Fallout Equestria - Long Way Home

Chapter Twelve- Strength

“I’m activating the program… Now.” I said to my zebra colleague, as I activated a new program on the thing attached to my wrist.

        The light that began to emanate from behind me was the reason behind my less than urbane victory yell. It had worked. Not exactly my life’s work, but it still made me proud.

                                 ---===*===---

        The clicking of keys was the noise I had woken up to. Compared to my other wakeups, this one was tame, I surmised before growling and getting up. The smell of brewing coffee greeted me as I got to putting on my under-clothes and shrugging into the lab coat that must have been made for minotaurs.

         Yesterday, Ximroon had given it to me. I had a feeling it was because my regular clothing had gotten progressively more nasty as time went on. At least with the coat on, I had a layer of mothballed clothing smell covering up the rest of my stench. In the large volume of time it took me to dress, the clicking of keys continued unabated. This only added to the headache that was building after I took a moment during my tasks to wonder why they had a lab coat for minotaurs anyway.

        “Ahhh…” I yawned before turning to face Ximroon. “Why did the ponies have a lab coat for minotaurs?”

        “They probably had some regulation that said they needed one in case a minotaur wanted to work or view the work going on here, or maybe one of the scientists here did it on their own.” He looked away from the terminal monitor. “Considering this place was built late in the war, it was probably the latter. Even if both sides of the war did terrible things, the regular buck or mare was still decent.”

        I had slid up to him as he spoke. He had seemed less sad in the past when he was close to me; I think he was just lonely. I could sympathize. “I think they still could be, circumstances willing.”

        “I refreshed myself on electromagnetics early in the morning, and I got us a meeting in two days with the ruling council.”

        “And you made coffee?”

“I remember when I was closer to your age… “ I had figured out quickly that this was his favorite way to say, ‘back when I was alive’. Old people… “I had a love affair with the substance. So I made an assumption.”

        “Good call,” I said before suppressing another yawn. Did this guy not sleep? “So, what are you working on over there?”

        “Standard lab reports. If anything scientific can be obtained from this, then It’s my duty to record it.”

        “Uh, for future reference, I can type for you… “ I then mimed a typing motion.

“For the future, indeed, given this report is finished,” he punctuated this by hitting the enter key climatically.

        “Alright, let’s continue where we left off on the cybernetics schematics analysis,” I said after a moment and a bout of palm rubbing.

He nodded, and thus began several hours of study.

---===*===---

“Did you know there’s a subroutine in the spine command files to send power to a resonant inductive power exchanger?” He asked from across the room. His unfamiliarity with that device seemed strange, given the fact he had been teaching me things most of the time. It also made me question why I was holding a magnet next to my chest. Oh wait, titanium isn’t really that magnetic.

“No, but it makes sense, I guess. I mean, what's the point in putting a reactor with a gigantic potential output in a system that never needs more than 1% of it?”

“So, should we decompress the files on the pipboy and set them up as an interface that can activated?” Ximroon said. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he wanted to do.

“Give me an hour or two and I can do it. But even if we activate the power exchanger, we have no way to transfer the power. Even if we had that ready, we still don’t have a setup for conversion between electrical energy and magical energy.”

“Yes, but we can reach our goals.” Ximroon said with uncharacteristic vagueness.

        I didn’t argue with the sentiment, though. That was partially precipitated by my mind’s preoccupation of thinking about how I was going to transfer the program into a usable form.

                                 ---===*===---

The second night had left me doubly exhausted as the previous one. However, I was perked up, because the next day would be the day that this place’s manufactory could be turned over to us for our project. That, and I had a chance -however small- to make things up with my friends. Well, this was all dependent upon what the governing body of this society had to say. So, anxiety about tomorrow was filling my mind, not just that, but my anxiety about the future in general.

Consequently, I got up and loaded as many of my magazines as possible with armor piercing rounds. Ximroon might have had a few words to say about my planning for the worst of all possible contingency plans, but he wasn’t there in the blacked room in the wee hours of the morning counting his hand grenades. As close as we were in attitude, he lacked that sense of dire practically that had in part kept me alive throughout my trials. The less than errant thought of shooting my way out right now after stealing all the notes we had compiled made me shiver as I realized just how much I had changed.

        Somehow, I found solace in the fact that I still held enough control to keep that impulse down. If there had been someone else in the room, they would have seen the sardonic smile that followed that thought. Luckily…

        So, my functional yet fractured mental state hadn’t been compromised. That thought had me laughing. Laughing in way that bled tension away from myself, enough tension to let me find sleep.

---===*===---

The day before had left us in a position that required the use of personnel and materials to advance the project further than a power transfer program and a pair of disgruntled intellectuals. Without saying, the meeting with the counsel would explicitly decide the fate of the project and the future of their own society.

Ximroon had told me about the council and their unofficial voting blocks. This, coupled with the fact I was dealing with the conservative ancestors of a submarine crew meant that the mentality a hydraulic state needed to survive was so deeply ingrained in them that change of any kind would be anathematic to them. Well, I assumed this, given nothing I had seen thus far had contradicted this. I had begun to see that as a valid axiom.

This led to me standing in a room that must have at one point been a storage chamber, filled with chairs and armed guards waiting to start speaking with Ximroon, who was beside me. We were prepared to speak, given the fact I had told Ximroon all I knew about the Enclave. He had done the same for me, except he had told me of each of the council members.

“Elder Ximroon, you have had the help of the Xenos in your newest research, correct?” Redband, a large stallion with a lot of sway with the other council members due to his ancestors asked.

“He is the reason the proposal is in front of you,” Ximroon said in a neutral diplomatic voice that well practiced as it was, wounded me on some level. The look on his face said it all.

He had been put in front of a lot of committees and councils in the past. It showed.

        “Can you give us an overview on what the goals of this project are?” A mare by the name of Yeman spoke confidently to the room. Ximroon had told me to be wary of her. She was a newcomer on the council, apparently, but she was gaining support of her own at this point. “Dangerously unaffiliated”. That’s what Ximroon had said about her.

        “The experience we gain from getting a fusion to magic generator system on this scale can only help future efforts on a larger scale.” Ximroon said to the assembled zebras before gesturing at me. Did he want…

        “Do you want a way for your children and your children’s children to live in a world that includes more than a bunker?” I hated myself for using this to my own advantage. Say whatever you want about me, but I’m not a manipulator. “Or perhaps more importantly, do you want to continue living?”

        “Unless you’re referring to some suicidal threat you pose to us, then you’re wrong. Not a single pony has come within a kilometer of this base for two hundred ye-” Redband retorted. He was cut off by a snort from Yeman. She then cleared her throat.

        “Do you even read the reports that Stone Hoof sends us? The scouts have been seeing EFS contacts on their metro patrols for months now. Even discounting those as random zom-... ghouls, that just shows that the fallout isn’t impenetrable. Ghouls and “homo-sapiens” can reach us with no after effects.”

“We all know that the equestrian equipment has bugs- read through the records about the original turret programs and how they flipped their EFS targeting without warning. Zombies that are capable of thought are almost as rare according to the database as these homo sapiens are, so no, they are not a threat.” A voice came from a physically unimpressive zebra wearing a maintenance jumpsuit. Apolemia was her name; head of maintenance and manufacturing. My hope diminished considerably when most of the council (including Redband) mimed agreement.

I turned to Ximroon “Cauterize?”.

“In the archives, Apolemia, did you read about the Raptors of the Equestrian Air Guard?” He had shifted to his academic tone. His question was a beautiful double bind; Apolemia had to either admit not knowing, or acknowledge the power that a machine that was built to hunt dragons possesed. I had time to figure this out, given the pouty look Apolemia quickly acquired.

        “Why do they matter? Equestria got bombed back to the herd age, right?” Redband… At that moment I learned ignorance was a political superpower. Then my thoughts shifted towards formulating a response that would work on him. I almost started bringing up why there was a permanent cloud cover above their heads. Almost. They lived in a bunker, so that wouldn’t work on their (his) common sense.

        So, perhaps it was for the best that an announcement went through the intercom, telling everyone in the complex that they were under attack at the sewer entrance.

        The room was a mixture of calm zebras and zebras terrified to the point of paralysis. The two groups were hard to differentiate. As with any broad categorisation, there were exceptions, those being Yeman, Ximroon, Apolemia and I. All four of us were reacting differently. I ran out of the room after yelling something resembling regret at leaving the meeting so soon, and helping the security forces do their jobs.

I think that I saw Apolemia and Yeman start to argue frantically about what should be done. In the short term, Ximroon left the room with me, only to run in the opposite direction that I was going.

---===*===---

So, as I ran through the halls towards the security breach, I had time to make some observations and conclusions. These conclusions being: these invaders aren’t Enclave logically, they might just be the sensor blips the security teams had been detecting for some time. They’re organized creatures resistant to radiation. I had also concluded that my motivations for trying to help these people out were anything but conclusive, but it was probably because I wanted their help. In that vein, I was ingratiating myself to them. And I was curious about what was attacking them, given the lack of further elaboration about what was actually fighting with their security forces.

Well, observations might be the wrong word. What I saw was a frantic movement of normally placid zebras away from the point of incursion. They must not have  practiced lockdown drills, given the terror they showed on their way to human eyes. This was brought to a head at one of the last intersections on my way to the breach. Zebras coming from the hydroponics bay had gotten built up to the point of trampling each other behind the narrow bulkhead door. I had been hearing yells and screams for the last minute or so of my sprint through the place. The trickle of zebras coming from that direction was worrying me at that point.

Seeing the dozens of scared people behind that narrow door frame was enough to chill my blood. That didn’t include the far off sound of gunshots and the ambient noise of mass hysteria. I had barely stopped myself in front of the door when I caught a glimpse of a child that had been held above the crowd by its father falling into the writhing crowd as its dad got knocked onto his side.

Their base reaction upon seeing me didn’t help the situation. I distinctly remember thinking “clean up the mess you made.” My hand found my pistol of its own volition. The shot into the air got all of the zebras that could look at me to do just that.

“All of you back the fuck up and make an orderly goddamn line!”

        At that, one of the zebras that was a right next to the door tried to make a run for it.

        Do you know what a forty five caliber bullet does to a body? Even if I knew what it did, I couldn’t have known what it felt like to put it into someone in an attempt to maintain order. The crowd went into a state of torpor as the sound of a mostly headless body hit the cold concrete of the bunker floor. I myself had just realized what I had just done. I felt simultaneously like the greatest of saints and the most damned of sinners. Pushing the feelings away for the time being, I had to act if I wanted there to be any meaning to my actions.

