Fallout Equestria: Sola Gratia
Chapter 9: Video Killed the Radio Star
“There is a foul stench on the wind, let us not tarry long.”

Infinity stretched onwards above us. Never stopping, never fading. There was no longer anything to prevent me from looking into the realm of the Sun, Moon and Stars, so I stared up into the eternity.

The cloud cover cut off, with an eerily sharp precision, exactly along Equestria’s border. I now knew that this was no coincidence, that the roof of my country was created through cowardice and seclusion, by the retreat of the Pegasus. But the wild lands of the North, the stretch between Equestria and the Griffon Kingdoms in the mountains far away, were free from the Enclave’s cover.

I had led my companions, Caliber and Ash, here excitedly as soon as I had been given a valid excuse. The way to MASEBS was blocked by a landfall, and according to my Pip-buck, the only way up the steep escarpment was from the other side of it. So we had walked along the wall, gray and aged, until we came to a breach. Concrete and steel reinforcements lay scattered along the earth; we had crawled our way through the ruin and now stood in No-mare’s-land, in what Caliber called the Divide.

The land wasn’t anymore alive out here, the world had been bathed in Balefire, and nothing was pure anymore. Even Zion, a valley that had been sheltered by walls of mountains, barely retained natural life.

The trees were scarce at first, but further into the expanse great forests stood, stripped and gray. The plethora of mountains far to the North indicated the beginning of the Griffon territories, unfairly affected by the war just as harshly as Equestria had been. The fading sun burned just above that horizon, still lighting up the white snow and tearing through the darkening gray sky with its gossamer rays.

We were all standing still, the three of us, regarding the landscape of the Divide. I think we were all a little disappointed by how similar it seemed, how it confirmed that there was no escape, no end to this barren death. ‘The Wasteland’ was not a term reserved for what had been known as Equestria, no, it was a term that applied to the entire world. The ashy gray and powdering snow was all the same, the mountains on the horizon stood bright and white under the dying sun, but everything between there and the broken border shared the familiar dead palette.

Running from West to East was a crack in the earth, what would be identifiable as a large gorge from anywhere closer. From where we stood, however, it looked like a narrow scar cutting through the ground, running deep and persistent. It seemed to glow a slight green, especially noticeable when the view was obstructed by one of the silhouettes of a blackened tree cutting through it. The land around the scar was flat, leaving the stretch of the wound visible until it tapered off towards the Western Horizon.

In that same direction I could see the curve of the Equestrian border reappearing at the base of the MASEBS mountain range. We would have to find a gap in it to get up to the tower.

After a few more moments of silent staring Ash, Caliber and I began to walk along the wall that we had already passed over. We would follow it until we found a way back into the country.

“We had better stick close to the wall,” Caliber warned. “I’ve heard it said that this chasm was used as a dump-site for the radioactive by-products of weapons production.”

“That’s horrible.” Whispered Ash, not expressing much surprise or even disgust.
“No one would have cared about a stretch of barren, unclaimed land, not during a war.” Caliber explained.

“It’s all the same now.” I had retrieved my shirt, vest and coat from Caliber’s satchel bag before we had crossed the border. The sun was setting and the day was seeping into a cold winter night, we could feel the mild warmth dying. I loaded some of Caliber’s burdens into my own saddlebags before I had strapped them back on. Apart from the medical supplies, Stockholm had rewarded us with a couple of grenades and some ammunition for his rescue. I wasn’t sure what defenses would be in place at the tower itself but I was glad that we were prepared.

The chasm now lay directly to our right, far enough away that we weren’t affected by the piles of radioactive refuse buried within it. I hadn’t really experienced radiation yet, surprising considering its apparent abundance in the wasteland, but Caliber assured that she had enough Rad-Away to deal with more sever levels of exposure. I didn’t yet know what it caused, apart from death or ghoulification.

“There’s a breach in the wall!” Caliber stated excitedly. She had taken point on our tight walk along the border so was the first to spot the hole. Though it was large; the collapse of an entire watchtower had brought the surrounding cement crashing down with it, leaving a scattered ruin in place of the border.

The floodlights of the collapsed tower remained lit, they had detached from the bent railings and now lay scattered amidst the stone, lighting up the rubble strewn about them. Their light shone white and strong, and they became more and more noticeable as the sun slowly descended into those far off mountains of the horizon. I would miss it, but the prospect of a clear (hopefully starry) night sky also appealed to me.

“Your thing was right Grace,” Ash said, probably referring to my Pip-buck. “It looks like we may be able to climb this slope fairly easily.” We stood on the fallen wall and peered back into Equestria. Though the over-bright floodlights made it hard to see the comparatively dark mountain face, it looked like the land was indeed sloping gently up to the escarped tower.

Before we made our way over the, now meaningless, border once again I noticed something else my ‘thing’ was telling me. Something equally helpful, but much more urgent. I couldn’t gauge their proximity, I couldn’t see their physical manifestation out of the blinding floodlight before me, but they were there.

“Red Bars!” I hissed as I ducked behind a large chunk of cement. Caliber quickly followed suit, being familiar with the display of my E.F.S, and so reacting accordingly. Ash stood still, taking just a moment to try and interpret my warning. A moment too long.

A flash of mottled brown swept her off of her hooves, and sent her rolling along with it across the ruin. She yelped and was rapidly stolen from our sight, sounds of shifting debris and bruising impacts followed.

Caliber and I leapt out and away from our cover, my radar registered two more attackers behind us, but Ash took priority. We stumbled clumsily in our speed but eventually we found them. A mottled bird pinned her down, raising an eagle’s claw to rend her as its rotting wings extended to its sides. It had pounced like a lion and a thin, raw tail whipped around at its flanks. No cutie-mark, nor had there ever been one, this wasn’t a pony, nor was it really a griffon, at least, not anymore. This was a ghoul.

The floodlight cast the creatures shadow, magnified it five-fold onto the wall behind and exaggerated the enormous, curling talons preparing to cut into their young victim. The holes and gaps in the attacker’s skin and feathers were made all the more apparent.

Ash kicked and fought as we took our pause of shock at the disturbingly undead lion-bird. Caliber acted first, being more desensitized to the sight of a seemingly walking corpse. As I drew my laser pistol she was already dog-piling on Ash and the assailant, stabbing the feral ghoul repeatedly in her own frenzy.

I turned to face the approaching pair instead, hoping two against one wouldn’t be enough to undo me, and knowing that one against two wouldn’t be too much for Caliber and Ash.

I fired rapidly at the nearest oncoming Griffon thing, focusing my fire on one. It absorbed the shots, appearing to take little interest in the creation of more wounds in its already torn up body, and closed the distance between us rapidly. As it pounced I did all that I could to roll to the side, ungracefully throwing myself head first across the broken concrete. Though my roll was embarrassingly unsuccessful, it did achieve its evasive intent and my eager attacker went streaking passed me, unable to halt its feral lunge.

