Fallout Equestria: Recovery

The last three days have been miserable. Not only could I barely move, but both Rose and Daisy decided to make fun of the temporary cripples. Daisy is a great doctor, but her bedside manor needs some serious work.

Her and Rose had been spending a lot of time together while Deadbolt and I recovered. Apparently Rose thought it would be a good idea to get some tips on how to treat injuries. Given that within a week I was hospitalized twice, I agreed with her. If we weren’t going to have a doctor around we should at least know how to fix ourselves up a little.

Steadfast decided to drop in on us once or twice as well. He had noticed I had been gathering multiples of the same pistol and showed me how to use parts from one to improve the other.

“You're not half bad at this.” the grey pony said, watching me tear apart the pistols and reassemble them with my magic. It was a tedious process. I would examine each piece before deciding on which was better. One would might be slightly rustier than the other or look more worn and used.

I could finally focus magic again without getting a headache. Not being able to levitate objects at will was something I really didn’t want to have to get used to.

It had been a gradual process but I was back to almost full mobility. My muscles didn’t ache nearly as much anymore, hell, I could actually walk around now. We would be getting ready to head out soon.

“Well, I did fix things for a living back in the Stable.” I said as the parts floated into place. I decided to only use the best two of the pistols for parts. I was going to sell the the last one.

I placed my horn onto the newly repaired pistol. I focused my magic into one of the few spells I knew. I wasn’t great with magic, but I did know a few spells. Though most of them barely worked and the others were practically useless.

The small bits of rust on the gun started to fade, not a lot, but it would still improve the quality of the pistol and make it more reliable.

Steadfast looked at the gun curiously. “Now that is an interesting spell.”

I was panting, even that spell, which barely affected the gun took a lot of energy for me to use. “Thanks, I’ve only ever used it a few times. Mostly on old water pipes.”

“Hmm, that could be kinda useful out here. Oh! almost forgot.” He grabbed his saddle bag and started rifling through it. “A little gift, figured you might need it” He laid out three pairs of rough, brown clothing. “Leather, its not the best, but it’ll protect you a bit more than that stable barding. Found it on the caravan when we went back to clear out those nasties in the cave.”

Steadfast had lead a team of guards out on a quick run to clear out that cave we had tried to hold up in. He wanted to make sure the road up to Trottingham would be safe for caravans and travelers again. We had also not been able to carry everything that the wrecked caravan had, so they were also on a collecting mission.

“Oh, thanks.” I said as I lifted the light armor up to look at it. It wasn’t a fully body suit like my stable barding. It only covered the front half of the body. I guess that was fine though. While I did like my current barding, the issue with the Stable 12 barding was that it was very impersonal and covered ones cutie mark. It never really made much sense to me why you would cover part of you that makes you an individual but I never heard anyone else complain about. “Your just giving us these? Don’t you need them?”

He waved his hoof. “Nah, all of the guards have some sort of protection. While these would be nice to keep as back-ups, I think you guys will need ‘em a lot more than we will.”

The door creaked open. Deadbolt had gone out to sell everything we had that we didn’t plan on keeping with us. That amounted to his old stable barding, a rusty pistol and some bullets for guns we didn’t have. From the look on his face he had gotten a decent amount of caps for it all. He almost looked content.

“Oh, I meant to ask. How’d the hunt go?” I asked, turning my attention back to Steadfast.

Deadbolt glanced over at us but kept walking over to the locker.

“Went pretty well. Lancer got bit but I had Daisy whip us up some anti-venom before we left. Didn’t let it start to work through his system. Other than that, went off without a hitch.”

“Did you ever figure out what those things were?” Deadbolt asked as he walk back over to us.

“Yeah, Dusk said he'd seen ‘em before. Apparently some kind night stalker variation. But we cleared them out of that cave. The main road to Trottingham should be relatively safe again.” The charcoal maned pony explained.

“Speaking of which, we’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

Deadbolt took a seat. “When did you decide this?”

Steadfast sat forward in his chair and gave me a questioning stare. “You sure you’re up to traveling yet?”

“Yeah, I think we’ll be fine to get moving.”

He didn’t drop his stare. “What about if you get into a fight, or need to run for some reason. Do you think you’ll be able to handle that? A few days ago you couldn’t even walk.”

I sighed. “Steadfast, we’ll be fine. Deadbolt and I are both pretty much fully recovered. I figure by tomorrow morning we’ll be good enough to head out. Besides we’ve been in your manes for too long. We need to get moving along.”

The guard shrugged. “Alright, if you think you can handle yourselves i'm not gonna try and stop you. But Daisy will, and you know it.”

That made me chuckle. He was right, Daisy has been trying to convince us to stay for the last two days and I doubt she’ll stop trying until we’ve already left.