        “Orderly line. Someone check for the foal.” At this point, the crowd started to do what I had ordered. “Get to the upper levels near the storage bunker entrance. It should protect you.” I didn’t add the “I hope” to the end.

The foal still drew breath. The crowd moved along. The air had a hint of cordite and a tension that seethed with a delicate balance of desperation and bottled despair, Which was funny, given the fact that my rebreather had been on for ten minutes by now.

                                 ---===*===---

        Hearing the sounds of gunfire increasing in volume as I continued forward meant that I was getting closer. Whether or not this meant the battle had moved further into the bunker wasn’t something I could know.

        It was luck that prevented me from being fired upon by the zebra soldiers. The two I ran into first were the ones that had spent time escorting me around. They had built a barricade at the end of a hallway and were firing away at a glowing ghoul.

Imagine their surprise when the ghoul suddenly had another, alien set of holes drilled into it.

        That momentary surprise and their slight familiarity with me was the reason I didn’t end up with nearly as many missing body parts as that ghoul.

        “You needed the help. Don’t think too hard on it right now. Just tell me how ghouls got inside the bunker.”

        The shorter of the two guards gave a grunt before tapping a button on his bit.

Tall Guard looked at me for a moment before doing the same. They reloaded, and shook their heads. Tall pointed a hoof further on down the hall.

        My eye roll was lost on them.

        How did feral ghouls get in? Someone must have let them in. That was as far as I could reason without knowing how the security for the sewer entrance worked. Speculation wouldn’t of hurt, If the ghouls hadn’t at that point decided to start throwing themselves at me. Critical thinking is hard to do when you’re moving in short bursts between periods of VATS use.

        Regardless of my incomprehension of the conditions behind the ghoul incursion, I was moving closer to the entrance. Before I headed into what I had surmised would be the entrance room, I stopped before walking over to a wall to catch my breath. My thoughts almost immediately turned to the zebra I had shot. A realization struck me: I could either continue onward in a quest to figure out why this had happened, or I could stay here and let things sort themselves out, and deal with my own affairs. One option required nothing more than a gun and a person with a working brain. The other option needed all of that and something less tangible but a lot harder to do.

                                 ---===*===---

        “We’ve secured areas C and D along with most of the hydroponics lab. Orders please,” I heard the leader of the security detachment speak into what I assumed to be a intercom link. I had taken up a position behind a barricade behind the closed door to the sewers. What I assumed was the forward security team was within earshot, but nowhere close to my position. Steel and concrete have some strange acoustic properties, you know? I heard no reply from the commander of the security force here, which gave some credit to my theory that the internal communication had been disrupted. The sound of someone kicking the comm terminal pretty much confirmed what I suspected.

        At that moment, I needed to know whether or not anyone had been told about my crowd control. Worst case scenario, I had the notes on the generator. I wasn’t sure I could get the system setup on my own though. I had a way out right in front of my face.

                                         ---===*===---

        The sound of footsteps alerted the guards in front of the council chamber, and put the already on-edge guards in front of the council chambers on unhappy terms with me. They didn’t stop me though- their organisation was under too much stress at that moment to contemplate starting another fight. Whoosh went the door, revealing the bare bones of the governing council. A tattered looking Redband was listening to Apolemia in one the room’s quiet corners. In opposition to this was the group listening to Yeman, subtly asserting that she was very, very right about their security. Was she just really opportunistic, or was she responsible?

        Clarity of thought wasn’t my strong point at that moment, so when her group approached me with questions, I wasn’t at my best.

        “You killed Xanatoos?” A buck asked, point blank.

“There were people being trampled, I had seen a foal in danger a second before I tried to get control. He…”

        “Got in the way. We’re right, you know. Fallen Pride needs zebras like you, we need to get out in the wastes, we need to get those fusor things working, we need you. Who here agrees?” And with that, Yeman became the de facto ruler of the complex, and with that also came support for the micro converter project.

        Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I wasn’t sure what to classify her as, but I was sure as hell going to keep tabs on her somehow while I was here.

                                             ---===*===---

        Apolemia was standing next to a recently replaced water main, she wasn’t happy to see me. She probably thought I was here to be petty; to add insult to the injury of Ximroon’s virtual annexation of the manufactory.

        “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to see you in private.”

“I thought you would’ve hooked up with Yeman by now?” Her questioning tone was belayed by the scoff she made after it. The bitter zebra flexed her muscles, cranking a hoof back before driving it back into the section of pipe. Yeah, I didn’t want to make an enemy of her.

        I would later wonder why at least half of my female acquaintances could kick my ass in fistacuffs anyday.

        “Don’t go there please, I ask you as one sapient being to another. Just think about talking with me candidly.”

        “Go, just go, you’ve done enough already.”

                                         ---===*===---

        I had been in the place for four days at that point, and finally figured out that this place had showers available to residents. Thus began my day of repair. It wasn’t any lack of enthusiasm that lead to me taking a day off from the fusion converter project. No, it was the simple fact that my talents didn’t lie with manufacturing and repurposing equipment to do jobs that they were never meant to do.

        So, I did some wonderfully mundane things like showering and washing the clothing that could actually be washed. I felt cleaner afterwards, in body if not soul.

The shower itself was the strongest example of this. Something about a shower had always made me contemplative in the past. Having not taken a shower in what seemed like months, I had plenty of fuel for wistful contemplation. All of the thoughts that had been in circling my mind for a while anyway. Still, I spent a long time in there.

                                         ---===*===---

        The next morning, I awoke to a the sounds of Ximroon assembling something in the lab. Dragging my refreshed yet stiff body off of the mattress, I turned to see the device that we were planning to test that afternoon. It looked simple. It was conceptually simple, but that prototype was the culmination of a couple hundred man hours of work. Ximroon had ran the machines and the zebras in the manufactory ragged to get it built quickly.

        I walked over to the device and rapped my fingers against the outer casing for the induction ring. That part was connected to a miniaturized power converter. The amount of crystal the subsystem had inside of it was astounding. The real beauty of the thing was the amount of variability it offered in output. A spark cell recharger could itself be powered by it. Honestly, that was the most exciting possibility for me.

Ximroon had told me about some of the more exotic magical energy weapons that might still exist. I might have gotten a little too happy at hearing about the gun that fired two-millimeter slugs at mach three.  However, this place had no magical energy weapons in working condition, or a spark cell recharger they were willing to part with.

        So, that was why the system was set up to send an almost negligible test output to a magical light bulb.

        He must have just gotten done setting up the bulb to the system.

        “You always put on that armor on before doing anything. Why the change?” Ximroon said as he laid the bulb on the messy work bench, which coincidentally also had our coffee pot set up on it.

        “I’m excited. Besides, we're all friends here. On a more serious note, did you talk with Yeman about our private meeting?” My words perked him up while simultaneously putting him in the mood to talk about the politics of Fallen Pride. That name was rarely used because of some cultural survivors’ guilt. I had figured in the last couple days that Yeman was a very effective opportunist. In all honesty though, she seemed to be genuinely worried about the safety of the city. For what reason, I could only speculate. Regardless, she had convinced the council to absolve me of all blame in shooting Xanatoos, so in her mind, she probably thought that I felt indebted to her.

        “I talked with her on your behalf, actually. Yeman sounded like she really was concerned about how the security door was opened.” What about the Enclave? Did he not?

        “Okay, so did you decide that you wanted to double team her into getting the expedition approved?” The terminal dinged at that moment. We had mail. “Uhh…”

          “I thought it over. Wouldn’t it be better to announce it at the emergency session today?”

        “After testing?” I said as i began to dump the magical black elixir into one of the actually enchanted coffee cups I had taken to stockpiling. Initially, I had been wondering why all the fake sugar I had managed to find was in cube form… This world was fucking weird.

        “Which I hope will succeed,” he said before snorting at the amount of sugar I dropped into the steaming liquid.

        “We did test each of the parts by themselves, and I’m still impressed by the job you guys did in the workshop. So I’m pretty confident about our chances…” He took the honest compliment well. Why couldn’t I have had him in my head?

        When I looked back towards him, having not received the reply I expected, I could see him staring closely at the terminal. Close enough for me to conclude that he needed glasses. Something told me that the message had some gravity to it. Something else told me that I would get the summarized version in another second or two. Therefore, I leaned against the bench and choked down a swig of coffee.

        “The system breach has been identified, so that means we’ll have answers in a couple hours if the security tech team is worth anything.” Good?

        “Now that I’ve woken up, you want to push the testing forward?” The schedule having been dependent upon me getting up at my normal time (elevenish). Today was going to be interesting; that much I had known even the night before.

Ximroon had found a not often used look of satisfaction at my words.

---===*===---

My armor wasn’t fully modified yet, hence its laying on the work bench next to a magic charge carrier wire and a repair talisman. Well, all of that stuff and some tools. However, I was wearing my lab coat and backpack, the latter having been modified with a compartment near the back added to hold the converter. Needless to say, it now weighed a couple kilos more.

“The bulb is set up. Ready when you are.” Ximroon said before running back to his terminal. If I asked him, I had a feeling he would say he was doing this to take notes.

“I’m activating the program… Now.” I said to my zebra-comrade (Zemad if you will), as I activated a new program on the thing attached to my wrist.

        The light that began to emanate from behind me was the reason behind my less than urbane victory yell. It had worked. Not exactly my life’s work, but it still made me proud.

        “So, do we tell Yeman before the meeting or at the meeting?” I asked Ximroon as I shut off the power flow to the exchanger.

        “The question in all reality is, do we want to fuel her agenda?”

                “Yes?”

                                 ---===*===---

        I fastened the shoulder plate to its strap. The click of conduits connecting felt right. The rictus grin I could feel forming on my face was totally unrelated. Looking down, I saw the material receiver bolted to my right side. I couldn’t feel it, but under my left pauldron there was small box that made the entire system possible. A repair talisman doesn’t work by itself, I had learned. This being the third time I had tried getting it to work, I was losing my patience. It didn’t help that Ximroon was off getting food. So, this time, if I had to rewire the system, I would be pissed, hence the grin I had on. And why my left hand had found Bowie and was gripping said knife tightly.

The door opened just as I was prepared to jab it into my chestplate. Ximroon stood in the doorway for a second before gesturing for me to follow. Force of habit told me to grab all of my stuff before leaving- I had been begun doing this religiously since my experience the night I met Glycerine.

I knew we were going to another meeting with the council. He gave a look of annoyance as I entered the hallway with all of my gear on. We began the by-now familiar walk to the chambers.

