Fallout Equestria: Tales of Chicacolt

Chapter 6: Discord's Day Out

"As Princess, I believe I have the power to spread the magic of [mustard] across [bagels]! That is the [lunch] I am meant to have in our world! The [brunch] I choose to have! But I didn't defeat [avocado] on my own. It took all of us to unlock the [fridge]!"

Discord here!

Ever since my release at the hooves of a meddling mare, I've not been myself. You might remember me as a veritable font of chaos, a world shaking king of the unexpected, a true paragon of the impossible.

But that was then.

Now the best I can do for myself is a free floating piece of luck. I had told Twilight that Equestria-that-was bored me, with friendship and harmony everywhere. Disgusting! But that was nothing compared to now.

To the cold peace. I'd had enough of that when I was a statue. Bombs fall, and everybody dies. Ponies and griffins, zebras and others. All those wonderful vibrant sparks of chaos snuffed out in an instant. I haven't been the same since!

So now I do what I can to keep things interesting. As time goes by, ponies are actually starting to recover, things are improving. One of the better places is Chicacolt. Out of the wreckage of the old, the gangs here have made a lovely balance between struggling groups and the fringes of their conflict are practically humming with wonderful chaos!

I'm feeling conventional today, so it's with hat and briefcase that I set off into the city as the sun rises. I've spent far too long putting ammunition here and bottlecaps there and filling floor safes with radroaches. Time to visit the Blustery City and see what sort of trouble I can get in. First stop – the spa!

The Lotus Triad is one of the groups that claims to ‘run’ this town, and they have the most bizarre setup. The public face of their organization is high fashion luxury services.

Take a moment and let that soak in. In the Wasteland, of all places!

But it works. They’ve got almost absolute dominion over the sport boys and call girls in Chicacolt, and those soft flanks hide hidden talents! Because the private face of the Triad is assassination. The same escort whispering sweet nothings into your ear and massaging your tensions away has a poisoned dagger tucked into her mane.

It’s elegant, I have to admit. So it’s with a jaunty smile that I step between the pages and arrive at their biggest spa. It’s astoundingly clean, the tiles on the floor are obviously scavenged from different sources but they’re all here, and they’re shiny clean. I flit about the various beauty supplies, and really this rack of bottles would do better with coat dye than with boring conditioner. The tops on all the pump bottles are facing the wrong way, by which I mean the same way. I’m busily unleveling one of the chairs when the front door opens. I’m instantly invisible, but not quite quick enough. A squeak and the door slamming tell the rest of the story, and I return to my good work as the mare flees.

The chair’s tilted at a jaunty angle and I’m considering the next step when the door slams open, and a screeching tornado of fury boils into the spa. I kiss Lotus Bloom right on her snarling lips and evaporate into the wind.

The air currents above the city are always good for some of that old fashioned atmospheric chaos. The sun warms the air, the air warms me, and I warm the people. Widening my course, I’m buoyed by a gust of hot sugary sweetness. That bears further investigation.

The hot happy wind leads me to a factory. I’ve seen this building quite a lot here in Chicacolt, it used to be a cart manufactory or something. Now it’s a bakery. But not just any bakery, it’s the apotheosis of bakeries. The home of the MMMM. These deadly fighters hold the city in fear of their iron hooves.

Or they were actually the best sweetsmakers in the Wasteland. Like the Lotus Triad, they had a public face. Theirs was usually covered in powdered sugar. Their other activities were a fairly boring protection racket, with one big difference. They actually protected. The Wasteland was a dangerous place, and probably always would be. The MMMM was Chicacolt’s first line of defense against raiders and monsters and whatnot. They were quite the bunch of goody-four-hooves, and should provide a fair bit of entertainment.

In through the chimney invisible, and out inside the shop in all my scaly glory. A crowd of ponies noticed me and fled screaming, leaving one lone figure standing at a chattering woobit of some purpose. The Moose.

I curled gently through the air, landing next to the burly figure. He turned his vacant gaze on me, and I struck a pose.

He blinked slowly, one eye at a time. I stared. He stared. Time rolled glutinously past, and I found myself entranced by his vacant stare. I focussed deep inside him, looking into his mind. Most ponies have a whirring clockwork of thought, mechanisms of intellect and structures. Inside The Moose, a field of grass. Green and vibrant, under a sun that beamed with love. Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt, and everyone was happy.

I blinked. Silently, The Moose turned back to his machine. I had to admit his victory in our staring contest, and whirled out of the building on a wisp of chocolate.

