Chapter 12: In Which Escapes are Great, and a Mystery Solved
“σπένδῃ ἐνὶ μεγάρῳ Διί τ᾽ ἄλλοισίν τε θεοῖσιν.”
“A generous heart repairs a slanderous tongue.”
- The Odyssey of Homer, Book VIII
I didn’t sleep well that night. The holotape’s words echoed in my mind, a mocking cacophony which teased me for my hubris. How dare I think that I could understand these ponies and their motives? How dare I think, even for a moment, that in a world ravaged by balefire and with such features as goddamn alicorn goddesses that these orchestrators of my misfortune would be just two normal ponies. The tape…facilities to create new holotapes, or rather, record new data onto old holotapes…I didn’t think they existed outside of PipBucks and, well, the studio at Tenpony. I mean, it could have been fabricated by DJ-P0N3’s assistant, but something told me that no, this was legitimate. The Twins as I know them have existed since before the balefire. They were 200-plus years old, and for some reason they wanted me. They wanted me, and Deduc Indagator had more than willingly attempted to give me to them. What did this mean? What did they want from me? What were they doing? I had wanted to think that their plan didn’t matter, that the only thing which mattered was finding them and stopping them in the simplest way possible – personally putting my hoof through both of their heads. Now…now I wasn’t so sure. There was something at work here. Whether it be by the Twins’ own design or if they themselves were being controlled as I seemed to be being controlled, there was something afoot, and it was something that I myself wouldn’t be able to stop by merely killing its two most prevalent players. Could they even be killed? I shuddered at the possibility. When I finally did sleep, as I said, it wasn’t well. No more was I assaulted with dreams of caves, shadows, and voices. Instead I was treated to warped memories; twisted visions of my family, my stable, and my friends. Parum, screaming as Deduc shot her. The rapport of the gunshot still ringing in my ears as my little sister gurgles at me through a torn and bloody hole in her throat in Mist Chaser’s bar. My mother and father, standing impossibly tall over me at a judge’s bench, sentencing me to a lifetime of aimless wandering for my crimes; crimes of which I have no memory or knowledge.
I awoke with a start before dawn. Honey Heart’s “discretionary fund” had been enough to afford us a room with a view, which in the Wasteland meant a window. I tried in vain to get back to sleep before giving up and choosing to wander the halls of Tenpony Tower. There weren’t many ponies out at this hour; in fact, my only company was the occasional security pony, and the odd early shopkeep. At least, I assumed they were shopkeeps – everypony here dressed so fancily there was no way to tell. As I looked up and around, no longer distracted by looking for glasses or information or just trying to keep out of everypony’s way, I thought about how this was probably the top for a lot of ponies. A life in Tenpony was easy, so long as you had caps. It was safe, it was self-sufficient, and the chances of being randomly murdered in your sleep for a scrap of two-century-old Salisbury steak were almost nonexistent. I didn’t know how bad this part of the wasteland was compared to home, but if it were even a fraction as bad…I myself would be tempted to try and make a life here. Tempted, but not swayed. I had to get back to Parum, I had to get back to Sunny and Oya and Butcher and Mist Chaser. Most of all, I had to figure out why I was forced out of my home and thrown into this chaos and put a stop to it. But first, I had to apologize. Over the course of the night and my morning walk, as well as the intervening weeks as a prisoner, the burning fire of anger that had consumed be had consolidated into a white hot star of purpose. I now knew what I had to do…even if I hadn’t figured out how to do it.
* * *
“So we’re leaving today?”
“That’s the plan.”
“And we’re going home? To Whinnyapolis?”
“Where else would we go? I dunno about you but I don’t know the first thing about getting around Manehattan.”
“Let me get this straight: We two ponies are leaving today to travel, on hoof, back to Whinnyapolis, a trip which you yourself said could take as long as a month, in hopes that we can beat Knight Flapjack in reporting to your superiors. Did I miss anything?”
“Yes: One, even if we did beat Jack, there’s no way Elder Sausage would take my word over her daughters. And two…” Honey Heart winked at me before donning her power armor helmet. I looked away to hide an unexpected rush of heat in my face. It was definitely going to be easier to travel with her in armor. “Two,” she continued, “Who said we were walking?”
I blinked. Granted, there was still much I didn’t know about the Wasteland, especially Manehattan, but I was still fairly certain that if the ability for flight or teleportation still existed I would’ve heard, well, something about it. I told Crusader Heart as much, and she surprised me further by laughing. “Right you are, Close.” She said, “But you’re thinking the wrong direction – we’re not going up, we’re going down. There’s a tramway that runs from here to every other hub on the continent, including the hub in Minneapolis. If we can find it, and it works, then we’ll be back in a day!”