“Is there an update on the security breach?” I said in an attempt to turn any conversation away from my (unorthodox) methods of equipment testing. The results up to the point of him entering the room had been two new deep scratches in my chest plating. Which, by then begged the question of why I hadn’t just fired up the converter already and merely tried the repair talisman out on the damage already done to the plating. Let it never be said that I was infallible. (Not that it ever would be said.)

“Stone Hoof wouldn’t say. Typical of his kind.” Ximroon said, and silence reigned. I didn’t feel like asking what exactly he meant by that.

        Before long though, we arrived in front of my penultimate door on my list of hated doors. As I entered the room, I briefly ruminated over how different my life had become to even have a list of hated doors.

   Having been present for the last council meeting, I knew I could snag a chair, if only to let myself become more of an observer. With that thought, I walked across the room to a chair, while Ximroon followed behind me. My fingers then carefully unplugged the cord from the contact point on my paldron before I laid my backpack and Epilogue down beside my chair.

“You ready to announce to these people the greatest threat to their existence in no uncertain terms?” Ximroon whispered to me from the chair next to me.

“If you think thats the right thing to do, then yeah… I guess.” Now that very soon I would be asking these zebras to first off let me go and then give me help with another project that really did benefit everyone involved. (But me more so than anyone else involved.) Secondly I had killed someone here. Anxiety is way too weak of a word to describe that situation, I thought multiple times in row. All the while, the room was getting steadily closer to its occupancy capacity.

A few minutes of contemplation later, Ximroon nudged me with a hoof; everyone had arrived. Well, everyone important, it seemed. Apolemia was on the other side of the circle of chairs. The look of distaste she shot me got my attention. The other council members seemed to ignore me, with the exception of Yeman's voting bloc. Whatever happened here, I had to secure my own freedom to leave. That was the most important thing above all else. Kidding myself about my prioritises wouldn’t help anyone.

 My eyes then turned to see Yeman herself striding confidently into the center of the room. She gave me a look that I interpreted as ‘your time to shine’. No one heard me swear under my breath. I considered increasing the volume for another bout because she looked ready to make a speech. Maybe it wasn’t her fault that she was a good political opportunist, but I couldn’t stand anyone that used the killing of a person as a way to push people to your viewpoint. I had been the one to kill another in the hopes that I could save the rest from themselves. Not a good action, just the one that needed to be done. At least, I hope it needed to be done. So that you can just wash your hands of it? A darker part of my brain shouted at the whole of itself. No. Admit to yourself that you can’t stand people that have done things that aren’t even half as bad as what you’ve done. You’ve killed more people than anyone in this room except the walking corpse, and that guy may or may not have killed himself. Do you hate that zebra for being good with people, her ability to get things done? maybe it’s her lack of diluted beliefs? Don’t get angry at yourself. You are what you are… right?

“I thank you all for coming here today, and for the privilege to speak first in our time of insecurity. Everyone here knows about the security breach; how it showed us just how vulnerable we are to even the centuries-old corpses of our nearly vanquished enemies. We as a people have lived peacefully for generations. I am a product of this, and you are as well.

‘We fought the ghouls off. Why change what worked for our parents and our parent’s parents?’ You might ask yourself, you might still ask after this is over. The reason is simple. The world outside is going to war with itself. Everything that was burned into the minds of the soldiers that fought in that war oh so long ago is coming to pass once more. The Enclave and their raptors are a force to be reckoned with. They have would absolutely have no problem with vaporizing our city. Don’t think that any struggle is pointless. We have what we need to save ourselves and others.

 Our visitor himself is a symbol for what has and will continue to go on.

Equestria has strengthened him, made him lean, taught him what was truly important. He, in a time of need, helped us fight off the ghouls, but even before that, he saved the life of a foal. More than that, we can see what we truly are through how he spent his days here. This buck came to us alone in an irradiated shipyard. We let him in. Our resident scientist Ximroon had the human sent to him, and they bonded over the work they did. This poor buck, because of his species, has been shot and ran off many times, clearly. Our society is more just than any other left. Thanks in part to our visitor, we are getting closer everyday to unlocking the power to rebuild.

        I propose that we stay hidden, and see how the Enclave war goes, all the while developing a military that can defend us from the Enclave.” Yeman’s speech was so wrong yet oddly inspiring even to the person that was questioning how she knew about the Enclave at all. She must have let those ghouls in…

        “How do we fight an enemy that has the ability to fight dragons in open combat?” Redband asked from across the room, before snorting in self gratification. He had asked the obvious yet salient question. Still, if this was her only competition, then I felt that she had a good chance of pulling off whatever she wanted.

        “Before the war, this place was a center for research in general, even though it was ostensibly for the Equestrian navy. Near the end, there was a proposal for a weapon that could shoot down anything that our ancestors could throw at them. It was supposed  to have the ability to shoot down balefire missiles before they reached the shore. The Gauss cannon project was shelved for three reasons: the amount of magic needed to power it was too high for operations, there was another project made to do the same thing, and the computing power necessary to calculate trajectories for the firing was impossible. To everyone out there; can you tell me why all of those considerations don’t apply to us?”

        “Fusion generators could solve the power problems, this is basically the way you might have availability to fight the Enclave. And because this is a weapon made to fight large relatively ponderous aircraft, that means the targeting and detection is a technically easier thing to do.” I finished talking, aware that I had helped her out again, this time though, I could manipulate her into giving me work, or at least giving me a way to leave.

She looked relieved at my words. It seemed we were making each other’s lives easier.

“You see why our visitor is useful to us? Now, it is time to decide how we act in the coming days. Our visitor has more information about the outside world than has been compiled by our patrols in years, so it stands to reason that he could help us get what we need to defend ourselves.”

At this point, I wanted to strangle Yeman for both using me for her own political advancement and the ability that she had to fuck all all of them over. Did she somehow find out that the Enclave really wanted me dead, or was she just betting that my good nature would prevent me from marching them into an irradiated hell hole? Either way, she grated on me. Her delusions of grandeur were trying to get mine going.  I disliked that. For the record, I only enjoyed being the advisor to an entire city a little.

“Alright, you’re going to need one thing more than any other in the short term. Radar coverage. Sadly, I doubt that this place’s radar array survived, because if it did, you guys would of collectively shat your pants. There have been at least two Enclave Raptors flying within minimum fifty kilometers of this base. So, in the spirit of partnership, I think I can set you up with a working radar system, on the condition that if you get these guns working, you’ll keep all of Baltimare under the your protection. Well, that and I can get you technical support and an alliance from some ponies that have goals similar to yours.” So, the alliance thing may of been a bit beyond my control, and the protection of Baltimare may have been a spur of the moment ejaculation coming from some idealistic part of me. However, on some level I felt that my words as eloquent as they were, combined with Yeman's had won most of them over.

The equine noise of approval turned out to be stomping their hooves on the floor- it startled me, to say the least. So, the voting turned out to be wildly in favor of our plan. The thought of leaving and getting back to my friends was becoming more and more enticing the longer I was denied it. This only made the hours of planning with a smaller security council all the more agonizing. Regardless, I made it out of the planning session with a feeling of dread for these zebras. In their plans, there were a lot of assumptions made, most of them centering around how quickly they could secure resources and build advanced technology, Nevermind how quickly they could train people to use it. When I brought any of this up, they gave me reasurrancences. At the very least, these people were confident that they could, given a little time, hold their own against the Enclave.

When the meetings were over, I knew that they wanted me to add a wireless command set up to the radar array located on the Indefatigable. This wasn’t surprising, given I had told them I would do it. It was because of this that I had another reason to speak to Ximroon before leaving.

When I entered the laboratory, his eyes were locked on his terminal. The noise of boots on hard materials brought his attention to me as I walked up to him. He tapped a key on the terminal and the door shut. That was new.

“You get the interface device done?”

“Yes. I understand you’re leaving to find your old companions,” Ximroon stated cleanly before pushing a boxy device with a connection cable and LED indicator of its status.

“Yeah, I have to find my friends. Well, my friends excluding you.” My voice took on a sardonic tone in that ending statement. I hated leaving people behind, yet hated staying with people. “Just take care of yourself. Oh, and keep an eye on Yeman; I don’t trust her.” He sighed before looking at me.

“She trusts you about as much as you trust her. That’s why she’s letting you “leave”. So, If I were you, I’d get out of here without looking back. I have a feeling that our activities won’t go unnoticed. I have a bad feeling about this militarization. If we end up at peace with the Enclave, then how will it help the rest of equestria? Peace through mutual fear didn’t work well the last time it was tried…” Ximroon’s words were wise. Then again, he had lived through events that mirrored the ones happening now.

“As much as I hate myself when I think this, even more when I’m about to say it; this isn’t my world to guide. Even if I could, I don’t believe I have the right. Well, I’m glad that I got to meet you either way.” I was cringing when I said the first part, which matched how his cracked visage appeared. I had to leave on a bittersweet note. My hand moved towards him to rest on his shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, you seem like a good stallion.”

I turned around… he didn’t reply.

                                 ---===*===---

The inhabitants of Fallen Pride could on the whole, be characterized by the kind of neutrality that generalization creates. Ambivalence is that natural state of affairs in such cases, if you were to make another generalization… of course. That meant that as I made my way out, I wasn’t impeded. Business as usual, in other words. So, I was gone within the hour on my way to install a piece of hardware that could safeguard their society.

Outside context… that was my role here. Perhaps most clearly in my dealings with the Zebra, but it was a feature of all my interactions here. Maybe my sabotaging of relationships was in part because I would always be the outsider: useful, unique, never able to connect with them.It was a glorious coincidence that the native language here was way more often than not identical to my native one. Some part of myself ached to be with people more like me; a pity, considering how much every part of me had been displaced by the circumstances of my month here. Has it been a month? Oh god. I don’t even know.

It was a totally random impulse that lead to me switch on Pon3 radio- not the grey skies above, my thoughts, or the strangely intact battleship growing steadily larger in my vision. The radio clicked on. Silence was pushed away, temporarily. Still, it mattered. Even if I did find out that the Enclave was broadcasting now. Fuck… they must have taken Tenpony? I listened anyway, because silence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I plodded along till I came to the bridge, Indefatigable awaited. It was at that moment that  coincidence struck… the DJ pon3 must have restored their control, I thought as I stood there, taking glancing at the abyss a few feet in front of me.

“I’m back, children.  But not for long.  So there’s a few things I gotta tell you about.

“First, our hearts and prayers go out to the folks of Friendship City and everypony who had relatives there.  Late yesterday, in their most horrific attack yet, that airborne plague callin’ themselves the Enclave brutally slaughtered Friendship City.  The city’s gone, children.  Hundreds of ponies dead.  If you didn’t believe me before, believe me now.  The Enclave ain’t here to save anypony.  They ain’t our friends.

