Fallout Equestria: Psychosis

Jim woke up with a start, vision black because for some odd reason his eyes hadn’t booted up yet. Usually they were booted the second they detected him exiting sleep, but apparently because reasons they weren’t active. There was an odd taste in his mouth, a tiny bit of a headache, and for a really weird reason most of his stomach felt… scratched. Like someone had scratched his stomach like he was a dog or something.

That’s fucking weird, he thought, same as that dream. How the hell did that luchadore type with boxing gloves?

His eyes still weren’t activating. Were they finally starting to give out? No, SarifCorp prosthetics were durable. He’d taken a low-intensity plasma shot (“shoot to disable” that merc had said) to the face, and they were still working. Not properly, but he chased the fucker who did it, ripped his arms off, and beat the guy to death with them.

That had been a fun job.

Either way, he rolled his shoulders and stretched his odd-feeling arms. Might as well get up. That dream with the ponies was realistic, he’d admit. Maybe someone put sedatives in him? That made sense, and certainly explained the odd feelings. If the backpacks just teleported him some place on Earth, and if it wasn’t the furthest reaches of Siberia or the Sahara, someone must’ve found him. If those bullshit quantum mechanics physics about wormholes or some shit (or were they showerheads?) from those old twenty first century games were correct, “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.”

He pulled up his (thankfully booted) CyberHub and checked for injuries.

[No injuries detected.]

[All prosthetics are at one hundred percent integrity.]

Huh. That was weird. He only got weird dreams when he was on sedatives, and if he wasn’t on sedatives then that meant that “speedy thing in, speedy thing out” wasn’t true, then… was he captured?

No, he could feel his cybernetics. Even if whatever secretive organization removed his cybernetic arm, which was highly unlikely seeing as it was integrated into his right side, then he’d be restrained. Maybe an everything-proof room? Possibly, but really, an everything proof room? That was impossible.

[SarifCorp Eagle Mk5 Prosthetic Eyes activating in 3…]

[2…]

[1…]

And then his eyes were assaulted by a battering ram, multiple ten gauge shotgun shells, a pair of Gerber Mark 8 Steel-Cutter vibroknives on hyper-mode, billions of pins, trillions of needles, and the deepest darkest depraved dredges of shark maid fetish porn on the internet. Well, the equivalent of it. Really it was just a tiny bit of light filtered through shut blinds, but it felt like the aforementioned ocular assault.

“Joder! Shit! My eyes!” Jim screamed, flinging himself out of bed and squeezing his eyelids shut. The pain! He’d always had a little headache when he woke up, that was a disadvantage of being a cyborg, you always had little pains, but this was bullshit! This was entirely bullshit! Almost as bullshit as the dream with the po-

Oh, wait, he was a pony.

Yeah. That was a thing, now. His eyes were still shut, seeing as he didn’t want to go bli-

He was drinking last night. That was it. Now it was coming back to him…

“Hey hey, if it isn’t amnesia boy!” someone said.

Jim jumped in his seat, very nearly spilling the drink (champagne, if you were wondering) that Barkeep let him have, on the house apparently. He thought that no one would pay attention to him. His initial observations said that this town was one of those adventure towns, the ones like in the old west, but with ponies! A cyborg clad in black leather wearing red sunglasses was not supposed to be noticed! How could that be!

Wait. He was a cyborg clad in black leather wearing red sunglasses. That was suspicious.

Either way, he turned to the speaker.

It was the same white-coat black-mane buck from onsta- that pony was still on stage. They were near identical, as far as he cou-

He was talking to Spade or Club. That’s when it hit him.

When his headache subsided, the blinds got closed, and he found his sunglasses, Jim got a glance at the room. It looked like it came straight out of a shantytown. Splinters on the wooden floorboards, a tiny bed with very thin sheets, and… most of his belongings that he brought in the bar scattered across the room.

He glanced at the door, thanking whatever gods would listen that there wasn’t someone to see him in such a mess.

With a sigh and a rub of his forehead (not with the cybernetic arm, he wasn’t that dumb), he sat down, laid his face on the bed, and attempted to recall what happened the night before.

