Same Shit, Different Wasteland

Diplomatic Relations

The mare glared at the man as Busy Bee pulled the cart back to Cherry Hill Ranch.

“I hate you.”

“Really?” Thomas asked flatly, wincing a little as he adjusted his seat. “And I just thought you enjoyed punching me in the balls.”

“It’s because of you that I’m out here in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere!”

The man snorted in amusement. “I’ll have to remember that one. And how is it my fault?” he asked.

“Those unicorn fucks took me because they thought I knew where you went!” Moonbeam yelled.

“And you didn’t say anything?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” the mare replied hesitantly. “I mean, it’s not like it was a secret or anything.”

“So if you told them, why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Moonbeam groaned in exasperation.

“We’re nearly there!” Busy Bee panted.

“Good.” Thomas turned back to Moonbeam. “Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you got caught up in this.” When she just scowled at him, he sighed. “Well, I tried.”

“Everypony at the Library either thinks I’m dead, enslaved or brainwashed by Unity,” she pointed out. “Those bastards got me at least ten days ago, and - ”

“Ten days?” he questioned, interrupting her. “It took two whole weeks to get here.”

“I don’t know, okay?” she asked back harshly. She barely glanced at the sign to the old farm as they passed beneath it. “Look, I just want to get back to Manehattan and let everypony know I’m not dead or worse, okay?”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option.” Moonbeam turned to the voice and let out a scream as she scooted as far away as she could. “Ma’am?” the Ranger asked.

“Courier?” the mare hissed. “What is that Ranger doing here?”

“He’s helping.”

“Helping with what!?” she asked, looking at the Ranger fearfully as the armoured pony tilted his head in confusion.

“Taking back Dodge.”

Moonbeam blinked. “Wait wait wait. Rangers are helping wastelanders?” she asked, sounding incredibly confused. “What the fuck?”

“Most of us were raised in the town,” the closest Ranger explained, stepping closer now that he was sure that Moonbeam wasn’t going to have a panic attack. “We even give ponies who want to join a fair chance.”

Moonbeam blinked again. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Those unicorns that abducted you have taken over the town. I need to get in, the Rangers want to retake the town…” Thomas shrugged as he jumped out. “One thing led to another.”

“I… I give up,” Moonbeam muttered, throwing her forehooves into the air. “You don’t make any sense. This whole situation doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, it makes sense. You just need to look at it differently.”

Moonbeam shot a glare at the man. “How about you shut up?”

“What’s all the noise?” Thomas turned around and saw another Ranger in full armour approach them.

“Hello, Elder.”

“I sent you two out on recon. Why have you come back with a cart and a mare?” the pony asked.

“It was all his idea!” Busy Bee shouted, pointing a hoof at the Courier.

“I saw three of them pulling this and thought there might be something valuable,” the man explained in his defense.

“So where did she come from?” the power armoured pony asked. “And who are you, anyway?”

“I-I’m Moonbeam, from Manehattan,” Moonbeam said uneasily. Then she pointed at Thomas. “And it’s his fault I’m here.”

Under his mask, Thomas rolled his eyes. “No, it’s those unicorns in their shiny armour that took you. I rescued you just now.”

“The only reason they took me is because they knew I spent time with you,” Moonbeam said angrily. “So it is your fault.”

“Isn’t it your fault for being around me?” the man asked back.

“Excuse me, but does this really matter?” the Elder asked, looking at the pair in annoyance. Then she focused at Moonbeam. “You’re here now, so I advise that you cease your complaining and get out of that wagon so you can lend a hoof.”

Moonbeam gaped at the Ranger for a moment. “I-I’m sorry, but who are you to think you can boss me around?”

“I’m Elder Cherry Blossom and these ponies are under my protection. So, shut up and do as you’re told. We do not have time for insubordination or whining. I have a town to liberate,” the elder said pointedly. “Of course, we could just leave you in there and take you back to the ponies that abducted you.”

“No! No!” The threat worked as desired, making Moonbeam jump out of the cart so fast she landed on her face. “Ow...”

“Busy Bee, take that down near one of the sheds,” the Elder instructed the pegasus. “We’ll find something to do with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hey, wait!” Moonbeam yelled as she righted herself. “All my stuff is in there!”

“Then I suppose you had best remove it,” Cherry Blossom told her rather blandly.

“What crawled up your tailhole and died?” the unicorn asked angrily as she retrieved her belongings.

“Maybe the fact that the town my Rangers and I are meant to protect was taken by those marauding assholes? Or that we lost three dozen, making it harder to take Dodge back? Or that the trust I had gained is being chipped away day by day?” She snorted. “And I thought the Manehattan chapter were stupid.”