The MMMM had failed to entertain, though I filed away what I had seen in The Moose for later review. That had to be the most idealistic, the most optimistic pony I had ever encountered. A true outlier on the bell curve of conflict and suffering that was the norm here.

The air currents brought me down and around and through the ventilation system for one of the buildings that surrounded Theater. I stayed incorporeal and invisible just on general principles. The ducting and air mover dumped me into an auditorium and I drifted gently into a seat, sliding glutionously into solidity as I landed. There was a gaggle of foals in the front row, and a pudgy unicorn bashing a pointer on a blackboard. He had a boring grey mane and tail, and a pre war business suit that had seen a lot of better days.

He was ranting at the foals, smashing and bashing at the chalkboard passionately. Under the scars and smudges from his enthusiastic demonstrations I could read “CAPITALISM!!!” in large friendly letters. With three exclamation points. Clearly a sign of madness. Capitalism was a boring philosophy, anyway. It ended up with almost a complete static caste division between the haves and have nots. While there was a fun chaos in the strivings of the underclass scrabbling for money, and in the play of the dissipated overclass… It was at its core, predictable.

Boring.

I gave the unicorn a closer look. His grey mane and tail were immaculate, and the suit was spotlessly clean, even if it was old. His cutie mark peeked out from under the tails of the suit, a symbol for money I recognized from before the War. One of the students raised his hoof with a question, and he practically flung himself at the colt, fixing an intense gaze at the small pony. The youngster bore up under his intense scrutiny and barked out his question, and the unicorn actually squeed in joy.

Well at least his teaching technique was entertaining. I sat through a few minutes of lesson unnoticed. This guy was brilliant, actually. He had a firm grasp on the ebb and flow of money in a society. The only problem was, none of this would work for him here, where bottlecaps were found in trash bins and barter was barely better than battery. Hmmm.. bottlecaps.

I slid forward and thunked the podium standing ignored on one side of the raised stage. The grey on grey unicorn whirled and charged at it. A snap of the claw and bottlecaps exploded from the worn wooden structure, fountaining out in a stream that knocked the grey pony flying. I left him buried in a pile of bottlecaps and swarmed by happily screaming children, sailing straight through the ceiling on the wave front of his furious astonishment.

I grinned as I rose, feeling the boisterous chaos of the young ponies. Their lesson had been completely derailed. I let the wind take me as I rose above the city, and a wave of sound from the Colter Field arena caught my attention. The minotaurs were always good for a laugh, so I decided to drop in.

Today was an exception. Wrath, the leader of the minotaurs, was mopping the field with one of his subordinates. The poor kid couldn’t even put up a fight. I couldn’t have this, so I bounced off to the slab of pavement that formed the arena. Wrath shouted and pointed at me, but suddenly I had my good old boys backing my play. A squad of burly minotaurs in lovely pink tutus danced past me in a perfect wedge formation and piled onto Wrath. The kid took advantage of my distraction and leaped into the pile kicking and punching, so I made him twice as large as I slid away giggling.

Minotaurs. Gotta love ‘em.

I whirled away from Colter Field and went immaterial again. I hit the ground and walked for a while, watching the pones and other species go about their day. With my power so greatly bound by order, little things were all I was capable of. This mare went into heat. That minotaur grew moss in great green streams hanging off his horns. All the pre-war scrap metal in that cart became tin, useless and worthless unless you were making solder. Little things, they made me happy and I could feel them working. Could feel that old chaos building, choclatey warm and full of ice cubes in my belly.

The fat old sun touched the horizon, and for a moment I missed Celestia something horrible. The old grey mare certainly wasn’t what she used to be. I’d tried to enter the tall white towers that dotted the landscape… once. There was potent order worked into the bones of those elegant buildings, enough to stop me cold in my weakened state. Someday, though…

My wandering brought me to the entrance of Theater itself, and in. I sidled through the halls behind the public areas, a secret agent on a scaly mission. Secret Agent Discord kicked down the door to the office of the leader of the MMMM, and I burst in. Into the room, into visibility, into audibility, and into song. I belted out the intro to the old showtune, then looked down at my audience, and recoiled in shock. Apple Danish, hoofpicked successor to the seat of power, sat leaned waaay back in his leather chair, a picture of that pesky power-armored pegasus in one hoof and… ohhhh my.

The picture went flying into the air in one direction, Danish fell backwards in his chair, and I shot through the roof bellowing laughter. I perched on a cloud, actually surprised for once in a long time. Today was a good day. I poked the sun as it fell below the horizon and felt it wibble in response.

Tomorrow would be even better.