//------------------------------// // Part 1, Chapter 2: Trinket // Story: The Chronicle of Relic // by SkeIePone //------------------------------// The next day was not as profitable, unfortunately. A dust storm had decided to come billowing through the Ruins, so Money Bag and Garter were unable to accompany me as I walked back into the rubble of some ancient monument. I was frequently alone as the three of us travelled into the more dangerous areas of the Ruins; but this was the first time I walked to our scavenging spot by myself. I understood why of course. The blindingly fast sands and debris from the storm would potentially give my comrades various illnesses and disorders. Pitiful ponies. Oh so susceptible to their many woes, doles, and griefs. At least going out on my own spared me from more of Lionheart’s abuse. One of the many perks of being a synthetic was the fact that we FFs can’t be damaged by some as ordinary as flying garbage. I scramble over to one of my favorite picking spots, the remnants of some sort of museum. Over two dozen marble pillars stand like monoliths across the vast piles of dark grey boulders. This place is the worst spot for finding anything besides forgotten artifacts and unusable FF-Prototype parts. I have come across several magical containers that proved to be very effective batteries. But that was a one time occurrence, and the probability of it happening again was minimal. After removing my large satchels and saddle, I extended my radar and did a quick scan. As was expected, the approaching dust storm caused the detector to go haywire. I quickly retracted the device before I somehow damaged it. This dig, I was going in blind. I revert into my digging phase, with flattened forelegs and balancing hindlegs. The hours pass by quickly, and before too long my battery was halfway depleted. This in itself was a bad thing, considering that I would have to make it home empty-hooved and running on low. I would need Lionheart (or preferably Garter) to refuel me with another amulet. I reformed myself and gathered up my bags, which were just as empty as when I first came out here. Lionheart would be absolutely livid, but that was the least of my worries at the moment. I had to beat this storm before… The ground shook beneath my hooves. Small alarms started to rocket across my processor. “No. It can’t be here already.” I turned slowly, just in time to see an absolutely colossal black cloud racing towards me. It was less of a small puff of fog and more of a wall of dust, so tall that I could barely tell where it ended and the sky began. It extended infinitely to the sides. I recalled a string of curse words that I learned from Money Bag and considered yelling them. But it was too late for that, and the thick cloud slammed into me with enough force to knock me on my side. The wind whooshed over my body, and I felt grains of sand work their way beneath my armor and into my circuitry and veins of magic. Alarms continued to flash across my visor. GYROSCOPE CALIBRATION LOST. COMPASS INOPERABLE. MOTOR MALFUNCTION. I struggled to lift myself up against the brute force of the wind. I could barely see the ground, much less my own hooves. My battery power detectors began to malfunction along with everything else in my body. I had no way of telling how much energy I had left, and I had much less of an idea of where exactly I was. I tried walking forward, but the wind pushed me back once more with enough force that I went tumbling into a pillar. The impact on the solid marble was strong enough that the stone itself cracked. I felt my own armor buckle from the damage, and I realized I was adding to my own problems. Now Lionheart would not only have to come fetch me when I drained my power, but he would also have to punch out any dents I placed in my futile attempts to escape the storm that I should have been paying attention to. This was all my fault. I wouldn’t blame Lionheart for any anger he felt at my foolishness. I was an idiot, possibly the stupidest synth in the Ruins. Stupider than Kitten, even. And Kitten probably only knew what positions made her partners happy and how to properly maintain herself. And I didn’t even know how to do that. I was- Out of nowhere, my radar began to blip. I extended my radar once more and listened closely to the blips among the static. There was something not even five meters away, buried under the rubble. It was a small something, barely the size of my own hoof. It was so small that my radar couldn’t even discern its actual shape. All it looked like to me was some sort of amorphous blob. I could retrieve this mysterious object, but I had only a few ideas how. Option one; I could simply deactivate until the storm passes. Option two; I could dangerously crawl along the ground just so I could figure out what it was just before my battery went out. Being the most logical of synths, I chose option two. I lowered myself down to a crouched position and slowly and carefully made my way towards the blip. I kept my radar trained on the mystery object. I was risking my brass-colored flank for this junk, I wasn’t going to lose it in the static of the dust. My leg spasmed a few times, grains of dust attacking the delicate gears of my motors. “Almost… There...” I whispered, my words instantly lost in the raging storm. Suddenly, my battery detectors returned to working order, and it was shooting lines of text over my visor. Warning: Battery Life is less than two minutes. Refuel immediately. No! I had to get to that scrap. Otherwise, I had wasted all this effort for naught. Battery Life is less than one minute, forty-five seconds. I flattened one hoof and began to feebly shovel away at the dirt. The object wasn’t too far below the ground, which was strange considering how often I checked this spot. I should have noticed it far sooner. Battery Life is less than one minute. I manage to unearth the mysterious something. Grabbing it in both of my hooves, I bring it closer to my face, trying to make out what exactly it was. What I saw was red, foremost. Like a burning fire, almost as bright as that of the sun. Then I could see a very, very distinctive shape. It was shaped like a lightning bolt, arcing across my hoof. I smile down at the little trinket. I had no idea why, I had no idea what. All I knew was that this had been an absolute waste of time. Battery Life depleted. Good night. Darkness. Nothing but a pitch black. I know what this is, I had felt it several times before. My battery had run out. I was out of magical energy. Before long, I would not be able to even think. I would be basically dead, just another useless scrap of metal in the dusty