“But I’m not bringing you a dark cloud without a silver lining, children!  Here’s the goodnews: the ponies of the Equestrian Wasteland are standing up against them.  And I’m not just talkin’ about our Bringer of Light, although she’s been right in the thick of it.  When the Enclave came for Friendship City, she struck back at them.  Thanks to our wasteland heroine, the Enclave lost everything they threw at Friendship City; and more importantly, a couple hundred ponies survived that attack.“But she ain’t the only hero standing strong against the Enclave.  Remember those renegade Steel Ranger outcasts I told you about?  Well, they call themselves the Applejack’s Rangers now.  And even as I speak, the Applejack’s Rangers are working ‘round the clock to ferry survivors off of Friendship Island, protecting them on the way to new homes.“Where can they find new homes, you might ask?  The answer is everywhere they go.  Even that normally stuffy Tenpony Tower has opened its doors to refugees… after a hoof-full of unicorns rose up and kicked the Enclave’s sorry tails out of their tower.  Yee-haw!  Score one for the good ponies!“And I’ve got more reports coming in.  Heroes all the way from Shattered Hoof to Hoofington have been holding the line against the nightmares from above.  I have a tale here of two such heroes taking down one of those warships just south of Stalliongrad.  Left a calling card: Lion & Mouse.  Well, tell you what, Lion and Mouse.  Drop by Tenpony Tower sometime.  As soon as my assistant is back from her vacation, I’d love to have her sit down with you for an interview.  And to the griffins and ponies who fought off the Enclave at Shattered Hoof: damn fine work.“But the biggest strike against the Enclave has come from none other than our own beloved author of the Wasteland Survival Guide, Ditzy Doo.  You all saw it.  Hell, I could see that glow all the way from Shattered Hoof Ridge.  We don’t even have a name for what the wasteland’s favorite pegasus managed to do this morning.  Sonic Radboom?  Toxic Rainboom?  Well, whatever you call it, I call it a miracle.”“Now don’t worry children.  I know I just kinda let my location slip.  But the Enclave already knew.  I saw a whole murder of them flying this way from the tower monitors before I started broadcasting.  They’ll be at the door any moment.  And I don’t think they plan on inviting me to tea.  But don’t worry about me.  I’m not a fighter.  Never really have been, not even when I was a wasteland explorer.  I was more of a hacker and repair pony myself.  Fixing things up, building off of schematics, making the technologies and magic of the old world work for me.  I can barely shoot a gun.  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to lay down and let them take me.Elder SteelHooves, founder of the Applejack’s Rangers.  I know, with all the death we’ve seen, it might seem odd to single one pony out.  But SteelHooves wasn’t just any pony.“SteelHooves was a hero.  A protector of ponies.  He put his life on the line saving others, and he inspired other ponies to do the same.  A whole legion within the Steel Rangers broke away to follow his example.“SteelHooves was a companion to our wasteland heroine as well.  She was stronger with him at her side.  Her victories were often his victories as well.“When I first met SteelHooves, he was making sure Chief Grim Star died a hero in the eyes of the ponies under his care.  I came to know him fairly well over the last few weeks.”“I’ll tell you the truth: SteelHooves was not without his flaws.  He was not always a good pony.  He meted out justice as he saw fit, and I did not always agree with whom he chose to play judge and executioner. But that is the harsh law of the Equestrian Wasteland.“But he never faltered.  He held true to his love and his principles, fighting until the day he died.  SteelHooves had lived an impossibly long life.  His death was swift, painless and in battle.  It was the death I believe he would have wanted.  And now it is our turn: to hold true, to fight and to never falter.”And with that, children, I have a confession to make.  This broadcast?  It’s not exactly live.“And I have a message for the black-armored soldiers who just burst into the station at the Shattered Hoof Ridge Tower: that thing you’re looking at with the glowing blue light?  A little homebrewed surprise rigged to the spark battery from a weapon made by the motherfuckin’stars!”“Farewell, you…”        The flash that followed was from roughly the same direction that the balefire bomb had detonated. This explosion was if anything, larger than that one. I have to admit that I merely watched the after effects of the bomb for at least five minutes. It was only after I made it across the bridge and was in the process of opening the hatch that I had left unlocked the last time I had been there that I realized I had a couple of those power cells. but not all of them were with me…        I had left a nuke with my kinda-sorta-maybe-girlfriend. Needless to say, I was worried for everyone in that town, worried to the point that I didn’t even speculate on what was powering those energy cells. So really fucking worried. I could do this later. I needed to warn Icepi-everyone!        I broke into a run… towards the potential explosion. The bridge made me slow down after a few seconds of running.“She wouldn’t do anything stupid with it? If anything, after the broadcast, the chances of it going off must be less than before,” I said to myself, for my own use. “But she… I have a job to do, for people that are already good enough to fight their enemy.” Fallen Pride- can of worms. Ahh… “I was in contention for several minutes. In the end, though, I took the time to install the device for Ximroon. I at least owed him that much. As I left the boat through the door I had entered from for what was could’ve been the last time, I remembered the armory. In particular, its unlooted condition. It then struck me that I was going after a much more powerful weapon… to prevent its use. Priorities and Why They’re Bullshit. I was going to write that book after this was over. I thought in place of what would have been a scream. A scream that would have riled up the ghouls. Recursion and why it’s bullshit, next book I…Screaming did occur at that point. The ghouls did scream in response, and I was reminded quite strongly that people not being around you can be more stressful than them being around. Even the people I associated with, damn their hearts. A chuckle left my lips at that thought. This noise didn’t placate the ghouls, but it did leave  me feeling that going down into the ship again just to shoot them was stupid. In that changed perspective, I knew I had to go, go quickly no less, and beg for forgiveness?“I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it, but not the one between the things, that’d be really stupid.” And so it was that my mental state became indecisive, which might just be its ground state. In combination with the truly pedestrian nature of walking, I was  left with plenty of time to think, the highlight of that being my realization that I was a man on a mission to clean up his own mess.                               ---===*===---

As I crawled out of a manhole, which after consulting a map I found on a ghoul with a pipe wrench, I had found out that this section of sewer came a lot closer to ‘Baltimare’. He hadn’t looked all that ghoul-y in retrospect. He had screamed at me. In place, that put me on edge. Feral or not, I didn’t feel too bad perforating him. The actual shooting of the ghoul reminded me of my almost shooting of Ximroon. Discovering the map in his (not utterly destroyed) barding had took my mind to less ethically straining places. It kept it there up until the point that I emerged from the hole in the ground.

Darkness had fallen on Balitmare, telling me that in my attempts to get here faster, I had delayed myself. Had I been much less concerned with time frame, I might of pieced together something proverbial from that. But, you know…

I picked up speed first as my proximity to the city walls decreased. After realizing that I was on the other side of the city from the entrance, I doubled up on my pace. The  guards actually fired a couple of shots in my direction, one of them hitting. If I was a guard and the thing that I had just knocked down with a bullet then yelled “THANKS”, I would have fired another shot. Thankfully, these guards were level headed, more so than I would ever be. Still, as I got past the mishap I totally understood why the guard with a bolt action had tapped me. Regardless, I knew I was lucky he had hit center mass. Along with deciding that I needed to find a way to reinforce my skeleton, I was positive a couple of my ribs were cracked if not broken. A fringe benefit of all that was the infusion of adrenaline my body decided to release.

So when the guards let me through, I was moving at a speed greater than most would have expected from me. My armor had saved me from terrible bodily harm once again. A wry smile appeared at that, then disappeared, I knew I had an apology to make. The path I followed never strayed. Resolve is funny like that. Hesitation struck back when I reached the back door of Blurred’s place. Resolve won, and the door was opened. Upon entering, I searched for the illustrious owner of the place.

“Held against my will. How’s it been for you?” I said to him as he sat behind the counter. He jumped at hearing me from behind him.

“Greaaaat. Now get out, the steel jackass leader told me to tell you-”

“Where is she?” I interjected sullenly.

        He sighed before looking me in the eyes. “I shouldn’t tell you this, I shouldn’t know this; she’s heading back up to manehattan. There, we’re even, cashed out.”

        “How long ago did she leave?” Maybe I didn’t deserve it, but I asked anyway. His response was a head shake before starting to turn back to his bar. “I helped you out, kept you unclean, business is picking up for you. Do you want it taken away?” The motion to my gun added intimidation.

        “A few days ago,” he said with force.

I turned and walked out the way I came, but not before grabbing a balefire brew he had left out on the counter. Burning bridges for a change. A gentle breeze greeted me outside as the wheels in my mind spun. The intimidation was effective, plus free stuff. Such a thought reminded me to the drink getting warmer in my hand. I had seen some ponies order these. They didn’t seem drunk afterwards, which was strange, given I had seen Blurred use vodka as a base for these. I slipped my helmet off and downed it. After I licked my lips I slid my helmet back on. My thinking resumed its full strength. Well, if you burn one bridge, why not burn another?

                                 ---===*===---

“Magical grenades don’t come cheap, you know,” Silver answered back. Before he could finish his dramatic pause, I short circuited his regular barter process.

“I have a something to trade… the location of a virgin equestrian armory for  whatever magic grenades you have.” The tone of desperation in my voice wasn’t quite synthesised- it didn’t have to be. Whatever was in that cocktail was perking up my senses whilst making me think faster, somehow.  “I need to leave town, the Enclave hates me, I didn’t even have time to loot that cache. I’ve been bad to you in the past, I just really need those grenades.” Need and want are pretty ill defined. That, and what a lie is. Oh, and business ethics. Wasteland business ethics, specifically. That balefire brew is still kicking in. It’s like an unholy love child of alcohol and caffeine. No.  Didn’t feel like redbull and vodka. Magic, then?

“Six spark grenades and four plasma. That’s for the armory and five hundred caps.” He gesticulated confidently, he loved feeling in control. Given my past behaviour in front of him, the feeling was probably even greater to him.

“Uh… alright…” I nearly sniveled inside my helmet, it came out to him as a weak affirmation. He smiled as I divvied up five hundred bottlecaps. A few moments later, I was leaning up against the counter while he grabbed what used to be his merchandise. They were now my munitions. Something tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, I saw that it was the young mare I had seen before.

“Don’t tell the boss I said this; but thank you.” She told me quietly.

“Why are you thanking me? I don’t deserve the praise.”

        “With those weapons, we can keep everyone here safe for a long time.” The mare said before hearing Silvers hoofsteps and going back to inventorying.

Ahhh….

