RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

2013 project - Fallout:Equestria Little Star - Prologue

Prologue.

“War, war never changes. It’s a pretty admitted truth. The consequence never changes at all: Death. In a war, what really matters is what remains after the last shell has been dropped and the last bullet has been fired. The end occurs when the losing side comes to the point of deciding that ‘All is lost therefore nothing shall survive our doom’. It’s what is coming. It’s the fate reserved for everypony… Everypony, but you. As I’m giving you that one last stable to protect. That last stable kept in a place nopony will ever reach again. Be safe, live, and prosper. Good luck.”

Scootaloo, Stable-Tec Corporation Vice-President.

₮ ₰ ₣ ₪ ₹ ₸ ₢ ₸ ₹ ₪ ₣ ₰ ₮

“Hey… Hey?” A few pokes clanged on top of my head. “Hey! Star, focus!”

I shook my head and blinked a few times. The view from my position was incredible, fascinating and somewhat scary.

“Stop looking down, you idiot!” the stallion’s voice reprimanded with a long huff of impatience. “We don’t have all day.”

“Oh, fuck off, Tinker!” I spat at the stallion and mumbled, “I was just sightseeing.”

The crimson pony rolled his weary green eyes hidden behind his thick shiny helmet. As I shook my head, Tinker rubbed his cramped shoulder beneath his suit. I saw his eyelids flutter as a speck of dust washed over his wrinkles and hit his left eye. He grunted, twitched about, and tried to wipe it away. I smiled at him as trying that with a helmet on was a lost cause.

“Got what you deserved, ol’ rag?” I smirked.

“Gimme a second, Star.”

Unable to scrub the intruding fleck away, he clutched his hooves tightly to the wall we were both attached to with a series of cables. He grunted, shook himself then surrendered to the task. A tiny drop trickled from his left eye.

“I’m too old for these antics,” he muttered to whoever wanted to hear.

In that case, I was the only one around to listen to him, though it didn’t meant I wanted to. Now, as our environment and helmets barred us from speaking to each other directly, we used transponders. The darn mule never learnt how to turn his volume down. Each of his growls sparked shivers into my ears.

“Can’t we just get this over with?” I suggested. “We’ve got a schedule to keep to.”

“And you’re the one telling me that?” he coughed. “Times change.”

After his fit of anger against his dusty nemesis, a lock of grey mane had fallen before his face. It hid the few brown freckles peppering his right cheek and wiggled in front of him as he kept rambling on. His ear twitched repeatedly, trying to bring the offending strand of hair back to its place. Then, he jumped away from the wall and let himself whirl in the nether.

I gasped in fear and tried to reach him. I was already too late. His body mass slammed back on the wall as his cordage pulled him back to safety, a meter or two away from where he started, and right next to me. I felt the force of the impact vibrate in my bones. While I was glaring daggers at him, he simply hoofed me his blowtorch with a large grin on his face.

“If Madam wants to start,” he grinned. “I don’t see your tools around. Have you lost yours again?”

“Shut up, Grandpa,” I protested. “I haven’t lost anything… again. I just forgot my own stuff.”

I snatched the blowtorch off his hoof and locked it on the magnetic clip that adorned each of my horseshoes. With a few kicks on the trigger, a thin but vividly blinding blue flame spurted out. Narrowing my eyes, I gently aimed at the broken pipe we’d been assigned to fix. Those damn pipes were used to cool down the Stable’s reactor and its critical internal parts. Those fuckers had to break at least once a week. I looked at Tinker’s backpack, a tiny sheet of metal tipped out of the cracked leather. At this rate, we would soon be lacking metal for replacement.

“That’s not the first time, Star,” Tinker pointed out after a long pause. “Are you sure everything’s alright?”

I sighed. I hung my head low and let the torch’s flame die out. I let out a deep, long breath and closed my eyes.

“I’m bored, ‘pa,” I confessed. “Like supremely bored.”

I opened my eyes again and looked straight into his. He just gave me a dry chuckle and smiled tiredly. I was the first to broke the awkward silence.

“Have you never… I dunno… wished for something else? To do something else?” I asked. “It’s the Stable over everything else. Stable there. Stable here… It’s only about the Stable. Nopony ever asked me what I wanted to do.”

Tinker smiled at me again with that wise, rueful, painful look.

“I could say that it’s how it has ever been, is, and will be. But I know the answer would never satisfy you. Nor will it satisfy anypony to be honest.” He chuckled sadly. “Let’s say it’s how it must be. Since my grand-grandfather entered the stable when he was young and when he later became the chief engineer, our family has served the stable as dutifully as it was able to.”

“We ain’t Overponies, though.” I joked. “We don’t enjoy their great life.”

“I don’t think you’d envy her current position, it’s quite the stressful job.”

“Maybe,” I whispered.

“Well,” he put his hoof over my shoulder and brought me closer. “We serve and protect. Thanks to our work, ponies live along peacefully, and as such it has been for many years. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful goal? Living to help others?”

“I hate the Stable,” I countered, flatly.

“Who doesn’t, filly?” he said. “We all hate it but that’s all that we have. Equestria has been dead for many years. There’s nothing left on that barren rock now.”

“But, what if the Overpony is wrong?”

Tinker laughed, “We could lift mountains with ifs, my dear.” He patted over my shoulders and snarled. “Stop tormenting yourself, you’ve got a pipe to fix.”

I looked back at the torch with a long sigh.