“Do you know how to get to the Stable-Tech building?”

I gave him a nod. “Yep, marked it on my Pip-Buck. It’ll lead us straight there.”

He leaned back again. “Theres a trader settlement up in Trottingham, you should make a stop there while you're in the city. Its called Junction 26. Its a bit farther into the City than the Stable-Tech building, just follow the main road and you can’t miss it.”

Just as he said that, a little blip appeared on my Pip-Buck, marked Junction 26. I didn’t even know the exact location, how the hell does it?

“We’ll be sure to do that, thanks again Steadfast.”

“I should get going, I’m on duty in a bit.” He stood up and strapped his rifles on. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As the door closed behind Steadfast, Deadbolt turned to me. “Where you even going to ask Rose or I if we were ready to go?”

“Deadbolt, no matter how long we stay here you're going to say that you're not ready to leave. As for Rose, yeah... I probably should have asked.”

The Brown unicorn rolled his eyes.

“Did you find anything useful at the shop?”

He shook his head. “I checked before I went out, we’ve got plenty of ammo from the caravan left. Daisy gave Rose some healing bandages and we’ve still got a couple of healing potions. All I picked up was some food and water.”

Deadbolt was always responsible for keeping inventory. It was part of his job as the head of the maintenance team. Looks like some habits die hard. Either that or maybe he was warming up to the idea of leaving, but I really doubted that.

He pushed himself away from the table. “If we are leaving tomorrow, we should get some rest. Leaving early would be best.”

I nodded. “Thats probably a good idea.”

The rest of the day we spent resting. I wasn’t one-hundred percent yet, but I felt like we needed to get going and I felt good enough to walk at least and Deadbolt seemed fine. We had spent a lot of time in Marefield, even made a few friends here. Who knows maybe if we ever come back we might stay next time. But I had questions and I wasn’t going to find my answers here, it was time to leave.

“Are you sure theres nothing I can do to convince you to stay?” The yellow pony asked as we approached the gates.

It just after daybreak. The air was still cool from the previous night. Walking in the morning would be a lot easier than it would in the afternoon when it becomes blisteringly hot.

“I’m sorry Daisy, this is something I feel like I need to do. I have to know why.”

She sighed. “Okay, just take care of yourselves out there. If you're ever in the area, you better stop by sometime.”

Steadfast was on watch above us on the gate. He gave a wave and the unicorns guards once again opened the gates.

“Don’t worry Daisy I’ll take care of these two.” Rose said as we stepped out of the gates. We gave Daisy and Steadfast a wave as the gates closed behind us.

I looked down the Road to Trottingham, The horns blocked the view of the city. I had yet to actually see Trottingham, even in the distance. All I knew was that it was somewhere along the road that lead north.

Down the road to the east was Whinney-peg I remember Steadfast saying. Stable 12 was also somewhere down that way. If it wasn’t for my Pip-Buck I doubt I could ever find my way back to it now, not that I was in a hurry to go home. Even if I was, there was nothing left of it to go back to.

I let out a sigh.

“Something wrong Rivet?” Rose asked seeing the solemn look on my face.

“Its nothing, lets get going.”

We made our way down the desolate road. Occasionally, I would look back to Marefield slowly shrinking in the distance. I’m pretty sure I could see Steadfast on top of the gates. He was probably making sure we didn’t manage to get ourselves killed while we were still in eye shot of Marefield.

It was a nice day out. Beams of light broke through the cloud layer above us. Even the view of the wasteland wasn’t so bad when it was bright out. Though the occasional dead trees and piles of rubble did their best to make it look as miserable as possible.

I was right about the heat. The sun quickly rose, making it hotter by the minute. We stopped more frequently to have a drink and cool off in what little shade we could find.

We weren’t making as good of time as we had when Steadfast was leading us ahead. Thats probably do to our inexperience with traveling, the fact that I was still a little stiff feeling and our frequent breaks. Deadbolt seemed fine now, but he shows emotion and distress as well as a brick.

“Deadbolt, you’ve been quiet today.”

He gave me a slight glance. “I've been wondering about something.”

I shot him a confused look, but he didn’t bother to look back at me. Instead he took my silence as a hint to continue. “We haven't seen or heard anything from the organization in almost a week. I wonder what they’re up to. If they do show up again, we’re not equipped to handle those suits.”

He was more thinking out loud than actually asking my opinion on the situation, but he was right. We didn’t have any powerful weapons. All we had was a couple of small pistols, and a knife, I doubt any of those were going to be enough to punch through those thick metal suits. The shotgun I had was probably the only thing that would even phase them. It was in much better condition than the one I had used back in Stable 12 but I didn’t like the idea of getting close enough to them to use it, and even if I did, there was no guarantee it would do anything.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something. We got away from them once, we can do it again.”

