Salvage

by Rollem Bones

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Crossover, Alternate Universe, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 109396

Curtain Call is a salvager with an entertainer's heart. He's already carved a niche for himself in the wastelands of Equestria, but an act of mercy and bravado forces him to have to rethink his place in the wastes

Curtain Call is a salvager with an entertainer's heart and a con-artist's mind. He's already carved a niche for himself in the wastelands of Equestria. However, an act of bravado and unthought mercy forces him into rebuilding his life. Maybe for the betterment of himself, and maybe for Equestria, if just a small part of it.

Cover art by Julep. See his work here.

Published 2013-08-10 18:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-10-11 18:25:08 UTC

Mercy, Mercy Me

Chapter 1: Mercy, Mercy Me
"I'm no hero."

"Good morning Equestria! This is your friend Curtain Call with the morning weather report; looks like we're in for another overcast day with a ninety percent chance of confrontation and a high mortality rate for all you fine ponies out there today. So wear your barding and pack your pistol, mares and stallions. Now back to the studio with your host, DJ-Pon3!"

While I rambled to the air, I looked out over the rubble of Manehattan's West Side; the crumbled, crumpled mess of structures from that bygone era I called home. That is, if one considers three walls, a half a roof, some bed, a bookcase filled with scrap and an ancient radio a home.

Not that I was complaining, it may have all been junk, but it was my junk. Some call me a scavenger. I hate the term. I'm a salvager. I venture forth into the remains of the old world in hopes of using the scrap left behind to build a new one.

The radio sparked and crackled with DJ-Pon3's broadcast of a long dead crooner tune out over the wasteland. The sound jarred me to my senses but my stomach's irritable bitching directed me to semblance of focus. I looked at the scratch marks on my wall. It was trading day. I needed to hurry and grab whatever I felt like parting with if I wanted to catch Summer Bounty's caravan. Catching up, when I considered my lack of food stores relative to my piles of electronics, seemed a better plan than learning to enjoy wiring with wine sauce.

My bookcase runneth over with the spoils from a Spark-King Radio shop. A radio, a few collected wires and connectors, even a heavyweight spark battery thrown in for good measure could keep me fed until the next caravan passed me by. I stuffed all of it into my saddlebags and hung them on my barding.

I liked my barding. It was simple, grey and brown sackcloth with some dull metal plates sewn on the outside. The lack of color did a better job of hiding me out in the city than my own red coat. Some years back I had my cutie mark stamped on the flank plates. The little comedy mask still smiled while his tragic sibling wept on. Was it vain? Probably. Did it look good? Definitely. I topped it all off with an old world hard hat. Most of it was still as yellow as my mane, despite the dings and dents from years of abuse. It didn't look like much, but my hat kept my skull in one piece on more than one occasion. I couldn't trust my life to anything else in the world more than that hat.

Crossing through the west side of Manehattan was like crossing over a minefield. Except that with a minefield you can at least predict the direction of the things which want to kill you. If I was to catch up with Summer Bounty on time to be able to eat for the foreseeable future, I had to make it across some particularly troublesome sections of the shell of a city. The standing walls, half present stores and office structures, the occasional home that still sat stolidly amid the brick and mortar high rises that once were, each one held a million different potential dangers. They also made for best friends when you were a loner who didn't exactly want any of those million dangers to come swooping in and picking you off out in the open.

The walls that still stood made for good protection. Stick alongside them; keep an ear and an eye out, and a pony does just fine. I poked my head around a corner to look for manticore, raiders, or just about anything that looked to make me dead far faster than I felt necessary. Three raiders in the piece-meal armor that seemed to make up the most of Manehattan's raider chic fashion plate cross the street a few blocks from my position. Unfortunately for me, I was too far away to hear what they were saying even if they were speaking at all.

I parked my flank on the pavement and looked at the half torn picture of one of the old ministry mares; the pink one with the big eyes looking down at me. "Don't suppose you can keep an eye out for me and let me know when those ponies have cleared out?" I asked the poster.

The poster didn't answer back. I waited a little longer, trying to listen for the raiders just around the way.

The poster folded, flopped, and fell to the ground. Maybe the poster was trying to answer after all.

I looked at the dingy paper as it hit the dingier road. I admit I was surprised it didn't fall down earlier. For a moment I had wondered why it was still standing in the first place. I had gotten so used to those posters over the years I'd sort of figured they would always stay up. Shaken from my pause, I decided to peek around the corner again, to see the tail of one of the raiders disappear from view and grant me my opening.

I scrambled down a half story pile of rubble to the usual meet point; a wide avenue that countless traders had cleared and reinforced over the decades since the bombs blasted Equestria to bits. Say what you will about the wasteland but in the end you had to admit it liked its trade routes. The pile of rubble I had climbed down was but one walling off the street and creating a single pass through the concrete canyon. From my position, I could see anything coming up from either direction for a good, safe, distance.

Two black dots appeared in the distance. They grew into two figures and then into the two familiar shapes I was expecting; an orange unicorn pulling a cloth covered cart. Alongside her was her bodyguard, a griffon by the name of Cutter. The two had been my main connection to the world at large for the past year or so of my life in Manehattan. I owed them, mostly Summer, my survival.

"Call!" Summer shouted as I trotted over, laughter in her voice the first living emotion I'd heard in weeks. "You come all the way out here just to see little old me?"

I held a hoof to her nose. "No words, my dearest," I spoke low, stared her in the eyes with enough worked smolder to start a bonfire. I leaned to her ear and whispered, "I want you. Nay, I need you. I burn for you, your presence, your everything. Never leave me."

She burst into laughter and pushed me away. "You only love caps."

"Too true," I agreed, laughing along with Summer "But such is a love that lasts eternal."

I circled the cart, my pokes at the tarpaulin covering the wares stopped by little bursts of golden magic. "What've you got in there you keeping from your oldest friend's eyes?" I asked Summer, walking back around to help her out of her cart harness.

"Lots, but I want to see what you have in your bags first. You know the policy, show me yours and I'll show you mine," Summer told me, taking the liberty to take my saddlebags up with her telekinetic grip.

I didn't object to the perusal, this was a ritual we had played out a hundred times before. "Got some wiring, most of it in usable condition. Clean and strip a few others and some yokel will part ways for it even if it's not worth a cap. Some small arms ammunition, most of it for holdouts. Somepony had cleaned out the heavy stuff before I got the chance to loot it."

A pair of chunky orange battery packs floated up out of the pack. "And some arcane energy cells for a beam gun," Summer said with a sly grin. Behind her, Cutter watched the packs from behind a pair of reflective sunglasses and her usual stony expression.

Cutter never did speak when I was around. She was some mercenary Summer picked up a while back. She was hard to read, but not impossible to work. A big beam gun like the one she carried must have been a thirsty beast. With safety being such a concern in the wastes, especially for long distance trading, battery packs were always big ticket items.

"So what's on the menu?" I asked, slipping over to the cart to take a peek at the goods. "I'm looking for food, but you should already know that. Got any other goodies in here?"

The cart was packed, but most of it I knew to be fairly useless to a pony in my position. After all, I sold much of it to her in the first place. I did see a bundle of food, mostly prewar cans and jars sealed up tight. If it was any sign of how pointless this whole back and forth was, it was that Summer already had a parcel set up for me the same way I knew what I was giving to her. Old friends make quick trades. Still, I saw a yellow kit bag tucked in the corner. Curious, I reached for it.

A growl stopped me mid motion. I looked back. Cutter stared out at the middle distance. Summer was just stacking up my offer with a small grin. I decided to leave the bag alone.

"You want something special, Curtain Call?" Summer appeared beside me. "Cause I think I might have something right up your alley."

She bumped me aside with her flank and her horn flared with magic. Out from the cart floated a small terminal screen on a foreleg clamp. I had seen them before, a PipBuck. Fairly rare technology and nothing to scoff at.

"A PipBuck?" I scoffed, "Really? You expect me to believe you're just going to pass on one of these out of the goodness of your heart and a bag of scrap?" I chewed on my tongue and gave Summer a raised eyebrow to tack a few more question marks onto my statement.

Summer looked away for a split second and I pounced. "It's busted, isn't it? Just a piece of junk you were looking to foist on some rube?" I asked, leaning closer to the mare. "I guess in this case I'll have to be your rube. Because I'm taking it, and my food, and an invitation for you and your pet rock over there to stay the night."

Summer sighed as I took my prizes to stuff into my now empty saddlebags. "I'd love to, Call," She told me, with a lingering exception left to hang in the air. She shared a look with Cutter and started to frown, "Believe me, I could use the fun, but I have to make time. I've got to get a stock of goods up to a settlement northeast from here. Word is it's new and the poor saps haven't all the gear they need, but they got a lot of caps they don't need. I'm looking to get in on the ground floor."

I nodded and gave a shrug to hide the hurt. Summer was a busy mare, I understood, but I'm a social stallion and it's been a lonely time in Manehattan. "Good luck, don't do anything I wouldn't,"

"Don't think I could," came Summer's reply.

We both stood and looked at each other for a long moment. The wind whistled through the buildings. Dust spiraled on the ground. And we just looked.

Cutter coughed. Summer and I looked down in unison.

"On our way back," Summer said, "We'll stay then. We'll have a haul to go over and I'll want to do it with you."

Both of us laughed as our minds jumped to the same place. "Okay, okay," I said, gathering up my goods. "You know where I am. I'll still be there by the time you get back. Good luck out there, both of you," I bid them, starting toward the rubble wall of the avenue.

I stopped and pointed at Cutter. "And you, don't talk so much."

Call it a hunch but something told me that someone was sticking their tongue out at me the moment I had my back to the two party caravan.

I have liked entertaining ponies ever since I was a colt. I traveled with my mother, my father bit it thanks to some bastard's booby trap. It wasn't a good life, nopony in the wastes has a true good life, but mine was as good as I could get. She sold what she could salvage, I sang, danced, told jokes, dragged them by their saddlebags, whatever bit of attention I could get for her and myself meant caps for us.

Sometimes we found something real special. My favorite was a book called "Greatest Plays for the Smallest Stage". I read it cover to cover, again and again and then some more until I knew it by heart. I played the parts, all of them, for the ponies when they traded with my mother. I was too young then for the realities of the world to be understood, but funny thing is, even when I learned how shitty the world is first hoof, I kept on playing the parts, only now in order to give ponies a chance at ignoring it all for a while. When I figured that out, that's when I got my cutie mark, the little masks on my flank. Just like the cover of my book. So you see, I knew that entertaining was what made me feel special, even if circumstance tells you otherwise.

Knowing that, it isn't hard to see why I was upset then at my radio listening for the evening getting interrupted by the crash coming from the bottom floor of my little hideaway. Right in the middle of hearing some news about a Stable Dweller doing some impossible sounding crap and there goes some kind of clatter and clank. I heaved a sigh, turned off my radio, and slunk out to listen in on the sounds below.

Around my neck hung my Sharp Retort. I wasn't about to go out against a suspicious noise without some form of protection. In this case, a bit with a pair of long spikes on either end set up like tusks. I picked it up off a caravaner a few years prior. It's kept me safe when things have gotten too close for comfort.

I was right, clanking and clattering. Somepony, or ponies were making a racket in the first floor of the bombed out building I called my hidey-hole. It didn't take long for whoever it was down there to start yammering, and I love it when they talk.

"There ain't shit down here!" shouted a stallion, the frustration in his voice made me grin. I'd picked that place clean months ago. "Was that scavenger you saw another one of your ghosts there, Cloves? Fucking dumbass."

"Just keep looking, limp prick. I know I saw something duck in here. I know it," came a mare's shrill reply.

"Hey, found stairs. Going up." A third voice, another mare, spoke up. Either she doubted I was on the second floor, or she was just too stupid to avoid shouting her plans. I didn't have time to ponder too much, there were more pressing matters coming up the stairs.

I got ready. Behind the door of my room, I waited and listened to the hoof-beats of the pony coming upstairs. I also listened to the insistent beating of my heart as it attempted to bludgeon its way out of my chest. I peeked and saw the mare as she rounded the staircase. She was tall, her fur a dingy white. Her mane was in a tangled mess of brown and black. The barding she wore made mine look high class; tire wheels at her shoulder, strips of cloth from a warehouse worth of clothing, and a thick leather band around her barrel. I was more concerned with the pair of heavy spikes that jutted from a strap around her cannon.

I crouched behind my door and waited. My heart beat a dance number in my chest. I heard the deafening rush of blood in my ears. I was terrified, but when I got to the heart of the matter I knew it was just pre-show jitters. At heart I'm a showpony. I can improvise when the time comes and the curtain was about to be drawn.

"Hey there, fancy meeting a mare like you in a dump like this?" I spouted, springing up from behind my door and leaning on the open hole where a window used to be.

She stopped and snapped toward me at speeds somewhere between crazed and rabid. She didn't hesitate, swinging her leg and the wicked spike attached to it right at my head. My heart fluttered. I loved it when an ill-thought out plan came together. I kicked with my front hooves, hard. The door swung out and into her. They never expect that I rigged the door to open backwards. I'm not a bulky pony by any means, but I'm still an earth pony, and I'm stronger than I look. That and she was caught off her guard. Okay, a lot of it was her caught off her guard. All the same, I pinned her against the wall, her head caught in the hole, her spiked leg flailed wildly. She struggled, grunted and tried to buck me off her as I pressed the door against her. She couldn't cry out, only gasp as I pushed the air out of her.

I had to be quick, I knew I wouldn't have much time to wait this out, or talk it out. It isn't like these raiders tend to enjoy a good hash things out with words session anyways. I kept my weight on the door, on the struggling, gasping mare, and took Sharp Retort into my mouth. I jabbed upwards, where her muzzle meets her neck. She went still, I went still, her blood began to run down the spikes of my weapon, dripping onto the doorframe. Her muzzle opened but only a gurgle came out. Her eyes stared, wide, but I doubt they were looking at anything. I tried to shush her, hissing through my teeth. I shoved the points in deeper, just trying to make it faster. I just wanted her to just die already but she kept fighting. Her friends could be coming up the stairs at any moment.

Eventually she stopped, her body going limp and heavy. I slid Sharp Retort from her throat and she fell to the floor with a lifeless thud. I didn't have time to take a moment for her, but I wanted to. After all, just because I can do something doesn't mean I have to like it.

The stallion came up after the partner that would never come. I darted behind my bookcase to watch him pass by. I saw the cutie mark on his flank. He walked to where I propped the dead mare's body. "Hey, moron, you come up here to take another nap?" I know a lot of these raiders were thick, but this was a special kind of thick.

"She's dead, Riot," the third voice, the other mare I guessed as Cloves, returned. "Somepony's up here." The mare was a unicorn, smaller than the first but she floated a heavy looking cleaver beside herself. It spun lazily in the air as the mare stopped just in view of me from my blind. This threw a sizable wrench, or more appropriately cleaver, into my operations, but I remembered I had one advantage. I knew the terrain, and I had physics on my side.

I shoved my bookcase hiding spot. I put every bit of muscle I could behind it. Turns out that all that random junk lying around gets very, very heavy when it's all piled up on a bookshelf. I landed on the back of the shelf as it fell with a cacophonous clatter on top of the unicorn. She let out a yelp before the crushing weight pinned her and took the wind out of her. Her magic broken, the cleaver hit the ground. I kicked it away when I charged the stallion. I didn't have time to check on my work, all I could do was move forward.

The stallion turned to see what had just happened. He found out very quickly that I did. I ducked down and caught him under his chest, and bucked. He went up, but more importantly, he went backwards. I caught him square in the belly with Sharp Retort. A spurt of blood hit my eye, blinding me. It hurt like hell and I staggered back. Fortunately, he did the same, and for him, back meant out the missing chunk of my wall. He danced on his hind legs, teetering on the edge, and then he was gone. I heard the smack on the pavement below and dashed to the hole to look. The pool of blood and the way his neck bent at a strange angle gave me no small flutter of hope that I had won

That's when I heard the groan behind me. I forgot about Cloves. I wheeled around, expecting to meet one very angry raider or a flying cleaver or both.

I met instead with a pony struggling to pick up a very heavy bookcase and quite a lot of radios.

I sighed. In the rush, I can hurt and I can kill. Anypony can to survive. But the scene in front of me was pathetic. I trotted over to the bookcase and stood on it to press her down. I jabbed one of Sharp Retort's spikes through her ear and into the floorboard to keep her down. The act was cruel and petty but I was angry and that colors one's perspective in a moment.

The unicorn's shriek rang in my ears and she tried to buck the bookcase, the junk, and I all in one go. When she realized it was futile, she stopped. She was smarter than the others.

"Go on and do it, asshole," she hissed at me, her eye narrowed in a mixture of uncertainty, fear, and all out hatred.

"You wish, darling," I hissed in her ear, pressing down on the bookcase. "I just wanted to let you know that I don't appreciate ponies trying to raid my house. It bugs me. Just a little bit, you know?" I forced myself to speak with overacted geniality.

The cleaver started to move again. I twisted Sharp Retort. The cleaver stopped.

"Tut tut, don't go getting ideas. Now, I'm going to be a good guy here. I'm going to let you go, and you're never going to come back, okay? Sound peachy keen fabulous?"

The unicorn tried to nod but just pulled on her own ear. She managed to hiss an angry affirmation though.

I am a pony of my word; let that be known, because I did push that bookcase off her. With the bookcase gone, it would not be too hard for her to stand up and leave. At least, it would have been if it wasn't for her ear being pinned to the floor by Sharp Retort. I didn't pull it out though, no. I was angry, and like I said, that changes things. She struggled to keep her eye on me while I took up her cleaver.

One quick swing later and the unicorn was free.

She yowled. There was blood. I dropped the cleaver to clatter on the floor.

I smiled to her. "Run."

Thank Luna she listened.

It took a few hours to clean up. Get my bookcase right ways up, get all my stuff back together. I looted the bodies, that's not as bad as killing them. They aren't going to use them after all. Least that's always what I told myself. As hauls go, it was not much. The cleaver was a rusted piece of junk, I was surprised it even allowed me my psychopathic scare tactic with the unicorn. Their armor was all a bust. I took it all anyways, tucked it away for next time I go find Summer Bounty. A handful of caps and a bit of Dash rounded out their possessions. I took it all. I dragged their bodies to an empty place down the road. I didn't want them around.

Dinner was good, for a broad definition of the term. I kept it down; don't know how I did though. The radio was better but I only half listened. I looked out from my hole in the wall. The blighted, blasted wreckage at night. The terrible things that I knew were out there so unapparent from my perch. It made me want to laugh. So I did. I laughed. I laughed loud. I didn't even stop when the tears started coming.

"Stop crying. You shouldn't have let that bitch go."

A voice over the radio cracked and popped across the the tinny airwaves. The voice dragged across my ears like a rasp. I couldn't help but look at the little flashing dial that sparked in time with the voice. I'm not insane, I thought. I was just alone and I needed to think and sometimes you need someone to bounce ideas off of in order to keep your head. Everyone needs friends. I just made my own.

"She's going to get friends. You know she is. She'll be back. You'll die. You done fucked up, Red."

I gritted my teeth and looked down at the floor. "Not right now," I replied, "She won't. I took out her friends and left her with a message she won't soon forget. I'll be fine."

"Fat chance of that. Should've run off with your little marefriend. Shame the better part ain't still-"

"Enough!" I shouted at the radio and smashed it to the ground. "I won't. Don't go there," I told the now silent lump of metal and wire. "I've got this all under control. I just need some sleep. I just need a little sleep and I'll be fine by the morning."

I paced the floor of my apartment, periodically checking out the gaping hole to the dimming light outside. "Just a one act play. It's over now," my reminders were sounding more hollow the more I thought of it.

"Stupid fuck," crackled a radio. "Lock your door and get ready for a sun up surprise. You know it, I know it, everyone here knows it. I'm looking out for you, Red, but you're the only one that can save your ass."

I swallowed the lump sitting in my throat. I looked down at the PipBuck I bought earlier. Solemnly, I rolled the device underhoof, thinking about where it came from and how it may have gotten in Summer's cart.

"Don't ignore me," the heavy rasp clamored for attention. "You should be half out of the East-side by now. Gangers travel in packs, you know that."

I laughed to myself and pushed the PipBuck aside. With the help of the weight of my actions, I fell into the old mattress I called a bed. "Go to sleep, Radio. Just go to sleep."

I woke in a cloud of comfort. Surrounded by the soft, silken wrap of a blanket and upon the softest mattress I had ever had the pleasure of meeting. A pillow that smelled like grass and flowers, perfumed and cold and it immediately set off every warning bell in my head. I didn't own blankets like this, I barely owned blankets at all. I certainly didn't have a bed that could redefine soft. I threw myself off the deceitful furniture and snapped my head back in forth to grab my bearings on where my, extremely kind, kidnapper had taken me.

It was a stateroom. Larger than my hidey-hole and decked in deep reds and golds. The bed was a monstrous four post affair with a heap of swirled blanket in the middle where I had been cocooned. The dim lighting came from flickering lanterns attached to the wall that made the shadows dance and stretch about the rest of the room.

I walked around the bed and stopped to stare at the portraits on a writing desk at the end of the bed; gilt framed but with their photos so cracked and worn their images were impossible to make out. One of them sat face down, the frame broken. I reached to right the frame but hesitated. A tinny voice in the back of my head told me to let it lay. So I did and turned away from the desk.

"Hello!" I called out while walking down the one hallway that seemed to lead from the room. The hall was similar to the room, rich and dark and just a little too large for comfort. I passed door after door, each closed and not a one seemed to budge when I had tried to open them. So I was left with calling to the sky in hopes of finding the owner of the finest house in the wastes.

My walk was interrupted by splashing water. I looked down to see my hoof in a puddle that threatened to consume the hallway. Following it back, the water seemed to be pouring from under a door marked with a "No Admittance" sign. Not being one to care much for such trivialities, especially when my curiosity was piqued the way this house was doing, I chose to ignore the sign.

I stared out into a rainstorm and immediately regretted ignoring that sign. The door now open, the house fell away and I fell face first into a deep mud bog. I thrashed to my hooves and looked up, blinking into the rain that fell with piercing force against my hide. The house was gone fully now, I looked back and forth for the hallway but was only met with endless darkness, mud, and more rain. I ran and ran and chased what wasn't for what felt like an hour. Only then did I sit in the mud and try to reclaim my breath. I felt like I was going to drown for the rain and exertion.

A sound wove its way through the downpour, slithering into my ear from somewhere behind. It cracked and hissed and popped in a way that sent a severing terror up my spine. I looked. A cable, animate from some unseen puppeteer, spitting sparks and cruelty from its severed end, rose like a serpent in front of me.

It struck.

Everything went dark.

I heard the word, "You."

I woke up hours later to the sound of my own screaming. The morning routine is still the morning routine and I took care of it as much as the ritual took care of me. Some dried up radhog to start, sink water to wash the blood and dirt off, some more sink water to drink with a radaway chaser.

I hit my radio to get the morning sound, but was met with nothing but static. Using my far-reaching mechanical acumen, I hit the radio again. Still not a sound came from the streamlined little box. I changed up my repair regimen, this time hitting the radio, but harder. It still didn't work. Giving up, I pitched the old radio through my empty space where a wall should be and I turned to one of the other radios I had salvaged over time. The new one popped, and fed me a static fizz. I chewed on my tongue a moment, contemplating broken radio number two, but my luck came around after last nights overtime and it spat to life, once again playing DJ-Pon3's broadcast. The sweet sounds of the morning DJ and his music took my mind off last night's dream.

"See? Right up there" A familiar voice spoke outside. One I had hoped not to hear too soon. My ears turned to catch the sound, the rest of me followed soon after. I stepped over to the edge. Down below there was about six or seven ponies, one of them a unicorn with a single ear.

"Well damn," I commented to my newest radio, "Turns out she has friends. Who knew? Oh yeah, me."

I looked down at the ponies and they looked back up. I up in my hidey-hole, they on the street. Me, clean, but without my barding or weapon, they heavily armed and bearing a certain pungent odor of rage and hatred. It was a silent moment, one shared between all of us. The moment communicated through us in the way that moments tend to do. This one in particular said that I was about to die a horrible death.

I looked back upon what I could technically call a life and decided that dying was not in my best interest. I took quick quick stock of my enemy. They had guns. One of them had a really big gun rigged to a battle saddle. I didn't wonder about their condition since I expected that those raiders would be more than happy to demonstrate their firearms for me.

I bolted for my barding. Hard hat first, and a good thing, as a falling chunk of upper floor decided it would be fun to outlast the world blowing up but not a few hundred bullets. The piece of plaster hammered off the top of my helmet. The world started buzzing, blurry and swaying. I forced myself into my barding, ducking under the metal lined cloak and tightening the strap of my saddlebags with my teeth. Rare is the time I wish I were a unicorn, this happened to be one of those times. The shooting continued outside, and I stopped to think of why they were firing when they should've known it'd be impossible to hit me from down there. I took Sharp Retort in mouth, and headed to the door.

Funny thing about doors, they are hard to open when a pony the size of an independent landmass is standing in the way.

He was blue and his mane was very white sticking out from under a black beetle helmet. That was the first thing I noticed about the earth pony that filled my doorframe. The second thing was what he was wearing on his back. It was a battle saddle, a big one, but it only had one gun barrel on the right side. The other side, what I could see of it, was a barrel. The third thing I noticed was that he had just kicked the door in. I noticed this about midway in my flight from door to wall.

Once again, I had to thank my helmet. I took this blow better than the unexpected plaster, getting to my hooves and could watch the big guy take his first steps into my hidey-hole. Number four on the noticing things list, he had a PipBuck on his foreleg. Unlike the one I bought from Summer the day before, this one had working light. I kept an eye on my exit options. At the moment they consisted of; over, or under, the big blue stallion, out into second story air, or off the mortal coil. At least it was multiple choice.

"So, you're the little pony that cut off Cloves' ear? I can't say that that makes me happy." Big Blue could talk, though his voice sounded like he gargled coal this morning.

"Furthermore, this was after you decided to end the lives of two of my gang. Now, I cannot help but feel that you were trying to send me a message with these actions. I ask you to forgive my ignorance but I could not ascertain the meaning of this message on my own, so I requested Cloves show me to your homestead in order to question you directly so as to ensure there is no misunderstanding between us." Big Blue could talk a lot. I found myself just a little disturbed at how erudite he was for a raider. I am a firm believer that the big ones should not have good diction.

"That was all in self defense; believe you me, big blue. Your guys attacked me first," I defended myself in as pathetic and abrupt manner as I could. However, for a bit of additional back up, I inched my way towards the open. Slowly and surely as I kept talking, to keep the big guy distracted.

"I don't need some kind of turf war with a gang of raiders, you stay away from me, and I won't hurt your gang, how's that work? Live and let live? Or is that too much to ask from some raiders, even if they clearly have more brains to work with than most."

Big Blue laughed. It was musical in a gravelly sort of way. "You're an awfully prescient little pony," he remarked with a single, large step. I shrunk back, closer to the edge. "It is too much to ask, I'm afraid. You see, now I need to send a message just in case word gets around that I am not a stallion worthy of respect and fear. You understand, that is the message you sent, and we cannot have anypony getting the wrong message now, can we?" He spoke, he stepped forward pushing me towards the edge.

My back hoof hit something, I looked, it was the PipBuck. It caught my attention, and it caught Big Blue's. We both stopped at looked at it for a moment. When I looked back to him, he seemed amused.

I thought for a moment, maybe I could use the PipBuck as barter so I could keep at least some of my internal organs. After all, Big Blue had one, probably knew how they worked, and it interested him. I knew the look of a buyer when I saw it.

"Go on, take it," his words cut my brain off at the pass. "Do you even know what you could do with one of those?" He laughed again.

Now I was going to keep it regardless of how many organs I lost, this was a matter of spite. I stood my ground, rose up to not look nearly as petrified as I was and slowly put the PipBuck on my forehoof. Congratulations, Call, I thought to myself, you are going to die wearing a useless accessory. Good for you.

"Scorch, can I shoot the prick, can I?" the unicorn whose ear I trimmed, Cloves, lost her patience. She had brought a shotgun this time, levitating the firearm with particular attention given to the space currently occupied by my head, a space she hoped to clear very shortly.

At least she gave me big blue's name. I liked knowing the name of my killer.

"Do not interrupt me when I'm talking, bitch!" Scorch turned on the unicorn mare with a snarl. Cloves did me the biggest favor of my life; she pissed off her boss. I couldn't tell if the unicorn was offended or not, because I took the opportunity that was presented to me and tossed myself over into the mercy of gravity.

Falling backwards, I was granted the admittedly impressive view of the gout of fire being spewed out into the air after my departure. I got a good solid second of watching the pretty fire before I struck one of the waiting raiders. The wind was gone out of my sails, I saw stars, my body shouted, I shouted. The pony under me didn't say anything but I wasn't about to find out why not. I twisted and turned, bucked to my feet and made a break for it. The other raiders must have gone inside with their leader, I couldn't have considered myself luckier for the all of two seconds it took before I felt the piercing sting of shotgun pellets on my back. I pitched forward, only staying on my hooves thanks to pure, unadulterated fear. The chorus of additional bullets joined the shotgun once the first verse ended. I didn't plan on sticking around to listen to the coda.

Armor saved my hide, literally in this case, but that does not mean getting shot is painless. I found myself in what I could call some kind of a lobby. There was a big desk, shaped like a C, I knew that because I was hiding in the concave side of it. The light was low, this building was mostly intact and all I had to go by was the dim lights of a few Sparkle-Cola machines that stood sentinel long after they had any real use. It was impressive how they still kept power for so long after all this time. It was strange comfort to know that at least some things were built to last.

I had gotten my barding off and was inspecting the series of welts that now peppered my back. I sighed, thankful that none of the shots actually got me. I hadn't grabbed any of the few healing potions I had back at the hidey-hole. It took a moment for that to process before I cursed the fact to the nopony listening. Everything I had was now in the hooves of raiders. My healing potions, my food, my radio collection, those magazines with the surprisingly informative articles, all of them gone. I groaned, the pain both emotional and physical, as I took a break to curl up on the dirty floor and feel sorry for my stuff and myself.

When I got around to checking my saddlebags, I took stock of my inventory. One battered reinforced leather barding, one hard hat, my Sharp Retort, my favorite book, and a broken PipBuck on my wrist. Well fuck me several ways from Sunday. At least I had the essentials. Packed back up again, I hefted to my hooves and mentally shushed the protest put on by my put upon spine. I was a salvager, and I was going to do what I was good at, salvage.

The Sparkle-Cola machine was my first target. I was impressed yet again when I got close to them. There were three of them, all of them giving off a quiet hum of arcane power and a soft glow, but not only were these ones working, they were in perfect condition. All of the other ones I'd seen in the wastes were long wrecked by time and ponykind. I took a moment of reverent reflection on these casks of cola. Then I immediately beset upon them to get at their contents.

They were too easy to get open. Easy as in they just swung open to show their perfect emptiness to me. "You, my good machine, need to learn that it's not what is on the outside, but what is inside that counts," I chastised the machine and checked its brethren. All of them bore nothing for me but one rather curious conundrum.

It may have been the throbbing pain, or my staving off the further realization that not only have I lost everything, but I also have a very angry and disconcertingly well spoken raider who wants me dead, but I was finding this puzzle of the machines the single most interesting thing in all of Equestria. I sat in front of the three machines and looked them over. Perfect condition, but nothing inside.

"How do you exist?" I asked the machines, "and why do you mock me by having nothing to salvage?" The machines stood silent in their smug rejection of me.

Denied a drink, I pushed to my hooves. Bruised and battered, my wounds were beginning to catch up with me. I didn't want to see the giant bruise my back must be by now, or the potentially cracked ribs. Ignorance is painful, painful bliss. Now that I was up at least, I could push myself forward and maybe to some sort of not cheating vending machine.

The first floor had nothing but junk, junk, and more junk, oh, and a clip for a nine millimeter pistol. It stops being strange after a while, but it serves as a good reminder that the old world may have been more trigger happy than we were. I had better pickings in the basement. Not much, since it seems someone had already gotten into everything down in the lower archive rooms and the stacks of old terminal equipment. I found some pieces of old electronics and stuffed them away. Summer always had some customers that picked through her supply while she was away from me. If I was going to start fresh, I'd need a guaranteed trade good. Shame I only found one on the whole floor.

I gave up. Not for the first time in my life, and not for the last, I gave up. Something was busted up inside me, and without a healing potion, there was nothing I could do about it. I hobbled my way back up the stairs and back to the embracing curves of the old lobby desk. I can't say I was surprised that sleep caught me there, because I never even noticed I was tired.

It was night when I woke up. My body decided it wanted to be a good alarm clock and wake me up with the sound of pain. I grumbled and groaned, moaned and mumbled to the ceiling. Celesta strike me down here, or Luna, or luck, or the angry gods of Sparkle-Cola if they aren't too busy manifesting mysterious vending machines to fuck with pony's heads. I did get to my hooves eventually, and steady enough to keep on trucking just a little farther, just enough to sate my curiosity.

I left my temporary refuge to slink under cover of darkness back towards my hidey-hole. I hoped the raiders had gotten bored of stealing everything after I took my early leave. My hopes were answered this time. There wasn't a single pony, earth of unicorn, to be seen at my hidey-hole.

It was on fire.

Not much to say or do when you watch everything, nearly everything, you had going up in a crackling bonfire. So I felt it was fitting that I didn't say a word and just sat to watch it all, jaw somewhere at floor level. The magazines, the radios, the food was now either somepony else's or it was kindling.

I didn't know what to feel. I didn't feel anything. Not anger, not sadness, certainly not happiness, but the whole of it, the sudden, awe inspiring whole of it just sucked the emotion out of me. I continued to stare at the dancing of the flames for Luna knows how long. It took the crack and ruin of the second floor collapsing into the first to shake me from my stupor. Slowly, very slowly, I got up. I sniffed a little, having caught some soot in my eye, obviously, and of all things, smiled. As I turned my back on home I said goodbye to my old friend. "You were a good house."

Back at the temple of the more dickish vending gods, I curled up to sleep again. It was a dark sleep. Deep and still, and good and you're so far gone you can't even begin to want to go back to being awake. It was the kindest, sweetest sleep I could have asked for. Dreamless, I experienced mind-expanding clarity in the backs of my own eyelids.

Unfortunately, the good things in life never last. Never, ever last, and once again I found myself cursing my luck when I felt a chilling cold against my forehead. It sent a shiver through me that jolted me to wakefulness. I opened my eyes.

A unicorn looked down at me from on top of the counter. She magically held a bottle of ice cold refreshment against my head.

"Hi there," she said, "Sparkle-Cola?"

Author's Note

Welp, here it is folks, the return of Salvage. A little more in the direction I'd prefer it.

Not going to do the level up perk stuff this time around. I'll let you guys figure out Call's stats and perks. Have fun with it in the discussions.

R.B.

Tonic

Chapter 2: Tonic
"Trust me."

Even after Equestria burned, Sparkle-Cola remained. Their billboards still line the old skyways. Their posters still hang on decayed plaster walls. Their caps are our currency. In most places a bottle of Sparkle-Cola is better for you than the local water. Running into the drink of choice for the wasteland is hardly a surprising matter.

Yet I was still surprised at the unicorn looking down at me holding a bottle of cola in a hazy blue aura.

I took the bottle and started to guzzle the drink. It was freezing. Honest to goodness ice-cold Sparkle-Cola had found its way to the wasteland. The bubbles, something I'd only seen in advertisements before this, danced down my throat in way I didn't expect. I coughed at the crackling fizz, but nothing couldn't keep the ear to ear grin off my face. I sighed with a happiness I hadn't had since before my life turned to ash. Almost being on fire makes a stallion thirsty.

"I didn't think anypony would find this place, much less stick around," the unicorn mused to herself while staring off into the thoughtful middle distance.

"Thank you. Especially for the part where you didn't kill me," I forced a laugh.

I set the empty bottle aside and got a look at my recent savior. She was silver but what stood out in a literal way was her mane; It was an electric blue ridge fanning along her head. The raider style clashed with the rest of her; it usually wasn't paired with glasses and a lab coat.

"What are you looking at?" she had caught me watching. Her eyes narrowed. I could see the calculations going on behind her eyes. I felt like a parasprite under a looking glass.

"How does it stay up?" I managed to blurt.

She snapped from her scrutiny, blinking at me. "What?" Her attention followed the track of my eyes. "Oh, my mane? Wonderglue."

Wonderglue. There was plenty of the stuff around, I had pawned it off on Summer more than a few times in the past, and I even used it to fix a few things here and there. A mane care product, however, it was not.

She caught my skeptical expression and fumbled to explain. "I dilute it. It isn't so dangerous as it looks. How do you think the raiders do it?"

"Blood, mud, and probably a few other fluids I'd rather not contemplate."

She gave me the expected look of disgust.

I shifted to a friendlier tone and stood up. "Name's Call, and thanks again for the hoof up."

She stood to introduce herself, tall enough to meet me eye to eye. "Fizadora Tonic. You aren't a threat to my work, so I wouldn't in good conscious kill you."

"You mean couldn't?" I asked

"No."

"Uh, thanks," I mustered a but I was talking to her flank anyway. She had gone back to those three immaculate vending machines. I trotted after her. "You mind if I just call you Fizzy. Fizadora is a bit of a mouthful."

"If you want," Fizzy Tonic said with a shrug that told me I probably could have called her anything and it would not have mattered. She looked at the side of one of the machines and asked, "Did you open these?"

I froze in place. I hoped this would not end with me stabbing somepony so soon after the last. The truth rarely set me free in my experience, but she had me dead to rights. She gave me a drink so I figured I owed her a little honesty. "Yes. I didn't know anyone was using this place. They looked so good I hoped I'd just gotten lucky."

"You really think so?" Fizzy asked. She looked at me with eyes the size of dinner plates. "I did my best with these ones. I had to scrap a few dozen around here, and trade for a bunch of electrical components. Just got it done yesterday, hooked it up to a spark generator I pieced together from the leftovers and the internals of an energy rifle. I always loved Sparkle-cola, and I wanted to get a feel for what it must have been like back in the old days. Did you know that the properties found in Sparkle-Cola are some of the hardiest in the entirety of the Equestria wastes? I mean, the reinforced terminals are great and all, and a lot of Equestrian tech is in surprisingly good condition given the circumstances but with a little effervescence and some proper care, Sparkle-Cola is just as good now as it was then. At least that's what that ghoul told me when I had him try one of my batches. I don't think he had reason to lie to me, there was little he could gain out it. What do you think? You tried it. You sucked it right down. Was it good?"

I blinked, dumbfounded. Fizadora could ramble. I took a moment to recover from the verbal deluge. "It was cold?" No, that was not a good start, but it got my engines running, "It was amazing. It had the sweet taste of carrots and all those tingling bubbles. All with no lingering after taste and yes, ice cold." I looked to her and threw up a smile for a shield.

Fizzy came at me like a shot. "Brilliant," she said, jabbing me in the chest with a fore hoof. "Because I made it that way. You won't get any other like it in the wasteland. Which means you owe me."

She huffed in a way that made haughty insufficient as she turned and marched back to her machines. I thought she was checking them again, but she was just getting some bags, floating them to rest against her flanks. "I'm cleaning out the top floor today. You can assist me. Take this. I didn't make it, but I'm certain the merchant who sold it wasn't lying. Not that I have proof, but a remedy is a remedy."

A healing potion floated to me as she trotted by. I took it and drank it down. The dull ache of my internal injuries faded from me. "Thank you. Again," I said for the fresh relief, but she was already through the lobby door and into parts unknown.

"Is she always like this?" I asked the vending machine before trotting after Fizadora

"So what's Haystack?" I asked Fizzy. On the back of her labcoat was a symbol; a ball with the word Haystack printed underneath. I had been watching it since following Fizzy up the stairs and my curiosity was eating at me.

"No idea."

Little lie detector bells rang in my head. The answer was too quick, it came out nearly the same time I finished my sentence. Mechanical wiz or not, Fizzy Tonic was no liar.

"Okay, okay, let me rephrase that for you," I pushed, "That's a lab coat. I've seen them before. I can tell by looking that Haystack wasn't put on there as some random decoration. You're good with technology. Lab coat, technology, they're kind of related. I figure you might have some clue."

Fizz turned around a little faster than I expected. We collided. She stared at me, her eyes wide and searching. I waited for the inevitable admission while her eyes finished darting back and forth.

"W-well, I could say the same thing about you!" she snapped.

I flinched at the sudden turn; this was not how it was supposed to go.

"Why don't you tell me about your stable?" she pressed, prodding my chest and glaring over the frames of her glasses.

I paused, trying to figure out just what Fizadora meant. I remembered the broken PipBuck.

"I bought it off a trader. I don't even know how to use one of these things. Even if I did, it's busted anyways. It's an oversized bracelet." I thumped the PipBuck against the wall to make my point.

"In that case, the same goes for my coat. Don't go press the issue." She turned the conversation, and herself, around on me.

I mentally kicked myself as I watched her trudge up the stairs. I still had questions, and I knew this girl had plenty to hide. Her reaction was enough to tell me I had hit on something important and my curiosity shouted and stamped to get me to go after it. For the time being, I would have to shut up and stick behind her. It was time to play my cards right.
Rows of desolate desks, most of them in near pristine condition, lined the entirety of the second floor; most of them empty. Blank faced dead terminals stared back at us, useless for decades.

"This all seem a little off to you?" I asked Fizzy.

The office was spotless. Desks, drawers, those little corners that no one really cares about, everything were immaculate. It was as though the whole office was just waiting to pick back up again after a years long vacation.

The unicorn was looking at a terminal, the silvery glow of her magic working at the electronics. She adjusted her skewed lenses whenever she needed to focus.

She must not have heard me. "Fizzy?"

"Quiet. I need to concentrate if I'm going to get this thing back to life."

With Fizzy being busy, I started to explore the rest of the floor and found the hall was just as clean as the rest. Photographs of ponies and places lined the walls. I took time to look at them to see who had lived here so long ago. The first had a group of ponies, a pegasus, an earth pony, and a unicorn in front of a large building I assumed was this one.

The next photograph had the same group as the first. They all wore some kind of safety gear and stood inside a massive factory. Incredible machinery stood like monuments around them. A factory floor of some type, but where I had never seen.

The last one showed a pair of pegasi standing in front of a Sparkle-Cola billboard. Their grins triumphant, they held their hooves up to show off their latest advertisement in the sky. I found myself lost in that old world of ghosts and photographs. Time sliding by into a haze of memories not my own.

A tin voice dragged me from my wallowing in the past. "Remember, employees, a clean office is a happy office!" It cracked and popped from the other room, growing louder though still not distinct.

Whatever was haunting this floor had caught me unawares. I needed to move and fast. I crouched, moving along the wall to the door that led into the room the voice came from. I didn't dare call for Fizzy lest I catch the attention whatever it was haunting this floor.

A moment later and I didn't have to; Fizzy came walking in from the other room by her own volition. She scowled, ears flat, and her eye gave an occasional twitch. "Stupid weak power converters," she groused, "Stupid damn motherb-"

I had stuck my hoof in her mouth.

"Remember, employees, to always dispose of all of your refuse in our brand new Incino-Tron chute!" The voice went off again. I leaned my head around the corner. Fizzy leaned in just under me. Both of us sighed with synchronized relief.

The voice came from a Mr. Hoof. The robot floated away from us, bobbing in shallow raises and dips as it went. Fizzy and I slipped into the room, side by side.

I spoke in a whisper, "Seems harmless."

"They all do until it tries to shove a saw in your eye."

The robot turned around. Its eye stalk aimed right at the two of us and it began to putter in our direction. It had heard us.

"Greetings employees! Are you ready for a Sparkle-tastic day?" it spoke in a too-cheery-by-half voice, "Please stand still for facial identification."

I readied myself to run. Sharp Retort was all I had for weaponry and it never did fare well against the occasional robot I stumbled over.

Fizzy stopped me with a well-planted hoof in my side. A little too well-planted, the wind puffed out of my lungs.

"What was that for?" I wheezed like a dying balloon.

"Hold still," Fizzy spoke from the side of her muzzle, giving a fake grin to the floating robot.

"Facial pattern not recognized," the robot announced. "You must be new employees! Please state the authorization code. If the code is incorrect, please remain where you are, someone will be here to vaporize you shortly."

I froze, counting the seconds until I took a saw in the eye. It was a good run while it lasted.

"Sparkle-Cola is magic."

I gave Fizzy a look. I knew the girl liked soda, but I couldn't help but wonder if those were what she really wanted to be her final words.

"Password accepted. Welcome New Employees, to the Sparkle-Cola Company's East Manehattan Facility! I am your floor two security and janitorial specialist. Please remember to use the appropriate Incino-Tron chute for all your refuse needs." The robot played a garbled fanfare. Then it simply turned and floated away.

Fizzy caught my look utter disbelief. "It's the same password everywhere. It's not the first one I've run into," she said, shrugging as she walked onward, leaving me to sit there and puzzle over her.

"Okay, okay," I said as I followed the mare. "What's with the cola obsession? You clearly have something going on here. Something has lead you to enough places that you know how their robots work. What exactly are we looking for here?"

Fizzy stopped and turned her head to follow my approach. "I'm looking for a terminal, a particular one with particular information on it. That's all. I just need you in case something attacks me. You are some kind of scavenger, are you not?"

"Salvager. I am a salvager," I was firm on that point, "I'm bringing back the forgotten, braving the dangers in order that the ponies of the world can survive just a bit easier."

I held my head high and pranced past the unicorn.

"Bullshit."

I stopped, my hoof tapped on the floor. I slowly turned my head back toward the unicorn. She was trying her hoof at another terminal. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Bullshit," again answered with casual dismissal. She looked up from her terminal and tilted her glasses straight. "Call it what you want, but you're just scavenging and hawking for your own profit. Don't try and tell me you have a higher reason for it."

I don't know what hurt more, Fizzy's statement itself or the fact that I knew it was right. I stormed toward her, head down and holding a look that I could only hope was a close approximation to steely "So what is it that you call what you're doing?"

The unicorn continued to work at the broken terminal. "I'm trying to fix a terminal." She spoke in that tone of voice reserved for the very young or the very stupid.

I snorted. If she was going to be like that, I wasn't going to help her out. "If that's how you're going to be, good luck being alone. Thanks for the soda." I walked onward, leaving the mare to type away on her terminal.

"Curtain Call?"

Fizadora Tonic caught up with me half way into the lobby. I stopped and closed my eyes. Her voice had a tremor I hadn't heard before. I chewed on my cheek and against my better judgment I turned around.

Fizzy stood with her head and tail drooped. She had big eyes, too. Very big eyes.

I sat and waved a hoof, "You got my attention."

When Fizzy spoke, she was quiet. Her mouth opened and closed and not a word came out. She looked down at the floor, the vending machines, me. "I," she took a deep breath and floated her glasses off her nose, "I'm sorry, okay? I," She closed her eyes and set her glasses back on her nose. "I don't always say the right things."

The admission threw me. I thought about what she told me. I have always prided myself on being a judge of ponies. I have traveled and I have met many, I have entertained many. I had a lot I could have said in that moment; a lot I wanted to say. However, this was one of those times I just had to shut up and play things right. I sighed, smiled, and started back toward the stairs. I smiled to the mare as I passed.

"Thanks."

I had bigger problems to think about than my own self-satisfaction. Fizadora Tonic was proud, and it would have to be something important to force her down here to apologize to me. I had no idea why or for what function she could need me for in this case, but I was getting increasingly curious of her as we saw more of the Sparkle-Cola Company, East Manehattan Facility.

"Well now what?" I asked Fizzy. We stood in front of the door leading to the third floor offices, the locked door leading to the third floor offices. "Do you have any way to get in there?" I watched her as she eyeballed the lock, seemingly trying to will it open. "Lockpicks? Magic? Small explosive device?" The look Fizzy gave me told me my curiosity was unappreciated.

Fizzy's face scrunched as she thought, and then looked back down the stairwell behind us. "Curtain Call," she "I need you to talk to the robot."

"Um, Fizzy, you do know that it's hard to fast talk a machine," I pointed out the obvious. Down below, the janitorial robot shouted some inane platitude about cleanliness and Celestia. "Especially a robot with an obsessive cleaning program."

Fizzy sighed and shook her head. Clearly my logic wasn't winning her over. "No, no, listen," she told me, "Just see if it can go clean the upper floors. If it thinks you're an employee, maybe you can just tell it to go upstairs. It does, we follow, we're in."

It sounded like a solid plan. I relented and went back down the stairs to find the cleaning robot.

I found the robot trying to pick up a bottlecap with a dustpan attachment. All it managed was to push the cap a little bit farther along with each attempt. It was endearing in a pathetic sort of way.

The hovering robot turned around from its bottle cap retrieval duties when I addressed it. Its eyestalk pointed at me and my grin.

"Hey there, mister janitor, I was wondering, you do a bang up job down here but the upstairs is a little messy could you maybe," I nodded my head toward the stairway, "Just bobble on up there to give it a once-over?"

"Negative!" The robot was still too cheerful. "I am not the assigned cleaning drone for the Sparkle-Cola Company, East Manehattan Facility, third floor. I am the assigned drone for the Sparkle-Cola Distribution Center, East Manehattan Facility, second floor. Therefore, I may not leave the designated area in order to fulfill request: 'once-over'." The robot hovered in front of me, silent. In some way it seemed to share in the awkwardness of the moment before it added, "Is there anything else that I may do for you, employee number not found?"

"Well that's a shame; I guess I'll just be going then." I turned back toward the stairs. "Say, mister janitor," I stopped, "Can you remind me of the company cleanliness policy?"

"Certainly employee number not found!" The robot sparked with pre-programmed enthusiasm and a literal fanfare. Then if began to rattle off a long and seemingly endless list of policy and procedure.

With no intention of staying around to listen to the whole speech, I went back toward the stairs. I only wanted the robot to feel accomplished.

". . .In perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world a- oh, Curtain Call, what're you doing back here so soon?"

"I didn't know you sang," I chuckled when I found Fizzy singing and tapping a little wad of paper against the hinges of the locked door.

Fizzy coughed and turned her attention back to the hinges. "It helps concentration. Now please back up, I'm working."

I decided now was not a good time to argue and stepped down the stairs though I kept watching until Fizzy came down to join me.

Fizzy had a too-wide grin. "I think you should-"

A loud bang filled the air and a ringing filled my ears. Dust and smoke roiled down from the stairway.

"Cover your ears," Fizzy finished and laughed and went up into the dusty unknown with my in tow.

"That was on purpose!" I cried out and ran up after Fizadora.

"And why didn't you say you had explosives!"
The third floor was made up of offices for the managerial staff. It was not as clean as the lower floor, with papers strewn about, old books rotted with age, leaking pipes and dim lighting filtered through grimy windows. The ceiling groaned overhead, straining with age and the recent bombing.

Fizzy and I separated, taking opposite sides of the hall. The offices were tombs. A diorama of time gone by left untouched by ponies like me.

The first held was a desk, a burnt out terminal, some old filing cabinets that had nothing more than disintegrating paperwork. The skeleton of a pegasus still sat at the desk; a coffee cup tipped on its side sat next to its skull.

I looked at it for a moment and wondered if it were one of the pegasi in the pictures I saw downstairs. I mourned the pony I would never know, though I imagined and hoped that he or she at least got the chance to enjoy one last cup of coffee before the end of the world.

The door to the next office was barred, held shut by fallen cabinets. I managed to shove it open after some effort. The room was empty and without a skeletal resident. There was little of importance to salvage in the office. I took it anyways. With all of my stuff gone, I had to start rebuilding somehow.

I ventured into the third office. I dug through the cabinets, scrounged through the drawers. All I could find were a trio of Sparkle-Cola bottles, one of them radish flavor. I popped open the Sparkle-Cola classic for a drink as I rummaged about. It was piss warm and flat but the flavor still lingered. When I saw the faint green glow of an operating terminal, I finished my drink, left the bottle on the desk, and called out to Fizzy.

It was password protected, and I was no good with those things, but Fizzy cracked its shell with ease. I felt a pang or two of jealousy over her magic when she pulled up the files she could salvage. I read over her shoulder.

Entry #267

Went to dinner with the R&D colts from Salt Lick City. We went over the quantities of sugar put into the latest batch of cola. They think they have some kind of substitute they drummed up in their labs that could replace what we use now. It's supposed to be sweeter than the sugar we already use. Frankly, I just don't get it. How could it be sweeter than sugar already is? Sugar is sugar. Sugar will always be sugar. They hinge their argument that when they get the formula up and running, it will be cheaper than real sugar, too! I may not understand how they can make it sweeter, but I can understand cheaper.

Entry #270

Tried the new batch of arcane sweetener today. I passed around a sample to the others. It works, somehow. Sky High thinks it has a funny aftertaste, but five out of six ain't bad. I pushed along a memo giving our take on this stuff. I can see a bright future ahead of us. This stuff could really fly out here, and if you can make it in Manehattan, you can make it anywhere.

Entry #289

Turns out the arcane sweetener has a little magical radioactivity issue. Of course, this falls onto my back. They even sent along one of the bottles from our new radish line. The damn thing glows! This is going to be a PR disaster. We cannot afford a recall this late in the quarter. Now that I think about it. Radishes, radiation. Rad. I think I could work with something here.

Fizzy turned off the terminal and sighed.

"Nothing?" I asked.

Fizzy nodded. "All interesting, but none of it was what I need. There's still one more, though. Check that and then that's it." Her eyes eyes turned to the floor and ears drooped as she slunk out to the hall.

I took the glowing Sparkle-Cola from saddlebag and mumbled around it to get Fizzy's attention.

"Where'd you get that? That's a Sparkle-Cola Rad. These are useful, yes, yes, very useful." Fizzy wrenched the bottle from my mouth using her magic. "They're a key reagent in a number of alchemical mixtures. Thank you so much, thank you! At least this isn't a total loss.

"Found it in the cabinet. Nothing else. So you think we'll get lucky with the office at the end of the hall?"

"I don't like to deal with luck, but I'd say the probability is in our favor," Fizzy said with renewed spirit.

Defeatism defeated. we strode into the office at the end of the hall. Two or three times the size of the others, it must have been some bigwig's place. The well held more pictures but they were stained and impossible to interpret. The giant desk that stood centerpiece was made of a solid wood that took on the war and time itself with a hearty laugh. On that desk was a terminal in equally good condition.

We split up; Fizzy headed straight for the terminal while I dug about the file cabinets, walls, and generally poked my nose into places for anything worth salvaging.

Fizzy made a squeak of happiness and I assumed we were in business. "Figs," the unicorn groused and business stalled. She magically adjusted her glasses and studied the screen. "This is pretty heavily encrypted. It might take a while for me to do this. You mind waiting?"

"Let me check my schedule. Seems I'm empty this whole lifetime, I think I can squeeze in a wait,"

Time ticked on and Fizzy kept ticking at the terminal.

I read some of the books left by the office's former owner. After a while, I started acting them out.

"Can't you see them hurrying, hurrying – puffing and blowing and hooting to their other mechanical affairs? Something out of gear in every case," I waved a hoof dramatically, looking up to my imaginary mark, "And swish, bang, rattle, swish! Just as they are fumbling over it, swish comes the heat ray, and, behold! Ponykind has come into its own." I turned around to end my speech on a dramatic note.

I found myself staring face to brain in a jar with a robopony.

A searing light burned my neck and I bolted from the machine. "Fizzy! Fizadora!" I shouted. I ducked down and the beam's scorching light reduced a pile of magazines to ashen powder.

"Friendship is a warm glow!" the robopony spoke in a mechanical voice that I can only describe as cracked. "Please hold still." It trundled after me, firing beam after beam as I ran a small circuit around the room.

Fizzy just kept on typing at the terminal, her attention long lost to things more important than the world around her.

I ran in circles to avoid the mental robopony and his terrible beam. "Anytime now!" I shouted, my voice cracking as I felt another searing ray heat the metal plating of my barding. The hot metal made me yelp. I tripped over one of the books I left on the floor and tumbled ass over teakettle.

The robopony rolled over to me. "Friend acquired," it intoned in a voice with far too much happiness.

I took my chance and threw myself upward, scrambled for my life as another beam nearly turned my head into power. I wrapped my hooves around the braincase of the robopony, swung around to the back and clung for my life.

"Locating new friend," the robopony announced and started rolling forward.

I took Sharp Retort into my mouth. With a muffled cry of war, I beat down on the robopony's brain jar. All I accomplished was making a resonant clunk and a painful throb in my jaw.

The robopony emitted a squealing alarm and tried to buck me off by rolling backward and forward.

Clank, clank, clank! Blow after blow I rained down on the robopony and it just wouldn't stop. It fired beams into the walls, into the floor, and one scorched the desk where Fizzy was working.

"Will you please take care of that thing?" Fizzy shouted above the clamoring robopony.

"I'm trying! You could try to help you know!" My head pounded and the burns from the beam gun felt like cold fire. I knew I couldn't keep up hanging from the back of the robopony for much longer.

"Just! Die! Already!" I shouted through gritted teeth in time with my pounding against the braincase. It cracked under my strikes but now Sharp Retort was stuck in the thick casing. Worse, it wasn't deep enough to pierce the brain inside.

The robopony threw me by spinning in tighter and tighter circles. I hit the ground, hard. My hardhat bounced off my head and clattered to a bookshelf. I lay sprawled for a moment, making sense of what up and down were. I had stopped tumbling but the world didn't.

Another beam lanced into my side. I wanted to shout to Fizzy for leaving me there to be riddled, but could only manage a wordless yowl.

"I just want to give you the welcome you deserve," the robopony squawked and giggled as it bore down on me.

The giggling robopony was going down. I rolled away from another blast and got onto my hooves. I dashed another circuit around the office and took up the heaviest book I could get my teeth on as I rounded the beam-spewing bastard. I reared up, put everything I had behind me, and brought my improvised weapon down on top of Sharp Retort.

The dome shattered. The ooze, viscous and pungent, splashed everywhere. Sharp Retort still skewering the brain, lay on the floor a reeking shish kebab. The metal body of the pony stood still. I stood panting. I won.

I spat my bludgeon on the floor: A book titled, "Making Weapons Work for You". I pocketed the book and cleaned the brain off Sharp Retort.

Fizzy cheered.

I trotted over toward her, head held high in pride despite being burnt, tired, and sticky.

"The password was Entitlement!"

My head dropped. I scowled. It was as though she hadn't just seen me in a brawl to the death with particularly persistent metal death machine. "Oh gee," my voice dripped sarcasm, "I hope you didn't strain a brain muscle there. I'm going to go curl up and die now, let me know when you're done."

A floating healing potion bounced off my nose. I stopped and stared at it crosseyed.

"Thanks," Fizzy told me, with a smile. "I couldn't have done this without you."

I took the potion and sucked it down. The feeling of relief was warm and intoxicating. My burns washed away in a cool rush of arcane wonderment. It even got rid of the headache from hammering Sharp Retort against the dome.

"Come here, come here," Fizzy waved a hoof, drawing me around to look at the terminal. "This is what I've been hunting for." She caught the look on my face. "I owe you a ton, I know, I want to show I can make good on it, I promise."

I sighed, accepting the IOU at face value. Besides, I was interested in what I just risked my life to get.

She scooted aside to let me in while she floated a map out onto the desk.

I read the terminal and my jaw struck the desk with the force of a jackhammer.

"Soda?"

"Soda!"

I shouted, "You used me? You used me and threw me in the face of death for some soda!"

Rage and fury was mingled with the growing impressment at being played so easily. More than that I was wrapped in such of a sense of utter disbelief it consumed me. I roared at her, loudly venting of my frustration and aggravation at her. "Not even soda itself. Information about where to get soda. Theoretical soda. Soda in potentia!"

Fizadora looked at me as firmly as she had just this morning when we sat at the vending machines. "I used you. I figured there would be defenses and I couldn't risk losing the information again given my standard means of protection. It's worth it, however, and you have to believe me about that. Please hear me out."

My furious panting slowed down. I leveled my eyes at her. "Continue," I bid her through gritted teeth.

Fizadora searched for words. Hacking came easier to her, of that, I was certain. "And besides, it isn't just soda. It's a shitload of soda."

"Oh that makes it all better, why the fuck didn't you say that before? That totally fucking changes everything." I laid the derision on thick.

"It's a rare kind!" she snapped at me now. "You wouldn't understand!"

Her voice dropped, and she had sat down. She could hack a terminal without batting an eyelash while a fight rages around her, but the weight of a few words crushed her. "I need it to help my family and friends. I need it to help my home."

My rage quelled. I sat down and I looked at her and her sadness.

She looked at the floor.