                                         ---===*===---

        I walked out into the chilled air, having gotten the grenades. All he got was a map location for the armory. He now knew about the armory aboard Indefatigable, for what good that does him, and what ill it brings to those under him. The road awaited, as it always did, it seemed.

          ---===*===---

        The radio that used to have the music horse on it was now playing propaganda constantly. I shut it off after a few minutes at the point that it rolled over. Listening to that stuff once was bad enough, a life time though? I didn’t need a well calibrated fascism detector to see the Enclave for what it really was. My opinion was probably  biased, considering I hadn’t met a pegasus that didn’t try to fry me.

“Only following my orders…wish I could say the same thing… or at least believe it…” I spoke to myself slowly. I think the brew wore off. Crashing after that didn’t feel all that good. After a few minutes of slowed progress later, I remembered that I had a lot of drugs on me.

                                Minty-goodness…

                                         ---===*===---

        In the darkness, I knew that I had gotten to a point in the road that I had reached before. The large hole where a bunker had once existed. Rarely were a person’s decisions so decisive in the world at large. I was lucky that I removed all the power cells before that place went up. Not deciding to take them would have had a big effect. Then again, If I hadn’t found the place, anyone with the right equipment could vaporize cities.

Well, given where I was, it would probably be re-vaporizing. As I swept my head around, I decided that in general that’d be true. Not in the dreary scrub grass-filled landscape that seemed to follow me around. At least deserts were pretty.

I wondered sometimes if the reasons for my own planet’s condition was due to it being a silent one. this planet though? They had gods, and then went on to kill them. A cell was twirled in my hands. All it would have taken to destroy one of them was a cell from a handgun.  Their ancestors had fought a chaos god and won. Time passed, then they blew it all up. I shuddered, from the cold.

---===*===---

        A caravan station was in front of me, occupied. The place was set a couple yards off the stretch of ruined black top. As I looked at the place, someone in power armor stepped out. I had caught up. Someone nearby might have heard the faintest whisper of a yawn drift out of my helmet.  Considering it was four in the morning, I had earned this.

        My approach was seen pretty quickly. Understandable, even if I once again had an assault carbine aimed at me.

“I’ve already been shot at once tonite, and once is enough.” I yelled at the ranger whose name I couldn’t quite remember.

At the sound of my voice, a caravan guard awoke to see me walking up to them. Ergo, another gun pointed at me. Given the fact I had already been awake for nearly twenty hours, I had sufficient evidence that this just wasn’t my day. I really needed a friendly face to vent to. That was paramount. That, and sleep…

I only noticed that they had let me pass after I had reached the door to the crudely reconstructed building.  The door swung open after a lazy push. As I saw the multitude of ponies passed out on the floor or in bed rolls, I had to keep myself from ‘aww…” ing loudly.  As a whole, their entire species was still cute, though some of that awwing might have been prompted by the fact that they were sleeping in what must have been a farm supply store.

Somehow, I summoned the superhuman resolve to look for Icepick in the smatterings of ponies. When I realized that she wasn’t on the floor, I knew this would take longer than I wanted. A huff left my mouth at that. This just might have reminded me to take off my helmet.

Eventually after a couple close call with stepping on a pony, I made it to what had been the manager’s office, lifetimes ago. I smirked at the room and its contents. She had snagged a futon. Perks of command, I guess. At this point, I just wanted to snag whatever sleep I could before I would have to have words. Undressing had gotten so mechanical at this point, it was truly like shedding a second skin. She didn’t awake as I climbed into the narrow crevice between her frame and the back of the futon. Maybe I needed the support of another person. Maybe she was just warm. Maybe, I thought,she might be less angry if I was beside her when she awoke. None of these motivations mattered in that moment. Reasons are important, but not so important as to change the act itself. She was warm…

                                  ---===*===---

“WHERE WERE YOU?” My eyes opened as her words woke me up.

“A military base held by zebras, irradiated sewers. I’m so sorry. I just go-” I stammered out, every word  ripping the bandages off self inflicted wounds.

         “Bread Slice told me that you showed up around four in morning. You walked in front of ponies with guns... Did you walk all night just to catch up to me?”

        “I had to… you know that power cell?”

“Bale fire bomb? I know… “ The things that had to be said had been said. Would the things that should be said be said, that was my question?

        “I couldn’t let that happen to anyone, least of all you,” I had averted my eyes for that. “Honest question. How is it easy for hardened killers like us to have a conversation about explosives from beyond the stars, yet have massive issues talking about starting a relationship?” Our eyes were locked by the end of question.

        “Usually, people aren’t so upfront about this kinda thing.” She jumped back onto the futon.

“The way I see it, we’ve had to put up with the jokes for no reward. Besides, I left on my own. My life expectancy lowers every second I’m here. I can’t beat about the bush.”

“Thats an interesting way to look at things. It doesn’t help that I can’t even think what kind of world that doesn’t kill you would look like.” She really wanted an image of my world. My deduction is legendary.

“I’ll answer any other questions you have. Just, can you answer one of mine?”

“Depends on the question.”

        “I don’t know how to say this without it becoming awkward, as it already has, so uh, you wanna you know, romantically entangle?” I would have slapped myself in the forehead if not for the hesitant smile that formed on her face.

        “I think I know what you’re trying to say, so yeah, just don’t run off again. I think I know why you did it, but this might just fix it.”

        “Strip Malls. Lawns.”

“What is a lawn?” She asked just like I knew she would.

        “It is a piece of land we plant grass on. They’re everywhere.”

“That sounds good. So, do you harvest it in the fall?” Icepick said earnestly, eliciting my hand to shoot up out of habit. She hadn’t forgotten that I’d left. I would be paying for that for a long while. I would find out later that she had orders, orders I could get behind. So between telling her more about me than I had told anyone in years, and her doing the same, I felt like that bunker out in the desert could wait…

---===*===---

Four paladins, two knights, an initiate, and three scribes. Plus Arthur, who hadn’t skipped out on them. Nine members of Applejack's rangers, plus some caravaners that had been going the same way and didn’t exactly turn down the offer of added protection. A beneficial arrangement. Well, more PR for the rangers. Then again, when there’s a war going on and the guys in power armor are on your side, the PR department is nearly superfluous.  What the caravaners were prepared for didn’t include two creatures that weren’t of their world. One was okay, but not two. The leader didn’t like the one look he got at my eyes. I didn’t just wear the helmet for the ballistic protection.

Well, as I talked with Icepick at the front of the group, numbering twenty, I didn’t feel so bad. Seems like some people were fascinated by my tales of frenzied engineering interspaced with dull combat. The scribes certainly liked my stories. Icepick was definitely more interested in the structure and capacity of Fallen Pride. Honestly, I felt more self conscious than anything when I started up my repair talisman. Icepick kicked me when I turned it on, and said I was becoming more metal than stallion. I corrected her on one part of that statement.

                                  ---===*===---

The noble knights under Senior Paladin Icepick were needed in Manehattan, well, they had been told over the radio, at least. Every night we travelled, the speculation about why they were being reassigned grew. And so it was that we were camped out around a series of barrels. Inflamed barrels. Whatever took the chill out of the air.

“So, you took the water you had dammed up, and used it to grow grass you couldn’t even eat?” Fiberglass surmised before rubbing his hooves and turning back to his personal barrel.

“To be fair, I never saw the point other than as a status symbol or an homage to our heritage. Then again, a lot of the people with big lawns think the world is six-thousand years old anyway.”

At that, I felt someone nuzzle me. My girlfriend. “You know, I talked with Heating Element and we agreed that I probably have at least a half megaton of TNT on me.” She said nothing. Eh, I put an arm around her.

“We both know my brother has a couple screws loose.” Glass said to us as we sat together on a turned over postal box.

“You’re just jealous I got his rifle set up with the secondary firing switch,” I relied to his (faked) chagrin.

“It’s only lit up a rat and a barrel of rubbish yet. ‘Sides, it isn’t painted red.” He referred to his flare machine gun. For the fifth time that day (I had counted.). Man, he would have had such a fun time with Degenerate Flame. Well, she would have had a fun time anyway. I shuddered to think of the children that might have resulted from that unholy union. Out of all the people I had killed, I didn’t bad about her. Sometimes a raider is just a raider.

“Hit the hay, Glass, I don’t want to deal with you, and my buckfriend’s bickering tonight.” We had compromised. I called her my girlfriend, she called me her buckfriend. And no one made any jokes about us. In front of us, anyway. Well, the two of us made fun of ‘us’, but only for laughs,

Fiberglass slunked back to his lodging for the night, leaving us practically alone.

“You know, I never expected my significant other to help out the scribes.” Icepick said softly before rubbing her head on my arm.

“Not to pry, but when you were younger, what did you want out of a partner?”

“I dunno. Well, when my mom moved away to Fillydelphia, I thought maybe she’d come back with a big strapping buck in tow. For me of course.”

“But you ended up with a sensitive guy like me, who da thunk it.” She looked at critically for a minute before chuckling.

“I’ve heard you when you sleep. You clink. A lot. Mom would like you though. She always wanted more metal than even she would want.” Her gaze softened to something more like a philosopher’s.

“If I took you home, I’d have to keep you from all the grass…”

“You know there aren’t any trees around, and I can outrun you.” She had figured out that any comparison to a terrestrial horse was less than flattering. All in good fun.

        “Oh no… you might hold me down and…  rut me to death! Oh woe to those that cross you.” I had time to finish before she tackled me.

Four days of travel and there we were: romantically entangled,quite literally.          ---===*===---

        The city of Manehattan was far off in the horizon. However, Stable Twenty-Nine and Gutterville shared two things; proximity to us, and recent spikes in population. Guess which one our merry little group was heading to first. Given one was their base of operation, it was an easy question…

        So, we were almost to our destination, and Arthur wanted to talk to me. “You want to join up with these guys?” I said to him while we were a couple meters behind the rest of the group, Which had shrunken with the departure of the caravaners going off towards Gutterville.

“Yeah, I did help them out when they needed a place to set up equipment, and fight the swamp folk.” I didn’t ask about the last part.

“Double A. I heard her talking about you. Not that I’m anything like an expert on these things, but I think she-”

“Likes a pair of hands in the shop.” He let out in way that made me reconsider broaching the subject in the future.

“Regardless, these guys, if they can win the war, might have a chance at making this place green again.” And then eat the green stuff. Well, not like waiting for something else to eat the green then eating that is any better. My point still stood.

“Like I said before, I’m thinking about it right now.” I let him think, as I sped up so as to get to the head of the party. While I went about that, I did take a good long look at him. I had no idea where he had gotten the double barrel shotgun or the big axe from. Suffice to say, he still scared a little. There’s a reason you keep your friends further away than your enemies. I digress.

