June 16th, 1075
Mom’s been a lot less sad ever since Fluttershy visited and ever since yesterday she’s been really, really happy. She finally told me why during breakfast. I’m not supposed to tell anyone because she could get in trouble if it gets out early, but mom got a job as the Ambassador of Friendship to the Vhanna. I don’t know about the friendship part though. Nobody talks like that anymore. Well, except for Fluttershy and mom I guess. Still, it’s pretty awesome news! Once everything is official we’ll be moving to Canterlot! No more Ponyville, no more assholes at school and no more ignorant ponies trying to blame the Sugarcube Corner fire on us just because we’re striped. Goddesses, I can’t wait.
Oh, and apparently dad left us because he knew mom was going to get the job. He thinks she’s a zebra sympathizer, which isn’t exactly wrong, but I didn’t think he would hate her for joining the peace effort! Mom kepts telling me not to be angry at him, but how can I not be?! He’s supposed to be my DAD and not just another asshole like Sagebrush. Mom’s trying to help end the war! Why would he be so against that?
I don’t care what he thinks. I’m going out to the Everfree Forest to find some birch wood. I think if I’m careful, I might be able to carve a white rabbit for Fluttershy before we have to pack.
The fearful silence coming from the strange pegasus next to him was painful to listen to.
Latch checked his power armor’s heads-up display. He’d need to stop at the quartermaster today and replace his fusion core. Another one hundred caps out of his salary, and every one of them worth it to keep his armor running. Most Rangers had to put their names on a waiting list for the next available suit, and with how rare they were to find and repair, it was a long list. He’d had the good fortune to find his during a recon mission down at Hayseed Swamps. It was half-submerged in an irradiated bog and had cost half a year’s pay just to recruit enough ponies to drag it out of the mud, and another month’s wages for the Rad-Away treatments needed to counteract the rads he’d taken walking the old thing back to the Bluff, but it had paid itself back tenfold the first time it saved his life. The thought of it made him check his radiation meter: barely higher than the usual background levels.
There wasn’t anything on the HUD that he hadn’t already looked at a dozen times already this morning, but it was something to do that didn’t involve thinking about the pony he’d been ordered to escort out of the Stable. What she did after that was her business. The odds weren’t great that she’d survive, but he supposed by the look on her face that she already knew that.
He realized he was staring at her wings again and looked forward before she noticed. Between carrying her on his back to the clinic and washing her sick off his armor while she tried to sleep, he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to actually look at her. Of the few ponies who had the luck to see a pegasus up close, only a fraction of them knew what they were actually seeing. Dustwings, a term unaffectionately given to the few surviving pegasi to live outside the influence of the Enclave, were notoriously hard to find even when you were looking for them. And the Steel Rangers were always looking for them. Trouble was, the Enclave had a knack for finding them first.
Aurora Pinfeathers clearly wasn’t Enclave or a Dustwing. He still wasn’t sure what to make of a pegasus coming out of a Stable. That never happened. Stables were uncannily notorious for being reserved for the unicorns and earth ponies who didn’t have the luxury of literally living above it all. How did a pony born to fly live underground and not slowly go insane? He was an earth pony and even he didn’t think he could hack it in a Stable if he didn’t know he could walk outside and see the clouds. He shook his head. Pegasi were made of tough stuff.
The walk to the Stable door made him feel like an executioner leading a criminal to the gallows. Granted, they didn’t use those at the Bluff. Rope was expensive and unreliable. Bullets were cheap. Still, something about this didn’t sit well with him. Most ponies would be able to scrape by out in the wasteland for a little while without much trouble, but that was because those who were too weak or ill-equipped were already dead. The wasteland had no pity for a pony unprepared for it and each day was measured by one simple fact: you lived or you died. Aurora was fresh out of a Stable and was being sent out into the jaws of Equestria without so much as a skin of water to take with her.
Whatever his reasons were, it was unmistakable that Paladin Ironshod was setting her up to fail. He was grateful she couldn’t see him grimace behind his suit’s helmet.
If there was any doubt in his mind that she was from a Stable, she dispelled it when they passed over the threshold of the immense cog. Her body tensed as if she were bracing for something painful, and then she blew out a quiet breath on the other side. Latch frowned. He’d experienced enough traumas in his lifetime to know what a flashback looked like. This pegasus had more battle scars on her body than most Rangers had by the time they made Knight. A deep bite behind her right leg, a scabbed notch atop her ear and most recently a busted lip given to her by his commander while he was in one of his notorious flashes of rage. He wanted to ask her where she’d gotten the other wounds, but he suspected it wasn’t the best idea to start becoming familiar with a mare he was very likely sending to her death.
As he led her down the tunnel, he saw her look over her shoulder at something. Her eyes lingered and curiosity eventually got the better of Latch. He glanced back and saw what had grabbed her attention. The old poster of Fluttershy with her expertly honed sorrowful expression looked back at him, the words WE CAN DO BETTER chiding him.
He looked back down at Aurora and realized she was staring right at him. Her eyes were damp but the burning accusation behind them kept the tears from spilling over. There was a force of will behind that glare that he couldn’t help but be impressed by. The only other mare that could trick him into assessing his moral compass that quickly was his wife.
With Aurora trying to melt a hole through his helmet and the end of the tunnel and his assignment to her approaching quickly, he decided to break the tension with a question that had been bugging him since they arrived at the wall.
“Can I ask you something?” he said and was relieved to see some of the heat wear off of her glare. At least she was listening. “Why, of all things, did you try to convince us you were part of the Enclave?”
She flattened her ears and looked away, saying nothing. Judging by the tuck of her tail, Latch was willing to take her silence to mean she already understood how much danger she’d put herself and her friends in.
“Let me give you some advice,” he said, and pretended not to notice her mouthing Celestia dammit. “Don’t impersonate the Enclave.”
Aurora snorted under her breath. “Wow.”
Latch wrinkled his nose at the rebuke. Not far ahead of them, the tunnel opening widened. He considered just letting her go and leaving it up to her to figure out where the monsters of the world lived. It was tempting, given how absolutely stubborn this mare had been since minute one. His fellow Rangers wouldn’t blame him, either. But his wife…
He decided he preferred staying married.
“Come here,” he said.
Aurora shot him a wary look as he turned off the flagstones and walked toward the tunnel wall. After a brief hesitation she followed, drawing the curious eyes of the ponies who were only just noticing the pegasus in their midst. Latch stopped in front of one of the preserved prewar posters hanging on the high cinder block wall. He nodded greetings to the Aspirant Knight standing guard beneath it. The young Ranger clapped his right hoof against his chest in salute.
“Why don’t you take a ten minute break?” Latch said. To his credit, the younger stallion had good ears and read between the lines. He found somewhere else to be.
Latch waited until Aurora stood beside him and smiled when he saw her eyes already reading the poster in front of them. He looked up at the towering poster of Rainbow Dash and asked, “Do you know who that is?”
It was a dumb question, but then again he had never been great with subtlety. He watched as several emotions flashed across the gray mare’s face. Not the reaction he expected, but whatever got the ball rolling.
“Everyone knows who she is,” Aurora finally said.
Latch nodded. Rainbow Dash hung frozen in flight, dominating the center of the poster. A contrail of dazzling color traced a bold arc against the skyline of the Equestrian capital city of Canterlot. Printed in bold blue and yellow lettering in opposite corners of the poster read the slogan: TAKE FLIGHT! JOIN THE FIGHT!
“Do you know why this poster is intact and that one back by the door got shot to confetti?”
Aurora’s forehead creased and she looked at him impatiently. “I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.”
Latch sighed and looked up at the old poster. “We leave it up because she’s the one pegasus that we know of out of her entire ministry that didn’t turn traitor at the climax of the war. She’s a reminder that the Enclave formed in defiance of Loyalty itself, and it serves as assurance to Dustwings that the Steel Rangers are here to protect them.”
He winced inwardly at how much he sounded like his old recruiter just then, but Aurora didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She stared up at the poster like she’d just recovered a lost picture of an old relative. He frowned. Not the reaction he’d been going for, but it wouldn’t surprise him if all pegasi had a goddess complex with the long-dead Element of Loyalty.
When she spoke, all of the sting in her voice was replaced by something bordering on humility. “The Enclave betrayed her?”