I thought back to the other night. My last night at home. My last night having a home. I had listened to the DJ talk about that Stable Dweller. I had wondered about what I was doing. I could see the writing on the wall. I couldn't help but laugh, "Well fuck me."

"What?" Fizz's words dripped acid.

"Not like that," I started, "Please. I don't like being used, okay, but, but I'd like to give you help if you're looking to do some good out there. Don't give me that look. I'll watch your back. It's safer out there in groups than alone. You need to be honest with me. No more of this keeping me in the dark crap, okay?"

She thought it over a moment. "Okay," she said, "You're right. Traveling in a pair will be more effective. I don't need or care for most of this junk anyways. I'm only after what I need. You can claim the rest as sca-," she caught herself and corrected, "salvage. I'm going to guess you're better at dealing with traders than I am, anyways."

I smiled, stood and shook myself off. "It's already gotten dark outside," I noted the obvious, wanting to fill the air with something, an emotional palate cleanser was needed.

"We'll just make camp downstairs. Leave in the morning," Fizz added, almost rote as she gathered up her map, levitating it into her saddlebags. She called after me as she caught up, "Oh, and do you know how to start a fire?"

Morning came without a sound and considering the lack of windows in the lobby, without much light. I woke with a start, having forgotten that I not only wasn't at home, but I didn't have one anymore. Shaking the sleep from my eyes, I checked on my newfound partner.

Fizadora slept still. She hadn't decided to steal my stuff and take off.

I decided not to wake her. I wanted to get a second dig around in the lower floors while I still had a chance.

Always check again is a standard rule in the world of salvaging, because you will never know what you missed the first time around. This time was no different. I must have been real off my hooves so soon after my escape from home. I picked apart here, and there, gathering up a few electronics, some scrap metals, a whetstone, and a bottle of wonderglue. Not a bad haul, all considered. It could come in handy picking up caps when we were on the road. Celestia knows that I didn't have any supplies, Fizzy had no healing potions, and I figured she didn't have enough supplies to support two for very long.

That's when I found the one thing I needed. A radio. It sat there, on a shelf, all streamlined and sitting pretty. I hoped to the highest and trotted over to give it a test. The music came out sweetly.

And now the foal's a going, he's a traveling all around
And now that foal's a running, race the sun down to the ground
He's got a little filly waiting down home with a tear drop in her eye
Cause her handsome foal has left her, gone somewhere out there to die.

I beamed as I listened to the tune. It worked. The damn thing worked. I added the radio to my stash and headed back to the lobby accompanied by the twanging tune from the past.

Fizzy was awake when I got back. She gave me a questioning look when she saw my radio.

"Hey, it gets quiet out there, and how else are we going to listen to what's going on out in the wastelands. You never know what could be happening out there," I defended my choice of carrying a noisy box with me into potentially dangerous territory. "Besides, we'll be able to handle ourselves and the music will do us good."

Fizzy shrugged and nodded. "You're right. Besides, I like it, too. But . . ."

"But what?"

"When I get the chance to, I want to take a look at that PipBuck of yours. With the right parts, I could probably get it going again, or at least mechanically sound enough that we would only need an arcane matrix to get it booted." Her answer rattled off her tongue, almost over my head, and caught my attention only to drive it down to the useless accessory on my foreleg.

"You really think you can get it to work?" I asked, "If you can, knock yourself out." I headed to the exit of the lobby, setting a hoof at the door. "Have any other talents I should know about?" I chuckled, pushing open into the dull gray of the day."

There were two raiders across the street. One was wearing a battle saddle with a pair of long guns. The other carried the boxy form of a beam pistol in her teeth. Both of them right there, and thank Celestia neither of them noticed me close the door just as swiftly as I opened it.

"Problem?" Fizzy asked, her head tilting as she stepped up to the exit.

"Problem."

"What kind?"

"Raider kind. Gun kind. Us being allergic to bullets and beams kind."

Fizzy nodded slowly. "How far?" she asked with far more thought than comfortable.

I gave my best estimate, "About one street width away, give or take a sidewalk."

"Open the door please."

"What?"

"Please, Call. Just open the door. Trust me on this one."

"What are you thinking?"

A gray metal apple floated up between us.

"Oh. I think I like what you're thinking."

Author's Note

Chapter two. Please let me know if something got fucked up in my taking things from Scrivner to Fimfic.

Thanks for reading!

Oasis

Chapter 4: Oasis
"This is my house and you follow my rules!"

"Don't be so shy. If you're going to break into a stallion's home, at least introduce yourself."

The booming voice came from petite white unicorn standing atop the grand staircase in the middle of the foyer of the Hotel Haflinger. He stood with the pomp and swagger of a king above his subjects. A confidence most likely born from the bottle floating alongside him.

Or possibly the confidence came from the large, griffon-made revolver strapped around the unicorn's chest.

"I think I understand now. You two are traveling mimes here to spread mirth and joy with your silent antics, hmm?" The unicorn's cold grin fixed on Fizzy and I between pulls from his bottle.

"We are not mimes," Fizzy spoke first. "We just need shelter, you have a sizeable place and I'm certain you can give up just a bit of it to us."

"We're not mimes!" I repeated Fizzy. I sprung to my hooves and plastered the biggest grin I could dig out of my repertoire on my muzzle. "Very difficult to be a mime in today's world, anyways. You ever try to stay quiet when a raider tries to flay your cutie mark off? Because it ain't easy. And that's just what they do the mimes they like."

"You two are funny ones," the unicorn held us with the same amusement as foal before squashing a bug. He polished off the bottle, smacked his lips wetly and flung the bottle aside before starting his descent from the top of the stair. "But I am not nearly drunk enough for jokes. So why don't you two get telling me who you are and why I shouldn't put two in both of your heads?"

A red aura flared around the grip of the unicorn's revolver.

"As I stated--," Fizzy started

I stopped her with a quick glance. I could already tell that this pony was not the type to be swayed by her pointing out any sort of appeal other than his own. A drunk with a gun who lays a minefield in front of their home is not one about to give up an inch of it without something to gain.

"Liquor," I dug one of the whiskey bottles from the Manticore crate. "I've got more where that came from. "The name's Curtain Call."

"You bring your own?" he turned his bloodshot eyes toward me. He paused at the landing, took a moment to sway in place, and nodded. "I like you. No one ever brings booze to the party."

"My name is Two-Shot. This is my place. Let me get the others." He turned and shouted to the upper floor. "You two, get out here. We got more for the party."

A pair of mares slipped from the darker rooms above us. A pink unicorn was first; she had a cherry on her flank. The second was a light blue earth pony with a pair of shears for a mark. They did not bother to wait, or seemed wary at all that we had just barged in on them.

The pair walked down the stairway until they flanked Two-Shot. The two of them had just about the most purely contented smiles I had seen in my life.

This party must have been something.

"This one is Daisy, the other is Cherry Pop. If you cannot figure them out, then there is nothing I can do to help you," Two-Shot said in a bombastic and half-slurred way. "They are my mares." His triumphant grin was a weapon aimed for me.

I looked toward Fizzy, she gave me a consenting nod. She understood that conversation was my area of expertise. "This is Fizadora "Fizzy" Tonic. She's a friend. Pleasure to meet all of you, sorry for the inconvenience, but we were-,"

Two-Shot interrupted my spiel with a raised hoof. "That's all I want. Don't care about the rest. You are here, you bring booze, you bring a filly, I like you. You can stay. You just need to know the rules." He cleared his throat, and once again, I couldn't help but notice he was more petite than both of the mares he was with. I wondered if he was using magic to amplify his voice.

"Rule number one: do not fuck with my booze." Two-Shot gestured toward a tall case containing a number of colorful and oddly shaped bottles. The well cared for bottles stood in neat, rows.

"Rule number two: do not fuck with my guns."

Two-Shot's cutie mark was a targeting reticle. I began to feel that rule two was a smart one to obey.

"Rule number three: do not fuck with my mares."

The mares at his flanks nodded in unison.

"And rule number four: do not fuck with me!"

Two-Shot snapped, snarling he stepped toward Fizzy and I. The two of us stepped back, shrinking at the sudden rage flaring from Two-Shot. His accusatory looks begged a challenge that neither Fizzy nor I would provide.

I watched his eyes. I watched him. I watched his gun.

Then, just as quickly as it came, the rage left. Two-Shot shook his head and smiled . "You two are smart, I like that. Now who wants to get shitfaced?" he belted out a deep guffaw.

Two-Shot trotted over toward the large liquor cabinet, telekinetically throwing open the doors. Arcane tendrils grabbed up bottles, levitating them with ease in a close orbit around Two-Shot. He laughed and invited us. "Come, come, this is a party! Don't be so shy, I couldn't scare you that badly."

I shared a mutual look of uncertain fear with Fizzy. It would have been safer sleeping out in the minefield. The look on Fizzy's face that this "party" was still my realm to deal with.

With a breath and a leap of faith, I made my way toward Two-Shot. "If you're going to offer, then I'll take your best. With a spread like this, no doubt it's the best of the best."

"Anything less would be an insult," Two-Shot claimed with no shortage of sloshed pride.

Two-Shot spun on me, the bottles around his head rotated and orbited one another in a ballet of booze before they settled back down, lined up like soldiers for battle. He selected a collection of glasses scavenged from different sets around the wasteland. None of the glasses looked alike but they all held a collection of clear and brown liquors.

Two-Shot stood to the side and crossed his legs. "That is how a real unicorn uses his magic," he said with a laugh, his eyes blinking out of sync with each other.

A faint pink hue spun around the drinks, lifting them with gentle ease. "I'll just put these on the table," said Cherry, appearing from behind me. "So we can all drink comfortably." She walked by me when she claimed the drinks, while she passed, she turned to me, caught my eye, smiled and winked at me.

Cool it, I thought. After the night I had I was in no state trouble like Cherry. With Two-Shots' stated rule number three and his mental state, I couldn't risk her.

I focused on my drink. It was warm, and it burned going down my throat. The intoxicating fire was a welcome addition to the myriad aches and pains I had been stifling in my desire to survive.

With the benefit of social lubricant, we got along swimmingly. I got out the radio I salvaged from the Sparkle-Cola offices. We were only interested in music, jumping from frequency to frequency in order to stick to a song or something with high spirits. Not a one of us was interested in the news or hearing about what was happening with a Stable pony, or some ghost of the airwaves. We danced and commented on the liquor and music to avoid talking. Two-Shot and his girls were friendly once you got past his rules. For a while, we ignored reality, the barbarians at the gate and the ragged, poisoned land outside of the Hotel Haflinger's walls.

It was tenuous, it was a lie, but damn if it wasn't a beautiful one.

A sharp shout and the crack of hoof against skull broke the spell booze and music held over our oasis.

Cherry and I, casually flirting with one another over our cutie marks, both stopped or verbal waltz to look over at the source of the sound

Daisy watched from a couch by the radio. Her eyes were cold, calculating, and carefully gaging what had just happened.

Fizzy stared down a swaying Two-Shot. Her eyes fixed and furious above her glasses held just a barest quiver of fear. She tried to figure out the unstable rattlesnake of a pony in front of her. It was a puzzle she wasn't prepared for.

Two-Shot held a stare of his own, despite his far past inebriated state. He did not speak to her, just looked at her while a trail of blood made its way from out his nose. Two-Shot looked like a stallion with no concern for himself; like someone ready to tackle a live grenade.

It struck me that with Fizzy involved grenades could very well be the outcome of a stare-down.

I stepped in to play the hapless idiot. This was my grenade to jump on. "What's going on, Fizz?"

The barrel of a gun pressed hard against my jaw, just at the top of my throat. It was very, very cold. I hadn't even seen Two-Shot move, nor the aura of his telekinesis light his horn before I felt the steel jam into me. I choked, sputtered, and went still.

"Stand the fuck down, wastelander," Two-Shot growled at me, his voice wasn't booming now, instead quiet and soft but edged as a razor blade.

"Hey, let's not doing anything rash here," I started, acutely aware of the growing pressure on my throat as Two-Shot dug the barrel deeper against my throat.

"Then don't do anything," Two-Shot cut me off before I could continue. His bloodshot eyes trained on me, twisting the barrel against my throat. "This is between me, and her, do you understand me, Curtain Call? I will blow your head off if you so much as move."

"And I will blow us all up if you try anything," Fizzy spoke before I could get a word in edgewise. A bundle of grenades bound by their stems floated in front of her, between the three of us.

The air was still. A wrenching tightness filled my chest. This time I didn't have an out. It was either Two-Shot's gun, or Fizzy's grenades. Both outcomes would have been sudden, but the fact was not solace. I gulped and silently prayed to Celestia, Luna, whoever would listen.

Two-Shot's eyes danced a furious jig, going from me, to the grenades, to Fizzy. Glassy and uncertain, they rolled about as I felt each rabid shift was drawing me closer to my last breath.

Fizzy held her clinical and disaffected. She showed no emotion to the matter at all, she was just as casual detonating all of us as she was hacking a terminal.

In the span of a second, I made peace with my life, and hoped that wherever ponies ended up after all was said and done was a better place than this.

The revolver clattered on the hardwood floor.

Two-Shot looked at the as though it burned him. He quivered; I could not tell if it was rage or fear. His wordless mouth hung open. A step back and his eyes darted from the gun to me, and then to Fizzy. His disbelief fell to rage. His death glare not on Fizzy or me, but on the gun.

"We're done here," Two-Shot's voice cracked, he turned away and trudged toward the stairs.

"Sleep wherever. I'm getting fucked up, don't bother me." Then he left, head down he stills shook.

Cherry and Daisy followed Two-Shot up the stairs. Cherry stopped and looked back at Fizzy and I. She mouthed "Thank you" and left into the shadows of the hotel.

A room on the top floor, off to the side, still had most of the comforts of the aged hotel. The bed was only partially rotted; the cracked cabinet still stood and still held a dress from long ago. The desk that sat against the wall was in the best shape of anything in this place. I dug through and took the bottle cap left behind. I played with the bath faucet, it belched silt filled, rusted water before it ran clear again. I drank. From the bedroom came a sound.

Fizzy sprawled herself out on the bed, claiming as much of it as she physically could. She stared at the wall.

"You alright?" I ventured, walking to the side of the bed.

She looked to me briefly but turned away. Her whole body rose and fell with a sigh. Her shoulder rolled an evasive shrug.

"Thank you."

I sat beside the bed and smiled. I couldn't believe she was thanking me. "I think you got that backwards, Fizzy. I'm the one that has to thank you. If it wasn't for that grenade stunt you pulled back there, I'd have a brand new superfluous hole in my head."

Fizzy pushed herself up to a sit. She hung her head, shaking it slowly. Her glasses sat askew on her muzzle. "It was not a stunt," she admitted in a subdued tone, opening her eyes to watch me out of their corners. "I would have killed us all."

The matter of fact tone struck me. I filled the air with a useless, "Well," and pondered the implications of Fizzy's statement. "I've thrown myself into worse," I admitted the fact. "But, uh, what exactly did he do anyways? I mean did he . . .?" I let the words trail off and hang in the air so she could fill the blank herself.

I got an expectant look from Fizzy for the few moments before she realized I was waiting for her to put it together.

"What? No!" she said, her head shaking hard enough to cause her mane to wobble. She let fly a torrent of "no"s. "He was trying to ask if," she stopped suddenly, and adjusted her glasses. "I just, I won't go into it."

The sudden refusal left me momentarily befuddled. I hummed, suspicious, but I nodded slowly. "That's okay?"

Fizzy sighed, eyes rolling backward. "Okay, okay, um, alright," she fumbled over the words, chewing on her lip. "I can't just give the information away. I just, maybe it'll be easier if I know more about you." She looked at me with sudden hope in her eyes and in the forced smile she wore. She was trying to shift the subject away from her.

I took the bait willingly. After all, I prefer to talk about myself than take a hoof to the jaw. "You just get comfortable, Fizzy, let me tell you a story."

I waited, pacing toward the door and back, part of it to give Fizadora a chance to settle and part to give me some time to find the story, myself. I stopped at the door and looked at the aging, cracked handrail, broken in places. My eyes closed of their own accord and somewhere I found a distant smile to add to the wistful look.

"I was born on the roadside to a caravan pony named Brightside. My father, Last Call, was her bodyguard."

"Romantic."

Fizzy's flat response left me windless. I shrugged and sallied onward, turning back into the room to continue.

"Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Being a foal, I wasn't too interested in asking those kinds of questions. Point is, I traveled along for the ride, all bundled up inside of the cart my mother pulled. I rode with junk and I rode with treasure, all depended on the pony that was buying. Saw a lot of a little world on that trade route."

Fizzy watched my slow sweep of the room. Her eyes were bagged and heavy. Still brilliant blue and big as saucers, but utterly exhausted. Still, she watched and listened. Despite her sarcasm, she was buying the performance.

"I got older, foals tending to do that, and as I did, my mother started up collecting books for me; old world, pre-war books from wherever she could, on whatever she could. I devoured them, mostly since there isn't a whole lot to do on the trails outside of moving forward and not dying. In the end, it was what got me through, those books."

"So why not a book cutie mark?"

"Suppose because I can't write. That and I started playing out the storybooks I read for the ponies on my family's route. Made them laugh, took their minds off of this shitstorm, and I liked that. It was good times."

I dropped down at the end of Fizzy's mattress. She moved to give me room.

"Then came the night we were salvaging up supply from a store up near the Whitehoof settlement. My father cracked the planks over the window so I could squeeze in. It was dark, very dark, and the must hanging in the air stank. Still, it was quiet and safe once I stomped out the roach or two that were living down there. Now, I had to sneak in because we couldn't get the door open, turned out that somepony had shoved a pile of furniture in front of the door. It took some time, but I got it cleared enough for my father to get in with me."

I stopped talking. My voice dropped, and I stared at the floor. I dug into places I generally didn't like going. The dramatic act was becoming swiftly real.

The bed shifted; Fizzy moving to get closer.

"The place had been the last stand of a pony back during the war. They must have set up before the bombs hit. I heard the twang and." I stopped again, it struck me again that I had not talked about that night for years. Taking a breath, I soldiered on.

"And then I heard the gun go off."

The dull feeling surprised me. I choked, and the memory welled up inside of me, but then it simply slipped away.

"I didn't see it, the shot that killed him. I only saw what was after. It was quick and I doubt he felt it, but it wasn't clean." My voice lost all tone or emotion, my head shook, disbelief at the disconnection I felt. "By Celestia, it was not clean."

A weight against my side woke me from the spell the past wove.

Fizzy hugged me.

Fizzy slipped back to the other side of the mattress. Her eyes apologetic and pitying.

"I'm sorry."

"It was long in the past," I told her, "I've had plenty of good times since then. Just get some sleep, Fizz. Don't go feeling sorry for me. I don't like that,"

"Then I'm not sorry, unless I should be sorry for being sorry in the first place." Fizzy's words were garbled by a long yawn. "Okay, now you want to know why I hit that stallion?"

I stopped in the doorway. "Not right now. I'll see you in the morning, Fizz."

I saw Daisy again while heading down the grand staircase to the foyer. She was by the liquor cabinet, nosing the last of the surviving bottles into place. I tried to be quiet, to stay under the sound of the morose jazz music coming from my radio. I stopped on the stair, and sat, and watched her as she went over the bottles. She was counting them, though only way I could tell was by the fact she was moving her mouth as she numbered. From my spot, I watched her as she counted, and slowly swayed to the music, her tail and flank bouncing in the slow time of the music.

"You can join in you know, or do you just like to watch?" Daisy's words jolted me upright. The coquettish grin and half-lidded eyes got me down the rest of the stairs.

I knew I was caught staring, and tried to laugh it off, strolling onto the landing with a light step. "Sorry," I said, "but when the show is that good, who am I to interrupt."

She laughed. It was a soft laugh, appreciative, but still condescending. She only looked at me through the corner of her eye, keeping her faux attention on the bottles. "I'm sorry for what he did. He's not normally like that."

"Yeah, well, that doesn't really lift my opinion of him," I spat with only a few gallons worth of spite and sarcasm. I walked up to her and looked to the racks of liquor, seeking something in the colorful bottles.

"He's under a lot of stress, and he's gone through a lot." He voice was quiet and soft, an old friend speaking through more wistful feelings than self-awareness. Her downcast gaze lifted to look at me. She shrugged with little more than a fatalistic smile on her muzzle. "I'm just trying to help him get by."

"We've all gone through a lot. Everypony has."

"I know, but you don't see how Two-Shot is making things better."

"How could he be making things better? You're all just holed up in here, surrounded by a mine field. I am looking, but I see no better."

Daisy stopped talking at my outburst. She sighed and turned away, heading to the radio. The music died with a tap of her hoof and her head hung, her tail drooped and her dark mane hung low. "You know what it's like out there." She spoke from experience. "You've seen what it's like. You can't tell me it's a good place. I'm sure you killed somepony before, same with your marefriend there. Same with me, and with Two-Shot. Cherry's about the only pony I've known who hasn't taken a life or done something they know is wrong."

Daisy turned back to me, her right eye covered by her mane, her left one staring deeper into me than comfortable. "But since I joined Two-Shot and we shacked up here I haven't had to kill. We live here. We're not just surviving like everypony else, we're safe and happy here. For Celestia's sake, Curtain Call, we were laughing and joking, you were laughing and joking, and we do that every day. How many other ponies can say that?"

She got close to me, nose to nose, staring me in the eye. "How many?" she jabbed my chest with her hoof with each word.

I searched for an answer. "Tenpony Tower? Friendship City? They're both doing well. Least that's what the radio says."

"Tenpony?" Daisy scoffed, wheeling around to walk away from me. Her tail struck my face like a whip. "They're up their own asses and only give a shit about themselves. Think you would've gotten a better reception there than you got from us?"

"Yeah, yeah. Bad example and I should feel bad for it." I sighed and leaned my head back to look to the ceiling for answers. "That doesn't change Friendship City."

"Don't suspect things are perfect there either. Two-Shot is just another pony. He has his own demons, but he's helped me, and he's helped Cherry, and he's helped you and Fizzy."

I was sour, she was right, but I didn't have to feel happy about it. I gritted my teeth and stared at the ceiling.

Daisy's hoof fell against my chest, this time she wasn't jabbing me. She looked at me and there was a small flare of hope in her eyes.

"Find it in you to forgive him, please," she asked. "If more ponies could do that, maybe things wouldn't be so bad. We've all done bad things. We just want to stay one step ahead of ourselves."

She turned from me, and head to the stairs. Up and away, she went into the darkness of the hotel beyond. Off to find Two-Shot for her own reasons, for comfort or for care. Me, I was left sitting alone in the lobby.

The lobby's light was low, provided by some salvaged spark batteries running into the dusty chandelier that once blazed brightly above the wealthy ponies of the past. I looked up at the intermittent twinkling lights and tried to place myself in this place so long ago. Closing my eyes, I smiled at the thought of talking, laughing, drinking and a life that didn't involve running or scraping to get by. I could see myself, walking down those stairs in another time, dressed well, knowing the right ponies, fresh off of a stage tour of Equestria. Talking craft with fellow actors, talking gigs with the movers and shakers, taking fun with the mares. To live in that world was to be blessed by Celestia herself.

"Stop fantasizing, you stupid foal. This ain't the past, but if you think about it, you ain't gonna have a future anyways."

I stared at the glowing dial of the radio. The dial was reticent.

"Don't stand there like a fucking idiot."

The snarl of the voice took my attention. I sat and, lacking anypony else to look toward, kept my eye on the radio that the voice came from. "What is it you want?" I asked in a tone to suggest he wasn't wanted at this moment.

The voice didn't take, or refuse, the hint. "I want to see you make it through this shitstorm alive. I'm here to help you, whether you like it or not."

I looked around with a hope that somebody else would walk in. But it was just me and Radio.

"Okay, okay. You want to help. So help. What've you got for me?"

The voice laughed. "Finally he gets it. First things first. Watch yourself around this Two-Shot pony. Don't buy into the crap that whore was spitting at you. She's his lover, she'll lie."

"Now you don't know that, and she does have a point. He took me and Fizz in when he could've just killed us."

Another strident laugh came from the radio. "What the fuck does that got to do with anything? Then? Now? Later? Ain't none of that matters, Red, cause where I come from, dead is dead, and you come from the same place. He's a killer and you know it. Not a matter of if, just when."

"So what if he is?" I debated back with half a heart. "I've killed too. That makes me a danger?"

"Yeah, yeah it does." The voice didn't even pause. "All the more reason you should watch this pony. It don't take much to squeeze a trigger. And if it ain't him, it'll be that cold blooded bitch."

I snorted, the disgust creeping on my muzzle was evident. "We've been down this road before, Radio. Fizz was willing to blow herself up so Two-Shot would back down. I think that goes a ways there."

"And you call yourself a good judge of character. Wake up and realize you're a commodity at best, not a friend. She was just protecting herself. She'd have gone for the bombs one way or the other. You were just a sap that stuck his head in where it wasn't needed."

"You don't know that."

"Don't I? Red, even at best, none of us knows what she was thinking. The thing about it is that my train of thought tends to be heading for the right station. You and I both know that. So stop kidding yourself. You went and opened up your whiny little can of worms and she didn't give you back squat."

"Hey, she hugged me," in the world of defenses, this was not the best of them, but I needed something to hold onto. "She's not good with words, at least not the right ones. She knows it, and she told me. That's all. You're looking too far into it."

The radio went silent for a moment. I grinned like a triumphant foal. Felt a lot better to beat the radio with words rather than my hooves.

"Wipe that stupid smirk off your face."

That smirk was wiped. I stood, started to stamp toward the radio, and stopped when I realized how dumb it was to try and intimidate an inanimate object I was reflecting on. I flopped my rump to the floor and stared.

"So maybe she ain't a demon in disguise. That doesn't mean you're any good to her or anypony else. Fact is I wonder why you're even kidding yourself about it all."

I frowned, thrown off track by the radio pony's words. "Kidding myself how?"

A snort, a belly laugh burbled over the airwaves. "Like I was trying to tell you yesterday, you're a nothing, a nopony. You're a bruiser who can talk a good game, but that's it, and it don't go far. You caught some ponies unaware once, but even a filly looking junkie like Two-Shot can outclass you in a real fight."

"Hey now," I stood back up, scowled at the radio, "I'm doing the best with what I'm good at. I never had to wave a gun around before, bullets are better off as barter anyways. At least I never chance running out. I'll always have a way of fighting if I need it."

"Take another bullet to the head and we'll see how well that, and you, stands up. Don't you forget your place in this world; a scavenger rat picking through junk. Just a parasite feeding off old world refuse. You ain't a guard like your daddy, and you ain't a trader like your mama. Course maybe it's better you haven't done shit. After all, all it got them was dead. Please, you're only walking with that unicorn because you have nothing else to do. You can't even find your own goal, just feed off of others. Course, even before that you fed off others."

"I'm doing some good. I helped Fizzy get her information. I sold goods to Summer Bounty. Ponies use the things I find and pack away. If it wasn't for that, Fizzy and I would never have killed that manticore. And all I want to do is make ponies happy. Make this place a little better for them. Doesn't matter if it's in little ways."

"You sleep better at night when you tell yourself that? Does it make a good little foal's tale? Or is this part of your comedy line? The wannabe entertainer. A social butterfly living in the middle of a dead zone. You're a living joke but I don't hear anypony laughing. Not anymore, at least."

I snapped. "You just fuck right off, whoever you are. You don't know a damn thing. I lost it all, sure, but maybe that kick in the teeth is what I needed. Daisy's right, Two-Shot, psycho prick that he is, is doing something. Fizzy's doing whatever it is she's doing with that soda. So am I even if I don't exactly know what it is yet. I'll find something." I shouted at the radio. The rage was impotent, useless against an inanimate object, but Luna be praised was it cathartic. Though my eye twitched a bit, the grin on my muzzle ran as wide as the day is long.

"It'll never make good."

My smile disappeared, the world shrank to the size of a pinprick, and I stared at the radio. It was just me and it. Together we danced inside my mind. Hatred and doubt and bitter memories dragged me into a pit inside myself. Inside, I called for help.

"Am I interrupting anything?"

The voice was sweet and rang with laughter from above me. It reached deep into the mired swamp that swallowed me and pulled me up for air. I was saved by that voice, that interruption.

Cherry Pop watched, forelegs on the banister, looking down at me. "It's okay, I won't tell a soul. I promise."

I looked at the radio. I looked back at Cherry. The realization dawned on me. I was okay, it was okay.

"I'm not crazy," my voice came out something like a squeak and a sigh. "It's just how I think."

Cherry just laughed and radiated warmth through her smile. "I believe you," she assured me. Slipping from the banister, she started down the stairs. "I didn't hear a thing, okay? But you got to promise me something in return. You can do that, can't you?" Her hushed voice teased with secrets she wanted to share.

I stood for a moment and just watched her. She had grace, the light steps that brought her down the stair and the fluid way she walked up to me. She stopped a hair's breadth from me.

I took a breath and felt myself smile. "Depends on what you want," I told her in a conspiratorial whisper.

"I want to take a look at those bandages you're wearing." She laughed again, a musical tone interrupted by her sticking her tongue out at me. She turned away, walking back up the stairway. "I have medical supplies in my room. Your friend did some good basic work, but I'm going to bet you need a real medical pony to look at that injury."

The mare was a medic, that's all. I laughed and closed my eyes. Since I stopped hurting, I had not even figured myself injured anymore. Suppose I still was. I followed her up the stairs, down the decaying hall and its faded opulence, to what I suspected was were she slept when Two-Shot wasn't involved.

The room was large. The bed, a wide one whose mattress hadn't seemed to lose any of its plushness over the years, took up most of the room. The bed was inviting, so I sat at the foot, sinking into the old springs. To my side, by the door, was an old armoire, the door was barely askew.

I leaned to see inside, a yellow medical kit propped the old door.

A faint pink glow surrounded my head and lifted my hard hat. Cherry shushed me before I could speak. The pink glow sat aside my hard hat and enveloped the magic bandages. The strips stung as they were slowly peeled from around my crown.

I winced and found the ground rushing up at me. My legs locked in place to avoid slamming to the floor.

"Yeah, you were hit hard weren't you?" Cherry commented. She stood close enough I could feel her breath on me. "I'm lucky it was just blunt force trauma, if the bullet hadn't been deflected, I wouldn't have you here."

My eyebrows rose. I worked a smile on my face. "I think I can consider myself lucky, too. But it's starting to hurt with you poking it like that. Starting to hurt a lot."

Cherry laughed. It seemed to be a recurring theme with the pink mare. Her horn was glowing again, this time drawing an old kit bag to the bedside. The kit opened, a potion floated out, uncorked of its own accord, and summarily planted itself in my mouth. "Drink. I'll have you right as rain soon as you know."

I drank; it wasn't as though I had choice in the matter. The potion was heady, with a smoky flavor that filled me with a warm numbness. The warmth grew inside of my, radiating from my stomach, out to my limbs. I felt heavy and tired, the world grew dim but more peaceful than I could ever imagine.

I woke up with a start, snorting and falling face first on the floor. More than anything was the lack of feeling. I had pushed aside a dull, throbbing pain for the past day, through shooting and shouting, it hadn't dulled, the rest of me had. "Good fucking morning, Equestria," I said with a whistle, blinking at the floorboards.

"You weren't out for long, silly," Cherry's voice came from the bed. I peered over it to see her on the other side. "I just needed you to stay still long enough so I could make sure the healing magic worked."

Shaking myself off, I got to my hooves. "I feel great; better than I have in a while." I looked myself over, spinning in place. "I take it removing my barding was for entirely important reasons?"

"I had to check for injury," Cherry said with a pair of the largest, fake innocence having eyes I had ever seen. "I still had fun doing it, though."

I chuckled, flattery works on my as well as any other pony. "Well I'm glad you enjoyed the show," I told her. "Thanks, though, I think the shot had taken a lot out of me. More than I thought, at least. You did me a big favor."

"You're patched up, but you're still hurting," Cherry's voice took a dip to private softness. She crossed the room in long strides to push the door shut. "I know about pain, Curtain Call, and I saw yours."

"I'm not hurting, I was the gunshot. That's all," I tried to shake the unicorn's attention. My barding lay on the ground not far away. I went to go get it, slip it back on and slip away.

"Gunshots don't make a pony give themselves speeches." She was beside me, putting her hoof on my barding.

I couldn't bring myself to simply shove her aside and claim it. Not after what she'd done for me. Instead, I stuck a humor coat over my excuses. "That one did. Special enchanted bullet."

Cherry shaking her head told me she wasn't about to buy that line. Her smile and her laugh told me she liked it all the same. "Come on," she said in a quiet voice, slipping by me, brushing against me as she passed. "Let's have a drink. To your health."

"You're not going to let me leave, are you?"

The floating bottle pouring into a glass gave me more answer than her words ever could. The glass pushed against me until I was against a desk. Relenting, I sipped from the glass. The drink was champagne. It was flat.

"You don't love her, I can tell."

I nearly sneezed out my champagne. "Wait what?"

"Fizadora," Cherry clarified. "You don't love her. You care about her, or you need her for something, but you don't love her."

"When did this become ponies take turns telling me what I think?" I wondered aloud, shooting a narrow look of warning toward my doctor turned psychologist.

"Am I wrong?"

I was beginning to hate that question very much. "No," I admitted, with a heavy sigh, "No. You're right about. I need her. She's literally the only thing I have going for me right now."

Cherry asked me how. That got me talking. I gave her the run down of the past few days. The raiders, the attack on my home, how letting one of them live brought fire and wrath upon my little corner of life, I told her all of it. I explained, and as I did I realized, that Fizzy and her soda were what I had to keep myself sane. It was dying in Manehattan, or following a mare I didn't know on some excursion I could only hope brought something better than the dying option offered.

When I finished, Cherry was at the desk with me. She finished her drink and started affixing me with the most sympathetic look I had gotten in ages. All I had in return was a shrug and a sheepish grin.

"We all have our needs, Curtain Call," Cherry told me, looking down at her glass with a distant, thoughtful eye. "It's been good since we came here. I haven't gotten to help many ponies, but we have other things to keep us busy. It may not look like much, but I've found what I need in this world. What about you, though. Is there anypony special out there? A mare that runs through your thoughts before you go to sleep?"

Her smile was disarming. "There's one, Summer Bounty. As if her name helps you. She's a trader, traveling. For a long, long time she was the only pony I saw regularly. We get along, and she's one of the prettiest mares I've ever had the pleasure to know. Sorry, I'll stop before I gush."

"No, don't. Tell me about her."

"Tell you? Smart, funny, long legs, beautiful mane, these big, big eyes you can get lost in, and a steady trade route. Not much more you could ask for in a mare than that."

"That it?" Cherry asked. She moved around the table to sidle against me, leaning in.

I closed my eyes and felt the weight against me; it made me smile. "One of those few sunny spots in life, having Summer's caravan show up. I never slept with her, but, you know." I laughed a quiet laugh, stopped short by Cherry nuzzling my neck.

"You're a terrible liar, Curtain Call," Cherry spoke in a whisper. She was right, and I knew it as much as she did.

I pulled away, looked away from Cherry. "That transparent?"

Cherry's smile was soft and warm but her eyes were sharp. "As crystal. You don't have to mention the one you love. I know when pain is too much. When we hurt, we can curl away and try to hide it all. But it doesn't stop. It never does."

I looked back up to Cherry. She moved closer.

"We still have our needs. Those are always with us."

"I know we do."

Cherry pulled from me, heading toward the bed. I didn't resist her. "Come over here, Curtain Call. Just think of her. We need this night. It'll be magic."

I did.

It wasn't.

I closed the door to Cherry's room behind me as quietly as I could. She fell asleep, but for as tired as I was, I couldn't bring myself to nod off. I took to wandering the hotel once more. Somehow I hoped that the old walls would bring me some sort of peace of mind.

I was not so lucky.

Two-Shot walked out from Fizzy's room. He looked at me with deep-bagged eyes, stared at me with a flat, dead look. a look that boiled my blood.

Everything he's already done, he had to go in there now. I charged the unicorn, gun at his side or not, I was going to beat him senseless. He had threatened me, hurt Fizzy, and Celestia knows what now.

I ran up to him, but then stopped. There wasn't any fight in him, he would have just taken the beating and it wouldn't have mattered. Something else in his eyes told me he had been beaten enough.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Haven't you done enough? Have to wait until I'm gone to sneak in there? What'd you do to her?" I hissed through my teeth, I wasn't going to kill him, but he wasn't going to just walk away.

He answered, looking me in the eye, only giving a single nod into the room.

Fizzy slept on the bed, a small ball lay beside her, and a saddlebag that looked different from either of ours. She was snoring.

"We spoke, and I gave her what help I could. That is all. I've done less than you, tonight."

I hadn't thought Cherry and I were that loud.

"So what?" I asked, backing from the smaller unicorn and looking at him. "Going to kill me for breaking one of your rules? Going to kill her?" I expected the shot, waited for it.

"No," he spoke in a whisper. "It was her choice as much as yours, and I'm no position to judge."

His attention shifted toward the end of the hallway. "I need a spotter." The unicorn didn't phrase it as such, but I can tell a request when I hear one. I followed him down the hallway. We walked in silence.

The night air was warm and dark. In the distance was the faint glow of Tenpony Tower. There was, out on the old bridge with its maze of carts and wreckage, the lights of multiple fires. They flickered and danced. Inviting even if I knew they were surrounded by ponies that wanted to wear my head as a hat.

Two-Shot nosed open a long case, and the faint aura of his telekinesis floated up a sizeable rifle. A small pair of binoculars floated out after the rifle.

It bounced off my chest and I bobbled it in my hooves for a moment before I managed to balance it well enough, taking a seat and peering out at the crumbled tomb of a city I planned to leave behind.

"The blue earth pony is the one that wants you dead?" Two-Shot asked me while he floated the rifle into position, lining the scope with his eye. He didn't have the slur, or the boisterous sound to him anymore. His voice was quiet, velvet soft, and hollow.

"His name is Scorch. That's what I heard, at least. I killed some of his gang and now he wants me dead." I looked out through my binoculars. I swept what part of the larger thoroughfare that I could, and then up toward those little fires. I was hunting for any signs of pony.

"Never got his name, but I don't think he likes you any better for coming in here. He's tried to take me a few times. Don't look at me like that, watch their camps, you're not the only pony who can make enemies."

I shook my head and went back to looking. "So you've killed some of his gang too? Maybe we should feel bad for him." I spotted a raider split from the camps. "There's one right over there, little to your left. Green mare, earth pony."

The rifle split the night. The crack echoed off the remnant building rubble and rang in my ears.

"Fuckmothering Luna that was loud," I I nearly dropped the binoculars. "Don't they hear that?"

Two-Shot hadn't blinked. "The corpses don't hear it, the others have the echoes to throw them off." He spoke matter of fact as he looked for his next shot.

A pair of ponies, wearing dark barding to keep their lighter coats from being noticed, went to go investigate their fallen comrade. "Two more on their way. Just off to the right of the dead one, just behind a cart, only-"

One of the pair jerked back as the thunderous report of the gun filled the air. The other stared in a panic.He shook in his barding, stumbled away from the other dead ganger and into the open.

He wasn't afraid for long.

"Well," I said, watching the pony lay in the road, "That's three less ponies of his to deal with."

"Not ponies."

I looked at Two-Shot for clarity.

"Corpses."

"Isn't that a little morbid?" I asked, looking back over the bridge. One pony started to move, but very quickly got savvy enough to duck out of sight. I imagined Scorch was down there, playing with fire, coaching his gang even as we picked them off.

"They were dead as soon as my attention was drawn to them. Crosshairs and bullets are just formality. They have to be, I never direct my gun at anypony I was not going to kill."

The air suddenly felt heavy and the night oppressive. I looked down at the shorter unicorn. "Is that so?" I inquired. I tried to keep the chill out of my voice; I think I failed.

Two-Shot paused; he looked up at me with a pure hatred in his eyes. Even so, none of that anger was directed at me. "I don't like killing ponies. Killing those who wish death on themselves does well enough."

He sniffed the air. "There was one," He admitted.

"Who?" I asked, unnecessarily quiet. There was little point to watching the gangers out on the bridge, but I kept it up anyways, looking over their empty little fires.

"Steel ranger. His name was Cinnamon Stripe. The only one I have killed I could call a real pony."

"What made him so-"

"That is all I will speak of him."

I looked from the binoculars to the unicorn by my side, focused through the scope of his rifle. "What about Cherry Pop and Daisy?" I asked, hoping that was a safer avenue for conversation. "I didn't expect Cherry to be a doctor." I hadn't expected a lot out of Cherry, but surprises abound.

Two-Shot laughed, but I use the term loosely. It was a short little rabid chuckle. Not at all like the big guffaws of the early evening. "I don't fuck just any mare. Cherry Pop is a good lay, but she's a better doctor. Found her after her little town was wiped off the map by a gang further North. She was their medic, unique healing style she has, though. So she came."

"Yeah, unique," I said with small, painful little laugh. "What about Daisy?" I wanted to keep topics moving, and off of Cherry. Something about Two-Shot grinning like he was unsettled me.

"Daisy was a merc, like me. We worked together for a while, running guns for some ponies. You should see her when she has her battle saddle on." Two-Shot smiled again, this time it was a little less trigger happy and more hopeful. I liked the change.

"I wanted to retire. I wasn't getting anywhere as a merc. I was hoping it was going to be protecting ponies and saving the day for a bit of scratch to get by. I was a foal back then. Didn't think about the reality. My final job was putting a hole in the head of that Steel Ranger. Once that was done, so was I. I put word through old contacts to find Daisy and we talked it over. Convinced her to come with me, set a place up for ourselves and anypony who wanted to escape. Found this place, set up, never looked back."

I thought for a moment, and reflected on Two-Shot. "You know," I told him, "You're awfully somber for a pony who has done all they set out to do."

Two-Shot's laughter bubbled with bitter derision. "Have I?"

"I fuck, drink, and suck up as much steady as Cherry can make. Not a life worth shit in the end. No life is, so what's the point of liking it? You can't change this place. You can't make it all better. There's a. . .There's a sadness in this world. It's like those clouds. Hanging over everypony. Nothing we can do but scrape up what little pleasure we can get and hoarding like a dragon. Did I do all I set out do? Yeah. Is it anything to be happy about? Fuck no."

I hummed and finally sat the binoculars aside. I stopped using them a while back. "I can't say you're wrong," I admitted and turned back towards the way in.

Two-Shot didn't move, staying still as a statue with his rifle hovering at his side. The world was dust and corpses to him.

I had played the part he pulled me out here to play. It was time to disappear again. "Thank you again, for letting us spend the night, and for helping us on the bridge. You made our world a little better. Maybe I can pay you back somehow. Maybe I can make yours better."

I went inside, I collapsed beside the bed in Fizzy's room. I hadn't got a response from Two-Shot, and truth is, I didn't need to.

I just needed to hear myself say those words.

<<<<>>>>

Author's Note

Welcome Two-Shot, Daisy, and Cherry back to Salvage!

Thanks again to everyone who enjoys my little derivative work. To my readers, commenters, and those of you who favorite and stay quietly in the back ground, thank you.

Special thanks to Julep for the title image.

East-Side Standoff

Chapter 5: East-Side Standoff
"Run."

Dreams are fascinating things. A dream can take you to places far beyond imagination. A dream can show you your innermost demons. A dream can also point you in the right direction when adrift in a sea of uncertainty. They can enchant and terrify and be more real than real. Windows to the mind and doorways for us to explore ourselves, a dream is gift given for surviving the day. There are more ideas, thoughts and philosophies about dreams than there are stars in the sky. Truly, awe-inspiring adventure awaits the intrepid dreamer at the end of a dull daily life.

Thank Luna for dreamless sleeps.

I woke up in a world of complete darkness, blind and helpless. I fought against the darkness with all the fury and technique expected of a pony just waking up. After valiant combat against the forces that blinded mine, I took the blanket off my head. That I was still in the room that served as a dirty window to the world gone past told me I was still alive. I picked up the pieces of my shattered dignity, rubbed my eyes, and looked about the room to get my bearings. I didn't see Fizzy, though her pack bags were still sitting by the bed.

I found a note on the floor while I was picking up the blanket the phantom coverer had given me. "Pump works. Bathe," it said. I silently thanked Fizzy and sloughed off my barding.

The washroom was small but had all the necessities. I blinked at the cracked mirror, and took a drink in the sink. The water was most likely irradiated, but I was thirsty and needed to get the taste of sleep out of my mouth. Once I was awake enough to work the faucet for the washtub, I drew a bath for myself and dove in.

The note only said the pump worked; it never said anything about the water being hot.The chill hit me like a shot to the head. The freezing flash jolted me more awake than I had ever been before. Most of that energy spent on trying to get as dry as possible, as quick as possible.

Old towels, a pre war dress from the armoire, the blanket, nothing was too good in my search to get warm and dry.

Wrapped myself in the blanket, awake and quiet, I could hear the sound of voices downstairs. The sound of rising and falling laughter took hold of my attention and refused to let go. Unfortunately, for my eavesdropping, I couldn't make out the particulars of the conversation, but it sounded like significantly higher spirits were in order for the morning. Heaving a sigh of relief, I doffed my blanket of warmth and donned my barding again so I could poke my nose in other ponies' business.

The dust motes danced in the light as I made my way downstairs. The pleasant smell of cooking food wafted in the still air. The noise drew me towards the source of the happy talk; the smell dragged me to it.

"About a one to one ratio on all four parts," Cherry was explaining as I walked in on her and Fizadora, "But I prefer using the flower to produce healing potions. It's an amazing reagent."

"Considering the risk in acquiring a manticore's poison sac, I am doubtful I can find much use for it. I am thankful, though. Any alchemical notes you have are appreciated."

Cherry noticed me first. Looking over, she gave a wicked little grin. "Were you tired from last night?" she asked, leaning on the question, grin grown wide. "I knew you'd feel better after a little relaxation. Me and Fizzy were just discussing medical alchemy, you're welcome to join us."

"He isn't the most scientifically minded," Fizzy noted aloud. "I don't think he'd gain much from the conversation we were having."

I looked back and forth between the mares. Cherry Pop's teasing look, directly opposite Fizzy's innocent one.

I pointed toward Fizzy. "What she said."

The former lounge room was spacious, though not as much as the lobby. The walls were plush, deep red in the places they hadn't worn to the wood underneath. Paintings and pictures, or at least blank squares that used to be paintings and pictures, hung all over the walls in no pattern whatsoever. Chairs and tables scattered the room, sitting silent and empty save for the one that held the two chatting mares.

"Is that another plate?" Daisy called out from another room, the source of the smell.

"Yes!" Cherry called out.

Daisy entered balancing a pair of plates on her flank.

I stared. I couldn't tear away my lustful gaze. After all, I hadn't eaten in days and there were a pair of genuine salads right there in front of me.

"Entirely not sorry for imposing but could I get one of those?" I asked Daisy, adding a drawn out "please" for good measure.

"I see how it is. Beg for her," Cherry interjected with a forced pout. She caught the look of puzzlement on Fizzy's face and that pout morphed into another grin and wink.

Fizzy tilted her head, her brow knitted in thought. Then her eyes went wide, coupled with a low "oh". Her attention turned to me, soon followed by the other two mares.

Since I already had one hoof in the water, so I might as well jump in with all four. I drummed my hooves on the table and shot the trio the biggest, toothiest grin I could muster. "So I broke rule number three, if this is the end of my ill spent life, at least I end it with a bang."

Cherry rolled her eyes, but the smile on her face was plain as day. "Don't give yourself that much credit."

Fizzy shook her head and focused her attention on breakfast.

"If I grab you a plate, you going to stop drooling?" Daisy's voice made me look up. She was halfway into the kitchen.

"I'll do you one better," I told her, "I'll stop telling jokes."

Daisy disappeared into the kitchen. "Deal."

I grinned, triumphant.

"Fizzy tells me you guys are going after Sparkle-Cola?" Cherry Pop questioned.

I nodded, shooting a sidelong glance Fizzy's way to see if it was okay to elaborate.

Fizzy ignored me, closing her eyes. A tacit answer in my book.

"We are," I answered, "I'm not certain exactly where it is, but Fizzy has the map. Did she tell you she threw me at a robopony without letting me now? Or that she didn't feel the need to let me know about what she was looking for until after I risked my neck?"

Cherry nodded with a concise, "Yup."

Fizzy's head bobbed in unison.

"Well damn, looks like that's all covered. All I can say about it is I still have no idea what she's planning on using the soda for. Isn't that right, Fizz?"

Fizzy nodded. "It's," she stopped to swallow the mouthful she was trying to talk through, "I was sworn to secrecy. It's for the benefit of my home but that's all I can say."

I shrugged. "I don't know it any better than you do, but it isn't like I'm doing anything else out here. I figure I might as well help some ponies out."

The pink mare thought the matter over a moment, rubbing at her chin with a hum. "I'm going with you guys," she stated, raising her hood and grinning at us with impish delight.

The suddenness of the statement had come at us like a shot. We all stared at Cherry Pop. Fizzy and I from the table, and Daisy midway from the kitchen.

Cherry looked between all of us and stared sheepishly at the floor. "What? I think it's a good idea," she claimed, turning back and forth to keep all of us in line of sight.

"We've been here a while, but we haven't done much for anypony except ourselves," Cherry was speaking to all of us, but her focus was on Daisy, and her tone was meant for herself.

"I'm a doctor. I need to help ponies. I want to help as many as I can. If I have to leave I'll do that."

Daisy was silent as she walked to the table. She sat my plate on the table, turned, and left without another word.

Cherry watched the whole time, hurt by her friend's taciturn response. There were not tears in the pink mare's eyes but the hurt was there, she wasn't doing a thing to hide that.

The scene left me uneasy. I knew that sleeping with Cherry had nothing to do with her decision, and I knew she knew that. Daisy was intelligent, and I felt safe in assuming she knew as well. What scared me was that I couldn't trust her to care about what she knew. I come in, have a one-night stand, and now her friend wants to break their group up. Truth or no truth, I made for a great scapegoat.

Cherry stared at the kitchen door. Fizzy watched Cherry as though the other mare was some sort of puzzle to figure out. I didn't feel and couldn't find a place for myself, so I ate the food Daisy had brought for me.

It was an amazing salad.

"So when are we moving out, Cherry?" Daisy's words as she came back into the kitchen broke the silence, and had all of us looking up in surprise. She had been gone for a few minutes, leaving us to our awkward silence. Now she was wearing some kind of piecemeal barding, constructed out of scraps of metal and old world sport equipment outfitted with spikes. A battle saddle rigged automatic rifle topped off the combat gear.

Cherry zipped over to Daisy, excited laughter filling the hotel's dining room. The two friends embraced each other. Cherry did most of the embracing. Daisy's general spikiness kept her from much more than a single foreleg around her friend.

Fizzy and I swapped questioning looks and simultaneous shrugs. Neither of us knew what to say.

"Did you really think I could let you go off with these two alone?" Daisy asked in a quiet tone, "As much as I'd like to stick around our little fortress, it wouldn't be the same without you. I wouldn't be happy without all of us together."

"Thank you, thank you so much, Daisy," Cherry Pop was grateful as she slipped away from her friend giving the mercenary pony some breathing room. "It'll be so much better to have you with us."

"What about Two-Shot? How are you going to convince him to leave?" Fizzy was the one who asked the question. I nodded to go along with the question. The thought had been sitting in the back of my head. It cuddled up nice and close with the ever-growing fear that Two-Shot was going to hold me responsible for all of this.

Daisy had a sad and knowing smile as she looked over to Fizzy and me. "He won't have much of a choice," she explained in the soft, piteous tone reserved for lost causes. "Cherry is the source of his fix. She knows how to cook what he needs. He wants it, he comes. I know it sounds harsh, but he needs us to look after him as much as he watches out for us. So if we have to yank his leash a little, I'm fine with that."

"Makes sense," Fizzy noted without much conviction. Cherry had a similar look of accepting, if not approving of the idea. I felt the plan was just fine.

"Speaking of Two-Shot," I interjected, curious as to the absence of the sniper. "Where is he, anyways? He missed a fantastic breakfast. By the way, Daisy, thank you."

"I've been on the balcony." The words ran down my spine like ice water. I shivered and looked over my shoulder. Two-Shot was strolling in. He looked like a mile of bad road. His disheveled mane hung wildly; his bloodshot eyes had deep bags underneath them. "And I'm a better cook than either of them, thank you very much."

Two-Shot walked by all of us without actually looking at any of us. Past Fizzy and me, past Cherry and past Daisy, he walked into the kitchen. All of us remaining in the lounge followed the small white unicorn in his long trek toward food.

"You look terrible," Fizzy's terse comment came from concern. She crossed her forelegs on the table, resting her chin at the crook as she studied Two-Shot.

"I look sober."

We all sat quiet. Each of us exchanged glances with one another, wondering just how much Two-Shot had heard and noticed. Even if he hadn't heard the talk of desertion, he must have noticed Daisy decked out like she was. All four of us leaned over to peer into the kitchen as well we could.

Two-Shot was standing near the salad, levitating small clumps to eat sans plate. He looked at us, chewed on his food, and completely ignored our stares. Another mouthful, and another, and another before Two-Shot sighed and rubbed his eyes.

"You make this, Daisy? It's good." He blinked at the air in front of him, shook his mane out, and blinked some more. "They're moving out there."

Our "What" quartet assailed Two-Shot. He looked at the four of us, leaned into view as we were, and slowly tilted his head to match ours. "Oh goddesses, it's too early to be sober," he muttered with a shake of his head.

"Alright, fillies and gentlecolts," Daisy projected her voice as she spoke, moving into the cluttered kitchen. She stood tall as she stepped back and forth, looking to each of us in turn. "If they're moving then they're getting ready for an assault."

"What about the minefield?" Fizzy asked, "That should detain them."

Daisy nodded to the silver unicorn. "It'll buy us time to prepare, but we shouldn't count on it. We don't know how many of them there are. All they have to do is throw ponies at the mines until we run out."

I stepped in. "He won't. I've talked with the pony leading them. I've seen him in action. He wouldn't waste them just throwing them at a grinder like that."

Daisy frowned. "Not raiders?"

"Manticores. The gang, not the critter." Two-Shot spoke around a small inhaler in his teeth. A single sharp inhalation later and the inhaler clattered to the floor. The unicorn's eyes bulged as he took a deep breath. "That's more like it," he said, faint, as he was nearly airless.

"Scorched Earth?" Daisy asked as a cruel curl scrawled across her muzzle. Her attention fell on Fizzy and me. "You guys pick the good ones, don't you?"

I raised my hoof. "Me, just me. Fizzy is just an accomplice against him."

"I don't see how any of that matters, can we figure out what we're going to do?" Fizzy gave a hard-eyed look to the lot of us, like a teacher scolding foals.

Two-Shot floated a few more chems around himself; the distinctive dash inhaler along with some larger, cobbled together out of a soda bottle versions. "Got what I need. I'll be on the balcony. I'll keep them back as long as I can."

We watched Two-Shot head out to take up his post. Daisy nodded to his parting before she turned on the rest of us. "I'm going to start up there with Two-Shot. I'll provide his cover fire and take the front lines if they manage to breach."

She looked over toward Cherry Pop, pointing a hoof at the pink mare. "Get your supplies ready. We're going to need you stocked and good to go when we make our break for it. We can push them back, but it's going to hurt."

Cherry saluted Daisy, gave us all a keen smile and bolted out of the door. We watched her for a moment, all three of us, before Daisy set her sights on Fizzy and I.

"Fizadora, go down to the basement. The door is right under the big stairs," Daisy instructed Fizzy. "I want you to set up a surprise in case this goes wrong. We have more than enough down there for you to work with."

A wicked little smile curled on Fizzy's face. She casually adjusted her bent glasses. "If you're correct, then I will send them to the moon."

With Fizzy's tail disappearing from view, just Daisy and I remained. "So," I said with a shrug, "That leaves useless old Curtain Call. I don't think talking to them will do me any good here. I can kick hard, and I'm good in close, but that doesn't leave me with a lot I can do. I can stop bullets, but only for a little while."

"You said no more jokes."

"Wasn't one."

Daisy shook her head to hide her amusement. "You may be more important than you think. Head downstairs after Fizzy. You'll find a bulkhead in the back. That's our way out of here. We need you to make sure that way is cleared for us. Worst case, if they get wise and come in that way it's tight quarters, you'll be needed."

I nodded, glad to have some kind of part in this that wasn't bullet shield. "Gotcha. Now go kick some ass."

Daisy and I traded smiles before we parted, she upstairs, and me down.

For all the luxury and pomp the public areas of the Hotel Haflinger had, its underbelly belied the utilitarian mind of the designer. The walls were bare, the floor covered in the dust of age. Lanterns rigged with spark batteries hung from the ceiling, casting an uneven glow over the halls. I looked up at them as I passed underneath, walking the narrow corridor. It was strangely warm down here and I could taste the smell of old fruit on my tongue as I wandered the narrow hallway.

I found myself confronted by a collection of metal vats, tanks, pipes, pots and tubes. A series of stills sat all lined up and boiling away. My jaw dropped as I trailed over the stacks of bottles, all filled and waiting. There was enough liquor down here to get Equestria through the next apocalypse with a comfortable buzz.

I walked among the stills, ducking under a pipe here and there to get around the moonshine operation. I stopped over by one of the stacks and sniffed at it. The sharp scent of the liquor hit my nose and made me reel back. That was when I noticed the little brown bag sitting among the bottles. Curiosity won out and I leaned over to inspect the bundle.

"Don't," Fizzy's sudden voice made me stand bolt upright. "It's a satchel charge. You don't want to touch that."

Slowly, very slowly I backed away from the incendiary pile. "This is your plan?" I wondered.

The look of pride on Fizzy's face spoke volumes. She pranced about the basement distillery as happy as could be. "Ayuh," the unicorn replied. "With all the ammunition that Daisy and Two-Shot have around here, I can make a bunch. Therefore, I have." She stopped by one of the bottle piles. "I could use a hoof moving the fuel around."

"You weren't gone that long," I voiced my thoughts even as I went over to gather the bottles of whiskey. "You came up with this that quickly?"

Fizzy floated another bundle explosive about her, studying the trigger spells she was applying. "I figured I was blowing something up when Daisy told me to go down here. Finding all this fuel just made the how all the more obvious." Her explanation came casually. She was having fun with this, the idea of detonating an old world hotel.

I followed the mad bomber to the only other sizeable room in the basement. It was a workshop. The reek of powder and oil in the air that managed to cut out even the strident smell of spirits. At Fizzy's instruction, I placed the liquor in a small stack. Then I got as far away as possible when she set and primed her little bundle of boom.

"We're using this basement as a way out," I said to Fizzy as she came out from the workshop. "You do know that, right? There's a bulkhead down here I need to make ready. How many more of these little set ups do you have planned?"

Fizzy glanced down the hall and back to the workshop. She chewed on her lip a moment. "One more in the workshop, one by the stairs we came down, and probably another one by the other door. Which I suppose is the bulkhead you mentioned. I suspect I can get everything ready on my own if you don't wish to."

I didn't have to think much on the matter. I could carry more than she could, and her magic was better served setting up those explosives. The door could wait for a minute. "No, no. Let me lug the booze and you stick to making sure I don't go up in a fireball unless absolutely necessary.

"What constitutes necessary?"

I gave a careful look to Fizzy. She was grinning, obviously proud of herself. "That was a joke," I said, my own smile growing. "Good. I like an explosives expert with a sense of humor."

A self-satisfied Fizadora and I set about gathering up more supplies to burn down the Hotel Haflinger. We finished up in the workshop first. A few more bottles tucked in amongst jars of munitions powder did the trick. I shut the door to the room on my way out just so I could ignore the powder keg I just had a hoof in creating.

"So, Fizzy," I broke the work generated silence as we finished up planting and setting the final incendiary plot by the bulkhead door. "I saw Two-Shot leave your room last night. Looked like he left some things in there." I let the statement hang in the air and hoped Fizzy would pick up the conversation ball.

Fizzy just nodded, looking down at the small fireball cache. The mare was not the best at catching onto these sorts of things.

"What were the bag and little ball?" I flatly stated my question, looking down at the mare with expectation.

"Oh," Fizzy said, pulled from somewhere inside of her own head. "It was some information and supplies. That and he wanted to apologize for offending me."

I was curious and pressed the subject as we headed back down the basement hall. "What kind of information and supplies?"

"He had some information regarding a method to get your Pipbuck in working order and attuned to you. Some technology he buried in a cave years ago."

"Why does it seem everypony around here knows more about this thing than I do?"

"Because we do."

I shrugged. "Fair enough," I admitted, stepping aside to let Fizzy go upstairs first. "But let me ask you this, why do you trust Two-Shot?"

Fizzy stopped on the stairwell. "He showed me a memory orb. One of his. I have no reason not to take him on his word."

