Same Shit, Different Wasteland

Arrival and Departure

The weight of their extra loot weighed the pair down, making the trek back to the Library harder than it would have been. Thankfully the rest of their journey was uneventful. Due to the damage it had received, Thomas had decided to remove the ventilator, keeping his helmet on.

Thomas put a hand against the door to push it open, but stopped himself. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Carefully, he eased the door open. The lights in the lobby had been turned off, but he could make out a pair of shadows at the other side. His ears perked when he heard them talk.

“Damn it, they should be back by now!”

“Calm down,” the other said. “We told them to bring all the heavy firepower, they’re just being careful.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” One of them slammed a hoof into the door blocking their way. “Not like we can just march in, either.”

Moonbeam had to bite back a gasp. Raiders, here? She couldn’t believe this was happening. The last time a gang had gotten this brave she had been a filly, and only knew about it because her mother had told her about it. She turned to look at the Courier, but was confused when he was nowhere to be seen.

Her eyes went wide when she saw what he was doing. Silently creeping towards them, with his revolver drawn, he looked as though he was going to take them out. Not that she could complain, but she would have appreciated it if he had given her a warning.

“Did you hear that?” The raiders turned around, seeing nothing but the closed door.

“You’re getting jumpy.”

Moonbeam let out a breath, as she leaned against the door. They had almost seen her. Oh sure, she could manage those two alone, but they had mentioned something about reinforcements. If they showed up as she was fighting off them, then it would only end in one possible way.

“Moonbeam?” a voice suddenly asked.

She fought down a squeal and whipped out her SMG. “Who was that?”

“Calm down,” the voice replied, its owner stepping out from behind a pillar.

“Oh, Rubble, it’s you,” the mare said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I thought it might have been a raider.”

“That’s why I’m out here,” the concrete-grey earth pony stallion replied. “Where’s your alien friend?”

“In there,” she answered, jerking a hoof over her shoulder.

“Is he gonna be okay?” the earth pony asked.

“YEAAARGH!”

“That wasn’t him, so I think so,” Moonbeam replied uneasily.

The pair poked their heads through the door in time to see Thomas punch one of the raiders in the jaw. The second was lying on the ground, whimpering with his front hooves between his hind legs.

“What did you do?”

Thomas looked up and waved. “Oh, nothing, just a boot to the balls.”

Rubble winced. “Did ya have to do that?” he asked.

The man shrugged. “It was a perfect target.”

“And the other guy?” Moonbeam asked.

“He should be up soon.” The downed stallion groaned. “See?”

“I think you broke his jaw,” Rubble added, poking the unconscious stallion with a hoof.

“Good,” Thomas said, shaking his hand around. “What are we gonna do with them?”

“A bullet in each of their heads, then we’ll throw them out the building, let the bloodwings eat them.”

“Harsh, but fair,” the Courier said appraisingly. “Want some help?” he asked, pointing his gun at the stallion he had kicked from behind.

“Not yet,” Rubble answered. “First we’re gonna want some information outta them.”

“Okay, I have to drop off this food,” Moonbeam said uneasily, not liking where this looked to be going.

“Oh yeah,” Rubble said, looking away from the downed raiders.

“I’ll go with you,” Thomas added.

“I thought you were gonna help me?” the stallion asked, looking at the man in confusion.

“You’re gonna do it now?” the man asked back.

“Well, yeah. Don’t want to give them a chance to escape, do we?” the concrete-grey pony pointed out. “And the council are gonna want this done quickly.”

“I guess that makes sense. Moonbeam?” he asked, turning around. To his mild disappointment, the mare had disappeared, moving a lot quieter than her hundred-pound saddlebags should have allowed her. “Huh.”

The stallion that Thomas had decided to attack from behind was still whimpering, refusing to move his hooves. “Hoohohohooo…” he moaned, a few tears escaping.

“How hard did you kick him?” Rubble asked, eyebrows disappearing into his mane.

“He did go into the air. And these are steel-cap boots…” Thomas blinked. “I might make a cup outta scrap metal or something…” he muttered.

“Steel… cap?” The stallion shuddered.

The Courier ignored him and instead grabbed the stallion he had kicked, dragging him up to eye-level. “Okay then, you gonna talk?”

The stallion didn’t say a word, the only sound escaping his mouth high-pitched squeaks.

“I think you might have broken him…” Rubble said uneasily.