The actuators in his helmet quietly hissed as he nodded. “Yep. Most of the Ministry of Awesome wasn’t involved, but enough of them got together and formed the Enclave as a contingency should the war go badly for Equestria. They made their own little shadow government within the ministry and used the war effort to build a small fleet of airships. As soon as the bombs dropped and Cloudsdale fell, the surviving members of the Enclave took their boats, choked the sky and left the rest of us to rot.”
He watched Aurora sit on the cold stone floor and wrap her tail around her flank. The shame on her face was plain to see. She had known some of this already. He lifted an armored foreleg and nudged her.
“Do you know what a Dustwing is?” he asked.
She looked up at him and gave him a noncommittal shrug.
“It’s what you are.” He pointed a hoof at the poster. “It’s what she is. Dustwings are the pegasi who live down here with the rest of us ground pounders, and they’re the ponies that the Enclave have hunted and killed since the day the war ended. The princesses died when Canterlot fell, but the sun and moon kept moving across the sky and the Enclave decided it meant they weren’t just an extension of the old government, but of the alicorn princesses themselves. They’ve been trying to elevate Equestria to the prestige it had before the war, but they’ve decided they can’t do that while pegasi still mingle with ghouls, mutants, and the rest of us.”
Aurora shook her head at the ground, unbelieving. “The rest of you meaning unicorns and earth ponies. They want to go back to the way Equestria was by killing two thirds of the ponies who used to live in it?”
Latch shrugged, a gesture that didn’t translate well in power armor. “Fanaticism doesn’t need to be consistent to be powerful. If enough ponies believe in it, then it must be true.”
The pegasi rubbed her foreleg where her Pip-Buck had once been. “And the pegasi that still live down here with you threaten that belief, and they hunt us for it.” She paused to soak that in. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you do,” he said, and her pained expression deepened as if he’d kicked her. He hastened to add, “If it’s any consolation, they haven’t made much progress with that goal.”
He turned away and began walking back toward the middle of the tunnel where the road would lead them back outside. Looking back over his shoulder, he realized she had gotten up but wasn’t following. He stopped.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Time to go.”
She turned toward him and he saw the deep contemplation that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Her pale green eyes seemed to find his through the dark glass of his helmet’s visor. “What do the Steel Rangers believe?”
He hesitated, sensing a loaded question. “I don’t follow.”
She stayed rooted where she was, the stubbornness settling back into her shoulders. “You just told me what the Enclave believe in. I want to know what the Steel Rangers believe in.”
Latch tipped his head a little to one side and chewed on that. He knew the boilerplate by heart but the trouble with boilerplate was how hollow it sounded. Aurora was looking for a reason to trust him. He wasn’t going to earn that with a recitation. “We believe that the right path for Equestria is the one forward, not back. The Rangers, like most ponies, have accepted that the war ended an era of prosperity. That dwelling on what we might have had distracts us from what we can accomplish now.”
“And what do you intend to accomplish?” she asked.
Latch couldn’t help but smile a little. “Renewal. Not necessarily a return to what we used to have. There’s no spell that can undo two hundred years of radiation damage. But I like to think that Equestria could heal, given enough time. Maybe become a place ponies can feel safe.”
Aurora nibbled her lower lip, her eyes unfocused. “Which makes you the good guys?”
His gut reaction was to say yes, but then he looked at the ring of matted hair around her foreleg and thought better of it. “We try to be,” he said.
He watched her look up and blink several times before pinning him in place with a recalcitrant smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She held up that bare foreleg for him to see and said, “I don’t feel safe.”
Latch wasn’t sure what to say to that. Aurora shook her head, her eyes wet with emotion. “I don’t have a weapon. I don’t have food. I don’t have water.” She wiped her eyes angrily, smearing the drying blood from her nose across her face like expired paint. “My friend who had nothing to do with Cider is being carted off to die, and thanks to the Steel Rangers I don’t even know where to find her!”
Voices murmured behind him and he looked to see a small clique of mares watching them as they whispered conspiratorially from one of the pillars. Several other ponies frowned in his direction as they walked through the tunnel, unsure whether to stop and look or hurry up so they didn’t have to get involved.
Latch looked back to Aurora who glared back at him, unaware or uncaring of the attention she was drawing. “Look, I’m not authorized to requisition any supplies for you but-”
She stabbed a wing at him, the feathers curling against his armor. “Of course you can. You just won’t.” She retracted her wing fast enough to spin up a miniature vortex of dust behind her. It twirled toward the wall and disappeared. “Roach told me a few things about the Steel Rangers that you decided to omit.”
Latch rolled his eyes. The only thing ghouls had more of than scars were opinions. “I don’t put much stock in the ramblings of someone with a brain rotted by radiation.”
The pegasus stared at him as if he’d slapped her. Latch shut his eyes and thought, Shit.
“You’re an asshole. Have a nice life.”
She walked past him, her hooves clicking against the flagstones with a finality that prodded at him. He grimaced. “Wait.”
She ignored him and kept walking.
“Dammit,” he muttered. He pressed his armored hoof flat against the flagstone and angled the tip of his own hoof down, past the cushioned padding of his suit and into the eject switch just ahead of it. It clicked and he held it down. His HUD went dark and with a hydraulic hiss, his suit split down the line of his back and bloomed open. He walked himself backward out of his power armor, his front hooves scooting over the interior shell that protected his belly, and winced at the state of his uniform.
Aurora’s voice came from behind him. “Oh…”
He turned and saw her standing a few meters away, staring back at him with her bloodied lip parted in shock. It was an expression he’d had years to become painfully familiar with.
Latch wasn’t a particularly tall stallion and stepping out of the bulky power armor always felt like descending a pair of stilts, but that wasn’t why Aurora was staring. He smiled the same courteous smile he wore whenever a pony saw his burns for the first time. The majority of his right side, from his head down to his ribs, were a pink waxwork of melted skin and thick scars. His cobalt blue coat had grown back patchy along the fringes of his neck and shoulder, and his mane had been thinned to sky blue wisps of longer hair.
He couldn’t remember all of the details of how it had happened. Just that he’d been attached to a platoon assigned to clear a nest of raiders that were trying to fortify a small, abandoned village north of Appleoosa. Whoever threw the molotov had done so with impressive accuracy. He remembered the shock of the bottle breaking across his right eyebrow, feeling something wet splash underneath his leather armor and then the sickening realization that he was burning. At some point he blacked out. Then he woke up in a hospital tent back at base and his new reality began.
The burns had destroyed most of the right side of his face, save for muzzle. What remained of his ear was misshapen and didn’t move anymore. His eye had been a complete loss, leaving behind an empty socket that most ponies desperately tried not to focus on while speaking to him. The fire had burned beneath his armor and ignited the padding under the leather, searing his skin like a steak. The silver lining in all of it was that because the fuel had been caught up under his armor, the damage to his legs had been minimal and his cutie mark had gone unmarred.
He’d gotten the broken amethyst geode on his hips during a prospecting trip with his father when he was young, and it one of the few things he had left to remember him by.
Aurora stared at his scars with the unabashed shock of a filly half her age. His smile tightened. He wasn’t ashamed of how he looked, but damn could it be a distraction.
“Aurora, I’m sorry,” he said, seeing her focus jump between his bad and good eye. “The Steel Rangers… Paladin Ironshod… we make mistakes sometimes. But I wish I could convince you when I say that what we’re doing in the grand scheme of things is to help ponies.”
He shifted his weight to one hoof and used the other to lift a leather strap up from under the collar of his shirt. The dull green clamshell of a hiking compass lifted up from the bottom of the loop. Bright steel shone along the weathered edges of the painted case where hooves older than his had pressed it open and shut over the years. Latch held it in the air for a moment to give himself time for any second thoughts to solidify. None did. He walked to Aurora and offered her his father’s compass.
“Your friend is being taken to the JetStream Solar Array. It’s a little more than half a day’s walk from here, but you can probably make the trip in a few hours if you fly.”
Aurora looked at his offering for several long seconds before finally lifting a wing to accept it. He watched her as she used her feathers to press open the case and hold the compass flat so that the needle could make its lazy trip around the bezel.
“Once you’re away from the Stable it’ll point north,” he added helpfully.
She blinked several times and nodded, her eyes glued to the compass.
Latch scratched his nose and glanced away. “Try to be careful with it. It’s kind of important to me.”
She nodded again and lifted the leather strap over her head to let it settle around her neck. The compass swung out of her wing and thumped against the thicker hair of her chest, and settled there.
“Can I ask,” she began, her voice subdued, “why you’re helping me?”
