* * *
BOOK SIX
US AND THEM
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CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT - BEAN-SECRETS
"We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity." - H.G. Wells
"If I cease searching, then woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may," - Vincent Van Gogh
Foster stood there, dumbfounded. Staring off into space. A million, billion, zillion miles away. Her forehooves clutched at her chest. Her head shook back and forth as she whispered the same words to herself, again and again and again. But I couldn't tell what they were. Nothing cheery, I imagine.
Cliff approached. Rested a hoof on Bananas Foster's shoulder. Meant to be reassuring. But it only startled her worse.
"Ahh!" She said. Scrambling away suddenly. "Don't touch me."
She threw her eyeballs around. Tilted her head up. Down. Twirled herself around in every conceivable direction before finally skidding to a clumsy stop, and shooting her accusatory eyeballs back at Cliff. "Stay away!" She cried.
"Sorry," said Cliff, backing off so fast that he tripped over the rubble beneath his hooves.
"What did you do?" Foster turned to me, and asked yet again.
"Me?"
"Ahhhh!" Bananas startled. This time at the sight of her own hooves and forelegs. And the shoulder that Cliff had just touched.
Flash! She made that green fire thing happen, and suddenly, Bananas Foster was back in her changeling form. Staring at the same spot as before - this time, studying her shiny black carapace instead of a bright yellow hide.
Then poof! She was a pony yet again. "You've gotta send me back!" Foster panted hard, chest pumping at the psychotic pace of a polka accordion.
She lunged back at the hole in the rubble that she'd crawled out of. "Send me back, Rose!" She shouted over her shoulder. "Send me back!"
"Shhhh!" I said. Scanning the buildings around us for movement. And the mounds. And the roads.
If there are any bad news ponies around, by now, they know we're here.
Bananas threw her hooves into the pile o' cement chunks. Shoveled brick and stone out of her way as best she could. "O mother!" She said to herself in the way that a pony might invoke Princess Celestia or Princess Luna's intercession. "O, Mother! O, Mother! O, Mother! O, Mother! O Mother!" She cried out again. Desperately hoofing at the rubble.
"I can't send you back," I replied.
"Whattaya mean you can’t?!" Foster snapped. "You've got to, Rose. Send. Me--;"
"Shh!" I lunged forward, ready to throw a hoof over her lips.
In a puff of green flame, she transformed into a changeling yet again. Scrambled backwards. "I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet!" She whisper-shouted. "Just don't touch me."
"Okay," I held my forehooves up and whispered. "Listen. Remember when I was in the hospital with you? How I could barely move, or get out of bed for days?"
Foster - or should I say, Changeling Scout Thirteen - was so busy checking her bughooves, her buglegs, and frantically examining the entirety of her freaky insect exoskeleton, that she didn't respond.
"Look at me," I said gently.
And she did.
Maybe it was the calmness in my voice. Or maybe I'd somehow managed to grab her attention at just the right moment. But whatever I'd done, it'd worked. "Do you remember?" I asked.
She nodded - even as she shook with fear.
"I went to No Mare's Land," I added. "I ran around. And I felt fine. Do you understand? Whatever sickness you have is your body." I pointed to the sky, meant to indicate that the waking world was somewhere up there.
But when Thirteen followed my hoof with her eyes, and caught a glimpse of the dull gray clouds above, she stumbled. And lay flat on her back. "WhoOoOaaa," she said.
"What?"
"The sky," she answered. "Is it always this...open?"
"Yeah," Cliff chimed in. "Sometimes opener when it's not so bleh outside."
Thirteen gazed up, eyes wide as moons. Fixed on the high-up Wasteland ceiling - the impossibility of it - the infinity of it. "Cooool."
"Are you okay?" Cliff asked.
"Yeah," Thirteen replied, stretching her bughooves upwards as though the sky itself were a thing that she could grab. "Wait a minute…"
"What?" Cliff asked.
The changeling rolled over onto her belly. Examined those same forehooves closely. "If I was gonna flare from this, I'd have little microblisters in my shell by now." She patted her own chest. "And I wouldn't be able to breathe very well either. Look at this!" Thirteen turned to me with a smile. And breathed deep. In and out. In and out. In and out. As though it were some kinda magic trick.
"I've been out of the cocoon for short periods before. And I always blistered. After only a few minutes, even the air burns. But watch!" Again, she sucked in the dank, smoky Wasteland breeze, and licked her lips as though she'd just eaten a marzipan-stuffed donut. "I think you're right!" She laughed. "I'm cured!"
"Shhh!" I lunged forward. Ready to shove a hoof in her mouth.
But she leapt back again. "Okay, okay, I'll be quiet," Thirteen whisper-shouted. "Just don't touch me...I mean, hold on a minute...can you?"
Again, she burst into green flame and transformed. Examined her other body for rashes. As though her pony hide might show signs of allergic reaction differently than her exoskeleton.
"Would you stop making so much light?!" Cliff Diver snapped, casting suspicious glances in all directions. Even though he was unsure of what exactly he was supposed to be on the lookout for.
"What?" Bananas replied. "Oh, that," she laughed. Sticking her tongue out to taste the air again. "Wait a minute! I can change form. Easier than ever before."
"Don't," I whispered in a panic.
"Rose Petal," Cliff asked. "What do we do?"
