Fallout Equestria: The Tartarus Contingency

Ch1: Smile, Smile, Smile

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Ever stop time?  It's easy.  I've done it, quite a lot.

The trick behind it is simple. The timing, your placement... Not so much. Keeping the device maintained? That's even more difficult. I only realized how do it when I found my first camera.

The moment they hear it like that, everypony else simply rolls their eyes. I can't help but laugh; if they only took a look at some of the things I've caught, even as a kid, they would understand. The smiles, in particular.

Do they even respect how hard hard it is to find an honest one?  No strings attached?

I caught my first real one, as morbid as it was, on the outskirts of my hometown. Resilience was a strange place to me, like any place would be to a colt.  It was all a lot of metal and burnt crystal, and of course since I was so new to the world, I didn't understand why.  I was never aware of what was past the walls until I was little more than twelve, a year after “story time” between my brother and I began as a past time.  It was a gentler way of him explaining the reality of things to me.

The city itself was a thick crescent.  The convex face pointed south- that wall was made of the junk that had been saved after the Last Day.  It was made for bullets, for bombs, for other ponies that would come after us for what they thought we had. It was for that reason it was over the bulwark most of the Tower Ponies, our many snipers, scanned. The height of the junk towers gave just enough to see the landscape past the Resilience walls, it's jagged outcroppings hacking at a smooth and ever gray sky while quiet shadows rustled inside and occasionally let out the sound of a gunshot.  

The northern wall, though.  That was the real reminder of what we were.  Why the crystals thirsted to stay and suffer, gluing ourselves together for better or worse.  It was where my brother, Sureshot, gathered the kindling for his cautionary legends during story time.

The wall was comprised of the remainder of what the shockwave from the balefire pushed around.  There was a great shield projected from a tall tower, or so my brother told me.  Crystal ponies fueled it through an artifact our princess maintained before she died, through a link we once shared through the small spark of magic in our hearts.  The shield took the brunt of the heat and impact, but with balefire, that wasn't nearly enough.

The shield fell, and the tower scattered beneath that sour and powerful wind to wall us off from the corruption that drifted through the streets in a tall jumble of blackly surfaced crystal chunks.  The building's corpse had become a fortress against the bitter gusts, and the only thing that kept the land in a state to found Resilience.

Beyond it, though, the others had to fend for themselves in the suddenness of their expulsion into the cold world.  Even in the softened childhood tales, those old ponies did not fare well.  The tainted water, snow that had melted under that instant and fake sun, froze in minutes after flooding the darkening streets.  That first generation of Resilience ponies tried to help the rest, when our binding to our pathetic sliver of scorched Equestria was secured.

The surviving crystals found their corrupted fellows changing before their eyes, the only grace for the “live ones” being that they were cut off from the then smothering emotional connection.  The unfortunate ones flesh transformed to blood fogged crystal, their organs and skeletons too thick to follow the trend.

Throbbing bulbs caged within visible bones, the shambling and gossamer terrors came to be known as Wailers.  Our very own ghouls, weeping in a constant and unexpected mourning of what they witnessed and lost.  Countless, and most of them alive from the moment the balefire hit, they recounted every flaming and then flash-frozen detail of their journey to madness.  

Any pony with enough of the old biological connection could see that too, my brother warned me.  All a crystal pony had to do was look into their eyes.  The connection would revert, and the idiot would get to experience every instant of the time those creatures had been alive in their own quickly lost minds.  Their union of soul left them all wallowing in cyclical, revisited memory, together...  And looking for the living and “Resilient” of the crystal ponies to join that union, on the instinctual urge to keep the link maintained and their society alive.  Unity is of lethal importance to any crystal.

It was why the tower ponies and their spotters were never allowed to turn around and look north into the blasted graveyard.  With all of them there, their crystal scilera a bloody red and always crying from inside their skulls, that huge portion of city had been deemed Sorrow.  When I heard weeping on the wind at night, I knew from the stories not to try and look from where it came.

Then, I found that toy of mine, resting upon a pile of junk and preparing to become scrap.  A codec 9000 camera.  I wondered, at first, if it had taken pictures of the last day we'd ever been really free and alive.

I decided to ask my brother Sureshot about things I could do with it. Stoic and plain as always, all he suggested was that I just go out and start pushing buttons.  That single encouragement got me wandering, trying to see what I could see- risk doesn't fathom for a colt, after all, until they edge out of the wounds acquired during a mistake.  So of course I did the worst possible thing, and thought like a colt.  I got my first disciplinary beatings from it.

Hiding within one of the taller, condemned towers one day, I pushed buttons.  The pictures were awkward and strange.  My camera had problems focusing on their transparent flesh.  I only picked up the wandering and far off skeletons, veins and hearts and lungs still squirming inside, distending the walking corpses limits in a display that had left my kin sickened.

