Hard Lesson
Just another day in the Wasteland.
I fiddled awkwardly with the weapon held in my forehooves while I waited, fighting the impulse to start twirling it, lest I butcher everypony standing around me. It was a halberd I’d found on the corpse of a pony that had been wearing an ancient set of royal guard armor, which I’d likewise taken for myself. Before I’d found it, I’d had to make do with a combat knife tied tightly to a piece of bent and twisted rebar, so this had definitely been a step up in the quality department.
“What’s on your mind, Caltrop? You look worried.”
I turned to face a unicorn mare with a coat so bright green that just looking at her made my mouth pucker. She had a short, chestnut-brown mane that was mostly obscured by the black helmet seated upon her head, save for a few rogue curls that poked up by her forehead. Combat armor of the same color protected her chest, and a little white emblem had been painted on the breast—the pawprint of a griffon’s hindleg. The logo of the company of mercenaries she was employed with.
“Iunno, Peridot,” I shrugged. “I gots a bad feelin’ ‘bout this, that’s all. My belly’s been doin’ backflips fer the past ten minutes.”
“Worried?” Peridot cocked her head to the side, her features softening in concern. “That’s not like you. You’re always raring to go.”
“Yeah, I guess…” I sighed, averting my gaze and focusing on the thriving crowds around us.
People of all walks bustled about around us as we stood waiting for our companion to return. We were smack-dab in the middle of a tiny little community at the center of the city of Buckston. Sanctuary—the city’s last major center of population. It was an old port city located on Equestria’s eastern coast, and a peek into metropolitan life in the time before the Great War. Buckston had never been hit by a direct megaspell blast, but the residual fallout had reduced the city and its surrounding areas into a wasteland just the same as the rest of Equestria, leaving behind nothing but a massive ghost town ripe for resettling.
A few months ago, a local Steel Ranger contingent had engaged in open conflict with a rogue group of pegasi that had defected from the Enclave in order to further their own agenda, demolishing much of the outer city in the process. Craters and ruined buildings could be seen on nearly every street, the debris from some of the skirmishes piling up so high in places that travel was made completely impossible.
At the very center of the city, however, everything was still intact and a burgeoning hub of commerce. Day in and day out ponies traveled through Sanctuary to trade, seek work, purchase supplies for travel, or even acquire medical aid or take up residence in the many unoccupied floors of the massive black obelisk of an office building at the city’s center. The tower was the tallest structure in the entire city, and functioned as a hospital, a headquarters for the local talon company, and a shelter for those who needed it.
The citizens of Sanctuary were protected by the local talon company—Obsidian Equestria—a griffon-run mercenary group that made its home in that building—the largest office building in the city, from which they derived their name. Krieg Razorbeak, the talon’s leader, was as philanthropist as it was possible to be in this day and age, and put every ounce of effort into keeping his people safe from threats, whether it be encroaching raiders and slavers, or even Steel Rangers.
A sudden commotion caused Peridot and I to turn, and the two of us watched as a small scene unfolded across the street from us. A sudden fracas had erupted right in the middle of the merchant district—the inner circle of a roundabout at the middle of the city, on the sidewalks surrounding the small park at its center.
As we looked on, a pair of griffons wearing armor with the same logo as Peridot’s accosted a shady-looking earth pony stallion in a trench coat. One of them—a burly thug with a snowy white coat and crimson accents at the tips of his muddy brown feathers—seized the stallion’s foreleg in one beefy claw, causing a cascade of tiny little containers to fall out from within his coat.
Ponies trying to make a quick cap slinging drugs.
Just another day in the Wasteland.
“Dash dealer,” Peridot murmured as the griffons hauled the earth pony away, ignoring his protests and claims of innocence. “I thought Magnus had better things to do than patrol Sanctuary for chem dealers? Oh, well. Maybe Razorbeak and that guy he’s traveling with finally made some headway on their search, so he’s back to his usual duties.”
Razorbeak was the griffon in charge of Obsidian Equestria—Peridot’s boss—and I even knew the ‘other guy’ she’d mentioned. In fact, I was supposed to have helped the two of them hunt somepony down, but I’d gotten caught up in the moment when I’d met Peridot and her partner, who’d hired her for her services. Rolling a shoulder in a shrug, I turned away from the scene as the small crowd that had gathered began to disperse.
Like many of the people bustling around Sanctuary, we were here for a reason. In our case, that was work. The leader of our little group was currently off seeing to that while we sat waiting for him in the middle of town, just idly twiddling our hooves.
