A unicorn must follow a fallen star across the Equestrian Wasteland to find his destiny.
Black Horse was one of the few ponies raised by the Bison Tribe of the western wasteland. Surrounded by untimely death he was considered cursed by his tribe and left to the lone care of his adoptive sister. On the day that he gets his cutie mark he embarks on a quest that will take him across the Equestrian wasteland. Armed only with his wits, (and a bit of magic) he will come to find about his past, his future, and the secret of the stars. A story set in the universe created by KKat, and a few others.
“War never changes. Though the means and reason do, at the core since the first animal killed another to survive nothing has changed. It is a constant state; the struggle for continued existence at the cost of life of another. Peace is just a dream, a fairy tale told to the young to help them sleep at night. It is a spoil of war that the current winning side is allowed to enjoy, and for countless millennia the ponies enjoyed the victories of war lead by two godly beings. In time they were proven fallible and the world fell into chaos once again until war won out; neither side won. Both sides made the mistake of believing they could win and war overcame the land, altered nature and both sides died, including the goddesses. We are beyond the veil of hope, instead embrace the world as it is.”
I had to stifle my yawn. This had to be the fifth time I heard this speech and although it seemed life altering the first time, it lost its edge after a while. Still the chief went on droning about ‘becoming one with the wasteland’ as the new warriors ate it all up. The Bison Tribe were a proud and noble race, but they could drone on if given the chance. As a group they remained neutral in the Great War some two centuries ago. Our land went mostly untouched when the mega spells spilt balefire across the world. Now we lived in a shithole world trapped beneath a permanent cloud canopy were scavengers and raiders killed, raped, and pillaged their way onto our land. Of course I am not a bison, but a pony, a unicorn to be exact; a nineteen-year-old blank flank unicorn to be exacter’er (and yes I know that is not a word). In our tribe there were four other ponies. A mated pair twenty-five years my elder, their daughter a year my younger, and the other was like me, an adopted male of the same age, though he was an Earth pony. The two my age both received their cutie marks years ago and despite what you might think, us being the same race and all, they had nothing to do with me. They call me Black Horse. I think cause my hide is black, go figure. They say I am cursed cause everyone I ever knew has died except for my sister. Cause of that every buffalo tends to leave me to my own devices.
I wasn’t a warrior or a hunter but a scout. Not even a lead scout, just a member of a patrol. If we saw anything we would either take care of it or report it in to the warriors to take care of. In stampeding times of the year we were assigned a far flank to ensure the herd didn't get jumped. Right now the new group of recruits were being given the routine introductory speech well the rest of us watched in solidarity. My yawn won out in the end, a loud one too, before I felt a quick kick to my ribs. My adopted sister, Lightning Strike, glared at me. I fell silent for the rest of the speech. “…and we stampeded on this land like his father before him, and his Father before him, and His father before him, And his father before him, and…” At this point even the new recruits eyes started to glaze over.
After it ended, Lightning turned to me. “You shouldn’t have yawned Black Horse. It shows disrespect to the chief.”
“If he didn’t want me to yawn he shouldn’t give the same speech every six months, when the young’ens come of age! Also does he have to say how many times his father’s, father’s, father’s stampeded.”
“What? You don’t think the rest of us are tired of hearing that same dumb speech, yet the rest of us don’t make a show of it in front of the recruits. Also he’s supposed to say it for the number of generations ago we came over here from wherever we were originally from. It tradition! Come on, I am hungry. I’ll make us some breakfast before we head out.”
I followed Lightning to our camp, where she got to making us some sage salads. The ceremony got me thinking about the past. I was raised by my father, my real father, in a shack on the edge of the bison lands ‘til I was about four. My mother died before I could walk. I remember he would trade and hunt with bison, than one day Lightning’s pop, Thunder Head, came back from a hunting trip with out my father and told me to pack my things since dad would not be coming back. He never was one to mince words. Lightning’s mom passed away from radiation sickness when I was six and her pop didn’t return from another trip six years ago. The other bison were too polite to tell us that he was captured and killed by raiders, so he is still just gone officially. Lightning Strike is all I have left now. She is six years my elder and my scout leader. The other buffalos say they won’t chance a blank flank in their crew, I think its because they think I am cursed. Lightning says its buffaloshit since in the wasteland everyone has lost someone.
We ate in near silence together. I noticed her looking at me, unspeaking. I looked at her and could see myself reflected in her eyes. Black fur, long blue mane, violet eyes. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, “What?”
“Nothing, just thinking that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Oh, the past. Mom and Dad. I remember when they brought in a little foal and told me you were to be my brother. Mom was already pretty sick, but she never seemed happier. Now here we are both scouts complaining about boring military duties.”
I smiled even wider. The truth was Lightning had started raising me when she was my age. Most bison her age were already married and with calf, but I think she never did cause of me. We finished up and headed out. The other two members of our group were waiting for us outside the village. We found nothing much, mole rats and bloat sprites. They posed no threats, but we killed them anyways just for the meat. The sun was starting to set and we were three miles east of the village. I was ready to call it a day, but Lightning wanted to pull one more patrol.
“Come on there is nothing here lets just go already,” I complained.
“Okay than, Horse. But only on the condition you climb that rock outcrop over there and scan the horizon,” she said with a sneer pointing at forty-foot outcrop a quarter of a mile northeast. “And hurry up your making us all wait.” The other two laughed.
This was revenge for the yawn; I just knew it. But the joke was on Lightning, I was still a unicorn after all. “Alright,” I said with a smile before staring at the top of the cliff concentrating all my magic on it before my horn burst out blue surrounding my whole body teleporting me the distance in less than a second. I learned this trick last year when a rouge manticore managed to separate me from my group. Most days I was too lazy to use it, but right now I was too lazy to be bothered with the climb. She turned to me jaw dropping the other two snickered some more. I had every intention to turn back and gloat, but I saw something to the north. Without thought I winked out of existence and returned back to the Lightning.
“Smoke to the northeast”
“Smoke means ponies. Ponies mean raiders. At least out this far from Appleloosa.” She turned to the other two member of our group. “You two run back to camp and tell them to prepare a war party. Horse and me will go in for a closer look and make sure they don’t go anywhere. Hurry they might not know the village is here yet.” At that they ran off back home. She turned to me and nodded. “We move quickly and silently.”
We tracked the smoke to small cave in the face of a cliff. There were four of ponies outside wearing spiked amour covered in dried blood. One was the largest unicorn I had seen with a sawed off shotgun and razorblades tied to the end of his tale. The other three were Earth ponies. One had a .38 revolver, another was armed with blood-tinged shovel sharpened to a spear, and the last one was a green mare unarmed and wearing a pre-war gas mask. Shovel turned to the unicorn and said, “this sucks! We always get guard duty. I am so hungry and how much do you want to bet when the shifts change they’ll have already finished eating that slaver from earlier.” This was the first time I ever felt sorry for a slaver.
“Suit yourself. I don’t give a shit,” said the unicorn. He turned to the .38, “keep an eye out were near buffalo country.” He turned back to the first one, “put that shovel to use and put the fire out we don’t need to give our position away. Whose fucking idea was it to start the damn thing?”
“The boss wanted us to cook up that fat slaver an hour ago and we were cold so we left it running,” answered .38. The big unicorn just glared at him long enough to shut him up. His horn glowed as his shotgun raised into the air.
“Like I fucking care. You two get to work!” He turned pointed the shotgun at Gas Mask’s head. “I gonna have me some fun. Take off your close bitch.”
The mare lifted the gas mask off her head to reveal her scared face as she cursed underneath her breath. She took off her armor and turned around as the unicorn started rape her keeping the shotgun pressed against her head the entire time. I turned to Lightning; she looked pissed. Shovel put out the fire out, and started watching the show while .38 tried to keep an eye out before getting bored and opting to join Shovel. “I got next,” he said as she started to cry out. Fuck waiting for the war party it was now or never.
I teleported next to the unicorn and bucked him across the face. Lightning true to her name bolted to the two onlookers in a flash tackling them both to the ground before they could pullout their weapons. The unicorn was stunned but didn’t drop his grip of his gun. He was easily twice my size and made ready his aim. He was armed, but I had something better, magic! I flashed my horn blinding him. He fired wildly missing me. I wrenched the shotgun away from him with telekinesis, throwing it as far as I could manage, well out the reach of his magic. Lightning, meanwhile, proceeded to crush the head of .38 under her hoof. Shovel managed to get on his feet and to his weapon, but she ain’t called lightning without a reason. She quickly turned around and gored him in the chest lifting him off the ground before throwing his dead body off her horn. The unicorn was still blinded. He lifted into the air swinging his legs wildly, but I was ready. I slid underneath him and kicked him hard in his dick causing him to fall over in pain. I stood up and with a shimmer of my horn I twisted his neck hard and fast killing him. Then I had my legs kicked out beneath me.
The mare we just saved was attacking me. Lightning just stood there amazed at the shear stupidity of the situation. She was getting raped and now was kicking me wildly. Fuck this I thought as I kicked her into the air as hard as I could get. She landed in a crouch, grabbed the shovel in her mouth and readied to get back into the fight. “Don’t touch my brother,” screamed Lightning as she slammed the full wait of her body on her back breaking her spine. She didn’t die; she just wriggled on the ground. I lifted the .38 revolver to her head and pulled the trigger three times. It was mercy. It was the first time I had ever used a gun. It was the first time I ever killed anypony in cold blood!
I gasped for air and so did my sister, the pistol just fell to the ground. We looked at one another, I was a bruised but we were both unhurt. This was not how scouts were supposed to do things, but in the light of pure evil how could we not react. Before either of us could speak up we heard a group of ponies running up the cave. I readied myself for the fight, but there was none left in Lightning. She turned tail and ran away. I was shocked. She was my big sister, strong and always ready for any challenge. Yet there she was abandoning me to my fate. I heard a snap and a clank. I looked down to see a silver apple at my feet. It was a grenade. I lifted it up with telekinesis and flung it right to the mouth of the cave as a huge raider came barreling out. The explosion took him out and the roof of the cave causing a cave in. His blood splattered across my face. I heard muffled screaming and the crush of rock, than silence. I looked on in horror at the pile of rubble that once was a cave. Whatever survived the blast had been buried. It was over they were all either trapped or dead. I fell on my haunches and sat there staring at the aftermath. I killed them all.
I was alone; Lightning Strike was long gone by the time I came to my senses. She hadn’t even turned back to see if I was okay. She just kept running home, to the war party. The clouds had long gone dark from the encroaching night. I made to get up, but I was not ready for what happened next. It was a miracle, a sign from the spirits. A loud explosion ripped into the sky parting the clouds. For the first time in my life I saw them, the crescent moon and the stars. I stood in the aftermath of the wasteland staring at the lost heavens. I finally realized for the first time all that was taken from us. There once was a world without battles, without the wasteland, and it was filled with stars! Just imagine it, an entire sky of stars ruled by only two ponies powerful enough to control the greatest bodies in the sky with just shear will, the royal alicorn sisters, Luna and Celestia. It was said under their rule the world knew ten thousand years of peace and prosperity. Since than they had fallen into the mist of legend, deified until they no longer felt like they could have ever been flesh and blood ponies. We knew they were real though, their emissaries the Elements of Harmony were part of our long history. They were there during our initial interaction with pony society. They brokered peace between bison and ponies but failed to do so with zebrakind in the Great War.
I didn’t need to embrace the wasteland, if the world once knew peace it yet still could. The chief was wrong. Even if it was fleeting, peace was worth fighting for. Than it happened. A single star swept across the moon it went northeast towards the mountains on the horizon before breaking into a flash of spectral green. In that moment Equestria and the heavens had become linked. I watched in awe as the cloud cover stitched itself together, but it didn’t matter. I was shown a piece of the sky and given a heading; I could still take a piece of the heavens for myself. It was than that I got my cutie mark: A crescent moon surrounded by five stars bisected by a shooting star.
I knew what I had to do. I felt a surge in power, like they act of getting my mark had strengthened my magic tenfold. I teleported back to the camp, further than any distance I had ever teleported before. The war party was getting ready to leave being lead by none other than my sister. Everyone stopped to look at me. “Black Horse what happened?” asked the chief.
“Oh the raiders.” I forgot about the raiders. “They’re dead. I killed them.” All their jaws dropped. My tribe beheld me with a sense of awe. I just walked past them to Lightning. She looked embarrassed. I nuzzled her, “I have been given a sign. I am to follow the stars. It cannot wait. I must go as soon as possible.”
“What?”
“I have to leave soon.”
“Not that. Did you say you are to follow the stars?”
“Yeah.”
“Come with me.” She broke away from the group and led me to our teepee. She grabbed a rag it wipe off the blood from my face, I forgot about it. Once inside she inspected my flank and sighed. She went to her parfleche near her bed and pulled out an old saddlebag. Handing it to me, “this was your father’s. I hoped I would never have to give it to you, but it seems destiny has marked you.”
I opened the bag. Inside where four objects, the first was an old black flat brimmed hat with a griffins feather on it, next was a duster and an old barding labeled 77 on the back. Last was a mechanical bracelet labeled Pipbuck 3000. “Your name is not Black Horse. It is Star Chaser. You are the descendant of the only survivor of Stable 77. Your grandfather escaped that horrible place. We were to give this to you on the day you got your mark. I had planned on keeping it from you, but it seems your old name has found you. I know I cannot stop you, not even giving you a fake name could. You destiny is too strong. Sleep here tonight. Tomorrow I will go with you as far as Appleloosa, after that you will need to go on your own Star Chaser.”
I looked down at all the objects. I lifted the Pipbuck 3000 to my right hoof and clasped it shut. I don’t know how, but I knew how to attach it. I looked up to Lightning. “Thank you sister.” The pipbuck displayed a map that had only one point, Bison Village.
The next morning we awoke before sunrise. I put on the suit, jacket, and hat. Some how it all felt right. Together we left the camp, no one saw me off; the cursed dark horse was leaving. By sunrise we had come to the raider camp. She told me to gather all the supplies I could get. I found the .38 and shotgun as well as a handful of ammo for both. On the unicorn were a strange white orb and a knife as well as a bag full of bottle caps. I couldn’t imagine them being of much use but my pip buck kept track of all my possessions and their value. It seemed to rate the value of the caps quite high so I kept them. I found on the earth pony raider that used the shovel two pairs of iron horse shoes that Lightning helped me put on. I snagged the dead green mares gas mask while I was at it. We walked all day coming across three mole rats. They showed up as red on my compass, it was labeled Eyes Forward Sparkle for some reason. I entered this thing called VATS and time seemed to stop. I teleported beside them, bucking one hard in the neck. It only took three hits to take one down. Time resumed its normal flow. Lightning took out the second one killing it by crushing its face. I tried to use the VATS thing again but it didn’t seem to work, it needed to recharge I guess. So I dodged out of the way of the third one jumping past it. I used my magic to lift it up by the neck strangling it to death as its legs flailed helplessly. It looked funny so I laughed before dropping its dead limp body. “That looks so disturbing when you do that you know!”
I turned surprised at Lightning, “And crushing in their skulls is not?”
“That’s different.”
“No its not.”
“Yes it is.”
“Whatever.” I pulled out the knife and proceeded to cut the best cuts I could get. She started a fire and we had meal of it before getting on. I was told in the days before ponies and bison were vegetarian. I liked meat though, never did see what was wrong with eating it. A few hours later we came across an empty cart with a cage built into it. This had to belong to the poor unfortunate slaver that got turned into dinner. Anything useful was already scavenged so we moved on. It was almost evening by the time we could see Appleloossa. I made to move towards it but Lightning held out her hoof. Stopping me.
“I want to talk to you first Horse, I mean Star.”
“What is it?”
“I want to apologize for last night I never should have left you. Its just I got scared.” I was going to tell her I didn’t blame her. “I got scared of you.”
That hit me like a ton of bricks. “Why the hell would you ever be afraid of me? I’m your brother!”
“I don’t know. I always saw you as my little brother, but I saw how easy it was for you to take on the other unicorn. You just teleported right after him and broke his neck without touching him. I had to react to save you from the other two. Than you killed that mare without hesitation, and for a moment I saw you as not my brother but just another pony. Another raider. I wanted us to go back to camp, but as the other raiders approached you were itching to fight them. I just couldn’t watch you kill again. So I ran. I didn’t return to my senses til I got back. I convinced the war party to let me join ‘em, when you ‘popped’ back into camp covered in some pony else’s blood.”
“Light, I am sorry for putting you into that mess, but I didn’t fight cause I wanted to. I did it cause I had too, and the mare was too injured; she could only move one of her hooves. It was mercy.”
“I know. I know. Its just I need you to promise me you’ll never become one, a raider. I just need to hear you say it.”
“I promise.”
“Thank you. Now one more thing, you known we traded with Appleloosa, but we never told you was that this is a slaver town. If you’re with me I can get you in. Appleloosa and us have a history going way back. They don’t get in our way and we stay out of theirs, but if you come back here without us they’ll take you and their ain’t nothing we all can do about it. So I’ll stay with you here and help you supply up, but come ‘morrow I’m head’en home and you best get on your way.”
I nodded even though the idea of doing business with slaver made me sick. As we headed into town we saw a several guns rise towards us, but at the site of Lightning they lowered their guns and let us in. As we got into town proper I heard a thud behind us. I turned around and saw standing behind me a giant dark green horned pegasus looming over my sister and me. It was an alicorn!
Footnote: Level Up! Level 2
Quest Perk: Mark of Destiny: As a unicorn you are worth more than the sum of your parts. Unarmed skill points affects your magic damage output as well.
New Perk: Iron Hooves: +5 damage to unarmed damage.
Alicorns were supposed to be the combination of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. They were said to be immensely powerful. The two goddesses that other ponies deified were a pair of alicorns sisters that had ruled the Equestria for thousands of years before their untimely death with the rest of the world. The last two to live, so the stories went. They were creatures of myth, yet here standing before me was a dark green alicorn staring me down. I wasn’t met by awe or wonder, nor fear. The only thing I could think was that she was as tall as the chief.
She looked between me and Lightning, taking us both in. ‘What are you doing here?’ I heard her inside my head, her lips did not move. I looked to Lightning hoping she knew what was going on. She didn’t. She did however regain her composure before I did and answered first.
“My name is Lighting Strike, and this here is my brother Star Chaser. We came from the Bison Tribe to the west. My tribe and this town have a peace treaty going back over two hundred years with the very founders of this here town during the first year of its creation. We came to trade and spend the night. Were planning on being off in the morning. Excuse me if I am being forward, but what are you doing here?”
The alicorn stepped away ignoring us. After a while it walked back to us and spoke, or telepathied (yes it is a word, you haven’t heard cause I just invented it is all). ‘We find your answer acceptable. We are now in charge of this town and all its commerce in Red Eyes and the Goddesses stead. We were not aware of such a treaty, but one of us knows about it. We did not know it was still in affect. You and your ‘brother’ may trade here without fear of the slavers. Just don’t interfere with our trade and you may come and go freely.’ She, or rather it, stepped back and flew into the sky towards the center of town.
The Eyes Forward Sparkle on my pipbuck switched from a sea of red markers to a bunch of green markers as all the ponies dropped their guard. I realized red was a threat and green meant friendly. A new marker appeared on my map showing the location of the town. I saw a scroll appear that said ‘quest complete: On the Road to Apple.’ It was almost as if I could hear triumphant music in my head. I looked under quests and saw it still showed one active quest: Chasing the Stars. This thing really needed a manual. I turned to Lightning. “What was that about?”
“I have no clue. Never seen one of them before. Apparently she’s the new sheriff or something. Was it just I or was she like inside your head. It just don’t seem right. At least she’s keeping the treaty going though, I was afraid there for just a second.” At that she turned and made her way towards a big red barn. I turned and followed after her. The town consisted of ponies in cowboy hats and ponies wearing collars rigged to explode. I assumed they were slaves, unless it was suddenly high fashion to wear bombs around your neck. The few slaves that weren’t wearing the chokers were in cages. They didn’t even look up at me. I saw a sign in front of an empty part of town that just read ‘Mines.’ This town made me sick, no wonder no bison ever told me about it. I was starting to see why the tribe was weary around us ponies. The fact I was technically one of them made me angry.
The sun was just barely dipping below the sky by the time we got to the barn. As we walked the slavers gave us a wide berth, nothing different from what I experienced back in the village. “This is the saloon and general store. It’s also the inn too so we’ll be holing up here for the night. I’ll get the room for us so don’t go spending all your caps.”
“Caps, like bottle caps.”
“Yeah they use them as money to buy stuff.”
“That is stupid how is a cap worth anything?”
“Don’t make no sense to me either. Crazy pony logic.” We walked inside. On one side there was bar and a stage. On it was a beautiful grey unicorn with a white mane streaked with red and orange producing music from her horn and singing a sorrowful song, on the other side were tables. In the back was a poker game and further back were some doors to some rooms. “I’ll settle the rooms with the bartender. You talk to the mare running the store,” she said pointing at the only corner I didn’t look at. There was a small stand with some goods on a shelf behind the unicorn mare. She was a slave but had a smile on her face. She had white fur and a pink mane and a horseshoe for her cutie mark. She was my age, maybe younger unlike the mare singing on the stage. I walked up; she turned to me losing her smile. She looked timid. “Welcome to the general store, my name is Lucky, how can I help you today, sir,” she said almost robotically.
“Name is Star Chaser. You guys buy guns and ammo?” She nodded her head once. I traded in the shotgun and revolver as well as all my ammo. I had no need for guns, only used one once and never planned on using one again. I kept the knife and traded the few pieces of meat I was holding; I knew they wouldn’t last long on the road. However, she refused to buy the gas mask or the strange orb so I kept them. Altogether I brought in a few hundred caps on top of the bunch I found earlier. I bought all the old preserved food (if it hasn’t gone bad in two hundred years it won’t go bad in another few weeks) and health supplies I could get. I ended up buying the store clean out and still had two hundred caps left to my name.
“It’s a shame. If you can wait til tomorrow we are set to get some more supplies from New Appleloosa.” She didn’t seem too happy about that thought though.
“I can’t. I have to leave in the morning.”
“Oh, I see well take care.”
I walked away. Lightning came up to me and handed me a beer. “Best to fit in. We’re sharing a room. Second door to the left. Apparently the mare on stage, Velvet something, is staying in the first. How did you do?”
“Alright. I sold all the guns for food and medicine. Bought the place up.”
“You sold the guns.”
“Yep I can handle myself,” gesturing towards my horn.
She rolled her eyes. “I am going to bed. Be careful out here.” At that she went to the room. Did I say something wrong? I sipped my beer and made my way to the game. They were playing Texas hold ‘em. (What the hay was a Texas? I don’t know) I finished my beer and got dealt in. I was winning but not by too much. I was always a perceptive sort and all the other players had too many tells to not read. The bar mare came by, not a slave. I got myself some whiskey. It burnt my throat. After a while the place started clearing out. Velvet Remedy, as I learned her name to be, just kept on singing as though it was full house. The mare slave running the store came up to one of the players looking at her hooves. She handed him some caps and asked if she could be excused. He shook his head so she sat down besides him. Apparently he was her owner. “So an alicorn runs this town? I thought they were all killed off.”
“She came and took over for old Red Eyes in Fillydalphia. She runs a much tighter ship, but profits been up. Them alicorns started appearing some ten years ago though. Where the hell you been. You one of those Stable Dwellers?” He pointed at my arm.
“Nothing like that. This was just a gift. I am part of the herd out west. That bison girl is my adopted sister. She practically raised me.” I was met with only a nod. “Does Velvet Remedy sing here every night?”
“Nah, she’s new to town. Came out here a little less than a week ago. Believe it or not she isn’t actually a singer. She’s a healer, go figure.” She certainly seemed a singer to me, her cutie mark was even a songbird. I guess my trade was a scout; well it used to be anyways. It ain’t got much to do with the stars and moon though.
I was dealt two queens. I was waiting for a hand like this all night. The slaver smiled giving away his good hand. I decided I wanted to beat him more than I wanted to keep my caps so I started high. The first three cards revealed an ace, ten and four. Another pony raised it. It was a quarter of all my caps. I called. There were only four of us left. The next card was a deuce, I had this! However, the slaver pony threw in a piece of paper. The slave looked concerned.