The third ghoul hovered above me, its wings functional despite their almost spider-web scarcity. I quickly reloaded more energy cells into the gun with my magic. I clicked the casing shut just as violently feline hind legs landed hard on my stomach, winding me to the fullest extent of the term. I pulled the trigger of the pistol recurrently, as fast as I could, my telekinetic abilities undaunted by my wheezing, empty lungs. The eagle head let out a screeching roar, sharp but powerful, though gravelly through a decaying throat.

I kicked up with all my physical strength; making impact with nothing but air, my target had swooped away. It flew high and wide, illuminated irregularly by the floodlights as it soared through the late evening sky. What orange sunlight was left made the bird another shadow amidst dozens of others.

I got back upright and hurriedly followed my E.F.S to the other two red bars. I wasn’t going to play games with my sky-faring enemy while my friends were in danger. I had already seen how hard it was to hit a flying target, and I wasn’t eager to resort to another air bound hijacking.

Before I could get to Caliber and Ash, I was accosted by the Griffon that I had first evaded. It wasn’t bleeding from the places that I had hit it, but the smell of burnt feathers and flesh surrounded me.

“You fight like cowards!” I yelled at the mentally destitute ghoul, frustrated by their recurring ducks and dives in and out of combat. It didn’t seem to care very much, and promptly reared up to swing its talons violently at me. I copied its stance and forced my hooves into its sharp hands, propping myself up against the creature’s almost unbearable strength. My legs dug into the gravelly dirt as I fought against it, both of us on just two legs as we formed an aggressive mockery of a triangle together.

The Eagle face stared right at me, eyes wild and bloodshot, pink skin poking out from behind moldy gray feathers. Its beak snapped forcefully at my tender face, leaving a stinging, deep scar where its tip grazed my left cheek. I floated my laser pistol to the side of that same cheek, leveling it to take a shot directly into the ghoul’s eyes, hopefully disintegrating its frenzied face as I had done the raider’s.

Eagle wings flapped wildly as it almost fearfully tried to break away. We were balancing each other, however, and before it could push against me and fall backwards I fired a red beam of concentrated energy directly into its right eye.

The ocular fluid boiled in a millisecond, popping the organ as soon as the shot hit home. The detonation lightly splattered my face as the Griffon slumped, limp, onto the ground. Its brain was burning, melting or dissolving into mush and ash, leaving its ugly head hollow and smoking out of the now empty eye socket.

I bound over the body nonchalantly, shaking the congealed goo off of my face as I ran. It had been a disgusting kill, but strangely – even upsettingly - appealing. The Griffons seemed more like the animals they were made up of rather than the fully sentient, sane beings that they had once been.

I saw the flyer flanking me on my side, swooping low and near as it raced me to our respective allies.

Buckshot flew through the air and stopped the ghoul mid-swoop in a satisfying burst of feathers. The coward flew straight up once again, flapping one wing weakly as it escaped from the onslaught of shrapnel. The creatures seemed able to survive a lot of punishment, needing a more directly lethal impact to finish them off. I fired fruitlessly after the retreating lion haunches, only succeeding to light up the sky.

“Where’s Caliber?” I asked, panting as we ran.

“Just ahead, finishing off the first one.”

We scrambled up and over a large chunk of wall, bounding over a floodlight which cast our shadows across the southern cloud cover that it was now aimed at. In the patch of clear ground below was Caliber, and she was repeatedly slamming the first ghoul’s face into a sharp piece of concrete.

She gasped, breaking for every forceful impact. The creature’s beak was shattered; its head was gradually collapsing in onto itself on every crushing meeting with the rubble. And yet its limbs still flailed, whether out of dying reflex or genuine struggle they flailed until finally they became still attachments to a corpse. Caliber allowed herself a faint smile as she panted over the body, her hooves completely bloodstained and her face splashed in a light mask of the same sanguine fluid.

“One left.” I reported, turning my gaze to the sky. It was darker than the nearby cloud cover now; the floodlights aimed at it disappeared into nothingness whereas on the clouds appeared faint circles of light. Obstructing these circles was the last ghoul, cawing while circling us high and wide. I holstered the laser pistol and floated out Caliber’s rifle. I wasn’t sure if I could make this kind of shot, but it was the gun most suited for the job, and, right now, I was the only one who could use it.

“How loose is she when you float her?” Caliber asked, catching her breath much faster than I could.

“Why?” I swung the weapon after the fast moving shadow.

“Let me aim it.” She said as she calmly trotted up beside me. “Put the incendiaries in.” I quickly swapped out the clip for the orange tinted one as I loosened my hold on her gun. She sat just slightly away from me, avoiding putting herself between me and the focus of my magic. She softly rested her hooves against the floating weapon and stretched her back until her unclenched left eye was on the scope.

I kept the gun floating on an axis so that she could rotate it at will; I put up no telekinetic resistance to her urges, letting the experienced marksmare take aim.

After a moment of dead silence, she took the shot.
The rifle kicked back with its usual power, hitting Caliber around the eye with its scope and knocking her off of her hooves. We could hear the bullet tearing through the air after the initial gunshot. A brilliant fire appeared high above us in the darkness, as if out of nowhere, and, after a few moments of flailing, the plumage of orange and yellow flame came rocketing towards the earth. It looked like a meteorite, or a falling star to mimic the purple one comprising Ash’s cutie-mark.
After Caliber collected herself off the ground, the three of us watched its descent together. The exposed sky was all but black, no stars, and only trace amounts of dim orange sunshine. I looked over to Ash as the Griffon burned just above us on its way to the ground. Her shining black eyes reflected the flames vividly, the dampness in them making the fire seem to dance against those shimmering coals.

“Goddesses…” she whispered almost inaudibly. The familiar look of distant pity crossed her face again as what was left of the ghoul nestled into the ruins before us. Feathers burned up in the air as they swayed slowly towards the earth and the remains of the Griffon emanated a strong smell of hot, rotted meat.

Before we could even move, familiar screeches sounded off from the North. They were laced with the rumbles of a lions roar but the sound that cut through the night made me think of a horrific, crying bird.

“Shit.” Caliber cussed as she rubbed her eye, I admittedly flinched at the word. “That was stupid of me.”

I realized what she meant as we stared out into the night, seeing the glowing green of the radioactive chasm behind silhouettes of dark trees and shifting figures. We had essentially set off a flare.

“Get to the tower.” I ordered uncharacteristically. Ash didn’t move, she just continued to stare down at the charred corpse that had lit up the sky and alerted its kin. “Now.” I barked, snapping her out of her daze.
We ran over the debris and cement, bruising our hooves as we occasionally clicked them against a jutting piece of the ruined tower. The floodlights looked fantastically bright now that all other sources of light were gone, and made it seem like the ruin was the only thing left in the world, a broken island in the night.

The wall stood clear and distinct though, and we easily found the large hole made by the towers collapse. Darting through it, I spared a look behind me. While there was nothing solid to see, the night was alive with activity. As I turned back on my way, I head more of the blood curdling caws and shrieks. One, the loudest of them, let out seemingly indiscernible sounds , but my paranoid imagination made them all sound like abominable and ominous words.

“Diiiiieeeeee…..”

