Chapter 9: Home
“Saucius at quadripes nota intra tecta refugit, successitque gemens stabulis…”
"Swift to its cover fled the wounded thing, and crept loud-moaning to its wonted stall..."
-Virgil, The Aeneid
What is home?
Is it where you live? Is nothing more than a structure? Four walls to hold back the wind, a roof to hold back the rain, a place to rest your head when the day’s work is done and the coming dawn is but a dream away? Or is it, as the saying goes, “where the heart is”; inside you, in your hopes and in your dreams? Is it anywhere your friends are? Where your family is? Where you can really and truly say you feel “at home”?
All this had been swimming around in the depths of my mind, lurking unseen but not unfelt, since Parum Sororem, my dear sister, had appeared suddenly in a ramshackle tent thrown hastily together in a ramshackle warehouse. I’d beaten it back, held its head under the waters of conscious thought while it thrashed and struggled against my efforts.
The answer, for now at least, had been answered by a simply holotape recording of a now-distant radio signal: home was a network of steel tunnels and rooms far underground. And I was going back there.
* * *
“Attention, attention, attention: This is Deduc Indagator of Stable 81, trying to reach the fugitives Close Call and Parum Sororem, both of my stable. We have your parents here; either come home and pay for your crimes, or they shall. Message repeats…”
The message repeated. For how long, or how many times, I couldn’t exactly say. I sat on the ancient, half-rotted wooden floor of the bar, mouth open, my mind reeling. The door opened behind me, though I hardly noticed it.
“Is it safe yet-“ Parum began, having come in with Mist Chaser, but was silenced almost immediately. Whether by Butcher’s presence, the holotape still relaying its message, or both, I don’t know, but it was to me to whom she spoke first. “Cost…what…is that…what’s going on?” she whimpered, eyes on my PipBuck.
It was that name that kickstarted my brain, allowed me to think a little more clearly again. “Cost”…like a misspelling of “coast”…or the bastardization of “Close”, the kind of bastardization a filly only just learning to speak would make. Parum hadn’t called me that in years, not since she herself was that young filly, only just learning to speak. “We have to go back.” I said simply.
“You need ta shut that fuckin’ thing off.” Sunny called from the bar. “What?” she demanded, flinching under the reproachful stares of both Butcher and Mist Chaser. I did as she asked nonetheless; it wasn’t like I was going to change anything by playing it over and over again.
“Parum…” I started, reaching out a hoof. Mist Chaser beat me to it, any fear of what her mother would do to her evaporated by the time she reached my sister. She hugged her with both hooves and wings, enveloping her in a soft blue shell of comfort.
Even in the state I was in, I couldn’t help but steal a sidewards glance at Butcher. “So…” I started, not entirely sure what to say next. Hell, I wasn’t even sure about what I was going to do next.
The pegasus just laughed, her wings fluttering slightly against her jacket. “You’re not a parent, so you don’t understand.” She said, “Even though I don’t see her too much anymore, there isn’t-and never will be-a thing Mist Chaser can hide from me. She’s got a decent head on her shoulders, and it looks like your sister may have one as well. Naïve, but what stable pony isn’t?” Although she was right, I couldn’t help but feel a bit offended. We weren’t that naïve, were we?
Butcher looked on at the two fillies-holding each other, both of them silent-for a moment longer before flapping her wings with a snap. I jumped, and they both looked up. “I hate to break this up, I really do, but your brother’s right: y’all need to get goin’, and get goin’ yesterday. So let’s go!”
I blinked. “Wait, us? Like, all of us? Why?”
The pegasus shook her head. “Mist Chaser’ll stay here.” Said filly opened her mouth to protest, but never got that far. “I love you honey, but there isn’t much you can do to help. And these two’ll need all the help they can get.”
Look, I knew that we were stable ponies, and that I myself still struggled daily with the mere thought of killing another pony, but come on! More ponies knew my sister as the Hellion, Defender of the Innocent and Reaper of the Wicked than knew her as Parum Sororem. And I…well, Parum should be enough for both of us! We could take care of ourselves! I told Butcher such, and received a laugh for my efforts.
“Who do you think took out that merc in the power armor?” She asked. My mid flashed back to our first meeting with Quick Charge: a quick battle, followed by a mysterious helper with a high powered rifle taking out the aforementioned mercenary in power armor. “I’m coming with you, at least to Sukawaka.”
“Fuckit, I guess I’ll go too. Why the fuck not?” Sunny slurred, magically slamming her bottle of Stalliongrad’s Finest on the bar for effect.
“There’s no alcohol in the stable, Sunny.”
“Fuck you an’ fuck your stable, I’m goin’.”
“Looks like it’s settled then.” Butcher stated happily, “It’s getting late. I suggest y’all rest up. We leave at dawn.”