Something clinked. He glared at it, and saw a bottle of cheap moose piss that could’ve passed for beer. The label said “Buckweiser”, and that made him grin. Even with the difference in universes, there was still some overlap. Maybe he’d find “Colt” Firearms, or Ford “Mustangs”. That’d be hilariou-

He slapped himself. Only Honest John would make a pun that bad, and his puns were pretty bad. Made Jim sing some old twentieth century song, made him drink even though he had the alcohol tolerance… of an anorexic… six year old.

Fuck.

“Look, Spade, I don’t drink hard liquor.”

“C’mon, really? A big, mean-looking fucker like you can’t hold his liquor? That’s more bullshit than I can take,” Spade pushed, moving the massive growler of whiskey in Jim’s direction. XXX was the label on it, but Jim doubted it had anything to do with sexually explicit content.

“Buddy, please, I do dumb things when I’m really drunk. Really, really dumb things. Wildly inappropriate things involving pineapples and yo-yos.” Jim pushed the growler away, grabbing his champagne and taking another sip. He really, really hoped that Spade would just ignore him after that.

“Man, I’m gonna keep bugging you until you drink it.”

“Just leave. Please. And die.”

---

Jim sighed. The last time he drank any hard liquor, it’d ended up bad for the whole team. They’d had Honest John to blame for it, but some of it still fell on his head. All he’d done was give in, once, and then there’d been that decapitated head, the trio of angry old ladies, and those two dudes.

He checked to make sure that all of his stuff was on his person. Both his Obrez he personally checked, and other than a new set of scratches on the bottom of the grip, they were pristine. Unfortunately, his armor didn’t get the same treatment, having “POLICE” painted very brightly on the back, in clear white paint. That’d get him killed for sure if someone decided to shoot him.

Then a very feminine groan escaped from something on the other side of the bed. Jim pulled one of his Obrez (it’d kill anything at this range)out with his cybernetic arm, afraid to use his telekinesis because he had no idea how alcohol would react to magic. He could explode, get a worse headache, or nothing at all would happen.

He wasn’t going to test anything yet. He’d only been here for the entirety of a day and… a half? Maybe? He didn’t know, but he did know that he wasn’t just going to let experimenting kill him. He’d had enough of that when he was a testbed for bio-mods, and that wasn’t something he’d wish on anyone.

Then a hornless mare with light-green mane and sandy-tan coat (the colors went well together, he noted) appeared, wiping her mouth and rubbing her head. The connection between the clothes and the mare was instant.

“Aw fuck,” Jim whispered, lowering the rifle-turned-pistol.

“I’m bugging you.”

Jim glared straight ahead, trying to ignore the young voice behind him.

“Buggy bug, bug.”

He looked at his reflection in the disappointingly-flat and distressingly-not-bubbly yellow-tinted drink. Maybe he could start a fight, get a dogpile going on with this annoying kid on the bottom. Didn’t he know not to disturb his elders?

“Buuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggg!”

With a sigh, he pushed the champagne away, turned around, pulled off his sunglasses, and gave Spade his rendition of the Eye of Fear. Those of lesser will and intoxication would back away, a sudden desire to check their ovens instilled in them. Those of even lesser will and more sobriety would take it as a sign of the end of days and run screaming in terror, the authorities finding them days later as a hobo on the street.

Spade, whether he had incredible will or too little blood in his alcohol stream, Jim wouldn’t know.

He did know that if he drank from the growler, the annoying kid would leave him alone.

He also knew that he had very, very, poor alcohol tolerance. He’d refused bio-mods to fix it, seeing as he had a distinct (but very minor) phobia of drinking hard liquor, because there was an irrational fear he’d do something wildly inappropriate with a pineapple and a yo-yo in a public place. And besides, if they discovered those government bio-mods...

“Fine, alright, I give in. I’ll drink this shit, but don’t think I’m going to get plastered for your entertainment!”

With that, Jim grabbed the growler, tipped it on to his lips, and chugged down.

It wasn’t the best whiskey, at least. It burned going down his throat, left a stinging aftertaste, and bit like hell, but it wasn’t horrible.

He finished chugging after a minute, setting the growler down and glaring at Spade. Jim ignored the warm feeling spreading through his belly, choosing instead to poke Spade in the chest with his cybernetics.

