art by Ric-M

This week, I give you the next part of "Origin Story".

Again, "Origin Story" was originally conceived of then abandoned as a fanfiction. Now, it has been reincarnated as part of a Fallout: Equestria tabletop roleplaying adventure. Each segment that I post consists of a report by Daring Do while on a mission for wartime Equestria, followed by a few pages of rough draft for a Daring Do prequel, intended to be used as a cryptography OTP. (And yes, as I said in my blog "The One in the Arena", several pages of narrative fiction would make for a far from ideal OTP, you're absolutely right. But it's a framing gimmick. And besides, this is the universe of Fallout: Equestria, where a wasteland pony with sufficient know-how, a lab coat and a tin of Mint-Als could hack Twilight Sparkle's personal terminal... cryptography was clearly not the ponies' most advanced science. ) Each of these "pads" amounts to the most crucial part of what would have been a story chapter.

Enjoy!

In case you missed it, here is the previous pad: Origin Story (Prologue & Framing) Oh, and please let me know if you stumble across any Word Crimes in this writing. Nothing here has been through a proper editor.

vector by Divebomb5

Second mission report.

Look around you. Where you’re standing is a symbol of all that’s wrong with this whole damn war. This place used to be Phantasy Sinema, one of the first outdoor cinemas in the zebra lands. Part of the great cultural exchange – they gave us drugs, we gave them movies.

I remember my first outdoor cinema… flying my own little cloud up, parking it front and center. I remember the kid who put his cloud right above mine kept dropping popcorn on me. But I didn’t care. I was too captivated by the huge silver screen and the adventures of Noir and Lace.

Now this place is a staging ground for the Legion. No zebra parents take little zebra colts and fillies here anymore. No images light up the grey screen. Instead, there are robots and missile trucks and military zebras everywhere. (I spotted a whole squad of them wearing wing-talismans; just flying isn’t enough of an edge in the Basin anymore. Fortunately, I’m more than just a pair of wings. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.)

It’s like we all woke up one day and decided we’d been too happy for too long and the world needs to suck now.

From here, they could secure Mwanzo Mpya in minutes, and they have enough forces to conquer Tragedy’s End. Or obliterate it. But I don’t think Equestria is their target. At least, not directly.

I still haven’t found out what they are doing yet. That’s going to require an excursion much deeper into the jungle. But I have discovered that this operation is under the leadership of Legate Jua. (Figures that striped witch would end up a Legate; I wonder how many corpses she had to climb to get there.) And knowing her, I’m willing to bet she’s not in the Basin for kicks. Whatever she’s up to, it probably involves the Amulet. Fortunately, even if she’s found where it’s locked away, I doubt she has what it takes to get to it.

Of course, it could have nothing to do with the Amulet at all. The Tenochtitlan Basin has enough other secrets that she could be after. One way or another, the Legion is taking a very unhealthy look at the ruins. Dash was right: this spells trouble for Equestria. Maybe for everyone.

And now, the pad. I tried the introduction in a more formal style, but it just isn’t the way I write. Still, it really works for what I feel I need to convey. So I figure maybe I should split the difference. Start each chapter with a lead in, then change to something more comfortable.