* * *
”Oh my, it really is, well, dark in here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, totally not awesome.”
“Will y’all just shut up an’ help me?”
I open my eyes; the voices here are…different. I look to my left and right to find that the others who were chained with me are gone. In front of me I can only just make out three mares in the wan light: a white unicorn, a cyan pegasus whose prismatic hair seems to shine despite the dimness, and an orange earth pony with a cowpony hat. They’re talking amongst themselves, leaving me to myself and my thoughts. I look down, and am disappointed to see that my legs are still bound. When I look back up, all three mares are looking right at me.
“Be strong.” Says the orange one.
“Be awesome!” cheers the blue one, leaping into the air with her excitement.
“Be unwavering.” The white one states primly, nodding, but still smiling warmly. I look back down, and not knowing what’s going to happen, start to struggle against my bindings.
A link in the chain cracks.
* * *
“Ready to go?”
I looked at my PipBuck as I shifted my now-heavy saddlebags. Food, check. Healing potions and bandages, also check. Sunny had ammo, and Parum was loaded to the brim with combat drugs-Buck for strength beyond strength, Hydra for healing beyond healing, Steady for sight beyond sight, and Stampede for insanity beyond insanity, from what I could tell, and those were just the ones she told me about. Apparently they were a regular part of her repertoire before she’d found me; she said she’d stopped since then, but…I shook the thought out of my head, nodding at Butcher. “We’re ready.” I said. Earlier in the morning I’d visited Oya in her shack, and tried to convince her to come with us. Much to my dismay, she declined, giving me only the epithet "Chakukupa sina ila nakuombea salama." So, essentially, no.
“How’re we gonna get there?” I asked Butcher. She seemed to know best how to get, well, anywhere in what used to be the Whinnyapolis-Metro area, and would be leading us back to the Stable. She still wore her leather flight jacket as well as a pair of aviator sunglasses. I suddenly noticed that I was missing my own pair, which had been part of my very first purchase, way back in Sukawaka. I guessed I’d been so absorbed in everything that’d been happening since then, I never realized that I had lost them. Now that I thought of it, I’d lost my actual glasses as well. Shit. Once again paying attention, my eyes were drawn back to Butcher; namely, her gun. It rested diagonally across her back, passing between her wings. It was massive, longer than she was. It looked like one of the huge sniper rifles I’d seen on the gate guards at Sukawaka, but…different. The rifle was light blue, its scope, magazine, and stock an off-white color. It (or rather, Tate, as she affectionately called it) fired rounds a little larger than my hoof, and could apparently take a pony’s head right off.
Butcher adjusted the strap on her rifle before she answered me. “We walk.” She said, “Well, you walk, and I try to fly as much as I can.”
“Lazy cunt.” Sunny muttered under her breath.
“What was that?” Parum cut sharply.
“As I was saying,” Butcher continued impatiently, raising her voice over the both of them, “If we hurry, we should be able to make it there in a couple of days. Let’s go.”
* * *
The journey home was, aside from one event, largely uneventful, so I will not be transposing it here. I doubt anypony (one, anyone) reading this will really want a detailed description of the four of us wandering through the wasteland, seeing nothing and meeting no one who wasn’t the occasional raider. I will tell you of that night, though, when we four travelers huddled around a makeshift fire in the remains of an old log house. It was one level; really one room, and it looked to be older even than the rest of Whinnyapolis, and I thought it must have been built long before the war, when the backbone of the area was logging. There was even the remains of what could have been a plaque outside. How it survived the bombs, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to find out. But for the first time, I couldn’t care less about the history of the building we were currently squatting in. I had something on my mind.
“Parum?” I asked, causing her to look up from a magazine she’d been reading. Butcher had retired with an old medical journal, and Sunny busied herself with cleaning her firearms; nopony had spoken in a while, and they both looked up at this. Parum looked up, waiting for me to continue. “Why exactly did you come out here?” I asked.
She looked confused…or was it troubled? “I told you, I didn’t believe what Deduc was saying about you. And like I said, Mom and Dad were-“
“Dicit plane!” I interrupted sharply. Parum recoiled, a frown growing in sync with her confusion. I’m sure Sunny had something to say-when I or anyone spoke in anything other than Pony, there was typically a snort and/or a roll of her eyes. If this was the case, or if Butcher had the same habit, I did not know; the entirety of my attention was focused on the little green filly in front of me.
“C’ose…” She tried, reverting back to her old lexicon.
“Parum Sororem!”
There was a pause. My sister shifted uncomfortably, going to great lengths to avoid meeting my eyes. Mine didn’t move, however, and eventually she capitulated. Parum looked down, speaking to the floor. “…sent me.” She muttered.
“What?” I demanded-in hindsight, more harshly than I should have, more harshly than I had probably intended, but there was something there, I knew it. And I would be banished to the moon before I let it just pass through my hooves like water through a sieve.