“Suffffeerrrrrr…”

“Runnn, Runnn Runnnnnnn…”

Adrenaline pumped through me as we darted up the gentle mountain, dirt and rock gave way at our scampering ascent and we ignored any semblance of a path to make a bee-line straight for the tower. I was terrified, I couldn’t think because of the fear consuming my mind, driven by my usually active and improbable imagination finally being justified.

I had been scared of a lot of things as a filly, all monsters and horrors from the unfounded, unreliable source that had been my imaginings. But this was real, and so was the terror. It was new, the challenge of rational fear, and in a way I couldn’t come to terms with it. A part of me kept assuring that it was all another nightmare, creatively spawned by my own exaggerations of the situation, it promised that I was under no real threat. That I was making it all up, a silly little filly making monsters out of mole-hills

I ignored that part and kept running.

The tower was dark but offset by the gray clouds behind it, though it was still difficult to find a door or access point. Ash circled the angular faces of the structure coming back around with a dour expression.
“The front door is sealed, metal and wood bars, it looks solid.” She panted.

I spun around frantically looking for Caliber in the blackness. If worse came to worse I would have to set off a grenade at the front entrance, I needed to know if she had found anything so that I could act.

“Here! Here! There’s a passage under the rocks!” she called for us excitedly. The younger mare and I dashed towards her voice, skidding on the descent across more loose rocks and dirt. Caliber was standing against a steel door, ordained with mechanisms that indicated a complicated opening. Blazoned across it, the enthusiastic green words ‘FUCK YOU’ welcomed us to the satellite communications tower. There was no terminal or apparent lock, and Caliber prodded at the door to little success.

I took her hoof in mine and guided it to press the switch on the adjacent surface. The thin bars spun round circles of metal that were no doubt attached to hinges or pulleys that pulled the door apart. It let out a series of clicks before sliding away into the frame, in four different pieces. The hallway within was lit with flickering fluorescents and seemed just as mechanically overburdened as the door had. The walls were lined with steel and wires up to the point where they disappeared, curving along together up some stairs.

“Oh no…” Ash moaned. “They’ll surely figure out the switch, it’s too simple for them not to. The griffons will be able to follow us in.” she looked back over her shoulder in trepidation. The screams were getting louder as the ghouls investigated the ruins were their fellows had fallen. They were clear in the floodlight and all looked just as decayed and dead as the corpses they poked over.

“We’re not going in…” concluded Caliber, she met the other mare’s completely colorful eyes and they both shared another moment of tactical understanding. “Grace, go, we’ll follow if it gets too hot out here. But the faster you can get to the DJ, the better.”

“We’ll slow them down, give you some time.” Ash agreed. “Then lead them into the hallway.” They were planning together as I collected my words to protest.

“No, I can’t-“Caliber bucked me in the chest, hard enough to send me collapsing into the underground hallway and to most likely leave a bruise. She drew the 45. Pistol from her holster and for an irrational moment as I lay dazed on the steel floor, I thought that she was going to shoot me. Instead she turned to face the Griffons, now attracted by the light that was leaking out of the open doorway, as Ash stomped her hoof against the switch, bringing the four quadrants closing together again, and shutting me in.

I was sure that I would go back out to help them. That’s what I wanted to do. But they were right, if I was going to talk to DJ Pon3, I would have to do it now, or risk losing the building to the approaching swarm of ghouls. I didn’t know how many there were or if Caliber would relent quickly enough to accept retreat into the narrow hallway, valuing safety over maneuverability, but I surely knew that I had to hurry.

I got up and sprinted deeper into the system of corridors and turns. I ignored both nostalgia and the throbbing ache in my chest from exertion and coercion, forcing myself to continue.

I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, or what I would do when I found it, but I knew that it had to be at the highest level of the tower. Everything important was always at the top.
I eventually found myself at the doorway into a large, similarly angular room that had to be the base level of the structure. I saw the barricaded front door Ash had accurately ruled out as a potential point of entry. Not only was it barred and boarded, but land mines dotted the hearth before it.
My E.F.S indicated a solitary non-hostile in the area ahead of me; I slowed my pace dramatically and cautiously peeked into the room. The bar must have spotted me as it almost instantly shifted from white to hostile red and the place where my head had just been was perforated by a barrage of bullets. Machine Gun rounds, it sounded like, no taunts or cries though. The room had been decorated raider-style, no corpses hanging but plenty of blood and graffiti adorning the walls and floor.

The bar was stationary, and as I panted against the corner of the doorframe it turned white. Robotic, it had to be, nothing else could be absent enough to think a threat could just disappear like that. This time I peeked directly in the direction of the bar. Nothing there, I turned my gaze up just as the automated turret swung around to face me again. Another clip emptied as I slammed myself back into cover.

It was fast, but SATS was faster. I hovered Caliber’s rifle at my side and dove into the room, activating the time-freezing mechanic as I found my balance.

The turret was caught mid-swivel, it stared eternally at the entrance that I had come from, frozen in its place by the magic of the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. I tried to move, thinking for one naïve moment that I could continue life in this realm of timelessness, that I could drag the frozen Caliber and Ash away from their statuesque opponents and save the wasteland as it all stood still. But I was as immobile as the turret; however my mind and machinery raced on as I plotted two shots to the guard’s body casing. As the tinted stopping power of SATS faded away I begged for the two rounds to be enough.
The defensive robot completed its turn to face me just as the rifle sounded out. Both bullets hit hard, embedding themselves into the turret’s casing, causing it to sputter and stall for a moment. I saw a metal frame staircase that wound up to the next two levels of the tall room, but as I ran for it the turret began to fire again. Its shots went wild and wide, as I must have damaged its targeting chip.

As I bound for the stairs, I fired off more rounds at the automated defender, and eventually, after a few more successful hits, it exploded in a burst of bluish smoke, sending shrapnel flying across the room. I didn’t slow at my victory over the crippled machine; instead picking up the garish pace that I had maintained before, bounding up the staircases, level by level, blindly hoping to run into my goal.

My hope died as I reached a much smaller room, an alcove really, at the end of the black framework. Inside were two purposeless machines on both close sides, no longer lit or beeping as they once would have been, and a step-ladder attached to the wall directly ahead of me.

The ladder led to a small circular hatch which, by my guess, would open up to the heights outside. That was not where I needed to be, I thought. The tower had seemed higher than this though, maybe there was another hatch that led back into the building somewhere out there, dividing the place I wanted to be from this area.

I heard the sound of a shotgun and a pistol, along with much louder, shriller shrieks, coming from far below me. Caliber and Ash had fallen back into the hallway; I was running out of time. Suddenly charged to move, I clambered up the diagonal ladder and pushed myself against the hatch.

The metal circle sat heavily atop my head, flattening my ears, as I poked half my body out into the cold night air. A framework of steel grating hugged the exterior of the tower, wrapping around it. I could see the largest satellite dish above me, opening out to the cloud covered sky. There was enough room between us for another interior area to exist beneath it, validating my course.