Of course I didn't know. I'd never been there. I'd spent most of my Wasteland time inside an innocence-hating cult mine, and when I did break outside of its walls, I still hadn't been right smack dab in the middle of a city!
I didn't even know how to find my way around a regular city, let alone a Wasteland one. But, at the very least, I had grown accustomed to surveying for danger. "Well," I said. "Um...we need food, water, shelter, and cover. This isn't like the Equestria we know. You can't just wander around hapless-like, and be safe. Anypony could be watching us from those buildings." I probed them again with my eyeballs. In search of strategic vantage points. The windows. The alleyways. The cracks-in-walls, and rubble-mounds. But there was nothing. We were alone.
"So what do we do?" Cliff asked yet again.
I pointed to a slope about five blocks to our left. It had what used to be a public park at the top of it. Or at least, a clearing. It was hard to tell the difference because there were no fucking trees anywhere.
"We can get a better view from there," I said. "If we're quiet along the way. And careful."
All eyes shifted to Foster.
"What?" She replied.
* * *
We headed for the hill. Slowly. Hugging the sides of buildings whenever we could. So as not to be seen coming down the road. But the ground warped at unreasonable angles. And walking straight wasn't always possible.
Did you ever get curious, and put a whole bunch of cereal in a paper bag, stomp it like crazy, and then empty the contents of the bag into your bowl to see how small the pieces had gotten? You know...for science? Well, that's what the streets of this forgotten city looked like. Frosted Science Flakes.
But even as we walked (or rather, maneuvered)over the flaky terrain - even as I tried to stay aware of the immediate threats - ruins of buildings, piles of rubble, nooks and crannies - any place at all that could potentially be hiding watchful ponies with sinister intentions - my eyes still kept straying to the fresh razor wire that adorned the top of the city wall.
The fact that the wall itself hadn't collapsed while so many other structures around it had been reduced to gnarled metal skeletons and heaps of broken concrete. That alone was unsettling. But the razor wire?
Who put it there? Why did it look brand new? What threat were they trying to discourage? Sweet Celestia, it was leaning inwards! Why was it tilted inwards instead of at the outside world? If the point of the wire wasn't to protect the area from foreign invasion, what exactly were they trying to keep inside?!
I redoubled my efforts to spot any evil so-and-so that might be lurking or stalking us. But still, I saw nothing. Not even a bug, or a bird.
"Hey, Rose," Cliff whispered. "What's our mission?"
"Well, there's that hill over there." I pointed.
"No," he replied. "I mean what are we supposed to do? What do your, uh...brain hornets tell you?"
I froze. It was only then that I realized that Cliff hadn't seen any of the crazy shit that had gone down between me and Screw Loose. The shadow presence. My escape into Misty Mountain's door.
Duh. Why would he have seen it? I hadn't established my connection with Cliff - hadn't actually reached out with his hair - until the moment I leapt through Misty's door.
And hell! Was there even a mission?!
In all of my other travels, the way to get home had always been to complete an objective. But here? There was no fucking objective at all! I was just a stowaway on Misty's.
And there were no fucking brain hornets in my head to nag me, or lead the way. Kinda like being in the Everfree. No shadow speak. No Powers That Be with their vague, confusing missions. Just me, my brain, and the echoes of the cries I'd heard on my way over.
Misty Mountain's cries. Bouncing 'round the inside of my head-skull.
Luna fuck me with moon rocks! What if Misty Mountain completed his mission before we found him? Would there even be a way home?!
"It's a long story," I said to Cliff Diver as I climbed carefully over a small mound of science flakes. "I'll tell you when we're someplace safe."
"Rose," Cliff said uneasily. "What did you do?"
I laughed nervous-like. Didn't answer. Just clutched my mojo bag.
"...Once we're someplace safe," I repeated. And we ambled on.
When we came to the first street corner, all twelve of our hooves shuffled to a halt at the same time. Even Bananas, (who was still so stunned, that we needed to foalsit her every inch of the way), was able to take a hint.
I gestured with my head that they should press themselves up against the wall harder. And they did.
Then slowly, carefully, I stuck my head out and peered down the road. In one direction, it stretched far, warping in weird origami angles all the way to that great, big wall with the wire on top. And in the other, it simply curved around a row of what had once been buildings. Either way, I couldn't see very far. At least not from that angle.
But it was a wide boulevard, after all. Open. Exposed. The central point of about five converging, disused roads. And we might get to see more when we crossed it. The problem was: we might also get spotted from any one of a gajillion hiding spots once we set hoof off the sidewalk.
"I think our best bet is to hang low," I said. "Just sorta dash across as fast as we can...while at the same time, oh, you know...crawling."
"That doesn't make any sense," Foster said, finally aware of the danger of her surroundings. And the stupidity of my statement.
"Why don't you just turn into a bird, and fly ahead, then?" Cliff Diver snapped, half-annoyed, but still leaning in close, not-so-subtle-like, hoping to find out if such a solution would actually be possible.
"Birds are too small," Bananas replied. "And it has to be something I've seen with my own two eyes."
"You've never seen a bird before?" Cliff asked.
"Not that I can remember," Foster answered with a shrug. "Not in the flesh anyway. But I do have wings of my own."
