Clipped Wings

by Desrium

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Last words: make the most out of them. A life is but a day in the Wasteland.

It had been eighteen days since Falcon became a part of the Equestrian Wasteland. Eight days since he last saw Klaxon and Steiner, five days since he saw Alana. On the nineteenth, the pegasi descended. Operation Cauterize: the day the Enclave returned to Equestria after 200 years.

A day of death.

Falcon Wing woke up the day after to a cloudy Wasteland morn at the base of a dead tree. A few minutes later he was fiddling with the goggles in his hooves. “So what’s this business about spell matrix terminals…?” he asked himself as he inspected them.

He was the epitome of a lost soul now. A wanderer who had yet to truly wander. Being a better pony was hard.
Over five days he tried doing good deeds, helping a beggar, running a few errands for the occasional pony he met that did not want him dead on sight, avoiding wild automatons that saw his behind in need of a few extra holes all the while.

At the end of the day however, he couldn’t shake the fact that he wasn’t a hero. He was no Stable Dweller, he was just Falcon Wing: the misguided youth who thought it was a good idea to rush out into the Wasteland, and bucking raiders until they blacked out only to find that he was better off shooting them from the get-go.
He thought he had hit the lowest of his lows when he took refuge in a dumpster. In recent days, he reconsidered that and determined that his new standard of pathetic was who he was now. Lying underneath a dead tree, playing around with goggles, completely strayed from his goals.

However, he took the bad along with the good, as tiny good as it might have been. He had more bullets on him now than he did when he left the cellar of his friends. He may have strayed from his goals, but he had yet to stray from his morals! Yet. Killing another pony, even a raider, was beyond him. Letting others do so, however, was just fine. So was stealing as long as the pony was a raving lunatic murderer. Clearly, Falcon Wing had the caliber of a true, admirable hero.

He hadn’t experienced anything like he had on that sunset since then. He did feel angry sometimes, sometimes without a proper cause, finding himself with anger at the world itself in all of its fucked up glory. But nothing akin to that incident. He was unsure if it was because he was doing a good job “not losing himself” or because he feared himself in that state of mind, of what he could do and what could happen to him, in addition to his moral dilemma which he still hadn’t sorted out. He understood it just fine, just lacked the conviction to carry it out.

So the fact of the matter was he was a wayward soul with a desire to do good but lacking the fortitude to make difficult choices. How very weak. It made him wonder just how he was still alive in such a most unforgiving place when he was not even willing to kill for his life. Or perhaps he was. It was all dreadfully confusing.

The goggles were back on his head, resting on his forehead. The emptied can from his daily meal was tossed a few feet away. His decision had been made: he was going to return to the cellar. His only accomplishment in eight days: assisting the liberation of the ponies in Klaxon and Steiner’s old town.

For whatever reason, that did not seem as bad as Falcon Wing thought it was.

The long walk back to Ponyville did not offer any new sights. It just made it clear just how desensitized he had become to the ruins of Equestria. He passed skeletons lying on the discolored grass, said a word or two out of respect and kept walking. If he stopped to bury all the remains he found, it’d take months for him to get back to that basement.

Just as he was getting too jaded, his world was utterly shaken.

The Ponyville ruins were belching smoke into the gray skies.

The sound of DJ Pon3’s broadcast emanated from his saddlebag with crystal clear clarity as he raced across the deadened land, listening to the progression of events elsewhere in the Wastes. Things were looking grim but being able to hear about it was yet another thing he had to thank Klaxon for when he found the stallion… dead or alive as the case may be.

“First, our hearts and prayers go out to the folks of Friendship City and everypony who had relatives there. Late yesterday, in their most horrific attack yet, that airborne plague callin’ themselves the Enclave brutally slaughtered Friendship City. The city’s gone, children. Hundreds of ponies dead. If you didn’t believe me before, believe me now. The Enclave ain’t here to save anypony. They ain’t our friends…”

The radio echoed eerily in rubble filled streets, the remains of… what remained of Ponyville to begin with. They were all gone. Raiders were nothing but gore and blood strewn about the debris. From different kinds of armors he saw blood soaked and littering the streets, he knew that some -- most -- of them spent their last moments warring with each other. In the end it was all for naught. In the end, both sides were wiped out brutally and efficiently. War, like stairs, never changes.

Many innocent ponies elsewhere died in similar display of extermination if DJ Pon3’s reports were to be believed. And Falcon believed them after seeing what had become of Ponyville with his own eyes.