"Your word is good enough for me," I told the silver mare with a nod, remaining at the bottom of the stairs.

She turned around to look back at me. A quizzical look about her threatened to cover the flattered smile she had as well. "How is it that you trust me? I've deceived you already."

I played it casual, off the hoof. "You've saved my life a few times. That goes a long way for me. That and you're the kind of pony that sucks at lying. It's why you choose to just not say things rather than come up with any sort of fast talk."

We looked at one another for a pregnant moment. I with my smug grin looking out from under my old yellow helmet, her with her scrutinizing parasprite under glass stare of deduction. She broke first, a wide smile on her face. "Good. At least you have a proper reason," she stated with a quick nod. Now as she went up the stairs, she stood a little straighter.

When Fizzy was gone, I made another pass through the basement. I dug around the distillery and took a few bottles of liquor for myself. I didn't want it all going up in smoke, after all.

The booze wasn't my only haul while I was down in the basement. My second go over and I braved the little firearm workshop. Amongst a pile of scrapped pieces of this and that, I found a battered old shotgun. Blowing off the dust and powder, I looked the weapon over. It took me a minute of useless staring to admit I really didn't know much about guns. I still figured I could sell it if anything. However, I didn't want to lug around any more useless things than I already had, so I tucked the shotgun away by the doorway into the distillery room. I could always grab it on my way out.

The muffled crack of gunfire reached the still air of the hotel lobby. The fighting had already begun outside. I was hesitant. Not being a complete idiot, I knew when my talents would be useless. I stood and listened to the distant sound of the gunfire, quieted by the thick walls of the old hotel. To me, the battle sounded a world away, even if it was just outside my doorstep. I looked over to my radio, still sitting where I had left it and silent as the grave. It figured that my noisy little eavesdropper wouldn't show up at a time like this. I sighed, and looked up at the ceiling, taking a seat there on the floor.

"Hey, what are you doing down there? We need your help, Curtain Call!" The voice came from above. Specifically, the voice came from above and to the right. It was Cherry. A yellow and pink set of saddle bags rested on her back, a ribbon of magical bandages floated above her. "Come on, silly pony, let's get moving or our friends are going to die!"

The cheery admonition threw me from my stupor and shunted me back to reality. I charged up the stairs, and on my way out to the balcony. Cherry skip-stepped toward the door as she called back to me, "Go back to my room," she told me, "Grab the rest of my stuff."

I did as ordered. Sure enough, there were a few of those pink on yellow cases lying on Cherry's bed. I quickly scooped them onto my back and bolted for the outside.

Daisy was the first pony I saw as I ran out onto the balcony. She stood at a gap in the balcony wall. The big gun she had rigged to her saddle aimed down toward the maze of carts and scrap that was the hotel courtyard turned minefield. The rapid pounding of her gun filled the air to nearly deafening levels.

Fizzy was crouched beside Daisy. Ducked out of view, she pressed her body against the balcony. A box magazine floated, held by her telekinetic tether while she focused on the Daisy's chugging machine gun.

I looked to the right and left for Cherry. She was low, laying out medical supplies for quick retrieval and a shotgun I suspected was just in case. I joined her, crawling low to stay out of sight from the whistling shots that came from down below. "Hurry!" she shouted above the raucous din. "Get them here; I'll take care of this. You go help the others."

I falling bits of plaster rained down on my helmet as I tried to make out Cherry's words. "Do what?" I shouted. "There isn't much I'm good for up here."

"Bullets, make sure they have bullets!"

Plaster and wood splinted and clouded the air as more round dug in from below. Cherry waved her hoof over towards Fizzy. I got her message loud and clear.

"I'll take this. You have better things to do." The gunfire nearly drowned out my voice when I threw myself aside Fizzy. She blinked at me, her concentration broken. Her ears flicked, tried to listen to me. I screamed, "Make them go boom," at her to get my point across. I am indeed an eloquent pony.

Fizzy got the hint. Soon she stood alongside Two-Shot, a few tin can constructed scrap grenades floated beside her in a line. The first can lobbed and tumbled through the air. Following its trajectory, I could just barely make out the grimy armored hides of the gangers. They were staying mostly out of sight, using the carts as cover and staying away from the cloud of fire that Daisy was lying down upon them. Much as I tried, I could not see their big blue leader.

Daisy's machinegun fell silent. I was still watching the gang down below. One of the gangers, moved, Two-Shot's rifle cracked, and the ganger left his thoughts on the ground behind him. A short burst strafed the balcony. I ducked back down, out of sight. I heard the sudden bang of one of Fizzy's tin grenades.

"Call!" I heard a voice. "Call!" I heard a voice saying my name. My ears swiveled, my head followed, and I ended up looking Daisy in the eye. "Load!" she ordered and she received. I clapped the box magazine into the side of her machinegun. Two-Shot's rifled reported behind me, but it was easily masked by the sudden burst of fire Daisy sent down at the gang's hiding point.

"They're not moving," I shouted to anypony capable and willing to hear me. A shot whistled through the air, cutting just past my head, burying itself in the wall behind me. I hit the deck.

Two-Shot turned his head, his rifle followed. Once again, the rifle's report split the air. "Your ass is safe," he told me, never taking his eye from his rifle's scope.

Daisy ceased her fire and ducked out of her gap in the balcony. Two-Shot spun to take aim. "Still not moving?" I asked, popping my head up to look down.

I couldn't see any of the gangers. "Still not moving," I reassured myself. The courtyard was quiet, out balcony point was quiet. The world was still as we kept look out down below.

"Wounded?" Cherry asked, slinking around behind our lookout line. Her horn and eyes glowed as she stopped at each one of us in a line. She looked me over, or at least I think she looked me over, for a brief moment before she moved on to Daisy.

"Diagnostic spell, "Two-Shot spoke up. He was down on the ground with a small bottle of whiskey. He floated it to his muzzle and began to drink.

I moved on toward Fizzy. She was busy assembling more of those tin can grenades. Steadily she packed black powder into the tin can. The entirety of her focus on the careful task, she looked like she was at peace. "How're you holding up?" I asked, dead set on interrupting that peace.

She packed and sealed off the can, floating it over with its mates. "I'd rather be escaping, but we're holding our own," she answered, adjusted her skewed glasses and looked up at me. "You probably should be checking on our route out."

I nodded, looking behind me. "Yeah, shit. You're – "

There was a hiss and the world exploded. The balcony bucked and rolled. Wood, plaster, and concrete flew through the air. Angry, violent chunks of shrapnel peppered the walls, cut through the windows and threatened to tear through us on the balcony. Dust filled my eyes, a whistling piece of hotel clanged off my helmet. Many smaller pieces blasted into my side. A hundred smaller blows hammered against my side. A stone and wood rain clattered off my barding. My ears rang, I couldn't breath, I couldn't see.

Muffled voices shouted around me. I couldn't make out the words but their panic rang loud and clear in my muzzy head. It felt like being under water. Disoriented, I stumbled and swayed around the balcony. I only found air where there was balcony a moment before.

I slammed to the remains of the balcony. Half my body hung out over the drop to the street below. My left legs wheeled in the air, uselessly flailing for nothing. I bit down, literally, on the balcony, pushing with my legs still in contact with the floor. Desperate to gain a purchase on the partially destroyed walkway, I tried to swing myself back up. I ended up doing little more than flapping like a flag in the breeze.

A white leg stamped down into my limited field of vision and I suddenly felt a lot lighter. Voices that sounded encouraging even if I couldn't make out the words were being shouted at me as I pushed myself up onto the balcony and onto my back. Two-Shot looked down at me, his mouth moving but unintelligible as he shoved a healing potion into my mouth.

The potion coursed its way through my system. I coughed, gagging on the liquid magic as it flowed down my throat. The faint fuzz that lingered around everything began to fade. Sound poured into my ears like ice-cold water; clear, crisp, and loud enough to sting. I could hear the crumbling and cracking of the piece of balcony falling to the ground. I could hear the dull, heavy thudding of Daisy's gun. I could hear Two-Shot shouting at me to get up and move my ass.

Not being in a position to disobey such a wise command, I rolled back to my hooves. Then it struck me harder than the explosion just had. Where was Fizzy? I shouted for her, dashing to the edge of the balcony to look down. There was a lot of gray, but none of it the unicorn I was looking for. She was obliterated. She had to be.

Cherry screamed my name. I looked. For a moment, my day go a whole lot better. She was standing over an unmoving lump that I recognized as Fizzy. I blinked; I couldn't believe my eyes.

"Get her inside!" Cherry shouted at me. A soft pink aura flowed around her supply boxes and they rose up after her mad dash for the way inside.

I looked over toward Two-Shot and Daisy. The looks on the two mercenaries were stone grim. They didn't need me, Fizzy did. I left them and hefted Fizzy onto my back, knocking aside a few spent healing potions. One more look at the two giving us cover fire. I caught Two-Shot's eye. The sniper gave me a nod.

Carrying her through the hotel, I couldn't help but notice just how light Fizzy was. I always knew I was strong, and I'm a fairly large pony. Fizzy was tall, and she always wore that big lab coat of hers, but with her weight hanging limp on my back, I found out just how thin she was. I won't deny that it scared me. She felt frail and broken.

Cherry already had her equipment out and at the ready; a pile of homebrewed and homemade medical supplies and magic. "Right here," Cherry pointed at a spot on the floor where she had placed a blanket. "I want her close to the exit in case we have to make a break for it," she explained when she caught my uneasy look at the lobby door.

It was a good idea, but I jumped around the lobby to gather up whatever furniture I could to form something of a barricade between the rest of the lobby and ourselves. A wall made of chaise longues, a table or two, and Two-Shot's big liquor cabinet would have to do for protection.

I checked and rechecked the finished barricade. Even though I wasn't a builder by nature and had no real clue if it would hold, that it hadn't fallen on me was satisfaction enough. "Alright, looks good. So what can I do?" I asked Cherry, my voice wavering with my uncertainty over the situation.

"She's hurt, but I think she'll be okay," Cherry informed me, looking up from the prostrate form of Fizzy. Cherry had already started mixing potions together, a spent syringe lay on the floor. I understood none of what Cherry was doing. "I've gotten the base potions working. I'm just waiting to see her reaction before I step up the treatment."

The words helped. I knew Cherry was a competent doctor first hoof. Though I don't think she would be sleeping with her patient this time. Probably for the best, I figured. "Okay. I'm going to secure our way out of here. Do you have any way to stay safe?"

Cherry hummed in the affirmative, briskly nodding her head to the side. I tracked the movement and saw a shotgun resting on the floor among her supplies. "Get going," she told me softly, looking up at me to give an encouraging smile.

I didn't really need the smile, but it was good to take with me down into the basement. I made my way down the hallway, turning the corner and heading to the bulkhead. There I stopped dead in my tracks.

I could barely make out a voice, and then I could really make out the banging on the door. It sounded like somepony was trying to hammer their way in from the outside. I looked down the hallway, looked back at the bulkhead and steeled myself for what I had to do.

My kick threw the door open, the clanging loud enough to echo in the empty streets outside. I spun around to see that it wasn't somepony that was trying to get in. It was some griffin, two to be exact. One stood and stared at me with a mixture of surprise and angry disbelief. The other came to a stop at the end of a trip tail over teakettle in the wake of my kick. Worse than the look I was getting from the standing griffin was the black body armor he and his partner wore.

I had to act fast. I had the element of surprise and I could take advantage of this situation. I pounced, verbally. "Finally, you guys show up," I rattled off, heading over to the fallen Griffin to offer him a hoof up. "I've been waiting for hours. Why didn't Scorch send you sooner?"

He took my hoof in his talon and rolled to his paws. It must have been instinctive because once he righted himself; he gave me a look of a griffin who just say a pony with three heads.

"What're you going on about?" the other griffin spoke up, drawing a boxy looking beam rifle. I was immediately unsurprised by the griffin's choice of firearm, but it did give me an idea.

"Scorch didn't tell you, did he?" I asked, heaving the universal sigh of those working under the incompetent. "I'm here to give you a hoof in. Did you really think he was going to just let you bang on a door until it gave?"

The two mercenaries looked to one another. Briefly, the one I had helped up rose a talon and opened his beak to talk. He thought better of it and closed up. The other, keeping his beam rifle pointed at me, managed to cobble together a thought. "Alright, alright, meat, that buys you a minute. Why didn't he tell us about you?"

I threw up a shrug. "Why would he care about you? He cares about his ponies, not griffins. You're mercenaries, right? Not part of the Manticores."

"You got a point," the griffin said, bitterness rising in his voice. "I hate it when these wannabe warlords try to play coy."

Praise Celestia for the smart ones! If he could think, he had imagination. If he had imagination, he could be deceived. I stamped on the ground in my false indignation. "I hear you. Look at this, he pays me to risk my neck infiltrating this place and probably expects me to get vaporized by you."

"He did say kill every pony inside," the one I helped up came in with the assist.

I swung my hoof out at the helpful griffin, pointing at him for emphasis of my clear exasperation. "See what I mean? He hires us and that's the treatment we get." I shook my head and heaved another weighty sigh to sell myself. "Let's get this over with, get our respective pay, and find a place to get shitfaced?"

Never say nothing can bring ponies or griffins together for there is still booze in this world. The two griffins agreed with my suggested course of action. I let them lead the way into the basement, very kindly holding my hoof out to invite them inside.

"So I bet you guys know a few good watering holes?" I asked to keep everyone talking. Talking griffins don't get wise to ruses.

"I do. Over out on the other side of Manehattan. Beyond that big tower," Helpful was living up to the nickname I had given him. "They got this lounge and everything. Whole show is run by a griffin, too, so you know it's legit."

I nodded and trotted along after the pair. Smart Guy still kept his beam rifle out. I didn't really like that, but I already had the pair where I wanted them. We got around a corner and I paused. "Hold up a moment. I need to grab something so I don't die up there."

The shotgun was still sitting there, propped against the doorjamb. I looked from it to the two griffins while I leaned over. It struck then that I really wasn't good at using shotguns. When I caught the two griffins looking at me, it struck me that I wasn't good at using shotguns in the manner intended. The thought made me grin as I took the barrel in my teeth.

I swung. Smart Guy hit the deck, his rifle clattered beside him. Helpful did not. The shotgun cracked with a sickening crunch as it struck Helpful. His head wrenched sideways, soon followed by the rest of his body in a pirouette of unconsciousness. He crashed to the floor in a heavy heap. A spattering of blood painted the wall a shocking red against the dull backdrop.

"Sorry about that," I said, dropping the shotgun turned club to the floor. "But I can't let –"

Someday I will learn to stop being interrupted mid sentence. Smart Guy was on me like a shot. He slammed me bodily into the wall. He held me against the wall, talons clamped on my throat, keeping me from getting to Sharp Retort. I coughed, the air expelled from my lungs. The griffin looked me eye to eye for the split second before he raked his talons across my face. It would hurt more later on, but it still hurt a lot now.

I struck out with my fore hooves. He already had me up by my neck; I just had to snap them forward. A one-two jab to the beak and his eye and his grip began to loosen. I curled my hind legs up against me and unleashed as strong a kick I could muster into his gut. The griffin crashed into the wall opposite me and landed, doubled over. I ran like a coward.

The distillery room, with it's hidden explosives, homemade stills and vats, piping and tables, made for a good place to duck into. I grinned to myself as I walked among the piping. I ran like a coward, but I ran like a coward with a plan. I quietly counted to myself. "One. Two. Three,"

Smart Guy Griffin tore into the room with his beam rifle clutched in his talons. "I'm going to fucking fry you, meat!" he snarled, storming about the room viciously as he lashed about, looking for me. The rage and fury lasted just as long as it took him to realize just what kind of room he was standing in. I really liked the smart ones.

"Hi there," I said with casually self-assured cheer. "Didn't expect this, did you? Let's talk." I kept moving around the room, my eye on the griffin. He held his gun with unsteady talons, his eyes going from me, to the stills, to the bottles along the wall.

"I read a lot as a colt, and I still do. A lot of those old stories talk about the elements of harmony. You know what; I like that idea, harmony. I want there to be harmony between us. So I'll start with being honest. You're a smart griffin, and I bet you can figure things out. You know we're both surrounded by things that like to explode which means you can't exactly use your little pew-pew gun. That means we're left with handling things hoof to talon and let's be honest with ourselves; you can't dance with me."

The griffin was watching me. I was watching him. I circled around and he moved with me. He held his beam rifle low.

"But let's hold on a moment. I'm a kind pony and I really don't want any of us to get hurt any more than we already have been. So let's talk about how we can all just leave here. I think we can all get along. Now I know you're being paid by Scorched Earth to come in here and kill me and my friends, but is it really worth it? It isn't like it's your vendetta. So let's do each other a kindness and let bygones be bygones."

I smiled and backed from the griffin. He looked at me, and I nodded over to the moonshine whiskey lining the walls. He followed my gesture and looked back at me with narrow, questioning eyes.

"That's right. I've got a gift for you and your friend. I'm a generous pony and I want to make sure you don't leave with empty talons. I'll let you take enough of the finest whiskey in the wastes to wet your beaks and whet your wallets. Consider it a payment in post, a last minute bid on your services. All you have to do is gather your friend, leave, and never see me again. None of us gets hurt, more, and we all leave the richer and wiser. I give you all that, for you to give me nothing. Just leave."

The griffin sneered, squirming at the position he found himself in. He started to circle again to find better position against me. His eyes began to scan the room. Gears were turning in his head. He was thinking, and him thinking was dangerous for me.

I knocked over a few bottles and exposed a hidden explosive charge. The griffin focused with the same intensity as the beam rifle he carried. That would do for a distraction.

"That is not my only offer. Because if you don't take that booze and get your tail out of here, we all go up in smoke. Bang, zoom. Straight to the moon. Because I don't want anyone laying a hoof, or talon, on my friends. Let me make myself a little clearer in case you didn't catch my euphemisms. I will kill us all. I will blow up. You will blow up. Your friend will fry. I will die for my friends, because that's how much they mean to me. Loyalty; it's a bit of a bitch like that."

The griffin was starting to get the hint and see the worth in my offer. He frowned, scowled, and stared daggers at me. He further sighed, looked to the bottles, the bomb, and to the hallway. "It ain't worth it," he spat.

"There's a bag over there. Take your fill."

The griffin did. He filled the bag with whatever he could carry. I never left the bomb as he did. Neither of us took eyes off the other for any more than needed. The whiskey would be worth quite a bit, most likely more than whatever a ganger like Scorched Earth would pay. I still added what amount of caps I had on me to the griffin's pay. Helpful was still out like a light, sprawled I the hallway, his beak busted up badly. I helped get him up onto Smart Guy's back. We did it all without a word, but still parted with a nod to each other. Didn't need to like one another, and we weren't expected to, but we could both share respect.

At least we shared quiet respect until the griffins had gotten out of sight and I was back in the basement. I burst into laughter and danced down the hallway. Scratched face be damned, aches in my ribs doubly so. I had won and how sweet it was.

My laughter died down as I skipped through the basement. "What's that about magic?" I asked the audience invisible, "Look at me, I am magic!" I laughed at the bombs and booze, basking in my triumph.

"Hey, Fucko," a radio on a high shelf I could have sworn was off crackled and popped to life with a familiar voice. "Stop stroking your ego and get upstairs. You still have shit to do."

I shrunk from the chiding radio and ran for the stairs. I hate it when inanimate objects make good points.

I found Cherry behind the barricade. She was low, peering through a hole in the furniture pile. Her shotgun floated beside her, ready and waiting to fire on the rest of the lobby. I looked down to find Fizzy lying on her side, breathing deeply. Her lab coat covered her like a blanket. Her eyes were open and she looked up at me with a squint. "Call?" her voice was croaking and indistinct.

"Yeah, Fizz?" I leaned closer to hear her better.

"I want that gun."

I laughed, louder than I should have. It made Fizzy wince. "I'll get your glasses back first, and then we'll work on the missile launcher. You just rest. Celestia knows you earned it."

The grey unicorn mumbled something and curled back to her side. I stepped over her to get to Cherry. "Any idea how it's going?" I asked her, keeping my voice to a whisper.

Cherry looked to me, leaning her gun against the barricade. Her expression shifted to concern. "You've been cut. What happened?"

"Pair of griffin mercs. I'll be fine and the coast is clear. How is it up here?"

Cherry gave me a nonplussed look. "Quiet so far. I only heard one more explosion outside. So long as I can hear the gunshots, I know they're alright." Her words were grim and tired, but her look up toward the walk around that ringed the lobby held hope.

We both stood and listened to the cracking of gunfire going on outside. Cherry split from me to check on Fizzy again. Her magic surrounded a syringe, floated it, and stuck it into Fizzy's foreleg. The gray unicorn groaned, closing her eyes.

"Just to keep the pain down, honey. Your insides are all in one piece again, but you're going to feel really sore and weak for a little while at least," Cherry spoke soft words to Fizzy, setting a hoof on her head, stroking her with the care of a mother. The bristly Mohawk of Fizzy's still stood resolute. Wonderglue indeed.

Something exploded outside. My attention shot up to the doorway above. I swallowed, a sick feeling rolled around in the pit of my stomach. Glancing down for a peek at Cherry, I could see far worse fear in her eyes. I was afraid to lose my front lines. Cherry was afraid of losing her closest friends. The sickness in my stomach grew worse.

The door above swung open. The report of Daisy's gun echoed off the walls of the lobby. Two-Shot backed in first. He held himself against the door. Daisy backed in soon after, tearing roar of her gun ceasing.

As Daisy danced by, a small pair of glasses floated down toward me covered in a white aura. "Catch!" she shouted down to us. I snagged the specs out of the air with my teeth and sat them beside Fizzy.

"Rocketmare's dead but the balcony's wrecked," Two-Shot called from above, running round the lobby overlook. "Everyone still breathing?"

"Well as we can," I answered back, not bothering to hide the laughter in my voice.

The laughter died when the big lobby doors exploded inward. Splinters flew inside; a sharp cloud filled the area. The world slowed to a crawl. Pony shaped shadows appeared in the dusty smoke. The shadows coalesced into ponies. Ponies armed to the teeth, charging in guns blazing.

Like a morbid call and response, Daisy's gun opened with a terrible roar and violent deluge of hot lead. A bellow from the gunner above managed to echo even over the sound of her weapon. "Rain on them!"

The gangers stopped their charging and began a violent dance as they broke the dust cloud. They shuddered, jolting with each heavy bullet that cut into their bodies. Their own shots were wild and useless against the torrent of death that fall upon them. They first few landed in their own blood. The ones that came after fell atop their comrades.

Just as soon as it began, the killing stopped. The charging stopped. Everything went quiet that, compared to the din a moment before, was as the grave. We held our collective breaths and waited.

Several metal apples bounced into the lobby. They exploded, clouding the room with shrapnel, blood, and body parts.

The roar came up once again. Daisy's gun took the lead. I heard the steady crack of Two-Shot's rifle count time. Even Cherry came up to the hole in the barricade and sent volleys of peppering shot at the door.

The next wave was smarter. I saw a few make it inside. A yellow stallion broke to the right, firing upwards at Two-Shot and Daisy's position, only to be cut down by Cherry's shotgun. I could barely make out the hides of a brown unicorn and an orange earth pony hit the stairs running before they tumbled back down a torn apart mess. They weren't making it far, but they were pushing. It was just a matter of time before they pushed too hard.

I was useless in a gunfight like this. I looked to Cherry. She fired on, pumping round after round into the fray. She cried the whole time and flinched with each shot. Daisy's words from the night before hit somewhere deep in my chest. Cherry had never taken a life. She was a doctor and until now, she had managed to not compromise herself and take another pony's life. She didn't look back at me. She just fought for our lives.

Fuck it, I thought. I scooped Fizzy onto my back; coat, saddlebags, and all. Her glasses I put with my things, she wasn't going to be using them anytime soon. "Come on, Fizzy. We're getting out of here."

Fizzy murmured something but I couldn't make it out in the chaos.

I kicked the basement door open and rolled Fizzy into an easier to haul position. She was light, but gangly. I didn't want any parts of her to get caught on anything.

"Cherry, come on, we got to get out of her!" I shouted. I froze when I turned to look for the doctor.

A blue shape charged through the bloody morass of the lobby. It ran through the insanity with a fluid and predatory calm. I saw a faint aqua glow began to hover about the big blue earth pony. Cherry turned her gun on the leader of the Manticore gang, Scorched Earth, the reason for all of this.

Everything moved fast, faster than it should have. Scorch blurred with the glow. I saw the triple nozzle of his flamer fill the hole in the furniture wall, inches from Cherry's recoiling face. A jet of flame burst forth from the weapon, reducing everything in its path to char and cinder. I cringed away from the sight and searing heat of the terrible flame. Turning and running for the basement, I couldn't look back. I wouldn't look back.

Cherry Pop never had the chance to fire. Thank the goddesses that she never had the chance to scream.

"I can walk."

Fizzy's words brought my stampeding through the basement to a sudden halt. Her words, that is, and her sudden interest in flailing about. I waited for her to flop from my back, she landed flat on her face, and to get back up again. She stumbled about, trying to get her hooves back under her while I looked back at the way we came. My heart thudded in my throat.

I could see it now, Scorched Earth, tearing through the hallway with his flamer scouring everything in his path. He would set off the distillery, and all of us with it. "We need to run, Fizzy," my foreboding made my voice quaver.

"You need my magic to prime the initial charge," Fizzy stated, blinking blearily at me before settling on a squint. "Do you have my glasses?"

I dug the lenses from my saddlebag and plunked them on her muzzle. They sat even more askew than before. Still, if Fizzy could see, they were doing the trick.

"I could have done that myself," Fizzy stated, tipping her glasses into a marginally better position. "I'll go get ready to set off the charges. Can you get the pony with the flamer down in here? Preferably without dying?" She started off toward the bulkhead at a wobbly pace.

"Why would you want him down here? Aren't we just blowing him up?" I took a hesitating step toward Fizzy, and then away again. I could do it, I knew I could convince him down here. I just didn't want to.

"Not for certain. The charges are not shaped nor at structural weak points, not enough time to build or place properly," she rattled off like a machinegun. Filly couldn't walk a straight line but she could talk bombing. It figured. "It'll make a lot of fire, burn the place down, but I want to be certain that one gets his for what he did to Cherry."

The nonchalance of Fizzy's motivation got to me. "On it," I told her, turning back to the stair leading to the lobby. "Hey, Big Blue!" I shouted up, "we're waiting." I didn't want to risk getting closer than I had. Too far in and I'd put myself at risk for an ambush. Of course, he could just come tearing down the stairs and do me in all the same. He liked to talk last time we met, I hoped for a repeat performance.

"Do not presume I am an idiot, scavenger." I bristled at his use of the s-word. "Your trap is not so fiendishly clever as you wish it to be. I have far better things to do than to fall for such simplistic tactical machinations."

Scorch liked to speak. I still had that going for me. "You mean like charging head first into a machine gun placement?" I asked in as sickeningly curious tone I could manage. "Or maybe hiring mercenaries with better business insight than you." I made sure that carried acid.

"Weaknesses brought about by the lack of my acumen. Rest assure that I refuse to repeat such mistakes. Now if you are quite finished, I believe I have a unicorn and his mare to cleanse from the planet. Do enjoy your escape, scavenger. I hope your coward's life is good to you."

I winced at the words. How bad could this pony be? I wondered to myself if Scorched Earth could possibly think I would fall for lines that bad. Of course, he would. He was egotistical, pretentious, and thought he had the upper hoof. Since he felt the need to converse with me through shouts from another room, I didn't bother to hide the wicked grin that stretched across my face.

"Yeah? Well, guess they're dead then. Toodles, Scorchy!" I rattled off in a cheer, giving a little salute to the air before I trotted off.

It took all of a half second for Scorch to scream down at me. "I burned one bitch, I'll burn the rest!"

Just as I figured, and just like last time. The pompous ass could not handle being disregarded. I hummed a merry tune to drown the righteous rage that told me to pound Scorch's head to the consistency of pudding. I needed to be irreverent; I needed to shrug Scorch off. The less I was hurt by his words, the worse he was by mine.

"I know it doesn't look it, but Two-Shot's actually a guy. That's the sniper who's putting holes in your gang's head while you're shooting the shit with me."

Scorched Earth's forehoof stomped heavily at the top of the stairs. He burst into the stairwell and started down the stair. Filled with self-important rage, he started at me.

I grinned at him, sat on my haunches at the other end of the hall.

Scorch stopped half down the stairs. His rage turned to fearful realization. The disgustedly panicked grimace on his face as he looked at me was priceless. Shame it was so ephemeral. The big blue earth pony corrected his course and started backing up the stairs. "I'm beginning to see that talking to you is of little use and lesser consequence. I will not expend anymore of my time on you, scavenger."

I turned my back on Scorch for one last attempt at drawing him into the basement. He didn't take the bait. He was still smart, for all of his pretentions and I so help me I couldn't think of a bluff to take advantage of his imagination. I hit the stairs. Fizzy was up there, sitting on the ground waiting. I shook my head to her. She nodded, understanding.

"Can you run on your own?" I asked, concerned for both of our hides at this point. There was still a firefight going on upstairs from what I could hear. I wanted to hope for Two-Shot and Daisy, but I couldn't bring myself to. Fizzy and I had a chance to bolt, and I knew we should take it.

Fizzy nodded and got to her hooves. "I'm healthy enough to stay alive," she pointed out, even if she did look like she was about to puke, she was mobile. "I'll give us time to get clear." And with that, she focused her magic on the basement stair payload, surrounding it with magic.

A crash from above brought the sound of gunfire to my position below. I looked up to see a large hole where a window used to be, up on the second floor of the hotel. My heart leapt in my chest. I made my way along the building and what I saw made my heart leap again. A white pony with a reticule on his flank stood in the shattered window. The large revolver of his floated about, cracking off a round at an unseen assailant.

Two-Shot looked down at me and shouted, "Catch!"

A blue body surrounded in a white aura hovered out of the window and promptly began to fall. Daisy, the thought made me freeze. I scrambled to get myself under the body. I wished I could have been a pegasus, or griffin or unicorn. I just wanted to be something better than a mobile cushion. Two-Shot did his part in slowing Daisy's descent, but it was still all I could to keep her from crashing to the pavement. Daisy's weight, coupled with her gun, landed smack on my back.

I sent a quick thanks to the goddesses for my strength. I sent it between pants and grunts, at least. Looking up, I watched Two-Shot continue his fusillade against the gangers bearing down on him. Then, without warning, he threw himself into the air.

Two-Shot made a faint crunching sound when he struck the ground. My jaw did the same when he stood back up.

"How in Celestia's sun are you still standing?" I asked, looking over the small white unicorn. He was a wreck. His coat was splashed with blood, both his and not. I counted a few open wounds in his flank and one foreleg. The other foreleg had some kind of strip that bound a syringe in place. A long, if shallow, slash mark ran over the side of his face. His eyes were wide and wild, and he was now standing slightly crooked after his swan dive.

Two-Shot took a deep breath, and exhaled a broken laugh. "I'm good. I'm good," he told me, bellowing in his amplified voice. He took a few more hyperventilated breaths. "See? I can smell all the sounds of the rainbow. Shut up, I'm talking."

His revolver, which had clattered nearby, swung into the air with a sudden pull of magic. It spun round, angled up, and fired. A pony fell from the window above and cracked his skull on the pavement.

Two-Shot pointed toward Fizzy. "Tell Cherry to finish patching that guy up and let's go. There's no good tech here. Nothing worth keeping. Just wastelander shit."

I found myself at a loss for words. "Daisy?" I whispered. I could feel the mare's weak breath on my ear, it was comforting, but I had no idea how to handle a drugged to the nines Two-Shot. I just watched him stand there. Even stationary, he seemed to vibrate in place.

"Just go," whispered the wounded mare on my back. "Get to safety. Don't want to die here."

My hooves were under me now, the sudden strain of catching Daisy gone. I hiked the mare on my back and turned to make for Fizzy. I was a little late in the matter.

"It's rigged," Fizzy stated and was off less like a shot and more like a poorly thrown ball. I trailed after to stay with her. I couldn't run quite as fast with everything I had plus Daisy and everything she had. Two-Shot, somehow managed to figure out which hoof was which and keep up with us. How easily he did so unsettled me because I didn't think he knew just where and what was actually going on around him. I dreaded what would happen when he learned.

We all ran. We all ran for our lives. Not a one of us got a chance to see the Hotel Haflinger, which had withstood war and time, finally succumb to the flames of fresh conflict.

I could only hope it was fitting enough a tomb for those buried inside.

<<<<>>>>

Funeral

“Dying for something is easy. It’s living for it that’s tough.”

I saw stars. The world flashed bright in my eyes and the sharp pain rattled around in my head. Two-Shot landed on all fours in front of me and began to circle again. I followed in step, snorting a rivulet of warm blood back into my nose. He took the step, came in and reared up. Clang went his hoof off the brim of my hardhat. The hunk of yellow metal tumbled to the sand. I looked to the hat, then back to Two-Shot. He stumbled to his right, balance thrown off by a mixture of poor landing and his fading high. I spun, bucked, sent the smaller unicorn rolling in the dirt.

Two-Shot came back with fury restored. He leapt through the air, a flash of white light surrounding him. I turned to take the brunt of the telekinetic cannonball with my side instead of my face. It was my turn to taste the sand. I may have been bowled over, but I was unhurt and swiftly back on my hooves. We locked eyes, watching each other for the faintest telegraph, the slightest twitch of muscle, to see who would break first.

The hazy white barrier surrounding Two-Shot dropped. He charged me. I waiting, counted time, and rose when he closed in. My hoof came down, striking him above the eye. He crashed to the ground beneath me. I quickly pranced away. Even if he was knocked for a loop, I was not about to expose my underside to him. Putting distance between us, I looked back to his prone form in the sand. Again, I snorted the trickle of blood back into my nostrils.

As Two-Shot picked himself up from the ground; I saw a line of red above his eye mingling with the white of his coat. Blood from the fresh gash began to flow down into his right eye. He looked down to wipe the blood from his eye, matting his mane down and turning his bright hair dark. Blinking back at me, he gritted his teeth and growled. “You should’ve gone for her.”

“There was nothing I could-,” Taking a hoof to the jaw cut off my words. It served me right for taking my eyes off the unicorn, but I couldn’t look him in the eye with him like he was. The iron tang of blood hit my tongue. I spat on the ground and used my tongue to take stock of all my teeth. A second kick struck hard against my barding. I wheezed, and wheeled around. My kick found purchase just under Two-Shot’s chin. He was angry, fueled by grief and pain, but I was still a lot bigger and stronger. I made him soar.

Two-Shot lay unmoving. I circled around him. “You done yet?” I asked through heavy breaths.

The white unicorn stirred. He managed to get back on his hooves, his right eye shut, blinded by the dirty gash above it. A white glow surrounded his horn. With whip crack speed, the light shrouded his revolver and drew it. “No,” he told me.

Time stopped. We stopped. I looked at him and he at me. He shared his pain by making me feel it. He expunged his by feeling pain himself. We both knew this, even if unspoken. We were not fighting each other. We were fighting ourselves through most convenient proxy. We left our blood in the sand, and with each drop that soaked into the ground, we distanced ourselves from the pain.

The revolver hit the sand. “Was getting in my way,” Two-Shot said, swallowing. He panted and grinned, his teeth stained red. I mirrored the gesture and gave him a nod.

He charged. I received. We hit the ground together. His hoof pushed against my neck. His good eye wide as tears from his bad eye mixed with the free flowing blood. I looked up at him, up at the pained grimace he had on his face while he choked me. Then I spat in his good eye.Two-Shot was off me and I was on him just as fast. I barreled into the sniper with my shoulder held low. He went up and I bucked him into the air. He landed with a heavy thud, kicking sand into the air.

I looked down at him. “Let’s go, little pony. Don’t get tired now. I can beat your flank all night.”

The half-blind, bloodied, tired and emotionally spent pony at my hooves looked up at me and once more grinned a bloody grin. “Counting on it,” he said, and took the fight to me.

For a long time we traded blows on the sand. Kicks, forehoof strikes, tosses, we spent our time tearing at each other to get to ourselves. We didn’t fight, you couldn’t call what we did fighting. It was nothing so well thought as that. We simply spent ourselves. Simple raging as the light dimmed and the glow of a distant fire danced in the sundered Manehattan skyline.

I sat in the sand while blood trickled from my nose in a tired, half-dried line. My head throbbed; it felt stuffed with cotton that was trying to explode. In front of me was water. Water as far as my eyes could see, for what they could see. Far out into the horizon, the inky black clouds met with the inky black water to create the velvet emptiness before me.

Behind me crackled a fire. Its light danced on the sands, creating long twisting shadows on the ground. I pushed some sand around to watch the changing of the patterns. It made me smile to watch as the tiny dunes and ripples I made contorted and warped the shadows. Simple things can still amuse.

I looked back to the makeshift camp. Two-Shot lay near the fire, finally at rest near the warmth of the flames. Bandages patched up the cut I opened above his eye. A Med-X syringe lay in the sand beside. The little helper got him off to sleep after our little bout with catharsis. Watching him rest, I was reminded just how small he was. He had a lot of strength in him, I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t know whether to credit the drugs he sucked down like candy or his own hatred. In the end, I settled on just figuring it was just to make up for his size. The thought brought a coughing laugh from my chest, it made me wince, but it felt good.

Across from the fire, Daisy slept. She had been out of it since we left Manehattan. When we started our escape, we talked to one another. Nothing more was said than just assuring each other she was alive and going to make it, but it was comforting to hear her voice. She had stopped talking sometime before we stopped on the beach were we made camp. In her efforts to be the front line, she took a lot worse than any of us still alive. We spent most of what remnant medical supplies we had trying to help her as much as we could. In the end, however, we just had to let time be the decider of the mare’s health.

Fizzy was still awake. She sat by Daisy, keeping watch over her. Without Cherry, Fizzy stepped in to do what she could medically. It wasn’t much, but her help was invaluable. Two-Shot was in no state to help by the time we got to camp, and I was too busy dealing with the unicorn to put in my helping hoof. The mare was a trooper, though. She didn’t interfere with our fight, just kept at helping Daisy, doing what she needed to. I wanted to thank her for that, but I couldn’t think of an angle were it didn’t sound worse than the silent acceptance.

White sands stretched to the lapping waters of the ocean. From my spot, I could see the long curve the beach made around the water. An empty dock, a devastated foundation, and a scattering of skeletons were the only signs of the ponies that came before the war. We managed to use some of the wood from the building to make our fire, including the sign that dubbed this place the Horseshoe Bay Beach Club. It meant nothing to me, but Fizzy marked the location down on her map and told me we were on the right track.

It was sometime after that, when Two-Shot finally came down from his high enough to realize that Cherry was not actually with us. He did not take the news well.

So now, I sat on the quiet beach, bleeding and ruminating. I looked back to the Manehattan skyline. I could swear the fire at the Hotel Haflinger still burned on. I could feel the flames, see the billowing smoke, and hear the crumbling death throes of the building. All of it lived in my imagination, but that was real enough as I looked at the dead city. Good riddance and I hoped Scorched Earth went down with Cherry. He deserved as much.

“Is there something wrong?”

Fizzy stepped toward me. Backlit by the fire, she was lost in shadow. I gave her a half-hearted smile and wiped the dried blood from my nose. All it served was to start the blood trickling fresh. For some reason, the futility of the gesture made me laugh.

“Um, I’ll take that as a yes?” Fizzy asked. She stepped closer, and the mixture of confusion and concern evident in her awkward smile of uncertainty became clear in the low light.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and the sudden fit of laughter. “I’m as good as I’m going to get right now, Fizzy. For whatever measure that’s worth.” I snorted the blood back into my nose on reflex. “Have you seen my hat?”

As though on cue, my hardhat floated back onto my head. “That was incredibly stupid, you know,” Fizzy chastised me, ramming my hat down to make her point abundantly clear. “We do not have enough medical supplies as it is, nor are we capable of fully utilizing what we do have. How could you think brawling with Two-Shot would be productive in the least?”

“It isn’t. It wasn’t. It was stupid and I know that Fizzy,” I tried to explain my place through the muss of my beating muddled brain. Explaining the nuances of the why was an impossible task. That did not mean I would not attempt it. “He needed an outlet. We don’t exactly have Scorched Earth around here to take revenge on, and I was the only pony that could have done something to help Cherry. I was a good target. And truth is I knew I could take him.”

“I was there, too.”

“You were busted up and mumbling incoherently on my back.”

“I was trying to tell you I could walk.”

“You also said you wanted a rocket launcher.”

“I do! Now stop trying to change the point!”

I grinned at Fizzy’s annoyance. Like I said, simple things amuse me. “Alright, alright, I know what you mean. There was nothing I could have done. I know that.”

Fizzy frowned and shook her head with the mild condescending disdain of the skeptic. “So why did you fight then? Was it because you slept with her? Did you have feelings?”

“I’d like to say I felt for her,” I began to put the truth out there with a half-hearted shrug. “I didn’t, but she didn’t feel anything for me, either. A night, that was all. It was something that both of us needed.”

The unicorn looked at me, her face scrunched in thought, skeptical squinting as though she sought secrets in my words. “I don’t know. I just don’t get it,” she waved a hoof in dismissal.

This was new, and surprisingly intriguing, or intriguingly surprising, either or. “You don’t get what?” I poked my nose into the statement with an eager little grin.

Fizzy took on a stony countenance. “How you could have, you know, done that with her. You didn’t even know her. I thought ponies were supposed to before that kind of thing.”

I couldn’t keep the chuckle down, but it at least bought me a moment to think about how to go about explaining. Laughing at her also bought sharp indignation from Fizzy, but that just made me laugh more. Terrible cycle, that.

“Take a look at them,” I told Fizzy, pointing a hoof over toward Two-Shot and Daisy, still listless and sleeping in the sand, “They loved Cherry, but they’re in love with each other. There’s a big difference. She may have wrapped it up in trying to help me, but in the end, I think she was looking to get something she needed and wasn’t getting.”

Fizzy looked at the pair with a thoughtful eye. Her mouth quirked into a frown and she adjusted her glasses. “I suppose I didn’t think of it in that way. It may be hard to tell,” she bit her lip and looked at the sand, drawing a circle with her hoof, “But I never really have thought much of sex or things like that.”

“Really? Never would have guessed.”

My sarcasm went undetected. “I just never focused on it. I had too many other things interesting me. So I never thought or cared about it much. Doesn’t make me weird, does it?”

I looked to my side. Fizzy looked back at me with wide, questioning eyes. I snorted back a laugh. “Nope.” I shook my head and looked back to the fire. “There are plenty of other things that make you weird, and a little terrifying.”

“I’m not terrifying. How am I terrifying?” came Fizzy’s indignant protest.

“Your tendency to solve problems via high explosives, maybe,” I pointed out with a little tap of my hoof on her saddlebag. “You probably slept with a grenade as a filly is one.”

“It was deactivated.”

We looked at each other for a moment. I tried to look for a sign of a lie, a joke, anything in Fizzy’s face that told me she wasn’t being honest. I found nothing but earnest and unvarnished truth there. I settled on relying upon my eloquence. “Really now?”

Fizzy nodded and attempted to shrug off my reaction with a look away. “I picked one up as a filly and wouldn’t let it go for some reason,” she explained, watching the slow lapping of the dark waves. “My father wrenched it from me long enough to disarm it so I could take it around without detonating.”

My jaw touched ground. “You really did carry a grenade around as a filly. Not a toy car or even one of those Smartypants dolls. A grenade. Wow.”

I couldn’t help but notice the suddenly very sheepish look that settled about Fizzy. She continued to deflect, taking sudden interest in the grains of sand, the wrecked Beach House, and the fire. I knew that look, and it made me smile wickedly.

“You still have it, don’t you?” I poked her saddlebag again.

Fizzy’s horn glowed faintly and out floated a grenade. It looked like any other grenade I had ever seen, other than the fact it was painted black. She held it in the air in front of me, letting the grenade slowly spin.

“You painted a face on it?” I rolled on the ground, laughing uproariously, my legs wheeling in the air. “You painted a happy face on a grenade.”

The grenade shot back toward Fizzy and she held it protectively against herself. “Of course Mister Boom would be happy. He’s not going to explode,” she stated with the kind of off the cuff casualness most would describe the clouds above.

“You named it?” I asked when I could find a breath to speak with

Fizzy nuzzled the grenade a little longer before she stuffed it back inside of her saddlebag. “Of course. There’s nothing wrong with naming a toy. And you carry around a book.”

“You’re right, but it’s several books, and I don’t name them,” I defended myself as I rolled back up to my haunches. “But I understand. You care for it as much as I do my books. There’s no difference. I just wasn’t expecting it. I mean, why not a bomb for your mark, then?”

“But my cutie mark is a bomb,” Fizzy stressed with some concern. She adjusted her glasses, turned and pushed her coat to show off the mark on her flank. “The first homemade device I made was using a Sparkle-Cola bottle. See the explosion around it.”

“I thought that was a sparkle, or a starburst.”

“Nope. Explosion. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sparkle-Cola, it’s so incredibly useful, but I learned a long time ago what my special something is,” she pointed out, looking back at me with a toothy grin.

“I-yeah, yeah, you’re something special all right, Fizzy,” I laughed quietly and looked back out over the water. “So explosives have always been your thing. That Haystack must be a rough place.”

Fizzy’s good mood set up an out-to-lunch sign and bolted. She looked at the sand, took a breath, and focused on the ground between her forehooves. “Well, no, not really.”

I looked to the mare from the corner of my eye. “Won’t push, won’t push,” I assured her, “But I can’t say I understand.”

“I know. You don’t have information. You cannot,” Fizzy admitted in a dull tone. Her head sank, and she took a conflicted look at me. “We’ve traveled together for a few days at most. I have to think of my home. We,” she took a deep breath, “as a rule try to avoid foreigners. It’s for our safety. I can’t go any further than that with you, Curtain Call. I won’t.”

“Good enough to help you get your soda though, right?” I asked, not bothering to hide the annoyed hurt in my voice. I didn’t think she would notice it anyways.

“You’re here because you want to be. It has nothing to do with me. I told you all I can. You can leave at any time.” Her words were flat and she wasn’t looking at me when she said them. I watched her unflinchingly stony expressionless expression looking for a crack. I couldn’t find a single one.

We sat in silence for a good while. The only sounds the lapping waves and the distant creaking of an out of sight dock bobbing on the water. I looked down at the sand, and back over at the fire, and back to Fizzy, and back to the sand again. Then, I noticed the PipBuck around my foreleg. Useless hunk of old world technology that I couldn’t get off of me. It’s dead face looked up at me, as dark as the water and mocking me with its pointlessness.

“You said you could fix this?” I asked, leaning to try and catch Fizzy’s eye, holding out my hoof and waggling the PipBuck back and forth.

Fizzy looked down at my PipBuck. She poked at it with a hoof. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t suddenly leap to life. “I can, but I don’t have the tools to get into it, I lack the matrix to reboot the system, and I don’t have the materials to repair the hardware. Not only that, but I’m not certain I can really get this thing going as good as it could be with what I know. Tinker, back home, she could do it, but I’m not sure of my ability to.”

I nodded, taking my hoof back, keeping my eyes on it. I watched my hope for finding some purpose for the PipBuck dwindle away as I put thought to what Fizzy said. “And as an outsider, I can’t get in to talk with her, right?”

Fizzy shook her head. My hope came back from its short vacation. “If you help me get this soda back home, they’d probably make an exception.”

I shook my head. The statement floored me. I sputtered, I stammered, and I still managed to get out an outburst. “Wait what? You can’t tell me a goddesses damned thing about this place, but I help you get soda and I can waltz right in there?”

Fizzy gave me a little shrug and a sort of ‘go figure’ nod coupled with an embarrassed grin.

“Okay, okay,” I tapped my forehead, trying to parse the skewed version of reasoning I was confronted with. “If I’m going to be getting this soda there anyways, why still be secretive about it?” I asked, my voice pained from the sudden headache I was feeling.

“Because you haven’t gotten it there yet.”

“Okay, see this?” I asked, gesturing at my nose. “Do you see this blood?”

“It kind of matches your coat, and it’s dark, so it’s hard.”

“That’s beside the point,” I deadpanned. “This blood running out of my nose is not there because I was kicked by him.” I pointed over toward Two-Shot, just in case she missed that part. “It’s because the words that just came out of your mouth made something up in my brain go ‘pop’.”

Fizzy began to laugh, intermittently broken up by a snort. She flopped over onto her side in a fit of giggles. “I’m, I’m sorry,” she managed to squeeze the words between a guffaw and a stray chortle.

“I’m glad I could get you your jollies, really I am.” I said while I watched her roll on the sand. “But it wasn’t that funny, Fizz.”

I stood around for an awkward minute or so while Fizzy got the laughing fit out of her system. When she finally deigned to let the rest of the world in on what was so funny, she spoke in breathless gasps. “You, you’re right. It’s just silly and stupid when you think about it. I, I had just looked at it that way so long I never really thought about it. When you pointed out how silly it was, I just had to laugh.”

There was not a thing I could do but nod along to the explanation. “So,” I asked, tapping at my chin, “You’re going to tell me about this Haystack?”

“Nope.”

“But you just said it was silly. Do I need to tell the brain joke again?”

Fizzy shook her head and had to adjust her glasses. “I said it was silly, and it is, but that doesn’t change my home’s policy, and I follow it. It’s, um,” she looked over toward the fire. “It’s like one of Two-Shot’s rules.”

“That’s not really a good example.”

“Good point,” Fizzy noted without missing a beat. “Can you consider it a request? Or, if you’d like, I could say that if you poke me too much about it before I’m ready, I’ll wire you to explode.”

“That works,” I agreed, laughing in a genial way. I still hoped that the grin Fizzy had suddenly grown meant she was just joking. I couldn’t be certain she was.

“Um, but if we can be serious, please,” Fizzy said, her voice dropping with gravitas. “If something does happen to me, I want you to take my map and make sure to get that soda to Haystack. I know you don’t have anything else going for you right now, and if you do that, they will take you in. It’ll give you something, at least.”

I paused at the sudden tonal shift. Caught off guard and unsuspecting, I did what anypony would have done in the same situation. I agreed. I nodded and agreed to risk my neck for ponies I didn’t know, for a prize I couldn’t be certain of, in a place I had never been to. A nice, secretive, presumably safe hideaway was a tantalizing apple though. Not to mention it would be one of those things that could get my story tossed up on the radio once in a while, maybe do some good for everypony.

“Yeah,” I said suddenly, “You can trust in me, Fizzy.” I jabbed the grey unicorn in the shoulder and gave her my broadest grin. The crossroads of untreated cuts and a blooded nose and mouth built up since yesterday made the grin very appealing.

“Thanks,” Fizzy said, and settled into watching the water again. I joined alongside and took in the view.

“Wakey wakey, dickweed.”

My eyes snapped open. I groaned and rolled on my side, pulling the covers over my head to shut out the annoying wet rasp of the taunting voice. My head ached, my body ached, I did not need a pain in the ass to add to the current list of maladies.

I didn’t go to sleep with covers. Nor did I fall asleep on a bed. I pushed myself up and blinked the sleep from my eyes. A blue silk blanket, a stuffed, warm bed, and the puffiest pillow I had ever had the blissful pleasure to sleep on all surrounded me. This was wrong, this was very wrong.

I leapt from the bed. I tried to leap from the bed. In actuality, it was more of a silk shrouded flop. I disengaged myself from the comfortable cocoon and got to my hooves. I took stock of my surroundings as I walked about to find my bearings, and some marbles since I obviously had just lost mine. The walls were polished wood, dark and glossy. Silver sconces held candles that cast light and shadows upon the bedroom. I passed by a desk covered in intricate swirling carvings and made of smoothly curving lines cut out of a wood as black as night. To my right was a gigantic wardrobe that loomed stately against the wall, again carved with similar swirling lines and marking, edged and tipped with gold. I whistled to myself, impressed with this room I managed to find myself in.

When I turned around, I was face to face with a portrait of myself. It was massive. Taking up the entire wall behind my bed, I stood large and proud, a gleaming smile on my face as I looked down from upon a stage. I wore a rich collar and studs with gleaming diamonds in them. The light seemed to make the painted diamonds sparkle, that was the level of workmanship of the grand portrait of yours truly.

“Done sightseeing yet, fucko?”

I twitched, jumping and looking around at the sudden sound of the voice. My eyes narrowed and I cast a look of suspicion over the room. A dark closet door drew my attention. Tentatively I approached the door. Slowly I reached for the latch. The door opened silently and slowly. Inside was a battered old radio, not unlike the one I lost to Scorch. No. It was exactly like the one that burned up.

The dial clicked on and moved of its own accord. A single light illuminated the radio. A static crackled burst from the speaker. “Surprised?”

I started daggers at the little appliance. The pony on the other side was to blame and I knew it. “Okay, where am I and what do you want from me?” I asked, cutting to the chase. I was in no mood to play around with the voice on the radio again.

A pop, crackle, and a hiss came from the radio. It was laughing at me. He was laughing at me. “Your dream, red, not mine. No way would I come up with a place like this. This is all you.”

That answered a grand total of nothing, even if I could trust the voice to be truthful. I looked around, and at the giant portrait of me again. “So why are you here?” I asked, “If this is my dream.”

I didn’t think a radio could shrug, but somehow I could just tell the pony that supplied the voice was taunting me with one. “I just leave that kind of impression on ponies.”

“Great,” I groused, shutting the closet door on the radio. “I’ve spoken to you twice and already I’ve had enough of you. I don’t need you to jump into my dreams, too.”

“I know, it’s a little intimate, and it’s really fucking unoriginal but my message is a bit too important for that.” The radio crackled at me, cackled at me, from the ornate desk.

I froze in my tracks. I looked at the desk and the beaten old radio. I very slowly opened the door to the closet. Just darkness greeted me. I slammed the door and stared with wide eyes at the radio

“Dream, fuckwit,” the radio reminded me. “Now you want to tell me what was going on out there?”

“I already explained-,”

The radio cut me off. “Not you and runt, Red. You and mare. Who the fuck are you to go off like some sort of noble stallion like that?”

The question knocked me back. “There’s a lot in it for me if do it. You were watching, apparently, so you know what she said.”

Can a radio nod? This one seemed to. “You’re right, I did, but unlike you, I was paying attention. You really think there is any sort of chance you can come through on that? You’re really fucking funny, you know that? You make me laugh.” To prove his point, he did just that, his raspy laughter mixing with the crackling of the old radio set.

“Who’s to say I can’t?”

“I do, dumbass. I’ve been saying it, you just haven’t been listening. But maybe you’re right. You have done well. Oh, wait. It was that pink bitch, and she’s well done. Yeah, you did a real good job of that one.”

I sneered at the radio. I didn’t have anything I could say to it, though. It was right. I dropped my head and looked at the floor. It was spotless, looked like no one had ever used it. When I slunk to the ground, I found it was ice cold, too.

“Oh yeah, you realize now that it was you. It was all you. You taking your sweet time to strut around in the basement celebrating your own magnificent ability to fuck up an ambush and luck out with a con. Then you finally get your ass upstairs you see the big blue bastard coming. What do you do? You pull the mare out of the flames? Goddesses no. You already fucked her literally, why not metaphorically too? Let her burn so you can get out. When the pyro’s busy, you ran out to safety with your meal ticket. Yeah, you think you got away with that? No such luck, Red. I noticed. I always notice.”

“I tried to get Scorch into the basement. I wanted to take him down for killing Cherry. For burning my place down. For causing all of this.” I spoke, but my words were weak and directed at me for my own benefit, not to argue the radio.

“Bullshit,” the radio maintained. “Isn’t knowing how pony’s think your little gig there? You knew he wouldn’t follow you down there. You knew you were safe.”

I didn’t answer the radio. I didn’t think he was right, but he could have been. It wasn’t a stretch, after all. I knew he was smart. I should have known he was quick enough to get over his own ego.

“Don’t beat yourself up too much. You suck, but all ponies suck. It’s their way of life. Look at the old world. They tried to kill everyone, pony and zebra. Couldn’t even do that right. It’s a shit world. Sooner you realize that, the better.”

I looked at the floor from my prone sprawl. I slid my hoof back and forth, thinking about the radio and its words. “You know what?” I asked, picking myself up and looking at the radio. “You keep saying you want to help me, but everything sucks. What’s the deal, Radio? What’s the angle? What’s in it for you? What do you get out of it?”

The radio stood silent and the whole room breathed in the still air. I stared at the radio and it stared back at me with its dial’s dim light. “Same as you, Red,” the voice croaked over the airwaves without the antagonism, but in the weak tone of the defeatist. “I don’t fucking like it, but same as you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked, sharper than I meant to.

“Look around, you unimaginative prick,” said the emotionally dead voice of the radio, “Or better yet, wake up.”

Sand does not taste good first thing in the morning. Though I would argue, sand never tastes good. The fact that it does not taste good is especially evident first thing in the morning waking up face down on a beach.

I spat the offending sand back onto the beach from whence it came while I tried to remember just what in the world I had done to get me there. The dull ache in my head served as a quick reminder to the previous night’s events. I opened my eyes to chance the world. The world greeted me with more sand. At least there was the water lapping in and out to break the oppressive silence of this long dead and abandoned beachfront.

A quartet of white legs briefly obstructed my beautiful ground level view of the ocean. I ignored them as they passed. Then they passed again, and then passing once more but in the other direction. By the fifth pass by, I had to admit that my curiosity was piqued. I forced myself to my haunches to see what was going on around me.

It was Two-Shot, the white legs were kind of a tip off. He was trotting with a bundle of plants floating alongside him. The plants were ones I had seen before, as a colt, but I had never known the name, nor had I seen them since I parked myself in Manehattan. They had long green stems, looked like tall grass, except for a few that had these fuzzy cigars at the tips.

“What’s that?” I slurred out, still muzzy and brain addled from my bad night’s sleep. I approached Two-Shot, who had planted himself with his plants and begun to focus his magic on them in earnest.

“Cat tail,” He replied in a dull, aching voice that told me he had to concentrate as hard as he could on the tall grass. He seemed to be splitting them apart. The brown cigars to one side, leaves to another, the middles to a third.

I am not a thick pony, but I was not in a position to figure Two-Shot’s plan out on my own. “Okay, you’re going to have to explain a few things to me,” I told the ground next to the unicorn. I repeated it again, this time actually pointing at Two-Shot and adding an internal curse to the radio pony. “What are you doing?”

“Making breakfast,” Two-Shot answered, still flat and focused elsewhere, “And nursing a little hangover. Sobriety doesn’t impress me at the best of times. This is nowhere close, but we need to eat.” He had stopped his partitioning of the plants to focus his attention on me.

“Why are you making breakfast?” I asked, my brain coming back to me after a reminder that it was indeed daytime and its services required, regardless of its protests to the contrary. I sat beside him to inspect what was to be our food.

“Because I’m the only one here that can cook right,” Two-Shot answered. He made his point by looking over to where Daisy slept “That and I don’t trust either of you to know what to find out here.”

“How would you-.” A magically levitated grass thing shoved into my mouth cut me off.

“Because you had to ask what I was doing,” Two-Shot stated, leaving me to chew the stalk while he pointed at Fizzy, who was still snoring beside Daisy. “And I expect anything she’d make would explode.”

I swallowed my forced breakfast. Not exactly fancy, but the greens were far better than the old world junk that had made up the bulk of my diet. I could see now where the ingredients of the salad I had yesterday came from. The small snack also reminded me that that single morning salad was about all I had to eat in a full day. “You have a point,” I choked out, hungrily smacking my lips in anticipation of more food.

“Eat these,” Two-Shot pointed to the long green stems. “Leave the tops. We’ll burn those to keep smaller bugs away at night.” He shook his head and winced. “You kick hard, you son of a bitch,” he muttered, laughing to himself.

My mouth was a little full, so I couldn’t comment on the compliment. In a way, though, I think it was for the best. I chewed over the greens, surprised at how fresh they seemed. As I got to thinking about it, however, I had to wonder; for all the destruction around me, how much was caused by balefire and how much was simple ravages of time and ponies desperate for survival. I figured I shouldn’t have been too surprised as I ate the grasses. If ponies could survive, perhaps other things were hardscrabble enough to make it. And here I was eating those hardscrabble survivors. Somehow, the thought made me feel good about myself. Simple things.

A yawn from across the fire caught my attention. Fizzy sat up in the sand, blinking sleep from her eyes while perched her glasses on her muzzle. They sat level for all of a half second before tilting to their usual list. “Morning?” she asked, squinting up at the clouds filling the sky.

“For lack of a better term,” I suggested. “And we have breakfast over here. Not exactly gourmet, but better than nothing.”