“Hey ladies, I got it!” a male voice said from behind me, and I turned to see a unicorn stallion approaching with a small piece of paper held aloft in his charcoal-grey telekinetic field. Combat armor similar to Peridot’s partially concealed his periwinkle blue coat, and golden tresses of blonde mane spilled down to his neck, the dim, cloud-filtered sunlight glinting as radiantly as was possible off of its many waves. Slung across his chest was a bandolier loaded with several different bolt types, and across his back was the crossbow he used to fire them.
I thought it was a rather unorthodox weapon in this day and age, but considering the fact that my own weapon of choice was a polearm, who the hell was I to judge?
“Hey, Longhorn,” Peridot and I chanted by way of greeting as the stallion approached.
“What’s up?” Longhorn said as he slowed to a stop, looking between me and Peridot while he waited for an explanation. “Why the long faces?”
“Caltrop’s worried,” Peridot explained, placing her hooves reassuringly on my shoulders and resting her chin gently atop my head.
“Am not!” I snapped defensively, hopping out from under Peridot. “I jus’ gots butterflies in my tummy, that’s all.”
“That’s anxiety, Caltrop,” Peridot explained patiently. “You’re worried. There’s no reason to be worried, Hon. We’ve been working together for long enough now for you to know that.”
“Yeah, Peridot’s right,” Longhorn agreed with a nod. “It’s just another day in the Wasteland for us, kid. We’ll take care of this little job, use the cash to buy a good meal and restock, and then it’s on to the next one. Danger’s an everyday thing here, but we’ll deal with it just like we always do. We overcome it with teamwork.”
I felt my ears droop. “Yeah, but…”
“Hey, come on!” Longhorn said, resting a hoof over my armored shoulders and giving me a little shake. “What’s gotten into you, Caltrop? You’re always the most enthusiastic out of all of us to take on a job, especially when it involves combat!”
“We’re gonna see some action?” I asked, immediately feeling my spirits begin to lift.
“Yep,” the buck beside me answered with a grin, waving the paper he’d been carrying in front of my face. “Doesn’t go into detail, but the client promises a huge reward for a tough fight. We need to meet with him on his property to discuss the details, but it can’t be too tough. The coordinates are nowhere near hexhound territory, so whatever it is we have to fight should be well within our ability to handle.”
I glanced at the paper and felt my jaw drop in shock. “Wow, that’s a lotta zeros.” I shifted uncomfortably as I weighed the job against the payout. “Longhorn, somethin’ ‘bout this ain’t addin’ up. It ain’t right. We should walk. A reward that fuckin’ big means it’s prolly gonna get us killed.”
“We won’t know unless we try, right?” the light blue unicorn stallion said, giving my shoulders a comforting squeeze. “At the very least, we can just see what the client needs done. We’ll only be out a little bit of our time, and if we come back empty-hoofed, we can always bunk in the OEQ tower for the night.”
“A-All right, I guess,” I agreed uncertainly. I still had a really bad feeling about this job.
“Come on, you two. We’re losing daylight,” Longhorn said, steering me toward Sanctuary’s entry gates. “The sooner we get this one over with, the sooner we can get some decent food in our stomachs. I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving,” Peridot nickered playfully as she fell into step beside us. “I swear you’ve got a hollow leg.”
“Says the mare who scarfed down a whole case of Sugar Apple Bombs in fifteen minutes,” Longhorn teased.
“I work my flank off out here, you jerk. Anything I eat doesn’t get the chance to stick around for very long. There isn’t an ounce of fat below my neck.”
I felt my eyes drift down to linger on Peridot’s flank, and I sort of lost focus of the conversation as I stared intently at her cutie mark- a large ammunition box with a small trio of shotgun shells laid in front of it. It was less the cutie mark I was interested in, and more the particular piece of anatomy that it was using as a backdrop. I felt a subtle stirring down below as I took in the view, each movement of her leg causing the muscles in her flank to tense, emphasizing her toned plot in the most pleasant of ways. She wasn’t kidding. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on there to jiggle.
“You’re catching flies, Caltrop,” Peridot said with a knowing smirk, playfully brushing beneath my chin with her tail, which afforded me another glimpse that I suspected wasn’t entirely unintentional.
“Busted!” Longhorn cackled wickedly.
“Shaddap!” I snapped, driving my hoof painfully into Longhorn’s side and causing him to exhale with a wheeze.
