Burrburrary 7th, EoH 47

“Attention stable dwellers!” Crispy’s voice crackled over the stable 93 PA system. “In celebration of our recent acquisition of a large quantity of purified water, Major Vindaloo and I have decided there will be showers for everypony!”

Distant cheering filled the stable halls.

“And just in case you think you don’t need one — they are mandatory. Yes, Rotgut, that includes you!”

A single voice shouted in outrage.

Lyra looked out from under Crispy’s desk in the security station, a screwdriver and a roll of electrical tape clutched in golden telekinetic hands. “Didn’t he get shot in the neck?”

“It got better,” said Crispy, miming injecting himself with a stimpack.

Lyra nodded; they’d gotten a bunch of those from the ration stockpile, and Rotgut had been the only serious casualty.

Crispy pressed his hoof down on the big red ‘broadcast’ button on the desk in front of him. “If you like being able to hear my beautiful voice all over the stable, you have Lyra to thank. Big round of applause for the tech support mare.”

Distant booing.

“You’re welcome, guys!” said Lyra into the PA microphone.

“She’s also set up an antenna, so we can get some fucking music down here.”

Distant cheering.

“Right right. Radio rules are: one station within earshot of each other. If ponies can’t agree on which station to play, flip a damn cap, there are only two. As you were.” Crispy took his hoof off the button. “Lyra, can I ask you something?”

“Can I stop you?” said Lyra, wriggling back under his desk to put the access panel back over the intercom’s guts.

“Seriously, what’s up with those hands you make? I don’t know a lot about magic, but it’s gotta be a lot of extra effort to make them. Paneer just lifts stuff in her magic. Can’t you do that?”

“Well firstly,” said Lyra, turning the last screw, “that’s the second time you’ve asked me. Secondly, fingers allow very precise control. Thirdly, I just think humans are cool.”

Crispy raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that little foal’s stuff?”

Lyra generated a third hand while she packed up her tools in her saddlebags. “Do you know what this gesture means?”

“No. Maybe we should ask Paneer.”

“Humans aren’t just a fairy tale,” said Lyra, standing and dusting herself off. “They’re real, and they’ve visited Equestria. The pre-war government was in contact with a parallel universe, and…” She noticed the tolerant look on Crispy’s face and decided she was wasting her time. “You know what. Never mind.”

“For a smart mare, you sure believe a lot of weird things,” said Crispy.

Lyra smirked. “No, I know a lot of weird things.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra sat in the newly cleaned locker room waiting for the shower, naked except for a fresh towel over her withers, feeling less awkward than she would of a week ago.

There wasn’t enough water for everyone to shower privately — they were using large drums of purified water they’d brought back from the ration stockpile, and they could only fit a couple on their sleds along with the food they needed. So they’d drawn lots to shower in groups of ten or so.

Lyra was sort of getting used to seeing other ponies naked. When she had been young, Equestrians had favored nudity — even in the sophisticated Canterlot society of her youth wearing clothes outside of special occasions was seen as putting on airs.

Then Rarity had happened.

Working together with Applejack as the heads of their nascent ministries, they’d funded research into automation to produce inexpensive fabric. Originally meant to meet the newly increased demand for EUP uniforms, Rarity didn’t miss the opportunity to popularize fashion amongst the lower classes.

Lyra had been cynical at first, dismissing it as a business ploy. But no, Rarity had divested herself from her business ventures when she’d taken over her ministry, as a government official ought. She just wanted to see her favorite art form flourish. So Lyra had given the new fashion a try. So comfortable. Cool in summer, warm in winter, and most of all private. And so she had fallen in love with wearing clothes.

But comfort with nudity was coming back to her already — so much so that she’d felt weird being the only one in the locker room wearing clothes. After a little while she’d stuffed her new stable suit (a smaller size, but it hung loose on her frame; she was losing weight at a worrying rate) in one of the lockers.