“But aren’t the tunnels infested with ghouls?” I asked as we checked out and set off once again into the tower proper. My predawn excursion had brought be to a closed, locked basement door with a sign telling me this very bit of information. When I inquired of a security pony, he confirmed that the metro tunnels were, in fact, infested with the same sort of feral ghouls that had attacked Sunny and I on my first day outside. A few of them had been an issue; I hated to imagine what a horde of them could do.
The Steel Ranger Crusader nodded in agreement. “They are, but that’s just the subway. Lot fewer ponies in the MAS’ private tunnels when the bombs hit. They would’ve been protected by the same spells that protected this place. So hopefully there aren’t as many ghouls, if there’s any at all.”
“I’m hearing a lot of ‘ifs’ in this plan… How would we even get to this tram?”
“You always ask this many questions? You’re hearing a lot of ifs, but I’m not hearing any other plans. Now come on, keep up.” She began to trot, not having to weave in and out of the crowd as I had to do the day before; ponies tended to unconsciously make way for something wearing twice their weight in steel, ceramic, and magic. Down and down we moved, past the reception floor, past the lower floors. We hit the basement level, and finally were stopped by a locked door. A faded sign notified us that access to whatever was behind this portal was restricted to MAS Executive Personnel only. A passing security pony kindly let us know that we weren’t part of this hallowed group, and then kindly notified us that if we didn’t leave, we’d be executed for “raider activity”.
“What do you mean, ‘raider activity’?” I demanded, “We’re just trying to get out of here!”
“I am a Crusader with the Steel Rangers.” Honey Heart interrupted, “I need you to open this door.”
“You could’ve stolen that armor for all I know, and I wouldn’t care even if you hadn’t. Now get moving.” Sullenly, we obeyed. Honey Heart had no ammo, and I wasn’t about to start something in Tenpony. Or was I? “If I were to…distract that guard, do you think you could kick the door down?” I asked quietly.
Honey Heart looked furtively behind us, and nodded. “Excuse me? Sir?” I called back to the security pony, stepping toward him once again.
Immediately he tensed. “Look, I told you –“ he began. Before he could finish, I dashed forward, sliding myself underneath him and kicking out at his joints. Somehow the hits connected through his security barding, and he collapsed in a heap. I put my hoof in his mouth to prevent him calling out for help as Honey Heart gave the offending door a mighty buck. It didn’t budge.
“I thought you said you could kick it down!” I accused.
“I thought I could!” She countered. “It must be spelled, or reinforced, or…”
“Or we’ve got five minutes before he can move – try again!”
She took a breath, gathered herself up, and bucked again. If the door had been spelled, the spell had worn over time, and the door flew off of its hinges, crashing down the stairs that had lied behind it. “Go!” I shouted, and my companion took off downstairs. I followed after her, deftly skirting around the battered door. I heard the security pony screaming for backup behind us, and quickened my pace. The stairs went down deep, and we were descending for some time before thy finally leveled out into a small platform. It as a small concrete square, just large enough for the two of us and a small terminal. The rest of the space was dominated by a pristine monorail tramcar resting serenely upon its track. The room opened up to reveal four branching tunnels. The track the tramcar rested on must have been on a rotating dais, with the terminal deciding the destination. A soft hum hung in the air, and a sickly green glow emanated from the terminal. “But…how?” I half-whispered.
“I don’t know,” Honey Heart replied, “But can you get that terminal to work? I don’t know how much time we have before that guard and his buddies come after us!”
“I…can try.” I mumbled, trotting over and having a look. Locked. Of course. “It’s going to take me a second!” I called back to her, plugging in my PipBuck and starting to try passwords. This one was massively more difficult than the terminal I’d encountered in the Robronco office back home. It had a ten-character password – ten characters!
“Can’t you go any faster? Aren’t you the Egghead?” Crusader Heart inquired, looking nervously back up the way we’d come.
“I’m a linguist!” I shouted. Terminal tech or not, however, I managed to unlock the terminal using the most precise of methods: random guessing. The screen refreshed with a menu:
MINISTRY OF ARCANE SCIENCES SECURE EXTRACTION SYSTEM
CURRENT HUB: MANEHATTAN
PLEASE SELECT DESTINATION:
> HOOFINGTON
> LAS PEGASUS
> WHINNYAPOLIS
> TROTTINGHAM
Immediately I punched the “WHINNYAPOLIS” option. “Destination Selected.” A cool, feminine voice announced from the speakers mounted on the tram, “Destination: Whinnyapolis. Alert: unable to establish continuous connection with destination. Monorail integrity not guaranteed.” The hum grew louder as the tramcar’s motor activated, shrugging off the dust and entropy of centuries. The dais upon which it rested turned slowly to face the northernmost tunnel, and its doors hissed open. By the time the security pony and his backup had arrived at the minuscule terminal, we were already gone.