wasteland we call the Ruins. But something is different. Usually, I feel out of it. Whenever my battery depletes, I would feel a sudden wash of hopelessness and tire. But this time, even in this empty space, I felt something else. I thought back to Garter and even Money Bag, both of which were probably worried out of their minds for me. I was trapped out here in the middle of a dust storm. Maybe even Lionheart was concerned. The thought of my charges… No. My friends. My only family out here. The thought of them feeling upset at my loss stirred something inside me. Something that I had never, ever honestly felt before. Loyalty. That was my family. Without me, they would have a difficult time scraping a living in the Ruins. Without me, Garter and Money Bag would be risking their lives going out into the heaps of rubble. Lionheart, with his harsh and aggressive personality, would feel the effects of my loss as well. He would be forced to watch the backs of the younger ones. He would have to risk his life as well, saving them from harm. Lionheart. He was the one who initially found me. Alone in the middle of nowhere, stripped of everything beyond my chassis and my processors. Left out in the Ruins to die. He fixed me, made me whole again and allowed me to work under him. Not as a synthetic slave, but as a co-worker. As an employee, if you will. Money Bag. As greedy and self-centered as he was, he was the pony who would explain how society works and how to properly interact with others. Without him, I would be completely unaware of how to make friends and how to talk to others without boring them. And Garter. My best friend. The only one who called herself my friend. Sweet, caring, kind. She was everything that I could only hope to be. Just then, something odd began to happen. I was sure it was just some sort of hallucination caused by my depleted battery, but I started to see more ponies, ponies I could not recognize. Six of the to be exact, of all the colors of the spectrum. Orange, white, yellow, blue, pink, and purple. Before I could call out to these ghosts, they all vanished save for the blue one. I saw that blue pegasus mare, with a colorful mane and tail like a ruffled rainbow. She was beaming at me, her reddish eyes locking with my own green. She flew up to me, soaring across the darkness. She hovered there, right in front of me, smiling all the while. “What’s up, sport?” She asked in a voice far more gravelly than I had perceived it was going to be. “Stuck in quite the bind, arentcha?” “Who are you?” I asked. “You’ll see.” “What do you mean, I’ll see? I see nothing. Why am I hallucinating a rainbow pegasus? Are you some sort of pre-programmed feature that I was never aware about?” The mare shrugged, still hovering. “Well, I guess it’s time for you to wake up, buddy. What’s your name?” “Relic, FF-7. Now what is yours?” “My friends call me Dash. Or Dashie. Either works. Now, it’s time you got back to your family. Whaddaya think, Relic FF-7?” “It’s just ‘Relic’, miss.” “Whatever.” And was when I woke up. I was covered in a thin layer of silt, lying on my side with the strange red gem glowing between my hooves. Several of the columns had collapsed from the powerful winds of the dust storm. As I flickered back to life, several notifications flashed across my visor. GYROSCOPE RECALIBRATED. COMPASS CALIBRATED. BATTERY RESTORED. BATTERY LIFE: 100%. What? I had collapsed during that storm. My battery had died. And yet here I was, fully charged and still holding that gem. The gem! I gazed down at the scarlet bolt. Whatever this thing was, it just saved my life. And the lives of my charges. It was probably some kind of amulet. An amulet that had belonged to this ‘Dashie’ mare. I turned the gem around several times in my hooves, and discovered something attached to the bottom. It was a note, made on some sort of old parchment. On it, there was some sort of chicken-scratch writing. Dear Twi, Keep this safe for me. Don’t know if I’ll be back. Love, R.D. I had no idea who this R.D. was, but perhaps she was related to the Dashie from within the amulet. I carefully placed my only find of the day in my satchel. Of the day… What day was it, even? I checked my internal clock, and mentally recoiled in horror. I had been deactivated for an entire forty-eight hours. How was this possible? How could I have spent what seemed like mere moments lying on the ground for two days straight? Lionheart was going to tear me limb from limb. So I tightened my satchel across my midsection and began to gallop home as fast as I could. “And where have you been for the past two days?” Lionheart mumbled, so enraged that he could barely speak. “I was caught in the storm.” “The storm that ended YESTERDAY?” “Yes?” “Is that a QUESTION, synth?” “Yes, sir. I had been deactivated for the entirety of the ordeal.” I explained. “If you were deactivated, then who turned you on? Who powered up your battery?” Lionheart squinted at me with suspicion. “Was somepony else with you out there?” I almost replied with a yes. But thinking back, the Dashie pony had been some sort of hallucination caused by my sudden shutdown. So I simply shook my head no. That was obviously a mistake, because Lionheart’s temples began to throb. I assumed he had burst a blood vessel. “Sir, you may want to lie down, if you have an aneurism then-” “I’M NOT HAVIN’ A BUCKIN’ ANEURISM!” Lionheart shouted, poking my chest hard with an angry hoof. “And if you say I’m havin’ an aneurism, I’ll rip off yer damned head and shove it straight up your flank!” I began to feel frustrated by Lionheart’s aggression when something began to flow through me. I identified the culprit as the peculiar amulet I had picked up during the storm. I glanced over at my satchel and saw that it was dimly flashing from within. It had to be the gem in there. But before I could make some snappy retort, I felt that familiar sensation that I had only a few hours prior. I felt loyalty. Lionheart had a right to be angry; it was my stupidity that almost doomed our little scavenging business. “I’m sorry, sir.” “Yeah, well I- wait, what?” “I apologize, sir. I had not been paying attention to the storm’s progress and I came back an utter failure. I admit I felt some degree of worry as I thought about how the three of you would cope without me.” Then I reached over and gave the somewhat shocked Lionheart a small hug. The large stallion said nothing as I nodded one final apology and made my way out of the tent, where I would rest myself for the next day. But when I began to shut myself down, I realized my battery was still full. And what’s more, the gem in my bag continued to radiate energy, right beside me.