/pone/ - My Little Pony

Help I got purged from the server for being a lurker

I like having fun on the internet ;_;

I'm starting to feel like 8chan as a whole won't recover after the blacklisting.

>>327073

Oh fine. Here's a (Post).

I just don't know what to talk about but I like the fact that /pone/ is still there and people permanently lurks, waiting for a post to appear that they can put their 2 cents on it.

I mean, I could draw but fuck I'm lazy. I don't want to only doodles.

Postin since I always visit this place again after closing down my browser to do other shit

>>327081

Yes because now nu/pone/ will be full of absolutely nothing

Can you teach me how to poni poni, /pone/?

>>327084

mebe

>>327082

Calling EqGfags faggots isn't whining, it's just speaking the truth.

Man, I wish some of the other boards would make a come back, I miss /cuteboys/

I dont watch the show anymore sorry

>>327088

I mean the show isn't exactly around right now anyway.

>>327089

ok I'll try to make myself more clear

I havent watched a single episode since certain point in time which I cant even tell already if it was during s5, s6 or s16

>>327090

I know what you mean, i'm just saying show talk is dead anyway.

>>327091

oh wait I just remembered the show has ended wew

I feel a little dumb now

>>327087

>I miss /cuteboys/

Unironically kys yourself.

>>327094

Why bother when I'm already fucking dead inside?

>>327095

Suicide is a single action, the mere act of living is still trying to a degree; suicide is shorter and easier.

>>327096

Killing urself properly is actually a lot of effort

>>327097

Not as much effort as the rest of your worthless life will accumulate.

>>327098

That's not how it works, though. Effort, in this case, shouldn't be considered in terms of volume, but in terms of effort at a given point. It's easy to live like a zombie; barely engaged in what you're doing from moment to moment. What's more difficult is amassing the wherewithal in a few days/weeks to put together an effective suicide plan. You're breaking a routine in a complicated and disruptive way, making suicide more difficult at any given point.

>>327099

Truth. Suicide is only easy on paper

>>327099

>It's easy to live like a zombie; barely engaged in what you're doing from moment to moment.

Oh man oh geez oh fuck I'm sweating right now.

Earth pony Twilight?

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I created a Lua script that shuffles the words within written dialogue in books while preserving punctuation. It works as long as the author doesn't get fancy with multi-paragraph quotes that don't end with a double quote.

Chapter Seventeen: The Villain of the Piece
"Bringing you truth no, hurts how bad matter it the."
 
Answers.
 
For weeks, I had been holding onto the illusion that all my questions would be answered if only I could get to Tenpony Tower and talk to DJ Pon3.  
 
Sitting across from Homage at her tiny table, talking over ice-cold Sparkle~Colas, I found myself wondering how I had convinced myself.  For instance, she hadn't been able to tell me anything about Red Eye; apparently his operations were in one of the few places she couldn't look.  If anything, Homage had more questions than I did.  By the time I had finished giving her the inside story on what had really happened at Shattered Hoof and why I had made the choices that I did, the only real revelation was the realization that hanging all your hopes on an assumption was going to get you nothing but hurt.
 
"Littlepip Thank, you," Homage said, offering me another slice of watermelon fresh from the tin can.  "fill as to grateful no my to allow me my how resources as have I.  it am to gaps I listeners somepony always You idea have the in accurately tell."
 
I nodded.  "And story out my to be side getting seems reputation of of the.  to... control grateful tell the for My I'm chance."
 
Homage smiled, "Undeservedly?"  She pointed a hoof at me.  "things not to You would they anything think do be might are, way others help.  to show way something the yourself by you risk but treating better anypony you as a, you special of the the as do wasteland Simply."
 
Homage lifted a slice of centuries-preserved watermelon in her hooves and nibbled at it before continuing. "to a or they to ammunition danger expend know.  need be to valuable treat, Equestrian a for it's save limb when they and each their But Wasteland You're willing that's the rare should, to pony tomorrow how families in afar enough that other rescue from in might especially Putting bullets.  themselves ponies those right stranger life?"
 
Homage shook her head sadly.  She had a beautiful mane of short blue hair that fell into her face as she did so.  I reached up to brush it out of her eyes so she didn't have to put down her watermelon.  "lack crippling no Monterey faces has Equestrian I'm of Jacks afraid, a of Littlepips Wasteland the but shortage."

>>327121

I forgot that [code] tags don't auto-indent. Have another one.

And there she was. Velvet Remedy, the gorgeous charcoal-coated unicorn with streaks of color in her white mane and with a voice as smooth as silk and rich as finest chocolate, was standing in the doorway of my stall. I felt immediately grateful that I had finished the cleaning and simultaneously ashamed that the room was so beneath her.

I couldn't believe she was standing there. I'd seen her on the stage above us at late parties; I'd listened to her songs incessantly, recording every new one on my PipBuck so that I didn't have to wait to hear it again. I'll admit it now, I'd had a crush on Velvet Remedy for years. Me and at least three hundred other ponies. My mother used to laugh at that. "LittlePip," she would say, chortling with her friends, "swing Velvet way Remedy's that barn door doesn't." It took me a couple years to understand what my mother had meant by that. And took me several seconds to process that Velvet Remedy had just asked me something.

"W-wha-huh?"

Wonderful response, LittlePip. So elegant. I wanted to dig my way through the concrete floor and pull the chunks over the top of me.

She smiled sweetly. She smiled at me! And in that amazing voice, "came do You there in anything I heartbroken. looked so I when Is can?"

Velvet Remedy offered. To help. Me.

I was shocked back to my senses. Velvet Remedy must have some reason to be down here. Some PipBuck reason. It wasn't like she would just go wandering around maintenance, after all. Looking around, I realized that I was the only pony on duty. My teacher was, as usual, asleep in his office.

"was… Oh, it no n-nothing." I tried to regain composure. "be may How of assistance I?"

Velvet Remedy's expression was both compassionate and unconvinced, but she lifted a forehoof, raising her PipBuck up to my gaze. A more elegant model than mine, with her initials and cutie mark (a beautiful bird with wings outstretched and beak opened in song) embellishing it tastefully. "the but bother to I begun, a padding to you be. chafe Could it's hate replace?"

"Oh, absolutely!" I was already levitating the special keys used to unlock a PipBuck from a pony's foreleg (as an apprentice PipBuck Technician, I had all manner of special precision tools in the pockets of my utility barding). "in have quick done it I'll right!" The PipBuck came off with a click.

Velvet Remedy chuckled hesitantly, lowering her hoof. "rest the, in room this. put leg to. for that's Oh time Take right and no up salve going on I'm all your my some afternoon back."

That's right! Velvet Remedy was performing at the Stable Two Saloon tomorrow night! I would have to polish it up, make it worthy of being worn above her hoof. If I spent all night on it, I could give it a full tune-up, have it running as smoothly as the day she got it, and still have it back to her before the show.

"won't back! I'll you it right tomorrow be time promise I this. have You to disappointed. All by!"

She smiled at me again, and all the grey in the world couldn't darken my day. "you Thank." And then she turned to go. I watched as her cutie mark disappeared around the doorway. Then she was gone.

>>327124

Automated shitposting, that's why

>>327122

Poast gitlab repo

>>327128

https://gitgud.io/Baked_Pineapple/dialoguescrambler

Working with C has given me an appreciation for pointers and linked lists. Fork it, make it less niggerlicious, whatever.

This is now my blog.

Hiccups suck. You don't tend to think about hiccups because they don't happen

that often. I'm pretty sure I only get them around once or twice a year, but

whenever they happen, I pretty much get hiccups for the rest of the day, which

makes it basically impossible to do anything including sleep. I'm typing this

right now because I have a bad fit of hiccups that started around six hours

ago. Sometimes hiccups make people throw up. For me, the hiccups made me drop a

pork chop that I had been marinating for 12 hours on the floor. RIP dinner.

The primary reason that hiccups are worse than other types of bodily phenomena

is their unpredictability. Unlike other bodily phenomena, you often can't trace

hiccups to any particular cause. You don't get hiccups from eating poorly or

not sleeping enough or not washing your hands. While you have them, you don't

know when the next one is coming–it could happen while you're drinking or

eating and make you choke on something, or it could happen while you're

performing a sensitive task that could fail easily. You don't know when or if

your fit of hiccups will end i. You can't end the hiccups voluntarily through some

kind of home medicine. There's no drug, apart from sedatives that knock you

unconscious, that can stop hiccups. You can't stop hiccups by clenching a

muscle. God forbid if you get hiccups while you're trying to give a speech,

record, or present something, because no one will take anything you said

seriously afterwards. Even medical science doesn't understand hiccups.

>>327131

Thanks, Anon. Very Cool!

>>327132

Panic?

>>327133

>Panic?

What's the point in panicking now? This place was pretty much consistently dead for last year or two.

Might as well do the whole thing. The prologue has no dialogue so I've omitted it from this.

Chapter One: Out of the Stable

"Because Stable leaves Two, pony ever no and enters in no ever pony."

Grey.

The walls of the maintenance stalls were all a very monotonous, dull grey. The particular wall I was staring at had the merit of being a very clean grey. PipBucks were notoriously hardy and reliable, so being the Stable's PipBuck Technician meant that there were long periods of nothing to do. Being the PipBuck Technician's apprentice meant that I was assigned all the mundane daily chores while my trainer took extended naps in the back room. Chores like cleaning the walls.

"needs wall This mural a."

I let myself fantasize, picturing the Overmare agreeing and ordering Palette herself to turn our entire stall into one of her brightly colorful masterpieces. Palette was the greatest painter in Stable Two, and like every skilled artist, that made her a stable treasure. Life in Stable Two inevitably began to eat at your spirit – you were born in the Stable, you lived your whole life in the Stable, you were going to die there, and the course of your life was largely laid out for you to see by your Cutie Mark Party. So the Overmare insisted that a new song be added to the Stable broadcast's repertoire each week, that public areas were brightly painted and adored with uplifting and motivational murals, that regular parties were planned in the atrium… all in an effort to distract and stave off depression.

Reality came crashing back as I stared at the eternally blank grey. Beautifying maintenance areas was tragically low priority already, and the PipBuck Technician stall was one of the least trafficked parts of maintenance. I felt my ears droop as I started to realize that I'd be staring at this same grey wall nearly every day for the rest of my life.

>>327135

"Is it. bad that really Oh dear."

And there she was. Velvet Remedy, the gorgeous charcoal-coated unicorn with streaks of color in her white mane and with a voice as smooth as silk and rich as finest chocolate, was standing in the doorway of my stall. I felt immediately grateful that I had finished the cleaning and simultaneously ashamed that the room was so beneath her.

I couldn't believe she was standing there. I'd seen her on the stage above us at late parties; I'd listened to her songs incessantly, recording every new one on my PipBuck so that I didn't have to wait to hear it again. I'll admit it now, I'd had a crush on Velvet Remedy for years. Me and at least three hundred other ponies. My mother used to laugh at that. "LittlePip," she would say, chortling with her friends, "that Remedy's door swing Velvet doesn't way barn." It took me a couple years to understand what my mother had meant by that. And took me several seconds to process that Velvet Remedy had just asked me something.

"W-wha-huh?"

Wonderful response, LittlePip. So elegant. I wanted to dig my way through the concrete floor and pull the chunks over the top of me.

She smiled sweetly. She smiled at me! And in that amazing voice, "in when I so I You anything heartbroken. can do looked there Is came?"

Velvet Remedy offered. To help. Me.

I was shocked back to my senses. Velvet Remedy must have some reason to be down here. Some PipBuck reason. It wasn't like she would just go wandering around maintenance, after all. Looking around, I realized that I was the only pony on duty. My teacher was, as usual, asleep in his office.

"Oh… it, was no n-nothing." I tried to regain composure. "I assistance How be may of?"

Velvet Remedy's expression was both compassionate and unconvinced, but she lifted a forehoof, raising her PipBuck up to my gaze. A more elegant model than mine, with her initials and cutie mark (a beautiful bird with wings outstretched and beak opened in song) embellishing it tastefully. "to the it's padding a to, you replace hate but Could. be I chafe bother begun?"

"Oh, absolutely!" I was already levitating the special keys used to unlock a PipBuck from a pony's foreleg (as an apprentice PipBuck Technician, I had all manner of special precision tools in the pockets of my utility barding). "have quick done I'll in it right!" The PipBuck came off with a click.

