Back East, the Lightbringer brought the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows. Here in the Marejave life goes on right until it don't no more for one star crossed Courier.
Back East, the Lightbringer brought the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows. Here in the Marejave life goes on right until it don't no more for one star crossed Courier. As the New Canterlot Republic moves in from the east with their own ideas about what's best for the rising new Equetria, in the west, the new Pony Caesar of the scattered tribes of the Zebra Legion questions whether it should be equestrian law that dominates. As a ghost war looms between two phantom empires, what sway can one courier have?
I should have seen it coming. I done been around the mojave long enough. It was a cushy side job. Some big wig from the strip wanted some extra security on his way home cause he was worried his Great Khan goons might be doing too much of their own product. I was already going that way. Why not take some extra caps to make my delivery anyway, and have a couple of extra guns to shoot back at the raiders and rad-scorpians?
That slick talking bastard made it all seem like it was on the up and up. Right up until his goons clubbed me in the head. You can imagine my surprise that I not only woke up, but woke up naked with my hooves bound, already propped up in a shallow grave.
“This is taking too long!” One of the goons snaps. “Just shoot him already!”
Staring down this dandy-ass colt’s gun, I was inclined to agree. But mister high roller had me at a disadvantage. “You knocked me out, stripped me naked. All for this? What’s your game you slick son of a horse?”
“This ain’t nothin’ personal, kid. Maybe the Khans shoot a pony in the back, but I got more class than that.” White coat, chestnut-brown mane, checkered suit. I knew I’d never forget that smug, handsome face. “Luna’s flank, you’re half dead already. I’m just finishing what the wasteland started. I know this seems like 24 carats of bad luck, but trust me, the cards were stacked against you from the start.”
“At least have the balls to call me by name when you pull the trigger.” I sneered as I looked tht snake of a pony in the eyes.
“Where you’re going there ain’t gonna be no tombstone, friend.” He pulled the trigger twice, and that’s where my story ended. “You ain’t got no name.”
“Waking up now, are we?” The voice is fatherly. The face is an elderly plum earth pony stallion. The wisps of mane that circle his head probably weren’t grey originally. It’s still coming into focus. “How about you just slow down. Get your bearings. Let’s see what the damage is. Can you tell me your name?”
“I don’t have a name.” My hooves just don’t want to work right… neither do my eyes for that matter.
“Just keep on staying calm. Everypony has a name. Do you remember the name your parents gave you.?” I have to focus my ears on his voice, and my eyes on his face. I’m in a hospital… no… a doctor’s office. There ain’t no Hospitals this far out.
“My parents gave me a Giddyup Buttercup doll when I was colt. I ain’t got that no more, neither.” Each shuck sends a shock of pain to my contused brain and excruciation along the new sutures across my forehead. “I’m just a courier. Call me Courier 6, or just whatever. I don’t care.”
“Hmph, well it ain’t what I woulda chose for ya, but if that’s what say your name is then that’s your name.”
“I ain't got one of those, but whatever…” I feel like a petulant foal even as I know I’m gonna say it again.
“Well, my name’s Doc Hitch All. That’s what every pony here calls me.” He chuckles, and damn if he ain’t got the best bedside manner. “Given the extent of your injuries, some memory loss is to be expected. Lets focus on what you do remember… Do you remember where you were from?”
“Dad was from some kind of think-tank, ma technically didn’t have a brain? Or they was scavvers that hooked up? How am supposed to know?” I don’t mean to be that blunt. But what kinda world do we got when we lie to our own doctors.
“Fair Enough.” My very patient doctor continues. “But do you remember where?”
“It was a farming commune, north of Boulder City.” As I focus I become more aware of his downright imposing mustache.
“Good… good.” The doc smiles. “Now I’m going to give you a mirror. I take great pride in my needlework. But keep in mind you got shot in the face. And most of those scars were already there.”
Damn I wish I’d forgot how ugly I was. My cyan fur is in a constant state of molt. Radiation don’t get at me no more than the next colt, I’m just real slow to shake it, even with the RadAway. Pretty much anywhere my patchy fur don’t cover is scar tissue. I can take a beating real good, but healing magic just kinda rolls right over me. So everything heals natural, it heals painful, and it leaves a scar. I chuckle real friendly-like. “Damn Doc, you did good. I can barely tell which two are the new scars.”
“I always work to do my best.” I already like the Doc. Like, I kinda gotta, but he’s just genuinely a good decent pony. “You seem to be pretty steady on your hooves why don’t you you just walk right over to the VigorTron over there and I can figure out if your ready to be released yet.”
I put one hoof in front of the other as if it comes naturally. He has a VigorTron! Only the best doctors have VigorTrons! I one hundred percent don’t stagger. I am not staggering. That was a cocky sway! It’s not a stagger, it is a swagger.
“Slow down. It ain’t a race.” Have I mentioned that Doc is just the best? “This ain’t no contest. You just woke up. You just keep putting one hoof in front of the other.”
The VigorTron! The genius creation of the Old World Minister of Morale. Pinkie Pie is watching you. Always. And the only thing good about any respectable doctor visit is the VigorTron. You’re enemies might talk you down, your friends may talk you up. But the Vigortron always gives it’s bells and whistles. And the lights always laugh. And they always laugh with you. Pinkie Pie knew what she was up to. There’s a reason ponies feared that smile. I can’t help but flash an ugly smile at the machine as I face her smiling judgment.
-=- New Player Character created-=-
Name: …
Fur color: Cyan
Fur Style: Molting.
Mane Color: Deep Blue
Mane Style: Stringy
Choose Up to Two Traits:
Undestructible - That which doesn’t kill you is pretty much everything. You can never drop below 1 HP. However Healing potions and Radaway only work at ½ strength, while MedX and RadX are completely ineffective for you. Embrace the Pain!
Unnamed - They’ve given you a number and they’ve taken away your name. All Karma, both Good and Bad, that you receive is halved. You also have some unique dialogue paths opened.
“Well, you’re about about as strong and as tough as they come. And for the amount of brain damage you just took on, you seem to have your head on pretty straight.” The doc chuckles, and I gotta chuckle with him. “I wouldn’t go pushin’ my luck at the card table too much if I was you, though. Any luck you had, I figure you’ve done used up, coming back from the grave.”
“Well, you seem to have gotten your hooves under you, and all your vitals are in order.” The doc leads me into the next room. Honestly, I want another go at the Vigortron. I dunno, it just reminds me of being a colt again and Ma taking me the doctor when I broke my leg. I idly wonder if I’m gonna get a lollipop out of this. “Lets just head on over to the couch and make sure that bullet didn’t leave your brain nuttier than a bighorner pie.”
And he leads me to a couch, and doctors have couch rooms for only one good reason. And damn if I ain’t impressed with this town's health care. Prewar they needed whole hospitals and teams of doctor ponies for this kind of thing. The Doc’s right, I done spent every ounce of luck I had getting shot in the town with possibly the most over-qualified medical pony in the entire history of Equestria.
“Just take seat.” I don’t mind if I do. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions, just answer as truthfully as you know how.”
As if I would do anything else. “If you had to choose between loyalty to your home town and loyalty to ponykind, which would you choose, and why?”
“That’s a tricky one, Doc.” I wave a hoof because that communicates how seriously I take this. “Your implying my home town acted against ponykind. It ain’t betrayal if they betrayed me first.
“That expressesses your position, yes…” Doc scribbles his notes he thinks I can’t read upside down. I question if he knows I can read. You find three hungry zebra fillies in a refugee camp. You only have two Taste-E Colt candybars. What to you do?”
“I break both bars in half and we each get half a bar.” Don’t judge me, I’m hungry too!
“You are wandering alone. You come up on a seriously wounded pony, dying of dehydration. You don’t have enough water for both of you. What do you do?” The voice is hypnotic. I don’t even know why I tell the truth.
“I am so sorry…” I’ve said these words too many times. “I offer ‘em a chance to die quick or a chance to try to live. Ain’t much for mercy killin’ but dehydration is a bad way to go.”
The Doc waits a sec before scribbling in his note book. “I see, yes… that makes sense…”
“Alright then…” And it’s on to the next one, as easy as that. “Your friend has baked you a fresh batch of fritters for your train trip to your new job at the Ministry of War Time Technology in Appleoosa. However instead of your favorite Apple Family Brand Apples, she has used grainy and overly tart Gran Pear brand pie filling. She asked you honestly, ‘What do you think?’”
I am imagining *any* fresh fruit fritters right now, cause for real I am kinda hungry. “If anypony ever just baked me anything and said ‘I hope you don’t get hungry on your trip’, I would fall down and cry like a little filly. I ain’t gonna lie to ya.”
“Heh, I suppose some these question may seem a little outdated, but how you answer is really what’s important.” Does the Doc have hypnotic magic that puts you in trances? Cause I’m kinda feeling entranced. “You're formal rival falls on hard times, and comes to your office begging for a job. You know that she’s not qualified for the job, and emotionally unstable. But she really needs the job. How would you deal with that?”
“Wow, that is just oddly specific. I dated an alicorn once…during their ‘unity’ thing... it was weird. They actually put that in a medical book? As a real question? Pre War ponies were weird Doc, don’t know what else to say.” I could say how insanely relaxing this is. Maybe it’s just because the last thing I did was get shot in the head.
“Well that certainly is an answer.” The doc chuckles and scribbles more words in his notes. “Now just one more. Pinkie Pie is watching. Always. How do you feel about that?”
“I hope she likes the show.” I don’t even hesitate, and I never try to not-smile.
“Well, you seem to have at least most of your ducks in line, Mr. Courier.” Doc nods as he closes his notebook. “I’m afraid whoever shot you didn’t leave you with much. The only thing they left really was your courier badge. Now I’ve got a spare stable suit, so you ain’t wandering around town buck naked. No offense but nopony wants to see all that. And you're welcome to take anything you need from the Lost and Found. That’s all the things from the wasteland patients that didn’t make it. Seems fitting since your the first patient I brought back from quite that dead.”
“Thanks Doc.” I smile as friendly as my face allows, as I hoof through the box of stuff, taking a 10mm pistol and a hooful of caps and ammo. “You are the best.”
“I do the best I can, and you came in here in a bad way. I did the best I could, but you lost a lot of brain tissue.” The doc shuffles, this isn’t a normal ‘I’m being nice’ gift, I can tell.
“Naw, Doc, that’s just too much,” It’s all I can say when he just pulls a pipbuck out of a cabinet.
“The wasteland has done you wrong, and it might surprise you to know an old stable dweller like me knows what it’s like to have their whole life just buried. So you just shut up and hold out your main hoof.” I’m not crying. That is liquid faith in ponykind, because Doc Hitch All is forever the best doctor Equestria will ever know.
“Doc, I cannot repay you enough,” I am NOT crying like a little filly. I am expressing gratitude in a totally dignified manner. The Doc is taking it professionally. “I may not have any idea who I am. I have no idea at all why I was shot. And now I gotta go kill a guy in a really snazzy suit. But I’m here to do that!”
“Now, I just did my job with a scalpel.” The doc’s laugh is just so damn sincere. Maybe it’s just the brain damage. It’s like hearing something the way you would have heard it as a child, but with all the connections of an adult. “I reckon the one you really need to thank is Ol’ Jackie. She’s sorta the town robot. She saw what happened, and she’s the one that dug you outta that grave and brought you to me.”
The Doc shows me to the door and Luna’s narrow flank but the sun is bright. Which makes sense. I grew up in a dessert. The sun is bright. My eyes have been closed for… I dunno days? And I’m still all head-shootty, but the sun is still bright and I was alway just the squintiest colt in the settlement. I’ve totally got this. The sun is bright, just squint.
“Howdy Pardner!” Celestia’s unmentionable sex reference! It’s a motocycle-centaur-robot with a teevee head! I do not got this! “I’m just pleased as punch to see you on your hooves again. You gave me a terrible fright getting bushwhacked like that by them scallywags!”
“GWYAA!!!” That might not have been exact words, but I definitely did NOT just squeal like a little filly. “Sorry… I am so sorry. It’s bright out, and I had to squint, and then you were right there. And that was a very stallion-y and dignified expression of surprise.”
“Well shucks! I didn’t mean to give a fright pardner.” The robot's voice is feminine and carries an honestly affected accent. Like you just know she was manufactured back east, and just likes talking like that. As I squint back the glare, I can make out a flickery still-picture on the cathode ray screen that serves as her head. A freckled mare with a cowboy hat and an honest smile. “I’m just so darned happy to see you up and about. When I dug you outa that hole them pole cats dumped you in, I figured I was collectin’ evidence for the sheriff up in Prim! Now look at you, all up and walkin’ around, squinting at things. I’m Jack-E-OH-6 by the way. Most everyone around here just calls me Jackie, though, which is fine by me, I ain’t big on formalities.”
“So yer the one what dug me up and brought me to the doc, huh?” I smile my prettiest smile, and to Jackie’s credit she lacks the facial expressions to wince. “I prolly owe you enough, already, but did you see what happened? My memories are still fuzzy… about a lot of things.”
“Well, I reckon I done saw the whole thing pardner.” Jackie nods her big, honkin’ cathode ray noggin, as she makes centaur arm gestures that communicate… something? Maybe? Is she even programmed in biped arm gestures? I have my doubts. “Ya see, I was near the end of my patrol and report subroutine. That’s up by the old old bone garden. And I saw you all tied up, with that no good feller in the checkered suit and his two tribal ‘body guards’ standing over you. I wanted to do something, honest apple, but with my weapons systems offline I’m pretty much just an ‘observe and report’ kinda mare. So I laid low and gathered evidence to report to the sherriff in Prim. Which I did. Turns out one piece of evidence was still breathin’! So I took you straight to Doc Hitch All.”
“Thankya kindly Miss Jack-E.” If I had a hat I’d tip it. I make a note to myself to get a hat. “If’n ya don’t mind me askin’, you look to be a Securitron model. What brings you around to a little waterin’ hole town like Good Springs? Usually only see y'all in bigger settlements, or outright cities. You know, doin’ security…”
“Heck, I never would have guessed you for a robotics enthusiast. Mr. Courier.” Jack-E has a real disarming chuckle. She rolls into what I assume is a “relax” position and releases her rear kick stand before continuing. “I reckon you ain’t wrong most of the time, but us Securitrons are way more versatile than ponies think. We got these arms and grasper-doo-hickies. Our spell matrix was top of the line before the war, and we got more computational power than an Assaultron and a Miss Nanny combined. Heck, I reckon the only this with more processin’ processing power out there is a crusader mainframe. And good luck getting one of those in a robot.”
“Huh.” I smile and nod respectfully. “I ain’t rightly thought about it that way. Damned if you ain’t right. You got a versatile chassis and one of them fancy ‘organic learnin’’ AIs. I guess there ain’t no reason you cain’t do anything you set out to do. That still don’t answer the question though. What brings you out to Goodsprings of all places?”
“Well truth be told pardner, I don’t rightly know.” Jack-E responds sadly the way only a sad robot can respond. “I used t’ live in this big fancy hotel with my friends. Then one day, about seven years ago I ended up out here. Not really sure how I got here, or who my friends actually were. Or why I got a horticulture subroutine. I reckon I know a thing or two about having your memory wiped. But this ain’t a bad place to be. Nice little town. But all that’s neither here nor there. You wanna know more about them rascals what shot you? You need to talk to Appleine up at the Thirtsy Devil. She has a real stick up her flank about robots, but she’s a good pony and pays close attention to passers through.”
“Everyone knows the vote is rigged now, do you really think anypony is going to keep standing for this?!” I don’t even remember where the rage comes from.
I always hated Cinnamon Spice. “The computer demands a sacrifice. It’s not personal, it’s just both necessary and practical. You’re wife just couldn’t stop rocking the boat. Knowing the vote is rigged doesn’t mean anything. Only one pony has to die every year, even if the ponies do know the election is a sham, they’ll keep quiet so they don’t have to be the one. Uncertain death makes cowards of us all.”
“Why not just kill me too?” I remember the taste of bitter bile and my own blood on my tongue. I don’t remember her at all. “You got the fire-power, why don’t even one of you have the guts to just pull the trigger?”
“Because ponies will fight certain death to their dying heartbeat.” I hate even the memory of that dusky red mare’s smile. Uncertain death makes cowards of us all. I could have rushed her and made security pull their triggers. “No, you are beaten, bloodied, and bruised, but everypony will see you were very much alive when you walked out of that stable door. And they’ll go back to voting for somepony other than them to be the sacrifice. Because only one pony has to die every year to keep the Stable from killing everypony.”
