front of Silver and pointed over her shoulder towards the Palace. “I know how it used to look. It looked like a version of the palace meant to dodge copyright laws and lawsuits. How?! Why?”
SIlver looked over her shoulder and swept a hoof towards the palace. “No other place is fit to serve as the capital of Equestria. Since the Enclave destroyed the old palace, and the Empire rendered Mount Canterlot uninhabitable, we built our own Palace.”
“With blackjack and hookers?” I asked sarcastically as I swept a hoof towards the other casinos on the same street.
“Yes,” Silverlight replied with a simple nod and a confused frown. “Why wouldn’t I employ the skills of my best architect and my most experienced civil engineer?”
Oh for buck’s sake… I facehooved. “You know… Seeing as how pony naming conventions are pretty loosely “call them a thing and move on” you’d think this would happen a lot more often.”
Silverlight chuckled. “Ah, I see, you meant gambling and prostitution. Yes, the location’s origins are perhaps a little unsavory but, we had an existing structure to work from. Come! A luxury suite awaits!”
Wander let Silverlight past, and I began to move forwards again, progressing down the strip one awestruck hoofstep at a time until, suddenly, I realized something.
“Wait a minute… What monster names their foal Hookers?!” I asked, my ears and tail raising in alarm.
“It’s even worse if you know her full name,” Silverlight said quietly.
“Please tell me it’s not Horny Hookers,” Wander said with an amused snort.
“Close… Wet Hookers… Her mother was… an immigrant,” Silverlightsaid with a flick of an ear. “Wastelanders can have some… very interesting names. Regardless of the implications of that moniker… and her rather crass cutiemark, Hookers is an excellent civil engineer. Assuming that she must be even more talented in, shall we say, cunning linguistics, than engineering, it’s little wonder she’s got a small herd of mares following her about at all times…”
Silverlight turned to give me a sheepish look. “I’ve heard your Queen is related to Princess Cadence. I don’t suppose you’d know if she had any non-alicorn children, would you? I can think of no other explanation for Hookers’ entire bloodline’s talents being, well, yes…”
I shrugged and looked over to Wander, who was blushing very hard for some reason. “I don’t think so… Hon, do you know?”
Wander simply shook her head and kept walking.
Nopony said anything for a few moments, making it clear the conversation had ended because… Squishy pony reasons, I guess?
I returned to plotting… Yes, my plan was shaping up quite nicely. As soon as the Prince and I were alone, it would be time to execute Operation Reality Check.
☢★★◯★★☢
Silverlight lead us down the gold trimmed, red velvet carpet, marble bas relief covered hallway. We passed mahogany trimmed ebony doorways, each with brass plaques designating room numbers. Behind each door was luxury accommodations unlike anything Speed or I had ever seen in pony. Wander had, and her nervous trotting told me just how little she felt she deserved to be here, in a slice of pre-war heaven.
I knew I should have been impressed and awestruck by the Palace’s interior splendor, but to be honest… I was just way more thrilled to have gotten to ride a working elevator.
It made me feel like a bit of a jerk to not appreciate all of the work craftsponies had put into this building, but… Well, it was an elevator! It elevated me! Like, really well! Better than the Tenpony Tower elevator, even!
I mean, that was probably because he had an active machine spirit who really liked to do elevator stuff… But that just made it more cool because he was all, “Hi friend!” and I was like “Hello!” and then he was like “Up or down? Is it up? I super wanna go up!” then the Prince pressed a button and ZOOM!
We, went, UP! We went up REALLY GOOD. He did such a good job! Really fast, no acceleration jolts, no bumps, I barely knew I was going up! I wish I had some oil for his pulleys or something. He deserved a treat!
“Hon… Sometimes, I swear I’ll never understand you.”
Heh, sorry dad. I know I’m being a bit of a silly filly, but there’s just something really awesome about well designed machines being happy to do their thing… I don’t think an organic will ever understand the pure joy of it.
“No, probably not,” Imaginary Dad agreed.
“Here we are, Suite Fourteen-oh-eight,” The Prince said as he stopped and unlocked the door before handing Wander the key. “You three are welcome to this suite for as long as you wish, and Miss Wander, should you desire, these rooms can be yours as in a home, fair payment for services rendered.”
“W— What services?” Wander stammered nervously, her tail lashing slightly.
Speed’s ears perked as she looked through the doorway. “Table! Dibs! I can work on my guns! YAY!” she exclaimed before bee-lining her way through the door with a happy eee.
Silverlight shook his head slightly. “She’s a simple mare, isn’t she? I mean that in only the best of ways, of course,” he said before turning to look Wander in the eyes. “Without you, this city would have fallen to ruin. You inspired me. The old regime was rotting away. It wouldn’t have lasted much longer, and without a leader this city and every opportunity it affords to the world would have become just so much ash and dust.”
“I— I just told you Pip’s story. I do that for every town I pass through at least once… It's not a big deal,” Wander murmured, taking a step back.
I winced and gestured for the Prince to stop. If he pressed her like this it would ruin my plan!
To my surprise, the Prince nodded and set his hoof on Wander’s shoulder. “Very well. I understand. I only wish for you to be comfortable, and so you shall be,” he let go of Wander, who immediately scooted into the room with a mildly panicked expression on her face.
Silver looked at me and nodded towards the room. “Would you like to freshen up a bit before I take you to the manufactorum?”
I shook my head. “No! I’d like to go on the elevator again sooner rather than later, actually.”
The Prince smiled and shook his head. “May I ask why?”
“Oh! Well, he’s awake, he loves his job, and is very very good at it! It’s just so nice to watch a happy machine enjoy its work,” I explained, leaving out the euphoric effect it had on other machine spirits…
He didn’t need to know about that.
The Prince’s ears perked. “It’s awake? I mean, he’s awake? I’ll have to hire a shaman to ensure we keep him happy… I have been told an awakened spirit is akin to a person in every way. Is this correct?”