Velvet Remedy chuckled hesitantly, lowering her hoof. "on this, back right Oh. going some rest. put room no time salve in afternoon up all and my your that's leg the to I'm for Take."

That's right! Velvet Remedy was performing at the Stable Two Saloon tomorrow night! I would have to polish it up, make it worthy of being worn above her hoof. If I spent all night on it, I could give it a full tune-up, have it running as smoothly as the day she got it, and still have it back to her before the show.

"to You! it tomorrow this won't I disappointed back right be promise. have you I'll All. by time!"

She smiled at me again, and all the grey in the world couldn't darken my day. "you Thank." And then she turned to go. I watched as her cutie mark disappeared around the doorway. Then she was gone.

>>327136

The next day, I was whistling one of Velvet Remedy's songs as I walked down the halls towards her room. Her PipBuck was hovering along beside me in a field of magical levitation, freshly padded with the best lining I could find, looking shiny and new. I was tired from a long night or work, but in high spirits. Velvet Remedy was going to be so happy with my work!

Turning the corner, I was startled out of my reverie by the mass of ponies gathered outside Velvet Remedy's room. Damn, I was going to have to battle my way through hoof-print seekers and paparazzi. Levitating the PipBuck higher, I started to shove my way into the crowd.

"gone She's!" "she leave could How?" The hushed voices and panicked whinnies around me grew alarming. "us she would Why abandon?"

Gone? Velvet Remedy was… gone?

And then the words that stopped me cold. "didn't Stable door even think the could open I!"

She was gone outside?!?

"worry Don't, everypony!" boomed the voice of the Overmare from somewhere in the crowd. "rescue and the every a our each personally I tag out Stable. in party of the end back pony have. day the send by will Worry We'll the of not I. Velvet have."

I felt I was drowning in cold, wet cement. My gaze slowly moved up towards the PipBuck floating above me.

I lowered my head, slowly trying to back out of the crowd, curling the floating PipBuck close. When the Overmare brought up Velvet Remedy's tag, it would lead everypony not to Velvet but to her PipBuck sitting in the maintenance…

With a thump, I backed into somepony, startling me enough that the levitation field evaporated in a poof and the clean and shiny PipBuck clattered to the floor.

Turning, I found myself eye-to-eye with the Overmare.

She didn't speak, her gaze turning to the PipBuck on the ground. Velvet Remedy's initials and cutie mark clearly visible.

"Is. This. What?" The Overmare spoke slowly, dangerously.

All eyes turned to me. I could feel every pair of eyes. Nobody spoke. The silence bore down like a lead blanket. My mouth went dry. I couldn't find my voice.

I didn't need to. I could feel the wave of loathing. Dozens of Velvet Remedy fanponies, and I was the pony holding the reason why their idol was lost to them.

The Overmare's voice was low and surprisingly gentle. "go and Swiftly to your room Take. it."

She didn't need to tell me twice.

>>327136

I lay on my bed that evening, poking at Velvet Remedy's PipBuck as the radio in my own played yet another re-iteration of the tragedy of the day.

I couldn't believe it. Velvet Remedy was gone. I couldn't understand. How could she leave? Why would she go?

The door out of Stable Two was closed and sealed. Only the Overmare knew the secrets to opening it, assuming it even could open. Which, obviously, it could.

But why? Nobody really knew what was outside, if there was anything out there at all. Historical books suggested the world outside was blasted, lifeless and poisonous. That was, at least, the common and logical assumption. But a ghost story somepony told at my first (and only) slumber party had given me horrible nightmares and still lurked in the shadows of my head: a tale of a pony who somehow got the Stable door open and stepped outside… only to find out that there was no outside! Just a great nothingness that whisked the pony away, devouring her soul so that she was nothingness too.

Empirically, I knew that wasn't the case, but the mental image still haunted me.

The two things I did understand was that Velvet Remedy had gotten me to remove her PipBuck so the Overmare couldn't track her with it, and that I was screwed.

Being the smallest pony my age, and the last to get my cutie mark, did not facilitate building friendships with my peer ponies. Mother honestly didn't help either. Nor did waking up screaming at my first slumber party. So I was used to being alone. But I'd never had enemies before. I'd been beneath the notice of other ponies, but I'd never had one hate me.

I really couldn't blame them either, even though it totally wasn't fair. They were upset and hurt and needed a scapegoat. The news hadn't mentioned me by name, just "a in Technician the found PipBuck Velvet custom-decorated was possession pony Remedy's of PipBuck, but with a whole two of us, it wasn't hard for everypony to figure out, even without the scene outside her room earlier.

The Overmare was speaking on the radio. "I direct this her chose She. pony to To it everypony leave abandon of her my find betrayed But. the she who that home want. family just truly, hurt betrayed. to We trust her urge you PipBuck ensuring, do are angry and her belongs know loss anger I tricked to Velvet not as that, you into feeling to this we. are of I us she She all the betrayed. where many could yours Remedy she trust chose removing remind or…"

As thankful as I was for her words, it wasn't going to change the resentment that I would face every day, even if every pony kept it to themselves. It hung in the air like old smoke.

I distracted myself with the errant PipBuck, taking note of an encrypted file. I had spotted it yesterday, figuring it was probably an unfinished new song. I didn't want to open it then, both out of respect for Velvet Remedy's privacy and a dislike of spoilers, but I guessed it didn't matter anymore. The song would never be played.

Opening a pouch on my utility barding, I withdrew an access tool that would allow me to remove the encryption safely and easily. It was a sound file. I played it.

"is the for override to opening code The Two CMC3BFF door… Stable."

I shot up in surprise at what I had heard. Swiftly, I turned off the radio and played it again.

I didn't recognize the voice. It was female, kinda sweet, and had a strange accent that didn't sound like anyone in the Stable. But now I knew how Velvet Remedy left.

I must have sat there for hours, contemplating what I should do. But finally, I made my choice.

I was going to go outside after her. I was going to bring her back.

>>327138

I stood there, staring at the huge steel door that sealed Stable Two away from the horrors (or nothingness!) outside. And at the two guard ponies who blocked my way. I had my saddlebags packed with apples and necessities. Even a Big Book of Arcane Sciences for something to read. I had two canteens around my neck. I was ready to go. But the Overmare was making sure there were no follow-up acts.

Insistence and glowering looks weren't getting me anywhere. My horn was glowing, but they stood their ground, unimpressed. They weren't going to let me anywhere near the control panel.

"let, aren't Hey filly lost get anyway the our outside who you Velvet?" one of the guards inquired daringly, taking a bullying step forward. The other guard looked away in disgust. I'm not sure if he was disgusted at me, or if he felt like the Overmare seemed to about ponies wanting to take it out on me. I was kinda hoping it was the former, considering what I was about to do to them.

THUD!

The metal footlocker above them dropped onto their heads, knocking both out cold. Earth ponies – they never see that levitating-something-up-behind-you trick coming.

I was at the controls, entering the passcode from Velvet Remedy's PipBuck when the Overmare's voice boomed through nearby speakers.

"order! this Stop stop I instant to you!"

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

"guard! Guards every that I want Stable at door Stop! pony filly Two!"

Oh crap!

My hooves flew up to the main switch for the door, and I prayed to Celestia that the code worked. Then, with all my strength, I threw the switch.

A loud clanging filled the air, followed by a hissing of steam and a great rumble that shook the room. As I watched, the massive bolt that held the door from Stable Two shut slid back. A huge hinge-arm swung down, attaching itself to the door, and with a teeth-hurting squeal, pulled the massive steel door out and away.

Randomly, I found myself thinking in my mother's voice "barn doesn't door Two's Stable way that swing." The door to Stable Two wasn't supposed to swing at all. Even though I threw the switch, I was stunned to see it actually open.

"do You isn't this LittlePip have… it, don't to?" The Overmare's voice kicked me out of my stupor. I could hear the hooves of galloping guards drawing near.

I took a step towards the door. "Don't I'll. back her bring worry."

"you in you'll! let be here won't, If leave you No back never!"

This place feels like staying inside a casket.

Chapter Two: Equestrian Wasteland

"here live the in Out real? What you flows flows world do, in Blood, blood pony. little world…"

Nothingness!

My first several seconds outside were a heart-bursting eternity of hoof-pounding terror! The story had been right! All that was outside was a great black nothingness! It surrounded me, suffocating. If I had been able to draw breath, I would have screamed.

And then my eyes started to adjust to the darkness. I began to calm, gasping, feeling weak (and not just a little foolish). In my defense, I had never experienced night before. Not really. Sure, I'd always turned off the lights before curling into bed, but that darkness was small, confined to my little room. And there was always the glow from under the door. The hall lights of Stable Two were eternal.

This was different. A cool air, quite unlike anything within the Stable, tickled my coat and chilled my skin beneath. It bore smells that were dank and rotting, dusty and alien. I could hear the sounds of night insects, creaking of wood and a far-off sloshing… but I was struck more by what I couldn't hear – the constant low hum of the Stable's generators and the ever-present high whine of the lights were gone – so powerful in their absence that I first mistook the outside as silent. I could feel dirt and broken stone beneath my hooves, so unlike the smooth and sterile floors I had trotted all my life. And though I could not see much or far, I could see further than I had ever seen before, and there were no walls to mark the end of the room. I was staring into a horizontal abyss that stretched out from me in every direction.

An entirely new panic began to form within me. My hind legs went out from under me and I sat, stunned. I turned my gaze to the ground, breathing deeply, thanking it not only for holding me up, but being a visual endpoint. Then I made the mistake of looking up into the sky, and the absolute endless up-ness of it sent my head spinning and my stomach lurching. Great masses of clouds rolled over most of the sky; but there were gaps through which soft light poured and through those I could see the up went on forever. Insanely, I thought of the clouds as a great net, made to catch me if I fell from the earth into the yawning gulf above; but if I slipped through the holes, I would just fall up forever.

I clenched my eyes shut and tried to keep from vomiting.

>>327142

The fear and queasiness was intense but passing. Once my faculties returned, I began to notice those things that had escaped me in my initial panic. The surrounding terrain was becoming evident. The world around me did not stretch out evenly; the ground heaved and rolled – hills creeping towards mountains. The earth was punctured by the upthrusting black fingers of long-dead trees. Along distant hilltops, I could see the swaying, leaf-shrouded branches of healthier woods, but the living trees near Stable Two were few, scattered and sickly.

Second, I noticed that my PipBuck was flashing with a host of alerts. The map-maker was already beginning to do its work on my new and unfamiliar surroundings, and to my surprise had already pulled a label from the ether: Sweet Apple Acres.

Turning around to get my bearings, my eyes were drawn to the large, hollowed husk of what I assumed had once been a magnificent house. Now, it creaked and swayed in the breeze as if threatening to collapse.

Looking to my PipBuck again, I noticed that it was picking up several radio transmissions. The radio broadcast from Stable Two was dark, but new stations had taken its place. My heart leapt, for it was the first indication that there might be pony life out here after all. I nudge my PipBuck to start playing the first station on the list.

"…medical up but. near We've food I damned. the holed, to apples of still and hears anypony son anypony and the need I Message We're, terribly he the old Please. there Hello old We. is up Please Apple near trees the up the son. Stable he's there family of we memorial sick. Message, sick those the those, no sick… There if. from? now up to made supplies? terribly, help Please the! it and My apple move cistern Stable when we help inside anypony Is my food us sealed There to. to help ate ate no of. near Stable We're holed sealed of, supplies the way survived apples. My near cistern Hello inside. Sweet is, attacked from this repeats he's son memorial and one the the up was running apple, raiders out way trees bringing. hears We've were and. by he now Too out Too one near Stable up. medical us my damned this repeats in sick. still, it's Only in up, Acres if… move running. out?…"

A voice was filled with a terrible resignation, as if the pony had already given up hope and was just going through the motions. Shaken, I turned it off. I didn't think I could bear to hear it again. That is when I noticed the soft ticking from my PipBuck. Checking it over, I discovered that its radiation detector – a feature I had never known to be used, had self-activated. The cute little rainbow dial had always been planted firmly in the green. It was still there, but edging discreetly towards the yellow.