Tumbling out of the hole, I let the hatch swing shut with a clang behind me. Caution was injected back into my movements; abrasive bounding and running on this rickety grating would no doubt get me killed. Had it not been for the railing I might have already fallen to my death against the rocky ground, nearly indiscernible as a black ocean, below me.

In the darkness I could make out the faint glow of the still-open door to the tower’s halls below. A few flitting shadows danced against it, like moths around a flame, the Griffon ghouls were slamming themselves against the sides of the doorway attempting to get in faster than the unavoidable drawl of going one by one. They were too big however; too stupid to close their wings or wait their turn as they recurrently bruised themselves against the concrete. The stream was slow, but there were several left milling on the outside. I understood why Caliber and Ash had retreated: if they had stayed in the open they would have been over-run, but in the narrow corridors they stood a good chance.

I wanted to help, but had to formulate a plan first. I walked along the framework until I came to another narrow hatch, too narrow, I noted, for any griffon to fit through. Returning to my overlook I pulled a grenade from my saddlebags, a gift of gratitude from Stockholm, and measured the distance between me and the writhing mass of living corpses, considered how the grenade at the toll had arched through the air

I let it loose of my golden telekinetic hold, putting as much power behind it as I could muster. I didn’t falter to watch its impact, instead turning to run towards the next hatch and back into the tower. I heard the shrieks, though, satisfyingly panicked and pained as the grenade went off with a compact cannonade.

They would come for me; they would slam against the impenetrable hatch as they had the doorway below, giving my companions a few less to deal with as they held the line. I knew that I had to be careful when I was talking to the DJ, I couldn’t sacrifice the meaning behind the words that I spoke in my haste. Somehow I would have to forget about the ghouls, have complete faith in Caliber and Ash’s survival as I acted as Damascus’ liaison, coherent, calm, a politician… though I had good reason to hate politicians.

I slid my way into the small hole, wriggling with half my body on either side of the hatch until it slammed against my flank forcing me to fall loose, face-first onto the cold cement just below. Brushing myself off, I sat back onto my haunches and surveyed the room that I now found myself in.

It was round, yet angular, like the base of the tower, dark apart from the flickering light of the live technology within. Screens lined the walls, all turned inwards onto the center of the system. Beeping, blinking machines and devices sat beneath every section, meaninglessly to my untrained eyes. Wires skirted across the floor in thick insulated black gatherings, carrying power, in the forms of electricity and information across huge distances from the Manehattan hub.

A microphone jutted out of the central pedestal, a small array of buttons beside it. I walked up to the system and sat back, pondering over the course of action that could patch me in to the DJ. I knew how to use terminals, years of experience had generated that skill, but I could generate no more intelligent ideas than ‘press something shiny and see what happens’. I settled on the biggest, most important looking button beside the microphone, if this worked like the walkie-talkies I had imagined playing with as a filly…

“Hello?... Mr. Pon3?” I asked, holding the button down as I spoke into the microphone. No response.

A large list of numbers appeared onto one of the screens as I held down the button. Another showed a wide angled map of Equestria, minimalistic, highlighting all major broadcasters that were functioning.

One of the markers was highlighted in white, drawing my attention to it, a red dot on the top of the map. That was me, I realized, on the very brink of the country. Using what geographical understanding I had accrued, I decided that the dot far south beside a large body of water was Manehattan. The North-Eastern quadrant of the map was unsurprisingly blank; if there was a functioning broadcaster there then the DJ would surely be using it already.

I mashed buttons until the white highlighter lay on the Manehattan dot. The system honed in and displayed a smaller list of numbers. One by one they cut out, they had been programmed into memory long ago when they were active but now these frequencies lay silent in the cites ruins. One remained, it had to be him. As I selected the Galaxy News frequency a security blockade popped up.

ACCESS RESTRICTED!
BROADCAST LICENCESED TO: GALAXY NEWS RADIO
<REMOTE TAP UNPERMISSABLE>
---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---
EMERGENCY_SECURITY_PROTOCOLS: ENABLED
MILITARY OVERIDE IN EFFECT
FORCE ACCESS?
Y/N…

This facility had been converted into a military outpost. Logical considering its ideal placement for broadcasting to the griffon lands or perhaps border patrols in the Divide.

I selected the ‘y’ option, for yes. Subsequently bringing the dauntless force of military authorization onto the frequency’s licensed privacy.

The soft static of radio silence filled the room; it was a gentle sound, as if somepony had turned the volume on a television too far up on a dead channel. I tried my luck on the microphone again.

“Mr. Pon3? If you can hear me then I’d really like to speak to you.” I didn’t know exactly what I had just done, but it seemed to have something to do with Galaxy News Radio so I persisted.
“I’m speaking from one of the MASEBS towers and I’m interested in helping you widen your broadcast range to include Calvary. The ponies up her could really use some… truth.” I used what I knew about the buck to try and appeal to his intentions, it had sounded like he enjoyed having as many ponies as possible listening to his broadcast, if only to inform as many as he could with his news and announcements. “Sir?”

Just when I was about to tap out in submission, the images, or lack thereof, on all the screens around me changed. A camera angle on a studio popped up, mostly obstructed by the face of a buck staring into the lens. He looked thin and aged but retained a clean dapperness that I found unusual for the wasteland. His coat was a washed pale blue, not shaggy or dirty in the slightest. His dark blue, blasted back mane had shocks of electric white streaking through it. Shiny red eyes peered over thick round glasses on the brink of his firm, lined muzzle, and a horn extruded from his soft mane, glowing a faint sky blue.

At first his expression indicated a mix of anger and frantic curiosity but as his eyes focused on me they became gentler, and the beginnings of a smile revealed clean, strong teeth.

“You’re on live, sweetheart.” He cooed gently, the wild DJ persona milder and softer as he regarded me from his Manehattan tower.
“Wha…” I cut myself off, dread spreading through me as I began to understand.

“D’you have anything to say to the Wasteland?” he looked amused. “I hope it’s damn good, considering you just interrupted Sweetie-Belle in the middle of a song.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t even realize that-“ I was panicking, nearly hyper-ventilating. “I’m… Slavers, I want to… kill them, Um, as much as I can? So don’t worry… folks!” I grasped desperately for words.

“You hear that children? This little filly is out for blood!” he laughed; I could almost hear the entire wasteland laugh with him. “So now that we’ve got someone to deal with the whole slavery thing, can I get a volunteer to disprove those pesky alicorns myths? Come on folks, there’s only lives at stake here.”

“Mr. Pon3?” I desperately wanted to cut myself off, let go of the button and go home, I had never spoken in front of a crowd before. Never been allowed to speak in front of a crowd before. And though I couldn’t see them I felt as if the whole wasteland was watching me quiver. “I need to talk to you…”

“Well go ahead Lincoln.” He chuckled. “What’s your name anyway?”

Before I could answer, and reveal my invaluable, or worthless, identity to the world as a result of my nervous compliance, Caliber came crashing through the hatch into the room.

