Fallout Equestria: Sola Gratia
Chapter 13: Fix You
“The cathedral sees to my needs. So I might see to the needs of others. Now let me see your injury.”

The whites of its eyes had cauterized, the very fluid constituting each ocular portal had boiled over, had been seared into deprivation of every sense except pain. It was flesh, muscle and even bone, shards of bloody white revealing themselves through the dark crisp that covered this beast, even as the charred skin broke off in its exerted run. Still slow…

You were never invited to this race Chief, how could you possibly hope to beat the master of fire?
The master of speeeed… Don’t think I can’t see that you’re improving; you’ve been doing squats haven’t you?
But it’ll take a lot more than the very exposed muscles you’ve got to step up to me.
You know they used to call me ‘Terminal Velocity’ back in my Stable.
Or was that in your Stable? How long ago was that?

It was breaking through the thick air, cutting through one layer of the invisible barrier that was time with every passing second. Its muscles pumped around the stripped skeleton, tendons of deep reds and browns contracting across an ivory frame. Every twitch, every tear was extended into a torturously slow display of what had to be incredible agony. A passable experience for him, despite how painful, was stretched out by my newfound relationship with time.

You’ve got a little crush on me, don’t you Chief? I wiggled my tail at him, flanks exposed and inviting. I saw what happened between you and that fat slut yesterday… yesterday.
She didn’t know how to handle a big… strong… haaaandsome buck like you.
I do, see, I’ve studied anatomy extensively. And I wouldn’t mind studying your… extensive anatomy.

The terrible, gelatinous decay that made up its eyes still expressed anger, a hunger.
I could see our breath in the cold air that seeped down from the mountains around us. We were underneath the clouds together; I had tempted the beast into the peak of frenzy during the hours between our exiting of the Stable. No… not hours, minutes surely. Perhaps seconds?

I’m just screwing with you Chief. I didn’t even like you that much when you had skin, now you look like jerky. Jerky is delicious, though. Though you’ll need to have about 20% more of it… know what I mean?
You’re getting awfully close again. I skipped away from the floating savage, his hooves suspended in the peak of a lunge that appeared as a slow dive through my awesome master-of-time-and-space eyes.
He was still heading towards me. What the shit? Did he jump again?
I could hear his roar, his muzzle was torn open into a cry of desperate pain and hate, but only now could I hear the horrible sound that emanated from it.
Please, I’ve heard that line a thousand times. Hell, I’ve used that line. You’ll have to do b-…

In the second that his hooves touched me, the entire force of his pounce was transferred into me.
A shockwave reiterated through my body, sending me crashing down across the rock.
I slid past the last of the rotten corpses lining the entrance to the Stable, sending up creeping dust and debris at a leisurely pace as my body dragged itself across the ground.

The impossibly dark clouds above were steadily accelerating, crashing and swirling with mounting speed.
I could smell the winter air, the festering animals laying dead around me, and the charred corpses below.
A roar of incredible anguish and anger persisting, steadily echoing throughout the valley as well as the metal chambers beneath it. The rock was cold, the breeze chilling, and I thought I could taste Milkshake.
Massive hooves were crushing my rib-cage, the creature’s chest heaving above my face as the horrible, earless, bald serpent that was his head reared above me in triumph, He smelled of hot death, burnt flesh and hair. His body was crushing me, the weight concentrated on my chest, though a heated passion emanated from elsewhere. The Savages’ Chief… this mass of exposed bone and muscle, this embodiment of primal vengeance and pain… was going to rape me.

A mare had challenged him. His pack’s scent was occluded by the cold smoke seeping from his hive, but he would still have to make an example of this weaker being. For his own honor, he pressed me down.

My horn ached as my magic grasped desperately for the rifle strapped to my side, the weapon that was creating an opposing pain to the beast’s crushing hooves by pressing into my soft side. Everything ached, but he had yet to begin his humiliation, he was staring into my panicked eyes with his own charred bulbs. I could feel his heavy breath, hot like his pulsing body, as it suffocated me.

I beat the side of his face with the gun, smashing it against the steadily emerging skull again and again. I was too afraid to take aim, too desperate to formulate a plan, too lost to understand what was happening. The cracks sounded clear, I could see the creature’s muzzle breaking under the barrage, but he still pushed himself closer. He wasn’t dissuaded by the pain; it was all that drove him.

I strained my focus, swinging the thick barrel of the tri-beam laser rifle to press against his temple. A triplicate of red energy tore through his primitive mind. No skin remained to contain the tendons and loose flesh that made up his face, as it seemed to simultaneously melt and rip apart. The grinning skull breaking into white shrapnel pelted my face along with a spray of warm red mist. His entire body went limp; thankfully I could only base this on the hooves pressing to my chest, and nothing more.

I was waking up, not from a dream… but an insanity.
Moments ago I had been standing on the brink of the Stable’s elevator shaft, now I was crushed, ribs most likely slicing into my lungs as these filthy pillars of keratin drove into them.
In between was nothing but a rush, a fantastic memory of omnipotence and ability. In those moments I had been, in my eyes, the most powerful entity on earth. My recall told me that this impossibility was a completely honest account, and that I had truly become a God for those countless hours.
An awesome, arrogant ass of a God.

I slid out from beneath the corpse, glancing at my E.F.S as I trotted back to the cog-shaped door.
Empty, the red sea of hostility had disappeared completely, leaving only clean, complete clarity.
The smell of gas had all but disappeared out of the Stable’s smoky air, replaced with the scent of a cataclysmic, heated rot. I was standing at the helm of my Genocide, taking in the apocalypse that I had brought upon this place by way of cleansing fire.

A fire that I had somehow escaped… I peered down the hallway to the darkness beyond, the steel walls were burnt black, the red rust altogether consumed in the massive pillar of flame.
It wasn’t a great distance, but the chief had apparently been just at my heels the entire time.
I had been faster than that behemoth, faster than Celestial Flame passing through a flammable vacuum.
That kind of power couldn’t come without repercussions, I told the mounting anticipation in my mind.
Doctor Olio had feared for the side-effects, he had been nothing if not tentatively afraid.

But I felt fine, I had succeeded, Dash hadn’t been responsible for my liberating of Zion from the savages, but it had allowed me to survive it. Without it I could’ve burnt to a crisp in the heat of my own happy massacre, leaving the chief to slowly die of his enormous injury, leaving Zion with an uncelebrated martyr.
I would leave it to fate, I decided, not putting myself out to look for anymore Dash, but accepting it as it came. Yes, that seemed fair. But the pulse at the back of my mind, like a foreign stowaway, scared me.

Now the real saviors of Zion were eroding away on Celestia’s Landing, while I pined for a new frightening drug. Ash and the small regiment of Zebra warriors had had a horde of savages barraging them last I had seen, they would need the medicine I had harvested from the ravaged medical wing of the dead Stable. Caliber was sent to that warzone too, along with every able-bodied Zebra willing to die for their home.

I hurriedly exited into the cold, winter night once again. I had been running for my own life before, now I was running for theirs. Pelting my way over the mountain stone I quickly found myself on soft, oddly comforting earth. Previously I had taken refuge in the sanctity of orderly, cold metal, but now the loose, ashy gray ground beneath me provided that same semblance of safety. The snow dusted landscape of our new Equestria was what I longed for, not the two technological prisons that I had been banished from and had purged of all life respectively.

I wound around the old pines bordering the escarpment and the valley it created. I didn’t bother to look for the mountain pass, as I was heading for the cathedral. Celestia’s Landing had been marked by my Pip-buck as the entrance into the hall of statues, the way to the church, rather than the monument itself.

My horn was aglow; I cut through the night like a bullet of gold, a particle of energy, as I sprinted over the black earth, beneath a black mountain. Moonlight lit up the clouds, distinguishing each from those around it, making their respective paths of self-destructive collision clear for all to see. Their darkness was mild, almost beautiful, compared to Mt. Zion, which stood as an imposing infinity, a statuesque void.
The monument still lit up the knife-like precipices around it, its beacon rising towards the point where cloud ended and an almost starry sky began. It was behind me now. My muscles ached from exertion, I couldn’t breathe, every intake reduced to a frail wheeze drawing fuel into my potentially pierced lung.

The marble doorway, I swung into it, bathing the archaic effigies and depictions of great historical celebrations or tragedies in arcane gold. Royal Unicorns, Militant Pegasus and Humble Earth ponies fell away into the darkness behind me. The lights had been switched off, reducing the hallway to the eternity of black that it had been when I had first traversed it.

I navigated by way of familiar statues, the crying mother first, feeble colt grasped desperately in her hooves, then the war torn stallion soldier, rearing up in glorious abandon. I felt the ground rise, sloping up on its way to the great church ahead. Light emanated from above, dim and flickering. It cast unsteady shadows onto the pillar-lined walls at my side, and invisible shadows into the darkness behind me.

Corpse fires beneath each stained glass window, embers licking up at them from blackened bodies. White, orange and purple on one side, dim but for the dancing glow of the cremations beneath them. Pink and Blue experience the same, yellow glowed by its own accord, though that hadn’t stopped a small stacking of the dead to have been set alight beneath it. At first I thought Celestia’s window had been similarly defaced as for a brief moment I had assumed that the dark, still figures beneath it were corpses destined to become kindling. I quickly realized that they were the injured; their visible stripes setting them apart from the charred figures engulfed in flame along each wall, whose own had been burnt away.

I hurried down the aisle; their moans were soft, reserved, and almost polite. The room smelled more like smoke than death, allowing me to forget the mass cremation at both my sides. Those bodies weren’t here for convenience… they had been dragged, a few at a time into the elevator, what looked like just over a dozen of them, because they weren’t simple corpses, they were fallen comrades.
I pulled my coat off from beneath my saddlebags, tossing it onto the throne at the end of the aisle.
Left in my brown vest, lined with scripture, over a white shirt, sleeves rolled up and collar limp, I levitated a potion over to the nearest Zebra. His injuries were general, no deep wounds but a plethora of severe cuts and bruises. My horn glowed, first due to illumination, then levitation, and finally restoration magic.

“L-leave me, let me die with honor.” He was worse off than I had first estimated, his words laced with blood. If he didn’t drink the potion then I could do nothing for his internal wounds. He would die.

“Drink the potion.” I ordered in a calm, controlled voice.

“I don’t need your pony corruption.” He glared at me through pained eyes. “Leave me to my wounds, unicorn. Your kind wouldn’t understand the claim I must adhere to.”

“Honor?” I raised an eyebrow, humoring him. “Is it really more honorable to lie here, wasting my time and giving up your own, even though drinking this potion will save your life?” I levitated it to his tight lips. “I’m not leaving until you drink this, and there are others who are likely to be critically injured, in more need than you are.” His external wounds and bruises had all disappeared; anypony looking at him would’ve assumed him as the picture of health.