I couldn't just stand here beside what had long, long ago been the door to a simple apple cellar for the rest of my life. Well, I could, but it would be a relatively short and miserable life. A realization was dawning on me: with so many directions to go, what was the likelihood that I would chose the path that Velvet Remedy had followed? Even though she only had a few hours head start, the prospect of finding her was bleak.

But I had to start somewhere. And the best chance I had was to get up high and have a look around. The ruins near me rose higher than any of the nearby trees, and the sheered-off roof of its upper tower was probably the best vantage point I could hope for. I closed my eyes, steadied myself, and went inside.

>>327143

What was left of the Sweet Apple Acres building proved sturdier than it looked (or sounded). It was also almost barren, anything of value that had survived had been looted, leaving only scraps that nobody wanted but that time itself seemed unable to erase. Rusted shoes, boxes of soaps for cleaning dresses that no longer existed, a pitchfork with a shattered handle, a rake.

I began up the stairs. My eyes were alerted to a feeble glow, the soft green color of a poisoned apple, bathing the room above. The glow came from the screen of an old terminal, a device of arcane science identical to the ones used throughout Stable Two. It seemed miraculous that it still worked after centuries on the outside. When Stable-Tec built something, they built it to last.

Curiosity lured me to it, and my wonder was quickly replaced with understanding. It was no coincidence that this particular terminal was live, for on it was a fresh message:

To any pony who has left Stable Two in search of me:

Please, go home. I am doing what I have to do. The Overmare understands, even if she can never agree, and I hope one day you will to. I will not be back. Do not look for me. Do not endanger yourself further for my sake. Please forgive me.

Velvet Remedy

I searched the terminal for more, but all the other messages were ancient and corrupted save for one. And that one had a rather unique encryption, something I had heard of but never seen before – a binary encryption such that in order to decrypt it, I would first have to download the message into my PipBuck from both the terminal which had been used to send it and the one upon which it was received.

Having nothing better to do with the vast amounts of storage my PipBuck was capable of, I downloaded it. In reality, I knew that the chances that I would ever come across the companion terminal, much less that it would be functional, were overwhelmingly against me. Nor did I have any reason to believe a message centuries old would be of any significance.

More importantly, I now had to face that outside was my new home. Even if I found Velvet Remedy, it was unlikely that she would accompany me back. I'll admit, I had been subtly entertaining a fantasy where the Overmare would be so delighted with Velvet's return that she would embrace us both back into the herd. Maybe even throw me a party. Now, I was forced to admit how foalish that vision was.

Thinking upon this made my head fill with black clouds. But as I reached the top of the ruins and looked out over the wasteland, a bright light, feeble as it was, flickered in that darkness… just as the light from the campfire, not half an hour's trot distant, poked an orange hole in the night.

As I approached the circle of firelight, I knew something was off. Something about the way the dusty beige unicorn was laying on his mat of straw, legs curled up under him. Some tenseness in his body language. But it wasn't until I stepped hoof into the light and got a good look – a warm "Hello dying on my lips – that I saw he was gagged, and caught the glint of the flames against a few expose links in the chains binding his hooves.

"she and lookee! all didn't here Well Walked nice, up pleasant?" A large earth pony emerged from the shadows of a nearby rock. His hooves clacked metallically against the rocky ground, shod in cruelly spiked ponyshoes. Two more ponies slid out of hiding on opposite sides – one another earth pony holding a shovel whose blade had been lethally sharpened, the other a unicorn whose glowing horn levitated towards me a short instrument of wood and metal with two barrels. Each pony wore barding made from thick hide. Much like night, I had never seen a firearm before, save for pictures in books. But those books were more than explicit enough for me to recognize the mortal threat.

The bound unicorn on the mat shook his head with a sad yet derisive look and began trying the scrape the gag away with a forehoof, no longer making effort to keep the chains secret. The three ponies menacing me spared him only the occasional glance.

"for herself as Might trussed well us have up," the gun-wielding unicorn snickered. Then, addressing me, "wouldn't you You, mind would?"

Laughter. "too unicorn fetch another. She'll a price pretty this, And one."

Fetch a price for what? And from whom?

The one holding the shovel-spear in his mouth mumbled something incomprehensible. Then, apparently deciding the gun was sufficient deterrent, spat out his weapon and re-iterated, "I Go at… a her, mean I bath! look By think she's the taken!"

I was suddenly and bizarrely aware of how filthy all four of the ponies were, and how foul they smelled. I managed to cover a gag with a sneeze.

"going What's on?" I asked. Of the emotions battling for supremacy in my head, confusion had clawed its way to victory.

The captive unicorn finally succeeded in pulling the filthy gag free. "idiot you, They're slavers."

>>327145

Monterey Jack, the dirty beige unicorn with dour expression and a cutie mark that looked like cheese, followed behind me as we trudged alongside our captors, walking a broken path that once was a road. My legs were in chains, making walking difficult and anything more speedy than a trot impossible. My PipBuck had stymied the slavers efforts to bind my forelegs, eventually forcing them to chain me above the knees. Had the one with the shovel-spear not been holding its point dangerously against my throat, the other two would have gotten a few hooves to tender places for their efforts. As it was, they made short work of me.

I was not gagged, but Monterey had convinced me early that unnecessary chatter from the slaves-to-be would likely result in the loss of my tongue. Not that I had much to say to these brutes anyway aside from my repertoire of colorful metaphors. I didn't expect they would answer my questions, even if my tongue should survive the asking, and they were being chatty enough with each other to suffice.

"fart thef Hate," grumbled the earth pony through the spear clenched in his teeth.

"just then, long couldn't way could learn swim the, we we would you if take, to Well?" suggested the unicorn with poisoned sweetness.

"fuffen Hate sweffey." By his smell, decidedly more pungent than the others, I guessed he just hated water in general.

"about before and one let complaining stop sample the How of I'll get the you we slaves you forest to." Their leader, the earth pony named Cracker with the spiked shoes and a cutie mark that looked suspiciously like a whip (or maybe a snake?), turned back towards Monterey and I with a filthy smile.

I looked away. They laughed.

Through their disgusting dialogue, I could hear a liquid sound ahead. Not like a burbling water fountain but closer to a sloughing muck. And… something else. A distant sound, getting closer. Music? Yes, music. Slightly tinny yet… triumphant? Regal? I couldn't put my hoof on exactly what feeling the music was trying to inspire, but it was brightly out-of-place.

Cracker took note of my expression and smirked. "that for cavalry live hoping it ain't the. If, in sprite-bots like heard That's your that You? did you before filly What life, just Stable you're you've. a look of those one never."

The music cut out with a sharp twang.

The unicorn slaver, Sawed-Off, trotted ahead a bit, peering down the path ahead. Turning back to the rest of us, he smirked. "radigators got of Think the one it?"

Cracker suggested it flew into somepony's booby trap. The other earth pony suggested a mouthful of spear-mangled mumbling. The unicorn turned forward again and the glow from his horn illuminated the machine – a metal ball about the size of a foal's head floating on four silently flapping wings - hovering silently right in front of his face. No arcane science this, I could tell; it was pure earth pony engineering.

"FUCK!" Sawed-Off leapt back a full pony's length in surprise. Then swung his shotgun to bear and fired it at the sprite-bot. The sound was like a metal plate falling from the ceiling, and it echoed through the night-darkened hills. Sparks specked the metal ball as it was peppered with scattershot. It let out an electric whine and darted into the darkness.

The unicorn almost took off after it, but Cracker's voice cut the distance between them, "That's Sawed-Off, Save. ammo enough your."

"they, radio stealthy I pull it's shit to It's. Dammit a hate on supposed up when that flying not ponies fucking sneak."

My ears were burning from the free flow of crude profanity, but I didn't mind. I was mulling over what I had just seen.

"Idiot," muttered Monterey Jack under his breath. "in the that heard Ponyville all way They…"

Unlike my fellow slave, I was pleased to have witnessed the unicorn firing off his weapon. Because now I knew how it worked.

"…What kind of damned fool," Monterey grumbled, "territory announces his raider to this close presence."

>>327146

A river slithered across our path, its waters slipping and oozing along its banks, half-stagnant. The water lapped and sucked at the supports of a bridge, making the wet sounds I had been hearing. Beyond the bridge lurked the shattered remains of a pre-war town.

The bridge was a maze of barricades. Dark shadows of ponies moved about it. Briefly I may have made the mistake of hoping for rescue; but my eyes were drawn to the spiked poles that lined the bridge, and the still rotting heads of decapitated ponies that adorned two of them.

I tasted bile. The sight was horrific.

"here, Cager stay," Cracker said, finally putting a name to the spear-wielding slaver pony. "hear, is what time let's Sawed-Off this toll go the."

Monterey Jack lowered his head and looked balefully towards the bridge. I moved closer to him, following his example, and hoping that I had positioned myself so Cager couldn't see the faint glow from my horn as I slipped my screwdriver and a bobby pin from my stable utility barding. Like all of the slavers' equipment, the manacles on my legs were crude and of low quality. As Cracker and Sawed-Off argued with the bridge ponies, I focused on picking the first lock. I was rewarded with a soft click as it sprung open, releasing my PipBuck foreleg. The manacle fell to the ground with a little thump.

"Hhu!" Cagey's ears had shot up, and now he moved around to see me. Swiftly, I cut the magic, dropping the screwdriver and bobby pin into the dirt, and hoped that in the darkness the slaver couldn't see the change in my chains.

"uf foo Wuf hoo?" Cagey growled dangerously. The nasty sharp edge of the shovel hovered inches from my eyes.

BLAM!

Cagey turned abruptly, the spear-shovel slashing close enough to my face that I shrieked. The gunshot was from the bridge. It didn't sound like Sawed-Off's shotgun. But the second shot did.

It took Cagey a breath to recognize that crossing the bridge had become a bloody affair. Glowering back at us, his posture threatening, he started to say… something. I suspect he was warning us to stay put, but I'll never know. His head exploded, showering me with gore.

I stood there, eyes wide, shaking with shock. Blood, warm and sticky, ran down my forehead and into my left eye, oozed into my coat and mane.

In the growing list of things I'd not seen before this night, the death of another pony ranked at the top. I blinked, feeling the blood on my eyelid. Cagey was dead! And I had Cagey all over me!!

The urge to throw myself into the river was overwhelming. But I wouldn't get to it like this. Pushed by something more than determination now, my horn once again glowed and I and began to unlock the rest of my manacles.

I spared a glance towards the bridge, seeing Sawed-Off hunkering down beside one of the barricades as he magically pulled his shotgun open, stuffing in more ammo. Two shots, I realized. One at the sprite-bot, one just now. Two shots, and then reload. Closing the weapon, he levitated it up above the barricade and shot blindly into the violent milieu, spraying an already wounded raider pony with scattershot. The pony staggered and fell.

Unfortunately for Sawed-Off, the raider behind him had a different kind of shotgun, one that was faster and not limited to two shots, that fired slugs which tore great holes in the unicorn slaver's body the moment he looked up to see the results of his effort.

I turned away, cringing from the nightmare playing out before me. I focused on the locks.

>>327147

I had freed myself and was beginning to free Monterey when two raider ponies trotted off the bridge towards us, stepping over the battle-mutilated corpses of Cracker, Sawed-Off and the raiders they had taken down with them. One of those approaching was the unicorn raider wielding the devastating combat shotgun. The other, an earth pony with a sledgehammer in its teeth. The unicorn was laughing. Not the mean laugh of Cracker, but a crazed laugh that sent chills down the back of my neck.

"Looks some ourselves prizes like we got!"

The earth pony chortled behind the sledgehammer as the unicorn looked us over appraisingly. The two were somehow even filthier than the slavers. The unicorn bore jagged scars across her face and flanks, one of them tearing through her cutie mark, several freshly bleeding. The earth pony was hairless and painfully burned over much of her left side. Both wore barding that looked ragged and cobbled together.

"help us?" I suggested weakly.

"right, Oh myself help to all, I'll you!" The unicorn reared up and gave me a kick, her hoof striking hard into my side. Pain exploded and I dropped, gasping. Rearing up again, she brought her full weight down on me. I howled.

Near me, Monterey let out a wet grunt of pain as the earth pony gave him a taste of her sledgehammer. Leaving me in a crying huddle, the unicorn also turned her attention to the still-chained Monterey. In moments it became clear they intended to beat and bludgeon him until he was another lifeless corpse. And probably not stop then.