The smaller buck stumbled back, but the stupid grin was still on his face.

“Happy? Are you fucking happy? I fucking chugged down an entire fucking growler, will you leave me the fuck alone now?”

“Alright, alright, I’ll leave you alone!”

---

“Lemme get this straight- I was so drunk I was saying that I was actually this thing called a human, which was a giant monkey from some place called ‘the Sprawl’, and that I actually had two hearts, one of which was mechanical, and that everyone should’ve bowed down to me because I was their robot monkey time lord master?”

The mare finished putting her clothes on. “That’s about the gist of it. Then you fell on the floor, vomited and said ‘give my regards to Honest John, the son of a bitch’. After that you passed out and I had to carry you to the room.”

“And you carried me all the way up to a room that you rented, put me in the single bed, and didn’t have wild drunken sex with me?”

“You aren’t my type.”

Jim let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He’d been that close to blowing his cover. If he’d just walked up to Salve and said “hi, I’m a space monkey from a mega-city called the Sprawl that has super-advanced technology that could totally save everyone here with no effort, oh and I don’t have amnesia”, he’d probably have been run out of town. Plus it was bad taste to have wild drunken sex in his line of business.

This was going to be the first time he ever thanked God for him being that drunk. He couldn't do that at the moment, seeing as he was a mortal and God... was kind of God, so he settled on thanking the mare for not having drunken sex with him.

“The cuddling was great, though. You’re a great cuddler, despite the metal parts.”

“Wait what? Say that again.”

“You’re a great cuddler. The cuddling was great. Are you deaf?”

Jim didn’t answer that. Instead, he holstered his pistol, put on his sunglasses, and walked out with his head hung low and a lot more self-consciousness.

He exited the bar and made his way towards the clinic.

On the way, ponies gave him odd looks. Some were of curiosity, others of surprise, and some… some of… was that lus- stopping that line of thinking right now.

There wouldn’t be any way he could take a back street- he doubted there were any, and if there were, he’d still have gotten lost. His skills might have been navigation, but even he had his limits. An entirely different town in an entirely different universe? No. Besides, he really needed to ask Salve about work that needed to be done around town.

Even he knew that he couldn’t mooch off welfare for long. Besides, six beans and half a liter of water? That wouldn’t sustain him for three days even if he rationed, and going by what he’d learned from Barkeep, most of the towns were at least a couple days walk apart. Some sort of Apple place was closest, at three days, but he had no idea where it was.

The verdict? He needed a job, or an escort. Even if he could figure out how to shoot like a professional, and how to run like a hundred meter… sprinter or galloper or whatever, and how to negotiate, someone would figure out. Bar gossip had said that most-if-not-all of the amnesiacs weren’t cyborgs and they didn’t recover nearly as quickly. Maybe he should have fumbled up on some of the tests.

Jim sighed.

It would’ve been a whole lot easier if there was some mystical marker that pointed him in the right direction. Hell, it’d be a whole lot easier if he just had some sort of automatic sorting menu thing that listed things in order of priority, or just listed what he needed to do.

Heck, why couldn’t there just be some sort of exposition fairy that guided him along? Just told him everything he needed to know, about why he was here, why he was a pony, and why everyone was staring at his ass. He’d settle for an evil looking man-bull thing, or a crusty old geezer, hell, even an annoying little kid, just so long as he got answers!

Fuck now everyone was staring at him because he’d just stopped in the middle of the road. The next thing he needed was for spaghetti to fall out of his pockets, but that didn’t happen, so he kept on walking.

Right up until a stallion got in his way.

[SUDDEN PERSPECTIVE CHANGE]

Wanderlust was a simple stallion. He had an orange coat and sky-blue mane, but that didn’t matter. There might have been some history of being silly (some mares would say adorable), too, but it didn’t matter. His cutie mark might have been a horseshoe and some bottlecaps, but most ponies didn’t pay much attention to that. Certainly not bandits or raiders.

What did matter was the fact that he was in need of a caravan guard. The last one had walked off when he said they’d be going south through bandit territory, and he’d been lucky to make it to Rivertown alive.