And before she could change into her bug-self again, I threw my forelegs around her. "No!" I whisper-shouted. "No splitting up. No green flames."
Foster seized up. Her torso started trembling with fear. I was touching her again.
"Ahh!" I backed away. Horrified at what I'd done.
Foster plopped down on her flank, and lifted up her quaking forehooves. She turned them over. Front and back. Front and back. Front and back. Then changeling-ized herself, and did the same with her bughooves.
"What?" Cliff probed. "What's going on?"
Then Thwomp! Without warning, Thirteen hurled herself at Cliff. Hugged him. Leaned her changeling-face against Cliff's chest.
"Oh my gosh, Rose, check this out!" She said. "I can hear his heart! I. Can. Hear. His. Heart!"
Thirteen leaned against Cliff so hard that they both toppled over. Cliff threw his forelegs around her reflexively as he fell. And, "Oof!" Landed pretty hard on his side in the process. But Thirteen just kept marveling at the fuzzy gray legs that encircled her. 'Till, at last, she just plain burst into laughter.
I would not have thought it possible for an exoskeleton to actually be expressive, but in that moment, I saw a joy in Thirteen's eyes, brighter and purer than I'd ever witnessed in anypony before.
My own eyes started to water. Just seeing it happen. And a squeak of laughter burst out of my throat. Like Pinkbeard shattering the bars on the brig of the H.M.S Pirate-Hater, surging to the deck, all unexpected-like, and diving overboard into the embrace of First Mate Squidamajig. I clapped my forehooves over my mouth so fast, I almost toppled forward. As I started to teeter, I suddenly remembered. We were out in the open!
"This is amazing," I said, struggling to contain my giggles. Throwing my eyeballs up and down the city block in search of danger. "Quick," I said. "Let's find someplace saf…" and next thing I knew, Thirteen flashed herself back into the shape of Bananas Foster, and pounced me.
"Ahhh!" I said. And tumbled sideways. Not nearly as gracefully as Cliff.
Both Bananas Foster and I banged ourselves against the corn flake sidewalk as we fell. But she didn't seem to notice. She clutched me hard. Enveloped me completely, being older and larger than I was.
"Omigosh, you're so floofy!" She said, prodding me.
"Alright, that's enough," I said wryly, though I didn't have the heart to pour boiling oil on her parade. "Let's find some cover."
We set ourselves up inside the lobby of a nearby building that hadn't totally crumbled. Piles of bricks and rain-eroded concrete guarded the gaping hole that had been the entranceway. But once we'd climbed over, we found a little natural grotto inside. There were also holes on the far end of the lobby where pillars had toppled, and caught some of the roof with it. The crevice they made was just big enough for all of us to fit through. Even Cliff. So we could escape if we needed to. That was important.
The three of us rushed in there giggling. And allowed ourselves to act like fools for a few minutes. To forget the Wasteland. And the shadows. And just...be kids.
But when those few minutes were over, we lay there. On the filthy floor. Staring at the warped tin ceiling of what we had ascertained to be the remains of an ice cream shop. Ogling the corrosion marks and the holes in the metal - like they were constellations.
Eventually, that itching feeling came back, though. A voice. Not from the great beyond. Just a regular Rose Voice. From somewhere inside my own annoying head.
"We need to find Misty," I whispered.
Cliff Diver sat up slowly. "Misty Mountain? Like the unicorn kid from Trottica?"
"Yeah," I replied. "We need to find him. So we should search this place for any canned food, or, you know, whatever might have survived. Water. Tools. Rope. That kinda thing. And get moving."
Cliff nodded. And I could see the gears turning in his brain. "You got paired up with Misty Mountain. Twice!" He cried out. Laughing in pure astonishment.
I looked away. Awkward-like. Clutched my mojo bag instinctively. It was a little tiny micro-gesture. Like an ant shrugging. But my eyes landed on Foster. And she saw the uncertainty in me. She knew.
"Wait 'till we tell Zecora!" Cliff exclaimed.
"Uh, yeah," I said, never prying my gaze from Bananas Foster's intense, on-to-me eyes. "Let's get foraging though, and move on while there's still daylight."
Cliff dove behind the counter of the decrepit old ice cream shop, and started clanging a bunch of metal stuff together as he rummaged. But Foster just stared at me some more.
I laughed nervously in reply.
...While she stared.
...And I laughed
...And she stared.
...And I laughed.
...And still, she stared
'Till crack! The sound of wood splintering. "Ahh!" Cliff cried out.
Foster and I dashed to the counter. Found a collapsed floorboard behind it. But Cliff Diver stood off to the side. Legs pressed firmly against the walls for support. Hooves strategically not weighing down upon the wooden section of the floor. "Sorry," he said as I ran around the counter to meet him. "I'm fine," he continued. "It only startled me. I'm not stupid enough to actually--;"
CRACK! My own hindhoof fell into the stupid floorboards as I tried to dash to his aid.
"Rose!" Both Cliff and Foster cried in unison as they flanked me on either side.
And that old dread sank in. Of being a liability. Of making everypony around me all concernitty. "I'm fine," I said. "Nothing serious." But as I tried to yank my hind leg up out of the hole, the broken floorboards, pointing downward, dug into my flesh.
"Don't move!" Foster lunged forward, hooves extended toward me in fear and desperation.