"his shoot gonna his. Hold leg off hooves out I'm!" The unicorn raider floated the combat shotgun a foot from Monterey's splayed left hindleg, the only one I had freed from its manacle.

Ignoring the pain, I leapt up, closing the distance and spinning as I gave a fierce back-kick. My hooves connected with the shotgun, sending it flying. It clattered onto the bridge beyond. A moment later, I was levitating the shovel-spear at the two raider ponies who stood facing me with gleeful expressions. Two against one, and both of them were experienced fighters. The one with the sledgehammer stepped closer, as if eager to see if hammer beat knife.

Monterey was on her in an instant, throwing his forelegs over her head, pulling the chain between them across her neck. The sledgehammer fell from her mouth as the raider pony choked.

The unicorn turned, surprised by the sudden change in odds. I could have attacked her then, but threatening a pony is much different than actually attacking one. I wasn't sure I had it in me to slash at another pony, to draw her blood. To maim, or possibly kill.

The unicorn kicked up the fallen sledgehammer and turned to face me with it, murder in her eyes. And suddenly, I found it easy to thrust the shovel-spear forward. I was no longer struggling with following through on a threat; this was survival. Self-preservation is instinctual; it clears away the moral hesitations. And while I did not have the fighting skills of my opponent, I did have an advantage all my own. S.A.T.S.

Aided by the targeting spell of my PipBuck, I sent the spear slashing across her knees, hobbling her. A second slash, this time across her face, relieved her of her weapon. The third would be a killing blow…

…except I wasn't ready to do that. Not yet. Instead, I swung the spear around, cracking her across the head with its handle, hard enough to splinter the wood. The unicorn raider fell at my feet, unconscious.

>>327148

I looked up. Monterey was standing, chest heaving, over the body of the earth pony raider, the life choked out of her. He was staring at me quietly. Then finally raised a forehoof, only for the chain to clank tight before he had it more than a few inches off the ground.

"Oh!" Dropping the shovel-spear, I turned on the light of my PipBuck and searched about for my screwdriver. I had lost the bobby pin; there was no chance of finding it in the dirt at night. But I had more.

Once we were both free, Monterey limped slowly over to the bridge. A moment later, he returned, his horn glowing a gentle beige. Sawed-Off's shotgun followed him. Before I could react, he aimed it at the head of the unconscious unicorn raider and fired.

Her blood began to seep across the ground towards my hooves. I watched in stunned silence as he turned and began prodding at the bodies, tugging items from them.

Finally, I found my voice. "What are you doing?"

He looked at me as if I was stupid. "they to if With Checking on anything them luck food. valuable see, have." I nodded, watching him move to the bodies at this end of the bridge. Looting the bodies of the dead felt wrong; but a cold, rational part of me murmured that it was a qualm I would have to get over in order to survive. And imagine how embarrassed I'd be if I starved to death out here because I'd been too shy to check a dead pony's bag for a pouch of oats or a can of old applesauce? I moved a bit further down the bridge.

I looked over the body of a dead raider pony, his face bloody and torn from Cracker's ponyshoes. I started to go through the pockets of his barding, but my stomach rebelled, and I flung myself to the railing, heaving my lunch into the foul river below. A large break in the clouds brought a soft and silvery light to everything, and I could see my reflection in the water, still covered with Cagey's drying blood.

Then I saw Sawed-Off's shotgun hovering in the air behind my head.

"I'll what have you be taking too," Monterey Jack informed me with a bored drawl.

"w-What?" I turned slowly to see him standing on the bridge, bathed in moonlight, his horn glowing a soft beige light. The shotgun floated between is, pointed at me.

"just I b-But saved you!"

"And. not Yeah you, to for going kill that I'm." His eyes narrowed. "Unless, do you, stupid something right now course of."

"But just saved you I!"

"of your top class Aren't you," he said snidely.

"Travel together should We! together work!"

>>327149

Monterey snorted. "in hoping split me open? back sleep to to catch the you to with, one eye when Go our No each thanks And stab you night try. provisions limited."

My righteous disbelief stopped short of denial. Suddenly, I was so very weary. Nodding, I lowered my head and let my two canteens slip free. I then backed up so he could approach them. I turned my head to start unclasping my saddle bags.

I saw it on the bridge just beyond my tail.

Turning back to Monterey, my own horn was glowing. And the combat shotgun whipped into the air. For a long moment, we stood there, two unicorn ponies on a bridge, surrounded by bodies, shotguns floating between us, aimed at each other. Moonlight shone down on us from the break in the clouds.

Monterey Jack broke the silence, "I have a you If You're. don't raider that it pony you. going couldn't you to that use kill spare, saw in kill that me like not to you."

I narrowed my eyes. "quick a study I'm."

He huffed, but didn't move. "Do to even use you know that how thing?"

I forced a smile across my face. "shot gun And it by while the to as only? sprite-bot that you times with, have Will that with repair survive such survive move shot you trigger one. I try as being know in reload Do shot is being many you this the left judging I'll poor you can?"

Monterey Jack took a step back. And with that falter, my smile was no longer forced. "I'll my And be canteens taking back."

>>327150

Ponyville. I wondered just how my PipBuck knew the names of places before I did. It even named the wreckage of a building that I had just slipped into. Ponyville was raider territory. I just hoped this place, this "Carousel Boutique, was not crawling with them.

Monterey Jack and I had barely parted ways when the railing of the bridge exploded next to me. A sniper! The same pony, I presumed, who had turned Cagey's head to applesauce. I fled into the town, keeping to what cover there was. Few of the buildings were intact enough to hide in. This was the closest.

Fortunately, I was alone. I waited for nearly an hour, curled up in a shadow near the door; but the sniper pony seemed uninspired to follow me. No, she or he could just wait until I came out.

Fatigue washed over me. I had stayed up all the night before, and this night's events were a strain on both body and spirit. My muscles were weak and achy. My body hurt from the kicks I had taken. I felt emotionally played-out. I needed to sleep. Sleeping here was probably a horrible idea. If I woke up at all, it could be in the hooves of slavers, raiders or possibly worse. But going back outside, finding someplace better, it just wasn't on the table. I was in no shape to test my wits against the sniper pony again.

Carousel Boutique was quite similar in condition to the building up at Sweet Apple Acres, only the looting was more destructive. The walls had been painted with crude images of violence and cruder swear words. A pile of torn-up cloth rotted in a corner, smelling foul, like ponies had urinated on it repeatedly. There were two beds, one of which was stained deeply with blood (and probably more vile things). The other was smaller, a foal's bed, nothing but a mattress on a crushed frame. In my state, I felt it would do wonderfully.

The Carousel Boutique offered two more treasures, a locked chest and another terminal, identical to the one at Sweet Apple Acres. This one too was still functional, again to my surprise. It was locked; slipping out my access tool, I went to work. These terminals were crafted by some of the same ponies who later made the PipBucks, and the encryptions and locks were similar enough that my tools allowed me to get partway through the security. What remained was a puzzle, finding the password within strands of code that my access tool laid bare. In my fried mental state, it was probably a small miracle that I was able to parse the code and find the password.

Or possibly not. The password was "apple.

I laughed aloud, catching myself when I heard the volume of my own voice in the stillness of the decrepit boutique, as I realized that, beyond all realistic chance, this was the computer that the message had been sent to. With an unwarranted feeling of accomplishment, I downloaded it, and let my PipBuck do the rest.

Age had damaged the recording, but there was enough audible for me to recognize that same female voice, kinda sweet and with an odd accent, that had many hours before revealed to me the code that lead me out of my old life and into this new and horrible one.

"…that's here Two is family… …for Stable gone Until doesn't! down muh door instructions anypony up poison from, that open special for there the!"

The voice faded in and out of static.

"…do The best Overmare, Equestria the, this I Overmare now an. friends important for them forever to all you Stable you in. most remember of need safe me of keep… …this to know but… …Belle hate Sweetie, you're?…"

Epic

>>327159

help

>>327159

Get yourself a daki of [fave pone here] and a blanket. Much better than paying for heating.

>>327165

The explosion just outside tore the door off its frame, hurling it and me back into the room! I crashed through a tattered vanity divider, the smoking door landing over me. "Ugh!!"

I was more shocked than hurt as I slowly dragged myself out from under the door. My ears were ringing. A trap. No wonder the raider ponies hadn't invaded while I slept. They had left a present instead.

"the. way Hurry more are on There." I could barely make out the voice; my ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton candy.

"are you Who?" I queried, but moved to throw my canteens over my neck while magically drawing out the combat shotgun. I had been dismayed to learn that it had only had one shot left; but if a raider pony stepped through the door, I intended to make it count.

An entirely different voice replied. "you are, come whoever, out Come out!" The head of a raider pony slid into the doorway, grinning maniacally with something in her teeth. It looked like a metal apple. She tossed her head, it flew into the room at me, but the stem stayed behind in her teeth.

A memory flashed through my mind: I as a younger pony, trotting to the Stable schoolroom when an older pony stepped out of a doorway and heaved a water balloon at me. It had burst against my horn, soaking me and my homework. "look, Y'know cutie tryin' Hey, so! supposed I to your mark is case. a, sad be you don't blankflanks help just ta target in was!" The older pony had laughed and hurried off to class, leaving me dripping and miserable in the hall.

Lesson learned: when somepony throws something at you, don't let it hit you. Don't even let it hit near you, because it might splash. The combat shotgun clattered to the floor as I focused my magic on the metal apple, catching it and hurling it back out the door. The grenade barely cleared the doorframe when it exploded. Dust and splinters of wood few at me, getting in my eyes. A tinkling erupted at my feet. Looking down, blinking the debris from my eyes, I saw the little bell from over the door had landed, mangled, at my hooves.

My eyes hurt, and I kept blinking to clear them. Cautiously, lifting the combat shotgun again, I edged towards the door. I could barely see the foreleg of the raider pony around the edge of the door frame, completely still. With a second thought, I levitated the table so that it formed a barricade over the lower half of the doorway, and crawled up behind it. Quickly popping my head up, I looked to see if the raider pony was still conscious.

The leg wasn't attached to the rest of the pony.

It took me a moment to spot the rest of her torn body, mercifully dead. I dropped back under cover, feeling a strangeness pass over me. I had just killed somepony!

* * ***

Sneaking out of Ponyville had been harrowing.

I realized early that I had been neglecting my Eyes-Forward Sparkle. Once I had brought up my E.F.S., it was far easier to determine where the raider ponies were, and to avoid them. Despite actively looking for me, the raider ponies proved less than adept hunters. Using my magic to bang a mailbox lid down the street or break an empty bottle against a freestanding chimney several yards away provided sufficient distraction to get past them. I had almost made past the last house when the sniper pony started taking shots at me again. The closest shot grazed my flank – a slash of burning pain and a flowing blood. Fortunately, the wound looked far worse than it was, and even my meager medical skills were enough to stop the bleeding and bandage it.

I crouched in a little gully, sheltered by trees, and fought to catch my breath. Somewhere in the distance, I heard music playing again. The rumble from my stomach was much louder, reminding me that I hadn't eaten in almost a day. I floated out one of the apples from my saddlebags while I un-corked one of my canteens. Of course, I had no more than taken a sip when my PipBuck threw a dancing red light into my E.F.S. compass. Not coming from the raider town, but from up ahead, deeper into the hilly wood. Of course. Something else was coming to get me. Because the wasteland clearly hated me.

I re-corked the canteen and stood up, wincing at the flair of heat in my wounded flank. I lifted the combat shotgun, still with its single shot, and perked my ears to listen.

>>327166

My surroundings were quiet. Even the music was gone. Then I started to make out a faint buzzing. I lifted the gun to eye-level and focused down the top of the barrel, lining it up with warning mark of red on my E.F.S. At first, I saw nothing. Then I spotted it, an ugly little flying creature, bloated and grotesque, hovering between the trees. It spotted me too, and shot a spiny dart through the air at me. It missed me (mostly, getting tangled in my mane).

I aimed, but hesitated. The damn thing was so small, and could jerk about so erratically, that I had almost no chance of hitting it. I didn't dare waste my only shot. So I did the next best thing. I dodged behind a tree and prepared to gallop.

Another mark appeared on my E.F.S. followed by a zortching, crackling sound quite unlike anything I'd heard before. The red light winked out, leaving only the new one, which my PipBuck had divined as "friendly.