“Oof!” Longhorn grunted, “Hey! Easy, kid! Sheesh, you hit hard for a mare your size.”
“Ya, an’ don’t forget it, Longhorn,” I growled, blowing aside the huge lock of vanilla-white mane that had fallen into my eyes. “I been lookin’ out fer myself since I was a li’l filly. I didn’t have nopony t’ do it fer me, so I had t’ teach myself how t’ fight. Ya build up a lotta strength swingin’ around a piece a’ rebar all day, lemme tell ya.”
“It shows,” Longhorn murmured, massaging his tender side gingerly. “Why is it so hard to find a ladylike mare out here? I swear it’s nothing but warrior mares or crazy raider chicks. What’s a guy gotta do to find the type of mare who needs help moving a couch these days?”
My reply was cut short by a sudden, unearthly droning hum that set my teeth on edge.
“’The fuck?” I wondered aloud.
My answer showed up a moment later as the hum increased in intensity and became a loud roar. Something above us eclipsed what little sunlight managed to get through the cloud cover, and I looked skyward to see a massive black warship streak overhead, heading in the direction of the bay just off of Buckston’s coast. I’d never seen one before, but damn near everypony had certainly heard of them. It was a cloudship. An Enclave cloudship.
“Is that a Raptor?” Peridot gasped in utter astonishment. “What is the Enclave doing here? Why are they below the clouds?”
“I don’t think they have business with us Wasteland folk,” Longhorn said, pointing at the ship as it streaked off towards the water. “Whatever its goal is, it’s either overseas or on the sea.” Longhorn cast his gaze downward, holding a hoof to his chin thoughtfully. “Still… what in Equestria would bring the Enclave down here to the Wasteland, and with a cloudship to boot? I think we might just be missing an important piece of the puzzle.”
“Haven’t you heard?” We all turned to face a passerby that had heard our conversation and spoken up. “The Enclave has finally made their move. Canterlot is gone. Leveled. They’ve already laid siege to Friendship City, and the most recent news suggests that their fleet is locked in combat with Red Eye’s forces over the Everfree Forest. If I were you guys, I’d find someplace safe to hole up before they attack us.”
The three of us exchanged a nervous glance as the stranger went on her way. None of us knew what it meant for the Enclave to be below the clouds, but it sure as hell wasn’t good. Even less so if they’d already destroyed the ruins of Canterlot and assaulted Friendship City. Red Eye could go shit in a hat for all I cared, but if they’d attacked a populated city, then it didn’t bode well for us over here in Buckston.
“Definitely explains Caltrop’s unease,” Peridot murmured as she continued to gaze at the now-empty skies. “What’ll you do, Longhorn? I’m still bound by my contract, so you’ve got me until your payment dries up.”
“Well,” Longhorn sighed, “It looks like we’re going to need that money for something much more important than food. If this is turning out to be a full-scale assault on us, we’re going to need all the supplies we can get our hooves on. That means guns, ammo, medical supplies and anything else we need to keep ourselves alive.”
“We’re still doing the job, then?” Peridot asked with a wry grin and a raised eyebrow.
“Yep,” Longhorn replied, and I quickly slung my halberd across my back, rushing to catch up as he started off at a canter. “Double time it, everypony. Let’s move.”
* * *
“Are you sure that’s the place?” Peridot asked as we paused at the road’s end. “It looks spooky as all get-out.”
Longhorn took a quick peek at the map.
“Yeah, I think so. It is a little creepy, isn’t it?”
From where we were standing, we could hear the sound of the surf crashing against the shore. Indeed, where we stood was only a hop, skip and jump from the water. Abandoned shorefront property surrounded us on all sides, but the unsettling locale that Longhorn and Peridot had spoken of was immediately to our right.
The remains of the small seaside amusement park practically oozed foreboding. Small games kiosks were either shuttered or boarded up, and those that weren’t had been broken into and searched for valuables long ago. Within some, I could see faded targets for dart games, some still decorated with dangling bits of rubber that had once been inflated balloons. Unclaimed prizes in the form of ratty old stuffed animals still hung from walls and ceilings, and I noted with some amusement that one kiosk had collapsed, but its target of stacked milk bottles still stood tall after two-hundred years.
Behind the massive arcade near the roadside—the closest building to us currently—the tallest of the old rides rose up just high enough for us to see. Of particular note were a roller coaster and a massive ferris wheel, both of which had been partially if not completely consumed by rust, due in no small part to the salty sea air.
