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               Fallout Equestria: Salvation                
                      -by Bladewolf-                       
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                       Prologue One                        
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Prologue One
War and violence, fear and hatred, paranoia and deceit, there many things are in the Wasteland that us ponies are used to. I haven’t seen much in the brief time I’ve been alive, but I know there are other things too. I've heard from others and the nice DJ on the radio, he was always going on about hope and the good fight, warning other ponies about the scary things out there trying to keep them alive to see another day.
    I didn't understand why the Wasteland scares so many ponies, nor was I sure about a lot of the bad things that are in it. I didn't understand sure because my Mama and Papa made me go hide whenever something happened. They said I shouldn’t have to see whatever it was they made me go hide from, but I obeyed because they are my parents and know what’s right, right?
    Was it right for them to shield me from the truth even though it was inevitable that I would learn it? Ponies that live in the wasteland of Equestria are scared with good reason. When I learned why was a day that changed me forever...
* * *
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Prologue One
“Any moment now, you'll be dead! Are you excited to see what that's like? “
    Garbage cans. Why on Equestria do so many ponies put valuable things in the garbage cans? I’ve always wondered that since you find so many good things in the abandoned garbage cans that are around, such as the one I was currently flank deep in. My papa says it’s a good thing I’m still small enough to fit inside the big ones to scavenge what’s inside them. The melted stuff of whatever the ponies before the war put in here was turned to green and brown sludge that felt oddly warm... yuck, that is so disgusting. I got up from sitting in the waste and tried to climb out the hole in the top of the standalone bin, but barely made it halfway before it tipped over with me hanging out of it, forcing me face first into the grimy tile floor.
    “Mama, there ain’t no val... valu... things worth it in this can!” I shouted from the corner of the small grocery shop we were currently searching around in. The sludge from the bottom of the tilted-over bin creeping toward me as I was still halfway through it. When it covered my hind legs was when I overstayed my welcome in it. I climbed the rest of the way out, the back of the metal hole chafing my back as I did. Why would anypony hide things in the garbage? I guess because nopony wants to or would think to look in there, I know I sure wouldn’t. Doesn’t that mean you have to go through it just to get your stuff back? It makes no sense whatsoever!
    My Mama poked her head out from above a shelf with her purple mane frazzled in today’s heat. “Silent, why don’t you try in the back room? Your papa is lookin’ over there,” she said nodding over to the shelves behind her. “And please, use your inside voice. We don’t want anypony to hear us, now do we?” Her head popped down and I heard her moving stuff around.
    I stood up with a gloop sound and shook my whole body with only satisfying sploshing noises of the sludge being flung from my coat, but you never know if you really get it all off with one try. I turned my head looking myself over. Dark blue coat? Check. Long purple mane and tail, both with a black stripe through the middle? Check. Completely free of any nasty stuff that probably would have made my coat fall off? Check.
    I took a good look around, this grocery shop seemed to be already looted even though it was just a small store in a small outlet mall in the middle of nowhere. The door was behind me and the register and counter to my right. I raised my head up a bit higher, looked across the saddlebaskets laying around here and there, and saw a lot of shelves stretching further on back with long dead freezers and shattered glass doors. I saw Papa’s black tail swishing out from the side of a shelf. I wondered if he found anything useful or something to eat.  Well that wasn't my job, Mama told me my job was to go check out that one room.
    One hoof in front of the other I skipped across the tile floor before turning around behind the counter. I liked looking for stuff since we would find stuff we don’t have! Well I guess that was obvious, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Looking around beneath the counters, I spotted an old worn down ammo box. Now my parents won’t let me have a gun of my own because they think I’d hurt myself with it. I laughed at that, you can’t hurt yourself with your own gun because it hurts other bad ponies.  I opened the top of the metal box, and found a bunch of red boxes. They looked like ammo for a shotgun, but I wasn't sure which type.
    “Mama, I found some shotgun ammo over here, but I dunno what kinda type of shotgun it’s to!” I said. I picked the boxes up with my teeth and put them in my brown saddlebags. I wondered what it was like to be a unicorn, and move stuff with your mind, not that I needed any of that fancy magic because earth ponies get things done reliably, even if we are slow to do it!
    I heard my Mama’s voice a bit muffled by something. “That’s great honey, just hold on to that ‘til we're done.”
    Hah, victory for me! I trotted up to the back room door and tried to push it open only to hear a metallic clank. Locked, everything good is locked, and that means stuff is always in there. “Papa, this here door is locked! Can ya come over here and get it open?” I said.
    Metal clanged from the back of the store, I saw Papa rush out of the aisle with empty cans and bottles smashing together at his hooves as he ran. “Well done mah boy, we might just find somethin’ yet,” he said. It only took him a moment to reach the door. He dusted off his brown coat and short black mane.
    “Now let us see here now if I can’t get this open, shall we?” He smiled as he pushed on the door with his front right leg, only to receive the same sound had I gotten. Again, with more force that time, to the same effect.
    “Well now, this thing here is locked up somethin’ fierce.” He turned around, gently moved me back a bit, and backtracked up to the door. I couldn’t even see him buck the door until I heard the noise of metal breaking whatever latch or something that had held the door locked. The sound carried through the store, and maybe even out of it. “There, good ol’ earth pony lockpicking. One day I’ll teach ya my secret Silent, and then you’ll be able to find al-”
    “What in Goddesses’ name was that?!” Mama poked her head back up over the shelf. She wore her fiercest glare on her dark blue face. “Were you tryin’ to tell everypony we’re here?”
    “Now now Storm, this here door refused my polite request to be opened and I just couldn’t take no for an answer. I tried bein’ the reasonable pony, I really did.” He put on his pouty face, I just giggled when I saw it.
    “That’s no excuse and you know it, that was a really loud noise and-” Mama quieted down and perked her ears up, and when Papa saw that, he did the same. I quieted down from my giggling and moved closer to the counter as Papa started to crouch down behind it.
    “Now Ah know Ah heard somethin’ over here guys, I don’t see how y’all could uh missed it!” The stallion’s rough voice carried through the door from the outside.
    “Naw, you just bein’ that idjit again like you always are” This pony was a mare, but her voice sounded like she was talking through sandpaper.
    “I ain’t no idjit and I is tellin’ ya, I heard somethin’ from over here”
    “Really now, ya idjit? Which one, go on then.”
    “Uhh.... eeny meeny miny... that one!” I heard hoofsteps as a shadow came inside through the window of the door.
    “Yeah, whatever. HEY GUYS THE IDJIT SAID HE HEARD SOMETHIN’!” The yell was like sandpaper through a megaphone. I had to shake my head just to get rid of the sound.
    “Pfft, I know I heard somethin’ and I’ma get it before any of yous gets a chance.” Papa crouched down low behind the counter and pulled me close. His face was full of, I’m not sure but I think it was panic. We scooted to the corner of the counter, closer to Mama and the back shelves when the door opened up. I looked up but couldn’t see who came in, but I did see a rusted sawed off shotgun floating in an orange magic field. My ears droop back, and I started to shiver.
    “Fine, we’ll indulge your mind playin tricks on you, but if there ain’t nothin’ here... Well we’ll come to that when we do,” the rough sounding mare said. I could hear the crooked smile in her oice.. I heard a gulp on the other side of the counter.
    The hoofsteps on the other side moved forward as more sets of them came inside, more than just that mare from before. I looked to Papa, only to see him take his revolver in his mouth, and look into my eyes. He gave me a feeling that everything was going to be okay.
    We waited as they all entered the store, the door didn't close behind what I guessed was the last pony who walked inside. Minutes passed by as I became more nervous, and Papa looked really scared for what I guessed was Mama. We didn’t hear the ponies act like they had seen her, just the sound of shelves moving and empty bottles and cans rattling together. At one point the stallion who first entered yelped in pain before the moving about continued. I felt sweaty, my fur sticking together and my saddlebags chafing me as I shifted silently Papa’s forelegs.
    “Ah know I sure heard somethin’, but I gotta take a whiz real quick like,” he complained as I heard a door open. A couple seconds pass before I heard a scream that sounded like Mama, and a yell from the previous stallion. A voice came from the very back, “I KNEW there was somethin’ in here!”
    Immediately there were a bunch of hoofsteps as ponies raced to the back as Papa got up, revolver still in mouth, and jumped over the counter to chase after them. I scrambled to my hooves and dashed out under the open-up countertop after Papa. A dark red stained yellow tail disappear around the corner of where we were running to. I heard both muffled cries and the sound of cheering as we got closer.
    Papa got to the end before I did, and stopped at the opened door before he got this awful look on his face. He looked to me, and then back through the door before he scowled. There was a brief flash from the barrel of his revolver, and I heard a scream of pain, before it turned into a gurgling noise that overpowered all other sounds besides the muffled crying.
    “wi... Wire... run!” It sounded like Mama, but her tone was really sad. Papa started crying as he fired one more bullet before he dropped his revolver, and ran back toward me. I think I didn't hear the crying anymore.
    “You idjits, he just killed Sunflower! GO GET HIM!” the scratchy voiced mare yelled as Papa picked me up by the back of my neck, and ran toward the door. He jumped over some broken shelves, and rounded the counter corner before a loud blast sounded out, and I hit the open door with my face, and fell onto my back.
    “Ow.. Papa?” I turned around and saw Papa laying on the floor. He must have tripped after being scared from that noise. “Papa, come on. We have to go get Mama.”
    His breathing sounded ragged, and a pool of red beneath him seemed to get bigger, “I’m sorry Silent Step, no-” he coughed, blood flying out of his mouth onto the floor, "now... run away!” He sounded so weak.
    “I think I got him boss!” one of the bad ponies said.
    I ran over to Papa and shook him before seeing that half his left hindleg was torn apart, a lot of small holes peppered into his leg and flank. “Papa...? C’mon Papa, we gotta go...”
    “Si.... Silent. Run! Now!” I saw an orange stallion and the same shotgun I saw from before floating in the same orange magic. The orange stallion had a horn from his forehead; a unicorn! I shook Papa another time but he didn’t move. “Papa...” I cried and turned around, running straight out the door. My vision was blurry and I couldn’t breathe.
    “Go get that colt before I beat you with your shotgun!” the sandpaper mare said.
    Hoofsteps followed my own, but I was a good distance ahead of him. I’ve always been proud of my speed, Mama said that it was my special talent, but I don’t think so. Sure I’m good at it, but I didn't want that for a cutie mark. I heard some more loud blasts, and the ground ahead of me kicked up dust while a few rocks shattered. I turned the opposite direction of the dust, but spun too quick and tripped over myself. I tasted dirt while I think my mouth was bleeding, as it was warm and full of stuff, besides the dirt and rocks I mean.  I looked up to see the orange stallion looking back at the grocery shop, squinting to get a clear look through my tear-filled eyes. I swear I would make sure he would pay for what he did to Papa!
    “Look boss, I got that lil’ colt! Ah did!” He started to turn back towards me, but a long wooden spear struck him through his back straight into the ground. His scream was silenced when another spear flew through the edge of my sight and pierced his throat. His body went still while staying upright from being impaled.
    I blinked a couple times to clear my eyes, getting a good look at the orange pony. Blood flowed from his body and crawled along the spear shaft into the ground, the other just having his blood drip off the metal head. There were three more ponies in front of the grocery shop, all wearing horrible red-stained armor cobbled together with scraps they found. I didn’t get to see anything more of them, a series of loud gunshots from multiple sources came from behind me, and I saw nothing but blood explode everywhere in the doorway.
    I just laid there for a minute, or an hour, I’m not sure which. I stared the entire time at the blood painted wall, doorway, and ground. Hoofsteps came up from behind me, and then more as two ponies, one white and the other grey, passed in front of me. How odd they were wearing nothing but a one big black necklace each.
    A hoarse male voice came from behind me, “Kid, are you alright? Where are your parents?” I didn’t even turn around to see who got my revenge for me, and just closed my eyes and cried more. I let my sobs be heard, not bothering to try and stop. I raised a hoof to the grocery shop, and just held it there. “Are they alive?” I just cried more.
    “Alright you ponies, loot the raiders and go inside to see if you can find his parents. If you do and they aren’t alive, take what you can and come back. You have your orders.”
    I lowered my hoof and curled up into a ball, just crying away the world as I let whoever found and saved me try and do the same for Mama and Papa. I stayed there crying, until my eyes found no more water to leak, and my breathing stopped coming in sobs. I just continued to lay there, never hearing that pony move away from me.
    The white pony, who I now noticed is a mare with a short light green mane, appeared in the doorway and stepped over the bodies on her way back over here. “Master, we found the colt’s parents.... I regret to inform you that they are no longer alive. The father died from a shotgun to the back and the mother from one bullet to the head. We gathered their belongings and found some medical supplies in a back room behind the counter.”
    “Good work Snow, where's Cup?”
    “He is gathering what else he can find in the place, shall I retrieve him?”
    “Do so, we have already wasted enough time with this incident.”
    Snow turned and trotted back to the store. I rolled over and looked up at my saviour, at least that’s what he did, save me. A very muscular pink stallion with a long cyan mane spiked in five spikes extending over three hoofs long. He looked down at me with angry cyan eyes, meeting my sight. “What’s your name.” It didn’t sound like a question.
    “Sil... Silent Step.”
    “Step, your parents are dead and you are coming with me. Follow.” He turned around and started walking. I looked around his large figure to see two wagons. One empty except for supplies and items, the other had two more ponies harnessed to the front and two armored ponies sitting in the back, each with an rifle of some kind. I got to my hooves and walked faster to catch up, still looking past him. The two pulling the wagon also had big black necklaces and wore nothing else. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I followed the pink stallion, keeping my sniffles to a minimum. I just looked down at the ground and trudged on.
* * *
    The two ponies that went into the store had come back and loaded up what they could find next to me, having stashed it all in Papa and Mama’s saddlebags. They hooked up to the front of the pink stallion’s wagon, and we set off with the other one. I just now noticed that it was no longer light out, though there is only so much light when there only clouds above. It was probably when that thing Mama said gave light to all of Equestria rested, but I’ve never seen such a thing.
    Ahh, my eyes itch really bad, I rubbed them with my left foreleg. I tried to cry some more but I couldn’t get any more tears to come out. I sniffed back some snot, only to realize I was really thirsty. I looked to my right to see the muscular pink stallion just sitting there, looking forward over the ponies that I had heard were called Snow and Cup as they pulled the wagon. They had put the stuff they got from my parents and the store in their saddlebags to my left. I scooted further back in the wagon to get a good wide space in front of me, before I pulled off my own saddlebags with some work, stupid buckles and straps.
    After a couple minutes I set my bags in front of me and glanced to the pink stallion. He was staring at me with a glare, but I was not sure if he was angry, or that was just how his face was. I started rifling through my bags to find any water.
    “What’s your name mister?” my voice came out raspy and sad. Did I really sound like that? My vision started to blur again as I remembered why I would.
    “Name is Blue Rose, I prefer Blue. What were you and your folks doing out there? Nevermind, what everypony does out in the wastes. Scavenging is the only way to live out here.”