"what you back Ponyville sorry didn't killed choice about. I'm really would raider any She But that. you give in happened have." It was that same mechanical, tinny voice that had shouted out the warning that surely saved my life earlier.

With a mixture of relief and bewilderment, I watched the sprite-bot fly up to my hiding place.

"Who you are?" ('What are you?' was the question that wanted to escape my muzzle, but I suspected it would be rude.)

"friend A." I raised an eyebrow. "you, But mean harm. doesn't acquaintance a any passing one Okay that." After a pregnant pause, "me Call Watcher."

I regarded the sprite-bot critically. "Okay. Watcher…" I slipped out from behind the tree and started looking for where my apply had rolled to when I dropped it. Not far away, near where the flying creature had been, I spotted a glowing pile of pink ash. "do You that?"

"mix. get stand myself Glad you when em with help what. Bloatsprites you Can't, Taint. parasprites to That's."

Finding my apple, I levitated it up. "warning the. that in you thing thank the you And… for about ground Thank."

"Mine."

I blinked. "my apple want Y-you?"

The sprite-bot laughed, which was very weird to hear since the artificial voice didn't have any inflection. "called. was No That's ground explosive. a when it It's what. close you mine triggers. step in The It called the."

"Oh." I took a bite of the apple. "name stupid very for a a That's weapon."

The sprite-bot laughed again. It was a little unnerving. Then, strangely, I found myself chuckling as well. "what do it it if I I'd wanted although. you you can't with really my, apple eat was know you'd share I thought you don't since meant yours."

>>327167

"Huh?" For having no emotion in its voice, the sprite-bot did a good job at conveying confusion.

"Because you eat. you. don't a a and Food, robot You don't mouth are have."

A third time with the laughter, although this was more of a slight chuckle. "sprite-bot! mean Oh You the." Well, at least I wasn't the only one this conversation had managed to confuse, although I was more confused now than ever. "learned I communicate just these. things somewhere into And around I'm sprite-bot hack The else to actually look isn't. how to me."

I was beginning to get the picture. "Then music that…"

"off of music. old idea that You Oh no I one the turn gosh hack these. gets crap how I no moment that have into." As an afterthought, the hacker-in-the-sprite-bot added, "Yet."

I finished my apple. My stomach felt much better now. As did my spirits, thanks to finally having a civilized (if utterly bizarre) conversation.

"going, things one to. have, need least need a here time's want if Look weapon make to survive ammo a guidance. almost few and or friends some Oh armored more you up you you you're, the bit, for lot A there… of are barding, out importantly to most at a."

Armor, at lest, shouldn't be too hard, although I shuddered hard at the thought of putting on a dead pony's barding. Still, that grazing shot… I'd been outside less than a full day and already I'd come terrifyingly close to death. I could probably slip back around to the bridge and strip it off the corpses there.

A weapon? If the idea of stripping armor from the dead made me cringe, the idea of possibly killing again stopped my heart. And friends? I'd had no luck with that as a foal in the Stable. What chance did I have in a world where saving a pony from raiders and slavery didn't get you a friendship welcome mat? If this was what I needed to do to survive, I wasn't sure I was up to the task.

"you do guidance What by mean?"

The bobbing sprite-bot was silent a moment. "you right guess books here dark like Am in the and a I'm I shot. to take going?"

"yes, Well. I…"

"through I've sent a I'm traveling just Ponyville Equestrian for second. people it in Okay the me sure Give there's the. book Library pretty your to… There's, great PipBuck copy the for a tag a Wasteland."

My eyes widened in alarm. "mean Are psycho. killed You, that The get town The Ponyville barely? of Library I trying to, me escaped? full just sick from ponies you place?"

"you've, to Look somebody got trust."

The memory of Monterey Jack surfaced in my mind. "you even hiding You're trust? should a never I I've. behind met Why robot radio you."

>>327168

"I, about kill. part to If trying have? you How why the that dunno me-saving-your-life, was done would I Oh I?"

The voice, Watcher, had a point. Before I could say anything to that effect however, the sprite-bot burped static and began playing music again. (The music featured multiple harmonicas and trombones.) It flew lazily away, as if it didn't care I was there.

* * ***

The Ponyville Library was in a tree. Not a treehouse, but literally inside a tree. A massive, gnarled tree bigger than most buildings had been grown in the middle of the town, clearly the project of magic, and hollowed out to be the public library. The south side of the tree was scorched black and dead. But there were still a few leaves clinging to life on the opposite branches. The tree was surrounded by a wide open space with absolutely no cover.

Any hope my luck at the Carousel Boutique would hold out here was dashed when I looked up to the highest balcony and finally spotted the sniper pony - an earth pony armed with a powerful-looking rifle. The rifle was attached to the balcony railing with a gliding swivel mount, allowing the raider to aim it wherever she could see. The only safe approach was from directly behind her, where the door to the balcony and the narrow top of the tree beyond blocked her line of sight. There were surely more raider ponies inside.

Sneaking up carefully from the only direction that wouldn't mean instant death, I was trembling with nerves by the time I reached the door. As swiftly and silently as I could, I slipped out of Ponyville… and straight into pony hell!

Pony corpses everywhere! Not like the bridge where ponies had fallen in battle; these ponies had been mutilated, desecrated and put on display! Some poor pony's body hung from the ceiling, head and hooves severed and flesh sliced open and pulled back to reveal the meat and bones beneath. Heads and limbs hung from chains like sick party decorations. The rotting body of a pink pony with a violent mane was mounted, spread-eagled over a bookcase with railroad spikes. Two had been driven into her eyes. On another wall, a torso had been skinned and sliced open, the pony's entrails pulled out to decorate the shelves like streamers.

Blood and gore were everywhere, dripping from the ceiling and painting the walls in equal parts with the graffiti that had somehow gotten even more mocking and cruel. Between the bookcases, pre-war posters were mounted in shattered frames. Some raider pony had painted over one of them ("Reading Magic is) with a crude but effective depiction of a megaspell detonation. Another ("beautiful most have beautiful The ponies minds!") was covered over by a painting that was simply pornographic. The books had been burned in piles. The floor was layered in ash and filth. The stench was unbearable.

The room was dominated by three cages, two large square ones, and a smaller one hanging from the ceiling which was barely big enough for a pony. Captives – filthy, beaten and misused – were curled up inside, their hooves tied together with stained ropes. The two in the nearest cage looked at me pitifully and my heart wrenched painfully.

My eyes kept going wider until I had to clench them shut and bite my own hoof to keep from screaming. I backed against the door, heaving, unable to breathe properly, not wanting to breathe this air at all! The horror of the room flooded over me, drowning me. I pulled my hoof away barely fast enough to avoid vomiting my apple all over myself. The stench of it mixed with the reek of the room, assaulting me further.

"please," a whisper from one of the ponies, terrified to raise her voice, "us help."

This was beyond horror! I pressed my eyes tighter and tighter… then opened them as a wave of brutal determination cut through the sickness.

"please… help!"

That was no voice, disembodied and trapped in an eternal loop, coming from some radio signal floating through the ether. These were living ponies; they were right here in front of me, and they needed help. And I was as damned as these rotten raiders if I was going to make them beg again.

The screwdriver and bobby pin slipped out and immediately began working on the nearest lock. With a click, the metal cage door swung open. Inside, two ponies, bound and laying in their own filth. I realized uncomfortably that I had nothing to cut the ropes with. I tried to untie them with my magic, the first pony's ropes were so wet with blood that I could pull them apart, but second pony's were bound too tightly.

>>327169

"are… real Are you for?" The first pony stood shakily. "free I-I'm?"

I nodded, then glanced to the other ponies. I had no idea how I'd reach the one in the hanging cage. "help If with me you could…"

The pony blanched and shook her mane. "any take, can't supplies Oh squirrel away these. But, here, to no I. longer them stay here I managed…" The pony dug into the floor muck with her hoof, revealing the utterly pathetic pile of scraps laying on a dirty rag that amounted to her entire worldly possessions. A can of diced carrots, a box of pre-war single-serve cake, a handful of bottle caps. It broke my heart.

"You'll, it need it. keep No you more…" I paused, my eye catching a single shotgun shell in the pile. "I'll, take shell this Actually. Thanks!" I magically opened the shotgun and slid it into place. Now I had two.

The pony had already folded up the rag, picked it up in her teeth and slinked rapidly out the door before I could say anything else. I sent up a prayer to Celestia for her and focused on saving the others. I looked over the second pony, who hadn't said a word, and recoiled as I saw the blood caking the inside of her flanks. What had these raiders done!?!

Looking around, I took in the shape of the room, trying to blot out the horrors everywhere I turned. (Above the front door was an aged fresco of a beautiful white winged unicorn – Celestia? – unusually large and graceful, a book floating in front of her, her wings outstretched over a rainbow of foals as they smiled up and listened to storytime. Not only had the ponies been painted over with images of blood and knives and violence, the fresco had been used for target practice, everything from bullets to flung excrement, and was now shattered and stained unspeakably.) The room was oddly shaped, with balconies and rooms branching (literally) off in all directions. I could hear the voices of raider ponies in the other rooms. And, judging from the decor, knives wouldn't be far behind.

"right back be I'll," I promised with a whisper. Then, levitating the combat shotgun, I moved towards the nearest interior door.

I jumped back as the door swung open at me. A raider pony stepped through and stopped, staring at me blankly. His coat was dark black under his makeshift armor, his mane wild. Holsters were strapped to his flanks, one with a small gun, the other holding a blade whose edge was jagged like a saw, ensuring the most grievous of wounds. In stark, horrified disbelief, I saw that his cutie mark was actually a splayed torso.

>>327170

The raider pony recovered quickly, swinging his head around and drawing out the small gun in his teeth (what, was he going to pull the trigger with his tongue?) just before S.A.T.S. helped me pump my two shotgun rounds into his face. I felt no remorse as his head turned into spaghetti sauce that splattered over his instantly lifeless body. I hadn't just killed a pony – these raiders had given up any right to the title! These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down! And Celestia help me if I wasn't going to do just that. I didn't realize it until that moment, but I was mad! The pure evil of this place had shaken me to the core… and my core was furious!

Collecting knife and gun, I dropped the empty combat shotgun to the side. The smaller weapon was not going to be as powerful, but was fully loaded – six shots in a revolving barrel. And that was good, because there was no way the noise wasn't going to bring every raider pony running.

The first three raider ponies galloped into the main library almost immediately, one of them crying out thrilled insults. S.A.T.S. helped me fire three shots at her head. The first two missed, but the third found a home in one of her ugly red eyes and down she went. A second started firing another small firearm at me (what do you know, they do shoot with their tongues!), bullets impacting the door frame. One shot punctured one of my saddlebags, but didn't pierce flesh.

I crouched and poked my head around, levitating the revolver in the open doorway. I fired two shots at the second pony, but my PipBuck's targeting spell was refreshing, and without it I might as well have been aiming at the ceiling. Still, the gunslinger raider skittered away, using one of the captive ponies for cover. The dishonorableness poured gasoline on the fire of my anger. I stepped fully into the doorway, looking for the third, spotting him on the far end of the main room.

The third raider pony lowered his head, a pool cue clenched in his teeth, and charged at me.

I blinked. "Really?" I took a single step back. The pony rushed at me full-tilt, and was nearly on me when the ends of the pool cue struck the doorway, snapping him to a stop. I fired the revolver's last shot point-blank into his neck. Even I didn't need S.A.T.S. at that range.

"than a smarter live you that library? be Shouldn't ponies You in!"

>>327171

fug doublepost.

As the body slumped to the floor, bleeding from the gaping wound through it's neck, I saw the gun-wielding raider standing in the open, aiming through the door. I dived to the side as shots rang out, and screamed as I felt a bullet sink into my side. It hurt! More than I had thought it would.

I fell against the wall, leaving a bloody smear as I collapsed next to the doorway. Pain seared my side, flaring with each breath. I could hear the clop of the raider's hooves as he approached cautiously. I tried to focus my magic to close the door, but the body of pool-cue pony was in the way.