He turned on me. “No Rivet, they gave up on chasing us once. If they would have tried i'm sure that we wouldn’t have gotten away from the Stable. You shouldn’t count getting lucky as a victory, especially when all that victory got us was being thrown out into this hellhole.” He waved a hoof around to the nearly barren surroundings, then turned back and kept walking. “you’ve nearly died twice already Rivet, if possible I would like to not have to keep being lucky and actually find a way to protect ourselves.”

Deadbolt actually sounded concerned for me. To his credit I did almost die once, I wouldn’t count the infection I had in my leg as that close of a call. Daisy did say my heart had stopped after that Night Stalker thing bit me though, so I guess technically I did die once already.

“Deadbolt’s right Rivet, we can’t just hope that we’ll be able to avoid them forever.” Rose said giving me a worried look. “Frankly, I doubt we’ll be able to avoid them at all out here.”

I shrunk down like a foal being yelled at. I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit. I didn’t expect to get a lecture on how likely we are to die. I decided that it would probably be best if I just shut my mouth and keep walking.

Looking out at the surroundings. I noticed the land was a lot flatter than I previously thought. Other than a few shallow hills, you could see for miles. A sandy brown and grey field stretching as far as you can see. Only being blocked by a few dead trees and The Horns mountains in the distance.

I could see why Steadfast was so worried about the trade line before. I doubted anything would ever be able to grow here. Maybe at one point the area might have been more habitable, but the mega spells that hit the area must have irradiated the soil beyond repair.

I paused in the road. Something had caught my eye. I had seen it before on our way up to The Horns but didn’t have time to check it out. It was the Ferrum Technologies building, the sign may have been hard to read but my Pip-Buck had labelled it for me. I couldn’t help but be a little curious about it. The building was the only one in sight and wasn’t like any of the houses back in Marefield.

“What are you doing?” Rose asked looking back at me.

“I’m gonna go take a look.”

Deadbolt sighed. “Why? Its just an old building. We need to keep moving.”

“Just a quick peak.”

Rose took a long look at the half crumbled building. “Really Rivet? The place is falling apart.”
“It’ll be fast. In and out, I promise.”

They both sighed in unison. “Fine, lets make it quick.” Rose sounded about as excited as Deadbolt was about anything.

The north side of the building had collapsed in on itself but the rest of building seemed surprisingly intact. At least, it did on the outside.

The door was stuck, the hinges had rusted shut. It took a few attempts to break the rust and have the door slowly screech open.

On the inside we were greeting by a help desk in a small room. Chairs were scattered all over the room. The one working light flickered and threatened to give up entirely. The help desk had a computer, the soft green glow of the monitor illuminated the back wall.

Sitting behind the desk was a blackened skeleton, still in the desk chair. I slowly pushed the chair away with my magic as I moved over to the terminal, it was still logged in and working.

There was a message open. It was hadn’t been sent and was only partially written.

To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight

I just saw a massive explosion coming from Whinniepeg. The News Pony says that the Zebras are attacking. Trottingham might get hit. Are you okay? Please send me back as

Thats all that was written. I closed the message. Looking back at the skeleton, I saw it was a mare. She must have been typing when a bomb hit nearby.

I sifted through the messages on the terminal. I found the series with the subject : Be Home Late Tonight.

To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet
Subject: Be Home Late Tonight

Hey, sorry I'm gonna be working late tonight. Honcho needs me to finish up some reports. I won’t be home for dinner tonight. I’ll try not to wake you up when I get home.

To: Sonnet
From:Swift Pen
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight

Again? I thought we were going out tonight. Theres no way you can do them in the morning? You’ve been working late almost every night. I barely get to see you anymore.

To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight

I asked but Honcho said he needed them done ASAP. We’ll go out tomorrow night, I promise. I’ll probably be here past midnight. So don’t wait up for me. I’ll see you in the morning.

I powered down the terminal. I had seen skeletons before, they were all over the wasteland. I had dismissed most of them. Knowing this one had a family, I don’t know, It made it seem like was actually a pony and not just some piece of gruesome scenery.

“you okay Rivet?” Rose asked seeing me staring at the skeleton.

I snapped out of my solemn daze. “Huh? Oh right, yeah, yeah i'm fine. Lets take a look around.”

Two hallways extended out of either side of the room. The on the right was labeled “Factory” on the left side said “Offices.” The hallway leading to the factory portion of the building was blocked off by some of the ceiling that had come down.

The other hall was dark, most of the lights didn’t work anymore and the few that did flickered and could give out any time now. It looked like no one had set hoof in the building for years. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

Looking through some of the offices, we found that they were mostly empty. Papers were scattered among most of them. Filing cabinets were either toppled over or the the drawers refused to open.