“Too rich for my blood,” said one pony dropping out. The other one smiled looking at the slave mare. “All in.” She looked scared for a second, before returning her eyes to the ground. Screw it, what were caps but scrap metal.
“Me too!” I said throwing it all on the table. The Slaver had an ace four, shit! The other pony had a king and a queen. My pair high wasn’t looking good. The dealer flipped the last card. A queen! I jumped up and scooped all the caps and the piece of paper into my saddlebag. The other two looked pissed, like they wanted to do something about it. “Next round is on my me I called out. Whiskey for everypony!” The two quickly sat in resigned silence as the rest of the bar cheered. Two whiskeys turned into four and five. I was feeling it. Velvet called it a night as the rest of the ponies filed out drunk. They’d be feeling it all day tomorrow. The slaver was still angry. He grabbed Lucky by the hair and walked out. “But, wait,” she called out; he didn’t care. I wanted to stop him. I couldn’t with out starting shit for my tribe. Actually, I didn’t care about the tribe, but what affects the tribe affects my sister. I grabbed my bag and went to the room. Lightning was taking up three quarters of the only bed snoring heavily. I shrugged and got in the bed with her, my back to hers.
I was drunk and not quite tired. I got up and went to my bag and placed my jacket and hat in there. I was going to go back, but I saw the orb. I am unsure why, but I levitated it up to my eye to inspect it only to find the world fading away. I lost my sense of self for the briefest second. Suddenly my senses came back but I couldn’t control anything. I was a passenger along for the ride.
I was flying. Flying through the air with my own wings. Despite having no control I felt free. The sky was clear and blue, no clouds in site. Celestia’s sun was bright, brighter than I had ever seen it. Below me was my home. The Bison lands of the west, an endless red plain met by jutting peaks and hills in sharp relief. It looked bright red back than, today the desert was mostly grey. The wind licked my entire body. Outstretched in front of me were light blue arms as a rainbow mane flapped in front of my eyes, and I was… I was a girl?! It was a memory, not mine, but a memory non-the less.
I saw before me a bison village. It was four times larger than the one I grew up in. Similar in almost every way though. I swooped down towards a large herd. I did a quick back flip before landing and folding in my wings in one fluid movement. She, my host trotted up to what had to be the chief wearing the largest war bonnet I had ever seen. Standing besides him just a horn shorter was a yellow bison girl wearing a beaded head strip with a feather in it. I felt a smile form on my lips, as my host got closer. She didn’t follow any protocol and by the way she held herself I could feel how confident and cocky she was. The two bison were not smiling.
The chief stepped foreword speaking in a deep booming voice, “Welcome, Rainbow Dash. It is always a pleasure to be visited by the Element of Loyalty. I heard you are in service of her Princess’ army now, and are to be acting as their official representative to the Sun Princess’ treaty renegotiations.”
“Oh, yeah I guess.” Her brashness made me cringe. “Look I think you guys have it wrong. I am not here for any negotiations. I am just here to talk Chief Thunderhooves.”
The yellow female stepped foreword. “So you were not sent by Celestia, Dash. This just a social visit.” She was one of the ponies who formed the treaty and knew Celestia personally. How did I find myself in the memory of a historic figure?
“Well not exactly Little Strongheart.” Dash said scratching the back of her head looking to the left of them. She spread out her wings and hovered in front of the two pulling her body to rear on her back legs at full height. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t understand the Princess. I should be on the front lines, but she wants you guys to join us. So here I am talking to you to see if you want to join us. I think you should, too. The zebras attacked us and you guys are apart of Equestria. A war against one part of us is a war against all of us. Still I understand though.” At that she landed and kicked the ground.
“Rainbow Dash, what has happened to you? Was it not you who on the eve of war against Appleloosa urged me to consider peace? Cannot pony and zebra just bury the hatchet and make peace? Adding bison to the slaughter will not solve anything. Sure we can kill, but we do not use weapons. On your battlefield all we can do is die or break our honor and take up arms. No lasting peace will ever come from battle. So no, we will not reconsider,” said the chief. Why the hell could we not have a leader like this now a days? Why was neither the ponies nor zebras able to see the truth!
“See I knew you guys wouldn’t change your mind. I am not good at this. I should be fighting where I can make a difference. The others do not see it. I am not a clever pony. I can’t make peace. All I can do is make it as deadly against zebras as possible and let the pieces fall where they may. I don’t suppose access to the new vault or whatever they are building out here will do anything?”
Little Strongheart spoke up this time. “No it won’t Dash. We’re stampeders. When the day comes we will go further west deeper into the desert for safety. We have no problem with this Stable 77 being built so close, but we will not go underground even if it was made for us. Tell Applejack’s little sister to stop sending these representatives of hers here too. Tell her to fill it with ponies, or crates, or hell even just one pony!”
“Alright. I’ll pass the message along to Celestia and Applebloom. However, I cannot go back so quickly. They think if I stay out here long enough I could change your minds or something. They just don’t understand you guys! Heck if anything you guys need to go talk some sense into them. So, if you don’t mind can I stay here for a few days?”
“That will be fine,” replied the wise Chief
I felt myself fly to the Little Strongheart and wrap my arm around her. “So what’s this I hear about you getting married? And so young too!”
“I am the perfect age to be married, shouldn’t you have been married ages ago. Besides it is more than that. I am pregnant too.”
“Congratulations! To think there might be a little Little Strongheart running around.”
I came to on the floor where I was before. This Rainbow Dash was one of the Elements of Harmony. She helped stop a war between the bison and pony, and fought in the Pony Zebra War. She understood the bison’s ways and they accepted her. She also knew who built Stable 77. If the raiders saw this too than this was how they found where we had hidden. I returned the memory gently into my bag. I suddenly felt a kinship to this blue pegasus.
The next morning Lightning woke me up just before sunrise. She kissed me on the cheek. “I have to go home Black Horse. I wish you luck on your journey. I would go, but I know this is a voyage for you alone. Remember your promise to me Star Chaser.” She left the room before I was fully awake. Like that I was alone, I had no one left in my life. Not knowing what to do, and well aware that their were two very pissed ponies possibly after me I made my way out of town towards the east.
As I approached the edge of town I heard in my head, ‘Wait, stop right there. We need to speak about last night.’ I saw the alicorn barreling down on me. She landed in front of me, cutting off my exit. Behind me was the slaver pony from last night and his slave Lucky. ‘We honor our debts here and you two still need to settle out. We know you were drunk but that does not change a thing. Honor your word!’ I was confused. I was quite drunk last night, but I made no deals.
I was about to speak up when the slaver behind me said, “Fine take the dumb bitch.” He threw towards me a detonator and a key before storming off leaving Lucky behind. I turned to the alicorn in confusion.
‘This town was quite lawless before we came. We are sorry he tried to cheat you. Slavers like you are always welcome here in Appleloosa, Star Chaser. Come back when ever you want to trade.’ At that she trotted off. I looked into my saddlebag. It was a title of ownership to one female unicorn slave bearing a horseshoe mark. Shit I was now officially a slave owner in the eyes of the sheriff, and how could I argue that since bowing before me was my very own slave.
“I promise to serve you dutifully master.” She said avoiding looking me in the face.
“No, just no. Stand up and look me in the face when you talk to me.” She obeyed, but somehow looked even more scared. “Look the only reason I don’t just start some shit right now in this town is because the treaty between them and my tribe prevent me. I hate slavery, I hate slavers. From this day on you are free. Now come here and let me take off that collar.”
“Please don’t do that. If you take it off here I am open game. The only reason I am not captured, killed, or raped on the spot is this collar. If you were to take it off I will be dead.” Fuck, she couldn’t be serious could she? I was trying to set her free and here she is trying to convince me to keep her a slave.
“Fine than.” I just walked out of town. She stood there confused before running after me. She kept trying to get my attention but I ignored her. Two miles out of town I turned to her. “Good were out of town. Now let me get that off.” She looked at me like she was trying to say something but just fell silent. I removed the collar, but it left a mark. It incised into her neck leaving behind a cut lacking any fur around her neck where it chaffed her. She had been wearing it for a while. “There now you are free and don’t need to worry about the towns people. Do as you wish.” I threw the collar into my bag and went on my way.
“No don’t leave me,” she screamed. “I’ll be good. Don’t abandon me to the wasteland.” She grabbed me and hugged my back leg. I looked at her and she gave me big puppy dog eyes on the brink of tears.
“I am going northeast from here. Where? I do not know. I am on a quest, most likely into raider territory. You would probably be safer by yourself, but you are welcome to join me if you wish. I won’t tell you what to do. Your fate is your own choice from here on out Lucky.”
She let go of my leg and stood up. “What are we on a quest for?” I continued walking explaining my upbringing and the vision I was given. “So you are actually chasing after a fallen star. Here I thought my name was the most literal.”
“Lucky how is being a slave lucky?”
“Well when I was a filly raiders killed my village. I was the only survivor. I escaped and a slaver group picked me up. Cause they did I wasn’t left alone to the elements. I was shipped here from New Appleloosa and instead of being sold off I was picked up to work the stalls. The day after I started though the old mare that ran the general store died so I was picked out to run it. It is only the easiest job in all of Appleloosa. Sure sometimes I have to service my owner, but it was few and far between, his wife doesn’t like it when he did. Last night he got drunk and bet me. I think he thought he could bluff everpony into quitting the hand. It worked before, but that other pony has been trying to buy me for years. Now you own me and I am free. All in all I am pretty lucky.” Her definition of luck was fucked up, but it gets her through the day. She just talked on and on about her past, customers, shipping schedules… All I could do was keep on trotting and listening, nodding my head every once in a while. “The train comes weekly, in fact it was supposed to arrive this evening, but I already told you that.” Then I saw it, a cluster of red on the EFS. I held my arm up to stop her; she fell silent. It was bandits. “This must be the camp of the slavers that were driven out of town by the new sheriff.”
“Stay here Lucky I‘ll signal you after I clear it out.”
“Wait though you aren’t armed. They’ll kill you.”
“I don’t like guns besides I’ll be fine,” I said pointing to my horn. She just rolled her eyes.
“I have one too and I still say use a gun.” I ignored that and snuck up to the camp. I counted seven on the EFS. I approached into the wind so they couldn’t smell or hear me. I circled around and found one bandit by them self. I floated my knife out and slit his throat before he could make a noise. I came up a group of three, two unicorns and an earth pony. I teleported between the three and unleashed a flash of bright lights taking out there site. I reared up and came down on the horn of the first unicorn taking out his magic. I bucked the second one in the face with my back hooves. The earth pony got its gun out so I flashed him again. He shoot wildly nicking my on the side. I drove my pipbuck into his face breaking his jaw. Try firing at my now. The first unicorn made to get up, but I came down on his head and felt it crush under my hooves, Lightning would be proud. The second unicorn was getting up but I entered SATs and hit him as hard as I could. It took me a second to realize by the fifth hit that I was beating a dead horse. The earth pony with the broken jaw managed to tackle me. I teleported ten yards away, instead of trying to stand up. He was still on the ground trying to figure out where I went. I lifted him by his neck with my magic choking him.
Two ponies ran at me. One had a magnum the other a lance. Magnum opened fire, but I used the dead pony as a shield before throwing it at him. He dodged but lance got knocked down. I ripped the magnum out of his mouth and threw it away. I closed the distance on the now unarmed pony rushing to attack him. He blocked my first hit and than my second. For the third I pulled out his eye with magic causing him to fall onto the ground, hooves to his face in agony. Mean while lance got up and I saw him attacking, giving me just enough time to enter SATs. I was fucked! The lance was frozen in time, mere inches away from my neck. I readied a teleportation spell behind him but it was taking to long. Out of nowhere I saw two magnum bullets tear into his face turning it into pulp. It was Lucky. That’s when I saw the yet unseen third attacker behind me on my EFS. I readied a teleportation spell behind him instead, rearing up and coming down on his back. Somehow even though I was in VATs I could see Lucky move towards him killing him with one shot well my attack landed its blow.
The only bandit left was the pony with a missing eye. I could only imagine what the two seconds of carnage looked from his vantage point. I moved towards him but Lucky was quicker. “This was your gun wasn’t it? I’ll give you a chance but I am warning you I am Lucky.” She opened the magnum to reveal one bullet. She spinned it before slamming it shut. She pointed it at his remaining eye and pulled the trigger killing him. “Snake eyes you lose,” she said to the double blind dead pony. She turned to me grinning ear to ear. “Oh my Celestia! You were so awesome, you took out five ponies unarmed and managed half blind and disarm a sixth.” When I killed my first pony (or three, wait how many died in the cave in?) two days ago it took me a while to recover. Maybe this wasn’t her first kill.
“I take it back, you are lucky.” She started to mill through their materials. She found amongst their ill-gotten goods a red and black dress and a saddlebag. She put both on and proceeded to fill her new bag with everything that wasn’t strapped down. She ran out of room and started putting stuff in my bags. I didn’t fight her, not after seeing how she fought. Meanwhile I took out some medical tape and covered up the nasty scratch the bullet gave me. Lucky l said I was overreacting. As I finished I saw her sitting on her hunches humming one of Velvet Remedies songs swishing her tail back and forth. “You ready to go?” She closed her eyes and nodded with a grin. “Why are you so happy?”
“Cause I was useful. I think I am starting to get the hang of this being free stuff. If somebody tells me to do something, I can just ignore them and do whatever I want.” I laughed at her. “Hey! I was being serious.”
“I know you were. I just thought you looked cute.” She blushed and turned away. The rest of the day was uneventful. After sundown we set up camp. I managed to use my flash spell to start us a fire. As I laid down, I turned and saw Lucky looking at me, thinking about something. She walked up to me and before I could say anything she kissed me on the lips. She pulled away her face inches away from mine, expecting, waiting. I kissed her back. After a while she slipped her dress off. “You don’t have to do this, you know?”
“I know. I want to though,” she said. “You are the most kindest and strongest pony I’ve ever met. You gave me my freedom and since I can do whatever I want now I want to do this.” She kissed me again this time slipping her tongue in my mouth. I turned and took my jacket and barding off. We climbed into bed together and kept on kissing. She was my first.
Footnote: Level up! Level 3 New Perk: Mare Killer: In combat, you do +10% damage against mare opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex.
Dreams are the manifestation of ones desires and will or so I was told. Growing up I never had any dreams when I slept. I thought, as I got older that it was because I had no desires or destiny, since I had no mark. Now I wander if I was not correct in this notion, for I dreamt for the first time that night. I was in a lush green jungle. The sun was out, birds sang, and fresh clean water glistened in the morning dew. It was a paradise. Lucky stood on a trail before me. She was wearing her red and black dress with a vale of red lace covering her face. She waved at me to follow her. I trotted up the trail, but never caught up to her. As we crested the hill the jungle gave way to a crisp clean beach. I trotted beside her. Silently she pointed a distance up the beach. Silhouetted against the horizon stood five figures. I trotted off towards them but noticed Lucky did not move her hooves. I turned to look at her. She stood firm. “Go on. They are waiting for you.” I left her there on the hill.
I opened my eyes to be greeted by the cresting sun. It wasn’t real, the jungle. Lucky was curled in a ball between my front and back hooves. I caressed her neck where her collar had left a mark in her white fur. “Please just stay here with me for a little while. The long walk will still be there in another hour,” she said without opening her eyes. I placed my hoof over her and she hugged it. I went back to sleep. I was back on the beach. Waves washed over my hooves, the wind howled. I was alone this time. I awoke to the smell of bacon.
“I didn’t know we had any bacon?”
“We didn’t, those slaver bandits did though. And look, eggs and brahmin cheese as well,” she said showing a sizzling pan, that I didn’t know we had either. “I am making us omelets.” I had never seen anyone happier to make breakfast before. I got up; it hadn’t been an hour since the last time I got up. “So judging by the strait line we are walking in, our target is somewhere in the mountains. We should be there by midday, right Chase.”
“Yeah, though I am unsure where in the mountains. You know anything about this area Lucky?”
“Not much. There are supposed to be some raiders around here somewhere. Oh, there are also rad-scorpions. They make great fixing for a casserole. Not much out here except maybe a pony or two looking for a pass to reach the Big 52.” We ate our breakfast with Lucky just asking whatever came to her mind. “Tell me about buffalos.”
I almost choked on the sudden topic change. “What do you want to know about them?”
“Absolutely everything.”
“Ok, when a male buffalo loves a female buffalo...”
“Eww, gross! You know that is not what I meant. Now I have the image stuck in my head.”
“I didn’t even say anything, you’re the one thinking dirty thoughts,” I chuckled.
“That’s only cause you made me.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
“True,” she conceded.
“Ok, I’ll be serious. They are really big on independence, and stampeding, for some reason.” I went on about everything I could think of; Lucky listened adeptly. After breakfast we put away camp and got dressed. We headed in a straight-line towards the mountain, Lucky humming the same song the entire time. After an hour I got fed up and looked to my pip-buck for a distraction. Radio, why had I not noticed this feature before? I clicked on it and three stations showed up. One said DJ Pon3, the other Fillydelphia Tower Sub-station, and the third read Old 52. “Whose DJ Pon Three?”
Lucky grabbed my hoof and stared at the screen. “You had a radio this whole time. Pony quite holding out on a sister. Also his name is pronounced ‘pony.’ It’s just written funny to make it look cool.” She turned the station on. I had no luck; it was the same song she was singing before, except worse since there were now lyrics. “Bongo, bongo, in the Congo,” Lucky sang on.
“Ok what are the other two?”
“Well the Filly station is Red-Eyes propaganda station. You probably heard it before, it’s what sprite-bots play.” I had heard it before. We made a game of it before by hitting those things until they exploded. Once it seemed like one was trying to talk to me before I had started pounding on it with a rock. “The other is run by Lonesome Pony. Only been east far enough once to hear it. Comes in clear only on the other side of the mountain so most ponies in the wasteland never hear it. Old Lonesome seems envious of the immortal DJ Pon3.”
“Immortal, what is he a ghoul?”
“No. Most ponies say when the current one dies another pony rises up to take his place. I think he just never dies, it makes more sense that way right.” It doesn’t.
“Hello wasteland this is DJ Pon3 for a special live report. Dun da dun da dah, Applelossa is dead and gone everypony! The old one, not the new one. That’s right, it seems by none other than the Stable Dweller’s of all ponies. See this is what the Equestrian wasteland needs, ponies that rise up and fight the good fight. Little miss Stable Dweller had only left the stable a week ago and already she has cleared out that raiders nest called Ponyville and now according to a report from New Applelossa via a train car full of former slave ponies she almost single handily cleared out the town, going as far as squashing an alicorn with a train car. Ouch! Now this is where the story gets a bit sad. It seems on the track back to New Applelossa a group of mercenaries attacked them. The Stable Dweller separated the slaves from the rest of the train and sent the train crashing off a cliff, mercs and herself included. Our hearts go out to her, another fallen pony fighting the good fight. Now back to the music with Sweetie Belle singing that one truth of the Wasteland.” Somepony that sounded a bit like Velvet Remedy started singing. I looked towards Lucky. Her expression was unreadable.
“It’s gone. They are all dead.” She jumped in the air screaming front hooves in the air. “Oh, thank you Celestia! I never stopped believing. First I am saved, now everypony else is. The Stable Dweller killed them. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes…,” she continued hopping in circles around me like a little filly high on dash. She stopped and kissed me. We trotted off towards the mountain listening to the radio the whole way after she calmed down. Every once in a while DJ Pon3 would interrupt to give survival tips and retell the only news story of the day. When the stupid Congo song came back on I turned it off much to Lucky’s chagrin.
Water, we came across a pool of water before noon at the base of mountain. I slipped off my bags and clothes as I went into the water. Lucky followed suite. There were slow clicks from the pipbuck. It was reading minimal radiation. Lucky threw a rad-x towards me before taking one herself and joining me. It tasted like a rotten oranges, not half bad. I needed a bath bad. We had hoped to be half way up the mountain by noon, but here we were still at the base when it came around. I was sitting in the water on a rock outcrop hugging Lucky who was sitting in front of me. “Shame about the Stable Dweller though. She could have done a whole lot more good if she survived.”
“Well that’s the life of a hero, though. Maybe it was for the best. It was a good death, saving all those ponies. I mean otherwise, if she survived, she’d probably have to live through so much worse. You know what they say about heroes in the wasteland.”
“They either die good or live long enough to go bad,” we said in unison. My hooves were wrinkly and the pip-buck was reading two rad-away’s worth of radiation. I got to the beach when I saw three red lines on my EFS. I looked at Lucky. “What is it Star Chaser?”
“Something’s on the other side of this hill. Get your gun and take the sniper position a top this hill. I’ll sneak around and see if I can get the jump on them. Move quickly, move silently.” The last part was more to my self than to Lucky. I got around the side of the hill, scorpions, big ones. I managed to flank them undetected and preceded to move towards the first. A few rocks slid down the side of the hill revealing Lucky’s position, and the scorpions were off. Lucky fired into the group doing critical damage to the last one’s leg. I only knew three spells, but I was going to put them to good use. I entered VATS teleported beside it and blind-sided it with a hard buck breaking three legs clean off. It seemed to die from the injury, odd. Lucky kept firing at the one in the lead doing no damage to it. The second one noticed me and launched its tail at me. I dodged it but felt its pincers stab me in my exposed stomach; I had no time to put on any of my gear. I flashed my horn as bright as I could, blinding the bug before I put my hoof through its face. It fell down dead, its pincers falling out my stomach leaving a three-inch deep gash pouring out blood.
The third one was the largest and it was almost on top Lucky who had taken to hiding behind a boulder to reload. I used my horn to levitate the rock up exposing Lucky to the scorpion. It took the bait, lunging right towards her. I smashed the boulder down, squishing the bug. For some reason I felt like saying ‘here comes Tom.’ I didn’t though. Lucky turned towards me covered in scorpion guts and anger. “You used me as bait and now I am going to need to take another bath!”
“Sorry,” I said collapsing into a pool of blood that had formed around me.
“Chase,” she screamed, leaving behind her anger as she rushed towards me. She dragged me up the hill and levitated her bags to her, pulling out a healing potion. She wrapped my stomach up before going down the hill towards the scorpion carrying my knife. She answered my question before I asked. “Better harvest their venom sacs before getting cleaned up.” Another bath later we got dressed and walked towards are heading. The healing magic had taken affect and I felt no worse for wear, a bit woozy from blood loss though. I searched through my pip-bucks sorter and pulled out a Sparkle-Cola. How the hay does something on the wrist sort stuff on your back?
I sipped on the fizzy carrot goodness till it was gone. Growing up they were far and few between, I bought four from the store in Appleloosa. I was going to save them as a treat for later but according to Lucky they are not all that uncommon. Half way up the mountain I saw five green lines. I held up my arm and Lucky stopped. “What is it?”
“Ponies, they seem friendly.
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know. Go around them.”
Lucky stuck her head around the brush and came back. “It seems to be two ponies, adventurers from the looks, and three griffin mercs, probably body guards. Maybe we could trade with them!”
I was going to argue with her, but I heard the sound of two beam rifles powering up. A griffon was floating in the air above us, beam rifles trained on us. “Come out nice and slowly,” she commanded. We obeyed. The other two griffons also had battle saddles with two beam rifles apiece. We walked into the middle of the clearing. The griffon that got the jump on us flew behind us. In front of us stood a male and female earth pony couple, flanked on either side by a griffon mercenary with their guns trained on us. The male earth pony was green with an orange mane, the Female was opposite in color. They both had on matching hooded white leather jackets.
The female spoke first. “What were you doing behind the bush?”
“Deciding if you guys were friendlies or not.” I said bluntly.
“We’re not raiders or bandits. Neither or you two it seems. What would a young unicorn couple be doing out here by themselves?”
“Nothing, just walking to the Big 52,” I lied.
“Horse apples,” the orange earth pony cried. She turned to her mate, “This is too much of a coincidence. Lets not mince words with these liars. It is obvious they are after the star metal as well, why else would anyone brave the wasteland without back up?”
