Chapter 1
I didn’t feel special. I felt about as special as common dirt. Not even when I had gotten my Cutie Mark (at a tender age I might add) did I feel in any way unique or individual. In my eyes, everypony had a Cutie Mark, just like me, so what made me any better? Pessimistic thoughts like these don’t bode well, particularly when you’re young, and I became a very paranoid adolescent. Day by day, I lived a life in which I felt that everypony was looking down on me, which in retrospect, I suppose they were. I was quite short for my age.
I was always quite a clumsy filly, particularly whilst I was very young, and I would constantly break things or knock things over, much to my mother’s resentment. So imagine how thoroughly overjoyed I was when one day after I had broken a particularly expensive and valuable possession, my Cutie Mark appeared, and was none other than a broken plate. A broken fucking plate. Oh how wonderful. Now everypony who every met me would know how much of a ditz I was. Oh hello there! That’s a nice Cutie Mark, a broken plate! You must be the clumsy type then. Superb! I suppose I could’ve used my magic to try and fix the things I broke, but really I don’t think it would have changed the outcome much.
Sorry, I tend to go off on a tangent when I talk about how I acquired the infernal thing. Anyway, I was born in a fortified town under the control of the National Security Agency (NSA), which meant I was always mollycoddled and not allowed to really explore anything or do anything for myself. That’s why I spent a lot of my spare time guzzling books and their contents to improve my understanding of the world. I particularly enjoyed a book with an unknown author (probably still unfinished) which gave a very interesting opinion on the world. It went on and on about the problems and how they should be solved etc.
Oh and by the way, I’m Bucky. I’m a unicorn born to a frontline soldier and an artist. My father was the soldier by the way, just in case you were unsure. Not that that will become relevant or anything. Anyway, I didn’t see my father much. He was often deployed to fight against the Revolutionaries or the Scavengers. As a matter of fact, I rarely even heard from him. Letters in and out were often censored or blocked entirely and usually not for any apparent reason. Then came that fateful day when I did receive a letter. It had the military seal of the NSA emblazoned on the front and needless to say I was quite excited to hear from, as I had expected at the time, my father. Then when I opened it, it only contained a notification of his death. Apparently he was killed in active service at the hooves of the Scavengers and their brutal (yet oddly efficient) regime of chaos.
I would have loved to say that I was distraught, that I cried for days or weeks on end. In actuality, I didn’t really feel much emotion at all. I had never really had an opportunity to bond with him in any way so I didn’t really feel overly grieved about his inevitable demise. My mother, however, was dismayed. She decided to put down the brush and paint and take up the bottle. She drank so much in those years that I wouldn’t have been surprised if her Cutie Mark changed to fit her new talent.
Needless to say the end result was failure of the liver, and this I was upset about. While my father was out in the field getting shot at, my mother would be at home with me, raising me on her own and helping me to grow. So I actually did feel attached to her. I wept for many days and suffered from a mild case of PTSD for a while afterwards. By the time I was done with being sad, I was a different filly. I became very quiet and secluded and I didn’t want to speak to anypony. The person who helped me ‘come out of my shell’ so to speak was actually a random stallion who asked me why I always sat on the same bench every day at the park for hours on end and didn’t talk. I told him that I had been recently orphaned and he encouraged me through each event.
By the time I was finished I was sobbing on his shoulder like I had before, and he looked more than mildly surprised. He pointed out to me that my mother had died because my father had died, and that my father had died because the Scavengers had shot him. He was right, of course. I decided to swap all of my sadness and despair for hatred and fury, all of it directed purely on the Scavengers. Every last shred of it. Turns out this mystery stallion worked for the NSA as a morale officer and he hadn’t really cared for my problems, but my idleness on a park bench day in day out was beginning to make some passers-by get a little upset, so he had to sort me out.
