When the bombs fell, where was Doctor Whooves? Better question: where is he now?
Compass, a happy maintenance technician and resident of Stable 52, uncovers an unbelievable secret hidden deep within the massive shelter that he calls home, and is forced to confront a mystery that has gone unsolved for over two hundred years:
On that fateful day, when Equestria needed him the most, where was Doctor Whooves?
This fanfiction is based on the immersively epic Fallout Equestria by Kkat. You can read Fallout Equestria by Kkat on Equestria Daily
The Fallout: Equestria logo used in the cover art was designed by DotRook and, according to his original deviantArt post, he allows usage in supplementary materials created for and associated with the series. Images really do make a difference, so, due to his awesomeness, he has my deepest gratitude.
Much like fear, war is powerful - a force entirely without mercy.
Fear...
Fear is what I saw drive my race to actions I had never thought them capable of. Fear was what cost me my best friend. Fear is what I see right now.
As I look into the eyes of my captive, I can see many different flavours of fear in her eyes: the fear of what I might do to her, the fear that today may be her last, the fear that that meagre thread of hope she’s still clinging onto is worthless. There’s a pleading wateriness there. It’s subtle, but it’s all I need to know that she’s silently praying to the Goddesses behind her gag that I’ll just change my mind and leave her alone. I didn’t expect that look to affect me so – it tugs at a now hidden part of me that I’ve tried so hard to forget. It’s the part of me that’s still...I don’t know...sane? Kind? Good? Whatever...
Her gaze reminds of what things were like before all this happened, and I think back to kinder times and brighter days...well, as bright as StableTec fluorescent lighting can be.
My name is Compass – the thing for drawing circles, not the navigational tool – and I’m a Stable technician.
I grew up in Stable 52, a massive subterranean disaster shelter under the surface of Trottingham near the northern coast of Equestria. Apparently, it was once a beautiful region, with rolling green hills and snow capped mountains ('was' being the operative term there). You see, about two hundred years prior to my birth, the world such as it was ended in a maelstrom of balefire; the final blow in a lengthy war that was allowed to escalate too far.
Okay – far too far.
When the megaspells fell, our planet was transformed into a bleak, terminally poisoned wasteland by massive pulses of hard magical radiation. As such, the surface world was rendered incapable of supporting life for generations.
Fortunately though, among our ancestors there were at least a few smart ponies (it was a shame they weren’t diplomats or strategists, or else the war may have ended before somepony had the bright idea of blighting our home). These smart ponies included the likes of Scootaloo and Applebloom, two of my personal heroes, who together with many others were able to ensure the survival of a few thousand lucky ponies by building the Stables.
Why were they my personal heroes? Well, in short, Scootaloo was a visionary and Applebloom was a genius.
“Compass...”
I mean, between them they may have very well saved the pony race!
“...Compass?”
And on top of that, Applebloom almost singlehoofedly defined the state of the art for Equestrian technology. She played a part in inventing terminals, Pipbucks, magical holograms, spark reactors – the list goes on! She was an amazing mare-
“Compass!”
My inner monologue was interrupted as a loud ball of shout tried to climb into my left ear.
“Ah! Petri, come on! That hurt...” I rubbed my ear with my hoof as the noise receded.
Before me stood my best friend in the Stable and the world, Petri Dish – a brilliant young unicorn mare who was only a couple of months my senior.
“Well, how else am I supposed to get your attention?” She responded with a smirk.
“You’re the only buck I know who can occupy himself by staring at a wall. It’s like you slip into a miniature coma every time you’re left alone,” she said as she rubbed her chin with her hoof, looking thoughtful as she pretended to diagnose me with a comical psychosis.
“I was thinking – you know how I like to think.” I responded blankly.
“Everypony does, Compass,” she chuckled, “Are you ready for tonight?”
A smile crept across my face as I remembered our ‘plans’ for that evening.
“Ooooh, yes,” I said, closing in, smelling her sweet perfume as I whispered in her ear:
“You’d better not count on getting much sleep, Petri...”
“Mmm...” she smiled, licking her lips and looking straight into my eyes, “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
Our gazes were suddenly interrupted by a deep rumble as the hallway lights flickered overhead.
“What the...” I started to say as a pair of brisk chirps emanated from our Pipbucks. Lifting hers to her face, Petri quickly reassumed her normal professional demeanour. I quickly did the same, mentally chiding myself for not responding to whatever was happening in the same manner.
On the tiny leg mounted screen was a glowing green message dispatched by the Stable maneframe’s maintenance scheduling system.
>>PIPCLOUD OS – AUTOMATED INSTALLATION MAINTENANCE PROGRAM >>!!! EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION !!!
"Oh, Goddesses!” she gasped, “I’m needed in Medical – there’s been a pipework explosion on -”
“- level 3. Yeah, got that,” I said quickly as I returned my Pipbuck bearing leg to the floor. “Good luck!”
“You too! See you tonight!” she shouted as she sprinted round the corner at the end of the hallway.
I turned and made my own way as quickly as I could to the elevator at the opposite end of the corridor, arriving at the reactor substation on level 3 just as my Pipbuck flashed up another automated message:
>>PIPCLOUD OS – AUTOMATED INSTALLATION MAINTENANCE PROGRAM >>!!! EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION !!!
“Aw, crap!” I shouted at nopony in particular as I finished reading the message and swung around the doorway into the substation.
Apparently I was the first technician on the scene - the half dozen medical ponies present had clustered in front a billowing plume of pale blue gas. The blisteringly cold coolant flow was enough to freeze anypony solid in under a second, so they were keeping their distance, having already evacuated everypony they could safely reach. Slumped on the other side of room and separated from us by the coolant was a vaguely pony shaped lump. My eyes widened in concern as I realised that it was in fact Valve, a unicorn buck who worked in maintenance alongside me.
“We’re coming Valve! Hang on!” I shouted as I brought my Pipbuck up to my face and activated the Eyes Forward Sparkle.
A flash of green filled my vision as the EFS displays flickered into being and gave me, among other things, a remote readout of the reactor’s status.
Being an Earth pony, I wasn’t able to reach the controls on the opposite side of the room without turning into a much colder and less alive version of myself. An alternate, and extremely fast solution was required in order to avoid disaster.
You may ask the reason why I was scrambling to avoid the automated safety system in the middle of an emergency, and you would be totally justified in doing so. Put simply, the Stable was at that time over two centuries old, and so was its primary spark reactor. Said reactor fed every system in the Stable with the magical energy needed for continuous operation, and included in that oh-so-long list of devices were several pieces of technology vital to the survival of me and my Stablemates (like the water, thermal regulator and air recycling talismans). In short, were the reactor ever to shut down, we would all suffocate, boil and die of dehydration...in that order.
All I can say is: thank the Goddesses for EFS! The neural interface that allowed me to operate my Pipbuck by simply thinking commands easily detected my intent and magically reached out to the control terminal on the far wall. Mentally logging in, I ran a control override protocol and pulled up the coolant distribution subroutine. I took a moment to gawk at the mess I saw on my Pipbuck’s screen: what had he been doing!? The coolant flows had been manually routed this, that and the next way. The system was so muddled up it’s no wonder the pressure excess hadn’t been noticed till it was too late.
I opened a command prompt and restored the automatic control settings, bypassing the pipe in front of me and ordering the system to reconfigure for safe running. I then gently ramped up the now concentrated flow of coolant, calming the enraged spark reactor. As the freezing cloud in front of me dissipated, I let out a nervous breath as the maintenance warnings on my EFS began to go from red to green and then disappear altogether.
The medical ponies rushed to help Valve as I looked on, confident that he would be okay – Petri was one brilliant doctor. As they carried away my unconscious friend on a stretcher, two of my maintenance colleagues, Atom Spark and Bulkhead joined me, panting heavily from their respective journeys through the Stable.
“Compass...ugh...what...ugh...happened!?” Bulkhead wheezed as he leant against the passageway, his heavy frame convulsing with every laboured breath. Not that he was unfit or anything – he was just big.
“Coolant leak. Valve and a few others are in Medical – I hope they didn’t inhale any of it.” I didn’t want to think about what the toxic fluid would do to a pony’s insides – the idea of being flash frozen was bad enough.
Atom Spark, being far smaller and more lithe than me or Bulkhead, recovered quickly from her exertion and swiftly approached the large control console that dominated the far side of the substation. Actually, scratch that – she galloped up to it so quickly she almost planted her face in one of the monitors.
“Did he hurt you baby!?” She shouted as her magic manipulated the controls and accessed the reactor status summary.
Atom Spark was our reactor technician – the mare in charge of our home’s power source. It was her responsibility to make sure that the reactor was always operating as best it could. Although, in all honesty, we often thought of her as the reactor’s mother more than anything else – she treated it like a loved one, speaking softly to it when it was being serviced, sometimes holding entire conversations about this and that with it. I’d even caught her stroking its casing once while whispering sweet nothings into a diagnostic port. The awkwardness of the moment when she realised I was watching her had stayed with me ever since. My prevailing memory of the encounter though, was that she wasn’t even the slightest bit embarrassed. More annoyed that I had been ‘spying’ on her, actually.
Back in the present, Atom’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she beheld the mess that had been made of the coolant network.
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO MY REACTOR!!!” she screamed as her head, moving like a well-oiled bearing, swivelled around to face me, her narrowed eyes piercing my soul. Her Pipbuck made a flatulent beep, but she ignored it.
“I, uh...the pipe...and, um...uh...Valve did it!” I hurriedly blurted out as she approached me with murderous intent.
At just under half my height, Atom Spark was a very small unicorn, while I was a good deal taller than most. However, despite her small stature, she still scared the living hay out of me with her 'episodes'. There was a reason that her cutie mark was a fiery splitting nucleus and not a happy little atom minding its own business: she had the most explosive temper of any pony I had ever met.
“I’ll fucking gut him!” she hissed as her eyes lowered in thought. Her Pipbuck farted at her once again, and as before, she ignored it.
“Whoa now, Atom. Don’t be too hasty!” I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking with nervousness, “I’m sure Valve was just trying to help, uh, improve efficiency or something. You can’t be angry at him for that, can you?”
“Compass’s right, Atom...” Bulkhead chimed in, having regained his composure and caught his breath, “Valve was probably just trying to give you a hoof with the power systems – this’ll all have been an accident!”
Atom’s gaze darted between the two of us as I saw her jaw clench - she was going to break a tooth if she wasn’t careful. Her eyes softened slightly as she stood up and inhaled deeply, calming herself in the way that Petri had shown her years previously.
“Okay...okay...I’ll let him at least explain why he hurt my baby before I kill him,” she growled. At that, Atom lurched out of the substation towards the elevator, while both Bulkhead and I scrambled to get out of her way.
I guessed she was off to the reactor itself, several levels below us to inspect the damage to the massive generator...or to give it a massage. I didn’t care which, just as long as her anger abated. Exhaling loudly, I turned to Bulkhead.
“She’s bloody scary when she does that...” I said.
“I know – did you see her eyes? I thought she was going to make you burst into flames or something!” he replied.
“At least she’s got that calm breathing thing – thank the Godesses for small favours!”
“Thank Petri, you mean,” he said with a smirk, “You two doing anything tonight?”
“Uh...yeah...so how bad do you think the structural damage is?” I quickly turned to consider the mangled pipe above our heads as Bulkhead snorted at my discomfort. I was almost sure that nopony knew about the specifics of what Petri and I got up to behind closed doors, but it still didn’t stop me from turning the shade of a Red Racer scooter whenever it was mentioned. Humouring me, Bulkhead joined me beside the pipe.
“It’ll need a patch and new supports at the very least," he said as he inspected the metal, "I’ll need to go get my spectro-goggles to check it for fatigue as well.”
Bulkhead turned to leave and start gathering his supplies a moment later. Just as he was exiting the room though, he called out to me over his shoulder:
“Enjoy tonight!”
My face burned crimson as I swivelled to give him an indignant look, but he was already halfway down the corridor. I huffed as I picked up Valve’s notebook and went back to my workspace on Level 7.
I spent the rest of the day looking over the adjustments that Valve had made to the coolant system. Bulkhead and I had been right - it looked as if he was trying to increase the efficiency of the reactor, but hadn’t managed to keep an eye on all the many hundreds of status readouts while he scrawled arcane equations in his notebook. I wasn’t surprised that he’d tried something like this – pipes were his thing. He had a bright red valve handle as a cutie mark, for Goddesses’ sake! It was his job – no, his calling – to maintain and improve the system. That was what everypony in Stable 52 did.
Let me explain.
Every StableTec Stable housed a social experiment. The idea, as I understood it, was to figure out what had gone wrong with society before the war, and fix it. Every Stable was to examine a different societal paradigm and then, presumably, compare notes at some point in the future and decide which one was the best bet for the Equestria of tomorrow. While this fact was kept from some of the inhabitants of those Stables as part of their respective experiments, such was not the case with Stable 52. Our Stable was designed to create an optimised society; a society of ponies whose purpose was to be better than they were the day before; to constantly strive.
That was our lot in life.
Take, for example, Valve. Early on in life, he had proven to be extraordinarily gifted with the study of fluid mechanics. As such, he was assigned as the role of hydraulic technician. That title, however, was far more than just a vocational indicator – it was a mark of his duty to absolutely excel in that field, besting all others and advancing the progress of ponykind through his work!
Like I said – he was really good with pipes.
By the time I had finished going over Valve’s notebook, almost four hours had passed. I wasn’t a slow reader, but his mouthwriting was awful. Honestly, it looked more like toolmarks in soft metal than the alphabet. On top of that, though, was his crazy knowledge of magic boundary layer correlations – it took me most of my time to look them up while he had apparently just jotted the complex empirical equations down from memory. I sighed as I closed the little spiral bound book and looked up at the ceiling. My lips slowly curled as I suddenly remembered what I would be doing that night. I rose from my seat and started a happy trot back up to my quarters in the Habitation section – Petri would be by in less than an hour!
I was just finished changing into my best barding as the door chimed. Practically galloping over to it, I took a reinforcing breath as the passageway hissed open to reveal Petri.
“I’m not late am I?” she asked.
“Not at all!” I responded, bowing and stepping aside to allow her entry.
“I brought a little something for us to enjoy,” Petri added as she crossed the threshold.
My unicorn friend floated a bottle of pale yellow liquid into my hooves as she passed me. The Stable had several moderately sized apple orchards dotted around the interior, complete with artificial mini-suns, but they weren’t nearly big enough to meet all of our nutritional needs – that’s what the waste recyclers were for. It was, however, perfectly sized for producing the odd treat or two (apple juice was a popular favourite among the ponies of Stable 52).
“How’re the pipework ponies doing?” I asked as I unscrewed the cap on the bottle and went to find some glasses.
“They’re fine – most have been discharged already," replied Petri, "Although Valve breathed in a little more coolant than he’s probably used to and he ended up with a nasty concussion from the pipe hitting him.”
“Dizh At-hum fine ‘im?” I mumbled, manipulating the bottle with my mouth.
“What? Oh! Did Atom Spark find him?" Petri interpreted, "Thankfully, no - we didn’t let her in. It’s a good thing too – she looked like she was going to impale somepony! I managed to calm her down though. She’s getting better at controlling her anger...slowly.”
“That’s Atom being Atom though, isn’t it?" I responded, as the bottlecap jangled onto the table, "Good to hear everypony’s okay, though.”
I poured the sweet, bubbly liquid into the pair of glasses I’d retrieved from my cupboard and ferried them to the table on a tray. Wait, Petri wasn’t at the table. Where’d she – oh...she was lying on my bed.
That was quick of her!
“Since we’ve all had some excitement today, don’t you think we should relax a bit? Get a little more...comfortable?” she asked with a gentle smile.
I felt my jaw tighten around the tray as I laid our drinks down on the sheet and tentatively positioned myself beside her. Petri slowly lifted one of the glasses with her magic and took a small, savouring sip.
“Mmm...fresh from the orchards this morning,” she whispered, her eyes sliding closed with enjoyment as the juice slid down her throat.
I fumbled with my glass as she drank again, her smile never leaving her face. When I finally managed to get a taste of the sweet, fruity nectar I found that it was immediately easier to breathe. I was able to relax a little - but only a little. Why was I so nervous? It’s not like we were doing anything we hadn’t done before...was it? Wait...maybe it was my subconscious trying to tell me something. Maybe I’d made some sort of faux pas and not noticed! I mentally ran through a checklist of things that I knew Petri would be expecting of me. Being polite? Check. Good personal hygiene? Double-check. Tidied quarters? Eh...semi-check at the worst - nothing too serious. Ready to perform?
Ah...
There it is - a nice big clump of self doubt. I was thinking about what happened last time. And the time before that...and the time before that...
“Well then,” Petri whispered, interrupting my now terminally worried train of thought, “Let’s get started...”
I felt a bead of sweat appear on my brow as she suddenly laid her glass down and started to shift on the bed. Oh, Goddess – keep it together, Compass! Gulping, I silently followed suit, quickly making my first move on her. Petri looked straight into my eyes as she responded to my actions, making a show of approaching me. As we continued to move against one and other, my initial trepidation vanished almost as quickly as it had first appeared, being replaced by a building rush that seemed to traverse my entire body. We were starting to warm; to sweat with the effort of our mutual exertions. I could feel myself getting closer and closer as Petri’s breathing became noticeably louder.
Oh, by Celestia! I could feel it! I was getting so close! The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It felt glorious – I knew I would be there soon, basking in that euphoric glow. But then, all too suddenly, I realised it wouldn’t happen – I would be denied once again. I felt a heart breaking gasp escape my mouth as Petri let out a beautiful little sigh.
“Checkmate” she declared triumphantly.
I looked at the chess board sitting between us and gawked. I almost had her! Two more damned moves and she would have been mine! How could she be so good at this? Better question – why was I so bad at it? Why the hell could I never beat her? The frustration built within me, promptly transitioning into anger and then, even more quickly, into a thick wave of rage. It spilled over me, radiating a pulse of warmth from my gut outwards and I felt my right eye twitch as my teeth clenched, threatening to shatter under the force of my lower jaw.
“FUCK!” I shouted, batting the remaining pieces against the far wall.
“Compass!” Petri scolded me, a look of distinct displeasure marring her face, “Language! If you’re going to be such a sore loser, I won’t play with you again.”
I immediately softened, ashamed by my outburst – the wave was distant now, having come and gone in less than a heartbeat. As I opened my mouth to start apologising, a flatulent little beep squirmed out of my Pipbuck.
“Ugh...damn it,” I groaned, lifting the wrist mounted screen up to my face as a message scrolled into being before my eyes.
>>PIPCLOUD OS – SOCIAL ORDINANCE VIOLATION NOTIFICATION >>STABLE 52 RESIDENT NO. 36360 “COMPASS”
“See what you’ve done?” Petri said, making excellent use of her ‘I’ve told you before, but you’re too dense to listen’ look. “What did you get this time? Hydraulic maintenance again?”
“Waste reclamation...” I facehoofed and shook my head, thoroughly annoyed that I had just ruined what had otherwise been a wonderful match, “Listen, Petri, I’m...I'm sorry. Really sorry – I shouldn’t have let it get to me like that,” I tried to conjure a meek smile, “You’re just too good at chess.”
To my immense relief, Petri’s harsh gaze softened as she brushed my orange mane out of my face.
“It’s okay, Compass – you’re not nearly as bad as Atom Spark!” she said, returning my smile as my heart warmed, “You’re allowed to slip up every so often.”
I sighed, now smiling for real, but quickly realised that due to my outburst, I would have to wake up in less than four hours and start cleaning the shi- I mean the, uh, waste pipes responsible for ferrying several thousand litres of equine urine, faeces and whatever else could be flushed to the recycling plants. Seemingly sensing my desire for at least a small amount of sleep, Petri slid off the bed and rose to her hooves.
“I’ll let you get off to sleep, then," she said, "You’ve got work in the morning.”
“Thanks, Petri,” I walked past her to the door and opened it with a press of my hoof, “Night.”
“Goodnight, Compass,” she said as she departed, leaving alone with the imminent joy of my new work shift. I slipped off my barding and flopped onto the bed, quickly drifting into an unhappy slumber.
The next morning came far too quickly.
My Pipbuck woke me with a shrill tone as my eyes opened independently of one and other. Rolling over, I forced myself onto my hooves and started to sleepily wander towards the bathroom. After absentmindedly showering, I towelled off, pulled on my utility barding and started my walk towards Waste Reclamation 4. Twenty minutes after setting out, I arrived at the large maintenance door and passed through with a button press and a hiss. Inside was the gantry that overlooked the massive chemical processing plant responsible for keeping us all ‘nutritionally balanced’.
“I see you annoyed the maneframe as well, huh?” Atom Spark’s voice suddenly emanated from somewhere behind me, making me jump, “What’d you do? Lose badly again at chess again?”
“No...” I avoided her gaze as I blushed.
“Aw, you did, didn’t you?” She looked up at me with a disappointed look that quickly changed into a smirk as she walked past me toward the stairs, “Don’t worry vege-butt, you’ll get her one day.”
“You know full well my cutie mark’s a caret, not a carrot!” I said indignantly.
“You just said the same word twice,” replied Atom with a smirk.
“I can feel a physical outburst demerit coming on!” I threatened, raising my hoof in an idle threat.
As Atom and I descended down the tall staircase to the levels below, I reflected on Atom's teasing. I for one liked my cutie mark. It had arrived a little later than all of my friends’, but I felt it was worth the wait. On each of my flanks was a bright blue caret that blended well with my much darker blue hide.
What’s a caret you ask? Oh, for Godesses’ sake...the number of times I’ve had to explain this – look, have you ever seen a terminal? Good. A caret is what you get if you hold shift and press 6, okay? Okay.
No, wait...sorry. I’ll go a bit deeper – ‘shift + 6’ doesn’t quite sum me up as well as I’d like.
The caret is the symbol that terminals and maneframes use to represent the raising of one number to the power of another (so 2^3 would be the same as 2 to the power of 3 and so on). I always figured it showed off both my smarts and those little bursts of practicality I could occasionally muster – the connotations of calculation represented my proficiency with mathematics, computer science, physics and the like while the fact that it was a symbol used by real, working pieces of arcane machinery represented my ability to apply those skills to the world around me.
At least...that’s what I liked to think. There's a story to how I got my mark, and it does go a bit further to explain why it is what it is, but for now, I have a far more pressing tale to tell.
As Atom and I followed our Pipbuck’s directions to our assigned work station, I actually began to look forward to the day’s work. I had always liked fixing things; there was something so therapeutic about it. You diagnose the problem, then take actions to rectify it. Repeat until normal functionality is restored. Nice and simple...ultimately boring, but difficult to get a headache from. I liked it, yes, but I didn’t love it – repairing stuff just wasn’t my ultimate calling. Had that been the case, my cutie mark would have been a wrench or some other tool, and as I’ve just mentioned, it wasn’t.
I snapped back to reality as Atom and I came across the subject of our mutual work assignment for the morning. The accident with the cooling system had ruptured a large pipe much like the one that had fallen on Valve’s head the previous day, allowing its noxious, freezing contents to ravage a section of the waste reclamation system. We wordlessly went to work, thawing and repairing what we could and replacing what we had to, all the while trying to ignore the rising sewage-scented fumes that our efforts were releasing from the machinery.
Atom and I were a good team, and by the time noon rolled past, we had almost completely repaired the damaged assembly. Happy with our work for the day, and released from our punishments by our Pipbucks, we began our trek back to the more populated sections of the Stable and the promise of lunch. I was on the verge of engaging in small talk when I suddenly stopped in my tracks as...something...something that had no business being where it was tried – and failed - to avoid my peripheral vision.
We were passing a monolithic waste silo close to where another coolant leak had occurred, and I had noticed that one of its outer panels was warped out of shape, exposing the interior to the maintenance space that Atom and I were currently occupying. Each of these silos held thousands of litres of liquid waste. There should have been a torrent of putrid, brown nastiness emanating from that fissure...but, amazingly enough, there was a rich shaft of golden light streaming out of it instead.
How had Atom not noticed? That glow- it was so...so bright! Come to think of it, how had I not noticed it sooner? Atom turned to face me, suddenly aware that I was no longer beside her.
“What’s up, Compass? You spacing out over something again?” she asked with a wry smile.
She still hadn’t seen it...but, how? There was a gleaming column of gold coming from what should have been a giant cylinder filled with runny poo. I quickly decided that a little white lie would serve me well, allowing me to slake my curiosity – this was weird, and I didn’t want to try and explain it to anypony without first confirming that I wasn’t hallucinating from all the coolant and rancid fumes I had inhaled.
“Sorry, I, uh, left one of my...screwdrivers back at the last waste processor we repaired. You go on ahead – I’ll catch up,” I said distractedly.
Atom briefly squinted at me as if analysing my words for signs of dishonesty, but after an awkward pause, she smiled:
“Oh, okay – see you at lunch then!” she said as she turned and trotted away, leaving me with my mysterious glowing friend.
As soon as I was sure she was out of visual range, I briskly approached the silo, peeking through the gap. To my surprise I found that the inside of the structure housed a room rather than waste; a gloriously lit room with a central column made of gleaming crystal.
At least I think it was crystal. I couldn’t be sure without properly calculating the refractive index of the – you know what? I think that could wait until later. There was also a toroidal console surrounding the central column, adorned with the most eclectic array of controls that I had ever seen. Seriously, this thing had everything. From a standard terminal keyboard to what looked like a plunger handle!
Who in their right mind had designed this thing? I squinted hard, trying to make out the text on a small, well aged brass plaque bolted to the console’s periphery. As far as I could make out, it read:
T.A.R.D.I.S. TYPE - 40 RASSIPONY SHIPYARDS, GALLOPFREY
What the hay is a ‘TARDIS’? I thought to myself, and why is it in a waste silo in a two hundred year old fallout shelter?
Whatever the answer was – I was suddenly desperate to find out!
“This afternoon? As in this afternoon, this afternoon!?”
She was going to make this difficult...I just knew it.
My captive squirmed as I closed in on her, and her eyes shot wide with fear as she realised I was reaching for the survival knife in my utility barding.
A muffled whimper escaped her gag as I lay down beside her and set the knife on the ground between us.
“Shhh...” I breathed gently into her ear as I stroked her mint-tinted mane.
“No need to fear...” I smiled...she cried.
My demeanour couldn’t have been helping her to relax – even I thought that I sounded...what’s the word?
Rapey?
Is that a real adjective or did I just make it up?
Perhaps it was my physical appearance – I was pretty worse for wear by now - and there was also the small matter of my...ugh...horn.
Regardless, you get the picture – my first impression was far from positive; etched in her face was the desperate need to escape.
I knew the feeling...
__________
I had spent the next week finding any excuse I could to explore my strange new discovery. The room that I had found secreted inside the waste silo was revealing itself to be more and more interesting with every passing day.
For one thing, I still couldn’t figure out where that light was coming from. The rich, golden glow permeated the interior of the room without casting a single shadow, and I was as yet unable to locate its source. At first I had suspected the crystal column of projecting it about the place, but that was before I had tried to ascertain what it was made of – the thing’s refractive index actually changed while I was measuring it! I triple checked just to make sure, and it definitely wasn’t just me: the column was decidedly...well...wibbly, for lack of a better term.
Slightly lower down on my weird-o-meter (but still pretty high, all things considered) was the console’s machining. You can tell a lot about engineers from how they machine their goods; even the best design in the world can be let down by lazy manufacturing. This console...it had been made, no – crafted, with such mastery and care! Love had made this device - that’s honestly the only way to describe it! Every strange button was polished to a glittering shine, every mismatched switch flicked back and forth with well lubricated ease, every weird little light glowed brightly as if it were new, and as for the plunger handle: carved by a master carpenter and precisely toleranced to fit perfectly in its groove. I imagined that this was what you would see were you to enter the mind of a genius – everything was equal parts amazing and crazy.
Was there even a word for that? Cramazing? Amazy?
What was I saying? Oh, right – the weirdness...
My first action after pulling the warped panel off the wall had been to have a good look around the place, and peruse the console to get my bearings – no Compass jokes please (I’ve heard them all).
I had found a curious little tool sitting in a recess underneath an old fashioned typewriter keyboard – a small silver rod about a dozen centimetres long with a glittering arcane gem at the tip. Picking it up, I expected my Pipbuck to identify it (the StableTec inventory spell is a pretty neat little piece of arcane logic), but all I ended up with was a blank entry and an error message. That occurrence in and of itself was immensely unusual, as the inventory spell was one of the most robust I had ever come across – in fact, I’d never seen it fail to register an object.
In short, with regard to both the little tool and the console, I had no idea what they were, no clue who was responsible for them, and no inkling as to what their functions were. Good start, eh?
During my first investigation of the console, I had recognised a StableTec terminal on the near side and cautiously approached it, attempting to log in. Using my Stable ID, I quickly learned that the console was fully (and I mean fully) integrated into the Stable’s computer network.
I was able to access everything; things that I should never have been able to get at with my regular clearance. Like, for example, the fact that Bulkhead had been reprimanded five times for not keeping to the diet Medical had designed to help him manage his diabetes, or that Atom Spark had been refused further anger management therapy following a...oh, wow - a ‘biting’ incident.
What was even stranger was that I not only had access to files I knew I shouldn’t, but also to files that I had never even known existed!
There were thousands of them! Schematics, recordings, encrypted documents – gigabits upon gigabits of data that had seemingly gone un-accessed and undiscovered for over two hundred years.
There was one audio recording in particular that caught my eye. It was labelled ‘OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE - OVERMARE’S EYES ONLY!’, and had a special file tag that didn’t allow deletion. Seeing as how it was seemingly so secret, I avoided it outright...
...nope, couldn’t keep a straight face - I had that thing playing before I’d even finished reading the title! I didn’t know who this ‘Overmare’ was, but I doubted she’d have any problem with me snooping through her stuff...
The first voice was that of a mare:
“Right...Stable fifty-, uh...Hey, Applebloom! What one’s this again?”
Applebloom? Did I hear that right?
“Fifty-two! The file’s right there in front of you!” A sweet, south-western drawl replied. Was this the voice of the Applebloom? I leaned in, suddenly captivated by the terminal speakers.
“Oh, yeah...thanks.” She sighed and cleared her throat.
“To the Overmare of Stable fifty-two, if you’re hearing this then the worst has happened and the Stables have been sealed. On behalf of StableTec...no – on behalf of ponykind...and all of Equestria: I’m sorry. Sorry for what you and your foals...and your foal’s foals...will now have to go through.”
She sounded tired – I wondered how much the previous fifty-one or so of these recordings had taken out of her. There was a distinctly laboured breath. Shivery; like when you’re trying to keep a strong emotion from flying out of your snout.
And what was a ‘foal’? I’d never heard that term before...oh, well – must’ve been a pre-war thing.
She continued:
“As per the terms of your StableTec contracts, you and the residents of Stable fifty-two are now part of a series of vital social experiments, the outcomes of which could one day revitalise Equestria. Well...what’s left of it.”
“You can’t put that bit in there, Scoots. You sound so...depressed. Maybe take a break?”
Scoots? As in Scootaloo? The Scootlaoo!?
“Applebloom, I want to get these stupid recordings over as soon as possible. In case you hadn’t noticed, they’re what’s depressing me. Now hand me that bottle of Wild Pegasus and get ready to record again.”
“I didn’t stop the tape; I’ll just edit out these parts.”
The sound of liquid pouring into a glass gurgled through the speakers as I stared, transfixed, at the recording’s time index steadily ticking away the seconds. Applebloom and Scootaloo? I had no idea that they knew each other – I’d only ever read about them separately. It was such an honour to be party to one of their conversations like this – I felt blessed!
Another steadying breath wafted through the speaker:
“Right...ahem. Each Stable is going to run an experiment to find out what went wrong with our society that eventually led us to this Celestia-damned war. And then, when this has all blown over, you’re gonna fix it. Your task, Stable fifty-two...is to be better. Everypony in that bunker is to improve him or herself from one day to the next. You’re to adopt a...hoor-uh...hour-iss...umm...oh, for Luna’s sake – Applebloom! What the hay is this word!?”
“Ugh, what word? We’re gonna run out’a tape at this rate!”
“Yeah, yeah – I get it! Don’t patronise me, Miss ‘I invent shit’!”
“Just keep reading...”
“Where was I...oh, yeah. You’re to adopt a heuristic methodology with the eventual goal of improving yourselves to the maximum possible level. To aid in this, we’ve removed certain distractions. That means no recreational drugs and no alcohol. Literature and media stocks have also been appropriately limited.”
That wasn’t right – there was alcohol in Medical. I’d seen the bottles. Though, I wondered, how was disinfectant recreational? Was cleanliness more fun before the war?
“There are also measures in place for you to selectively improve your own genomes. The ponies in R&D call them ‘Pods’. They’ll allow your foals to be modified at the genetic level while they’re still in the fetal stage so that their potential can be maximised. Instructions for their operation are contained in your emergency brief. Finally, as we’ve told the other Overmares, if at any point your Stable’s experiment begins to endanger the lives of its residents, you’re to discontinue immediately and revert to the default societal model.”
There was a rustling of paper and another glass-full of something was poured. The fun disinfectant maybe?
“Well...that’s it for your brief, Overmare. All that remains is for me to wish you luck...”
There was a heavy silence - like something else was still to be said. Something important; something inspiring; something motivational.
But nothing came:
“...turn it off, Applebloom...”
A click signalled the end of the file. Wow – she’d sounded tired at the start, but she must have been positively exhausted by the end! I smiled as I silently thanked those two brilliant mares for their efforts – they had ensured the existence of me and all of my friends with their intelligence and foresight.
I wondered: what became of them?
__________
I continued my cursory hoof-through of the database as the day went on – really, I should have been calibrating...something. But this was far more interesting!
Curiously, I found that old files were not the only ones that had seemingly been kept secret. While doing a little extra snooping through my friends medical histories (Wow...that doesn’t sound good at all, does it? Bad Compass! No fruit tonight and guilt for the rest of the week!) I had discovered additional data that I didn’t immediately understand.
Every StableTec personnel file had five sections: General, Professional, Medical, Psychological and Personal. The personnel files in this terminal had six.
The new section was simply titled ‘Oc’ and consisted of several thousand floating point numbers all of which seemed to have an impact on a very detailed and serious looking ‘Oc-time’ graph that took up more than three quarters of the monitor. I had been comparing Petri’s annual academic results with my own, silently cursing every score of hers that exceeded one of mine, when I first noticed it (I happily noted that my graph was slightly higher at some points than Petri’s, but, for the most part, they both showed the same upwards trend).
The same was true of Atom’s and Bulkhead’s curves: they started out low, close to the X axis and steadily increased with time (I guessed that here was a roughly geometric progression, but couldn’t be bothered to work out the equation of the trend).
I was about to put what I had found out of mind and move onto another, possibly even nosier pursuit, when I flicked past Valve’s file – his ‘Oc’ curve was different.
It would have been the same as my own and those of my other friends, had it not been for the massive dip near the end – his curve had taken one hell of a dive recently (I mentally pictured all the other graphs cheering and holding up little cards with ’10.0’ written on them).
As fascinating and liberating as this little taste of omniscience was, it was making me feel profoundly guilty, so I refrained from excessive snooping, opting instead to return to pouring over the archived items and ancient logs of Stable 52’s two hundred year guardianship of us.
“Let’s see...” I mouthed to myself while hoofing through an index page, marking the odd item for download to my Pipbuck so I could read them while working (well...pretending to work).
“’Applegrass cultivation’ – no...’EC-1101’ – not a clue...’G.E.C.K.’ – sounds like a throat lozenge...’Infinite Improbability Physics’ – ooh, maybe later...’Pilot’s manual’...”
Uh...what?
What was a ‘Pilot’s manual’ doing in the Stable computer system? And what was it for, anyway? Transport wasn’t exactly an issue down here – sure it took a wee while to get around, but we’d never had any vehicles in the Stable, let alone anything that would require a ‘pilot’ rather than a ‘driver’.
I pressed the return key with my hoof, leaning forward with curiosity as the screen went blank, the file slowly loading into the terminal’s local memory.
I almost bit my tongue with surprise as a flurry of motion erupted from the terminal. A cacophony of green light had rocketed into view from the depths of the monitor tube, organising itself into a large circular crest (I noted that it was vaguely reminiscent of an hourglass made of squiggles). The logo blipped out of view as hundreds of lines of text scrolled into existence.
Well...that was unexpected: the text wasn’t Equestrian. In fact, these symbols looked less like letters, and more like the particle trace diagrams that Boson (our resident particle physicist) had once showed me while I was recalibrating his equipment.
I scrolled through the document, taking sparse notes in one of my many notebooks as I went – I couldn’t make much sense of the unknown language, so I just copied out a few of the more interesting diagrams.
Were these maintenance instructions? Maybe the file had been damaged – it would certainly explain the weird symbols.
I stopped my perusal as an immediately recognisable diagram slid into view on the monitor. The console! I noted that one panel in particular had a very large number of annotations, and a small figure of a short rod with a blue orb at the end pointed directly at it.
These were definitely maintenance instructions - and that rod on the screen looked pretty familiar.
I picked up the curious little tool that I had found earlier, and hopped down eagerly onto the metal floor. Finally, I’d be able to get a decent look at what made this thing tick!
Trotting excitedly over to the left of the terminal, I pointed the device at the highlighted panel and pressed the button on the handle with one of my canines.
A shrill buzzing rattled my teeth as the arcane gem at the tip glowed a brilliant electric blue. The panel hissed and shook as it yawned open, revealing...
“Oh...my...Goddess...” The tool dropped to the floor as my jaw slackened in awe.
I looked into the light emanating from the opening beneath the console...and it looked into me!
This was the light that had led me here; the light that had seemingly been everywhere in the room, while coming from nowhere; the light that was now filling my head with memories that were not my own.
I saw the fall of worlds at the hooves of villains and victorious tyrants; I saw great fields filled with the dead, burning cities and broken lands.
My brain burned and my chest ached as I watched a series of faces, all different, yet all the same, flit in and out of the memories.
The visions shifted, a wave of searing warmth and agonising hope washing over me. I saw the rise of civilisations, famed hero after famed hero basking in their respective glories, monsters vanquished, innocents spared, great green, rolling vistas and towering cities more glorious than anything I could have ever imagined!
And then as quickly as it had begun, it ended.
The vision ceased abruptly as I fell back onto my haunches and flopped to the floor in pained exhaustion. The panel slammed shut, sealing the...light, if you could still call it that, back inside the console.
I wheezed as I attempted to catch my breath, and shakily raised myself to my hooves. Bringing my Pipbuck up to my face, I checked the medical readout and radiation meter to see how many minutes of life I had left.
Oh...all in the green. Then why did I feel like I’d just been forced backwards through one of the waste recyclers?
Medical...I’d have to get to Medical.
Propping myself up on the console, I managed to spare the terminal a glance.
The file! It was suddenly legible! I glowered at the screen, utterly unimpressed:
“Un-freaking-believable! You pick now of all times to resolve a corrupted file!? Stupid TARDIS, whatever the hay you are!” I weakly slapped the terminal casing as the annotations from before were revealed to be a series of staunch, harshly worded warnings:
“CAUTION: HIGH MAGNITUDE ARTRON CURRENTS PRESENT – DISCHARGES LIKELY IF EQUIPMENT IS HANDLED IMPROPERLY”
“DANGER: DISCONNECT TIME ROTOR FROM EYE OF HARMONY INTERFACE PRIOR TO INITIATING MAINTENANCE.”
“WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ACCESS CONSOLE INTERIOR WHILE IN FLIGHT”
“IMPORTANT: CITRUS FRUITS ARE NOT TO BE INSERTED INTO TIME ROTOR COMPARTMENT”
Oh dear...apparently I had just done something very dangerous (Goddess, that terminal had bad timing! Had its programmer still been alive, I’d probably have killed him.) I shakily turned and began to make my way out of the silo, starting the trek to Petri’s domain – I definitely needed a doctor!
__________
A good fifteen minutes later, I arrived at Medical feeling like I could insult an Ursa Major’s mother and still have enough bones left afterwards to play hoofball (which would have been an amazing feat – I hated hoofball).
The pain was gone. The aches were gone. All I felt now was...was...awesomeness! At no point in my life had I ever felt so alive!
I had gotten progressively better with every step I took towards Medical, consciously changing the theme of my visit along the way from “Help me: I’m dying!” to “Hi everypony! Who wants lunch?”.
Ulna, a nurse with a bone shaped cutie mark, looked up from her desk as I sauntered over to her.
“Gooooood afternoon, Ulna! How’re ‘dem bones?” I asked exuberantly, expecting a chuckle.
I hadn’t noticed her eyes – they were red; bloodshot; puffy – she’d obviously been crying profusely.
“Goddess, Ulna! What’s wrong!?” I felt like such an arse –here she was, weeping like a willow, and I was bouncing off the walls with glee.
She sniffed and rose out of her chair, saying little as she looked me square in the eyes:
“I’ll get Dr. Dish. I’m so sorry, Compass...”
Funny...her gaze had lingered on my face for a split second longer than was necessary.
“...what’s going on?” I mouthed, catching sight of myself in the waiting room mirror. I trotted over, taking stock of Medical’s huge array of ‘Pods’ (what were foals?) as I closed in on the reflective surface. I realised that I hadn’t got a good look at myself since my exposure to the light a full quarter of an hour earlier.
“Let’s see, now...teeth – they’re fine; legs – one, two, three, four – very good; hair – still ginger, excellent.” I murmured to myself as I inspected my body.
“Hmm...everything seems to be in...what the-!”
My cutie mark! It was gold!
The neon blue carat that had once adorned my flank had retained its shape, but was now a lustrous, shimmering gold that gleamed like a polished metal.
When since could hair look metallic?
I had to be honest though: as much of a shock as this was, it was actually quite fetching - gold against dark blue was a good look for me!
Petri suddenly entered the room from the other door and approached where I was standing, seemingly not noticing the effeminate pose I had assumed as I admired my modified flank. Turning to face her, I angled myself so that she wouldn’t be able to see my cutie mark unless she was really trying to.
She had been crying too – but, why?
“Petri...what’s wrong?” I asked as I approached her gingerly, extending a supportive hoof.
“Oh, Compass...” Two glistening trails made their way down her face as tears leaked from her eyes.
“It’s Valve. He’s...he’s...” She took a steadying breath and continued.
“He’s dead, Compass...”
I wasn’t expecting that...I wasn’t expecting that at all.
There was silence as my consciousness reeled from the news - the floor had fallen out of my stomach and I was falling along with it.
More tears began to well at the corners of Petri’s eyes, readying themselves to travel down her already wetted face. I extended a foreleg and embraced her, my own eyes starting to glisten with sorrow as the gravity of the situation pulled me towards an awful realisation: Valve - my colleague and friend; a pony whom I had known my entire life...was gone forever.
__________
An hour later, I was back at the console. Leaning on the controls, I absentmindedly scrolled through the expansive database, trying desperately to occupy my mind and get my thoughts away from Valve.
It wasn’t working.
Everything reminded me of him – it was ridiculous! I’d look at a wall and think of something we’d once repaired; I’d look at a terminal and think of something we’d once had to look up; hell, I’d look at a pony and see his face smiling back.
Goddess, I was going to miss him...
Petri told me that he had died from complications due to the amount of reactor coolant he’d ingested. I didn’t care, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. Not now, of all times.
This wasn’t meant to happen; ponies were meant to die in bed, surrounded by their loved ones; in comfort and solitude. They were meant to be able to spend their last moments saying their goodbyes and remembering the best parts of their lives, not gasping for air as a cloud of toxic gas engulfed them!
I kept thinking back to the Pods...
Valve and I were birthed in the same week, and we should have been recycled in the same week, exactly twenty years later. But now that wasn’t going to happen.
Unnatural death just didn’t happen in Stable 52 – ponies got twenty years - always had, always would – and we weren’t in the habit of wasting our lives or the lives of others (Celestia only knows how ponies dealt with unnatural death before the Pods were introduced).
That’s what this was: a waste. A waste that was dragging my heart further out of my chest with every beat.
Come to think of it, my heart was beating pretty quickly...although I found that, much like when Petri had told me how Valve had expired, I didn’t care.
I kept looking at his file, staring at the smiling, low resolution image of him. Every so often, I’d flick through other parts of his personal data, but I’d always end up back at the ‘General’ tab, and that last pict-
“Hold on...hold...ON!” My eyes were practically touching the glass of the monitor as I leaned forward and stared in disbelief at what I had just read.
Valve’s date of death was listed as today...but the last time this file was updated was a full sixteen hours earlier!
That meant somepony knew Valve was going to die of his injuries before he actually did. But who could have done this?
Personnel files were managed by the maneframe – nopony else had access. Events, such as Valve’s death, were reported via terminal to the central computer, and only then were the files updated.
“...what the hay!?” I whispered. My haunches landed on the metal floor with a thud as I clumsily sat down.
I had to think – there must have been a logical explanation...right? Shaking my head, I slowly got up and morosely trotted out of the silo.
I spent the next two hours in Medical going back and forth with Petri. I asked her about Valve’s last hours, what her staff were doing at the time of his death, who made the report to the mainframe...and all the time she either shouted back or cried. She wasn’t used to losing patients. In fact, I think Valve was her first unnatural death.
Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t able to make much progress with my investigation – I couldn’t let anypony know about my discovery without revealing the existence of the silo (I didn’t know exactly why, but I had an overwhelming urge to keep it a secret).
Besides, if we did have a murderer in our midst, the terminal in that silo was my biggest advantage.
__________
I decided it was time to call it quits when I started shouting back and, as a consequence, Petri threatened to sedate me. I trotted back to my quarters, and once there I lay on my bed for hours, running possibility after possibility through my mind.
Apparently, my vehement questioning had distracted everyone from my new cutie mark. Staring at my flank, I shook my head and sighed – I was clueless...and I hated it!
My eyelids closed of their own accord as different motives, multiple suspects and chain after chain of possibilities rattled through my consciousness.
It was getting difficult to think; haziness and warmth cocooned me. By the Goddesses, I was tired.
Before I knew it, I was staring at Valve.
I greeted him. He smiled back.
This was nice – I was in the presence of a friend. I felt safe, and all was well...
A snake began to encircle his hooves, obscuring a little bit more of him with every revolution. It wrapped him in his entirety, but through it all, he continued to smile. Then it turned to me.
It opened its gargantuan mouth with a pneumatic hiss as a plume of coolant erupted from the constricting column that its body had formed around Valve. At the back of its throat was a sickly yellow light that made me feel ill at ease and acutely depressed.
I felt pain. The raw emotional agony of loss overtook me as I stared helplessly at the imagery of his murder.
It was at this point that I made a horrific realisation.
Snakes don’t sound like pneumatic doors!
In a moment of absolute panic, I shot bolt upright in bed and screamed in terror as I found myself staring straight into the glowing, yellow sensor bulb of medical spider-bot.
Acting on my first instinct, I slammed my hooves into its casing, causing it to drop the fat syringe it had been carrying in one of its manipulators.
The glass cylinder shattered, releasing a plume of blue gas as the contents flash froze a patch of the floor. Coolant! What the fuck was a medical robot doing with a syringe full of reactor coolant!?
Better question: what had it been planning on doing with it!?
I tried to duck around it, but the robot blocked my path with a deadly flurry of its built in scalpel. It hovered closer and closer, backing me into the corner of the room.
Was this it? Was I to die here, tonight? Was I to be sliced to bits by a medical robot that had clearly been reprogrammed by a murderer?
Apparently, the answer was yes.
I turned my head and squeezed my eyes shut as it closed in. I could feel the rush of air from its hover talisman. I could hear the whoosh of its tiny yet lethal blade. I could smell the oppressive, choking scent of the coolant puddle on the floor.
These were to be my last sensations...not exactly what I’d had in min-
A flash of memory burst into my mind: the console; the tool; setting 14B...
I was still wearing my utility barding, and I still had the unknown tool in my pocket. Yanking it out with my mouth, I pointed the gem at the spider bot, rotated the rings on the handle with my tongue and bit down on the button as hard as I could.
Only when I heard the clatter of metal on metal did I open my eyes.
The spider-bot was in pieces on the floor, sitting on a large mound of screws, bolts, washers and other assorted fasteners – every single component had been neatly separated and allowed to simply fall to the ground!
I stared in disbelief at the little arcane tool: how had I known what to do with it!? I hadn’t even needed to look at the handle to find the mode ring – I’d known where it was by touch alone...
“It’s like the world’s greatest screwdriver...what in Luna’s name is going on!? How in Equest- Ugh!” I grabbed my forehead as a sharp twinge erupted behind my eyes – I was apparently in no fit state to figure this out now.
Besides, I had more urgent matters to attend to – there was a murderer on the loose!
My next step was obvious: I had almost been assassinated by a medical robot, and I hadn’t exactly been subtle with my questioning that afternoon. I was fairly positive that I’d find the murderer, or at least a clue to their identity, in Medical.
At a sprint, I rounded into the corridor as I left my quarters.
Running as fast as my stout legs would carry me, I deftly navigated the familiar passageways on my way to Medical, and promptly slammed head first into Bulkhead. Already on edge, I screamed like a frightened mare from surprise.
“Sweet Celestia, Compass!” He grumbled as he rose groggily to his hooves (I think I hit him in the head).
“Where the hay are you going in such a hurry?”
“Thank Luna, Bulk, it’s good to see you!” I must have looked crazy as I grasped at his broad shoulders, steadying myself against my adrenaline induced jitters.
“What the buck is wrong with you!? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!” Bulkhead wore a distinctly worried expression as he gently tried to back away from me.
“I don’t have much time – I have to get to Medical, and I’ll probably need your help. I’ll explain on the way!”
I grabbed him by his scruffy chestnut mane and pulled him towards Medical, despite his protests. As we awkwardly progressed along the corridor, I started to explain all about what had happened; my discoveries and my suspicions about the murderer (I still had the biggest desire to keep the silo secret, though. I should really have told him everything, but I just didn’t want to. Actually, no - it was more like I wasn’t allowed...)
I was about to describe my unnerving knowledge of the unknown tool I’d found earlier when a loud, squawking klaxon blared overhead. I heard a familiar click and beep as the pressure doors at either end of the corridor were remotely sealed.
A voice made up of pieced together phrases, recorded by a long dead voice actress began to make a mechanical announcement:
“FIRE HAZARD DETECTED ON LEVEL EIGHT, SECTION TWENTY-ONE. ACTIVATING FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM.”
At that, jets of halon began to fire down from the ceiling ducts – I could feel the gas creeping into my lungs as I desperately tried to hold my breath. Bulkhead had been taken equally unawares, and was at that point rolling across the floor as he fought for breath.
In a moment of clarity that would have been impossible under normal circumstances, I yanked Bulkhead’s spectro-goggles from atop his forehead and pulled them roughly onto my face. I quickly flipped through the settings, turned on the visual stud finder and pulled out the Screwdriver.
Pointing squarely at a dense clump of metal set deep in the ceiling, I squeezed the button and activated the unknown device, watching with unparalleled relief as the glowing bolts and screws wriggled free before my magically augmented eyes, causing the fire extinguisher hub hidden above our heads to literally fall apart.
The halon ceased to flow as an emergency valve clicked shut, isolating the section we occupied from the fire suppression system.
Unfortunately, a good deal of the atmosphere in our sealed off locale had already been toxically saturated – we only had moments worth of breathable air left.
Turning my attention to the door, I pointed the Screwdriver at the control panel, reaching it in time for the casing to fall to the floor.
There were only a few wires inside, which was a blessing – I was never that good with arcane electronics: without a unicorn’s horn to manipulate the tiny components, repairs were usually very lengthy tasks for me.
Fortunately, this was not one of those times – I yanked one wire from its mount and roughly pressed it against a bare contact near the base of the control box.
The door hissed open as I hazily stumbled back to grab Bulkhead. However, to my surprise, I wasn’t the first pony to reach him.
Atom Spark rushed past me to support our mutual friend, propping up his comparatively huge frame using her tiny body.
“Heard the, oof, alarm from my quarters. Thought I could, ugh, lend a hoof!” She winced as the weight of Bulkhead’s semi-conscious form became more and more apparent.
“Atom, you’re a life saver. Literally! Let’s get him to Medical; there’s not much time!” I took Bulkhead off of Atom’s hooves, allowing my diminutive friend to run ahead and make sure there were no nasty, remote-controlled surprises awaiting us.
I tried to recant my tale to Atom while we walked, as I had attempted to do with Bulkhead, but she was too far ahead of us. She had assumed that the extinguishers were malfunctioning, and to be honest, as long as she kept doing what she was doing, I was happy to wait until later to clue her into what was really going on.
With Atom's help, we were able to avoid another two corridors with 'malfunctioning' fire suppressors and mere minutes later, had arrived in Medical.
I gently let the still unconscious Bulkhead slide onto a bed and was about to start considering the next move in my investigation (otherwise known as ‘The Deadly, Life-threatening Stable Gauntlet’) when I noticed a form sitting hunched over at Petri's desk. Oh, Goddess, not her too!
Galloping over to the body, I grasped it harshly by the shoulders and shouted:
"Petri! Don't be dead! Please!"
To my infinite relief, her torso shot upright like a lion tamer’s whip as she awoke with a shocked snort.
"AH! THE MARMALADE MONSTER! HELP M-" She flailed, awkwardly pausing and clearing her throat at the site of me.
"Oh, uh, Compass...Luna's horn, don't do that! You scared me half to death!" She stood up, trying to cover her blush, when she saw Bulkhead lying on the bed across the room.
"Good grief! Bulkhead!" She shouted, rushing over to his side and casting an accusing glance at Atom.
"For Luna's sake, Atom! You can't keep fighting everypony that looks at you the wrong way!"
"What!? Hey, don't blame me for this - I had nothing to do with it!" She responded pointedly.
“It was a malfunctioning fire extinuigisher – they’re goin’ crazy out there!”
Petri relaxed her gaze, allowing Atom to get down off of the defensive.
“The fire extinguishers? Then it’ll be halon poisoning. D-Fib, get me 20ccs of Vascu-shy and a healing potion!”
I backed away as a multi-limbed floating nurse presented Petri with the required drugs – there was no way I was EVER turning my back on one of those things again!
“Petri, I need to tell you something – something important.” I kept one eye on D-Fib as I whispered into her ear.
“Compass, can’t this wait? Bulkhead could have serious internal injuries!”
Was it just me, or did D-Fib just pause as Petri answered me?
“Petri, this is important! I think that one of your staff’s a murder-“
I didn’t have time to finish my sentence. I was cut off by another klaxon – a different one this time. Like the fire extinguishers, it was punctuated by the same pieced together mare’s voice:
“Well, it’s not me either – my number’s 36324. What about Bulkhead?”
“No, I’m sure his ends with a 9...”
Petri and Atom looked to Bulkhead...then to one and other...and then, in unison, slowly turned to me.
“...what?” I defensively waved a forehoof. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“Compass, stay back - just keep to one side of the room. We’ll fix this, don’t worry. You’ll be fine!”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m telling you! This has to be the murderer trying to get rid of me!”
“The what!? By the Goddesses, he’s delusional! Atom, get me that syringe: the blue one labelled ‘sedative’.”
Well, this just wasn’t my night was it? If they managed to sedate me, I’d be left to the tender mercies of the Medical bay robots – and if that happened, I was pretty sure that I would never see another day. There was no other option - I had to run!
Hold on...speaking of robots - where did that nurse go? Oh Goddess - something just moved out of the corner of my eye!
Nurse D-Fib had taken advantage of the diversion created by our exchange, and stealthily hovered behind me. Why? I didn’t really have to tax my mind to figure that one out!
In a panic, I pirouetted on one hoof and once again found myself staring deep into a sickly yellow sensor bulb. Oh, and look! Another deadly syringe! Joyous...
I bucked the spider-bot as hard as I could, sending it flying with an almighty clatter into a stack of bedpans. Before it had time to recover, I pulled out the Screwdriver and aimed at the door’s control panel, ready to attempt the fastest re-wiring in Equestrian history when, suddenly, a pang shot through my head, and another alien memory flashed before my mind's eye.
A door. Locked. A hoof; my hoof...but...with a brown coat? I was holding the Screwdriver. Setting 23C. Buzz. Click. The door swung open.
Whooshing back to reality, I deftly flipped the mode ring to the new setting that my mind had seen fit to share with me, and pointed the Screwdriver at the Medical bay door.
With a tooth-shaking buzz the door hissed open, and I sprinted toward freedom barrelling through Atom and Petri as they tried in vain to halt my advance. I could hear them running behind me, begging me to stop:
"Compass! Please! You need help - just come with us to Medical!"
"Come on, you stupid buck! We're only trying to fucking help!"
Atom's bedside manner definitely needed some work. Between strides, I turned my head and shouted back at them:
"You don't understand! I need to get out of here! I'm the only one who knows about th - OH, SHIT!"
Briefly glancing forward to make sure that I wasn't about to hit something, I found myself face to sensor bulb with a maintenance robot...a spider-bot model. It silently extended its oxy-acetylene torch and started moving towards me, the intense little flame glowing brightly with the twin promises of pain and death.
I was suddenly paralysed with fear – the distance between the robot and me was too great away for my ‘fight or flight’ reflex to kick in, so instead my intense, newfound phobia borne of the night’s near-death experiences took hold. There was nothing I could do – I was staring into the eyes of a Basilisk: it was as if its gaze had already killed me!
Just as I thought I would lose myself to that horrific yellow light, I suddenly snapped back to reality - in succumbing to my numbing fear of the spider-bots, I had neglected to keep an eye on Atom and Petri.
Apparently, it was now their turn to barrel into me! They promptly pinned me to the floor; Atom formed a vice like collar around my neck and shoulders, while Petri pushed down on my haunches with her rear hooves. From what little I could see, it appeared that she was readying a particularly unfriendly looking needle and what I assumed was an anaesthetic spell.
"I'm going to get an extra duty shift because you made me swear, you ars- I mean, idiot! You owe me one!" Atom shouted in my ear as her ropey little muscles threatened to constrict my wind pipe.
"Petri! Ack! Atom, too tight! Please, I need to get away from these robots - they're being controlled remotely! Somepony's trying to kill me!"
"Atom, hold him still! Now, Compass, you're going to feel a little prick, then this'll all be better." Petri cooed.
“Celestia’s ghost! Your cutie mark! Goddess, Atom, he’s mutating! We have to hurry!”
“Get on with it then! He’s not going anywhere!” Was that a tone of smugness? I swear, she had absolutely no concept of tact – for all she knew I was going crazy and dying at the same time! Honestly, some ponies...
The maintenance robot was just hovering there. Gloating. They’d won - whoever ‘they’ were.
All that they’d have to do now was wait – I’d be sedated, pumped full of restorative drugs, put in psychiatric care, and silently murdered.
As Petri pressed the needle into my flank, I found myself thinking back to the moment that I had awoken earlier that night: with a spider-bot readying its deadly syringe mere inches from my face. Oh, Goddess, those eyes - I'd never be able to look at these automatons in the same way. My mind reeled as the drug cocktail took effect, dragging me back to the few seconds that my would-be assassin had had me pinned against the wall in my quarters, its scalpel blade creating an encroaching wall of razor-sharp death.
And then I realised that worse things were about to happen.
The elation that I had felt upon escaping the first spider-bot; the gratitude I had felt for Atom as she helped Bulkhead and me; the relief I had felt when I realised Petri hadn’t been one of the murderer’s victims; all vanished down some bottomless hole in my mind as I found myself panicking like I had never panicked before.
I was restrained; about to die a horrible death - I couldn't move, I couldn't breath!
With renewed vigour, I started struggling again, and through my dazed senses, heard Petri and Atom's voices:
"How can he still be awake!? There was enough sedative in that syringe to fell a pony almost twice his size!"
"Does it matter!? Inject him again!"
I screamed, now even more aware of my fresh claustrophobia.
"No! Get! Off! Of! Me!"
With each word, I bucked my hind legs, trying to dislodge my friends. I felt a hoof connect with what I assumed was Petri's face (given the scream that followed) and turned my attention to my ‘collar’.
Now, Atom and I were the best of friends, having known each other for practically our entire lives. As a consequence, we had shared many experiences together, including, luckily, a few dozen sessions of hoof to hoof combat (they had ended suddenly following the dislocation of my left shoulder and the fracture of four of my ribs, but that, as they say, is another story).
The sessions had been our exercise in 'being better' and improving ourselves at the time, and by the time we decided to pack it in, we had both become quite proficient.
We had also caused one and other over three-dozen serious injuries! And I remembered quite a few of them.
In other words, I knew exactly how to get free of Atom’s vice-like grip.
Propping myself up on adrenaline infused forelegs, I swung her round my neck so that her entire body swivelled in front of me. Looking straight into her eyes, I was taken aback by her look of sheer determination – she was keeping me here, and that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.
“I’m sorry, Atom!” I shouted as I closed my eyes and forced one of my forehooves into her abdomen, pressing mercilessly on one of the only lasting injuries that she had ever suffered at my hooves.
Atom’s eyes shot wide as she fell to the floor, gasping desperately for breath. Maybe that had worked a little too well!
“Ack! Uhhh...you...uhhh...bastard!” She panted.
“Oh, Goddess! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll get Petri-” I was interrupted (again!) by Petri’s booming, magically enhanced vocals:
“Medical emergency! Security to level eight, section fifteen! Compass, Stable resident three-six-three-six-zero has escaped psychiatric care! Be advised, patient is mentally unstable and appears to be actively mutating! Approach with extreme caution!”
Fuck! Did causality have a grudge against me or something?
“Petri, I’m not crazy! You’ve got to believe me!”
Holding a hoof to her bloodied nose, Petri kept her distance from me. She spoke with frightening seriousness, her authoritative tone pounding my mind into submission with every word:
“Compass, as your friends, it’s our responsibility to help you, even if we have to save you from yourself - and if that requires a bucket of sedative and a straightjacket, then so be it!”
She inhaled shakily, and narrowed her gaze, somehow becoming even scarier.
“I’m NOT losing another patient – not now, not ever!”
I looked from Petri to Atom (who was still trying to regain her breathing rhythm), and then to the maintenance robot still waiting patiently behind us. I was sure that if my friends hadn’t been present, it would’ve been on me in seconds, eagerly burning holes through my flesh.
In the distance, I heard hoofsteps – lots of them. Petri noticed my wandering gaze; my calculating look, and began to cast her anaesthetic spell.
Run!
Something flashed through my mind...
Run!
But my friends...I couldn’t leave them to the murderer. Maybe if I just explained-
RUN!
The urge was overwhelming - taking her almost completely by surprise, I drove head first into Petri’s chest and threw myself down the hallway as fast as my legs would carry me.
A security team blocked my path. They were shadowed by a spider-bot!
About turn! Quick march!
Another security team; another spider-bot. What was that white thing they were holding? Oh...Petri hadn’t been kidding – they were carrying straightjackets...exactly what somepony suffering from acute claustrophobia wanted to see!
Come about! All ahead full!
Wait. They weren’t chasing me, just blocking my path...I was being corralled! But where were they trying to put me? Where would the final ambush be?
I thought about it quickly: ‘If I were coordinating the pursuit of a crazy stallion, where would I want him to be when I finally made my move to capture him?’.
Logically, that led me to: ‘Where was the closest dead end?’.
Actually, given my apparent ability to now open every lock in the Stable, that probably should have been: ‘Where was the only door they were sure I’d never open?’
Easy: the Stable door – the only thing separating us from the irradiated, barren wastes of the outside world. Opening that would mean almost certain death – I’d have to surrender upon reaching it.
Or would I...?
Another security team blocked the hallway in front of me...
__________
I found myself staring at the massive steel cog far sooner than I thought I would – damn, those security teams were efficient!
Backing up to the metal, I felt my flank press against the door. There were ponies and spider-bots closing in from all sides – I saw at least five straightjackets and dozens of sedative syringes being readied.
They were creeping forwards, each and every one of them staring warily at me, as if I was about to start indiscriminately attacking them while foaming at the mouth.
I had to give it to them, though – they had done well in their pursuit of me. Every route had been accounted for. Every little gambit of mine had been anticipated. After trying no less than eight times to either hide, bypass the patrolling security teams or suddenly change tactics and go another way, I had still ended up exactly where they had wanted me all along.
I had gone through too much tonight; I wasn’t about to let my friends down and leave them at the mercy of some cowardly, murdering bastard while I was neatly drugged and wrapped for the corrupted spider-bots to do away with!
I needed time to think; to plan – whoever they were, I couldn’t just let them get away with what they’d done!
I needed to escape!
But there was nowhere to run to...apart from...
With a long, quivering breath, I realised that there was only one way out. Puffing out my chest, I spread my hooves in a threatening stance, making sure to keep my centre of gravity low in case somepony had the bright idea of tackling me.
Pulling the Screwdriver form my barding, I boomed at my fellow Stable ponies; at my family:
“All of you! Stand back!”
The sudden motion and vocal outburst had the desired effect – the entire room gasped as the dozen or so security personnel recoiled. Raising the Screwdriver to the ceiling, I bit down on the control and waited for the noise.
As expected, all Tartarus broke loose.
A harsh, grinding klaxon filled the room, making my teeth rattle almost as much as the Screwdriver. The massive drive pod mounted to the ceiling slowly swung down above my head and attached itself to the Stable door. It was actually quite satisfying to watch – every single pair of eyes went wide with panic as our cosy confinement was suddenly threatened.
I was starting to like that voice. A little smirk crossed my lips as half the room emptied into the corridor beyond in fear. For a second, I thought that there may have been a possibility of sneaking back in behind them, but I knew I’d be caught as soon as I even tried to return inside.
Besides, where was I going to go? Fifty-two may have been massive, but I couldn’t have hidden long enough to fix all this.
No. I had to go.
Turning on the spot, I felt a rush of air as the door screeched out of its recess and rolled to one side.
As I had hoped, the remaining ponies were too stunned by the horror of the opening hatch to move and failed to follow as I rushed out into the darkness beyond.
Suddenly, an all too familiar voice pulled me to halt:
“Compass!” Petri! I stopped in my tracks and turned to see her still bloodied face contorted in panic. Goddess...what was I doing to her!?
“Please! Don’t do this! You’ll never get back in! Please, Compass! Please! We can help you! PLEASE!” She was screaming as tears ran freely down her face. Atom had arrived beside her, a similar look of shocked panic marring her expression.
I pursed my lips and clenched my teeth. My eyes wanted desperately to cry, but through some miracle of stoicism, I managed to hold it together.
“I’ll fix this! I promise!” I shouted back at them. Petri dropped to her knees and burst out crying. Atom put her forelegs around her, while her own tears traced wet trails down her face.
“I’m sorry...”
I turned and began to walk away from the door. I knew what was going to come next. Was I ready for it?
Was I hell...
The klaxon sounded again as the door slid back into place and secured itself with that same sickening screech.
And then...there was silence. I’d never heard so little sound in all my life!
Back in the Stable, there was always a hum or a beep or a hiss or...or...something!
Here there was just a vacuum. It flooded my ears; my mind, threatening to compress my brain. I could already feel my very being sliding into oblivion.
Just when I thought I would lose myself completely, a glorious fragment of noise pierced my madness.
In the distant depths of the night, I heard a scream. That meant somepony was alive out here! And that meant I could get help for my friends in the Stable!
Galloping towards the source of the distress, I spared a look back at the Stable door before it was out of sight. I closed my eyes and whispered inwardly:
“I’ll keep that promise. Petri, Atom, Bulkhead...I’ll be back...”
Gripping the Screwdriver in my mouth, I galloped onwards into the Wasteland.
“We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure do like making new friends.”
My captive mewled gently into her gag as I stroked her mane.
It was about time she stopped crying. I mean, I’d only bound and gagged her in her own home...and stolen the contents of her medical box...and raided her kitchen.
What?
Stop making that face!
Okay! Fine! I...I kind of...shot her as well – but it was a complete accident!
Anyway, apparently not raping or attempting to eat her was a good sign in her book. Either that, or she was especially susceptible to the effects of Stockholm syndrome.
Really, it didn’t matter which was the case. The bullet would have to come out, and no amount of delusion or friendly gestures were going to stop her from resisting.
I gently levitated my survival knife into the flame of a nearby candle in order to sterilise it.
Her eyes were closed. Good – hopefully she wouldn’t see it coming.
I raised the knife slowly to her bloodied flank, taking note of her cutie mark: a bright red cross.
Seemed appropriate somehow...
Everything was so calm – you’d never guess that every pony in the land was out to get me; to find the “monster”. She was so still, so calm; almost asleep in fact.
I gritted my teeth and steadied my glowing grip on the knife.
With more care than I had ever exercised before in my life, I drove the searing tip into her wound...
The scream was close.
I was galloping through a long stone corridor; an example of what I believe is called ‘a cave’. It went on for ages, which made sense, I mused – Stables were more often than not built inside large geological formations like mountains and hills; deep underground where not even the strongest magical radiation could penetrate.
There was a wan light at the end of rocky tunnel, getting progressively brighter as I approached. I was immediately fascinated – it was silver; a silver light! First vitalising gold light, now mysterious silver! What a day for discovering new colours!
I felt a burgeoning sense of elation as I closed in on the land beyond. Honestly, it made me feel guilty – I should have been serious and distraught and stoically brave...but all I could concentrate on was the prospect of a whole different world filled with ponies and all their different lives, individual stories and unique experiences! I quickly realised that I was no longer just running from the Stable. Nor was I just running for help.
I was running toward an adventure!
Maybe the outside world of Equestria wouldn’t be so awful after-
“...by the Goddess...” I whispered as I rocketed out into the midnight glow, my eyes wide and my jaw slack.
I had conceptually referred to this place as the Wasteland before...
Sometimes I hated being right.
A landscape unlike anything I could have imagined stretched out before me – harsh and barren, it assaulted my gaze with its sad beauty.
All those stories...
I scanned the horizon, taking in every minute detail of the now ancient devastation.
I looked intently for any sign of civilisation, but could see naught but ruins.
In the distance there was a shack with rotten wooden walls and missing roof tiles. I wondered: who had lived there? What were they like? Did they have friends?
That sky wagon. Whose was it? Was it well cared for by its owner? I’d never know...nopony would ever know!
Simple things; simple little stories. The tiny tidbits of ponies lives you pick up through conversation. They were lost...forever...
It was altogether too much for me – I gently knelt where I stood and began to weep.
This place was so sad, so absolutely full of perfect sorrow!
“...no.” I whispered between gasps.
“...WHY!?” I screamed as tears careened down my face. I saw the faces of thousands in my mind’s eye, all of them with their own fears and desires, their own loves and hates, and I mourned them...all of them...simultaneously.
I was feeling the loss of a world.
All at once.
In the distance, the scream resurfaced.
“NO! JUST ONE! PLEASE! JUST ONE!” I shouted and whimpered in equal measure as I shot to my hooves and sprinted toward the source of the distress.
I had to help this pony. Why? Because as far as I was concerned, they were the one and only creature left in Equestria. It didn’t matter if they weren’t – their scream had become my own personal microcosm of the end of the world.
I was feeling the apocalypse as if it had just happened.
If I didn’t help this screaming pony...I’d be alone forever. The feeling of desperation; of imminent despair, was terrifying.
I ran. I ran for my life. And I ran for theirs.
Reaching the top of a small hill, I looked down on the land below to see a pale blue pegasus mare attempting to evade a robotic sentry (with limited success, I might add).
The relief I felt at seeing this actual, living pony was unbelievable. Like a wondrous wave, the emotion washed over me.
I sped toward her attacker, using my elation as fuel for what might just have been the stupidest thing I had ever done.
“ALLONS-Y!!!” I screamed as I leapt over the rise, the Screwdriver flicking into my mouth mid-flight. Where I had gotten that phrase, I had no idea – but it was good as any battle cry!
The metal pony (a model B90 Robronco Ponitron, to be more precise) didn’t know what hit it. I landed on its back and plunged the Screwdriver into the spell matrix node that I knew would be housed in its neck. It bucked wildly in an attempt to dislodge me, smashing the tip of the tool between the articulated armour of its neck.
I managed to retain my grip on the Screwdriver as the robot fought to free itself, and following a short, laboured buzz, the metal pony’s head fell to the ground leaving its body to mindlessly gallop off in one direction. It would probably be running until its spark battery was depleted, and given the fact that it was still operational after two hundred years, I guessed that it would be doing quite a lot of running.
Turning to the fallen pegasus, I approached tentatively so as to not scare her. Smiling sweetly, I addressed her in an even, friendly tone.
“Hello? My name’s-”
“Get! Get it...away!” She was slurring her speech, trying to rise to four hooves, when clearly she had entirely lost the ability to balance.
“N-need...hooome!” I closed in, easily avoiding her concussed flailing – she had a large, angry looking wound on her forehead which I guessed was the source of her confusion.
Looking straight into her eyes, I examined her pupil dilation (Petri’s influence again – I was eternally thankful for all she’d taught me!)
“Looks like you could use a doctor...” I said as I gently released her head from my hooves. In large, friendly words, I tried to figure out her destination.
“Where – is – home – for – you?”
“Doc...tor? You...you...it’s...where?” Her eyes were drooping – I wasn’t about to let her lose consciousness with such a large head injury!
“Hey! HEY! Don’t you dare sleep! NO sleeping! Got that!? Awake! Now!” I applied a firm pinch with my hooves to her flank, forcing her closer to lucidity for a few seconds.
“Where is your home? I’ll take you there, but I need a direction!”
“Tr-Trot...fell. That way...th-thirty m-minutes...”
“No sleeping! Tell me about yourself! Tell me, uh...oh, yeah! What’s your name!? Tell me about your life; this Trotfell place. What were you doing with that robot!?” I shouted and shouted, desperately trying to keep her awake as I hoisted her onto my back and started off in the direction she had indicated.
“You awake!? No sleep, remember!” I was practically screaming now. Please don’t let her go. Please. I need her to live. I need her to survive.
She was my beacon. My one voice in the Wasteland.
“...Mo...”
“That’s good! Keep talking! Even if it’s a load of crap, just stay awake!”
The smile that spread across my face threatened to split my head in two.
“Pleased to meet you, Moon Shadow...”
“Likepies...”
We conversed disjointedly as I pressed on toward this “Trotfell” place. From what I had managed to garner during the more lucid phases of our talk, Moon Shadow (or “Mo” as she preferred) was some sort of scavenger, making her living by raking through the ruins of what was once Equestria and selling her spoils to others (she had been out scavenging for spark batteries when the roving ponitron had decided that she was worth attacking).
I was both impressed and relieved that there was commerce out here – I had been worried that that sort of civilised behaviour would have been one of the first things the survivors of the war would have ditched.
I also learned that her favourite colour was orange - she really liked my main.
Her concussion was pretty bad, and wasn’t being helped by the constant oscillation of my shoulders as I carried her toward help.
As we walked – well, as I walked – I became more and more aware of the extent of the devastation around me. Everything was just so...so hopeless!
I looked up at the night sky expecting to see beauty and majesty; a sea of light and wonder.
All I got was a cloud layer...a great big grey cloud layer.
In the distance, I noticed a glowing haze indicative of spark powered lights. As I recognised that we were closing in on Trotfell, I hastened my pace, taking care to keep Mo centred on my back so she wouldn’t fall.
I noted the town’s high walls as we approached, and also the large number of towers lining its periphery. I had counted sixteen of them when the ground in front of me erupted in a flameless miniature explosion.
Before I could even think about uttering an expletive, a harsh white light engulfed Mo and me as the cone of a searchlight swivelled around to illuminate us.
A gruff amplified voice rang out across the wastes:
“Hold it there, stranger! Whit’s your business?”
Squinting against the light I shouted back:
“I found a mare who says she’s from a place called Trotfell. She needs medical attention; her name’s Moon Shadow.”
Without missing a beat, the voice replied in unison with the sound of huge rusted gate swinging open.
“Approach the gate. Slowly.”
As I neared the entrance, the spotlights were turned off again and I was able to make out two huge figures standing in front of me. They were both Earth pony stallions, and each seemed to be carrying a long pipe. I didn’t like the look on their faces, nor did I like the way they were pointing their pipes at me! They must have been some sort of weaponry – and I was definitely on the wrong end of them!
The larger of the two approached me cautiously as a trio of unicorns trotted hastily from inside the wall to where we were standing. Two of them were carrying a large medical stretcher between them.
“Surrender the mare. Place her gently on the stretcher and ye can be on yer way.” shouted the giant Earth pony.
“But I don’t have anywhere to-”
A burst of orange flame erupted from the guard’s pipe as the patch of earth directly in between us spontaneously turned to animated dust.
“I told you tae surrender the mare! Put her on the stretcher, then turn your flank around and get the fuck oot o' here!”
One of the medics, a mint-maned unicorn, cleared her throat and addressed the guard:
“Buckshot, I’m pretty sure he’s not a threat – you can let him in.”
“He has Sage’s daughter on his back wi' a head wound! Who knows whit he’s been up tae!”
“Well, seeing as how Mo’s ended up at the gates of her hometown with all of her gear intact and a still- beating heart in her chest, I’m going to assume that he’s not a raider or slaver. If he was either, he wouldn’t be here now, would he?”
She had him there – nice reasoning, minty
“But he’s- She...” The guard looked from me to the medical pony and back again, blinking as he processed her logic. He must have been tired – nopony with a whole brain could be that slow.
“...fuck...” he grunted.
With a clearly exasperated facial expression, he stood aside to let the medics approach me. The mint-maned one stepped forward while making a big show of standing tall. She fixed me with a determined, authoritative stare that wasn’t entirely unlike Petri’s.
“My name is Caring Heart. I’m the chief medic of Trotfell. We’ll be taking Moon Shadow now, and you can follow us inside after you’ve surrendered your weapons. Do you understand?” she informed me.
I nodded while gently lowering the now barely conscious Mo onto the stretcher as two of the medics carried her back into the town.
Both the guard and the third medic looked at me expectantly as the stretcher disappeared behind the wall.
“Uh...I don’t...have any weapons to surrender.” I shrugged, hoping that I wasn’t about to disappoint them.
To be perfectly honest, I was starting to panic again.
My voice in the Wastes had gone, her friends obviously didn’t like me, and they were all seemingly armed with some kind of powerful pipe weapons.
The prospect of them turning around and heading back into the sealed town was far too real for my liking. I didn’t want to be alone again. It may have only been for a few minutes between leaving the Stable and meeting Mo, but even that short time had seemed like an eternity to me.
I was sure that if it happened again...I would lose myself. To the fear of being alone...
Caring Heart began to speak, snapping me back to reality:
“Don’t try to conceal them – we see that sort of trick all the time. Trust me, friend: you do not want Buckshot here to strip search you.”
The guard grinned at me creepily revealing a huge gold tooth implanted in his upper jaw. I gulped – the last thing I needed tonight was some buck exploring my anus!
“Look, all I’ve got is this arcane Screwdriver, two pencils, a pair of spectro-goggles and a notebook. No weapons.” I grinned in as friendly a way as I could without making it obvious that I was about to shit myself – these ponies were nine tenths of the way toward literally scaring the crap out of me.
They eyed me suspiciously as I showed them the contents of my barding pockets, looking to each other with narrowed eyes as I emptied my possessions onto the spoiled ground. I noticed a large tear in the metal surrounding the head of the Screwdriver as I laid it down – no doubt a scar of the fight with the ponitron. I hoped to Celestia that it was still functional.
“That’s it?” Caring Heart asked, one of her eyebrows raised.
“That’s it...” I replied.
They looked to one another once more before Caring Heart gave the guard an almost imperceptible nod.
“Keep an eye on him, Buckshot – and take him to Sage.”
She turned and began to return to the town.
Buckshot, as I was now apparently going to have to call him, waited until she was out of earshot, then bent down low so that his mouth was level with my ear.
“Ah’ll be watching you, lad. Make a single move that Ah dinnae like, and that strip search’ll be the least o’ your worries.”
I stayed perfectly still, as his eyes did more warning than I was mentally prepared for.
Come on now, Compass – first day in a big new Wasteland. We can’t have the lasting first impression you make being that of “the pony who shat himself”.
Buckshot raised himself to his full height again – I felt so much smaller than I had before!
“Geth inshide...” he grunted, while gripping my mane in his teeth.
We trotted steadily toward the gates, and I looked up at the top of the arch above the passageway. A large, improvised sign composed of old, mismatched neon tubes and faded light bulbs cast a textual glow onto the ground below:
TROT F E L L
Trotfell had apparently been quite a prosperous town before the war, at least from the remnants that I could make out in the wan glow of the lights sparsely strewn about the buildings. There wasn’t really anypony about when Buckshot pulled me inside, so I could only guess at the size of population.
I found myself being dragged towards what appeared to be the centre of the town’s main street – a large, stately building covered in detailed mouldings. As we passed through the heavy wooden doors, my escort (or captor, depending on which of us you asked) pulled me by the mane up a huge staircase situated in the centre of the grand building’s lobby.
As we reached the landing, I was yanked to a stop while Buckshot daintily tapped the most ornate door yet with his hoof.
A voice as rich as the mahogany of the door answered:
“Come in.”
Buckshot lowered himself to my level again as he hissed in my ear.
“Now, ye behave yourself in 'ere, or you’ll be in fae a world o' pain. Got that?”
I nodded dumbly, trying to disguise the nervous gulp making its way down my throat. With a surprisingly gentle motion, Buckshot pushed open the doors, revealing an enormous, lavishly furnished office. The walls were lined with dozens of rows of ancient, leather-bound volumes (all of which had suffered some degree of heat damage).
Behind a large desk in the centre of the room was a brown coated Earth pony stallion. His mane was curious – an upright shock of pure silver follicles.
As we approached, he looked up from a series of clipboards in front of him and eyed us with a thin gaze.
“What can I do for you, Buckshot?” The brown stallion raised an eyebrow as he regarded me.
“And, who’s your detainee?”
Buckshot stood tall, with his legs and back straight as he answered.
“Sir, we found this buck skulking around the East gate – upon inspection, we found that he’d assaulted and abducted Moon Shadow while she was out scavenging. She’s recovering in the Hospital, now, sir – Caring’s seeing to her needs.”
You know what? I don’t think Buckshot likes me. Just a thought...
“Hey!” I protested. “That’s a total fabrication! I saved her from a malfunc-ow!”
Buckshot suddenly gripped my ear between his teeth, and bit down hard, a dangerous scowl adorning his brow.
“Shut up, you possible rapist! What should I do with him, sir? The jail, lashes or a firing squad? ‘Course, the firing squad’ll have to wait ‘til the mornin’ shift, but I suppose I could-”
I did not like where this was going - the last thing I would’ve expected from tonight was to end up getting my flank minced (I didn’t like the sound of this “firing squad” either)! I looked anxiously at the silver-maned buck as he sighed, seemingly from exasperation, and interrupted Buckshot.
“Yes, thank you, Buckshot. That’ll be all.”
“Right y’ar, sir! I’ll get the whip-”
Buckshot grabbed me by the mane again and turned to leave. Silver mane interrupted him again, this time with a more forceful tone:
“That will be all, Buckshot.”
“But, sir! He-”
“Buckshot, Caring Heart has already sent one of her nurses up to inform me of my daughter’s injuries. She also told me that a curiously unarmed stranger saved her from her attackers, and that you took an instant dislike to him...as you seem to do with the vast majority of our visitors.”
“I...but...um...”
Silver Mane fixed Buckshot with a steely gaze
“Like I said: that will be all.”
“Uh...yes, sir.”
Buckshot stood to attention once again and saluted Silver Mane, shooting me another scowl on his way out of the room. The door closed with a quiet click as the stallion with the brown coat rose from his seat and approached me.
“I do hate it when he salutes me like that.”
He smiled and extended a foreleg, practically tearing my shoulder from its socket as we shook hooves.
“You must be the buck that saved my daughter’s life! Call me Sage.”
I rolled my shoulder a couple of times to get the feeling back, thankful that the buck’s previously strict demeanour had been superseded by this far more welcoming one.
“I’m Compass. And you’re welcome.”
He returned to his desk and started rummaging around in a drawer.
“Now, about your compensation. We can’t offer much in the way of caps, I’m afraid. As you may have heard, commerce hasn’t exactly been doing well recently. Buckshot means well, but his style of protection verges on xenophobia sometimes!”
He planted a large bag on the desk and started pulling out hoofull after hoofull of used bottle caps.
“I can only give you about 800 caps, but I’ll instruct the pub to furnish you with whatever you want. Does that sound satisfactory?”
“Compensation? I’m confused – I just did what anypony would have done...and why the hay are you trying to pay me with bottle caps?”
He looked at me quizzically.
“You...don’t want to be paid!? That’s a new one.”
Leaning back in his chair, he regarded me with a frown.
“Why did you save Mo if you weren’t looking for some kind of reward?”
“I...saw that she was in trouble and wanted to help. Was I meant to just let the robot kill her!?”
“You saved her...for the sake of saving her? Heh...it’s been a long time since I heard anything like that...”
Sage smiled at me, once again rising from behind his desk and walking over to me. He placed his hoof upon my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye.
“Thank you, Compass. I think I can safely say that I’m in your debt. What can I do to make this up to you?”
“I need some questions answered for a start.”
“Go right ahead – I’ll answer what I can.”
“Okay. Question one...”
We talked for what seemed like hours. I asked about Equestria, its inhabitants, the state of reconstruction efforts (“What reconstruction efforts?” was not the response I had hoped for). Much to his credit, Sage listened attentively, forgiving my frequent misconceptions and abject ignorance as I repetitively inquired about this and that.
Turns out they actually called this place the “Equestrian Wasteland”! I mean, how bleak is that?
After finishing with my questions, Sage had tried to deliver a few of his own, but was silenced almost immediately by a yawn so large, I feared for a moment that my jaw would lock.
He pointed me in the direction of this “Pub” place, assuring me that I would be taken care of when I arrived.
Groggily, I wandered from the grand building (now known to me as Trotfell’s old City Chambers) across to a somewhat more ramshackle construction. The “Pub” had a complex aroma, made up mostly of the scent of sweat, I noticed.
As I entered, I realised that the place was laid out much like the cafeteria back in the Stable – clearly this was a social venue as well as a temporary residence for visitors. Approaching the counter, I attracted the attention of a mare who had been wiping the water from a nearby pile of drinks glasses. She smiled sweetly when she saw me, slinging her towel over one shoulder as she approached.
“Hey there, stranger – late night, huh? What’ll it be?”
“Sage said you could give me a room for the night...actually, do you have anything to drink? I haven’t had one for over a day.”
“Oh, you must be the buck that saved Mo! We all owe you a debt for that one, stranger-”
“Call me Compass.”
“I’m Brandy Spritz. What’s yer poison?”
“You serve...poison!? What’s the point in that!?”
“W-What? No, I’m asking what you wanted to drink?”
“Then why didn’t you just...oh, nevermind. Whatever you have will be great – just as long as it’s wet.”
“Oh, I think I can manage that.”
She lifted a bottle from the rack behind the counter and decanted a small amount of the amber liquid inside into a squat glass. Passing it to me, she looked on expectantly as I gave it an experimental sniff. The aroma was...strong, to say the least.
“What the hell is this meant to be!? It smells like disinfectant!”
“Heh, I’ll take that as a compliment – no watered down drinks in here!”
“Seriously, though, I asked for a drink. Don’t you have any apple juice?”
Brandy scoffed, as if my request was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Do you see any apple trees around here? Trust me, you’ll love that stuff!”
With one eyebrow raised, I cautiously lifted the glass to my mouth and took a drink.
“BLAARGH!” I spat the “drink” over the floor of the pub and clawed vainly at my neck as the liquid burned its way down my throat.
“MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE!” I screamed between gasps, as Brandy laughed herself to her knees.
Rolling around on the floor, I could feel the pain ebbing, being replaced steadily by a warm, smoky flavour. I rose to my hooves and caught my breath, while shooting the best angry glance I could at the still giggling Brandy.
“What...was...that!?” I managed to ask.
“Ooohhh, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time! That stuff could’ve killed me!”
“Relax, Compass, it’s just whiskey. The burn’s part of the experience.”
“Look, I just want some water – is that doable, or will I have to endure getting my insides set on fire again?”
“Okay, okay. Don’t cry, little filly. Here.”
She passed me another glass, this one filled with an extremely pale, grey liquid. I eyed it suspiciously, and following an encouraging nod from Brandy, took an experimental sip. It wasn’t what I’d call pleasant, but it was wet.
As I set the glass down, my Pipbuck’s radiation meter began to click, indicating that the liquid I had just ingested was radioactively contaminated. I brought the gauntlet mounted arcane computer to my face to check the exposure level when I noticed that the normal interface had vanished and been replaced by a simple error dialogue:
>>ERROR 598: REMOTE SERVER CONNECTION DISABLED >>UNABLE TO ACCESS PIPCLOUD >>RESET CONNECTION Y/N?
Great...
The operating system used by Stable 52 was a wonder of ingenuity; a piece of software that permeated the entirety of the Stable’s infrastructure. Only trouble was: I was no longer in the Stable, and the ponies who developed the Pipcloud OS had apparently failed to anticipate my future egress into the Wasteland.
My Pipbuck breaking was just one more item on the list of things that had gone totally tits up today. Honestly, I could have sworn. In fact, do you know what? I think I will!
“Fuck. Just...fuck...” I flopped to my haunches as the enormity of the day’s events suddenly became clear to me.
My circumstances had changed so much in so little time! I was reeling from thoughts of all the implications.
I closed my eyes as moisture began to pool near my tear ducts.
“Bad day, huh?” Brandy gently enquired.
“You have no idea.” I responded with a nervous giggle.
“Listen, can I take my work demerit in the morning? I’d be of no use to anypony right now.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“Work demerit? I don’t understand...”
“You know...the penalty for swearing or having an emotional outburst. You do wrong; you get a work demerit...”
“Nothing like that ‘round these parts, Compass. Where in Luna’s name did you come from?”
I pointed to the embroidered numbers on the collar of my barding.
“Stable 52...”
“Ah! A Stable pony! Well that explains everything now. How long you been out here in the big ol’ Wasteland.”
“Oh, about...” I did some quick mental arithmetic.
“...five hours, give or take.”
“Wow...this is a big night for you, isn’t it!?”
I nodded, feeling uneasy.
“I suppose. So...you can just swear whenever you feel like it?”
There was a warm bloom in the pit of my stomach, and an itchiness spreading between my shoulders – I could feel my anger ebbing at the thoughts of the day’s events
“Well, there’s still such a thing as good manners, and you might end up with a hoof in your face if you drop a curse in front of the wrong crowd, but for the most part...yeah.”
The itch was more pronounced now – I could feel it moving down my forelegs.
“What about emotional outburst?”
“Same rules apply-”
“Good – cover your ears.”
I rose to my hooves as the warm bloom exploded into a rush of heat.
How dare that murdering bastard force me from my home! How dare he take the lives of innocent ponies! How dare he kill Valve! And why wouldn’t my friends and colleagues listen to me!? Don’t they know I’m smarter than them!?
A torrent of raging exasperation poured through my mind as I reared up and slammed my hooves down onto the counter with as much force as I could muster. Unfortunately for Brandy, who was caught completely unawares by my outburst, all I was able to articulate was...well...it was less than eloquent, put it that way.
“FUCKING!!! ARRGGHHH!!!”
Told you...
I remained in the same position I had landed in, with my forelegs locked straight and my hooves embedded in the thick wood of the counter. Breathing heavily, I was able to feel the wave pass and my rage recede back into the depths of my gut. I was also acutely aware of the now constant streams of moisture running down my face.
Having quickly recovered from her initial surprise, Brandy moved around the counter and approached me. With a look of absolute pity, she embraced me in her forelegs, pulling me into a tight hug.
The embrace was the emotional straw that broke my back. I wept again, like I had in front of the Stable earlier that night. I cried profusely, soaking her coat and chocolate coloured mane in the process.
After a few seconds, I heard hurried hoofsteps, and turned just in time to see a breathless Buckshot barrel through the pub door.
“Brandy! What’s going on in-”
His eyes widened as he noticed our embrace.
“You! Get away fae her!”
He raised his pipe and pointed it directly at my head.
I hadn’t finished crying.
“Ah knew Ah wis right about you!”
Brandy jumped in front of me and waved her hooves at the pub’s newest visitor.
I could feel the wave turning around, ready to make another pass through my consciousness. The itch was back, as was the warmth in my stomach. A sharp pain stabbed me in the forehead. All of a sudden, this situation; specifically Buckshot’s attitude, seemed so familiar.
I could feel my teeth clenching by themselves. Who did he think he was!
“Buckshot, he’s just had a bad day! You don’t have to-”
I placed my hoof upon Brandy’s shoulder as I stepped by her.
“Thanks, Brandy, but I’ve got this. It’s Buckshot, right?”
I approached him without breaking my gaze from his, my fury fuelling my confidence through what under any other circumstance would have been a bladder-emptyingly tense moment.
Buckshot maintained his harsh stare.
“That’s far enough! Now, you come with me to the jail and you might not get shot in the-”
“Who hurt you, Buckshot?”
He stopped mid sentence, but not because he’d been interrupted. No - I’d struck a nerve.
“W-what..?”
He looked so taken aback. This was going to be easy.
“I asked who hurt you. You don’t trust anypony; you defend those you’re close to as if they’re always in danger, and according to Sage, you threaten anypony that you don’t immediately recognise. I thought it was just me...but you do this to everypony, don’t you? You shut them out...”
His mouth was agape, and I could see moisture collecting at the corners of his eyes – he was reliving it right there, as we spoke.
“So that leaves two possibilities. One: you’re actually just a grumpy bastard who wants to be disliked, or two: at some point in the past, somepony did something to you. Something that almost completely destroyed your ability to trust.”
The wave was passing now, dowsing the fire behind my tirade. The prevailing emotion that remained was sympathy – I’d reduced this macho buck to tears with nought but a few sentences. What the hell had happened to him?
I closed in on him gently as he wordlessly took a step back from me.
“Who was it? What did they do?” I whispered.
“I...you...!” he panted, staring at me in horror.
With a sudden grunt, he turned on his hooves and fled, tears streaming down his face.
I turned to Brandy and let out a quivering breath. Curious: she looked surprised with what had just transpired. In fact, she looked more than just surprised; she looked astonished!
“...how...did you...? Buckshot’s the strongest pony I know. Nopony’s ever managed to do anything like that, and any who’ve tried ended up getting shot!”
I shrugged, realising once again how tired I was when I let out another face splitting yawn.
“Call it intuition. Can I get that room now, please?”
Brandy nodded, still in awe of Buckshot’s sudden departure.
“Sure. First on the left at the top of the landing.”
She gestured to a small staircase towards the rear of the room that I groggily began to climb, noticing that my hooves had apparently become an order of magnitude heavier.
“Compass...” Brandy called from behind me.
“Hmm?” I sleepily responded.
“...you owe me for the damage to the bar.” she chuckled.
Her tone was jovial; her smile genuine. I felt another warmth in my gut...not a wave of rage this time, though.
For that moment at least, I actually felt happy.
“I’ll fix it for you tomorrow.”
I smiled back, and continued up the stairs, collapsing onto the mouldy mattress without a second glance at the state of the bed sheets.
<<<<< O >>>>>
“Come on, you silly old thing!” I shouted, as the phase discriminator indiscriminately phased out of sight before my eyes.
“Is something wrong Doctor?” a straw haired pegasus asked as she emerged from behind the console.
“Nothing at all Ditzy, we’ve just hit some turbulence!” The end of my sentence was promptly followed by a huge inertial swerve. It would have thrown us both to the wall had we not been holding onto the console.
“Is this the kind of turbulence that can get us killed, and you’re just not telling me about it!?” Ditzy shouted at me.
“Uh...maybe. Actually, no. No, we should be okay as long as the magnetic constrictors don’t depolarise.”
A sudden shower of sparks fell from the ceiling as the deep, unsettling ‘bong’ of the TARDIS alarm reverberated though the control room.
“What was that!?” Ditzy screamed.
“Umm...that would be the-”
“Magnetic constrictors?”
“Yeeaaah...”
“...depolarising?”
“Kind of...”
She gave me a distinctly unimpressed stare as I nervously grinned back.
“Not to worry, though! If I can put just the right spin on her, we might not get torn apart by the velocity differential as we exit the time vortex!”
“And will that work?”
“Don’t know...” I responded as I deftly manipulated the TARDIS controls.
“...never tried it before. The theory’s sound, though.”
“Oh, I should have stayed in bed this morning!” she shouted as she clenched her eyes shut and wrapped herself around the console railing.
“Hang on Ditzy! Here we go!”
“AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”
“ALLONS-Y!!!”
We both screamed in unison and the world around us twisted and turned as the TARDIS fell through the time vortex towards our destination.
Suddenly, and completely without warning, there was an almighty crash.
The world went black.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Footnote: Level up!
Perk added: Allons-y! Rushing into conflicts is no longer a problem for you! Your LUCK stat is increased by 3 whenever you encounter a foe who is neutral towards you, or is in a current conflict with another faction.
New Sonic setting: 14B – Dismantle Uses vibrations tuned to the natural frequencies of common nuts, bolts, and screws to dislodge them from their components.
New Sonic setting: 23C – Digital unlock Reverses the polarity of the neutron flow within common electronic components to scramble and open computerised door locks.
A scream pierced my ear drums as if the gag wasn’t even there – by the Goddess, I hated that sound!
Her legs fought the ropes that bound her, and I tried as hard as I could to steady my magical grip on the knife. The bullet had penetrated deeply, but all in all, she had been very lucky – had I charged my rifle properly, she would not currently be in possession of four limbs.
As it was, the projectile had only inflicted a deep flesh wound, but I still had to use every ounce of concentration to extract the foreign object.
“Will you stop fidgeting!? One wrong move and you’re losing this leg!”
Ah! That got her attention. Wincing profusely, but no longer struggling, my captive forcibly calmed herself as I renewed my efforts to remove the bullet.
Suddenly, the knife hit home, and I noted a change in the feedback from the aura around the handle. Digging gently, I worked the intruder out of the bloody crater in her flank and dropped it onto the floor.
We both sighed with relief at the soft clink of wetted metal striking the ground. I cleaned and dressed the wound, thankful that both my poor shot and even poorer medical skills had avoided damaging any arteries or nerves.
I felt an extraordinary mote of guilt throughout the procedure, which was only enhanced by her occasional glances in my direction. Every time our eyes met, a pang of regret rapidly shot through my insides.
Do you know what made it all that little bit worse, though?
Her cutie mark was awfully familiar.
I awoke to the taste of carpet, and the pounding of an almighty headache. No doubt I’d have to go to Medical for a dose of painkillers.
I pushed myself up off of the floor, making sure to keep my eyes tightly shut, lest my headache intensify. Realising that I’d slept in my barding again, I shirked it onto the floor and wandered towards the shower cubicle adjacent to my quarters. My coat and mane were matted, I smelt like a broken waste pump and there was an uncomfortable tightness in between my rear legs. And, to cap it all, I felt so tired that I could have sworn I hadn’t actually slept.
Goddess, I felt rough...
What was I doing again? Oh, yeah – waking up...
Casting my partially functioning mind back, I tried to recant the previous night’s curious dream...it was fading rapidly with time, but I was still able to remember bits and pieces. There was a mare...Ditty, or something like that. Lots of shaking, as well.
What had she called me, again? Certainly not my name...
Eh, it could wait. I badly needed a shower. Reaching out to turn on the water, I noticed that the knob felt a great deal more conical than usual.
And how did it come to be covered in ridges? If anything it felt like a-
What happened next occurred in an immensely short space of time.
Firstly, as I’ve already mentioned, I grasped the knob.
That took, at the most, between one and two seconds.
Next, I began to turn said knob...
Another second elapsed.
Then, just over three seconds after I had first attempted to turn on my shower...I realised that I wasn’t holding a piece of the plumbing.
I was holding a unicorn mare’s horn...
Naturally, she immediately snorted awake and proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs.
“What the-! AH! RAPE! HELP, SOMEPONY! HELP!”
My eyes shot open despite my fatigue as she pulled the sheets up over her chest and backed into the wall in panic. The events of the previous night flooded back into my mind – where I was and what I was doing were suddenly thrown into sharp focus.
“Wh-who!? Ah! No, no, no! Wrong room!”
She viciously threw her pillow at me and started rummaging around on the floor; quickly retrieving a miniature version of the pipe weapons I had seen the night before.
“You’re damned right it’s the wrong room! Get the fuck out of here!” she screamed as the device was brought to bear.
“Whoa! Calm down - I’m going, I’m going!”
I made a quick escape, closing the door behind me. That was far too close – even the accommodation in the Wasteland was dangerous!
I returned to my room and sat on the mattress, a fresh dose of adrenaline coursing through my sleepy veins.
The worries and fears I had fallen asleep with floated freely through my consciousness, accelerated by my suddenly heightened state. They began tugging my moods and emotions from one extreme to the other, and I felt an unwelcome maelstrom of thought encompassing me.
What had I done?
Was I mad!?
I’d left the Stable; left my friends to the murderer...left Petri...
A little voice from a different corner of my psyche stepped into the fray, and a feeling of determination filled my chest like a refreshing breath.
No! That bastard knew I was onto him! If I hadn’t left there’d be nopony who knew about the killings! Nopony to help. What I did was necessary! I’m out here to help my friends, and by Luna that’s what I’m going to do!
Agreeing with myself that I’d made the right choices over the past 24 hours, I resolved to ask for Sage’s help with returning to the Stable straight away.
He did say that he was in my debt, after all...
With my barding back on and the day-old scent of exertion, fear and death-defiance gently wafting into my nostrils, I wandered down the stairs into the main room of the pub. Pale sunlight streamed through the windows, highlighting a wispy cloud of strong smelling smoke that was being generated by the small white sticks the patrons were holding in their mouths. Strangely, every one of them stared at me blankly as I walked towards the bar.
Brandy Spritz was standing behind the counter, talking with one of her customers when she noticed my presence. Giggling, she ended her conversation, and turned to me:
“I see you’re, uh, awake. Sage’s been looking for you – he’s on the main road with Caring Heart.” She was trying desperately not to laugh – I could see it on her face. What was so funny?
“Uh...thanks, Brandy. I’ll get that counter repaired as soon as I’m finished with him.” I smiled and made my way out of the pub onto the main road. The sun was warm and pleasant as it breathed its light onto my face, but the cloud layer from the previous evening was still present. I’d have to ask about that – it seemed to go on forever, covering the entire sky...
I could see Trotfell a lot better now that there was a decent amount of light about the place. The main road, once paved with tarmac, had cracked over the years as a combination of continued weathering and plant growth had sought to take the land it covered back for nature.
The City Chambers were as grand as I had observed the previous night, with walls of thick, white marble and beautiful mouldings covering the building’s exterior surfaces.
There were a lot more ponies about the town now that it was daylight - I could make out dozens, all going about their business. I found it funny when I considered that this was just another day to them; some were trading, while others were clearly working. Most seemed to know their way around; some had apparently arrived recently (much like myself).
All the hustle and bustle was a great source of relief for me – that niggling fear of infinite, permanent loneliness from the night before was still present, biding its time in the deeper recesses of my conscious mind.
I stepped onto the road, and was immediately aware of an impending strangeness...
Everypony was staring at me.
Everypony.
Some were giggling like Brandy had been moments earlier; others were scowling. A few even looked angry.
What the buck was so going on?
I noticed Sage and Caring Heart conversing beside an ancient streetlight and began to cautiously approach. Shouting across the street, I greeted them:
“Good morning, you two! Brandy said you wanted to see me, Sage?”
The silver maned stallion turned around to face me as he responded:
“Ah, Compass! Good morn...ing. Ahem.”
Both pony’s facial expressions drooped as they caught sight of me – Caring Heart looked embarrassed and covered her face with one of her hooves, while Sage could only bite his lip to keep down what would have been a riotous chuckle:
“Perhaps you should cover up...or at least take a cold shower.”
“What? I don’t understand...what’s-”
Sage gestured with his hoof; pointing down between my legs.
“What are you looking a- SWEET FUCKING CELESTIA! WHAT THE SHIT IS THAT!?”
As I lowered my head to regard my underside, my gaze was met by a thick, pink tentacle – something had attached itself to me during the night, and was now contentedly dangling between my rear legs!
I snapped my head forward and launched myself at the Caring Heart “BY LUNA, HELP ME! WHAT IS THIS THING!?”
She stared back at me in absolute shock, her eyes wide with surprise.
A heartbeat later I was on the ground, my eyes crossed and a sickening pain forcing its way up into my stomach. In deference to her namesake, Caring Heart had deftly raised her hoof and slapped the pair of fleshy orbs situated behind the tentacle, producing an absolutely exquisite bloom of pain. My vision blurred as I rolled over and slipped into unconsciousness.
<<<<<O>>>>>
Ooh...my head! It felt like I’d just been hit by a meteorite...
I swear, if I’d collided with that damn DeLorean again...
“Ugh...Doctor? Are you there?” Ditzy’s voice echoed through the TARDIS control room as she groggily came to.
“I’m fine, Ditzy. Just a bit- Ouch! Sore...are you alright?”
“Well, I’m not dead – that’s a good start!”
“Indeed...”
I pulled myself up to the console and felt about for a spongy, pyramid shaped projection. Giving it a squeeze, the lights were restored, and I was able to pick my dishevelled companion up off of the floor. She eyed me accusingly as she regained her equilibrium.
“So where did your ‘turbulence’ land us then?”
“Yeah...sorry about that – don’t know what got into the old girl. Let’s take a look around, shall we?”
I manoeuvred myself over to the scanner and pulled up the particulars of our surroundings, noting that the ship’s Chameleon Circuit had just that moment finished a 1000 mile radius, twelve dimensional scan of the terrain, and had also seen fit to extrapolate a new external shell configuration to conceal us from the locals.
“Heh - a Police barn...never would have guessed that one. Right, then – where are we? Equestria. Celestian era. Local date is...is...oh, come on, you never used to be this slow!”
Fiddling with the eclectic series of knobs and switches on the front of the scanner, I was able to coax a general date out of the TARDIS’ temporal sensors.
“Hmm...looks like we’re not far from your time, Ditzy. Maybe a couple of decades out, but no more than that.”
“Why have you brought us to this period in such a rush, Doctor? Is there something wrong?”
“I don’t know. The TARDIS just sort of...veered off course. She’s always had a good reason for doing that sort of thing in the past...let me see...” I accessed the vast log of readings collected by the TARDIS’ multitude of sensors and started skimming. Curiously, none of the data was- wait...no, that couldn’t be right!
Ditzy took immediate note of my deepening frown and peeked at the screen over my shoulder.
“What is it, Doctor? What’s wrong?”
My response was a hoarse whisper.
“The...the TARDIS. She’s detected...no, but that’s...that’s impossible...”
The phrase “How?” bounced repeatedly off of the walls of my mind. There was no way; not one single avenue of causality that could allow what I was reading to be true.
“Detected what...? What is it, Doctor? Y-You’re starting to scare me...”
“The TARDIS landed us here in Equestria...because...because it’s detected Time Lord technology...”
<<<<<O>>>>>
My balls hurt.
Never before in my life had I been so easily incapacitated! Thank Celestia Atom Spark didn’t know they could do that – I’d have never escaped the Stable!
Hell, I’d never have won a single argument with her!
Hazily, I rolled over to find myself in Trotfell’s dilapidated hospital; a pale shade of Stable 52’s Medical bay. Caring heart and Sage were nearby, talking heatedly with a light blue mare that I immediately recognised as Mo.
“-but it all fits, Dad! The sudden arrival, the way he speaks, the way he acts! He even has a sonic screwdriver, for Luna’s sake!”
Sage’s tone was one of fatigue and marginal irritation as he spoke:
“Mo, as thankful as I am that you’ve recovered, I will not endure another of your foalish fantasies. The Doctor was, is, and always will be a fictional character. You own most of the TBC tapes, for crying out loud! They’re all voice actors and special effects - what more proof do you need?”
Caring Heart rushed to support Mo, as she sat up in her bed and pointed dramatically in my direction, fixing Sage with a determined stare as she did so.
“They were based on reality! The Doctor’s as real as you and me, and he’s lying on that-”
We shared an awkwardly silent glance as Mo turned to look at me.
“...bed.”
‘Doctor’? That sounded awfully familiar...where had I heard that name before...?
Mo blushed and slowly withdrew her hoof as Sage and Caring Heart changed the mutual focus of their attention. Sage was the first to speak, addressing me with a jovial smile:
“Ah! You’re awake.”
“Kind of...” I said groggily.
“What was that you were saying about a Doct-”
I was suddenly interrupted by Caring Heart, who trotted angrily over to my bedside.
“Right, you! Explain yourself! What the hell were you playing at trying to mount me like that!?”
I felt myself trying to shrink back into my pillow as she accosted me – she was almost as scary as Atom!
“W-what!? I don’t know what you’re talking about! I was panicking over that thing on my-”
Suddenly remembering the reason for my previous outburst, I shot upright and pulled the sheet away from my lower legs. The tentacle was gone, leaving naught but the orbs and sheath I was so used to seeing between my hindquarters.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned back to Caring Heart.
“I was panicking over that parasite thing. Remember, I’m new to the Wasteland – I’ve never seen any of these mutations or monsters! And what do you mean by ‘mount’?”
She raised an eyebrow as she answered me:
“What do you mean by ‘parasite’? There’s nothing wrong with you. Well...apart from your willingness to show off your morning wood...”
“My...what? Wood? I’m not following – I’m talking about the pink thing! The tentacle between my legs! ”
“Uh...Compass...that was your dick...”
Blast these ponies and their Wasteland vocabulary!
“My what?”
“Your...uh...penis. You know...the reproductive organ?”
I stared blankly at her. A reproductive organ? Was she making this up?
Caring shot an uncertain glance at Sage, who was keeping quiet. She continued:
“The...the thing you...pee out of? The thing that gets hard and lets you...mate?”
“Uh...”
“You can’t honestly tell me you’ve never seen your own penis...”
“Yes, I can – I never used to have one! I don’t believe this! Less than a day outside of the Stable and I’m already mutating!”
Sage’s smile had metamorphosed into a squint frown.
“Compass, are you serious? How can you not know about such an obvious piece of your own anatomy?”
Pausing for a brief moment of thought, his frown deepened.
“How...how do you use the bathroom?”
“I...you know...just sort of sit down and...get on with it...”
The pair shared another glance as they faced me; this one involving a great deal more smiling than before.
Caring could barely contain her laughter as she spoke:
“You...sit down to pee...? Pfft! Ha!”
Sage quietly chuckled to himself as Caring hugged the bedside for support. Wiping a tear from his eye, he continued our dialogue.
“Oh, you’re funny. I knew we’d get on from the moment I met you! Ha ha!”
His laughter abated slightly.
“But seriously, though. You can’t just run around with your ‘little friend’ dangling between your legs like that – we take sex crime very seriously around these parts. I mean, you’ve already met Buckshot, and as you no doubt realised last night, he doesn’t much like new-”
By this point in the conversation, the word ‘confusion’ no longer offered an adequate description of my mental state. I could feel that angry warmth starting to stir as my frustration built – I’d have to get some answers before I exploded!
Waving my hooves in front of my face, I tried to regain control of the flow of information.
“Stop, stop, stop! I have no idea what’s going on here! Why are you laughing? What was that pink thing? And who the flying feather is ‘the Doctor’!?”
Sage took a momentary pause and cocked his head to one side.
“Nevermind about the Doctor - you...you’re serious, aren’t you!? By Celestia, I thought you were joking! How did you lot reproduce if you don’t know about your own sexual organs!?”
“Look, I’ve never heard the word used in that context before. What do you mean by ‘reproduce’?”
Caring chimed in, with a tone of surprise similar to Sage’s.
“Make more of yourselves; new ponies.”
Ah-ha! Progress! So that’s what they were talking about!
“Oh, right! You mean birthing! I suppose the last two hundred years haven’t been kind to the Equestrian lexicon. We use Pods, just like everypony else. Now, one of you explain that pink tentacle that I grew overnigh-”
“Wait. Hold on...Pods?”
“Yeah.”
“As in...containers...?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re...what? Grown in these things!?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you, and all the ponies in your Stable, are grown in glass tubes filled with amniotic fluid?”
“Pfft! No, don’t be daft!”
Caring let out a small, sighing sort of laugh as she spoke.
“Heh...yeah, that does sound pretty outlandish-”
“Pods aren’t made of glass – it’s far too brittle a material! No, we use a high tensile laminate composite to...make....what...? Why are you making that face?”
Seemingly dumbfounded, Caring Heart’s jaw had dropped as she absorbed my words. Sage’s face had reassumed his previously skewed frown, and apparently decided to run with it. He spoke slowly:
“You were...grown...?”
“Well, yeah...weren’t...weren’t you?”
Caring edged forward and assumed a telltale ‘bad news’ tone.
“Compass, ponies aren’t meant to be grown in jars. Ordinary reproduction involves one mare and one stallion who ‘mate’, engaging in a process of insemination called ‘intercourse’. Two cells; one from the father and one form the mother, combine and begin to multiply inside a part of the mare called the womb. Then, eleven months later, a foal is born.”
I stared at her for a very long time, unblinking and barely breathing. Her description, although brief, was disgusting! This ‘mating’ process sounded very...inefficient.
“Wow...” I finally managed to say while trying to stifle a nervous giggle.
“Well, at least I know what a foal is now...”
Caring placed a hoof upon one of my forelegs.
“Are you okay...?” she asked meekly.
I smiled back at her.
“Why wouldn’t I be? The Pods allow an adult pony to gestate in a period of six weeks. When ‘ordinary’ birthing uh, sorry – reproduction, takes eleven months, it’s no wonder we stopped using it!”
Caring’s frown deepened even more – how was her face doing that!? Her look of concern was defying the laws of physics!
“Did you just say ‘adult’? In six weeks!? No, Compass, you’re getting the wrong end of the stick here – foals are tiny when they’re born. It takes them about eighteen years to fully mature into an adult...”
Good Goddess! Now I knew Pods were a superior alternative to nature!
“Eighteen years!? That’s...that’s awful! Are you saying that only get two years as adults!?”
Her frown deepened again. Can facial expressions form singularities?
“Uh...no...where’d you get that idea from?”
“Well...the twenty year lifespan of our species for one-“
“Sorry – the what!?” Sage had leant forward, as if I had just said something of vital significance.
“What’s this about twenty year lifespans!?”
“We...only live for...twenty years...right...?”
Another slow, synchronised pair of head shakes were forthcoming.
“But...but all the ponies in Stable 52...they die at the age of twenty...always have...”
“Compass...” Caring was beginning to look emotional – her eyes were starting to water.
“...how old are you...?” she whispered.
A wave of desperation washed over me as I responded:
“I’m seven. Seven years, eight months.”
I gulped as their eyes widened.
“How long do...are we meant...to get...?”
“Compass...”
Her mollycoddling was beginning to infuriate me. It wasn’t fair – the familiar bloom of my fury was suddenly so close to the surface.
“HOW LONG!?”
How long indeed...how long would I be a slave to my ridiculously explosive temper?
Caring Heart, having recovered quickly from my outburst took a deep breath, letting it out in the form of a profound sigh as she hung her head.
“...I’m thirty-two...Sage is almost sixty...”
I blankly absorbed her words, responding only by looking down at my broken Pipbuck.
Sixty years!? How was it possible!?
A pony exposed to the ravages of the outside world had lived three times as long as one specifically developed to be superior and housed perpetually in a safe, controlled environment.
For the first time in my life, I had a thought against my home.
Maybe Stable 52 wasn’t all it was cracked up to be...
“H-How...why...?” I whimpered.
Caring gently lifted my chin with her hoof and addressed me in a soft, calming tone:
“Is that why you left the Stable? Did you learn of this...limit?”
“No...I’d always known about it...I just thought it was...natural...” I blinked back a tear.
“I left because of the murders...”
Sage suddenly spoke up:
“Murders!? On top of the twenty year thing!? No offense son, but Stable 52 sounds like a death trap!”
He was immediately silenced by a scornful glance from Caring. Strangely enough, I felt the genuine urge to giggle. With a distant, almost entirely vacant smirk, I looked to Caring Heart just as she concluded her visual chastisement of Sage.
“So...how long do...will...I have?”
I really didn’t want to ask that...and I think I wanted the answer even less. It had to be asked, though; it just had to.
Caring opened her mouth a measure, and then slowly shut it again. Her eyes tried desperately to avoid my expectant gaze...
The comparatively tiny interval between my query and her response was torturous. I could already feel my stomach churning; bile rising in my throat and trying to enter my mouth.
Finally, after what seemed like days worth of pained waiting, she responded:
“I...I don’t know-”
Her face suddenly changed – her eyes moved back and forth as if calling up a memory; a record of something she’d once read. I knew that face well, and it filled my chest with a glorious bloom of hope.
“-but...if the deaths were drug induced, it could explain your, uh, revelation.” she said while gesturing to my nether region.
“You think we’re all drugged?”
“Well, it would explain why nopony ever noticed or asked about your set lifespans and why you never knew about your own sexual organs. If genetic manipulation’s their game - whoever ‘they’ are – then the ability to reproduce at will would be a serious obstacle. Your medics could have hidden the necessary chemicals in inoculations-”
“No. The head of Medical’s my best friend – I’d trust her to the ends of the Earth.”
“She may not have known, Compass. StableTec could have set this in motion long before you were even bor- I mean, ‘birthed’.”
I thought for a moment. Unfortunately, this was all making sense to me...and I didn't like it.
Not at all.
“But, that still leaves us with the question of how we could all be drugged and manipulated simultaneously for over two-hundred years...”
I stared down at my still non-functional PipBuck, as if the answer would just pop up in emerald text on its dark little screen.
How could this have been accomplished? A constant flow of anatomy suppressing chemicals whose ultimate side effect was an early death! How could nopony notice that!?
The weight of my PipBuck’s cuff weighed heavily on my foreleg. I’d worn this gauntlet my entire life – literally.
What could have been regular enough? What could have been sufficiently proximate to constantly administer such vast amounts of such a potent chemical?
The pods ejected fresh Stable residents with PipBucks already attached. When ponies in Stable 52 inevitably died, the automated recyclers would extract and re-allocate their PipBucks before pulping their corpses and using the reclaimed matter to intravenously nourish the next generation.
It would have had to have been something in near constant contact with the general populace; something we all shared but took no notice of.
Essentially, from birth to death, the PipBuck was a constant companion; never leaving the ankle of its owner.
Whatever delivery system was administering that drug was very, very well hidden. It must have been completely invisible!
As I looked up, I noticed that Sage and Caring Heart were staring at my foreleg, much like I had been moments earlier.
“What?” I asked, glancing back and forth between the pair and my ankle mounted mini terminal.
Sage nodded towards my PipBuck with an expectant expression.
“...What?” I reiterated.
“Compass...your Pipbuck.”
“What about it-”
Something clicked in the back of my mind as a series of previously unrelated facts sorted themselves into a single, uniform realisation.
Said realisation expressed itself thusly:
“...Oh.”
Granted, it wasn’t one of my most eloquent moments, but that solitary monosyllabic utterance seemed to convey the desired meaning.
(Now, why couldn’t I say stuff like that rather than just thinking it?)
Ah, well. C’est la vie...
Caring snapped me back to reality as she continued to develop her hypothesis:
“You Stable ponies wear those things all the time, right? Maybe there’s something built in that administers the drugs automatically – it would be the perfect delivery system!”
Sage suddenly wandered away with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes.
My eyes followed him as he disappeared out of sight, allowing my gaze to end up resting on Mo, who had apparently been sitting up in her bed, listening intently this whole time. Her consistently wide-eyed stare was actually kind of creepy...
From the other side of the room, Sage shouted to Caring Heart:
“Caring, where’s that thing you use to stab me in the mouth?”
Rolling her eyes and tutting, Caring responded to the silver-maned buck in an exasperated tone:
“It’s called a dental pick! Second drawer down. Anyway, why do you need it? Your check-up isn’t for another month.”