After Sureshot found out (and I healed from his reply), I wasn't allowed near the towers for a long time.  So, I took a lot of pictures at ground level to figure my device out.  None of them were spectacular, or even distinguishable from one another. There was a lot of building going on, all the time; it was usually a lot of repairs on the towers legs, so I got some confused faces holding hammers or arc welders.

There were plenty of those towers within the jagged junk walls, flimsy looking and in varying states of worth, against (or even atop) the magenta crystal abodes. My brother usually occupied one with his rifle and whatever spotter he’d been assigned. So, I made it a game to find him each day, and take a picture. Many of my early photo's were of my brother sneering at me from behind his fluff-lined hood, his rifle and body silhouetted against the sickly gray sky.

After a few months, (with a long hiatus between the trader caravans- papers to bleach for “film” were few and far between) I was already bored. I asked my brother if I could explore outside.  He mulled on it for a while, and decided it was probably a good idea- if for nothing else, than to get used to the cold that existed outside the city.  He said it would be healthy for my spirit to see the outside, and not nearly as dangerous as looking north.  Interactive story time! I'd exclaimed.

Yet, there was even less to find beyond the walls. Lots of pristine, beautiful, arcing white dunes.  Bits of snow lofting lazily through the air, with gusts occasionally sending them into chaotic spins and tossing up waves of thin frost. Through the poorly fitting goggles and two-sizes too large coat, I was disappointed, but believed my curiosity would pay off somehow, no matter how annoying I'd have to be.

The trips became regular, outside one of the groaning and smaller side gates, with my brother smoking whatever cigarettes he had by that entrance to keep an eye on me with a smaller variant of his rifle. I steadily grew into my coat, and eventually, the goggles kept the cold air out because they actually fit on my face.

My first little adventure began when I stumbled across something peculiar. It was a big metal ring, attached to a bolt. When I looked back, my brother not much more than a speck against the huge metal doors, I decided to play with it. I found that it turned in one direction atop the dome to which it was connected. After nipping and yanking, using what little strength I had back then, something popped.

It hissed open with all the venom of a wounded breath. Hot air, something I was not at all expecting, formed a billowing pillar of steam from inside.  It hit me in the face in such a way I started to sweat in my baggy coat almost immediately.

Even after rubbing off my cold goggles from the condensation, it was dark.  A ladder went downwards, and disappeared into the blackness.  Little lights showed that there was a floor, however far down it was to me.

The sound of lilting metal and beeping, not to mention the heat and familiar odor of rust, overwhelmed me in interest. I looked to the dot that was my brother, and feeling satisfied he wouldn't be able to stop me from finally finding something fun, went down the ladder with my camera ready.

It was uncomfortable. Not just for the darkness, but the humidity and smoldering air making it hard to breath. Several pretty, symmetrically aligned dots glowed on the wall to my right, and there was a strange hum that was punctuated by clicks. It sounded like it was coming from some kind of metal box, and a needle was tap-tap-tapping away on a table.

I ventured out of the column of bitterly white light the hole above me was giving, and wandered haphazardly toward the dots. I stepped on a lot of things. Papers, mostly. I hit something that rolled and spun, clinking like glass and making me pause. But then I reached my destination, and bumped my nose several inches away from the wall.

I waited there a moment. I blinked a few times, trying to let my eyes adjust. I found it was like a table, and I had been just tall enough to bounce my muzzle off it's front. I put my forehooves up atop it, and peered all about at what was before me.

Most of the dots were lit. Some of them were blinking red. When I squinted, really hard, I saw there were words below each one, but remained obscured for they blended in with the dark. Many strange little yellow papers were all about the flat spots before it, covering glossy buttons and scrawled in scratchy scrabble.

There was a pair of something to my right. Twice the size of a bottlecap, and very, very round, one of the discs was tilted atop the other. When I nosed it, the skin all over my body burnt for the moment I was in contact with it. I snorted and sneezed, then let myself down from atop the metal table in annoyance.

The world seemed clearer then, though my eyes felt strained in the dark, so I looked around more. I saw a shape on the wall. Well, colors really, in the form of a shape. They had gotten quite bright once the snow-blindness left. To my interest and amazement it was something I was quite used to seeing, though only in my own collections. It was a picture.

A bright pink mare was smiling. Her poofy, awkward mane was cut with gray, her shimmering blue eyes crinkled with age. On her haunches, she had a hoof to her chin, as if pondering. Above her, in an oddly shaped white bubble, there was a bizarre arsenal. A green, shiny looking circle on the end of a stick.  A puppy.  A heart.  Above her, the words “Think HAPPY Thoughts!” was printed in a soothing and bubbly font.

At the bottom of the picture, though, it was torn. Gouged out in brute force by something sharp, the metal wall behind the fresher graffiti had a faint sheen. “OR ELSE!”

Not knowing then what it meant, I sat back and tried to contemplate it.  Being so young, I decided a few seconds was long enough, and went back to the dot-wall. I looked under it that time, and found (to my delight) even more pictures. Pinned atop a piece of board by a clip, I pulled some of them out.