“Go to them, I can already hear the ca-“ I shoved the bottle into his honorable mouth, forcing him to suckle at it like a baby would formula. His eyes glazed over as the inordinate pain wracking his insides soothed under the smooth flow of magical, invasive healing.

I waited until the bottle was half full, then pulled it from his muzzle and held it at my side. “Anypony… anybody in critical condition?” He nodded, gesturing to the base of the great window with a hoof. His alleviated state seemed to have silenced his protest, making him rethink how honorable his totally unnecessary death would be. “Alright, when you feel you’re strong enough please bring me your chief.”

He stood immediately, of course, pulling himself up with forced grace. “We are not tribals, we do not have a chief.” His eyes were thankful beyond the façade of cultural pride. “We are military, we are Zebra, and so we follow a Decurion.” Nodding dismissively I hurried over to the injured lying against the wall. There were more wounded soldiers than there were dead ones. Hopefully there were more healthy survivors than the latter or the former.

“What do you feel?” My horn glowed, patching over a bleeding gash in her neck, suppressing the tide of red warmth that persisted beneath the cheaply stitched, leather rag.

“L-leave me, let me die with honor.” I almost rolled my eyes, sliding her broken back leg into a medical brace. The even flow of bleeding had stemmed off after I had rubbed a salve of healing potion against it, if she didn’t have any internal injuries then I could move on. I could tell that she was feeling better.

“Still hear the ancestors calling you?” she shook her head and I smiled despite myself. The starry-eyed claim to honor had left her as quickly as it had left the buck; they were obviously not used to such capable medicine. “You don’t have any healers?” She shook her head again, this time inciting fear rather than amusement; hopefully my supplies could hold out. “Alright, your neck wound wasn’t too deep; you’ll be able to speak once the blood clears itself out.” I left her to recuperate her voice.

I hunched over the next mare, whose leg was felled halfway through. It looked like a tree-trunk on the brink of collapse, bone unbroken but exposed drastically, surrounded by only one hemisphere of flesh.
“Shepard?” she uttered, not protesting as I pressed my horn up against the wound as closely as I dared. Her willingness to remain crippled paled in comparison to her comrade’s willingness to die. “Savages?” This was the first and only zebra I had spoken to up on the monument earlier. Her blue-tinged rifle lay to the side, glowing as amethyst as her eyes. The short Mohawk on her head was tussled and stained.

I wrapped her leg in gauze then placed a medical brace over it to be safe. I wouldn’t be able to fully tend to many more cripples. “They’re all dead.”

“Impossible, that you survived… you lie.” Her words cut, even though I knew the undeniable truth behind my own. “If you truly had made it to the orchard, it would have been with an entire hive at your hooves.”

“No, I made it down undetected… well, unthreatened anyway. Then I vented gas throughout the entire Stable, ignited it with Celestial flame.” I explained quickly, trying to justify the time wasted staying here by magically repairing the minor cuts on her body.

“We’ve… never thought to try the gas.” They didn’t know Stables. I moved over to a buck nearby, though he wasn’t in as much trouble as I would’ve liked… That was an oddly cruel thought, I berated myself.

“I grew up in a Stable; I had the plan in mind before I even knew that it was possible. Though it’s unlikely any Stable would exist without an oxygen recycling system.” I called back to her, still curt by protocol.

“What about the mares?” She stood tentatively. “Reports by one of the only insurgents who ever survived told of entire planes of mares and bucks alike. No offense, but we were born to walk as ghosts, trained to act as shadows. I would think one of our own would have had more success than a pony ever could.”

“They must’ve seen her as one of their own.” Caliber! I callously jerked the last drops of healing potion down this reluctant buck’s throat and spun around. We were wrapped in a hug before I had even completed my turn. Her body was warm and strong. The Chief’s had been burning… seared and dominating, his strength had been a source for pain, opposite to the comfort that Caliber’s provided.
“Sounds like you’ve been through a lot.” She stroked my dusted mane, accustomed to my neediness.

“How did you get out?” The Zebra intruded, somehow still skeptical... No: cautious, she had to be sure that her home was safe. I couldn’t blame her for that, so I pulled away from my Caliber and obliged.

“I vented the gas from the lowest floor, then took the elevator all the way back up to the entrance.”

“The elevator has no power, it can only be reactivated from the Maintenance section.” She retorted. “We’ve accrued this knowledge over decades; over countless casualties… don’t insult them.”

“Cool it, Zalika.” Caliber put a name to the beautifully exotic face. “She wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Bookstack…” I realized. “I think I can explain: Just after I entered the elevator it was called to the Maintenance level, by Bookstack, the sentient buck you watched us talking to. The only buck who could’ve figured out that the gas in the air meant that it was well past time to evacuate.”

An almost apologetic look crossed her face. “That… is a possibility…” she speculated for a moment, eyes cast down to her fragile leg. “Then after you killed him, you rode the elevator to the exit, dropped the Celestial Flame down the shaft as it lowered, and ran, leaving the entire hive to burn?”

“Yes… except, I let the buck go.” I hadn’t known at the time that without him I wouldn’t have had such a smooth escape, perhaps no escape at all. Pssh, you can escape the surface of the sun with a healthy dose of Dash pumping through your system, the Dash-enthusiast part of my mind reminded me.

“Can’t say I would’ve done the same.” Caliber shrugged, her pity didn’t equate to mercy. I shifted over to yet another injured mare, ignoring her pleas for a glorious, futile death as I focused on Caliber and Zalika.

“Me neither.” The Zebra had watched our conversation from an undisclosed, covert viewpoint and still despised the sleazebag. “Shepard, I am truly sorry that I questioned you.” I could almost feel the grateful relief welling up inside of her; she now knew that her home was safe, that the corpses burning on either side of the room were truly martyrs of Zion’s liberation, not another failed attempt at it.

“I understand that you had to be sure.” I tied off a mare’s arm, stopping blood flow to her wounds. About half a dozen zebras left to go, and I still needed to speak to the Decurion. “Good work on the monument, how bad was the fight?” I hoped that there wasn’t another graveyard on the structure’s face.

“Fourteen casualties.” She sighed. “These are all the wounded that could be saved, they brought us down here to shelter us from the cold, and separate us from the gore above. Though the savage’s casualties total at above one hundred, quadrupled if you count those that you burnt in the Stable.”

“Only one survivor compared to our several dozen.” Caliber beamed, referring to Bookstack’s authorized escape. “Tribe’s still going strong; they’ll recover easily now that the savages are gone.”

“Not a tribe.” Came the powerful, heavily accented voice of a buck. “A squadron, a family, but not a tribe.” The voice was larger than the zebra it came from. The Decurion was solid, extensive muscles wound compact and tamed into a lithe body. He was only a head taller than me, with his sleek Mohawk constituting most of that superiority. He wore little, save for the battle-saddle holding a glowing red rifle, setting off his green eyes. I regretted not being able to see this wide range of enchantments in action.
“You’ve pulled some of my troops from the brink of death, Shepard.” he glanced at Zalika. “They may not be thankful, but I extend my own gratitude as substitute.”

Ignoring the obvious restrictions that came with showing respect to this buck I trotted over to my next patient. These injuries wouldn’t wait for curtsies and formal introductions. “I’ve been looking forward to a chance to heal somepony.” My horn glowed arcane as I ran it over this Zebra’s battered body, stab wounds too severe for my unassisted magic. I floated the penultimate healing potion to him.

“Drink it, soldier.” The Decurion cooed, seemingly amused at his people’s attitude towards my Equestrian medicine. “We’ll take this country’s generosity when it is given by a friend.”

“Is it true that you don’t have any doctors?” I asked as the potion tapered away into its rapidly healing subject. “No, wait sorry, let me ask that again in a minute. More importantly; where’s Ash?”

Caliber smiled, immediately comforting me. “I knew that girl was shy, but she’s taken it to a whole ‘nother level since you’ve been gone. She’s in the… Con-fessio-nal? I think that’s what she called it. Anyway.” The mercenary rubbed her chin. “She got stabbed through the vest so she had to redress herself.”

“Stabbed through the chest!?” I turned to her in urgency.

“Stabbed through the vest.” She giggled. “Nearly cut her bandages loose, but she has replacements.”
“Oh… that’s good.” Strange more like it, though nudity had never been a qualm for me. Who knew how long she had been encased in those bandages. I guess, after a time, anypony would feel exposed without them. “You look alright, at least.” I changed the subject.

“Better off than any Zebra who wasn’t on the brink of death, masochistic, glory-hounds won’t accept Stimpacks otherwise.” She nodded to an empty syringe on the floor, it looked like a means to deliver healing potion directly into a pony’s bloodstream. Using it would have let me save some of the life-giving substance by dosing out smaller, more controlled amounts. “For folks who insist that they aren’t a tribe…” Caliber rolled her rich brown eyes, and I smiled despite the abundance of stripes nearby.

The Decurion was muttering to Zalika, no doubt getting an account of what I had done in the Stable. I desperately wanted to ask him why the Zebra’s had developed this abhorring standpoint on medicine, but I continued work on the last few patients as Zalika rounded off her report. Two internal bleeders left, I extracted the last of the healing potion into the empty Stimpack and dosed it out equally to both of them. Closing off any more wounds with gauze, bandages and magic, I hurried over to my penultimate patient.

I levitated the last medical brace, to find two broken limbs before me.
The real problem was that they belonged to two different zebras, my last two patients.

“Without moving your legs, can you please make sure that they are beyond immediate repair?” I worded out the sentence carefully, rehearsed from Doctor Cross’ own curt bedside manner.

One of the zebras had to move his leg, obviously. He cried out in agony as bone ground against the brittle shards of its former fellow. However the other mare followed instructions, cautiously feeling out her limb and evaluated the damage.

“It is broken,” she admitted, as if it was her own fault. “Though I would rather not be subject to your unnatural reparations. Give him the glow.”

“Is that what you’re all so scared of? Unicorn magic?” I began to carefully strap the buck’s leg into the brace as I spoke. “How can something that we’re born with possibly be unnatural?”

“It is a gift undeserved by simple beings.” The brace tightened by my telekinetic hold. “Such as us.” She added, quickly amending her statement so as not to offend. “The same goes for your Pegasus and their wings, the earth is our plane, nature is our survival. Flight and magic are privileges that should be earned; they should be reserved for those who are worthy. We should have neither wing nor horn on our birth.”

“Testify,” Caliber smiled and waved a hoof in the air, mockingly playing along with the Zebra’s tirade.

“You earth ponies aren’t exempt.” She turned her head meekly. “You do not learn to commune with the earth, you do not develop your own proudly held fortitude… you inherit it.”

“So… what? Anybody who isn’t a zebra is doing something wrong just by being born?” Caliber picked up the discussion, allowing me to focus my energies on the writhing buck.