He traversed the leveled buildings, finding purchase on large slabs of concrete and wooden struts and vaulting himself up and over the rubble. Alana was right, even without wings he had the agility and speed of a proper pegasus, honed in the Wasteland in ways he never dreamed of when he was an introvert above the clouds.

He wound himself through the puddles of flesh, ignoring the smell of blood and the after-effects of gunfire. The air was electrified from magical energy weapon discharge, weapons able to turn a pony to ash in one hit or simply tear through their bodies in a way bullets could not. Even the Peashooter with its affinity for precision and massive damage could not contend.

Duck under that fallen lamp post. Jump over that barrier of mangled wall. Gallop through the flames, feel the heat and emerge from the other side like the phoenix reborn. He was no longer concerned about being a hero. His mind was focused solely on his friends.

DJ Pon3’s voice followed him as did his overcoat, sweeping the rushing air underneath it and billowing out as he ran, as if it wished to compensate for his clipped wings.

“… This broadcast? It’s not exactly live. And I have a message for the black-armored soldiers who just burst into the station at the Shattered Hoof Ridge Tower: that thing you’re looking at with the glowing blue light? A little homebrewed surprise rigged to the spark battery from a weapon made by the motherfuckin’ stars! Farewell, you …”

The deep voice of the stallion gave way to static. Falcon Wing did not stop running, even to shut off the crackling that echoed off into the nigh deserted town.

His course took him right down that street. The street he landed in amidst the dead of night. The street where he lost part of himself. He raced down it and over all the obstacles in his way a much stronger pony than he was then. He did not even give the ordeal a passing thought as he went.

“Find Klaxon, find Steiner. Then find out what the fuck happened to Hope,” Falcon thought, a mantra that repeated in his head.

“Son of a bitch!” the red colt shouted, seeing what had become of the building that stood close to the train tracks. “It finally happened! 200 years and it was the Enclave who knocked it down!?”

He threw himself the rest of the way to the building, landing on the collapsed building and digging into the wood so charred and smashed. He bared his teeth as he tossed bits of wood aside, ignoring splinters that dug into him.

“They are alive!” he told himself, practically growling as he tore through the pile. Pieces of wood landed with a faint thump behind him after soaring through the air in an arc.

“They lasted this fucking long, I don’t see how some shitty pegasi could be the ones to kill them!”

His hooves were not good enough now. He bit into a few large planks of wood and hauled them out, causing a small cascade of rubble to spread out. Repeating the process and suffering several splinters in his gums, he saw what he was looking for. The dumpster. It was crushed in the collapse, caving into itself and wedged into the cellar entrance.

Falcon Wing’s heart sank. If the two stallions were alive down there… they were trapped!

He jumped off of the pile of debris, gut wrenching grief hitting him and hitting him hard. He trembled, staggered a little then finally threw up.

Hell of a time for that to happen.

“… Nasty. Boy, did you swallow some of that shit you bit into?” said a familiar earth pony. Falcon Wing --who was still heaving at the time -- perked up instantly. He looked around and saw them. The two stallions standing behind him raising their brows.

“…How… how long?” Falcon rasped.

“Long enough to see that whole display,” Steiner answered him. “We were out scavenging when we heard your radio. Speaking of which, do you fancy the sound of static accompanying your…meals?”

“You were out scavenging…in all of this…” Falcon countered, ignoring the comment about the radio and panning his gaze over the leveled and burning buildings.

“You’d be surprised at what we found. We came across a few raider stashes and without any raiders to guard them, looks like the loot is ours,” Klaxon said.

“I…see,” Falcon Wing said, slowly regaining his composure.

From the looks of things, the two had overcome their emotional hurdle in the last few days. What better way to celebrate than revel in the destruction of the Wasteland competition? Ponyville was theirs! Whatever was still standing at least!

“It’s good to see you guys too, by the way,” he added, smiling weakly, his mouth stained red, bits of wood sticking out. Steiner narrowed his eyes, sighed and shook his head. He’d have to fix that.

"This is what we get for letting you rush out to play hero," Klaxon deadpanned.

“How’d you two get out of there anyway? Dumpster’s bust,” the red colt asked, gesturing back to the pile behind him.

“Emergency tunnel,” the dark blue unicorn stated.

“… Called it” Falcon mused, looking into his bag to turn off the static.