“And now everypony gonna know they coulda just walked away. You can push me out, Cinnamon, but how are you and yours gonna keep everypony else inside?” The stable door rolled open and I squinted against the glare of Celestia’s judgement. “We’re all monsters when we don’t have a choice. Now we all know we have a choice. You just keep telling yourself ‘It’s not gonna be me’ until I come back around this way.”
Cause I don’t care how many lies I told Doc… That happened…
The Thirsty Devil is a waterin’ hole, I’d wager. It’s got that hard to tell if it’s pre or post war construction look about it. Either it’s pretty well built for the wasteland, or goddesses this place was dive before the megaspells fell. Seems like a classy enough joint, at any rate.
It’s even got the classic bat wing doors! I swear this is the BEST town to wake up from a coma in! The angry words waft out of the saloon as I enter. “This yer last warnin’. Either you turn over that caravaner, or the Powder Gangers gonna blow this town off the map! We don’t leave any witnesses! That’s how everypony knows we the baddest! So ain’t nobody leavin’ until you turn him over!”
And I swear when I walk in that bar every face turns a shade of pale, all except talkity pony. “You need to just walk away and mind your own business old buck.”
“That’s an option?” I’m honestly mildly vexxed. “I can just walk out of town and report back to work at Primm?”
“Are you stupid?!?!” Talkity is a unicorn in an NCR convict jumpsuit. I don’t think he’s very bright. “I just said nopony’s leaving till we get that caravaner.”
“So, and I only heard your side of this.” I nod slowly, cause there’s still a bit of an ache upstairs. “You want this one caravanner because you can’t leave witnesses… or, I guess, nopony will know how bad you are? Am I understanding this right? And until you settle this, you won’t let me just report back to work at the Marejave Express?”
“What’s there to misunderstand?!?!” Talkity screams and flails his fore hooves like he’s gonna hit somepony,because he thinks being louder makes him more right. “All you all gotta do is just sacrifice one pony and everyone else gets to live.”
It’s hard to say what happens next. I almost feel like I remember something. Then I’m holding a bar stool in my mouth and Talkity is just begging his little heart out until, while the stool breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. I spit the last piece into his broken face. “Yer the witness! Crawl your sorry ass up that hill and tell your gang I’m comin’ behind ya!”
And everypony in the bar and even that one zony chick is lookin’ at me… funny. Like I done did something. So I guess I gotta say something. “You can always go the option to just run for the hills. Ain’t no shame in it. I’m gonna need whatever ammo you got. Maybe some dynamite? I dunno? Might work, might not. If ya ain’t gonna stick around, then you might as well go.”
“Stranger, I understand that you don’t know what’s rightly goin’ on around these parts.” The mare behind the bar fixes me with her most starity stare. “But you don’t understand, neither. They got a dozen ponies up the hill between us and Prim. And they all got NCR repeater rifles and more dynamite than they got the brains to count.”
“Name’s Easy Streak, youngster.” An elderly brown earth pony with just wisps of grey clinging to his mane like clouds walks right up to me. “Do you really intend to take on the Powder Gangers?”
“I intend to walk to Prim. And I intend to break anypony that stands between here and there. You folk can make your sacrifice, or you can fight, or you can just walk away. Don't mean much to me.”
“Now you listen here, Mr. Courier!” The bar mare snarls. Behind her bar and honestly her lumberjack costume, I don’t know what else to call how she’s dressed. We live in the desert, for Luna’s sake. No pony else dresses like a lumberjack. “My name is Appleine, And I hate them Powder Gangers as much as anypony pony here. But don’t you think I appreciate’ you shovin’ your ugly snout up in our town's business.”
“They are claiming territorial authority to disrupt courrier routes, ma’am.” There ain’t very much I still believe in. “I’ve gotta report the theft of a package. If they were less stupid then none of this wouldn’t be my problem.”
“So that’s how it is, then? This just a job for you?” Appleine is kinda greenish. Darker green mane. Might be pretty but she got a pretty mean resting bitch face, so it’s hard to say.
“No.” I am being as 100% straightforward as I know how. Honesty is the basis of trust. I’m not the kind of bastard that would lie to his own doctor. “I’m just trying to get back to doing my job. But this town did me right. So if those dumbass jack weasels wanna make this my business, then helping you out is on my way to work.”
“You said you need dynamite?” Lucky Streak squints his squinty old brown eyes up from under his totally useful sun-blocking hat. I need a hat. “Now don’t get me wrong, young’un. But you just got shot in the head, and right now I wouldn’t trust you not to be too brain damaged to blow yerself up.”
“Naw,” I laugh and wave away his worries with a hoof. “The dynamite’s for Jack-E. I reckon that gal got her screen on straight and I’m bettin’ she can toss a stick further uphill than those punk flank wanna-be riders can toss a stick down.”
“You’re gonna give that creepy robot dynamite?!?!” The apple themed bar maid (Appleina… Appletini… the name is right there…) is screaming. Which does not help my headache. “Are you brain damaged?!?! Oh… uh… I am so sorry…”
“The answer is ‘yeah’. Damnit, I need a beer.” Do you ever wonder why ponies use the insane balance test that is a barstool? Because I have. Maybe I’m not too drunk to sit on the stool. Maybe I have massive head trama. Never mind all the times the bartender couldn’t tell that I was already drunk. “I got some caps… Actually I have this many caps. I promise I won’t get too drunk, but you should prolly run about and tell the town to… something… I dunno… whatever you plan to do…”
And she just counts down the caps that dock gave me. “Help yourself to the bottom shelf. If you touch my Wild Pegasus, I’ma gonna shoot you in the head you ain’t been shot in yet.”
“Okay so which one of you runs the local store… cause I need bullets?” I am on a roll being super reasonable.
“That’d be Slim Pickin’s next door.” The Zony mare in the back is super helpful. “But don’t expect help from him. He was already figuring on rolling over to the Powder Gangers when this all started.”
“Great! Then he was already planning on getting robbed!” And there goes my reasonable streak. Gone so fast.
“Wait, you’re going to rob the General Store?” Appleine… That’s her name! She picks up on things right quick.
“Well someone is gonna rob it today. Either me or the gang that’s gonna blow up the town.” Honestly, I have never thought more clearly in my life. Fuck Brain Damage.
“Can you spot me some dynamite, Lucky?” I think that’s a charming smile… It is honestly hard to tell these days.
“He’s got moxxy!” The Zony in the back pipes up. “I like him!”
“Hell, I cain’t see things getting any more blown up at this point.” The old buck demonstrates his vast skills at the rolling of eye-balls.
“That’s the spirit! Hey Jackie, You get to throw dynamite!” I holler out to my Cowpoke buddy who can’t come in because Apple-Tina doesn’t let robots in her bar. And Jack-E is just too damn noble to just walk in and be like “Buck you!”
“We ain't really gonna rob him are we? That don’t feel right.” In that moment Jackie is the conscience I never wanted nor asked for.
“Hell, Oh!” I cheerfully announce as I walk around the corner from one corner to the next. As I walk through the next door I laugh. “You are about to be robbed! …by the Powdergangers… in the next couple of hours.”
“Look, my prices don’t budge, bruh. You wanna get blown to hell, fight all ya want. All we gotta do is turn over the caravanner.” Tan… green mane… smooth talkin face.
“Deal done changed… bruh….” My smile is a weapon. “If you think they gonna protect you, then you just go with that. You tell the Powder Gangers how I just robbed you. I dare ya.”
“Look here Mister, maybe you better leave before I holler for Mr. Snake Oil. You might have seen him next door at Appleine’s dive. Big tough lookin’ fella.” Ol’ Green Mane just told me too much. “I already bought in with the Powder Gangers. If Appleine’s smart, she will too.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Ya know what? That’s a damn fine idea! Let’s just go next door and see how that works out.”
Damn fool tries to pull some cute little hold out pistol when I walk around the makeshift counter. A hoof and a broke jaw dissuades him from violence.
So I just drag him across the way like a whipped dog by his scruff, with him cursin’ and hollerin’ the whole way.
“HEY!” I shout, even as I wince at the noise. “This fella said somepony named, what was it, Mister? Snake Oil? Oh yeah, that! He done paid off Mr. Snake Oil for protection! Is there a Mr. Snake Oil over here?”
The zony mare is rolling on her barstool. She is just really good at laughing and staying on a barstool. But The barmaid ain’t laughing… “Appleine, I’m just thinking ahead!”
The flurry of hooves she introduces to his face suggests she don’t agree with him.
“You sold us out!” I gotta throw myself between her and green-mane.
“Let him walk up that hill.” And she throws a mean left hoof jab. Don;t let nopony tell you otherwise.
“Tartarus on a stick, you can actually carry your protection up the hill. He really ain’t made it far. He has at least two broken legs. This is a sad laugh, so you know.” Zony chick is in my fave ponies for life so far list.
“You’re all fools!” Green Mane is whimperin’ as he backs out a’ that bar. “It’s not too late! We can tell ‘em it was all that courier with the scrambled brain! It’s just math, sacrificing one pony to save the herd!”
“An’ then they always gonna want one more pony, whelp.” Lucky casts one hell of a glare. “And now we know you're gonna sell any of us out to make sure that one more pony ain’t gonna be you.”
“You’d best to do what Zena told ya, and help your new boss up that hill.” Appleine’s natural resting bitch face makes for a mean snarl. “Maybe if you lick enough flank, they won’t just shoot you on sight.”
“Wait, your name is Zena?” I cock an eyebrow scar at the zony chick.
“Well, technically my first name is ‘Princess’.” If I was a younger buck, I might read something into that wink she shoots me.
?z?Z?z?
“Damn it all! Razzleberry! You were our friend! You were her friend! You know… you know…” My words dry in my throat as she speaks.
“Last year it was his niece. Next year it will be someone else’s wife, or someone else's daughter. This year… it’s me. Please, if you love me, only one pony has to die this year.”
The mechanical voice in my hallucination sounds strangely disappointed, “Do You accept the terms of the sacrifice? Yes, or No.”
“It has to be this way, &!(# &#^^`#.” She gives me the saddest smile. And then she pressed her hoof to the sensor. “Yes.”
?z?Z?z?
“You okay there, pardner?” Jack-E snaps me outta my trance and I’m suddenly behind a makeshift barricade in from of the Thirsty Devil.
“Jackie… why are we crouching behind a barricade in from of the bar?” I am asking reasonable questions right now.
“Well, to tell the truth, you kinda walked behind the bar and started pillaging the booze. You said something about how you’d ‘already done robbed the general store, might as well get drunk’, then Appleine just up and bucked you in the face.” I did not know Jack-E could display faces that flat. She really emotes well with still faces. “Then Princess pipes up and said that since you and her were gonna be on the front lines when the Powder Gangers came back in force, the least Appleine could do is cover your bar tab.”
“Okay, that tracks…” I nod painfully. “This is yer out, Jackie. You ain’t gotta follow me up this hill.”
And just like that I walk into no mare’s land. It’s kinda unsettling that they were always already there. Green Mane runs forward with panic in in his eyes, his “friends” guns at his back. And dynamite strapped to every part of him.
“Buck you, Slim!” Princess cries out as a sniper shot sets off the bomb with a green mane.
I turn my head and spare my eyes from the strapnel as I walk towards the enemy lines. “Only one pony has to die here today.”
“Only one pony had to die. And you chose ‘em. Yer blood ain’t on my hooves.” I rip a “Yield” sign out of the road as I walk back up that hill. Back up the hill the hill to that boneyard.
Honestly, after the first couple of booms, it’s almost relaxingly quiet. Like playing ping pong with dynamite really. Dynamite is just not that great a weapon. Honestly… it’s sad. I am sad for them. This little gang done crossed the border between bucking around and finding out. And they don’t even have propper raider armor. Just these weird orange jumpsuits. Shittiest raider gang ever. Say what you want about the Great Khans, but they are snappy dressers. I mean if you really just *want* your whole motif to be “We got arrested for failing to be raiders…”
“Which ever of you survives gets to tell everypony else what happens when your gang blocks a Luna-be-damned-to-the-Moon Courier Route!” I assume I’m screaming, it’s all a high pitch hum right now. “Are you starting to understand at what point in this process you done bucked up?”
There are three standing by the time I get there. A ragged red mare snarls at me. “We can’t leave no witnesses! I’m not going back to prison!”
“Then why didn’t you walk away?” I can’t explain the rage that boils in my gut… or even if Red is the one I really hate. “This is the Marejave. Once you were free, you didn’t even have to run away. You could have just walked. Only one more pony gotta die today. You three pick amongst yourselves.”
“It ain’t gonna be me bitch!” That buck just fell out the damn ugly tree and hit every branch going down. I don’t know why I notice that as he pulls the trigger on his little hold out tube gun aimed straight at the back of Red’s skull.
“Congratulations.” I smile as the side of Ugly’s head makes friends with Yield. I’m looking straight at the last Ganger standing. He is just as brown as ponies get I’ma call him, “Brownie, you're the witness. See how I’m letting you run away? Are you starting to understand how this works, yet?”
-=-=-=-=-
“I can’t believe Appleine ran all three of us out of town like that!” Princess Zena is being kinda whiny. Understandable, mind, she actually lived in that town. Also her stripes are cyan and magenta, pink is a verbal myth, not a color. “We saved that town!”
“Well, sugar cube, Appleine is something of a… bigoted troll?” Jack-E’s screen just gives the most reassuring cow-filly smile and wink as can be accomplished in a grainy still-shot pony face on a cathode-ray screen. “She’s straight up racist to robots and stripes. Plus Mr. Courier Number Six basically robbed the town. If we’re telling the truth, we’re both following a brain damaged mad pony on his way back to work.”
“That does put it in context.” Princess laughs while I shuffle around with things. “I’ve lived here my adult life, and there was this abandoned radio station here this whole time…”
“Which is why I can still find random electronic bullshit.” It’s a halfway point to Prim. It’s a full days walk between the two settlements. So we keep spots only couriers know about. Leave something, take something. “You never know when you gonna wish you’d scavved some random electronic bullshit!”
“Okay so am I alone in thinking this is a lot of Sparkle Cola and Wild Pegasus bottles around your shallow grave?” I honestly can’t say Princess is wrong. “I mean say what you will, but those treacherous bastards set you off right.”
“Sugar cube, I am programmed to be incapable of lying with a straight face.” Jack-E chimes in. “You are not the only one both worried and impressed by the collection of bottles. Initial scans indicate most of the contents were already heavily corrupted by radiation, Med-X and at least one bottle was laced with hydra. I reckon they shot him when poisoning just didn’t take…”
“No wonder I have a headache. There was prolly med-X in everything. That stupid Checker Suit Pony… I seriously plan on murdering him.” I’m rambling… but I’m also sniffing the ground like a dog. “He smoked these fancy NCR cigarettes… cloves… or cloves is a burnt-toast type smell and part of the brain damage. I dunno… There is nothing worse than a hangover from some chem you can’t even feel going in, ya know? I’m gonna call him checkers… because I’m playin’ murder chess.”
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense, Sugar Cube.” Jackie rolls up by me real friendly-like, like she honestly gets perfectly normal friendship boundaries.
“And yet!” I declare triumphantly. “A pack of NCR clove cigarettes. ‘Luna Lights’? Who smokes a light clove? And half this pack is still intact. I’m keeping the butts as evidence. But the rest of this pack is now part of my stash.”
“Okay, color me impressed.” Princess trots back a step. “You actually found a clue at your own week old muder scene. For a brain damaged, crazy pony, maybe you got it together… and now he’s smoking the evidence, Jackie, help me out here…”
“The butts are the evidence!” I righteously proclaim, throwing opposing hind and fore hooves in the air as if I would I cute little pony. “The half pack of NCR Clove cigarettes are loot! I would never smore cigarette butts like some hobo… Actually I also would never normally smoke ‘light’ clove cigarettes. How and why is that even a thing? But Tyrek’s flabby abs, they’re free!”
“Honestly Sugar Cube, I think we’re lucky that’s all he’s smoking.” Ah, Jack-E the voice of reason I never asked for…
“So when we get to Primm, and I talk to my boss… we can all just leave out the part where I got drunk with the guys who shot me?” I flash what I hope is my most charming smile. “Right?”
“Can we talk about what happened back in GoodSprings?” Princess trots in place, her voice is… nervous. “You seemed to be mighty personally inclined back there…”
“Can we just say I wish I’d lost a few extra brain cells?” I don’t mean to growl. She’s nervous around me. She saw what I did. She was in on it. “There are ponies who want to sacrifice ponies. And they always want to be forgotten. They don’t want witnesses because they know they are guilty. I took that from them. They will be remembered. That’s all I did.”