“I’m sorry, okay, but it’s not a reason to act like a massive bitch,” Moonbeam retorted, saying the exact wrong thing. Thomas bowed his head in frustration at the mare’s idiocy.

“It’s plenty of reason, you little shit!” Cherry Blossom yelled, finally snapping. “I suggest you shut up before I get a pair of powerhooves and skullfuck you with them!”

“Moonbeam, you fucking idiot,” Thomas said as he picked Moonbeam up around the barrel. He ignored the mare’s protests as he put a hand over her mouth before she could say anything else that might get her shot. “Never piss off someone in power armour.”

Though the mare couldn’t answer, she still turned to look up at him in disbelief.

“Get her out of here before I decide to shoot her,” the Elder growled.

“Gladly.”

The man proceeded to carry Moonbeam away from the enraged Elder before depositing her on the ground. He then smacked her on the back of the head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What the fuck was that for!?” she shouted.

“Oh, I didn’t know you wanted to be target practice,” Thomas said loudly. “I’ll just take you back to the Elder and - ”

“No!”

“Then shut the fuck up and listen.” He kneeled down so they were face-to-face. “You need to not antagonise these folks. They’ve lost practically everything and the last thing they want or need to hear is your complaining. You still have a home to go back to. They don’t have a clue what’s going on in the town. There might not be anything left for them to go back to, so try and show some fucking empathy, alright?”

Moonbeam took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just… those assholes who took me kept going on about torturing me. I don’t think they were serious, but…”

“Don’t worry. I’m gonna make sure that those assholes aren’t gonna bother anyone every again.” Thomas stood up and looked around. “Stay here, I’ll get your stuff. I don’t think the Elder wants to see you right now.”

“You’ve kicked a radwasp nest, Courier,” Elder Cherry Blossom said angrily as he walked back towards her.

Thomas couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “I managed to set it on fire before I even got here,” the man retorted. “Those unicorn pricks have been after me because I managed to do… something in Manehattan,” he said, avoiding giving any details.

“If I’d known you were going to pull a stunt like that I wouldn’t have let you leave.”

“And my friend would be in there, with those fuckers doing god-knows-what,” Thomas replied. “This way, I know she’s safe and I can work towards getting her home.”

“Um…” They both turned to see Moonbeam standing there, looking awkward. “I wanted to apologise.”

“Oh?” The Elder tilted her head in confusion.

“Yeah. I just… I got abducted, and threatened with rape and - ”

“They threatened to rape you?” Thomas asked in a growl. “They threatened to rape you!?”

“I… don’t think they were serious?” Moonbeam said, backing away as the man radiated pure fury. “They just wanted me to talk. Even after I told them everything - ”

“They didn’t do anything, did they?”

“What!? No!” Moonbeam yelled. “All they did was tie me up, knock me out and drag me out here. Can we get back to what I wanted to say at first?” she asked timidly.

“Right. You two kiss and make up, I’ll go find some food.” The man walked away as both mares looked at him in shock and disgust.

Thomas had managed to find a pack of playing cards, and had decided to kill some time with a game of solitaire. While the cards were practically the same, the Jack, Queen and King were absent, instead replaced by the Baron, Countess and Duke. Apart from the minor confusion, though, nothing significant happened for several hours.

He looked up when a power armoured pony poked their head in and called out to him. “What is it?” he asked distractedly, turning back to his cards.

“One of the unicorns is here,” the earth pony said uneasily. “Making demands.”

“What? Oh, I need to see this…” Thomas put his cards down and followed, deciding that this a much better way to pass the time.

As he stepped outside the farmhouse, he saw the helmetless Elder stomp past furiously. “If they think they can come here after kicking us out of our homes, they have another thing coming,” Cherry muttered.

“What do you think they want?” Thomas asked as he joined her.

The mare snorted. “The obvious answer is the cart you stole. But we don’t know if they know you’re here. Try and stay out of sight, at least until they’re finished talking.”

“All right then.” Thomas immediately peeled away to the left, digging into his duster’s interior pockets.

“What do you want?” It was clear from her tone that she wanted nothing more than to see this pony die.

The unicorn, in his strange power armour, snorted disdainfully. “That’s hardly any way to speak to someone who came here peacefully,” he said haughtily.

“Cut to the chase. I’m a busy mare.” It took all of Cherry Blossom’s willpower to not leap forwards and throttle the stallion, just to wipe that smug expression off his face. The fact that he was being flanked by two more armed unicorns helped stay her hooves.

“Fine. We suspect that you have something of ours. A cart.”

“Why would we steal a cart?” the Elder asked, doing a good job of playing dumb.