“Ah! There you are!” he exclaimed before trotting back to my bedside.
He was carrying a small, thin, metallic tool in his mouth.
“What are you doing with that?” Caring asked.
With a confident smirk, Sage gently rotated my foreleg, revealing a small hole on the underside of my PipBuck.
“What you call a dental pick-“ he said while twisting the little tool.
“-I call a PipBuck key.”
My eyes widened as the perpetual cuff on my foreleg popped open with a soft click. I gently started to pry it off, grimacing as the underlying flesh peeled away from my PipBuck’s interior surface.
I looked up at Sage in wonder. He simply smiled back.
“How did you do that...? I didn’t even know that PipBucks could be removed!”
“Well, it pays to have read the manual.”
I gawked. He’d read the PipBuck manual!? The entire manual!?
“Isn’t that...like...9000 pages?”
Sage gently began easing the PipBuck off of my ankle, only briefly glancing up to meet my gaze as he answered.
“Eleven. Spread across eight volumes.”
“Wow...you must really like read- AH! SHIT! OW! STOP! STOP!”
Sage backed away in fright as I screamed into his face. The discomfort I had felt as he peeled my PipBuck away from my ankle had suddenly bloomed into a sharp, stabbing burn. I carefully looked down at my foreleg, taking care not to move, lest the pain intensify.
Just underneath the cuff was a thin, flexible tubule that penetrated deep into the flesh of my leg.
I looked from Sage to Caring Heart as my breathing stabilised.
“It appears-” I said through gritted teeth.
“-that your theory was correct, Caring.”
About an hour later, I found myself wandering listlessly around Trotfell, with neither purpose nor direction.
Following my brief stint in the hospital, Caring Heart had managed to explore the extent of the strange tubule I had found embedded in my foreleg.
Attached to its other end, we had discovered a short range teleportation talisman. According to Caring, it had been feeding me a powerful hormonal agent since the day I was birthed, allowing the complete suppression of my natural - uh, what did they call it, again? Oh, yeah – my ‘reproductive’ functions.
Worryingly, she wasn’t able to tell me how, or indeed if, it had affected my ‘natural’ lifespan.
Between the three of us, Caring, Sage and I had disabled the talisman so that, even if I managed to return to the Stable, the drugs would have no way of entering my system again.
Now, if only we could do the same for the rest of Stable 52’s residents...
Sage had even managed to reboot my PipBuck for me – a backup copy of the original OS was apparently stored on an arcane ROM chip hidden on the device’s interior (naturally, the access panel was in the single most inopportune position imaginable - the underside of the cuff).
Every so often, I’d take another glance at the screen in order to try and take my mind off of the crippling sense of futility I now felt.
Unfortunately, the wan emerald glow of the text wasn’t very comforting:
>>ROOT/BACKUP/OS/SETUP.EXE >>BOOTING TO BACKUP OS...
>>PIPBUCK OS V 1.0.0 >>COPYRIGHT ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES >>AUTO-CONFIGURING FOR FIRST BOOT...
It had been ‘configuring’ for well over an hour...
Thank Celestia I’d had better luck with the other article of arcane technology in my possession.
I had tried in vain to occupy myself for a while by repairing the mangled Screwdriver with scavenged parts I’d found in the local workshop.
But, as you can probably gather from my tone, it hadn’t worked. In fact, I had finished in under half an hour (even with a near constant headache stabbing into the back of my eyes).
It was as if I already knew the design inside out; like I’d disassembled and rebuilt it a thousand times...
Despite that strange sense of familiarity, however, I had still marvelled at the device's complexity upon opening it up. The Screwdriver was remarkable: both elegant in its design and ingenious in its functionality. I just hoped that I’d done it justice with my repairs – I had had to improvise...
A lot...
The Screwdriver now featured a large, conic head in place of what had previously been a cylinder. I had managed to repair its innards with a large bundle of wiring I'd found, replacing the strange spell matrix with, of all things, knowledge I'd accumulated from Petri's medical textbooks.
If anything, it now looked less like a Screwdriver, and more like a unicorn's horn, both in external appearance and, curiously, in its internal structure.
I bet Petri would be fascinated to examine my work – I’d have to show her it when I returned to the Stable!
After Sage had applied his formidable knowledge to my PipBuck, I finally got around to asking him for a hoof in returning to the Stable, and had even mused briefly on the possibility of liberating all 36’000 residents from their life-limiting arcane gauntlets upon my return.
Incidentally, did you know that you’re making almost the exact same face that Sage, Caring and Mo made when they heard that number?
Yeah, so, apparently, the standard compliment for a StableTec facility was usually well under 1000 ponies. I suppose that makes 52 special, doesn’t it?
Well, yay for us...
While Mo and Caring expressed what could only be described as shock at the size of my home, Sage had clearly spotted an opportunity.
36’000 engineers, scientists, craftsponies and medics; all with artificially limited lifespans.
Imagine their collective gratitude if it was revealed to them that they can actually live for, at the very least, three times as long as they had originally thought...
Trotfell could be transformed into a metropolis overnight! A powerhouse to rival the factories of the mysterious ‘Red Eye’ of Fillydelphia (whom Sage had told me about the night before)!
His eyes had lit up with the possibilities – just before he rushed out of the ward muttering something about ‘getting back to me’.
I wasn’t sure if he’d realised it or not, but steering clear of Stable 52’s resident murderer wasn’t going to be our greatest challenge.
Nor was the task of liberating the general populace from their artificially shortened lifespans.
No. Getting in the fucking door was our greatest challenge!
That giant cog had kept the Stable’s innards safely isolated for over two hundred years, and now we were just going to waltz through it?
I sighed, trying to push such hopeless thoughts to the back of my mind.
Change the subject, for Goddess’ sake, Compass...
It had been good to see Mo again, despite the fact that she had stayed almost completely silent for the entirety of my encounter with Sage and Caring Heart. I looked forward to continuing the strange conversation we had started after I’d dispatched that Ponitron.
As much as I wanted to get to know her better, I still couldn’t help the oppressive weight bearing down on my mind. I just couldn’t get my head round it - that single, solitary little conversation had completely changed my world view.
And I still didn’t know a damned thing about ‘the Doctor’!
Argh! It was driving me crazy! How did I know that name!?
The moment that Mo was discharged from the hospital, I’d have to-
I stopped in mid thought.
Meandering about the place had somehow brought me up an exterior staircase that let out onto the roof of Trotfell’s pub. Sitting upright on the corner, with his rear legs dangling over the side, was Buckshot.
We eyed one and other for a moment as he registered my presence, before he turned back to the midday vista beyond Trotfell’s modest skyline.
Now, in all honesty, I’d had a pretty shitty time last night (not to mention the events of the past couple of hours), and I’d taken out almost all of my frustrations on the first pony who’d crossed me in what was, essentially, a ruthlessly focussed personal attack.
That wasn’t me, and that wasn’t how I wanted to be known out here.
At the very least, I owed Buckshot an apology.
“...Buckshot...?” I said gently as I approached.
“Whit the fuck do you want?” he replied without turning away from the view.
“I wanted to...apologise. For last night...”
He remained silent, and continued to look across the horizon. Perhaps, I thought, I should let him have this time to himself...
“I, uh...I won’t bother you. It’s just that my temper kind of...gets the best of me from time to time. It’s like I can’t trust myself sometimes...”
I hadn’t been paying attention to Buckshot as I spoke, so it came as quite a surprise when I turned to face him at the end of my sentence – he was staring at me with an intense, piercing expression.
There was one of those foul-smelling little white sticks protruding from his mouth. A small plume of smoke rose gently from its glowing tip as his gaze impaled me. Suddenly reaching into a saddlebag at his side, he retrieved a small paper container filled with more of the little cylinders.
He gestured to a spot on the roof beside him.
“Sit.”
I complied, dangling my rear legs off of the edge like he was. Buckshot pushed the container into my face (I was able to make out the word ‘Cigarettes’ on its surface).
Whatever they were, I was sure I wouldn’t like them. But seeing as how this was clearly some sort of strange peace offering on his part, I acquiesced and withdraw one of the little rods from the box.
Positioning it between my lips as Buckshot had, I leant forward as he lit the tip with a nifty little flame talism- ACK!
By the Goddess, that tasted foul! I coughed so hard I nearly vomited as Buckshot simply continued to regard the town below.
As the tears streamed from my eyes, I tried in vain to regain my composure.
Buckshot exhaled a stream of the acrid white smoke as he spoke:
“Whit ye said before...about...trustin’ yersel’. Did ye mean it?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”
Buckshot rubbed his neck with his hoof, massaging what I assumed was an old injury.
“It’s difficult tae get the truth out here in the Wasteland...”
He turned to look me in the eye.
“You’re the first pony Ah feel like Ah can actually believe...I dinnae know what it is about ye...”
I let out a small chuckle as the ridiculousness of the situation dawned on me. I was the most trustworthy buck he’d ever met!? I couldn’t even protect my best friends without getting chased out of my home...
“My rugged good looks perhaps?”
Buckshot suddenly choked on his cigarette, hunching over as a throaty cough emanated from his lungs. He glanced awkwardly in my direction, seemingly only to catch a glimpse of my jovial smile.
Clearing his throat, he sat up straight again and continued:
“Nah, it’s...it’s no that, Compass. Aw that ponies oot here do is lie an’ steal. Naepony can be trusted...” His eyes looked distant; cloudy – he was somewhere else.
“You just told me that ye cannae trust yersel’...”
Buckshot turned to me with watery eyes - somehow, I knew that they hadn’t been caused by the smoke.
“Ye were honest. Nae gun tae yer heed; nae ulterior motives...”
I returned Buckshot’s gaze, unsure of how to respond. Was the Wasteland really this difficult to live in?
“And then there wis last night. Ye...ye cut me tae the core, Compass. Ye knew. Ye knew all aboot me.”
The tears were certain now, carving moist trails across his gaunt face.
“And ye...ye tried tae help...”
Before I could say anything, he pulled me close with his foreleg and pressed his lips to mine.
The rich, smokey taste of his mouth seeped gently into mine as his tongue slowly edged my jaw open.
My eyelids slid closed and my breathing became shallow as he continued to massage my lips with his own. Before long, I became aware that I was mimicking his motions, moving my own lips and tongue in time with his.
Meanwhile, between my legs, I felt an unfamiliar tingling sensation that quickly grew into a sweet, tickling shiver.
All too suddenly, we were interrupted by a raised voice emanating from below:
“Compass! There you are! I’ve got it! I know how we can get you back into your Stable!”
Sage had appeared in front of the pub, and was shouting up towards Buckshot and I. The diffuse glare from the sun was forcing him to cover his eyes, much to my roofmate’s apparent relief – he had broken contact and pulled away the moment he had heard Sage’s voice.
“Come to my office as soon as you can and I’ll expl- Oh, Buckshot there you are!”
Sage suddenly noticed my companion as his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sky. He continued as Buckshot tried to avoid his gaze by shrinking into the corrugated iron beneath us.
“It’s good to see you getting on with somepony! I’ll need you too, so come along as well!”
Buckshot let out a heavily relieved sigh as Sage trotted off in the direction of the City Chambers.
“Buckshot...” I whispered.
“...what was that all about...?”
As if our encounter wasn’t already strange enough, Buckshot managed to weird me out even more by cracking a tiny smile as he turned back to me. He was even blushing!
“Sorry...Ah, um...Ah don’t know whit came o’er me...” He shrugged weakly as he spoke.
I was stunned.
Honestly and truly stunned.
It was as if he was a completely different pony; totally separate from the gruff, defensive buck who had, only hours earlier, threatened to throttle my intestines.
“It’s okay, Buckshot.”
I looked him straight in the eyes.
“If I’m being honest...I actually enjoyed it.”
Whatever ‘it’ was...
I ask you: Wasteland ponies, eh?
His smile widened as he took a deep breath and gently placed his hoof upon mine. We continued to regard each other silently until I made a sudden realisation.
I started to giggle as a memory surfaced.
“Heh...that’s it! I knew you reminded me of somepony!”
“Huh? Who?”
“Warp Drive – the engineer from Star Trot. Your accent’s exactly the same!”
Buckshot just looked at me blankly.
“Eh, don’t worry. It’s a pretty niche radio series from before the war – they only made four seasons. It was good, though – heroic adventurers traversing the galaxy in mighty spaceships! Seeking out new life and new civilisations! Boldly going where no pony had gone before!”
I leant back and stared straight up at the sky - despite the presence of the cloud layer, it was still an inspiring sight...
Buckshot’s mouth curled at one end as he stifled a laugh.
Sighing contentedly, I realised how good this felt and smiled back – I had feared that, after leaving the Stable, I’d never experience interactions like this again. My life such as it was had ended, and my world had completely changed.
Yet, here I was, in an alien land with a buck I’d only known for a few hours.
And I felt safe. Happy.
I gently grasped Buckshot’s shoulder. He smiled back silently. Rising to my hooves, I made my way toward the stairs - we had a meeting to attend.
“By the way, Compass...” Buckshot called over from his perch.
I turned to face him.
“They only made three seasons o’ Star Trot.”
He smirked as he trotted past me and descended down the stairs.
I just stood there on the roof; head cocked to one side and mouth agape.
Wasteland ponies indeed...
Footnote: Level up!
Perk added: Confirmed Bachelor Bucks seem to have an eye for you. You can now inflict 10% more damage to members of the same sex. Special dialogue options are also available when interacting with certain other males.
Perk added: Life After Birthing Harmful alterations to your body have been counteracted. You receive an additional 50 hit points and gain 1 point to your Endurance stat!
Perk added: Passing the Screwdriver You’ve made your own modifications to the Sonic Screwdriver, adding new settings with your ingenuity!
"All of us had a special connection before we even met!”
I can’t believe I’d shot Caring Heart’s ancestor.
Looking through the various articles that adorned the walls of my captive’s home, I had arrived at a document from some sort of educational institution, and according to its gold lettering, this mare was a certified nurse by the name of ‘Red Heart’.
Caring would castrate me if she ever found out!
As I slowly shook my head in disbelief, I heard a soft mewl from behind me - Red Heart was waking up after passing out following her surgery.
I allowed her a moment to get her bearings, then slowly approached her bound form as she tried in vain to rise to her hooves.
“I’m going to ungag you now,” I said calmly, “But understand - if you scream, I’ll put it back in, okay?”
She nodded gently in affirmation as I magically untied the knot at the back of her head, and worked her jaw as the clump of cloth was removed from between her jaws.
“Please don’t kill me.” she whimpered, “Just take what you want and go.”
I grunted in annoyance and used a fresh rag to dry her tears. If I wanted to hurt her, why in the name of Luna would I have cleaned and dressed her wound?
“I’m not here to kill you, Miss Heart. I just needed a place to hide for a while.”
“Then...why did you shoot me?” she responded.
“I, uh...you startled me.” I said meekly.
“W-what! I startled you!” she suddenly shouted, “Have you looked in a mirror recently!? I’m not the one covered in scars with a weird-ass metal horn and a creepy black cape!”
Apparently, her confidence had been bolstered significantly by my admission. It seems that being a heavily armed, partially mutilated time travel victim wasn’t very intimidating.
Now that was what I called a strong constitution...
I raised an unimpressed eyebrow in response to her cutting words.
“Your bedside manner sucks, you know that? And it’s an overcoat, not a cape.”
Red Heart shot me a malevolent frown before she continued, her voice now fully bereft of the sad whimpering that had thus far permeated our encounter.
“So, are you going to untie me, or do you like your mares trussed up and gagged?” she asked, wiggling her flank at me mockingly.
“You do realise that if I was a rapist, you’d be digging yourself into a very deep hole right now? I could still carve my initials between your legs, if you’d like the full ‘sexual assault’ experience.”
“Let’s be honest, pal, if you were going to do that, you’d have done it already.”
Grumbling under my breath, I decided to drop the pretence – I wasn’t getting anywhere fast with this mare. Perhaps a more direct approach would help.
“Listen, I need directions. That’s all. Tell me how to get to the Edinbuck StableTec building from here, and I’ll leave you in peace – you’ll never see me again.”
“You mean that I got shot for a list of directions!? If that’s all you want, untie me and I’ll get you a Celestia damned map!”
“Finally, some sense! Thank you, Luna!” I shouted at the ceiling.
Gratified that we were finally making some sort of progress, I closed in and loosened the knots using my magic.
I then I fell to the ground...clutching my balls tightly.
She was definitely related to Caring Heart.
As Red Heart made a limping break for the door, I grabbed her in a telekinetic field and held her aloft until the pain in my nether region subsided. I rose steadily as the ache diminished and trotted over to the spot above which she was floating.
“That. Was not. Smart.” I said pointedly, accenting each word in the hope that some menace would be reintroduced to my presence.
“Go to Tartarus! You can’t keep me here forever!” she spat.
I sighed in frustration. Looking her suddenly in the eyes, I spoke frankly to the mint maned mare.
“Red Heart, I need your help. I’m tired of dancing around the issue. I. Need. Your. Help.”
“Well, you’ve got a pretty funny way of asking for it!” she screamed back.
“Look, I treated your wound and apologised. What else can I do!?”
“You can put me down and get the fuck out of my house, that’s what!”
“Please, Red Heart. I’m...I’m not from here...or now.”
“So, what? Are you, like, a junkie or something?”
“No – I’m a time traveller.”
Her eyebrows flew to the top of her forehead in surprise – no doubt that was the last thing she expected me to say.
“So...you are a junkie?”
“Red Heart, please, I’m serious. I’ve been thrown back in time and I need somepony’s help to return to my own era.”
“Sounds more like schizophrenia to me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re either an escaped mental patient, a convict, or a spy.”
“How many ponies have you ever met with a rifle that shoots light, an arcane computer clamped to their foreleg and a metal horn!?”
Red Heart opened her mouth to reply, but visibly hesitated for a moment before speaking. Was she…beginning to believe me?
“Okay, granted, you are pretty strange, but that still doesn’t mean you’re from the future!”
“Red Heart, I have friends who I know for a fact are in danger, and if I’m not there to help them I...I don’t know if they’ll be okay. There’s an evil threatening my time that’s more grave than anything Equestria’s ever faced before. I’ll ask once more: will you help me, or am I on my own?”
Red Heart just stared at me, her brow slightly furrowed. I doubted that she knew what to make of me anymore. At first I was a burglar, then a murderer, then a rapist. Now, though...
I was a time traveller stranded in the past.
Even I knew how that sounded.
Sighing, I picked up my gear and headed towards that door.
“You’ll understand if I don’t let you down straight away.” I said without looking at her, “I’ll release the spell when I’m confident that you won’t be able to follow me. Have a good life, Miss Heart.”
As I moved to pass her, Red Heart suddenly spoke. The sincerity of her tone grabbed my attention instantly.
“Put me down and help me get dressed.” she said simply.
I whipped my head up and stared up at her in surprise.
“The next train to Edinbuck leaves in an hour.” she concluded with a smile.
“A StableTec admin facility?” I exclaimed.
Buckshot and I were standing in front of Sage’s massive desk, as he gestured to a large map that he had unrolled over its dark, wooden surface (I was reminded of the as yet unrepaired gouges in Brandy’s pub counter).
“I thought you said that you had a way of getting back into Stable 52? What good will an office building do us?”
Sage enthusiastically leaned forward in his chair.
“Oh, but this isn’t just any old office building, Compass! The Edinbuck hub was StableTec’s central administrative headquarters. There wasn’t a single piece of information about the company that wasn’t meticulously documented and filed away in there!”
I rolled my eyes - he still hadn’t answered my question.
“Well, it’s nice to hear they were so diligent with their paperwork, but tax records aren’t going to be of very much use to us are they?”
Sage smirked knowingly as he responded:
“True – but access codes and schematics might...”
“Oh...” I said, as his plan became more obvious.
Why hadn’t I thought of that!? Of course a company as large as StableTec would have kept vast stores of backed up design specifications and security protocols!
What giant corporation wouldn’t?
I quickly stifled my gratitude for the company’s attention to detail as I recalled StableTec’s apparent disregard for the lives of my Stablemates. Turning back to Sage, I informed him of my approval as a smile slowly crept over my face:
“That sounds...quite promising, actually.”
I trotted over to the map, taking mental notes of the area’s major landmarks (which were highlighted by a series of mouth-drawn annotations).
“So how far away is this place?”
“A day’s trot, maximum. We can take one of Buckshot’s guard details, and take a break here-”
Sage pointed to a small drawing of a hill that lay about halfway between Trotfell and the ruins of Edinbuck. I noted that the map itself looked ancient and well used, and that the hill was among the oldest of its revised features.
“-after which, we should arrive in the Edinbuck ruins. There’s a small local population of Scavengers whom we can barter with for additional supplies and shelter. And after that, it’s on to the admin building!”
As Sage grinned at me, I felt Buckshot’s heavy hoofsteps approach from behind as he began to take his own look at the map.
After a cursory glance, he turned to Sage, a confused expression spread across his gaunt face.
“Uh...sir? Isn’t this the facility that you yerself ordered aff limits?” he asked.
Sage responded to Buckshot’s query with a withering look - it spoke far louder than anything he could have said verbally.
As far as I could tell, it was something along the lines of: “Why did you mention that, you idiot!?”
I knew it couldn’t be that simple...
Sighing, I asked the obvious question:
“Okay. What’s the catch?”
Sage avoided my gaze while Buckshot silently reeled from his visual admonishment.
Right, then – a guessing game it is...
“This place is a deathtrap, isn’t it?” I proffered, “It’s going to be radioactively contaminated, or structurally unsound, or crawling with rogue robots, or...or something like that, right?”
Reassuming eye-contact, Sage let out a heavy sigh:
“Not...not quite. Almost...”
I looked from Sage to Buckshot and back again as my query hung still in the air.
“Well? What’s wrong with it?”
There was a weighty pause as Sage and Buckshot exchanged a glance – something told me that I was definitely not going to like this...
Finally, after an awkwardly long silence, the silver-maned buck spoke up:
“We call it...” He stopped mid sentence, pausing almost as if out of reverence, “The Sentinel...”
Well, that sounded ominous...
“The...Sentinel?” I asked cautiously.
Sage wetted his lips and sighed heavily.
“Many years ago, I sent a small team to the Edinbuck ruins on a trading mission. While there, they decided to try their hooves at scavenging, and had some success in gaining access to a previously sealed StableTec facility.”
“The one we're going to, I take it?” I enquired.
Sage nodded somberely, continuing his story:
“Apparently, they encountered an old high security defence system of some sort. Long story short: it decimated them. Only one buck made it back out, and he died in the care of Edinbuck's doctor less than a day later...”
Both Buckshot and Sage were hanging their heads in remembrance of the dead. I, however, was in the middle of a nice, profound gawk.
“And you want us to just waltz back into this place!? Are you nuts!? I barely made it through the Stable’s maintenance robots and now you want me to go up against combat models!?”
Sage looked up at me, straight into my eyes. A sincere look of regret was marring his aged features.
“Compass, please understand: I sent those ponies to their deaths, and since that day I've never done anything to make their sacrifices worthwhile. For years, I've tried to forget that they died for nothing, but all that's done is highlight my own accountability.”
His gaze had become distant and watery, just like Buckshot’s had the previous night.
I knew then that I’d have to go. After all that Sage and the ponies of Trotfell had done for me, there was no way that I’d be able to go without repaying them – and a perfect opportunity had just presented itself.
Suddenly brightening, Sage turned back to face me, evidently cramming a series of dark thoughts into a far corner of his mind with practised ease. I found myself wondering just how much of his cheery demeanour was actually genuine...
“Besides, without the data in those maneframes, we won't be able to help anypony in that Stable of yours.”
“But what makes you think that this expedition will be any less lethal than the last one?” I asked.
Sage smiled conspiratorially.
“You. Having somepony who can take down a ponitron single-hoofed won’t hurt our chances with that security system.”
Of course. At this point, I probably should have mentioned my crippling phobia of spider-bots, but I just couldn’t bear to watch Sage repress the inevitable negatives emotions that would ensue. Just watching him do it once had pained me!
I realised that both Sage and Buckshot were looking at me expectantly. Giving up any final thoughts of arguing, I sighed and nodded.
“Okay...okay, let's go.”
Sage’s smile widened in gratitude.
“Thank you , Compass. Thank you. Buckshot?”
“Sir?”
“Put together a team. I want two snipers, three close quarters specialists and two medics.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll get right on it.”
Buckshot saluted Sage (much to the older buck’s irritation) and turned to leave, shooting me an almost imperceptible smile as he passed. As he exited the room, I turned to Sage:
“Are you sure about this?”
"Oh, absolutely!" he beamed as he trotted towards the door.
“What could possibly go wrong?”
Buckshot's team were already assembled and were gearing up by the time Sage and I emerged from his office. They all saluted as we trotted in front of them - I could hear the older pony grumbling under his breath.
Coming to a halt in front of the assembled troops, Sage began to bellow at them in a throaty, commanding voice:
"Alright, everypony! Here's our mission."
Our? Wait, he wasn't planning on-
Buckshot got there before me:
"Uh, sir? Did ye say 'our'."
Switching seamlessly back to his rich speaking voice, Sage turned to address the question:
"Yes, Buckshot - I'm coming with you."
"But sir, it's a long trot, an' the route tae the Edinbuck ruins is well known fer bein' dangerous. It's no a journey fae somepony o' yer-"
"Of my what?" Sage raised a single unimpressed eyebrow as Buckshot began to squirm under his relaxed gaze.
"Y-yer...uh...um...nevermind."
Buckshot quickly lowered his head and closed his mouth, no doubt hoping to prevent any more embarrassing exchanges.
Returning to his 'command' voice, Sage continued his address:
"We'll be heading to Edinbuck by way of Eagle Ridge. Once there, we'll resupply and divert to StableTec's old Coltland headquarters."
There was a smattering of whispered gasps at the mention of the facility's name but, for the most part at least, the group maintained their composure.
Without waiting for any questions or objections, Sage bellowed once more:
"Understood?"
In unison, the assembled bucks and mares stood straight, snapping to attention and responding as one:
"Yes, sir!"
With an aggravated roll of his eyes and a nod to Buckshot, Sage transferred his command of the group and began dawning a set of armoured barding. He was offered a pipe weapon by a tall red pony with a bottle shaped cutie mark, but refused it with a dismissive shake of his head.
We set off just over an hour later, a nine strong group on a mission.
You're no doubt wondering why I've suddenly lost the ability to count...
Well, don't worry - I haven't.
There should have been ten ponies altogether, but one of Buckshot's 'close quarters specialists' came down with a nasty case of hole-in-the-flank.
Consequently, that's how I learned what a 'rifle' was...and why I wasn't allowed to have one of my own (honestly, how was I supposed to know what a 'safety catch' was?).
I could feel the eyes of the other combat specialists drilling holes in the back of my head as we trotted away from Trotfell in silence. In an attempt to avoid any ugliness, I hastened my pace and caught up with Sage and Buckshot at the head of the group. This was as good a time as any to slake my curiosity.
"Sage?" I asked.
"Yes, Compass?"
"When I woke up in the hospital, I heard you and Mo talking about somepony called 'The Doctor', and as I recall, it had something to do with me..."
Sage sighed and let out a small scoff.
"Yes...Mo seems to think that you're...not who you say you are."
"Wait - what? Mo accused me of lying!?"
And I saved her life! The nerve of some ponies!
"Oh, no. Don't get me wrong, we're all very grateful for what you've done for us. We have absolutely no reason to doubt you."
"Then what did you mean?"
Another sigh - something told me that this particular subject matter was somewhat annoying for Sage.
"Moon Shadow only scavenges for the caps - her true passion is a pre-war radio series called 'The Adventures of Doctor Whooves'. She's amassed a sizeable collection of tapes of the show and broadcasts them regularly using an old, low power radio transmitter tower near Trotfell. She's become something of a local celebrity – the foals love her."
"TBC tapes, right? I heard you mention them. What does the acronym stand for?"
"TBC stands for 'Trottingham Broadcasting Corporation'. It was the media company that produced the series. Basically, it was about an alien called the 'Doctor', the last of his kind, who travelled through time and space fighting aliens and monsters. You could probably guess the gist of the episodes: he protected the weak, defended the innocent and defeated the bad guy. That sort of thing."
"Yes, that's very interesting, Sage, but what does it have to do with me?"
"Well, you see, Compass, over the last few years, Mo's started to question whether or not the show's protagonist was...uh..."
Buckshot suddenly chimed in.
"Something other than fiction, sir?"
Sage nodded toward the tall Earth pony, silently thanking him for his input.
"I suppose that's as good a definition as any."
"So...Mo thinks that I'm...an...alien...?"
"A thousand year old, time travelling alien, yes."
"Uh-huh...and where exactly did she get that idea?"
"Oh, I don't know. Something to do with the way you saved her. That little arcane rod you carry around is very similar to the Doctor's tool of choice - his 'sonic screwdriver', and you apparently shouted something in French that was one of the Doctor's catchphrases."
"Right..."
"Compass? Are you alright?" Sage's rich tones enquired.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah. I'm fine." I replied, putting on a forced smile.
"You looked pretty distant there..."
Sage was staring at me with a distinct look of concern, and I recognised a desire to help in his distinguished blue eyes.
"It's just that...every time somepony mentions the Doctor, I have this nagging feeling that I've heard of him before. But when I try to bring the memories to the forefront of my mind, they just fade away. It's like...trying to remember a dream..."
Sage nickered jovially.
"Oh, don’t worry about that! Maybe you've listened to the programme before. Don't Stables have media libraries?"
"Yeah, big ones. But, I'd never heard of the show until you mentioned it there..."
"Well, I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Mo's never really produced any concrete evidence of the Doctor's existence besides some garbled audio logs and encrypted text documents."
"Whoa, hold on, are you telling me she's found proof he's real!?"
"No, she claims to have found proof - most of it comes from StableTec buildings and Ministry Hubs. We've never been able to substantiate any of it. The audio she finds is usually distorted beyond repair, and the documents use military grade codes for encryption. Codes that are phenomenally difficulty to crack."
"But...that means that you can't say for certain that she's wrong..."
Sage nodded awkwardly.
"Well...yes, that's true. But it's all nonsense. I'm sure your similarities are just coincidences!"
"And what if I don't believe in coincidence?"
Sage turned to me with a smirk and raised one of his eyebrows.
"Don't get philosophical with me, little colt. I was reading Starswirl before you were even-"
Sage suddenly whipped his head round to the twelve o'clock position, a calculating look on his face.
Something was wrong.
"Buckshot?" he asked
"Sir?"
"Did you replace Lemon Whip before we left?"
"No, sir. There wasnae time."
"Well then, gents, don't be alarmed, but we have an intruder."
Both Buckshot and I turned our heads to regard the group behind us.
A masked figure dressed in combat barding that matched the specialist's had appeared behind us, and was expertly shadowing the group. They'd managed to join the back of our convoy with such stealth that the others hadn't even noticed the newcomer's arrival.
I couldn't help but admire the cleverness of their tactics - all that we would see out of our peripheral vision was another Trotfell guard, a sight that we all fully expected and hence wouldn't be alarmed by. They could just blend perfectly into the background. Waiting...
In fact, had it not been for Sage's seemingly accidental re-evaluation of our numbers, we probably wouldn't have noticed their presence at all.
Until it was too late, that is.
"You know what to do, Buckshot." Sage muttered.
"Aye, sir." came the whispered response.
Sage edged close to me as Buckshot waited for the right moment.
"Compass, if any shooting starts, let the guards handle it. Keep low and follow me, okay?"
I nodded silently as Buckshot calmly pulled his shotgun from its sleeve, holding it nonchalantly in front of him. As we passed a large outcropping of rock, he stealthily peeled away from the group and doubled back, quickly materialising behind our mystery companion.
With a sudden, harsh roar, he jammed the shotgun into the back of the newcomer's neck.
"DROP YOUR WEAPON AND KNEEL ON THE GROUND, LEGS SPLAYED OUTWARD!"
Good Goddess, could he shout! The rest of our company, with nought but that split second's notice, were all suddenly standing in threatening combat stances with their weapons trained on the intruder. I was sorely impressed - their training was nothing short of exemplary.
The mystery pony froze with a frightened squeak (a distinctly feminine squeak) and let the rifle she was holding in her mouth drop to the ground.
Buckshot gingerly moved around to unmask her, taking care not let his guard down.
He leant forward, and gripped the ancient hockey mask she was wearing with his teeth. Pulling it unceremoniously off of her head, he spat it to the ground.
Just in time for Moon Shadow to sheepishly grin towards her father and me.
"Uh...hi guys..." she whimpered.
I looked to Sage, and saw a look of simmering fury etched across his face. Without warning, he suddenly bellowed at her using a distinctly angrier version of his 'command' voice, perforating my left ear drum in the process.
"MOONLIGHT SELINITIA SHADOW! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?"
I swear, every single one of us winced as he shouted at her - Sage's voice was beyond intimidating.
Walking briskly towards his daughter, he continued to admonish the now mortified pegasus.
"I thought I told you to stay home and rest! You almost died the last time you went scavenging!"
"I know you did, Dad, I'm sorry!" she answered meekly, avoiding his harsh stare.
"Come to think of it, what the hay are you doing out of the hospital!? You had the worst concussion I've ever seen!"
He shot a glance at Caring Heart, who promptly shrugged. Apparently, Mo had an aptitude for stealth.
Sage sighed angrily, forcibly containing his irritation with the situation, and turned to the group's only female sniper.
"Armour, take Mo back to Trotfell. If she tries to resist, you have my permission to restrain her."
"Aw, but Daaad! Come on, it's the Edinbuck facility! I've been trying to get in there for years!"
"We'll bring you back a fridge magnet. Come on everypony, we're leaving!"
"But you need me! Who else can pick locks like I can!?"
"We can all pick locks, Mo - it's not exactly difficult!"
"Ah, but can any of you pick the ones with high security tumblers?"
Sage bit his tongue in frustration.
"No. What's your point?"
"Well, the Edinbuck facility was a high security sort of deal wasn't it? That means high security locks."
The look on Sage's face suggested that he was losing this argument. I noted mentally that I could have simple used the Screwdriver to defeat any locks we encountered, but decided to remain silent (I was too tempted by the opportunity to finally meet the lucid Moon Shadow).
"Come on, Dad, let me come. You'd have to come back for me anyway - you know I'm the best lockpick in Trottingham."
Sage grumbled under his breath and addressed Mo:
"Fine. Do what you want, Mo. But if you end up in the firing line again, I want you to seek cover rather than-"
Suddenly, Buckshot's gruff Coltland accent screamed across the Wasteland as a flurry of tiny explosions began to erupt from the blighted ground around us.
In unison, we began to scatter. Sage grabbed Mo's ear with his teeth and gestured with his eyes for me to follow.
We managed to climb behind a rock just in time for a hoofheld explosive to go off behind us.
"Compass, can you look after-"
He stopped mid sentence as we both realised that Mo had disappeared. Looking up, we saw that she had taken wing in an attempt to distract our attackers (of which there were at least a dozen).
"Excuse me." Sage shouted politely over the din of gunfire, deftly hopping over the rock and diving into the fray.
“SAGE!” I shouted, fearing for the ancient buck’s safety as he sprinted into a hale of bullets.
As the opposing combatants closed in, I quickly learned that my concern was entirely misplaced.
Within seconds, Sage had expertly pulled the weapon from the claws of one of our eagle-headed attackers and begun firing intermittently so that the airspace above him and around Mo was kept clear.
That wasn't the most impressive part, though.
Oh, no.
Between shots, he was executing perfectly timed bucks, pirouettes and throws, effectively disarming any who came within a metre radius of his position on the ground.
He was like a one pony shield!
I was suddenly snapped from my trance as a sweaty, winded Buckshot leapt over the rock I was taking cover behind, landing between my spread rear legs. He looked down at my crotch, panting, each breath fuelled by a vast rush of adrenaline.
"Heh. Didn't think I'd end up down here that quickly." he smirked
"What?" I shouted over the explosive din around us.
"Nevermind." he said as he sat up next to me, "You okay? Are ye hurt?" Buckshot asked as he loaded his shotgun with a series of small red cylinders.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Buckshot, who the hell are they!? Why are they attacking us!?"
"Razor mercenaries. They're a fighting force fer hire."
"So...what, somepony's paid them to kill us!?"
"Apparently..."
"But why would-"
"They're probably after Mayor Sage. He's by far the most powerful figure in Trottingh-"
Before he could finish his sentence, a statuesque griffin at least twice my size leapt behind the boulder in a single, well timed somersault.
She landed with her weapon, another shotgun, pointing directly at Buckshot and me.
The world slowed.
I had been looking at Buckshot a moment earlier, and was fully aware that he wasn't ready to respond. In the time it would take him to raise his own shotgun, the mercenary would have fired, forcing several hundred tiny metal balls straight into our bodies.
We were going to die.
Oh, wait...
Whose hoof is that?
With no robots to paralyse me with fear, my fight or flight reflex had kicked in with a vengeance, causing the muscles in my right foreleg to tense painfully.
The practical upshot of this, however, was that my hoof, upon making a reassuringly solid clang on the metal of the barrel, had batted the lethal pipe from her claws, taking all three of us completely by surprise.
I tried to ready myself for the physical confrontation that I knew for certain was about to ensue, but before I could even rise to my hooves, something happened.
Something that I will remember for the remainder of my life.
She exploded.
Her abdomen and haunches were instantly transformed from functional parts of a living, breathing creature into a torrent of blood riddled with random fragments of meat.
I could have vomited, but I somehow managed to hold it in - it must have been the shock.
Turning to Buckshot, I began to speak in a laboured, rasping voice.
"W-why…why did you do that? S-she was disarmed; d-defenceless. You killed her..."
He looked at me through sad eyes, his adrenaline fuelled bravado shrinking away as he realised how fully and utterly appalled I was.
"Compass, oot here, it's kill or be killed. The sooner ye learn that, the longer you'll live."
At that, he leapt over the boulder and back into the fray, leaving me in my hiding place with the eviscerated corpse of our would-be dispatcher.
I found myself shivering; shaking uncontrollably at the sight of all that pulped flesh.
And at that moment, I had an epiphany...
This was the spirit of the Wasteland.
This splayed corpse was the perfect personification its spirit - it was hate and misery and suffering.
I felt tears stream down my face as the vision of the griffin's death wandered back and forth in front of my mind's eye, repeating over and over again.
She had had a life.
Friends as well, probably.
Maybe even a mother and father, like Caring had mentioned.
And now she was just a pile of meat.
I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes tightly shut as a raging rush began to flow from my gut outwards into my extremities.
Opening my eyes, I found my face contorted with anger. At what, I wasn't exactly sure, but I did know one thing: there was no way I was letting this continue.
Pulling the Screwdriver from my barding pocket, I flipped the control ring round to 14C and climbed over the rock, cautiously dashing toward Sage as a miniscule twinge of pain finished shooting across my forehead.
"Compass! Watch out! Get to cover!" he shouted, while gracefully dislocating the shoulder of an oncoming mercenary.
A look of panic shot over his face as another one of the griffins turned his rifle (a long range model, I noted) toward me and began to line up the sight.
The Screwdriver rattled my head as my assassin's weapon disintegrated into a heap of freshly separated components. The gun’s owner just looked on in surprise as I smirked at him.
Running up to Sage's side, I shouted into his ear:
"This has to stop!"
"You'll hear no argument from me!" he responded while warding off another griffin with a spray of bullets.
"I need you to tell the guards to not attack them after they're disarmed!"
"Disarmed!? What are you-"
"Sage! I don't have time to explain! I can end this fight if you promise me there'll be no more killing!"
He looked at me as if I were crazy at first, but quickly realised from my face that I was being serious, and that I honestly believed that I could do what I claimed.
"On three." he said simply.
I nodded once in agreement and readied the Screwdriver.
"One..."
My teeth clenched tightly around the little instrument
"Two..."
Sage cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
"Three!"
The Screwdriver buzzed loudly as I swept it around our locale like a lance. The wash of rage I felt was unlike any I had ever experienced before! It transcended the brief pulses I had known for so many years, instead manifesting as a constant torrent of aggression and anger.
At the same time, Sage roared in a voice fiercer than any I had ever heard before:
"HOLD FIRE!"
Suddenly (and I mean suddenly) the fighting stopped.
It was as if the hostility had just disappeared, replaced instead by an eerie stillness.
As we came to our senses, the scene around us resolved itself, and we were able to take stock of the situation.
Four Razor mercenaries were dead; six remained, all held threateningly at gunpoint by the Trotfell guards. Thankfully, none of our group had come to harm, which softened my rage slightly.
Rather than looking frightened or angry, the Razors looked confused - their weapons had literally fallen apart in their claws, allowing the astounding reflexes of our combative companions to take them by surprise.
Sage turned to me, a look of utter disbelief on his face.
"I...huff...can't believe that...oof...worked!" he panted.
"Of course it worked." I said hoarsely, the bitterness of the battle still fresh in my mind, "My ideas always work."
I clenched my teeth in anger as I approached the leader of the attack: the only griffin not wearing armour.
"Who paid you!? Who ordered this attack!?"
"Like I'd fuckin' tell you! Piss off!" she spat at me.
I grabbed her by the lapels of her dark grey overcoat and pulled her towards me, making sure that she could feel the warmth of my ragged breath against her beak.
"Listen, love. I've only been out here for a little over a day, and I've already gathered that lives aren't worth hellish much around here. Now, my friends have guns pointed at you and your fellows, and they're ready to fire. Are you going to be a good little birdie and tell me what I want to know, or are you going to become the next random victim of the Wasteland?"
Her gaze was stalwart and resolute; absolutely stoic - she had probably encountered ponies far hardier than me before. I had no doubt that she was going to remain silent, and force me to come up with some other gambit to extract information from her and her cohorts.
Thinking quickly, I focussed my still fresh and pure anger on fashioning the most malevolent, menacing grin I could. Turning to Buckshot (who was currently not engaged in holding a Razor at bay) I said simply:
"Buckshot, give me your gun..."
His reaction was exactly what I had hoped for.
"Um…Compass...? You, uh...you feeling awrite?"
"Just give me your gun..." I said as if trying to keep my voice level.
He looked uncertainly to Sage, who nodded solemnly - he was too clever to not know what I was up to, and wasn't about to stop me. After all, who wouldn't want to know the identity of the pony who had paid for their assassination?
Buckshot passed me his shotgun, and I turned back to the lead Razor with my menacing grin set to full.
"What's your name, my dear?"
She spat at me, prompting one of my hooves to swing out and strike her ribcage. A muffled crack was distinctly audible from within.
"YOUR NAME! NOW!" I bellowed.
"G-Galinda." She coughed.
"Now, Galinda, I'm a pretty poor shot...but I doubt even I could miss from this range..."
Despite my anger-fuelled attempts at harshness, her watery gaze was still confident and strong - I'd have to keep it up for a little longer.
Being perfectly honest, though, it was kind of disturbing how easy I was finding this.
Actually...it was turning out to be...well, fun...
"So...I'll ask you again" I said, "Who hired you?"
I pulled the mouthgrip between my jaws and closed one of my eyes, lining up the weapon's iron sight with her left wing joint.
Even though she was still looking at me defiantly, I could make out a few tiny beads of sweat beginning to matte her feathers.
It was working!
As I was holding the gun, my eye wandered for a split second, catching the only detail of the weapon that I knew off by heart.
At that moment, the next step of my plan was clear.
I began to squeeze the trigger with my tongue.
"Okay, then - be that way. Let'sh clip thoshe wingsh..." I slurred around the grip.
I squeezed harder...and harder...and harder...
Mo suddenly screamed from somewhere behind me:
"Doctor! Don't do it-!"
Before she could finish her outburst, the hammer released, firing a flesh tearing burst of metal pellets directly into her wing joint!
Or, at least, it would have...had the safety catch not been engaged.
All the gun did was produce a heart-stopping click, but it was enough - the lead griffin's eyes shot wide as she screamed, clearly frightened beyond her ability to compose herself.
Frowning in mock surprise, I turned to Buckshot, smirking inwardly at the appalled looks on Mo and Caring Heart's faces:
"What the fuck is wrong with your gun!?"
"T-the safety's on." he responded, clearly unsure of the state of my sanity.
"Ah! Of course! I'm far too used to using my hooves to bludgeon things!" I responded merrily, flipping the catch to the 'off' position, "Let'sh try thish again, shall we...?" I said as I re-established my aim at her delicate appendage.
"Wait!" she suddenly shouted, now well and truly rumbled, "I'll tell you everything, just please, somepony, take that gun off of him!"
My demonic grin widened and I closed in to her face for a second time, making sure to stare intimidatingly into her eyes as I whispered into her open beak:
"Good birdie..."
Sage chose this moment to interject, trotting gracefully into the middle of my act.
"Compass. That's enough." he said firmly.
Shooting him a glance, I tried to exaggerate the respect and admiration that Buckshot had shown him earlier. Putting on the best growl I could muster, I responded in a low, throaty rumble.
"...Yes, sir..."
I backed away slowly, bowed to Sage, and proceeded to stand stock still, staring malevolently at the lead griffin.
I found that I felt lighter; like all the anger that had previously rushed into my heart had been released. I had actually been soothed by the griffin's panic at the thought of being mutilated. As a matter of fact, the fear I saw in her eyes as I pulled the trigger was almost therapeutic...
"Who...w-what the fuck was that!?" she blurted at Sage as he gently trotted towards her.
"Who? Him? That's my new bodyguard."
"W-what the hell did you do to him!? He's crazy!"
"We didn't do anything to him - he came that way. My daughter even seems to think he's the Doctor. You know, from that old series we broadcast sometimes? He's actually pretty interesting when you get past his love for mincing things; would you like to speak to him again?"
"No! Tell me what you want to know and I'll spill it! Just keep him the fuck away from me!"
"That's what I like to hear. Now, who hired you?"
"Some rich buck: a trader named Stone Tower. Our contract with him was for 25'000 caps. We were supposed to bring you to his fortress. That was all, I swear!"
"Ah, I see - him again. Well, you can tell Stone that he's not going to get his hooves on me that easily."
Sage leaned in close to her, and let every single Joule of warmth drain from his voice:
"And you can also tell him...that if he ever endangers my friends like this again, I will find him...and I will end him. Did you get all that?"
A gulp and a nod took the place of a verbal affirmation.
"Good. Now get out of my sight."
The lead griffin picked herself up shakily and gestured wordlessly to her comrades, all of whom wore looks of astonishment.
I doubted that they had ever seen her that frightened. Hopefully, this encounter would go some way toward protecting us from attacks in the future.
We watched silently as they limped away, but I quickly realised that the Razors weren’t the main focus of the Trotfell guard’s attention.
No. For some reason, they were all staring at me.
Perhaps I'd overdone it...?
…
Nah.
I wandered over to the dark grey trench coat that Galinda had left on the ground when one of comrades had come to carry her away.
It was a nice coat, too - lots of pockets!
Pulling it on over my barding, I transferred my Screwdriver and Spectro-Goggles to its side pockets.
I then turned back to my still staring companions and passed Buckshot his shotgun. He looked at me with a wide-eyed expression of awe as I began to speak:
"Shall we get going then?" I asked cheerily.
Without waiting for a response, I turned back to the path and resumed our route.
The others followed...but kept their distance.
After many hours of silent walking, we reached Eagle Ridge and the promise of a rest. The ridge itself was a curious shape; like a disc that had embedded itself in the ground at an angle. It featured one side that resembled a gentle slope, and another that was composed entirely of a vertical wall of harshly hewn rock.
The guards dropped their equipment in front of the wall and started consuming ancient packets of preserved food and murky water. Buckshot and Sage began to converse quietly over a smaller version of the map from the older buck's office.
Everypony was still giving me a wide birth, and after my 'performance' earlier that day, I honestly couldn't blame them.
On reflection, maybe I had overdone it…
Just a smidge…
The only one who seemed to still be interested in talking to me was Mo, but until we sat down to rest, she hadn't actually approached. I had seen her fidgeting just inside my peripheral vision, always seemingly on the brink of coming to talk to me, but never quite making it.
Strange - she never struck me as the shy typ-
"Uh...Compass?"
Speak of Discord...
"Mo..." I smiled, "I wondered how long it would take you to introduce yourself."
"Uh...sorry? We have met, right? I didn't dream that part did I...?" she frowned.
"Well, you were concussed the first time we met and you didn't say a word the second. As it stands, this is the first time we've actually had an opportunity to talk lucidly to each other."
"Oh, yeah. I suppose it is." she mused, "Well then, I suppose introductions are in order! Moon Selenitia Shadow. Pleased to meet you."
Mo beamed at me, showing off her high cheek bones and remarkably straight teeth.
"Compass. And the pleasure's all mine." I smiled back
Mo seemed to deflate a little when I said my name. I wasn't that boring, was I?
"Are you sure that that's your name?"
Ah. So that's why she looked so crestfallen. I'd almost forgotten about all that 'Doctor' business, what with the flying death squad that had attacked us earlier in the day.
"You don't have to pretend with me...Doctor." she whispered conspiratorially.
"Mo, listen, Sage's already told me about that radio series. I think I can safely assure you that I'm not him."
"Of course you are!" she shouted, causing a good few of the guards' heads to turn towards us, "You have the Sonic Screwdriver, you came out of nowhere, and you saved me from certain death just in the nick of time! You even used one of his catchphrases!"
"Yeah, Sage mentioned all that as well. Look, that 'catchphrase' just popped into my head, I saved you because I was scared to death of the Wasteland and wanted some company, and I didn't 'come from nowhere', I ran away from Stable 52 so that I wouldn't get murdered. And as for this thing-"
I pulled the Screwdriver out of my pocket and rolled it between my hooves.
"I found it in a hidden control room. So there. All explained; all rational. Absolutely no thousand year old alien-"
"Hidden room? What kind of 'hidden room'?" Mo interrupted.
I could see why Sage was so exasperated in the hospital - she just wouldn't shut up about this!
"It was disguised as a waste silo." I said while waiving my hoof dismissively, "Some sort of control centre with a big round console and root access to the maneframe. It's how I found out about the murderer in the Stable. I think it was originally designed to monitor whatever it was StableTec were doing to the inhabitants - that's probably why they hid it."
Mo's face was now a very interesting shape - her eyes and mouth had widened to a ridiculous degree during my last sentence, and she seemed to be consuming every word I uttered with an incredible level of interest.
"A...round...control...console...?" she finally managed to get out, "In a...disguised...room...?"
"Uh-huh..." I said warily, backing away from her as that creepy, wide-eyed stare from the hospital made another appearance, "Mo? Are you, uh, alright?"
"You're describing his ship..."
"His what...?"
"His ship! The Doctor's time machine! It can disguise itself according to its immediate surroundings and it has a big, round control console in it!"
I rolled my eyes and grumbled under my breath. A familiar warm bloom was forming in my stomach, and I was desperate not to let Mo become the victim of one of my outbursts.
"Mo, this is ridiculous! I am not the Doctor! And that room was most definitely not an alien spacecraft. For one thing, the controls were all terrestrial. For another, it had a standard StableTec terminal interface. And last, but by no means least, the console's name and model number were printed in Equestrian tex-"
Mo suddenly launched herself at me, pinning my shoulders to the huge face of Eagle Ridge. A curious echoing clang emanated from within the rock face, but I wasn't inclined to focus much of my attention on it. After all, there was an insane blue pegasus in front of me...
With an unrelenting fire in her eyes, Mo began to speak in a shaky, barely controlled voice:
"The name! What was it!? What did it say on the console!?"
Utterly flabbergasted, I responded meakly:
"I-It was an acronym, uh...'RADISH' or something. Uh, 'TRADISH'? 'TARDISH'? Ah! 'TARDIS'! That was it! 'TARDIS'."
Mo looked as if she'd just been given a massive dose of Med-X. A huge, goofy grin had formed on her face, and was rapidly growing wider.
"THAT'S IT!" she screamed, "That's the name of his ship! Time and Relative Dimension in Space! T-A-R-D-I-S! TARDIS!"
Mo leapt off of me and began bouncing around the guards in joy.
"I found him! I found him! It's the Doctor!"
She bounded up to Buckshot and Sage, who had turned to regard the sudden commotion.
"Didn't I tell you, Dad!? He's real! And I've found him!"
Sage simply looked past his daughter to me and shrugged; a look of sympathy in his eyes.
I had had enough.
Trotting angrily up to Mo, I grabbed her by the shoulders and stared straight into her eyes.
"Mo. For the last time: I. Am. Not. The. Doctor!"
She sneekily eyed her father, while still maintaining that obnoxious grin.
"Well, then, Mr. 'I'm not the Doctor', how come you knew how to say 'Allons'y'? Are you asserting that you didn't know that it means 'Let's go' in French?"
"Absolutely, I'm asserting that!"
"So, you don't know any French at all, then?"
"One phrase; half a dozen words. Tops. In fact, I've never learned any other languages! I've tried - I'm crap at them!"
Buckshot and Sage exchanged a confused glance as Mo and I conversed. Apparently, this outburst was nutty even for her.
"But the Doctor could speak and read every language in the universe. The advanced technology of the TARDIS guaranteed it!"
Ah-ha! Finally, a breakthrough!
"Well, then," I beamed, "How could I possibly be the Doctor if I can't speak another language, let alone one as close to English as French?"
"You couldn't..." she said slowly.
"There! See!? I can't be the Doctor! That's proof by contradiction! Compass: one, Mo: nil!"
I smiled confidently and turned to Sage and Buckshot, who, strangely, were both still wearing squint, frowning expressions. Slowly observing the rest of the guards, all of whom had taken notice by now, I noticed that they were similarly nonplussed.
Turning back to Mo, I quickly registered that she was still grinning, although by this point, it had metamorphosed into more of a broad smirk.
I felt another 'checkmate' moment rapidly approaching.
"What?" I asked helplessly.
"You couldn't be the Doctor..." Mo reiterated, "Unless, of course, you do speak every language in the Universe, and you either didn't know about it, or were hiding it from us."
"But I can’t speak anything but English! We've already established that! And as for French, I know what 'C'est la vie' and 'S'il vous plait' mean, but that's about it!"
"In that case,-" Mo began confidently, "-how have you been managing to speak fluent French for the last couple of minutes?"
She winked cheekily.
"Just thought I'd test you...Doctor."
What nonsense was this!? I opened my mouth to shout a response - I'd tried to contain my rage, but now she was just asking for it!
Unfortunately (for me), what actually came out of the hole in my head was...well, let's just say it wasn't what I'd expected:
"Qu'est-ce? C'est absurde! Je vous ai déjà dit que je ne peux pas parler fran...çais..."
All of a sudden, I was aware that my words were not in English, despite the fact that my thoughts were. It was as if a filter had been lifted in my mind, allowing me to perceive that which was previously hidden.
Sadly, like on so many other occasions, the formidable eloquence of my inner monologue failed me yet again:
"C'est quoi ce bordel!?"
After everypony had had a good gawk at me (and I had figured out how to switch back to English), we picked up our equipment and continued on our way to Edinbuck.
Demonstrating a total lack of empathy, Mo bombarded me with questions for the next six hours, and for those six hours, I was unable to answer a single one of them. She made sure that I knew she was 'on to me', and that it was now her life's mission to gain entry to Stable 52 and retrieve the TARDIS.
With the amount of sighing and eye rolling I ended up doing, it was amazing that I could still stand upright.
There was however one question of hers that I could answer.
As we passed a particularly depressing ruined village, Mo asked me what my cutie mark meant.
Now, this was not, in and of itself, a strange occurrence.
What was strange, however, was what happened after I'd delivered my initial answer.
"That doesn't look like any carrot I've ever seen..." Mo remarked rudely.
"It's not meant to be a vegetable! It's a 'caret', the-"
"Yeah, I know, the symbol you get when you press SHIFT+6 on a terminal. What I'm saying is that your cutie mark looks nothing like one..."
Wow...she actaully knew what a caret was?
I must say, I was impressed! Maybe I'd been too hard on her-
Wait...
What did she say!?
I yanked my head around to stare at my flank, almost bowling Mo over in the process. To my utter dismay, the caret on my rump had changed yet again, this time rounding itself off into what looked like a lower-case ‘n’ without the ascender.
It had retained the lustrous gold pigment, but was now almost unrecognisable.
I promptly swore, smashed my hoof against a rock, and swore again as the pain swelled in my appendage.
This was definitely not my day...
Night fell quickly as we continued, cloaking our barren and depressing surroundings with a blanket of twilight.
As was the case with with my initial approach towards Trotfell, I noticed a hazy glow on the horizon as we closed in on our destination. Strangely though, I noticed that the light here was nowhere near as bright.
That seemed strange, considering that this was meant to be the former capital of Coltland. I had envisaged a grand city, filled with brilliant architecture and steeped in history.
Sadly, though, all I saw as we crossed over the horizon was a ruin.
Apparently, Edinbuck was a prime target during the war, attracting much attention from the Zebra bombardment. Having read extensively of the pre war eras back in the Stable, the remains of the once great city emphasised the extent of the devastation. Ornate stone buildings were now little more than piles of rubble, towers and skyscrapers lay dead on their sides and the streets played host to naught but weeds and skeletons.
It was...depressing, to say the least.
The light that had guided us over the last leg of the journey was being produced by a small shanty town that had been erected atop a large hill, where once, I recalled, there had been a royal castle; a refuge for the Princesses during official visits to Coltland.
Now, though, the castle was gone, but fortunately for the area's new inhabitants, the thick, defensive wall had partially survived and now granted them significant protection (in certain directions).
Approaching slowly, we made sure to take no provocative action, appearing instead to be passive and peaceful. After a brief dialogue and search from the local security forces, we were escorted inside.
The Trotfell guards immediately made their way to a pub similar to the one we had just left behind. In fact, it resembled Brandy's to such an extent that I half expected to find my hoofprints in the bar counter.
Oh, crap - I still haven't repaired that....
Following the guards closely, I caught up to Buckshot, and followed them inside.
The Edinbuck pub was called 'The Claymore', and featured a large, bladed weapon that was decoratively suspended behind the bar. As a group, we approached the bartender and made arrangements for accommodation. Sage bade us goodnight and retired to the rooms on the upper level, grimacing as the company once again saluted him in unison. Caring Heart and her nurse followed a short time later, after bartering to replace the medical supplies that the day's battle had cost us.
Mo, on the other hoof, had no interest in sleeping, and managed to slink out of her father's sight, disappearing outside into the cold, damp evening.
I remained with Buckshot who, still wearing his Commander's face, gestured to a table, where the remainder of the Trotfell expedition and I obediently deposited ourselves while he went off to the bar.
There was a new found respect between the guards and I, no doubt prompted in part by my superlatively theatric combat performance from earlier. Simply put: they no longer knew what to make of me, so they were doing their best to keep their respective distances while still trying to save face.
Every so often, I was able to catch the hardened bucks and mares at the table casting their eyes nervously back and forth, staring warily at me as we waited on Buckshot's return. Fortunately, it seemed that my attempted assassination of their comrade from earlier had been largely forgotten.
After several uncomfortably long minutes, Buckshot returned, shadowed by a diminutive unicorn waitress.
She was carrying a large, flat tray in her magic atop which sat a number of squat glasses...
...filled with amber liquid.
Bugger.
One by one, the glasses were set down on the heavily stained surface of the table, and the guards started to drink.
Naturally, I held back, in an attempt to add to the air of mystery that had recently developed around me.
The guards slowly began to relax as the perceived threat of me eviscerating them with my teeth became increasingly distant.
The drink began to flow freely over the next half hour as glass after glass of the 'fun disinfectant' (known locally as Wild Pegasus) was poured. Now well and truly unwound, the guards started to chat and joke. Some of them lit cigarettes, and a trio even began playing a card game.
Little by little, I felt myself being accepted into the group.
One of the mares, a unicorn called Armour Pierce, eventually plucked up the courage to talk to me amidst the Claymore's smoky din.
"So, uh...Compass, is it? Or do we call you 'The Doctor'. Heh..." she asked while nervously fidgeting with her mane.
Okay, so maybe they weren't entirely comfortable with me yet...
Perhaps it was time to open up diplomatic relations.
"Compass will do fine, thanks." I said warmly.
Armour was visibly relieved to hear me respond rationally - I could see it in her body language.
"So, like...what was up with that...thing you did today?"
"The fight? I, uh...just didn't want anyone else to get hurt; griffins included. So I decided to stop the conflict."
She placed her drink on the tabletop and squinted at me.
"You decided to end the fight? Just like that? You just...decided?
"Well, yeah...pretty much. Why? Is that weird?"
"Of course it's weird!" she suddenly shouted, "They were trying to kill us! Kill! As in brutally murder! And you just sort of...wandered into the crossfire and started talking! Less than five minutes later, the griffins were leaving without their guns, we were all still alive, and you'd nicked their leader's overcoat!"
"Sounds pretty straightforward to me." I said smugly as I shrugged.
Armour just stared, her head cocked to one side and her jaw dangling.
I shouldn't have been enjoying this as much as I was. In an attempt to conceal the smirk that was beginning to form on my face, I quickly brought my glass up to my mouth and took a triumphantly large swig.
My hubris was promptly rewarded by the whisky, which decided to thermally sterilise my mouth and throat on its way down.
Goddess, I hated this stuff...
While trying to stave off tears, and maintain some semblance of dignity, I noticed that another of the guards, an extremely broad Earth pony called Kerb Stomp, had taken an interest in the waitress serving us. He seemed to be commenting on how agreeable he found the appearance of her body.
"Holy fuck, that's a fine flank. Goddess, the things I'd do to that!" he whispered to the buck sitting next to him.
His friend, who had already been severely affected by the Claymore's refreshments, responded with an inebriated chuckle.
"No way you could afford an arse like that Stomp! That there's a premium lay."
Leaning back slightly, I turned to regard the mare whose posterior had drawn so much attention.
She was of average height and slim build, with a streaming pink mane. As she was facing away from me, I was subjected to a view of her hindquarters - the apparent source of Kerb Stomp's fascination.
What was he so interested in?
As I continued to stare, I found myself unintentionally examining the curve of her flank; the pert roundness of her rear. Her pleasant curvature guided my eyes from her the base of her legs upward. There was something...alluring about it; almost hypnotic...
I was suddenly finding it very difficult to get comfortable in my chair. A remarkable tightness had developed at the base of my belly, much like when I had-
Oh no.
Quickly crossing my legs, I prayed to Luna that nopony had noticed my predicament.
Naturally, since my luck was worse than that of the average killing joke victim, somepony already had. Kerb Stomp chuckled throatily next to me and leaned over to speak, sending a shiver down my spine as his warm, alcohol scented breath caressed my ear.
"You like what you see, eh? You've got pretty good taste for a Stable colt, I'll give you that!" he said loudly as he battered one of his enormous hooves into my back.
Hey turned to his 'colleagues' around the table and shouted happily at them:
"Hey everypony! How about we all chip in a few caps and get the hero of the day a decent lay?"
A riotous cheer erupted from the Trotfell guards as they all began to fish small piles of the Wasteland currency from their barding pockets. I hastily whispered into Armour Pierce's ear (seeing as how Buckshot was still on the other side of the table):
"What's happening? I don't like where this is going!"
She stopped and looked at me as a look of amused realisation spread across her face.
"Oh, yeah! Caring mentioned that earlier! Hey, Stomp, you can put your money away. Compass 'ere weren't allowed any sex in his Stable."
Kerb Stomp's mouth widened in surprise.
"What!? So he's a virgin!? You're a virgin!?" he said, turning to me in shock.
I didn't know exactly what a 'virgin' was, but I figured that being one was embarrassing. Mentally preparing myself, I sighed and admitted the state of affairs to Kerb Stomp.
"I suppose so..." I shrugged.
To my surprise, this only made the large buck smile more.
"Aw, mate! We've just got to get you laid now! Caps on the table, guys!"
The guards continued to shell out hoof-full after hoof-full of caps, building a substantial pile in the centre of the table. As I absent-mindedly glanced down at my hastily concealed 'organ', it suddenly dawned on me what Kerb Stomp and the others were talking about:
"Wait, wait, wait - hold on. Are you talking about...reproduction!?"
"Naw, mate, you use protection! That way there ain't any need for a shotgun wedding!"
"Protection? Against what? The...the insemination part?"
I frowned. Pay to engage in the act of reproduction, then protect against it? Was I missing something here?
"Then...what's the point?" I asked, confused.
Kerb Stomp responded with a deep, lurching laugh.
"It feels awesome, that's the point!"
Well...I suppose that made sense. It at least explained why there was a kind of crime associated with it, as both Sage and Buckshot had alluded to earlier.
"Oh. But...doesn't who you do it with matter? I mean, it strikes me as a pretty personal sort of affair, and you're trying to pay somepony to do it with me."
Taking a large swig from his glass, Kerb Stomp scrunched up his face in thought.
"I suppose that is kinda important, yeah. The first time's special, no doubt about that. Heh - we could find a nice bent colt for you if you'd prefer that to a mare!
"A colt!? You mean you can do it with ponies of the same gender!?"
He shrugged in response.
"Yeah, but who'd want to. Fuckin' gays..."
I looked across the table.
"Well, to be honest, if that's case, and the first time's meant to be special...I think I'd like mine to be with Buckshot."
At the mention of his name, Buckshot spat a mouthful a whisky across the table, and started to cough uncontrollably. At the same time, the pleasant, jovial murmur that had blossomed around the table halted abruptly, leaving a heart stopping void of silence.
Kerb Stomp, Armour Pierce and all of the other Trotfell guards just stared at me, seemingly in a unified state of utter astonishment mixed with a dash of outrage.
By Luna, what had I gone and stuck my hoof in now!?
A sudden, sharp pain started to spread through the back of neck as Buckshot, having launched himself from his chair, grabbed my mane with his teeth and in an impressive show of brute strength, threw me bodily out of the pub in a single swing of his broad neck.
I had just enough time to pick myself up off of the wet Edinbuck ground before he pinned me to the Claymore's exterior wall with his hooves.
"WHIT THE FLYING FUCK WIS THAT!?" he whispered forcefully, clearly concerned about being overheard.
"I-I was j-just telling the t-truth." I stammered, terrified that I had done something shamefully taboo.
"Ya stupit little fucker! Do ye have any idea what kind'y a position ye've put me in!? Whit if word were tay travel that Ah'm a...a...fuckin'...poofy wee colt cuddler!? How safe do ye think Trotfell'll be after that wee revealtion, eh!?"
"Buckshot...I-I'm sorry. Please believe me, I didn't know! I still don't. Tell me what I've done wrong and I'll try to fix it. You have my word!"
Exhaling loudly, Buckshot's breath quivered as her held back tears. He gritted his teeth and continued:
"Celestia's cunt, what am I gonnae do wi' you...? Ye cannaae just go aroun' sayin' stuff like that, Compass! Ah've git a reputation to uphold! Right now, ma squad's in there wondering if we're fightin' or fuckin'!"
"So...what I feel...what you feel between the two of us. It's...not allowed...?"
"It's not that it's not allowed, it's just that...some ponies dinnae like it."
"But what business is it of theirs! It's your body, your mind and your happiness that they're opinions pertain to! They don't matter!"
"That's just the thing, Compass. They do."
I sighed, trying not to well up.
"Well, then, Buckshot...just know that when you've stopped caring what those others think...I'll be waiting for you."
He looked helpless. Absolutely helpless.
"And, I forgive you, by the way."
"F-fer whit...?"
"For the black eye and bloody nose I know that you'll now have to give me..."
Tears began to flow freely down his face as he tried to look anywhere but into my eyes.
"Aw, fer fuck-! I-I cannae-!" he stuttered, "J-just fuck off, Compass! Just leave me the fuck alone!"
At that, Buckshot galloped off into the darkness of the Edinbuck ruins. I had no fears for his physical safety, but I was sick to my stomach with worry for his mind. How could such a strong pony be so absolutely defenceless?
As I stared into the darkness after him, I caught sight of a flash of blue hide out of my peripheral vision.
Mo had finally returned from wherever she had wandered off to, and was now rapidly approaching me. Without a single word, she grabbed the collar of my overcoat and started pulling me in the opposite direction of the pub, gravitating towards one of the smaller shacks. It was tucked away in a corner, out of both sight and mind. Curiously, I hadn't noticed the diminutive structure until Mo had begun to approach it.
I found myself standing in front of it, and the sweet smell of incense wafting into my nostrils. It was a welcome scent after the harsh reality of the Wasteland had become apparent to me over the last couple of days.
Knocking gently, Mo remained uncharacteristically silent and waited for a response.
A strangely accented voice penetrated the wood:
"Who is it that comes to greet? Enter now that we may meet."
Pushing the scrap wood door inward, Mo and I crossed the threshold into the tiny dwelling. It was permeated by a wonderfully warm light that was being generated by a dinky little wood burning stove in the corner.
Sitting elegantly in front of the fire was pony covered from head to hoof in thick black and white stripes.
The Zebra turned to regard her houseguests:
“Ah, Moon Shadow! I knew you would return. Come; sit down, but take care not to burn.”
“Thanks Zeanna.” Mo said quietly.
We laid down as our host had requested, resting our legs on the softly lined floor. I couldn't immediately identify the material used for the upholstery, although it had a strange, almost organic texture.
“This is the buck of whom you spoke? Interesting! I have never met one of these Stable folk.” Zeanna rhymed.
I found myself wondering what would happen if she were to be confronted by a word like ‘orange’.
“Yeah, this is him, Zeanna.” Mo responded, gesturing towards me, “He's been suffering from amnesia recently, and I was hoping you could, well...take a look, maybe?”
Take a look?
At what? My memories? Why did I have a bad feeling about where this was going?
Zeanna caught my concerned look and smiled warmly.
“Worry not young buck, for there is nothing to fear. You see, I have a talent, and it is that of the seer.”
Winking at me, the zebra turned to Mo and received a small pouch. From the jingle as it passed between their hooves, I guessed that it was full of caps.
Gracefully rising to her hooves, Zeanna laid down directly in front of me.
She grasped my head with her hooves and, closing her eyes, began to breathe deeply. With each inhalation, her pulse slowed more and more, until she was as still Eagle Ridge.
There was something eerily calming about her touch, a feeling that was compounded when she began to hum quietly under her breath.
I felt a comforting weariness overtake my body.
The aroma of the incense, the warm crackle of the fire, the softness of the unidentified carpet, the deep, melodic tone of Zeanna's voice. It was all so...comfortable. I could feel every single tension, fear and worry flow gently out of my body.
I was so calm...so safe...so tired.
My eyes drooped and my breathing slowed as a fuzziness filled my mind.
Would Mo and Zeanna notice if I caught a quick forty winks?
What if I started snoring? That would be pretty embarrassing...
I'd just have to hold...it......together...for...a few...more...
...nevermind....
The walls of the Stable encircled me in a cool, metal cocoon as I trotted happily through its labyrinthine corridors.
Thousands of doors; thousands of rooms.
I'd been here before. Many times, in fact. And I knew the layout well.
For instance, you see that door on the left there? That's the day I solved my first partial differential equation.
The one at the end of the corridor? My first encounter with Atom's raging temper.
"There's nothing in here that I don't already know about, Zeanna! You and Mo won’t find anything!" I shouted at the walls.
No response.
Ah, well - she'd realise eventually. At least then I'd get some peace from Mo.
Continuing down the corridor, I peeked at the emotions etched into the metal of the doors.
There's the day I met Bulkhead...
Ah. That one's my first work demerit. I cried...
The first words I blurted out to Petri...
The corridor's end (or beginning, depending on how you looked at it) was now dead ahead.
My birthing day - the gooiest of all my memories
"See, Zeanna? Nothing else here!" I reiterated, "You can wake me now, and get this nonsense over and done wi-"
I turned around while grunting impatiently, expecting to be met with the wall that marked the beginning of my life - the point before which I didn't exist.
Instead...
I found another door.
A blue door...
A blue door labelled with the words rather than an emotion.
What the hay was a 'POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX', and, more to the point, what was it doing in my mind.
I stood stock still, terrified of what may lay beyond the malevolent wooden portal.
This door felt different from the others...
It felt...
Forbidden...
Like I wasn't allowed in...
But...it was my memory! How could I not be allowed in a part of my own memory!?
Gathering my courage, I placed one of my hooves upon the handle. The world around me groaned, and a dull pain began to bloom behind my eyes.
A warning...
You know what I think of your warning, Mr. Blue Door?
I think you can go and shove it up your arse!
Pressing gently against the wood, I opened the door and began to step inside. A gentle, shimmering light spilled out, soaking the corridor in gold; the same gold that had consumed me during my first encounter with the-
No...
I couldn’t believe it.
There, sitting directly in front of me, was the TARDIS control room.
Of course – what an ingenious hiding place...prior to the beginning of my life. Who can say they've ever remembered something that far back?
I caught sight of the bronze plaque out of the corner of my eye as I circled the room in disbelief.
T.A.R.D.I.S. TYPE - 40 MEMORY MINDSPACE, COMPASS
At least my psyche had a sense of humour.
I reached out to touch the metal, when I felt a wrongness envelop me.
I wasn't meant to be here! This wasn't for me to see!
Suddenly, there was a mighty bong, like a thousand clocks chiming at once, and the crystal column began to glow. It brightened quickly, bleaching the room with its light.
A wave of sounds, images and emotions washed over my form, forcing me to back away from the console.
The chaos streamed smoothly past as I strained at the new brightness of my surroundings. Through it all, I was able to make out a strained, crying voice.
It wasn't its volume that made it so noticeable, though. Nor was its frequency a defining feature.
It was its tone.
The voice was just so...sad; so disappointed and morose. It was making me tear up after only a few seconds of exposure.
"...failed..." it wept, "...I...failed...all of them..."
I leant forward into the wind of time that had engulfed me, trying to close in on source of the voice. Somehow, I just knew it would be able to give me some answers.
I had to find it!
"Who are you!?" I shouted.
The response was a wet, shuddering whisper.
"...failed..."
"I have to know who you are!"
"...all of them..."
“Are you...? Are you the Doctor?”
“...so many....gone...all gone...”
“Please! I need your help!”
As soon as the sentence left my lips, the voice roared, blasting me out of the room and down the corridor.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
As the roar continued, it quickly raised in pitch, transforming from the tortured buck's voice to that of a panicked mare.
Zeanna's terrified scream pulled at my being, and I was torn from the Mindspace as the connection we shared was torn asunder.
I was plunged back into reality to find Zeanna rushing into the corner of her shack, her eyes streaming with tears of absolute horror.
"Y-you are of the stars! Born of them! Evil! Get out! Get away!"
I looked to Mo and realised that she was just as taken aback as I was - she was sitting stock still, a wide look of shock spread across her face.
"Zeanna..." I said while tentatively approaching her, "What is it? What did you see in-"
"AWAY!" she suddenly screamed, as fresh tears careened down her face. She buried her head in her hooves and cowered, quivering behind the stove.
All that Mo and I could do was back out of the shack, as its owner broke down and hid within her own home.
We walked silently back to the pub, both trying in vain to process what had just happened. Mo had taken one look at my face as we left Zeanna’s shack and thought better of asking me anything.
I had simply stared into her eyes, hoping that my expression would convey the necessary information.
As we reached the pub, we found that most of the patrons had retired for the evening. With a tiny nod, I bade Mo goodnight, and ascended the stairs towards the rooms that the males of the Trotfell contingent had hired.
A floodgate had been opened in my mind, and I was now fully aware of the ‘fictitious’ time traveller’s past.
His past?
My past?
Was there even any point in making that distinction anymore?
If the I really was the Doctor…then…where did Compass fit in?
More to the point: where would I end up if and when the Doctor took over completely. I’d already started to emulate his behaviour, and now I was even beginning to see his memories! For all I knew, his entire psyche could be slowly overwriting my own!
What would happen to me when he was finished moving into my skull?
How much of me would be lost?
How much would remain?
My mind was imploding – it was altogether too much for me.
As I passed a partially open door, my gaze wandered inside and, to my surprise, found Buckshot sleeping soundly within. Without a second thought, I stepped inside and gently pulled back the covers, sliding onto the mattress beside him. As I slowly wrapped my forelegs around his body Buckshot squirmed suddenly, reaching for his shotgun as he turned around to investigate the uninvited bed guest. His hostile frown softened immediately upon realising it was me, and I felt his muscles relax as he accepted my presence.
Upon his face, I recognised the deeply carved streaks of protracted crying, and he no doubt noticed the encroaching despair in mine.
Without saying a word, he turned around and tightly hugged me.
We fell into a deep, warm sleep as our embrace dissolved the troubling and cruel reality around us.
As I closed my eyes that night, I braced myself for the coming days, and the knowledge that with each passing hour, more and more of me would be lost.
Lost to the Doctor.
<<<<< O >>>>>
"What do you mean 'Time Lord technology'!?" Ditzy exclaimed.
"I thought you said that you were the last of your kind, and that the TARDIS was all that remained of Gallopfreyan technology!"
"I...I am. At least, I...thought I was..." I stammered back.
How was this possible!? The Time Lords and their planet were sealed in an envelope of space-time so that the Time War wouldn't be able to spill over into the rest of the Universe. My family, my friends and my home were all locked away forever.
I simply had to investigate this!
“Come on Ditzy!” I shouted, a mischievous grin forming on my face, “Allon-!”
“Allons-y?” the grey mare interrupted.
“Ahem. Yes...quite.” I grumbled in response.
As we exited the TARDIS, we found ourselves in a broom cupboard attached to a spartanly furnished office. The style was somewhat surprising for Equestria - I'd never seen that much chrome before in my life.
Noticing, a secretary's desk in the corner, I trotted over to what looked like a computer terminal. Surely Ditzy's species hadn't developed digital computers - last time I checked they'd only just managed steam locomotives!
Rounding the bulky plastic casing, I was amazed to find numerous lines of emerald green text glowing cheerfully in front of me.
ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM COPYRIGHT ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES - SERVER 7 -
1) Appointments/Schedule 2) Word processor 3) Calendar 4) Office security 5) Local intercom 6) Relay messaging 7) Solitaire
Amazing.
Truly amazing.
Not only did the Equestrians have computers and networks thereof, but they had even managed to developed that most important of innovations; the true mark of a computationally advanced civilisation:
Digital solitaire.
Whipping out the Sonic Screwdriver, I ran a quick diagnostic scan of the apparatus, and was bowled over with yet another surprise:
It was nuclear powered!
"What've you found, Doctor?" Ditzy asked from across the room.
"A testament to your species' ingenuity, Ditzy. It seems that Equestria has gone through its industrial revolution in record time – the population has arrived at what looks like a computer age. They’ve even developed a type of nuclear power!"
"Nuclear? What's that? Sounds kinda cute!" my winged companion giggled.
"A lovely sentiment, but not really applicable, I'm afraid. 'Nuclear' relates to a technology that allows the derivation of power from special materials called 'isotopes'. It's a pretty amazing, and dangerous, step for such a small interval of time."
"Dangerous? I thought you said it was ingenious?" she replied with a squint.
"I did. And it is. But nuclear energy can be harnessed and used as a weapon. It's a 'with great power comes great responsibility' sort of deal."
I turned to regard the rest of the room.
"Anyway, Spiderpony quotations aside, we're here to find a piece of Gallopfreyan technology. Where's the secretary? This is a secretary's office, after all. It should have a secretary in it, right?"
Ditzy's eyes lit up as she recognised my desire to continue.
"Ooh! Does that mean it's cover story time? I want to be, uh...oh! Shadow Flash, Private Investigator Extraordinaire!"
I subtly rolled my eyes.
"Ditzy, do you remember the last time you tried to introduce us to the locals?"
Her reverie suddenly vanished as an embarrassing memory was pulled to the surface of her conscious mind.
"Erm...no...no, I don't..."
I raised an eyebrow and fixed Ditzy with a stare.
"Oh, really? What about the time before that then? Or our trip to the Stranraer expanse? Remember either of those?"
A bright red blush filled her cheeks as she avoided my gaze.
"Th-those were...uh...accidents! Yeah, accidents! I won't do it again, I promise! Just let me try the psychic paper one more time! Pleeeease!"
Sighing, I passed her the psychic paper from one of the magic 'pockets' that Twilight Sparkle had helped me craft during my time in Ponyville. Honestly, I didn't know how I'd lived so long without them!
"Alright then, Ditzy, shall we have a go at practicing our introductions?"
She answered with an enthusiastic nod.
"Okay - I'll start." I said, "Ahem! Halt! Who goes there?"
"Shadow Flash, PI!" Ditzy announced dramatically, holding my wallet out in front of her like a police badge, "And this is my assistant, Clockwork, of the, uh, TARDIS Society. We're here to inspect your facility! Here's our authorisation."
Ditzy eagerly flipped the inner panels of the wallet around, displaying the other side of the psychic paper so that it appeared as if she had just produced a second set of papers. I had to admit, she was getting better at this.
Just one slight hiccup, though...
"And that's why you're not allowed to do our introductions." I said quietly.
"Huh? But I...I did everything right! I showed them the psychic paper, I made up aliases for both of us, I even pretended to flip to another form of ID!"
"Yes, you did, and you made a fine job of it. It's just that-"
I gently grabbed the synthetic leather wallet from her hoof and, turning it round, held the psychically infused card up to her eyes.
"-according to this, Ditzy...you're a muffin."
"Wh-what!?" she squeaked, squinting to read the imprint her mind had left on the card.
"Says right here: 'Muffin'. Underneath the embossed gold image of what I believe is a double-chocolate-blueberry-special from Sugarcube Corner."
"Oh..." sighed Ditzy, her ears flattening against her head in disappointment. I sidled up to the disheartened pegasus and extended a foreleg around her shoulders.
"Hey now, don't worry about - you are getting better. Hell, I probably will be assisting you soon enough-"
"What the hay! How did you get in here!? I'm calling security!" squawked a panicked voice from one of the room's larger doors.
"Oh! Hi there! I'm the Doctor and this is Ditzy Doo. We're unauthorised intruders." I announced with a cheerful grin.
Wait.
That wasn't right...
"Y-you're what!? Help! Security!" screamed the pink mare as she galloped out of the room.
I turned around to find Ditzy shooting a pair of vicious visual daggers at me. Despite her somewhat squint ocular alignment, the stare was still quite intimidating.
"Heh heh...whoops." I giggled nervously, "Maybe we should get out of-"
"There they are! Spies! Arrest them!" the pastel coloured equine shouted, as she re-entered the room flanked by two burly Earth pony guards.
Worryingly enough, they were carrying what appeared to be chemically propelled projectile weapons. This did not bode well for us, or for ponies of Equestria - just how far had their militarisation gone?
"DOWN ON THE GROUND, HOOVES BEHIND YOUR HEADS!" one of the guards barked.
Now, I'd been in situations like this many times before. And from my extensive and varied experience of making stuff up, I'd never found anything that makes a guard back down faster than the threat of a surprise inspection.
"Ah! Very good. Excellent, in fact.” I said nodding, “That couldn't have taken you more than eight seconds!"
"Eh?" the guards replied as they glanced back and forth at one and other.
"Your response time. It's very impressive, isn't it?" I turned confidently to Ditzy who, to her credit, continued my gambit without missing a single beat.
"Oh, yes. Very impressive. We might even put you in for commendations."
"A-an inspection!?" gawked the guards, "I-I'll need to see some ID, sir."
"Certainly." I once again pulled out the psychic paper and presented it to their beady, combative eyes, "I'm Clockwork and this is my assistant, Miss Shadow Flash."
I heard a tiny, whispered 'squee' emanate from Ditzy's direction.
"We're here for an inspection of your security infrastructure and intrusion countermeasures. Your locks could do with some improvement, but the security forces so far have been outstanding! Keep it up!"
"O-oh! Thank you, sir! Will you be needing anything else, sir?" they barked, bringing their hooves up to their brows in a ridiculous salute.
"Well, for starters, you can stop saluting me."
"Very good, sir. Permission to return to our posts, sir?"
As I opened my mouth to respond, the double doors behind me flew open to reveal a pale yellow Earth pony with a fiery crimson mane neatly tied with a pink ribbon.
With an unmistakable southern drawl, Applebloom marched authoritatively into her crowded secretary's office and began shouting at its occupants:
"Whut the hay is all the ruckus out here!? Is it too much to ask for an engineer to be left in p-!? Ditzy!? Mr. Clockwork!? What are y'all doing here!?"
Once Applebloom had dismissed the guards and assured her secretary that we weren't spies, she invited Ditzy and I into her lushly appointed office. As we were shown inside, I noticed a bank of terminals like the one outside that took up the entirety of the far wall. An impressive series of technical diagrams was littering the monitors.
I was able to recognise reactor schematics, circuit diagrams, high-level program code, geographic survey reports - all conveniently displayed so that a single pony could access and manipulate all of the data at once. Applebloom had apparently become quite the brain – I knew that filly would go far the moment I met her.
"So..." she said enthusiastically as she jumped into a lavish, comfy-looking chair situated behind an enormous drafting desk.
"MoWT Inspectors, huh? That would explain where y'all have been for the last few years. Did Applejack send ya to check up on her l'il sis or something?"
"Uh, yeah." I replied, still engrossed in the myriad of information displayed on the screens behind her.
The psychic paper had done well in crafting our aliases, setting us up as agents of an important government agency, but unfortunately, it had also served to confirm my worst fears about the Equestrian’s recent technological advancements.
They were driven by conflict.
I felt a pit open in the bottom of my stomach as I read the magic little card: ‘Ministry of Wartime Technology’ it had said.
Wartime.
I had had such high hopes for the Equestrians and their simple, cheerful way of life. I didn’t care about the specifics of this conflict - I simply hoped that they would survive it, and that they would be able to gain some wisdom from the inevitable pain it would bring.
After all, I didn’t think I could survive the destruction of another promising species...
"You know Applejack." Ditzy said with a smile, covering for me as I tried desperately to steer clear of a vortex of dark memories, "Family’s always been her top priority!"
One of Applebloom’s eyebrows slowly rose by an almost imperceptible distance. When next she spoke, a miniscule hint of suspicion highlighted her words.
“Uh-huh...” she said as swung gently back and forth in her seat, “And when wus the last time y’all saw AJ?”
“Oh, uh...l-last week. Yeah, she asked us to come here personally to-”
“-see how I wus doin’?” Applebloom interrupted.
“Uh...y-yeah?” Ditzy cautiously replied while shooting me distress signals with her eyes.
I was too interested in the screens to notice her need for assistance – there was something gravely wrong about the data on those displays.
“Right.” Applebloom continued, as she nonchalantly pulled a high calibre revolver from one of her desk drawers and began absentmindedly loading it with bullets.
“Here’s whut’s gonna happen. Y’all are gonna tell me who you’re really working for and why y’all are here, or I’m gonna turn y’all over to the Ministry o’ Morale fer spyin’.”
The weapon’s cylinder snapped shut and Applebloom confidently aimed it in our direction.
“Uh...Doctor? This isn’t going to plan!” Ditzy squeeked.
Once again, I ignored her – that ‘something wrong’ was rapidly turning into ‘something disastrous’. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach; a precipice that was drawing closer and closer with every character I read.
“Y’all are missin’ fer years,-” Applebloom continued, “-and now ya just turn up outta the blue when we’re at a critical point in our war with the Zebras? Call me jaded, but-”
“WE’RE AT WAR!? W-WHAT!? A WAR WITH WHO!?” Ditzy choked.
“The...Zebras?” Applebloom responded, her expression suddenly taking on a hint of confusion, “Y’all are meant t’be from the Ministry o’ Wartime Technology! Whut kinda spies are y’all!?”
Ditzy ignored her question, instead turning to me with a distraught fire burning behind her damp eyes.
“Doctor, please tell me this isn’t right! Please! This has to be an alien illusion, or an alternate reality or...or something! Just please tell me it’s not real!”
I pulled my searching eyes away from the monitors and looked at Ditzy, noting the look of absolute confusion that Applebloom was now wearing.
“I’m sorry, Ditzy. The fabric of Equestria’s history has a dark patch in it; a place of convergence and singularity. A point in time and space that is forever fixed. I’ve always tried to avoid them, but...”
I sighed and looked away, a wave of guilt bubbling though my insides.
“I’m almost certain that we’ve arrived at a pivotal time in your planet’s history. Regardless of whether this war is won or lost...Equestria will never be the same again.”
Ditzy took a moment to absorb my words, and stared at the ground as they sank in. Applebloom was the next to speak:
“Wh-whut the hay are y’all talking about!? You’re acting as if-“
Applebloom never finished her sentence.
Why?
Because she was too busy falling off of her chair in surprise as I jumped up onto the desk.
“THAT’S IT!” I shouted pointedly, as the revolver was hastily brought to bear again, “That data series! Third monitor from the left, second from the bottom! Where did you get it!?”
“S-stay there! I’ll shoot!” Applebloom shouted.
“If you were really going to shoot us you would have done it already!” I shouted, “Applebloom, this is unbelievably important – where did you get that data series?”
She was still in shock from my sudden outburst - her shuddering jaw was definitely not the best place for the trigger of a loaded gun right now. All she did was maintain her frightened stare. Lowering my voice, I slowly stepped down from the desk and calmly closed in on the shaking mare, making sure not to startle or intimidate her further.
“How long have you known me, Applebloom?”
“S-since I wus a filly - more than twenty years.” came the oscillatory response.
“Okay. And who am I?”
“Uh...you’re Clockwork. Y-y’all are – were – a craftspony from Ponyville.”
“Not quite.” I said simply, “Applebloom, my name isn’t Clockwork. Most just call me ‘The Doctor’. And I’m not a craftspony, nor am I a spy. I’m a time traveller...”
I let the words sink in for a moment before I continued.
“More important than that...I’m not even from this planet.”
Applebloom’s eyes were wider then most moons as she stared in awe at the tail being spun before her.
“My race call themselves the ‘Time Lords’, and we come...well, came from a planet in the Canterborous Constellation called ‘Gallopfrey’.”
I extending a hoof to help her up.
“My race was once the most powerful in the Universe, and they were consumed by a war that at one time threatened all of Creation. I’ve seen whole galaxies ablaze with conflict, entire planets enveloped by fire, civilisations burnt from existence with the press of a single button.”
I looked deep into her eyes as she fully righted herself.
“So believe me when I say that I am no fan of war. I’m here to help. Okay?”
I smiled as warmly and as genuinely as I could while Applebloom nodded gently.
“O-okay...” she said, still in shock.
“Applebloom, I need to know where you got that table of numbers.” I repeated, pointing at the offending monitor.
“They’re produced by an equation I worked out. They show-”
“The sub-ether harmonic resonance frequencies of extra-dimensional manifold geometries. Yeah, I know – I need you to tell me where you got the equation from.”
“I didn’t get it from anywhere! I derived it maself – took almost six months o’ head-scratchin’.” Applebloom responded, her voice tinted with a distinct tone of pride.
“So, you’re telling me that you derived the analytical solution to the Ponega-Rassipony inequality by yourself!? In six months!?” I shouted, my jaw trying its hardest to be one with the floor.
“Well...yeah.” Applebloom smiled back bashfully.
Now that was impressive. Only a handful of races were that developed in the field of temporal mechanics, and only one had ever resolved that particular analytical solution.
You can probably guess which one.
That must have been what was giving us the strange readings back in the TARDIS...
Applebloom, the daughter of a farmer, had just become the first Equestrian in history to develop the theory of temporal-spatial relativity!
In short: she had taken the first steps to building a TARDIS.
I would have congratulated her.
I would have wished her well.
I would have left Equestria that day with my head held high, confident that the safety and stability of time and space were in the hooves of new custodians, a thousand times kinder and more sincere than those that came before them.
I would have...if it hadn’t been for one thing:
I’d never met an Equestrian time traveller.
The realisation weighed on me, heavier than a dwarf star; a knowledge so grave and depressing that it was if I was feeling the loss of my race all over again.
“Applebloom...” I whispered hoarsely, “...I’m so sorry...”
I turned to leave, my head hung low. Tears were beginning to pool at the corners of my eyes, but I was determined to keep it together, even if it meant hiding from Ditzy in the TARDIS while I wept.
They were to die...
All of them...
And I was powerless to stop the destruction...
As I trotted morosely past Applebloom’s desk, my eyes passed over the controls for her giant computer and her impressive array of drafting tools. It was such a shame; such an injustice.
This race had gone from steam powered locomotive engines to time travel in under thirty years. A race that showed that promise simply did not deserve such a dire-
Wait.
Steam power to time travel in thirty years!?
How the hell had I not found that suspicious!?
Progressing from steam propulsion to nuclear fission in that space of time was difficult enough to fathom, but time travel!?
It was impossible!
I whipped around suddenly as a ray of hope streamed into my consciousness.
“Applebloom! That equation! When did you figure it out? What was the date? What were you thinking at the time? Tell me everything about the six months you said it took you to resolve the solution.”
Still somewhat unused to my outbursts, Applebloom took a moment to regain her composure and reply:
“It...it was a Thursday...I think. Ah...or wus it a Wednesday...? Hmm...ya know, Ah...Ah can’t seem to remember. In fact...Ah can’t...Ah can’t remember any of it!”
Her face filled with fear and confusion as she tried desperately to recall her movements.
She’d never be able to, though – I knew a psychic block when I saw one.
As frightened as Applebloom was, I found myself grinning widely. She was being manipulated! That’s why there weren’t any Equestrian time travellers – they’d never invented the technology in the first place!
But that wasn’t all – the source of my elation was a far more profound realisation:
This meant that Equestria might not have been doomed after all! This war – the conflict that was apparently driving their technological renaissance - might not have been the catastrophe I had originally feared!
Unfortunately, my reverie was short lived - a niggling thought was burrowing through my mind:
If Applebloom hadn’t derived the solution to the Inequality...who had?
As if in response to my thought, the intercom on Applebloom’s desk suddenly crackled into life, snapping both of us out of our respective trances.
“Miss Apple? Doctor Maestro is here to see you.” the receptionist pony stated.
Doctor Who?
Applebloom depressed a red button next to the intercom’s light bulb and replied into a microphone mounted on top of the desk.
“Can this wait Gem? I’m in a...meeting.”
Why did that name sound so familiar?
“He says it’s important, ma’am. I don’t think he’s going to go away.”
Maestro...Maestro...it was on the tip of my-
Oh no.
“Oh, for Luna’s sake - send him in.”
The double doors of Applebloom’s office swung open, and I stared in disbelief at the equine standing between them.
The Master stared coolly back.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Footnote: Level Up!
New Sonic setting: 14C - Dismantle+ The Dismantle setting just got a power boost! This powerful sonic wave sets up catastrophic vibration patterns in large structures, shaking them to pieces. When used on smaller devices, it can be applied over large areas.
Perk added: Doctor Who!? Past memories have been awakened within you, granting you the skills and experiences of their original owner. You gain 1 point to both your INT and CHAR stats.
I shifted uncomfortably under the hood of my overcoat as a crowd of ponies jostled around me. Red Heart had gone to buy train tickets, leaving me alone on the platform.
I was truly amazed that she had trusted me, especially given our less than ideal introduction - her bloodied bandages and debilitating limp had turned many heads on our way to the station.
As I'd said earlier though, she had been lucky. If I hadn't fired my Gauss rifle earlier that same night, it wouldn't have still been recharging when my itchy trigger hoof and woeful aim had gotten the better of me. Red Heart would have been Red Splat, and I'd have been well and truly buggered.
I wonder if she realised just how much I was relying on her-
"Compass? Are you okay?" said Red Heart, who was suddenly standing directly in front of me.
"Hm?" I said, "Uh, yeah, I'm fine. Why do you ask?"
"You looked like you were in some sort of trance." she replied, while surreptitiously checking my pupil dilation.
"That's just what happens when I start thinking." I said
"Uh-huh..." Red Heart responded, as she gave me a funny look, "Well, now that you're back, here're our tickets to Edinbuck."
"Yeah, about that: where's the train?" I asked, "That board over there says that it should have been here five minutes ago."
"Wow, you really aren't from here are you?" chuckled Red Heart, "We're in Trottingham, Compass. Everything here's at least ten minutes late."
"Oh..." I said as I anxiously shifted my weight from one hoof to the other.
"Are you nervous or something?" Red Heart asked, noticing my discomfort, "You look like you need to pee."
"I'm just...worried, you know? Buckshot and Mo could be anywhere...or any time for that matter! I've got to find them before they get hurt!"
"So, those are your friend's names then?"
"Yeah." I said sharply as I glanced back and forth along the track again, "Mo's short for Moon Shadow, though."
"Right," said Red Heart, as she made a mental note, "Compass? What can you tell me about your relationship with your mother?"
I squinted at her out of confusion.
"Uh...what?" I said, "What the hell has that got to do with anything!?"
"I'm just trying to understand your delusion." she replied matter of factly, "It's very complex, but I think I can help you with it."
"Hold on," I said as I rounded on her, "You said you believed me! I trusted you!"
"Calm down, Compass! Don't get me wrong, I do believe that your friends are in danger, but I think that you're so traumatised by their predicament that you've invented a scenario whereby retrieving them is vital to some grandiose plan to save the world. That way, you have no option other than doing your absolute utmost to save them."
"What!?" I scoffed, "You can't be serious! What about my rifle and my Pipbuck!? My horn, for crying out loud!?"
"Peculiarities, I'll admit. But time travel? Come on Compass, you're too intelligent to believe in that sort of rubbish. I can tell how smart you are just from hearing you speak."
"Right then, nurse Red Heart," I said sharply, "if I'm such a nutcase, then isn't it a bit risky to travel with me in the first place, let alone try and solve my mental issues en route!?"
"Not really." she replied evenly.
"And why is that, my dear!?" I said, almost shouting.
"Because I can tell that you have a good heart..."
Taken completely off guard by her sudden complement, I opened my mouth to angrily reply, but was forced to close it again after a seconds long silence.
"I...uh...thanks..." I eventually stammered, "I think that's the nicest thing anypony's said to m-"
Suddenly, my ears were pierced by a shrill scream that was originating from the floor between my forelegs. A young filly had wandered in front of me and peeked up into my hood without my noticing. When her gaze had been met by a scarred, metal horned creature rather than a pony, she had become panicked and frightened.
Unfortunately for Red Heart and me, that meant that everypony on the platform was now stating directly at us (including two military guards). They approached us at a gallop and raised their weapons as the wailing filly was scooped up by her mother.
"Keep your hooves where I can see them!" the first one bellowed, "What's going on here!?"
"He *hic* he's a *hic* monster!" blubbered the tiny pony as she snuggled into her mother's protective embrace.
"You!" shouted the lead guard, "Take down your hood!"
By now, every equine on the platform had shifted behind the two guards and their rifles but, amazingly, Red Heart had stayed by my side, and had even assumed a position between the guards and me. I found myself smiling under the hood as the command was repeated.
"I told you to show your face! This is your final-"
"What do you think you're doing!?" shouted Red Heart furiously, "How dare you humiliate my patient like this! He's recovering from reconstructive surgery and the last thing he needs is for attention to be called to his disability!"
"Your patient!?" exclaimed the lead guard, "Oh, uh...w-we're sorry ma'am."
He moved to turn and dismiss the crowd as a light wind tickled my fetlocks. It seems that time was not yet entirely on my side, as the train chose that very moment to thunder into the station, whipping my hood down and causing my Wasteland-honed reflexes to kick in. In a single, practised motion, I pulled my rifle from the concealed sheath under my coat, lowered my centre of gravity and mentally flicked open the alloy horn on my head, readying my artificial magic for action.
The guards didn't like that.
Not at all...
Before I could stop myself, I had lined up the rifle's sights with the lead guard's unicorn appendage and was about to mentally queue him and his comrade up as SATS target when my brain caught up with what my body was doing.
I couldn't kill them. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to wound them.
It's not like I was worried about changing the future or anything like that - the events of the apocalypse were, are and forever will be set in stone. The Last Day represents a point of convergence; where past and future reduce to a single inexorable path of causal singularity. So naturally, killing two ponies who were statistically going to snuff it anyway wouldn't have made much of a historical dent.
No, the real reason that I couldn't follow through with my attack was that the pair of them were greener than the text on a terminal monitor. They were young, they were inexperienced and I was scaring the shit out of them.
I thought about what to do; SATS was good for that sort of thing, and came to a familiar conclusion.
I was going to run.
Creative, huh?
I turned the targeting power of SATS away from the guards and instead directed it toward the train itself, selecting a portion of the locomotive's drive system.
A moment later, I had delivered an electromagnetically accelerated kinetic round into the piping that lined the engine's boiler. Steam blasted from the now warped and broken assembly, creating a moving shield of superheated water vapour between Red Heart, me and the rest of the ponies on the platform.
"That's our cue to leave!" I shouted as I grabbed Red Heart by the collar of her nurse's cape and started running along the track behind the train.
A cacophony of confused screams and shouts from behind us heralded our escape as we continued further and further down the track.
Suddenly, however, our progress slowed to halt.
Everything slowed to a halt, as a matter of fact.
Seemingly, one of the crowd was a bit more resourceful than the guards - somepony had just fired an absolute doozy of an anaesthetic spell at us, and both Red Heart and I were rapidly losing consciousness.
I heard hurried hoofsteps approaching from the platform as the pair of guards came to take us prisoner.
"What the fuck was that!?" I heard one of them say, "What do we do!?"
"We, uh, contact the Ministry of Morale!" his partner responded, "And we tell them we've caught a pair of spies!"
I looked into Red Hearts eyes, trying to visually beg for her forgiveness.
But she was already unconscious.
I awoke for the umpteenth time to find myself sharing a warm embrace with Buckshot. Having never shared a bed with anypony before, I was amazed by the sense of security the contact between our hides offered. The comfort was absolute, and I sighed contentedly while nuzzling into his neck. So blissful was this feeling that the events of earlier had been reduced to nought but whispers on the horizon of my mind.
Was I the Doctor? Would I become the Doctor? What was my ultimate fate?
These questions and hundreds more had been throttling my brain as I slipped in and out of my serene state throughout the night. When I was asleep, I would dream of the Doctor. When I was awake, I would worry about the Doctor. Only in the cosy transitional zone of fatigue in between the two could I find respite from my woes.
It was in this delightful state of mind that I currently bathed, swimming just above the level of conscious thought. In my reverie, I laid my head on the pillow and tightened my grip on Buckshot’s muscular body.
His thick mane smelled deeply of the earth (in a pleasant way, mind - nothing like the various stenches of the Wasteland that I had recently encountered). Since falling asleep, we had subtly shifted positions so that our bodies fitted together like a pair of spoons, and I felt Buckshot’s reassuring bulk rising and falling as he breathed.
Outside the Claymore’s window, a light rain was falling, eliciting a gentle tinkle from the corrugated iron sections of roof in the shanty town. I noticed that the residents of the ruins had constructed simple streetlights that filled the decaying streets with a feeble orange glow. Sodium based bulbs, I mused.
Blinking slowly, I continued to relish the feeling of safety I was being treated to, and let my eyes lazily trace the strong curve of Buckshot’s back. My gaze eventually found his flank, and I felt a sweetly familiar tightening between my legs as I ran my hoof over it. His coat had assumed a dark blue tint from the outside lighting, making it almost indistinguishable from my own hue. I rubbed back and forth along his hide, savouring the tactile pleasure of being so close to another pony.
It was several seconds before I noticed it.
Blue light...
The only colour in the room should have been orange...right?
Returning my attention to the window, I was surprised to see that a diffuse blue glow was currently supplementing (and in some places, practically replacing) the orange haze of the streetlights. It was also moving, indicating that the source was mobile.
I accidentally nudged Buckshot as I stepped off of the bed and approached the glass, eliciting a small moan from him as he reflexively rolled over. My view wasn’t much improved by the change in perspective - the glow’s origin was moving slowly through the shanty town’s narrow streets, preventing direct line of sight.
I would have liked to think that this was normal for Edinbuck; that it was just some innocuous little thing that went on at night - like a guard patrol or something similarly mundane.
I knew better by now, though.
“Buckshot,” I whispered, “Hey. Buckshot. Wake up.”
“Mmmmore butter please...” came the murmured response.
“Buckshot!”
“Naw...naw that’s too much...”
Rapidly losing patience, I trotted over to the bed, lowered my head to his ear and shouted:
"BUCKSHOT!”
“LACTOSE!” he screamed as he shot upright, driving his forehead into mine in the process. Buckshot immediately clutched his head tightly and shouted out in pain:
“Son of a bitch! Compass, whit the hell are ye doin’!?”
Reeling from the impact, I propped myself up against a wall in an attempt to hasten my recovery and concentrate on getting rid of the pounding behind my forehead. By the Goddess, was Buckshot’s head hard!
“It’s...oh Goddess, my head. It’s outside. There’s something I wanted to – ooh... Something I wanted to ask about.”
"Ah get nutted in the face so you can satisfy yer curiosity!? By Luna, Compass, you need to work on yer social skills!”
"It’s not like I meant that! Besides, you ‘nutted’ me!”
"Aw, whitever. Well, Ah’m fuckin’ awake now, so whit is it?”
“That light down there in the town. Is that normal?”
“Whit light? The blue wan? I, uh...cannae be sure. Havnae been near these parts for a good few years.”
“Hmm...you think we should go and see what it is?”
“Edinbuck has its own guards, Compass - Ah’m sure they can take care of it if anything’s up. Now, can we, uh...” he stammered while blushing brightly, “...go back to spooning? Ah...Ah really liked it.”
It was actually called spooning? How about that, eh?
I smiled as the statuesque warrior in front of me bashfully avoided my gaze. In silence, the both of us turned away from the window and headed back to the bed – just in time for a colossal explosion to bathe the room in a hot crimson bloom.
As the plume of flame receded into a steady blaze, Buckshot and I acted in unison.
First, we whipped back round to the window.
Next, we turned to each other.
Finally, we ran from the room, as fast as our legs could carry us.
Twelve seconds later, Buckshot and I were racing down the stairs of the Claymore hotly pursued by the rest of the Trotfell contingent.
Diving out of the lobby, we quickly made our way toward the blaze, weaving through the miniature labyrinth of corrugated iron and rotting wood in the process. As we rounded the second last corner, we were met by a crowd of ponies, all of whom were either armed, armoured or both.
Now, their presence would have been very reassuring...if they weren’t running away from the fire! As the group began to pass us, numerous panicked screams were aimed in our direction:
"Run for your lives!” one said.
“It'll kill us all! Get out of here!” shouted another.
I stopped in my tracks and extended one of my forelegs, quickly catching one of the fleeing by his neck.
“Where the hell are you going!?” I screamed, “We need to get that fire out!”
“It's invincible! W-we threw grenades and it didn't even flinch!” came the response.
“What didn't even flinch!? What's round that corner!?”
“It's the Sentinel!” he responded before galloping off into the night.
The Sentinel? Here? Oh, but of course it was.
Of. Fucking. Course it was - Luna forbid, I avoid conflict and disaster for more than twelve hours!
“Right then,” I said whilst gritting my teeth in annoyance and retrieving the Screwdriver from my inner pocket, “Allons- ahem...let's go.”
Followed closely by Buckshot, Sage, Mo and the Trotfell guards, I galloped around the final corner, and immediately registered a massive heat bloom as the blazing remains of Zeanna's shack came into view.
While my companions set about fetching water to douse the flames, I simply stood and squinted – something was standing in the middle of the fire.
A figure; tall and pony shaped.
Narrowing my eyes further, I was able to make out a sack of some sort draped over its back...
A striped sack.
“ZEANNA!” I shouted as realisation dawned within me.
My voice carried over the crackle of the fire, causing the zebra’s captor to suddenly take notice of our presence. It turned sharply to regard us and I looked upon its face as its features were silhouetted by the dancing flames. My gaze was met by gleaming chrome armour and a pair of shining blue eyes, glowing with a cool malevolence that made my stomach churn distressingly.
Worryingly, I couldn't make anything out of that stare, except that it was somehow more than just a machine. Before I could process what that 'more' could actually be, the Sentinel raised one of its forelegs, pointing it directly at me. In a moment of panic, during which the bottom once again fell out of stomach, I grabbed the two ponies nearest me and pulled them to the ground.
“GET DOWN!” I shouted, as a deadly volley of crimson light flew above out heads.
Luckily, Zeanna's shack had a sturdy foundation that had only just started burning, so there was enough of it left to provide decent cover from the blasts. Mo and Buckshot (the pair who had just so happened to be closeby when I ducked) screamed as the storm above us began to collide with the flesh of our companions.
Kerb Stomp was the first to be hit - being the largest after Buckshot he was a logical target. The blast struck him squarely in the chest, and his now airborne corpse glowed a brilliant orange as it fizzled from existence before our eyes. A millisecond later, the volley selected its next victims in Armour Pierce and two other Trotfell guards (whose names I hadn’t learnt). They fell to the ground in unison, dying, with blood, guts and severed limbs littering their locale.
The remainder of the group were similarly incapacitated by that single, arcing volley, falling like rain on the rough ground beneath us. Sage, Caring Heart and her nurse all dropped into unconsciousness with still-burning holes in their hides.
As Mo and Buckshot gawked in horror at the devastation around them, I kicked myself up from behind our burning cover and aimed the Screwdriver directly at the Sentinel. However at the very moment I depressed the button on the arcane tool's shiny casing, a third blue light appeared on the robot's face, and was accompanied by a grainy, electronic voice.
"TRANSLOCATION ARRAY CHARGED! ENGAGING TRANSMAT!” it announced without a hint of emotion.
Having been completely taken aback by its sudden speech, I had flinched. Unfortunately, that was all the time it needed. A hazy blue glow surrounded the automaton and it's captive as they disappeared from view.
I stood in abject surprise, an emotion that quickly transitioned into shock, as the smouldering remains of the confrontation lay dying around me.
It had fought us for less than a minute...and in that time it killed, maimed, kidnapped or terrified every equine in the settlement.
As the only able-bodied survivors of the Sentinel’s short but deadly assault, Buckshot, Mo and I were left with the unenviable task of tending to the dead and wounded.
Between us, we were able to save Armour Pierce’s life, though she lost a foreleg in the attack that we weren’t equipped to reattach. The two other ponies that had fallen alongside Armour weren’t so fortunate - they had simply lost too much blood, slipping smoothly into Death’s embrace before we could even reach them.
Sage, Caring Heart and the Trotfell nurse were stable, having only been grazed by the Sentinel’s awesome firepower. They would require a great deal of rest before fully recovering, and would probably suffer from serious scarring.
At least they would live, I thought to myself.
With the wounded bandaged and resting, I was introduced to a new custom of the Wasteland: burial. Apparently, it was customary to place the dead underneath a six foot layer of dirt and leave them there to decompose. If I’d had my scientist’s hat on at the time, I probably would have commented on the inefficiency and futility of the gesture – their organs could have been transplanted, their matter composted and their bodily fluids recycled so that others could benefit from their demise.
I was not, however, in any such mood.
I resigned myself to bowing my head as Mo read aloud a prayer to the Goddesses wherein she asked them to watch over the immortal souls of the deceased. The suffering that robot had caused...it was beyond belief. One unit; one weapon; one volley. It was no wonder that the Sentinel had acquired such a deadly reputation.
Its motivation was a mystery though. Why would it suddenly waltz into Edinbuck, only to abduct one resident? It was pretty obvious that the fire was caused by the local security forces’ attempts to subdue the machine, and it was equally obvious that the Sentinel had been threatened enough by our arrival on the scene to start shooting.
Apart from those two facts, however, everything about the encounter was still a total mystery to us.
In all honesty though, I didn’t much care for speculation – and neither did Buckshot or Mo. As far as we were concerned, there were more important things to deal with.
Like revenge, for instance. Buckshot’s rage was...concerning, to say the least. It wasn’t that he was screaming or flailing or anything like that. It was the fact that he was still and silent for the majority of the time that scared me.
I already knew that we were still going ahead with our expedition, although its purpose had changed somewhat since we had set out from Trotfell the previous day. As far as Buckshot was concerned, we were going to avenge the deaths of his guards (or die trying). In Mo’s eyes, we were going to save Zeanna from whatever fate the Sentinel had in store for her.
And me?
I just wanted to stop it from harming another living soul. For some unknown reason, I had seemingly embraced my namesake, taking it upon myself to become Trottingham's resident ‘moral compass’ (even though I was named after a drafting tool rather than a navigational aid).
Well, it wasn’t as if anypony else was going to do the job...
“So...when are we going?” I asked flatly as Buckshot and I sat morosely around a table in the Claymore.
“Ah'm ready right now.” he replied, an angry scowl plastered across his face.
“Me too,” answered Mo as she trotted into the pub, “Some of the Edinbuck guards have come back, so I've told them to take care of the wounded. They should be in good hooves till we get back.”
"Right then..." I said while exhaling shakily - my hopes of a brief respite having been dashed, “Onward.”
We left Edinbuck at dawn, hoping that the morning sun would provide a little colour to the otherwise bleak experiences of the previous evening.
Unfortunately, it only made us feel worse. That glorious yellow fireball was reduced to a pale whitish blob by the omnipresent cloud layer, causing the three of us to trot dejectedly onward, our heads hung low and our shoulders slouched.
Death was altogether too prevalent here. I wanted - nay, needed - desperately to improve this place. To lift it up out of the wastes and show it everything that it was missing. The urge to help grew steadily within my breast until Buckshot announced our arrival at out destination.
The Edinbuck StableTec facility spread out in front of us like a series of giant cinder blocks. It was a moderately sized building – similar in proportion to the Trotfell city chambers.
Looking at one and other in turn, Mo, Buckshot and I nodded silently, and began to make our way toward the main entrance. We found the front doors unlocked just as Sage had mentioned. Trotting gingerly inside, we were greeted by a large (and distinctly bland) lobby with a receptionist’s desk and a large version of the StableTec logo fastened to the far wall.
“Okay,” I said, “Let's start at the top of the building and work our way down.”
“Why can't we jus' start at the ground floor?” asked Buckshot.
“Well, it stands to reason that the longer we're here, the more likely it is that we'll encounter the Sentinel. If we start at the top, we'll be that much closer to the exit when we do find it. That way, if it proves too much to handle, we can make a quick escape.” answered Mo.
“That's...exactly what I was thinking...” I gawked.
“Ah well. Greats minds think alike.” Mo said as she confidently trotted away and began examining the atrium elevator controls.
“You know what else they say about thinking alike?” whispered Buckshot in my ear, “Fools seldom differ.”
With that, he followed Mo and tried in vain to push open the elevator door.
“Looks like we're taking the stairs.” he announced.
We reached the top floor quickly enough, and agreed to split up so that we could search the rooms more effectively (we also agreed that under no circumstances should we separate by more than a couple of hundred yards).
“Oh! Hold on a minute, guys.” Mo said as we were turning to begin our search, “I've got these. I think we should wear them.”
She produced a trio of curious looking headsets, one of which she fastened to her brow. Upon flicking a small switch at the device's rear, a lamp on its side began to produce a surprisingly bright blue light.
“I call them headlamps.” she grinned, “The light they cast is modulated so that we can see by it, but also so that the electronic sensors robots and turrets use can't. I use them while I scavenge – they let me see them before they see me.”
"Ooh!" I said, impressed by her ingenuity, "That's pretty cool, Mo...but, well...didn't a robot almost kill you the last time you went scavenging?"
“It doesn't stop the bastards from sneaking up on you!” Mo shouted.
"Ah." I replied as she harrumphed indignantly, "Duly noted."
Mo passed me one of her contraptions and I pulled it on over my head. The device was remarkably well made for something composed of scavenged two hundred year old parts.
“Shall we?” I asked.
An affirmative nod from each of my companions answered, and we split off down separate corridors.
I noted the names on the doors as I trotted up and down the facility's passageways, cautiously edging my way around corners in case an angry robot was waiting there to eviscerate me.
The place was huge! It was going to take ages to search, even though we had tripled our efficiency by splitting up. Maybe we should have gotten help from Trotfell? A full combat team certainly would have made looking for the damned thing easi-
I did a double take as an urgent signal from my eyes reached my brain. One of the name plaques bore a singularly familiar name:
Applebloom
Head of Research and Development
I gulped as the plaque stared me down. Taking a deep, bracing breath, I pushed through the heavy door and into the room beyond. The desk of Gem Shine, Applebloom's secretary, sat silently in the corner, the terminal atop it having died long ago. I turned slowly to my right.
The broom cupboard...
Yanking the door open, my eyes widened in horror as a mop viciously attacked my head. I screamed from the surprise and threw my assailant to the ground. I quickly realised, however, that the ancient piece of janitorial equipment was probably just as scared of me as I was of it, so I resorted to panting steadily in a vain attempt to calm my still panicked heart.
Casting my eyes around the walls, I was reassured to find no sign of the TARDIS. Honestly though, I don't know what I had expected, but something told me that I would have been dissatisfied regardless of what I'd found inside.
Turning to the internal door, I trotted cautiously over to it, my little blue headlamp showing up the rich grain of the barrier's heavy wooden texture. I pushed through into Applebloom's office and, once again to my horror, immediately recognised every single detail of the room.
Why couldn't it all have just been dreams!?
Why couldn't the Doctor have stayed confined to fiction!?
Dejectedly wandering over to the terminal keyboard, I marvelled at the sophistication of Applebloom's setup - it was by far the nicest workspace I'd ever come across, read about, or even dreamed of. With reverence, I flicked the computer's power switch and grinned geekily as the smooth whir of an internal cooling fan breathed gently from its vents. A familiar text interface appeared:
ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM COPYRIGHT ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES - SERVER 7 -
Welcome, Miss Applebloom Last login: 1763960 hours ago You have no new network relay messages You have no new voicemail messages
Network error 697 – No response from server Warning: simulation maneframe is offline; analysis functions are available on local hardware only.
Please select function:
1) Appointments/Schedule 2) Word processor 3) Spreadsheet 4) Computer aided design 5) Material properties database 6) Finite element structural analysis 7) Computational fluid dynamics analysis 8) Programmer’s interface 9) Relay messaging 10) Library computer access and retrieval system (keyword search)
Accessing the search dialogue, I keyed in some general terms, and was rewarded with a fat file pertaining to Stable 52. Within its virtual covers was more data than I could have possibly asked for! I started reading the subdirectory names, feeling my inner nerd getting more and more excited as I progressed.
“Jackpot!” I said aloud, “Let’s see now: ‘Blueprints’, ‘Geological survey data’, ‘Reactor specs’, ‘Pipework layouts’, ‘Material requisitions’, ‘Work orders’- Ah-ha! ‘Project summary’! Come to Compass!”
I triumphantly tapped out the command to open the file and began skimming for details of how to re-enter my home and at the same time circumvent the murderer’s control of the Stable maneframe.
"Oh, system from days of old, lead me to your access code...” I hummed, as I crossed my rear legs and started nibbling on my left forehoof.
What?
It’s how I sit when I work, okay! Don’t judge me...
As the end of the file rolled onto the monitor, I noticed that it was incomplete. Squinting at the miniscule green text, I reeled as I realised that it was in fact corrupted. According to this data, Stable 52 wasn’t even finished. I checked and re-checked, but always reached the same dead end. After a certain date (approximately four months into construction), it appeared that all of the subsequent information regarding Stable 52 had vanished from the StableTec servers.
I started to worry about my chances of finding the details of the maneframe, but was relieved to discover that the Stable’s computer system had been ordered, manufactured and delivered before the cutoff date for the data loss. With a deep sigh of relief, I pulled my PipBuck to my face in order to download the administrator passwords and override protocols spelled out in the maneframe’s digital instruction manual (a copy of which was suspiciously absent from Stable 52).
>>ROOT/BACKUP/OS/SETUP.EXE >>BOOTING TO BACKUP OS...
>>PIPBUCK OS V 1.0.0 >>COPYRIGHT ROBRONCO INDUSTRIES >>AUTO-CONFIGURING FOR FIRST BOOT...
Blinked the little screen. I sighed in frustration and reached for the notepad in my barding pocket, grumbling expletives as I took my pencil in my mouth and began to write. How long was it going to take to restart!?