* * *
The trip was smooth, for the most part. The tunnel the monorail ran in was deep enough underground that none of the surface damage had even touched it. The errant ghoul we saw must have somehow wandered out from Tenpony, and they were dispatched easily enough. Rarely there was the occasional debris which had fallen onto the tracks, but Honey Heart’s power armor was more than enough to take care of it. I wondered if other tunnels like this existed. Did the other ministries have something like this? Or only the MAS? I could pop almost anywhere in Equestria in a matter of days! Well, almost anywhere. “You realize we can probably never go back to Tenpony Tower, right?” I asked.
“Did you really want to?”
I sighed, and shook my head. Yes, Tenpony had been, well, awesome. Yes, it had been safe and clean(ish). But the ponies who lived in it were snobby and rude, the food was overpriced, and…I couldn’t remember off the top of my head who had said it, but it was “a gilded cage”. Honey Heart did have a point, though: even if I were allowed back, there was no way it’d be a good time. I’d verbally assaulted the DJ’s assistant and threatened to physically the DJ himself, and I’d also assaulted a security pony and technically stolen high-level tech for this day and age. All that considered, Tenpony Security most likely would shoot me on sight. So no, Tenpony Tower was a no go for the rest of my natural life, as short as that may be.
We reached Whinnyapolis on the second day of our journey. The way I could tell? My Pipbuck’s compass, which had been pointing north our entire trip, suddenly pointed east. Then it pointed south. Soon enough, it was just spinning so fast the markers were blurred; even though we hadn’t actually changed direction, I had to turn off my E.F.S to prevent myself from getting motion sickness. Soon after that, we hit our first real snag.
When the cool, calm electronic voice had told us a continuous connection couldn’t be established, I figured there was just a cut wire somewhere, or that it was talking about how the MAS hub back home was a still-smoldering crater of magical radiation. Instead, I found that there was, in fact, a place where the bombs had penetrated even this deep into the earth. Muted sunlight poured in through the enormous hole in the ground, it and the tramcar’s lights illuminating a swirling mass of…something. It was a sphere about as big as a pony, and seemingly comprised of just pure magic. Zebra glyphs swirled on its “surface”, appearing for a moment or two before disappearing again.
“What…is that…?”
“A balefire bomb.” Honey Heart clarified. “It’s one of the subtypes, not meant to just explode – you can tell by the glyphs. Can’t you?”
I coughed, embarrassed. “We didn’t really study contemporaries back ho – back in Stable 81. I’ve actually never seen what goes into a balefire bomb. Or seen one before now.” It did seem odd, but it was the truth. 81’s research was almost entirely of pre-industrial revolution Roam and her lands. Any knowledge we had on balefire or how it was harnessed was what the Equestrian government knew when our stable was sealed. It was news to me that they didn’t even all explode. “If it’s not meant to explode, what’s it do?” I asked.
Crusader Heart shrugged. “Dunno, but it’s messing with my electronics something hardcore. Let’s just get out of here.” She explained, getting out of the tramcar and beginning to look for a way out of the hole. I followed, looking back at the pulsating sphere once more. Suddenly, I had an idea.
“Hey, Honey? You said this wasn’t made to explode, right?”
Honey Heart looked back at me. Although her helmet hid her expression, I could tell she was confused. “No…I don’t know what is was supposed to do. Why?”
“Could we make it explode?”
There was a moment in which my friend only stared at me. It stretched to the point I though she hadn’t heard me. “I said –” I began again.
“I heard you,” she replied, “I’m just trying to figure out why in Tartarus anypony would want to detonate an undetonated balefire bomb. This thing could have a blast radius of miles, we could be obliterated!”
I shook my head. “Just trust me on this. I think if we hook up some explosive to a timer or something, then we could be outside of the blast radius in time. Something tells me we’ll be alright. Please?”
Honey Heart just stared at me for another long moment before sighing, the mechanical filter unable to hide her resignation. “The tram uses a battery to power its lights. I might be able to wire it and use it as a primer, but I can’t guarantee it’ll work.”
About an hour and much tinkering later, Crusader Heart stepped back and looked at her handiwork. The large battery from the tramcar was placed as close to the balefire bomb as we dared; wires had been field-soldered to the contacts and to the focusing gem from one of her beam rifles (“I don’t have any ammo for them; we left it at Tenpony, remember?”). “Once I connect this wire here to the battery, we’ll have maybe two minutes before the gemstone is charged. Maybe. You ready to run?” I nodded. “Then here…we…go!”