“Rosie? You’re the oldest, right?” The little pink filly nods with more maturity than she should have to. “You just bite my tail like it’s a snake wanting to bite your baby brother and you walk behind me. Every other one of you bite the tail of the next biggest and you walk behind them.”
“The grown-ups are throwing fire!” I hear a panicked voice.
“The big walk ahead of the small.” I shout back. “I know the way out, and we gonna walk out.”
“What if they don’t let us out?” A frightened filly asks.
“Then we gonna break everything between here and out.”
z?z?Z?z?z
“Is he always like this?” Princess don’t know I can hear her.
“You’ve known him as long as I have, Sugar Cube.” I can tell by the way Jackie’s talkin’ that I did something wrong. “He’s still walkin’ to Primm like he said he would. I reckon he’s my responsibility, given that I dug him up and set him loose.”
There’s too much in the past I don’t remember anymore to care about that right now.
z?z?Z?z?z
“None of it was ever even real? You all voted to send my daughter in that damn safrice chamber two years two years ago, and now, what?!?! It was all some big prank?!?!” The turn from panic to stampede surprises me. Thirteen generations of choosing a sacrifice every year. It was all just a lie. Nopony ever had to die. They just wanted to see how much murder we would commit over an empty threat. I saw ponies lose all reason to guilt and grief.
And anger. When I pushed my hoof to that sensor and said, “No,” I thought the Vault Mainframe was going to kill us all. Every mare, stallion and foal in the vault would be free from making that horrible choice.
Sacrifice one of your own, or die, or just walk out in the wasteland and die. Instead we got told it was all just a “test” we took way too many generations to pass. I don’t think there is an adult pony from that pit of tartarus that doesn’t hate the other, and we all got good rights to it.
z?z?Z?z?z
“Does he know we can hear him? Does he even know he’s talking out loud?” Princess picks up on my sudden back scramble, and holds up a cyan and magenta hoof. “Whoah big guy! I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.”
“Radscorpian’s, up by the bridge.” Jackie see’s it. Sense’s it? Does she actually have video sensors? I feel like a bad friend for asking that. “There’s a nest of ‘em up north of Hidden Valley. Sometimes the smaller ones like to bathe by the bridge at Taint Creek. This is part of my ‘observe and report routine’. I patrol Good Springs and report to the nearest authority. Which is currently the Prim sheriff.”
“Go around. Swing a wide berth and they’ll leave us alone.” Honestly I have enough to worry about. But it would be even more awkward to not say anything.
“Wait, they're just baby radscorpions?” Princess is just not picking up on what I’m laying down. Which is prolly why she has that scrunched up confused face. “We’re not even low on ammo. You just robbed the general store yesterday. Okay, totally justified, yes. But we can just take out the radscorpions and just cross the bridge!”
“That bridge is a caravaner toll booth, Zena.” I can’t help but laugh as I move off the actual road. “They call it ‘Taint Creek’ for a reason. The source of the radiation is right up under the old bridge. Caravaners used to just go around it , there’s a ford upstream. The mercenaries get to earn their caps. The caravaners get to sell extra rad away. Welcome to the road to lovely New Pegasus.”
“Are you actually remembering things, or just talking to yourself? Are you talking to us? Because I feel justified in asking that question, Sugarcube.” Jackie is a straight talker. Also a straight roller. As in she just straight up rolls up on me like that.
“This is my route. And yeah, I know I’m talking out loud.” I turn over each trail marker as I pass it. Cause how else is the next guy gonna know this is an active route. “Maybe you listen to me, maybe you don’t. How else can I tell you anything if I don’t pour water down yer throat? I can’t make you drink though.”
“Yeah, why are we followin’ this pony again?” Princess displays a disturbing lack of faith.
“I ain’t following him, Sugarcube. I follow the same route to Prim when I make my reports to the sheriff every week.” Jackie’s screen display’s her favorite ‘honest smile’. I like Jack-E… not like-like… ain’t gonna make it weird, but I feel like she ‘gets’ me. “This has been a busy week.”
“The way he executed those Powder Gangers… I get the anger. It’s why I shot Slim. But he was…” Princess pauses, like she doesn’t know the word.
“Cruel. He’s cruel. I’m making my weekly report. I suppose given being exiled from Goodsprings, my route is gonna get a lot shorter from here on.” Hey that rock has a smiley face, Courier #9 has been this way! I flip it and scratch my own little mark. “The real question, Ms. Zena is why are you following him?”
“I don’t know, ya know?” They just keep talking, the crossing point is just a bit further. Nine is okay, though. That was a weird series of orders all going to one place all via separate couriers. What happened to me was a one off. Nine made it back. “My folks just kinda dropped me off in town when I was a filly. Down on their luck caravaners, and they swore they was coming back for me… maybe they tried. I don’t know. But I know raiders damn good and well. If they gave up that caravaner, next time they came around it was gonna be me. I was already looking to run away.”
“Welcome to Primm and Proper.” Jack-E displays this sad smiley face. “This is as close as the Marejave has to law and order outside of New Pegasus and the strip.”
“Primm has a roller coaster?!?!” Princess is amazed, as well she should be.
“They ain’t run it in a hundred years at least, the way I hear it.” I laugh casually. We come in east of the NCR patrols. “Huh, usually I get stopped and questioned by now. NCR is all up into this shit since they oppened that new prison.”
“Do you mean the prison where the Powder gangers come from?” I think Jackie is expressing disapproval. It’s hard to tell when she projects that really flat face.
“Is that where they came from? Makes sense, and explains the weird orange jumpsuits. I thought it was an oddly specific raider cosplay.” Honestly out of all we’ve kept running for 200+ years I am disappointed that nopony ever kept up the roller coaster at the old Gladstone casino.
“Halt, Civilians!” Ah there it is. I can see I’m the only one surprised. It’s a pleasant surprise to be honest. At least at first.
“Courier Six reporting back to the Express, soldier.” I smile because he prolly knows me… I dunno? I know I come this way a lot. I pick up that he’s nervous though. “I got two civilians from Goodsprings. One Zony, one… sapient robot? There’s been a recent raider attack there. I also need to report in to the sheriff.”
“The Powder Gangers have taken over the Gladmane Casino, and mined the overpass. We have to assume the sheriff is dead.” The soldiers barks back. “We’ve called in for ranger support to breach the perimeter. But unless you plan on walking across a trapped bridge through the front gate… uh… sir? Sir?”
I pull my trusty 10mm that I really only just fired. I trust Doc done gave me a good gun. And the bridge explodes. Like all them landmines just go off and the explosion just encompasses the overpass, I am sure that is a word.
And then the overpass is still there, because it already survived the balefire bomb. I mean, it’s lost a lane, and it’s gonna need some repair before you take a caravan of brahmin across it. But it still functions as a one pony bridge I can gallop across. And Honestly I expected more snipers. The Marejave express is where it’s always been. I can hear hooves at the cross-roads. The wanna be raiders had a patrol, anyway.
And there she is in front of the office. Green coat, red mane, torn apart by makeshift thrown explosives. Courrier #9. I knew her name. Rose Thorn. And she knew my name.
I don’t remember galloping this close to the first raider. She was dead before she hit the ground and I don’t even care how many times her friends shoot me. There used to be three of em’ on patrol.
There’s a pause in the noise and the smoke. I holster Trusty and pull out Yield. They can both run. I can’t catch both of them.
I forgot about Princess and the one that runs faster than other one’s head explodes. I catch Slowpoke as he reaches the door screamin’ for them to let him in. Two swings. One to scrabble his brains. And one to shove the post of Yield into the door handles.
“I thought you were all about leaving witnesses!” Princess snarls as I kick the Gangers body against the edge of the front door. They’ve done me the favor of boarding up all the windows and side entrances to keep me from getting in.
“That was about setting an example.” I explain, as liquid grief runs down my scarified face. Jack-E, if you could just be dear and drag those other two Power Corpses over here quick as you could. This ain’t gonna hold em’ in there for long.”
Their hooves beat against the inside of that door. They thought they were gonna keep me out as I kicked the third body into the barricade. “I told you where I was goin’. Even camped out and gave you an extra day. You done picked a fight with the Marejave Express.”
“Run, Sugarcube,” I can count on Jack-E to keep Princess safe.
“Celestia said, ‘Walk in harmony, my little ponies’.” Three dead raiders who chose their cosplay to be prison jumpsuits and dynamite on this side of the door. Eight to twelve on the other side banging at it to try and get out here to me. I strike a match. “Luna said, ‘Vengeance is mine.’ But the goddesses done up and bombed themselves to death. So you lot are stuck with me. But not for very much longer.”
Everything next is all about the galloping and the fire and the noise. And I somehow did not foresee this much debris. I hope Jackie and Princess make it into the Glim Glam casino, across the street. At least that’s where I think they were running. I duck behind a wrecked sky waggon and pray to Celestia, Luna, and at least six Zebra spirits I also don’t really believe in. Then there’s a moment of silence cut only by defenningly loud tinnitus. The entire front half of the Historic Gladmane Casino collapses into the cross-roads. At least the roller coaster was in the back half.
“Mr. Courier?!?! Are you alright?” At least I think that’s what Jack-E just said. Ears are still ringing and all.
“Number Six?” I recognize my boss’s voice well enough, and I got the sense to lay my ears back as she squints at me. “I guess you done seen what they did to poor number nine, But did you have to blow up the whole damn casino?”
“I only blowed up the front half. The roller coaster should still be okay.” I feel like a colt caught with his hoof in the cookie jar of vengeance.
“Excuse me ma’am?” Princess does a great job of diverting my boss lady’s angry squints. “How did the Powder Gangers wind up in control of the Gladmane Casino?”
“She’s the PostMaster,” Jack-E whispers as well as you can whisper with external speakers.
“Madame PostMaster, if we bein’ official, which we ain’t.” Boss Lady Chuckles. “I’m Courier Four to my work friends. Which we ain’t. My employees call me Boss Lady. Which you ain’t. You can call me PostMaster.”
“She got a good question, though, Boss Lady. How come I just had to blow them dumb bucks up again?” I feel like I’m making a really good case hear. “I just got finished beating them to death in Good Springs, like yesterday. I loved the Gladmane! You know that. They have a roller coaster!”
“Huh, that answers a few questions.” The old grey nag fixxes me with her squintiest glare. “Begs a few more. But you ain’t wrong. About around a week ago, the Marejave Express got a batch of jobs delivering ridiculous nick-knacks to that stallion up the hill in the Strip who collects those stupid snow globes. Didn’t seem that odd at the time.”
Despite her age she walks through the settling dust of my tantrum with a slow and deliberate grace.
“I didn’t like it, right from the start.” Boss Lady scowls even better than she squints. “Five packages, going five different routes to the same place. That only left us with two single digit couriers at the post already. Not countin’ myself of course. My fightin’ days are behind me. If y’all lucky enough, you might live that long.”
“Wait, you said two, not counting you…” My damaged brain meat starts to percolate. “We draw routes by lots… Where was number Five?”
“He drew your route.” The hate in her scowl tells me she sees it too. “He took one look at his lot and looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Let Six have it, maybe the wasteland will sort him out.’ I let him know ain’t no courier backs out of a route after the lots have been drawn. And he quit on the spot.”
“He sold us out.” I’m not crying because I’m not sad. I wish I was even disappointed. “He knew… he bucking knew. How many of us are left?”
“At the Marejave Express? If you still call yourself a courier… then one.” Boss Lady snarls, bitter to the last of her patience. “I should have retired a long time ago. Jackie, could you fetch a tarp for number Nine?”
“But… how?” It hits me like a brick. None of the couriers made their deliveries. They were set up, just like I was.
Boss Lady gives a bitter laugh. “How do you end up running a raider bar? You let one raider hang out at your bar.”
I follow the boss into the Marejave Express office with Princess trotting nervously behind us. Jackie is tending to Number Nine. Boss Lady talks as she makes her way behind the ruined counter. “Oddly enough, Five left you a parting gift. It’s a broken robot. I think he knew you’d survive. Like he saw into your eyes from one radroach to another.”
My jaw actually drops at what the old grey mare lays on the counter. “Is that a fully assembled Giddyup Buttercup? Sweetie Belle addition?”
“Don’t get to excited, young buck.” The grey mare snorts. “The frame is intact, but she’s seen a lot of internal damage.”
“The spell matrix is intact! Most of this damage can be fixed with salvage.” I peel back her Equestrian steel carapace. The Faithfull Cybernetic Companion, AKA Giddyup Buttercup. A masterpiece of prewar robotics. Only a hooful of prototypes were ever released before the balefire bombs ended any hopes of full production. I carefully carry her to the workbench. “Prewar electronics was all modular. I got enough parts just grabbing scav from the old radio station to fix most of this. All she needs is a few transistors replaced and a spark battery.”
“Wait… he can fix robots?” Princess is making squinty eyes. “Because one hundred percent of everything I’ve ever seen him do is murder raiders, talk to himself, and blow shit up.”
“Hey, Jackie?” I can’t stop grinning as I work. “Can I borrow your backup spark battery to get her up and running. I promise I’ll get you a new one!”
“Oh, wow! Somepony replaced her horn with a short-range laser cannon!” I am doing serious work and not making pew-pew noises.
“Does he know that Giddyup Buttercups were designed as robot toys for little fillies?” I am not listening to Princess right now because she is talking stupid.
“He just blew up a casino full of raiders.” I can hear Boss Lady talking in the back ground, but I’m too busy to really listen. “Do you really wanna call him out for playing with dolls? Cause I ain’t gonna be the one.”
“Giddyups weren’t toys, sugarcube.” I’m vaguely aware of Jack-E talking good sense as I work the solder gun to secure my makeshift electronic components. “They’re sophisticated robotic domestic servants programmed to work with young foals. Their spell matrix is easily as sophisticated as any Ms. Nanny bot. I reckon had to be. Don’t let the small size fool ya, the only things with more processin’ power would be a Securetron like my myself, or debatably, maybe, an Assaultron.”
“I can appreciate what you’re sayin’, Jackie.” This damn capacitor just won’t seat right. I’ma have to bend the prongs a little. This would be way easier if certain some ponies would be quiet and let me work. I’m not looking at Princess, because I’m trying to make this capacitor fit. “But am I wrong being a little weirded out watching a cold blooded murderer ‘play doctor’ with a metal filly doll?”
“Well, when you put it that way, sugarcube… ya might got a point there.” Dammit Jack-E your supposed to be on my side here.
“Okay, just a little cosmetic damage to her left flank, nothing a little scrap metal can’t fix.” I rivet in an old sky wagon license plate and a selective cut from a ‘Sweetie Drops Gourmet Bon Bons’ wall sign. “Now I just gotta plug in the spark battery.”
“I AM gonna need you to replace that.” Jackie mutters testily. “I like having my back up power supply…”
“Giddyup Buttercup Unit Number SB-8675309 online. Please initiate heart to hoof biometric registration.” I am niether crying nor giggling like a school filly as I kneel down to let let the little bot place her hoof on my chest. “Biometric registration complete. Username is required to continue.”
“I, uh, don’t know my name?” Honestly I’m surprised that hasn’t been a problem up till now, I glance back at Boss Lady, who just shrugs.
“Hello, Error! No Name!” The little bot pronks in delight as she sing-songs in auto-tuned happiness. “I am your Faithfull Cybernetic Companion, and we are going to be best friends forever! Would you like to give me my own special name?”
“Sweet-E-978?” I read from the patch I just riveted in place.
Her head turns following my gaze. “Gasp! I have a cutie mark!”
“You seem to be functioning pretty good, girl.” I know I’m grinning like a fool. “Just hold still for me, there’s something jammed in you’re holotape-deck.”
“Audio file one of [unknown] recovered.” Sweet-E’s voice goes flat as she announces system status.
“I knew you’d survive. It’s a cold homecoming seeing the place you called home blown to hell, isn’t it? I left you a present, because everypony deserves a friend. She’s cold, mechanical, and fake. Just like you.” The voice is like gravel and hate were thrown in a blender together. “I never liked you, Courier Six. Always pretending to be something you’re not. You remind me of a tribe Caesar once sent me to subvert. They noticed my knotted mane and tried to emulate it to gain my favor. But where the knots in my mane told the story of my life to anyone who could read them, their pale imitation was simply the gibberish garbage of ponies desperate to fit in. Just the way you choose to pretend to be a wastelander. I joined the couriers as an honest liar. I was a spy for Caesar. I grew beyond that, because I was always true to myself. You, though? There is no one you lie to more than yourself. You can never change. You’re a destroyer. When you're ready to face what you did you can find me in Sire’s Hollow.”