    I counted out the things I had in my saddlebags, though it wasn’t much. Three bottles of purified water since my parents said the dirty stuff was very unhealthy, a pair of healing potions in case I got hurt and they weren’t near me, my sleeping blanket and a very hoofy pre-war multitool. The multitool was a bit bigger than my hoof, and had a bunch of things like a screwdriver, a little saw, a knife, a bottle cap and can opener, tweezers, scissors and a metal hoof file. I took out a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap before gulping half the bottle down.
    “Why did you save me?” my voice still sounding sad but the raspiness was mostly gone.
    “Raiders are bad news, even for us folk. Most are just too evil and crazy to even negotiate with, so when I saw you, I made a call. Was hoping for your parents too, but can not win them all.”
He turned away to look ahead again as I took another drink from the bottle, this time more slowly. I screwed the lid back on and put it back before putting my bags back on. I looked left a bit to my parents bags. I scooted towards them before getting a look from Blue. I looked from him to the saddlebags then back at him. He glanced at them, gave a grunt, and turned back forward.
    I pulled Mama’s bag to me first before opening it. I never knew what either of my parents carried with them, only that it was pretty much everything they could find of value. Some food and water along with a bunch of scraps and a long purple and black scarf. What the hay? I pulled the scarf out and unbundled it neatly. It was a scarf that was meant for an adult pony, a deep purple with a solid black stripe running lengthwise through the middle stopping just before bright silver initials ‘S.S.’
    My vision blurred really bad and my eyes started to sting. I slammed my eyes shut as I felt the tears roll down my cheeks. Was this meant for me soon, or when I became a grown up pony? I peeked out at the scarf only to shut my eyes again. Why did they have to leave me alone? So many questions I could never answer, or hear them call my name again. I wrapped the scarf around my neck three times so as to not let it drag on the ground. I felt the warmth of the cloth as I thought about how I wouldn't feel theirs again. My neck was a little stiff from it but that was a minor thing compared to wearing it.
    I wiped my eyes before closing the bags and pushing them back to Papa’s. I looked at Blue and saw him staring at me with his usual scowl, but slightly lessened. I wasn't sure of what to think about it as I scooted to the front of the wagon, and stared out into the empty wasteland full of trees that couldn’t get any deader and rocks and dirt that filled every other spot the trees didn’t.
* * *
    An hour, or what I thought was an hour, passed. The dim light that was there before completely vanished, leaving only dark night and cold air. I thought that traveling at night was a reckless and dangerous thing to do.
    “Alright ponies, this is tonight’s camp ground. Snow and Cup will make the fire and food while Shine and Bang will make the tents.” Blue ordered. I guess he thought it was stupid to continue further. He turned to me, “Step, go wait at the campfire for dinner.” and walked over to his two friends in the other wagon. At least I thought they were friends, why else would they travel together?
    I hopped down off the wagon and walked over to where Snow was placing some dry blackened wood in the middle of a ring of rocks she gathered for a campfire. She blew her light green mane out of her face and looked at me with a smile, and then suddenly looked very sad. A couple of hoofs to her left was a grey stallion with a long dirty yellow mane unpacking a couple of unlabeled metal cans, I think Blue called him Cup.
    I sat down near the not yet on fire campfire and watched Snow work. Every piece of wood or two she would glance at me before returning to her work. I looked around the camp, flanking the wagons were two blue tents on each side. A red stallion with a short yellow mane on the left, and a green stallion with a buzz-cut brown mane on the right. Both were setting up their own pair of tents.
    Blue was talking with his two friends who looked very much alike, each a tan coat and blue mane on one side of their face but opposite sides than each other. They wore black leather barding with some insignia I couldn’t see clearly on the chest. They didn’t seem to wear those black metal necklaces everypony else was wearing.
    “Sorry about the loss of your parents. Being orphaned is never an easy thing”
    I turned back to see Snow talking to me. She picked up the lighter that was at her hooves and lit the black wood, it came to life in an instant. I tried to speak but my throat choked. After a moment I cleared my throat to try again.
    “It’s hard to believe they’re dead... it doesn’t seem all too real. I was with Mama and Papa just this morning and now...” my throat choked up again as I stared at the ground hard enough to burn holes with sheer willpower.
    I felt a hoof on my shoulder as the clang of cans that were set down. I looked up to see a grey face with yellow eyes looking at me.
     “It’s alright little guy, at least you ain’t dead right?”
    Snow walked over and jabbed who I believe to be named Cup in the side. “Why would you think to say that to a recently orphaned child?”
    “Because,” Cup looked over at Snow, “Reality is harsh and ain’t no use lyin’ or softenin’ up the truth to the kid.” He turned his gaze back at me, “Name’s Suction Cup, but I prefer Cup.”
    “Suction... Cup?”
    “Haha, yeah well, my folks always said they done borned me with a toilet plunger. Not sure if that’s true or not, but they died before they ever told me so.”
    “My name’s Silent Step. It’s a pleasure to meet y’all.”
    Snow and Cup glanced at each other before both looking at me with warm smiles. I’m not sure why they did but it made me feel a bit happier inside.
    “Pleasure to meet you too, Silent. This here is Snow Leaf,” he pointed his hoof at the white earth pony, “and those two making the tents are Bang and Shine. Red stallion the former, and green stallion is the latter. This whole camp here seems to be earth ponies. Where’s a unicorn when ya need one?”
    I looked around slowly, realizing what he said was true. Where are the unicorns? There was always a unicorn here or there, at least as much as earth ponies are.
    “Just prepare the food before Master decides you are being forgetful, or worse, lazy.” Snow walked over and sat down next to me with her job finished. Cup sat down and started to use a can opener attached to his hoof with a black strap to open the cans of food. The question seemed to eat at me for some reason now that I was talking to them.
    “Why does everypony except those over there,” I nodded over to Blue Rose and the twins, “have those big metal necklaces?”
    Both Snow and Cup seem to freeze as soon as I finished asking. Cup just slowly turned his head and looked at me with a really sad looking face. I looked up to Snow and she shared his expression. There was an awkward moment of silence before Snow broke it.
    “You don’t know? About who we are and what these are?” she tapped the collar lightly as Cup winced when her hoof connected with the metal. I just shook my head. She looked in Cup’s direction and then met my eyes with a serious look.
    “Do not ask Master Blue about these collars or about us, understand? It’s very important that you understand this.”
    “Uhh... yes ma'am, I understand.” I started to look at the ground again, feeling like I just asked a bad question. A old can of beans was pushed out in front of my face by a grey hoof. I looked up to see Cup smiling at me.
    “Eat up, kid. After today, you must be starving!”
    My stomach suddenly felt like an empty pit and flies were buzzing around inside, making the sounds coming from my gut. I momentarily forgot my manners as I picked up the can with both hooves and shoved my muzzle in the can, devouring all the contents. Cup chuckled as he resumed his job.
    After a minute of various gurgling noises, and nearly choking on my food, I finished eating. The can clanked on the ground as I dropped it, contents consumed by my feeding frenzy.
    “Step, over here.” I looked over to the leftmost tent where Blue was standing. I got to my hooves and trotted over to him. He towered over me by, I think, five times my height. He opened the tent flap with a hoof and gestured inside.
    “You will go to sleep inside, then I will wake you in the morning when we leave for town. We will arrive there tomorrow.”
    I looked back to the campfire to see my new friends watching me, then walked into the tent. Blue let the tent close up, darkness invading what had been the small light from the fire outside. I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out my thick brown blanket with my mouth, setting it down on the ground. My body got very heavy as my vision swayed, making a dull thump as I impacted the cushioned ground. Curling up into a ball, I pulled my scarf over my face to hide more tears that came from my eyes, and to muffle my sobs. As I had done all day, I remembered my parent’s smiles and love as I cried until my throat burned and my eyes felt crusty. I drifted off into a dreamful sleep, where maybe I would meet Mama and Papa again. I’m not sure what I had dreamed that night, but I remember it made me happy.
* * *
    “Silent... Silent...” the voice in a controlled whisper from above me. “Silent...”
    My eyes slowly opened as feeling in my body returned traveling from my chest to my hooves. I looked around groggily, but didn’t see anypony. I closed my eyes again ready to drift back to sleep.
    “Silent... get up. You have to leave at once.”
    Why would somepony wake me up after the day I just had? I sighed, opened my eyes, and took a good look around after my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the tent. I was met with a very big pair of lime green eyes.
    “Ahh! ...Snow? Wha-”
    “Silent, you have to leave. This is not a safe place, nor is it a good one. Pack your things and go. Do not let anypony see which direction you go. Hurry” Snow looked as calm as she normally was, but her voice was a panicked whisper.
    I gathered up my blanket, stuffed it into my saddlebags, strapped them on, and tightened my scarf around my neck ready to go. “What do you mean? You ponies saved me, how can that not be good?”
    “No, this is not a good place, and these are not good ponies. At least the ponies who are not wearing these,” Snow tapped her right forehoof on the bulky black metal collar.
    “Why?” I started walking toward the tent entrance.
    “Because th-”
    Blue’s voice outside barreled  through the blue cloth entrance, “Because the ponies wearing them are slaves, and they have no freedom.” Snow shrank into the corner as Blue walked into the tent.
    I looked up at Blue and something struck me as odd.  I looked at Snow, she was cowering in the corner while looking straight at Blue. I turned back and realized what it was, Blue wasn’t scowlingm instead he looked slightly pleased.
    “Snow, why are you trying to make Step leave, even though I saved his life?”
    Snow’s calm was broken and she started looking for a way past Blue. “Master, I.. I am truly sorry. I, um, I have to-”
    “That was not an answer, Snow.” Blue smiled at her like Mama did when she caught me snacking secretly.
    “Please forgive me! Please...” Snow collapsed onto the ground and covered her face with her forelegs, shivering. Blue looked back at me. I was really confused, what was going on? What does he mean by no freedom?
    “Uh, Mister Blue? What do you mean by no freedom? What are those collars?” I saw Snow start to really shake after I asked that.
    “Why, Step, these collars,” Blue walked over to Snow slowly before tapping his hoof on the collar, “are bombs that will explode if anypony that is wearing them get a certain distance away from me. Why, let me give you an example. Snow, would you walk outside.” It wasn’t a question.
    Snow’s eyes started to water as she stood up and walked out of the tent. Blue and I followed, walking to the edge of the camp. Snow looked back, her face soaked with tears but not a sound came from her.
    “Snow, continue walking straight ahead until I say to stop. Now Step, there is a meaning to the collars and what they symbolize to other ponies.” Snow took a couple of steps forward, spots on the ground darkened even more as she passed them.
    “Mister Blue, what is she doing? What’s goin’ on?” I looked from him to Snow walking further away.
    “Step, listen to me. What she did, asking you to leave, was not her place nor was it her right. There is an order and she failed to follow it.” When Snow was what I think is fifty hoofs away, I heard a beep.
    “Master Blue?” Snow stopped in her tracks as another beep came from her direction. Her voice sounded worried.
    “Keep going forward, my dear. I have not told you to stop.” Snow started walking again as the beeping got louder and faster paced.
    “What’s happenin’ Mister Blue? Why is it beeping?” I felt like I knew the answer but I didn’t want to think about it.
    “Step, is it not obvious?” Snow was roughly a hundred hoofs away, almost the entire length of our camp. “Well then, Snow? Continue”
    Snow continued walking, I could no longer see her face clearly and all I heard was that beeping. I looked to Blue and he was smiling wildly with a pleased look on his face. I turned back to Snow. I knew what was happening, but it couldn’t really be true!
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeBANG
    A flash of light and an explosion that wasn’t all that loud sounded out from Snow as her head disappeared. Small chunks of meat with white and green hair littered the area around her as her once white body now stained with dark red. Her corpse took another step, as if she didn’t realize she was dead, before falling forward with a sick wet thud.
    “Snow, stop. See there, Step, that is what happens when you do not obey the rules. The beeping is a warning, and it is all you get. Now go back to sleep.” Blue said with finality as he turned around and headed back to his tent next to mine.
    I just stared ahead as Snow’s headless corpse, dyed red with her blood, a pool starting beneath her. I started to cry without making a sound, as she did. Not once did she make a noise to give her murderer any more joy than what he was getting. My stomach tightened, my head got dizzy, and I vomited all of the beans I had previously onto my forehooves. The last thing I remember before passing out on the spot was how beans are pretty tasteless on the way back up.
* * *
    Sounds of ponies moving around and wood and metal shifting ended my rather poor sleep. My fur around my chest felt grimy with a rather nasty smell. I still didn’t want to open my eyes to get up, but a sharp pain of somepony stepping on my tail decided otherwise. I yelped and looked up through blurry dry eyes to see the Cup looming over me.
    “Get up runt, and go take down your tent.” he hissed.
    “Whuh, Cup? Why di.. what’s goin’ on?” my brain decided not to fully function this morning. I couldn’t blame it, the previous day really sucked. He stepped down on my tail again as to prove a point I didn’t get.
    “Goddesses, do you even realize what happened? Snow died! DIED, because she decided to try and help the poor foal who had his parents killed.”
    The haze around my reality lifted, and crashed into me at top speed. My eyes snapped open as I looked around in a circle before spotting a red and white mound in the distance. Oh Celestia, they couldn’t even get her body without ending up like that themselves.
    “But Cup, I didn’t cause...” I took a moment to take in what he said. Why Snow was dead was clear, Blue had made it so. I looked down averting Cup’s eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that would happen.”
    “That doesn’t bring back my marefriend, now does it? She was here the longest of all of us. It’s a simple slave life under Blue as long as you don’t fuck him over. I... I just don’t know why she did it, the wasteland ain’t easy on nopony. It isn’t something new.”
    He lifted his hoof off my tail and just walked away, to resume whatever he was doing before this I guess. I watched him leave, feeling sorry for him and Snow, but it still wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for help because I didn’t even know I needed it. Stupid ponies and their emotions. I stood up and looked at my legs and chest. Ugh, I was covered with my own dried vomit. I brushed most of it off my chest, but couldn’t scrape it good enough off of my legs. Whatever, a bit of grime wasn’t as bad as the ache my body was feeling because I slept on hard rock and dirt.
    I trotted my way back over to my tent, scraping whatever dried vomit I could against large rocks on my way while stretching my aching muscles, and arrived at my blue tent. Now how did this thing even stand up? I took a peek inside and saw a familiar looking pair on metal rods on each side in the middle. So those hold it up, huh, well that’s easily fixed. I backed out, faced my rear to the entrance-side metal pole, and bucked. The pole tilted as the shock came back into my legs, forcing me to fall to the ground with a thud. I stood up and looked at it. It still stood firm even at an angle, oh wait, it’s stuck into the ground. No wonder!
    I climbed to the top end of the tilted pole, and start to shift my weight up and down to make it fall, succeeding after a few tries. Hooray! I went ahead and did the same thing to the other pole, and soon had my tent down. I walked to the corners, pulled the stakes out of the ground, packed the tent in a bundle with the stuff set by it, and walked to find Blue.