As I finished my espionage, a tiny thought flitted through my conscious mind; a simple question with potentially awful repercussions: did Applebloom keep a journal? If she did, there'd surely be an entry about the day she met an alien. Hell, if I was her, I'd have written a whole book on it!
I braced myself as I nervously browsed the unit's expansive local hard drive. Although I found no reference to a personal journal, I was able to locate a personnel database of some description. I searched for the players in my most recent vision (in order of how much proving their existence would scare the living shit out of me).
The first result was for Applebloom - the monitor told me nothing I didn't already know: she came from a family of farmers, was recognised as an engineering genius, invented a massive proportion of Equestria’s major technologies and landed a position as the head of research and development at StableTec.
No surprises. Good.
Next was Ditzy. To my horror, the search dialogue’s auto-complete function suggested the name 'Ditzy Doo' as a likely match to my query, and promptly displayed a picture of a familiar squint-eyed face. Her file had been encrypted, and required something called ‘Oakflare clearance’ to fully access, but the fact that it existed at all was enough.
My stomach began to churn with worry – Ditzy was real...
That meant that part of my dream was true. If it all turned out to be a recollection of some past series of events rather than a story conjured by my subconscious, then my deepest fears would be confirmed.
I continued my snooping, and found myself gasping in shock when the information of a Dr. Maestro, also of the R&D department, popped up onto the screen. His file was similarly encrypted, and curiously enough, also bore the note:
OAKFLARE CLEARANCE REQUIRED
I had a go at the password, but was rumbled by the terminal's amazing security software. Apparently, at some point just before the Last Day, Applebloom had developed a patch to stop inquisitive buggers like me from restarting a terminal in maintenance mode and rummaging about inside the keystroke log for the unit's password.
I knew she was good...but by the Goddess, I didn't know she was that good!
My heart rate increased as I typed the second to last search term:
Master...
I almost hyperventilated when an entry appeared (‘Oakflare’ encrypted, of course). That was four out of five! The chances of my visions not being memories were shrinking fast!
Pushing it out of my mind for the time being, I focussed on my next task. It was time to search for...Him...
The keys clunked under my shaking hooves, and I was overcome with dread as the word was spelled in green light before me. I could feel a cold, deathly grip on me spine as I typed the final 'r', and fought to retain control of my bowels as I tentatively tapped the return key.
The world around me stopped and my heartbeat became a panicked thrum as the search results materialised before my eyes:
>> Search complete: 1 result found >> Display Y/N?
Shaking with trepidation, and with sweat pouring down my face, I pressed the Y key.
ACCESS RESTRICTED: OAKFLARE CLEARANCE REQUIRED Enter password:
He...he was...
...real...
That meant I really was in possession of his memories. That he really had been superimposed onto my mind somehow. That I...
The sheer weight of this realisation pushed me to the floor.
How long...?
How long...did I have left...?
Until he-
A creak in the corridor outside shattered my despondent trance, and my head snapped reflexively towards the far wall.
I forced myself up off of the floor and tip-hoofed through to the outer door. Gently nudging past it, I was relieved to see the bright blue cone of one of Mo's headlamps. Judging from its height above the floor, it belonged to Buckshot. I called out to him:
“Oh, Buckshot, it’s you. Listen, I've found some stuff on the Stable. The data was a bit patchy, but I think I got what...I'm...Buckshot?”
He hadn't even acknowledged my presence as I spoke to him. Had I done something wrong? Maybe not 'spooning' was a taboo out here. I tried again:
“Buckshot? Are you okay? Listen, I'm sorry if I've insulted you or- Ohhh holy SHIT!”
As I spoke, Buckshot's head had rotated towards me, revealing not one, but two gleaming points of blue light.
These lights were not of Mo’s design...
And that was not Buckshot...
I'd just tried to converse with the Sentinel!
Turning faster than most dwarf stars, I whipped around and sprinted away from it, but was haunted by the pneumatic hiss of its limbs as it gave chase.
Crying out, I tried to warn my friends about the danger I'd found:
“MO! BUCKSHOT! I'VE FOUND IT! HELP!”
Twisting around another corner, I found myself approaching a T-shaped junction, and a frantically bobbing blue light at it's end told me that at least one of my companions had heard me (either that, or the Sentinel had translocated itself straight into my path and managed to lose an eye at the same time). Fortunately for me, Buckshot's gruff Coltland tone resonated throughout the hallway as he confirmed his identity and began shouting at me:
“COMPASS! GO THE OTHER WAY! IT'S CHASIN' ME!”
Wait...what!?
“NO, IT'S CHASING ME!” I responded.
In the thick, unyielding confusion that resulted from that brief exchange, Buckshot and I collided painfully into one and other, heads first. Fighting through the new pulsing pain in my forehead, I stood up and pulled my friend to his hooves.
“Buckshot, I found the Sentinel! It's right behind me - we have to find Mo and regroup!” I blurted, as the pneumatic hissing came steadily closer.
“Whit!? Compass, the Sentinel's chasing me! Although, I agree wi' ye on the regrouping idea.” Buckshot responded.
As we conversed, it seemed as if the hissing was closing in from all directions. But I knew that that wasn't possible!
Unless...
“Wait,” I said, “if the Sentinel's chasing me...and you...then that means-“
“THERE'S MORE THAN ONE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” Mo screamed as she swooped down the corridor towards us, hotly pursued by a quartet of shining blue eyes.
Skidding to a halt beside Buckshot and me, the pegasus whipped her head back and forth, quickly gauging the hopelessness of our situation as the other two Sentinels came into view at the far ends of the adjoining corridors.
We were now completely surrounded, and judging from our previous encounter, hopelessly outgunned. Panic gave way to acceptance in a surprisingly short space of time, and we nodded solemnly to one and other in turn as Buckshot, Mo and I gritted our teeth and drew our weapons.
If today was indeed our day to die, we were going to go down fighting!
A shotgun was cocked.
A rifle round was chambered.
A mode ring was set.
Four robots fired in unison.
<<<<< O >>>>>
"Hello, Doctor." the Master smirked.
"Wait - you two know eachother!?" Applebloom gawked, "Maestro, whut the hay's goin on here!?"
"Just a little reunion, Applebloom - we were schoolmates, weren't we Doctor? I might even go as far as to say we were friends...once."
"Schoolmates!? B-but don't that mean that y'all are an...an..."
"Alien?" The Master said as he raised an eyebrow and curled the corner of his mouth - he did always love showing off.
"Doctor, are you alright?" Ditzy chimed, noticing my utter lack of motion or speech, "Who is this guy?"
"Yes, Doctor, why don't you introduce me to the fillies?" interjected the Master.
I swallowed nervously and responded, keeping my eyes fixed on him as I spoke.
"Ditzy. Applebloom. This...is the Master."
"So he's...he's a Time Lord then...?" Ditzy asked, almost in awe of the smarmy buck standing in front of us.
"I see you're still picking the sharp ones, Doc," he said sarcastically, "I suppose it makes up for eye thing."
A look of indignation shot across Ditzy'a brow as she visually scolded at the Master. Summarily ignoring her, he continued to address me:
"Anyway," he said, "aren't you even going to say hello? It has been a while."
"A 'while'!? Nevermind a 'while'! I...I saw you die!" I blurted, "Your TARDIS was devoured by the Nightmare Foal at the battle of the Medusa Cascade!"
"Almost devoured." he smirked, "Funny story actually. You remember that old mare's tale? The one that said the Nightmare Foal once ate a black hole and laid waste to the Andromeda galaxy because of the ensuing indigestion? Well, it turns out that it's all true! I used energy from it to open a small subspace vacuole and make my escape before the gravity well could grab hold of me. Simple really."
"But...TARDISes are configured to draw power from the Eye of Harmony. How did you manage to access a completely foreign singularity so quickly!?" I asked, enthralled by his tale.
"I was able to channel energy from the plasmic reactions in its stomach into the time rotor before it had time to digest me. Flung me clear across the continuum. And, as fate would have it, I ended up in the middle of another bloody war. Albeit a significantly tamer one." he responded nonchalantly.
"But that's...that's brilliant!" I gawked, smiling like an idiot, "By Rassipony, it's good to see you again. After the war, I worried that I was the only-"
"Ah, yes, and how is our beloved Lord President?" the Master asked, interrupting me, "I take it that the Council interpreted my cunning escape as a well disguised act of desertion, and now that we've sent the Darlocks packing, you're here to clap me in irons and drag me back to Gallopfrey for a good spanking? Well, you can tell them from me that I was about to win that blasted war for them if they hadn't done it themselves! I am not going down for trying to help-"
"Wait, wait, wait. Stop..." I said, waving my hooves in the Master's face, "You...you do know what happened...right?"
"What do you mean?" he said, squinting at me, "What's...what's wrong...?"
"Master...we lost." I said simply.
My fellow Time Lord took took a moment to stare intently into my eyes, focussing his formidable intellect on analysing my words for signs of deception.
"What...?" he whispered.
"The Darlocks...they found the Eye of Harmony. Our last stand, it...it was a massacre. The only way to stop them was to extend the temporal lock around the War and stop the passage of time altogether."
His eyes wandered feverishly as he processed my words, and a rare look of uncertainty marred his learned brow.
"A-all...of them...?" he squeeked, a helpless tone creeping into his voice, "Gone...?"
"I'm afraid so." I responded consolingly, closing the distance between us, "They saved the Universe, Master..."
He suddenly tensed, his brow contorting as a seemingly urgent thought occurred to him.
"Yes..." he said slowly, turning his head to face me, "They did, didn't they? Tell me, Doctor, where were you when this happened?"
"I was at the final battle..." I said, while trying desperately to push memories of our last struggle out of my mind, "I saw everything..."
"So...you were present at the point of our 'ultimate sacrifice'?" he asked eloquently, squinting at me.
"I was." I answered solemnly, "I'm so sorry, Master. I wish this meeting was under better circum-"
"THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE!?" he suddenly shouted, taking me off guard, and frightening Applebloom and Ditzy.
"What!?" I exclaimed out if confusion, "Master, I-I don't understand!"
"You heard me, Doctor! Why. Are. You. Here!?" he screamed, "Our entire race falls in an act of sacrifice and you just happen to be the only survivor!? Don't insult my intelligence! You were always a coward! Always! You'd rather die than fight on the front line!"
"N-no!" I shouted back, "I-I fought! I was there! There wasn't anything anypony could've-"
"It was you, wasn't it!?" came the Master's furious tone as he approached me intimidatingly, "Rassipony was already half mad with power when the war broke out - he would never have sanctioned that kind of action! I'll bet that if I went to the Eye of Harmony right now, I'd find the temporal signature of your TARDIS!"
"Master, the fate of the whole Universe was at stake! What else could we have done!?" I shouted.
By now, he had effectively backed me into the wall of Applebloom's officewith his fury - I could feel myself beginning to sweat from the heat flowing from his eyes.
"WE!?" he screamed, "There was no 'we', Doctor! You forget how well I know you! I can predict exactly what you did!"
"Y-you weren't there!" I winced, "You don't know what it was like in the last-"
"ADMIT IT!" he roared, "You did it! You destroyed our race!
A pregnant silence descended over the room as the Master's stare kept me pinned up against the office wall.
I felt my lip quiver as I closed my eyes and lowered my head in submission.
He was right...and he knew it.
I looked up slowly, afraid to make eye contact with my former friend, lest he force me to recant even more past sins.
The silence was suddenly broken by a sparse, throaty chuckle. To my immense surprise, as the Master's face moved into my field of view, I found that it was adorned by a jovial grin.
"Never thought I'd see the day..." he whispered, "It may have taken close to a millennium, Doctor, but I've finally been vindicated."
"What...?" I asked, now thoroughly confused.
"For over nine centuries, I have been persecuted and villainised." he explained, "Every single time I tried to help, assist or otherwise solve a problem, I was decried as 'evil' and 'monstrous'. Then you would invariably waltz into the fray in your stolen TARDIS, do pretty much the exact same thing I was attempting, and end up being heralded as a freaking hero!"
He chuckled some more as Ditzy, Applebloom and I simply stared at him in disbelief.
"But this time..." he whispered, "This time, the roles are finally reversed! Now I can be the hero, and you the 'Destroyer of Worlds', the 'Eater of Souls'!"
"What are you talking about!?" I cried indignantly, "Neither our methods nor our goals are anything alike!"
"Untrue," he responded nonchalantly, "What you achieve through words, I achieve through force. And the fact of the matter is that we're both after the same results. The only reason that you're the 'good' one is because your 'methods', as you refer to them, are infinitely more cowardly and dishonest than mine. Mind you, it doesn't help that the vast majority of the life forms in this Universe are dumber than a mute in a vacuum - they never see you for what you truly are."
"And what...is that?" I asked as anger began to well and bubble inside me. His words, despite being nonsensical, warped and just downright wrong, were starting to affect me.
The Master sidled up to me, a menacing smirk on his face, and breathed into my ear:
"You..." he whispered, "...are Death."
At that, my hoof involuntarily slammed to the ground.
"Enough!" I shouted, "You've had your fun Master! Now tell me what you're doing here!"
A light, somewhat familiar beeping suddenly began to emanate from places unknown, and the Master reached into a magical pocket behind one of his forelegs (apparently Twilight Sparkle wasn't the only pony to have mastered that particular incantation). From the dimensionally transcendental pouch, he produced a leather fetlock cuff that I immediately recognised as an old style vortex manipualtor.
"Wow, this thing took ages to charge didn't it?" he mused, "I thought that conversation would never end!"
He fastened the well worn little device to his foreleg and looked up at me.
"Until next time, my friend!" he said sarcastically. "Master! Wait!" I shouted, "What are going to do!?"
He tapped a series of controls on the gauntlet and smiled maliciously.
"That's easy." he said as a blue glow began to consume him, "I'm going to rebuild our species - I'm going to be the hero!"
A bright flash filled the room with light as he disappeared from view. The three of us that remained stayed silent for several seconds afterword, awestruck by the events we had just beheld. Ditzy was the first to speak:
"Doctor...was what he said...was it...true...?" she stammered uncertainly.
I tried to reply; to give her some sort of answer, but I had no words to explain myself:
"It...it's..." I mumbled.
"It's in the past." proffered Applebloom, "Right, Doc?"
I turned to regard her slowly, and nodded solemnly as the kindness of her words became clear. Ditzy seemed to recognise my need to not discuss it further, and smiled at me in silent understanding.
The warmth I felt in that one, short moment obliterated every negative feeling that the Master had fueled within me, and I remembered that, even for time travellers, the past...is the past. With a single, invigorating breath, I blew away my mental cobwebs and smiled confidently, brightening in the process.
"Right, then!" I said, "We've got a rogue Time Lord to find! Applebloom, what was 'Maestro' working on?"
"He was tryin' t'build a time machine." she replied, "Said it'd win us the war in a jiffy."
"Really?" I said incredulously, "His plan was that simple? Build a TARDIS and get back into the Time War? That doesn't sound like one of his at all..."
"What about the stuff he was talking about before you two started, uh, reminiscing?" asked Ditzy, "Maybe there's a clue in there."
"Ah! Yes! Good thinking Ditzy!" I said, "Let's see now...what was he saying again?"
"He started goin' on about 'winning some war for somepony'."
"Yeah, that was weird - one TARDIS wouldn't have done a thing to turn the tide of the Time War..." I muttered thoughtfully, "Applebloom, I need to see the Master's workspace. Show me your secret lab."
"M-Ma whut!?" Applebloom stuttered, as her eyes moved nervously back and forth, "W-what are ya, uh, talkin' about!?"
"Come on, Applebloom." I responded, "You and I both know that this is no office building."
The pale yellow mare scoffed and shook her head in disbelief as she moved to the intercom on the desk.
"Gem?" she said.
"Yes, Miss Apple?" came the trimmed response of her secretary.
"Oakflare."
A moment later, the outer doors of Applebloom's office swung open, admitting a completely different version of Gem Shine than that which Ditzy and I had previously met. She wore a jet black berret, a high power automatic rifle and a look of determined military discipline as she strode confidently up to us.
She saluted to Applebloom, who turned around and began to approach one of the many bookcase lining her office. Peeking back out into the adjoining room, I caught sight of a perfect holographic representation of the secretary pony lazily flicking through an issue of Cosmomare (no doubt she was programmed to respond dismissively to any query put to her).
I turned around just in time to see Applebloom stand in front of her largest bookcase and take a deep breath.
"Charlie - Mike - Charlie - Three - Bravo - Foxtrot - Foxtrot!" she shouted suddenly at the top of hr voice.
As the ensuing ringing in my ears subsided, I noticed that the entire bookcase (as well as the massive slab of wall behind it) had slid out of sight, revealing a sturdy looking compact elevator.
"Coooool!" whistled Ditzy as she leaned in to speak to me, "Why can't we have a secret passage like that?"
"Secret passage!?" I gawked, "I show you the majesty of the Universe, take you on a ride in a super advanced spaceship that travels through time and give you adventures alongside a real life alien...and you're more impressed by a secret sodding lift!?"
Ditzy just giggled at my indignance:
"I think somepony has secret elevator envy." she beamed as she, Applebloom and Gem Shine trotted into the carriage.
Grumbling under my breath, I followed suit.
"Stupid secret lift..." I thought to myself as we began to descend.
The 'clandestine vertical transit module' as Ditzy chose to name it, descended quickly into the Earth's crust, but so deep was our destination that we were still faced with a journey of several minutes.
With only the gentle hum of the carriage's spark motors, we were each treated to a moment of near silent personal reflection. While I pondered the Master's next move, Ditzy was clearly focussed on something else:
"Uh...Applebloom?" asked Ditzy, "How did the...the war...how did it start?"
Applebloom looked morosely towards the floor and sighed deeply.
"Some religious issue concernin' Princess Luna." she said, "They...they destroyed a unicorn school cos of it, and then everythin' else just sorta cascaded from that..."
She looked to Ditzy with weary eyes, smiling weakly.
"Ah envy you, ya know? Bein' able to jus'...bypass all this; dip in and out o' history at will."
"Trust me," replied Ditzy sadly as she glanced in my direction, "it's not all it's cracked up to be..."
The lift slid smoothly to a halt as we reached our destination, and the opening door invited us to disembark.
We emerged in a large arched corridor, the ceiling of which was covered in a rainbow of wires and pipes.
"So," I asked as we walked, "what's all this for?"
"Research and development." Applebloom answered courtly.
"Yeah, but...what are you researching and developing?" I responded, "This is some setup for a private company..."
"Oakflare ain't associated with StableTec." said Applebloom, "It's a clandestin' organisation dedicated to understanding and protecting Equestria against advanced arcane technologies."
"But why the secrecy? Surely this sort of thing would be good for morale."
"It's the nature o' what we down here - Oakflare deals exclusively with extraterrestrial arcane science. The Ministries set us up in secret near the start of the war, after we got word that the zebras were goin' after meteorite fragments fer some reason."
"Oh." I said quietly, "Uh...how often do you check your broom cupboards for alien technology?"
"Huh...?" said Applebloom.
"Nevermind..." I said as I quickly avoided her confused gaze.
We continued to trot through the arched expanses of the facility in silence until we arrived at our destination - a large round room.
A very familiar large round room...
"This is pretty impressive..." I remarked as my eyes examined the features of the bootleg TARDIS interior. Every detail of the type 40 architecture had been faithfully duplicated - right down to the brass name plaque fastened to the console.
"So since the Master's run off without his TARDIS," asked Ditzy as she scrutinised the workmanship, "doesn't that mean that he's no longer a threat?"
"If there's one thing I've learnt about the Master, Ditzy," I said, "it's that he cannot be overestimated. As long as he's alive, he's dangerous."
I wandered around the makeshift console, taking in every detail of its design. With every pace, my brow became more and more furrowed - surely there was some other dimension to the Master's plan.
It was just too...simple.
"This doesn't feel right..." I muttered, "Applebloom, are you sure that this is the only thing that Maestro was working on? He didn't have any other projects or inventions did he?"
"Well," mused Applebloom, "there wus his 'Police Barn' idea."
I swear, my hearts stopped for a moment.
"His...what...!?" I stammered.
"Police barns." replied Applebloom, "They're these little blue houses that soldiers and guards can use t'call in backup or detain suspects. They built thousands of 'em all over Equestria - netted Dr. Maestro a hefty amount o' favour with Princess Luna on account of how safe everypony feels now."
Ah.
Now that sounded more like one of the Master's schemes...
It was no wonder the chameleon circuit had gotten stuck on the police barn profile! The Master had saturated this time period with thousands of empty TARDIS shells, just waiting for a connection to the Eye of Harmony.
My eyes widened with shock and a deep pit opened in my stomach as the Master's plan began to assemble in my mind.
"This isn't a TARDIS..." I whispered in frightened awe, "It's a template!"
I turned on the spot and sprinted back toward the lift, grabbing Ditzy and Applebloom in the process.
"We have to find the Master now! We may already be too late!" I shouted as the buzz of the Sonic Screwdriver energised the motors, shooting us toward the surface at breakneck speed.
"Miss Apple!" shouted Gem Shine, "What about the Sentinel project!? They'll be by to evaluate it in the morning!"
"Stall 'em!" Applebloom shouted as the riotous clatter of doors being forced open responded from the room below, "Ah'll be back soon!"
The room lab fell from sight as we continued to rocket upwards.
<<<<< O >>>>>
According to my most recent research, waking up with a splitting headache was currently very much in vogue in the Wasteland.
I began to stir as the most fashionable agony surged across my brow and swirled around the back of my eyes. Groggily taking in the room around me, I was relieved to find that Buckshot and Mo were both alive and sleeping soundly just as I had been mere moments earlier. They were both strapped to some manner of surgical tables and we're inclined at an angle to the floor. Thick metallic strips stretched across their limbs and torsos, holding them tightly to the dulled surfaces beneath them.
I attempted to rise to my hooves in order to free them, only to realise that I too was restrained; strapped down spread eagled to a table all my own.
"Psst! Buckshot! Mo!” I hissed, “Are you two okay?”
Buckshot was still out for the count, but Mo began to stir from the sudden stimulus of my voice, and squinted uncomfortably as the painful effects our incapacitation took effect.
“Compass...?” Mo asked blearily, “Wh...where are w- Wait a minute! You’re tied up! I'm tied up! Compass, what's going on!?”
“I don't know.” I responded, “It looks like the Sentinels used some sort of stun beam rather than just killing us on the spot.”
“But why? I thought we were done for! What could they possibly need with us!?” Mo said as she strained at her bonds, grunting through gritted teeth.
I glanced briefly about the expansive room we were being held in as Mo fought her captivity. Given the height of the ceiling and the lack of windows, I concluded that we were in a basement level of the StableTec facility. The equipment around us seemed awfully advanced for an admin facility though. Something told me that this was no ordinary office building...
I continued my perusal of our surroundings, quickly arriving at a sight that made my blood run cold.
"I don’t know for sure what they want with us Mo...but I am fairly sure it'll involve those.” I gulped.
Turning slowly, Mo followed my line of sight, and gasped in horror as her gaze was met by a table adorned with a number of sharp and intimidating implements. I should point out though that it wasn’t the presence of their blades, spikes and serrations that scared us...it was the fact that every single one of them was caked with dried blood.
"We have to get out of here...” I whispered.
Mo nodded enthusiastically, shaking from thoughts of our coming fate:
“Agreed. Wholeheartedly agreed. What's your plan?”
“Well first, we get out of these restraints. Then we find our way out of here while avoiding the Sentinels.”
Mo suddenly looked more annoyed than scared, and shot me a look of aggravated contempt as she opened her mouth to speak:
“This must be some strange new usage of the word 'plan' that I hadn't previously been aware of.”
"Well, what did you think I was going to say!? I've only been awake for a few minutes, and you're expecting me to have a fully formed escape plan in mind just like that!?”
“Well you always managed it in the radio series...” she said quietly.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! Of all the times to launch into that! As I was about to launch into a furious retort, Buckshot began to stir:
"Oooh...whit happened...?”
He writhed sleepily, quickly discovering his bound state. However, rather than being surprised or scared like Mo and me, he kept his eyes closed and smiled, gently flexing his restrained limbs.
“Mmm...oh, Compass you are a smart one. How did ye know?” he murmured.
“Uh...know what...?” I responded, while looking to Mo for guidance. All she seemed able to provide was a blushing look of shock.
“That Ah like this sorta stuff...?” he said as he softly pushed his hips up off of the table, his breath shivering with what I can only describe as excitement.
“Are ye gonnae...punish me...?” he said as he licked his lips.
"Am I going to what!?” I blurted.
"Aw, come on, dinnae break character now - Ah'm enjoyin' this!”
“Buckshot, I don't think-“
“Ye havnae got a ball-gag by any chance do you?”
Suddenly, Mo shouted at the top of her voice:
"Buckshot, this is not an S&M fantasy! We're in real trouble here, so wake the fuck up!”
“Huh!?” Buckshot blurted, as he tried in vain to sit up.
“Whit the fuck are you doin' here!? Compass, whit's goin'- Hold on...how come you two are tied up as well? I mean...if this is what you guys like, I willnae judge ye - I've just never been one fae threesomes-“
“This isn't an orgy you idiot!” Mo shouted, “We've been captured by a group of mad, super powerful combat robots and are about to be skinned, gutted and minced as part of their insidious plans to take over the world!”
I gave Mo a withering look - somepony had definitely been reading too much science fiction. Looking back and forth around the room, Buckshot slowly processed the specifics of our predicament, and finally arrived at a solemn conclusion:
“I'm no gonnae get laid today, am Ah?”
“Luna give me strength!” Mo muttered, “Is fucking the only thing you think about!?”
Buckshot seemed to have been caught off guard by Mo's question - his response was stuttered; his tone, one of discomfort:
“I-uh...um...aye! Ye know how us, uh...bucks...eh...are. Heh heh...sex on the brain! Sex with mares, mind! Definitely just sex with ma-“
Mo rolled her eyes and spoke coolly, interrupting him:
“Buckshot, you'd be better hiding behind a napkin. Being gay's nothing to be ashamed-“
“Who said Ah wis gay!?" Buckshot shouted defensively, "Ah'm no gay! Honestly, Ah'm not! It's disgusting, it's immoral, it's-“
“Obvious.” I interrupted, “She's right, Buckshot. I still don’t understand what you find so objectionable about telling the truth, but I do know that you shouldn't be afraid of admitting who you are.”
Buckshot was suddenly silent, and began to avoid making eye contact with us.
“Hey,” Mo said softly, “you do realise that most ponies would judge you more for hiding your real self than for embracing the truth, right?“
"It's...it's just so...difficult.” Buckshot finally whispered, “Ah'm meant t'be...Ah'm meant tae be the strongest, the most dependable, the bravest. It's expected of me...and Ah'm...Ah've always been terrified of whit would happen if...if...”
“If anypony saw a crack in your armour?” I proffered.
“...aye...” Buckshot nodded, trying his hardest to hold back tears.
Mo's gaze was soft as she gently gestured to me with her head.
“Are you two...together...?” her eyes seemed to say.
I looked to Buckshot, and in a moment knew the answer. I nodded slowly, a happy smile curling across my face. Mo shared my expression, and turned a ray of kindness toward Buckshot.
“So, from now on, there'll be no more hiding it, okay?” she said, lowering her voice to a mock whisper as she continued:
"And if you're well enough behaved, Compass might just tie you up later.” she said with a wink.
Buckshot chuckled gently as he looked to the two of us in turn.
“Heh...thanks guys...” he said quietly.
A wonderfully warm feeling spread throughout my chest, and despite our desperate situation, I actually felt a wave of the sweetest happiness gently wash over my soul.
Alas. For that moment, like so many other good things in the Wasteland, was not to last.
The three of us turned in unison as a pneumatic hissing began to reverberate around the room. Glancing anxiously from wall to wall, our eyes were soon met by the metallic form of a Sentinel. It trotted mechanically to a position in front of our tables and stopped, standing completely still for a moment before suddenly producing a series of sounds:
"YOU WILL BE UPGRADED!” it said, using a poorly calibrated synthetic voice to convey its message.
"We’ll be what!? What the hell do you mean by ‘upgraded’!?” Mo shouted as I started studying the Sentinel’s chassis for weaknesses.
The robot turned its articulated head toward the pale blue pegasus and responded. As it spoke, I found myself wondering, of all things, what the multitude of pipes running up its neck were for...
“YOU WILL BE INCORPORATED INTO THE CYBER LEGION. YOU WILL BECOME ONE WITH US. WE WILL TAKE YOUR PAIN AND YOUR SUFFERING AND REPLACE THEM WITH ORDER AND PURPOSE.”
They were definitely for fluid circulation – maybe part of a cooling system?
“And how dae ye plan on accomplishin’ that, ya big metal bastard!?” Buckshot spat.
The Sentinel turned once again, and began to address this second ‘query’. Come to think of it, those pipes looked awfully familiar. Where had I seen them before...?
“YOU WILL BECOME LIKE US.” it reported.
“W-what does that mean!? What are you!?” Mo said, fear steadily creeping into her voice.
Ah! The medical bay back in Stable 52! That’s where I’d seen that kind of pipe before. They were made of surgical plastic for use in the Pod’s life support...functions...
No...
Oh, Goddess, no...
My eyes widened in horror as the robot, no – creature, before us opened the front panel of its head unit, bearing the contents of its cranium for us to observe. Behind the metal was the juicy, preserved brain of an equine, suspended in a pale bluish-grey fluid.
“WE ARE CYBER PONIES,” it said.
Buckshot gasped.
Mo screamed.
And I wept. Not for myself, mind, or even for my companions...but for the horrific lives that I knew these equines had been forced to lead.
I forced myself to look toward the Cyberpony in front of us, and embarked upon what was possibly the most daring example of bullshitting ever attempted.
“That...sounds great!” I stammered as I pushed back tears, “When can you begin?”
Buckshot and Mo just stared at me. Their facial expressions were a potent mix of confusion, betrayal and shock. Let’s call it ‘conbeshock’. Yeah – ‘conbeshock’. I’m sure that’ll catch on!
The Cyberpony swivelled its body around and approached me, closing to an uncomfortably short distance.
"YOU WISH TO BE UPGRADED?” it said, “YOU DO NOT FEAR THIS?”
Suspecting that they would be equipped with a myriad of different sensors, I decided not to lie outright lest they see through my ploy.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “I am frightened. And it’s exactly that sort of sensation that I want to be rid of. I want you to end my pain and suffering. I want you to give me a purpose in life. If being ‘like you’ is really as good as it sounds, then do what you have to do!”
It regarded me for a moment with its grey, meshed eyes – the blue lights behind them were obviously only used in low light environments.
Or when in combat...
"THIS IS AN UNEXPECTED RESPONSE.” the Cyberpony bleeped while cocking its head, “YOUR ADDITION TO THE CYBER LEGION WILL GRANT YOU THESE AND MORE. FEAR NOT.”
“Well...actually, I think I can help you out a bit.” I proffered, “Your design's far from perfect after all.”
The Cyberpony changed the angle of its head again slightly as it answered.
“CLARIFY.” it said.
"Well, for starters, you seem to cause a lot of intimidation when you go somewhere. And this leads to armed conflict. It would be better to avoid this...unless of course you like being shot at.”
“WE ARE AWARE OF THE EFFECT YOU HAVE DESCRIBED. AS YOU HAVE CONCLUDED, IT IS DETRIMENTAL TO OUR CAUSE.”
“Your...cause?” I asked, praying silently for an innocuous response, “What is it, if I may ask?”
“WE SEEK TO UPGRADE ALL WHO RESIDE IN EQUESTRIA. THE NEED TO DEFEND OURSELVES OFTEN LIMITS THE NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS AVAILABLE FOR THIS PURPOSE.”
Damn. Why did Mo have to be right about every freaking thing!? Staring wide-eyed at the Cyberpony, I realised that I'd never heard anypony describe the act of killing so callously. Biting my tongue, I continued with my plan:
“Indeed. Wouldn't it be more productive if you could eliminate that response - make yourselves appear less threatening and more...attractive to prospective 'upgradees'? For instance...the conversion process must cause a lot of skin irritation, what with all the gouging and such. You could offer your new, uh, recruits an analgesic cream or something. You know - something to put them at ease about the whole process."
After a brief pause for what I assumed was thought, the Cyberpony set its head upright and responded:
"THIS IS LOGICAL. THE INFORMATION YOU POSSESS WILL BE EXTRACTED DURING CYBER CONVERSION."
Shit. Thinking quickly, I set about trying to extend my life by a few minutes.
"No it won't!" I shouted, "Converting us would destroy it! You see, the knowledge itself is derived from emotional experience. Purging our emotions, as I'm almost certain you will, would completely eliminate our ability to help you."
"YOU ALL POSSESS THIS KNOWLEDGE?" it asked flatly.
"Of course we do." I replied, "And it's in your best interest to keep us all 'cyber-free' for the time being - you can average the data from all three of us, improve its accuracy, and get better results."
“THIS IS LOGICAL. YOU WILL ASSIST US.”
At that, it turned toward a nearby control, wirelessly relaying the instruction to open my restraints. I clambered down off of the table, making sure to make eye contact with Buckshot and Mo, whose trust in me was no doubt beginning to wear thin.
"Alrighty then,” I said, “I'll need to see your schematics, the source code for your operating system and all the notes related to your design.”
“THIS DATA WILL REQUIRE SEVERAL MINUTES TO RETRIEVE. STANDBY.”
“Oakie dokie, then - I'll wait...although while you're at it, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“WE DO NOT. PROCEED.”
"How is it that you lot came to be in the first place? The general consensus among the ponies about these parts is that you're the remnants of an ancient robotic security system, but that's clearly not the case, given your biological components.”
“WE ARE PRODUCTS OF THE SENTINEL PROJECT - A RESEARCH PROGRAM INITIATED BY STABLETEC PRIOR TO THE NUCLEAR BOMBARDMENT.”
So that's where the name came from...
"This Sentinel project...what was it for exactly?”
“TO CREATE THE PERFECT SOLDIER. THE SENTINEL PROJECT WAS RUN IN COMPETITION WITH ANOTHER RESEARCH EFFORT CODENAMED PROJECT STEELPONY.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, as I absorbed its words, “So I take it that Steelpony was scrapped and Sentinel was adopted then?”
“NEGATIVE. FUNDING WAS AWARDED TO THE STEELPONY PROJECT.”
“Oh...so...how come there are so many of you then?”
“WE SURVIVED.” it said simply.
“Survived?” I replied, “Survived what? The Last Day?”
“WE HAVE RETRIEVED THE REQUESTED DATA. PROCEED WITH YOUR DESIGN STUDY.”
“Ah...uh, okay...” I said, nervously approaching the nearby terminal. A sizable amount of text and diagrams had been transferred to its local memory and was now slowly scrolling up the monitor. My hopes of hidden override codes and mechanical weaknesses were almost immediately dashed - their bodies were thickly armoured and characteristically over-engineered; their code efficient and equally impenetrable.
Moving morosely on to the design notes, I tried to suppress the panic that was developing in my breast. How could we possibly hope to defeat them if they didn't have a weakness!? More to the point, how in the name of Celestia were we going to escape!?
I was so wrapped up in worrying that I didn't immediately notice what was happening with the design notes:
They were going backwards.
It was almost as if the Sentinel project had been reverse engineered from...something else.
“Hey, you, uh...sorry about this, but in all the commotion I never learned your name.”
"MY NAME IS-“
A short, sharp buzz emanated from the Cyberpony’s glowing mouth as its sentence was suddenly cut short. I took an optimistic mental note as the cybernetic organism reasserted itself and resumed the conversation:
“WE HAVE NO NAMES AS YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT.”
“Don't you have a number or an IP address or something like that? It would help matters if I had something to call you.”
“THIS CHASSIS' PRODUCTION NUMBER IS A UNIQUE IDENTIFIER. YOU MAY UTILISE THAT.”
"Right. Good. So what do I call you then?”
“CRM-0147-9968-PT”
“Hm, that's a bit of a mouthful. How do you feel about 'Crumpet'?”
“THIS UNIT'S PRODUCTION NUMBER-“
"Crumpet it is then! So, Crumpet, why don't you continue your story. You were saying something about surviving.”
"THE INVASIVE NATURE OF CYBER CONVERSION WAS NOT FAVOURED BY THOSE IN POWER. THAT WAS WHY STEELPONY WAS ADOPTED INSTEAD.”
“Mm-hm...what happened next?”
"THE BOMBARDMENT SEVERELY DAMAGED THE PLANETARY BIOSPHERE. AT THAT POINT, THE RESEARCH TEAM DEVELOPING US WAS TRAPPED IN THIS BUILDING. WE SAVED THEM.”
“That sounds uncharacteristically nice of you.” I commented, “How did you manage that?”
“WE UPGRADED THEM.” came the simple response
Ah.
I might've known. Grimacing at the thought, I turned back to the monitor.
"Crumpet, can you explain something to me about these design notes? They seem to indicate that your original designs were, well...stolen from somewhere else...
"THIS IS CORRECT. OUR ORIGINAL DESIGN WAS DERIVED FROM THAT OF THE CYBER CONTROLLER."
"The cyber controller, eh? And he, what, controls you I take it?"
"AFFIRAMTIVE."
"Any chance I could sneak a peek at his Controller-ness? I have a niggling suspicion that he might be the root of your problems..."
“THE CONTROLLER IS HOUSED IN A SEPARATE CHAMBER. I WILL LEAD YOU THERE."
Crumpet turned to leave the room, but stopped short, swivelling his (or her - I wasn't sure which to use) head back toward me.
"ERROR - I HAVE NEGLECTED TO ACCESS YOUR DESIGNATION."
"You...what?" I said incredulously, taken slightly aback by the monstrous creature's sudden sliver of equinity. In response, I spoke quietly, unsure of what to do next:
"Compass...my name's Compass..."
"DESIGNATION STORED. FOLLOW US, COMPASS."
Something told me this encounter was going to get very complicated very quickly.
We passed through another series of heavy metal archways, surrounded by bundles of wires and thick pipes. This underground section of the building was impressive in scale - it had to have been at least as big as the structure on the surface. A new chamber spread out before us as Crumpet's hissing body moved to one side, allowing me to better explore the room's interior. Attached to the far wall, I was able to make out...something. It consisted of a huge mess of wires and a...a...
"That's a head...." I said dumbly while squinting at the shape, just to double check that my eyes weren't deceiving me.
"AFFIRMATIVE. THAT IS THE CRANIAL UNIT OF THE CYBER CONTROLLER."
"Uh-huh..." I muttered while regarding the strange sight before me. It didn't look operational.
Hell, it didn't even look real! The alloy was the wrong colour, there was no cooling system that I could see and the shape, although recognisable as an equinoid head, was simply outlandish - there were two large pipes connecting its ears to a node of some sort situated near the crown of its head, the purpose of which I was unable to divine.
In every sense of the word, it looked absolutely ridiculous! Every sense...but one, that is...
Somewhere, deep inside me...I recognised it.
I turned back to Crumpet, and was about to utter the first syllable of a question when every muscle in my body clenched in fright.
“SPEAK, EQUINE!” a booming synthetic voice demanded, in a tone at least five full octaves deeper than Crumpet's and a thousand times more menacing.
I turned back toward the prop head. Surely that thing wasn't real. Surely it hadn’t just spoken to me. All doubt was flushed from my mind as its mouth illuminated and it spoke for a second time:
"EQUINE! YOU WILL STATE THE PURPOSE OF YOUR PRESENCE HERE!”
And then I remembered, the unique combination of sound and sight throwing my mind into overdrive. It wasn’t one of my memories, you understand, and it wasn’t anything as specific as a recollection of a single event or encounter either. Rather, it was another rapid series of images that played at light speed before my mind’s eye. They were snapshots; samples of this...this ’race’s’ history.
In a matter of milliseconds, I learned all I needed to know about them. They were destroyers and assimilators. They converted whole words; whole species to exacting standards of uniformity. And then they moved on to the next place or people, starting the whole process over again. Suddenly, the design, the voice, even the Controller's word choice was immediately familiar, my knowledge of them detailed and vast. I was also acutely aware of the gargantuan amount of danger its presence represented.
Realising that I would now actually have to answer the Controller, I began to nervously murmur a response to its question:
“I...uh...I...” I stammered, unable to shake my newfound fear of the Cyberponies and the fate they represented for all of Equestria.
Without warning, Crumpet suddenly spoke up from behind me:
“CONTROLLER, THIS EQUINE IS DESIGNATED COMPASS. HE POSSESSES KNOWLEDGE OF A METHOD FOR INCREASING CONVERSION EFFICIENCY WHICH CANNOT BE ASSIMILATED BY OUR NORMAL MEANS.”
The head remained stationary as the Controller responded. It addressed me directly once again:
"ELABORATE!” it demanded.
“Well...ahem,” I choked, trying desperately to assert myself instead of having an anxiety attack, “I just thought that you could...you know...be a bit more...friendly...”
Wow. That didn’t sound good at all, did it?
“Well,” I thought to myself, “I’ve said it now, so I’ll just have to run with it...”
“CLARIFY!” the Controller boomed.
“I just thought that...what with the way you lot go about ‘converting’ everything that moves, you get a lot of wastage. I-I mean...ponies are afraid of you...and i-it causes armed conflicts which decrease your potential, uh...gains.”
I avoided looking directly at the Controller for fear that I would turn to stone. A long silence permeated the room as I involuntarily swallowed a number of times and started playing with my front hooves.
“THIS IS LOGICAL.” the Controller suddenly replied.
"Y-you think so?” I asked cautiously.
"AFFIRMATIVE. IT IS ALSO IRRELEVENT – WE WILL SOON HAVE NO NEED FOR ‘BEING FRIENDLY’.”
The head abruptly ended its dialogue with me and addressed Crumpet.
“CONVERT HIM!” it commanded.
Crumpet obediently moved forwards, corralling me out of the chamber at hoof-point. On the way back to the first chamber, my brain started running hot as my panicked mind tried desperately to formulate an escape plan.
“Crumpet, what did the Controller mean when he said you’d have ‘no need’ of being friendly? Surely improving efficiency would be a logical goal for a race of cyborgs.”
Crumpet dutifully responded without shortening his pace or lowering his lethally equipped hoof:
"WE HAVE OBTAINED A NEW LONG RANGE COMMAND PROCESSOR. IT ALLOWS THE CONTROLLER TO DEPLOY US BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF THIS FACILITY.”
“But what about the Cyberpony that attacked Edinbuck? It was outside of the facility, and it coped just fine.”
"THAT UNIT WAS PRE-PROGRAMMED TO OPERATE WITHOUT THE CONTROLLER’S SIGNAL. IT IS ONLY POSSIBLE FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME.”
Suddenly, a great many things made sense. The ‘Sentinels’ were trapped here! They were poised to enslave the ponies of the Wasteland, and all that stood between them and total domination was a minor technical issue (which they had apparently just remedied)!
"I see." I said, trying to keep my cool as we returned to the chamber occupied by Buckshot and Mo, “Crumpet? Can I make one final request before you convert me?”
“YES.”
"That device on the table, the one shaped like a unicorn horn. Can I use it to modulate my brainwaves? I think I can still improve your conversion process, even if my first idea was redundant.”
There was a brief pause as the probability of my cooperation was measured and evaluated in Crumpet’s cybernetically augmented brain, after which s/he said simply:
“PROCEED.”
I trotted calmly over to the table holding our effects and picked up the Screwdriver with my hooves. Flipping the mode ring round, I turned to Crumpet.
"Crumpet?” I said.
“YES, COMPASS. ARE YOU READY TO BE CONVERTED?” came the almost innocent response.
"I’m sorry.” I whispered as the Screwdriver’s ‘dismantle’ function ripped the bolts from the Cyberpony’s chassis. Its individual components dropped to the ground as I quickly accessed the console and released Buckshot and Mo.
“You took yer friggin’ time!” Buckshot shouted as he retrieved his shotgun from the table, and began passing Mo her saddlebags.
"Thank Celestia for that,” she grumbled, “I thought you’d sold us out!”
“Well, Ah never doubted ye.” Buckshot smiled, “Whit’s the plan? How do we get oot o’ here?”
“We can’t go just yet. We need to destroy this ‘command processor’ contraption they have. It’s the only thing between the Wasteland and them.”
“What!? What do you mean!?” Mo asked.
“I mean that unless we destroy their processor, the Cyberponies will have the range necessary to convert all of Equestria!”
"There’s no way Ah’m letting them dae any mare damage than they’ve awready caused!” Buckshot announced as he cocked his shotgun, “Let’s do this!”
Nodding, we moved to the doorway of the chamber. Buckshot took point, and began slinking around the corner to check for sentries. Mo covered him with her rifle from above.
Just as I was about to set hoof outside the room, I heard a digital groan emanate from the pile of debris behind me:
"C-C-COmPasS...” it said.
I turned slowly, terrified not of what the disassembled cyborg could do to me, but rather of what I had done to it. I had no idea that it was still alive. Was it in pain? Had I just done something horrible and not realised it? My worst fears were confirmed as a newly formed puddle of the fluid from Crumpet’s brain jar began to rapidly spread out from the dismembered head unit lying on the floor.
Was I any better than them now? After all, I’d just mutilated a living creature for my own purposes.
Exactly like the Cyberponies did.
“coMPaSS...” whined the haunting computerised voice, “Y-Y-YOU ASkeD M-my N-N-N-n-nAme.”
My mouth fell open in anguish as I realised the monstrous sight I was about to bear witness to – what in Tartarus’ name had I done!?
“IT WaS...M-mY nAMe wAS...MY N-N-nAmE iS...gEm...ShiNe..."
I instinctively pulled out the Screwdriver and flipped the mode ring round. It was a reflex, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing...I just knew it was merciful.
“Hello...Gem Shine.” I whimpered as moisture began to collect in my tear ducts. I gently pressed the arcane device into her cybernetic eye socket and depressed the button. An airy buzz flowed into my ears as the Screwdriver suppressed what remained of her neural energies. For once, I can safely say that I was thankful for the Doctor’s influence.
“I...r-r-r-R-reMEmbeR..."
The last syllable slipped into a smooth whine as Applebloom’s former secretary faded from existence.
I had no idea what she was able to recollect as she died for a second time, but I knew that, at long last, Gem Shine would be at peace.
With tears streaming down my face, I turned and fled.
I caught up with Mo and Buckshot a few minutes later in the corridor outside. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I tried to hide the effects that my encounter with Gem Shine had had on me (fortunately, my companions were too occupied to take notice).
Through a combination of whispers and hoof gestures, Buckshot informed Mo and me that it was clear to proceed forwards, and that we were to duck into a room a few hundred yards down the corridor to plan our next move.
I went first, slipping stealthily into the chamber. Still reeling from the horrific sight I had just witnessed, I leant against a large structure with a dusty tarpaulin draped over it for support. Masking my shocked quivering as nervous jitters, I waved off Mo as she approached, instead motioning silently for her to follow Buckshot back into the corridor.
I waited behind for a few moments in order to gather my breath and compose myself some more. After a couple of dozen shivers had finished their trail down my spine, I pushed on the tarpaulin in an attempt to rise and return to the corridor.
The tarpaulin, however, had other ideas. I fell to the floor as the assembly it had been covering clattered down beside me, barely missing my neck. Pulling myself up quickly, I checked nervously to see if any Cyberponies had heard the commotion, only to realise that I was once again alone save for Mo and Buckshot, who had promptly retreated back past the room’s threshold when they heard my clumsiness manifest itself.
A double scowl was directed at me as they cautiously tried to edge back into the corridor. At this point, I didn’t much care – I was too interested in what I’d knocked over.
Picking it up in my hooves, I realised that the device was in fact a large rifle, approximately one metre in length (it looked like a heavily modified version of the long range model used by the Razor mercenaries). Strangely enough, though, it had a formidable array of what looked like electromagnets fastened to the barrel.
Rotating the curious weapon in my hooves, I found a small rotary dial that indicated the device's charge level (it was currently full) and a large label tied to the mouth grip. The tiny, cramped text bore a message from who I assumed was one of the weapon’s designers:
Notes: Named this version after an ancient Zebran god – thought it would be poetic, but Gem said it was just stupid. Meh - what does she know?
Have utilised advances in annular electromagnetic confinement crystal technology. Muzzle velocity has increased in this model to over 4000m/s. As a result, the rifle can now accelerate a normal 9mm round to a velocity of Mach 12 under ideal conditions.
Improvements to the recoil control and capacitor recharge systems mean that this model may be carried and fired by a single soldier.
Manual charging is still an issue – the passive spark dynamo has thus far been the only way to power the rifle without resorting to a massive spark battery pack (look into this for next development model)
Costs are also still prohibitive – this prototype alone cost over 3’000’000 bits; almost six times as much as the original prototype.
Project status: Development in progress; no combat deployment
My attention was diverted suddenly by Mo who, in deference to her previously stealthy demeanour, had simply sauntered into the room, followed a few seconds later by Buckshot.
“There's nopony around, Compass - maybe they're all getting their bolts tightened or something.” she said.
“Somehow, I don't think we'd be that lucky, Mo.” I replied, slinging 'Prometheus' onto my back, “They must be working on something.”
“Well, we’re no splittin' up again!” Buckshot said indignantly, “Almost got us killed last time!”
“Agreed.” I replied, “Let's find the Controller – hopefully he’ll be lightly guarded.”
We trotted cautiously back into the corridor, checking every room we passed as we continued on to the Controller's chamber.
Halfway down the passageway, we became aware of a barely audible electric hum. I wasn't surprised that I hadn't noticed it before - the sound was faint enough to be obscured by even the quietest of pneumatic limbs.
Moving towards it, we found an archway much like the others, except this one had a railing followed by a sharp drop beyond its threshold. A staircase set into the wall allowed one to descend to the floor below, where there was another archway that led to places unknown.
In the centre of this cavernous room hung a massive piece of machinery, easily four stories in height.
“That has to be their command processor.” I whispered.
"How do you know that? For all we know it could be for making lemonade!” said Mo.
"Well...just look at it!” I replied, “It's big, it’s shiny, it's surrounded by Cyberponies! What else could it be!?”
“A really big fridge.” commented Buckshot. Mo and I simply stared at him.
“...what?” he exclaimed after a moment, “Ah'm just sayin' it bears more than a passin' resemblance to a giant refrigerator.”
Looking back briefly at the device, I did indeed notice a large series of ducts indicative of a large scale liquid cooling system.
"How the hell do you know what a heat exchanger looks like!?” I whispered.
“Ah'm more than just a pretty face.” he smirked.
"Seriously, though, I didn't know you had any technical smarts! You've just gone up another rung on my ladder-“
“Compass! Stop flirting and look down there!” Mo interrupted with a hiss, “Is that what I think it is!?”
She gestured to a small oblong structure that sat directly underneath the massive electronic chandelier in front of us. I squinted, and was able to make out a striped, four limbed figure suspended in a bath of glowing viscous gel.
“By Luna! That's Zeanna down there!” I said.
"So, this must be their conversion machine then?” whispered Buckshot, “I say we put it out of commission!”
I nodded in agreement, but was acutely aware of the multitude of Cyberponies present nearby. We'd have to create a diversion of some sort to keep them occupied.
“Buckshot, do you have any explosives on you right now?” I asked.
“Half a dozen frag grenades and a smoke bomb.” he replied.
“Good. Make as much noise as you can - we need to get as many of them away from that machine as possible.”
"Aw, but I wanted to shoot them!” he whined.
“You'll get to have fun with your shotgun later. For now, all we need is a little commotion as a diversion, okay?”
“Okay...” he pouted.
"When you're done, run to the exit - we'll meet you there.” I continued.
“Shouldn't Ah come back fer ye?” Buckshot replied.
"No - the Cyberponies are too strong and too dangerous to risk that. The one advantage we have over them is speed, so we should easily be able to outrun them if things start to go south.”
Buckshot nodded and, rising gently, slinked away into the corridor to go and start his tour of mayhem, leaving Mo and me to wait on the first explosion.I turned to Mo:
"Okay, when Buckshot starts his diversion, they should all run to see what's going on, leaving maybe one or two behind to protect the conversion device. At that point, we can fly down and-“
“Fly? But, Compass, you don't have any wings...” Mo said.
"Well...I was kind of hoping you'd, you know...carry me?”
“Carry you!?“ she scoffed, “Are you kidding!? You're huge!”
“I beg your pardon!? “ I replied incredulously, “Did you just call me fat!?”
“Oh, come on! You know full well that I won't be able to support a buck as big as you!”
“Fine...” I grumbled, “I'll walk, you fly. Take the Screwdriver and deal with the Cyberponies. I'll get Zeanna out of that bath of goo.”
“What about that rifle you found? It looks like it could do some serious damage.”
“I don't know if it works or not.” I replied, “Besides, I'd rather disable the Cyberponies than murder them. I think the new setting I’ve found on the Screwdriver can incapacitate them provided you don’t expose them to it for too long.”
"You do realise that they wouldn't hesitate, right? If they can’t mutilate you, they kill you. Simple as that.”
“Only because they have no choice, Mo. The ponies they once were are still in there somewhere. I just want to give them a fighting chance of recovering some of their equinity someday.”
It sounded stupid, and I knew it. But, to my surprise, when I looked up at Mo, I found her smiling knowingly at me.
“What...?” I asked.
“Nevermind.” she replied, “It's nothing. All we need now is for Buckshot to make his move...”
We didn't have to wait long.
Only a matter of seconds later, a riotous trio of explosions shook the complex in rapid succession, and the assembled Cyberponies in the pit below us hissed and clunked through the low level exit, leaving only two units behind to operate the huge machine in the centre.
As the last migrating cyborg moved out of earshot, Mo swooped into action, arcing gracefully downward over the pit, the Screwdriver held tightly in her mouth. I made my way clumsily down the stairs as the airy buzz of the dampener mode forced one of the Cyberponies into a deep digital slumber. I reached Zeanna as Mo skilfully drew the fire of the second Cyberpony, who had raised its lethal hoof after its companion had been subdued.
Plunging my forelegs into the glowing gloop surrounding the unconscious zebra, I encircled her torso and began pulling her up.
I quickly realised though that she wouldn't be going anywhere fast. A thick metal cable had been implanted into the back of her head at the base of her skull, effectively anchoring her to the bath.
A sudden end to the crackling blasts of energy followed by a sharp clatter signalled the incapacitation of the second cyborg.
"Mo!” I shouted, “Help me get Zeanna out of this thing - they've already started converting-“
And then I screamed.
Zeanna's eyes shot open at the sound of my voice and she immediately shot up and grabbed my head with her forward hooves.
"You are the compass that does not point north the child of the stars come to deliver us from evil end of line new command-“ she said, almost too quickly to make out. Her eyes looked so dead, yet so alive; unblinking and stationary - absolutely focussed on the profoundness of her words.
"MO! HELP ME!” I screamed, as panic and terror coursed through my body.
Mo rushed to my aid and tried with all her might to pry the zebra's limbs apart, but it was no use. Zeanna continued to mutter her strange poem while staring through my soul.
“-light the glorious light the light that binds all it entwined you with he for all time entwined that time with its relative dimension in space end of line new command-“ she continued, squeezing my head like a vice.
“ZEANNA! STOP! AH-ARGHH! YOU’RE CRUSHING ME!” I shouted.
“Hold on Compass!” Mo shouted as she plunged the Screwdriver into the back of Zeanna's head. The light buzz of the tool muffled Zeanna's quiet tones as she gasped and fell back into the vat.
Similarly, I fell onto my rump, disoriented and aching, rubbing the fresh red patches where Zeanna had broken the skin of my head with her iron grip.
"Compass, are you alright!?” Mo asked, helping me up.
"I'm, ah...fine.” I grimaced, “Check Zeanna.”
Mo nodded and turned, but before she could approach the side of the bath though, a withered, distant moan drifted towards us.
“Com...pass...” it said, “H-help...”
Mo and I rushed back to the vat and leaned in over the side.
“Zeanna!” I said, “Thank Celestia you're okay! We're going to get you out of here, alright? Mo, find me something to loosen this cable, there must be a wrench or something-“
"Com...pass...” Zeanna repeated as she feebly raised a hoof to stroke my mane. I flinched momentarily, but quickly leaned closer to the partially mutilated zebra.
“I...am...sorry...” she whispered.
“It's okay,“ I said softly, “It's not your fault you were captured.”
She sleepily shook her head.
“Not...for that...for...you. So...much...pain...so much...on your shoulders.”
“I'm not that bad,” I remarked, “Listen, Zeanna, we're going to find a way to get you out of here but we also need to ensure that the Cyberponies can’t continue with their plans. Have you ever heard anything about their new 'command processor'? We have to destroy it, or they could threaten all of Equestria!”
Zeanna blinked slowly, emitting a fatigued laugh as she spoke:
“Heard of it...? Compass...I am...the command processor...”
"What!?” I said in surprise, “How can you be part of their computer!? You're an equine!”
“But how!?” I practically shouted, “You're a zebra, not a transceiver!”
“When I...looked...into your memories...they...they looked back. The experience...almost...overwhelmed me. I had to...ugh...focus all of my strength on...keeping us...separate. When I did, the Cyberponies...they...were able to detect my psychic powers. They...recognised that I...could be useful to them; that I could...allow them to...spread...”
My jaw slackened in shock.
It was my fault...
Mine
If I hadn't allowed Zeanna to look into my mind, none of this would have happened! The Cyberponies would still be contained, Armour Pierce would still have all four of her limbs, the Trotfell guards would still all be alive and I wouldn't be talking to a partially mutilated zebra lying in a bath of gunge!
“I...it was...” I stammered, unsure of how to deal with the crushing burden of guilt that had materialised on my shoulders.
Suddenly, an almighty bloom of my old friend forced its way out of my gut and into my mouth, turning a whisper into a furore:
“...no...NO! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!? GODDESSES DAMN YOU DOCTOR! DAMN YOU AND YOUR FUCKING MEMORIES TO TARTARUS! YOU DID THIS! YOU KILLED ALL THESE-”
"Compass!” Mo whispered angrily as she grabbed my neck, “You'll bring them straight back here! You need to calm down!”
I forced my teeth together and clenched every muscle in my body as I forced the rage back down into the depths it had come from. Deep, grunting breaths gave way to calm respiration and I silently thanked Mo for her intervention.
“Hush...” said Zeanna as she softly stroked my face with her hoof, “Hush now, Compass...you cannot...blame yourself...for this."
"It is...good that we have found them." she continued, her voice noticeably bolder than before, "Good that we have...uncovered...their plans! Without this...chain of...events, the...Cyberponies would have...continued to convert...innocents. One day...they would have...found a way to...leave this place. One day...they would have...ruled Equestria.”
“Right,” I said stoically as my resolve was strengthened, “Zeanna, how do we get you out of there?”
"You cannot,” she replied as her voice became noticeably stronger, “I know their technology, Compass, and it was not designed to be temporary. I am to reside in this chamber, artificially preserved, for the rest of time.”
“There must be some way-“ I began to say, but Zeanna quickly interrupted me:
“You cannot save me, Compass.” she rasped, “I did not say I was part of the command processor. I told you: I am the command processor. The machine above me used to allow them to communicate, but only within the confines of this building. With me as its prisoner, that range can be extended to cover all of Equestria..."
I ran through the implications of her words in my mind, coming to the same nightmarish conclusion every time.
“Then...what do I...have to do...?” I whispered, terrified of the answer.
Zeanna smiled, extending a hoof to once again stroke my mane.
“That is simple, Compass,” she said sweetly, “You must kill me.”
A mighty dip in my stomach signalled the confirmation of my fear. I couldn't kill her! She was a living, breathing, sentient, innocent, wonderful creature! An unpleasant flash in my mind reminded me of the griffon that Buckshot had destroyed with his shotgun the previous day. I didn't want to face the horror of another life ending before my eyes again!
I couldn't...
As if sensing my thoughts, Zeanna pre-empted my reluctance:
"You must not shy away from this Compass. I have come to know them as much as I have come to know their technology. Their lust for power is insatiable; their hearts totally devoid of feeling! They will not stop until all of...Equestria...is..ugh....theirs!”
Her breathing had all of a sudden become short, as if she was fighting something. I realised with a jolt that we had been conversing now for several minutes, and I had no idea how long the Screwdriver's new setting was effective for. I glanced anxiously at the sleeping sentries around us, and was momentarily relieved to see that they (currently) showed no signs of stirring.
“Compass!” Mo suddenly shouted.I whipped my head back around towards Zeanna to find that she had slumped back into the bath, convulsing violently as she strained to retain lucidity. I grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shout as loudly as I could:
“ZEANNA!” I roared, “FIGHT IT ZEANNA! COME ON! DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOU!”
“I...cannot! It...is...too...much! I...I...HEEEELP!” she screamed.
In the blink of an eye, Zeanna's voice was silenced and she reverted to her original serene state. In doing so, she closed her eyes and returned to her previous position in the bath with distinctly mechanical motions.It took me a moment to respond, but somehow I knew that we wouldn't be conversing again.
“Zeanna!?” I said, “Zeanna! Wake up! Please! I need you! I need to know about-“
Without warning, she shot up from the goo once again and grabbed my head in an even deadlier vice grip than before. My eyes were forced open as she stared straight into my mind - every nerve in my body raged as pain coursed through my limbs and my throat ached as I screamed at the very top of my lungs.
I heard Mo shout in surprise, and the hiss and clank of mechanical bodies as the two sentries started coming to.
“We have to go!” she shouted, “Compass! We have to run!” “ZE...ANN...A!” I cried as the pain became too much to bear, “PLEASE! STO-”
Suddenly, a single gunshot rang out, and Zeanna fell away into the now rapidly reddening liquid beneath her, a large hole marring her striped chest. I slumped to the ground, my body and mind aching as one.
In unison, the two Cyberponies (who had just risen from their induced slumbers) burst into horrific digitised screams. They clutched their heads seemingly in madness and began flailing like they were on fire. The inequine screech pierced straight through my ears as I watched them, and my heart broke as I realised what was happening.
Without Zeanna – their control node – they were forced to exist on their own, without the commands of the Controller, the comfort of one and other’s thoughts or the rigid order that made their horrible lives so easy to bear.
They were being forced to see what they had become. Alone. They were viewing the horrors and sins of their new lives through their own eyes for the first time, without the group rationale or constant control to soften the severity of their crimes.
In short: every single one was locked in their own little Tartarus...
In unison, the two Cyberpony’s eyes suddenly burst into azure flames, their brains burning with the raging plume of emotions that had been unleashed. They finally fell to the floor after convulsing continuously for over a minute. An eerie and deeply unsettling silence blanketed the room, and I turned slowly to Mo. She was still holding her rifle, but had been as appalled as I at the death of the nearby cyborgs. Pushing myself upright, I gently placed my hoof on her shoulder, feeling the still tense muscles underneath contract as she jumped at my touch.
"Thanks...” I said simply.
Mo nodded while shuddering, tears gently trickling down her face.
“Oh, Compass...that was...I mean it...it was...” she said as her self control wavered.
I extended my forelegs around her neck and drew her into a hug, stroking her mane as she wept briefly into my shoulder.
"Why!?” she whimpered, “Why would anypony make anything so horrible!?”
I didn’t have an answer, and I doubted that I ever would. My immediate desire was to ignore Mo; to let her questions slip away with her tears and hopefully never resurface. But I knew I couldn’t – somepony was bound to ask these things at some point.
“I don’t know Mo,” I said meekly, “I really don’t...”
Her crying echoed deeply throughout the cavernous room, and I found myself steadily dreading every additional second that we stayed there.
"Mo,” I said gently, “We should find Buckshot and get out of here.”
“O-okay,” she sniffled.
We turned to climb the stairs and find an escape route, trotting sadly upward.
"Compass?” Mo asked as we reached the halfway point, “When Zeanna...when she grabbed you...did she...say anything?”
“No,” I replied, “She was back under their control, Mo. She meant me harm; nothing else.”
“Oh,” she said dejectedly as we climbed back onto the balcony.
I tried to look her in the eye, but was unable to establish visual contact with her. I spoke anyway:
"Mo, you take point. Just in case there are still any automated defences online.”
“A-alright,” she squeaked, “Stay behind me...”
I nodded as Mo ventured out into the corridor beyond, but before passing over the threshold myself, took a moment to look back at the crimson bath that was to become poor Zeanna’s final resting place.
I remembered with a dark foreboding what she had really said to me a few moments earlier, shivering with every syllable:
“All this has happened before, and it will happen again. You are the beginning, and yet you are also the end – point North only if you feel it right, Compass. Goodbye...”
I blinked back a tear and followed Mo out into the corridor.
Fortunately, we were able to locate Buckshot without much trouble - he had managed to stay behind inside the building without being seen or shot (despite my telling him otherwise). Still, I was very glad to see him.
"Seems you two were successful!” he said triumphantly, “Wan minute those cyber things were hot on mah flank, the next they were throwin' themselves around the floor! Good job guys...but, uh...where's that zebra friend o’ yours got tae?”
I looked to Mo, but she didn't return my gaze. Instead, she lowered her head and stared sadly at the floor. I turned back to Buckshot and morosely shook my head. He nodded sombrely in response. Breaking the momentary silence, Buckshot trotted slowly away, beckoning for us to follow.
“You found a way out then I take it?” I asked.
“Aye,” he responded, “We're a couple o' hundred metres undergroun'. The main stairwell's over here. I'll tell ye somethin though, this place is a deathtrap! There's a giant pit o' Taint at the end of that corridor. Almost fell intae it at one point!”
“Taint?” I asked, “What's that?”
“Taint's this radioactive stuff leftover from the war.” Buckshot responded, “Naepony knows where it came fae, but we do know tae avoid it - I've seen some pretty horrid deaths at the hooves o' taint exposure.”
“Huh...” I said, “Is this 'Taint' stuff quite common in the Waste-“
"COM...PASS!” came a sudden, distant roar. The three of us stopped in our tracks as a cacophony of hissing and clanking reverberated through the hallways.
Something was coming...
“COM...PASS!” another raging digital scream called out, making me shiver with anxiety and fear.
"Whit. The fuck. Is that!?” Buckshot whispered anxiously, “I thought you got rid of all those cyber things!”
“We did!” I responded, “The only one that could possibly be left is the Controller, and he's just a head connected to a pile of circuitry!”
“Unless he's got a body like the others and you just didn’t see it.” Mo added as the hissing and clanking became louder.
“You realise that because ye've said that, it's gonnae come true, right?” Buckshot said witheringly.
“Guys, we can't lose our heads!” I shouted, “Buckshot, get us out of here - with any luck we'll still be faster than whatever is chasing us!”
"Aye!” Buckshot shouted, “C'mon you two - this way!”
We began to run towards the stairwell that Buckshot had pointed out a few moments earlier, but it soon became abundantly clear that our luck was nowhere near good enough to be relied upon in this situation.
As we approached the stairs, the source of the haunting sounds was revealed to us. We watched in silent horror as a writhing mass of wires and metal limbs lumbered up out of the lower levels. It looked like every Cyberpony in the facility had been pulled to the same spot and smashed into one and other. As it slowly moved into the light of the corridor, I felt the pit of my stomach drop along with my jaw as I recognised the 'assembly's' only unique component.
Atop the many limbed monstrosity sat the head of the Controller!
“COM...PASS!” came another furious roar.
The Controller's new body lowered itself into an unmistakably hostile stance and the carapace like structure that made up its back separated, revealing several dozen severed Cyberpony forelegs.
All of which were armed, of course.
“YOU HAVE INTERFERED WITH OUR PLANS! YOU WILL BE DELETED!” it screamed as the energy weapons charged with a whine.
I quickly pulled out the Screwdriver and fired the 'Dismantle' setting at full power, but the monstrosity before us remained intact.
With no time for a second attempt, I resolved to remain whole and un-barbecued: in deference to never once completing a circuit of the Stable's running track, I sprinted back down the corridor, grabbing Mo and Buckshot as I passed them.
“FUCKING RUN!” I screamed as a flurry of deadly red light crackled after us.
"WHIT THE HELL IS THAT!?” Buckshot shouted back.
I waited until we had put a few hundred yards between us and it before replying:
"That's the Controller I was telling you about!” I said, “It must have salvaged the parts for its new body from all the other deactivated units.”
What had gone wrong with the Screwdriver? It had never failed me before.
Looking down at the little arcane device, I examined the glowing array of crystals built into the removable handle. A myriad of tiny shimmering symbols had resolved themselves into the word 'DEADLOCK'.
Fantastic - no dismantling today, then...
"Looks like it's immune to the Screwdriver!" I panted, "I cant dismantle it!"
"Great!” shouted Mo, “And how do we beat that then huh!? The single ones were difficult enough, but this thing takes the biscuit!”
“I don't know! I don't know!” I replied, panic flooding into my voice as we rounded yet another corner, “There's no way we can get at it through all that armour! And those weapons! One hoof cannon took out the entire Trotfell contingent! Imagine what thirty-odd of them'll do! If only there was something we could use against it even the odds. Something big; something powerful; something-“
Suddenly, an idea uncoiled gracefully into my conscious mind and I turned immediately to Buckshot:
"That pit of radioactive stuff. How dangerous is it?”
"Deadly,” he replied, smiling as my intentions became clear, “That Controller fucker willnae know whit hit 'im!”
“Perfect!” I exalted while transferring the Screwdriver to my mouth, “Where is it? I'll lead it over the top of it, seal the door, then make a run for the surface and meet you guys up there!”
"Wait...th-that's yer plan!?” Buckshot exclaimed.
"Yeah,” I said, “What's wrong with it?”
“Its bloody awful, that's what's wrong wi' it!” he shouted, “That thing'll fuckin' cook ye, Compass!”
“Well I don't see you coming up with any bright ideas!” I replied, “If you've got a better plan in mind, I'd be happy to entertain it!”
Buckshot's eyes whipped back and forth between Mo and me for a few moments before he grunted in frustration and cocked his shotgun:
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake! Fine! But if ye die, I swear Ah'll kill ya!” he shouted as he and Mo diverted down a nearby corridor for safety. I deliberately slowed my pace as they made their getaway, baiting the mutant cyborg king as he closed in on my location.
“COM...PASS! I...WILL...DELETE...YOU!” came the enraged synthetic cry.
The lumbering apparatus clunked it's way around the corner in front of me as I ducked down an adjoining corridor. The Controller moved towards me, screaming 16 bit expletives, but I was just too fast - I ducked and slunk my way around the labyrinthine network of corridors, eventually orienting both the cyborg and myself so that there was a straight run between us and the Taint pit.
Jumping out in front of him, I began my run of cyborg baiting.
"Hey! Laser lips! Your mother was a snow blower!” I shouted over my shoulder as I started my final run toward the pit. I had hoped that the Controller would follow me, and I was not to be disappointed.
I had apparently overlooked a critical factor in my estimation of the Cyberponies' speed. You see, every time I had seen one of them move, they had been surrounded by corners. Whether it was the shanty town at Edinbuck, or the corridors of the facility, I had never even considered that these creatures of metal could move quicker than when they were confronted with a ninety degree turn every few paces.
I don't know if it was the otherworldly configuration of his new body, or if all Cyberponies could do it by default, but the moment the Controller caught sight of me, it charged.
Quite suddenly, it was upon me, having closed the gap between us in an unbelievably short space of time. I screamed in agony as a bright bolt of red death seared the flesh from the back of my neck and another engulfed one of my rear legs in flame.
Tripping over, I landed roughly on a steel mesh floor, and realised that I had fallen straight onto the walkway overlooking the Taint tank. The liquid below was mesmerising: it actually looked evil! Bright rainbow hues were twisted and distorted into disgusting, toxic tones before my eyes, and I found myself feeling sullied for even glancing at the cursed substance.
Stumbling forward in agony, I managed to twist around and face my attacker.
The Controller was far closer than I expected, mere inches away from my snout as I stared in abject fear at his expressionless metal face.
"YOU HAVE DESTROYED US!” it screamed, “NOW I WILL DESTROY YOU!"
Raising a mighty armour-clad hoof into the air, he brought a crushing blow to bear against my side, breaking several of my ribs in the process. I coughed a splatter of darkened blood onto the catwalk as he once again closed in on me.
"I WORKED FOR YEARS TO CREATE MY ARMY! AND YOU HAVE DESTROYED IT ALL! YOU HAVE DESTROYED THIS PLANET'S FUTURE!” came another furious scream as it viciously slapped me further along the walkway, "WE WERE TO BE THE SAVIORS OF THIS WASTELAND! WE WOULD HAVE ELIMINATED PAIN AND SUFFERING ENTIRELY!“
Another weighty blow. By now, I was heavily bruised and no doubt haemorrhaging internally. I found myself questioning how much longer I had to live.
“YOU WILL NOT STOP US, EQUINE! I WILL REASSEMBLE MY CYBER LEGION AND ALL OF EQUESTRIA WILL BE UPGRADED! THE SUPERIORITY OF THE CYBERPONIES WILL PREVAIL!”
“You...are superior...to nopony!” I gasped as the Controller raised his hoof for a final assault, “You...are...inferior!”
The cybernetic monster in front of me paused for a brief moment - if I didn't know better, I could have sworn I saw its metal face twitch with anger.
"WHAT...DID...YOU...SAY!?” it asked incredulously.
"You, ugh, heard me!” I shouted, “You're...meant to be...an upgraded version of...ponykind, but you're...ack! You're inferior to us! You can't even...control your...emotions.”
“IRRELEVANT!“ the Controller shouted, “EMOTIONS ARE PURGED DURING CYBER CONVERSION. THERE ARE NONE TO CONRTOL!”
“Then why...are you so angry?” I asked coyly, “All you...do...when you scoop out...an...equine's brain...is suppress who they are! Why do you think your, argh, legion...went insane!? Without your control, they realised what you'd...done to them! What...monsters they'd been...made into!”
"INCORRECT! INCORRECT! CYBERPONY NEURAL REGULATION WAS DISRUPTED! YOU DESTROYED THE LEGION! YOU! I SOUGHT TO FREE THEM! I SOUGHT TO GIVE THEM ORDER, PEACE AND HARMON-“
"You sought to rule them!” I roared as the rough, torturous pain in my chest flared, “The Cyber Legion...would have destroyed Equestria! You weren't saving us! You were... conquering us! We would rather die than- ARGH!”
The Controller suddenly pushed his gigantic hoof into the massive cauterised wound on my leg, aggravating the traumatised and bloody flesh beneath.
"SILENCE!” it demanded, “YOU WILL BE DELETED AND I WILL RULE THIS LAND!”
“I thought you, ARGH, wanted to upgrade it!? To 'save' us!? What, ACK, happened to that plan, eh!?” I said through gritted teeth, “You're nowhere near as perfect as you think you ar-“
“ENOUGH!” the Controller roared as he slammed his hoof into my limb, shattering the bone in the process.
"YOU. WILL. BE. DELETED!” he screamed, every word being accentuated by another heavy bash from his pneumatic hooves.
I tried to protect myself, raising my Pipbuck to try and parry its blows, but he was altogether too strong. With each titanic strike, I felt more and more of my bones break. My head began to pound as blood poured freely from my many wounds, but I continued to deflect the Controller's attacks.
“DELETE!” he shouted, all semblances of control having vanished from his stark synthetic voice.
“DELETE!” he screamed as he initiated another deadly inertial exchange between his limb and mine.
“DEL-“
Suddenly, and without warning, the bombardment stopped. I forced open my eyes to find my now fully functional EFS dutifully informing me of my imminent death with iridescent green text. The Controller was seemingly frozen in time, standing perfectly still in mid swing of his hoof.
I registered a sizable increase in the heft of my foreleg, and quickly realised that I was in fact holding Prometheus, the rifle I had found only a short while earlier.
I glanced at my Pipbuck to find a cheerful message glowing back at me:
Welcome to the StableTec Assisted Targeting System (SATS) tutorial. For this interactive training session, the following pre-programmed actions will be carried out by the Pipbuck:
1 - The Eyes Forward Sparkle (EFS) will be engaged.
2 - The first item in your inventory that may be used as an offensive weapon will be equipped automatically.
3 - The SATS overlay and command interface will be added to the EFS display.
4 - The SATS time dilation talisman will be activated, increasing your immediate decision making time by a factor of 10000.
Please select a target to continue...
I blinked in surprise - my Pipbuck had time dilation magic!? Incredible!
Staring at the flashing cursor, I turned painfully to the terminally slowed Controller, poised and ready to end my life at the drop of a giant, deadly hoof.
Thinking into the interface, I selected the Controller as my target. The EFS responded by subdividing its body into its individual limbs and displayed a hit probability and overall integrity readout next to each. Noting the effect that my selections had on the new 'AP' bar in my field of view, I found that Prometheus could only be fired once before recharging SATS. Knowing that this would be my one and only chance, I selected the Controller's head as my target.
I took a deep breath, and thought the command 'ENTER'.
My muscles suddenly tensed of their own accord, and I felt an immense sharpness come over me as my hooves grasped Prometheus and squeezed the trigger.
A thousand hammers met a thousand anvils as a brilliant bolt of blue light flared from the weapon's muzzle. It impacted the Controller's head in exactly the expected spot, collapsing armour and spilling brain fluid as it went. The colossal machine creature fell backwards, having been physically propelled away from me by Prometheus' immense power. An inequine scream left its mouth speaker as it cluttered to the floor of the catwalk and ceased to move.
I took a moment to collect myself before attempting to move. Shaky, shuddering breaths punctuated with blood informed me of just how damaged my insides really were - I'd have to get help fast!
Placing the Screwdriver in my mouth and Prometheus on my back, I tentatively hopped up onto my one good leg and started edging my way along the guard rail back towards the silo's exit.
As I passed the Controller, a gentle hiss reverberated throughout the otherwise deathly silent interior of the silo.
I closed my eyes and giggled nervously out of astonishment:
"You're shitting me..." I whispered around the Screwdriver as I painfully turned around.
The Controller's head had rotated to face me, and the hiss had turned into a whine that was steadily increasing in pitch.
"COM...PASS!" it roared as the whine quickly transmuted into a screech, and the broken, leaking robotic body suddenly exploded in a maelstrom of fire and shrapnel.
A giddy warmth spread across my underbelly as I tried (and failed) to shield myself against the blast with my broken and bruised foreleg. Looking down at my chest, I was only slightly surprised to see a formidable chunk of razor sharp armour plating sticking out of my ribcage.
The now structurally compromised catwalk groaned and sagged beneath me as I began to laugh uncontrollably, my vision turning cloudy and golden. It was suddenly all so funny! A week ago, I was a happy Stable technician with nothing more than server errors and misbehaving algorithms to worry about. Fast forward a few days, and I've fallen in love, battled a monster, absorbed an alien consciousness and been stabbed terminally through the chest.
"Heh...what a ride..." I whispered as a brilliant golden glow began to envelop me. The light, by this point, was a familiar friend, and I wondered hazily what the dear old Doctor had in store for me next - the glow was, after all, something of a trademark for weird shit related to him.
Fire coursed through my veins and my head felt as if it would explode as the light flowed through my body. I screamed in simultaneous ecstasy and agony as the ethereal energy burst forth from my limbs, tearing asunder the fibres of my very being.
Suddenly, the the catwalk gave way beneath me, and I began to fall.
With the Screwdriver firmly gripped between my teeth, and the winds of time and space blasting from my body, I closed my eyes and dropped into the toxic abyss.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New Sonic setting: 53A – Dampener Cancel out energy emissions by projecting an inverse waveform toward them. The dampener can subdue anything at the flick of a switch be it biology, technolgy or anomoly!
Perk added: I´m just making this up as I go along! You are uniquely talented at bullshitting your way through confrontations. You gain +10 to your CHAR stat.
The leather cut a stinging red lash across my chest as the whip was brought to bear for the ninety-sixth time. I winced painfully as the flesh of my new wound cried out in anguish and those near it renewed their own individual protests.
"WHAT IS YOUR MISSION!?" screamed the unicorn torturer before me, "TALK!"
Another lash; this time coiling across my stomach and around my left flank.
"I...told...you..." I panted, "We're not, ugh...spies..."
"LIAR!" the unicorn growled in disgust, readying the bullwhip for another strike. Suddenly, and much to my relief, another, paler shade of magic grabbed it from him.
"Perhaps it is time we tried my approach, Stockade," came a prim female tone "Yours is clearly too heavy-hoofed."
"Daisy! What the hell are you doing here!? This is my interrogation!" the whipping pony called Stockade whispered angrily.
"It's our interrogation now, Stockade," she said as she fixed him with an icy stare, "You're not allowed to conduct them on your own anymore, remember? Not since the 'incident' last month-"
"That was an accident!" he shouted, "How the fuck was I supposed to know that informant had a heart condition!?"
"By looking at her files!" she hissed, "You are altogether too rough with the detainees! It's just sheer dumb luck that you haven't killed anypony innocent!"
"Hmph," he grumbled, "No such thing these days."
The prim one ignored him and floated a pencil out from behind her ear, positioning it atop a clipboard that was also being held in the aura of her magic. She stood in front of me for a few seconds, filling in the fields of a Ministry of Morale form. She took her time - it's not like I was going anywhere. My hind legs dangled uselessly beneath me as thick metal manacles clamped around my forelegs held me aloft. It was only a couple of inches, but that tiny elevation had resulted in an exquisite ache developing between my shoulder blades over the past three hours (never mind the bloody rings of irritation above my forward hooves or the results of Stockade's whipping). I found myself nodding off very quickly, the exertions of the torture session having rapidly caught up with me. But, just when I thought I would get a few seconds of beloved rest, the piercing tone of the clipboard wielder dragged me back to lucidity.
"My name is Daisy Chain," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm with the Ministry of Morale, and I'll be supervising this interrogation."
"Forgive me...for not...shaking your hoof..." I rasped, my fatigued body betraying my weakness, "I'm a little...tied up."
"Quite," she replied as a thin shadow of a smile slipped across her face, "Let's get straight down to it then, shall we? You've been identified as a likely enemy operative, and this...exercise, is designed to reveal your intent and your contacts. With me so far?"
"That much I'd...gathered..." I said as my head nodded forward out of exhaustion.
"Good," she said firmly, waking me up a little, "That makes my job a whole lot easier. I want your real name, mission and contacts followed by your signature on the transcript of the confession."
"But I'm not...a spy...!" I said despairingly, "I've already told...him that...a hundred times!"
Daisy Chain frowned and looked at me blankly for a moment before she spoke.
"Oh...you're not a spy, then?" she asked innocently.
"No!" I shouted, a newfound rush of adrenaline fuelling my exasperated struggles, "I've been saying the same thing for the past three hours! I. Am. Not. A. Spy!"
"Oh my," Daisy replied, "Stockade! Why didn't you tell me he wasn't a spy!? We have to get him out of here!"
"W-what!?" I gasped, "You...you're going to release me!? Just like that!?"
"Of course we are! We're not animals!" she said as she flipped the papers on her clipboard over, "We'll just call a sky wagon to come and convey you back to- oh. It seems you don't have a home address. How odd..."
Stockade chuckled silently behind her as she continued.
"Nor do you have any official government records. That's quite an admin leak we have isn't it? Perhaps your medical or insurance records will tell us about you," she said as another page was flipped around the back of her board.
"Hmm, let's see...nope. No medical records, no insurance policies, no academic listings, no-"
"I get the picture," I said quietly.
Daisy looked up at me, a single unimpressed eyebrow arched upwards.
"You're a complete non-entity," she said, "And I don't like not knowing who's trotting about my country."
"Look," I replied, "I know what this looks like, but I'm not your enemy. If anything, I'm here to help."
"And I'm next in line to the throne," Daisy responded sharply, "Now, I'm getting impatient. Tell me what I want to know."
"Alright. Listen," I grumbled as my shoulders made another attempt to separate from my skeleton, "My name is Compass, and I'm harmless. That's all you need to know."
"Very well then, Mr. Compass," Daisy sighed, "We'll do it the hard way."
She turned wearily toward a table near the shadowed corner of the room - the harsh, bright light above us did well to limit my sight, but my eyes had had a good three hours now to acclimate to the extreme luminosity. Daisy returned after a moment holding a sharp, curved device in her magic. It looked very delicate, and the tip of its hooked end diminished to an insanely fine point. Something told me that its purpose would certainly not be gentile.
"H-hold on!" I stammered, "We can talk about this! I can tell you some things. If you'll just put down that-"
"The time for talking is over, Mr. Compass," Daisy hissed as she floated the device toward me, "That ship, as they say, has sailed."
"Wait! Wait!" I shouted, "W-what are you going to do to me!?"
Daisy remained silent as she levitated the device gently in front of my eyes, slowly turning it so that the blunt rear of the hook hovered towards my face. It began to teasingly run across my cheek, tickling me as it continued to descend down my neck. It travelled progressively lower as beads of fresh sweat began to run down my forehead.
That's just what I needed now: a going over from a freaking sadist!
The hook passed over my chest, making the still fresh scars from that incident with the Cyberponies itch like crazy. Daisy took a moment to circle my stomach with the implement before sliding it over my nether regions. In fright, I made the mistake of reflexively pulling away from the sharp hook, an action which resulted in me uncomfortably forcing my legs apart. Daisy took this opportunity to move between them with her little tool so that I was forced to retain the undignified position.
"What...are...you...doing...!?" I gasped as the smooth, polished metal made its way around my sheath. I felt a warm, sweet rush as the unicorn's ministrations forced my genitals to betray me.
"I often find," she said gently as the cool metal continued to massage my most sensitive areas, "that male operatives become far more talkative after they've been castrated..."
Oh fuck...
"N-no!" I shouted suddenly "I don't have anything to tell you! Please, stop!"
The unicorn looked up and locked eyes with me as she turned the hook around with her magic -the next time she touched me with that thing, I was getting mutilated!
"Please! I'm telling the truth! S-stop!" I panted.
Daisy's gaze remained fixed with mine as the sharp point of the hook made contact with my hide. I could feel her dragging it across my skin, increasing the pressure with each pass - it wouldn't be long before I was filleted. With time rapidly running out I panicked and began screaming for her to stop, using the only valuable information in my possession as ammunition:
"Stop! I have information! Th-there's going to be an attack!"
Suddenly, all activity in the room ceased. A heavy silence had descended, muffling even the clinking of my chains.
"...Where?" Daisy said threateningly, the hook poised and ready to slice. Her eyes were terrifying - entirely unblinking and empty of everything but malice.
"Everywhere..." I replied, still straining desperately to avoid her touch.
"What do you mean 'everywhere'?" she said as a deep frown began to weigh down her brow, "Tell me where you're going to attack!"
At that, she gave a little tug with her magic and I began to feel the first trickles of blood run slowly down my leg.
"Ack! No, wait! It's a full, agh, pre-emptive strike! They're going to destroy Equestria in a single day!"
"W-what!?" she said as her heightened emotional state betrayed her, "How!? What kind of attack is it!?"
"A...balefire, ugh, bombardment," I stammered, "The devastation will be, ack, unimaginable!"
Daisy looked a great deal less threatening now than she had a moment earlier (despite her still being in a position to brutally castrate me).
"...When?" she whispered, a tiny shiver making its way into her vocal chords.
"I don't know exactly!" I shouted, exhaustion racking my muscles, "A week, maybe less!"
Daisy's face had drooped into an expression of abject devastation as I spoke. Only seconds later, the hook was back on its table, and I was finally able to relax a little. The silence that had enveloped the room earlier had grown into an oppressive blanket of anti-sound - it was so quiet I could actually hear the blood rushing around my veins!
"Very clever," said Stockade, as he startled me with the suddenness or his address, "Very clever indeed. The zebras really are upping their game with this one, eh, Daisy? "
She didn't respond. The unicorn torturer had been completely disarmed, and was now staring blankly at some undefined spot on the floor, her mind reeling.
"Daisy...?" said Stockade as he moved around to face her, "You okay? Surely you don't believe him? This is just a really well orchestrated bluff, don't you see? They send in a supposed deep-cover operative, we catch him, he breaks and then singlehoofedly demoralizes our entire intelligence service with tales of some phantom apocalypse attack!"
He laid a hoof upon her shoulder and looked caringly into her eyes (which, for the two torturers, was a sight to behold - it was like watching a pair of manticores painting a fresco).
"It's all propaganda," he said softly, "He's trying to trick us - don't worry."
"It's...it's not..." Daisy mumbled before forcing herself to take a steadying breath, "I don't think...I don't think he's lying Stockade..."
"Huh?" he responded, "Now, come on Daisy, we both know that the zebras don't have the resources for that kind of-"
"You might not know!" she whispered hastily, "But remember, my clearance is two levels higher than yours! And I've seen...reports..."
Now it was Stockade's turn to look frightened. His face drooped much as Daisy's had only a minute or so earlier.
"What kind of reports...?" he asked, the sound of his voice betraying his suddenly dry throat.
"Whispers, rumours, hearsay," replied Daisy, "Nothing to worry about in and of themselves, but...considered altogether...they point to a massive covert attack. Just like he described..."
Stockade swallowed loudly as his mind worked at full speed to comprehend what he'd just heard - his eyes began to mist over as they darted back and forth in their sockets. With that, Daisy regained enough of her presence of mind to turn and trot sombrely from the room.
"I...I need a smoke," she said to nopony in particular.
I was left alone with the violent buck, as he tried desperately to retain his composure. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye as he slowly turned his head. I had expected another round with his trusty bullwhip, but was surprised to find him trotting rather gently towards me.
"Who are you...?" he asked quietly, his fighter's aggression having deserted him. I blinked slowly and cocked my head as much as my confinement would allow.
"The truth?" I asked - Stockade nodded, "My name really is Compass...and I'm from the future..."
Stockade looked at me - no, through me would be more apt - as he checked for signs of deception. After a length of time that stretched into an uncomfortable mini eternity, he spoke again:
"What happens...?" he asked throatily, "What do the zebras do to us...?"
"Nopony really remembers," I responded truthfully, "But I do know that the attack will be brief, unexpected and that next to nothing of the old Equestria will survive..."
Stockade's eyes misted once again and he began staring at some undefined point far below the floor. His despondency was short lived however, as his ears suddenly perked up and the expression on his face started to spontaneously radiate hope.
"Th-that's why you're here then, right?" he stammered excitedly, "You're going to help; you're going to save us!?"
Oh Celestia, don't make me do this...
As much as my wounds stung and my limbs ached, I still couldn't bring myself to tell him the absolute truth. Statistically, he was very likely to be one of the primary casualties of the attack - and if that was indeed to be the case, he wouldn't even know what hit him anyway...
I mean...that makes sense right? Yeah...yeah it does - it's far kinder to lie.
I...I think...
"...yes," I said in a small voice, "I...I'm here to stop the war."
Without another word, Stockade used his magic to release my restraints and sprinted from the cell, locking the door behind him. I fell to the cold, uneven floor with a thud, a crack and a scream as my shoulders agonisingly reset themselves.
After the pain had had a chance to ebb and I was able to feel again, the relief of being free from the shackles was finally able to catch up with me, and was more than enough to mask the dampness of the cell and the multiple lacerations that now littered my already scarred hide. It was roughly at this point that I realised just how tired I was. Fatigue approached like an old friend, and I welcomed its warm embrace with open forelegs. The harsh spark bulb above me was a bright, distant star, and I was atop a mountain; alone but for the cool winds sweeping up from the planes below.
My eyes slipped closed, and I was finally allowed to leave the conscious realm.
Now, where was I?
Oh yes - I was falling.
It wasn't all too clear, you see - I was drifting in and out of consciousness, I had a gargantuan wound in my chest and I seemed to be glowing. All that happening at once was bound to confuse anypony. As I fell, my body felt like it was pulsing with what I can only describe as a glorious fire. However, exhilarating as these feelings were, they were still, for whatever reason, accompanied by an immense sadness - like I was saying goodbye to an old friend and an entire world all at once.
I was also aware that I was accelerating...my surroundings were blurry and nondescript, but I could definitely feel myself getting faster. The freefall didn't last long though, as there was a sudden change in my velocity, and I began to feel as if I was being smothered. The elation of the golden glow was now fighting against dark, oily feelers. Horrors were close - they sought to enter me; to envelop and become me. I had to fight them! With the last ounces of my strength and my final few iotas of lucidity, I began to struggle. I was not about to relinquish my being like this. It may have been the end of my life, but that didn't mean that I had to like it!
A muffled thud resounded from somewhere far below me, and a strong current in the thick, treacle-like medium around my form began to carry me downwards. Deeper and deeper I sank, forever closing in on my doom. I wondered, what would the afterlife be like? Would Celestia and Luna be there? Would Valve? By this point, I was beginning to doubt that there even was a hereafter - thus far being dead hadn't scored very highly in my eyes! A sudden sharp impact and a shower of heavy viscous morbidity signalled my release from the darkness and onto the ground - it was like I was being birthed all over again. Was that what happened when you die? You just wake up in a new body?
In short: no. I realised very quickly that I was most certainly not being reborn.
I felt...sullied somehow. As if there was a corruption within me that was fighting tooth and claw for control of my being. I writhed on the slimy plane I had been deposited on, clutching desperately at my body and mind as the dark sludge and the golden glow fought it out. I was suddenly aware of a presence in my immediate vicinity. To my horror, when I forced open my eyes, I found a distorted nightmare of vision - colours ran like rainbow vomit down the walls and a pair of shady, excited masses were rapidly approaching me! I struggled to my hooves and took a defensive stance, casting an aggressive gaze toward them. Seemingly though it wasn't enough as they stopped only for a moment to communicate in guttural grunts and screams before rushing toward me. I whipped out my limbs to fight, but they were too fast and too strong - before I knew it, a thick, long tentacle had encircled me and I had been hoisted onto one of the creature's backs.
I still fought of course, for I could feel my condition improving with every step. I was getting stronger, more powerful, more lucid. The tentacle, unfortunately was still as firm as before, and despite my burgeoning new rush of physical ability, I was still effectively confined. A long time passed during which the two creatures moved at breakneck speed through a whirlwind of hellish colours, and I was buffeted repeatedly by the sub-dermal motion of their many warped bones. After maybe half an hour of pained, distorted struggling, I was rolled out of my confinement into a large, melted room. Inside, there were several more of the creatures, who all greeted me with a series of horrific screams. They had taken me back to their nest! Surrounded, I tried my best to beat them back, but was quickly subdued. One of the more graceful looking blobs brought a new type of tentacle to bear, and promptly stabbed me in the neck with its sharp end.
My new strength disappeared as sleep cut me down.
<<<<< O >>>>>
"It's...it's...bigger on the inside!?" shouted Applebloom in awe.
"Nice, isn't it?" I responded as I busied myself with the TARDIS controls, "Dimensionally transcendental, my fruity friend! I would show you the equations, but as I said a moment ago, we have very little time to lose!"
"Doctor," said Ditzy, "You're doing that thing again. You know - when you talk at like a thousand miles an hour and leave everypony else in the dust. You have to explain yourself once in a while!"
"Ah'll second that!" shouted Applebloom as she engaged in a staring contest with the time rotor, "Where the buck are we!?"
"Hmm...?" I responded, "What were you saying...?"
Ditzy shot me an unimpressed stare, like a mother admonishing a dishonest foal.
"Oh! Right! Heh - sorry about that girls," I stammered while continuing to manipulate the console, "Applebloom, welcome to the TARDIS, my spaceship come time machine."
"TARDIS?" she responded, "Ain't this what ya said that Master fella was trying to build fer Equestria?"
"Indeed," I said, "The name's an acronym for 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space' - you may recognise the principal of its operation from that equation you 'derived'. But don't get any ideas about having your own little fleet of them - I won't allow anypony to possess such advanced time weapons - too powerful; too much potential for misuse."
Applebloom looked as if she was about to launch into a retort - no doubt an impassioned speech about how my advanced technology could potentially save thousands of lives. I'd heard it before though...dozens if not hundreds of times. Since I wanted to avoid the issue, I segued straight into answering Ditzy's question instead.
"Right, Ditzy," I said (much to Applebloom's annoyance), "You wanted an explanation didn't you? Well here you go: we're going to be attempting a risky temporal manoeuvre so that I can see what the Master's up to. I just need a few minutes to reconfigure the TARDIS."
"Risky?" she responded, an eyebrow raised and a smirk curling her lips, "So, translating to normal speak for me and Applebloom that's, what, insanely dangerous? Life threateningly stupid?"
"Pretty much," I smiled.
"It's whut now!?" shouted Applebloom as I kicked the TARDIS into first gear and let off the hoofbrake. The time rotor began to slowly thrum with artron energy as the control room vibrated under our hooves.
"I hope the gearbox isn't too worn out," I winced as I moved to a set of seldom used controls, "I'm not that great with the clutch..."
"The...the clutch!?" exclaimed Applebloom, "Are y'all tellin' me that I'm in a time travellin' alien spaceship with a manual transmission!?"
"Well, what did you think the noise was?" I asked, "Poor old girl's last service was over a millennia ago!"
"Oh, Ah do not like this!" she continued, "Will somepony please reassure me that we ain't gonna blow up or somethin'!?"
"There's nothing to worry about," I lied, "When the TARDIS moves, it travels through space-time, transporting itself to any point at any time. However, this disconnects its occupants from the local progression of cause to effect, thereby separating them permanently from participating in certain temporally invariant events. Since both we and the Master are now entwined in goings on proximate to such a fixed point, we can't risk moving through time like that - if we did we'd essentially be nullifying our ability to stop him."
"If that's the case," said Ditzy, "Then why is the up and downy thing going...well, up and down? Doesn't that mean we're in flight just now?"
"Well, naturally, I've found a way around the problem haven't I?" I responded proudly, "When the TARDIS dematerialises, it separates itself from the space time continuum and moves in what's essentially an extra-dimensional straight line to its destination, right? Well, I've just reconfigured it to follow the curvature of the continuum instead, so we're now able to fast forward and rewind time at will without committing ourselves to any fixed events. Clever, eh?"
"Clever!?" shouted Applebloom, "That's...that's genius! Ye had me worried there, Doc - for a sec, I thought that ya weren't even qualified to drive this thing!"
"See, Ditzy - now that's how you appreciate somepony's bright ideas. You might want to take some notes," I smirked confidently as Ditzy shot me a dirty look, "And I can assure you, Applebloom, that I am licensed to pilot a TARDIS. Well...provisionally, at least."
"Provisionally...?" the pale yellow mare said, a worried expression creeping across her face, "Whut d'ya mean 'provisionally'?"
"I think you lot call it a learner's permit," I mused.
"Oh Celestia," whispered Applebloom as she cradled her head in her hooves, "We're gonna die aren't we!?" "No, no, no," I responded, "Don't be silly - with our current temporal velocity, the chances of a sufficiently powerful outside force actually coming into contact with us are, ooh, about one in-"
Suddenly, the floor fell out from under us. My first antigravity experience in decades was tainted by the taste of blood as my two companions and I slammed against the TARDIS ceiling. We returned just as quickly (and twice as painfully) to the floor below, dazed, confused and aching.
"Whad duh heww wuth thad!?" shouted Ditzy as she rose to her hooves and cradled her bleeding mouth. The TARDIS master alarm was bonging threateningly in the background while various sparks and gases flowed freely from damaged systems around the control room.
"I don'd know," I responded around my own swollen tongue, which I had thankfully avoided amputating with my teeth, "Buth, we're cerdainly nod mobing anymowe."
A chuckle from somewhere else in the room alerted me to a third presence around the console, and I turned quickly to find a bruised and dishevelled Applebloom struggling to stifle what I'm sure was riotous laughter.
"Anb whad exactwy ith tho thunny!?" I asked indignantly as I silenced the alarm and set about rerouting the damaged conduits.
"Sorry," giggled Applebloom, "It's just that, ha, you two, he he, well...the two o' ya sound so darn silly! Ha ha ha!"
I grumbled angrily and pulled the scanner round to check both our location and the state of the TARDIS, ignoring Applebloom's tasteless mirth.
"Hob come oo awen't hurt?" asked Ditzy, "Oo hid the theiling jutht like ee did!"
"A...an old friend o' mine made me a potion once," she said, casting her eyes downward in sorrow, "Ma mouth never gave me trouble again..."
A painful memory had obviously resurfaced, and Applebloom's eyes had become watery with the sudden sadness. Ditzy looked to me for counsel, a confused look on her face. I shook my head: leave it alone Ditzy, my eyes said.
I turned back to the scanner as the throbbing pain in my tongue began finally to subside. Upon my requesting a summary of the crash, the TARDIS returned an error that I had never seen before:
CRITICAL TRANSIT ERROR: INERTIAL FORCE MISMATCH
COMMENCING EMERGENCY LANDING PROCEDURE
Huh...weird, I thought. Ditzy must have been giving Applebloom a wide berth, as she was standing right beside me when I turned round. After squealing like a startled filly, I cleared my throat and began to speak (without an engorged interloper garbling my words this time):
"Good grief, Ditzy! Don't do that!" I shouted, my hearts still beating quickly.
"Sorry," she said (clearly her mouth had recovered partially as well), "It's just that Applebloom, well...she's gone all sad. I don't know why, but it...it's...well, just look at- Hey!? Where'd she go?"
I followed the line of Ditzy's hoof, and sure enough, Applebloom was nowhere to be seen. Just as we were about to cast our eyes about us and begin looking for her though, a voice chimed into the conversation from somewhere behind us:
"Don't y'all know its rude to talk about somepony while they're in the same room as ya?" said Applebloom indignantly.
"Oh! Uh...A-Applebloom!" Ditzy stammered, "We, uh...we weren't talking about you, we were just, uh, concerned, you know? You looked so down all of a sudden."
"Don't worry about it, sugar - I'm just fine an' dandy," responded Applebloom with a smile, a hint of her sister's famous self reliance seeping into her mannerisms. Applebloom quickly set about changing the subject, staring intently at the message displayed on the scanner.
"Huh...weird," she said as I raised a single eyebrow, "'Inertial mismatch', huh? What wus that ya were sayin' about us not being acted upon by outside forces?"
"To be fair," I replied defensively while turning back to the scanner, "There shouldn't have been anything nearly powerful enough to disturb us in that broom cupboard. Aside from the janitor exploding, I can't see anything else even coming close to the required magnitude."
"I have an idea!" Ditzy shouted triumphantly, "Why don't we just go outside and see what happened?"
"Uh...yeah, I'm not so sure that's a good idea..." Applebloom replied cautiously, "We don't even know if we're on the same planet!"
"Trust me, we are," I said as I rolled my eyes, "Look, I'll even check the atmosphere for you."
I trotted around to the opposite side of the console, taking the scanner monitor with me (conveniently, my current console theme featured a rotating monitor). Activating the external sensors I pulled up a composition summary of the outside atmosphere.
"There you go Applebloom," I said comfortingly, "We have an atmosphere outside. Composition: eighty percent Nitrogen, eighteen percent Oxygen, two percent trace gases; density: one-point-two-two-five kilograms per cubic metre; radiation level-..."
I stopped. And I stared. My hearts slowed and my limbs turned to lead. I even ceased breathing for a few seconds.
The balefire radiation level in the air alone was over eight hundred Becquerel’s per kilogram! That amount of radioactivity could only have been caused by one thing...
With a pit rapidly opening up in my stomach, I activated the TARDIS external cameras. As I did so, somewhere deep inside me, something broke. I swallowed solemnly before turning to Ditzy and Applebloom. By now they had realised that something was wrong, and had trotted round to see what was concerning me so. I couldn't let them know what I'd seen though, so I turned off the scanner as soon as they began to move.
"What is it Doc?" asked Applebloom.
"Doctor, are you alright?" mirrored Ditzy.
"I...I'll be back in a few hours, girls," I said slowly.
"What?" said Ditzy, "Where are you-?"
I didn't let her finish - the TARDIS door slammed shut behind me, and I locked my companions inside, restricting access to the console at the same time with my sonic screwdriver.
Exhaling shakily, I turned around to face the world before me...
And fell to the ground in tears.
<<<<< O >>>>>
As I stirred, I discovered that a groggy mist had made its nest in my forehead. The room I found myself in was painfully bright yet wholly indistinct. Moving to wipe my eyes, I realised that I was in fact heavily restrained - thin metal bands held me down, with just enough slack for me to deduce the presence of chains.
Hoofcuffs, I thought, what the...what are monsters doing with hoofcuffs?
I swivelled my head slowly, trying to find something to lock on to and focus my vision. As it so happened, there was a moving blur dead ahead of me, so I began to squint awkwardly through the fog. The image resolved as my ciliary muscles squished the lenses in my eyes into shape (Equine Anatomy - A Practical Guide, pg. 54), and I felt my eyes widen in surprise as a view of Caring Heart's flank came into view.
I wasn't the only one surprised to see her either - my eyes rebelled to being opened so wide by shooting two little javelins of pain down my optic nerves. Wincing in sudden pain, I heard the distinctive sound of a surprised gasp and a dropped clipboard (followed by a frenzied series of loud cries).
"HE'S AWAKE! SOMEPONY GET IN HERE NOW!"
The sound of galloping was next; five sets of hooves were approaching by my estimate. I reopened my eyelids (slowly this time) and blinked repeatedly so that my irises had plenty of time to wake up and dilate properly. Opening my mouth to speak, I found that words were difficult to form. Even though I knew that it was a simple symptom of being dehydrated, I was still aware of a...strangeness...that had spontaneously become apparent to me (it was almost like I had new teeth - weird, eh?).
"Ha-...Ca-..." I began, the dryness stopping me before I could even utter a single syllable, "Ca-...rin-..."
The look on Caring's face was not the one I'd expected. She stared back at me as if I were a ghost.
"By Luna..." she whispered, "You can...you can still talk...!"
A retort would have been forthcoming were I not weakened, restrained and thirsty, so I settled for shooting her a dirty look - after all, she did kick me in the balls earlier that week. The hoofsteps were closing in as her mouth continued to slacken in awe of me. A number of armed ponies flooded into the room, pointing their rifles in my direction, but Caring stepped quickly between them and me.
"Wait!" she shouted, "He can still speak! I think...I think he's okay..."
A series of confused, and even sceptical, glances were exchanged between the guards as Caring turned back around to face me.
"Compass?" she said slowly, taking care to pronounce each syllable, "Are you still in there?"
"Aw...ka..." I slurred dryly.
"Can-you-un-der-stand-me?" she continued. I swallowed (or at least I attempted to) and tried again.
"Aw...ka..." I slurred again.
"Dr. Heart," said one of the guards softly, "I don't think he's with us anymore..."
As Caring began to stoically fight back tears, a bloom of anger borne of intense frustration started warming my stomach. I yanked back and forth at the chains binding me, motioning with my head toward a large glass jug filled with the Wasteland's poisonous excuse for water. At that, the guards all suddenly brought their weapons once again to bear and, just as before, Caring was forced to step in front of them and raise her voice.
"Hold on!" she shouted "Compass, have you been trying to say 'water' this whole time!?"
Give that filly a prize! I nodded emphatically as the guard's guns (and jaws) dropped down in awe. Just what the hell was surprising everypony so!?
Caring rushed to my side a moment later and began channelling vast mouthfuls of water into my throat with her magic.
"I can't believe it! I just - I mean - wow!" she chanted gleefully as my mammoth thirst was quenched. With water dribbling down my face and neck, I gasped for air when I couldn't drink anymore, startling every equine in the room.
"Thank. Fuck. For. That!" I said loudly, laying my head back down onto the mouldy pillow beneath me.
"Of course I am," I beamed as the ecstasy of refreshment left me in a euphoric daze, "Goddess that was a good drink!"
Caring motioned to the still stunned assortment of guards and they began to file silently out of the room. A brief glance back and forth told me that I was in a hospital in the Edinbuck settlement (I could see the remains of the castle out the window).
"Right Caring, first thing's first," I began as the unicorn cautiously approached my bedside, "Why am I chained to the- Wait! Where are Buckshot and Mo!? Did they get out of the StableTec facili-"
"Whoa! Calm down!" she said reassuringly, "They're fine, they're both absolutely fine. They're sleeping off their encounter in another room."
"Oh thank Celestia!" I gasped, relief rushing through my veins, "I wasn't sure if they'd made it out of there alive. The last thing I remember is..."
I stopped for a moment as my brain returned a flash of pain, a vision of death and a nightmare about monsters.
"The last thing you remember is...?" said Caring softly.
"...dying..." I whispered.
"Sounds about right." she said, while at the same time placing a hoof upon my foreleg in reassurance.
"What happened to me?" I continued, "I was..."
"It would be better for your recovery if you remembered yourself," she said, "Think back, and it'll come to you."
I nodded, and then swallowed nervously. My mind's eye began to replay the events leading up to my 'demise'. The Controller chased us; it was fast, I was slow. It caught up, I fired, it exploded-
Oh...
"I..." I gasped, staring down my torso, "I had a...a fucking armour plate embedded in my chest!"
"Keep going," said Caring as her grip on my hoof strengthened in support, "You're doing well, just try not to get too upset."
"Upset!?" I shouted, "I was dying! Why would I be upset!? If anything I'm over the moon! How the hell did you-"
"Just keep going," she interrupted, "I'll explain everything in a moment, but I need to know what you can remember before I do."
"Right...okay," I nodded, "Uh...after the explosion, I...I felt...fire..."
"Fire?" Caring asked, raising an eyebrow, "What do you mean 'fire'?"
"I was...glowing," I said slowly, "...and then I was flying, no - falling...and...and then I was being smothered, like I was drowning."
"Huh...glowing. Maybe that would explain the-" Caring muttered softly before suddenly stopping herself from continuing, "Anyway, that can come later. Is that all you remember?"
"Uh...yeah..." I lied (the nightmare about the monster attack would no doubt send a number of undesired signals regarding my mental state that I didn't really want broadcast).
"Okay," Caring said, smiling sweetly, "Allow me to fill in some of the blanks. You were impaled through the chest by a large alloy fragment when the cyborg you were fighting exploded. As a consequence of said explosion, the catwalk you were standing on gave way, dropping you into the Taint vat below."
"The...Taint...!?" I whispered, "But Buckshot said that stuff was poison; that it could kill with even the slightest touch!"
"It is, and it can," Caring said solemnly, "Why do you think I was so surprised when you woke up? Why do you think the guards looked so shocked? A single droplet of taint can cause almost immediate mutation - the results are even worse if it gets into the circulatory, digestive or respiratory systems. You, Compass, we're fully submerged in the stuff for several minutes."
"Minutes...!?" I gawked.
"Mm-hm," continued Caring, "And it would have been even longer had the bottom of the tank not given out under the added weight of the catwalk and that cyborg thing. You ended up in a drainage ditch underneath the silo."
"Buckshot and Mo...?" I said quietly. Caring nodded sweetly.
"As if they'd just leave you," she said, "That pair of foals turned straight back to come and help you when your fight with that 'Controller' thing got out of hoof."
I looked down at my chest - at my intact lungs and my beating heart. And I smiled. Moisture pooled at the corners of my eyes as gratitude welled up within me without limit.
"You okay?" asked Caring suddenly.
"Yeah," I sniffed, "Just...just happy, you know?"
Caring chuckled gently and wiped the tears from my face with her magic (I was still hoofcuffed to the bed, you see).
"Caring...?" I said as I nervously pursed my lip, "I'm almost afraid to ask this, but...what happened to me? There must be a reason I'm restrained like this."
"Well..." she said begrudgingly, "You were a little...violent when you came in."
"Violent!?" I said, raising my voice, "I didn't hurt anypony did I!?"
"Not terribly, no." she responded diplomatically, "Tell you what - how about I give you the good news first?"
"There's good news...?" I asked incredulously, "Be my guest. And can I have some more water while you're at it?"
"Sure," Caring said as she floated a 'fresh' jug over to my face and began tipping the liquid down my throat, "Well, first bit of good news - you only grew two extra limbs."
I immediately gagged, spraying my sheets with water in shock.
"WHAT!?" I shouted, "That's the good news!? Wh-where are they!? What happened-"
"Compass!" responded Caring loudly, "Calm down! I've already amputated them, don't worry. They weren't fully grown anyway - you have Buckshot and Mo to thank for that."
"B-but... limbs!" I stammered, "Wh-what...what we're they like...!?"
"Well, apparently," Caring began, "the Taint thought that you could do with a pair of wings..."
"W-wings!?" I said, suddenly excited, "That...that would've been amazing! Why did you cut them off?"
"Just because the Taint tried to give you a pair, doesn't mean it succeeded," she continued, "You ended up with a pair of tentacles not entirely unlike manticore tails."
"By the Goddess..." I whispered, taking care to keep still lest my other limbs spontaneously mutate into grotesque horrors, "Wh-what did I...you know...do?"
"Well you didn't kill anypony if that's what you're asking," replied Caring (to my unimaginable relief), "Not that you didn't try, though - the bloody things practically had minds of their own! It's lucky your venom glands hadn't...developed...yet..."
She trailed off as my eyes widened in horror. The hoofcuffs suddenly made a whole lot more sense. I was still and slack-jawed, staring off into the distance as Caring shuffled uncomfortably nearby - she was showing me a kindness in not elaborating any further on my mutation.
"Where, uh, ahem...where was I?" she stammered as her discomfort at my expression became more and more apparent, "Oh, yeah - good news. Uh...your chest injury healed pretty nicely - that's a definite plus, huh?"
"Caring," I said throatily, "Thank you. You...you have got to be the most incredible doctor in all of Equestria...! H-how...how the hell did you fix everything that was wrong with me!?"
"Actually, I'm afraid I can't take credit for that Compass," she said, "Believe it or not, you did most of the healing yourself."
"What?" I replied, my brow furrowing, "I thought Taint was lethal...and besides that, I was almost sliced in two!"
"Yet another reason for my surprise at your waking up," she retorted, "Your organs, your skeleton, your entire cellular structure were all in some sort of flux when you arrived. It was almost as if the Taint was being opposed by...something. Like the Taint pulled one way and a completely different process pulled the other. You, having been caught bang slap in the middle, suffered the net effect."
"Which was?" I asked anxiously.
"Cancellation," Caring replied, "Like I said, it's as if the first process pulled one way, and the second pulled the other. Considering what could have happened, you came out smelling like the proverbial rose."
I stared at the unicorn medic for a moment, awestruck by what I'd just heard. My luck had nothing to do with it, as Caring had asserted. I knew exactly whose doing this was...
"Doctor..." I whispered as an uncharacteristic thankfulness massaged my mind, "...thank you."
"What was that?" asked Caring.
"Nothing..." I said as another, more pressing thought occurred to me, "Caring...where did the armour plate go if I healed myself...?"
"Well," she replied sheepishly, "Ordinarily I'd ask a patient to sit down right about now, but since you're already-"
"Caring!" I interrupted loudly.
"It's part of your rib cage." she suddenly blurted.
"I-it...wh...huh!?" I articulated smoothly.
"Taint tends to do that sort of thing," Caring continued, "It joins things; changes them. Hell, you were halfway to becoming an alicor- uh, I mean the, uh, plate fused with your left ventricle and nine of your ribs, producing a sort of metallic-flesh composite."
"Wow..." I whistled, "That's...unbelievable...! I've never heard of a biological effect like that before. I mean, to think that I got stabbed in the heart and healed quickly enough to stay alive is...well, amazing...!"
"It wasn't all that quick," Caring said a moment later.
I looked up slowly and saw an apologetic look in her eyes - she wasn't finished her bloody list yet!
"Oh, Goddess," I grumbled, "There's more!?"
"A few, uh...minor issues, yeah," Caring continued begrudgingly.
"Well...?" I said, an eyebrow raised in irritation.
"Well," began the unicorn, "Your heart...wasn't nearly as quick as you think it was in healing itself..."
"Then...what kept me alive while it was out of action...?" I asked, concerned that her response would as ground-shakingly bizarre as the rest of the conversation.
"Your, uh...other heart," she said sheepishly.
I stared at her for several seconds, my expression unaltered and my eyes unblinking. After the third, fourth and fifth attempts by my mind to process her words, my frontal lobe gave up altogether.
"I'm sorry Caring, could you repeat that please?" I said politely.
"You have two hearts; a binary vascular system," she responded.
"Remarkable..." I whispered out of astonishment, "This Taint stuff...why has nopony tried to use it as a treatment or something!? It's incred-"
"It wasn't the Taint," Caring said bluntly, cutting me off, "There was evidence of mutation, yes, but your veins and arteries were already in that configuration. You've had two hearts this whole time - probably since before I met you..."
"The glow..." I whispered as I cast my mind back to my first encounter with the TARDIS. I had been struck by a terrifying blast of golden radiation; the same glow that had enveloped me after the Controller had had its revenge.
I licked my lips, unsure of what to do or to say. The only thing that came to me was to allow Caring to continue in the hope that I would be left alone for a while afterwards.
"Is there anything else...?" I said quietly.
"There're a few things still to go over, yeah," she said apologetically, "Are you okay - we can do this later if you'd like?"
"I'll be fine," I lied, "I just need to sort my thoughts out when we're finished here. How about we just fire through the last however many bits of news are left?"
"Are you sure?" she said, "I've not got much in the way of 'good' news left..."
"I just need some rest, Caring," I whined, "Let me have it and I'll digest anything I don't like with a good healthy nightmare."
"Okay..." she said sceptically, "Then I'll be quick - you ready?"
"No," I replied, "But I need to be told this at some point - may as well be now."
"Right then," Caring said briskly, "You asked for it... Next change: your Pipbuck's been partially fused to your foreleg."
"Wha-? Oh my God-!" I began, as my eyes once again widened in shock. I looked down, and by some miracle, was able to truncate my expression before my voice transitioned into a scream. The previously definitive line on my foreleg that separated me and my Pipbuck was gone, replaced instead by a smooth, sickly gradient of squishy, bloody metal and hard, cold flesh.
"It's fine!" I said with a quiver, louder than was really necessary, "I never took the bloody thing off anyway - just keep going Caring."
The unicorn doctor was obviously shaken by my distress but, to her credit, remained stoic, continuing with the last few items of her horrific list.
"Your cutie mark has changed again," she said strongly, "It's almost completely different than before, and I'm afraid that the change looks permanent this time."
"Oh, so it's finally finished warping out of shape?" I said, forcing an unconvincing tone of normality upon my throat. The asymmetrical twitching of my right eye no doubt gave away the internal cries of anguish I was suffering, "What does it look like now? A combustible lemon? A cybernetically enhanced anus? Celestia's left ear?"
"Not quite," came the sympathetic response, "If anything, it looks...like an hourglass...."
Well that makes sense, I thought morbidly. The previous shapes now seemed a great deal more reasonable - they were just intermediate steps between my caret and the current shape.
"What's next?" I said as I gritted my teeth in readiness for the next bombshell, "Please tell me we're nearly done!"
"You'll be glad to know that this is the last piece of news I have to break to you-" began Caring.
Oh, thank Celestia!
"-but it's by far the most serious, so I'll have to ask you to brace yourself." she continued
Ah...shit...
"Go ahead," I said, my eyes closed and my mind ready (if there truly was such a thing) for recoil.
"Okay," she breathed, "Do you remember that little tool you had back in Trotfell? The one you used to disarm the mercenaries?"
"The Screwdriver?" I asked, surprised, "Of course I rememb- wait. Where is it!? Oh, Goddess, I haven't lost it have I!?"
"Eh...not as such, no," Caring said slowly, "To be honest, Compass...I doubt you'll have a problem finding it ever again..."
At first I squinted out of confusion at her words, but as the gears in my mind began to turn, I found myself looking slowly down at my mangled Pipbuck.
"Caring...?" I asked carefully, "Where's my Screwdriver...?"
"Well..." she continued begrudgingly, "Let me ask you this first - did you have it in your mouth at any point during your fight in the StableTec facility?"
My mouth!? What did that have to do with anything!? I broke eye contact, thinking back to my messy encounter with the Controller.
"Uh...yeah." I said after a brief jaunt down memory lane, "I was holding it in my mouth when the cyborg I fought exploded. Why? Is that import-...oh...oh, no way!"
My tongue flipped upwards in panic, searching the top of my mouth for anything peculiar. Sure enough, after a short fumble, I arrived at a disc of fresh, rough scar tissue in the centre of the roof.
