Fallout Equestria: Psychosis

Time was frozen for Jim.

All he saw was that horse, mouth agape, looking straight at him. The horse that was violently girly, wearing a leather coat, and carrying a gun in its mouth. The room didn’t matter, his being a unicorn didn’t matter, nothing mattered.

There was a horse that had no right to be pink, wearing something decidedly human, and doing something that he was fairly certain was anatomically impossible. A rational part of his brain said that the pink failed as camo, that the horse didn’t need the leather coat, and that the gun would knock all its teeth out if it fired. Another rational part of his mind said that PINK HORSE + LEATHER COAT + PISTOL was illogical and had no right to exist in the universe. Then a third, irrational part of his mind screamed PONY, PONY, PONY, PONY, PONY, PONY, PONY!

He closed his eyes.

Then he opened them.

The impossible pink horse was still there. Still being pink, still wearing the coat, still holding the pistol.

He laid his head on the ground.

Then he raised it.

        Still there. Still pink, still with the coat, still with the pistol. As far as he could tell, she was confused.

        Then it hit him that he shouldn’t have been able to tell if the horse was confused because their body language was COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT but he could still tell she was confused.

        He started chuckling.

        The horse cocked an eyebrow. “Sir, are you okay?”

        Clarity started to return to his head. No need to be panicked. Panic wasn’t good. If he panicked, he was dead. Deader than dead. A plan started to form in his head. He needed to make the most of this situation, figure out where he was, get help! Hopefully his acting skills would hold up.

He turned off his voice changer before saying a simple, “perfect, really. How are you?”

She was definitely confused. “Was there anypony in the room? Anypony at all?”

Jim looked around. “Nope,” he exclaimed, a stupid grin splitting his face, “just myself and these beds and you.”

The pink horse -she said pony, so she must’ve been a pony, like in those old cartoons- blushed -how?!- then holstered the pistol. “If you’re alright, you’d best get back into bed.”

A blank spot hit him right then. He glanced at his splayed out legs, then back to the pony.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Shit, I said, shit,” he repeated, louder.

“Why? What’s wrong?” The horse started getting closer.

“I can’t walk.”

The horse stopped. Her -definitely a her, going by the slight build and high voice- face was definitely confused. “Wait, what?!”

“You heard me. I can’t walk.”

She cocked another eyebrow. “And why’s that?”

He paused for effect, biting his lip. “I… forgot.”

“You forgot how to walk?” Once again, she started to move closer. “How is that possible? Everypony knows how to walk. How come you, a grown stallion, don’t?”

“Well maybe I hit my head! That’d explain it, going by the fucking massive headache!”

Before the mare had a chance to reply, Jim got to his feet -well, hooves, now, but he thought of them as his feet. It was much like walking on all fours, if your arms were stretched to the same length as your legs, the joints messed with, and everything changed, but the comparison still stood.

As soon as he tried to take one step, gravity decided it wanted the slightly-panicking man-turned-horse to kiss the very much dirty floor.

When he tried to catch himself with his (woefully uncalibrated) right arm, he ended up launching himself to the side. The bed that he ended up hitting went bang under the weight of a large horse flung at great speed by high-density synthetic muscle. New pain assaulted his new body, and he started up a storm with the profanity coming out of his mouth.

When he finally stopped, he noticed the large cut running across his back, and rolled off the crunched-up bed, there was a large crowd (they were all horses of varying shades of brown, green, and tan) in the doorway. Their weapons varied from rifles, to shotguns, to submachine guns, or even baseball bats -horses can’t play baseball they don’t have fingers and they can’t throw how the fuck do they have baseball bats- all of which were pointed in Jim’s direction.

And the pink horse had a positively-radiant (and biologically impossible) blush.

The only good thing to come about this was the fact that Jim knew he really, really had to turn down the power in his right arm. Which was actually a leg. Which he didn’t use to facepalm, because he was certain it would leave a dent on his thick metal skull, and that wasn’t easy to repair.