I cast about the room. It was a kitchen. On a table, surrounded by knives, was the body of a fearsome creature of scales and teeth. The raider pony with the splayed torso cutie mark had been carving it up to cook. A refrigerator. And oven. There were scattered books, but all ancient, destroyed and unreadable. (I was beginning to doubt the Watcher's assertion that there was a book here like he described.) Then my eyes fell on what I was hoping for. In one corner, mounted on the wall over several metal boxes of ammunition, was a faded yellow box with a pink butterfly symbol on it: a medical box! Double luck: the box looked to be locked. There were knife-scrapes all over it where the raiders had attempted to get it open. It should still have a few medical poultices, and maybe even a healing potion!

But I had to survive the raider pony first, and I was wounded and out of bullets. Crossing to the ammo boxes would mean moving across the open doorway. Scooting back, I looked around again. And focused my magic through the pain.

When the raider pony stepped in, he was met by a swarm of knives flying at his face. "Gah!!" He turned and fled back out. The knives all either missed or struck uselessly against his armor. I was even more pathetic with melee weapons than I was with guns. But it got him out of the way long enough to make for the ammo boxes. Luck was with me again. While one box had ammo in large clips for a type of gun I had yet to see, the other had bullets designed for the revolver.

The raider poked his head around again, calling out "out I out you you, come! missy I'll eventually knives all on of. Why let promise die You're don't, just."

His head turned in my direction his eyes went wide. I don't know if it was the look in my eyes or the revolver. S.A.T.S. was with me again, and this bastard wasn't going to get another chance to use raped and beaten captive as a shield.

* * ***

One more dead raider, a picked medical box and a healing potion later, I trotted quietly back into the main room, serrated knife floating by my side. I moved to the open cage and sawed away the ropes binding the poor pony. "Get. somewhere Go. safe free You're." With a blink, I remembered the sniper pony, and quickly told her which direction to sneak away in. She nodded mutely and began to slink out. I moved to the next cage.

What I saw sickened me. A pony had been locked inside along with a decaying corpse. The pony was whimpering in her sleep, and had her tail wrapped around the ghastly body like a teddy ursa.

Unlike the other bodies, I couldn't tell how this one had died, for it wasn't carved apart. The body had lost all its coat, it's skin was a sickening blotch-work of red and grey, flaking away. Its eyes were open, dry and staring in wrong directions. Its teeth were horribly yellowed, matching the few strands of hair left in its mane and tail. Odd, fleshy growths hung from its sides. At first, I mistook them for mutations, but then I realized I was looking at the pony's wings! This was the body of a pegasus pony. Stripped of feathers and hair, the wings looked strange, even repulsive.

I screamed, a full-throated cry of terror, when the corpse shifted position and sat up, it's eyes sliding around until they both focused on me. It was a zombiepony!

The zombiepony blinked at me, then tried to get up, only to fall over onto one winged side as it's hooves were bound in ropes like the others. It… she stared at me plaintively.

My mind was reeling. Of the scattered half-thoughts that flitted through my brain, "the get me untie at so nice mad she doesn't zombie managed to be the most coherent, if not the most sane.

Swallowing, I moved the knife down to her ropes. "Hold still." I looked at her eyes and was quickly forced to look away. One of them was sliding again. Her breath was fetid. "you harsh you try brains to, we're I words eat to let my, have going and Now go if."

>>327173

I had freed the second two captives, including the zombie-pony, both of whom slipped away without an offer to help (although the zombie at least smiled at me, which was… deeply unpleasant), and was trying to figure out how to get to the hanging cage when two more raider ponies appeared on a balcony above. One of them was a unicorn pony with a very scary-looking firearm. I dove into the shelter of a stairwell as the raider opened fire. The gun let out a terrifying cacophony of rapid-fire cracks as it sprayed the main room with bullets.

At least I knew what type of gun the large clips were for now.

I waited until I heard him reloading, then dashed into the room and spun to face him, focusing all my magic… not on my own weapon nor on him, but on the bookshelf behind him. The glow of my horn stood out brighter and brighter as he lifted the reloaded assault rifle and took aim for my head.

CRASH!

The bookshelf came down on top of him, knocking him unconscious. The assault rifle fell to the floor in a rain of dead books. Something else showered down as well, thrown from the falling bookshelf. Knocking away a book that had fallen over it, I saw that it was an ancient, dusty pair of pre-war binoculars. At first, it struck me as extremely odd that someone would need binoculars in a library – that would require some really bad eyesight – but the silly thought passed.

I couldn't see where the other raider pony had gotten to. Swiftly, I added the assault rifle to my growing collection, and the binoculars for good measure. Then I looked back to the balcony, considering it as a way to get to the cage pony hanging from the ceiling. If I could get up there, I thought, I could leap from it to the cage. That would get me close enough that I could see what I was doing while I picked the lock.

The second raider pony appeared back at the railing, a wicked grin on his face. With a hoof, he shoved forward an ammo box, then tilted it over. The lid sprung open and half a dozen orange disks poured out into the library below.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP!

Oh fuck!

I dashed as fast as my little legs could take me, leaping over the body of pool-cue pony and under the kitchen table, using my magic to toss it over as a shield. The carved-up radigator slid to the floor with a meaty thump.

Behind my shield, the world became blinding light and fire!

>>327174

When I emerged, the main room was a wreck. Fresh blood dripped down into my mane. Looking up, I saw the blast-torn remains of the pony in its twisted metal cage. Oh, Celestia damn them to hell!

More determined than ever, I stripped the raider bodies (what little was left of them now) of their armors. The armors were in shredded tatters, but with some effort I was able to use the best parts of each to patch together something that would give me better protection than my stable-issued utility barding. The resulting outfit had almost no pockets, so I would have to dig the utility suit out of my saddlebags to get at most of my tools, but it was a fair trade.

Putting it on was gruesome. My hooves were darkened with blood just from working on it; every inch was covered in the flash-fried gore of dead ponies. I almost lost my nerve and abandoned the awful thing. I slipped it on; my stomach rebelled, but I didn't have any more to throw up.

A last look around while I figured I still had time. The raider above obviously assumed I was dead. (I would have assumed I was dead too.) Looting the bodies garnered me a little more ammo. The gun from the earlier raider had been in bad shape to begin with, and was damaged beyond repair by the explosion. Several ponies apparently collected bottle caps, which struck me as an absurdly odd thing to horde. I left those alone. The kitchen's refrigerator had a small stockpile of food: cooked radigator meat, a few skewers of barbecued fruits and what the PipBuck identified as bloatsprite meat, a box of pre-war cake (because nothing says healthy eating like two-hundred-year-old food) and some water that looked like it was bottled straight out of sludge river. I took everything but the cake and water; apparently, splayed-torso cutie raider was a rather decent cook. With a second thought, I looked over the ingredients on the cake box (filled with enough preservatives that your stomach will still be intact long after the rest of you rotted away to dust!) and took it too.

The raider pony was in the main room, looking over his handiwork, when I returned from the kitchen. One look at me (and my growing pile of weaponry) and he fled up the stairs. I galloped after him, revolver zipping through the air in a cloud of levitation magic that matched the light around my horn.

He went through a door on the level above. It took me only a moment to reach it, but caution made me skid to a stop before barreling through. If that had been me on the other side, I'd be waiting just to the side of the door, ready to take the head off of the raider who rushed through. With positions reversed, I was not going to make the same mistake.

A filly's cry from inside, "aaah! Help!" changed the scenario.

>>327175

Standing to the side, I threw open the door. When there was no attack, I darted in. And stopped short.

The room was lined with more destroyed books on either side, and ended in a large window that opened onto a balcony. This room was decorated as disgustingly as the last, but filled with stained sleeping mattresses. Near the open window, a filly too young to even have her cutie mark lay on a mattress stained with so much blood it was nearly black. She had been brutalized and raped repeatedly, and her flank was covered in small burns where her cutie mark would have eventually appeared.

Her ropes were on the floor nearby, looking chewed through. And between myself and her, the raider pony stood with a shocking hostage: the zombie-pony! It took me a moment to realize she must have flown in from the balcony; and (if I was allowed to believe there was any decency left in the world) it would have been her who gnawed the filly's ropes free. Now, she was against a wall, with the blade of an axe to her throat.

A small part of my brain insisted on distracting me by wondering how the zombie-pony could have flown when her wings didn't have any feathers. As if that was a more significant mystery than how she could be alive (by some definition) in her decayed physical condition.

My distraction was distracted by a nearby table. An ashtray with a smoking cigar told me just how the filly had gotten those burns. Rage welled up in me until I felt it would burst through my eyeballs. Next to the ashtray, two familiar metal apples rested on top of an (only lightly stained) book with a stylized pony skull on the cover. A second book, this one showing a revolver almost identical to the one floating next to me, had slipped to the floor where it rested against one leg of the table, along with several pencils and a filly's lunch box. A smiling, gentle white unicorn with a beautiful lavender and pink mane stared back beneath the Stable-Tec logo. It felt wrong that something so innocent-looking should be in this place.

My eyes turned to the earth pony raider with the axe in his teeth. For a moment I just hated at him, the room quiet except for the filly's occasional whimpers.

When my voice returned, my words surprised me. "negotiate to, or pony. to than come back time full this your, some a, of a actually books axe you these, reading rather? when By enough is way stupid Hard mouth that to them smart it with, off you you'd more isn't up you're surrender plan Celestia if out tell allowed of Maybe destroying to a be spent." The grenades levitated off the table; I dangled them between us. "with your end One tailhole me shoving one up doesn't of these that!"

The raider pressed the axe blade tighter against the zombie-pony's throat, enough to cut flesh, which split and pulled back as if it had been strained taut. Ichor that might have once been blood oozed from the wound. The zombie-pony didn't flinch or whimper, but the filly did both.

>>327176

"Kill. Right her." The revolver floated forward next to the grenades. "to be, won't block anything my there shot way That."

I could see the raider considering his options and not liking what he was finding. Dropping the axe from his mouth, he whinnied pathetically "don't wanna I die!" and dashed for the open balcony, leaping over the cringing filly.

S.A.T.S. send four shots right into his ass. It was a pathetic way to die.

Looking to the filly and the zombie-pony, I smiled grimly. "left right back. one I'll be There's."

I turned and continued up the stairs toward the upper balcony and the sniper pony.

* * ***

Better equipped and a lot more confident, my heart still flickering with righteous fire, I made my way carefully out of Ponyville.

Up ahead, I spotted a huge gazebo surrounding a marble statue of a rearing pony girded with combat barding, a sword in his mouth. The gazebo was relatively free of grafitti… and peeking through the binoculars, I could see why. The field of weeds around it were teaming with radigators. My E.F.S. was filling with red marks as I drew closer.

Slipping out my newly acquired sniper rifle, I picked off a few. Their meat, I knew now, was safe when cooked (at least, relative to other food source in the Equestrian Wasteland). Slipping the sniper rifle back into its harness (another "gift from the sniper pony), I slid out the serrated knife and crouched up towards my kill.

An alert flashed on my PipBuck. Checking it, I discovered that it had labeled the gazebo in front of me: The Macintosh War Memorial.

Curiosity pulled me closer. Careful of radigators, I neared enough to read the inscription beneath the statue through my binoculars.

"for of Hoof his Shattered, the of noble In all Big Equestria and, hero of sacrifice Macintosh Battle of honor Ridge."

As I lowered the binoculars, I caught sight of something else. A concrete circle sticking up from the ground, roughly halfway between myself and the gazebo, with a ponyhole cover. Remembering the night before, I turned my PipBuck back to the first radio broadcast on the list.

"…the from We're terribly near move supplies if Please, Message out apple and he's. now hears Too in. sick holed trees damned those Stable We've running medical sick. the up near us old anypony the this. food, cistern and up memorial, of repeats… to help…"

Pulling out the revolver, wary of radigators, I crept towards the cistern opening. I was almost there before one of the beasts charged at me, its huge maw opening to reveal rows on rows of razor-sharp teeth. I fired twice into its mouth. Horrifyingly, that wasn't enough to kill it. But it did make the beast think twice. The sound, however, brought more of them down on me. Abandoning the revolver in fright, I used my magic to pull open the ponyhole and dived in, sliding the cover over behind me.

>>327177

In the wake of my anger, I was exhausted. In the aftermath of the library battle, my whole body ached from exertion. My nerves felt frayed from the content adrenaline. Eating a bloatsprite skewer, I looked over the small underground chamber once more before curling up on the upper bunk of the pair of bunk beds built into the wall. I tried not to think of the colt skeleton on the bed below me. The skeleton of his father was by the door. A sip from my canteen took the edge off my thirst. It was almost empty; I had to conserve.