And yet she still felt a little bit exposed. Not least of all because, through coincidence or conspiracy, she’d wound up assigned to the same shower group as Blue Note.

Blue Note had waved hello when she’d come in but ignored her after that to talk to some other mare. So Lyra just waited awkwardly on a bench, trying not to stare at Blue Note’s round little butt. It was futile. She found herself waiting with bated breath for Blue to flick her tail at an itch on her flank so that she could see her swollen, glossy vulva. Its thick lips were an indigo so dark they were almost black. Lyra imagined kissing her way slowly up the back of Blue Note’s thigh and…

Blue Note finished her conversation and turned around.

“How are you, hmmm?” said Blue Note, looking Lyra up and down and smiling.

“Oh, hi! Fine, I’m fine,” she said, waving a hoof dismissively. She was sitting in a puddle, actually. “How… um, how are you?”

Blue Note’s slit-pupiled cerulean eyes drifted up Lyra’s exposed haunch. “Blue Note wondered what your cutie mark was. I admit I was expecting something more technical. Are you a musician?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean, yes,” said Lyra. “I mean, not professionally. But I play lyre.”

Vindaloo stepped out of the steaming showers, rubbing her pink mane with a towel, Paneer close at her heels. “Next group!”

Blue Note nodded towards the sound of flowing water. “Shall we?”

Lyra stayed close to Blue Note, not quite touching her. Vindaloo tilted her head towards Lyra and stage whispered as she passed. “Drop the soap.”

She ignored the other ponies’ laughter and lost herself in the feeling of hot water washing over her body, gradually working through the filth matting her coat. Of all the bodies around her, she was only aware of Blue Note. She tried not to think about it, but the other mare drew her with a gravity inversely proportional to the distance between them. The closer she got, the harder it was for her to move away.

“Would you wash Blue Note’s back?”

“Lyra would,” said Lyra.

Blue Note turned away from her. Lyra ran the soap over her narrow withers, and down the ridge of her spine. She hesitated at the edge of her croup, then slid the soap up her back. “Do you want me to do your wings?”

“Not in public,” purred Blue Note. The eight other ponies in the shower with them laughed.

Lyra blushed. “Sorry.” As the wife of a pegasus, she ought to have known better. There was no need to lie to herself — she did know better. She knew exactly what she was asking, and passing it off as an innocent mistake.

“Not at all. Let Blue Note do you.” She turned Lyra around and began to soap her back, washing all the way down to the base of her tail. Lyra felt the heat of her body so close, the curve of her pregnant belly rubbing against Lyra’s cutie mark. “We found some instruments,” said Blue Note, close in her ear. “But none of them harps or lyres. Do you play anything else?”

“I play a pretty sweet guitar,” said Lyra, her voice husky. She was lifting her tail. Oh no. Oh no. She was cheating. Cheating! She had to stop!

“We have one of those.” Blue note pushed down on Lyra’s dock, and whispered in her ear, “Band practice, seven o’clock. Maybe after, we’ll practice something else.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“Puzzles?” said Paneer. “Are you an important wizard, or a babysitter?”

Lyra sat on the floor of her workshop, legs folded under her body. Freshly showered and dressed in a fairly clean stable suit, she felt the serenity of the kind of wise old mage she very much wasn’t. An opened 1000 piece puzzle box lay between them. “Are you the student or the teacher?”

Paneer gave the box a half-hearted shove with her magic. “Are we gonna play with dolls next?”

“What happened to waxing my car and running races with me on your back?”

“Ugh, fine.” Paneer reached into the box with her mouth. Lyra pushed a telekinetic finger against her nose.

“No. With your magic.”

Paneer’s mouth fell open. “Every single piece?”

“Yes.”

“That’s bullshit! I’ll get a headache!”

Lyra nodded. ”You will, the first few dozen times. You need to build your strength.”

Paneer gritted her teeth. Her horn glowed green. Lyra’s cot rose slowly off the floor, wobbling slightly. “I’m plenty strong, see?”