The green buck sighed. “You’re right honey. They are competition either way. Even if they weren’t looking for it and we let them go they could just simply stumble upon it by accident before we find it. It pains me, but kill them.”
I turned around wide-eyed towards Lucky. She already levitated her Magnum out. I entered VATs but it was too late the other two griffons were already in the air and six laser rifles pulsed out in unison. I was stuck in time as all six shots made contact with their target. The one they saw as the biggest threat, the one with the gun, Lucky. She was only inches from me facing me her eyes went up in terror in slow motion as what was occurring dawned on her. I saw her back flare up pink as her body slowly turned into pink dust. Then it seemed like the world broke. Though I was in VATs Lucky turned towards me as if I wasn’t, half her body still turning into dust. She reached out her head and her horn touched my horn. A flash, than nothing. It felt like I was forced out of my body. Time meant nothing, nothing meant anything. The world went black.
I was on a summit. The ground was black and the sky white. I could see the black sun through the clouds. The air was thick, my breaths felt empty. I looked down and saw a shining white light at the base of the mountain towards the east. It felt like I stood still as the world moved around me. The white light approached me. In the air was a black and white pegasus wearing a double mini-gun battle saddle mid-flight both guns blaring into a swarm of three bloatflies fleeing in terror, nothing was moving. ‘No kill, like over kill,’ I heard. The ground lurched underneath me. I was now in the air as the landscape flew underneath me. All that went by was desolate and dead, than a massive graveyard and a large road. I stopped before me was walled town. I floated to the top and saw another white light emitting from a pony in a duster and wearing glasses before a group of uniformed armed ponies. ‘An honest days work for an honest days pay,’ the world echoed. The ground was off moving again. This time I saw a road, a tower, a desert covered in a trail of flags. There was a mountain I flew over and came down on the other side in an entrance to a large tunnel. A shantytown had formed there. I saw another white light in this town. It was an earth pony in goggles talking to a large group of zebra. ‘I’ll see you guys through the pass, for a price.’
I felt myself lift into the air, as the world grew smaller below me. I could see the entire mountain chain and old Canterlot off in the distance. Still I was lifted higher into the clouds. I saw a group of three pegasi in scorpion looking armor patching up a hole in the cloud layer. One of them was glowing white. A canteen floated in the air between him and another pegusis in the same exact armor. ‘Here take mine if you need to.’ The clouds lurched by as I descended towards a massive city. I saw a white light inside a massive statue. I was hurtling towards it with break neck speed, but I just passed right through it. I was in a room filled with benches. A lone pony knelt before an alter. ‘Princess Celestia bless us, Princess Luna forgive us.’
The world faded away than reformed far below me. I could now see the entire continent. It was all black except for a handful of lights. I could see all the white ones I had visited before. There was a small cluster of three green lights in the woods between Old Applelossa and Shattered Hooves. To the west was a cluster of red scattered around Hoofington. Far to the north was a cluster of blue around a city in the desert. I could make out a small group of yellow to the south. It seemed there was six colors in all and six lights of each color. There was however a pulsing rainbow at the top of one mountain above the clouds, the only mountain above the clouds. Then I saw it. Half way up a mountain was the sixth white light. I fell towards it. In a clearing was a pair of unicorns in embrace as one disintegrated. Around them were three griffons and an earth pony couple. The world screamed ‘No’ but than I was back and time was normal. No longer was the voice coming from around me but from my own voice.
I saw before me, Lucky’s eyes turn to dust. She was dead, gone. The three griffons trained their sights on me. My vision turned white. I lifted into the air four feet as the wind erupted around me. All my magic I had, and some I never knew about, came pouring out of me. Lightning fell from the sky causing one the griffons to explode into dust. I turned to the next, and felt heat form from my gaze. He was cut in half, burned by my own site. The third one, the one that got the jump on us cowered in fear as I floated towards her. Blood poured out of its beak and as crimson tears fell from its eyes. She fell down dead unceremoniously bleeding from every oriface. I turned around to see two earth ponies embracing each other. The mare had peed herself. I was still floating in the air. There eyes were stark wide. I saw myself in them, eyes glowing white my blue mane and duster willowing in the wind, a black shadow against the grey sky. “We’re sorry! Please don’t kill us,” she pleaded.
“Please I love my wife, we..”
“She loved me,” I screamed cutting him off as the earth below them opened up and immediately snapped close, entombing the couple. I slumped back to the ground exhausted, “and I didn’t actually care about her.” I cried. I was my fault I had set it so she would have no choice but to follow me into danger. I didn’t kill her, but I arranged it so couldn’t have avoided it. A hoof brushed my face. I turned and saw her, Lucky, still alive!
‘I know you didn’t love me. I didn’t care.’
“I am sorry this happened to you. Its my fault,” I said turning my face from hers to hide my shame.
‘No it’s not. These last two days were the only ones I had free. Don’t try and take that away from me by saying I had no choice. I am thankful for you. I love you and will always watch over you. Now go on. They are waiting for you.’
“Who?”
I turned to where she would have been but she disappeared. I was alone in a clearing with one and a half dead griffon bodies.
I walked to the pink mound, what was left at least. Her saddlebag hadn’t disappeared. I lifted it up and placed it on my back. I lifted the mound of dust into the air telekinetically until I felt a strong wind. I released my grip, and Lucky spread across Equestria. There was a large boulder nearby. I walked towards it and focused. I combined my flash spell and telekinesis. The telekinesis gathered the air as the flash spell propelled it foreword as a jet forming a magic bullet. The magic bullets were strong enough to leave two-inch deep gashes in the stone. I worked on it for an hour as my magic allowed. I last I finally gathered all my remaining magic into horn. I placed my hoof to the stone a directed my new spell out my hoof thrusting it an inch into stone like it was made of butter. I stepped back, than I felt it. Magic-burnout. My horn hurt, my head throbbed, I had nothing left, it didn’t matter. I was done.
‘Lucky, A free heart,’ it said with a horseshoe print next to it, her cutie mark. I sorted through her bag taking any food, or medicine. I took any ammo and guns I could carry for trade. Her magnum was nowhere in site, it must have dissolved with her. I looked at the pile of griffon dust and the other two bodies. They killed her, hell if they were getting a burial. The two earth ponies only got one cause it felt like I was sending them closer to hell to make the whole thing easier for the devil. I kept on walking no heed given to the heading. I walked staring only a few inches before me at the ground. It could have been minutes or hours. Than I saw the ground rutted and scorched. A trail etched into the land a quarter of a mile. I ran towards it up hill to the end. This was what I left my home for? This was what those Earth ponies killed Lucky for. I didn’t know what it was. It was big, two stories tall and as wide as the Appleloosa barn. Completely metal and circular, I could tell it was not from this planet. Neither horn nor hoof could have made this, even before the megaspells fell. A walked around, looking dumbstruck at this thing. It wasn’t a star, that’s for sure. The massive machine lurched. Where there once was a wall, opened up as stairs descended down to my feet. I was hesitant but from the machine came a gentle voice, “Come on in, I was waiting for you.”
I walked up the staircase. Inside the walls were smooth and silver. The whole thing was lit with soft lights that seemed to come from nowhere. I walked down a circular hall, the doors where all tall soft rectangles with no means of opening them. As I approached an end of the hall the ground lifted up forming a staircase to the second floor. It was the same as the one below except the walls were white. The whole place was too clean, too shiny and new. I felt scared as I approached a pair of double doors at the end of the hall. I knew not of what sort of monster could be on the other side I had only seen a handful of what the wasteland could create, and what things the heavens could wrought I knew not. It was too late, the doors opened. Inside was room full of screens and chairs. There were five seats. I had only ever seen one computer in my life. Every wall had computers that made me ashamed to consider my pip buck was anything more advanced than a pointed stick in comparison. As I stepped foreword the door behind me shut cutting off my only route of escape.
The seats were lined in two a piece with a fifth one by itself in front. I looked at the screen in front of each chair as I walked by them, I couldn’t make sense of them. How did you put in commands? Did you just touch the screen itself? I made to test my theory when I heard from the furthest chair, “You probably shouldn’t mess with something you that you do not know what it does.” I turned to see something standing up from the chair. It walked towards me so I could get a better look at it. It stood on its hind legs and was tall, two ponies tall. It had no fur, light brown skin and was covered in clothes feet to neck. It had on a pair of black boots that completely covered it feet; they appeared to be made of leather and rubber. It had on a pair of grey pants. It had a button up shirt made of the same material as its pants only it wasn’t buttoned. Underneath that it was wearing a white tank top and had on medical wrapping around its shoulders and neck stained with dried blood. Its mane was long, but tied in a tight bun. Both its hair and eyes were black. I think it was female. It stood silent and still allowing me to take it all in. I think it might have been sick.
“Hello, welcome aboard the U. S. S. Embarr. I am Chief Warrant Officer Nuneiz. I saw that show you put on outside. I am sorry for your loss.”
“You are a Human,” is all I could say.
Footnote: Level up! Level 4
Quest Perk: Lucks Kiss: +1 Luck New perk: Iron Hooves lvl 2: +5 damage to unarmed damage.
Humans were not even creatures of myth or lore. They were creatures seen only by the paranoid and mad. The Bison Herd had stories about them; none of them were good. They all seemed to involve anal probing, and the devouring of intelligent creatures like ponies or bison. Humans were said to be strong like bison, smarter than earth ponies and unicorns, immune to the all magic, and capable of more evil than nightmare moon. They were creatures from beyond the stars; zebra kind would run in fear at their mere mention alone. Yet still I saw one standing in front of me.
“Hello, welcome aboard the U. S. S. Embarr. I am Chief Warrant Officer Nuniez. I saw that show you put on outside. I am sorry for your loss.”
It spoke! “You’re a Human,” is all I could say.
“Yeah, and you’re a unicorn. Believe it or not until a few centuries ago us humans thought half the stuff in your world were make believe.”
“You’re a human,” I repeated.
“We already established that. Look I’ll just start talking and when your brain catches up maybe than we can speak. Ok.”
“You’re a…”
“People are from another world. I was sent here on a mission to observe and learn about your world. We were doing a routine patrol when we had engine trouble and our ethereal drives failed forcing us out of subspace above an Enclave command ship. They noticed us before we could turn on our stealth systems. Our protocols do not allow for us to interact with your world, we could not defend ourselves. At least we weren’t suppose to. Half our crew got killed before we disobeyed orders and returned fire. We took out most of their forces, but they destroyed out kinetic drives forcing us out of the air. All the other crewmembers died in the crash. I am all that is left. I am not suppose to be even talking to any natives, I could be court marshaled! The coms array is down and the jump drive was damaged beyond repair in the crash. There is no rescue party coming, even if they knew were I was central command might not risk a rescue. I saw you outside, that spell you pulled off before going all white and killing everybody was picked up by our sub-ether detectors. You went sub-space for a second, right?”
Ok, she was defiantly talking. Talking techno babble. I am only semi literate in techno babble. So, sky battle, explosions, me seeing the whole thing, dead humans, and I think there was a question in there somewhere. “You mean that dark plain I went to when Lucky touched me.”
“Dark plain? I guess that could be sub-space. We can’t actually see it, we use sensors to navigate through it.”
“What is it?”
“It is like a place between spaces. One can still interact with the outside world, but physical parameters that make up reality are weakened. Things like energy constants, time, and distance don’t mean as much. Humans use it to travel great distances quickly in our universe.”
More techno babble. “So its the world outside the veil of existence.” The veil was a bison concept. It was what separated the living world from the spirit world. There was supposed to be layers to it though. “Wait! Humans don’t come from the stars; they come from another universe entirely. How, Why?”
“Well the properties were actually stumbled upon. It is all very complex.” What isn’t? “The fact is the universe, well any universe, is infinitely large. We could search for eternity and never find any other intelligent life. It is much easier to explore other universes to find intelligent life. I mean our world produced life once before. Change some variables slightly, hop on over to the next universe. Boom life found. Most what we found were other humans. But, change enough variables and viola pony world.”
“Wow, that almost makes sense. How could I help you any? I am just a unicorn.”
She laughed, hard, in my face. I got freaked out when I noticed her teeth. They were sharp in the front. Designed for tearing flesh, ponies flesh maybe. She started to wince in pain as she laughed before sitting back down in her chair. “Ow, I think I tore some of my stitches. Let me tell you it’s a son of a bitch having stitch up your own body.” I glared at her. “Look, just a unicorn, humans did everything I talked about with out using any magic, just science. Our universe doesn’t have it. Our bodies do not even process it. We have no idea how it works. You managed to teleport, fly, shoot lightning and laser beams, cause an earthquake, and enter subspace with out using any machinery. I think ‘just a unicorn’ is enough, besides I am pretty sure unicorns are only supposed to use two or three spells that match your magical butt tattoos. I think you can help me. Besides I don’t have many options. I am sick. I don’t have long. None of your spells or medical supplies can help me. Even your medicinal herbs are reliant upon their magic properties.” She laughed again, this time she sounded sad. “Please just cut a girl a break.”
“Ok, I’ll help. My name is Star Chaser, my ‘cutie mark’ was given to chase down a falling star. Well that star was you, so I guess my special talent might be to help you. I have no clue how I entered the void nor how to do it again. What you saw out there was called magical overload. When a unicorn enters that state common restrictions upon magic use are temporarily removed. The unicorn just acts as a conduit for any and all magical energy in the surrounding area with no control.” I had learned almost all of this from Twilight Sparkle’s Big Book of Unicorn Magic. The herd kept anything that had to do with the elements of harmony, and growing up my adoptive father Thunder Head made sure I learnt all I could about old pony culture. He seemed to know more about it than any bison should. I was really well read considering the current state of education in Equestria.
Officer Nuniez quickly grabbed a piece of paper and started taking notes. “We were not aware of this phenomenon. So during that time you had no control of the spells you were casting.”
“Well sort of. The raw magic was just reacting to my emotions. In fact most spells are hard to create. Most unicorns just learn them during their cutie mark events. I think the act of getting the mark introduces raw magic to them when they are midst of one of the most emotional parts of a young ponies life. I think after that they are left with the magic they were exposed to the during the marks creation.”
“Fascinating.” She kept on writing. “See we were working on a different theory. We thought that since magic had sub-space properties, and sub-space does not follow established chronology, it consists of elements of the past, present and future, the ponies are exposed to a possible future experience. It was thought they were learning from their future self. Since magic is the manifestation of a ponies will we thought that’s what allows you ponies to have such a control over your projected time line. I mean that would explain why your potential future timeline projections are so limited compared to most other…” She fell dead silent. She knew she made a mistake and said something that I was not supposed to hear. “Shit!”
“Projected futures. Humans see into the future? So what you just enter other universes and travel through time collecting data.”
She looked sheepish, nothing like a monster from a story. For the first time I could tell she was in a weakened state. “Pretty much. I definitely was not supposed to reveal any of that. Look I’ll just come clean, but it isn’t going to be pretty.” She took a breath. “We are not I what you would call the present per se. There is a hard line present. If one were to go back before that point in time and change anything from before it would create an entirely new universe. It is a chaotic and powerful event. Its best avoided at all cost. However, in subspace the timeline can be hard lined to create a projected future temporarily in subspace. We were wondering about your culture so we created a bunch of them, but no matter what we do the probability that the events that will create this future is fixed. We think it is due to magic, but we are unsure. Where unsure about a lot of things!”
“Wait if this is not the present, but the future. When is the present?”
“Two hundred and twenty one years ago approximately from this point in time.”
“So the war hasn’t even started.”
“Technically? No, but it is a fixed event as far as we can tell. The outcome is not. Which takes me back to why I need your help.” She turned away from in her chair and set down here notebook. What do you know, the screen is touch based. “I was going to lie and say something about sending a distress signal, but since you know already. I wanted to use you to collect data about the timeline. This world, your world, this timeline has been my life work. Growing up I loved My Little Pony. It was a story told to little girls. When we found this world it seemed a dream come true. Then I saw the projected future. I wanted to stop it from occurring at all cost. We are legally not allowed to interfere with your timeline though. I am dying, I don’t care about the law anymore.”
“So you want me to help you change the past. To help you save my world.”
“Yes. I know of a way to get you back into the past. You can go back to anytime after the Discord events. Here is the catch. It is a one-way trip. You can go alone, but the machine can easily take ten to twenty ponies. I’ll trust my legacy to you, just promise me you will not fail.”
It all sounded to good to be true, but I was talking to a human and two days ago I was talking to an alicorn. Ponies like the stable dweller wouldn’t need to die anymore, this could work. “Deal! Just tell me what I need to do.”
“Here let me see you pip-buck.” I gave her my hoof. She just slipped it off somehow. She put it on a tray where blue lights traced it. It disintegrated. A second later a golden pip-buck ‘grew’ in its place. She tapped the screen some more before grapping the new pip-buck and asking my to see my hoof before attaching it. It booted up. It brought up the same screen as before. It seemed no different except now the boot screen said pimp-buck 3 billion, for just a second. Afterwards it returned back to pip-buck 3000. “Okay I altered your pip-buck. It should work the same as before except I vastly increased the memory and added some files and features. You should now have some of my research notes, read them. There are some hints on when the timeline can be changed. Next I added the ability to read into computers remotely along with some hacking software. It is designed to break into a few special systems, but should aid you with any regular system. The third thing I added was a sub-ether detector. This thing will start vibrating when you enter sub-ether field. It’s dangerous for you ponies. Magic breaks down in its field if it is too strong. Ponies run on magic. So it can be lethal to you, which is kinda strange due to the fact magic has sub-space properties. Find out about this if you can.”
“Okay, now I left you written instructions but there are six things you need to do. First, find a computer with access to the Equestria network. The pipbuck will run some files and return a search result. That will tell where to find a computer with sub-net access, which is the second thing. Once you have access to the sub-net the pip-buck will run another search and should give you a list of locations for some files. The third thing is to find a passkey. You need a file passkey from the EC-11 series. There are eleven in all ranging from EC-1100 to EC-1110 any should do the trick. Fourth, you need gain access to the priority-one access channel with the passkey. You will get these locations from when you accessed the sub-net the first time. It will tell you where to find an ethereal and jump drive. Number five, get to the drives location. It should be all under Project Moon Fall. Keep an eye out for anything that deals with it. Now the last thing, you are going to need what you ponies call starmetal. As much as you can get your hands on.”
“I don’t have hands.”
“Whatever. What you ponies call starmetal is a subspace alloy. It emits a small sub-ether field and is dangerous to be around for too long. Store it in a lead container.” At that she pulled out a plain wooden box. I opened it to find it was lined in metal and filled with a golf ball sized chunk of blue metal and several square rectangular sheets an inch long. My pip-buck shook slightly. “That is about a third of what you need. Keep and eye out for any human weapons. Some might contain it. They are like energy pistols but they will turn anything it hits into a pile of blue dust in one shot, so be careful.”
“Thank you for everything. I will do my best.” My whole life I had prayed for something to do with my life. Now I had a list of six things I needed to do in a neat ordered list. The whole ordeal seemed to take a lot out of the Chief Warrant Officer. She was sweating hard her skin seemed to get paler. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah just peachy.” She tried to get up before collapsing. I lifted her onto my back. Her legs were dragging.
“Tell me were to take you.”
“Medical,” she grunted. I was going to ask where that was, when a blue light formed on the ground. I followed it. When I reached those inoperable doors they opened on their own. Her medical room was sparse. I laid her down on a table when a scanner zipped across her body. A read out of her vital stats lay in front of me as a computer read them off. ‘Temperture: 102 degrees Fahrenheit (warning you are running a high fever). Blood pressure normal. Warning you are infected with an unknown virus (potentially lethal and contagious), unknown form, please quarantine yourself in a stasis pod. Alert, all stasis pods are down, please repair ether drive. Administrating temporary measure, please see a doctor for further aid. Warning: staff doctors current vital signs are unresponsive please call command. Warning: communications are down. Please repair comms.’ A large needle came down from the ceiling and injected into her neck. “Ow,” she said before sitting up. Apparently the medication worked fast cause she looked better.
“I don’t need to be worried about getting your virus do I?”
“Actually I think to you I have like a common cold. My body can’t handle it though, whatever it is. My body is going into systemic shock. My organs are slowly shutting down. At least I have good blood pressure,” she laughed. Shit maybe I was really unlucky. Everypony I had ever met has died shortly after meeting me. My family, Lucky, the whole of Appleloosa, now the only human I ever met too. “Please don’t look at me with those big sad pony eyes. Ponies should be happy, not sad. Please smile, just for me.” I smiled and she smiled back. She put her hand down and rubbed my mane. “I set this ship to explode at the end of this week. I diverted all energy into stealth systems so no one should find me after you leave. I would end it now, but my God does not look too kindly on doing such a thing. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you out.” She walked with me to the exit in silence.
“So are you part of some military?”
“Yeah but we were part of their science division. We were examining magic, the brass wasn’t quite interested in how ponies developed, but this future is a goldmine in long term weaonized magical effects on the land.”
“Oh, I guess that could be useful. Are all humans part of the military.”
“No, most are civilians. There are also a whole shit ton of other countries. Humans are about as varied as ponies in terms of personality.” At that we approached the exit. “This is where we part my little unicorn.” She propped herself against the wall. “Take care Star Chaser.”
“Thank you, Chief Warrant Officer Nuniez.” As I descended the stairs I waved good-bye to her. She waved back. After the hatch closed she turned around. “Computer access CWO logs. This is CWO Nuniez final log. I guess I feel bad using that unicorn like this. He eagerly ate up all my bullshit. I hope he does what I ask if only so my notes get broadcasted back home. I love you Mom, I love you Dad. I have no regrets. Well except for maybe shooting my CO, if the dumb fuck listened we wouldn’t have gotten our asses kicked in that fight. The bastard ordered the computer to shut down all our systems before dying. We mutinied for nothing. On the other hand I finally got to meet a unicorn, every little girls dream come true. He was black with blue hair. He was wearing an old leather jacket and a flat brimmed hat like some cowboy, you should have seen it. I love you all good-bye. Computer send this to his pip-buck.” She slumped against the wall, resigned to her fate, but one thing still bothered her. “Computer, new message, to be played to the pip-buck user after all six parts of the quest are finished. Star Chaser, I am sure by now you have realized I was not telling you the truth. I am sorry for tricking you. The truth is…”
As I walked away from the ship I was examining my shiny new pip-buck just going over the quest log. I looked through and noticed ten new entries in my notes section. They all seemed long and technical; I would have to read them later. I had to find a computer apparently and had no idea where to start. I made to go back west when I realized that there was no longer an Appleloosa anymore, and there were definitely no networked computers back with the herd. According to Lucky there was supposed to be a major road on the other side of the mountain. So, I walked along it in hopes of finding a navigable pass. After an hour my back was aching, probably from carrying two saddlebags worth of supplies.
Among the bison we were taught to accept death. Luna knows I had enough experience with it. Deaths were handled in regimented fashion. The family of the deceased had one day to grieve. The next morning there was a funeral. If the buffalo that died were a soldier, the chief would say some somber speech as all bison in service stood vigil. After that a family member would speak their peace, and last was a medicine bison that was close to the bereaved. All in all it would take an hour or two. As a scout I was in attendance of a funeral every other week it seemed. My adoptive father was never given a service though. He was still considered missing and would be so until a body was found. Raiders don’t leave bodies. The mantra for the herd was survive one day at a time in the best way possible. Although I sorted through her bag I never did clean any of the junk she put into mine. Most of the stuff was junk. Plates, tin cans, scrap metal and so on. I consolidated any food, medicine and ammo into my bag when I came across a glowing Sparkle Cola Rad bottle. I had never seen any of these before. I made to drink it when I felt something blunt hit my head. I turned and saw on what any other day would be the craziest thing I have ever seen. Three elderly earth pony mares dressed in matching spring dresses and high beehive hairdos brandishing rolling pins and switchblades.