They were very old, very frail, and very grainy.  They were of ponies I'd never seen or heard of before, and they had poor clothing for the snow they were in. What I could see on the gaps in their clothes, which were mostly on their neck and back legs, were black stripes. Many had saddles like my brother did, and had smaller rifles that my brother carried around outside the towers. The pictures had been blemished though, with ink circling the guns and had arrows pointing down to letter and number combinations that didn't form words.

I didn't have long to look at them.  I heard yelling from outside.  I recognized my brother's voice, and a flowery, yet strong female response.

I ran to the light pillar, and yelled skyward. “I'm down here!” There was crunching snow, and two heads blocked the light from above. One was hooded with fuzz, the other wearing a wide brimmed hat. My brothers voice started swearing uncontrollably. The mare's shadow put a hoof to him, stilling him, and simply asked: “What are you doing down there?”

“Huh? Oh! I found all this neat stuff!” I shuffled over to the picture-board, and nipped it between my teeth. It wobbled in my mouth as I tried to talk. “Fee? Mickchuh's!”

Sureshot sighed at me and shook his head. “Get your flank up here, NOW!”

I placed the picture board neatly down, and tried to think of an excuse. He was scary sometimes, when he was mad. Getting inspired to save my flank, I said “Wait!” and scurried back into the dark.

“What the hell did I just say?  Didn't you hear me?” I nipped at one of the strange coins, wincing a little at first. It felt tingly and warm simply to touch it again, but I was more worried about his reaction had I been unable to prove my excursion worthwhile. I ran back to show him. “Fee? Fif fing if weird!”

Both of them silenced. Then, the hatted shadow let out a laugh. “Little guy would make a good scavenger.”

Sureshot grumbled. “Only if his luck holds out. Never does.” He gestured with his head for me to come back up. “Alright, bring that up with you.”

“Fere's anofher down here! Fudd I get it?”

She positively cackled, and had to walk herself down to speak. “Really? With fortune like that, I'd take him with me any time.”

Sureshot disappeared from view, and I heard more swearing. Needless to say, I got the other coin, and clamored up the ladder toward his curses and my perceived punishment. I had been preparing myself for the colder air outside, when I scrambled up into the snow. To my surprise, it started to melt around my hooves, and steam curled off of me. I wasn't cold. In fact, I was comfortable.

The mare was unfamiliar, and from her clothing, was as well prepared for the snow and bitter cold as the striped ponies in the pictures. She had exceptionally large saddlebags atop her white coat, and her hat had a goggled hood that came down to frame her green muzzle. When my brother took one of the coins from me, only a few seconds passed before hot air started to lick the air around him. He offered it to her, and she gladly took it without any hesitation. It vanished into a pocket, and she shook off like a wet dog.

She laid down next to me. Looking me straight on, I felt nervous under her sudden, persistent gaze. Then, she brandished the warmest smirk I'd ever seen from a stranger. I wish I could have snapped it then, but my mouth and mind were occupied. “I know I was laughing, but... You shouldn't have done that. He was really worried.”

I looked toward him, not allowing myself to talk. Unable to concoct any reasonable reply, I simply adjusted how my lips sat around the coin. “Lets go back to town, okay?”

I nodded, and began to follow my brother. She took up a position beside me, while Sureshot lead us onward. I thought it completely bizarre that we were smoking, and couldn't take my eyes off it for the short distance we had to go in order to return to Resilience. “Do you know what you found?” she asked me.

“Mickchuh's.” I said, still tongue-stupid.

She laughed a little. “No, not those. That thing you've got there.” I was relegated to shaking my head, after crossing my eyes to try and look at the coin. “Well, this guy is right. You are really lucky.” She said. “That's a very important talisman you have.”

“Talifman?”

“Yes. You aren't used to things like that, are you? It's magic.” As we reached the doors, Sureshot tapped the side of his hoodfuzz with a hoof, and jerked it away from himself in a wave toward one of the towers. The doors screeched open, the red lights and howls of the klaxons spinning, leaving just enough to fit a body through. “They're very special to people that have to be in the snow. If you like playing outside, it will be very good for you to have it. Understand?”

I nodded, not knowing fully the implications of what she was saying.  Magic, my brother had always told me, is what got us in the position Resilience found itself within in the first place.

Once she left for the center of town, we took a trip back to our home.  It was a long, quiet night with expected discipline; when it never came, I finally broke into questioning.  He just sighed, and started story time while he worked.

He sat at what I called his hobby table, with instruments I still haven't seen outside of that room. He measured bullets, weighed black powder down to the grain on rinkydink scales, and then put it all into a brass casing that more often than not had burns at the end the bullet was going in. He held his breath whenever he toyed with the powder, trying not to scatter it.

He explained that in our outdoor ventures, I had only seen a fraction of what the white dust encompassed. It extended for many, many miles, and the only way to survive was with those coins. Warming talisman's.