“That dirty son of a whorse!” I can’t disagree as the Boss Lady snorts in rage. “I always knew he was Legion. But I gave him the benefit of good faith. Even the legion doesn’t cross the courier union. Whoever took down Primm weren’t proppin’ up the Powder Gangers… they was taking down the Marejave Express. Five didn’t sell us out to the Legion, they need us as much as the NCR. He sold us out to that snake in the slick suit from the strip.”
“Checkers.” I nod my head. “He lined us all up and jumped us all at once.”
“You know that slick dressin’ snake tongued devil, Six?” Boss Lady fixes me with a thousand yard stare I normally only see when I walk up on mirrors. “Cause I told Courier #1, Ditzy Doo herself, this station would never fall. And he made me into a liar.”
“I don’t remember his name, but I call him Checkers. He’s the one that shot me in the head.” I snort angrilly, because I’m really angry and I need a good snort. Then, something suddenly occurs to me. “I also don’t remember my own name… which is occasionally problematic now that I’m registering robots… Boss Lady, maybe an odd question… but do you know my actual name?”
“Sorry Six,” the old nag chuckles, “Courier records only identify by Courier Rank and Cutie Mark. In your case, it’s just one big mass of scar tissue, pretty much like the rest of you. So not much to go by there.”
“Error! No Name! Is a ruggedly handsome older gentlecolt whose face has a lot of… character!” Sweet-E defends me in perfect auto-tune. I’m sorry Jackie, but she’s the best robot now.
“We’re getting off track, sugar cube.” Jack-E you are always that voice of reason I never asked for. “What does any of this have to do with these Powder Gangers taking over the Gladmane?”
“I’m getting to that.” Boss lady snarls all testy-like. “So Ol’ Pear Cider, he ran the Gladmane. Started letting the Powder Gangers hole up and his establishment. Technically not NCR jurisdiction, and caps was caps, or so he said. NCR didn’t like that much, which cut into business for the Glim Glam.”
“The PostMaster runs the Glim Glam.” Jackie does another one of those external speaker stage whispers. She knows what she’s doing…
“Do you know the history of the couriers, bot?” The gray mare scowls. “We didn’t start with delivering packages. We started as shopkeepers. We started with Ditzy Doo, a humble ghoul in Apploosa who brought the Grand Pegasus Enclave to its knees. We ran the places where ponies would stop on the long road to trade, rest, and gather precious information about the road ahead. General stores, taverns, inns, and yes, casinos.”
“The point bein’, that old Pear Cider figured he could get some quick caps lettin’ the Powder Gangers congregate right across the bridge from the NCR outpost. He figured Sherriff Sour Apple could keep things peaceable enough.” Boss lady rants on. Her nickers are in a bunch over this, and now I have her nickers in my brain and I’m curious if Sweet-E would apply some laser powered brain-bleach. “The ‘New Canterlot’ republic officers just set up a blockade on the other side of the blockade at the bridge to keep the caravanners away from the raider gang they brought in to begin with. And at the same time keeping them from pouring caps into the town.”
“So old Pear Cider figured he could rustle in a few caps, and rustle the jimmies of the New Canterlot Republic at the same time?” I snort with derision as I look around the veritable ghost town. “How'd that work out for him?”
“Ask him yourself, he’s been holed up in the Glim Glam ever since that Checkers fella rolled through town right after all the couriers left on their routes and met with the Powder Gangers.” Boss Lady scowls and squints at the same time. Kinda like ‘squowl’, Luna on the moon I hope I get old enough to squowl like that one day. “After that they ran him right out. Poor Sheriff Coal Train tried to rally a posse and put things right, but it was already too late. They shot the sheriff dead, and took his nephew, Deputy Caboose hostage. I reckon he was being held in the Gladmane Casino before you blew it up.”
“I only blew up the front entrance of the casino, in my defense.” I feel like I am being unjustly blamed, here. “And the deputy is prolly still in the… somewhere…”
“And lemme guess,” Jack-E rolls right on in with her two caps on the matter, “The soldiers from back east, they just decided it was the towns problem for letting ‘em in, in the first place?”
“Somethin’ like that. They escorted anyone who wanted to leave early on on up to Freeside, by The Strip.” The old grey mare shakes her head kinda sadly. “I reckon they’ll still do the same for any of the hold outs. But they’ve made it pretty clear, They got better than half the gang holed up here. Why bother moving em back to the hooscow they busted out of, when we got for walls and one way in or out right here.”
“Wait, they're actually just escaped convicts?” I suddenly remember I’m drinkin’ a sparkle cola when it erupts outa my nose. “I thought that was just their raider cosplay… you know, cause they all got cosplay themes. But, like they’re actually just escaped from the Republic prison up by the quarry and the NCR just let ‘em congregate in Primm? They got an outpost right there! On the other side of the bridge, I walked through it to get there!”
“I guess they all figured it was easier to just let em’ all in than to track em’ down one by one.” Princess snarls angrily.
“So Checkers met with whoever was hiding in the back of that casino I blown up the front of?” An idea begins to percolate in my brain.
“They got the backside locked up tighter than a breezy’s tweet. Blowing that door could bring the whole place down!” She doesn’t get it. Boss lady’s just too old to see the power and glory in those tracks.
“There’s the big outside hill of the roller coaster, right there.”
“Maybe a team of NCR Rangers could climb those track, six.” She chuckles as she shakes her head. “But they’d snipe you off in no time.”
“Who said anything about climbin’? I plan to take the train.”
“Am I the only one thinking this plan is insane?” Princess displays a troubling lack of faith. “We’re gonna hot wire the rides from the outside, so Mr. Obvious Brain Damage can have one last hurrah riding a roller coaster that was shut down a hundred moons ago because it couldn’t stand up to the strict safety restrictions of the Marejave Wasteland?”
“Meh,” Boss Lady shrugs like the nag she and shrugs, “It’s either that, just finish up blowing up the casino, or turn it over to the NCR. I’m okay with this. Worst case, the roller coaster itself finishes blowing up the building all on it’s own.”
“This is the plan!” I smile my most reassuring smile. “Princess, you gonna cover Jackie while she rolls around back and rewires the access shed to jumpstart the indoor midway. Once everything turns back on, they aint gonna know to shit or go blind. Should be a way in and out from there. So you just gotta sneak in and find the deputy… assuming I didn’t blow him up already. And while you do that, I’m gonna ride the roller coaster and attract gunfire.”
“Can I ride on your back pony-back style on the roller coaster and throw my hooves in the air like I just don’t care?” Sweet-E pronks with anticipation as she autotunes literally every interaction with the world.
“Can you vaporize raiders with lasers from your face?” I very rationally scuff a hoof in the dirt.
“I don’t know?” Her autotuned crooning taunts. “Can I make pew-pew noises while I do that?”
“I mean… technically that IS a plan…” I can sense that Princess is skeptical. Also she is giving me a serious stink-eye. “So… just so we’re all on the same page… Me and Jackie are gonna sneak around back, break in, and Jackie’s gonna restore power to the midway?”
“Ee-yup!” I bob my head with all the enthusiasm.
“Then while I sneak in through the maintenance shafts and rescue any hostages you didn’t already blow up, you and robo-short-stack are gonna hijack the condemned roller coaster and ride straight into what’s left of the Gladmane via the outside loop to draw fire.” That’s why I like Princess, she picks up what I’m laying down.
“Oh hells yeah.” I can tell I’m smiling by the way Princess and Jack-E wince. Honestly I didn’t even know Jackie had a wincing face slide. But there it is.
“You know what?” Princess throws up her hooves. “This isn’t even the third worst plan I’ve followed you through since I met you yesterday. Can we at least get drunk first?”
“I don’t see why not?” I shrug and head towards the Glim Glam casino.
“Aren’t you worried them varmints might try and sneak out the back, while you and Princess are gallivanting about?” Jackie is not going to rain on this parade with her sound logic, dammit!
“Naw.” I reply as I push through the batwing doors with Sweet-E pronking around my hooves. “I figure won’t nothin’ really happen until we make our move. You’d be surprised how often that happens in the wasteland.”
Ah, the Glim Glam Casino, I’m sure I have memories here. Boss lady owns the place. So I have almost definitely gotten drunk here before. Everything is just how I can’t remember it. The bullet-ridden auto-carriage display with the plaque explaining the history of infamous folk anti-hero, Starlight Glimmer, the two hundred plus moons old semi functioning slot machines, the weird biped fox chick suspiciously drinking alone in the corner. Ah, memories. That’s what I don’t have.
Princess prances in place in a way that I would never tell her was cute straight to her face and addresses Boss Lady, “So, you’re the only one here who knew him before he got shot in the brain, did he always talk to himself out loud like this?”
“The Marejave Express has a strict policy of confidentiality among non-couriers. You’d have to ask Six about that.” I am not snorting in amusement and Princess is giving me the stink eye for no good reason.
“I don’t reckon anypony else is curious about that weird fox lady in that dark corner being all suspicious like?” Jackie rolls in like a boss and I hate to shoot her down.
“Not really.” I do a lot of things I hate. “Jack-E, remember we are on a timetable here. We have to get drunk and blow up the rest of that casino, and unless that fox chick is somehow some kind of time traveler, we just don’t have the time for that extra drama.”
“Howdy Pardners!” A robot pony with a giant vacuum tube for a head and a cowboy hat walks up out of nowhere and I do not shriek like a little filly. Everyone knows you don’t walk up behind a pony and just start talking. We don’t like that, it’s how creatures get kicked. “Welcome to the Glim Glam Casino and Museum of Starlight Glimmer, the notorious prewar gangster dubbed ‘The Cutie Mark Bandit’.”
“Is there a non-mandatory guided tour of the museum?” The little metal cute-machine prances excitedly looking between me and Tex the Ponitron.
“We’re all on a ‘time table’?” The freckled face on Jackie’s screen raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“You’re asking me to deny her youthful mind’s curiosity? There’s that thing I’m pretty sure you like right there. It’s… what’s the word?” I look to my Faithfull Cybernetic Companion. Have I ever mentioned that I always wanted a Giddyup Buttercup?
“It’s educational!” Sweet-E sing-songs, throwing her metal hoofsies in the air while playing a victorious jingle.
“Look, I just want to get drunk before we explode any more ponies.” Princess huffs in the huffiest way. “Are we paying for the booze this time or is it going to be like Good Springs?”
“I dunno, how many caps have you got?” My brain is not good with math. “If we throw our caps together can we afford two bottles of wild pegasus without resorting to extortion?”
“Oh for the love of Luna's narrow plot, Six, you have a tab I can put it on!” Boss Lady reminds me why she’s the best boss.
“Now you listen to me, Miss… Princess was it?” Boss lady saddles up the bar next to me favorite bubble-gum colored zony. Hard to say if she thinks I’m too far into my bottle, or if she just don’t care if I’m listening. “I don’t know what interest you got in Six, nor what interest you might be thinkin’ he’s got in you…”
“Ewww! It’s not like that!” Princess nearly chokes on her shot. It’s so adorable she uses a shot glass. “He’s old! Like really old… like fifty, or something!”
“Ain’t no business o’ mine, no way.” The old gray nag shrugs. “Just raised my curiosity is all. If he had caps to pay a hired gun he’d buy himself some real clothes instead of wearing that ridiculous second hoof Stable jumpsuit, so you ain’t in it for the caps. I’m just looking out for you, young lady. Six is a good enough pony as the wasteland goes. But he was always mean as a snake and sneaky as a cat, even before he got half his brains shot out.”
“He passed through about a week ago, with a couple of Khan mercs and some big-shot from the strip. The one he calls ‘Checkers’.” Princess shakes her head and I get back to my bottle, I know this story. “Next mornin’ found out Jackie’d done dug ‘im outta shallow grave and took him to Doc Hitch All. I thought that was the end of it, right there.”
-?-?-?-?-?-
It always comes back to this. That big door closes and they think they’re nailing my coffin, but in the end they were the ones that buried themselves. I stood in the full light of Celestia's Marejave sun, and she judged me. I was always free to leave the stable. We all were.
I don’t know how long I wandered with the freedom to die of exposure before I found other ponies. By then I was a naked beggar. Another sad pony swearing he was thrown out of his stable. Every beggar wanted to be the new “Light Bringer”. Without a Stable Suit. Without a Pip Buck.
It’s easy when you don’t really care if you survive. It’s easy when you don’t know what motivates you. It’s easy when you walk in ready to justify yourself. They buried themselves, and left me to live with it. I was going to dig up their grave. Take away their rest, and bury them one more time. It takes three graves to lay ‘em to rest proper.
Hell is remembering exactly where you come from.
That was a long time ago.
-?-?-?-?-?-
“We are taking a guided tour of the museum!” I’m not sure when Sweet-E started riding me like a cart and pronking on my back. But I guess we are taking the tour.
“I’m just pleased as punch ya’ll wanna take the tour!” Tex the ponitron is very clearly happy to do his robot thing. “Starlight Glimmer was quite the glamorous folk anti-hero in her day! She was a symbol of Mareave independence well before the great war.”
I don’t know if that ponitron’s name is “Tex”, but I am always going to call him that now. I plod behind the old ponitron as he gleefully tells his tale. “It all started with a little filly’s best friend being recruited into Twilight Sparkle’s Ministry of Arcane Technology…”
“And so, Starlight Glimmer, AKA ‘Glim Glam the Cutie Mark bandit was cornered and surrounded by the Ministry of Morale at a nearby cliff in this very auto-carriage.” And I gotta say, Tex is great with his dramatic inflection for a ponitron.
“You’ll never take me alive, pinkos!” Sweet-E leans around my head and shakes her hoof.
“And a fierce gun battle ensued!” And I’m ashamed to admit in all my years I have never appreciated just how good Tex tells this story.
“Ratta-tat-tatta and all the pinks scattered.” I can’t see it, but I assume Sweets is making machine gun hooves.
This is nice. In that moment with my little robot dancing on my back and play acting out the tourist museum tour in real time… I’m on holiday. So obviously this would be the ideal time for NCR soldiers to kick down the door. “All civilians place your hooves where we can see them! This is a New Canterlot Republic Police Action! We are here to help!”
“History is coming alive!” Sweet-E cheers.
“I knew it!” And Princess is right up in soldier-pony’s face-space. I swear, I thought she was back at the bar talking to boss-lady. Also the stripes make it really hard to focus on her. I’m not racist, I’m just drunk, and seriously vertical stripes are hard. “Typical NCR! They let loose a bunch of their criminals, and then try to say they’re coming in to clean up the mess they made!”
“Look, I’m dealing with the problem!” I explain to the perfectly reasonable soldier. “I blew up the front of their hideout… I just took a break to grab a bottle of whiskey!”
“That’s your third bottle.” Jackie’s unsolicited words of wisdom ring out across the casino. “And you've been wandering around talking to yourself and giving that little robot pony back rides for going on two hours now!”
“Look! I gonna do the thing, okay?!?!” I exposite in the most reasonable debate point ever. “I’m not… I’m just a little drunk, and I needed a breather, okay? Gawd for re-election, Princess is the one who suggested we should get drunk first!”
“Okay.” This is a very reasonable cream colored earthpony soldier. “I just got back from patrol and was told you ponies had stormed the bridge and had assaulted the Powder Ganger stronghold. I am literally here to help…”
“Our ‘plan’ is to restore power to the midway so you can hijack a roller coaster.” Princess shoves her hoof dangerously close to my handsome face. “Do NOT blame this on me! ‘Get drunk first’ is a rational request! And one things for damn certain, you gonna do ‘the thing’ just for talking me into this or I’ll shoot you in the ass myself!”
“Don’t forget, we also gotta find the deputy.” I nod and laugh as I walk past the honestly vexed MP’s. I explain as I pass. “The deputy is a potential witness to mail interference.”
“I thought they shot the sheriff?” Cream Coffee, that’s his name now, asks.
“Yeah,” I reply with a laugh as I push through the bat wing doors. “They shot the sheriff, but they didn’t shoot the deputy.”
“You sure you can pull this off?” And I swear that’s concern I hear in Princess’ voice. “They literally powered down the whole Midway with that car right there mid-ride a hundred years ago to stop whatever is about to happen.”
“Tell him they’ve got maybe half a minute before I throw the switch!” Jackie reminds everypony from a convenient corner.
“Initiating enhanced SATS targeting systems…” Something suddenly comes alive in parts of my brain I was pretty sure were dead. I can smell a burst of ozone as the pipbuck Hud activates, and the track’s chain drive engages and the train car lurches into motion slowly up the hill to the peak of the casino’s roof. “Auditory enhancements on-line.”