I stood up an entered VATS prepping for a magic barrage, but there was none left. I was burnt out. I dropped out as the nearest one closed in on me. I made to block but I felt the sting of a rolling pin hit me. I swung my pip-buck at her. Blocked. I kicked at her. Blocked again. I jumped back only to realize one of the other mares had cut me off as she drove her switchblade into my shoulder. I pulled out the blade with my teeth and limped slowly away from the three crazy mares as the slowly regrouped. I was fucked. I had always considered myself a proficient fighter, but now realized I had always relied on magic to supplement my fighting capabilities. As I faced three experienced melee fighters who never learned to rely on magic I realized I was screwed. Sure I could take them on, it would be a long fight trading blows for blows. However, there was no honor in fighting them. I would not stand being the pony that killed three elderly mares. Only one word rung in my mind: Survive!
I turned tail and ran as quickly as my hooves could carry me as the three gave chase. Not my proudest moment, I admit. Every once in a while I could hear them swing at me a few feet behind me. I might not be too strong or agile, but one-thing years of stampeding builds in a pony is endurance. After five minutes of running I could barely hear them. After ten minutes I think I lost them. I stopped to catch my breath and drink a healing potion. It helped with my bleeding but did nothing for the pain. My head was throbbing from the smack and the magical burnout. I got up to take in my surroundings when I saw one of the crazy mares charging at me. “Give me back my knife thief,” she screamed. I never considered taking a knife used to stab me as stealing. And we’re off to the races again.
I ran another two minutes before I lost sight of them. However, it mattered not as I had cornered myself on cliff. Though I could not see them I could hear hoof beats in the distance. I saw a rock out crop half way down the cliff that I could reach. As I made to land I stumbled and found myself rolling the rest of the way down. I was going to get back up and keep running when I saw a metal door built into the cliff. I kicked it open and jumped in what appeared to be an abandoned mine. My whole body was aching now, not just my head. I slammed the door shut and caught my breath. It wasn’t long when I heard some pony land on the same rock I did. “Give me a break,” I said aloud. The pony outside heard me and was now trying to bang the door open. I threw my body against it to keep it closed when two more bodies joined the first in trying to force the door open. Than to my horror I saw the two giant scorpions coming from the cave to inspect the noise. Seriously, what the fuck wasteland?
I pushed off the door as the three mares slammed the door open, falling on there faces. I rushed past the giant scorpions before they could react and bolted deeper into the mine. I found the first unlocked door and ran in. I turned the door slamming it shut and locking it. There were three radroaches as big as my face ready to greet, so I introduced two to my hooves as I danced on top of them popping them into gross bits. The third however found its way onto my face. I yelped out as it chewed on my cheek. Without thinking I slammed my head against the wall before realizing I could just pry it off with my hooves. I threw it as hard as I could muster right onto the floor. It died with a gurgle. Tired and messy, I slumped on the floor and leaned against the door.
Outside I could here a battle to the death between the crazy mares and the scorpions. I heard one of the mares scream, “They killed Maude.” After a few minutes it was silent. The room I was in was dark. I made to make my horn glow only to feel a sharp pain. “No magic idiot,” I said to myself. I fumbled in the darkness until I found out how to switch on my pip-bucks lamp. I was in a bunkroom with a bunk bed and a couch with half of the room was caved in. Along the opposite wall from the door was a series of lockers and next to that a computer. I searched the lockers and found some old world bits, two more horseshoes and a hat. I replaced my two worse horseshoes with the new pair and took the band off of the new hat and replaced the one on my pop’s with it. The feather seemed to stay in place better with the new band. “There we go all repaired,” I said to no pony with a smile.
I really didn’t care about the computer, but I had a new tool and damn if I wasn’t going to use. I went to the keyboard, but my pipbuck beeped first. I looked at the little wrist-mounted screen. ‘Contact with computer established… Security password required… Initializing backdoor protocols…’ A list of random words and symbols appeared just before a bunch of them disappeared. ‘All duds removed.’ I looked at the screen and there were a list of seven four-letter words. I saw the word ‘mine’ on the list so I picked it first. Correct! I was greeted with a list of shipping manifests and a notice of security protocols. I scrolled through the list and found one option to ‘open locked ordinance container’. I selected it and heard a soft click beneath the rubble. I went over and moved a piece of the ceiling to find a safe built in the wall behind it. Inside the safe were six sticks of dynamite and bunch of unreadable papers. I slipped the dynamite into my bag.
I was dead beat so I decided to hole up for the night and take care of the scorpions and mares tomorrow since no one was getting in through the locked door. Turns out the couch was more comfortable than the two-century-old bedding, go figure. I was tired, but I wanted to read one of the notes the human left me first though. I took off my jacket, hat, and saddlebags as I made myself comfortable.
Equestria Weather Patterns Equestria weather systems relied upon anthropogenic control prior to the Pony Zebra War. However since the culmination of the war, pegasi have used the weather to create a continual cloud layer utilizing the Ministry of Awesome’s (MoA) Single Pegasus Project (SPP) protocols as a basis of weather control after the destruction of the weather control factory in the Cloudsdale megaspell attack. MOA has been shown to be the primary espionage and intelligence agency under Luna ruled Equestria. The artificer that controls SPP has been shown to rely on high-energy magic that was comprised of zebra and Ministry of Arcane Technology (MAT) derived techno-magic. The cloud cover is believed to have increased pegasus survival by primarily allowing for non-irradiated agriculture. Well the Enclave have shown to be a primary force preventing the re-integration of pony culture, societal development is shown to not have developed any quicker in non-Enclave cloud cover timeline projections. However, the SPP is a primary candidate for the ongoing search for the missing Elements of Harmony (EoH) artificers. Current theories point to an arcano-tech integration of the EoH into the machinations of a MoA or MAT project prior to the…
At that point I fell asleep. The boring note was boring. I had no dreams this night. I just fell deep into a void, dead to the world.
I heard a series of pop’s like a string of firecrackers. I awoke when I heard screaming and realized I was hearing bullet fire. I sat up and hoped for the best as everything fell silent again. I saw the door handle jiggle. I was still locked. I felt relived. Whatever pony it was would just move on… then I heard a click as the door came unlocked. The door flew open as a single pegasus flew in wearing a double mini-gun battle saddle. She turned to me and I saw her guns start spinning a she grinned.
Footnote: Level up! Level 5
New perk: Eerie Equestria: The most bizarre and strange elements of the Equestrian Wasteland are unleashed. Not for the faint of heart or the serious of temperament.
Pegasi were once a common find in Equestria. Now a days not so much. After the war they holed themselves up and selfishly took the sky from everypony below. A group called the Enclave rules them and not much is really known about them except they seem to think they are better than everypony, but really what group doesn’t in the wasteland. They rarely come to the surface, and when they do it is always done through their military. Pagasi for pegasi seems to be there motto, but then again it always was the pegasi’s unofficial motto before. I had never seen a pegasus before. Right now one had two mini guns pointed at me with a mad smile on her face. Two shots rang off far to the left of me.
“Hold up. Hold up. Don’t shoot. I am not a raider. Don’t shoot.” I screamed as I frantically waved my hooves and dug myself deeper into the couch.
Three more shots rang off before the fire ceased. She stood back surprised with a look of disappointment. “Are you sure your not a raider?”
“Do I look like one,” I screamed at her.
“Well, no, but neither did those two crazy mares outside, but they totally were raiders or maybe they were angry waitresses.”
“You killed those mares?”
“Yep, shot them. Dumb bitches tried to take me on with rolling pins. Guns beat sticks, duh. Every pony knows that. Only an idiot chooses melee when there are big guns just lying around practically everywhere.” She just called me an idiot.
“Okay, look what are you doing here,” I asked pulling myself out of a two hundred year old couch cushion.
“Scavenging, I am on my way to Applelossa. What are you doing?”
“I was sleeping. You haven’t listened to the radio anytime soon, have you?”
“Not for a while, its so boring they just keep playing the same songs over and over again. I swear if I hear Butcher Pete or that Bongo song again I’ll go CRAZY,” she screamed flapping her wings lifting her self all the way to the ceiling.
“Applelossa was destroyed, like, two days ago. Some pony named Stable Dweller wiped it off the map."
“Well that sucks. I guess I’ll have to go back to the Big 52. I think Broccoli might be the next closest town. Ok, all that is left is to settle out with you and be on my way.”
“Settle? Settle what?”
“The standard heroes fee of course. I just saved you from some raider mares and scorpions, so cough up the caps so I can be on my way.”
“Fuck that.”
“Well I never!” She started to rev up her guns before stopping again. “Wait, are you a trader?”
“No, but I am willing to trade if you want to.”
“Cool, let me see what you got.” She was too dumb to be a bandit, apparently it never occured to her that she could kill me and just take what I have. As she approached I could make more of her out. She was a white pegasus with a short cut straight jet black mane. Her eyes were as dark as coal and her face, neck, and back were covered in grey freckles, and impeccably young. I think I saw her in my vision from yesterday.
“A, how old are you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I am 17, but I have been adventuring now for three years so I am experienced ok.”
“And what, you travel alone?”
“No, not alone. I had my dog; she died. Dumb bitch ran in front of my crossfire the other day. And, I have two bucking broncos right here,” she said revving both her guns. “Got any 5 millimeter ammo?” I pulled up my pip-buck to check. The light blinded her as she made to cover her eyes. “That’s a fancy pip-buck. Never seen a gold one before. Are you from a stable near here?”
“No, not from a stable. This thing was a custom job. As for the ammo I have fifty-six of the 5 millimeter. A cap a bullet sounds good to you?”
“That’s not too many, I’ll take them all. Any 10 millimeter?”
“Forty-three of them. Same price?” I had no idea what I was doing.
“That’s a bunch of bullets. I’ll take twenty.” How was 56 bullets too few, but 43 too many? We exchanged our goods. “Anything to eat?”
“I don’t sell my food. Although I won’t mind the company if you care to join me for breakfast.”
“Umm, okay.” At that I stood up and went to grab my jacket when I heard the pegasus gasp and take up a fighting stance.
“Seventy-seven! You ain’t him are you?”
“Who?”
“You don’t know! You are wearing that suite and don’t know! Dude, you should seriously burn that barding, than dig a hole, and bury the ashes, and leave, and never come back. That barding is bad news, it belonged to him.”
“Seventy-seven? What the hay are you going on about.”
“Wait! Did you kill him? How did you get it?” She flew up to me and grabbed my collar lifting me onto my hind hooves. “I need to know!”
“They belonged to my dad.”
“Did your dad kill him? Was he from Stable 77?”
“No…” she dropped me and breathed a sigh of relief. “My grandfather was the lone survivor of Stable 77.” At that she panicked and made to fly away. I bit her tail and prevented her from flying off. “Na ya don’d. Stay an tall ma evrythin,” I gritted through my teeth.
“No! Let me go. Let me go. I am too young to die!” I was so taken back I released my grip and she took off like a champagne cork into the wall.
“Please, don’t go. I never knew my family. If it is something bad, please tell me. I have to know.”
She looked at me upside down, lying on the ground. She flew into the air, righted herself, and landed patting the dust off herself. “Okay only cause you asked nicely.” She stood up straight, closed her eyes, and cleared her throat. Then she leaped into the air onto her back hooves. “This is the story of the puppet pony,” she said waving her front hooves in the air. “Woooooo,” she moaned. I just stared at her dead pan. “Okay not as scary if you don’t already know the story I guess.” At that she fell back onto her haunches. “The Stable’s were never supposed to save any pony. From what we can gather they were tests and sick jokes played on all of ponykind. Stable 69 had a thousand mares for every stallion and Stable 43 consisted of ten mares, twenty stallions, and a manticore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“But we are not talking about those stables,” she interrupted. “Stable 77 was one of the worst stables. It consisted only of one pony and one crate. After the first pony entered the stable, it closed behind him locking him inside. The pony was left inside by himself for years. Over time he found a crate full of puppets and formed his own weird puppet society ruled by a king puppet. Than one day the puppet pony had enough and snapped. He and another puppet killed the puppet king.”
“Wait, how do you kill a puppet?”
“I don’t know! You twist its head off or something,” she replied before regaining her composure for dramatic story telling. Which mostly consisted of her talking slowly in a low voice. “He escaped into the wasteland. He came across a super giant scorpion and punched it dead.” At that she swung her arm so hard she spun her whole body. “Than he tamed the ants and rode it as his mount. A group of bandits captured him and threatened to kill him. He did nothing at first, but they made the mistake of threatening his puppet. He beat everypony to death till they were in pieces, but he did not stop. He just kept killing. He killed every slaver, every raider, every bandit he saw. He would tear them limb from limb and bathe in their blood.”
“How is that worse than a raider? Isn’t that what heroes do? Kill bad ponies.”
“No, he was worse than a raider. Raiders kill out of a sick need or desire. The Puppet Pony just loved death. He wouldn’t even scavenge their bodies. All he would do was beat everypony to death. Sometimes he would even kill captured slaves, claiming they were too weak to live for being caught. Somehow he found the secret to a long life for it was said he never aged a day. For over a hundred years he cut a bloody swathe across the wasteland, killing any pony that so even looked at him funny. Then one day he disappeared. It is said on the darkest nights he will come back and kill anypony he comes across with his puppet.” At that she closed her eyes and blinked a few times. “So wait, he settled down and had some kids?! What crazy mare would get with the puppet pony?” My grandmother, apparently.
Suddenly things started to make more sense. Why my adoptive family changed my name and kept my history from me. The other bison didn’t think I was cursed just because everyone died around me; they also thought I was cursed because of the atrocities my family had committed. Ok, that just made me feel worse. I felt my shoulders slunk as I turned away from the pegasus. I walked over and put my jacket and hat on and just walked out the door plunging the exuberant pegasus into darkness. “Thanks for telling me,” I said as I made my way out of the room.
“What about breakfast,” she called out to me. I just kept walking away though. As I made my way to the main room I could see the rays of the early morning suns light, but as I walked outside I heard the flapping of wings behind me. “Wait up." I turned and saw her come out. “You aren’t lying are you? You really are a descendent of the Puppet Pony. I am so sorry. I guess it would suck to learn that. To me it was always an old mare’s tale. A scary story like Chronos the Glue Maker.”
“Its alright. Truthfully I have been through the ringer the last few days. This was just the piece of hay that broke the ponies back, is all.”
“You poor thing. Did you hurt your back?” Was she always this oblivious?
“No, I am fine.” I stuck my hoof out. “My name is Star Chaser. What’s your name?”
She firmly took my hoof with both her hooves and nearly shook my arm off. “Call me Soaring Skies, or Sky for short. Do you prefer Star or Chase.”
“Either or. I’ll let you decide?”
“Chase it is. It just sounds more ‘namier’ if you know what I mean.” I didn’t. “Look you can join me if you want. I am headed to Broccoli to sell some gear.”
I had nothing better to do. Actually, I had nothing to do. “Sure count me in.”
“Good that means the only thing to do is settle out the standard escort fee and we can be on our way.” I face hoofed.
It turns out everything had a standard fee. There was a fee to scout out a hill. A fee to be the first to open up an empty abandoned toolbox and a fee for standing guard well I took a piss behind a bush. “No I am not paying any of your damn fees,” I screamed as she tried to charge me for the rights to butcher the bloatfly she nearly turned into paste. “Besides you said you weren’t taken’ the meat either.”
“That’s not the point. Bug meat is gross and I refuse to eat it well I have better things to eat. Besides that’s my kill so we do with it what I say.”
“Still not paying,” I said as I cut off any edible chunks.
“Aw, no pony ever pays the standard fees.”
“How can they be ‘standard’ if no pony ever pays them?”
“They aren’t yet. Give it time. Eventually everypony will pick them up as the standard. Commerce is the corner stone for society.”
“Well that pony ain’t going to be me. Here tell you what. You get first go on any crap we come across on our way to Broccoli.”
“Deal, sucker!” At that we bro-hoofed in agreement.
“What direction is Broccoli anyways? Cause we haven’t been going in any one direction this whole time.” We were mostly going from fleeing animal to fleeing animal as Sky chased after them guns blazing, while stopping at any abandoned piece of junk we came across.
“Some where over there.” She pointed east south east. “But we are not going that way yet. We’re going that direction.” She pointed her other hoof south south east.
“Why the hay are we going that way?”
“Silly pony, Broccoli is more than a day away. If we go this way we can hit up an unexplored power station and I know a safe place to sleep. Real Safe.”
“Okay, lead on.” I was screwed. No magic and no clue where in Equestria I was meant I was left to the whims of a half crazed pegasus. At least she wasn’t fully crazy. Maybe some of Lucky’s ‘luck’ rubbed off on me.
As we walked, or rather as I walked and Soaring Skies flapped (is that the proper term for half flying half trotting?), we came across power lines. “How can these still be standing after two hundred years?”
“Under Luna’s rule they started to overdevelop everything. They made everything to survive balefire attacks. Unfortunately most things didn’t. Go to Filly, Manehatten, or the Hoof and you can tell no pony knew just how bad the megaspells were going to be.”
“Have you been to all of those places?”
“Yes, though I haven’t been to Fillydelphia since I was a filly. I heard it has gotten a lot worse.”
“So you grew up in the wasteland? I thought all you pegasi lived in the clouds as Enclave.”
“Only the stupid ones live there. They think the pegasuses are special and that there abandonment of the rest of ponykind is somehow doing us all a favor. I am no Enclave, nor am I Dashite. I am a Remnant.”
“Remnant, never heard of them, Dashites neither.”
She rolled her eyes. “Dashites are pegasuses that agreed with Rainbow Dash and left the Enclave to live in Equestria. Most of them get branded or killed by their own families. Remnants were pegasuses that never left Equestria. We are descendants of the military that didn’t leave their posts even after the megaspells hit. There weren’t that many, really. Most of us live out in the desert where the bombs never hit. Of course the Enclave don’t care if your Dashite or Remnant. All non-Enclave pegasuses are killed on sight. They call us blood traitors.”
So Rainbow Dash survived the bombs by hiding in the sky only to turn against the Enclave. A part of me felt like cheering while the other part asked, “Isn’t the proper term pegasi?”
“No!” She screamed at me. She turned around crossing her front hooves over her chest flying with her legs hanging down directly in front of me. “Pegasus is an old world pegasus word. There is no pluralization using an ‘i’ in words ending ‘us’ like in Equestrian common. So for pegsuses words ending in ‘us’ the pluralization is ‘es.’ Like octopuses and pegasuses.”
“I am pretty sure it’s octopi too.”
“Aah!” She started pulling at her mane, still flying away. “Stupid ponies, stupid ponies everywhere I go!” We traveled on in silence following the power lines. Well actually mostly following lone standing power poles with maybe one suspended wire linking them. Eventually we finally found it. A tall three-story building with three smoke stacks surrounded by several power substations and a bunch of dead animals. There were miles of wire strewn across the ground around the yellowed decrypted building. As we circled around the building I made sure to not touch any of the wires. This left me looking like a hopping idiot as Sky laughed at me. “Wings beat horns.”
“Hey if I had magic right now I could just levitate all these wires away from me.”
“Whatever, I’ll be waiting near the door.” It took me a minute longer, to reach it but I made it in record time. “Okay I think we should split up. These buildings always have their best stuff in the highest and lowest floors. You take the top. I take the bottom. After two hours we meet up right here, okay. And what the hay is that clicking.”
“Radiation.” I lifted my pip-buck to show her.
“Ok, meet out here in one hour.” I saw this as a chance to take another rad-x. Turns out most plants in the wasteland that survived the apocalypse taste horrible, and two hundred year old food has almost no taste. I was looking foreword to the taking it since we never did eat. I only had two left so I took one and gave the other Soaring Skies. After taking it she retched. “It tastes like an orange threw up in my mouth.”
We pushed the door open and entered a square metal room that might have once served as the main lobby. Every surface was brown and rusted. As I looked around the room Sky hopped over to the secretary’s desk and rummaged through old binders and papers. “Shit, this desk has already been hit up. If we are lucky no pony checked the rest of the building. We made our way into hallway, I moved silently as I could while Sky went ahead with out a care in the world. She approached a double door just as I noticed a red mark on the EFS moving straight towards her. Before I could word warning a glowing zombie launched its self at her. However, she was quicker. She jumped towards the ceiling and using her wings she pressed herself against the wall and let loose both barrels into its chest. It couldn’t even reach her. With that loud of a distraction I managed to get in close enough unnoticed to surprise it with a good buck to the back of the head. It came completely off. What was left of its body slumped next to it. “You stole my kill.”
“No I didn’t, we killed it together.”
“Well, I still get loot.”
“Go ahead.” I looked at the glowing mush. It once was a pony. I think it was a ghoul. I had only seen a couple in my life. Every once in a while one our two would stumble across the Herd, gross looking but generally nice. “Why is it glowing? Why did it attack?”
“It attacked cause it went full zombie. The brain rotted,” she said patting down the rags on its body. “When their minds go they seek shelter. Ghouls heal in radiation, this one probably came here to heal.” She pulled out a few bottle caps and a piece of hard candy that she popped into her mouth. I winced at the thought of eating ghoul candy, but Sky didn’t notice. “Its glowing cause it’s radiated to fuck. When they get like this they can heal their own body off their own radiation. You sure you didn’t grow up in a stable, this is common knowledge, you know?”
“I never have been to a stable. I grew up out west with the Bison Herd. We survived by keeping away from everypony.”
“I thought the buffalos died off ages ago. Glad to hear they made it. Soooo, what are you doing out here?”
I looked at my pipbuck and saw my radiation poisoning radiation steadily rising. “Maybe we should have this conversation outside where the air isn’t slowly killing us.”
“But, you might die cause your too dumb to carry a weapon, and than I’ll never find out about the buffalos.” Thanks for the vote of confidence.
“Well at least you have something to look foreword to,” I said as I walked further down the hall. She said something in reply, but I couldn’t make it out. I turned around and noticed she vanished into the double doors. I rounded the corner and moved as silently as I could up the staircase to find it come out o a railing above a huge room filled with half a dozen generators. One was still running. I looked at it and noticed there was writing on it. It read ‘Assimov 1000 Mini Nuclear Generator.’ “Well that explains the radiation.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lone pegasus flying around looking lost. I noticed a group of red dots on my EFS making there way to her. Out of a side door below me a group of three more glowing zomponies came rushing out. I readied some dynamite and slipped into VATS and launched two of the explosives at the leader. I smiled as I watched them detonate in slow motion just after making contact with the leader. The dual explosions ate away his body sending it out as shrapnel killing the second and blowing off part of the face of the third.
Time returned to normal and my smile faded as I saw the third one stand up and slowly regenerate its face. It let out a scream and turned towards me jumping in vain trying to reach me. Meanwhile, Sky came around and unleashed a hell fury of bullets pulverizing it. “I thought that was kill stealing.”
“Oh, I was just saving you dynamite. And, just so you know you technically aren’t unarmed if you use explosives.”
“These aren’t weapons, they’re construction materials.” She shook her head with a smile and made her way through the door the three ghouls came through. I turned back to the railing and made my way across as silently as I could. I kept my ears open, but I wasn’t expecting to come across anything. I figured any other ghouls in here would be coming our way after that display of castraphony. The first room was a control room. There were six displays all dead save one. I dare not touch it. I found some wonder glue and duct tape; I moved on. This whole floor was just open offices filled with posters with a pink candy cane mare staring out. It read ‘Remember: Pinkie Pie is Watching You, Forever!’ The eyes even followed you. “Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”
I found another set of stairs well and went up to the next floor. This one was filled with more offices. I dug through the filing cabinets and desks only finding a few caps, some bobby pins, and a ton of pens and pencils. Office supplies in an office, who would have guessed. I took everything and was going to call it done until I noticed a carton of cigarettes in one desk. Score!
I ripped open the box and pulled out a pack. They were Marlbronies; I was a Camels stallion myself. I ripped off the filter and made to light it before I realized no magic. I searched the desk again until I found a lighter. A ruby imbued with the essence of red rainbow fueled it. Double score! I managed to balance it on one hoof and press the button down with another. It had been several months since I last had a smoke. With the Bison smoking was reserved for prayers and offerings, I just liked to smoke though. I found a lab in the next room down the hall. I searched it and came up empty, just scrap metal. On the wall was a picture of a lavender unicorn in a lab coat wearing goggles. ‘Safety First!’ it read. I recognized her; it was the Element of Magic, Twilight Sparkle. There was a picture of her on the author page of her book.