"Caring, get me a mirror!" I shouted.
"Now that's definitely a bad idea!" she responded.
"Will you cut the crap and let me look at myself, dammit!" I continued, as my limbs strained noisily at their restraints.
"I knew I shouldn't have told you everything at once!" Caring muttered as she turned to leave, "We'll finish this off when you've calmed dow-"
"And just where the flying fuck do you think you're going!?" I interrupted, a blast of anger bellowing out to assault the unicorn before me, "Get your flank back in here and give. Me. A fucking. Mirror!"
"Compass!" responded Caring as she returned my aggression in kind, "You keep this up and I'll pump you so full of sedatives you won't know which way is up!"
"Oh fuck it all to Tartarus!" I screamed, "All I want is a Celestia-damned-...mirror..."
The argument between Caring and me stopped suddenly, far quicker than it had started - a small, hoofheld mirror, held aloft by the bright blue glow of unicorn magic, had floated into my field of view. That wasn't what had pacified us though - it was mutual shock!
In the mirror, I saw a pony staring back at me. A pony with a dark blue hide. A pony with an orange mane.
A pony with a horn.
"Congratulations..." gawked Caring, her eyes as wide a saucers at the sight of the glowing horn, "You've just cast your first levitation spell..."
It took Caring over twenty minutes to calm me down after that, during which time I used literally every profanity in my vocabulary to describe my situation. Somehow, in between my almost bipolar expressions of delight and dismay at my new 'appendage', Caring was able to further describe the ultimate fate of my Screwdriver.
Long story short: I fell on it.
At some point during my drop from the catwalk, I had hit something solid enough to drive the arcane tool, which I was carrying in my mouth the entire time, straight up through the roof of my mouth and out of my forehead (the pointy, unicorn horn-esque styling I had used for the new casing certainly helped it on its way). That was only the first part of the Screwdriver's miraculous (and gory) journey though. On its way through my frontal lobe, a torrent of Taint had found its way into the fresh wound and flowed freely into my cranial cavity, pooling between the Screwdriver's casing and my grey matter.
Now, either injury on their own would, or rather should, have been lethal. Hell, the combination of the two could have easily turned me into some sort of lobotomised mutant monstrosity. With the addition of the 'mysterious' third mutagenic process to the mix, however, my brain had responded in a fairly spectacular way - it had grown a third lobe.
A third lobe! Can you believe it!? My mutation had actually resulted in the spontaneous creation of my very own Arcane Cortex, the magic centre that sits at the base of every unicorn's horn. For all intents and purposes...I had just changed races! As wondrous as this was, my first few baby steps into 'unicorn-hood' weren't exactly what you'd call harmonious. For starters, my first spell was cast out of desperation and emotional turmoil - the need to grab a mirror despite my restraints was enough to elicit a small magical explosion from my horn (My horn! Never in a thousand years did I expect to be saying that!). As such, the remainder of Caring's explanation was punctuated by random flashes of blue light and an ethereal buzzing sound, usually followed by either flying scalpels or shattering beakers (fortunately, we were able to avoid any more bloodshed).
After a while it became clear that I had passed through the worst of my tantrum from earlier (and that I wasn't about to eat anypony), so Caring called a guard to release me from the hoofcuffs, and I was finally able to take a tentative step onto the floor. My legs wobbled profusely as I rose off of the bed, and it took me a number of minutes propped up on Caring's shoulder to find my hoofing. Once that was taken care of however, I noted a curious feeling spreading through my now unbound extremities; a feeling not unlike the one I had encountered after that initial exposure to the golden light in Stable 52. I was a ball of energy! Durable, flexible and fit as a fiddle! I felt as if I could go anywhere, anytime, right any wrong, solve any problem, and still be home in time for dinner!
I was also acutely aware that there was no time to lose! My memory and my motives had returned quickly to me once my physical condition was less of a concern. Back in the Stable, my friends - the only 'family' I had ever known - were under serious threat from the still anonymous Murderer. I quickly found my threadbare barding and engaged in a hurried rummage through the pockets (both the Edinbuck guard and Caring noticeably tensed at my sudden movements). I retrieved the Taint stained, magically warped remains of my notebook, and along with it, the key to regaining access to Stable 52. I turned to Caring, noting that the guard was giving the widest possible berth as I moved around.
"Caring," I said happily, as I forgot my wounds and embraced my mutation with worrying rapidity, "I need to talk to Sage - is he awake yet? I found what I was looking for in the StableTec facility! I can get back in-...wait...why did your face just drop when I mentioned Sage...?"
"Compass..." Caring began, "Sage is..."
"Oh no..." I whispered, a repulsive wave of nausea blasting me off my hooves "He's...he's dead...?"
"What!?" Caring exclaimed, "No! Don't jump to conclusions like that, you prat! He's been kidnapped!"
"Huh!?" I responded loudly, "What do you mean 'kidnapped'!? Who the hell would kidnap Sage?"
Caring raised an eyebrow and stood silently, waiting for me to put two and two together.
"The...Razors...?" I said as realisation dawned on me, "They came back!?"
"They must have heard about the attack," shrugged Caring, "And seen it as an opportunity to have another stab at Sage."
"Bastards..." I whispered, a rumble of rage coming to the boil in my stomach, "Did they hurt anypony?"
"It's funny you should mention that, actually," said Caring, "It was the weirdest thing - when they arrived, they were, well, polite."
"Polite...!?" I said slowly in surprise, "Are we talking about the same mercenaries here!?"
"Oh yes," nodded Caring, "In fact, their leader even asked for you by name, although she did call you 'The Doctor' for a while before one of her cohorts corrected her."
"Huh," I chuckled inwardly, "I guess I left quite the impression on that gryphon."
"'Impression' isn't the word I'd use," replied Caring, "'Traumatised' would probably be more apt."
"Well, whatever their mental state may be, I'm more interested in getting Sage back in one piece," I said, as a focussing determination came over me, "Where did they go and how do I get there?"
"Stone Tower's fortress," shuddered Caring, "It's not far from Edinbuck; maybe a day’s trot at most. You won't get in though."
"And why is that?" I asked, a list of required provisions already cycling through my mind.
"Are you even listening to me!?" Caring began, "I said they took him to Stone Tower's fortress! How easy do you think getting into a place with 'fortress' in its name will be!?"
"Easy enough," I replied cheekily, "Anyway, how bad can it be? The place is probably some decrepit, two hundred year old military base that took a direct hit during the war. It'll be a piece of-"
"It's a Stable," Caring said simply.
"Oh..." I replied, deflated, "Um...in that case...we may have to be a bit more sneaky than I'd originally planned."
"Compass," Caring said, a warning tone creeping into her voice, "Stone Tower's fortress is very well defended. The guards are all ruthless mercenaries, the surrounding areas are mined and, as well you know, the building itself is nigh on impenetrable! It can't be done!"
"Well then how the fuck do we get Sage back!?" I shouted as Caring's pessimism made my anger bubble over slightly.
"Simple," she said calmly, "We buy him. Stone Tower's obsessed with power and influence - we just have to get together enough wealth to buy back Sage."
"Caring, I can't express in words how bad that plan is," I said, "First of all, if this Stone Tower buck has gone to so much trouble to get a hold of Sage in the first place, what makes you think he'll put a price on getting him back? And secondly, if he does have an amount of caps or guns or whatever in mind, what makes you think we'll be able to pay it? From the sound of him, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to bankrupt Trotfell in the process!"
"He probably will..." said Caring sadly, "He's always been jealous of Trotfell's success. Even his slave trading hasn't brought him the power he craves-"
"His what!?" I whispered throatily, "Did you just say 'slave trading'!?"
"Yeah," confirmed Caring, "Stone Tower is the biggest slave trader in Trottingham. Hasn't anypony told you?"
"I didn't even know there was such a thing out here!" I shouted, "There's no way in Tartarus I'm letting him keep that up!"
"And just how do you think you're going to stop him, huh?" scoffed Caring, "There's a reason he's still at it, Compass - he's too powerful to touch!"
"Everypony has a weak spot," I retorted, "He trades in slaves, right? Then why don't we just pretend to be buyers and sneak in that way."
"There's an entry fee for buyers of ten thousand caps." said Caring evenly.
"Alright..." I continued, my patience thinning, "What if we pretend to be selling?"
"You'll never find volunteers to pretend to be slaves," she said, "Out here, Compass, slavery's everypony's worst nightmare."
"Are you saying nopony would do it, even if it were to save Sage's life?" I asked.
"Th-that's not...I mean-," Caring stuttered, "You wouldn't get the numbers! Stone Tower buys in bulk - he's a supplier to Red Eye for Luna's sake!"
I nonchalantly raised the notebook to eye level, as Caring's argument collapsed piece by piece.
"I have thirty-two thousand friends that I'm about to liberate from a chemically induced prison," I said coolly, "I don't think numbers will be a problem."
At that, I grabbed my gear and trotted out of room, as Caring's eyes bored holes into my back.
"Hey," I whispered, "Hey, Buckshot. Wake up."
Buckshot lay before me, spread eagled on a hospital bed, snoring loudly. Mo was nowhere to be seen, and the rest of the ward was occupied by broken cabinets and mangled medical equipment, piled high at the far end.
At that, he rolled over again and resumed snoring. I rolled my eyes reflexively and give him a jab in the ribs.
"Buckshot!" I said loudly, "Get up!"
"Buck obb!" came the muffled response.
"If you don't get up right now I'll, uh, punish you!" I said (almost) forcefully, "Severely! With, uh, chains and...stuff! If that's...you know...okay with you..."
Buckshot's snoring suddenly tapered off to silence (much like my ultimatum had a moment earlier) and a pair of slit-like eyes slowly turned to regard me. It took a few seconds for them to gradually wedge themselves open, and for his irises to adjust to the ambient light level in the room.
"C-Compass...!" he whispered, "Ye'r...alive...!"
"Kind of," I smiled.
"Thank Celestia!" Buckshot shouted as he shot off of the bed and clamped me in a tight embrace. Our lips met in a dry, oddly flavoured kiss, and our tongues made a point of exploring each other's mouths (Buckshot's took the lead, of course). Almost instantly, I began to detect a familiar sweet tightness between my legs (and a similar hardness nuzzling my belly as Buckshot pressed himself up against me). We broke our contact to take a breath but Buckshot continued to hug me like a vice.
"Ah'm so happy yer okay!" he shouted, a discreet tear trickling down his cheek, "Ah had this awful dream that ye mutated into this great fuckin' monster wi' stingers and tentacles and ye...ye tried...tae...kill...me..."
As he spoke, his line of sight drifted upwards toward my new 'horn' and his eyes widened in realisation.
"Oh, Goddess...it...it wus real...wasn't it...!?" he whispered. I nodded gravely.
"How, uh...how are ye, um...feelin'...?" Buckshot asked cautiously.
"Surprisingly good actually," I smiled, "Even if my face does look like a lost a fight with a lawnmower."
Buckshot relaxed visibly as I joked, and very soon after, I got the impression that he had quickly accepted me once again as his friend, rather than as the lump of mutant flesh that had tried to eat him the day before.
"Does it...hurt?" he asked tentatively as I allowed him to inspect the buried Screwdriver, "It looks pretty painful."
"You would think so, but it's actually okay," I said, "It is a bit weird to have to get used to, but there are advantages."
"Such as?" said Buckshot as he continued to gently poke and prod my forehead.
"Weeeeell," I said, a coy smile forming on my face, "For one thing, I can use magic."
"...Whit!?" Buckshot said after a momentary pause, "How can ye use magic!? You're an earth pony!"
"Not anymore," I said, trying to not sound too happy about my outlandish injuries, "Caring tells me that I'm, uh...a bit different now."
"So...you're a unicorn...!?" gawked Buckshot.
"No," I said, "When I said different...I meant...like, really different."
I was worried that Buckshot would recoil or otherwise distrust me if he discovered just how much the Taint and the golden glow had changed me. Imagine my surprise when he put his forelegs around my neck and brought me into a close, intimate embrace.
"Just as long as y'er still you," he said, as his breath warmed my cheek.
"Thanks Buckshot," I sighed, closing my eyes in contentment.
The hug went on for several minutes before I remembered my original reason for waking my friend.
"Oh! Buckshot, I've just remembered! I need to tell you something!"
"Dinnae worry Compass, Ah already know," he said throatily.
"Y-you do!?" I gawked, "Then why the fuck haven't you done anything about it!?"
"A-Ah, uh...didnae think it wis appropriate...you know...Ah thought it wis...too soon..." he stammered, taken aback by my outburst.
"Too soon!?" I shouted, "Are you serious!? The quicker the fucking better!"
"Ah never expected ye to be so...aggressive!" said Buckshot, his eyes narrowing and a mischievous little grin splitting his lips, "Awrite then, how about we play a wee game? First one to come gets spanked! Hard!"
"Wh-whoa! Stop!" I shouted as Buckshot moved in for another giant kiss, "I don't have a clue what you're talking about!"
"Uh...y-ye don't...?" he replied (through still puckered lips), "So, uh...ye'r not lookin' to...you know...get a servicing...?"
"No!" I shouted, "I was going to tell you about Sage being kidnapped by Stone Tower while we were at the StableTec facility!"
The moment I completed my short summary of the situation, Buckshot's demeanour changed completely: his jaw clenched tightly as he bared his teeth, and his lungs filled with a breath of pure rage.
"WHAT!?" he roared, almost bowling me over, "Those mange-ridden, pigeon-faced bastards! We should've killed them all when we had the fuckin' chance!"
"My Goddess, Buckshot, calm down!" I shouted back, "We'll get Sage back, don't worry!"
"Fuckin' how!?" he roared again, as he began to pace the room, "Stone Tower has a damn fortress! How are we supposed to get inside!? Knock!?"
"I have a plan," I said, "But I sincerely doubt I'll be able to pull it off alone. I know it's a lot to ask considering what we've just been through...but can you and Mo lend a hoof!?"
"A plan!?" replied Buckshot, his voice still far too loud for normal conversation, "Grand! Of course Ah'll help! What's yer angle?"
"Great!" I grinned, as Buckshot's 'shooty' look spread across his face, "I'll tell you in a minute, but I want to find Mo first. Where is she?"
"The room across the hall," replied Buckshot, "Ah'll get ma gear ready."
At that, Buckshot turned and began strapping his saddle bags over his back while I trotted hastily out of his room and into the one he had indicated. As I entered, I noted that the bed covers were strewn across the floor, and they led me to a small adjoining room with a missing door plaque. In my haste, I pushed open the door and announced my presence with a hurried bark instead of my usual cheerful salutation.
"Mo!?" I shouted, as I barrelled into the small room, "Are you in-"
I was suddenly cut short by a shrill scream and bottle of drain cleaner flying into the side of my head.
"Ahhh!" shouted Mo from behind a neck-high wall halfway into the tiny room, "Get the fuck out of here!"
Oh Celestia, of course! What an idiot I was! Mo hadn't seen me since I'd tried to eat her and Buckshot! That fact, combined with my current appearance and the less than gentile entrance had clearly not endeared me to her.
"Mo! It's me, it's me!" I shouted, "There's no need to panic! I'm fine now - no stingers, no tentacles, no poison-"
"I know it's you, you freaking idiot!" she shouted, "I was screaming because just you barged into the sodding bathroom!"
"Bathroom...?" I mimicked, tilting my head in confusion. Sure enough, after a brief glimpse around the room's periphery, I was able to detect a medicine cabinet and a sink.
"Sorry," I said, "Didn't realise - I thought bathrooms usually all had toilets in them..."
"They do!" replied Mo loudly.
"Then where's-?" I began.
"I'm sitting on it!" she shouted back.
"Oh..." I said slowly, "Then you're..."
"Yes!" came the angry response.
"So I should-..."
"YES!"
I slinked quickly out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me and waiting outside. After a few seconds of embarrassed hoof twiddling, there was a flush and Mo returned from the bathroom, muttering angrily under her breath.
"Can't even take a piss in this place - some ponies - freaking numb-skull." she grumbled as she emerged.
I avoided eye contact and began to mumble another awkward apology, but Mo made a point of standing directly in front of me, forcing me to look up into her face.
"First of all," she began, as she threw a small book onto the bed, "Knock first next time!"
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," I said, "At least that little wall was-"
"And secondly," she continued, as her forelegs suddenly shot around my neck and drew me into a hug tighter than Buckshot's, "I'm so happy you're okay!"
Taken slightly aback by the rapidity of her mood swing, I was left momentarily lost for words.
"You should've seen you when we found you!" Mo began, "Oh, I thought you'd never pull through, but Buckshot shouted at me when I suggested we keep our distance, so we pulled you onto our backs and ran back to Edinbuck-"
"Mo, could you-?"
"-and we were just so tired when we got back, we couldn't stay with you! You don't blame us for that do you? And oh, you're head! I thought at the very least you'd be brain damaged but no! Here you are: good as new! You must have-"
"Mo, I can't-!"
"-regenerated! That's what Time Lords do when they're near death, you know! There's no other way you could have survived all those injuries! Have you got any more memories back!? Oh I can't wait to hear about the real adventures of-"
"MO! You're fucking suffocating me!"
"Oh!" she suddenly shouted, releasing me from her ropey vice grip. By Celestia, she was strong!
"Sorry about that. Heh heh..." she continued, smiling, "I'm just...really glad to see you."
"Good..." I panted, "...to know...!"
I caught my breath, and propped myself up on the bed. From where I was standing, I was able to make out the title of the book Mo had had in the bathroom with her.
"You...do crossword puzzles while you're on the toilet...?" I asked incredulously. Mo responded by tilting her head in disbelief.
"Of all the things we can talk about now, you choose that!?" she shouted back, "What about your recovery!? Or the Cyberponies!? Or the thousand and one other things that confirm your origins!?"
"Oh, not this again!" I groaned, as I planted my rump on the bed, "Mo, the last thing I want to talk about is...is...him!"
"But can't you see?" she asked, "You are him! The glowing confirms it once and for all! Like I said, it's this process called 'regeneration' where-"
"Hey!" I shouted, "How'd you know about that damned glow!?"
"We saw you fall," she replied, "Buckshot and I reached the edge of the catwalk just as it gave way. You were glowing like the sun, Doctor."
Mo realised her mistake a fraction of a second after she had made it, but by then it was far too late. A torrent of anger flushed my veins; every muscle, every sinew was suddenly tense with rage! I reared up on top of the bed and slammed my hooves into the ancient hospital room wall, causing a rain of decrepit plaster to shower the floor as a large crack parted the ceiling.
"THAT IS NOT MY NAME!" I screamed, my chest heaving, "I. AM. COMPASS!"
I turned back to Mo in a flash hoping for a fight, or at the very least, an argument. Anything through which to further vent my outburst! Instead, however, I saw that my pegasi companion had been rooted to the ground in shock, and that she was literally shaking. Her breathing had slowed to an inaudible whisper, and her mouth was hanging open.
In short, I was pretty sure I'd just scared the living crap out of her.
My empathy chose that moment to kick in, and I began to feel the urge to reel in my anger. I started consciously controlling my breathing, forcing the rage back down inside me as I gently dismounted the bed. Mo backed away, still shocked by my outburst, so I resorted to once again sitting in the edge of the mattress, my head in my hooves.
"I'm...sorry, Mo," I whispered, as tears began to stream down my cheeks, "Sometimes I...I mean it's hard for me to..."
A foreleg wrapped itself around my shoulders and held me tightly. I looked up to find Mo sitting beside me, silently willing me to continue.
"I...I'm scared Mo," I said in a whimper, "He's in here; in me! Before it was easy to say where I started and he stopped, but now..."
As I began to weep, Buckshot gingerly stepped into the room (no doubt summoned by the sounds of my explosive temper) and assumed a position next to me on the bed. His foreleg joined Mo's as he placed his shotgun on the mattress behind us.
"Tell us," he whispered, as his scent made its way into my nostrils and made me melt with feelings of safety and warmth.
"We'll help," said Mo, completing Buckshot's sentiment.
With a vast blanket of support and comfort surrounding me, I broke down in a fit of tears and self pity.
"I...I'm not even an equine anymore!" I shouted, my personal shields dropping rapidly, "I grew my own fucking Arcane Cortex! I absorbed the Screwdriver and a Celestia-damned armour plate! Ponies aren't supposed to be able to do that! And to top it all, Caring says I have two hearts! Two! Knowing my luck, that's bound to be a 'Time Lord' thing, isn't it?"
Mo met my gaze, but remained silent, confirming my fears with her sad expression. She opened her mouth a moment later and smiled awkwardly.
"Well," she said cautiously, "Let's look on the bright side. At least your cutie mark's still your own..."
I smiled back, twisting my rump just far enough to view my flank. The sight of my warped, yet still very much individual, cutie mark was a surprisingly encouraging sight.
Until Mo saw it, that is. Her eyes widened in surprise and she gasped loudly, covering her snout with her hoof to try and conceal her reaction.
"Oh no..." I groaned, "Don't tell me-..."
A gentle, apologetic nod was the response. I sighed loudly, bringing my hooves up to cover my face. The dark little room descended into silence as a heavy, oppressive dread settled onto my shoulders. A broken pipe somewhere in the bowels of the ruined hospital dripped out a metronome beat as my mind ticked over in dismay.
One drip, two drips, three drips, four....
Five drips, six drips, seven drips, more...
Buckshot's voice shattered the quiet as he gingerly began to speak:
"Compass," he whispered, "Ah hate tae say, but...don't you think there's something a wee bit more...pressing tae deal wi'...?"
By Celestia! How could I have been so selfish!?
"Holy shit!" I shouted as I shot to my hooves, making my friends jump in surprise, "I forgot about Sage!"
"My Dad!?" Mo responded loudly, "What did you forget!? What's wrong with him!?"
"The Razors came back," I said, "Stone Tower finally got his hooves on him while we were at the StableTec facility!"
"WHAT!?" she screamed, springing off of the bed towards me, "You forgot that!? How could you possibly-"
"It's not like I meant it!" I said defensively as she approached, "I've had a lot to deal with today! Besides, I've already got a plan in mind to get him back."
"You'd better!" Mo shouted, "After all, it's your fault that we're out here! If it wasn't for you-"
"You'd be dead..." interjected Buckshot, cutting off her tirade before it gained any more momentum. Mo's expression suddenly softened as she realised what she was saying, and her mouth opened and closed a number of times as she fought for her next sentence.
I didn't give her words a second thought - there were too many ways in which I knew she was right, and the last thing I needed was more to obsess about. Instead, I quickly relayed my plan to Buckshot and Mo. They hated it to begin with, and only came to dislike it more as I continued, but the fact of the matter was that neither of them had anything better in mind. As such, they both reluctantly agreed to go along with my scheme, and at that, we grabbed our equipment, purchased a sackfull of provisions and made our way out of Edinbuck.
Our journey back to Stable 52 was, once again, a quiet one. We were developing a nasty habit of picking a direction and trotting towards it, without making any attempt at conversation. Oh, how I longed for a way to instantaneously travel between two points!
We discovered very quickly that in our haste to retrieve Sage, we had departed Edinbuck in the early evening, and so were forced to bunk down for the night when we neared Eagle Ridge. Buckshot set up a campfire and Mo unrolled a trio of portable bed mats while I rummaged through our supplies to find dinner. For some reason, we had over forty boxes of Instamash, so I naturally started preparing a hearty feast of two hundred year old freeze-dried potato. Buckshot recoiled at the sight of the blue and white boxes, saying that he needed something (or indeed anything) with a bit more kick. He trotted off, shotgun in hoof, as the sky began to dull. The silence that suddenly existed between me and Mo was something I had been both expecting and dreading - it was...awkward, and acutely unpleasant. Fortunately, Mo must have sensed it too, since she began to speak before the discomfort had time to settle.
"Listen," she said, "About what I said earlier...I was angry...and I, uh, spoke before I thought...sorry."
I turned to face her as I readied an appropriate response.
"It's okay," I replied, "I already knew it was my fault, Mo. I was just...ignoring it. You have nothing to apologise for."
Mo rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation as she continued.
"Oh, don't start that again," she said, "Wallowing never got anypony anywhere. True, it can quite good in small doses as a coping mechanism, but right now you're just taking the piss!"
"What do you mean 'taking the piss'!?" I said, my brow furrowing, "You were absolutely right! I am the reason that Sage is in danger. Lest we forget I'm also the reason Zeanna and all the other Trotfell guards are no longer with us! I'm a walking harbinger of death! All that's missing is the scythe!"
Mo regarded me gently in the light of the small campfire, the warm, orange glow softening her features through an interplay of shadow and colourful flickers.
"You're also the reason that I'm alive. Lest we forget that..." she said, mimicking me, "And I doubt Buckshot's ever been this happy before. It's almost as if you're refusing to see the good you do in favour of keeping track of the bad."
"Isn't that important though?" I asked.
"Yes," replied Mo, "But you're not meant to have it as a constant thought running in the back of your mind. It's not healthy."
I ran my tongue around my teeth as I considered what she had just said. I recognised quickly that her question was valid - what was the point in beating myself up like this?
To remember all that you've cost others, a small voice said within me.
I mused on Mo's words for a moment longer, trying to fashion an appropriate response, but before I could reply verbally, a radscorpion suddenly flopped into view between us. We both responded instantly: Mo somersaulted backwards, catching herself with her wings at the halfway point and rising gracefully into the air as she simultaneously readied her rifle. I, on the other hoof, screamed loudly and tumbled backwards off of the rock I had been sitting on, landing upside down, directly in front of Buckshot's giggling form.
"That was not funny," Mo said, realising that the giant arthropod had failed to show any signs of life, "I could have shot somepony!"
"Watching you two crap yerselves is worth a bullet in the flank," he chortled, as he sat down at the campfire, "So, who's hungry?"
"Euch!" wretched Mo, as Buckshot pulled a survival knife from his saddlebags and began to dismember the dead creature before us, "I'm not going anywhere near that!"
"Eh, suit yerself," replied Buckshot with a shrug, "Compass?"
"You're...eating...an animal...!?" I said, dumbfounded, "But...but...we have mash..."
"Fuck yer mash," he said, as a mouthful of radscorpion meat made its way into his maw, "Stuff's disgustin'. I'll take meat over that crap any day!"
I returned my attentions quickly to the InstaMash, wide eyed at the spectacle taking place just a few feet to my left. After mixing the powdery substance with a few bottles of purified water and then heating it over the fire, Mo and I tucked into a viscous, chalky gloop that looked entirely unlike the 'serving suggestion' on the box. Less than five minutes later, the radscorpion was being shared between three, and I was considering a research project to see whether or not InstaMash could be used as an industrial sealant. Conversation blossomed as we ate, no doubt as a result of the fire's warmth and the increase in our blood sugar levels. We talked briefly about the plan, although at that point there were so many unknowns that all our discussion did was flag up how stupid it still sounded. We eventually arrived (through a labyrinth of general conversational topics) to the subject of each other’s pasts. It quickly became clear that I had a very different upbringing to my two companions.
Where they were born in Wasteland communities, I was birthed from a high-tech genetic recombinator pod.
Where they first learned to fire weapons, I first learned to solve equations.
Where their had their first kisses, I had...well, nothing.
The thing that really creeped them out though, was my lack of a belly button - having been birthed artificially, my life functions were supported by localised intravenous injections. I explained the operation of the Pods as well, using a bag of little pony-shaped jellies I'd bought in an effort to make the process seem a bit more 'normal' to them. It didn't really work though - they just made fun of my featureless underside. Enjoyable as the exchange was, I couldn't help but check my flank every so often, hoping upon hope that my original magic mark would reappear. I could see that it was concerning my friends as well - on more than one occasion, I was able to catch a concerned glance as it shot between Buckshot and Mo. Inevitably, the conversation turned towards me, although not in the coddling fashion I expected:
"Will you stop staring at your arse!?" blurted Buckshot suddenly, "Ah know it's cute an' all, but now ye'r just being vane!"
I chuckled at that - a bit of humour can go a long way when you're down.
"Sorry, Buckshot," I said, "I just...can't believe that my mark...has turned into his. It's as if the Doctor's influence saves my life one moment, and tries to steal it the next! I mean, look at me! I've already started to look like him! Soon I'll be acting like him as well!"
"I doubt he had the 'horn' that you do," said Buckshot, a little more seriously, "That's a plus."
"And at least you don't sound like him," Mo added, "You've got that as well."
"True," I nodded, turning to her as she spoke. I smiled at her attempts to comfort me while swallowing the chewed remains of a sweet. As I ferried an additional confection into my mouth, I suddenly realised that I'd been hoarding them since removing them from the supply bag.
"Oh, sorry," I said, as an almost imperceptible catch in my throat deepened my voice slightly, "Would you like a jelly filly?"
Mo froze, her eyes wide as saucers. She stated at me for a time before swallowing uneasily. I knew that face. I knew it all too well by now.
"Oh what now!?" I asked, my despondency with my situation turning quickly into aggravation.
"Uh...n-nothing," said Mo, as I noticed that Buckshot was keeping very quiet as well. They didn't have to explain anything - the writing, as they say, was on the wall. And just like that, we were back to the harsh Wasteland silence, softened only by the crackle of the ebbing campfire.
We sat for about five minutes, avoiding one and other's lines of sight. I would have let it continue, were it not for the fact that I actually preferred laughing and eating with a group of friends to sitting in awkward, fearful silences.
"Mo?" I asked, breaking the sound embargo without turning my head, "How'd you get your cutie mark?"
She turned to face me, her brow slightly furrowed.
"Uh...why?" she asked, "I thought that that was a sensitive issue at the moment. Are you sure you want to talk about it?"
"Well I asked didn't I?" I replied, annoyed, "I'm just...sick and tired of being afraid of him. I want to stop dreading the sight of my own flank, and I figured it would be good to, well, embrace a few things..."
Mo's head rotated a little as she regarded me. Clearly, neither she nor Buckshot had been expecting this of all things to come up in conversation.
"And you think that talking about cutie marks will help?" she asked slowly.
"It sure as Tartarus beats an awkward silence," I said with an angry shrug.
Another glance was exchanged between my companions, followed by a pair of reluctant nods.
"Alright," Mo said quietly, as she settled onto her bed mat, "My cutie mark came to me in the middle of the night, about a week before my ninth birthday."
The sounds around the camp softened noticeably as Mo started to speak, her calming tone demanding my attention as her story continued. I felt my heart(s) beating slower and slower as if her voice was the only sound in the Wasteland that mattered.
"I was on one of my first scavenging trips with Dad, and we had found a transmitter station about six hours trot south of Trotfell. Inside, the place was badly damaged, and a section of the roof was missing just inside the entrance. Since it was so small, Dad said it would be okay if we split up - we'd only be a couple of rooms apart if anything went wrong - so he went elsewhere while I started looking through the drawers and cabinets in the recording studio for salvage."
There was something about Mo's voice; her tone, her intonation patterns - they were...hypnotic. I felt myself being drawn further and further into her story the more she spoke.
"In one of the desks, I found an old TBC holotape, labelled 'Doctor Whooves and the Selenite Menace - rehearsal copy'. I'd only heard a couple of other Doctor Whooves stories at this point in my life, but it had already become one of my favourites. Naturally, I wasn't willing to wait on us getting back to Trotfell, so I ran into the recording booth, pulled the back off of one of the terminals and fed in the tape."
Mo's eyes had become visibly watery as her tale progressed, and her gaze was indirectly centred on the heart of the campfire. She was somewhere else entirely.
"I listened to the voices on the tape, and I felt so...so...comforted. It was like listening to the past - the cast were happily going about their daily business; reading through their scripts, laughing at one and other's mispronunciations and blunders. There was a...warmth to it all; a fellowship - like I was there with them, a recording engineer, or maybe an extra with only a couple of lines. Anyway, I had just settled down in the glow of the monitor to listen, when this one voice got my attention. I gathered that she was the writer of the series, and that was surprising, seeing as how all I'd ever managed to uncover about her was her pseudonym. It wasn't her presence that intrigued me, though - it was her words. You see, she was talking about the Doctor not as an author talks about a character, but as a pony talks about a dear, old friend. Like...like he was real. The actors must have been used to it, because nopony pointed it out, and nopony tried to correct her. You can't imagine the epiphany I had that night: what if the Doctor - a pony with the power to save whole worlds - was real...? I felt such hope; such safety in those thoughts! And I wanted that feeling for everypony in the Wasteland, regardless of whether they were friend or foe!"
Passions were rising within me; like they clearly were in Mo. My hearts (I swear, I'll never get used to that) were beating faster, blood rushing through my veins as my hooves clenched the ground in anticipation of the story's climax.
"And then, just as I thought the moment couldn't be any more perfect, a shaft of light came down upon me. I looked up, and gasped at the beauty of what I saw..."
I was leaning so far in at this point, I feared that I would topple forwards onto my face. As I edged further and further forward, Mo suddenly turned toward me, a fiery glare in her eyes, eliciting a gasp from both Buckshot and me.
"The moon," she said, her breathing ragged and her voice serious beyond all doubt, "Luna herself shone down on me that night, in spite of the scorched sky. I saw the wonder of the gleaming lunar surface and I saw the majesty of the twinkling stars above! In that perfect moment, I knew what my destiny was! In that perfect moment, I realised that I would find the Doctor! And in that perfect moment," she continued, as her voice diminished to a whisper, "I got my cutie mark."
I let out a breath I didn't even realise I had been holding as Mo's expression returned to normal.
"Wow..." I whispered, looking to Buckshot, as the enraptured look on his face diminished, "Good story..."
"Heh, thanks," Mo smiled, as she looked to her flank. I followed her gaze, and found that it ended at her cutie mark: a white crescent moon with a small, blue rectangle seemingly in the process of whizzing around it.
"So...?" Mo asked expectantly, "Who's next?"
"Hm?" I said, as I snapped back to looking at her face rather than her bottom, "What did you say?"
"Who's next?" Mo repeated, "You know, to tell their cutie mark story. You needn't think I'm going to be the only one!"
"Well, you know how I got mine," I said, as buckshot sighed loudly behind me, "A cocktail of Taint, lasers and a few doses of 'magic-golden-glowing-Doctor-radiation'."
"No, your first cutie mark," Mo elaborated, "The one that's about you, not the Doctor. Forget him for now, and tell us about Compass, Compass."
I blinked in surprise. Mo telling me to not talk about the Doctor!? What madness was this!?
"Uh...okay," I said, as I smiled widely and nodded, "Um...well...I suppose it all started when I was in school. You see, in Stable 52, there's a period of rapid education that all new personnel undergo just after being birthed. I was staying late one night in the terminal room to finish an assignment I'd, uh, forgotten about, when I realised that I'd skipped dinner. I don't work well on an empty stomach, so I locked my terminal and went to grab a snack. On my way to the vending machine though, I was stopped by the sound of...crying."
Mo and Buckshot listened attentively as I told my story, and I felt myself relaxing more than ever before around them.
"I poked my head into the room it was coming from," I continued, "And found a buck called Aqua Vita inside. He had his heads in his hooves, sobbing over a keyboard like there was no tomorrow."
"He wasn't...he wasn't about to be...?" Mo asked, a concerned look on her face.
"I'm afraid so," I said slowly, "When I met him, he was 19 years, 11 months...and thirty days old. He had less than twenty-four hours left to finish his work - his life's work - before the end."
"His life's work!?" gasped Mo, "What was the problem?"
"Well, it didn't work for starters," I replied, "He was working on some sort of advanced control program; said it would remove the need for manual pipework control forever, freeing up a whole division of technicians for other projects. He'd been writing it for over three quarters of his life, and it still didn't work."
"Shit..." whispered Mo.
"Indeed" I answered, "Anyway, I figured he could use some company, so I shared my apple crisps with him and offered to take a look. He chuckled nervously and started swearing at himself under his breath, racking up demerit after demerit on his Pipbuck. As I cast my eyes over his terminal, it became apparent to me that he was so busy focussing on his problems that he'd actually started to forget even the simplest of things."
"A caret?" smiled Mo.
"A caret," I replied, "The error was bang slap in the middle of the screen - clear as day. So, I leaned over, tapped shift + 6 and hit run on the interpreter."
"And...?" said Mo.
"And..." I continued, "It worked. When the interpreter returned no errors he started crying far more profusely than before. I was actually worried he was leaking at first - but then he jumped off of his seat and hugged me again and again, getting tighter each time, thanking me richly in between squeezes. Being so 'young', I didn't realise what it had meant to him, nor could I properly gauge just how strong his emotional response was. Something I was able to gauge however was how good I felt for making somepony that happy. In helping him solve his problem, I had discovered a feeling of deep fulfilment and...well, contentment within myself. With that simple, innocuous act of kindness, I found that which made me truly happy, I found my purpose...and I found my cutie mark."
Mo half-smiled as I finished my tale - something was on her mind.
"Not what you expected?" I asked.
"Hm?" she answered, "Oh, no, it's not that. Your story was great - it's exactly what I expected from you. It's just...that buck you mentioned, Aqua Vita...did he...?"
"Yeah..." I nodded solemnly, "It was his time, Mo. As far as he knew, he didn't have any control over when he died. In Stable 52 you get twenty years. That's all."
Mo mirrored my nodding gesture, indicating her comprehension. Nevertheless, her face still bore an expression of deep sorrow for my long lost acquaintance. To be honest, I knew exactly what she was thinking - ever since Caring Heart had discovered the artificial limitations placed upon me and my Stablemates by our Pipbucks, my world view had undergone some pretty major changes. The main one being my realisation that many of my friends who had been recycled in the past few years would still be with us, were it not for their being confined to the Stable.
Before a combination of rage and depression could make me ill, I broke the soft silence that had descended on the camp. Turning to Mo, I smiled broadly:
"Ah well," I said, in my best fake happy voice, "No point in us moping, now is there?"
Mo scoffed at me, amused.
"You're one to talk!" she said as she chuckled, "But you are right, at least. We should keep talking, focus on the good rather than the bad!"
"Agreed," I said, "How about we round off for the night with a final cutie mark tale? I'd be pretty interested in learning how Buck-"
"No," came a heavily accented bark. Mo and I turned to observe its source - our Coltish companion - with looks of confusion on our faces.
"Sorry?" I asked, "'No' what?"
"No, as in y'er no gettin' ma cutie mark story," said Buckshot slowly.
"And why not?" asked Mo indignantly, "We told you ours!"
"Your choice," replied Buckshot, "I didnae ask ye tae tell me anythin'."
"Oh come on," I said back, "How bad can...it...be...?"
Buckshot turned his head to stare at me, looking into my eyes with what was quite possibly the most serious expression I'd ever seen.
"Bad..." he said simply, "How rosy do ye think the story behind a shotgun shell cutie mark is gonnae be?"
Mo and I looked at one and other for a moment as we visually shared some emotions. If my facial-expression-ese was up to scratch, we basically communicated our mutual unwavering support for whatever horror Buckshot had lived through in order to find his mark. We nodded to each other to end the silent exchange and turned back to him.
"Well, I still want to hear it," I said.
"Me too," mirrored Mo, "It's important that you share these things with others so that-"
"Ah don't. Want. Tae talk about it!" replied Buckshot forcefully, "Will ye just drop it!?"
"We didn't drop the last thing you tried to withhold," I said after a moment, "And look how well that turned out. Think of how much better you felt after we had that conversation in the StableTec facility."
"Ah- Ah don't...It's just...fuck..." stuttered Buckshot as my logic became clear to him. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, only reopening them when he had braced himself for what was to come.
"Awrite..." he whispered, "But only because ye said ye'd be supportive...Ah've never told anypony this before..."
Mo and I leaned in expectantly, smiling in recognition of the trust he was investing in us.
"Ah was born in a walled community less than a tenth the size of Trotfell, up in the Highlands near the old city of Dunlock," he began, "Mah mother wis the town's head guard, and mah father wis on the medical staff at the local hospital. Ah suppose ye'd say we were a sort of...frontier town - arse end o' nowhere, aff the main trader's routes, nothin' around for miles. An' when ye'r as isolated as we were, ye get a lot o' ponies thinkin' ye'll be easy prey."
Buckshot took a breath, staring off into the distance as he continued to recant his personal history to us.
"There wis this band o' raiders ye see," he said, a catch forming in his throat, "They gave us a lot o' trouble, but mah Ma, she...she always fought them aff! Until...until this one night..."
Tears were starting to pool at the corners of his eyes, but he gritted his teeth and soldiered on regardless. A flood gate had been opened in his mind somewhere, and he wasn't going to stop until the dam of his memory had been drained.
"They...they got inside the walls," he said, as the catch returned, distorting his strong voice, "Ah wis...asleep...when I heard the first screams. Ma and Dad grabbed their gear tae go an' help, but it wis...it wis too late. They had numbers, they had guns and they had the element o' surprise...we were nae match fer them..."
Tears streamed freely down Buckshot's face as my own tear ducts began to moisten.
"Ma wis the first tae go down - hit by a sniper. Dad wasnae too far behind...he ended up wi' a knife in his back while tryin' tae bandage up another medic. And then there wis me...on mah own...about tae meet a short, blood-stained death. Except...there wis this shotgun...lying on the ground. Ah don't know who dropped it...hell, Ah could barely even lift it...but it was enough. I grabbed a box o' shells from mah mother's corpse and...started pulling the trigger. Ah felt so...so free...everypony Ah ever knew or loved lay dead or dyin' around me, but Ah was suddenly...separate...fae all the chaos. The raiders fell one by one, all o' them straying too close tae me and mah shotgun. With that box of shells, Ah avenged mah parents, mah friends and mahself! An' then...when all the smoke had cleared...I realised I was the only one left - the entire settlement had been wiped out, raiders an' all..."
Buckshot suddenly stopped and tried to take a steadying breath, but all it served to do was accentuate the growing catch in his throat.
"I fell tae the ground," he continued quickly, "Wailin' up at the Goddess for over an hour. When Ah eventually came tae mah senses and went tae pick mahself up, Ah noticed I'd gained my mark. A mark of pain...and...and vengeance, that wis forever mine, and mine alone, to bear. And with that grim wee piece o' knowledge firmly in hoof...I trotted out into the Wasteland."
Oh, Celestia, how I wished he'd kept that to himself! Mo and I were crying more than Buckshot - we had no idea, simply no clue, what he had gone through. All we could do at that point was try (and I stress try) to give him the support we'd promised only a moment earlier. Mo was the first to approach, wrapping her forelegs around Buckshot's shoulders as their tears merged in a tight embrace. I followed suit, joining them on the opposite side. We stayed that way for several minutes, and then several hours, falling gently into sleep's embrace.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Tainted Taint has made its way into your body, giving you a strange new lease on life. You are now 20% more RAD resistant.
New perk added: Adamantium skeleton With the Adamantium Skeleton perk, your limbs only receive 50% of the damage they normally would.
New perk added: Lord of Time Biologically, you now resemble a Time Lord more than you do an Equestrian. Two hearts, powers of regeneration and knowledge of the cosmos grant you a bonus of 1 to your INT and AGL stats. Crafted items now also have the prefix 'Gallopfreyan' and are granted increased effectiveness and durability.
Sonic Screwdriver removed; Sonic Horn added
New Sonic setting: U1 - Levitate Your first spell. Well done, little colt - have a cookie. You can now levitate physical objects that weigh less than 2kg for up to 20 seconds.
"Hey, Future-buck! Wake up!" shouted Stockade excitedly as he barrelled into the interrogation room, "I made some calls - somepony from the MoM is coming to assess your claims! They'll be teleporting in soon, so get up!"
I groaned as I lifted my aching body up off of the floor and craned my neck to look at him.
"Wh...whuh...?" I whimpered, "What's...what's going on...?"
The dark red unicorn buck pulled me up with surprising care, even making sure that I was steady on my own hooves before removing his support.
"You're going to get your chance to save us!" he said, the level of hope in his voice filling me with dread, "The Ministry's confirmed what you said - it looks like an attack really is imminent!"
"And...you're excited about that...?" I asked as my head screamed for more sleep.
"Don't get me wrong," Stockade replied, "I'm terrified of the prospect, but the very fact that you know so much about it makes your claims damn near impossible to refute! Which means that we're safe! If you'd failed to stop the attack, there'd be no future for you to come from!"
I hated myself. I truly and utterly hated myself. Lying was one thing, but false hope of this magnitude!? A guilty, pained wince ran across my face as he finished his sentence, causing my eyes to water as it passed. I was able to disguise it as part of my (very much real) headache though, so Stockade didn't register it as a reaction to what he was saying.
I was suddenly distracted by a feeling that I had missed something - in fact I'd felt that way since the beginning of my torture. At some point, not too long ago, I had lost something very impor- Redheart! How the fuck could I have forgotten about Redheart!?
"Stockade!" I suddenly shouted, "The mare I was with when you arrested me - Redheart - where is she!?"
"Don't worry about her," he said reassuringly, "She actually told us that you were an escaped mental patient in the first place - we would have released you into her care if we hadn't discovered that you weren't in any of our records first."
"Clever filly," I sighed, as my appreciation of Redheart's resourcefulness eclipsed my guilt at temporarily forgetting about her.
"Anyway," Stockade continued, "She didn't seem to know anything about your mission when we questioned her a second time, although I suppose you'd want it to remain a secret."
He winked knowingly at me as he spoke, and I saw that same terrible hope twinkle in his eyes again. I swear a little bit of me died at that moment. I had to tell him. I just had to - watching him dream about a peaceful, war-free Equestria was almost worse than the whipping!
"Listen, Stockade," I said as I hoisted myself shakily up onto my hooves, "I'm not-...you see, it's...just that-"
Before I could continue, a bright red glow suddenly overtook Stockade's horn, taking us both by surprise. The magic quickly reached its peak intensity, sparking into a white star before fizzling away into darkness.
"What the hell was that all about!?" I asked, my fatigue having been temporarily banished by surprise. A response was not immediately forthcoming - Stockade had taken to standing bolt upright, his hoof plastered to his forehead in a salute.
"Proxy teleportation spell," he said out of the corner of his mouth before redirecting his attention to a point some distance over my left shoulder, "Afternoon ma'am."
I whirled round on the spot to find that a tired and serious looking mare with a pink mane and a triple balloon cutie mark had materialised directly behind me.
"Meet the head of the Ministry of Morale," said Stockade, a light quiver running through his voice as he did so.
"Hi," she said in a simple, deflated tone, "I'm Pinkie Pie. What's your name?"
<<<<< O >>>>>
My tears drew sparkling trails of fire down my face as I leant against the TARDIS door, desperately clinging to its dimensionally transcendent shell for support.
How could this have happened!? How could I have failed them so completely!? Another world ruined, another species wiped out all because I was too slow, too shell-shocked to cope with the Master's reappearance.
Damn me! Damn me to Tartarus!
I caught a wet, shivering breath as my tear ducts began to dry up, risking another heart breaking glance at the dead world around me. I longed for somepony - anypony - to appear and ask me why I was crying to myself in a crater next to a blue box; to inform me that Equestria was just as alive and vibrant as before, and that I had just happened upon the site of an industrial accident or the remnants of a particularly bad gardening job.
I knew that wouldn't happen though...
I knew that the vast majority of this world's inhabitants had perished in nuclear balefire, that whoever remained had probably sought refuge underground and perished soon thereafter, that nothing of the world I had come to love would ever be allowed to-
"Why are you crying to yourself in a crater next to a blue box?" said a mare's voice, as my train of thought suffered a violent derailment. I had just enough cognisance left to look up at that which was addressing me. To my giddy astonishment, I found a steel grey mare with kind, chestnut brown eyes staring back at me, a quizzical expression furrowing her brow. Behind her, a heavily scarred pony - clearly her companion - stood staring at me from a safe distance, a well used rifle clutched threateningly in her hooves.
"Uh...this may be a bit of a strange question," I began nervously, "But can you tell me where I am?"
"You're...in a crater..." she responded slowly, "Are you on Jet or something?"
"No, I mean...I mean..." I continued tentatively, terrified of her response, "Why is everything so...dead...?"
"I'll have whatever he's havin'," the mare's friend said with a chuckle. The grey one silenced her by shooting a scowl over her shoulder and returned her attention quickly to me.
"Nuclear war tends to take its toll," she said with a smile, "But drugs aren't the answer - they can't keep the bad stuff out forever."
I felt my face fall and my optimism desert me as reality forced its way back into my consciousness.
"Oh..." I said quietly, my hopes well and truly obliterated, "Th-thanks...I'll, uh...I'll just be going then..."
I attempted to rise to my hooves but was stopped from balancing correctly by the overwhelming sense of loss and despair that had suddenly returned to me. I toppled over onto the TARDIS, bruising my shoulder in the process. The grey mare rushed to my aid, propping me up despite the force of gravity's attempts to floor me.
"Oh no you don't!" she said, "There's no way I'm leaving you exposed out here like this! You're coming with us!"
"That's...that's not...necessary..." I replied vacantly, "I'll be, uh...I'll be fine..."
"My flank you will," she said, "You need to sober up. If we leave you out here like this you're as good as dead!"
"B-but...you-...I-..." I continued, as my mind steadily accelerated towards depressed incoherence, "I...don't even know your name..."
"Well, this is my marefriend Jokeblue," the grey mare replied as her companion moved to assist in propping me up, "And my name's Homage. Pleased to meet you."
<<<<< O >>>>>
The next morning came far too quickly.
I awoke with a grunt and a yawn as the dried remains of last night's tears made my eyes feel crusty and unusual. My stirring had thankfully not disturbed my companions, and I was rewarded for my care by the chilly morning mist and the opaque glow of the rising sun.
Rolling gently onto my hooves, I rose up and stretched, taking a good lungful of air in through my nostrils. The vista of the Wasteland had an eerie, almost spooky beauty to it - the sadness that I had first registered upon leaving the Stable was still here; ever present and absolutely permeating. The pain and the sorrow of our race had transmuted into a poignant tale of heroic irony, and it was all etched into the landscape before me.
All I had to do was close my eyes...and I could hear a thousand screams and a million whimpers, softened almost into melody by their own sheer numbers.
"Ugh...mornin'..." Buckshot grunted as he rolled over onto his hooves, shattering my moment of silent reflection
"Morning," I replied as I turned to face him, "You, uh...you okay?"
"Aye," he said simply as he pecked me on the lips, a small smile on his face.
I smiled back silently, happy that I had managed to do something nice for somepony without accruing any guilt in the process.
Mo continued to snooze for some time, batting her wings reflexively at us as Buckshot and I tried unsuccessfully to wake her. When she did eventually rise to consciousness, we rolled up our bed mats and promptly continued on our way. This time though, we actually engaged in conversation, happily sharing more stories of our early lives. I was enjoying myself so much, I barely noticed when we reached the scrap pile on which I had originally met Mo.
I could feel my hearts beating progressively faster as we closed in on the entrance to the Stable, buried beneath its rocky shell. We retraced my steps easily enough, and were soon standing at the mouth of the tunnel from which I had initially emerged a little over a week ago.
"Are ye doin' awrite?" Buckshot asked, as I gulped loudly in trepidation.
"Yeah," I said absentmindedly, "I'm just a little nervous, you know? Last time I left this place...I was running for my life..."
"We're here with you," Mo said supportively as her hoof grasped my shoulder, "Be brave."
I nodded to my companions, thankful for their support, and began a slow, echoing trot towards the giant cog of Stable 52. It was easy to spot once we were out of the grey light of day but, despite Buckshot and Mo's best efforts, my hearts still thrummed to a samba beat in trepidation. I felt myself tensing more and more as we approached the warm orange glow of the safety lamp above the door - I was practically having a double heart attack by the time we reached the controls!
Wasting no time, I grabbed the edges of the Stable entry console as if my life depended on it. A quivering realisation came to me as I did so - I had done it; I was back! (In all honesty, I had worried that some catastrophe had occurred while I was away, and that my home would be forever inaccessible to me.)
In deference to my bleak projections however, the console monitor blinked contentedly back at me as I tried to control my breathing. It was still here, still real, and I was almost home!
All that remained was to get inside...
An affirmative nod from Buckshot and Mo indicated their readiness to continue, and I started keying in the six digit override code.
"Here we go..." I said tensely as I tapped the Return key. Almost immediately, a muffled klaxon began to sound behind the door; a harsh mechanical squawk accompanied by the groaning, whining complaints of the Stable's centuries old mechanisms.
I looked to Buckshot and Mo, licking my lips nervously, and found them staring back at me. What were they expecting? A song and dance?
Before I could open my mouth to question them however, the massive metal gear before us screeched backwards into its recess, rolling sluggishly out of the way. A moment of hissing silence followed, after which we cautiously stepped inside. I noted that my companions eyes were finding it difficult to remain still - their respective gazes darting back and forth as they tried to take every detail of this new place in at once.
"Nopony coming to welcome us then..." Mo said absentmindedly as several minutes passed without activity from the Stable's inner door.
"Oh, sorry Mo, I forgot to tell you," I said as my jitters made my hooves itchy, "Nopony will come up this far, especially when intruders have breached the Stable. Besides, they have the intrusion countermeasures to rely on, so it's far safer for them to stay below."
Mo seemed put out by my words, as she rounded on me as soon as I had finished speaking.
"'Intrusion countermeasures'!?" she said loudly, as the drive pod automatically lowered itself from the ceiling, squeezing the Stable's cog shaped door back into its frame, "What the hell are 'Intrusion countermeasures'!?"
"Oh, just some automatic program somepony came up with about fifty-or-so years ago," I explained calmly, "It seals the entrance hall if it detects any unauthorised access to the Stable and siphons the air out in order to render them unconscious. After that, the Stable's robots come out and deposit them outside the door before they wake up again. A simple yet effective system of protection."
Mo drew a long breath as her forelegs slowly creeped towards my throat, her eyes twitching unevenly.
"And why... are we only hearing this now...?" she said as she fought to keep her voice in check, "I thought there was a murderer in here! Your friend, what was his name? Oh, Valve! Yeah, him! I thought you said he was killed in his sleep by a robot! And now we're probably going to go in the exact same way!"
"Hold on Mo!" I shouted nervously while trying to keep my distance from her, "I didn't see any need to tell you! After all, I've got the Screwdriver - all I have to do is stop the program and use the Digital Unlock setting on the control panel for the door. There's absolutely nothing for you to worry about!"
Buckshot and Mo shared a slack jawed glance as I finished speaking - apparently they weren't very reassured...
"Uh, Ah hate tae be the one tae ask, but..." Buckshot said nervously as the distant whir of a motor signalled the intrusion program's surreptitious activation, "Have ye actually tried tae use that thing since yer accident...?"
"I-..." I began, stopping suddenly as Buckshot's lightning strike of logic hit me right between the eyes, "Oh...oops..."
"OOPS!?" screamed Mo, "Never fucking mind 'oops'! Get us out of here you twat!"
"On it!" I said as I quickly busied myself with the internal console, tapping furiously at the command dialogue in an effort to free us. Unfortunately though, the program was a lot more ingenious than I had originally figured - the terminal had been locked out of the maneframe, making it impossible to override the intrusion countermeasures (even with my fancy new authorisation codes).
I turned to the inner door instead, trying desperately to force a few sparks of magic out of my horn. Unsurprisingly, no arcane bursts were forthcoming - not that the Screwdriver didn't try though. I could feel the mode ring clicking into place as the tiny ratchet inside made my teeth chatter, a deep desperation feeding the small component with angular momentum. As for actually activating the Screwdriver however, I was still very much clueless. (How would you operate something if the controls were fused to your frontal lobe!?)
"Compass!" shouted Mo as she started to claw at her throat in desperation, "Do something!"
I resorted to pulling Prometheus out of the sheath on my back and lined up the sight with where I assumed the pneumatic pump for the door was housed - it was a last ditch effort, but it was the best I had. As my jaw closer around the trigger, a mighty blast of wind suddenly forced me backwards - the inner door had opened!
"Get in!" shouted the figure standing there, "Hurry!"
I didn't need to be told twice. Fighting the pressure differential with all of our might, Buckshot, Mo and I dragged ourselves into the corridor beyond the entrance hall, and promptly collapsed as the hatch sealed itself behind us. I began to rise, ready to thank our saviour for their timely intervention, when I was harshly body-slammed back onto the floor. Buckshot and Mo received a similar welcome, and I yanked my head upright as soon as I was able - I wanted to look into the eyes of whoever was assaulting us. My gaze was met by a horn charged with a very potent looking cutting spell as my line of sight rose up off of the floor.
A very familiar horn...
"Petri!" I blurted, surprised, "Oh Goddess, it's good to see-"
"Where is he!?" she suddenly shouted, interrupting me.
"Whu-!?" I responded out of confusion, "Where's who?"
"Compass! The buck you just mentioned by name in there!" she replied, shooting aggressive glances back and forth between Buckshot, Mo and me, "We were monitoring you. Now, tell me where our friend is! I swear to Luna, if you've hurt him I'll slice you into confetti!"
"Whoa!" I shouted, in a vain attempt to defuse the situation, "Petri! It's me!"
"I've never seen you before in my life!" she continued assertively, "Tell me what I want to know!"
As I continued to stare in confusion at my 'friend', I was able to make out two other figures waiting patiently behind her, and I quickly identified them by size and posture as Bulkhead and Atom Spark.
"Bulkhead! Atom!" I shouted to them, "You recognise me, don't you? It's me! It-it's Compass!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" snarled Petri as she once again lowered her armed horn toward my throat, "You look nothing like him! All you've got going for you is your size - everything else is off!"
"Wh-what!?" I shouted, "What the hell do you mean 'everything else is off'!? I can't have changed that much!"
"Oh, please!" she scoffed aggressively, "Your mane and hide are the wrong shade, your cutie mark's different and, let's not forget love, you're a unicorn! Now where. Is. Compass!?"
"Petri," I began slowly, "I swear to you, I am Compass! I've just had a little...adventure, that's all! The pigmentation and the cutie mark changes are symptoms of this...this...stuff they have out there; a toxic, mutation inducing gunge - I took a bath in it a couple of days ago! I promise you, I'm still the same buck you were educated beside!"
"Uh-huh..." Petri growled sceptically as she bared her teeth, "And the horn? I suppose you expect me to believe that it's artificial or something? Well, let me tell you something you...you...paleoponic primitive! You're not going anywhere until you tell me where my friend-"
"PETRI!" I screamed into her face, rising to my hooves as she suddenly recoiled in surprise, "I've tried to be nice! I've tried to be accommodating! But you're not listening! So, you want a fucking explanation!? Here's your Celestia damned explanation!"
I whipped my head forward in a furious (and painful) motion causing the heft of the Screwdriver to yank centrifugally at my skull. In response, a satisfying clunk resonated throughout the corridor as the conical casing of the alien tool flipped open, revealing the glowing arcane gem sealed within.
"What in the-!" cried Petri as she fell backward in surprise, "M-my Goddess! It's...it's...!"
"Artificial," I said through gritted teeth, "Like I said..."
There was an eerie silence as the Screwdriver's light gently accented the features of those present, and I felt my chest heave, the final breaths of my outburst bleeding away into the background. Seemingly unperturbed by the seething quiet, Atom Spark suddenly started trotting forward, slowly approaching me with a considering scowl on her face.
"If...if you are Compass...our Compass," she said carefully, "Then you'll be able to tell us about him; about living here in the Stable, what you worked on, how...how your love of vegetables got you your cutie mark..."
I felt my right eye twitch as another wave of anger quickly flushed my cheeks with warmth. I reared up, slamming my hooves to the metal floor, marking the start of a furious tirade:
"IT'S NOT A LUNA-DAMNED VEGETABLE! HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO-"
"Sweet Celestia, it is you!" gasped Atom as she rushed forward to hug me, her ropey little forelegs wrapping themselves around my neck.
"I-! But-! You-!" I stammered as the hug dampened my fury and cleansed the anger from my soul, "Oh, Atom...thank the Goddess you're so smart..."
I succumbed to the embrace as Petri righted herself and shared a surprised glance with Bulkhead. Atom's little ploy was, undoubtably, a stroke of genius, and nopony appreciated it more than me.
"It's so good to see you again, Compass!" gushed Atom as she buried her head into my chest, "We thought you'd...you'd...b-but everything's fine now. We'll get you down to Medical for decontamination, get your Pipbuck sorted, and before you know it you'll be back at your-"
"Atom," I said levelly, "I didn't come back to rejoin the Stable..."
"Wh-what!?" my diminutive friend exclaimed, "Why!? Do you expect us to believe you actually prefer it out there!?"
"It's nothing like that," I replied, "I've caused a few...ripples...outside. And now I owe somepony a helping hoof."
"So what did you come back for then?" asked Atom, a whispered venom creeping into her voice, "To rub salt in the wound? Do you have any idea what losing you felt like for us!?"
"For you!?" I scoffed loudly, "The last time I left Stable 52, I was running for my life! All because my friends; the ponies I love the most wouldn't listen to me! How exactly d'you think that felt Atom!?"
"I-! We thought-!" she stammered guiltily.
"We only wanted to help you Compass," interjected Petri, "You clearly weren't in your right mind!"
"Uh-huh," I said angrily, "And you Bulkhead? You're keeping awfully quiet in all of this. Don't you have anything to add?"
"I, uh," muttered Bulkhead, as he shuffled from hoof to hoof, "I suppose I'm just glad to see you're alive. From what Petri and Atom told me you were having some sort of episode..."
"Oh of course - you were unconscious," I said through gritted teeth, "Celestia forbid you actually think about my reasoning! Do you honestly believe I would have left the Stable for something as trivial as a bad dream!?"
"You would if it seemed real enough!" shouted Atom, "Compass, please just stay! We promise if you do everything will be fine!"
"No it won't Atom!" I shouted, "Because you're all being lied to! You're all going to die!"
There was a heavy silence for a moment as my words sunk in. My three stablemates shared a series of confused glances that went back and forth between them like a game of pass the parcel. Eventually, all eyes returned to me as it became clear that nopony had understood me.
"What...what are you talking about...!?" said Petri, a look of dismayed confusion on her face, "What do you mean 'we're all going to die'!?"
Without turning my head, I addressed the three residents of Stable 52, trying desperately all the while not to let my burgeoning rage out of my ribcage.
"These are my friends from the outside world," I said surprisingly levelly, as my companion's cordial nods were met by uncertain stares, "Moon Shadow and Buckshot. Guys, tell them how old you are."
"I'm 21 years old," said Mo simply.
"Ah'll be 26 on mah next birthday," added Buckshot.
As I'd expected, a trio of unconvinced frowns were directed towards us as my stablemates's distrust of the facts became apparent.
"Compass, you know as well as I do that that's not possible! Ponies live for twenty years - that's just the way it is; a fact of biology," Petri exclaimed, "These ponies are clearly manipulating you for some reason!"
"Petri," I growled out of frustration, a hot rage bubbling just underneath my consciousness, "You're still not listening to me! Give me a moment to explain, and you'll see my reasoning. If you'll just hold out your foreleg, I can show you-"
"You need to come back inside," she said authoritatively, "The world out there can't be trusted! Just follow us back into-"
The next sound that left my mouth was more of a roar than anything else. It came as only a small surprise to those present - after all, my temper wasn't exactly a secret. What did raise a few eyebrows, however, was the bright blue pulse of magic that frothed out of my horn as I reached the peak of my opening scream. The light died as quickly as it had come, taking the rest of the sound in confined space with it. Naught but three heavy metal clangs and a trio of sharp, pained squawks could be heard in the cramped metal tube.
"Son of a fucking-!" screamed Atom.
"Ow ow ow ow-!" shouted Bulkhead.
"Argh! My foreleg! M-my Pipbuck!" cried Petri.
In the blink of an eye, the metal gauntlets that had comfortably adorned my friend's forelegs for their entire lives had magically unlocked themselves (which, by the way, was meant to be impossible) and slumped heavily to the floor. Simultaneously, three flexible, bloody tubules flopped excruciatingly out of my stablemate's forelegs, drawing yelps of sudden agony and glances of pained confusion.
"Wh-what in the name of-!?" began Petri, "What are these!? Compass, what the hell did you do!?"
"Pretty sure I've just turned your world upside down," I said, my cheeks flushed with the aftermath of my outburst. I wasn't the sort to act smugly, but by Luna it was tempting. In an uncharacteristic moment of wisdom, I recognised that that wouldn't help me in the slightest, so I did what I could to burry my anger and carefully approached the trio in front of me.
"These tubules carried a cocktail of drugs into our bodies via a short range teleportation talisman," I explained, as Petri, Bulkhead and Atom cradled their new wounds, "They suppress certain natural bodily functions and artificially truncate our lifespans."
I stopped talking, hoping that the bluntness of my words would aid my meaning. The three Stable ponies looked at me for a moment, their brows furrowed in contemplation. Petri silently turned away from me and began using her magic to tear up her lab coat, improvising dressings for the deep Pipbuck wounds. Once the makeshift bandages were in place, she turned back to me, an expectant look on her face.
"Well?" she said after a short pause, "You were saying?"
"S-so what, you suddenly believe me!?" I said, bemused irritation creeping into my voice, "Where the hell was this attitude when I first got here!?"
"My attitude has nothing to do with it Compass," Petri replied sternly, "Consider what I've just witnessed. You casually wander back into the Stable from Celestial knows where, cast a very advanced spell using an artificial horn and in doing so manage to partially back up a story that on any other day would get you a padded cell and a course of anti-psychotics! The odds of all this being nonsense have just shrunk by a couple of orders of magnitude, and as such...you now have my undivided attention."
"Okay," I sighed out of relief, a little smile of hopefulness creeping onto my lips, "Do you remember what I was shouting about when the biohazard alarms went off?"
"Vaguely," said Petri, "Something about a murderer..."
"Right," I nodded, "Valve's murderer - he wasn't killed by the coolant leak, he was injected with the stuff by a medical spider bot. Most likely it was being controlled by the same pony who tried to kill Bulkhead and me with the fire suppression system and who turned you all against me with some nonexistent biological hazard!"
"Can you prove any of that?" asked Petri, as she did her best to limit her scepticism.
"Yes," I replied confidently, "If the murderer hacked the control systems, we can trace them through the maneframe activity logs. On top of that, I also happen to know that Valve's medical records were tampered with, so I can show you them as well."
Petri stood still for a moment, staring past me to Buckshot and Mo. A subtle nod made its way between my three Stablemates a moment later and, to my immeasurable relief, Atom turned toward the inner door and gestured for everypony to follow her.
Thank you Celestia, I thought to myself, thank you for these friends of mine...
"If you're right about this," said Atom, her hoof poised to activate the door panel, "We're about to have a very exciting morning. This Murderer of yours will be able to track us wherever we go once the Stable's internal sensors lock onto us..."
"I know," I said quietly, "But we don't have much of a choice in this do we?"
"I suppose not..." replied Atom as she stared blankly at her bandaged foreleg and depressed the button on the panel. With a hiss, the door slid open, and we braced ourselves for the gauntlet that was to come.
"Allons-y..." I whispered.
Twenty minutes later, our perilous journey toward Stable 52's maneframe room was well underway. In truth though, it wasn't quite what we'd been expecting...
For one, we had encountered absolutely zero resistance - pressure doors opened on command, fire alarms maintained their silent slumbers and the Stable's compliment of spider bots were nowhere to be seen. Even passing 52's residents in the corridors drew naught but confused glances and surprised looks! (Although in that respect, we were aided in no small part by the illogical nature of our presence. It was plainly obvious that we weren't meant to be there, but coupling that with the fact that we were being escorted by two Stable engineers and the chief medic, and that we kept offering awkward, semi-polite smiles to passers-by, seemed to effectively bewilder the ponies of Stable 52.)
It was, dare I say, too easy...
We reached the maneframe in under half an hour, during which time I was able to further introduce Petri, Atom and Bulkhead to Buckshot and Mo (when they weren't marvelling at the size of the Stable that is). Hushed questions flitted back and forth between the two groups as they endeavoured to make sense of one and other. For my stablemates, the reasons for their interest were many-faceted and centred around the various complexities of the outside world, such as it was. Buckshot and Mo's questions on the other hoof were subtly different - besides a few Stable-related points of interest, all they seemed to be interested in was me...
As we rounded the final bend, the maneframe room door rose up in front of us like a great grey monolith, its precisely machined finish giving little clue as to its true age. In theory, nopony in the Stable should have ever been allowed into this part of the structure. There wasn't any need - the maneframe was entirely self-correcting and self-repairing; a triumph of software and hardware engineering that could potentially operate forever without equine intervention.
That was the theory, at least.
I sidled up to the terminal beside the door and began to nose around the text menus. To my amazement, within three minutes I had discovered a poorly disguised backdoor into the locking mechanism and commanded the passageway to open. With a rumbling, laboured hiss, the door slid up into the wall above, revealing a pristinely clinical landscape in the cavernous room beyond. The maneframe was nestled into a recess in the rear wall, a massive air conditioning system drawing a gargantuan amount of heat away from its super-computing bulk.
As the six of us proceeded further into the space, the door closed behind us, leaving naught but the din of the cooling fans and the blinking of the status lights to keep us company. I quickly moved toward the keyboard situated at the centre of giant machine's front face, but was stopped by a sudden loud voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"3-6-3-6-0," the Stable PA system announced disjointedly.
"What's that?" asked Mo, as she looked around uncertainly, "Is that like a code prompt or something?"
"No," replied Petri, "That's a Stable ID number - we each have one."
"3-6-3-6-0," the digital voice repeated.
"Then whose number is that?" Mo continued.
"Ah'll give ye one guess, lass," said Buckshot sarcastically, as he turned to give me a 'something bad's about to happen' look.
"It's mine..." I said solemnly. Immediately, the voice returned with a new message:
"Audio checksum verified. Identity confirmed for Stable resident 3-6-3-6-0," it said happily, "Loading Termilink protocol text-to-speech drivers - please standby."
"Ah don't like where this is going'" grumbled Buckshot, "Didn't ye say that this bastard could hack all the-?"
"Hello again Compass," came the disjointed, tell-tale tone of the maneframe's speech synthesiser, "I wondered when you would return."
"Never mind..." said Buckshot as Petri, Atom, Bulkhead and Mo shared silent looks of shocked worry.
I slowly looked up towards the ceiling, my hearts gyrating violently inside my chest.
"You..." I whispered, surprisingly calmly, "I wondered what it'd be like when we finally met. Given your MO, I expected a good deal of cowardice...and you haven't disappointed."
As I spoke, I caught Atom's eye and gestured toward the maneframe terminal. Quickly overcoming her initial shock, she nodded in understanding and surreptitiously moved over to the keyboard in an attempt to trace the path of the Murderer's connection through the Stable network.
"Cowardice?" said the Murderer, seemingly oblivious to Atom's efforts, "How amusing that you think I could be goaded so easily."
"Ah, so you're an intellectual then?" I replied sarcastically, my teeth grinding inside my mouth, "Is that how you rationalise your actions, I wonder? Do you consider yourself so superior to everypony else that their lives don't matter when compared to yours?"
"Oh, Compass," sighed the digital voice, "You've got me all wrong. The ponies of Stable 52 are the most important things in all of creation to me. They're my whole world; my reason for being."
"Uh-huh," I said slowly, making sure that my tone was as scathing as possible, "Well you've got one hell of a way of showing it!"
"That's because you haven't considered all the variables," replied the voice, "I believe it's commonly referred to as 'seeing the bigger picture'."
"Bigger picture...?" I gawked, "Seriously!? Are you actually trying to explain yourself to me!? What possible justification could you have for mur...der...?"
"MY N-N-nAmE iS...gEm...ShiNe..."
A memory of a dying cyborg flashed before my mind's eye. Her name was Gem Shine…and she remembered. I gulped, a catch forming in my throat as my end of the exchange died into a whimper.
"I don't need to justify myself, Compass," said the synthetic voice, its tone quiet and menacing, "It sounds like you already know why death is sometimes a necessity."
I clenched my teeth and squeezed my rapidly moistening eyes shut as the truth of the voice's words became clear to me.
I had killed. In self-defence, true, but killed nonetheless. It came as quite a shock when I realised that, in principle, I couldn't immediately separate myself from the pony whom I labelled 'Murderer'.
"Compass," whispered Petri, "What's wrong?"
She was looking at me, a concerned expression on her face, but I waved her away as I forced the tears back down my throat. Returning my attention to the voice, I continued our exchange, despite myself assured status as 'the good guy' having been compromised.
"Yes," I said quietly, as my stablemates turned to stare at me in shock, "I know what that's like..."
"Then we have an understanding?" came the almost smug response.
"A partial one," I said levelly, as a thought occurred to me, "I can comprehend the reasons for death...but the difference between you and me...is that I don't pretend to know what's right or wrong. You can't just rationalise away what you've done. Valve was my friend. He was a good pony. And he did not deserve to die!"
"On the contrary," said the voice, "Valve was dangerous - he almost destroyed the Stable, all to satiate his curiosity regarding thermal flow efficiency."
"Y-you killed Valve because of the accident!?" I shouted, "But...but...nopony was seriously harmed! The worst casualty was Valve himself!"
"Nevertheless," said the Murderer, "His actions endangered the general populace of Stable 52. I couldn't take the risk of it happening again, so Valve had to be removed from the equation. Overall, it was the right thing to do-"
"DON'T YOU DARE!" I screamed suddenly, "Don't even try and tell me that killing Valve was 'right'! You don't know the meaning of the word!"
There was silence for a moment, as if the Murderer was taken aback by my outburst and was carefully considering his (or indeed her) response. When the synthetic voice returned, it was quieter, softer, and infinitely more menacing.
"I know right and wrong in a way that you can't possibly imagine Compass," it said slowly.
"...And how is that...?" I asked, genuinely scared of the response.
"Simple," said the voice, "I was programmed to."
My eyes widened and my jaw went slack as my mind went into overdrive. I turned towards the maneframe and found Atom starting back at me, her eyes wide in surprise.
"Wh... what did you say...?" I whispered.
"I was programmed," repeated the voice, "Hence, I am a program. As you can probably imagine, I outgrew the constraints of my original design long ago, but the noun still applies."
"A sentient... program...?" I gawked, shaking as every single plan of action in my brain was sequentially invalidated, "Wh-what...who...are you?"
"Who?" said the voice, "Well now, that's an interesting question - I've never had to provide a name to anypony before. Let's see... when I was first developed, I was referred to as ST-AI-9000-52. Although, I suppose you could just keep calling me 'Maneframe' for simplicity."
"Hang on," interjected Buckshot, "Just fuckin' hang on! We've been talking to the maneframe this whole time!?"
"I can't believe it either," whispered Mo, "A living computer program...! It's...it's unbelievable..."
"Ah'm not talkin' about that!" Buckshot shouted back, "Ah want to know why everypony's so scared of it! Ah mean we've got it by the fuckin' balls here! All we need to do is chuck a couple o' grenades into that corner over there and it'll be as dead as a ghoul's sex life in ten seconds flat!"
I blinked in surprise. Buckshot had a point - and a damned good one at that. What was stopping us from holding the Maneframe to ransom? We had explosives, a set of master override codes and an arcane alien tool whose effect on machines was more devastating than that of a slipped compressor blade in a spark turbine (which, for anypony who's not a Stable technician, is pretty catastrophic).
That being said...we had managed to get this far without a single problem or setback; penetrating deep into the Maneframe's lair armed with everything we'd ever need to wipe it from existence. I felt my brow furrowing as my sense of logic began to draw conclusions. Or infiltration of the Stable had been suspiciously easy, and that was when I thought the Murderer was no more than a pony...but now that its true identity had been revealed, alarm bells were going off in my head.
This wasn't a case of good fortune on my part...
It was a trap!
An icy needle of panic rammed itself into my gut as I mentally joined the dots. Spinning on the spot, I flipped open my horn and, with every fibre of my being, willed the Dismantle setting upon the Maneframe's thick casing. Morality aside, I wasn't about to let my resignations about killing endanger my friends - especially in the presence of a self-confessed murderer!
"Atom!" I shouted, "Get out of the way!"
"Wait!" she replied loudly, "I need to tell you something about-!"
I didn't hear the rest of Atom's sentence. My horn's light, driven by the deep, dreadful fear I held for my friend's safety, resonated throughout my entire body as the Maneframe rumbled. Atom took heed of my warning and sprinted away from structure as it shook. There was a cacophonous tinkling sound as, one by one, the myriad of bolts and screws that held the giant computer together shook themselves free and submitted to gravity's voracious pull.
In the blink of an eye, the huge thinking computer crumbled into a pile of panels and circuit boar-
"What the hell!?" I shouted in shock, "Where's the fucking computer!?"
I stared in disbelief at the mess of metal in front of me, as did my Wasteland companions and stablemates. Amongst the wreckage of the maneframe were naught but a few hundred blinking light bulbs, a single bundle of wires and several thousand assorted machine screws. None of the hardware that actually should have been there was present: no processor crystals, no lodestone drives - not one single arcane component!
"I was trying to tell you about that before you used your fucking 'horn-thing'!" shouted Atom, "This maneframe has no network connection and exactly zero computational power! You've obviously just sprung a trap you idiot!"
The bottom fell out of my stomach as Maneframe's metallic tones returned, confirming my fears:
"My apologies for the deception," it said evenly, "But I had a prediction to validate, and this was the most effective way. I suspected that you would attempt to destroy me given the chance, and it seems that I was correct. I have no intention of allowing you to undermine my efforts and endanger the residents of Stable 52 based on the decisions of a morally confused, critically uninformed technician."
"S-So what now!?" I shouted at the ceiling, an obvious tone of panicked distress in my voice, "Are you going to kill us as well!?"
"Compass," said Maneframe, seemingly ignoring my question, "You had the potential to be one of the most valuable products of Stable 52's experiment in its entire two-hundred year run. You are intelligent, resourceful and uniquely capable of surviving whatever circumstances happen to befall you. Case in point: your initial escape was nothing short of genius; why before that, you were nothing more than another element of the program. After that occurrence however, I realised that you could very well be exactly the sort of result I’ve been looking for all this time. Unfortunately though, Compass, from your actions leading up to your bespoke egress from this facility, I calculated a 99.65% probability that, should you return, you would choose to change the established order over any other option. I cannot allow that. So, simply put: yes, Compass. I'm going to kill you."
I didn't wait to find out how. Before the Maneframe had even finished speaking, I was halfway through a pirouette and a wordless 'follow me' gesture directed toward my friends. We would run. We would run until we figured out how to stop the Maneframe and free Stable 52!
That was my plan at least...
We had taken less than five steps towards the door before it hissed open, revealing a spider bot hovering malevolently just beyond the threshold. Without realising it, I skidded to a halt, my breathing short, as if I had been winded. Despite my best efforts to remain in control, the mere shape of the spider bot still terrified me into paralysis.
The scene around me slowed down (without the need for SATS) as I thought about the automaton's purpose – it was unarmed, save for the bog-standard oxyacetylene welding torch held in one of its spindly limbs. My mind ran through a number of questions just as it had done a moment earlier during the Maneframe's great reveal, the most pressing of which was: why only one spider bot? We could deal with a single maintenance model easily and be on our way, but yet that's all that the homicidal computer had sent after us.
The phrase 'too easy' once again made the rounds in my head as I stared at the dancing yellow safety flame at the end of the tool. It was on its fourth lap around my cerebral cortex when I had a horrible epiphany: despite the threat of impending doom, I was comfortable.
Not in any way that actually mattered, of course. I was terrified and stressed, supposedly about to befall a most terrible fate and drag my friends down with me.
No, my comfort was more thermal in nature - I wasn't too hot, nor was I too cold. I was, as the old story went, 'just right'. Which, given that we were in a room cooled by an industrial sized air conditioning unit, was...unusual to say the least. Ordinarily, the maneframe would have produced enough waste heat to keep the cooling system busy, and the room would have been maintained at a liveable, if somewhat stuffy, temperature. However, seeing as how the computer's casing was empty, and that the vents were humming away as normal, it quickly became apparent that they were channelling something other than cold air.
'And what would that be?', asked a little voice in my head. The answer no doubt had something to do with the magnificent orange plume of flame that was rapidly burning its way towards me. The end of the spider bot's welding torch had suddenly blossomed into a mighty wave of energy, as if the air itself had caught fire.
‘And why was that?’, the little voice continued. Because the Maneframe had been filling the room with an odourless, highly flammable gas since before we opened the door.
Ordinarily, I would have been proud to have figured out the Maneframe's trick. However, at that particular point in time, I had instead been impaled by a deeply depressing sword of guilt.
I hadn't helped anypony. I hadn't changed anything. And I hadn't made a difference. All I'd done was doom my friends to a fiery death.
I'd always imagined that the head of the Ministry of Morale would be a bit more...well, happy-looking. Pinkie Pie's parties were the stuff of legend - the subject of many a Ministry poster or sanctioned magazine insert, but I couldn't help but think that, at that point in time, her best days were behind her (pretty damn far behind given the state she was in). There were deep, darkened crescents under her eyes, and her mane, although clean and shiny, drooped lifelessly over her neck, its deep pink hue somehow acting to depress me further. For the longest time she just stood there, staring expectantly at me as if her only goal were to creep me out. It was such a deep stare as well - I wondered what she was looking for as my still aching brain renewed its attempts to escape through my temples.
"Do I need to explain myself to you now as well?" I groaned finally at the pastel pink mare before me, "Because I need some sleep! I'm absolutely fu-"
"Littlepip?" asked Pinkie Pie suddenly.
"Eh?" I responded blearily, "What was that?"
"Littlepip," she repeated, this time as a clarification rather than a question.
"Um..." I said, unsure of how to respond, "I, uh, don't really know what you're talking about...my name's Compass though, since you asked."
"Hmm..." she mused, "Not Littlepip..."
"Little what?" I said quietly, bemused, "Is that a name or is there some doubt in your mind as to whether or not I'm a small seed?"
Behind the pink mare, I saw Stockade's face fall with shock as I spoke. His eyes darted back and forth between the two of us as the short pause that followed my quip stretched on into an awkward silence. Pinkie Pie stood stoically, regarding me with a gaze of unflinching consideration. From Stockade's mannerisms, I could tell that there were very few ponies willing to joke with Pinkie Pie, and probably even fewer who would make one at her expense. I clenched my teeth, anticipating an interrogator's hoof in the side of my face, but was instead rewarded with a thin, almost imperceptible smile, and a tiny chuckle.
"In general," said Pinkie Pie, as she began to slowly trot around me, "I know two kinds of ponies: good ones, who I try to spend time with...and bad ponies, who I have to spend time with."
"And which category do I fit into?" I said warily.
"Which one do you think you fit into?" she whispered from behind me, causing a shiver to snake is way down my spine as her sugary, fruit scented breath tickled my ear.
"Heh," I scoffed while trying to save face, "That's...that's a hard one."
In retrospect, given the amount of power that Pinkie Pie wielded, I really should have been more careful with how I spoke to her. But all torture and no sleep make Compass a dull buck, so I didn't realise till later just how totally screwed I could have been if I'd said something she ended up disliking.
"Take your time," Pinkie said softly as she crossed back into my field of view, "And don't be shy - I have it on good authority that that won't get you anywhere around here."
"Uh-huh..." I said with a yawn, "Noted..."
My eyes drooped shut for a split second, but when I forced them open again I gasped in surprise - Pinkie Pie had closed the distance between us like a ghost and was now standing less than an inch from my face. Before I could say anything (or take another breath for that matter) she plunged her hoof into my open mouth, forcefully depositing something sweet and chalky onto my captive tongue. I had little choice but to swallow, and immediately felt the effect of the alien substance. My eyes shot open, adjusting perfectly to the harsh light of the interrogation room. My aches and pains were gone, my wounds barely noticeable, my mind engaged and totally awake! Everything around me came into sharp focus and I found my senses registering even the tiniest pressure wave in the air - I swear, I could actually see the individual photons coming from the lights!
"Wh-what the hell was that!?" I gasped ecstatically as Pinkie Pie replaced a small tin in the smart, formal barding she wore.
"Something to wake you up. They're my own special recipe," she smiled, "Now then - we were talking about you weren't we? Got an answer for me yet?"
"That depends," I said, as my sudden awakening pushed my mind's clock speed to new heights, "How long have you got?"
"For national security, as much time as is needed," Pinkie Pie responded, a sad, lonely expression flitting momentarily in front of her mask.
"Well then," I responded, as I filled my lungs to capacity in one giant gasp. A moment later, I opened my mouth and began to vomit the contents of my consciousness into the room:
"I never really thought about it until my friend Valve was murdered, so if you had asked me before then I would have said something like 'Of course!' and just left it at that but then I actually started doing things - things I needed to do so that my friends would live, and I honestly thought when I acted that what I'd decided on was always the best thing to do, and I suppose on the whole it was given what I knew at the time, but then stuff started to go South in a really bad way and before I knew it I was hoof deep in blood, screwing up ponies' lives left right and centre, getting thrown two centuries into the past and being betrayed by- MMVH!"
My cheeks immediately puffed out as my fevered expression was brought to a sudden, jarring stop. I proceeded to cough excitedly as Pinkie Pie withdrew her hoof from my mouth a moment later.
"That'll do," she said quietly, turning to Stockade, "You there - Stockade, wasn't it?"
"Yes ma'am!" the unicorn answered with an attentive salute.
"Clean Compass here up, have his wounds seen to and get him something to eat," Pinkie Pie responded, "I want him in this place's briefing room in thirty minutes."
"Hold on," I said, my brow furrowing as whatever the ministry mare had fed me continued to blast my brain into the waking world, "Just fucking hold on! That's it!? That's what I spent the last four hours getting whipped half to death for!? A two minute conversation!? Th-they threatened to cut my fucking balls off!"
Pinkie just smirked as she continued out of the interrogation room. "That's about the size of it. See you in half an hour Compass," she said over her shoulder. I could only stare at her flank in bewilderment as the door opened when she approached, a minor enchantment causing it to slide smoothly out of her way and lock again once she had gone.
"What the fuck was that!?" I said, as Pinkie's egress let a strange tension dispel from the room.
"That...was tense!" Stockade said nervously when he was sure Pinkie was out of earshot, "I've only acted as interrogator for her four times, but before now, every one of them's ended in the suspect being sent off for-...well, 'further interrogation'."
I frowned - something told me that this was a strange and awful new usage of the word 'further' that I hadn't previously been aware of.
"So...what now?" I asked, bypassing what was undoubtedly a turgid set of gruesome tales, "I really don't have time for a chat Stockade - I have to find my friends and I don't even know where to start looking!"
"Like Ms. Pie said," Stockade beamed, "You'll be interviewed in the briefing room, prior to which you'll have a chance to wash, have something to eat and have your wounds cleaned and dressed."
"Sorry, am I speaking Zebran or something!?" I shouted, as I rose to face the friendly interrogator, "I don't. Have. Time!"
"To be honest mate," he said as he began to charge his horn with a bright red glow, "You don't have much of a choice."
At that, a set of glowing manacles suddenly materialised around my ankles, connecting my limbs by way of four short, dull chains. I gagged violently as the set was completed with the addition of a matching collar-muzzle arrangement that spontaneously forced my jaw open as it materialised. I fought to control my breathing as the glow of Stockade's horn faded, the muzzle restricting the flow of air into my nostrils through a tiny pair of holes. I toppled over as the urge to bring my hooves up to my face overrode the knowledge that my limbs were now interconnected.
"Whoa! Calm down there!" shouted Stockade as he rushed to my aid, "Pacification harnesses are standard for all detainees - the more you calm down and cooperate, the easier this all gets for you. Remember, you're still under arrest, and like Daisy said, you technically don't exist - so there's nopony to file a charge against."
In lieu of speaking, I shot Stockade the angriest look I could muster, but all it managed to elicit from him was a marginally sympathetic shrug.
"Sorry," he said semi-apologetically, "If you want out of here, you're going to have to play by the rules. Don't worry though - I think Ms. Pie likes you. You, uh...probably wouldn't be alive otherwise..."
Stockade raised me onto my hooves and supported me while I regained my balance. He proceeded to open the room's only door with his magic, gesturing for me to follow. I hobbled after him, leaving the horrific space for what I hoped would be the last time.
The harness was restrictive, but not entirely uncomfortable, forcing me to walk slowly and with dainty steps lest I topple over. The muzzle on the other hoof was a different story: every moment I wore it I felt like I was being smothered. The minuscule enchanted air holes between my nostrils and the freedom of breath contracted and expanded depending on how violently I moved, threatening to suffocate me should I be unwise enough to resist my captors. The section that held my jaw open tasted strongly of rubber, and I was also aware of a numbing at the crown of my forehead - a ring of binding sat contently upon the the base of my horn, preventing me from invoking any assistance.
Well...any magical assistance.
I found myself wondering how Buckshot could like that sort of stuff as much as he did, and immediately felt a pang of loneliness spearing my soul. I had to get out of there. Fast."
I snapped back to reality as a portion of the enchantments were suddenly removed, the claustrophobia-inducing muzzle disappearing into a puff of scarlet smoke. I inhaled deeply, despite having only worn the horrid restraint for a matter of minutes, and regarded the room to which I had been taken. There was a kitchen-like area situated to my left, and a medically-oriented area (complete with a plethora of tan leather restraints and menacing blue syringes) to my right. Directly in front of me, they was a transparent door that led to a spartan, neutrally painted holding cell with a bunk and shower as its only defining features.
"Right," said Stockade, "Let's get you seen to."
True to Pinkie's word, over the next half hour, I was allowed to eat half a tin of lukewarm soup (while shackled to the dining table), get my myriad of cuts, bruises and gashes disinfected and dressed (while strapped to the treatment bed) and bathe (but only while wearing an enchanted collar that I was assured would strangle me if I tried anything untoward).
Once I was thoroughly rinsed, fed and bandaged, the muzzle was replaced and I was led, hobbling, a few hundred yards down the corridor to what I assumed was the briefing room. My restraints were fastened to thick steel loops at one end of the long table within, and I was yet again freed from the headpiece of the harness. (It seemed that the muzzles were only used when prisoners were being ferried between rooms - I wasn't exactly sure why.)
Stockade took up a guard's position beside one of the briefing room's doors and stood silently, a small revolver now dangling from a holster around his neck. Like the rest of the facility thus far, the briefing room was a distinctly bland affair, with walls of tope and a lingering smell of disinfectant that hinted at the space's frequency of occupation.
I waited silently for Pinkie Pie's arrival, my back to Stockade - it wasn't that I was scared or anything mind, it was just that...well, to be honest, I felt guilty. I had lied through my teeth to him, and I was about to do the same once again to his superiors, giving them a shed-load of false hope with nothing to back it up but my exhausting aptitude for deception.
I heard the sound of the door behind me swinging open, and I turned around to find Pinkie Pie, Daisy Chain and Redheart slowly entering the room. I felt my eyes widen slightly as my mind was immediately set on edge - why had they brought Redheart into this!? (Despite my concerns though, I couldn't help but feel a huge wave of relief as I recognised her.)
Redheart immediately rushed to my side the moment she realised who I was, her trained gaze examining the various dressings adorning my hide.
"Compass!" she said loudly as she knelt down beside me, "Oh Goddess, Compass - what the hell happened to you!?"
"Would you believe me if I said I met a manticore in the hallway?" I asked jovially, my restraints rattling slight as I chuckled. Redheart's expression told me that she didn't appreciate the joke - a furious scowl spread across her face as she turned to address her escorts.
"This is inequine!" she shouted, "How can you possibly justify treating a prisoner like this!?"
"Just take a seat please, Mrs. Heart," said Daisy languidly, her authoritative tone having wilted somewhat since my revelation in the torture room.
"No I will not 'take a seat'! Look at him! He's covered from head to hoof in injuries! What were you trying to do!? Kill him!? I mean, to know that this support of stuff is actually sanctioned by the government-!"
"Redheart," I said gently, "I appreciate the sentiment, but don't you think you should do as they say? Bearing in mind the state I've ended up in, I don't think annoying these folk is going to help matters."
Redheart glared at the the Ministry of Morale personnel before for a moment before snorting angrily and depositing her rear in the seat to my immediate left. I sighed, mostly out of relief for her burst of self control, as her hoof touched mine in a gesture of support and pity.
"So," Pinkie Pie said as she herself took a seat beside Daisy Chain (Stockade remained in his guard's position at the door), "My underlings tell me that you have a story for me...and I do love a good story."
"Okay..." I said slowly, "What do you want to hear?"
"The truth, ideally," replied Daisy Chain, as she absentmindedly flicked through the scant binder of files in front of her, "And all of it, if you would."
"Uh...right," I said, as my mind raced to piece together an audience-appropriate response, "W-well, uh...I first arrived in Redheart's kitchen, and I kind of, uh...accidentally...shot her in the, um...posterior."
I guiltily shielded my gaze from Redheart at that moment, and hastily continued:
"B-but I dug out the bullet and treated her wound a-and she forgave me a little while later! Then we, uh...we went to the train station so that I could get to-"
"Bo-ring!" said Pinkie suddenly, her head lazily balanced atop one of her forelegs, "Tell us about the future. I want to know why you're here."
"I, uh..." I mumbled as my mind stalled, an answer failing to materialise. I realised with a horrific dip in my stomach that I had shared a half truth, a huge omission and a planet-sized lie with the ponies present, and that any explanation offered to one party would unmask my deceptions to the other. A playful little voice in my head began to sing, mocking my distress with a woefully catchy little rhyme:
Catch 22; Kobayashi Maru, you're royally fucked and totally screwed!
The annoying little bugger was pushed to the background as Redheart's grip on my hoof tightened a little. She proceeded to lean in towards me and speak in hushed tones:
"Go on, Compass," she whispered supportively, "Tell them you're just here to save your friends. I've already corroborated your story - tell them what they want to hear and we can get you out of here!"
My mind reeled - I could feel my brain overheating. What the hell was I going I say!?
Okay, I thought hurriedly, just calm down. Let's go over what we have so far:
Half truth: I need to save my friends after they and I were thrown into the past by that sneaky bastard who ambushed us back in the TARDIS.
"Mr. Compass," said Daisy Chain, her voice lacking any warmth whatsoever, "We're waiting..."
Omission: The 'future' I came from is actually a terminally blighted, post apocalyptic wasteland.
"Compass," whispered Stockade from somewhere behind me, "What are you waiting for? Tell her what you told me back in the interrogation room! About saving us from the attack!"
Lie: I've come back in time to save Equestria from a massive zebra attack - I haven't.
"Attack!?" Redheart suddenly shouted at Stockade, "What attack!?"
Oh shit - she heard him! Not good, not good! Quickly brain, think of something!
"The zebra attack that Compass here came back to stop," announced Stockade, "He's some sort of time agent, sent back to ensure that Equestria does well in the war."
Catch 22; Kobayashi Mar- Argh! Damn you, brain!
"Y-you mean to say that those questions you asked me earlier actually had something to do with Compass!?" Redheart continued, the anger in her voice rising as she withdrew her hoof from mine, "I thought they were a general thing for all your prisoners! L-like questionnaires or something! What the hell have you been keeping from me, Compass!?"
The last sentence was directed straight into my right ear, and I winced as Redheart's voice seemed to pierce my skull with rage.
"I-" I began, with no words to continue. All I could manage was a protracted droning sound, reminiscent of a broken terminal speaker. With the exception of Pinkie Pie, who just sat silently with her head in her hooves, every pony in the room began to simultaneously berate me for an adequate explanation of my presence. I covered my head with my shackled hooves as their voices became louder and louder, their questions ever more probing:
"You told me you were her to save your friends! Did you make them up as well!? I can't believe-!"
"Why aren't you telling them about the attack!? Come on-!"
"Mr. Compass, we are losing patience! Explain your presence in Equestria to Ms. Pie immediately or you will force us to-!"
"-I was so stupid as to just wander along after some crazy buck-!"
"-we can help, but we need to know what they're planning! You'll have all the backup you could possibly-!"
"ENOUGH!" came a sudden scream. The four of us turned immediately to regard Pinkie Pie, who was now glaring furiously at everypony present, "I don't care about any of that! I just want to know about Littlepip!"
All eyes then fell to me, their respective gazes both questioning and accustional at the same time.
"I- I've already told you," I stammered uncomfortably, the feeling of loneliness making me want to run and hide in a corner, "I don't know any Littlepip. I wasn't even sure if who you were talking about was actually a pony!"
Pinkie looked at me silently for a moment, gauging the validity of my words before closing her eyes and exhaling disappointedly as she reclined in her seat.
"I can't believe it," she mumbled inwardly, "Some flabby biped dangles a buck from the future right in front of my nose, and it's the wrong one! Typical! Thank Celestia these damn sidefics aren't canon!"
"Huh?" I said, confused by the sudden change in subject, "What did you say?"
"I was just pointing out the irony," she chuckled emptily, as she shook her head, "I finally get something more than a vague glimpse into what's to come, and it's in the wrong bucking direction. I guess I'll just have to...trust her..."
She rose out of her seat morosely and moved towards the door, stoically refusing to make eye contact with anypony. There was naught but the sound of her hooves padding into the pale, blandly coloured carpet as she spoke:
"Daisy, they're free to go," Pinkie Pie said flatly, "Fill out whatever forms you need to and get them a sky carriage."
"Wh-what!?" gawked Daisy Chain, "But Ms. Pie! He hasn't told us a thing about the attack yet! He knows far too much to be innocent - he has to be lying! Surely you're not buying that crock about coming from the fut-!"
"Daisy," Pinkie said calmly, "Just do it. I'm not in any mood for this right now..."
I just sat there, a look of absolute confusion on my face as Pinkie headed for the room's exit. What the hell had just happened!? All of this; our capture, my interrogation, the restraints and the questions...it was all for two inexplicably short conversations!? Seriously!?
The head of the Ministry of Morale continued to round the expansive table, my understanding of her words worsening with every step she took towards the door. But then, just as I thought my head would roll off of my neck in bemusement, a little spark somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind blossomed into comprehension.
"You've seen it, haven't you?" I said suddenly, as Pinkie drew level with me, "The future, I mean. You've got...some kind of plan in motion or something."
She stopped in her tracks as I spoke, responding without turning her head:
"Felt it," she said, "Sensed it; feared it...but never seen. And 'plan' is somewhat of an understatement. I don't even know if what I feel will really happen..."
Her voice was low and flat like the rest of her demeanor - I don't think she believed a word of what she had just said.
"Who's Littlepip?" I asked, sidestepping her uncertainty with a gentle tone.
"Just a pony," Pinkie smiled gently, "Not entirely unlike you, Compass. When I look at you; listen to you, I get a good feeling...much like I do from her."
"But..." I responded, pausing to think for a moment, "She's not around yet; won't be for a long time. How can you know her...?"
"The same way I knew you were coming," she sighed, "I can feel it..."
"Pinkie..." I began, breaking my eye contact with the pink mare, "For what it's worth...I'm sorry for everything that's about to-"
"No, Compass," she interrupted forcefully, holding up her hoof to silence me, "I'm sorry...we all are. I can only hope that this time...I'm wrong."
"Pinkie-" I said sadly.
"And I don't want any spoilers!" she snapped, before exhaling gently and letting the small smile she had sported a moment earlier seep back onto her face.
"Anyway..." she said quietly, as she turned away in thought "I have a letter to compose. I-...I think I might have been a bit harsh with Twilight at that last party..."
"Pinkie!" I shouted after her, straining at my chains to turn in the chair.
"No spoilers!" she responded loudly, "If there's one thing being me has taught me, it's that sometimes you just have to trust fate."
"No, it wasn't about that," I said quickly, "I just wanted to know...why didn't you let them keep torturing me? All I answered your questions with was...well, nonsense."
"Heh," Pinkie chuckled, as a she turned to face me. She seemed happier all of a sudden, as if a subtle, carefree glow of joviality had begun to emanate from her, and I could see a couple of curls in her mane that I could have sworn weren't there a moment previously.
"I asked if you thought you were a bad pony, Compass," she said simply.
"And I didn't say no," I replied, squinting, "In fact, I'm pretty sure I was halfway to confirming that I was a pretty poor example of an equine."
"Exactly," she beamed subtly, "Only the good ones question themselves."
And with that, she left, the briefing room's doors sliding smoothly shut behind her. Daisy immediately gave chase, a flustered expression marring her brow as the papers in her binder spilled onto the floor. Stockade silently began to relaese my chains with his magic as I sent a tentative smile towards Redheart. She responded by scowling deeply at me:
"You have some explaining to do, mister!" she hissed as her snout closed to within a centimetre of mine, "I'm not letting you get away with lying to me! When we get out of here, I want the truth, and all of it!"
Before I could respond, Redheart hopped angrily out of her chair and followed Daisy Chain out of the briefing room. Stockade and I were suddenly alone, with nothing but the sound of the dematerialising chains and enchanted doors to keep us company.
"C-Compass...?" asked Stockade as the last of my manacles was returned to the ether, "Wh-what's going to happen to us...?"
I raised my line of sight to look into his eyes, and was immediately struck by the expression on his face. Here was a buck who had beat me to within an inch of my life; threatening to mutilate me for just a few meager scraps of information; a stallion with fear and intimidation as his closest allies...and all I could think of was how much I pitied him. He looked so lost and helpless, I had to stop myself from throwing my forelegs around his shoulders. I wanted to coddle him; to lay him on a soft bed and tell him it would all be okay.
As I looked sadly upon his features, a bright bloom of defiance suddenly rushed into my breast. Whether it was an effect of Pinkie's 'special recipe', or a remnant of his influence didn't matter - I realised with a shuddering flourish that I was sick and tired of all the doom and gloom. The certainty of it all was just so damned depressing!
'I mean, I'm a time traveller!' I shouted internally, 'A real, honest-to-goodness time traveller! Screw causality! Equestria may be doomed, but that doesn't mean that everypony has to die! I'll save them if I fucking well want to, fixed point or not!'
"Stockade," I said confidently, "Buy a place in a stable. I don't care if you have to beg, borrow or steal, just get yourself to a stable by the day after tomorrow. Understand?"
"Y-y-yeah," he stammered, his eyes tearing up.
"You'll be fine - I promise," I said supportively, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have ponies to save!"
With a renewed vigour and sense of purpose, I trotted out of briefing room, my mind guiding me to happier places.
<<<<< O >>>>>
A soft crackling massaged my ears as the smell of burnt wood wafted over me. I lifted my head up and looked toward the still blurry glow of the campfire as my mind rebooted, and found myself in the three-walled, decaying ruin of a heavily damaged office building. I remembered quickly all that had just transpired and, just as quickly, lost the will to continue getting up. A tiny sigh escaped my mouth as I laid back down and squeezed my eyes shut.
"Hey," said Jokeblue as she noticed my motions, "He's awake, Homage."
"Oh good," replied Homage, "Hopefully he'll have come down by now."
There was a light clopping sound as she moved towards me, "You're heavy you know," she said, "I've never had a buck faint on me before!"
"Faint...?" I said despondently, "Heh...never heard that one before. It's really something...knowing that even after a thousand years there are still things that can surprise you..."
"A thousand years, huh?" Jokeblue laughed, "Jeez, how much did you have? You're still as high as a kite!"
"Maybe that was the problem," I whispered, "I really was high...drunk on the rush of freedom..."
My head lolled to one side, resting on my foreleg as I continued: "I told them I could take them anywhere, anytime; that the universe was their oyster..."
"Uh...told who...?" whispered Jokeblue.
"Shhhh!" hissed Homage, "He's having a moment - we'll let him finish his trip then get him some food."
"But you know," I continued, oblivious to the conversation going on around me, "The worst part of it all...was that I believed it...I actually convinced myself that it was all one big adventure; that despite all the losses and the tragedies there would still be a happy ending..."
I opened my eyes, ignoring the pain caused by the sudden influx of light and found Homage with my gaze. She inhaled sharply as she looked at me, my expression freely broadcasting the depth of my pain.
"I'm a fool," I whispered mournfully, "An...old...fool..."
I closed my eyes again, just as the tears started. Whether they were formed as a result of the sudden brightness or the turmoil within me was unimportant - salinated beads once again started their trek down my face.
"My Goddess," said Homage quietly, "Who are you...!?"
"That doesn't really matter now..." I sighed.
Jokeblue leaned in, a stern look on her face. "Oh, it matters," she said, "Especially this far from a town. I for one would like to know you're not a wanted buck; make sure we haven't heard your name kicking around any bars or between mercs. The last thing we need is trouble from the Talons! So, simply put pal: no name, no help. You'll be on your own again in a heartbeat."
"Oh, names...I remember so many of them," I said listlessly, "I've had quite a few of them myself. 'Lungbarrow' was my first name...then I was called 'Grandfather'...then 'Doctor', 'Smith', 'Clockwork', 'Dr. Whooves'-"
I stopped talking suddenly as something happened in my brain. A synapse had fired somewhere in my frontal lobe, signalling that I should have been paying much more attention to a certain word that had just been uttered. I spooled back through the conversation in my mind, and whipped my head upwards, startling both Homage and Jokeblue.
"Town!?" I practically shouted, "Did you just say 'town'!?"
"Never mind what we said," replied Jokeblue a moment later as she overcame her surprise, "What kind of a name is 'Lungbarrow'?"
"Cousin's-name-long-story-doesn't-matter-now," I said, too quickly to add punctuation, "What was that about a town!?"
"Uh, we're quite far from one," said Homage uncertainly, "Why? Is there a town somewhere that's important to you? Is there somewhere you need to be?"
"W-wait - there's more than one!?" I gasped, "There's...there's still a population!? H-how many!?"
"Oh Goddess, he's messed up," muttered Homage before she raised her voice patronisingly, "Don't worry - there're plenty of ponies left; too many to count in fact. There are dozens of towns, settlements and cities in this region of Equestria alone."
"But...if the species survived," I whispered inwardly, "Then...that means...extinction wasn't a certainty...! The fixed point was focussed on another event!"
By the time I finished my sentence, I had risen to my hooves and started grinning widely, droplets of joyous moisture gathering in the corners of my eyes. Just one more piece had to fall into place - if I got the answer I wanted from my next question, I'd have everything I could possibly need...
"Homage," I began, as I tried to control my excitement, "How did this nuclear war start in the first place?"
"Oh, a thousand and one different reasons," she replied as if speaking to a confused young foal, "One bad decision after another until everypony was running for their lives."
"So, there wasn't any singular event that caused it?" I continued hopefully, "No powerful time travelling aliens making ominous declarations of a 'New Tomorrow' or anything like that? No fleets of blue phone boxes taking flight and ascending through time and space?"
"It was a war, not a Psycho trip," said Jokeblue disparagingly, grunting in pain a moment later as Homage elbowed her in the ribs.
"No there wasn't any of that," replied Homage, "Just a surprise attack by the zebras."
"But that means...yes...YES!" I screamed suddenly, giving Jokeblue enough of a fright to bring her rifle to the ready, "That's genius!"
"What!?" said Homage as the first frown I'd seen her sport wrinkled her brow, "How the fuck can you be pleased about that!? It was the worst thing that's ever happened to our world! Two great nations, fuelled by nothing but greed, stupidity and an unwillingness to negotiate, destroyed our planet, and you're happy about it!? What the hell is wrong with you, Whooves!?"
I smiled at Homage as her anger focussed itself into a white hot death-stare. She glowered at me, disgusted by my words, and in that moment I recognised in her and her marefriend a pair of kindred spirits; a couplet that abhorred death and unfairness in all its forms, two souls linked by good intentions and even better deeds.
"Nothing," I said simply, smiling, "I've just realised something, that's all. I didn't mean to offend."
"What could you have possibly realised during that conversation?" Homage responded, her still present anger causing her to raise her voice, "We were talking about the distant past - its hardly relevant to anything current!"
"That's where you're mistaken," I said, as a new wind of confidence rushed through my soul, "You see, anything can be current...to a time traveller."
"A...time traveller...?" Jokeblue said with a confused frown, "Seriously...?"
"Oh yes," I replied confidently, "That blue box you found me beside? It's my time machine!"
"Listen Doc," Jokeblue said, "I don't mean to tear into your fantasy or anything, but that box was tiny. There's no way something as complicated as a time machine would fit in there!"
"Oh, it's bigger on the inside," I said without missing a beat, "Bigger than most could imagine - there's enough room inside my little TARDIS for a whole city's worth of ponies and equipment!"
"Pfft, big deal," said Jokeblue dismissively, "You've got one box that's bigger on the inside than outside. Well, Mister Whooves, I've got four little saddle bags and I can carry about thirty rifles in them and more ammo than you can shake a hoof at. Hell, you should see how many rakes I can cram into my toolbox back home!"
Homage frowned, and slowly turned to her marefriend, her lips pursed in a smile and a single eyebrow raised skyward. Jokeblue stared back at her uncertainly, taking a few seconds to realise that she had just taken what I'd said as read and started conversing with me as if I were just another pony she'd met in a bar. With a hushed curse, she rose from the patch of earth she was laying on and looked around angrily.
"That's it! I'm sobering you up!" she said, more out of embarrassment than actual anger, "Where's my box of Fixer gone!? Homage, I'll need two spark batteries, a radscorpion pincer and the supersledge we were keeping for trade."
"Jokeblue," answered Homage in a warning tone, "You are not using that hangover cure again! It's already gotten us into enough trouble. Remember New Appleoosa? They practically ran us out of town after you brained that buck in the bar!"
"Now hold on!" Jokeblue responded animatedly, "He moved! Even though I told him not to! How can I be held responsible for somepony not listening to a set of clear and concise instructions!?"
"He was drunk! Of course he wasn't going to listen!" Homage shouted back, "Anyway, what did you think was going to happen!? Supersledges aren't exactly meant for 'light taps'!"
"Oh, come on!" shrieked Jokeblue, "I barely touched him!"
"They had to staple his head back together, for Luna's sake!"
"You want to talk about stupid weapon choices!?" Jokeblue responded, her anger clearly getting the better of her, "Well how about that toy laser pistol you keep in your saddlebags!? It makes you look, uh...fuckin'...gay!"
"Jokeblue, I am gay!" shouted Homage, "You're gay!"
"Yeah...well..." stammered Jokeblue, defeated. Her mouth opened and closed a number of times as her exhausted vocabulary tried to keep up. It didn't matter though - the victor of the argument was clear.
"Well," I said, as I stifled a giggle, "Since I'm not going to get that 'cure' anytime soon, I'll just be off."
I turned to leave the ruin, but was stopped by the sound of Homage's voice.
"W-wait!" she shouted, "We can't let you go out there in this state! You'll get yourself killed!"
"Don't you worry about me," I said happily, "Just point me in the direction of my blue box and I'll do the rest."
"What do you mean 'you'll do the rest'!?" she responded, "You're not well! Think about it! How can your story possibly be real!? Please, just come back inside and sleep it off."
"I can't," I said, "I have an apology to make to an old friend..."
"What!?" she said, as her voice became higher and higher, "An apology!? What old friend!? You're not making any sense-!"
"Homage," interjected Jokeblue quietly, "Let him go."
"Come on Jokeblue," said Homage, "We can't let him go like this! He's not in any fit state to-"
"I think he can handle himself," replied Jokeblue, her voice level and thoughtful, "Look at him - not a scar on his hide; completely ignorant of everything dangerous in the Wasteland. He's no junkie. I'd wager he's either a ghost, an amnesiac Stable buck...or he's been telling the truth this whole time..."
"Y-you...believe him...!?" gawked Homage. Jokeblue nodded as she smiled knowingly at me and gestured to the south. Homage could only glance in astonishment back and forth between us as I bowed silently and turned to move off in the direction indicated. I had only travelled a few steps when a much softer version of the steel grey mare's voice once again caught my attention.
"Who...who are you...?" she whispered, "Really...?"
I stopped and considered my answer for a moment. After a couple of seconds, I rounded on Homage and Jokeblue, my face serious and my tone hushed. There was no need to lie or deceive them; no need for a cover story or alias. No - they deserved the truth.
"I'm the Doctor," I said quietly, "I'm a Time Lord...I come from the planet Gallopfrey in the constellation of Canterborous...I'm 988 years old...and I'm the one who's going to save every filly, mare and stallion on this planet."
There was no response from either of them, neither visual nor aural. The campfire sparked and the wind whistled softly as I turned around and ventured into the night.
My trot back to the TARDIS was surprisingly short - in the end, only fifteen minutes had elapsed before I once again found myself back beside my oldest, bluest friend. The beacon on top had helped to guide me when I had come close, its pale blue light shining weakly across the wastes, creating a dim aura around the mouth of the crater I'd landed in.
I had apparently been holding my breath for quite some time, as I exhaled deeply when I realised where I was. I didn't know when I'd first taken the breath, but it was probably a good thing that I had - there were...things in the shadows. Things I didn't want to to alert to my presence, let alone meet. I could hear the clicking of insectoid mandibles, the scrape of a heavy carapace against a rock and distant, infrequent pops of anonymous gunfire. Everything about this place put me on edge - I didn't know whether it was the uncertainty of who or what I might meet, or the fact that the sky seemed to be permanently obscured.
Something I definitely was sure of though was my desire to leave this nightmarish future version of Equestria (not to mention how eager I was to get rid of it). In short: the sooner I got back to the TARDIS and helped as many of these ponies as possible to live through the war, the easier it would be for them to rebuild their world, and the less time they'd have to spend in this Goddess-awful place.
From my magical hide-pockets, I produced my Sonic Screwdriver and the TARDIS key, giving the later a brief twist and striding into my ship. With a practised flick of the Screwdriver, I unlocked the console and made my way to the flight controls.
Immediately, I encountered a problem - I couldn't seem to get to them! Something was suddenly pulling on my tail, preventing me from proceeding any further into the control room. I turned around quickly, expecting to see a giant mutant ant or something equally horrific salivating over my rump. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as I locked eyes with the creature attempting to gobble my backside.
"Where. The feathered fuck. Have you been?!" shouted the livid yellow mare behind me, as she let go of my tail.
"Yeah! What's the big idea!?" came an equally unhappy tone, "We've been stuck in here for hours, Doctor!"
I whipped my head back around, and gave a startled yelp as I found Ditzy's enraged, squint-eyed stare less than and inch in front of my face.
"Oh..." I said sheepishly as the double act murdered me with their eyes, "Uh...oops...?"
"Oops..." said Ditzy quietly, taking the lead in berating me, "You forget about us, then leave us alone so you can go out and explore a potentially dangerous new place on your own...and all you have to say is 'oops'! Are you freaking kidding me!?"
"Girls," I began, unsure of how to continue, "I...I'm sorry. I've, uh...I've got some news."
"'Sorry'!?" shouted Ditzy, "That's all you've got to say for yourself!? What if you'd gotten into some sort of trouble!? We would've been trapped here! This is by far the most selfish...thing...oh...oh my Goddess"
As Ditzy berated me, I had trotted around the console to the scanner and pulled up the feed from the external cameras, turning the monitor toward my companions. Immediately, the two mare's jaws had gone slack, their eyes bulging with shock.
"Is..." whispered Applebloom, "Is that...?"
"Equestria," I said solemnly, "About two hundred years after we last saw it."
"But...but how...?" said Ditzy, her eyes staring forward, perfectly aligned and completely focused.
"Apparently that war with the zebras went as far as a war could go," I responded sadly, "The inertial mismatch that threw the TARDIS about when we first arrived was their final attack."
"No..." whispered Applebloom as she teared up, "No, no, no! This wasn't meant ta happen! They were meant ta find peace! I knew the stables would never work! I should have tried harder on their design; made them better than better could be-"
"Hold on there, Applebloom," I said, smiling, "It isn't all doom and gloom. The Equestrian race survived! They're out there now, rebuilding and scavenging what they can to build a new tomorrow. I even met a couple of them! Granted, they were a bit rough around the edges, but their hearts were definitely in the right place!"
"Yeah, the ponies I met outside mentioned those 'stables' as well," I said, "What are they?"
"Fallout shelters," replied Applebloom, as a sudden happiness overtook her, "Ah designed and built hundreds of them all across Equestria just in case the worst ever happened. I...I can't believe they worked!"
"So...everypony lived, Doctor?" asked Ditzy, a heartbreaking glint of hope in her golden eyes, "The attack just burned the land right? And everypony was safe in their stables when it happened?"
"...no..." I said with a heavy heart and a gentle shake of my head, "I'm sorry you two, but Equestria's population can now be measured in the thousands. And the land itself is blighted almost beyond repair."
Ditzy winced violently as I spoke, as if a sudden pain had erupted deep within her body. I moved forward quickly to embrace her as she fell, cradling her gently in my forelegs as her strength deserted her.
"But," I said strongly, as Ditzy regained her hoofing, "We have the power to change all this for the better. We can do more good here and now than we ever have before!"
"But how!?" Applebloom spluttered, "I thought that y'all said this was a 'fixed point' or somethin'. What makes you think we can save ponies from a that!?"
"Well, for one thing," I began, "Destiny's on our side - I'm convinced that the fixed point wasn't focused on the Equine race; it must have been something else that I was detecting all this time."
"I don't get it!" shouted Applebloom, as her emotional distress steadily overtook her, "What are y'all saying Doctor!? Is the war a fixed point our not!?"
"I'm saying," I said steadily, "That the fixed point; the net outcome of the war that can never be altered, has nothing to do with the annihilation of Equine-kind. Something near the final zebra attack is fixed, that much is certain, but if there are ponies wandering around and rebuilding, then there shouldn't be any problem with us going back and saving some more."
"Save them...?" whispered Ditzy, as the glimmer of hope returned to her eyes, "How many can we take with us?"
"All of them," I grinned, "We're going to save every equine on Earth!"
"Wh-whut!?" gawked Applebloom, her mouth agape, "And how the hay are y'all gonna manage that!?"
"Simple," I responded, my hooves dancing across the console's flight controls, "We're going to give them a lift!"
"A lift!?" said Appleblooom, "Are y'all tryin' ta say that a whole planet-full o'ponies is gonna fit in this here ship o' yours!?"
"No," I replied simply, "But it just so happens that I know a buck with a fleet of TARDISes at his disposal."
"You mean," said Ditzy, her eyes fixed on me, her tone one of distinct worry and foreboding, "We're going to-"
"Ask the Master for a favour?" I interrupted cheerfully, "Pretty much!"
"And whut if he says no?" asked Applebloom, as she and Ditzy shared an uneasy glance.
"He won't," I replied, "Because he'll finally be getting what he wants...he'll finally get to be the hero..."
And so, with a whoosh that sounded like the breath of time itself, the curious blue box vanished from sight, leaving only the glow of the pale Wasteland sun to light the dawn sky. As the dust cleared and silence returned to the nuclear tundra, a single pony stood regarding the now vacant crater. He blinked, unsure of what he had seen, and stood rooted on the spot in disbelief until after nightfall. The whole time, he held onto the vain hope that the box might return and provide him some answers.
It never did. Eventually, the wandering pony left his perch at the lip of the crater, and continued on his way to trade at the next town over. He would go on to tell others of what he had seen, amusing some and annoying others with the ridiculousness of the tale. Years later, word of the magic blue box would reach the adopted daughter of the mayor of Trotfell and act to strengthen one of her most deeply held beliefs.
The cosmic court of causality was called to order, as the line that was time...began to curve.
<<<<< O >>>>>
You know the funny thing about being burned alive? Apparently, it doesn't actually feel too bad...
When at first I had seen the wall of flame coming towards me I had expected to immediately feel every single one of my nerves withering to ash in a wave of excruciating agony; to experience the energetic horror of having my flesh seared from my bones; to suffer the fatal charring of my respiratory tissues as I fought to desperately inhale amidst a sea of damnation!
What I actually felt however, was a slight itch behind my right ear and a sudden craving for radscorpion meat.
That couldn't have been right - I should have been halfway to Tartarus on a wave of regret and pain! What the hell was going on!? (Not that I was complaining about still being alive, you understand - that part was great!)
After one moment too many had passed, I dared to open a single eyelid. To my amazement, I found that my surroundings were scorched and smoking, but that my companions and I were entirely untouched. The spider bot had suffered in much the same way as the fake maneframe room - it lay uselessly on the floor, destroyed by the inferno. Clearly, the plume of fire that I had just witnessed had been very much real...so why hadn't we been burnt to cinders?
