//------------------------------// // Ayez arouh.....ba'iid 'an hena. // Story: Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns // by Pokonic //------------------------------// The next hour or so was one of the most agonizing in my entire life. It might have been for Blueberry, too, but neither of us could be sure, for entirely different reasons. It wasn’t a very talk-heavy hour. I didn’t bother trying to talk it out with her, considering she barely stopped sobbing before she shuffled away from me and just sat down on her belly to rest. Bleary eyed, she tried to avoid my gaze for a very long time before finally asking about the tiara thing lying besides me. However, I did feel awful when I told her she needed to walk back to the cart alone. She was very reluctant at first, understandably, but then I told her that I needed to go downstairs to get the water talisman thing, and she was in no condition to do so. And, as such, after she grabbed her gun, she slowly trotted out of the room. I simply slipped her magical death-reversing doohickey into my belt for safekeeping. I felt guilty for making her go by herself, but only slightly. I had to talk to the creature that tried to kill her. By the time I was in the basement proper, I was having second thoughts about going in alone. First and foremost, the basement’s sole occupant was curled up in a far corner of the room, making odd gasping sounds that reminded me of not only a literal fish out of water, but also a crying pony. I was unsure if she noticed my arrival, so I cleared my throat. If she did not before, she certainly did then, and she slowly raised herself up and slithered closer to me. After a tense few moments of seemingly sizing me up, she hesitantly acknowledged my existence. “Minotaur.” she said flatly. “Yes.” She leaned to her right, apparently to see if there was anyone behind me, and after a few moments of intently examining the stairs she went rigid and gave me a look containing no small amount of confusion. “Why are you back?” I, with no little pause, pointed to the raised flat area I was laid out earlier. “I want to talk about, well, you.” She was not expecting that, going by the way her wide, flat tail began to shift from side to side. The resulting sloshing water was nearly as cold as the glare she gave me. “What about me?” she said, that odd gurgle oozing back into her voice. I felt a bead of sweat form on my brow, which was impressive considering how cold the basement was. “Well, I just wondered what….” My mind drew a blank, and Sea Salt made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded like bubbling mud. “Well, what!” “...Well, I wanted to know how you were doing.” I finished lamely. She blinked, and began to seemingly shrink back. “Oh. That’s…reasonable. But I have a few, well, questions of my own.” “Like what?” “Well, I have been out in the lake outside, but how long has it…been?” “Since when?” I knew what she was talking about, but I was afraid of her reaction. Deeply. I saw her claws, and knew what they could do to meat. And I was mostly meat. She grimaced, and waved a claw vaguely. “Well, since the…event. The great war. I suppose the Zebras lost?” I suppressed the urge to lie. “It’s been two hundred years, give or take a few.” Her entire face slackened, as if every muscle suddenly stopped working, and her eyes became somehow wider than they already were. I expected a wail of sadness or something akin to it, but to my surprise she simply closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, and after a few moments she looked perfectly fine. “Ah. Explains a lot.” As if to show what the most important topic on her mind was, she looked at one of her claws as she wiggled them experimentally. With that strangely calm reaction serving as a little encouragement, but I was not one to question two hundred year old ponies with razor sharp claws. I slowly began to wad across the room to get to its centerpiece, which was six large egg-shaped orbs attached to a squat pillar that I assumed to be the water generator. Sea Salt just lingered in the same general position, seemingly uncaring that I was moving around in her lair. The water generator, as I now knew for sure what it was, was an impressive looking oddity. It was actually slightly transparent, being made out of some strange plastic-glassy material that was filled with a dark purple substance, and four out of the six round objects at the top seemingly produced water at a rapid pace. The other two were either dormant or broken, for they were leaking some strange shimmering colorless substance from some clearly defined cracks, and I noticed that more than a few of the pipes leading out from the machine were broken or leaking slightly. More importantly, I didn't see anything that I could call a "talisman". I was looking at the reason I even went into this cursed place, and now I knew I could never touch it because there was at least one sentient being that probably needed it to live. I sighed. Blueberry will be upset, but hopefully would be distracted by her own issues enough that she would not mind getting out of here in one piece without the reason we went inside in the first place. The rooms other occupant got my attention by sending a spray of foul water in my direction, interrupting my thoughts and nearly sent me sliding into the murk. To my somewhat relief, however, Sea Salt had a claw cupped over her mouth and was giggling. Not a sociopathic “I am going