"If I don't move," I said with rolling eyes. "I'll never leave."
Foster shook her head gravely. "You can't let that cut get any deeper. This wood is rotten." She flailed her hooves, gesticulating at the warped floorboards that ran alongside the serving counter of the-ice-cream-parlor-that-once-was. "Infection. Can. Kill. You," she continued. "Without access to modern medicine."
"Over so small a cut?" I scoffed.
"Yes," Foster spoke in a voice so quiet, and so dire that somehow, it felt like yelling.
"I thought you knew all about Wasteland stuff," Cliff chimed in.
"I'm sorry," I snapped. "The crazy cult that tried to sacrifice us to the God of Jewel Mines at the very least had the basic decency to keep normal floors that didn't just...attack you for stepping on them!"
I winced in pain as my passions had me moving and flailing wildly. The splintered wood dug in deeper.
"Stop!" Cliff shouted. "You're making it worse."
Meanwhile, Foster crept around the back of the counter to wedge herself real, super-cose to me. She lay across the floor so as to distribute her weight properly, and not break the wood herself. "Are you cut deep?"
"Not really," I said. "I'm just stuck. How do you know about this stuff, anyway?"
"I've read every book in the hospital library at least six times, including the first aid manuals and reference materials when they had nothing else to give me," Foster replied. "Now hold still."
She let loose a flash of green flame and became Scout Thirteen again. Then leaned in close. Found a section of the broken floor board she liked, and started nibbling on it with her rock-hard bug-jaws.
And as I stood there. Helpless. Stupid. Watching Cliff's eyes widen with concernitty fear, it finally sunk in just how foalish I was. How much could actually go wrong if we didn't find Misty, and fast! How much…
Poof! Suddenly, Nurse Redheart was right there. In the ice cream parlor. Standing over me. Stern-like. "Hold still," she said.
And I did. I seized up like a foal forgetting her lines right smack dab in the middle of her first school play.
Before my brain could even begin to formulate a clue, Nurse Redheart was a changeling again, om-nom-nom'ing on that nasty old wood 'till snap! The floorboard broke, and my leg was freed. Thirteen gently guided it out of the hole, and sighed, splaying across the warped floor once I was good and free.
"Don't make me turn into an adult again," she said grumpily, rising to her hooves, rubbing her temples in pain.
"You mean, like, mentally, or physically?" Cliff leaned forward, eager-like, bracing himself on the counter.
"Yes," Thirteen replied.
Thirteen left Cliff Diver inside to rummage for anything resembling alcohol, or clean cloth for bandages - supplies I hadn't even thought of - while she took me into the grey light of day, and examined my leg.
"You're lucky it didn't break the skin," she said.
"I told you," I sighed with rollity eyeballs. "It's not a big deal."
"It is a big deal," Foster leapt up and stood over me. "What would you do if it got infected? Do you have any idea what tetanus does?"
I shook my head. Knowing only that I'd hated getting the shot as a foal.
"It's a bacterial toxin," Foster said. "The chemicals that it releases into your body causes your muscles to contract. Usually starting with your neck. And your jaw." She gestured at my head without touching it. "As the infection progresses, every muscle in your body seizes up at the same time, and stays that way for several minutes. Sometimes it happens 'cause you got startled by a bright light or a loud noise, and sometimes it just hits you for no reason at all. But when it does, you lock up, and every muscle feels like it's on fire for minutes on end, and there's no way to stop it, and you don't know how long it's going to last. Your jaws mash together, and your teeth grind themselves down - that is if you're lucky enough not to have bitten your tongue off first. Once you get to a certain point, there's no treatment - even in the best hospital in Equestria. You just die, Rose. Either you waste away 'cause you can't open your mouth to eat. Or you go into shock from the pain. All from a cut no deeper than a little scratch."
I rubbed my jaw without realizing it. Craned my neck to get another look at my hind hoof. The one that got floorboarded. It seemed fine. But what the hell did I know?
"Sorry, girls," Cliff scrambled out of the ice cream parlor empty-hooved. "Nothing in there."
Foster closed her eyes. Nodded. And out of nowhere, thwomp. Threw her legs around me. Smothered my face with her chest and ran a hoof through my mane. It reminded me of Roseluck's protect-y-ness.
Then, after a long, deep, trembling breath, she held me at legs' length, looked me square in the eye, and said, "Okay, Rose. What's the safest way to cross the big street?"
After a little deliberation, I ultimately decided that the best way to cross the boulevard of death was simply to cross it. Casual-like. At normal speed. So as not to draw attention to ourselves.
The three of us made our way to the other side of that massive thoroughfare. And finally got a peek at what those long stretches of road had to offer. But as I gazed out, tossing my eyeballs left and right, up and down, near and far, and everywhere in between, I saw no sign of life. No camp that Misty Mountain might have joined. No compound, nor war zone that he might need rescuing from. No hospitals to loot. No raiding hordes, nor enemy soldiers, nor child-hating zealots to flee.
Just rows and rows of dilapidated buildings that stretched out into the void. It reminded me of the dead world I'd visited. Columnland. And its empire o' dust.
My thumping heart sank into my stomach. Waiting for the catch. The bullet storm that would rip us all apart like in No Mare's Land. (Even though the very idea was fucking stupid. 'Cause, seriously, all three of us were naked. Unarmed. Harmless. Not a threat. And anypony looking to kidnap us, and throw us into a slave mine probably wasn't gonna shoot us full of holes first).