I ended up providing for myself (because whilst the NSA always has the needs of the many in their best interest, individual minorities usually escape their radar) and started off by stealing a few things. Only basic necessities, like food and clothing. After a while I got pretty good at it, and I could swipe several items in a few seconds with mopony noticing and make a clean get away. Naturally these thefts were reported and guard patrols were stepped up, becoming more frequent and more heavily armed (the usual Militia being replaced by military Watchponies).
So I had to try and get what I needed another way. There was no charity so to speak where I grew up (there was a homeless shelter, but I still had my parent’s house to live in, so I wasn’t homeless) meaning I needed to find a way of generating an income. This came from learning to stitch fabrics, and I started small, making small hats for locals, and I even gave a few to the homeless shelter and some of the guard patrols as a sign of good will (and to keep them from finding me out as the thief that had plagued the local market), but I soon stepped things up and was sewing up full scale garments.
I was hardly a vintage dress maker, but I could make a nice jacket or pullover, and I even made my own clothes (which by now consisted of a black turtle-neck jumper and cowgirl hat) and sold them to the public at the market, becoming quite famous throughout town. Originally I had gotten my cloth and thread from my mother’s old box of scraps, but now I could afford to by proper materials and durable thread to use in my crafts. I learnt to replicate designs, making an almost identical copy of a Watchponies’ uniform to give to a sorry looking stallion that had lost his and didn’t have the balls to admit it to his officer. How do you lose a military uniform?
Things were beginning to look up for me. I started to regain my confidence, turning back into my quirky and humble self. The quiet and secluded Bucky was being left behind and here, here was the Bucky that I knew and loved! But because destiny hates me it decided it wanted to yawn in my face again and sent my way the biggest fear I had ever harboured. The first I knew of my impending fate was a brilliant green flash in the sky. This was amazing! I had never seen anything so vibrant and pretty in all my days, but sadly it held before it something terrible.
I watched it ark its way through the sky before disappearing behind the roof tops of the town. I sat and waited for more of the bright lights, but what I got instead was not as pretty or as harmless. Shots began to ring out from the fortifications, return fire was made, the horizon was ablaze with muzzle flashes and the boom of our long range artillery deafened me. I was utterly terrified. What was this that I was in the middle of now? Why was there so much carnage occurring at this time, here, in this place? The answer was only too obvious, and I felt my insides hang themselves when I saw the first of their khaki uniforms.
Screams of fear emanated from all around me as doors and windows were smashed in, mingling horribly with the cruel laughter of the invading Scavengers. They shot dead anypony they saw. Foals, mares, soldiers, they didn’t care; they just enjoyed the wanton destruction and death they were causing. I could see fire spring up in some of the buildings in stark contrast to their ice cold hearts, and I knew that this was it; this was where I was going to die. And I was going to die just like my father had. At the hoofs of these ruthless ponies who knew nothing but killing. I noticed three of them branch off in my general direction, and I took flight.
I didn’t have time to grab everything that I wanted to take, just the basics: A water canteen, my saddlebags stuffed with food, my passport and other papers, a few books, and a photograph of my parents. Tacky I know, but they were my parents, and I didn’t like the thought of the Scavengers getting their hoofs on it. Whispering a quick goodbye to my house, I bolted as fast as I could away from the advancing wall of steel and lead. The Scavengers hadn’t gotten this far yet, and the only ponies that I ran into were soldiers moving to counter the advance of their enemy, and other refugees like me.
Despite how bravely our Militia and garrisoned troops fought, the Scavengers were still making incredible progress, sustaining few losses and quickly setting more of the town I knew and loved ablaze. There went the market. And the park I used to sit in. The school building was now gone. I stopped and stared back, on the verge of tears as I saw a Scavenger waving their flag from the roof of my parent’s house, surrounded by numerous others cheering and holding their rifles in the air. There was no doubt that this town was beyond saving, and to think that these ponies had invaded this place purely for the fun of it.
The Scavengers didn’t kill for justice or in defence of their people, and despite their namesake they usually didn’t even kill for supplies. They killed because they had the power and the guns to do it, and they did it better than even the NSA. After a successful Scavenger raid, few buildings are left standing, and even fewer survivors make it out without being captured and either put to death or enslaved. They had made a reputation for themselves and they demanded (and most certainly received) the fear of the Equestrian populace, and to make matters even worse; they were one of the largest ruling factions in the entire country.
