Epilogue
Epilogue
"It’s like we’ve forgotten how to have heroes. Only worse. We’ve forgotten how to believe in each other. In ponies. Even Scootaloo… she’s trying to fix ponies with all these experiments."
"Demi, I'm not writing another word," Anne quietly told me. "I was only a bit player in the story of Littlepip. It would be best if we leave it that way." Modest as usual. Maybe she was only a minor player in the story of Littlepip, but she was a major character in the story of Stable Four, and for that matter, in the healing of the wasteland. Her golden Pipgirl was a testament to that.
Anne plonked down a memory orb and a storage device of her writings in front of me. "That orb contains the memories of my mother, from the last days of her life. You could use them as the introduction to the story, as that was where the adventure started."
"That would be your famed fight with Saffron Fields, wouldn't it?"
Anne nodded as I lifted the white orb with a hoof and stared at the thing. Like the rest of my kind, I had never been able to use these unicorn specific items. I didn't have a horn to which I could touch it. I wondered if I really wanted to see into the head of a mare on the day she died. Years ago Anne had told me the memory was painless, although at times somewhat confused. It would also allow the viewer to experience being human or at least Lee's interpretation of it. The crazy robot mare was still going bipedal as often as not. I had seen the recording myself, when it had first been extracted from Lee's cyberframe, but only on a monitor, and at high speed, and that was very different from living it through a memory orb.
"Oh, you're not a unicorn, are you," Anne commented, glancing at my forehead as if she wasn't well aware of the fact. "Maybe you can get a recollector to play it. If not, perhaps Shadow could dictate it to you."
"Helvetica can do it for me," I responded.
"Oh, of course. She is the Recorder after all," Anne said, "and ultimately, I've been writing this story for her records, haven't I?"
I nodded. Initially Anne had refused Helvetica's request. Helvetica had approached me, asking me to convince Anne to do it. After all, Anne was the first Overmare of Stable Four in well over a hundred years, and under her guidance, the stable had gone from being a slaughterhouse to the very pleasant place it was now. "I agree with her. Your story is an important part of Restoring Hope."
Restoring Hope was the name of our little community, although as often as not, it was simply referred to as Hope. It was a direct reference to the clandestine social experiment conducted at Stable Four. The residents had never lost hope, and now they were spreading it to the wasteland!
"The foals will want to read it when they are a little older: a bit of adventure and action about the old ponies who run this place. It will also give them a lot of insight into just how good they have it!" I suggested.
Anne turned, and walked slowly away, as if still recalling what had happened all of those years ago. A lot had changed since then, but some remained as they were. Anne's small, cyborg body was one such thing; she would look that way until the day she died, forever young and beautiful, but at such a high cost. Our relationship was another constant: we had remained inseparable, despite the comings and goings of other ponies in our lives. Some would ask if we had grown closer over the years. To them I would answer in the affirmative, but the reality was I don't think it was possible for us to be closer than we had been for many years, considering the explosive rate at which our relationship grew when we met. To that end, I was living up to my cutie mark as much as ever. Anne continued to look after a stable, no, not just a stable, a settlement full of ponies, and I looked after her. Really, we looked after each other. Not surprisingly, she had never married or settled down with a stallion. On the other hoof, a time had come when I had married. And while I had a husband, as often as not, I still shared a bed with Anne, her comparatively small form curled up beneath my wing. Nowadays ponies often mistook her for my daughter, or if they thought I didn't look old enough to be her mother, for my younger sister.
Who was that stallion I married? Well, when I met him, he wasn't quite an adult, and when we went adventuring as part of a larger group, he often came along as the group's medic. Eventually it dawned on me why it was almost always him, when others with the same skills could have taken their share of the work, or if he hadn't come with us, why he always seemed to be one of the ponies waiting at the door when we returned. The reason was that he yearned to be where I was. Being as reserved and quiet as he was, it took him a while to work up the courage to ask me, but by then, I had a clear idea of how he felt and had warmed to the idea myself, so I gladly said yes. That's right, I married Shadow.
Now, several years on, Anne had a granddaughter to play with. I called her Scoots, and like her namesake, she had two wings. Colorwise, she was somewhere between Shadow and myself; in other words, she was grey, although her mane and tail did have a suggestion of red to them, like her father's. Yeah, it does appear that I am really a one winged pegasus and not a mutant earth pony. There must have been some recessive genes hiding on in both of my genetic parent's lineages. On the subject of the ex-parents, no, I never did see them, or even hear of them again. Do I mind? Not at all. I became so integrated in Anne's small family that what had come before lost all significance. The pony I am now was born on the day Anne rescued me from the slavers.