    Even though I knew Blue killed Snow, and it was his fault, I still had to think it was mostly Snow’s fault for even trying. She must’ve known what would happen. Best put that out of my mind, it wasn’t helping me at all. I glanced back to my tent to see Bang gather up the stuff and continue on. I wonder if he and Shine hated me for it, I didn’t really talk to them at all.  I found Blue sitting down sharpening his javelins while talking to one of the armored twins next to side of one of the wagons. I stopped just as I started to hear them talking.
    “...the wagon now? What was the oh so important reason you had to go and kill one of the slaves Blue? GAH! What are we going to do, rather what are YOU going to do about this?”  He looked really angry, so much I thought he was foaming at the mouth.
    “Apricot, she disobeyed my rules and I have a no tolerance policy for this. I don’t abuse or mistreat my merchandise and they don’t have to starve as long as they remember who is in charge. I liked Snow, I did, but if I just waved this incident by it wouldn’t be good for my reputation.” Blue continued sharpening his javelins metal head without looking at Apricot.
    “That does NOT solve th-” Blue interrupted him.
    “The wagon problem is easily fixed. Either you or your brother can pull it with Cup. I’ll pay whichever one a bonus on top of your share for the supplies profits. Sounds fair, no?”
    Apricot just looked disgusted as if the thought of pulling a wagon next to a slave was just unbelievable. “Us? Why don’t you pull it, since you went and killed the slave for some petty reason.”
    Blue froze in place as soon as the last word entered his ears. His scowl darkened as he stood up to his impressive full height, which was a head taller than the tan earth pony next to him. Apricot seemed to regret his statement just a bit, or he was just scared with good reason.
    “Petty? I’ll let that slide for now, but are you really suggesting that I do something that you wouldn’t? No, these are my wagons and my slaves, and you do not tell me what to do. I like to believe I’m fair, so suggest your price for either of you to pull the wagon.”
    Apricot backed up a couple steps before erasing the cowardice on his face, and met Blue’s look with his own blue eyes. “200 caps, and I’ll pull it. No less, because we should get going soon. Non-negotiable.”
    “Alright,” Blue walked over to a couple of large bags in the back of the wagon, and pulled out two small brown cloth bags that jingled as he carried them. With a fling of his head they landed right at Apricot’s hooves. “I’ll give it upfront just so we can move on.”
    Apricot grabbed the bags in his mouth, and quickly trotted back to his brother who was in the other wagon. Blue walked over to me, and yelled, “We are leaving in ONE minute, so get ready.” He hopped up onto the wagon and motioned for me to climb up, so I did.
    I didn’t even think about how Snow’s death would affect everything like this. Had Blue known or was he just not concerned at the time? Bang and Shine hooked up to the other wagon with, I think, Apricot’s brother sitting in it. I can’t tell them apart, but the other twin hooked up to our wagon with Cup, and we set off.
    I looked up to Blue who was just staring out ahead like he always did. I just had to ask, it just itched my mind to think about it. I needed an answer even if I didn’t like it.
    “Mister Blue... why did you have Snow walk out there? No, I know why you did, it’s because she broke them rules. Did you know stuff would go badly because of it? I don’t understand.”
    He just turned his head and looked at me with his usual scowl, and sighed. “I was not thinking about it, I’ll admit,” he shot a glance at the twin pulling our wagon, "It was a waste of caps, but that doesn’t mean I regret it.”
    He turned back ahead and we sat in silence. It was a waste of caps? I guess he means he bought her, or was she worth caps to sell, I don’t know. This was all confusing, why do ponies hurt each other? I bundled my scarf up tighter and just sat there looking over the dead land and cloudy skies. Mama, Papa and now Snow. I would like to think today would be better, that it can’t be any worse than yesterday. I fought back the tears that were coming up. No! I had to be strong, now that nopony was there to be strong for me. I didn't know much about the wasteland other than the basics of what my parents taught me. They always did the scary stuff, but now I wish they hadn’t hid me from it. I... I was just so lost. The sound of wagon wheels and pony hooves treading dirt and rocks filled the air as time passed on.
* * *
    The light of day changed from the dim orange haze of the morning to the bright glory of the early afternoon as we traveled across the wasteland. I stayed silent for the rest of the trip, not wanting to bother anypony pulling the wagons. The twin who was pulling my wagon seemed far more exhausted than Cup did. I doubted he did that kind of thing often, but didn’t dare laugh or it might be my turn to pull. I gulped at the thought of even trying to move Blue, let alone him and a wagon full of stuff.
    “I can see it from here, it is only a short ways now.” Blue informed everypony else. I looked to ahead in the distance to see what looked like a town. It looked like somepony took a whole yard of old train cars and made a barricade, and then built walls and buildings behind that barricade with even more train cars. I could only imagine what it took to move one of those, probably some fancy magic or a team of earth ponies. I’ve never been to this town before, so I started to ask Blue what it was.
    “We should be at New Appleloosa in an hour,” Blue answered before I even opened my mouth. I stared at the town in the distance. I wondered how many ponies lived there, was it a nice place? Did it have another kids around my age? My sadness got swept away by these thoughts of excitement and curiosity of a place I had never been. Adjusting my posture into one more comfortable, we marched onward. Figuratively speaking, of course, since I was sitting in the wagon.
* * *
    “State your business in New Appleloosa.”
    Three leather barded sentries stood at the entrance gate of the town. The pony speaking was a brown unicorn mare with a red tail, as her mane was hidden under a leather cap. Both wagons stood side by side in front of a large fenced gate between two stacks of rusted colored train cars three cars high. You would have to be able to fly to get over it without going through the gate. Blue turned toward the guard.
    “We wish to sell our wares and purchase any supplies we require. Is that all?” He didn’t change his normal angry sounding voice at all. I was almost glad, seeing him out out of his usual personality was not something I wanted to be around for.
    The guard looked over our wagons, at the necklaces of the slaves, and waved us through. I thought slavery was a bad thing, why were they ignoring it? I didn’t even think what kind of town this would've been, though looking back it was the type of town that Blue and his friends were willingly going to.
    As the wagons were pulled into the town I was greeted with a view of civilization. Ponies were walking around the street and talking up merchants at their own carts and such. It didn’t have the look of an evil town at all, so maybe it wasn’t? Blue hopped off the wagon as the slaves unharnessed themselves and the twin struggled to, looking like he was about to pass out. His brother, who I was still not sure which one was which, went over to help him.
    “Step, I am going to give you a choice almost nopony else would,” Blue appeared in front of me. Hadn’t he just been on the other side? ”You can stay here in this town and try to live, or you can come with me. I won’t be your parent, or a guardian. You will take care of yourself and earn your place. You will do that in anyway here, but would you rather do it alone or with me? I’ll give you until we leave to make a decision, I am going to go do my business around town.”
    He took some bags from the cart, more than I could've even dragged. “Shine, watch the carts. Bang, you’re with me,” and they walked off. A group of four ponies stared at Blue from a corner of a building, all armed and with armor. I dug into my saddlebags and pulled out the half-empty purified water bottle, unscrewing the top and drinking the rest. I put the empty bottle back in my bags and hopped off the cart.
    Blue’s offer was a solid one. I could try and make it on my own, but that sounded a lot harder than just working for Blue. I don’t think he would make me wear a collar if he was giving me this choice now. I wonder why he was even offering? I couldn’t see him in an evil way, even if he was a slaver and got Snow killed. I walked over to the green stallion with shortly cut mane.
    “Um... hey, Shine, right?” He nodded, “My parents just kinda died, and I’m really confused. Blue said I could stay here or work for him, but I’m not really that sure what to do. I know you might not care, but could you tell me what you think?”
    Shine just stared at me for a minute, thinking I guess, or maybe he just didn’t talk. “I’m not sure, kid. You saw what happened to Snow, not that I blame you for it. Blue is pretty good to us slaves, unlike... well, just about every other slaver. However, if you break his rules, there is no second chance. I have worked for him for what I can count as seven months. If you decide to go your own way, you could probably make it. Do some odd jobs around town or try it out in the wastes. That’s my advice.”
    “Oh, okay...” As much as that helped, it still didn’t seem like I had a good choice. “Why would Blue even give me a choice? Not that I don’t appreciate it, ya know?”
    Shine just shrugged, “I guess he isn’t the most vicious bastard in the wasteland or has a soft spot for kids, either way you should think about it. Don’t think your life is at the bottom of the barrel. It can always get worse, so take what you can.”
    “Thanks for listening, Shine. I really appreciate it.” I tightened my scarf so it didn’t drag on the ground much, and walked over to a random building on the left side of the street. It was a large box train car with railing extending from both sides to show the entrance side. It was faded blue and brown, covered in rust and other various stuff I couldn’t identify or even want to know. I walked up to the wooden door that was put in a spot where metal was cut out with a torch or magic, and opened up to walk through.
    A big sign in the back read ‘Blossom’s Brutal Weaponry’ behind a counter where a purple and red maned mare stood. Weapons of all kind were stacked and pinned to the sides of the store, hanging in various manners. Boxes of bullets were by the counter side, organized by what kind they were. I walked around the store, inspecting different items. My parents never let me have a weapon before, always choosing to just tell me to go and hide. Well they weren’t here anymore and it was up to me to keep myself safe.
    “Hey runt, not that I wouldn’t sell you a weapon, but do ya even have any caps?” the mare who I would guess is Blossom asked from behind her register.
    “I have a couple, how much does a weapon cost?”
    She facehoofed. I guess it was way more than I had. “Okay, whatever. Just don’t be touchin’ anythin’ or I’ll go over there and brand your blank flank a thief.”
    I nodded and went back to looking around. Assault rifles of different kinds and conditions were next to a stack of boxy black pistols. Scopes of different sizes were over by the counter on a table. Everything that seemed that you could probably steal quickly was all placed by the owner herself. I walked to the mouthheld weaponry, eyeing this very large hammer. The card on the crushed my hopes of ever owning it.
Super Sledge
320 caps
“One hit to end your troubles”
    I spent another hour or so browsing the shop, asking Blossom every so often about the weapons. She seemed pleased to inform me about how they work, what kind of ammo types they can use, and especially the details of what happens when you use them. After she went into great detail about this time she used the super sledge on a raider, I had a mix of awe and disgust for the weapon, not that I could've hoped to lift it.
    I waved goodbye to Blossom as I exited her store since I couldn’t buy anything. Blue was outside putting bags into his wagon, with everypony returned except the twins. I approached the wagon to tell Blue I was going to work for him. He did save my life and didn’t seem that bad, at least he wasn’t worse. I got up to him and opened my mouth to speak.
    A thunderous bang exploded from somewhere, echoing throughout the town. My vision went red as Blue’s head was ripped apart by an unseen force, sending his blood into my eyes. I had a wet bitter taste in my mouth, and spat it out to see even more red. Eww, I had Blue in my mouth. With another echoing bang Blue’s stomach ruptured and his guts were sent everywhere, including all over me. The smell was foul and fresh, as sick at that sounds. I relieved my stomach of what little contents it had all over my forehooves, again.
    Why is everypony dying around me? I wiped my eyes with my puke-covered hoof only to get clearer vision with a bad stinging sensation, making them tear up. I looked around, and saw both the twins on top of a train car building further down the street, and could see a big black rifle with a long barrel pointed in our direction. Why did they shoot him? Revenge for pulling the wagon, or some other reason I probably didn't know.. Shine and Bang both hid behind their wagon as Cup ran toward me.
    “Get out of the way!” he ran to Blue’s headless and destroyed corpse, rummaging around in his saddlebags and barding. I turned to run when another explosive bang rang out, a spot of earth becoming a small hoof-sized crater next to Cup. I looked back to where I saw the twins and saw the four armored ponies from before with their weapons in mouth and magic, firing upon the brothers on top the building.
    My mind was racing in confusion and terror, and I think I wet myself at some point as I climbed on top the wagon Blue put some bags on. They were big for me, normal for an adult pony, but I was confident I could carry them. Don’t let it be said an earth pony couldn’t pull his own weight, and many times more. Before I picked them up I spotted my parents pair of saddlebags still sitting on top of each other in a bundle. More emotions entered my already fragile state of mind, why did this have to happen? I ran to them, grabbed them with my mouth and tossed them on my back, and hopped off the wagon.
    I looked over to see two of the armored ponies lying in pools of their own blood, the other two behind some carts and boxes firing back. Only one twin seemed to still be alive on the roof, but it was only a guess. Who were those ponies and why did they fight? Argh, this wasn’t the time for my questioning mind! More ponies were coming out into the street to see the spectacle, even though a stray bullet would be the last thing they see. What was it about violence that ponies seemed to be drawn to? I weaved between the legs of taller and older ponies before reaching the tall fenced gate.
    The gate was open, letting a cart of random stuff I didn’t get a good look at pulled by a single unicorn. I ran through the opening and turned to my right sharply, sliding on the grounding as I took off into the wasteland. I didn’t care if I was on my own, or anything else. So much bad things have happened in such a short time, I just wanted to be away from it. My run turned into a sprint as I pumped all my strength into my legs. Running was fun, it was easy, and it cleared my mind and didn’t make me think about the past days or the future. I closed my eyes, which is normally dangerous when sprinting with all your strength, but I didn’t care.
    The light of the day disappeared, letting the darkness overtake the land. I kept running until my legs gave out and my body ached. I slowed down to a crawl before dropping on the spot. I smelled rotten and my whole body shivered. My scarf felt so very wrong, my mind screamed to clean it. I opened my eyes a crack to see a flash of light from behind me. I glanced back and saw what I would have never thought I would’ve saw. My cutie mark! A brilliant silver horseshoe with with a single bright white wing on my tail's side on my dark blue flank. Happiness overpowered my sad and horror leaving me in a blissful state as I closed my eyes again, to let my mind have a rest from an awful couple days.
Footnote: Level Up
Skill Note: Sneak 50
New Perk: Silent Running: Your speed of movement and armor/item weight do not affect your sneaking.
Strength - 8
Perception - 5
Endurance - 7
Charisma - 5
Intelligence - 6
Agility - 6
Luck - 3
((A/N: Huge thanks to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria universe, and shout out to all other side-fics of FoE. You folks are awesome! Any and all feedback is welcome and wanted.))

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                       Prologue Two                        
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Prologue Two
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Prologue Two
“Quite pleased to make your acquaintance actually... for now. Let's get the other bit of politeness taken care of, shall we? What the bloody, bloody, bloody hell are you doing here?!”
    Small rocks tumbled down as I climbed my way up steep hill standing high in the middle of the dead landscape, it being the only land high enough to get a good view of the land. I had been out on my own for a day now, with a couple more days of food and water with me, but I would've rather not run out before I find anypony else.
    I reached the top of the dirt hill and viewed the land. Most of it was the normal, long dead burnt trees, cracked dry ground littered with rocks, and the destroyed furniture and items of the pre-war era. Wait, was that? I saw something in the distance, maybe another day on hoof to reach. It looked like a huge building, perhaps more of a compound, with a tall fence around the entirety of it. I couldn’t get a real good look from here, but hope swelled inside me.
    I started to climb my way back down carefully, slipping down would not end well. The last few days really sucked, losing my parents and then the only other ponies I knew. I reached the ground, and stroked my purple and black scarf Mama made for me. I would be strong, if not for myself, then so my parents wouldn’t have to meet me so soon in the afterlife. I wasn’t sure if there was anything after death, but Papa told me the Goddesses saved our souls after we die, so we could spend the rest of eternity with others in peace.