“She sent me!” My sister shouted explosively. Before I could even ask who, she was already continuing. “Deduc Indagator! She came right after you left, said something had gone wrong, and that somepony needed to bring you back. I volunteered, and left the next day!” Her eyes finally met mine, wet with tears. She was going now, words flowing as freely as the water from her eyes, “I got outside, and…the bones, C’ose, the bones…it wasn’t supposed to be like this!” I could relate.
“I found a village just a bit outside the stable…ponies whose ancestors had tried to get in when the megaspells hit. They were being hit by raiders almost every day, and had been for years. They begged me to help them…how could I say no? How could anypony? I killed the raiders, and one of the villagers called me a little hellion, and that’s what I became. I didn’t think I was going to find you as fast as I did, and I didn’t…I didn’t…” Her breath hitched in a sob, “I didn’t think she’d actually threaten to kill our parents!”
What could I say to that? All I could say at the time, rounding on my sobbing sister, shouting in her face, was, “You lied to me? That explains it, doesn’t that just fucking explain everything! When I see you, it’s nothing but how we need to help the wasteland, then out of the blue you want to go home! If you had just listened to me in the first place we wouldn’t be in this situation!”
My words rang off the walls of the cabin and hung in the air. Sunny and Butcher looked away uncomfortably, and I went outside to start first watch. There was nothing more to say, and nothing more was said.
* * *
It is said that home is where the heart is. For a long time I thought it was just where one grew up, where most of a pony’s memories lie, a place that no matter where they were or what they were doing, somepony could point to this one place and say “That’s it. That’s my home.” Ever since I’d heard that phrase, I’d always been content in being able to point to Stable 81, to mine and my family’s shared space in that stable, and say “That’s mine. That’s my home.”
Now, staring at the massive steel gear which served as the Stable’s door, I found I could no longer answer with the same certainty that this was my home. I had been out here for only a few weeks, but it had been long enough for my own home to take on a distant, almost imaginary flavor in my mind. Sukawaka, Harbor, New Falmalla…these places had become real to me, whereas before I would have dismissed them as myth while clinging to the reality of, well, home. Now that I was back here in front of this door, so much sooner than I had planned, while my own family was under threat…I didn’t know if I wanted to open it.
Sunny solved that dilemma for me. “No Balls, I just humped my sweet ass across what feels like half the fuckin’ wasteland. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m pissy, and I hear stables have the closest thing to a decent bed a pony can find. If you or your Pissant sister don’t open that fucking door, I’ll kill you both and do it myself.” Very well then. Before I left, I had been given codes to the stable door for when I returned…if I returned. I linked my PipBuck to the battered console in front of the door and entered them. I dimly heard mechanics inside. There was a hollow-sounding clank as the arm inside attached itself to the door, followed soon after by an ear-splitting shriek as the monstrous gear was pulled away from its moorings and rolled aside. I stared into the Abyss, and the Abyss stared back at me. At least, the lone security pony stationed in the entrance looked up from his book in surprise and stared at me.
“You’re…you’re the traitor! Stop, stop right where you are!” he shouted. He pressed a button on his desk and shouted once again, this time into a speaker. “I need backup over here! The traitor has returned! I say again, the traitor has returned!”
“The fuck, Dream Charmer?” I exclaimed. I was dumbfounded, to say the least. We’d grown up together, from daycare to foal school, right up to when we went to our separate job trainings: me to linguistics, and her to security. I wouldn’t say we’d been all that close; as I’ve said before, I never really had more than one or two actual friends until I came outside, but we definitely knew each other. More so than as “Dream Charmer” and “Traitor”, at least.
“Luna’s amazing ass, you never did quit being a little cunt, did you?” Parum responded in kind. Even before she’d received her cutie mark, Parum had been a good enough fighter that she was often called to teach hoof to hoof combat to the security ponies. She soon earned herself a reputation of being…abrasive to trainees. Dream Charmer didn’t answer, nor did she have to-her backup had arrived.
A jet black unicorn mare with a blood red mane and tail appeared, flanked by two more security ponies. “That’s quite enough, you three.” Deduc Indagator commanded. All of the sly and playful cadences of her voice were gone; here we had an authoritative voice, the voice of the leader of Stable 81.
“Damn, No Balls, no wonder you wanted to fuck her.” Sunny said, with perfect timing, as always.
Deduc looked to her, and then back to me. “Quis est hic? Who is this?” she asked-no, demanded-her eyes flicking to the brown unicorn. I almost commiserated, looking down at my hooves while muttering an apology in Roaman and reminding myself to keep Sunny within kicking distance from here on out. Almost. Instead, before I could form the words in my own mind, it was assaulted by the three phrases in three voices which had become my mantra: Be Strong, Be Awesome, Be Unwavering!