“I’ll just… return to my bed now. Sorry about-” he pointed to the bed-that-was-not-a-bed-anymore with a hoof “-that. I know I’ll pay for it, just let me get my bearings, alright?”

The leader of the group, a grizzled old horse with gray coat and mane that was very much white, turned to the girly pony, and a silent conversation seemed to happen between them. It was punctuated with nods of the head, hoof -that’s impossible how do they tell what symbols are made with hooves that makes no sense!- language, and very subtle body language.

At the end of the conversation, the leader turned to the group and seemingly told them to buzz off. Group of panicky herbivores gone, the leader glared at Pink Horse for a second, then followed the group.

Pink Horse sighed. “Sorry about that. The Sheriff is a bit… jumpy. He’s nice, but jumpy. Don’t worry about paying him back.”

Jim was silent. Just for a second, though. “So, how’s about I get back into bed and you check up on me? Cause you’re a doctor or a nurse, right? I mean, unless you aren’t. In that case please don’t operate on me.”

The mare -was that the correct term for a horse that was female? Probably- chuckled. “Yes, I am a doctor. Don’t worry, I’m not going to operate on you. You’re in perfect health…” -she glanced at his cybernetics- “except for a couple things.”

He let out a fake chuckle. “What things?”

“An irregular heartbeat. Cardiac dysrhythmia of the tachycardia persuasion, I believe. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s there. I would provide some medication, but we’re… a bit short on resources.”

He gasped an incredibly fake gasp, because he already knew that his Heartbeat Regulator caused irregular heartbeat if it wasn’t calibrated. Nothing fatal, and it wouldn’t get worse due to built in failsafes, but he needed to put on an act.

“I’m not going to die? Am I going to die?! PLEASE TELL ME I’M NOT GOING TO DIE!” He put a hand/hoof to his chest, somewhat panicky, (attempting) to feel his heart.

“Calm down! It’s just minor! You probably don’t even need medication!” said Pink Horse, rushing over to Jim’s side, “well, there might be a chance of you suddenly dying, but that’s one-in-a-million! You’re perfectly safe!”

Jim let out a breath. “Well, ain’t that a relief.”

“Look, just calm down and tell me who you are.”

That threw a curveball in his plans. A genuine “Uh…” escaped his lips.

“Uh? That ain’t a name for a pony.” Pink Horse sat down, reconnecting the heartbeat monitor to his chest.

“I…”

“I who?”

The ceiling was very interesting at that moment. Very dusty, very… rustic. Very shantytown-esque. “I… don’t… know.”

“You… don’t know? You don’t know your own name?” Pink Horse cocked an eyebrow. She looked liked she’d dealt with this kind of stuff before. “What do you know?”

He bit his lip. “Just… that I was running. Running away from someone. And falling. When I hit the ground I woke up here. I can’t remember anything else, ma’am.”

Technically, he wasn’t lying. Just leaving out details. And that wasn’t lying.

“Is that all? Nothing about yourself? Or how you got those cybernetics?”

He saw no risk in divulging a tiny bit more information. Always had to seem friendly, even with members of different species. “Well, I know I’m good at running. And that I got this-” he raised his right leg/arm “- in an accident. But other than that, nothing.”

“Let’s get a look at your cutie mark. That should shed some light about your identity.”

Another curveball. “A what now?”

And that made Pink Horse stop in her tracks. “A cutie mark. The mark everypony gets on their flank when they figure out what they’re good at in li- oh Celestia. You really did hit your head that hard… Can’t even remember what a cutie mark is. The others at least remembered that...”

“Well… uh…” Jim was truly at a loss here, “why don’t we have a look at mine? And then I can decide on a name that you can call me! Would that work?”

Pink Horse nodded.

Glad that no other questions came up about his past, Jim twisted his head around to get a look at his flank. The fact that he didn’t even know what a flank was didn’t stop him, just that he needed to find a mark on his behind. And he needed to think fast about a name.