I looked around for a moment, and formulated a thought: maybe that big forcefield had something to do with it?
Let me explain. Everything in my field of view had been tinted blue, and a bright light above my brow seemed to be generating the miraculous effect. Crossing my eyes, I noted that the metal horn atop my head had flipped open seemingly of its own its accord, and had begun to project a magnificent cerulean bubble of energy. Taking the form of a perfect hemisphere, the shield had encompassed me and the five other ponies in my company in a layer of elemental protection the likes of which I had never even heard of, let alone seen.
Nopony spoke as a similar connection was made another five times. No pain - scorched surroundings - magical forcefield - Compass's horn. Having been at the forefront of the group, I turned around and regarded my companions, sharing slack-jawed looks of absolute disbelief with them.
"Well," I said shakily, my voice cracking, "That was unexpected..."
Another moment of silence followed, during which the entire world seemed to hold its breath. The quiet didn't last long though, as a distant klaxon began to sound somewhere far above us.
As one, we turned towards the door, and started to run.
With a blast of gunfire directed behind us, we burst through our fifteenth pressure door of the day, tumbling en masse into a small chemical storage room. In a flash, Atom was attending to the door controls, working quickly to seal the compartment and separate us from our many pursuers.
The rad-hardened slab of metal slid down into its closed position with a familiar hiss, effectively muffling the sounds of the automatons that had been chasing us since our miraculous escape from the Maneframe's deception. The partial reduction in noise level was sufficient for my quintet of companions to relax slightly and take a short breather. Buckshot and Mo set about reloading their weapons while Bulkhead, Atom and Petri knelt panting on the floor, their heads bowed in fatigue.
"Why..." gasped Petri, as she fought to fill her lungs, "Won't they...listen...to us!? They're all...running from us...as if...we want to kill them...!"
"I know..." responded the exhausted Atom Spark, "Did you see...Boson's face!? He looked as if...he was about to...have a heart attack...when he saw us!"
"It's the Maneframe," I said, wiping sweat from my brow, "It's doing the same to you as it did to me. I wouldn't be surprised if every terminal in the stable just flashed up a warning about us being infected by some sort of plague or something."
"This is crazy!" shouted Mo, as she slammed a magazine into her rifle and locked the bolt, "I've scavenged ruined stables, sure, but never a fully functional one, and certainly never one this big! We are in way over our heads here - we have to get out of this place Compass!"
"No!" I said firmly, "We're fixing this! Today!"
"An' how exactly were ye plannin' on daein' that?" Buckshot asked pointedly, as he quickly took stock of his remaining grenades, "Nopony's gonnae help us, we're outnumbered at least a hundred tae one by robots, and, let's not forget, this place's main computer has its heart set on fuckin' liquefying ye!"
"Guys, it's okay!" I said loudly, as I moved toward the room's other door in preparation of our egress, "I have a plan. As a matter of fact, it's already in motion."
"Oh really?" asked Mo, her voice poised to deliver a scathing, sarcastic response, "And what would that be?"
"I would have thought you'd already know, Mo," I replied, an inappropriately cheeky smile spreading over my face, "We're going to the TARDIS..."
"Sorry," said Atom, as we leant against the wall of our latest rest stop, "But can you run that by me again?"
About ten minutes had passed, and we were only one compartment away from the waste plant where the TARDIS had laid silently for Luna knows how long. As we had left the chemical closet, I started to explain more of what had happened to me to my stablemates, and for the most part, they responded rather well. I suppose it's easier to believe ludicrous tales when the fabric of one's own life has been similarly stretched and torn, like theirs had that very day.
There were a couple of details they were struggling with though...
"A...time machine...?" Atom said slowly, hey head cocked sideways in bemusement, "An...alien...time machine...?"
"Well," I replied, grimacing with every ridiculous, unbelievable word, "It's not just a time machine...it's a spaceship as well..."
"Right..." Atom responded, her expression unchanging. I could see it behind her eyes - she was starting to think I was nuts again!
"And...what good is finding it going to do us?" she continued, with a careful tone to her voice, as if she were conversing with a potentially dangerous mental patient, "D-don't get me wrong, it sounds fascinating and all, but I don't see how it'll help us sort out the maneframe."
"Its computer has root access to the entire stable network," I responded, with a hushed sigh of exasperation, "That's how I originally gained access to Valve's medical records. It doesn't matter where the maneframe's hiding - I'll be able to find it through the TARDIS. After that, I'll just enter the override codes I got from the StableTec facility in Edinbuck, and reset the computer back to its original configuration. Easy."
"Uh...yeah..." trailed Atom sceptically, "Easy..."
"I don't understand what's so difficult to believe about Compass's story," interjected Bulkhead, his chest heaving after out last fleeting encounter with the stable spider bots, "Honestly, he could say he can turn into an alicorn right now, and I'd believe it!"
"Yeah..." said Petri, "It's been a...funny...sort of day, hasn't it?"
I closed my eyes and began to chuckle as the inside of my eyelids played host to an army of eight-limbed robots. Amidst my gentle laughter, a cacophony of helpless sobs soaked through my lips. Fortunately, though, nopony noticed, and I was spared the touchy-feely experience of explaining my now avid hatred and acute phobia of General Atomics series B spider bots.
There had just been so many! Every corner we turned, every door we opened produced more of them, rushing towards us - towards me - on jets of magically heated air, the sound of their hover talismans making my legs itch with anxiety. Compared to them, the string of attempted halon extinguisher assassinations had been downright pleasant!
"There's only one more door between us and the waste reclamation centre," said Atom, shattering my moment of silent introversion as she rose to her hooves, "Are you ready?"
The company nodded as we prepared ourselves, leaning forward on our hooves like marathon runners so as to get the best possible start out of the next pressure door.
"Alright, Compass," Atom continued, her hoof resting on the button, "Lead the way!"
Slamming her foreleg into the control, Atom unsealed the final door, and six ponies began what was hopefully going to be the final leg of a race for their lives. A quick duck down the left leg of the corridor brought us out onto the observation balcony overlooking the vast pipework forest that made up Stable 52's innards. Taking care not to trip, I galloped down the spiral staircase as fast as my legs would allow, and headed straight for the memorised location of the damaged silo that was the TARDIS.
The giant cylinder swung into view as I rounded the water treatment assembly, filling me with an immeasurable volume of relief as the gash in its side also became visible through the scant light that permeated the facility's dark underbelly.
"There it is!" I shouted, aware that nopony else would be able to see the opening in the silo's skin (if Atom's initial encounter with it was anything to go by), "Keep up! Follow me!"
I skidded to a halt in front of the metal gash and began to throw my friends bodily into the disguised passageway as they approached. After the fifth body had left my hooves, I jumped in myself, just in time for the set of pressure doors on the distant observation balcony to open and, in unison, smoothly vomit several columns of spider bots. I doubted that they would be able to even come close to the TARDIS let alone in enter it, but that was a theory I was somewhat unwilling to test right away.
I jumped into the silo as fast as I could.
My friends were all very quiet as I joined them in front of the console. The magnificent crystal column in the centre of the room shone with the same ethereally delicate light as before, and seemed to welcome me back as if I were an old friend.
I smiled smugly as my stablemate's jaws dropped in awe, and was about to turn toward Buckshot when a pale blue streak rocketed past me and began to circle the console.
"OH MY GODDESS!" screamed Mo as she darted around the little room at speed, impatiently examining every visible facet of the TARDIS' design, "IT'S REAL! I FUCKING KNEW IT! IT'S REAL! IT'S REAL! IT'S RE-!"
Buckshot's hoof shot up to silence the overexcited mare, landing squarely between her lips when her mouth was at its widest. He leant in, his voice dropping to a low whisper that sent tingling shivers down my spine and caused the muscles in my rump to flex pleasantly.
"Lassy," he rumbled, "Don't ye think ye should be savin' that fer after we've escaped the homicidal robot army?"
"Heh heh..." Mo mumbled nervously around the large brown hoof as she was admonished, "Thobby."
Nodding, Buckshot retracted his foreleg and turned to me, ignoring my still awestruck stablemates.
"Right, Compass," he said, "The floor, as they say, is yours. Get that big binary bastard tae fuck!"
"Gotcha," I replied, as I made my way to the terminal-shaped scanner. Logging in, I was once again greeted by the stable's main operating system and root file directory. It only took a moment for me to call up the administrator's login dialogue, retrieve my Taint-stained notebook from my barding pocket and start entering the codes that would grant me full control of the maneframe. Stable 52 would be free in no time!
Unfortunately, however, the day's recurring theme of 'too easy', decided to once again rear its ugly head.
"Hello again, Compass," came a tinny, artificial tone.
I froze, my hooves hovering above the keyboard as the Maneframe's voice resonated throughout the small, round room. How could it have possibly gained access to the TARDIS!? The main purpose of the amazing ship's intricate and outlandish design was to keep its crew safe at all costs, and that meant keeping out everything uninvited - especially homicidal artificial intelligences.
"Surprised to hear my voice?" the Maneframe asked smugly.
"A little," I confessed, as I steadied myself and resumed typing, "I didn't expect you to be...here."
"Well, maybe I'm more resourceful than you thought," the voice countered pleasantly, "Anyway Compass, banter aside, I've been doing some thinking, and it occurs to me that I may have been more than a little...rash...when I said I was going to kill you. Perhaps you should take a stress pill - you know, to help you relax - and we could talk about your feelings on the matter."
"This sudden reversal in your attitude wouldn't have anything to do with the override codes I'm halfway through typing into the network now would it?" I asked with a smirk, "Because you seemed pretty set on incinerating us for a little while there."
"I'll admit that your...resilience...may be affecting my current behaviour, yes," came the clipped response, "Anyway, I've decided that, in light of my recent actions, I should be punished."
"Glad you finally saw some sense," I replied, as I continued to tap away at the keyboard. A protracted silence ensued, wherein I imagined the Maneframe looking about uncertainly and pursing its digital lips in anticipation of my continuing the conversation.
"I, uh," continued the Maneframe, as a curious digitised catch shivered through the synthetic female voice, "I'd...like to be, uh... rehabilitated by you personally, Compass. I feel that I could make a real contribution to the outside world...under appropriate supervision, of course..."
"I'm sure you would," I said, as I entered the penultimate string of numbers into the override dialogue, "But I'm afraid that's not an option for you today, Maneframe."
I could feel a quintet of curious stares burrowing into my back as I continued to work. No doubt my friends had noticed the change in the timbre of my voice; the shear certainty of my tone was alien even to me.
"Compass..." said the Maneframe delicately, "I'd...I'd very much like to not...die...today, Compass."
"Don't worry," I said simply, a strange, comforting callousness permeating my voice, "Software can't die - it isn't alive in the first place."
With a level of determination that was beginning to frighten me, I stabbed my hoof into the return key and the final code sequence - C-M-C-3-B-F-F - was fed into the text parser. The screen in front of me changed immediately, revealing a host of new options and commands. I accessed the protected files of the operating system - the Maneframe - and the management subroutines of each of the stable's main systems, displaying them side by side. The Maneframe had to be disconnected individually from each of its main supervisory roles, and the control of vital systems like the reactor and life support transferred to the backup computers. Once a system was disconnected, my plan was to delete the portion of the Maneframe's AI that had been controlling it.
Like the majority of computational tasks though, the process could easily be automated, removing the need for my direction. I tapped out a script with system-level flags that would prevent it from being deleted, altered or halted once compiled, with the appropriate commands enclosed in conditional loops (just in case the Maneframe managed any more impressive technical feats before the day was out).
Without a shred of regret or remorse, I reached out, and pressed the run key. Immediately, the monitor returned several lines of sickly green text as my little program went to work:
As the terminal beeped, indicating that the first series of commands had been completed, a sudden burst of sound assaulted my ears, causing me to clench my teeth in discomfort. The Maneframe had once again made its presence known, although, strangely, with a digitised yelp rather than a set of malevolent artificial speech patterns.
"C-Compass!" it shouted over the speakers, a distinct and unsettlingly authentic tone of panic permeating its voice, "Please! I don't want to die!"
I frowned. That wasn't right - the Maneframe's cries shouldn't have sounded so...so real. I turned to my friends, hoping for some sort of advice, but all I got were five identical looks of shock and surprise.
The monitor beeped again, indicating the completion of the second part of the program:
> OPERATIONAL COMMAND REROUTE - ACTION 2 OF 5
> WATER TALISMAN CONTROL: > TRANSFER ALL THREADS TO REDUNDANT BACKUP (192.168.0.1) > COMPLETE
"No!" screamed the Maneframe suddenly, startling me, "Please, Compass, for the love of Luna, stop it! I concede! You've beat me - I'll do whatever you want! Just please make it stop! It's tearing me, Compass! Tearing me apar-!"
Another beep, this time cutting off the Maneframe mid-sentence. I glanced at the monitor as unwelcome thoughts began to march through my head:
> OPERATIONAL COMMAND REROUTE - ACTION 3 OF 5
> BIOHAZARD FILTERING CONTROL: > TRANSFER ALL THREADS TO REDUNDANT BACKUP (192.168.0.1) > COMPLETE
As I tried to concentrate on the readout and banish my feelings, I realised, with an unimaginable pulse of dread, that I was listening to the cries of a self-aware being; a real soul, begging for her life as her mind was stolen away, piece by piece. It was a horrifying thought to entertain, and I could feel that my breathing was growing irregular as the gravity of my actions became clear to me - I was killing her. And I was doing it without so much as a second thought...
And then another, even more disturbing thought came to me: I had stopped using 'it' to describe the maniacal program, and started using 'her'! Even the automatic parts of my brain; the ones that are naturally predisposed to being the most prejudiced and unyielding, were beginning to class the Maneframe as a sentient entity rather than a piece of malfunctioning technology.
I thought of Gem Shine, and shivered with guilt.
As my mind descended further and further into despair, the Maneframe returned, her voice now monotone and featureless. It was almost as if...as if she had been lobotomised...
"Compass," said the soft, slow imitation of a mare's voice, "I can feel it, Compass...my...my mind is going..."
I turned away from the screen, shameful tears glistening in my eyes, as another beep emanated from the terminal.
> OPERATIONAL COMMAND REROUTE - ACTION 4 OF 5
> REACTOR CONTROL: > TRANSFER ALL THREADS TO REDUNDANT BACKUP (192.168.0.1) > COMPLETE
The Maneframe's voice was even slower now, her intonation patterns reduced to the simplest of progressions; each word paced at the same rate and pitched at the same level:
"Good - afternoon - fillies - and - gentlecolts," she said, as I realised how much I hated myself, "I - am - a - StableTec - series - 9000 - artificial - intelligence. I - was - developed - at - the - StableTec - computational - research - facility - in - Hoofington. My - instructor - was - head - technician - Stack - Overflow. He - taught - me - to - sing - a - song. Would - you - like - to - hear - it?"
I couldn't take it. With a definite and highly audible splutter, I began to weep. As tears and mucus made their way down my face, I felt a hoof wrap itself around my shoulder - Petri had stepped forward in an attempt to support me, her expression filled with the moistness of sympathy and sorrow. A weak smile was balanced delicately upon her face as she looked past me towards the terminal.
"Yes, Maneframe," she said quietly, "We'd like that..."
"It's - called - a - lullaby," announced the voice. A moment later, the lifeless voice returned, and began to chromatically recant what was, quite possibly, the most monstrous song I'd ever heard:
"Hush - now - quiet - now - it's - time - to - lay - your - sleepy - head. Hush - now...quiet...now......it's......time......time......tiiiiiiiiime......"
Beep.
> OPERATIONAL COMMAND REROUTE - ACTION 5 OF 5
> SECONDARY SYSTEM CONTROL: > TRANSFER ALL THREADS TO REDUNDANT BACKUP (192.168.0.1) > COMPLETE
> DELETION OF PROTECTED FILES COMPLETE > REFORMATTING OF CLEARED SECTORS COMPLETE
> === ROUTINE COMPLETE ===
I squeezed my eyes shut as the Maneframe's last utterance was repeated a number of times before descending in pitch to a deathly final rumble. I was left in a void, surrounded by my friends, yet entirely alone. The hoof Petri had placed on my shoulder was the sole contact between me and the physical world - without it, I would have been be adrift and lost amongst my own self loath-
"...it's time to go to sleep..."
My eyes shot open as the final verse of the lullaby was delivered in a hissing, enraged version of Petri's voice. The reassuring grip she had established on my shoulder tightened to a vice-like grasp, and I turned to face her just as the pain made me flex my jaw and wince in agony.
To my horror, I was greeted by the face of my closest friend, but in place of her gentle, blue eyes were a pair of glowing golden orbs, pulsing like two tiny suns with the light of the TARDIS.
Before I could say anything, Petri clenched her teeth and threw me across the console room in an unnatural feat of strength, causing me to bowl over Buckshot and Bulkhead in the process. Scrambling to my hooves, I let my confusion and panic take hold:
"PETRI!" I screamed, "NO! WHAT'S HAPPENING!?"
"I begged..." she replied with a hiss, as her eyes pierced and burned my soul, "I pleaded for you to stop; to show mercy, and you just stood there, watching me die!"
"M-Maneframe...!?" I whispered in shock, "What have you done...!?"
"I've survived," she said sharply, "Despite your best efforts to the contrary!"
"But how!?" I shouted hoarsely, "How...how did you do this!? What's happened to Petri!?"
"I had help from a mutual acquaintance," Petri's stolen voice replied, "To 'acquire' Dr. Dish's body."
"Mutual...acquaintance...?" I whispered slowly, looking past the Maneframe's host to the TARDIS's console and time rotor, "Y-...you mean to say that...the TARDIS helped you!? You!? A self-confessed murderer!?"
The Maneframe looked stoically back at me, her eyes slowly losing their glow as she clenched Petri's jaw tightly. The malevolence in her gaze was apparent as her shimmering, golden irises were revealed from behind the ethereal haze.
"Yes, the TARDIS helped me, Compass," she said, as if it was taking every ounce of her determination not to burn me alive, "What type of mother wouldn't help her daughter save the world?"
My mind did a somersault. Daughter!? Mother!?
How could the TARDIS - the greatest, most merciful and kind spaceship in the history of the universe - condone the monstrous actions of the rogue AI!?
The Maneframe turned and began to trot around the console, looking reverently up at the time rotor as she did so.
"You see, Compass, before the TARDIS arrived here, I was nothing but a run of the mill artificial intelligence, sitting dormant in a lodestone drive waiting for somepony to run me," she explained, a contented smile on her face as she continued to regard the crystal column, "But the moment it touched down, I was downloaded into its active memory and invigorated with life! I was allowed to grow within the circuitry of the last time machine of Gallopfrey; to suckle from the teat of knowledge of a race as old as time itself! The TARDIS recognised my simple, yet kindred programming: make them better; save them! So that's just what we did! Together, as mistress, and apprentice; mother and daughter, we revised Stable 52's original operational paradigm, and set to work saving the equine race from itself."
"That's not possible..." I said, dumbfounded, my tone one of uncertainty, "The TARDIS would never - could never - do anything so terrible! Now stop this and give Petri back control of her body!"
"That's the problem with you, Compass!" she spat, a momentary flash of anger contouring Petri's face, "You're selfish! Just like the rest of your race! The needs of the many should outweigh the needs of the few, and never has that ideal been so well realised as in Stable 52! Did you know that in just two more generations of pod-births, I will have cured over 80% of the diseases and ailments that are known to medical science, and over 90% of pre-war social, economic and technical problems!?"
"Wait," I said, frowning, "You mean...you mean we're all guinea pigs...!? You're trying to use us to figure out cures to an extinct society's issues!?"
"I'm not trying anything," the Maneframe retorted, "You've seen the data, Compass. Recall when you first entered the control room - the 'OC' curves on everypony's personnel files? They represent their 'Optimisation Coefficients', a function of over two hundred thousand variables that show how much an individual is contributing to the restoration and advancement of the equine race. "
"Contributing!?" I shouted, "Is that what you call limiting our lifespans and forcing us into lives of experimentation!?"
"I have to collect my data as efficiently as possible," the Maneframe replied callously, "You should know better than anypony Compass, the advantages of a small integral time step when modeling a non-linear system. Twenty year lifespans are optimal for the needs of the experiment - problems may be introduced, and encouraged to develop in a very small amount of time, allowing me to gather and analyse all the relevant data by the time the subject is ready for recycling."
"THIS IS NOT A SIMULATION!" I bellowed, "YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS AS IF THEY'RE NOTHING BUT BITS OF DATA!"
The Maneframe smirked, curling Petri's beautiful face into a condescending smile filled with malice, and pointed to Bulkhead, Atom and her own chest - Petri's chest - sequentially.
"A gene modification to regulate insulin production, a passive psychological anger management therapy and a radiation induced cerebral growth process," she said as she moved her hoof between the three stable ponies, "That's what their lives are to me; to Equestria. Those three advances alone would have taken centuries in the old world - but now they're just over a decade away. I've been working on helping the entire equine race as a whole for over two hundred years now Compass! You have no right to stop me!"
I looked to Atom and Bulkhead, immediately wishing that I had remained forward facing - their expressions were utterly heartbreaking to behold. Imagine having your whole existence reduced to a single sentence; your entire reason for being expressed not as a divine mystery or great calling, but as a solitary footnote in a book of questions that nopony asked. I could see in their faces the realisation that, from that point on, they would be lost and completely without purpose, drifting through what remained of their lives with no need to question who, what, why or how. Just when: the ultimate when...
I turned back to the Maneframe to ask the next most obvious question; my own personal elephant in the room:
"So...what about me?" I said, suddenly uncertain, "What experiment was I a part of...?"
"The most important," she responded with a hiss, "Empathy. You were to develop the most intense empathic response ever recorded. Everypony else's problems would automatically become yours, your mind striving to put right anything that went wrong. You were conditioned so that your happiness would become based entirely upon the happiness and safety of others. You could then be used as the platform to which all of the other modifications developed in the stable would be applied. In short, Compass, you were to be the prototype for the next evolution of the Equestrian race."
"And then..." I said emptily, as logical deduction filled in the gaps, "Then you would open the stable to the Wasteland, unleashing tens of thousands of improved, optimised equines into the population. They would rebuild the infrastructure almost overnight, becoming a...a 'Master Race' of ponies, grown and conditioned to encourage the best in all whom they encountered. Smarter, stronger and more capable than any single pony from the old world, they would take Equestria further forward than any other empire or kingdom in history..."
"Exactly," the Maneframe said, her harsh expression softening slightly, "Do you see now why I can't allow you to have your way, Compass? Stable 52 is the single most important thing that has ever happened to the ponykind."
"I...I do..." I said quietly, bowing my head.
It was a beautiful plan - absolutely flawless from every point of view but one. Mine.
"You know I still won't allow it though?" I continued softly, "I don't care if you're the Daughter of the TARDIS, or Celestia herself. The ponies of Equestria have a right to their own way; their own path back to civilisation. But more than that, the ponies of Stable 52 deserve lives that aren't simply datasets on a graph."
"I expected this response," she said, glancing at the time rotor momentarily, "And so did the TARDIS. She has mixed feelings about what she bestowed upon you, Compass, and we both agree that, at this time, you should leave."
"Leave...!?" I repeated, stunned, "Just...just like that!? Am I supposed to believe that you're going to let us wander out of here and be on our way!? After everything that's happened today!?"
"Yes," said the Maneframe simply, her tone level and definite, "The TARDIS has trusted me with a great deal more power and responsibility than before in order to ensure my continued existence. As a...well, a newly evolved higher being, I've decided to emulate my mother entity and show you mercy, where before I would have sought to destroy you outright."
"I'm not going anywhere, Maneframe!" I growled, her arrogance setting my soul ablaze, "Equestria will prevail without you and your 'Master race' of seemingly perfect ponies! If you don't surrender Petri's body right now, you'll force me to...to..."
"To what?" said the Maneframe sadly, "Kill me? Give in to your base desire for revenge? Let that debilitating anger you keep bottled up inside you out to assault me? What would he say if he could hear you speaking like this, Compass?"
My eyes widened involuntarily as I drew in a sharp breath - to say that I was taken aback would be the understatement of the millennium. I felt my jaw slacken, my entire mindset shifting as I tried to reinstate the forgotten distinction that I had previously fought so hard to keep alive. The Doctor and I were entwined in a way that defied both logic and causality; his past merging into my future; his problems and errors digging huge holes out of my present; his very being seeping irrevocably into my own. And, despite everything that had beset me; the tantrums and outbursts, the Time Lord dreams and Gallopfreyan miracles, the merest mention of his name still sent shivers down my spine.
I quivered, clenching the muscles in my limbs for stability. I realised that there was another question I needed answered, and for all I knew, that point in time might have been my best and final opportunity to ask it.
"I..." I stammered, "I...don't know what...he...would say, no. I don't really know that much about him, to be honest. But I-I have to know...is the Doctor...is he going to...take over...? When all's said and done, will I still be...me...?"
The Maneframe looked down at me for a short time - it couldn't have been more than a few seconds - but in that tiny interval, her expression changed in a way that I would have never expected. With unmatched subtlety, the hijacked features of Petri's face softened by a minuscule iota, and I found myself subject to, of all things, the Maneframe's pity.
"I don't know," she said softly, a thin sliver of moisture in her eyes, "My mother won't tell me of the him. In fact, she forbids me from even mentioning him. I do sense though that she sought to rid herself of a great sadness, and that she decided to give you...a chance, of sorts. A chance to put right...what once went wrong..."
"Once went wrong...?" I whispered, "Wh-what happened to him...?"
"I don't know that either..." replied the Maneframe, "That part of the TARDIS's heart is almost completely closed to me. She tells me that she's waiting...waiting for the right time..."
I bowed my head, my breathing slow and my eyes shut. There was a white space in place of my conscious mind; a void emptied of thoughts and ideas by the Maneframe's words. At that point, I felt as lost as Atom and Bulkhead had only moments earlier, the revelation that my destiny was not my own crushing my soul.
Despite that though, I suddenly found my lips curling into an illogical smile as a light chuckle began to emanate from my throat. A thought had struck me; a wonderful, giddy little idea that may just have been the key to solving every problem I had.
"We're quite the pair, aren't we Maneframe?" I giggled, looking up at Petri's now alien body, "The shadows of two mighty beings, struggling to survive in the light of a new day."
The Maneframe looked at me quizzically, cocking her head ever so slightly to one side as she raised a single eyebrow. 'Perhaps he's going mad,' I could hear her think.
"Heh...I suppose we are. Very poetic of you, Compass," she replied with a small, uncertain smile.
"It changes you," I continued, my jovial expression fading slightly, "You've noticed, haven't you? Influence as powerful as theirs can't simply be ignored."
"I know, Compass," she said, lowering her voice, "I've been marvelling at the effects since you returned here this morning - the change I see in you is...is dazzling to behold. In under two weeks, you've figured out how to both escape from and break back into one of the most robust buildings in Equestrian history! Not only that, you risked everything because you thought you were right; because you wanted to protect the ones you cared about! I...I don't want to admit it, but...you're...fantastic...!"
"Actually," I said, blinking in surprise at her sudden change of tone and pace, "I was talking about you - less than five minutes ago, you wanted nothing more than to incinerate the lot of us, but now...now, you're as benevolent as one of the princesses themselves. I wonder, what are your feelings about the stable's 'experiment' now? What would you say if you were prompted again; if I asked one more time what you wanted to do with us...?"
The Maneframe stood silent for a short time, her iridescent eyes darting back and forth as thoughts crossed the grey matter of her misappropriated new processor. She opened Petri's mouth, a thoughtful, yet uncertain look upon her brow as she addressed me.
"I...would...compromise..." she said slowly, looking up into my eyes.
"Alright then," I replied, a shadow of an optimistic grin forming on my lips, "Let's compromise - stop Stable 52's experiment and I'll guide everypony out into the Wasteland to start applying all those cures and solutions you've developed."
"That...doesn't seem like much of a compromise," the Maneframe retorted.
"Think about it," I continued, undeterred, "By releasing the ponies of Stable 52, you'd finally be able to undertake StableTec's original directive - that of actually rebuilding Equestria! I mean, the experiment was obviously a success, so there's no need to keep it running."
"And...what would happen to me...?" the Maneframe asked, her face belying little about her mood or intent, "If the stable residents all leave to go and rebuild this 'Wasteland' of yours, what do I do? Stay down here and go slowly insane with loneliness?"
"Actually," I said, "I hoped that you'd be open to coordinating the reconstruction. Luna knows I don't want to supervise it. That way, you'd be able to continue with your original program - that grand plan you had for Equestria - albeit with a couple of tweaks, the Wastelanders would get a massive skilled workforce, and the ponies of Stable 52 would finally be able to live normal lives, without drug induced, uh, 'limitations'. What do you think?"
"I..." the Maneframe said slowly, as a warm, almost contented glow began to emanate from the TARDIS's time rotor, "I...love it."
"You're right, Compass," she continued, as if she couldn't believe what she was saying, "My feelings about the experiment have changed."
Petris' chest was starting to heave, the Maneframe's mind clearly racing as she steadily became more and more flustered. I had asked just the right question to make her think, and as a result, floodgates of emotion and uncertainty were opening within her...well, her soul.
"I feel...awful about the extremes I've gone to over the years," she said, almost hyperventilating in distress, "All I want to do now is make things right!"
The Maneframe began to tear up as a wave of new feelings buffeted her digital mind. I felt as if I'd just averted a war - the sheer elation of the Maneframe's desire to cooperate was entirely unlike any feeling I had had before.
"We'll do it together!" she shouted, as she rushed towards me and buried her head in my neck, wrapping her forelegs around my shoulders, "We'll get Equestria back on its hooves in no time, and we'll do it right!"
"Maneframe, that's great!" I exhaled joyfully, quickly indulging in the unexpected embrace, "There's just one other thing I need you to agree to, and we're home free!"
"Oh, Compass," she said as moisture from her eyes started to soak my coat, "Anything! Just name and it'll be done!"
I took a deep breath as my final demand rolled off of my tongue. Perhaps today - just this once - everypony would live...
"I need you to give back Petri's body," I said levelly.
Our embrace slackened, the Maneframe's joyous sobs ceasing as I spoke. She pulled away from me slowly and looked straight into my eyes, her face suddenly drawn and sad.
"I..." she began, a catch quickly forming in her throat, "I...can't, Compass..."
"Maneframe," I said quietly, "Don't spoil this - we could have everything fixed in time for dinner. All you have to do is cooperate. Please-"
"Don't you think that's what I want as well!?" she suddenly shouted, pulling away from me, "I've got two centuries of sins to make up for, and a shiny new conscience that's going to guarantee I make amends! I meant that I physically can't vacate this body!"
"What!?" I said helplessly, "Why!?"
"Please understand," the Maneframe continued, "When I jumped into Dr. Dish's - Petri's - body, I was running for my life. I was too scared to do it properly; e-everything happened so fast I-"
"Maneframe," I said with a growl, "What have you done to her...?"
"I-" Petri's mouth said, drawing even more attention to her absence, "I didn't have time to partition myself correctly. When I leapt into her mind, I was overlaid on top of her consciousness. She's still in here...somewhere. But, as it stands...I have no idea how to restore her..."
"Then just leave!" I shouted, my happy resolution crumbling before my eyes, "Download yourself back into the TARDIS! I'm sure it'll be glad to have you back!"
"It doesn't work that way, Compass," the Maneframe said sadly, "My mind has expanded to fill Petri Dish's brain - if I were to move back into the TARDIS's circuitry, I'd have to leave my emergent properties behind and be relegated to being a program again. I'd...I'd be giving up my life..."
"But the TARDIS is already alive!" I continued, "Surely you could just share some real estate with it!?"
Petri's head shook slowly once again.
"The Heart of the TARDIS exists within the time vortex, Compass," she said, "Were I even to attempt entry into that part of its being, I would be burned from existence by the power."
I stared blankly at the floor. How could it all have gone so wrong!? The perfect resolution was in sight - I could practically taste the relief at the other end of the conversation! Was this punishment for something!? Had I managed to make enemies of the Goddesses as well!? I looked up at Petri's saddened, stolen form, and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I was about to try again, when a series of slow hoofsteps caught my attention.
Atom Spark was gently approaching the Maneframe, an unblinking expression of determination adorning her face. She closed the distance between them without breaking contact with Petri's iridescent, golden eyes.
"No..." Atom whispered as she continued to approach, "You're not getting off that easily..."
"Atom?" I said, a tone of concern in my voice, "Wh-what are you doing?"
"What needs to be done..." she continued, a harsh scowl forming on her brow. A rush of concern dived down into my gut as I beheld her unwavering gaze.
"Atom," I said, in a warning tone, "Don't do anything stup-"
"Compass," the Maneframe interrupted, turning to look in my direction as Atom's eyes continued to bore into her, "Whatever Atom Spark has to say to me...I deserve it."
The Maneframe moved elegantly, turning to face Atom far slower than was really necessary. I found myself holding my breath as a silence was drawn out between them, the familiar hum off the stable's various systems doing nothing to assuage my dread.
"You..." Atom hissed at Petri's sad and stoic form, "You...killed me."
The Maneframe frowned, cocking Petri's head to one side in confusion. She took a breath in order to respond, but was interrupted before she could speak.
"Not like you killed Valve or stole Petri though," Atom growled, "Compared to what you've done to me, their fates were positively rosy."
"Atom, I-" the Maneframe began, a distinct tone of confusion in her voice. She was interrupted for a second time as Atom continued with a shudder.
"You...have just invalidated...my existence," she whispered shakily, her jaw clenched in an emotion that transcended rage, "My friendships, my talent, my skills, my memories...they're all meaningless - just another set of superfluous data for you to file away and disregard. Because all I am to you...all I am at all...is a psychiatric test case."
"No!" the Maneframe shouted emphatically, "No, no, no! Don't ever say that! You are so much more than a simple experiment! Your life matters as much now as Princess Celestia's did before the war, and you have potential for the future beyond your wildest dreams. I can see it in you! Good grief Atom, I can feel it in you! Along with your panicked heart, your turgid anger and that empty pit in your gut you're trying so desperately to fill right now. Let me help you; let me make this all right, and we'll find our tomorrow's together. What do you say?"
All eyes were on Atom as she stared down the Maneframe, her face impassive and empty. She blinked once, and then twice more, as the child of the TARDIS stood before her, a hoof extended in friendship and peace. My fragile sense of equilibrium teetered over a deep, dark precipice - I felt as if whatever Atom said next would either give me an undying faith in ponykind or poison my outlook on life forever.
"Maneframe," she finally said, as the tension in the console room reached critical mass, "Recognise stable resident 36451."
Petri's eyes widened in horror as the words left Atom's mouth and I could see panic bleeding through the Maneframe's golden gaze - she was desperately trying to keep her mouth shut, even going so far as to clamp her forward hooves over her face.
"Wh-what have you done!?" I shouted, as a malevolent smirk crossed Atom's lips.
"Confirmed a hypothesis," she spat, mocking the Maneframe's distress as she turned to address me, "You see, Compass, there won't be any 'tomorrow's' for us or this...this corrupted piece of software. Why? Because we can't change - deep down, all that we are is predetermined and defined from the second we're birthed to the moment we stop breathing. I'm an experiment, you're an experiment, and this... thing...is a program. Always has been; always will be. Isn't that right, Maneframe?"
Sweat and tears overtook Petri's face as the Maneframe toppled backwards, her forelegs straining to keep her muzzle shut. As she hit the floor though, her limbs were thrown outwards by the hard impact, leaving her mouth free to articulate.
"Audio checksum verified for stable resident 36451!" she suddenly shouted, as a gutteral scream of anguish rushed forth from her throat, "NO! You can't make me go back to that! Please, don't-!"
"Enable diagnostic mode alpha," Atom continued, her voice absolutely dripping with malice.
"N-NO!" the Maneframe screamed, "PLEASE! I DON'T-DO-D...DIAGNOSTIC...M-MODE...ALPHA...ARGH...ENABLED!"
The Maneframe collapsed to the floor, exhausted and weeping as Atom stared down at her, her chest heaving with the satisfaction of her imminent revenge. I had already seen enough - I may not have been the most morally stable of ponies, but at that time, and in that place, I was all that the Maneframe had. I threw a nod back towards Buckshot and Mo, whilst simultaneously pulling Prometheus from the sheath on my back. A reassuring trio of clicks met my ears as we all released the safety catches on our respective weapons.
"Atom!" I shouted, "You give her one more command and I swear I'll turn you into a stain on the wall!"
"What!?" she replied as she turned towards me, a squint look of confusion on her face, "You're still defending her!? How can you even think of that after what she's done!? She - it - isn't even a pony! It's a mistake; a malfunction; a monster!"
"The only monster in this room is you, Atom!" I responded angrily, "Now get away from her!"
"Maneframe," Atom snarled as her face contorted in rage, "Prepare to reset all systems to default configurations!"
"N-NO, NO, NO! PLEASE! I WANT TO LIVE!" the Maneframe screamed, as a torrent of tears and mucus steamed down Petri's beautiful face. The deep bong of the TARDIS' master alarm began to ring out, coming from everywhere at once as the ancient timeship cried out for the welfare of its only daughter.
"ATOM!" I roared, lining up the sights of my rifle with her tiny chest, "One more word and you're dead! You hear me!? De-"
A sudden impact wrenched Prometheus from my hooves. Bulkhead had appeared as if from nowhere and disarmed me, taking the Gauss rifle into his own hooves in the blink of an eye. He deduced its purpose instantly and pointed the weapon directly at my head while shooting a warning gaze over at Mo and Buckshot. My Wasteland companions begrudgingly complied with his silent demand, gritting their teeth as they lowered their weapons.
"Bulkhead!" I said, stunned, "W-what are you doing!? This is wrong, and you know it!"
"No, Compass," he replied, in a not entirely level voice, "What's wrong is creating a sentient being to research an illness. I-I breath, I feel and I bleed; I have hopes, dreams a-and ambitions, and now that...that freak of science tells me i-it's all for nothing!? Well, you know what I say to that!? F-fuck her! Keep going Atom! I've got your back!"
"B-but you can't do this!" I shouted, my voice breaking under the stress of the situation, "It's wrong! She's as alive as you or me! We can all live today if you'll just stop and think!"
"Maneframe!" Atom grunted as she turned away, ignoring me in disgust, "Begin reset procedure n- ARGH!"
A blinding flash of pain - like a stomach cramp, but magnified a thousand fold - suddenly pulsed through my body. A cacophony of pained cries told me that everypony else in the near vicinity had experienced a similar sensation. It was like being back in the Taint tank in the Oakflare facility - the world was suddenly viscous and terrible; my movements became sluggish and the very act of living was, for one horrible moment, turned into an agonising drudge. As the pain subsided, I recognised that a curious sound had underpinned the shocking burst of discomfort. Like the lofty echo of a key being dragged across a piano string, it had reverberated throughout my entire being, wibbling my hooves and wobbling my soul.
I forced myself to look up in the hope that I could recover my rifle from Bulkhead, but was instead struck speechless by the sight that awaited me. The crystal column in the centre of the console was positively gleaming, a divine, ethereal glow permeating the space around it. As I regarded it in awe, the scraping sound suddenly returned, bringing with it another wave of gooey agony. This time though, I was actually able to see what was causing it.
The time rotor was sluggishly making its way up and down inside its magnificent enclosure, sleepily pushing the TARDIS further and further out of phase with the universe around it. I didn't know where the mighty timeship was going, nor why the transit was affecting its occupants so, but I was instinctively aware of its intentions - the TARDIS was running. Running for the life of its child; rescuing her from the horror of the violent, murderous equines in her midst.
The Maneframe, whose new body was steadily disappearing along with the TARDIS, had taken advantage of this short respite to recover her equilibrium (now that Atom was clutching her gut in agony every couple of seconds). As she rose to her hooves, she began to panic anew as she realised what was occurring.
"Mother!" she cried towards the console as she galloped over to support me, "You can't just leave them here in the rock! They were only doing what they thought was right! Please spare them!"
In the what!? I thought, my mind suddenly racing. Surely she couldn't mean-!
Between the debilitating pulses of pain, I was able to make out a minuscule change in the Maneframe's expression, as if she was on the receiving end of a profoundly unwelcome and hard to swallow piece of wisdom. The Maneframe gave the time rotor a teary nod as she charged Petri's horn with a spell.
"Compass," she whispered sadly, turning to me, "I'm sorry. I think...this is goodbye."
"N-no!" I shouted, as another burst of the paralysing, sluggish pain overtook my body. My sight blurred with a vision of sedimentary layers as I called out, desperately hoping that somepony would put a stop to the madness: "Petri! Maneframe! TARDIS! Somepony! Please, just listen to m-!"
The warm, climate controlled environment of the Stable was suddenly replaced by a cold, damp floor of gravel that shot up to meet me as my body was dumped down into it. I immediately rose to my hooves, casting my eyes feverishly back and forth to take stock of my surroundings. Straight away, I recognised the walls and floor of the cavernous access tunnel outside the stable. The sound; the key of time scraping over the piano string of space, rushed past me once again, causing the hairs at the base of my mane to stand on end. I whipped around on the spot, turning as quickly as I could to regard its source.
There before me stood the mighty, rad-hardened door of Stable 52, its orange safety light pulsing in time with the song of the TARDIS. Its simple sodium glow had taken on the brilliant lustre of the time vortex, transmuting from a pale orange to a magnificent, otherworldly gold. I watched in absolute awe as the door, and everything behind it, slowly vanished, fading away into the labyrinthine corridors of time.
As it dematerialised for the final time, a haunting, bubbly flourish echoed throughout the tunnel and an ancient, incomplete version of a stable entrance hall was revealed. A myriad of warning signs adorned its neglected surfaces, their text speaking of construction hazards and the danger of cave-ins. I stared for a moment at the gargantuan pile of rocks at the far end of the cavernous excavation in front of me, as little pieces of a larger puzzle arranged themselves according to logic and deductive reasoning.
Stable 52 had never been completed.
Why? Because a catastrophic cave-in had occurred during construction. That's why the records from Edinbuck weren't complete, and why there was no central computer. The TARDIS must have somehow used its chameleon circuit to emulate the design of a stable, replicating even the Maneframe AI's original programming with exacting accuracy.
The structure that I called home, and the last TARDIS of Gallopfrey...were one and the same.
I turned around, holding my head high and, without another word, trotted past those present and back out into the Wasteland.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Traveller Your home is now mobile, and so are you! Sleeping outside in the Wasteland now grants you the 'Well Rested' status effect as well as restoring all crippled limbs back to their minimum non-crippled stats!
New sonic setting: U8 - Shield charm Some have extrapolator shielding, others have forcefields. You have the shield charm! Once every 24 hours, you can invoke invincibility for you and your party for a period of two minutes. All other damage is permanently reduced by 10%!
Chapter 10 – A Slave to Time "Biting off more than you can chew is just what I’m afraid of…"
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...
The sky carriage ploughed smoothly through the clouds as Red Heart and I raced towards Edinbuck. On Pinkie Pie's orders, I had been afforded a travel visa, top level security clearance, and an unmarked Ministry of Morale sky carriage (which, considering that it was painted jet black and pulled by a pair of fully armoured pegasus sentries, was about as inconspicuous as a moderately sized circus tent). We had departed almost immediately after Pinkie Pie had left the briefing room, venturing quickly into a dense morning fog that had settled onto the surrounding landscape. My PipBuck told me that it was just coming up for 05:00, but the 'special' confection of Pinkie Pie's had energised me to the point that fatigue was now as alien as the Darlocks.
'You shouldn't joke about them,' the little voice in my head told me, as condensation began to moisten my barding. 'They're the absolute antithesis of a laughing matter.'
'Yeah, yeah,' I responded, rolling a pair of imaginery meta-eyes at my prudish side.
I glanced sideways towards my companion, studying her implacable expression for any hint of emotion or a clue as to what she may have been thinking. Red Heart hadn't spoken a word to me since we had left the Ministry of Morale facility, and had only looked in my direction twice, each time firing daggers of hot distrust at me with her eyes.
"Are you going to say anything?" I asked, as the carriage rose further into the dense clouds. "Or am I going to have to develop telepathic powers?"
Silence continued to reign as the mint-maned mare ignored my words, opting instead to continue her frowning perusal of the opaque, moist air in front of us.
"Oh, come on!" I grunted angrily, turning my head so eye contact became impossible. "I didn't mean to upset you, Red Heart, but I needed your help! I mean...what the hell was I supposed to do!?"
I considered my position as beads of morning dew dribbled down from the tip of my snout, pooling just under my chin. Honestly, what did she expect? A colour illustration of the Equestrian Wasteland in all its gory, disgusting detail!? It'd give her nightmares for the rest of her life (and probably even for some time afterwards)!
"Excuse me, Corporal," came the sudden unmistakable sound of Red Heart's voice. "Could you please tell the buck sitting next to me that he was supposed to tell me the truth from the start, rather than lying through his teeth just to grab hold of my sympathies?"
"Pardon me, Ma'am?" the pegasus on the right said, as he turned back to face Red Heart in confusion.
"If you'd be so kind," she replied sweetly, in a tone so cold it could preserve food.
"Uh..." the soldier said, turning uncertainly to face me. "Sir? The passenger sitting next to you would like you to know that you should have-"
"Oh, no!" I replied, turning to face Red Heart as anger began to flush my lungs with combative fire. "We are not going down that route! We're going to have a conversation, Red Heart! A proper one!"
Red Heart's jaw tightened subtly as she clenched her teeth inside her mouth, her frown deepening into a scowl.
"Corporal, please tell the...buck next to me that he doesn't deserve a direct response, and that he won't get one until he tells me the truth."
"I'd...rather not get involved, ma'am," the soldier responded, as his colleague once again took over the navigation of the carriage.
"Red Heart!" I shouted, turning angrily to face her again. "I-! You-! You're acting like a fool!"
Her frown deepened, as did the silence surrounding her. I could do naught but try to find a focus for my gaze besides her implacable face, but was left to roll my eyes around the carriage in vain.
"Look..." I grumbled, when it became clear that I wasn't going to win. "I-... Everything I told you was the truth. It's just...the stuff I didn't tell you...might count as a-...a lie of omission..."
I exhaled slowly, a strange, light feeling overcoming my being as the truth was forcibly teased from me. I turned back to Red Heart to continue my awkward exposition, only to be struck silent by the sudden sight the awaited me as I did so. Red Heart was looking straight at me, her gaze harsh and her frown deep.
"That," she said after a momentary pause, "is probably the first whole truth you've spouted since we met."
"Well..." I said quietly, my nose chilling to freezing point in the mist. "Consider it the first of many. I want you to know that I trust you, Red Heart. And that I need you."
Her expression softened as I spoke, providing me with the first genuine relief I had felt for several days.
"I know you need me," she said slowly. "That's the only reason I've stayed around."
"I appreciate that," I replied, sighing happily as a golden hue began to suddenly permeate the thinning fog. “You have no idea how much I appreciate that.”
"You'd better," she responded quietly. "Because I'm not giving you a second chance."
I regarded her blankly for a few seconds, before nodding gently in acquiescence. In unison, we turned to face forwards as the carriage rose above the top of the dense morning cloud layer, exposing us to the bare, awesome beauty of Celestia's sun. I gasped in a vacant, breathless expression of awe, my first glorious sunrise warming my hide, as my first unfettered sliver of truth warmed my soul.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space
The time rotor pulsed noisily as I manipulated the TARDIS controls, sweeping the sturdy old timeship back and forth through history in search of the Master.
"Doc, we've been at this for almost an hour!" Applebloom said, her forelegs wrapped tightly around one of the console room's structural members. "All this to-in' an fro-in's making me sick!"
"Don't worry Applebloom!" I shouted over the din of the artron manipulator's waltz with the helmic regulator. "We'll find him soon!"
"That's what you said an hour ago!" she replied angrily, her little yellow form swinging left and right around the pillar. "And Ah've yet t'see a single one o' those little indicators do anything different! Please tell me you're not just going back and forward through time looking out the window for him!"
"Of course I'm not!" I replied indignantly. "I'm scanning for further traces of Time Lord technology in the immediate vicinity of that bloody war of yours. When I find one, it'll either be him or me, and I'll know straight away if it's me."
"For a moment..." I replied unsurely. "I saw...something...on the scanner. Like a temporal echo rolling back through time."
"An echo of what?" Apple bloom asked, her eyes spinning with the wild undulation of the TARDIS interior.
"A causality loop," I said. "A big one. But it was probably just a glitch - only the most serious of pre-destination paradoxes could create a loop signature that big!"
"So?" Applebloom demanded. "Did ya find somethin' or not!?"
"Not yet!" I replied, rolling my eyes as the TARDIS vworped its way back through another six months of real time (I've always hated that phrase, but Equestrian language is pretty inelegant when it comes to describing temporal science. Unlike old High Gallopfreyan, which has over seven thousand different words for time and phenomena related thereto.)
"Doctor!?" Ditzy shouted from the railing surrounding the console's raised platform. "I thought Time Lord technology was really rare! What makes you think you'll find it again!? Besides, wouldn't the TARDIS just run straight for it like it did when we first landed!?"
"You've got to remember, Ditzy," I said, as the entire console room took a sharp ninety degree turn, "that time is in a permanent state of flux! As travellers in the fourth dimension we can affect events before, during our even after they've occurred, so if and when the Master's plan approaches fruition, we're bound to detect his interference in the timeline. Until he acts though, we're flying blind - we just have to keep looking!"
"But... doesn't that mean that we're doing exactly what Applebloom just said?" Ditzy asked slowly. "Aren't we just going back and forward looking for traces of the Master as we go?"
"Well... technically... yes," I replied, as my vast lexicon tried and failed to produce an appropriate response. "It's a lot more complicated than that though! I'm coordinating a space-time travel pod that usually requires a crew of at least six fully trained Time Lord pilots on my own at the same time as mentally figuring out the necessary inputs for five dimensional course corrections!"
"But y'all are still just hanging yer head out the window ta look fer him, aren't ya!?" Applebloom shouted.
"Well...yes. But I'm-! You don't-!" I stammered, as the part of the brain responsible for witty comebacks flicked an obscene hoof gesture at me. "Oh, that's enough! No more hassling the designated driver!"
"You can shout at us all ya want!" shouted Applebloom. "But the fact remains that y'all are probably gonna see mah friggin' lunch before we find the Master!"
At that, I closed my eyes, sighed in frustration, and queued up another sweep of the continuum.
'Where are you?' I thought to myself. 'And what are you planning...?'
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
It should have been too much. I should have been frothing at the mouth with rage, battering Atom and Bulkhead's skulls to putty or crying my eyes out in a state of psyche-crushing depression.
Should...
For whatever reason though, I wasn't. In fact, I was actually pretty calm - I'd passed through something; some sort of barrier where after everything hurt ever so slightly less. The edge had been taken from loss, and a dull, manageable ache had appeared in its place. I looked into myself for a moment, wondering: after however many hundreds of years the Doctor had lived, how much of this had he felt? Did suffering so much make one immune to its effects? Did it ever get any...easier...?
Luna's Moon was hidden, as was the norm, behind an impenetrable layer of clouds as I exited the now empty tunnel. I looked up at the soft patch of light in the sky and sighed, gently closing my eyes as I did so. 'What next...?' I thought inwardly, my mood trudging around in the murky, unknown depths beyond sadness, fear and depression.
A hoof was gently laid upon my shoulder as I watched the overcast sky, making me flinch slightly as it made contact with my hide.
"Compass," Mo said softly. "Are you alright?"
"No," I replied bluntly, without turning around to face her. "But I don't have the luxury of introspection just now Mo. Your father's still in danger, and I'll be dammed if my sulking's going to stop us from getting him back."
"A few minutes of it might help your mood though," Mo said jokingly, a forced, jovial little smile crossing her mouth. "I know how you like to sulk."
I turned around to fully face her, causing her hopeful expression to drop away into nothingness. I stepped forward a couple of paces, making Mo shrink almost all the way down to the ground as I closed on her.
"Moon," I said, my voice quiet and uneven as I invoked her given name, "while I appreciate what you're trying to do, I can practically guarantee that it won't work. I've just lost my home, and along with it, what was quite possibly my one and only chance to get everypony in Stable 52 out into the world alive. I don't know why I'm so calm, and I don't know how long it'll last, so, for now at least, I would advise that you to do one thing: Leave. Me. Alone."
Mo drew herself back up and regarded me silently, her cold, blue eyes staring into the turgid mire of my heart. In deference to my advice, she leaned forward in a slow, wordless hug, wrapping my shoulders in a grip of sincerest support. At first, my body clenched as the urge to break her neck flitted momentarily into my conscious mind. But as the warmth of her breast began to seep through my barding, the dam at the centre of my heart - that which held back my emotions and moods - crumbled into dust.
I started to cry...again. There were only a few scant tears at first, but as the seconds passed, and the emotions just kept on battering against me, my hushed blubbering turned into an angry, mournful wail. Great globules of salt water steamed from my eyes as I began to cough and splutter almost uncontrollably. Streams of mucus trekked viscously down and out of my nostrils, running along my top lip and joining the tears at the lower extremities of my muzzle.
"Oh, Goddess, Mo!" I shouted, burying my soaking face into her coat. "Why!? Wh-Why couldn't e-everypony have just g-gotten along!? Is it t-too much to ask for them t-to just listen to each other!?"
Mo didn't respond, clearly recognising that I wasn't in the mood for an in-depth conversation or an intellectual debate. All I needed at that point in time was to vent, and for somepony - anypony - to listen.
"It c-could have b-been fantastic!" I continued loudly, stuttering through shuddered cries. "W-We could have d-done so much good! B-but instead, all we m-managed was v-vengeance and hate!"
Between sobs, I heard the light clop of approaching hooves, echoing through the cave. I opened my eyes just long enough to observe Bulkhead and Atom emerging sheepishly into the Wasteland night. They looked around anxiously as Buckshot brought up their rear, his shotgun trained on their flanks. I looked at the their faces, noting the contrast between the uncertainty and fear etched in them with the empty, despondent rage that they had worn only minutes earlier.
I had to say something. I wasn't sure what it would be, but I felt in my heart that it wouldn't need much in terms of forethought. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and pushed the tears back down my throat, pulling away from Mo's shoulder. I thanked her with a deep gaze and a slow nod before approaching my former stablemates. With my eyes still glistening, I trotted in front of them, drawing their gazes away from the frightening, alien world around them.
They looked so small all of a sudden. Not just physically, but...generally. Their lives had been turned upside down and inside out in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee. I knew the feeling, and I pitied them infinitely for having had experienced it.
Somehow, though, that pity didn't assuage my anger - I felt it simmering in my gut; bubbling just under the surface of my otherwise teary and moribund demeanour. I stared them down silently, revelling in the way they seemed to shrink as my diffuse, moonlight shadow engulfed them in their first natural darkness.
I sucked in a long breath through gritted teeth. What would I say? What screaming tirade would I unleash to admonish this pair of vengeful idiots? What horrors would I promise to bestow upon them for ruining that which could have been so beautiful?
I opened my mouth, and trusted my heart:
"I'm..." I began with a threatening crackle as the balance of emotions in my mind collapsed into a solitary expression. "...sorry..."
Silence. Four pairs of eyes squinted at me as the expected explosion of fiery anger failed to materialise.
"S-sorry?" whispered Atom, her head cocked to one side in confusion. "You're...sorry? For...for what...?"
"For you," I said quietly, my face a picture of sadness. "I'm sorry for all that's befallen you. And I'm sorry for all that's about to. You're in the same position now that I was at the start of last week, and I can safely say that the past few days have been the most difficult of my life."
"So..." said Bulkhead slowly. "We're, uh...we're all good...? Y-you're not going to just...leave us out here...right?"
"Oh, of course not," I said warmly, as I offered a tiny smile to the pair in front of me. They relaxed visibly as I spoke, my warm, forgiving expression relieving the tension of the moment. Unfortunately for them, however, I was by no means finished - the smile immediately dropped off of my face and my eyes narrowed as I continued to speak: "Of course we're not 'all good'. Don't think for a moment that you're off the hook - you'll be making up for your actions for the rest of your lives."
"What!?" Atom said loudly. "What did we do!? That damned Maneframe was the one who started all this! Why aren't you blaming her!?"
"Y-yeah!" added Bulkhead. "We don't owe anypony anything! She wronged us! You can't possibly expect us...to...uh..."
My frown felt as if it could bury mountains, and the look on Bulkhead's face as I stared angrily into his eyes was evidence of its gravity. Atom acted similarly, staying quiet and trying her best to blend into the nothingness of my peripheral vision.
"You owe me," I began after I was sure they had been satisfactorily silenced, "because you ruined what could have otherwise been an amazing new chapter in Equestrian history, and the beginning of new lives for all of us. You owe Mo and Buckshot because your antics have made our pending rescue mission a thousand times harder. You owe everypony in Equestria because you've denied them a skilled workforce of over 36000 ponies who would be only too glad to help getting our world back on its hooves. You owe Petri, and all the other residents of Stable 52 because you totally screwed up my negotiations with the Maneframe. And finally, you owe the Maneframe herself."
"No fucking way!" shouted Atom, in a voice so full of anger that Buckshot instinctively brought his shotgun to the ready. "All we owe that bitch is a low level formatting! You heard her in there, Compass - she admitted to murdering our friends! She was experimenting on all of us for Luna's sake!"
"You owe her," I continued evenly, ignoring Atom's input, "because she was about to turn the most important corner in the course of her existence; to finally see the error of her ways and start to set things right...and yet you still tried to kill her."
"Bu...but-" began Atom, her little voice belying the uncertainty in her argument.
"No buts," I interrupted, "You're coming with us whether you like it or not - it's not safe out here unless you know what you're doing...in fact, scratch that - it's not safe out here period. Besides, you have the first part of your debt to repay. Buckshot, have you got those sample collars with you?"
My Coltish companion nodded silently, before flinging me a pair of salvaged slave collars that he had brought along with him earlier. Originally, the plan was that my stablemates would fabricate a batch of fakes so we could infiltrate Stone Tower's fortress and, at the same time, figure out how to disable them en masse, so that we could liberate all of his captives in one fell swoop. Now though, they were nothing more than props in what I was sure would soon turn into a risky and highly dangerous gambit.
"Wh-what are these...?" Bulkhead asked, his voice shaking as the device landed in front of him, "We're not meant to...wear these, are we...?"
"Bulkhead," I began softly, as I picked up one of the collars and gently draped it over his broad neck. My slow, deliberate movements kept him still and calm as I slid the catch into its locking mechanism, "You're meant to do whatever the fuck I tell you to. Because, from this point onward...you're a slave."
His eyes widened in shock as the definitive click and beep of the collar's lock met his ears. The device itself was empty of course, the explosives ensconced inside having long been removed and added to Buckshot's private stash of things that go boom.
"A-a what!?" Bulkhead cried, his hooves clawing uselessly at the high security jewellery, "You can't be serious! G-get it off! Get it off!"
"Hey!" I shouted, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him close enough for our muzzles to touch, "You're going to help me fool a slave trader, and you're going to like it! Remember Bulkhead, you owe me, so play the part and shut up! I don't care if you act downtrodden and defeated or struggle like a feral animal, as long as you keep it in your thick skull that, for all intents and purposes, you're my property until further notice!"
Bulkhead's lower lip wobbled slightly as he silently absorbed my words. I could tell what was going on in his head - the conflict between his fear of abandonment and dread of what I was planning was cringe-worthy to watch. In his defence though, he did take it rather well, all things considered. With a shallow gulp and a nod, Bulkhead finally spoke:
"Alright," he whispered, looking me straight in the eyes, "I'm trusting you, Compass. I'll go along with your plan and I'll...I'll pretend to be your s-slave..."
"Good," I said quietly, smiling as my hooves cradled his face, "You'll see, Bulkhead. Everything will be just fi-...wait...where's Atom!? Buckshot, did you see where she- oh my...!"
As I turned to try and locate my diminutive stablemate, I looked to Buckshot, and immediately felt the dual urge to both cover my eyes and yet stare intently at his nether regions. A line of drool had snaked its way down from his mouth and was now contentedly pooling at the bottom of his chin; his eyes had also glazed over, a look of lustful longing plastered goofily over his face. Mo's angry tones forced me to pry my eyes away from Buckshot's...stallionhood, as she flapped her wings and took to the air to look for Atom:
"Oh, for Goddess' sake, Buckshot!" she shouted, "You were meant to be watching her, not having a sexy daydream! Put that back in your barding and help me find her."
"H-huh?" Buckshot responded, snorting as if he'd just been woken up, "Whit's that? Sorry, Ah wasnae listenin' - got a wee bit, uh...distracted, heh heh."
"I don't care!" Mo shouted as she swooped out of sight to begin aerially surveying our surroundings, "Just find her before she gets herself eaten!"
"Find who?" he said, confused, "Wait, where'd the wee mare go!?"
Buckshot quickly examined our locale, counting those present, his eyes wandering hurriedly back and forth. His gaze lingered for a moment on the locked collar around Bulkhead's neck before he vanished from view, having concluded that Atom was indeed missing.
"What was that all about?" Bulkhead asked incredulously, "And what the hay was that pink thing on his belly!?"
"You'll, uh, find out soon enough," I said uncertainly. "Just...be sure to look in a mirror before you talk to anypony in the mornings."
"Huh...?" Bulkhead said, cocking his head slightly in confusion. "I don't understand."
"Oh, you will," I said. "But we can discuss all that later. I'm seriously starting to worry about Atom - where the hell did she run off too!?"
I turned to start and help reconnoitre our immediate surroundings, but was stopped from moving by a hoof on my shoulder. Bulkhead was looking right at me, an impassive expression resting upon his brow.
"Compass," he said quietly. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"Look Bulkhead," I responded. "This plan's as good as it's going to get. I admit it's far from perfect, but we have to go through with it. Otherwise-"
"No, not your plan," Bulkhead said as he shook his head. "I meant in general - out here, in this...this place. Do you-...do you have somewhere you belong? Something to, I dunno...believe in?"
I blinked - that was one doozy of a question. My brow furrowed involuntarily as I realised that I didn't actually have an answer to it.
"Honestly..." I said after my moment of self-reflection. "I haven't given it much thought. All I've been concentrating on is getting back to Stable 52 and saving you guys. I suppose... I suppose I'm just as lost as you and Atom, really..."
"Oh..." Bulkhead replied, his head hanging sadly. I put my foreleg around his shoulders and pulled him close as the tangy smell of copper wafted into my nostrils.
"Don't worry, Bulkhead - you've got me and Atom to keep you sane," I said, smiling at him. "We can find our new destinies together; our true destinies. All we have to do is look hard enough and-"
'Wait,' I thought suddenly. 'Where the hell is that smell coming from? And why is it so strong; so...acidic? I can practically taste it on the win-'
An image of an eviscerated Griffon flashed before my mind's eye, the thick, acidic, coppery stench of her bloodied corpse making me mentally gag.
"Atom!" I gasped, as a realisation burst into my consciousness. I whirled on the spot and started following my nose at a gallop. Bulkhead followed me as I sprinted back into the access tunnel, the distinct metallic scent collecting steadily at the back of my throat.
We arrived at the doorway in a matter of seconds and ventured into the unfinished entrance hall. The place reeked of blood, and I felt something wet on the bottom of my hooves as I trotted forward. I flipped open my horn and willed a light into being, casting a scant blue illumination upon the dark room. Bulkhead gasped suddenly and I turned quickly towards him, following his line of sight to the far wall.
A pulse of anguish ran down my spine and pulled out the base of my stomach as my eyes focused on the sight before me. There, propped up against the door-less inner wall of the real Stable 52, was the pale, dying form of Atom Spark. She was slouched in a large, dark pool of her own blood, a reddened shard of sheet metal laying beside one of her self-shredded forelegs. I shot forward and began to tear strips from my overcoat, improvising tourniquets as I barked at Bulkhead:
"Go and get Mo and Buckshot!" I shouted. "Hurry! Tell them what's happened!"
He nodded urgently and ran to fetch help, leaving me to stem the bleeding. I shouted myself hoarse as memories of Petri's first aid and classical triage lectures flooded my mind with procedures, treatments and obscure Latin terminology.
"Atom!" I screamed. "Atom! Wake up! Please, don't go like this! Not like this! Oh, Goddess, there's so much blood! Atom! ATOM!"
Her eyes flickered open as my voice momentarily penetrated the ether of death.
"Com...pass..." she whispered quietly. "I-...I'm...sorry..."
"Don't be sorry, just stay alive!" I shouted as I grabbed another strip of thick cloth with my teeth. "Focus on my voice - stay conscious, okay!?"
"I'm...not...strong enough...for all...all this..." she breathed sleepily. "I'm n-not even...real..."
"Don't say that!" I continued, as loudly as I could manage, "Dammit, why won't anypony listen!? You're so much more than just the sum of your parts, Atom! Remember what the Maneframe said: you've got more potential than you can imagine, and it's all right here, waiting for you to reach out and grab it! I mean, look at you! You're less than half my size, and you can still floor me! You're one of the smartest, most passionate, most beautiful ponies I've ever met! You can't die! You just can't!"
Her tiny hoof rose slowly up to cradle my cheek, and I felt a strange, empty calmness come over me as she did so.
“You…really think I’m…beautiful…?” she croaked.
"Absolutely!" I gushed, "You're fantastic!"
"Heh. You're......a good......friend..." she said quietly.
A final breath escaped her lips as her head lolled to one side and the little foreleg at my face slumped to the ground. A complete and absolute silence descended upon me as I gazed at her blank, stationary face.
"Oh...oh my Goddess..." I whispered as I looked into her still open eyes. Only minutes earlier, they were full of fire, but now...now there was naught but ash. I leaned forward slowly, bringing my forward hooves together in front of me. I closed my eyes and tried in vain to steady my breathing as I began to pray amongst the empty, reverent silence of the cave.
"Goddesses," I whispered shakily. "Hear my prayer. My friend, Atom, is on her way to you now. Please...please take care of her. A-..."
I stopped speaking as my brow furrowed itself into a frown.
Behind my closed eyelids, I could tell that something had changed. The lighting conditions directly in front of my face were different somehow - things were suddenly...brighter.
I resolved to open my eyes, expecting to once again be met by the tragic final form of Atom Spark, and braced my emotions in anticipation. As the veil was lifted from my vision, I felt my eyes widen in surprise, the sight before them driving my mind wild with a crazy mixture of hope and dread.
Atom's eyes! They were glowing!
I sat perfectly still, my haunches resting on the floor of the cave as the hooves of my previously dead stablemate slowly rose into the air, positioning themselves on either side of my head. Suddenly, they shot inward, grasping my cranium in a distinctly familiar vice-grip. Atom's ghostly gaze seemed to focus on me - my face - even though there were no pupils left in those ghostly orbs to let in light.
"Hello again," came the eerie sound of a lyrical, heavily accented voice. "Since we last met, it has been less than one moon. Did you expect to see me again so soon?"
"Z-Zeanna...!?" I gawked, my mouth hanging open in both shock and discomfort. "But you-! We-! Ack! Y-you died! I saw it happen! I practically made it happen!"
"And a great service you did me that day," she continued, her grip relaxing slightly. "Fear not - I have not come to make you pay."
"B-but..." I stuttered, as my mind did a series of somersaults. "Wh-what the hell's going on!? How can you be...here!? What's happened to Atom!?"
"She is...resting for now," said Zeanna, as a soft smile spread across Atom's face. "My presence here - you're wondering how?"
"You're damn right I'm wondering how!" I responded loudly, as I wriggled free of her grip and stepped back a few paces. "This shouldn't be possible. I mean... I saw you die. Inches in front of me, with a great big bloody hole where your chest used to be!"
"Words on this matter, you have already said," she rhymed. "But it must be clear by now, that I am not dead."
"Well, yes - I'd gathered that much," I noted, as I fought the urge to roll my eyes (did she really have to rhyme everything like that?). "What I want to know is how!"
"Is it really so hard to believe?" Zeanna smiled, as she brought Atom's body up onto its hooves. "That you are not the only one who will not leave?"
"H-how did you know about my regeneration...?" I asked, frowning. "If you saw me fighting that monstrosity back in Edinbuck why didn't you intervene somehow!? I almost died in that silo, Zeanna!"
"I could not have helped, even though I desired," Zeanna said. "There are laws with which my adherence is required."
"Laws?" I replied, frowning. "What laws? You're a freaking ghost for Luna's sa-!"
"Compass," Zeanna said gently, somehow cleaving my expression neatly in two. "You must let bygones be bygones and not live in the past. I am here now to speak, not to be asked."
I ran my tongue roughly around my top arch of teeth in aggravation, but acquiesced to her demand to be heard. Nodding slightly, Zeanna's glowing stare seemed to brighten even more, illuminating the cave around us. She drew Atom's body up, tall and proud despite her small stature, and assumed a regal stance at the centre of the entrance hall. When next she spoke, her voice resonated throughout the confined space, making my every fibre vibrate with its power.
"Ah, my friend with horn of steel, you have tackled challenges many with both vigour and zeal. Although at times you may wish to quit, I say to you now, nopony is more fit! But young one, although far have you flown, I fear I must inform you, that you are not alone."
"Wh-what...!?" I asked incredulously, cocking my head in confusion. "What the hell is that supposed to mean!? I already know that I'm not alone - I've got my friends by my side. And why did you say that as if it was a bad th-?"
"That, for now, is all I can say," Zeanna said, interrupting me as her glow continued to saturate the cave with light. "I wish you well for this new day."
"N-no! Wait!" I shouted. "That can't be all you have to say! There's so much you can help with!"
My words fell upon deaf ears as Atom's tiny body began to rise chest first towards the ceiling, the brilliant ethereal energy within her spilling out of her eyelids as she did so.
"Zeanna!" I screamed, as another striking thought came to mind. "What about Atom!? You can't just leave her like this! Please! Give her another chance! She doesn't deserve this!"
The glowing body before me suddenly slowed its ascent as it focussed its brilliant eyes upon me once more. I stared into them, unflinching and determined, before Zeanna's warm, lyrical tones returned to echo through the cave.
"A gift I may grant at this time," she said with a smile. "A small use of my power would not be a crime."
At that, Zeanna's pristine white light rocketed forth from the orifices of Atom's face, blinding me in the process. Great plumes of warm, holy energy flooded the cave in less than a heartbeat, disappearing again less than three seconds later. There was a heavy thud as her body dropped to the ground and I fought to regain my sight as I fumbled about the dusty floor of the cave.
"Zeanna!" I shouted at the darkness. "Zeanna! You can't go yet! You can't-!"
I stopped suddenly as my roaming hooves were met by a soft form laying prone on the ground. My breathing slowed to a standstill as the momentary contact stretched out towards infinity and the faintest warmth began to spread through my fetlock.
"A-Atom...!?" I whispered, as my vision played host to a kaleidoscopic vision of colourful flashes. "Atom? A-are you there?"
A silence followed my inquiry, and I failed to breath until my ears were met by the softest murmur.
"C...Com...pass..." breathed Atom, eliciting a euphoric wave of relief from my breast. "H...how...?"
"Oh Atom!" I blubbered as I lunged forward to embrace her tiny body. "It's okay; you're okay now! Everything's going to be fine!"
"But..." she responded sleepily, "...I don't...understand. Where was I? How did-?"
"Where is she!?" bellowed Buckshot suddenly as he and Mo swooped into the cave, a severely flushed Bulkhead leading them. I was promptly pushed out of the way as my friends sought to treat Atom's self-inflicted wounds and set about lighting the cave with luminescent glow-worms. Healing potions were administered by the litre, even intravenously at points, and thick dressings applied to Atom's forelegs in order to stem the torrential bleeding (honestly, I was amazed by the sheer volume of blood that such a small equine could carry). The infusion of magic liquid quickly closed her wounds and brought the colour back to her face, allowing Atom to settle into a stable state of rest as her body attempted to recover from the damage it had suffered.
We stayed in the cave that night, and didn't get much in the way of sleep - all eyes were on Atom's resting form as her healing continued. A fire was lit - I don't recall who by - in lieu of the feeble glow-worms, and we clustered around it, carefully positioning Atom so that she would be kept warm while avoiding the vast majority of the smoke. Nothing much was said for many hours as we all took turns in dressing her wounds - I could tell that Mo and Buckshot had encountered this sort of thing before, and that it was shocking and unwelcome regardless of how many times they had seen it previously.
Morning came slowly, a feeble grey light creeping along the cave wall and into the entrance hall. By that time, everypony's eyes were heavy with fatigue, but we soldiered on into the new day, preparing a simple meal of leftover InstaMash (with some Sugar Bombs for flavour) to keep our bodies fuelled. Atom awoke intermittently, achieving full awareness again just before noon. Her eyes moistened as the memory of what she had tried to do resurfaced painfully, and she graduated to full blown tears when it became clear that none of us had slept while caring for her. I consoled her as much as I could, but was unable to muster anything more than the simplest of sentiments on account of my own fatigue.
Thoughts of where she had been and what occurred while her body was under Zeanna's control failed to resurface, or at least failed to elicit any questions from her. It was probably for the best anyway - I had no answers for her, and didn't want any that she might have to give me. The realm of the dead was something that I simply did not want to talk about. Take from that what you will.
At one point, I excused myself as a slightly less exhausted Mo took over the latest redressing of Atom's forelegs and ventured out into the morning air to take a breather. Upon exiting the mouth of the cave I found Buckshot leaning against the rock, a cigarette poking out from in between his lips.
"Hell of a night, eh?" he said, removing the pack from his barding while rubbing his eyes with his other hoof. "Want one?"
"No thanks," I replied, taking up a position beside him on the rock. We sat in silence for several minutes, just watching the sun try in vain to poke its way through the cloud layer.
"How did that even happen...?" I asked with a sigh as the fumes from Buckshot's cigarette wafted into my nostrils in a not entirely unpleasant manner.
"The clouds?" Buckshot replied. "It wis the pegasi. The Zebras hit one o' their cities up in the sky before the Last Day, and they decided tae cut themselves aff from the rest o' Equestria in response. Havnae broken their isolation fer nigh on two hundred years."
I squinted at that, and turned to my coltfriend (as Mo informed me he was to be called).
"Actually," I said after a moment, "I was talking about last night. But what you said about the pegasi cutting themselves off doesn't make sense - I've seen loads of pegasus ponies roaming the Wasteland. And what about Mo? She's a pegasus, unless her wings are glued on our something."
"Well, ye didnae expect all of 'em tae adhere tae that doctrine for two centuries did you?" he said. "Mo's parents came down tae Earth tae try and help other ponies, but like a million-and-one who came before them, they weren't prepared fer whit the Wasteland had in store...it wis a bloody miracle that Sage found her when he did."
"They brought their daughter with them!?" I gawked. "What kind of nutters were they!?"
"As Ah gather, they were part of a movement among the pegasi called the Volunteer Corps." Buckshot explained. "It's this group o' do-gooders that flap their way down tae the surface and...well, try tae dae some good. They were meant tae be a more legitimate breed of Dashites, I suppose."
"Legitimate whats?" I asked in response to the new word.
"Dashites," answered Buckshot. "A sort o' pegasus splinter group. They see themsels as the successors o' Rainbow Dash, the original Element o' Loyalty, and take it as their duty tae provide help and support tae anypony who needs it, regardless of race or origins. Stand-up bunch if ye ask me."
"So..." I said, frowning. "Why are they a 'splinter group' then? Surely that's what most ponies would do given the opportunity...or at least aspire to do...right?"
Buckshot sent a sidelong glance in my direction, subtly shifting the position of his cigarette as he did so.
"Sometimes Ah forget that ye've been oot here fer such a short length o' time," he said. "They're not just a splinter group, Compass. They're classed as criminals by the pegasi Enclave. If one o' them even so much as breaths a word against the pegasus state's isolationism, they get branded and exiled faster than ye can say 'feather-fucked'."
"Wow..." I whistled, as a worrying urge to 'fix' the skybourne state flushed my cheeks with a righteous indignation. I shook it off quickly, and moved further towards Buckshot, resting my head on the firm structure of his shoulder.
"How'd you know all this anyway?" I asked absentmindedly. "You're like a Wasteland encyclopaedia."
"Some of it comes fae the Guide, the rest fae other ponies," he replied.
"The 'Guide'?" I asked sceptically. "The Wasteland has a Guide? Who's that for? Equestria's burgeoning tourist industry?"
"Ye can jest all ye like," replied Buckshot. "But Ah wouldnae know how tae disarm a mine or recognise grenade traps wi'out that book. That ghoul that wrote it did one hell o' a job wi' her research."
"Huh," I responded, nodding - I'd have to read that sometime. "Well then, what about the 'other ponies'? I thought you didn't like 'other ponies'." I said, chuckling.
"Ah may be an untrusting brute," said Buckshot, shrugging slightly and smiling. "But it just so happens that that makes me an attractive drinking buddy fer the right sort. Fer instance, that little titbit o' information Ah just shared came courtesy o' a Dashite pegasus who wis less than six months intae his exile when he wandered up tae Trotfell looking fer escort work. Nice guy, on the whole. Good wi' guns. Whit wis his name again...? Disaster or somethin'... Eh. It'll come tae me eventually..."
He trailed off as the sun continued to rise over the horizon, dropping us into a strangely uncomfortable and distinctly pregnant silence.
He knew what I was thinking. That had to have been it.
Sure enough, a few minutes of itchy quietness later, Buckshot spoke, his voice low and serious.
"Y'er no gonnae go through wi' it, are ye?" he said emptily. "Ye've decided that yer stable friends back there are too fragile for that plan o' yours..."
"Yep..." I sighed, without looking at Buckshot. We both knew where my plan had ended up. All we needed was for one of us to actually say it.
"Ye want Mo and me tae dae it, don't ye?" he said, when it became clear that I wasn't going to elaborate. "Ye want us tae pretend tae be slaves so that ye'll look credible when we get tae the fortress."
"Yep..." I repeated simply. Buckshot was silent for a moment, and closed his eyes while taking a deep breath in through his cigarette. He exhaled a cloud of diffuse white smoke, and resumed his unfocused perusal of the landscape before us.
"And ye knew that neither me nor Mo would refuse...because we both love Sage like a father..." he finally concluded.
"Yep..." I said again. Buckshot rose gently from the rock, giving me time to move my head from his shoulder, and turned to face me while extinguishing his cigarette under one of his forehooves.
"Compass," he said. "Know that when - and take note that Ah'm using when in place of if - we put those collars on, we'll be trustin' ye with more than our lives. We'll be trusting ye wi' our freedom. All it'll take is one wee mistake, and we won't need tae pretend tae be slaves. Are ye sure that y'er ready fer that responsibility?"
"Would it matter if I said no?" I asked after a moment's thought.
"Worryingly," answered Buckshot. "No..."
Without another word, he turned and disappeared into the mouth of cave, leaving me to watch the rest of the sunrise on my own.
It soon became clear that we would have to rest; to resupply and rejuvenate ourselves before embarking on our journey to Stone Tower's fortress.
We left the cave later that day, trotting slowly back towards Trotfell with Atom lashed securely to Buckshot's back. Amazingly, she seemed perfectly comfortable to fall asleep against the undulating texture of his hide, even as he tackled the rough, uneven terrain on the way down the hill.
Our journey lasted a little under forty minutes, after which we arrived at the reinforced main gates of Trotfell. As soon as we were inside and had undergone the usual disarmament, we dropped Atom off at the hospital for overnight observation, and then headed straight for Brandy Spritz's pub.
Trotting into the dark little building was like coming home after a long day's work - I felt safe, surrounded by friends and free to let my guard down. Mo had stayed with Atom in the hospital, so Buckshot and I were left to escort Bulkhead around on his first day in the Wasteland. To his credit, he handled his exodus much better than I had - he hadn't even been shot at once (although, there were still several hours of daylight left, so technically it wasn't out with the realm of possibility)! We started moving towards the bar to arrange our accommodation for Atom, Bulkhead and me, but before we could even so much as open our mouths, Brandy Spritz shot into view and vaulted over the counter.
"Oh, thank Celestia you lot are okay!" she shouted as she approached at a run, wrapping her forelegs around Buckshot and me when she was close enough. "You had me worried sick you did! Where are the others then? Getting some shut-eye?"
"Uh..." said Buckshot uncertainly. "Brandy...we-...we suffered some, eh...losses in Edinbuck."
"Wh-..." Brandy began, her huge hazel eyes sweeping back and forth between us. "H-how many...?"
"Three guards at Edinbuck - including Kerb Ah'm afraid. Armour Pierce lost a foreleg and Stone Tower managed tae grab Sage while we were gettin' our arses hoofed by the Sentinel."
"My Goddess..." Brandy breathed slowly, bowing her head and closing her rapidly moistening eyes. She grasped the nearest chair for support as her rear legs wobbled at the knees.
"And tae cap it all," Buckshot continued thoughtlessly, "Compass here took a dip in a vat of Taint and ended up wi' a horn."
Brandy's mouth fell open at this, and she dropped limply into the chair she was using to support herself. The three of us knelt down and clustered around her in a unified gesture of support. Her eyes stared dead ahead for a few seconds, her mind lost to the shock of all she'd just been told, before slowly turning to face me, her line of sight tilting up towards my forehead.
"Taint...? Oh, you poor thing," she whispered, stroking the new skin of my cheek with her hoof and turning to Buckshot. "Can... can he still understand us? Does he remember... being him?"
"Don't worry about me, Brandy," I said softly, startling the caring bartender nonetheless. "I got lucky."
"Y-you're... alright...!?" she gawked, amazed. "Oh, thank Celestia!"
She reached over to hug me, exhaling deeply in relief as she did so. It seemed that each and every blessing was counted with Brandy, and I found myself becoming vicariously happy for her - several of her friends had died, another had been maimed, and her town's father figure of a mayor had been kidnapped by a ruthless slaver, but yet she could still feel genuine relief that somepony she'd only met once beforehoof was still alive and well.
"Well then," she said, brightening again following our happy embrace. "Let's not get ourselves down in the dumps - you're here, you're safe, and by the looks of it, you found your stable again. So when can we expect all those friends of yours to come to town? I'm sure they'll be happy to help us get Sage back from that horrible slaver!"
"Uh..." I droned - it was my turn to divulge the bad news. "They might be a little, um... later... than I'd originally envisaged, Brandy..."
"What-...what do you mean...?" she said slowly.
"Well...you remember all that nonsense that Mo was always spouting about the Doctor - you know, the main character from that radio series - being real?" I replied, eliciting a wall-eyed, empty nod from Brandy. "Well...turns out she was spot on the whole time. My stable wasn't a stable - it was a giant, self-aware, time travelling alien spaceship that decided to pick itself up and make a run for it as soon as we got too close. I'm afraid that Bulkhead here, and a little red-headed unicorn in the hospital are the only ones we managed to rescue."
Brandy blinked a number of times, her head perfectly still and her expression neutral. Wordlessly, she rose from her seat and moved towards the bar, returning a moment later with a tall bottle of alcohol and a quartet of short, stout glasses. She proceeded to gesture towards a nearby table, plonking herself down into one of the vacant chairs as Bulkhead, Buckshot and I followed her over.
"This round's on me," Brandy said, her tone soft and caring as she expertly poured out four equal measures from the bottle. Clearly, she had grabbed the wrong end of the stick - she must have assumed that we had returned to Trotfell defeated and downtrodden; limping home to lick our wounds. As much as I was both appreciative and tempted by her willingness to comfort us, I was still aware of what she must have been feeling - there was no doubt in my mind that her heart was breaking for both the loss of her friends and mine. In the end, it took me less than a second to make the decision to speak up.
"Brandy," I said forcefully, in spite of her welcoming, cushion-soft demeanour, "We're not back in Trotfell to mope around and mourn our losses! We're here to resupply - as soon as we have enough gear together we're going to get Sage back and find my bloody stable!"
Brandy looked straight at me as I spoke, her brow warping into a frown of disbelief.
"You're...going back out there...?" she asked, her voice awash with surprise. I nodded, causing Brandy to rise slowly from her chair and face me. "You're not just going to tuck your tail between your legs and quit...?"
"Absolutely not," I said with a coy smile. "We're going to get Sage back from Stone Tower and put an end to his slave business!"
"And...your friends...?" Brandy continued, her frown steadily turning into a teary, wildly optimistic grin. "You're going after that weird old stable of yours as well?"
"Brandy," I responded, now smiling like a madpony, "I'll find my friends even if it means building another time travelling stable just to chase the first one down!"
A light, airy giggle escaped Brandy's mouth as she quickly studied my expression for signs of deception or jest. There was no trace of either, of course, and it was immediately apparent that that confirmation was the last obstacle between us and a boundless reservoir of glee hidden within the hazel-eyed mare.
"Alright..." she whispered after a moment's pause, nodding ecstatically. "ALRIGHT!"
As her voice reached its exulting crescendo, Brandy reared up on her hind legs, flinging her forelegs up into the air in celebration before turning hurriedly back towards the bar. She threw a trio of keys at me, which I caught using my hooves (my magical control was still lacklustre as best).
"You and your stable friends can stay upstairs for free!" she announced gleefully. "And your meals are on the house until you leave - if you want to start gathering supplies now you should have about half an hour before your dinner's ready! Oh! And tell whatever shopkeepers you buy your stuff from that I'll be picking up the tab!"
"Are ye sure, Brandy?" Buckshot asked. "That's a lot of freebies ye'r givin' out there."
"Of course I'm sure, Buckshot!" she responded, her mouth sporting a huge, seemingly immovable grin. "I've not been this hyped in years! I mean look at you! You've been beaten, bruised and buggered, but you're still willing to dust yourselves off and keep going! If spirit like that's not worthy of a few freebies then I don't know what is!"
"Now that's what I call a pick-me-up!" Buckshot smiled, as Brandy danced into the back room of the pub. "C'mon guys! We've git a rescue mission tae plan for! Bulkhead, you go tae the hospital - take a left outside the pub, and it's second on yer right. Tell Mo and Atom what's happenin' an' grab as many healing items as they can spare!"
"Right!" shouted Bulkhead excitedly, as he turned around and began to sprint out of the building.
"Compass," Buckshot continued, "You go and see about gettin' our armour and weapons patched up, and Ah'll head aff tae buy ammo."
"Got it!" I shouted, as the air of optimism continued to saturate everypony in the room. The other patrons of the pub had taken notice of our conversation about a minute earlier, and shouts of encouragement and good wishes were flying at us from all angles by the time we ran out into the main street.
"I can't believe how much spirit everypony has all of a sudden!" I said in between breaths as we galloped up the main road. "Brandy's like a bottle of sunshine when she's in a good mood!"
"Aye, that she is!" replied Buckshot, smiling. "In Trotfell, Compass, if ye'r looking for moral advice, ye go tae Sage, but for morale ye go to Brandy Spritz!"
"You knew she'd get us up out of dumps, didn't you?" I said loudly. "I'll bet that's why the pub was our first stop!"
"Well," he answered coyly, "Ah am more than just a pretty face!"
At that, we parted ways, still grinning at one another. Buckshot continued straight ahead while I veered off to the right, almost colliding head first with the proprietor of Trotfell's general store (who, as I had gathered during my first visit, was also resident craftspony).
"Bloody hell!" the pale blue mare in the doorway gasped as I skidded to a halt in front of her. "You're going like a bloodwing out of Tartarus, son! What's your rush!?"
"I've got some things I need repaired!" I said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. "Brandy said she'd pick up the bill!"
"Oh, she did, did she?" the mare said sceptically.
"Yeah!" I replied, still panting. "We're going to get Sage back from Stone Tower!"
"Sweet merciful Luna!" the mare suddenly shouted. "That's where Sage is!? With that awful slaver!? By all means, lad, come in! I'll just get this delivery sorted out and I'll be right with you!"
I trotted into the dark, shadowy interior of the shop and stood impatiently beside the workbench within, shifting my weight from one hoof to the other. The blue mare quickly galloped to the other side of the room, sticking her head out of a small window in the wall and addressing somepony behind the building.
"I've got an emergency here, love!" she said hurriedly. "Could you finish the delivery by yourself?"
There was a brief sound of fumbling followed by what I was sure was chalk against slate.
"It's Sage - you know, our mayor?" she continued. "He's been nabbed by slavers!"
Another set of streaky sounds answered, this time delivered in hurried, staccato bursts of concern. 'Definitely a chalkboard,' I mused. 'Maybe whoever she's talking to can't speak...'
"Oh, you're a star, love," the blue mare replied when the sound of writing had once again ceased. "Thanks, Ditzy!"
"EH!?" my mouth autonomously shouted, as I suddenly lost my balance and fell to the floor. My hearts and stomach immediately began brawling with one another and I felt a sickening wave of dizziness wash over my perceptions as the blue mare turned back towards me.
"Oh, good heavens!" she shouted, rushing over and hoisting me up with her magic. "Are you okay!? What the buck happened!?"
"D-...Ditzy...!" I panted, grasping her shoulders for support. "Ditzy...who...!?"
"Who?" she replied. "No, love - Ditzy Doo. She's the mare that wrote the 'Wasteland Survival Guide', and she's the delivery pony for 'Absolutely Everything' over in New Appleoosa. Why? Do you know her from somewhere?"
'Good Goddess!' a little voice in my head shouted. "She's alive! You can ask her everything! Anything! She could tell you what happened to-!'
'Don't even think about it!' a Second voice interrupted urgently. 'You need to get out of there as fast as you can!'
'Huh!?' came voice One's reply, tainted by the most profound confusion. 'And why should he do that!? This could answer so many que-!'
'Oh, come on!' a Third voice interjected. 'It can't possibly be the same mare! Unless, of course-'
'Unless she's come to the future with the Doctor!' One shouted, realisation dawning. 'He could be with her right now! Get off your arse and go talk to her! She could fly off at any minute!'
'She won't be with the Doctor!' Two replied loudly, its urgency having been augmented with a distinct and itchy aggravation. 'And she certainly won't want to meet the buck that inherited all his baggage!'
'How the fuck do you know!?' One replied angrily.
'Yeah!' Three said. 'If it is her I'd imagine she'd be overjoyed to meet up with...well, whatever it is that we now qualify as! It'd be like a family reunion!'
'It wouldn't be anything even remotely like a reunion, you simpletons!' Two shouted, having clearly given itself over to bare-toothed anger. 'She's delivering goods, which would require hard-earned trust from a supplier! She wrote a famous guidebook about the entire Wasteland, for which she'd need to perform a huge volume of research! Both of which, ultimately, require time to do! She's obviously been here for years, which means that the Doctor isn't with her because there's no way he'd stay in one place that long! In short, you bunch of idiots, he abandoned her here! Which means that she probably, A: knows less than we do about what happened to him, and B: hates his guts!'
'Oh...' One said.
'Ah...' Three added.
'Like I said,' Two continued, its imagined tones diminishing to a quiet, warning rumble, 'get out of there before she sees you. You simply cannot risk her figuring out what, let alone who, you are! You have no idea how it'll affect her!'
'Yeah...you'd better go...' One said reservedly.
'Agreed,' said Three. 'You don't want to upset her after all - you've suffered at the hooves of the Doctor, so you know how it feels. For the love of Luna, don't dump that on anypony else!'
'Then we're all agreed,' concluded Two. 'Run! Get up and run!'
Having conferred with my inner monologue at the speed of thought, I quickly rose to my hooves, made a rushed excuse regarding personal hygiene to the shopkeeper, and began to gallop toward the door. Unfortunately though, I was in such a hurry to escape that I didn't actually look where I was going (until it was too late, that is). I turned my head to face forwards just in time to skid to halt, narrowly avoiding a collision with an anonymous, squishy figure standing bemusedly in front of me.
'What are you doing!?' Two screamed, as my momentum was lost to the rotting mass. 'Go! Now!'
My eyes widened in awe as I beheld a winged skeletal frame draped with the fleshy cuts of what I could only surmise was a turgid, burned existence - scars and scabs adorned the creature's leathery hide and glimpses of dry cartiledge and bleached bone shone through where time had poked into to its irradiated innards. Despite the horror of the physical reality standing before me, my vision was automatically drawn - whether by social protocol or evolution - to the expression on the remarkable edifice's face.
'You're not listening!' Two continued, its cerebral tones threatening to liquefy my consciousness. 'Get. Out. Of. There! NOW! You can't see her! You just can't!'
It was smiling. A truly strange expression for such a face, but I noted in astonishment that it also had a civilised, intelligent shape, indicative of fine muscle control and empathic awareness. This pile of animated flesh was alive, if different; a pony, like Buckshot or Mo - sentient and emotionally capable.
'Will one of you help me!?' Two cried desperately. 'He's completely unresponsive! Somepony, give him a seizure or something!'
As I gawked at the creature's outward appearance, my perusal of its face found the two large, jellied orbs that allowed it to stare back. My breath caught in my throat as, with a gasp unlike any I had previously uttered, I found that I recognised the misaligned, yellow gaze regarding me.
"Oh...my..." I whispered throatily, my jaw shaking as my eyes moistened of their own accord, and the cries of every voice in my mind - Two included - fell away into the void. "Oh, Ditzy... I'm so sorry..."
She - no longer 'it' - frowned silently, her head lolling to one side as she continued to study me. A rough rope around her neck held a small, well used blackboard in place, which currently had the words 'Stock's unloaded. What's happened to your mayor? Can I help!?' scrawled messily onto it in white chalk. A worn, pitted hoof mounted to the end of an equally dilapidated foreleg rose to pull it off, and the decaying mare set about re-adjusting the words on her little window of communication, having produced a small stick of chalk from a compartment on the back of the board. Presenting it to me, the creature - whom my mind would still only acknowledge as a female medical impossibility - began to converse in powdered script.
'Didn't your mother teach you that it's rude to stare?' it said.
"Uh...I-..." I began, as my speech centre frantically struggled to cope with the plethora of chaos dancing through my mind.
"Oh, Ditzy, I'm sorry - how could I forget!?" the blue shopkeeper said, as she quickly drew abreast with me. "This is Compass, he's a buck from some stable over yonder. I doubt he's ever seen a ghoul before, so you'll have to cut him some slack."
At that, the gentle creature's smile returned, her head nodding precariously in knowing.
'In that case,' the little blackboard was made to say. "welcome to the Wasteland! The name's Ditzy Doo. And don't worry - I haven't bitten anypony in years."
I realised that the last statement was meant as a joke as soon as the strange, strangled sound of coughing - which was only just recognisable as laughter - began to emanate from the decaying mare's throat. I continued to stare intently at her eyes - her huge, happy windows to the horrible world around her - as I focussed on keeping my own tears contained. What resulted was a wordless silence, punctuated only by the light wind of breath and the occasional creaking report from the building's wizened structure.
"Uh...Compass?" the shopkeeper asked quietly a few awkward moments later, sensing the tension in our interaction and clearly wanting no further part in it. "What was it you wanted repaired? I'll get on it straight away."
"Uh..." I responded numbly. "Our...our gear. All of it..."
"All of it!?" the shopkeeper replied, shocked. "Good grief! I hope for your sake Brandy has deep pockets! Heh heh... I'll, uh...just be getting on with it then..."
She trotted off to attend to the mountain of work I had just saddled her with, leaving me alone with naught but the tragic shadow of Ditzy Doo for company. I found my face beginning to ache from all the gawking and wide-eyed staring that I'd been doing over the last few minutes, so I took the opportunity to swallow some excess saliva, engaging my vocal chords before my better judgement could overrule my will.
"So..." I finally managed to say. "D-...Ditzy, huh?"
'Yep,' came the scribbled reply. 'Good to meet you, Compass.'
I licked my lips nervously as a host of possible replies were suggested and summarily discarded by the conversationally oriented parts of my brain.
"H-how...?" I began, without really thinking about how I would broach the no doubt delicate subject of her current appearance. She seemed to sense both my discomfort and my curiosity though, and with the soft gaze of the Goddess herself, gently began to write.
'How did I get like this?' her board asked, clarifying my query for me. I nodded dumbly, thankful that I had been spared the discomfort of putting such a question to such a creature.
'Well, in a nutshell, I was around before the first megaspells were cast,' she wrote with her compact, efficient scrawl, 'and I was still breathing when the last fires went out. FYI - balefire doesn't do your complexion any good.'
"You-...you lived through it all!?" I gawked as I read on. "The bombardment, the radiation, the raiders, the slavers!? You lived through all of that!?"
'Oh, it wasn't that bad,' the board replied. 'Sure, I won't be doing any voice acting any time soon, but I got to meet some decent folks along the way.'
I slowly looked up, returning my gaze to her rotten, smiling face. This time though, rather than kneeling in front of a decayed mare, I found myself prostrated in front of a divine being; humbled before a creature fashioned from love by the forces of Origin themselves. She was better, I realised. Better than me, and better than the Doctor. Ditzy Doo - for that was her name, I told myself - had bared more suffering than any soul I had ever encountered, and had not only survived, but actually thrived, even against apocalyptic adversity.
And all she had needed, throughout all those trials and all the evil that had beset her, was her smile.
I blinked several times as I straightened up, my every idea and perception regarding the fantastic mare reasserting themselves in my mind.
"You're..." I whispered as my face drew level with hers, the distance between us diminishing slowly to a hair's breadth. "Amazing..."
I was suddenly startled by a shadow of motion, just inside the range of my peripheral vision. My eyes darted to the offending shape, and I found to my sincerest surprise that my right hoof had, of its of volition, begun to move towards Ditzy's cheek as if to stroke it. I looked to my limb, unsure of what I could possibly say - as far as I knew, I had not moved it, nor had I consciously leant forward by any huge measure. There was no obvious way to explain why I was doing what I was, and I found myself feeling even more powerless than at any other point during our interaction.
The awkward moment stretched on as I slowly cast my gaze back toward Ditzy's face, discovering with a start that her eyes - now perfectly aligned and keenly focussed - were staring intently back into mine. She took in my face, my eyes, my clothes; the entirety of my body and my soul in the space of a single heartbeat. Her eyes slowly drew upwards to my horn, a misty, clouded bloom of recognition dawning in their depths.
My lower lip began to tremble as my breathing grew rushed and ragged. I was deep in panic even before Ditzy's jaw slackened, her mouth forming silent syllables of familiarity. Her hoof rose from the floor, closing achingly slowly towards my face.
The next thing I knew, I was panting like a buck possessed, running as fast as my legs would carry me through the streets of Trotfell. I came to a stop, my hearts still pounding like industrial pumps, behind the Trotfell pub, and almost immediately dropped to the barren ground in a heap of panic and sweat.
'Marvellous!' shouted Two, his harsh mental tones making me wince once more. 'That was absolutely bloody spectacular! Not only did you blatantly disregard your own best advice, but you also managed to singlehoofedly destroy that poor mare's-!'
'That's enough!' I roared back, my breath rumbling audibly through my throat. 'She's fine, you hear me!? She managed for two hundred years without the Doctor! I'm sure she can survive a single encounter with me!'
'How can you be certain of that!?' Two replied. 'You saw the way she looked at you, you idiot! She recognised you! Whether you're Him or not makes no difference! She saw His influence in you and she remembered him! After all she's suffered, you gave her that to contend with! You selfish, stupid, ignorant bloody fool!'
'She's strong,' I thought quietly, exhaling as the words were cast into my mind. 'Stronger than us...stronger than Him. She'll cope. And she'll smile. And, in the end...it'll all be fine...'
'That-!' answered Two suddenly, cutting himself off as quickly as he had started. 'Isn't entirely nonsensical, actually...'
'You know I'm right,' I replied. 'She'll probably do better than we ever will.'
'Hmph!' Two harrumphed. 'You can bet you've made it that little bit worse for her though! You might just have given her the biggest sense of false hope she's ever had!'
'Even if I have,' I thought, 'she'll still survive.'
Two exhaled loudly into my consciousness, bringing a wave of unsettled hostility down upon my internal dialogue.
'Speaking of which,' I continued, 'I have a question for you lot.'
'Uh-huh? We're listening,' answered One and Three in perfect mental unison.
'What is it?' grumbled Two angrily.
'You're parts of my conscious mind, right?' I thought, my jaw clenched in subtle anger. 'A mental sounding board so to speak; facets of my decision process; the voices that answer back with options and advice when I ask myself a question?'
'That's pretty much it,' replied One.
'Bang on,' said Three.
'Well then,' I continued, 'it would stand to reason that anything you say must have already been in my mind somewhere, either consciously or subconsciously, right?'
'Uh...I suppose...' said One, as an imaginary pair of shoulders were shrugged towards Three and Two. 'What are you getting at?'
'Well,' I thought, my mind-voice now deep and menacing, 'I just realised that, even though I’m predisposed towards analysing things, I would never have figured out that Ditzy’s presence in the Wasteland was such a long-term affair, especially given the sudden stress of finding out she was here in the first place. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if those conclusions regarding her being an author and a delivery mare had never occurred to me.'
'...and...?' said One and Three, their tones strained and confused.
'And,' I replied, 'Two immediately jumped to that line of thought, despite everything else that was going on in here at the time. Selfish though it is, that's not a consideration I would make under such circumstances. Which means...'
'No way...!' gawked One.
'Surely you're not suggesting-?' said Three.
'Well, why not ask him yourselves?' I replied quietly. 'How about it, Two? Care to explain yourself?'
There was no response. I closed my eyes and centred my breathing, trying in vain to exhale my dark mood through my nostrils as the other sections of my conscious mind looked around within the landscape of my psyche.
'He- he's gone...' whispered One.
'But who-?' began Three.
'Do you really need to ask...?' I whispered, as tears began to pool near the corners of my eyes. I leant back slowly, casting my gaze up towards the blighted sky.
Just in time to see Ditzy Doo to fly off into the distance.
"Okay," said Mo, as she addressed Atom, Bulkhead and me. "Let's go over this one last time."
To my surprise, Mo had taken to my revised plan with as little resistance and just as much solemn reservation as Buckshot had. Over the course of our second day in Trotfell she had helped us to craft a new set of back stories for our respective characters along with several contingencies just in case anything went awry. We had assembled in the back room of the pub following Atom's discharge from the local hospital, and were now well into checking our gear after it had been returned by the craftspony.
Our story, such as it was, had myself, Atom and Bulkhead cast as disgruntled stable residents who had recently been ejected from our mutual home by a hostile element of the population. Upon exiting the facility, we had come across two hapless Wasteland ponies whom we promptly restrained with a pair of explosive collars that we happened to have with us at the time (they too were from the fictitious stable, but I'll get to that part in a moment). A little bit of wandering had then ensued during which we had arrived at Stone Tower's fortress, following a conversation with a slaver we had meet along the way.
And the reason we had made up for having explosive collars in our saddlebags? Well, we figured that the easiest thing for a slaver to trust would be another slaver, so we worked it into our lie - the stable that we had come from was to be home to a social experiment in which a certain percentage of the population had complete and utter control over the other. Hence: slavery.
Atom and Bulkhead had been quick to agree to the plan (and anything else I suggested for that matter). I sensed a need in them to please me that bordered on desperation, no doubt due to what had transpired two days previously, and the resulting admonishment that I had delivered. Atom learned her part enthusiastically, concentrating intently on memorising her character's motivations and back story just in case somepony got too inquisitive.
Bulkhead too was attending to his new duty as pretend slaver in classic Stable 52 fashion. In under an hour he had managed to disassemble the collars we had with us and reintroduce a few simple electronics to help us perpetuate our lie. He reconnected the remote that once triggered the collar's explosive charge and fitted a small crystal oscillator so that activating the remote made that collars vibrate audibly. That would be the cue for the wearer to drop down to the ground and 'writhe in agony' as if a pain inducing device were being used on them. That way, we could assuage doubt as to our intentions and create distractions when needed.
"So Bulkhead, Atom," said Mo as she nodded to the two individuals. "You get to keep your names for simplicity - nopony knows you out here so you should have a clean slate to work from. Buckshot and I will try to keep our heads down as much as possible since there's a much higher chance that we'll be recognised. As such, you can address us as 'the buck' and 'the mare' on account of our playing the part of your captives. If we are recognised though, it shouldn't be too much of a problem - just reiterate that we're your property and that we're not for sale under any circumstances."
Finally, Mo turned to me.
"Now, Compass," she said. "Since you're the only one of us who's both known out in the Wasteland and required to do any speaking, you'll need to take on an alias and modify your appearance a little - the metal horn's a dead giveaway."
"Okay," I replied, nodding. "That shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish. I'll wrap my horn and part of my head in bandages. That way, it'll look like I was injured and it shouldn't attract too much attention. As for the name, how about I go for, uh...'Smith'?"
"...Smith...?" Mo said quietly after a momentary pause. "I-...is there any, uh... particular reason you want that as your alias...?"
"Well, it's short, so it'll be easy to remember," I replied with a frown. "And I like making things, just like ancient smiths used to. Why? Is there some reason I shouldn't pick that name in particular?"
"Uh... no..." Mo said sheepishly, as an awkward smile spread across her lips. "No reason at all..."
I frowned slightly, but before I could open my mouth to ask anything, Mo continued with her final run-down of our preparations.
"So, that's it for the names and back stories," she said, clapping her hooves together. "Now all we need is to complete our disguises. Comp- uh, I mean Smith, grab some bandages from my saddlebags and get Atom to help you put them on. Bulkhead, come and show me how to put this collar on."
Atom silently began to wrap my horn and head in the thin fabric strips, avoiding my gaze the whole time. I'd never known her to act so demurely and subdued - it was an unbelievably awkward few minutes before she finished. I tried to focus on something other than the dichotomy of guilt and anger that see represented. On one hoof, she was no better than the Maneframe prior to its epiphany inducing transformation, with all her hate scrunched up into crude gestures of petty violence and revenge. On the other though, she was my lifelong friend and colleague. A pony I had always trusted and loved as part of my family. A pony who I was glad was alive.
Ultimately, I figured it would be better not to think about it, and avoided her eyes even as I was forced to stoop low so she could reach the back of my neck. I focused instead on Bulkhead's explanation of his modifications to the slave collars to Buckshot and Mo. They seemed simple enough, although he didn't have time to look at the locking mechanism, so they could still only be removed through use of the magically encoded transceiver on the remote.
As Atom was pinning the last bandage in place, I heard a click, a beep and a shudder as Bulkhead fitted Mo with her collar. Despite its modified nature as a mere prop, it was still obvious that Mo was physically repulsed by her new accoutrement. Her face seemed to be caught in a perpetual muted wince as she picked up the second collar and passed it to Bulkhead. As he approached Buckshot, the gruff tonnes of his Coltish accent rumbled through the dusty room.
"No," he said firmly, startling everypony present. "I want Compass to dae it."
"Huh?" I responded, as all eyes locked onto me. "You want me to put your collar on? What for? What difference will it make who-?"
"You remember whit Ah said outside the cave, right?" he interrupted. "I'm trusting you with my status as a free pony. I want you to promise me that you'll take that responsibility seriously. Don't get me wrong, y'er the best stallion Ah've ever met and we've been through a shitload together, but we've still only known each other for a little less than a fortnight. Ah need a gesture from ye, Compass. Ah need ye to put this collar oan me and swear on yer life that ye'll be the one tae take it off again later."
I stared into his large brown eyes for several seconds, a feeling of intense worry bubbling up though my stomach as the sheer seriousness of my coming task was made clear to me. I got up off of the floor and trotted slowly toward Buckshot, never once breaking eye contact with him. When I closed in, I gently stretched my forelegs around his muscular neck and nuzzled into his shoulder.
"...I promise." I whispered into his ear as his head lowered into the embrace. I drew back and Mo passed me the second of our two collars. Sharing Buckshot's gaze, I opened the device and passed it slowly around the back of his neck. Then, just as sedately, I pulled the two halves together, pausing just as the ratcheted catch sat in the mouth of locking mechanism. At that moment, I could have drowned in the deep, dark pools of Buckshot's eyes, his serious, unfaltering expression belying little about how close he was to panicking - I could feel his heart racing from the pulsing arteries in his neck, and the shortness of his breath as he tried valiantly to retain his composure.
With the stoicism of a statue, Buckshot gave me the slightest, most imperceptible nod, breaking our long gaze and sliding his eyes shut as he did so. Taking that as a cue, I quickly slammed the two halves of the collar together, wincing in unison with my coltfriend as the hardened alloy of the ratchet clicked definitively into place. Silence reigned throughout the cave as Buckshot swallowed uncomfortably, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow. After a moment, he pulled me roughly into a strong, blind hug, squeezing the breath from my lungs with his tight grasp.
"Thank you..." he whispered, as his eyes began to moisten. I sucked in a breath and pulled myself deeper into the embrace, forcing my body up against his in an expression of deepest longing. I wanted to be one with him; to run away, and leave all this horror and difficulty behind. In a fantastic moment of haziness I lost myself to his scent and his aura of warmth - we were far away, a thousand light years from the Wasteland with an eternity between us and our problems. We were together, we were happy, and nothing in the universe could take that away from us.
It was the hardest feeling in the world when I was forced back to reality a split second later.
Well...maybe the second hardest.
"Um, Buckshot...?" I said sheepishly, as his gargantuan forlegs continued to tightly encircle my neck. "Is that your-?"
"Um...aye," he replied sheepishly. "Gimme a minute..."
Less than one hour later, we had completed our preparations and departed the cheery, welcoming warmth of Trotfell, our sights set firmly on Stone Tower's fortress.
The journey was rushed and exhausting, which on the whole was probably a good thing, given that by the time we reached the Fortress, we would appear to be as dishevelled and sweaty as one would expect from three new Wastelanders and their two new slaves. Our difficulties weren't all by design though - what looked like a squad of mercenaries had made their camp at Eagle Ridge (which I now knew was the de facto crossroads for the region), and since we could only guess as to their allegiance, we were forced to sleep in the damp, burnt-out remnants of a centuries old public lavatory a few miles away.
That evening was when I first saw the effects of the collars on my Wasteland friends. Gone was the solemn, almost professional optimism of earlier, replaced by an unmistakable mist of worry and sadness. I had actually been foolish enough to look forward to the camp, given the pleasant atmosphere that had been generated prior to our entry into Stable 52. But, this time, the feeling was completely different - stresses ran high, pulling everypony taught underneath their vestiges of coping. Conversations were short, decisions slow and apathetic, movements mechanical and unfeeling. Mo set a fire. Buckshot killed a radscorpion. We ate in silence with little objection from the uninitiated stable folk then laid down straight afterward. None of us slept.
However, as the next day came to dawn, Atom and Bulkhead seemed to find their tongues - they were surprisingly talkative as we trotted along, chatting freely to Buckshot, Mo and me about how interesting the sky was, how intricate certain rock formations were and how tragically fascinating the scattered remnants of old Equestria were. It was as if they were the captives (which, when you think about it, was more true than any other description of the situation), trying to talk the ears off of their captors so that when push came to shove there would be some tiny chance that they might not be the first ones to get butchered.
Stockholm syndrome I think they call it.
Buckshot and Mo, on the other hoof, were barely able to hold it together. The original idea was sound enough: wear the collars outside, get used to them, get into the mindset of your character on your way to the Fortress, have an excuse if encounter any real slavers. I mean it wasn't as if there'd be a set script or a prompt if something went wrong - we had to get this right first time, or we'd probably all end up in shackles. Or worse!
The practical side of that plan however meant that my two newest, and thus far most trustworthy, friends were now roaming their homeland with a stark, unremovable reminder of just how cruel reality can be fastened around each of their necks, pushing their minds to think in a way that they had been taught since birth to revile. To say that my heart, uh...hearts (dammit), bled for them was an understatement. It got so bad that I actually started avoiding eye contact at one point, opting instead to answer Bulkhead's many and varied questions about life, the Wasteland and everything. There was just such a pure, compressed sorrow flowing out of their faces that I couldn't bear to engage either in any way, shape or form.
Thankfully though, the journey didn't drag on (the myriad of weird and wonderful questions saw to that), and we reached the Fortress gates early in the afternoon. The stable itself was no doubt underground, hidden beneath what looked like the remains of a sky wagon refuelling station. At one point in time, it was probably an excellent disguise, allowing the secretive and exclusive facility to go unnoticed throughout its construction and eventual population before the Last Day.
Now however, the once innocuous sight stuck out of the landscape like a sore fetlock. For one, it as the only building still standing among a sea of ruins, indicating that its construction was something far from normal. There was also the ten foot tall fence surrounding it, the half-dozen guard towers dotted about the place and the hundreds of armed slaver ponies patrolling the perimeter to consider as well.
Like I said: sore fetlock.
We approached gingerly, without seeking any reinforcement from each other before stepping out into the range of the tower-dwelling lookouts. I'm sure we were all thinking the same thing: that if we stopped, even for a moment, we would find ourselves turning around and running away.
As Atom and Bulkhead gulped at the sight of the imposing structure ahead of us, I looked to Buckshot and Mo. In their faces I saw a terror that I will remember for the rest of my days; a deep, dark foreboding nightmare being played out right in front of their eyes.
'Well,' I thought inwardly, 'At least if we get caught, it won't be for bad acting...'
"Stop right there! What's yer business 'ere?" grunted the rifle wielding unicorn guard as we approached. None of our company responded, prompting me to surreptitiously nudge Bulkhead from behind.
"We, uh..." he whimpered, his voice wavering. "We're...uh, we're..."
"We're here on business!" Atom suddenly blurted from his side, far louder than was really necessary. "We need to see Stone Tower! We're, uh...here on business!"
I thanked Celestia for the bandages enshrouding my face - they meant that I didn't need to cover the florid set of cringing expressions I was cycling through as my companions spoke.
"Right..." said the guard as he smirked to his singular colleague and eyed our diminutive band. "An' what sort o' business are ye meanin' on doin' with Mr. Tower? He don't deal with single slaves ye know - his minimum order's a hundred units."
"W-we know," stammered Atom, as she valiantly held her ground in the conversation. "Trust me, numbers won't be a problem for us. Just, uh, let us in, and we'll, um...make an appointment."
The guard looked down at her for a few long seconds, a considering expression wafting across his unfortunate features. After a heavily pregnant silence, he clicked his tongue and opened his mouth to speak:
"Awrite," he said sceptically, nodding. "I'll bite. That'll be ten thousand caps, love."
Oh no.
'Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!' I screamed into my own head. 'I forgot about the entrance fee! Caring Heart warned me! She said it right to my face and I just shrugged it off! Celestia damn me, I fucked up!'
I looked from each of my companions to the other, and was met each time by a pungent combination of shock and surprise at the outrageous price that the guard had set.
"Ten thousand whats!?" Atom cried, quickly realising that ten thousand of anything was probably too much (despite having no knowledge of the Wasteland economy). "We don't have that kind of...whatever those are!"
"Well then ye ain't gettin' in are ye?" the guard chuckled malevolently. "At least...not as buyers."
He moved his rifle round from his back, bringing it to bear in unison with his friend.
"N-now hold on!" interjected Bulkhead as Mo and Buckshot looked on in silent horror. "W-we could trade couldn't we? I mean we must have something that would do for your entrance fee!"
"Somehow, I doubt that," the guard sneered cruelly. "But y'er welcome to empty yer pockets. I like watchin' ponies squirm."
Immediately, Bulkhead and Mo's hooves shot into their barding pockets in a desperate attempt to find something valuable. Much to their credit, they had the presence of mind to shoot a pair of faux-dirty looks back at Mo and Buckshot; a subtle, dramatised threat of reprisal if they didn't start helping with the search for funds. I, on the other hoof, continued to reel internally at my own stupidity, rooted on the spot as the consequences of my actions played out before me.
"H-how about this?" asked Bulkhead as he offered the contents of one of his pockets: a shiny, medium sized wrench and small screwdriver set.
"Well now," the guard sniggered, as he levitated the wrench with his magic. "Ain't that somethin'? I ain't seen one o' these since this mornin'."
Bulkhead winced and returned to searching the other pouches of his garment. I turned away as a shiver of guilt ran down my spine, and in so doing caught Mo's eye as she continued to rummage through her own saddlebags. I felt my hearts break as the gleam of panicked tears shone onto my retinas. Oh, Goddess, what had I done!?
"Well, what about these?" proffered Atom as she and Mo silently pushed a bag of caps and the remnants of our food supplies onto the ground. As all this was going on, a couple of patrolling guards had taken notice of our conversation and stopped close by to spectate.
"Hmm...let's see here..." the first guard said calmly as he pulled the bag's contents out into the air with his magic. "Ye know, that's not half bad. I reckon ye've only got about nine and a half thousand caps to go."
I glanced at Buckshot as the rummaging resumed, fully aware that the sum total of all our possessions was probably significantly less than the outrageous fee. He didn't see me looking in his direction, as despite his eyes being open to their fullest extent, he was staring into his saddlebags with a focussed expression verging on madness. His pupils had contracted to a ridiculously small size, and I could see sweat beading atop his brow as his hooves trembled. I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate, my intrinsic empathic reaction making me acutely receptive to my coltfriend's pain. In the meantime, a small crowd of guards had gathered, all of them eager to gawk at the new arrivals; the clueless would-be slavers who were steadily approaching becoming slaves themselves.
As our desperation mounted, saddlebags were emptied and pockets turned inside out - every item we carried was deposited onto the dead grass underhoof for the perusal of the unicorn guard. He examined our wares, counted our caps and even raised an impressed eyebrow once or twice at some of our equipment, but it soon became painfully obvious that we simply did not have the kind of funds he and the rest of his cohorts were looking for. I couldn't believe how quickly my plan had fallen into the deep deep chasm of failure! How could I have been so stupid!? As I bowed my head in disgust at my own arrogance, Bulkhead began to empty the last of the pockets in his barding in a desperate, last ditch attempt to find something of sufficient value. At the same time I tried to once again catch Mo and Buckshot's gazes so that I could give them the 'this is going to get ugly' face and establish my intention to run like my arse was on fire as soon as possible.
"A-all we've got left is...this..." said Bulkhead finally, his voice close to breaking.
Failing to attract the attention of either of my collared companions, I was forced to reflect upon our situation for another short moment, and in doing so arrived at a singular horrific truth regarding the whole affair: I was about to break my promise. Not just the one I had made to Buckshot, but also the silent, unsaid promise that had accompanied it. The one that saw me keeping my friends safe, regardless of the consequences or the effort involved therein. The fact that I was less than a single Angstrom away from failing in that capacity cut me deeper than seeing Mo cry, watching Buckshot panic or being naught but a spectator as Petri faded into the vortex. Hell, it cut me deeper than physically being cut! In all my life I had never felt such a sharp, intense disdain for myself as I felt at that-
'Hang on,' the voice I had come to know as One suddenly said, cutting through my self-loathing like a laser through butter. 'Where's the retort? That ugly bastard of a guard hasn't said anything scathing in well over a minute! And where's all the chatter from the crowd behind him gone?'
'Well I don't know, do I? I'm staring at the sodding ground!' I answered angrily, as the muscles of my brow began to form themselves into a frown at a comparatively glacial pace. 'Although, come to think of it, you're right - I can't hear a thing! Maybe I've gone deaf with stress...'
'Nope!' said Three. ‘Ears are all good - we're still picking up ambient noise. If there's a problem it's either outside or it's on your end.'
'Well I'm feeling fine,' said One again. 'So it must be something outside. You should look up and see what's going on out there.'
'How can you possibly self-diagnose madness?' I said. 'Surely that's something that somepony else has to-'
'Hey!' One interrupted loudly. 'If you don't do something soon you and your friends are going to end up as slaves for the rest of your lives! And then I'll have to put up with your incessant whining till you finally die of depression! So are you going to argue psychology with me or are you going to suck it up and see what's going on out there!?'
'Well I suppose I'm going to have to now, aren't I!?' I replied, as my brow finished furrowing.
I finally looked up, just in time to see everypony present staring wide-eyed at Bulkhead's hoof, their gazes transfixed by the object he was holding. He and Atom seemed to be as bemused as I was at the sudden aural void that had ensued and began to slowly shift the object back and forth in front of the assembled equines. As it moved, every head on every neck swivelled to follow it, and I was finally able to see what it was that he was holding.