Fizzy managed her way over to us. She gave the greens a careful once over before taking an uncertain bite. The uncertainty melted away and she was chowing down eagerly. What we saw sent both Two-Shot into sputtering laughter.

“What?” Fizzy asked, looking around for the cause of the sudden laughter. One whole side of her Mohawk had been coated in a layer of sand. She scratched the side of her head, and still managed to remain unaware.

“What do you use to keep your mane standing like that?” Two-Shot asked when his snickering subsided to an amused sigh. My snickering was still going strong.

“Wonderglue, why?” Fizzy asked. Then it came to her all at once. Her head hung and she gave a deep groan dredged from the wells of exasperation.

The flower of laughter bloomed anew in Two-Shot and me. When it finally died down, we were left looking at a scowling Fizzy. “I’m sorry, but it just looks silly,” I tried to explain, even through the remaining grin.

Fizzy suddenly dropped the scowl and took up a grin of her own. “Oh, it’s okay. I think I understand. But,” She paused; her horn became sheathed in a silvery glow. A loud bang filled our ears and the beach between Two-Shot and I burst upward, coating both of us in wet, heavy sand.

Both Two-shot and I sat dumbfounded at the sudden burst, blinking in stunned surprise as globs of the wet dirt sloughed off us and back to the beach. Considering this was Fizzy’s doing, I probably should not have been all that surprised that she’d have some kind of magical firecracker at hoof. Just goes to figure with unicorns.

Fizzy cracked up, shaking the sand from her mane, leaving Two-Shot and I to try to shake the sand from our everything. Something broke at that moment. A mutual realization within all of us that this moment of levity was an indulgence we could afford. I broke first, joining Fizzy in laughter; Two-Shot cracked a grin and then burst forth like a levy giving way. The only one of us there not laughing was the unfortunate Daisy, who continued to lie still, breathing deeply at rest.

Two-Shot was the first to stop laughing when he saw Daisy. He got to hooves, moved to check on the mare. He looked down at her with a distant sadness that he struggled to keep in check. “What do you think?” he asked the air. “Do you think she’ll make it through this?” His eyes rose to look toward Fizzy.

The gray unicorn looked unflappable under the desperate, sorrowful, questioning gaze. Despite her appearance, she still had little answer other than a shrug and a shake of her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted, “I’m not a doctor. I know a little bit, but without someone with training, I can only do so much. Not to mention our lack of supplies.”

Two-Shot’s face fell. He looked toward Daisy with plaintive need. “Then I’ll go get supplies,” he said with quiet resolve, lifting his head to look toward Fizzy. “When I was looking for something for us to eat I passed over a few buildings still standing. We could probably find something there.”

“You didn’t check them out already?” I questioned.

Two-Shot shook his head. “Not alone, not hungry, and not first thing in the morning. Too much risk to it,” he directed his hoof at me, “Now, though, you’re coming with me and she’ll stay here to watch Daisy.”

Fizzy snorted, “I’m not Cherry, you know. I’m not a doctor. I’m nearly useless here.”

Two-Shot shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He swallowed the retort as best as he could, opened his eyes, and gave Fizzy a reptilian glare. “I know damn well you aren’t Cherry. I know damn well we need her now. But she isn’t fucking with us anymore.” He seethed through his teeth. “You’re still better than the big guy, and you can lay a minefield to keep anything from getting close. That work for you?”

Fizzy nodded tersely, and looked down at her hooves. “You make a good point. I’m, I’m sorry for not thinking through your logic,” she said with the begrudging mumble of the embarrassed.

“Um, yeah, hey, I’m still here,” I pointed out, standing up, not liking the way Two-Shot just shot down Fizzy. “You know, you aren’t exactly our leader here. I’m here for Fizzy. She’s out here to get supplies for her home. You did a lot for us, but you said it yourself, Scorch was after your head too. Don’t act as if it were just us who brought this shitstorm. And besides all that, do you really think we’re that cold? We’re going to help you. We’re all in this together now. So give us the benefit, alright?”

Two-Shot gave me a dark eye before looking away. He looked back again, begging a back and forth debate with himself. It was a step forward in the right direction, getting him thinking about himself. It paid off when he gave a grudging nod. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Just don’t bring her up again.”

“Got it,” I answered. “First thing’s first, though. Let’s get some food in us.”

It turned out that Two-Shot was not bragging when he claimed to be the better cook out of the lot of us. He had somehow turned a mishmash of preserved old world food. I hadn’t thought that a centuries old food could be cobbled together into something that tasted like actual food. The only problem with the meal was that I couldn’t eat my fill. We only had so much to go around, and with supplies as low as they were, that much had to be spread thin.

“I think we should say a few words,” I spoke up, staring at the dull gray overcast that perpetually hung over our heads.

Two-Shot was eyeing me from where he sat, suspicious of my intention and already cultivating a fresh mood swing.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I called him out on his stare. “She deserves it, don’t you think?”

If looks could kill, Two-Shot would already have put me in a hole in the ground. Thing was, he knew I was right. I could see it in his face, the melting reluctance giving way to a shallow nod. “So what are you suggesting?” he asked in a last ditch effort to throw me off the subject. “Can’t pull a funeral; she’s all the way back there, can’t bury her.”

I held a smile. “Who says we need one? You have the memory, and Fizzy and I, we didn’t know her long, but I can’t say we’d be here if it weren’t for her.”

“Call’s right, you know,” Fizzy came in with the assist. “We owe her, and I don’t know about Call, but I think it would be kind.”

“You two are right,” Two-Shot admitted, the dark look drained away for a weak smile. “I should. She fucking deserves it. I just want to Daisy to be around for it. Feels kind of cheap without her involved.”

I nodded, Fizzy as well. “It’s a sure thing,” I told the sniper, getting to my hooves. “So let’s get going.”

A smattering of letters remained on the battered and broken sign that stood along the outside wall of the half-collapsed building that stood in front of Two-Shot and I. What few letters there were, coupled with the stained and shadowy outline of long since fallen told us the crumbling structure was once a hospital. What was once, I assumed, a bright and shining symbol of health and care had long since given itself away to a dingy yellow color that looked as sickly as the wasteland itself. I could see that only one floor seemed to be left standing whole, the upper floors collapsed and crushed in on themselves, with only part of a second bearing the weight from above.

The hospital was a good distance north of our beach position. Most of the walk was spent with Two-Shot and I keeping trekking past crumbled and destroyed shops and homes. What few buildings we had found standing were mostly empty save for some small amount of food that Two-Shot picked through with discerning taste, deciding what was worth keeping or not. He threw out a lot that I would have just taken, but I deferred to him on the food front.

He had seen the hospital first, spotting it standing on a hill while I was digging through a foundation to recover some useable scrap metal and wood to stuff into my pack. Two-Shot didn’t balk. I figured this mutual respect was a sign of good things and hoped for better.

“There’s got to be something somewhere in here,” Two-shot muttered as we pushed past the double doors into the hospital’s reception area. Long benches lined the walls leading to a round desk bearing the placard for the receptionist. Paper lay strewn about the floor. A Sparkle-Cola machine flickered and struggled to hold its post as the reception room’s long internal light source. The whole room was silent as the grave and just as still.

“Three bottles,” I told Two-Shot, slipping the soda I rescued from their mechanical prison into my saddlebags. The unicorn was checking on the reception desk terminals for any help in locating stock. “Anything?”

Two-Shot just shook his head. “Both broken,” he answered, leaving the rusted out devices to continue on their rotten path to oblivion. “Just take a look around. It’s a hospital. There’s something.”

The hallway and the next several rooms yielded little. What few medical supplies we could find, mostly small instruments, we tucked away in my bags for safekeeping. A downed Mr. Hoof model robot retained enough working parts for me to pull out a sellable if not useable supply. In the cafeteria we even managed to find some, for lack of a better term, food to take back with us. I made Two-Shot carry the questionable looking edibles. No place had a single sign of life, however. Not a roach, a scorpion, or even parasprite seemed to exist in the old hospital. The floors were messy, much of the metal was rusting, and some of the wood had given to rot, but it all lacked any sign of life within the walls.

“Who are the Bastards?” I asked Two-Shot. He replied with a shrug as we both looked up at the words THE BASTARDS painted in large letters on the walls of the hospital’s ransacked pharmacy. When we had found the room, there was no door. What remained of it was in two pieces and lay on the far wall from where it had originally been. Cupboards and shelves lay in pieces on the floor. Bits of glass and wood, from tiny glittery chips to large, sharp shards made stepping and digging through the rubble a dangerous prospect. The searching ceased when we stopped to read the writing on the wall.

“Whoever those bastards are,” Two-Shot said, closing the door of an empty cupboard, “They beat us to it.” He kicked at the wall in frustration. The little panel door fell off its remaining hinge and joined the refuse on the floor.

Other than the trashed insides and the graffiti coated walls, there was nothing of value to be found in the pharmacy. Whoever the Bastards were, they were thorough. The small room was not only picked clean, but also left in such a state it would have been hours of picking through for nothing had the pair of us been more desperate than we were. As it stood, we still spent well over an hour and had nothing to show for it but enough shards to rebuild the door and start a small toothpick company on the side.

“What about upstairs?” I wondered aloud, looking down the hall, back towards where we came. “Part of it still looked standing. There could still be more.”

“You really are a salvager,” Two-Shot said, passing by me en route for the stairs. He looked over his shoulder, and shot me a self-satisfied grin.

“Got me dead to rights,” I answered with an ear-to-ear grin, following Two-Shot.

We discovered a small problem when it came to actually climbing the stairs. The problem mainly lay in the fact that there were no more stairs anymore. Two-Shot and I stood at the precipice between floors. Rubble lay below us and above us, the just out of reach second floor.

“Damn it,” I scowled at the gap between floors. “Alright, I think I can, ow!” I snapped less in pain than surprise at Two-Shot’s sudden clambering up my back like a mountain goat. “What the blazes are you doing?”

“Stay still,” Was all Two-Shot told me, perched on my back, his hooves trying for purchase on the reinforcing plates of my barding. I got the feeling he was eyeing the gap with hope now that I had just been requisitioned as a springboard.

“You done up there?” I asked after growing tired of being kicked in the back of the head. He just had to keep managing to find the spot between my barding and my hard hat.

Teetering and tottering managed, I felt Two-Shot go still on my back. “Hold still down there, alright? Good. Now for Luna’s sake, give me a boost over to the other side.”

I bucked. Hard.

Two-Shot crashed, upside down, into the far wall of the second floor hallway. He slid to the ground and scowled at me in an inverted heap.

“That’s for headache I’m going to have thanks to you,” I said, full of petty jocularity.

“I’m going to kill you,” Two-Shot’s threat lacked any real malice as he untangled himself and got his hooves under him. “Do you hear me? I will kill you for that.”

I continued to beam up at Two-Shot. “So are you going to find a way to get me up there too, or do you think you can catch me?”

Two-Shot took a look down the hallway on either side of him. “I got you; just don’t expect me to cart your ass without any help. You got to jump.”

Help in hoof, I took a step back, crouched, psyched myself up and ran for the gap. I threw myself into the air, putting all of my muscle behind my leap and soared over the gap. The rubble down on the first floor passed beneath me, the broken edge of the second floor as well. I laughed at my triumph; I had cleared the jump with no problem at all.

I slammed right into a white hued arcane barrier and crashed to the floor. “You are an asshole,” I muttered from my suddenly very floor centered perspective.

“Never denied it,” Two-Shot told me, punctuation supplied via a swift, if mercifully light, kick to my side. He trotted off down the hallway, leaving me to pick up and dust myself off. It was worth it.

When I did get up and go after Two-Shot, we were greeted with another, albeit smaller, series of desolate rooms. The music of the wind blew through the holes in the walls and windows, playing loud and clear in the otherwise silent corridors. A door slammed, sending bits of broken wood and glass crashing down. Room after room was tossed, but empty. Their yellow and pink aid kits torn open and robbed of their contents by those that came before. Each blow of the wind ate at our nerves and each cleaned kit frayed those nerves even further.

I walked into the last room that we could possibly get in. Ahead of us, the hallway had fallen, creating a gap too large to get across. This room was, for the most part, identical to the other patient and exam rooms we had been in today. Except for one particular detail that set it apart. There was no wall on one side and a much smaller gap. More important was a little flash of yellow half buried in the crumbled rubble.

“Two-Shot. I got one!” I called out. “”Come here. I need to throw you again.”

The unicorn popped in shortly. “You do?” he asked, following my line of sight as he approached. “You do,” he agreed.

We worked out a simple plan. A variation on the earlier lesson in backstabbing and one that would, we hoped, involve not so much hitting walls. I crouched before the gap. Two-Shot backed up, out into the hallway. I planted myself, getting low and steady. Two-Shot charged. I braced. His hooves hit my shoulder and I threw myself upward, launching Two-Shot threw the air. He turned a full somersault and landed on all fours on the other side.

Two-Shot and I cheered, whooping and hollering at the success of our little acrobatic stunt. “Now grab that thing and let’s get the buck out of here. We have a mare to save,” I said with no lack of pride.

A nod from Two-Shot and he turned to dig the yellow box out of the rubble. He kicked aside joist and paneling, wood and plaster to get down to the medical kit. Free from the refuse, Two-Shot’s magic surrounded the case and wrenched it to freedom. A quick checked confirmed it; we had supplies.

“Catch!” Shouted Two-Shot, and the medical kit came hurtling at my head. It came quick, tossed by Two-Shot’s magic. I yanked it from its flight, caught tight in my teeth. I left it hanging on my tail from the handle to wait for the unicorn.

Two-Shot’s leap was good. He cleared good space, flew well, and for a pony carrying a large rifle and a bulky revolver, the jump was very impressive. It just wasn’t enough of a jump to clear the gap. He hit, front legs on the floor, the rest of him hanging in the air, hind legs wheeling. He gasped at the sudden blow to his ribs and began to slip.

I tried to reach him; I dove and snapped my teeth on the back strap of his revolver’s holster. I pulled, but the holster slipped from my jaws, snapping back and falling on my haunches.

A thud and a chorus of cursing groans came from the lower floor.

Peering over the edge, I looked down below. Two-Shot rolled on his back, eyes closed and teeth clenched. He may have taken a much worse fall not all that long ago, but he was far, far less numb this time around. I winced in sympathy pain and jumped after him to give him a hoof. The drop wasn’t quite as bad when expected. It stung, but nothing more serious than that.

I helped Two-Shot to his hooves. He continued to groan and stretch his side, wincing. “I’m not going to do that without med-ex again,” he muttered, confirming my theory. “I’m good, though. Glad you stuck with me, but this happens again, you get back to Daisy and let me be. I’ll be okay.”

“I’m not just going to leave you to lay there, Two-Shot,” I reminded the unicorn. “We have what we need, anyways, let’s just get out of here.”

“Problem is, our exit is that way,” Two-Shot pointed out, directing my attention to the pile of collapsed building that blocked our path back.

“Well damn. Looks like we’re hunting an exit now.” I wasn’t going to let this setback get me down. We had some supplies, we were both doing well, we could get ourselves out in no time. I did all that I could do, just turn and start down the ward hallway along with Two-Shot.

This ward was cleaner, less touched by time and outsiders. I could only imagine that Two-Shot and I were the first to come through this area in ages. The walls were still relatively pristine, only slightly faded with age from their original pastel blue. The lights did not work, but enough streamed in from the breaks and spaces to let us adjust easily enough to the dim lighting. If it wasn’t for the rest of the building tumbling down around it, the hallway we found ourselves in was a nearly pristine time capsule of the pre war age.

There was tarnish to the time capsule ward hall. Tarnish that came in the form of a skeleton that lay splayed out in the middle of the hallway, flush against the wall, underneath a dirty brown splotch. Draped over the ribcage of the long deceased pony was a battle saddle with mounted shotgun. It was old, but it looked good. Even if I couldn’t make use of it, I could hawk it for a good price. The dead pony wasn’t about to be using it anymore, so I felt little qualm over scattering the bones to get at my prize.

The scene was suspicious, but I didn’t even bother to question it until I had tossed the gun and battle saddle to drape haphazardly over my back. “Hey, Two-Shot, why do you think this guy was killed here? This place is untouched, seems kind of weird he’d just be here.”

“Something to do with this, I bet,” Two-Shot’s answer sounded distracted, and I couldn’t blame him. He was looking at a pair of double doors down the hall from the skeleton. A fire hose, pulled from a red box along the wall, wound tight around the door’s push bars in a makeshift lock. There was something unsettling creeping up the back of my spine as I approached the door.

“This part of the hospital hasn’t been touched in what, at least a hundred or two years?” I asked, trying to downplay the bubbling feeling of unease percolating in my stomach. “Whatever was locked in there has to be long dead.”

Two-Shot nodded. “Don’t take chances,” he said, backing from the door. His magic flared, enveloped his revolver and drew it into the air. “Get the door open and get out of my way.”

The hose was old, it was well onto rotting, and tearing it aside was an easy job. The taste of rust and dust would stay with me after biting down and pulling it away. No sooner had I freed the door from the binding did it swing outward. I leapt away, tumbling to safety, twisting mid roll to face the thing inside the ward.

All that attacked us was a small wave of bones clattering noisily to the floor at my hooves. Pony bones, and so many I couldn’t make heads or tails of just how many must have died on the other side of the door. Skulls and spines, arms and legs spread out on the floor in a skeleton helter-skelter.

“Damn,” Two-Shot spoke under his breath. No surprise, no fear at the sudden onrush of bones, just a dull puzzlement. I can’t say I felt any different than he sounded. No danger, only confusion was here.

We pushed onward, stepping over the carpet of long dead ponies. We had other things on our mind. Ponies who needed us, ponies who needed the supplies we carried. At least while we were here, we could dig through this ward. After all, it could contain more medical equipment, or at least some salvage worth peddling.

The ward was empty as any we had passed through, but it was cleaner and larger. An untouched tomb for the souls of those that surged from the doorway long past the time they had hoped to. Beds still lined the walls, and in several of them, some skeletons still lay. Unmoved by what caused the others to flee in vain; they were just as still now. I looked over the clipboards that hung at the foot of each of the beds. The names were all different, but they all had a similar trait in common.

“Soldiers,” I said, casting a glance over to Two-Shot. He had secured one of the yellow and pink cases from the wall and was busying himself with gutting its contents to stuff in his bags. The revolver still floated about him. He looked up at me from his packing. “They all have rank listings. These ponies were all military.”

“Well, they’re with Celestia now. Can’t do anything for them,” Two-Shot responded before going back to cataloguing the contents of the case. “They all went out together. They had that at least.”

I looked over to the door, over at the bones that lay scattered about the entryway. “They all went out together, alright,” I repeated. Something struck me as enduringly morose about whatever had happened here. These ponies were trying to get out, and they never had the chance. I couldn’t afford to ponder the past, however. I left the thought and continued digging through the room.

Two-Shot had caught the haul. I found little else but mementos that held a lot of sentimental value to someponies long dead, but not a lot of the real variety. At the end of the ward, I found a terminal in good condition, sitting and glowing faintly. It had waited all these years to be used again. I tried my hoof at it, and found myself walled off by a passcode.

“Hey, Two-Shot, you got that other terminal working, right?” I asked, trying to find the unicorn.

“Yeah, I’ve been around a few before.” Two-Shot came out from underneath one of the beds, a soldier’s pack bag now hung from his neck. “What’ve you got?”

“That’s kind of what I’m asking you for.”

Two-Shot snorted, trotting over toward the computer. I stepped aside so he could get to work. He focused on the terminal, his horn glowing faintly, his hooves ticking off the controls. I just walked away to let him work, and work he did. He was through the code with surprising speed. I had barely enough time to inspect the sturdy canvas bag he had secured.

“It wasn’t hard,” Two-Shot explained, reading the terminal. “I was shown a few things by an old partner of mine. You can shoot your way past locks, but terminals, you need to speak their language.” The explanation struck me as odd, given I never solicited it, but I shrugged it off.

“It’s all garbage,” Two-Shot added after poring over the information held on the old world machine. “Transfer to Dancer’s Psychiatric Hospital. Transfer to Dancer’s. Transfer. Battle fatigue. Battle fatigue. Transfer,” he rattled off line after line with increasing frustration at the lack of useful information on the terminal.

“Can’t all be good,” I offered with a shrug. “We’ve got a few more healing potions and some chems out of it at least.” I made my way to the door, stepping over the pile of bones on my way out. I didn’t wait for Two-Shot, I knew he would be right behind me. It was best to leave the dead to their resting and I was feeling anxious to do what was best.

We eventually managed to find an exit. Not an exit so much as a window, and not find so much as angrily-toss-a-chair-through, but the difference was negligible. I boosted Two-Shot out first, and he used the chair to clear out a hole in the glass large enough for me to get through without gutting myself on shards. We were out on the far side of the hospital from where we began, but the sky still had that welcome dull gray of the daytime and we were happy with it. Moreover, we had one more major discovery in the form of pull cart left behind. It was faded yellow, and had a series of butterflies painted on it, those familiar colors and the padding in the back spoke enough of the cart’s purpose.

Two-Shot and I stuck a proud feather in our caps, tossed my finds in the back of the cart, hitched me up, and went on our way back to the beachfront. Thank the goddesses for a change of luck.

“Pass that bottle over here!” I shouted with a laugh. A silvery haze bobbed and bobbled around a bottle as it made its way over to me. I drank freely, the liquor burned warm in my throat. I soaked in the feeling as it ran into my full stomach. Fizzy’s magic clung around it as it poured. I coughed, spitting some of it onto the sand but laughing all the same. Waving the bottle aside, it settled into the sand between our jubilant quartet.

The firelight danced off the lot of us. I sat with my back to the beach. Fizzy was to my right, her magic making a trio of bottles orbit her head and grinning at a joke Daisy was telling involving two fillies, a bee’s nest and a sleeping raider. Daisy had come to while we were out, and though we couldn’t give get her back at a hundred percent, she was good enough to be up and chatting. We all knew she would need a doctor to fix the more serious problems, but med-ex and companionship were doing their part for now. Two-Shot was the one supplying most of that companionship. He hadn’t left Daisy’s side from the moment we got back. He hovered and doted like a guard dog, only leaving to gather up something for us to eat. As with breakfast, he pulled another filling meal out of thin air and garbage. The night had fun and friendship, and we indulged, but we all knew there was one thing that had to be done.

“You ready for this?” I asked the small white unicorn that was clambering up into the back of our salvaged hospital cart.

He responded with a nod and a swing from the liquor bottle that floated about his head. He stood tall, his bellowing voice enhanced by magic. “I’m not good at this. I never was. So, here it is. This is for Cherry. She was the best damn wasteland doctor I ever met. She loved everypony, and she treated them all like we should. She saved my ass more than once, and she did the same with every one of us. We all owe something to her, even if you only knew her a day. Thing is, even if she only knew you for a minute she treated you like she knew you forever. We could only hope to do the same. So here it is, here’s to you, Cherry. Hope those damn goddesses treat you right since they had the backbone to take you from us. Hope they’re happy they got you, too. Cause I sure as fuck need you right about now.”

Two-Shot sank, dropping to sit and stare down at the sand. “Here’s one last drink,” he said, voice barely a squeak. The whiskey bottle that floated nearby turned over and rammed itself into the sand, buried nearly to the bottom. “I sucked that one up,” he told no one in particular.

“But it was all true,” Daisy said from her spot on the sand. “When Two-Shot and I met Cherry, she was all that was left of her settlement; she had tried to keep them all alive even without equipment. She even tried to help the raiders that were left behind by their own. That’s what kind of pony she was. You two saw her, she had the slightest chance to get out and help, and she jumped right on it. That’s why I’m going to see this out to the end, and I’m sure Two-Shot is going to too. And I won’t take a no for an answer, Fizadora. You hear me?”

Fizzy was looking at the ground. “This is, um, this was not accounted for, but it will help, greatly. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her better. I know I can’t be blamed for it, but I am sorry all the same.” She was drawing a little circle in the sand with a foreleg. “I’m also very bad at these things. Sorry.”

“You did your best to keep me alive, stick to doing that, honey, and you and I’ll get along just fine,” Daisy said with a bittersweet laugh.

I knocked a hoof against the side of the hospital cart. “I know it ain’t much, but I remember a little song from when I was foal. If you don’t mind.” I didn’t wait, beginning to tap time against the side of the cart, a slow, steady beat, easy to keep track of.

It was a simple song, three verses, sang twice. I cannot remember where I first heard it, but I could remember it. I knew I couldn’t say anything about Cherry, but I could sing. The night was ending, and the wastes had given us a brief stay of execution, but I damn well knew I could sing.

When I was a little foal, oh I heard my daddy cry
When I was a little foal, yes I heard my daddy cry
He didn’t think I noticed but I saw it in his eye.

He took me by his side told me “Now son I got to say.”
He took me by his side told me “Now son I got to say.”
“Your mama, boy, she loves you now but has to go away”

Where is momma going, dad, is momma going far?
Tell me where is momma going and is it very far?
She’s gone to be with Luna, son, to be a brand new star.

Author's Note

Much of the rest of Salvage will be coming out as it was. Mostly so I can pull together my head to work on this and other projects.

Once more, thank you for my e pub dude, Vol, and especially to all you readers who care about this little story.

Roadside Attractions

Roadside Attractions

“What we wouldn’t give for just a little foresight.”

“Next place worth a damn we see, we try to salvage a radio.” I made my point loud on a particularly quiet day of walking the long and lonesome road our quartet wandered. According to Fizzy’s maps, we were walking was called the Broncton Postal Trail on our way to the soda delivery that never made it to its destination. A dull road made worse by splitting away from the beachfront we had been on since leaving Manehattan. Now we had a sparse covering of trees, desiccated and dying from the long lean years since the war. Daisy had shown herself to be a better than average horticulturist, but neither her nor Two-Shot could dredge up anything that wasn’t an ashy tasting culinary metaphor for sadness.

I pulled the hospital cart. The cheery yellow with pink butterflies motif was, in my opinion, one of the few moral bright spots in our well armed little caravan. At the very least it was the only one of us that hadn’t taken a life in the past few days. It was even roomy enough to carry two ponies, or one pony and the items we managed to save from rotting away forever in the back end of some hospital.

I had offered to use the shotgun we recovered, but when I suggested that I preferred its application as a bludgeon more than a firearm, I was outvoted three to one. We ended up attaching the gun to Daisy’s battle saddle opposite her machine gun for when she could get back on her hooves.

Daisy was still riding in the medicart, there since we left the beach. The supplies we secured from the hospital did wonders for all of us, put us back at full force I figured, except for Daisy. She was fine and dandy, but we weren’t taking any chances we didn’t have to. We all knew a few wasteland idiots that got themselves killed pushing more than they had to give. That kind of stupidity wasn’t going to fly in this caravan. Also, it was her idea, and even wounded, we were all wary of how capable the mare was. Never doubting an earth pony’s endurance was something I knew from first hoof experience.

Two-Shot had taken up residence at the rear of the caravan in order to cover our trail. We could not rule out Scorched Earth coming up from behind. After all, we never saw him die, and I doubted he stayed inside the Hotel Haflinger once he sussed out the explosive contingency plan. Given his track record for insane overreaction, the lot of us agreed that he would probably be sending out feelers to keep an eye on us, no matter how far we had run. Two-Shot’s approach to the threat was a simple one; kill them before they could report our movements. It was a good plan.

Fizzy handled the mapwork. She walked alongside the cart, floating the map before her to keep track of our movements. That is, she handled the mapwork when she wasn’t trying to squeeze herself into the medicart to check on Daisy. For our resident not-a-medic she threw herself at the job with eagerness. Chalk the excitability up as a chance to experiment with the formulae Cherry had passed on. Fizzy was whipping up new combinations of Sparkle-Cola and wildflower alchemical mixture here, a healing bandage with additional reagent there, and trying them out on every cut and bruise we managed to pick up on the road.

We needed to find that mare something to blow up. Fast.

“Hey, hey Call. Curtain Call,” Daisy’s voice came from the medicart. It had the prodding insistence that usually only accompanied a request or a correction. “We’ll find a radio when we can, but you have to tell me why you’re wearing that tail weapon around your neck.”

I was right. It was a correction. I looked down to Sharp Retort. It had a part to hold in my teeth, and a strap around my neck. It was custom. It was also proving a little useless when I didn’t have an ambush. I also never did ask the pony that made it how it was supposed to be used, I just took the design from another I’d seen and guessed the details. Now I felt like a foal. I went to my mind’s excuse drawer. “It’s a fashion statement.”

“If it’s a tail weapon, wouldn’t that statement be that you’re head is where your ass should be?” Fizzy peered at me over her map.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, stopping the medicart. “If you guys know a better way to use it, why not stop me instead of letting me look like an ass?”

“Because we’d be stopping a lot.” Two-Shot’s two cents for the conversation.

The others laughed. Okay, I laughed too, but I still wanted to get some use out of Sharp Retort. “Alright, alright, I walked into that one. But come on; give me a hoof with this thing.”

Daisy pulled herself out of the back of the medicart. She moved with a list to her gait, trying to hide the discomfort that she was living with. I lifted my head so she could slip Sharp Retort off my neck more easily. She was still nickering when Two-Shot came around to lend his magic at threading the straps into my hair.

Sharp Retort tied into its new place, my tail curled around the bar, I lashed the weapon back and forth to try it out. Out and back, around one side to the other, I found I could strike like a radscorpion. Sure, I couldn’t get it all the way around my body, too big for that, but with a little more motion I was a stabbing machine.

“There,” Daisy told me with a grin, tapping my flank with a hoof. There were bags under her eyes, she had lost weight, but she was still going strong.

“Thank you for your quick response to my idiocy, Daisy. Glad you’re kind enough to point that out, unlike some other ponies,” I pointedly said to Daisy as she climbed back into the rear of the cart. My glare directed at Two-Shot.

“Never used one of those before,” our diminutive sniper responded, magically floating a dash inhaler he was inspecting with sudden casualness. “Never had much of a reason to pick up on hoof to hoof weapons. Corpses don’t get close.”

I shook my head and pressed onward when I saw Daisy’s head pop up over the side of the medicart. We walked on down the road for a ways longer, reading the road signs that still survived through the centuries. The giant smiling face of the pink mare that claimed to be watching forever was a running theme. So was the yellow mare that accompanied every Sparkle-Cola advertisement. Each one pockmarked by age and frequent use as target practice. The further we walked, I noticed the same BASTARDS graffiti appearing on the signs we passed.

“Country living with city style. A High Rise Enterprise!” I read the new sign aloud. It was smaller than the other billboards, with a picture of a tower that wouldn’t look out of place alongside Tenpony back in Manehattan. A white, blue maned unicorn stallion dressed to the nines smiled in a benevolently patronizing way. Visual shorthand for what the builders expected their tenants to desire and emulate. The bottom of the sign invited us to reserve our place at Equestrian Lane Towers today. Somehow, I doubted they were still taking renters.

“Looks like it has potential,” I told the others, “Could be good salvage in a place like that.”

“Those Bastards nearly cleared out the hospital,” Two-Shot spoke up, coming around the medicart.

“Still found enough to help me,” Daisy’s head popped up, resting on the side of the cart.

“Even scrap parts would give us something to work with,” Fizzy joined in.

I nodded, “Three to one, we’re going in. I’m getting me a new radio.”

“I wasn’t saying no, just warning. Besides, I’d like to get a chance at the high ground. See what’s going on around us.”

“Four to zero, then. So let’s get our flanks in gear, I want a change of scenery.”

Equestrian Lane Towers left something to be desired as far as scenery goes. A skeleton of steel just starting to stretch upwards was all the ponies of the past managed to construct before their world ended. Materials lay scattered about the construction site on the hill. A series of trailers gathered in a small herd around the far corner from our approach. The rusting hulk of a crane stood stock still, frozen in time so long ago. Below it, a beam speared into the ground. The snapped cable coiled about the base like a snake. In the distance, a bird cried out. The only sound, its echo filled the site on the hill.

“You going to be alright here, Daisy?” I asked, ducking out from under the medicart hitch. I looked behind myself to see the mare bracing her machine gun on a bipod and perching it on the edge of the cart. She stabilized the heavy gun with a foreleg. Her attention focused on the construction site.

“I’m good here. I could hold this position for a while,” she explained with only a brief look to see my curious glance. “Can fire from a tap button underneath; don’t need a bit to shoot this with. I can just sit tight in my little nest here.”

“Got it, you watch over us, oh guardian gunner of the wastes. I’m going to hit the trailers, see if there’s anything left in there.” I trotted off, splitting up from the rest of the caravan.

“Keep in eyesight, or keep an ear out,” Two-Shot instructed as I left. “Stay in contact. Heading to the scaffold, see what’s what around here.”

“I’ll, uh, I think there are enough tools lying around here to fill a few boxes. Going to stock up, but you guys find anything interesting, tell me. Okay?” Fizzy’s shout got mirrored wordless shouts of acknowledgement from Two-Shot and I. In my mind, she muttered something about stallions behind our backs.

I hit the first trailer I came across. The door was stuck, though not so stuck a swift kick couldn’t open it up. Inside was a small office, holding little more than a file cabinet and a desk. All the same, I dug around for anything of interest. Several clipboards with notations and numbers on them that I couldn’t have cared less about. The bottom drawer of the desk had a small case of pistol ammunition, but no pistol. I stashed the ammunition in my bags and hopped outside.

Daisy shouted, asking if I found anything. I reported my lack of luck with the first trailer on my way to the second. This time the door opened with a push. It was cramped, more so than the first. Inventory papers and big rolls filled every available space of the trailer, with only a small amount of room for a table that held a large blueprint tacked onto it. Out of curiosity, I stopped rifling through rotting time sheets and decaying inventory logs to look over the old blueprint. I don’t know what I expected to find other than a carefully drawn picture not dissimilar from the skeleton of the building that stood outside. That, and the numbers and equations scribbled all around the picture. Two ponies if the changes in writing style were any indication. For a moment, I wondered why one had written so extensively over the other. Visions of arguments over design and work followed up with a drink at the nearest watering hole filled my head. Even if the ponies of the past did wreck their world, I still bet they had it better than I did.

The next trailer I forced my way into stood separate from the others. I guessed it was to give the occupant better line of sight to the construction site since the door directly faced the skeletal framework. I tried my hoof at the door, but this time it refused to budge at all. I tried again, but still locked tight. I turned and bucked. It did not even budge. Refusing to lose to a door, I backed up, backed way up, and charged the door. This time the door open, it opened more than I expected.

I picked myself up from the far side of the trailer, certain to make note of the dent I left in the wall for later headache reference. This trailer was not much different from the first one I had entered. It had a desk, and a filing cabinet, and a big brown splotch on the wall. That was different. I didn’t need to inspect the splotch to tell what it was, I had seen similar stains many times before. Maybe that argument I had pictured earlier didn’t end in drinks between colleagues.

Though I had expected one, there was no sign of a body in the trailer. Papers lay strewn about the desk and filing cabinet, rifled through by a pony long ago. Whoever did the job was in a rush, however. The bottom two drawers of the filing cabinet remained locked. Now I was no master with a lock, never really could get the hang of the picks. What I did get the hang of, though, was kicking things until they opened for me.

A swift pounding and the cabinet began to warp, but in a manner quite unexpected. The bottom two drawers buckled as one. I studied the bend and changed up my kicking game. This time, the pair of drawers swung open like a door, revealing a hidden compartment with a large case. My attention angled down toward a piece of paper that had also fluttered from the compartment. It had a ragged torn edge, pulled from a ledger or journal. It had writing on it. Drawn by curiosity, I dropped on my haunches to read.

We have been made foals of! High Rise has been using us as pawns to service his own greed. I should never have been so accepting of a pony’s generosity. All my life I have lived in Equestria, all my life I have given to this nation that now loathes me. I wished to believe in the goodness that I knew so many years ago. I wanted to believe High Rise at his word. He and I had worked together in the past. We were friends. This request, this structure would prove to the world that zebras and ponies could still work and create as one. All of it, I wanted to believe. I did believe. No more and no longer will I play patsy to his schemes.

To think that he would change my calculation behind my flank is a knife in my heart. To change them, to sabotage his own structure and his own dream was beyond me. I refused to believe it at first. I kept my tone deferent. I kept my head down. He was still willing to hire zebra employees. He was still willing to employ me as head architect, allowing me to take the helm of a project when so many of my kin are looked upon as traitors or worse. High Rise was a beacon of hope, a light in the darkness that blights this land. I see now that the fire was a spark in the powder shed. To think I called him my friend.

I cannot let this happen. I will bring it all down, I have recovered an old friend. I will keep it safe and hidden and sabotage the infernal structure by night. So long as I am alive, this trap will not be sprung. I will not allow it.

I stopped reading and looked to the splotch on the wall. He may not have been alive, but the tower wasn’t completed. He won, but it felt like an awful high cost. Looking down at the note, I read the last portion. Hastily written, the writing was not as neat and precise as the rest of the journal.

If you are reading this, High Rise, then you have killed me. Do not feel you have won, my friend. I may be a zebra, but I still have allies. Your bank books, your insurance claims, the adjustments that you and your agents made to my designs, all of them have been sent to reputable sources. I suspect that before my body grows cold that your schemes will be brought to light. Your plans, your business, your life is ruined. You will never profit from hatred.

Your friend,
Haki.

The paper fluttered to the ground. Consider my rosy little image thoroughly dashed. I tapped a hoof on the ground for a moment, looking at the blood spatter on the wall. These things always felt different when I knew the why. I wondered how that was, when I had walked past so many before. I had even killed before, even if it was always in self-defense I had still taken lives. I knew a lot about what made pony’s tick, and however much more I would learn, I don’t think I’d ever be able to explain why it felt so different.

I turned to the case in the cabinet to escape the philosophical pitfall. “Well, Haki,” I spoke to the ghosts of the past, “Let’s see just who your friend is.” I dragged the case out, let it fall on its side. It was dirty with age, the polish long gone, but I could see the gleam the case once had. HH Tool and Engineering, the logo on the box proclaimed. I flipped the little clasps with a flick of the hoof and the case lifted open.

It was some kind of machine. It was long, roughly the entire length of my forearm, and painted with yellow and black striping. “Crack the planet!” was written on it in white paint. I pulled the machine from the case and sat it on the floor. There were a number of straps and buckles, and some thick padding on one end. Down at the other was a heavy chisel. I may not have known what this thing was, but a lifetime of salvage work had left me with numerous skills and techniques at my disposal.

“Fizzy! I got something here!”

“It’s a steel driver,” Fizzy explained. The machine spun as Fizzy levitated it in front of us. “Used like a big drill. Heavy stuff, probably have to be an earth pony to use it properly. The custom casing is a bit lighter than I’ve seen back home, though.” She turned the straps toward me to explain further. “See the straps and pads? It’s been designed to sit against your chest and shoulder, sort of like an industrial yoke.”

I nodded, listening even if I was imagining a zebra destroying his own creation with the tool. “So, if I’m hearing you right, I’d wear it on my fore leg? And that bit that looks like a battle saddle trigger, that runs it?”

Fizzy’s smile was proud. “You can be taught,” she laughed, “You’re right, that’s the gist of it. It’s a big bucking tool though, this thing’ll split stone and steel. Get on the wrong end and-,” Fizzy paused. She looked at me. She was grinning.

“I want to run an experiment.”

“I don’t really see how this counts as an experiment.” I looked down at the piece of industrial equipment that engulfed my left foreleg. The fit was a little snug, and I wasn’t used to the slight weight it put against my shoulder. Neither issue was nearly as bad as I had expected. The relative comfort didn’t change my reluctance to try out a piece of centuries old demolitions equipment. I tended to put my trust in my own hooves for a reason, and now I was putting my hooves in the trust of a big metal punch.

“We’re testing something, which makes it an experiment. Don’t argue my logic, Curtain Call,” Fizzy shouted from beside the Medicart, using Two-Shot’s binoculars to watch me. Daisy lounged near Fizzy, using her machine gun like other ponies would a sofa.

“If I die, it’s your ass I’m haunting, Fizz!” I called back only half joking. I bit down on the small starter and pulled. The starter cable was on a spool, retracted into the shoulder case when I didn’t have the starter in my teeth. Once it was explained to me, the way it worked wasn’t that difficult to understand. The bulk of the object was handled with minor levitation enchantments, which needed a bit of an arcane spark to trigger it, but Fizzy handled that easily enough. A bite on the trigger should start the chisel. Not hard at all, so it was obvious that I wasn’t totally stalling or anything.

I set my hoof on the rock. My leg was tense from uncertainty and readiness for the kick of the machine. I bit down. The rejuvenated spark roared to life after its 200 year sleep. The chisel punched back and forth, a blur of dull steel. Dust and chips of stone flew up in a fine powdery mist. The pressure was shocking, but mitigated by the tight squeeze of the padding at my shoulder and chest.

My leg slipped. I carved a sharp line through the stone, my body bucking behind it. Flying bits of stone stung my face. Dust and smoke filled my eyes and lungs. I hit the ground encased in a gray cloud, coughing and sputtering. I had held myself too rigid, too inflexible and too afraid to keep control. I dropped the bit from my mouth, killing the power. Despite that, the arcane drill continued to work out its energy, chugging on mercilessly until its dying sigh.

Fresh taste of dirt, dust, and debris coated my tongue. I looked up at the upside down world through watering eyes. Everything had sort of a jaunty tilt thanks to the interesting way my body twisted about from the kick of the steel driver. I could even see Fizzy running over from a fresh and new angle. Her manic grin said she considered this little test a success and the glint in her eye said I was going to be testing this machine a whole lot more.

“Are you hurt?” At least she was considerate. “Is the drill damaged?” Make that as considerate as could be expected from her.

I responded while remaining inverted. “I’d say only my dignity, but that implies I had any to begin with.”

Fizzy rolled her eyes but helped me untangle myself and get back on my hooves. “That was a start,” she said diplomatically, “Any idea what caused it to slip from your control?”

I didn’t answer right away. I was busy moving my foreleg, bending it up and setting it down in constant repetition. My attention occupied by figuring out how the auto-drill felt to move around. It felt light, and I could get enough range of motion with it. With some time and practice, I figured, I could make use of the powerful drill. That’s when the realization of Fizzy’s intent hit me.

“It’s worth it as a weapon. In the right hooves, this thing would be worth a fortune. I think I could get it down with some practice. Or, just getting used to it. I think I was too stiff. It broke from me and I lost it because I couldn’t work with it. I was too busy being against it.”

“Knew you’d get it sooner or later!” Fizzy’s smile practically squeaked, or my ears were still ringing. “Sooner was the preference, but later was workable. What I’m saying is that I fully expected you would eventually have figured out my concept for the drill without instruction.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Fizzy she should have stopped at the first sentence. There was no correcting the enthusiasm. “Yeah, thanks, Fizzy,” I dug for words to fill the quickly growing gap of awkwardness. “Are you going to stick around here while I embarrass myself some more, or is there something you want to go tinker with?” I sincerely hoped the latter. I didn’t want an audience for this performance.

Having no such luck in the matter, Fizzy and Daisy stayed on as my audience. I practiced for a better part of an hour or two by my best guess. It was a blur, though not in the sense that the time passed particularly quickly. It felt like damn near eternity. Rather it was that I spent the better part of that time being shaken like a cocktail. It still worked, though. I managed to learn how to stand the right way, strong enough to keep it straight, loose enough that I could guide it without ending up carving wild grooves into everything else. It was a painful lesson my shoulder wouldn’t soon forget.

Time ticked on like it does, and though I considered myself the victor in the war against rocks and inanimate junk, there were things to do. With Fizzy’s help, I got the jackhammer off my foreleg. She took it aside with Daisy to see if either of them could figure out any way of improving the design. I was just glad to have my freedom again, so I took off to see what else I could dig up.

I found Two-Shot on top of the crane. He was simply sitting in the breeze, looking out at the surroundings through his riflescope. His bright red mane and brighter white hide made the sniper less than stealthy. I figured he knew that, moreover I figured he didn’t mind. “Are you planning on giving us a report?” I shouted as I approached the side of the rusted out hulk, “Or are you just going to keep enjoying the sights?”

“Looked busy with your power tool.” Two-Shot didn’t break from his scope to look at me, continuing on with his self appointed mission. “Didn’t want to ruin your fun. Not that there is anything to ruin it with.”

“Nothing out there?”

“Just a radio tower to the east with a mostly intact building under it. Probably an old station. Not far away so I suggest we try and hold up there for tonight. Not exactly pressing news.”

“Point taken,” I thumped my hoof off the side of the crane. “Did you find anything while you were cloudbathing?”

“Not a lot on ground level. Then again, didn’t look for anything that wasn’t going to kill me.”

I shook my head, grinning all the while. He had his priorities. “So you already scored any deserted drugs?” I cracked the jock as I turned to sweep the area.

“That’s what I said.” There was no humor in Two-Shot’s voice.

I stopped long enough to look back to Two-Shot. He was looking out into the distance, his face devoid of emotion. A white haze obscured his eyes from my view. Magic for purposes I could only guess. I turned from him and left him to his own devices.

Two-Shot hadn’t looked for much, but there wasn’t much to look for anyways. A few bottles lay here and there. I took the caps and left the glass. Dirt, rotting lumber, a redundant toolbox, and the assorted useless junk that even I couldn’t sell. I wandered the perimeter of the building, and stopped to look out from the highest point. There, in the distance, I could just barely make out the shattered struggling tips of the city of Manhattan far in the distance. Destroyed and difficult to see, the sight still made me smile bittersweet. It looked like the sign was right, a view of Manhattan from the top of a hill. If the building had been finished, the view would have been breathtaking.

My hoof struck a bone. It clattered against other bones. Looking down, I saw a small pile. A pony, earth pony, by my guess, lay on the ground. It still wore a rotted, tattered collar around its neck. The collar coupled with an equally rotted, tattered noose just above it. On instinct, I looked up. A frayed length of rope dangled from the beams high above. Pieces began to fall into place, and I looked down at the bones. The pony died looking out on Manehattan. At least he took a good view with him. That was when I noticed the glinting circlet around the skull.

I had seen one of those things before, simple ring with a set stone called a black opal. A recollector. The black opal was more versatile than a memory orb, primarily since any pony could use them and not just unicorns. Just put on the piece and you were whisked away to memories of the past. They could be worth a lot and not just in caps. The recollector was stuck on the skull, however. It just didn’t want to budge. A swift kick and I caved the skull in enough to get the ring free. I’m not entirely cold, I apologized before I robbed the bones. It was not like he needed the device anyways.

Once freed, I spun the recollector around my foreleg, sitting on my haunches and thinking to myself. What was on it, I wondered, and why did this pony record before taking in their last view of the Manehattan skyline? I had my ideas, given everything I’d seen today. I removed and set aside my hardhat. There was only one way to find out.

It was dark. Night had fallen. A genuine night, with stars, but my host was in too much of a hurry to enjoy the gift that it was. His heart pounded. His breath came in a hurried, haggard rhythm. I could feel it in his chest just as I watched through his eyes. My host was approaching a small house, unassuming but tasteful. He stopped long enough to fixate on some fresh paint that covered only a small section of wall by the front door. My host was hesitating; something about that paint was the reason for his pause. I didn’t have time to think of an answer. My host was on the move again. At full gallop he hit the door, rising up and pounding at the entrance with a dirt brown forehoof.

The door opened, at first just a crack, and a deep green eye looked out at my host. After a moment of scrutiny, the door closed. My host’s heart sank. A click sounded on the other side. In a split second, my host bit back his breath and brushed stray black mane that had fallen in front of his eyes.

The door opened to reveal a statuesque zebra mare that stared eye to eye with my earth pony host. The two stood still for a moment, simply staring at one another. She wore a set of bangles around one fetlock, and a pair of large hoops in her ears. Her mane reminded me of Fizzy’s, though far more monochromatic. She carried a look of worried puzzlement but my host broke first. He down and away and I could feel the blood rush to his face. His heart pounded even heavier.

“High Rise?” The name confirmed my suspicion and made my heart sink. the mare spoke in a quiet tone weighed with uncertainty. “It is strange for you to be here. Come inside, come before you are noticed.”

My host obliged, nearly falling into the simple house in his haste. He looked around at the zebra home. For its simple façade, the inside teemed with personality. Intricately carved masks adorned this wall. A tapestry covered that one. Blueprints, their intricate pencil work displayed as art from utility held prominent place to display their designer’s craft. Photographs of friends and family filled the empty spaces as a reminder of what was important. It was cluttered, but cluttered with heart and my host took to looking at everything and all to avoid eye contact with the mare.

“Zera,” my host spoke, swallowing the feeling of sick he had in his stomach that I now had to contend with. “I need you to do something for me and I need you to do it quickly.”

The mare, Zera, was taken aback. High Rise looked to her long just enough to gauge her reaction. “What is wrong, High Rise? Where is Haki? He was supposed to be with you at the site.”

My host shook his head. “It’s all gone to pot. It’s all ruined.” His words were choked, spat out and meant more for himself than the zebra. He looked back to her. “I just need you to listen to me, Zera. I have friends. Friends in very important places.”

Zera was swiftly growing a stone face. She shifted, placing herself between High Rise and the door. “I am aware. It is why you no longer visit. So what brings you here tonight? What happened?”

Once more, High Rise sought refuge in the scenery. He looked at one of the large blueprints on the wall. His attention focused on the pair of signatures in the corner. I tried to read them, but they swiftly became blurry and High Rise closed his eyes. “Mistakes, Zera, terrible mistakes.”

“What kind of-,” Zera was cut off by High Rise drawing a parcel from a side bag and dropping it on the floor.

“Let me make this better. Let me help you,” High Rise said, urgency rising his voice. “You have been through so much, and things will only grow worse. Take this, there are names in there, and proof of my word. Go to them. Take your children and go. They will keep you safe and what is in that box will keep you secure.”

Zera opened the package and her jaw went agape. “This is-,”

“I know what it is!”

Zera fluttered between astonishment and suspicious ire. She looked from box to High Rise and I could feel the tension in his body like a coiled spring ready to burst. I was ready for her to shout, at least to needle, but all she did was ask in a soft voice, “Where is my husband?”

Another look down for High Rise, and the world grew blurred again. His voice cracked plaintively. “Let me do this, let me help you so I can fix it.”

“Where is my husband, High Rise?”

“Please let me help you, Zera.” His voice was needy and begging now as he looked back to the stern face of the zebra.

“Where. Is. My. Husband.”

“Just let me fucking help you!”

The levee broke. I felt the hot tears on High Rise’s face, the physical pain he felt as his chest tightened. He had roared at Zera; ran up to her, screaming in her face his pain and need. She only looked back in sudden shock. I felt High Rise breathing heavily, quavering as he stood eye to eye with the mare. Her mouth hanging open, I felt her own nervous exhalation.

This time, she broke first. Her eyes closed with silent realization. Her body lost its tense fear. She stepped around my host and pushed the box shut with her hoof. “Leave this place,” her words cut like the softest and most painful knife I’d ever heard, “I do not wish to know more.”

High Rise looked down, his head was pounding, my own reflected the pain. His chest was tight. “Please,” he croaked, looking up to Zera’s backside. “I’m so sorry.”

“Go, High Rise,” Zera words were velvet covered iron. “Others will think you’re a traitor when they see you’ve helped us.”

High Rise laughed. I was too engrossed to consider the whys or the absurdity of the quietly despondent chuckle. “But I am.”

Zera looked back at High Rise. She didn’t look at him with anger, or disgust, or fury. Nor did she look at him with forgiveness, kindness, or a shred of thanks. She looked at him with sad sympathy and regret. “Good bye, High Rise.”

“Good bye, Zera.”

My host turned, left, and shut the door quietly behind him. He never looked back as he walked down the lane. Riding, I could only feel his body, not read his mind, but I didn’t have to. I knew full well that he couldn’t bring himself to look back at the zebra home. Even more, I knew exactly where he was heading when the memory poured me out of the past and back into my own body.

I was still alone when I came out of my recollector-induced coma. I slipped the enchanted device from my head and replaced it with my hardhat. For a moment, I thought about leaving it behind. The last testament of a long dead pony was something that should probably stay with the body. I took it anyways, and I made a note to grab Haki’s letter later. I had an itching feeling in the back of my mind that they could prove helpful.

“You’re moving, so you’re not dead.”

I jumped to my hooves at the sound of Two-Shot’s voice. Spinning around to confront the approaching unicorn, I saw the white glow of his magic fade from his eyes. “Yeah, just, found a recollector. Figured I had you looking out for me so it wouldn’t hurt to try it out.” I wasn’t exactly lying, but it was stretching the truth. I had been operating on emotional interest trumps rational thought logic at the time.

Two-Shot stopped at my choice of words. He chewed on his tongue a moment before nodding at whatever his internal decision was. “Good,” he said, whether to me, what I said, the situation, or a bit of breakfast plucked from his teeth I don’t know. Whichever the answer, he started to look at the recollector and its former owner.

“Coward’s way out,” he surmised. His statement salted with the usual acid he saved for discussing his morning sobriety.

I looked down at the bones. Two-Shot’s tone was clear he wasn’t looking for enlightenment to the reality of the situation. He had his opinion and was quite comfortable with it. “Maybe,” I tried the diplomatic approach.

Diplomacy proved only partially fruitful. “Not maybe. Whatever was going on, he had a chance, he blew it. He ran away where he wouldn’t have to deal with his problems. Cowardly prick,” Two-Shot spat at the bones. He didn’t stop talking to me, truth was, he never was addressing me to begin with.

I didn’t bother to reply. I simply tucked the circlet into a bag and started on my way back to the mares.

The silent approach was as effective as the diplomatic one. “Running like that. Doesn’t matter what he did. You can’t kill yourself. No matter how much you may hate living. Just doesn’t work. Going out like a selfish coward. That kind of thinking is just another part of the shit piling up on ponies. The bad ones are greedy, the ones who grow a conscience off themselves.”

“Anyone ever tell you that when you’re sober, you’re painfully sober?” I ventured, my concern fought with annoyance over determining just how I felt about Two-Shot’s ramblings.

Two-Shot’s chuckle was as disdainful as it was amused. “Happens when you’ve smoked, shot, and shorted everything you could get your hooves on. Takes a lot to fly and when you aren’t it gives you a lot of time to think about shit. And how shitty that shit is.”

“How are you not dead? I haven’t seen you actually take anything since Manehattan? Every junkie I’ve ever known would be foaming at the mouth by now.”

“Might be because I’m not a junkie.” Two-Shot’s reply was terse, but without anger.

“Go on.”

“Not much to go on. I just don’t get addicted.” He shrugged his shoulder to take attention away from the uncomfortable look in his eyes. “Not for lack of trying, and I like the rush chems give me, but I bounce back better than any pony I’ve ever known. Just how it goes.”

I snorted in disbelief, but most of what I’d seen so far confirmed the unicorn’s statement. “Lucky you,” I told him, lacking any other kind of remark.

“Depends on what you want to get out it,” Two-Shot’s cryptic tone came with a look that told me to derail this train of thought fast.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked in complete disregard for Two-Shot’s silent request.

“I mean exactly what I mean by it. Nothing more.”

That time I took the hint and didn’t press any further. We had gotten within earshot of Fizzy and Daisy anyways and I had them pegged for better conversation anyway.

“As an industrial tool it needs the reinforced framework, but as a weapon it needs to be more maneuverable than it is.” Daisy still sat in her medicart turned machinegun nest, but she was now leaned over the side pointing a hoof down at Haki’s “Old Friend”. The more I thought of it, the more I liked that name.

Fizzy’s magic enveloped Old Friend. What was left of it. Pieces and parts lay scattered about the unicorn in a fan pattern of mechanical components. The main bulk of the machine was still intact. It was missing large portions of the protective heavy plating, exposing the seemingly simple cords and cables that made it all work. What appeared to be several of those cords and cables lay among the bric-a-brac about Fizzy.

“Ayuh, but I know a more complex spark spell than what’s been powering it already. With some higher yield spark batteries, we could get more for less. Cutting down on weight needed for power supply can let us preserve protective plating,” Fizzy rattled back to Daisy, spinning various parts in a low orbit about her great blue mohawk.

“Wouldn’t overcharging the spark battery capacity like that make it dangerously unstable?” Two-Shot broke his silent to spin out that happy thought.

Daisy greeted us, but the words had already put Fizzy into thought. She tapped a hoof against her nose. “It would technically increase the volatility of the cell,” she nodded before amending, “However; the chances of catastrophic thermal runaway are still relatively low.”

Two-Shot shrugged. “You’re the explosives lady.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I felt compelled to interject since I would be, in theory, strapping that thing onto my foreleg. It meant I had just a little bit of a stake in the situation. “Relatively low in what sense there, miss Tonic?”

“Quite a few things, really,” Fizzy’s wide eyed innocent spoke volumes, “Active grenades, a cleaning product cocktail, baby unicorns. Little things like that.” She followed that line up with a too-wide anxious grin.

“Not exactly filling me with confidence, Fizzy.”

The silver unicorn sighed and averted her eyes. She adjusted her glasses, setting down all the assorted mechanical parts she had been floating about her. “Trust me on this one, Call,” she told me, “Please?”

I had heard those words before and they panned out then. I broke into a smile. “Alright, do what you got to do,” I told them, “Whatever you two have planned; it’s out of my area of expertise. I doubt either of you would be trying to sabotage me anyways.”

Fizzy looked like a filly on her birthday. Magic flared around her horn and back around Old Friend. “Okay, now Daisy, what do you think about a composite casing modification, rather than relying on heavier metals?” She was already launching into her happy science place over my new toy.

I am not mechanically inclined. I can generally guess and fake my way through things, and I have an eye for ideas, but the implementation is something beyond me. What Fizzy and Daisy did to the Old Friend in the few hours that followed I have no real clue. Once fitted back onto me the chisel felt a little lighter, and it moved about with me rather than despite me. I gave another shot at cracking the planet as suggested and low and behold, there was not flailing failure. Successful test behind us, we all agreed to get moving again. Our target: the distant building Two-Shot had sighted.

And I still hadn’t gotten my radio.

A few hours back on the Postal Trail and the day was growing increasingly gray and wearing. An impressive feat when one considers the general dreariness of the wastelands. The Broncton Postal Trail snaked on behind us, less a ribbon and more a hard packed binding of the ground beneath our hooves. A dipping, lowland binding at that. The hilltops that the ill-fated Equestrian Lane Towers perched upon were behind us. Now we found ourselves in something of a valley.

I still pulled the medicart, though it was lighter with air occupying the space Daisy had taken up. Old Friend, a name I still liked, had gotten comfortable as we put the miles behind us. It did seem to be semi under its own power thanks to Fizzy’s experimental tinkering. Daisy’s efforts to lighten the load did further wonders. With the two mare’s help, I was beginning to think that the impressive looking machine really could give me an edge. I wouldn’t always have the advantage in wit, so some admittedly scary looking brute force was a welcome comfort.

“So there we are, weeks of work trying to find and break into this stable and what do we find in it? Puppets, row after row of puppets. All over the place, just staring at us. Creepy as fuck, but kinda funny looking back on it.,” Daisy wrapped up an anecdote from her and Two-Shot’s earlier mercenary work. “But boy did I want to find that ghoul and give him a ride on the end of my side gun.” Her words were harsh but she was laughing all the same.

“So what did you do about the stuff down there?” Fizzy asked.

“Oh, we did what everypony before us did. Signed our names in a little book by the door, locked it right back up and started talking loudly in every bar and watering hole in the west,” Daisy barked out laughing. “If the names in that book were telling the truth, we weren’t the first, and we damn well weren’t going to be the last to get duped into going down there.”

We all laughed, but I couldn’t blame her. Being fooled into descending into a Stable that could hold who knew what with the promise of wealth and only finding puppets. I had to take stock of the creative method of revenge. I liked that idea and figured I could steal it in the future.

We were so wrapped up in our trading stories and poking fun at one another that we almost missed it when Two-Shot finally spoke up from behind. “Two coming up from behind,” he told us. He hit the dirt, his horn glowed and a white haze clouded his eyes while his rifle swung in the air, pointing to the hill behind us. A stray tendril of telekinetic force slid an inhaler made out of a bottle and some straws out of his bag. He bit the end and inhaled sharply.

“Confirmed as threat?” Daisy asked in a steeled tone, sidling against the medicart and looking to the hilltop.

“Scorch's gang. Have the mark I saw at the hotel,” Two-Shot’s response was immediate and steadied for speaking around an inhaler.

“Waste them,” Daisy said. Not a beat skipped.

“I can’t even see them,” I muttered, trying to pick out what Two-Shot was seeing. “Wait, wait!” I threw myself into the situation. “This doesn’t smell right. Why send ponies in obvious armor?”