Latch shrugged and looked back at his open suit of power armor. “I’ve already got a compass built into my suit’s HUD,” he said, and smiled a little. He looked back to Aurora and added, “and because it’s the right thing to do.”
The corners of Aurora’s lips tilted upward, barely enough to notice. “What happened to ‘we’re not friends?’”
He surprised himself by chuckling. “We’re not. But that doesn’t mean we have to be enemies.”
“Fair enough,” she said. She pressed the compass into her chest with her hoof. “Thank you, Latch.”
He dipped his head to her and she gave his scars one last curious look before turning toward the end of the tunnel. Her hooves echoed off the dusty stone as she walked away.
Latch turned back to his power armor. He was settling his hooves against the sweat-slicked padding when he remembered something. He practically leaped out of his suit to catch up.
“Ma’am, are you alright?”
Sweat was pouring off Aurora’s nose like a leaky faucet and one of her knees had developed a click that hadn’t been there before, but she kept trudging. Her head wasn’t hanging low so much as it was dangling off the end of her neck. Latch’s compass danced between the droplets coming off of her like it was the star member of some maddening musical play.
Of course she wasn’t alright, but that was his fault.
“I’m fine,” she said, and lifted another aching leg forward.
“If… you say so.” She side-eyed the concerned older mare and continued her torturous climb to the flat top of Blinder’s Bluff.
She wasn’t built for this. Walking, she could do. Running, she could do. This was something else entirely. The road that bent up the slope of the bluff didn’t even have the decency to be shallow. It just kept getting steeper. She scowled and watched the first floor of a shack continue level into the stones until she was passing a basement. If she ever ended up going to Tartarus, this was the punishment that was waiting for her there.
Hoof traffic was mercifully thin this high up the bluff and mostly consisted of ponies headed downhill to the marketplace outside the Stable tunnel. Most of the city’s services, including Redheart’s clinic, had been smartly grouped in the lower heights of the city where supplies wouldn’t have to be carted up to the windy heights she found herself scaling. With the wall protecting the face of the city the only open real estate for new residents was uphill. Aurora tried to imagine making this trip every day and briefly considered bashing herself over the head with a loose cobblestone instead.
Every so often she would pass the odd unicorn or earth pony on their way downhill. Some offered friendly, if not bemused greetings upon seeing a pegasus climbing their road. One stallion sent out his daughter with a dented ladle filled with warm water and, upon seeing her face, brought out a damp strip of cloth for her to wipe off the now-dried blood. His daughter, a unicorn filly with large hazel eyes, asked her why she didn’t use her wings to fly around. Aurora told her that a friend had told her not to. The understanding nod from her father was the first confirmation she had that Latch hadn’t been paranoid.
He’d caught her just as she’d begun thinking about how she was going to take off. She hadn’t been sure how to get into the air without a running start, but she was beginning to piece together how it might work when Latch stopped her. He told her about a Dustwing - she still wasn’t sure about that name - that had flown in over the bluff and was mistaken by some of the residents as a member of the Enclave. The result had been several weapons raised toward the sky and one pegasus falling from it shortly thereafter. Latch said that while word was being spread to the Rangers in the city that Aurora was harmless - she wasn’t sure about that either - taking off in full view of every bleary-eyed waking pony in the Bluff wasn’t a great long-term strategy.
When she asked where he thought she could take off without starting a minor panic, explained that the bulk of the city was crowded under the north face of the bluff. The only reasonably private place to take flight was the south side which, much to Aurora’s growing disgust, was most quickly reached by simply climbing all five thousand feet to the top of the bluff.
It didn’t help that she still had a full dose of Rad-Away happily turning her bladder into a sieve, nor did it help that she was past the elevation where building pump-fed outhouses was impractical and descending back down to find one was impossible. As she relieved herself in a shaded alley between two houses, praying not to be heard or chased off, she wondered if she’d done something in a previous life to deserve all this.
At the very least, the view up here was something out of a foal’s storybook. Each time she looked down the way she came, the sweeping arc of colorful square rooftops and inviting mazes of light-strung streets and alleyways grew longer and impossibly beautiful. Hundreds of sheet metal rooftops had been washed with paints, patinas and even fabrics to give the rusted metal panels bursts of colors unique to every household. There was nothing in her Stable that came close to comparison and it took everything in her to keep from sitting down and staring at it until her eyes were sore.
They made the climb worth it the suffering.
After a half hour of pressing cobblestones back into the dirt, she came to a point where the shanty homes of Blinder’s Bluff petered out and the cobblestone transitioned into a well-worn dirt path. She was high enough to look down the slope to her left and see the confetti rooftops curl down toward the east while the flat face of the bluff sheared up toward the peak on her right. To stand this high up and still have so much stone looming above her felt otherworldly. Along the dirt path, weathered wooden posts sunk into the bluff marked the route of a prewar hiking trail. Without the buildings to break the wind, it buffeted her from the west like a giant trying to ease her off the trail and down the rocky slope below. A thin layer of mud formed around the rims of her hooves where the sweat running down her legs met the soil stirred up as she climbed.
She wasn’t aware she’d reached the top until her weary hoof thumped against the first wooden beam of a step. A dozen of them lay half-sunk in the uneven soil, their middles worn down like a bent lip from constant wear. She looked up to see a strange sight.
A metal signpost, faded and rusted but its white-on-green lettering still legible, stood atop the final step.
HIGHTOWER FIRE LOOKOUT
Equestrian Park Service Personnel Only
Past the sign, standing precariously close to the southern ridge of the bluff’s flattened peak, was a tiny house perched atop a white wooden tower.
“What the…”
Aurora pushed past the last step and stared up at the strange construction with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.
A tangle of steel antennae and capped broadcast dishes sat strapped to the north-facing leg of the tower connected to a rat’s nest of wires. The wires scrambled up the length of the tower and disappeared over the edge of the catwalk that ringed the small windowed structure on top. Staples held wide swaths of chicken fencing and a lattice of crisscrossing copper wire to the heavy timbers, as if the owner had wanted to create some sort of cage out of the open space within the tower’s legs. A workbench and an honest to goodness tool cabinet sat askew in the dirt within the fencing. She approached the apron of chicken wire and it rattled softly under her hoof.
A breaker box had been drilled into one of the timbers inside the fence. A single, thick black cable snaked out of the bottom and sank into the dirt, presumably to make its trek downhill to the city’s anemic power grid. More wires sprouted from the top of the breaker box and fed into a hole cut through the floor of the tower’s cab. When she listened she could hear the peppy tune of a long-forgotten band being broadcast to ponies for miles in every direction.
“Do you like the music?”
"Shit!” She reared away from the fence and stepped on the end of her tail in the process, sending her tumbling backward into the dirt. The ache in her legs returned with a vengeance.
Sweet, airy laughter trickled down to her from the tower’s catwalk and Aurora looked up.
Leaning over the painted railing was a creature unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It was huge; its long feline frame was equal to if not larger than Latch’s bulky power armor. Lean muscle rippled under a coat of dusty brown fur that lightened to a milky cream as it followed the line of her neck to her belly.
It rested its strange avian face in an equally avian claw, its pale beak creasing the corners of its lavender eyes in a casually bemused grin. Its other hand hung over the railing, idly playing with a thick curl of wire that ran to a pair of battered gray headphones pulled down over her neck.
Aurora stared up at the creature with a mixture of awe and the primal fear that came with being the distant descendant of ancient prey. It watched her with growing curiosity, its large ears twitching and reorienting in the wind but always swiveling back to face her. Its large eyes narrowed and its smile widened.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” it said in a familiar, feminine voice. “You’re Aerie-something!”
She hesitated for a moment. How did this creature know where she’d been? “Aurora…” she corrected, her eyes still trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “Are you Flipswitch?”
The creature lifted her head and clapped her hands together, startling Aurora with the sharp pop of sound. “First try!” She dipped her head low over the railing and flourished her clawed fingers in a mock bow. “The Mare on the Air, at your service.”
Aurora squinted, unsure how deep down this rabbit hole she wanted to go. “Mare…?”
“Not literally,” she said quickly. “It’s just a pseudonym to help connect with the audience, you know? Oh, but I’m so happy to finally meet you! I thought maybe you’d been taken by that raider caravan but then I heard that a pegasus arrived at the wall on foot - er, hoof - and I knew it was you!”
The gryphon’s face bubbled over with excitement. Without warning she hopped atop the wood railing and dropped to the ground. Aurora scrambled to her hooves at the sight of Flipswitch’s massive wings billowing open to brake her descent. She touched down in front of her on a pair of feline paws the color of damp soil.