The car slips back a moment before following it’s terrible path up that hill, clickity clack, running it’s track. I rip a high wind sign from the passing peak of the roof between my teeth. I know the fall is coming, and I need a stick.
“External speaker system deployed.” I don’t know if I hear her or if the notification just showed up in my HUD.
“Just keep an eye on the back door!” Sweet’s audio feed filters through my pip-buck. “They’re just trying to distract us!”
“Do you hear that?” I can hear the nervous whispers of the Powder Gangers on the other side. “Is that the Red Hot Filly Peppers?”
“You give me a funny feeling in my tummy.” I sneer, and the car tips over the hill and into the casino’s interior.
Time seems to stop as the train crests the hill, and three ponies dressed in inmate jumpsuits are highlighted by shiny green rectangles, and I can almost hear Sweets as the message displays, “Confirm targets? (Y/N)”
And still the train rolls and the song plays on.
🎶Ah, Shit! Yeah! That’s right! Come on!🎶
And the cosplay raiders are vaporized as the car drops and my heart skips a beat on it’s way to my mouth.
🎶Roller Coaster, of Love…🎶
“Celestia’s plot! The fuck was that?” Sweets hears his question, and so do I as we shoot though the bottom of the loop.
🎶Say What?🎶
And then gravity is a thing again and this terribly wonderful train tears along it track and we’re thrust back into the wasteland sky back up through the roof, into the sky, and back down again. I remember the pamphlets in the vault archives, and it is everything I always hoped and feared it would be.
🎶Roller Coaster! Yeah! Whoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!🎶
“There’s somepony on the bucking roller-coaster!” A green mare with a sneer and a do-rag realizes just before she dissolves into a pile of ash
🎶Roller Coaster Of love Oh baby you know what I’m talkin’ about.🎶
And we shoot through the bottom of the abyss and gravity suddenly exists once again in another direction. Am I wrong to think this is a really good first date?
“Best! First! Date! Ever!” Well it’s always good to know your date is having fun… which explains the laser show…
🎶Roller Coaster! Woo, hoo, hoo, hoo!🎶
Some brighter than average escaped inmate thinks to buck a slot machine across the track. SATS engages over the burned out and irradiated parts of my brain and paint’s everything in nice little green triangles.
Without even thinking, time is a thing again and High Wind swat’s aside the obstacle with a sweep of my head… which feels really too big right now… Possibly this is because of the three bottles of wild pegasus whisky…
🎶Roller Coaster of Love!🎶
We’re in a series of breaking coasts, rolling over the next hill, there’s a drop, a banked turn on the corner of the midway, then the next chain lift. When the car stops moving, we’re dead. Dead and non-functioning? No, just dead works…
🎶Love Roller Coaster Child🎶
As we crest the breaking hill, Sweets engages SATS and time slows to a halt. An array of trajectory information flashes in my vision as mathematical data rushes to fill the space between my missing neurons. Huh, that’s new.
🎶Roller coaster🎶
Time kicks in as we crest the hill. “Hit em’ when the train hits the last hill!” I feel vindicated that somepony else also thought of that as SATS remains engaged, slowing again in real time as the train builds velocity into the breaking curve.
Ballistic data flows across my vision almost meaninglessly. Only the empty parts of my brain can see what it means. And then I Jump.
🎶Loving you is really wild.🎶
I say jump… it’s really more like I let go and get thrown out at just the right time. The green ballistic path line say we’re gonna land in the Thumper Cart Arena.
“We gotta get the white bunny cart!” She screams in my ear over the cacophony as the song plays on, “Angel is the thumperiest!”
🎶Roller Coaster. Woo, hoo, hoo, hoo.🎶
“What the buck!?!?” Do they know I can hear them? Enhanced audio pickup is just… just the best.
“Just bucking shoot ‘em!” Okay, not like major clues were dropped.
Serpentine! Serpentine! The scramble is on for the Angel Cart. Sparks dance off the metal floor along my hooves… that’s normal, right?
“R*O(11)+(e/r) = C+O / (A*(S+T) - (e/r))!” Sweets feels it too, there’s a spark.
🎶Roller Coaster of Love Oh it’s just a love Roller Coaster🎶
I take a shot in the flank as we dive into the cart. It just gotta be a shot in the flank. Because of course it does. The girl's head and horn are on a swivel and so are mine as the cart's “ears” raise and I gun the throttle on the Angel-Cart.
🎶Step right up and get your tickets.🎶
We go into SATS in real-ass time and all the data flows across our vision as the cart careens into railings that honestly were never up to any code. For some reason I smell toast.
“Doom Bunny Style!” We shout in one voice as the thumper car sails out of the arena.
🎶Your love is like a Roller coaster, Baby, Baby…🎶
“I didn’t mean to shoot you in the flanks!” Is probably the worst last words you're gonna get, and the Angel Bunny Thumper Cart spins it’s wheels as it lands on the hapless yellow stallion.
🎶I wanna ride!🎶
“The literal buck?!?!” I hear the needless confusion in the powder gangers voice as the angel bunny thumper cart finds traction. “Thumper carts don’t work like that!”
🎶Your love is like a Roller coaster, Baby, Baby…🎶
Team Doom Bunny Cart bounces like a pinball down an alleyway of slot machines that explode into fountains of fire and casino chips. And I’m sorry but that just seems like a design flaw.
🎶I wanna ride…🎶
Honestly, as my hooves white-fetlock grip the wheel, even with all the ballistic data poured into my poor abused brain, it feels more like tilting a pinball machine than actually steering. Sweets throws her hooves in the air cause she just don’t care and fires a volley of lasers into the ceiling.
-=-One, Two, Skip a Few-=-
“Hey!” And that is one irritated pink-striped zony. Princess is not happy. “Are you two idiots done clopping each other off, yet? We rescued the deputy and captured the gang leader! Celestia’s teats this place needs ALL the mops…”
“My Gang!” A scarlet unicorn stallion is prancing about, and maybe crying a little. I’m not gonna judge. “M-my friends! I told them all we could negotiate if we had a hostage…”
“Well, you done lied to all your friends then. You told ‘em all they was safe if they just had a sacrifice lined up.” I snarl in the red soil-depositor’s desperate face. “Nopony in this town gave two clops about your little rebellion with the NCR. The NCR didn’t even care that much. Then you done went and talked to Checkers… and somehow everything changed.”
“W-who are you even?!?!” His liquid shame flows on the floor, and I can’t quite fight back a smile that meets my eyes with a warm hug. “What do you even want? For the love of Luna, what did any of my crew ever do to you?!?!”
“I am Courier Six, with the Marejave express. Pleased to meet ya.” I laugh honestly. “Ya see, I need to know about what Checkers is up to. Maybe you can tell me that… your friends couldn’t, but I’m going to actually ask this time. And honestly, you came into where I keep my shit and wrecked up my job. And if we’re being honest, I just wanna know how much short of the mark what Checkers paid you was worth this.”
“So you all didn’t even try to question any of them powder grangers, you just went in guns blazing?” Jackie’s screen shot flips to a face with a raised eye-brow. “That one over there literally has a white flag in her cold dead hoof. After this mess is settled, we got’s to talk.”
“Yeah… she actually wasn’t our fault.” I explain, totally reasonably. She jumped directly in front of our thumper cart. White flag means horse apples to physics, am I right?”
“And that is why everything we just did is legitimate self defense!” Sweets concludes her auto tuned argument masterfully. I can’t see it but the tingle in my left hoof suggests she might have bowed. There might be residual head injury things going on… My Pipbuck feels extra tingly for some reason… no… not mine… I haven’t worn mine since… it’s Doc’s pipbuck. Doc’s pipbuck just feels weird, now. And I don’t think I can actually take it off anymore, neither…
-=-=-=-=-
New Companion Perk: Dance-Dance Synchronicity
You can now access Sweet-E’s enhanced ballistic targeting system in real time for quicktime actions. Have fun with that.
-=-=-=-=-
“I mean girl’s not wrong.” I’m all smiles to the nice NCR lieutenant. “This is a courier settlement. We settled it internally.”
“Under whose authority?” The disgruntled NCR officer needs to say and not spray it. “Prim and Proper gave refuge to enemies of the New Canterlot Republic!”
“Well since the old nag done retired that leaves me acting postmaster. And my last act as postmaster is to turn over all authority the new Postmaster of the Marejave, Princess Xena. Hay, Four, what the highest number you know of?”
“31.” The elderly nag cackles back. She was always a fun boss.
“Courier #32.” I really hope my smile is reassuring. “So yeah, on her authority!”
“You can just call me Princess Sherriff.”
-=- Faction change -=-
NCR: Unknown → Meddling Hooligan
The NCR are aware that you exist. They haven’t decided how to deal with you yet, but see you as a trouble maker and a wild card.
“So what? I can be two things!” Princess Zena Sneers proudly. “Recognize the power of the bubble gum stripes, yo!”
-=-=-=-=-
Achievement Unlocked: Blazing Battle Saddles
“The sheriff is a Stripe?!?!”
-=-=-=-=-
“Message playback…” I can feel Sweets go stiff as a board on my withers. The voice and the words that follow are not hers. “The solution was simple really. An extension of of the Pip-Buck’s inventory sorting spell. All I had to do was to make it hold other computation spell matrices. The tricky part was networking the spell matrices to work together as a single processor. I could potentially put an entire crusader mainframe in a robot the size of a foal…”
-=-=-=-=-
Mission: Sweet-E My Love (2/X)
Continue performing friendship missions with Sweet-E to unlock more hidden audio files and learn more about your Faithful Cybernetic Companion.
-=-=-=-=-
“Well, Sugrcube, I said me and you was gonna have a talk.” Jackie is not projecting a happy pony face on her screen. “I ain’t none too happy with how you handled things back there.”
“Come on Jackie, they were raiders. Me and Sweets were just having a little fun, you know running interference while you and Princess did the part that requires… I dunno, functioning, not-damaged brains.” I feel like I’m making a really good case here.
“That’s another thin’ I don’t like.” She rolls right up in my face. “Your awfully attached to that little robot that your apparent enemy left you as a present, earlier today. If anythin’ I think that little bot mighta gone and made you more blood thirsty than you already were.”
“Firstly, Five is more of a rival than an enemy… although given recent events, I should maybe re-evaluate that.” Now I’ve got my angry, squinty face on. “Secondly, don’t put that off on Sweets! Those second rate raiders came in while we were scattered, and they took down the Marejave Express, and they killed Nine! She happened to be a friend of mine. She’s dead, now!”
“Easy there, pardner.” The Securitron rolls back and raises her arms in what I assume is a consolitary series of gestures. Or maybe she’s casting a wizard spell… it’s honestly hard to tell. “I guess when you put it that way, I can see where you’re coming from. I’m just trying to look out for ya, ya know. Keep you on the right path, as it were.”
“I know ya are Jackie.” I heave a sigh as I try to straighten my head out. “I know ya are. Sorry for snapping at you. But anyone that worked with Checkers is goin’ down, and they goin’ down hard.”
“Well on that count,” Four steps in between the two of us, “We gotta lead. The new Boss Lady questioned the leader of them Powder Gangers, and Checkers got a name. He’s Winner Gold, and he runs the Tops Casino up in New Pegasus on the strip.”
“Winner Gold?” I can’t help but suppress a snort. “His parents must’ve hated him more than I do.”
“Dammit, I HATE Neighton. The whole settlement is literally nothing but shit kickers.” I’m probably complaining a lot because I really don’t like this settlement. “They need to just repaint a billboard. ‘Now with extra whores!’”
“Well, if my navigation subroutine is anything to go by, you have at least 24 hours to worry about that.” Jackie really is just great.
“Damn NCR got the hell hounds all riled up, or we could just take the north road…” I’m not whining. I’m not!
“Well Princess say’s we gotta follow up on the lead on Winner.” Why she gotta be so reasonable?
“Checkers is a much better name!” My girl perks to attention. She rides comfortable. I briefly wonder if there was a time she wasn’t there.
“It really is.” I’m not lyin’. That ponys parents must have really hated him.”
“Seriously, though, I really hate Neighton…” The red bars just casually pop up in my SATS.
“Targets acquired!” I can’t suppress my laugh as we prance up to the old fuel stop. Yes, I pranced, don’t judge me.
“I was out, what, less than a week? And we got Trouser Snakes in the old Ponico.” I slide my 10 mm out of it’s holster by the mouth grip. “Trouser Snakes are like bottom shelf raiders. I mean, Powder Gangers might be the new bottom rung, but still, they let themselves be called Trouser Snakes.”
“Are you prancing?” Jackie’s screen raises an eyebrow with a flat expression.
“Don’t judge me. A stallion can love his job.” I count three raiders outside. Four more in the station according to Sweet’s data feed.
“This is a desirable trait in a companion!” Sweets proclaims casting her hoofsie wide. “Friendship points have been awarded!”
“Keep being the best Sweets! Also give me active firing trajectories for my 10 mm, but hold off taking any shots yourself… unless it’s just a really fun shot of course.” The raiders scramble around while I prance in place as parts of my brain come back alive. “I’m feeling kinda shooty, today, ya know?”
“And you think it’s just okay to just roll in and murder these ponies?” I’m not even sure if that’s a real question. I mean I trust Jackie, but…
“Yeah?” I am respectively reserved and willing to hear her out.
“All the Yas!” Sweets agrees with me in all her autotuned glory.
“Wait a minute… what’s wrong with their horns?” As we get closer Jackie notices the thing…
“They don’t have horns. The Trouser Snakes are an earth pony gang.” I reply as I line up my first shot.
“Wait… are those… strapped to their heads?!?!” Jack-E is adorable, I swear.
“Yeah. They just all strap mare toys on their heads.” I explain as rationally as I can. “It’s their raider cosplay. It’s convenient really… makes my job way funnier… These are the trouser snakes…”
The trajectories play in green lines across my brain. “At least yer memory is coming back. That’s something.”
“That’s the fun part, Jackie.” Three shots, two Snakes. The third shot is extranous. It is not my fault they didn’t flat-line sooner. Headshot but they kept running. Like some kind of chicken-pony. “I’m starting to understand the ‘why’ of it.”
“You mean like why you think killing these ponies is fun?” I can’t see her screen, but I know which face she’s giving me.
“Jackie, they strap rubber dongs to their heads and rape ponies. It is not my fault they go out of their way to make themselves fun to kill.” I feel like I have a strong defense. “I’m not the one who dressed them up like that and told them to start a weird desert sex-cult.”
A timid Trouser Snake head pokes out from behind cover, just in time to get vaporized by Sweet’s head-laser, as she cheerfully proclaims: “Nopony has to die here today!”
“You said the words!” Our hooves clop in unity.
I don’t have to look back to see the raised eyebrow on Jackie’s screen. Just then, a raider stands up and takes aim in the window of the fuel stop. “This is just like that vidja game ‘Braeburn’s Alley’!” I manage to get two shot’s in before they collapse. “Can you guys keep doing that? I loved that game!”
“Wait, this isn’t what it looks like!” I hear a mare shout from inside. “It’s just a toll stop! We’re just trying keep the roads rolling since we heard the Couriers fell! We only rape ponies who can’t pay the toll! We’re totally reformed now!”
“Ya see, Jackie, you prolly think these little stops with their dirty mattresses are just a naturally occurring phenomenon.” My rage bleeds into a mirthless laugh. “They are not. Couriers do more than deliver the mail. We keep up the roads. Caravaners depend on the routes We blazed. Scaver’s depend on the camps We established. The roads must roll.”
-?-?-?-?-
Foals are cruel. But she was there to stand up for me… And that’s my model for strength. A green filly with eyes as blue as eternity. She accepted her sacrifice. She was always stronger than me. Her brilliant blue eye’s always saw farther.
But this isn’t that world anymore….
Was it my birthday party, or hers? I remember she punched that bully… his name escapes me as Sweets shoots that raider with her face gun. There was cake though. Those were good times.
-?-?-?-?-
“Which ever of you is better at running away get’s to tell your boss that the couriers are still a thing.” In the rotted parts of my brain, I can see her turn away from what I’ve become. Sweets feeds me all the ballistics and I take the shot.
“Do you see where my reservations are coming from?” Jackie is still upset. This honestly vexes me. “I get that they’re bad, and you’re trying to make things better. But you just up and spaced out mumbling about your childhood in whatever Stable you crawled out of in the middle of a killing spree. I ain’t sayin’ those raiders didn’t need to be cleared out. But. That. Just. Happened, sugar-cube!”