Oh, it was a nice town. One of the larger ones he’d seen, and he’d been all over. From Hoofington to Manehattan, Stalliongrad to Mareami, all in the span of some five years. Had guards, had a wall, had a bustling community, but he was in the business of searching for a caravan guard. Which they unfortunately did not have.

Two days searching and he hadn’t found any prospects. Sure, those Spade and Club fellows seemed nice, but they were already on a mission! Wanderlust was a polite stallion, if odd, and he wouldn’t interrupt their mission to investigate stuff even if he had a bajillion caps. Which he didn’t, being a dirt-poor trader.

Maybe finding a Sentinel patrol? No, he doubted that they’d be all the way out here. They mostly patrolled through Appleanta. If he did find a patrol, then they’d take him.

If, he reminded himself, if I find a patrol.

Could he ask for the assistance of the guards of the town? No, he’d been lucky to get into town without bandits on his ass, and unless he found some four-leaf clovers which made him lucky, which let him get more four-leaf clovers to infinitely prolong his luck until he was the luckiest pony in the universe, then he just plain wasn’t going anywhere without a guard.

Where would he even find four-leaf clovers? And where would he hide them if he had to, to keep someone from stealing all his luck? Would he have to kill if he wanted to keep his clovers? Oh he really didn’t want to have to kill to keep his luck!

What if he found an entire clover field! Just roll around, gather all the luck. But what if a giant monst-

Unfortunately, he wasn’t lucky enough to spot the massive stallion he was about to run into.

Thud.

And Wanderlust fell to the ground, pain shooting up through his nose. He made to apologize, but stopped when he noticed that there was a massive stallion wearing black leather, carrying a pair of badass looking pistols, and having cybernetic parts.

Plus he was huge. Like way huge. Huger than Wanderlust, and he was pretty large. Well, in comparison to the ponies from his hometown, who were kind of small. To normal wasteland ponies he was kind of small. An unusually tall dwarf pony? Maybe this pony was a very unusually large dwarf pony.

Bah! He shook his head, banishing those thoughts. There was a badass in front of him, either waiting for his apology or a chance to shoot him.

“Sorry about that,” Wanderlust said, “usually I’m more attentive.”

“Oh, that’s alright! I’m not very attentive myself. Sorry for bumping into you,” said the surprisingly soft voice of the badass. He expected a deep rumble, or a throaty growl, but a voice like that? Did not expect!

“It’s fine.”

And silence. The stallion started walking, Wanderlust following after realizing there was a complete badass who looks like a mercenary just walking past him. And that he needed a caravan guard.

Thirty seconds.

The badass paused, turned, then looked at Wanderlust. “What do you want?” the stallion groaned.

“Oh well I was in town and looking for a caravan guard. Do you happen to know any caravan guards?”

That made the stallion pause. “No, unfortunately, but I am planning on heading out soon.”

Wanderlust’s face lit up. “Wonderful! How soon?”

[BACK TO JIM/GUNSLINGER]

Jim didn’t sigh.

Of course, he mused, I just have to think about getting a job and then a weird pony walks up and asks me about it. I am a master at the art.

He still needed to talk to Salve, find a more resource-efficient medium-range weapon other than the hideously-overpowered plasma rifle, and maybe get a map. Then he’d be out of the town.

Both Jim and his maybe-employer made their way to the clinic.

Salve was there, reading an old magazine. As soon as she heard the clunk of Jim’s cybernetic hoof, she looked up and glared at him. Then she glared at his maybe-employer, cocked an eyebrow, and her face softened.

“Before you ask me if you can go out, let me tell you that it usually takes a week before the amnesiacs even think about joining a caravan. And usually they don’t even find one.”

“So can I go?” Jim asked, pointing to his soon-to-be-employer.

“Sure. Your health checks out and you got the two skills every wastelander needs, why not?” she deadpanned.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes. You’ll survive in the wasteland. Just keep your wits about you and your gun pointed at anything that moves.”

And cue silence.

“You’re letting me go, just like that?” Jim stated, almost confused.

“Yeah, you’re letting him go, just like that?” Wanderlust added. Jim glared at him, which caused the small stallion to back away to avoid the low-power Eye of Fear. “Sorry!”