Let’s try that. Here goes: rough draft, chapter one, take one…

Second Pad Begins

Second Pad -- a rough draft excerpt from Chapter 1: A Most Peculiar Dinner I first met A.K. Yearling in the sweltering summer ten years before the return of Nightmare Moon. I had just completed my first year at the Baltimare University, where I was attending on a full athletics scholarship. I had also been fortunate in that my high school had offered cooperative credit courses with the University, allowing me to start college with several of my general studies requirements already completed – primarily writing and arithmetic, the former because I took every class in it that I could and the latter because I made the effort to get those studies out of the way as swiftly as possible. As a result, I was able to delve into the professional curriculum for my true passion – archeology – as early as the second half of my first year. And this allowed me to join Professor Underhill’s summer travel study. I was one of five students privileged to join Professor Underhill and his teaching assistant Packer on their trip to the zebra city of Bahari Soko. A.K. Yearling’s godfather, Goldentongue, was the current Equestrian Ambassador to the zebra nation, and invited us all to dinner at the ambassadorial manor in Mwanzo Mpya. ~-------~ oOo ~-------~ Severed and stuffed animal heads gazed down from their mountings, the faces of previous ambassadors and their families stared out from the portraits lining the walls, a trio of flies danced in the air above a table filled with fruits, breads and thickly-veined greens, and Daring Do was experiencing the strangest conversation yet in her life. Professor Underhill accepted a refill of wine from Mhudumu, Goldentongue’s zebra manor-servant, as he patiently tracked the conversation at the table. Like most of the other student-archeologists, Daring Do was being reserved, not wanting to commit some unexpected cultural faux pas within her first night outside of Equestria. But next to her, Fleetwing was bombarding the ambassador with enough questions for the rest of them. Daring Do wasn’t sure if he was just that eager to learn as much as he could during this extraordinary opportunity, or if he was trying to impress someone. Probably, Daring Do thought, a little of both. As for herself, Daring Do just couldn’t keep her eyes on the young mare sitting at the far end of the table. At the end of the table sat a pretty mare – a pegasus like herself and about her age – hidden behind a flower dress and a pith hat. Daring Do’s mother had once told her wearing hats at the table was rude. Maybe it was different in the zebra lands? She opened her muzzle, but her brain locked, unable to find a polite way to ask. So instead she closed her mouth again and just watched her. Or, that was, she tried to. But it was like her attention just kept slipping off of her. Everything else seemed so fascinating. Still, Daring Do decided to strike up a conversation when she noticed nopony else was paying the mare any attention at all, not even on the rare occasions when she spoke. Worse, there was something sad about the way she talked, as if she’d already given up on being heard. Daring Do, having never been particularly social herself, decided she wasn’t going to let the girl be alone in a room full of ponies. She had only gotten as far as “Hello” and “I’m Daring Do, what’s your name?” when the blurting of yet another random question from the pegasus beside her yanked away her attention. “What’s that hanging over the fireplace?” Fleetwing asked between mouthfuls of cheese, pointing a hoof towards the slender metal pipe with a wooden stock mounted over the mantle of a walk-in fireplace, beneath the four trophy hydra heads. A carved horn hung beneath it, the end of the pipe bowed out like a bell, and there were odd mechanical pieces to it. Daring Do found herself looking towards the strange thing, her own curiosity welling inside her. Goldentongue smiled. “Ah. That’s a blunderbuss.” His horn glowed with yellow light as he lifted the thing from its mounting and floated it over the table towards Fleetwing, offering a closer look. “It’s a zebra weapon, essentially a small cannon. You fill it with explosive powder from the powder horn, stuff in a metal ball, steady your aim with a forehoof and fire it with the mouth-brace.” Goldentongue gently rotated the blunderbuss before Fleetwing and Daring Do before letting it settle into Fleetwing’s eager hooves. “Is that safe?” Professor Underhill asked the ambassador in a hushed tone. Goldentongue assured him that without being filled with the powder, the weapon was as harmless as a lead pipe. Daring Do and the other students joined Fleetwing in examining the strange zebra weapon. She wanted to know what sort of monster it was designed to protect against; the only cannons she had seen before were used for parties, and the need to weaponize one struck her as alarming. But Fleetwing had already launched into a dozen questions about how it was made, how it worked, and if he could get one to take home to his uncle who could totally make an even better one. Mhudumu brought out a bowl of branches laden with what looked like orange grapes. Daring Do once again turned to the mare at the end of the table. “What’s your name?” she asked, then immediately regretted it. There was a slightly pained look in the mare’s eyes, a touch of a frown on her muzzle, which told Daring that she had already given her name. Daring had been too distracted to hear it. “Just call me A.K.” the girl said with a meek and slightly weary tone. Daring winced, mentally kicking herself. She promised herself to get the mare’s full name soon, and to use it. But for now... “Is it used for