But old paranoia dies hard.
So I did my best to hack through all the screaming fears inside of my brain-head. To get a grip on where we actually were. What perils we might actually face. Like, you know, fucking doom-splinters that turn you into a statue of torment and grind your own damn jaw down to dust.
And with my friends beside me, I made it uneventfully to the other side of the widest road I'd ever crossed, all the while, wondering what the Hell Misty Mountain was doing in a world that was just so damn empty.
* * *
Once on the other side of the boulevard, the three of us kept going. Headed up the block in silence. Made for the hill. Where hopefully, we'd learn something useful about this particular ducky-future.
I patted my mojo bag with my forehoof. Closed my eyes. Hoped for a sign. Or a feeling. Or a direction. Anything, really. But all I sensed was a strange quiet. A hornet-less void. With no guiding forces at all. Just a sort of...loneliness.
"Hey Rose?" Cliff said gently.
"Huh? What?" I replied. I hadn't even noticed that my friends had slowed down, conspiratorially-like to flank me. One on each side.
"Cliff and I have been talking," Bananas said ominously.
"Oookay?" I said.
Foster looked to Cliff Diver. Cliff Diver looked away. A little unsure of himself. Embarrassed by whatever-the-hell-it-was that he felt he had to say.
But after a moment of our dozen hooves clopping awkwardly over the broken concrete, Cliff finally craned his neck around, and looked to me, super-direct - almost confrontational-like - and said, "This is Misty's door, isn't it?"
"What?" I laughed as though it were a great big joke. "What do you mean?"
...
...
...
When nopony else joined me, I just sorta smiled. Blushed. Averted my eyes.
"What was chasing you, Rose?" Cliff asked gently.
I seized up. Completely unprepared to get called out like that. My legs kept walking as if by magic. But everything from my belly up just sorta hardened like crusty paste.
"You wouldn't've gone through the wrong door for no reason," Cliff continued. "So what was chasing you? It's not gonna, like, follow us here, is it?"
"What? No," I protested. "At least...I don't think so."
I pretended to check my evil hoof. As though it had an invisible watch on it. Let them think that it was just regular shadows. 'Cause I couldn't betray Screw Loose's secret. Not when Bananas Foster's main ambition was to kill the Inquisitor out of spite.
I mean: Was there even a way to make her understand that Screw Loose wasn't that pony anymore? That the Inquisitor was functionally already dead, and was gonna stay that way so long as the locks held on Screw Loose's dream door?
Or was spilling the beans just gonna open up a giant can of worms who would then proceed to eat up all of my spilt beans, and make an even bigger mess outta everything?
Did I even have a right to keep my beans to myself any longer? After all they'd been through, didn't my friends deserve to know those bean-secrets?
"It was your dog-friend wasn't it?" Bananas Foster, said matter-of-fact-ish-like.
"What?" I replied, oh-so-cunningly. "How did you...Wha...How...Are you hive-minding my brain?" Thunk. I knocked myself in the head with my hoof. As though that would do anything. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk.
"What? No!" Foster said indignantly. "Hive mind doesn't work like that, and even if it did, I wouldn't just go rooting around your head without telling you! What kinda monster do you take me for?"
"Sorry," I kicked a pebble in frustration. Feeling like a total jerk. The truth was, I didn't actually know what kinda monster I'd taken her for. I didn't know anything at all about changeling magic, let alone their taboos about personal brain-space.
"I'm the one who figured it out," Cliff said.
"You did?"
My hind hoof sunk into a pocket in the rubble. I tripped. Stumbled forward. And even as Bananas threw her forelegs open, and caught me, I could already hear the sound of the clop slapping back from the rubble around us like a brittle echo.
"You alright?" Foster asked.
"Yeah," I answered softly. "But maybe we should continue this conversation when we're..."
I spun around, checking all the structures on the block for enemies yet again.
"Alone?" Foster said.
…
…
…
Her words hung over a silence. Even the breeze slowed to a halt. As if to mock me. And show off how very alone we were.
"Fine," I said.
Cliff leapt in front of me without missing a beat. "Okay," he said excitedly. "If it was only the shadows chasing you, you'd have told us by now. And Screw Loose is the only missing piece of the puzzle. So if she's the escaped Inquisitor, then that explains why Bananas Foster - a girl who can't leave the hospital - got tasked with finding and capturing her.
'Aaaand she's the only one you coulda reached for in your dreams, and ended up panic-diving into Misty's door. I mean, who else is there? Gary the Moth?" Cliff kicked a little hunk of broken cement off the sidewalk into a giant hole in the busted up street, as if to punctuate the thought. While I was left dumbfounded.
"I...I…I, um..." I looked to Cliff and Bananas both. "You're right," I sighed. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Cliff said, laying a hoof on my shoulder.
"I...didn't know how to tell you. And I'm worried about her," I hung my head. Letting all those new ideas swish around inside of it. Screw Loose. Changelings' cultural etiquette around hive-mind boundaries and stuff. Cliff's analysis of, well...everything. The fact that none of my bean-secrets were really secrets at all anymore. "Wait," I said. "The shadows don't know that Screw Loose is, um...used to be...the Inquisitor."