“There are places that were made during the big war.” he said. “They were a lot of those rooms, in fact. All of them in the dirt, some of them connected by halls, and if you don't know where they are you need those talisman's to go anywhere over long distances. We have a lot of the talisman's in the city, and we need them to stay as warm as we are now.” He pointed toward the ceiling, his back still to me. Within a crack there was a gold-colored gem inside, which lit our magenta walls and dingy cots with dull yellow. Behind it, there was the glint of something metallic- it was the edge of a coin, the same size of what I'd found. “Those were made during the same big war.  They were from ponies that were all the same, black and white...”

Interrupting his tale, though, there was a knock. Confused, my brother opened the door, and there stood somepony familiar. It was the mare we'd met. One of her saddlebags flat and rolled up, the other much looser and holding something with corners. I waved at her from my cot. She waved back to me first, then looked to Sureshot. “You're a hard pony to find, you know that?” she said to him. “Tiny place like this in all this shiny stuff. With the way ponies look at you and the money you earn-”

“That, is for the staples. Rifle, bullets, food, and water.  The reputation can go hang.”

“Saving humbly for the future?” she asked, looking beyond his brown coat and toward me. He looked back at me.

“You could say that, but up here we all do.” he replied, before stepping into her line of sight. “What are you here for, exactly?”

“To check on your lucky scavenger. You didn't hurt him for what he pulled, did you?”

Sureshot sighed. “No, I wouldn't. Not with what he found. But I was just in the middle of explaining things to him.”

“Do tell.”

Sureshot grunted, lowering his head. “Look, I appreciate what you did. What you've been doing. But don't think that means we owe you anything- the trades have been fair, you don't deserve more than what you've gotten in caps already.”

“I'm not here for that. I already have plenty. I'm here for him.”

I leaned back into my cot, in order to watch their lips move. Curious as ever back then, I was even worse once I realized they were talking about me. “What about him?” Sureshot asked.

“Well, I learned a lot of stuff asking around about you. Not many other ponies get out anymore, huh?”

“No. No they don't. Not with the... Storms.”

“Ever think you'd be doing a solid for the city if somepony taught another pony that it’s not so bad?”

“I do enough already. And don't go thinking you'll give him ideas. If anything, he's going to stay put and learn proper- not get prospecting dreams.”

“Proper is so slow. And you need all the help you can get. That's coming from a pony that's real, real tight with your city suppliers. Ever think I could weasel in a discount for you, if you do me a little favor?”

He sat back on his haunches, and threw his head back in annoyance. “Why are you so interested?”

“I learned more than where you lived when I was asking about you. He's the only one so young that's willingly gone out there, isn't he?”

“... Yes.”

She clicked her teeth in tsks. “Your city needs more scouts, more travellers if it's going to live. Your hydroponics are threadbare and really dependent on the talismans.  And while I like how many caps you spill over the pipes and seeds, I don't think it'd be good for business to see you all starve.” She waited. My brother didn't budge. He never budged. “He's got the urge the city needs. I can at least show him how to indulge it.”

Sureshot looked back at me, his short, fuzzy chocolate mane tilting from an outside gust that numbed the room. His blue eyes thinned. He went over to his cot, scooping his pale blue coat from it, and started to nestle himself into his thick clothing. “My shift is starting anyway.” he said. I knew he was lying.  He always did an extra shift when he lied.

He went to his big rifle. It was black, old, and well maintained despite the surface scratches that covered the dark coating. There were two mouthgrips. One was on the side, a soft looking padded holder with a delicate tongue trigger he was always fiddling with. The other mouthgrip, if it could be called such, was nothing more than a curved metal bar with an orb on it. If it was pulled backward and up, the chamber was exposed. A fat, long scope was atop it, and the entire thing was attached to a set of straps that could sling onto the saddle he wore. The barrel itself was two full grown ponies long, and ended in a wedge that had holes.

She entered with a start, her eyes lingering upon it. She was oogling it. Since I had been so desensitized to it, it made her reaction all the more obvious; I regarded her with concern. That rifle was Sureshot's favorite and most expensive possession, and he used it every day. If she had ideas about it-

She swallowed hard, and took to purposely ignoring it.  Not knowing exactly what was so special about it then besides that my brother adored it, I did what I always did.  I helped him with some of the sling straps so it sat taut over his coat.

He whispered to me. “If she does anything bad, anything at all, you start screaming okay? Kick her between the lips and the back legs like I taught you, and run outside to get help.” I simply nodded, and shut the door behind him.

When I turned and saw her laying on her belly, looking at me... Like that, I was taller than her when I was standing. She seemed a lot less scary. I returned to my cot, in front of her, and it sagged so I was at eye level with her.

“My name is Book Worm.” she said from the depths of her hood.

“I'm Snapshot.” The quiet enshrouded the room again, and her mind chewed in order to digest her words into something she wanted to say.