I took off up one of the shallower edges of the crater, scrambling up the broken rock and concrete as fast as my hooves could carry me. I heard Honey Heart behind me, moving faster than I thought a pony in full power armor could move. Also behind me I could both hear and feel the gemstone collecting more and more power. I looked back, and almost stopped. I did stop, actually, so I could see all that was happening. The balefire bomb’s outer shell of spells was swirling faster, its glyphs appearing more and staying longer. The bomb and battery both were glowing white-hot, and I could feel the heat on my face. “I said move, idiot!” Honey Heart shouted. Before I knew it, her head was underneath my midsection, and I was being lifted bodily into the air, before landing harshly on the ground at the lip of the crater. She came up immediately after, and kneeled down in front of me. Before I could ask why, the world exploded. The ground rumbled and buckled beneath me, and a wave of light and heat assaulted us. After a few long seconds things calmed down, and both Honey and I stood up. “So this was constructive why?” she asked, her helmet just as unable to filter her irritation as it had been her earlier confusion.
I turned my E.F.S. back on, and nodded, grinning from ear to damaged ear. “Do you have a compass? Like, in your helmet?” I asked.
“Yeah, but we never use it, there’s no –”
“Turn it on.”
She was still for a moment, then, “What? How…”
“That bomb was the reason.” I explained, “It was the reason compasses never worked in Whinnyapolis.” I grinned again as I turned north, and my compass did the same. East, same story. South, once again, my own compass pointed south. “As I looked at it, it just came to me: my compass has always been broken, but it’s never just spun around like it did when we got here, so that meant not only was there an area where the effect was stronger, but that there was a source!” I took a breath, and went on, “And the glyphs on it – somepony, or rather, some zebra, miswrote them! There were supposed to be fire, destruction, and death, right? Well they must have been in a hurry or drunk or tired or something because instead of destruction, they accidentally wrote, well, magnet. So now it’s exploded, it wasn’t half as powerful as it was supposed to be, and our compasses work!” I wasn’t sure if it was just because I’d figured it out, or if it was that I’d finally figured out something on my own and did some good with zero negative consequences. I sighed; there were probably going to be a slew of negative consequences later, because this was the Wasteland and the Wasteland hated everypony all the time no matter what.
So now that there was a point in looking at my map, I pulled it up on my PipBuck to see just where we were. I then proceeded to curse loudly; we were on the Southwest edge of the Whinnyapolis Ruins. It had only been a couple short months ago that I, along with Sunny and Oya, had almost died of both thirst and starvation. There was no food, no potable water…for some reason, that area was just straight-up dead, even more so than the rest of the world. The rest of the world at least had Salisbury steak. My map also now showed me the exact locations of places I’d been, and my actual relation to them. I saw a little hollow square marked “Mall of Equestria” a little ways west of us, and a city icon marked “New Falmalla” quite a ways northeast. I looked around. We were at the very edge of the old city, in an open area that may have been farmland before the war. To our north, the buildings and skyscrapers of Whinnyapolis proper rose to the clouded sky. To the west, what looked like suburbs, and the broken skeleton of a raised highway. South and east of us was just, well, wasteland. Open space inhabited by rocks, petrified trees, and probably all sorts of monsters and mutated creatures. “The Mall of Equestria…” I murmured to myself. Hadn’t Curator told us about that back in Harbor? He’d said it would have information on the Twins. What information could possibly hope to match or surpass what I’d found out at Tenpony, I had no idea, but after pooling resources with Crusader Heart, we found that we were in a similar situation as when she found me: not enough to get home, but enough to get where we were going. “Don’t you want to find your sister?” my friend asked.
I sighed. “I don’t know where she is.” I stated simply, “And we don’t have the supplies to go wandering. Really, we can just strike out for the MoE and hope there’s food and water when we get there.”
Heart nodded. “Makes sense. Worse comes to worse I hear enough combat drugs’ll keep you going for a while. And boy do I have a lot of those.” And so we set off west, with me hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be a repeat of, well, last time.
* * *
Two days later we were still doing well enough. We were eating sparingly, only when we had to, and doing whatever we could to conserve water. If we kept up like this, things might not have been so bad once we got to the Mall. In all actuality, it had been a strangely (but also pleasantly) quiet trip: we ran into almost no hostile wildlife, only once being forced to run until the mutated bear-thing chasing us got bored. This place really was dead, the dilapidated homes providing even more of an eerie atmosphere than they would normally inspire to an inexperienced pony unlike myself.
I did learn more about the Steel Rangers, and by extension, Honey Heart. The Steel Rangers were indeed remnants of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, as Sunny had said, and were indeed constantly on the lookout for whatever prewar tech was still in working condition; even if it wasn’t working, there was an entire branch dedicated to making it work. Those were the Scribes. Heart had been a scribe herself for the entirety of her “career”, until she’d requested a transfer to the Knights a year ago. Even as a “field Ranger” (her words, not mine), Heart still made sure to bring a pad and pencil wherever she went – her cutie mark placed her as an artist, and apparently Gun Bunny would be annoyed to no end whenever she found her drawing on missions. “Gun Bunny was like every other Ranger.” She said as we fruitlessly picked through yet another startlingly empty home, “She didn’t care about art or history or really other ponies – tribals – she only cared about our mission. Right up until the end.”