I shook my head. “Not really? There’s plenty of things a mortal and spirit differ on, fundamentally speaking. Things one understands the other cannot, different ways of thinking… Treat them nicely, keep their physical form in good repair, thank them for their hard work, and that’s about all of them usually need… It’s not until you put one into something like a robot, marequin, or doll, that you get, well, an actual person out of a spirit.”
“Thank you for the advice,” he said with a little bow. “Perhaps you should tell your companions we will be returning within the hour?”
I nodded and trotted over to the door and peeked into the room. It was fairly large, and obviously a living room! I could see an open doorway to a nice kitchenette, a set of open doors which lead into a lovely bathroom with a shower stall and drying-archway visible through the door, and three closed doors which presumably led to bedrooms.
The living room featured a large table which Speed had dumped her weapons and tools on, and was already happily disassembling her chainsaw while cooing happily at it, like how Wander does when petting me before sexytimes, a large couch, a bookshelf stocked with comic books (presumably they didn't have enough text-only books for each room), and even a mini bar in one corner of the room.
This was in addition to the incredibly ritzy carpet, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, frescoes, and wall sconces, of course.
Wander was busy making a bee-line for the bathroom, incredulously enough stripping out of her cloak and jumpsuit on the way over, astonishingly not caring about the open door behind her!
I cleared my throat. “Um, girls? I’m going to go see the things with the Prince, call Her Highness, then be right back, okay?”
“Oh! Could I get some power tools please?” Speed asked with a little hopeful wing flutter.
“I”ll have some sent,” Silverlight promised. “Miss Wander, is there anything you—”
“Talk later! Shower!” Wander squeed in excitement as she slipped through the door and closed it.
Oh. Yes. That’s right, she had seemed really keen on one of those.
I closed the suite’s door and turned back towards the elevator with a smile. It was nice to see that as bucked up as her head was, she still felt like she deserved at least one nice thing.
Prince Silverlight cleared his throat. “S— So um… She’s Vinyl Scratch, huh?” he asked, seemingly flabbergasted.
I blinked and turned towards him with a frown. With how well Wander concealed her old identity, it made me uneasy to encounter somepony who knew her on sight… From just her mane and a bit of shoulder, at that.
“Yes,” I said, doing my best not to look alarmed. “How do you know? I mean, I knew she was famous, but that was centuries ago, and so little survived the balefire and the years.”
“Her posters are plastered all over the Off World Colonies theater,” Silverlight said as he shook the surprise from his frame with a few blinks “She was to be performing a concert there…”
“Oh,” I said with an understanding nod.
That was a reasonable explanation. I guess Wander had been right to avoid old world towers. She’d just been worried about the wrong one…
My plan had better work or Wander would be forced into being Vinyl again. But in a bad way.
He said seemingly in shock. “I— I think I understand her problem with being well known now.”
Not wanting to talk about her secret in the open I simply nodded. “Yes.”
Then I realized I should explain things to the Prince, because he probably didn’t understand completely. Wander was… complicated.
“Wander believes she doesn't deserve anything like her old life because she knew what the problem with her stable was and didn’t say anything because she assumed if she knew what the problem was, the engineering team must have known too.” I quickly summarized with a flick of my tail.
Silverlight whinnied and shook his head. “No! I— I— I understand that!” He said, still clearly in mild shock. “I understand her desire to conceal her identity; she makes it quite obvious she wishes to cut ties to her past self. It’s just… She’s supposed to be dead!”
I blinked. That is what was surprising?
The Prince’s jaw dropped slightly as I blinked in surprise. “Pip’s story!” he blurted. “Stable 23. When Pip is going through her room there in search of the records Homage asked her to seek out—”
“Pip finds no bones, nor mummified corpses, in Vinyl’s room,” I interrupted, offering an apologetic smile for my rudeness.
“Yes! But,” The Prince sighed in exasperation. “The Crusader Maneframe killed everypony in the Stable the night of the survival party, where Vinyl was scheduled to perform!”
“Yes…” I said with a sigh. “She left the Stable. As in, she exited it. It’s silly nopony thinks of that possibility, given just how frequently Stable Dwellers appear to have done so. After all, Red Eye was a Stable Dweller, and Pip’s story is about a pony many call The Stable Dweller. Leaving their Stables seems to be a thing at least one pony from each stable does, if you ask me.”
Silverlight raised a hoof in protest, but it faltered. A calculating look slipped across his face, creating a thick cloud of unease which forced me to take a step back. Then he nodded and the tension vanished. “Yes… You’re correct. Wastelanders would have heard legends of Stables, and possibly seen their doors, but after centuries, nopony other than ghouls would have ever known what a Stable Suit looked like. They are not dissimilar from police, firefighter, and sports uniforms… But everypony knows what one is. Even before Pip became famous, ponies knew she was a Stable Dweller because they recognised her jumpsuit. It must be common for ponies to leave Stables.”
“Right?” I said with a happy smile. “The logic is undeniable.”
“Yes, but not intuitive,” Silverlight said as he nodded to himself. “You’ve got an interesting head on your shoulders, Miss Gears.”
I smiled shyly and rocked from hoof to hoof. “Oh, well… To be honest it’s pretty much empty,” I admitted.
The Prince laughed and shook his head. “I see Wander is not the only pony with self esteem issues… Come, we should make haste. It’s late enough as is… Would you rather we wait until morning to make the call?”
I shook my head. “No need. She will want to hear this right away, and on my last call home I learned there’s… A conflict brewing. I believe she would welcome being woken up in the middle of the night for an alliance, and I doubt she is in bed quite yet.”
“Then, we shall make haste,” Silverlight said as he began to quick-trot down the hallway.
We galloped in silence to the elevator, where the Prince pressed the call button only to pause and ask allowed, “Please pick me up, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I smiled. While unnecessary, it was nice to see somepony ask nicely allowed. Silly mortal. The call button is please! Well, for him. For me it’s giving me an envelope or parcel that I can translocate for them.
The elevator arrived moments later, the doors opening with that same happy ding as before, sure enough, the moment I stepped inside…
<Hi, Mailmare!>
Hello, Elevator!
<Is it time to go down now? Is it?!>
Yes! But wait for the pony to push the button.