    I turned around in the direction the building was, and headed toward it. Today’s clouds were brighter than usual, the air hotter than it was yesterday. Sweat covered my body, making my fur sticky and letting any dust and dirt hitch a ride on me. I was used to my own smell, but I could only wonder if it was as bad as I thought. I stood still for a moment and shook violently, trying to fling any of it off. I succeeded in only making my fur very uneven and my mane tangled and messy.
    I walked over to the nearest flat rock, sat down, and started rifling through my saddlebags. I took all the junk and items from my parents bags I had and stuffed them in mine, the other bags neatly packed away in one bag in case anything happened to my own. I was raised to never throw things away, because anything I would was worth something to somepony else. Hah, found an old metal comb! I took it out, and slipped on the brown leather strap it came with to secure it to your hoof. Now I might not be a vain pony, but I loved my mane. I’m not sure why I kept it as long as I did, maybe because I hated manecuts, but I like to believe it was good look for me. I spent a couple minutes combing it out straight and getting most of the grime out, then did the same with my tail before putting it back and continuing on.
    The light of the afternoon slowly darkened to night as I finally reached my destination. A very tall chain link fence, barbed wire spiraled along the top, stretched around the entire compound. An even taller stone building sat behind it, a prison to keep ponies in, or a headquarters to keep them out, I’m not sure which. Sentry towers stood at each corner, but I couldn’t see anypony up there through the night’s darkness.
    I walked along the fence, looking for a gate or entrance of some kind. This place didn’t seem very friendly, but I couldn’t just judge that by the outer look. It could be a safe fortress held by civilized ponies, or full of dangers. I wasn’t in a position to choose, the only other option was wandering the wasteland with little supplies and no way to protect myself for sure.
    I turned left at the corner of the fence, and was greeted with a wide open area full of rocks. Not the normal rocks of outside, but these were clusters of big rocks stuck in weird formations inside the fence. What were they doing, some form of art? Maybe they were farming rocks, hah, like you could even do that. I walked all the way down this side, still with no sight of anypony. Maybe they were all sleeping, it was the middle of the night.
    I turned left again, ending up on the opposite side I first arrived on. Turns out, this was the entrance side, further down a pair of ponies were standing guard over the fenced gate. Lamps that hung from the top of the gate poles on each side lit up the area around them. The guards were wearing rather clean armor and weapons, they didn’t look like crazed raiders. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a small hole in the bottom of the fence next to me, just the size I could squeeze through.
    They could be civilized ponies that would welcome me inside, or they could be bad ponies and want to kill me, or worse. Over the last few days, I haven’t been shown any real reason to trust others, but trespassing might break any trust I would have had. Ugh, this sucks. I looked back and forth between the guards and the hole, why did a hole have to be there to tempt me?
    Alright, I’ll sneak in, see what kind of place it is, and sneak out. If it’s a nice place, then I would obviously go and ask for safety, otherwise I would run and take my chances out in the wasteland. I crouched down low, stomach touching the ground, and started to crawl through the opening. A couple of rocks and sharp metal ends of the torn chain link scratched against my hide. I’m sure maybe only one or two actually drew any blood, but I couldn’t see to check. As I was almost through, my saddlebags snagged on the fence, rattling it slightly. I froze. Did anypony hear that? Oh goddesses, I reached back and pushed the snagged part of the bags off the metal, then hurried through. I jumped to my hooves, and ran silently across the open yard, weaving between the large rocks. My heart beating loud in my ears, I glanced over my shoulder to see that nopony went to check out the sound. I slowed down and let out a sigh of relief.
    “Who’s there?” an angry sounding mare called out ahead of me.
    I dove behind the largest rock near me, and balled up. A light shown against the rock, casting a shadow out in front of me. It stayed for a moment before moving like a searchlight along the field, looking for any signs of intruders. I held my forehooves over my mouth to prevent me from making any sound or breath.
    After what seemed like forever, the light disappeared from view. I let down my hooves to peek over the rock. A bright lavender unicorn mare had a searchlight shining from her horn. Magic, why must you be my enemy? I mentally sighed, not wanting a repeat mistake, and started sneaking to where the mare had just been. When I reached the corner, I looked around it to see her at the further end with her back to me. A slightly open door was right next to me. She must have came through it, but what kind of unicorn wouldn’t close a door properly? I hurried around, pushed it open quietly, and went in. I made sure to put it the same way it had been, a door suddenly being closed would probably be suspicious.
    Inside was a long stone walled hallway with what used to be a white tiled floor. It looked like somepony defiled the place, then another tried to clean it up. The aging effects didn’t seem to help the appearance at all. I started to walk forward, but stopped after a couple steps. My dang hooves clopped on the tile, that wasn’t sneaky at all! Clearly I was going to have to solve this problem in the future, if I had one. I tried my best to walk silently, but could only manage to muffle the sounds with soft, slow hoofsteps.
    I spent the next half hour, or so I assume, wandering the same looking hallways and doors. Maybe everypony really was sleeping? I finally saw doors different from the others, a faintly glowing sign above reading ‘Shattered Hoof Employee Lounge’. There were pair of metal doors, a window in each above me, higher than what I could see through. I heard sounds of a lot of ponies from inside cheering, laughing, yelling, and other various sounds. I don’t know what I should’ve done, but curiosity got the best of me, and I opened them.
    Inside was a large stone room, with a different style of tiled floor. Magical lamps were posted around the area. It had burnt and broken tables littered along the walls of the room, stripped for what usable materials one could get. A giant circular dirt pit was dug in the middle of the floor, broken and pulled up tile on the edges of it. I think what was salvaged from the tables were built into two sets of bleachers, sitting on opposite sides of each other. Many ponies, filling out the bleachers, were looking joyful or angry and all having a fun time. The pit was too deep for me to see what was inside, but I heard noises coming from it.
    What’s going on, I wasn’t sure, but I noticed only a couple ponies actually had any weapons. I kept to the shadowed walls, trying to see what was inside the pit. I crept to the side of a set of bleachers to get a better view.
    A colt and a filly were inside the pit on opposite ends of the pit. A teal colt and a bright green mane, a single white stripe ran through it, stood on one side of the pit. A long thin scar ran along the side of his body, a pink filly with a short purple mane on the other. The filly seemed to be starved, her ribs showing sickly, while the colt was in a slightly healthier condition. The cheers from the crowd roared in my ears.
    What the hay was this? Well I know what it looked like, a child fight arena, but who would think of something so cruel? This was sick, but for some strange reason I continued to watch. Random cheers came from the crowd, asking them to do cruel things to each other. A dark brown unicorn walked to the edge of the pit, wearing a old worn suit and dusty pair of shades.
    “On this side we have Berry Blitz,” he said, motioning to the colt panting against the wall, his eyes were dashing around at the ponies cheering in the bleachers. “and on this side we have Peach. She doesn't look so good folks, I would put my money on Blitz to take this one.” the stallion exclaimed, causing the crowd to surge.
    “Now kids, whoever wins this gets to eat a dinner that isn’t rotten slop.” he finished, tossing a knife into the middle of the arena. The crowd roared again, was this entertaining to them? I leaned forward to get a better view inside of the pit.
   The two foals stood frozen in place, staring at the knife. After a moment Berry dashed for the knife while Peach was still looking at it, not seeing him approach. When she seemed to notice, Berry had already grabbed the knife in mouth, and backpedaled away. Panic filled her face as she struggled to even walk around, trying to get a good distance away from her enemy.
    “Just tell them you give up,” Berry pleaded. It sounded more of an offering than a threat.
    “I can’t! If I don’t eat today, I don’t think I’ll wake up tomorrow...” Peach’s eyes started to water.
   “I’m sorry.” Berry said with a sigh. He looked down, and a moment later he was dashed across the dirt floor. It didn't take long since Peach wasn't able to move very quickly to avoid him. Oh goddesses, I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes.
    The sound of the other ponies seemed to quiet down. Wait, did something happen? I opened my eyes back up to take a peek, only to see the opposite bleachers all looking at me. Oh crap.
    “Hey fellas, look what we got here!” a voice yelled from behind me. I turned to see the same brown unicorn from earlier standing behind me. “Seems we have a new challenger! Place your bets now, things just got more interesting!” A hoof struck my flank, shoving me into the pit.
    Oh damn, this was so very bad. Why had I stayed to watch this stupid fight? I looked at the starved filly and the colt with the knife. Wait, did that knife have a hooked blade? What the... I do not want to be anywhere near that.  I backed up until my rear hit the dirt wall.
    “Hey, can we not do this?” I asked the other kids. They had to be sensible, right? Both of them were looking straight at me, Berry standing a couple hoofs away from Peach.
    “Two versus one? Well it isn't the first time,” Berry said, a hint of pride in his voice. Has he done this before? I looked to Peach, she was sneaking up behind him. When she was right next to him, her stomach made this horribly loud gurgling noise. Blitz’s smirk faded, and he bucked straight backwards, hooves connecting with her face. I wouldn’t say it was the best buck I’ve ever seen, but when you’re starved and weak, it didn’t need to be. Peach’s head snapped back, tossing her to her back. Berry looked at the brown unicorn behind me, as if waiting for something.
    “No mercy, finish her.” the unicorn said flatly.
    Berry turned around, walked over to her with knife still in his mouth, and slit her throat. I was too scared that even my words came out after it was already too late. “No... wait!” Peach convulsed and choked, before she stopped moving as blood pooled around her head. Oh goddesses, what had I gotten into?
    Berry backed off of the dead filly’s body, and headed back to where he was previously. He dropped the knife at his hooves, and sat down against the wall with a sad look. I was both stunned and terrified, I had never seen another kid get killed, let alone by colt! My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. Shakily, I tightened my scarf some, to feel the warmth and safety of it.
    “Well, cash-in your bets folks, because we got another match on the way. We already introduced the current champion, Berry Blitz. Whoever this mystery colt is, he’s looking a lot healthier than Blitz’s previous opponent.” he announced. I stared at Peach’s bloody corpse, imagining that was me next. A brown magic field enveloped her body, and lifted her out of the arena. I looked back to Berry, with his knife on the ground next to him.
“Are all bets placed? Haha, good.”
    “Hey... your name was Berry, right? Let’s not do this,” I glanced at the bloody spot where Peach had been. “there has to be a different way.” Berry got to his hooves and picked the knife back up.
     “Ha you think you are the first to try and trick me like that? I don't think so. I’m not gonna fall for it.” he shot back, talking pretty well for having an object in his teeth. Berry started to creep closer, with murder in his eyes.
    I moved along the wall, keeping him within my field of vision. I didn’t want a knife to come out of nowhere and kill me. “It’s not a trick, we don’t have to do what these ponies want us to.”
    “That might be easy for you to say. You don't have one of these.” he said motioning to the heavy, black collar around his neck. My ears drooped back, memories of Snow’s head exploding in a bright flash coming back to me. What kind of monsters put that on a kid?. “If I don’t kill you, then they kill me. Gotta keep yourself safe, that's the law of the Wasteland.” he finished, slowly moving closer.
    I reached into my saddlebags, keeping him in the edge of my vision, and pulled out the empty water bottle. I twisted my neck and tossed the bottle at Berry. I guess I was going to fight after all. I was so going to die...
    The bottle bounced harmlessly off of his horn, and he looked down at it in confusion. I pushed all my strength into my legs while running at him, and jumped, trying to body slam him. I could almost picture the knife stabbing me somewhere, this was such a bad idea.
    Berry looked up in time to see my blue body smash against his face. I heard a crack, and felt a burning pain in my right shoulder, my fur dampening. I almost didn’t want to look, but I did. the hooked part of the blade disappeared under my fur, leaving only a dark purple where my blood met my fur. The edges of my vision started to darken, I didn’t feel very good.
    I felt a tug from the knife, sending a wave of pain through my body. I looked to see Berry, on the ground with blood pouring from his mouth, glaring death at me. A yellow aura enveloped both his horn and the knife as it moved again. Goddesses, why does it hurt so much? Stupid magic unicorn spells! I couldn’t take more of this, so I grabbed the knife handle with my teeth, and yanked it free. The result was white flashes in my vision, and my body having small spasms in pain. I staggered back, and fell to the ground.
    I looked to see Berry getting back up, although he looked really shaky, so I did the same. His mouth was cut up, blood dripping from his chin. I didn’t mean to do that, I only wanted him to stop! I took a deep breath to calm myself down, the pain in my shoulder lessening as I got used to it.
    “Give up, please, just give up.” I don’t think I could continue.
    “You think that I can't beat you? Ha, nopony has ever beaten me.” He didn’t look like he was going to give up.
    I tightened my grip on the knife, slowly approaching Berry. He just stood there, glaring at me. What was he doing? He closed his eyes and squinted in concentration. Curse you curiosity, I walked up close to him. His horn started to glow, as a spark came out of it, then more sparks. I got closer, even though I know it was stupid. More sparks erupted from his horn, and his face scrunched up really tight. Then, they stopped, and nothing happened. Huh, that was anticlimactic...
CRACKOW
    A small lightning burst from his horn, sent him sprawling backwards as it struck me in the chest. I flew back hard, and my back struck the opposite end of the pit. My teeth tingled as the rest of my body burned with pain, my joints locking up. I closed my eyes in pain, and started to cry. Coming in here was definitely the worst idea ever.
    I didn’t want to die, that would really suck. I had to pull through this, but the pain was blinding. I tried to stand up, but my body wouldn’t respond. I opened my eyes, and saw Berry trying to get up through darkened blurry vision. If he got up before me, well, I couldn’t let that happen.
    I commanded my legs to move, and got a shaky response. After a few seconds, I managed to stand, but it felt like even the slightest thing would knock me over. Roars of cheering and laughter came from above as a burning smell came from below. What could possibly be... I looked down to see a scorched hole in a part of my scarf. My scarf!
    “What did you DO!? My scarf!” I spotted the knife near me, and picked it up in my mouth. “Ahhhhhh!” I screamed as I charged Berry, rage blinded me to what I was doing.
    “Haha, serves you right,” he replied through a clenched jaw. He tried to stand up, only to fall back down again. I stopped, standing over and looked down on him. I wanted to kill him, for killing that other filly, and destroying my scarf. It was the only real thing I had left from my parents...
    “No mercy, mysterious challenger! Finish him.” the unicorn’s voice came down from above. Was I really going to kill him? No! I wasn’t going to let myself kill another colt, that was just cold.
    “NO! I won’t do it.” I managed to say through the knife. Besides all the pain and stuff, talking with an object in your mouth was really hard. I backed away from Berry, and sat down. It only got a look I couldn’t quite place from him.
    “Well, this is a new one folks. Looks like we got a draw. House wins, and of course, no refunds.” Shouts of anger came from the bleachers as a brown magic field enveloped me and Berry, bringing us out of the pit, and over above the announcer pony. Wait, where was he taking us? I didn’t want to think about it, and realized I still had the knife in my mouth. I turned my neck, twisted back really quick, and threw the knife at the head of the brown unicorn. I don’t know if it was because he didn’t mean to keep the knife inside or not, but it shot straight through his magic field, ending up inches deep in his skull.