“Didn’t she die like a bitch?”
Honey Heart whirled on me, but I was just as confused as she was angry. “What? That wasn’t me!” I explained hastily, shifting into a fighting stance and looking around. My eyes fell on the speaker: a brown unicorn with a dirty blonde mane coming down from the second floor of the home. “Sunny?!” I cried, utterly baffled by what I was seeing.
“It is not just her, Close Call of Stable 81.” Another voice, this one deeper and more melodic called. I looked up as the black-and-white-striped owner of the voice followed Sunny down the stairs.
“Oya! How…what…why…?” I stammered. The appearance of my Zebra friend (who I’d thought stayed in New Falmalla’s Zebra ghetto) and my one-time kidnapper at the same time temporarily fried my synapses. Luckily, Sunny was more than willing to elaborate:
“We’re on our way to the Mall of Equestria. Word on the street is there’s a decent amount of caps to be had there, so I snagged Oya to come along! Where are you assholes heading?”
“The same.” Honey Heart responded curtly, “What makes you think that there’s caps at the mall that other scavengers haven’t taken? Or are you just that desperate for caps?”
“Aha!” Sunny declared, grinning as she pointed a hoof at the Ranger, “That’s where yer wrong! See, ponies have tried to loot it, but their compasses didn’t work, since nopony’s compasses work around here! So they just got lost in this dead zone and wandered in it until they starved to death! So nopony’s been there since the war, which means it’s full of salvage and caps!”
I recomposed myself and looked sideways at Sunny. “So then how do you plan on getting there without meeting the same fate?” I asked skeptically.
She floated a scrap of paper out of her saddlebags, which looked to be stuffed full with food. “I have a map!” She declared triumphantly, “With landmarks! No getting lost for us!”
I kept the revelation of the balefire bomb to myself for the moment, moving on to (for me) more pressing matters. “Have you…Have you seen…?” I began, afraid to finish the question. After my…outburst, Sunny had been the first to leave, with Butcher chasing after her. I didn’t know what had happened after I left, and I was afraid to find out.
“Parum Sororem?” Oya cut in, answering for me. I nodded. “She resides in the Ikhanda, the Common House, with those who do not have homes for themselves. I bring her food and water daily, for she does not seek these things on her own; she only sits, silent, either unable or unwilling to speak. Do not worry, Close Call of Stable 81; a friend takes care of her in my stead.” She didn’t eat? Didn’t drink? This wasn’t the Parum I knew, even before I left the stable.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sunny answered. At my blank look, she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Look, I told you I grew up in New Pegas, right?” I nodded. “My mom was a casino whore and my dad was a john. After I was born, I had maybe a year of ‘aw, cute’ before I was put to work. I left soon after, and’ve been running ever since.”
“Look, Sunny, I’m sorry, but –”
“I had nopony else to lean on but me. You and your sister grew up in a stable. Whether you realized it or not, y’all had the entire stable to fall back on. You had your parents.”
“My parents –”
“Are dead, No Balls. And your stable told you to not let the big-ass door hit you on your way out. So who did Parum Sororem have to rely on, to lean on then? Butcher, aka her marefriend’s mother? Mist Chaser, who she’s been ‘dating’ for less than a month? Me? No – she had you. And you screamed at her and walked out on her when she needed you most.”
I sat down hard, looking at my hooves in shame. “Is this true, Close Call of Stable 81?” Oya asked.
I nodded again. “I…I was angry. Confused. So much had happened, I…” I looked up, locking eyes with Sunny. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Sunny barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t sweat it No Balls. At least you didn’t try to fuck me before you ditched me. More than I can say for most ponies in my life. It’s really your sister you should apologize to, if she’ll listen to you.”
“So what do you wanna do?” Honey Heart asked me. “Should we head back?”
I thought about it for a moment. A part of me said that yes, we should head back. I needed to talk to Parum, I needed to apologize to her and maybe, just maybe, rebuild our relationship. Another part argued that Oya had assured me she was being taken care of, and that we should continue on. What if I died out here? What if I never got the chance to apologize? What if she died before I got there? What if there’s another war and we all die? I thought, and that sealed it. “The map said we were closer to the mall anyway. Curator told us that there would be information on the Twins at the mall…Let’s keep on.”
“Wait, what map? You have a map too?” Sunny asked, looking from me to the scrap of paper in her magical grip.
I waved my PipBuck. “Always have. It just works properly now.”
Honey Heart stepped forward, and peered at Sunny’s map. “This is covered in penises. All these landmarks are penises. How did you even manage to get this far?”