“Can you think of why I'm called that?” She asked. I shook my head. She smirked, just like the first friendly time I'd seen her do it. The look made me hug my camera. “Well, here...”

She nosed back at her saddlebag, lifting the flap. She mouthed out a stack of papers, old and dry, and plopped them on the ground in front of my cot. She called them magazines.

She used a queer glow I rarely saw, levitation, to move the pages. That simple trick alone was enough to mystify and enrapture me. But, even more seductively, each of those thin and fluttering books were filled with pictures.  Ancient things, from shiny glass buildings, to floating orbs with sharp arms that she called robots, to big boxes with mouthgrips she called magic weapons. My fascination in the pictures themselves obliterated any mistrust, and did so stupidly quick.

The pictures of other ponies I liked most. She had a lot of them, in a verdant and bright place she called a park. The very idea of one was a completely stellar notion, as if plucked from stories even the tower veterans hadn't heard. The pictures couldn't be fake, I'd thought. If they were, they were very, very well drawn.

That's how she hooked me.  It's how I got started. They were all smiling in the photographs, and that was the first real twinge of realization on what kind of moments I craved to capture.

She spent a week, coming and going and occasionally imparting herself on the house for sleep while my brother was “on shift.” Sureshot actually started to like her; she kept sharing her food, and even brought him a box of bullet cases to bribe him. I only appreciated her more, as she also brought back parchment rolls that fit into my camera and allowed me to take more photo's.

When she left the first time, it was with the promise that she would come back with more magazines. It took a month or so. I was on coals the entire time, wondering what exactly she would bring back, and what I would see. I consumed every inch of those she'd already given to me in the interim, gleefully memorizing them down to the wrinkles and accidental folds.

She didn't disappoint. Twice as many, at least three dozen, and every one different though many had the same names. She even gave my brother one, to which he blushed. He tore pages out of it, gave them to the other tower soldiers, and kept a long, unfolding three-page picture for himself. The others were all for me, and I had them in an open but cautious jumble along the floor for many hours, having to leave paths for my brother to walk through when he was done with a shift and ready for sleep.

The last few days of her life, Book Worm was taking me to and from that bunker I found. My brother was always at the gates, with his smaller rifle, smoking as usual. Bookworm showed me things down inside it that I had never known were precious- batteries, what a pre-war first aid kit looked like. The place had been picked apart since I'd found it, but the old pictures of what were called zebra remained.

With the picture board, though, there was something else nopony else had cared to notice.  Not even me, the first time I’d been around.  It was a small map.

It showed a number of other bunkers from far above. Many of them close to Resilience, buried in the snow and ice, and circled in those rough black lines. She brought it up to Sureshot, and after a quick perusal, he begrudgingly allowed the two of us on an excursion to find one.

The only reason why was because it was still within earshot of the first one, not more than three hundred feet away. It had apparently never been noticed by the towers, because it was further out, and from Book Worm’s excuse “probably hidden under white shit.”  We would find it! I'd exclaimed.

It took us a few hours.  A little digging. We had to take a warming talisman, trading it between each other every once in a while, and she would make fun of me when I started to smoke.  I returned the favor.

Unlike what we had expected, we instead found it within a smoothed, glittering crater. It had been painted white, and had been hard to notice even though we knew just about where it was. The hatch was half-open. From inside there was little noise, besides the clang and thump of ancient metal.

We didn't even get inside before I got so content that it was a victory.  Dancing around her on my stubby legs, I held up my camera, and laughed. She rolled her eyes, as ponies are apt to do against my lens, and took position by our newfound play area.  I made her take the talisman, so I could get a silly picture of her steaming.

I brought the camera up, and aimed. Wiggling a little as I looked through my goggles, I tongued at the mouthgrip. The flash went off as it always did, but the sound that came from her direction suffocated my camera's click with a violent and terrible crack.

She collapsed, and the snow quickly started to turn red. For a moment, I honestly thought my camera had somehow murdered her, and began to panic. She wheezed, vile crimson bubbling up from her nostrils and frothing at coughing lips, pouring in rivulets to pool below.

When the hatch creaked open, and the white coated mare slipped out, I turned. When she saw me, she met my terrified look with a confused expression of her own. I pivoted completely as another mare's head slithered from the hatch, and I started to run.

From behind me, I heard angry yelling. “Get the lil' bastard! He's gonna tip the spotters off to where we are!”

More and more gunshots sounded off. The air tore around me, and I could see the supple impact exploding from the white dunes. Snarls and thumping hooves followed behind me, barely loud enough to eclipse the beat of my own heart. “Sureshot!” I screamed out. I just kept calling his name, and the blood running through my ears made me believe I wasn't even saying anything at all.

With another crack, my back right leg kicked out from beneath me. I tumbled, and the hard top of my camera hammered my jaw. My leg started to hurt as if crisped, hotter than any burn barrel I'd let myself near in the city. When I moved it, it only made me squeal.