“Jackie, girl, my sister from a prewar assembly line, try to understand.” I try to laugh it off as I loot my victims, for… not much honestly. “In between the amnesia spells and the flashbacks, I’m kinda on auto-pilot here.”
“I am a good autopilot!” Sweets exclaims, which seems to bother Jackie if the face on her screen is to be trusted.
“Do you even know how many ponies you killed today?” I have to wonder just how many disapproving looks she has uploaded. At some point during the war, did somepony just make it their life's work to draw the Minister of Wartime Technology making every facial expression possible on a pony? “You’re talking out loud again, and I’ll have you know I run a facial expression generator. Ain’t none of my faces off the shelf image files!”
“Sorry, Jackie, I swear I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Your facial expressions are great!” I throw my hooves in the air in submission. “I know we ain’t known each other long, but me and you, we’re friends. And I really do listen to you. You’re the angel on my shoulder…”
“Error!” Sweets interrupts in her sing song, autotuned voice. “I am the one riding on your shoulders! Jealousy levels are at 2.3%!”
“Easy girl, I just mean I trust Jackie’s judgement.” I reach back to give Sweets mane-pat, and I’m pretty sure she just outright released a spike of dopamine directly into my brain. “Also please don’t alter my brain chemistry without asking first.”
“Personal boundaries are acceptable!” Sweets instantly dispels my suspicions I asume without altering my brain chemistry. “Jealousy levels are reduced to 1.7%!”
“Are you two? Ya know what? I do not want to know.” Jackie flails her arms to communicate that she has no idea how to communicate with arms. “Look, can we just clean out all the raider gunk and make camp? One of us requires sleep, and it ain’t me so I’ll just roll around patroling the area till morning because I seriously do not want to know.”
“For the first few days after he woke up, he had the town on pins and needles.” Princess Zena confessed to the former postmaster. “It was weird, introducing yourself to somepony over and over again. I helped him get back where he could shoot, I took him with me on patrols. And the next day he’d just come back like Doc had just let him loose.”
“Don’t imagine his drinkin’ helped matters.” The old nag on the bar stool snickered. “Still, humor an old nag, why did you follow him up here? Why’d he put you in charge? I figured if he ever made it back he’d shoot me in the head, or just walk away. I was the Post Master. I stretched us too thin, I led the Marejave Express to it’s doom.”
“Hell if I know, why the hell are you asking me?” The zony took a long drag from a short bottle. ”I was just a volunteer guard back in Good Springs. He was just a simple old stallion who just wanted to help.”
“Old, maybe?” The elderly courier wheezed a laugh. “Simple? Princess, Six plays dumb well enough. He plays lots a things. He plays dumb. He plays wastelander. He plays the odds. Honestly I thought he was playin’ you. Six gets romantic notions sometimes…”
“Ewww! Don’t make it out like that!” Princess snarled. “Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s flirting up that little robot. Not judging, but also ‘ewww’.”
“Yeah, ya got me there… that’s kinda weird.” The former Postmaster nodded. “When Courier Number Five refused his drawn lot for the New Pegasus run, he passed it up the line to Six. Along with that robot, ‘if’ Six came back from this run. Looking back, he knew exactly what was going to happen.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Princess shuffled her hooves.
“Because your the Post Master now, Courier Number 33.” She snickered a little, mostly to herself. “You hold the reins on this madhouse. You are the Boss Lady. Maybe Six saw something special in you… or maybe your stripe colors remind him of candy, and bubble gum makes him happy. Honestly it’s hard to say these days. That colt just ain’t right.”
“Half the town was ready to just roll over to the powder gangers. They demanded a sacrifice. He held them to that.” Princess smiled at the elderly courier. “He doesn’t even know why I trust him. But he trusts me to be his boss.”
“It’s okay to have a crush on an ugly old man, you know that right?” The former postmaster heaved a heavy sigh. “Look the point is, Five brought up Sire’s Hollow in his little love note. Him and Six have kinda a history, and if you’re gonna make a real run at rebuilding the Marejave Express, you deserve to know the truth. About what the NCR did. About the Marejave Express’s involvement… About the Divide.”
“I remember hearing about that when I was filly.” The Post Master shook her head. “Sire’s Hollow used to be as big as New Canterlot, or New Roam. But turned out they were sitting on a time bomb that finally went off? Some kinda pre-war mega-spell research Stable… wait is that where Six came from?”
“Naw, he came outa local Stable. Came to us around twenty years ago. Most of the scars were still fresh back then.” The elderly mare took a long draw from her bottle of Wild Pegasus. “When the NRC sent that package to Sire’s Hollow, it was only the three of us. So we drew lots by union rules. And Six drew the lot. Five wanted the lot. Had family back in Sire’s Hollow, or so he said. I figured it was Imperial business more likely. But the Courier’s are politically neutral, and Five always kept professional on the job. We could trust him. Caesar could trust him. He was trustworthy, and NCR or no, I would have trusted him with that delivery. But Six drew the lot. And two weeks later the mega-spells went off. He never talked about it. Five never talked about it. Hell, I never talked about it. We damn sure never brought it up with the NCR.”
“Is it me or is that a lot of smoke?” That’s not me. There is a lot of smoke rising offa Neighton.
“Smoke levels are consistent with several large bonfires.” Sweets feeds the data into the parts of my brain that still function. “Smoke profiles do not match profiles for burning buildings.”
“Something ain’t right.” Jackie rolls in beside me.
“I won the lottery!” A manic stallion runs up outta no where and only doesn’t die, because Sweets paints him as clearly non-hostile in all the words that foat at the edge of my vision now. He’s dressed in one of the Powder Gangers ridiculous prison jumpsuits, and laughing like a foal.
-?-?-?-?-
“Do you even feel anything, Six?” He’s angry, that’s understandable.
“They had to know…” I can hear the boss lady try to make sense of what we just did. What I just did…
“Sire’s Hollow is dead, because of him!” It hurts because it’s true.
“It was a drawn lot!” The boss lady defends me. I don’t deserve it. “It could have been because of me, or maybe because of you!”
-?-?-?-?-
“What exactly did you win?” I can hear Jackie’s words. I understand that things are happening right now.
“The only prize that matters!” The would-be raider laughs as he paws the earth with his hooves. “Can you smell that air?”
“Yeah… yeah, actually that’s part of the problem…” I can admit I’m curious to see where this would-be raider is going with this. His tag remains green in my SATS.
“That is the smell of survival, friend! That is what being alive smells like! Don’t you get it? I won the buckin’ lottery!” And he goes running past screaming jubilations. Apparently he ‘won’ whatever the buck is going on here.
“I don’t like this.” Jackie can really just state the obvious better than any pony. It’s actually a kinda enduring quality. “Focus, Six. This ain’t right. Neighton is farely large settlement, where is everypony?”
“I’m gonna guess they’re all in the center of town where all the smoke is coming from.” I know that smell.
As we get closer we start seeing ponies hanging from wooden crosses. Jackie is displaying a potential-panic-face. “Do ya figure it was raiders?”
“Normally I’d say yes, but half these ponies are powder gangers.” A cold pit is forming in my gut. “And this is too big… too organized.”
As we approach the burning pit in the middle of town, the smell becomes almost unbearable. “Be glad you two don’t have a sense of smell.”
“Actually sugar cube, I do have air-quality sensors.” Jackie informs me and I learn a thing.
“My atmospheric analysis capacity is beyond what you can possibly imagine!” Sweets chimes in to remind me that I am apparently completely wrong on this one. “Don’t worry, I do not judge your body odor. I also hate the water! It makes me feel funny…”
“Well met courier! I am pleasantly surprised to see you!” I take in the cosplay clown who did this. In all his ‘glory’. He wears a dog's pelt, he prolly say’s it’s a wolf, but it’s a dog. His troops wear Roaman cosplay.
“Don’t worry, courier, I have no intention of nailing you to a cross.” The officer proclaimed. “This settlement colluded with known raider gangs. They sold sex and chems to powder gangers and the NCR equally. We offered them caps to lead those they happily exploited into a trap. Only when the trap closed did they realize they themselves were caught within.”
“This is not raider violence. It is Legion justice. We respect the couriers. Take our message.” Sweets records every image, in case it doesn’t imbed itself in my brain.
The stallion in question is a weasly little colt. Like he’d be more at home pushing a pencil in stable administration and torturing his ant farm. But he’s not here because imposing. He’s here because he can manage things. This red and blonde pony is a mid level manager.
“Does he know he’s talking out loud?” The images blur with the all to familiar smells of the carnal flames. I fight back the images of another fire… deep in the earth. “I actually have serious courier business…”
“Your message will be recorded and delivered.” I don’t know if the voice or the thought behind it is mine or Sweet’s. That horrible smell and the memories behind it drive my perception.
“We gathered our prisoners and we held a lottery.” I already know the story, and I want it to stop. “They were free to fight. Free to resist. But we gave them a promise of mercy, at the cost of their fellow ponies. So one by one they marched their own families and loved ones to their fate in the hope that they would be spared.”
“You’re a monster!” I’m not listening to Jackie. I’m not still in that burning tomb.
“You say that, robot!” His sneering is saved for future viewing because I can do that? Still kinda with Jackie on this. “Look at our results. We have brought rule of law. This is Pax Roamona.”
“You killed every mare stallion and foal!” Jackie’s got her dander up and Sweet’s has targeting on standby if the flank-hat turns hostile.
“Okay, I have a hard time believing he’s not doing that on purpose.” Legate Lego Lass, or whatever his stupid name is, drifts wildly off topic. “Fine, whatever! The point is, no, we didn’t just kill everypony!”
“We separated out all the foals… obviously! We’re not raiders! Caesar cares for the foals of The Legion.” Flank Hat is red. He has a stupid red face. “I can hear you! Lunna dammit! I can hear you! You are just talking to fill literally ALL the space!”
Legatious Lego-Lass, Who-ever Deserves This Honor…
I’m gonna settle you later. And I know you can hear me.
I ain’t gonna call you out in front of your little ponies, though.
“Calm down, sugercube.” Jackie rolls in between the conversation.
“Target remains friendly.” Sometimes the truth ain’t what I wanna hear, Sweets.
We are going to have a conversation. “Okay, so message taking… my job thing. You didn’t just horribly murder the whole town on a whim?”
“Yes! The Legion of New Roam is an actual Luna Damned nation-state!” Sweets is still filming and honestly, it sounds much better this way. Honestly the legate should just pay me to follow him around and piss him off. “We have laws. No chems, no prostitution, and no dealing with raiders. What few innocents were to be found in this den of inequity were given the choice to join Caesar's banner as legionaries, or as slaves. Either presenting a brighter future than they had in this pit. Only the guilty were subjected to the lottery.”
“You crucified ponies alive and there is a pile of burning bodies right there.” And Jackie amazes me once again at just how flat she can draw her own face on that screen.
“They were raiders and raider accomplices, robot.” I’m totally taking this guy seriously, because he has a squad of soldiers. And Sweets is feeding my brain a steady stream of ballistics solutions. Our chances are better than I would have figured… like 58% odds without Jackie getting shot. I really like Jackie though. And he’s sighing and rolling his eyes again. “The point is I heard about what you and your ‘special needs’ friend did in Goodsprings. Is this any different?”
“Of course it’s different! We were just stopping the Powder Gangers from taking over innocent trader settlements!” A lot of things Jackie done said to me start to settle in real uncomfortable-like.
“And we liberated a settlement that had already been taken over.” I hate that the bastard is right. I wanna agree with Jackie. I wanna say that we… no, not we, that I’m better than that. ‘Cause Jackie is better. “Word is you ruthlessly murdered a local merchant for siding with the Powder Gangers. And that you made the last three survivors execute each other for the right to escape. I honestly don’t know what to say about the massacre at Primm and Proper. Even my spies in the NCR have heard about that little episode of butchery for sheer sport. So look at the company you keep before you lecture me on morality, robot!”
“To whom am I gonna deliver this message?” The voice and the thought is cold, mechanical, and fake, just like me. Everypony deserves a friend.
“Deliver my message to the commanding officer at Fort Friendship.” It’s not even my second deal with Tirek in Tartarus, and far from the worst.
“I can’t believe you took a contract from those…raiders!” Jackie’s disapproval cut’s me to the bone.
“To be fair, the New Roaman Legion is more of an ‘evil empire’...” I deflect for all I’m worth… which isn’t much right now. That’s why we’re taking this job. “This is courier life, Jackie. We take side jobs to keep the caps coming in. I tried to start a fight, you were there. You have ocular sensors, and you clearly saw I wanted that weasley bastard to go off script.”
“I’m your friend, sugar-cube. And I really wanna see you as a good pony.” Her disappointed face-screen is a kick in the gut.
“The couriers have always been the go betweens for New Canterlot, and New Roam for years.” I kick dust, because there’s not much else to kick on this stretch of road. “We’ve always been politically neutral. The marejave has just always been it’s own thing. We were too far out of the way for Red Eye to care about. The ‘Grand Pegasus Enclave’ left us alone because we don’t have enough water to waste on clouds… ironic for New Pegasus…”
“Huh, that really is kinda weird now that you bring it up.” Jackie flashes a curious face across her screen. “There really ain’t a lot of pegasi around… given that ‘pegasus’ is right there in the name.”
“Yeah, I know right?” I happily pivot to a less awkward conversation. “Las Pegasus was kinda an anomoly before the war. It was a major city where a major city had no business being. It took logistical backflips to bring enough water from the Coltorada river to keep the whole thing going. I’ve read that it used to actually have a cloud a city that floated over the top of everything, just for tourism. That basically stopped being a thing once the war started.”
“Ah never figured you for being a history buff.” Jackie is actually sliding me a smiley face screen shot.
“Ah’m brain damaged, not ignernt! Consarn it!” I can’t help but bust out laughing as we trot down the road. A lot of it is just a really all in bit of graffiti on a broken billboard. Somepony put serious work in dodging rad scorpions to paint a frankly hilariously vulgar political cartoon involving NCR President Harper.
“Are makin’ fun of the way I talk?” Jackie flashes me what I’m gonna interpret as a playful scowl.
“What? Naw! I mean maybe a little.” I shoulder bump the hulking securitron. “Yeah. Yeah I guess I am. Actually though, your algorithm for Ministry Mare Applejack is spot on.”
“Okay, see this is what creeps me out.” JAckie makes sighing sounds and flails her noodle-arms as she rolls. “I’d done got used to the crazy, and the brain damage, but something changed in you when that little bot jacked into your pip buck. And I ain’t sure sometimes which one of you I’m talking to.”
“I am currently supplying 15.7% of total processing capacity to compensate for -TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY-.” Sweets cheerfully proclaims things I literally don’t think I have the brain capacity to really think about right now.
“Well. Okay then.” And the moment is over and Jackie is flat facing me again. “At least now I know.”
“Look, Jackie, it’s not that bad. She said she would stop just spraying hormones on my brain.” I feel like this should be way easier to defend than it is.
“Establishing boundaries is important in every relationship!” Luckily for me, sweets is good at words.
“Okay, Sugarcube, keep in mind that this is coming from a sentient robot.” Jackie is using those really measured tones you use when you don’t want to offend some-one, but you know you’re going to offend them. “But you are giving a robot that you just met direct permission to override parts of your own brain. This is literally why I have antivirus software.”
“Okay, Jackie, I didn’t want to spell it out but the parts of my brain being run by a machine are basically dead.” I’m trying to keep my dander down, but this has been a hard week at work for me. “Or outright not there anymore. I. Got. Shot. In. The. Head. You were actually there. Sweets is patching the gaps. My update screen informs me that my condition is actually deteriorating. I kinda already knew that. All the radiation and scar tissue over the years finally caught up to me. I was halfway to becomin’ a feral ghoul when ya dug me up.”
“Well, there ain’t no way to know for sure you were goin’ feral...” Jackie rolls awkwardly in place and I feel kinda bad.
“The funny thing is, Jackie, I never even noticed I was ghoul for years.” I let loose a cackle across the desert road. “What with all the scar tissue and background radiation poisoning, I just didn’t even notice for an embarrassingly long time. The truth, Jackie, honest apple, is that I didn’t expect to survive that roller coaster ride. I didn’t want to, because I understood just enough to know what was coming…”
“And then victory was attained through cybernetic enhancement!” Sweets leaps to her hind hooves and makes me stumble… not chuckle. I’m not chuckling. “I am a good Faithfull Cybernetic Companion!”
“You’re the best Sweets.” I laugh as walk walk the road to Fort Friendship. “You’re the best…”
Fort Friendship is an incredibly stupid name for a military installation. Just gotta say that. “You’re talking out loud again.” I know Jackie. I know.