Salve sighed. “Look, I can’t prepare every amnesiac that comes through. I can’t just go ‘hey, here’s everything you need to get started’. I have to get them up to speed, get them to learn the ropes, and hopefully send them off with somepony who isn’t going to kill them. Frankly, Spade and Club are probably bringing in another pony right now, as we speak.

“Admittedly, you’re one of the fastest recovering cases, but even if I wanted to I couldn’t help you. You know how hard it is being a doctor in a small town like this? You got dumb ponies needing treatment all the time because they do dumb shit. Jump off a building thinking they’re a pegasus, try to breakdance or something, drink two hundred year old rat poison for shits and giggles. Maybe explore the crater of an old megaspell. Or other things.”

And cue more silence.

Jim groaned. “Alright, I see your point there. Still, letting me go without even checking on my health? That’s a bit… questionable, to me.”

“You just got piss-drunk, and if you’re still walking and talking, then you’re fine. Like I said, I don’t have the time to take care of all your injuries and all your requests. Your employer could handle anything you need to know. Now, if you could plea-”

At that moment, a pony barged in, carrying a foal on her back. A large cut was running across her back.

“Help!” the mare screamed. “She tried jumping out the window like Mare-Do-Well! I told her not to but she said she’d try to be a hero!”

Both of the stallions stepped out of the way, Jim giving Salve a look and Wanderlust trying to avoid the blood. Then they turned, looked to each other, and walked out.

Leaving the altercation with the mare behind them, Jim decided to discuss business terms with his employer. He’d come back later and get the

“So, how much am I getting paid?” he asked, ignoring the wait what? look the stallion gave him.

“Uh… seventy-five caps? It’s a half-week’s walk to Appleanta from here, assuming we don’t stop in Powder Springs.”

Jim very nearly tripped at that. Appleanta? Was that some pony parody of Atlanta? And Powder Springs? Fuck, that was where Honest John came from! Maybe this was where John disappeared to, all those years ago. He found a similar portal device, activated it, got turned into a pony, and to say ‘fuck you’ to everyone named a town the same as his home?

And then Jim realized that it was all baseless conjecture, and that he really needed to throw his disbelief out the window if he was going to get anywhere.

“Are you okay?” his employer asked. “You looked a bit shaky there.”

“Sorry, sorry. Just… just a thing. You know how amnesiacs are. Flashbacks and all that to the life they can’t remember.”

“Y’know I never really understood that. How do amnesiacs just have flashbacks all the time? Do you need like emotional stuff, or does it just happen?”

Jim didn’t answer that. He couldn’t. He wasn’t really an amnesiac. He was just pretending to be an amnesiac. He’d probably get paid more. Like the actors that portrayed doctors getting paid more than the doctors. Fucking Hollywood.

“It… sometimes happens. Or maybe there are triggers. I’m still not sure. You know I just woke up, and that my memory only goes back to about yesterday. Bit of a fish out of water, me.”

“The fuck is a fish?”

“An animal. That lives in water.” Jim never thought he’d be explaining just what a fish was to a tiny cartoon horse living in a third-world wasteland.

“Well, anyway, back to employment. Does seventy-five caps sound good to you?”

Jim was silent. “How long is the job?”

“Three days, going south to Appleanta.”

“What should we worry about while we’re on the path? Bandits, wildlife, any obstacles, anything?”

“Don’t worry. The only thing we really need to worry about are bandits, and if you’re smart like me you can avoid them.”

Jim didn’t reply to that. Really, three days with a maybe encounter of probably poorly equipped bandits? Even if his employer was a complete idiot and fuckedsomething up, they’d probably get to this Appleanta place in time. Still, if he was remembering correctly, all of his supplies were worth one hundred seventy five caps, and that was mostly the armor… And the armor was the cheapest thing in his size… Shit, he wasn’t good with math, but seventy-five caps probably wasn’t a lot.

“I’ll do it for one hundred caps.”

His employer whinced. “Sorry, but I don’t have that kind of money. Does eighty five sound good?”

“Ninety, any lower and I walk.”

More silence. The other pony sighed.