“That’s push strength, not sustained strength. Also, that cot’s not that heavy.” Lyra pushed the cot back down to the ground with her magic.

“Ugh fine. I’ll do your stupid puzzle.” Paneer lifted a random piece out of the box and set it on the floor.

“It helps if you do the edge pieces first,” offered Lyra.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Not right now. I need to watch what you do.”

Paneer grumbled but went to work. Soon she was lost in concentration, painstakingly sorting through the box for pieces. Lyra watched her carefully. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Vindaloo, but she was worried about Paneer. Because while this puzzle-solving was a normal part of magical training, Paneer was right that it was usually a task from small foals in magic kindergarten. Even the least talented unicorns Paneer’s age would already be adept at basic telekinesis and their personal spell. Though she lacked nothing in terms of pluck and natural talent, her magical ability was atrophying from lack of use, and Lyra didn’t know if she’d caught it in time to arrest the decay.

Her wild teleport on the day they’d met would seem like a promising sign, but it was actually dire. No matter what she’d told Vindaloo, wild magic did not occur in a foal as old as Paneer unless there was something seriously wrong — psychologically or thamatologically.

Paneer gripped each piece with deliberate effort, lugging them through open-air like she was balancing a cup of water on a bowling ball.

“Don’t try so hard,” said Lyra. “You’ll exhaust yourself.”

“If I don’t try hard, nothing happens!”

“You’re tensing up. Bunching up your whole body won’t help get the magic out. You need to take deep, slow breaths, and focus your attention on the thing you’re trying to affect. Here, let me help.” Lyra lifted two dozen or so edge pieces out of the box. “Put these together. Take your time.”

Paneer blew out through her lips, then closed her eyes and started breathing slowly. Lyra waited, letting her calm herself. A minute or so later, she opened her eyes and started moving pieces, glancing at the box lid to get an idea of where they went.

“You’re tensing up again,” said Lyra. “Deep breaths.”

“Deep breaths is your answer to everything.”

“That’s because it’s a good way to calm down. It brings you back to your body.”

Paneer narrowed her eyes. “But you told me not to use my body!”

Lyra shook her head. “No, I told you not to tense your body. Magic isn’t just a thing that comes from your horn. It’s part of a unicorn’s whole being. And you can’t fully control it until you understand that on a deeply intuitive level.”

Paneer flicked her tail. “Sounds like a lot of mystical crap to me.”

Lyra smirked. “Yes. It is a lot of mystical crap. That’s why it’s called magic. But it’s very precise, difficult mystical crap, and you just folded that piece in half.”

Paneer slammed her face against the floor. “Ugh! I’m so stupid!”

“Not stupid. Just untrained. Luckily, I’m here to fix that.”

“You said magic comes from the body.” She stuck out her flipper leg “Well, my body is messed up, so my magic is, too.”

Lya tilted her head back. “Have you heard the legend of Fizzlepop Berrytwist?”

“No. More mystical crap?”

“No. History. From my time, actually. right before the war.”

Paneer tilted her head to one side. “History’s more Crispy’s thing.”

“Well, she had a broken horn, and she defeated all four alicorns in magical combat.”

“Wow!” Paneer’s eyes widened, and she leaned forward.”No way!”

“I was there. Ask Crispy, if you don’t believe me,” said Lyra. “So. If Fizzlepop could defeat four alicorns even though she had a broken horn, you can put together a puzzle even though you have a weird looking leg.”

“I think you mean an awesome looking leg,” said Paneer, levitating a puzzle piece and popping it into place.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Band practice had been an interesting experience. The lineup was Lyra on electric guitar, Blue Note on sax, Tub Thumper on drums, Trail Mix on trombone, and nopony on vocals because none of them could sing. They had no idea what that kind of band was supposed to play, so they spent two hours going through a pint jar of moonshine and clumsily reinventing pre-war ska.

The vocals things was also going to be a problem because none of them knew the words to anything.