“Zebras who are unwilling to learn, to grow, are just as bad. And by extension Ponies who are open-minded, aware of their gifts, who work above and beyond them: those ponies are worthy of praise.” The mare was left alone, lying at our hooves as the buck limped away to check on his other, less engaged, comrades. The brace held well, but its limping departure signaled the end of my medical supplies.
“Who’s to say we aren’t like that?” Caliber retorted. The aggression that she had expressed towards DJ Pon3 at the MASEBS tower was slowly resurfacing, bubbling, to our races defense.

“You may be.” She admitted, surprising the fiery-eyed, fiery-maned mare, cooling her. “You may likely be, based on your willingness to help us. But while your kindnesses on the battlefield are appreciated by all of Zion, your kindnesses here are seen as alien insults, a cheap escape from the death and pain we have suffered in defense our home.” It was almost as if they felt indebted to the valley, and pained in return.

“Some of you would have died, most of you here in fact.” I pointed out, gesturing to the dozen Zebras now up on their hooves and healthy. “If you’d stuck by that belief.”

“It is better to be a martyr, than a coward.” She hissed. “I can only wish that my injuries were great enough to claim me as tribute. Unfortunately, my pain is all I can give. So please, leave me, my anguish is an unworthy offering compared to what those who fell have given. I must bear the brunt of it.”

Caliber crooked her head to the Decurion, prompting me to ignore my futile instincts to heal the mare. Despite the expended supplies, I could have at least dulled her pain magically. But it was more than obvious that that would be taking something away from her, no matter how ridiculous that seemed.
So I trotted away, bothered by an ingrained desire to complete the set, to have healed them all.

“No wonder these guys raised so much hell during the war.” Caliber said. “Imagine armies of stripy zealots, all eager to die for their country’s honor.” I giggled, to which she raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” I recovered. “Imagining ‘stripy zealots was’ funny for some reason.”

“That’s racist.” She smiled, indicating that even if it was, she wouldn’t care.

“I just pictured stripy troops coming out of stripy houses on stripy tanks, with stripy wives and stripy children waiting for them at home, taking care of the stripy dog.” I couldn’t help but to smile at the childish imagery that I was conjuring: little stick figures colored in crayon dancing across a page instead of the reality of hardened troops going off to war, leaving a genuinely concerned family behind, to pray and hope for their safe return. “Stripy.” I preferred my version.

“We’d actually be killed if you had said that any louder.” She laughed.

Proving her point, the Decurion turned away from Zalika to regard us. He wasn’t pounding my naively discriminating face into a bloody pulp, so he must not have heard any of my drivel.

“Sounds like it could only have been a pony that ensured Zion’s salvation.” He said grimly, seeming disappointed at the fact. “Maybe if we had realized that earlier, we could have had peace long ago.” Zalika placed a hoof on his shoulder, reflecting the familiarity that overlooked their military culture. “Still I am indebted to you, as even if we had known, it wouldn’t have been easy to find one such as yourself. One who was willing to help.” I gave him the respectful curtsy that I should’ve earlier.

“You’ve more than paid off that debt.” Caliber assured. “As much as I’d like to say that I’m a shinin’ pillar of selflessness, we specifically came here to get your contribution to our cause.”

“I have a feeling that if you’d simply stumbled upon our plight, with no motivations of your own, you would have done the same.” His green eyes met my gold. “Shepard.”
“So it’s not doctors your people dislike, its Equestrian medicine?” I asked, quickly changing the subject from my new mare-do-well persona and alias. I enjoyed the appreciation and renown, but the crackling corpses and leering survivors were making it hard to bask in glory, no matter how deserved it might be.

“Yes, we lost the knowledge to heal from natural reagents long ago; any other method is questionably dishonorable. What you garner in life should determine what you get in fair return, that is our doctrine. It was the system our ancestors lived by and has become even more important in these trying times, to abandon it would be heresy, to spurn it in clear conscience would be an insult to our fathers.”

“Speaking of, where did you come from?” Caliber asked bluntly, “You certainly don’t sound like the Equestrian zebras, how many generations have your kind been in Zion?”

“Since the war exactly.” he regarded us with a newfound respect. “You are interested in our history?”

We nodded, like two fillies preparing to hear a recount from their grandfather’s stretching, storied past. We settled down in front of him, he had asked because it was undoubtedly, like an elder’s tale, long and engaging. Zalika positioned herself beside the Decurion, keeping a guarded distance out of reverence for a superior officer. In a more casual setting, she would likely by nuzzled against him, as daughter or wife.

“First, I must admit that we were never taught to engage your kind as kin, never allowed to think of you as anything higher than enemy or annoyances. Sharing our technology, our history, with a pony would be equivalent to insulting a parent, or defaming our flag. This is what we are told by orders from an ancient time, in fact, the mission that brought our founders here was one of the furthest intention from peace.” He admitted, trusting our acceptance of his kind to keep us from fearing this truth. “It was an act of war that brought our ancestors to your Equestria, a heinous act of war. They were insurgents, operatives of stealth invasion; their assignment was to cross the heavily guarded border of your country.”

I felt a pang of sadness knowing that Fern had ultimately failed at her life’s ambition, but it was partially sated in knowing that the Zebras couldn’t have succeeded in theirs either, considering they had become entrenched in Zion for these last two-hundred years.

“They were carrying a weapon, a balefire bomb.” Caliber’s ears perked up. “Though it was never set off, we no longer posses it.” He looked at her as he said this, relaxing or disappointing her, I couldn’t tell which. “They travelled for months, skirting the entire eastern border, ignoring the temptation of simply traversing the lake and the Great Plain to head for Calvary. They wanted to spend as little time as possible in the pony’s land, by way of its weakest entry-point. So they came to the northern mountains, undoubtedly exhausted and detached from their home by an eternity of land and sea. They had nothing but their ancient orders to go by, their mission drove them over the legendary mountain of Zion. The one place your own military never anticipated, it was known as an impossibility to them, a way that could not be traversed by any but the eternal ursas and their mortal daughters.”

Ursas were bears, weren’t they?

“No physical border exists on the other side of the mountain; the rock itself was expected to serve as deterrent enough. But we persevered, the ghosts of the north, which is what we were to be known as. The name that our people would remember us by, for we knew that out mission was suicidal, all that mattered is that we died in the right place.” He chuckled, hiding dishonor. “We didn’t die, nor did we ever reach our destination; our last success was breaching the ‘impregnable’ womb of Equestria. So we hold onto that victory, we live off this land because it is no longer held by the enemy we sought to destroy. That enemy is dead, but we remember the extent of our success in fighting It.”

“Why didn’t you continue to your target?” I already knew the answer.

“Apocalypse,” Ash sat beside me as he spoke the word, silently and suddenly, a gesture of quiet respect to the Decurion and his people’s story. “The very day that the sky closed, we had already entered Zion.”

“Why did that stop you?” I nudged Ash softly in the pause, acknowledging her. Her bandages were fresh, pristinely wrapped around her mid-section, swirling out from beneath her black vest. My coat was still sitting in the throne behind us, I longed for its warmth, to share or, failing that, to use myself.

“We were on the monument. Celestia’s Landing, otherwise known as the window on the world. That name, while arrogant, is admittedly apt. We watched as your sky city fell, and then we watched the clouds sweep over the land. Finally we saw your capital’s shield break, effectively watching as your Princesses died, and our mission became obsolete.” He sighed. “We thought that we had won, even as we watched your own missiles tear over the horizon, bearing down on our home… we thought that we had won.”

“So you waited,” I guessed. “Just like the Stable you bunkered down against the fallout and waited for your people to begin their occupation of the country.”

“Bunkered down?” He clearly didn’t like the term. “No, we waited on the monument. The ash and radiation tore across the land before us; we saw it reach every visible echelon until finally it subsided. But Zion, Zion was barely touched, so we descended into the valley, and there we stayed. Even after we realized that there was nothing left, that we had lost a home. We made a new one. We have been here, surviving, as long as any of your Stables. Without the sheets of steel or the cleansing magic of their talismans they are nothing, we have proved our worth time and time again, simply by surviving. This is why we refute your Equestrian, Stable, medicine.” He explained, aggression seeping into his voice at the Stable’s mention. “We did not bunker down, we are warriors, not fortunate cowards.”

“I am from a Stable, sir.” I announced with something near pride; adhering to what few shreds of down-home patriotism I had left.

“Who do you think is better suited for survival, you or your friends?” He retorted, thankfully with a pleasantly amused tone. “Can you even start a campfire?”

“No, but I just used my experience as a fortunate coward,” I replicated his derogatory term. “To start the fire that killed over three hundred of your valley’s savages.” I pointed out. “Anypony, from any Stable, would have been more capable at solving your problem than you have been for these last two hundred years.” Don’t say that! They kicked you out, remember? Screw them! ...Right?

He laughed, thank the Goddesses, he laughed! “I will give credit where credit is due, Shepard.” Caliber shot me a proud look, Ash a nervously relieved one. “Though you must see that you are extraordinary. The Stable’s may instill a heightened sense of right and wrong, but when the victim of this indoctrination is not strong or lucky enough when their shelter is taken from them, they are likely to die on the soonest exposure to the cold truth of the real world.”

“Well, I can say with certainty that Grace survived on strength.” Caliber threw in with proud zeal, as if presenting a daughter’s accomplishments. “I’d like to take credit for keeping her alive when she first got out, but from what I’ve seen, she can handle herself finer than a lot of experienced wastelanders.”
If she couldn’t take credit, then Charon could. I would’ve been captured by raiders within the first hour of my wasteland experience were it not for him. I was the lucky kind of Stable-Dweller, even now, without Caliber I would likely starve to death or get trapped in some shallow hole.

The Decurion saw the ashamed look in my eyes. “Take no offense in my words, whether by luck or strength - perhaps both - you have allowed for the liberation of Zion. All of you. I only meant to distinguish my people from those we have come to know as Stable-born.” He explained. “To us the connotations of that term are based on the violent, overgrown children that have plagued us. Maybe now our perception can change to see more than cowards within those underground vaults.”

“You must hate the Enclave.” Ash offered, trying to get us back onto level ground. Something about this Zebra’s pride and adherence to his people’s strict beliefs made us all feel uneasy, as if he would set upon us in a patriotic rage at any moment. He didn’t seem very violent, despite the rifle, just passionate.

“Hate? No.” he shook his head. “They are nothing to us, like all cowards and traitors. They aren’t worth the emotion, they aren’t worth anything.” Zalika nodded, her mouth shut tight as if bound by firm order. “The Savages were a threat, an enemy; they had some semblance of drive, of significance. The Pegasus are lower than that, they are insignificant despite the roof they hold over us, despite their technology and pride. True embodiments of all the qualities we refute, in fact, they serve as a good example of what an absolute abandon of honor looks like. They’re useful for that, at least.”

