Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 17: Identity

Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 17: Identity
"It's all secrets and lies with those ponies!!"
I'm starting to wonder: am I still Blackjack? Sure. My cutie mark is the same queen and ace. I have the same security barding, modified and very patched up though it is. I'm still not the smartest pony and I have a terrifying habit of stringing together half-baked ideas on the fly and calling them a plan. I'm still as mule-headed as ever; that will never change.
But since I've left the stable, I've killed ponies. I did that before, too, only I painted it with colorful euphemisms like 'taking out of service' and 'defending myself to their death'. Now, I just killed, plain and simple, with shotgun and carbine and fire axe and my bare hooves if I needed to. I was also more concerned with survival. In Stable 99, everypony knew that the stable was one hard sneeze from failure. Now I had ponies that would kill me for bottlecaps. Heck, even the very land itself would kill me. There was already a time bomb inside me that might finish me, or maybe mutate me and then kill me.
Still, at least spending most of my time almost dead made the few poor bits I had left feel a lot better. Relatively.
There have been changes in me, too. I think a little more. I know that I'm still not a smart pony, though. I just don't know things. I don't pick up on them as I should. I can shoot things and hit things and that's about it.
I find that I care a little more. It's funny to think of myself as less callous outside the stable than inside it, but it's true. I feel bad for ponies who are trying to kill me; how crazy is that? They're trying to kill me, and I feel bad for them about it.
...Maybe it's not that I'm changing. Maybe I'm just realizing that the pony who lived in that stable wasn't who I thought she was. But if she wasn't... then just who is she?