“Hey!” She cried out, as Ash dropped softly through the entrance behind her. “Uh… Shepard!” she ran up beside me, making sure her voice would carry into the microphone as the Dj’s did. “All those ghouls you killed on your way up here, we… we took care of the rest of them! But you got most of them!” she yelled with feigned admiration, her voice doubled by the mimic coming from the radio strapped to her blue vest.

“Now hold on a minute, children…” the DJ addressed his wide-spread audience, still maintaining his sarcastic tone. “Could it be that the terror of the Slavers has some merit behind her?”

“I…” I caught on to Caliber’s façade as she prompted me on with her wide eyes. “Damn… damn right I do! Now my two companions and I fought our way past dozens of ghoulified griffons, automated turrets and ventured into the accursed Divide to get here! So how about you and I talk about how you’re going to help me in my crusade against the plague of Slavers stealing Equestria’s own from their beds as they sleep.” I forced away the nerves in my attempt at a bold, confident tone; we wanted him to take us seriously. Caliber had shot me a worried look at the mention of the Divide, but Ash was cheering silently behind her.

“He-ey! Looks like we got ourselves a force to be reckoned with here, children! Griffon ghouls and Robots? Sounds like the Slavers are going to be seeing some serious shit!” he shifted his eyes to the devices in his studio as he continued to speak. “It seems like this Shepard wants to talk to the old DJ about strategy, so how about I set you up with a couple of songs to tide you over while we work this out!”
I noticed the Dj’s cutie-mark as he worked, a treble cleft like those recurrent on sheet-music. He wore a black vest over a white shirt and his cleanliness continued to baffle me. Even his hooves looked trimmed. Another prompt appeared on one of the screens.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
BROADCAST FREQUENCY: GALAXY NEWS RADIO
REQUESTING TERMINATION OF OVERIDE
Y/N…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I quickly obliged and music began to play once again, audible over Caliber’s radio and from the studio still displayed on most of the shining screens. I slumped back onto my haunches, indescribably relieved; I hadn’t even known how nervous I got when speaking in public. Even trapped within a Stable of hundreds for most of my life I had yet to have held long conversations with any more than a dozen in total.

“Who the heck is Shepard?” Ash laughed as she sat down beside me.

“It’s what a group of ponies that she saved this morning called her.” Caliber explained.
“It was all I could think of.”

“But why?” I sat silently shivering as the two continued to talk over me. The DJ was still busy lining up the playlist that he would use to give us the time we needed.

“Your real name isn’t something you want to share with just anybody, especially not when you just announced a ‘crusade’ against one of the most organized groups of criminals in the wasteland.” She shot me a light-heartedly skeptical look. “You two are awfully eager to share yours.”

“But now I’m a patriotic zealot with a taste for the blood of her enemies and a penchant for killing Slavers. How is that any better?” I sighed.

“You’re an anonymously patriotic zealot with a… all that. Besides, we were just telling the truth.”

“’Crusader against the Plague of Slavers stealing Equestria’s own from their beds as they sleep’ is not what I thought I’d grow up to be.” I shook off the shakes riddling my body and gathered myself to continue talking to the DJ. There was a faint pride welling inside me at my victory over surprise self consciousness.

“If that was the truth then you two must have taken big steps on this crusade while I wasn’t around.” Ash pointed out. “As far as I know we’re still on the very first step of this whole thing.”

“And I’d like to know why you felt the need to cut into my broadcast to take that step.” Pried the blue buck who had drawn his attention back to us through the screens. Ash went quite, apparently more nervous than me about speaking to an audience. “You’re definitely off the air.” He reassured. “And there’s no need to press anything else, just talk and I’ll be able to hear you through the cameras.”

“Then why didn’t you hear me in the first place?” I asked, wistfully wondering if this whole debacle could have been avoided, though there was still a strange pleasure at becoming something relevant… known.

“I’ve tapped into the tower you’re in; so I’m getting a live feed from the security systems now. I had no reason to focus on some far-off abandoned broadcaster until you all used it to hijack my baby.”

“An accident, I swear.” I waved off his smiling accusation. I had seen his anger when he had first popped onto the screens, but it had disappeared as soon as he had seen me. Was I really that unthreatening? “I’m sorry, though I’m sure that hurt me more than it hurt you.”

“Hurt me? Kid, the wasteland loves to hear about heroes! And I don’t care if that was a load of bullshit or not, it still made up for the invasion on my frequency.” He laughed.

“No lies, sir.” I nodded at Caliber, thankful that her interrupting report on what had happened could only serve to sway the DJ further to our side. “We’ve certainly been through a lot to get here.”
“Well then, I suppose you came for a reason.” He arched his frosted brow.

“We want to help you.” I confessed. “What I said about Calvary was the truth. I want to know how we can get you access to the East.”

“Funny, that’s usually the kind of thing I ask ponies to do before I agree to help them. Not what they actually want help with.” His voice was recognizable as the one he had used when addressing his ‘children’, but somehow vastly different. “Why volunteer?”

“We were sent by a buck named Damascus, he asked me to rally a resistance force so we could liberate the railway from the Slavers. Getting information on the Great Plains and Calvary was our first task, and you seem to know everything about everywhere else.” I summarized.

“I understand the logistics… what I meant was why are you involved at all?” he had already figured out that if we wanted to help him access an area so badly, then we must want to use him as our source of information on that very area. “I’m an old buck, should’ve retired a long time ago, and in my years of watching and reporting I’ve learned how to read a pony, how to look at the visual to see the truth. You’re traveling with a weathered mercenary who lost her innocence long ago and a mare too young to have the wounds she does, too have seen what she’s seen. They’re wastelanders; they can only be wastelanders, that much is obvious, they’re wounds make it clear.”

I looked at Caliber, bandage on her head, black eye from the rifle scope’s impact, a hardened coat on a body that had sustained more bruises and scars than I could imagine. Ash’s middle was wrapped in bandages, I realized what the white material was as I looked at her as the DJ would have, barely an adult but still so damaged, the Ecru swatches across her green-beige body weren’t stains, they were wounds.
But I had scars, both fresh and aged, on my left cheek and a multiply bruised chest under my father’s dirty brown coat, my own body had been stained by blood and dust multiple times over since the last time I bathed, there was little about my physical state that implied the life of safety and comfort that I had lived.

“You don’t mean physical wounds do you?”

“No. That’s not the truth I see.” He regarded my friends. “You two are here for different reasons.”

“We don’t have to explain our reasons to you.” Caliber hissed, she clearly didn’t like being judged by the clean, healthy buck from his comfortable tower. Ash remained silent beside her, eyes cast down. “I might not be able to ‘read’ ponies like you think you can, but I can sure as Hell see that you haven’t been anywhere more dangerous than that studio in years. You’re just a louder version of the Enclave.” At the rising tensions Ash stood up and backed up to the hatch.

“We should wait outside.” She urged, suspecting that Caliber’s disgust could dissuade the DJ from co-operating. He seemed a little pretentious, granted, but couldn’t they see how much he was helping the wasteland from his ‘ivory tower’? Much more than as a lone, old buck with only a gun and his ideals. But Caliber had understandable trouble respecting that, and Ash didn’t like the past wounds and traumas that he was causing her to dig up, so I let the two of them exit into the night together.