But it was her wings that held Aurora’s attention. Her long feathers were a beautiful mosaic of silvers and tans and ruddy browns that fit no pattern except for the one that suited them. They reminded Aurora of the mural of Equestria’s southern canyons that graced the corridor wall near her compartment.
Flipswitch stood a full foot taller than Aurora and was nearly twice as long from stem to stern. She seemed to notice Aurora’s apprehension and sat down with a sheepish smile.
Her excitement was contagious, squeaking a quick smile out of Aurora despite her growing sense that this was time Ginger didn’t have the luxury to see wasted. Still, something nagged at her about this gryphon and it wasn’t her terrifying size or the predatory talons that were kneading grooves into the dry soil.
She was certain she knew the answer to her question but she asked it just to be certain. “How do you know we came across a raider convoy?”
The gryphon’s eager smile took on a note of pride as she hitched a thumb at the tower behind her. “Spritebot feeds! I was the one who told you to hide, remember?”
It would be some time before Aurora forgot the face of the knife-twirling mare who had come looking for them, nor the crack of the gunshot that ended the life of the stallion who spotted her hopping the cuts in the road. The spritebot that had warned them to hide had been controlled by Flipswitch. Good to know, she thought. If the gryphon was as dedicated to news radio as she seemed to be, having a hoof-ful of spritebots at her disposal was a definite advantage when it came to information gathering.
Several more questions sprouted from Flipswitch’s explanation, none of which Aurora had time for. “Look, Flip-”
“Call me Fiona. Flipswitch is my stage name.”
She smiled but the stress of being held captive to this conversation was starting to wear on her nerves. If Fiona noticed the edge in her voice, she didn’t let it interrupt the smile in her eyes.
“Look,” she restarted, “I need to be somewhere. Maybe we can pick this up when I get back?”
Fiona’s eyes widened with realization. “Oh! I almost forgot that you were with Ginger Dressage when I saw you! Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to stop you from-”
“It’s okay,” Aurora said, caught between placating a creature she’d just met and finding a way out of the conversation. She opened her loaned compass and lifted it flat against her hoof until the needle steadied out to her right. She looked left, toward the southern horizon. “I have to go.”
She started walking toward the southern edge of the bluff and Fiona began to follow. Aurora tried and failed to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Unless you plan on coming with?”
Fiona laughed and it had a high, musical quality to it that Aurora was surprised to discover she liked. “To Autumn’s place? Nooo-no-no. With everything I’ve said about her family on the air, she’d kill me. If I’m being completely honest, Aurora, I’m not so sure you should go there either. Not without… well, anything.”
Aurora stopped at the edge of the bluff and looked down. It would be a long fall if she botched her take-off. Fiona stopped next to her and sat down, seeming to enjoy the strong breeze that played over her fur. Whether it was desperation or the loneliness that came with being separated from her only friends in this awful and beautiful world, Aurora found herself hoping that the gryphon would have a change of heart and come with. “The Rangers took my rifle, along with the rest of my stuff,” she said flatly. “I’m accepting donations.”
She saw a wince finally break the smile on Fiona’s beak. “I don’t really do weapons,” she said apologetically. “But if you have time, I could fly down and get you some food and water from the market?”
Aurora shook her head. “I don’t, but thanks for the offer.” She rolled her wings, preparing herself for the jump.
“Before you go,” Fiona hastily added, “could I get a statement for the show?”
She took a few steps back and opened her wings to test the breeze. Her mind was already swinging to focus on what she needed to do. “Ginger didn’t kill Cider. I did.”
“Wait, what do…”
She didn’t wait for the gryphon to finish. Every minute spent chatting was a minute Ginger didn’t have. She burst into a gallop, heaved her wings toward the ground and leapt. Her feathers dusted the edge of the cliff and she was airborne. Her wings billowed and quickly found their natural rhythm. Blinder’s Bluff, the lookout tower and a smear of colorful rooftops slid away behind her.
She pumped her wings, looked toward the flat rim of the southern horizon and tried not to think of what sort of danger she might be flying into.
Trotter tipped what was left of his whiskey to his lips and drained the bottle. Normally he was more prudent about how fast he went through his drink - the palatable stuff was getting harder to find these days - but today was a day worth celebrating.
His rented cart wobbled on dented wheels beneath his seat, but he didn’t care about that anymore. With the caps he was going to pull in he could buy his own cart. Maybe even lease one from Autumn Song and finally get his hoof into the trade business. He leaned back a little in the driver’s seat and watched the stallions that pulled his cart. If he’d had a choice he would have preferred to rent out a pair of mares to do the job, but he hadn’t been in a position to choose. Finding a rental in the middle of the night had been difficult with an unconscious unicorn to lug around, and he didn’t want to risk her waking up before he had access to bindings and a magic suppression ring.
It turned out he hadn’t needed to rush at all. For a while he thought he’d hit Ginger Dressage too hard. When the wanted mare had walked past his bench behind Redheart Clinic, he’d thought he was seeing things but her short-cut fiery mane was impossible to mistake for anyone else. When she walked out of the outhouse, Trotter was ready. He struck her over the head with his bottle and she fell like a bag of stones. By the time she came around, they were more than halfway to their destination.
The knots he tied around her ankles were strong and held up to her spirited struggling. Trotter didn’t know why they called it hog-tying, nor did he much care. All he knew was that it kept Ginger off her hooves. He decided not to gag her thinking he might use it to pass the time, but she fought rabidly against him even after he tried to beat her into a better mood. Dejected, he stuffed a wad of dirty cloth into her mouth and cinched a belt around it and the back of her head. She gagged on it for a while, but that was why they called it a gag.
Trotter considered her other end but the stench of urine put him off. Maybe Autumn would let him rent her once they cleaned her up, but he wasn’t going to collect his prize covered in a mare’s piss.
He squinted at the square bottle to verify there wasn’t a sip puddling in the corners. Nothing. He tried pitching it over the heads of the two stallions he’d rented but his aim fell short, thumping the pale lavender stallion on the right against the shoulder. The slave barely reacted as the bottle bounced off him and shattered against the cracked asphalt.
Trotter’s chest bounced with quiet laughter and turned around to check on his prize. Ginger faced the back of the open-topped cart, moving only when a wheel dipped into one of the road’s old ruts. A frown gradually sunk onto his face and he leaned back, slamming his hoof against the old boards. She shrank away from him, curling around her midsection where he’d tried kicking her into compliance earlier. Her forelegs were a mess of lumps and bruises from where she’d shielded herself. Her fault, not his.
Satisfied she was still breathing, he turned around. Her bounty was worth exactly zero caps if she died. He hoped Autumn wouldn’t take much off the total just because he roughed her up a little.
Two thousand caps for one pony. He chuckled, and dug a hoof into the rumpled saddlebags under his seat. He sat up and set into his lap an unlabeled bottle of an amber-colored liquid he was pretty sure was liquor. Even half the bounty would afford him a decent cart, and he was sure he could talk Autumn Song into letting him trade under the F&F Mercantile brand.
After all, he had her brother’s murderer. She owed him.
His eyes dropped to the bobbing flanks of the stallions hitched in front of him and his frown returned. They were slowing down again.
“Pick up the pace!” he shouted.
He chose to ignore the groan that one of them let slip as they synced their hooves back to the steady canter he’d demanded since they left the Bluff. He’d been assured that they would take him to the JetStream Solar Array within half a day. That was all well and good, but Trotter didn’t see the point in spending any more time out on the roads than he needed to. A single stallion driving a beaten up cart without a guard detail was essentially a giant neon sign that read ROB ME.
The slavers had estimated twelve hours. Trotter made it in eight.
He was halfway through his bottle, some kind of spiced rum that hadn’t gone quite bad enough to pour out, when the scorched asphalt began its gentle descent into a basin filled with clean, glittering water.
Trotter squinted at the unexpected lake and checked the sky to make sure the morning sun was still to his west. The bright patch of thick clouds confirmed he was headed in the right direction, but there were no lakes down here. The Badlands were a dry region.
As he drew closer, he realized he wasn’t looking at water. The basin was filled with mirrors.
He whistled. Thousands of mirrors spun around and around the perimeter of the shallow basin in concentric rings creating the illusion of a single unbroken reflective surface at a distance. A uniform cylindrical spire rose several hundred feet from the center of the solar array like the axel of a massive wheel. Two layers of reinforced steel fencing penned in the perimeter of the facility, broken only by four gatehouses equidistant from one another along its length.