We searched all of the offices we could, a few were blocked by large pieces of rubble. As we approached the end of the hall a red light popped up on the EFS.

“Whoa, hold up.” I whispered. “Theres something over there.”

The light was moving quick, it was close. It approached the corner and paused.

I drew my pistol.

A Radroach scurried around the corner. As soon as Deadbolt saw it he burst out laughing.

“You were afraid of a little roach.” He said chuckling and walking over to the roach. He sent his knife through it with a loud *Shlink* , then scraped off the bits of roach on the wall.

Rose tried to stifle a laugh.

“Oh, come on. How was I supposed to know it was just a bug?”

She tried to regain her composure. “Sorry Rivet, but it was pretty funny.”

Groaning at her, I walked around the corner that the roach had come from. There were some stairs leading up.

After looking in the first office on the floor, I was suddenly less confident about the integrity of the floor. I opened the door and found that the entirety of the office was now on the ground level.

“I think this place was looted a long time ago Rivet.” Deadbolt said walking up the stairs. “I did find a few caps in one of the desks, but thats about it.”

Rose followed close behind him “Yeah, theres not much here. We should get going.”

“Alright, just a quick look on this floor then we’ll go.”

I took some passing looks into the remaining offices, just to see if there was anything interesting. One caught my eye. A rather large office with a big desk in the middle, and in the back, a nice little blue safe.

“Hey Deadbolt, come look at this.” I said trotting into the room.

I got about halfway across the room when the floor started to creak and groan under me. I realized what was about to happen about a half second before it actually did.

The floor gave out from under me. I spun and braced myself before slamming into the first floor.

“Rivet! are you okay?” Rose yelled down to me.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just lay here for a minute.” I groaned as I slowly sat back up. “Hey Deadbolt, see if you can get that safe open.” I brushed the bits of rock and dust off me as I sat up. It wasn’t a long fall but my back still didn’t appreciate it.

I slowly stood up and took a glance around the room. It was an interior office, no windows and all of the lights had gone out. other than the glow of another terminal it was almost completely black. The door was blocked on the outside by some rubble. After trying to push it away a few times I gave up. I was going to need some help with it.

Walking back to the center of the room to see how Deadbolt was doing with that safe I tripped.
*Crack!*

My horn slammed onto the desk in the middle of the room.

“Fuck!” I was the only unicorn I knew that managed to hit his horn every time I fell.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw what tripped me. A dried corpse of an earth pony stallion laid dead in the room. His eyes were rotten through and maggots swarmed on him. His fur had fallen out long ago, leaving behind a grey and green layer of skin that pulled tight over his bones. He wore a Pip-Buck on his right foreleg, the rotting skin had fused around it.

I scrambled and kicked the body away. My heart raced for a moment before I realized he was dead.

“What was that?” Rose called from the office above me.

Panting trying to catch my breath I yelled back to her. “Its nothing. The door is blocked by some rubble.”

There was a loud click and I heard the sound of metal scraping on metal as the safe door swung open. “Got it.” Deadbolt shouted as he checked the contents. “What the hell?”

“What's in it?”

“A couple of grenades.” He paused “Why the hell would an office worker need grenades?”

“How should I know? Anything else?”

“Some caps and a box of something called cigarettes. What the hell is a cigarette?”

Rose peered down the hole in the middle of the room. “Okay, hold on a second Rivet. We’ll see if we can clear the door. Just hold tight.” She motioned for Deadbolt to follow her and they disappeared.

“Um, okay. I’ll just wait here then.” They were already gone.

I always thought it was strange how time seemed to slow to a crawl when there was nothing to do, and Rose and Deadbolt seemed to really be taking their time.

The room was nearly pitch-black. I couldn’t help but think about floating around in that darkness again. It send a shiver down my spine whenever I thought about that.

Stepping around the corpse, I sat down at the terminal. It was logged out, but still functioning. I knew enough about computers, I could probably break into this. It wouldn’t be the first time I had done so. I tried to learn how to hack into computers back in Stable 12 to annoy Deadbolt by changing his password occasionally. Though the one time I actually had a chance I ended up locking him out. It didn’t take him long to figure out it was me.

My magic encompassed the keyboard and I went to work. I might be in here for a little while so I might as well try. I almost locked it out on my first attempt. I shut it down and powered it back on. That reset the attempts I had. I got it on my second try. The password was “Dawn”

The screen broke away and a few files popped up. They were audio logs. Some of them were corrupted and wouldn’t open.

I played the first one.

“Engineering log, Chief engineer Ratchet reporting.”

The voice was a stallions. He was gruff and seemed annoyed.