I saw the tatters of my coat cradling the wound. Ragged threads of muscle, the meat boiling over with blood. It only made me shriek louder.

I heard trotting from behind me. I tried to get up, pushing up on my front hooves. The pain was paralytic, and made me shake.

“Sureshot!” I kept screaming. My mouth was bleeding, and when I yelled, I spit red. “Sureshot!”

A hoof came down on my muzzle. It pushed me into the snow, and the weight compressed my flesh against my bones. I started to see stars almost immediately, and could barely breath. I could feel the cold of the shadow the body was casting over me.

There was a loud, sharp whistle from the distance to my left. I felt the body above me through the stomped hoof; it twitched, and looked toward the sound. There was another gunshot, different that time, and much sharper.

The pressure on my head lurched away, the pistol fell next to my head, and I opened my eyes toward what had been slung from me and into the snow. Missing half of it's face and one of it's eyes, another pony stared back at me through the fuzz of her coat. She had a skinless and gory grin, her bloody skull covered in flecks of flesh that reminded me of dark rust on bone. I could see the snow behind her, through the shattered goggles and empty socket.

I screamed again, so loud my balance began to twirl, trying to push away from her. The sensation in my leg gnawed at my temples. I was shivering as I felt a nauseating chill, far worse than something normal in the snow, rush between my ears and the weeping hole in my body. I heard Sureshot's voice after he galloped through the snow. He held my head up from behind my hood, and my dizzying eyes blinked.

Something pressed to my lips. His then tinny voice urged me to drink, and I wasn't strong or willful enough to argue. It was a terrible flavor, one I would grow jaded to and eventually forget the cruel necessity of. My body desperately wanted to reject the potion's twist. I spat up some and gagged, but he lifted my head and tilted the bottle back to enforce it's consumption. When I tasted air again, it was with a gasp that cooled the ache in my lungs.

He pushed me back to the snow, he said six words. “Get back to the city gates.” He looked up, away from me, and began to carefully follow the hoofprints that lead toward the bunker. The pain in my leg had started to fade, and I could feel it moving again. I didn't care; I was too shocked to try and fathom why.

I rolled onto my belly to stand again. When I did, I saw the mare. Her face intensified the urge to vomit- I merely wretched, and the sensations remained. The smell, exhumed from her paling body heat as the scent passed my nose, unwillingly intoxicated me with a visceral taste that drowned out whatever Sureshot had made me drink. By the time I looked back from the brutally hypnotic scene, he had vanished between hills of snow.

I heard his rifle crack again, and a frightened female yelp. I have no idea what tempted me to follow, being already familiar with the noises. I was hot, the sweat was freezing below the coat, and my eyes misted in my goggles. Most importantly, I didn't hurt any longer, and the heat in my head had drowned the fear.

Resting near her ear, I saw the pistol. Though gray and grazed with dirt and scratches, I knew how to use it- my brother hadn't been so stupid to neglect teaching a colt what not to do with his “work tools” when he wasn't around. It was heavy when I took up the mouthgrip, still wet with saliva and coppery blood, and scurried down the hoofprint path with it.

When I got close to the bunker again, I scooted back when I heard my brother's voice. I hid, as best I could in the open expanse, by laying my small body down and trying to peer over the edge of a rock frosted in white. I had to crawl a little, my lower jaw tightened in order to hold up the pistol where I was looking, before the scene crested.

Next to Book Worm, there remained the still twitching leftovers of another mare.  A gaping hole, the size of my hoof, was in her chest. She was crawling, pathetically so, and had left a path of several inches behind her which was shining red. Her mouth was moving as if trying to slowly speak, but there was only the noise of wet suction. My brother was circling the bunker hatch, the lid still open, sneering as he looked down toward it.

He paced a time. Another mare's voice came from within, some kind of insult to goad him. He stopped, looked at the still-living but useless mare, and then back at the hatch. Calmly, he let his gun sling to the bridling and walked to her, then took something from her body.

It looked like an apple. Gray and grungy, he pulled it off of a belt, which the mare had been wearing over her coat. Holding it by the stem with his teeth, he walked back to the hatch. He reared his head back, and with a sharp nod, the stem broke free. The apple dropped inside.

There was a clanking noise. Then, I heard dampened screams. They went completely silent as Sureshot slammed the hatch shut, and put his weight atop it with both hooves. He turned his head away, as if shying from a hot stove.

There was a loud, vibrating boom that made me cringe even at the distance I was at. The hatch flew open, kicking him several feet in the air. A huge, rolling pillar of bright yellow flame blasted from it, devolving into a black cloud that was consumed by the wind. Sureshot rolled to sit upright from the imprint in the snow that had cushioned him, his eyes still on the bunker hole, and spat away the stem which he realized he'd still been holding.

He returned to his gun, which had come undone and fallen near Book Worm's head. Instead of picking it up, like I thought he should have, he put his hooves to different parts of her neck. Every drop of anger I had in that moment drained down my gullet, and into my stinging lungs.  He shook his head.