<Awww, but he’s being so slow! It’s been three hundred whole microseconds since you two got in and I want to down! Down is the best direction.>
Silverlight cleared his throat. “I have been informed you’re alive, Elevator. I am glad to hear you enjoy your service. Would you kindly take us to the fourth level of the basement?”
<YAY! Down!> The elevator’s spirit exclaimed before we were plunged into a rapid descent.
“Thank you, Elevator,” the Prince said with surprising calm.
I couldn’t help but grin. If only I got to experience the full effect of performing my primary function… It had been a while since I was puppy levels of happy.
Actually, come to think of it, I stopped being that happy about delivering mail when I lost my postmare’s hat…
I need a new hat.
And it would be nice to deliver an actual address parcel instead of these free-form at my discretion radios. I mean, what kind of mail is that, anyways?
☢★★◯★★☢
I’d expected Elevator would take us directly to the replicators. I was wrong. Instead the 4th level of the basement opened up into a large wood paneled entry hall lined with red banners. Silverlight and I walked for nearly three minutes before reaching a simple wooden door, behind which was a metal staircase descending deep into a very smoothly queried passageway through the bedrock. We climbed down three more flights of steps before we reached the door.
The Stable door.
It was the second biggest door I had ever seen, second only to the troop landing platform door of my old ship. The colossal gear-shaped blast door was open, preventing me from seeing the number on the door, but a banner hung over the entrance told me everything I needed to know.
Stable-Tec welcomes Los Pegasus’ High Rollers to Stable 118!
“What was the experiment?” I asked as we stepped out of the hewn rock room and into the warmly lit, rubber floored, concrete walled, metal roofed bunker that was Stable 118.
“It appears to have been to see if greed was the issue at hoof,” Silverlight remarked as we walked inside. “Ponies typically gambled to become wealthy. The replicators can provide infinite wealth. There were plenty of game machines in the Stable, as well as tables for other forms of gambling. The Stable Dwellers eventually decided the only things of value within the Stable were the replicators themselves, and as everything else was worthless…”
“They fought over them,” I sighed in irritation.
“Indeed they did. There were only six survivors who chose to leave the Stable, whereupon, the Corporations took control of the replicators.”
Silverlight led me through the oddly quiet, distressingly blandly decorated bunker, following illuminated glass signs which directed us to the engineering section, then the replicator room. The final pressurized hydraulic door opened to reveal a huge room, easily bigger than anything other than an airship hangar.
The room was filled with four dozen huge machines. They were all identical, or at least, had been. Big bus sized dome-like metal shells, every side studded with a large chunk of enchanted crystal, save for one side upon which a conveyor belt and door sat, ready to extract material from the interior.
Many of the machines were obviously broken. Cracked housings. Blackened scorch marks. Shattered crystals. One was a pile of parts which looked like I’d gotten to shoot it back in my battleship days, its walls also draped in memorials to the dead. Others appeared fine, but were not active or in use.
Atop each machine sat a Hooves Coil, which would presumably have once collected magical energy from a complex series of ambient magic collectors set into the roof of the room, and likely also built into the layers of the rock above to tap directly into a layline. I questioned why not directly wire the replicators into the collector’s network for a moment, but then I saw the nearly two hundred unicorns gathered around thirteen of the replicators.
They were sending rays of their own magic into the coils on the top, fuling them with their own power.
“When did the collectors die?” I asked curiously as I looked up into the mess of cables, crystals, and arcane circuitry.
“The original power supply?” Silverlight asked curiously.
I nodded. “The Arcane Collector, yes.”
“You know what it’s called,” He asked with a joyous twinkle in his eyes.
“Yes. We use these for powering small machines… This is much, much larger than I have ever seen, and far more complicated, but it is an Arcane Collector, it’s probably tapped right into a layline. You can’t power more than a water heater or some lights off ambient magic alone without being on one.”
Silverlight sighed in relief. “Miss Gears… I believe this is the beginning of something truly wondrous… Allow me to prove the devices work.”
The Prince trotted to the edge of the catwalk the door opened onto and cleared his throat. “Good evening, my friends!” Silverlight called the unicorns below. “This young mare is a foreign dignitary whose people possess the technical knowledge to assist our restoration efforts. Is it possible to show her a matter replication instance at this time?”
An excited buzz filled the room as workers began to talk to each other for a moment, then somepony called, “We’re almost ready to make some gold, sir!”
Silverlight’s head turned to face the speaker and he smiled. “Excellent, we will be right down, Please wait for us.”
He then turned to me and gestured towards the stairs. “Mares first.”
“Thank you,” I trotted down the steps and waited for Sivlerlight at the landing before following him to the machine.
Up close, I could see the outer housing of the machine included etched arcane circuitry. The housings themselves… Well, not housings. This was open circuitry. Nopony would make a finished design like this. These devices were prototypes, meant to be worked on over time and have the parts easily accessible.
Upside, that would make them easy to repair, and a ton easier to figure out how they were supposed to work.
Downside, it would be so easy that anypony could fix it with the manual and some basic knowledge of advanced matrix casting and enchantment. That meant if this Stable had contained any of the data for the replicators maintenance, it had been lost to time.
Problem: My machine-scenes told me the poor machine in front of me, while spirit free (likely due to the aura around it being… unsettling), was functioning on little more than prayers, dreams, and the will of the unicorns powering it. It needed maintenance, desperately. I wanted to give the poor thing a hug.
“You there,” Prince Silverlight said, drawing my attention away from the degraded circuitry.
The Prince was looking at a younger mare who was missing her rear left leg from the knee down, and balancing on a simple metal peg-leg. Barely balancing. The poor thing looked so unsteady on her hooves that she had to be drunk, sick, or about to face-plant into the ground and snore where she stood.
The mare poked her own barrel with a hoof and nearly fell over. Two of her friends caught her and helped her up as she stammered. “M— Me, your highness?”
“Who is your manager?” Silverlight asked.