The buck didn’t seem to be bothered. “I didn’t mean that they weren’t invested in the Good Fight,” he explained calmly. “They just aren’t solely motivated by the thought of fighting it. Like you are.”

“What about you?” I wanted to get to the point. “You’ll help us, if we can give you the means to?”
“Definitely,” he nodded. “If I want to see anything happen before I go then it’d be this damn railway put out of commission.”

“What do you mean go? How long has DJ Pon3 been around?” It was hard to imagine a persona dying.

“Technically… since before the war. I’m just another embodiment, a child of Galaxy News Radio, though I call it my baby it really doesn’t belong to me, I’m just the one keeping it alive right now.”

“How does that work?” He didn’t look like a ghoul.

“DJ Pon3 is a title, passed down from pony to pony; it’s a responsibility to uphold the values of this station, and to keep preaching on about the Good Fight.” He explained. “Once I find somepony to pass it to then that responsibility will shift to another, and I will leave this tower.”

“I respect what you’re doing.” I reassured him, feeling that the reference to the tower was his subtle way of assuring that he had no intention of maintaining the apparently luxurious lifestyle after his job was done. “That’s why I’d be willing to help even if we didn’t need you. Just tell me what has to be done.”

“That’s what I mean.” And that was what Caliber had meant when she had insisted that I be the one to talk to this buck. “You’re an idealist.”

“I just want to get to work.” I really wanted to console Ash and Caliber, in case they’d decide to leave me.

“You’re eager, good. Unfortunately the only way you can help me is from beyond the city itself, a considerable distance South-East of here. There is a routing tower in the heart of the Plains, far north of Calvary.” The city was on the opposite end of the Canterlot mountain range according to my Pip-buck marker, a ways out of the crescent-shaped Littlehorn Valley. Though we could get there by heading straight East through Zion then directly South, as Caliber was planning. “I have enough knowledge of the MASEBS system to tell you exactly what building you’ll need to get into, though it should be obvious from the satellites that will undoubtedly be attached to it. All I know is the location, I can’t tell you what to expect when you get there, or what might stand in your way.”

“If you know where it is why haven’t you just sent your signal there already.” I asked, surely if the underground cables of the system reached the relay then he should be able to access it.

“It’s locked down, somepony shut it off or sabotaged it or it simply isn’t powered anymore. The country’s crazy technological revamp during the war could have turned it into a television tower for all I know. In any case, you noticed there was no marker for it on the map that popped up? That’s because it’s no longer recognized as part of the system.”

“So you just need us to repair it?”

“Flip a switch, plug in a cable, adjust a satellite, do something! It could be any number of issues so I’ll transfer schematics and access codes to your Pip-buck if you would plug it into the machine there.” I obliged, using the same cable that attached it to the Stable terminal in my room days ago. “Once it’s connected I’ll be able to talk to you from there, and I’ll have access to every security system in range that I can hack into. I’ll be able to get you most any information you need.” He promised as he transferred the data across the countless miles of cable.

“Then I look forward to talking to you there.” I had more questions but I didn’t want to leave Caliber and Ash fuming out in the cold for too long. “Oh, and feel free to play up this Shepard thing if you want, as long as I don’t have to do any more interviews.”

“You get me a voice in the East and I’ll let everybody in the wasteland know that you were responsible.” He assured with a smile.

There was that urge again, that wanting, an anticipation even. “Shepard.” I falsely introduced, donning what now seemed like a stage name of renown. Suddenly feeling as if I was doing something wrong, I tried to word the insistence out more subtly, as if it weren’t personal desire. “If ponies like heroes then go ahead and use this whole mess to invent one for them. You’ll have to explain the interruption somehow.”

“Sure, but I don’t think I’m going to have to do much inventing.” He grinned.

“You don’t do any at all, do you?” I had a feeling this pony held the truth higher than anything else.

“Not ever, no matter how bad it hurts.” He assured me. “That’s the whole point, and that’s what makes finding an appropriate replacement so difficult. It can be hard sometimes… there aren’t a lot of things in the wasteland that you can just un-see. And spreading these things, broadcasting bad news far and wide, isn’t a job I would wish upon just anypony.”

“But you love it.” I smiled.

“More than anything in the world.” He looked back at the records and machinery of his studio, his home. I was starting to respect this buck more and more, the work he had put into his ‘baby’, the care he had for it, shone out in the crimson of his musical old eyes. “I’m not saying it won’t be hard to let her go… but death isn’t predictable, and if I’m not prepared before it comes, then this station dies with me.”

“How long have you been DJ Pon3?” My curiosity was battling against my guilt over choosing to side with the DJ over Caliber, though I was starting to feel like she had been the unreasonable one, which only made me want to apologize to her more.

“I thought I’d seen it all, before this job I mean, I was older than your fiery friend when I stopped fighting the good fight in the literal sense.” He chuckled. “But here… I think I’ve been here long enough to honestly say that you can never see it all. There’s too goddamn much.”

“And that’s without Calvary.” I pointed out.

“I can’t say I’m not excited to see it, the old earth ponies were always strong, and I’m willing to bet that that city is still as beautiful and powerful as it ever was. They built it, after all.”

“Beautiful?” I hadn’t imagined he would have that expectation.

“Famous for architecture and history before industry took over, it was. The hoity-toity Unicorns of the old days were always a little too quick to dismiss the fortitude of their more ‘grounded’ brothers and sisters as a brutish virtue. Truth is their ability doesn’t stop at the physical, they’ve got their own freaky magic.”

“That’s more believable than those ‘Magic of Friendship’ fairy-tales.” I nodded.

“Speaking of…” The DJ gestured to the hatch and the mares beyond it.

“Yes, I’d better go.” I turned to the exit. “You know I think you and Caliber would find that you have a lot in common, if she could managed being in the same room as… you were transmitting to.” I adjusted.

“I don’t blame her. It’s hard to see anything but black and white sometimes, especially in times like these. I should have been more careful. I know what it’s like, not wanting to be judged.”

“She’ll come around.” I blindly promised. “You two can make up at the relay.”

“Here’s hoping.” he raised a hoof in a half salute. “Good luck, kid.” The screens cut out; I had barely noticed the music playing behind us as we spoke, until it was gone. The room was oddly dark, dancing lights of red and green dotted the blackness and the sound of whirring and breathing machines were all that remained. It felt colder.

I pushed my way out of the hatch once again, replacing the fading warmth of the room that I had taken for granted with high, almost icy winds. Caliber and Ash sat together overlooking the Divide, the scar still glowed green and was widened to a gaping wound by the higher angle we now regarded it with.

The night sky above it, cloudless in the no-mare’s land, was almost bright. Flickers, tiny white pin-points of light seemed to move while simultaneously remaining completely stationary. They were beautiful in pictures, and pictures couldn’t dance. That’s what they were doing, I decided, dancing.