I passed a happy stallion firing a familiar looking gun with a familiar looking sticky note on the back of it at a small rodent on the side of the road. There were flames. On a totally unrelated note, I was now hungry. So was the life of a natural omnivore among a group of self-avowed omnivores. Honestly, until you’ve seen a pony go from fixing a device that shoots lasers, to digging into barely cooked animal within the span of five minutes, then you- no, thats just Double A. Still scary though. In my non-expert opinion, you’re not supposed to sharpen your teeth like that. In light of that, I could DEFINITELY see Arthur’s hesitance.

“Took you long enough. Were you talking about lawns or something?” Icepick said from the front of the herd. I broke into a light jog to reach her so that she wouldn’t have to yell.

“What are the Swamp Folk?” I asked, genuinely curious. She looked ill after I said that, which was uncharacteristic of her. For some reason, they all gave me the cold shoulder for the rest of the trip.

---===*===---

The inside of the stable didn’t impress me; the people did. Steel walls aren’t nearly as interesting the tenth time you run into them. Apparently, I was at this point classed as a civilian operative under a new system, which meant I could buy things from their armory at a reduced cost. In exchange for the caps they owed me and the ability to sit in at their strategy sessions. Thus, I got acquainted with the head of armaments quite quickly. I wouldn’t normally call anyone an old Battle Axe, but that fit as both a good description of her demeanor, looks, and her name.

“You want buy accelerator rifle and bolt rifle stock?” The stern mare gave me a look of disgust.

“Uh, I have a charger built into my body so something that uses it makes sense. Unless you have something else that can penetrate cloud tank armor that I can actually use,” I said to her in way more patronizing than I meant it to be.

She did the job and took a lot of my caps. There was a feeling of pride as I carried the long rifle out of the armory. In my mind, the next thing on my agenda was obvious. Firing range. Calibrating a scope and some practice would probably burn enough time for Icepick’s meeting to get out? I really had only one way to find out…

---===*===---

        The sound of the bed I had taken as my own being lightly trod upon registered in my ears. I stayed stock still though. I might pass as asleep to the one that had entered. Besides, I had already grown attached to this mattress. That was probably because of the smell; familiar enough to give the final push I needed to pass out. Then, all at once, I felt the owner of the room (and some would say owner of me) nip my ear.

“Ow, fuck,” I yelped out. “Why?”

I turned to look at her. She seemed pleased at how high pitched my voice had gotten a minute ago. However, something was on her mind. It probably involved the meeting she had spent the day in…

Her look away from me was her downfall. She would have beaten me in every other situation. Distracted as she, was I managed to pin her to the surprisingly soft mattress. At that point, I had leverage. To my surprise, she didn’t tense up under me, she just looked me in the eyes and a less than hidden ‘fuck me’ look had registered.

“Hard day at work?” I said after letting my head rest right above hers.

“No, it was great. We discussed plans to open up the sky and start farming the Everfree.” Her sarcasm was punctuated by hot breaths right to my face. I knew where this was going.

“My paladin will bring light to the unwashed masses, I cou-will bestow upon-” She broke my counter sarcasm with her mouth. Any sort of weirdness about her and I had been purged from my system by then. It was only after either a very long time, or a very short time that she broke off for a moment to say.

“For the record, you are an unwashed mess.” So what? I had found the best connection I would ever find to another in a furry blue quadruped with beautiful blue eyes.  Maybe a traumatic situation had bound us together. Perhaps strange forces were at play. Without a doubt, we both had strange attraction to each other’s alien bodies. In the end, we were functionally the same as any other couple of the same age group. In the meantime, she got what her face had showed. I felt satisfied, and we were both glad that any marks we left on each other could be covered up by armor. We ended up passed out in the regular cuddling position we had figured out- laying side by side, my arms wrapped around her, her head against my neck. Peace. Satisfaction. A heartbeat next to mine.

                                         ---===*===---

        A building with columns stood before us, useless columns and all. The court house. We had elected to elope. As soon as that thought registered, we were standing in front of the person in charge. Icepick was nervous. She still drew lots of looks from… everyone. She had taken to wearing clothing; cute saddlebags hung from her sides.

        “Sir, these documents aren’t valid. you can’t marry an animal.” The voice was indistinct yet full of loathing.

                                         ---===*===---

I needed to get less sleep. I thought this before noticing how tightly I was holding Icepick, easing up enough to stay comforted.

We weren’t the standard model, but there was definitely something there.  But if you have a dream about marriage to a person that means something, what that something means is another matter entirely. Would she come with me, if she had the choice? Would I stay here for her?

She must have noticed my tightened grip. She stirred. Her flipping over to face me wasn’t something I wanted, though maybe it was something I needed.

        “More bad dreams?”

“Yeah, you were in it,” I couldn’t see her face in the blacked room. We both agreed that a room to be slept  in should be as dark as possible.

    “What happened in it?”

“We were walking into a courthouse…  You know how you don’t really think in a dream?” Her nod gave me the confidence to continue.

        “It was nice, I could sense that at least. Well, the first person we saw gave us the coldest look I’ve ever seen.” So I lied about the exact content. I didn’t want to freak her out by saying I on some level was contemplating something like marriage. Then again, that wasn’t that strange, people often think about how their names would sound together… this didn’t seem that different.

“Why would someone look at us like that? We weren’t covered in blood in that dream, right?”

        “You know, I was lucky I ended up here, you have like five different sapient species. My home, not so much. We have two, and I’m only sure about the dolphins. No one freaks the fuck out all that much around me.”

        “You’re exotic, but not that different.”

“I need to tell you something straight out. When I find my way home, if you come with me, people will freak the fuck out. Orders of magnitude more freaking the fuck out.”

        Her lack of response told me that I probably should have made this clear way before. Out of sight, out of mind, up until the moment your head meat brings end goals back into sight.

        “It’s not just that, is it?”

“Really, it was me not making my decisions for myself that led to me not being more upfront about what I feel for you. Two dying animals with sapience that have feelings for each other. The type of dying animal isn’t the important part.” I took a deep breath and looked away for a second. The feeling of her cheek pressing against my neck felt good. I wasn’t ever going to complain about her body. She was warm; she also would always need help to open jars, some things society instills in you that can’t be removed. “Those on my earth haven’t realized this.”

        “I still wanna see it. Besides, someone has to keep you oiled.” Somehow, in the dark of the room, I knew there was a smirk on my girlfriend’s face. Thusly, a smile appeared on mine. My left arm moved out and pulled her closer to me. “Have a good dream for once. You need it.” I don’t think I was supposed to hear her say that, but still; it was comforting. The sentiment, not the odds. I hadn’t had a good semi-logical dream in the last month; good sleep was dreamless sleep.

        I kissed her on the head and whispered good night. Sleep took me.

                                        ---===*===---

        The stable’s hydroponics weren’t repaired as of yet, so that left Icepick’s team, Arthur, and I all sitting in the mess hall, eating canned food mixed with some radhog someone had filled with holes. Given the fact I hadn’t eaten fresh meat since a lunch about a week ago, the pork given to me wasn’t in front of me for very long.

Damnit, I missed Nightflight.

“So, were going to Tenpony Tower,” Icepick broke the ice.

“That’s a good plan.” Arthur ejectulated, he must really wanna get away from Double A. I understood.

“Whoa there, scout. Icepick, what does command want us to do there?” Fiberglass said after setting down his cup of tea. The liquid inside the cup was still hot enough to visibly evaporate. Now some of that was inside of him. He seemed to be in some sort of permanent contest with his brother for whom was the more stallion stallion. It was a trial by... fire.

“We’re going to escort some scribes and a permanent liaison to the tower. The information on what the scribes are going to do there is confidential. Alright, most of you should know what that means, other than the two that don’t.”

“Arthur and I are ready to leave when you are; benefits of living like  warrior hobos.”

“How much pull does DJ Pon3 have in the tower? ‘Cause getting these two in is going to be like getting a Minotaur through an air duct.” She might have been a bitter pessimist, but she made a good point. From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs. Ironsight.

“We have money, we have marketable skills, and we don’t intend on making a stir. So, we should be fine. Right, Arthur?”

“Fucking stellar.” He shot out quickly. Damn, he was acting erratic again…

He was probably gonna switch out for Elvis pretty soon. Honestly, I thought the reason for Elvis’s absence was the presence of Double A. Elvis was scared of a small horse with a peppermint colour scheme, and I was sure that the red wasn’t dried blood, because that substance dried brown. I snuck a glance at where she had sat down to eat. She liked her meat rare, like, scary rare. The congealed fluids were evidence of that. I briefly thought about why anyone gave her meat in the first place, or at least, let her eat it like she did. Then I remembered a conversation I had with a buck in charge of training initiates. He had said something about a special punishment for insubordination. Pssh, until you’ve had to wash your own crusted blood out of your boots, I guess that would seem pretty terrible.

        “Sir, are you alright?” The pony called Bread Slice had used a formal title to break me out of my reverie. Either that, or he had been using sir for a long while.

        “I’m fine. I was thinking about bloody laundry,” He was satisfied enough by that to turn back to the remnants of his food.

        “All that radiation catching up to ya? Got the bloody shits do you?” Glass was a bastion of both medical knowledge and emotional sensitivity.

        “The only bloody shits he has are bloody shits of the mouth.” Ironsight…

I couldn’t keep myself from chuckling at that, though that might have been me just trying to spite Iron.

 Why did I travel with these people? Their guns, their armor, certainly not their companionship. Losing Nightflight and Synthie had broken something in me that was something I knew. I didn’t need friends, besides I had a relationship. I was fine.

                                 ---===*===---

        On my way to stable twenty-nine, the skeletal remains of the city across the river were impressive. On my way in towards the only building left that was more than a shadow of something amazing two centuries before, I was feeling giddy. From what I heard, this place was the only real civilisation left that resembled a normal state. A government, rule of law, all that jazz. Honestly, it felt like I was on a march to Shangri-La. A tower punching into the sky; what a rarity in this place.

---===*===---

Diplomatic immunity. We apparently had that, though the stallion that normally took your ammunition disputed it. We had been waiting for at least half an hour before a higher up in the governing body took the time to come down to the entrance to negotiate. I might of normally been willing to give up my ammunition temporarily- the issue was that I had ammunition that could level this place, and bullets made out of mysterious materials. My party, on the other hand…

“That’s not happening,” Icepick said bluntly to the suggestion that they acquiesce to disarmament for reason of building trust. Maybe I had spent too much time around barely likeable people, so this stallion by the name of Life Bloom seemed charming by comparison. My empathy switch would have to have been fried to not see why letting in a group of people carrying automatic weapons around into a building that was more civilian than any other in the wastes would be disastrous at best. He must have drawn the short straw, because he and the Tenpony guards were the only people out there.