The work group pointed to a tall, jade furred stallion one machine over. The Prince turned to me, gesturing for me to wait there, stomped over to the stallion, and launched into a five minute lecture/scolding hybrid about worker safety that made everypony in the room scootch away form the scene…
It was terrifying. His voice was raised, but not by very much. He never once swore as far as I could tell. His eyes remained fixed on the manager’s the entire time he lectured, speaking of duty, honor, leadership, and compassion like an upset mother would to her foal who did not yet understand the need for such things.
Perhaps even more cold and seething than the lecture, the moment Silverlight finished the reprimand he stared into the manager's eyes until the manager looked down in shame. Then, and only then, did the Prince walked back over to the exhausted mare and gave her a gentle hug.
“Go home,” he ordered. “Don’t come back for three days, four if you need the extra day. Your lost wages will come out of his pay. Don't argue, it’s obvious you’re about to drop dead form mana burn,” the Prince cleared his throat. “As for the rest of you… Shame on you! Do not allow managers to push any of your coworkers anywhere close to where she is! If anypony is about to burn out, they go home. The Old Days are over. Understood?”
“Yes, your majesty!” the entire room chorused, seemingly relieved.
The exhausted mare began to hobble away. Silverlight but glanced at a pony near her and nodded, and the stallion he looked at immediately went to help the mare walk.
The Prince closed his eyes tightly, snorted angrily and then sighed and turned to me. “I must apologize for that… They cannot push the replicators, so they push themselves… and often died, under the old management. Our nation needs long term growth and stability, not short term gain at the cost of its most precious resource!”
I nodded and coughed into my hoof. “We have the same problem with powering an environmental shield around our capitol. I hope your wall of the fallen is shorter than ours.”
Silverlight looked down in shame for a long moment. “I doubt it is… What is your shield for? The cold? Can you not create heaters?”
I shook my head quickly. “Oh no! We can make heaters. If it was a simple cold we could deal with it just fine. The problem is… Spirits. Windigo, to be precise. They really want to eat our Queen, and after eating her they would devour everypony else in Pomare if they ever got inside. Being weather spirits, the shield is impermeable to them.”
Silverlight nodded and smiled. “Well, then once our machines are able to be fully utilized, we shall have to see about creating a proper power supply for your shield! But for now, can we create a gold block, friends?”
One of the remaining workers looked up at a small console attached to the side of the replicator, and nodded. “Yes, sir! One gold block coming right up.”
I tilted my head to one side. “Is there any particular reason—”
The stallion at the console pulled a lever. Bolts of bright blue mana raced through the replicator’s exposed circuitry, illuminating the inconceivably complex patterns within the metal before reaching the crystals. The Crystals filled with mana, glowing brighter and brighter. The off putting aura around the machine blossomed into a brilliant flower of mixed magical schools, like a sea of controlled chaos which grew ever more complex, threatening got burst and—
The machine dinged cheerfully. The conveyor belt hummed to life, and a cube of pure gold a meter across whirred out of the machine.
“— it has to be a block…” I finished quietly, thoroughly terrified about what I just saw.
“Heh!” One of the workers chuckled. “Check it out, same face the last zebra made!”
“Because it will only make one meter cubes no matter what you set it to for volume, but the mass can be anything you specify… You need to be very careful about what you set it to or there will be... problems,” Silverlight answered casually. “I take it you also have concerns over the… admittedly chaotic spell matrix?”
“YES!” I shouted.
“I assure you, unicorns also sense it. We are aware of how it appears, though the effect is stable in spite of the chaos,” Silverlight stated with a soothing smile.
One of the workers nodded. “It probably only works because it is chaos magic.”
I gulped and looked at the replicator. It didn't feel evil, or dangerous… Now that I had seen it work, it just reminded me too much of the Spirit Realm. These devices were imitating the primordial chaos with unicorn magic to conjure stable materials. At least, that’s what a very bad shaman thought… Wait a minute.
I closed my eyes tightly for a moment and looked inwards, directing some of my magic towards Jasmine’s soul. Jasmine! Are these safe to use?
<While very dangerous, with the machine as damaged as it is, based on the aura, my knowledge of Chaos Magic, and what I know of pony enchanting, it’s safe… But if the machine is too damaged it could overload and explode. Which they know full well, given the shrapnel pile and grave markers over there.> Jasmine signed back after a few moments. <Mom could probably fix one of these with a few months of study. I wouldn’t make any judgment calls until we see one in good condition make something. But, given how Los Pegasus is still here and not one big patch of wild magic, and they have been using these things without any proper maintenance for centuries… I’d say they are pretty safe.>
Thanks, Jasmine.
<No problem, Gears.>
I stopped pushing magic at her, letting her fade back into my subconscious how she liked… It would be kind of nice to have her with me all the time. But, well, everypony prefers certain things.
“Well… If we had a sample of arcanite, we could manufacture proper Ferrier Cages,” Silverlight admitted. “Everypony, well done! Please ensure the gold arrives at the roofer’s promptly. It’s possible we could soon have a visit… From Princess Cadence’s daughter.”
The excited buzz the Prince’s statement ignited followed us as we left the workroom. It made me feel like I’d done something important.
☢★★◯★★☢
I’d always wondered what it would have been like to visit Canterlot and see Celestia upon her throne. I never thought I’d get the chance. Now I had half the answer to that question.
The Palace’s throne room was a faithful recreation even the very smallest details recorded in history books. Every tile in each stained glass window was where it needed to be to recreate the depiction of the given ancient heroes precisely. Every coloum’s decorative carvings were inlaid with gold, not a leaf, flower, or thorn out of place as far as I could see.
And I could see. Silverlight was proud of his people’s work. He took out a scrapbook of reference pictures to go through it with me as he showed off the throne room.
The golden throne with the rising sun as the backrest was perfect. The gold embroidered red carpet leading to the throne’s dais was prefect. The way the crystal lamps shone down to create the illusion of sunlight falling across the throne room, putting shadows exactly where the reference pictures had shadows, was perfect.