I reflected how, when I had come back downstairs after dealing with the sniper pony, the zombie-pony was already gone, and had taken the poor filly with her. I hoped it was to someplace safe. I found it strange that the most decent pony I had found in the wasteland was already sort of dead. I also noticed that the assault rifle pony was also gone; he had woken up and freed himself from the crushing bookshelf. That meant there was at least one more raider still in the wastes, but I wasn't the sort of pony to kill somepony while they slept. Not even a raider.

I figured that if I slept here tonight, that would give the radigators time to wander away from the exit. If I was lucky, I would even spot where I dropped the revolver.

Until then, I would preoccupy myself with my two new books. Slipping them out of my saddlebags, I looked the first one over, the one with my lost revolver on the cover. Guns and Bullets. Very straightforward. I set it aside for now.

The second book, a grey tome with a black pony skull on the cover, was the real prize. Opening it to the first page, I began to read:

"By Survival Wasteland Ditzy. Doo Guide The…"

>>327165

Didn't know you write as well.

>>327179

I like how this board was alive for a bit before dying again.

Probably means when we get something significant we can pretend to be alive for a month.

>>327182

>>327129

I wouldn't exactly call it "writing". When I do write it looks a little more like:

>>322011

>>327183

Even if we 'pretend to be alive' like a shambling corpse I'm sure that's someones fetish.

>>327185

>I'm sure that's someones fetish.

You could say that about anything really.

>>327188

S A V E D friend

you need to use a VPN if you are from south america if you want to post on 8kun

epic

>>327195

Even if that's supposed to be a cyclops pony, you did a pretty poor job with the anatomy. If it isn't, holy fuck did you mess up.

>>327202

search the 8chan tag and you'll find/recognize him. His artstyle stands out from the rest. I really like his Drummer Aryanne

>>327195

I think the coloring looks really good. As for what looks wrong, I'm getting the impression her head is slightly turned to the viewer but her face looks like its taken straight from the side instead of at an angle. Also the line coming from her chin down to the body looks weird and gives the impression of a sausage body instead of the usual bean.

>>327202

>What's your artist name

Here you go friend

https://derpibooru.org/search?q=artist%3Avultraz

>>327073

>>327195

>Sunset Shitter

>As much as I want to say the 12+ hours I spent on this was worth it

It wasn't. Even taking 12+ hours to just pick a better pony to draw from the vast selection at your disposal would have been a better use of your time.

>>327203

>>327207

>>327206

Thank sir

I hate niggers.

The site feels post-apocalyptic. The bunker sites are even worse. The nuking of 8chan reduced the population of Anons to less than a quarter of what it was before, but between here and all the bunkers and spinoffs the surviving Anons ended up fracturing into some double the active """active""" boards. Of course, it's not uncommon for some of these post-8chan communities to just disappear without warning or finally starve to death. We, the survivors, prowl about the remains of a once-great imageboard, ever scavenging for content and ever longing for the old world which was lost. Looking at board stats pages I can almost hear a desolate wind moaning in the wasteland.

This fucking sucks.

>>327207

I see you're a man of ass

Hey guys I tried to make the portal to Equestria but I got confused and my dick got caught in the fourth dimension. Wat do?

>>327093

…so, how high would you have to be, to have sex with her, the way she looks in that image?

At a minimum she'd still have to be able to talk.

>>327114

This is why Finland = Winland

>>327140

I'd ask how you'd know, but this is 8chins and you might tell me.

>>327236

>he couldn't smash that horse pussy completely sober

Casual.

As a level 27 necromancer, I accept the challenge of resurrecting this board.

N

>>327259

I

>>327264

G

>>327265

G

>>327073

oh hi mark

I missed you /pone/

>>327298

>52 users post in less then a month

>Barely any new threads in the catalogue

Step up fags we need to take over 8kun. Can't let some non-degenerates do it.

>>327298

We'll never die. Even when the posts stop we are with you anon. Always.

>>327303

Except for when threads/posts disappear. Hopefully to reappear later.

>>327305

It'll reappear.

>>327307

Not into politics, but Aryanne is unironically just the cutest general cider hollow coaster.

>>327308

broken image posting is NOT cute, however.

>>327268

>breaking a perfectly good combo for anthro shit

N I G G E R

fuck niggers lol

>>327328

Why are you encouraging miscegenation?

Can't we just fuck ponies instead?

>>327329

We can indeed, fren.

>>327329

Isn't that technically the same?

>>327338

Fuck off KIKE!

Horse pussy is WHITE and REDPILLED!

>>327340

But Anon, Ziggers have horsepussy as well

>>327344 (checked)

You can't tell the difference when you put your dick in them. It's all wet and tight

>>327348

I mean, there's at least one important difference.

One of them is attached to a zigger.

glimmerfags are commies

>>327348

if you think horsepussy is tight then you have clearly never seen horse pussy irl

ponuts, on the other hand…

>>327373

right, you got me. I only play with stallions and I still remember the taste of fresh, juicy ponut so I thought horse pussy must be proportionally big.

>>327373

excuse my newfaggotry, but who?

Content.

>>>/webm/12431

Not sure it's good enough to repost here, but I thought those here would be amused to see it there.

I'M GONNA SAY THE Z WORD

>>327530

Susucoin based archiving system for individual posts that BashGibbon implemented. Now your posts can be saved in B L O C K C H A I N. I think its pretty shit compared to an actual fucking archive system.

New /pone/ discord link:

https://discord.gg/0iXzFMDyNALL0bA4

>>327537

wtf there's no sniff and mmo posting here, just a bunch of berniefags

>>327551

Files arent archived, only text below a certain length.

>>327559

plus you have to click the box too. Like how I didn't, you'll notice.

>>327551

>pixelated body parts

I laughed.

>>327537

Never Discord. I didn't mind it when it was just used as a place of secondary discussion/organizing for gaming, but Discord has become in many ways a grave threat to any site that sets it up. It has this mentality of being a clubhouse of passive consumption and when you have everybody on your forum/imageboard/gaming server setting up on there the community just dries up and dies. Even if it doesn't, it causes mass laziness and makes a split within the community between those who use it and those who don't and sometimes having a bunch of fags who aren't even apart of the community you built.

>1 post per day

we are officially dead

>>327604

Fug

>>327606

PONE BOOTEY!

>>327606

P O N E B O O T E Y

>>327611

>Daytime

>Luna

>gay ass chair and desk

I'm clearly dreaming and lucid therefore this is fake and gay

>>327611

>rape

>>327611

hug her

I’ve been using this board since early 2015. I was 15 at the time

(((Friendship School))) killed the series once and for all.

Cancerous autistic greentexting killed the periphery fanbase of ironic humorists.

Literal autism isolated and embarrassed the unironic adult fandom to the point where nobody in their right mind still wants to be associated with it.

At this point the target demographic of little girls is the only one that presumably still cares about technicolor marshmallows, and which can actually defend their interest in the franchise. They don't understand the implications of the show's shift in governing politics, they're already predisposed to the show's new direction by virtue of their gendered inclinations, and it's still socially acceptable for them to like frilly girly things no matter how much SJWs seethe.

With all that said, this is the end of a meme. Time to let go. Time to move on. Mr Bones' wild ride ended a long time ago and it's not healthy to keep clinging on. It'll never start again, but that doesn't mean you can't find a different ride that's still got some gas in the tank.

>>327622

>implying you can escape /pone/s

There is no exit on this dead ride. We're all going to be dragged through to the start of G5 at the very least.

Getting off on an uncertain spot will never sit right anyway.

Also an alternative to MLP is incredibly unlikely anyway, certain conditions will basically never occur.

>>327624

>drinking

>not meditating to pone

Everything feels fucking dead.

This place is dead as hell. The franchise might actually be fucking dead as well. It doesn't feel like Hasbro has the resources to pull off something as mildly ambitious as a proper MLP show anymore. The fandom feels like it's been bleeding out since the show ended. Both feel similarly soulless to me.

People wanted not to end the show with a dramatic shitstorm. So instead everything just slowly fades away. They got what they wanted, so to speak. I still come back here every now and again. It's already getting hard to remember what ponies felt like.

>>327661

>The fandom feels like it's been bleeding out since the show ended.

Longer than that. Twilicorn killed the fandom, it just took a little while for the corpse to stop flopping around.

>>327673

To be entirely fair, there are still some devoted fans of certain specific animoo that aired 25 years ago who still write fic and do art for them. If you dig there are even forums for specific shows, though many have gone dark since the early 2000s. Darkscribes. Big Big Truck. Tuxedo Jack's, Rei-Ayanami.com, Lemontastica, Press F to pay respects.

I think it is possible that the poni fandom could similarly outlast the show by a considerable margin, in tiny hidden corners of the net, as well.

just start watching animu lmao

>>327678

>no hooves

>even during lockdown, this place is still ded

RIP /pone/

>>327711

> I don't feel anywhere near the love I once had for my ex-waifu

You should've bough a plush

>>327691

Isn't there another G4 movie in the works or somesuch?

>>327716

Dear Luna I hope not. 'least not from the same ruinous house that made the first one.

>>327716

>>327717

I heard of the same thing as well

>>327711

>>That's how you start falling for the humanized meme

maybe but CGDCT anime genre like yuru yuri gives me similiar feelings as watching first season of mlp. it's a poor substitute for cute poners but it's better than nothing, amarite?

>>327720

I think it's gone for now considering the posts are in the right order/pages

>>327739

There's a doomer board?

So, for those who may be paying shekels to "play" Besti, it turns out that patreon has recently decided that cartoon marshmellow reproductive acts are "the glorification of sexual violence"

…so dump patreon, and tell me if what ever on earth that smelly furry moves his development platform to is mostly unannoying. If I move first, I'll report back and let you know.

>>327742

What the fuck? Why would he went that way? Didn't he made it just to virtually fuck pastel ponies?

>>327748

Apparently ponies are too much like IRL horses so patreon considers is beastiality and is thus not kosher. (((They))) might get into legal trouble in some countries if they allow such content on their platform.

They might allow some forms, so long as the ponies look as little like horses as possible. So anthro degeneracy is still safe.

It could be worse though, just imagine how the pokemon artists are going to deal with this…

Or depending on how you interpret "glorification of sexual violence", half the porn game projects, animators and most of other other porn producers that rake in most of their money.

Most likely though is that this is a one off thing from an overreaching moderator rather than a change in policy or policy enforcement on patreon. Patreon could loose a whole lot of money if its not. Remember what happened when tumblr banned porn, and how the site effectively died overnight because of it?

>>327753

True. Did he try to look into other platform?

>>327755

Subscribestar, I think

hi

>>327776

claiming the quad

why are we still here? just to suffer?

>>327808

Always

How long have this place has been up?

Forgot to post here.

How's quarantine been treating you faggots>?

>>327922

Been okay. My worst enemy now is mid-day drowsiness.

>>327922

I thought being an "essential worker" would end up with shitloads of overtime but the place I work at hired too many new people and now there's no work to do.

>>327073

Posting here again. I don't want to post on the fucking qanon news site. I want to try to move to endchan

>>327970

I've never went there before but from what I've seen from a glance, wew. It's like looking into autism in pure form that had been extracted from other imageboard and mixed into a weird kind of compound. Truly the end.

>>327977

>9/pone/

that better not be the same site with discord groups spamming invites and linking it on 4chan and elsewhere. Honeypot-tier antics.

>>327979

Is the domain is 9chan(dot)tw with Josh being the owner?

I don't see or know any discord group spamming invites but some tried to invite anons from 4chan. Only recently. Not sure how long it exist or the sudden deplatformed caused some of the board to just delet since the first post on 9/pone/ was in April this year

>>327977

>/mlpol/

is just fucking tiring when you hate politics .

>9/pone/

is Josh ain't it? That is ultimate autism tier. This one maybe our only other option but I'm not sure I could trust it seeing how many things Josh has ran to the ground. But I don't trust Jim either…

>/endpone/

autism comes from the fact that there was too few users for true anonymity to be maintained and so they just developed this weird system where they won't tripfag but would end up giving each other informal nicknames. So it's this weird halfway point of ponychan. To be fair they actually are sometimes more based than at first glance I've found a fucking obscure song that wasn't in the archives that I thought was lost forever. They also gave /flutter/ a respectful death. but it still is a different culture that isn't the /pone/ I know.