Trotter’s road descended toward the northern gatehouse; a squat, single-story building perched atop a cement curb behind the rusting fence. A mare and a stallion wearing the usual blue and white F&F Mercantile pinstripes stepped outside of the gatehouse and watched his cart approach, making sure he saw the compact submachine guns at their sides.
The rented stallions staggered to a stop outside the gate without needing to be told. The lavender pony collapsed, his barrel heaving up and down for breath. His pulling partner’s legs shook violently but he stayed upright, barely. Trotter pretended not to notice. He wasn’t in the business of rewarding dramatics.
As one of the guards began pulling open the gate, Trotter took the time to admire the large enamel sign still perched atop the gatehouse like a billboard in miniature.
JetStream Solar: Your Future, Today!
A Proud Subsidiary of the Ministry of Awesome.
The words swept across a picturesque, albeit faded and pockmarked blue skyline that Trotter didn’t recognize.
The gate banged open and the mare, a pretty little orange unicorn, casually tipped the muzzle of her SMG toward him and nodded at his cart. “This ain’t a trading post. Turn around.”
He looked at the mare’s weapon and felt jealousy crease his forehead. It was immaculately clean without so much as a scuff of dust on it. He didn’t doubt that if he lingered, she’d use it on him. He could see it in her eyes. To her, he was just an annoyance. A bug to be shooed away. By the way the stallion behind her looked at him, he probably thought the same thing.
“I have Ginger Dressage in back,” he announced, and relished the flicker of uncertainty that flashed across both guard’s faces. “Unless either of you have two thousand caps for me, I suggest you let me in.”
The stallion walked out to Trotter’s cart, far too confident for how thin he was, and peered inside. He frowned. “Where’s her cutie mark?”
Trotter shrugged. “Doesn’t have one.”
“Yes she does. Give me some water.”
He grunted and fished an untouched canteen out of his bags. The guard took it and pulled the plug out with his teeth. The unicorn stayed still as he climbed into the cart, sloshed the lukewarm water over her hip and harshly dragged his hoof against the grain of her dampened coat.
Ginger avoided the guard’s scrutinizing gaze as a thin film of coffee colored sludge formed along the rim of his hoof. He doused her again and scraped away the makeup layer by layer, ignoring her pained whimpers, until a faint image appeared. A coil of chain looped around a metal collar, the two items connected by a thick iron link.
The stallion looked down at his counterpart. “Radio for an escort. It’s her.”
And just like that, the gates to F&F Mercantile swung open as if he were royalty.
The slaves he rented for the journey were unhitched and moved - dragged, in one case - out of the way so two ponies in pinstripe armor could take their place. He was brought down through the field of mirrors in a hurry. He didn’t notice the disapproving glares from the ponies who moved his stallions aside, nor did he pay much mind to the scowls he got when he looked back at the mare charged with guarding Ginger inside the cart. Let them be jealous. It was about time they were humbled.
At the center of the mirrors, in the shadow of the strange pillar that rose out of the basin, stood the complex network of outbuildings, pipes and tanks that had once made this place worth building. Trotter didn’t pretend to understand how mirrors, even a few thousand of them, could ever create electricity. That was a problem of the distant past. Here, in the now, places like this were one of two things: fortifiable and unfortifiable. Those places that could be protected, were. Those places that couldn’t were stripped apart down to the screws and sold. The wasteland, for all of its hazards, was an easy place to understand.
The strange pillar rose out of the center of a squat concrete building that looked built for function rather than design. A rare thing, considering the love of flare and flourish that prewar Equestrians indulged in. As guards helped Ginger out of his cart, Trotter marveled at the pillar’s height. He wondered what its purpose had once been, or if there had ever been one in the first place. A trick of perspective made him feel like it was ready to fall on him, frozen in place by some invisible force. Somewhere nearby, a generator puttered away.
As Ginger was carried away toward a quartet of massive tanks, Trotter followed his escort through a pair of metal security doors and into the stout building at the center of the solar plant.
Admittedly, he hadn’t been expecting much. A dim room with rubbish pushed to the walls would have suited him fine. What he found himself standing in was much more impressive than the Equestria status quo.
Trotter stood inside a lobby straight out of a prewar magazine. Oak paneling wrapped the walls and deep ivory commercial carpeting tickled the undersides of his hooves. In the center of the lobby waited a pair of white leather couches sitting perpendicular to one another around the edges of a wide glass coffee table. Recessed lights glowed with warm light that made everything feel just bit unreal.
At the back of the lobby, behind a wide receptionist’s desk, waited a primly dressed white stallion replete with a tiny blue bow tie around his neck. Trotter’s entourage took up positions on either side of the door behind him, leaving him to approach the desk alone.
“May I help you?” the receptionist chirped. His eyes flicked to the trail of wasteland dust flaking off Trotter’s hooves onto the clean carpet.
“Uh, yeah…” Trotter said, aware that he was gawking but unable to make himself stop. “I brought Ginger Dressage. Bounty board said there’s a, well, a bounty. For her, I mean.”
The receptionist blinked rapidly and smiled a little wider. “Ms. Song has been informed. Please take a…” his eyes drifted to the immaculate furniture, and the certainty that he would be the one to clean it off later. “Please wait here. She’ll be with you shortly.”
Trotter nodded absently and decided to walk around the lobby while he waited. He found himself drawn toward a tall potted plant beneath a recessed light in the corner, its plastic fronds painfully green and bordering on cartoonish. A thin layer of dust collected at the base of each stem where a feather duster hadn’t been able to reach.
He moved toward the wide couches and felt oddly satisfied to spot evidence of repaired and patched leather. Not perfect, then. Just something someone had spent the time and resources on to restore. He rounded the armrest and was preparing to test the cushions when a door next to the reception desk swung open. Trotter froze, half standing and half seated, not noticing the reception stallion’s relief.
A pale yellow mare stood in the doorway, frowning at the stallion on the verge of ruining her furniture. The red and white curls of her mane were pulled back and secured behind her ears with a length of green ribbon that matched her eyes. The black suit jacket she wore was tailored to fit her lithe frame and she wore it confidently.
Autumn Song spoke to Trotter with a businesslike tone that didn’t fit the hawkish narrowing of her eyes. “I’m told I owe you some caps, mister…”
“Trotter,” he said proudly.
“Trotter.” She gestured for him to follow. “Step inside my office. I’d like to take a few minutes to get to know the stallion that brought me my brother's killer.”
Autumn had been in a sour mood since news came of her brother’s death three days prior, and it didn’t seem likely to lift in the near future. She knew on some level that Cider would get himself killed eventually, but she hadn’t thought he would be so stupid as to try to force himself onto a member of the Dressage family. She loved her brother, in her own way, but his years of insisting that he take new caravan leaders out on the trade routes had given her ample time to prepare for the day the wasteland eventually devoured him.
Still. At the hooves of a Dressage.
The radio wasn’t wrong when it branded Cider a monster, nor was it the first time she’d heard him given the label before. They came from a strong line of ponies stretching back to the original prewar business magnates Flim and Flam, and while the generations that preceded her tried to minimize their connection with the two ruthless brothers, Autumn had spent the majority of her life breathing fire back into the old family business.
Cider had been on board from the beginning and quickly learned that their growing stronghold on the eastern trade routes allowed him to take liberties that would have earned any other pony a bullet and a burial. He took those liberties often. Personally, Autumn found her brother’s midnight dalliances with unwilling mares and stallions revolting, but his reputation backed by F&F Mercantile’s stabilizing influence on the wastes made for an effective combination that Cider always managed to transform into valuable goods and information. And Cider followed her rules. He had always been good about that. He never touched ponies involved with the Rangers, raiders or Epicureans though even he expressed disgust for the latter group. Rape was one thing. Cannibalism was entirely another.
As long as his off-hours activities didn’t threaten the business, he could do what he liked.
Which was why Autumn hadn’t been sleeping well for the past couple nights. Cider knew who Ginger Dressage was. They both did. Touching her or anyone with that last name was off limits. So what had he broken the rules now?
Something didn’t add up.
She brooded silently behind her desk while she watched Trotter fidget. The crescent-shaped wood desk had been found by her scavenger teams while F&F Mercantile’s operations were being moved to abandoned solar plant. The cost of having it restored had been egregious, but the smooth maple veneer against her hooves paid for itself.