The only difference in the entire throne room was the addition of a single new stained glass window. This one depicted Littlepip, Calamity, Velvet, Steelhooves, and Xenith with everypony clustered around Pip who was rendered as an unconscious angel laying atop a sarcophagus-like bed.
Something told me Homage would prefer this depiction over the Pipite’s… Even if it would make her cry.
Then again, it was hard to cry in this room. It felt warm, and loving. It felt like I was home, and mom was nearby, in one of her more lucid moments, and she wanted to talk about her latest invention.
I’d been so shocked at the obvious care and precision which had gone into recreating Celestia’s throne room, as well as the soothing feeling of calm it possessed, that I missed Sliverlight’s first question.
“Huh? I’m sorry… What was that?” I asked with a sheepish smile.
Silverlight returned the smile. “Do you think she would like it?” He asked hopefully.
“Who? Her Highness?” I asked with a tilt of my head.
“No,” he chuckled. “Princess Celestia. Do you think she’d like it?”
I thought for a moment, then nodded. “It’s almost exactly how she left it… Aside from a window she would have had built. I can’t see how she wouldn’t.”
Silvelright sighed in relief. “Thank goodness. We worked so hard on it. This… This is not my throne. It’s hers.”
I nodded in understanding. “A monument.”
“Yes,” Silverlight said after a sad pause.
A sad pause which he cut short. He smiled at me. “Well, no matter. I believe you have a radio for me, miss Gears… I hope it wasn’t crushed under that grenade launcher of yours.”
I giggled and shook my head. “Of course not! I know how to wear a bag and a gun properly.”
I reached into my saddlebag, opened the hardcase, and removed a radio for the Prince. “Here you are. And here’s your letter.”
“Excellent,” Silverlight said as he took everything with his teleknetic grip, opened the letter, and began to set up the radio.
After a few moments he cleared his throat and pressed the transmit button. “Good night, your Highness Queen Katydid. I am Prince Silverlight of Los Pegasus. I apologize for the late hour of my call, but I have been told your situation is dire and you might prefer an alliance now rather than at dawn. Over.”
The radio crackled and hissed. No replay came.
The Prince frowned and looked at the note. “Did it set it to the correct frequency and modulation?”
“Give her a few minutes,” I prompted. “It is late.”
“Yes, but surely she has messengers or scribes attending the radio.”
I shook my head. “No, these ones are for her personal channels.”
“I see…” The Prince frowned. “In that case, perhaps we should wait until morn—”
“Good evening, Prince Silverlight,” Queen Katydid said, sounding quite fatigued. “Please know that I am most anxious to speak with you, especially as I am seeking a trade deal and you propose an alliance. However, my kingdom is currently besieged and a rare respite has presented itself in which I might be able to rest for a time. So, unless you are nocturnal, I would very much prefer to converse at da—”
I jumped forward and took hold of the radio’s hoofset and pressed Transmit. “Your Highness! He has a magical means of producing a semi-infinite amount of anything!”
Her Highness was silent for several long moments. “Well look at that, it’s dawn,” Queen Katydid said. “Over.”
I leaned over to Silverlight and whispered. “It’s actually always day up there this time of year.”
The Prince cleared his throat. “Thank you, Miss Gears. Your Highness, I am in desperate need of your nation’s technical expertise inorder to retain the ability to produce the materials your courier mentioned. I have allowed her to witness the creation of a cubic meter of gold so she can confirm we do indeed possess working replication technology. Why don’t we begin with your immediate problem… What precisely is besieging you, and could you spare a large troop transport? I cannot allow the knowledge your people possess to be lost, the restoration of Equestria itself depends on it!”
“Please, fill us in from the beginning, Prince Silverlight,” Queen Katydid asked.
☢★★◯★★☢
The Prince and the Queen spoke for nearly an hour… An hour in which I learned what had been going on at home while I was away.
The Enclave Remnants had made their move. Pomare was currently surrounded by power armored troops, and supplies were extra scarce. A few different skirmishes had been fought but so far Pomare’s defences were holding out well. Her Majesty's airship’s guns proved to be able to hold the Enclave back well enough.
Unfortunately, not enough supplies could be airlifted into the town to keep everypony as happy as they were when I had left… The Enclave’s main goal also seemed to be to reach mom’s library.
Fortunately, they were also doing something in the Crystal City ruins. Our scouts had discovered the actual bulk of their forces were trying to breach the monster's lair and take the city proper. They didn’t know why yet, and the changeling spies inserted into the Enclave were too low in rank to know why.
The weirdest thing though, in Silverlight and my opinion, was the power armored troops the Enclave were fielding. I hadn’t thought about it before, but… The Enclave had been a pegasus only faction. The power armor troops they had were mostly earth ponies, with only a scattering of pegasi in their scorpion tailed lightweight power armored suits.
Something wasn’t as it seemed… But that hardly mattered when they were shooting at our soldiers!
Fortunately…
“It’s settled then,” Silverlight said with a firm nod. “As soon as your airship arrives I will have a full Wall board with orders to defer to your command.”
“How many soldiers is a “wall” precisely?” Queen Katydid asked curiously.
“Four companies, totaling roughly four hundred ponies,” Silverlight said.
“Will that not leave you vulnerable?”
“It is a significant percentage of our forces, but should the Enclave attack us again, without air support this time, well… It wouldn't be the first time every mare, stallion, and foal of Las Pegasus picked up a gun to protect their city. More to the point, nothing would leave us more vulnerable than allowing the potential Lith represents to fall into the hooves of the Enclave.”
“Then we are agreed… and I shall have to dispatch three airships… This will leave us vulnerable, but with your reinforcements we are certain to be able to secure Pomare,” Katydid said decisively. “I will have them bring you some of our technicians. I need most of them here for now, but we will do our best to at least learn how your replicators work, if not mend them. I have full confidence they will be able to at least discover how to maintain them. All of them maintain our shield generator, after all…”
“Good. And as discussed, I will ensure each of my soldiers is carrying two weeks of rations. I will be happy to supply food if we can ensure regular cargo flights.”
“We’ll discuss that after Pomare is safe,” Katydid paused a moment. “Oh! Yes! I nearly forgot… I made a deal with an individual by the name of Homage. Do you know of her?”