to eat you” giggle, but a genuinely carefree one. It was directed at me, yes, but it was better than her crying. “Minotaur, I do think we need to talk?” she said, still fighting the urge to break out into a bout of full laughter. Frankly, I didn’t find being soaked with water that funny. I tried to shake most of the water out of my hair, which just made me colder. “Yes, I think we do.” She stared at me for a few moments, and I realized just how strange this was. I was talking to a giant sea pony, and said sea pony was a college student who has probably killed dozens of ponies in the past, but might not really be the blame for her own actions. I really did not know where to start. However, to my relief, Sea Salt took the initiative. “Well, my name is Sea Salt, but you know that already. What’s yours? I do not want to keep calling you a minotaur.” “My name is Ever Watchful. And it was a guess.” She raised a smooth ridge that might have once been an eyebrow. “A guess?” I reached out into the deepest corners of my brain for a decent response, but it was a dud. “Err, Sea Salt? How about you just tell me who you are, and I will tell you how I got here?” I doubted I could have worded it any more clumsily. She just nodded, and to my surprise seemingly allowed herself to sink into the murk without leaving any sign of her existence. A few moments later, accompanied by only a little bit of moving water, she somehow managed to slither onto the power generator and lean her upper body on it, using the two broken orb-things as arm rests. It was so effortless; I was tempted to begin clapping. She just saw my reaction and looked almost embarrassed. “Err, yes, I think I just might have gotten some time to learn how to swim decently over the past decade or so.” I was unsure if I was supposed to laugh or not, so I did nothing. Sea Salt just tapped a claw or two against her makeshift armrests, and gathered her thoughts. “Well, anyway, before I start, how did you know my name?” I scratched my left shoulder in an attempt to get a chunk of something green and slimy out of it. “I read on a terminal that there was a pony named Sea Salt in the shark tanks.” She blinked, and shifted her bulk slightly so that her entire body somewhat encircled the generator. “Where was it?” I tried to think of something convincing that she would buy, but she responded to her own question. “It was Pearls, right? You read her logs. She said she was going to delete them before the...thing, but she always lied to me..” I nodded. She began to blink some more, presumably to hold back some tears. “N-now then, how much to you know about the world before it was…destroyed?” She spoke like every word was a little wound to her sides. “Well, it ended because there was a war between zebras and ponies. Both lost.” She eventually accepted that answer, even if she did begin breathing harder. “Anyway, you seem intelligent enough.” I am unsure if that was an insult or not. “Do you know where Tauronto is?” she continued after a brief pause. I had an excuse to smile. “Yes. I am heading there right now with my companion.” I realized that that might have not been the wisest thing to bring up, but she seemed to take it with stride. “She’s still alive, right?” I opened my mouth, but closed it after a bit of water landed on my tongue. She just let out a little guilty laugh. “She is alive, correct? I think I heard a pony talking upstairs.” I slowly nodded. “You can see souls, right?” She looked like I told her the sky was brown. Which it was, but that was beside the point. “That’s a very weird question. What would possibly make you think that?” Before I could open my mouth in protest, she pointed at what might have been her chest. “Because just because I look like something out of a foals tale does not mean I can do silly fairy stuff!” I was slightly surprised at her outburst, and I took a step backwards. “But I just assumed because of what you said about colors and things!” Her hard expression melted into something like bitter confusion. “What?” “You said that you did not want to feed Blueberry to the fish because she had a red glow to her!” She mumbled something under her breath, but quickly met my gaze. “Blueberry? The pony?” “Yes.” I said. She looked puzzled, as if I just said that she was bright orange and on fire. “I said that? Really? I don’t remember that.” Seeing that she was seemingly as confused as I was, I decided to not press the topic further. “Sorry, then.” Sea Salt narrowed her eyes and looked at me like I was the mutant. “No, don’t be. It’s just weird. I can remember everything, but it’s been a long time since I have had to…well, think about something more than what I was going to eat. The only time I remember seeing another pony inside here was a long, long time ago. All I know is that he came up the back entrance and screwed around with the water filtration systems..” I grunted slightly, and knelled down to try and regain my body heat. Futilely. I could only wonder what sort of pony could mess around here without outright stealing the water pump. However, that was a secondary thing of note, compared to the giant fishbeast that was coughing politely in an attempt to get my attention. “Err, about Tauronto. Is the river still there?” I felt bad, as I had no idea what she was talking about. “I really don’t know if there is a river there, Sea Salt.” Then my mind processed what she actually said. Wait, a back entrance? “There’s another opening in this