“One of the magical generators is leaking radiation. We had to shut down the factory today. A few ponies and I will be staying to fix it tonight. That thing is so old though, it would probably be cheaper to replace it at this point then to keep fixing it. Nothing else to report.”

That actually kind of made me chuckle. I had to fix one of the generators in Stable 12 once. It was a long process that took me all day. Though this pony had a team, so it probably wasn’t as big of a task.

“Engineering log, Chief Engineer Ratchet reporting. Due to recent cutbacks I had to let go half of the maintenance staff. I don’t see why we don’t get rid of some of the paper pushers, we’re the ones who actually make the money here. In addition to that, one of the Gutzy bots had a bit of an incident. It went crazy and buzz sawed the main conveyor belt, thankfully we shut it down before it had a chance to actually hurt anyone. Now corporate wants us to run diagnostics on all of the robots, which means I just lost my weekend We’ll also have to replace the belt before we can start production back up.”

“Engineering log, Chief Engineer Ratchet reporting. I am getting real sick of this shit. It seems like every other day something goes wrong.”

I was starting to get the impression that this pony didn’t really like his job.

“Today my best mechanic quit. Said he wanted to spend time with his family while he could. Dumbass thinks the Zebras are going to actually win the war. The diagnostics came up with nothing on any of the robots, including the Gutzy that tore the conveyor. Just to be safe we decommissioned that one and now corporate is refusing to pay for a new one. If anyone actually listens to these, please tell the higher-ups to go fuck themselves.”

“Engineering log, Chief Engineer Ratchet reporting. That damn generator is on the fritz again. Its not leaking radiation but its barely running and most of the machines aren’t getting enough power to run at max capacity. Were going to try to... What the hell was...”

There was a loud rumble and the recording burst into static. One more recording was left.

There was the sound of something steadily clicking, it sounded similar to my Pip-Bucks Geiger counter. “I don’t know if anyones going to get this.” He sounded distressed and I could hear his labored breathing. “There was an explosion, I don’t know what, but it shook the building. It must have been too much for the generator, because it finally blew. Fucking thing brought down half the building.”

He let out a coughing fit. “Fuck... thats blood. The doors blocked, I can’t get it open. Radiation is pouring in, I already used up my emergency supply of Radaway. If this reaches corporate, send help. There may be some others trapped in here too.”

He hacked and gagged, then spit. “Please hurry. I don’t think I’ve got a lot of time left.”

Again, I found myself staring at a corpse. These ponies were just having average work days when the bombs dropped. It didn’t seem right that they ended up as casualties in a war that didn’t even involve them.

A pounding outside the door ripped me away from my thoughts. “Rivet! can you hear me?” Rose called from outside.

I rushed over to the door. “Yeah.”

“Okay on the count of three, try to push the door open.” Deadbolt called in. “One...Two...Three!”

I slammed myself into the door, pushing. Rose and Deadbolt tried to pull the rubble away at the same time on the other side. It was heavy, I could see how Ratchet wouldn’t have been able to move it on his own.

“Okay, it moved a little. One more time. One...Two...Three!”

Again I pushed as hard as I could against the door. Slowly It opened enough for me to squeeze out.

“There, can we get out of here now?” Deadbolt said catching his breath.

I nodded. “Yeah, lets get out of here.”

It didn’t seem like we had spent that much time inside, but it had started to get dark. We only had an hour or two of light left before we would need to stop for the night. We picked up the pace, we wanted cover as much ground as possible. There was no way we would be making it to The Horns before nightfall, but I was actually okay with that. I really didn’t want to camp out near that cave,even if Steadfast had cleared it out, it just made me kind of nervous thinking about it.

We stopped for the night and started a fire. The days out here were hot and draining, the nights were cold and harsh. We huddled around the fire eating. Outside the circle of light of the fire was nearly pitch black.

“you know, Deadbolt, you never told us where you learned to pick locks.” Rose said as she took a bite of an apple.

He glared at her. “Yeah, and I never will.”

“Oh come on, you're going to have to tell us eventually.” I said levitating a piece of rad hog over the fire.

“No.” He said flatly

“Why not?” Rose pushed.

“Just no.”

Rose tossed her hooves up. “Fine, be that way.”

I chuckled at Rose, she had temporarily given up but within a few minutes she would be right back at it and keep asking him until he told her. But Deadbolt held firm and refused to talk about it.

To my surprise I actually slept really well that night. I did wake up once or twice but it was a relatively peaceful night and weirdly, probably one of the best nights I had since leaving the Stable.

We got up early in the morning, I was actually feeling completely rested for once. So far everyday out here I would either wake up stiff and sore or just plain wouldn’t get any sleep.