At the end of the hall was one last door. It was the Directors office. There was a computer on a desk and a safe built into the floor underneath the desk. I walked up to the desk and put out my cigarette when I heard a beep from my pipbuck. I looked at and noticed it had already started the hacking protocol. This password was seven letters long. I guessed randomly three times before I was warned I would be locked out if I guessed wrong again. I backed out of the hacking system before re-launching it again. I had to do it six times before I was successful. The code was ‘HARMONY.’ I was logged in as Director Blue Spark. There were four options: PONYNALE FILES, WORK LOGS, PERSONAL PROJECTS, and SAFE LOCK MECHANISM.
I selected the third one. There two choices: PNUEMATIC STEEL HOOVES (HOOFO!) and SPARK CORE. I selected the steel hooves one.
Entry #1,
The colonel has asked me to switch off of the spark core design. He said it was unnecessary to continue since we had already finished working on Project Second Six. Luna’s interest has already moved on. It was decided that I was better suited helping the war effort by improving upon the mechanics of the Iron Power Hooves. A crude weapon, already out of use well before my stint in the military ended. Apparently, Minister Applejack is curious if we can improve upon robotics. I plan on fully integrating the spark core into the new design. If I wasn’t suppose to why else would Cupcake ask me to do this specifically.
Entry #2,
Okay scrap iron, its steel now. The spark core out paced the spark battery in energy output. I had to increase the energy consumption of the whole design to make it work better, but the kinetic force was so great it practically destroyed itself. I had to upgrade it to steel just to have the tensile strength necessary for it to function, but it still destroys itself. If only I could incorporate a self-healing mechanism to make the whole thing repair itself.
Entry #7,
So when Colonel Cupcake approached me about my progress, I told him I was working on a mechanical self-repair talisman instead. He reprimanded me for going beyond the confines of the original project, but I did mange to have him sell my data to Twilight Sparkle’s Ministry, of course I had to delete all my old notes on it. When I told him about the machine being so strong that it destroyed itself, he seemed happy about it. Back to the drawing board. I need something stronger than steel.
Entry #8,
I did it! It works perfectly. Steel worked perfectly, I installed some shock adsorption and integrated some pressure control. This thing runs on mollified air. I use the excess energy to excite the particles of the air itself to push the plates. It actually is magnetic in design. Electricity Blue, us Pegasi need to stick with what we understand. Let’s see some unicorn or dirt pony come up with this answer. The techs have started calling the thing ‘Hoofos!’ but I think a better term is Steel Hooves, much more elegant.
Entry #9,
Fucking Cupcake! He took all my results and gave it to the Ministry of Technology. They even took the name Steel Hooves. They aren’t even going to release it, they’re just integrating it into some larger project. At least I got paid this time.
I went back and clicked on SPARK CORE since I was now curious about it. Unfortunately all but the last entry had been deleted.
Entry # 21,
All notes on the spark core have been deleted and the technical notes turned over to the monarchy. For lack of a better word the spark core was a failure. It failed to produce the required parameters and Project Second Six has found success via an alternative route. The expenses were repaid, but there was no profit. It seems my money is now all tied into the success of this power plant, a shame since I only built it because the spark core required nuclear generation. All in all, the spark core was nothing but an improved spark battery. One that generates energy on itself and does not require recharging, but a battery nonetheless. The colonel has already has me working on a new component of another proposed project, but nothing as important as a personal request from Princess Luna, some minor MOT project. It’s a shame I wanted to find out what Project Second Six had to do with that hush hush project of Lunas. At last, I will never know what Project Moon Fall was truly about.
Shoot I was this close on finding something important about Moon Fall. Blue Spark seemed to be a somewhat important pony, but what was he doing out this far from Equestria proper? I had already wasted too much time reading so I opened up the safe. Inside were the Hoofos that Blue Spark wrote about, but two hundred years did not wear on them well. I stuffed them in my bag hoping I could find some way to repair them later. There were seven blue gems inside, I had no clue what they were, so I stuffed them in my bag and looked them up in my inventory. They were labeled spark cores. As I prepared to leave I noticed there was something white in there. It was an envelope, still clean like it arrived in the post only a day ago. It was enchanted paper, designed to repeal the wear that comes with age. The contents had to be important. Inside was a small red card with a black stripe on the back and and a folded up letter, also enchanted paper.
The following is an official correspondence from the office of Colonel Cupcake:
Hey Sparky,
How you doing? I hope Life is doing you well. I am sorry about the whole Spark Core and Steel Hooves thing. I never meant to hurt you. Also, not a day goes by that I don’t regret the unfortunate accident that deprived you the use of your left hind leg. I promised to make it up to you, and boy have I.
Luna has agreed to allow you into Project Moon Fall. The Second Six required to fuel the whole thing has proven to be wildly unstable. Unfortunately, I now have little to do with the project. Most of my old duties have been delegated to other ponies. Applejack has been appointed a full time military consort, Applesnack of all ponies. I almost feel sorry for the old mare. Well Luna feels that Twilight Sparkle can be trusted, she now runs the whole Ministry exclusively. The princess has deemed me most useful closer to the front line. I am heading to Hoofington to over see construction of the city core.
I don’t like it one bit. The whole thing just seems to be wrong, and tell you what, I think Luna is right in not trusting that Goldenblood. Any pony that can consolidate that much unchecked power is too dangerous to trust. I am so glad she keeps his filthy hooves out of the more important non-ministry projects. Trust me, once you find out about the true purpose of Project Moon Fall and Second Six all the other Ministry’s projects seem insignificant. Let the schemers scheme, were doing the works of the goddesses!
Forever your friend,
Cupcake
PS I have included a copy of my house key in Bucklyn. It’s located on 1217 E Lemon Drops. Stop in whenever, I am almost never near Manehatten anymore.
“So whoever Colonel Cupcake and Blue Spark were, they both knew what was going on. Was Luna trying to use time travel to win the war? Did she get the technology from humans? I am missing something that’s for sure. Also, who the hay was Goldenblood? And what is that popping noise?” After I said it I realized I knew exactly what that popping noise was, muffled gunfire. I ran as fast as I could back to the main generator room. I could see Sky firing into one doorway. “What’s going on,” I screamed at her. She looked at me scared. Without a word she ceased fire and flew right at me, picking me off the railing. She shot out the window behind me just moments before we would have collided with it. We were losing height as Skies wings strained to support all the weight. Once we reached the other side of the field of electrical wires we crash-landed.
As I steadied myself and stood up, I noticed Sky had already started reloading both her chain fed guns. “Chase, get ready. It is coming,” she screamed.
“What?”
“That,” she said pointing a hoof towards a silhouette peering out the window we escaped through. I was going to say we were far enough away, when it unfurled a pair of wings and dive bombed towards us landing twenty feet away. It was a giant ghoulified griffin decked out in heavy armored carapace that had melded to its skin. Attached to its front hands were razor sharp metal gauntlets. Worse still it was glowing from excess radiation. The feathers around it beak and neck were missing revealing deformed skin. Bits of its skull were visible around its right eye, and instead of eyes it had two pink glowing orbs. The creature let out an unworldly scream and flew straight at us only to be met with two full streams of mini-gun fire. I watched as I saw bullets bounce off its armor, while its face was nearly liquefied from the onslaught. Eventually, Sky ran out of bullets I cheered at its demise but felt cold when I heard Sky say, “Cover me well I reload.” I turned back and saw in horror as the creatures face reformed from a pink mist. “It’s a Canterlot ghoul. The thing has absorbed enough taint to practically be immortal.”
“What happens when it’s glowing?”
“Than it most likely is immortal.”
Luna fuck me sideways with her horn. It had already fully reformed and was pressing attack again. Sky was busy reloading her guns leaving me on point. The thing rose up and swung at me. I jumped away and strafed around it as it kept swinging wildly. The heavy armor slowed it down, while my barding didn’t slow me any. I saw an opening and bucked it hard as I could in its beak. The creature flinched so I cut in and used my head to uppercut it under its jaw. The creature was knocked into the air, but instead of falling it flapped its wings and lifted into the air. I ran away as it gave chase. Every once in a while it would swoop in to swipe at me. We did this dance until it finally connected with my hind leg cutting into it like butter. I fell in a bloody mess, the creature standing over me. When I heard some whirling.
Bullets ripped into the creatures back. The creature undisturbed turned directly into the fire and charged Sky head on. It closed the distance taking every shot Sky put out. Her firepower wasn’t enough though, as it eventually managed to tackle her sending her flying ten feet away. It unfurled its wing intent on finishing her, but VATS was quicker. I loaded up three sticks of dynamite and threw them at it with magical aided precision. The explosion only seemed to stun it as it started reforming from all the damage. However, I had enough time to close in the distance. I leapt at it, biting down on its wing. I place my two hind hooves under each of its other two exposed limbs while hugging the rest of its wing with my forehooves. I pulled as hard as I could, intent on ripping its wing off. The creature screamed and made to roll over only to come face to barrel with Sky's gun.
“Smile you son of a bitch,” she screamed as she used her gun to saw its head off. Its body fell limp as I let it go. Sky ran over to its disconnected head and kicked it as far away from its body as she could manage, lest it some how found a way to reattach it. She ran up to me and pulled out a healing potion dumping it on my open wound before giving me another to drink. I lay there on the ground letting the magic do its thing.
“Sky.”
“Yes, Chase.”
“Next time lets not go into a ghoul zombie den.”
“Okay.”
We stayed there ten minutes lying on the ground catching our breath. We got up afterwards and headed straight in silence, ignoring all small animals and random junk. Nothing seemed to bother us thankfully. As the sun kissed the horizon the cloud covered sky ignited in flames of red and purple as we entered a massive cemetery. I sullenly followed Soaring Skies past row after row of tombstones. “Sky.”
“Yes, Chase.”
“How safe is this safe place to sleep?”
“Real safe,” she replied pointing at a giant metal tank a top the hill.
Footnote: Level up! Level 6
New perk: Travel Light: Move 10% faster wearing light or no armor
“Unicorns? They are just horned ponies, who can control their magic by will. It all seems freaky to me. Peguseses and Earth ponies have magic, but it is innate, a part of our very being. It just seems unnatural to be able to take one’s own vital energy and wield it however. I mean I know you are, like, mostly bound to your special talent, but I have no idea how magic works or where it comes from. I am pretty sure no pony does. Why did you ask Chase? You are a unicorn. So you’re more of an expert on unicorns than me.”
“I know. I just I haven't met all that many. I only knew maybe four or so in my whole life and they all weren’t true magic users. Lucky only knew telekinesis.”
“Well that’s like the only spell most unicorns know. Maybe they’ll know one other spell dealing with their talent. Although I met one pony that could use like nine spells before; her talent was putting on magic shows. She ended up becoming a raider pony though, no one pays to see shows in the wasteland. Who’s Lucky,” she asked as she rotated some questionable meat on a stick above the fire.
“She’s, I mean was, another unicorn I was traveling with. Well the reason I was asking was to see if you knew a remedy for magical burnout.”
“Nope, sorry.” At that she pulled off a piece of meat and handed it to me. “Here take it.”
“What is it?”
“Dog meat.”
“This isn’t meat from your dog, is it?”
“That’s a stupid question. Waste not want not,” she replied as she tore some more of the meat off for herself. I shrugged and ate it anyways. We had arrived at the tank in the cemetery an hour ago. After Sky pried open the tank hatch we dropped off our packs and made a fire next to it. We sat and ate some more of the meat. I had taken off my jacket and hat and was now using them to lie on, while Sky was on her haunches back against the tank. I caught her stretching her head to the side looking at me.
“What?”
“Is your cutie mark the moon? I’ve only seen the moon twice, but it didn’t look like that. It was big and round.”
“Oh, it’s a crescent moon. Its when the sun only lights up one side of the moon.” I turned my head to look at my mark. “There are five stars and falling star too. See” I said pointing at my flank.
“What’s it mean? I mean, what’s your special talent?” That was a good question. When I only received it a few days ago. I thought for sure it meant I had some kind of destiny, but now I wasn’t sure. Maybe it represented an affinity for the night. My coat was black and my mark made me look like the night sky. Then it hit me.
“I think it’s for questing. I am looking for something. All my life I never strayed to far from the Bison lands. Now I seem to be making up for lost time.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A networked computer, which will tell me where I can find another computer, which can tell me where I can find a file.”
“Any idea where this file is located.”
“No clue.”
“Is it important?”
“Kind of, its all needed to activate some machine. I don’t quite understand it all, but I suppose it’ll be worth it in the end.”
“Ok, I admit it. I’m jealous.”
“What? Why!?”
“Most ponies just live day to day here in the wasteland. There is no real living. Its just survival. Find resource, use them till they are gone, move on. Rinse, recycle, repeat. I never wanted to be a scavenger. I just travel cause I have nothing else to do. This isn’t even what my talent is.”
“What is your talent?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“So.”
“You’re supposed to promise me you won’t.”
“I can’t promise that. Besides you brought it up so now I have to know.” At that she stood up unzipped her body armor and slipped it off. She turned so I could get I a good look at her cutie mark. It was a black circle (a record actually, but I didn’t know what that was back then) with two black wings on top of a musical note. She pulled her armor back on.
“My special talent is dancing. I’m a dancer. I once was part of a traveling show. No pony ever paid us. They would go on about how graceful and beautiful I was, but never spare a damn thing. Eventually the troop had enough and attacked a caravan. They said they did it because they had no other choice. They were starving. That didn’t sit well with me so I left. Since then I have been scavenging. I tell other ponies I am an adventurer, but whom am I kidding. I collect and peddle junk.” At that she got up and grabbed some more her dead dog and kept on eating.
Did I ever tell you I hated the wasteland? Cause I do.
“You know I hated this dumb bitch,” she said as she ate on. “I kept her around cause she seemed to notice any threat before I ever could. She wasn’t even my pet. She just followed me one day. She ate some bloat fly I killed and seemed to think I gave it to her. She would try to lick my face, but I would always remember the last thing she ate.”
I took another bite thinking about what she said. “You know if you think about it you kind of are eating insect meat by proxy.” Sky stopped chewing mid-bite. I was afraid I might have grossed her out, but than she shrugged her wings and swallowed. She begun to chuckle before giving in to full on laughter.
“You’re just trying to gross me out so you can have more,” she said between laughs. “It almost worked too.” I just smiled. She regained her composer after a while and turned to me saying, “that’s it I have come to a decision.”
“About what?”
“Me and you are going to form our own company. I’ll assist you in finding this file and return we split any profits gained in this venture down the middle. In return you help me collect and carry any salvage and I get any and all 5 and 10 millimeter bullets.”
“Well what do I get?”
“The company of a lovely mare, and first dibs on any explosives since you seem to refuse to use any other weapon. Also...” Then she said something really fast.
“What was that last part?”
“Shoot! I hoped you would just agree.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Okay I said ‘also I get your pipbuck in case you die.’ Plus you can take my two broncos if I do,” she added gesturing towards the tank. I think she meant her mini-guns she had stored inside. I stuck out my hoof and she bro hoofed me back. “Deal, sucker.” At that she bounced up and down like a filly. “I’m going to get a pipbuck. I’m going to get a pipbuck,” she sang.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“What its not my fault your too stupid to use guns.” I was going to reply when I saw out of the corner of my eyes some floating green lights. I stood up and turned towards them but didn’t see anything.
“Sky, you see that.”
“See what?” she replied. I turned back towards her.
“Those lights,” I said gesturing towards where I had seen them previously. She gasped. I made to look behind me, but sky grabbed my face and turned it towards her.
“You’re eyes! Chase what’s wrong with your eyes? They’re pitch black.” Right then I saw a floating green glowing cloud float through our camp and over our fire. My pipbuck vibrated for a second as I turned my head away from her.
“You had to see that this time. It went right through our camp.” She stepped back from me with a look of real worry on her face. “Come on, we have to check it out,” called to her as the glowing cloud slowly billowed away.
“Star Chaser you are creeping me out.”
“Come on,” I said trotting away from the fire. “It’s getting away.”
“I think I am going to stay here. Near the fire. And the tank. You know, where it’s safe, and not a creepy dark graveyard.”
“Suite yourself.” At that I galloped off. I could here Soaring Skies calling for me to comeback, but the glowing green cloud was getting away. I ran over a nearby hill and criss-croosed between the graves keeping the glowing green cloud in sight. The colors of the world had inverted again. The sky was white and the earth black. The cloud sparkled like a thousand particle of fine emerald dust. It would swoop and swayed, double backing on itself. It was like the devil got in me and compelled me to follow it to the ends of the wasteland. Luckily I didn’t need to go that far. The mass seemed to stop and hover over a tree.
As I approached, the cloud consolidated and begun to take on the rough shape of a pony. There were no defining features except for its eyes, which were composed of two points of pure light. I walked up to it maintaining eye contact the whole way. As I stopped before it, it hovered in silence. The individual particles still swarmed, but the shape did not change. “What are you?”
“A pony. At least I was at one time.” It started to circle me focusing the lights of its eyes on me as it circled me counter clockwise. “I wanted to meet you for a while now. Ever since I learned you had the gift of sight.” It stopped circling me and gave a quick bow. “I am your grandfather.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re lying. He’s dead. Everypony in my family is dead.”
“Aye, that is true. Though there are ways around it.” I begun circling me again, this time clockwise. “There are many mysteries in the world. Things unexplainable even by magic. The fact is when I learned you had the sight I needed to meet you. It had to be now, here in this place dedicated to the dead. Here the distance between the worlds are not as vast. I needed to tell you just how disappointed I was in you.”
“What the hell are you talking about,” I responded in anger jabbing my hoof at it only for the form to burst into a cloud and reform behind me.
“I see you making the same damn mistakes everpony makes.” I turned around just in time for him to poke me hard in the chest. “You see, they are tricking you. They are making you think in terms of good and evil. Like you have to be one or the other. It’s all lies. There is a third choice. One that is neither, neutral. Other ponies will make you think you should use your strength to help the weak, but its horseshit!”
“Is that all you came to say,” I asked.
“No, just one of many things. Ask me anything and I’ll answer you.”
“Is it true you killed all those ponies, that you went insane alone in Stable 77 and killed your way through the wasteland?”
“Oh, that! Yep all true, every word. For one hundred and forty years I had my way with the world. My time in the stable opened my eyes to the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That everypony is equal.” I had to admit that was not the answer I was expecting. “I saw through the bullshit. The whole cause of the war was cause the ruling class of zebras and ponies could not admit they were fallible. The alicorns were just the fourth race of pony, and the zebra weren’t lesser, just different. Don’t fall for the lies son, everypony has magic. Unicorns wield it with their horns, while pegasi control the air around them. Even Earth ponies use magic to commune with the Earth. It comes from will, not cutie marks. Dammit, boy you are going around doing stupid shit cause some mark appeared on your butt.”
He was right. I had a sister and a whole herd waiting for me. I could just get up and leave. I owed nothing to the human. I already got one pony killed on this quest, not including all the ponies I killed. Yet here I am trying to get another bystander involved. “I thought cutie marks represented your special talent.”
“Nah, cutiemarks don’t mean nothing. They just help you focus your magic. Truth is you can get as much power working against your mark as with it. And, don’t you go thinking you belong back with the bison, either. That was your papa’s dream, and he got himself and your momma killed doing it too. If you want to solve the mystery of this thing, do it cause you want to, not because you need to. Heaven’s know I had plenty of fun here in my day.”
I gulped because I knew I was about to ask the big question. “Why did you do it?”
“It was my way of helping the world, and having fun. With in each pony is the potential to become a god or a demon, but I wanted to show the world the power of a pony by himself. Fuck, make sure they knew the strength of a pony with out shit to lose. You know, set a standard. Of course I had help from my friend too.”
“Friend?!”
“My buddy the pip-pony. Together we killed he King of Stable 77 and fought heaven and Earth.” Oh, my goddess, he was still insane in death. “After I lost him I found it no longer as fun cracking skulls, breaking backs, or tearing limbs. In those last ten years I was just going through the motions.” Ok, really crazy.” “In fact it was him who figured out how to beat aging.”
“How?”
“A spoonful of taint, everyday. Take to little and you get a nasty case of cancer, take too much you end up a giant wiggle worm. However, just enough and little things like radiation and time start meaning less to ya.”
“How did you die?”
“Liver failure.” He started to lose his shape as his voice trialed off. “Fuck, I don’t have much time left. One more thing boy, a gift from me to you.”
“What?”
“Magic!” At that his form broke up into a spectral cloud flowing over my face and into my horn. I felt warmth spreading through my head as my eyes were filled with white light. All my pain melted away. Than it stopped. The world was back to normal and I was alone by a tree. I made to walk away, but heard a voice, weak and small. “Make me proud boy.” I smiled and made to walk away when I heard it again. “One more thing, a warning. Beware Pinkie Pie, she is always watching and now that she is free from life its true, too.” I waited five minutes after that in case I could hear something, but only the wind made a sound. I walked back towards the tank, testing my horn to see if I could summon a flash spell. A white light formed from the end of my horn lighting my way.
I made my way into the camp only to be greeted by a scared sky pointing a semi-automatic pistol at me. “Whose there,” she yelped.
“Just me,” I replied extinguishing my horn. I saw her relax her muscles and stash her gun.
“Chase, what the hell was that? You’re eyes were all funky and you were seeing things that weren’t there.”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
“You’re not crazy are you?”
“Gee, I hope not.”
We were off the next morning before the sun rose. Nothing bothered us through the night. Like yesterday morning, we didn’t walk in a straight-line. It was again a morning filled with chasing animals and checking random junk only this time my head wasn’t hurting. A part of me just seemed to accept the craziness of the whole ordeal. A week ago my life was scouting missions with my sister, today I lived in a world filled with alicorns, humans, and ghosts. Even if last night was just me losing touch with sanity, one thing was correct. I needed to be living my life for myself. I dare say I was letting myself have some fun for once.
A little before noon we approached a large gated compound. The surrounding land was filled with large swaths of tilled land with sickly green and yellow sprouts as far as the eye could see with sparse farm house dotting the landscape. I had never seen such a sight before. About a mile out four ponies galloped towards us, two in heavy black armor and two wearing light barding. The ponies in armor beat the others to us. I braced myself for a fight, mostly out of habit. “Halt, state your business with Broccoli.”
Sky swooped down and floated above us upside down. “Trade!” she said.
“You don’t look like traders.”
‘We aren’t,” I replied. Before the armored ponies could ask another question the two light armored ponies caught up to us.
“Let them in boys. Soaring Skies is a regular with us here, though we don’t know the feller,” said a one of the other ponies. Sky righted herself and land next to me. She hugged me with a wing.
“This here is my business partner. You can trust him. The dummy doesn’t even know how to use a gun.” I pushed her wing off of me.
“I do too. I just don’t like using them though.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Yeah, I believe you.” The armored security ponies apparently were convinced we belonged here and wandered off. One of the others escorted us to the gate, a small yellow buck. “Those guys are new, what happened to the last group of guards,” asked Sky.
“They all moved on already. Most ponies here are just looking for a quick cap before going off to the next place.”
“So you hire out mercenaries to guard your town?”
He looked towards me. “Yeah, mercs make up half our towns security. Most ponies living here are needed working the fields so we have to hire out.” We reached the main gate. The buck waved at the armored ponies manning the gate. “Should be fine the rest of the way by yourselves. Make sure to buy some broccoli while you’re here. Enjoy your stay.” With that he was off. As we reached the gate it slowly opened up for us. Sky got restless and just flew over the top. When the gate finally opened enough I found her already talking to another guard pony selling our extra ammo. I stood a bit away from her and let her do her thing when I noticed a strange mare walking up with a wood crate on her back.
The mare was a skinny paint with a mostly white coat with brown and tan spots and a brown mane cut short. She had on a ratty old tan duster, and a pair of red horned rim glassed. Everypony seemed to avert their glaze as she dropped the crate on the ground. She stood up on it and cleared her throat. “Can I have everponies attention,” she called out. No pony seemed to give her any.