The man sighed. “Look, if you talk, I’ll do something about the pain. Okay?” The stallion looked at him, his eyes wide as if to ask ‘Really?’ When the man nodded. the raider opened his mouth to speak.

“W-what are you?”

“Answer my questions, then I’ll answer yours,” Thomas replied after a moment of deliberation.

“W-we were gonna take this place as a new base.”

“So you were gonna kill everyone?”

“N-n-no, we wouldn’t have enough ammo. Just w-wanted to scare them off.” The stallion smiled strangely. “The rest of the crew is gonna get here, and you’re gonna die.”

“You mean the ones from the little base about three hours from here?” the man asked. “Because they’re all dead.” He smiled grimly when the stallion gaped.

“N-n-no… You’re lying.”

“Do I look like I’m lying?” the Courier asked, one of his hands moving away from the pony’s throat.

“But there were forty of us…”

“Yeah. Were.” Thomas placed his revolver against the stallion’s temple.

“W-what are you doing?”

“Stopping your pain,” he said, tightening his grip on the trigger.

“N-no - !” The stallion tried to squirm away but failed.

Moonbeam was helping an older unicorn unload her bags in the Library’s pantry/storeroom when the Courier decided to reappear. “Have fun interrogating him?” she asked, not turning from her task.

“Didn’t even take two minutes.” Thomas reached down and grabbed a box of processed macaroni and cheese. The unicorn snatched it from him.

“Well good.”

The other unicorn, pale yellow with a spatula cutie mark on her haunches, rolled her eyes as she took out a stack of packaged food. “Moonbeam, we’ve been over this. It’s necessary,” she said, not looking at either her nor Thomas.

“I don’t have to like it, though,” she shot back. “I know you don’t like it either, Cookie.”

“It’s how we’ve always done things,” Cookie explained wearily, as though she had gone through this same conversation a hundred times. “You can’t expect the Council to just change something because you don’t like it.”

“I don’t expect that,” Moonbeam shot back, placing a number of boxes on the shelves, “I’m not stupid.”

“You can’t just let them go,” the Courier added. “They’d come back, angrier and more willing to hurt someone.”

“See,” Cookie said with approval, “he understands the way - eep!” The mare jumped back when she caught sight of Thomas for the first time.

“Cookie, this is my alien friend Courier,” she explained as the other pony tried to stop her heart from exploding through her chest.

“So we are friends?” Thomas asked.

“I guess?” Moonbeam shrugged. “We saved each other’s lives, after all.”

Thomas was ready to point out that he hadn’t exactly been in any true danger of dying, but ultimately decided against it. She’d helped patch him back up, a process that would have been longer and more painful had she not been there, and for that he was grateful. “Yeah. We did.”

The older mare, now recovered from her shock, looked between the two. “So, when’s the wedding?” she asked cheekily.

Moonbeam’s magic went haywire, sending a box of food flying across the room. “Oh, no,” Thomas said loudly. “No no no! I nearly got married once, I’m not going through that again!”

“Oh?” Cookie asked.

“Yeah, a night full of drinking with a good friend. The next morning I nearly ended up with a shotgun jammed up my nose,” he replied darkly.

“What kind of friend does that?”

“One with a short temper,” Thomas said. “We got it all figured out, though, all that matters.”

“Cookie, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Moonbeam asked angrily, smacking the older mare in the head with a box of processed apple chips.

“Oh, let me have my fun,” Cookie replied cheekily, ignoring the blow.

That night, when Moonbeam went to her room, she found Thomas sitting on his mattress, flipping through the tourist’s guide. His duster was neatly folded up at the base of his makeshift bed, with his guns, body armour and helmet sitting on top of and next to it. “I know where to go.”

“Oh?” she asked, placing the rusty battle saddle against a wall.

“The Ministry of Arcane Science hub. Even if it’s abandoned, then there’s gotta be something in there I can use to at least get started.”

“You mean Tenpony Tower?” the mare asked.

“Tenpony Tower?” he asked back.

“Yeah, it’s where DJ Pon3 broadcasts from. There’s a settlement there too,” she explained.

“Broadcasts?” Thomas tapped a few buttons on his Pip-Boy. “How the hell did I not think of this earlier?” he muttered. Suddenly, it started making noise.

“ - stay the hell away from the alicorns. We haven’t been able to confirm anything yet, but all signs point towards really bad things. Stay alert and stay safe. Also, that strange biped I talked about a few days back? It went and took down an entire raider compound, by itself. If you see this guy, give him a big thank you on my behalf. And big guy, if you’re listening, feel free to drop in. Now, back to the music.” The stallion’s voice gave way to a mare, singing a song he didn’t recognise.

“How does he know about the thing with the raiders?” Moonbeam asked.

“No idea.” He turned off his radio, letting silence fill the room. “So, a settlement in there? Reckon I can find someone who can help?”

“I… maybe?” Moonbeam shrugged. “Only way to find out is to go there.”

“Alright then.” Thomas set the book down. “Then that’s where I’m headed.”

“Tomorrow, right?” the mare asked, unstrapping her armour and levitating it to one of the room’s corners.

“I am not suicidal. Even if my optics were working properly,” he waved a hand in the vague direction of his belongings, “those bloodwing things don’t sound like something I want to get too close to.”

“Your what?”

It took the man a moment to remember that he had never explained why his helmet was so valuable. “This helmet,” he said as he leaned towards it, “has a built-in air filter, low-light optics to see in the dark and enough protection to stop a hollow-point three-oh-eight round dead.” The mare stared at it in awe. “Best thing I’ve ever pulled off of a corpse,” he added, smiling as he picked it up.

“Ew.” Moonbeam turned away.

“Like what you’re wearing didn’t come from a dead guy,” Thomas retorted.

“Yeah, but this wasn’t pulled off a corpse,” the mare pointed out. “It was looted from an armoury years ago.”

“Along with half of the guns here?”

“Probably? Oh yeah, speaking of guns,” the mare said loudly, “didn’t you say you were going to take a look at the battle saddle?”

“Don’t expect anything, though,” he warned. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“You don’t have battle saddles where you‘re from?”

Thomas gave Moonbeam a flat stare. “How do you think I’m meant to use one?”

It took her a moment to understand what he was talking about. “I’m tired,” she said defensively. “It was a long day.”

“I’ll give you that,” Thomas conceded. “Do you want me to do this now?”

“Yeah, sure.” She levitated the machine over to him, where he took it and set it on the floor.

After a few moments of staring at it, trying to decide where to start, he looked back up. “I’m gonna need a lot more than just a screwdriver for this.”

“I bet Sparky won’t mind lending you her toolbox.”

It took Thomas hours to put the device back together, but when did it was in much better condition. There wasn’t much that could be done about the exterior rust with what he had on hand, but the internal mechanisms and magazine feeds were incredibly simple to fix. Having to use parts from other guns resulted in one side of the battle saddle being bulkier than the other, though Moonbeam assured him that it would have no adverse effect on its operation.

The next problem lay in where to obtain ammunition. To the man’s dismay and irritation, .308 rifle rounds were somewhat expensive and rare. The machine was almost better off as a bartering tool. He resolved to get his hands on enough scrap metal to craft a few rounds, though, to tide them over.

The next morning, Moonbeam was nowhere to be found when he woke up. He didn’t think anything of it until she happily pranced back into the room, humming to herself. “Well someone’s happy,” he commented.

“I don’t have to stay cooped up in here,” she replied. “They want me to go to Tenpony.”

Thomas couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. “And why is that?”

“They want me to get more trade caravans to come this way,” she explained, grabbing her barding’s armour plates. “We only get one a month, and they want at least one every two weeks.”

“Seems strange they’d send a scavenger to do the job of a sweet-talker.”

Moonbeam rolled her eyes. “I know what we’re likely to find. Some merchants will only take chems, or food, or guns. None will take rare tech, though, the Rangers took all of them out years ago,” she added sadly.

Thomas didn’t say anything, his thoughts taking him back to the first time he encountered what was left of a caravan the Brotherhood had attacked. It had also been the first time he’d seen just how deadly a laser rifle could be, capable of burning bottlecap-sized holes through metal or turning a man into a pile of ash. That’s why he preferred traditional firearms, they tended to leave enough of a body to rob. The Steel Rangers seemed to prefer gunpowder, though, which struck him as a little odd. Maybe this world had never managed to reach the point of laser and plasma weaponry?

“Let me guess, they want me to make sure you get there alive.”

Moonbeam paused as she tightened a strap. “I… They didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t surprise me if the only reason they’re sending me now is because you’re going in that direction, though,” she admitted.

“So, an escort job,” the Courier muttered. “At least I don’t have to fake us getting attacked.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he replied, waving her off.

Author's Note

There was meant to be a quest (if you can call it that) that revolved around the Courier and Cass getting drunk, waking up the next morning to find out that they had been married by the King, in true Vegas style.