Complexities.

After band practice, Lyra wound up in a maintenance corridor discovering what it was like to kiss someone with fangs.

“Why are you licking Blue Note’s teeth?” said Blue Note.

“They feel cool,” said Lyra.

“It feels strange. Stop it or Blue Note will bite you.”

Lyra smirked and ran her tongue over Blue Note’s left canine. “Is that a promise?”

Blue Note nipped Lyra’s tongue.

“Outh!” said Lyra, pulling back.

Blue Note’s head darted forward with bloatfly-catching speed and hooked Lyra’s stable suit zipper with a fang. She pulled it down, opening it up over Lyra’s chest and belly. “Blue Note has a responsibility to get you out of this ugly thing. Why do you wear this?”

“I just got used to wearing clothes.” Lyra climbed up onto a crate — there were a huge number of crates in the maintenance corridors for no reason at all; most of them didn’t even have anything in them — but kept her hind legs crossed and one hoof over the open zipper on her chest, holding it sort of semi-closed. “Rarity made it seem so cool. And then everypony got used to it. And then it got weird for somepony else to be able to see your body.”

“Weird?” said Blue Note, nuzzling Lyra’s belly fluff.

“Weird, and exciting.” Lyra stroked Blue Note’s head, ruffling her spiky mane. “When you show it to someone, it’s really special. Do you want to see?”

Blue Note pulled the zipper down until Lyra’s teats slid out. “Yes. Blue Note wants to see everything, please.”

Lyra let it slide down over her shoulders. “Well. Since you asked so nicely.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

BON-80n floated through Lyra’s door the next morning, bobbing cheerfully, chassis lights green.

“It’s customary to knock,” muttered Lyra, not looking up from the security camera circuit board she was working on. Surveillance of the inside of the stable was against the Minutemare’s principals — which Lyra found admirable — but the outside of the stable needed to be monitored, and those cameras weren’t working. She’d tracked the problem down to this circuit board, but her eyes kept watering, and she couldn’t see to solder. She must be allergic to something in here. Mutant fungus in one of the vents or something. That was it. She wasn’t crying.

“I came to see how you were doing, and I am glad I came because your biometrics indicate that you are in great distress.”

“I’m f-fine,” blubbered Lyra.

“Available data indicates that this is not so.” BON-80n floated over to Lyra. “Do I have permission to embrace you? Physical contact can be quite calming to animal life forms.”

“I g-guess,” said Lyra, pushing away her soldering iron and the circuit board. BON-80n’s four padded tentacles wrapped gently around Lyra’s torso. They felt surprisingly warm through the fabric of her stable suit. Lyra began to sob.

“Oh no,” said BON-80n, “You are weeping. This means you have failed to fulfill your programming. This is very bad.”

“I ch-cheated on him!” wailed Lyra.

“There there. There there. It is not so bad to cheat at a game. You must merely confess and return any of your winnings, no?”

Lyra laughed bitterly. “No, I cheated on my husband.”

“Oh!” the running lights on BON-80n’s chassis brightened. “I see. You have attempted to reproduce with Blue Note, then.”

Lyra bent over laughing. She laughed until she felt like she was going to throw up. “Oh! Bon Bon you know that’s not how it works.”

BON-80n lifted her tentacles and bobbed in midair in a sort of curtsy. “Yes. I made a joke, no? Did I do well?”

“Yeah,” she said, patting BON-80n on the side. “Anyway, we tried pretty hard. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to take, but we did our best.”

“This was expected, no? The stable ponies, they have a, how do you say it, been placing wagers as to when the two of you would mate.” BON-80n’s chassis lights dimmed. “I admit that I may have placed a bet myself. I hope you are not offended.”

Lyra scrubbed at her eyes with her pasterns, still giggling. “Yeah, we have been pretty obvious. Everypony probably heard us last night. Did you win anything?”

BON-80n bobbed and raised her tentacles in a curtsy. “Oui. Your biometrics indicated that you were ready.”