We would be passing through The Horns before noon if we made any decent time. The fire had died out sometime while we slept. It was still smoking a bit so it couldn’t have been out for long. We quickly ate breakfast, a few pieces of tasteless fruit and some irradiated water, packed up to head out. It was going to be another long day of walking.

Looking at The Horns again, I could kind of see how they resembled unicorn horns. The spiral on the started at the top and wound down almost to the bottom. They were very rough and jagged horns but I could see how someone might make the comparison.

“How far is to Trottingham?” Rose asked as we approached the mountains.

“I think we might be able to see it when we clear the pass.” I said checking the map on my Pip-Buck. It was still a long walk.

The sheer cliff faces of the pass were a lot different in the light. The red rock walls seemed to sparkle as the light hit them. It added to the illusion of them being “Horns.” It also helped that the broken wagons and dead brahmin had been cleared out. It made traveling through a lot nicer.

I brought up my EFS as we approached the cave we stayed in. I trusted Steadfast had cleared it out, but theres no harm in being careful. Also, I really didn’t want to be bit by one of those things again.

As we made it to the exit of the pass we got our first look at the Trottingham area. While it wasn’t drastically different than what we had seen to this point, it was unfamiliar territory. The dead trees we had seen were much more abundant in the area. Far in the distance I could see what looked like a large forest. It was noticeably cooler this side of the horns, maybe the mountains blocked some of the cooler air from getting into the area around Marefield.

We finally got a look at our target. Far in the distance, tall buildings protruded out from the horizon. Even from here I could tell, Trottingham was a fairly large city. Especially compared to the quaint town of Marefield. Not too far from the city, a mountain range stretched across the land.

I sighed, I was hoping that Trottingham would be a lot closer. That The Horns just blocked it from view and we would be able to get there within a few hours. That was not the case.

Just past The Horns was a large billboard. On it was a the massive face of a pink earth pony. “Pinkie Pie is watching watching you...forever.” was written in large letters.

“Thats really creepy.” Rose remarked at the large face.

I didn’t disagree, there was something about it that was imposing. The eyes of the mare seemed to follow us as we passed.

“Ministry Of Moral...” I read aloud. “This is supposed to raise moral?”

We passed the sign. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pink mare. I shuddered after the face disappeared from my sight.

It was around noon when we past The Horns. We were making much better time than we had yesterday. I’ll admit that was partially my fault. It was much cooler though, which meant we didn’t need to take as many breaks. The clouds had started to darken a bit since we set out this morning. If it was going to rain it would still be a while.

The Trottingham area didn’t seem quite as unforgiving as the surroundings of Marefield did. There was much more vestigation around here. That vegetation was still just the dead trees and bushes we had seen before, but there was much more of them. The ground had changed from the sandy-brown of marefield to a dull grey.

We passed more billboards as we continued to Trottingham. One for some kind of drink called Sparkle-Cola and another for The Trottingham Museum of Medical Science. The Former showed a large bottle of soda. The latter simply showed the building, but it also was covered in graffiti depicting genetals and had a large “FUCK YOU” written on it.

We found a sign and a little side road. The sigh was for a diner called SlapJack’s. Which was pretty good timing, because I was starving. I knew there wouldn’t actually be anyone still working there but we had been walking a few hours and needed to take a break and it wasn’t far from the main road.

It was small place. The building was yellow, or at least it used to be. Most of the paint had come off leaving a grey shell. A sign on top the building Read SlapJack’s Flapjacks. A few tables outside had been toppled over.

A red light appeared on the EFS.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Rose asked as I stopped.

“Shh, wait here.” I moved slowly, trying to approach as quietly as I could. More lights began to show up.

“Fuck off with that.” I heard someone yell from inside.

“Completely serious, the bitch fucking blew herself up. It was great.” Another voice answered.

I drew my shotgun as I pressed against the side of the building. there were four lights inside. I slowly peered up into the window get a look.

Four rubber and bone clad ponies sat around the diner.“Raiders.” I whispered to myself. I slipped around the back of the building.

“I gotta take a leak.” one of the raiders said and opened up the back door. He took a quick glance and spotted me.

I froze for a moment. It seemed to take a minute for him to register me, because he stared for a good second or two.

“What the fuck!?” He said as reached for his gun.

*Bang* I blew a hole in his chest before he could raise his weapon.

The lights inside burst into action and scattered.

*Bang* The glass next to my head shattered as shot whizzed by making me duck below the window.

I heard the sound of Rose’s revolver as her and Deadbolt ducked behind some of the tables around front.

Another pony darted out of the back door.

*Bang* The shot missed as he flew by.

His knife swung in his magic. The knife felt like fire as it slashed across my chest leaving a burning gash.

“Gah!” I screamed as I swung the back of the shotgun at him.

*crack* The butt of the gun made contact with his head and he staggered back giving me enough time to pull out my pistol.

