Kipper [Diamond Dog] [Complete]

Kipper has an analytical mind and a deep appreciation for order and process. He loves figuring out how things work, hence his skill with machines and computers, and when confronted with a problem, he is most confident when he has time to put his mind to work. However, he is liable to panic when rushed or surprised, and can quickly become frustrated in the face of something that he cannot conceptually deconstruct.

On the other side of the coin, Kipper prefers not being understood by those around him – he feigns a poor grasp of grammar to give an impression of a less than keen intellect, and will often obscure his thought processes, going off on tangents or raising non sequiturs in an attempt to make himself seem unthreatening.

The incident in Stable 81 has taught Kipper that concordance – trust, respect, honour, compassion, stuff like that – is the key to a happy and stable society, but he has little genuine understanding of the concept. As a result, he’s liable to resort to shallow deference to defuse a potential situation, or even simply to gain someone’s favour.

Having learnt something of the war that devastated the world, combined with his cynical outlook, Kipper is distrustful of both ponies – whom he sees as violent, destructive egotists – and zebras – whom he sees as violent, destructive zealots. Also gryphons, who would kill their own grandmother for a handful of caps. And dragons, who would sooner eat you than give you the time of day. Come to think of it, he’s not really a fan of diamond dogs either.

Between the pony-zebra war and the Stable 81 incident, he has acquired something of a distaste for politics.

Once upon a time, in a hermetically sealed underground habitat buried somewhere beneath Equestria called Stable 81, there dwelt a two-tiered society of ponies, donkeys and diamond dogs. The menial tasks required to maintain society were handled by donkeys and diamond dogs, leaving the ponies to focus on the more academic pursuits.

One of these diamond dogs, Kipper, made a modest living by maintaining the Stable’s maneframe and miscellaneous mechanical equipment. He toiled away, fixing fridges and doors and complaining about the poorly conceived pony-designed operating system, and was largely ambivalent about the social unrest that had been bubbling beneath Stable 81’s figurative lid.

You see, not only had the rigid, tier-based society stunted Stable 81’s progress in pretty much every area (technological, cultural, political, and other things ending with “al”), but a few citizens of the “lower” tier were less than satisfied with the way they were being treated, or the way things were being run – there were a few different reasons, really, but they’d managed to congeal into a general, unified dissent, thanks largely to a diamond dog named Gruff.

Gruff was a cunning, opportunistic brute who saw the unrest for what it was, seizing its reins when it was still in its infancy and turning it into the unstoppable wrecking machine that was its ultimate state. Donny Hokey, a sycophantic security donkey with a knack for self-preservation, had been keeping an eye on him for some time; he’d recognised the dark glint of ambition and the charisma necessary to achieve it, and he was sufficiently savvy – and sufficiently interested in being on the winning side when things hit the fan – to ingratiate himself to Gruff early in the movement. Between them, they had eyes and ears all over the Stable and were easily able to set the inevitable uprising into motion.

The ponies, largely concerned with art, science, politics and philosophy, had seen the uprising coming months in advance but were completely unable to deal with it. Attempts to sabotage the movement’s growth through social engineering were cut down by Hokey’s machinations before they could take root, and attempts at appeasement could not contend with Gruff’s drive nor the trust his followers had placed in him. Finally, when the day came, they were woefully unprepared for the battle.

Kipper was picking up a dinner jacket from the dry cleaner’s as a favour for a friend, an easy-going and debonair earth pony artist named Avant Garde, when the shooting began. He hid behind a the counter and stayed there until the sounds of fighting died down.

Gruff led his dog and donkey forces against a pathetically overwhelmed opposition, slaughtering hundreds before capturing the overmare less than an hour after the first shot was fired. When the dust cleared, he and his followers seized control of the Stable, ostensibly creating a brighter society for the formerly oppressed donkeys and diamond dogs.

The last item in Gruff’s list of demands was to open the Stable door. To many of the donkeys and diamond dogs, the sinister, mysterious barrier that had remained closed for centuries had, under the perceived oppression, evolved into a symbol of the ponies’ power over them. Now, like that power, it would finally be cast off.

The outside world, despite being pretty much exactly what they’d been assured it was, took everyone by surprise. There was no hope out here, nowhere safe to go. But Gruff saw more: food, water, building materials. If ponies could live off the land in the old world before the Stable, then they could do it again.

Many of the surviving ponies were tasked with venturing out into the hellscape to gather anything useful. Some of those ponies decided they’d prefer to take their chances with the dead, poisoned world over their cruel taskmaster, and fled to forge new lives in the unknown. Some were simply killed by mutant beasts or raiders. Only a few returned, and they didn’t have much to show for their efforts: a small bag of potentially toxic berries, a couple of barrels of irradiated water, some torn and rusted salvage, and the agonising realisation that the overturning of their small civilisation was not the last card fate had hidden up its sleeve.