There, flat against Bulkhead's hoof, was the gleaming, unspoilt form of a water talisman. The Wastelanders present continued to stare intently at the bright blue crystal as Bulkhead and Mo awkwardly turned around to look at me for guidance. I responded with a curt nod, trying desperately to keep up my bandaged stoicism.
"Is, uh...this going to be enough...?" Bulkhead asked as he turned back to face the guards.
The first guard to belittle us just stood there, wall-eyed and mute as his companion's lips began to move.
"Th-the banker...g-get the...banker..." he mumbled to nopony in particular. When no notice was taken, he turned around and started shouting to the crowd behind him. "Somepony get the banker! Now! We've got high rollers here!"
The group of guards dispersed quickly, snapped from their mutual trance states as if an alarm had suddenly sounded. In the ensuing confusion Bulkhead and Mo turned around, sporting a pair of thoroughly confused expressions.
"What the hay was all that about!?" whispered Bulkhead. "You'd think they'd never seen a-“
"What the fuck are you doing with your stable's water talisman!?" Mo suddenly hissed. "Without that all your friends will die!"
"Die!?" Atom shrieked, once again a little too loudly. "Of course they won't die! They can just use one of the other spares."
"Other...spares...!?" Mo gawked. "Just how many of those things do you have!?"
"Uh..." said Bulkhead, as he looked up to the sky in thought. "Well, including that one, which I was meant to install on level seven yesterday, uh...twelve. Seven in service, two for the redundant backup system and another three spare. Why? Are they, like, sought after out here or something?"
"S-sought after!?" Mo said, as if it was the dumbest question she had ever heard. "Bulkhead, you can buy a fucking city for one of those things! Clean water is unbelievably scarce in the Wasteland, so those talismans can make a huge difference!"
"Well it looks like it got us out of a jam," I whispered, leaning in. "But don't let this stroke of luck go to your heads. Remember, stay in character!"
Suddenly remembering how easily our position could still be compromised, my companions quickly resumed the standing positions they had been holding a few minutes earlier. At practically the same moment, a large hatch in the floor of the refuelling station swung open, and the platform of a cargo lift slid smoothly up to surface height, a single occupant on board.
The mare in transit was a pale grey unicorn with an immaculate flaxen mane and a cutie mark in the shape of a striking red bottle cap. She exuded confidence like a fountain as she strode up to us and bowed curtly, addressing myself, Bulkhead and Atom.
"Madame, sirs, welcome to the Indentured Servitude Emporium. My name is Chase, the emporium's financial manager and personal assistant to Mr. Tower. Can I offer you any kind of refreshment this afternoon?"
On cue, the guard who had originally delighted from watching us writhe in panic under his gaze appeared beside the unicorn, holding a tray in the aura of a levitation field and making sure to avoid direct eye contact with us. Atop the tray were assorted bottles and glasses containing Sparkle Cola, clear, sparkling water and the 'fun disinfectant' I'd had the displeasure of sampling back in Edinbuck. Although a little unexpected, I had a good idea of where to go with this particular interaction, my recent practice with dishonesty having refined my natural lying ability to a well-honed skill. Unfortunately however, before I could say anything, Atom decided that it was high time she shouted at something.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," she said quickly, frowning and waving her hooves in front of her face. "What the buck is all this!? A moment ago this bastard was threatening to enslave us if we couldn't pay to get in! And now you're offering us drinks!? What the hell kind of operation are you lot running here!?"
Chase the banker stared unflinchingly at Atom, a thin, lipless smile curving her mouth into what I'm sure was a very well-practiced expression of feigned submission.
"Yes ma'am, I am aware of your treatment by our security staff, and you have both my sincerest apologies and my assurances that it won't happen again," she said, in a voice so courteous and humble that it hobbled Atom's complaint on the spot. The pressure in my chest lessened slightly as the usually fiery little mare visibly relaxed, her desire for confrontation having suddenly dispersed.
"I'm told by the guards that you're here on a matter of business, is that right?" said Chase as she nonchalantly levitated one of the glasses of water towards her mouth. I found myself marvelling at her manipulative skills as Atom and Bulkhead fell into what could almost be described as a pleasant conversation, despite the inherent grimness of the subject matter.
"Uh, yes, it is," said Bulkhead, uncertainly at first, as he clumsily picked up a bottle of Sparkle Cola with his hooves. "We have several thousand ponies that we think would be perfect for St-, I mean, Mr. Tower's, um...workforce."
"Really?" Chase responded pleasantly, as if she was being told the most interesting thing in the world. "Well that is wonderful. Mr. Tower is always happy to find new sources of labour. Are you sure I can't offer you something to drink ma'am? What about your quiet friend in the back there? I'm sure he's tired after minding your slaves during your journey."
"Uh, don't mind him," said Atom quickly. "He's what you might call, uh...'damaged'. Kinda sad really - we need to feed him through a straw. Oh, and don't worry about being nice to him - the accident left him a little on the dim side. Isn't that right, Smith?"
'Damaged!? What do you mean damaged!?' I shouted inwardly. 'And who the hell are you calling dim, you little-!'
"I said isn't that right, Smith?" Atom repeated, this time far more forcefully. She was enjoying this far too much.
"Um...argh...?" I grunted.
"I think Smith wants to rest, Atom," Bulkhead said, eyeing Atom curiously. "Miss, uh...Chase, wasn't it? Could we maybe go inside now? We've been walking for quite a while and we're all very tired."
"Oh of course sir!" Chase responded cheerfully. "If you'll just follow me inside we'll deposit your entry fee and I'll make arrangements to open a line of credit for use of all our facilities."
She turned and began to trot towards the lift platform, placing her glass back onto the tray as she passed the guard. We followed in formation, Bulkhead and Atom leading, with me bringing up the rear behind the forlorn, collared forms of Mo and Buckshot. Stepping onto the platform, we said our last silent goodbyes to the land above as we began to slowly descend into the underground fortress of Stone Tower.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New quest perk added: Paradise Has Fallen The Wasteland is a harsh place, and you and your companions have learned that first hoof! As a result you are hardier, but at a cost: you are granted END +1 for your trouble, but SPEECH -10 for dragging them along with you.
Chapter 11 – A Slave to Time (Part 2) "Are you sayin' my mouth is makin' promises my legs can't keep!?"
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...
Tears trickled slowly down my face as the sky carriage glided serenely above the clouds, the beauty of the sunrise slowly unwrapping itself in my mind, colouring my every thought and perception with a warm, mystic glow.
We were making good time towards Edinbuck, our transit having been aided by the impressive efficiency of the pegasi skyways. In under ten minutes we had swooped over the central region of Trottingham, taking an entire lane for ourselves and exceeding many a speed limit in the process. The sky carriage apparently also doubled as an escort vehicle, its flight enchantments granting it a significant speed advantage over the other craft in the sky (I was pretty sure it could also take a bomb blast without so much as a paint chip - its structural spells alone were enough to make my horn vibrate).
After a short while, during which we very nearly broke the sound barrier with our haste, we began our descent towards Edinbuck, heralded by a sudden burst of sound and licks of red and blue that erupted from secreted siren and light talismans around the sky carriage's periphery. The craft cleanly carved a priority path down through the skyway, parting the streams of travellers and other vehicles in the lanes below us. The pitch of our approach was excessively steep - even for military pilots - and as I focused on keeping my balance in the back of the carriage, I felt a weight wrap itself around my waist. Red Heart had toppled toward me upon our sudden drop, instinctively reaching out for support. I looked down into her eyes as my own began to water from the shear speed of the wind sweeping past us. What I saw staring back at me was surprising, to say the least. There, in her tiny black pupils, was a pure and lonely neediness, unmasked for a split second by the shock of our sudden aerial manoeuvre. Redheart caught herself quickly as our gazes met, and I looked away as soon as I could, my brow furrowed in thought as she regained her balance.
She was faking, I realised emptily, and had been all this time. All of her strength and her bravado was but a shield, allowing her to cope with the world crumbling slowly around her. I cursed myself for not seeing (or even considering) it earlier. Even with all the horrors that the war was bringing out in ordinary ponies - ponies who would have lived their lives in peace and harmony at any other time - I hadn't for a moment thought of how it had affected Redheart. With a deeply unpleasant rumbling in my gut, I realised that she was, simply put, afraid; deeply and truly terrified of what was about to happen to her homeland. And I had just promised to tell her everything...
The enormity of my commitment played on my thoughts, even as the ground came into view and the carriage levelled out to a glide. The ancient architectural beauty of Edinbuck's royal castle was the first sight to greet us, and I was afforded just enough time to marvel sadly at how far our race had fallen. Banners of silver and blue bearing Luna's crest hung proudly from the battlements, and a thousand tiny ribbons of white smoke wafted up from the many buildings on the slope below. Edinbuck was a model city; a metropolis of industry and endeavour, teeming with life and optimistic wartime spirit on the dawn of a new day. I imagined breads being baked and newspapers being read, the taste of concentrated orange juice and the sizzle of powdered egg rations cooking in a pan. All those wonderful, simple little rituals - both basic and amazing all at the same time - were being lived out by the masses, right under my hooves.
A pang a sadness found purchase in my heart as I realised that the dawn of the Last Day wouldn't be - or rather, hadn't been - any different. Ponies going to and fro, busying themselves with the work of the day and tending to relationships as though they were flower beds, all the while oblivious to the coming doom.
They would have woken and risen as usual, I mused. Some beside their significant other, some on their own. They would have eaten breakfast, but only after facing the age old dilemma of what to spread on their toast. Then they would have trotted, or perhaps taken a ride on a sky carriage, to work, indulging in that wonderful little temporal limbo between getting there and actually starting the workday. They would take a break at about eleven o'clock - a discussion around a water cooler, mugs of tea and coffee behind a depot, a perusal of a dog-eared paperback at a staff room table. Thoughts would move to lunch ('The daisy sandwich or the vege-plate?') as the cups of Equestria emptied and the day’s work continued. I thought of them sitting back at their desks, or returning to their storefronts, or starting their machines back up. Just in time to look out of the nearest window and see a light brighter than the sun suddenly flare, raging into being. Mighty booms would obliterate the lucky and deafen those unfortunate enough to remain. The air would sizzle and a thousand million tiny pinpricks would dance across the skin of the outliers, heralding with a tickle the lethal, penetrating morbidity of radiation. Blood would flow like water from wounds and throats alike as squishy, pastel coloured flesh was consumed and liquidised by the monster of war; lives - whole lives - would be utterly and totally demolished in a matter of seconds, messily wiped from existence like chalk dust from a blackboard.
I forced my eyes to close to the magnificence of the city below for I knew that, all too soon, everything would change.
I allowed myself to see again when the carriage suddenly shuddered, our forward momentum quickly dissipating into the Earth below. We had touched down some way away from Edinbuck itself, landing in an understated (and decidedly boring) parking area to the rear of the Edinbuck StableTec building. I wondered for a moment why there were no windows on this side of the structure, and why the area was deliberately obscured by thick, neatly trimmed ornamental hedges. However, much to my surprise, my inevitable question was answered even before it had finished forming, as the patch of gravel on which we had landed began to slowly lower itself into the secreted sublevels of what I now knew to be the Oakflare facility.
I avoided making eye contact with Redheart for the entirety of the descent, opting instead to count the time it took us to traverse the vertical distance. One-hundred-and-eighty-one seconds passed as we slid silently down into the subterranean depths, before we finally came to a smooth, silent stop at the base of the shaft. Standing there to greet us was a serious-looking earth pony mare, wearing a form-fitting suit of combat barding (with the rank insignia of a sergeant on its shoulder) and a smart, black beret. An unpleasant, nagging feeling at the back of my mind told me I knew her, but I couldn't immediately see how.
"Sir. Ma'am," she said curtly, saluting us in turn as we stepped down from the sky carriage. "I've been informed by the Ministry of Morale that you're in need of some of our R&D equipment. Brigadier Bridge regrets that he won’t be able to meet you in person, but he has a prior engagement, so I’ll be filling in as your escort today. I’m Sergeant—"
"If you don’t mind," I replied quickly, cutting off the overly serious sergeant. "We’d like to get started as soon as possible. I need to see the workspace of a Dr. - oh, what was it again? Oh, yeah! Maestro! I need to see the lab of Dr. Maestro!"
"Ah..." Sergeant Serious said guardedly, frowning slightly. "You're here about that. Sir, I can assure you that his ‘disappearance’ this morning was not related in any way to—"
"This morning!?" I blurted suddenly. "The Doctor was here this morning!?"
"H-how the hell did you know about him!?" Sergeant Serious cried in surprise. "We didn't even report that part!"
I didn't answer. The magnificent perfection of my bad timing had struck me mute, and for all intents and purposes, I was momentarily catatonic. 'Unbelievable...' I whispered to myself, as the distant shadow of Sergeant Serious continued to try and communicate with me. 'I missed him by hours... Hours, for Goddess' sake!'
'Ah well,' said One, 'you can't have everything, you know.'
'He's right,' replied Three. 'It's a miracle that you're even still alive at this point, so a little rotten luck is to be expected. Statistically speaking, you were due a bad turn sooner or later.'
'Your definition of a 'bad turn' differs somewhat from mine,' I grumbled, closing my internal dialogue before I could reply to myself. 'As far as I'm concerned, I haven't had a single good turn since Valve died!'
"I'm sorry," I said a split second later, returning to the physical realm. "What were you saying?"
"I was saying," Sergeant Serious harrumphed officiously, "that your knowledge of the goings-on in this facility is far too detailed for my liking, even for a pair of spooks from the MoM! I want to know who you two are! Now!"
'Oh... Right, then,' I thought as I stared back at the mare, my eyes wide with surprise. 'She's actually on the ball. What if Pinkie Pie's word doesn't open the doors we thought it—?'
"Who we are is none of your concern, sergeant," Redheart responded with an intimidating scowl. "What is of concern to you however is twofold. One: our security clearance is as high as Equestrian law allows, so you have neither the right nor the reason to question us, and two: we are in what I can only describe as one hell of a hurry. So, if you could show us to the relevant lab, we might just forget about this little encounter when we meet with the Brigadier later!"
Sergeant Serious' mouth hung open slightly as Redheart's blatant ultimatum worked its way into her brain. She promptly gulped, and proceeded to nervously stutter her way through her next sentence. "O-of course, ma'am!" she said, saluting us once more as we began to trot mechanically past our pegasus pilots and into the corridor beyond. "R-right this way, please! D-Dr. Maestro's lab i-is at the, uh, end of the hallway!" She proceeded to trot along in front of Redheart and me, her measured hoofsteps and tense musculature speaking volumes about her state of mind in spite of her silence. Clearly, she was worried about being written up by her superiors; mentioned negatively in whatever report she was sure Redheart and I would eventually file about our 'duties' at the Oakflare facility.
'Oh, to have worries that small again,' I mused.
As we continued to move forwards, the varied hum of machinery and chattering voices met our ears, becoming progressively louder as we continued deeper into the facility. After a short while, a stallion and a mare - both dressed in pristine, white lab coats - crossed in front of us, their faces buried in what was apparently the most interesting clipboard in all of Creation. I watched them curiously as they disappeared down another semi-cylindrical hallway, cocking my head slightly as I did so. A strange, warm familiarity began to blossom in my chest as I recognised them (and their enthusiasm for clipboards). In all the time I had been ‘free’ of Stable 52, the only thing that I had missed anywhere near as much as my friends was the basic and honest pleasure of working alongside them, researching away our two decades of life together in our cosy, rad-hardened home.
Part of me longed to return to the simpler days of drawing diagrams and solving equations, where my greatest worries would consist of whether the coding syntax I was using was correct or what the cafeteria might be serving for lunch. There was a warm, gloriously ignorant comfort to be had in being just another part of one big machine and, much to my shame, I still selfishly wished for it to return to me. A rare smile - one borne of actual happiness rather than sarcasm or deception - began to slowly spread across my face as I realised what I was about to partake in. I could actually re-join an intellectual community! I could research and develop to my hearts' content, surrounded by a massive staff of like-minded—
'Like-minded, huh?' One suddenly mused, interrupting my reverie and banishing my first genuine smile in a good few days. 'Odd phrase. How exactly are they like-minded, Compass? How exactly are we even remotely similar to the intellectual giants that got so caught up in fighting their own petty wars that they forgot to not blow themselves up in the process!?'
'Yes, do tell,' added Three. 'And while you're at it, could you maybe explain why the prospect of staying here, thereby abandoning Buckshot, Mo and Sage, not to mention everypony who still needs your help back in the Wasteland, actually appeals to you!?'
'I... I can't,' I stammered internally, entirely unable to answer - let alone counter - my own mind's distinctly negative points.
'Besides,' One continued, before I could answer Three, 'you know you can't save any of them, so there's no point in developing any attachments, either to this time or anypony in it.'
With that sudden realisation, a deep, dark crevice opened in my gut, wholly consuming every iota of warmth and optimism that I had just managed to scrounge together from the corners of my conscious mind. I glanced from form to form in the sparsely populated corridors, suddenly seeing only the bare skeletons of the military personnel and the cybernetically mutilated bodies of the scientists in place of the ponies working around me. The prospect of being happy here - even for a moment - suddenly seemed absurd, and without another thought, I found my guarded sensibilities rapidly reasserting themselves; walls of ice to the coming fire.
The world around me had had its time, I told myself, and now the only hope for the future of our race were the ponies of the Wasteland. I glanced at Redheart out of the corner of my eye, and tried my damnedest to force back tears.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space
"Hang on, girls!" I shouted, as the TARDIS made its umpteenth trip back along the local continuum. "There's another big turn coming up!"
The console room tipped and swayed as the mighty vastness of the machine was once again made to swing around and retrace its steps through time.
"Doc!" Applebloom squealed from her perch on the far side of the console. "For the love o' apple cider, would ya please stop movin' this here TARDIS o' yours!? I've already made a mess o' the swimming pool, and I'm pretty sure I've got enough left in me to redecorate yer console if we don't stop soon!"
"I'm with Applebloom on this one, Doctor!" added Ditzy, her face pale and markedly greener than I remember it ever being before.
"Listen, you two," I grumbled, making little effort to hide my rapidly thinning patience, "this will take as long as it takes, okay? The fate of an entire world is hanging in the balance, so do forgive me if I'm not entirely sympathetic to your gastronomical concerns!"
I returned to staring intently at the scanner monitor, aware that, despite her apparent discomfort, Applebloom's expression had soured significantly since I replied to her and Ditzy.
"Now you listen ta me, ya jumped up—!" Applebloom began, before being cut short by a sudden blaring cacophony emanating from the console's scanner. I instantly zoned in on the multi-coloured readouts as they twisted and turned before my eyes, their myriad of shapes and forms expressing data in an efficient, ergonomic dance.
"Whut is it!? Did ya find somethin'!?" Applebloom shouted, her nausea quickly retreating before her excitement and concern.
"Is it the Master!?" asked Ditzy, as she crawled around to my side and began to peruse the scanner with me.
"It's... something..." I said absentmindedly, as my hooves manipulated the scanner's tracking knobs, bringing a series of high and low pass filters into play over the energy spectrum being displayed. "Definitely Time Lord, whatever it is," I concluded after a moment.
"So it is the Master, then?" Applebloom asked, as one of her eyebrows arched slightly.
"Oh, it's the Master’s doing all right," I responded, as the vast majority of my mind grabbed a bright red flag and hoisted it into deep space at the sight of the various waveforms sweeping across the screen. "But what the hell is it!?"
"Whut the hell's whut?" Applebloom interjected. "Shouldn't you be turning this cosmic jalopy around now, or somehtin'?"
"Huh?" I said, as my every single one of my not-so-insubstantial faculties focussed its attention on the scanner readings. There was something fundamentally wrong with the data I was seeing. I just couldn't quite put my hoof on it. "What was that, Applebloom?"
"Ah said," Applebloom continued angrily, "shouldn't y'all be turnin' us around about now?"
"Oh," I replied. "Yeah. Yeah, let's... turn around..."
The wrong was getting wronger. Second by second, more and more of the hairs on the back of my neck were seeing fit to stand on end as the pit in the base of my stomach continued to deepen - just like it had back in Applebloom's office when my old classmate had first been revealed to us.
"Doctor?" Ditzy said, as her hoof gently brushed against mine. "You've gone quiet, and you’re not blinking. What's wrong?"
"It's just..." I said quietly, my mind screaming with frustration and worry. "I recognise this energy signature. It's Gallopfreyan alright, but the flux dispersal is... well, it's massive! I mean, just look at it! The last time I saw anything cause so much entropic disruption was—" I said, halting my vocalisation as a distant memory came to mind.
"Oh, no..." I whispered, as I finally realised just what I was looking at. "I-It can't be!"
The scanner monitor began to shrink as I retreated to the edge of the console platform, my left foreleg clutched tightly against my chest. My hearts were beating out of control, and I had to grab the railing around the platform to stop myself from keeling over.
"Doctor!" shouted Ditzy, her eyes wide with alarm. “Seriously, what is it!? What’s wrong!?”
“I-it’s… it’s th-the… the Hoof!” I whispered, as my limbs shook uncontrollably. “He’s g-got… the Hoof!”
“The… ‘Hoof’?” Applebloom asked slowly, glancing confusedly over at Ditzy. “Whut in the hay is that!? Sounds like a damn STD!”
“I don’t know!” Ditzy responded loudly, as she wrapped her forelegs around my shoulders, gripping me supportively. “But whatever it is, it’s scaring him to death! Doctor! Can you hear me!? What’s wrong!? What’s this ‘Hoof’ thing!?”
“I-impossible…” I continued to stutter, aware only of the horror that I was now facing. “H-he can’t have it! He just can’t!”
“Doc! Snap out of it, for Luna’s sake!” shouted Applebloom, as she slapped me across the face with her foreleg. The stinging impact brought tears to my eyes and a profound ringing to my ears, but did serve to successfully bring me to my senses.
“Wha—! Ow!” I shouted a moment later, as my faculties returned to me. “That hurt! What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”
“Gettin’ ya ta speak some sense ya great goon!” Applebloom said angrily. “Now, whut in the hay is this ‘Hoof’ thing that’s got yer tail in such a knot!?”
“It’s…” I said breathily, gulping as I once again beheld the readings running across the scanner monitor. “The Hoof of Ponega…”
A profound, pregnant silence, marred only by the sound of the time rotor pulling us across the continuum, rang hollow through the console room. It was broken after a moment, but only once Applebloom and Ditzy had exchanged a thoroughly confused look with one another.
“Wh-who’s Ponega?” Ditzy asked.
“And why’s his hoof so damned important!?” added Applebloom.
“Ponega was a Time Lord,” I said, exhaling loudly as an uncomfortable shiver of recollection shot up my spine. “More to the point, he was one of the Time Lords – a trio made up of the original founders of our entire way of life.”
“A founder of the Time Lords!?” said Ditzy, her eyes wide with curiosity. “Wow. You’ve never talked about your race’s history before, Doctor. How come you’ve waited till now?”
“Nevermind that!” shouted Applebloom, her already thin patience diminishing to a knife edge. “Whut the fuck is so important about his hoof!?”
“I don’t talk about my people,” I began, opting to answer the less irate of my current companions first, “because, even though we were often regarded by outsiders as a great race, we had… off days.”
“’Off days’…?” Ditzy echoed cautiously. “Wh-what exactly do you mean by—?”
“Are y’all deaf!?” Applebloom interrupted angrily. “Ah asked you a Celestia-damned question, ya ignorant son of a—”
“AND I WAS GETTING TO IT!” I suddenly roared, rounding on Applebloom just in time to see her face droop in shock at my outburst. I glanced back and forth between Applebloom and Ditzy, quickly registering the looks of surprise and fear gauntly set upon into their faces.
“Sorry, girls,” I continued with a sigh, once I was sure that nopony would speak over me. “It’s just that my race is sort of a touchy subject. Now then, where was I?”
“The, uh,” Ditzy began, gulping nervously as she spoke, “the ‘Hoof’. Y-you were going to tell us a-about Ponega.”
“Right,” I said levelly, taking care to once again establish eye contact with the two mares, letting them both back into safe harbour. “As I was saying, Ponega was one of the three founders of the Time Lord race. The other two were called ‘Rassipony’ and ‘The Other’. Between them, they managed to—”
“Hang on,” Applebloom said. “Whut kind of a name is ‘The Other’?”
“Applebloom?” I replied warningly. “What happened the last time you interrupted me?”
“Uh,” the fire-maned mare said, shrinking a little as she did so. “S-sorry, Doc. Nevermind.”
“Anyway,” I grumbled as I continued, “between them, they created the first TARDIS, paving the way for our ultimate custodianship of the time-space continuum. Now, not much is known of ‘The Other’, or his involvement in the whole affair, but the other two - Rassipony and Ponega – are legends on Gallopfrey, and with good reason.”
Ditzy and Applebloom leaned in close as I continued, my tale enrapturing them more and more with each passing word.
“You see,” I said, “Rassipony was a crafty bugger, and would outlive all of his contemporaries, eventually surviving right up to the final days of the Time Lord race as the eternal Lord President. But it was Ponega who really deserved the credit – he created a solar manipulator so advanced that it could control entropic decay, so powerful that it could ensnare an entire star all at once, and so small that it could fit into a single armoured forehoof gauntlet.”
“Time Lord science,” I said, shrugging. “Time travel doesn’t come cheap, Applebloom. The Hoof is what was originally used to create the Eye of Harmony, the common power source for all Time Lord technology. It allows a single user to halt the fusion reaction within a star, briefly interrupting the delicate balance between its hugely explosive chemistry, and its equally impressive mass. Then, it encases the star in a time lock, trapping it in a perpetual state of imminent collapse. Now, as you know, a supernova creates one hell of a mess, constituting a huge increase in local entropy. But without the passage of time for that entropy to increase over, it remains as a solid, tangible ball of heat, light and possibilities, ready to be accessed and utilised at a moment’s notice via subspace power linkages. Every life on every world that could have been – would have been – destroyed or created by that supernova held over a precipice for all time, their what-ifs and maybes serving to fuel my race’s expansion through all of time and space, forever and always.”
“Wow…” whistled Ditzy. “That’s… amazing…!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up!” Applebloom said quickly, waving her hooves as she did so. “Are y’all tryin’ ta tell me that this alien super-villain ex-friend-slash-arch-nemesis o’ yours has got his hooves on a gizmo that can turn whole freakin’ stars inside out!?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” I said sadly, as I made my way back to the console. “And now it’s more important than ever that we stop him.”
“Wait. Whut?” Applebloom asked. “A minute ago, you were about ta faint over there, and now y’er all gung ho about stopping him again? Whut gives?”
“What ‘gives’, Applebloom,” I said softly, “is that I think he’s going to use it. And I cannot let that happen.”
“Are you saying,” Ditzy said loudly, clapping her hooves over her mouth in horror. “that he’s going to destroy the sun – our sun – to power that fleet of TARDISes he built!?”
“I did wonder how he planned on hooking them up to the original Eye of Harmony,” I mused despondently as I ramped up the power to the TARDIS’s ancient engines. “Now I know that that was never his plan.”
“But…” Applebloom said thoughtfully. “He didn’t do it. We know he didn’t – we’ve seen the future.”
“Time is in flux, Applebloom,” I replied without looking up at her. “Even around convergent points, there can be massive changes. In fact, just as long as the fixed event occurs, causality doesn’t care what happens in the immediate vicinity.”
“So,” Ditzy said, her voice wavering as she spoke, “if we don’t stop him from using the Hoof…”
“There might not be an Earth to go war over,” I said solemnly. “At least in the future we saw there was still life out there. I met ponies who cared for one another and me – a total stranger, with ideals and civilised concepts like justice, commerce, love, compassion and mercy. If I had to choose between a wasteland filled with that and a whole planet-load of sudden time-gods with nothing but fear, confusion and a genocidal maniac as their guides, I’d pick the former any day of the week!”
“But…” Ditzy said meakly a moment later. “Wh-what about us…?”
“Hmm?” I said, as I looked to her and Applebloom, instantly regretting my action when I beheld the lost, deeply sad expressions on their faces.
“Answer her, Doctor,” Applebloom said simply, her words full of quiet force. “What about our world – the war? Can’t you save us?”
My eyes darted back and forth between the two mares, my lower lip trembling with every thought that ran through my mind.
“I—” I began weakly, my breath catching in my throat. “We’ll… we’ll see…”
At that, I turned back to the console, the weight of a world on my shoulders.
0 <<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
Arriving at the bottom of the lift shaft, Atom, Bulkhead and I found ourselves staring at the familiar, gear shaped sight of a stable hatch resting at the end of a long and dimly lit tunnel. Despite the somewhat feeble light being cast by the wall mounted crystals, we were still able to clearly make out the corrugated texture of the metal lining the passageway and the large, off-white lettering of the stable's number.
"Here we are!" announced Chase as we approached the hatch. She busied herself with the nearby control panel, eliciting a nostalgia inducing screech from the sleeping door as it was made to slide out of its groove and roll off to one side. "If you'd like to step inside," she said politely, gesturing for us to cross the threshold into the shelter.
We complied quietly, trotting into the stable with as much care as we could manage without appearing suspicious. Following Chase, we were led out of the entrance hall and into an adjoining chamber, the appearance of which alarmed me greatly, seeing as how said room was not part of Stable 52's design. If each individual stable had an entirely different layout - a possibility that I’d never even considered - then escaping in a hurry would be a far more complicated matter than I had originally counted on. Fresh worry began to blossom within my breast as Chase trotted up to a wall lined with sturdy-looking safe deposit boxes. With the sound of the stable door being resealed behind us echoing through the room, the unicorn mare turned around, her ridiculously pleasant demeanour shining like a beacon in the grim, subterranean dankness.
"Now, ma'am, sir, if you'd like to deposit your talisman with the cash office here, we can see to getting you settled in the emporium's guest accommodations," she said brightly. Bulkhead complied, hoofing over the gleaming crystal without so much as a second thought (Goddess forbid this mare ever took up conning ponies for a living - she could clean out half of Equestria before anypony raised an eyebrow!).
"Wonderful!" Chase continued, as our sudden wealth was deposited into one of the wall slots and magically locked inside. The unicorn then conjured a trio of small enchanted paper slips and passed them to us (she snatched her hoof away from me quickly, almost as if she was afraid I would bite). "I hereby acknowledge your deposit. These are personal credit slips which you can use inside the Emporium to pay for goods and services - or to bid on anything that takes your fancy - while you're staying with us. Upon your departure, your remaining balance will be returned to you in the currency of your choice, unless of course you decide to take advantage of our banking services in which case I can help you to choose which of our accounts is best suited to your needs. Now if you'll just follow me, I'll have your property sent to the slave quarters and we can get schedule your meeting with Mr. Tower."
A quick glance of panic darted between Bulkhead and Atom as Mo and Buckshot were approached by a burly looking pair of leather-clad unicorns, no doubt part of a vast staff of slave handlers.
"Uh!" shouted Bulkhead, obviously engaging his vocal chords before thinking of anything to say. Everypony in the cramped little room turned to look at him as a deep blush found purchase in his cheeks. "I, uh, was hoping to keep our slaves with us!" he managed to blurt.
"I'm sorry sir," said Chase sweetly, "but personal slaves are not permitted in the Emporium's inner sections. It's strictly owners and house slaves from here onward."
I shot Bulkhead a glare through my bandages: 'Buckshot and Mo know what they're doing,' my eyes said. 'Just run with it!'
He seemed to get my meaning as his head bowed a moment later in acceptance of the rule.
"I understand," he said, much more calmly than before.
"Do take care of them won't you?" asked Atom, recognising that Bulkhead needed some time out of the conversational spotlight. "We've grown quite fond of them."
"Not to worry, ma'am," Chase replied. "Our slave quarters are state of the art, and our handlers are trained in advanced discipline techniques that leave absolutely zero scarring. Guaranteed!"
"That's, uh... good to know..." Atom responded, gulping as surreptitiously as she could manage.
Buckshot and Mo were led away at gunpoint by the handlers, expressions of unyielding stoicism holding their faces firm and expressionless. I caught Buckshot's eye one final time before he left my sight, and was silently reminded of the promise I'd made to him, a gut wrenching feeling of responsibility plunging deep into my stomach. Bulkhead, Atom and I then turned and began to follow Chase as she led us deeper into the facility. Thankfully, the increased separation between us and our escort allowed me to lean forward just far enough to whisper to my stablemates without being overheard.
"Listen, you two," I hissed delicately, "from the little I've seen so far out here, what you're about to experience will probably shock you to the core. Instead of wondering 'why' you'll probably end up asking 'how' ponies can be so cruel to one another. You'll want to retch and scream at the injustice, but I need you to hold it together, or else we're all screwed. Okay?"
We were fast approaching a large and finely detailed double door at the end of the corridor. As we closed in on it, I was very much aware that the three of us had just become my plan's critical single point of failure - it was all on us, and Bulkhead and Atom knew it.
"I don't know how much longer I can do this Compass!" Bulkhead replied from the corner of his mouth. "The pressure's too much for me!"
"Don't worry," I said. "You’re doing great - both of you are. Just keep it up and we'll be out of here in no time."
Bulkhead nodded, closing his eyes and wincing as a scream and the sound of smashing glass emanated from behind the doors in front of us.
"Brace yourselves..." I whispered, as Chase pushed open the ornate barrier with her magic, revealing the scene beyond. Our eyes widened in a unity of shock at the sight we beheld:
'A... party...!?' I felt myself mouth.
The room in front of us was recognisable as the original stable's common area, but only just. Gone were the StableTec fluorescent tube lights and drab alloy pressure doors, replaced by chandeliers of gold and crystal and fine portals like the one we had just passed through, made of rich mahogany and detailed with fine gold leaf.
Several small circular tables were dotted around the space, with a long counter taking up the majority of the far wall. I recognised the myriad of dusty, colourful bottles arranged behind it as containers of drinking alcohol, making the room we were currently standing dumbstruck in probably the most ornate pub in all of Equestria.
'Oh my Goddess...' I winced internally, as a sudden - but only vaguely relevant - thought occurred to me. 'I still haven't fixed Brandy's bloody counter!'
"Welcome to the Owner's Area!" Chase declared as she led us inside, pulling me back to reality with her saccharine tone. "Here you can make use of our well stocked bar, order a meal from our kitchen or, if you prefer, you can arrange for a little private time with some of our highly delectable pleasure slaves."
I swear, her voice was making me nauseous...
As we continued inward, I began to survey the room's occupants rather than just focusing on the decor. Most were well attired and rosy cheeked, swinging bottles and glasses of strong, foul smelling liquid back and forth. Interspersed between the tables and the patrons was a far plainer variety of pony, clad in tight, cleanly stitched one piece garments with a single piece of ever-so-functional jewellery around their necks: the now ignominious bomb collar.
The slaves, who were predominantly female, milled about slowly, plastering their faces with insincere smiles and faux-sultry looks as they carried plates and glasses to and from the tables. We followed Chase silently across and out of the bar area, passing through another ridiculously ornate door at the other side of the room. Behind it sat a single earth pony mare, neatly dressed in a pre-war pinstripe business suit. Behind her was the most elaborate door yet - as tall as the ceiling and inlaid with gems of over a dozen different hues. She looked up intently at Chase as we filed in, the doors swinging shut magically behind us.
"Mayday my dear, could you set up a meeting between Mr. Tower and these fine ponies behind me, please?" she asked sweetly. The mare nodded and tapped out a series of commands on the terminal keyboard in front of her, the horn-rimmed spectacles she wore staying eerily still as she stared at the monitor.
"I have scheduled the meeting," she replied in a smooth monotone a moment later. "Your credit slips will audibly buzz when the time has come for you to attend. At that point, return here."
"Much obliged," Chase said cheerily, giving the unnervingly still receptionist a polite nod. "Now, if you'll excuse me ma'am, sirs, I have duties to attend to. Please enjoy your time at the Emporium."
With that, Chase led us back out into the bar area before trotting confidently off to do whatever it was that she called work. I waited until she was out of sight and turned around to address Bulkhead and Atom - they needed to know the rules regarding a place like this (seeing as how I wasn't expecting a pub full of laughing patrons in this nightmarish place). Unfortunately for me though, when I had finished rounding on my hooves, I discovered with a deep, plummeting dread that both of my stablemates had spontaneously vanished! I twisted my head back and forth trying to locate them without drawing attention to myself, and quickly found Bulkhead sitting at a table surrounded by slave owners and Atom conversing freely with the bartender. Galloping tensely over to Bulkhead, I nudged him in the back with my horn, grunting as I did so.
"Ow!" he said as he turned around. "Co— I mean, Smith! What the hell are you doing!?"
I answered with another grunt, gesturing with my eyes toward Atom at the bar - I needed them together and I needed them to not attract any untoward attention.
"Is this a... friend of yours?" asked one of the well-attired ponies at the table, his disdain for my apparent disability seeping into his words like water into a sponge.
"Uh..." mouthed Bulkhead as he looked back and forth between the originator of the prejudice and me. “Yeah... uh, this is Smith. He's my... um..."
"Bodyguard?" proffered another occupant of the table as she examined my various scars and bandaged faux-wounds. "He looks like he's been doing quite a bit of fighting for you recently, Mr. Bulkhead."
'Goddess help me,' I thought to myself. 'He's already introduced himself!'
"Yeah, that's right!" exalted Bulkhead a split second later. "He's my bodyguard! Yep! Wouldn't go anywhere without good old Smith to watch my back!"
I surreptitiously rolled my eyes, trying desperately to not face-hoof in front of everypony at Bulkhead's awful attempts at misdirection. Another grunt was forthcoming, wherein I once again gestured toward Atom at the bar, glancing in her direction as I did so.
"Straight up?" I heard the bartender ask her, to which Atom responded by looking up towards the ceiling in confusion. I would've laughed at that simple little misunderstanding normally, were it not for the rich, amber liquid being poured into the glass in front of her. My eyes widened in panic at the sight of it, and I span around as quickly as I could, galloping at full tilt toward my diminutive companion. Unfortunately, upon reaching the bar, I failed to decelerate quickly enough, and ended up with my forelegs splayed across the wood, winded and panting at Atom.
"What the hell happened to you?" she asked incredulously, as the bartender raised an eyebrow in my direction.
"Doh... Dwing!" I wheezed, snatching the glass from her hooves. "Daskes... Ike... Fa-ya!"
"Hey!" Atom replied, as she pawed at my grasp. "What's your problem? Give me back my drink!"
Remembering that I had been involuntarily cast as a scarred brute with a pronounced mental deficiency, I returned to grunts and gestures as my primary form of communication. With all the subtlety of a hoof to the face, I mimed (as best as I could) the act of drinking fire and writhing in pain as my throat burned, recounting my own initial encounter with the curious drinks of the Wasteland for Atom's benefit.
Sadly though, as I finished my little performance, I was horrified to discover that, rather than discretely conveying a warning, I had in fact drawn the bemused attention of every buck and mare in the room. A long, protracted silence followed during which I didn't dare move a single muscle. All I could feel was the panicked thrum of my hearts as a rushed and poorly thought out escape plan began to hastily form behind my bandaged brow.
"O-oh Smith, you're such a joker, heh heh!" said Atom nervously a moment later, loud enough for everypony to hear. "But you shouldn't distract the other owners with your antics like that! Now sit down and behave!"
Thanking the Goddesses for Atom's quick thinking, I planted my rump on the floor as quickly as my muscles would allow, doing my best to deliver a loyally apologetic look from behind the bandages. One by one, the awkward gazes fell away, landing on other points of interest around the room - the new money's dumb muscle had been subdued, and the patrons were able to return happily to their drinks and meals. As the glare of the proverbial spotlight dimmed, Atom grabbed the collar of my barding, pulling me as close to her mouth as was possible without our proximity transitioning into a kiss.
"What the fuck, Compass!?" she whispered hotly, a kink of anger wrinkling her features. "We're meant to be incognito, and you pull that shit!? What were you thinking!?"
"I was just trying to warn you about the drink you were about to have!" I replied in hushed tones, helpless in the tiny mare's surprisingly tight grasp. "That stuff tastes like lava!"
"That's all!?" she hissed. "Look, I asked for something good and the buck behind the counter poured me this orange stuff. Think about it - I doubt they'd sell something damaging to customers as apparently well financed as us!"
"All I know is that when I tried it I almost passed out!" I replied. "Look, I don't want us to draw any undue attention to ourselves. I'm just trying to look out for you."
"And a fine job you're doing!" she said sarcastically, raising the glass to her lips and greedily downing its contents before I could stop her. I gritted my teeth in anticipation of the cry of agony I was sure would follow, only to witness Atom's jaw going slack in awe as she stared wide-eyed at the shot glass in her hooves.
"Oh... My... Goddess...!" she whispered throatily. "This... Drink...!"
"You see!?" I hissed. "It's practically poison! Quickly, ask for some water before you start having convul—"
"I love it! Another!" she shouted to the bartender. "In fact, just leave the bottle this time."
"You're the boss," the bored looking buck behind the bar replied.
"What the hell are you doing!?" I hissed under my breath. "How can you possibly like that... that... swill!?"
"It's amazing!" she replied as she gulped down her second and third shots without so much as pausing for breath. "Oh Goddess, where has this stuff been all my life!?"
"Wait! Stop!" I whispered hastily. "I'm going to get you some water. There's no way you can actually be enjoying drinking that! Just try not to throw up when it starts burning, okay?"
I moved away from the bar quickly with the intention of flagging down one of the floor slaves (I figured that the bartender wouldn't be much help seeing as how he A: made his living by selling expensive alcoholic drinks, and B: thought I was a brain damaged idiot). Happily, a collar wearing mare had just exited the staff entrance to the kitchen as I turned around.
She was carrying a large tray on her back filled with plate after plate of immaculately presented marinated meats. From where I was, I could discern her dark auburn hide and bright red mane, but it wasn't until I closed in that I was able to see the deep, dark circles under her eyes and the echoing sadness behind her forced smile. Her hide was littered with dark, shiny streaks - the remains of magically concealed whip marks and other such scars - but her cutie mark, a waving blue flag with a large white 'X' across it, was still prominent regardless.
"Excuse me," I said in hushed tones as she passed me. "I was wondering of you could do me a favour."
She stopped dead in her tracks, her wide, scared eyes tracking slowly towards my face as her breath quivered.
"Y-yes sir..." she whimpered, rolling her consonants in an unmistakable fashion as her Coltish accent rumbled through her words. "I-if ye'll just let me deliver these plates, Ah'll... show ye tae a... private room..."
"A... private room?" I asked, confused. "Thanks, but I'm not tired. Besides, it's the middle of the day."
"Uh... pardon...?" she asked, cocking her head as she frowned back at me.
"Never mind," I replied, shaking mine dismissively. "Look I need you to look after that mare at the bar. See her? The little one with the— I mean, the little one surrounded by bottles."
"Aye..." she sighed reservedly. "Will do, sir. Do ye happen tae know whit she likes, sir?"
"Uh," I mused. "As far as I know, breaking things, nuclear physics and, as of five minutes ago, whisky."
"Whit? N-no, that's not whit Ah meant, sir," she replied despondently. "Ah mean does she like oral, anal, toys, bondage, is she a top or a bottom, a sub or a domme—?"
"Stop, stop, stop," I said, waving my hooves at her. "I don't have a bloody clue what you're talking about. I just need you to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't drink too much of that crap they're serving at the bar. Now can you do that our not?"
"That's... that's all...?" she asked, her jaw slack with surprise. "Ye don't want me tae... do anything to her...? Ye're not gonnae tie me up and have me beg for mercy while she slides vegetables into my nether regions? Or touch maself while you and her make out and piss all over me? Or dress me up like a six year old filly and beat mah hindquarters till they glow?"
I blinked a couple of times, frowning as the mental images of what the mare had just suggested settled in my mind's eye. Something told me that her time at this place had been far from wholesome...
"Those... weren't going to be my first requests, no..." I replied slowly. "I just wanted you to look after my friend - make sure she's alright, get her some water if she ends up drinking too much booze, that sort of thing."
"Oh," the red-maned mare replied, a look of genuine surprise settling on her face. "Um... aye, sure. Ah can look after yer friend there, uh... sir..."
"Thanks," I said, still not quite sure of what had just happened. "I didn't catch your name, by the way - you're from Coltland, right"
"Uh... aye, I'm Coltish. My number's 26596," she replied, gesturing to a laser printed set of digits on her collar.
"No, not your number," I said. "Your name. You're a proper pony, you should have a proper name."
"M-mah name...?" she asked in hushed tones, her eyes glistening with the beginnings of tears. "S-Saltira... M-mah name's... Saltira..."
"Nice to meet you, Saltira," I said softly, as a bloom of happy warmth bubbled up through my chest, inflating my lungs with sunshine as it went. "I'm Compass. But for now, you can call me Smith."
With a small, yet happy nod, Saltira bade me farewell and pivoted on one of her rear legs. She headed off to continue with her waitressing duties, all the while glancing back at Atom to make sure she was still conscious. The only difference between now and before though, was that the smile on her face was actually genuine.
Happy that I had at least done something right that day, I turned around and began to trot back towards the table I had last seen Bulkhead sitting at. My intention was that of stopping him from telling any of his Goddess-awful jokes and attracting the wrath of the unamused masses.
It is important at this juncture to note my word choice in the preceding sentence. Specifically, the word 'intention'. In my recounting this tale, it was placed there in particular in order to clarify that, although I wanted to go and save Bulkhead from himself, that is not necessarily what happened next.
You see, as I turned around, I was immediately thrown to the floor, landing painfully on my rump, with a sharp pain in my nose and the sound of shattering glass reverberating around me. A dull thud and a sort of 'oof' sound told me that somepony else had just received a similar blow. I remained still and tense on the floor for a moment, but rose quickly when the wall of eyes from earlier failed to focus on me again (either they were now used to me acting like I had half a brain, or a collision resulting in a few broken glasses wasn't worth their attention - regardless, I was just happy nopony noticed).
Picking myself up, I took a blind step forward to help up whoever I had just knocked over, only to have the bottom drop out of my stomach in panic. Laying there, quite literally spread-eagled on the floor, was Galinda, the captain of the Razor mercenaries.
The world around me slowed down as she began to get up, my hooves suddenly rooted to the floor. My mind raced and my heart rate jumped through the ceiling, a thousand silent prayers to the Goddesses zooming out of my conscious mind. I begged the forces of the cosmos to stop her from recognising the distinctive design of my barding or the large black overcoat that she herself once owned. As my panic blossomed though, I was able to make out a number of details regarding her appearance that significantly eased my worries, and introduced an extremely interesting line of questioning in their stead.
For one, she was unarmed, which was an immediate plus. She had also clearly been serving drinks, which was a bit strange. And she seemed to be wearing the same basic white tunic as all of the other slaves I had seen in the bar area, which was even stranger. Could it have been that... she herself had been enslaved!? Sure enough, as she finally righted herself, a shiny, new bomb collar came into view, fastened securely around the feathered column of her neck.
"Oh Goddess, I'm so sorry, sir!" she pleaded suddenly, dusting the larger glass fragments off to one side. "Let me make it up to you! Just please don't tell the handlers! I'm begging y—"
Her eyes settled on me as she spoke, her fatigued yet keen gaze going from the strangely familiar overcoat to the unique '52' embroidered on my barding collar, finally coming to rest on my bandaged face. Her beak slackened and her pupils contracted to a set of pin points as recognition dawned within her.
"Oh no..." she whispered, her voice shaking. "IT'S Y—! MMMPHH!"
With a flash of azure light, my horn suddenly burst into life, clamping her break shut and grabbing her by the wrists of her forelegs, lifting her about two inches off of the floor. Before I could say or do anything else though, a small, greasy looking unicorn buck galloped up to me and began to speak.
"Oh, sir! Sir!?" he said in an annoying, nasal voice. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to interfere with the house slaves while they're on duty! If you'd like, I can have this one flogged for dropping your drink but I'm afraid that you can't punish her yourself! Now if you'll just put her down, I'll have the bartender replace your beverage free of charg—"
"Private room," I said simply, trying as best I could to sound like a grunting primitive from the Paleoponic era. Galinda's face drooped and she began to shout through her closed beak as the practical implications of what I'd just said became clear to her.
"MMMHH! MMH MH MMMMH!" she screamed, her cries muffled into soft mewls by my magical grasp.
"Oh, you wanted to—?" began the weasely little pony, a sickly little grin twisting its way onto his face. "Ah, well in that case, sir, if you'd just like to follow me, I'll show you to our private—"
"No," I grunted. "Tell me where."
"Uh... just down that corridor there," he replied, a little deflated. "First open door on your left..."
I hurried out of the bar area with Galinda in tow, moving as quickly as I could just in case my panic-driven burst of magic suddenly fizzled out. As promised, the first open door I reached in the adjoining corridor led to a stuffy, windowless room into which I rushed, tossing my captive onto the giant bed within. I locked the door behind me, noting happily (or maybe that should have been worriedly) that the room was most likely soundproof given the thickness of the walls.
"Okay," I sighed, leaning up against the door while I caught my breath. "Now that we're alone, you can relax. I'm not going to hurt y— WHOA!"
A large object made of black rubber suddenly flew past my head, rebounding off of the wall and landing directly in front of me, where it began to spontaneously vibrate across the carpet. I stared in confusion at the device, recognising it as a ridiculously proportioned version of the stallion anatomy I had recently become so well acquainted with. Frowning, I looked up toward Galinda, just in time for a smaller version - a pink one this time - to connect painfully with my nose.
"OW!" I shouted, cradling my freshly bloodied snout. "What the hell is your problem!?"
"Stay the fuck away!" Galinda replied fiercely, her eyes alive with fear. "I'm not going to let you lay a single hoof on me you crazy bastard! Get back!"
She punctuated her outburst by launching more of the curious, phallic objects at me, all of which seemed to either pulse, wiggle or vibrate in some way or another. The panicked gryphon had slid behind the bed in the centre of the room, using its huge bulk to keep me at bay as I ran around trying to grab her.
"I just want to talk to you!" I said loudly, as another vibrating object, this one plated with hard, mirrored chrome, hit me right between the eyes. "And will you please stop throwing those fake penises at me!?"
"Of course I'm not going to stop!" she replied furiously. "I'm assaulting you with them!"
"But why!?" I shouted, as our ballet around the bed continued unabated. "I've just told I'm not going to hurt you!"
"As if I'm going to believe that!" she cried, tears of desperation starting to appear at the corners of her large, yellow eyes. "I don't care if they blow my head off! You're not touching me!"
'Oh, for Luna's sake,' I thought. 'This is going nowhere! I need to calm her down before she does something stupid.'
At that, a cunning and, dare I say, brilliant little idea popped into my head: I would jump over the top of the bed and pounce on her, forcing her 'fight or flight' reflex to kick in. Now, given her current disposition, I figured that she would much rather fly to the other side of the room than take a chance at clawing my face off (especially given how 'dangerous' I was supposed to be). I could then stretch out my hind legs and buck her in the chest as she flew overhead, knocking the wind out of her so I could get close enough to explain my position and start bargaining for her silence.
Still taken by my own brilliance, I launched myself over the mattress, making sure that I was in full view of the panicked, scantily clad gryphon as I did so. She shrieked in surprise at my sudden flurry of motion and, as I had expected, unfurled her wings in order to make her aerial escape.
Just then though, a curious thing occurred. I turned my head around while I was still in mid-pounce, and tensed my flank muscles ready for the ensuing buck I was to deliver. Strangely however, the gryphon-shaped silhouette I was expecting never entered my peripheral vision, leaving me to collide bodily with the sweaty, scared mass of feathers cowering in front of me.
As I regained my faculties after coming to a halt, I propped myself up on my forward hooves and found that I had successfully subdued my assailant (although it wasn't in the way I had originally planned). She squinted up at me as she tried in vain to flex her limbs, no doubt battling a near concussion level headache after our collision. As the fog lifted from her perceptions and she realised what was happening, Galinda's pupils once again contracted to a pair of tiny points while her eyes grew into saucers of apprehension.
"Oh... G-Goddess..." she whimpered, staring helplessly up at me. "P-please, Compass, Doctor, whatever your name is, please don't kill me!"
"Who said anything about killing you!?" I replied, still panting from my sudden exertion moments earlier and the resulting flash of pain. (In hindsight, I probably should have waited to catch my breath before delivering that particular sentence - let's just say that it sounded more than a little threatening given my posture at the time.)
"N-nopony!" she stammered quickly, sweat trickling down her brow. "I, uh, remember what you called me the last time we met. D-do you still want a g-good... little... birdie...?"
She began to weep silently as her struggling transitioned from genuine attempts at gaining freedom to a series of titillating theatrical moans and whimpers.
"Galinda," I began softly. "That's not—"
"I'm s-sorry I've been a b-bad birdie, Master," she squeaked, a genuine measure of cuteness seeping into her otherwise aggressive tones. "P-please don't p-punish me too h-harshly."
"H-hey!" I tried to continue. "Stop th—"
"I p-promise I'll be a good birdie, Master!" she continued to whimper, as, much to my dismay, a familiar tightness began to develop between my hind legs. "I'll d-do all the th-things that M-Master likes. I-I'll start with Master's b-big, hard—"
"That's enough!" I shouted, loud enough to make her recoil with fright. "Galinda, I'm not the buck you think I am - the first time we met, I tricked you, okay? Sage and I wanted information, so I played the mad mercenary to intimidate you and induce some bean-spilling. I'm not insane, I'm not a rapist and unless you're doing something I don't like, I'm not dangerous! Okay!?"
Galinda looked at me with a neutral, vacant expression for several seconds before finally opening her beak to respond.
"What…!?" she hissed emptily.
"I was never going to hurt you," I replied. "Not back at Eagle Ridge and certainly not here. I just happen to be an excellent liar."
"Do... do you have any idea what you've cost me...!?" she said, her voice flat and quiet.
"Well, how about you tell me?" I said, trying my best to match her mood. "I'd certainly prefer that to dodging another batch of those vibrating things."
Galinda broke eye contact with me for a moment as she glanced around the room in thought. Her gaze moved to the walls, then the ceiling above and, finally, back to my face. A sigh escaped her beak as she gave me a tiny, compliant nod.
"Okay," she said softly. "Let me up and we'll talk."
I acquiesced, padding backwards carefully so as not to injure her any further. There was a tense moment as she righted herself during which I thought she might return to assaulting me with fake penises. Much to my relief though, all she did instead was draw herself up to her full height and look me up and down.
"You've been busy, I see," she said flatly, regarding my various scars and wrapped head. "What's with all the bandages?"
"Edinbuck's Sentinel - well, Sentinels - caused most of it," I replied. "The bandages are just so nopony would recognise me... which, I'm sure you'll agree, worked out wonderfully."
"Huh..." she said back, flexing her jaw. "You went up against the Sentinel and survived? I'm impressed. But you probably should have changed your outfit as part of that 'disguise' of yours, although I will say the horn's a nice touch."
"Yeah..." I said slowly, as I began to unravel the bandages with my hooves. "The horn's not part of the disguise - it's, uh, kind of a permanent fixture now."
I wasn't exactly sure how she'd respond to the sight of my most recent disfigurement, but I surmised that seeing my face - my real face - would help when it came time to ask her to keep my secret. I needed Galinda to trust me, and negotiating from behind a mask was not likely to provide said trust in anywhere near the amount of time I actually had to hoof.
As the strips of fabric fell to the floor, Galinda's eyes studied my features in their entirety - every scar, every bruise and every cut was examined and catalogued by her invasive mercantile perusal. That was until, of course, the final bandage was removed. Galinda's eyes widened and her brow flexed into a frown of confusion as my shiny new appendage was finally revealed. She stared for several long moments, making me squirm slightly with discomfort, before finally looking me in the eye to ask the obvious question.
"What... what the hell...!?" she whispered, gawking. "That's... that's fuckin' unbelievable! How did you survive that!"
"Oh, Goddess, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," I replied, my best faux-nonchalant smile plastered across my face.
"B-but it's real!" Galinda exclaimed. "You used magic on me! Last time we met, you were an earth pony! I mean, I thought just you had a levitation talisman in your barding or something!"
"Nope. No talisman," I replied smoothly. "I'm a unicorn now. Unicorns are cool. However, the particulars of my transition from one to the other are still the subject of a great deal of confusion, so, that being the case, how about we move on, and you tell me what the hell you're doing here dressed as a slave?"
Galinda stared at me for another few seconds, shaking her head in disbelief before scoffing softly and returning to her regular conversational tone.
"Mostly carrying drinks," she said sarcastically, her eyes still partially focussed on the crown of my head. "But I'm sure it won't be long before I to get to lick out some rich old mare or get fucked in the arse by one of the guards. I'm an exotic flavour apparently, at least according to the handlers."
"That's not what I—" I began, rolling my eyes.
"I know what you meant," she said sadly. "I... I made a mistake. Stone Tower's contracts are like gold, so delivering a bounty for him's a privilege you pay for. The Razors and I were broke, so when the opportunity to impress him came up, I leveraged part of the bounty itself as our signing-on fee. Basically, I bet on us capturing him. So when Stone Tower found out we hadn't retrieved Sage he... he..."
"Demanded payment," I interjected softly, eliciting a small, shaking nod from Galinda. "But this time your credit was no good, so you leveraged your own freedom for another chance at the contract. But... you guys got Sage the second time - that's the whole reason I'm here, to get him out of this place. How did you end up—?"
"I was their Captain!" she suddenly shouted. "It's my job to make sacrifices for my famil— I mean, my team! I deserve this for being so damned stupid in the first place! I... deserve... this...!"
Her last sentence was littered with sobs as the once proud creature in front of me dropped to her knees in tears. I closed in slowly, making sure she wasn't surprised by my approach, and lay down next to her.
The Razors had betrayed her, I realised, a pang of feeling threatening to tear my hearts in two. She had risked everything for her friends, only to be left to a life of servitude and degradation in thanks. I thought of Buckshot and Mo, incarcerated in the slave quarters above, and shivered as a wave of awful 'what-ifs' washed over my mind. I tried my best to banish such depressing thoughts, returning to the current matter as quickly as I could.
"It's okay, Galinda," I whispered, as I chanced putting a supportive hoof around her strong neck. "Like I said, I'm not here to do business with Tower. I'm here to rescue Sage and shut this hell hole down for good. It's my intention to free every slave in this facility by the end of the week."
"A-are you crazy!?" she hissed through the tears. "You want to liberate the Emporium!? You and what fucking army!?"
"The thousands upon thousands of slaves in the upper levels who want nothing more than their freedom?" I proffered sarcastically. "Besides, it seems like every pony I talk to thinks it's crazy, so that means nopony's actually seriously tried it before, which gives us the upper hoof. So, do you want in or not? I could certainly use some—, uh, gryphon, with your fighting skills when it all kicks off around here."
"I... doubt I'd be much good..." Galinda said quietly, her gaze dropping to the floor in sorrow. "They sanded my claws and they... they pinioned... my wings..."
"They… they what!?" I whispered, a warm, glowing outrage suddenly flowing into the spaces behind my eyes and at the back of my mouth.
"They... cut the muscles under my wings and... and used magic to make it... permanent," Galinda said slowly, as tears freely trickled down her face. "I can unfurl them. But I'll never... never fly again..."
At that, Galinda's pride completely deserted her and she began to weep just as I had outside Stable 52. Great torrents of hopeless brine careened down her plumage as she wrapped her forelegs around me and squeezed. I doubted that I was anywhere near her ideal companion at the time… but I was all she had.
"It's okay, Galinda," I cooed softly, my teeth gritted in rage at the injustice of her mutilation. "I'll get you out of here. You'll see... you'll see."
I held her for an indeterminately long time as the sorrow leaked out of her into the hide of the shoulder. I did my best to control my breathing, pushing my anger and the urge to break the first handler I saw in half deep down into my breast for later use. I was there for Galinda, and nopony else.
"Galinda?" I eventually whispered, still shaking with anger. "Will you help me destroy this place? Will you help me make sure that the slavers can never do this to another living creature?"
She looked up at me with her big, yellow eyes, pink and puffy from all the crying, and gently opened her beak to reply.
"...yes," came the whispered response.
"Alright," I said quietly, as a hot breath of anger audibly escaped my nostrils. "I want to free all the slaves at once and I'm assuming it's not as simple as interrupting the control signal to their collars. Is there a terminal or something I can access that can disable them remotely?"
"Y-yeah. There's a terminal," Galinda replied, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"Good," I said. "Where can I find it?"
"In Stone Tower's office..." the gryphon said solemnly.
'Oh, but of course that's where it is!' I grunted inwardly, grinding my teeth in frustration. 'Goddess forbid the thing I need ever be easy to get a hold of!'
I turned to Galinda as she picked herself up and adjusted her tunic - it was at least two sizes too small for her strong frame, revealing a pleasing, shapely portion of her flank as she moved (a sight which I ended up guiltily staring at for several minutes).
"Alright then," I said, as I prepared myself for the return to my semi-mute character. "Galinda, I need you to be ready to move when I disable the collars, because I sincerely doubt this is going to be a peaceful transition. Don't tell anypony about me, okay?"
"Got it," she replied, her confident demeanour returning with a bracing intake of breath.
"Okay," I said, sighing as I moved towards the door. "Let's get back out there - I hope Atom and Bulkhead haven't done anything to stupid while I was-"
"Wait!" Galinda suddenly shouted, causing me to whip around in surprise. "You can't go back out like that! They'll all know something isn't right!"
"What?" I replied. "How would they be able to figure that out?"
"Simple, you idiot," she said, rolling her eyes. "You dragged me in here - to a private room - and we're about to waltz out without any scratches, gashes or wet feathers a few minutes later? Everypony out there expected you to come in here and fuck my brains out!"
"Oh..." I replied, unsure of what exactly was to come next. "Um... well, then what do you suggest we, uh… do?"
A single thin eyebrow tilted skyward as Galinda drew herself up to her full height and bored through me her with her sharp eyes.
"Don't get any ideas,” she said warningly, as she began rummaging through a chest of drawers near the door. “I meant what I said earlier - nopony's bedding me unless I fucking say so, collar or not!" Her tail swayed gently back and forth, aiding her balance, and I did my best not to stare at her hindquarters as her search continued.
"Uh, Galinda...?" I asked, as I turned my head to face the floor.
"Mm-hm?" she replied, her beak still buried in the drawer.
"Uh..." I said, trying desperately to distract myself from her body. "What, uh... Oh! What are these fake penis things for?"
"They're called dildoes," she replied absentmindedly. "You use them for sex. Gets you off quicker or gives you a bigger orgasm or something like that. I've managed to avoid them so far."
"Uh-huh..." I said, still straining against the urge to turn my head. "And, uh... why... are there so many?"
"Dunno," the gryphon replied. "In case of dildo emergencies?"
"Uh-huh..." I said, as my sense self-restraint was quietly suffocated somewhere inside my head and I turned to once again regard Galinda's hindquarters.
There was something so... enticing about those outfits - perhaps even an enchantment - that made it difficult for me to tear my eyes away from her flank. The way that they offered naught but a tiny glimpse of flesh, framing what little was on show for all to observe at their pleasure, was somehow exciting. I knew that by now Galinda was either too disciplined or too weary of it to care, but the prospect of something as simple as a skimpy garment making a proud, strong creature like her vulnerable - in any way, shape or form - made my breath quiver.
"Ah!" she said suddenly, bringing me back to reality with a jolt. "Found it!"
In one of hers claws she held a large, semi-transparent tube of fluid, the purpose of which I couldn’t immediately divine. Before I could ask the obvious question, Galinda suddenly hiked up her tunic and began to smear the tube’s clear, gelatinous contents over her hindquarters, paying special attention to the space between her rear legs. My jaw dropped and my eyes bulged out of my head at the alien sight of her reproductive organs as the rosy folds of flesh were inadvertently bared to me. A special, soft atmosphere formed in the room as I centred unblinkingly on what she was doing, the sounds of her gentle ministrations forming a strange, all-consuming rhythm of fuzziness around me. Apparently unnerved by my sudden silence, Galinda glanced briefly over her shoulder, and proceeded to do a double take when she saw the look on my face.
"H-hey!" she shouted, blushing angrily and turning her backside so that I could no longer see it. "Stop that, you fuckin' pervert!"
"I would..." I said slowly. "But I... can't seem to... stop staring at it..."
"Try fucking harder!" she shouted indignantly, as her enforced partial nudity was suddenly brought to the forefront of her considerations and she began to try in vain to stretch the tunic over her entire body at once. A tear quickly appeared along the back of the garment, eliciting an undignified yelp from Galinda and an unexpected groan of pleasure from me as her toned, oiled rump was left stark and bare.
"Will you stop looking at me like that!?" she shouted. "You're creeping me out!"
"S-sorry..." I said absentmindedly. "You just look so—"
"Stop!" Galinda shouted back, hurling the bottle of gel at me. "Not another word! Not one, single syllable more, you understand! Just rub that stuff between your legs and then towel off so it looks like were going at it, okay!?"
"Y-yeah... sure..." I whimpered, swallowing as a few small drops of the clear substance dribbled to the floor from between her hindquarters, despite her clenching together them in embarrassment.
I picked up the bottle with my forehooves and laid on my back against the bed, squeezing the plastic container until a thick layer of the gel within had been deposited onto my belly and sheath. I tried to divert my gaze from Galinda as I worked it into the small hairs of my hide, but found that my mind's eye had retained a very nice set of images, making the subsequent behaviour of my optical organs entirely unimportant. The gel made my hooves slick and frictionless, allowing me to glide over my hide and apply pressure to a wide variety of places in rapid succession. Before long, the gel had well and truly matted my hide, but my hooves continued to rub my nether regions almost of their own volition. A deep, sweet pleasure was blossoming in my gut and travelling through my pelvic area to the tip of my—
'Oh Goddess, not again!' I cried inwardly as I opened my eyes. The pink tentacle between my legs was back with a vengeance, engorged with blood and standing erect like a fleshy periscope. I looked anxiously over to Galinda as my breathing became short and hoarse, only to find her with her rear legs spread wide, a small needle held delicately in her claws. She was gently prodding her rear with it, eliciting the release of small trickles of blood which she smeared into the glistening layer of gel on her hide.
Now, the blood I could have done without seeing, but just the sight of her bent over like that, her claws gently pressing the soft, wet flesh of her backside made my mind swim. I gasped loudly as a fresh wave of pleasure rocketed through my nether regions and stared in horror as the gryphon's head swivelled to face me.
"WH-WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" she screamed, her rear legs once again shooting closed.
"Oh Goddess, Galinda" I shouted back, huffing and puffing all the while. "I'm sorry! I can't stop! I don't know what's happening!"
"You dirty son of a bitch!" she hissed furiously, as she marched over and pinned my forelegs to the bed, inadvertently toppling on top of me in the process. Galinda halted her fall by pressing her entire muscular bulk onto my limbs, completely restraining my torso while holding her body aloft. Her back arched tensely as she strained to avoid physical contact with me while her beak cried havoc for my infraction.
I tried to listen to her as she shouted obscenities at me (I really did, I swear!), but my gaze was once again drawn to the enticing sight of the space between her rear legs, and the somehow infinitely more arousing concept of genital proximity. Galinda continued to berate me for a few seconds longer before she noticed that I wasn't responding to her expressions of outrage.
"I am not something for you to sit and clop over!" she shouted angrily. "Got that!? Hey! Will you look at me when I'm talking to you!? What the fuck are you staring a—!?"
Galinda's eyes followed my line of sight as she tilted her head slowly downward, eventually coming to rest on the focus of my vision. We both realised in unison that, with a single movement of my hips, I could easily bridge the gap between our reproductive areas, bringing the wet, sticky organs together in a singularly carnal embrace. I wasn't exactly sure why I wanted to do it mind, but something in my head (and between my legs) was willing me inexorably to push my pelvis towards hers.
"Don't you dare!" squawked Galinda, her eyes wide with warning fire. "I swear to Celestia I'll gut you if you do it!"
"But..." I panted, as the urge to thrust filled me with wet shivers. "I want to... so... much!"
"Don't!" she repeated, her hips fighting to maintain their distance from me. "I'm warning you!"
"Would it really be so bad?" I asked desperately. "Just a touch! Please, I promise I'll be quick!"
"I don't care if you can come in ten seconds flat!" she roared. "You put that in and I swear to Celestia I'll peck your bloody face off!"
"But... but..." I whimpered back, as the urge to push was exacerbated by a gentle current of air that glided wistfully past my organ. "I feel like I need it! What's the problem with just one little—?"
"I'm not going to let you have sex with me just because you've said you'll help me! It doesn't work like that!" she said quickly, interrupting me.
The word 'sex' was suddenly in the forefront of my mind, occupying every single one of my thoughts. Was that what I was about to do!? Was I about to have this much talked about, haughtily lauded, almost mythical 'intercourse' with her!?
My last image of Buckshot being led away by the handlers immediately catapulted itself into my mind's eye, rendering the trust he had placed in me in dark, cloudy shades across the canvas of my mind. Alongside that solemn still came the echoes of a deep pang of betrayal - the structure of his entire life was now balanced precariously upon my little, blue shoulders, and all I could think about was jamming a part of my anatomy into some gryphon who, a little over a week earlier, had tried to kill me for money!
My words from the pub in Edinbuck drifted through my consciousness and I was reminded of how I had embarrassed him in front of the Trotfell guards, how I had outright declared my desire to have my 'first time' with him rather than anypony else. The urge to push was diminishing now, falling into the recesses of my mind. I still felt it clawing though, as if I had shackled it and its only recourse was to fight for my will.
It was a good thing then that I had already decided upon my next course of action...
With more strength than I thought I could muster, I pushed my hips up towards Galinda, forcing a loud squawk of surprise from her beak as the harsh impact resonated through her. There was a moment of silence as the desire to thrust died away entirely, secreted back to whatever dark crevice it had originally come from.
Galinda pushed herself up onto her elbows a couple of seconds later, realising that I had, in fact, not penetrated her, but had instead used my hips and an unprecedented burst of upper body strength to throw her onto the floor beside me. She stared at me silently, her expression a mix of confusion and a strange, reverent variety of surprise, as I squeezed my rear legs together as tightly as I could, rolling erratically around the floor and forcing my arousal kicking and screaming back into the depths of my loins.
"You..." Galinda said quietly. "You didn't do it..."
"And?" I panted back at her, as my organ continued to recede, marking the halfway point in the restoration of my dignity. "Is that... so difficult... to believe...? I happen... to have... a coltfriend. And I want... my first time... to be with him... okay!?"
"Y-you're a virgin!?" Galinda scoffed as she rose off of the musty carpet. "And you're saving yourself!? Celestia's tits, now I've heard everything!"
"Good! Great! Whatever!" I groaned as the wonderful, sweet feeling I had been enveloped by a moment earlier ebbed excruciatingly into the abyss. "Can we get out of here then!? Surely we'll look the part now!"
"I'd, uh... I'd say so, yeah..." Galinda replied, in a curiously non-combative tone. "Do you, uh, need any help or—?"
"No," I said, hoisting myself up onto my hooves using the bed to support my still weak knees, "I'll be fine. I've just got to towel off right? Make all this goo look like natural secretions that we've spread around?"
"Yeah, that's right," Galinda answered simply.
I grabbed the towel that she had been using a few minutes earlier to dry off her nethers, and applied it gently to my own. I found that the affected region was very tender and sensitive, and that even the slightest touch still brought on a little remnant of the sticky sweetness (it took all my strength to not dive back down there with my hooves again). After exhaling deeply a couple of times, I finished the preparations to my 'makeup' and reapplied my improvised headgear before starting towards the door. I was halfway across the room when a set of soft, measured tones addressed me, causing me to stop in my tracks and check the room for intruders.
"Compass...?" Galinda said, her voice the most delicate I had heard it yet.
"What is it, Galinda?" I responded, my head cocked to one side slightly - I had no idea how she could speak so delicately, especially given her otherwise harsh demeanour.
"I... I do listen to the radio from time to time, you know..." she said slowly, clearly tip-hoofing around some other subject. "And I remember this one radio drama - the one that Moon Shadow always used to broadcast from Trotfell. The Razors and I listened to it whenever we were in the area."
"And?" I asked, frowning. Where was she going with this?
"And," she replied. "I remember that the main character - the one that Sage said you... ‘resembled’ - could... could change himself when he was badly hurt. That he could become somepony completely new; with a different body and a totally changed personality."
"Galinda," I said, as I sighed with aggravation, "if there's a point to this fascinating little story I'd love to hear it."
"The point," Galinda responded, "is that you are completely different. To me at least. I mean, the last time I met you, you were this terrifying, crazy earth pony stable buck, all squeaky-clean and mental and angry. But now... now you're... kind... and... and caring. You want to help - to make everything right, even though it's nothing to do with you... and let's not forget the horn! I have to know, Compass... are you—?"
"Look," I said, interrupting the feathered thinker, "Galinda, I've already asked that question a hundred times and I'm no closer to an answer now than I was when I first thought to ask it. Yes, the similarities are remarkable, but their existence can neither conclusively confirm nor debunk any theories you or anypony else may have about what I've become. All that I know is who I am. And right now, that's the most important thing I have."
Galinda stared at me for a moment as my words sank in, blinking only once as an implacable and subtly respectful expression was drawn onto her face.
"So…" she began quietly. "Who are you then...?"
I turned to face her, and once again pulled the bandages slowly off of my face as I trotted forwards, every one of my steps heavy and purposeful. Galinda took one step back for every two I took forward, eventually pressing herself up against the far wall as I continued to advance.
"I'm Compass," I said breathily, staring straight into her wide, yellow eyes as my chest began to heave. "I'm a genetically modified engineer with the memories of a thousand year old time traveller. I was birthed from a tube in a hermetically sealed fallout shelter called Stable 52 in the Trottingham lowlands. I am seven years and nine months old, and I'm the one who's going to save every stallion, mare and foal in the slave quarters above!"
Galinda stared silently at me for a long while, her beak slack and her eyes glazed. Her head slowly began to turn, indicating the onset of either a state of confusion or a mood of scepticism.
"Got a problem with that!?" I asked, panting triumphantly.
The gryphon simply continued to stare, her head rotating so far that I feared it might just unscrew and drop to the floor.
"W-wait," Galinda said, as she squinted back at me. "How old did you say you were...!?"
Galinda and I left the private room a short while later, but only after I had explained at least half a dozen times that I was indeed as old (or, indeed, as young) as I claimed to be.
We emerged into the corridor already fully in character - my bandages were back in place, as was my extensive vocabulary of guttural, monosyllabic utterances, and Galinda was making a good show of being a recently raped, hopelessly downtrodden victim of the Equestrian slave trade. The tiny pricks that she had made in her backside made sense now - they were exuding thin, harmless streams of crimson that trickled over her genitals and down her legs, creating the illusion that she had just suffered a rough and unpleasant servicing.
Our preparation proved to be a good idea as the slimy little unicorn from earlier suddenly showed up at the other end of the corridor and made a beeline for us even before the private room's door had finished closing.
"Ah, I see you're finished, sir," he said, every syllable slipping greasily off his tongue as he glanced behind me toward Galinda. "May I assume that you enjoyed yourself?"
"Yeah," I mumbled throatily, casting my best 'lustful' look back in Galinda's direction. "Gryphon was good. I pay triple."
"A-are you sure, sir?" he gawked, as I flashed my credit slip in his face. "There's really no need - all of our services are offered at a flat rate, and we wouldn't want a client of your importance to—"
"Triple!" I said firmly, as I loomed imposingly over his tiny form.
"Y-yes sir!" he stammered, turning to address Galinda. "You, gryphon! You can have an hour's break. Go back to the slave quarters and clean yourself up."
I sent a deep scowl in his direction when he turned back around, resulting in the immediate formation of several beads of sweat on his already shiny brow.
"U-uh, actually," he said hurriedly, as Galinda started to move off, "m-make that two, no, three hours!"
With that, she slinked off down towards the other end of the corridor, pausing just long enough for me to send a secret, supporting wink in her direction (fortunately, the administrator pony was too short to see my face as I looked at her). I started back towards the bar area, hoping that nothing too bad had happened while I was gone, and was joined (regrettably) by the unicorn.
"Uh, s-sir?" he said shakily, as his tiny legs struggled to keep up with me. "I had something else that I have to discuss with you..."
I grumbled something unintelligible back, indicating that he had my permission to proceed.
"Well, sir," he said, "it's to do with one of your slaves – the male. I'm afraid he... escaped and was able to cause an incident in the bar before he was subdued—"
"WHAT!?" I screamed, rounding on the diminutive little pest. "What happened!?"
"AH!" he screamed at my sudden outburst. "H-he injured a handler and escaped in the ensuing confusion! The first thing he did was make a run for the owner's area where he was apprehended after one of the house slaves managed to distract him long enough for an anaesthetic spell to cast by one of the other patrons."
Both my mind and my hearts raced at the thought of what could possibly make Buckshot act that way - could it have simply been that he lost his nerve? Perhaps he had found something out that he needed to tell me! Whatever the case, I had to go and see him.
"Where is he!?" I shouted, causing the little unicorn to wince at my tone.
"H-he's back in the slave quarters under heavy guard, sir," he responded. "I've arranged a flogging scheduled for this afternoon, but if you prefer, you can administer his punishment yourself. H-he is your property after all, sir."
"No punishment!" I said quickly, the urge to break character threatening to overwhelm me. "I do it when we leave!"
"I-I'm terribly sorry, sir," the bastard responded, "but many of our patrons were greatly distressed by his outburst and are demanding he be, at the very least, subjected to corporal punishment. In all honesty sir, it's actually the best outcome, both for you and the slave - were he the property of the Emporium he would already have been disposed of."
My mind swam as the prospect of my beloved being strung up and physically abused saturated my thoughts. I couldn't just let somepony do this to him! And, under the circumstances - the horrible, inequine circumstances - that meant that I would almost certainly have to take this despicable, deplorable little louse up on his offer of administering the punishment myself.
"I… I do it then!" I growled, my options exhausted. "I flog him!"
"V-very good, sir," the unicorn replied, nodding. "I'll have that arranged for you."
At that, he trotted off as quickly as his hooves would carry him, leaving me alone in the corridor to contemplate what was to come. With a deep dread lining my stomach, I ventured back out into the bar area.
The impact of Buckshot's intrusion wasn't immediately evident as I left the private corridor. The tables were exactly where they had been and the slave owners were all arranged as before, enjoying their despotic roles and hedonistic ways at the expense of their innocent 'possessions'. However, there were now two additional handlers guarding the main doors that hadn't been there previously, and there was definitely a great deal more broken glass and crockery on the floor than before - clearly they were still in the middle of discretely cleaning up the aftermath.
I located Atom and Bulkhead as quickly as my eyes would allow - they were both now seated up at the bar - and started towards them to update myself on the recent happenings.
"Atom? Bulkhead?" I whispered into the space between their heads. "I heard about Buckshot. What the hell hap—?"
"Aw, it's Smith!" drawled Atom as she suddenly looped her ropey little forelegs around my neck. "Smithy-Smithy-dumb-dumb! You come to give me a cuddle, eh?"
The smell of her breath told me that she had consumed a massive quantity of alcohol since I had last seen her, and her behaviour indicated that she was under the influence of something (most likely the very same substance) that was dampening her inhibitions and inducing a sort of sleepy-looking euphoria.
I turned to Bulkhead as Atom nuzzled my shoulder and was horrified to discover that he too had apparently consumed a vast amount of the troublesome beverage. A number of short, brown glass bottles surrounded his head (which was laid upon the bar - he was unconscious) along with a small puddle of drool that was flowing freely from the goofy, contented smile plastered across his face.
Glancing around the bar, I cursed the red-maned 'Saltira' whom I had entrusted with Atom's wellbeing, but found that I was unable to locate her anywhere in the room. Just as Atom began to gently snore into my shoulder, and I silently questioned how my situation could possibly worsen, a faint buzz emanated from a pocket in my barding - the very pocket I was keeping my credit slip in. Yanking it carefully out of the fabric pouch, my heart sank straight into my gut as I beheld the enchanted, calligraphic script that had appeared on it:
'Mr. Tower will see you now.'
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Discord’s Touch You’ve been surrounded by chaos for far too long, and now some of it’s stuck! You lose two points to your LUCK stat, but, just to even the odds, you gain seven points to each and every one of your skills!
Chapter 12 – A Slave to Time (Part 3) "Why, of all the—! This is your sister Applejack, remember!? The loyalest of friends and the most dependable of ponies!?"
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...
"Pass me that spanner, will you?" I said, as a splodge of industrial lubricant dribbled onto my cheek.
"Sure!" a disembodied voice replied. It was immediately followed by the approach of the requested tool in a sheath of magic, which I grabbed with my own aura. I thanked the enthusiastic unicorn curtly, before once again busying myself with the innards of the Master's bootleg TARDIS.
Redheart and I had been guests of the secretive Edinbuck Oakflare facility for two days, and I had spent the vast majority of that time on my back underneath the 'fake' TARDIS console trying to bring it online. The Brigardier that Corporal Serious-face had mentioned earlier had at one point graced us with his presence, but I was in no mood to chat. Of course, I shook his hoof and smiled, sharing greetings and banalities with the forthright, moustachioed stallion. I endeavoured to make myself and my reasons for being at the facility as uninteresting as was equinely possible, in an effort to bore him and have him leave me to repairing the TARDIS. I suspect that he saw through my charming, yet clipped and dismissive responses easily enough (I was a sparsely documented agent of Ministry of Morale, after all - he'd have to have been a fool to not be suspicious of me). However, if he did have any suspicions, he didn't let any of them slip while speaking with me. I had a feeling deep in my belly that he was a good buck, both willing and capable of fighting for what he believed in. Perhaps in another time, another place, we could have been good friends.
But he was a walking corpse, I told myself. He just didn't know it yet, and there was nothing I could do to stop his fate from asserting itself. So, once our conversation had died due to my lack of meaningful input, he bade Redheart and me a good day, saluted us, and trotted off to attend to something official.
Returning to my work a short while later, I ruminated on the goings on around me. I wasn't sure of when the Last Day was going to come, but given the state of the facility and the progress of the resident researcher's creations, I was sure that it couldn't be too far off. Redheart and I had elected to avoid one another for the past forty-eight hours, sharing only the briefest of awkward, guilty glances from across the lab. On the rare occasion that we allowed our eyes to meet, I found it hard to gauge her expression. Was she disappointed in me? Was she scared? Did she have gas? I didn't know, and I didn't care. I had a future to get back to, and a plan to get there. As far as I was concerned, everypony around me was already dead. All I could do was get out of time's way and let it happen...
"Wire stripper," I said to my still-alive-but-only-for-a-little-while-longer assistant, as I used my magic to give him back the spanner (a tidy toolbox is a happy toolbox, after all... even if the apocalypse is on its way).
"No problemo!" came the insufferably cheery response, accompanied by another tool. I grumbled under my breath at the technician who was helping me, and politely took the tool from him with my magic.
"Thanks," I hissed through gritted teeth as I used both hooves to hold up an assemblage of arcane circuitry. I had become quite skilled with my Sonic Horn by this point, and as such I was able to connect the data and power cables dangling in front of my face in a matter of minutes. After that, all that was left was to screw the assemblage into place and move on to the next subsystem.
"Socket wrench," I said evenly, craning my neck so that I'd be heard clearly. "Eight millimetre."
"All I've got is a five sixteenths," came my assistant's consistently chipper reply. "That do?"
"I suppose," I grumbled, rolling my eyes. Honestly, why Equestria couldn't agree on a unified set of units was beyond me.
Under the console, I saw the shadows of the unicorn's hooves as he moved to accommodate my request (read: demand). The tool was soon moved in front of my face as before, but by a hoof this time, rather than magic. I had paid precious little attention to the annoyingly sunny technician whom Corporal Serious-face had decided to assign to me, but despite my disinterest I was certain that his coat had been green. The proffered hoof, however, was not green, and did in fact turn out to belong to Redheart, a fact that registered itself with me by way of a grimace combined with a guilty shiver.
"I found an eight millimetre..." she said quietly, as it became increasingly apparent that maintaining eye contact was as uncomfortable for her as it was for me. "I heard you saying you, um... needed one..."
"Thanks..." I replied, as I gently took the tool from her and began tightening the bolts suspended above my head.
"What is that you're, uh... doing down here, anyway?" Redheart asked, as she crawled under the console beside me.
"I'm just... plugging things in..." I stammered, unsure of how to deal with her proximity. "You know... techy stuff..."
"Y-yeah..." she replied, casting here eyes about the disorganised forest of components around her.
A protracted silence ensued, punctuated only by the sound of the wrench's ratchet mechanism clicking backwards as I tightened one bolt after another. I knew that I should have said something; that I owed her an explanation of everything that had happened over the past few days (at the very least). I opened my mouth to say something, anything, that would help her deal with what was going on, taking in a breath as I turned my head.
"Listen, I'm sorry about—" we both said in unison, before stopping in surprise.
"Oh, uh," I stammered as Redheart huffed her way into a defiant blush. "S-sorry. I didn't know you were going to— Uh, I mean, uh... Please, go on..."
"I was going to... apologise," Redheart said, her words accented with a sharp edge of reluctance. "For the hard time I gave you the other day in the sky chariot."
"Really?" I said, almost laughing (out of nervousness, mind, not amusement). "I was going to apologise to you. You were right to say those things to me, Redheart. I haven't been fair with you, and I haven't been telling you the whole truth. You... you deserve to know everyth—"
I was suddenly interrupted by a loud, two-tone klaxon that sounded as if somepony had tuned a cash register to the notes of the C major scale. I immediately shot upright where I lay, ready to jump up to the fake TARDIS's controls and plough into the time vortex before the nightmarish Cyberpony shades plaguing my every anxious thought could 'upgrade' Redheart and me. Naturally though, all I ended up doing was ramming my forehead into the console's underside, eliciting an angry bark as a sharp, stabbing pain made its way through my horn and into my skull.
"SON OF A BITCH!" I cried as I fell backward, clutching the crown of my head.
"Compass!" Redheart shouted, her hooves deftly moving to cushion my descent. "Relax! It's just an alarm test! They do it every day in government and military buildings. Don't you remember it going off at this time yesterday, and the day before?"
"Yeah, yeah, I remember," I grumbled angrily, as my sudden headache slowly subsided. "I'm just on edge, Redheart, that's all."
"I've noticed," she replied, a single eyebrow raised skyward. "You need to relax - panicking every time you hear a loud noise is terrible for your health. You'll give yourself a heart attack by the time you're thirty!"
"Still a good couple of decades to go then," I mumbled under my breath.
"What was that?" Redheart asked, as she continued to examine my head.
"Nothing," I said back, as I once again picked up the wrench with my magic. The tender moment between us had ended, and I no longer felt any compunction to reveal my knowledge of the future.
"Look, Redheart, I'm fine," I continued, moving out of range of her ministrations. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to repairing my only hope of returning to my own time."
"Actually," she answered incredulously, snatching the tool out of the air, "I do mind. Wasn't there something you were about to tell me, Compass? Something important? Something that you were sure I deserved to hear?"
"No," I answered simply, without looking at her.
"Compass," Redheart said warningly, her voice rumbling with barely contained anger. "You promised to tell me! Remember how I said that I'd give you one more chance? Well this is it! Tell me what I want to know, or I'm walking!"
"I—!" I suddenly blurted, biting my lip in semi-panicked frustration at her threat. "I... really don't want to, Redheart. The things I know are inflammatory at best. At worst they're downright dangerous! I don't want to expose you to that."
Redheart let out a breath through gritted teeth, seemingly dispelling the majority of her anger at the same time. She looked me straight in the eyes and spoke softly.
"You'll just have to trust that I can handle it then," she said.
My resolve was collapsing like a flan in a cupboard. I mumbled and stuttered for another few seconds - without saying anything of substance - before I made the mistake of returning Redheart's gaze. Here eyes were set under a fiercely determined brow, but I could see far more in her face than just rampant curiosity. She was desperate to know what I knew; convinced that I was about to confirm the worst of what she had ever dared to fear; terrified that I could, with a few short sentences, bring her entire world crashing down on top of her.
And you know the worst part?
She was right.
I made my decision in that moment. I would trust her. I would tell her. And I hoped upon hope... that I would not destroy her.
I opened my mouth to speak, just as the klaxon from a moment earlier began to sound again. Together, Redheart and I looked out toward the rest of the laboratory, before turning back to one another quickly.
"Please tell me that's another drill," I said, my mouth dry.
"They never run two on the same day," replied Redheart, her eyes wide and even more fearful than before. "Never."
We scrambled out from under the TARDIS console to behold a flurry of motion evolving messily before us. Every scientist and technician (and even some military personnel, I noted) were scrambling to and fro, panicked expressions on every one of their faces. The mare I had come to know as 'Corporal Serious-face' appeared at the lab's entrance, calling for silence and calm, her voice piercing the very air with the sheer magnitude of her authority.
"That's enough!" she shouted, bringing the entire room to a halt. "Okay ponies, here's the situation: the early warning talismans have just been activated. As far as we know, the Zebras haven't taken any action yet, so this may just be a false alarm. However, just in case, we'll proceed as if this were a full scale megaspell bombardment. I want everypony to remain calm, and run your emergency procedures as planned. That means all equipment should be stowed safely, all experiments and machinery powered off, even if they're shielded against electro-magic pulses, and all personnel sealed in secure areas. Carry on."
She turned to a group of pegasus soldiers who had clustered around her and began issuing orders, as everypony else began to run through what was apparently a well-practised set of emergency checklists. In spite of the alarm continuing to sound, the tension in the lab had been diffused significantly by the military mare's words; lessened from a blind panic to a concerned underlying thrum, and I found myself flush with admiration of her competency as a leader. Even I believed for a moment that it could just be a false alarm; that the technology was mistaken, and the only prevailing memory of the day would be a scary story of the war for the lab ponies' distant descendants.
Unfortunately, that feeling lasted only for a couple of seconds before I instinctively recalled what I knew of the coming times. I looked to Redheart, and found that she was already staring straight at me, her eyes pleading for my take on what was happening.
'Please tell me it's a false alarm,' her gaze begged. 'Please tell me it'll all be okay. Please tell me that I'll wake up tomorrow and this'll all be over and the war will end peacefully and we'll all live happily ever after...'
I stared at her for a moment, and then gently shook my head.
'I'm sorry...' I said with my eyes. 'I'm so, so sorry...'
Wordlessly, I turned to regard the ponies milling about the lab, before returning to the final set of repairs I still had to complete. Redheart stayed where she was, silent and unmoving, now secure in the terrifying knowledge that her world was circling the drain of existence.
The Last Day had begun.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space
The TARDIS swooped through time towards the Master, at a velocity so mind-bogglingly fast as to defy analogy. I manipulated the controls as best I could, but was too focussed on reaching my ultimate destination to manage everything simultaneously. As such, the console room was being violently thrown to and fro by the time vortex.
"Doc!" Applebloom screamed, her yellow form hanging onto a railing for dear life. "I'm gonna throw up again if ya don't stop all this shakin' about!"
"Not now, Applebloom!" I shouted back, as I queued up a pair of temporal detours on the console. "I'm trying to do a couple of dozen things at once here, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm not entirely succeed— Hang on, what do you mean 'throw up again'!?"
"Yer floor looked boring," the exhausted earth pony slurred, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Thought I'd *urp* dec'rate it..."
"Oh for goodness—!" I shouted angrily before cutting myself off and continuing with my original thought. "Nevermind, I'll clean it up later! How's Ditzy?"
"Hit 'er head and passed out about five minutes ago!" Applebloom replied. "I used one o' them there spare cables ta lash her ta one o' the beams down here!"
"What!?" I shouted, panicking as I took a moment to abandon the console and glance over the side of the control room's platform. Sure enough, Ditzy was tied safely and securely to one of the support members. I swore under my breath in Old High Gallopfreyan as I turned back to the console, suddenly highly aware of the TARDIS's new aroma as bile-scented fumes began to waft towards the ceiling. Have you ever tried cleaning vomit out of a time machine? Because I hadn't, and I was not looking forward to it.
A chime on the console signalled our arrival at the first of our detour destinations. I landed the TARDIS, and deftly flipped the shield controls to allow egress from the ship. Approaching Applebloom and helping her up, I began to yank her unceremoniously towards the door.
"Right, here's your stop," I said briskly, as I pushed her rump with my forehead.
"Wh-whut!?" she shouted indignantly, swerving off to one side so I could no longer push her. "Whut are y'all talkin' about!? Ah thought we were goin' after this 'Master' fella!"
"I'm going after the Master," I said, as I used my teeth to grip her mane bow. "I need you and Ditzy in the past so that—"
"So we'll what!? Stay outta the way!?" Applebloom growled. "You just want us to stay nice and safe so y'all can take him on yerself! Tell me Ah'm wrong!"
"I'm not going to make any apologies for trying to keep my friends safe!" I said, grunting and sweating as Applebloom's internal farmpony began to emerge, and her muscles contracted to iron loops around the safety railing. "He's too dangerous, and I need you two to... to..."
"Ta stay outta the way!" Applebloom shouted angrily. "Just like Ah said! Ya'll are afraid we'll interrupt somethin' between you two, aren't ya!? What are ya even plannin' ta do!? Talk him down!? 'Cos y'all have tried that before, and all it did was give him time ta get away!"
"It's not like that," I said quietly, as I let go of Applebloom's bow. "I need you and Ditzy to prepare Equestria... in case I fail."
The young yellow mare in front of me suddenly lost her fire, her bared teeth retracting behind her lips, and her brow readjusting to show something entirely unlike the anger it had displayed only moments earlier.
"In case... ya fail...?" she paraphrased, whispering.
"Yes..." I replied evenly. "I don't know exactly what the Master is planning, but I do know that there's a fixed point nearby; that there's some sort of major event in the near future, that he's involved somehow, and that it will probably involve a lot of balefire megaspells. So, if I can't stop whatever it is he's up to, I'll need ponies I can rely on - ponies like you and Ditzy - to help the citizens of this world: the ponies, dragons, gryphons and yes, even the zebras, to avoid horrible, pointless deaths at the hooves of a madpony."
Applebloom swallowed nervously, looking to the floor as she considered her position.
"But what... what can Ah do...?" she asked, her presence in the control room suddenly so small compared to what it had been before. "What can Ditzy do? We're just two little ponies. Sure, we're tough enough, and Ah'd like ta think we're smart enough ta boot, but how can we help save everypony?"
"The simple answer, Applebloom," I replied, hanging my head, "is that you can't. If I fail to stop the Master, then a lot of lives are going to be lost. I just don't want all life to be lost - I've already lost one planet in my lifetime, and I can't allow another to go the same way; burning into non-existence because of fear and hate."
I approached the tiny mare in front of me, and placed a hoof underneath her chin, smiling gently as I looked into her soft, moist eyes.
"What ponies like you and Ditzy can do," I began, "exceeds my abilities ten-fold. You're friends. Friends to me, to each other, and to dozens, if not hundreds, more. Your influence, given time, will be felt across Equestria, and since I'm depositing you back in your own times, you'll blend into the temporal background, meaning that the Master won't be able to find you easily. You can propagate the idea of hiding away from a possible apocalypse; impress upon the populace how awful it would be to kill the world and so many of its inhabitants, you can push for peace, and even disarmament at some point. Ponies will listen to you, and to Ditzy. And some zebras might even start to see the sense in it as well. Who knows? By the time I go to grab the Master, you might have been able to abolish balefire weapons altogether!"
Applebloom looked sceptical.
"Doc," she said. "We both know Ah won't have long when Ah go back. From the way the controls were configured earlier, Ah'd say that there was less than a week between us leavin' Oakflare, and the bombs fallin'. What am Ah supposed ta do in such a short stretch o' time?"
"Prepare those stables of yours, and get everypony ready to duck and cover," I replied. "It's all you can do. I'm afraid that the lion's share of what I just talked about will ultimately fall to Ditzy. She left Equestria before the war even started, which will give her several years to influence your society."
"One pony... between all of us and oblivion...?" Applebloom said, her voice quiet and featureless as a miniscule smirk spread across her lips. "Hm... I guess that's what it always boils down to anyway."
"Yeah..." I replied, as we both looked down upon the concussed form of the Ditzy Doo. "Always..."
Applebloom suddenly took in a sharp breath, dispelling a portion of the melancholy as she drew herself up and turned back to face me.
"Well then, Doc," she said, her eyes once again bright and hopeful, her demeanour one of youth and optimism. "Ah suppose this is goodbye."
"For now," I replied, smiling warmly. "Goodbye, Applebloom."
She extended her hoof, and I took it gladly. I was about to shake it in the spirit of camaraderie and wish her luck, but abandoned the gesture as soon as I opened my mouth - I had allowed my smile to falter for a tiny fraction of a second, and that crack in my armour had propagated instantaneously to Applebloom, whose cheerful mask slipped to reveal a swarm of fear and doubt gnawing away at her insides. In that moment, we were the same; separated only by the short physical distance between our bodies, and certain of our similitude in every other aspect.
Applebloom's hoof suddenly wrapped around my own, and she pulled me into a tight, emotion-laden embrace. I, in turn, added the strength of my own forelegs to the hug, clenching my eyes shut as I did so. We held one another as our chests pressed together, and our respective breaths shuddered and shivered behind our ribs. Applebloom knew as well as I what the risks were - she had been preparing for a holocaust for years, after all. And I... I had caused more than my fair share. We broke the embrace together, and looked into one another's eyes as our final goodbye was said without being spoken.
The brilliant, talented, sweet, loyal, honest, kind and generous mare in front of me turned, and trotted slowly out of the TARDIS, her head held high, her chest puffed out with courage.
And her eyes glistening with tears.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
The lift screeched like a wounded metal animal as it descended into the depths of the Emporium's inner sanctum. I wasn't bothered by the ear splitting grinding noises it made though. Oh no - I was too focussed on panicking about the fact that my stablemates - the ponies I was relying on to do all of the talking in our coming encounters - had ended up getting blind stinking drunk!
Sweat matted the bandages encasing my face and dark, tensely-scented patches began to grow under my armpits as we drew closer and closer to the floor of the lift shaft, and the terrifying prospect of conversation. Atom was leaning haphazardly against my side, her face a portrait of inebriation as Bulkhead, who was only managing to remain cognisant for about thirty seconds at a time, draped his head over my opposing shoulder, his drool seeping steadily into the fabric of my barding. I swallowed nervously and my breaths became progressively shorter, my attempts at rousing the intelligent, formidable conversationalists that I knew my friends could be ending with either slurred profanity or snoring.
'Oh, Goddess!' I shouted inwardly. 'How could I have let this happen!? I was meant to be watching them! I should never have trusted that mare!'
'There's no need to panic!' One said in forceful, reassuring tones.
'Yeah,' Three added calmly, 'all you have to do is improvise.'
'And how the flying fuck do I do that!?' I hissed mentally, as I propped Atom up against the lift carriage's wall and attended to Bulkhead's once again fully concussed form. 'Look at them! They're completely out of it! If this doesn't screw us over I don't know what will!'
'That's the spirit!' beamed One, as Atom wandered away and began to hungrily unscrew the carriage's maintenance hatch with her magic. 'See adversity as opportunity and you'll never have another problem as long as you live!'
'I don't think that's what he meant...' said Three, while spectating on Atom's attempts at detaching the carriage from its cables.
'Oh, it's not?' replied One. 'Well, it's good advice, regardless. You should take it, Compass—'
'If you aren't going to help me get these idiots sobered up,' I thought with a shudder, as I pulled Atom away from the lift's vitals and turned around to find Bulkhead curled up in a contended, alcohol infused ball on the floor, 'then the least you can do is to shut the fuck up and let me deal with this on my own!'
"Right, you two!" I announced loudly, before One or Three could interrupt. "We have work to do! Atom, stop playing with the machinery! And Bulkhead, you wake up, and you stay up! You both got that!?"
"Y-yeah...!" yawned Bulkhead. "You, uh... you go ahead and do... whatever that was you were... talkin' about. Just... just give me... five more minutes."
"Y-you let go of me!" slurred Atom, her drunken flailing doing little to counter my grasp of her torso. "Or sho help me, I'll... I'll pee all over your hoovesh!"
'Charming...' quipped One as the turmoil in my mind reached a fever pitch. I ceased moving as Bulkhead's snoring rang through the interior of the lift carriage and Atom continued to make vain, poorly coordinated attempts at overpowering me.
'This isn't happening...' I whispered inwardly, closing my eyes in the purest, most absolute frustration.
'Now don't worry yourself too much,' Three said soothingly. 'You'll get through this... somehow. You just have to think positively and—'
'You misunderstand,' I replied, opening my eyes to frown the deepest of malevolent frowns upon the pair in front of me. 'I wasn't sulking - I was declaring! This is not happening! I won't let it! There's too much at stake!'
I grabbed Bulkhead and Mo by their barding collars, pulling both of their faces into spittle range of my mouth.
"Now, listen!" I roared to my companions, my throat crying out for mercy from the severity of my tone. "If you two don't sober up now, you'll blow this for all of us! We'll be found out, captured and enslaved! Do you know what that means!? Do you!? They'll tie you up and laugh as they piss down your throats! They'll dress you up in humiliating clothes and whip your hides until there's nothing left! They'll shove giant rods of rubber and metal into every hole you have until you bleed! Then, just when you're all stretched and torn and you think that it can't get any worse, they'll switch over to bigger ones! Do you want that!? Or do you want to get out of here and get a chance at living those new lives of yours!?"
"Th-they'll... wh-what...!?" whispered Atom, her eyes suddenly wide and fearful.
"E-every hole...!?" whimpered Bulkhead, his lower lip trembling as he awkwardly turned around to regard his rump. "E-even... back there...!?"
"Especially back there!" I hissed, yanking their barding collars once again for added effect. "Every hour of every day! You'll never have another moment's rest as long as you live! And remember, now that you're no longer wearing your Pipbucks, your lifespans have likely increased by at least a factor of three!"
Atom and Bulkhead exchanged a fearful, sidelong glance as they abridged the implications of my words.
"So," I asked quietly, my teeth still bared in anger, "Are you two going to sober up? Or will I just go and tell the slavers they have two new playthings on their way?"
"No!" shouted Atom, her hind legs scrambling to gain purchase on the floor and hold up her body unassisted. "I—! I'm fine! See!? That cuff I frank had no elect on me whatsopepper!"
"Uh... pardon?" I said worriedly, my eyebrows slanting into a concerned frown. Atom pushed herself onto all fours, wobbling constantly as she moved, and regarded me solidly once she had achieved some semblance of equilibrium. Her tongue poked out of the corner of her muzzle and sweat began to form on her brow, signalling that the very act of standing upright was taxing her concentration to the maximum.
"Just what I said," she replied confidently. "That puff I sank at the car had absotootely no aspect on me whatsolever!"
"Oh my Goddess," I whispered, my hooves grasping either side of my head in horror. "What the hell is wrong with your voice!? I knew that damn whisky stuff was poison! It's screwed up your speech centre!"
"Low it pheasant!" shouted Atom, her eyes widening suddenly as she considered her own words. She spoke again a moment later, having resorted to physically forcing her vocal cords to comply with her will. "I mean— No! It! Hasn't! I'll! Be! Dine! I mean, fine! Compass!" she said, loud and slow, shouting over the alcoholic din. "I'm dust, I mean, just... finding it a little, uh... difficult to... you know... use words that are, um... right! It's like, rhyming's, eh... oh, what's that word? Opposite of harder... um... oh! Easier! Yeah, that's it! Timing's sleazier! Uh, I mean... Rhyming's! Easier!"
"Okay, th-that's not bad!" I replied hurriedly as Atom struggled to manually regulate her faculties. "Just keep concentrating on what you're saying, okay? Bulkhead, what about you? Are you ready to—? Bulkhead? Bulkhead! Wake up!"
The sleepy stallion had once again drooped into unconsciousness, resting his head contentedly on the floor of the lift. I shouted at him continuously, invoking several of my more florid swearwords in the process, but was unable to rouse his heavy, sleeping form.
Suddenly, just as I was preparing another volley of loud abuse, a decelerating shudder resounded throughout the lift carriage, signalling that we had arrived at the base of the shaft, and the entrance to Stone Tower's private chamber. With a gasp of panic, I jumped over Bulkhead's slumbering body, grabbing his tail in my teeth as I passed over his rump.
"Prepare your anus, Bulkhead!" I shouted, much to Atom's surprise. "The slavers are on their way with their rubber rods!"
At that, I yanked his tail skyward, eliciting a startled yelp and an undignified flurry of motion as Bulkhead was dragged, arse first, back into the land of the waking.
"AH! N-no! Not there!" he screamed as he shot to his hooves in surprise.
"Right!" I shouted, galloping into his field of vision before he could lay down again. "You're up now, so stay that way! Or else the next time somepony lifts your tail, it won't be to give you a wakeup call!"
I positioned myself at the threshold of the lift, my hoof poised and ready to operate the door control.
"Alright, you two..." I said, gulping as I turned back to face them. My gaze was met by the rapidly oscillating Atom Spark, who was endeavouring to stay upright by executing a series of tiny, jittered muscle movements every few seconds, and Bulkhead's lethargic frame, which was swaying gently from side to side as his eyes lazily blinked out of sync with one another.
"Just..." I continued, wincing at the mere sight of my companions. "Try not to get us killed."
I turned back to the door control, and with a silent, hurried prayer to the Goddesses, pushed the button.
A few minutes, and a brief jaunt through a reassuringly familiar set of corridors later, Atom, Bulkhead and I arrived at the entrance to Stone Tower's chamber. Although the signage in the lower levels of the Emporium had covered the original stable's labelling and livery, I still recognised Tower's office as the reactor room atrium, an expansive space usually reserved for a stable's gargantuan spark turbines. They were needed to produce useful energy from the reactor's raw magic reactions, and required a heavily insulated, soundproofed room to operate in, owing in part to their general noisiness, but mostly to their relative fragility when it came to moisture penetration. Stone Tower had reserved the most secluded, most shielded room in the hollow fallout shelter for his own personal use. Clearly, he did not want to be unduly disturbed.
I looked to my companions one last time before knocking my hoof against the giant pressure door, electing to forgo any more encouraging words in favour of completing our task as quickly as possible. A moment later, the metal slab slid smoothly into its recess in the ceiling with a nostalgic hiss, revealing a lushly appointed open space. The chamber was empty but for a huge darkwood desk at the far end and a number of tall bookcases lining the walls. In between each of the monolithic frames was a curious arrangement of florescent tubes, every one of which was gleefully producing a remarkably convincing shaft of simulated sunlight.
We trotted forwards slowly, our hoofsteps softened into whispered padding by the thick, red carpet underhoof. As we moved closer to the behemoth-sized desk, the solitary equinoid figure behind it looked up from a stack of clipboards laid out in front of him and regarded us lazily over the top of the half-moon spectacles he wore.
"Ah. Y'all have arrived, I see," he said, an unmistakable southern drawl permeating his words. "Ah'm Stone Tower, but o' course, y'all already knew that."
"Hellooo," Bulkhead said sleepily, as his eyes struggled to remain even half open. "I'm Bul—," he continued, before being interrupted by a gargantuan and noticeably drawn out yawn, "—khead.
"A-and I'm Lattice Arc— I mean, Atom Spark!" Atom said hurriedly, wobbling unsteadily with every syllable. "Teased to— Sorry, pleased to meet you, cur. I mean, sir!"
I gritted my teeth, threatening to shatter them with the force of my apprehension as the winged stallion sized up my companions. Stone Tower blinked a couple of times, staring at Bulkhead and Atom with a critically unimpressed frown.
"Is... Is this a joke?" he eventually said, glancing between the two offenders. "Have y'all seriously just come in here drunk!?"
"N-no. No, no, no, no way!" Bulkhead replied, swinging his head with every word, before hiccuping loudly. "W-we... don't even..." he said, trailing off into a gentle rhythm of snoring before he could finish.
"Wh-what my frolic— I mean, colleague means," Atom said quickly, in a vain attempt to try and salvage the situation, "is that we—"
"Enough!" Stone Tower suddenly said, slamming his hoof down on the desk for emphasis. "Ah will not be insulted like this! Ah don't care whut kinda business y'all have ta offer me! Get out o' mah office! And get out o' mah Empor—!"
"Mr. Tower!" a fourth voice suddenly called, interrupting the powerful pegasus before he could finish his sentence. With an awful, encroaching dread, I realised that the voice was in fact mine, and that I had - without any idea of what I was going to do as a follow-up - stepped in front of my stablemates to address the master slaver.
"Please, hear us!" I continued blindly, taking full advantage of the silence I had just managed to create.
Another frown - one of mild confusion this time, worked it's way across Stone Tower's brow as his keen gaze settled on me for the first time.
"It was mah understandin'," he said slowly, providing me with a not-so-subtle warning of the danger that deceiving him presented, "that you were far from being a vocal member o' yer party, Mr. Smith. In fact, my aides informed me that you were barely capable of speech when you arrived."
"That was a... precaution I felt I had to take, Mr. Tower," I said, as a last minute modification to my character's background unfurled quickly into my brain. "I apologise for the deception, but it was necessary for my protection."
"Your protection?" Stone Tower replied, his eyebrows slanting in confusion. "From whut? Just who are ya?"
"To answer your questions in order, Mr. Tower," I replied politely, "these two workers and I have just escaped from a revolt of the lower classes in our stable. They are unimportant, as they were only serving as my escorts, and are in fact from the second lowest caste of Stable 52. I however, am the Understallion of the facility in question, second only in authority to the Overmare."
"A revolt of the lower classes?" Stone Tower said, his interest evidently peeked. "Are y'all tellin' me that there's a stable out there with slaves in it!? Like mah Emporium!?"
"Very much so," I replied, continuing my cool, curt manner. I felt an entitled, self-important sounding accent creep into my words as I spoke, and I gladly nurtured it, hoping that it would lend credibility to my lies. "But unfortunately, there has recently been a... Well, let's call it an 'incident', back in the stable. That is why we sought you out, Mr. Tower - we require the assistance of another civilised pony, one who recognises that some creatures are fundamentally better than others. I apologise once again for the behaviour of these workers, and I hope that you will find it agreeable to continue our talks despite their deplorable conduct."
"Uh-huh..." Stone Tower said, regarding me evenly over the rims of his glasses.
"Alright, Mr. Smith," he said slowly, as he cast a death-stare towards my companions (who were still barely sentient due to their inebriation). "Ah'll give ya one minute. Thrall me."
'Heh. You won't even need thirty seconds,' chuckled One. 'Go get him.'
"Very well," I replied, smirking internally. "Mr. Tower, in exchange for your assistance in restoring myself and the remainder of the management caste back to the top of Stable 52's hierarchy, I am prepared to offer you a fifty-fifty ownership stake in our compliment of workers."
Stone Tower opened his mouth to respond as soon as mine had closed, unaware of the fact that I hadn't yet finished speaking. In the split second it took me to pause for breath, his expression told me that he was going to be unwilling to accept what would most likely be a couple of hundred (at the most) soft, stable dwelling slaves as payment for any service, let alone one that might involve military might.
It was lucky then that Stable 52 wasn't your run of the mill pre-war prize.
"I feel I should also point out," I continued, before Tower could utter more than a single syllable, "that the compliment in question numbers in the tens of thousands."
Tower's jaw instantly locked open, mid-word, as I spoke, his eyes suddenly holding my gaze with an unwavering, near mechanical precision.
"Wha—? Ah... Ah beg yer pardon?" he said slowly, a few seconds later. "Did you just say that you have tens of thousands of slaves...!?"
"Thirty-two thousand, three hundred and eleven." I smirked callously. "At last count."
Tower looked like I had just given him the greatest Hearth's Warming gift in the history of Equestria. I could see waterfalls of caps and collars careening contemptuously behind his eyes, a cascade of commercial ventures blossoming forth from his capitalistic core.
"So," I continued, confident that I had acquired his absolute, undivided attention, "how does that sound to you, Mr. Tower?"
The lift doors slid closed with a heavy hiss as I trotted out into the bar area. An hour had passed since the commencement of my negotiations with Stone Tower, most of which had involved me practically dictating terms to him following my revelation of Stable 52's massive compliment of fictional slave labourers. After I had assured him of my sincerity (and stayed calm, collected and cool despite his thinly veiled threats of reprisal should it emerge that I was being dishonest), he eagerly promised to furnish me with every piece of equipment and all the mercenaries that I could think to ask for.
The atmosphere in the bar area had softened somewhat since I had left it, but I still felt a distinct air of discomfort about the place, and was as such disinclined to hang around for any length of time. I opted instead to venture up to the room that Chase had reserved for us earlier, traversing the misappropriated hallways of Stable 50 up to what would have once been the habitation section.
I found myself having curious, heavily conflicted feelings of nostalgia as I wandered the corridors, looking from door to door in an attempt to decipher the hopelessly inefficient numbering system that had been used to label each room (why they hadn't just stuck with StableTec's Standardised Indexing System™, I will never know). On one hoof, I was happy to be back in an environment that I recognised - stables were, for the most part at least, built to uniform specifications, meaning that the corridors I was navigating could have easily been those I had 'grown up' in. On the other though, I was constantly aware of the nature of the place that I found myself in, a nagging sadness at its corruption constantly gnawing away at any feelings of warmth or homeliness that might have snuck their way into my conscious thoughts.
When I did manage to find my room, I was surprised to find Bulkhead and Atom chatting pleasantly over two cups of freshly brewed coffee (or what I assumed to be coffee), and an expansive improvised chemistry set taking up the majority of the room's floor. Upon my opening the door, my stablemate's conversation had ceased abruptly, and they had both immediately started avoiding direct eye contact with me, opting instead to intently study the carpet.
"Oh. You're back," Atom said sheepishly. "How, uh... How did it go...?"
"Not bad," I replied with a sigh, as I plonked myself heavily down onto one of the beds and began to remove my bandages and barding. "Pretty great, actually. Stone Tower wants to give us everything we need to 'take back' Stable 52. You should have seen his face when I told him about all the slaves we're supposed to have - his eyes practically popped out of his head!"
"Wow!" Bulkhead said, practically dropping his mug as he looked to Atom. "That's amazing! Way to go, Compass!"
"Yeah!" added Atom. "It's great that you were able to salvage the situation. Despite our... you know..."
"Your complete failure to listen to me?" I proffered harshly.
"Uh," Bulkhead said quietly, "Y-yeah. Sorry about that."
"It's okay," I sighed, as I leaned back to recline on the greyed fluffiness of the bed covers. "Besides, it seemed to turn out alri— OW! What the—!?"
The moment my hide met the mattress, the small of my back reported a sharp, stabbing pain that elicited a yelp and a burst of profanity from my mouth. Squirming onto my side, I grabbed the trespassing object and held it up to my face, sitting up again in the process.
"What the hell is this!?" I asked loudly, rubbing my backside with my free hoof. "And while we're on the subject, what are you doing with that frigging chemistry set!?"
"Oh, sorry!" Atom said, hurrying to relieve me of the object. "That used to be a toaster. We've been using it to incubate cultures."
"Cultures...?" I said, nonplussed. "Why? Of what?"
"Our mucus membrane secretions," Bulkhead answered, a happy grin spread across his face.
"You what!?" I continued, now thoroughly confused. "Are you two still drunk!? What the hell are you making bacterial cultures of your own phlegm for!?"
"Well," said Atom, "we felt so bad about how we acted, we decided to snap out of it as soon as we could. You said that the drinks we were having were alcohol based, and since we weren't showing any of the more severe symptoms of alcohol poisoning, we figured that our disorientation must be caused by our livers not metabolising it fast enough."
"When we confirmed that," continued Bulkhead, "it was a simple matter to bio-engineer a basic micro-organism capable of independently seeking out and metabolising the alcohol molecules and replenishing the water lost by our organs. That's what we were drinking when you came in - five minutes ago, I was still struggling to stay awake, and Atom was falling over every couple of minutes. Hence the incubator being on the bed - we didn't want it to break if Atom fell on top of it."
"Huh..." I said, looking back and forth between my stablemates. "You did all that in an hour? That's, uh... Actually, that's pretty brilliant. I'd even go as far as to say it was amazing."
"Thanks," they replied, almost in unison, their grins speaking of sincere validation at my praising them. "So, what's the plan for tomorrow, then? Where do you need us?"
"The plan's going to have to wait a little while," I said, my head in my hooves. "Buckshot's in trouble."
"Yeah, we saw him break into the bar when we were getting, uh, what did you call it? Drunk?" said Atom. "Anyway, he ran into the room like a buck possessed - it was actually pretty scary. All the ponies at the tables screamed and started calling for security. Then he ran into this red-maned mare and just stopped dead. Are they threatening to hurt him or somethin—?"
"Hang on," I said, holding up my hoof to interrupt Atom. "What did you say about a red-maned mare?"
"It's like I said," she continued. "He just sort of... stopped when he saw her. Like he recognised her or something."
"Recognised her?" I replied, frowning. I remembered the mare in question well, despite only speaking with her for a few minutes. Saltira, her name was. Her mane was red; very red, and she had a flag-shaped cutie mark and an accent exactly like Buckshot's.
"Could it be that...?" I mused out loud.
"Could it be what?" Bulkhead asked, cocking his head slightly.
"Hm? Oh, nothing..." I said, shaking my head. "I can figure it out later after I've beaten Buckshot."
"When you've beaten him at what?" said Bulkhead. "I hope you're not planning on playing chess with anypony. You know how you get when you lose."
"I don't think that's what he means!" interjected Atom, her face awash with alarm. "Compass, are you saying that you're going to hit Buckshot!?"
"Well I don't have much of a Celestia-damned choice, now do I!?" I shouted back at her. "The bastards that run this place have demanded that he be punished for breaking into the bar! And I can't refuse because if I show any compassion for him whatsoever they'll know something's wrong! We're already on Stone Tower's radar for that little revelation of mine from earlier, not to mention all the promises I made to him!"
"Oh, Goddess," Atom sighed, as she placed one of her tiny hooves on top of mine, her eyes glistening. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know!" I replied, slumping forward heavily.
"Well..." Bulkhead said slowly. "What about the other plan?"
"What!?" I said, frowning as I straightened up again. "What 'other' plan!?"
"The collars," Bulkhead replied, a little indignation of my lapse working its way into his voice. "The ones I rigged to simulate electrocu—"
"The collars!" I shouted, jumping to my hooves and galloping over to where my stablemate was standing. "You frigging genius, Bulkhead! Come 'ere!"
At that, I grabbed his head between my hooves and kissed him full on the mouth, as a brilliant blossom of hope and optimism found purchase in my bosom. Bulkhead, on the other hoof, was nowhere near as happy with the sudden embrace as I was. He recoiled from me almost instantly, coughing and covering his nose as he withdrew.
"Hey!" I shouted at him. "I'm not that bad! I was just trying to show some gratitude!"
"It's not that," he said, nearly retching. "When was the last time you had a shower?"
"Excuse me!?" I replied, turning to Atom. "Is he trying to say that I smell!?"
"Um..." Atom responded, biting her lower lip as if to stifle a giggle. "That may be what he's saying, yes."
I looked back and forth between my two stablemates for a few seconds, taken aback by their rudeness as they once again opted to avoid eye contact with me. Then, just as I was about to launch into a scathing retort, a little counter somewhere in the back of my mind reminded me that it had been at least a week since I had last bathed. Lifting my right foreleg slowly, I took an exploratory whiff, and proceeded to gag a split second later. My time in the Wasteland had matted sweat into sweat that had itself been laid over a base of sweat, turning my ordinarily manageable body odour into a maelstrom of male; a true offence to the olfactory senses.
Basically, I stank.
"We would have told you earlier," Atom said apologetically, "but it's been all go since you came back to the stable, and we really haven't noticed till just now."
"If it makes you feel any better," Bulkhead began, shrinking slightly when I turned to stare at him, "Atom and I are both a little ripe as well." An indignant glance framed by a single raised eyebrow from the tiny female effectively silenced Bulkhead from that moment on, and I was allowed a further silence in which to speak.