“You drive a hard bargain, but I’m in need of a guard. You’re hired, Mister Amnesia. You’ll get your pay when I get to Appleanta safely.”

“Mister Amnesia? Fuck, did we ever exchange names?”

They both stopped, put their hooves on their respective chins, and then realized that, no, they never gave each other their names. Jim facepalmed (not with the cybernetic arm, he wasn’t that hungover), his employer sighed, and then they both gave each other a look.

Jim spoke first. “The ponies here call me Gunslinger, but I respond better to Black, for some weird reason. Nice to meet you.”

“The name is Wanderlust, and I... am a caravanner.”

Silence.

Wanderlust, as he was now known, grinned. “Well, now that we’re introduced to each other, want to get a dr-”

“No, just tell me where your caravan is so I can check it out and find it.”

“Alright, that’s fine. My caravan is over by the north side of town. It’s the one with two brahmin. My associate should be there. Just tell her ‘Shanktastic’ and you shouldn’t have to worry about anything. Now, time to get intoxicated!”

At that moment, before Jim had any time to ask Wanderlust just who his associate was, the stallion galloped straight to the bar. Jim reminded himself to justgo with the flow. Instead of running after Wanderlust and swearing at him, he chose instead to sit down on a nearby bench and think. Easy to do, on an empty street.

The sooner he got out of town, the better. Drunken antics weren’t appreciated, as far as he knew. Attention would be on him, and that was the last thing he wanted. Samurai might have been killers of many, but they were always anonymous. The bad ones made a name for themselves, the good ones kept in the shadows.

Unfortunately, he doubted his acting skills would hold up. The last time he’d ever really had to fabricate an entire personality was with the support of an entire crew at his back, along with a lot of practice and preparation, and that was a long time ago. There were probably holes in his story that someone would notice, and then the questions would get asked.

His amnesiac ploy wasn’t going to work, not unless he kept moving. Rivertown had familiarity with actual amnesiacs and a small town dynamic. They knew what amnesia was like, and his learning to do in two hours what most others took a week to learn was definitely suspicious.

Wanderlust’s appearance was a godsend, Jim knew, and that he needed to keep on his good side to get paid any amount of money to get anywhere. That’s what good people did, right? Had good relations, weren’t a supercriminal? He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t a good guy.

Shit! Why couldn’t it just be simple, like back home? All he had to worry about there was when the next job came in, or when the Operator got the next shipment of ammo, or which fucking corporation would hire him next! None of this bullshit about acting a mask, or balancing public relations or not drawing attention to himself! Why? Why couldn’t things be simple?

Because nothing is ever simple, he sarcastically mused, and next thing you know I’m gonna have to deal with an ancient cult of alien worshipping hippies.

Killing those thoughts before they could evolve into something more sinister, Jim drew one of his pistols and glared at it. Why the hell had he brought them on that mission? Would’ve made more sense to go with a dedicated armor piercer, or hell, even a plasma zipgun. The Obrez were wonderful for ambushing and getting the first shot off in close quarters, but they were crap at everything else. Did do a good job of intimidation, though.

He definitely needed better weapons and armor. That was a given. He’d have to conserve on plasma rifle ammo, but if he found some sort of bullet-firing carbine…maybe a shotgun, he’d be set. The armor he had on was definitely crap, despite looking cool, so he needed to replace that as soon as possible. Power armor would’ve been nice, but he doubted the backwater knuckleheads even invented it, or if they did, if any of the suits were still operational. Or in his size, for that matter.

So, priorities listed. Find better weapons, find better armor, don’t get hunted down, figure out why I’m here and how I could get back. Also, why I’ve been turned into a pony. Also, also, go with the flow.

Jim already knew it was the backpack that dragged him here because of some random numbers. What he didn’t know was how it turned him into a pony and why he landed near a town frequented by amnesiacs. He’d overheard tidbits of conversation on the “amnesiacs from that MAW place”, but he had no idea what the hell the MAW was or where said MAW place was located.

With a sigh, he checked the time on his CyberHub (noting that he really needed to sync it up to something) and groaned.

Only fifteen minutes had passed.