“Know anything about the Steel Rangers?” I asked, fearing a similar response.

He shook his head. “I know of the role their order played in the war. I’ve been trained to fight them through ancient techniques and warnings from our ancestors, but I expect they’ve changed along with their country. They held the border once, so I know them as the most feared infantry unit in the Equestrian army. But I have no idea what could motivate them now that their military is dead.”

That sounded…good? They sounded capable, at least, though that also meant we had all the more reason to be cautious in approaching them.

“But considering the power they held, I can only assume the worst. Power corrupts.” He added decisively. “Although, knowing what you intend to do, I agree that it still may be worth seeking their aid.”

“Sounds like you’ll keep your promise.” Caliber, our acting liaison, affirmed. They must have come to some agreement conditioned on my success in the Stable.

“Yes, we have no reason to spurn you.” Wonderful, somehow I had made progress in this vague quest. “We’ll send a messenger south, a courier, to confer with Damascus.”

“You know Damascus?” I interjected. It would’ve been presumptuous to assume that he had had some association with them because of the zebra in the orbs, but I did. I didn’t feel like much of a racist, but it seemed like I was turning out to be one. Oh well.

“My people did, too long ago for me to trust him myself.” He nodded, eyes shut. “I would not trust anyone who has suffered for that long, though I can put aside my qualms and compromise in my debt to you.”

The Zebras milled around the elevator, crippled mare suspended in a makeshift stretcher. They weren’t leaving yet, but were making it very obvious that they wanted to. We weren’t going to be a part of any celebrations they had planned; I could feel the animosity that had grown over the centuries of combat between our two countries. We wouldn’t be welcome in their home, nor were they comfortable in our church. “I hope one day it’ll take less than obligation for our peoples to be allies.” I said, hoping to leave on a high note in this inconsistently pleasant conversation.

“There’s too much between us.” He rejected, having admitted and accepted this fact long ago. “We’ll never forget what we’ve done to each other, not while we both inhabit the evidence.” Nodding to Zalika he stepped away, rejoining his troops at the base of the elevator, ferrying them on their way to burn the corpses that covered the monument above. “But Zion is grateful.” He bade, stepping into the crammed elevator, which somehow compacted away in reverence to give him an aura of clear space.

“You two related?” Caliber asked Zalika, again drawing from a familiarity that I hadn’t yet developed.

“I’m his daughter.” I would’ve guessed wife, the buck hadn’t looked old enough to have had children. “Hopefully, now that the savages are gone, that’ll matter more than being his first class legionnaire.”

“Why did your people hold onto that military culture at all?” Ash asked. “Why didn’t it fall away in the time between your arrival here and the savage’s release?”

“We had little knowledge of alchemy, of history or our roots. We were the generation of war, young soldiers who knew their country as a participant in global conflict, to be defended, not appreciated. The Military was our heritage, weapons and enchantments became our alchemy and our orders became our history.” The glowing rifle was strapped to her side once again, pulsing an amethyst aura. “In those fifty years we bore the brunt of the apocalypse’s fallout, and rank was the best way to preserve control.”

Fern’s ranks had fallen apart during that hellish time; she had been stranded in her old outpost desperately calling for her troops, to no avail. She had been ghoulified by the radiation, turned feral by the isolation and killed by our intrusion. She had been freed by our influence, doomed by Caliber and buried by Ash who had both been prompted on by me, but I didn’t regret it.

“You don’t know anything about the buffalo, do you?” Caliber pressed, already setting a course for the next faction we sought to rally. I could only imagine how chaotically things would be going without her.

“All I can tell you is that they’ve never come to Zion.” She shrugged, her comrades disappearing fractionally by elevator trips. “Not a single one, despite their migrant nature.”

“My congregation encountered the buffalo on occasion.” Ash reassured. “Just South-East of here, in the heart of the Great Plains. I couldn’t tell you where exactly, except that they’re well beyond the lakes.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, never recognizing any of the places that were referred to.

“It means you all have a long, dangerous journey ahead of you.” Zalika bode. “Skirting the Northern Plain to Calvary’s is almost as perilous as traversing the city’s own sprawl… and less predictable.”

“It’s said that New Calvary is huge.” Caliber explained, reacting to my puzzled look. “It includes every township and suburbia that has sprouted out of it, so it technically stretches for miles around what you’d think of as the actual city. Almost fills the entire southern Plain, apparently” Calvary was marked on my Pip-buck as a distant, singular point, not giving any indication towards the expansive developments that really constituted it. “When we finally head to it we’ll be passing factories and townships mostly, shanty towns, then afterwards we’d need to cut through the suburban areas to get to the city.”

“I’ve hear the caravans take the underground, from a Starline station, I think.” Ash added. “And by take I’m sure they mean to walk along it. Slaver trains are the only ones that actually run anymore.” The Station popped up, right on the edges of the Southern Plain, Far East of Calvary’s marker. “Though, this is all under the assumption that we succeed with the Buffalos, and by succeed I mean…”

“Don’t die.” Caliber concluded. “There’s no point planning under the assumption that we do.” She thought for a moment. “Except for Ash.”

“You two don’t believe in the after?” Caliber and I shook our heads, her fervently against my more guarded response to Zalika’s question. “All the more reason for you to take these.”

She pulled a rack of salves from her tight satchel. Their colors burned with the same stellar distinction as her gun, some with a similar amethyst hue. Gold, white and blue. She slid the golden vial into my saddlebags, followed by a rolled up piece of parchment.

“Gold for you, blue for her,” she nodded to Caliber. “White for her.” She slid the sparkling white salve into Ash’s own satchel. “The recipe on the parchment is for the gold salves, they can be made with reagents not localized in Zion. The others, unfortunately, cannot. So conserve them.”

“What determines who uses which?” Caliber pried, jiggling the amethyst vial into her saddlebag.

“Amethyst is concussive, a rifle enchantment like my own.” She nodded to her battle-saddle. “White is an electrical effect, best used with a scatter shot weapon, like your shotgun.” Ash almost smiled at the gift. “Gold is explosive on standard weaponry but, more interestingly, very effective on energy weapons.”
She hadn’t seen the tri-beam laser rifle, as it waited along with my coat on the throne, but chose well.

“What do you mean effective?” I asked. The Zebra was grinning, making it clear how much she enjoyed seeing others bolstered by her people’s hard-earned magic. The runes spinning in a tight circle around her rifle reinforced the feeling of power these salves had.

“It’ll be more fun if you figure that out for yourself.”

** ** **

Wolves, that’s what these were.
Run of the mill, natural, Equestrian wolves.
No radioactive growths, no flaying skin or revealed muscle and bone, nothing to distinguish them from their ancestors. As if the war, the death and destruction that had consumed everything else, had spared them to live on as they always had.

Hunters of the night, driven by a pack mentality and inherent instinct.
All that had changed, was the desperation they now lived by, the hunger that pushed them to reckless abandon. Their family could be spared, but anything else that drew breath, that pumped warm blood within itself, blood to be unleashed in spurting torrents by a tear at the jugular, was food.
Right now, that was us.

Ash, seeing no logic in electrocuting the already frail creatures, hailed simple buckshot at the pouncing beasts. Caliber, seeing the opportunity provided when they had run at us, compacted as a tight unit, had sent a concussive shot hurtling into their path. The dark blue runes danced on her rifle, now inactive at her side, too dangerous to fire at such close proximity. The corona of force, born from her first shot at the charging canines, had knocked their first line into disarray and unconsciousness, but now the second charge was upon us, nipping at our sides and lunging at our throats.

She tackled them as they dove through the air, knife clenched tight in her teeth, only the salivated hilt left unstained by blood. She used her strength to overpower them, forcing them down and cutting their throats. Ash, almost dancing with the wolves, fired her own weapon with reserved caution as she gracefully spun under and around the streaks of black and white fur.

What was I doing? Well, in the church I had neglected to reattach my gear over my father’s coat, so it had remained packed beneath it for the extent of our journey through Eastern Zion. So my saddlebags, containing my pistols and the salves, were difficult to open and my rifle was still caught in its holster, unable to maneuver the correct way due to the heavy coat’s obstruction.

So I was dancing with myself really, the Wolves kind enough to focus on the source of the stabbings and buckshot rather than the mare caught up in her own outfit. My awkward flailing, magic fruitlessly tugging at my Tri-beam laser rifle, hadn’t yet stricken fear into their primal hearts.

Finally, I changed strategy. Opting to take the coat off first, instead of continuing this pointless war with it, a peaceful resolution. I threw the brown article to the ground and then, finally able to access my saddle bags, I pulled the golden vial out, bathing it in my similarly colored magic.
For lack of a better, gentler application, I smashed the small glass container against my new laser rifle, unleashing the shimmering alchemy upon it. It seeped into the dark weapon, its light spreading within it only to extrude as ancient runes to adorn the gun along its barrel. They burned with unjustified intensity in angular shapes, lines and sharp cuts dissimilar to the Zebras’ generally smooth, sloping cutie-marks.
Tri-beam bristled with newfound energy, begging for me to pull the trigger.

I slid into S.A.T.S, using the technology of fortunate cowards to gain an advantage.
A pang of guilt shot through me as I stared at the immobile of wolves and mares, suspended in the air of a frozen eternity. Only four enemies left, nopony was in real danger, my friends too strong or fast to be pinned or even severely hurt by the starving, weakened animals. Caliber had killed, or knocked out, three already, Ash two, It wouldn’t hurt to tough this one out.

I slipped out of S.A.T.S, and the world immediately clicked back into action unleashing the stalled force behind every dive, lunge, pounce or twirl. The dance went on.

I steadied tri-beam in my telekinetic hold, still blissfully exempt from the wolves’ assault.
One triplicate of crimson energy, laced with hues of gold, burnt a gaping hole through the mid-section of a wolf, the wound cauterized immediately, but the corpse stayed whole. My next shot went wide, at least, a third of it did. Two of the beams struck Ash’s wolf, stalling it for long just long enough to leave it vulnerable to a barrage of buckshot. Only a pair left.

Caliber tackled one, dragging it down out of its leaping arch and onto the solid earth. She would finish it.
The last dove at me, finally acting in recognition to our battle. The beams hit it dead on, three to the chest, sending wrinkles of pain pulsing across its face. The wolf seemed to stay suspended, the fall that would conclude its failed pounce slowing to a gentle crawl towards the earth.
Its body began to dematerialize, burning in a shining energy rather than dissolving under a wave of it. Feathers of gold drifted off of the corpse as it slowly eroded into a simplistic auricle frame of its former self. It appeared as a brilliant silhouette, growing gradually smaller as the elegant flecks of energized flesh and fur flew away from it to dissolve away into the air. It was as if the wolf had exploded into nothing but pure energy, at a miniscule fraction of the appropriate speed. The feathers tapered off into the air around it, leaving a void of early morning darkness where the beautiful, fatal display had taken place.
The corpse simply didn’t exist for long enough to reach the ground.