* * *
Our course decided, we bedded down for the night and caught up on what had all happened. Butcher had caught up with Sunny and convinced her to come back, only to find that I, too, had left. Sunny, with nowhere else to go, kind of settled in the city. Parum had moved into the Ikhanda in the ghetto. About a week ago Sunny had approached Oya, Butcher, and Parum with her plan for caps and salvage. Butcher had called her crazy and suicidally stupid. Parum had said nothing. Oya had agreed, however; she was doing what she could to help the Zebras, but there was only so much she could do. She was a fighter and a survivor – what was needed were doctors, engineers, architects. Those, and caps. Caps for supplies, for labor, for everything. So Sunny’s pitch had worked, and Oya had joined her, the both of them following a “map” that was a collection of li’l stallions. Sunny had gaped in disbelief when I told her about the balefire bomb, refusing to believe it at first until I showed her my map. Oya seemed intrigued about the development of the Twins. Although I couldn’t give her any more information, I did agree that is was interesting, and even if Sunny’s plan was a bust, we both felt that the Mall of Equestria was definitely an important stop on our journey for knowledge.
Dawn came, and with it our travels began again. We moved as quickly as we dared, conserving food and water the best we could – Sunny and Oya had brought quite a bit, but Honey Heart and I had brought whatever we’d had left from the trip to Tenpony, which wasn’t much. There weren’t any hostiles to bother us; eventually we just stopped searching the crumbling homes we passed. The suburbs of Whinnyapolis were truly dead. Something told me the balefire bomb we’d set off had had an effect on this as well as on compasses; now that we’d destroyed it, the area may very well come back. Who knows what would live here, but maybe sometime in the future wandering into this zone may not carry a death sentence?
Throughout the morning, the density of the neighborhoods diminished, and by midday we were in the middle of what I had come to know as the eponymous Wasteland. By evening, barren and broken ground stretched as far as the eye could see; although dotted with the occasional upthrust of rebar or wooden beam, there was nothing else but barren ground and clouded sky. The only things in abundance here (other than rocks) were bones. This must have been where most ponies heading this way had died – with no working compasses and faulty maps, they must have just wandered, lost, until dropping where they stood. If we didn’t get moving, I feared we may end up the same way…again. I shivered at the memory.
“Hey, there’s something over here!” Sunny called out to our right. We’d spaced ourselves out to increase our chances of finding, well, anything – Sunny went right, Honey Heart left, with Oya and I in the center, far enough to cover some ground, but still within shouting distance. The three of us hoofed it to where the brown unicorn stood, looking down at something in front of her.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a plant…” Oya answered, her eyes widening. I stepped past her, squinting down in the fading light, and gasped. It was a plant indeed! A small, green stem ending in two green leaves, poking out from underneath a rock. Honey Heart caught up, and together we four just…stared at it. We were in the Wasteland! Nothing grew here! There was no grass, no trees, no wheat or apples or anything; this place was dead, especially this part! Yet here, right in front of us, was…life.
“We’ve got company.” Honey’s filtered voice broke through the wonder and confusion of the moment. I booted my E.F.S. back up, and she was right – one friendly and six hostiles clustered close together. Looking to the horizon, I could just make out a group of shapes standing atop a hill.
“Get ready!” I shouted, dropping into a fighting stance. Sunny drew both of her pistols, Chandrahasa and the one she’d had when we first met. Oya readied her laser rifle, and Honey Heart…without any ammunition and not wanting to take what Oya had, just tried to look tough; I hoped the presence of a Steel Ranger would be enough to dissuade whoever was coming for us.
“Hold, ponies!” One of the figures called down. Its voice was rough and raspy, like the sound of wind blowing over dead leaves. The one green marker approached our group down the hill, moving quickly and with ease among the rocks and ruin. As it came closer, I had to stop myself from taking a step back. Honey Heart gasped, and even Oya and Sunny tensed.
It was a Timberwolf, a being I had heard of in passing, but never thought still existed. It was larger than a grown pony by at least half, and entirely composed of branches and sticks. Glowing yellow eyes flashed at me from underneath eyebrows of dried leaves. It spoke, and as it did I kept an eye on its sharped, large, thorned teeth: “You ponies trespass here trespass. Turn back now, ponies.”
“I am not a pony.” Oya said simply, the first of us to speak. Really? Thanks, Oya, we love you too.
“You travel with them, and ally yourself with them. You are Pony, as they are.” The Timberwolf rasped back, a low growl underpinning its words.
“Please,” I pleaded, “We’re just passing through; we don’t mean you any harm.”
That was the wrong thing to say. The Timberwolf bristled, his marker on my E.F.S. flashing red for a moment before settling back to green. “So has said all Pony to us!” It snarled, “You lie as they do! Leave now, while we still allow it!”