“Fuck,” he muttered. Didn’t he have some songs loaded on his Hub? Maybe he could pass the time by listening to those…

[Loading Folder: Music (53.2GB)]

[Searching Folder for: Nine Inch Nails]

[Found Sub-Folder: Nine Inch Nails Discography]

[Load Sub-Folder to Music Player]

[Sub-Folder loaded]

[Playing now]

“God money, I’ll do anything for you…”

He waited.

Jim took the mare scolding the bandaged child riding on her back (odd how that image came up mentally, to him) as a sign that he could run into the clinic and get his stuff. Only fifteen minutes had passed, surprisingly.

What didn’t surprise him was the fact that Salve had returned to sitting on her chair, reading a different magazine.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her attention.

“Hi. What’s your business?”

He sighed, walked up to the desk, and looked her in the eye. “I’m grabbing the stuff I left in my room.”

“Go ahead. The door’s unlocked and nopony’s been up there.”

“Alright,” he muttered, clambering up the stairs.

Jim stared at the room. Everything was as he left it. Well, no, really he didn’t mess with anything. Just set his plasma rifle down, covered it with a burlap bag, and called it a night, then went to the bar. The only other things in the room were… really nothing. He had his sunglasses, he had his armor, he had his guns, his water, and… beans.

Just… Just fuck beans. Fuck all the beans.

Fuck, they were beans. The only thing worse would be MREs. He’d had enough of those in his stint as a soldier, and he was not going back. That fucking taco prank. Jim had a fear of the Chicken Taco MREs for months after that. Fucking Chicken Taco PTSD…

He shook his head, strapped the plasma rifle to one of the saddlebags, and exited the clinic.

Unlike the movies and books, it wasn’t nearly as epic as it should have been. Instead of dreary music providing ambience, all he got was… silence, tinged with the merrymaking in the bar. There wasn’t some ray of light shining on him to provide some holy illumination, just a sheet of sickly green filtered by silver. No breeze to make his hair (or was it a mane?)... do whatever it was hair did in the wind.

Heck, there wasn’t even a philosophical rambling monologue to go with it.

Jim was disappointed, to say the least, but he didn’t voice it.

Instead, he consulted a nearby pony to figure out where the north gate was. After a conversation mostly consisting of stuttering and pointing, he finally got an answer.

“That a way,” the mare had said, trembling and pointing off to his right.

“Gracias, senorita.”

Before she had the chance to respond, Jim was walking away.

It was barely five minutes later when Jim exited the north gate. The guards didn’t pay him any mind, instead choosing to glare at the dusty horizon.

The first thing he saw was the single large caravan wagon harnessed up to two mutated cows. The cows were mostly normal looking, save for a lack of fur, two heads, and distended udders.

Really, he’d seen more horrifying science fair projects. Actually, he’d killed more horrifying science fair projects. Heavily mutated cows were just a drop in the bucket of weird shit he’d seen, but the mantra of go with the flow he’d pseudo-officially established kept him from stopping and going “what the fuck.”

Next, he saw the tiny pony sitting on the front of the cab, massive shotgun held in a deep blue telekinetic grip. She wasn’t wearing much, just a bandanna around her neck along with a sling for the twelve gauge shells, but damn if she didn’t look mean. That shotgun would make short work of him, cybernetics or no.

Then Wanderlust stumbled out from somewhere, clasping a hoof across Jim’s back.

“Hey, Wrench, this is our new caravan guard! His name is Black!”

“Wrench”, as the tiny pony was now known, just glared at Jim. A tiny part of him said that it was an adorable glare from a tiny pony, while a slightly larger portion said that oh dayum those eyes burned. Either way, both of them were squashed like bugs underneath an L5 Lagrange Point colony being dropped from orbit by a part of him that said go with the flow.

“I’m guessing this is your associate?” Jim asked, surprised to find such a tiny… foal, he guessed, traveling with such a crazy pony. Odd how their colors were similar... “Are you two related?”

“Nope!” Wanderlust exclaimed, “I just found her in Boomtown, fixing shit up, and because of some reasons I can’t remember she’s traveling with me!”

“So, since I have all of my stuff, are we leaving?”

“Yep! Come on, let’s get all of this set up!”

Jim didn't say a word.