• Published 11th Feb 2019
  • 470 Views, 4 Comments

Bit's of Tomorrow's Future - No one is home



The Horse With No Name died a long time ago... The ashen waste survived him...

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Muddled History

“Wut?” AppleBloom scrunched up her face in confusion.

“Yonna knows!” The fluffy yak screamed. “We have just watched a deleted protocol from Profesor Rarities robot-sister!”

“I’m not a robot, and the robot in the film isn’t…” Sweetie Belle paused. “Wait, how did you know that?”

“That’s a good question, actually,” Gallus stroked his beak thoughtfully. “I mean I was there for the field trip, and I was just as ‘wut’ as apple-short.”

“Yaks best at paying attention on field trips,” Yona proclaimed with pride.

“Are you guys gonna do this through the whole movie? Their coming up on a big flashback!” Smolder hissed at her classmates. “I wanna see this, it’s the old pony who had a crush on Bullette when he was little.”

“Bullette’s the one that looks like you,” Sandbar whispered to Sweetie.

“Shhh!”

-=-=-=-=-

“Bully,” the elderly, clown face faced insectile unicorn begged, abandoning reason and dignity, “Don’t do this.”

“I can only remember ten years at a time,” the little metal filly crooned in autotune, “For me it is only one long moment of vigilance. We were together for so long...it’s not fair that I can only remember ten years!”

“This isn’t how he would he would have wanted you to live, Bully!” The seemingly older stallion shouted.

“It is not,” the tiny automaton conceded, “It is not what he would want from me, but he is not
here anymore, is he, Corny?”

-=-=-=-=-

“That’s so sad,” Sweetie Belle sniffed as Scootaloo hummed thoughtfully.

“Wait,did the dragon just say that he was her old crush or something?” The orange filly asked, “‘Cause, she looks like she’s about ten or something… and he’s, like really old…”

“She’s been ‘like ten or something’ for a long time,” Sandbar explained.

“Quiet!” Smolder exclaimed, “They’re explaining things!”

-=-=-=-=-

“Okay,” The insectile clockwork pegasus took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, “This is how I understand it… around a hundred and twenty years ago, no one’s really sure because calendars were pure ash-worm-crap back then, there was this cult that worshiped this false sun god, and they travelled disguised as a traveling circus. And my great, great grandsire, Slapstick LaFaux was tracking them down because they… killed his circus? I think? Anyway that’s the first time the Unnamed Soldier ever appeared…”

“He hated that name.” The metal filly replied as flatly as her voice would allow.

“Well,” the colt reseasoned, noting the filly’s strange familiarity with the subject, “No one really knows what his name was.”

“ERROR! NO NAME!” The filly shout in a sudden rage.

“Yeah, that’s all that’s written on his tomb, it’s why we don’t know what his name was,” the clockwork colt reasoned reasonably.

The metal filly gave a long suffering, musical sigh, “Go on.”

“Oookay… so the Un...No Name?” The colt paused quizzically for a quick nod from the metal filly as pieces began to fall slowly into place. “So he finds this relic in some old pre war bunker outside of Stone Cross, so he brings it to my great, great, granddad because the… uh… No Name? That was actually his? Okay, nevermind… He found this relic, the Sword of Old World, but he couldn’t activate it. Most serious historians believe it was a gun, not a sword, but the name stuck.”

-=-=-=-=-

“Wow, I know one field trip of their history,” Gallus shook his head, “and even I know that’s a load of bunk.”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo agreed, “I don’t even know that much, but that sounds too much like the Crystal ponies explaining how Spike defeated King Sombra…”

“Kinda a statement on the degradation of history through an imperfect oral tradition, if ya ask me,” Applebloom noted.

“Or maybe, everyone in THAT dimension ALSO talked through the entire presentation on their actual history!” Smolder fumed.

-=-=-=-=-

“There really aren’t very many pictures to be honest,” Tick Tock shrugged helplessly, “The most famous is the mural in Turves, but it’s not very helpful. It just shows him defending Stone Cross with an unnamed steelheart standing on his back. It’s clearly symbolic, his ‘sword’, or gun, or whatever, isn’t shown at all, and the proportions aren’t even right. Either No Name was at least four times the size of a normal pony or the mare was a steelheart short legs, or… wait… what’s so funny?”

-=-=-=-=-

“I don’t reckon I got much context,” the youngest Apple mused, “But that colt ain’t got no clue.”

“What’s a steelheart?” Scootaloo asked.

“Oh, they’re like these weird robot ponies,” Silverstream supplied helpfully.

“I thought we agreed they were more like cyborgs?” Ocelus interjected.

“I don’t know, but this Tick Tock guy is DEFINITELY a robot,” Sandbar mused out loud.

“He looks more like a wind up pony if you ask me…” Galus replied with a shrug.

-=-=-=-=-

“Well we better get going, Ticky,” the filly said with a final chuckle, “We have a water tower to blow up. I have not done that in a very long time.”

“I still have to get the sword…” The clockwork trailed off as the filly flashed him a sly smile.

“I already said I was coming with you,” her autotuned voice rang out, “Now come on, the water tower isn’t going to blow up itself. ‘Unnamed Soldier’ and ‘Sword of the Old World’. As No Name would say, ‘I’m gonna teach Queen Bitchface to mess up my name’. And she had me painted as a steelheart short-leg mare… I am smiling on the outside, but I am really angry and we want to be outside when I start blowing things up. Danger Level: Yellow.”

The confused colt followed in a daze.

-=-=-=-=-

The screen flashed to a quick count-down followed by a test pattern. “Well, class, that’s the end of the first reel, I'll have the next loaded shortly.” Discord dipped said reel in ranch dressing, munching it like an oversized potato chip.

“No context, three takeaways…” Apple Bloom mused, stroking her chin with one hoof, “Sweetie bot is adorable… and kinda scary, whoever No Name is, his dead, and she’s ticked off that they got his name wrong, and that wind up colt ain’t got a clue…”