My ears perked at the mention of Homage's name. “Did we find out what’s wrong with Pip?!” I asked hopefully.
“We have,” Her Highness confirmed.
Silverlight’s eyes widened. “I take it you were asked by Miss Homage to look into Little Pip’s failing health… If you have a cure for her, I will gladly safeguard it!”
“Because that will give you more leverage over the NCR, right?” I asked casually.
Silverlight sputtered. “Well, yes… I do still need to speak with Spike, and he’s the only way to Pip, as well as Celestia.”
Queen Katydid gasped. Something heavy fell on the other end of the radio. “Uncle Spike is alive?!”
Silverlight blinked. “Oh! Of course. One of you is Flurryheart. Yes, your goduncle is indeed alive and well… It’s a shame you couldn’t come down here. They wouldn’t dare stop you from visiting him.”
“They won’t stop me even if they do dare to try,” Katydid laughed darkly. “I have been without any family for centuries… Aside from Gears. You’ve done a wonderful job by the way, Gears. Better than I had dreamed, assuming nothing throws a wrench in this… Ah yes! Pip’s “cure”. It’s not a cure, it’s a doctor. Her diagnosis is grim, but if we can get this particular surgeon to her, he can cure her.”
“What is wrong with her?” Silverlight and I asked together.
“It’s quite simple. We were looking at exotic issues first due to her lifestyle as reported by Homage during our chats,” Katydid chuckled. “I had to take my personal surgeon out of stasis to ask him to make sense of the gobbledygook we had theorized…”
Katydid cleared her throat. “Believe it or not, the data from the SPP pod’s medical systems, combined with Pip’s symptoms as far as we can hear them, and the simple fact that she has been laying down for almost the entirety of the last decade and a half makes her condition quite clear. Pulmonary edema by way of a pulmonary embolism with complications from lead poisoning.”
“I beg your pardon?” Silverlight asked with a confused tilt of his head.
“I also don’t know what that is,” I remarked with an apologetic blush.
“Well, certain factors we can see indicate she has a bullet in her somewhere and the lead content of it is slowly killing her. This is mostly counteracted by her regenerative abilities, but not entirely. The same goes for the blood clot which formed in her leg, well, most likely a leg. Regardless, she got a major clot because she has been laying down forever, which then detached form the location it formed and migrated into one of her lungs, where it’s causing her to drown in her own blood via a major blockage, hence coughing. Normatly, a pulmonary edema kills within hours, a day at most, but the SPP pod’s does perform a temporal dilation and pseudo-stasis. Due to this, she’s lasted for nearly five years in this state… Unfortunately, she will not last much longer. A month is the worst case scenario. We need to operate within a month, or she’ll die… and I do not think we want to find out what happens when a mare plugged into a weather machine starts to die.”
“Huh…” I said with a little frown.
It was so… simple. I’d expected some kind of curse or whatever mutation caused her to gain her regenerative powers was causing her to die without rads. But… No. Apparently you really shouldn’t just lay down in one spot for years on end. Especially not with a bullet in you.
“I will house your doctor until we can get a meeting with Spike. If you have personal contact with Homage, I urge you to get her in contact with me. She knows where his cave is,” Silverlight pressed with a hopeful look.
“I will do so immediately. She’s always up this time of night. I swear she doesn't sleep…” Her highness commented. “Miss Gears, as for you… While this is a big enough win, I want you to deliver a radio to the Herd’s leaders in Oak Valley. I need to hear their side of the NCR/Herd divide story even though your mission has otherwise succeeded.
“Aside from that, I want you to remain in Los Pegasus under Silverlight’s command as my trusted liaison until we can formally cement our alliance. Understood?”
I nodded twice. “Yes, your Highness.”
“What’s more, when it comes time to meet Spike… I need you to go in my stead. Not as my Courier, nor as my subject, but as my niece. Go tell Uncle Spike that Flurry is alive, she desperately wants to see him, and she’s trapped by windigos and the Enclave or she’d be there herself right now.”
“So, you want him to come charging in like a knight in shining armor?” I asked with a little blush at this rare glimpse into Katydid’s more vulnerable side.
“No? Why would I want him to rush in like dad’s coltfriend?” Katydid said with a confused little chitter. “OH! You meant the expression. Yes. Like that. Not the other way. That would be messy.”
Wow! I’d gone years without that happening, then twice in one day. Statistics, what are you?!
Silverlight cleared his throat. “Your Highness, perhaps you should get some rest now that a reinforcement plan has been hashed out.”
“Yes. Yes I should. I shouldn’t have thought she meant Platinum Knight and my father… They were a tasty couple! Also adorable, and lucky Mom liked threewa— Uh…” Her Highness trailed off with an embarrassing squeak. “I seem to be hungry as well as tired. I should find a meal… My airships will arrive within five days. It shouldn’t take more than one for them to return. It will take time to slip three vessels through the Enclave’s notice. Good day, and good luck!”
The radio clicked as her highness ended the transmission. Silverlight shivered and looked over to me with worry and disgust. “I— I believe she implied she is a cannibal. I— I don't suppose you can confirm or deny this?”
I giggled. “No, you silly! She’s a changeling, and a pony. She eats emotion too. Her changeling half must have tailed Flurry’s father for snacking reasons before they were merged.”
Silverlight sighed in relief. “Right! She is. Yes. Thank Celestia!”
I nodded twice. “Yeah! Don’t worry about eating ponies. That’s a major crime in Lith.”
“As it should be,” Silverlight agreed before clearing his throat. “Now! Your Queen ordered you to make a radio delivery to Oak Valley. While you are there, since you are The Machine, the greatest mailmare of them all… Would you mind picking up a high risk package for me?”
My ears perked. “Package?”
He nodded. “Indeed. A high risk package which I attempted to have delivered once before, only for the book to be stolen, recovered, and returned to the library in Oak Valley. Nopony has been willing to try picking it up for me since the incident a month ago. Since you will be there, and are certainly capable, if you pick it up and deliver it to me—”
I trotted over to Silverlight and eagerly looked him in the eyes. “It’s an actual package? Addressed, stamped, and paid for with postage in need of delivery by an actual postal worker?!”