What of Scoots' name? Some may wonder at the choice, considering Scootaloo was the pony behind the Stable experiments. My daughter was named Scoots after my beloved doll, not Scootaloo after the famous mare, although the distinction could be somewhat blurry, considering the doll was a promotional action figure of Scootaloo. All the same, Scootaloo the mare had been forgiven. More data had come to light, and her ordained experiment had been to generate a coherent team of ponies who could work together with great effectiveness. The experiment had been designed to run under the oversight of the Overmare. Ultimately the Overmare had the power to declare the experiment a success any time she wished, as she could edit the parameters of the test. In theory, the experiment could have been ended with the first bruised pony. Covert experiment # 2445C. Operation Hopelessness, the hidden experiment that had turned Stable Four into a slaughterhouse, had apparently been programmed into the system at the behest of another, more sinister department. Which department? We had no idea. They covered their tracks well, but not so well as to hide their interference. I hoped the bastards involved had either been victims of the war, or taken shelter in Stable One, Scootaloo's prison for those she blamed. What the extra information suggested was that Scootaloo had lost hope herself, and somepony else had warranted that something worth studying at larger scale, choosing Stable Four as the place to study it. All the experiments had been largely pointless though, the test data never being compiled by StableTec due to the near erasure of the pony populace by war.
Going back to more recent events, Scoots and I were learning to fly together, although I had to resort to technology to get airborne. Lee had rigged me up with a flight harness using talismans much like the harness she had made for herself all those years ago, after the battle of New Appleloosa. The talismans were less likely to explode than the levitation units used in the Stable Four floater robots, and didn't need spark batteries to work, which was a good thing because good batteries were getting harder to come by. Lee did her best to keep as many exhausted spark batteries in service by recharging them, although with some of these ancient wonders, it didn't matter how often she tried to recharge them, they were simply so worn out they would die within the day. There was a limited supply of alien power cells to go around, some stolen from the Enclave by Calamity, and others salvaged from the inner workings of Lee's ship, though those were rare, and Lee kept them for important functions, such as powering the heavy gauss rifles that protected our settlement, and powering her children.
Little Duct Tape came of age, and started her career as a systems analyst and troubleshooter. Her graduation was nothing more than a formality, as she has been doing that between her schooling anyway, the only real difference being that her schooling was over. While technically she was Anne's half-sister, in our little family circle, she took the role of younger daughter, effectively making me her older sibling. She's dating Cloud, Shadow's younger brother. What systems does she troubleshoot? You name it, she does it. Foremost, she looks after the logistics of running the settlement, including the stable, and that is no mean task, because the stable no longer has its A.I. computer. Duct Tape has a team of ponies doing her bidding. Oh, little doesn't apply to her anymore. She is quite the shapely young mare.
What of the Stable Four mares? What of the stable itself? And how did we survive the war? We survived it very well. Anne is proud that she didn't lose any other pony from the stable during the war. In fact, all of the surviving Stable Four ponies still live here. Yes, that's right, we all still live in Stable Four, or in Restoring Hope, the settlement above it. Most of the mares were able to be healed of their injuries, and now walked about unclad, enjoying the freedom of being able to go au naturel. A couple of them scoot about in the wheelchairs Anne made for them, and one still wears the later cladding Lee designed. Even this many years on, they continue to delight in their new life.
We were able to give little Bubbles a new pair of forelegs, white, of course. The medical ponies were never able to sort out the coat color problem with replacement parts grown by the autoclinic, not that Bubbles cared. After all, she could walk again. Cherry Sundae is still blind, but unless you were told so, you wouldn't know it. Somehow what her brain can glean from her cyber-eyes, combined with the magic she used to get about before they were fitted, gives her all of the 'visual' information she needs.