Daisy looked at me and shook her head. “They’re raiders. They’re stupid. You know that. Best we put them down from a distance.”

“She’s got a point, Call,” Fizzy sounded distracted. Looking over, I could see why. She was already working on one of those sack bombs she had made back at the hotel.

Two-Shot started muttering to himself. “Two little ponies, sighted by my gun.”

“I know, I know. They’re stupid, but Scorch isn’t. This is just too easy. I don’t give a fuck about those two, just think they might be being used, not actually working for Scorched Earth.”

“One stuck his out.” Two-Shot’s gun boomed. “Then there was one.”

“Even if they are, any pawn of his is a danger to us,” Daisy said. She hadn’t flinched or seemed to care about the shot. Odd enough, none of us did. We just kept on talking around it. “Do you think he’d just waste supplies like armor? Come on, Call, think.”

“One little pony, turning tail to run.”

“It really does make more sense,” I admitted. “Hadn’t thought about it like that. Fuck them.”

A little beep and Fizzy trotted from the side of the road. “Bomb set. Any other pony tries to follow us up here they’re in for a nasty surprise.”

“He didn’t flee fast enough.” Bang. “And then there was none.”

Fizzy frowned. “I’ll go disarm the charge.” She sounded disappointed at the whole course of events.

Two-Shot stood back on his hooves. “Nice poem,” I told him, turning to get the medicart moving again.

“I paraphrased a little,” the sniper quipped, looking amused. He tossed the spent inhaler to the side of the road and smiled in a way that didn’t make him look just a little unhinged at all. “Let’s go, anything within a mile can be in my sights. Let’s go. Chop-chop. We’re wasting time when we could be sitting pretty in a new building.”

Daisy and I exchanged glances. We shrugged, synchronized. “He’s better to have around like this,” she told me like a parent trying to make excuses for an excitable colt.

“I’m not about to argue with you on that one, Daisy. I’m more worried about what happens when we run out.”

“He doesn’t have the same reactions most other ponies do. I don’t get it, but I’ve seen him mainline stampede like a fiend and come out of it like it was nothing, He just gets a little depressed.”

I nodded, walking along and speaking quietly to Daisy as to keep Two-Shot from overhearing. I caught Fizzy’s ear twitch, she was listening in, but she seemed to prefer remaining mum for now. “That’s what I’m talking about. I’ll overlook it all, just want to keep him in chems if it’ll keep us from having to deal with morose the wonder sniper.”

“Then we agree,” Daisy spoke with a sly glint in her eye. It faded to a distantly sorrowful smile. “I just don’t want him to hurt more than he already does. I don’t care what I have to do to make that happen.”

The look in Daisy’s eyes as she spoke, a look of pure iron, spoke volumes on how serious she was about Two-Shot. I looked over to the small white unicorn. He was walking backwards, keeping an eye on the horizon behind us. It struck me just how easy it was to confuse Two-Shot for a mare. I told Daisy as much. She laughed and agreed. I knew then just how much he meant to her.

“How’s he feel about you?” I asked after a pang of concern rippled up my spine.

“Why do think I love him so much?” She answered my question with her own, and raised me a coy eyebrow.

“That’s what I thought.” I looked didn’t crane my neck to see Two-Shot again. I was right earlier, he would look out for us. I was probably insane for trusting a pony like that, but then again, I talk to my radio. Who am I to judge?

There was a town in front of the radio station. Emphasis on “was”. It wasn’t the usual scene I’ve seen a dozen times before, either. Foundations with rotted or burnt timber that tried to hold up walls that fell long ago. Boarded up death traps that waited for a stiff breeze or a bad winter to come along and collapse them. Tombs and monuments to a dead world of dead inhabitants that served as our daily reminder of the class of fucking we were enduring because of them. That’s the kind of town we all usually see.

This was different. This was alive. Again, key word being was. A general store left unlocked, a smattering of the unappetizing old world food left on the shelves. Scraps of paper marked prices in caps. We called for anypony left around. No answer and no bodies either. We took what we needed for dinner, cleaned out the till, and left.

The store was just the beginning of the ghost town. We swiftly moved on to the other businesses. The expected bar was easy to find, since it seems that ponies everywhere will establish some place to wet their tongues. It was empty, scraped cleaner than the store. Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. Two-Shot was upset. We all were. Even though we still had some liquor from the Hotel Haflinger left, no doubt that we could’ve used more.

A few homes rounded out the settlement, at one time businesses by my guess, but converted to bunkhouse style lodging. It made sense to keep everything localized for safety. Safety was probably the reason given the increased number of graffiti tags proclaiming ownership by the Bastards. First thoughts were either the Bastards had the most direct real estate marketing scheme in the wasteland, or they may have had some influence on the ponies here. I doubted they were the reason for the sudden vanishing. The hospital pharmacy suggested that, as a group, the Bastards were none too concerned with tidying up after a visit.

“This is incredibly suspicious,” Fizzy spoke in hush tones, like she were in a crypt. In a sense, we all felt that way.

“I didn’t know a place could be aggressively deserted,” I voiced my own growing disdain and unease.

“Fuck this place and fuck whatever ghost story it comes from,” Two-Shot verbally spat on the fear the ghost town tried so hard to cultivate. He had broken into and nearly sucked down one of the final bottles of his finest. The nearly pure grain alcohol was quick to serve its master. “We’ve been walking all day and I want to get on dinner. I’m thinking soaking that old can of beans in whiskey, and tossing in some dried radhog. No garnish but we ain’t exactly eating fancy.”

I struggled to decide what I liked best about having Two-Shot around. Being a talented shot and an experienced gunman made him great to have around in a firefight. However, that he really could cook counted in many tasty ways.

Let it be known that food is a great motivator. Creepiness, wonder, and mystery of a town with a population that packed up and left with nary a note mattered little to begin with and we were losing concern quickly.

The broadcast building was easy to find. The big antenna was hard to miss. I was expecting the building to be as deserted as the rest of the town. The street outside did not disappoint. It was a squat building with few features. Only a sign, part of one, decorated the building. A big red letter W, a big red letter O, and a similar letter L remained of the façade.

“Our fortress awaits,” I waved an overacted hoof towards the doors, bidding the others ahead of me. I still had to get out of the medicart harness. Daisy helped while Fizzy and Two-Shot went inside to secure the lobby. Deserted town or not, we needed to be cautious.

Two-Shot’s sudden peals of laughter caught my attention mid way through unhitching. “Hey, remember to watch out for Fluffikins. There’s a note up here giving us fair warning.”

A larger sigh could not have been heaved. “Watch out, Two-Shot. That’s a sign of a pony who thinks they’re funny. I bet you ten caps that Fluffikins is some sort of battle robot or psychotic radgator.”

“Sucker’s bet!” the unicorn shouted back to me. His revolver glowed white and floated out of the holster. He spun it in the air and laughed. “Anyways, now I’m counting on it.”

Two-Shot gave the door a heavy push, sending the doors wide open. He shot Fizzy a grin that encroached on mania. “Let’s go have some fun, boom-girl,” he said, leading her into the darkened lobby.
Daisy and I were inside shortly behind Fizzy and Two-Shot. I was already wearing Old Friend, and Daisy was so familiar with her battle saddle, remounting the gun was foal’s play. The sniper and the mad bomber had the good grace to wait for us. The office was, not to put to fine a point on it, boring. Seats and cushions sitting and waiting for ponies to sit and wait upon them lined drab yellow walls. A secretarial desk sat at the far end of the room. It wasn’t an impressive or ostentatious desk, just a desk that was content to fit the description and duty of a desk without seeking to improve upon being a desk. A non-working terminal sat on the desk, doing nothing.

There was, however, a sound. “Do you hear that?” Two-Shot asked, leaned against the wall near the only door that wasn’t the way we came or marked RESTROOM. “Sounds like somepony talking in there.”

The rest of us responded with a trio of nods. We craned our necks, piled close to one another and strained our ears to listen. The words were indistinct, but we could tell it was a voice speaking in a set pattern. A voice that seemed to be repeating himself.

“Sounds like a loop,” ventured Fizzy. “This is a broadcast station. Maybe somepony rigged a recording to play over the radio.”

We all took a moment to realize the obvious and just how silly we were being. Sheepish looks passed around and Two-Shot took first move to push the door open.

The door opened without a sound. The old radio station bullpen confronted us. The rearranged desks lay on their sides, stacked into a makeshift barricade. The entire wall served was bait, making me wonder what was so important the residents needed to keep us out. A look to the left gave us stairs going upwards. Since right just lead to a wall, our options appeared limited.

Do you grow weary of the harshness of the world? Tired of the violence? Of starvation? Of suffering? Do you long for a better day?

All of us alerted to the words coming from the stairs. The speaker’s voice was soft and slow, but inviting. The kind of voice a well-worn pillow has. It couldn’t force you to listen, but it was damned enticing.

If you do, then I humbly ask you to come to Dancer, a place where the world as it was, as it should be, lives again. Walk grounds without raiders, without slavers, without fear. Grounds filled only with the smiling faces of your friends and family. Work and play amongst your fellow ponies without heartache and without sorrow. Live, and love freely, knowing that all is well. It is what I wish to give you, to give Equestria.

It was a good line, but none of us were buying it. At least I hoped not. I wasn’t. I had to admit, though, it did sound good, just impossible.

You might ask yourself, “Who is this pony that offers the impossible?” My name is Stardust. I have founded Dancer in order to bring a little of the civility, the honor, and the love of old Equestria back to this land. Dancer is open to any pony who seeks refuge and a better life. If you wish for more, even if you simply wonder how it could be, come to Dancer. Taste old Equestria and live anew.

The track ended and picked up from the beginning. After a moment we all snapped out of the dull stupor we wandered into. Fizzy and I shared a look and a nod. “We’re going to check on that sound. You guys good with checking down here?” I asked Daisy and Two-Shot.

The pair nodded. Together they were a well-oiled machine. Fizzy was at a disadvantage in close quarters, provided she didn’t want to detonate herself with her target. I, meanwhile, was in my element. Not that I was itching to test out Old Friend in the field, but I was more comfortable in a place where I could out think danger and keep it close at hoof.

I took the lead, Fizzy at my back. We rounded the top of the stairs. The short hallway was in better condition than many places in the waste. Not clean and shiny, not by a long shot, but it was maintained. No signs of life, though, and we kept on moving.

There was a door to our right. Next to the door was a large window. I peered inside. Radio equipment lined the wall, a large soundboard blinked, still receiving power from nearby cache of spark batteries hot-wired to the broadcaster.

“Think you could tear that apart for supplies?” I looked back to Fizzy. She responded with a simple nod and a face that seemed to ask me if I’d forgotten who she was.

She split off from me, going inside the sound room. For a moment, I watched her get to work stripping the equipment for parts. Then I went back to searching the floor. There was only one other door I could see up hear in this sort of broadcast nest. Shouldn’t take long at all.

I was right, it didn’t take long. The tiny studio room housed little more than the equipment needed for the DJ to do his job.

There was also the matter of the body of a unicorn. She was against the wall, propped in an awkward sitting position. She stared straight ahead with only one eye, the other reduced to a pulpy hole. A pistol lay by her side along with several spent syringes and, more interestingly, a note. I stepped over her, with respect, to see what she had to say.

Echoes and gaps, the note read, I see echoes of the gap. Are they in the gaps or because of them? I can’t tell. I was taught. I know the lesson. I can’t remember the point. Faith in danger. I can’t live by it. Life just bugs me.

That note got me nowhere. I let the paper fall to the ground and looked over to a curious looking device on the floor. It was a battle saddle. Not like others, though. Mostly because it wasn’t being used as a gun mount. Instead, it had what looked like a ham radio on one side, and a cut down transmitter complete with antenna on the other. Most notable, though, was that it was the source of Stardust’s voice. My love affair with radios paid off. I could recognize broadcast equipment when I saw it. The bastard may be shilling a hill of beans with his old Equestria pitch, but he had radio transceivers. He had a portable broadcast station.

Correction: I had a portable broadcast station.

I did a happy dance at this pot of gold. No mean feat given that I was wearing Old Friend. It may have been a little disrespectful to the dead mare in the room but I thought she had more pressing issues on her mind.

First thing I did after the dance was take Stardust off the airwaves. A tap of the hoof and the frequency was all mine. Cramped as it was, I wriggled my way into the saddle and hoisted it onto my back. Then I took it off, learned to breathe again and adjusted the fitting for a pony larger than a mid-sized mare.

“Fizzy! Look what I got!” I called out with giddy anticipation that travels with discovery.

It was a massacre. Pieces and parts everywhere. Wires, connectors, arcane charge fuses strewn about the room in like piles. A cataloging system that seemed to take cues more from predation than politeness. My new radio wept for its kin.

“What’s that?” Fizzy asked. A stray cable draped over her nose in front of her glasses. She paid it no heed. “Oh!” She noticed, eyes widening as she cooed in interest.

I explained what I had already figured out from the DJ booth. She would have known that had she bothered to look further than gutting electronics for parts but she had worked fast and what she claimed was good for use or barter. So a bit of ignoring the big glass wall could be excused. Her best estimate was that my new gadget didn’t have fantastic range, or else Stardust wouldn’t be using this station to pump his advertising. I didn’t care as long as it was any range. I was just happy to have it.

“Guys!” A shout from below, a shout from Two-Shot, cut the conversation short. “We found Fluffikins!”

A staccato racket of bursting gunfire sounded off below. Fizzy and I ran for the stairs. I saw a can grenade hover beside my friend. I took Old Friend’s starter in my mouth.

I hit the landing and stopped in my tracks. For one thing, the broadcaster was heavy. Unlike Old Friend, it was dead weight, unpowered and far from lightened. I stopped to slough it off, not seeing as Fizzy pinged her grenade off the wall and down at the formerly walled off bullpen. I stopped, realizing the difference, and looked where the desks were.

The now splintered wall of desks was meant to keep something in, not keep us out. That something was the biggest and strangest looking radscorpion I had ever seen. A was big, bigger than our medicart big and its carapace was a sickly yellow-white color. The way the thing moved was far from sickly. Massive claws snapped, lashing out at the lobby door. It couldn’t fit through the pony sized doorway. The way the claws were cracking and snapping at the wall made me doubt the hole would remain pony sized for very long.

Gunfire whipped like infernal hail through the doorway. The steady bass chug of Daisy’s machinegun played high-speed metronome to the slower but higher pitched crack of Two-Shot’s heavy revolver. The shots all punctuated with the inclusion of Fizzy’s grenade.

Yet little of it seemed to be having much effect on Fluffikins. Several of the shots rebounded off the armored hide of the behemoth, only a few struck the soft spots. It was enough to hold the beast at bay, but how long their ammunition would last was another story.

Fluffikin’s claw, the one nearest to Fizzy and I, finally jammed purchase in the wall. Its vice like claw cracked the wood and plaster. The door began to creak and crumble. The massive tail struck out, embedding itself in the wall. The creature struggled for a moment, trying to pull its tail free.

I took the opportunity and leapt for the claw. My teeth bit down on the starter and Old Friend woke from its slumber. I landed, no, I stomped my forehooves down on the claw. It took my weight as though I were nothing. It didn’t take Old Friend the same way. The industrial tool was made for demolition and demolish it did. The chisel punched in and out, cutting and pounding away at the thick carapace. Pale green ichor flew from the increasingly larger hole I cut into the creature. I pulled my hoof up to stop again and again, drilling holes in the giant scorpion.

A shudder rippled through the radscorpion. The claw stopped moving and for a moment, so did the rest of Fluffikins. Gunfire still rampaged from the lobby, thudding heavily against the carapace. I don’t know if it’s possible for a scorpion to scream, but I swear that this one did. We had it on the ropes.

Then it freed its tail. I looked up at the wickedly curved stinger. Tipped with a poison that would kill any pony if the impalement didn’t do the job first. It was coming for me and I knew that it would. I was the only target, and here I was right next to its recently obliterated claw. I was a sitting duck.

“Call!” I heard a shout. I looked. Fizzy had a funny looking bundle of wires and spark batteries whipping wildly above her head. She let the thing fly for the scorpion. It spun in the air, spreading out as the cluster of batteries all tried to fly in separate directions. The tail lashed out, catching the bundle in mid flight. The bundle wrapped around the tail and made a shrill beeping sound.

What happened next made me note that I should ask Fizzy about just what she did to power the thing on my arm. I had never seen an explosion as colorfully pretty and incredibly frightening as this one before. One went off first, blowing into a great sphere of crackling green magic. This set off the others. White, purple, gold, all flares of magic stored for nothing but power being expending in a fiery rainbow of death. The force and energy glittered and reflected in the air for only a moment, sending a tangible ripple of power cascading over the station. Then it all died out, fading to a silence made greater by the prior cacophony.

I rolled over to find Fizzy. The force of the explosion and my surprise had sent me tumbling back to the stairs. She looked placid, smiling to herself in a deeply satisfied way. Turning her head to look at me, she knocked her glasses back on kilter.

“You okay?” I ventured.

“Ayuh,” she said, nodding. She looked to the smoking crater that was once Fluffikins and she gave a happy little sigh.

I lay on my back a little longer, watching Fizzy. I thought she was humming. Either that or my ears were buzzing. Scrambling, I managed to get back to my hooves and left Fizzy to contemplate destruction while I checked on Daisy and Two-Shot.

“Hey guys, did I call it or what?” I stopped in the doorway. Two-Shot was nuzzling Daisy. She was on her side, but I couldn’t see much her with Two-Shot in the way. My heart sank for a moment, until I saw her leg move. She hissed. In pain but alive was better than dead.

I stepped into the lobby and knocked aside Two-Shot’s revolver. I looked at the gun for a moment, and his similarly discarded sniper rifle. The sight gave me pause. Two-Shot was still with Daisy, engrossed with her. Looking closer, I saw the faint edge of a magic barrier bubble that surrounded the pair.

I left them, let them have their moment and went back out to the bullpen. Fizzy had gotten over her distraction and greeted me at the bottom of the stairs.

“They need a little time,” I told her. She gave me a puzzled look so I corrected myself, “Personal stuff. They should get some alone time.” Fizzy nodded at the clarification and gave me some help getting the radio saddle back on.

We gave Two-Shot and Daisy a few minutes before growing bored enough that it outweighed our politeness. Daisy had moved to some of the old lobby seats, propped up on her side. Two-Shot was not far off, looking over their guns.

“Thanks guys,” Daisy thanked us with a grin. The grin turned into a grimacing wince. “You saved our asses there,” she spoke through gritted teeth.

“What’s hurt?” Fizzy asked, already half way to the door for the medicart and our supplies. “I’ll get your something for it.”

“Nothing new,” Daisy claimed while hissing through a sigh. “My gun just has a lot of kick to it, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. It’s not going to keep me down.”

Fizzy paused briefly at the words but decided better on it and went outside for the medical supplies anyways.

The next hour or so was not so much a blur of activity as a slow, trudging smear. Two-Shot managed to construct dinner from detritus yet again, making me more than a little jealous of the drunkard’s ability to fill our stomachs. Daisy rested for the most part, I suspect the force of her gun’s recoil did a number on her already punched up insides. It made me nervous, it made most of us nervous, but none of us wanted to voice it out of fear. Fizzy and I spent the time tinkering with the radio and eventually found a working configuration.

In that time, night fell outside, our only light the small fire we made from the remains of shattered desk and old paper. I sat away from the others, mussing about with the various switches on the radio. Behind me, Fizzy quietly snored in the dancing light of the flames. Two-Shot and Daisy were together among their amassed cushion supply. Me, I was ostensibly on fire-duty. There were other things on my mind though.

I looked at the recollector that spun around my forehoof, thinking to myself. I looked at the transceiver. The tiny click as I hit the switch was a melodic twinkle in my ear. I pulled the swivel-mounted microphone around to me.

“Hello wasteland, this is Curtain Call speaking.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note

Friday night show, ladies and gents. Hope you guys are still enjoying the return. We'll be getting to new material soon enough. Just be patient and remember how we all got there. After all, the journey matters more than the destination.

Unless the destination has ice cream. That's way more important.

R.B.

Bastards

Chapter 8: Bastards
“We all get by with a little help from our friends.”

There I stood, dressed tip to tail in the slickest suit Manehattan had ever seen. It was midnight black to make my coat stand out and my mane pop. There was even a little gloss to the fabric. No real reason, just that everypony likes a little bit of shiny now and again. Right there on top of my head was one of those hats from before the war. It was made of straw, flat on the top, and had a little band around it. It didn’t go with my suit one little bit, but damn it if that wasn’t the whole point. I looked good, I felt good, and I had two gorgeous mares at my side.

To my right stood Summer Bounty, the tradesmare and long standing guest star when the good dreams rolled around. The little red and yellow number she wore gave the fireball of a mare an appearance to suit her personality. She went and leaned against me, smiling and look up to me, content as could be. She still had that air about her that she wanted to sell me something. It was a dream, not a fantasy.

This time, this dream, was just a little different from ones in the past. The inclusion of a tall, stunning pink unicorn with a mane that was mostly yellow with a bit of white, name was Cherry. She had big eyes that looked right into that honest part of a pony and knew what made it hurt. Even better, all she wanted to do was mend that hurt. Right now, she was looking at me with the kindest smile I ever had the pleasure of seeing.

The three of us watched a glowing pre-war city I had never seen before drift by from the deck of a riverboat. I did not know why and I certainly did not have a damn to give. This was pure. This was happiness. This was all I could have wanted.

I woke up on the dirty floor of a radio station’s lobby using my new broadcaster as a pillow. It was all thanks to a clanging sound coming from just outside the station. I tried to ignore the stealer of dreams and contemplated many a fitting punishment for such a crime. Nothing too extreme, I just wanted to hold his head under water until the bubbles stopped.

Cheery fantasies aside, I lurched to my hooves and took quick stock around me. Daisy and Two-Shot were with one another. She took up the bench while he took the floor beside her. Daisy’s hoof draped off the side and rested against Two-Shot’s shoulder. Looking over, I found Fizzy. She was all curled up and using her lab coat as a blanket. I wouldn’t let her know that I saw the smiling yellow face of Mister Boom tucked against her chin. Correction, I wouldn’t let her know until I felt it was funny.

Since there were only four of us, a headcount was quick. We were all inside, and the clanging was outside. I looked over to where Old Friend lay. There was no time to deal with strapping on an industrial tool. Besides, I had Sharp Retort and for once, I could use it properly. I slipped over to door and readied myself. Just me and the noisemaker. Pony against just about whatever the hell it was on the other side.

Realizing the danger probability had just presented me, I undertook a little supplementary readying. With my second attempt, I threw open the doors to confront the dream thief.

The thief was a zebra standing on his hind legs to pick through the medicart. Tall, broad, he was roughly my size all around. Black with white, or white with black, either way he had stripes. His mane looked like Fizzy’s, but longer, and with significantly less vibrant colors. Most jarring of all, though, was that he was clean, very clean. He also had a scarf around his neck. The wool kind with the little tassels. Strange as he was, he looked very familiar.

“Haki?” I ventured a guess. The fight left me the moment I began to take stock of this supposed threat that I gaped at from the door.

The zebra stopped digging through my stuff. He looked at me and smiled, dropping back to all fours. “I have been waiting for you, Curtain Call,” he spoke in a slightly accented tone, trying for musical yet still somewhat nasally, “I am glad to see you’ve decided to come and speak with me.”

“You’re wearing a scarf?” Of all the things to be confounded by given my situation, my brain chose the most obvious.

“I,” the zebra paused, blindsided by my choice of question, “I don’t think that is very important right now.”

“’I’m tired, and you are not my usual delusion. Humor me.”

Haki looked left and right in hopes of finding a wayward answer. “It gets cold here.”

I nodded. It was a good enough answer to satisfy me. The real reason he wore a scarf was that Haki wore a scarf in one of the pictures I saw of him in High Rise’s memory. I knew that, but I was not about to let my imagination off that easy.

Haki looked pleased with himself. “I am glad you are satisfied, Curtain Call. Now perhaps we may speak.”

The zebra approached, smiling openly, and I noticed the mark on his flank. It wasn’t exactly square, more square-like; certainly reminiscent and evocative of squares and square things. My guess was, given my experience with cutie marks, it was a building. That was the idea I went with.

“You have discovered a great tool, and I do not mean my old friend,” the zebra told me. His easy smile slipped into a frown, as he grew closer. “But I find myself asking, what will you do with it?”

I wasn’t surprised that Haki knew I had the broadcast equipment. I was more surprised he asked about it. That wasn’t standard hallucination speak. I shook my head to make sure I heard him right and then I found myself at a loss for words. “I guess I’m going to give running a station a shot. Sure, Fizzy says it’s short range, but I think it I can get something out of it.”

Haki looked amused in a sort of condescending way. He nodded and looked away from me, back to the medicart. It was a look with purpose, but I couldn’t guess just what. “You intend to build with no plans in mind? What good will you do with that, my friend?”

He started to walk away and I followed. “Who says I need to do good?” I asked him. “It’s just a thing to do. My chance to entertain, to give ponies something to enjoy.”

“Fucking knew he’s a hypocritical ass,” a growly, wet voice crackled from inside the medicart.

“Hello, Radio. Good to see you too,” I muttered, watching Haki stand to pull a radio from the back of the medicart. It’s always nice to see illusions working together.

The radio cracked and popped when Haki set it down on the edge of the cart. It balanced as precariously as a radio that didn’t exist could balance. “Red tells me all the time he’s going to do something good in this world,” the rough voice spoke, “Guess not so much now.”

“Hey, hey,” I stepped in with a glare at the radio’s blinking dial. “I’m not saying that something good can’t be done with this It’s just that I don’t know what. I haven’t thought that far ahead, yet.”

Haki looked on approvingly. “Something to enjoy is good, there are many, not just ponies, who need a voice for good.”

I shook my head. I was starting to notice the zebra’s game. “The wasteland already has DJ-Pon3. I can’t do anything better than he can.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. You ain’t got it. You can’t do what he can. You’re just a foal with a toy,” The radio popped. “Good to see you finally fucking learn.”

The zebra shook his head. The sadness on his face was palpable. “So it seems,” his words were heavy, but as I looked at him, I caught his eye. There was a glimmer within his eye. A hope, a crinkle at the corner that told me the zebra was clever for a hallucination. “But have you not the heart of a good pony?”

Radio did a double take inasmuch as a radio can. “He doesn’t. He’s full of shit. Only in it for himself.”

“Hey!” I snapped at the radio, jabbing my hoof at the illusory device. “You know, I’m getting sick and tired of this crap. You’re always looking for the worst in me. What do I have to do to shut you up?”

“What have you got?” countered the radio.

“And is one thing enough?” echoed Haki.

“Call?” A curious and infinitely more welcome voice came from behind my back. “I could hear you all the way inside. Who are you arguing with?”

I looked back to Fizzy and shook my head. “No, no one at all,” I answered. Turning back, I looked at the medicart and the empty spaces there. Out behind it was light dimly growing through the clouds.

“Oh,” Fizzy’s tone held confusion and doubt. She stepped up beside me and sat. Thank Celestia that Fizzy decided to take today off from being curious.

Together we sat and shared those few early moments of the day where peace still existed, and for a moment, you could imagine yourself in a completely different world.

“Fizzy, you ever think we’ll see a real sunrise?” I asked, reaching into the heart for a moment of poignant reflection.

“Barring untimely deaths and provided certain situations occur that are required in order to dissipate the current cloud cover, and providing those situations occur within our natural life spans then we will. So, yes, there does stand a possibility if not exactly a probability that one or both of us will witness a sunrise.”

“You really have a way with words, Fizzy,” I sighed and smiled all the same.

“Did any of you guys find out the name of that place?” The question I posed to the rest of our little caravan was a legitimate one. I was trying to put together something to broadcast. I didn’t exactly have a collection of music to play. Even if I could do a little song and dance, only half of that carried over the airwaves well. What I did have, however, was immediacy. I was on the spot. I was among the ponies. Or I would be when there were more ponies than just the four of us. And when those additional ponies weren’t trying to kill us. The point was that all I had was the ability to impart the here and now to the area around said here and now. I saw opportunity in getting word out that an entire town had apparently upped and vanished. My problem being I didn’t have a name for the town. Turns out it is a little difficult passing on information when you yourself had none to begin with.

“Didn’t bother to look,” Two-Shot answered from behind the medicart. He had once again taken up residence in the rear to watch the road we were putting behind us. The sniper was doing a good job of it and outside of a few critters; we had been in the clear. There hadn’t even been a sighting of Scorched Earth or any of the Manticore gang since Two-Shot gunned down the two scouts. While I wanted to consider that a good thing, the truth was, not seeing them made me more suspicious than ever.

Daisy’s head popped up from the cart. “Same,” she wheezed as she had been since the fight last night. “Nopony there, nopony cares.” She attempted to laugh, coughed, and hissed down to a weak moan. In the back of the medicart, she grumbled angry little words about uselessness. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with her, none of us could. All we knew was she had a pain in her side since using her battle saddle in the radio station. She blamed it on the kick of the gun. Without anything else, we did as well.

“Actually, I think I do,” Fizzy finally spoke up, eyes popping over the folds of map that floated about her head. “I don’t know for certain, but given the distance we have traveled since Manehattan I think we were in a place called Haven. It’s supposed to be a friendly town.”

“You’ve been there and didn’t tell us?” Two-Shot got to the question before I could.

“No,” Fizzy answered in a matter of fact way. “The pony that made the map for me drew a happy face next to it.”

Sound enough logic for us. We pushed onward. It was just another gray day on a brown path in a world with only the occasional hint of green to keep our hopes up. Thank Celestia I had my radio. I swung the microphone pivot around to my mouth, had Fizzy hit the switch, and I was live.

“From the road to your radio, this is Curtain Call speaking. We got a newsflash for you, coming straight from Broncton Postal Trail to your ears, courtesy of me. We’ve got ghost towns out here on the roadside, and I ain’t talking about the old world, either. That friendly little town, Haven, is gone, baby, gone. I mean it, too. Seen it with my own eyes, too, folks. There ain’t a soul left in town. Sad state of affairs, my little ponies, if whole towns start pulling disappearing acts.”

I looked back and forth at our little group, my friends, for lack of a better term. They could see the shit I was cooking up a mile away, they’d been there too. They knew it as well as I that we really didn’t have a lick of information to give, but I’d be damned if that was going to stop me. Not a one of them looked apprehensive about it. I doubted any of them truly cared about what I was saying, but in a way, I took their silence as tacit approval. It felt good to have. I looked forward, cracked open a fresh grin, and plowed on ahead.

“Current information on the how and the why is nil. So, if you got any inside knowledge to the disappearance of these good ponies, well you’ll just have to let me know. How will you know? Look for the dashing red pony with the masks on his flank and the radio on his back. That’s right, fillies and colts, this is a roadbound radio. We’ll be traveling along, so if you see us, get your news ready.”

Now Two-Shot was giving me a curious look. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to congratulate me or throw a bottle at my head for my shear stupidity. Most likely it was both. I knew there was danger in getting identity out there, it was inviting trouble doing anything to get your name known. I knew there was a safety in it as well. If we were lucky, I could get it out there that we were on the right side of things. Never did hurt to make friends.

“That ain’t the end of the story, folks. Cause stories in these wastes they never end. Things just keep on going. Haven will keep on going. And you, my listeners, can be the ones to make it happen. If any of you down in Manehattan can here this, I know for a fact, jack, that the old city is having a fair bit of trouble with fires recently. Whole town is just waiting with open arms for you. Any of you out there wandering, needing and looking for a place to make a stand, to make something of your own, well you to have your opportunity. We’ve got all the pieces of a world to work with, so let’s get building something special. From the road to your radio, this has been Curtain Call. Stay gold, ponies. Stay gold.”

The microphone clicked off when I slid it back into position. I felt a sense of pride run through me, Self-indulgent as it was, I had done something, taken a chance, and hopefully kick started some kind of recovery for the little town that no pony lived in. Part of me wondered if I should have cleaned up the radio station of the various levels of gore strewn about in our visit. I felt the better option was to conveniently ignoring that little part.

“You know that just lit a flare to attract every raider and scavenger in the area,” Two-Shot was the first to point out. His monotone drone was matter-of-fact and somehow still rounding on snide. “They’ll pick the carcass clean and be on their way.”

“Though I suspect that several ponies that truly need a place to stay will also arrive,” Fizzy leapt to my defense. “Of course, it will just put them into the path of the raiders that also come.” And promptly shot me in the back.

“I’m banking on there being more of the latter than the former. Give enough wasteland and you’ll find good ponies out there. It may be tough, but they can do it. You mark my words, Haven will come back, it won’t be easy, but it will earn its name again.” I defended myself with pride in the certainty I had for the ghost town’s future.

“Doesn’t hurt that it isn’t you that has to deal with the shit,” Two-Shot pointed out.

“Nail on the head,” I replied, grinning, “I’ve always had faith in the ability of others.”

“I hope it works out.”

We stopped and looked in on the medicart. Two-Shot and Fizzy looked in on the medicart. I just stood and craned my head in a pathetic attempt to see what was happening behind me. Mirrors quickly found themselves high on my procurement priority list.

“How is it any different from what we tried to do?” Daisy was sitting in the back of the cart, nose to nose with Two-Shot. “That was our plan, wasn’t it? Trying to make a place for all of us? We aren’t the only ponies out there who just want to live. We aren’t the ponies who just want to live and can defend ourselves, either. I think Curtain Call has a good idea. If we get the right word to the right ponies, we can put them in the right places. We’re out here because of Cherry, you know she would want to do good, no matter the risk. You got that, loverboy?”

A little pony in the back of my mind waved a pennant with Daisy’s name on it. I grinned while Two-Shot took a pained breath. Daisy echoed the breath, but for an entirely different pain. The two looked back at one another and Two-Shot broke first. “You’re right. It’ll probably go to shit first, but no point in not having some hope.” He looked back at me with a pointed expression. “Now let’s get going. We’ve got places to go and doctors to find.”

The tags were first. We had been seeing them since the hospital a few days back and again in Haven. The scarecrows were second. I call them scarecrows but I doubt they were there to keep crows away. Maybe scarepony was a better term. They weren’t complicated constructs. Each one was a post with a skull; the kind didn’t seem to matter, unicorn, earth pony, griffin, even brahmin. The skulls all wore helmets of different style and quality. Some had ornaments be it feathers, horns, or spikes, but all were black with a letter B stamped on the front. The message was clear, “This is our territory, stay back if you know what’s good for you”.

Not being the types to let macabre lawn ornaments dictate our travel plans, we continued. Skull after skull, we passed the scarecrows. Each one looked down the road in the direction we had come, all part of the message to let us know we were being watched. As we looked on down the postal trail, we could follow the line of helmeted skulls all the way down to a large building. The way the old structure looked, it survived by virtue of just being too damn tough to beat. A swooping curve built of brick and mortar, at least what we could see of it. Most of it was out of view, hidden by a hulking barrier made with the carcasses of old train cars. Given that the natural state of an abandoned train car wasn’t in a “defensive perimeter” layout, the sight was just a touch suspicious. The giant horned letter B was a bit gauche, though.

“Three guesses, guys, as to who lives there. First two don’t count.” I grinned to the others.

“Bakers?” Two-Shot’s head popped around the side of the medicart.

“Beekeepers?” Daisy asked. She’d felt good enough to ride sitting up. It made me much happier to see her moving about.

“Bastards,” Fizzy said, finally dropping the map from in front of her eyes. Her head tilted to the side, a querying look to the trains. “But I kind of want it to be bakers.”

I sat a hoof on the steel colored unicorn’s shoulder. “If we were only so lucky, Fizzy,” I intoned with utter solemnity, “If we were only so lucky.”

We gave the moment it’s due seriousness and mourned the passing dream that was the fortress of baking. Then Two-Shot stepped around the back of the medicart. His rifle floated alongside him. “Scouting time,” he told us, stopping by the medicart just long enough for Daisy to toss out a dust colored blanket. The blanket fell about Two-Shot, covering his noticeably white coat and red mane. “Back in a minute.” Then he was off.

It was roughly ten minutes before Two-Shot and his blanket returned. He looked, of all expressions in his repertoire, amused. I briefly entertained the thought that he did more scouting of the local drug and drink rather than the occupants of the train fort. However, he seemed coherent enough when he invited us to join him at the spot he picked out for observation. Consensus was that had to see what Two-Shot did.

I had the binoculars first. Settled in a small ditch to hide my body, I spied down the line, through a gap in the train cars to finally glimpse of the ponies that set up all those tags.

They weren’t ponies. Not all of them at least. The bulk of the tribe, their numbers too big and they too built up to call a gang, was made up ponies but I was counting a number of other species. More than I had seen gathered before. All of them seemed friendly enough to each other. Maybe they just had a strong sense of irony in choosing their names.

“So I’m looking at griffins. At least four of them,” I reported as I scanned the tribals milling about. “Few brahmin talking with, I think it’s a goat. Even a buffalo or two.”

“Bison,” Fizzy interrupted.

I shrugged. “Whatever. More important is how we’re going to approach this. I’m thinking us three go in with the medicart, and Two-Shot stays out here to provide cover in case we need to run. Agreed?”

The ‘ayes’ had it. Three of us were off to walk into a pack of tribals whose idea of decoration was skulls and pointy bits while our guardian junky watched over us. We all knew the dangers we were walking into. We trotted on in with our heads held high. Casual acceptance of death was just part and parcel of the wasteland experience.

Truth was, not a one of us accepted the danger with any sort of nonchalance. No matter how experienced and toughened by the roads we were. I looked around and I could see it. Fizzy’s breaths were quick and catching up to rapid, her eyes were wide and I was certain I could see the beginnings of an arcane spark on her horn. Looking back to check on Daisy, I could see she was fully exploiting her injured mare leeway. On her side, she looked frail and weak, a far cry from the mare I met in Manehattan. A far cry from even the mare that took on a giant white radscorpion. It was a good act, I was wondering where the lines of reality were blurring together.

We may not have been cool, calm, and collected. That was just because the three of us had lived out in the wastes our whole lives. The only ponies who aren’t scared are ponies with a trick up their sleeve or the soon to be dead. The real experienced survivors, they aren’t cool and calm, they’re just really good at faking it.

The entry to the tribal camp was between a pair of rust red boxcars. They may have looked better fresh and new, but the Bastards had reinforced the holes and bolstered the bulwarks. Not that the walls needed much looking at, since there was no gate to speak of. The train cars were spaced wide enough to make a sizeable avenue right into the heart of the camp where tents numbered enough to populate a small town.

The lack of a wall struck me as odd. I wondered why the tribe had gone to all the trouble to build a fortress without making a gate. It was imposing, but there was a nice big road leading down the center. It seemed very welcoming for a group that called themselves the Bastards.

“It’s a kill zone.” Daisy spoke up from the cart, her voice a quiet whisper. “If you see an encampment with one glaring weakness, you can bet that it’s anything but.” Her voice suggested an uncertain respect for the Bastards. The kind that most give very large dogs. You can respect that they can chew faces off, but don’t like that your face may be the entrée.

We walked into the camp under hard-eyed scrutiny. The kill zone became more apparent as we passed through the boxcars. I looked up to find a scrawny griffin staring back at me from a position on the train. His talons were crossed and he had a wicked grin. Then he pointed. I looked. Behind a slit in the car, I could see the faint haze of magically levitated assault rifle. The show of force made its point clear. We weren’t dead yet, but we could if the Bastards wanted.

I stopped pulling the medicart. Fizzy stopped alongside me. I couldn’t see the pony operating the rifle, the tribals that watched me from inside the tent city looked to be about as open and friendly as a bear trap. That left me with the griffin.

“Looking to trade for supplies and medical service,” I called up to the gangly griffin. Strictly business, I kept things direct and honest.

The griffin seemed unmoved, scratching at his neck and looking at the cloudy sky rather than focus on me. “Is that so?” he asked in a twang of a voice. He laughed, or tried to laugh, seemingly unable to produce anything above a titter. “What makes you think we won’t just take your shit and leave you for dead?”

“Because you haven’t already,” I replied, playing the old back and forth game. If the griffin wanted to posture, I’d give it to him. “Besides, you try anything, you die first.” I flicked my head behind me, out toward our cover fire.

The griffin twitched and scratched at his side. He took a moment to process what was out there waiting for him. When he did, he sniffed, looked back at us, and smirked. “Alright, you guys are cool. Wait here,” he told us before looking to the camp and screeching, “Brighteyes, we got two spuds and a sparkler. Order up.”

Convincing the griffin was quicker than I expected. He reclined as soon as he passed the bit and I determined he was more lazy than convinced. I could appreciate the attitude.

“What now, Shrike?” called out a soft bass voice. The kind of voice that made you think of a dragon trying to pick a flower, deep and dangerous and trying far too hard to be gentle.

The voice’s owner came around a tent and the shining light of reason came to me. He was big, bigger than I. Bigger than me with Fizzy on my back. He was also a bison, so the size wasn’t all that surprising. I had met some before, when I was a colt, but this was the first I’d seen since setting up camp in Manehattan. A light shade of tan, he blended in quite well with the dust and dirt of the trainyard. Not that he could possibly be stealthy with a body type that resembled the train cars that surrounded the camp. To his credit, he was light on his hooves, trotting toward us with easy quickness.

“We got two spuds and a sparkler, Brighteyes,” the scrawny griffin, Shrike apparently, said with feign annoyance. He waved a claw towards us so general as to encompass us and all points West in his direction. “You deal with them.”

The bison slowed to a walk, looking over the three of us. The look he gave us was one of off the record approval. A sort of mutual tolerance of the other’s existence. He reserved a withering glare of suspicion for the griffin on the boxcar. It lasted barely a second, however, as he softened to look back to Fizzy, the medicart, and I.

“So you’re armed, I can see that, and you have a sniper on us. Nice thinking,” he seemed to share the sentiments of the griffin. “Not going to let you in just yet, but don’t let Shrike fool you. We’re not going to rob you blind. Especially not him. Dash head up there could throw himself at the ground and still miss.”

“Love you too, asshole,” said the reclining Shrike.

“Anyways,” continued Brighteyes, still looking us over in judgment, “You’re welcome here, but don’t start any trouble because it won’t end well for you. We’ve got some space for outsiders, and if you’re here for anything more than a place to rest your head for the night, you should let me know.”

Fizzy and I explained what we would allow. Ditching Manehattan, Daisy being injured, the ghost town of Haven and the radio signal we interrupted. All wrapped up with our arrival. We left out the details, and stressed that we were only looking for barter and medical assistance if they had any to spare.

Brighteyes took it all in with a stone wall of a poker face. I couldn’t read a word about him from the moment we began speaking. When we finished, he only gave us a simple nod and looked to the boxcar turned gun nest. “Dozer. What’s your take?”

The side of the car slid open and the dark brown head of a unicorn pony popped out. He brushed some of his dirty white mane from his eyes and looked to Brighteyes. A shrug, a nod and a curious scrunching of his forehead told us that he figured we were telling the truth and could be believed. We were dangerous, but not hostile and therefore a comfort to have around. Also, he would like some coffee and a sandwich.

Fizzy and eye shared a glance, staring and wondering as the unicorn disappeared back into his boxcar. The two of us looked back to Brighteyes in unison.

“Dozer doesn’t talk much,” the bison said with a forgiving shrug. “But he seems to think you’re safe. That’s good enough for me.”

“Really? He doesn’t talk much?” I said with mock disbelief. “So yeah, you wouldn’t happen to have a doctor in the,” I looked about for the right word, “tent, would you?”

We followed Brighteyes into the encampment. Daisy gave the signal for Two-Shot to follow. None of us said anything about our sniper coming in with us; we just rather took the thought of his allowance for granted. Further, I assumed Two-Shot would find a way to make it in anyways. His drug stash was still in the medicart.

The camp was open, taking advantage of the sizeable area granted by the rail yard. The Bastards within the compound corroborated what I had seen through the binoculars. A mix of several species made there way about. An earth pony and a griffin were talking tactics over drinks. A unicorn repaired arms alongside a buffalo sharpening metal on a treadle powered grind wheel. An old unicorn mare sat watch over a small group of foals playing tag and wrestling in the sand. However, that particular image was a little less wholesome for the long rifle that the old mare stroked like a beloved pet. Most of them wore some form of decoration. Feathers woven into manes, small bones and bullet shells served as jewelry. All of it worn in the scattershot and visually cacophonous manner that straddled the line between not knowing about taste and tastefully not giving a damn about it.

The Bastards seemed an all encompassing and loving tribe, allowing for the apparent casually armed style that seemed to dominate the tribe.

“So you say you were the one that turned off the broadcast coming from Haven?” Brighteyes dragged my attention away from the Bastards and back to him.

“Yeah, well, Fizzy here did most of the deconstruction work. I just stole the broadcaster for myself,” I explained, casually throwing my friend under the blame bus in case the Bastards approved of an all day every day advertisement.

“Should thank you,” the bison told Fizzy. “That noise has been playing non stop for weeks. Glad for him to finally be shut up.”

Fizzy grinned and my mind supplied the squeaking sound effect. “It was little trouble, we could possibly use the electronic supplies we salvaged from the station as barter for your medical services.”

The buffalo shook his head. “Take that up with the doctor. We just got her recently. Needed some help taking care of injuries around here since the last party came back with more wounds than worth. You want help for your friend, you make contract with the doctor herself. I’m just taking you there.”

Fizzy and I exchanged glances behind the buffalo’s back. This could make things either very easy, or very hard. Brighteyes had seemed reasonable, working through him would have been simple. Now we had to deal with an unknown. If Brighteyes wasn’t lying about the reason the Bastards needed a doctor, then we were looking with an overworked unknown.

My thoughts about the Bastards and the doctor took a flying leap when we arrived at a long tent on the far side of the camp, nearer to what I had gathered was the old rail yard’s roundhouse. A big pink butterfly had been painted on the side of the canvas just in case any pony had forgotten the tent’s purpose. Some past artist, in a moment of tribal expression, added horns to the butterfly. More important than the tent was the orange unicorn flank that stood outside.

“Summer?” I asked. There was no way she could have ended up out here. I knew she was a traveling caravan, and I had no knowledge of just what her route entailed, but I didn’t think she would come all the way out here. Further, she would be trading with tribals like the Bastards. Then again, I never really thought much about the actual Summer Bounty. She was always just a placeholder in my fantasies. Summer was the only mare I was in regular contact with while I was alone in Manehattan.

Summer Bounty looked back at me and her eyes bugged. “Curtain Call, what the buck are you doing out here?” her voice rose with surprise. She looked me over. Old Friend on one foreleg, busted PipBuck on the other, radio equipment on my back and all of me tied to an old medicart must have made me a strange sight. I couldn’t blame her for the slack jawed gawking.

“Funny story,” I gave my best grin as I told her, “it turns out all my stuff was flammable. A little bit of a design flaw.”

The gawking turned to pity. Summer’s face fell, looking sympathetically wounded. “All those materials,” she said in quiet respect not for me, but my stuff. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she added but it just left me with the feeling she was being very literal.

Not that she pitied anything for very long. Summer’s attention bolted toward Fizzy, who was being quietly curious and observing our quick back and forth. “So you did have a special somepony? She’s adorable!” Summer went from pity to avoiding in two sentences and greased with a very sudden grin. I noted hers didn’t squeak. It was practiced and very attractive, but not squeaky.

Fizzy and I looked at Summer in unison, speaking in similarly dull synchronicity. “What?”

Summer pointed an accusatory hoof at me. “You were flirting with me for how long and you had a filly like that at home?”

Fizzy and I decided to encore our “What” duet.

I snapped out of my stunned stupor first. “Wait, Fizzy and I? No, no, no. I just met her a few days, ago. Ran into her after my house went up in smoke. I’m just tagging along on her soda run.”

“Uh, guys?” A quiet voice spoke from behind. A quiet voice that was a solid kick square to the conscience. “If it’s okay with you, I can just walk into the tent.”

“Sorry Daisy,” I muttered so I couldn’t hear myself. “We got to get my friend in to see the doctor. Can you hold on a moment, Summer?” My question made after I already started to walk, Summer wasn’t getting any real option in the matter.

“Oh, damn, yeah, let me lend you a hoof,” Summer offered with the nervous grin of embarrassment. She never got the chance to act on it.

“Don’t bother!” Daisy wheezed. She came around the side of the cart, unsteady but on all fours. “You guys catch up, I just need to get poked at. Only a bruised bone, I bet.”

Her assurances fell on deaf ears. I dashed to her aid, only to realize I was still strapped into the medicart. So I, in a significantly less dramatic way, unclipped myself from the harness so I could catch her halfway to the hospital tent and do little more than walk alongside her. Behold the mighty gentlestallion.

“What?” Fizzy asked, still dealing with social inertia keeping her back a few minutes. She was still deeply engrossed with being dumbfounded when Daisy and I entered the tent.

A wash of rank air spilled over us as we entered the hospital tent. The heady scent of blood, disease, alcohol and alchemical reagents filled the air. Several cots lay about, a few empty, the others holding mostly ponies. They lay stretched out on sides, back and front. Whichever position, I assumed, was easier for the doctor to attend. They were all resting, sleeping away injuries while an apron clad griffin moved amongst them.

“Another one?” the griffin spoke in exasperated tones. “Fuck’s sake what is wrong with,” she paused when she saw me. “You?” she asked, pointing her talon at me.

“I don’t know whether I’m more surprised-.”

The griffin cut my quip down with a sudden shushing. “Never mind. You’re not important, she’s hurt. Get her over here so I can look at her.”

Daisy got up onto a table with some help from the doctor and I. She sat quiet, laying down onto her side. She gave the griffin a breakdown on the past few days, with some details left out. A few times her excuses had to be snuffed out by a sharp word from the griffin. Daisy relaxed after her explanation, sighing back into the cot to allow herself to be poked and prodded.

“We’ll get you patched up in no time,” the doctor assured Daisy. She had the side of her head against Daisy’s chest, tapping the side with the back of a talon. I had no idea why the doctor was knocking, but each rap made Daisy suck air to swallow the pain. This made the griffin perk. She tapped again to make Daisy twitch. The griffin’s eyes narrowed and there was a small tremble in her claws. “Who played doctor?” she asked in that very, very quiet voice that sounded like a rumble of thunder in the far distance.

I looked to Daisy, who didn’t seem to be too keen on answering. Taking a breath, I decided the right thing in the situation was to stonewall. I said nothing.

This just made the griffin bear down on me. “If it was you, tell me. This is more fucking important than your damn pride, meat,” she shouted at me, jabbing a talon into my chest. “I need to know so I can help her.”

The griffin was shouting, and even then, I could see the barely restrained fury behind her eyes. What made things worse was that she was probably right about things. I thought a quick apology to Fizzy and told the doctor about my friend’s attempt at doctoring.

Out the door like a tempest, the griffin raged. She batted the tent curtain aside with a wing and lunged her way over to Fizzy before the flap had time to settle.

I bolted out after her under the vain hope that I was somehow capable of stopping the fight that played out in my mind. I had to protect her, there was no doubting that. I needed her. We needed her. The doctor had no idea what kind of pony she was dealing with.

“You dumbfuck!” Not the words I wanted to hear first out of the griffin’s beak. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you? No idea at all. Just fucking playing doctor. Think it’s easy to heal people because you have your precious magic. Think it’s easy, huh? You dumbass. You have no idea what you’ve done. Do you?”

Fizzy was just standing there, staring and listening. She looked about as emotive as a rock. Not gaping like she had been a minute ago, simply stone faced and stolid. No magic enveloped her horn, at least there was that. So far it looked like that griffin would only blow up in the much cleaner metaphorical sense.

“You could have killed her,” the griffin spoke in leaden tones, her beak inches from Fizzy’s nose. “Do you understand me, fuckwit? You could have killed her. You are an idiot.”

Fizzy cleared her throat and I awaited the boom. “Then correct my mistake by assisting Daisy rather than shouting at me, please.” Her words were quiet and firm, though I swear I heard a quaver in her breath.

The griffin’s eyes went wide. She groaned, looking skyward, slapping a talon against her forehead. “Shit,” she voiced the painful realization and looked back to the tent. “Alright, alright, you fucked up, so you get to watch. You’re going to see what you’ve done. Got it, meat?” she corrected herself, snapping back at Fizzy, jabbing her with a claw.

Fizzy nodded. She kept her cool and followed the griffin back into the tent. As Fizzy passed me, she looked me in the eye and nodded to let me know it was okay.

I was floored. I sat on the sand and watched as the tent flap flopped closed again. Fizzy was the smartest pony I had met. She was a little scattershot and maybe she did a few weird things but she wouldn’t have hurt Daisy on purpose. The whole scene sat sour in my stomach. I pawed at the ground and looked at the mechanical punch wrapped around my foreleg. My nerves steel, I marched into the tent. I was not about to let the griffin shout at my friend like that. I wasn’t going to take this sitting down.

That little spark of determination fizzled and died an ignoble death at what I saw inside the tent. The doctor had Fizzy alongside Daisy, pointing about the patient’s ribs.

“You gave her too many healing potions too quickly. That’s stupidity on a grand fucking scale, you know?” the griffin’s voice had dipped down to polite company even if her word choice hadn’t. “You got to set the bone first, clean out any foreign debris, prep the damn meat before you go about patching it up. Fuck, infection and misuse of magic kill more than anything else. You idiots are so damn used to your magic shit you forget the practical bits.”

Fizzy was watching with rapt intent. Her head nodding, mohawk bobbing as her attention whipped back and forth between the griffin and Daisy. It was impressive in its own way, Fizzy’s ability to absorb the griffin’s casual insults.

“Now watch, cause I want you to see what I have to do to fix your crap. Right now her ribs are trying to screw her lungs thanks to you,” the griffin procured a bottle from her blood stained apron. She poured the contents out on a rag and stuffed it into Daisy’s mouth. “You, bluebell, suck on this cause this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me.” A moment of limbering up and the griffin put her claws about Daisy’s chest.

I will never forget the sound of Daisy’s ribs breaking for as long as I live. It’s always expected that bones make a dry snapping crack when they break. That’s a clean sound, a good sound, a tolerable sound. This was nothing like that. It was a wet, ragged crunch. Sick and weak and the kind of sound that likes to curl up in your ear and stay a while.

Daisy’s muffled screaming did not help matter much, either.

Leaving the griffin, Fizzy and Daisy back in the tent of horrors, I flopped onto the sand beside the medicart. I proceeded to ignore the fact that I had actually done worse to ponies in my time, and very frequently done so up close and personal. There is just something different about it happening to a friend that could make a stomach dance. Mine was somewhere past the pony pokey and into some unknown realm of interpretive break dancing.

“So,” I spoke with my face at ground level, looking up at the still spectating Summer Bounty. “How long has your body guard been a doctor? More importantly, how long has she been able to speak?”

Summer Bounty looked down at me with a knowing grin plastered on her face. “Oh,” she told me with a flippant little laugh, “She’s always been able to talk. Shout, mostly. She just doesn’t talk around you.”

I picked myself up out of the dirt. The comment pricked at my pride. I had always considered myself quite easy to talk with and now this mouthy griffin was going to use me as the one reason to clam up. I needed answers. “So what’s her deal then? Why so closed beaked around me?”

Again, Summer chuckled my concern away. “It isn’t you, Curtain Call. Cutter just doesn’t have a head or heart for business. She doesn’t care, so she shuts up. Not like you ever really tried to talk to her.”

The lady had a point. I never did speak to Cutter. The assumption was just that she was a griffin mercenary and would just as soon eat me as shoot me. “Okay, fault mine,” I admitted with a nod. “That doesn’t explain the doctor thing. Every time I see her she’s toting around a beam gun and scowling at me. That is not very doctor-like.”

Summer retorted with a raised eyebrow, taunting me into thinking the situation. “You’re not an idiot, Curtain Call,” she told me.

I tapped at my chin, almost shoving Old Friend’s chisel bit up my nose. I made a note to stick to using the other hoof for thoughtful expressions in the future. “You’re covering your bases,” I said, starting to flesh out the reasoning. “She’s a merc like any other, but if you’re traveling long distance and in a pair, you’ll want a bigger package than just a hired gun. Savvy, Summer, savvy.”

We shared a smile. “And,” Summer added with a smart grin. “Cutter can’t hack a contract to save her life. She cares too much. I can negotiate her terms and she supplies medical know how and a zap gun. I think I make out better on the deal.”

“Sounds like a good partnership. At least a profitable one,” I agreed. I cast a look over the rest of the tent city of the Bastards. A loitering trio of armed ponies watched me back. “Interesting choice of trading partners.”

Summer exhaled and gave that laughing sigh that comes as the red flag before a problem is aired. “Truth is they found us. We were a ways outside of Manehattan when we were hit. A group of them came by and were very persuasive in letting us know we needed to help their tribe.”

“Persuasive, huh?” I asked with heavy lidded skepticism. “What kind of persuasive?”

“The guns and pointy object kind.”

“That’s pretty persuasive. Let me guess. That was when you let slip that Cutter is a doctor. Use that as leverage?”

Summer tapped her nose. “I wasn’t expecting them to up and kidnap us once they knew, but it got me a chance to broker a deal with one of their leaders.”

“Better than dead,” I pointed out the obvious with great skill, “Good to hear you got out with your head still attached. Assuming that’s part of the deal.”

“Cutter patches them up until she’s satisfied, I can trade with anypony here and we get out with our lives.”

“Funny. They were much kinder to us coming in here,” I looked around to the trio of ponies that were watching us. Counting them, I made out one orange earth pony, a one-eared unicorn, and a red unicorn with a deep scar around his throat. The thought of what they could have been other than friendly tapped me on the back of the mind to remind me danger was still about.

Summer picked up on my concern. She bumped her flank against my side. “Hey, just think, you don’t have a thing they want,” she reminded me, “You’re not important enough to hassle and they don’t need anything of yours to make it worth hassling. Sounds to me like a damn good position to be in.”

“Mutual unimportance and apathy keep us all safe.” I shared a conspiratorial chuckle with Summer.

A messenger cut our conversation short. Specifically, the conversation was cut when the messenger cratered into the ground, showering us with sand and rocks. When the dust cleared, the scrawny griffin from the entrance stood shaking debris from his wings. “Big Buck wants to speak with you,” Shrike told me, scratching at the feathers on his neck. “I’m taking you to him. Leave your shit here.”

I looked to Summer. She nodded, telling me the medicart would be safe. All the same, I didn’t want to put myself at a disadvantage. “I’m keeping the radio and my Old Friend. I won’t leave those.”

Shrike just shrugged. “You ain’t plucking my feathers. Come on he’s this way.” The griffin turned and took wing.

Before I left, I looked to the medical tent. By now, the sounds had died down from inside. I didn’t know if that made me feel good or terrified.

I was not certain what I was expecting the inside of the roundhouse to look like. In some ways I would not have been surprise if it were flush with pomp and circumstance. If it were regal palace of stone to stand opposite the collection of Bastards outside then it would have made sense. If it were a vile pit of death and blood, a raider’s pit of raider pits, then it would have made sense. I wanted something to tie to expectations. Either the pompous leader or the wretched despot, either of those would do.

The roundhouse didn’t give me so much as that. The cavernous building was dim. Most of the light streamed from the giant archways where trains once passed through. The tents located inside of the roundhouse were no different from the ones outside, simple, pragmatic and plain. I approached them first, drawn by the dim glow that backlit one of the tents, and by my guide.

Rounding the tent, I came to find two ponies, one unicorn and one earth, seated around a table with the largest buffalo I had ever seen. My attention immediately focused on him. He towered over me, sharp eyes staring down at me from between a pair of sharper looking horns. When I approached, he snorted, the sound echoed through the roundhouse. It made Shrike slink away. Unlike many of the other Bastards, he had no decoration about him. He was as he was, big, broad, covered in a dark chocolate coat, and big.

We regarded each other quietly. The two ponies at the table did much the same. We stood in silence for seconds that stretched out, took a walk around the block, and came back feeling like minutes. I didn’t feel like I was going to die here, but there was something disquieting about six very dangerous looking eyes staring at me that I didn’t quite like.

The unicorn was a mare. She was smaller, amber colored, but her eyes looked hollow and her half-open smile vicious. Her mane was pitch black and fell over one eye. She had feathers stuck behind her ear. I snuck a look and noticed she had a brick as a cutie mark. Not sure what that meant, I imagined from her expression that it didn’t bode well for me.

On the other side of the table, the earth pony appeared to be more sedate. He was older, age and hard life wore a sober stare into him. He was a dust colored, but his short mane was shockingly white. Looking at him, he bore a resemblance to the pony by the entrance only washed out and worn. He wore an old engineer’s cap on his head that sagged to the side.

“So you’re the one that shut off the radio,” the buffalo spoke. His voice was deep and fluid, lacking the gruffness that I had expected from the giant gang leader. “Then you took it and used it yourself. Didn’t you? It was you on the radio this morning.”