Lyra sighed and turned back to her circuit board. “Damn you, Bon Bon. You made me laugh, and now I don’t feel bad any more. Even though I should.”

“I do not understand. Why do you believe that you should feel bad? You have not violated your programming.”

Lyra scowled. “I did. I broke a promise.”

BON-80n hovered for a little while, silent except for the whirring of her internal fans. “I think I should say something important for you to hear, but which you will also find very painful.”

“Shoot,” said Lyra.

“You do not know if you will ever see your husband again. It may take you years to find him. Perhaps it will be less time. But I do no see you leaving the stable on your own to look for him.”

“Fuck you, I’ll leave right now.” Lyra started to slide out of her chair. Padded tentacles pressed her back into it.

“Nor do I recommend it. You will die if you go alone.”

Lyra scowled at her robot friend and crossed her forelegs over her chest. “It’d be the right thing to do.”

“I do not know right from wrong. Nor do I understand pony sexual relationships. I only know my programming, which is to protect the health of the organics around me. As your physician, I say that you may mate with Blue Note as often as you both wish. It will relieve some of the stress you are under, and strengthen your bond with your social group. You may not go looking for your family by yourself, though you are welcome to do so as part of a team.”

“Oh. Okay.” Lyra didn’t know how to respond to a robot giving her instructions, but it wasn’t terrible advice.

“I also wish you to know that if you do go on such a mission, I will accompany you.”

Lyra started crying again. But in a better way, this time. “You don’t have to.”

BON-80ns chassis light brightened to a warm glow. “I would have to be physically restrained.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Late that afternoon, Lyra headed back to the security station with the repaired circuit board. It seemed unusually cold in the stable, and as she headed down the maintenance corridor towards the security station and the exit that deepened to an arctic wind that cut through her stable suit and made her fur stand on end.

Her lower black twinged, and she picked up her pace a little.

When she got out into the front of the stable, she found the entrance open. Loose snow was drifting down into the foyer.

“What the hell!” she shouted up the shaft.

Blue Note leaned over the edge dressed in her Minutemare coat, dark goggles, a cloak, and a rifle in a shoulder mount. “Greetings to you as well, screamer!”

Lyra blushed. “Why is the stable open?”

“Vindaloo, Trail Mix, and some other ponies went to get more food. And that machine gun. Blue Note is waiting out here until they come back.”

“They’ll let you do that while you’re pregnant?”

“If Blue Note complains enough, they let her have a gun.”

Lyra nodded. “I guess that makes sense. Why is the door open?”

“So Blue Note can shout if she needs help!”

That made sense, too. “Okay. Um. Band practice tonight?”

“Something tonight, certainly,” said Blue Note, smiling smugly.

Lyra grinned. “Good. Okay. I’ll let you get back to work then.”

The back twinge must’ve been a false alarm. Or just overwork. As she got older prophetic body pain was less and less useful.

She went back to the security room. The door was open, and Crispy was in there, muttering at a battered old pocket computer with a cracked screen. She knocked on the doorframe. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Naw, just waiting for this old thing to boot up,” said Crispy. “It barely runs, anymore, but it’s all I’ve got to record on.”

“Record what?” She leaned over his shoulder. It was an off-white plastic rectangle the size and shape of a brick. “Hey, I used to have that model. The PipBuck is way better.” She’d left her old one with that Ministry of Morale goon on the Bad Day. She wondered if it was still there — she had a lot of photos on it she’d like to get back.

“The PipBuck can record audio?” said Crispy, looking incredulous.

“The PipBuck can do everything!” Lyra pointed up at the picture of Flim and Flam on the wall. “Those two idiots should have should have sold these as a consumer product, instead of building these death traps.” She gestured at the stable around her.

Crispy looked at the device on his pastern and raised his eyebrows. “Is it possible to copy stuff over?”

“Yep! I can copy your stuff to the maneframe and them upload it to your PipBuck. That way you’ll have a backup. Let me get the transfer started.”