The symbol that was on his behind gave him pause.

It was his two Obrez, their synthetic furnishings and silver barrels crossed. They were overlaid on a serrated vibro-knife, and that rested over five black hexagons arranged in an X shape.

There was silence.

Pink Horse broke it by clearing her throat. “So… what do we call you?”

“Runner,” said Jim.

“Your cutie mark doesn’t have anything to do with running, and as far as I can see you can’t run. How about Gunner? There are guns. We found guns on you.” Pink Horse cocked her head to the side, obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel for names.

Jim thought about it for a moment. “How about… Cyber Runner.”

“What the hell is a ‘Cyber’?”

“It’s… a computer thing. Like the cybernetics. They have computers, inside them. I think. And I'm good with computers.” That was a weaker explanation than any Jim had ever made. He mentally facepalmed (or hoofed).

“Your mark has nothing to do with computers.” And that destroyed any computer related names that Jim could come up with. “My parents named me Salve. My cutie mark is bandages and some healing potions, and I’m great with medicine. That shouldn't be so hard We could call you… Gunslinger, but I don’t know how well you can shoot.”

Seeing no other option, Jim agreed. He was already in a world that had talking horses in it, and they had weird names, so why the fuck not. Disbelief went out the window a long time ago with the cutie marks. “Gunslinger it is then, because I can’t be original. It’s a better name than Pip or Steel Hoof or something.”

“Alright, let’s see if you can walk…”

Jim frowned. “This ain’t gonna be fun, I can tell.”

“Most of the time, it ain’t.”

“Well… you’re making progress, at least.”

If only falling on your face every five steps was progress in this world of ponies, then it must have been a funky world.

Suspendeth thy disbelief, and thy will shall never be broken.

It had taken five minutes, but “Gunslinger” as he was known, was able to stand up without assistance. It was taking slightly longer to figure out how to walk at any pace that could be considered “normal”.

Without complaint, he stood up, looked down at his legs, and followed the process laid out by Salve. Left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg. 1-2-3-4. Left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg. 1-2-3-4. Turn. Left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg. 1-2-3-4 left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg. 1-2-3-4. Repeat.

“Gunslinger” had written up a quick program that would create a beat in a pattern of four. Then he’d written up an extension to that program that told him just what step he had to take on which beat. It’d helped immensely, but he was still falling flat on his face.

“That was eight steps. You’re definitely making progress.”

He sighed. Then he got up, walked around for twelve steps, and didn’t fall down.

“Now, we got to teach you to trot. And gallop. Those are useful skills in the wasteland.”

That caught his attention. “The wasteland?”

“Right. Amnesiac. Well, all you need to know is that a long time ago, a bunch of ponies got in a war, blew up the world, and now we’re all suffering for it. Some of us were lucky enough to get into Stables. The others… I prefer not to think about them.”

A chill went down his artificial spine. Salve must have caught it.

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing. So, can we get to the trotting and the galloping?”

“Later. For now, follow me outside.”

The first thing that Jim saw when he came out the house-turned-clinic’s back door was dirt. Brown dirt, as far as the eye could see, flatter than a dead man’s heart monitor. There were rocks strewn about it, and tiny hills and ripples, but it was overwhelmingly flat.

The second thing that Jim saw was the strikingly familiar sky; the same hue of television-static gray clouds that he was familiar with, day and night. The only difference was the rougher appearance, likely because they were natural and not caused by industrial fumes.

The third thing that Jim saw was the collection of barrels painted with bullseyes set up at various distances. All of the metal was rusted, incredibly so, but how it was still standing was beyond him.

Then it hit him that he was standing in a firing range.

“Stay right here, I’ll be back in a minute.”

And with that, Salve left.

Jim sighed. I really need to figure out how I got here.

So far, he’d deduced it wasn’t a dream, he wasn’t in an artificial dream machine, and he wasn’t high. It being the afterlife might have been a possibility, but he wasn’t being tortured by a bunch of big red devils, so that was good. He just knew that it wasn’t heaven. He’d never go to heaven with his morals, or the kind of stuff he did.