It struck me then; a flash of knowledge, much like the one that occurred when I first got my cutie mark. Suddenly, I saw this for what it really was. At least, what I thought it really was. The Timberwolf was afraid. It threatened to kill us, but really, it and its compatriots were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to. There must have been too few of them, and by the way the lead Wolf kept glancing at Honey Heart, they must not have known that she was out of ammunition, and more of a scholar than a soldier. I took a tentative step forward, and tried again. “We’re on our way to the Mall of Equestria.” I explained, “There’s been enough death already, and all we’re trying to do is prevent more.” I hoped that Sunny would keep her mouth shut – she, as always, was just in it for the caps, but nopony needed to know that right now.
Luckily enough for us, she did the opposite of what I expected her to do: Sunny holstered her pistols and even took a step back. The Timberwolf regarded us with its glowing yellow eyes, and before it could answer, Oya surprised me as well by stepping forward. “I come from a village of Zebra.” She said, “Us, and my brother and sister Zebra are still treated with the stigma of our race. In the settlement of New Falmalla, we are confined to a ghetto and unable to move about as we please. Never before have I met a pony such as Close Call of Stable 81 or his kin. I travel with these ponies because I trust them. Please, we mean you no harm.”
The Timberwolf stared at her for a long moment. Eventually, it nodded, and turned around. “Come.” It said simply.
* * *
“Entry Log: There are stories of Timberwolves stretching back to just before the war. The earliest record in Stable 81 involved future Ministry Mare Applejack and somepony named ‘Spike’. In this and all other stories they are described as fearsome, barely sentient creatures which live only to hunt and kill ponies and other animals. They certainly don’t talk, and certainly don’t have names. So when Ma’iingan told me his name as he led us through the wastes, to say that I was surprised would be an understatement. Even that surprise paled in comparison, however, to what happened when he stopped leading us.
Oasis is simply named; the Timberwolves and few Buffalo who live there do not believe in naming their settlements, believing it to be claiming for a few what belongs to all. At least, their ancestors did, and they have merely continued the tradition. Oasis is named simply for what it is, an oasis. The small green plant Oya had spied before the Timberwolves descended on us had been only an odd occurrence of what happens regularly here. To quit stalling, Oasis is a small, lush forest growing up around a crystal clear lake…in the middle of the Wasteland. Real, green, and very much alive trees and grasses and plants grow tall and healthy, and my PipBuck indicate that as well as there being no detectable radiation in the water, there is also no detectable radiation in the air. The plants here, by some miracle of science, biology, magic, or all three are actually cleaning the air here. This unique microcosm also means that for the first time in any of our lives, there is fresh fruit and vegetables to be had. Structures, what few there are, consist of simple lean-tos for the Buffalo; Timberwolves, not being, well, normal, don’t really have a need for shelter, and just sleep where they lay.
I am afraid I do not have the sort of pull here as I do in the Zebra Favela; as I have noted before, Stable 81 was commissioned to research the Zebra Empire, thus our records and histories hardly ever crossed into Equestria or her peoples. Long story short, I know maybe three words of Timberwolf and Buffalo. I simply can’t talk to them, which only feeds their distrust of us. Oya managed to placate Ma’iingan with her speech, but it wasn’t until that night that I began to realize just what sort of distrust we were dealing with here. Zebra have always been discriminated against in Equestria. It was only de facto at first – ponies shutting their doors, mean names, what have you – then Equestria went to war. Zebra were taken from their homes, sometimes their families, and placed wherever we wanted them to be. Then the megaspells hit and everyone died. All in all a bad situation.
The ’Wolves and Buffalo’s story, however, begins even sooner. When Equestria began to expand north, there was no (grudging) acceptance or deal like in Appaloosa: the ponies pushed the Buffalo to the forests, and then when they came for the forests, pushed the Timberwolves out of them. War, broken treaties, and the explosion of the Equestrian lumber industry decimated the Timberwolves and Northern Buffalo, and also the ‘Wolves’ homes and breeding grounds. When the war came, they suffered even more greatly. If it wasn’t for Oasis, I assume the Buffalo here would have died out, and these intelligent Timberwolves would have become completely extinct. So while we have been allowed to stay the night in Oasis, we are by no means welcome.
* * *
“You just had to open your mouth!”
Our intrepid group was finally resting in the shade of a large rock protruding from the earth. We had spent the better part of a few days running from the Timberwolves; it had become easier a couple nights ago, when our distance from Oasis meant we weren’t running from Buffalo and Timberwolves. As soon as we’d stopped, Honey Heart had thrown off her helmet, panting and gasping for air. Oya had just collapsed in the shade, too tired to move or say anything. I was exhausted, but anger is a hell of a stimulant. “For once, we were safe! For once, we had clean fucking water! For once, we had fresh goddesses-damned food! But for once, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut!” I shouted at the unicorn, who was sulking while I paced.