I could lie, but I had the feeling that the broadcast equipment that I was carting around would give me away. Sometimes honesty is the best policy. This is especially true if you would get caught in the lie. “Name’s Curtain Call. Broncton Postal Trail Radio at your service,” I introduced myself with a toothy grin.

The buffalo stood, looming over the table and assorted ponykind. “Well my name’s Big Buck Bastard!” he bellowed. The echo careened about the roundhouse, followed by the buffalo’s deep guffaw. His laughter caused his whole body to shake and tremor like a good-natured mountain.

Laughter was good. Laughter was me not having to fight for something. I could live with laughter. Most importantly, I saw my in with these ponies, and buffalo. “Well it’s damn good to meet all of you. You run a damn good camp here. Haven’t seen one this good since Manehattan.”

Big Buck laughed and the echo ran around the roundhouse again. “Don’t run anything,” he told me. “But thank you. The Bastards are my family and I like hearing good things about them.” He looked at the ponies at the table with him and stood. He began to circle the table. “Let me introduce you. This is Bad Road, brother to me,” he nodded to the sober looking earth pony. “And my little girl, Brickbat.” His walk ended behind the unicorn.

“I’m going to assume not blood related.” My jest made as I sat by the table to insert myself at the table.

“More to family than blood,” Big Buck told me with a deep nod. His voice became serious. “That’s one thing every Bastard knows.”

The laughter had echoed long and deep and the sudden lack of it made the mood settle like a lead blanket. I looked to the earth pony, Bad Road. He looked thoughtful, but as open as he was dour. I looked over to Brickbat but she just looked bored, keenly studying the dust motes in the air.

“Why don’t you and I talk, Curtain Call. I think these two have some strategy to talk over,” Big Buck said, standing and turning from the table. He cast a look over his shoulder, giving me a nod to follow. “Don’t let it surprise you, but Bad Road is a lot smarter than he looks.”

“Too bad he thinks so slow,” Brickbat shot a sharp eyed glare across the table to Bad Road. “We keep sitting around here doing jack shit while he sits on his hooves.”

Bad Road looked to Brickbat, dull and unimpressed. “Deliberation is not inaction, Brickbat. With greater insight into our maneuvering, we can achieve greater success. If we had taken care in planning your last raid, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in now. We were lucky to find the griffin medic.”

Brickbat snorted. “Don’t know why you even deal with those outsiders. Rough them up a little so they do what you want. We all know how outsiders think. If we don’t put pressure on them, they’ll stick a knife in our backs.”

Bad Road and Big Buck exchanged meaningful glances. I was quickly building a feeling I was meant to hear this conversation first. Big Buck was not making much of an attempt to drag me away.

“Simple rule of life, Brickbat, is never give the ponies that tend your wounds or cook your food reason to hate you. Do you truly feel that my actions aren’t the proper ones. If you do than you can do as you wish. Few here will stop you from putting the screws to an outsider.”

Brickbat looked down at the table and bit her lip. “I won’t. Not my thing anyways. Let’s just get back to talking about knocking in heads. I’m starting to go crazy doing nothing all day.”

I looked away long enough to see Big Buck’s surreptitious nod. He was as surreptitious as he could be with a head big enough to rival some pony’s bodies. I could see that this next part was not meant for my ears and I parted from the pair with a nod.

Big Buck and I walked together through the shadows that made up much of the roundhouse. Our steps were loud and growing louder as we put the only ponies in the building behind us. The further we walked, the more I appreciated how large the roundhouse was. There was a strange, alien peace this far into the house. I could look out on the tribe and yet couldn’t hear them. Witness action and activity and still be so very distant.

“I listened to you on the radio this morning,” Big Buck broke my internal musing. “You came from Haven?”

I nodded. “That’s what name on the map said. Not that there was anypony there when we passed through. I take it you know what happened?”

“I do,” Big Buck answered with a nod of his massive head. “Some time ago a mare came through with a radio pack like the one you wear. She spoke of Old Equestria and the work of some pony named Stardust. We had no use for her and sent her on her way. We know she went to Haven. Convinced the ponies there to leave their homes and travel north. All save for the Bastards who lived within Haven. They returned to us as the others parted.”

This was interesting. I hummed to myself and started to pay attention. “That answers that. Still have a few questions, though. Why did you throw her out?” I started with the freshest note on my mind. Back in the radio station I knew what the advertisement said was crap, but it was good to hear another agree with me.

Big Buck closed his eyes, looking in pain. “Why would we care of Old Equestria?” he answered my question with one of his own. “Look at the world we have now. That is the result of Old Equestria. Everything we have today is because of Old Equestria. They destroyed themselves. They failed. There is no reason to look back to them. We must do things our own way, in our own manner. We need to be better than Old Equestria. Burying our heads in the past will not serve any of us.”

I nodded, filing what Big Buck said for further dealings with the gang leader who wasn’t away for later. “I hear you,” I told him I agreed even as I thought about the recollector back in the medicart. “But what were some of your gang, tribe, doing back in Haven?”

“I told you that we are family,” He repeated, “While it is true that many of the Bastards look to me and respect me, as they do Bad Road and Brickbat, we do not lord over others.” He looked for a moment as though trying to find the words for the moment. A large sigh escaped the buffalo’s throat. “Allow me to start at the beginning, if you do not mind my speaking.”

I shook my head, every bit of information I could get would help with the favors I was already planning to ask of the gang. Emotional fulcrums were the basis on which deals could be made.

Big Buck’s smile grew and an all too aware look came to his eye. “I was born in a settlement a long, long ways away. My mama died soon after I was born and I never had a father to speak of. Wasn’t sad about it, cause the ponies in that town all sort of raised me together. They took care of me, but, never did get a name you see. I was, and am, a bastard. That’s where the name comes from. I am a bastard buck, and in case you haven’t noticed, a little on the large side of life.”

The buffalo laughed his old sorrows away. Putting down pain with humor and resolve, he looked out of the roundhouse to the dimming light.

“Could only live there so long. As I grew up, the ponies there were itching to use their bastard buck, their community muscle, as a tool. Told me to go out and run raids to curry favor with some gang they were paying for guards. That didn’t sit well with me. Told them where I stood. Told them with own four hooves where I stood. You may give someone food, you may give them shelter, you may heal their wounds but if you don’t even have the heart to give them a name you cannot say you cared for them. You cannot say you raised them. I was a kept outcast. When I got done talking, I cast myself out.”

I followed the buffalo’s words as I followed his gaze to the outside. We watched the inner part of the camp gathering supplies to build a fire. My host continued his speech.

“I left that town that bore me. I left, searching for other illegitimate children of the wastes with the spirit to survive. They would become my family and I would not refuse any with the spirit and the strength to survive. Look around and see the strength that lay in the wasteland refuse. A runt of a griffin cast aside. The last survivors of gangs and misfits ripped apart. The hungry and tired and discontent. Those who could not survive in the wild and who are refused survival in the supposedly civilized. They are my family. They are the Bastards. Not one of us is master to the other and not one of us is servant. If you have the strength in you to guard the back of your brother, they will have yours. That is how we survive here. Do you understand me?”

For some time, I considered the silence after Big Buck’s question. I looked at the nascent flames licking and leaping for life out in the rail yard. He was attempting to manipulate my emotions, appeal to the sense of righteousness he had thought he heard over the radio. It was working, but to what end, I didn’t know.

“I understand,” I told him what he wanted to hear. “I just don’t understand what this has to do with Haven.”

“Not all of us agree on everything. You’ve seen that yourself,” Big Buck pointed out. Literally directing my attention back toward the lit table where Brickbat and Bad Road still debated. “We do not force our own to remain here if they don’t wish to. Many settled in Haven once leaving the tribe. The ponies of Haven had been allies in the past. They traded with us, and we would protect them from outsiders. Until the mare with the radio came through, and I believe you can see the rest.”

I nodded, understanding now as I put pieces together. I was beginning to see why Big Buck was talking to me so freely. “You need to have Haven back,” I stated, quietly certain of that fact. “You can raid for goods, you can run that road out there, but there are some things you can’t get from raids. Like decent medical care. That’s why you kidnapped Cutter.”

Big Buck smiled, pleased with my summation. “Brickbat is a terror on the battlefield, but she is not so talented at the negotiating table,” he told me, adding in a whisper, “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“It can’t last forever,” Big Buck said quietly, returning to somber tones. “Eventually the griffin and her partner will want to leave. They are, like you, outsiders and we have no reservations with forcing them to work, but as Bad Road has said ‘do not anger your doctor’.”

My eyes narrowed as suspicion dictated. I could start to see where this was going. “You have a plan, and it hinges on me. And, you’re going to use Cutter and Summer as leverage.”

Once again, the buffalo nodded and smiled his knowing smile. “There is a settlement to the north of here with a mechanical doctor in their possession. They refuse to speak with us since they believe we’re raiders who don’t deserve their notice. Our medicine is limited, and we cannot afford more losses. We need an outsider to speak for us.”

“And why not Summer?”

“We kidnapped her and her friend. You come speaking of rebuilding for the good of all, pony and not. Who would you ask?”

“Point taken.”

“So you will agree to help us?” Big Buck asked without a sense of hope but one of expectation.

I considered the situation for a moment. Not that I had to think the matter over, I already had my terms, but it was rude to seem so eager. “You get your mechanical doctor and the two of them are free to go,” I told the buffalo. I was going to stand firm on this matter, no matter how hard the negotiation would be. No matter how long it would last.

“Sounds good. We won’t need the griffin afterwards anyways.”

Turns out not long at all.

“Of course,” Big Buck spoke through a pleasant chuckle. There was always an ‘of course’. “There is the matter of initiation.”

Eyebrows up in the proper quizzical position, I studied the buffalo. “And why would this be a thing we need to do?”

“Tribe doesn’t trust outsiders. May not kill you, but that doesn’t mean they’ll trust you. Difficult to trust a pony from the road coming by with good intentions.” Big Buck shook his head, but amusement colored his tone. “Even here there are politics at play.”

“That’s why you told me all that,” I said to the buffalo. “I’ll go through it. I can’t say the same of my friends, since like you, I do not control them. I can say this, I will go through your initiation. It may be of a different stripe, but I’m a bastard.”

“Then come morning you will be a Bastard, too.”

This time, both of our laughs echoed off the rafters of the roundhouse.

Two ponies fought in the crackling light of a bonfire. Hoof to hoof they beat each other to a pulp while a crowd cheered them on. Their bodies tangled half shadows, they had fought until first blood. Once that happened, they fought again for the sake of pride. The tribe did nothing to stop them, on the contrary they encouraged it. The fight was part of the night’s revelry. The tribe gathered to gamble on the outcome, to watch their brothers in arms beat the tar and frustration out of each other. A pair of foals mimicked their elders in preparation of the years to come. It was sweet in a terrible cycle of violence way.

Not that I could look down on it. There wasn’t one of us without blood on our hooves. In many cases literally where I was concerned.

I sat off to the side, watching the fire from a distance. After my discussion with Big Buck Bastard, I had little to do and the sun, what little we ever had, was gone. There was the fire though. A great fire built tall in the center of the camp. The fire was a flaming centerpiece for the Bastard’s flagrant enjoyment of life in the face of the wastelands. I wondered about it, and about the collected mix of species that called themselves a single tribe. They were killers, so was I, so were my friends. I could not truly see a line of distinction between us. There were stories, and I had heard many, of those beaten by the wasteland. I had to wonder what was wrong with all of us, then. Those who grew with the wasteland. Despite the wasteland. The hardscrabble grass that clawed to live in the cracks of pavement surrounded by tainted dirt. Like that grass, we seemed green. Like that grass, we would thrive as we had to. Such was life.

Moving from the fire, I passed on toward the medical tent to check on Daisy. I hoped that by now, everything was settled and I could see how she was coming along. Not to any surprise I found Two-Shot already there, standing outside the tent hard at work constructing a bottle pyramid. He was currently engaged in emptying one of his building materials of their pesky liquid fill.

“She’s sleeping. Doing better now,” said the white slip of a unicorn at my approach. He sighed in a way more relieved than simple alcohol could provide as he stacked the latest empty on the pile.

“Drinking alone, then?” I asked with a grin. “Cause if you got room to spare, I could use it.”

“Not alone.” Two-Shot pointed to a bottle that had been stomped upside-down into the dirt.

“Good.” My grin shifted to a smile. “Still could use any spares.”

A bottle floated over. I took it and took a drink. It was good, a little dirty tasting, but the warm burn of alcohol was welcome after a long day. I sat beside Two-Shot, joined in on watching the ponies, griffins, and various sorts of wasteland patchwork that made up the Bastards. Outsiders looking in, we took to being apart from them, together.

“You angry at Fizzy?” I asked, assuming that he would have found about Daisy in some way, shape, or form.

Two-Shot shook his head. “Wasn’t for boom-girl, Daisy wouldn’t be here at all. Fuck, if she hadn’t I would have and I would have done a worse job of it. No, I’d be a shit if I were angry with her.”

The unicorn sighed and looked at the level of liquor in his latest glass. It floated about him, swirling the piss colored booze around, fizzing and settling back to a frothy level. Worlds of thought sat behind his staring eyes.

I took the bait. “What’s on your mind?”

Two-Shot pointed the bottle at the fight by the fire. “Them.”

I tried to guess Two-Shot’s meaning, but all I saw were two ponies slugging it out in the dirt. “What about them? The Bastards? The fight? Because I really don’t want another few rounds with you. It was fun, but let’s not make it an everyday thing.”

“No, you idiot. Them.” Two-Shot shifted the bottle down. Following the invisible line, I was guided to the two foals wrestling in a youthful mirror of their elders.

“All that surprising? Big tribals come from little tribals. They have to start somewhere.”

Two-Shot shook his head. “Not that. Kind of that. Are you telling me you never noticed I spend all my time fucking two fantastic mares and there wasn’t one foal about that place?” he sounded offended by the fact I hadn’t asked about such things.

“Completely slipped my mind,” I lied. I just didn’t care.

Two-Shot’s look of disgust wounded me. The pitiful pull from his bottle afterwards hurt. “Funny,” he said in a quiet way that suggested in many ways that he was not talking about the ha-ha kind, “Most ponies, most of any species I know, they’d think I’m blessed by Celestia herself. Suck, snort and shoot anything without a care. Fuck without a thought cause nothing’s going to come back to haunt you. Sure, see me from the right angle and I make for a better looking mare than Daisy. But it isn’t true. It isn’t good at all.”

“Can’t say I’m sympathetic, Two-Shot.”

“Don’t expect you to. It’s just bitching. Don’t want your sympathy.” He took a long drink from the bottle. He took so long without air I was beginning to suspect he was trying to drown himself in the booze.

“Yeah, well.” I tapped him on the shoulder for some sense of contact. “You’ve saved lives, one of them very close to me. My own. So it can’t be all bad.”

“You’re a prick, Curtain Call,” I was told with more love than malice. “I think I just need some time with Cherry right now. You think you can leave well enough alone?”

I nodded, turning to leave the unicorn behind. “Thanks for the drink,” I said over my shoulder.

“They provided them,” Two-Shot pointed to the Bastards. “Not that they know it. Even gave me the gift of filling up my chem stash.”

We shared a laugh at our host’s expense before I found myself alone again.

I staved off loneliness by finding Fizzy and the medicart. She had moved it off toward the side, along the wall of the trains. From here, the fire was hidden and only the crackling and cackling of drunken song were any signs of the Bastard presence.

Fizadora Tonic herself was behind even the medicart. She had bits and pieces scattered about her. A tin can here, a bottle of glowing Sparkle Cola, and a few different types of powder set apart from one another all lay in front of the unicorn. She was lost in her alchemical world and didn’t notice my approach.

I tapped on the medicart, “Fizz?” I asked, hoping to dislodge her from her focus gently. “How’re you doing after, you know?”

I didn’t get an answer right away. The bundles of powder began to glow and fold themselves up, packing themselves away in a magically methodical manner. “I’m fine,” she said, sounding anything but.

“Well,” I tread carefully, not wanting to set anything off. “I don’t think she had to yell at you. You were trying to save Daisy. You helped her.”

“Call. I told you I am not a doctor. I told all of you. You pushed me into it and made me think I could do it. I experimented. As a result, I nearly killed somepony. I don’t mind being shouted at.” She still looked away.

I tried to circle, to catch Fizzy’s eye. “You’ve killed ponies before. We all have.”

“That was the intent, Call. I know you are not that stupid. Please don’t try to make me feel better when it isn’t necessary. Now please. I have work to do. I bought a special reagent from that tradesmare and I want to work on it.”

She caught me looking at her things, “And I won’t explain it until I’m certain it’s a success,” she hastily added. “Now leave me be.”

The words cut me deep. I tried to get a hold of something, some kind of words to help but sometimes words don’t matter. I felt white hot blood rush to my face and turned to leave Fizzy alone. There was no reason to blame myself and I knew it, but knowing things didn’t always change the feeling. I left her, walking away so she could have peace. At least until I spotted her saddlebags in the back of the medicart. That gave me an idea.

I ruffled through the bags, digging through her things with the swift and silent abandon of a thief. Not that she would have noticed if I set off half the explosives I found in the bags, she was busy with an experiment again. I found what I was looking for and pulled it out.

With a light kick, I rolled Mister Boom alongside Fizzy and went on my way.

Again, I found myself alone. I wandered the perimeter of the encampment, looking for things to just look at and hopefully some pony to talk with. Little did I know that some pony was looking for me.

“And the kindly stranger comes in the hour of need.”

“Sweet fuckmothering Luna!” I nearly leapt out of my skin.

A dull, dust colored pony with a voice that actively denied the concept emotion materialized from the air beside me. He looked at me with bagged eyes from beneath the brim of an engineer’s cap. “You will do well of us to keep us out of conflict,” he told me, unsympathetic to the fact my heart was currently residing inside my throat.

Once I contained myself enough to speak, I informed him, “Big Buck already said you couldn’t afford a conflict. I already said I’d help.”

Bad Road shook his head. “He lied to you. You are just one point in his plan. He fully intends for you to fail. Once you do so, it will justify an assault.”

“But he told me -,”

“He told you what you needed to hear to build your spirit. We can more than afford an assault.”

“So how would I do well to keep you out of conflict?”

The dust colored pony sighed. It sounded like the weight of ages. “If we fight, we will win, but many will die. I have felt it as I have felt you. It will come to be. I don’t desire to add to our roadbound brothers. There are enough skulls there as it is.”

I thought about the scarecrows on the way in. “So those aren’t to scare ponies away?”

“Unintended side effect,” Bad Road said with a shake of his head. “We claim the skulls of our fallen and place them so that they may always watch out for us on the road ahead. Reverence, not psychological warfare.”

“I see,” I said with a quiet, thoughtful hum. “Still, I wonder how you knew I was coming. The radio, sure, but what’s all that about kindly strangers?”

Never again do I want to see a pony that seems to have only a vague awareness of emotions affect a smile. “The back of my right ear burned when I woke this morning. It was a sign,” he gave me an answer that answered nothing.

“Okay, okay. So I’m some prophesied savior? Now you’re just laying it on thick.”

“I had seen that I will fall on the battlefield by my son’s hoof and I have predicted my morning oatmeal was going to burn. Do not consider yourself special.” Bad Road showed a flash of anger in his words, a sense of fire and urgency that was quickly subsumed and hidden underneath the crust of a beaten lifetime. “If you do anything, do the opposite. The survival of this world hinges on the ascent of the humble.”

I sat back, eyes wide, just letting the air cool in the aftermath of the outburst. “I’m sorry,” I told the older pony. “Listen, I can tell you’re a little keener than the rest. I doesn’t take a genius to guess that you have a back up plan. Can you just be honest with me here?”

Bad Road nodded, strands of white mane fell in front of his eyes, obscuring them more than the brim of his cap as he looked into the ground. “While you speak with the settlers to the north, I will send a team into position. If you cannot get the mechanical doctor through words, we will take it without bloodshed. Should you both fail, then we will fight. We will win, but we will not all return.”

There was truth in his voice. A quiet and dead desperation. Whether or not he could predict events didn’t matter. I was part of a plan, either the buffer zone or lip service to peace before a war.

“Okay,” I told Bad Road, “I’m all wrapped up in this, and I’m apparently joining your tribe come tomorrow morning, but I hope this is worth it.”

The stallion was suddenly nose to nose with me. “There will come a day when being a Bastard will be what saves all of us,” he intoned with a dread finality, turning tail and walking away.

“It better.” I couldn’t work up a response any stronger.

“One more thing,” Bad Road said before he disappeared into the tent town, “The road of night is long, and you never know where you will sleep.”

Then the cryptic bastard was gone. Just like that. I still disliked well-spoken raiders.

Frustrated now at my lack of companionship but wide-awake thanks to the brief jumpstart my heart had at the hooves of Bad Road, I wandered about the camp. The fire still burned and the party was going well past drunk and into that state of mind from whence legends come. Yet I wasn’t a part of it. I was distant, the outsider, and now it was beginning to lose its charm.

I found my solace in Summer Bounty.

Summer’s cart was by the perimeter ring. I found her using a nearby train car for shelter. She was curled up on a sleeping roll, covered with a blanket. I almost left, turning away but I stopped when she made a sound, a quiet cough and laugh.

“So you’re awake?” I asked, speaking in a whisper though I doubted any others were close enough to hear us.

“Will that disappoint you?” she countered. She looked back at me with half-lidded eyes and a sneak thief’s grin. “Did you want to spy on sleeping mares?”

“Not particularly,” I answered, turning around and leaning on the rust dusted wall. “I find them more fun when they’re awake.”

Summer Bounty rolled to sit up. Her horn wreathed in orange, a pair of mugs and a bottle floated in from behind me. “Since we’re both terribly awake, share a drink?”

I laughed and moved into the train car, joining Summer on the sleeping roll. “I don’t think I’m sharing much here,” I said, taking the mug. They were much easier to hold than bottles.

“Oh, I think we both know what you’ll be giving me in payment for the drink.”

I looked out at the cloudy night sky, an inky black void that if you looked hard enough you could miss the clouds completely. “You mean getting you out of your deal with the Bastards so you and Cutter can go free?”

Summer shifted gear from flirtatious to intrigued. “Really now?” she questioned taking a long drink to give her time to think. “Too bad I know you, Curtain Call. What’s your gain out of it?”

She caught me. I tried an innocent chuckle but it turns out it’s hard to do those. “I’m hoping when you get done here you and Cutter can come along with us. Manehattan’s not safe anymore and I’ve got some insight into something that could be big.”

A nod from Summer. “Good. But it’s a little late to discuss business, don’t you think? There are a number of other things I’d like to discuss. After all, it’s been a long time since we had a night together.”

I clinked my mug against hers. “We got a lot to say; shame we’ll be too busy for small talk.”

Bad Road said I wouldn’t know where I slept. But I damn well knew who I’d be sleeping with.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note

Derpaderpaderpaderpaderp

Negotiating Conviction

Chapter 9: Negotiating Conviction
“Working together is just another way of saying mutual exploitation.”

The morning brought rain, great sopping gobs of rain that seemed in earnest effort to drown the world in as lazy a way as possible. I like the rain in the general sense that I had no fervent animosity towards it. It fell, I liked the sound, and I particularly liked how it had a tendency to make for a calm day in the wastelands. Murder, disease, theft, big things that liked to chew on ponies was all well and good, but no pony likes to be stuck out in the rain. Thus the rain was why our little group of outsiders sat huddled together inside of a single train car, listening to the thud and thunder.

We had breakfast, or, we had an approximation of something called breakfast offered by Two-Shot. Even given his expertise —which still surprised me— with the ingredients we had left he could only manage a weak stew. I drank it all the same. Cutter didn’t partake of the soup, she instead satisfied herself with a stash of dried meat.

“I know it tastes like shit,” said Two-Shot from the spot in the corner where he found he could watch the Bastard camp through a hole in the boxcar. Now, though his angry stare pointed directly inward. “I can only get so much out of the garbage they eat around here. That’s all the flavor you’re getting, so suck your cider and be happy.”

“Think it tastes pretty damn good,” Cutter threw in. She stayed near the door of the boxcar, never drawing closer. Even as the rain slicked her feathers and fur, she remained by the door.

I laughed. Nopony else did.

“So, Call, about this deal you cut with the Bastards.” Summer cut into the conversation. She hadn’t drank her soup. It made me wonder where her food stash was and how I could get my hooves on it.

I grinned, scoping out the others to gauge the mood before speaking. “Cutter and Summer will be free to go as soon as I broker a deal between the Bastards and some settlers.”

“Like fuck I’m going,” Cutter objected as soon as I closed my mouth. “Not while I still have patients.”

I countered the griffin’s snap with calm tones. “The point of the negotiation is to get a mechanical doctor for the tribe. That way you can go on your way, safe and secure that they’ll be taken care of. I’m not going to endanger your patients. Daisy is one of them, after all.” I nodded over to the blue mare, about the only one of us besides me giving any thought to eating Two-Shot’s soup. Healing needed energy, I suppose.

The griffin tapped at her beak, giving me a narrow eyed look of predatory scrutiny. At least this time I felt like an equal instead of an entrée. “We’ll see,” the griffin ventured, her voice wavering where her eyes didn’t. Then she told, she looked over to Summer. It was furtive, or it tried to be, her big eyes didn’t move in subtle glances. “I want to see if it works,” she directed a talon toward Fizzy, “She looks it over first.”

“That sound good to you?” I asked Fizadora. She had been silent since I left her the night previous. I had no idea what she was putting together all by her lonesome, but whatever it was it seemed finished since her ingredients were safely tucked away. More importantly, she still had Mister Boom nearby. That, I noticed.

“I could run some diagnostics,” Fizzy replied with a casual shrug. Much of her attention remained on the contents of the bowl in front of her. However, it was attention in a scientific inquiry sort of manner as opposed to any actual consumptive intent.

“Does that settle that?” I asked the griffin, hoping she was assured on the matter. I was hoping just to get Daisy’ patched up by stopping here, but the boon of having a genuine medic was too much to pass up.

Cutter heaved a sigh and waved the situation off with a claw. “I don’t do deals,” she remarked, looking out at the rain splashing down. “I don’t like leaving patients. I won’t unless I know for certain they’ll be okay. Everything else you take up with Summer.”

I looked over to Summer and asked her the obvious question by way of an inviting raise of my brow. The smile wasn’t even necessary, just a sweetener.

The orange pony took longer than I anticipated contemplating the question before her. “So what’s the something big?” she asked, leaning toward me, her eyes challenging my bargaining position and me directly.

“Picture this,” I started, casting a pointed look over to the distracted Fizzy. “A place that can afford to toss a pony like her out into the waste for a supply run. A settlement nopony, or griffin, outside of this boxcar really knows about. You get first dibs on opening up trade with them.”

Fizzy perked her ears and looked at me. Her brow knitted together and a small frown tugged at her mouth. Whatever was on her mind went unvoiced as she watched me use her home as a bargaining chip. Maybe her entire home, but enough of it to serve its purpose.

Summer looked to the ceiling given the absence of a sky to gaze at thoughtfully. She tapped her chin in slow time, buying moments for her to contemplate the possibilities. “So what you’re saying is there’s an opportunity. Nothing guaranteed.”

I had to admit, she saw right through me. “An opportunity,” I agreed with a nod, “With a place desperate enough for goods to send a genius into the wasteland.”

“Or,” Summer was quick to counter, “It’s a place that has so much she isn’t worth much to them.”

Fizzy looked between us, frown quirked even deeper. “Um. I’m right here,” she started to speak up, raising a hoof in objection.

Summer and I continued as we were. “Either way you’re looking at a gain. You’ll either be offloading supplies at higher cost or able to pick up supplies cheaper. It’s a win either way,” I suggested the weighted points in my favor.

The orange mare leaned back, sitting on her haunches. Her head tilted down and she set upon me with a look of confidence that didn’t just border on cocky; it set up a duty-free shop. “Shame there’s more than two outcomes to any opportunity. Are you really trying to tell me this is no risk?”

I laughed off the rejection of my heavy-hoofed offer. “Got me dead to rights, Summer,” I told her, altering verbal course by way of a shrugging feint. “There will be risk involved. I’m absolutely certain of it. I know nothing about these ponies, just supposition. They could be naught but grifters for all I know.”

Summer’s soupbowl burst with a sudden pop, soaking both Summer and I with soupy shrapnel.

We both looked to Fizadora. She adjusted her glasses and gave the two of us, mostly me, a single snort.

I directed a hoof toward Fizzy while grinning to Summer.

“Point made,” Summer Bounty acquiesced. “You got my interest. We’ll go along, like one big happy caravan.”

Fizzy groaned. She turned from us to leave the boxcar. As she moved out into the rain, she held her head held high and her body rigid.

The boxcar was still for the moments after the aggravated departure. I shared a look with Daisy, both of us frowning but hesitant. Two-Shot was busy looking out the side of the train car, watching something in the rain from his corner. I looked over to Summer, who was still trying to clean the soup from her coat.

“Wow. You fucked up,” chimed the ever-helpful Cutter. “See, this is why I don’t do deal making. Never works out.” She added while crossing her talons and leaning against the wall of the car. The rain slicked her feathers as she looked out into the camp.

“Celestia help me,” I muttered to myself and walked to the door. “I’ll go get her,” I told the others, not glancing toward them before jumping down into the sopping mud.

Wet, it was so very wet outside the confines of the boxcar. The rain didn’t drive on my back, it soaked through the gaps in my barding and drenched me to the bone. I looked at the camp through the dripping curtain of water that fell from the brim of my hard hat. It was an empty world, the rain kept even tribals inside.

I found Fizzy standing alongside the boxcar. Even with the rain, her lab coat kept her dry for the most part. Heavy rivulets of rain ran off her muzzle and tail, though it seemed to avoid her Mohawk, apparently fearful of the Wonderglue resistance. Stifling the laughter in my throat, I approached and sat beside the mare. I immediately regretted the action, not for Fizzy’s reaction, for she had none to speak of, but the ground was very muddy.

Together we sat, soaking in the rain. I’m not certain exactly how long, but long enough to drive the point home that neither of us was just about to up and leave the other. The rain continued to pour, the wasteland continued to waste, the ponies and griffin in the boxcar continued to do as they were doing. Fizzy and I sat, got wet, and sat some more.

“We aren’t bad ponies.”

Fizzy spoke without looking at me, instead staring at a circle she had drawn in the mud. “We aren’t,” she reiterated.

I studied my hooves while flipping through my mental playbook for a tactical approach. Then I looked at the mare beside me and threw that book out the window. “I got nothing to go on, Fizadora. Nothing except that your Haystack doesn’t like ponies that don’t have something for them. With a pony like Summer, I need to turn that into a selling point.”

“Because she’s your marefriend?” Fizzy asked, lifting her eyes to meet mine. Once more was I a parasprite under glass.

The comment made me laugh. “Summer? Goddesses no.” I shook my head, dismissing the notion. “We screw, yeah, but just because she’s good at it. Can’t say I love her. Like her, but that’s it.”

Fizzy looked to the boxcar for a split second before returning to me. “Not bullshit,” she said with a sigh somewhere between relief and frustration. “But why do you want her around? Why use my home?”

“Because without her we don’t get the griffin. They’re a package deal, they’re our best bet and they’re right here in front of us and I’ll use what I have to make a deal that gets us a little further and makes things a little easier.”

Fizzy held a hoof to her head, eyes closed. “Okay, okay. We need the doctor. We can’t afford any bad injuries without one.” She looked back to me and flicked water from her ears. “Do you trust her?”

“Not in the least.”

Fizzy looked agog so I decided to fill out my answer. “I can predict her. I trust you. I trust Daisy. I trust Cutter. Luna help me, I trust Two-Shot. With trust, though, comes uncertainty. I can’t say for certain you’ll never cut my throat, but I can say you’re a good enough pony that I’ll leave it unguarded around you. I can’t say that about Summer, but I can say I know when, why, and how she’d cut me. At times like this, that can be more useful than trust.”

I had made my point as honestly as I could. We spent the next few moments without words as I let her parse mine in peace. She looked away, and then turned away, taking a few steps from me. A moment longer passed before she took a deep breath and turned back to me.

“The Haystack is a technologically advanced facility. Very much so compared to what I have seen outside of our walls. I would suspect, and evidence has shown, one of the few places in the wasteland still capable of dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge. We have plans, but in order for those plans to achieve fruition, we must maintain secrecy.”

“You literally have Haystack in big letters on your coat.”

“You didn’t know what it was, and no other pony did.” Fizzy grunted, slapping her hoof against her forehead. “Never mind that, irrelevant. We need to get that soda because for all our knowledge and small scale testing, we cannot enact on a full scale without materials. Materials we are incapable of producing.”

The skinny gray mare sighed and hung her head. She looked visibly pained at the revelation and it was that look, more than the words, which took me aback.

“I won’t tell anypony else,” I assured Fizzy.

“I know you won’t,” She told me back, “If you did, they’d never be able to find all the pieces. I just wanted to show you I trust you. That I can take the risk. I was thinking last night. You do not have a reason to be here. You are taking threats upon yourself because you think you can make something of them.”

“It could just be a long con.”

Fizzy narrowed her eyes at me, and then smiled. “I’ve played with explosives all my life. Maybe it’s time I tried my hoof at something risky.”

I looked to Fizzy, shock writ upon my face. I laughed, we both did. It felt good to release the tension I wasn’t even aware I was feeling. “We’re getting soaked,” I pointed out. “Let’s go back inside so we don’t drown.”

Fizzy nodded, and we headed back to the boxcar. Neither of us spoke of what we discussed and admitted to one another, but it wasn’t necessary. After all, I knew Summer wouldn’t care, and I could trust the others not to ask.

In hindsight, it may have been in my best interest to inquire about the Bastards initiation rites before taking them. I found myself standing, still in the rain, within a large ring of tribals surrounding where the bonfire burned the night before. Ash, soot, and charcoal had been rendered into gritty slurry that I now waded through and across the way, joining me inside the ring of their comrades, where four Bastards. Not a one of them looked as though they were the type of pony to settle the matter over a game of Battleclouds.

I stared at them. They stared at me. The audience stared at all of us. Not one of us moved, not one of us spoke. Then, from the audience, a voice of reason rose. A voice that spoke up against conflict, for brotherhood and comradery. A voice that strove to touch to the genuine good that lives in the core of all living beings.

“This is the most stupid fucking thing I have seen in a good goddamn time!”

A voice that had the tact of a sledgehammer yet none of its persuasive knack.

The collected entirety looked toward Cutter. The griffin looked back at the collected entirety. “What?” was all she said.

Somepony in the crowd coughed. I looked down at the mixture of ash and mud at my hooves. For a brief moment, a feeling of self-awareness held sway over all of us. The fight was a waste of time, pomp and circumstance serving nothing. I was to negotiate for these ponies, griffins, donkeys, buffalo, and I think a minotaur was somewhere out there. The whole point of my negotiation was to get a mechanical doctor to help with their injuries. A tribe that had, or claimed to have, limited resources was going to throw them out in the name of their tradition. It was all a waste.

That moment of clarity was cut short by a spirited roar that picked up among the crowd. My ears pricked at the sound and I lifted my head. That’s when I took a hoof to the face. The blow drove me to the mud. The thick, semi-solid liquid filled my nose. I tried to cough and spit the gunk out to little success. Not an easy feat when four ponies are attempting to play six eight time on my torso.

Each blow that rained on me struck my unguarded hide. As this was a test of strength, Bad Road had me remove my barding and my helmet. “You go in as you are and you come back as you end up,” according to him. At this rate, I was going to end up a fine paste well mixed with the mud. I know I’m an earth pony, but I doubt that was the meaning behind the ‘connected with the land’ sentiment directed at my kind.

I did catch my opening when it presented itself. One of the Bastards, an orange earth pony, missed planting a hoof in my eye socket. I lashed out, wrapping my forelegs around the offending limb and spinning like a turbine. The pony went over, slamming into the mud with a choked grunt. The splash he kicked up bought me time to get to my hooves.

None of that time allowed me to savor my limited victory. There still was the question of the trio still standing. We stalled for a moment, staring at each other. I pawed at the mud, ratcheting my stare to a glare levels. Add one confident grin and I was ready for anything they could throw at me.

A dark brown unicorn, it was the guard pony named Dozer, flicked his wet mane from his eyes and sent his own glare. When I considered our first meeting I realized that I was outmatched in the non-verbal threat category. His glare did not just imply physical harm in the general sense; it implied particular bones and organs. This look supplied references and liner notes to the techniques behind the pain the giver intended to inflict. I was in the presence of a master, and in my heart of hearts, he had me beat when it came to the art of the look.

So I kicked him in the head. He was good at looks, but I was faster and had him on reach. I caught him on the forehead, just under his horn. The blow drove him to the mud. For the moment, I operated under the belief that it was Dozer who attacked me when I wasn’t looking. The thought made it better that I just forced him to kiss the ground.

A blue-green mare rammed her head into my ribs. The blow forced me to the side, only to be met by a pair of hooves coming from the other direction courtesy of another earth pony. Back to the other side and the blue-green mare’s newest kick caught me just below the chin. This time there was to be no stumble. I simply spun on the spot and fell atop Dozer.

An alien feeling hoisted me into the air. I wriggled, flying against my will. A chocolate colored haze gave me a not so subtle hint as to the reason for my sudden case of airborne. I probably should not have made the assumption that Dozer was going to be put down with a single blow. While looking down and seeing the unicorn beneath me get to his hooves, I realized I was in for a world of hurt.

My prediction came true a moment later. I picked up speed, hurtling across the ring toward the Bastards on the far side. Just before I careened into the crowd, I was wrenched downward and spiked into the mud.

By the time I pulled my head out of the ground for a needed breath of life giving air, the Bastards set upon me. One of them, I think the orange one, slammed into me, rocking me forward. Almost pitched to the ground, I stayed up only through the kindness of two Bastards squeezing against my sides. They kept me up, lifting me between them, and ran. The world eventually stopped spinning and I could make sense of what was going on, only to find I didn’t want to. The pair halted. I didn’t, and immediately found myself flying toward Dozer

When the dirt colored magic flared around my body, I caught a glimpse of Dozer’s look. All it said was pain.

Dozer set out to explain the concept of inertia to me and his lesson was succinct. I stayed in motion until I met a body with greater mass than the force of my travel. In this case, the greater mass was the planet, again.

As I lay within the small, me-shaped crater, I decided to stop moving. Pain throbbed and thudded throughout by body. Blood tried to run from my nose. Stopped by the caked mud and dirt, it instead ran down my throat. The warm iron taste made me gag. However, the mouthful of liquefied charcoal may have helped.

I rolled onto my back and looked up to the gray skies. A drop splashed into my eye. It was fitting icing on this shit cake. There I lay, resting and taking stock of the injuries, internal and external, to body and pride. Hoof to hoof combat was not something I lost often, but four on one was a little much. I was beaten in more ways than one.

A head popped over the side of the hole and into my field of vision, Dozer’s. With a flick, clearing his mane from his eyes, he raised his eyebrows and nodded upwards. He wanted me to get up, but the look had no malice, no anger or wrath. It was a coaxing and friendly look. A sort of expressive helping hoof offered by a not quite enemy.

I stared up at the incongruity through my one good eye. “You have got to tell me how you do that,” I told Dozer, pointing up at the unicorn. Against all of my bodily desires, I lurched to my side, heaved myself to my hooves and then heaved of a different sort. All the while, the world spun around me. Eventually I managed to poke my head from the ditch.

“Come on,” I breathed. Every word felt like they weighed a ton. I couldn’t stop now, and I couldn’t just use some words here. I licked the blood off my teeth and spat it at the ground. I gave a grin, quickly realizing that I had a new hole in my teeth to breathe through.

“Is that all you got?” I challenged no pony and every pony at once, “Cause I ain’t done dancing.”

A whooping guffaw rumbled out over the crowd. The hulking form of Big Buck Bastard stood tall, pushing through the crowd. “Well, well, well,” he bellowed with each great stride taken toward me. “Still standing?” Once beside me, he changed to hushed tones. “Good.”

“Look!” Big Buck boomed to the collected Bastards. “Look at this pony. He walks the long road. He brings an end to the poison spread by those who deceived our comrades at Haven. He pledges himself to our cause, to our way of life. He has come to me wishing to speak on our behalf, to speak for all of us who have gone so long unspoken for. He has come with promises to claim the mechanical doctor from the high and mighty who would look down upon us. It is his will to place himself as the first, to lead the efforts of our survival so that you and I may live to see another day. That is his promise and his word.”

The bison moved as he spoke. Back and forth, he paced in front of me. Every time he acknowledged me in word, he did so in act through a nod of his horns. He knew the way to bolster a pony’s pride and given that my body was currently propping itself up on pride alone, I took all the boosting I could get. It also helped that I was standing in my own ditch; that way, nopony could see my legs quaking in silent protest while Big Buck continued his speech.

“Of course, my brothers and sisters, we will not simply stand and take the word of any pony who claims to be a friend. Many of us know all too well where that train of thought leads. So no doubt, there were many among you who doubted the honesty of your newest brother. I ask you all this. Who doubts now?”

He paused, and silent was the crowd.

“As I thought,” said the bison. He stepped aside and stopped his pacing. “Curtain Call, tonight we drink in your honor, and the honor of all Bastards.”

Cheering happened in the way that cheering does when there were shadows of future inebriation to consider. Loud shouts and whooping cries mingled with the stamping of hooves. Many of the Bastards had thrown their helmets to the ground and used those to sound off. At least, the ones that weren’t decorated with spikes or horns.

I was supposed to feel good, to feel happy. To let elation wash over me when a crowd was cheering my name, cheering for me. Instead, I felt nothing. I felt nothing all the way to the ground. Then I saw nothing, too.

My eyes opened to behold a blurry avian face staring down at me with a quizzical eye. She squinted, looking down at me, and made a quiet little trill of curiosity. It was, in its way, kind of a cute sound. However, that may have been the head trauma talking. I tried to speak, but it felt like my mouth was filled with cotton; mostly due to all the cotton in my mouth. That experiment over, I resigned myself to my fate and looked up at Cutter, who chose that specific moment to disappear from my field of vision.

A flash of light brought a brand new definition of pain and misery to my personal dictionary. The light flooded my vision. Blind, I struggled to keep from struggling. I knew in the rational part of my brain that this was all happening for a good medical reason. The irrational part of my brain, however, was mounting a persuasive argument that Cutter was attempting to melt my head.

“Hold still, damn it,” Cutter hissed at me, pulling the light away from my face. “Needed to see if your pupils synch up and dilate properly.”

I tried to speak again and once again produced nothing more than muffled mumblings. Cutter responded by pointing a talon at my head. I watched as a small bag float above me, surrounded in a gray haze. Then a fresh new feeling akin to getting my head dunked in ice water joined the myriad other aches and pain that ran throughout my body.

“Try not to move much,” Cutter told me while I watched her dig through a bag. “None of your injuries are too life threatening, so you don’t need to whine. Tell you the truth, I’d rather just let you heal yourself, take you off your hooves for a few days and let you rest but apparently you have this big meeting to go to so I need to bust out the magic. Great idea, by the way, agreeing to let yourself get fucked up by the gang that you want to help.”

Not being able to verbalize an answer, I responded with a withering gaze. I suspected the look failed to have the intended effect as Cutter just made a laughing little trill.

“Have the tooth?” Cutter asked whoever else was in the tent.

“Ayuh,” Responded Fizzy’s voice. Something white bobbled in the air from outside my perspective, wrapped within her magic field. So, I was missing a tooth after all. Not missing the tooth, exactly, since it was right there in front of me. However, it was certainly not in its proper place.

Cutter yanked the gauze from my mouth. I winced. “Stick it back in the gap,” she told Fizzy, “Don’t be afraid to really jam it in there.” The last bit she added with a suspiciously direct grin aimed toward me.

“I real—“ I was interrupted by the forceful reentry of my tooth. Part of me wondered if this was, in some way, retribution for past slights.

The taste of the brew that slithered down my throat confirmed that I was indeed being punished by some cosmic force. I made an effort to spit the medicine out, purely on reflex, only to be stopped by a pair of talons wrapped around my muzzle. The strength of a griffin’s talons, by the by, is something to take note of. Under force, I swallowed the bitter brew.

My mouth felt like it was on fire. I rolled to my side and tried to retch, but nothing came from my gut. In fact, nothing came from my mouth at all. Using my tongue, I prodded about my mouth. Every tooth there and accounted for. Chalk one up for alchemy.

“Picked that one up from an old Zebra remedy guide,” Cutter smirked as she boasted. “Of course, there’s still the subject of your concussion, and several other issues stemming from blunt force trauma to take care of.”

“I think I’ll be okay with a healing potion or two,” I suggested, my voice dipping to sheepishness. I disliked the sharpness of the griffin’s grin.

“Oh, I know,” Cutter purred. “That’s why I had Fizadora whip up something special. She ain’t a doctor, but she gets chems.” The griffin procured a syringe seemingly from thin air. “Hope you like riding the mainline.”

The griffin jabbed the needle into my flank.

All I felt was a little pinch and, even then, with the speed the injection worked with, I felt good as new by the time Cutter was tucking away the empty syringe. Anticlimactic, but I never did have a problem with needles.

“Thanks,” I said, lying back down on the cot. “Both of you.”

Fizzy’s grin squeaked. “I’m just the chemist. All I did was mix the reagents. Well, I found your tooth, too.” She floated the little ice bag from my head. “Other than that, it was all Cutter’s doing.”

“Still glad you did that, Fizzy, I was kind of attached to it.”

We shared a short-lived laugh, but Cutter put a stop to the enjoyment with a cough. Giving a pointed look to Fizzy, she nodded to the tent flap. “You helped me out, but I need to do private doctor things with the patient. Think you can give me a minute?”

Fizzy was puzzled. I was puzzled. However, the dour look about the doctor made me consider the importance of the request. I shared a look with Fizzy. She frowned, looking at me from over her glasses frames.

“It’s okay,” I told my friend. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

Hesitant though she was, Fizzy left the tent. On the way, she asked Cutter for a catch up medical lesson after Cutter and I were done. Leave it to Fizzy to not want to be left out of the loop when it came to learning something.

Cutter watched Fizzy leave, going so far as to hold her head poked out of the tent for a long minute. Popping back in, she let the flap fall. She spun and stared at me. Sharp eyes and sharper beak set, she took stalking steps toward me.

“Can you be straight with me?” she interrogated. A quick look around and I was suddenly very aware of how empty this tent was.

“I am an open minded stallion.” Humor, don’t fail me now.

Cutter stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes wide, beak open, feathers all ruffled. Defensive strike a success, the griffin was off her track.

“Not even remotely what I meant,” she muttered while she smoothed her feathers back down and tried to find her bearings.

“So what did you want to know?” Knocking the doctor off her guard left me emboldened. I rolled off the cot and back to my hooves. It felt good, I felt good. That injected potion did a number, and did it fast. Whatever Cutter did during my beating induced naptime worked wonders.

Cutter shook her head and sighed, placing a claw between her eyes. “Was talking, want to know how legit you are. I get a bunch of stories from those ponies and none of them fit. I want to know the truth. So I’m going to the source”

It was my turn to be thrown off base. I considered the matter, considered the griffin I was speaking with, and considered what she had done for me. Down, up, around, I looked about as though an answer would dance its way into view.

“What truth do you want to know?” I settled on the open ended.

“What’s your aim in all of this? What are you getting out of it? I watched all that time, whenever Summer and I were in Manehattan. You weren’t the kind to go help others. Now I see this, and I heard that crap on the radio. Summer says you’re faking. Fizzy there says otherwise. What do you say?” The griffin poked my chest to punctuate her statements.

I looked the griffin in the eye. Then I broke. I looked away, laughing despite myself. “Okay, okay. Truth is, it’s a big investment. I lost everything and Fizzy seems the best opportunity.” I paused, holding in a slow and quiet admission. “And I’d like to see something better in this life. Too much shit’s already happened and I’m tired of it. I keep hearing about ponies trying to make a change for the better and I think maybe it’s about time. Fizzy’s Haystack looks about as good a place to start as any.”

“And these tribals?”

“Investment. I’ve got enemies and bet I’ll make more. If getting beaten up and having a damn fine doctor patch me up is enough to give me an army to throw at them, I’ll do it.”

“So you’re using them.”

“Inasmuch as they’re using me but not nearly as much as they’re using you.”

I stepped around the griffin to take my leave. “I’ve got to talk with them about just what I’m dealing with here. Thanks for patching me up, Cutter. It’s good to know there’s someone else I can trust out here.” I made sure to tell the griffin that with a smile, but I didn’t wait to see if she was smiling herself. However she took it, she didn’t stop me.

Leaving the medical tent behind, I walked to the roundhouse. My guess was that if the leaders of the Bastards, and after the big speech this morning I could not see Big Buck as anything but a leader, were anywhere it would be there. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still soggy. Not that it mattered how muddy my hooves got, my coat was already a train wreck after the initiation. I was certain I had mud in places I didn’t even know about.

Two ponies and a buffalo sat around a table in the back of the roundhouse. I wasn’t surprised to see the same three non-leaders doing their leading. Trotting towards them, I hummed an old world song as loud as I could. I would have waved a banner if I had one nearby. I wanted them to know I was coming, that I was ready, that I was more than happy to do this for them because I was certain to hold them to their word in the future.

“What luck, finding you all here in one place,” I shouted out to the lot, grinning wide enough to make my mouth hurt. “So it looks like I’m going off to do some talking for you, make that us, and I was thinking that I need some information to put this all together.”

I planted myself between Bad Road and Brickbat, putting Big Buck across from me. The buffalo was the one I trusted the least out of the trio and the one I wanted to watch closest. Brickbat looked at me; the unicorn looked unconcerned with the matter. A scowl built from a hardscrabble life of conflict was all she had for me. Bad Road was more amiable in the way that a tombstone is to a circular saw. The buffalo broad grin gleamed; his hulking frame took up most of the table.

“Good to see you back up so soon, little brother,” Big Buck laughed, his frame quaking. “Even better to see you so eager to throw in with our lot.” He looked down to the dust colored pony to my right. “Bad Road, if you’d like. This is all your plan.”

Bad Road began with a small nod with an added glower toward Brickbat. The unicorn looked away, making a half-hearted effort to hide her smirk. “The background and objectives regarding the matter are simple. A settlement to the North calling itself Conviction has somehow come into possession of a pre-war mechanical doctor. The tribe needs use of that machine. The settlers have refused all offers of a diplomatic nature. Their reasoning is simple as it is false; they claim we are a violent gang representative of the ongoing rot that plagues this world.”

I nodded my head throughout Bad Road’s opening. “So why send me?” I asked, picking at threads I didn’t like the looks of, “If you’ve already tried diplomacy and negotiation before why send another?”

“Exactly,” Brickbat cut in, slamming a hoof on the table, “We got to go in there and smash some fucking skulls. Show the creeps around here they can’t dick with us without getting it right up the ass.”

Bad Road raised his eyebrows with the expectant look of a parent waiting out a foal’s temper tantrum. When it seemed Brickbat was not going to continue her outburst, he went back to talking. “Your cheery fantasies aside, Brickbat, I would prefer we not add to the markers on the Long Road.”

“You just don’t respect our tradi—“

“Do not presume to lecture me on tradition!” roared Bad Road. His threw his forehooves on the table, lunging at Brickbat. His eyes wide with righteous anger, baring his teeth, he hissed at the mare. “I cut your father’s head from his body and flayed the flesh from his bones when you were but a child. I lead the raid to reclaim you and your mother from slaver trash. I went back to claim her head when she fell. Do not speak to me of our traditions, child, until you learn just what they truly mean.”

The mare shook. Her eyes, wide as saucers, stared back in shock at the sudden ferocity of Bad Road. She made no reply but to lower her head in silence.

Bad Road backed down, returning to his seated position. He and Big Buck shared a look to one another, solemn and sober. That distant look of understanding that shared pain brings passed from one to the other.

Looking back to Brickbat, I noticed she was chewing on her lip, still looking at the ground. A thin red line had appeared where she gnawed and was starting to stain her amber coat.

“Now then,” Bad Road spoke without emotion, as though the outburst had never happened, though he did so with shake and increased gravel in his voice that served as a constant reminder, “To answer your question, Curtain Call, it is because you are an unknown quantity. When you arrive to speak with the leader of the settlers, you will not be an envoy from us; you will present yourself as a mediator between our two groups. I’m certain you can assure that they have no reason to doubt your self interest over ours.”

I almost missed what Bad Road had said, my attention still on Brickbat. “Let me get this straight, you want me to play up my end of the deal?” the question was purely to buy me time to think.

Bad Road nodded.

“It’s a good idea. A smoke screen. Make them pay attention to my interests instead of yours.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, looking at the air while I drew up verbal battle plans. “I’ve got it. Yeah, this can be done. What do we know about them and their leaders?”

Two of the three around the table smiled at my response. Brickbat was adopting a stone look. She had stopped biting her lip, but the thin cut she made still bled.

“One leader, considers himself some form of mayor. I have my doubts as to their elective policy,” Bad Road explained, “He’s a pegasus named Anvil Crawler. I know, hard to believe. I don’t know his story, and I don’t particularly care. What I can tell you is that he has stonewalled me and any attempts to speak on our behalf in the past. He’s your trouble, not the ponies there. However, they follow his word to the letter, so I doubt you’ll be able to win them over to your side.”

I followed the words with meaningless nods. “Any reason to consider them dangerous?”

“Right now they’re nothing. That’s why we got to just cut them down,” Brickbat spoke up while keeping her hollow eyed look on the table. “No reason to wait until they get dangerous. Fuck it, just kill the mayor, the rest will fall apart.”

I looked over to Big Buck and Bad Road. The flat looks, the nothing response told me that Brickbat had a point to consider after all. “Good to have a back up plan,” I said, letting a grin grow on my face.

“Okay.” I coughed to clear my throat and focus the attention onto myself. “Here’s what I can take away from this. I’ve got a pegasus, which is enough to raise eyebrows as is. He also has a hate on for your, our, tribe and he has a whole settlement that hangs on his word. However, the settlers aren’t a threat so who gives a flying fuck. I think I got this. Anything else you care to give me?”

“Good luck.” grinned Big Buck.

I opted to leave behind a few accessories with my friends before leaving for the settlement. Not wanting to openly cart weapons into a diplomatic situation I left Old Friend and Sharp Retort behind. The radio stayed behind as well, not so much because it was threatening, more that I didn’t want to risk damaging it in case things went wrong. I kept my barding and my helmet since I wasn’t a complete fool. To top off my peaceful, if potentially unscrupulous, intent, I wore a piece of an old white sheet around my neck to serve as a flag.

While I walked through the hills and valleys that I am certain were green a long time ago I played count the tree. More specifically, I played count the dead thing that probably was a tree at one point. When I ran out of those to count, I started counting rocks. There were a lot of rocks. When I ran out of the attention span required to count rocks, I stopped counting altogether and began to think. Thoughts of negotiations, claiming the mechanical doctor, and the cheers of the Bastards upon my return all danced in my head. Cheering, in the Bastards’ case, being accompanied by the high intake of alcohol and a whirlwind night with a certain orange mare.

“You got to get a hold of it first, dipshit.”

I stopped; I closed my eyes, and said, “Radio.”

“Got it in one,” replied the cracking, popping voice of my hallucinatory harasser.

“How are you even here?” I asked, and started to walk. I opted to believe the logic that I could outpace the speaker box.

“Because I have decided to carry him,” explained the quietly insistent tones of a certain spectral zebra.

“Great, are you two going to gang up on me now?” I asked, opening my eyes to see Haki keeping pace with me. He carried Radio on his back. I couldn’t help but notice he was wearing that scarf again and for some reason it still bothered me. “Because if you guys are going to pull that crap, I’ll just make a new guy. I can do that you know.”

“But you would not,” Haki countered, looking at me from the corner of his eye, smiling, “It would not be the right thing to do.”

The radio crackled with a static laugh. “He’s too fucking thick to pull that off. Besides, we’re already here. What’s he need another?”

I looked to my side. The dim radio dial stared back at me. Haki smiled to himself. Together we walked in silence. Two of us walked, Radio just rode.

“Okay,” I broke the silence with a groan. “What’s the deal? I’m going to make a quick deal, done shit like this before. Doing it again.”

“You ain’t going to pull it off, Red. You don’t have it in you. You don’t know what you’re getting into and you’re putting up a fucking screen. And that screen ain’t even for your dupe, it’s for you.”

“Why the hell would I do that?” I challenged Radio’s assertion. “You and I, and I’m willing to bet Haki, know that fooling yourself doesn’t help. What kind of screen would I be setting up against myself? That’s just stupid.”

“He can learn,” Radio’s voice was far too cheery for my liking.

“Lying to yourself, what does it do?” Haki asked.

The zebra’s question struck deeper than the insults. I turned my head from the zebra to hide the building heat in my head. “It keeps you going. You can call it a screen or a lie, I call it hope.”

“You can’t spin us, Red,” Radio snapped, the speakers popping and hissing with the words, “You ain’t going to pull this off. Words won’t work this time.”

“So I just kill him. Get him alone, pound his head in.” The words lacked drive and effort behind them, no meaning. Even as I spoke them, I knew they were worthless. It would never work. There were too many unknowns to contend with to make assassination viable.

“That right, fucko?” Radio pushed harder. “Just like that? Don’t fucking bullshit us, Red. Come on, we all know that’s a bad idea. You won’t win, you won’t kill this guy. So get thinking. Get planning on how you can benefit from this shit. You know that the Bastards are already gearing up to stomp on these ponies. Don’t even fucking bother with their games. You’re sticking your neck out for nothing.”

“You know what, shut up, Radio,” I snapped at the radio, staring daggers at the illusory device. I wasn’t going to take being berated by my own imagination. “I’m going to do this. I’m going to run rings around them. I’ll be walking out of there with two sets of allies. I do enough here, we’ll get Haven up and running again. Then it’s a beeline to the soda, onto the Haystack, and a whole new place of my own.”

I turned my nose up at the Radio and all it stood for. “You just walk me work some magic, and then see if you’re still so damn certain I’ve got this wrong.”

When I looked back, neither the Radio nor Haki were there. I had wanted Haki to hang around. Now I was alone until I found the settlement.

At least I could always go back to counting trees.

I didn’t find the settlement of Conviction so much as I was visually assaulted by it. The settlement wasn’t made out of anything unique, the same junk, rubble, refuse and wreckage that made up any other wasteland town. The difference here was all of the junk had a fresh coat of paint on it. Vibrant yellows, reds, blues, greens and purples bright and lively regardless of the clouded sky above. It all looked so clean. The town was in ruins, but at least it was clean and well-maintained ruins.

As I drew nearer, I saw the ponies. What I saw left me feeling both dirty and yet over dressed. A collection of ponies, a dozen I could see, milled about among the small square ramshackle homes of the township. My jaw dropped when I saw them. Most were unicorn, but more than a few earth ponies to round out the ranks and none of them wore barding. None of them wore helmets. None of them wore radiation suits. None of them were even armed. They were just ponies as ponies should be.

They saw me as much as I saw them. Turns out a red stallion wearing yellow and white does not blend into his surroundings well. I wasn’t to concerned. After all, they were waving to me as I approached. A pale green earth pony approached me out of the group. Her long mane was a darker green streaked with white.

“Hey there,” she said in a voice far too cheery for an unarmored pony in the middle of a blight blasted waste. “Welcome to Conviction, my name’s Sea Breeze. Why don’t you come on in? We’d all love to make your acquaintance.”

I cannot say I expected that sort of a reception. I gave Sea Breeze my name and swept my way with her into the population of Conviction. The initial friendliness shown by Sea Breeze never word down. Pony after pony, earth and unicorn, all of them kind, open, friendly and welcoming. All in all, deeply unsettling.

Sea Breeze made for a competent, if a little bubbly, tour guide. With the kind of civic pride only found in long outdated propaganda, she paraded me past their primary color infrastructure. The town sported a one-mare post office, though I couldn’t imagine there was much business in a town that barely numbered over two dozen and were all localized in a single area. Nevertheless, the mare in charge was kind enough to offer her services should I need them.

Moving on with our tour, Sea Breeze brought me into a general store. The owner, a teal unicorn going by Saltlick, was kind enough. He was a soft bargainer, but I threw the deal in his favor, going high on a bundle of wiring and a partially functioning ward talisman meant for security spells. The extra caps were worth it to ingratiate myself with the public of Conviction. I didn’t have long to pull information out of my new friend before Sea Breeze pulled me away again.