    “RUN!” I shouted at Berry as the magic disappeared, sending us crashing to the floor. We both seemed to get up okay. Everypony in the room seemed to quiet down at this.
    “I can’t...”
    What, why couldn’t he? Oh hay, he was wearing one of those bomb collars. “I’m so sorry, but I gotta leave!” I turned and ran back to the door I came in at. Ponies were climbing off the bleachers, everypony yelling something different, I couldn’t understand any of it. I shoved one of the metal doors open, and ran through it.
    I continued through the maze of hallways, backtracking each left or right turn I had previously made. Hoofsteps, many of them, were racing behind me. I couldn’t tell how close they were by sound, the echoes bouncing off stone and tile. It only took a few minutes this time before I spotted the slightly open door I had come inside from. No time to lose, I exited the building, rounded the corner, and sprinted as best I could to the small hole in the fence.
    Why was everypony out here crazy and trying to kill me besides my own parents? No time to think about that now, busy trying to run through pain, and not die. I dived under through the chain link hole, not caring about the many small cuts along my hide, and made it on the other end of the fence in good time. Hah! I was go-
Bang bang bang!
    Two little puffs of dust appeared in the ground in front of me, but the other bullet seemed to hit something in my saddlebags. It felt like I just got bucked in my side, that was definitely going to be bad. Ahh, don’t think and stand there like an idiot, RUN!
    A shout I couldn’t make out came from where the gunshots did as I put what was left of my strength into my legs and ran into the wasteland. I didn’t care where I ended up, but it was better than here.
    I ran, oh I most certainly ran, for quite a long time. I don’t know how far I got, but I didn’t notice anypony following me. I looked at my shoulder, and just cringed. Dried blood was cracked all over my fur and still fresh wet blood seemed to still be coming from it, though a lot less than before. Was a pony supposed to be able to lose that much blood? I don’t think it was very healthy... maybe I had something to fix that. I dug my head in left saddlebag to check, and found a broken glass vial with red liquid still sticking to it. Well, that last bullet had killed me in a different way. The edges of my vision were dark, which I was sure wasn’t a good sign, but I had to continue until I found something.
    I continued onwards, or I would have if my legs didn’t stop holding up my body. Yeah, I guess I needed my blood after all. The darkness invaded from the edges and took everything I saw, and my mind shut down.
* * *
    Ugh, did I die? Well, at least I can see Mama and Papa now. The goddesses would accept me, even though I killed that unicorn pony, right? My stomach felt sick thinking about it. Wait, I could feel my stomach. I tried to move one of my legs, and got the pain of soreness. Yesyesyesyesyes, I wasn’t dead! I don’t know how, I was pretty much gone there. I released the tension in my body I hadn’t known I held, and gave a relaxing sigh.
    “Oh, you awake kid?” a soothing mare’s voice asked.
   I sat up and opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was the clouds were gone. Well, not gone, but a brown canopy was above me. I looked around, it was a rather spacious canopied wagon. I was laying on my own blanket, with a friendly looking mare sitting next to me. She had a bright yellow coat, tomboyish short orange mane, and a horn. A black duster covered her from forehooves to her flank, and an assault rifle strapped to her back.
    My mind froze, did I get saved by yet another group of ponies from a certain death? I should stop making a habit of this. I tried to talk, but my throat was so dry it ended upcausing coughing fit.
    “Whoa now, don’t choke yourself. Here, take a drink.” she levitated a open bottle of water to my mouth. Well they saved me, fixed me up, and didn’t kill me. I don’t see any real reason not to trust a bottle of water. I gulped that whole bottle down, filling that pit in my stomach I didn’t know was there. How long was I out?  I pushed the bottle away when I finished.
    “Thanks for savin’ me, Miss. I was gonna die out there, pretty sure... Why’d ya save me anyhow?”
    “Hahaha, yeah... You lost a lot of blood, but I ain’t no medic. I figured a healing potion was worth the life of some random colt, but I don’t know if it fixes blood loss. You’ve been out for a whole day.”
    “Oh.. thanks then. How’d you find me?”
    “Well Longshot saw something running our way out in the distance, thinking it was a raider attack. There’s a lot of those fuckers up at Shattered Hoof, so he was going to take you out when you just dropped. He said you looked too small to be a threat, and you were alone. We went out to see what it was, because such a situation is a strange sight. Could have been a type of ambush looking back on that.”
    Wow, that’s a really lucky break. Last time I had one of those, it turned out they were slavers.
    “Well... y’all aren’t slavers, right? Had that happen once.”
    This caught her by surprise, and she laughed like I had just told the wasteland’s funniest joke. That was a good sound, when was the last time I heard a laugh, or even laughed myself? Oh right...
    “Oh man, that was a good one. Anyway, where are your parents?”
    I looked down, and wrapped my scarf around me a bit more. Thank Luna I still had it, I think I might have broken if it was gone. I tried to put on my bravest tone of voice, but failed miserably.
    “Raiders, or I guess they were raiders.”
    “...Sorry kid, that sucks. Well, my name’s Captain Glare. Mourning Glare is the full, but I’m the captain, and I think Captain Glare sounds better than Captain Mourning. Since you don’t have anyplace to be, what’s your name?”
    “Silent Step...thanks again for saving me, and then not killing me. It means alot... Wait, captain? What are you captain of?”
    “This unit of course. Oh, you wouldn’t recognize us, we aren’t well known around this part of Equestria. *Ahem* I am Captain Glare of the South Station Mercenaries, Fourth Unit. That explain it?”
    “South Station? That’s a funny name for a group.”
    She scratched the back of her head with a forehoof, “Yeah, well, our HQ is in this big old train station down south. The pony who started this up liked it, so who’s to argue? It’s a good company though, and it pays well if you’re good enough.”
    A grey stallion with a light blue mane poked his head through the back of the wagon. He was an earth pony, wearing a similar black duster that Glare had on. He had a strange pair of goggles on, with thin reticles painted on each lens in a dark red. A battle saddle strapped to his back had a sniper rifle equipped on both sides.
    “Captain, it’s all clear. Nopony was following that colt from yesterday.” Glare looked back.
    “Ah, Longshot. Thank you for the report of good news. Tell Plum to hitch up, and move out.” Longshot nodded, and left.
    I turned to Mourning Glare, “You were waiting to see if anypony was following me?”
    “Well, like I said, it seemed like a good moment for an ambush. You don’t survive out here with sheer kindness or positive thinking, and some cruel bastards think up the craziest ways to get to you. No offense, Silent, but I don’t want to take the chance of dying for a random kid. At least not for free.”
    “Yeah... none taken,” the wagon lurched forward, and started to move at a steady pace. A couple minutes of silence passed, making the atmosphere shift to awkward. The light of the evening shone out from the sides that weren’t covered by the brown canopy. Around the wagon was fairly standard sort of scavenged or bought items lying about, a couple boxes of ammo and weapons alongside them, and a bunch of duffle bags laying side by side, each painted with different colors and patterns.
    “So, why were you bleeding out in the middle of nowhere?” Glare decided to break the silence.
    I told her my story of my past few days, going into pretty good detail about things. Maybe it was how it all rushed back to me, but I couldn’t seem to stop until I told all of it. She just waited patiently for me to stop, never looking away. When I finally finished, I was half-crying again.
    Glare stared at me, then smiled brightly as if she had a great idea. “We’re going back to HQ. Hey, you don’t have anywhere special to be, do you?”
    I shook my head, my parents were dead, the slavers who saved me were dead, and I had no idea where I was. No place special at all.
    “So, Silent Step, how would you like to be a mercenary?”
Footnote: Level Up
Skill Note: Melee Weapons 50
New Perk: Push Through the Pain (Rank 1): When you are suffering from medium damage or ill effects, you find the endurance to continue onward.
Faction Joined: You have joined the South Station Mercenaries. All members are friendly to you, but that does not mean they will help you for free.
((A/N: Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Berry Blitz is Dyon's (http://www.fimfiction.net/user/Dyon) OC. Any and all feedback is welcome and wanted. Sorry for having a split prologue :P))

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               Chapter One: Six Years Later                
//-------------------------------------------------------//
Chapter One: Six Years Later
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Chapter One: Six Years Later
“The more time I spend talking to you, the less I spend watching for raiders”
    Sigh, why couldn’t the simple assignments ever turn out to be just that? Wood chips fell on my head as bullets destroyed the wall above me. I peeked to my left around the corner of the bar counter I was hiding behind to see where they were. Two raiders, both looking straight at me, aimed their guns at my head. I pulled back, the counter vibrating as it took more bullets. I dusted off my purple and black scarf, and pulled one of my three javelins out of the holster on my side. Salvaged wooden shaft and a sleek metal head, a weapon that wouldn’t run out of ammo or jam.
    “Haha, now this is what I call real action! Us two versus them two, easy win!”
    I lazily glanced to my right, a slightly younger charcoal unicorn stallion with a blonde mane and eyes. Glowing in his grey aura beside him was his .44 Magnum. He wore no armor besides our uniform black duster that had its own saddlebags. I wished he put on the standard black barding that came with the duster, mine sure has hay saved me on more than one occasion.
    “Live Wire, no win is easy. We’re pinned down behind in a bar with who knows how many raiders outside besides those two.” More gunshots rang out, the counter vibrating from the impacts. “This was supposed to be-”
    “Yeeeeaaahhh! Eat lead father fuckers!” He peeked over the counter, angled his gun sideways, and unloaded all six shots before crouching back down and reload them. Something in my mind snapped, and I facehoofed. Why did I have to always babysit the rookies? Oh right, so they don't die.
    “Goddesses damnit Wire, that was exactly why we’re in this friggin’ situation!”
    He looked up while magically loading bullets into the revolver, “What situation? I thought we were doing our assignment.”
    “Yeah, our assignment was to clear out the raiders from Bearado, but Captain told us to watch for anything and alert her if-”
    “Yeah, but waiting up on the hill was so boooooriiinnng! We have guns, well I have a gun, so why not just go and take them out ourselves?”
    I couldn’t finish a sentence around this foal. Wait, something is off... the gunshots have stopped. Live Wire snapped the chamber closed, and looked over the counter again. His face told me it before he did.
    “Hey, uhh, Silent? The raiders are gone.” This wasn’t good. Javelin still in mouth, I looked over the counter as well. Charred wooden walls held up the building with a couple wooden beams here and there, old broken and decayed bar furniture littered the floor with all the empty glass bottles. Mostly intact windows were on both side walls, the front entrance having none.
    “Aww hay, Live, we should get o-” I stopped mid-sentence staring at a metal apple floating in a pink field in the doorway. Obvious lesson of the day, don’t talk on a battlefield, you’re more likely to get killed while distracted. It flung itself inside the building, and landed right between me and Wire. “Shit, windows, now!”
    I saw Wire turn to his nearest window as I did mine. I dash-jumped through the window head first. While that was the obvious way to jump, the grenade seemed to have made me forget I wielded a javelin in my mouth. As the tip of my snout cleared the window, my spear met both sides of the window, and slammed toward the back of my mouth. My body didn’t catch the stopping queue, slamming downwards and sending me falling onto my back. Why the heck were centuries old wooden buildings so damn sturdy? I balled up with my back to the grenade, hiding my face under my forehooves.
BOOOOM
    My ears started to ring as I was peppered with shrapnel and glass that was laying around the grenade. Most of it bounced off the duster, and the sharp pieces stopped at the leather barding underneath. Saved yet again by armor, how I shall never go anywhere without it. I uncovered my eyes and stood up. Well that wasn’t that bad.
Creeeeeaaaaaaakcreeeeeaaaaak
    I looked at the support beams for the building. They were heavily damaged and broken by the explosion. Oh come on, how can it break that easily? They snapped, breaking into small chunks at the roof started to cave in. I wasn’t going to stay for that! I picked my javelin up, angled my head so the length pointed through the window, and climbed out, falling face first into the dirt. Wood smashing together and dust flying outward behind me was all I needed to know that I almost died, again.
    I coughed the dust out of my lungs, and got to my hooves, only to see a sawed-off shotgun barrel covering my vision. Ahh! I ducked, bullets flying over my head and the heat from the fire singing my ears. I twisted my neck and felt the solid thump of my javelin's head sinking into the raider’s body. She dropped the shotgun from her mouth, collapsing on the ground. I yanked my weapon out of her body and ran off to find Live Wire.
Bearado was, or used to be a small town of maybe eight buildings all tightly clustered. Many of them were still standing tall, pride of pony construction in a long ago generation. I turned around the back of the collapsed bar and ran toward the opposite end. Gunshots came from that direction, so I just ran quicker. As I reached the end to turn, I bumped into somepony, at least I knew it was a pony since my spear stabbed into something meaty. I got a good look at the back of a raider’s head, blood leaking out of the small gap between the metal spear head and her hide. Thank goddesses that wasn’t somepony important. I gave a hard tug, pulling it out. Chunks of meat and brain clung to the tip. Eww, I gave it a hard shake, flinging it off to the ground.
    I turned around the corner and saw Wire laying down behind a tipped over decayed taxi cart with his magnum pointed at the front side of the bar. I ran as stealthily as a pony could in broad daylight up to him.
    “Good, you’re alive.” He gave a startled jump and turned his magnum on me, firing off a shot. Thankfully, it went straight into the sky. He should stop floating his gun in that stupid position, the sight must be way off. “Woah, wh-”
    “What the hay, you almost scared me to death!” I just noticed his left shoulder was bleeding badly from a large gash, blood running down his right foreleg.
    “Yeah, you almost killed me, we’re even. You’re hurt, one sec.” I slid my javelin back into my holster, reached into one of my saddlebags, and pulled out a vial of red liquid. I held it between my hooves, opened it, and shoved it down Wire’s muzzle before he could object. The healing potion took effect immediately, the gash closing up seamlessly. Biggest downside to the potions was they didn’t clear up any of the blood, so his foreleg was soaked. He's lost a lot of his blood, maybe the was deeper than it looked?
    He shivered in relief, “Oh, thanks, that feels loads better. So, what should we do now?”
    “We try and survive this stupid attack, and maybe Captain won’t kill us. Look, let’s just get out of town. We’ll head down the street behind the bar.” I helped Wire to his hooves, and trotted to the end of the street. I looked around the building’s corner into the next street, no sign of any raiders.
    “Wire, this way is clear,” I motioned for him to come over. When he caught up, we both walked around into the dirt road. What. The. Hay. Six raiders standing side by side were in the middle of the street, blocking the way. Most of them had various rusted or broken melee weapons, but the pink unicorn in the middle held a rather well maintained assault rifle in her magical grip, it aimed straight at us. Wire just gave me a curious look.
    “What? It was clear just a few seconds ago! Hey” I made a sweeping motion at all the raiders,” y’all can’t just show up from thin air! That’s not fair.” I mean, what, did they just spawn on the road when nopony was looking or something?
    “Hah, ready to die you chumps?” the raider yelled with glee. Her entourage started to laugh all crazy like. Raiders were fucking insane, how did they ever end up like that from being a normal pony?