Or maybe it was the backpack. Had he managed to enter in coordinates that would take him to another universe? Probably. The device did use some Quantum Tunneling bullshit to do what it did. Maybe it sent him to another universe. One that had ponies instead of people.

But why am I a pony now?

He looked around, spotted no one (or pony) then lifted his cybernetic leg.

Yep, they were still there.

Neurons fired, organic and synthetic. The tiny fingers on the end of the metal limb opened. They seemed different, somehow, but just as familiar. Shorter, stubbier, and with a wider palm. Open. Close. Open. Close.

Schwing.

        Four, tiny, inch-long blades erupted from the ends of his fingers, right where the nails would have been. He retracted them, then turned to a nearby trash can lid.

He lifted the lid by the edge, turned it around, then threw it like a frisbee. It went sailing off into the clouds. A smile crossed his face. At least that was familiar.

Barely a second later, Salve came back outside, struggling to lift a massive burlap bag. Before Jim could ask if she needed help, or how she was holding it, she deposited it at his feet/hooves.

“Open that,” she said, panting.

“What’s in it?”

“Your stuff. Well, the stuff Spade and Club found. There was some armor that looked like it was built for a minotaur, but they couldn’t bring that with them. Said it was too heavy. Those griffon guns, they could.”

He undid the string, opened the bag, and was surprised to find that the plasma rifle and Obrez were inside it, not tarnished at all. He counted out his original six twenty round magazines, each full of 5.56mm rounds, three for each of his Obrez, while the two other drum cells for the plasma rifle seemed to be at full charge. They seemed much larger than he remembered.

The vibro-knife was in there, twelve inches of serrated cobalt-titanium alloy larger than he remembered. It must have been a depth perception thing, he assumed, because his entire field of view still didn’t feel right. Someone had taken the time to craft a cloth sheath for it, one that was undecorated.

He turned to Salve. “Well… uh, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, usually, we don’t do this so quick, but because you’re recovering particularly fast, we’re skipping a couple steps. I just want to see how well your motor skills are.”

Silence, for a moment. “Might as well see how well my aim is.”

Jim unfolded the fingers on his mechanical hands, ignored the surprise on Salve’s face, grabbed one of the Obrez, loaded a magazine, cocked it, and took aim at the barrel that was a good fifty meters away.

KRAK. KRAK. KRAK.

And there were three bullseyes. The spread on them was negligible, but the recoil was stronger than he remembered. He set the Obrez down after flicking on the safety.

“Alright. That’s good. Much better than I expected. At least you know how to use that arm of yours, and your sight ain’t all that bad. You sure you weren’t a wastelander before you lost your memory? Or a sharpshooter?”

“I’m certain, ma’am. This is the first time I’m using these guns.” Jim winced inwardly as what he just said fully processed in his mind. That’s a lie, and she ain’t gonna believe me.

“So, pick up that rifle for me.”

Jim paused, looking at the massive beast of a weapon. It was definitely larger than he remembered.

“I can’t pick that rifle up, not with one hand.”

That gave her pause. “You’re a unicorn. You can lift things telekinetica- right, amnesia.”

Telekinesis? Bullshit.

Then Jim remembered that he was a pastel-colored unicorn, there was a pink pony in front of him, and griffons apparently existed. He’d thrown his disbelief out the window a long time ago.

But he was still not incredibly familiar with being a pastel-colored unicorn who could do magic. “Can you at least explain it to me?”

“Sorry, but as you can see right here-” she pointed to the lack of a horn on her head “-I ain’t a unicorn. The amnesiacs I process, of which few were unicorns, usually learn it pretty quick though. It’s instinctive, I think.”

Fine.

He grabbed the plasma rifle, set it down in front of him, and planted his rear end on the ground. Maybe telekinesis was just like controlling his cybernetics. Think, and it happens.