"Are you sure?" Bananas said.
"Positive."
"How do you know?" Foster leaned in close.
"For starters, wouldn't they have told you? I mean, why send you to find an 'Inquisitor'..." I reared up on my hind legs to throw my forehooves into the shape of quotation marks. "If they knew that she wouldn't be recognizable as one?"
"But Rose," Cliff spoke up. "Didn't the Powers That Be also send you really vague messages on your mission? Isn't it always bare minimum on the details?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I replied. "But the shadows still don't know about Screw Loose."
"How can you be so certain?"
"Because Screw Loose doesn't live inside her own dream door. Princess Luna calls her the Wanderer. 'Cause Screw Loose dashes all over the dream realm going from door-to-door-to-door. Anywhere but inside her own head."
"Like a dream nomad?" Foster asked.
"Yeah," I replied. "But she does it in the shape of a, you know...sort of a...giant dog-looking thing. That no one - not even Luna - would think to recognize as a pony."
"But can't the shadows still trace her like they do with your hoof?" Cliff asked.
"No," I said. "Her inquisitor-sona has been locked up all this time. Because her actual dream door - which she never goes in - is covered with bolts, and bars, and locks, and chains and stuff."
"...That you took it upon yourself to open," Bananas Foster said dryly.
"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds…" My voice slowed to a trickle.
Cliff looked at me in horror, and I couldn't bear to face him, so I turned my head away.
And even then, I could still feel his Say-It-Ain't-So eyeballs boring into the back of my skull. Drilling shame-craters into my brain until I just couldn't take it anymore. "I heard a scream in there, okay?" I snapped, all defensive-like. "I hadn't seen Screw Loose in days, and I thought she was in trouble." I shook my head. "I didn't know that the scream wasn't hers."
I sighed. Cast my eyes upon the ground. Half in shame. Half just to keep from stumbling on the awkwardly-sloping sidewalk.
"What did you see?" Bananas inquired at last, tremors in her throat.
"Young Screw Loose...inquisitizing somepony," I whimpered. "With, like, this...chair. And this...helmet. It had a bunch weird dials, and stuff, and a screw in the back. When the Inquisitor turned it, the poor girl screamed, and stared off into space, fixated on something far beyond the wall. And there was, like, this flickering light. Like the girl's brain itself had turned into some kinda magical film strip projector."
"A projector?" Cliff asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I think that it was replaying the filly's memories. Though I couldn't see what they were."
Cliff cocked his head. "Why do magical nightmare beings need a machine to get inside somepony's head?"
"I have no idea," I replied. It'd all happened so quickly, and so horribly that I hadn't really gotten a chance to stop and think about it.
"Are you sure what you saw was a memory?" Cliff said. "Maybe Screw Loose was just, I dunno, having a weird dream or something."
I held up my evil forehoof as if to refute his argument with a cunning rebuttal of my own. But the truth was: I didn't know. I could say for certain that the shadow presence was real. That the inquisitor I saw at the end of that awful stone corridor was, in fact, the pony that Screw Loose used to be. Of that, I was as sure as anyone in the universe could ever possibly be. I'd felt it. But when it came to the technology? I had no idea what was going on.
"The torment was genuine," I said, holding up my black hoof as evidence once again. "The Inquisitor-y-ness of it, at least. But I admit, I don't understand the tech. Maybe it had to do with beard magic or something?"
"No way," Cliff said. "Starswirl wasn't like that."
"How do you know?"
"I read that book that Spike gave me this morning," he retorted.
"When did you have time to do that?"
"Okay, maybe not the whole thing." Cliff kicked another hunk of eroded concrete down a long groove in the broken remains of the street. It skipped over to the dusty 'sidewalk' as the road started curving to the left. "I read the intro and first chapter before we went to bed. And Starswirl was not a big fan of technology. He said that, from what little he saw of it amongst his younger protégés, the whole experiment was a dangerous shortcut. Intelligence without wisdom, according to Starswirl, would be the death of us all."
I took a look around. At the building-skeletons. At the heaps and mounds of worthless nothing that Equestria had been reduced to. "He had a point," I said, gesturing at The Everything with my head.
Cliff gazed around him. Nodded grimly. "So, the chair wasn't Starswirl's," he said, throat as dry as gravel. "It had no reason to be there. So it probably was just like, you know...a dream detail or something."
"I dunno," I replied. "I guess. Maybe?"
We walked in silence a little further. Following the natural curve of the road. Until at last, Bananas Foster spoke up. She'd drifted behind us. Deep in thought while Cliff and I had been busy analyzing everything.
"The chair's real," she said.
We stopped dead in our tracks, and turned to see what Foster'd meant.
"I remember," she said. Her stare into nothingness reminded me of Rainbow Glimmer - that guy in the trenches who'd survived No Mare's Land (sorta), and lost both his only friend, and his only mind. "You don't notice the chair when you're stuck inside the memory. But every couple-of-hundred times, you snap out of it. Heart pounding. Like waking up from a nightmare. And you're in this, this...well, this chair." Bananas swallowed her throat-apple down hard. "And you've got this helmet bolted to your head, and your inquisitor starts asking questions. Sort of like a rate your experience survey you get after dealing with some big city bureaucracy like the Canterlot Public Archives. Except that she lives for your tears. Feeds on your agony. And calmly asks you if you wanna try out a new career in the Shadow Industry."