The rest of her office was a showcase of her life’s work. A variety of notable items she had found interesting enough to keep during her early travels rested on simple glass shelves between an array of picture frames on the eggshell white walls. A rare bottle of Sparkle-Cola Glimmer, still full of artificial grape flavored cola, sat opposite of a gold pocket watch she found in the drawer of the desk she currently enjoyed. Embossed into the case stood three licks of fire that vaguely resembled some sort of bird. Despite it not working, Autumn had added it to her collection.
Framed Equestrian maps of varying age displayed highlighted trade routes that Autumn and Cider had worked to take control of from the raider factions that once ran rampant in the area. They read like a book without words. To her right, the first map highlighted only a single red line between Blinder’s Bluff and Rickshaw, her hometown to the north. It had taken her two painful years of begging and bribing to secure that route and most of that resistance had come from the Bluff.
Each subsequent map showed new roads highlighted in red right up to the most recent one she put up months earlier. A broad network of red roads and highways branched away from the JetStream Solar Array like arteries from a beating heart. Two of the longs routes stretched west for hundreds of miles - taproots she was determined to one day drive into the lavish markets of New Canterlot and eventually to the western borders. Both lines had stymied and shrank away from the stalwart bubble of Enclave territory that still encompassed the old Equestrian capital. No matter how many caps she threw at the problem, that invisible wall stood. Neither the Enclave nor the Rangers would permit trade to cross their borders.
It didn’t help her mood that Cider had sent a report from Junction City telling her he was tracking down something that might fix that problem for her. She hated when he was unnecessarily cryptic, but it was just how he was. Now he was dead and it didn’t matter.
Trotter cleared his throat and she looked at him with mild annoyance.
Her chair creaked as she leaned back to assess the drunk currently filling her office with the stench of sweat of alcohol. She addressed him as evenly as any other client, though it pained her to do so.
“How did you do it?” she asked. What she meant to ask was how does an earth pony subdue a unicorn?
Trotter seemed to sense the opportunity to brag and puffed up a little bit. “Clocked her over the head when she came out of the shitter, ma’am.”
Autumn’s smile drew tight. “Oh.”
The blue stallion grinned in return, clearly proud of his accomplishment. “Two thousand caps makes a guy brave.”
“Ah. Yes, I haven’t forgotten your reward. But before we get to that, I’d like to go over a few concerns that I have regarding Miss Dressage’s condition.”
Trotter frowned. “She’s alive, ain’t she?”
“That’s my first concern, Trotter,” she said. “If my physician is to be trusted - and I trust her with my life - Miss Dressage was beaten within the last few hours.”
She let the accusation hang in the air long enough for the words to sink in. Trotter’s forehead creased with the slow realization that Autumn wasn’t happy with him. “The bounty never said nothing about her being healthy,” he said defensively.
Autumn leaned forward and crossed her hooves on her desk. Her face was a calm breeze that masked the hurricane of anger behind her eyes. “Trotter, have you ever purchased any of our goods before?”
He hesitated, taking a moment to follow the new track of the conversation. “Yeah, sure. You guys keep bringing in that Prancing Mare bourbon from out east.”
She smiled a little. F&F had lucked out in recent years when they discovered wild corn growing near a prewar distillery. Cider had the idea to fix the place up and see if they couldn’t come up with a saleable product. They had. One of Cider’s more artistic employees had designed the logo: a nude mare frozen in mid-step with her tail hiked skyward, leaving nothing to the imagination. Autumn had been horrified when she receive the first bottle and saw herself on the label, but the brand had already begun to stick along the east coast. It was a bitter pill made easier to swallow by the fact that whoever had drawn her hadn’t known enough about her to include the freckles.
The memory did little to cool her temper. “Trotter, when you purchase a bottle of Prancing Mare, you expect it to be full. Correct?”
Trotter nodded slowly.
“Because a broken bottle wouldn’t be much use to you.”
He didn’t nod this time. He was beginning to understand.
Autumn steepled her hooves and pressed her lips against the point where they joined. “I requested Ginger Dressage to be delivered to me alive. You delivered her damaged. As such, your reward will be reduced significantly.”
Trotter balked. “Listen here you cheating bitc-”
An emerald aura wrapped around his muzzle and clamped his jaws together with enough force to crack his front tooth. The magic field remained in place, muffling his scream of pain.
“Furthermore,” Autumn continued, ignoring the pitiful noises coming from Trotter, “one of the slaves you rented to drag you here died outside my gate from exhaustion. The other one is saying you ran them nonstop from Blinder’s bluff, through deathclaw territory, to get here a few hours faster. Is that true?”
She released the muzzle from Trotter and set her hooves back on her desk. Trotter tentatively prodded his front teeth with his tongue and groaned. He tried to move but only jerked as if his hooves were dipped in cement, which they effectively were. Autumn pinned him in place like a particularly interesting insect.
Trotter was too distracted by his own sudden change of fortune to answer. Autumn helped him focus by jerking his chin to face her. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He nodded frantically. “I’m thorry! I didn’t know about the deathclawth!”
She shook her head and opened a drawer. A heavy iron six-shooter floated in her aura and settled against her desk, careful not to mar the polished wood grain. “You’re missing the point. You came here with one of my carts, killed one of my slaves, lamed the other, and took it upon yourself to beat my bounty for some quick entertainment.”
Trotter stared at the revolver on her desk. She felt the gentle tug on her magic as he tried once again to move away. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Pleathe…” he whimpered between his broken teeth. “I didn’t know they belonged to you.”
She ignored him. “Do you know how much you cost me today? How much you’ve put me at risk?”
He boggled at her, searching fruitlessly for understanding.
“Of course you wouldn’t.” She was sorely tempted to open the revolver’s drum and let him see the six brass cartridges resting inside, but theater was her brother’s thing. Had been. She looked up at him, the revolver slowly drifting up to follow her gaze. “I used to know a pony a lot like you. Interested in three things: fucking, fighting and drinking.”
Her throat caught and she lost focus. Thankfully the blue stallion was too terrified to notice his magical bindings loosen. She regained her composure before he could tell she’d lost it. “Your reward is forfeit, Trotter. All of it. And unfortunately, you’re too much of a liability for me to supply you with a fresh team of stallions for the trip back to Blinder’s Bluff.”
Fear and confusion fought through the thick malaise of inebriation. “How am I thuppothed to get home?”
Autumn leveled the revolver at Trotter’s head. The hammer drew back with a heavy click.
“You won’t be.”
She pulled the trigger.
Flying came naturally to Aurora. Flying well did not.
She was exhausted.
The first hour of her flight had been excruciating both physically and mentally. The wind, the lack of it, the thermals and the terrifying pockets of low pressure she only knew were there when she started to plummet all worked against her from the outset. It was like reliving her first day on shift as the newbie when her supervisor had given her a pained expression when he learned that she didn’t know how to tighten a bit into a drill. She knew how it should worked. She just didn’t know how to make it work.
She fought relentlessly for every bit of speed she could collect and spouted more and more curses when the sky decided to throw her a curveball that sapped it all away. It didn’t help that gulping down the dry high altitude air had parched her throat and made swallowing her own saliva a painful endeavor. It didn’t help that the constant eastward wind kept shunting her off course and no doubt added mile after mile to her journey. It didn’t help that she didn’t have time for this.
And yet she forced herself to continue on. And after that first infuriating hour, she started getting the hang of it.
She felt the warm, rising air pooling beneath her wings cooling and she started flapping to gain altitude. Less than a minute later she passed through the invisible column of the thermal and began to coast through the calmer air beyond. She was learning to gauge her speed by how far the feathers at her wingtips bent in the airstream. It was anything but a perfect measurement but at this height it beat trying to use the ground as a guide.
She groped for her compass and held it in front of her nose, bending her body to adjust for the uneven drag of her foreleg. The needle bobbed and swayed until she steadied herself. Once she did, it lined itself up with her right shoulder. She made a face and adjusted her bearing until it pointed slightly toward her left and hoped she would make up for the eastward drift.
Below her, geological and natural features were little more than smudges on a brown landscape. Hills looked like wrinkles in the dirt and buildings were barely the size of dice. Every so often she would drift closer to the surface and get a better idea of what she was flying over, but each time there was little to remark on. Everything looked a little more barren, a little more desolate the further south she flew. The dark smears of trees and grasses were far behind her, giving way to a cracked vista so flat that it unnerved her.