Directly ahead of us was a massive pier that stretched out into the ocean. Wooden posts protruding out of the water near the far end suggested that its end had been much further out than it was currently, much to my surprise. It was pretty damn long to begin with.
This whole place was just an eerie reminder of what used to be. This had once been a place of amusement. Fun. Ponies had shared good times here centuries ago, and now all that was left was a weathered ruin that somepony deeper than me would probably see as a commentary on the horrors of war, using fancy words like ‘juxtaposition,’ or some shit. To be fair, it was pretty fuckin’ creepy. I half expected ghost ponies to fade into view and start walking around going about their lives like nothing had ever happened.
“So… where the fuck are we s’posed t’ go, Longhorn?” I asked when nopony moved or spoke up. “We ain’t gonna get jack shit done jus’ standin’ around all day.”
Longhorn stirred with a nicker, and shook his head as if to clear it. “Oh, sorry. Uh, the job posting said that we had to meet him in an old lifeguard tower on the beach, I think.” Longhorn floated the piece of paper out to check it. “Yeah, ‘look for the only lit lifeguard tower,’ it says.”
“Great,” I snorted grumpily. “Gonna get sand in my fuckin’ horseshoes. I fuckin’ hate sand.”
“Time’s money, ladies!” Longhorn stated brightly. “Let’s get moving.”
I grumbled my dissent and followed behind Longhorn and Peridot, dragging my hooves sluggishly. I was in no hurry to wade into the sandy dunes on that freakin’ beach. We made our way across the remainder of the cracked pavement before making the abrupt transition to the beach proper, and I couldn’t help but click my tongue and sigh angrily when my forehoof sank deep into the fine grains of pulverized rock. Great. I was never gonna get this shit out of my coat.
I slogged my way through the sand after my companions, becoming increasingly more frustrated each time I put a hoof down and it shifted beneath me, bogging me down just enough to drive me up the goddesses-damned wall. Thankfully, we didn’t have too far to walk, and we approached a fair-sized lifeguard tower—not what amounted to a really tall chair, but instead one of the towers with a tiny little office-sized cube of a room on top of a deck and stilts, with a ramp for easy access.
“Hang out here for a second, I’ll talk to the guy,” Longhorn said as we gathered around the wooden planks that made up the ramp. “Won’t be but a minute.”
I heaved another huge sigh and turned to look out at the water. In and out, in and out went the surf, dragging with it bits of seaweed dislodged from the ocean floor and depositing them on the shore, where they collected in large piles of dried, tangled brown clumps. The ocean breeze was steady and didn’t show any signs of letting up, and was even now tossing my vanilla-white mane back into my face despite my best efforts to sweep it aside. Stupid wind. Stupid beach. Ugh!
“Hey,” Peridot said from beside me, and I felt her rump bump playfully into mine. “Still feeling nervous? Or have you gotten a little more comfortable by now?”
“I feel like I need t’ get off this fuckin’ beach before I stab somepony,” I snapped testily. “It’s a pain in the ass t’ walk, this stupid sand is gettin’ inta places it shouldn’t be, an’ it smells gross, too. I hate the beach. Hate it!”
“Just tough it out for a little while longer, Hon. We’ll be through with this soon.”
“’Soon’ ain’t doin’ a whole lot fer me now, Peridot,” I grumbled. “Gonna be findin’ grains a’ sand in my coat fer weeks after this.”
“All right, you two. Ready to get to it?” We turned to see Longhorn making his way down the ramp, holding aloft in his telekinetic grip a tiny, tiny little stoppered bottle barely big enough to hold a scant few drops of liquid, which he held out to me. “Here, Caltrop. Take this.”
I eyed the bottle warily. “’The fuck is it?”
“Just take it and splash it on you.”
“What is it, Longhorn?” I demanded, refusing to take the bottle. No way was I putting that shit on me without knowing what it was.
“Just trust me, okay?” Longhorn unstoppered the bottle, quickly splashing its contents against the side of my neck like some sort of perfume before I could move away. “It ain’t gonna kill you. Quite the opposite, in fact. Now come on.”
“W-Wait!” Peridot called out as Longhorn trotted past us and made his way back towards the road. “Longhorn, stop! Will you at least tell us what the client said before you run off on us?”