How did Equestria become such a hot bed for death and destruction? Well it goes something like this: The reigning princesses at the time were doing a frankly rather shit job of ruling. Unemployment was at a high and a famine had struck, and most ponies wanted change. So there was a revolution, in which the ponies of Equestria rose up and overthrew the princesses that had ruled for centuries. Science had developed a way of keeping the sun and moon moving, but the revolution had no real collective goal other than the exile of the monarchy, so once they were successful, society slowly collapsed. This is, of course, vastly over-simplified.
Ponies of similar mind-sets bonded together to form factions, the first three of which (and now the largest) were the Scavengers, the Last Remaining Soldiers Alliance (LRSA), and the Wanderers. The Scavengers I have explained well enough for the time being, so I shall try and briefly fill you in on the others, or at least give you enough information to keep you going.
The LRSA was formed by the Equestrian army and other armies from foreign nations garrisoned in the country which is attempting to establish a military dictatorship until democracy can be achieved. They are composed of seven primary nations: The Equestrian Army, the Russians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the British and the French. There are many other smaller nations, but those are the most common ones. They are all well-armed, well trained, and in no position to be giving up anytime soon. They are at constant war with the Scavengers (of which I approve of).
Then there are the Wanderers, which was originally composed of a group of farmers and tradesponies who decided to travel what was left of Equestria and sell their wares and grow their crops. Many of the smaller factions rely on them for food and resources (with a few exceptions) and even the Scavengers tend to leave them alone and trade for supplies, but they have been known to attack convoys when it suits their needs.
The NSA is one of the smaller factions formed later on that doesn’t rely on Wanderers, but it is also at war with the Scavengers, and sadly this was my affiliation, meaning I too was indoctrinated into hating their guts. Not that I needed much indoctrination of course. It was originally formed by members of the Royal Guard in an attempt to safely house civilians, but as is now evident, it didn’t always work.
By the time it’s taken me to explain all that, I am now on the outskirts of town, and few Scavengers hard on me heels, yelling and whooping as they gave chase. I didn’t need this. I had only turned nineteen last month and there was still so much I wanted to do in life. I didn’t want to die because of these savages (or if I did I would want to go down fighting, not running like a frightened rabbit), and I was confident in the knowledge that tonight wouldn’t be my last.
A trip and a stumble, that’s clutzy old Bucky for you. Trust me to screw up something so simple. The lead Scavenger was on me in moments, and I found myself staring down the barrel of a submachine gun, cocked and ready to scatter my brains. I instinctively shielded my face, but to fulfil no real purpose. The bullets packed by the firearm would certainly have enough force to go through my hoof and my head, especially at this range.
I was now a good way off from the town, the lights of fires and flashes of gunfire now distant on the horizon. Admittedly I hadn’t expected them to follow me this far, but they must have wanted me really badly. Ain’t that just like a Scavenger? This particular Scavenger was a dark blue coloured earth pony, with a mane that looked as though he’d been electrified, and with a grey hue. A wicked grin played across his muzzle, surrounded by scars and with two, very large cyan eyes staring back at me, with oddly small pupils. He looked as though he was a heroin addict. His uniform was the standard Scavenger khaki, but with several straps, hooks and pockets on them, with a different size or style of hoofcuff trailing off them. The red arm band on his left arm sealed the deal though. This was a Sadist, a rank of Scavenger shock trooper tasked with the job of torturing prisoners of war and harassing the enemy with rapid and brutal attacks.
He laughed hideously, and said in an accent I didn’t recognise, “Stoeger! Stoeger look I got her!”
“Well done. What? Do you want a medal or something?” came his reply, and a unicorn mare came into my peripheral vision, floating a double barrelled shotgun in the air next her. She glanced down at me and chuckled.