MY E.F.S revealed that one of the other ‘corpses’ Caliber had made with her energized shot of concussion lived on in its hostility. I spared another triplicate into its slowly heaving body, ensuring that it would never wake to avenge its pack. The corpse lit up in another golden glow then flaked into the winter wind, leaving only a small trail of sparkling embers in its wake. Not as magnificent a death as the former, but the dancing feathers of light against the night still made for an impressive show.

“So it makes regular weapons explosive, and energy weapons… prettier?” Caliber speculated, sliding her knife back into its holster. “Maybe you made the wrong choice as to which gun to use it on.”

“Says the mare who couldn’t fire her gun for fear of knocking us all unconscious.” I pointed out.

“We probably should have asked for instructions on how to deactivate them.” Ash blended much more successfully into the night compared to the almost neon armaments strapped to Caliber and I. Foreign runes spun around the black rifles, putting on a veritable light show for anypony watching us through the darkness. Thankfully mine were more discreet, especially compared to the arcane light now emanating from my horn, which was already making us the least stealthy things in all of Zion. “Now you’ll probably be better off using them up as quickly as possible. Zalika had to recharge several times during the battle against the savages, so it shouldn’t take long.”

“Doesn’t sound like you care for them, Ash.” I said, leading again on our walk east, sending blinking light through the stripped black pines rising around us all the while.

“We were doing fine without them and, apart from yours; they seem more hindering than helpful.” What she was really saying was that mine was effectively pointless and that Caliber’s had been nothing but a crutch, forcing her to use her knife to avoid any friendly fire.

“I think we got ripped off.” Caliber grumbled. “Roped in by that ‘ancient alchemy of our ancestors’ spiel.”

“I doubt the Zebras would go to that much trouble to trick us.” Ash countered softly. Her voice was light as she refuted Caliber’s irrational suspicion of a deep conspiracy. “You’re not saying that they’ve been using that fantastical story to draw travelers in, to get them to fight the savages in exchange for these over-hyped, underperforming enchantments.”

“Yeeeaah.” Caliber rubbed her chin in feigned realization. “Those conniving con-mares probably made up the whole thing, why, I don’t think they were even Zebras at all!”

“Oooh, it must have been the changelings.” Ash giggled.

“Or Discord!” I threw in, having read about the storybook villain in… well a storybook.

“Probably both!” she announced. “Girls, we’ve just been had by Equestria’s two greatest enemies!”

“I would have thought that the Zebras were Equestria’s greatest enemies.” They did kill pretty much everypony, after all. That’s got to get them a higher place in the rankings than making it rain chocolate.

“Exactly.” Caliber tapped her nose. “The circle is complete.”

“This is starting to make so little sense that it makes sense.” Ash whispered to me, with genuine concern.

“Alright, rein it in Caliber; you’re shifting our very foundations of reality.” I ordered, smiling. “Let’s not make things any more complicated than they already are.”

“We’ll see… Just remember: if the changelings do double cross us, there are only two options you can take when dealing with your own clone…” I hoped to Celestia this whole thing was a charade. As much as we were enjoying it now, I certainly didn’t need a crazy conspiracy-mare attacking anything that she suspected of being a covert changeling. “You can kill it or have sex with it.” Or worse, humping anything that looked remotely like her.

“Kill.” Ash blurted out, wanting to quickly make sure that everypony knew where she stood on the issue. “Kill, kill, kill!”

Caliber smiled at the young mare’s desperate assurances. “What would you do Grace?”

“What am I wearing?”

“Hah! That’s the spirit!” It was incredibly obvious what Caliber would do if given the opportunity. “We’ll give those changelings something to remember us by!” we hoof-bumped, awkwardly, as we walked.

“Goddesses, I would be surprised to hear that you haven’t broken any mirrors by charging into them for some inter-Caliber fornication.” Ash remarked, making us all giggle as school-fillies would when sharing a joke that they didn’t fully understand.

We needed to laugh, the looming pines rose around us like charred bones jutting from the shadowed earth. My light was both a comfort and a burden, always threatening to call the beasts from beyond the extent of our vision to come charging down upon us. The clouds tore with their usual ferocity, subtle cracks revealing pale moonlight as it barely seeped through the ever-changing gaps. Despite the silence, the smallness created by the limited aura of visible world, everything felt alive. Electricity raced through the air and through our blood by way of tense fear and guarded anticipation.

“We should set up camp.” Caliber interrupted the whispering silence; her words cutting through the atmosphere like… a missile? A freaking missile!
Why was that image in my head? I could come up with a better analogy than that, surely.
Cut through the atmosphere like a… mother would her child.
That doesn’t even make any sense.
And I’ve used it before, what the hell?
Like school fillies would when sharing a j-
Dammit! Get it together mare!

“Grace?” Her word cut through the atmosphere. “We should make camp, agreed?” she tried again.

“Yeah, definitely. Let’s do it!” I responded with half-hearted enthusiasm. “Good plan, Cal.”

“When’s the last time you got any sleep?” Ash asked meekly, picking up on my internal distress.

“I’m fine, heck I’m excited!” I was still berating myself for failing to come up with a suitable metaphor. “Can’t wait to camp! Let’s just pick up the pace then, huh? Go faster… gogogo!”

“Let me call first watch now.” Caliber said as she looked at me with both concern for me and for herself. “So you can sleep through whatever this is as soon as possible.”

It’s just one miss, you can’t win them all, I told myself. “Yeah, okay.” But why was it so difficult, why was that missile analogy dominating all the others? “Let’s get to a… hill, where we can see our surroundings well enough to get fair warning.”

“Good thinking.” Ash chimed in, whether her praise was genuine or not remained undisclosed. “How about me and Caliber split up, look around some, while you stay here as a beacon to regroup at.”

Caliber nodded in agreement, bounding into the darkness before I could protest.
“What’s the matter?” Ash kept her distance as she tried to break my concentration.

“Nothing, I’m fine.” Cut through the atmosphere like a ship’s searchlights as it approached the rocky shore. Was that true? Did ships have that?
Like a lighthouse. Okay, yeah, I knew what lighthouses were for. A lighthouse on a cloudy day.
Clouds had nothing to do with lighthouses.
Were there lighthouses for airships?
Good question, why don’t you ask if there are rocks in the sky too?
This was a disaster.
I looked at Ash in desperation, her puzzled expression giving me no inspiration.
Her cutie-mark…
Cut through the atmosphere like the flickering light of a dying star.
Was that good? And why did I care? Were falling stars dying?
No, they weren’t technically stars at all. But Ash’s Cutie-mark? Her cutie-mark is wrong!
Like a meteorite burning through the atmosphere.
Cut through the atmosphere like a meteorite burning through the atmosphere?
You’re a freaking genius.

“Grace… your eyes.” Ash stepped closer, which I really didn’t have time for right now.
In fact I needed all my focus for this Goddess damned analogy, so lights off everypony.
My magic cut out, breaking the restraint I had held against the pressing void that sought to consume us. As the arcane gold dissipated, the night set upon us, drowning us in its cold loneliness. The surrounding darkness unleashed like a cascade of icy water, drenching us in its own endless sorrow.
Boom! Poetry!
Who cares about the atmosphere and what cuts through it?!
When you’ve got quality junior-high-school creative writing like that for yo’ ass!

“Caliber!” her voice still sounded gentle and soft as she rose it to a desperate cry.
“Something’s wrong with her!”

Maybe that savage could have fucked some inspiration into you.
You know he never would have caught us if we’d been ourselves, and not trapped, restrained by that pathetic lump of a body. Stable made us soft, kept us weak, but now you know how to be better.
How to be fast.

Get off the floor, I screamed at myself.
Get on your hooves and start running, because there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t.
There’s nothing stopping you from running all the way around the world, until you end up right back here. Just put the mission on hold, get your adrenaline pumping.
Like it was when we were free. You can do it without Dash; you did it when that buck was on top of you.
You were fast, he was going to rape you, but despite his strength you beat him.
Because you were faster, that was enough to make you better.
Be that mare again, because she was cool! She was awesome! She was radical!

They’re holding you down?

“Grace, what the fuck!? What are you doing?” Caliber is stronger than you; show her that speed is the only thing that matters.

“Goddesses, look at her eyes Cal!” This egghead? This egghead is holding you down?
Break her, break her sad little neck. It’s the fastest way to kill somepony, if only you weren’t so pathetic.

I’m not going to break her neck, I yelled, disgusted at what this new part of me was demanding.
Don’t you want to win?
I did want to win.
Then get some Dash, or break her neck.
Those are the only ways you can make up for your weakness.
I don’t have any Dash…
THEN BREAK HER NECK!

“Get an orb!” The strong one is saying.
They’re holding my arms down, I can’t break her neck.
Liar! You couldn’t even do it if she was the one being held down! Even if you had complete control you’d still be weak. You can’t even think of a better analogy than the one Dash gave you!

“Okay, here.” The small one is saying. The weak one. She’s got a white orb.
That’s you. You are the weak one.
One is weak, the other is weaker, but you are weakest.

“No, it has to be the gold one!”
You’re being held down by one mare! One mare! While the other roots through your belongings!

“What does it matter!?” She asked, singing through her unbroken neck.

“It matters!” The mare who is better than me said. The mare who knows more, the mare who is really in charge. Who led you to the zebras? Who led you to MASEBS? You are a follower.
Every mare is better than you, every buck, and every foal, and everything…
I’m a good pony. I’m doing a good thing. It doesn’t matter whether I’m really in charge or not.
You don’t even know what Damascus is planning, you just blindly follow his orders, follow his mercenary.
You can’t follow me into the orb.
No. I’m the best part of you.
You can’t hurt my friends while I’m gone.
No. They aren’t your friends.
You’ll be waiting for me.
Yes. Coward.
<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

“Aisha.” I whispered, embracing the cold sting of the wind and the hot sear it induced across my body.

“Yes?” She was so beautiful. Every zebra was beautiful, as every pony could be if we respected our bodies as they did. What distinguished her was the way she had aged; her youth seemingly eternal in her eyes and even on her face. It had persisted, unchanging despite the passing of years, of decades.

“What did you change?” The recollector sat omnipresent on my head, as it always did.
It was a part of my body, a part of me.

“It is no longer extracting,” she explained, her accent recognizable now, if lighter than that of the Zionists’. “This memory is being recorded; it will exist both in the orb that is produced, as well as in your mind.”

“What is the point of this?” This wasn’t why I was here; extraction was all that mattered, all that was worth my time. I wasn’t here to replicate memories. I was here to forget.