He nodded slowly a frown forming on his muzzle. “Yes… M— May I ask why you are so… aroused, right now?”
“I accept!” I squeed as I gave Silverlight a hug which probably made him glad he was still in his power armor.
“Oh! Well, good?” Silverlight said with an uncomfortable wince. “It’s a very important spellbook. One of a kind. It must not be lost or damaged. It is critical I have it before I talk with Celestia. And that may at last happen soon.”
“Express delivery! Understood!” I said with the biggest smile ever.. Then blinked as I realised I had meant to ask the Prince something. “Oh! Um, right… Can I ask a small favor?”
“Of course. Deliver the spellbook to me and you can have anything you like,” Silverlight said matter of factually.
I could get more mail! No! No that’s dumb… I could get a hat!
“Oh! Uh, no. Not that. We have a rate schedule for these sorts of things, although I’d like a replacement hat,” In truth, I hadn’t really given a buck about the possibility of payment.
It was a package! That I could deliver! To an actual known address! That’s almost as good as getting to shoot a very big gun!
But for now… Help marefriend!
“Actually, I just wanted to know if there were any ghouls in town who were alive pre-war and also lived through the Corporation's rule of Los Pegasus,” I said to the Prince.
“Yes, there are a few who are able to speak still… Most lost their tongues,” Silverlight admitted sadly. “Why do you ask?”
Wow! Every little detail he slipped in about this city’s history was just the worst possible thing…
I put on my best serious face, which was hard because I was going to deliver proper mail soon!
“Well, I want to see if one would be willing to talk to Wander and see if they can convince Vinyl to come back,” I said with a smile. “See… I think she just needs to know what she helped to stop. She doesn't really have context, you know?”
Silverlight smiled slowly. “I know just the pony for the job…”
☢★★◯★★☢
Half an hour later, I returned to Suite 1408. In spite of having a key, I knocked. After all, I had a guest with me.
The pegasus ghoul behind me had once been quite the handsome stallion. What remained of his fur was a shimmery blue. One of his eyes had a horrible knotty scar across it, the other one was a piercing shade of purple. A cigar was clamped between his teeth, and while I hadn’t seen him switch cigars, I swear he’d gone through six on the way over. The stallion was always smoking, his tattered Equestrian Guard uniform reeked of tobacco.
I don’t even know where the buck he got the tobacco… Silverlight had quietly told me they didn’t have a tobacco sample.
Did… Did he just have cigars hidden everywhere in advance or something?
Wander opened the door after the sixth knock. I could see her fur was wet, and that she had tossed her cloak on to conceal herself as best she could, having obviously still been taking what must have turned into a Princess grade shower to make up for centuries without one.
“Didn’t the Prince give you a key?” Wander asked me irritably. “The water doesn't get cold, Gears! It Doesn't. Get. Cold! You can come along, but I am going to go back to my shower n—”
I cleared my throat and stepped aside slightly. “I ran into a pony who wants to talk to you, hon.”
Wander’s eyes widened slightly as she noticed the ghoul beside me. “Oh, um… Okay. Hello. I’m Wander. You really don’t need to thank me or anything. I didn’t do—”
The ghoul extended a hoof, not to shake but to offer Wander a salute. “Commander Solemn Creed, 8th Neighdian Guard, at your service, Ma’am… May we talk?”
Wander blinked, squinted at him for a moment, then sputtered, her ears perking enough to lift her hood. “W— Y— You’re—”
“The very same stallion to save this city once before, who supervised the Normane Landing, and many other battles. Yes. I know what I did before the end,” he said, nodding to the room. “May I come in?”
Wander stepped aside immediately. Creed trotted inside and took a seat on the couch. “Please face me when you speak. I’m afraid I am deaf, but I read lips very well.”
Wander nodded and trotted over to sit on the floor across from him. “I’m not sure why you want to talk to me… Is there a song you’d like to hear? Well, feel? I know plenty of deaf ponies like my music because they could feel it.”
Creed shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I thought I’d tell you a story. You go around telling stories to so many ponies I imagine it’s been awhile since you’ve heard one yourself.”
Wander frowned and looked over at me suspiciously. “Um… Sure… What is it?”
Creed leaned forwards and steeped his hooves to look Wander in the eyes. “Think back to just before the Ministries… Do you recall Our Town?”
Wander frowned, pursed her lips, mmmed for a moment, then her tail perked. “Right! That was the border village some cult took over, wasn’t it? Didn’t the EUP have to go in and retake the town by force? I’m pretty sure that was a media circus.”
“It was,” Creed agreed with a sharp nod. “You remember how pre-ministry Equestrians were about violence, pacifists to the core. Not the stupid kind. No, we used to only fight to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and our homes.”
Wander nodded in agreement. “Yeah… I figured whatever happened there had to be just… horrible. Especially since the Elements couldn’t solve it.”
“It was,” Creed said with another nod. “Good. You remember how we were… Our Town had been taken over by a group of militant fascists lead by a mare by the name of Starlight Glimmer. She believed in the subjugation of everypony through equalization. That everypony should be forced to be the same. Not just by preventing ponies from seeking education, or other things like that. No… She used dark magic to rip ponies cutiemarks away.”
I sputtered in shock and disgust. Wander growled and shook with rage.
“WHAT?!” She demanded as she jumped up. “BUT THAT WOULD—”
“Gouge out a chunk of their soul, yes,” Creed spat. “She knew. She wanted that. She didn’t want to risk anypony being special or different… Anypony but her. She was so powerful, and cunning, that she managed to trick the Bearers into allowing her to remove their cutiemarks. This prevented them from using the Elements to stop her.”
Creed adjusted his position on the couch. “I was a corporal then. Princess Celestia sent us to the town when Twilight and her friends had been out of contact for a week on their mission. We figured we were all dead. If the Elements couldn't stop whatever was happening, how could some ponies with those old single shot rifles that couldn't hit a can at twenty paces?