She flew above a narrow white line that she quickly recognized to be a road. It bent and swayed beneath her, navigating obstacles that were no longer there. Dozens of other roads fed east and west from dusty intersections before fading beyond her ability to tell them apart from the rest of the dirt. Twice she had seen roads lead toward distant towns that looked like Junction City. She’d been sorely tempted to stop to rest there, but something about this region told her to stay airborne. She could have sworn she could see things moving in the wide ranges between the roads.
High above, but not nearly as far as they had been, the dusty clouds that shrouded Equestria in permanent twilight seemed larger. More foreboding. They rolled and shifted silently into one another like boiling water, only slowed down. They made her think about the titanic beasts that had once been rumored to pull ships beneath Equestria’s oceans. She kept her distance.
“Shit,” she panted.
The dizzy spells were getting worse, and this one was a record setter. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for her balance to settle, listening to the wind as it sped over the backs of her flattened ears. It took nearly a minute before she felt normal again. Her mouth felt sticky and it was starting to become an effort of will to keep her wings extended. The signs of dehydration had been lingering with her for at least an hour, but now her body was making the decision for her. She needed to land.
She tipped her body forward and allowed herself to descend.
As the ground came up to meet her, she began looking for options. There were precious few. The last town she saw had been at least thirty minutes back the way she came. She spotted a cluster of broken-down carriages pushed to the side of the road but as she dove closer she could see they’d been picked apart. She flapped her wings to regain a little speed and slid a few dozen feet above the road surface.
A worry began to tickle at the back of her brain. Maybe she’d flown too far. Maybe she was flying away from Ginger.
She shoved the dark thought away and kept looking.
It was several minutes before she saw the dim shape of a building forming on the horizon. As she coasted nearer she began to see the defined edges of a small building set away from the road behind a wide metal awning. Her hooves clicked and scraped against the uneven pavement as she landed, bringing herself from a brisk gallop to a leisurely walk. She approached the edge of the lot cautiously, her eyes on the gigantic apple rusting atop the awning. Flecks of orange paint clung to the silhouette of a pony reclining against the apple’s giant stem, her western-style hat tipped lazily over the bridge of her nose.
She stepped around a fallen marquee sign and accidentally set her hoof onto a plastic letter tile caught in a patch of dead weeds that had grown and died in the cracked parking lot. The tile crackled indignantly.
Beneath the wide awning sat a single rusted carriage next to an intercom speaker on a tilted pillar. Aurora glanced inside and saw a few bones mingling inside, many of which bore deep grooves from where something had chewed on them for a long while. She winced and looked at the wide signboard the carriage was parked next to. The words, sheltered from the dim sunlight by the tattered aluminum awning, were still legible.
Welcome to Red Delicious!
Please read the menu as your
meal number might have changed!
Aurora found herself scanning the menu and feeling a little jealous at the array of options. Hayburgers, fried potato wedges, spicy mushroom chili, salted caramel apples and no less than five flavors of Sparkle-Cola soda alongside a promotional offering of iced Celes-Tea. She winced and accepted the indisputable fact that the height of civilization would forever be remembered for its awful branding puns.
Even so, the washed out photo of iced tea being splashily poured into a clear cup dotted with condensation made her swallow reflexively.
She trotted across the sandy remants of asphalt and scanned the windows that spanned the first half of the restaurant. Advertisements that had been adhered to the interior glass were bleached white, their messages wrinkled and forgotten as the signage slowly baked over the decades. The dining room inside looked as if the entire building had been given one hard shake. Rows of pedestal style tables lay fallen in one direction, some resting on rusted stools caught beneath them. In the back, near the counter, one table had been righted and two stools stood neatly on either side. Two empty trays sat atop a nearby garbage can.
Aurora nudged past the front door and through a narrow vestibule where a wooden display sat stacked high with yellowed phone books. A warped cork board on the cramped wall held a laminated recruitment poster for the Steel Rangers.
She navigated the tangle of stools and tables and reached the counter where a pair of cash registers waited dutifully for her order. The faint scent of rot wafted from the dark kitchen space beyond.
Behind the counter, surrounded by pillars of red paper cups and a stack of dispensers filled with bright green lids stood a machine Aurora was surprised to have seen before. The soda fountain was a lot more decorated than its utilitarian cousin back at the cafeteria a floor above Mechanical. It had been installed with a fiberglass shell made to advertise the various flavors on tap. Without thinking, Aurora scooted around the counter, snatched a dusty cup from its pillar and pressed it to one of the levers beneath the row of spouts.
A fine spray of syrup spat out of the nozzle hard enough to make her drop the cup. She held her eyes shut and exhaled slowly, feeling the tacky mist settling against her face and neck.
“Fantastic,” she muttered.
She picked up another cup, hating the sticky feeling between her feathers, and tried the same spout a second time. It hissed at her as it blew pressurized CO2 into the cup, creating a little wind tunnel inside. Seconds passed and nozzle shuddered before, finally, a sputtering stream of mildly discolored water gurgled into the cup. She lifted it to her nose and gave it a sniff before tasting it.
The bitter, slightly metallic tasting seltzer water poured fire into the split lip Ironshod had given her and she jerked away. A thin rim of bubbles, what was left of the anemic carbonation, clung to the rim. Whatever flavor it was supposed to be hadn’t even made it into the lines. Even so, she knew she wasn’t in a position to complain. She ignored the pain and drained the cup, then filled it again. The warm water was a salve and she relished the simple relief of not feeling like her throat was trying to glue itself shut.
When she couldn’t drink any more, she turned her attention to the trays of sealed condiments below the registers. She pushed aside bloated sauce packets and briefly considered breaking one open when she spotted a plastic-lined box piled high with saltines. She lifted one out, its cellophane wrapper crinkling in her wing, and turned it over in the dim light. She wasn’t sure whether to feel encouraged or worried that the little crackers looked perfectly edible two centuries after their sell-by date.
She tore open the wrapper, took a bite and her nose crumpled at the cracker’s strange stale-beyond-stale pliability. Still, her stomach didn’t revolt. She wasn’t rolling on the floor foaming at the mouth. It wasn’t great food. It wasn’t even good food. But it was food.
With a sigh, she looked at the remaining cracker, popped it in her mouth and chewed.
She filled a second cup of water to wash down the meager meal and dragged the cracker box onto the top of the counter. It landed with a soft thump and an crackle of wrappers. Committed to whatever gastric distress she had signed up for, she dug out a wingful of saltines and began unwrapping them onto the counter in a neat stack next to her cup. Wrappers snowed onto the floor around her hooves as she worked.
Something thumped from deep within the kitchen and she froze.
She held her breath and listened. Nothing. Just the sound of her heart pounding against her chest. After several tense seconds she allowed herself to exhale.
Then she heard it again. A solid, thud, like meat hitting the ground followed by a deep, predatory rumble. Aurora turned her head slowly and peered into the black recesses of the kitchen. Two green globes reflected the half-light back at her. They narrowed and ice flooded her heart.
The bellowing roar that rippled out of its throat was louder than anything she could remember hearing. It lunged forward and she ducked just as it swung a fistful of claws through the space her head had just been. She threw herself down the length of the counter and bolted around the corner into the unlit kitchen. The soda machine crumpled against the wall behind her like a sledgehammer and the creature howled after her, claws scraping madly against the tiles as it gave chase.
“Fuck fuck fuck!”
Aurora took a risk and looked over her shoulder and saw the silhouette of something massive closing the distance behind her. She let out a scream as something grabbed her hooves, sending her sprawling over the tiles and into the base of a stained ice machine at the end of the cooking line. With no time to get up, she lifted her wings and threw them down. The meager thrust was just enough to slide her to the monster’s left, out of its path and into a mound of bones and shredded clothing. The creature’s nest.
It hurled its bulk into the ice machine and it crumpled like an empty beer can. The complaint of shearing metal snapped her back to attention. She scrambled onto her hooves, scattering remains, and ran back toward the front counter as the creature’s feet thundered after her. The storm of claws and muscle barreled through its nest of shredded corpses, intent on adding her to the pile.
She leapt over the counter.
It exploded behind her.
She landed on the single table that had been set up some time before and launched off of it with wings open. The creature smashed into the tangle of overturned tables like a breaking wave. Stools hooked around its legs, then one another, and soon it was wading through the mass of jumbled steel like an animal stuck in quicksand. It howled at her as she landed unsteadily at the front door. She looked back at it for only a second, but it was enough to stifle her breath.
A monster looked back.