Foster ran a hoof through her mane and added, "Fucking bitch."
It startled me. To hear Foster use a 'colorful futurism,' as Luna had once called it. But changelings got around, I guess. She coulda picked it up from anywhere.
"If you're wondering how the helmet works," Bananas continued. "I don't know. 'Cause you're right, Cliff. The shadows don't need a machine to get inside your head. And neither does their army of filly inquisitors.
'But they are using it to collect something." Foster stopped. Thought long and hard. Like there was some special word that could somehow explain everything if only she could summon it past the tip of her tongue. "It's kinda like when you crank a phonograph reeeal hard," she said at last, aggressively miming the motion she'd just described. "And it has enough kinetic energy to play an entire record...The inquisitors cranked us to our breaking points. And used the machine to harvest our fears - bottle our nightmares.
'I'll never forget my inquisitor. She was teeny tiny. Barely old enough to get into Kindergarten, from the looks of it. But her shadow could fill a room. No matter where the torchlight was coming from. And her eyes!" Foster shuddered. "She may be no bigger than a foal, but those fucking eyes have seen centuries. Generations and generations of other kids' nightmares. I don't know how to describe it. She wasn't an adult. In fact, she was very much a kid. Tantruming at a moment's notice.
'...Cause after all the ages that she'd spent in that castle, my inquisitor had never ever learned how to cope with the word, 'no' when it was said to her." Foster lowered her head. Stared at her own hooves for a moment. "When she got mad, she'd tighten the machine, and push it to its limits."
Foster smacked her lips. Like her mouth was full of sawdust. "I can't describe what it was like," she whispered. "But after what felt like weeks, I'd wake up in that chair again. Suddenly aware that my back muscles had swollen, and atrophied from disuse - that my scalp was sore from the helmet, and my head was throbbing from the pressure...Then, she'd inquire again. How would you rate your service?
'The cycle repeated, and repeated, and repeated. 'Till my sanity started fraying like rope, and I finally said, 'Yes'. Just to keep the shadows out of my hive mind - a corner of consciousness that they weren't probing 'cause they hadn't thought to look for it.
'It's my sacred space. Where love is pure. Where Mother used to sing my mind to sleep...The space where you two are now." Bananas picked her head up and gave us each a weak little smile.
Cliff and I looked to one another. Frozen in shock at the vaulted honor, and crushing responsibility of being allowed inside Bananas Foster's head.
"You know," she added in an inappropriately bright and bouncy tone. "When I finally told my inquisitor that I'd given up - that I'd take whatever shadow job she had to offer - there was this look of satisfaction that stretched itself unnaturally across her face. And the thought of that smile – used to wake me from my dreams at night in a cold sweat.
'The only thing worse than surviving one of her tantrums is the carnivorous grin she makes when she gets what she wants."
'But I'm not afraid of her face anymore." Bananas chuckled defiantly. "It has no power over me."
Foster looked to each of us. Nodded smugly, chest puffed out, all floofy and such. Pride radiating off of her like color flying off of the rising sun.
"Wow, that's awesome," Cliff said.
"Yeah, I'm really proud of you." I added.
"You wanna know how I did it?" She asked. "Do ya? Do ya? Do ya? You're my hive now, so no more secrets!" Bananas Foster smiled so hard it made a squeaky sound.
Cliff and I nodded enthusiastically. And judging by Bananas' wholesome smile, I thought she was gonna say that she, like...remembered her family - her hive - or her friends, or something.
But that wasn't it.
Foster flashed a burst of green flame. Turned from pony-to-changeling-to-pony again. "I made it my own." Bananas threw us a duck face. Coiffed her mane proudly. Gestured at her own face with her forehooves.
"You mean…" Cliff said, jaw agape.
"With a few adjustments, of course." Foster first held her hoof down low, then raised it up high, indicating that she had made herself look exactly like her torturer, only, you know, a fuck of a lot bigger.
Then she drew Cliff and me together in a three-way hug. While I stared off into space. Imagining the inside of the doom castle, with a tiny, evil version of Bananas Foster in it. Tantruming over her victim's escape, vowing vengeance, and annihilating the psyches of all the children who got condemned into her care.
* * *
The three of us came to another street. A wide street. Not as massive as the one before. But an open stretch nonetheless. And there was a great big gash running across the center of the road. Like a giant had stabbed it with her enormous sword, and dragged the blade over the entire length of the road, exposing a network of metal veins that had once been pipes, and cables, and other infrastructurey stuff.
The drop was only about ten feet down, but it would be a hard climb. And Luna-only-knew how stable the street-guts at the bottom would be. If stepping on a Wasteland splinter could get you so sick that your own jaw killed you, I didn't wanna think about what a jagged, rusty old pipe would do.
"There has to be a safe place to cross," I said. "The road-chasm can't cut through the city wall. We should make a detour that way." I gestured with my head toward the city wall, eight or nine blocks sideways of where we were going.
"I could just fly across," Bananas said. "Or even better, fly up. There's nothing you'll be able to see from that hill that I won't be able to see from the top of one of these buildings."