“Okay Shultz, you can put your gun down. She ain’t gonna fight back.” Oh hell was I gonna fight back! But bugger, she was right. There was no way I was going up against a submachine gun and a shotgun and still escape with all my body parts intact.
The earth pony (whom I took to be Shultz) holstered his weapon and asked, “Should I use the regular hoofcuffs, or the spiked hoofcuffs?” He glared evilly at me.
“Eh, the regular ones ought to do. She hasn’t done anything yet.” The electric haired Sadist removed a pair of cuffs from a clip and slapped them onto my arms, preventing me from moving them any more than a few inches in any direction. I was actually surprised. They’d not killed me, and instead had put me in cuffs and were likely planning to take me prisoner. On reflection, I reckon it would have been better had they shot me.
Shultz lifted me up by the end of my hair, triggering a wince of pain which made him grin gleefully. The unicorn mare (of a brownish tint similar to mine but a shotgun as a cutie mark) yawned and turned around. As she started to stride off towards a clump of trees, she looked over her shoulder and said, “Right. I’m going to go and fetch Pin-Point. Keep an eye on her, and be it on your head if she gets away.”
“Oh she’s not going anywhere, Kommandant.” He yanked on my hair again and caused me to wince again, but to my own credit I didn’t scream or cry, just fixed him with what I hoped was an intimidating stare. It hurt my pride when he laughed and said, “Ha, look! She’s trying to scare me!” Stoeger merely grunted and continued on her journey to fetch this mysterious Pin-Point, leaving me alone with this deranged German sadist.
He flicked off my hat and placed it atop his own head, “How quaint,” was his comment. “Do you think it suits me?” I spat in his eye. He growled and pushed the hat down over my eyes, obstructing my vision. Ooooh, this son of a bitch was making my insides burn and I struggled to resist the urge to lash out and strike him one in the temple. Not that I would’ve been able to had I attempted it. He stared at me in an eerie way that made him look almost artificial and said completely out of the blue, “You’re pretty. I reckon I could get a fair price for you. Of course, part of it lies in the buyer. If they’re anypony worth trading with I think two hundred cigarettes would be a reasonable offer.” The Scavengers traded using cigarettes in place of the traditional bit, one cigarette being worth roughly one bit in our currency. Slightly counterproductive actually, when one considers the possibility of collecting bits and just bulk buying cigarettes from Wanderers.
I was silently fuming under the rim of my hat as my captor played with the stock of his automatic firearm. Stoeger came back with a crimson earth pony stallion with a khaki helmet with five cigarettes stuffed into a band strapped around it. He wore a pair of flying goggles and had a gold nose ring. He glanced over at me and leaned over to Stoeger, “Good find. Ya gonna keep it or can I have her?”
“After what you managed to do to your last one, I think not. Shultz can have her. I suppose it’s only fair since he caught her.” I think it would be worth adding at this point that I was seriously expecting a life time as a Scavenger’s slave. I guess it wasn’t a choice of whom I’d end up with, but how long I’d last with them. I concluded that at the first opportunity I’d kill myself to spare me the pain.
Golden nose ring pony decided he would take point on our journey back to their district. Neither German pony nor shotgun pony objected and thus our journey began, with me sandwiched between Shultz the heroin addict and Stoeger the pissed off a lot. It was a fairly boring and un-eventful trip and I won’t bore you with any particulars, but I will fill the space by telling you a little bit about Scavenger organisation. After their first year of service, Scavengers specialise as either Hunters, Raiders, Sadists or Guards. A Sadist, Raider and Hunter are grouped together to form a Scavenger ‘Squad’, who will be deployed into villages and settlements surrounding their district to gather supplies and prisoners. Scavenger squads will band together in a settlement they own and select a building, which becomes a field headquarters and the centre of the district. A district is composed of one central, well-fortified location containing the field HQ and all other surrounding settlements under Scavenger control or influence. The district is named after the field HQ (Church District, School District and so on and so forth) and is where most of the strategically planning takes place. For all of the chaos they seem to enjoy they were very well organised and efficient.
