Harmony Lane [Finished]

She wanted to scream. Really loud for really long, scream for help, scream for mercy, scream for anything beneficial to happen. The shred of rational mind she had left working for her though stifled it with the depressing though that, Nopony will be coming. Kestrel works for a branch of the government that can outrank MoM Agents. Nopony will come if you scream.

As such eventually she stopped wiggling and trying to find a way to flee and went limp. She landed like a sack of potatoes, barely registering that she had landed not on some interrogation table or horrible device designed to extract her guts without killing her, but on a nice soft couch. Before he spoke it did occur to her. She pressed her forelegs into it and marveled at it's softness.

She looked up at the re-issuance of Kes's voice, just slightly trying to move away from him as he stared into her Goddesses damned soul. She did however nod, making only a scared squeak in reply.

Seeing his quarry nod the Gryphon shifted his gaze from her eyes to her cuffs, and with a quick working of talons and common sense the pathetic excuses for suppression devices were removed and set on the coffee table.

"Get yourself together rookie, I got questions." the big gryphon stated backing up a bit so that should the mare want to she could sit up and take the glass of water on the table before her.

He'd give her 1 minute before he began his interrogation.

Rookie? Sawdust looked incredulously at the water, eying it for the gentle swirl of alcohol or the faint grit of a dissolved tablet. Finding it to be apparently clean and really needing something to wash away the vomit punch taste in her mouth, the yellow and green mare grabbed it and gulped it down greedily. It was at that moment she realized how thirsty she really was, but she dared not ask for another.

Rubbing a hoof against her cheek in a vain attempt to clean it of tears she again looked at Kestrel, "What are you going to do to me?" She asked, sure in the idea he was still probably going to do something really horrible.

"You seem to know whats going on." Kes said, calmly picking up the glass, refilling it, and once again setting it on the coffee table when it was full. He had already tried the scare the shit out of her approach, time to see if he could ease some answers out of the young mare by being...nice.

"I want are answers. You seem to have 'em." he reaffirmed, waiting on her to finish he drink should she take it.

Sawdust lowered her head, shook it then turned her eyes on the gryphon, "I don't know anything." Her eyes spent a moment roving around the room, there was no way she could be sure of anything. Her voice gains a ragged tone, "Only that something is in my head, probably yours as well. It could be MoM, doing something to us," she flinches, "Wartime Weariness or something, but why would we all be awake for it! Walking around. Something is wrong. Something we are all experiencing together. I tried what I could but I'm no unicorn, I can't just magic up a solution."

She pouts with a distressed look in her eyes as her ears draw back. Her voice wavers briefly, "I... I keep seeing things. Things that hurt before the world goes back to this 'normal'," she pauses then almost at a whisper and with great distance to the word, "Ruins." One eye flutters as the Other of the world tries to remove the thought from her. "It must be MoM. Only they would do this to somepony, put them in someplace and take away their minds! I'm going to wake up brain dead at this rate!" Sawdust bows her head, her disheveled locks falling over her face as she begins to cry. She couldn't fathom why she'd imagined that was what would happen. The thought of dying in some fake world made up by MoM and their agents so they could scramble their brains was more than she could handle.

Kes nodded and stepped back a bit, looking at the mare as she cried. Well damn, that worked a bit to good. Kes had been hoping to get more out of the mare before she broke like that.

He stood and moved through his apartment and grabbed a towel from his bathroom; which reflected the spartan nature of the rest of his apartment.

He returned to the living room and tossed the towel on the couch next to Sawdust's shuttering form. Kes did not comfort people, he couldn't. He figured it was best to just let the mare cry herself out then try all this again.

As he waited he went and grabbed a two glasses and a bottle of whiskey from his cabinet, pouring himself a glass and taking a seat at the tiny little coffee table. He'd sip the drink every so often, the burn helping him think.

MoM didn't have the tech to do this kind of indoctrination that Kes knew of but what did he know? He was just a high ranking grunt with a rifle and a lot of connections.

This was strange. It didn't sit right with him. The memories from before, at the party...those were real. Not faked like this world was. So why couldn't he break the damn illusion?

Sawdust didn't recover for a while, crying out sometimes too a long time to do and Sawdust was taking her time at it. As she cried she worked the towel through her mane, an act done completely on autopilot. The curls of her mane popped back into place as they became dry as if they had never been mussed up in the first place. Finally after nearly ten minutes of awkward silence she looked up again, eyes red, "W-was that it?" She put the towel aside and stared at Kestrel, "What about you, what do you know?"

"I think." Kes stated, taking another long sip of his whiskey. And thats just what he was going to do. Think. Think of ways to break the illusion he knew he was active. Think of ways to figure out what was real and what was a dream. Think of ways to get back to normal.

The bottle of whiskey and a spare glass sat silently on the table as Kestrel stared off into the distance. His cold predatory eyes flaring up with fire and ice as his thoughts raged inside his mind.

Kira had been just watching in a confused horror when Cross ordered the arrest and the Steel Ranger stated to get to work arresting everyone at the party. This was something that would not happen in any place it was wrong in so many levels, maybe this was as Sawdust had said noting was really it just made more and more sense why would place be like this.

This was not real, none of this was real everything in this world was a lie a fabrication. The gryphoness could feel her memories of her real life in the wasteland return to her, the battle, her home gone, she leaving Stabeton, this group and her exploring the ruins of Manehattan then nothing, then it was only Harmony lane. But everything in this place had felt wrong, different, strange really. It was the little thing that had added up to the big things which had finally broken this false this reality. She felt a sucking and woshing sensation and a blinding white light filled her vision as the basement and the world around her faded away in to a another world.

Kira open her eye with a gasp, she found her self in what she could simply explained as a pod. She could see several other pods with a single monitor in front of her that was black except of a text.

[Error]

[Simulation ... Harmony Lane ... Have encountered an Error]

[Contacting Support]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[Connection could not be established]

[Simulation Terminated]

[Please Contact Support]

Kira was not sure what this mean but the pod that she was in as well as the other pods around her opened showing it inhabitants all being or beginning to wake up from what she now knew had been a simulation of pre-war Equestria. She got slowly out of the pod and noticed that her saddle bag as well as several other were placed in the corner of the large oval room that held many of the pods like chambers that she had just gotten out off. She walked on unsteady legs and picked up her saddle bag and tired to get her mind around what had just happened.

What ever the simulation pods had been for but they had somehow been able to break the program Harmony Lane which forced it to end returning their minds to the real world and the wasteland. Still was that a good thing. The simulation had made them happy and have had a life with out the horrors of the wastes, was it really that bad to be lost in a false world of happiness or the real world of horror? Kira was not smart enough to think about this instead she simply secured her saddle bag on her back and went over to help the other that where waking up before leaving this strange place of dreams and questions.