“It’s not about the cart, but what’s inside it,” the unicorn elaborated. “All that matters is that is incredibly valuable, moreso than you could possible imagine.”

“You still haven’t explained why you think we have it,” she replied flatly.

“Apart from the fact that you are the closest possible group? How about the tracks? The ones we are currently standing on?” the stallion pointed out.

“You have no proof that the tracks are from your missing cart,” Blossom responded. “Do you have any more ‘evidence’?” By now a group of refugees and Rangers had gathered, curious to see what was going on.

“I suggest you tell your lackeys to stay back, Elder,” the stallion warned, the title sounding like an insult. “My fellows aren’t the most… lenient. They get too close, and I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

“Answer my question.”

“Fine. There was a tracking beacon on the cart. Unless somepony here decided to pick up a spell talisman smaller than my hoof out there a few hours ago and bring it here, then you have our property.” The stallion smiled menacingly. “Has that refreshed your memory?”

“Suppose we have your cart,” the Elder said, stalling for time. “What’s so important about what’s inside it?”

“I am not at liberty to say. But if we don’t see our property within the next ten minutes, we will raze this pathetic little camp to the ground, and lobotomise the survivors,” the stallion growled threateningly.

“Lobotomised?” she asked, not liking what she was hearing.

“You don’t think we just executed everypony that didn’t get away, did you?” he asked. “No, we’re not just going to throw away perfectly good muscle. We aren’t raiders, after all.”

Elder Cherry Blossom turned tail and walked away.

“We’ll be waiting,” the unicorn said.

The Elder made her way back to the farmhouse, doing her best to keep her steps steady. The moment she walked in, though, she jumped. “He’s lying,” Thomas said as the door swung close.

“How do you know?” she asked sharply. “And how did you get in before me?”

“I spend a lot of time around gamblers. I know when someone’s bluffing, hiding something good, hiding something bad, or is planning on betraying you. As for how I beat you,” he held up his Pip-Boy and detached something from it, “I have my ways.”

“You said he was lying?” she asked.

“Yeah. Not sure if he was lying about survivors, or about lobotomising them, but either way he’s full of brahmin shit.” Thomas pushed himself away from the wall and walked across the room, his footsteps echoing. “What we need to do is send a message that we won’t be intimidated.”

“What do you propose we do?”

“They want their wagon, right?” he asked. “We give it to them. Throw something on top to cover what’s inside.”

“We can’t send them away with an empty wagon,” the mare retorted. “They’ll check it before the leave.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Thomas said with a smirk. “When they check, I’ll give them a shotgun rhinoplasty.”

“A what?”

Under his mask, the man rolled his eyes. “After I take out two of them, we need someone else to knock out the third.”

“To deliver the message,” Blossom muttered, following his train of thought. “But how will that show them that we can’t be intimidated?”

“This isn’t exactly… orthodox, or sane, but hear me out.”

“I see you decided to listen to reason,” the unicorn said smugly.

“Shut up and take your crap.”

“Fine.” The three unicorns in their strange armour watched as the Ranger unhitched herself. “Flash, Beacon, take a look inside. Make sure it hasn’t been tampered with.”

The other two unicorns marched up to it and ripped away the canvas cloth covering the wagon. “It’s empty,” one of them said.

“No it’s not,” the wagon said. A blast of emerald fire came from nowhere and smote one of the pair in the chest, melting its way through her armour and out her back. Before the second pony could respond, something solid slammed into her jaw, sending her onto the ground. Before she could get back on her hooves there was another blast of emerald fire, this one removing three of her legs.

“Messy,” Thomas said as he flicked a switch on his Stealth-Boy, deactivating the device.

“What the - ?” was all the third unicorn managed to get out as a Ranger slammed into his side, sending him flying into a fence post.

“He unconscious?” Thomas asked as he jumped out of the wagon.

“Well he’s not moving,” the Ranger that had just subdued the unicorn replied, poking the pony in question.

“Good enough for me,” the Elder said. “Bring him in, so we can do this next part.”

“Someone get me a saw,” the Courier said as he loaded the bodies back into the wagon.

“Why?”

“You’ll see.” Despite being asked repeatedly, the man kept his mouth shut as he slowly pulled the cart away.

When the unicorn woke up, his body felt heavy. His surrounds seemed a lot darker, and there was no sign of his fellow unicorns Beacon and Flash. “What happened?” he asked as he pushed himself up.

“You’re going to deliver a message.” He looked up and jumped back in shock, falling onto his rump as the armoured biped stepped into view. He only just noticed the searing pain on his haunches. “You might want to be quick, too, because I’m pretty sure the last thing you need is to get infected or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you got slammed into that post, it broke a few of your ribs,” the Courier explained casually. “We don’t exactly have the best medical equipment here, so we don’t know if we did it right.”