place?” I said, perhaps a little too fast. She shrugged slightly. “Yeah, there is. Ponies sometimes go out and leave dead ones out there for me. They are creepy looking, though, and they don’t taste good at all. It’s flooded now, anyway, and it’s connected to another water pump. You wouldn’t want to go through it; really, it’s full of dead ponies.” Well, that does it. Braymont (or was it Bearmont?) was a horrible town that needed to die out. But there was another, slightly more disturbing aspect to what she said. “I thought you didn’t like eating ponies?” She blinked at me, and I realized then that, for the entire conversation, she said the word “pony” like some would say “ground”. I looked at her eyes, which wasn’t a real issue considering how big they were, and I saw nothing. She wasn’t really concerned about what she was doing, killing ponies. Even the half-smile she had was no different than the one she sported when she had a mouthful of pony meat in it. “I don’t really like the taste of them, but I have eaten one of them once or twice when I get tired of fish. Only a nibble to spice up things, not…” As if to solely increase my horror, Sea Salt absentmindedly licked a corner of mouth, and for a moment I saw true contentedness flood her eyes. I shuddered. She saw my expression, and laughed lightly. It wasn’t even forced. In an attempt to change the subject, I decided to see if there was anything I could actually gain from risking Taint infection down in one of the most uninhabitable places I could imagine. “Sea Salt, where did you get that potion you healed me with?” She frowned, and lurched forward off her makeshift seat. After getting most of herself off the metal lump, she nearly dived to the left into the murky water, and only surfaced when she was in the far corner of the room. “Would you follow me, please?” It wasn’t a command, more of an eager wish. She sounded almost desperate. I quickly discovered that the water became far shallower in other side, only to my knees, and eventually I saw something that looked like a raised entranceway a few feet of the ground, with the crumpled remains of what was probably a door a few feet away from it. Sea Salt just waited for me, half coiled and half leaning on the wall, and when I got close enough to it she looked at me gravely. “Watchful, can I trust you?” I looked at the twelve foot long pony eating mutant, and nodded before common sense could override that small part of my brain that blindly accepted everything around it for face value. Sea Salt looked at the half-lilted room somewhat quickly, as if it was painful to look at. “I have some stuff in there that I don’t want to get wet. It’s…” She shot a glance at the slimy floor, and dragged a claw on it, leaving a little clean trail on the grime-covered surface. “It has a lot of my stuff, before I, err, became me.” She sounded like she was talking about someone else, and that scared me shitless. “Anyway, can you carry it for me? It’s just a few bags and stuff.” I grunted as I carefully hauled myself up the ledge, and avoided facing her to not give away my discomfort in what I was doing. I quickly found two interesting things about the room. The first one was, besides a single large wet spot on the floor, it was completely dry and somewhat clean. The second thing was that some unseen light source kicked in when I stood up. I turned around, and I nearly jumped when I saw that Sea Salt used one of her huge arm-fin-claw things to flick a light switch on. She just grinned at me innocently, which might have been reassuring if it where not for the fact that there were still specks of pink on some of her sharper teeth. After quickly figuring out that she was making me slightly unnerved, she leaned back outside the room and lowered herself halfway into the muck. Her stuff, however, was easy to find, as the room was bare of any real decoration besides a few little yellowed pieces of paper pinned to the wall. I avoided touching them, as I was still wet enough that they might have been damaged, but they all had crude little drawings on them, apparently with crayons. I noticed that they all had at something vaguely shaped like a pony on them, usually with smaller one’s accompanied by animals. I grew increasingly unnerved when I realized that they were all made by little ponies more than a hundred years ago. Luckily, her things seemed far less personal and unintentionally horrifying. Seemingly untouched over the centuries, the single bag and a few knick-knacks were in the far-right corner near the pictures. After I carefully dried my fingers on what might have been a towel two hundred years ago, I opened the little green carrying purse. It was pretty much what I was expecting, which wasn’t much. A little red booklet, a few rather colorful pieces of cloth that was probably clothing of some sort, a few larger books that looked rather boring, something that looked like a journal, and a few scattered papers. In essence, it was pretty standard stuff, but considering that it was likely Sea Salt’s last real connection to life before the war, I could see why she would want it. I was tempted to look at the journal, but that would have been rude, especially because I could practically hear her breathing outside the room. Sea Salt reacted to me walking out with her things faster than I expected. “Oh, thank you thank you thank you! I don’t know how to make it up to…oh; I didn’t think you would…” I swore she did her best