“Amicus est, et ita ei non loqui. She is my friend, and you will not speak to her in such a way.” I responded.
“We’re not-“ Sunny began.
“Shut up Sunny.” I cut in, not taking my eyes off of Deduc. I swore I heard her mouth snap shut.
“Enough!” Deduc Indagator bellowed. “Mr. Call, estis sedem maiestatis reus habitant. Emendatum captivitatis, et eris stabilis, ut vos postulo ut adire aedificaveris temptandi causa, quae incipit cras. Cave, Close Call; Ero tibi in oculum. Mr. Call, you have been accused of treason against your home and its inhabitants. In lieu of imprisonment, you will be free to travel the stable as you need to in order to build your case for trial, which will commence tomorrow. Be wary, Close Call; I will be keeping an eye on you.” With that, she left, and her guard remained to escort us to my family’s living quarters. They were silent the entire way, even despite Sunny’s badgering. I couldn’t even bring myself to try and get her to shut up. Treason? Trial? What was going on in this stable? Never in my life had I experienced anything like this. It was almost as if we were under some sort of martial law! Before, we were just a group of researchers, all working together to find out whatever we could on the Zebra Empire, all working together to help our nation, our homeland. The only reason a position like Deduc Indagator-Lead Researcher-existed was to give us a general direction for our research. And as far as I knew, the direction for the past hundred years had been “whatever you want. Go for it.” With these thoughts swimming around my head, I wasn’t prepared for when we actually got to our quarters.
“Close!”
I snapped back to reality in time to be glomped by my mother, who swept both me and Parum into a bear hug, chattering rapidly in Roaman, something along the lines of: “I thought you two were dead! How dare you do this to me and your father? First you, running off without even talking with us first! Then you, going after him! Look at how thin you two are and how long your mane’s gotten and Close Call what happened to your ear!?”
“Mom, Mom! It’s ok, we’re ok, just calm down…” I soothed, separating myself from her with difficulty.
She looked like hell. Her normally pristine white mane and tail showed streaks of grey, with the odd strand poking out here and there. She herself looked like she hadn’t been eating. Wrinkles which had been slight when I left had lengthened and deepened to veritable gullies. “Close Call, you try that again, only properly this time…” she scolded, letting go of my sister, but smiling nonetheless. I didn’t smile back. One sentence, that one sentence, and my happiness at being home, at seeing my mother again, faded almost to nothing. In that moment I was a foal again, trying desperately to impress my parents and failing every time.
“Where’s dad?” I asked sharply, making both my mother and my sister wince.
“They…they said we had to be separated until the trial…I was allowed to stay here, but your father is in the detention center.” Mom replied, obviously holding back tears. Regardless of her perceived feelings toward me before, she loved her husband dearly. This entire ordeal must have been hell on her. I started to commiserate, but was interrupted, per usual, by my brown unicorn companion.
“Holy shit, is this an actual fucking shower?” Shouted Sunny from our unit’s shared restroom. Before we could answer, we were met with the sound of running water, closely followed by a cheer of “Hot fucking water too?! Fuck yeah, let’s stay here forever!”
* * *
A much-needed shower and mane trim later I found myself wandering my former home. Not much had changed, it was unnerving how much hadn’t. I’d changed, both physically and psychologically; I had been through trial and tribulation, witnessed what had truly become of our homeland, and nearly died more than a few times. Yet in here, nothing had changed. Aside from this oncoming “trial”, everypony giving me weird looks, and my armed escort, things were essentially the same. It was like I never left. The feeling was hammered home (no pun intended) when I found I had wandered to my old office.
“Per deae Iam redit extrinsecus! By the Goddesses, you’re back!” My friend, Insusurro, exclaimed, looking up from an ancient-looking book. “You’re good, he’s fine with me.” He said to the escorts, who looked at each other, shrugged, and left. “Sucks about this whole trial thing, huh? What happened to your ear?”
I sighed, the hole in my ear burning as if it knew we were talking about it once again. “I got shot. Long story.” I said, “Do you even know why I’m on trial? Or why Deduc felt the need to essentially imprison both of my parents? What the hell is going on here?” I walked over to my desk as I spoke. It hadn’t even been touched-my To Do pile was just the same as I’d left it, my little knickknacks, the picture of my family was still there, if a little dusty. And, to my elation, my spare pair of glasses was still in the top left drawer. “Sweet Celestia and Luna above, I can see again…” I muttered, resolving to try and go a week without breaking and/or losing them.
“You got shot?” Insusurro asked, “Well I guess I’m not surprised. I guess that’s what happens when you piss off the Equestrian Army. Thanks for that, by the way.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Don’t act like we don’t know. Deduc Indagator told us everything. You went out, were met by New Equestrian Army officials who were going to help reintegrate us into society, killed their envoy, ran off, and now they’re threatening to come in and take the stable by force unless you’re brought to justice. So yeah, thanks man. We really appreciate it.”