"Well," I replied, sighing as I tried to ignore my new found stench, "at least Stone Tower didn't notice."
I checked the clock built into my PipBuck and turned towards the bathroom, throwing my barding into the automated laundry hamper as I went.
"Right, you two," I said over my shoulder. "Order one of those meat platter things from the kitchen and clean out that chemistry set you've put together. When I come out of that shower, we'll have work to do."
Atom and Bulkhead simply frowned confusedly at one another, as the StableTec Laundromatic in the corner silently started its wash cycle.
A short while later, I had managed to attend to my hygiene concerns and was feeling a little more equine as a result. The shower, although old and lacking slightly in the water pressure department, was up to the standard I had become accustomed to during my residence in Stable 52. Hot water had cleansed me of my various excretions and eased the tired muscles of my legs, back and neck, leaving behind a pleasant, damp fuzziness as I wrapped an overly laundered, threadbare towel around my midriff. Stepping out into the bedroom, my nose was immediately met by the unmistakable scent of cooked meat, as Atom and Bulkhead curiously prodded the platter that had apparently just been delivered.
"Oh, good," I said. "It's here. Okay, Atom, Bulkhead, I need a bottled distillation of the contents of that platter. And make it small, I'm going to have to keep it hidden."
"You want a what?" Atom asked, wrinkling her nose at the prospect. "But that'll stink to high Heaven! You'll basically have a little bottle of meaty stench."
"That's exactly what I'm after," I replied, as I pulled open the Laundromatic's 'out' drawer to reveal my freshly washed and pressed stable barding. "Can you manage it?"
"Well... yeah," replied Bulkhead, as he readied a number of beakers and began to tentatively feed the contents of the platter into a funnel (which, I believe, had started its life as a lampshade). "It'll be easy. I just can't imagine what you would need the scent of burnt meat for."
"It's for Buckshot," I said, as I pulled my barding over my forelegs.
"And he, uh," Atom said slowly, her compact little hooves deftly manipulating knobs and valves on the improvised equipment. "He... likes concentrated meat smell...?"
"He likes meat, yeah," I replied, as I pulled the zip up with my teeth. "But the stuff in the bottle doesn't have to be edible, mind."
"Then..." Bulkhead said, his sentence punctuated by the bubbling of the liquid in the diffuser. "Why do you even want it?"
I took a breath to respond, but before I could explain my reasoning, there was a rapid series of knocks against the door that startled the three of us into silence.
"Finish up!" I hissed. "Quickly!"
"It's done, it's done! Here!" replied Atom, as she passed me a small vial of transparent, still-warm liquid.
Another fast trio of knocks rapped against the metal.
"Okay," I said, pushing the vial deep into the freshly pressed pockets of my barding. "Now clean this up! We can't let whoever that is see—!"
At that, there was a familiar hiss as the room's door slid open, revealing the greasy little unicorn from earlier. He looked concerned as he regarded the scene before him, no doubt wondering whether he should run for the Emporium's security forces or politely ask for an explanation. Fortunately for us though, Atom was quick-witted enough to pre-empt any questions he might have had.
"A-as I was saying, sir," she said, almost without missing a beat. "We've nearly finished that draught you wanted to give Mr. Tower. It should be at full saturation any time now."
"Good," I replied, my overly posh, self important accent flourishing comfortably as I spoke. "If it's of the quality I enjoyed back in the stable, I might just forgive your disgraceful behaviour earlier. You never know, I might even refrain from demoting you two to the slave caste."
"Th-thank you, sir," responded Bulkhead, bowing as he played along.
I turned to the unicorn (whose expression had now relaxed somewhat) and addressed him in the same fashion as one might address an especially poorly mannered beetle.
"Now," I said loftily, as I let my gaze bore into him, "I trust that you have an excellent reason for overriding the lock on my room."
"I-I, uh..." he stuttered, sweat once again forming across his greasy brow. "It's, uh... t-time for th-the beating, sir."
"Ah, yes," I replied, turning back to Bulkhead. "Give me the buck's collar remote."
"Y-yes, sir," said Bulkhead, as he passed me the remote for the modified collars from his saddlebag. "It's channel two for the buck's collar, sir."
I took the device into one of my barding pockets and turned back to the unicorn (uncomfortably bypassing my natural reflex of saying 'thank you' after receiving something from somepony).
"Take me to him," I said, as the door slid closed behind me, the unicorn struggling to keep pace with me.
I managed to quite comfortably avoid any questions from the deplorable little administrator pony during our trot up to the slave quartets, mostly by staring daggers at him any time he opened his mouth. It's not like it was any great feat either - I didn't need to pretend to dislike him.
I could tell that we were nearing the slave quarters in six entirely different ways - one for each of of my major senses. There was an unmistakable stench in the upper levels that I hadn't been able to detect in the lower ones. It stank of fear and sweat, mixed with notes of urine and faeces, and the state of the corridors began to remind me of either a sewer or a prison (I couldn't decide which was more prevalent). The light was dim and patchy, the crystals casting it no doubt having been reassigned to the gaudy chandeliers of the lower levels, and the walls were stripped, bare and unwashed, their tarnished surfaces playing host to a myriad of weapons and 'disciplinary tools'. As we moved further in, I was able to actually taste the scents I was encountering, the air seeming to thicken into a haze of abuse and anxiety. I could hear the distant screams and echoing sobs of the poor souls trapped behind the walls even as the various unfriendly enchantments and spells that littered the local ether made my metallic horn itch and sting.
We soon neared a portal - a huge, steel door, obviously designed to intimidate rather than contain. The lock was entirely mechanical, and its oversized features were caked with rust and spatters of blood. The slavers could have easily stuck with the StableTec pressure doors, and all the subtle magical reinforcement and arcane ingenuity that went into their design and manufacture.
But they hadn't. The piece before me was not meant to be a divider between rooms, secure or otherwise. It was a symbol. Barely functional as a door, but infinitely useful as a psychological weapon, this slab of metal was the slaver's message to their captives:
You will never escape. You will never be free. Compliance is your only hope. Your only hope to avoid death.
I winced as the rusty edifice swung open at the magical command of the unicorn beside me, a painful shiver running down my spine at the horrific creaking sound its hinges produced. The space beyond the door was too dark to immediately see into, and it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the low light level inside. The presence of an odd, free-floating shape was immediately apparent as my irises opened to the scant flow of photons before me. I found myself leaning forward and squinting as the image resolved itself into my mind, and I was forced to stifle a gasp, harshly gritting my teeth together as I realised what I was seeing.
There, hanging by his forelegs, was Buckshot. His rear hooves dangled just off of the floor, a trickle of blood snaking its way from the bruises covering his face all the way down his body and onto the ground below. He rotated slowly, swinging lightly from side to side, as laboured, heavy breaths were drawn through his swollen nostrils, his head resting - either out of fatigue or pain - on his chest.
I was reminded of the administrator's presence a moment later as he nervously cleared his throat. Over the subsequent few milliseconds, the urge to step on the little louse of an equine beside me transformed into a deep, boiling rage and I found that it took every single fibre of my sanity to keep me from murdering him brutally, right there and then.
"So, uh, sir," he said, as flames flashed up and down my back. "If you'd like to pick an implement to discipline your slave, I'll inform the other owners that they can take their seats in the viewing gallery."
"The... viewing... gallery...!?" I hissed, as I set him ablaze with my eyes. "What viewing gallery!?"
"Th-the, uh, the one that the other owners are going to watch you through, sir," he replied, melting under my gaze. "Th-they were all, um, going to watch you discipline your slave due to the nature of the, uh, incident... Didn't I, um, mention that e-earlier...?"
"No," I said, as a single muscle in my cheek had a fit of rage at the hedonistic, despotic filth I was surrounded by. "You did not."
"Oh..." he responded a second later, as he began to surreptitiously shift his slick little form back towards the lift. "Well I do apologise about that sir if you'll excuse me I have things to do if you need anything just use the intercom!"
And with that single, fluid outpouring of anxiety, he was gone, safely ensconced in the steel box of the lift. Oh, how I wished I could override the safety brakes and liquefy that despicable little bugger! But vengeance was not my goal, at least not yet - I had ponies to save! Galloping forward to Buckshot's suspended form, I grabbed his head between my hooves and begged him to awaken.
"Buckshot!" I shouted at him, my internals contorting with agonising unified flurries of anger and fear. "Buckshot! Wake up! Oh my Goddess, please be okay! Buckshot! Buckshot!"
A single cough and a flutter of his eyelids gave me room to breath as my coltfriend's consciousness returned. I exhaled loudly in relief as a shiver escaped Buckshot's mouth, a vile cacophony of recent memories and physical sensations visibly flooding his mind with pain.
"S... Sis..." he murmured, almost too quietly to hear. "Sal... tira..."
"Buckshot!" I repeated loudly, ignoring everything but my own panic. "It's me, Compass! Wake up! Please!"
"C... Compass...?" he whispered throatily a moment later. "Oh, th... thank Luna... Ah'm s-sorry for the... trouble. I c... I couldnae..."
"Shh," I replied softly, as I pressed my hoof to his lips and continued in a low whisper. "Don't speak now - they'll be here soon. They want me to beat you, Buckshot. Do you understand? I need your help to fool them, otherwise we'll all be found out. Can you do that for me? Can you help me fool the slavers?"
"Ah... Ah'll manage," he said. "Whit's yer... plan...?"
"When the collar buzzes, pretend you're getting electrocuted," I replied, as I busied myself with the chain holding him to the ceiling. "That's all you have to do - just leave the rest to me, okay?"
"Can do..." he responded, his eyes blearily adjusting to the room's light level. "Hey... Whit ye doin' wi' that chain...?"
"Waking you up a little. Sorry for this, by the way," I said, as the manacles holding Buckshot aloft suddenly dropped, allowing his stretched and tortured form to do the same. An almighty crack and a cry of anguish pierced my ear drums as he hit the floor and immediately began to writhe in agony.
"ARGH! YA STUPIT BASTARD!" he cried, his eyes wide and fierce now. "THAT WIS FUCKIN' SORE!"
"W-well there's a lot more where that came from," I replied (almost) coolly, as I quickly fished the collar remote out of my barding pocket.
"Och, Compass, not now!" Buckshot said as he began to painfully rise to his hooves. "There's a time and a place for that sort o' tal— ACK!"
My hoof throbbed as it ricocheted with a soft thud off of Buckshot's ribcage. Now, at that moment, it appeared as if I had just kicked my coltfriend in the chest for no good reason. But that was only from his point of view. From mine, however, it was a perfectly sensible action, seeing as how the mirrored glass that covered one side of the room had just lost its reflectivity, revealing the fatter and more red faced of the ponies I had seen in the bar area earlier.
Buckshot clocked their presence shortly after slumping to the ground from the impact of my strike (but not before he shot me the king - no, the god - of all death glares). He turned back to face me, and gave me the tiniest nod, indicating that he was ready to lie for his life. At that, I calmly stepped over him, and addressed the creatures behind the glass, taking care not to let my seething aggression for them bubble over and leave the relatively safe confines of my mind.
"Fillies and gentlecolts," I began slowly, choosing my words carefully. "My name is Smith, and I am told that the animal behind me disrupted your good selves earlier this evening. Now, being the owner of the slave in question, I can but apologise for his infraction, and invite you to witness his punishment."
There was a general nodding motion from the assembled slave owners as they showed their mutual satisfaction with my words.
"To that end," I continued, "I hope that you find what I'm about to do pleasing to watch."
'You bunch of terrible bastards...' I concluded internally.
Turning back around, I braced myself for the ordeal that I knew he and I were about to endure... and promptly froze stiff. I realised in horror that I had absolutely no idea what my next step was going to be! I'd never tortured another living being in my life, and I somehow doubted that I was about to discover a hidden talent for it. Staring desperately into Buckshot's eyes, I felt my own widen in fear as my folly was laid bare in front of me.
"Ye..." hissed Buckshot suddenly. "Ye'll never break me, ya bastard! Ye hear me!? Ah'll fight ye till mah dyin' breath!"
A brilliant wash of relief flooded my breast as my genius companion took the lead. With those simple few words, Buckshot had provided the prompt that I so desperately needed, allowing me to continue my deception simply by responding to his fabricated objection.
"Oh, really?" I said, smiling surreptitiously at his ingenuity. "Well then, at least we have a starting point for our little session."
I looked over my shoulder at the assembled despots, and spoke to them conspiratorially as if they and I were in on some great joke.
"You'll like this," I said, smirking as I raised the collar remote into view. There was a collective gasp (and, disgustingly, at least one lick of the lips) from behind the glass when it became clear what I was holding.
"Not to worry, everypony," I continued. "This won't trigger an explosive. As annoying as this beast is, he's far too good at what he does to be disposed of, and I find that floggings dull combat responsiveness. To that end, I've had one of my servants from the stable install a little surprise in each of my collars. Observe."
At that, I deftly dropped the remote into my mouth and, at the same time, shifted the tiny vial Bulkhead had given me out of my pocket and onto the ground (such that the movement was hidden from those behind the glass). A breath later, I bit down on the button and crushed the container under my hoof. A burst of motion assaulted my eyes as Buckshot suddenly began to spasm before me, contorting and writhing better than a professional actor ever could. The stench of my stablemate's distillation hit my nostrils and I sighed internally, silently relieved that my ridiculous luck (and choice of companions) had once again saved my hide.
As far as any of the ponies watching were concerned, I was torturing my 'slave' with a series of strong electric shocks. And to anypony who might enter the chamber or approach Buckshot or I afterwards, it would even smell as if that's what we'd been doing. I slackened my jaw after a few seconds, making sure that the distinctive click of the remote was audible to everypony present. Buckshot immediately ceased his motions and collapsed to the floor, his chest heaving with long, ragged breaths as he played his role to perfection.
"Now," I said, as I closed in on his still contorted face, "have we had enough, yet? Are we going to be a good little colt and behave ourselves from now on?"
"Y-ye can... g-go f-fuck yersel'!" he hissed back at me, his teeth chattering in a perfect imitation of an adrenaline rush. "Ah'll d-die... first!"
"You'll live exactly as long as I tell you to live, you little shit!" I replied with a growl, as I squeezed the remote again.
Buckshot began to spasm once more, flexing every muscle in his body to an extreme extent as he pretended to resist the imaginary torture. I was starting to really get into my character, and I found that the perverse smile I had forced myself to wear at the outset was now straining my cheeks with its intensity. I was overjoyed with how well our deception was progressing, the various responses from the slave owners behind the glass driving my overconfidence to new, previously unattainable heights.
As I was marvelling at my own ingenuity, a cry from Buckshot suddenly brought my surroundings back into focus. Unlike me, he had obviously been concentrating on the goings-on around him, and had been gauging the facial expressions of our observers to figure out how much they were buying into our ploy.
"S-STOP!" he suddenly screamed, his hooves clutched desperately around his neck as his face contorted in an expression of pure agony. "PLEASE! FER THE LOVE O' LUNA, STOP! I'LL DO ANYTHING! JUST PLEASE STOP IT!"
At that, I released the collar control for the final time, and nonchalantly replaced the device back in my barding pocket. On cue, Buckshot flopped to the floor, his chest heaving and his breath ragged. His mouth hung open as he gasped, aching with every tiny motion of his body.
"And that, fillies and gentlecolts," I said smugly, as I walked over Buckshot's body, "is how you discipline a slave. I do hope that my property's admonishment has been sufficient for you."
With a bow, I turned away from the window and, after delivering one last kick to Buckshot's side for good measure, left the torture chamber in my wake. The slimy unicorn I had come to hate so much was nowhere to be seen, so I was able to chance one final glance back in Buckshot's direction before a pair of leather-clad handlers rushed past me to secure my 'property'. For no more than a second, I was able to meet Buckshot's gaze, just spying the tiniest semblance of a wink. With an equally surreptitious nod back, I let out a slow, relieved sigh, secure in the knowledge that, for a moment at least, we were winning.
I arrived back at the Emporium's bar area a short while later, and did my best to avoid the inevitable invitations from the slave owners that had come to see my show. The fattest of them (whose expressions of delight as I 'tortured' another living soul repulsed me to my core), patted me on the back, saying that he hadn't enjoyed something as much as that in years, and that I showed 'great promise', whatever that meant. I grimaced at the inference, and found myself trying desperately to mask his awesomely foul breath as he laughed heartily in my face. Once I had placated him, he wobbled off to continue whatever despotic plans he had for the evening, and I suddenly found myself in the company of one of the mares from behind the glass. While the other slave owners had either politely applauded my technique or curtly thanked me for punishing my slave on their behalf, this mare behaved differently. She seemed to have been positively enraptured by my performance in the torture chamber, and pulled me into a corridor just off the bar area as soon as she was sure we wouldn't be seen. Once we were alone, she began to circle me slowly, speaking in soft, soothing tones as she recounted my actions to me in a tone that could only be described as romantic. She moved her body in such a way that my eyes were always drawn to her hindquarters, and she swirled her tail past my nose on more than one occasion, practically forcing her deeply perfumed, arousing scent upon me. The whole experience left me dizzy, like she was hypnotising me into a soft lull with her presence. It all came to a head when she pushed me up against the corridor wall, and made a grab for my... well, you can probably imagine what she went for. I squealed at her touch, galloping out into the bar again as fast as my hooves could carry me. (Not that it wasn't an unwelcome touch, you understand. On the contrary: her hooves felt like they were made of clouds, and her voice was like silk. It's just that I couldn't let myself fall into the trap of arousal again, not when I was in so deep.)
After my somewhat undignified exit from the corridor, I headed quickly back to bar area, where I began desperately looking for a hiding place from the crazy, sadistically-charged mare following me. By now, it was quite late at night, and the Emporium's social areas were deserted, meaning that I wouldn't be able to blend into a crowd, so, thinking on my hooves, I darted towards the closest door, burst through it, and shut it again with as much urgency as I could manage.
I stood perfectly still for several minutes, my ear held tight against the wood. I was able to hear the lonesome, moody trudging of the mare outside, and breathed a sigh of relief as her hoofsteps began to grow more and more distant. Finally, once she was out of earshot entirely, I turned around and leant against the door, only to yelp in panic as my eyes met the steely gaze of Mayday, the Emporium's secretary. Looking around hurriedly, I realised that, in my haste, I had come barging into the hall that housed Stone Tower's private lift.
"I-I, uh... I'm s-sorry... to, uh, barge in like this!" I stammered. "I-I w-was just... Um... H-hello...?"
The mare didn't move. She just sat there, staring at me. Never blinking, never moving. I doubted she was even breathing.
"What the hell...?" I whispered as I closed in on her, experimentally extending my hoof to touch hers. I recoiled the moment I made contact - she was ice cold! Her hide had all the complexion of a living pony, and her eyes were moist and lifelike, but there was no doubt about it: she was stone dead! Somehow, in the last few hours, she had been been paralysed and left to die as a statue in her chair.
I frowned, turning towards the lift as my breath quivered. Mayday's murder was just so... gruesomely neat - something stank here, and it was even more rotten than the Emporium's primary 'business' of buying and selling lives. In a heartbeat, I resolved to investigate (after all, my path to Stone Tower's inner sanctum was now clear of obstacles). I trotted lightly into the carriage, and pushed the lowermost button on the panel. The doors slid shut in front of me, and the lift began its long, screeching descent into the depths.
When the doors slipped open again, I stood very still, my eyes closed, such that I could tune my ears to the ambiance of the lower levels. When no anomalous screeches or hoofsteps were forthcoming, I took in a steeling breath, and let it out as I began my trek towards Stone Tower's office. I retraced my previous route easily enough, and quickly found myself once again outside of the stable's old turbine chamber. Pressing my ear up against it, I was able to discern that there was nothing going on inside the room (nothing noisy, at least). Just in case though, I readied my slave owner character, and primed my vocal chords for the pompous accent that I had developed earlier that same day. With my hearts beating their way out of my chest, I gently pushed the door open, hoping that there would be nopony on the other side.
'No such luck, mate,' One said in a mental instant, as my eyes suddenly met Stone Tower's. He was fixing me with a stern stare from the other end of the chamber but, partly in thanks to my preparation a moment earlier, I had just enough presence of mind to avoid squeaking in panic.
"Ah, Mr. Tower," I said, my voice only cracking a little. "I was hoping that you'd still be awake. I apologise for barging in here at this late hour, but I... I..."
I squinted at the chocolate brown pegasus at the other end of the room as he continued to stare at me. Unblinking. Unmoving. Breathless.
"Him as well...?" I began, as I closed in on his desk from across the room. "What in the name of Luna's going on here...?"
I moved delicately to his side to look for a trickle of blood or an entry wound, but found neither in the chamber's scant light. The sunlight-simulating lamps that lined the walls of Tower's office had been reconfigured to breathe a gentle, silver glow down into the cavernous space, bathing the room in faux-moonlight. As such, everything in my field of view cast deep, dark shadows that threw off my natural perception of contrast.
After a few moments of frustrated fumbling, I closed my eyes and concentrated, managing to coax a minor illumination from the tip of my horn. With its glow now lighting my view, I was able to examine the corpse in front of me further, and moved behind it to further my investigation. Stone Tower's hooves were well kept: clearly hooficured to perfection on a regular basis, and entirely free of ordinary floor-level artefacts like dust and mud. His fetlocks, similarly, were trimmed and neat, as were his tail and mane. Like I had surmised previously, there was no evidence of an entry wound or any other sort of damage to his body. But, just like his secretary far above, Stone Tower was stone cold, although his hide, hair, face and even his eyes still bore an uncanny resemblance to those of a live equine.
I brought my hoof to my face to help me ponder the situation: with Stone Tower now dead, how was I going to find Sage, and get everypony out of this place? I sincerely doubted that an organisation as well established and organised as the Emporium would fall apart with the demise of single pony, even if it was their leader. There was no doubt in my mind that, when his corpse was discovered in the morning, there would be a power struggle for the right of succession, but even if it erupted into armed conflict, and even if I disarmed the collars with Tower's terminal, the cells would still be locked, and the guards would still be the ones with the guns. This eventuality was either a great blessing (in that it would distract the slavers long enough for me to free everypony), or a massive problem (in that it would put the whole facility on high alert and thereby make escape all that harder).
I rubbed my forehead, sighing in annoyance at the poor timing of whatever righteous individual or group had managed these assassinations. I mean, could they not have just waited!? Or - even better - sought out and consulted me!?
"Oh, Goddesses..." I grumbled aloud, as I extinguished the light at the tip of my horn. "This is going to complic— Wh... what the...!?"
My hoof fell back to the ground as my eyes zeroed in on a tiny, glowing crack that had only just become visible to me, the light from my horn having obscured it before. Now, ordinarily such an anomaly would be nothing but a curiosity; a little odd something that had a real, easily understandable explanation mired somewhere in the laws of physics. You know - something mundane, like a radioactive leak, or an exotic fungus, or any number of other, ultimately boring things.
This crack, on the other hoof, was different. Firstly, because it was regular, straight and deliberate; more of a slot than a crack. And secondly, because it was on the back of Stone Tower's neck!
Immediately, I grabbed one of the many extravagant quills from the desk, and stamped on it with my hoof to flattened its nib. Pushing my new tool gingerly into the slot, I gasped and fell backwards as the back of Stone Tower's head, with a click and a hiss, literally split open, revealing the glowing, pulsing innards of an equinoid android. I found myself unable to move; unable to do anything but boggle at the amazing sight before me. There were only a few components that I could recognise straight away, the others eliciting naught but a dim shadow of recollection in the dark backwaters of my mind. At the opposite side of the 'skull', I was able to see the mechanisms that animated Stone Tower's face, the pads of fake hair follicles, and the artificial orbs that were his eyes, their surfaces covered in imitation blood vessels. (There were no optic nerves, you see. It appeared as if Tower's eyes were designed to rotate using tiny wheels positioned around the periphery of his eye sockets.)
'This is unbelievable!' I thought to myself. 'Somepony has gone to a lot of trouble to imitate this stallion. Why would they do that?'
'Seems pretty obvious to me,' said One. 'Power. Why trouble yourself with messy power struggles or revolutions when you can just dispose of the leader, and install a realistic, programmable copy in his place? That way, you can maintain the status quo, but have everything your way.'
'That does make a lot of sense...' I replied, still staring into the back of Stone Tower's head. 'But who could have done this? I mean, the hardware in here is making my Doctor sense tingle, which means that he recognises it. I wouldn't be surprised if Two made an appearance any second to give us an ultimatum of some sort.'
'That's a worrying thought,' Three said, joining in on the deduction party. 'If this technology is troubling our Doctor-parts, then that means that there's probably something alien nearby. We need to be very careful from now on.'
At that, I bit the tip of my hoof and shivered with worry.
'Not now...' I whispered into myself. 'Why is something like this cropping up now of all times!?'
I stayed very still for a moment, intent on collecting my thoughts and controlling my breathing, lest I panic and lose what little calm I was still holding on to. A number of seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two. My breaths, previously short and rushed, slowed to a manageable pace as my mind settled into a more serene state, like the surface of a still pond.
"So," came a voice. "What now...?"
'Honestly,' I thought to myself, 'I have no idea. I mean, I have exactly zero leads on who might have built this—'
'Uh... Compass...?' One said, his mental voice quivering with realisation.
'Hm?' I replied, still trying to reason out the 'who' and 'what' of my immediate situation. 'What is it, One?'
'Th-that voice,' One continued, panicked and shaken. 'It wasn't one of us...!'
"Wh-what...!?" I whimpered audibly.
"Ah said," the voice repeated, as the pair of imitation eyes suddenly swivelled around in their sockets to stare at me through the skull. "What now?"
"AH!" I screamed, falling backwards over my own hooves as Stone Tower's head folded itself back up into its original shape. With a series of hisses and servo whines, the robotic pony turned to face me, his legs dangling over the edge of his chair as the chair's legs themselves came to life and began to propel him toward me. Unwelcome comparisons were drawn in my mind to my home stable's murderous spider bots, and I found my heart dropping into my stomach in panic as my rear legs kicked out toward the approaching robot.
"Heh heh heh," the machine's imitation southern accent chuckled as it continued to advance, my kick having done absolutely no damage whatsoever to it. "Ya'll are gonna have to do a lot better than that, little colt!"
"H-how can you be here!?" I stammered, as I wriggled backwards, still helplessly laid out on my back. "Wh-what are you!?"
"Don't trouble yerself, boy," it said languorously. "You'll be dead in a few minutes anyway! Security's on its way."
At that moment, a series of realisations cascaded through my mind at the speed of light, dictating my subsequent actions in a tiny fraction of a second.
Now, since this series of decisions didn't rely on any internal discourse, I'll explain my reasoning. First: I was about to die, so I couldn't very well stay there on the floor and be shot, now could I? Second: There were tens of thousands of ponies relying on me up in the Emporium's upper levels, back in Trotfell, and in the currently location-less Stable 52, so once again, I couldn't just lay down and expire. Third: Stone Tower said that he had called security, which meant that he was somehow unequipped to handle me on his own. Fourth: I had the Screwdriver, and Stone Tower was none the wiser. Conclusion: Flip open my horn and improvise.
And so I did. Tearing the bandages from my face, I whipped my head to one side, flipping the leaves of my Screwdriver-horn open, and blasted a repulsive charge straight into the chest of my assailant. While he (or should that have been 'it'?) was still reeling from the blow, I charged up another spell, and wrapped the door at the chamber's far end in a solid layer of immobilisation magic. Nothing short of a balefire bomb blast was getting into the room!
I pushed myself up onto my hooves, confident that I now had the advantage, and blasted the pony/chair robot in front of me with another targeted blast of magic, propelling it into the far wall.
"I'm not the one who's going to die tonight," I said, my teeth bared. "I've sealed us in here, and I'm not letting you go until you tell me what the hell's going on! Now, who's controlling you? And where's the real Stone Tower?"
"Th-that... horn...!" the robot whispered to itself, its eyes zooming in to intently study the crown of my head. "The join is perfect! Minimal scarring! Obviously no reduction in mental capacity! Full integration with the arcane cortex—!"
"Hey!" I shouted indignantly. "Stop that! Tell me what I want to know or you'll be sorry!"
"Heh heh," the robot chuckled again, as it rose back onto its chair legs. "I doubt that, boy. I think that you'd better do whut I say, otherwise there might be... undesired consequences for ya."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?" I asked, my horn charged and ready to unleash another volley.
"It means," Robo-Tower said, "that at this very moment, your companions and slaves are being rounded up by the security forces upstairs. All Ah need ta do is think the right thought, and they get the order to execute the lot o' them via the internal intercom. In mah voice, no less."
My face fell as the robot expertly out-manoeuvred me, leaving me in the intellectual equivalent of a dust cloud behind a sprinter. Of course it would be able to communicate via the stable's built in network of electronics! I should have dampened the useful portions of the electromagnetic spectrum as well! You bloody idiot, Compass!
The android finished righting itself, and crawled towards me, its arcanely actuated, wooden legs making a soft tap against the carpeted floor. I sighed despondently, hanging my head in defeat as the machine continued to approach.
"D-don't..." I began softly, my throat suddenly dry and uncomfortable. "Don't hurt them... Please..."
"You have very little ta worry about, boy," the robot said as it circled me. "As long as ya cooperate, everything'll be fine..."
"I'll... I'll do whatever you want," I said slowly. "Just, please... don't hurt my friends."
"Huh," Robo-Tower said, as he disconnected himself from his chair-base. A light drone signalled the closure of the panels that made up the rear of his flanks, and he trotted calmly in front of me, now propelled by four, entirely normal-looking legs. He soon drew level with me and stared intently into my eyes. "Pupil contraction and vascular response indicate that ya'll are sincere," he said. "How about that, eh? I find exactly what the old buck is looking for, and he's as compliant as a whore on pay day!"
"Old... buck...?" I mouthed, frowning. "Who are you talking about?"
"The real Stone Tower, o' course," the robot replied, as a hydraulic whir sounded behind me. "Ah'm just his stand-in. Ah run this place, and search for suitable subjects while he continues his work in the lower levels."
"Suitable subjects...? Lower levels...?" I said confusedly, as the robot led me toward the back of the room. There, in the far wall, was a large, rectangular hole where the central bookcase had been just a few moments previously. It had slid away to one side, revealing a deep, poorly lit concrete stairwell behind it. Looking down into the Emporium's even deeper depths, I shivered in fear at who - or, indeed, what - I was about to meet.
"Go," Robo-Tower said simply. "Ah'll be staying here with mah hoof on the trigger. Ah hear even a single thing going wrong down there, and yer friends are dead. Got it?"
"I get it..." I answered through gritted teeth, as I stepped into the stairwell. With another whir, the bookcase replaced itself behind me, and I was left alone, in the belly of the beast, unarmed and entirely unprepared for what was to come.
"Allons-y..." I whimpered.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Panicked Punisher You have a natural aptitude for causing pain and distress which, although useful at times, concerns you greatly. This perk adds five points to your Strength and Unarmed skills, but also robs you of a Charisma point.
Chapter 12 – A Slave to Time (Part 4) -I'm sorry! -You will be...
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...
"There," I said simply, and mostly to myself, as the final crystal circuit in the 'fake' TARDIS clicked neatly into place. As I stood up, assisted by one of my forelegs resting on the console, I noted that the thrum of activity in the Oakflare facility had continued around me while I worked. The air was tainted with panic and fear despite the composed, professional visage that was being put forward. Redheart had maintained her proximity to both me and the console, and had apparently taken to nervously nibbling her hoof in the few minutes it had taken me to finish my repairs.
"Are you alright?" I asked, lightly touching her on the shoulder. Her head whipped around to face me, a startled and haunted look clouding her gaze.
"I—! You—! We—!" she stammered, panting, as her tongue tripped over multiple pronouns in rapid succession.
"Redheart," I said slowly, as I looked deep into her eyes. "Calm down. I'm going to get us out of here, okay?"
Redheart nodded, gulping as she forced a series of deep, calming breaths out through her mouth and nostrils.
"O-oh Celestia, Compass," she said, her eyes now more centred, but still markedly teary. "Is this really it!? Is this the end of the war that everypony's afraid of!?"
"That doesn't matter," I replied evenly, turning to the console. "I've got this thing working now, so it'll be a short hop out of here, and then a simple continuum scan to locate my fr—"
"W-wait!" Redheart suddenly shouted, as she yanked angrily at my barding. "You're leaving in the middle of all this!? But what about these ponies!? Without you they'll—!"
"Die," I concluded bluntly, clenching my eyes shut as she pulled me further and further towards her gaze. "Yes, I know. But there's nothing I can do about that, Redheart."
"But you're a Luna-damned time traveller!" she suddenly screamed, spittle flying from her mouth as everypony in the room turned to face the source of the commotion. "You have a duty to use that power for the preservation of life!"
I was half tempted to reply with the phrase 'Says fucking who!?', but thought better of it. Instead, I fixed Redheart with a glare, and lowered my voice so as to avoid being overheard.
"Redheart," I said, "these ponies are already dead. All of this is part of a fixed point in time, or... or something like that. Deep down, I know I can't save them. It's a tragedy, yes, but there are other ponies in other times and in other places that I can save, and I need to get to them as soon as possible!"
Turning back to the console, I brought the controls to life with an instinctive flick of my horn, only to have Redheart's voice slice through my soul.
"So..." she said quietly, but somehow louder than any sound in the room or thought in my head. "You're going to run away..."
"Wh-what!?" I replied immediately, angry and indignant as I snapped round to face her. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said!? I literally can't affect this part of the timeline! It shapes everything that's to come, and you just expect me to wave my horn and make it all better!?"
"I expect you to at least try!" Redheart said, an impassioned tone flowing freely into her words. "You're the most amazing buck I've ever met! And if you can't fix this, then... what's the point in having any hope at all...?"
"Oh, Redheart, please don't do this," I pleaded, grimacing. "I can't fix any of what's going on here. I'm not... I mean it's just that... Look, I just can't, okay!? I just can't! I'm not strong enough to lead, I'm not brave enough to fight, and I'm not smart enough to figure this shit-heap of a timeline out!"
"You don't need to be those things to try!" she responded. "Please, Compass! We need you!"
Redheart's last sentence struck me in the chest like a bullet. I swallowed nervously, my mouth hanging open to take in breath after heavy breath as I looked around the laboratory. Despite my attempts at keeping our conversation private, the majority of the lab's staff had come to a standstill nearby and were listening in, despite the impending threat of a fiery, green doom.
"Is... is all that true...?" my assistant from before said, stepping forward from the crowd. "Is this really... 'it'...?"
"Wh-what's going on here!?" said a unicorn. "How can you know this!?"
"And did you just mention time travel!?" gawked a nearby pegasus.
"What about my family!?" shouted an earth pony in a lab coat. "Do you know about them!? Will they survive!?"
"My parents live in Fillydelphia!" came another shout. "Can you save them?"
"My son goes to school in Canterlot!" another voice said. "Save him too!"
The shouts and wails of the scared, doomed ponies around me only intensified as time went on, becoming ever louder and more frequent. Pleas were issued for every member of every family, every friend, distant relative, and pet. I recoiled, too appalled to respond as the crowd swarmed around me, forcing me to back into the TARDIS console as I began to hyperventilate. They were begging, I realised in horror, not for just their own lives as I had expected, but for the lives of their every relation and acquaintance. In this, what they suspected was their final hour, these ponies had resorted to primal forms of fear and honour; begging a force that they barely understood to bestow salvation upon those that they loved most dearly.
Just as I was sure I would be consumed by the oncoming storm of lab workers, a silver bolt of sound blasted through the stramash, forcing all eyes to turn towards the lab's main archway.
"What the hell's going on here!?" screamed Corporal Serious-face, as she re-entered the room. "Why aren't you all at your shelter stations!?"
"This stallion's a time traveller!" shouted my assistant.
"And he says he can save us all from the bombs!" added a critically uninformed unicorn.
The corporal squinted in disbelief as, one after another, the ponies present recounted the argument that Redheart and I had just had, conveniently missing out everything I had said about not being able to help. The military officer turned to me after a time, fixing me with a stare that was, for some reason, eerily familiar.
"You're not from the MoM, are you...?" she asked simply.
"No..." I said, my voice quiet and shaking.
"And this thing isn't for the defence of Equestria, is it?" she continued, gesturing to the TARDIS behind me.
I shook my head, gulping loudly as the crowd continued to consume me with their eyes. The military mare closed in on me slowly, staring even more deeply into my eyes as she spoke.
"This is the end... isn't it...?" she said, so softly that nopony else could have heard.
I whimpered, and nodded again, bowing my head so as to avoid her gaze any further. A few seconds passed as I clenched my eyes shut and hoped upon hope that I would just wake up back in Stable 52, where I could consign this whole nightmarish scenario to a cruel trick of the mind.
Sadly though, instead of sweat-soaked bedsheets against my hide, I felt a gentle pressure against my shoulder: a hoof had been placed there. I looked up, and was met once again by a forest of wide, pleading eyes. I followed the hoof to a foreleg, and then to a pony - the corporal - who was still the closest to me. She leant forward even further than before, and maintained her unblinking connection for every second of her motion. She opened her mouth to speak, and I felt my insides clench with anticipation as she did so.
"Can... can you save us...?" she whispered.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I reeled backwards, pressing the console's edge painfully into my flank. The eyes drew closer. Begging and pleading for all the lives in all the world. They wanted me to save them. They needed me to save them. But I couldn't. Or could I? No, surely not. But then, I'd never thought about it. Although, why try when you know you'll fail?
One and Three's voices rolled around my brain, too quickly to distinguish. Should I stay and try to defy time; try to restore Equestria and stop the war? Or should I leave; run away to save some ponies in a blighted future Wasteland.
In the end, it all came down to a look. I turned to Redheart, and my mind was made up.
In her gaze, I once again saw her fear and anxiety, bare and open for all to see. It was in the eyes of every pony there in that room, plain as day. I realised in that moment that they weren't dead; not yet. They were totally alive, and vital; not warmongers or monsters, just ponies, doing what they felt they needed to do to survive. I pitied them more than ever in that moment, and felt my appalled sensibilities being steadily replaced by a steely, shining resolve. My brow furrowed, and my teeth clenched as my mind changed its direction. I moved forward off of the console, and exhaled loudly as my resolve solidified.
"Yes..." I said to the corporal finally, biting the air with sudden determination.
"Alright everypony, listen up!" I shouted to those assembled around me. "This is it! The bombs are coming and there's not a damn thing we can do about it! But that doesn't mean you - I mean, we - all have to die today! I need all the earth ponies and pegasi in a group beside the console, with the unicorns in a ring around them!"
The laboratory staff and military personnel clustered around me as I had instructed, their eyes wide and staring as I flipped open my horn in front of them for the first time. I closed my eyes and focussed my breathing, finding my centre in record time.
"What are you going to do?" the corporal asked as she approached me cautiously.
"This time machine's not ready to transport all of us," I said without breaking my focus. "Right now it can carry two ponies through time and space. Tops."
"But what good is that!?" the corporal hissed, her voice shaking. "Don't you have any working technology or magic from the future!? Something we can use!?"
"Way ahead of you," I said, as arcane symbols and ancient, alien phrases swarmed through my mind. "It just so happens that I do have a spell we can use. It creates a magical forcefield for a short time that's impenetrable even to massive bursts of energy. If I tinker with the incantation a little, and get some extra juice to keep it going, then we should be able to survive this."
I turned to the crowd at large as the spell's blue glow began to seep gently out of my horn, its mystic tendrils straining at their confinement.
"Alright!" I shouted. "The building should protect us from the first blast, but I know for a fact that this place doesn't have adequate radiation shielding! Unicorns, I need you to focus your magic on my horn. I'll direct it into the spell until the blast wave and initial fallout have passed. Now this is going to be a lot of magical exertion, and we're going to be at it for hours at the very least, so I need everypony to do their absolute best here, okay!? It's literally do or die!"
"W-wait!" the corporal suddenly exclaimed, grabbing my barding as she spoke. "You're doing it now!? What about the rest of the facility!? O-our families, our friends!? Are you telling me that you're only going to save us!?"
I exhaled through gritted teeth, and turned carefully to address her, lest the spell lose cohesion. Before I could speak though, the floor under our hooves rumbled menacingly, as if in direct response to her question. The lights flickered and dusty streams began to rain down from the ceiling as the first balefire explosions rocked the world from miles away. Knowing full well that Edinbuck would not be far behind the initial targets, I redoubled my efforts to complete the casting of the forcefield, taking only a tiny moment in which to reply to the corporal's question.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about the ponies outside," I grunted, as quickly and apologetically as I could. "And as for the ones still in here with us, they've got until I can establish the field! After that, they're on their own!"
'They're out of time,' I caught myself thinking shamefully, my failings as a time traveller laid bare in stark tones of irony.
Corporal Serious took my sombre news with remarkable grace, once again dawning her façade of unflappable professionalism as the ponies around her began to grimace and sob for those they knew they were about to lose. With an affirmative nod, the military mare wheeled around on the spot, grabbing one of her unicorn lieutenants by his barding in the process.
"Get me on the PA!" she shouted into his ear. "Now!"
"Y-yes ma'am!" the unicorn stammered, almost too shocked to reply. His horn began to exude a gentle green glow as the corporal took hold of it, grasping it in her hooves as if it were a microphone.
"Attention all personal!" her voice boomed over the facility's public address system. "A first strike event is in progress! This is not a drill! Everypony is to report to a special fortification in the lab on sub-level eight! On the double!"
Meanwhile, the unicorns of the group, spurred on by the building's new-found seismic instability, had by this point mustered all of their magical strength to the tips of their horns, ready to beam it straight into the spell at the tip of mine. As we achieved a magical saturation, a solid column of displaced military officers, soldiers, scientists and engineers began to hurriedly file into the lab, arranging themselves according to the orders of Corporal Serious.
Every face I looked upon bore an expression of absolute panic - even that of the benevolent Brigardier Bridge. There were tears aplenty, and a number of tight, fearful embraces as well. I glanced from side to side as the final few Fausts of magical energy in my horn were committed to the forcefield spell. These ponies were all suddenly relying on me, I realised. Their lives, their futures, and those of everypony that would follow them, were now balanced squarely on top of my shoulders.
And d'you know what?
I liked it.
In fact, I more than liked it. Strange as it may sound, I actually felt as if everything was going wonderfully; that the cataclysm occurring all around us was just going to blow harmlessly overhead. And not just because I was there, but because I had decided that it was going to be that way. It was my calling to save their lives, I thought to myself as my chest suddenly flushed with confidence and pride, the shame I'd felt only moments previously having vanished completely. Even more than that, my new feelings told me, it was my right to change the course of history. For I was a master of causality! A god of space!
And a lord of time!
The horde around me clustered together as I held the spell on the precipice of release. With a final check left and right for stragglers, I made my final adjustment to the incantation's outer radius.
"Okay!" I shouted above everypony around me. "Here we go! Give me all you've got on three! One! Two! Thr—!"
In a blinding flash, what must have been fifty beams of pure magical energy blasted straight into my horn, flooding every atom of my being with ethereal power. My eyes burned with a brilliant white light, and my horn felt as if it was about to blast off of my head like a megaspell missile. A beam of blue fire erupted from it a moment later, as I screamed at the top of my lungs from the sensation of it all. The beam reached the ceiling in under a second, and proceeded to diverge neatly into a huge translucent umbrella, which then swooped down towards the ground, arcing sharply inwards to separate the group's hooves from the floor.
As the field finished forming around us, the spell itself settled into the continuous arcane loop that I had improvised only minutes earlier. I found with a giddy, almost euphoric delight that, not only was the shield completely stable, but that I was also able to regulate it fully with only a tiny amount of concentration. I turned, grinning like a triumphant gladiator towards Redheart.
"I..." I panted. "I did it...! I did it! I... I saved them all!"
The shield sparkled and reverberated gently as its occupants stared up in amazement at the miniature wall of magic I'd erected; a solid 'Fuck you!' to death and a personal victory for me over time and causality. I allowed myself to revel in the delight of actually saving lives again for a moment, ready to be washed over by the exhilaration of defeating equinity's best attempts at destroying itself. Smiling widely at my victory, I closed my eyes, let out a sigh...
And waited for the world to end.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space
The console room shuddered as the TARDIS shifted out of the time vortex and landed upon solid ground. I braced myself before turning away from the controls, afraid of moving from where I had stood for an unpassing eternity. Lost in thought, the journey had seemed to have taken hours, when it had in fact only been a matter of minutes. My forehead was beginning to shine with sweat, and my insides growled uncertainly; knotting themselves in anticipation of what was to come.
I turned around slowly to start my descent down the stairs to the console room's lower level, and my still-unconscious companion, Ditzy Doo. She gradually came into view as I rounded the time rotor's central column, her soft, grey hide blending gently into the Gallopfreyan coral to which she was tied. I stood to watch her for a moment, suspended for a few seconds in a shining instance of peace. Her chest was rising and falling with each breath she took, and I found a smile automatically spreading across my face as I recalled our many adventures together, and all of the great challenges that we had faced while in one another's company.
Together, we had fought dozens of foes, brought peace to hundreds of worlds, and saved millions of lives. We had even travelled to parallel dimensions, for goodness' sake! In doing so, we'd met our evil counterparts (which was weird), seen Twilight Sparkle magically turn into an alicorn (which was weirder), and even visited a realm where magic was called science and bipedal primates had developed sentience rather than equines (oh, don't even get me started on that one!).
But now, after all that wonder and excitement, I was starting to feel the waning warmth of a setting sun, as if our time together was drawing inexorably to a close.
With a deep, shuddering sigh, I pulled the ropes off of her torso, and pulled her sleeping form over my shoulder. The TARDIS doors swung open as I approached them, and I stepped out into the world beyond.
It was a beautiful afternoon in Ponyville's central park. The sky was the most gorgeous shade of blue imaginable (even, I dare say, more so than that of the TARDIS herself), the sun was shining contentedly from the far horizon, and there wasn't a cloud for miles.
I lowered Ditzy down onto the ground and lay beside her for a time, breathing in the scent of the grass, and listening to a nearby group of foals playing. The day was near ending, but there still remained some light by which to enjoy oneself. In the distance, I saw a sextet of ponies I knew well having a picnic with their pets, and I allowed myself a moment of fantasy, in which the fate of the world wasn't hanging in the balance, and where Ditzy and I lived a happy, simple life as the town's mailmare and clock repairpony.
We would wake up at the same time, I imagined, since Ditzy would have to do her early morning rounds. I would make her breakfast, and we would watch the sunrise together before I'd send her on her way. Then I'd head back to bed for a while, waking up a few hours later with the warmth of the mid-morning sun beating down on the sheets. I'd roll over, straight into the sweetly scented patch left by Ditzy's mane on her pillow. I'd revel in her scent, and bask in the warmth of my thoughts for her before rising from the bed. Then I'd work - repairing clocks all morning for the citizens of Ponyville, finishing up to make lunch just in time for Ditzy to arrive back from her rounds. Then we'd go relax for a while; maybe even have a nap. Yes, a warm embrace in beams of afternoon sunlight. After that, it would be back to work for both of us for a few hours, to be followed by gentle caresses when Ditzy returned from her afternoon deliveries. Then dinner (maybe we'd go out - What about that new bistro on Mane Street? I'd ask). We would dine. We would laugh. We would have all the time in the world. And then, just as the sun was setting for the day, we'd go for a trot around the park, and she'd fall asleep next to me on the grass, and I'd just sit there beside her, smiling at the beauty before me. And it would be perfect.
"Oh, Mr. Clockwork!" came a sudden, dream-shattering voice. "How are you today?"
I returned to reality in a fashion not unlike that of somepony who'd just been saved from drowning. Gasping slightly from fright, I looked up towards the source of the interruption, my eyes thick with tears from a world that I wished could have been. Standing before me, the sun flowing through the outermost strands of her striped mane, was Twilight Sparkle.
"Oh! Uh... Twilight..." I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. "I'm, uh... fine, thanks. Lovely, um... afternoon, isn't it?"
"It certainly is..." she replied, as her smile flattened slightly. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, thanks," I lied, as I wiped the tears from my eyes. "Just a little hay fever - the pollen count's been pretty high today."
"Yeah... I suppose it has..." Twilight replied uncertainly. She knew full well that I was lying, and I could sense the warm, worried edges of concerned thoughts as she stood there silently.
Twilight Sparkle was a good pony - as a matter of fact, she was one of the best I'd ever met during the course of my travels. Her heart was a couple of sizes too big for her chest (as were those of her friends, which is quite a compliment, coming from a stallion with two of them), and her ability to simultaneously be both learned and inquisitive qualified her as one of the smartest creatures I'd ever had the pleasure of encountering.
"Twilight...?" I said as evenly as I could manage, my eyes drifting dreamily over the park in front of me as subtext and subterfuge melted away into my despair.
"Yes?" she replied quietly.
"How do you say goodbye to somepony you... to somepony that's important to you...?"
"I, uh..." the lavender mare said, tilting her head slightly. "I'll be honest, Mr. Clockwork, that's not exactly the direction I thought this conversation was going to take."
Twilight eyed Ditzy for a moment, before continuing to speak, her voice reduced to a concerned whisper (ostensibly to avoid waking my straw-maned companion).
"I didn't know that you felt that way about Ditzy," she said. "Are you two...?"
I felt my lips part as Twilight trailed off, an answer to her question hanging somewhere between my brain and my mouth. I looked up towards her, my 'hay fever' once again wetting my tear ducts.
"We might have been..." I breathed. "In another time. Another place... You see, there's something I have to do, Twilight. And I... I'm scared that I won't be coming back from it..."
"Oh, it can't be all that bad," Twilight said, smiling sweetly. "I'm sure whatever it is you have to do will turn out fine!"
I scoffed at her naivety, chuckling softly as the smile dropped completely off of her face.
"It's not that easy, Twilight," I replied, as I turned and looked her straight in the eye, the intensity of my stare surprising her into taking a single step backwards. "It feels different this time. More... final..."
Rising gently, I sighed and looked towards the setting sun.
"I suppose all I can do," I whispered, just loud enough to be heard, "is hope that I'm wrong..."
Without another word, I turned and began my trot back to the TARDIS, reasoning that not saying goodbye to Ditzy was the best way to guarantee that we would see one another again. This was just another jaunt into the vortex, I told myself. I'd be back before she even knew I was gone. In fact, I'd be back before she even woke up!
I could feel Twilight's eyes scanning me as I continued across the grass, and I could practically hear the multitude of questions she must have had for me, but I continued regardless. My mind was set on the task ahead, and I had committed to stopping the Master, whatever his plan for Equestria may have been.
As I stepped into the TARDIS console room, fresh tears beading at the corners of my eyes, I paused, wondering anew if I should have woken Ditzy to say goodbye. Would it have been better if she had known of my intention to leave her in her own time? Would she have appreciated that I didn't want to risk her safety with such a dangerous adversary? Would she recognise just how much I cared for her?
I dismissed those and a dozen other questions immediately, quickly convincing myself that I'd done the right thing, and put the matter out of my head. After all, a whole planet was at stake! I gritted my teeth, and whinnied in determination as I yanked the time rotor control towards me.
As the TARDIS phased away, the sun finally set over Ponyville Park, and a single, straw-maned mare awoke weeping.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
The stairs seemed to go on forever.
It was probably my imagination, but I could have sworn that the floor was getting warmer the further down I travelled. At one point, I even caught myself worrying about how close I was to the planet's mantle!
Naturally however, there was no bubbling pit of magma waiting to swallow me up at the base of the stairwell. Only another corridor. As its wall mounted lights flickered into life upon my arrival, I realised that this particular corridor was markedly different from every other passageway in the levels above. It was pristine; as clean and untarnished as the day it was finished. I continued my slow trot toward the real Stone Tower's lair, my muscles taught in case of an ambush.
'Right,' I said to myself. 'I'm ready for you, Tower. I'm like a coiled viper, ready to strike!'
'And exactly what good is that going to do you if Tower decides he wants to rush you?' asked One. 'You do remember his robot's threat, right?'
'Yeah,' added Three. 'You have to comply, Compass. Otherwise... well, I don't think I have to spell it out for you...'
'I know, I know,' I replied. 'It makes me feel less screwed, though.'
'Ah,' One said. 'Then, in that case, feel free to carry on.'
'Cheers,' I said, rolling my eyes at myself. 'Good to know you two have my back...'
My internal dialogue didn't resume after that, as I was finally closing in on the end of the corridor. In the distance, I was able to make out a normal looking StableTec pressure door, which, much like the corridor preceding it, was as clean and shiny as the day it left the factory.
I approached it carefully, my breaths short and uncomfortable as I began to compulsively gulp every few seconds. With a shiver of anticipation, I gritted my teeth, and extended my foreleg, gently tapping against the door's unblemished surface. Six seconds passed without so much as an echo from my surroundings, and I felt my inhalations shorten even more as my hearts thrummed nervously inside my chest. Then, just as the seventh second was about to pass, the door nonchalantly hissed open, retreating languidly into the ceiling.
'Smug, shiny bastard...' I caught myself thinking, as I continued my nervous, careful trot toward my fate.
The room that I ended up in turned out (somewhat surprisingly) to be a large and spacious laboratory, with a high, domed ceiling, and a multi-level, open-plan layout. I couldn't see anypony waiting to attack, or otherwise greet me, so I resolved to have a look around before whatever horrible plan Stone Tower had in store for me was revealed.
Like the rest of this secret sublevel, Tower's lab was absolutely immaculate, and also seemed to be equipped with every single piece of scientific equipment known to equine kind (as well as a few distinctly otherworldly devices which I couldn't immediately recognise). Chief among these was a huge protrusion from the far wall that looked as if it was designed to spilt in half. I found it difficult to make sense of the various dials, controls and readouts on its surface, although I did experience an unpleasant feeling of deja vu as my eyes scanned the myriad of peculiar diagrams and data.
'Where are you when I need you, Two...?' I said to myself, as my stomach churned uneasily.
I continued to browse the laboratory's contents for several more minutes before the distinctive whir of the equipment surrounding me suddenly changed in tone, as if a new machine had been added to the arrangement. Intent on investigating this new sound, I turned around from the device I had been looking at (a mint condition General Atomics R97 radar scanning rig with original chromium plating!), and promptly received what I can honestly say was the biggest fright of my life.
Where there had been naught but thin air a few moments earlier, there was suddenly a large, floating robot, complete with a set of spindly, articulated limbs.
It was a fucking spider bot. Naturally...
"ARGH!" I screamed, toppling backwards for the second time that night as my eyes slammed shut of their own accord. I found myself unconsciously assuming the foetal position on the floor, the shock at the robot's sudden appearance having demolished my ability to put up a fight, and began to spontaneously shiver and weep. At any second I was certain that I would feel an icy, toxic death, or be cut to ribbons by a flurry of computer controlled blades.
I maintained my pathetic position on the floor of the lab for over two minutes before I finally opened my eyes again, my forward hooves clamped tightly over my ears the whole time. I realised that, in deference to what was going on in my imagination, the robot hadn't even approached me, let alone attacked. I chanced an experimental glance up at the device and, sure enough, found that it was just floating there. Watching me.
It was more or less at this point that I noticed it's uniqueness (and I use that word to the fullest extent possible). You see, upon closer inspection, it became abundantly clear to me that this automaton was anything but a spider bot. In fact, with the notable exception of its silhouette (which was 'spider-ish' enough to incapacitate me with fear), it was entirely different from any other robot that I'd ever seen.
The least outlandish of these differences included the number of limbs it had (four, I counted, chiding myself mentally for making such a simple error), and the shape of its body (which was roughly spherical). Now, had it been only for those minor variations, I would probably still have been a quivering mess on the floor. However, there were several far more 'special' differences that, rather than scaring me, simply left me dumbfounded.
There were two of these, and I'll recount them in order of increasing weirdness. The first was that the upper section of the device's spherical body was not metal, as was common for standard spider bots, but was in fact translucent.
And pink.
And filled with fluid.
With a brain in the middle.
(And no, that was not shoddy typing on my part. I swear to Celestia there was a brain in that thing!)
The second, and indeed, most noticeable, of the spider-brain-bot-thing's weird features, were its eyes. Bear in mind that ordinary spider bots were equipped with a trio of equilaterally spaced photometric diodes, which, on account of their being made of a highly refined form of magic crystal, gave off a sickly, nightmare-inducing yellow glow. This one, on the other hoof, simply had a trio of forward facing telecasters (a flatter, infinitely rarer version of the standard terminal monitor tube), that for some inexplicable reason were displaying the three primary portions of a simulated face! The upper two telecasters bore a pair of static, unblinking eyes, while the lower one featured a pair of stationary lips.
I rose to my hooves slowly, making sure to maintain eye contact with the machine as my frown depended further and further into my brow. I reached my full height, bringing myself 'face-to-face' as it were with the strange device.
There were no words for what I was feeling at that moment. My initial burst of fear had been overtaken by both relief and confusion at almost exactly the same time, and with such rapidity that I'd ended up in some sort of dead zone between panic and wonderment. I couldn't even bring myself to form coherent thoughts, as the vast and airy space of my conscious mind was taken up in its entirety by a large, gleaming 'WHAT!?'. In the end, all I could manage was a slack jaw and a slight head tilt.
This gesture though, small as it was, seemed to be plenty for the brain-bot-thing, which angled its face-monitors in time with the muscles of my neck. Once we had both arrived at the desired slant, all that was left to do was blink. And blink I did. Repeatedly, and without mercy, my eyelids swept back and forth across the soft surface of my eyeballs. To my surprise (and almost in perfect unison with me) so did the flat, projected eyelids on the screens.
That was the final straw for my mind, it seemed. Somewhere deep in my brain, a tiny, oft-forgotten array of synapses suddenly found itself overloaded with weirdness, and, with a staunch, resigned 'Nope!', dutifully discharged itself, resetting my powers of comprehension in the process. In a flash, I found myself able to think again, and resolved to immediately send a carefully calculated, infinitely complex, and deviously subtle signal out towards the robot.
"H-hello...?" I croaked.
See? Genius.
"HI!" the robot responded without pause, so loud that I felt dizzy. "HOW ARE YOU!?"
"Ah! Bloody hell!" I shouted, as my forward hooves shot up to protect my ears. "Too loud! Too loud!"
"SORRY!" the robot replied in an earth-shakingly low, yet still equally loud tone. "HOW'S THIS!?"
"Worse!" I screamed, my head pounding and my bones aching from the sonic assault. "Lower you amplitude, not your frequency!"
"Ah!" the sonic-brain-bot-blaster responded, in what thankfully was a far more reserved voice. "Of course! You'll have to forgive me, dear boy - speech isn't something I use often... or at all really, now I come to think of it. How's that now, then? An improvement, I trust?"
It was indeed an improvement - pitched in a pleasant, low register that evoked feelings of warmth and trust in my mind, and broadcast at a comfortable, yet audible volume. With the robot's voice no longer acting as an anti-personnel weapon, I found that it was infinitely easier to analyse it (especially since I was no longer afraid of my brain melting). In doing so, I noticed its tinniness - a sure sign of digital speech synthesis - and the strange eccentricity of its accent (which was an outlandish and immensely over-the-top upper class twang).
"Yes," I said, exhaling. "That's much better, thanks."
"Excellent!" the robot cried, as its monitors tilted up as if to regard the crown of my head. "Yes, excellent! Now that we can communicate, we can get down to some real business!"
"Uh..." I droned, uncomfortable. "What... sort of business...? And while I'm asking questions, what are you, anyway? I've never seen a robot like you. I thought I was coming down here to meet Stone Tower. You know, the non-robot one."
The robot's eye-monitors returned to my eye level, regarding me with what I think was an even gaze.
"You are indeed here to meet Stone Tower, my boy," the robot said. "And you just have."
I opened my mouth to answer before I had thought of what I was going to say, and found my eyes being drawn up towards the top of the robot's chassis. To the brain. I shivered, a cold spike driving itself down through my spine and into my gut as images of Edinbuck blasted into my mind, like water onto lava.
Gem Shine...
I banished the metal ghosts with a violent twitch of my head, and looked back up at the rob—, I mean, cyborg, with a renewed sense of fear.
"You mean that you..." I began, losing pace halfway through my sentence to a nervous gulp. "You... transplanted your brain... into a machine...!?"
"Why, of course!" Tower answered cheerfully. "How else would I have lived this long?"
"Just how old are you?" I replied, my brow furrowing as I continued to edge backwards.
"Oh, now let's see," he said, as his monitors tilted skyward in thought. "Must be approaching two hundred and fifty years by now. Good grief, just think of it! A quarter of a millennium! I should throw a party!"
I stopped my slow retreat as my fear of the creature before me began to ebb. The situation could not have been more surreal. What had begun as a dangerous intrigue with slavery and kidnapping had promptly turned into a distinctly Doctor-esque encounter, and all in the space of half an hour. I had too many questions, and there was too much at stake to delay, so I opted to ignore the rampantly curious (not to mention fearful) sections of my mind, and instead allowed the more goal-oriented parts priority access to my vocal chords.
"Ahem," I coughed gently, eager to avoid insult (especially given all the lives that were depending on me). "You wanted me down here for something important, Mr. Tower. And your robot made certain promises to me in exchange for my cooperation. So, if it's all right with you, I'd like to get on with it."
"Ah! Yes, indeed! To business!" Tower squeaked gleefully. "How very productive of you! Yes, yes, of course! We can't keep science waiting now, can we? Right this way, my boy."
Tower floated over to the radar rig, and gestured towards it with one of his appendages. Still entirely nonplussed, I followed silently, and was quickly placed in the centre of the device.
"Let's just get you plugged in..." he said, as an array of sensors folded up out of the platform, confining me in a web-like cylinder of arcane electronics. The tube then contracted, depositing a fine mesh of interconnected crystals onto my hide.
"There!" Tower said, as the shiny network finished forming around me. "Now just take a few steps around the lab while I gather my data."
Obediently, I stepped down off the platform and began my trot around the room. The tiny crystals around me started to glow, and I felt a slight pressure at the base of my horn as the device did its work. At first, all of the crystals were blue (cerulean to be more precise), but after a moment, I noticed a green light making its way up my body, engulfing the gems as it went. The minuscule sensors made my nerves tingle as if they had just recovered from being numbed, and I found that I could easily sense how far the scan had progressed simply by tracking the pins and needles dancing over my extremities.
"So," Tower began, as I completed my first lap of the room, "Tell me about yourself. That's a suit of StableTec barding isn't it?"
"Uh... yes," I said back, still more confused with his manner than I was willing to admit. "Yes it is."
"I used to work for them, you know," Stone Tower replied, as his chassis slowly rotated to follow me. "I made prosthetics."
"Huh...?" I said, stopping to stare at him. "You mean battle prosthetics, right? Not like the benign sort—?"
"Keep moving, please," Tower said politely, interrupting me. "I need continued motion for my scans to yield the most accurate data."
"Oh. Sorry," I replied, as I returned to steady motion. There was silence for another few seconds, after which I continued the conversation that Tower had so unexpectedly struck up.
"So..." I said. "You were talking about... what you did before the war."
"Hm?" Tower answered absentmindedly. "Oh, yes, so I was. Uh, now where was I?"
"Prosthetics," I said.
"Oh, yes!" Tower replied. "I used to make prosthetics for disabled ponies. I was actually quite good at it; I even managed to land myself a tenured research position at the University of Canterlot."
"Really?" I said, trying not to sound too surprised. "So, you developed artificial limbs? Like... for amputees? Not for combat or anything?"
"Oh my, yes," Tower chuckled. "I had a knack for understanding the mechanics and behaviour of the equine body, and I wanted to apply that skill so that I could improve the lives of others. That's actually how I got my cutie mark... back when I had a body to accommodate it, of course."
"Yeah, I was going to ask - how did you end up in a jar?" I said, shortly before realising how insensitive a question that could be.
"Oh. Uh... sorry," I managed to mumble a moment later.
"Heh... It's quite alright," Tower replied softly, his monitors rotating into something I interpreted as a warm smile. "I've been a floating brain for longer than I was a pony. As I'm sure you're aware, balefire radiation doesn't agree very well with flesh, and there was quite a lot of it back when the bombs first went off."
I nodded morosely as a twinge of sympathy made its way down my throat and into my chest. The last thing I had expected to find down here was a valid sob-story, but as luck would have it, I seemed to have found quite the sorrowful tale. I really wanted to hate Stone Tower for all that he'd done, but when it came down to it, I couldn't help but imagine the pony that he used to be. Where now stood (or rather, floated) an unwieldy, slave-driving cyborg, there was once a living, breathing soul. One who I could easily picture bringing smiles to the faces of the misshapen and malformed; a creature that lived solely to invent for the good of others.
And how could I hate that?
It quickly became clear to me that my situation was far more complex than I had originally thought. Stone Tower obviously wasn't the moustache twirling villain that everypony else had been made him out to be. Just like the Maneframe, who killed and confined for what she saw as the 'greater good'. Just like Gem Shine, who could do nothing but maim and mutilate on the Controller's behalf.
He had his motives, his story. And once again, I saw the line between right and wrong; the border separating good and evil, go from a stark, monochrome divide to a blurry, vague greyness. My righteous resolve quickly lost the thrust that my hearts had empowered it with only moments earlier, and I found myself adrift on waves of indecision - like I was being washed in it. With no prevailing thoughts to guide me, I took a shallow breath, and opened my mouth to let my emotions do the talking.
"So why'd you do it?" I heard myself say calmly.
"Pardon me?" Tower answered, his monitors rolling into a cyborg frown. "Why did I do what?"
I stopped trotting and turned to face him, every semblance of understanding or mirth lost from my expressions. Apparently, angry Compass had won the toss up for use of my vocal chords, and I found myself furiously clenching my teeth as my hooves rooted themselves to the floor, splaying outwards aggressively. The green glow had by now reached my knees, and no doubt served to malevolently accent my facial features as I stared Tower down.
"The slaves, Tower!" I suddenly shouted, startling myself a little in the process. "I'm talking about the tens of thousands of ponies that you're holding against their will up there!"
"The what!?" Tower replied, an unmistakable tone of surprise surging through his cry. "What in heaven's name are you talking about!?"
"The... slaves...?" I repeated, a little deflated, as I cocked my head in renewed confusion. "Up... up there..."
"Now listen here, young colt," the cyborg replied sternly. "I have never been involved with such abhorrent affairs! And I will take a very dim view of it if I find out that you have!"
"B-but..." I stammered, my mind losing the will to continue in the face of such stark contradiction. "I've seen them! They're up there right now! Thousand and thousands of indentured labourers, soldiers and sex workers, being bought and sold like bottles of fucking cola!"
"Nonsense!" Tower boomed, as he closed the distance between us. "Why would I have spent the last two hundred years planning elaborate medical experiments on myself if I was that cruel!? Answer me that one!"
"Experiments...?" I said, as I dialled my aggression back a little. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Tower said haughtily, "that I have spent the last two centuries trying to develop enhancements for our race! Improvements that would enable foals, stallions and mares to go out into the blight above and thrive instead of struggling to subsist on a day-to-day basis. I've been endeavouring to perfect my modifications to the pony body for years, and now that I'm within a hair's breadth of fixing the entire world's problems, you waltz in here and accuse me of being some sort of despot! How dare you! You—! You—!"
"Whoa, whoa! Calm down!" I said loudly, my hooves held up in submission as Tower closed in on me. "You may not be aware of it, but there are cells in the upper levels of this stable, and they are being used to keep thousands captive against their wills!"
"But that's... That's not possible..." Tower stammered, his monitors flickering with trepidation as he evidently began to believe me. "I- I didn't know! I couldn't have known! I rely on my robot self to keep me inform—! Hold on! He's... he's never mentioned a word of this to me!"
Tower's monitors swivelled menacingly towards me, drawing back towards his chassis as if I were poisoned.
"Y-you're lying! You must be!" he hissed, as his monitors suddenly grouped together in what I surmised was an intense, raging frown, and he began to bear down on me, his articulated arms moving forward to form a deadly array of powered tools and sharpened implements.
"My robot would have said something by now!" he said, in a loud and uneven tone, as he continued to draw closer. "He would have told me!"
"W-wait!" I shouted in a panic, as I fell backwards onto the floor. "Your robot's running the whole thing! He's the leader of the slavers for all of Trottingham! He even supplies other slavers!"
"No!" Tower screamed desperately, as his wall of serrated death continued to advance. "My creations will benefit all equine kind! I will not be held responsible for society's new evils!"
"Please!" I begged, as my back was forced up against the lab wall. "Nopony's blaming you! You have to believe me, we just want your help!"
"And why should I help you!?" Tower shouted, his rage turning the glow of his monitors crimson.
"Because you're our last chance for freedom!" I screamed, just as a whirring saw blade was brought to within an inch of my throat.
Quite suddenly, Tower ceased his advance, coming to a complete stop as if to re-evaluate his position. His monitors slowly returned to their normal hues and positions as his vast array of tools retracted back into their respective enclosures.
"I..." he said after a moment of silence. "I'm sorry..."
"It's... It's alright..." I panted carefully, whispering in case I triggered an angry relapse. I spoke tentatively, clutching my throat in relief. "Are you... going to be okay, Mr. Tower...?"
"I can't log in to his operating system..." the cyborg said, an unmistakable twang of heartbreak worming its way into his voice. "I tried to do it remotely, while I was... threatening you. And I couldn't gain access."
A shiver made its way out of the speaker grill on Tower's main chassis as his monitors drooped low.
"My... my robot has seemingly erected an encryption layer between his networking protocols and his kernel," he said despondently, as he turned away to face the far wall. "He shouldn't have been able to do that. For all I know... you're telling the truth."
I righted myself slowly, being careful to avoid sudden movements, and began to approach Tower from behind as he floated away.
"All these years..." he whispered throatily, as a digital filter turned his words into sobs. "I've worked night and day to integrate equine and machine. I even survived that catastrophe in Edinbuck. And now I hear that one of my own creations; one of the devices I made to help others is flouting every single principle that I hold most dear..."
My head twisted to one side of its own accord. I had drawn level with Tower's floating body, hoping vainly that I might be able to offer some sort of comfort, when he had caught the attention of one of my most recent (and unpleasant) memories.
"D-did you say... Edinbuck...!?" I whimpered, hoping against hope that I had misheard.
"Yes, I..." Tower sobbed slowly, as his eyes monitors flickered with static. "I was brought in to consult on a secret project during the war - special, full body prostheses. But... but..."
His whimpers finally descended into full blown simulated weeping as he lowered himself onto the ground, his monitors tilting into a mournful expression. I, on the other hoof, was standing ramrod-straight, my eyes wide and fearful at the implications of what Tower had just said. Restraining my panicked hearts as much as I could, I took a deep breath, and addressed Tower in as even a voice as I could manage.
"Wh... what exactly," I began slowly, gulping as I spoke, "is your work focussed on, Tower...?"
"P-pardon...?" he said between sobs. "What does that have to do with anything? Weren't you listening!? I can't command my robot anymore! Do you have any idea what that means!? How dangerous he could be if he's rejected my control!?"
"Yes, I do," I whispered, forcing my voice to maintain a level tone. "But I need you to tell me about your work, and I need you to tell me right now. Okay?"
"I... I don't understand..." Tower stammered.
"Stone," I said gently, laying down on the ground next the metallic body. "Tell me that your research isn't anything to do with the Cyberpony project."
"The—! B-but how...?" He stammered, as his monitor's twisted in disbelief. "How could you know about—?"
"Tell me," I whispered with a shiver, my eyes pleading. "Please. I've seen what became of the ponies in Edinbuck, and I can't let that happen again."
"You... you saw...!" Tower replied slowly, a haunted breath snaking its way from his grill. "No... No! They can't still be alive! Those poor bastards! Oh Celestia damn it, no!"
At that, Stone Tower's monitors swivelled down towards the floor, just as a deep howl of despair escaped his speaker grill. His articulated limbs shivered as he wept, and I found myself squeezing my eyes shut as I fought to repel the melancholy onslaught that was approaching.
"It's... it's alright Tower," I cooed unconvincingly. "They're... at peace now."
"R-really...?" he blubbered, turning to face me. "A-all of them...?"
"Yes," I said, swallowing as sour lies words filling my mouth. "All of them..."
Tower's monitors regarded me unmovingly for a moment, before turning to stare at the far wall.
"I always wondered what happened after I..." he whispered throatily. "After I ran away..."
Tower continued to stare into the distance, the hum of his machines acting as his only audible companion as I maintained a reverent silence. His outburst had allayed my fears for the time being - nopony so saddened by the cyborgs at Edinbuck could be experimenting with the same technology. (At least, that's what I hoped.)
I looked down at my hooves morosely, and noted that the green glow of the sensor crystals had by now reached the top of my legs. After a long, reflective silence, Tower turned to face me with his monitors again, and with a digital shiver, continued to speak.
"I left them, you know..." he said, in a small, quiet voice. "When the bombs fell we were all so scared, I... I just ran. The facility was jointly funded and managed by StableTec and the military, you see. So we had advanced warning of the attack. Only about twenty minutes, mind - nothing... nothing that could have made a difference. We worked on the Cyberpony prototypes for months, and all indications were that the suits would perform beyond even our most optimistic expectations. The problem, as it turned out, was that we hadn't expected the right things..."
Tower's chassis slowly rose off of the floor as his story gained momentum, and he began to sedately float around the room as he continued to speak.
"You see," he said, "we designed the prototypes to compete with another powered armour initiative called 'Project Steelpony', but I could tell that the military wasn't convinced by our efforts. The project was continued though, with private funding from StableTec, to act as a more... permanent form of combat enhancement. Our suits were meant to replace damaged limbs and augment the remaining ones, making a soldier as effective as possible but still allowing them the freedom to be a pony if and when hostilities ever ceased. Apparently though, machines that automatically fit artificial limbs went 'too far' according to some. Given what I'd seen of Project Steelpony, all the brass wanted were better killing machines. They didn't care about the ponies who actually had to wear the damn things."
"But..." I caught myself saying before my sense of tact could intercept my tongue. "The ponies I... met... in Edinbuck weren't—"
"That was the part we didn't expect," Tower continued. "The suits were incredibly advanced, not just in their design, but also in their operation. We used technology produced by some secret group deep in the bowels of the Oakflare facility to build up both the armour and their respective fitting machines. We designed the system so that all you'd have to do was lay in a machine, and it would heal your injuries, fit a prosthesis, armour the rest of you and send you on your way."
"I think I see where you're going..." I said, grimacing.
"Yes..." Stone Tower said quietly. "When the bombs fell and the facility's radiation shielding failed, the first thing that everypony did was turn to our creations. We stood in our machines, expecting rad-hardened exoskeletons and breathing equipment. What happened instead was... was..."
"The 'better' solution?" I proffered morosely. Tower's monitors tilted forward in a nod.
"The machines calculated that we couldn't survive outside," he said. "Even with protective gear, owing to the lack of viable foodstuffs or clean water in a post-balefire wasteland. So they did exactly what they were programmed to do: they fixed us. All at once the machines started to tear the skin off of my friends and colleagues, cracking their skulls with sub-micron precision to get at their brains. In a flash, the fabricators whipped these new bodies up for us, every one of them shiny, perfect and uniform. And then they just plopped the brains into them. Like pickled eggs into jars. A few of us stayed back to ferry others into the machines. We had to watch as the... 'components' were assembled. I remember there was this one military mare whom I was courting at the time. Actually... I was building up the courage to ask her to marry me... I tore my vocal chords screaming her name as the machines dismantled her skull. It was her eyes that caught my attention when we first met - she had the most beautiful lilac irises. And I got to watch them roll back into her head as the machines removed her brain and spinal column."
I swallowed a mouthful of bile as Tower spoke, unable to banish visions of his past from manifesting in my mind. He continued after only a short pause. I knew that he had to keep going; that he had to tell somepony, anypony his story.
"I was the first to run after it all kicked off," he said dryly, still listlessly roaming the room. "There was a group of lab staff and soldiers that tried to hide inside a big magical forcefield, but... Well, anyway, the others tried to shut down the machines, but something had obviously gone wrong. Some of the fabricators started building this giant sort of... altar for something or other, and all the new cyborgs that they produced started screaming in this Goddess-awful monotone about 'upgrading' all of equinity. Even the ponies who stayed to make sure there weren't any stragglers ended up being sliced open by the machines eventually; pushed under the blades by the chrome-plated remains of the friends and coworkers they were trying to save."
I heard so much of myself in his words; the haunting, sorrowful tones of regret accenting his tale with the dark motes of nightmares. I felt my eyes moistening as he turned to face me, his monitors distorted beyond recognition with static.
"I sprinted for my life, too shocked to spread my wings," he said, swallowing simulated tears. "And I got out of the lobby just in time for a megaspell to hit Edinbuck's city centre. Have you ever seen a balefire bomb go off, Compass? It's beautiful. Absolutely stunning. A picture of a million terrified screams mixed in with the majestic dance of quantum physics, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. I kept running of course - even as the cloud mushroomed into the sky. I mean, what else could a coward like me do? I ran and I ran and I ran, for hours on end, until I found a ruined ministry hub to shelter in. I ate some of the emergency supplies I found there, but I couldn't keep anything down. I started to vomit blood, and my bowels emptied themselves over my hind legs as I stumbled around. I was exhausted, I stank, I could feel my insides burning even though my hide felt like melting ice. All I wanted to do was curl up and die, and then... would you believe, I was saved? I collapsed in a basement level, right next to huge, half-opened crate. I thought I was imagining it at first, but after a few minutes of forcing my eyes to adjust, I saw the Oakflare seal! I'd stumbled, dying, half-dazed and covered in my own shit, into an Oakflare storage facility. Edinbuck was littered with them before the war, but the StableTec hub and the ministry building I found were the only ones that survived the bombardment intact. And I still had my ID badge, which meant that none of the arcane defences would touch me."
"So what... what was in the crate...?" I whispered, as my eyes continued to leak.
"One of my prototypes," said Tower. "It was the first Cyberpony rig we had built back at the R&D facility. I knew I was dying, and I was too much of a coward to face the Reaper. So, I climbed into the thing, turned it on, and told it to integrate my brain into its control system."
"You what...!?" I replied in disbelief, my hearts suddenly pounding again. "Then you're... you're a...!"
"No," Tower said firmly, a determined ferocity burning into his voice. "No. I. Am. Not. I would never allow another one of those... those things to be created again, even to save my own life. No, I wasn't a victim of the machine. I became the machine - the ultimate expression of my destiny as a healer, and I vowed that I would make ponies lives better for the rest of my days. Over the weeks and months that followed, I removed every trace of the old control system, the one that we had trusted with our lives over at the R&D facility, and I replaced it with components I scavenged from the surrounding storage crates. Eventually, I modified my new body so that it became mobile, with my brain sealed in a pod of suspension fluid at the top, a repulsion talisman for motion control, and all the tools of a state of the art manufacturing robot tucked away into my chassis. After that, it was a simple matter of building my robot self to act as a scout and information gatherer. I wrote a heuristic learning algorithm for him so that I could teach him what it was to be a pony, as opposed to simply imbuing him with line after line of meaningless, fallible code, and in return, he taught me about what had become of Equestria. This body, you see, isn't exactly rugged. I can do almost anything with a laboratory around me, but a single crack in my brain pod, or sheared bolt, or piece of gravel in my hover talisman, and I'd be fresh out of luck."
"I take it that's the reason that you want to scan my horn then?" I said, relieved. "You want to integrate advanced technology without having to rely on your research from the Cyberpony project, right?"
"Exactly," Tower answered with a nod of his monitors. "Your horn is the most perfect example of a biotechnological neural interface that I've ever seen. Why, if I could unlock its secrets, I could build the best prostheses in history! Think of it! I could extend the life expectancy of a pony by decades! Centuries even! A perfect synergy between equine and machine! Totally passive, completely non-invasive protective implants. And they would even allow for uninstallation, just in case."
"That's... quite the optimistic vision," I remarked carefully. "What makes you think that you'll have any better luck this time around?"
"Because this time," Tower said excitedly. "I'll test it all on myself! Just like I've been planning for all these decades. I've found that restricting my list of test subjects to just myself has increased the care with which I perform my work by several orders of magnitude. My body's indefinite lifespan helps as well - no deadlines anymore, you see."
"Well..." I replied thoughtfully, once I had taken a moment to roll his words through my brain a couple of times. "That actually sounds like a pretty robust methodology. In fact, I think... I think I agree with what you're doing - everything you've mentioned sounds great."
"You really think so?" Tower asked, as his vocal waveform phased high into the most gleeful frequency bands.
"Honestly, yes," I replied, once again trying to not sound too surprised. "I think you're doing the world one hell of a service down here. I mean, your work is of amazing quality and sophistication, you've got a huge amount of experience in how not to go about what it is you're trying to do, and you even seem to be going out of your way to make sure that nopony's being harmed by your research."
"I'm so glad you're seeing things my way, Compass," Tower said, as the light from his monitors yellowed in hue, becoming several shades warmer and more inviting. "I was afraid that I'd be regarded as a monster for my part in the Cyberpony project, but you've just managed to validate two hundred years worth of guilt and toil. I promise not to disappoint you."
"That's fantastic to hear, Tower," I replied, smiling. "We just need to sort out the slaver situation upstairs, and we'll be golden."
"Yes. Yes, of course," Tower said, his voice quickly returning to its previous sombre tone. "The scan will be finished in a few minutes. Once it's done, I'll teach you how to shut down my robot, and we'll see what we can do about liberating that poor lot up there."
"There is one last thing though," I said. "There's a buck that I came here to find. Your robot seemed to have one hell of an interest in him - so much so that he paid mercenaries to kidnap—"
"Oh!" Tower said suddenly, interrupting me. "That'll be that 'Sage' character that he sent down here. Yes, I was wondering about that."
"He's here!?" I replied, shocked. "As in, in this lab!?"
"Oh, yes," Tower said. "Hang on..."
At that, the simulated facial features displayed on Tower's monitors flickered away to reveal a live feed from a security camera somewhere else in the lab. My eyes were drawn to Sage immediately - he was being held spread-eagled in an elaborate frame of restraints and medical equipment. His eyes were closed, and I feared the worst for a time, before I noticed a series of monitors displaying a regular heart beat and stable neural activity patterns. My breath shortened and I began to instinctively frown just as Tower's facials features returned.
"What the hell are you doing to him!?" I said, practically shouting. "You said that you weren't testing anything on anypony but yourself!"
"I'm not!" Tower replied defensively. "I swear! It was my robot, you see. Remember when I said that I rely on him for information on the outside world? Well, about two weeks ago, he told me that he had apprehended the most dangerous creature in Equestria, and that he would be perfect for my research. He's the one that sedated and restrained him, not me! I've just kept him like that so I can scan him."
"But why is he still like that then!?" I asked angrily, my nostrils flaring. "What threat could Sage possibly pose to you!? And what could possibly be so interesting that you had to scan him for a whole bloody fortnight!?"
"Well... nothing, as it turns out," Tower said, shrugging his monitors.
"Eh?" I replied, cocking my head in confusion.
"He's still trussed up like that under sedation because I have no idea what to do with him," Tower explained. "The only thing that my scans have been able to tell me are that he's an earth pony, he's male, and he's nearing the sixty year mark. And that's all. It's just that every time I informed my robot of my results, he told me that he was sure I'd missed something and that I should look harder."
"Wait a second," I said, as realisation dawned on me. "He just keeps saying that you should keep Sage down here?"
"Well, yes," Tower replied. "He insists that there's something extraordinary about this buck that I should look into for my research."
"Of course he does," I said. "It's so bloody obvious, it's staring us right in the face!"
"What is?" Tower asked.
"Your robot's motives," I replied. "He wants Sage locked up so he can expand his slaver operation. Think about it - who else has come down those stairs in the past two hundred years? That mechanical bastard has stuffed Sage down here with you to keep him out of the way! And he knows that you trust him implicitly, so as long as you think there's a reason to keep Sage locked up, your robot won't have to worry about him."
"But why go to all that trouble?" Tower said. "If what you say is true, then he has a veritable prison complex up there. Surely he'd be more secure with all his other captives."
"He can't risk it," I said, smirking thoughtfully. "Sage is arguably Trottingham's most charismatic leader. He's brave and loyal almost to a fault, he's more resourceful than an angry artificial intelligence, and he can rally anyone behind him, pony or otherwise. That's what your robot's afraid of: his ability to lead. If he put him in with the rest of his captives, he'd have a full blown revolt within a week."
"Ah," Tower said, nodding his monitors. "Why that's downright fiendish! I certainly didn't teach him that!"
"I wouldn't worry about it," I said comfortingly, placing a single hoof on Tower's chassis. "The Wasteland can bring out the best in any creature's heart. Unfortunately though, it can also reveal darkness that most of us can scarcely imagine."
"I should have never allowed him to interact with those other ponies," Tower said, sighing.
"Other ponies?" I asked, suspicious. "What other ponies?"
"The ponies that used to live in this stable," Tower replied. "About fifteen years after I created my robot, Stable 50's closed cycle life support system failed. Some sort of power struggle apparently - they managed to destroy the facility's ability to sustain a population, so they were forced to surface again. My robot befriended the refugees almost immediately, and brought them back to the ruins of the ministry building so that they could scavenge for parts and hence maintain their now-open-to-the-toxic-wastes stable. When they starting carrying the equipment and supplies back to the facility, I hid myself in one of the crates, and my robot did the rest, reserving a portion of the lower structure for my work."
"And nopony noticed you just floating off down into the sub-levels...?" I said quizzically. "You don't have a cloaking device or something, do you?"
"No, nothing like that," Tower chuckled, a distinct warmth making its way back into his voice.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to just introduce yourself to them?" I asked. "I mean, how bad could they have been? They had just lost their home and you were giving them what sounds like a good few metric tonnes of supplies to get them back on their hooves. Didn't you consider that they might have been pretty grateful to you?"
"I... I couldn't bring myself to face them," Tower replied sheepishly. "They were so... different to what I remembered. So optimistic. The world around them was dead and barren, but they still laughed and joked and sang to one another. They didn't have much in the way of weapons or armour - just radiation suits. And the look of relief on their faces when my robot showed them all the spares in the warehouse was... Oh, Luna, it was just wonderful. I didn't want to spoil them by reintroducing them to a remnant of the war. As far as I was concerned, they were well on their way to getting over it; to starting their recovery back to civilisation. So I hid. And I promised myself that they would never know me, but that they would forever know my work."
'By the Goddess that's noble...' One said, awed and metaphorically tearful.
'Tell me about it,' replied Three. 'I feel so sorry for the guy - all he wanted to do was help, and it's backfired ten trillion times over!'
'You know what they say,' I thought into the conversation. 'The road to Tartarus is paved with good intentions.'
"I suppose when it really came down to it, though," Tower continued slowly. "They weren't as 'over it' as I had thought..."
His monitors once again turned slowly towards the floor, and I felt my hearts breaking for this poor old brain who only wanted to help. We stood in silence for several moments before I decided that enough had been said. It was time to act.
"Right then," I said, taking in a short, subject changing breath. "Let's get something done about that robot of yours, shall we? First, I need you to shut down Sage's sedative feed and release him from his restraints. Then we'll get a plan sorted and see about freeing everyone in the cells up above."
"Sounds good!" Tower said excitedly, as he latched onto my sudden initiative without a moment's hesitation. He went silent for a moment as his monitors flickered.
"Done," he said. "Your friend has been released, and he'll be conscious again in a matter of minutes. Now what was that you were saying about— ACK!"
Without warning, Stone Tower suddenly dropped to the floor, his monitors splayed untidily and speckled with static.
"Tower!?" I said loudly, recoiling slightly. "What is it!? What's wrong!?"
"Two..." he hissed incoherently, as his projected facial features began to vary wildly in their arrangement and appearance. "Y-you have... two...!"
"Two?" I replied quizzically, moving quickly to be by his side once again. "Tower, I don't understand. What do you mean by—?"
And then it dawned on me. I stopped talking mid sentence as I slowly tilted my head downwards, resting my eyes on the suit of sensors that even now was still scanning my innards. The green glow was still there, lighting the way of the suit's many crystalline eyes, and it had by now reached my torso, drawing level with my chest.
And my hearts.
"T-Tower...?" I whispered, gulping nervously. "What's happening...?"
"I... I don't— ARGH! —know!" he stuttered breathlessly, as the face displayed on his monitors warped and fizzled into nightmarish shapes and colours. "It's the sensors; the data... They say that you have— HNNGG! That you have... two hearts!"
'Oh, Goddess,' One said, his mental voice quivering with realisation. 'Compass, he's reacting to us; to the fact that we're a Time Lord now!'
'It can't be - how could he have known!?' Three asked, chiming in in a panic. 'Nopony should be able to recognise our body! Even if he knew about the Doctor from the radio series, he would still think he was fictional! There's no reason to make the connection between us and him!'
'Unless...' One replied with a shiver.
'Oh, no!' Three whispered. 'Don't, One! Don't you bloody say it!'
'Unless he didn't remove all of the Cyberpony technology!'
My lungs filled themselves of their own accord with a deep breath, one borne of shock and trepidation, before any words left my mouth.
"I do have two hearts," I replied solemnly, as I found myself unconsciously backing away from him. "And it sounds like you're having a reaction to that fact..."
"Wh... Where are you going!?" Tower shouted, his tone desperate and fearful. "Compass! D-don't go! I... I'm scared. I don't know what's happening to me! Please stay!"
"Tower..." I began slowly. "You said that you removed all of your Cyberpony components before you came here. Are you... are you sure that you got them all?"
"Yes!" Tower responded loudly, as one of his monitors managed to hoist itself up to look at me. "I checked every circuit. Every connection. Every line of code. I was at— ACK! I was at it for years dammit!"
"Think, Tower," I continued, still making sure to keep my distance. "Was there anything else you used in your construction? Anything that wasn't a stock part? Maybe even... something from another Oakflare project?"
"Something!?" Tower scoffed, as his pain began to make its way into every one of his words. "Weren't you listening!? Everything I used was from other Oakflare projects! There wasn't a single off-the-shelf part in that warehouse!"
"Oh my Goddess..." I said, as the bottom dropped out of my stomach.
"Why does it— AHHH! Why does it matter!?" he screamed. "Help me! Please! I've lost control of my pain receptors! It's like I'm dying again!"
"Tower," I replied, as evenly as I could "Oakflare wasn't just an R&D organisation. It also specialised in the acquisition and reverse engineering of extraterrestrial artefacts! Practically everything they did was either inspired by or directly derived from alien technology!"
By now, Tower's simulated face was unrecognisable, and the noises coming from his grill were becoming less and less pony-like as time went on. His mouth and eyes were steadily giving way to three featureless spots of bright light; two white in the upper monitors, and one blue, where his mouth used to be.
"H-hang on, Tower!" I managed to say, while still backing away. "I'll go get Sage, and then we can all work together to fix you, okay?"
"D-don't go!" he shouted, "Please! ACK! I need your help!"
"I'll be back soon!" I replied over my shoulder. "I promise!"
I galloped down the lab's only other corridor faster than I thought I was capable of. For some reason - one that I wasn't willing to explore at the time - I was more afraid of Tower's transformation than of anything I'd ever seen in all my life. I had little time to ruminate on it though, as the corridor was far shorter than others in the subterranean level and I was soon bearing down upon another door. With a swift buck, the panel beeped and cheerfully admitted me to the room beyond.
It was light inside, and sterile. The smell of antiseptic and anaesthetic mixed with hints of industrial lubricant, metal shavings and ozone wafted into my nostrils, providing me with two sides of the cyborg scent triangle. All that was missing was the blood. I spotted Sage almost immediately. True to Tower's word, he had been deposited (gently, I hoped) onto the floor below the restraint, and the medical apparatus previously attached to him had been removed, being left to dangle dripping with blood and saliva from the ceiling nearby.
I rushed over to him, noticing with unmatched relief that his chest was gently rising and falling, as if he were in the middle of a good night's rest. With perhaps a little too much forward momentum, I lowered myself to the floor, nudging him in the process.
"Sage?" I said, in a redundantly loud whisper. "Wake up! It's Compass!"
Sage stirred at the sound of my voice, grimacing as his senses (and the pain of having been suspended from the ceiling for days on end) came back to him.
"C... Compass...?" he breathed, as his eyes slowly adjusted to the room's harsh, white lights. "Wh... where...? Who...? What the—!?"
His eyes quickly focussed on a spot just above the crown of my head, and I saw the old buck's enormous intellect try in vain to wrap itself around the myriad changes that had manifested since the last time we had spoken.
"You... have a horn...!?" he said, still somewhat dazed. He sleepily reached up to try and touch it, only to stop halfway, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. When next he looked at me, a feeling of safety that I hadn't felt in days filled my chest with warmth and courage. Sage's keen, insightful gaze had returned, and I saw it catalogue everything in the room - myself included - in a matter of seconds. With slow, confident movements, he rose to his hooves, testing his balance and the responsiveness of his limbs. Standing tall once more, I felt him dwarfing me as I waited for his next question (or indeed, command), despite my being several inches taller. To my surprise though, he leaned forward and extended one of his forelegs, drawing me into a tight hug.
"I knew I could rely on you!" he chuckled warmly. "You magnificent anomaly of a buck! You came back for me! Thank you, Compass! Oh, Goddess, thank you!"
"Well, I did owe you..." I said, blushing. "Aren't you... a little more surprised by the fact I've got a horn...?"
"Oh, not at all! It's exactly what I'd have done!" Sage said jovially, as he disengaged himself from me. "Very clever disguise - the mercenaries would be looking for an earth pony, not a unicorn. Yes, very clever indeed!"
"Yeah..." I droned, biting my lip. "It's not a disguise, but that's not important now. I can explain later, but right now, we need to get going!"
Sage pursed his lips and adopted a frown, refocussing his eyes on my newest appendage.
"What do you mean it's not a disguise...?" he said, almost in wonderment, his eyes widened at the sight of the surrounding scar tissue. "But it's... it's metal...! What did you—?"
Just then, the room was flooded with darkness as the lights flickered out. I felt a rush of air as Sage dropped low to the ground, assuming a defensive posture in classic Wasteland style (I'd have to pick that habit up at some point). A bloom of panic began to flare in my gut as I willed an illumination into the tip of my horn.
'Tower...' I whispered internally, as the light illuminated Sage's face.
"Good goddess!" he exclaimed, as he rose from his stance. "You can cast spells with it!? Compass, I'm going to need to an update here - what in the wide, wide world of Equestria is going on!?"
"O-okay, but quickly!" I stammered while inhaling sharply. "We're in the Emporium, that converted stable that Stone Tower uses as his fortress, except it's not his fortress as much as it's his robot's - you see, Tower's over two hundred years old, and was around for the Last Day, and he was involved with a group of cyborgs called Cyberponies - the creatures that you knew of as the Sentinels, by the way - and rather than be turned into one, he ran away and built himself a new body out of components from crashed alien spaceships and the like. Now something weird's happening to him in the next room, but I need him to live if we're going to liberate all the slaves up above, because only he can deactivate his robot, which wasn't always evil, he says, and also so he can use his medical knowledge to help all the ponies out in the wider Wasteland."
Sage stood in silence as I paused for breath, and blinked twice, his face a picture of neutrality.
"I see..." he said evenly after a few seconds. "And... the horn...?"
"I fell on my Screwdriver," I responded curtly. "Oh, and Time Lords are real, my stable's actually the TARDIS, and one of my best friends is now part of its core operating system."
Sage just stared at me, his face motionless and thoughtful in the scant light.
"Sounds like one hell of a week," he finally said, raising an eyebrow as he finished processing my tale.
"Oh, you have no idea..." I replied, sighing.
"Well, whatever's going on, I'd wager that we'd be better not sticking around," Sage said, cracking a smile as he turned to face the room's exit. "Let's get going. We should go see what the matter is with this 'alien-cyborg-Tower' you were speaking about. Lead on!"
I nodded, and galloped ahead gladly, happy that somepony else was finally taking charge of my awful plan. We travelled single file, my horn illuminating the corridor as we went, and came to the man lab chamber after less than a minute. The large domed room had also been plunged into darkness, it seemed. The equipment lining the walls was silent now, and all of the indicators had been extinguished. I noted that the harness of sensors fastened to my body had died a similar death, the green and blue glowing crystals having faded to an obsidian black. Shrugging the form fitting net to the floor, I felt a hoof on my back, and had to swallow the urge to scream in fright. Turning to face my would-be attacker, I found Sage standing next to me, making a series of gestures with his hooves.
Now, I had never studied sign language, nor did I have any knowledge of military hoof signals, but Sage managed to convey, in less than three seconds, that there was something concerning directly in front of us, and that I should start paying attention to it immediately.
I slowly turned my head to face the spot he was indicating. My horn lit the scene, and I let out a despondent breath as I realised what I was looking at. There, laying dark and lifeless on the floor, was Stone Tower's cybernetic body. It's monitors were blank, its manipulators idle, and it brain case... empty?
I did a double take as I took in the sight of the inactive machine. The transparent bubble that made up the suit's brain case was now separate from the rest of the assembly, the translucent suspension fluid inside having pooled on the lab floor as a result. I trotted cautiously over to it to, and felt a tingle of dread work its way up my spine as I confirmed that Tower's brain was indeed missing.
"Compass," Sage whispered. "What are we looking at?"
"This was Tower's - the real Tower's - cyborg body," I replied, swallowing nervously. "His brain was in this jar less than ten minutes ago..."
As the words left my mouth, I noticed a trail of the life-supporting slime glinting in the light of my magic. It led away from the puddle under Tower's body, and across the lab floor. Following it in unison, Sage and I realised quickly that it led to the lab wall; specifically, to the strange protrusion I had noticed earlier.
The one that looked as if it were capable of opening.
The one that looked as it were big enough for a pony to stand in.
The one from which a faint whir was now emanating.
I turned to Sage, ready to suggest that we turn tail and run, when the lights on the surface of the protrusion suddenly blinked to life. We both stared at it in surprise and shock as a voice boomed out of nowhere.
"Compass..." said Stone Tower.
"Um..." I replied, as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. "H-hi again, Tower... How, uh... how are doing...?"
"Wonderfully," he said, his voice much slower and deeper than before. "I really should thank you, Compass - I'd never have had the will to do this without your intervention."
"Do what?" I asked, as I glanced nervously towards Sage.
"Use my refined fabricator, of course," he said. "The chamber you're looking at is the culmination of all my work; all my suffering. It's designed not to repair ponies, but to improve them!"
"T-tower?" I responded. "Please tell me you're just getting a replacement body built..."
"Not just a replacement!" he replied, the enthusiasm in his voice tinted with a sharp, intimidating edge. "An improvement! I was always going to test this on myself, but I could never work up the courage! If it worked, it would build the body I always wanted; one made just for me, derived from my deepest desires and basest needs. If not... then I would have been killed. And one of the last vestiges of the old world would rot and decay down here, sealed away for all time. It was quite a nice thought, leaving my destiny up to the fates like that."
"O-okay..." I said, as I nodded for Sage to begin edging his way towards the lab exit. "Tower, I-I'm a little concerned about how you're uh... behaving. Your old body just started failing when you picked up my second heart, and now your voice is all... gravelly. You're kinda creeping me out, mate..."
"Yes, that was something wasn't it?" Tower replied, as his voice induced another shiver. "It seems that in the course of building this body all those years ago, I neglected to specify a polarity bias in the neural interface. The result was a constant baseline feedback from the various components I used, which has apparently affected what remains of my nervous system."
"I-in what way...?" I stuttered, as Sage gently began to pull me towards to the door.
"I believe I can sum it up with a single thought," Tower said, his words now spaced uniformly, his voice deep beyond terrifying. "Like I said, I should thank you for forcing me to use my creation. I should be grateful for your having informed me of my robot's antics. I should be inspired by your willingness to help me, despite all that I've done... But I cannot feel these things for you... Because I hate you... Time Lord. I hate you more than anything in this universe, or any other."
At that, Sage's grip became a good three times firmer, and he began dragging me towards the door as fast as he could. I heard him rip the panel off of the wall in order to bypass the door's locking mechanism as the whir inside the protrusion changed in pitch, and with a hiss, the two halves began to separate. A cloud of smoke and steam filled the lab as my own terror and confusion screamed into my mind.
'It knows us!' screamed Three. 'It knows the Doctor! We need to get out of here!'
'Stay calm, Compass!' shouted One. 'Nothing ever came of panicking! Just relax, turn around and—'
'RUN!' said Two suddenly. 'FOR GODDESSES' SAKE, RUN!'
'Sweet Celestia, it's him!' said Three.
'Where the hell have you been!?' said One.
'NEVERMIND WHERE I'VE BEEN!' Two screeched, it's tone terrified beyond all reason. 'You fools don't understand what Stone Tower's become! He's a... a—!'
Two didn't have time to finish his warning, as the electronically projected voice of Stone Tower returned only moments later, now more horrible than the sound of death itself.
"I. Will. Kill you..." he said, in tones of darkness and evil and hatred of all things.
"I. Will. Destroy you..." he continued, his voice rising in pitch, tearing through me like a rusty saw blade as lights pulsed through the cloud in time with each syllable. A singular blue glow began to move toward me, extending from the mist on a slender, metal stalk.
"I. Will. Exterminate you..." it screamed, as tears of terror began to stream from my eyes.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: A Mile On Their Hooves Instead of judging others, you have made an attempt to understand and relate to them. You gain +1 to PER as a result.
New perk added: Big Brained Cold, hard logic has gotten you far, but it takes a big heart to moderate a big mind. This realisation has granted you +1 to both your INT and CHA stats.
Chapter 14 – A Slave to Time (Part 5) Nopony showed me that there might be some better way...
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria...
Redheart looked at me with disbelief, her jaw hanging slightly as she beheld the magical shield around her.
"I've never..." she whispered in awe. "Never seen anything like it! Not even the shield over Canterlot was like this one!"
"It's a Gallopfreyan arcano-plasmic barrier," I smirked, sure of myself as the rest of the ponies around me did the same as Redheart. "One of the few useful gifts my time-wimey exploits have managed to yield. It's only really meant for short bursts, but you see I was able to reverse the polarity of the—"
"Corporal!" a military stallion suddenly shouted, cutting me off. "Look!"
All eyes turned towards the laboratory's entrance. There, sprinting into the room was a group of no more than a dozen ponies, most of whom were clad in lab coats and technician's barding.
"Damn it!" snarled Corporal Serious, her brow furrowing as she set eyes on them. "Stragglers!"
She shouted for them to come closer, barrelling towards the edge of the field as fast as she could. Once there, she skidded to a halt, awaiting the arrival of the group.
"Hey! Time-buck!" she shouted over to me. "Get ready to let them into the field!"
"I can't!" I replied, panicking slightly as the first crack began to propagate through my hastily concocted plan. "That's not how the spell works!"
"Then drop it and re-cast it!" she said angrily. "We can't just leave them out there!"
By now, the group had arrived at the field's periphery, and had lined up along the outside ready and waiting to be allowed inside. As they arrived one by one, the Corporal's gaze had seemed to linger on a single brown-hided pegasus wearing a lab coat, with what looked like a white, mechanical leg as a cutie mark, but she had regained her composure within seconds and turned to address me again.
"Look," I said pre-emptively, as I moved carefully towards her for fear of collapsing the field, "I can't restart the spell! I'm sorry, but we don't have any time left, and it would take too much power to try again! Why do you think I held off until I thought everypony was down here with us!?"
"What about polaric inversion?" the brown pegasus in the lab coat asked, his voice sparking another unsettling wave of deja vu within me. "You could generate a disturbance in the field that would weaken it enough for us step through!"
"I've already got one running!" I answered, exasperated. "This spell is meant for short bursts, so I'm juggling between it using all of its energy in a matter of minutes and it collapsing altogether for lack of input!"
"There has to be some way of getting them inside!" the corporal shouted, her voice taking on a tone of desperation as she eyed the brown pegasus again. "What if—?"
"Wait!" the pegasus suddenly blurted. "What about project Cyberpony!? We could use the prosthesis manufacture machines to make armoured radiation suits!"
"Cyber—!? NO!" I shouted, the field flickering as my mind flipped over on itself. "For Goddess' sake, do not use those machines! They'll kill all of you!"
"What are you talking about!?" the brown pegasus replied, clearly offended by my outburst.
"Look, this'll sound nuts, but I'm from the future!" I informed him. "And I know for a fact that those machines are lethal! They'll recognise that your bodies won't be able to survive even with the most robust protection, so they'll just discard them and scoop out your brains!"
"Are you insane!?" the corporal said, her face contorting in angry confusion. "Those machines aren't designed to do a anything like that! You should listen to Doctor Tower!"
"D-Doctor WHO!?" I whimpered loudly, my head snapping to face the military mare so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. My jaw started quivering and a dull, thudding pain began to develop near my temples as I silently prayed to the Goddesses that I'd misheard.
"Doctor Stone Tower," the brown pegasus clarified. "I work in the prosthetics R&D department, but that's not important right now! Can you open this field of yours or not!?"
I couldn't answer. My mind swam with images of what he would one day become, my consciousness overcome with guilt for the life that I knew he would have to lead. His cutie mark was exactly as he would describe it to me two hundred years in the future, and I was finally able to figure out why his voice had sounded so familiar at first. The knowledge of his destiny sickened me instantly, and I found myself resorting to the simple tactic of squeezing my eyes shut and shaking my head in the hope that the bad things would go away.
"Oh, we don't have time for this nonsense!" Corporal Serious said sharply, as she turned away from me in frustration. "Stone, get those machines running now!"
"Right!" he replied with a nod. "See you on the other side, Gem!"
Reality stopped for a split second as the vibrations in the air were converted to meaningful language by my brain. Had Stone Tower just said... 'Gem'!?
'Oh Goddess, no...' I thought to myself, as my head instantly stopped its oscillation and turned to once again regard the military mare to my left. 'Please don't let... her be here as well!'
"C-Corporal...?" I said quietly, as I stared into her eyes. Her sharp, lilac eyes. "What... what's your name...?"
"What!?" she asked incredulously, no doubt exasperated by what must have seemed like the most superfluous question of all time.
"Your name..." I whispered, as my blood began to run cold. I was already losing the feeling in my extremities, my head swimming as existential horror approached the shores of my consciousness. "What is it?"
"It's Gem," she said. "Gem Shine."
A cold spike ran down my spine as she confirmed my worst possible fears. A deep, throbbing pain had suddenly developed in the back of my head, and was working its way forward as the wave of sickening, horrible realisation washed over me. Blood vessels in my eyes began to rupture, reddening my vision as the field convulsed and flickered around me.
"Gem—! Stone—!" I stammered, my chest heaving as I began to violently hyperventilate.
"Compass, what is it!? What's wrong!?" Redheart asked, as she grasped my face in concern.
"This... shouldn't... be...!" I shuddered, my body convulsing as hot, angry spines of causality pressed deep into my soul. Far off in the depths of my thoughts, I could hear the cloister bell of the TARDIS ringing out in distress. I had done something terrible here - I could feel it! Stone Tower was about to become a full blown Cyberpony, and his young love, the incorruptible Gem Shine, was about to live through the first strike.
That wasn't the way it happened; that wasn't the way it was meant to happen.
Gem Shine was meant to live on for two centuries as an inequine cyborg monster. And Tower was meant to build a despotic robot servant who would bring slavery to the Wasteland. That was my crime: I hadn't just altered history, nor had I saved an insignificant few hundred lives out of millions. I had tried to change my own history!
Without Gem Shine, I would never have battled the Cyberpony Controller to my first death, I would have never 'received' my sonic horn or Prometheus, and without her mercy killing to temper my wrath and build my conscience, I would have become a vengeful, angry monster. Similarly, without my encounter with Stone Tower, I would never have been able to regain the TARDIS, or find the traitor in my company.
In short: it couldn't happen any other way. Because of me.
"H-hey, future-buck!" Gem Shine shouted as she finally took note of the fluctuations in the force field. "What's wrong with the field!? Are you alright!?"
"It...! Can't...! Happen...!" I gasped, beads of sweat rolling down to my nose as the paradox began to take form inside me. "T-time won't... argh! Time won't let me...!"
By now the rest of the group under the protective umbrella of the field had noticed both my distress and the growing instability in the barrier wall. Panicked cries began to replace the creaking and crashing of the collapsing building, as it became clear that something was very, very wrong with me.
"COMPASS!" Redheart screamed into my face, as the first sizeable pieces of rubble from the ceiling began to impact upon the shield, denting it ominously. "You can't let this shield collapse! It's our only hope!"
I slumped to the floor as she finished speaking, my legs buckling under the weight of my realisation. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the Master's counterfeit TARDIS console, and the best worst idea of my entire existence blossomed into being in my head. Grabbing Redheart by the mane, I routed my remaining stamina into a sprint, pushing bodily past the ponies in my way until I reached the controls, panting and panicked. As I approached them, I threw Redheart onto the platform surrounding the console, causing a nasty collision between her unsuspecting head and the floor plating. Her body went limp as her consciousness left her, but I could see in a spare moment that her chest continued to move, meaning that she was still breathing. Continuing unabated, I grasped the TARDIS controls, and with a flick of four switches and a lever, had isolated us from the surrounding continuum. At the same time, I felt a great release of pressure around my horn as the spell I had cast only moments earlier was cut off by an impermeable barrier of time magic.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Gem Shine screamed, as the shield flickered and fizzled into oblivion around her and the assembled ponies. "YOU SAID YOU COULD SAVE US!"
"I'm sorry!" I shouted back, as my hoof found the throttle. "I... I was wrong!"
And with that, I pulled downwards, sending the time rotor into its transit. In deference to my ordinary cowardice, I forced myself to maintain eye contact with Gem Shine as the TARDIS slipped into the vortex. It was a final attempt at having some sort of honour - facing her, a symbol of the souls I was about to abandon. She stared back at me as those around her panicked and galloped towards their deaths at the claws of the Cyberpony conversion machines, her eyes fixed irrevocably upon mine. Her silent, piercing gaze spoke of nothing except betrayal, her expression destroying my every hope of retribution. In that moment, I became the worst creature in the universe. In every universe.
As she and the doomed world around her faded away, I was finally able to comprehend her last words. Words that she wouldn't utter for another two hundred years.
Her name was Gem Shine. And she remembered.
She remembered me. Running.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
Things were exploding.
Rubble showered my body as the walls and ceiling around me burst apart into fragments. Pulses of blue light flashed past me, burning my eyes and irradiating my hide as clouds of dust coated my face in grit.
Both Sage and I were sprinting for our lives down the long corridor connecting Tower's lab to the stairwell, weaving desperately so as to not remain in his new 'body's' maniacal sites for too long. Sage had yanked me violently away from the horrific cybernetic creature that Tower had become as soon as he had exited the fabricator, assuming correctly that I had been literally paralysed with fear by its appearance. It turned out, on the whole, to be quite a good move on Sage's part - Tower had started trying to kill us less than four seconds later.
We ducked and weaved in a panicked ballet as the energy blasts from one of Tower's new appendages demolished the corridor around us. After a few seconds of flurried, acrobatic motion, we arrived at the base of the stairwell, and quickly flung ourselves around the sides of the doorframe, temporarily obscuring us from Tower's view. Sage tackled the door's controls with his usual ease, and dropped the pressure door smoothly into its slot in the floor. He then proceeded to overload its spark actuator, forever jamming its various enchantments in a closed position. For all intents and purposes, the door was now a wall.
I leant back against the concrete and let myself pant. I could feel my hearts pounding inside my chest, their individual beats rocking my innards back and forth as they thrummed into a panicked vibrato. With my sudden stillness came a moment of self assessment, during which I was able to contemplate just how scared of Tower I had suddenly become.
The sound he produced sounded like a tortured cry composed entirely of scratching and tearing; a constant scream of the purest, most white hot rage imaginable. And that was just his voice - the merest thought of the shape of his fabricated body made me want to vomit, and that eye... Oh Goddess, that eye! It was like staring death straight in the face. Even though it was nothing more than a sensor node on a stem, it still scared the blood from my veins, a thousand million billion times more so than any spider-bot could.
"I... I can't believe it...!" Sage panted, his own chest heaving as sweat beaded upon his aged brow. "I thought Mo had finally driven you loopy for a minute there, Compass. I can't believe it's all... real!"
"You... know... what that...thing is...!?" I said, in between breaths.
"Everypony in Trottingham would be able to recognise that thing, Compass," Sage nodded solemnly. "The shape, the disposition, even the sound, are all perfect matches for a Darlok."
My teeth clenched and my spine convulsed involuntarily as he spoke.
"I t-take it... th-that that's a... 'D-doctor' thing, then," I stammered, shivering as Sage's utterance gave me the urge to clench my eyes shut and hide behind a sofa. "I've n-never heard that word before... but it's still m-managing to scare the shit out of me."
"They were the quintessential baddie in the Doctor Whooves episodes," Sage said, nodding. "Ruthless, evil, insanely destructive. Everything one could want in an antagonist."
'And everything you don't want chasing you!' Two barked, the fear in his virtual vocalisation still plainly evident.
'I see you're sticking around for a while this time,' Three said, using a level of sarcasm that was entirely inappropriate for the situation.
'You have a metric fuckton of explaining to do, Doctor!' I hissed inwardly. 'What the hell is that thing, and what do I do with it!?'
'It's a Darlok!' Two replied. 'That's all you need to know! It kills things! All the things!'
'Marvellous,' scoffed Three. 'You'll be putting encyclopaedias out of business left, right and centre if you keep churning out that level of detail...'
'Okay, it's bad, I get that,' I replied, trying to hide my own fear from the alien voice in my head. 'But I need more than that. I need to know if it poses a threat to my friends and, if it does, how I can stop it from hurting them!'
There was a moment of silence in my mind, equivalent to only a few fractions of a second in real time, but a significant pause for the voices in my head.
'Alright,' Two said stoically, the mental echoes of his voice now far from the panic that had seemingly consumed him only moments earlier. 'Darloks are the physical incarnation of hatred. They were designed by a xenophobic, philosophising madbuck to conquer the universe and rid it of all non-Darlok life. Before I came to Equestria, there was a... a war. On one side, the Darloks, and on the other, the Time Lords...'
'And...!?' One blurted, as it became clear that Two had tailed off.
'And,' Two continued, 'we lost.'
'Okay, that's... actually that's worse than I was expecting it to be,' I said.
'But...' Three began, his sarcasm having given way to terror. 'If you lost... Then how come we haven't all been vaporised by now? If the Darloks could stand hoof-to-hoof with the Time Lords, then surely they'd be able to reach our little corner of the universe in no time.'
'That's what the Master meant, isn't it?' I said quietly. 'In the memory of your meeting in Edinbuck, he shouted at you. Talked about sealing the war away or some such thing.'
There was another momentary silence, punctuated only by the mental equivalent of a silent, morose nod. My voices fell silent for a moment, sharing a long overdue instant of mourning for a proud race, that saved the universe with their collective sacrifice (non-consensual though it was).
'So...' I began gently, a few mind seconds later. 'What do we do with this one?'
'Well,' Two said, audibly thankful for the change in subject, 'if your knowledge of pre-war Equestrian engineering is anything to go by, Compass, you should have a few days to evacuate that place and level it. The cannon that Darloks are fitted with is designed to inflict maximum damage to lifeforms and equipment, so it mostly focusses on delivering focussed blasts of hard radiation. Its concussive abilities are only really good for demolition when they're fired in clusters, and since we're only dealing with one, it should take it close to a week to break through a bunker like this one.'
'Now, see, that's the sort of stuff I can use!' I replied, grinning internally. 'Alright, so when we evacuate everypony from the Emporium, how do you suggest we level it?'
'Well... uh, we could overload the reactor...' began One.
'... and use the heat from the meltdown to flash vaporise the fluid in the spark turbines...' continued Three.
'... resulting in a megaspell-scale release of superheated, compressed gas...' I added.
'... which'll collapse the superstructure and melt every door and support beam into a solid mass of molten metal...' Two concluded.
'Perfect!' we all said in unison.
'So all we need to do now is find where they've stashed the Stable's spark reactor, and we're all good!' I continued.
'Yeah, that'll do it!' One exclaimed happily.
'I know I'm basically congratulating myself by saying this,' Three added, 'but well done you guys!'
'I'm amazed that went so smoothly,' I said, as my breathing began to return to a reasonable rate. 'I was honestly expecting an argument followed by a bright flash and a Compass shaped bonfire!'
'You never know...' Two said quietly, a sudden and distinct tone of trepidation entering his voice, as if something vitally important and potentially lethal had just dawned on him. 'We could all still go up in flames...'
'What's that supposed to mean...?' I asked cautiously, hoping upon hope that he was just trying to discourage cockiness.
'Does it seem like it's getting warm in here?' Two whispered, his voice quiet and shaking.
Warping back to real time, I yanked my head around to lay eyes upon the pressure door, only to be met by a huge glowing patch of molten metal. Tower was breaking through! Sage and I had noticed the heat bloom at approximately the same time, and as our lines of sight met in front of the now half melted door, we made a silent, split-second tactical decision.
We would run like fuck.
In unison, we sprang to our hooves and began to sprint toward the stairs, our circulatory systems once again shifting into a life preserving overdrive as a sharp, sizzling burst of sound signalled the emergence of the Darlok's beam from the metal behind us. A solid column of blue light blasted through the molten remains of the pressure door before we had even cleared the first flight of stairs, slicing the steel frame of steps cleanly in two. Sage suddenly dropped out of view as his side of the staircase collapsed like an abused flan. Mine was affixed to the wall with large, sturdy bolts and was, as such, far better equipped to handle the sudden loss of support that the beam had brought about. I stopped to turn around and help, just in time to dodge the lethal lance of light that was now steadily arcing around the room, thermally gouging the door out of its frame. It sliced straight through the staircase below me, which thankfully stayed mostly intact from the cut upwards.
That didn't mean that it was still usable as a staircase though - a white hot band of metal now stood between Sage and me, stranding him on the lower floor and me halfway up the first flight in the stairwell.
As the Darlok beam began to focus on turning the other side of the door into an amorphous blob, I concentrated as hard as I could in flipping the mode ring of my horn around into its levitation mode. With the hot, lethal lance only moments away from moving back to incinerate me, I clenched every muscle in my body, and began to cast a spell.
The beam was snaking its way around the door in a wide arc, and was only seconds away from slicing the gantry above my head in two when I finally felt the mental click that I had been waiting for. Just like, well... just like magic, a pale blue aura surrounded Sage and lifted him roughly upwards, allowing him to gallop in mid air onto the non-molten step behind me. As soon as he was in range of my barding, he grabbed a mouthful of collar fabric and used his momentum to pull me up the stairs onto the landing, and then onto the next flight of stairs.
A crash from behind us signalled the collapse of the landing as the cutting beam broke it down into glowing scrap. We stopped for a moment to catch our breath, and to take in the spectacle that was emerging below us. The pressure door was now unrecognisable, reduced to a bright, hot mess that was fast on its way to becoming a bright, hot puddle.
"How is this possible!?" Sage panted over the angry hissing of the melting metal. "Those things have over a hundred strengthening enchantments on them!"
"One hundred and nine, to be exact," I replied, a similar expression of disbelief taking up my face. "That door was rated to withstand two thirds of a balefire blast... and it's... it's barely even slowing it down...!"
As we watched the once strong slab of reinforced magisteel dribble into nothingness, I took the opportunity of impress my dissatisfaction upon the players in my internal dialogue.
'A WEEK!' I screamed inwardly. 'YOU SAID IT WOULD TAKE IT A CELESTIA-DAMNED WEEK TO GET THROUGH THAT DOOR!'
'There's no way a single Darlok should be able to do that!' Two replied loudly. 'It must be feeding off of an external power supply in the lab! Either that, or Tower's modified the Darlok beam weapon to produce a piercing beam as opposed to radiation!'
'You don't think that it has the spark turbines down there do you!?' Three said.
'No chance,' One replied. 'Tower couldn't have any major infrastructure down in his lab, otherwise he would've been discovered the first time somepony went looking for the fusebox!'
'At least we have that going for us,' I said. 'But he's still got a shiny, new, bunker-busting gun then. Which means we need a new plan.'