impression of a surprised lamb for a few seconds, but my surprise at that was quickly smothered by the surprise of a metallic groaning coming from the far end of the room. Sea Salt noticed it as well, and looked at me almost guiltily. “Ever Watchful, would you be so kind as to help me one more time?” she said, eyes practically glittering. I doubted I could say no even if I wanted to, considering what I had done already for her. “With what?” I said, perhaps a bit flatter than I actually intended. “You remember what I was saying about Tauronto, yes?” she said, voice brimming with excitement. “Yes, I do.” “Well, there is a tunnel down here that’s meant too, if I remember correctly, lead to an old water transportation system in the Donk River. Really advanced stuff, apparently, but more importantly it’s a way for me to get out of here. Unfortunately, it seems to be rusted over, and I can’t pry it open. If I could, I could eventually get to the ocean, which probably isn’t too irradiated, right?” I nearly missed her question. “I don’t think so. But do you really want to leave this place?” She snorted. “Yes, yes I do. I used to think I could live in this place, but that was probably a few decades ago. I just can’t open the stupid thing.” I looked at the object of her hatred. It was pretty big as hatches go, at least the size of a pony, and it large enough that the top part of it was exposed to the air. What was exposed was covered in dents and deep cuts into the metal, a testament to a decade or so of the attentions of an annoyed sea pony. Every few seconds, it let out a little groan, a sure sign of the sheer amount of pressure and damage it had obtained after centuries of diligent duty, some of which where louder than others. I wondered for a few moments just what cause it to make such obnoxious noises, but that thought was silenced to make room for thoughts about breaking things. I kicked it. It crumpled into itself, starting from the hole my hoof made in the thin metal, and water began rushing into the hole. Sea Salt just stared at the increasingly widening hole in the ground, and then at me with blank, nearly glazed over eyes. “I once broke a claw trying to break that.” She said miserably. I sympathetically patted her on…well; it was probably part of her belly. Neither of us said anything, which was perfectly fine for me. “Ever Watchful, yes?” she said hesitantly. I just nodded, and stared at the hole in the ground. The sound of sloshing water below was getting louder. “Thank you for this. I can honestly say you have given me the best company I have had in years.” She cracked a smile, one that was not expressed in her eyes whatsoever. “I try my best.” I said truthfully. She leaned back, as if preparing to simply dive into the hole. “Does this happen often? Out there, I mean.” “I don’t think so, but I would think that there are others like you. Changed, anyway. I would think it would be best to see for yourself.” “Fair enough.” She said, almost robotically. “You treasure the past, right?” I wasn’t entirely sure where that came from. She paused for a few moments, as if she was wondering that herself. “I suppose. I have been…myself for a lot longer than I have been…before. I would think that I have accepted myself for who I am by now. I don’t think there’s anything I would want to see here that I haven’t already, let alone some…ponies I used to know.” “Fair enough.” I echoed. By the way she shyly put an arm over her head and glanced to the side, she almost looked like she was... No, that would be impossible, and furthermore, would be very, very weird. “If this tunnel does lead to where I think it does, I can meet you near Tauronto Bridge. It's a day travel here by walking, I think. I will probably get there before you do.” “Okay, then. I will try and meet you there, Sea Salt.” She slowly turned around and faced the lit room on the far side of the basement. “Anything else I should aware of, before I go?” she said in a manner that suggested that the world outside was on the least of her worries. “I am still learning myself. I would not think anything out there is a danger to you, however.” She smiled slightly, and without another word, nearly dived headfirst into the watery pit below, leaving me standing with her stuff in the middle of a dark basement filled with now-shallow water and old memories. It was bright outside, which showed just how much time I could spend with pony eating mutants. The Seahorse looked even worse in daylight, and I had the joy of seeing every bit of it that was mercifully cloaked by the darkness. It looked far less scary in the light, however. It almost looked sad; a little monument-tomb that was once dedicated to making ponies smile that was reduced to a leering ruin of a building. Even the debris filled pond below was another sign of its ruination. Far more important to myself, however, was the fact that Blueberry was nowhere in sight. I readied the head of my hammer to a more comfortable place on my shoulder, which was in itself a feat when one was carrying a few pounds of dead weight under ones spare arm. But the reason for her being missing quickly became apparent when I saw the cart, for snuggled in between a green saddlebag and a very asleep Blueberry was a tan colored cat nearly as big as she was. This would have been adorable if it where not for the tiny wings and scorpion tail it sported. The fact it was awake, and more importantly, leering at me, was a factor too.