I blinked again. “What now?” New Equestrian Army? Reintegration? Where was he getting all this? Better yet, where was Deduc Indagator getting all this? “It’s been nothing like that. There is no New Equestria; there’s no Equestria, period! The war’s over and everypony lost, there’s nothing but wasteland out there.”
Insusurro didn’t even look up from his work as he spoke to me. “Look Close, it’s good to see you well-mostly well, at least-but I really shouldn’t be talking to you. Salve, Close.”
* * *
Parum, Butcher, and Sunny found me in the empty atrium, sipping a protein and vitamin shake and staring off into space, lost in my own thoughts. They too each had their own security escort, which joined mine in watching us from a respectable distance while the two mares sat across from me. “Stable ponies are fuckin’ weird.” Sunny stated. She took a whiff of my shake and wrinkled her nose. Her horn glowed for a moment, then extinguished as she sighed and hung her head. We had been allowed to travel Stable 81 as we please, but our personal belongings had been confiscated. Parum and I were back in Stable 81 barding, and our saddlebags had been removed. My statuettes, Parum’s spear, armored barding, and combat drugs, Butcher’s rifle, and Sunny’s pistols and alcohol were sitting pretty in Special Operations. If Deduc Indagator had her way, we’d probably never see them again.
“Do you know why they’re doing this? I can’t get anything from anypony: my coworkers, my students…” Parum whispered, her eyes flicking to the guards.
“Apparently I was met by a ‘New Equestrian Army’, who’s envoy I killed before running off and completely abandoning the stable. Now said army is about to break down the door and drag us out by force unless I’m punished.” I explained. “Look, I know it’s stupid, but no matter how hard I tried, Insusurro couldn’t be dissuaded.” I added at the mares’ dumbstruck looks. “Have you seen dad yet?” I asked.
“I haven’t ever seen my dad.” Sunny piped in.
“No. They won’t let us see him, and won’t say why.” Parum answered, ignoring her. That certainly added yet another layer to my mounting confusion; why could we see mom, but not dad? What were they playing at? Just what was going on here?
“Sounds like a classic ‘lie to the public and demonize the truth’ situation. Reminds me of the Enclave…” Butcher muttered. When I looked at her, confused, she just coughed and looked away. Something for later, I guessed.
* * *
Turns out I’d changed in yet another way: I no longer really cared as much about raising any sort of fuss or being a part of any sort of conflict. Although Stable 81 could contain anywhere between 250 to 300 ponies at any one time split into various departments, which themselves were fairly autonomous, it was a small stable; word got around fast, and a slight against a pony in one department could definitely make life miserable for an offending pony in another. So, like most ponies, I generally kept to myself when out and about. The thought of it actually drew a chuckle from me as I pinned one of my former stablemates to the steel wall by her neck. I’d left the cafeteria to wander the lower levels, where the stable’s Maintenance Department was housed. A maze of generators, purifiers, pumps, and other such machinery, added to my burgeoning skills, and it was simple enough to lose my escort for a bit. How long, I couldn’t be sure-I still had my PipBuck, and it was only a matter of time before one of them thought to look up my tag. But I had some time, and I used it to surprise Parua, a pony who so happened to work in the Special Operations. Lucky me! If memory served, she was the same pony I’d handed a seemingly random note to so long ago.
“You’re the…traitor…” Parua grunted.
“Etiam non es ingenio? Well aren’t you a genius?” I cooed, “Look, I want answers, and I’m sure you don’t want to cross the pony that killed an Equestrian Army envoy, so how about we cooperate, hmm?” An ancient Zebra book once said that war was about deception and fear; regardless of the actuality of a situation, if you play on somepony’s fear, they’ll be butter in your hooves. I was banking on this, because while I had slowly come to accept that killing others was a necessary part of wasteland life, I didn’t think I was ready to murder a fellow stable pony.
She must have been new when I last saw her; she broke almost immediately. “Whatever you want, just please don’t kill me!” she pleaded, her eyes moving frantically from side to side, searching for somepony, anypony, to help.
“What was on that note?” I asked. It had been bothering me since I first laid eyes on it, and my suspicion of it had come back in force after I’d returned. “What did it say?”
“What note? I don’t know what you’re-“
“Stultum me credis? Do you think me a fool? The note! The one I handed to you personally before I left! What did it say?” I yelled.
“I-it was a cipher…” Parua explained, becoming more and more panicky, “’Send the pony holding this’, that’s all, I swear!” What? Send them where? Had I been chosen for the expedition just because I happened to be the last one to have the note? Did Insusurro know about it when he asked me to drop it off in the first place?