“I’m worried.” Aisha admitted, her galactic eyes dampening to unnecessary emotion. “During our talks, when we were checking that we had left no traces behind… you’re changing Damascus.”

“That is the point.” I stated calmly. “I have nothing that I’m not willing to lose.”

“Your Faith?” My ears perked up, my eyes, blue as the altitude… no, the atmosphere. Cut through the…
I am Damascus, I am Damascus, I am Damascus, I am Damascus, I am Damascus, I am Damascus.

“You’ve already lost pieces of your history with it, fragments of speeches and fractional moments that you used your Faith to live by. We need to take precautions, to make sure that if you lose too much of it, we have a back-up that we can use without having to restore all your memories in the process.”

I nodded. “You know exactly how to sell me on an idea.” I smiled, feeling wasteful warmth towards Aisha. “If anything needs to stay intact, it’s this. Just tell me what I need to do.” Damasc-

Just tell me what I need to do. And I’ll do it…
What can I do? Just point me in the right direction.
I want to get to work.
Make the wasteland a safer place…

I said.

“The process is identical to that of extraction.” Aisha explained, once again tinkering with a smoky brew. “Just remember the appropriate memory, never let your focus falter, and it will be recorded over the layered planes of consciousness.”
“Watching it will restore all my memories of the Faith?” I asked, arching a seared brow. This body…

“Choose the right memory.” She pushed the bottle towards my flayed hooves. “One that represents a perfect moment in time, one that you could never conceive forgetting, that bears the weight of all you believe. The orb will forever preserve that revelation, to be vividly relieved if you do lose your way.”

“The Goddesses’ Call.” I whispered, my stare emptied as I looked at the Zebra, as if my focus had shifted into my own mind, odd. “It set me on the journey that defined, that justified, my existence. The path that self-replicated into an infinity, along the never ending approach to the ascension that I have been denied.”

Aisha nodded at my visible appreciation for the memory, a shard of my life that I couldn’t yet access.
But before I could delve into the mystery of the detachment that barred me from my own mind, the bottle was being drained into my mouth. The fluid crawled its way down my throat with an unsettling uncertainty, as if the entirety of my system had become numb to its influence.
The discrepancy soon melded into the numbness that submerged my other active senses, calling the dark void of unconsciousness to occlude my perception and drag me down into its bleak emptiness.

---------------------------------------------

My life rolled away before me, memories pulled themselves away, almost automatically, as they sought to reveal their pivotal sister. I was remembering things with impossible clarity, fragments that I couldn’t recall by natural thought raced by, drawing us ever nearer to the Goddesses’ Call.
Which was, in itself, an unknown to me.

The reel slowed, flickering away from the familiarity of the gray, cold tones of the Stable and dancing over the diverse, decrepit pale of the Wasteland. Night and Day blended together in a pulsing strobe of black and white, simplified to shades of gray as the seemingly infinite cloud cover shielded the world from the rays of sunlight both direct and moonstruck.

The ground was dusty, earthier than the North, a palette of faded browns and sporadic soils, the blanket of powder snow completely absent, if ever present at all. I walked in a healthy body, a body that bore scars from battles that cut deep and rich, but still blemished against the purity of an otherwise intact light tan coat. Most notable, was the fact that it didn’t burn in the sharp pain of unfaltering searing that I had somehow grown accustomed to. My hair was red, crimson and copper laced by the monochrome tinges of ageing that shot through my tell-tale tail. Celestia Rising, calling the sun to join her over Equestria, simplified into the golden cross that adorned my newly toned flank.

My companions were at my sides, though I had no E.F.S to truly discern their hostility.
A Steel Ranger? No, he couldn’t be, I hadn’t know anything about Steel Rangers when talking to the girl.
The armor’s emblem had been scraped away, the metal left bare save for the scars of its individuality. This buck was too aggressive, too unpredictable to belong to any order.
His steps were heavy, as if he was attacking the very earth that he traversed in a persistent rage.
His breaths were akin to grunts and snorts, like a bull rearing against the restraints that bound it.
We were not friends, not familiar. He flanked me as a guard, in obligatory proximity, adhering to orders.

The other was a mare, pale green, sharp locks of overloaded black, beautiful in the most unpleasant way.
Attractive, a more accurate word, a lack of innocence and the naturally rich face of a working night-mare.
No make-up, except for the dirt and blood she had picked up on our hard road, and yet her features were still defined, pronounced beyond the semblance of virgin beauty.
Even looking at her sent ebbing shivers through my body, stemming from the draw of forbidden appeal.
We were more familiar, though not in the way that my more primal urges would have us.
Her eyes were startlingly green, electric and alert, indicating complexity behind the sensual overcharge.

They were well armed, the brute with weapons as heavy and powerful as his gait, the concubine with saddled knives and a holstered pistol. I had a rifle, aged and adorned with scratched wood, loaded with 12.7 mm rounds, an excess of which wrapped over my chest in a belt.

The land was barren, stricken of all life and distinction save for rising ruins of concrete and metal tapering off into the distance. Clouds, light in tone but dense in presence, stretched towards every corner of the sky. It wasn’t cold, I wore nothing but a battle-saddle yet couldn’t muster a reflexive shiver.
We were not in the North. We were persisting in the scarred landscape of Equestria, to be sure, in another of its many dirty echelons. This memory existed far away, and long ago.

The ground seemed to shake, suddenly but with a consistent intensity.
Was the coming attack the reason this moment had been pertinent? Were the tremors my revelation?
Eroded rock and collections of dust skittered and bounced in these brief moments of foreshadowing.
Our party froze, adhering to the calling instinct for a brace against the unstable earth.
Safeties clicked off, grenades slid into the chambers of the machinated suit of armor while the light-hoofed mare, blind to the hostile approach but wary all the same, spurred in a desperate scan of the area.
The buck was ready for the bars he saw ahead, their physical actualities invisible because of the packed earth that they burrowed through. My stance indicated readiness, and though my body was brave, my panicked mind still spun in confusion and terror at the tunneling unknown.

The tremors slipped away, disappearing deeper into the earth, as the creatures arrived directly below us.

“Clear the breach!” I shouted, prompting the sultry mare to dive away on my own evasive course. The Steel Pony only took a few steps back, unable to move as freely as we could. However he wasn’t running, neither were we, our haste was motivated by our knowledge of what the buck’s guns were capable of, and our inherent desire to avoid the same fate that our attackers had awaiting them.

As the first emerged from the ground, driving out of the earth like a drill of fur and leather wildly clawing at the open air, the Steel Pony pelted out an overpowering barrage of small, but incredibly reactive, apple grenades. Each hit with its own burst of heat, light and compact shrapnel. The rhythmic explosions manufacturing silence in every other aspect of the world, drowning out the canine’s uncountable suffering.

More were bursting forth, three kinsman to the first, immediately shielding themselves against the heated fury of heavy weaponry. The mare and I unleashed our own onslaught, the millimeter-measured bullets pathetic in comparison to the repeated detonations that they flew wildly into.
She fired the pistol, her lips wrapped around its hilt as her tongue pulled repeatedly at the trigger, bright eyes squinting with every drowned report. I bit my own bit, and though the noise and impact of my rifle was easily overlooked in the hail of grenades, I could feel the gun’s power as it pulled against my side.

They are dogs - Was my first assumption - colossal, mutated dogs.
Their snouts short but vicious, indicated by rows of gnarled teeth, revealed as the creatures snarled.
Their bodies were long and powerful, lean and sinewy like an unnaturally bipedal wolf.
Diamond Dogs, my mind offered, the territorial residents of Splendid Valley.
That memory had been clear, Stable knowledge accrued over years of secluded reading… alone.
The Damascus façade was beginning to fade. I never had a Rose, never a Marie… just Grace alone.

Two of the creatures had fallen under our fire, but the seemingly infinite supply of grenades, the well of explosive distraction and destruction, had run dry. Two left, visible through the settling dust and smoke as towering visages of canine superiority, claws long and sharp, and eyes furiously hungry.

The mare leapt towards them, putting herself ahead of the Steel Pony who clumsily attempted to gain control of his alternate armaments. The suit was not his own, he had learned to use it through trial and error, rarely having to resort to anything more than the veritable carpet bombing he had just unleashed. Now the agile mare was all that kept the hellish beasts from taking advantage of his ignorance.
She danced and dove, evading fell swipes of claw and red bursts of energy.
One of the dogs held a comically small laser pistol in his monstrous grip; he fired it desperately at the pale green flurry that accosted his partner. I felt myself aiming…

Child…

The voice exploded into Damascus’ mind, simultaneously crooning and screaming as it injected into his consciousness, freezing him in place.
This was not my body, this was not my mind, and this was not the voice in my head.
The ramblings of a Dash-addled, drug deprived echo were nothing compared to this invader, this terrifying insurgent into our shared experience. This was another being, not a hallucination, but a third.

I can feel you…
Through earth and steel… conviction…

Whatever Damascus was thinking was inciting the same reaction that I was paralyzed by and, despite my detachment to his body, I felt just as immobilized as he was.
The compact battle before us no longer mattered, the battered mare, the charging buck, we no longer cared for them. As all that was, all that could ever be, had wrapped itself around his mind.

You know who I am…

Though I occupied them; I could not see what was happening in Damascus’ thoughts. I didn’t know whether or not he could communicate with this saccharine, horrible voice. Whether it had engaged him, as my own Cravings for Dash had seemingly conversed with me outside of this sanctimonious orb.

I am the Goddess…
The light of the world…I am everything that has ever been, and all that will ever be.
I know what you believe of me… I see your Faith… I would call upon it.

There was an underlying malice to the smooth, softly booming voice.
It was dark, boastful, proud… It was not the voice that I would have given to Celestia.

You will obey…

It commanded, to which Damascus nodded, shifting the dismal scene before us up and down.
His eyes were wide, his face set in an expression of awe, of absolute devotion seemingly being validated.
The voice was beyond the definition of ‘mare’, and despite my suspicions… it was godly.
The earthly mare before us was crying out, begging for our help, the Diamond Dog batting her from side to side like a cat would a ball of yarn, bruising her deeply with every swipe, crushing her.

We can bring Unity to our lost world…
Unity…
You can be together again, under me, you can be whole.

The mare was thrown against a rocky extrusion, scarred and bloody, her body limp with exhaustion and agony. A cataclysm of bullets buried themselves into the monster looming over her, making the creature yelp in dying abandon as it was perforated by the Steel Pony’s activated Gatling gun.

Be the first to enter unity…
Be my first…disciple…
One is all that is necessary, to begin the rebirth.
One is all that our great destiny has stalled so long for…

“Command me.” He whispered, voice quivering with indefinite emotion.
The crippled mare lay, twitching and twisted on the rocky pile, reaching weakly for her satchel.
Steel Pony fired wildly at the final Diamond Dog, but it was far more agile than he, diving and ducking with canine grace as it slowly approached him by way of wild evasion.