“An’ what this crap ya just threw all over me is?” I interjected pointedly. It had a sort of sweet, heady aroma that was actually quite pleasant-smelling, despite my aversion to any scents that could be described as ‘nice.’ It reminded me somewhat of honey, or what I imagined fresh-cut wildflowers would’ve smelled like, if they still grew in the Wasteland.
“It’s perfume,” Longhorn said dismissively. “You smell like the bottom of a hoof, and a nice little mare like you shouldn’t smell that bad.”
I could tell he wasn’t telling the truth. Not the whole truth, in any event. Whether or not this crap really was perfume, it wasn’t causing me any harm at the moment, and the thought of what Longhorn was keeping from us slid to the back of my mind for the moment as we hastened to catch up to the stallion. He continued trotting along even as we caught up to him, meandering to the right once we hit the pavement. Once on the road, Longhorn moved swiftly and with purpose, floating his crossbow off of his back and pulling back the bowstring to lock it into place, pausing at the large wooden ramp that led up to the pier.
“Okay,” Longhorn said with a shaky sigh, and I felt my eyebrows rise in utter shock when I saw him float one of his most powerful crossbow bolts out of his bandolier before nocking it against the bowstring. It was one of his very, very fewenchanted gem-tipped plasma bolts. “Here’s the story. Our client needs us to clear out a Radwasp nest. They’ve constructed it right in the middle of the pier, and he needs it gone so that he can open the place for business.”
Fuck me. Radwasps were bad news. Upsized by the taint and radiation, the fuckers were bigger than an average pony, but their size wasn’t the worst thing about them. The mutations had also turned their venom into a highly corrosive acid, able to burn completely through flesh and bone in a matter of seconds. Not only that, but they didn’t have to sting to use it. Radwasps had the ability to squirt their venom from their stingers at range, making them an incredibly lethal foe. Nopony liked dealing with Radwasps. Nopony with a functioning brain, at least.
My jaw hit the floor at the news, but before I could voice my concerns, Peridot did so for the both of us.
“Longhorn, we’re nowhere near properly geared for this job! I’ll probably be able to keep myself alive with my shotgun, but the rate of fire on your crossbow is terrible, and all Caltrop has is a melee weapon!” Wow, okay. No faith. “No. No way. Caltrop was right earlier when she saw the payout. This job is way too dangerous. We should walk.”
“We’ll be fine,” Longhorn said, though he didn’t sound too sure of himself. “It’s just another day in the Wasteland, ladies. Make sure to stick by Caltrop. Not too close, mind; bunching up is a good way to wind up getting all of us melted into a puddle.”
“Wait!” Peridot called out as Longhorn started forward up the ramp and onto the pier. “Longhorn! Why are we going through with this? You told Caltrop that if the job was too dangerous we’d pass it up, but now we’re going through with it anyway? What’s changed?”
“Nothing,” Longhorn shrugged as we reached the top of the ramp and passed through into an old gift shop on the way through to the pier. “I honestly believe we can do this. All I need is one good shot with an incendiary bolt, and that nest will go up in flame. The only tricky part will be fending off the workers protecting the nest. Anything inside will be torched, but if there are any outside when the bolt hits, we’re going to have to deal with them.”
I lagged behind as Longhorn moved on ahead with Peridot in tow, still doing her best to convince him to drop the job. The boards of the old pier creaked under our hooves, and I looked curiously from side to side as we made our way further along the lengthy structure. Much of the right side was open for viewing, with a mere two old shops at the near and far end of the pier, granting a clear view of the beach. The left side however, was end-to-end stands and kiosks.
Faded old signs advertised shops for curios and keepsakes, or even vendors for cotton candy and fresh, piping hot hay fries. Just thinking about food was enough to make my stomach rumble, and I felt myself grow just a bit keener on pulling this job off. Just a bit.
“There it is,” Longhorn said, slowing to a stop and allowing us to step up to stand alongside him.
It had been audible long before we’d even seen it. The sheer size of the Radwasps’ wings made it sound like an entire squadron of bombers was flying just overhead. Attached to the side of a tall building ahead of us was a massive ball of paper constructed by the wasps for nesting, and even now they flitted all around it, some making strange, erratic side-to-side motions before landing to crawl all around the crinkled grey surface. We’d gone unnoticed so far, and we merely observed as the massive insects flew all around their nest, entering and exiting and regurgitating chewed-up wood fibers to build upon their existing structure.