There was a shout of “There he is!” from down the corridor; the guards had found me. I let go of Parua, who shouted hoarsely, “He was going to kill me!”
“I was n-“ I started, only to be tackled to the floor by two armored security ponies. There was a brief struggle as they pinned me, and with a baton strike I was out for the count.
* * *
Stable 81’s atrium served many purposes: cafeteria, party room, conference room for Stable-wide departmental meetings, and as a general hangout spot. Today it served as a courtroom. After my little escape/interrogation, I’d been thrown, hoofcuffed, into a small conference room to think about what I’d done. Now I sat at a small table with my sister, facing Deduc Indagator, who had her own table. To my right was a third table, which would serve as a witness stand, if there were any sense to be had out of this farce. The rest of the stable sat behind me, muttering amongst themselves. Sunny, unable to scrounge up any alcohol to help her cope with the situation, had attempted a hostile takeover of Special Operations to try and reclaim her possessions, and was now confined in the stable’s jail. Butcher had been thrown in as well-crime by association. Considering the amount of attention being a pegasus in a stable had garnered, I was sure she found it preferable to being in here.
“Close…”
I turned, snapped out of my reverie. Afflata, my mother, was standing behind me. It’d been twelve hours since I had last seen her, and she looked worse than ever. “I just want you to know that no matter what happens…I love you and your sister more than anything. I’ve always been…so proud of you.” She whispered, her last words breaking into a small sob.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” I asked flatly.
“What?! What makes you think-“
“You feel bad for treating me like shit my entire life, and now you’re trying to absolve yourself of any guilt before I’m executed, which
I assume is what they’re going for. Now if you really loved me, you may have just tried a little harder to not have your children put on trial.” I spat, looking at Deduc instead of her. Mom began to weep softly, and Parum just hung her head. Harsh? Sure, but I really was in no mood for fake commiserations.
Deduc cleared her throat, and her horn glowed white as she magically magnified her voice. “This court will now come to order!” she commanded. The room fell silent almost immediately, excluding the occasional throat clearing. Even mom had stopped crying-at least, stopped sniffling.
“Close Call,” Deduc began, “You, as well as your sister, Parum Sororem, have been charged with treason against your Stable, as well as reckless endangerment of those which live within its walls. How do you plead?”
I bristled, but kept my composure. “Not guilty. And let it be known that these charges are slanderous and contrived, and I hold that Stable leadership has in fact lied to its citizens in order to bring legitimacy to these claims.” There was murmuring behind me. Dissent amongst the ranks?
“Noted.” Deduc said, “The defense may call their first witness.” Wait, witness? I had witnesses? “Perhaps you would like to start with a friend or family member?” she added after a minute of me staring blankly at her.
I saw the chance and I took it. “Get my father, Admiratus, out here. Now.” Deduc glared at me briefly before nodding toward one of the security ponies. Minutes later they returned, escorting a forest green unicorn with a gavel cutie mark. Admiratus was a large pony, muscular and toned. When he was still young enough to be a blank flank he’d been pegged for combat studies, but instead had become a scholar of Zebra government and politics. Over time he’d moved up in his department, and until recently had not only served as the head of his department, but also served as Chief Justice of Stable 81. Trust me, the irony was not lost on us all. Side note, his daughter had been the one to go into combat studies, in another (minor) twist of irony.
As he stepped up to the witness’ table, he turned to me and nodded, before addressing out esteemed leader directly. “As I told you before, I know my children. The Stable and the welfare of its citizens come second only to the dedication they hold to the attainment and spread of knowledge. I doubt either of them have killed anypony, much less that Close Call tore his way through an entire military envoy. This court is a farce, and I will not stand idly by while you railroad him and my daughter on trumped-up charges.
“My children are not murderers.”
Parum’s head snapped up so fast I swear I heard her neck pop. I coughed explosively and took my turn to stare at the floor. “Does the defendant have something to add?” Deduc asked, with more than a hint of a smile in her voice.
I opened my mouth to tell her no, only to be interrupted by my sibling. “Four hundred and nineteen!” she shouted. Every eye in the room was on us now if they weren’t already. “I’ve killed four hundred and nineteen ponies!” Parum shouted again, before shutting up again.
Now the eyes were on me. After a moment of staring at my sister in disbelief, I did a quick internal count before muttering, “Six.”
“So you have murdered before?” Deduc questioned.
“Only in self-defense!” I countered vehemently, though my words were lost in the ensuing din, which erupted into a cacophony of anger and disgust. It echoed off of the walls, as if the stable itself-my home-were venting its unending disappointment in me and my sister.