Initially, when the Enclave came down from the clouds, the stable had gone into lockdown out of fear, but a number of injured and homeless ponies, victims of an Enclave strike, came past our above-ground walls, hoping to use them as shelter. Anne had us open the door, and take these ponies in. And that kept happening as weeks passed. The upper floors of the stable became wards for the injured. Those that were healed, or were well enough were rehoused on lower levels, and assigned to assisting those who were in need of care. Before we realized it, Stable Four had become a hospital. The medical ponies took to teaching others their spells when possible, and alternative methods when not. They even started making their own healing potions during quiet times. Ruby went back for the stolen Enclave tank The Brick, and, assisted by refugee pegasi, set up a rescue service, taking The Brick near war zones or recent Enclave strikes, and rescuing all the ponies they could. If the Enclave ever recognized the sloppily painted tank covered in old corrugated iron as one of their vehicles, they never said or did anything about it. We often joke about changing Ruby's name to Emerald these days, as the first time she molted her coat post transformation, her red hair was replaced with green.
At the Stable we had a simple rule: Leave your prejudice at the door. It seemed to work. When an injured pegasus has been assisted back to health by earth bound ponies, they either left, feeling a debt of gratitude to their wingless brethren, or they stayed to help pay that debt. The same then happened to muck dwellers that were assisted by these pegasi. It would be a long time before the factions all over Equestria stopped their warring, but at least we were sowing the seeds of peaceful coexistence. The policy still applies, and to the whole of Restoring Hope. If a pony cannot or will not change their ways, we recommend another settlement where their views will be tolerated, if not embraced, and send them on their way.
Using the water burning reactors on her ship, Lee was able to power up many of its internal systems, and even a small version of her jump drive. That let her open a magic portal between Stable Four and Stable Lab Four, so now the two places are effectively one. The autoclinic at the Lab can simply be accessed by walking through a magic door from the Stable. Lee also fixed up the bridge of her ship, and was now using it as a planetarium to educate other ponies about the wonders of space. For assistants, she had her two children, both of whom she had assembled from parts from her ship. Both were foal sized, but annoyingly astute and intelligent! Anypony who makes the mistake of treating them like foals usually has to sit though a lecture! She called them Sandy and Mouse. The autoclinic didn't have any trouble giving them their own unique color coats though. Apparently it simply cannot match coat colors when trying to match DNA. It seems to be operating in some sort of safe-mode, producing blanks - tissue with artificial DNA that is compatible with the broadest spectrum of natural DNA. Oh, the water burning reactors? Lee said they use electrolysis to break water into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter of which is fed into the fusion reactor itself. The waste oxygen is either concentrated for medical use or just vented into the stable air supply.
The world outside the stable has somewhat changed too. The first big shock happened not long after the battle of New Appleloosa. Suddenly rainbooms burst from those strange white towers that reached into the clouds. They had the same effect as Ditzy Doo's radboom, knocking Enclave war machines from the sky, and blowing away acres of their cloud-sewn crops. That signaled the end of the war, and the beginning of the big fight.
Later, the Watcher called past, inviting Anne to his home. Anne went, alone, and when she returned, she was wearing the second Pipgirl, this one in gold, with a jewelled version of her cutie-mark emblazoned on it. She never talks about it, mostly out of modesty, I think, but we all know it is one of those Element things. While she was away, Equestria underwent a magical transformation, and was purged of the toxic and radioactive substances ponykind had created during the days of great stupidity. That made life on the surface much more attractive. Now we have to wait for the toxic nature of the last generation of wastelanders to be purged. To that extent, ponies still fought.
Then again, I don't think that will ever change. There will always be ponies eager to find something to fight about.
After all, ponies will always be ponies.
Special thanks to the team of proof readers.
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And thus closes one of the greatest Fo:E side stories there is. Thank you, good sir, for this literary gem.
WHEEEE!!!!! Thank you for such a great ride!
Hah! After all her stark denial, that cracked me up
Eeeeee! Those guys are back?
They always remind me of Agatha's little wind-up clanks in Girl Genius
Aw yeah! It's Sandy and Mouse
I wonder if she just called them that, or if she restored them from backups...
Huh. Looks like the transformation had more effects on her after all, then
Well. That was quite the ride. A beautiful ending, to a beautiful story.
Thank you
(PS: some small corrections have been indicated on the GDocs version)
yay! anne had a filly! so much better than colt!
nice ride, thank you for telling us your interesting adventure ^_^
Perfect ending for a good fic
. Sad it ended though,
I'll bet anyone a thousand bottlecaps that, whatever it was that fucked up the stables so badly, the O.I.A. and Goldenblood have something to do with it! Anypony wanna bet?