Then, without any further interruption, he rearmed and walked over to the other mare. He stood on her flank, aiming the gun straight down at her head, and dispersed the contents of her skull into the ground in a single gore-slinging snap of his weapon. By the time the smoking brass from his gun had landed, I had shrunk, curling up into a sniffling, shocked little colt with a gun in my mouth.

About then was the time he heard me gurgling back the snot thawing in my nostrils.

His rifle turned to face me, then immediately went back down. His jaw dropped, the rifle with it, and we stared at one another. He broke the silence first. “What the buck are you doing with that? What the buck did I just tell you?!”

I couldn't say anything. My mouth was full with the weight of the pistol. I just stood straight up, trying to give him a snorting, defiant glare. The gun wobbled, and my conviction against his admonishment failed me when I looked back at Book Worm. I dropped the weapon, flopping back onto my haunches, and started to cry. I couldn't see after only a few seconds, and I just sat there, shaking each time I sobbed.

Before long, I felt his shadow over me. I looked up at him, his eyes hidden behind those frosted goggles. His brow was angled, his rifle slung, and he was frowning at me. He sat next to me, looking back over the corpses strewn out in front of us, and scooped me up into a hug that buried my face into his chest so I couldn't see the carnage.

Saying nothing, after a while he nipped at the pistol, and put it into his saddlebag. He had to drag me to my hooves, and push my gaze away from Book Worm's corpse. When he spoke again, after leaving the bodies well behind, his voice barely broke the creeping wind. “We'll get someone to take care of her, okay?”

I knew what he was saying. Our parents had been “taken care of” the same way. It meant what it always did in Resilience; stripping them naked, taking everything useful for the living, and sending them to the crematorium. Crystal ponies do not bury the dead; the ground for them was always far too hard.  The thought only intensified the pain in my leaking eyes.

As we returned to Resilience, the adrenaline wore off and my leg began to hurt. It made me slow down, but Sureshot remained near me the entire time, eyes swapping from me to the path ahead in constant caution.  I paused when I saw what was left of the mare that had chased me down.

I ran away from him, much to his vulgarity spewing and almost violent dismay, and didn’t dare allow myself to limp. I had forgotten my camera back where he had saved my life. I could not let the pain neglect it’s retrieval; there would not be another pony bringing another camera, let alone parchment, for a very long time.

Scared of the body, imagining it would jump up and seek some kind of revenge with it's exposed teeth, I kept my eyes upon it. I retook my toy, dragging it slowly from the red snow by the grip. I hadn't brought the parchment against the serrations of the printing slot, so the picture I had taken remained jutting from the front. I didn't even look at it during the blurry return to the gates, my brother shielding me from the staring ponies as he took me through the streets.

He tried to nurture me with words when we returned home. I barely heard anything he said.  All I could recall, obsessively clutching at my camera mouthgrip while I cried, was the sound I had mistaken for it's click. I was afraid of taking pictures then. I didn't want it to make the noise again.

When I undressed from my goggles and coat, my brother watched me. Creeped by his stare, still in awe at what had happened and furious because of it, I yelled at him. “What? What the buck is it, huh?!”

He pointed at my flank. When I looked back, my eyes went wide. Separating the white speckles on my rump from the rest of my brown hide, there was the image of my camera. It was a black, crushing joke at my expense, punctuating the helpless rage of what had happened that had quickly spiraled back under his unwanted attention.

I was supposed to be happy about earning a cutie mark. Wasn't I?

I turned and bucked at the wall. My wounded leg was weak, but I kicked with every speck of strength. I was trying to split my hooves, jostle my own bones from whatever bound them to the meat. My brother stopped me, holding me tightly as I writhed and shook, until I melted to the floor in further sobs.

Just like outside, he waited for me. That time, though, I could see his face. He was just as distraught as I was, but looked at me with a true concern I had not seen lace his eyes since... Well, ever. “Stay here, kiddo.” he said. “I'll take care of things, just like I said. Don't think about it, don't bury it. Just let it all out, okay?”

I hobbled back to my cot, and shuffled myself inside. My camera tumbled, and bumped me. “HEY!” he yelled. “It's important. Don't keep it in. I mean it.”

I was breathing hard from my outburst. My teeth were locked together, and grinding so hard I could hear them. Before he left, he said something that didn't just stick. He followed through with all the things he would warn me about.

“Her and I talked a lot.” he said. “She kept saying you should get out there. Actually see what it was like, you know? I don't really think she understood what that meant.” He sighed.

“She was the only nice pony I met.”

“I know, kid. Keep that in mind, but don't let it get to you.” he shook his head. “Look, this pistol?” He took it from his saddlebag. It was still rather bloody, and pimpled with dingy condensation. He chewed at the grip, removing the magazine, and wedged the slide on the end of the table. He pushed it down, ejecting the chambered bullet, before he rested it on his hobby table. “It's yours now.”