Since I had bought some parts, my tour guide felt I should see their resident repair pony, Redline. Like the rest, she was friendly in that borderline overwhelming manner. Still building a good report, I gave away my equipment for the young mare to take care of. While she worked, she spoke about her love of working with metal even though she expressed disdain over why it was being used in the first place. I found that I couldn’t deny her point.

While Redline was delving into the conundrum of loving working with armor yet hating the reasons behind it, I took a look at her flank. Not in any sexual way, mind, but because I couldn’t help but notice the cutie mark that she had. It was a shotgun. Now, I knew that cutie marks were not always spot on accurate, but I had to think about the other ones I had seen in Conviction. Saltlick had a razor blade, and the postal mare several links of chain. While pondering the matter at hoof, I snuck a look at Sea Breeze while she lead me out of the armory.

When I saw the pair of crossbones on her hide, I was glad for my freshly repaired armor, but I was growing far less comfortable with this town. Too wholesome, too nice, too damn safe seeming, and I had long since started to wonder why it was the Bastards didn’t just stomp them into the dirt for what they needed. I couldn’t make sense of it, and I was growing more desperate to.

“Sea Breeze,” I said to get the pony’s attention. She was midway through a talk about how they were planning for a get together to raise a barn by Tuesday, something about increasing their farm yield. “You have been a wonderful guide, but I was hoping to speak with Anvil Crawler while I was here. If you could be so kind as to let me know where he is?”

Sea Breeze went wide-eyed for a moment. “Oh? Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said in a gasp. “I should have asked you where you wanted to go instead of just dragging you around silly-willy.” She tapped the side of her head, repeating, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

I laughed shallowly, uncertain and uncomfortable with how easily the mare became upset. “Hey, now, Sea Breeze. It’s not so bad. I, I really liked it. Redline cleaned my armor, I got some good deals. I had a good time. I just need to get on with my business and I’d hate to keep him waiting.”

Sea Breeze took a deep breath and offered me a weak smile. She shook her head, tossing her mane left to right. “Okay. I can do that. I’m sure you have much more important things to talk about than just looking around our little town. Of course I can take you to the mayor. Come on, he’s just over in the old school house. You’re going to like him. He’s the best.”

The schoolhouse was a small affair. A small square building whose only defining feature was the short belfry that stood on the façade roof. Like the rest of the township, it had a fresh coat of paint, in this case violet. The bell up in the tower was didn’t gleam, but that it existed was reason enough to be impressed with what must have been a simple structure before the war. The sign above the entrance said “Conviction School and Town Hall”. Underneath was a second sign stating “Anvil Crawler, Mayor”. Since it wasn’t torn down, burnt, spat at or shot, I had to assume it was new work.

Upon entering, I found the interior was not spared the restorative efforts granted the outside. A small room in the front served as a foyer. The inside was worn, and the wallpaper quite literally patchwork, but clear attention was paid to matching color and design to make for smooth transitions from one to another. A few cushions sat spread about for those having to wait. However, there were no ponies inside to sit.

Sea Breeze did not bother telling me to wait, or even knock on the mayor’s door. Like her namesake, she swept in without warning. “Anvil!” she called out in a sugary tone, eyes a flutter, “I’ve got a pony here and he says he has something to talk to you about. Oh, and he’s from outside, and I already showed him the town.”

The lavender Pegasus sitting behind the large desk and in front of the larger chalk board on the far looked up with a cool nonchalance. He regarded me a moment, looking me over for summary judgment. “Thank you, Sea Breeze. Your hospitality is commendable. If you don’t mind, I’m certain that our guest,” he stopped talking, eyes flitting to the mare beside me.

“Curtain Call,” she answered with an eager smile.

“Well I’m certain Curtain Call would like to speak with me about important matters in private. If you don’t mind, why don’t you go see how the plans for tonight’s story are going. See if anypony has a particular interesting tale to tell. If they don’t wish to tell it, you know what to do.”

“Make them feel brave enough to try?”

“Right on the nose, Sea Breeze.” Anvil Crawler tapped his hoof on the end of his broad muzzle. “See you tonight, then, I’m sure you’ll drum up a good one.”

Not needing any more encouragement, Sea Breeze gave me one last smile, a grin, and zipped out the door in a blink.

“She’s an eager one, Sea Breeze. But an absolutely lovely mare. She’ll make some mare happier than sunshine one of these days, mark my words.” The pegasus stated with a sense of pride as inflated as his chest.

“Please, sit if you’d like,” he invited me by waving his wing at several desks placed in a horseshoe around the room. “Or stand if you’d rather.” He did. He was not a particularly large pony. I was both taller and thicker by a good margin, but he had a swagger and a cocksure posture that made me want to take notes. He took up nearly twice as much space as his size needed, and that was before taking his wings into consideration. Like the others in the little town of Conviction, he wore no armor. A pair of brass colored stars adorned his flank.

He wanted me to take notice of himself, and I wasn’t going to disappoint. However, despite my notation of the mayor, I was more interested in the familiar shape of a mister hoof robot on a dais in the corner. The yellow and pink paint job told me all I needed to know about it.

Anvil Crawler caught me staring. He let out an audible sigh to catch my attention back onto him. “So tell me about my town, Curtain Call. What is your opinion on it all?” He walked around his desk and made it a point to stretch and settle his wings as he did.

“To be honest, I find it hard to believe.” I spoke the truth, no point to bluff yet, but I did refrain from admitting my suspicions. I started to make my own rounds of the office as well, taking care and caution to look as casual as possible.

To my surprise, Anvil Crawler laughed. It was light, condescending, and less a laugh and more chuckle. “I cannot say I blame you. After all, Equestria is hardly the land it once was. To see it alive again must be a shock.”

“You could say that again,” I gave in empty reply. “I didn’t think there was a place that ponies still lived like this. I suppose I’m too used to the blood and bullets line of fashion. I think it might take a little while for pastels to catch on.”

“In time, they will. You’ll see.” The pegasus kept a tight eye on me and our pacing followed a mirrored track until he found himself a position in front of his desk from which to lord over. “A little kindness and a little happiness are all that most ponies need. If they have that, we could all live in peace again.”

“Lofty words and high hopes. What gives you the idea that you can do that?”

“Not me. I may have been granted a great responsibility, but not me. No, no, this is all Stardust’s idea. It’s his vision and his works that can bring Equestria back to its old glory.”

There was that name again. I frowned and thought about the empty town and its little radio station, and my newest gadget. Screw the mechanical doctor, I had information to pump. “Really? How so?” I asked, taking a seat to suggest more comfort than I had in the situation.

“I knew that would get your attention.” He was right for all the wrong reasons. “Stardust’s retreat is the greatest place a pony could find themselves today. Many go in for the relaxation, the calm environment, the thriving community of genuine ponies. After the times they have, and given the knowledge that such a life can be theirs, many wish to join us in encouraging positive growth for the land. We’ve grown so large, I was tasked with taking these ponies you have met today in order to establish a satellite township in connection with the retreat.”

I had trouble telling if Anvil Crawler was giving me a sales pitch or if he had genuine belief in the words he was saying. It struck me as a little more proactive a plan than what was being sold on the radio. I had to admit, somewhere deep inside I was a mixture of interested in living the old world way and skeptical of a blatant impossibility. A third part of me was jealous I didn’t find a way to market the concept myself.

“What about Haven?” I asked, swallowing my suspicion as best I could. “I heard the ponies there recently joined up. Any word on them?”

Anvil Crawler smiled the broadest smile with the most teeth that I had ever seen on a pony. “Yes, yes, many of them stopped here on their migration. Several even helped us with some of the renovations. I suspect many, if not all of them, are currently living the lives they deserve. I do hope to see many of them again.”

That was honest and the thought of it made my stomach churn. “What about the tribe to the South. The Bastards? I see their tags everywhere.”

“You also came here to speak for them.”

I could hear the sound of my hope balloon deflating. There went my being an unknown quantity.

“I saw you watching the mechanical doctor.” Anvil Crawler’s explanation came with a nod to the pink and yellow robot in he corner. “They have sent their numbers here on several occasions. I kept telling them that they and their ways are not welcome here. We refuse to truck with the very murderous thugs that cause the continued suffering of Equestria.”

I needed a spin and fast. “I’m sorry,” I started simple, “I wasn’t aware. I’ve only recently come to dealings with them. Have you tried telling them about the retreat? After all, I spent barely an afternoon in this town and I have to admit I’m interested.” I wanted to figure out the scheme, but interest was interest and what Anvil Crawler didn’t know, didn’t hurt me.

“The very first thing we offered was our hospitality,” Anvil claimed, and from what I had experienced, I had little reason to doubt his honesty. “We told them about the ways of Old Equestria. We told them that if we were to trade with them as they were, that we would be contributing to the problem. If they were to just visit Dancer’s then they would see, but no. They refused.”

The pegasus looked down at the floor, his wings drooping and his head shook. “They claimed their independence and their freedom allowed them to be the way they were.” He lifted his head, tucked his wings in and looked through me when he spoke. “I tried to inform them that their lifestyle was not free. They are at the mercy of others and need to learn to live with society. I can only hope that they will learn their lesson by experiencing the negative repercussions of their behavior.”

“Seems a rather harsh lesson,” I ventured into the realm of ethics with trepidation. Not only wasn’t I the best versed on the subject, word or deed both, but it wouldn’t get me any closer to getting the mechanical doctor.

“Is it?” questioned Anvil Crawler with a confident grin growing. “They murder, fight, coerce, and deal in terrible chemicals when they do bother to trade.” He stood and began to pace. “Now I understand you are new to these Bastards.” He spoke the world with disgust. “You haven’t had the time to see their behavior for yourself. To be honest, I hope you don’t have to.”

We were entering lecture territory at a breakneck pace. I knew I had to put a stop to this if I wanted to get anywhere productive. “Actually, I have,” I pointed out, “I’m only looking to do this to help a friend of mine, you see. The Bastards have taken her captive. I only agreed to broker this deal in order to gain her release.”

Anvil Crawler looked to me, judged me, tried to find the lie in my words. There was enough truth to the statement, and I was sure enough I threw him off. We shared a moment where we both waited for the other to break.

“Then I’m afraid your friend will have to find her freedom another way,” the pegasus finally decided. “We cannot compromise the wasteland by granting an inch to those who would tear it apart. We cannot give ourselves over to those who would coerce us. To do so leads down the same roads that brought destruction in the first place.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely fair. I’m only asking for a little sympathy.”

Anvil Crawler tapped a hoof on his desk, avoiding meeting me eyes. “It isn’t, and I can admit that. I am not saying that this decision comes simply. Growing up in Cloudsdale, at a young age I learned the dangers of giving into bullies regardless of motivation.”

My attention focused with a beam gun like intensity on this new statement. I had read and rooted through the past to know that there was just a teensy-tiny little discrepancy in what Anvil Crawler said.

“Cloudsdale has been destroyed for hundreds of years.”

Anvil Crawler locked his eyes on me. Then he was silent. He stared unblinking for a minute before finally responding, with a shake of his head, “That’s shows what little you know. I distinctly remember the grand columns, the sweeping skies, the rain factory, and my friends. Even my little pet dove, Olive. Who, like I was trying to explain, was the reason I will not brook bullies and thugs. I did so many stupid things as a foal to keep that lovely bird safe, and in the end, they still hurt her. Because that is how those kinds of ponies think.”

“What happened to your friends?” I cut in with a light question, thrown out in a casual way. “Sorry for getting away from track, but how are they? Still in Cloudsdale?”

Once again, the pegasus stared into a blank space that only he could see. This time, I took the momentary lapse in response to go study the mechanical doctor. I learned that I knew nothing about the actual operation of these things and studying it was a waste of time. All I needed was a look to the still in stasis Anvil Crawler to remind myself I wasn’t doing anything but wasting time.

“That’s irrelevant.”

I spun around to look at the pegasus, who was looking back at me. “Where they are has nothing to do with why you’re here. We really should be getting down to brass tacks. I cannot just keep fielding answers about my past. I will not make deals that will continue the decline of Equestria.”

I blinked back at the sudden response. The last moments spent indulging my curiosity put me off my game. I searched for words.

“Repeating yourself won’t help, Curtain Call,” Anvil Crawler spoke up. He started to rub an ear with a hoof. “I will always remember Clousdale. We can never forget. I mean, I can never forget.”

He lowered his head and held his hooves alongside. “I am sorry, Curtain Call. I cannot help those tribals. The very notion is giving me a headache. It will do you well to not fall in with crowds like The Bastards. Good day.”

I stood in shock. I was being stonewalled. “Is there anything I could to change your position?” I asked, pressing the issue. I was fine with doing favors to get favors.

Anvil Crawler looked back at me. One eye was closed and a deep frown was dug into his face. “No. I cannot think of anything you can do to break my principles. Please go and inform your gang that we have no desire or need to assist them. We are always open to more discussions and we hope that some day they will see the error of their ways.”

I raised my head and did my best to look down at the pegasus. Not hard to do physically, but I didn’t feel like I could. I still felt like I lost here. I was beaten by a scatterbrained liar of a pegasus who fabricated his own past to serve his point. I loathed Anvil Crawler and the power he held over me in this situation.

For a moment, I entertained the thought of just beating him until he gave up the mechanical doctor, but I doubted my ability to lug it back alone. I gave in.

“Thank you for your time,” I told Anvil Crawler. I kept my head high and walked out of the classroom with my dignity intact. I carried that dignity and poise past the ponies of Conviction, out of the small town and back into the wasteland.

Then, when I was well and clear of anypony, I allowed myself a self-pitying trudge on my route back to the encampment. The weight bore down on me. I couldn’t broker a deal. Now unless Bad Road’s thief plan came through, there would be a war. The Bastards would stomp a group of genuinely kind ponies just because their differences couldn’t be crossed.

More importantly, I lost. I lost to the leader of a bunch of rubes.

The walk back felt twice as long as going in. I did not count the fucking trees.

My anger had mostly subsided by the time I made it back to The Bastards’ camp. I passed by Shrike and Dozer at the bottleneck of an entrance. A nod from Dozer and a well meaning mock salute from Shrike. Respect and friendship comes in flavors, but I was in still in a rough mood so I ignored them on my way to find Bad Road. He had to know about the misstep and I had to try and finagle something out of our deal.

I found Bad Road in the small circular tent he kept in the roundhouse. The others in charge of The Bastards weren’t there, most likely off “not leading” things. I didn’t bother to question it. I found the pony I was looking for. He was sat on a cushion, looking over a book by the light of a lantern. His back was to the tent’s entrance flap but he greeted my by name when I poked my head inside.

“I’m not surprised you couldn’t succeed in convincing them in cooperation. They adhere to their outmoded ways, stagnant worshippers of the very conceits that ruined them and their kingdom. They continue to pursue a path that leads them into the fire.” Bad Road closed the large book he was reading and looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes looked more sunken than they had earlier. “But you are not here to listen to me philosophize, and I cannot lose the time in doing so. I have to keep trying to avert the coming conflict.”

I stared back at the older pony, watched him stand and walk toward me. Out of a sudden stroke of politeness, I stepped aside, letting him pass. By the time he disappeared, I was left with the distinct impression that he just held a conversation with me, without me.

Not wanting to stand alone in the roundhouse, I left to search out my friends.

Daisy was counting the contents of the medicart. On her hind legs and propped over the side, she rattled numbers off under her breath. Her indigo mane, back in a braid, hung by her neck, the tip swung back and forth as she nodded her head, ticking off our things.

“Good to see you up and running,” I spoke up to get the mare’s attention. “Everything check out?”

“Everything’s good,” Daisy noted, slipping from the side of the cart. “It’ll be good to have some extra room in there now that I’m not stuck on my side.”

She trotted around the side, checking on the wheels. She tapped the hub with a critical hoof. “I’ll pull it from here on out,” she told me, looking back over her shoulder. “You’ve got enough crap on you already. You look like a robopony with all that gear on.” She gave a laugh and went back to looking over the cart.

“That’s a relief. You were getting a little heavy. Think it was too much time off your hooves.” I grinned and leaned against the cart.

“Watch your mouth. I carted your ass to the sawbones after that unicorn smacked you around like a filly.”

“And I thank you very much for that. I’ll keep it in mind the next time I plan on being unconscious,” I told her, looking back into the medicart. Daisy’s gear was laid out inside. The repurposed sports equipment with the spikes reminded me of the general aesthetic of the Bastards.

“So when are we getting back on the track for the soda?”

I looked back over to Daisy. “Not sure,” I admitted. “Didn’t get use of the mechanical doctor.” I snorted and tried not look too suspicious

Hiding my annoyance didn’t go well. Daisy saw right through me and gave me a swift thump on my shoulder. “You’re ticked your words didn’t get through to them?”

“It should have been easy. I could have, should have, talked my way right through them. Not that I’m angry or anything. I just want to watch him fall down a flight of stairs.”

“That’s it?”

“Two flights.”

“Good to know you aren’t vengeful.”

“I am an exemplar of mercy.”

Daisy laughed as she completed her inspection of the medicart. “Looks in good shape,” she rendered her judgment mostly to herself. “Better than my armor, at least. This is going to be a pain to repair.”

My ears perked. “That reminds me,” I told the mare and dug into my saddlebag. I tossed the parts and pieces I picked up in Conviction into the cart. “While I was making friends with the natives, I dropped some caps.”

Daisy nodded with approval. “Good on you for that. I can work with these. “You know, I always felt weird without my gear on. Don’t get how some pony’s go without any.”

“Like Two-Shot?”

“I’ve been with that pony for years, and I knew him longer than that, but in all that time I’ve never seen him in armor.”

“Never worn any at all?”

Daisy shook her head. “He hates armor. It’s one of the few things I can’t budge him on.” She signed and looked up to the clouds. “At least he has his force shield spell.”

I looked around, I had sort of taken it for granted that Two-Shot tended to be around Daisy whenever her could and yet we were sniperless. “Where did he get off to, anyways? He find the Bastards’ drug cache?”

“Nah. He was showing a few of the unicorn foals how to do some of his spells. His amplifier spell if my ears heard right.” Daisy was grinning and looking out at nothing as she spoke.

I could only muster a grunt of surprise at first. When I could find words, I said, “Feel bad for the tribe, can you imagine a gang of foals with loudspeakers at the ready?”

“Psychological warfare at its finest,” Daisy pointed out and we shared a short laugh.

“Oh,” she added, looking at me again, “Fizzy’s off working on some experiment of hers. She’s locked up inside one of the boxcars. I checked on her a while back, but I think she welded the door shut.”

I looked around as though I could pinpoint the exact train Fizzy was in. I figured it would be the one exploding. Unfortunately, none of them seemed particularly volatile for now.

“Cutter’s still in the medical tent. One of the tribals fell off a train and broke her leg. She’s refusing to use magical healing on it to conserving our supplies for the trip. So I think we may actually have the bird on board.”

That was welcome news, but Cutter was still laboring under the idea that I would be back with the mechanical doctor. I had doubts she would be so ready to leave when she found out I came back without the device.

“If you’re looking for Summer Bounty, I think she’s working her own cart.” Daisy’s tone took a noticeable downturn. “She seems a bit self interested, don’t you think?” she asked with suspicion. “I can’t say I trust her.”

“Neither do I,” I agreed, “But aren’t we all?”

Daisy had to take her turn to agree. “Yeah, but mark me here, Call, you get more out of working for a unit than just looking out for yourself.”

“Speak from experience?”

“All too much. Before I took to being a merc, I ran with more a few tumbledown gangs and raiders. I can see the difference between getting something good out of having friends and being friendly to get something good. You get what I’m saying?”

I told her yes.

The next few hours were of little words and even less consequence. Daisy and I sat around and watched the scenery for some time. I grew restless and left to find my gear. It was, as expected, where I left it by where Summer had bed down for the night. She wasn’t there, so I took advantage of the open spot to take a nap.

Once awake and rested, I reattached Old Friend to my foreleg and my broadcaster on my back, I took to wandering the encampment. The light was growing low, and the camp seemed buzzing over something. Several Bastards of various species were flitting about to pile junk for a fire. They were moving much faster than the night before, it was an angry energy that set my teeth on edge. It wasn’t until I passed by one of the furthest away boxcars that I had an inkling why.

“Every time!” A voice inside the closed car raged. “Every fucking time I try to make a change it falls apart! Why?”

I leaned against the wall of the boxcar, pressing my ear against the metal. I listened to the clanging and stomping of hooves. It sounded like a single pony, a single pony that I had seen temperamental earlier today. But, I had to wonder just what and why Bad Road was out here screaming, and at who.

“Is this some kind of cruel joke and I’m the terrible fucking punchline?” Something crashed. “Why show me? Why? What am I to do but stop them? Must I live with seeing everypony I know die twice? What is the purpose of it all and why me?” Glass broke.

My curiosity boiled inside of me. I snuck around the side of the car until I found a big enough hole to peek through. I looked in to see Bad Road, white mane hanging in front of his eyes without his cap to hold it back. He stormed left and right, snorting and stomping in rage and frustration. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the subject of his wrath, just him.

“I’ve fought, and I’ve fought and I’ve fought for too long already,” Bad Road’s rage took on a pleading tone. “How many will I see die, and how many will I send off to die trying to stop the deaths from happening? You took two more today. You vicious bitch. Two more. I hope you’re happy. Who the fuck am I kidding? You’re always happy.”

The dust brown pony moved out of my line of sight. I struggled to keep him in view, but couldn’t manage it.

“But that’s all it is, isn’t it? Make it a little better, no; we don’t make it really better. We just make it seem better. Give them a smile before knowing we send them off to die. Fine. Fine. You’ve made your point.”

Bad Road crossed into my sights again. He stepped in front of the door out. His tail twitched. “I’m aware of your presence,” he said, eyes closed. “I need to find Shrike and Brickbat, but I think it’s in your best interest to attend the bonfire tonight. I believe it will interest you.” He moved toward the door, but stopped himself again. “And Curtain Call, please do not come in here. There is nothing inside this place worth salvaging.”

I turned around and sat on the dirt. I was embarrassed for having been caught. Stranger still was whether he ranted for or despite me. There was no reason for choosing to shout like a mad pony while being watched. There must have been some purpose behind it all. Maybe to tell me to go see whatever was happening at the bonfire, or maybe to keep me out of the boxcars, maybe nothing at all and he was stark raving mad. All three had a good chance of being right, and not one excluded the others of being also true.

Despite my curiosity, when I left, I left without going into the boxcar.

The light of the ever-hiding sun was long gone but the incandescence of the bonfire stood as good a rival as any. The fire raged at the heavens, clutching for the clouds and sky. It burst and roared with a discordant heat, snapping and lashing about as a demon restrained. Surrounding the flames were the Bastards. In many ways, less kind than the writhing flames they watched.

They stood in loose ranks, brought together through brotherhood and bloodlust. Most were silent, a few murmurs rippled through the crowd. Inner fury and the heat of the flames fueled these rumblings of anticipation. Pony, griffin, buffalo, all the sorts and styles of Bastard in attendance were individual yet gathered as one. All were waiting for one thing.

We, that is, myself, Fizzy, Two-Shot, Daisy, Cutter and Summer Bounty, were as drawn as the Bastards. Both emotions and fire entice and here the tensions where high and the heat intense. Together we watched, amassed as a separate group among a larger group. We watched the fire, but like the others, we were watching for one thing.

A hulking shadow moved in front of the flames. The massive frame was simple to identify as belonging to Big Buck Bastard, the namesake of the tribe he stood to address. As I had noticed, he was simple and unadorned as usual, eschewing the bullets, bones and feathers so common among his followers. Being backlit by the dancing flame, his features were indistinct, but in some way that was the point. Now, when he spoke, he was not a single simple buffalo, he was darkness wreathed in flame, standing in as the very spirit of the tribe.

“Look to your left. Look to your right. What you see are your brothers and sisters. What you see is your family. Those around you, whatever species they may be, are your fellow Bastards. Each of us has endured the whip of those who deny us. Some of us have been called too small, too weak, too dangerous, too angry, or simply just not good enough for them. Some of us have been slaves. Some of us hated for simply surviving as we wished. We have come together, we have stayed together, out of our understanding that there are bonds greater than that of blood and birth. That is why we call ourselves Bastards. We do not care who our fathers are, for what matters is ourselves, and our family. What say you?”

Hoof beats filled the air along with shrill whistles. Whoops joined with screeches and roars.

“Those of you who looked to your family will have noticed that we are less in number than we began the day. Today, two of our own, Mossy and Riveter, have been taken from us while attempting to secure a mechanical doctor for each of you and the tribe. They have been taken by our enemies; the settlers who have the spine to call their town Conviction. These ponies have conviction, that they do. Those convictions are that we are nothing and they are all. Their conviction is that the only way for us to live with them, to live alongside them, is to live as them. Bad Road has spoken on our behalf. Dozer has spoken on our behalf. Our newest brother, Curtain Call, has spoken on our behalf. All three times we have been rebuffed. All three times we have been spat upon and spurned. Now, they take our lives.”

The crowd surged. The beats continued, growing in pitch and lining in rhythm. The shouts, whistles, and whoops had all fallen silent. Focus was on Big Buck. A storm of fury and violence was ready and waiting for direction.

“We cannot allow this to stand any longer. We must, together, stomp out those who wish to do us harm. I ask all of you to stand with your fellow Bastard to take up arms against our aggressors. We have attempted words, we have attempted subtlety, it is now time for us to show them force. The assault I call for is more than our pride at these insults thrown at our way of living. The assault I call for is more than our needs and a mechanical doctor. Now, because of them, they have made the assault I call for about our brothers. It is our task, our duty as a tribe, to reclaim their skulls to add to the Long Road. What we do is not for ourselves, no, this is for our brethren, and all Bastards who watch over the Long Road!”

The crowd erupted along with Big Buck. There was no question of their compliance. The buffalo waited for the cries to die down before he continued.

“As I have in the past, I shall lead this charge to battle. I have never, nor will I ever ask for any of you to risk what I will not. We are all Bastards, and we shall march as one. We shall visit upon this town of Conviction and we shall rain vengeance. Go and rest, my family, for as the light dawns we shall rise, and by the fading of the light, Conviction shall be no more.”

The sounds were deafening. I felt the beating of hooves in my chest. And as I listened to the scream started by Big Buck and continued by the Bastards, I understood just what plagued Bad Road.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note

Thank you to everyone reading this.

Battle

Chapter 10: Battle
“I love it when a plan comes together.”

As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew I was in for another fun time in the subconscious. The warm, fluffy bed beneath me, the silken covers that shimmered in the flickering candlelight, the dark walls with the small picture frames placed on the wall in a haphazard way.

I stopped taking mental stock of my surroundings. I did not have any pictures on the walls of my subconscious. Rolling and kicking, I freed myself from my posh prison and fell to the floor like a wounded duck.

The pictures were small, simple, and certainly not the grand affair that was the grand portrait above my bed. They were photographs, grayscale and grainy. Images of life ill defined; a caravan with a trio of ponies, too small and indistinct to make out, a single pony in a long coat whose face was smudged from existence, a skyscraper I had never seen nor could have imagined. I stared at the three, and at a few others that dotted the walls. Like the pictures, the frames were old, half-broken or made from scrap in the first place. Despite the stressed look, I liked them, for whatever the actual subjects were, since most seemed too worn to make out.

“They add to the décor. Gives the room a sense of being aristocratic but not aloof. Kind of an ivory tower on Cannery Row feel.”

The source of the voice was a reedy looking dirt brown earth pony. He looked to me and gave a small nod, his necktie bobbing along.

“You’re new,” I told the pony. Turning from him, I walked to go look at the other pictures that had taken up residence on the walls. “Have a reason to be here?”

“You’re observant,” the brown pony noted. “So you should know I’m only here because you wanted me here.”

“The Radio says I need you guys.”

“There’s a difference?”

I looked over my shoulder. The earth pony smiled, adjusting his noose. “Not a lot, I suppose,” I admitted with some trepidation. I turned and looked square at the pony, trying to pick out where I had seen him before.

“High Rise,” he filled in, reading my memories. “We got a lot to talk about, Curtain Call. You and I. Believe me. We have got a lot of talking to do.”

I rolled my eyes at the architect. “That’s the point of you guys, to talk. You don’t need to tell me twice. So get on with it. What’s on my mind?”

My imagination laughed. “Dreams are funny things, ephemeral. I don’t think it’s a good foundation for a lasting relationship. Besides, you’re waking up. I don’t speak that fast. So I’m just here to tell you, you and I are going to have a sit down sometime soon.”

“I’m waking—“

“Up.” I did. Dirty metal roof above me. Dirty metal walls to my sides. Dirty bedding below me. I was awake all right. Horribly, horribly awake.

Stepping out into the dim light of early morning and blinking to clear the sleep from my eyes, I was surprised to find the Bastards were morning ponies. The camp collective was out in force at the ready. Most wore some form of armor, a myriad of style and source cobbled and collected by their wearers. The one constant among the piecemeal army were their helmets. The designs were different, built to fit the wearer, but all were painted black and stamped with a red-colored B. Motif purposes or not, I wondered if the Bastards just had limited stencils lying about.

Their weapons were, like their users, well made if still scrap, and just as varied. Guns looked to be the weapon of choice, particularly with the unicorns and the griffins. I still counted battle saddles outfitted with spears, and yokes that had blades jutting forward in a mimicry of tusks. Bad Road, moving among the crowd with a calm that reminded me of the hour just prior to a thunderstorm, wore a strange vest that held a small gun mounted at his shoulder. Griffins with spurs and wingblades, bison carrying what looked like field artillery, the collection was impressively frightening.

The Bastards themselves were reverent in their preparation. Gone was the whooping and hollering. Gone were the drinking and carousing and even the rage that fueled the night before. Now the gang was filled with a quietude that sent a shiver up my spine. I listened as I walked through them, and still heard little. The family all consumed in silent assistance for the battle ahead.

I finished my round of the lot, and not finding anything of interest or even anything of friendliness, I returned to the medicart. There I sat and continued to watch, knowing I would be getting my own gear soon enough and joining the march. Inside, I knew I could just leave, ditch them all with the rest of my friends. The only thing getting in my way was me and I was putting up a tougher resistance than I expected.

“We’re different from them.” Two-Shot rounded the medicart. He sat beside me, eyes on the tribe’s preparation.

I looked to this stunning statement of the obvious with a quirked brow. “Think of that all on your own?”

The unicorn looked up at me just long enough to sigh, giving his head a shake. “Not that, you idiot.” He nodded to a pair checking one another’s armor. “Daisy and I are mercs, we fight for caps and gear. You’re an inveterate opportunist, you’re in this because you think you can make something out of it. Them, this is their life. This is them. This shit, it defines them.”

I glanced toward Two-Shot. “You already start drinking?”

“Not yet. Now shut up and listen,” he chided with good humor. “They’re damn serious about this. This kind of fight is in them to the core. Whoever they’re up against, those ponies up north, they’re in for a bloodbath.”

The unicorn prodded my side with a hoof. “I want to know if you’re ready for it.”

The show of concern was surprising to say the least. I thought the matter over. I had fought before, at the Hotel Halflinger, at the Sparkle-Cola office, on the streets. Fighting was not new to me and I hardly had a weak constitution. I told Two-Shot as much.

Still my small friend shook his head. “Not the same. You were running away. It’s easy to fight when it’s to keep your skin. Harder to do it when you’re just looking to skin others. For good reason, too. Sometimes it’s good to have some real killers alongside you.”

“Are you suggesting anything?” I asked with a slowly growing grin.

“What he’s saying is we’re in on this.” Daisy cut in, flanking my other side. She was already in her barding and battle saddle, a nightmare-moon-may-care grin on her face.

Back and forth, I looked between the lovers. “Both of you? They’re paying you? No having to go through initiations or anything like that?”

“Nope,” Daisy said and a look to Two-Short corroborated. “It turns out that Brighteyes kid is perfectly fine with hiring mercenaries. At a reduced rate, of course.”

My glance turned from Two-Shot back to Daisy. “How reduced a rate are we talking about?” My question came with doubt. I was beginning to suspect they were not in on this for a great capital gain.

“Not sure,” Two-Shot said with a shrug, “About enough to compensate for the ammo?” He looked around me to his partner in crime.

The mare simply nodded and grinned.

“There you have it. Reduced to compensation. I think it’s a fair price.”

I stomped a hoof on the ground. “I appreciate the idea, guys. In fact, loving it. Still would have liked to see you go a little higher. Might as well have made a profit on it.”

The mercenaries laughed. I joined them. None of the tribals seemed to care or notice our sudden good spirits in the face of their solemn anger.

“So you were paying attention to what I said yesterday,” Daisy commented, her grin showing signs of smug superiority. I approved.

With a laugh, I told her I had. “So there’s the three of us. Feel safer already. Much as I figure I can take this tribe at their word, I’m glad to know I have you there. Still got to ask, though, why?”

“Like you said, you carted my ass around for a few days after you carried me away from a burning building.”

“You did good for Daisy. Enough for me.”

I looked back to Two-Shot, who was making a strong point in avoiding my glance. No point in pushing the matter, I went back to looking to Daisy instead to the unicorn’s favor.

“Good to know I have you two with me,” I told them, rattling the thought and idea of that around in the back of my skull. I had been alone for a while, a very long time by most standards. I had my reasons; it made my life much easier doing it on my own, it worked on a personal level not having to care about anypony else.

I thought again to the night before my home burned. Listening to the radio, lost in my mind, wondering the worth of a life spent the way I was spending it. Getting by and making a profit was great and all, but goddesses damn it I wanted to do something worth it at the same time.

I looked at the Bastards, armed, armored, waiting and ready to slaughter a town full of ponies that, as far as I could tell, had no idea about the battle ahead. Two-Shot was right; this was going to be a bloodbath. Worse still, I was going to be involved in it.

Then I smiled. Better I was going to be involved with it.

“Two-Shot, Daisy, I have an idea,” I told the pair, reaching out to bring them close to me. “I need you two to go get Fizzy and if she’s not already in for joining us, make her. I have a doctor to find. Get her and meet me back at the medicart. I’ll explain then.”

Agreements made and my nebulous plan was taking a nascent shape. I sent the pair after Fizzy under the assumption they would have an easier time of getting agreement from her than I would with the griffin. My hopes in my words, I went to find Cutter.

“Really?” I was floored with the simple, direct and total agreement from Cutter. There I was asking her to risk her neck without even knowing what little plan had formulated in my head. There she was already packing a yellow canvas kit bag.

“I don’t stutter. I said I’d go. I was already planning on it anyways. Survival is a matter of time, and the sooner I can get to patients the better off they’ll be,” Cutter told me while measuring out dosages of freshly cooked up med-x substitute. She and Fizzy has been spending time together if the mess of jury-rigged chemistry sets were any indication.

I shook my head, dislodging the last bit of disbelief to allow for more planning to coalesce in the empty spaces of my mind. “Good, great. Because what I’ve seen tells me you won’t have to worry about too many Bastard causalities.”

The griffin trilled and turned her head over her shoulder to give me a questioning look. “Is that right?”

“Absolutely. These ponies are strange, sure, nasty looking marks on their flanks but they don’t act the parts. All innocent. Too innocent. Thing is, I don’t think they were putting me over. It was all too genuine.”

Cutter looked back to her work, checking the volume in her syringes. “So what you’re saying is those settlers are about to get reamed?”

“Pretty much. It’s going to be ugly. They’re going to need a doctor. They’re going to need you.”

Cutter’s shoulders rose and fell, I could see the rolling of her eyes even looking at the back of her head. “Nice pep-talk, but I already told you I was in. You going to fill me in on the plan or just stroke my ego a little more?”

“In good time, Cutter, in good time,” I rose a hoof and waved it with a flourish. “I will fill you in later, and if you want, I can stroke your ego as well. I just need to know you’ll be there.”

Cutter finished her packing and slung the bag around her neck and under a talon. “Why wait?” she asked, stepping toward me. “Let’s get moving. These tribals won’t be sitting around forever and I want to know what your plan is.”

We stood for a moment, eye to eye. A silent accord between the two of us made before we left the medical tent.

Inside my head, my plan was beginning to form, now that I had pieces to play with. I could see the swirling nebulae of ideas becoming more real with each step to the medicart. I still needed Fizzy’s help to make this plan into something magic.

Cutter and I arrived at the medicart first. We waited, swapping dirty jokes to pass the time. When Fizzy arrived, flanked by Daisy and Two-Shot, we shared a collective nod and the conspiratorial friendly grin. Then I stepped into the middle and started my ballyhoo.

“All here, all gathered, all good. Okay everypony, here’s the deal; we’re saving lives. That’s right, you heard me. We are marching off to battle to save some lives. See, those ponies up in Conviction don’t stand a chance. They’re going to be slaughtered. They’re good ponies though, the kind I think we all need. So it’s my plan to save their hides. Doesn’t makes sense, I know, but damn if I’m going to let a little bit of logic and that asshole reality get in my way. Don’t worry though, I have a plan and it involves all of us.”

I threw my hoof toward the mercenary couple to my right. I couldn’t imagine the thoughts in their head at the night manic grin on my face. I was hitting a roll and I was going to take this where it needed to go.

“Daisy, Two-Shot, you guys have it the easiest. We need guards and we need gunners. I’ve already been through Conviction, I still know the layout. I think we have a good spot in their post office to set up a safe zone. Problem is, I’m going to need you guys to be able to hold our ground in case we have a few Bastards that get overzealous or a couple of panicky settlers get ahead of themselves. I know you two are good for it, I’ve seen you do it before.”

I spun on my back hoof, a half circle twist to snap a point at the griffin behind me. She trilled and had a wicked grin at the same time.

“Cutter, we’re going to need your medical expertise with us. I get you want to run around and grab anypony you can out there. Great, good, and noble of you, but I think we could use you on top of things once we set up the safe zone. We’ll take in wounded, be they settler or Bastard. Fuck, we’ll lay them out side by side with each other just to twist the knife a little, I don’t care. Just going to need to make sure they live. You won’t just be a medic, we’ll set you up with a damn hospital.”

Again I whirled in place. Words punctuating my steps, or my steps punctuating the words, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Up to Fizzy, I swaggered with a cocksure grin. I had this. I had this good.

“Which leads me to the last little detail, we’re going to need a chemist to cook up some meds in case we run out. Now of course, there’s only one pony around that I’d expect to give that sort of job to in a time like this. That’s right Fizzy. You. Now I’m not going to bother to ask if you can do it, because there if there’s a pony in all of Equestria who can, it’s you.”

Fizzy didn’t flinch at my advance. She adjusted her glasses, gave a smile and a shrug and said, “I was hoping to field test some armaments I have been cooking up, but I suppose I can do both that and supply Cutter with what she needs.”

My grin became less pointlessly manic with each agreement.

“But,” I stopped grinning. There was always a but. “I’m going to require some form of chemistry equipment.”

“We’ll take what we need from the medical tent,” Cutter interjected, “They have enough to spare. They’re just using the others to cook up chems. The Bastards won’t miss a set.”

Fizadora nodded, looking back from Cutter to myself. “I need reagents. No medicine without them.”

“Leave that to me,” I told Fizzy, grinning to beat the band. I twisted around and started to march off. “Follow along, all, and make note there’s one of us not among our little chat. Believe me, it’s for a reason.”

Onward and outward and we found Summer Bounty going over her inventory at her cart. She must have been worried about the Bastards but I was about to be the more dangerous thief in the encampment.

“Summer!” I called out the mare in a voice far too cheery for her own good, “I’ve got a plan cooked up and guess what.”

“I’m not going to charge into battle, Curtain Call. You’re good looking, but not that good looking,” Summer retorted with a wry little smirk. “I’ve got nothing to gain from this fight.”

“Now now, never say that,” I reminded the orange mare, sliding past her to get a closer look at the stock she had in store. “After all, the ponies we help today may be your best friends tomorrow.”

“So it’s a social investment?” Summer’s words were sarcastic, and all too knowing.

“You could look at it that way,” I admitted as I dug through the supplies, looking for some of the things I remember seeing around chemists in the past. A good way to tell something’s worth is by what they keep around them and what they do. Learn about the ponies, and you learn about worth.

“Fat lot of good it’s done you before.”

I looked up from my rooting and fixed my eyes on Summer. “We all make mistakes,” I admitted with a shrug and went back to my digging.

“Summer, we need the stock,” Cutter stepped up and around to the cart, apparently in a hurry, she started at the goods in the cart. “Besides, without me you wouldn’t have half of this. So I can take what I want. And I want these ingredients.”

Now beginning to be outnumbered, Summer looked like she had just swallowed a bug. She looked over to the others but found little hope there. Even less when Fizzy joined Cutter and I in looking for the needed reagents.

Now that I had others who knew what to look for, I could stop. Slipping from the cart, I walked around Summer. She still looked doubtful toward me, and my motives, but her look had resigned overtones. We looked eye to eye. I knew I had won.

“This will pay off in the end. Trust me,” I assured the orange mare with a hoof at her shoulder and my best smile.

She met the smile with her own and brushed my hoof aside. Her words were quiet and meant for just me. “Can’t throw you that far.”

Summer looked over at Cutter and Fizzy comparing the usefulness of one flower over the other. Then she looked down at the ground, shaking her head. “Not that it matters.” Her eyes lifted to meet mine again. “Don’t go wasting my stock and don’t go getting killed.”

“Lucky you,” I told the mare, “Because my plans don’t include either of those things.”

It took only a few minutes for Cutter and Fizzy to work out just what the two of them needed to keep a temporary medical shelter sustained. Still, time dragged on in a lazy way that denied us the gravity of the situation. While Two-Shot and Daisy talked tactics, I counted and recounted the bullets of information I gleaned from my whirlwind tour of Conviction.

I never did get a chance to go over the information as well as I wanted. For as long as it felt, I still felt unprepared when Bad Road approached from the bulk of the main encampment. He had Dozer with him. The silent unicorn’s automatic carbine floated alongside.

“It’s good to know we’ll have you and yours in the coming fight,” the dust colored pony spoke in his equally dulled tone, “As much as I wish we all could have avoided this conflict, the die has been cast. To know we have allies, both new to the family, and outside of it, is not something we take lightly.”

Quiet confirmation coexisted with a mutual silence regarding the non-partisan hospital plan. Dozer remained a silent cipher while Bad Road spoke.

“I’m certain Curtain Call has already informed you of the predicted ease of this operation. I have argued for a lifetime that there is honor in conflict. That to fight for self, for family, and for your ideal is how a pony proves they exist in this world. I find today that I cannot agree with that philosophy. It’s a shame that I already know the role I shall play this morning.”

Bad Road looked to all of us, a half smile on his face. His mane peeked from beneath his cap, hiding an eye that hid the machinations of a sharp mind. In the last few days, I had grown a mixture of respect and distrust of the canny stallion.

“So why not do something about it?” Cutter spoke up. “Why not stop this whole stupid thing. You tried to avoid it, now tell them to sit down, shut up and work something else out?”

Bad Road turned his attention to the griffin. His resigned smile never waned. “I have tried. I have tried my damnedest to stop the inevitable but it is just that. I stand as much chance of ceasing this war as I would turn back the tides.”

The older pony turned to the younger unicorn beside him and smiled, “However,” he continued, “That does not mean the flow of events cannot be directed toward a more desirable tack.”

One of us questioned him, I cannot say which of us, to which he replied with a canny grin and a glinting eye. “I overheard Curtain Call’s speech.” He must have caught the look on my face since he added, “You do speak a little on the loud side. Anyways, I want to let you know that I approve of this little quasi-deception and will see to it you get what assistance I can provide.”

This changed the game. This changed the game big time. I looked about to my friends, most of us all considering the same thing if through different tracks.

“Going to need what meds I can carry. If I’ll be healing up your crew and whoever is up there, it could get dicey,” Cutter said.

“Base reagents would also be a help. I know you have plenty raw materials around here to work with,” Fizzy added.

Bad Road gave a long moment of consideration to the requests from the pair. His face fell and he looked toward Dozer. The two shared a silent debate, a trade of looks and expressions that ended with a short nod from the younger stallion.

“We will do as you ask,” Bad Road agreed with a solemn nod. “I will make certain you will find what you need when the time comes.” He held up a hoof to preempt a response from Cutter, “I will not make movement before that. There is some trust for Curtain Call, but most of you are outsiders and mercenaries. Not all of us are in agreement with your service, nor do we all trust you to simply hand off our supplies.”

Cutter spoke up anyways. “Hey, I’ve been patching you idiots up for days now. What gives? I don’t get any trust?”

“You’ve been doing so under duress. You know you’re well meaning, as do I and some others, but to many, you are still a threat. You may yet turn.”

“This is bullshit.,” Cutter sat back on her haunches and crossed her forelegs with an indignant huff.

“Welcome to politics, young lady.”

Cutter simply grumbled her hurt and frustration, suddenly finding interest in something happened in the distance.

“Thanks,” I stepped in, literally, offering a hoof to Bad Road. “It feels better knowing we have you at our backs.”

We shook on the matter, only be interrupted by a loud and abrasive shouting. “Incoming!” shouted a shrill, nasal voice from up above. It was a griffin. A griffin carrying a unicorn by a harness held. Specifically, the griffin was Shrike, the dash head from the first day, and he was carrying Brickbat.

The two touched down, Brickbat dropping a short distance before Shrike touched down beside her. Her harness looked like an upside-down saddle, with a pair of looped grips jutting from the top. Tied to the side of the harness was a wicked looking bat that had appeared to have been involved in a major industrial accident by the nails and bits of metal jutting from it.

“Hey, Bad Road. Got those flowers you wanted,” Brickbat spoke loud, stepping toward the older pony. She had a broad, smart grin on her as she added, “Would’ve been back quicker but we got some flying in.”

“All night?” Bad Road asked with a knowing raise of an eyebrow, cracking a smile of his own.

“All night,” Brickbat added, stressing the syllables while she passed on a bundle of yellowish flowers to Bad Road. Behind her Shrike looked about the happiest a griffin could be.

The exchanged finished, Brickbat looked to my friends and I. She sniffed and looked to Bad Road. “They throwing in with us?” she asked, doubt didn’t creep into her voice so much as smash in the door “Or is the new guy splitting already?”

“Curtain Call and his friends will be joining us in the field today. Experienced mercenaries and specialists all, you can assure yourself they will be an invaluable asset,” Bad Road told Brickbat with a welcoming nod to all of us.

Brickbat’s frown and discriminatory eye cast doubt on all of us, but she relented. A sigh and a nod and she looked back to Shrike. “We got to go get the crew up and ready so we’re not all tripping over our own hooves out there,” she seemed to speak to no one in particular. “And I need my helmet. See you lot before the march.”

With that, she and Shrike were gone, turning tail and leaving alongside one another to ready themselves for war. It was an interesting sight, to see how easily she slipped into the warrior role; more interesting was her relationship with the griffin. It did explain the feathers in her mane.

“I will see you shortly,” Bad Road said without looking to any of us, sorrowful eyes instead on the departing pair. “We will meet at the entryway before leaving. Thank you again, for what you do for me.”

Bad Road shared another look, another nod, with Dozer and they left as a pair. Once again, my friends and I were left to contemplate our increasingly odd relationship with the tribals.

“Not sure if we can trust him,” Two-Shot pointed out, watching the departing Bastards.

“Best to keep an eye on him,” Daisy said, “If he’s on our side, he’s a damn good asset. If he’s against us, then we could be fucked. Call, you’ve been around him most, what do you think?”

“He’s with us. He wasn’t lying, I can tell that much. I’m not sure what he’s planning to do for us, but I can tell you he isn’t going to be stabbing us in the back anytime soon.”

“Do you trust him, or can you predict him?” I was suddenly aware of Fizzy at my side. She looked at me with concern from over her spectacles.

The question ate at me, made the moment I mulled it over drag for what felt like minutes. “Trust,” I told her, “I don’t think Bad Road is a pony that can be predicted, but he can be trusted.”

Fizzy looked buoyed by the idea, gave me a smile, and nodded. “Good. I will remind everypony that I am well stocked up on my usual supply, by the way. In case it turns out Call is wrong.”

There wasn’t a one of us that looked too secure in that knowledge.

Not an hour later, the army had formed. It was less an army, more an organized angry mob with a relatively higher amount of focus and weaponry than the standard variety, but the differences are few. The Bastards wore their armor now, even the ones without such protection still took to wearing the familiar helmets that managed to combine individual tastes with uniform helmet-ness. The uniform gave the appearance of a massive, multicolor ladybug. Bright colors, dull colors, feathers and fur all dotted with black coats, barding, and helmets.

Our little group was in the back. Apart, yet together, we stuck out, clear outsiders among the throng. In some ways, it brought a little more unity to us, and a little more awareness of how separate our plan was from the Bastards. We were sharing a unified cause, excepting Summer, she held a monopoly on thinking what we were doing was stupid. She was right, of course, what we were doing was stupid; we knew that, she was just the only one to act on her self-preservation instincts.

I stood alongside Fizzy, who was alongside Cutter. Daisy was on the other side of me, and Two-Shot behind her and I. We all watched the empty space with the rest of the Bastards. The empty space we were about to head off into war through. Being a not leader, Big Buck had of course decided to speak to the collective before the march to war.

A freight train stepped up in front of us. I have seen power armor before, and the rig that Big Buck wore was not power armor. It was as though someone had seen power armor and decided that the whole power concept was for weaklings. What really caught my attention was the locomotive pilot at the front. A wedge of metal tailored to guide unfortunate victims toward the auto-axes that flanked his frame.

He turned to the crowd, looked over the crowd, and with a snap of his head flipped up the face of his helmet. A stern look dominated his features. The buffalo squared himself, lifted his head and spoke.

“Bastards! Today we take to battle! Today we meet our enemies face to face! And today we make them bleed!”

Big Buck bellowed to the sky. The Bastards answered in turn. The roar washed over us all, ringing in my ears and resonating in my chest. Then, the buffalo stormed from the encampment with the Bastards in tow. It was only after the briefest of pauses to take stock of the situation before us that my friends and I followed.

For the second time in as many days, I took the walk, the long march over the boring rolling hills and valleys of the Bastards’ territory. This time I didn’t bother counting trees or rocks, I already knew where they were and how many. There was company outside of my own head for a change, but somehow none of us could find words. Talking didn’t feel right. As we closed in on the settlement, the growing awareness that the chances of pulling this whole plan off were low and could only go lower began to gnaw at the back of my mind.

I saw a deep brown pony in a dull green tie walk beside me. I looked at him and he, despite sunken eyes and lank mane, gave me a smile.

“Incoming,” he said.

I blinked. Something whistled. Then that something went boom.

Dirt, stone and I think a bit of tree stump peppered my side. At least I hope it was tree stump. There was shouting, angry shouting and it quickly grew into a mighty roar. The ground vibrated with furious pounding as the Bastards broke into a run. Another explosion rocked the nearby ground. Someone, I don’t know who, shouted “mortar” while another explosion burst somewhere behind me.

We scattered, thrown into disarray by the sudden volley. I dove for a ditch. The Bastards, still screaming their battle cry, ran for the settlement undeterred. A few limped, still moving forward. A few more lay unmoving. None of my friends was with me, but I couldn’t see them on the ground either.

A screech from above and I looked to see a trio of griffins fly by. Each of them carried a unicorn by a harness. Tracking them across the sky, I watched as they soared over the settlement, streaking by the charging Bastards. The griffins released their unicorn payload over the settlement. Protective spheres flared around the plummeting tribals before they slammed into the township. Debris kicked high, makeshift shelters cracked, and guns barked over the roar of Bastards war cry.

Something landed beside me. I looked to find a particular blue mare. She had a wide smile on her as she hit the ditch. “Come on, Call!” Daisy shouted at me. “You want to save some asses, you got to move yours. Now lets move it!”

We got up. We ran. Gunshots in the distance, too many to be just the Bastards, announced the start of the firefight. I thought on that, how the peaceful citizens of Conviction apparently took to arms, as I ran around rocks and long dead foliage.

A griffin slammed into the ground in front of me. I skidded to a stop. It was Cutter and she was pointing at something behind me. “I’m going back,” she shouted, “I need to see if I can help them first. Go on without me. I’ll catch up.”

I looked over my shoulder, at those left behind in the shelling. “Got it!” I called back, “There’s a general store, to the left side of the town as you go in. We’ll set up there.”

Cutter and I shared a nod. Her wings flared and she took flight. I watched her for a moment, debating on whether or not I should go back. The Bastards, of which I was technically a member, were wounded and I could help. Then again, I had no medical training and I was better off securing a forward location. Mind decided, I turned to catch up with Daisy.

The two of us took shelter behind a garish green building. One of the homes I never entered during my first visit. Daisy was breathing heavily but still had an excited smile spread over her face. It was as though she was at home here. She looked back to me expectantly. It took a spare moment for the thought to click that I was the one who knew the territory.

“This way,” I told her, nodding behind me, “The general store is over here. Older pony runs it, goes by Saltlick. He’s a friendly sort.”

A burst of gunfire from down the way punctuated my words.

“Okay. I thought they were friendly sorts.”

Daisy responded with laugher. “Those are the ponies to watch out for. If they can afford to be nice, they’re dangerous.”

“Point taken.” I peeked around the corner: no sign of anything dangerous. I told Daisy as such and asked, “ Did you see where Two-Shot or Fizzy went?”

“I’m right here.”

I nearly leapt out of my skin. “Fizzy!” I snapped, turning to face a mare with a grin you still couldn’t call innocent on a newborn. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Fizzy shook her head, her mohawk followed the motion. “If I was trying to kill you, I would’ve just used a grenade,” she said as though it were obvious. Considering Fizzy, it was.

Daisy, who was winding down laughing at me, finally answered my question. “Was going to say, Fizzy was behind us, and Two-Shot can take care of himself. I know he’s okay.”

“How can you tell?” Fizzy and I asked in unison.

“You been together as long as we have, and through as much shit, you tend to know these things.”

That settled, we three advanced. Fizzy and I kept together; Daisy went around the other side to provide cover. We crept slowly and steadily alongside the hovel to the main road within Conviction. My head low, my helmet snugly protecting my skull in case of stray fire, I stuck my head out into the street for a quick look.

One way was empty, the way I wanted to go. The way I didn’t want to, not yet at least, that way had a gunfight. The sight was surreal. A cloud of smoke and shouts and the stinging cry of gunfire that was not far away but felt so damn distant as to be another world. Reality popped back in when I saw Daisy’s spiked hoofball helmet pop out from the other side.

I announced the all clear to Fizzy and walked out into and down the street. Daisy took up the rear, walking backwards to keep an eye on the combat. Thankfully, the walk was a moment of peace, passing only a few brightly colored silent homes until we reached the happy little general store. The door was closed, so I gave it a little nudge.

“Hello?” I called, sticking my nose inside the shot. No answer, I pushed the door wide-open and stood inside.

That was when a knife embedded itself in the doorjamb next to my eye.

Saltlick stood in front of me. Only, in many ways, this was not the same Saltlick from yesterday. For one, he did not have nearly as many sharp objects strapped to him then as he did now. For another, the one eye squinting, ear flicked look of madness just cried out for a touch of a spittle at the mouth to complete the look.

The shopkeeper didn’t have any words for me, just a snarl. He turned his head, while I stupidly gawped and wasted time, and drew a long pointed blade from a saddle sheath. He held it in his teeth, not quite unlike how I had use Sharp Retort in the past. Only this was bigger, blade-ier and pointed at me instead of in a more health conscious direction.

“That’s my idea,” I complained while ducking under the first swipe. There are priorities in these matters.

He thrust, swung and stabbed, wild eyed and furious. I ducked, wove, and bobbed out of the way. The razor cutie mark on the older stallion’s flank was becoming more and more apparent as I danced around his shop. Shelves went over, product spilled out and goods of all kinds, things we would need, were lost with every missed swing or every clumsy dance step. For a shopkeeper, Saltlick was being very unconcerned with his stock.

Saltlick’s blade clanged off my helmet. He stumbled back, rattled by his own blow. I shoved him back, tried to plead with him, and tried to show I wasn’t a threat to him. Nevertheless, he had to have things his way and took a swipe for my forelegs.

Broken or not, a PipBuck is still a nearly indestructible little gadget and is more than capable of taking a heavy blow. The same cannot be said for a pony’s skull.

“Thanks for not shooting,” I told Daisy. “And for not bombing me,” I amended for Fizzy. Shaking my leg out, I was glad I hadn’t used Old Friend as anything more than weight. That way, the only bleeding Saltlick did was from his bitten tongue.

“Kind of a tight spot,” Daisy pointed out, following Fizzy into the shop. “It was too high a risk.”

“I would’ve also accepted ‘you’re too awesome at hoof to hoof combat.” I said with a shortened laugh.

The three of us cleared up the shop. We pushed shelves to the side, stole what goods we needed, tossed what we wouldn’t need aside. Fizzy bound Saltlick with a length of rope we found, just in case he was still a little angry when he woke up. Fizzy’s chemistry set was rigged up in a safe corner while Daisy took to the shop counter. Daisy removed her machine gun from her saddle to mount it on its bipod, switching to the same pushbutton trigger she had in the medicart. The barrel pointed square at the door.

“Anypony tries to come in without permission, then they’ll come in a patient,” Daisy told us while we finished the preparations.

“I’m getting the first batching cooking right now,” Fizzy called out, her horn flaring with magic to start up a small hot plate. She had surrounded herself with various stolen ingredients in a makeshift box fort of alchemical science.

“So you’re both good. Good,” I said, backing to the door. I gave a sweep of the shop. Floor cleared, knocked out crazy guy on the floor, meds cooking, big machine gun standing guard, everything was a go.

“I’m going out,” I told the others. “Going to find some ponies and bring them back here.”

“Go save some ass,” Daisy told me with a laugh. Fizzy added: “Please don’t die.”

“With words of encouragement like that I couldn’t possibly die. It’d be gauche.”

Bravado and words aside, I was nervous going back out into the fray. Perhaps not the fray itself, but in a close enough relation to the fray the potential for fray-like conditions were high. It was still altogether quiet when I stepped out into the empty street. A quick look down the way and I could see hear the shouts, the bullets, and even see a few lights from beam weapons fired off in the distance. I could still hear the booming of distant mortars, shelling goddesses knows what out in the fields. Dead ponies I imagined. I hoped not Cutter and refused to entertain the thought.

Redline Repairs was the first place I searched. It was first because it was closest; it was also a little further away from the battle. The repair shop stood empty, nothing but the walls of spare parts, bits and baubles of machinery and tools to keep a pony company. I pushed in through the darkened structure, moving around the cramped front toward the more open area in the back where Redline had repaired my armor. I called the mare’s name, but received no answer in return.

Upon entering the repair bay, I was startled by the sudden clattering and clanging of crashing metal. I took Old Friend’s starter in my mouth, lashed my tail back and forth to build momentum for Sharp Retort and promptly felt like an idiot when I saw a rump with a shotgun cutie mark pushing out from under a hastily constructed shelter.

I Dropped Old Friend’s starter, the cable zipped back into the shoulder slot. “Redline?” I asked, slowly approaching the tangle of metal and pony. It moved, so I stepped back. It moved again and I stepped back again. One final tug and a repairpony tumbled out from the stack and against the back wall.

Redline looked up at me, her eyes rolling about. “Wha, what?” she mumbled before giving her a clearing shake. “What’s going on?” she asked me, looking me up and down. “Have you come to help us build something?”

She didn’t know. I pondered the meaning of that for a moment, especially in lieu of Saltlick’s behavior. “Sort of the opposite,” I informed the puzzled pony. “There’s a firefight going on out there. Can’t you hear it?”

Redline shook her head. “No, well, yes, but only now. I’ve been trapped under there all night, I couldn’t hear a thing. See, I was getting ready for the fire, cause Anvil said there was going to be an awesome story he was going to tell, but then my whole south wall just went and fell on me. Boom!”

I sat, listened, and tapped my hoof at my chin while she spoke. “Alright, that’s interesting, but can we get going? I want to get you somewhere that’s safe.”

“It’s pretty safe here. Conviction has always been a good spot to live.” Realization dawned slowly as she took in the look I gave her. “Oh,” she muttered quietly, looking away.

“I have friends, they’ll protect you. We’re setting up a hospital for the wounded, they could use a hoof.”

Redline nodded and I could tell that she was trying to put on her bravest face. She refused to leave until after she gathered up a toolbox and a half worth of gear. If she was going to help, she told me, she would need her tools.

En route back to the safe house, I looked out to see what I could of the battle. A griffin swooped about, raining firebombs down on enemies I could not see. Back and forth, he was gliding and throwing specks of light that burst into flaming plumes. I began to dread the thought of having to help burn victims. It would not make the day any easier.