“Excuse me, I have an announcement. All hired guards are required to listen or else they don’t get paid, according to the sheriff’s orders.” Everypony fell silent except for Sky and the old stallion she was selling ammo to. All the mercs gathered around her, giving her a death glare. I moved closer to hear better. “Thank you all for working on securing our town. However, Broccoli is in need of more than just guards. We need ponies to work the fields. We can’t offer much, but what we can offer you is an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Work the fields and we will find a family to put you up. Work for a month and we can offer you a room in the bunkhouse. Work a year and become a citizen with your own home to call your own. There is a better way of life and it can start for you today. Also, sign up now and you can have an extra weeks ration of broccoli at this weeks end. Thank you.”
“Get bent you old hag,” screamed one merc.
“Hey, I’m not a hag, or old,” replied the paint mare.
“And we ain’t no farmers ‘ither,” replied another merc.
She let out a humph and climbed off her crate. “See you all tomorrow,” she called out as the crowd dispersed. She slowly bit the crate and put it back on her back when it got knocked off by Sky who pulled her in for a an unwanted hug. “Morning, Morning. Its ok if no pony signs up to be a farmer. There is always next time.” The timid paint was trying to claw her way out of the hug but the pegasus would not give. Eventually she resigned to her fate and patted Sky’s arm.
“Nice to see you too Soaring.” At that Sky let her go and shook her head in disappointment.
“You know I don’t like to be called that.”
“Well tough, its what I like calling you,” she replied sticking her tongue out. They both chuckled. I approached them both.
“Well I thought it was a nice speech personally.” The skinny mares eye’s lit up. I swear there were sparkles and everything.
“Really! Do you want to become a farmer?” I suddenly backed away, but before I could protest Sky placed herself between the mare and me.
“No, he’s my unicorn. Were forming our own company and I can’t have him run off to play in the dirt. Besides when he dies I get his pipbuck.”
“I am not planning on dying any time soon.”
“I can wait. It’s a very nice pipbuck, after all.” I looked down at my leg to find the paint mare an inch away from my pipbuck.
“Oohh, its golden.” I took a step away from her. She walked a step closer, muzzle still inches away. “I can see why you want this. It’s a refurbished model E.” I took another step away, she took another step closer. “Its so new I can see my reflection in it still!”
Sky flew next to me. “Chase, meet Morning Mist. Morning, meet Star Chaser.” I stuck my hoof up, while Morning mist took a step back and looked at my hoof. Then up at my face, then back at my hoof. She slowly stuck out hers hoof and tapped mine.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Star.” I had never been called that before.
“Same here, Ms. Mist.” She beamed back at me. Before we could say anything else Sky flew between both of us and started ushering us towards town.
“Broccoli is really awesome. It is the grows all of its own food…”
“Actually we import a lot of our food using broccoli as trade for…”
“…When I first got here I ate nothing but broccoli for two weeks straight. I ate so much that my…”
“…also we specialize in doing repair work for other ponies since this used to be a military…”
“… and the doctor said that it was all completely normal and I shouldn’t ‘just’ eat broccoli. Oh look a junk salespony, maybe he wants some stuff for trade.” At that Sky flew of leaving me alone with Morning Mist.
“…but then everypony just kept calling us that. So it became our towns name.” Morning looked around and noticed Sky had already left, while I had no clue what either Mare had just said. “Oh, Soaring already left.” She turned back to me. “Are you sure you don’t want to be a farmer?” I face hoofed.
After selling all our excess crap we ate a late lunch consisting of broccoli soup, served with broccoli salad and deep-fried broccoli for desert. It all actually tasted extremely good, and was a mark improvement over cooked mutt. I could see why Sky would just eat it for two weeks straight. Sky and Morning had just kept talking to each other the whole time while I felt weird sitting with them. Was this how regular pony life was like? Just hanging out at a café between work. It just felt, weird. There was no gunfire, death, or scouting. Just two old friends catching up, talking over broccoli tea. “Is that true?” I had missed something. Both of them were staring at me, waiting an answer. I slowly chewed my food and swallowed.
“Sorry, what?”
“Where you raised by bison?”
“Yeah, out west.”
“See told you, he was. That’s why he has a feather in his hat and everything.”
“Actually the feather came with the hat. I think it’s a griffon feather.”
“So why are you out here than?”
“I am looking for a computer. One with access to the old network.”
“He’s looking for a file, for a machine.”
“Really what does the machine do,” asked Morning.
“It’s some old prewar machine. A fail safe of a sorts,” I lied.
“Oohh. That sounds cool. So what does it do, like clean water or restart the weather.”
“I don’t know. I am doing for a friend. It was kind of a last request.” At that I took a big bite of food so I wouldn’t have to answer any more questions. Last thing I needed was to tell these two was that I was trying to find some time machine for an alien from another dimension. Celestia, I sounded crazy.
“Wow, you’re lives sound so amazing. I wish sometime I could go on adventures, but I am needed here.”
“What do you do here Morning Mist,” I asked. It was then I noticed Sky frantically waving her hooves in the air behind Morning trying to prevent me from asking that question.
“No much actually. I help in the field when I can. I fix machines. I have a good mechanical sense. But my talent is understanding water.” At that she seemed to get excited, too excited. She lifted the back of her jacket and pointed at her cutie mark. It was three droplets of water flowing in a circle around each other. “I love studying the water cycle, water transport, water talismans, soil water, water radiation, plant water uptake, evapotranspiration, and plumbing. I routinely check the soil water, amend our irrigation water tanks, and alter the towns water usage. It really should be a full time position. Though it’s a one-pony job, and the elder scientist has already started training two more ponies. One of which is specializing in soils so they are already starting to split up my duties. That’s why the sheriff thought it would be great if I started trying to recruit more farmers, so I could have more stuff to do.”
“So why don’t you leave. You know take that expertise and apply it in some other town.”
“But they need me. If I were not here, who would check the daily water consumption?” Probably anypony with some free time. “Any ways when I was a filly they took us into the field…” I’ll spare you the details. The main jest was she saw the irrigation system and put it on herself to redesign the whole thing, from scratch. Oh and she did all the modifications with out the permission from anypony else in town while she was still only twelve. Mistakes were made, bad ones. “And that’s how I got my cutie mark. See, it’s really cool.” It really wasn’t. I looked over to find Sky asleep.
Morning Mist noticed the sleeping pegasus. “Oh the poor thing must be tired from all her adventuring.” She grabbed Sky by her main and threw her on to her back. She made it two steps away from the table before falling flat. “She is really heavy, with these guns and all.” Long story short I ended up carrying the sleeping Sky all the way to Mornings house, or shack rather. I placed her on an old love seat. Morning threw a blanket over her. “She always stays with me when she is in town. She worked as a town guard for two months, and I put her up. We have been friends since.” Morning walked over to a table and gestured for me to sit. Reluctantly I joined her. “I really don’t like it when she leaves. I get so scared I’ll never see her again.”
“She’s a strong pony. She can take care of herself.”
“Oh, I know.” She looked around her place then down at her hooves. Her ‘house’ was made of rusted old sheet metal wielded together. There was a table constructed out of old two by fours, a scavenged couch, a bed, and a rusty old workbench covered with papers and a hunting rifle. “Sky usually comes back alone. The last few times she had a dog with her, though.”
“The dog got killed a few days ago.” I spared her the details about us eating it for dinner.
“That’s to bad. But, what I was getting at was that I really have no place for you to stay. I can ask around and see if I could come up with someplace for you to stay. The bunkhouse is reserved for farm hands only.”
“Are there no inns.”
“Well there is a room or two at the saloon. Its usually filled with the guards though. Most of them camp outside, though, but I don’t think you want to stay there.”
“Oh, why not?”
She leaned in close to me like she was going to tell me a secret. “Its filled with drunk ponies,” she whispered. I laughed at her; she smiled.
“Well it goes with the territory. Don’t worry I’ll be fine.” I put my hat back on and waved at her as I left. I wandered around town for a while. It was an old military base. All of the old building had been preserved and a series of shanty towns sprung up between every building. I realized a good portion of the ‘wall’ was made up of the houses of the ponies that formed this town. I found myself a small bench and took in the place. Little fillies ran back and forth while guards regularly walked around the confines of the little town reminding everypony of the wasteland that lay beyond. It was an oasis of civilization amidst the chaos of the Equestria.
As the sun started to make its descent for the day I made my way over to the bar, apparently named ‘Salon.’ Evidently no pony bothered correcting the sign. The bar was empty save for a passed out stallion. I made a seat at the bar, when out of the back came the ugliest ghoul I ever laid my eyes on. “What the fuck happened to your face,” I asked. Part of his muzzle appeared to be melted off.
“Ah, well fuck you too,” he replied. I just gawked at him. “You buying anything or just came to take up space?”
I shut my jaw. “Yeah, I was wondering if you had any rooms available?”
“Just one kid, yours for fifty caps.”
“Deal.” I slid him some caps.
“Up the stars last room on the left.” He threw the key at me and walked away. I went upstairs and found the tiny room, just big enough for a bed and a dresser. I dropped off my bags and went back down to the bar. “Oh you’re back already. What you want buck?”
“What you got?”
“Same thing as every other bar. Beer, whiskey, vodka, and scotch, all past their expiration date.” Kind of like the bar pony.
“A beer and two shots of whiskey.”
He rolled his eyes. “A beer and bottle of whiskey. Here’s a shot glass give it back when your done or I am charging it to your room.” I was going to say I only wanted a shot but before I could even say anything. “We only sell stuff by the bottles kid. Fifteen caps.” I paid the ugly stallion, or at least I thought it was a stallion. “Enjoy alchy.” He walked off.
I poured myself a shot and slammed it.
“Psssss.” I turned to find the sleeping stallion at the bar awake and peeking out from his hat.
“Huh?”
“You’re suppose to leave him some extra caps.”
“Why, I paid him what he asked for. If he wanted more he should charge more.”
“It’s called a tip you dumb ass,” hissed the drunk old stallion. “You leave ten to twenty percent, or one cap per item. Its courteous.”
I threw down two more caps on the bar and took my drinks up and levitated them to a dark table in the corner. I always preferred the dark. I think as a scout I was trained to observe and not be seen. Darkness always made me feel more secure. I sipped on my beer and took a shot every once in a while. Over time more ponies filtered in. After an hour I was half done with whiskey, and long done with my beer. I ordered another one and lit myself a cigarette. Sky was angry I took out a pack from the carton. Apparently cigarettes are as good as currency too. She said it made no sense to burn money, but I wasn’t burning money. I was smoking it.
I noticed two unicorn guards come in. They were looking over their soldiers and talking in whispers. They ordered their drinks and sat down next to me. They seemed suspicious. It was obvious they wanted nopony to hear their conversation. So of course I leaned in to listen.
“I finally got it off of him. All we gots to do is just go in and grab it.”
“But won’t they suspect us. You were the last one in the office and I am supposed to be doing patrol tonight.”
“That is why we high tail it out of here after tonight. It don’t matter if they know we did it. We will be hooked back up with the Wild Herd in two days and they won’t be able to do shit about it.”
“Ok, we go after this round.” After they finished up their drinks they got up to leave. I waited ten seconds before following them. Outside darkness had settled giving me ample cover. The two idiots didn’t even look back to see if they were being tailed. They made their way to a non-descript door on the side of the old base and unlocked it with a key. I snuck up to the door and nudged it open. It was the armory.
The two where helping themselves to every gun and piece of ammo they could fit into their saddlebags. I slowly backed out the door and sat down waiting for them. Sure enough they trotted out without a care in the world right past me. I cleared my throat. The both looked at me. “What the hell do you want,” asked the leader of the two.
“Put the shit back and leave. I won’t even tell them it was you. Just go and leave these good folks alone.”
One looked scared, but the leader of the two stepped foreword. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll beat the living shit out of you two and turn you to in. I doubt this town looks too kindly on thieves.”
“Well we don’t look to kindly on snitches either.” He levitated out a shotgun and fired at. I jumped to the side and teleported away. The other unicorn had enough time to levitate two hand guns and turn around firing just at where I had reappeared hitting me in the shoulder. They must have fought teleporters before. I let out a flash and entered VATS. Time slowed down enough that I could make out the grimaces on their faces. I used the extra time to form my magic bullets. I gathered the air around me and infused it a single point with a flash spell firing off two small magic bolts at shotguns face. I watched both of them impact into his skull splattering blood across his face. Time returned to normal and guns lets out two more shots.
I teleported again. Guns quickly turned around and let out a shot not noticing I had teleported ten feet to his left. I encased myself in a field of levitation and sprinted and hurled myself as quickly as I could towards him. He swung his guns around too late as I tackled him. We wrestled around on the ground as I managed to place my hoof under his jaw. I unleashed a torrent of magic through my hooves propelling my horseshoes five inches in a second breaking his jaw and knocking him unconscious. Then, I got shot in the back.
Shotgun had used the ensuing time to sneak behind me and get a clean shot. My jacket and barding prevented most of the buck from getting through, but damn did it hurt. I rolled on my back to find him levitating it over my face. I managed to wrap my own telekinetic field around it to jerk the barrel out of my face, but the other guard pony quickly pulled it out of my field and lined up another shot. However, I had enough time to get back on my hooves. He had me dead to rights when a single shot rang out. It wasn’t a shotgun, but a rifle. We both turned and noticed a bevy of hired mercs and townies together training their rifles on both of us. In front was a single earth pony mare wearing light armor with a battle saddle holding a smoking rifle and an annoyed expression on her face.
She turned to a merc standing next to her. “What is going on here?”
“We found these three fighting when we got here, mam.”
She pointed her gun at the shotgun-wielding unicorn. “You, explain yourself.”
“This fucker attacked us,” he lied.
She pointed her gun at me. “What do you have to say about this?”
“He’s stealing from you. He has half your armory in his bag, check it.”
She pointed her gun back at the unicorn. “Empty the bag, nice and slow.”
He turned pointing the shotgun at her. “Fuck you, bitch.” She was quicker and he was dead. Straight shot to the forehead, nice and clean. She walked up to his dead carcass and kicked his bag spilling out ammo onto the ground. She walked over to the unconscious unicorn and did the same test with similar results.
“Take this one into custody,” she ordered the other guards. She walked up to me. “Ok, what the hay is going on?”
“I overheard these two talking about doing something so I followed them. I confronted them as they left the armory and they opened fire. You know the rest.” She quickly scanned me and stopped for a moment in thought. “We owe you a debt of gratitude it seems. Go to the doc and have him give you the once over. Tell him it’s on the house. When he’s done with you have him come over to the jail. Come tomorrow I went you out of town, you here. We don’t like troublemakers. Now git.”
She gestured towards a medial hut and walked away. I hobbled over and to find the doctor already peaking outside to see what the commotion was about. In fact half the town was peaking out doors and windows watching me. I didn’t even have to explain anything to the doctor, he just ushered me in to his office and on to a table. I was treated for two gun shot wounds, a strained hernia, magic exhaustion, medium radiation poisoning, and exhaustion; otherwise I was all healthy. I was also given the usual doctorly advice: don’t go into radiated buildings, try to avoid getting shot at, cigarette smoke gives you cancer, don’t eat mystery meat, and try stretching before running for your life.
As I walked out, the doctor followed me locking the building up behind him and making his way towards his next patient. I made to walk off only to hear a small squeak. Sitting by the door was Morning Mist. “Are you okay?”
“Yep, clean bill o’health. What are you doing here?”
“Well when we heard, we hurried over here to see if you were okay.”
I looked around. “Where’s Sky.”
“Well when Soaring heard you where going to be forced out of town she rushed off to argue with the sheriff. I tried telling her when Mayor Boiled Broccoli gets an idea in her head, she doesn’t change it.”
“Your sheriff is your mayor too and her name is Boiled Broccoli?”
“Yes and yes.” I ambled towards the bar, Morning followed. Her head hung low in silent contemplation.
“You seem sad, what’s wrong?”
She looked up at me and then back at her hooves. “If you have to leave tomorrow Soaring Sky will leave tomorrow.”
“You truly care for her don’t you?”
“She is my best friend. My only friend actually.”
“Do you actually like living here? I mean you seem down about this whole place.”
She looked up at me. She tried speaking, but every time she started she would stop. Her head dropped back down and she took in a deep breath. “Actually, I hate it here. No pony gives me the respect I deserve. I literally read every book that they have here. My job is redundant. I’ve done everything I could ever hope to accomplish. The only thing left for me to do is get shacked up and have some foals, but I am not ready to be a mother. I’m not sure if I ever will.” She looked back up at me with a fire in her eyes. “Also, I hate broccoli. The food, the town, the mayor; I hate all of them. I’m just a coward though. I am too scared to face the world. I don’t know what to do.”
“You should come with us!!!” We both turned in surprise as Soaring Sky did a triple loop and landed next to us. “Come on it will be so fun. We’ll all go and see the sights: Dead Canterlot, Manehatten, Friendship City, Tenpony Tower, everything. I’ve been telling you to come with me and now is your chance.” Sky put her hoof to her chin in thought. “Your last chance actually.”
“What did you do Sky,” I asked.
“Oh, not much. I kinda sorta maybe punched the mayor in the face and got myself kicked out of town, too.”
Morning gasped. “Oh my Celestia. Why did you do that?”
“Cause she was being a mean old bitch.”
Morning just snickered. “When isn’t she?” She shook her head trying to calm herself down.
“So Morning Mist, What will it be: adventuring across Equestria, or eating broccoli in Broccoli while working for Boiled Broccoli?” At that we both looked at the skinny paint. She seemed deep in thought.
“Fuck Broccoli! Come tomorrow I am joining you two.” Sky let out a cheer and flew in to hug Morning, but Morning stuck out her hoof stopping the happy pegasus. I just smiled.
Footnote: Level up! Level 7
New Perk: Blessed by Luna: You’re a night pony! +2 intelligence and +2 perception during night.
Earth ponies are probably the least understood of ponies. Historically they were considered the lesser three of the pony races. However, in the story of Hearth Warming Eve, they were said to be the only pony race capable of growing produce. They are also said to be among the best cooks. Their understandings of the Earth’s working later proved to be a great benefit to technological development of Equestria. They learned to harness coal for fuel, crystals for arcane uses, and metals to control electricity giving them the ability to reproduce the gifts of the other two races using earthen materials. However to make the wasteland, the gifts of all three races were required to reshape the world.
Morning Mist stood above me waving her hoof. I was lying on the ground, head in agonizing pain. With each heartbeat I would feel a stabbing pulse of pain echo inside my skull. I could barely make out the sounds she was making as words. I tried to sit up, but she pushed me back down. “Are you alright,” she called out a third time before I could understand her.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“He says he is okay,” she yelled behind her.
“He could be lying, ask him again!”
I made to lift my hooves, but noticed they were covered in blood. “How many hooves am I holding up,” she asked waving one hoof in my face.
“One.” I looked around and saw sand as far as the eye could see. Everything was orange from the setting sun. There was an overturned cart torn in half and on fire with two brightly colored Earth ponies milling around a bunch of dead bodies. I was near the edge of a circular crater. “Where are we?”
“What is the last thing you remember Star?”
“We were in Broccoli waiting to leave. What’s going on?”
“He has some memory loss,” she screamed behind her.
“How much?”
“I don’t know, like a day!” She turned back to me. “Do you remember the robo-ponies?”
“Robo-ponies? No, I think I would remember robo-ponies.”
“He forgot about the Steel Rangers.” She called out again.
“Can he stand,” called back Soaring Skies
“I don’t know.” She turned back to me. “Come on lets see if we can get you up.” She grabbed me by my hooves and helped me to my feet. Everything felt unsteady.
“Whose blood is this?”
“Don’t worry, it’s mostly the serpents,” she said waving a hoof dismissively. I looked around some more. We were definitely in some desert. Across from the circular crater was Soaring Skies standing next to several ponies wearing burlap cloaks.
“Serpent, what serpent?”
“I’ll explain later. First lets go see how Soaring is doing.” I made to take a step but fell down. At first I thought it was because my wooziness, but the ground underneath me started to give away. One of the Earth ponies near the caravan screamed, as Morning Mist reached out her hoof and grabbed me. The pit had started expanding pulling me down. I heard Skies distinct guns blaring out before puttering to a stop, as she quickly needed to reload. As much as Morning tried to pull me up the sand underneath me kept sinking. Eventually the blood loosened her grip and I started sliding down the ever-expanding hole.
At the base was a metal monstrosity covered in blood. It had an open maw full of grinding drills pulling the very ground towards its mouth. I slid down the pit and pulled up my pip-buck and selected explosives. I was all out of dynamite despite distinctly remembering having some sticks left, but I had two things called pulse grenades. I selected them and pulled up VAT’s. Time stopped and I could see what was trying to kill me. It had a long snake like body consisting of half metal and half scales. The entire head was encased in metal helm. And, it was spurting blood from its eyes, which had been shot out. It registered as half dead. All I could think was, ‘this must be the serpent Morning was talking about.’
I threw the first grenade and it bounced off its head exploding two feet above it in an electric field. The drills stopped, but the creature could still move and struck out towards me. The second grenade entered its mouth exploding into a blue field encapsulating its whole head stopping the thing dead. I finally finished my slide and ended up harmlessly in it mouth. Even though it wasn’t moving I did not want to be here. I tried running out but kept sliding right back into its open mouth. I tried two more time with similar results. “Damn it Star Chaser, just teleport up here,” called out Soaring Skies from the top of the pit. Teleportation, why hadn’t I thought about that? I was up and out of the pit in a second.
A zebra wearing a cloak trotted up to me. “Hold still,” he said. He grabbed my hoof and messed around with my pip-buck. I tried to pull my arm away but a white hoof stopped me.
“You can trust him. He’s kinda like a doctor, at least the closest we’ll find out here,” replied Soaring Skies as the zebra looked on.
“This thing says his head is crippled. Just give me one second. I have something that will fix you real quick.” He pulled out a healing potion and crushed up some party-time mentals. Next, he pulled out a flask and poured some liquid into it. “A dash of vodka for personality.” He gave it a quick swirl and the whole thing fizzled. “Drink this.” It didn’t seem smart to drink mixed chems from a stranger, but I obliged. The whole thing had a strong kick to it. As I downed it I could feel my head throbbing, as a chill seemed to run through my brain. My head cleared up and my dizziness faded. My memories slowly returned.
“Thanks, Paris I needed that,” I said shaking my head after a few minutes.
“Glad to see that you remember me,” he replied.
“What was that thing?”
“I don’t know,” replied Paris.
“Pony monster,” suggested a zebra mare
“It was a war machine, duh!”
“That still doesn’t narrow it down,” squeaked Morning Mist.
Earlier that morning just after dawn I was waiting outside a broken down farmhouse. Unlike Morning Mists shack in Broccoli proper, this was a real house made of recycled timber. There was a porch and everything, and I had been sitting on a barrel on the porch for an hour. Sky meanwhile had abandoned her two guns to go for a morning flight. She was pulling a triple backwards loop spiraling up into the air closing her wings as she reached a crescendo holding herself motionless in the air for a brief moment. As gravity worked its magic, she twisted her body into a swan dive picking up speed before unfurling her wings and pulling herself back up at the last possible second. She landed without a sound and cantered up to me with a wide smile on her face.
“Wow, have you ever thought of sky dancing professionally,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re an ass, you know that right.” She made herself towards her guns and started slipping them on.
“No I’m not. I am an unicorn.”
She finished attaching her heavy battle saddle and flew up to the barrel I was sitting on. “You’re an ass with a horn, but an ass none the less.” She shoved me off my perch. “Move it, I want a pickle.” She dove her head into the barrel right when Morning Mist walked out of the house.
“Don’t worry Hope, I have these two protecting me if anything goes wrong.” Morning waved a hoof at us. Hope, Morning’s older sister, looked over at us. I was lying sideways on the ground where Sky had pushed me, and Sky pulled her head out of the barrel, soaking wet with brine, smiling while eating a pickle.
“And I didn’ know why I was worrying,” deadpanned Hope. Hope was a paint like her sister. They looked almost identical, but where as Morning Mist was spry and wirily, Hope was tall and muscular. Also, Hope didn’t wear glasses. “I’m not gonna be able ta talk ya out of this, are I?”