Plasma rifle, upwards.

Nothing.

He repeated his thoughts, trying to get the plasma rifle to go upwards. After the twentieth attempt, he stopped.

Time for a different approach. Maybe some innervision? They always did that magic shit with the introspection in the movies. Maybe it’s the same here.

He closed his eyes. His focus drifted to the horn sticking out of his head and the monofilament wire running down it. Then he opened his eyes, focused on the plasma rifle, and willed it to move with invisible fingers. Sorta like moving his cybernetic- exactly like moving his cybernetics.

A pale orange glow surrounded the stock and barrel. Something started weighing down on his head, probably some metaphysical equal exchange quantum mechanics bullshit, but he ignored it.

He willed the plasma rifle to move upwards. It swung up in a wild arc, but stopped at Jim’s command. He lowered it, straightened it out, and checked out that it wasn’t damaged. Satisfied with the state of the rifle, he physically grabbed one of the power cells, connected it, flicked the fire-select switch to ‘single’, and took aim at the furthest thing he could see through the variable-zoom scope.

A single tree, blackened and dead, some hundred meters away. Its limbs twisted, trying to reach into the sky, while exposed roots let it cling to the ground. Most of the bark had been shorn off by a stray bolt of lightning some time ago.

Jim smiled, looked down the sights, and pulled the trigger.

From the barrel exited a single blob of ionized gas, held together by a slow-decay magnetic field and guided by a tiny ultraviolet laser. The white hot blob crossed the distance to its target in the blink of an eye, vaporizing a large chunk of the rotted wood.

Then he whistled.

Then he grinned, set the rifle down, grabbed the vibro-knife, and activated it. The vibrating weapon shook in his magic (ha, magic! He’d never thought he’d be using that kind of stuff!) grip, causing Jim to frown. His frown did a backflip when he got a better grip on it. A piece of wood levitated over, and he sliced it up like butter, spreading sawdust and splinters all around.

He’d still prefer to have hands, those were familiar to him, but telekinesis was a whole new avenue.

Holy hell I can make shit float with my mind. I CAN MAKE SHIT FLOAT WITH MY MIND!

From the look Salve was giving him, he guessed that he did well.

She hmphed, then cleared her throat. “That was much better than I expected. Most amnesiacs I process can’t even stand an hour after getting up. Are you sure you weren’t a wastelander?”

“Absolutely sure, ma’am,” he replied, mentally tacking on a but I do know some places that could be a wasteland.

“Well, now that we have the mandatory tests out of the way, let’s get you outfitted. I think we might have some leather armor in your size, over in the storage area, should keep you alive for a while. Supplies, too. You’re gonna need ‘em.”

And I hate leather, he thought, not voicing those words. If there was one thing that he would say to other prospective Samurai, it was “don’t complain, not to Zaibatsu or indie employers, otherwise you won’t get repeat clients; same thing applies to women you don’t want hating you.” It was a different situation entirely where he was now, but maybe that one thing would stay the same.

Jim followed Salve through the town.

It was a bit of an exaggeration to call it a town; more like if a small section of the slums on the outskirts of the Sprawl got dumped in a desert, compressed, and if it were possible, given an even more run-down look. Most of the homes were either tiny shacks of metal and cardboard, some being less broken-down huts of wood and brick, while a select few were built around the restored-remnants of collapsed houses. Despite the different materials and qualities of the homes, they all shared a dirty, dusty look, wood rotted and metal corroded.

It left a bad taste in his mouth.

The inhabitants were covered in dirt, clothes -why the hell would they need clothes?- patched up things of cloth and leather, most carrying some form of weaponry, whether it was a baseball bat or shotgun. They looked at him with a mix of wariness and curiosity, as if he’d lash out at any moment or break into musical number. Most of their eyes were focused on his cybernetic leg, some on the weapons he was carrying on his back, and a disconcertingly large amount (mostly from mares, but he swore he saw a couple stallions looking) at his bum.