“Oh.” For a moment, he was lost for words. “Why?”

“Simple. We need you to get back to your bosses alive.”

“Where are the unicorns that came with me?” he asked.

Courier Six simply turned and made a gesture to somepony in the distance. As a pony pulling a cart came into view, he spoke up. “Now, when you get back, you tell whoever’s in charge that they have fucked with the wrong person. Any attack on these ponies is as good as an attack on me. And as a general rule, I don’t leave survivors.”

“Where are my friends?” the unicorn asked stubbornly as the other pony quickly unhitched himself.

“Take a look,” the masked biped said, gesturing at the wagon.

The unicorn walked around to get a better look, and nearly threw up. “Y-you monster!” Inside the wagon was a mess of severed limbs, organs and blood. Flash and Beacon had been hacked apart, before being arranged in the back of the wagon in the most gruesome display possible. He couldn’t decide which was worse, that their heads, positioned so that they were looking directly at him, had no horns, or that he could see parts that looked as though they had been skinned.

“That’s just a taste,” the Courier stated as he stepped closer, revealing his chest and arms slick with blood. “A small sample of the horrors I plan on unleashing.” The man brought his left hand up and looked at the two things he was holding with mild interest. “Might make a necklace,” he muttered.

“Y-you’d wear those as some sort of sick trophy!?” the unicorn exclaimed.

“Met a man once, a bounty hunter, collected fingers. This isn’t that different, way I see it,” Thomas said calmly as he put the horns into one of his many pockets. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he added when the stallion’s horn began to glow.

“Why not?” he spat.

“There are half a dozen snipers, each one with your head in their sights. I give the signal and…” The man trailed off ominously. “I suggest you run off back home, little pony. Don’t forget what you came here for,” he added as he walked away.

“I liked it better when you just made creepy threats,” Moonbeam said as the man entered a small tent. “That…”

“Threats only get you so far. Sometimes, you gotta show them the consequences.”

“I hope we haven’t thrown away good tech, Courier,” the Elder said disapprovingly. “Because if this doesn’t work -”

“It will,” he reassured the older mare. “If drugged up cannibals can put together a proximity mine, I can put together a photosensitive trigger.”

Bright Shine stumbled past the fortifications in Dodge, his gruesome cargo in tow. “Th-they killed them. Killed them,” he stuttered.

“Killed who?” somepony asked.

“Beacon. And Flash.”

“Holy shit,” somepony muttered when they caught a glimpse of what he was pulling. The sounds of retching filled the air.

“Get him to the doc.” Bright Shine was dimly aware of the harness being removed and him getting pulled away.

“It’ll be okay,” the mare leading him said.

“They… they said some of my ribs were broken,” he said in a daze. “Something about an infection.”

“I’ll help you get your armour off, okay?” the mare said soothingly.

He didn’t know how long it took to get there, but he eventually found himself before one of the doctors. Bright couldn’t remember his name. “Get him on the bed,” the old stallion said, “and help me get his armour off.”

“What’s wrong?” Bright asked dimly when they stopped and stared halfway through.

“Sweet merciful Queen…” the doctor muttered.

“Those… those monsters,” the mare said.

He looked at where they were staring and gaped. His cutie mark, an eight-pointed crimson starburst, was gone. Instead there was nothing but raw bleeding flesh where he had been skinned.

“J-just get some bandages, and help me disinfect the wound,” the doctor ordered. “You, get up here.”

Bright obeyed the command, too far into shock to even think of anything. His mark was gone. His best friends were dead. Those two facts were all that mattered. He didn’t even feel any pain as they cleaned up his wounds and did what they could to save him.

“Those are some terrible stitches. Cauterise, give me some help here, would you?” As they went to work on his chest, undoing the clumsy work of those pathetic primitives, he decided that he would make them pay. Especially that damned Courier. “What the fuck is that?”

“That was a lot bigger than I was expecting,” Thomas said in awe.

“How much explosives did you put inside that pony?” Moonbeam asked in shock.

“I wasn’t there for that, I just said to get in as much as they could. What did they do, tear out half his stomach and one of his lungs?” he asked rhetorically. “Seriously, the only way they could have gotten a bigger boom was to stick an artillery shell inside him.”

“So… what now?”

“Without any doctors, any injuries will slowly kill them. But they might be able to get reinforcements,” he added thoughtfully. “I guess the Elder will have a long talk about it in the morning.”

Author's Note

This Thomas is not exactly the same as the one that features in Wayward Courier. Oh, the majority of their history, actions and morality are the same, but the devil is in the details.
And I said it before, this setting lets me demonstrate just why angering this man is a very bad idea...