3082934 Lee's "children" are also rather like the DRDs in Farscape - amazingly so. The fun fact though is that Lee's children were invented around 1979 or 1980 by me. Some ideas are just so logical that others have them as well.
It must be a seasonal thing this year...
Last night I read the epilogue of Broken Steel, and tonight I just finished this (still an awesome story, by the way). Before I shoot myself in the foot, I'm betting the next epilogue I read will be Projec Horizons >.>
I do like the last line, though. A lot of the FoE stories I've read just sort of imply that after sunshine and rainbows, everything was instantly good, or that Equestria was returned back to the way it was. It would take years and years for something like that to happen... (after all, they are only ponies)
EDIT: Twas a fun read. A great story to read while I was taking a break from my own story.
3084981
Oh, I'm aware of how old your Stellar Orphan ideas are
I have to say i must give you props. Your story here has had me at the edge of my seat and ever diligent for what is next to come.
And no I did not read it when you were still writing the chapters. I actually began reading when you finished. And I have to admit after reading this. It deserves to be known as a good side story to the Fallout Equestria trilogy.
Thank you for making these story, it was an epic journey to go with the characters made in this. I have to say the plot for this as well was well thought out and well produced into this little story.
And seeing Anne as the virtue of Generosity. Honestly did surprise me. I was too focused on reading what happened next I gave it no real thought.
Not until Demi pointed it away. And I was quite shocked to be honest, Sure i noticed how forthcoming she was to helping others but still I was quite shocked.
Again I have to give you props for a well done and well written story.
3133990
"A date with a hole in the wall" usually refers to withdrawing money from an ATM!
3145139
Yup.
3161115
Why name a pony when all you are going to do is confuse the reader with yet another name to remember - especially when it is one they don't need to remember.
Ahh, you know, after rereading it all this makes a lot more sense. Even in the story, that colt did a really good job pretending to be a background pony. He's a real sweetie though, ain't he
Waaait... Mouse is Anne, isn't she? The original Anne was actually Mouse's VR 'roleplay' character
The day is sometimes still referred to as the "Day of Cabbage and Carrots Rain", rather than the more famous nickname of "Day of Sunshine and Rainbows"
3170493
In Stellar Orphan, yes. But here Lee already has somepony running around calling themselves Anne.
I just finished reading. Friend of mine pointed this out as a good FOE fic that was completed (I'd mentioned being weary of the staggering amounts out there that were either not very good or incomplete). I'm glad he did. I really got into this story; spent a few days just sitting here reading it.
I think the part of the story that hit me hardest was actually when Anne, Saffron, Lee (and Demi I think? Can't remember) returned to see Stable 4 was taken over by raiders. I was actually heartbroken thinking they'd all been lost. especially after some of the mares were seen strung up like raiders do.
I also took a hit when I thought the auto-clinic brutally murdered Lee, but that was short lived since she spoke up pretty soon afterwards.
3171468
Thanks for your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed it overall.
3169717
3168977
http://askpuppysmiles.tumblr.com/post/30719332434/spoiler-were-no-heroes-tribute-because-puppeh
3171388
Yeah, it's just, I didn't realize until now that the "Anne" name from Lee's logs was never a real person (not counting the original Anne the VR persona was based on). Seeing the thing about her rebuilding "mouse" made it click.
3173540
Haa! I totally forgot about that comic
Great story, and nice addition to the FO:E group.
For the most part, the writing is pretty great. Action sequences flow well, and descriptions are good and vivid. But one issue I noticed was characters seemed to lack emotion at times, or didn't have a reaction that fits what's going on.
A pretty big example is the colt in chapter 28. He seems much too in-control of himself, and shockingly calm for his current situation.
A child spending two days completely alone in the wasteland desert, after he knew his family and friends had been killed by raiders, without water or food or shelter, probably completely lost, with only a bulletless gun for protection. Then mustering up every bit of mental effort that would be required to jump out infront of a large group of adult ponies and try to commit his very first stick-up on a bluff.
His body and mind is already weak from hunger and dehydration, and he's just been flooded with adrenaline. He'd be a complete mess. Stuttering and stammering, his instructions would be almost incoherent in his attempts to yell them out, everyone clearly able to see how utterly terrified he is, his body and the gun shaking uncontrollably.
7715980 Probably the emotionless bit is directly related to how I was raised. I was pretty much punished any time I tried to express anything. As such, I'm pretty emotionless myself.
And the stickup is a scene from the original game :)