“Are you guys alright?” I asked softly as I joined them, Caliber was pushed up against the railing, hooves hanging over it as she sat tall on her haunches. The thought of being that far over such a height made me dizzy and I opted for Ash’s guarded curl on the grating.

“Fine.” Muttered Caliber, frowning absently as Ash just nodded in empathy with her reply. “I know why I’m doing this… and it isn’t only for the money, Grace.”

“He didn’t think that.” I excused. “In fact I think he genuinely respected you. He’s a good buck.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally Caliber; it’s something he probably does automatically.” Ash spoke up. “He might not be risking his life but Grace is right: his intentions seem pure.”

“Why’d you leave then?” the frown left her face but she still stared off into the bleak horizon.

“He was making me think of things I didn’t want to.”

“Your Pilgrimage?” I asked.

“Amongst others.”

“So you left from discomfort, not anger.” Caliber flopped off the railings to face us. “Explains why you felt better once we were out here.”

“You don’t?” she asked.

“That whole conversation left a sour taste in my mouth. And anger stews.” Though she seemed to have shaken it off, or she was just concealing it. “Trust me; I don’t like my reaction any more than you two did, but it’s hard to see past a hooficure.” She giggled.

“Or designer glasses.” Ash contributed, smiling at her friend’s improved mood.

I realized how odd it must have seemed to them, cleanliness, health. In the Stable everypony had looked like that. I hadn’t seen anything wrong with the DJ, because a few days ago I had looked exactly the same way. To them, he immediately looked spoilt and, in terms of the wasteland, he was. That didn’t mean his work wasn’t important though.

“So what now?” Caliber asked. “He give you anything useful?”

“Some codes and blueprints, he doesn’t know much more than we do. There’s a routing tower in the plains north of the city that we need to check out.” I showed them the distant marker. “And it looks like we’re going in blind: it could be a repair job or a complete rewiring of the place from what he told Me.”

“Well then we might want to find somepony who knows a little more about that kind of stuff than we do.” Caliber suggested.

“Check.” The lavender haired mare chirped

We both looked at her expectantly.

“I can help you with that.” Ash beamed. “I’ve done a lot of research and work in repairs and electronics. I kept a lot of the tech at my old commune running long after it would have packed it in.”

“You can repair things?” Caliber was clearly getting excited by the prospect.

“Sure! When I restored some discarded Enclave stuff I was named the official mechanical-mare of my congregation.” she recited the achievement like a girl-scout announcing a badge that she had worked particularly hard for.

“I wish you had mentioned this earlier! I got a wrecked battle-saddle that I would really appreciate you taking a look at.” she skipped gently in place, I wondered if Ash knew about the borderline unhealthy relationship Caliber had with the rifle that her decrepit saddle was built for. “In the morning of course.”

“Sounds like you want to sleep.” I grinned; Caliber must have been exhausted to put off her long awaited reunion. Though she looked a little ashamed. “You’re allowed to be tired, Cal.”

“I hate to say it, but I am working on mental overtime here.” She admitted. “So I was hoping we could hole up here for the night. Seeing as we can’t count on hospitality in Zion with any confidence, we should probably get as much rest as we can now.”

“What if there are more Griffons down there?”

“You can’t sleep anywhere in the wasteland without somebody keeping watch. Besides they can’t get into that hatch, so I’d say we’re actually relatively safe.” We had spent the previous night at a grenades-toss away from a raider-infested toll booth, after all.

“Well then I’m volunteering for first watch!” I exclaimed. “And there’s nothing you can say to dissuade me this time!” I was determined to get Caliber some sleep.

“Relax, the logic I used against you at the toll still applies, except this time you’re the one who’s well rested and I’m the one who would have already passed out if it weren’t for my reluctance to roll off this tower. If you’re up for it, go ahead.” She said dismissively, quelling my adherence to the call of honor.

“Don’t try and reverse-psychology me, sister! I’m going to sit here, in the cold, on this rickety framework and keep first watch, so don’t you try and stop me!” Caliber giggled at my jovial outburst as she turned to re-enter the hatch. The younger mare stayed curled up against the concrete.

“You’re not passionate enough to oppose her on this, are you?” she asked Ash. “Because I don’t think you’ll win, Gracie’s got a weird thing for volunteering.”

“No, it’s just… I’d rather come in later.”

“What’s the problem? She’ll wake you for your turn in a couple of hours if you want to go second.”

“I just… don’t like trying to sleep with somepony… I mean..!” she panicked. “I just think it is weird to be in a small space when you’re both trying to fall asleep, you know!? I always end up laying there until the other pony is out, I feel like I have to wait for them before I can relax. It’s just… something I struggle with! In my Pilgrimage I was always the last to go, and I couldn’t ever do it while watching anypony else was trying to do it! Or even knowing that they were lying there, in the same situation as me.” Ash explained awkwardly, her face scrunching at every hesitant stall. “It is just uncomfortable for me.”

“You know for most people I’ve worked with; sleep was a lot simpler than this.” Caliber remarked as she held open the hatch. “They’d pass out when they pass’d out and first watch would go to the pony who drew the short straw. You two are making a political science out of it!” she wiggled her way into the dark room as her last sentence echoed within the chamber of cement and machines. The hatch swung shut.

“You’re not exaggerating?” I pried.

“No… I’ll go in in a minute. That room is just so small.”

“I would have thought you’d be comfortable with Caliber by now, you two seemed to be getting along really well after I came out of the orb.”

“It’s not her, it’s just a problem I have.” She assured as we stared into the starry sky from beneath the Enclave’s cloud cover. “I’ve always been a little… private.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Lack of privacy was one of my biggest problems with the Stable” After the murders and conspiracies of course, I added to myself.

“Caliber told me that you were from a Stable.” She settled forward, deeper into her curl, resting her muzzle on the low railing. “She also said that you do not like to talk about It.”

“Yeah.” I closed off the issue. We sat in silence for a moment, just looking into the night. Apart from the radioactive cut in the landscape, it was awfully beautiful out. The snowy mountains in the northern distance were visibly white, the gray earth and skeletal trees from here to there were also dusted with snow. Black and White nights, Gray days.

“How long have you two known each other?” she asked, breaking the silence with her soft voice.

“Only a few hours longer than you two have, I left the Stable yesterday afternoon.” ‘Left’ was not the word that I would have used if being honest, but I still didn’t want to be candid about it. Keeping it all to myself seemed like the easiest way to forget. What we were doing now was more important anyway.

“Oh?” she seemed surprised. “You seem closer than that, and it sounds as if she knows a lot about you.” Ash kindly side-stepped any questioning about the Stable.

“She’s read me, whether she meant to or not, I think she picked up more than I offered. Though she definitely won’t analyze me to my face like the DJ did to her.” That was the difference between how they each used their shared skill.

We sat in silence once again, Ash seemed to get entrenched in her own thoughts from time to time, and when she did I could see her eyes vividly lighting up as her mind worked. They always seemed a little wet, like she was constantly on the brink of crying.