“Icepick, you understand they have maybe three things in there that can do more than ping off of that armor, right?” I needed to say that. She wasn’t seeing it, and the other party involved wasn’t going to admit it. Besides, I heard they had places in there where they wouldn’t be averse to me taking notes and making suggestions. Even the opportunity to make something like an honest living here excited more than it probably should of.

“What, the scribes? Robes?” Icepick said in a deadpan tone. Life Bloom grimaced, as people are apt to do in a situation like this one. When he made a half step forwards and gestured for us to do the same, I was a little surprised.

“When we fought off the Enclave, we took almost half of our security as casualties, we couldn’t stop you if we tried. But we wa-”

“Well in that case, then having us around is in your best interests, and ours.” Icepick had  won him over; I could see it in his eyes as he processed the words.

“You make a good argument. I’ll talk to the society,” He said before turning around and walking off. I had taken him for someone who despite his place of birth wasn’t a cynic, or at the very least had some optimism in him that couldn’t be repressed fully.

        “He’s walkin’ away. We goin’ inside or what?” Fiberglass said. It was a valid question with a valid answer…

“I don’t know?” I threw up my arms in a display of honesty that was still baffling to everyone I’d come across so far.

        “Glass, we’ve made it farther in an hour of talking and waiting than any Steel Ranger.” Icepick’s voice sounded tired yet quietly proud that she would be the pony that was there for the setting up of an alliance. She had told me as we walked up here what she thought this could do for the wastes. Her arguments were compelling, but more than that, she had let me in on what we were here for. That had brought a bittersweet smile to my lips. Helping them out with a powerful weapon of indeterminate description. At least I had, in that regard. Man, next thing I knew, I was gonna be designing a bacterial weapon. Not just that… it will be a purely defensive measure. Pessimism aside, I had reservations on working on something so multi-purpose.

        “I know my history. The last time the rangers tried to take this place, they threatened to blow the bridge.” Glass responded.

        “You still could of bombarded them. You have more rockets than you know what to do with…”

        “Then we would have had a broken building without any useful tech, and angry wastelanders after us for blowing up the DJ.” Icepick answered quickly, a pedantic tone in her voice.

        “It wasn’t worth it then, and we couldn’t do it now.” She said as an after-thought, though it sounded more like she was speaking more to herself than the operative.

        I walked away from the gate itself, and moved back the way we had come.

“I’ll be back in a minute. I’m checking on Arthur.”

        There was a ladder that descended back to the street level a ways back; if anyone was going to go down it, it’d be him.

                        Street level probably wasn’t the term? Thoughts on that subject kept me occupied in the time it took to find him.

                                 ---===*===---

        Finding him wasn’t the same thing as running up to him and saying hello. Considering the circumstances, I didn’t think making my presence immediately known was a good idea.

        Watcher… I hadn’t seen him in a week. Yet here he was, casually talking to Arthur. Okay, that was a guess, but given Arthur’s posture, they didn’t look to be doing anything more than shooting the shit. Some more logical part of my mind told me to refrain from making my presence known.

        Watcher didn’t make social calls and I heard Arthur talk about coming here a long time ago. Thinking back to when we had met, I knew that Watcher had mediated that event. I was a firm believer in random chance being more powerful than anything, but this wasn’t random. Arthur had been on us like a dog the entire way here, both to Stable 29 and away from it. So I watched from behind a burned out husk that must have been a carriage at one point. They talked for maybe three minutes before watcher opened a storage compartment in the Eyebot. This surprised me because I had no idea eyebots had such a thing; the kicker was that he had given him a block of what looked like plastic explosives. No detonator though. I could make no conclusion about anything. It might have been pure chance that he had this meeting a couple blocks away from Tenpony, the place he had said he needed to go. My thoughts were interrupted by the fact he was walking back the way he had came.

I had no way to explain why I was there, other than the truth, or some flavor of it.

As a person, I had never been one to well, be agile or sneaky, or a sprinter. Imagine my face when I ended up tripping on an exposed bumper and smacking my head against rusted steel. Please imagine it, because I couldn’t describe it to you. An intense burning from an injury to my head and the noise my helmet had made striking another piece of metal had brought Arthur to attention. The sounds of his armor’s servos going into heavy use told me that. Picking myself off the wreck of a vehicle, I had time to turn… Elvis had stopped himself about ten meters away, in the sea of long ruined vehicles. Elvis. He knew how to hold a gun. Aiming it though,was well, another talent of his; one that Arthur lacked.

        “Oh, it’s you,” Elvis said neutrally, the barrel of the gun dipping slightly.

“I…  came down to see where you were at. I was successful?” I really didn’t want to fight him- he was a lot bigger than me in that armor.

        “You found me, so what did you wanna say?” He was always standoffish, but now he was really pulling it off well.

        “We think they're going to let us in.” I regained some of my confidence as I said this.

        He stayed silent as he walked up to and then past me. I made no move to say anything or make any movements for the time it took for him to get to the ladder. A little blood was leaking out of my nose. That, along with the pain, told me that something wasn’t doing well there. They probably have a doctor in the tower. Honestly, everyone could use an examination. I licked a cheek. Yep… blood. Regardless of that, I threw a look over my shoulder at the ruined ground level of Manehattan. The ladder called.

                                         ---===*===---

The Rangers had gained entry at the cost of one of their ranks taking a guard posting at the gate. Well, that is what I ascertained from a couple questions aimed at Bread Slice. Also, I was the last person inside, hanging back to let Elvis gain some ground had made that a certainty.

        I was let into the building with haste; apparently, someone in the merry organization had let slip I had a large supply of caps. That was honestly only half true. It wasn’t Icepick, considering she had known that I had dropped a few thousand caps on the gauss rifle. Besides, she wouldn’t do that normally. So I had a warm welcome- aspiring  business ponies with all the avarice that it entails. Honestly, it cheered me up. If the Rangers and the Twilight Society didn’t need me all that much, than getting some work here sounded nice. Or at the very least, no one paying me for anything really illicit  struck me as a nice change.

        Nevertheless, I wanted to find out where everyone was, then do something more constructive. Like clean the dried blood off my face. That was actually pretty far up there in the list of priorities. Well, whatever, I could just, you know…

                                 ---===*===---

“Uh hey, vendor person, is there a restroom near here?” The guy looked at me for a second. I guess he hadn’t noticed me walking up to him.

        “Just walk down there, get to the hallway, three doors down.” So I waved goodbye to the straight laced dude manning the wine shop.

        He had given me effective directions. It was an empty bathroom; empty and with running water. Badass.

        I went about cleaning my helmet and taking a look at my face before deciding on whether I really wanted to shell out the money for a visit that would be of dubious value, if only because I had an alien physiology. I was startled later on when a stallion exited a stall. Yeah, he had heard me talking to myself. And yell when I had tentatively touched my nose. We shared a look as he exited quickly. It spoke of agreement, an agreement more ironclad than any paper: the agreement of never acknowledging what had gone down. Or at the very least, not giving a good description of the other person involved in the situation.

        Needless to say, I soon followed the guy’s path out of the well equipped bathroom. In that time, I had learned that they had the ability to maintain flushing toilets, so the prospect of them having a serviceable weapon of mass destruction went up, by at least a little.

---===*===---

I had been on my way to where Icepick had gone, the information coming from a mare that seemed to think I was in the market for scarves. The employment board had caught my eye; these ponies didn’t have any bounties posted, and they were literate. A fucking jackpot that was. As I perused, a couple jobs caught my eye, one involved going into a crater. It was, of course, irradiated. It involved grabbing some information from some hardened terminals in a building down there. Ministry Of Arcane Science Emergency Server, had some information locked into it from right before the bombs fell, I supposed. Maybe the juicy tidbits and final reports from all over this terrifying country.

Sounds good.

“There you are,” Icepick said from behind me, startling me slightly.

“I was just about to find you. So, you worked things out with the Society?”

        “Counter question, you hungry?”

“As long as you’re paying,” A stallion who was walking by nodded in agreement.

        “Daisy sandwiches it is,” Icepick said merrily before trying her damnedest to skip down the halls in power armor.

        Hence my standing there for a second and thinking I’d pay for dinner, she was worth it. Who would have known the key to my heart was sarcasm?

                                 ---===*===---

The waiter had taken our orders. I had gotten a meat loaf, Icepick’s choice was the casserole; she had a thing for canned daisies. On the extremely bright side, they had offered wine, centuries old vintages from alien fields. It was the most single faceted thing at the table. Raw romance aside, I could feel that she were having a talk over dinner as soon as the waiter left. It wasn’t going to functionally be a first date, though it technically was. Icepick had said a couple words, and I had spaced out for a second, the climax being the mental image of two wearing T-shirts that said: I FUCK BEFORE THE FIRST DATE.

“What’s so funny?” my snickers had drawn her attention back to me with force.

“Just something I thought of… by the time I explained it, any humour would have died.”

        “Okay?” She took a deep breath, almost sighing, then she lit up. “So, we did it.”

“The alliance offer was accepted?” It made sense, given the security support.

“YES! do you know what this means?!”

“Knights serving the aristocracy?” My shit eating grin gained me a delicious glare. “A resurrection of the military-industrial complex?” Ditto. After a few seconds, I decided to be serious. “No, I can see why this really could help you guys out. A Doom Weap- uh, system of alliances is probably the best way to fight the Enclave.” I wasn’t sure about the whether or not knowledge about the weapon was classified, so I pulled a patented Nice Save™.

        The shit-eating grin hadn’t disappeared, it had just switched whose face it was on.

Time passed and we talked, talked about the wastes, talked about anything except for ourselves. Our own futures, what we would do tomorrow. I think we both knew the evening wouldn’t have been what it was if we had to acknowledge our own futures.

        By the time the food was in our systems, we were both buzzed. Alcohol tends to do that. It was honestly sheer luck that led us to leave the restaurant before we made a real PR nightmare. If loose lips sink ships, then booze has made the bottom of the ocean a little less roomy. Well, really, it was the person who thought it was a good idea to put a minibar in the suite itself that was the problem. Thinking about it a little, that person was probably a bleached pile of bones then and certainly now. Still doesn’t absolve them of blame.

        “Sooo… what is the weapon?” We had sprawled out on the bed. There was pleasant warmth throughout my body, some places were just a little warmer than others, of course.

        “Death ray…” She said it with a flick of the hoof.

“Like, a laser?” There’s no way.