“If this is like your average nest, the queen will be in there, laying eggs,” Longhorn murmured, raising his crossbow and taking aim at the structure. “If I can tag her, this job gets a whole lot easier.”
“Alternatively, you’ll just piss them off and the entire swarm will melt our flesh from our bones,” Peridot whispered angrily, none too keen on drawing attention. “I still think this is one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had.”
“Trust me, Peridot. Just remember what I said,” Longhorn said as he stuck his tongue out and slowly squeezed the trigger. “Stick by Caltrop.”
A tingle shot up my spine as Longhorn’s crossbow bolt took to the air, and I watched with fascination as the enchanted gem began to glow hot, melting both it and the bolt down into a narrow streak of bright green plasma. From that point forward, the next few moments appeared to play out in slow motion. Both Peridot and I went for our weapons while the bolt was still in flight, bringing them to bear in order to properly defend ourselves. Longhorn slid another bolt from his bandolier—this one ringed in red to mark it as incendiary—and drew back his bowstring to nock it just as the plasma bolt made impact with the nest.
The bolt tore clean through the paper structure as easily as a hot knife through butter, punching clear through the other side and soaring off to flicker out of view in the distance. It left behind a hoof-sized hole with a glowing rim, and several deceased Radwasps came tumbling out of the nest to crash noisily to the pier’s surface, their exoskeletons making strange clacking and scraping sounds as they landed.
“Stick close, Hon,” Peridot said, hefting her shotgun in her cherry-red magical aura. “It’s about to get rough.”
“Ya sound a li’l worried there, Peridot,” I teased playfully in an attempt to keep the mood light, giving her a ginger prod with the haft of my halberd. Panicking wouldn’t do us any good against such lethal creatures. We had to keep our wits. “Listen t’ Longhorn. Stay by me, I’ll protect ya.”
Peridot snorted and rolled her eyes, but that was all she had time to do before all hell broke loose.
Longhorn fired again, and when his incendiary bolt hit the nest, its thermite core detonated, setting the nest ablaze with a very small—albeit incredibly hot—gout of flame. Tiny little flecks from the initial detonation spread the flame faster than a wildfire, and it was only a matter of seconds before the entire nest had shriveled up into ash, leaving behind nothing but the charred corpses of the Radwasps that had been within.
The Radwasps that hadn’t been consumed by fire were not happy.
My skin crawled as the buzzing around us grew furious, the air practically vibrating as the Radwasps shifted duty from work to defense. Peridot and Longhorn didn’t give the insects time to gain the advantage, and I cringed as Peridot’s shotgun roared beside me, loud enough to set my right ear to ringing. Longhorn was resorting to his explosive-tipped bolts at this point, and I cringed when one such bolt found a home in the thorax of a Radwasp, detonating and blasting us with disgusting bits of bug guts.
Our biggest problem at the moment was keeping nimble on our hooves. Radwasps tended to gravitate toward ranged attack, which meant we had to be constantly aware of our surroundings to ensure we weren’t struck with their acidic venom. Longhorn was catching the most attention, and he hadn’t stopped moving since we’d drawn the attention of the Radwasps, constantly galloping around the pier in a desperate attempt to avoid being hit by the barrage of caustic liquid.
My frustration started to get the better of me the longer I watched Peridot and Longhorn fight. I was stuck with my halberd, and I had no way of helping those two unless I ran up and got stuck in. I didn’t want to ditch Peridot, but watching Longhorn run for his life was starting to seriously get under my skin. I knew how to kill things! I wanted to help!
“Fuck this,” I snarled, galloping toward a Radwasp that was hovering just behind Longhorn, lobbing globs of venom at him while he attempted to deal with the rest of the swarm. When I closed the distance, I cradled my halberd in both forelegs and pushed myself into the air with my hindlegs to gain a little more reach, swinging upwards with the axe blade and grinning with triumph as the steel sliced through the massive bug and cleaved it in two. “Gotcha, fucker!”
“Damn it, Caltrop!” I heard Longhorn growl, and I turned to face him with a chastened look. What did I do? “I told you to stick together! Get back to where you were and cover Peri-”
Longhorn’s orders were drowned out by a bloodcurdling scream, and dread tore at my stomach when I turned around to face back the way I’d come. Peridot was right where I’d left her, but without me to watch her back, she’d been hit from behind by a jet of acid. Even from where I was standing, I could see plain as day that the highly corrosive substance had eaten clear through her left hindleg, and she was lying on the pier writhing in pure agony and screaming herself hoarse.