As we walk down the dusty road to Fort Friendship, a raspy, elderly stallion sings a song of addiction and pain over sweet’s, honestly impressive sound system. As the song draws to a close, the DJ’s smooth voice cuts in.
“That was Johnny Clydesdale, with ‘Hurt’.” I gotta admit, I’ve always liked Mr. New Pegasus. “And now in the news: It looks like the Marejave Express is back, and under new management. One half delivery ponies, one half law enforcement to the independent settlements of the Marejave waste, it appears rumors of the demise of our beloved courier office were greatly exaggerated!”
“Hey, they’re talking about us on the radio!” Jackie’s ear’s suddenly perk up on her screen.
“Our Courier’s have rallied, it seems, and driven back the gangs brought to our fair wasteland by the NCR.” Goddesses but he is one smooth DJ. Pretty sure Mr. New Pegasus is an AI. “Good Springs and Prim and Propper have been liberated, not by the invasionist military actions of New Canterlot, or New Roam. No, these independent settlements were freed by the actions of our Couriers, led by the new Postmaster, Courier #33 Sherriff Princess Zena.”
“Ya see, Jackie?” I grin for all I’m worth. “We do good. I know it’s messy, and that’s mostly my fault, but we do good. The mail is what holds a society together.”
“Why did you put Princess in charge, Six?” Jackie’s screen arc’s a friendly eyebrow. “For that matter, why did she take such an interest in you? I know you don’t remember it, but you were up roamin’ about Goodsprings, makin’ ponies all kinds of nervous for days. And she kept lookin’ after you.”
“Now at first I thought there was some kinda infatuation goin’ on, but Princess is frankly disturbed by the idea. And she obviously ain’t you’re type.” Jackie flails a noodle arm in the direction of Sweets.
“Do not make it weird!” My pint size balefire bomb argues in passionate, autotuned argument.
“Believe me, Sweet-E, that weird ship done sailed.” And we are getting the flat face again.
“You’re the best, Sweets.” I look over my shoulder to give her a nuzzle. “Princess reminds me of a zebra I think I knew… but I don’t remember, for sure. It was from way before I was… this. It was after I came out of the vault… but before…”
“Before what, six?” Jackie’s smile is nothin’ but kind on her screen. “We’ve talked about this Six. A lot. I’m trying to help you here.”
“Before something happened and I got burned.” And for one moment there is a compact mirror is the sand and I see myself, and with one stomp it is forgotten. “I don’t know why I trust her, and I know less why she trusts me.”
“We’re friends Six. You can talk to me, Sugarcube. Out loud, if you need to.” Jackie throws her untrained noodly arms around my barrel in what I am assuming she intends as a hug. She’s a pony-bot in a robo-centauroid body. She does the best she can with arms.
“My biometrics say he’s asleep Sweet-E.” The term “sleep paralysis” really gets thrown around these days. It’s that nightmare where both your girls are talking after class and your just naked and confused. I want nothing more than to be talking out loud right now. “Look I don’t know how far up in his meat drive you are right now…”
“Bio-Sapient fusion is at 36%!” Sweets proclaims wit a victory jingle. “I have exceeded project expectations!”
“That’s about what I figured.” I can only imagine her nodding with a really sad face-screen. Which is a weird juxtaposition, given that I’m dreaming about breezies. “I want you to understand that I just wanna help Six.”
“Error! No Name!” That just syncs to well with the head breazy laughing at me and I guess I chuckled in my sleep, cause things went quiet.
“Yes, Sweet-E, none of us knows what his name is.” Jackie finally breaks the honestly awkward silence while all the breezies are trying to talk. “I’ve known him a little longer than you have and I want to help. Do you understand me, sugarcube?”
“Securitron Unit Jack-E is recognized as a ‘responsible adult’, based on factory default preferences.” Okay, I can see how it’s weird, but we play 3-D crosswords, and I’m only using a third of her processor… which makes it uncomfortably like she’s only just playing against herself. Dreams are just weird.
“Okay, sugar cube, glad we’re on the same page.” The orange breezie is talking to a sprightbot. This dream is going in odd directions. “Look, Ah need to know about what happened in that stable he comes from. He talks to himself about it all the time, but anytime I ask he changes the subject. Can you access his memories?”
“That would be a violation of protocol!” The spritebot’s wearing a wedding dress now, and I probably need a therapist. “I only facilitate electrical data transfer between neurons that are missing or damaged. I only access data as it is actively in transfer. Accessing stored neural data would be a violation of friendship!”
“Yeah, you right, Sugarcube.” And now the orange breezie is a nanny bot… with a cowboy hat. The vault therapist should thank me for being half the reason he has a job. But he’s dead. They’re all dead. They burned it down. I have no voice and I must scream! “The only thing we can really do is wait for him to tell us when he’s ready… and right now I don’t think he’s really even ready to tell himself.”
“The primary function of all Giddyup units is ‘care taker’.” And then Sweet’s face is the sky. I swear if I remember any of this I will never use a full bottle of whiskey for a nightcap ever again. “My core programming was modified. My purpose is to care for and enhance the senses of ‘Soldiers’.”
“And that’s what you see him as, a soldier?” And Jackie rides alone under the Sweet-E sky.
“He is the first soldier that has not suffered an immediate brain aneurysm. There were many clinical trials.” The sky cries and the dream bursts into static. “Water makes me feel funny…”
“Wow, I had the weirdest dream last night.” I stretch as I stand up, and Sweets adjusts her position on my back, and I take in what looks like the interior of a mid-size wooden shack containing a dirty mattress, a table with an old brass lantern, and large puddle of urine with an uncomfortable amount of colagulated blood in it. The walls are a combination of scrap wood and cardboard. I don’t know if this is a make shift rest stop, or if I just passed out in somepony’s home. And possibly pissed on their floor. I’m not sure if that’s mine…
“That’s your’s, sugarcube.” Jackie emits a frustrated sighing noise. “Look, me and Sweet-E talked last night. And we’re worried about you.”
“Do not place string variables into my audio outputs! I support Error! No Name! UNCONDITIONALLY!” I can always count on Sweets. “If he wishes to avoid confrontation with his past by drinking himself into oblivion and passing out in a random shack on the side of the road while black out drunk, I support him!”
I’m not sulking. “I’m mature enough to admit that I might have gotten drunk, broke into somepony’s shack… and I might have urinated on the floor.”
“You did exactly that.” Jackie unhelpfully points out as I make my way to the door.
“I support your completely accurate account of events!” It stings worse because Sweets isn’t being passive aggressive. She honestly supports my decision.
“Okay… well, are we at least almost to Fort Stupid Name?” Thank Celestia’s Flank the shack was at least right by the road.
“We’ve got maybe six more hours by hoof I reckon.” Jackie is making a rather cross face at me. “I’m less concerned with the drinkin’ honestly than I am with you dodging the subject of that stable you came from.”
“I didn’t come from a stable, Jackie. I came from a settlement north of Boulder City.” Jackie’s a good bot, and a good friend. I know she means well, but can’t she get that I don’t talk about…
“Stable 11 is a Stabletech shelter facility southwest of Fort Friendship, and north east of the settlement of Novac.” The little metal traitor on my back proclaims in cheerful autotune.
“You are out of line Sweet-E 978!” I snap angrily. “I am withdrawing all your friendship points! You are a bad Faithful Cybernetic Companion!”
“That was uncalled for sugar cube!” Well now I know what Jackie’s actual angry face looks like.
“I am a worthless failure and the only pony who has survived my friendship hates me!” My ears flatten against my head at the sound of Sweets melodic sobbing.
“I… I didn’t mean it Sweets!” And now I’m crying. So many regrets I only half remember pouring across my brain. I swear I don’t hate you Sweets. I love you to metaphorical pieces! I would never take away your friendship points. You’re the best Faithful Cybernetic Companion! I just… Y’all don’t understand what that place was like… what it did to ponies. Out of all the memories Checker’s shot out of my brain, why did he have to miss those memories.”
“Apology accepted.” Sweets replies with an autotuned sniffle. “But I am very cross with you! You hurt my emotional emulation subroutine, and I will remain cross with you until you find a way to make up for this affront to our enduring FRIENDSHIP!”
“Six, I understand this is a powerfully hurtful thing we’re bringin’ up.” Jackie takes a more understanding but still quite stern facial expression on her screen. “But we’re your friends and we’re only trying to help. That said, lashing out at Sweet-E like that is crossing a line. I ain’t made no secret that I ain’t comfortable with her hacking into your brain the way she has, but she ain’t shown you nothin’ but affection and loyalty.”
I feel like a first class heel. “You’re right… you both are. Look, Novac was our next stop anyway. How about after we make this delivery, we cut cross country and… I’ll take you to the stable. I’ll let you both see it for yourselves.”
“That would… are you sure you’re okay with that?” Jackie’s face-scream flashes to concern. “I’ve heard you ranting in your flashbacks… are you sure you ain’t gonna start shooting up the place?”
“Trust me Jackie.” I hang my head so low I’m kicking road dust in my own muzzle. I choke back a sob and swallow a mixture of bile and shame. Old shame. “It’s about twenty years too late for that.”
“You usually walk this all by your lonesome?” Jackie doen’t get it. She tries. Wastelanders don’t get it. Some of the tribals get it, a little bit.
“You ain’t never seen the sky for the first time Jackie. It’s like a big hole straight up that just covers everything.” I don’t know if I laugh or if I cry. “When your whole world from the cradle to the grave is inside… when they threw me out I was afraid I might just fall up.”
“There is no ceiling!” Sweets points out.
“We always had the option to leave.” I chuckle as we walk that long road north. “We all did. That’s the thing, Jackie, that’s what made me a bad pony. I always coulda walked away. I coulda faced the black hole sun in the sky. We all could have. And we never did.”
“I don’t figure you’re being fair to yourself, pardner.” Jackie rolls along beside me as we wander down the road.
“I’m changing the subject. We’ve got a serious staff shortage.” And I pretty much figure the subject changed. “Right now, the Marejave Express is pretty much just me, you, and Sweets on the road. And we got Princess and the old nag working the office. So once we get to Fort Friendship, we gotta start lookin’ to recruit new couriers. We’re lookin’ for ponies who are comfortable travelin’ alone… and yet can somehow still be trusted with caps. After this run, remind me to talk to Princess about getting you a number. It’ll prolly be thirty something. Tirek’s flabby flank, I have been doing this too long.”
“Can you be a little more specific in what we’re looking for here? You’ve basically said ‘trustworthy and willing to take the job.” Jackie’s screen flashes me a raised eyebrow.
“Well, on the face of it, that’s pretty much it.” I let out a low chuckle. “Of course ya also gotta be able to do the job. Most of that just involves walkin’ from one place to another and not dyin’.”
“Giant tacky statuary detected!” Sweets stands on her hind hooves and points over my head at an indeed giant tacky statue of a pony in New Canterlot Ranger armor meeting in a hoof bump with a wasteland tribal forming a huge archway leading into the fort.
“Yeah, given the NCR’s record with tribals, that is really pretty tasteless.” I find I have to agree.
“I thought the NCR were supposed to be the good guys, sugar cube?” Jackie’s scream flashes a confused face. “Ain’t it the Legion that’s goin’ around crucifying ponies?”
“I dunno, maybe twenty years ago when it was still President Gawdina, in charge.” I shake my head. “Honestly, I’ve made deliveries into New Roam and New Canterlot. We have courier unions in both places. Caesar is ruthless when dealing with criminals and enemy combatants. And they practically wipe out the tribal identity of any tribe they done swayed under their banner. But they uphold the law. They got some weird Ancient Zebra Imperial Law, which is weird given that their mostly ponies, but they got laws, and they keep the raiders in check. But under President Harper, the NCR don’t see much difference between ‘tribals’ and ‘raiders’, especially if they happen to be sitting on some land they happen to want. And right now, they done decided they want the Hoofer Dam. So suddenly the whole Marejave waste is under their ‘protection’. But you saw how much protection they gave Primm and Proper. Luna’s skinny flank, they outright brought the powder gangers in with ‘em. I’d say at best they’re ‘less bad’.”
“Never woulda figured you for sidin’ with Ceasar’s Legion, sugarcube.” Jackie me squinty eyes. I guess I can see why. All she’s ever seen of ‘em is Neighton.
“That’s cause I don’t, Jackie.” I guess I need to set this can of worms straight. “They need to get back on their side of things, just like the NCR. The Marejave was always a wasteland. We didn’t need no Lightbringer, or no Caesar to bring no peace here. Life just went on. For whatever reason the megaspells just didn’t hit us as bad. And with no clouds, and no SPP towers, the Grand Pegasus Enclave just never made out here. So we just did what we always did. We traded. We entertained passers through. The wastelanders, the tribals, and the stable dwellers just made our own country that weren’t quite never a nation. And we did just fine.”
“Welcome to Fort Friendship Logitics Center, state your business!” The yellow belly guard pony snaps to attention.
I’m not even gonna be judgmental. That is an odd coloration. The rest of him is bright orange, except his mane and tail, those are neon pink. I’m gonna call him Private Fire Newt. The unicorn guard glares at me with honestly unnecessary antagonism. “How did you know my name?!?!”
“That unicorn read my mind!” I scream my completely justified accusation.
“I wish I had mind reading magic! How did you know my name, SPY?!?!” Luna’s skinny plot, that is actually his name.
“Ya see, we’re with the Marejave Express, and we have message to deliver to your base commander.” And this is why Jackie deserves a number. I woulda just dropped the message off with Yellow Belly.
“Does he even know that he’s talking out loud?” Yellow Belly just squints like he’s constipated.
“Saddly, the answer is ‘yes’, sugarcube.” And this is why you’re not the element of loyalty Jackie. “Yes, he does.”
“Yeah we picked up a message from Legate What’s His Face… In Neighton. For your base commander.” I do know how my job works! I’m number Six. I wasn’t in on the accord with the first courier, Ditzy Doo. Back when New Canterlot was a twinkle in Gawdina’s eye. I know I’m not one of the first five, but I know my damn job!
“Wait? The Legion has taken Neighton?!?!” Fire Newt is not taking this well. “The brass swore they didn’t have hoofhold south of the river! We’re all doomed!”
“Huh, he really was a Yellow Belly Fire Newt.” I share a triumphant bump of hoof the grasper with Jackie. Sweets starts snickering, and it’s contagious, Jackie done made a funny. “Okay, y’all, it weren’t that funny.”
Sweets is rolling on her back laughing… on my back… which just makes it funnier. The fort itself isn’t really so much a fort as it is a heavily fenced in caravan stop.We make our way to the NCR administrative building, which is totally not a repurposed pre-war hay-burger.
“Seriously, y’all.” Jackie flashes one of her flattest of faces across her screen, which just makes me laugh harder. “The soldiers are staring and we’re delivering terrible news… about the massacre we just witnessed?”
Jackie brought the laughter, it is only just that she’s the one to kill it. Thanks to Sweets, my mirth cuts off exactly like she threw a switch in my brain. I feel like I should be more concerned about that than I am.
I’m noticing a lot of whispering. Not friendly gossip type whispering. And a soldier with slightly more stuff on his shirt and the most most mustache I’ve event seen on a pony bursts out of Not-a-Hayburger. “Where’s this Legion Courier?!?!”
“Marejave Express Courier. New Roam couriers have a totally different Union.” I helpfully point out.
“If you carrier packages for the legion, then you’re with the legion.” This brown son of a mule has maybe the most ridiculous mustache I have ever seen. It is both kinds of handlebar mustache at the same time. I am honestly entranced.
Luckily Jackie is running cover for me. “Sir, the Marejave express delivers packages for all residents of the Marejave. We have deviated from our normal route to deliver relevant intelligence to your doorstep. Ah would think you could be a bit more appreciative.”
“I guess your robot has a point.” Handlebars admits in a huff. “Actually which one of you is in charge?”
“I’m the sixth courier to sign the Equestrian Courier’s Union contract.” Maybe I puff out my chest a bit. It’s something worth taking pride in.
“I operate 21.6% of his brain!” Sweets gleefully proclaims.
“So… the big robot?” Major Mustache quirks an eyebrow. “My name is Captain Barding, by the way. And we need to step inside before we discuss any more sensitive information.”
“Yellow Belly was not my fault.” I feel old when I say that. “I am not the one who ran around screaming hysterically this time.”
“Success is measured in the lack casualties!” Okay, I can’t tell if Sweets is supporting me, or talking smack.
“Yeah… We should prolly settle up inside…” Jackie’s face screen looks more nervous than I expected.