“Well… Turns out that’s what was needed… We walked into the village by way of the north. I fell into a mass grave, Wander. Anypony who refused to follow her even after their mark was stripped from them, who resisted her torture, brainwashing, and crude mind control? They were killed.
“We walked into a town filled with terrified ponies. They did everything Starlight said because if they didn’t they knew what she’d do. They couldn't stop her. Not even if they had their marks. That mare was a wizard on par with Celestia herself. She annihilated my entire platoon in a matter of moments, grinning as she killed them, taking every opportunity to mock our values, to put us down. To insist the reason we couldn’t stop her was because we were not equal.”
Creed’s lips parted in a wicked smile. “For all her power, for all her cunning… She miscounted. She thought there had been sixteen of us. Nope. There had been seventeen. She dropped her shield. I put a bullet in the back of her head, then another, and another, followed by my bayonet.
“Remember, Wander, this wasn’t me now. This wasn’t me during the Great War. This was me during the halcyon days of Celestia’s rule. I was just as peace loving and kind hearted as anypony else back then. As the poor bastards living in Our Town had to have been once… Keyword: Once!”
Wander shivered. “You’re about to tell me something beyond horrible, aren't you?”
“You’re a smart mare,” Creed laughed. “The minute Starlight’s corpse hit the ground, the ponies she had subjugated fell upon her loyal agents and ripped them limb from limb. They pulled their legs off. They smashed their heads into the cobbles ‘til their brains came out. Before I could even try to bring things to any kind of order, three of them set Starlight’s body on fire, screaming they had to destroy her before she came back.”
“Picture as clearly as you can what horrors it would take a Celestia-era pony living through to make them do that… and never regret it. For them to spend the rest of their lives worrying they hadn't killed her hard enough. That one dark night, she’d appear in their bedroom, and rip their mark away again… I shudder to think what would have happened if Twilight and her friends had seen it… If they hand’t been locked in that torture shack… The power they got later… Nopony who saw any of what happened was quite sane afterwards. Not even me. Getting our cutiemarks back didn’t help.”
Wander winced and curled in on herself. “I— I have an idea… What are you getting at? What’s the moral of this story?”
Creed leaned back on the couch, took his cigar out of his mouth and tipped off the ashes. “The moral of the story? Hold on to just how bad you think living in Our Town was. It’s your measuring stick. We’ll call Our Town under Starlight’s rule a one on the fascist regime scale. I’m going to introduce you to the two through ten on this scale. I’m going to tell you the story of what you inspired ponies to fight back against. Including me. The pony who put an end to Equestira’s first fascist, a war hero who faced the worst Zebrica had to offer, and who was too scared of the Corperations to ever raise a hoof against them… Until you inspired a young sex slave named Silverlight with the story of a real life hero who had once been a nopony.”
☢★★◯★★☢
“... Then you came along. The Corporations had squandered so much that they were finally at a point where their reign could be toppled. They’d rotted almost everything about our city to dust and slime. You told a story in a tavern. You dropped a match into an open container of oil.”
Creed paused to wave a hoof around the room. “All of this? Sure, we did the heavy lifting. Yes, Silver got our plots in gear and showed us the way. But you? You made him see the light. You gave him hope. Without you, none of this would have happened. Los Pegasus would have continued to rot, and by now it would have been just another ruin. Equestria wouldn’t have any chance of rising again from the ashes.
“But you did tell that story. You started this fire, and if your sense of karmic balance doesn't count the liberation of tens of thousands who were given the drive to try and do something about the Tartarus pit out there… Well, then I’ll be quite upset my filly idolized you.”
Wander stared silently at Creed like she and I had for the entire story. The two centuries of pointless cruelty, terror, torture, sadism, unchecked greed, backstabbing, and just… evil… The place he described. The suffering.
It was beyond words. He’d lived it, and I couldn’t even find the words to explain it. I don’t think anypony else could have summarized the evil which had claimed so many souls in this city.
That’s all he’d given us. A summary. A summery which included things like the rulers of the city punishing a mare by raping her until she had a foal, and forcing her to kill it with her bare hooves, or they would kill her older children and everypony who lived on the same floor as her.
I… I didn’t even want to think about that ever again. Or anything else which had happened here… I imagine Creed only agreed to talk about them for Vinyl’s sake…
Creed quietly reached into the breast pocket of his coat and held his hoof there. “I have something for you… They aren’t yours. They’re my filly’s. Replicas. She also had Irlen syndrome. Needed the same color you did. It made you her hero.”
Creed took a pair of purple colored sunglasses out form his coat pocket. They were obviously old, but well preserved, definitely lovingly cared for. He held them out to Wander. “Wander… Wander’s more than made up for any sins Vinyl made.”
Wander stared at the glasses for a few minutes. I kept thinking Creed would put them back in his coat and walk away, but he continued to hold them out.
“Yeah… Yeah she did,” Wander agreed.
Her horn glowed as she took the glasses from his hoof and slipped them on.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry that happened to everypony,” Vinyl said quietly.
Creed nodded. “Everypony is. But enough horribleness. The world’s done with that, you hear? We’re cleaning up this mess. Get out there and do your part.”
“I will,” Vinyl promised. She looked up at the old ghoul and smiled gently. “Thank you.”
Creed nodded. “Don't mention it… We don’t want to give some evil buckstain ideas.”
He stood up from the couch nodded to the two of us, and trotted out of the suite, closing the door behind him.
Vinyl immediately turned around and hugged me so tight I swear I felt my endoskeleton creak.
“Gears, I need about a thousand years of hugs until I forget the details of everything he just said.”
“Except the part about you being a good pony?” I asked hopefully.
Vinyl nodded. “Y— Yeah… I— I helped stop… that. Karma’s balanced.”
“Good,” I said as I hugged her so hard I was worried she’d need to regenerate some bone fractures. “Cuz I need about a thousand years of hugs till I forget all of that too!”
“Well, good thing we should be around long enough to do that,” Vinyl said as she cried into my shoulder.