*Bang,Bang,Bang* I shot as fast as I could at him. The first two shots missed as he regained balance and lunged again. The third hit his leg and he tripped, falling behind me.

I turned and slid into SATS. His knife was slowly lifting back into the air.

*Bang,Bang* I sent two shots into his head from point-blank range.

I moved to the door. The other two ponies were focused on Deadbolt and Rose out front. Reloading the shotgun I moved in and made my way behind the counter.

I stood up to fire when I saw something flying through the air.

“Fuck!” One of the raiders screamed as Deadbolt’s grenade landed between them.

I dropped behind the counter just before *Boom!* the raiders were thrown back, both of them missing a few body parts.

My ears rang as I looked around for more lights.

“I think thats all of them.” I called out to the two ponies hiding behind tables outside. “You two alright?”

They peered out before walking up to the front door. “Yeah, we’re fine.” Deadbolt said as he took a look around the diner.

“You’ve been cut.” Rose said looking at the bleeding slash on my chest.

“Yeah, but its not deep. I’ll be fine.”

She gave me a stern look. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “You said that last time, remember what happened then?”

I scratched the back of my head and averted my eyes. “Yeah, but...”

“No.” She said interrupting me. “I told Daisy I would make sure you wouldn’t go around with an open wound again. Sit down and hold still.” She pushed me onto my haunches and slid her saddle bag off, digging through it for medical supplies.

Rose pulled out a healing bandage. Instantly I could feel it going to work slowly closing the wound. It wasn’t as fast as the healing potion Steadfast had given me, but it was still effective at healing the gash.

The inside of the diner was trashed. It was like that before we got here but Deadbolt’s grenade hadn’t helped the fact. The front door lead to a small dining area with a bar as the front counter. Behind that was the kitchen. Cabinets had fallen over spilling out rusted,old pots and pans. The fridge was the only thing still completely intact, all it had in it was various alcohols.

Behind the bar were a few ammo boxes. Containing some more shotgun shells and a few bullets that would fit Rose’s revolver. Deadbolt decided to trade out his knife for the one the raider cut me with. His was large with a flat end, the one the raider used was smaller but the end came to a deadly point and had a serrated edge. He gave it a few practice swings before putting into the holster on his saddle bag.

A few pictures hung on the wall behind the bar, a lot of them had fallen on the ground and had broken frames. A unicorn mare with a pancake cutie mark was in all of them alongside various other ponies. Each picture was signed but I couldn’t make out most the names, either they were too faded to read or the writing was nearly illegible.

One of the pictures caught my eye. A familiar mare that seemed to be bouncing next to the pony I assumed was SlapJack. Pinkie Pie, along with five other mares who were sitting in one of the booths, were all huddled together with SlapJack in the picture. Each mare had signed it along the edge of the picture. I could only make out two of the names, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, I could also make out the two Ps in Pinkie Pie’s signature.

“I gotta say, she looks a lot nicer in this picture.” Rose said looking at the photo.

“Yeah, kinda hard to believe its the same pony.” I said levitating it off the wall to get a better look. The Diner looked a lot nicer back then. a strip of wallpaper with a pancake design ran across the center of the walls. The booths and table were all still intact. Outside you could see some ponies dining in the pure sunshine, not a cloud in site. The six friends along with Slapjack all sat with wide genuine grins. plates of freshly made pancakes laid on the table in front of the mares.

Looking around now, there was no trace of the wallpaper. Outside was a grey and depressing wasteland. All of the booth’s benches were torn open or smashed completely. There was nopony outside enjoying the weather as they ate. All that was here was us and four dead raiders.

I slide the picture into my saddle bag.

“What are doing?” Rose asked

“I’m keeping it.” I don’t know why but the picture made me kind of happy. The six friends huddled together all looked so carefree. It wasn’t something I had seen much of, well... ever. Even in the Stable I barely ever saw ponies looking as legitimately happy as the ponies in the picture.

She shrugged and went back to looking at the pictures decorating the wall.

We all slumped down into one of the booths near a window. I wasn’t really hungry anymore but taking a break still sounded nice. Deadbolt laid out the rest of the Raider’s supplies onto the table. Caps, a couple of worn out, old pistols and a few small orange tablets that my Pip-Buck labeled “Dash.”

Looking out, I could see Trottingham. It was still a ways away. If we didn’t take anymore breaks, we might be able to make it there a little after sundown. I dared a look up at the clouds, they continued to darken but I hadn’t heard any thunder yet. It was getting easier to look up finally. If i did it for too long I would get dizzy but I could at least check out the clouds for a moment before vertigo set it.

“We should get going.” Deadbolt said looking out at the darkening clouds. “Maybe we can get to Trottingham before the storm hits.”