“Order! I will have order!” Stable 81’s Lead Researcher bellowed over the crowd, her magically enhanced voice drowning theirs out. “I believe we have heard all we needed to hear. This court moves to-“
“You’re being lied to!” I interrupted, speaking more to my stable than to its leader. “There is no New Equestrian Army; there’s no Equestria, period!” There was a brief moment of stunned silence, and I took it while I could. “I’ve been Outside for nearly a month now, gathering information, doing my job. You can look through my reports and listen to my logs if you want, because I’ve recorded only the truth. There is nothing left of the Equestria our forefathers knew. What does remain is little more than a skeleton, where ponies struggle to survive, much less organize any sort of government, much less an army! I don’t know where you’ve been getting your information from, but they’re wrong!”
The look on Deduc Indagator’s face wasn’t the bafflement or sudden realization I‘d hoped for. Instead, she looked insulted. “How dare you? How dare you?! It is clear to me that not only are you a murderer, you have come back only to spread sedition amongst us! Close Call and Parum Sororem, I hereby sentence you both to death, to be carried out immediately!”
“Now see here!” My father shouted over the resuming din, but Deduc ignored him. Cries of “Kill ‘em!” and “They won’t fool us!”, as well as “You can’t do that!” and “This is wrong!” I wasn’t paying attention to them, though; I was paying attention to the pistol Deduc had floated out and was now pointing at my table. She truly was going to be judge, jury, and executioner.
It happened in a matter of seconds, though it felt like hours. I froze. My father began to turn, perhaps to leap towards the offending mare. One of the security ponies shoulder-checked him, while the other piled on top of him. At the same time, there was movement behind me as my mother, catching me by surprise, threw herself between me and my sister. She shoved us aside, and I heard the crack as I fell.
Once, when I was just a foal (an only one, at that), I had snuck into my parents’ room on an adventure which can only be fabricated in the minds of the young. Their room was tidy, and depressingly lacking in anything interesting or adventurous. What did catch my eye was a framed photograph on their nightstand. It was Afflata, my mother, only younger. Later I would surmise that it had been right around the time my parents started seeing each other. In the picture, she was painting, rendering in brilliant color the battle of Shattered Hoof. The photograph was in black and white, but even as a foal I could see every color, both on the wall and her face; I could see it in her eyes as they shone with passion and inspiration.
Her eyes didn’t shine that day. When she fell beside me her eyes just stared on, unseeing, unfeeling. In the distance I could hear Parum screaming, the echo of my father’s shouting. My own eyes flared; as my mother lay dead beside me, I knew exactly what I was going to do next. Deduc pointed the pistol again towards me, pulling back the hammer but not firing. In hindsight, she probably expected me to react as another member of the stable would have: stop, perhaps try to talk my way through it, or perhaps just sit there and let it happen. It’s exactly what I would’ve done a month ago. But that had been then; now, I’d been in the Wasteland. I had been shot, stabbed, beaten, and blown up-a single pony pointing a single weapon at me wasn’t the terror-inducing sight it had once been. So the look of abject disbelief on her face as I vaulted over the overturned table wasn’t that much of a surprise to me.
I landed on her table, smashing her across the face with my PipBuck. Her magic hold on her weapon broke and it skittered to the floor. I spun, following up with a rear hoof kick that spent her sprawling. She tried to get up, but she was too slow, and I was enraged. I leapt off the table, landing on her with all four hooves, keeping her on her back. I felt multiple ribs crack underneath me, and I couldn’t help but smile. As I raised a hoof to strike again, she caught me off balance and threw me off. I recovered quickly, and when I got up I saw she’d risen as well, one hoof clutching at her chest and breathing heavily. I could have let the fight end there, left her broken and beaten, but alive, let the stable dictate whatever justice they believed she deserved. Instead I charged forward, sliding underneath her on my back. I struck out at her three remaining limbs in what had become my signature move and rolled out of the way as she fell, paralyzed, to the floor. I didn’t just leave her there while I ran, however; I sprang once again on her, beating her mercilessly on her face with my bare hooves. There was naught left but hair, red paste, and bits of bone left when somepony finally pulled themselves together and pulled me away.
* * *
The rest of the day was a blur. The stable as a whole was too stunned to celebrate, mourn, revolt, or really do much of anything, so my friends and I pretty much got free reign to do whatever the hell we wanted. Parum and Butcher scrounged for medical supplies and combat drugs from the stable’s massive supplies, Sunny had long since given up even fabricating excuses to use my family’s shower. Me? I was cleaning house. First, a trip to Special Operations. Unfortunately, the encryption they used on their terminals was far and above my level of understanding, and although they didn’t seem to mind me poking around their department, nopony was going to give me their passwords. It wasn’t a complete loss; aside from my group’s belongings, I managed to snag a recollector-a device capable of giving non-unicorns the ability to view memory orbs. Now I could take a look at some more of those memory orbs I acquired from the Ministry of Morale! I mean, at this point I guessed my mission was null and void, considering the mare that had given it to me in the first place was right now being incinerated.