All the while, between the repair work and the mostly failed attempts to bypass the maneframe’s security systems, Kipper found himself asking any of the surviving ponies who would listen about his friend Avant Garde. He still had to deliver his dinner jacket, after all, even if it was a little dusty and worn. Days later, he caught the ear of one of the lucky ponies that had managed to return from the wastes. Turns out she’d known Avant Garde before all this had happened; in fact, she was with him and a few other friends when the shooting started. She got separated from her friends in the chaos, and hadn’t seen any of them since.

For weeks, Gruff proudly presided over his demesne like a lion over a fresh kill. Things didn’t really improve much over the previous state of affairs. Between the reduced rations, the re-emerging air of unrest, the lack of climate control and the looming threat of complete societal collapse – and perhaps other reasons – Kipper decided he’d had enough. Figuring that self-imposed exile was simpler to orchestrate than meaningful social change, he gathered up some supplies – his toolbox, a couple of weapons, a reappropriated security vest, Avant Garde’s now stretched and tattered dinner jacket, a few days’ worth of pilfered food and water – and fled into the devastated wilderness.

(Intermission)

After a few days of misadventures and a couple of near misses with the giant, floating head of death (that’s a metaphor), Kipper stumbled upon a strange-looking hollow tree stump in the middle of one of those grey deserts that seemed to be all over the place. He looked inside; there was a hatch, and beneath that was a hole and a ladder. He glanced around, instinctively checking to see if anyone was watching (no one was, of course), then hoisted himself in and climbed down.

Inside was maybe the second or third to last thing he was expecting: a fully furnished, three-room, underground apartment. There was a living room with a full, though somewhat disrepaired lounge suite, and even a radio! Which was broken. Adjacent was a kitchen – well, a small storeroom full of canned food. No shelves, even; everything was just kind of piled up on the ground. And over the other side was a small nook with a pillow and a couple of sheets on the dirt ground. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that fully furnished. But it was still far cushier than anything he’d hoped for!

First things first: he got to fixing that radio. Didn’t take too long – a couple of fried circuits that he fixed right up with his trusty soldering iron. He switched the thing on and was surprised to find a station broadcasting (frequency seemed a bit out, but mostly okay) – some pony playing old-timey tunes and harping about love and justice or something. Next, he started working on one of the tinned treats in the “kitchen”, but to his dismay, he couldn’t find a way to open them.

Some time later, after Kipper had partaken of every nook and cranny the subterranean hovel had to offer, he heard the hatch opening. Before he could react, an olive green unicorn mare with a cream-coloured mane and tail dropped down through the entrance, foregoing the ladder entirely. Something that looked like a mop handle whipped through the air around her and darted toward him with lightning speed, sweeping his legs out from under him and pressing its tip against his throat.

The unicorn demanded to know what he was doing in her home and why her radio was working. Through desperate spluttering, Kipper explained that he’d fixed it and that he hadn’t even stolen anything yet except for a few cans of food but he could put those back no problem. The unicorn raised her eyebrows and her mop handle. She introduced herself as Flash Point and offered to train Kipper in the art of the mop handle as thanks. Kipper gave her a strange look; he asked if the offer included lodgings for the duration of the training. When Flash Point said yes, he eagerly accepted.

And so, for a week and a half, Kipper lived with Flash Point in her underground hovel. He meditated and practised strikes and poise, but mostly Flash Point just beat him about the head with a length of wood. Somewhere along the line, he learnt a thing or two. One of those things was that the music on the radio gets old after a while; he almost wanted to break the damn thing again.

Then, one morning, just before lunch, Flash Point stopped beating Kipper about the head for a while. She told him that she could no longer train him until he had completed a quest. He was to venture forth into the wasteland and not return until he had found a working can opener. Once he had found this can opener, he was to return to her to complete his training. Kipper tried to convince her that he could fix her radio again or something, but she just kept hitting him in the head until he left.

So Kipper wandered the wastes once more, bearing the hostile elements and hiding from the even more hostile denizens, but he couldn’t find a single can opener. A little less than two days after leaving Flash Point’s tree stump, though, he found something that might be the answer to his disgruntled mutterings: a little haven carved out of the endless dangers of the wasteland. A town. Judging from the lack of skulls and entrails, it didn’t even look like a raider place. Swallowing his trepidation, he crept toward the outskirts, looking for a way to sneak in unnoticed.