hunting?” one of the other students, Bluebell, managed to slip in. “It sounds like it would be really noisy.” Daring Do’s attention was once again pulled back to the blunderbuss and Goldentongue. The mare named “A.K.” momentarily forgotten, Daring Do silently thanked Bluebell for getting in the question she herself had wanted to ask. “The blunder is more for defending,” Mhudumu explained, entering the conversation for the first time. He looked to Goldentongue, who nodded approvingly. “Its thunder monsters find offending.” “These lands are full of dangerous creatures,” Goldentongue added. “The forests to the south are even wilder than the Everfree back home, and manifested spirits roam freely, especially in the jungle just beyond this village.” He floated the blunderbuss out of Fleetwing’s hooves and set it back on its mounting. “A lot of monsters, timberwolves for example, can be frightened off by loud noises when they cannot be fought off.” Daring Do made another attempt to strike up conversation with A.K., asking about the foreign fruits and leaves. The mare blinked (was she surprised that Daring Do was still trying to talk to her?) and began to answer. But she’d barely said a few words when a coughing fit from Fleetwing tore away Daring’s attention. Fleetwing had finally stopped questioning long enough to munch the strange, vein-y leaves that comprised the meal’s main course, and was quickly downing a glass of water, tears in his eyes. (“I warned you they were a little spicy,” the mare in the flower dress and pith hat said softly. Only, it wasn’t really that she said it softly, Daring thought later that night, so much as the words felt oddly inconsequential.) A flash of irritation passed through Daring Do. She took pride in being focused. The first few times seemed like coincidence, but now she was beginning to feel as if somehow the world was actively conspiring to keep her from having a conversation with this mare. Frowning to herself, she made another attempt. “So, A.K., how long have you lived with Goldentongue? I noticed you weren’t...” Daring Do stopped. She had been about to say that she had noticed the young pegasus mare wasn’t in the portrait of Goldentongue and his family. But as she looked across the table at the picture – Goldentongue and his wife standing in front of the ambassadorial manor – she realized that there was a third figure standing in front of them. There always had been. But, for some reason, A.K.’s image was oddly de-saturated, as if there was a fault in the film, and it made her difficult to see. The young Daring Do stared. And for a moment, she was struck by the thought that someone or something had taken a pencil and tried to erase A.K. from the picture. Professor Underhill had meanwhile seized the opportunity to delve into professional matters with the ambassador. “I had really hoped that, after the trip to the Bahari Soko museum, you could help me get the permits for an expedition I was hoping to make into the Tenochtitlan Basin next summer,” he said brightly. (Fleetwing was staring pleadingly at Mhudumu as the zebra poured him a new glass of water.) “You hope to find the Tree of Life, yes?” Goldentongue asked with a chuckle. “You are hardly the first. But permissions have gotten harder. The new local primi ordines, a rather ambitious mare named Jua, is making an issue over Equestrians rescuing Tenochtilian antiquities. Apparently, she believes leaving them to rot in the jungle is more respectful than putting them in a proper museum.” Daring Do joined the other students in voicing frustration and disapproval. Bluebell rolled her eyes, proclaiming, “Well that’s just silly!” “What’s the Tree of Life?” a teary-eyed Fleetwing managed to wheeze between gulps of water. Goldentongue steepled his hooves and looked to Professor Underhill with a smile. The professor jumped to explain, “Have you ever been to the Equestria Games?” he asked. When Fleetwood nodded, he went on. “Then you’ve seen the ice archery competitions. Ever wonder where those arrows come from?” Daring Do, as much as she wanted to try to talk to A.K., knew she couldn’t miss paying attention now. She had no idea what ice archery had to do with the Tenochtitlan Basin, but if Professor Underhill was planning an actual archeological expedition next summer, she wanted in! “There are plenty of spirits in the zebra lands, some of which are very powerful. We all know about manifested spirits, but sometimes spirits inhabit natural things..." “Like how nature spirits inhabit wood, making timberwolves?” Bluebell asked. The professor nodded. “...and like how a powerful spirit of cold and hate, like a windigo, can make its home within a tree,” Underhill explained, “There is a grove of such trees just southwest of this village. The trees change to reflect the spirit that has fused into them. The wood, if you can really call it wood anymore, from those trees is used to make ice arrows.” “And the Tree of Life?” Daring Do asked, finally getting a question of her own. “A tree with some sort of life spirit? What would that be like?” “Yes!” Professor Underhill announced with a touch too much enthusiasm. “Based on my research, such a tree exists deep in the Tenochtitlan jungle. And I believe that the fruit of the tree would add years to a pony’s life. A veritable fountain of youth!”

Second Pad Ends

Crap. I’ve got to be losing my touch. That would have to be the most boring start of a Daring Do book ever.

Origin Story:

Origin Story (Prologue & Framing)

Origin Story (Part One)

Origin Story (Part Two)

Origin Story (Part Three)

Origin Story (Part Four)

Origin Story (Part Five)

Origin Story (Part Six)

Origin Story (Part Seven)

Origin Story (Part Eight)

Origin Story (Epilogue)