    “Chumps? You’re the chumps!” Wire retorted with a pointed hoof. Wow, real great comeback on that one.
Vvvvvvrrrrrrrrrrrrr
    A slow mechanical spinning sound came from the rooftop on our left, it gradually getting louder. I just smiled at the raiders. A white unicorn with an orange and blue mane stepped up to view, wearing the typical South Station Mercenaries black duster and armor. A large minigun levitating next to her, it’s barrel spinning at top speed. We were all chumps in her blue eyes.
    “What the fuck?” the pink raider looked up to only see a flurry of bullets a second before she was torn apart into chunks of flesh. With the priority target dead, the minigun mare continued her slaughter on the helpless raiders from above, them all becoming chunks and blood in the open street. When all were dead, besides wire and myself anyway, she stopped firing and let her minigun wind down before setting it on the saddle mount on her back.
    A few minutes later she exited the building’s front doorway, the door no longer there. She had a warm smile on her face as she walked over to me and Live Wire.
    “So, I see my boys are still alive after all.”
    “Ah... thanks for the save Captain Frost. We were in a bad spot there.” I winced at Wire’s comment. Captain Frost Fire walked up really close to him.
    “Yeah, so I saw. Now that I saved your hides,” she put one leg around his shoulder, “mind telling me why you two aren’t back on that hill ready to save MINE?” Wire started to sweat under the pressure. Nopony would want to be in his position, so my next actions didn’t really make sense.
    “Wasn’t Private Wire’s fault, Captain, it was mine.” Wire gave me a shocked look, while Frost just looked at me boredly.
    “Go on...”
    “We didn’t see that you were in any trouble, so we decided to go and help you out by attacking the raiders.” I stood still and tried to talk in monotone, failing miserably at it. This lying thing had always been hard.
    “Wow Silent, that sure is the best plan ever! Much better than my plan I thought we were using.” her sarcastic tone couldn’t have been more obvious.
    “It is?” Wire asked. Both me and Captain facehoofed. She sighed, and dropped her whole act.
    “Look, Wire, you know what we are?” she asked in a motherly trying-to-teach way.
    “Yeah, we are the 7th Unit of the South Station Mercenaries. Why?”
    “Okay, so, do you know why we’re in a Unit?
    “Because it’s safer with more ponies.” He smiled sheepishly. Captain just sighed, there sure was a lot of sighing going on today.
    “Silent, would you?” she asked. I turned straight to Wire.
    “A Unit is complete with three ponies in order to make sure SSM makes profits without killing off all their employees. One captain, one corporal, and one private. Captains are the veteran of the group, being around for far longer than others. The corporal is a pony with a normal amount of field experience under their saddle. Then there is the Private, the rookie of the group that is trained in the field with other ponies. This way, a group of rookies wouldn’t just group up and go get slaughtered on any assignment they pick up.”
    “Exactly the textbook answer, so that’s why you privates don’t make the plans, and should listen to your teammates. There isn’t any real rule saying I’m the leader, but you should bucking listen to me when I tell you to do something. Got it?” Captain Frost stared straight into Wire’s eyes until he nodded in approval. He looked like he was going to cry, not that I could blame him. Captain looked back at me.
    “Corporal Silent Step, what would you suggest we do now that this assignment is complete?” She gave me this weird look, maybe for me to show Wire something? Either way, what would I tell any private not do to during a battle?
    “We should loot the bodies, collect anything of value, and head back to HQ for payment. Cut off the ears of any dead raiders as proof that we did our job, I’d rather not lose another payday that way again.” Both Frost and Wire nodded in agreement, and we split up to do just that.
    An hour or so later we met up at the southeast end of town, the direction our headquarters was. I hoofed my bloody bag of ears to Captain, as did Wire, and we set off to home. It was two days travel on hoof, but we were going to trot instead of walk most of the distance, cutting the time to a half.
    “Oh, by the way, you two owe me for all that minigun ammo. I would say a seventy-five, twenty-five split. Wire, you obviously get the seventy-five because it was your idea to ruin my plan.” she said in a mild tone. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or mad, maybe a bit of both?
    “Oh fine, i’ll jus-”
    “My twenty-five can be bought for that healing potion I used on you back in town.” I interrupted Wire, justice has been served. He grumbled, levitating a small sack out of his bags, normally a set amount of a hundred caps put into one that size, and put it in Captain’s bags.
    “Pleasure doing business with you boys, a mare could make a profit of saving your burly hides all the time.” she taunted in a stuck up tone. I smiled a bit, at least she saved us.
    I looked around the same typical dead landscape I’ve seen my entire life, wishing for something not black, red, brown or any mix of the three. These trips would be so boring without conversation. Oh wait, they were, since we used all our breath covering distance at a higher speed. Discolored scenery, why were you my enemy?
* * *
    We didn’t make it back home, no, it would just so happen my unit and I ended up in a large abandoned factory on the way there. I could hear the downpour of rain outside, filling the hollow building with a thousand taps a second. We got inside before it got too heavy, so we weren’t all soaked to the bone. Be thankful for the small things, right? Wet fur smell got old when it wasn’t your own fur.
    Well, at least wet fur would be more pleasant than this. My unit sat around a fire to keep warm, thing is, the fire was burning random junk we found around the factory. Old teddy ursas and wooden toys piled together for kindling, some of the materials letting off a nasty odor as they burned. With all these toys, I guess this was a toy factory? Who knows, these could have been disguised weapons for children by how crazy our ancestors were.
    I took out my three javelin’s out of their side holster and laid them down to my side. Captain was just resting, and Wire fiddling with the junk weapons that he looted from the raiders. I reached into my saddlebags, nosed around a bit, and pulled out dry rag. I started to dry off my weapons, they would get bad fast if they just stayed wet without maintenance.
    “Hey Silent, why do you use those spears instead of a gun?” Wire asked.
    “Why indeed... It’s a pretty stupid reason, I guess.”
    “I’m amazed you haven’t just dropped them for something like Captain Frost’s huge damn gun, that thing is crazy. What is your so called stupid reason then?” Captain waved a hoof and ignored him. I shrugged, using a gun like that without magic would weigh me down.
    “Well, when my parents were killed by raiders, the pony who rescued me killed them off using the same type of weapons I currently use. In my mind, I’m using a weapon that avenged their deaths.” This got both of my teammates to stare at me. Wire whistled.
    “Damn, that’s a better reason than I use this magnum. It’s just the best gun I got.”
    “Wow Silent, I don’t think I’ve heard mention that before. When did you start using them?” Frost seemed rather curious, or maybe it was natural to be curious about why a pony would use spears over the technologically advanced weapon that is the firearm.
    “I started to train with them when I joined up with the SSM as a colt, but only started using them in the field about a year ago. They’re rather efficient for sneaking, assassinations or silent killings, and extremely lightweight. Plus I can just sell any ammo I find for bonus caps or materials to make another one.”
    “Wait, you make them yourself?” Wire tilted his head as he asked.
    “Where else would I get them in such a good condition? Nopony would use these over a gun, maybe raiders, but they’re crazy. I guess that makes me either a nopony or a crazy one.” I gave a laugh, and continued wiping down the spears.
    “I don’t know if I would if I could use them right. What if you lose or break all of them in one go, then you would be unarmed!” Wire tossed his hooves in the air for emphasis. I laughed a bit more.
    “Then what if I ran out of ammo at a crucial moment or my gun jammed and I didn’t have a backup weapon, or that backup was already destroyed? It can work both ways, and I never said I didn’t know how to use a gun. What do you think I used in the field as a colt when I couldn’t use these?” I motioned with the spear I was drying off in my hooves.
    “Wait, you’ve been a mercenary since you were a kid?” Wire’s jaw dropped as he looked to Captain, guessing maybe it was a joke. She just nodded.
    “Silent’s been here longer than me at the SSM, not sure why he isn’t a captain by now, forever stuck as a corporal.” I shrugged again, and switched to my next javelin.
    “I would’ve been probably, but most of my previous captains blamed me for mistakes in the past, and reported most of them to the Council.”
    “Mistakes? You don’t make that many without a good reason...” Captain Frost stated sympathetically.
    “Who said I made them? I was mainly blamed for their mistakes or one’s I covered the privates I babysit. Some of those rookies wouldn’t have lasted if they got yelled or punished for every little wrong thing, ya know?” I swapped to my last spear, drying it off to complete the set.
    “Haha, yeah....” Wire looked down to the ground.
    “Don’t mind him, I wouldn’t hold you responsible for my or any others mistakes. Maybe you might get promoted from this unit.” Captain smiled at me. That would be the day, Captain Silent Step. It has a good sound, but I like being a corporal. Somepony has to look after the new recruits, making sure they don’t get themselves or everypony else killed. Goddesses only know how many times I was saved as a private, it can mean a lot when you're in that position.
    I holstered my javelins, and put the now damp rag over by the fire, just close enough for it to dry. We spent the next hour continuing the small talk, thankfully the subject shifted off at dinner onto why Wire decided to eat a brahmin steak over a can of pre-war potatoes. Even after all these years, food was still mostly fresh and edible. Generations long gone feeding us with their food to make up for fucking up the world. After we all finished eating and put away out belongings, it was time to get some rest.
    “I’ll take first shift.” the other two nodded and went to sleep around our toy fire. Another hour passed by as the flame died out, leaving the factory floor mostly dark.
Grrrrrrrrrrr thump thump
    The growl came out from above, along with the dull thumps of what sounded like hooves. My body went cold, I knew what was coming. Didn’t we scout this place out, or at least camp in a safe spot? No, we were in the middle of the open factory floor.
    “Frost, Wire, get the fuck up.... I heard something and it sounds hungry...”
Footnote: No Level Up
((A/N: Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Sorry this chapter isn’t really that long, I just wrote until I felt it was good. My first fanart by Mint Julep here (http://shytalon.deviantart.com/art/Silent-Step-293196133).))

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                     Chapter Two: Home                     
//-------------------------------------------------------//
Chapter Two: Home
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Chapter Two: Home
"The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know nothing."
    There are many times in my life where I look back, only to realize that whatever I did at that moment was the stupidest thing ever. Even if somepony knocked me over the head with a lead pipe, then asked me what to do, would have resulted in a better option. Sometimes it is the complete lack of doing anything that was the stupid choice. I failed to do one of the simple survival rules of the wasteland, making sure where you sleep is safe, and was paying for it. Sure, I could blame my teammates that they should’ve done so, but can I really do that? No, I should have done it regardless if they remembered to. When you grow up in the Equestrian Wasteland, and actually manage to survive to adulthood, you don’t risk fate by forgetting the basics. Okay, so we did this time, but you really shouldn’t. No matter if you think it can’t get worse than it is, the wasteland will just laugh at you, and then send some horror to prove you wrong.
* * *
    “Ponies, get up!” I yelled in a whispered voice. Captain Frost and Wire woke up, and got to their hooves. The factory stone floor felt colder than it should have, or maybe that was me being scared.
    “What is goi-” I shushed Wire. Sounds of hooves on metal clanked above, probably on a catwalk somewhere. Ponies from before the war loved catwalks built over machinery for whatever reason. Neither Frost or Wire used magic while securing their gear, afraid to give away our location with the light.
Grrrrrrrrrrr grrrrrrr grrrrrrrr
    Multiple growls came from above, maybe ten or more from the same direction. I pulled out a javelin, and looked above into the darkness. A small green light appeared from above, and gradually got brighter. I heard my companions back up to my side.
    The sickly green glow got bright enough to reveal it was coming from a doorway, and illuminated that a catwalk was indeed up there, then it came through the door. A large glowing ghoul stood there, it’s light revealing over two dozen feral ghouls all lined up on a catwalk directly above the entrance to the factory. The rain still echoing softly through the building.
    “Holy mother of the goddesses...” Wire whispered. I almost had the urge to piss myself right there, and I don’t think the others would’ve blamed me. A tense moment hung in the air.
    “Shit,” I looked around and saw a metal door behind us, opposite of the ghouls. “there’s a door behind us, slowly back up toward it, don’t take your eyes off the ghouls.”
    We all started towards it, nopony making any noise if they could help it. Not ten steps after, the glowing ghoul pony let out a banshee shriek, and all the feral ghouls jumped off the catwalk onto the factory floor. Shit, shit, shit! “Ruuuuuuuun!” I yelled as I quickly turned, and ran for the door. The factory filled with the squishy and metal clop of all the pony hooves.
    I reached the door first, a couple seconds before the others, and pushed it open. I went in, and held it for Captain and Wire. I got a good look at the scene when I looked back. A small army of rotted animated corpses were screaming is a gnarled tone as they chased two ponies, the glowing one just now slowly jumping down from its perch.
    “Ahhh!!” Wire screamed, Captain Frost just looked determined to make it through the door. After they passed me, I slammed the door shut, and locked it with its small bolt lock. That wasn’t going to hold out very long.
    “Captain, what do we do?” I asked, she picked up her minigun off her back with levitation.
    “Easy, we kill all these sons of bitches, then go to sleep.”
thump
    “Are you crazy!? There is a whole army out there, not to mention that freaky glowing pony!” Wire was screaming, probably in shock. I faired a bit better, seeing worse things before, but this was still really scary.
thumpthump
    “Captain... Do you think this is a good holding position?” I looked at the straight hallway, it was maybe five ponies wide. I saw further back that the end of it had collapsed on itself, we were trapped in here. I met her blue eyes in the dim light from her horn.
thumpthumpthump
    “We have no other option, Silent.. Wire, take any guns you have that can be fired and lay them out next to you in the back, you won’t have a chance to reload. Silent, you keep them off us when they get up close.” We all went to the collapsed back, stuck between a wall of rubble and an army of ghouls wanting to eat our flesh.
    “Don’t you mean if they get close?” Wire looked at Captain, and she just shook her head.
thumpthumpthump--
    The sound of the ghouls beating against the door stopped. I didn’t have a good feeling about that, and neither did Captain Frost, revving up her minigun. Another loud banshee shriek pierced my ears as an explosion of ghostly green light came from the doorway, ripping the door off its hinges. The glowing green ghoul stood right in the doorway, backed up a couple steps, and let the other ghouls rush in to eat our soft fleshy bodies.
    Gunfire blared from both my sides, the rapid fire of dozens of bullets a second from one, and the single shots of a revolver on the other. I stood between them with a javelin in my teeth, prepared to skewer any enemies that got within range. The decayed ponies were torn to pieces, falling over in chunks one after the other, but more just climbed over their bodies to get it us. The glowing ghoul was behind the entire pack, sending off a wave of radiation to heal his herd every couple of seconds.
    “Where are they all coming from!?” Wire yelled. What did I tell him about talking in combat? Besides, the obvious answer was when ponies and zebras decided to kill everypony with radiation bombs. A ghoul got through the blaze of gunfire, and jumped for me. I angled my head, and thrust the spear into its skull, the metal head coming out the other side with green ichor all over it. I kicked with my forehooves, and pulled my weapon out of the ghoul’s brain.
    They got closer and closer, finally within good jump distance. Only six of the ferals were left, and the glowing pony behind them.
click click click
    “I’m out of bullets!” Wire released his gun from his magic. Why would you do that, even if you were out of bullets, you could still club somepony with it!