“Nope, I made my mind.” Hope walked up to her little sister shaking her head. She gave her a great big hug that went on for several minutes. She was whispering in her sister’s ear, but I couldn’t make out a sound. Every once in a while I would hear Morning Mist reply with an ok, yes, and an uh-huh. Eventually she let go of her sister, her eyes watering with tears. She gave me and Sky a death glare and walked back inside slamming the door behind her.
Morning Mist walked up to Sky and me flashing us a wry smile. “I’m ready. Let’s go.” We walked in relative silence away from the Morning Broccoli Farm. Though Hope and Mist were only two years apart, Hope had been married for four years and already had two foals. Their parents died in a bandit attack some years back. Eventually we made it back to the main road and headed north. “So where are we going first?”
I had no real idea. “I need to find a networked computer. So we’ll just follow the road to the next major town and look there.” This morning before we left town I snuck into the main building that made up the old military base to hack the computer. Turns out there wasn’t even a security code and it was just filled with notes from after the war by the old mayors. Apparently before Broccoli grew broccoli the town was called Rainy Days after the first mayor. Other than that I learned nothing from the computer.
“The next major town would be Salt Cube City. It’s a bit of a ghoul den and the city core is radioactive,” answered Sky.
“So more glowing zombies. Hopefully this time they won’t be semi-immortal griffin warriors.” Sky and me chuckled while Morning looked perplexed. “So, I guess Morning is the new member of our little company.” I kept walking as Sky stopped. “Is something wrong?”
“Shoot I didn’t think that. Oh no, this messes everything up.”
“No it doesn’t. She can just take an extra share.”
“No that’s not how a company works. There has to be discussions and deals. The arrangement needs to be commonly agreed upon.”
“Ok, than I move to vote we add a new member to our little nameless organization, and we all split our shares evenly. All for it raise your hoof.” I raised my hoof. Sky stood hoof firmly planted on the ground. “Ok, what’s wrong now?”
“Well now we have to split up ammo and the death payout clause. I refuse to split your pip-buck and any 5 mm ammo.”
I rolled my eyes. “Morning.” I pointed my hoof at her. She squeaked and hid behind Soaring Sky.
“Yes?”
“Do you want my pip-buck?”
“Its nice, but no not really.”
“What weapons do you use?”
“I have an altered hunting rifle that uses 3.47 bullets and a 10 mm pistol.”
“Ok, same deal as before but she forfeits all rights to my pip-buck upon my death. She has first right to all 3.47 bullets and half of the 10 mm bullets with you taking the other half. Also in event of either your or her death we split your guns. All for it raise your hoof.” I raised my hoof, Morning raised her hoof, and we looked at Sky. She sheepishly raised her hoof.
“Fine.”
“Alright Morning. Welcome to our company.” I smiled and resumed walking down the path. Sky solemnly followed, while Morning didn’t move. “What? Is something wrong?”
“Well its nice and all that you let me in to your company, but what do you do and what is our name?”
Sky face hoofed. “We’re adventurers. We help each other to finish our ends. We split any payout from scavenge and odd jobs evenly. And, we don’t have a name. I guess were Morning Sky and Star for now.”
“So were mercenaries.”
“No mercenaries take on only security and battle related duties, and do not scavenge. We on the other hand take jobs on with discretion, but make most our profit off of scavenge.”
I turned to Morning. “So we are kinda like mercs, but not.”
“Exactly,” replied Sky.
“Ok, I guess we need to make caps. However, I am not really too hot on the name.”
“Whats wrong with it. It has all of our names on it,” replied Sky.
“Yeah but Soaring is your family name, not Sky. So shouldn’t we be called Morning Soaring and Star?”
“But Morning Sky sounds better then Morning Soaring. Besides I don’t like the name Soaring, it sounds like a stallions name.”
“But Soaren was so cool. You should be happy to be his descendant.”
“Wait, whose Soaren?”
Sky turned to me “He’s my great, great, great grandfather and the orgin of my family’s name. He was one of the original Wonderbolts, back before they became part of the Equestrian Army as the Shadowbolts. Today the Wonderbolts are the premier hit squad for the Enclave. However, my pappy was loyal to the crown. He never left his position even after the world ended. It makes me sick that the Enclave would go on using his memory for propaganda but ignores the fact that the last original Wonderbolts were completely against them. I’m proud of him to be sure, but I would rather not have the stigma of the Wonderbolts associated with me. And! Morning Sky makes more sense cause it matches your name Star.”
“Well if we want to make it make more sense wouldn’t Dawnstar be cooler. I mean morning sky refers to dawn.”
“I like it, I vote we call our selves Dawnstar.” I raised my hoof and Morning Raised her hoof.
“You just enjoy railroading me, don’t you Chase.” I nodded with a grin. “Fine our name is Dawnstar.” Morning clapped her front hooves together in happiness while Sky walked off grumbling. “He gets his name in the company’s name, but I don’t.”
We followed the road towards a huge tower in the distance. I was informed that the tower was some Steel Ranger base. Living in the Bison herd we heard stories about the Steel Rangers. To sum them all up, Steel Rangers are dicks. To be more exact, if they think you’re gear is sufficiently advanced they think you do not deserve it and it is their goddess given right to take it by force. Essentially, they are fancy bandits. Unfortunately, the main road went right to the tower. Under Mornings suggestion we decided to circle around it giving the Ranger base a wide berth. Plus it didn’t hurt that her route cut out two miles from our trip. After crossing through some hills we finally reconnected with the main road before lunch time.
“I know you have only heard bad things about the Steel Rangers, Star, but they aren’t all that bad. Some ponies even consider them heroes. They fight for their ideals and they help keep this area clear of raiders and bandits,” said Morning suddenly.
“That’s cause they don’t like the competition,” replied Sky.
“No, the tower acts as a training ground for new recruits. The different tribes that take up position along the Big 52 tend to keep out most raiders and bandits, but the Steel Rangers almost exclusively protect everything from the desert to Broccoli. Besides the occasional territory dispute it is relatively peaceful.”
“Yeah there is only a war here every other year.” I couldn’t tell if Sky was being sarcastic or not. “Nah most locals are to busy running down ponies who try to sneak past their territory before paying the tax.”
“Tax,” I asked.
“Unlike Broccoli, most other settlements don’t have anything to sell. So they make caps charging ponies access to their land. The caps go to paying mercs to keep peace, or at least it’s supposed to,” answered Monring.
“Just sounds like more crazy pony logic to me.”
“But you are a pony,” cried Sky and Morning in unison.
“Only by blood,” I called back. I lead on as they followed. As we passed over another hill I saw two ponies clad head to tail in metal coming up the other way, only twenty yards away. We stared at each other, as Sky and Morning caught up to me. My brain stopped working I found myself only able to say one thing. “Robo-ponies?”
I checked my EFS it was blue, not a threat. I felt myself relax; maybe they were the protectors of the land. Then one turned red. It nudged the other one. “Have you ever seen a gold pip-buck before?”
“Never,” he replied. My EFS now read two red marks. “I’m reading red on all three now. Open Fire!” Shit of course they would have the same arcane technology as my pip-buck in their suites. They’d probably have espresso machines built in to if the Ministry of Wartime Technology thought it would have helped the war effort two hundred years ago.
My brain hadn’t caught up, it was still stuck on ‘robo-ponies.’ To my surprise the first shot fired came from our side, and it wasn’t from Skies twin guns. Morning at first sight pulled out a rifle from her bag. She was balancing on her front hooves holding the gun aloft to her shoulder staring down the sight. Her right hoof hovered over a lever mechanism that acted as the trigger. Next thing I knew I was flying through the air as Sky lifted me up and threw me ten feet away behind a boulder on to my head. Saving me from an incoming missile fired off by one of the rob… Steel Rangers, which flew off somewhere towards the horizon. Meanwhile Morning fired her entire clip into the head of the closest ranger before grabbing her gun in her teeth and making her way to my position as another missile connected with her previous position.
I heard Sky’s guns blare out somewhere in the air above, while Morning slid out a 10 mm pistol from a holster in her jacket. A grenade ricocheted off the boulder we were using for cover exploding ten feet above us in the air. I am unsure what happened next. I think my mind broke. The only thing I could think was ‘these were the protectors of the wasteland.’ In what sick world were over powered robo-pony bandits considered ‘good?’ If there were no raiders, slavers, or bandits they would be thought of as scum, and that was all they were. The ghost was right, there was no good or evil, just ponies in different factions, and I was done sitting on the sidelines. I should have said screw the bison’s and done the right thing, and destroyed Appeloosa when I had the chance like the Stable Mare did. I should of killed those old mares instead of hiding and waiting for Sky to come and finish the job, and most of all I should be showing these dumb earth ponies not to fuck with a unicorn just because you think your armor will protect you.
Since, I had no idea what the smart thing to do in this situation was, I decided to just go ahead and do the dumb thing instead. I teleported back to my original position and entered VATS as soon as I felt my feet on solid ground. Time stopped and I sized up both combatants. The one that Morning shot in the face already had his armor fully regenerate. He was armed with a double grenade launcher battle saddle and was preparing to fire on Mornings position behind the boulder. The other had only a single rocket launcher and was lining up a shot on Sky who appeared to firing on him from directly above. So to sum up my situation, I was facing two armored opponents with magically self-repairing armor armed with weapons that could kill any one of us if we were caught in a direct hit. Trading blows was out, giving them distance was out too. I knew what I had to do.
I loaded up three magical bullets at the grenade launcher pony. His armor could regenerate, so what about his weapons. I aimed for the belt feed on the back of his gun. My first shot ripped out missing by inches. A shot from Morning rang out contacting him in the head. My second shot made home connecting with the grenade launcher doing partial damage. Morning’s next shot hit his neck, as a grenade pumped out. My third shot rung out crippling the belt mechanism. I had hoped for an explosion, but the launcher read dead so mission accomplished. All I had to do was maneuver around to get in a few good shots at his other gun after I fell out of VATS, but I was stuck in it. Time still moved slowly, and reality failed to return. Then I saw her.
A mare wearing a red dress and a red veil was standing on the other side of the ranger. It was Lucky! She had her magnum floating in front of her lining up a shot at the ranger. I single shot belted out connecting with a grenade as it was being belt fed, causing a chain reaction of explosions erupting his back in an ever expanding flame. Still time did not return. Instead Lucky turned and ran away downhill. She rounded a corner and as soon as she was out of sight time returned. I immediately felt the heat from the exploding pony in front of me as blast rung out towards my face. His buddy stood in silent reverie watching the burning pony wreathed in flames. Morning and Sky both stopped firing as well. I slammed my hoofs on the ground, “Enough!” I grabbed the burning pony in my telekinesis and rolled him on the ground until his flames were out. The other ranger stupidly lined his rocket launcher towards me. I lifted his half dead friend up between us.
“This is fucking stupid. You attack me try to take my shit and we are forced to blow up your friend. Instead of tending to him, you try to shoot me! Well here’s your friend take him.” I threw the steel pony at rocket launcher knocking him off his hooves. “Use this time to save his life. He rolled his friend off of him and stood.
“I am not leaving without that pip-buck.”
“You want this so bad, go three days over the mountain and have her make one for you. You want mine, than be a buck about it and take off that armor and fight me one on one for it.” The exploded pony let out a groan as he fought for consciousness. The standing ranger looked down and weighed his options.
“Fine, we’ll leave.” As he made to pick up his buddy group we were interrupted.
“What is going on here?” Morning squeaked as a unicorn mare in a red cloak along with four more armed robo-ponies flanked us.
Rocket launcher dropped his buddy back on the ground. “We came across these savages with an unusual pip-buck. We made to ascertain it, but came under heavy fire. We halted combat and the black unicorn offered to let me go peacefully so I decided to take on his offer, sir.”
The unicorn must have had rank. She turned her head sizing up my pip-buck. “I admit I have never seen that model.” Oh Luna, not again.
“Well we I offered your partner a chance to take me on hoof to hoof, but he refused. He was too scared to find out just how badly I would beat him. I’ll offer you the same choice. Take me on if you want my stuff or save your friend. Of course if you think you need to fight us ‘savages’ with power armor, than I am perfectly happy to show you how to blow up a pony in a can.” Please just leave me alone, is what I actually meant.
She turned towards one of the other armored ponies. “Help carry the injured initiate back to base.” Oh thank Luna. She turned back to me. “Very well I accept you’re offer of one on one combat.” Damn you, Celestia! She took off her jacket and made herself ready as the three rangers trotted off. I turned towards Sky who was giving me a ‘this is a bad idea’ glare. Morning sulked away from her boulder and made her way towards me. I took of my jacket and hat levitating them towards her. The unicorn cleared her throat. “What are the terms of the dual?”
I smiled. “We’re both unicorns, so light armor, hooves and magic only.”
“Very well, shall we commence?”
“No,” I replied.
“No?”
“If this is a duel everything must be equal. I am putting up some top grade gear, what do I get if I win?”
“You get the pip-buck of course.”
“I already have the pip-buck. I am very attached to it, literally. Should I lose I stand to lose something very dear, so it stands to reason you should stand to lose something of equal measure should you lose.” The mare put her hoof up to her muzzle in thought. Apparently forgetting she could just order the remaining three rangers to open fire.
“Fine, I offer you a very dear memory orb. It was obtained by the Brotherhood many decades ago and features the earliest memory of the goddess found to date. So, are we agreed?” I nodded my head in agreement. “My name is Scribe Scroll, Scribe of the Big 52 Steel Rangers, under the purview of The Ministry of Wartime Technology, and student of High Scribe Scold.” She curtsied to me before rising.
Not one to be out done I reared myself on my back hooves and neighed as loud as I could before slamming both my hooves on the ground. “I am Star Chaser, Wastelander of the Bison Herd of the West. Last descendent of Stable 77.”
“And member of the Dawnstar company,” Called out Sky behind me.
“Wait, that Stable 77,” asked one of the robo-ponies.
“You’re joking right, that’s just a legend. There’s no pony from stable 77.” I pointed towards symbol on my barding Scribe Scold shook her head in disbelief.
“So we doing this, or not,” I asked. She nodded back taking her stance. We stood still for several seconds.
Sky jumped in the air and screamed, “Fight!” With out hesitation I teleported next to her blindsiding her with a double buck to the face, sending her flying. She bounced twice on the ground before rising to her hooves, but I covered myself in telekinesis and launched myself at her swinging my pip-buck hoof right into muzzle. I tried to get her with another quick jab, but she put up some sort of shield. Her horn started glowing brightly so I jumped back. She dropped her shield only send out two waves of flames. They shot out in arches in front of her. I managed to dodge the first but was hit by the second.
“That’s for setting my initiate on fir…” I didn’t let her finish. I entered VATS and lined up two shots of magic bullets at her left knee. Both rang out but only one hit the mark. She had her shield back up. I raced around her as she hobbled on her knee. I made to get in closer and she dropped her shield and shot two more waves of flame crossing them at where I was standing. I rolled away unscathed. This time however the flames stayed lit forming whips. She waved them about, but they were too slow and not very distanced. After four seconds they burned out. I dashed in hoping to take advantage of the opening, but she brought her shield back up. Undeterred I placed my hooves on her shield and rang out a pulse wave from my hooves shattering it. I got in one free shot before she shot out another wave of flames. I easily dodged them, but gave her plenty of space. Meanwhile, she hobbled away. We stood together facing each other breathing heavily. Above her head three white arrows formed shooting strait and fast. The first two missed, but the third grazed my side, cutting into my barding and removing a good 4 inches of skin. She smiled. “You don’t fight like most unicorns, it’s almost like fighting an Earth pony who augments himself with magic.”
I smiled right back. “And you use magic mixed with fire arms. You’re shield and flames take too long and telegraph your attacks. Your arrows need to be summoned before they can be used. It’s all designed to force your opponent to give you an opening shot. Face it, you’re out classed. Give up now and I won’t embarrass you in front of your comrades.” She just shook her head and conjured three more arrows. I charged my horn in preparation. Just before she formed her third arrow I attacked. She was too distracted to notice I had covered the entire battlefield in my telekinetic field. I threw sand at her eyes from every possible direction and flared my horn taking out her vision. All three of her arrows launched out blindly nowhere near me. As she rubbed her eyes she formed two sweeping waves of flames spreading them out as wide as possible in hopes of hitting me. She was too late. I had already teleported safely away five feet above her. I fell slamming my elbows into her back, flattening her. I wrapped my back hooves around her shoulder and used my left hoof to choke her neck, while diving my right hoof into her horn taking out her magic. “Tap out.” She shook her head. I slammed my hoof into her face. “Tap out.” She shook her head. I repeatedly punched her in the face while cutting off her circulation. “Tap out. Tap out. Tap out. Tap out.” Punch, punch, punch, punch. Finally she did. I teleported back to Morning and Sky. Sky’smouth just hanged open while Morning covered her eyes unaware the fight had ended. I levitated my jacket and hat back on before turning to see the three robo-ponies helping Scribe Scroll on to her hooves. The right side of her face was already starting to swell and bruise. She shook off their help and hobbled towards me.
She stuck out her hoof. “Good fight.” I tapped her hoof with mine. She turned and levitated her jackets towards. It hung in the air as she pulled a clear orb from her pocket. “Here take it.” I levitated over to my bag. “It’s been a while since I lost a fight. You were holding back weren’t you?”
“No, you put up a good fight.”
“Horseshit! You could have dodged all my hits with teleportation, and could have shattered my shield at any time. What they hay did you do to my leg, and what was that thing you did with your hooves when my shield shattered?”
“I call it a magic bullet. Its compressed air enervated with magic, propelled out as a stream by a flash spell. I can form it in a bullet, or direct it through my hoof.”
“Why didn’t you end the fight earlier?”
“Truthfully?” She nodded. “I wanted to see what spells you had. I’ve never seen magic arrows and flame whips before.” She nodded, apparently accepting my answer.
“Take care, enjoy the memory.” She hobbled off towards her acolytes sipping on a potion. By the time she reached them, her gait returned to normal. I turned towards my group.
“That was dumb. We could have taken them, now all we got to show for this exchange is a loss of ammo and some stupid orb that only unicorns can use.” Sky walked off talking mostly to her self. “And you forgot to mention our company. At least we can use this get some publicity. But what does that say about us. Dawnstar, we punch mares in the face!”
Morning waited for me. I walked a bit slowly to allow Sky some distance. “I liked your magic. Did you use the magic bullet thingy to blow up that ranger?”
“That wasn’t me. The robo-pony was hit by Lucky.”
“Whose Lucky?”
Star, don’t talk about crazy hallucinations, I told myself. “She’s no pony. No pony important. Never mind, I think I took a hit to the head when Sky threw me.”
“Ok,” replied Morning. The rest of way to the desert was uneventful. We kept to the road and stopped for nothing. Any major threat was already dead, sporting exploded limbs courtesy from the steel ranger patrol from earlier. Eventually, we came across a caravan of two traders stopped on the road before a broken bridge. A large pole, about twenty feet high was embedded in the ground. At the top was a red flag. I looked off in the distance and noticed another one every three hundred yards or so going out to the horizon. We made our way to the caravans only to find three cloaked zebras arguing with one of the caravans.
“I don’t care how many caps you stripe basterds have. I ain’t selling you no ammo. I’ll sell you food, but there is no way I ain’t getting shot with my own goods.”
Morning walked up to the vendor. “Well will you sell us ammo.”
He stopped and considered for a second. “Screw this I am outta here. You lot are just going to turn around and sell my goods to these goddess killers.” He grabbed his brahmen and trotted off. As he trotted off, Morning shrugged.
“While, at least I tried.”
“Thanks anyways,” said the zebra mare. The other two zebras were both males. One was older than the other three and the other was broad shouldered and half muscles. The older zebra turned to the remaining caravan.
“Well do you have any ammo?”
“Sorry, I only have medicine, clothing and food.” Suddenly he bolted up. “Wait, I do have some ordinance though.” He gestured to a small mare sitting in the cart. She dug through and plopped down two apple shaped grenades with blue bands on them. The older stallion made some gestures with his hoof at the larger zebra, who only shook his head. “He only wants bullets right now, sorry.”
“I’ll take them,” I chimed. “What are they?”
The confused caravan turned to me. “Pulse grenades,” chirped the small mare who couldn’t be much older than a filly. “They destroy machines.”
“And nothing else,” chimed in Morning. The merchant glared at her. “Sorry, but they are an extremely specialized weapon used specifically for robots. They emit an EMP field that kills the power source on unshielded circuitry.”
“But they explode right?”
“Yep,” nodded the caravan owner.
“I’ll take them.”
“Well that is all and good, but we weren’t done with our transaction yet,” replied the zebra mare. “Do you have any sugar apple bombs?”
The zebras ended up buying out most of the food. Sky bought out all the remaining food, much to Mornings disgust. “Ponies are not supposed to eat meat,” she cried out. Everypony (and zebra) laughed out at her. We stocked up on potions and the traders went on his way, following the flags into the desert. Hungry, I pulled out my pan and started cooking us up some bacon, dandy boy apples and broccoli medley.
“What brings you out to the desert crossing,” asked Sky.
“We are headed to Tunnel Town to meet up with some of our friends and family. What about you three, are you mercenaries,” replied the older zebra.
“Oh not, we’re just a company of adventurers. We do everything from technical, magical, or odd job work.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. We needed some mercs to escort us across the desert since we are almost out of ammo,” replied the disappointed zebra mare.
“Oh, we also do work of a mercenary nature as well. I’m Soaring Sky, she is Morning Mist, and the unicorn with the pan is Star Chaser. What’s your name?” She stuck out her hoof. The older stallion slowly reached out his hand and quickly tapped her hoof before retracting it, like her hoof might be a poisonous snake.
“I’m Paris. The young mare is my granddaughter Zolka, and the brooding lump is Knox, family friend. Don’t mind him he doesn’t talk much.”
“I can talk, I just can’t hear that good.”
"Yeah, yeah. He’s deaf,” whispered Zolka.
“Hey, I can read lips too. And I am not deaf. I can hear gunshots and explosion just well.”
This was going to take a while. I added some more food to the cast iron pan, enough for six. Sky was debating about the price of our aid with Paris. Zolka was off talking with Knox, well more talking at him. The conversation was one sided. Morning grew board with the negotiations and came and sat next to me.
“What’s your take on them?”
“Who?”
“The zebras.”
“They seem rather relaxed at the prospect of crossing the desert. I mean who travels with no ammo.”
“You do! You don’t use any weapons.” I pulled out my knife and used it to stir the pan.
“I use weapons.”
“I don’t mean to cook with.”
I set my knife down and showed her the bottom of my hooves. “See I have on iron horse shoes on. Gives my kicks a good heft. Plus I have offensive magic, and I don’t mind explosives.”
“But you don’t use firearms and have almost no range. I admit you have some fancy magic, but if we ever get pinned down you have no recourse.”
“Sure I do. I can just teleport us away. Besides I don’t need to use guns, I have your rifle and Sky acting as a flying mobile turret. Don’t I?”
“I am just saying limiting yourself does not seem like such a good idea in the wasteland.”
“Look my people got along just fine without firearms. Hell we outlasted most of the world. It wasn’t by being strong or fast, not that neither one of those hurt. It was by being smart. Most ponies die doing stupid shit, like going into a building full of monsters, picking sides in fights they have no part of being in, or taking on an army all by themselves.”
“But, you and Sky wandered into an irradiated ghouls nest, you stopped some bandits trying to steal from a town you had no affiliation with, and took on the Steel Rangers. You broke every rule you just listed.”
“Yeah, but none of that was beyond my capabilities. Can you do me a favor and tell everypony lunch is done.” I gave the pan one more quick mix with my knife and stomped out the linen I used for the fire.
“We’re not done yet,” said Morning as she walked away and grabbed Sky and the zebras.
“Sky turned and flew over to me. Don’t tell me you cooked for the zebras too.” I nodded my head and showed her the pan. She face hoofed. “I was just negotiating the meal payouts. I got them to agree to cook us every meal on top of the agreed upon payment.”
“Well consider this a good will gesture, or something. Either way this bacon was going to go bad. Better eaten than wasted, you know.”