Redline shrieked a name I didn’t catch. I looked to her. She was unharmed so I followed her line of sight. A pale yellow mare ran from a unicorn. I blinked and squinted to make out who was giving chase. A floating club confirmed it was Brickbat. A sinking feeling slammed into the pit of my stomach. A feeling confirmed a moment later when Brickbat’s club came down hard on its victim. The pale mare tumbled end over end into the dirt. Brickbat barely slowed when she struck again while running past the fallen mare.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I shouted to Redline, shouldering the gawping mare along. “I’ll go and get her, but I need you safe first!” I snapped at her and it seemed to do the job. She gave me a sad, sorrowful look that betrayed the sudden crash of reality on her life, but she bolted as if her life depended on it.

The two of us crashed into the safe house. A tangle of limbs, we tumbled onto the floor. Redline had stopped in front of me, but it was my fault since I never told her about our machine gun nest. We disengaged from one another and got to our hooves. Introductions were short, but enough to get into Redline’s head that the machinegun was for her protection.

“What happened to Saltlick?” The repairpony asked, prodding her napping friend in the side.

“Something got into his head,” I explained. “He was acting wild. Tried to kill me with that sword over there.”

Redline was astonished that the shopkeeper even owned the sword. I had no reason to doubt her. I was more impressed that she took us at our word. Of course, she didn’t have much other choice lest she end up like Saltlick. Still, she offered to help and we put her to work reinforcing the walls of the shop and being a general assistant for Daisy and Fizadora.

“I’m going for your friend, Redline,” I shouted from the doorway. I just barely caught the name ‘Dewdrop’ as I ran back out into danger.

Dewdrop didn’t make it. I could tell as soon as I got to her side. Most of her face was missing; my guess was it was currently hanging from Brickbat’s bat. I wished the corpse the best and turned only to find Dozer with his assault carbine staring at me. For a moment, we looked to one another, and then he smiled. His brow quirked quizzically and he nodded down the road toward the makeshift hospital.

I nodded, falling into his pattern of silence. It was infectious.

With a ruffle of his brow, a roll of a shoulder, quirking his mouth and several gesturing nods. Dozer told me he approved and was going to be making sure we had as much peace as we could.

Once again, I nodded, but this time I added “You really do have to show me how you do that.”

Dozer just smiled, the smug Bastard.

All the same, I smiled too. “I’ve got more ponies to find. Bring your injured down there, but let them know it’s neutral territory. Anypony is allowed in and the only pony doing any firing will be my machine gunner.” I turned to head away, but stopped. “And Dozer, one more thing.”

He stopped and looked back to me.

“Bad Road’s your father isn’t he? He trusts you and that’s why you’ve always been hanging around. The gate, the initiation, this. He’s been stacking the deck in my favor this whole time.”

Dozer nodded, and we parted ways.

I was rounding a building shortly after leaving Dozer when I found the mortar nest and why it was still firing. There was only one, the others must have been firing from elsewhere. The interesting thing about it was that it was a Mister Hood operating the launcher. Hovering silently, the robot turned, plucked a shell, and deposited it inside the launcher. Then one of the other arms pulled a small lever on the side and with a funny little thumping sound, the little canon shot.

Of course, with a bounty like this, I had to leap into action. Literally, I leapt at the Mister Hoof, kicking and stomping the floating metal ball. Its grabbing arms flailed and pinched but couldn’t get a hold of my barding’s metal plates. Somepony had disabled the weapons, or built it without any weapons. Not that I wasn’t appreciative of that fact, on the contrary, I wanted to thank the maker for it, but it still puzzled me as I jumped up in down on top of the robot.

Now a Mister Hoof was not made with prancing in mind and soon the robot was little more than dented scrap metal under my hooves. One source of artillery fire down, I smiled in self-satisfaction before picking through my spoils. That’s when I noticed a mark on the inside of the robot’s metal plating. A funny looking little circle symbol pressed onto the metal. I thought for a moment about where I saw the symbol before, but I didn’t have to. The words underneath were enough to bring my mind crashing to a halt.

“BIAS Haystack”.

I sat stunned. Fizzy’s people were helping these ponies, and I had no idea. I had to find out if Fizzy knew of this. I had to know just what in the pits of Tartarus was going on here. Did she know and if she did what was going on with these ponies? My mind raced while my ass was planted but I stopped myself from getting lost in my own head. I had things to do other than leap to conclusions.

I finished gathering up what parts I could salvage from the wrecked robot. For good measure, I took the mortar and shells too. When it came time to grill Fizzy, I would need something to hold over her head as bait.

Our doctor had arrived by the time I returned, along with a few patients. Cutter moved about the shop, overseeing the trio of Bastards she had brought in from the mortar field. Two were bandaged and unconscious; one was awake and sitting with a splinted foreleg.

“No more wounded,” I told the group, trotting into the safe house. Redline looked to me with hope that fell as soon as I shook my head. “I did take out one of the mortars. They have robots firing the damn things.”

Daisy cursed under her breath but Fizzy looked over to me. More specifically, she was looking at the mortar I carried. She looked at me with pleading anticipation as I walked over. I swear the only reason she didn’t explode toward me was because she was still enclosed in her box fort.

“Picked up a few presents, too,” I told everyone, leaving the mortar and the scrap metal with Fizzy. She grinned, eyes wide, and pounced on the artillery like a filly with a birthday present. I didn’t mention of what else I discovered to my friends, but I left the piece with the Haystack stamp up so she could not have possibly missed it.

“Redline,” I asked the repairpony, “Do you guys have a lot of these Mister Hoof bots floating around?”

Redline shook her head in negation. “We brought four with us. One of them set up for medical purposes. The others were just extra tools for helping with the build work.” Her innocent curiosity faded quickly. “It’s because of those, isn’t it? That’s what this fight is about.”

I was impressed. The girl was quick on the uptake. The problem on my end was that she was also totally in the dark.

“You’re telling me you don’t know?” Cutter didn’t allow me much time to puzzle things over. Redline nodded in confirmation. “You got to be shitting me. You rained mortars down on us. You were prepped. You had to have known why.”

Redline shook her head. “I missed out on a lot last night. I kind of spent it trapped under my stuff. I didn’t even know something was going on until a few minutes ago.”

Cutter’s look was skeptical, but she shrugged it off to go yell at the Bastard with the splint for trying to use his hurt leg.

“Redline,” I said, once more going for the door. “That storytime you mentioned. I heard Anvil Crawler talk about it, too. What is it?”

The repairpony gave a shrug. “Just telling stories around a campfire, usually. Old stuff, stuff about Equestria normally. Kind of like a town meeting. Why?”

“Anvil Crawler runs it?” I asked.

“Of course. He’s the mayor of the town. It’s his job.”

“All I needed to know,” I told Redline.

I was crossing the street, having just checked an empty home, when I saw a lavender streak come tearing out of the school bell tower. It had to be Anvil Crawler. I watched the streak zip around the sky and hammer into one of the Bastard griffins. The clash was swift, the Bastard flopping to the ground in an ungainly dive to the dirt.

One griffin, even at a distance, his smaller size pegged him as Shrike, dove to intercept his falling brother. They both hit the ground, but I watched and Shrike immediately rocketed back up into the sky. His trajectory aimed square at Anvil Crawler.

The two met above the battlefield and I wondered if I was their only audience. The two fliers kicked and clawed at one another, trading hoof blow for talon rake. They split and gave each other chase. One leading the other until caught, more mid air dives and dodges, and the chase would begin again in reverse.

Then I saw it, Shrike caught Anvil just under the chest with his claws. I found myself giving a cheer that the leader of Conviction was wounded, hopefully mortally. My cheering was short lived, however, when the pair, led by Anvil holding onto Shrike, shot for the clouds. The two disappeared into the dirty gray cloud cover and all appeared deathly still.

An ear shattered thunder crack split the air. Tendrils of lightning snaked across the clouds in a dazzling spider web. A small figure fell from the sky, tumbling broken and burnt, crashing to the ground.

Anvil Crawler flew from the clouds, slow, wobbling and wounded, toward the school’s bell tower. For a moment, I wished I had a gun. But I didn’t, and I had ponies to try and find. I didn’t try to save Shrike. I entertained the thought, but I saw, I knew the griffin was dead. I had to look elsewhere for survivors.

I crept low to the ground, ducking under fire on the narrow walk between two half-built, half-reclaimed houses. Bullets whistled and whined off the walls above my head. I had cleared the distant buildings and now found myself closer and closer to the battle. Now, I was attempting to get to the post office where I had seen two ponies run in under fire. All the while, I watched Bastard and settler trade blows in their skirmish. Small groups and solo they ran about taking pot shots at one another.

My opening was short. I dove across the street, feeling the hot sting of metal from both sides scouring my barding. One of the shots—I don’t know which side fired it— bit my back. I both cursed and praised the goddesses in equal measure while I crashed bodily through the door of the post office.

A screaming weight slammed down onto my chest. Not that I noticed it much compared to the hoof slamming onto my muzzle. I yelped, or tried to as another hoof struck the other side of my head. Once again, my dead PipBuck came to my aide. I swung wildly and bludgeoned whatever was sitting on me. The weight swiftly lifted and I heard muttered cursing to my side.

The mailmare, never did get her name, sat beside me rubbing her head and groaning. She saw me roll to my hooves and scuttled back, cringing away. “Don’t hurt me!” she cried out in fear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I shook the stars out of my vision, but the pain in my face wasn’t going away. The punches took my mind off the graze wound I had on my back. When my vision and my voice decided they wanted to work again I tried to calm the panicked mare. “Not here to hurt you. I want to help. I have a safe house and I need to get you there.”

The mailmare shook her head.

She had to be difficult, didn’t she? I grumbled to myself and chewed on my tongue. “Okay, why, is there something you need to do? Name it and I’ll do it.”

She pointed a hoof behind me. I looked and saw Sea breeze lying on the floor. Her eyes were wide but she stared at nothing. Her breaths came out in shallow gasps. When I went to check her wounds, she snarled at me, wild eyed and furious. I ignored her and found the blood pooling on the floor from a jagged line of little holes that peppered her back.

“I’ll carry her,” I told the mailmare. “Will you come with me then?” The mare nodded affirmative. “Good. Just try to stay safe. I’m armored, you’re not. Okay?” Again, she nodded.

It took a little help from the mailmare to get Sea Breeze off the ground and onto my back. The wounded mare whispered into my ear. “If this wasn’t, I wasn’t, I’d fuck you up. You know that?”

I looked to the mailmare. She must have heard because she offered a shrug with a bemused look. With Sea Breeze murmuring away, the three of us made for the door. Again, shots rang out in the streets. I could even hear the buzz of rotary blades spinning. Together, we waited for a lull in the fire and then we ran for our hides.

The gunfight had moved on, pushed toward the school by the time the mailmare and I ran. The growing distance between the gunfight and us made each step faster and the wounded mare on my back feel lighter. I had this. We had this. I felt that jolt, the thrill of victory, race up my spine. Eyes focused on the safe house, I called to the mailmare. “I never got your name.”

“Fli—.” The mailmare either had a scream as part of her name or something was wrong here.

I stopped and turned. The mailmare lay on the ground, struggling to get to her hooves. I caught her eye and she pointed. I looked just in time to see the scattergun that was going to shoot me.

The sound of the gun was surprisingly quiet; I barely registered it over the stinging pain that electrified my side. The birdshot wasn’t strong enough to penetrate my barding but the surprise and the sting tripped me up. I crashed to the ground and Sea Breeze crashed alongside me.

Three Bastards approached me. I was caught, and for helping the ponies of Conviction, I was going to die now. Every time I had tried to help something things ended up blowing up in my face. This was another one, the last one, and I knew it. Just the look on the ponies faces, the ones that were going to kill me, reminded me of that stupid unicorn I let go a little over a week ago.

I looked again and saw I wasn’t just being reminded of her. I was looking at her. There she was the third one of the group, with the shotgun, the olive green unicorn with only one ear, Cloves. I wasn’t dealing with Bastards. I was dealing with counterfeit Bastards, the bastards.

The lead one, a red unicorn with a great scar across his throat, strolled up to me. An overlarge pistol floated from one side of his head to the other. Zero guesses as to who shot the mailmare. He grinned a sharp grin, a sinister mirror to the marring around his throat.

The air cracked and the red unicorn’s side opened like a bloodied, blooming orchid. His eyes bugged, stunned to be suddenly so aware of his own mortality. His mouth formed wordless shapes as he toppled over to his side, pistol clattering in the dirt.

Thank Celestia for guardian junkies.

“Sniper!” shouted Cloves. Being quicker on the uptake than her friend, she bolted to the nearest cover. He orange coated friend wasn’t so smart. He went for the gun his ex-friend dropped.

With a flick of the tail, both the orange pony and I had learning experiences. I learned the benefits of using Sharp Retort as a tail held weapon. The orange pony learned what an impromptu tracheotomy feels like. For a split second, it was a very educational one.

I got to my hooves, leapt over the gasping orange stallion, and charged for the house where Cloves ran for cover. I tore into the darkened house, keeping my head down. A shotgun blast ripped into the wall above me, sending splinters sprinkling down on my back. I saw her in the flare of the muzzle flash. She turned to run, but I was already overtaking her. I ran her to ground sending her shotgun skittering across the floor and her into a frenzy of curses.

“Give me one good reason not to drive this through your skull,” I hissed into Cloves’ remaining ear while I pressed Old Friend into the back of her head. I had to be sure my point was not misheard.

She gritted her teeth and spat at the floor in annoyance and pain. “Scorch’s going to kill you,” she managed to croak through a closed mouth.

I ground Old Friend into Cloves’ mane. “Doubt it. He keeps sending half-wits like you after me. What’s he doing, tracking you somehow? Keeping an eye on his cronies?”

Cloves very quickly took an oath of silence. It was all the answer I needed.

I couldn’t bring myself to kill Cloves. I struck her, a few times fur good measure, and bound her as best I could before slinging her onto my back. I did not have the time to sit around and interrogate her any further anyways. I had wounded to save. So, with my prisoner on my back, I dashed back into the streets to find Sea Breeze and the mailmare.

I was lucky, the mailmare was luckier. She was back on her hooves when I got to her. She had been shot in the flank, right above her chain cutie mark. She was slowed, but she could stay up. She only had one word to say to me when I got back to her: Flicker.

It took me a moment to catch up, my brain still back in the house. “You know, that’s a really cute name,” I admitted with a smile. “But let’s get Sea Breeze back. I can carry both, but it’ll slow me down.”

“Don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Flicker told me as she cast a forlorn look to the orange pony. He had the vacant stare symptomatic of dead and a spreading pool of dust, dirt and blood on the ground confirmed the diagnosis.

I didn’t feel for the stallion, he wasn’t exactly a friend, so I just shrugged best as I could. Again, with some help, Flicker and I draped Sea Breeze alongside Cloves.

The added weight turned a run into a slog eased only by the lack of gunfire coming in my direction. Every few steps Flicker leaned on me for her own support. I didn’t see the wound, and even if I could I had no means of dressing or assessing it. All I could tell was how much the shot was slowing her down and the last thing I wanted was her bleeding out on me before we could get her help. My own wounds felt distant, a problem to be dealt with later rather than sooner.

“Three wounded,” I gasped, nearly collapsing into the safe house. The shop had gotten crowded in my absence. Counting Bastards, settlers, my friends, and the new patients I brought in, the tally was over a dozen ponies and one griffin. Fizzy’s box fort of ingredients was dwindling, though she seemed more engrossed with dismantling her new mortar tube. I could only hope we had enough to hold out.

Redline squealed and dashed over to us. She spoke like a machinegun, wondering and wanting to know what happened and how they were. As goes in cases where excitement overwrote any sense of concern, the repairpony did nothing to actually help the situation, just served as a very noisy reminder that there was a situation. Thankfully Cutter saved me by shoving the excitable settler aside.

“Alright, alright, clear out,” Cutter snapped while she moved in to check Flicker’s side. Being the resident leaning post, I didn’t have much to do other than feel the dawning realization that I had been peppered by that shotgun.

“Not for nothing, Cutter, but can we move this so that I’m not supporting the weight of three ponies plus myself?” I asked, trying to get a look at the griffin.

She gave me a small scowl, shook her head and directed Flicker to the side. “Alright, we’ll get you patched up, but you walked in here alive and under most of your own power. My little assistant here’s going to clean you up and I’ll get to you when I can.” With a click of her tongue, Cutter pulled Redline’s attention and instructed the repairpony to walk Flicker off to the side.

The doctor looked at the two on my back. I filled her in on the difference between my prisoner and her patient. Cutter gave me a look that told me different. “This one’s been knocked out cold, that puts her in my territory,” she told me, tapping Cloves on the back with a talon. “You can have her after I clear her.”

“Just check on the other one first, she hasn’t tried to kill me yet,” I told the doctor before telling Daisy; “Two-Shot’s okay. No idea where he is, but he bailed me out back there.”

“Told you,” Daisy’s response came packaged with a familiar all-too-knowing grin. “He’s doing more for us being away from us right now. We’ll catch him on the way out.”

I felt a weight lift off my back. Turning, I saw Cutter hoisting Cloves from me and onto the floor with the rest of the injured. I opened my mouth to protest, figuring the doctor smart enough to not completely ignore me. She caught my look first, though, and the shake of her head gave me all the answer I needed.

A string of obscenities danced in my mind. I settled on “fuck”. “She was alive when I picked her up,” my protestations useless but necessary, and Flicker attempted to back me up. I was beginning to like the mailmare.

Cutter shrugged, looking matter-of-fact at the corpse draped over my back. She was kind enough to pull Sea Breeze off me and lay her in the corner. She was kind enough even to cover the body after a moment of consideration.

“Serves the settler bitch right,” snarled a Bastard with a heavily bandaged foreleg. “If she would’ve just—“

Cutter was there in a flash, her talon clamped around the earth pony’s snout. He struggled, twisting and lashing, but couldn’t break the doctor’s grip. She leaned toward him, one eye staring wide, the other squinting.

“Right here,” she told him, tapping her free talon at a spot in the middle of his throat. “One incision, one drinking straw, one silent pony. Don’t disrespect the dead. Are we clear one this matter?”

The Bastard looked left and right. His comrades in wounds had miraculously found other things to entertain themselves. A groan tried to escape from his throat and he rolled his eyes back around to the griffin. They held their staredown for a pregnant moment. The room watched one edge. Except Fizzy, she was all smiles consumed with her new toy.

The stallion nodded inasmuch as he could with Cutter’s grip restraining him. She released his muzzle and the Bastard made a big silent show of how little the medic hurt his pride. There have been more convincing performances.

“Okay, bullshit time is over,” Cutter called out, rallying attention to herself. “Curtain Call, get that shit off. I want to have a look at the holes you have in your hide. Redline, go fetch a potion and some bandages, I’m going to save your friend’s leg.”

She started toward the wounded mailmare as Redline dashed by now that she was back in her assistant role. Cutter added, by way of gesture, that she didn’t much care for any objections to her stated goal.

I went over toward Fizzy and Daisy at the far side of the shop. “How are things on this end?” I asked the pair while I got to the business of sloughing off Old Friend and my barding.

Fizzy said she hadn’t really noticed, too busy with cooking up the chems needed. Daisy, however, gave a half there shrug and leaned on the stock of her machinegun. “Good, far as it can be. All of them are smart enough to not start any real shit. Least they won’t chance with the good doctor over there.” Daisy watched the griffin like a, for lack of a better term, griffin. “So what do you know about her? She doesn’t act like any griff merc I’ve ever met.”

“Didn’t know she could talk until a few days ago,” I admitted as I peeled off my barding. The air gave me sudden sharp reminders of the peppering Cloves’ shotgun gave me. I hissed out, “She’s as cheery as any griffin I met.”

Daisy shook her head all the same. “Yeah, but that’s any griffin. They’re cocks by all definitions. What I mean is she’s no mercenary. She ain’t acting like one.”

I nodded, watching the griffin snap at Redline for some kind of mild medical mistake. “Remind you of Cherry?” I asked. “In aim if not execution.” I amended after a particularly exasperated sigh came from the doctor’s end of the room.

“Yeah,” Daisy admitted in a voice that struggled to crawl above a whisper of self-admission. “She was a great girl. Didn’t deserve what happened to her. Not at the hotel, not before that. Toughest mare in the wasteland, Cherry was. Mark my words.”

She caught my look and gave me a soft smile. “Grew up alone, had one place after another shot out from under her. Never broke. Not fucking once did she break. From here, looking at these ponies, I can tell you, Call, that Two-Shot and I broke. We gave up. We should’ve been out there, doing this. It’s what we set out to do. What we planned on.”

Looking to my side, I saw Fizzy was listening as intently as I. Both of us looked toward the blue mare. I wanted to comfort her, but then she looked at me and smiled. “Don’t think I don’t see you two. I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, she was there with us, but she wasn’t there because she was fed up with this world and the shitheads in it. She was there trying to take care of the two shitheads that locked themselves up in a hotel in the middle of Manehattan.

Fizzy and I nodded, it seemed right. Whether or not it was true didn’t matter. Despite the bittersweet feeling in the air, I felt a stirring in me to punctuate the situation in a fitting manner.

“She had a pretty nice looking flank,” I said with a grin. I am more than certain it was the sheer audacity of the statement that got the laugh out of my two friends, and odd looks from those not in on the conversation. We ignored them all the same.

I looked down to Fizzy, wanting to breech the subject of the markings I had seen on the mister hoof. She and I traded a quick conversation of the countenance. I raised my eyebrows. She looked to the plate in question. I gave a little nod. She responded with a quirk of an uncomfortable frown, looked to the crowded room, and gave me a short shake of her head. I mirrored her look and nodded. I wouldn’t push that subject now, but I had ways around these sort of things.

“So where do you suspect they got mortars from? I was here yesterday. I would expect them to break into song, not break out artillery.”

“Broncton Manufacturing Company most likely,” Fizzy answered with a shrugging glance to the tube at her side. She looked up and saw on my face that she should explain further. “They make weapons.”

“I gathered that.”

Fizzy rolled her head back and forth, adjusted her glasses and bought herself time to think. “Broncton, the Broncton Manufacturing Company, they’re one in the same.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard of them.”

“Same reason you never heard of The Haystack. The code of silence does its job keeping out ponies they don’t want knowing about them. At least the details.”

“And you’re familiar with them?” I pressed in interest.

Fizzy nodded. “I worked for them in research and development. Part of a trade agreement. Didn’t you ever wonder why I was trusted with this job?” The look on the mare’s face told me this should have been something entirely obvious. Still, she filled us all in. “I have experience with the outside.”

Daisy and I exchanged glances. “So what do you think this company has to do with these ponies?” I asked Fizadora.

Fizzy had turned her attention back on the chemistry set. “Probably nothing more than just trade. I can’t say where they get their tech from.”

I studied the mare. She was awful liar, but nothing about her told me she was. It was a discomforting thought. I didn’t have long to dwell on it, however, as it wasn’t long before I a sharp pain jolted through my body.

“Calm down, you big baby,” Cutter chided me as she dabbed antiseptic on my wounds. “The wounds are superficial at best. Quick wrap of those enchanted bandages and we can get you out into the field again so I have something to do tonight.”

I hissed agreement through my teeth. The medicine always had to hurt more than the actual wound. I had been good at ignoring the light ache up until the griffin brought the knowledge straight to the fore.

“Can’t say I think there are that many out there to save left,” I told the others, “With the amount of bullets flying out there, most of them are fighting. Surprising, I know, but these ponies should have just been rolled over. Not standing ground like they are.”

“You’d be surprised,” Daisy said, “I can’t tell you how many ponies I’ve seen stand against things they couldn’t take, just out of a sense of pride. I know because I faced off against most of them.”

“But you’re the one still standing,” Cutter pointed out since she wasn’t too busy jabbing stinging liquids into the holes in my hide to make comment.

Daisy simply nodded. “Like I said, standing up to things they couldn’t take.”

Cutter finished patching me up, gave me a slap on the back to show me how much she cared, and laughed before leaving to check on the rest of the charges. “Keep bringing them in to me, Red, I’m just getting rolling,” she said over her wing.

I just shook my head and started to get my barding on. However, I stopped at the growing sound of gunshot and voices from outside. My ears perked, several of the patients looked to the door, and Daisy leaned into her gun.

Not just one Bastard, but a small mob of them gathered outside. I made my way to the door to get a better view. They had bodies with them, bringing their wounded. One at the head of the group, the same blue-green mare that was part of my initiation, spoke up. “Hear you got a meds here. That right?”

Standing in the doorway, I took the job of speaking on my shoulders. “Yeah, we do, but this is neutral zone.”

The mare directed a hard-eyed glare at me. “You telling me you’re helping the fuckers who’re shooting at us?”

I paused. I could answer truthfully, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well and unlike the wounded already inside, most of this mob was more than ready to fight back if their sensibilities were offended. Lying wouldn’t work, the truth would have been found it instantly. I had few options, standing there confronting a mob of Bastards. That’s when it hit me, I had seen their mobs before and I knew what would work here. The Bastards liked big speeches and I just happened to have a one prepared thanks to endless reading of “The Greatest Plays for the Smallest Stage”.

I gave a long nod, nearly a bow, overdoing it a bit. A grin drew itself in confident defiance on my face. “I am,” I told them.

The mare moved to speak, but I thrust a hoof out with a loud. “Halt!” A moment of silence and that was my cue. “My friends, comrades, we stand in arms for what? To strike a blow and draw the blood of foes? To claim for pride and strive for wicked gain? Deny, say I, deny the cruel. Now cast aside the thoughts most dark and foul, to rend the woes of war, to stand and drive the cries of hate away from heart and mind and land. Shall we so see the windigo fly this day? Tis keen, the cry that fills the sky to rake our souls upon the coals from darkened pit. Are we but foals to have at it without the mind to speak our crimes? Stay hoof and knife, stay spear and spell. My friends, this day I take another way. To you, I ask, take up the task. Hold friendship near clutch close and dear. For that, ponies, is our birthright.”

All was, or seemed, still. The mob was silent. My friends were silent. All their eyes were on me, on every word and every sweeping gesture. Now it was over and I was left, nearly panting, and standing in front of an armed mob. They looked, for a moment, to consider my words, and pity rose in their eyes. All the same, I took the initiative of insurance.

“If that didn’t convince you guys,” I told the group, moving aside and revealing Daisy and her machinegun. “If you don’t drop the weapons, she’ll drop you.”

I will never know just what did the trick, but the mob listened. If it was me, Daisy, or the realization that their wounded were not getting better standing out in the middle of the open I didn’t ask. They entered with their wounded on their backs and lay them out on the dwindling floor space. No words were spoken, none at all. I didn’t know most of the ponies brought in, save one. Dozer. He was unconscious, a ragged wound torn into his side. I couldn’t tell from what, nor did I have time to remain here much longer. All I did before slipping back onto the battlefield was suggested Cutter treat Dozer first.

The sounds of war were fading as I trotted down the main thoroughfare. The shots coming rarely, distant, and mere punctuation to the chorus of shouts and cheers that rolled like thunder. I saw Bastards run, a cheering stampede. I stopped in the street to watch the distant charge back to their camp. Victory, it seemed, had been claimed and there I sat on the sidelines watching. I thought to those I managed to help. One who tried to kill me, two who didn’t, and one who died. My plan was hardly what I could call a success.

A brown-coated earth pony coughed to clear his throat. He adjusted his necktie and gave me a smile when I looked at him. He looked like he was expecting something, something I wasn’t about to give him just yet.

“No time,” I told him. “Still could be survivors out there.” He kept his smile at my denial, and looked to the schoolhouse bell tower. I looked along with him.

A lavender streak shot down toward the ground. It dipped among the running mob. There was a cry and the lavender streak rose into the sky. Angry, misaimed shots trailed the pegasus’ cutting acrobatics. Circling, Anvil Crawler swept down again and I could see the set of blade he wore on his wing. Each pass a last ditch slashing, harassing his enemy without any chance of real success. I couldn’t tell if it was pathetic or noble, detached as I was from the whole conflict at this point. An observer, I wasn’t even considered by any of those still in the fight. What can I say? It gave me damn good seats.

Anvil Crawler circled again, stopping at his tower to take aim at the escaping crowd. It was the last mistake he ever made. He jerked in the air before I heard the crack of the gun. Spinning, he slammed against the side of the bell tower, half inside, half hanging out. His hind legs kicked and struggled for a moment before he disappeared into the tower.

I only allowed myself a moment of debate before running to the school. The room had been ransacked. The horseshoe of seats was in disarray, smashed apart and strewn throughout the school. The chalkboard was riddled with holes and what wasn’t shot up had been covered with a large, thorny letter B to hammer home just who had been through here. In the corner, the spot where once sat a mechanical doctor lay bare. The mission a success, for how success was measured in this instance. A streak of blood stretched from a spot on the floor to the desk, where Anvil Crawler lay.

His breathing was heavy, his bleeding heavier. It was a gut shot, tore through and obliterated most of his right wing. He wore no armor, and his remaining wingblade lay on the floor between us. As I entered the room, his eyes opened. They stared for a moment, struggling for focus before they settled their fury on me.

“Hold on,” I spoke barely loud enough to make myself heard, “I’m here to help. I can get you to a doctor. You can make it.”

Anvil Crawler shook his head. “Stay back,” he told me. He moved his hoof to show me the glowing light of a landmine. “Any closer and I blow myself straight to Celestia.”

I stopped cold to avoid being stopped dead. “Okay, okay. Staying back here. But I got Redline and Saltlick and Flicker all waiting for you. They’re going to want their friend. Don’t you think?”

Of all things for Anvil Crawler to do, I was not expecting a smile to be it, but smile he did. “I’m not their friend,” he coughed and almost fell on the landmine, and then he laughed. “I’m their warden. They just don’t know it.”

“The what?” I questioned in disbelief, “Those are probably the most well behaved prisoners I’ve ever seen. Those were the most well behaved ponies I’ve ever seen.”

My confusion was apparently one of the few things to bring a dying pony comfort. Anvil Crawler had a twinkle in his rapidly unfocused eyes as looked to me to speak. “That’s the point. Take the biggest scum of Equestria and with a little work, we can make the world sunshine and rainbows again. Murders, rapists, warlords, none of it matters in the end. Anypony can change. You seen that.”

I edged a few steps forward but Anvil Crawler still had enough wits about him to hover his hoof over the mine’s trigger plate. “Okay,” I said as I licked my lips, “Color me skeptical but I want to know how this happens.” I remembered the robots. “And what it has to do with the Haystack.”

“That’s the fucking catch,” Anvil Crawler spat as he laughed, speckling the floor in red. “I can’t remember.” He grinned to me, ear to ear. His teeth were stained red. “It’s all in the gaps. All I can think is I got to remember Cloudsdale, but I don’t know why? Ain’t that a bitch?”

He thumped his head against the desk. By now, he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes may have been pointed in my direction, but they were seeing things only he could see. “In the desk,” he whispered. “You want to know what I know? Orders are in there. Listen all you want. Just let me die.”

For a long moment I watched the dying pegasus. I watched him bleed and slip away from the world through a hole in his stomach. Yet for all of it, he seemed at peace, genuinely happy with his death. It was dirty, painful, and watching all you had in the world torn to pieces, but he went down with his ship, and perhaps there was something to that. When you had nothing left, you still had your pride.

“Hey.” My attention snapped to Anvil Crawler. He had found focus again, though the struggle for it was etched in his face. “One thing. Just, can you do one thing?”

“What?”

“Repeat after me,” he asked, and I did.

“Junior Speedsters are our lives,
Sky-bound soars and daring dives,
Junior Speedsters, it’s our quest,
To someday be the very best.”

Anvil Crawler died smiling.

Time stretched in the minutes I sat silent and still. I watch the corpse cool on the floor. I watched the dust settle. I listened to distant sounds of the outside fade until all was as silent as I was. Only then did I stand and walk to the desk. I gave the corpse a respectful nod before I went about rifling through his stuff.

There was little inside the desk. A few maps, old toys, a never opened stationary set were all well and good but it was a small recording device that I was after. I dug the device out and set it on the desk. I hesitated, not wanting to press it right away. My hoof hovered over the device. “Hope this works, Anvil.”

Shortly after pressing the button and a soft, comfortable voice came from the device. One I’d heard before.

“I cannot thank you enough, Anvil Crawler, for your willingness to lead the first phase of our expeditionary community project. You have proven your ability and your dedication countless times since you first came to Dancer’s with open mind and open heart. As such, there is no other I would feel safer leading my charges into the wasteland than you.

However, I must stress to you that rehabilitated as they are, these ponies represent some of our more difficult cases. It will be easy to forget that they can be dangerous despite our best efforts at improving their lives. Further, I must implore you to remember that though their pasts may make them dangerous, they are as any other victim of the wasteland. Always treat them with the respect and care that they deserve. Remember that we alone have the opportunity to show this land the glory that was Old Equestria. You are the ambassadors; you are the envoys of hope and harmony. Once again, I thank you, Anvil Crawler. I cannot thank you enough for all of your efforts.

Of course, there is the matter of outsiders. Not all ponies will be so receptive to our offers. Many may even be hostile. Should conflict arise, I have provided you with a top of the line medical automaton. In addition, you will find the mechanical controls for several Mister Hoof model robots, as well as small arms and artillery. You should rely on the robots as your first line of defense. Should the robots not be adequate, and should the safety of all be at risk, then you have permission to institute Storytime. You will find the appropriate triggers after this message. The resultant fugue state will be exceedingly stressful on the patients, but it will allow the township to continue. I trust you not to use this information lightly, Anvil Crawler.

This has been Stardust, wishing you and all my little ponies the very best. And as always, remember Cloudsdale, Anvil Crawler. Always remember Cloudsdale.

I turned the recorder off and tucked it into a bag. I headed for the door but stopped. Looking back at Anvil Crawler, I decided to take his wingblades. As I tucked them into my bag, I questioned why I felt so empty about it all. I was supposed to feel guilty. At least, this was the point I was supposed to feel guilt. It felt like I was supposed to.

“They were going to attack anyways,” I said aloud. “I was just a smokescreen, a fake out, or a warning. Whichever one of them. Besides, they were all scumbags. Fucked in the head scumbags, maybe, but they were still bad ponies. No matter what I saw from them. No matter if whatever was going on here was working in a fucked up way. I still got a few out, hell, if I wasn’t around none of them would have made it. So yeah, fuck feeling bad. I did some goddess fucking good around here.”

I looked over to High Rise. He looked back with a shit-eating grin, his noose swung about his neck.

Cross-Town Express

Chapter 3: Cross-Town Express
"Did you ever have one of those days?"

"Seriously. Grenades. This is fantastic" I high stepped along the avenue alongside Fizadora tonic. The crossing behind us still smoked from the blast that tore up a pair of Scorch's raiders. They had been waiting in the street for me to exit but weren't expecting a very large, very loud explosion to precede me. Getting to know Fizadora was already starting to pay dividends in the survival department.

One question still weighed on my mind.

"Did you miss the part where I was trying to not die for you? Because I could have use a grenade back there."

Fizzy shook her head. "You could have, but I couldn't."

I looked away and bit on my tongue. I had to rethink my verbal strategy. Fizzy was direct, I had to be as well. "Okay, okay. I get your literal word games. Let me guess, you didn't want to destroy the terminal, so you felt it was okay to let me get myself fried so you could find a who knows how old delivery notice?"

Fizzy stopped. She had hesitation in her downcast eyes. "Yes and no," she answered deliberately, slotting words neatly into place. "Fragmentation grenades would do little to a terminal such as the one in the office. At the same time, I was more worried with what my grenade would do to you instead of for you. At the same same time, I was afraid to use my arcane static explosives because, as you said, afraid for the terminal. I couldn't lose another shot at this. Please understand."

The point, like Fizzy herself, was a logical one.

I took the explanation for what it was and accepted it with a generous, "Thanks for clearing the path back there."

"I needed them dead as much as you did," Fizzy pointed out, looking to the cloudy sky as she pondered, "I do wonder why they were just camped out there. It seems awful weird. I didn't leave any trail"

"Well now that you mention it," I laughed. It was a nervous one. "You know when you found me? I had just been chased by a gang of raiders that want me dead." I coughed and gave my best Luna-may-care grin, trying to shrug off the fact I was a wanted stallion. "They burned down my home. I barely escaped getting char grilled."

Fizzy stared at me again and I was once more a parasprite under glass.

"So yeah, I ain't going home cause I don't got a home to go to."

Fizzy heaved a sigh and looked skyward. "I have nothing to give, but you can salvage anything I don't need until you find your own place to stay. Besides," she directed her attention back to me, "I have not met many ponies as quick to help as you are."

"And those grenades of yours won't do you much good if something gets up close." I tactfully pointed out the strategic limitations.

"There is that." Fizzy blushed and cleared her throat, "I usually just try to make it a point to not let them get that close. A few primed proximity charges usually do the trick rather well."

I nodded to Fizzy's point and slid into silence, my mind busy with the thought of just what kind of ordinance the unicorn was packing in those saddlebags of hers and what had I gotten myself into among the ruins of East Manehattan.

The rattle of the gunfire mimicked the bursting pulse of my heart as Fizzy and I ducked down below the overhang of a remnant floor in a bombed out shell of a building. Rounds burst overhead, cutting through the concrete and stucco, sending shards and clouds of particulate dust raining down upon us.

Fizzy fumbled through her saddlebags in a desperate search for a grenade, a stick of dynamite, anything to hurl at the raiders pinning us down.

I snorted, braced against the overturned pile of rubble and office supply that served as our front side shelter. Unarmed save for Sharp Retort and my own four hooves, I could do little against the spraying gunfire.

A graveyard of a city and the ponies here all labored to add their others to the pile of dead.

"I got one! I need sight, I need sight!" Fizz shouted, her voice thin above the sharp crackle of gunfire. She signaled to me: hoof pointed at her eye and then to the barricade.

I looked around our cover and took a bullet to the head.

Thank Celestia for my helmet. Just a ping and my head jerked around like I took a cart to the face. I spiraled, spun, and sprawled to the pavement. My ears rang. My head pulsed with screaming pain. The world spun and twirled in a graceful drunken dance. Everything in me burned.

I looked up at the gray cloud sky above. It spun so much it made me sick. I turned away from sky and saw my savior: my dusty, dull yellow hard hat. I silently promised it a new coat of paint and polish if we made it out of this alive. It deserved that much.

I lay there and listen to the sounds: staccato cracks of automatic gunfire, a shriek from who knows what, the loud pop of a grenade. Combat all around me and I couldn't move, couldn't will myself to motion as my body fell into a stiffening numbness. I could see a wall of the building behind us, riddled with holes from firefights past. In my fevered state I wondered how many more it would take before it fell and crushed me.

Pavement spat up by gunfire peppered the side of my face. I was too numb for it to hurt, but the strafe was close enough to snap my focus back to reality. I was still alive after all. I cursed some more and twisted to my hooves.

I lunged to get my helmet. I wasn't going to leave it behind, not after what it just did for me.

Fizzy hunkered against the barricade, another grenade hovered by her side. She let the explosive fly. Another pop as it went off. The fire from the other side ceased. We both paused, she looked back at me, and for a moment, a smile came to her muzzle. It lasted the briefest of moments; more fire from our assailants took reign of our attention.

"Stay here!" I shouted as a new stripe of holes was created in the wall behind us. "Send another bomb at them, I'm going in!"

I lowered my head and charged as the grenade sailed overhead.

A pair of raiders vaulted over a wrecked pile of old carts to meet me in the street.

Two shots pinged off my reinforced barding. I focused on the gunslinger; a small unicorn with a pistol floating in his grey-green aura. I put my shoulder into my charge. Another shot buzzed past my ear as I closed the gap. I put my weight square under the unicorn's neck and tossed him aside.

The raider hit the car with an audible thunk. His magic cut out and the gun clattered on the ground.

A mare came at me with a wrist razor swinging. A complete amateur; she was all wild swings and slashes.

I ducked, weaved, under and around her desperate slashings. My head was ringing, my body aching, but I was running high on adrenaline and more experienced in a fight. I spun around, got my front down and brought my rear hooves just under her muzzle.

Her jaw crunched. She rolled head over flank and lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement.

Another pony lay on the other side of the heap of carts, torn up by Fizzy's grenade. She was the machine gunner; the one I suppose shot me.

I gave the dead mare a kick for good measure.

"You're an idiot, do you know that?"

I looked up and blinked away the tunnel vision threatening to black out my vision.

Two Fizzys walked toward me from across the street. "I could have killed you, they could have killed you," she said, her voice warbled in and out of my ears.

"I'm not dead, am I?" I asked, not entirely certain of the answer. The rush of excitement bled out of me and I didn't get three steps before I found myself on the ground. The last thing I saw was Fizzy looking down at me when everything went black.

I came to in the remains of an old world diner. The old relics of a long past, happier time surrounded me with a mocking cheeriness hidden underneath the rust and decay. The too-big eyes of the pink ministry mare were watching, as they always were, from a poster that still clung to the aging wall. There was a clock, branded Sparkle-Cola and stopped sometime in the early afternoon, that I fixated on. I don't know why, it didn't help as I knew the clock was more dead than I felt. It was something to watch that wasn't the staring eyes of some long dead mare.

I tried to get to my hooves,quashing the rebellion in my legs. Pain lanced through my skull. The world blurred, went pale, too dark and then too light all in the same moment. I reeled and found support in the shape of an old table.

I stood there for what felt like hours, even though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. I tried to call for Fizzy but all I succeeded in was a garbled moan. She was no where to be seen

"She ditched your ass."

I looked around for the source of the voice. It popped and hissed, sounded vaguely tinny. Fearful of leaving my support table, I craned my neck to find my radio sitting on the decrepit countertop. The little light still working behind the dial flashed as though it were winking at me.

"You heard me, Red. That filly you been following around went off and left you here."

"She just went out to get some help." I had to reassure myself that I wasn't left alone, "She'll be back."

I got a laugh in return. "Really now, Red? Who's to say she ain't going to bite it out there? Manticore's all up and down this strip. Raiders too. And that's only if the girl even comes back for your sorry flank."

I stared back at Radio. I hated him. At the same time, I could not exactly say he was wrong. I mustered what defense I could, given my state. "Because I'd come back for her."

It sounded weak. Radio smelled that weakness and poured on the acid tones. "How noble a scavenger you are, Red. Too bad I know you better than that."

"I'm a salvager," I snapped back, lashing towards Radio. Too much, too soon, and the world spun around me. I managed to stay on my hooves thanks to pure obstinacy. I had to get on the offensive. I gritted my teeth and tried to stare down Radio. "The things I find get put to use."

"As if that mattered, Red. You and I both know what happens to the things you find. The kid's better off ditching you."

I lowered my head. "You're wrong, and you're not helping."

"Sometimes help hurts, Red. I'm just being honest here, your radio wave reality check." Radio laughed. "I always know what you're up to and I'll always be around to tell you what you need to hear. So don't worry about it, cause I sure as shit won't. See, I don't care if you like me, because it doesn't make what I say wrong. Catch you later, Red."

I hammered the radio with my hoof. If the old world hadn't seemed to make everything to withstand balefire and megaspells, I think it would have broken. I wish it had, it would've looked better than my impotently thumping a radio to the floor before following it myself. For the second time today I took another impromptu, but eagerly needed, nap.

I woke amid an endless pile of satin and silk. My soft prison clung to me, dark and suffocating. I thrashed, spinning and kicking in a wretched panic at the clutching cloth. Piece by piece, the wrappings fell away from me and I tumbled out onto a cold wood floor.

Once again I found myself in the red-and-gold stateroom. I felt a gnawing unease ripple up my back as I walked across the floor. Nothing had changed; the bed, the desk with its worn photographs, the flickering lamps were all still in place.

Only now there wasn't a hallway to walk into. In front of me was just a door. It loomed in front of me with all the purpose and sobriety of a gravestone.

Water trickled from underneath.

I hesitated, out of fear and knowledge of what could lay on the other side, but I opened the door. I had no choice. My body moved on autopilot.

The wooden dock creaked out in protest of my weight. I stood on a long wooden path that bobbed up and down on the thick, stagnant waters of a swamp. The air hung heavy and bore its oppressive heat and humidity against my back. Unseen things chittered and called in the dark thicket. The whole place stunk of stale water.

I looked behind myself. The door was gone.

I walked down the wooden path and listened to the water slap off the sides of the barrels that kept it all afloat. Small lamps shone in the shadows and kept me from falling into the fetid swamp water. Closer and closer those lamps drew me along through the dark to a cluster of shining lights that fought for luminescence in the deep black distance.

The weak lights grew stronger, shapes formed in the mire and I saw a small town on stilts rising from the shadows.

My heart stopped and I felt a cold rush of blood in my ears. "No," I said. "No," I repeated.

I turned to run. I didn't want to go into that town. I didn't want to continue.

I came face to face with a sign that read:

Marshlight
Pop. 74

It was just a wooden plank with a few words burned into it. A welcome sign for a small community.

A sign that terrified me.

I turned again only to be met with the same sign and the same town standing in front of me. Back and forth I went and each time the town transposed itself in front of me.

I twisted and turned in place and saw my escape. I dove for the water.

And slammed snout first onto the dock. The boards bobbed up and down violently. I got to my hooves and there again stood the sign. Only now, the population was crossed out and in place of the seventy-four ponies that made up Marshlight was a single number.

Three.

My breaths came in quick, hungry gasps. I backed from the sign and that's when I heard a distant sound. A sound like frying meat. I sound like cracking and popping and the screaming of demons.

Another scratch, like a claw across the board, dug through the three.

Two.

I sat down and closed my eyes and begged for it to end. I didn't want to be here. Not again.

"Call," a voice gagged out my name.

"Sorry," I whispered to the voice.

"Here, this won't help you in the long run, but it'll get you on your hooves."

This new voice I heard was cloudy and distant, a faint echo from a long hallway. It was the sweetest thing I could have hoped for.

A needle pricked my neck. My body swam in the warm, encompassing glow of Med-X

The source of the voice helped me to my hooves. "Just some scrap bandages and leftover drugs. I can't help you any more than that; there wasn't much I could find in a pinch. Hopefully this can keep you going long enough for us to find some decent healing potions or a doctor."

I blinked away the blur in my eyes. Slowly, the counter came into view. Then the radio, still off, and my helmet. Finally, I noticed Fizzy. I laughed, it felt and sounded like sandpaper.

"You were wrong, Radio."

"What?" Fizzy gave me a look that told me it was best to backpedal lest I look insane.

"Nothing, just, was just worried you left me to rot. Can't think of many ponies who would've come back for a pony like me."

She looked insulted. "If I was just going to ditch you, I would have done so before I dragged you all the way here."

"I know that now. Getting shot in the head doesn't keep most ponies thinking straight. Thankfully I got a hard head."

"If you can crack jokes, you're going to be fine."

We both found respite in a short laugh.

"And I reinforced your helmet while you were out of it. I didn't think some old metal hard hat would stand up so well. Chalk it up to earth pony construction."

Fizzy's silver aura clung to my helmet. It floated across the diner and sat gently on my head.

"Same goes for your skull."

I put on my best brave and confident face, thanked the princesses for the wonderful drug and the magic in the wraps around my head and made for the door. "Show must go on," I said, stopping only to look back at Fizadora. "I owe you, again. Can't get your soda staying here."

"Can't get you a doctor, either."

Thank Celestia for Fizadora Tonic.

"Hold up, I want to check this out," I called to Fizzy.

We had come across a fallen air cargo carriage. It was a rusted out shell of a vehicle but it was big enough to house a lot of materials and after a cursory look around, seemed to have been left relatively alone over the years.

Trash and potential treasure spread all over the ceiling turned floor. Empty liquor bottles made for most of the refuse. A few rusted metal boxes in the back held little more than dust.. I managed to find a few stray cases of Mint-als and a few bottles of Apple Brand Apple Cider in the back corner. I stuffed them into my saddle bags while Fizzy kept lookout. I could keep a bottle of the booze for myself and pawn the Mint-als off on some addict to cover the cost of my medicine.

The roof nearly buckled, denting in and groaning. Fizzy and I looked to one another, silent, barely even breathing as we heard the ghastly screeching of claws on metal. Thud after heavy thud echoed above us. The protest of the worn metal filled our ears. We both watched the door. My heart was in my throat. Fizzy's magic pulled a grenade from her saddlebags.

We were still as the grave.

A large, bulky shadow hit the pavement and blocked the entrance. Pinpricks of lightfrom the gray outside streamed in through holes in the fatigued metal, but not nearly enough to give us sight. In the darkness we could hear the thing breathing, snuffling about just outside the container.

"Fizz, Fizzy," I hissed through my teeth to the mare. Neither of us moved as we tried to simultaneously look to each other and watch the thing at the same time. "Go for it."

Fizzy nodded, apparently agreeing with me. The little metal apple sailed through the air. It bounced with a light clack, rolled, and sat underneath the brute. The glacial seconds hung in the air, then, bang.

The explosion tore at the beast. It fell back knocked to the ground, roaring in surprise and pain. It lay on the ground, still, bleeding from a myriad holes torn by the flying metal.

It was a manticore. We just blew up a manticore.

Fizzy and I shared a silent cheer when the manticore hit the dirt. Together we bolted for the exit.

The manticore hauled itself to its paws and turned its attention on us. Baleful fury and pain in its eyes and in its bellow, it charged the overturned carriage. A deafening crunch echoed in the carriage as the manticore struck. The carriage bucked, Fizzy and I slammed against side and wall as bottle after bottle of spent cider rained about us.

"I need to develop a higher yield formula." Fizzy made notes while upside and folded like a concertina.

Fizzy could be scarier than the manticore.

The manticore's massive paw stretched deep into the carriage. It pounded about the inside of the carriage, swiping blindly for us. Junk tossed about by the paw bruised and battered off my barding but the creature couldn't push in any farther.

Trapped as we were, at least it could not get to us. In all, we had broken even on the situation.

"I can't detonate anything this close to us. I don't have any shaped charges." Fizzy was back on her hooves and hunkered with me in the back to figure this situation out. "If I blow anything here it'll be messy."

"I think that's a given just about anytime someone blows something."

Fizzy rolled her eyes. "We'll be in the blast radius."

"We're facing something that wants to eat us, I think a little levity is warranted." I looked around at the junk tossed about and what things I had picked up from the plant.

"Fizz? How are you with making things?"

"Pretty good," Fizzy eyed me with curiosity, "You have something in mind?"

"Ayup." I dug through my saddlebags.

"I got some spare electrical junk, a plunger, a spark battery, some duct tape and a big kitchen knife. Now If I remember, you can put a charge into any metal thing if you can hook a battery up to it. I'm just not sure how to do it. Think you can?"

Fizzy took to the scrap with that same parasprite-under-glass look she gave me. Her magic lifted the various parts up and around. "I think I can do something with this. Yes. Just try to let me work here."

A sharp stinger, dripping with venom, plunged through the top of the cargo container and lashed about. Fizzy and I cursed as the stinger punched through the roof over and over again. It only stopped when the manticore tried to shove its face inside to roar and spit at us.

"Hurry up, Fizzy. We don't have much time here!" I called out as the container began to bend more with each strike of the manticore.

"Distract him," Fizzy called back, speaking around a length of wire while parts orbited her head, "Busy here."

Distraction. I felt a bubbling of deja vu at the thought of my appointed task. I looked around at all the bottles and saw my answer.

I hurled the bottles at the manticore. They bounced uselessly off its gaping maw. The ones that broke didn't cut much but most just bounced harmlessly.

I didn't hurt the manticore, but I did piss it off

The manticore snarled and bellowed. Spittle flew from its fangs. Clanging filled the carriage each time it hefted its considerable bulk against the rusted frame. I continued to taunt the monster until Fizz trotted past me floating some strange looking spear. It was short, made from body of the plunger. The knife was at one end, the spark battery at the other. Two wired ran the length of the stick, kept down by the tape.

"Are you sure about this?" I shouted my concern over the manticore's din.

"We'll see as soon as I stab it!"

Her answer did not fill me with a great load of confidence.

The manticore bellowed. Fizzy floated the spear up just as the great beast's jaws closed.

There was a light show. The spark battery discharged when the spear wedged itself inside the manticore's maw. Arcane flashes in a multitude of colors splashed and sparked in a dazzling way. Pure scintillation.

It bucked, slamming its head against the ceiling. The manticore thrashed out of the container and began to dance and twitch. It pawed at its mouth, uselessly trying to dislodge the sparking spear. Its bellows and roars choked and sputtered as it slowed, fell, and twitched its last on the pavement.

The tangy smell of cooked flesh coiled up in the smoke from the animal's jaw.

We stared for a long, quiet time, Fizadora and I. We stood waiting, watching the death throes, listening to the crackle hiss of charred flesh, the gargled whimpers of the dying beast. The carriage, the road, the section of the city seemed quieter than death after it ended.

"Figs," Fizzy broke the silence..

I just nodded in reply.

"So, uh, let's just keep going then?"

"Let's"

"Not all that much farther," Fizzy said, floating her map in front of her face.

She spun the map and continued, "I think we ended up turned around for a while, but I'm working off of hearsay and guesswork."

Not satisfied with my lack of response, she jabbed my side. "Hey, are you listening?"

"What? Yeah, yeah," I sputtered, looking back down from the gray clouds above. I shook my head, my eyes needed to adjust. "Getting lost happens some times. And we're out of my area so I don't know this place that well."

"If we could get your PipBuck working, then this whole trip would become a lot simpler" Fizzy prodded the dead device on my foreleg. "I could probably fix it if we can get some time and parts. I have seen a few before. Back home, that is."

"Considering it's nothing more than a useless hunk at the moment, I'd appreciate that."

Fizzy nodded, rolling up her map to tuck away in her saddlebags. "Even with the parts, I need something to boot up the spell matrix. That means we are going to need some arcane technology to help with the job. Got any of those on you?"

Before Fizzy and I stretched a bridge over the stagnant, still, sickly looking river down below. Across the water lay the final leg of our hike through Manehattan. Just one more neighborhood to go and we were clear of raid gang territory.

I watched the skies and thought of everything I was leaving behind. Everything I called home. Not that there was much of it left. Not that it was much anyways. My radio collection, a mattress, a stack of books I had read over and over again. I already begun to replace the radios.

As hard as it was to admit, I was not doing anything important with my life. If that stable pony could do give up whatever they had to help others, I could give up my little hideaway.

Can't hide from what I'm running from, anyways, I thought to myself.

"Hold on, I got a bad feeling about this," I said, holding a hoof to stop Fizzy.

Bullets drilled themselves into the bodies of the rusted out and dead carts that littered the old bridge.

Fizzy and I ran for our lives.

There was about six of them, raiders, all armed. Not that I cared much about most of them, not when I saw the one standing behind the charging line.

Big, blue, a flamer tank on his back. Scorch found us.

I composed a mental a symphony in the key of "fuck". I lead Fizzy and we began to put space between us and the raider by weaving around and over the detritus that littered the bridge.

Fizzy stopped. She dug into her pack and floated out a pair of disks and flung them to the path behind us.

I should have known she carried mines on her.

"What are you waiting for, run, run!" Fizzy tore past me. The high-pitched whine of bullets striking followed.

I turned tail to keep up with Fizzy. More pinging gunfire struck around me as I ducked behind an overturned hunk of metal far beyond its original shape an intended use. It still made for a decent wall. I stopped there for a moment to catch my breath.

The expected booming from the land mines never came. I stuck my eye up to a hole in the metal wall. "Sweet Celestia!" I spat at what I saw.

Scorch directed the raiders to the other side of the bridge. He was going around the mines. He looked right at my cover. There was no way he could see me, which is why it was very disconcerting when he pointed a hoof in my direction. His raiders turned at their command and opened fire on my position.

The fusillade tore at the wall. My safety compromised, I bolted. I couldn't see Fizzy and With nothing else to go on, I ran for the far end of the bridge. I shouting her name, ducking and dodging the onslaught.

A blue ridge of a mane peeked out above a barricade. I whooped and ran for that beacon of safety.

"Fizz, let's move. Now. As in running time. They're avoiding your traps." I spat out the warning, jumping over Fizzy and the mine she had just laid in my path just as the little armed light blinked on.

"I know. Just want to slow them. Didn't want you getting caught up," Fizzy spoke in clipped, though not urgent, sentences. She quickly outpaced me amid the growing number of increasingly suspicious barricades on the bridge.

The shots started again. Short bursts; they were conserving their ammunition. Worse than the thought of them playing smart was that gnawing realization that they were playing us, herding us along through their bursts of gunfire. They shot to force us one way or another as they chose.

I hated these raiders.

I saw a grenade soar up and over Fizzy's head. I heard it explode behind me. I looked back to see the dispersed raiders regather under the lead of a peach unicorn. I couldn't see Scorch among the group. I knew that Scorch's disappearance meant nothing, but I held out hope for his death.

The peach colored unicorn's head popped. A spray of red fanned out behind what was left of him. One dying eye blinked in surprise as what was left of his brain tried to process its sudden disappearance.

"Shit!" I shouted, turning and running. Raiders behind and now a sniper ahead. This day just got worse.

Fizzy and I banked left when we got to the end of the bridge. We had no choice in the matter; there was a sizable wall just beyond the intersection. The wall wasn't some random falling of debris. Some pony had piled up whatever they could gather to build themselves a solid fortification. It was impressive and impressively inconvenient for us.

I looked out over to the bridge. From my new perspective, I could see Scorch's position. He was watching me; crouched down behind one of the overturned barricades.

Another raider spasmed when a bullet ripped a path through her body. The sound of the shot echoed afterward.

This loss apparently kick started the raiders' brains again. They hunkered down under fire. The raiders kept focus on Fizzy and I's unseen savior.

Scorch watched me.

Night was fast approaching. My meds had worn down, the dull aching realization that I was injured was coming back. The adrenaline rush that bought me so much more time was on its ebb. I hurt, and though the chase hadn't added any more injuries to me, it made me acutely aware of the ones I already had.

The situation was made worse by the fact Fizzy and I had little success in finding a suitable place to camp for the night. Neither of us wanted to be out when the bloodwings took flight, nor be exposed in case Scorch and his crew got past the sniper.

"Aha, found it!" Fizzy's voice brimmed with excitement.

"Found what?"

"The way in."

Fizzy stood at a bent flap of metal in the wall we had followed since the bridge.

"Careful," she continued as she nudged her way past the flap and reinforced bits of well placed metal, stone and wood fashioned into crooked barricades. "We've got mines, live ones. This will take a bit."

She crouched low, the silver aura of her magic trailed along the ground to a mine just barely out of view. Her magic coated the explosive and her eyes narrowed in concentration

It beeped once, twice, and then chirruped when deactivated. Fizzy may have been calm, but I still released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. We past the device and Fizzy rearmed it in our wake.

"At least we know they like visitors." My sarcasm fell on deaf ears but I stayed close to my little explosives expert for my own safety.

"Can't help but think," my voice kept low, as though it could set off the bombs at any moment, "it's good that this pony doesn't want us dead."

"I got the joke, bit busy here," Fizzy said while hiding a mine behind us.

"No," I corrected, "I mean look there. That building."

I directed Fizzy's attention to a large, short structure, intact considering the state of its neighbors. The building's squat height spared it the wrath of the bombs. Most importantly to me was the fact it had one key feature, balconies, namely one large balcony that ringed most of the structure.

"I bet from there they could pick off anypony or anything they wanted to. We were trying to clear a path through the mines, we completely let ourselves out in the open."

Fizzy didn't reply, processing the angles to the balcony. Upon realization, we shared a nod, and she returned to her minesweeping.

One by one, spot by spot, we moved. Fizzy collected and replaced every mine we past, leaving them in case Scorch or his minions followed.

Closer and closer we got, bit by bit nearer to the front door. The stairs leading to the doorway was clear of mines. After the ages it took us to deal with the minefield, it had grown nearly pitch dark, and Fizzy and I both broke for the door, stopping just shy of throwing the doors open and running in.

"The Hotel Haflinger," I read the burnished brass plate beside the door, "Established before you were born." Fizzy and I shared a glance. "So," I said, "You're thinking the door is trapped?"

She nodded, looking from the door to me. "Ayuh. Evidence suggests it."

I tapped my hooves in time to an internal song. She adjusted her glasses. Time ticked impatiently.

I broke first. "I'll be the gentlestallion and get the door for the mare of the hour."

With a flourish and a bow, I put my weight into the most florid door opening I could muster.

Only to find that there was no door anymore.

I fell into the foyer flat on my face. While being intimate with the flooring, I pondered why Fizzy didn't at least laugh at my failings. A voice echoing from somewhere above gave me my answer.

"So, my friends, would prefer booze, or bullets?"

<<<<>>>>

Author's Note

Short chapter this time. Shorter than before. I cut out some bits I thought were lumpy and useless. Tweaked some things and added a few more. Still not my move beloved chapter but it does what it needs to.

Thank you all for your support. Thanks for taking time to enjoy this little fan work of mine despite how long this road is taking.