        “Nope, the beam is incoherent,” Icepick looked at me seriously for a moment before snorting.

        “It can’t be good that you’re laughing about the super weapon…” I said simply before moving a hand over to scratch her head, the head that she had pushed into the blanket.

        “You, when people asked me why I got together with you after all the shit you pulled, I told ‘em ‘because the scratching is great’. I was only half kidding.” Her head moved up. My smile notwithstanding, she could tell that I really wanted to know about the death ray. “It needs the sun… the spell needs sunlight. It focuses it or something. Hey, why’d ya stop?”

        “That is so wrong.”

“Don’t care.” She had taken to pushing her head into my chest. The moment I resumed scratching, she cooed softly… all it took was a couple hours separation from her subordinates for her to get touchy feely. I had slipped into a happy state. To be fair, a simple state of closed eyes, repetitive motion, and warmth. Only for her to get up and dump her bulk on top of me. Her eyes opened with a sleepiness, gazing at me, then opening in concern.

        “My nose... I know,” I pre-empted her, for what good it would do me.

“How?”

        “I ran into a parked vehicle,” Her facial expression was that of a person wondering how something happened.

“One of the ponies in the society is a doctor, he said he’d give you a check up. You’re getting one.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about doing that earlier. Now that I’m going into an irradiated crater, it sounds even more attractive.” Who wouldn’t want to poke and prod the alien, maybe the guy just wanted to do it for the scientific value. I could get behind that… among other things.

        “So, after our first date, do you think you like the guy enough for another?” Cheesy lines delivered huskily. My god what had I become.

“Well, considering I already slept with him, I wouldn’t be a gentle mare If I didn’t.”

“It would be rather scandalous. Then again, maybe you want a second date for more than mere principal.” I felt exactly two seconds after that, she needed a kiss. Icepick may have been mechanically incapable of reciprocation in regards to scratching, but she could hold her own here… hold her own in spades.

                                 ---===*===---

Out of all the nights I spent with my knight, that one holds a special place in my heart.

                                         ---===*===---

In the morning, we had both dressed and left for the clinic; she was getting checked out as well. So what? I hadn’t told her this detail yet. It didn’t even matter that I had ample opportunity to do so. It only made sense that we watched out for each other’s health, right? In any case, I wanted to know if my ribs had healed correctly, nevermind any other healed or healing injury.

The doctor’s name was Helping Hoof, Icepick had informed me. Well, she had informed me just before entering his clinic. I followed a few paces behind. The place didn’t smell strongly of dried blood and other wonderful fluids, so on that basis alone, it was in the better half of all the places I had stayed in. I turned away from my examination of the room and looked over at the person who had just made a noise. He followed my eyes, and the steadily closing distance between me and Icepick. I closed the door behind me.

“That nose does look fractured…” His gaze shifted down to Icepick. Her impatient look was justified. She had people to direct. Responsibilities and all that jazz.  “Please, take a seat, I’ll try to do a detailed medical examination in as short a span of time as possible.” He had some bite in his voice, and a fair point. Maybe Icepick was slightly hung over?

“Right O, doctor.” I said as I walked over to an exam table. Volunteering to get poked and prodded first was chivalrous, right?

They both seemed a little surprised at my initiative, yet they followed in my wake with haste. I started to strip down to my underclothes.

“Can you think of anything on the top of your head that you need treatment on, other than your muzzle?” His professionalism almost had me shedding a tear.  Almost.

“Honestly, check all of the wounds, if that’s not too much to ask. I just haven’t had a doctor look me over for a month.” A quizzical expression had managed to take over his face. “It’s been a hell of a month.”

        “For you and everyone else, it seems. I mean just a week or so ago I helped a mare rebuild her mare friend.”

        “What do you mean rebuild? rehabilitate or…?” Icepick beat me to the question.

        “The mare was limbless, cancerous, and altogether… Dead. I had never implanted cybernetics before. Thankfully, the mare who had brought her here was a genius. The only reason the patient had even arrived here in an operable state was the mare’s body was attached to another pony.” Helping Hoof recollected with a voice half way between clinical detachment and glee. Well, he seemed more well adjusted than most people here…

        “Heh, heh, so, where did this mare go?” My sounded inquisitive as it rang off the walls. Helping Hoof raised an eyebrow at this. “I mean, have you thought of some sort of support group?”

        “A support group for what?” Damn you occams razor, he must have assumed the outlandish possibility.

        “For people with cybernetics… it’s stupid, isn’t it?” Self deprecating remarks when no external validation was given for an idea. Wonderful.

        “It’s not a bad idea. We have some support groups that meet at various times during the week.” His voice became one of quiet talks between friends as he said this. “I may or may not need this information to treat you.I must ask- where are your implants?”

        The sound of steel hitting the ground broke our concentration. Icepick had disrobed, and a single look at her face gave the impression that she was interested in our discussion, yet she also knew there was a time constraint to be aware of.

        “Spine is my major one. That, and three nervous system linkages, two of the hook ups being body modifiers.”

        “No, energy processing ability in the chest cavity? How do they stay powered?”

“Fusion reactor… In about a century, I’ll need a new supply of deuterium.”

        “That’s amazing,” he said with his mouth slightly agape. I felt as though telling him the reason I had all of the amazing technology was because someone thought it would be a great way to weed out the weak.

        “Jake, what did that?” Icepick pointed at the the scarred over remains of an old wound.

“Robot with a saw blade.” I cringed while remembering when that happened.

        “Did you use a healing potion shortly after you got the wound? Because that looks like natural scarring to me.” Helping Hoof asked.

        “Why would it look any different? You can’t just magic away dam-”

“No, when you drink a potion, it replaces the damaged tissue perfectly. Unless there’s shrapnel in the wound or you have a broken bone,” Icepick explained while we all exchanged curious looks.

        “Life Bloom, can you come here a minute?” Helping Hoof yelled in the direction of a room offset a couple meters away, filled to the brim with filing cabinets.

        “Why? I thought you were just checking up on some ponies.”

“I want to see what a healing spell will do for this stallion’s leg. Besides, I know you wanted to talk to this buck. He’s the biped.”

        “Fine, but you’re getting someone else to update the patient files; I have a meeting with the council later.” Lifeblooms voice got steadily closer as he trotted into the room.

        “I was expecting red eyes or something. You’re not even intimidating, the DJ…”

“Initiate the healing spell…” I asked bluntly.

        Soon after, a glow was flowing from the top of his head; a glowing spot of the same intensity appeared on my scarred over leg. Seconds passed and the only thing that changed was the intensity of the light. First, it increased in luminosity, then after an expression of intense concentration, it began to fade, eventually petering out completely.

        We all looked down.

“That’s remarkable.” Helping Hoof said.

        “It didn’t do anything. How is that remarkable?” Icepick responded with an edge of worry.

         “I didn’t hold back. I mean, that was a universal healing spell. I haven’t found anything that isn’t fixed by it.” Lifebloom seemed to be telling himself this more than giving us information.

        “This isn’t a big deal. I don’t plan on doing anything really dangerous in the future. A little scar tissue isn’t that big of a deal.” I didn’t want them freaking out about this. I didn’t lie to them- I really didn’t consider going into a crater that dangerous. Everything other than ghouls should be dead, right?

        “Lifebloom, you remember that magical energy damage cannot be healed?”

“Yeah, if it’s extremely concentrated. Unless you got lanced in the leg, the spell should’ve worked.”

        “Why does that kind of damage preclude healing?” Icepick asked, with curiosity evident on her face.

        “This is conjecture but… When I did treat a mare that had a spot of magical weapon damage that did actually come from a lance, the tissue did scar over and it wasn't necrotic-”

        Helping Hoof had been cut off by his assistant. “It wouldn't be conjecture if we had her here now, and if we had access to a magical field probe.”

“I might have a Magical converter in my bag. Would that work. I mean, I’d have to break down my repair system.”

“What kind of converter are you talking about?” Lifebloom asked.

“Alternating current to Raw magical power. Well, in what I read the standard magical frequency thats associated with talismans.”

Honestly, understanding how the energy moved and what it could do in regards to technology was enlightening and helpful. I had learned to treat magic as a kind of fifth force. As a physicist by trade, it wasn’t beyond rationality. It was cleary something that existed (here at least- I had doubts about elsewhere in the cosmos). However, some of these people can manipulate it with their minds. Even the ones that couldn’t use their minds had it inside of them. Icepick for example. I came from a place withou-

“Oh… I think I figured it out… maybe. So, Icepick you know that your radiation doesn’t have any effect on me whatsoever?” The medical ponies were a little aghast at her slow nod. A nod that I interpreted as indicating some wheels were turning in her mind. At great velocity.

“There’s probably a correlation between my complete immunity against magical radiation and my lack of magical healing. Perhaps the same reason for both phenomena.” To be honest, I didn’t know for a fact that I was truly unaffected by the pervasive poison of this world. It was an axiom. A justifiable one, considering the equipment and time required to get a real handle on human immunity to Balefire released fallout was really beyond anyone’s capacity. Besides, exposing people to generally terribly dangerous material seemed a tad unethical. “Your original words were pretty good at describing this. Interesting as it may be, I don’t really know if it’s consequential.”  The looks they were giving me were making me antsy. Even Icepick was looking at me uncomfortably.

“You don’t have a soul,” Helping Hoof said in a darkly in a tone that indicated pity.

“I agree. But you don’t have one either; souls are a myth. Self aware organic machines is what we all are. TThat was never in question, although in my case I have more metal in me than average.” They weren’t laughing, they weren’t grinning, they weren’t even looking down at the ground in disappointment. Icepick looked shell-shocked. The others I had stopped looking at as soon as I saw the state of her expression.

“I’m so sorry,” She said quickly before running out of the room nude. The nude thing didn’t tend to be a problem for these people, it’s just that she had never been one to leave armor on the ground. Her slight paranoia and ingrained habits had become something that I had… Loved about her.

End Of Chapter Twelve- Strength

        Footnotes- Level Up

        Armor Level Increased-

Order Will Be Established- You have seen the wastes, you have seen what people do when anarchy reigns. You don’t like it. With your acquired Antidisestablishmentarianism, you gain a speech advantage with any large orderly faction.

        Police Brutality- All indiscriminate weapons gain a fire rate increase.

        Hippie Beat Down- Any riot baton strike has a chance for an automatic KO.

Perk Added- Rationalist

        As a person in a world destroyed by technology, but being born in a world created by technology, you haven’t given up on the power of reason. Your natural intelligence bonuses to skills are increased to +5 per point. Being alone in a quiet place suits you, for reasons that you don’t want to think about…