“Fine.” We all ate up everything leaving nothing to waste. After lunch we set out to the desert. We walked in single file. Sky took the lead, followed by Paris and Zolka. Knox had the middle while Morning and me took the back. We moved relatively silent. The zebras seemed abashed to talking while traveling. According to Paris it just brought on unwanted attention. All together it was boring. Worse yet a swarm of flies, regular ones (not of the bloat variety) found our sweat a good substitute for water. Every two seconds I was flipping my tail or tossing my mane to keep them off of me. Poor Morning seemed to get the worse of it. She was a magnet for horseflies, and kept on getting bitten. Her theory was they liked the taste of all the broccoli in her blood.
“Will you two shut up! You are going to attract raiders if you keep this up. And no, flies do not like the taste of broccoli, Morning,” yelled Zolka. I scanned the horizon with my EFS.
“There is no red, we're clear. This thing picks up hostiles, its like a raider detector.”
“I am not going to trust some crazy pony techno magic gizmo that no pony even knows how it works. Just be silent.” The rest of the trip was even more boring than scouting duty. At least Lightning allowed us to speak to each other as we prowled the endless plains. The desert wasn’t all that different from the bison lands. Just more sand and less sage. Suddenly, I saw two red bars.
“Everypony hold up. I am seeing red.” They all stopped in place. I saw the two bars become four as I trotted up the hill. I pointed to where the reading was coming. The zebras backed away as Morning and Sky came up to me. I looked again. I was now reading eight. I tapped my hoof eight times and gestured towards the largest grouping. I waved them to come in closer. “They’re over the hill, Morning take the sniper position up the hill. Sky do your thing in the air, just once it starts get to the other side of the battlefield and maybe drive them into Morning’s fire. Just do me a favor and hold up until after I engage them first.”
“Why?”
“I’ll soften them up and gather them into one spot.”
I circled around the hill while Morning slowly snuck up the hill, Sky just sat there rubbing her nose. As I crested the hill I saw the merry band of raiders pillaging the caravn that left ahead of us. The young mare was nowhere to be seen, but two ponies pinned down her father as a unicorn mare wearing metal armor was punching him in the face. The remaining five were digging through the caravan. One of the raiders wearing spiked armor drinking wine straight from the bottle looked up. “Wait, Wait. Why don’t we just take the whole damn cart with us.”
“Fuck, that we already killed the brahman. Hell, Skull already took a bite out of it and I sure as hell ain’t pulling this damn thing.”
“No, no. Get the asshole to pull us. Shit we can make him pull us all.”
The unicorn in metal armor stepped away from the merchant. “Aww, I was hoping to cut off his face. I was going to turn his skull into some shoulder pads.”
“Shut up Skull, you can do that when we get him back home.” The two earth pony raiders grabbed him and dragged him back to the cart. I looked over, Morning was in position. I had no clue where Sky was. They dropped him in front of the dead Brahman. All eight were around the cart. It was now or never. I teleported into the middle of the cart and bucked the wino raider knocking him towards Skull and her two associates. I entered VATS and punched the closest pony in the face, after two hits I felt his jaw shatter. Another, pony pulled out a gun and fired off one shot. Somehow he managed to miss a point blank shot. I heard Mornings rifle fire shoot into the metal unicorn. I grabbed the closest pony and used him as a shield as I backed out of the cart. The other raiders did not care they unloaded into their own buddy. Knocking me off of the cart. I landed hard on my head with the dead raider bleeding on me. Right then Sky unleashed both mini-guns into the whole bunch. I backed away and pulled out one of my remaining sticks of dynamite and tossed it into the cart.
With a boom the raiders died spreading blood and gore all over my face. A few seconds later all fire stopped. Sky landed on the cart and started to poke all the bodies to make sure they were all in fact dead. Morning slowly ambled her way down towards us. “Did it work? They are all dead, no pony hurt. Is the merchant alive.”
“I am alive.” He jumped up and waved at me. The Zebras slowly peeked over the hill and trotted up to the caravan. “Thank you so much I thought I was going to be killed.”
I saw Sky smile. She turned towards him, “Great all we have to do is settle out first. You owe us the standard hero fee.”
“Oh, of course, of course. What is it, 100 caps?” Sky nodded and the poor sap hoofed over the caps. I facehoofed, but didn’t try to stop her. A little pony ran down from another hill. “Dad, your alive. Oh, thank Celestia.” She threw herself at her bruised father. Sky hopped out of the cart and ambled towards the Zebras. I followed her.
“Great jobs. It seems we chose a good group of ponies for security detail,” chimed Paris. We heard a large lurch. “What was that?” There was an explosion of sand and earth and night turned into day. I turned to find a tall shadow twenty feet high. It was a large metal serpent. Half of its scales were metal and the rest were purple. Over its face was a metal helm, which appeared wielded to it, with four horns jetting out its back. It had two glowing red eyes and it screamed out. Less of a roar, but more of a cry of anguish. It stayed still and surveyed all of us. It dove right at the cart and bit down taking half of it in its mouth. I heard grinding gears and the thing spit it out at us. Everypony ran for it. The serpent leaned back and unleashed a fury of flames where we stood.
For once I was the first to react. Well it was leaning down spiting flames. I ran and jumped on it wrapping my hooves around it horn I climbed on it. The creature was furious and roared. I heard Skies rifle fire. I crawled foreword until I saw its eye. It started punching it until I heard a squirt. The creator roared and writhed in pain. All I could do was hold on for dear life. I felt a stream of blood flow and splatter all over me. Eventually I lost my grip and flew towards the earth. As soon I was out of the way Sky unleashed a fury of bullets into its face. Knox ran up and helped me up.
I got up in time to see the creature jump up and try to bite Sky. She turned in the air and dove at it guns blazing. As its jaw snapped shut she managed to corkscrew around it. She hit the ground at a dash as it swept out its tail. She leapt over it and took off into flight putting as much space between her and it. Still, Morning kept on and stole its attention. Knox pulled out a pistol and fired on it, but after one clip he put his gun away and retreated. Meanwhile I used the time to pull out all of the dynamite I had left. I held it in front of me as I lit the first stick. I failed to notice its tail whip out and slam into me. The dynamite exploded and the world went dark. I heard more gunfire. I caught sight of the creature dive back into the sand. Morning fired one more shot, there was another roar, and everything went silent.
The battle was over, the serpent dead. Paris healed me up, and the merchant pony gathered up as much goods they could salvage before turning back towards the Steel Ranger tower. We got as much ammo we could gather. Apparently, Sky had the foresight enough to gain first rights to all salvage. None of our group wanted to go near the serpent, so the Zebras happily salvaged as much parts they could get from it. The sky was growing dark and no pony wanted to stay near here. We walked another hour before calling it a day. The zebras were adamant about not lighting a fire, which was fine by me. Sky took the first watch and Morning had the second, and I was to cover us through to the morning after her. I was tired and just threw down my bed spread at the first bit of flat land I could find and laid down to sleep.
My body was tired and sore. I wanted to sleep but could not force myself to actually fall asleep. I remembered the orb I won earlier today. I rummaged though the bag until I found it. If I remembered correctly Scribe Scroll said it had the earliest memory of the Princess. I focused my magic on it and the world faded away.
I was in a castle. The pony I was riding in was a unicorn wearing armor. He trotted up a flight of stairs up a tower. The walls were lit by torchlight and the ivory walls glistened in the flickering light. We approached a pair of double doors. The unicorn stopped and made to knock on it. He withdrew his hoof. I really wish I could hear what he was thinking. He stood in silence, before placing his ear to the door. I heard nothing. Eventually he just pushed the door open, foregoing knocking.
He trotted into a large room. It lead into common room with several tables surrounded by cushions. The walls were made up of bookcases filled with a mixture of books and artifacts. We took a step in and sitting with her back to us was a lavender mare reading a book. My host loudly cleared his throat. The pony didn’t notice. He walked behind her.
“I was ordered to report to you, mam.”
The lavender mare jumped up. Slammed her book shut and turned to me. It was Twilight Sparkle. She smiled, “Oh, you scared me. You shouldn’t sneak up on a pony.” We didn’t sneak up on her. We were quite noisy, but my host didn’t react her words.
“Princess Luna, has told me to report to you and carry out whatever task you require.”
Twilight Sparkle walked to me, I mean us. She inspected us and seemed to look at my hosts horn. “You should do. What is your name guard?”
“I am called Private Corn Dog, mam.”
“Have a seat.” She waved a hoof acroos the table at a rather comfy looking pillow.
“I’d prefer to stand.”
“Sit down,” she commanded dropping any hint of cordiality. It was quite clear this was an order not a request. Corndog obeyed. Once we were sitting across from her, her cheery disposition returned.
“Do you know who I am, Private?”
“Yes, you are the Princess Celestia’s protégé, and one of the six heroes of Equestria. They call you the Element of Magic.” She nodded. Apperently she wasn’t a Ministry Mare yet.
“And, what do you know about memory spells?”
“I know the princesses have been working on a memory orb that allows for unicorns to observe other ponies memories.”
“They aren’t working on it any more.” She hovered a clear orb similar to the one I was now in. “They finished it a while ago.” She set it on the table and hovered out a large cube crystal the size of a ponies head. It was covered in gold inlays. “Do you know what this is?” My host only shook his head. “This is a memory shard. It was an ancient magic artifact that allowed ponies to store memories. It is not as advance as a memory orb, and were much harder to produce on a large scale.” At that moment the door behind them opened.
In walked an indigo alicorn two hooves taller than my host. She had a set of wings larger than a pegasus and a horn twice as long as any I had ever seen. She was wearing a blue carapace and had a long flowing ethereal mane that shone like the midnight sky. She was the most beautiful pony I had ever laid my eyes on. On one side of her was a pink earth pony. It was a young Pinkie Pie, her hair was still all pink and were missing the characteristic white streaks. On the other side was Rainbow Dash, dressed in a dark blue suite. With out hesitation my host postulated himself on the ground. “Princess Luna!”
The royal alicorn surveyed the room. “Oh, have ye not begun Twilight Sparkle?”
“I was just getting to it your majesty.”
“Very well, do not let our presence heed ye any further.” They all came up and sat at the table. Twilight looked at the princess. “Go on,” said Luna waving her hoof at the future ministry mare. Twilight shook her mane and regained her composure.
“As I was saying, this artifact has some dangers to it. It runs off of a unicorns own magic. It can drain ones magic completly and has been known to put unicorns to sleep for days. We have been going through and transferring the information on the shards to the newer orbs. However, we cannot seem to do a direct transfer on this particular memory. We want you to look into it and will take the memory from you and transfer it into this orb.”
My host put a hoof to his chin. “If it’s not too much to ask mam, why don’t you just observe the memory yourself?”
“We cannot chance losing Twilight Sparkle for two days. Not with Celestia’s upcoming announcement. Tis’ is not a request soldier! We need the Elements of Harmony to see this memory.” Poor Corndog shook in fright. Luna could really turn the scary on. He gulped and leaned foreword focusing his magic on the cube. Nothing happened. “It has a lock. The key is Selene casus.”
“What’s ‘Selene casus’ mean?” the world faded away. Everything seemed to shift. There was a sudden image of a fire and screaming, everything faded black again. Some time passed and this time I found myself in a purple earth pony mare. It was a memory in a memory! The purple mare was standing before a door staring into the polished floor at her reflection. She turned behind her and I could see Canterlot. The castle ground was finished, but the city was still being built. We waited for a minute, before the door opened. A guard pony wearing golden armor opened the door. “The princess will see you now.”
The earth pony mare walked into the throne room. It was a long majestic hall with stained glass windows. At the end were a large series of steps leading up to a throne with two pegasus guards at the base. My new host walked up to the steps averting her eyes. Once she reached the base she bowed down low. “Princess Celestia!”
“Rise.” The mare rose and looked upon the princess. She was an alabaster alicorn, taller than her sister, with larger wings and horn. Her mane flowed on ethereal currents and shone the colors of pink, green, and blue. “Guards leave us.” Without delay they marched out the room and shut the door behind them. The alicorn majestically stepped down the stairs up to the mare. At the last step she rushed foreword and embraced the mare, breaking decorum. “Kimono, it has been so long. Too long.”
I felt a smile spread across Kimono’s face. “I have missed you too princess.” The alicorn set us down. “Why have you called for me?”
She looked down, for a second looking embarrassed, before instantly regaining composure. “Tomorrow is the 555th Summer Sun Celebration. Do you know what happened 555 years ago, Kimono?”
I felt a hoof rise to my chin, before slamming it back on the ground. “It is the anniversary of your defeat of Night Mare Moon.”
Celestia slowly walked foreword in the hall. Kimono closely followed. “Tell me what do you know about Nightmare Moon.”
“She was another Alicorn. She attempted to usurp your rule and establish an unending night.”
“But do you know who she is?”
“I’m afraid I do not understand your question.”
Celestia just slowly ambled away, “I figured as much.” She stopped at a particular stained glass window. She stuck out her hoof and placed it on the figure of an indigo alicorn fighting some strange dragon along with an ivory alicorn. “Her name was Luna before she was Nightmare Moon. She was my sister. Together we defeated Discord using the Elements of Harmony. We established our rule as equals. I controlled the sun and she the moon.” She turned and stared us in the eyes. “It is due to her I refuse to take the title of queen. You see, even if my sister is in the moon, she yet still lives. She too is the rightful ruler of Equestria.”
I felt Kimono gasp. “But Princess, the legends say you alone are the bearer of the Elements of Harmony.”
Celestia laughed, and kept on laughing until her voice sounded out as a cry. “Legend! It is not legends, it is history. To me it’s not even yet ancient history. What decades are to you, are centuries to me. I was forced to steal control of the elements and use them against the other bearer of the elements. I turned the most magical creation in the land into stone just to banish my own sister. Tell me Kimono, you’re a historian, what does history say about the Elements.”
I felt Kimono frown. She looked at her own hooves. “They are the strongest known magic in the world. Nothing can override their effects. Only those chosen by destiny can ever wield them. They are the last know defense in Equestria, and that you alone are the sole bearer, Princess.”
The Princess nodded. “All true, though I fear that soon they too will fall away to legend. I am the last bearer. As long as they are tied to me their spell cannot be undone.” Celestia looked very sad. “If I were to die, the chain will be broken. Destruction this world has not known for thousands of years will be unleashed. Maybe even my sister will return.”
“Pray it never happens Princess.”
Celestia turned cold, anger in her eyes. “Pray that my sister not ever feel the earth beneath her feet again.”
Kimono averted her eyes and bowed. “No, that you shall ever pass on, your Highness. We would be lost without your guidance.”
Celestia turned away. “I’m sorry dear Kimono. I am not myself today. The truth is, as long as a single bearer of the Elements of Harmony yet lives, and remains connected, the magic effects of the Elements will carry on. I believe my sister’s banishment shall carry on until the next bearers appear. The Elements are always on the search for their next bearers. Should a group be worthy, the elements will accept them. The chain has never been broken. The elements have always found a replacement group when the last bearer passed away. Not a day has passed in Equestria without the continued influence of the Elements of Harmony. If I were to die today, the Elements would designate a new group of bearers and all the magic my sister and I used could potentially be reversed.” The Princess slowly returned to her throne. She stopped at the first step, back facing towards us. “What do you know of the events eighty years ago?”
“Do you mean the Dragon Griffon Conflict?”
“I forgot that also happened. No I mean here in Equestria to the south.”
“It was another legend, your majesty. It was said a star fell in the desert.”
“You’ll soon find Kimono, that legends have a habit of turning out to be partial truth.” She turned; there was a smile on her face. She conveyed hope. “A star did fall, but that is not all. It came and sung. It sang a song that could one day save us all. However, that is not all, something else came that same day, something that could change Equestria.” The princes walked back up the stairs to her throne and took her seat. Her royal presence fully returned. “Kimono, I have an assignment. I need you to travel to the village of Hoofington, There you’ll find a contingency of soldiers who will do your bidding. Your assignment, should you chose to accept it, is to uncover the complete history of the area. The fate of my sister may very well lay in your hooves.” At that a green flame erupted from Celestia, summoning a sealed envelope. It whisked through the air and landed at our hooves.
“Very well, your Highness,” responded Kimono in a low bow. The memory ended and the world turned black. I found myself back as Private Corndog. We were laying our head on a table. We opened our eyes to see Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie playing a game of checkers. Pinkie Pie noticed our return first.
“Hey, he’s back. Welcome back soldier pony,” She said waving happily at us. Dash nudged one of her pieces before rising.
“Hey this unicorn is awake now.” She sat back down as Twilight and Luna returned. Pinkie pie rubbed her chin before picking up a piece and jumping two of Rainbow Dashes.
“King me!”
“Hey that’s unfair. Let me take my move back, I was distracted.” Twilight pushed the Pegasus out of the way.
“Private Corndog, how are you, did you experience any memory loss.”
“No mam. It was a success,” I felt myself say. Twilight seemed relieved. Luna looked disappointed.
“That’s a shame. Twilight, remove his memory up to when he came in the came into the room.
“If you say so Princess.” Her horn glowed and I was forced out of the memory.
I was back in the camp. Morning snored next to me. All of the Zebras were crashed out. I couldn’t see Sky anywhere. I assumed she was on patrol. I laid my head down to try to get some sleep. The only thing was I found myself trying to imagine the world 700 years ago. I fell asleep thinking about the princesses. They were easily the two most beautiful mares I have ever laid eyes on. I think Luna was prettier.
That night I had another dream, this time it was a memory. In it I was a foal playing ‘hit the sprite-bot’ with Lightning. She was faster and stronger, but back then we were evenly matched. We ran together. The machine bobbed and weaved. It acted unlike a regular one, which generally ignored us even as it got smashed in. Lightning tripped and I took the lead. I jumped up and grabbed the machine in my hooves. Instead of playing that annoying march it was silent. The electronic eye focused on me and the thing spoke. “Hello, can you please not destroy this unit. I am trying to use it for something.”
“Silly robot, we can’t let a spy bot go.” I hit it in my hooves. As it started to spark I threw it and laughed at the explosion. Then I heard another explosion and it wasn’t from my dream. I opened my eyes in time to see a ring sweep across the sky clearing away the cloud canopy exposing the starry sky beyond. Unlike the first time I was unable to see the moon, but the heavens were just as beautiful as remembered.
“Wow, its so pretty. I’ve never seen so many stars,” chimed Morning. I only nodded in agreement.
“This can’t be good,” responded Sky, already putting on her armor and battle saddle.
“What makes you say that?”
“Enclave don’t appreciate cloud bursts. I am plenty sure whatever caused this will be rectified soon with extreme prejudice. Besides, Paris and his cohorts already took of into the desert. We are going it alone.” I looked around and sure enough there were only three bedspreads and no zebras in sight. I was going to argue, but I noticed Morning was already packing.
“I suppose it won’t hurt if we head out now.” I rolled up my bedding and threw on my coat and hat when a bright light from the air shined on me. I turned and stared into the light only to see a red line scan over me. The light shifted towards Morning and Sky repeating the same process. As it turned I made out a floating triangular ship floating silently in the air not making a noise. The light turned off.
“That’s not Enclave,” screamed Sky.
“What do we do,” asked Morning.
“Run,” screamed Sky and me. And, we were off to the races. As we dashed while the ship followed silently. Next, came a noise. It was like two hundred tons of metal scraping together. It was so loud I felt the vibrations of the noise force me to the ground. I could not think, I actually felt pain. I turned and saw morning on the ground wreathing in agony, hooves covering her ears. Slowly the ship hovered directly over us and the bottom opened up. I turned towards Sky who was saying something, but no sound reached me. She opened fire and the noise disappeared. The ship suddenly shot the opposite direction as Skies bullets harmlessly hit an invisible shield. Morning pulled out her rifle and soon joined Sky. A part of the shield started glowing red and a moment later a shot of light flashed from it. It was pointed nowhere near us, hitting thirty yards away. The light disappeared and the ground it hit explodes throwing all three of us high into the air. I found myself falling towards a group of sharp rocks aimed to impale me. I charged my horn and teleported myself as quickly as I could manage.
Unfortunately, I did not have time to designate a location and found myself hundreds of feet in the air free falling. All I could do was scream as the ground came closer. However, before I had fallen even half way a blue circular light shot out and caught me, holding me in the air. No longer in imminent danger I surveyed my surroundings. Morning and Sky where nowhere to be found, and I was unable to move. Slowly the light drew my in towards the ship, but out of nowhere Sky flew up behind me and yanked me out of the light; as we lifted we flew over the ship. It rang out another loud sound knocking me loose from Sky’s grip. Now Sky and me were in free fall together. I reached out my hoof and she reached out hers. Just as got a hold of one another’s grasps, the ship shot out another blue light snatching both of us out of the air.
“Well this sucks,” Said Sky.
“Where is Morning?” I heard a rifle fire off in the distance at the ship. “Oh there she is.”
As we lazily floated towards in opening in the ship, Sky called out. “Morning save your ammo and run. Were not taking this thing down any time soon.” An explosion rung out behind the ship. “Well that might take it down,” said sky gesturing towards a large Enclave ship. The blue light faded and we were in free fall again. Only this time Sky had me in her grasp. Just before we hit the ground she pulled up. I felt my hooves touch the ground and started running. Sky dropped me as I dashed off towards where I heard Mornings rifle fire earlier. Sky dropped besides me and ran for a little to gain up speed before leaping into the air and flying next to me. Our path was lit by flashes of red and pink behind us.
I heard a loud explosion. I turned and saw the ground a quarter of mile back was erupting in flame. I saw the enclave ship shooting pink beams of light into the alien ships shield, while the alien ship was shooting its red death beam at some target on the ground. Out of the Enclave ship I made out dozens of pegasi taking to the air to engage the ship. I turned my head and saw Morning jumping up and down trying to get my attention off in the distance. I felt Sky’s tail brush my face when I was hit by an idea, which hurts a lot less then getting hit by just about anything else. I grabbed her tail pulling Sky to a stop. She turned, anger covering her face. Before she spoke I teleported to Morning. I wrapped a hoof around Morning and teleported as far north as I could muster. The three of us hit the ground maybe a mile and half north.
I turned to check on my comrades, they were both sizzling. “Sorry, I’ll try to be gentler next time.” As I giggled at my own lame joke Morning Pointed her hoof to the south.
“Look.” The battle suddenly ended. Everything went silent before a castrophany of noise roared out.
“That was a sonic boom. No Enclave ships are capable of breaking the sound barrier. Their cloud components would break.” Morning and me searched the sky for the source of the sound. “Don’t bother looking, that sound means it is long gone.”
“What was that ship,” asked Morning to no one in particular. I was going to answer, but Sky beat me.
“That was a star beasts ship.”
“Star beast?”
“A monster from beyond the stars. They have freaky technology and come from the stars.”
“It was a human craft,” I corrected.
“Humans don’t exist,” said the two mares in unison.
Morning shook her head. “I can accept some space pony, but not humans.”
“Silly ponies that was a star itself. Coming to reap the souls of pony and zebra alike.”
“Not you too Paris. Wait! Paris!” I turned behind me to see Paris, Zolka, and Knox standing behind us. “I thought I would never so you’re stripes again.” He smiled.
“Sorry for leaving you three, but when the sky opens up it usually is time to run,” apologized Zolka.
“Oh thank heavens,” screamed Sky as she tackle hugged the unsuspecting zebra mare. “I almost thought we weren’t going to get paid.”
“Yeah, I was worried for you too Soaring Skies,” deadpanned Zolka back.
Footnote: Level up! Level 8
New Perk: Lady Luck: Sometimes when you enter SATs the mysterious Lady Luck will appear and help you out with her special Magnum.
Unarmed Level 100
Authors Note: I had real trouble with this chapter. I actually gave up and rewrote it, moving stuff that was supposed to happen later forward. I generally try to keep the length down to make these chapters more manageable, but I felt I needed to cover the entire desert crossing in this chapter. In fact, the beginning of this chapter was originally going to the beginning of the next chapter, but it worked so well with this one that I left it. Thanks to all my readers and KKat, Mimezinga, and Lauren Faust for their respective works and inspiration. I’ll try to pick up the release of the next chapter quicker.