I nodded. “Yeah, thats probably a good idea.”

We tossed the things we got from the raiders into our packs and headed out. the knife was the only thing we would actually be using, the pistols were in much worse condition than either my pistol or Rose’s revolver. According to my Pip-Buck Dash had a similar effect as SATS and slowed your perception of time. Sounds like it could be useful in a fight.

It was starting to get late, but I couldn’t quite tell if the lowering light was from the sun going down or from the clouds obscuring it more than normal as they darkened. The first few drops of rain started to sprinkle down. They few and far between but last time we hadn’t gotten too much warning before the downpour hit so I was weary.

The road ahead of us was mostly clear. The body of a Rad Hog lay on the side of the road. Two large birds sat on top of it ripping small bits off. They flew off as we approached and passed the corpse. Thankfully I hadn’t eaten or else I very well may have had a hard time keeping it down.

The city was starting to take shape in front of us. The tall, ruined building slowly growing as we approached. Trottingham was almost within reach. The Stable-Tech building was somewhere along the road that bisected the city. If we kept following this road we would be lead right to it. Further in from there would be Junction 26

The rain was slowly picking up, it didn’t come all at once like it had before. The rain made the leather armor uncomfortable as it clung to me. We wouldn’t have time to stop to rest without getting caught out in a downpour before we could find shelter somewhere in the city.

The entrance to the city was a small bridge. The ground took a sudden dip beneath it. Some strange wagons laid wretched on and passed the bridge. They weren’t like the ones from the caravan though, these were bigger and made of metal and had no wheels. They all had a similiar harness on the front, you could see some kind machinery on the undersides of some of the ones that were flipped over.

The buildings loomed above us. My vertigo came back when I tried to look up at the massive structures around us. I was actually surprised when my Pip-Buck didn’t pop up with a message about getting to Trottingham.

We slowed down when we got into the city. Something about the buildings being so close together and being so tall made me nervous. The fact that a lot of them looked like they could come down at any time didn’t help either.

It was dark now, and getting hard to see through the rain. It was starting to come down hard. We needed to find a place to hold up for night.

*BOOM KRRAANG!* A bullet whizzed by and ricocheted off one of the nearby wagons.

“Shit! Get down!.” Deadbolt yelled as we all dived behind the wagons.

“Fuck! Get em!” Somepony yelled from the direction of the shot.

I pulled up the EFS, red lines swarmed my vision. I drew my pistol, turned around and entered SATS.

I could barely see at least five raiders charging at us.

*BANG,BANG,BANG* I fired three shots at the nearest one, an earth pony wielding a sledgehammer, all three missed.

He dashed up and hit me in the side, knocking the air from lungs.

I fell to the ground and saw Deadbolt jump on the pony, sending his knife into the pony’s back.

He ripped it out with a disgusting *shlurk* and the pony dropped.

One of them managed to get around us. A unicorn grabbed Rose and held a knife to her neck.

Her eyes shrunk to pin-pricks and she started to thrash and scream.

There was a flash from the corner of my eye and the unicorn’s head exploded.

Rose was shaking, huddled on the ground. I ran over to her.
Deadbolt tossed a grenade at the incoming raiders.

*BOOM!* He landed it right in front of a charging raider, all that was left was a black smear on the pavement.

“Rose are you okay?” I asked as I held and pushed up against a wagon for cover.

She was shaking, I could tears streaming down her face. “I thought...I thought he was going to...”

Dammit, this is not a good time for this. I stuck my head up and saw a flash from up in a building behind the raiders. *BOOM* blood splattered out of an earth ponies head.

The last raider must have lost his nerve, he took off, galloping as fast as he could at the nearest building. He didn’t make it.

*BOOM* the same flash, the same result. The pony dropped.

“There's someone shooting from up there!” I yelled to Deadbolt, tilting my head to where I saw the flashed.

“I can’t see him.” He yelled back. I couldn’t either, my EFS wasn’t picking him up from this distance.

I looked over we were near an open building. If we were quick enough we might be able to make it. If we weren't, well, I didn’t want to think about that.

“Rose, do you think you can run?”

She wearily nodded.

“Okay, we're gonna make a dash for that building, ready?”

She nodded again. I looked over to Deadbolt.

“Lets go.”

We galloped as fast as we could. I didn’t hear any fire.

We dived into the building. He wouldn't be able to get us in here.

“Rose how you doing?”

She was still shaking. “I think i’ll be fine. It’s just that pony grabbed me. I couldn’t help but think back to the Stable, I panicked.I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Rose, its okay. I understand.”

She looked up at me and jumped back.

“What?”

“Drop the gun.” Somepony said from behind me. I felt something metal press against the back of my head.

Fuck....