Realizing that he’d slowed down to a crawl, he quickly picked up the pace to get beside Salve.

A thousand questions were on his mind, but one came to the front.

“So, who are Spade and Club?”

“Two of the town’s many inhabitants. They’re from some city down south, Appleanta, I think. Part of some special company calling themselves the ‘Fifty-Twos’. Walked into town a couple weeks ago, said they were here to guard the town and secure some M.A.W experiment site. Sheriff pitched a fit, but when a bunch of bandits got cocky enough to raid they were vital in protecting the town.”

Probably mercs hired by some egghead.

“And they’re the ones that found me?”

“Yep,” Salve answered, then she pointed her hoof at a pair of stallions, “and there they are right now.”

Jim looked them over, then did a double-take. Were it not for the custom patches on the fronts of their trench coats, they were identical. Practically-shining white coats, inky-black manes, and dirt-brown eyes. They both wore pinstriped fedoras with playing cards (Spades on the one with the Spade patch, Club with Clubs) on them. Even their weapons (sidearms, he guessed) were identical, near-pristine revolvers with foot-long barrels and synthetic (mouth?) grips.

They had dragged an obviously-drunk stallion out of the bar, beating him senseless with their hooves. A petite mare (with wings, Jim noticed) was standing just outside the door, shocked expression on her face.

Salve didn’t stop.

Jim, realizing once again that he and a growing crowd had stopped to watch, quickly caught up with Salve.

“Is it normal for those two to beat the shit out of someone?”

“No. It’s normal for Lucky to get the shit beat out of him by someone else. He just so happened to get the shit beat out of him by Club and Spade today. Last week it was Aero. Week before that, I had the honor of beating the shit out of him.”

“He ain’t that lucky if he gets the shit beat out of him that frequently.” A thought crossed his mind to go and help Lucky. Spade and Club were really giving it to him...

“Don’t fret. He’s the town punching bag, and a justified one at that. Nopony can stand his desperate attempts to get some pussy or ass.”

And that’s when any sympathy for Lucky went straight down the shitter. If there was one thing Jim hated, it was womanizers.

“Can I ask just what Spades and Clubs are like?” Jim said, glad to be away from the scene.

“Spade and Club. Spade’s the talker, Club’s the fighter, and they’re twins. I’ve seen fillies swoon over both of them, but they haven’t shown any interest in mares. Or bucks. Very dedicated to their work, and protective of the ‘weak’ and ‘innocent’. I think it’s just a license in their heads to be heroes.”

Jim grunted. “But are they?”

“Some say they are, some say they aren’t. I prefer not to deal with them.”

Silence, save for the clip-clop of hooves.

The storage area wasn’t really a storage area. More like a fenced in mini-warehouse with a bored-looking clerk at the front. Three heavily-armed and armored ponies, one mare and two stallions, kept guard, aided by a pair of impractical-looking wheel-hooved robots.

Jim could tell their huge, dinner-plate eyes were focused on him even through the tinted visors they wore.

He made it a point to lay down all his weapons at the door, even his knife. If it made them less twitchy, so be it, but if that mare kept on staring at his bum...

“Try this on,” interrupted Salve, “it should have more padding on it. Might be a tiny bit more comfy.”

Sighing, Jim slowly removed the previous set of leather. “Look, just toss me a trench coat and some saddlebags and I’ll be fine. Frankly, I’d prefer to not get shot at all.”

“Trench coats are tacky and they aren’t in stock. Saddlebags, however...”

A pair of saddlebags slid into Jim’s hooves. Annoyed, he glared to his right, where that same mare was looking at him with one of those looks. Snarling, he snatched the bags, threw them to the side, and looked at Salve.

“Gimme that,” he said, snatching the black leather out of Salve’s hooves. He put it on, tightened a couple straps, then glared at the annoying security mare.

Whom he flipped off. She obviously didn’t understand the gesture itself, but seemed to get the meaning behind it. When she didn’t back off, Jim cut across his throat. She definitely got that, and backed off just slightly.