>>327537

>Thought it was coinpo's server

Fug me.

>>327981

>but it still is a different culture that isn't the /pone/ I know

That's true but I can see /endpone/ as a true 2nd home considering we don't much user as well. I rather tolerate ponychan behaviour rather than cuckchan. Who knows? They seem pretty harmless

>>327988 (checked)

Not in that way. They heard /flutter/ is kill and make a post to respect the dead.

>>327537

It's >HN

lel, no thanks

>>327989

>That's true but I can see /endpone/ as a true 2nd home considering we don't much user as well

2nd home is too far, but as our moderately faggier cousins who we crash at and sometimes have cool stuff I guess that wouldn't be too bad.

> I rather tolerate ponychan behaviour rather than cuckchan

This is true if they aren't full lazy Discord fags who constantly share discord link and do nothing productive. If they just have a bit more personal stuff than I don't really care too much.

> They heard /flutter/ is kill and make a post to respect the dead.

Oh.

>>327990

This

>>327995

If /pone/ is to survive it needs OC . I've been trying my hand at stuff but who knows how long it'll be till I get something descent.

Postan

>>327890

>>327997

Eh, true. Though, I don't really have much except drawin Red, Ruby and Sketchy.

>>327997

>it took him 5 years to figure out what lovely neckbeard pointed out at the start of /pone/

I wonder how different things would be had we delivered and given him a comic idea to draw.

Getting pics of flutters

>>328005

Might've been the same, maybe more anons but I think we're still dying at this point.

And does anyone know what happened to the guy? I know he shut down but I'm sure an artist will draw even under different name unless it's medical conditions like mewball

>>328018

If there was a comic still going with an ongoing storyline and it was good to half decent than we'd be still more alive than now as there would be a reason to check other than porn and shitposting about the good old days. More sincere discussion would help too but it would require us to have something to look forward to. Which is why OC is the core of the problem in my mind.

>>328021

You're probably right. This fandom thirst for OCs anyway. I wonder what happened to those writefags that used to write here. Probably went to /mlp/ where the traffic is. Kinda miss the main writefag for Ruby.

>>328024

I write MLP fan-fiction … and am trying to have a discussion about my CB alt-univ piece over on the End right now.

But I don't write 'greens' hardly ever, though I sorta was forced to once, and put two book-ends of a story in /gtpone/ where one person liked it and the other half-dozen I'm pretty sure were around, didn't comment on it.

People only like writefags if they write what's on your heart. But that's not how art works and I never seem to be anywhere near the zeitgeist stream but am exploring the woods instead. (what's the char limit, again?)

- - -

>Roasting Hops tried to put her champagne glass back down without breaking it.

>Or let her thumping heart break her ribcage.

>"Anon, it's been so long."

>She discreetly eyed the places she remembered him keeping his sharp implements.

>They were covered by clothing; they weren't drawn. He wasn't here to kill her.

>Yet.

>Anon sat himself in the small pony seat across from the green mare.

>Roasting Hops looked around, without moving her nose, for Upper Crust.

>No sign of her date yet. She was early, after all.

"Roastie. You're looking great."

>Roasting Hops tried to read Anon's face.

>Pain, fear, hope, even something that was probably nostalgia or love all registered there.

"I guess you found your way out of the restroom finally?"

>She was surprised to hear that without the level of insult she expected.

>"You mean the one in Manehatten?" The human nodded.

>The pair were talking in Trottingham, at the moment.

"Feels like it's been a century since I've seen you."

>ThatsBecauseItLiterallyHas.ogg

>Roasting Hops focused on her heart rate.

>She hadn't had to look normal in … about a century.

>Just like old times.

>Except where it's totally different.

>"I totally didn't expect to see you again. Like, after the argument last time."

>There hadn't been one.

>She'd gone to powder her nose and crawled out through the window.

"I've been thinking a lot about how we seperated."

>He barely moved. Still coiled like a snake, eyes following her face,

>they flicked to follow her hooves as she brushed her orange curls out of her way.

>She needed all the eyesight she could get. If this turned violent …

>"And working out, Anon. You don't look a day older."

>Don't mention it directly. Don't start this fight.

>She'd seen him drop royal guards like they were rotten hot-potatoes.

> Roasting Hops tried to sip her champagne.

>She barely noticed that she cracked the flute as she slammed it back to the table.

>"I suppose you're here to talk about our future."

> Still, his body didn't move as he replied

"I'd be just as happy to talk about the past."

>Finally he relaxed a little, his attention roving beyond Roasting's form.

> Anon eyed the plates on the table.

"In the future, your boyfriend is meeting you."

>He raises his eyes to yours, a hurt look coming to the fore.

"Pony stallion?"

>You nod.

>"Anon I …"

> never liked having your weird, gangly legs wrapped around me?

> Never wanted to date a cold blooded killer?

> Want to know what the effing tartarus caused us both to stop aging?

"I'm not here to force you into anything, Roastie. If you want to split up, let me know."

>There's a tear forming, now falling.

>But his expression has softened. He's said his piece; he's found his peace.

>"I was afraid." Her heart was thumping again.

>They had been Quicksilver for a decade and a half, and she never wanted it.

"I would have gone legit, for you. I thought that's what that dinner had celebrated."

>The other couple. She remembered now.

>They had met a pony stallion taking his lady friend out for a date.

>Human lady friend.

> Her eyes fell to the table, noting the weave of the tablecloth's silken pattern.

> Would it really have been that easy?

>"Now that I'm not a filly, I'm sorry I hurt you, those years ago."

>When she looked up, Anon was crying freely, though his expression was motionless.

>Cold, like the snake decorations of his dojo from the human lands.

>"Anon, you can write to me. Maybe … in enough years, I'll be available again."

>"But for now, I have a coltfriend, and he's"

>Right over there, politely waiting and looking out of place for it.

>OhCrapOhCrapOhCrap

>Anon's going to follow my eyes,

>then kill the competition,

>so that I'll be available NOW

>He follows her gaze and sees Upper Crust, looking out of place.

>Roasting Hops can't breathe.

>Anon looks back at her, and uses a quick head-tip to point at Upper Crust.

>Roasted Hops nods, once.

>Anon sits up straight, wipes his tears away.

>She realizes she had been holding her breath.

>She has read his body language; there won't be bloodshed over this.

"Can I … hug you?"

>Anon is almost choking, his tears still flowing.

>Humans are so strange some times. With their emotional displays especially.

>Roasting scoots her chair back from the table, hooves only lightly on its surface

>Anon jumps up, and steps around the table to embrace her.

>His sweat is fresh. Showered, then hustled through a job.

>The smell is identifiable. Too familiar.

>A picture of nights spent in ditches, hovels, and broken-into cellars.

>She isn't sorry to have a home.

>But she's sorry to have hurt the stallion, human though he is.

"I just wanted to save you. You seemed so scared, that first night."

>He means when they met, she realizes.

>"That was the morning, Anon. I was too drunk in the night to know …"

>He steps back, broad, flexible hands still on her shoulders.

"What did you think we were going to do? In my motel room and us both drunk."

>She didn't remember. She shrugged.

>Then she did. Her father had written a letter exculding her from the will.

>The family alcohol was wine, and he wouldn't tolerate a beer drinker.

>Aloud, she told him "I needed somepony to hug me. -

> "I guess I didn't care what else they touched."

>Like her sense of survival.

>He tried to smile, failed.

>Anon stood up, towering over her, then turned and walked out.

>Just like that. No odd gait, no looking back, no sniffling.

>But if the past century had taught her anything, it was she (and he, it seemed) was immortal.

>They could amend their fences later.

>If no one killed her.

>Or Anon.

>>328028

That wan pretty good. Tbh there's no reason for it to be green, really. I remember Unseen Equestria written in non-greentext format and was highly praised. The use of ponycreator pics + edits were downright creative and gave it the feel of canon.

>Stompy

God, I feel old. I remember writing a short fic about her during her inception in 4ch. Wonder if my pastebin is still up

>>328029

My favorite subject is Luna, dreamwalking.

Here's a clip from my CB piece..

||

I hear reports you're trafficking with terrorists. Not the best starting point for your defense, young pony.”

”Says the tyrant who repeatedly invades other universes to kill everyone you don't like, then transmogrify everyone else into a pacified, unquestioning slave.”

Luna's face was developing a very sour look, but Celestia chuckled. ”My ponies are happy, Fred Soleman. They'll live longer than any human ever would, and eventually I'll find out where you physically are, and I can simply turn you to stone. Some village will have a beautiful civic development and I can stop worrying about the damage you'll wreak while some terrorist that you claim isn't you tries to vaporize you.”

Luna spoke again, saying to Forest ”I suppose that is thine choice, then. Between becoming vapour, or becoming stone.”

The wanton threats handed out with a smile were too much, and Forest started to lose his cool. ”Look, lay off. You know I have contacts with the Human Liberation Front – well, my ponification wasn't an accident. I can make an army of alicorns. I can teach them how. You got lucky with the batponies and only have to browbeat one slave. What about when you're confronted with ten thousand? What about when all your ponies see you willfully destroying all humanity just because you're an overbearing tyrant?”

”Bat ponies what, now?” was Celestia's retort, turning now with a definite scowl towards Luna.

Luna was suddenly doing an impersonation of stone admirably well, grunting out through gritted teeth ”We wouldst prefer that thou hast said that not.”

To which Forest shrugged, as happy to have the heat off himself for a moment. ”I'm assuming something similar, with the griffons? How many of them can cast pony magic, by the way?”

That had exactly the wrong effect, as all four ears pricked completely at his words. ”Griffon magic?” Celestia's left ear rotated back as the gears turned, than pricked forward again. ”None.”

”Yeah, well. My first experience with a translation spell was a visiting griffon. And I saw him charm your fore runner guards too, making them forget about the burned village because he told them that they had seen a 'code majeste' out on the plains.” Forest started racking his brain for ideas. How does one wake up? He might just be unable to, until Luna released them from her special alicorn-talent.

The two sisters looked at each other meaningfully. And it was Luna that spoke after they had finished their private gaze. ”We canst offer thee a small concession. Bring George back to us, and we will offer thee asylum.”

Celestia waved a hoof to interrupt. ”What she's saying is we'll make a trade. Help us disable that immortal thorn in my side permanently, and I'll invent some story about having a baby brother.”

Forest rolled his eyes, despite being grateful he had a valid bargaining chip. ”Oh, you mean I can operate the royal nursery and order the earth ponies around so long as I don't leave my assigned building? What if I want to be the elder brother known for being something of a troublemaker and that's why I gave up the crown to my baby sister.”

Celestia's face hardened, and her horn illuminated brightly, a slight yellow tinge to it. Forest could actually feel heat coming off it from some ten feet distant as the princess squinted and growled ”If you make any alicorns, the deal is off. I am the unquestioned ruler of this nation, and its safety and happiness are solely MY domain.”

”Great!” Forest tried not to wince as the small sun started getting hotter. ”Two things we can agree on. I want no part of being considered competition, and I'd rather not teach those knuckle draggers how to make their own gods. But if you nearly vaporize me again, I'm siding with humanity.”

The next two seconds were fairly busy. The sun quadrupled in intensity, Luna warned ”Thou'rt all in dream.” in as dry a tone as ever Forest had heard, and Celestia bared her teeth. When she reached out to bite Forest, the sun flew off her horn, and went ahead of her, burning his flesh from his bones as it approached.

When enough of himself burned away, such that he should have died, he woke up instead.

Heck, if it helps keep the board alive, I won't lurk anymore.

>>327073

Came here from Google. Did not read thread. Used to post on 8ch, but fell out of the habit a while ago.

>>328040

Nice. Though, what's a CB?

>>328055

Conversion Bureau, otherwise known as "there IS no year seven" (Equestria collides with our universe, magic destroys human flesh. You can ponify but it dehumanizes you)

hi

>>328128

>hi

bye

Or did you just come by to say you got some xtc to go with your pony music? In which case, share your choice of music in the music thread! Keep your drugs, though, TBH.

>>328132

lel

>>328136

lel. I feel better shitposting from a computer rather than phone. Might continue drawing as well.

>>328148

>Also why does this place seem so dead?

It is. We're only zombies over here

>>328157

There is nothing about it on here.