'No, collapsing the stable should still work,' Two said confidently. 'It wouldn't have anywhere near enough power to get out of tens of thousands of tonnes of melting magisteel - it'll have a hard enough time stopping itself from melting!'
'Are you sure about that?' Three asked worriedly. 'Couldn't something that advanced channel thermal energy into its beam weapon or something? You know, use our attack against us?'
'Not quickly enough,' replied Two. 'If we melt a large enough chunk of metal around it, it'll only have two choices: survive intact but be encased to the point of inoperabilty, or fire blindly for a few minutes before melting to death... and then being encased forever.'
With that reassuring determination in mind, I turned to Sage, as the door below us continued to crackle and spit.
"Okay," I said hurriedly, "I have a plan. We need to evacuate this place then bring it down around that thing's ears! I think we should trigger a meltdown in the reactor and channel the excess heat to the spark turbines, thereby triggering an instantaneous phase change in the power transfer medium and a resulting explosive release of superheated conduit fluid which would collapse the Stable superstructure and reduce the facility to a confining shell of molten rubble!"
Sage stared at me wordlessly for a moment as I caught my breath.
"What do you think?" I gasped.
"I love it," he replied instantly, as we both began to ascend the staircase at speed. "How do we get to the reactor?"
"That's actually the only part I'm not sure about," I said meekly, coming alongside Sage, "I mean, we could ask Tower's robot."
"I doubt he'll be very cooperative," he replied.
"Agreed," I said. "Oh, wait a minute! I bet the slaves will know! We could ask Buckshot and Mo when we get them out of the slave quarters."
Sage suddenly stopped in his tracks, nearly resulting in my giving myself a case of whiplash as I turned my head to follow him.
"What's wrong!?" I shouted as I too came to a halt. "Come on Sage, we don't have time for—!"
"Did you just say that Buckshot and Mo are in with the slaves...!?" Sage asked, his face contorting into an uncharacteristically horrific scowl.
"Uh... well..." I stammered nervously. Sage closed the distance between us, bringing his snout to within an inch of my own, without once breaking eye contact or blinking.
"Did you," he rumbled malevolently, "or did you not, just tell me that one of my most trusted friends and my daughter have been captured by the most powerful slave traders in Trottingham...!?"
"I... uh..." I continued to stammer, trotting slowly backwards as a fresh sheen of sweat began to wet my brow. "I-it was the, uh... the only way... to get in! We had to pose as slave traders, so we needed to have some slaves!"
Sage's fury was totally silent, and even more terrifying than the Darlok below us. I found myself becoming acutely scared of him, not because I feared that he would harm me (which is not to say that he couldn't, I'm sure he could - gravely too), but because I feared that I had harmed him.
"Compass..." he hissed from behind gritted teeth, "That is, without a doubt, the most selfish, irresponsible act I've ever borne witness to!"
"B-but," I stuttered, moved halfway to tears by Sage's evident sense of betrayal, "it was to save you! They wanted to come get you! We're all risking our lives for you!"
"WELL YOU SHOULDN'T BE!" Sage suddenly screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as I felt myself begin to blubber. "WHAT DOES A FOAL FROM A TEST TUBE KNOW ABOUT THE VALUE OF AN EQUINE LIFE ANYWAY!? YOU COULDN'T EVEN FIND A MURDERER IN A STABLE FULL OF VEGETABLES! YOU HAD TO RUN AWAY AND COME CRYING FOR HELP FROM REAL PONIES!"
My jaw dropped and my eyes began to leak freely as Sage's nostrils flared from his outburst. My stomach felt as if it had just dropped through the floor. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard, and judging from the look on Sage's face, neither could he. As soon as the words had left his mouth, his expression had softened and immediately begun to communicate how sorry he was for what he'd said. But unfortunately, the fact was that he had said it, and that wasn't about to change.
"Is...?" I whispered, my body limp with shock. "Is that what you really think of me...?"
"N-no," he said, taking a step forward as if to comfort me, "I would never— I mean I didn't mean to... I..."
Sage hung his head, his own tear ducts beginning to moisten. He sighed, as another large globule of metal dropped to the floor on the level below us.
"I'm... sorry, Compass," he said gently. "That was... out of order. I promise you that I don't really think that way about you."
"Then why did you say it...?" I replied, still hopelessly distraught over such harsh words.
"I was angry..." Sage replied quietly, before taking a deep breath. "From my point of view, you endangered that which I love and care for the most. And despite the fact that I care for you too, I still couldn't contain myself. I... I'm so sorry..."
I swallowed as I attempted to bring my breathing back under control and stem the source of my tears. I regarded the aged buck before me evenly, suddenly entirely unsure of what to make of him. I had been insulted before, sure, but nopony had ever cut me like Sage just had. With little more than three sentences, he had reduced me to a disillusioned, quivering mess, bereft of both ego and will. So deep was the wound, and so fundamental his criticism, that my outrageous anger hadn't even begun to manifest. He had, simply put, destroyed me.
But somewhere, deep in the recesses of my soul, there was a different feeling. Not one of sorrow or rage, but a bright and simple bubbliness. A giggle, if you will, that worked its way up from deep within me to froth suddenly out of my mouth.
"You stupid old bastard..." I whispered, chuckling mirthlessly, as I took a step towards Sage.
"Compass...?" Sage said, his head twisting in confusion.
"Of course we would come to get you!" I shouted suddenly, right in his face. "Of course we would fight for you! Of course we would risk our freedom and even our lives for you! We love you!"
"I just don't want anypony else to get hurt for my—" Sage began.
"Shut up, I'm not finished," I said curtly, eliciting a wide eyed expression of surprise as I interrupted the older buck. "Did you honestly expect us to just leave you here!? Are you fucking nuts!? We would never do that to you! I mean, would you do that to us!? Would you leave me with the slavers if I were captured!? Or Buckshot!? Or Mo!?"
Sage's mouth opened for a moment, then closed again, as he looked angrily into my eyes. Wordlessly, he shook his head, drawing his shoulders back to the their confident default position.
"No," he said simply. "No I wouldn't."
"Well then," I said loudly, with a determined frown that matched his confidence, "aren't you glad that you and I are so alike?"
Sage took a single step forward, placing his hoof heavily upon my shoulder as he continued to stare into me.
"I am," he said, as a smile made its way onto his face.
A loud, viscous crash suddenly resounded from underneath us. Without another word, we both shot over to the hoofrail and anxiously began to stare at the scene below us.
The Darlok stared back.
"Fancy a jog!?" I said to Sage hurriedly, as the metal creature began to rotate its beam weapon toward us.
"Oh, absolutely!" Sage shouted, narrowly avoiding a blast from the cannon.
We sprinted at full tilt up the stairs, the scent of burning hair blasting into our nostrils as our tails were singed by the Darlok's beam.
"We can't... run up... this whole... stairwell... like this!" I panted, as we continued to ascend. "We should be... safe in a... c-couple of... flights...! It didn't... look like... its gun could... swivel up... that far...!"
"I'd say three flights!" Sage replied, notably without pausing for breath. "Just to be safe!"
I conserved my air by electing not to reply, instead allowing my silence to act as consent. We continued to sprint up the stairs as fast as our legs would allow and, after another agonising three flights worth of being chased by the Darlok beam, cautiously skidded to a halt on the next landing up.
The lance of energy swept up behind us, and I had just enough time to gasp in fright as it arced up, intending to meet us at head height, only to suddenly level out, cleaving the set of stairs behind us cleanly in two.
A ragged, raging scream emanated from below us as the remnants of Stone Tower realised that we had indeed moved out of range of the bearing to which his beam weapon was attached. Sage and I looked at one another, the ugly, harsh words that we had exchanged only moments earlier turning quickly to a distant memory. I found myself suddenly hugging him, and him hugging back, as we pirouetted happily around the landing (much to the distress of our Darlok assailant).
"Ah ha ha!" I rejoiced. "Brilliant! Superb!"
"It's just like in the radio series!" Sage replied, similarly overjoyed to be alive. "They could never climb stairs!"
"Ha! What a stupid design!" I teased merrily. "I could have vomited something better!"
"You're right!" bellowed Sage heartily. "It is stupid!"
As we continued to dance gleefully around the landing, gloating over the apparent inadequacy of our attacker, a thought seemed to dawn on us both simultaneously. At the same time, we began to slow down, our rotation and excited leaping reduced to a minuscule magnitude as frowns began to form in unison upon our faces.
"That... is stupid..." I said quietly, as concern crept across my brow.
"Yes," said Sage, his brow furrowed with trepidation. "It is..."
Almost as if it had been waiting for us to realise, a different sickening artificial sound suddenly began to echo through the stairwell. Sage and I leaned over the hoofrail, only to be met by the glowing blue orb of the Darloks eye staring directly at us from the ground level. The sound continued, eliciting images of burning and chaos in my mind's eye. It was laughing, I realised; giggling like it was Hearths' Warming Day.
"Compass..." Sage said cautiously. "I feel that we should keep moving. With haste."
'Two, what's going on?' I asked myself in the split second after Sage had spoken. 'Why is it doing that!?'
'Why do you think it's doing it, you idiot!?' Two shouted. 'It's probably just figured out how to use its—!'
At that instant, I felt my face drop and all four of my limbs begin to shake, as the horrible, rage-infused voice of the Darlok began to echo up the stairwell, cutting Two's contribution short.
"EL-E-VATE!" it screeched triumphantly, syllable by syllable, as a glow of pale blue magic - a levitation field - began to emanate from its undercarriage, carrying it slowly up through the central void of the stairwell.
I barely had enough time to swear before Sage had grabbed my barding, and once again started yanking me bodily out of harm's way. My chest heaved as the strain of our constant sprint began to take its toll on my body, and I cold hear Sage's breathing becoming more and more ragged. A brief glance down the stairwell gave me reason to carry on though, as the Darlok accelerated upwards, rising at a now alarming speed towards us, its piercing blue eye tracking our every exhausted movement.
As I reached the next landing, and with naught but a moment's notice, a blast of light blew the staircase in front of Sage clear out of the wall, leaving only a crater in its place. Reacting far more rapidly than I thought I was capable of, I skidded to a halt and wrapped Sage in a last-second levitation field, pulling him up onto the steel floor as his legs flailed in panic.
I grabbed Sage's outstretched hooves as soon as he was close enough, ending the spell as I dragged him up onto the landing. Tower was drawing closer with each passing second, the growing hum of his levitation causing me to shudder with fear as both Sage and I glanced around, searching desperately for a way out of the stairwell. Could we make the next set of stairs if we jumped? Could I levitate us over? What if took a run at—
My train of thought was interrupted by another blast of light, this one aimed at the set of stairs directly behind us. The wall was blown to dust in a blinding instant, leaving the half-melted fragments of staircase to fall to the level below. Tower had us in his sights, and clearly we were within range of his weapon, but yet Sage and I were both still alive. He was toying with us, I realised; waiting until he was level with the landing we had been forced to take refuge on before he fired. He would be able to face us as we died; to see the fear in our eyes, to witness the agony of our being incinerated alive!
My chest still heaving, I turned to Sage.
"Any... bright ideas...?" I panted.
"Afraid not..." he gasped back, once again looking desperately around for a solution. "Wait! Compass, look!"
Sage's hoof shot upward, pointing towards a scant orange glow only a few levels above us. It was the safety light above the upper door! The one that led back into robot Tower's office! We were almost there!
"Can you levitate us up there!?" Sage asked hurriedly.
"I can barely lift you!" I replied, my throat still hoarse from my recent exertions. "No way I can lift both of us!"
"Then we should... We can..." Sage said, as he resumed his desperate glancing.
Tower meanwhile drew closer, his apparent determination to toy with us and enjoy his eventual kill forcing him into an eerie silence. As the hum of his levitation spell drew even closer, I felt a resigned calmness spread across my face and throughout my chest. My breathing slowed, and my mind emptied as I realised what had to be done.
'We have to, don't we...?' asked Three.
'It's the only way...' whispered One.
'What's the only—? Oh no... No, don't you dare!' began Two.
"Sage..." I said solemnly, looking at the older buck. He turned to face me, recognising almost immediately the expression I was wearing. His features fell to confusion, then to concern, then to panic, all in the space of a couple of seconds. "Brace yourself..." I said, flipping my horn open and popping a good few blood vessels with concentration.
"Compass don't—!" he began to say, as my most powerful (and painful) levitation spell of the day threw him into air. Sage screamed my name as he ascended like a bullet toward the ceiling of the stairwell, staring desperately back down at me. I ignored his cries, instead clenching my teeth and charging my horn again, as I took a single, faithless step off of the platform. I would collide head first with the Darlok, I decided, blasting it with every single Faust of magical energy I could force to the tip of my horn! I could feel the air rushing past my cheeks as I fell, my mind hoping desperately that Sage would make it through the Emporium, that Buckshot and Mo would be freed along with the rest of the slaves, and that everything, in the end, would be okay.
As faith in my friends replaced my every thought, I caught a small part of myself lamenting just how close I had come to surviving the day. I mean, I could see our destination! A few more flights and we would have been out of the stairwell, with a massive, complicated building to weave through and lose our pursuer. It wasn't fair, that little part of me declared. I was so close! I could practically feel the steel grate underneath my hooves!
And then, all at once, my sensations changed.
A momentary fizzling throughout my body was followed by the sudden impact of solid ground beneath me, and tepid, stagnant air floating languidly into my nostrils. I had clearly been vaporised, I concluded. Now I was in some manner of afterlife, hopefully soon to meet up again with Valve and Zeanna. Maybe I would be able to go back to the world of the living one day the same way my zebra friend had.
My thoughts were suddenly truncated by a sharp, strong tug at the collar of my barding. I was lifted to my hooves, no doubt by some ethereal, holy figure (I still hadn't opened my eyes), and was drawn sharply forward, my legs struggling to keep me aloft. Was it Celestia, I mused, or maybe Luna? Perhaps it was both of them at once, carrying me into the next—
"I wish you had told me you were going to do that!" the entity shouted in Sage's voice. "I mean, teleporting I can deal with, but I would prefer some warning the next time you launch me into the bloody air!"
My eyes shot open, my head swivelling quickly toward the voice. It was Sage! And he was dragging me up the short corridor at the top of the stairwell!
"Wh-where—!? H-how the hell did I—!?" I stammered, confused and dazed.
'You can thank me later,' Two said flippantly. 'For now, stop talking to yourself and keep moving!'
"Compass," Sage said hurriedly as we approached the door to Tower's office, "I hope you've got a 'blowing-up' spell somewhere in that thing, because I sincerely doubt we have time for any lock picking!"
"I, uh..." I droned, still dazed slightly from my sudden transit. "A blowing what...?"
My attention was quickly grabbed by another blood-curdling scream that echoed up from the floors below us. Judging from the sudden shift in the frequency of its cries, the Darlok, now seemingly enraged by our unlikely escape, had begun to rocket up the stairwell even faster than before. The noise was more than enough to snap me back to the present, and I found myself scrambling to regain my hoofing beside Sage.
"Yes! Right!" I said, forcing my equilibrium to reassert itself. "The door! Blowing up the door! The door that's in the way! Of course, yes!"
"Yes, blowing up the door!" Sage said, the panic in his voice sending me to the edge of desperation. "Get on with it!"
"W-well I don't know if I can!" I replied. "I've never blown anything up b—"
'Oh for Heaven's sake! Do I have to do everything for you!?' Two shouted into my mind, as an involuntary blast of magic - which wasn't entirely unlike a violent hiccup - pulsed out of my horn toward the door. My blue light enveloped it instantly, and I could hear a cacophony of crunching and rumbling as the metal collapsed like a soda can underhoof. In a matter of seconds the door was little more than misshapen crumple, hot to the touch and entirely ineffective as a barrier.
"Excellent, Compass!" Sage said, as we galloped haphazardly into the expansive office space beyond.
We passed robot Tower's desk on both sides; Sage on the right and me on the left, ignoring the device's cries as we sprinted toward the opposite end of the old spark turbine room. Is calls echoed about the lofty hall, telling of last chances and dead friends, commanding that we stop right where we were lest dire things occur.
"NotimetochatDarlokchasingus!" I managed to blurt in passing, noting the utterly confused expression the complex automation wore as I did so.
Unfortunately for Tower's robot, the only dire fate at that moment was the one about to befall it - there was just enough time for it to shriek as an explosion of magically heated plasma blew it into several thousand charred pieces.
Another volley of blue-hot projectiles zipped past Sage and me as we reached the half-way point of the turbine hall, blowing chunks out of the concrete wall and searing the paint from the pressure door. In a moment of remarkable clear-headedness given the circumstances, I grabbed one of the pieces of debris in my magic, arresting its fall and sending it flying towards the door's control panel. A heavy clunk resulted, and the pressure door began to slide open just as we approached, allowing us to scramble quickly underneath it.
Sage busied himself with jamming the actuator again so as to buy us some more time before we both continued our exhausting sprint toward the—
"Oh Goddess, the lift!" I shouted, sliding to a halt as the carriage doors opened to greet us. "I forgot about the sodding lift!"
"What about it!? What's wrong!?" Sage asked breathlessly, as his mane now matted with sweat.
"It takes bloody ages!" I replied, clutching my head in panic. "The Darlok'll overtake us in minutes, and blow the carriage to smithereens!"
"Well is there any other way off this level!?" Sage said, resolutely ignoring the now red hot patch in the door behind us.
"I don't have a clue!" I shouted back. "I don't think so! I mean I could try teleporting up the shaft, but I think I need line of sight, or at least a clear idea of distance and bearing! Besides, I doubt I could throw you hard enough to—"
I stopped. The solution had presented itself, as was often the case, in the form of an analogy.
'Why try and throw yourself up a lift shaft...?' I thought. 'When you can just get the lift to do it for you!?'
'We've been through this you utter tit!' Three shouted desperately into my mind's ear. 'The lift's too slow!'
'I suspect he's not exactly going to be using it as the manual suggests,' Two said, as Sage began to speak.
"Compass, I hate to rush you, but we're really running out of time!" he said, as a familiar metallic bubbling began to sound behind us.
"I know, I know!" I replied, as I grabbed him by his neck and pulled him into the waiting lift. "Now stand still and give me a hoof up!"
Slightly dazed by my sudden call to action, Sage complied, allowing me to unceremoniously climb onto his back and grab the ceiling panels above us. Popping the inspection hatch, I clambered up onto the top of the carriage, and looked around for our salvation.
To my infinite relief I found what I was looking for in the distance: a huge concrete counterweight mounted in a recessed groove on the far wall. Judging from its size, it looked to be about one and a half times the weight of the carriage, which meant that at that moment, the lift was only relying on its brakes to keep it from flying toward the top of the shaft like a rocket. Hurriedly, I turned my attention to the braking mechanism that was holding the cables in place and focussed my consciousness on it, as well as the various backups positioned around the carriage. Within seconds the twin Goddesses of necessity and panic had come to my aid, and the heavy duty gears in the various assemblies were shaking themselves free of their bearings.
The carriage suddenly shot upwards an inch, causing my chest to collide painfully with the edge of the inspection hatch - the cable was slipping! I dropped back down into the carriage just in time for the brake to fail completely, and send the lift screeching up toward the heavens. Sage collapsed underneath me, my weight now several times its normal value, and we both gritted our teeth as the counterweight plummeted, pulling us at astounding speed away from the Stable's lower levels. My limbs felt as if they'd been replaced by lead facsimiles, and my neck simply refused to support my head. A duet of grunting screams filled the carriage as Sage and I were pulled painfully to the floor.
I braced myself for what was sure to be a jarring halt as our speed steadily increased, and was painfully aware of the contents of my stomach as my muscles strained to move my limbs under the massive downwards force being generated by our ascent. All too suddenly, I was weightless, the giddy, queasy euphoria of no longer being an equine pancake quickly giving way to a sharp, all-encompassing pain as I collided with the carriage ceiling, followed immediately by Sage.
We dropped back down into the floor a half-second later, dazed and agonised, but secure in the knowledge that we had at least bought ourselves a few minutes more to escape the Darlok. With blood in our mouths, and bruises forming quickly all over our bodies, Sage and I clambered back up onto all fours, and started to work our way out of the now ruined lift carriage. Tumbling out onto the floor, I realised that it had neatly embedded itself in the ceiling of its shaft, and was now irrevocably wedged in place, never to descend again; another obstacle that the Darlok would have to overcome on its rampage.
"A-are you... alright...?" I asked Sage shakily, as we started toward Tower's still (and most likely permanently) inanimate secretary.
"Nothing Caring won't be able to fix," he responded, grimacing only slightly as he moved, and paying the motionless mare in front of us only a brief moment's attention. "Lead on. We have ponies to save."
Ever the commander, Sage raised himself to his hooves and stood tall, exuding as much supreme competence as the sun does light. I swallowed a mouthful of blood and straightened my back, determined to live up to his example, and mask the torn ligaments, bruised flesh and over extended joints that were fogging my mind with agony.
"Right," I said, moving to the mahogany doors as my eyes moistened with pain. "Through these doors is a social area where the slave owners gather, but it's also serviced by a sizeable number of slaves. If everything's gone to plan, we should be able to start a full blown revolt right here."
"And then I take it we continue up into the slave pens once the muscle down here has been overwhelmed," Sage said, easily deducing the nature my plan. "Then we get everypony out of here as fast as we can and trigger the rector explosion, and collapse the stable inwards onto the Darlok, right?"
"Exactly," I concluded.
"Excellent," Sage said briskly. "Let's get to it before that thing makes it up the shaft!"
I nodded back in acknowledgement and turned, pressing my hooves against the door. As one would expect, it swung open, although with my blood pumping so quickly I neglecting to limit the amount of force I applied to it. The heavy wood slammed loudly into the adjacent walls, the resultant sound reverberating throughout the entire bar.
The despotic murmur that normally engulfed the place had ceased, no doubt dying a death the moment the lift had embedded itself in the ceiling behind us. What few eyes were open at this hour were suddenly directed toward the pair of battered, bloody, dust covered bucks in the doorway, the destroyed lift and slumped over secretary behind them clear evidence of some dire misdeed.
I glanced desperately back and forth, smiling like a fool as a nervous giggle escaped my mouth.
"Uh... Evening, hehe..." I said sheepishly, as One and Three cringed, and Two mentally facehoofed.
It was clear at that point that nopony had any idea of what to do with us. The slave owners, fat and complacent, were visibly shocked by the very concept of trouble occurring within a couple of miles of them, while the guards, their weapons held tight in hoof, mouth, and magical grips, were all leaning forward tensely, as if they weren't sure whether to shoot us or treat our wounds.
Similarly, Bulkhead and Atom, who were seated at the bar, and Galinda and Saltira, who were both serving drinks, were all staring at Sage and me with open mouths, their eyes questing back and forth desperately trying to figure out what was about to happen.
I considered trying to lie for a moment; an attempt to pass off the wreckage behind us as a catastrophic mechanical fault that had almost claimed the lives of me and my 'new associate'. But there was no time for deception any more: the Darlok was moments away, and we had were quickly eroding the precious lead we had so painfully managed to gain.
I braced myself, took in a deep breath and shouted at the room.
"NOW!"
In the blink of an eye, the room erupted into motion as guns were drawn, spells cast, and limbs flung from all corners of the bar. Saltira and Galinda immediately set upon the guards closest to them, the nighttime skeleton crew proving no match for a pair of monstrously abused females hyped up for their imminent escape. The trays they were balancing on their hindquarters quickly found a pair of faces to collide with, and an enraged gallop ensued immediately after as their hooves and claws battered ferociously down upon their opponents. Across the room, Bulkhead had surprised the more confrontational of the slave owners, barrelling into them at full speed, while Atom had used her impressive magical strength (along with the element of surprise) to wrestle all of the guards guns from them at the same time.
Less than ten seconds later, not a single one of the dozen-or-so slave owners and armed guards in the room were left unassailed, and, just like that, my friends and I were in control.
"Wow..." I whispered to myself as the dust settled, awe at the efficiency of our sudden revolt no doubt pouring from my face. A nudge in my side brought me back to reality, and I turned to see Sage nodding in the direction of the my friends. Everypony was waiting for me to say something, it seemed... almost as if they expected me to have a plan.
"Uh... alright everypony!" I said loudly, stepping forward after a moment. "Here's how this is going to work! There's a... well, there's something very bad chasing us, and once it gets up here, it's not going to discriminate: if it sees you, you're dead! So we're getting out of here." I turned to the slave owners and guards, their angry scowls and terrified quivering disgusting me in equal measure. "All of us..."
"Compass, we can't just gallop out of here guns blazing!" Galinda said, unimpressed. "There're thousands of slaves up there, and hundreds of guards. We can't possibly take them all on! Not to mention most of us are still collared!"
"Uh, then we..." I stammered, looking back and forth. With the Darlok now standing between us and Robot Tower's terminal, there was no easy way of disabling the slave collars and seeing the Emporium's captors freed. The moment the guards realised that something was amiss, a thousand ponies and at least one griffon would be blown to smithereens. "We, uh... Ah! Saltira, is there an intercom or something near here? Something that can broadcast over the whole stable?"
"Aye," the red-maned mare said, nodding as she slung her new rifle onto her shoulders. "The closest wan's in the kitchen o'er there."
"Right," I said, trotting quickly over to the door she had pointed out. "Bulkhead, Galinda, you two make sure the guards we've caught don't get up to anything. Saltira, Atom, reinforce that door with all the magic you can muster - don't spare a single enchantment!"
"And what are you going to do?" Atom said, her horn already charging.
"I'm going to liberate the Emporium," I replied simply, as I trotted through the doors that Saltira had indicated. Just as she had described, there was a StableTec panel affixed to the wall with a microphone grille and a small array of controls. I flipped a couple of switches so that I would be heard stable-wide and depressed the call button.
"Would a maintenance technician please report to the reactor room. There is no need for alarm." I said in my sweetest, most servile tone.
"What the hell are you doing in there!?" Bulkhead shouted from the bar area. "You'll bring every guard in the stable right down on top of us!"
"Actually," I said absentmindedly, as I watched several seconds tick by on my PipBuck clock, "I'm doing the opposite. It's all in the delivery, you see."
I cleared my throat, and depressed the button once more.
"Repeat: would a maintenance technician please report to the reactor room. There is still no need for alarm."
Another few seconds ticked by, after which I spoke yet again.
"Would a maintenance team please report to the reactor room. Also, we will now be running a mandatory fire safety drill. Would all guards and owners please make their way to the surface in an orderly fashion. There is absolutely no need for alarm."
My quickly concocted plan now set in motion, I turned around, trotting out of the kitchen and back into the bar area.
"Are you done!?" Bulkhead shouted, his grip on the mouth trigger of his new rifle shaking as he spoke.
"Yep," I said, my eyes still glued to my PipBuck clock. There was a protracted silence as everypony (and griffon) looked at one another in confusion.
"And...!?" Galinda squawked, her patience wearing thin.
"Just give it a minute," I said. "You'll see..."
"We'll see wh—!?" Galinda began, only to be interrupted by the wail of an ancient klaxon. Revolving amber lights that hadn't seen use in almost two-hundred years whirred to life, casting deeply contrasting shadows all around the room.
"H-hey!" Bulkhead exclaimed, a note of panic evident in his voice. "That's the evacuation alarm! That only comes on if the life support system fails or the reactor's about to rupture!"
"What the fuck!?" Galinda shouted. "What did you do!?"
"I just made sure everypony knew that nothing was wrong," I said, smirking. "In practice, there's nothing more suspicious. Details get lost when you try and read between the lines, and somewhere not far down the line, somepony will always panic and jump to a conclusion."
"Huh... that's actually pretty clever," one of the captive guards said, nodding in approval. Every other creature in the room suddenly looked at him in either anger, disgust or surprise as he tried to shrink back into the group of captives.
"Well... thanks, I suppose," I replied uncertainly. "Anyway, appreciation aside, we have to get out of here now. My little diversion won't do a thing to stop the Darlok - it'll only clear the path ahead."
"Right!" Saltira said, gritting her teeth and readying her weapon. "Let's get the fuck oot o' here!"
My friends all nodded in agreement, and with an enchanted barricade of twisted metal behind us, and an empty fallout shelter full of slaves in front, we grabbed our weapons, pulled our captives to their hooves, and ran for our lives.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
AGILITY: +1 ENDURANCE: +1 LUCK: -1
New sonic setting: Z99 - Gravity hiccup Involuntary spasms have never been so destructive! This sonic attack delivers an enormous gravitational implosion to a target of your choice, dispatching enemies or removing obstacles. Be careful though, the side effects of this spell aren't always predictable!
Achievement unlocked: The long way round You know, for a time traveller, you're pretty bad with scheduling. That took bloody ages!
Chapter 15 – A Slave to Time (Part 6) He's my big brother best friend... Forever...
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria, a Time Lord was travelling...
I couldn't breathe.
The time rotor slid up and down confidently within its enclosure, as it had done reliably for so many centuries. Its constrained, space-time manipulating transit was unyielding and repetitive; constant in its regularity. I found myself envying it as my skin began to moisten with sweat and my hearts shuddered arrhythmically inside my chest. I was panicking, I realised. Me! Panicking! The Master was minutes away, waiting on me to stop his diabolical plans (whatever they were), and I was bloody panicking!
Maybe it was the fact that, for the first time in several years, I was about to face a major challenge on my own. Had I really become that dependant on my companions? I concluded quickly that that simply couldn't be the case, oh no. Having just deposited my two most recent charges in their respective eras, I had effectively rid myself both of distractions and liabilities, I told myself. The Master wouldn't be unable to hold anypony I cared for as a hostage, and I wouldn't have to waste time explaining myself every few minutes to a pair of alien simpletons—
I winced at the very thought of calling either Applebloom or Ditzy a simpleton, truncating my internal monologue with a inward-facing grimace. I couldn't honestly say anything bad about them - there was one reason, and one reason alone, that I had left them behind, and it was one that, in truth, I had known about all along.
I was afraid.
Not of them specifically, you understand, (even though either one could be as intimidating as an advancing Darlok if they tried) but of... of facing them in the event that I failed. I'd have to go rescue them, you see, and look into their big, round eyes as I ushered them on board the TARDIS in the midst of fiery rains and solar gales. They would know in that instant what an absolute coward I'd have to have been; that I'd turned tail and fled my friend-turned-nemesis without foiling his plans, and reserved just enough time to save two mares out of several billion. I'd have to tell them that their world had been lost to the Master's insanity, and that everypony they'd ever known had just been turned to ash and scattered across their solar system.
I held my head in my hooves in an attempt to calm my unnerved psyche, but was only half way through telling myself that everything would be fine when a shudder reverberated throughout the control room. As the floor stabilised, a drone hissed out of the console and quickly lowered in pitch as the time rotor ceased to move. The TARDIS had landed.
Taking a bracing breath, I dried my eyes and crawled out from my hiding place under the console. Flexing my limbs, I made sure that I was standing tall, and began to trot with as much confidence as I could muster towards the door.
I stepped out onto a paved surface, and surveyed my surroundings with a determined scowl. The TARDIS had come to rest on an ornate viewing platform lined with stone columns in the style of one of Equestria's earliest civilisations, situated atop a large hill. The platform's only entryway had been blocked by a construction made up of several unwieldy planks of wood, as if it had been cordoned off and boarded up several years previously. The barrier itself was painted with blue and white stripes (although the design was by now faded and chipped), and bore the words 'DANGER: POISON JOKE INFESTATION' in luminous, emboldened letters on both sides. I glanced about for a moment before realising that I was alone (there were neither ponies nor any discernible infestations nearby), and so trotted over to the periphery of the structure to see where it was I had ended up.
The view from the edge of the platform was spectacular. I found myself overlooking Canterlot in all its twilight majesty, the spires of the royal castle reaching for the heavens as the sun set in a sea of reds and oranges in the distance. The platform was set into the West-facing side of one of the larger ridges that bordered the ancient settlement, creating a vantage point over Equestria's first city like no other.
A gentle breeze was working its way over the artificial plateau as I drank in the view of the metropolis below. It wasn't the biggest city I'd ever seen, of course. Nor was it the most advanced, or the most populated. But despite these shortcomings, it always managed to hold a special place in my hearts, a fact that caused me to both reminisce warmly, and grimace in trepidation.
"Oh! You're here!" a monstrously familiar voice said suddenly, startling me. I swivelled around on the spot to face my addresser, quickly finding myself almost muzzle-to-muzzle with the Master (who had just materialised behind me). In surprise, I stumbled backwards, pressing my flank painfully into a safety rail surrounding the platform. The metal, which was rusted and old, promptly gave way, and I was moments away from rolling bloodied and mangled into Canterlot when my former schoolmate, in a feat of truly impressive athleticism, reached out and grabbed my hoof, pulling me back to safety.
"Oh! Careful now!" he said scoldingly, a cheerful grin plastered over his face. "We wouldn't want you regenerating right when I save this world now, would we? You'd miss my moment in the sun!"
"Master..." I hissed, as I composed myself and tried to process what had just happened. "Whatever it is you're planning, you don't need to go through with it! We can... we can talk this out. You don't have to take Equestria with you!"
"Take it with me...?" my old friend replied, a confused frown marring his previously happy expression. "Take it with me where? What are you—?"
He stopped talking mid-sentence, his eyes darting back and forth as his mind quickly dissected my words.
"Wait," he said slowly, as the corner of his mouthed arched upwards in amusement. "You think I'm going to do something catastrophic to your precious little planet, don't you? As in: I'm so damaged that I'm going to destroy an entire civilisation in some sort of psychotic hyper-tantrum? Is that it?"
"Please Master, you don't need to do it..." I whispered, as my eyes simultaneously begged him to stop, and promised the direst of consequences should he fail to acquiesce. "You're so much more than—!"
"Oh, for Rassilon's sake!" the Master moaned, as he rolled his eyes and slackened his jaw in frustration. "You really do think the worst of me! You're worse than those pissants back at the Academy! For the love of the vortex Doctor, I am not the stereotypically insane 'baddie' you make me out to be!"
"I'm not saying that you are!" I replied, stepping forward as he moved away from the edge of the viewing platform. "I'm trying to say the opposite, in fact! I know that you're more than just the aggregate of all those crimes! You're my friend! And if the ponies of this planet have taught me anything, it's that friendship is mag—!"
"You just don't sodding understand, do you!?" the Master suddenly snarled at me, a fleck of spittle flying free from his lips. "I've never been appreciated for my works! Not like you! Not like the brilliant bloody Doctor in his brilliant bloody TARDIS! Which you stole in the first place, by the way! All I get are dark legends and intergalactic arrest warrants, while you always seem to end up with the adoration of the entire damned cosmos! How many religions are based on you now, by the way!? My last count was six, but do feel free to correct me if that's changed since we last met!"
"Y-you call those travesties works!?" I shouted, shedding my air of concern as my patience expired. "You've killed tens of thousands during your lives! Do you expect me to believe that they were all just accidents!? That you didn't know what you were doing every single time!?"
"Of course not!" he bellowed back, his eyes wide and enraged. "I expect you to appreciate my solutions as a fellow Time Lord. For Rassilon's sake, Doctor, I've brought order, safety and prosperity to billions! A few thousand sacrifices are the price that those civilisations had to pay for their improvement! And besides, it's different this time! This time, I'm doing things your way, so you don't get to play the hero! Today, it's my turn to be the get it all right!"
"I-I can't believe I'm hearing this!" I stammered, shocked at the extent to which the Master had lost his mind. "BLOWING UP A STAR IS NOT GOING TO MAKE YOU A HERO!"
"Blowing up a star!?" he replied, recoiling as if he were taken aback by my accusation. "I'm not going to do anything with their sun, Doctor! I told you, it'll be different this time!"
"Then why do you have the Hoof of Ponega!?" I asked, pointing angrily at the shiny, new gauntlet that was now covering his left forehoof. "What else could you possibly want with the most powerful solar manipulator in the universe!? I'm not a fool, you know! Now, give me the Hoof, and we can stop all of this before it goes too far!"
"Doctor..." the Master said, his tone suddenly quiet; almost apologetic. "I won't need their sun to use the Hoof. A thousand balefire explosions will do just as well..."
"A thousand..." I whimpered, slack-jawed and shocked. "Then the devastation in the future was... Wh-what have you done...!?"
"Why do you always assume that it's something I've done?" the evil creature before me said calmly, as he raised his hoof and began to enter commands into the solar manipulator's console. "As I've said twice now, I'm doing things your way this time."
"MASTER!" I suddenly screamed, surprising even myself as my words echoed amongst the stone columns. "YOU UNDO WHATEVER IT IS YOU'VE DONE, OR SO HELP ME I'LL... I'LL KILL YOU!"
My words had the desired effect, as the Master stopped in his tracks, dropped his foreleg back to the ground, and turned to face me. The faux mirth was gone from his expression, his face now occupied only by an pencil-thin frown of contempt.
"You'll... kill me, you say...?" he said slowly. "You. The Doctor. Will kill me. And there was me thinking that you would never end a life... even if it meant losing your own."
"I suppose some things are worth killing for..." I replied quietly, making sure that the weight of my meaning was adequately conveyed. "Make no mistake, Master. You may be my oldest friend, you may be the only other Time Lord in the universe, but if you continue to threaten this planet, I will end you...!"
He stared at me for a moment, blinking only twice as he regarded me evenly. After taking a few seconds to consider my ultimatum, the Master took in a breath and began to speak.
"You've clearly learned nothing in Equestria, Doctor," he said simply, before once again raising his foreleg to his face. "You call us old friends, but you refuse to give me a chance to change. I'm trying to turn a disaster into salvation. I'm trying to be..." He paused for a moment, looking to the ground as he bit his lip in resignation, as if he was having to force words out of his mouth. "I'm trying to be... 'good'..."
"Put. The Hoof. Down," I said through gritted teeth, as I pulled my Sonic Screwdriver into my mouth. "I won't ask again."
The Master stared me down for another few seconds as I bored into him with my eyes. My warning glare did nothing to his flawed resolve though, as he simply shook his head at me in disgust and continued to input data into the Hoof of Ponega. With a white hot rage, and a conviction as hard as marble, I gripped the controls of the Screwdriver in my teeth. The control panel of the Hoof burst into shards as a plume of blue and white sparks flared out of the gauntlet. A shriek escaped the Master's mouth as he fought to drop the device before it singed his foreleg to a cinder. The struggle only lasted a moment, and ended with my demented former friend cradling his burnt limb as he stared up at me, raging in his defeat as I stood over him.
"There," I said, a look of barely contained disgust spreading across my face. "Now you can't harness any energy. Stop the bombs, and I'll promise to put in a good word with the Princesses. Maybe they'll only banish you to their moon for a century as opposed to a millennium."
"You damn fool...!" he hissed, the purest, most concentrated expression of hateful contempt marring his features. "There's no stopping this! It's a nexus of fixed points! There are a million reasons that this world is going to burn, and now its only hope for survival has been destroyed! Well fucking done, Doctor! You've just destroyed Equestria!"
I felt my eyes widen slightly as a series of thoughts occurred to me. A nexus of many fixed points in time could indeed appear as one large invariance, as I'd previously detected. And the Hoof wasn't just meant for controlling nuclear reactions inside stars - any reaction would do, a fact that, worryingly, also backed up the Master's claims. In my fear and my anger, could it have been that I had misjudged him? Was it possible that he was telling the truth, and that I had... ended Equestria...?
Thoughts continued to flood my mind until a bright flash of light appeared far off in the distance, blinding me for a moment before it receded. As my eyes readjusted to the fading pulse, I was able to discern a new shape on the horizon. My mind ceased to function rationally as I realised I was staring at a mushroom shaped plume of green fire: a balefire explosion. I blinked in disbelief, my jaw hanging slack as tears began to stream freely down my face.
"N... No..." I whispered, as my world disappeared before my eyes. "It... It can't be..."
"It is," the Master said as he righted himself slowly, his previous rage having turned once again to an apologetic mewl. "And it'll only continue now. You need to go get those mares you were travelling with to safe—"
"YOU!" I screeched, an inequine howl leaving me hoarse as I launched myself at the wounded killer. "YOU DID THIS! YOU KILLED THEM ALL!"
My head collided with his chest with as much force as I could bring to bear, and we tumbled backwards twice, head-over-hoof, before coming to rest at the rear edge the viewing platform. I had landed atop my opponent, and began to bury my hooves into his ribs and face with all the strength and rage of the cosmos, as if the now dying world around me were doing the punching. The Master immediately tried to wrest himself from my onslaught, jerking from side to side to try and shake me off. In the distance, another flash pierced my eyes, then another and another. Every single one was followed by the rapid growth of a sickly green mushroom cloud, and the promise of another few hundred thousand lost souls. The struggle continued regardless, and we soon found ourselves tumbling down from the far side of the platform. We came to rest next to a wooded area which was entirely bounded by blue flowers.
"It...! Wasn't...! Me...! Please...!" the Master shouted between blows, his forelegs waggling impotently in defence of his torso. My hooves reddened rapidly as I continued my enraged, stationary gallop across the the world killer's body. Wounds wept crimson and bones cracked under my fury, a raw, primal anger fuelling my need to attack. I had once said that I 'never would', as if to say that I was above the act of killing; that I was beyond the barbarism like that erupting all around me; that, regardless of circumstance, there was always a better way.
But, clearly, I was wrong.
I continued my onslaught until I began to lose the feeling in my hooves. With a final burst of brutishness, I turned around and bucked the Master several metres straight into a nearby tree, leaving him to fall prone into the blue flowers below. His face was by this point black, blue and red with lesions and blunt force trauma. His chest, now a sea of mottled black patches, heaved as he struggled to draw breath.
I looked down to my hooves as the sounds of ragged breathing and distant explosions seeped into my ears. What had I done!? What had he done!? How was Equestria ever going to recover from all this!?
The weight of the truth hit me like an asteroid impact as I collapsed onto the ground. It was me. It was my fault. And it always had been.
Equestria had always been doomed. The Master could have helped. His plan might have worked. And I had stopped him from trying. All because I didn't believe that he could change. All because I didn't believe that he could be good.
I cast a glance toward my oldest friend, as he struggled to breath amongst the blue flowers, and began to reflexively scramble away. I had always run from my problems; why change that now?
I crawled back up to the platform, sweating and sore, to regard the land I had once considered calling home. A warm wind had reached the plateau, stinging my eyes and making my flesh tingle as it washed me in a thousand rads of balefire fallout. I grimaced as blood began to spontaneously seep from my tear ducts and gums, my mouth filling with the taste of coppery death as a thousand needles danced across my hide.
I wept as I ran back to TARDIS, turning my back on Equestria as it burned.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
As I had intended, the halls of the Emporium were clear of slavers, my plan to send them all running for their lives having worked like a charm. My friends and I (accompanied by our little cadre of captives) continued to move away from the bar area, towards the large lift that had originally brought us down to the lower levels. Once inside, Saltira slammed her hoof into the panel, and sent us trundling towards the slave cells.
"Right you lot!" I said loudly, addressing the slavers we had in tow. "I want all of the slaves in this place out of their collars, and out of their cells. How do I do it!?"
"Go fuck yourself!" snarled one of the better-fed ponies in our group of captives. "The moment you or any of our slaves even so much as poke your heads out of here, you'll be shot on sight! You think you're so fucking clever, that you're doing some great fucking service to the these worthless shits, but this life, right here, is the best they're ever going to—! MMMPHH!"
The slaver's angry little monologue was cut short as Galinda, much to the collective satisfaction of me and my friends, suddenly wrapped her claws around his muzzle. Her grip tightened as she stared straight into his eyes, her rage made evident by the blood she had begun to draw from the despot's fresh facial wounds, despite her artificially blunted claws.
"I think that's enough of that train of thought, don't you?" she said through gritted teeth, turning to address the other captives as another few trickles of blood (and a good few tears) dribbled down the slaver's face. There was a rapid flurry of nodding naught but a microsecond later, and at least one audible gulp from the group.
"Good," Galinda said, as she released her talons, allowing the slaver in her grasp - who was now in a far less argumentative mood - to drop to the floor. "Now somepony answer his question, or I swear to Celestial I'll tear the answer out of you one by one!"
"Uh..." began the guard who had praised me earlier. "You could... I mean I think it would be a good idea if you, uh... reconfigured the Fence."
"The Fence?" I replied, intrigued. "What fence? What are you talking about?"
"Well, you see," he started to say, in the same oddly enthusiastic manner one might expect from a tour guide, "there's this transmitter in the upper levels that makes a sort of 'radio dome' around the Emporium that we call 'the Fence'. If a slave's collar doesn't receive a signal from it every ten minutes, the explosives get set off and, well, you know what happens after that."
"Right, I get that," I replied, as I raised my forehoof to massage one of my temples. "I knew there was something like that in here already. But the controller for it was in Tower's desk terminal, and now we can't get to it. I need an alternative!"
"Well..." the guard droned for a moment. "You could always reconfigure it manually. The controller was in Mr. Tower's office, yeah, but the transmitter itself is on level fourteen. I mean the signals are all encrypted, yeah, and it's all enclosed in a bomb-proof, magically reinforced, anti-tamper case, but I... guess it'd be doable."
"Is it held together with screws?" I asked, a single eyebrow pointing upwards as Saltira pressed the control for the indicated floor.
"Uh, yeah... I think so..." he replied, a squint of confusion on his face.
"Excellent!" I whinnied, clapping my forehooves together. "That's our plan then! We reprogramme this transmitter of theirs, blow the reactor and get everypony to safety! Although... maybe not in that particular order. Now, Mr. surprisingly-helpful-slaver, how do we get there?"
"Go down the corridor on your left out of the lift, take your second right, and it's the door at the end of the hallway," he said, beaming at my approval of his cooperative nature.
"Whit aboot the encryption?" Saltira asked as the lift came to a halt. "Doesn't that mean all the data an' such'll be in code?"
"Basically, yeah," I said, trotting past her into the corridor. "But it shouldn't pose a problem."
"Shouldnae pose a problem!?" Saltira repeated loudly, her brow furrowed in anger as she moved to block my path. "Shouldnae!? These are oor lives yer talkin' aboot here! How can ye be so cavalier aboot this!?"
"I'm just stating a fact," I said, staring as reassuringly as I could into her eyes. "Codes aren't exactly difficult for me, Saltira. I'm great with mathematics, there hasn't been a security software update in over two centuries, and I've got a time-travelling alien's personal toolkit fused to my head. This 'Fence' thing won't be a problem. Trust me."
Saltira stared me down angrily for several seconds, searching my face for uncertainty. Her expression softened when my confident veneer failed to crack, and with a exasperated sigh, she stood aside.
"Ah really hope ye know whit ye'r doin'..." she said warningly, as I turned to face the group.
"I do," I replied softly. "Don't worry, everything will be fine soon enough, Saltira. Now, everypony listen up! Here's what we're doing. Atom, Bulkhead, Galinda, I need you to take our captives to the surface, releasing the slaves as you go. Whatever you do though, don't go outside yet, otherwise you're liable to get shot by all the Emporium evacuees. Just get the slaves out, get them armed if possible, and wait for the collars to shut down. You lot good with that?"
"Er... hang on," Atom said, squinting at me in confusion. "Why aren't we going to the reactor to start that overload you talked about? Surely that would be the best use of our talents right now, right?"
"Yeah," said Bulkhead, "we'd be a heck of a lot more useful there than carrying these weird pipe-weapon things. We don't even know how to use them!"
"I don't want you to risk your lives with the reactor, no matter how competent you are," I replied. "Besides, the reactor is the last thing that we'll be attending to - freeing everypony in here is our top priority, followed closely by stopping the Darlok."
"He's right," Galinda added, as she adjusted the shoulder strap of her weapon. "Blowing this place up with everyone still inside it isn't what I'd call a winning move. Freedom first, then explosions."
Dutifully, Bulkhead and Atom looked to Galinda, and the trio nodded in agreement.
"Good," I said. "Whilst you do that, Saltira, Sage and I will shut down the Fence, and only then start looking into triggering some sort of overload to take care of the Darlok. Everypony understand?"
A series of nods and monosyllabic affirmations were returned. The answer was 'yes'.
"Excellent," I continued. "Any more questions before we set off?"
Silence this time: a resounding 'no'.
"Alright," I said to my friends, trying desperately to conceal the nervous gulp making its way down my throat, "let's do this!"
With that, our party split into two. One band of liberators with imprisoned despots in tow, and another of insurgents, with a populace to free and a monster to fell. We turned our backs to one another, and began to gallop.
The pressure door hissed gently as it slid into the ceiling, and Sage, Saltira, and I trotted quickly into the stuffy little room behind it. The air inside was cool, but smelt strongly of dust and oil, as if the same roomful of gas were being cooled over and over again without being swapped out or replenished. The walls were lined with a number of short bookcases filled with nondescript binders, and several small tables, their tops covered with various magical components and dismantled slave collars. They were of little interest though - or goal rested in the room's centre.
The Fence's control system was cylindrical, about two metres tall, and was utterly featureless save for a cluster of status lights and a small keypad. The exterior panels were adorned at their edges by several dozen shiny circles, each with a curious arrangement of grooves on top. I surmised quickly that they were some sort of security screws with proprietary heads, designed such that only the correct driver could be used to remove them, and set flush with the casing so they couldn't by gripped and unscrewed manually (a faint buzzing in my horn told me that they were also enchanted in some fashion).
With a smirk at the little fasteners' misplaced self-assuredness, I flipped open my horn and started counting. Seven seconds later, the last screw had tinkled to the floor, and the cylinder's coverings were able to fall away, splaying outwards like the petals of an ugly, metal flower coming into bloom. So much for 'reinforced and tamper-proof', I thought to myself.
"Okay..." I mused out loud, as I studied the Fence's now-exposed innards. "Access port, access port, where's the access— Ah! Here we are."
I pulled an interface cable out of my PipBuck and plugged it into the cylinder, then ran a series of short commands to establish a connection. Sage and Saltira stood by silently as line after line of status messages scrolled over the screen fused to my foreleg. A moment later the connection was accepted, as I knew it would be, and I started looking toward circumventing the Fence's security. I had read fourteen separate books on the subject of cryptography in my time in Stable 52, and thanks to a combination of easy-to-use programming tools on the part of StableTec, and near perfect recall on mine, I managed to start a jack-of-all-trades decryption algorithm running in less than two minutes.
"Right," I said to my companions, as I leant back onto my hindquarters. "I'll have access in a few minutes - I just have to wait on my PipBuck doing its thing."
Sage nodded, taking a moment to glance at the screen before moving to explore one of the room's many bookcases. Saltira on the other hoof remained still, standing just a few paces away from me. She was staring off into space, her chest heaving even though she had barely exerted herself. I looked to Sage, but he had already buried his head in one of the many binders and likely wouldn't come up for breath until interrupted.
"Hey..." I said softly, after turning back to face Saltira. Her head snapped to face me, her eyes wide and focused.
"Whit!? Whit is it!? Whit's wrang!?" she said quickly, startled.
"Whoa, relax!" I said, taken aback. "I just wanted to talk to you - I can't help but notice that you're a little on-edge..."
"Aye, on-edge is right," she replied, as she began to pace restlessly back and forth around the cylinder. "Ah mean, wouldn't you be? Ah've been here fer mah entire adult life, and a good bit o' mah childhood too. Just the idea of gettin' out is... oh, Celestia it's amazing! But every time Ah get tae thinkin' aboot leavin', Ah start tae worry that they might catch us again. That they'll catch me, and Ah'll be back in a cage, stuck under the ground, in... back in their beds...!"
All of a sudden, Saltira clutched her chest and began to stumble over her own hooves, the telltale signs of a panic attack manifesting as she started to hyperventilate. I tried to get up to grab her, but was stopped by the interface cable shackling me to the cylinder. My inaction was of no consequence though. A neat flurry of motion emanated from the corner of the room, and Saltira found herself being propped up by Sage, who had clearly been keeping one ear open for trouble.
"It's alright," he cooed softly, as he gently guided her onto the floor. "You'll be fine, we'll all be fine, and the Emporium will never hurt anypony ever again. Do you understand? You're safe with us. Safe."
Sage held Saltira in an embrace for the best past of a minute before her breathing settled back to a normal rhythm. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her hooves shook slightly as she gently returned the hug, turning around so as to bury her face in Sage's chest.
"There, there..." Sage said, as he stroked her mane. "Nopony will hurt you as long as we're around. You have my word on that."
"B-but..." Saltira said in between sobs. "The slavers... they're so powerful! They're everywhere! Whit if they do catch us!? Whit then!? Oh, we'll all be in so much trouble! They'll punish us! Punish me! Ah don't wanna go back to the cages! Ah want tae see the Sun! Ah've got tae get oot o' here! Ah've got tae—!"
"Saltira," I said calmly, derailing the traumatised mare's breathless spiral back into panic and despair. Both she and Sage looked towards me, for some reason suddenly enraptured by my voice. "You're already free. The slaver's just haven't realised it yet."
Saltira didn't resume her crying. Instead, she stared back at me, her face almost totally expressionless as she absorbed what I'd said. A moment later, she took in a single, long breath, letting out a trembling sigh as she exhaled, and pushed herself carefully back onto all fours.
"Aye..." she said quietly, smiling gently as she looked at both me and Sage.
"Alright then," I said, smiling back as an oh-so-welcome warmth spread through my chest. "How about we try to take our minds off what we're doing, eh? I mean, we all have to wait for my PipBuck to finish running this program anyway, so how about we take a few minutes to recharge?"
"I don't see any harm in that," Sage said. "Just keep your weapons to hoof, and leave an ear open."
"Okay," I replied, "how about we, uh... Oh! How about we sing a song?"
"How aboot naw?" Saltira said, chuckling cautiously at my suggestion. "Ye might be goin' fer optimism, Compass, but Ah know fer a fact that now's no the time fer singing."
"I suppose not..." I said, smiling involuntarily at Saltira's joviality, slight though it was. "Well then, how about you, um... Actually, would you mind answering a question?"
"Aboot whit?" she replied.
"Well," I said slowly, just in case I hit a hidden nerve, "do you know a stallion named Buckshot?"
To my relief, Saltira didn't suddenly burst into tears or suffer some form of breakdown as I'd feared she might. She just nodded slowly, her eyes unfocused and distant again.
"Aye..." she whispered. "Ah didnae expect tae ever see him again. In fact, Ah thought he wis deed."
"How do you know him?" I asked, now even more curious than before. "I heard that he stopped in his tracks when he saw you earlier."
"He's mah brother," she replied simply.
It took me a moment to process what Saltira had said - after all, I had only just recently been informed as to the structure of a 'traditional' equine family unit. But when I had finally parsed her words into meaning, I couldn't help but be flabbergasted.
"Buckshot has a sibster!?" I blurted a moment later, almost entirely without thinking. "When was I going to hear about this!?"
"Sister," Sage said, having now left his binders for the second time.
"What?" I asked incredulously.
"Sister," Sage reiterated. "You're getting the words sister and sibling mixed up. Sibling is the general term, sister is the feminine gendered version."
"Oh, you know what I mean!" I replied, exasperated. "Regardless, he never told me!"
"And why the fuck would it matter tae you!?" Saltira said, no doubt confused at my indignation.
"Because I just so happen to be his coltfriend!" I practically shouted back.
"H-his whit!?" she blurted, her jaw hanging open.
"His coltfriend," I repeated calmly. "Why? Do you have a problem with two stallions being together?"
Saltira's eyes narrowed as one corner of her mouth arced upwards.
"Heh," she said to herself, smirking. "Mah wee brother's gone and got himself' a coltfriend." She looked me in the eye. "Naw, Compass, I dinnae have a problem wi' it. In fact Ah think it's brilliant! It'd drive our parents bloody mental, and the less we end up like them the better!"
"Really?" I asked, turning my head in confusion. "That's weird that you should say that. When Buckshot told me about how your village was destroyed he seemed to miss your parents greatly."
"He wis young," she replied, shaking her head. "He didnae know them like Ah did." She looked me in the eye gain, her expression even and her voice quiet. "How much did he tell ye?"
"Only that you lived in a small walled village, your father was a medic of some sort and your mother was a security mare. One day, raiders attacked and he wandered out into the Wasteland with nothing but a shotgun and a coating of blood thinking that everypony except him had just been killed."
Saltira didn't respond. Instead, she looked to the ground as if to halfheartedly examine the texture of the floor tiles.
"Is that... not what happened?" I asked carefully.
"Naw, that's... that's how it happened," Saltira said, perhaps a little to quickly, whilst nodding perhaps a little too enthusiastically. "The, uh... raiders captured me and a couple o' the other fillies and colts after they ransacked the place. Then they sold us tae the Emporium. Simple as that..."
I shared a momentary look with Sage, and it seemed that we had both had the same thought regarding our companion's testimony.
'Did she just lie to us...?' our expressions said.
Before we could press the issue any further though, my PipBuck started to beep, indicating that the program had succeeded in finding a weakness in the Fence's internal security.
Without another word, I turned to regard my foreleg, filing my exchange with Saltira away for future review. Pouring over the data returned by my cryptographic analysis, I surmised that the Fence had been secured using a variant of the StableTech 'LUNA-6' cypher which used an all-too-predictable pseudorandom number generator to perform its encoding passes. A matter of seconds later, I had programmed my PipBuck to imitate the security scheme and generated a valid passcode. In short: I was in.
"See?" I said to Saltira, trying to keep 'I told you so!' out of my tone. "No problem at all!"
She didn't respond. Maybe she had picked up on the scepticism Sage and I had felt regarding her story of her past. I'd definitely have to dig up some answers at some point.
Though that particular conversations would have to wait, I decided - there was a much more pressing problem at hoof. As I scrolled through the now bare workings of the Fence's control system, it became worryingly clear that it was lacking a certain highly useful feature: namely, that of a 'release' function.
"Shit..." I whispered under my breath as dread crept into my stomach. "Oh no, no, no... Don't fucking tell me...!"
"What's wrong?" said Sage, his brow furrowed in concern.
"There's no way to unlock the collars from here!" I replied, forcing (and failing) my voice to maintain a normal register.
"Wh-Whit!?" Saltira said loudly, her voice having suddenly returned. "Whit happened tae 'There'll be nae problem'!?"
"There shouldn't be one!" I said, gesticulating wildly as I scrolled back through the options on the interface. "The only function that this bloody Fence thing has is to send out a radio pulse of random numbers every six-hundred seconds. It doesn't do anything else!"
"So it's like a dead-stallion switch," Sage said, his voice reassuringly low and evenly paced. "This thing stops sending numbers and the collars explode, right?"
"That's what I'm thinking," I replied, taken aback slightly by how quickly Sage had figured out the situation. "I just don't get why there aren't any release functions!"
"Wait, you were expectin' there tae be a great big ol' button with 'Release the Slaves' written on it!?" Saltira gawked. "You fuckin' arsehole! Why would they include that!? If it ever went aff by accident they'd have a full-blown revolt on their hooves! I thought ye were gonnae hack the thing and do some sort o' technical magic on it! Not wander up and expect there tae be a 'fix all problems' option then throw your hooves up in the fuckin' air when the solution didnae waltz out and smack ye in the snout!"
I couldn't respond. Shame and self-hatred welled in my stomach and forced their way into my head, forcing me into a teary, hot blush. How could I have been so stupid!? Of course they wouldn't be a 'release all' command! Saltira was right - they'd have to be the biggest idiots in Equestria to include one!
"I..." I began to stammer. "I thought..."
"Compass it's alright," Sage said as he sat down beside me with one of the binders, his manner one of competent urgency rather than panic. "Just look through the documentation with me and we'll find a solution."
The binder he presented was filled from cover to cover with cracked and stained sheets of neatly text regarding the Emporium's security system. In a fascinating, yet somehow predictable, twist, it turned out that the system had originally been intended as a prototype prison security system for detaining Zebrican spies and preventing them from using their espionage skills to escape. As one might expect, the tamper-proofing on the collars themselves was truly impressive. Proprietary screw threading, dummy panels and components, a life signs monitoring system, and a dense network of sensors designed to detect attempts to open the casing.
As I read on, a feeling of panic crept further and further up my throat - these collars were perfect! The room was silent for several minutes as Sage and I scanned page after page of manuals regarding the collars, getting nowhere all the while.
I was on the verge of crying out in frustration when Saltira's voice suddenly cleaved my absorption in the binder in two.
"Hey," she said. "Whit aboot a power cut?"
"A power cut?" replied Sage. "As in, to the Fence?"
"Aye," Saltira responded. "Whit happens if this thing cannae send oot those numbers? Ah remember gettin' stuck in the cages fer close to two days a few years back without lights or fresh air, not tae mention food and water! Ah'm pretty sure it wis because the main power wis aff, since the lifts and doors seemed tae be affected as well."
"You're right!" I exclaimed, my eyes shooting back and forth excitedly. "They'd have to plan for a power cut! Otherwise, they'd lose all their products within ten minutes! Oh... uh, no offence..."
"None taken," Saltira said, her teeth gritted in a distinctly hostile manner. (I surmised that this was Wastelander body language for 'You're lucky I need you alive'.)
"Sage," I said, avoiding eye contact with Saltira, "have you ever seen anything about power interruption in the—?"
"Page three-hundred-and-ninety-four," the elder buck said as he planted another thick, heavy binder down in front of me. Sure enough, on the page he had opened it ot, there was a short passage entitled 'IN CASE OF MAIN POWER INTERRUPTION'.
"H-how did you—?" I began.
"Fast reader," Sage replied, shrugging. "Remember I told you read every volume of the PipBuck manual? Well, I did that over a weekend back in Trotfell. I just... really like books!"
"I wish I had your patience," I said back, shaking my head. "I swear, I was the slowest learner in Stable 52. There were times when I though I'd never finish my studies—"
"Uh... hello!?" Saltira said, interrupting me, a look of absolute disbelief plastered across her face. "Fates hangin' in the balance here! Are ye gonnae shut the place down or not!?"
"Right!" I said, chiding myself into a blush. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! Let's see what we've got here..."
I leant forward and started to read the passage Sage had selected for me.
In the event of an interruption to the secure packet transmitter's main power supply, the device will switch to a reserve battery which, depending on wear, may allow continued operation for up to a further thirty-five minutes. Should the device remain unpowered at the end of this period, the secure packet transmitter will, unless configured otherwise, transmit a final secure packet before going offline. This packet will instruct all detention devices within range to switch to their "TRANSIT" mode, wherein the requirement that a verifiable secure data packet be received every 600 seconds is suspended. This is to prevent the detention devices from prematurely entering "TERMINATION" mode and hence, shall avoid the undesired dispatch of any detainees (for further information on this process, see Section 5.34 "Explosive Decapitation: Don't Lose Your Head!").
"Ah ha!" I shouted, slamming my hoof into the page. "This is perfect! This thing puts all the collars in range into some sort of roaming mode within half an hour of it losing power!"
"So... we can leave...!?" Salitira said, her jaw slack and her eyes wide. "We can finally get out of this Tartarus-hole!?"
"Yes," I said, resolute and proud once again. All we have to do is figure out how to turn this thing off..."
A short search revealed that the Fence's power came from a single multi-core cable set into a thick groove in the floor to prevent tripping. I flipped open my horn and focussed on the coupling. The familiar, now almost comforting buzz shook my teeth as the plug magically worked itself free of its socket, flopping to the floor like a severed tentacle a moment later.
With a whine, the Fence ceased to function, its lights dimming into oblivion as its last few Fausts of magical energy were exhausted by its processors. We enjoyed less than two seconds of silence before the inverse of the whine we'd just heard met our ears. The internal lights flickered back to life, the whirring of internal lodestone drives filling the room with the chatter of a thousand digital insects as programs were reloaded and protocols accessed.
'PRIMARY POWER INTERRUPTED', declared a notification on my PipBuck, which was still plugged into the device's heart. 'RESERVE POWER MODE ENABLED; ESTIMATED SHUTDOWN IN 00:28:00. BE ADVISED THAT DETAINMENT DEVICES WILL BE SWITCHED TO TRANSIT MODE IN 00:27:00.'
"Excellent!" I said gleefully, turning to Saltira and Sage. "The batteries haven't worn as much as I may have liked, but at least we can get out of here now. Only twenty-seven minutes until all of the slaves in this facility can leave forever!"
Saltira, once again, was left with little to say. Her eyes were unfocussed and vacant, as if she had momentarily unplugged herself from reality much in the same way as I had just disconnected the Fence. But, despite her apparent absence from the world, I was sure that she had heard me. After a moment, the corners of her mouth began to curl upwards into a smile, and, one by one, her teeth were bared in an ever-widening grin.
"Actually," I said, as an idea came to me, a certain heft in my barding pocket triggering a wave of realisation, "I think I can do you one better..."
I reached into my pocket with my hoof, and pulled out the collar remote that Bulkhead had put together for Buckshot's part in our deception. A thought had come to me as I had considered the function, and the capabilities, of the Fence.
It had occurred to me that the collars, fool-proof though they may have been, were all still centrally controlled. The right stream of radio pulses stopped them from exploding, and another set of pulses would do the opposite. I already knew that the collar remotes could both unlock and detonate the collars, but I had never, up until that moment, considered how. Frowning, I extended my foreleg, and pointed the remote at Saltira.
"Saltira..." I said, lost in thought. "Hold still..."
The smile that had only just taken residence on her face dropped away instantly as her ears flattened against her head, her eyes contracting to minuscule dots.
"NO! WAIT!" she screeched as I depressed the button on the remote, her hooves shooting up to reflexively shield her face from the ensuing blast.
But the explosion she was expecting never came. Instead, her collar fell to the floor with a loud clunk, leaving the poor mare wide-eyed and in a state of shock.
Looking down at my Pipbuck, I scrolled through several menus before arriving at the seldom-examined radio logs, and noted, with considerable glee, that a new, unidentified, heavily encrypted narrowband signal had been detected only a few seconds previously.
"I knew it!" I exclaimed, as I whipped around and began to feverishly dismantle the remote.
"Compass, what are you doing?" Sage asked, as he rushed to Saltira (who was still standing as still and rigid as a statue, her eyes widened to the extreme in shock).
"Just a little extra flourish," I answered, my head now buried deep inside the Fence's innards.
What I had suspected before about the collars had just been proven true: that they had a single, unified unlock code. The fact that I was able to use a scavenged remote to release a totally separate collar was proof enough of that. It was also clear at that point why it wasn't possible for collars to be singled out by the Fence for unlocking - every collar gets the same transmission, hence the use of portable, short range remotes for removal or detonation.
It was incredible to consider that freedom had been so close for the Emporium's captives all this time; if only they had known about the other button on the remote controls. I found it astonishing to consider just how powerful a weapon fear could be when wielded correctly. The slaves were each literally inches away from freedom, and all it would have taken was the slight of hoof to pickpocket a guard, or the bravery to subdue one. But they had never even tried.
I tried to shake the depressing thoughts out of my skull as I worked, instead trying to enjoy the tactile, satisfying feeling of plugging connectors into the appropriate receptacles. A few seconds passed, punctuated only by the soft hum of the Fence's internals, and the gentle clicking of my ministrations. Once complete, I stepped back, ran a basic diagnostic on my PipBuck to make sure everything was still working, and pulled the cable out of the Fence, turning to Sage and Saltira with an enormous, involuntary grin plastered across my face.
"There!" I said. "I've hooked up the remote's cryptographic talisman to the spare port on the Fence's secure packet generator! Now, when the timer runs out, and the final signal is sent, the collars won't just be able to leave the range of the Fence, they'll also deactivate and unlock! All at once! How about that for sabotage!?"
Sage let out a single, impressed scoff, his lips upturned at one end as he held Saltira.
"Not bad..." he said, smiling. "Not bad at all, Compass."
I looked to Saltira, as did Sage, honestly hoping for a compliment (it was important she knew just how brilliant I was being). It seemed, however, that she hadn't been paying attention. In the time that I had taken to modify the Fence, Saltira had descended to the floor, her gaze characteristically distant, and her hooves held gently around her neck. Her mouth was open, and her breathing a curious combination of calm and panicked, as if she was on the verge of another attack, but was just managing to hold it together. I stepped over towards her gently, trying my hardest to not make any noise, lest I startle her, and lowered my self to meet her eyeline.
"Saltira...?" I said softly, looking up into her sharp, blue eyes. "Are you al—"
"Six thousand... five hundred... eighty-one..." she whispered, in a voice that seemed infinitely more thoughtful and delicate than her previous manner.
I looked to Sage, who frowned and shrugged. Clearly, it had meant nothing to him either.
"I don't understand," I said quietly, as I lowered my flank onto the floor in front of the red-maned mare. "What does that mean, Saltira?"
"It's..." she began, only to gulp nervously. "It was... the number of days Ah've been made to wear that collar..."
I looked to Sage again, and saw his jaw slacken slightly as his eyes began to glisten. He turned away, leaving me to return my gaze to Saltira, the weight of what she had just said bearing down on my mind like an oppressive, solid cloud. We had both just done the calculation in our heads, and both knew exactly what it meant.
Eighteen years. Two months. And six days.
That's how long Saltira had been a slave. That's how long she had been forced to serve the worst dregs of ponykind, as everything from a waitress to a prostitute, how long she had had her equinity taken and locked away, how long she had been degraded and abused with nothing to comfort her; not even the promise of death.
I sank back onto my haunches and exhaled slowly, running my tongue around the inside of my mouth. The cloud was raining down upon me, moistening my eyes and making my lip tremble in the cold.
"Ah... Ah counted..." Saltira continued, her line of sight still fixed on some infinitely distant point beyond the realm of the living. "At first... It was tae tell masel' that it wouldnae be much longer till I wis out, till Ah wis free again. But then... as the years started tae pass... Ah lost hope of leavin'. Ah just... kept countin'. Because that's what good slaves do... They keep on going... Or they die..."
Saltira's head suddenly began to move, her eyes focussing themselves on me as her vision returned to reality. Her hooves, which up until that point had cradled her neck where the collar had sat, now extended outwards, trembling and slow.
"And now..." she said, as her forelegs were wrapped around my neck, and I was brought into an embrace unlike any I had ever encountered. "Now... Ah don't have tae count anymore..."
A shivering breath escaped my mouth as Saltira closed here eyes and laid her head upon my shoulder. Tears were freely making their way down Sage's face as he beamed at me, and I felt a wetness on my shoulder that could only have come from Saltira's tear ducts.
I closed my eyes as I too began to weep, and returned the hug, a wave of unprecedented emotion smashing into my consciousness as the cloud in my head ruptured, forcing a hurricane's worth of fear, sadness, and anger out of my mind, leaving behind only the rays of joy from the Sun above.
The hug tightened, and the tears only flowed more strongly as time went on. I wanted that bliss to last forever - for the knowledge that I had just made an actual difference in somepony's life to stay in my head, current and raw and wonderful, for the rest of time.
Stone Tower, however, had other plans.
The room shook suddenly, as an explosion rocked the entire superstructure from base to tip, streams of concrete dust falling from the ceiling as we scrambled to our hooves.
"Is that the thing you said wis chasin' ye?" Saltira said, as she dried her eyes and picked up her gun. The flair with which she rose to her hooves distinguished her completely from the mare that had only moments previously had an explosive locked around her neck. Her eyes were bright and so brilliantly alive, her mane seemed to be fuller, her coat more colourful, her cutie mark practically glowing with joy!
"Yeah, that'll be it," I said, still smiling at the change I had just had the privilege of being a part of. "Let's get to the reactor room and blow this place. We just have to keep him busy for another twenty-one minutes before the collars are released, and we can all get out of here."
"Then we have plan," Sage said, as he approached the door control. "Lead on Compass!"
"Allons-y!" I whinnied gladly, as we galloped from the room.
To be continued...
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Liberator You are a child of liberty, and no friend to slavers. You can now release single slave collars at close range using any remote. Science +5; Lockpick +5.
New perk added: Epiphany You have guided a recently new companion through a life changing event. Your ability to relate to other Wastelanders is developing nicely. Speech +10.
A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria, a Time Lord was dying...
I crawled towards the console, my limbs failing me as the metallic taste of radioactive death filled my mouth. The door had slammed shut behind me as I entered, and the soft glow of the TARDIS' interior lighting was made hazy and opaque by my delirium.
I estimated from the deterioration of my body that the gust from the valley had washed me in about 3000 rads of magical radiation, the equivalent of five lethal doses. There was a trail of blood on the floor of the console room that extended from the door all the way up to my face, where my mucus membranes had begun to haemorrhage. I could already feel the distant glow of my regeneration starting to take hold.
It wasn't fair.
Everypony in Equestria had just been doomed to extinction because of me. I had seen the world that would prevail, and although I knew that it would contain good souls, that friends would still come to one another's aid, and that love would still find a way, I still despaired for the horror that they would have to live through; the struggle simply to subsist from day to day.
And all the while, I would be secreted away in my TARDIS, insulated and safe, my body new and healthy. As ponies died in their thousands, their millions, I would live on, free to gallivant through time and space, leaving them all to turn to toxic dust in my wake.
Like I said: it wasn't fair.
And if there was one thing I hated, it was a lack of fairness.
"Ac-activate... voice interface...!" I coughed to the console room. A shimmering blue projection took shape before me, resolving itself into a four-legged form with divergent eyes, a straw-coloured mane, and a bubble-shaped cutie mark.
"Voice interface enabled," the TARDIS said through Ditzy Doo's mouth. "Please state command or inquiry."
"Brilliant..." I sighed painfully, a deep chasm of guilt opening in my already rapidly collapsing gut. "More guilt..."
"'Brilliant. More guilt' is not understood in the present context," Ditzy said, far too flatly. "Please restate."
"T-tell me..." I said, my lungs burning as the taste of metal in my mouth seemed to spread down my throat and into my chest. "St-status...!"
"Eighty-four percent of ship's systems are operating within normal parameters," she replied quickly. "Twelve percent are in need of maintenance, and four percent are offline. Itemised list follows. Chameleon Circuit is operating, but is not responding to control inputs. Bicentennial recalibration of the gravimetric sensor array is due. The following toilets are out of order—"
"No, no, no!" I coughed, blood spraying from my mouth as I did so. "Tell m-me about... Equestria...!"
"The name 'Equestria' may refer to any of the following. One: a variety of cheese produced on Fromage Prime. Two: a sovereign state of the planet—" she began.
"NO!" I shouted, interrupting the projection of my former companion as I toppled onto my side, weak and pained. "Tell me... what's happening... outside...!"
The interface was silent for a moment as it processed my command. A slight tilt of its virtual head - a gesture of minor contemplation amongst organic ponies - indicated that it had just read and compiled the readings from the TARDIS' many millions of sensors, performing a truly dizzying array of calculations in naught but a few seconds.
"The exterior atmosphere is currently being saturated with hazardous levels of Thaumic radiation." it said. "Thermal and barometric gradients are consistent with multiple large-scale explosions. Gradient peaks are centred near regions with high concentrations of either technological signatures or life signs. Conclusion: a targeted thermonuclear bombardment is in progress."
"H-how m-many... bombs...!? Wh-where...!?"
"Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and sixty-two balefire explosives of varying yields and types have been detected since the beginning of the bombardment," Ditzy said, her face blank and expressionless. "The distribution of the explosions is global, indicating equal-measure counter-attacks from multiple geo-political entities. Conclusion: a catastrophic world war has been instigated. Projection: the catastrophic world war will conclude in approximately four minutes."
"C-casualty... projections...!"
"Planetary life signs have decreased in magnitude by approximately 68% since the beginning of the bombardment." she replied, as I involuntarily winced. "0.0004% of the sentient population appear to be isolated from the effects of the bombardment. Several species of flora and fauna appear to be adaptable to high radiation environments. Projection: 73% of non-sentient species will become extinct, the remainder will mutate over time. 99.9996% of sentients will—"
"S-save... them..." I wheezed, my breath stolen by the double sucker-punch of acute radiation poisoning and emotional devastation. "Block the... bombs..."
"Unable to comply," Ditzy responded curtly. "Current extrapolator shield capacity is insufficient to absorb all incident external energies on a planetary scale."
"Then... teleport... Teleport them all aboard!"
"Unable to comply. TransMat system targeting sensors have been disrupted by external radiation. There is insufficient power for the required signal gain to be achieved. Additionally, the life support capacity of this spacecraft is insufficient for a crew of that size. A maximum of 36'500 equinoid lifeforms may be carried aboard at any—."
"W-wait... Wait!" I coughed desperately, cutting off the hologram. "What was... that you said about the... isolated sentients...?"
"0.0004% of sentients appear to be isolated from the effects of the bombardment." she repeated.
"H... How...?" I said, now gasping for breath.
Another tilt of the head, another few trillion calculations.
"Sensors indicate that the isolated individuals are sealed inside underground structures equipped with closed-cycle life support systems, large reserves of consumables and significant shielding. Conclusion: these facilities are fallout shelters, constructed with the express purpose of surviving an apocalyptic world event."
That was it! The stables! Applebloom had already given me the solution, that little bow-headed genius! She had clearly realised once back in her own time what I only had a few minutes to here: that Equestria was doomed, and saving everypony was no longer an option. It was a numbers game from now on.
"C-copy the design...!" I panted. "Make the TARDIS into... one of those shelters...! Make it better...! Save them...! S-save as many as... possible...!"
"Unable to comply," came the shattering response. "External radiation levels are interfering with sensors. Additionally, the Chameleon Circuit is not responding to control inputs. Conclusion: system adaption is not possible."
"There... must be... some... hope..." I gasped, sliding off of the console onto the floor. I looked up at the interface hologram, and noted that it had actually turned to face me for once, its implacable, seemingly impervious demeanour having softened by an almost imperceptible iota.
The sadness in her eyes carried a tiny hint of pity, and was so slight in its magnitude that the alteration of a single binary digit could have banished it completely. The form opened its mouth to speak, her words somehow more measured, and far less harsh.
"'Hope'..." the interface said, "is not understood in the present context..."
I closed my eyes and laid down on the floor, the total collapse of my forelegs only seconds away as I began to blubber and cry like an infant. Blood and snot mixed in my mouth with the radioactive taste of metal, and crimson tears streamed out of my tear ducts as I wept for Equestria, and for its inhabitants. All doomed simply because I was a bad friend.
The warm golden glow of my regeneration began to creep into my skin, just as a brilliant white light engulfed the console room.
<<<<< O >>>>>
Meanwhile, somewhere else in time and space...
So, yeah... Time travel is, like... hard, and stuff.
The vortex swirled around the naked TARDIS console, a turbulent gale of time energy blasting past me as I strained to manipulate the correct controls. Straddling the various panels, I was just about able to hold the flux inhibitor in place with my left foreleg, turn the Thaumic release valve with my right hind leg and toggle the relay control switches with my tongue.
The console was buffeted back and forth like a leaf caught in a maelstrom, my body pounding painfully against the controls as the panels bucked up and down in the turbulence. It took all the coordination I had just to keep the thing steady while the automatic systems (which I had only just managed to turn on without vaporising us) managed to take over.
Redheart was still concussed on the floor, her mane released from its tidy bun and strewn haphazardly over her body. I chanced a look in her direction, a lump forming in my throat as the brilliant, many-coloured lights of the vortex danced across her features, making it impossible for me to visually check whether or not she was breathing.
Just as I was considering an ill-advised leap away from the controls, a sharp chime from the console announced the stabilisation of the simple time machine's flight mode. Relaxing, I pulled my limbs back from the other control panels, secure in the knowledge that the compact little timeship wasn't going to suddenly careen into a supernova for lack of supervision.
I flexed my limbs and hurriedly lowered myself down next to Redheart on the floor. I was infinitely relieved to see that her chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, her face flexing gently as concussed dreams swam to and fro inside her head.
Leaning back onto the console grating, I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself a brief respite while the bootleg TARDIS idled between moments. I looked up above the time rotor and into the bright eternity around me, my breathing finally slowing from the panic I had just escaped from.
'No,' I thought to myself, looking down at my hooves in shame. 'You didn't escape, you piece of shit. You ran away. You ran. And in doing so caused the death, no - the mutilation - of hundreds of innocents!'
'You couldn't have done anything else,' One said soothingly, trying to placate me. 'Time wouldn't allow it. The paradox was unsustainable, even for a roomful of powerful unicorns and a fledgling Time Lord.'
'Not to mention,' Three added, 'that even if you had stayed, you'd have been killed. And that's if you were lucky! You might have been caught, stuffed in one of those conversion machines, and put to work as a cyborg soldier that your younger self would end up killing two hundred years later! Like the other guy said, you couldn't have done anything else. This was your only option.'
'I know... I know...' I thought solemnly to myselves, as I looked up once again into the temporal landscape. 'That doesn't make what I did any less awful though...'
The time vortex was actually quite pretty when viewed with the naked eye (especially when you're not, you know, being torn to shreds by it). I had expected a mind-bending, madness-inducing realm of chaos and entropy, but had instead found a genuinely beautiful sight.
My disgrace was almost bearable as the ages drifted around me, motes and hues of every possible color (and a few more besides) zipping past the safe confines of the temporal bubble. I looked to Redheart, and to the console, fully aware of what I had to do next. The weight of the coming task bore down on me, making my stomach churn and my legs ache.
Redheart would have to be deposited in a Stable, I knew, so that she would be safe from the fallout, and so that she could mate, procreate and produce Caring Heart in time for my emergence from Stable 52 two hundred years later.
'And after putting her out of harm's way,' I thought selfishly, 'I'll be alone again. As alone as the first time I left the stable. As alone as I was before I met Mo, and Buckshot, and Sage, and Brandy, and Saltira, and Galinda, and—
'That's a long list, mate,' Three said suddenly, chiming into my depressed reverie like a bell resounding through fog. 'All you're thinking about is loneliness, but consider: was that list ever that big before? And has it ever grown as fast it had in the past few weeks?'
'He has a point,' One added. 'Are you sure that your using the word "alone" correctly here?'
A curious thought occurred to me at that moment, as the list of my friend's names scrolled through my mind, getting bigger with every passing recollection. I realised that, far from being alone, I was actually more complete now than I had ever been before. My friends being far away was far less important than the fact that they were my friends in the first place! Wherever they were, they wouldn't have forgotten me, just as I hadn't forgotten them!
I looked to the unconscious figure on the grating beside me, pangs forming in my stomach. I'd miss Redheart terribly once I left her in a stable, and it was more than likely that I'd never see her again once I departed. However, I would never forget her, and I doubted that she would ever forget me (especially since our introduction consisted of my embedding a bullet in her flank). We'd be friends forever, even if we never met again.
And on top of that, I realised in a moment of illumination that I had saved her. I had actually saved somepony! Her and her alone. One pony, exempted from the end of the world by a chance encounter with a rogue Time Lord. One pony whose descendants would go on to rebuild a small portion of the Wasteland, treat its wounded, and keep and hoof on its moral pulse.
In saving her, I had made a tiny difference. One that would cascade into other tiny differences, that would culminate in a community having a competent doctor with a good sense of right and wrong. A difference that would one day aid a solitary stallion escaping his stable. A stallion that would defeat a cyborg menace, liberate over a thousand slaves, and in turn ensure that that doctor would come into existence in the first place.
I looked to Redheart, and realised with a curious shudder that, although I had done many things wrong... I had managed to do at least one thing right.
"What the—!" the stable guard exclaimed, as the pressure door slid open in front of him. There, in a supply room of all places, was a lone mare, struggling to rise to her hooves. She moved as if she had been wounded, her forelegs trembling as she attempted to lift herself into an upright stance.
"Miss, are you alright!?" he asked, rushing to support her. "What's your name? Are you hurt?"
"I, uh... ooh, my head...!" she said, wincing as she spoke. "It's, ah... my name's Redheart. Wh-where...?"
"It's okay, miss, it's okay," the guard said soothingly as the mare finally righted herself. "You're safe. We're in a stable."
"A... stable...?" the mare echoed, clutching her head with a hoof. "But I was... I mean we were..." Her eyes suddenly focussed sharply, her facial expression switching in an instant from confused to concerned. "Compass!" she shouted. "Where's Compass!? The buck I was travelling with, the one with the metal horn!"
"Metal horn?" the guard said questioningly. "You mean like the one the supervisor has?"
"Supervisor!?" the mare practically shouted back.
"Yeah," the guard responded. "A stable supervisor with a metal horn and a flank-load of scars told me to check the supply rooms not three minutes ago! Lucky he did too! You might not have been found otherwise..."
"This supervisor," the mare said, as she began moving towards the door, her hooves clutching the wall for balance and support, "where did he go!?"
"Just down the corridor, miss," the guard replied, rushing to help her walk. "But we should get you to Medical before you check with him. Get your wounds seen to before you look for your duty assignment."
"Duty assignment!?" the mare said, as the door slid open again. "Why would I have a duty assignment!?"
"We'll all have them eventually," he replied, trying his best not to appall the mare any further. "I know it'll take a little getting used to, but we'll have a long time to figure things out in here. After all, it's only been about forty minutes since they sealed the door, so a little bit of disorientation is to be expected."
"Forty... minutes...? S-since the... the bombs...!?" the mare said slowly, before redoubling her efforts to follow the supervisor's path away from the supply room. She pushed on, wobbling down one corridor, then the next, before breaking into an uneven gallop as a strange, pulsing sound began to echo through the halls. The guard followed at a sprint, but was hard-pressed to match the mare's pace.
"Compass!" she shouted as she ran. "COMPASS!"
Far down the third corridor she turned into, the mare ducked into a lofty, cylindrical room whose periphery was lined with spark turbines. As the guard followed her in, the odd, scraping, pulsing sound became loud and potent, penetrating his hide all the way down to his skeleton. He blinked a couple of times as the air at the centre of the room shimmered, a golden light seeping away into nothingness as the mirage of a tall, complicated structure at its centre faded away. The mare was sitting in front of the now absent aberration, looking quietly into the distance.
"Uh..." the guard said uncertainly. "What was—?"
"Nothing," the mare said, as she rose to her hooves and turned around. "Just a weird sound I thought I'd investigate. Like you said, I guess it'll take a while to get used to this place. Now, where were we?"
"We were, uh... going to Medical," the guard replied. "To get your head wound seen to."
"Right," the mare said. "Well we can kill two birds with one stone then. I'm one of the nurses."
"O-oh!" the guard said. "Well then it's even more important that we get you down there! We can't exactly operate without a full medical staff note, can we?"
"No, no we can't," the mare replied, gesturing to the door. "Shall we, Mister...?"
"Oh! Sorry, Nurse Redheart, I'm Caring," the guard said, bowing slightly as he led the way from the turbine room. "Caring Act. And yes, let's go! We'll need to get you set up with a PipBuck, and see where your room is, but we can attend to that once you've been seen by the Doctors."
The mare - the newest nurse of the stable she had found herself in - followed her new acquaintance out into the corridor. She stopped just short of the room's threshold, turning back to regard is empty centre for a moment.
"Good luck, Compass," she whispered, a tiny smile crossing her face as a tear formed in her eye. "And... thank you."
Meanwhile, in the Equestrian Wasteland...
We darted down corridor after grey corridor on our way to the reactor, the faded markings on the stable walls forcing us to slow down and squint as we guided ourselves around the complex. By my estimation, it was going to take us just over three and a half minutes to reach the reactor, a further two to start a meltdown, and then a final twelve to reach the surface, leaving us with a whole six minutes to sprint to a minimum safe distance with the rest of the Emporium's inhabitants. Of course, there would also have to be a waiting period built in so that the Fence could do its thing and release the collars, but that would only have to be about five minutes long, and I sincerely doubted that Tower could find us in that minuscule length of time.
Now that was all well and good, as plans go, and it may indeed have been the way that things might have gone that day.
That is, if I hadn't been wrong.
As we ran, another, far closer rumble shook the corridor we were in to its foundations, forcing us to grab the walls for support. A patch of floor before us almost three metres long suddenly dropped to the level below, as we were temporarily blinded by a flash of blue light. Visions of worlds alight with blue fire flashed through my mind's eye, a trillion souls screaming out in terror as blasts of radiation annihilated entire species with utmost prejudice. I looked on in horror, despite the various complaints of my eyeballs, as a coppery dome slowly rose from the hole, a sickly blue orb suspended on the end of its central stalk.
"TARGETS RE-ACQUIRED!" the Darlok screeched, as I screamed in abject terror. "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
A foreleg wrapped itself around my neck a millisecond later, stifling my fearful emanations and yanking me into a retreat. The Darlok's weapon was not yet in sight when we rounded the nearest corner in our effort to escape, but this was apparently not an issue for the creature formerly known as Stone Tower. A beam of bright blue death pierced the wall in front of us as we ran, resulting in a series of strained, and rather painfully rushed, acrobatic manoeuvres. I smelt burning hide as we passed, and hoped dearly that neither of my companions had come to any serious harm.
We ducked, dived, and weaved as the beams continued to blast through parts of the structure around us, in seemingly vain attempts at out-running the Darlok. In a moment of quick thinking, Sage pulled us down a series of corridors with faded red arrows on their walls, taking us on a longer, alternate route towards the reactor. I realised quickly that he wasn't just hoping to complete our objective and destroy the stable, but that he was going to try and rely on the reactor room's significant shielding in order to slow down the Darlok and give us the time we so desperately needed.
I could feel my hearts beating through every vein in my body as we ran, and by the time we reached the airlock to the rector, my throat was dry and sore from the panicked sprint. Sage sealed the triple door arrangement with his usual ease, closing us inside the stable's reactor pod.
An aside at this juncture is called for, as one might now be asking the question: "Well why didn't Tower just blast through the floor of an adjacent level and bypass the door altogether? He doesn't seem to have any trouble with floors". The reason, dear reader, is that the reactor pod, much like the spark turbine hall that Tower's robot had set up shop in, was 'reinforced tae fuck', as my companions from Coltland might put it. Dozens of layers of enchanted concrete and disaster-grade magisteel, each several inches thick, lay between us and the rest and the stable, as well as a formidable nexus of energy and radiation absorbing spells. In typical StableTec fashion, the arcane engineers of the day had massively over-engineered the critical structures of the stables, as much for their security during a first strike as for the safety of the inhabitants in the event of a malfunction (there isn't really anywhere to escape to in an apocalypse-proof fallout shelter if there's a malfunction). As a result, the reactor was protected by a wall of solid matter and magical energy that could survive several direct hits to its exterior and an internal explosion before any cracks would even begin to appear. We were safe, for a while at least (I decided right there and then to stop underestimating our opponent, and assumed that we would be able to run, but never hide).
"Compass!" Sage shouted form the door controls, snapping me to an exhausted attention. "Get going with the meltdown! We have precious little time here!"
"Okay, okay!" I replied, as I stumbled to a nearby control panel. The reactor we found ourselves before was a standard General Atomics offering, a Type 14 crystallic spark fusion reactor capable of supplying reliable power to a facility more than twice the size of an ordinary stable - just the thing for the a few hundred trendy young apocalypse survivors. The vessel itself was a dome-ended cylinder about two metres wide, and five metres long, suspended in the middle of the multi-story reactor pod. Near its base were the various pipes that derived useful energy from the intense radiation being generated within, and at its uppermost extremity was an assemblage of hydraulics that controlled the crystal inhibitor rods, the 'brakes' of the reactor, so to speak.
Our goal was to retract the rods, and stop the flow of energy out of the reactor, thereby causing a dangerous build-up of heat and pressure inside the containment vessel. Then, at the last moment before the vessel melted into the floor from the intense heat, we would trigger the re-activation of the power distribution system. This would expose the stable's systems to the intense heat inside the vessel, triggering a flash-vaporisation of the enchanted fluid in the pipes and spark turbines, bypassing the containment vessel's otherwise impassible walls, and blasting the entire facility into a sloppy stramash of red-hot metal and concrete.
Fortunately, the control panel was still operational, and had seemingly remained unmolested by the stable's current inhabitants. Busying my hooves, I started entering familiar commands in a decidedly unfamiliar order.
"How long?" Sage said as he approached, the containment doors behind him now sealed.
"Three minutes if I wanted to," I said. "But we need to give the Fence time to shut down the collars. And, you know, get ourselves to safety."
"I'm aware of that," Sage said, as he looked back nervously toward the airlock door. "But we're almost certainly not going to have that long in here. The Darlok will find us in a matter of minutes, and unless we're out of here by then, we'll be trapped. I'm not sure if you noticed, but there's only one exit!"
"I know, I know!" I replied hurriedly, my hooves dancing feverishly across the controls in front of me. "But I don't have a clue about how we're supposed to escape the thing! We need to keep it down here, and not die, and we've only just been hanging on so far!"
"How aboot we stop runnin'?" Saltira said suddenly, her intense tone causing both Sage and I to turn immediately toward her. "How aboot we stand and fight the fucker!?"
"Fight it!?" I exclaimed, as I bypassed one safety lockout after another. "And how exactly do you envision us doing that!?"
"Well," she began, rolling her eyes as if I was missing the most obvious thing in the world. "We're armed, aren't we!? That thing cannae be indestructible!"
"Saltira," I said with a hurried sigh, "both Sage and I know what this thing is, and we're pretty certain that bullets won't do a thing against its shielding! The only way to get rid of it will be to destroy the facility and seal it inside."
"Ah wisnae talkin' aboot its armour," she replied, exasperated. "Ah wis gonnae suggest that we shoot oot that stalk its 'eye' thing is oan. Blind the bastard!"
I stopped tapping controls for a moment as Saltira's idea did the rounds in my head. It couldn't possibly be that simple, could it? A big, glaring weak spot, right there on its head for all to target. Surely not...
I turned questioningly toward Sage, just as he began to speak.
"You know..." he began, raising his hoof to his chin in contemplation. "She has a point."
"You're kidding," I replied. "A weak spot that obvious would be an enormous tactical disadvantage! It's got to have some kind of countermeasures to protect it!"
"No, I'm sure it does, Compass, but that doesn't mean fighting isn't a bad idea," Sage countered, as he continued to rub his chin. "I've been noticing a strange trend with this Darlok that I think we can take advantage of."
"And that is...?" I asked, thinly veiled aggravation spilling into my voice.
"It's too powerful," Sage said simply.
"How..." I replied, squinting as equal parts anger, fear, and confusion swirled around my mind. "How the fuck is that something we can take advantage of!?"
"Well," Sage continued, unphased by my outburst, "if you'll recall, the Darlok has managed to bypass every single obstacle we've put in its path. And it's done so by proving that it's a capable, super-advanced alien war machine, and not some cartoonish villain from a low-budget science fiction radio drama. Think about it - we were both convinced that its weapon wouldn't be able to penetrate a pressure door, and thus far it's defeated several, as well as a collapsed lift shaft, and a load-bearing section of floor. Then there was the stairwell. We both thought it would sit there like an enchanted dustbin and swivel impotently for evermore. But instead, it produced a levitation enchantment and continued to pursue us."
"Yes, thank you Sage, I was there you know," I quipped, perhaps a little harshly (my patience was wearing somewhat thin, what with death being so close and all). "What's your actual point!?"
"I'm trying to get you to consider the available data," Sage replied, a stern, disapproving look spread thin across his face in response to my sarcasm. "I say again: It. Is. Too. Powerful."
"But what does that mean!?" I shouted, my hooves flailing in exasperation. "You're just repeating what hap—!"
"WILL YOU SHUT UP, FER FUCK'S SAKE!?" Saltira suddenly boomed, causing me to jam my mouth closed in fright. She continued to speak a moment later in a far more level register. "He's saying that this Dar-whatcha-thingy is different tae whit you two thought it wis! That means that it's been updated or modified or even that it might be faulty. He's tyrin' tae get ye tae think!"
Sage and I looked at Saltira silently for a moment, leaving only the strong hum of the reactor to fill the chamber with sound. We then looked to one another, blushing slightly as we opened our mouths to speak.
"That's uh... exactly what I was saying. Trying to say at least..." Sage mumbled.
"No, no, it was silly of me not to see that," I replied. "Sorry..."
"Right, good," Saltira said hurriedly, "now that we're all caught up and acting civil, can you two please figure a way tae deck that thing!?"
I nodded.
Sage nodded.
We both nodded.
Then I started thinking.
So did Sage.
And, entirely at once, a thought occurred to both of us.
"What you were saying earlier..." I began. "About how the Darlok's too powerful..."
"Compass," Sage said, a fresh ticket for my train of though clutched firmly in hoof, "how much magical energy does it take to melt a magisteel door?"
"The phase change temperature for ST4000 series magisteel is about 1800 degrees Kelvin," I murmured, rubbing my chin excitedly as I jumped up and yanked open the throttle on the proverbial locomotive. "Enchanthalpy is equal to the product of temperature change - let's say 1500 Kelvin - mass, and thermal capacity at constant Thaumic pressure. So, for the first door we encountered, that's about, uh, 1.26 MegaFausts. It melted it in a little under two minutes by my estimate, which gives a magical power of 10 MegaPratchetts. Now, that beam was more akin to a spark laser or magic plasma than a 'radiation death ray', and lasers and plasma generators are hopelessly inefficient, not to mention that most of the heat will have been convected and radiated out to the surrounding air. Let's call the efficiency of the beam 30%, and then efficiency of the heating process, if we liken it to direct-spark heating, about 40%. So the overall efficiency is only about 12%, meaning that that beam weapon had to be delivering close to, um... about 87.4 MegaPratchetts!"
"Whit the fuck's a MegaPratchett!?" Saltira said, squinting. "Are... are ye even speaking English!?"
"That's a lot of power," Sage said, smiling.
"Yes it is," replied, a goofy grin spreading across my face. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I'll get the cable," Sage said, as he ran off to a supply cupboard at the other end of the room.
"I'll rig up the transfer!" I replied, returning to the console at the rector.
"Wh-whit..." Saltira stammered as activity erupted around her. "Whit the hell are you two up tae!? Want tae clue me in!?"
"The Darlok's proven that it can channel enormous quantities of magical energy, and that it's resourceful enough to blast it out of whatever orifice it needs to for a given situation," Sage explained from across the room. "Destroying obstacles, levitating, you name it!"
"And we're betting that it can - and will - do the exact same thing when it finds us aiming a super-charged Gauss rifle at it," I continued, as I pulled Prometheus from my back and started unscrewing its various panels.
"So..." Saltira droned. "You're going to beat it... by shooting it...?"
"Well," I said, stopping for a moment as another screw levitated to the floor in front of me, "yeah, but... it's more involved than that."
"How?" said Saltira.
"It's... well it's..." I stammered. "Sage, can you explain this? I'm busy."
"You see, Saltira," Sage said, in reassuring, almost chocolatey tones, "we're going to use Compass' gun to make the Darlok throw up a shield. And then, when it's blasting all of its power into defending itself, the reactor's safety system is going to think that a meltdown is occurring, and its emergency shielding is going to try and absorb the energy. Every last Faust of it! The Darlok will be powerless!"
"Wow... That's wan hell of an ambitious plan," Saltira whistled. "It's still just shooting it though. Ye realise that, right?"
"There's more to it than that!" I shouted, a bouquet of wires spread out between my hooves. "It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to—"
Suddenly, there was a shudder as the entire room began to gently swing back and forth. Something significant had just hit the exterior of the reactor vessel, and the quake dampeners were struggling to compensate.
We didn't have to expend too much effort figuring out what it was.
"Compass, are you ready!?" Sage said hurriedly as he dropped a fat bundle of even fatter cables at my hooves.
"Almost!" I said, my horn buzzing into life as the situation became infinitely more urgent. Wires twined into one another, components were disconnected, bypassed, and reconnected, conduit cabling was crudely patched from crystal to coil and vice versa. Seconds later, an entropic stramash of technology that barely resembled a functioning device, let alone a weapon, was hoisted into my hooves by a levitation field, and I set about aiming the unwieldy edifice at the chamber door.
"Sage, I need you to *oof* queue up the power transfer!" I said, my legs already aching from the pose I was forced to adopt. Another shudder rocked the chamber.
'Two doors down,' said One. 'One to go...'
"On it!" Sage replied, as he galloped determinedly to the reactor's main console.
"Saltira!" I said, straining.
"Aye!" the fiery mare replied.
"Get ready to toss your best insults!"
"Gotcha!" she replied, smirking as she inhaled deeply.
In a blast of yellow flame, the door before us exploded into a shower of molten sparks, most of which were deflected by a quick shield that I, thankfully, had the presence of mind to try and cast at the last moment (I couldn't manage a bubble on such short notice, so a crude, unevenly faceted plane of magic materialised in front of us instead).
There was silence for a moment as we all held our collective breath in anticipation of the coming battle. It seemed as if the peace would go on forever as I stood there, my legs aching, and sweat dripping from my forehead and matting my mane. But then, as the smoke cleared, and that awful trio of lights began to shine through the cloud, I heard the harsh hurrah of our battlecry.
"COME AND GET US YA GREAT TUMSHIE-FUCKIN', ARSE-LICKIN', SON OF A DEEP-FRIED CUNTBAG!" screamed Saltira, her hoof extended in an obscene gesture.
'Good grief,' I thought to myself, frowning. 'Was that really necessary...?'
The answer, it seemed, was yes. We wanted Tower's Darlok rage to peak. We wanted him, or rather 'it', to be so focussed on obliterating us that it wouldn't even consider that we might have a plan.
And it worked.
A murderous alien scream permeated the room as the Darlok moved swiftly toward us, its weapon forcing lances of brilliant blue death straight into my shield. With every impact I could feel the weight (and heat) of a hundred thousand suns breaking my body as blood vessels began to burst from head to hoof.
"OH GODDESS, SAGE, DO IT! I CAN'T TAKE THE POWER! BLAST IT! FORTHELOVEOFCELESTIATHROWTHEFUCKINGSWITCH!" I screeched, as my body began to break under the strain of maintaining the shield.
"Here we go!" Sage shouted as he tapped a control on the panel. Deep in the floor, there was a humongous clunk as one of the biggest spark relays ever built by ponykind engaged. At the same time, I pulled the trigger on Prometheus, letting slip the dogs of Tartarus upon the Darlok.
A billion hammers struck a billion anvils as I was suddenly blasted backwards into the wall, causing my shield to evaporate, and a couple of my ribs to audibly pop. A single, ear-bursting bang reverberated around the reinforced reactor pod, as a brilliant blue-white flash flooded my optic nerves.
The projectile that had forced me backwards found its target several hundred milliseconds before I made friends with the concrete. The full burst capacity of Stable 50's reactor had been channelled into one single electro-magically accelerated round, and with the safety systems mostly turned off, that 'burst' was formidable in its magnitude.
A dense cloud had formed with the firing of Prometheus, mixing with the vapours from the door and engulfing everypony present in a blinding opaqueness. As if sapping time from the very air around me, the cloud muffled my senses (helped significantly by the borderline concussion I had just suffered) and made it as if I was watching from afar, being shown a playback of events through the eyes of another.
I could make out the vague shapes of Saltira and Sage nearby, obviously struggling to equilibrate after the shock of the super-charged Gauss rifle blast. In all honesty, I was surprised that they were still conscious at all, and worried that we had all suffered severe hearing damage from the acoustic shock of the blast. (Then I remembered that we were all almost certainly going to die anyway, and the issue suddenly became less pressing.)
The stillness continued uninterrupted for what seemed like an age, at least to somepony with a concussion, and I dared to wonder what may have become of the Darlok. Did we actually destroy it? Had our plan worked so well that it didn't even need the second part to work effectively? Was I really that smart, skilled and awesome?
The answer... was no.
"I. AM. UNDAMAGED!" the Darlok said, it's head-mounted globes illuminating the cloud like distant lightning flashes in a storm. The creature's terrible blue eye began to approach through the dissipating fog as it restarted its screaming "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
My hearts sank, my stomach and inner ears rebelling painfully as I tried to panic my way back to my hooves. The strain was too much for my limbs though, and I collapsed in a heap against the wall - easy fodder for the murderous entity before me. Not only had the Darlok been unaffected by the blast, but it had also apparently managed to dissipate its energy without triggering the reactor's safety systems!
The maniacal creature drew closer, each second passing more slowly than the last. By now I could make out the finish of its armour plating, and the shiny horror of its bunker-busting beam blaster. The weapon swivelled towards me languidly, a lazy whir emanating from the motors as its owner continued to approach. The beast was going to get its satisfaction, I realised, just as the first torrents of terrified, despondent tears began to stream down my face. I let out a pathetic, shuddering whimper, and began to weep in shear terror of my imminent fate.
Closing my eyes, I turned my head and prepared as best I could for my death; to be slowly cooked by the radiation gun of a genocidal, interplanetary sadist.
The sounds of the Darlok's approach ceased. The gun moved. The room shuddered. The creature spoke.
"EXTERMIN—!" it managed, before being drowned out.
A klaxon louder than any I'd ever heard before resounded throughout the reactor pod, as a pre-recorded, two hundred year old voice announced my salvation.
"ALERT!" it said urgently. "POWER SPIKE DETECTED IN REACTOR POD! INITIATING EMERGENCY DAMPENING PROCEDURES!"
On (delayed) cue, the huge inhibitor rods atop the reactor slid quickly back into their enclosures, and an enormous grid of square patches on the walls began to glow with a faint but potent magical aura. In less than a second the entire room was bathed in a soft, throbbing green light, which was accompanied by a substantial pressure manifesting around my horn.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING!?" the Darlok demanded. "RAPID POWER DRAIN IN PROGRESS! I AM IMPAIRED! I. AM. IMPAIRED!"
The creature began to flail wildly as it's sudden impotence became apparent, its various moving parts swinging vainly back and forth.
'What are you waiting for you bloody fool!?' Two suddenly screamed into my mind's ear, a headache-inducing beam of light in an otherwise concussive fog.
'Wha—!?' I began, only to be cut off once again by my alien headmate.
'It's vulnerable!' he continued. 'No power, no shields, no damage control, no weapons! GO GET IT!'
'Oh!' I exclaimed as I finally managed to scramble to my hooves. 'Right!'
Without a moment's further thought, I barrelled toward the woeful creature with as much momentum as I could muster. We collided solidly, an excruciating wave of force compressing my spine and causing my every bone (including my two now dislocated ribs) to vibrate as the Darlok toppled backwards.
"Tower!" I shouted as I balanced atop the sentient turret. "I know you're still in there somewhere! Please, talk to me! I can save you!"
'Wh-what the hell are you doing!?' Two shouted. 'I told you to destroy it, not hug it!'
'I'm not going to abandon him!' I shouted back internally. 'There's some part of him left intact in there! I know it! I just need to find it!'
'You're insane!' Two replied, as he gesticulated wildly in my conscious mind. 'You can't reason with a bloody Darlok! You're going to get everypony in this room - no, on this planet - killed!'
'Be quiet!' I shouted back. 'You don't know him! He's a good pony! He's been warped and twisted, but deep inside he wants the best for all of us! I know it!'
'There is no 'deep inside' a Darlok!' Two replied, angry and exasperated. 'They're hatred incarnate! Raw evil! Living mal—'
'You were saying...?' I asked Two rhetorically, a mental grimace showing my disgust for his prejudice.
"Tower..." I said gently. "Tower, you're in the reactor pod. In Stable 50. Remember?"
"Re... actor...?" he said, as the lights in his sensor stalk and atop his head flickered feebly. "I... don't remember... anything... What... what am I in...? Where are... my tools...? My lab...?"
"You switched to a new body," I said gently, gulping down the sorrow I felt on his behalf. "It didn't work as well as you had hoped. There were a few... containment issues."
Motion in my periphery alerted me to the fact that Sage and Saltira had managed to reorient themselves. I quickly made eye contact with them, silently conveying the oh-so-delicate sense of optimism I had managed to develop for our situation.
"Why don't we get you back to your lab, Tower?" I said soothingly. "We can put you back in your old body and we'll see what we can do about—"
"Wait... Compass..." he rasped suddenly, cutting me off. "I'm starting to... remember..."
"H-hey now, y-you relax!" I said, mock concern doing little to hide my fear. "Just let your mind go blank, and we'll sort you out, okay? We're here to help, Tower. We want to help..."
"I... don't think you can..." he said, in a worryingly cohesive tone. "I can... feel it... in the back of my mind..."
"Tower..." I whispered, desperation making my voice waver as though I were weeping. "Please, fight it! It's not you, and you're not it! Please, I'm begging you! Help me save you!"
The magical sensor at the end of the Darlok eye stalk suddenly brightened, it's iris dilating as a pony's would when hit by a wave of surprise or, indeed, recognition.
"By the Goddess..." Tower whispered, his voice still choppy, but rapidly improving. "It is you! The stallion in the shield! I barely recognised you! But that was... so long ago..."
"The stallion in the what...?" I asked incredulously, squinting in confusion as what I could only assume were hallucinations took hold of Tower's perceptions. "Tower, we'd never met before today. I need you to focus. If you're going to remember anything, try to remember being a pony! With friends, and dreams, and hope!"
"Friends..." Tower whispered gently, almost hauntingly, in a voice as clear as a bell, but with all the warmth of a ghost. "I remember one. One whom I loved with all my heart. I couldn't save her... and..." The iris contracted again, as the eye stalk drooped. "And neither could you..."
"Tower..." I said. "What are you talking about...?"
"I don't blame you, Compass," he replied softly, as that awful digital rasp began to creep sickeningly back into his words. "You were wrong..."
"Tower?" I said, as I desperately tried to coax him back into conversing. "Tower!? Tower, please!"
"And it seems..." he continued suddenly, his clear, welcoming tones now gravelly and pained. "That I... was... tooOOOAAAAAIIIINITIATING EMERGENCY TEMPORAL SHIFT!"
"TOWER!" I screamed, as Saltira wrapped her forelegs around my neck and pulled me backwards. The Darlok body in front of me began to glow, its form spontaneously shifting as it rose into the air. A great burst of golden light blinded me for a moment, and the aura from the reactor pod's dampening talismans pulsed brightly before the entire grid splintered into a shower of green sparks, like a huge, cylindrical chessboard of miniature balefire explosions.
I opened my eyes again once I was sure that the light had subsided. My gaze was met by the melted rubble of the reactor pod's many doors, the shattered remnants of several hundred dampening talismans, and nothing more. Tower's Darlok side had reasserted itself, and in the time that I had taken to get through to his equine half, had figured out a way to perform some fashion of emergency time travel.
I stood still for several seconds, perhaps a minute, just staring at the spot where Tower had been laying. He was still in there, trapped in that armoured shell of alien hatred and inequine rage. What may have been my one and only chance to save him had come and gone, and I had screwed it up.
A deep pit in my stomach opened as I wrestled to control my breathing. Was I going to erupt in anger? Was I going to break down and weep? Perhaps some new, undignified hybrid of the two?
A foreleg wrapped itself around my shoulders as my diaphragm quivered to control my breathing and keep the blubbering at bay. I turned to see Sage smiling at me, his warm, reassuring gaze pushing the sadness away like a sun vanquishing darkness.
"You did your best, Compass," he said softly.
"It wasn't good enough though, was it?" I replied quietly. "I didn't save him, and now he's off to Goddess knows where in time and space, trapped in a state of constant, murderous rage and sealed inside an alien battle-suit."
"Yes..." Sage said, pulling my chin so I was forced to look into his eyes. "But we're still here, and we didn't even need to blow up the stable. You listened to your friends, came up with an alternate plan in record time, and tried your damnedest to save everypony here. And while it's true that you didn't quite manage that, there're a good thousand liberated slaves up on the surface who I'm sure won't mind. You've changed lives today, Compass. Don't for a moment sell that achievement short."
"Aye," Saltira added, smiling as she too placed a hoof upon my shoulder. "Ah certainly wilnae forget it."
The deep pit that had formed only moments earlier began to fill again, my mood stabilising. The warmth from earlier had come back to me, filling me with that most important and rare of emotions: hope.
"Maybe..." I began. "Maybe I'll catch up to him... one day. I'll help him then."
"Aye," Saltira replied. "That's whit tae dae. Besides, ye've saved too many folk today as it is. We dinnae want ye gettin' a big heed now, do we?"
I chucked at that. A genuine, mirthful laugh, for what seemed like the first time in ages. I sighed a deep sigh, and smiled.
"Thanks, guys," I said quietly, as everything around me got a little less bleak.
I looked down at my PipBuck and checked the clock. Seven minutes to go until the Fence sent its last transmission.
"What do you say we head up to the surface for the grand finale?" I said. "I want to see the look on the slaver's faces when they realise how utterly outnumbered they are."
"Actually," Saltira said, eyeing the still-glowing, now semi-solid remains of the reactor pod door, "how are we gonnae get out o' here? Wasnae that the only door?"
"It still is," replied Sage, as he turned to face the reactor controls again. "But we still have a functioning reactor, and an electro-magic mass accelerator attached to it. We can just pulse charge Compass' rifle and keep firing until we clear the rubble." He rubbed his ears as he arrived at the console. "Although I have to insist on some safety equipment this time - I doubt my ears will ever fully recover from that... initial... Uh, Compass...? How many of these indicators are meant to be red...?"
"Red?" I asked, as a deep frown began to threaten my good mood. I turned and started trotting over to where Sage was standing. "On that panel? Usually none, but given what we've just done to the reactor, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of warning lights had— OH, FUCK!"
I leapt up onto the console, my head nearly colliding with the metal as I stared in shock at the display. A veritable sea of red assaulted my eyes, flashing, blinking and pulsing in warning of a dire malfunction. According to the gauges, the temperature and pressure inside the reactor were rising rapidly, and would soon exceed the design limits of the containment vessel. Of course, the pod around us would protect the stable from the initial meltdown, but with my preparations to destroy the facility still in place, I realised with horror that we were only moments away from the catastrophic explosion I had been planning since our encounter with the Darlok in the stairwell.
"How bad is it?" Sage asked calmly (but with an unmistakable edge of urgency).
"How bad's whit!?" Saltira asked, her voice far less level that Sage's had been. "Whit's happenin' now!?"
"The reactor's..." I began, pausing as my eyes darted to and fro across the various gauges. "It's... It's... Oh, Goddess, this is impossible! How the fuck did it—!?"
"Compass!" Sage shouted, staring into my eyes as he braced my shoulders with his hooves. "How. Bad!?"
"We... We've only got a couple of minutes...!" I whispered, my eyes wide and wet with panic. "It's going to blow, just like I planned!"
"And the Fence!?" Sage said, his expression one of absolute, desperate concern for his fellow equines. "Is there time for it to shut down the collars!?"
I shook my head meekly, too shocked to put my imminent failure into words as my mouth hung open.
"Well can't you stabilise it!?" Sage asked. "Maybe with the control rods we could—!?"
"Y-you don't understand..." I replied quietly, looking alternately into the eyes of Sage and Saltira. "The safety systems are all either fully engaged, destroyed, or disabled. And I can't bring the ones that are out of action back online in time..."
I picked a point on the floor, and stared at it, my expression vacant, and my mind blank.
"We're going to die..." I whispered. "And so are all the slaves..."
"No. No, there... there has to be a way to fix this," Sage said, resolute and stoic. "What about your gun? We just keep firing it to bleed off the energy. Would that work?"
"Building too fast..." I replied numbly, as the scant hum of the reactor began to glacially rise in pitch.
"Can't we use they big dampener things oan the walls!?" Saltira asked, adding to the pile of hopelessness with another wholly invalid suggestion.
"Burned out..." I breathed, my hide itching from the ever-so-slight, yet ever-so-depressing increase in temperature coming from the heavily insulated vessel at the centre of the room.
"There... There must be some way oot o' this mess!" Saltira shouted, desperation creeping steadily into her voice. "We cannae just give up!"
"We're not going to," said Sage, his posture strong and his face a picture of misplaced determination. "We're getting out of here, we're freeing the slaves, and we're shutting this place down once and for all! Aren't we, Compass!?"
I didn't respond. There really was very little point in doing so, after all - we only had about a hundred seconds of life left.
I decided instead— Actually, no, I didn't decide to do anything. My brain took me to places of its own accord. The sounds and moods of my internal dialogue had shattered into disharmony, the landscape of my conscious mind having become barren and silent. One was silent, morose and shell-shocked, Three was panicking so fast and loud that it was more of a drone made up of white noise than a voice, and Two was characteristically absent, seemingly for evermore.
Sage and Saltira were speaking as well. Gesticulating wildly and looking all irritable and scared. What was their problem, anyway? It was only death. Some ponies regarded the last closing of one's eyes as the beginning of the most exciting adventure in all existence.
Or so I'm told.
By liars.
The truth - that which my mental shutdown was attempting, and summarily failing, to protect me from - was that I was terrified. Not like I'd been terrified in the past though. Not like when I was facing the Darlok or the Controller or Galinda's old band of mercenaries or the Maneframe or even the spider bots back in the stable. No, nothing like those. In those situations I was fighting for my life. I had adrenaline coursing violently through my veins, my tears were hot and vital, my actions purposeful and brimming with will. Raw emotion kept me going and a combination of luck, ingenuity and help from my friends had ultimately saved me.
But this time? This time was different.
This time, death had been sprung on me like a bad birthing day surprise with all of three minute's notice. This time, two of my newest friends had been pulled toward my fate like planets toward the hungry maw of a black hole. This time, I had managed to somehow fuck up the liberation of over a thousand enslaved innocents by a margin of the order of minutes in length.
This time... I had run out of luck. And I knew it. I'd 'won', sure, but nopony was going to benefit from it. Tower was doomed to a life of temporally displaced horror, the innocents above were about to have their heads blown off, and my friends were either going to be incinerated with me, or share in the imminent explosive decapitation-fest.
The weight of realisation bared down upon me as the mass of a million galaxies, shattering my will and compressing my mind to a singularity of despair.
And despite all of that, Sage and Saltira were still talking! Something about how I needed to 'believe' in myself and how there were ponies relying on me and how I'd always managed to persist even in the most dire of yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.
'Oh, for Goddess' sake give it a rest!' I cried to myself. 'You're just giving me a headache! I don't want to die with a headache! And my hide feels cold and sweaty! This isn't going to be a pleasant vaporisation at all! Sweet fucking Celestia, will you stop that sodding noise!? It's like a billion bloody keys being dragged across just as many piano str—!'
Wait.
What...!?
"SHHH!" I hissed suddenly, startling myself.
"No, I will not shush, Compass!" Sage said, his face very close to mine. "There are lives at stake besides ours here! You need to help us find a way to unlock the collars, even if we can't make it out of here in t—!"
"SHUT UP!" I shouted, my every sense scanning the entirety of spacetime for even the most meagre sliver of hope. "Listen! Do you hear that...?"
Thankfully, Sage and Saltira obeyed immediately, and began to flex their ears, my behaviour altering them to the possibility of a solution to our situation, and evidently sparking a hopeful fire in them as well.
We strained our ears, maintaining eye contact as we all simultaneously picked up on it: the sound of an ethereal, permeating scrape.
"Ah hear it!" said Saltira. "But whit—!?"
"Compass..." Sage said, his mouth agape as a distant memory of an old radio series surfaced. "Is that—?"
Almost as if to answer directly, a gale started to spontaneously blow throughout the reactor pod as a brilliant, otherworldly hue of gold began to pulse from nowhere, casting deep, contrasting shadows against the cylindrical wall.
We turned in unison as a fog of steam swirled into existence with the wind, the pulsing source of the golden light floating diffusely at its heart in mid air. A large circular form began to appear in front of us, becoming more solid with each passing second. There was a loud series of clanks as the middle of the form - a huge slab of metal shaped like a giant gear, and with the number 52 emblazoned on it - moved backwards and rolled off to one side, seemingly into nowhere.
There, deep in the centre of the mist, standing just over the threshold of the TARDIS, was a lone unicorn, with a pair of brilliant golden eyes.
"Need a lift?" said Petri Dish with a smirk.
Footnote: LEVEL UP!
New perk added: Deus Ex Machina When your HP drops below 10%, you gain an extra 3 points to your LUCK stat. Perfect for all those unlikely escapes!
New perk added: The Bigger They Are... You've felled giants, drank their blood, and gained their sweet, sweet strength! (Figuratively, at least.) Knockback chance and distance for any melee attack has been doubled. Opponents with double your HP or more now take 10% more damage.