He turned back to Salve, scowling. In the minute he’d taken to put on the leather armor (it was still not comfy, even with the padding), she’d grabbed a pair of large, rose-tinted Lennon specs.

“Try these on,” she said.

A genuine “Why?” escaped his lips. If they were to hide his cybernetic eyes, they’d be slightly redundant, as the only way that anyone would be able to tell if he had cybernetics was if they looked incredibly closely. Thank God for SarifCorp.

“If you didn’t notice, nopony’s made eye contact with you. You got metal eyes. That scares ponies.”

And then he remembered that his eyes were massive dinner-plate sized things. He complied, the room shifting towards the red end of the color spectrum.

“Huh. It actually looks good on you. C’mon, let’s go the front so we can pay for this stuff.”

They walked to the front, Jim checking the bags along the way.

A small amount of water, six cans of beans, two empty Obrezmagazines that I’ll have to check, leather “armor” that wouldn’t stand up to a Saturday night special, some sunglasses, and bags. Yup, if they toss me out of here right now, I’m fucked.

The second they got anywhere close to the clerk, all three of the guards tensed. Jim snorted, putting what Salve had snagged on the counter and emptying the bag.

Clad in even heavier armor than her guards, the clerk levitated a suspiciously familiar machine gun from off the wall behind her.

Jim tensed. That gun would turn him into mush, even if it was falling apart.

...and the second the clerk looked up and saw Salve, the gun went back on the wall.

“Another amnesiac pony? Lemme guess- M.A.W?”

“Yup. How much for the supplies?”

“Normally, that leather armor he’s trying on would be two hundred or so caps. Those mags would be fifty each. Ten caps each for the beans and twenty-one total for those three bottles of water. The bags and sunglasses? Five caps. About four hundred fifty caps, total.”

Caps? As in bottlecaps? Was that what they used as currency? Fucking weird ass currency to use. I’d use empty cartridges, or maybe just not use a currency at all.

“For you? I’d say… two-fifty. Minimum,” the clerk said, leaning forward,”for the handsome buck behind you? Hundred seventy five caps.”

“Just a hundred and seventy-five caps?” Salve said, eyebrow cocking.

“Consider it a favor for the stud right there.”

Oh God this mare is hitting on me, he thought, barely noticing the bow-chicka-wow-wow coming out of one of the stallions or the look on his face, and isn’t a stud a breeding stallio- nope nope NOPE!

Salve, seemingly reading his mind, groaned, “Pincher, how many times have I told you that hitting on the amnesiac patients is kind of frowned upon? Oh, right, a lot. Now, here’s the caps-” she dug out a dirty-looking bag “-and we’ll be off.”

They quickly exited the storage area/warehouse, but not before Jim heard a catcall directed straight at him.

Salve had given Jim a temporary room in the hospital where he could rest his head for the night.

It was very small, the hospital bed in the center taking up most of the room, most of its sheets covered in gunge and its originally-springy material no doubt stiff as a board. Broken computers and medical equipment lined the walls, burnt out and choked with dust. The only window in the room as boarded up, letting the little light left in the day through the cracks. Even though he’d only been up for a couple hours, going by his CyberHub, the day went by far too fast.

He’d only been in there long enough to drop off all his weapons save for one of his Obrez, some of his supplies, and his saddlebags. With a bit of ingenuity, he cut out a small holster for the oversized pistol from a burlap bag, tying it around his left leg. Telekinesis certainly made the job easier.

Jim walked out of the room, cybernetic leg clunking against the ground. He’d seen Salve go to a room at the end of the hallway, probably a converted office, and he needed to ask her a question.

Clip-clop-clip-clunk.

Seconds later, he pushed open the door, looked inside, and made eye contact with the mare of the hour.

At the moment, she was sitting on her bed, loading a large shotgun with what-looked-like magnum slugs. She twitched, then glared at him. Jim barely noticed her out-of-control mane.