“Shit, Peridot!” I screamed, panic welling up inside me as I ran to her. “Fuck, I’m sorry!”
Even as I grew close to her, I could tell it was too late. Her screams grew quieter, and her thrashing less energetic just as I realized the full extent of her injuries. It hadn’t been just her leg. Additional jets of acid had landed on the small of her back, as well as her left side, and I could see raw flesh and bone through her corroded barding. I felt my stomach heave when I took a closer look at the wounds and saw that the acid was still eating its way through her. There was nothing I’d be able to do. Peridot was gone.
“Longhorn, she’s…” I muttered, my mind collapsing into a thoughtless jumble of white noise as I gazed down at Peridot’s corpse. “Peridot is…”
“GAH!” Longhorn screamed, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. No… “FF- AAARGH!”
“LONGHORN!”
I hopped to my hooves and ran as fast as I could to the stallion, raising my halberd when I was halfway to him and swinging it with every bit of strength I had, bisecting the Radwasp on top of him horizontally. It had been buried up to the stinger in his chest, and I watched with complete and utter horror as the venom burned its way out of his body from within, eating holes through his chest before dripping onto the pier beneath him.
“YOU FUCKERS!” I screamed to the remaining Radwasps still buzzing aimlessly about. “I’LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE A’ YA, DO YA HEAR ME!? YOU’RE ALL DEAD!”
Taking up my weapon, I charged the nearest Radwasp, stabbing out with the pike at the top and spearing the mutant bug through the middle. I swung the halberd as hard as I could, hurling the dead Radwasp clear of the pike and straight off the pier to splash into the ocean beneath. For some reason the fuckers were ignoring me, flying up out of my reach and away. I whinnied angrily before pursuing the nearest one that turned its back on me and began flying toward the far end of the pier. No way were these fucking bugs going to fly away after killing Peridot and Longhorn. I didn’t care if they didn’t have the mental capacity to feel pain. They deserved to die.
“GET BACK HERE! COME BACK AN’ FIGHT ME! WHAT, YA COULD KILL MY FRIENDS, BUT YER TOO GOOD FER ME!?”
I started forward but quickly skidded to a stop when the boards cracked beneath my hooves, backpedaling as the wood fell out from under me and plunged into the water. The pier beneath me was so pockmarked full of acid holes, the structure of the planks had been completely compromised, and there was no way I’d be able to pursue the goddessdamned Radwasps to seek vengeance unless I wanted to go for a fucking swim.
Despite every natural urge telling me to kill, despite the guilt I was feeling at having royally fucked everything up, I turned my back on the Radwasps as they drifted away, glancing at the corpses of my two friends. My only friends. Biting my lip, I moved toward Longhorn, making absolute sure that the acid wouldn’t still burn through me before carefully lifting him onto my back.
If I couldn’t avenge them, then I could at least pay them the proper fucking respects.
* * *
I sat back on my haunches as I finished settling the last of the pile of sand into the hole that was Peridot’s grave. I’d lugged them both down onto the beach one by one, digging their graves by hoof—partly because I didn’t have the necessary tools, and partly because I deserved the punishment—and burying them as was proper. As I gazed down at the unmarked graves, I felt tears welling up inside me as the few memories I’d made with these two great ponies came flooding back all at once, and I began to heave with sobs as they brought with them a crashing tidal wave of remorse.
These two had been all I’d had in the world. My first and only friends, taken from me by something that was supposed to be small enough to step on. They’d been taken from me because we needed money to feed ourselves, and there was no better way to earn money in this lawless fucking pit than running errands for ponies. They’d been taken from me because I’d fucked up, and by some retarded miracle, I’d been ignored by the Radwasps. They’d been taken from me because this place claimed ponies every damn day, and today just so happened to be the day that Peridot and Longhorn had drawn the short straw.
Just another day in the Wasteland.
I stood and turned my back on the graves, looking out at the ocean and wiping at my teary eyes with the back of a hoof. Out in the middle of the bay, a cloud of low-hanging fog had moved aside sometime between when we'd arrived at the beach and now, revealing an old oil rig still standing tall after all these years. As I looked on, two small dots took off from its upper deck and flew towards the city, and I winced and held up a hoof to shade my eyes as the rig was engulfed by an enormous fireball. What remained of the rig following the explosion slowly toppled and crashed into the ocean with a massive plume of water and a splash audible even from where I was standing.
Just another fucking day in the Wasteland.