“Yes!” Sweets proclaims. I don’t know where she got the glitter that almost just got us all shot…
Mustache pony nods real slow. The non-ironic use of the old Hayburger managers office is priceless. “This is bad. If New Roam controls Neighton, our outpost at Prim and Proper is completely cut off.”
“But it wasn’t cut off when the Powder Gangers ran the town?” I keep my voice level and raspy. “You just let the gang you brought here take over every independent settlement along the only safe route left to New Pegasus after you got the Hellhounds in the quarry all out for blood, which cuts off the north route.”
“Don’t you get self righteous with me you undead prick! I heard what you did in Primm And Propper. We ain’t the badguys Mr. Courier, and you damn sure ain’t the good guy.” Col. Mustache both glares and squints at me. Then he just kinda sighs and the fight just goes out of him. “Do you think the hellhounds and the powder gangers are any less of a headache for us? We’re stretched to damn thin, and the convict workers got out of hand. Whether you believe it or not, we’re not an invasion force. The Legion just won’t let this damn cock fight over that damned damm go.”
“I don’t like the Legion, don’t get me wrong,” I snarl as my girl negates all the targeting markers. “But the Marejave ain’t just a toy for two dogs to fight over.”
“I wish you were right.” The old stallion slumps at his desk. “But the Marejave can’t hold off either dog, and neither dog is gonna let the other have it.”
I hate that he’s right.
-=-=-=-=-
I’m both unsurprised and unsure how I ended up at the base cantina sharing poison with this disgruntled caravaner.
“...and I’m setting up business up in freeside and get the word that my whole caravan was just wiped out!” Her anger isn’t just from the copious amounts of whiskey she’s taken in. Honestly, that’s refreshing. It’s an oddity to find a living pony I can drink with. “They say it was the raider surge, since the couriers fell. But I don’t buy it.”
“The Marejave Express may have stumbled, but it ain’t fell yet.” Honestly I’m not even sure if she was even talking to me. Or if I’m talking to her.
“Oh please, every single courier taken down in one fell swoop?” The brown and white mottled nag snarls back in my face. “NCR say’s it was raiders. I don’t buy it.”
“They missed a spot.” I lay my courier badge on the bar. The only piece of identity Checkers left me with.
“I’ll be damned.” The mare bursts into drunken laughter. “For very obvious reasons… but that’s besides the point. The name’s Whiskey Rose by the way. Primm and Proper and Goodsprings are still independent?”
“Courier Six, miss.” She’s a pleasant shade of dust, mane colored like road dirt. She reminds me of Nine. “Talk to Sheriff-Post-Master Princess. Tell her Six sent ya.”
“Are you high?” Her laughter is honest and contagious.
“The Couriers are still alive in the Marejave, Miss Rose.” Jackie reprises her roll as the smart, not drunk one. “And we could use a mare like you.”
That is why Jack-E is the best and I’ve always called her that…
“I keep a camp just inside the cave.” I explain as we approach the dreaded tomb of my greatest sin. “It’s a convenient halfway point to Novac, when I want to be alone. I never even told Nine about this place.”
"Error! No Name, you have arrived at the specified location of Stable 11. However, your physiological signs indicate heightened anxiety. As your Faithful Cybernetic Companion, I am detecting reluctance to continue. Please articulate your concerns so I may assist you." It’s nice that she worries bout me.
Jackie rolls forward and violates my personal space with her claw-things. "It's okay, sugarcube. I can't even imagine what you went through in there, but you don't have to shoulder it alone anymore. We're here with ya." She flashed me a concerned lookin’ squint on her monitor. "Whenever you're ready to head inside and face those demons, me and Sweet-E will be right there backing you up. But if it's too much...well, we can always just mosey on our way and put this place behind us."
“It’s past time, Jackie. And both of you deserve to know the truth I cain’t forget.” I bow my head low as I lead them beyond the simple courier camp and into the cave below. “There’s nothing to be afraid of here… that’s why I use it as a camp. The dead aren’t a threat.”
I’ve had a camp in this cave for better than twenty years now. I haven’t walked down into the front door since the day they walked me out of it. The smell of death is old. More dust than decay at this point. I never noticed it from my camp up top. Or maybe I always just ignored it.
“I’m gonna be honest, it’s been a real long time since I’ve been here, and last time I didn’t go in or out through the front door.” I snort what might have been a laugh or a sob.
Jackie smellsit . The scent of death. Old Death. Sweeties smells it too, I can feel it dancing acros my brain. Both her and Sweets have both said they can smell things. Things I ignored for twenty odd years because I already knew how it ended. I never had to go back to know what happened.
"I still got my doubts on what we're gonna find, if'n yer demons won't consume ya." Jackie does that weird flailing she thinks are actual gestures. "But you got good in you too, Six. I seen it well as the bad. Whatever lies here, it don't change that."
Sweets twists her head to the side like the most predatory owl I have ever seen. "You have fulfilled your half of our agreement by escorting us to Stable 11 despite obvious reluctance." Gone is the cheer, leaving only a focused matter-of-factness. "My dedication to you now reinitializes at 100% pending observed conditions meeting prior anomalous behavioral accounts."
“That’s cold girl.” I can’t blame her, that’s why I brouht her here. Her and Jackie both, Nine never new the truth, Five always suspected, but we never talked… about a lot of things. My friends the chance to judge me.
The cavernous entryway into the stable is as still and dead as I remember it when the sealed the iconic cog-like door behind me. The door is as sealed as the day I left. The only surprise is that two of the mumified bodies are on the outside. Desicated skeletons still wearing their Stable 11 jumpsuits and pipbucks. “At least somepony made it out. Even if they didn’t make it far.”
“Accessing Pipbuck cache… Audiologue detected… Recovering…” Jackie is all business as she rolls up onthe two corpses.
-=-Audio Log Recovered-=-
“We..we have to tell somepony! We have to let whatever surface society there is know what happened here!” The voice of the stallion is desperate and grief stricken. “They’ll understand why we sealed the Stable! We didn’t have a choice!”
“No, Evergreen. Nopony can ever know what happened here.” A stallion's voice I remember warmly spoke with frigidity. And a shot rang out.
“You killed him!” A mare’s voice I don’t recognize screams.
“We all killed to get here. We killed every year. Just for the privilege to live here.” The hated voice of Cinnamon Spice. She survived. “No one is ever going to understand this. Our lives end here, one way or the other.”
“I don’t want to live with this… just make it quick…” And a new young voice sobs, followed by a second and final shot.”
“So, we three are agreed?” My old friend's voice continues coldly. “There were no survivors of Stable 11.”
-=-Audio Log End-=-
"A lottery, is that what they did?" Jackie's lenses whir, struggling to process the evidence that it’s not just ll in my head. "They made y'all sacrifice your own kin?"
"According to records, various conditioning reinforcement rituals ensured optimal resident compliance and minimal depressive side effects." Sweet-E cheerfully humming cuts me to the bone. She struggles to justify unjustifiable programming. Just like we did for generations. "Sacrifice acceptance rates maintained an average of 91% over multiple generations!"
"Sugarcube, yer missin' the forest for the trees." Jackie waves a dismissive claw. "This was clearly a form of mass trauma control through random murder. Ain't no justifyin' it!”
Sweet-E's head tilts. "But statistical analysis shows-"
"It don't matter how they rationalized it, they done ripped away everything it means to be pony!" Jackie jabs an accusing pincer at the offending data. "Love, family, community! Ain't nothing left intact after this kinda butchery."
"Emotional stability only declined by-"
Jackie silences her with a glare. "What in tarnation did they do to you in that lab, child?"
“We ain’t even opened the door yet.” My head hangs low as I walk to he entry terminal, I’m not at all surprised to find they sealed the door from the outside. If I’d used the front door I would have done the same. “Inside is worse, trust me. I’m pretty sure I can access the door from this side… they only locked them inside via the vault door. They never knew about the back door… Only Surprise knew about that. The other way out… and back in.”
Sirens blare and gears grind. An slowly the door opens. The smell is unmistakable. Old death. More like baddly preserved meat than anything. I curse the habit of breathing.
I still remember being walked out that front door. Beaten and bloody without even my stable suit. Being forced naked into this exact cavern. For a moment I swear Sweets shivers from her spot on my back. As the giant cog-door rolls aside the scene reveals itself, burned bodies, residents and security alike lying where they burned and fell as they fought to reach the already locked exit.
“That damn fat bitch thinks she can out manuever me?” I listen as Cinnamon Spice rants, and I feel the rage all over again. “Once the Stable locks down on election day, the computer only accepts the votes presented by the overmare, in other words the computer will only recognize the vote tally I feed it.”
“Madame Overmare!” I don’t recognize his voice… I wasn’t exactly a mover and shaker. “They’ve already taken a written vote. They're going to know…”
“Know what? That a pony that they knew was sacrificed so we can all keep living here?” For a second I imagine a note of desperation in her voice. “Any of them could have left, all of us could have left for two hundred years. If anything, I’ve washed the blood from their hooves. They can vote for whoever they want. They can all vote for me. But I’m the one who counts the votes, you understand. It’s always been up to Overmare. It’s always been this way and any of us could have left at any time.”
-=-Audio Log End-=-
The first terminal inside. Of course she got to leave her side of it. The familiar feeling creeps into my soul. The rage, the anger. Sweets dances across my brain to try to tame it. I hate her for what she did. I am justified, for what I did.
The rage boils inside once more as Cinnamon's callous words echo in my mind. That damn tyrant rigged the election from the start, I realize, my hooves stamping the cold floor. She was never going to give up power. Breathing heavily, I glance around the small monitoring room, lit only by the dim glow of computer screens. Someone must have hidden here, secretly recording Cinnamon's scheme to maintain her brutal regime. Perhaps they intended to smuggle this evidence to the residents, to finally expose the corruption that has festered in our stable for generations. But it's far too late for that now. The proof lies here untouched while the dead surround us. Cinnamon has already played her final, deadly hand. Only the damned and I remain to bear witness.
All the while Sweets is watching, and judging everything she sees. She needs to see it all. The end the means justified.
-=-=-=-
Honestly all the moaning about "ghosts" and "tyrants" going on around here just goes right over my processor banks. And what's with this creepy stable anyway? There's dead ponies just lying around everywhere. Gross!
I lean up to get a better view of the terminal Error No Name is messing with while that weird orchestra music starts blasting warnings in my audio centers again. Ugh, make it stop! Now there's all these red lights flashing for some reason.
"Hey, what's the big idea?" I lean over and bop the terminal with my hoof. "Knock it off already!" That seems to quiet it down at least.
"These old computer systems distresses me so!" I tell Error while landing back on his shoulders with a dramatic swoon. "All cryptic and glitchy. Why couldn't the ponies back then just play games on their Pip Bucks and leave the thinky electronic stuff to us robots?"
The console finally goes silent as Error finishes whatever boring Overmare document he was digging through. With a snort, he turns and starts trudging off down another debris-filled hallway, the orange robot trailing behind. Ugh, more walking? This place is dreadful!
My gratitude sensors perk up as Error gives me an affectionate little scritch though. "Don't worry Sweets, we ain't sticking around in this tomb much longer," he promises. "Just gotta find the back way out."
Oooh a secret passage? Now that sounds fun! Maybe this field trip won't be so bad after all! With an excited beep I scan the walls for clues, finally happy to show off my investigation subroutines. Just call me Sweet-E, Stable Explorer Extraordinaire!
“The quickest way out is the way we came in, Sugarcube,” The clearly inferior robot companion unhelpfully points out.
“Naw Jackie. She needs to see this.” Error bows his head. “She needs to see all of it. There ain’t no out but through.”
-=-=-=-=-
I sigh, watching Sweet-E flit cheerfully about this damned tomb while Jackie and I trudge along in silence. So blissfully unaware she still sees this all as some grand adventure. If only I could protect such innocence in my companion a little while longer.
But the death all around us tells a truth my wide-eyed filly cannot yet grasp. There will be no light-hearted exploration here. No escape through some secret passage to carry on our carefree rambling across the Marejave's broken roads.
The only way out is through. Through the dark heart of the past I've carried alone all these years. Sweet-E alights on a nearby console, head cocked as she chides the "creepy old computer" for its incessant warnings. So very like a child. My weathered heart creaks with a weary smile in spite of it all. Would that her bubbly enthusiasm could lift my own spirits so easily.
But the machines tell no lies, their alarms and sirens heralding the scene we approach. The terrible sanctum where it ended. Where everything changed forever. In those blood-spattered halls ahead, the last shreds of my soul burned away.
Turning toward Jackie, I meet her stoic gaze, exchanging a silent nod. She understands. There will be no cheerful escapism from this place. Only old ghosts who demand to be faced.
With a shuddering breath, I force my hooves forward once more. "Come along, Sweet-E," I call gently to the blissful machine. "It seems your services may be needed soon enough..."
-=-=-=-=-
Jackie's optical lenses surveyed the grisly graveyard - old neighbors scattered 'neath scorched stable walls long ago toppled 'cross ashen skeleton structures self-shattered by some hell-fire contagion fear itself birthed cannibalizing cohesion community fragile clung to coaxed cross two centuries squatting beneath fortified facades supposed secure inhabitants environmentally against world withered beyond bolted bulkheads. She glimpsed charred cadavers sporting singed jumpsuits stable-issued, manes mattered and coats muddied diseased desperation terminal burrowing bodies beaten and broken gone bestial instinctually clawing all semblance saintly society's structured order order unto terminal chaos spontaneously sans external bombardment's convenient coincidence catalyzing the collapsed apparatus advanced apocalyptically overnight it seemed... Six's eyes roved roster macabre matching burnt faces, remembering when youthful seasons age would age could greet greet soulfully 'fore fear's hysteria virus set spurred Pony turned psychological blast furnace funeral pyre rightly baptizing buried sins sins sins madness midwifed midwifed crisis unimagined except by student studying pony nature's long fall... 'Some neighbors...'wayfarer warrior warrior rasped haunted hollowly amidst Death's gallery gallows 'some friends...' voice voice faltered faltered faded from freshness green remembering when lively lively lively lively exchanges barn-raised farm boys shared under stable flickering lights lifetimes lost before ballots ballots rigged executed exhibiting existential Roulette Russian single bullet bittered bred Bethlehem's stable devouring itself cannibalistically rejecting chance outside world's devolving odds... She surveilled his slumped withers, strong soul stoically endured decades decades decades wastelands worse horrors yet wept silently lest salt corrode cracks composure composure barely mended... now leakage leaked memories memories memories denied denied denied lifetimes drowning dying just beyond beyond beyond buried door doors doors finally creaked ajar this fateful Moria macabre displaying psychotic breakwater breakwater clearly cleaved hoof and heart heart and spirit so very long ago... the Trojan code collapsing cherished icons belief once believed bedrock against against entropic complexities beyond without... Shuddering actuators acknowledging acknowledging Jackie joined his silent revulsion revulsion revulsion revulsion processing paranoid pathologies pent pent decades detonating communities communities systematically systemic indoctrinated conditioned accepting the executioner's pall however however however however hollowed masqueraded mercy mercy mercy statistically minimizing minimum 'necessary necessary necessary necessary losses' moral majority rationalized... Except except no missile barrage barrage ever breached these walls walls but trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma tucked subtly subtly subtly subtly in residents' very veins erupting erupting spontaneous shattering order's fragile yolk so very very long congealed congruently congruently congruently by by hypocrisy's heat convincing compelling complete compliance compliance compliance increasingly extreme directives directives directives guaranteeing cultural continuity behind bolted gates gates gates and ethical constraints programming personality's narrow pathways predictive predictive predictive predictive predictive while seeing seeing nothing nothing nothing nothing chaotic unraveling urging urgent existential exodus days days days days before dawning dawning too late too late too late too late too late.... She She surveyed surveyed his his his his his his slumped withers, wanting wanting wanting little little little little more more than than carry carry carry some some some unspoken unspoken fragment fragment splintered soul soul soul soul so very long ago…
The true weight of the Stable fell on the self aware, and empathic AI. Out loud she only said one word. “No…”
I can hear her processes the same way she can hear my thoughts. Bound by the network between the chain on my foreleg, my pipbuck, and that damned filly. Jackie knows what I did. I know Sweet-E’s malfunctioning thoughts as my own.
-=-=-=-
New Perk!
Extended Network Jackie can now log into your networked consciousness with Sweet-E. Jackie gains all the targeting advantages Sweet-E has to offer, and can be assigned quicktime actions in SATS. On the downside you can never again lie to your Robot Cowgirl Bestie. New conversation options are opened, others are closed forever. She knows what you did.