“About what the DJ said…” her black eyes reflected the brilliant dots of lights that decorated the obsidian tapestry that was the sky. “Do you ever feel like… like you are not living how you truly want to live? That you don’t even know the real reason you do things, or the reasons you should. Like you aren’t really in charge of your own life? Your own destiny?” she stacked each question slowly onto the former, building up the severity of her wonder.

“I think everypony feels like that sometimes. I know that it was all I could think about when I was younger, reason, obligation…Heck, I’ve been unemployed my whole life, so I never even felt like I found my destiny.”

“What is unemployed?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“You know, when you don’t have a job, a purpose, a thing you do for a living.” I explained.

“I thought you only had to live for a living.” Her face didn’t show much expression, her eyes stayed fixed away and her mouth moved gently against the rail, bouncing her darkly lit lavender head slightly as she spoke. “And surely a purpose is bigger than a job, something on a whole other plane.”

Her viewpoint was confusing to me; your job was your life, your reason to exist, your contribution to the Sta- to the world. Without one you had no viable reason to be, no destiny. “Well, your cutie-mark symbolizes your destiny, right? And it tells you what your good at, or what you’re going to achieve or be involved with, and most of the time it’ll point you in the direction of a certain career…”

“So you didn’t have a job because your cutie-mark is just a symbol?” I remembered that she had seen me naked for an extended period of time while I was in the orb. Not that she would have been paying attention with stupid old toned-up Caliber waltzing around in her vest. The standard for body image hadn’t been high in the Stable but in present company I was starting to feel a little soft.

“Pretty much…”

“Seems like a flawed system. How can you be expected to rely on just one factor to determine the rest of your life? What if you don’t like what your cutie-mark tells you that you’re going to do with your life?”

“But you will like it Ash, that’s the point, it’s your destiny.” This was simple, why didn’t she get it?

“Do you like not having a destiny then? Because according to the Stable’s interpretation that’s all you might as well have.” she pointed out. There wasn’t harshness behind her words, just logical curiosity.

The silences were getting to be a little arduous. Due in part to the odd train of thought that she was following, and subsequently causing me to trail behind, struggling to keep up. Her opinions on cutie-marks were… different, in a strange way they felt almost blasphemous.

“No I don’t.” I murmured after the awkward pause.

“Sorry.” She noticed that I was upset and shifted back to my side, face coming away from the railing and resting beside mine as she leaned back against the concrete tower. “I just don’t get it.”

“Well what do you think of your cutie-mark?” I asked pointing at the falling lavender star engulfed in dark purple flames, set in place within a solid black diamond. It was also rather vague.

“I don’t give much thought to it.” She deflected. “It certainly doesn’t change the way I live.”

“Alright,” I understood the body language that shyly said ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. “What about Caliber’s,” I pressed, hoping that she would yield if I made things less personal. “You saw the shot she took on that Griffon today, it was almost pitch black, the target was circling high above us, and she was relying on my telekinesis to aim!”

“What does that have to do with a compass?” she laughed.”Did she navigate the bullet into that Griffon?”

“What does a ‘compass’ have to do with the crosshairs on her flank?” I retorted, though she had used an unfamiliar word. I knew what it meant but I had never seen a physical incarnation of a ‘compass’. Caliber’s cutie-mark had always looked like a black crosshairs bordering a white interior to me, not some maritime directional device.

She seemed as confused and surprised by the word ‘crosshairs’ as I was by ‘compass’.

“Crosshairs are what you’re supposed to see when you look down the scope of a rifle right?” Had this pony been living under a rock for her whole life? An even bigger rock than the one I had been living under? I gave her a look that expressed my internal skepticism.
“I’ve never been able to do that before,” she bumped her soft, flat forehead against me playfully.
“Earth pony… I have only ever used a battle-saddle.”

“Right, sorry.” I felt embarrassed despite myself; surely she would have seen a crosshairs somewhere else before, I thought, though what did I know? I might as well be a day old when it came to knowing what life in the Wasteland was like. “I suppose it’ll be interesting to find out what she thinks it is.” I offered.

“Yeah.”

Sky and Stars again.
“Sorry to bring up something so heavy.” She said earnestly. “I’m still feeling a little lost.”

“Seems to me like you ended up exactly where you were meant to be. A couple of mares on a quest to repair a big, confusing satellite relay meet up with a helpful, mechanically adept, genuinely good pony in a wasteland writhing with idiotic, illiterate sadists.” I smiled. “Coincidence?”

“We’ll see.” She returned my look. Despite our pithy arguments I still liked seeing her happy. She had a sweetness to her that I couldn’t help but feel protective of, to want preserved.

We sat in yet another span of starlit silence, thought this time it was comfortable, peaceful even.
There was something about it all, this place I found myself in, that made me undeniably happy. The Wasteland was damaged, scarred and torn, but the beauty of Equestria survived. Not only in the stars, the Sun and the Moon but also in the snow and lights. Even the ruins and the memories that dotted the landscape served as a reminder that this had once been home to a peaceful nation, a happy nation.

I wanted to be here, I realized. I had always been sure that I was glad to have left the Stable, but that was after being introduced to how intrinsically screwed up it really was. Now I saw that this was what was important, this was what I was meant for. I wasn’t sure if I believed in fate, how could I not if I invested so much Faith in the prophetic cutie-marks? But for a moment I felt as if this was exactly what was supposed to happen, that I was walking the same path that I always would, my path. And now I walked through a beautiful, dead world, filled with sin and sadness, but redeemed by the good that survived.

It was easy to be a good pony in the Stable, there was incentive, authority, and it was expected.
Here it was a miracle, morals made life harder, made survival an even more unattainable aspiration.
I hoped it wouldn’t break me, I hoped I could hold onto myself in the face of it all.
But I knew that moments like this would make it easier.

The Moon ebbed its way into the sky from behind the Pegasus’ cowardice. I thought the white of snow was pure, that the light of the fluorescents and stars were all that would brighten the night. I was wrong. This was the incarnation of Luna, of her night. The Snow and Lights couldn’t compare.

It was incredible.

It glowed as it shared the light of the Sun that now burned above an entirely different piece of dead world. And though it wasn’t as bright, or as brilliantly blinding and warm, it was easily as beautiful as its sister. Looking at it made me think about how small I was, made me feel comfortable despite its reminder that compared to the eternity of space and even Equestria, I was so very small.
I could see its face, its blank, incredibly empty face. Hills and craters gave it depth but couldn’t take away from the fact that it was impossibly simple, grand and expansive, but simple all the same.
Not dead like the land we were perched above, but peaceful, eternal, alive.
I was looking at day, I realized, the night it brought was always accompanied by its own lit up landscape, its own piece of sunshine to light up the darkness. The Moon wasn’t the cause of the night; it was our comfort for it, our salvation.

“I’m glad that I’m Lost.” I whispered.

Footnote: Level up!
Perk Added: Demolitions Expert: +20% damage with explosives.

(Happy 100,000 words everyone! Thanks for reading and Enjoy your Heritage Day!)

Next Chapter: Chapter 10: Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac Estimated time remaining: 10 Hours, 59 Minutes