Come to the resting place…
The place all must speak of as the grave of the Goddess…
There we can begin…
Unity…
To spread our influence eternally and infinitely…

“Damascus!” The mare screamed, bloody and begging, her voice chocked and desperate as the two imposing figures, one of flesh and fury, the other of machine and nerve, reached the pinnacle of their conflict. We didn’t stir, but stared on through blank devotion and unchangeable history.

One…

The Diamond Dog tore through the air, its claw cutting the air along its descent.
An execution…
The Steel Helmet fell to the earth, helm segregated by the sharp impact of the creatures swipe.
Its metal casing obscured the empty eyed face within, though blood trickled from its apertures.
The body swayed in the shadow of its decapitator, eventually collapsing, lifeless, into the dirt.

Unity

That was not the voice of Celestia… that was the voice of those Abominations to her image.
A scream tore through the fallen silence, static and mechanical, emotionless, expressing itself by the power of its pitch. The voice’s influence fled from Damascus’ mind, unraveling black tentacles retreating back into the grave from which they came, releasing him from his credence.

The mare was clutching a device between her hooves; it blinked in vibrant crimson flashes, meek in comparison to the high screech that it was emitting. The Dog clutched its ears, whimpers and yelps censored by the omnipresent drone. It ran for the plains of dust and ruin that it had once burrowed beneath, scampering desperately as it tried to escape the scream, amplified by its own canine nature.

Damascus cooled, the world around us becoming tangible once again as time resumed from its illusionary pause. There was nothing that gave away any emotion expended on the beheaded buck, no semblance of grief or guilt as we hurried towards the crippled mare. Even for her, he didn’t emit a single implication of pity; all was consumed by the revelation, by Faith.
We scooped her onto our back, adrenaline pumping from neither the past battle or genuine concern.

The device skittered out of her hooves, rolling down towards the bleak radioactive field to scream until its mechanized lungs were empty. Damascus opted to collect the mare’s satchel rather than retrieve the Diamond Dogs’ boon; he grabbed the leather bag with unnatural, earth pony dexterity and hurried back over the corpse of their fallen companion.

No remorse, no burial, not even a prayer for the brutish thief.
We ran, soft mare bouncing gently on our back, until the scream had faded to a low whine behind us. North, the mountains confirmed, back the way we had originally come, away from the Diamond Dogs.
Whatever had drawn Damascus and his party here was now forgotten, replaced by the burning excitement of a pony who believed that he had just spoken to his Goddess, his creator.

“You- you bastard…” The mare winced, voice wheezing and jolting with her carriers every bound. I could feel her warm blood on our back, a steady trickle, not critical. Her wounds were bruises and broken bones, she had been pawed and severely battered, but she would survive.
Damascus didn’t respond. Our eyes were set ahead to the capital range breaching over a distant horizon, focus and ambition drowning out our every concern or emotion, driving us North.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked meekly, not strong enough to pursue an argument.

“I’ll leave you with a doctor.” He promised, developing his own plan away from my ability to survey it.

“Leave me?” It was uncertain whether she was too wrecked to act surprised or concerned, or if she simply didn’t have those reactions to offer to his answer.

“Yes,”

“Where are you going?” His answers were curt, their very nature reflecting the absence of Damascus’ commitment to this interaction, his concern was invested within his own thoughts, reflecting on the spiritual revelation that he had just experienced… The ploy he had just been manipulated by.

“Canterlot.”

Existence stopped, and the world was immediately plunged into the blackness of mental defocus as the Damascus that I truly inhabited, body scarred and decades older, cut his recall, closing the memory.

<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

I was clean.
My mane, no longer blast back into a blood-stained mess, bounced in short tousled waves of gold above my face, the curled layers were soft and light, a welcome departure from the grimy clumps of dust and gore. My Coat, my own and not my father’s, was pristine and comfortable, exposed to the brisk young air.

A river babbled gently, deeper into the fading morning darkness, the sound of it was an odd extremity from the wasteland’s usually catatonic silence. It had undoubtedly cleansed me, its recently melted chill lacing my body in the simplest of purifications.

I also felt empty, physically refreshed though disturbingly light, as if gravity had released its hold by a marginal fraction. The sky was brightening to the misty white haze of dawn, growing more and more occluded by the second as the low, mocking clouds of the mountains obstructed those of the sky.

I called out to the voice, that dark resurrection of Dash, delving into the depths of my repressed memories of it to verify its presence. My internal cries were met with silence, no trace of the Dash-addled derivation of my personality. It was as ifs voice had been purged, scared off, by that of the Goddess, whose own had then been stricken away like a Diamond Dog submitting to that screaming machine.

Comparatively, it was amateur, non-sentient and driven within the realms of my own control, whereas the Goddess had been something truly terrifying, though still able to abuse Damascus’ Faith to control him.

She was undoubtedly an alicorn, the resemblances both in tone and personality, while subtle through her divine act, were striking. Though she had had telepathy, whereas the lost alicorns had yelled their every thought as eager announcements to the world. Perhaps the Goddess had devolved in the decades between the memory and present day, leaving her own kind as confused shadows.
I would ask Damascus what he had found in Canterlot, and the DJ more about the southern alicorn myth.

“Graish!” Ash mumbled excitedly, mouth closed around my drying outfit. She dropped the clothes hurriedly at the base of an impossibly tall, stripped black pine, and scampered over to me.

“’Morning.” I laughed, relieved just by the sight of her, and rolled up off of the stiff grass. Grass that was very much like that I had found within Stable 34, turned artificial and dry post mortem. The trees stretched immense and dense, branches crossing over one another like a mass of naked, anorexic limbs.

“Are you alright?” she asked, getting remarkably close for somepony whose neck I had recently threatened to break.

Except… I hadn’t done that audibly, I realized, in fact: I hadn’t said anything in my withdrawn breakdown. All the violence, the ferocious decent of it, had been internal. Meaning that my friends had no idea of the severity at which my mind split apart, and how close I had come to hurting them.

“I feel fantastic!” I grinned cheaply. It was true, but I still felt ill at ease knowing what I knew, and what she didn’t. “What happened?”

She smiled back, happy to see that whatever they did to fix me had worked. “Well it wasn’t pretty… but Caliber said we had to purge your system.” My smile drooped. “Hence: River.” She admitted tentatively.

“How bad was it?” Considering how light I felt, I didn’t really have to ask.

“It was… messy.” She tried to maintain her pleased expression as she stumbled the words out. “Mostly… um, well thankfully it was mostly… most of it came up.”

Most of it? I winced, that wasn’t the best way to solidify your relationships with ponies you just met.
“I’m so sorry?” I offered, unsure of the protocol after… purging all over yourself and your clothes.
“So…so sorry.” Some intrinsic instinct of absolute shame was coming over me, reminding me again and again of what I had done, what I had made ponies watch me do.

“Zebra…medicine… is powerful stuff.” Oh Goddesses did they give me a laxative? “They developed it to extrude poisonous materials from the body, and Caliber said that you looked to be in withdrawal or rebound, I think… after you had that seizure.” A seizure? That’s how they had interpreted my attempts at violently murdering them? For a disturbing instant, I almost felt ashamed that they hadn’t recognized my attack for what it was, instead attributing my wild flailing to a reflexive medical condition.

“Where is Caliber?” I asked, decidedly thankful that my aggression had passed unnoticed by both mares.

“Getting water from the river.” She handed me my fresh white collared shirt and I tugged it over my revived mane, sweeping my bangs up to the side after I had the article on.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you refused to drink that particular water.” I grimaced, still shuddering at the implied show that I had put on. I was glad for my shirt, as now was not the time that I wanted to be any more exposed that I already felt. I rolled up the soft sleeves, bunching them at the middle of my front legs tightly. The soft material was dry, warming me against the familiar cold of the North I had now rejoined.

“It’s probably the cleanest water in the wasteland… regardless.” The uncomfortable regret went both ways, apparently. “It melts straight down from the thicker snow on top of the mountain range.”
The stars were disappearing to daylight behind the great looming monuments to the world’s history, which stood tall all around us. We were in a nook, a quasi-valley, from which the river flowed.
“I haven’t had truly fresh water in over ten years.”

“I can’t imagine what that’s like.” I admitted, wishing I hadn’t used the water as my waste disposal site all the more. “I didn’t even know what it was like to be anywhere near filthy until a few days ago.”
Being clean was, for now, the greatest feeling ever conceived by anypony ever.
And having my mind fresh, cleansed despite the ghost of embarrassing procedure, was almost as good.

“You look like one of those mares on the billboards.” Ash said softly, rubbing her arm and looking down. “Your mane I mean.” Her own, a lavender curtain of thick waves, fell over her face as she stared intently at the empty space underhoof. “But not the ones for Gomorrah!” she added, urgently reassuring.

“Thanks Ash” I couldn’t remember a single physical compliment that hadn’t come from maternal obligation, or juvenile, venomous perversion. While my mother had repeatedly chastised filly-me for being ‘messy’ or ‘unkempt’ – permanently instilling a need to keep myself tidy - some of my crueler peers, in the years after her death and our innocence, were painfully blunt about the best uses they could imagine for an orphaned daughter of the damned. Their compliments were not the kind that made you feel beautiful.

Not like this… but now I wasn’t sure whether or not I should compliment her back.
“Your… bandages look good.” I offered pathetically. It wasn’t that it was difficult to find anything pretty about Ash, far from it in fact, it was just that I had never really given a compliment either.
Aside from that ‘heaving bosom’ thing, of course… if that even counts.

“Thanks.” She said, arching an eyebrow and nudging the brown vest, lined with golden scripture, over.
Alright, so it wasn’t the best compliment in Equestria.
I took the chance to pass the awkward silence by wriggling into it, adjusting it constantly to make sure it was just so, though really it was mostly to seem as busy as possible while the moment passed.
Interesting! This area was very heavily forested, I observed, distracting myself.
Clusters of flaking, blackened vegetation dotted the landscape, which was otherwise cut apart, lined by the many immense pine trees on their way towards the clouds.

The river was just visible; a higher bank of it further north raised aside the slow, dark flow.
Caliber was traipsing along, jovially swinging around the barky pillars and hopping over the extruding rock. She looked like the iconic picture of a mare enjoying Equestrian Nature, with a few post-apocalyptic alterations. Most notably: that the terrain she romped through was dead, beautiful, but dead all the same.

Though I felt the cleansing aspects of my ‘bath’, I couldn’t see the effect it had had on my appearance. Caliber, however, looked pristine. Evidently she too had bathed in the cool waters of Zion, and had become all the more appealing to look at as a result. It was as if her entire palette had become brighter and despite her persistent black eye and scarring, the mare was radiant.