    I pivoted my body, and tossed my javelin at the glowing ghoul. It went straight into its chest, appearing out the bottom of his stomach. Fuck, I missed the head. Its rotted flesh healed around the shaft of the spear, and it continued on like nothing hit it. Only two ferals and the glowing pony left.
click click click
    “Oh, fuck...” Frost’s voice was all I needed to hear to know it just got worse. I pulled out one javelin, tossed it to Captain, “Captain! Pointy end in the head!” and yanked out my last one for myself. Captain caught the spear in her telekinetic grip, and jabbed one of the ferals through the skull, the body fell forward, and trapped the spear inside its corpse. My eyes widened in fear, me and my last spear the only defense against two ghouls.
    The last feral ran at me, its dead eyes showing its hunger for my blood. I reared up, its ghoul teeth biting my armored barding, and I slammed my forehooves down on his spine with a rewarding sick crunch. I stepped over its body, and jumped at the glowing ghoul. I twisted my neck, and drove my javelin through its mouth, into its brain. It released one last explosion of radiation, and sent me flying into the nearest stone wall. My back hit first, then my neck snapped backwards, and my head cracked against the stone. I felt the warmth of my blood soaking my mane.
    I heard voices, probably that of my teammates, saying some stuff that sounded like concern. I touched the back of my head, and looked at my blue hoof. It was purple. That was so not good!
    “Any of yous gots uh healin’ potion?” I looked up at Captain, she was looking through her saddlebags. Wire just shrugged, guess he would have used his back at Bearado. Frost pulled out a red vial, and levitated it to my lips. I drank that potion like my life depended on it, which it might have. I’ll never know since it fixed my skull right back up to top condition.
    “Are we alive?” I looked at Wire and Captain.
    “You bet your ass we’re alive. Though, I’m definitely going to need that pay from the raider assignment, my minigun isn’t looking too hot, AND I’m all out of ammo.” She levitated her gun back onto its saddle mount.
    I walked over to the dead glowing ghoul, his green light fading by the second. I yanked both of my javelins out, the one in his chest proving a little harder, and holstered them. I went to go get my last one.
    “Wow, I haven’t seen that many ghouls.... ever! Think we could get paid for this number?”
    Captain and I looked at each other. Could we? “If there was such a request somewhere in our files, and we showed up with proof, maybe we could.” I replied.
    “That’s pretty unorthodox, but it might fly with the upper staff. This seems like it would have been a dangerous mission. Wire, Silent, any of you have a really big bag?” I smiled. I pulled out my large sleeping blanket, large enough that it could probably cover up two dozen pony heads.
    “We could put them in this, I’ll carry it back to camp. Question is, who has a machete?” Wire levitated a broken, but still sharp sword out of his pack.
    “Raider had it on him.” This could work.
    We cut off all the heads at the top of the neck, stacked them in the middle of the blanket, and tied it up in a makeshift sack. I looked on the bright side, if we did get paid for these, I could always just buy a new blanket. I don’t think the smell would ever come out, the bottom started to turn green with soaked ichor blood. We put the sack of heads by the front door, kindled our fire with more toys, and went back to sleep with Captain pulling the second guard shift.
* * *
    Wire woke us up at the end of his guard, signalling that morning had arrived. The smell from the rotten ghoul heads wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it’ll get worse in the next few days. I suggested we find out what the name of this place was, so we could report it correctly. If we showed up at HQ with a bag full of zombie heads and didn’t know where we killed them, we might not even get one cap a head. Captain and Wire took the top floor, where the ghouls first came out of, while I searched some of the side rooms on the bottom. This place had a basement, but that just screams bad news. You would have to pay me to go in any basement or sewer tunnel, and then pay me again if I came back out.
    I found a locked first aid box, the standard yellow with a pink butterfly mark, in one of the small bathrooms. A lot of medical supplies ended up in bathrooms, that always struck me as odd. Oh well, chalk it up to crazy pre-war ponies and their shenanigans. I pulled out my multi-tool, bit the screwdriver tab, and pulled it open. I wedged the flat head in the lock, and made sure it stayed it when I let it go. I slowly turned around, and bucked the end up the screwdriver, driving the head through the lock. Good old fashioned earth pony lockpicking, I yanked the tool out with a metal screech, and put it away before opening up the medical box. A newly shattered potion sat next to its twin, and a syringe of Med-X. Well, it wasn’t a perfect lockpick, but I got supplies I wouldn’t have if I didn’t open it in the first place. I continued looking around, but found nothing of use, not even old factory report papers or something. I went back to my ghoul heads, and waited for my teammates.
    In about ten minutes, they came back downstairs. Said they found an old working terminal in an office, and that this place was called Charity’s Gift Supply. Well those ghouls weren’t my idea of a charitable gift. Captain levitated the, now dark green, bag of heads onto my back. It felt squishy, but I ignored it by thinking of the potential caps. The air was misty and cool from the storm last night, I thanked it for not making us travel in the heat. We left the abandoned factory, heading back home for some well deserved rest and rewards.
* * *
    South Station was the home of its very own mercenary group, started by a founder nopony actually knew the name of. When I think of home, it will always be there. Even as a colt, my family were just roaming scavengers, just trying to make do in their lives. To me, this is where I feel safest, well in a manner of speaking. When our unit finally saw home, I just couldn’t help but feel happy.
    South Station used to be an old train station before the war, but not in what you would think. It wasn’t a hub for trains to come and go from, no, it was a station where they built the train cars and parts. Many of those very same box train cars sat around the building in a square perimeter, acting as a barricade against anything that would attack it. At each of the four corners inside the train car fence, were sentry towers, just tall enough to get a view over the walls. Inside the whole thing was a huge stone building shaped like a small set of stairs with three floors, windows all over the sides of the building.
    We walked up to the entrance into our headquarters, a small security checkpoint at a pair of makeshift tin doors cut out of the middle of the train cars leading into the actual fortification. Captain walked up, and knocked of the doors.
    “7th Unit reporting back, open up.” she said in a military tone. The set of doors were opened by a blue unicorn guard, who just stared at us, and waited as we walked through before closing them again. Between the box walls and the actual building was nothing special, just a couple guards patrolling about. Guard shift was something any mercenary could do for a small time and get paid for it, but it took years to retire to the actual guard service. Even when you get too old or too damaged to go back out into the wastes, you can stay home and protect your allies so they can continue on. They were probably the strongest group here, each probably worth a whole unit themselves.
    The fetid ghoul heads started to really get to me, and I could tell that the others gave me some space after walking all day with them. We walked through the metal double doors into South Station, and were greeted with the familiar smell of other ponies, and the various sounds of conversation. The first room you enter is the large floor where they used to build the train cars, but somepony long since cleared all that machinery away. Now it was a large open common room, full with salvaged tables and chairs, vending machines along the wall that were mainly there for decoration, and a long desk at the left end from the front door. It had a large bulletin board behind it, with many requests and posts of assignments.
    “Wire, go see if there was any assignment to Charity’s Gift Supply, or to clean out a bunch of ghouls in the area. I really hope I didn’t carry this thing here for nothing, not to mention ruining my good blanket.”
    “Alright, meet you at Lemon’s.” Wire walked off toward the desk and billboard, weaving through small groups of ponies that littered the open floor. Captain motioned for me to follow.
    “Come on, let’s go get paid, and drop off that nasty thing while we’re at it.” We walked toward the door that lead further in on the far right. I got some odd looks, but nothing unusual for a pony carrying a dried green lumpy bag on his back. Continuing past that door, we walked down two hallways before coming to what looked like an iron barred ticket booth.
    A yellow unicorn sat behind the bars, her brown mane covering half of her face in a mess. She was about two decades older than me, but only looked maybe a couple years over me. She was writing something down in a ledger with a floating pencil, her white duster she wore showed that she was our resident quartermaster. Captain went directly up to her, while I sat down the disgustingly big bag of heads. Maybe I should have found something to drag them with, I don’t know if I can ever get that ichor out of that blanket.
    “Hey Lemon Cake, how’s life?” I wasn’t too close with our quartermaster, but Captain was. Lemon looked up from her work, and her expression brightened considerably.
    “Frost Fire! Damn girl, haven’t seen you in a couple days. Thought you kicked it, or something.” she looked over to me. “Hey Silent, woah, what is up with that sick sack of shit?”
    Captain laughed, “It’s nothing, just full of ghoul heads that belonged to an army trying to eat us in our sleep. I really thought we were going to die. Hey, 7th Unit is reporting completion of our assignment out in Bearado. You know, the raider infestation?” Lemon nodded.
    “Well, give me a second, and I will gather up your payment.” Lemon crouched down, and made some sounds like opening metal, and popped up with six bags of caps in her magical grip. Captain took four, and levitated two over into my saddlebags. Six hundred for the total, split three ways.
    “Look, we figured we could get something out of nearly dying to all those ghouls. Think you can do something about it” I asked with a pleading tone. Lemon just shrugged.
    “I don’t know if I can help without it being an actual assignment, but you could always ask a council member to credit a reward to you.”
    I sighed, and Captain looked to me. “Silent, don’t you know one of the council personally?”
    “Yeah, but I’d rather not use my friend’s position to benefit myself like that. Would give her, me, or possibly both of us a bad reputation. Let’s just wait fo-”
    “Guys, there WAS a request up on the board!” Wire was running down the hallway towards us. One of these days, I’m going to knock his teeth out when he interrupts me. He stopped in front of the booth, and put a piece of paper on the desk so Lemon could read it. I got up to go get a look at it.
Assignment #614
Extermination of Ghouls
Old Toy Factory
“I saw a bunch of ghouls, I mean a bunch of them, all around this factory about a day away from your company. They’re attacking, and eating anypony that gets close. Daring Deliveries will pay 900 caps to anypony who gets rid of them.”
    Wow, I’ll be damned, I didn’t reek of rotted ponies for nothing!
    “Woah, that sure is a reward. How many suckers did you kill in there?” Lemon levitated nine bags out this time, and set them on the desk. I grabbed three of them, and stowed them away for later use. Captain took hers, then levitated Wire’s share for the raiders into his bags, Wire following suit and taking his three bags and tucking them away.
    “I’d rather not open that up to count, but I’d guess two dozen, plus this really nasty radiation filled ghoul.” I said casually, acting like it was no big deal. Her face looked shocked from the number.
    “You ponies faced down that many ghouls, with a Glowing One in the group? I’m surprised you fellas ain’t dead in a gutter with your bones picked clean by them right now.”
    Wire shivered, “Yeah, I thought we were going to die when we ran out of ammo.”
    Lemon gasped, “Even you, Frost?” Captain just laughed, then nodded.
    “If Silent was not one for using weapons that didn’t shoot bullets, I would think we would be ghoul food right now.” I shrugged, trying to play is smooth. That praise was going to go straight to my ego, but I wasn’t going to let them know that.
    “Well, I’m off to relax for the rest of the day, maybe wash my friggin’ uniform. This ghoul blood is disgusting.” I waved my hoof, and left them to, what I assume, resupply their ammo and buy some stuff. I would do that later, I really had to get this smell off of me.
    I walked around to the back exit of South Station, and went outside. The backyard was really a small scrap yard, usable by anypony who needed it. I walked over to the water pump further back. This stuff is pretty irradiated, so drinking it would kill you faster than a bullet to the head. I grabbed beaten metal bucket that was lying next to the pump, and filled it with dark brown water. I unlatched the saddlebags from the coat, and took out my cleaning rag. I spent the next hour scrubbing that thing until any spot that wasn’t black was gone.
    I held up the duster in my hooves, inspecting it closely, and sniffed it. At least the smell of radiation is better than what it was coated with. Re-attaching the saddlebags, I put the duster back on when I heard hoofsteps behind me. I turned to see a pair of orange eyes. Ahh! I stumbled backwards, knocking over the bucket of nasty water.
    “Jeez, don’t have a fit Silent, I only wanted to see how you were doing.” I smiled, this day just kept getting better.
    “Then don’t sneak on ponies, they might just get scared. How are ya, Council Member Glare?” She punched me in the shoulder.
    “What did I tell you about titles? Just call me Mourning, or something. I get enough of the council stuff as it is.”
    “Haha, alright. How’s it goin’ Mourning?” Now don’t get the wrong idea, we are just friends. Maybe a bit closer than that, but only in a parental way. She was the one who looked after me as I trained up to be a mercenary. You know, like a second mother.
    “Ugh, the Council is currently having this whole campaign about whether we should ignore or accept the request to end this town’s civil war.” She sighed, and looked back at the station. “The problem is, both sides have put in a request, and we can’t afford to take sides.”
    “Wait, why is it up for vote if we can’t take a side?” All this politics and stuff was confusing, maybe you had to learn how to be confusing to understand it.
    “Well, if we refuse outright, one side will know and might think we took the other side’s.... side? Wonder how many times I can use that in a single sentence. Anyway, letting it hang in the air is just as bad.”
    “Well, that’s complicated. I just got done with almost dying three times, but you seem to have your hoofs full. I wouldn’t want to be in your horseshoes.” I laughed, and got a punch to the shoulder again, same friggin’ spot too.
    “Yeah, it’s tough being behind a desk all day.” Mourning rolled her eyes,” Look, I know you just got back and all, but you think you could do me a favor? You won’t get paid officially, but I could work something out.”
    “...what is it?” I tightened my scarf around my neck, pushing it under the collar of my duster.
    “Would you go solve that civil war problem for me?” I sighed. It sounded rough, but at least it was better than sitting on my ass, gambling away all my caps in boredom.
    “Only ‘cause it’s you asking me, Mourning. Where is this town?”
    “Well, it is a bit bigger than a town.  Ciderside City is two days west of here, you will be going without your unit since this is an unofficial job.”
    “What!? Oh, damnit Glare, that’s...” I took in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “Alright, but I have to get some supplies, and you have to pay me something up front even if I might fail.”
Footnote: Level Up (3)
Skill Note: Melee Weapon: 75
New Perk: Quick Reflexes: You are now 50% quicker to react to any attack or ambush.
Quest Perk: Ghoul Slayer: You deal 25% bonus damage to any ghoul, through your great knowledge on how to end their unlife.
((A/N: Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. The chapters will get longer, I swear! Major thanks to Mint Julep for drawing and editing me a cover. Any and all feedback is much wanted and welcome))

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             Chapter Three: Unfriendly Allies              
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Chapter Three: Unfriendly Allies
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Chapter Three: Unfriendly Allies
"This ain't what I signed up for!"
    I had that feeling, you know the one, where you feel like whatever you are fixing to go do is going to go terribly wrong. It ends up possibly killing you, and leaving you in a ditch somewhere in the wasteland to rot. I wasn’t sure what to think about the civil war going on in Ciderside, hay, I’ve never even visited Ciderside before. Must be one of the newer cities that popped up after a Stable opened up. Mourning didn’t give me any information on what I was supposed to do, other than ‘solve it’. At least she paid me five hundred caps upfront, and if I did fix this, she would work with the Council to reward me with anything I want.