Mortified, I peered from behind the big flash bulb on the camera. “What? What makes you think I'd want it?”

“Want? Of course not. Need?” He looked back at it. He started to search for the escaped round, and found it rolling beneath the table. His voice lost a little enunciation, until he put it back near where he had placed the magazine. “Well, I didn't want to have you grow up so quick. I had to teach you at some point.” He took a deep breath. He was waiting for my reply.

“But, I don't wanna have to shoot-”

Quizzically, he raised his brow. “You were awfully ready to use it outside.”

“I...” I withered under his stern stare. “That was different.”

“No, it really wasn't. If you were willing to chase us down like you did, you have the spirit for actually having to pull a trigger. But you have to trust me that you do, okay? Otherwise, you'll end up like her.”

I tried hard to search for excuses. After what happened, I knew he was right. That didn't make it any more a comfort, though. “Hey,” Sureshot said. “I'll be back in a while... Think happy thoughts while I'm gone.  Big brother’s going to teach you, and do it proper.”

With that, he gave a tepid trot to the door. He waited there, and upon hearing nothing from me, left. After the door closed, I turned back to my camera. I tilted it by one of it's corners with a hoof, against the crinkle of paper. Still attached, on crumpled and red-stained parchment, was the first true smile I had ever caught.

Book Worm's expression, frozen in a single frame, was happy. A long-petaled, broken flower of crimson was blooming from her neck, plumes of red glittering upon the dreary gray sky. The muzzle flash of a pistol, the one on the table, lit up every detail of her killer's goggled face from the half-opened hatch. Book worm hadn't even realized she had been shot in that instant. That smile, clueless and final, was what persisted to me well past her death.  To this day, I haven't thrown the picture away, even with all the reasons I should have.

That image, though I refused show it for several days, made me accept where my cutie mark had come from. It wasn't just because I was good at taking pictures. It was because it made me understand what capacity a camera could allow me to reach, in all the simplicity of what it does.

You see, the camera didn't prevent, nor ignore what happened in front of the lens. That's how I was able to put to words, at least in my mind, just how important it was to be real when you face one with a smile.  Not because it was merely some bizarre holdover tradition from before the war everypony talked about, but because the thing simply didn't care.

The moment a pony neglects being sincere with themselves in front of one, it would preserve that and only that, and it could be the last thing they'd leave behind.

That is why I laugh now, every time ponies roll their eyes at me when I say I stop time. Especially when they don't know the things that camera has seen, or just how quickly things can turn so vividly ugly in front of it. If they only knew how bucking hard it was to get a good, honest smile...

That night, I tore the picture off carefully. I sat on Sureshot's chair, having to hop in order to place myself on the ripped cushion. My forehooves to either side of the weapon, I placed Book Worm's last moment against the wall behind the table. I looked back down at the pistol.

Blandly, I nipped up one of the torn bits of coat Sureshot used for his own rifle, and started to wipe its surface. I could feel the depth of the knicks. The time I spent doing so was cleansing for me, in a way, and the more I did it the more relaxed I got.

It had been what felt like hours before I heard hooves trotting back to the door. Hearing Sureshot's voice, I plucked the picture away, and took to putting it beneath my camera in a hastily folded square. Before he could enter, I was back at the table, the cleaning cloth tasting tangy in my mouth. When he saw me, studiously tending to it (like I wanted him to), he paused. He was covered in smeared flakes of soot, so I knew for certain he'd been at the crematorium. He too knew it was obvious, but made no effort to disguise it.

He took a place beside me, perusing the gun, and flipped the pistol over at the mouthgrip. I put the cloth down; I'd gotten both sides long before his return. I awaited his grade.

“... I'm sorry you have to do this, kid. Everypony in Resilience has to sometime, though.  Just part of who we are.”

Slumping in the chair, I just looked at the gleaming pistol. “Well, it's not so bad.”

“What?”

“... It's just like my Codec.” I said. I hopped from the chair, and wearily moved to my bed. I sat by my camera protectively, looking over it, but not daring to move it. He didn't understand, then, what I meant.

“When do you want to start training?” he asked me. “The other ponies are kind of eager to see what you'll be good at... Besides escaping your own luck, I mean.”

Not stopping to think for long, I only said the first thing on my otherwise chore-blanked mind. “Tomorrow is fine.” I replied.

“... You're sure? I won't be nice. You don't deserve to get shorted like that.”

“Yeah. It's not like I have anything to smile over right now.” I cuddled up with my other “point and shoot,” watching the old logo. “Tomorrow might give me something, at least.”

[***]

Welcome to level 1!

Hot Blooded (trait): Your fight or flight reflex has a hard time processing the “flight” part when you've been wounded.  You gain +15% damage for a short time if your HP drops below 50%, but suffer -2 to both INT and PER for this duration.

Detail Oriented (trait): you notice things others may not.  When observing your surroundings, you have +2 PER.