The three of us spun our heads in unison. To have a look at a nearby spire, jutting up out of the rubble of a collapsed school like an angry hoof shaking itself at the sky. Refusing to go down with the rest of the structure.
"Yeah," I said. "But what if somepony sees you?"
"So what if they do?" Bananas retorted. "I don't know what Misty's mission is, but fair bet? It's going to involve other ponies. We'll never find Misty if we shy away from all signs of civilization."
"Have you ever actually flown before?" Cliff said.
"No," she licked her lips as though there was a giant maraschino cherry atop that spire. "But I wanna try."
"I get a splinter, and you freak out because there are no splinter-hospitals, but you think now's a good time to go all Junior Wonderbolt?"
"I can do it," she said. "Just straight up and down. To see if I can. No fancy moves."
"A splinter!" I said yet again.
"Do it," Cliff gazed upwards at the spire like it was made of magnets, and his eyeballs made of nails.
Everything fell quiet. I didn't dare challenge him. Not on this.
Bananas Foster rested her hoof on Cliff Diver's, all serious-like. An I won't let you down gesture.
"Discover whatever you can," I said. A gentle reminder that she had a practical reason for going up there too.
"Uh-huh." Foster fought back a smile.
"And, like, when we do find other ponies, we should follow them back to their...camp, or slave mine, or whatever it is that they have, and try to figure it out from there. It would be crazy to just walk right up to the first pony we saw, and say--"
"Hello," A stranger approached us from behind.
"Ahhhh!" All three of us leapt back.
He was lime green - at least his horn and snout were. Every other part of him was either decked up in a jumpsuit and boots, or strapped into a series of vests and utility belts strategically loaded with tools and padding. His back was weighed down by saddle bags, brimming with weird shit I couldn't identify. His head, obscured by a dirty old construction helmet with goggles attached to it.
He'd approached us from somewhere in the gash in the middle of the street while we were busy looking at the spire. But he wasn't sneaking up on us. In fact, he held his forehooves way up high to try to assure us that we shouldn't be alarmed.
"Don't be scared. You kids alright?" The stranger brushed himself off and came closer. Bursting with urgency. "What are you doing all the way out here?" He looked left. Looked right. Like he was afraid that somepony might see.
"Um…"
"Kids?!" Coughed a gruff voice from somewhere unseen. Moments later, a mare's head popped up out of the gash in the road. She wore the same helmet as the green stallion, (minus the hole for a unicorn horn), only her entire face was covered in soot. All we could make out were the whites of her eyes, and her tangerine irises that shoink! Narrowed to terrified pinpoints the second that she caught sight of us. "What are they doing all the way out here?" She said through gritted teeth the color of parchment.
Her partner with the goggles didn't answer. Just smiled nervously at us. Forced a friendly little chuckle through a grin the size of Manehattan. But the smile - big and toothy as it was - did not make a squeaking noise.
"This is freaky," I whispered to Cliff.
"What do we do?" He whispered back.
The soot-covered one scrambled over the edge, her jumpsuit every bit as blackened as her helmet and face. She stomped over to her partner, and thwapped him in the flank.
"Oh!" The lime stallion startled.
Sooty smiled in our direction. A bit too brightly - a bit too wide - but unlike Mr. Goggles, she didn't dare make eye contact.
As the silence grew longer, and weirder, Sooty once again muttered at her partner through her gritted brown teeth, though this time, I couldn't make out what she said.
"You really shouldn't be here," Goggles laughed. "Ow!"
Sooty kicked him in the shin, and gave him glowering eyeballs of doom.
"I mean. It's not safe. Not that we don't want you," he laughed. "You wouldn't think that...would you?"
Suddenly, silence yet again. As Goggles expanded his phony smile, and Sooty leaned forward so eager-like, I thought she might topple.
Cliff and I shrugged at one another. "No," I said. "Of course not."
Both grown-ups breathed a sigh of relief. Sooty threw a forehoof around Goggles's neck. He leaned against her for comfort.
Then, silence. Again. More bizarre than the first.
…
…
…
"I don't trust them," Cliff whispered at me through a smile he wore for show.
"Me neither," I said under my breath.
"Should we run?"
"No, they might know something."
"Like how to cook us," Cliff said.
"They seem more afraid that we'll eat them."
"Well, then what are we supposed to do?"
"I don't know," I snapped. And flashed the two grownups a phony smile. Then, just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder, I heard a sniffle. And a squeak. It was Bananas Foster. Crying.
Sooty and Goggles looked at one another in pure terror.
"I'm sorry," Bananas Foster blubbered, stumbling over to Goggles, who froze in place, as if by some kinda spell. "I don't mean to bother you," Foster continued. "It's just...it's just, j-j-just that…" she went silent for a moment. And once the four of us - friends and strangers alike - were all leaning toward her, hanging on whatever her next word was gonna be, Bananas threw her hooves around Mr. Goggle's leg, buried her face against him, and bawled, "We're lo-o-o-ost!"
Ms. Sooty backed away in horror.
Goggles awkwardly patted Foster's head like she was made out of egg shells. "There, there," he said. "There, there," trying - and failing - to convey warmth and safety. "I'll help you."
He turned to Sooty, grim-faced. Resigned as a pirate about to walk the plank. "You keep working, and don't wait up." He sounded like his throat was made out of ghosts. "I'll take them home."