* * *

It would take us a while to get down from the top of the Exchange. Walking wasn't the problem; my legs were strong enough, and Deus's final moments had knocked down so much of the walls that we had plenty of slopes we could scramble down. The problem was simply summoning up the will to stand and make our way to the streets below. While I kept staring out at the rain P-21, ever practical, went to dig out Taurus and check his belongings. I couldn't fault him for that; some scavenger would come by sooner or later for them. The duffel bag carried a few missiles and a few dozen rounds for his hunting rifle.
I had to admit, that rifle was a beautiful weapon. The stock was made of well-worn and oiled tan wood with a brand of a bull on the stock. The action slid like silk, with only the softest rasp, and the scope was cleaner and truer than my assault carbine. I ejected the clip, looking at the armor piercing rounds that had tried to bring down the technomagical monster and failed. I'd done no better. In the end, it was P-21's bomb and Gem's sacrifice that had mortally crippled Deus, and his own weapons that had finished him.
I had so many reasons to be happy for his death, so why wasn't I? I doubted that any bounty hunters would be after me now that he'd been finished off. Heck, technically this made me a Reaper. Nopony would mess with me now, right? He'd violated my stable and made my life a living hell with the price he'd placed on my head. He'd threatened my friends and mocked a mortally wounded Mini. So why wasn't I dancing in the street right now and singing 'ding, dong, the Deus is dead!'?
"I dunno," answered the old pale horse sitting beside me on the ledge, slowly working the cards between his hooves as he looked at me with his sad, milky old eyes.
"Shut up. I'm in no mood for crazy right now," I said softly as I closed my eyes.
"I reckon not, but here I am," he chuckled.
I rubbed my eyes, then glanced over at him again. The cards hissed softly between his hooves. "What is this supposed to accomplish? I get it. Taint is driving me nuts. So what's with all the spooky little card metaphors?"
He just smiled and shook his head. "Oh, well, us hallucinations need to do something to keep things interesting. Otherwise, some ponies just don't think," he said as he dealt five cards to me and five to himself. "You know why you're not happy, don't you? Deus wasn't exactly the brains of the operation, was he?"
Don't look... don't look. "No. Sanguine, and whoever is employing him." I sighed. He'd told me to listen to the recordings and I had.
The cards were right in front of me; I couldn't help myself. I slowly picked them up, looking at the spread. I didn't have any idea what game we were playing now. A pink mare with a curly mane was balancing on a ball on the edge of a cliff, a cupcake on one hoof and a present on the other. A white alicorn grasping a pair of scales with a sad expression. A pair of red eyes peeking out of a cage of nine swords. An empty bottle of Wild Pegasus with eight upside-down shot glasses on a bar with a mare silhouetted in a doorway. A purple mare hanging by her rear hoof from a rusted street light.
"I think I got a flush," I muttered, glancing at him. "Why can't my fucking broken brain just play things straight for once?"
"You tell me. It's your brain," the old buck chuckled as he put down his spread next to mine. A moon overlooked by a sad young black alicorn. A handsome unicorn buck smiling, his mane and horn bright yellow. The black towers of Hoofington wreathed in green light. Six swords piercing the clouds with upturned blades. A yellow pegasus with long, beautiful pink hair sitting before a pool and hugging a strange little blue and green ball in her hooves. I couldn't tell if the card was upside down or not.
"I'm sure that this is all fascinating and chock-full of meaning and mystery, but you should know that I'm not a smart pony. I don't get stuff like this." I sighed, closing my eyes. "I don't understand anything anymore. Why can't I do anything? I can't protect Glory. I can't make everything right with P-21. I can't understand Rampage. I can't even be happy that one of my enemies is dead." I slowly lay back, rubbing my face with my hooves. "And to top it all off, I'm having conversations with crazy hallucinations that give me mysterious, creepy cards."
"Blackjack?" Glory asked softly, "Who are you talking to?"
"Just myself, Glory." I sighed, looking over and seeing that he was gone. I sat up and looked at her again. Her eyes were dull and lost. What could I ask? 'Are you okay?' Of course she wasn't. 'How are you feeling?' She was miserable. Finally, I sighed, stood, and walked to her. "What can I do to help, Glory?"
"You can't call me that anymore," she replied softly.
I closed my eyes, wishing that I could turn her elder sibling into a feather duster. "You don't have to listen to her, Glory."
"I have four sisters, Blackjack," she said. "Dusk is the oldest. Then Moonshadow. Then me. Lucent and Lambent are younger. My father lives on his pension through the Enclave. Dusk is an Enclave security officer. Moonshadow is in research. Lu and Lamb are in Enclave schools. Do you know what a family member turning Dashite will do to them?" she asked. I shook my head dumbly. "My father will be forced to disown me publicly. Maybe he already has. Otherwise, he loses his home, his income, everything. My family would be forced to live on some feral cloud near the Everfree Forest, or worse, come down here to survive! Moonshadow might have been bumped from whatever project she's working on. And I know the kind of trouble Lu and Lamb are getting from their classmates."
"How can they do that? How can the Enclave betray you but be so hard on pegasi strong enough to walk away from that?"
"Walking away isn't strong!" she snapped back at me. "Sticking it out, backing your fellow pegasi, doing what must be done... that's strength," she said firmly. "The Enclave didn't betray me; Lighthooves did. And every single time some pegasus goes Dashite they completely destroy everything Rainbow Dash wanted to do. Like they decided to drop her loyalty and courage and become the greatest egotists of the pegasi.
"There was one a few years back, a real high profile case. Deadshot Calamity. A legend in the security forces, the kind of pony who could have really forced the council to engage with the surface. He gets an audience in front of the pegasus council. Does he call for opening contact with the surface? No. Does he say we should trade food and medicine to the surface? No. Instead, he spends half an hour calling the entire council cowards, featherbrains, and negligent murderers. Then, when his wing went looking for him to beg him to reconsider, he killed them!" she shouted and stamped her hooves. "That featherbrained idiot almost singlehoofedly destroyed ten years of work getting the Volunteer Corps established!
"So I know just how damaging what Lighthooves did was. And every time there's a report mentioning 'the Dashite Morning Glory', Dusk's career falls a little more behind. Every time a news release talks about Dashites, Lambent and Lucent will suffer the mutters and glares of their classmates. The only way my family gets to have any real peace is if I'm dead. Dusk gave me a choice: die for pretend or die for real."
"Your own sister would kill you?" The idea chilled me; it was like me killing Mom.
"She was going to before you stopped her," Morning Glory replied softly. "But she gave me a choice instead, and that was generous of her."
"So you're giving up?"
"Of course I'm not giving up. I have to find some way to stop Lighthooves and expose him and what he's doing. Not because he wronged me, but because he wronged the Enclave! I can't believe that he's operating with the blessing of the pegasus council. And if I can prove my loyalty and clear my name, then maybe I can be Morning Glory again." She sat up and sighed. "Till then, I'll have to be somepony else," she said as she stood, looking out at the drizzling rain.
"Morning Glory..." I said softly, looking at her. At her burned-away cutie mark and that pale brand on her flank. Did losing your cutie mark change you? Had it changed P-21, or was there a unique mark underneath the spell 99 had put on his flanks?
"Fallen Glory," she corrected quietly. Then she looked at me with a sad smile as the rain dripped off her purple mane. "I think it's a Dashite-esque enough name. And besides, you can still call me Glory. You and P-21 are the only ones that really do."
"Glory... you don't have to do this," I whispered, looking into her hurt eyes. Just like Mini's. I couldn't shake the thought that this was some kind of suicide, bloodless but no less wrong.
Her lips trembled as she closed her eyes. "It's better this way. What did I have left that was Morning Glory's, anyway? My career and reputation are gone, my family is ruined, my sister wants to kill me, and I don't even have my..." She clenched her eyes and teeth in a hiss of pain. I couldn't tell what was rain and what was tears anymore. She drew a shaky breath. "All I have are my friends. That's more important to me than any name." Her round, wet eyes stared up at me, begging me to accept it. Accept her.
What could I do? Everything about this felt wrong... but... I put my hooves around her and murmured, "If this is what you really want, Fallen..." She gave a little sob; it wasn't, but it was what she thought she had to do.
When she stopped crying, I took a deep breath and gave her a look of stoic determination. "I also have to confess something. A grave and dark secret from my past. Something I've not told anypony..." I said, watching her eyes get round as she braced herself. I took a deep breath. "My name... The secret, true name of the Security Mare... is... Go Fish."
She blinked at me in confusion, and then I let out a snirk and curled my lips in a smile. She let out a hiccupping little giggle. Then another one. Finally we both broke out in laughter. "I guess you had a really big aquarium in 99, huh?" she said as she gasped for air.
I just smiled and nuzzled her forehead. She didn't get the joke; she was still my Glory, no matter her name.