And after several more hours after the moon had found its zenith we arrived at the Church District that was the home of my captors. The first thing I noticed was the low wall made of bricks, stones, sandbags, steel bars and pretty much anything that was hard to break. They had a gate which was made of steel bars erected upright and lashed together with a grill of prison bars hanging from a series of chains. Every ten yards was a Scavenger pony specialised as Guards, armed with everything from a brick to a bazooka. The gate itself had four of its own guards, two on either side, all armed with assault rifles and standing stock still as if they were part of the fortifications.
One of the ponies (a pegasus stallion boasting an AK-47 and belt of grenades), ordered us to halt so he could check our identities. I was surprised at how good the Scavengers were at this whole sentry thing, and even more surprised to learn that the Scavengers had their own passports. Once he had confirmed my captors as legitimate (although I don’t know why they’d have brought me here were they not) he ordered his second in command over to search me for weapons and supplies. The unicorn mare took me off to a side building away from the rest of the Scavengers, and closed and locked the door after her. She flicked on an electric light hanging from the ceiling, giving a low hum.
The mare flicked back her flowing crimson mane and stared at me with lemon yellow eyes. She had a cutie mark that resembled a golden police badge, except it had a set of pegasus wings adorning the centre. It was very pretty and I struggled to figure out exactly what it meant. I was jerked back to my senses when she said, “Do you mind not staring at my ass? This is a search room, not a strip club.” I quickly averted my gaze, blushing slightly. She took a few steps towards me and asked me to, “Remove your hat and put it at your hooves. If you fail to comply then I will remove it myself.” I obeyed and placed my hat on the floor, only to have it kicked aside.
“Let’s get this over with shall we?” She didn’t wait for my reply and instead engulfed my saddle bags in a blood red aura and dropped it onto the floor in front of her, rummaging through it and throwing things out at random. She piled all me food to her left, and took off my water canteen to add to the pile. Most of what she found was useless to her, and she quickly said, “No weapons in here. Don’t you know better than to travel around without a weapon?” I made no comment and instead waited for her to finish tearing my bag apart. She took out my passport and held it in front of me, “Ya see this?” I nodded. “This ain’t gonna be any use to you anymore. From now on, you only hold the identity that your master or mistress gives you. You have no past, no pride and no personality unless instructed otherwise. What’s your name?”
“I’m Bucky.”
“No you’re not. You’re nothing. Useless. Pathetic. Were it up to me I’d kill you this instant. From now on you will answer only to ‘Slave’ or any name given to you by your master or mistress. Nod if you understand.” I nodded and she set fire to my passport and papers, turning them to cinders and scattering them over the floor. She then held up the picture of my parents, “Are these your parents?”
“They were my parents. They were both killed by you horrible lot.”
“What a touching story. I’d feel sorry for you, but I honestly couldn’t care less. You see these ponies? They are scum. They are nothing to you. You know nothing of them, you don’t care about them, you frankly don’t wish to know them at all. They are worse than you, and you are nothing.”
The minute I was free, this pony was going to be my first victim. I’d saw off her horn and pull out her mane and tail in tufts and cut out that confounded cutie mark of hers and make her eat it. Of course I would like to do that but given the chance I probably couldn’t bring myself to do it. Still I wanted to at least hurt her in some way. Maybe just knock out a few of her teeth. She frisked underneath my sweatshirt and, finding nothing, she returned my food and water into my saddle bags and flung them over her back. Pushing the door open, she muttered, “Search completed. You will return to your captors, Slave.”
I returned to Shultz and Stoeger and flying goggles pony who were waiting on the other side of the gate sharing whiskey with the guard captain. Shultz (who I was treating as my ‘master’ at this point) stood up and led me like a dog to what looked like a school house, but now had some seriously pornographic imagery painted over the door and definitely wasn’t a place for little fillies. They had painted over the original sign with the words ‘Prisoner Storage’, as if we were items of freight meant to be stored for future use. Which in effect we were at this point. I refer to my current predicament using the term ‘we’ as if there were many of me. In actual fact I am referring to all of the slaves currently held by the Scavengers at this point in time.