By the time she was done sorting out he cameras, Crispy’s data was on the maneframe. She plugged in his PipBuck and started copying it over. “So how are you getting used to this thing? Did you use SATS in the battle? Is Littlepip giving you any trouble?”

“Little who?” said Crispy.

“She’s like the PipBuck mascot, I guess? Maybe she’s turned off on yours. I bet I could switch her on if you need a cartoon pony to tell you you’re in danger of radiation poisoning or that you’re not eating your vegetables.”

Crispy crossed his forelegs over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, how about you do me a solid and fucking don’t.”

Lyra laughed, but as she did, she checked his settings to find the option to turn Littlepip off. She couldn’t find it. No reference to Littlepip at all. Even the biometrics section was just a boring list of statistics with no pomonculous to illustrate them. That was… odd. Maybe she had a different model. “So this’ll be the only time I ask, I promise, but what are you working on?”

Crispy sighed. “I’ve been keeping a history.”

Lyra’s jaw fell open. “That’s amazing.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.” Crispy waved his hoof at her. “C’mon, gimme that back.”

Lyra clutched Crispy’s PipBuck to her chest. “It’s not done yet. And I wasn’t being sarcastic. Remember the part where I missed the last twenty years? I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Crispy’s posture relaxed a little, but his legs stayed crossed over his chest. “I wanted to be a writer when I was a colt. Things didn’t work out, obviously. But I’ve been making recordings and taking notes about things I’ve seen. Getting interviews, when I can. Maybe if things ever settle down…” He shrugged. “They ain’t gonna. But pretending I’m going to get a chance to write a book one day makes it easier to make it through when things are really bad.”

Lyra took a deep breath. “Can I look? I have a lot of questions.”

Crispy shook his head. “It’s not finished. Hell, it’s not even started. It’s just research.”

“Do you want me to hang around asking you questions every free moment I get?”

Crispy glared at her for a full five minutes. “You can listen to some, I guess. If you like it, tell me what you think. If you don’t like it, go fuck yourself. I’m gonna figure out the cameras.”

Lyra found a file named war_day_final_version_23.PAF and popped in her earblooms.

All right. Let’s try this again.

The day the spells fell, I was out helping my dad with the braeburns. We had the radio off and didn’t get the news — not until we saw the flash in the east. I remember the flash — I was looking away, but it was still so bright I couldn’t see for a moment.

I heard a roaring noise, and above it, my father telling me to run. I turned back to look at him, and... and he turned towards me. And Harmony help me, I almost passed out, because…

Okay, deep breaths. You can get through this, Crispy.

So he turned towards me, and half of his body is… just… burned away. And the whole world is just going up straight in the air. And he screams at me — I don’t even know how he’s talking, with half his face in such bad shape, but he screams at me to run.

My dad was real strict. If he said jump, you’d ask how high on the way up, or it was a whipping. So when he said ran, I ran.

My family had a bunker. Built it with our own mouths. It was meant to hold all of us — Dad, Mom, Jonagold, Autumn Glory, Sugar Bee, and Grandpa Honeycrisp. But dad and I were the only ones in that field that day. And I was the only one who made it in.

The last thing I saw before I closed the outer door was the whole braeburn orchard rising up behind me…

Lyra stopped the recording. She saw the flash of the megaspell, felt the hot wind of the onrushing balefire shockwave. She heard the sound of cracking tree trunks.

No.

That was gunfire.

“Vindaloo is back! Raise the elevator! Hurry!” Blue Note’s voice was barely audible over the sounds of violence. Her rifle spoke several times, then Lyra heard her scream, and her gun fell silent.

Lyra’s heart stopped. She blinked the light of the remembered megaspell out of her eyes and teleported across the foyer to the elevator controls.

Level Up
New Perk: Teaser Mare. You are becoming a coy seductress. You gain +1 Charisma and gain new dialog options.

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