“What do you need?” she asked.

“It’s about my heartbeat. Why can’t you prescribe medication?”

“We don’t have any, and we probably won’t. Remember what I said about us being low on resources?”

Jim nodded, putting on a slightly more concerned face.

“We’re low. Way low. Not on food or water, we get enough of that from the radigators, brahmin, and the river. We’re low on medical supplies. Disinfectants, bandages, healing potions, painkillers, Rad-X, Rad-Away, Anti-Tox, shock talismans, you name it. We don’t get those, we’re fucked.”

“How so?” he asked, already knowing part of the answer.

“Even if we cook the meat, there’s still gonna be radiation in it. That builds up over two meals a day, every day, seven days a week. We mix in a bit of Rad-X with the food of the livestock, dilute the water with Rad-Away, that helps. And the water, despite our best efforts, still doesn’t get filtered enough. Tiny particles with bacteria, dirt, grit, whatever. That can make ponies sick. You got ponies sick on the job, you don’t get ponies doing their jobs.”

Jim nodded, not saying anything. He’d learned enough back home to always, always listen to everything.

“Don’t even get me started on the painkillers, healing potions, and disinfectants. You know how a heali- right, amnesia. Well a healing potion just boosts your healing system, and it works the best when there’s not a bullet lodged in your body. Yeah, it’s great when it works, because then you can go from being bed-ridden to walking, but when you’ve got a bullet stuck in your ribcage and you need it removed, you can’t use a healing potion! It’ll just heal around it, and that’s bad in the long run! So I have to do surgery, and because as you can see from the state of this place, it ain’t that clean!”

Internally, he winced. He’d been lucky to get off with few bullet wounds in his career as a Runner, but even with the advanced medical tech humanity had, it still hurt like a bitch.

He raised a hoof, stopping her reasons-turned-ranting from becoming full-on raging. “So, you’re running low on resources that bad? How about, as a favor, I go and find you some medical stuff?”

Salve chuckled darkly. “That’d be nice, don’t get me wrong, but the only place you can get anything is from places that haven’t been picked clean yet. And most places are picked clean.”

“That’s… not good.”

“Like hell it is! Spade and Club found a Ministry of Peace transport up the river that crashed when the bombs fell, but they couldn’t bring it back in because of the wildlife.”

“Wildlife?”

“Wildlife. Ironwolves, manticores, coyotes. No raiders, fortunately, but you’re dead if you go up there,” she said, turning to shut off the lamp by her bed. Sensing that it was time to go, Jim closed the door and made his way down the hall.

A sleepy woman was not something he wanted to mess with.

In Jim’s opinion, bars weren’t that great a place to be. Most of the time, they were blaring procedurally-generated pop music to a mindless crowd with nothing better to do while they were served cheap moose piss and shitty salty snack foods, which had no other purpose than enticing the crowd to buy more cheap moose piss. They were great places to do business for a lesser Samurai, but other than that he’d avoided them like the plague. He was classier than that.

Unless they had champagne, in which case he was perfectly okay with this bar.

So, when he was greeted by friendly folks talking about friendly things, wooden tables and chairs, warm, natural lights, and a bartender that was flesh and blood, a massive grin crossed his face.

None of the barflies paid any mind to the cyborg wearing black leather, nor the pair of pistol handles coming out of his saddlebags. Their eyes were on the messy white-coated, black-maned buck on the stage in front of them, and the microphone being levitated in front of his face.

Satisfied that he wasn’t going to be the subject of a shootout anytime soon, he made his way over to the counter. A teenager with half-lidded eyes tried to sidle up to him, but he pushed her away. The sound of her hmph-ing was lost over the jolly atmosphere and rocky voice coming from the singer on the stage.

Jim jumped on to a seat by the edge of the counter, waiting for the bartender to take notice of him. When the large mare did, she grinned and leaned to face him.

“And what can I get for you, handsome?”

“Any word about job openings in the area?

[//END CHAPTER//]