For a moment she regarded me with the same stark, surprised expression that Ash had had before complimenting me. Now was not my most honorable hour, and the attention was unsettling.
Her brow furrowed as she remembered the pivotal interrogation she still had to give me.
“I’m glad to see that you’re alright.” She started off lightly, still frowning. “I’ve never seen a rebound as severe as that before… must have been some powerful stuff.”

“It was Dash!” I blurted out, as if I was passing blame to a younger sibling for my own atrocities.

She was visibly relieved, but didn’t drop her investigative line of questioning. “When did you take it?”

“This morning.” I knew that full disclosure was the best way to atone for my inadvertent mistake.
“In the Stable, I needed a boost to escape the fire.”

“What?!” The intense scrutiny left her eyes, replaced by wide disbelief. “One day?”
She stroked her chin in thought; Ash evidently shared the confused sentiment.
“That’s… I have to say that’s unusual, Grace.” Ash nodded. “Not saying I don’t believe you, it’s just…”

“You must be mistaken.” Ash drew the conclusion they had both been working towards. “There are barely any narcotics that could manifest such symptoms that quickly. It’s especially impossible that any of the ones manufactured before the war could have those kinds of effects in just under a dozen hours.”

“Well, I’m only calling it ‘Dash’ because that’s what my Pip-buck labeled it as.” I waved the device. “And it certainly wasn’t made before the war; some scientist in the Stable synthesized it based on an old recipe. He was going to test it, but apparently never got the chance to.”

Caliber laughed as relief and amused belief danced across her clean, bruised face all at once.
“So you figured you’d just take a big ol’ swig of a totally experimental substance! Good gravy girl! Just ‘cause you’ve got a mane like an old-world sex symbol doesn’t mean you have to go out like one!”
She apparently found this allusion very amusing, but I didn’t get it. I would have to look out for billboards.

“You never thought that it wasn’t a good idea?” Ash smiled, and though she had hidden her original suspicions, she now shared in Caliber’s happy enlightenment.

I shook my head. Were there other ways to outrun a raging gasoline fire and a savage rapist?

“That’s a load off my mind.” Caliber grinned. “Just let me know if you feel anything like that again, though we should be alright now that it’s all out of your system.” She began to unpack the electric hot-plate from her pack, pulling out a pair of tin cans, with delicious implications. “For a second there I thought Damascus had sent me on some kind of wild, junkie babysitting assignment.”

“About that…” I ignored the aspirations of my empty stomach, to pursue an admittedly valid point that Dash had brought up. “What did Damascus send you to do?”

She shrugged and stabbed one of the cans, roughly tearing the lid away in jagged shards. “Follow the plan.” Ash seemed very concerned about the sharp shards of tin, watching closely as Caliber tore them away with reckless disregard for their potential addition as a fatal seasoning.
“Follow my instincts.” She began work on the other tin. “Follow your orders.”

“What is the plan exactly?” Ash peered into the cans, scanning them for lethal shrapnel.

Caliber looked at me, as if she genuinely believed that I had been aware of my leadership this whole time. “Um…” Dash had been wrong; the mare didn’t have any more of an idea than I did. I felt bad for doubting her, and for what little skittering suspicion had crept into the back of my mind, motivating that doubt.
“I guess were heading into the Great Plain t’talk to the Buffalo, then on to Calvary and her Rangers.
“It doesn’t get much more complicated than that in the Wasteland.” She admitted. “You’re missing the routine of it, the organization of the Stable?” I nodded, realizing that she was right.
Meal plans, assemblies, sermons, assigned working hours and even a set age for retirement.
That had been my ritual, my life. Now everything seemed chaotic in comparison.
“You’ll need to get used to relaxing once in a while, not having an appointment to go along with everything that you do.” She ignited the hot-pan.

“You do need some kind of ritual.” Ash assured. “Everypony does, it’s the only thing that can tie the days together, keep some order in our lives.”

“It’s called impulse.” She gripped the tins in her mouth and poured the contents of each out onto the reddening pan. “Eat when you’re hungry, drink when you’re thirsty, and drink again after that if you’re off contract. If you can’t afford either and need some buck to pay your tab, then you get to strutting, Simple.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as the submissively flirtatious type.” Ash remarked.

“It’s all survival.” She frowned. “Though I can’t say that I haven’t fallen for the tactic myself. You pay for a mare’s tab when you get hot to trot, even if you know the play.”

“Oh…” Ash fumbled awkwardly with the pork and beans as she distributed them into three small plates. “I- I didn’t realize that you… Ah- that you were a… homosexual.” She said the word cautiously, as if she wasn’t sure if it was a slur or not. As far as I’d learned from the Stable: it wasn’t.

“It’s called impulse.” Caliber grinned. “Simple as any other.” She gestured at her food as if it explained.
“So I’m thinking your straight?” The difference hadn’t even occurred to me until I saw her unease.

“That depends… are you heterophobic?” She seemed very interested in her Pork and Beans, though she could only stare intently at them for so long under Caliber’s patient pressure. “Yes, though I believe… well, I think procreation is the only reason you ever really need to… ‘Pay for somepony’s tab’.”

“That’s an awfully limited condition.” Caliber chewed.

“No! I mean… I have no problem with other ponies… doing it recreationally, or anything! I just can’t see any appeal in… doing it, any need, apart from reproduction.” She stammered, eventually taking refuge through a mouthful of the taste sensation that was breakfast.

Their conversation was interesting, but I couldn’t bother to take part in it in between the sloppy love affair that I was currently conducting with food.
Who needed this business? Pork and Beans would always be there for me, always.

“Are you kidding?” Caliber laughed. “Reproduction is the only drawback to doing it. Not that it’s a problem for mares like us!” She offered her hoof and I instinctively bumped it, unsure of exactly what I had agreed to. My focus continued to drown in the sensory overload that had made a mockery of my restraint.
“You should do it because it feels good. Sex is recreation.” She concluded.

“Sure, for you. It’s supposed to feel good so that ponies will instinctively want to do it, its evolution.” Ash eyes widened. “Not that mares like you are a problem! I’m fine with anything you want to do, just don’t feel obligated to invite me! There’s just no logical reason you should be… doing whatever it is you do.”

“It’s not about what’s logical, we eat food because it tastes good, we have sex because it feels good.” The red-head retorted, driving their pleasantly friendly argument, if awkward on one side, onwards.

“Eating food keeps us alive, reproducing keeps our species alive. I just don’t see any reason to bother with it at all. It seems so messy.” She glanced at me, perhaps to reference my bean dabbled face as an illustrated definition of the word. “To me… in my own opinion… primarily: sex is procreation.”

“Recreation!” Caliber smiled, enjoying the younger mare’s cautious distress.

“Okay… I mean, that’s just fine… But if it’s all right with you, I prefer to reserve it for procreation.”

“Recreation!” Caliber retorted with childish glee.

“Yes, I see your point…” she deliberated.

“Come on!” Caliber giggled. “It’s no fun if you keep trying to formulate your fancy sentences.”

“What do you mean?”

“Recreation!” She barked in response.

“Um… procreation.”

“Recreation!”

“Procreation.”

“RECREATION!” Caliber boomed, giggling all the while.

“PRO-ah!-Procreation!”

“Reeeeecreation!” Caliber threw her hooves up in the air like an old world cheerleader.

“Procreation!” she almost managed to yell.

“What ever happened to love!?” I demanded through a mouthful of beans.

They both turned to stare at me, Ash with a look of amused distaste that let me know how ridiculous my sentiment was, and Caliber with a subtle smile bordering on pity.
I sat back on my flanks, empty plate resting on my full, rounded stomach, balanced precariously.
My hooves tapped together over my gluttonous body, awkwardly measuring the silence with every click.

“That’s still a thing, right?”
Ash and Caliber exchanged a small smile, deciding simultaneously that there was now a very distinct loser for their debate. They had reconciled at the presentation of my, immediately failed, perspective.

“How about I clean up your face, okay sweetheart?” Caliber cooed. “You’ve got yourself into a bit of a messy-wessy, haven’t you? Haven’t you? That’s right!” Ash stifled a laugh as Caliber began to dab at my face with a clean rag, wiping away the saucy Pork and Beans.
“Now you can be pretty again, my little Gracie.” She ruffled my permanently ruffled mane.

They laughed together, lying back against the ecru grass to really drive home the degree of my humiliation as they rolled, their high, curt giggles chirping out like the morning birds once would’ve.
The mist had come, blanketing the peaks of black mountains, lowering the roof of the world onto Zion.
Black rock cutting into its virgin white haze, anchoring it, locking it over the valley, a comforting blanket against the harsh collisions and cuts of the dark northern clouds above.

I suddenly realized that I was inordinately happy.
Clean, the sauce stricken from my face by Caliber’s maternal mockery, mane and coat purified by icy river water, the waters that had also served to purify my mind, carrying the extruded remnants of Dash away. The heavenly ritual of breakfast had left me feeling surprisingly light, as the satisfaction elated me.
Now my friends, for they were truly my friends, giggled jovially in one of the last vestiges of life left in Equestria, the river softly laughing along with them as it flowed by on its eternal course.

“Grace…” Ash whispered, their hysteria now calmed. “Come and see.” She beckoned me over, her mane laying about her in a wild corona of lavender waves. I lay back in between the two mares, warmly brushing against Caliber’s body as I settled in and looked up to the sky.

We stared up at the thin web of black branches, persisting frames to the leaves long lost, as they bristled together in the breeze. Upon one, almost indiscernible against the brightening white mist behind it, was a bird. A living, healthy bird, one who was neither mutilated nor mutated to any degree of either punishment. It looked down on us, briefly, as it flickered and flounced on its narrow stage, panicking.
Or dancing…

The foreigner was from an otherworldly place, a place exempt from the death and poison that riddled our long unshaped Equestria. The dancer was a native, a symbol of survival and the remnants of hope left in our home, a preserver, a reminder. The bird brought both faith and abandon, the harbinger of redemption as well as a sign of the times; truth and regret bundled into a single frail, impossibly pure embodiment.
She was a bittersweet portrait of mitigation, an archetype of life.

Who promptly defecated on my face.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Apostle: You’ve seen enough of the wasteland to come into the odd relationship you now maintain with it. Your ideals have survived, you’re once naïve hope now has a justified standing, and it stands as fact to you, driving you upon your blind journey.

What do you mean you did that yourself?

So what? It’s not like you just automatically became a better doctor on your first day out. These perks aren’t freaking genie wishes.
I can so use your character development to generate a perk.
Fine…
Chemist: Chems, food and stimpacks last twice as long. Happy now? You gluttonous junkie.

Next Chapter: Chapter 14: Rivers and Roads Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours