From the desk of First Lieutenant Contrail
After Action Report 7112
On the date of 8-19-1277
The following is a true and factual assessment of the surface engagement between my squadron and a force of Red Eye’s soldiers which took place sixteen hours ago from the time of the writing of this report.
Forces involved included one (1) squadron of pegasi under my command against thirty-five (35) enemy combatants loyal to Red Eye.
On 8-17-1277 my squadron was reassigned from Cirrocumulus Castellanus to Neighvarro as part of preliminary preparations for Operation Cauterize. Primary objectives were to investigate all rumors of pre-War technology falling into the hooves of surfacers, and secure any and all confirmed instances of functioning pre-War technology. The investigation that led to the engagement involved the discovery of a functioning Cloudbuster warhead presumably used against pegasus outposts during the Last Day. Reports indicate it fell to earth as a dud, but would be capable of repurposing. It was determined to be a class-B threat, enough to warrant search and recovery.
Our squadron located the Cloudbuster intact and capable of being rearmed. While preparing the target for immediate recovery, we came under surprise attack by a force of unknown strength under the command of Red Eye. I deemed the situation to be under control and ordered my squadron to engage the enemy and prevent their taking of the Cloudbuster warhead until it could be retrieved. Approximately four minutes into the engagement a company-sized group of enemy reinforcements were reported by airborne surveillance. Their ETA was reported to be three minutes. The Cloudbuster recovery crew was still fourteen minutes out at this time. It was decided that to prevent the enemy from obtaining the warhead, it would be detonated via a rewiring of the warhead’s circuitry to activate its timer. Preparations were made to take off, however, immediately following the reprogramming of the warhead, Corporal Dares’ flight suit suffered a catastrophic failure when an enemy shot hit his primary arcane power packs. Removal of his armor would have taken time we did not have. An enemy rocket wounded Lieutenant August Shade immediately after, bringing us down a third of our fighting strength. August Shade’s injuries were too severe to consider anything less than immediate treatment back at base camp.
At this time the enemy reinforcements arrived, necessitating either immediate withdrawal or detonation of the Cloudbuster. Corporal Dares suggested being left behind in order to detonate the warhead himself.
Let it be known that I take full responsibility for the outcome of this engagement, and under the circumstances I found there to be no other option than to leave Corporal Who Dares Wins with the Cloudbuster while our squadron secured August Leaf and moved to meet the pickup team in the air.
Surveillance confirmed successful detonation of the Cloudbuster forty-two seconds after we left.
Following the engagement the surveillance team under the command of Warrant Officer Swift Dance counted sixteen (16) confirmed enemy kills. Enclave casualties include Private Slim Pickings (Wounded, Non-critical), Lieutenant August Shade (Wounded, Critical) and Corporal Who Dares Wins (Missing In Action). The surveillance team was unable to verify the whereabouts of Corporal Who Dares Wins immediately following the battle due to more enemy reinforcements already en route to the battle site.
The possibility of recovery of Corporal Dares dead or alive is currently deemed extremely unlikely. If he has survived, possibility of surface exposure is almost certain. I suggest listing Corporal Dares as confirmed KIA in future reports.
/=/
He couldn’t move, but he could still breathe. Through the sand and grit piling up through the crack in his helmet, through the blood bubbling up through his lips from some tear deep inside, he sucked air in, pushed it back out with tangible effort. In. Out. As long as he breathed he was alive. He measured what was left of his existence by how much air he was able to get. So far, he was worth at least one more breath. His whole world had been reduced to that single action, every thought and muscle bent towards gulping in just a little more air. It was all he had left to prove to himself he wasn’t dead.
The weight of his armor pressed in on his chest. Something pinned his legs down. Or maybe his back was broken and he just couldn’t use them. He blinked in the darkness, unable to see past the layer of sand slowly building over his visor. He heard the wind, tinny and howling in the confines of his helmet. He must have had cracks in that too. Not a big surprise considering what he’d tried to do.
One more breath. He could take that much, couldn’t he? Yes. And another.
He was going to die. He’d resigned himself to that a long time ago. That he was alive at all was something of a relief and an annoyance. A relief because in spite of everything he didn’t really want to die; an annoyance because being dead was a fair sight better than slowly succumbing to lack of oxygen and blood loss.
He tried to think of home, but the desire to keep death at bay with just one more breath kept getting in the way. There weren’t many happy memories to offset his despair. And so he lay there and breathed instead.
Time passed; he was certain more than he had left had gone by, but he’d stopped caring about time a long time ago. He couldn’t even remember the last few seconds. The sun, shrouded behind clouds but still blazingly hot, baked him in his own flight suit until he was certain he’d drown in sweat instead of blood, and he imagined his own brain beginning to sizzle after he expired. Maybe he’d make a nice cooked meal for whatever dirtside pony found him.
Something was leaking out of his side, too, which only made him even more uncomfortable. He could feel it with every beat of his heart, which made him believe it was blood. It was then he began to hope for the end, almost willing his own body to shut down with each breath. There wasn’t any pain either; he was beyond pain. Nothing mattered to him now. There was nothing but the waiting, and the in and out pressure of his chest rising and falling.
He might have passed out once or twice. He couldn’t have been sure, since he didn’t remember it and the landscape didn’t change save for the amount of gloom on his visor. But at some point, he recognized a shadow passing over his eyes, and a noise that made his ears tingle. He blinked, and an eternity later he woke up again to find himself out of the cloying heat of his flight suit, and the landscape around him was gently rolling past. Maybe the Reaper Pony had come for him and he was being dragged to the afterlife. That was a nice thought.
The noise from before invaded his ears, and he tried to answer it. All that came out was a strangled gurgle. But at least the feeling that his body was leaking had stopped. He couldn’t focus on anything. The world around him was fuzzy and unfocused, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get any of his limbs to even twitch. He thought being dead would be better than this. Everything still looked so grey, so lifeless. Was this the afterlife? Was there an afterlife? Maybe it had been atomized too.
He closed his eyes, having had enough depressing thoughts for one day. This time, he knew he was asleep.
/=/
A soft pillow under his head. Fuzzy wrappings around his body. A light in the corner of his eyes that bothered him, made him blink. He turned his head and was overtaken by a wave of nausea that made him wince, which made him even more nauseous until he lay still, clenching his eyelids shut until the feelings receded. So he must have been alive. No afterlife would make your head spin with anything but happiness, right? But if that was true, where was the pain? He felt so... comfortable. Almost nothing in his life made him feel comfortable, except...
“... Home.”
His eyes flew open as the word passed his lips. It was like he’d never heard his own voice before. It was thin and raspy, but after what he’d been through that could be forgiven.
“Home,” he said again, and tilted his head back towards the glaring light, gritting his teeth against the seasick feelings. “Am I... home?”
There was no answer.
He tried to force his mouth open wider, push more air out of his lungs. It was easier than he thought. How long had been lying here, convalescing? He had to have been taken care of by somepony. The bandages and bed were ample evidence of that. “Anypony? Ya’ out there?”
“You shouldn’t talk so much. You need your strength.”
The voice was hard to pin down. It was soft, but clipped and direct, wasting no breath. There was a tenseness, a strength behind it he couldn’t place. He couldn’t move his head anymore, so he settled for just talking to it.
“M’fine. Jus’ gotta... get movin’... be fine.”
“You need rest. I’m surprised you’re even in one piece. You should be missing limbs from the state you were in.”
“Why’m I not... dead?”
“I found you. You should dead by all accounts. But I wasn’t about to let the Wasteland take another pony I thought I could save.”
“The what.”
He forced his head more to the right. Something about that word lit a fire inside him, and it wasn’t good. Wasteland. He wasn’t home. His home wasn’t a Wasteland. It was bright and clean and efficient. Through the glare of the light, he saw a pony. The very first thing, before he saw anything else, was that pony didn’t have wings.
She held up a chain. His dogtag dangled on the end.
“Welcome to Equestria, Corporal Dares.”
He fainted again.
When he woke up, he judged that several hours had passed, as the light was off and the faint gloom of a night sky pierced a window he hadn’t noticed before. There weren’t any stars that he could see, and his heart plummeted. The ache in his chest quickly grew to match the one in his head. The mystery pony wasn’t lying. If he was anywhere but sitting pretty on a cloud, he was very much alive, and he’d been left behind in Tartarus itself.
Wasteland. The word echoed in his head, bouncing off the confines of his skull and only adding to the massive headache that still had a death grip on him. Nothing seemed to make sense. Not even the fact that he was alive was any good. He was supposed to be dead. He gave Stuka his tag. He’d watched them fly gloriously into the sunset while he told himself that he’d be giving himself to a good cause, because he was a good pony. Good ponies weren’t punished with being dumped in the Wasteland. He gave an involuntary shudder as he realized that if he was in the Wasteland, he was in the house of a surfacer. A dirt pony had picked him up and dragged him over the dirt back to their dirt house and put their dirty hooves on him.
Some way for the universe to repay his heroic sacrifice.
He experimented with his limbs and found he could move them, and the bandages were gone. He immediately sat up to spite his headache and checked himself over. Aside from a few sore spots, he seemed to be in perfect health—whoever had picked him up had some useful skills at least. He’d half expected to be sprouting tentacles out of his eyes or the like if a dirt pony had tried their doubtless irradiated hoof at healing. Perhaps they had a store of healing potions lying around.
Too depressed and aching to panic he rolled off the bed, which had been comfy until he realized it belonged to a surfacer, and put all his weight on his hooves. He spread his wings to make sure they were still there. Safe and whole, it seemed. Now, that window looked just big enough for his slight frame to squeeze through, so—
“Ah, you’re awake.”
“Sweet Celestia stab me with a rake!”
He leaped into the air and crashed into the ceiling hard enough to hear the crack of wood, and his wings folded in on themselves which sent him crashing back to the floor. Before anymore dirt ponies could lay hooves on him he rolled into a defensive crouch and prepared to fight.
The earth mare standing at the doorway seemed less than impressed.
“You really shouldn’t be stressing your body like that, Corporal. I used a fair amount of healing potions, expensive ones, to drag you back from the brink. I don’t want to spend any more than I have to.”
“Where am I?!” he snarled.
“Somewhere in northwestern Equestria. Not in the air.”
“You foalnapped me!”
“If the Enclave is accepting foals, I probably did you a favor keeping you down here.”
“Shut up! Where am I? I asked that already! Who are you?”
The earth mare rolled her eyes and crossed her hooves, leaning on the door frame. She tossed her braided tail in a manner that seemed almost bored. Somehow that irked him even more than the fact that she wasn’t a pegasus.
“For starters, I’m the pony who saved your life and convinced my boss you were worth saving. And so far, you’re not doing a good job of proving that I was right.”
He flinched. Not out of shame, but surprise. No matter what he thought, she was right. He was alive because of her. Unless she was lying. Dirt ponies did that. He looked at the wall instead, breathing deep to get his emotions back in order.
Silence fell over the room, save for the creaking of the wooden walls in the strong wind picking up outside.
“If you meant my name,” the mare said quietly, “it’s Silverlight.”
He perked an ear and snuck a glance her way. She stared right at him, with turquoise eyes surprisingly free of malice or insanity. He didn’t want to admit it, but she seemed like a real pony who wasn’t going to eat his brain.
That didn’t change that she was covered in dirt like most dirt ponies, though.
“Silverlight,” he said quietly. “Right. Thanks for not... uh...”
“Eating you?” Silverlight asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m no mutant Raider, Corporal Dares, contrary to what the Enclave might think.”
Dares scuffed a hoof on the ground, unwilling to concede that much. Mutant Raiders were known to be very good at subterfuge and disguise. He assumed as much at least, since the surface was supposed to be populated exclusively by them, but she hadn’t done anything violent yet.
“Right, look, that’s all well and good, but I need to get back. I have to report in that I...”
He stopped, mouth open, staring at the ground.
The rush of memories made him weak in the knees. Images flashed before his eyes, of tracers and plasma filling the air, of the slight slouch in Contrail’s shoulders when they heard the reinforcements wouldn’t come in time. The sight of Stuka taking off her helmet in the middle of a firefight just so she could yell at him for being a big dumb suicidal idiot.
He remembered the explosion the most, though.
“That... oh. Oh my...”
He wobbled on his hooves and staggered back against the bed. It felt like weights were attached to his wings and dragged him straight down to the ground, and a horrible pressure pounded on his brain. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead.
“I’m supposed to be...”
“Come again?”
“... Dead,” Dares choked out. “They left me. They all left me. I was supposed to die.”
Silverlight took a hesitant step forward, eyebrow raised. “Your squadmates? They abandoned you?”
“They had to,” Dares mumbled, covering his face with his hooves. “I told them to. The bomb...”
“This should be good,” Silverlight murmured.
Dares ignored her, narrating the memories to himself as they came. He felt like he needed to, to remind himself why he should be dead. Then maybe this nightmare would be over and he wouldn’t be a walking corpse in the middle of a pony-made Tartarus. “I told them to leave me. We couldn’t let it fall into enemy hooves. Red Eye’s forces were gonna take it otherwise... I couldn’t let them take it. I couldn’t. I set it to blow and ran, but I didn’t think I’d get far enough.”
“Well, better an exploded bomb than one in Red Eye’s armory,” Silverlight muttered, walking over and nudging him gently with her nose. “And better you get some more rest rather than having a nervous breakdown in the middle of the clinic.”
Dares took a moment to wonder at the fact that any surfacers had anything approaching a clinic, which by Enclave standards was probably very much medieval. They had healing potions, sure, but millions of those were made during the War. They were likely scavenged. He consoled himself with thoughts of Enclave superiority as Silverlight heaved him back up on the bed, and he felt a rush of nausea once his head hit the pillow.
“I’m going to check on you in a couple of hours. Get some sleep, okay? You look like you still need it.”
Dares just stared straight ahead.
“And if you talk about how you’re ‘supposed’ to be dead again? Just think about where you’d be if you actually were.”
She ducked back out of the room, leaving Dares with his thoughts.
He judged about three days had gone by since she last came in for a serious conversation. Those three days were boring and uneventful. She left food next to his bed, tried to say a few words, he ignored her, and she left. The food was greasy and unappetizing, but his empty stomach demanded he wolf it down regardless. It gave him fuel for his exercises and experimental circuits around the little room, snatching little glances outside the window every time he passed it. On the morning of the fourth day, the healing potions had done their work and he felt well enough to do... what, exactly?
He spent most of the day hovering by the window, watching life in the town. He’d never been up close to surfacers before, and he certainly wasn’t planning on getting closer than this. At first, he’d started his observation with militaristic adherence to protocol: a good soldier always knew his surroundings. But none of it seemed to make any sense. Everything he’d heard about surface life painted a bloody picture of horror and death. These ponies, while certainly dirty and ugly just like the briefings said, were rather tame. He didn’t see heads on spikes or bodies in the streets. The ponies outside went about their business, nodded gruffly to one another in passing, and once or twice he even saw foals running back and forth without any fear of the adults. In spite of all the reports they’d gotten of dirt ponies being utterly venal and greedy, this Silverlight hadn’t even asked about payment for saving his life. The bewilderment of having most of his views of the surface world being turned upside down in an afternoon almost matched the grief of being trapped here forever. He didn’t even have to think about his fate to know it was sealed: the training made it crystal clear that any contact with the surface meant immediate expulsion from the Enclave. He made a conscious effort to drown his sorrow in observation of the townsfolk as they went about their daily duties.
But as time went by and the reality of his situation sank in, his gaze slowly turned to the one thing he had been trying to keep his mind off of: the clouds. They were omnipresent here, and even though he’d seen the cloud layer from beneath before, it was different seeing it and knowing he would never breach it again, or risk disintegration.
He settled his hooves onto the wooden floor, still shocked to find that the ground was so solid and unyielding. There was something unnatural about floors that didn’t have a little give. He could only imagine what the rest of the world felt like; how did these ponies walk around all day without their hooves aching from the constant stress of walking on solid ground?
On top of that, none of the ponies outside seemed to even be doing anything besides walking back and forth. There were no monuments to civilization of all the places he could have ended up in the Wasteland he had to end up in the most boring, tiny corner of it. None of his pony watching and regimented exercise satiated his desire to get out and do something. But he couldn’t risk it. The ponies out there could turn hostile at any moment once they realized he was Enclave. They’d probably form a mob and hang him. Or burn him at the stake. Certainly something that dirty ground ponies did to their prisoners.
He still stood there, staring out the window, when Silverlight reappeared at the door.
“It’s almost evening,” she said, tilting her head. “Didn’t you want to stretch your legs?”
“Not out there,” Dares replied, shuddering. “There’s...” He gestured with a wing, scrunching up his face while he tried to accurately express his disgust. Silverlight cocked her head to one side.
“There’s... ponies?”
“Yes!” Dares said, now pointing at Silverlight with his wing. “Thank you. There’s ponies out there.”
Silverlight sighed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dares exclaimed, “and I thank you for bein’ an exception to the rule, but ponies out there? They ain’t gonna be as understanding as you as to my... unique background.”
“Nopony out here cares about the Enclave.” Silverlight flicked her mane and leaned against the doorway. “We all know what happens to the ones who hit the ground. You’re one of us now, soldier boy.”
Dares fought the instinctive urge to educate her stilted dirt pony views on what constituted ponykind. Instead, he just shut his eyes and counted to ten. Silverlight still stared when he opened them again.
“No,” he said. Silverlight blinked.
“No,” Dares repeated, “I’m not. I’m not one of you all. Never will be. The Enclave... well, we aren’t like you.”
“In some ways,” Silverlight responded. “Most ways? We’re exactly alike, soldier boy.”
Dares’ felt another surge of nausea in his gut. Did this pony know nothing about where he came from? “Look, Silverlight... I don’t think you understand what I’m sayin’—”
“No, you don’t understand.” Silverlight suddenly pushed off the doorway and stood firm. Dares’ breath seized in his chest when he saw the way she looked at him. She didn’t glare, but the way she narrowed her eyes just so and flared her nostrils reminded him of his old drill sergeants. It wasn’t a look of anger, but command. He gulped.
“You don’t understand,” Silverlight said again, just above a whisper, “where you are. You’re an Enclaver on the ground. Enclave ponies don’t go back up. You’re stuck here, I get that. I know what’s it like to be stuck. You never feel like you belong. Every day the horizon just teases you until you can’t take it and you have to get up and just go. But that’s not going to happen. I’ve seen what the Enclave does to ponies who try to go back up, even to their own. Ponies who try to fly without wings just looking for a better life, guys like you who just can’t take the surface life... it always ends the same.” Her jaw tightened. “You find them sometimes, out in the Wasteland. I know how to look at a corpse and tell you what killed them. Their bones are always broken in a way that can only come from a long fall. Once I found a pony who the scavengers hadn’t found yet.” She gave him a meaningful stare. “Their wings were broken, Corporal Dares. Before the pony hit the ground.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over them. Dares shifted on his hooves, looking away, back to the window and the eerily peaceful ponies outside. They were still wandering aimlessly.
“Well, you’re lying,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s—you’re lying. The Enclave doesn’t do that. We have to stop the surface corruption from spreading. We don’t just kill ponies like that. Especially not pegasi. We kill traitors, we kill raiders, we... we kill...”
A younger mare’s face replaced Silverlight’s, twisted with anger and frustration, accusing him with her tears and shrill voice.
Who gave you the right?
He blinked and the vision was gone. “You’re lying.”
“Dares—”
“You’re lying!” Dares snapped, and he felt a sudden headache from his spiking blood pressure. Silverlight’s stern facade lost some of its edge. Her stance relaxed just a bit. Dares breathed heavily through his nose, struggling with his inner urge to just buck the mare in the face and make a run for the door. But he wouldn’t. As an Enclave pony he was more civilized than that. Not like these lying propagandist dirt-siders. “You saved my life. I get that. But you ain’t gonna... subvert me. Or whatever this is. Just... just leave me alone.”
Silverlight didn’t leave. She turned to the window too, heaving a sigh as she shifted weight between her hooves. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—I just—look. We’ve all had bad experiences with each other, I get that. But you’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t start seeing this place from the ground up. You can’t go back. Whatever else you believe, you have to believe that. And I was going to say I think I know somepony who can help.”
Dares squinted skeptically. Silverlight gave him a wan smile and nodded over her shoulder. “Don’t get your hopes up. You aren’t getting parades in your honor for bringing civilization to the Wasteland any time soon. But this guy, he’s been around even more than me. He might be able to give you some advice on where to start, assuming you don’t kill each other on sight. Also, ditch the flight suit. It’s not really fashionable down here.”
Dares sniffed. “This uniform was given ta’ me as a sign of trust to uphold the tenets of the Enclave. I’m not going to ‘ditch’ it.”
“Well the Enclave sure as shit ditched you, soldier boy,” Silverlight said with a petulant flick of her tail. “And in case you haven’t noticed, there really aren’t a lot of ‘tenets’ to hold up here.” She turned away and trotted downstairs. “Start thinking dirty, Dares. Everypony is in the Wasteland. Oh yeah, and we’re heading to a junkyard!”
Dares gaped. “There is no way I’m visiting a dirt pony junkyard in the middle of—”
“Did I mention that’s where we’re keeping your armor?” Silverlight’s voice floated back to him.
Dares clamped his jaw shut. He could have sworn there was a coy, heckling tone in that mare’s voice. If his armor was stuck in some ugly junkyard, he had to go with this mare, if only to rescue a piece of high-tech Enclave hardware from falling into the wrong hooves.
Dares grumbled to himself, stalking back to the window as he considered his options. He looked down at his flight suit, plucking some of the flexible armored mesh with his hoof. It had seen better days, and regretfully he hadn’t taken anything resembling a ‘bath’ since he hit the ground; the smell was permeating his clothes. But he was never going to get home if he painted a target on himself by announcing he was a soldier of the surface’s archenemy.
With a long-suffering sigh he peeled off the flight mesh, wincing at the scars that criss-crossed his body. Healing potions went a long way, but they couldn’t get everything. He found a strange sense of pride, seeing those pink lines cutting tiny ravines in his fur. It reminded him of what he was willing to sacrifice—something that would always separate him from those aimless little ants wandering around outside.
He trotted downstairs, finding himself in the lobby of what appeared to be a doctor’s office, or at least what passed for a doctor’s office on the surface. An observation table sat behind a ragged cloth partition in one corner, surrounded by surprisingly clean and well-kept tools. An earth pony sitting at a rickety old desk looked up from whatever he was working on, peering at Dares.
“Ah, you’re up,” he said in the high, wavering voice of the educated set. Another surprise—Dares expected most of the dirtsiders to talk in that scratchy growl most of the raiders he encountered did.
“Welcome to the first floor,” the earth pony said with a knowing smile. “Silverlight’s taken good care of you I see. Some scars, but that’s to be expected. Don’t worry, she’ll get you sorted.”
“Are you her assistant?” Dares asked.
“Hardly!” he answered. “I’m the head doctor here. Silverlight is the one who helps out. She’s a pony on a mission. She brought you in, you know, from out there. Most ponies would have stripped your gear and left the body. Or eaten it, depending on their mood.”
“Charming,” Dares muttered, wrinkling his nose. “But I’ve already thanked her.”
“No you didn’t,” Silverlight said as she appeared in his periphery from a back room, throwing a bundle at his face. He was immediately shrouded in cloth that stank of dirt and grime and the stench of old leather. “Put that on. It’s better than nothing, and it can hide your wings if you want.”
“No,” said Dares through the clothes on his face.
“Suit yourself,” said Silverlight. “But that’s leather barding made from the toughest brahmin skin around. You’ll fit right in wearing it and you just might turn a blade aside with a little luck.”
“That reminds me,” Dares grumped as he yanked the stinking armor off his face and grudgingly threw it on with angry jerks of his legs, “where’s my gun?”
“Where you can’t get it, and before you ask it was broken when I found it. If you want it working again you’ll need to find somepony with a working knowledge of gemcraft, and that’s nopony this far north.”
Dares gritted his teeth as he fumbled with the straps. There was that feeling again. It would be so easy now that he was healthy. Silverlight looked tough, but she didn’t carry herself like a fighter. And he could take a doctor. Just give them both a good knock upside the head and he could find all his old gear on his own terms...
And then he’d be an outcast on the ground and in the sky. No, better to play the dirtsider game for now, much as it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Then we get the gun first,” he announced.
“Ah. You’re one of those types,” Silverlight said with a playful smirk and a flick of her tail.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You meet a lot of ponies down here who get very attached to their guns, is all.”
“That gun,” Dares began, but trailed off into a wispy murmur. “That gun means more to me than you know.” He clenched his eyes shut, savoring the feeling of how Stuka had shoved the gun into his hooves, the desperation clear on her face. It was his last link to friends. To home. “We get the gun first,” he said again.
“Fine,” Silverlight said with a nod. “But it’s in the junkyard with everything else.”
Dares couldn’t help himself, throwing his hooves in the air with an exasperated sputter. “What—Do you—I—Is it just standard procedure down here ta’ just throw all the advanced tech ya find into the dump?!”
“Sure is,” Silverlight said, heading for the door. Her hoof rested on the handle as she hesitated for a breath, peering at Dares out of the corner of her eyes. “Believe me, with the ponies that are in this town, your stuff is safer there.”
Dares held back another gulp as he followed Silverlight out, giving the doctor a vague nod as he wished him luck. Silverlight held the door for him as he took his first steps into the Wasteland, looking to the left and the right. All the ponies on the street were level with him. The buildings were above him. The sky was a slate grey wall that stretched to the horizon. His eyes were drawn up to the ancient barrier. Was that how it really looked from down here?
His rumination was cut short by a sudden jarring pain in his hoof as he missed the last step down and flopped forward onto his face. His snout bit into the dirt as his chin cracked on the ground and sand flew up into his nostrils.
He snuffed it out and lay there a moment, basking in the humiliation of Silverlight laughing behind him and passing ponies giving him odd looks. As he expected, the dirt down here tasted horrible.
“Look at that! The Wasteland’s already giving you a warm welcome!” Silverlight crowed, chuckling as she went past him and flicked his ear with her tail.
Dares just sighed.
Author's Note
And you all thought I didn't like Fallout:Equestria.
Well, I don't like the core fic very much. But I love the group I've been playing the setting with for the past year. This is a novelization of the events of that game, edited and converted to be appropriate for book-type reading.
The cover image is the party we play with.
Silverlight never thought of herself as a complicated pony. She was a doctor’s assistant in a town that needed the help and she did it for a roof over her head and a meal in her belly, plus the fleeting joy of a hard day’s work. Last came the gratitude of the townponies, but that was only because it came so infrequently it was easy to forget they even appreciated her work. Her life was relatively consistent here in Junk Town, and she had seen enough gore and death in the Wasteland that even the interruption of an Enclaver from the sky was not enough to rattle her. Consistency, fortitude, and an ability to dig in and get to work without complaint kept her alive.
Junk Town was just as uncomplicated as herself, which was part of the reason she stuck around. She took comfort in the fact that the town was just one long line of buildings. What use was there for more streets for vagrants and ne’er-do-wells to hide in?
That said, she didn’t appreciate how the Enclave pony behind her kept looking over his shoulder at every opportunity, or shooting her dirty looks behind her back he thought she didn’t notice. He was being actively resentful of everyone and everything around him. Apparently the Enclave gave their soldiers a more thorough brainwashing than she thought.
“So are you going to snap and murder everypony in reach now or later?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Not ever,” Who Dares Wins replied with an airy sniff. “I ain’t a barbarian like you ponies.”
“Well, the way you’re eyeing all the ponies around here I’d think you’re one of those raiders you undoubtedly enjoyed vaporizing.”
“Excuse me?” Dares replied, edging away from a foal and his mother as he passed them on the street.
Silver rolled her eyes. “I mean you look like you’re about to go berserk on us, Corporal. I know I said this was a rough town, but you’re making yourself less a part of the landscape and more a target.”
“Well, these ponies keep lookin’ at me funny,” Dares snapped. “I don’t like it when ponies look at me funny.”
Silver felt her ire rising with every combative word. It was one thing to have an ungrateful patient, but Who Dares Wins was rapidly finding his way onto her list of ponies she wanted to send back to the hospital. “Then stop making yourself so funny to look at. Try to walk, not tip-hoof everywhere. You need to break in that armor, Dares. Can I call you Dares?”
“No,” said Dares as he matched glares with a tough looking colt across the way. Silverlight could have smacked him. More ponies died from establishing eye contact than radiation poisoning out here.
Almost to the edge of town, then you won’t be a spectacle anymore…
“This armor smells,” said Dares. “You could’ve at least washed it.”
Silver’s eye twitched, which was a problem she thought she’d resolved years ago. “I did,” she hissed. “Brahmin leather just naturally smells that way.”
“I’m sorry, we just don’t usually wear the skin of another living thing back-”
Silver scrunched her eyes shut and felt something break. There was a rush of movement and a loud snap, and her hoof impacted something soft and pliable. When she opened her eyes Dares no longer looked at her but at something off to the right, his mouth agape, and his cheek was burning red.
She’d smacked him. Realizing this didn’t surprise her at all, since it was what she’d intended.
“If you say anything,” she hissed under her breath, “anything at all about where you were from out loud? Then you will find the trouble you seem to be trying to attract to yourself, soldier boy. And I won’t be able to protect you. We don’t need dead weight out here, and your corpse would make quite a lot of that.”
Dares blinked rapidly at her, as if coming to some kind of realization. Or at least that’s what Silver hoped he was doing. He stared back at her and she saw the anger she expected, but you didn’t look into the eyes of dying ponies as much as she did and not pick up on cues here and there. Behind the impotent fury was something softer, more fragile. Something that reminded her that this was a pony working through some tough times.
She stood back and sighed, brushed a hoof over her mane.
Deep breaths. You’ve dealt with worse.
“Look. Dares. I understand. Nopony wants to be in the Wasteland. Especially not…”
She glanced back and forth, saw that the only company was the guard tower on the edge of town.
"But this place? This whole world? It isn't for ponies like you. You need to adapt, Dares, or you're going to die."
"I was already s'posed to die a while back," Dares grumbled. "I didn't ask ta' be brought back."
Silverlight's hoof tingled as she considered another smack. "Yeah, well, none of us asked to live in a rad-covered, monster-infested shithole either. Life sucks down here. So stop being a little bitch about it or I'll make sure to leave you for dead next time, capisce?"
Dares said nothing, but she saw his Adam's apple bob up and down with an audible gulp.
"Good enough," she muttered, and turned to walk out of town. She heard his hooves hurrying to catch up and hoped that meant he wasn't gawking at everything along the way.
In the distance loomed the shadow of the junkyard. It was a constant fixture on the horizon of the town, and was sadly the biggest landmark around outside the mountains to the north. Dares was quiet most of the walk and Silverlight didn't bother to make small talk. She was stressed enough as it was keeping an Enclave pony in the clinic. The Doc was going crazy keeping nosy townsponies from poking their heads in, or keeping the more zealous among them from lynching the pegasus while he slept. She didn't want Dares' little words buzzing around her head and adding to her confusion.
Still, as they passed through the broken gate and passed the creaky old booth that marked the junkyard's borders, it didn't stop Dares from speaking anyway.
"Listen, Silverlight," he said, and the way he used her actual name made her stop and turn. She didn't mean to look intimidating, but Dares licked his lips and scuffed his hoof and she knew what he was going to say before he even worked up the courage. She still let him say it though. It was important to let ponies hear their own voice and explain to themselves what they felt.
"Thank you," he said, "for not lettin' me die. I wanted to... kinda... or maybe I just thought I did. Or maybe I didn't wanna be dead 'till I found out I was here. But I guess I do owe ya, if nothin' else. From the looks them townfolk were givin' me, you're the only one who woulda lifted a hoof to help. So, uh, thanks. You're all right for a, um..."
"Dirt pony?" she wondered, flicking her tail and smirking.
"I was gonna say surfacer," he mumbled.
"Hey," she said not unkindly, and caught his gaze with hers again. She liked looking ponies in the eyes; the old axe about being windows to the soul held sway with her. His were tarnished gold, breezy and distant. They were eyes that were used to staring into an endless horizon and pondering far-off things. Old soldier eyes if she ever saw them.
A lot like the pony they were looking for, really. She wondered if he'd find the same similarity in Dares.
"Hey," she said again. "Don't worry about it. It's what I do."
Dares glanced up at the piles of junk that surrounded them on all sides. Wind whistled and metal creaked. Rust flaked off and mixed with the dust, creating a permanent red haze.
"So who're we lookin' for here?" he wondered.
"The guy who's gonna make your life a whole lot easier if you let him," Silver answered, leading Dares into a canyon lined with bits and bobs and corrugated steel. "He's kind of an expert on this living in the Wasteland business."
"You know him well?"
Silver breathed in sharply. "I admire him."
Dares stopped to pick at a loose sheet of plastic, peeking under it as if to find the pony they sought. "What's he like?"
Silver smiled. "You'll see. Or maybe you won't. He likes to keep to himself, and he's an expert at that too. The town was under his wing before I came here, though they didn't know it. I think most of them still don't. He's been killing stuff the regular guards can't handle, warding off raiders, typical vigilante. Even this junkyard was crawling with radscorpions before he came. But he won't take payment, and the sheriff doesn't know he helps, only that he lives here."
Dares made a small noise, though it was hard to tell if he approved or not. "Tall dark and silent type, is he?"
Silver laughed, passing under an arch made of stop signs and old curving metal bits she didn't see the purpose of. "To the bone."
"So why stay out here if he's such a big help?"
Silver chewed her words carefully before spitting them out. "He has his reasons. One thing you learn quick down here, soldier boy: not everypony appreciates a helping hoof. Especially the ponies who value making a cap and seeing another day over doing the right thing. But this guy, he's all right."
"Hm. I almost look forward to meeting him."
Silver turned around and smiled warmly.
"So say hello."
"Hello," said Dares and the pony standing behind him at the same time.
"Whadda fuggin’ what!?" Dares squealed, taking to the air and twisting about, his eyes wider than bloatsprite eggs. Silver laughed and laughed, falling back onto her haunches and holding a hoof over her mouth. A pegasus taken by surprise was always a hilarious sight, and the holier-than-thou attitude he'd been cultivating so carefully just made his humiliation all the more precious. The new pony, his broad-shouldered, powerful build covered in wrappings and a thick, dusty cloak, stared up at Dares through the goggles on their gasmask, unperturbed by Dares’ sputtering and pointing.
"What! What!" Dares gasped. "How did you—? When did—? Who are you?!"
"The pony you were looking forward to meeting," the stranger said, and Silver felt that familiar thrilling warmth at his deep, rolling voice, muffled though it was by the mask. "Come down, pegasus. Let me have a look at you."
Dares landed several feet away from the masked pony, shaking his head. "Luna's pearly ass, you scared me half ta' death!" he griped. "How did you do that?"
"Practice," said the masked pony, pacing around Dares and looking him up and down. There was something adorably entertaining at how Dares raised his hoof defensively and curled his wings tight against his body.
"So who've you brought me, Silver?" the masked pony asked. "He doesn't stand like a pony of the Waste."
Silver grinned widely and threw out a hoof, as if she was presenting a diva at her next performance. She loved making introductions here; nopony knew what to expect from her gasmask-wearing friend. "I present to you Corporal Who Dares Wins! He's a recent drop-off courtesy of the Grand Pegasus Enclave."
"Enclave?" said the masked pony, leaning uncomfortably close to sniff at Dares, the sound exaggerated and unseemly through the mask. Dares yelped and tucked a leg against his side. "But he hasn't been branded."
"I ain't no Dashite!" Dares barked, stamping his hoof. "The Enclave's my home! I got stranded here."
The masked pony shrugged. "Home is an ephemeral thing in the Wasteland, Corporal. There are other brands besides that of a Dashite, and not all of them are visible. It may behoove you not to be an Enclave pegasus much longer."
"Who are you to tell me what I am an' ain't?" Dares snapped. Silver rolled her eyes. The insufferable child act was getting old. If anypony had the patience to deal with this pegasus, her friend would.
The masked pony shrugged. "Nopony Special."
Dares rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I can see that."
"No," said Nopony, "that is my name."
Dares blinked. "Your name?"
"Yes."
"As in what your parents gave you?"
"As in who I am."
Dares looked at Silver, who smirked at his befuddled expression. "Don't worry about it," she said, sashaying over to Nopony and throwing a hoof around his broad shoulders. "He gives the same spiel to everypony, even me."
"I am nothing if not consistent," said Nopony.
Silver grinned. "He's a real peach, ain't he?"
"He looks dirtier than most," Dares grumbled, smoothing out his feathers. Silver sniffed, but let it go. It was a common trait of the arrogant to turn to insults when their pride was pricked.
"In case you didn't notice," rumbled Nopony, "there aren't any warm baths or hot showers here in the junkyard. I wear the rags to protect myself from the environment, and the mask to protect my lungs."
"From your own stink, I expect."
"Like I said," Nopony answered slowly, "no showers."
Dares blinked. “Right. Well. Silver said you could help me.”
“That depends,” Nopony answered with a tilt of his head. “What kind of help are you looking for?”
“All the help he can get,” Silver cut in, which earned her a glare from Dares. She took it in stride and grinned right back. “Admit it flyboy, you don’t need a map. You need to learn to draw.”
“What I need is direction! I’m not stayin’ here forever,” Dares retorted.
Nopony shrugged. “I am skilled in the ways of the Wasteland. I’ve wandered it for many years. The best advice I can offer is to stay here and keep your head down. For the rest of your life, if need be.”
“What!” Dares yelped. His wings snapped open with an audible crack of air. “I’m not stickin’ around in this dirt town for the rest of my life! I got a home! I got ponies ta’ go back to! Silver, back me up here!”
Silver stepped away from Nopony, sharing an uncomfortable glance with Dares.
“There’s other kinds of help than what you wanted, Dares,” she muttered, scuffing her hoof on the ground as Dares snorted and turned away. She knew Nopony better than anyone, and while she knew Nopony would help, his kind of help was not what a pony might consider ‘kind.’ That was the way of the Wasteland.
“This is a good town… mostly,” Nopony added, making no move to follow Dares. Dares hung his head, but didn’t leave. “There is work to be had and ponies that need protecting. They are not ponies of an especially fine quality, but it is good enough for me. The rest of the Wasteland is not a place you want to go, Who Dares Wins. It is unkind to everypony, but especially so to outsiders. And you are from as outside as a pony can get.”
“I can handle myself,” Dares grunted, but there wasn’t any power in it.
“For a time, maybe,” Nopony agreed. “But if you really came for my advice, then I would tell you to be happy that you are even alive.”
Silver felt she had to say something. This was a pony whose life she’d saved, after all. And she knew the longing for home better than most. Seeing it crushed so readily still affected her, as fond as she was of Nopony.
“We’re not saying you have to be stuck here and be miserable,” she offered. “We’re saying that there’s a life you can live.”
“I don’t want the life that you ponies have!” Dares snapped, turning around and swiping his hoof. “Don’t you get it? I came here so I could get advice on how ta’ survive, how ta’ get along, an’ how ta’ make a graceful exit. Sheesh, you ponies are sellin’ this shithole of a town like a couple a’ realtors!”
Silver felt another spike of frustration, but her sharp intake of breath tipped Nopony off. “We’re not selling. We’re giving,” he responded calmly, cutting off her tirade. “We’re in the business of giving life, Dares. My life isn’t much. Your life isn’t either, right now at least. But just because you didn’t want to end up here does not mean the Wasteland is a punishment or a purgatory.”
“Whatever,” Dares sulked, turning away. “If you don’t got anything useful to say, I’m done here.”
“There is something,” Nopony said before he could leave, “that I have in mind. Something that may require a pony of your talents.”
“Huh?” said Dares.
“What?” Silver said immediately after. Her mind spun with all the different ways Dares could be put through the wringer. There had been that one poor colt a while back who Nopony conscripted to help deal with the giant rats, but Nopony promised that had been a one-time thing… “Nopony, you’re not just gonna throw him to the dogs right after you’ve met him, are you?”
“Of course not,” said Nopony. “But you say he is a soldier of the Enclave. That would make him the first real soldier Equestria has seen in almost two hundred years. I have an idea to help him keep his hooves busy.”
“What’s that?” Dares asked, no doubt intrigued by the thought of staving off boredom.
“You will show me your skill,” answered Nopony, “and your courage. We must go out and destroy an infestation of nightstalkers that is encroaching on my territory. They have already overtaken an abandoned farm not far from here and I believe they may form a brood that must be eradicated. We leave tomorrow.”
“Why not today?” asked Dares.
“I need time to gauge the measure of your worth,” Nopony said, with that hint of teasing crypticness that Silver loved and hated so much. “If you want to help yourself Dares, do it by helping me.”
Dares looked between the two of them with a suspicious glare. Silver knew she would have given up and booted him out on his own if he wanted it so much, but Nopony had a special hoof with recalcitrant ponies—perhaps something to do with his background.
“Fine,” said Dares. “I need somethin’ to do anyway. When do we start?”
“Right now,” said Nopony. “Come. We need to get you armed.”
“Yeah, there’s the little matter of my gun—”
“Which I have.”
“—Of course you do,” said Dares with a sigh. “I want it back.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s broken. Useless. You won’t fix it without an expert. Don’t worry, it’ll be safe here until we can get it working again.”
Dares glared. “Can I at least see it?”
“You get to see everything. Come, both of you.”
Nopony led them deeper into the junkyard, where the landscape was blocked by mountains of scrap metal and piles of old chariots and skywagons, their broken corpses singing a hollow moan as the wind blew through them. Through a valley between two piles of broken gadgets and rotting circuits, into a little enclave covered by a makeshift lean-to, Nopony led them to where he made his home. The lean-to was dug into the side of the junk pile, making it more spacious inside than it looked outside. An old mattress sat across from an improvised set of cookware, and Silverlight noticed Dares eyeing the cauldron and dirty chemistry set in one corner, gritting her teeth in silence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “and you’re not correct. He’s not that kind of pony.”
“Coulda fooled me,” muttered Dares.
“The beakers are for my craft,” said Nopony, grabbing a large trunk from under a sheet of metal and dragging it to the front. “I am something of an everypony. I work on what needs to be worked on. Much of the knowledge of the Old World has been lost, including how to create some of Equestria’s most potent spells and potions. I try to study and recover some of that history.”
“An’ what kind of potions might you be makin’?” Dares asked.
Nopony stood up and held out a small vial of red, gently glowing liquid.
“The kind that heal ponies,” he answered.
Dares took the vial and shook it gently, watching the liquid inside slosh around.
“You mean this stuff will… heal you?”
“To a degree,” answered Nopony. “The liquid is a concentration of very expensive and hard-to-find ingredients. It is a catalyst for healing magic that quickens a pony’s natural healing abilities by magnitudes. Do not rely upon them too much; I don’t know much about how it works, only that it does. You can find many of them while scavenging, as bottles of them were produced in their millions during the Great War.”
Silverlight smirked at Dares. “See? There’s ponies down here who know how to make stuff beyond instruments of torture.”
Dares slowly slipped the vial into one of his armor’s pouches. “So you have working knowledge of Old World tech down here,” he said carefully, and glanced at Silverlight. “I thought you just used bits and pieces you picked up around the Wasteland, not manufactured.”
Silver balked at the veiled threat. “You can’t seriously call that a bad thing! I saved your life with this gunk, remember? Most ponies can’t even remember how to open and close a door, let alone create anything beyond a stick figure drawing!”
Dares returned his gaze to Nopony. “You couldn’t do something this sophisticated in a junkyard. You must have had help.”
Nopony tilted his head to one side. “Of course I did. Silverlight here has been invaluable with her knowledge of pony anatomy and general know-how, and her doctor friend the same. As well as others across the Wastes whom I have kept in contact with.”
Silver stepped forward and took up a position at Nopony’s side. Though he didn’t outwardly react, she knew he appreciated the gesture. There was always a warmth to him when she was nearby, through all those rags and stoic stares. When Dares’ glare didn’t abate, Nopony even leaned slightly to the side, keeping the pegasus focused on him.
“In order to survive, I learned how to make connections. How to make friends. How to use the knowledge those friends have. Is it such a surprise that ponies here have learned to make do? Do not think that knowing how to make healing potions makes me a threat to the Enclave, Dares. Think instead of why the Enclave believes it is a threat in the first place that ponies have knowledge at all.”
“I’ve spent my whole life fightin’ against evil ponies who’d use that knowledge to lord over others,” muttered Dares. “So don’t tell me that I shouldn’t be cautious.”
Silver felt her lungs tighten as Nopony gave Dares a goggle-eyed stare. She didn’t know what Dares saw in that look, but whatever it was it was enough to make the Enclave soldier take a visible step back.
“There is caution,” said Nopony, in a slow, quiet voice Silver had never once heard him use around her before, “and there are excuses.”
“Whaddaya mean by that?” Dares asked, but by the tone in his voice he already knew the answer.
Nopony shrugged. “We will discuss philosophy another time. For now, take a look at your new equipment.”
“You’re gonna like this,” Silver promised. “Nopony’s been stockpiling some real top of the line gear for some time now.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Dares grumbled as Nopony pulled out a large locker from a hidden alcove, dropping it heavily in front of Dares. He popped the top open and stood back.
“Take your pick.”
Inside was a pile of guns. Silver knew most of them by sight; you didn’t survive in the Wasteland without being able to tell. Mostly old salvage from gunslingers and raiders who died in the Wasteland and were kind enough to leave behind their stuff, it was a motley assortment of low-caliber weapons in various states of disrepair. Most of them weren’t what she’d call clean either. At least Nopony was fastidious enough to wash the blood off.
Dares picked up an old assault rifle wound together with fraying duct tape. The wooden butt fell off the moment he got it off the ground.
“Uh,” he grunted, looking queasy.
“Here,” said Nopony as he slapped a saddle onto Dares’ back, knocking all the air out of him. “You’ll need a battle saddle of course. Most of these weapons can be rather sticky, so you’ll need all the help you can get firing them.”
“Anything a little less, uh…”
“Dirty? Corroded? Likely to blow your hooves off?” Silver quipped.
Dares shuddered. “I was gonna say crap, but…”
“This is the Wasteland, Dares,” muttered Nopony, impatiently glaring at the pegasus over the top of the locker. “We take what we can get. Occasionally, traders come by with weapons of superior quality, but the only qualified gunsmith is often busy just keeping the town together. He doubles as the blacksmith.”
“Fine,” said Dares, picking up a rickety looking carbine and strapping it to his saddle. “Not even an articulated mount?”
“Not even iron sights on some of them. I hope your warrior instincts are as strong as the Enclave thought, Dares.”
“Warrior instincts? You sound like some kinda tribal.”
“Tribals do have a habit of persisting where even the Enclave fears to tread,” said Silver, enjoying the rankled look Dares gave her. She did so enjoy poking a few holes in inflated egos. The sound they made while deflating was delightful.
“Enclavers aren’t much good down here,” said Nopony. “The best thing to be now is a survivor.”
Dares looked forlornly at the rusty carbine at his side, grudgingly shoving an ammo magazine into it. “Where’s my old gun?”
“I’ll get that,” said Silver, trotting to a case that was much more well-kept than the weapons locker. She unlatched it and pulled it open, twisting it around to Dares. She almost felt sorry for him when his face went a little green. Almost.
“Oh, Sky save me,” he muttered. “Gem case cracked, burned out power regulator, focusing case just gone… what’d they do ta you, darlin’?”
“It’s not a total lost cause,” Silver said, closing the case again. “Like I said, if we can find somepony who knows this stuff, it’ll be fixed up in no time.”
“And to do that,” said Nopony, approaching Dares with an extra assault rifle and attempting to fasten it to his battle saddle, “we’ll have go back into town. And you, Dares, will help me make this town safe. There is a problem I know of that will test your abilities well. This junkyard, you see, sits above a cave system—”
Dares jumped and backed away, shaking his head as Nopony chased him with the gun, still trying to attach it. “Oooh, no, now I don’t do so well in tight spaces—”
“—that has recently been infested by a large number of giant ants—”
Dares’ tail and wings shot up straight behind him. “How large is a large number?!”
“Stop flinching. And if they overtake the junkyard, I will have no home, and the ponies here will spend lives and resources to take it back. We will find the queen, eradicate it, and burn the eggs.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dares said, backing up until he hit the wall of Nopony’s home and then sinking to the floor. “You mean just us two? We’re going into a nest full of giant bugs and we’re just going to kill them? And then tomorrow we’re fightin’ nightstalkers?!”
Silver blinked, watching the Enclaver closely. She realized she was feeling something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Something that had gotten her through many long days with ponies who didn’t deserve the brains they’d been gifted with. Something that let her keep laughing in the face of horrible danger.
She was feeling smug as hell.
“Oh, come now,” she purred, sashaying to Nopony and using him as a leaning post with her elbow on his back and her chin on her hoof. “The big, scary Enclave soldier is afraid of some simple extermination jobs?”
Dares glared at her “It’s easier when the exterminatees aren’t eight-legged freaks with giant mandibles and those twitchy antennae thingies on their face and the gross little stingers—”
“Six,” Silver cut him off.
“What?”
“Six legs. Not eight. Giant ants have six.”
“Well, whatever!” Dares grumped, flinging his hooves into the air. “The insects you have down here should all be killed with fire! Lots and lots of fire! They’re disgusting and I hate them. I’ve seen the reports. I saw those things swarm a raider stronghold once. It was horrifying. Not even raiders deserve to die like that.”
“Which is why,” Nopony explained patiently, “you and I must cut this infestation off at the source before it becomes unmanageable.”
"Why isn't Silver comin' along?"
"Yeah," said Silver, "why aren't I coming along? It's been getting bored back in town."
Dares nodded. "If she's so skilled at treatin' injuries then she would be an invaluable addition to the team, right?"
"Aw," said Silver, "that's the nicest thing you've said about me yet."
"If a giant ant bites my leg off," Dares huffed, "I want it reattached by somepony who at least halfway knows what they're doin'."
Nopony shook his head. "Silver will stay behind. Here in the Wasteland anything could happen."
"Why is why," Silver said, narrowing her eyes, "I should come, to help."
"Of all the ponies here, you are most indispensable to the town. Besides, this job really will not need more than two ponies. I’d never forgive myself if you died because of something as manageable as a giant ant. If we suffer injuries a healing potion cannot cure, then we are already dead ponies walking."
"So we're good at shooting, but not so good that we ain't expendable?" Dares asked with a sour look on his face.
"Yes," Nopony said, without hesitation.
"So we’re going because literally nopony else is willing or qualified?"
"Exactly."
"Great. But we don’t have the means!”
“We already do,” said Nopony. “All we have to do is kill the queen and burn her nest chamber. That will ensure we kill any future queens she may have laid. The ants will scatter and die soon after.”
“An’ how are we gonna burn it without laser weapons?”
“Fire,” said Silver. “Like you said, lots of it. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find stuff that burns down here. Honestly, Dares, you’re a soldier. You should use that brain if the Enclave didn’t make you forget how.”
Nopony said, “I’ve managed to scrounge up some drums of oil from passing caravans, scavenging the junkyard and the like, that should do the trick. There aren’t any vehicles out here to be fueled and not enough oil to make it last, so it’ll hardly be going to waste. We roll them into the lair, set it alight, and then we are done.”
“It’s that easy?” Dares asked, raising his eyebrow.
Nopony turned and fixed Dares with a stare through his mask that Silver felt from behind the masked pony.
“You should know,” he said, “that it never is.”
Author's Note
Posted purely for sentimental reasons. I saw this sitting in my Google drive and didn't want it languishing there.