“They started –“
“I don’t care who started it! What were you thinking?! We finally get a chance to rest in the worst part of the Wasteland and you can’t shut up for a night or two?” A part of me feared that I was slipping back into the same state as I’d been in when I abandoned Parum, but at the same time I knew this wasn’t the same. I was mad, sure, but could I be blamed? They had fresh food! There was non-irradiated water to be had!
I’d been minding my own business, flicking through files on my PipBuck, when a Timberwolf and Buffalo walked by. They said something in Pony about “interlopers” – I shrugged it off, knowing full well how much they hated us and also knowing full well that we were in no case in any condition to try and fight this secluded conclave. Sunny, however, apparently felt the opposite. There was something said about how they were “just pissy because y’all couldn’t keep ahead of the industrial revolution”, and then we were running for almost three straight days. I sighed, defeated. “Let’s just rest up; we’re almost at the mall.”
“Look, Close, I’m sorry, but…really, it was only a matter of time before they found some reason to run us out of town.” Sunny commiserated, “At least we were able to fill our canteens an’ shit, right?” Yeah, she was right, I had to admit. We decided to bed there for the night, mostly confident that we’d lost at least this set of pursuers.
* * *
Two things: One, when the ponies of prewar Equestria built something, they built it to last. Two, “Mall of Equestria” wasn’t just a name they slapped on a building on a lark.
The Mall of Equestria was, in a word, massive. As we approached, an entrance several times the size of Stable 81’s door and nearly as tall as the Ministry of Morale building in downtown Whinnyapolis loomed over us. This wasn’t just a building, it was an entire campus, almost a small city on its own! Galician columns flanked either side of a colossal set of double doors, all remarkably well-preserved. One side of the complex had collapsed, but even then the entire building looked old, but intact. “Shall we?” I asked tentatively. One of the double doors was open, just enough for a pony to slip through, but before I could even take a step, Sunny sprinted ahead of me, a look of purest glee on her face. We’d made it further than almost any other pony in Whinnyapolis, and while I was both excited for the history I may uncover and fearful of, well, the history I may uncover…Sunny was just excited for the caps. She ran inside, with me, Oya, and Honey Heart on her heels. I stopped suddenly a few feet inside. “Ex virtute stellarum…” I exhaled.
The inside of the MoE was downright cavernous. Three floors of abandoned and derelict storefronts greeted us – department stores, coffee shops, all sorts of things. From what I could tell as we walked up the aisle, the mall was situated into four wings in a cross; the center of which was topped with an ornate geodesic dome. Broken escalators zigzagged around the center pavilion, in which a stage had been set up. It had been temporary; while the rest of the Mall was crumbling brick and tarnished marble, this was crafted of a sort of thin plywood. Dark blue paint peeled off of it, and painted on the large sign in white block letters:
FLU SHOTS!
WE CAN’T WIN IF WE CAN’T FIGHT!
On the left side of the sign was yet another picture of “the Zebra Menace”: gray with black stripes, large, looming, with glowing red eyes and a wicked smile. On the right side, a sick white unicorn, with red, watery eyes, a thermometer poking out of his mouth, and an ice pack on his head. He certainly wasn’t able to fight. And, on the bottom of the sign, front and center for all the action, were what could only have been the organizers of this ad-hoc immunization: two dark, orange, unicorn ponies in fedoras and round sunglasses. “Sunny…”
Sunny turned, having been checking out a storefront, and cursed loudly. Oya, per usual, said nothing, but even she couldn’t hide the look of confusion and concern that spread across her face. “Who’re those ponies?” Honey Heart asked, “Are they important?”
“They’re the ones that have been after me since I left the stable…” I explained.
“But they’re on the sign?”
“And in a centuries-old doctor’s notes.”
“And they’re not ghouls?”
“Only thing old about them are their suits.” Sunny interjected.
“We need to find them.” I declared. “We need to find them and find out just what they want.”
“How?” Sunny shot back, “And how are you gonna find them? If you haven’t noticed, nopony –“ Oya coughed, “ – no one knows how to find them. They find us. We could search the entire Wasteland until we died and probably still wouldn’t find them!”
“Oh, I doubt –“ Came a voice from behind us.
“ – You’ll have to wait that long.” Came another.
All four of us immediately whirled around. It was almost a mirror of the sign: two orange unicorns in fedoras and round sunglasses stood before us, and between them…a small, lime green filly in armored stable barding, suspended in a magical field. “Parum! Let go of my sister!” I shouted. I took a step forward, and the field flashed dangerously.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Call –“ One began.
“ – We have no intention of harming Parum.”
That fire rekindled within me, and I snarled. “Don’t give me that! You killed our mother!”
“We did not.”
“Deduc Indagator killed your mother.”
“Which itself is a lie –“
“ – seeing as she was not your mother.”
Level up!
Perk Added: Unstoppable Force – Watch that anger! Your blows now only have a 15% chance of being blocked!