Bundles of muscle rippled beneath its muddy green reptilian hide. Serrated claws curled out of its fingers and toes like scythes, matching the yellowed fangs that crowded its stubby muzzle. It was covered from head to toe in disorganized plate-like scales. Two black horns curled along either side of its face, the left one broken just above its eyeline.
Those eyes locked onto her like she was the only thing in the world worth chasing. She had no doubt that if it got close enough to grab her, it would devour her without giving her the courtesy of death first.
It whipped its claws through the hill of restaurant furniture, scattering chunks of tabletop and chair legs in a wide arc of shrapnel.
“Shit!” Aurora ducked into the vestibule just as debris turned the exterior windows into clouds of shattered glass. She shoved herself through the front door hard enough to bruise her shoulder. With a shaky flap of her wings, she took to the air.
The monster bellowed as its meal escaped.
She landed on the aluminum awning, breathing hard. Below, she could hear the creature shredding tables and chairs like a box of nails dropped into a blender. More windows shattered, but the creature didn’t come outside. With the focus of its rage out of sight, it was as if she no longer existed. And yet it needed something to take out its primal fury on. Without a second thought, it took to gutting the building with a vengeance.
Aurora sat down to catch her breath and watched as a booth seat punched through the restaurant’s brick facade like a cannonball. It tumbled across the parking lot in a cloud of dust and shredded padding. Wood cracked and metal shrieked like it was being torn apart at the welds.
A rusting air conditioning unit that had spent the past two centuries rotting on the restaurant’s roof sagged downward. Aurora’s ears perked and she watched it tip, slowly at first, then more quickly. It rolled as if the rooftop was made of wet tissue and disappeared into the kitchen portion with a loud crash. The hole it made began to widen and after briefly stabilizing, the entire roof began to deform.
The center of the restaurant succumbed to the enormous damage of the creature’s rampage and collapsed inward, ejecting a cacophonous of noise that Aurora felt in her sternum. The roof dragged two of the walls down with it and ejected an expanding plume of dust through the various holes that had been punched into the building. Pinned somewhere beneath it all, the creature struggled to claw itself free.
She would have almost thought its muffled roar was pitiful if it hadn’t just come inches from taking her head off.
“Serves you right!” she yelled, riding the wave of adrenaline in her system, and for good measure added an enthusiastic “Fuck!”
The creature tried and failed to push through the mound of debris, but it was only a matter of time before it broke through. Aurora didn’t feel like being around when that happened. She navigated the awning’s old ribbing, crossing through the giant apple’s shadow, and perched herself at the edge facing the road. Looking down at her compass, the silver glint of something below caught her eye.
A metal sphere hovered silently above the parking lot. Its bristling antennae pointed low to the ground, giving the impression that the black lenses behind its sleek steel grille were watching her.
One of Fiona’s spritebots, undoubtedly drawn by the drifting plume of dust.
She sighed relief. Fiona would be able to tell her how far from JetStream Solar she was. “Thank Celestia you’re here. I don’t know where-”
“IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”
Aurora blinked at the heavily modulated voice. Not one of Fiona’s spritebots.
“Who are you supposed-”
“UNABLE TO VERIFY,” it buzzed. “IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”
Her forehead bent low. “You first, rustbucket.”
A moment passed. Then another. The creature trapped under the restaurant growled as the debris settled on top of it.
*pop*
Aurora narrowed her eyes at the spritebot as the robotic voice was replaced by the distant fumbling of a microphone. The tinny, nasal voice of a mare crackled over the speaker. “Alright lady, stop dicking around and give me your serial before that deathclaw gets loose and eats my bot. I’m late for my break.”
She snorted. The stranger’s voice gave her the mental picture of a tiny pony trapped inside the buckball-sized robot. After giving the ruins of the restaurant a glance to confirm the creature trapped inside was going to stay that way, she hopped off her perch and landed in front of the bot. It puttered backward like she’d invaded its personal space. Cute.
“Can you hear me?” it said. Several quick pops came from its embedded speaker. “Damn. Taffy, are you using your mic? I need it.”
“I can hear you,” she said. The bot-mare made an exasperated noise in her reedy voice. Aurora ignored it. This was the first time she’d seen anything in the wasteland that looked so new. With the exception of a little road dust dulling its shine, it looked like something freshly assembled.
“Look,” the bot-mare sighed, “my ticket queue is piling up over here so I don’t have time to play this game. I’ve got enough shots of you for the nerds upstairs to figure out who you are. I’m logging an infraction either way, but if you don’t identify yourself I’ll be adding dereliction to the list.”
Aurora resisted the urge to smile. “Before you do that, could you tell me which direction the JetStream Solar Array is?”
She did smile when the mare-bot didn’t respond, caught off guard by the abrupt change of topic. A long pause stretched before it spoke. “Twenty-one klicks east-southeast of this position, but I feel like I should remind you that the power station is a no-fly zone until our assets are recovered.”
Aurora already had the compass open in her hoof. Her confidence rose as she turned, settling the needle on the notch between E and SE. “Funny coincidence, I happen to be on a recovery mission.”
The bot swung in front of her. “You happen to be ignoring basic Enclave protocol by refusing to provide your serial to a ranking officer!”
Aurora hesitated.
“And to that point, violating a red level no-fly zone is grounds for immediate court marshal. I shouldn’t have to-”
“You’re from the Enclave?”
The mare-bot laughed her nasal laugh. “Oh, don’t even try pulling the Dustwing bit on me. You’re not the first conscript I’ve caught sleeping on the job, but you might be the dumbest. I have your cutie mark on file and this conversation is being doc-”
Aurora pivoted on her front hooves, lifted her hind legs and bucked the annoying machine in the center of its grille. The metal screen bowed inward and its internal components made a satisfying crunch. The spritebot rolled in a high arc before crashing against the broken pavement, sparks sputtering from its broken casing.
“Nope,” she said to the shattered spritebot. “Not dealing with that today.”
Behind her, the deathclaw emitted a grumbling growl from beneath the rubble. It was about as close to agreement she expected to get from the monster.
She gave the compass a final check before snapping it shut and looking east. A little over twenty miles on a belly full of questionable water and a couple incredibly stale crackers.
No problem.
She eased herself into a canter that quickly sped into a gallop, passing the smoking spritebot and lunging into the air with a brisk gust of wind from her wings. Euphoria and dread mingled in her gut as she lifted into the air and rode the light tailwind from the west. The restaurant, the deathclaw and her first faltering contact with the Enclave shrank away. The sky rushed in below her to fill the void.
June 23rd, 1075
Holy crap, mom made the front page of the Manehattan Times and put the JetStream Aerospace test launch on page two! I mean yeah it crashed again but still! Mom thinks that Fluttershy might have pulled some strings to make it happen but if you ask me, the papers know she’s the right mare for the job.
Oh, and Fluttershy’s jackrabbit came out really good. The ears didn’t come off this time and I pinned a little bit of birch bark to its butt so it could have a fluffy tail. It’s a little more cutsie-wootsie than I wanted, but I think she’ll like it.
I’m so glad it’s summer vacation. I’m super proud of mom but I don’t feel like having to talk to the ponies at school about it. Sagebrush especially. Since we’ll be moving soon, I guess I won’t have to talk to him at all! Adios, asshole!
June 25th, 1075
We’re going to be spending the whole day today packing up the house. The Ministry of Peace had a ton of flattened boxes and tape delivered, and it’s starting to finally feel real. First thing tomorrow morning we’ll be following the movers to Canterlot.
P.S. If I never have to build a box again, I’ll die happy.
P.P.S Oh my Celestia I forgot about UNPACKING OH MY CELESTIA NO.
June 26th, 1075
I knew we’d be leaving in the morning, but the carriage came way too early. Mom practically had to drag me out of bed by my mane. The movers were already waiting to load our boxes into another carriage and I swear they all looked like the stallions from the magazine mom used to keep in her dresser drawer. All tall and handsome and perfect. Mom would have killed me if she saw me staring so I only stared a little. I guess they’re going to bring something bigger for the furniture. Celestia, I hope our new home in Canterlot has carpet worth sleeping on.
Mom’s got an folder thicker than Sagebrush’s head that she’s gotta read through before we get there. I guess the job technically started already and she’s getting herself caught up. She won’t let me read what’s on all the papers but I know her face. There’s a bunch of stuff in there she doesn’t agree with, but that super confident all-knowing-mom-smirk is there too. She’s going to be awesome at this.