Shultz pushed the door open and welcomed me inside, which I acknowledged with a snort. The old school house had its own guard, who looked thoroughly delighted to be there, and even more delighted to see yet another prisoner for him to be responsible for. He nodded at Shultz, who nodded back, and took a key chain off his belt to unlock the steel door that separated him from the cell. It swung inwards and I was pushed in after it, stumbling and falling in a cloud of dust. What pride I had managed to maintain was immediately lost as Shultz and the guard pony cracked up laughing and slammed the door behind me. I brushed myself down and gave a dignified sniff as I returned my hat to its rightful place on my head.
The cell held three other prisoners who didn’t even nod in my direction. One of them was an earth stallion dressed in a suit and tie, both garments having been seriously damaged and almost not worth keeping. Despite his condition, he maintained an air of superiority and pride which I admired and found incredibly annoying at the same time. There was an earth mare too, dressed in less distinguished clothing. She looked like your typical Wanderer and she was busy talking softly to a young unicorn filly. The filly was quite small and garbed in only a collar. Her mane was bedraggled and untidy, and her flank was blank. It filled me with fury to see the Scavengers hold such a pony captive, but then again most of what they did filled me with fury, so this was not a new experience.
I sat myself down next to the mare and introduced myself politely, “I’m Bucky. I come from an NSA compound that just got raided. What’s your name?”
“No need for formalities here kid. I’m Silver Spinner. Your background and heritage means nothing here I’m afraid, by try telling that to the haughty shit over there and he’ll just laugh at you.”
“I’m nineteen! Not a kid!”
She returned to talking to the filly, who only looked down at her hoofs, her tail wrapped around her. I leant forward and waited for a pause in the one way conversation to ask, “I’m Bucky. Do you want to tell me your name?”
The filly said nothing for a while before saying, “I don’t have a name anymore.”
“Yes you do. The Scavengers can take away your passport and papers and say you’re nothing, but they can’t truly take your identity away from you. What would you like me to call you?” She remained motionless for a while, likely thinking over what I just said before replying.
“I’m called Mystery.”
“That’s a nice name. You must be very proud of it. Where do you come from?” She looked up at me, tears in her eyes as she sputtered out her answer.
“I can’t remember!” What shocked me more was not that she’d been here so long that she couldn’t remember her birth place, but from what I saw on her forehead. Her master had obviously made his mark on this one, as the word ‘SLUT’ had been cut into it with something sharp. It had scarred and must have been done a while ago.
Ooooh, this shit just got real. There was no way I was letting the Scavengers away with this. They would pay a thousand fold for this, and I was going to help this filly escape if it killed me. He waited for her to calm down a little, “What is your master’s name?”
“I’m not allowed to call him by his name. I can only call him Master. But I think he’s called Pin-Point or something like that.”
“Don’t worry kid, I’m going to make that nose ringed bastard pay for what he’s done to you. And I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”
“Okay.” Somehow I didn’t feel like she believed me. Spinner took me by the shoulder and pushed me against the wall, talking very low into my ear.
“Listen cowgirl, we’ve all been here a long time. I’ve been here since I was her age myself. I’ve tried every method of escape I can think of and none of them have worked. We don’t need heroes, we need comrades. Ponies we can trust and talk to without worrying about the consequences. If you go around raising hopes you’ll only dash them, and this kid can’t take any more of that. She’s been through enough already.”
I pushed her off my shoulder and snorted. Fine. I was going to get out of here, and if she didn’t want to help then I’d just do it myself; from now on this unicorn flies solo. In hindsight that was probably not the best turn of phrase. For now though I would wait. Wait for the opportune moment. Set up a routine and analyse my opponents, waiting until I could cause the most damage. I posted myself next to the door and looked through the grill at the guard now sleeping in his chair, snoring loudly. This sight helped jog my own memory, and I realised how tired I truly was. I lay down on the cold wooden floor and let myself drift off into a deep sleep.