That’s when it hit me: what was I going to do now? What reason did I have to leave? For once, the answer came almost as soon as I’d asked the question: find out what started all of this in the first place. Not the war-I was piecing that together bit by bit myself. No, I wanted to know the real reason I’d been sent out in the first place, and why Deduc Indagator had been so…zealous in her recapture and almost-execution of me and my sister.
After Special Operations, I made my way to DI’s old office. I’d been struck with an idea, and was acting on it. The door opened readily; as I said, my friends and I had been given (almost) free reign of the stable. Walking in, the wall on my right was comprised entirely of bookshelves, with the left wall being dominated by a large circular window. In the center of the room was an ornate wooden desk, not steel like the rest of ours, with a single terminal sitting atop it. I stepped to the window and looked out, out over the atrium and the few ponies milling about. If I remembered correctly, the other side of this glass was just a sign, something about serving our nation as well as our stable-something you just stopped paying attention to after a few years. So it turns out that Deduc Indagator had been able to watch us (at least in a limited way), and we would have had no idea. Creepy.
But that wasn’t what I was here for. I turned instead to the terminal. Surprising me almost more so than finding my sister locking lips with another filly, it was completely unlocked. Hubris, perhaps? That’s where my luck ran out, however: before the sham of a trial, Deduc had erased everything. Either that, or when these outside ponies had given her orders, they hadn’t done it through the terminal. Defeated for now, I headed back to my family’s living quarters. Hopefully nopony would be there, and I could watch a memory orb and meditate on what I was going to do next in peace.
* * *
oooOOOooo
“This could be the biggest story since Luna returned, what do you mean I can’t go?!” My host almost shouted. By pure chance (or was it?), I’d chosen an orb which once again featured Gum Shoe-or Gummy to her friends-an investigative reporter living and working in prewar/wartime Whinnyapolis. While in the orb, I was privy to everything but her thoughts; what she saw, what she heard, what she felt….I was a passenger in her body. The first time I’d viewed an orb, I had missed a chunk of it freaking out because I thought somepony or something had stolen my colt-bits. Now, however, I was (slightly) more used to it, even though Gum Shoe’s wings still freaked me out a little bit.
“I mean you can’t go, and that’s that!” The stallion in front of her (us) answered, obviously exasperated. A brown unicorn with a black mane that was graying at the roots, smoking a cigar, it looked like whatever he said, went. Must’ve been her editor. “We’ve already gotten our statement from the Army’s press representative: there is no ‘plague’, and there is no ‘quarantine’. What we are seeing is just an adverse and severe reaction to Wartime Stress Disorder, nothing more, and I will not have you trying to break into a military base just to satisfy your filly-like fantasies! Your answer is no, and that’s final!” He shouted, slamming his hooves on his desk for good measure, before sitting down again and shuffling through some paperwork. It must have been her cue to leave, because my host turned around and stormed out, her eyes clouding with tears. Whether they were tears of sadness, anger, or both, I didn’t know-I was merely along for the physical ride, not the mental one. She came to rest at her desk with a huff and flutter of her wings.
“J.J. tell ya no again, huh?” Asked the yellow unicorn sitting across from my host. She smiled apologetically, and shrugged. “Just give it up. I did. Otherwise he’ll just keep giving you shit assignments.”
Gum Shoe blinked, as if realizing something. “Watch my desk?” she asked. The unicorn barely had time to nod before my host grabbed a tape recorder and zipped out of an open window.
As I’ve said before, I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, and hunted. But now I could say, without any shadow of a doubt, that flying was the most terrifying experience of my life. Although Gum Shoe’s special talent was being a reporter, she was one hell of a flyer. It’d taken less than a second to grab her recorder and get outside, and once she was in the open air, the wind beneath her wings, whipping her hair back and forth, rising even above the skyscrapers of Whinnyapolis…it was exhilarating. That is, it was exhilarating once I was able to stop screaming. I had no idea what she was doing or where she was going, except that when the memory ended,
we were over the suburbs, heading toward a large, multi-story structure decorated with Galician columns.
oooOOOooo
I awoke in what some time ago had been my room, looking into the deep green eyes of my father, Admiratus. “How long have you been there?” I asked, wary of his stare.
“Not long.” He replied simply. “Close…we need to talk.”
Please don’t be another trial… I thought, sighing. “About Deduc?”
“She is a part of it, yes…”
“Ad rem. Get to the point.” I cut in. Between coming back in the first place, my mother getting murdered in front of my very eyes, murdering Stable 81’s leader in turn, I was in no mood for games.
“You, your sister, and your friends have been declared persona non grata. We need you to leave as soon as you can.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Level Up!
Perk Acquired: Fast Metabolism-You’ve finally grown accustomed to life in the Wasteland, and now you gain 20% more health from healing potions and bandages!