    I was in 7th Unit’s home room on the second floor of South Station packing up my new supplies I bought from Lemon and traded with a few other mercenaries around the common room. It was mainly food and medical supplies, also a pair of spiked horseshoes, which I equipped on both my forehooves. I stuffed my saddlebags with a week’s worth of food and water, to prepare for the disaster or distraction that was sure to come. It was like the world wanted to prevent me from trying to get anything done properly.
Creeeaaaaakkk
    Well, an ominous door opening, a sure sign that somepony is behind you. I turned to see Captain Frost staring at me from the doorway, and she did not look happy. I started to secure all my armor and gear on me as she walked in, and shut the door behind her.
    “Oh, Silent.....” she fluttered her eyelashes, walking toward me in a seductive manner. I’m a pretty normal stallion, as straight as my javelins, so this both intrigued and scared the living hell out of me.
    “I heard you were out buying stuff... a lot of stuff. You going somewhere?” My back hit the wall across from the door, wait, when did I start backing up? Captain Frost was right in front of me, within very personal range.
    “Ye-yeah, I bought some medicine and food, since I used all of mine over the last few days.” I could feel myself sweating, what was there for me to be hide? I was just going to go out to the city. It’s just the way she was talking, it made me nervous.
    “I’m not doing anything suspicious!” I blurted out. Wow, I thought I was good under pressure.
    “No, you are not... but the amount of the supplies you bought is!” She grabbed one of the ends of my scarf, and yanked it off of me. She jumped back a couple steps with it in her mouth. I got away from the wall, standing as tall as I could manage, which was barely half a head over Frost.
    “Wait! Captain, give me back my scarf.” I stamped down my left hoof to punctuate, ending up with a very soft thump. She dropped it into her hoof.
    “Where are you going? I did not hear anything about a job, especially not so soon. We are a unit, Step, we don’t do solo missions.”
    “I’m no-” Captain levitated my scarf up in the air, and twirled it around a bit.
    “Tell me! Tell me, or your scarf gets it!” she spun it around it circles faster. What was she going to do to it? Honestly, I was afraid to find out.
    “Alright, alright, just... set it down. Please?” I looked straight into Captain’s blue eyes, and she slowly let it down, my scarf ending up neatly folded on the floor next to her. She just looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
    “I’m going off to Ciderside City, doing a favor for a friend. Really, that’s all, it’s a couple days away so I packed for both trips in one go while I had the caps.”
    “Ciderside is not a safe place to be right now. Do you do know the current situation in that city?” I shrugged, other than some sort of dispute that I didn’t think was worth being called a civil war. “The city is tearing itself apart over its morals. I am not positive over the specifics, but the leaders of the city have formed a group, and any pony not with them is their enemy.”
    “Wow, uh,” I wasn't sure how to respond to that. What would make a city of civilized ponies split so far apart that they would kill each other?
    “Are you still going to go, even if it is a battlefield?” She narrowed her eyes at me. Wow, that was not the way I expected that to go.
    “Well, let us hope that it’s not as bad as you heard.” I walked past Captain, and stopped in the doorway. “ I’m heading off now for a week or so, will you tell Wire for me?” She frowned at me.
    “Yes, I will. We got paid enough to take a couple days off, but if we are gone when you come back, do not blame us, we have to work to eat.” She laughed.
    “Don’t you mean if I come back?” She walked over and punched me in the shoulder, same spot Mourning hit me the day before. Is it on purpose, or do all mares hit that same area on reflex?
    “No, I meant when.” She deadpanned.
    “No promises, seriously.” I held out my left hoof toward Frost. She smirked, and gave me a hoof bump. I walked off toward the stairs, and called out behind me, “Don’t go getting fat on your vacation!”
    “Yeah right, tell that to the rookie!” I heard her yell back, and a soft chuckle that didn’t follow after me. I went down the stairs, and weaved my way through the first floor to leave home. I stepped outside, greeted by the light of morning and the never ending view of grey above. I trotted up to the tin doors in the train car perimeter, two uniform mercenaries on guard.
    “7th Unit, Corporal Silent Step, going out for an estimated week.” The left guard, a light blue unicorn, stepped up.
    “Alone, without your unit?” I nodded, “Alright.”
    They lifted away the tin doors, and let me through, shutting them behind me after I got all the way out. I liked most of the main guards, simple to talk to. I guessed they didn’t want to know why I was leaving alone, or they didn’t care enough, but it made things a lot less stressful. Endless brown and grey, we meet again. I checked my direction, making sure I was heading west of home, and started off. At times like this I really wished I had a portable radio or one of those fancy PipBucks, just for its radio function. I sighed, time to see how many rocks I could count before not caring. One, two, three...
* * *
    Wow, it had been so long since I had traveled by myself, I forgot about the mind-numbing boredom. I camped last night in some old wreckage of... well I wasn’t sure what it was, but it helped fight the cold. A few radroaches and bloatsprites on my path that were easily taken care of, they didn’t last against my hoofs. I wasn’t far from Ciderside City, but I wished I had some music to drown out the wind. It wo-.. wait, what’s that?
    Through the brown haze was a pony shaped figure, and it was pulling a medium sized box. Finally, something other than this blasted dirt desert! I walked toward the pony carefully, and I did not make any sudden movement on the way. Approaching fast could be mistaken as hostile, and that was a good way to get shot. Never fully trust anypony you randomly meet, but if you aren’t a raider or slaver, at least give them the benefit of the doubt. I noticed that the pony saw me, and stopped moving.
    As I got closer, she called out to me. “Greetings! How are you this fine day?” I got close enough so the haze wasn’t a bother. She was a red mare, with a shortly trimmed green mane. I heard a click next to my head, a shotgun floating to my left side. Oh, she was a unicorn too.
    “It’s been a good day, how are ya?” I looked behind her to see a small faded red wagon with various goods. “Merchant, or a threat?” The double-barrel shotgun floated back to her side, the tension seemed to lift.
    “Scavenger, but I barter most of it off to ponies. Wait, does that make me a merchant? Haha, not sorry about the gun, you cannot be too careful.” Ah yes, talking to another creature who actually responds, and doesn’t even want to kill me. She eyed my clothing and armor, “Oh, you are one of those ponies that dresses like that. I see quite a few of you ponies out and about, not sure what you ponies do though.”
    “Haha, we are mercenaries, usually I wouldn’t be alone. I’m heading to Ciderside, any news about that place?” Her slight smile disappeared quick.
    “Yeah, I have some news about it.”
    “Great...” I waited a couple seconds for a response, but none came. I sighed, “alright, how much?”
    “Fifteen caps, because I’m generous.” I picked out fifteen caps and let her levitate them into her bags. “Look, I just came from Ciderside, and it’s hell. I would not recommend going there, not until whatever their problem is has gone.”
    Damn, this wasn’t what I wanted to hear. That news kind of killed my mood, but now I knew to be careful. Well, even more careful than I would’ve normally been.
    “Thanks, but I’m still going, though I’m not happy to hear it’s gonna be worse than I thought. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a radio of any kind, would you?”
    She levitated this small box radio, small enough anyway to comfortably sit in one of my saddlebags. “Forty-two caps, no less.” We traded item for caps, and I turned it on. Sweet, sweet classical music came out of the speakers.
    “Hay, you have no idea how much sweeter this makes me day, even after that news.”
    She smirked at my comment, “I can imagine, got my own I play when I know it’s safe to. Nice meeting you, merc’.” She walked off, pulling her little wagon behind her; it looked like the handle was tethered to her tail. I trotted, almost skipping, in the direction of Ciderside. I don’t care if any threat hears me, I dared anything to fight me with my music playing.
* * *
    The next few hours on my trip were amazing. I listened to various songs that were played by DJ-Pon3, and his occasional news on how to survive in the Equestrian Wasteland, along with a report or two of random heroic behaviour or feats. I heard my unit get a mention, although not specifically, in clearing out that ghoul infestation from Charity’s Gift Supply. There was a trade route that passes by there in between a few small settlements, and with the path clear business was safer than a long detour. I guess it was nice to know that my unit and I weren’t the only ones who benefited from it.
    The brown haze lifted as I got into sight on Ciderside City, and it was no small town. It was a small metropolis, buildings only a couple stories high littered the area for a couple miles. What it didn’t have in height, it had it the sheer number of units. The city’s buildings were an assortment of colors, all dulled and eroded by years in the world. I trotted up to the nearest street, as there were no walls or barricades separating the wasteland from the city.
    I arrived at my first dirt street; the city was probably too large to buy any sort of pavement for all the roads. I slowly walked further inwards, the silence was very disturbing. I came expecting constant battles and gunfire, possibly a few explosions. I looked to the dead stone walls and shattered windows for any sign of life. My radio softly playing a sad orchestral melody, the atmosphere shifting to something more akin to a funeral. Shadows flickered along the edges of my vision that made me slightly paranoid.
    Quiet notes of gunfire echoed among the ruins from further ahead, I picked up my pace to a light run toward the source. Two streets down and through an alleyway I found the conflict. A group of four ponies were fighting it out with... raiders? What the hay were raiders doing here?
    I stopped at the end of the alleyway, and ducked behind a dumpster bin in the shadows. I peeked over to watch the battle, not sure if I wanted to go risk myself. Seven raiders were on my side of the street, taking cover behind various pieces of wreckage and rubble from the demolished building behind them. Four of the raiders had firearms, all an assortment of pistols in poor condition, the other three all had combat knives. They were trading fire with the ponies across the street, who were hiding out in a single story building, a half destroyed sign that read ‘-tterc-p’s Dres-es’.
    The small group of ponies all had assault or hunting rifles, also in poor condition. They must have been in a lot of battles to wear down their equipment so badly. I noticed that the ponies were wearing almost nothing, not even armored clothing. I wondered if they found being exposed comfortable; even raiders had the sense to get some armor, even if it was crude.
    One of raiders with a pistol, a purple unicorn, signaled the ones with knives to move in as the other three with pistols opened fire. They dashed across the street, attempting to close the distance and get inside to slaughter the group. A yellow stallion popped out of one of the windows with an assault rifle, taking fire from the raiders. He let out continuous fire on the charging raiders, killing all three of them. I noticed the purple unicorn, probably the leader, fire a couple shots off, the bullets rupturing through the poor stallions eyes. He fell over behind the window in what I imagined a fountain of blood.
    I heard a loud change of tune on my radio as the singer of the song changed to a louder, rock and roll style. The pistol raider nearest to me turned his head as his allies stopped firing to duck behind cover, and let somepony turn his head inside out with a flurry of bullets, it took more than one to break his skull. The other three raiders looked at each other, and the leader unicorn took out a grenade. She levitated it over her head, peeked over her slab of stone she was taking cover behind, pulled the stem and tossed it at the what once was a tailor shop. A green field took hold of the grenade mid-air, and flung it back over between two of the raiders.
    The explosion ripped them apart, along with their filthy cobbled armor, their bloody body parts coating the area away from the blast site. The last raider pony, the purple unicorn leader, looked like she was in a rage. She popped out of her cover, and ran at the building while firing at the holed up ponies. A burst from multiple rifles brought her down with a thud, her hide full of bleeding holes.
    The small band of ponies walked out of the stone building slowly, having lost one of their four in the assault. Two mares and a stallion were left, all of them with minor wounds. They started looting the raider bodies that filled up the street, I was surprised they lived through that. I held a moment of silence in respect for the yellow stallion who gave up his life, on purpose or not, to protect his comrades.
    I wondered if stalking around in the shadows would be suspicious, and possibly considered hostile. I stepped out of the alleyway, and started walking over to the survivors. One of the mares caught sight of me, and raised her hunting rifle with her magic. A bullet struck me in the chest, failing to penetrate my leather barding, but still hurt like hell. I staggered backwards, and another bullet hit me in the chest, but still didn’t pierce. Goddesses, wearing good armor had saved my life yet again.
    “Die you raider scum!” the dark green mare yelled out, preparing to shoot me yet again. I wasn’t prepared for a fight, and still wasn’t sure I wanted one.
    “I...I..” I coughed hard, my chest hurting from being shot. “I’m not a raider.”
    “Then die you slaver scum!” The mare magically pulled the small handle on her bolt-action rifle, loading in another cartridge. I mentally sighed, not pleased with my life being in this pony’s hooves.
    “I’m not a friggin’ slaver.” I regained my balance, and shifted on my forehooves to get a better feel for the spiked horseshoes. Always wearing them made balancing on rough terrain a little annoying, but they were hoofy in situations like this.
    “You have to be one or the other, since you aren’t with us.” She nodded back to the stallion and mare who were still looting the raider bodies, confident in their companion. I walked slowly up to her, ready to kill if this couldn’t be talked through.
    “I’m not a raider, a slaver, or with y’all. I just got here, and you just killed me, twice.” The mare gave me a questioning look, glanced at her allies, and turned back to me.
    “What? You are standing right there, alive and not bleeding to death. I don’t think that counts as killing you even once.” Wow, this mare was stupid or just didn’t care. I got within striking distance of her, feeling a lot safer now that I could prevent her shooting me with a punch to the face.
    “You shot me. In the chest. Twice.” I stared stared with a straight face.
    “So? You’re fault for not dodging.” She made it sound like it was the simplest thing in the world.
    “What, how does that even make sense? I wasn’t planning to attack you.”
    “And that makes it my fault my bullets hit you?” She brushed some dust off her dark green coat and yellow mane.
    “YES! You friggin’ shot me, it’s all your fault.” I stamped a spiked hoof down for emphasis.
    “You shouldn’t have been on the raider side of the street. Besides, you’re not exactly dead.”
    “Wha...” I facehoofed, I needed to work of my conversation skills. “Look, I just arrived to town and got shot by some ponies. Ponies, might I add, who I am talking to. You owe me for not retaliating.”
    “I figure you owe me for not shooting you a third time, so we are even.” I didn’t think I could win this, it just wasn’t in me. I sighed out loud this time. “That was a nasty sigh, problem?”
    “Who are you ponies, and why are there raiders in the city?” She set her hunting rifle down with her magic onto a pair of hooks on a brown leather harness she wore. I guessed the hostilities were finally out of the way, though I had still felt a need to hit something.
    “Who are you, and why are you in our city?” I was just going to do this the easy way, and answer her questions first, not like being here was supposed to be a secret.
    “I’m Silent Step, a mercenary here to help whatever the hay is going on in Ciderside. Your turn.”
    “Name is Sour Bean, auburn mare back there is Sunrise, turquoise stallion is Pond. We are part of the group of the sane ponies from Ciderside. Now, how are you going to help us out?”
    “I still don’t even know what’s going on, so I’ll help anyway I can.” Hopefully anything would mean combat, I wasn’t much good at anything else.
    “Alright, whatever, we don’t have anything to pay to with, but I can lead you to our base.””
    “I got paid before I came out here, so no problem there.” And it was a favor from Mourning, that was a huge factor.
    “Oh, okay.” She turned back to talk to her group, “Guys, we are leaving, looting time it over.”
    While she was looking away, I inspected my newfound ally. Sour Bean had a dark green coat with a short spiky yellow mane, wearing green saddlebags and a leather harness to set her rifle and newly acquired 10mm pistol from the raiders. I would guess she was a few years older than me, and was quite pretty. I kept that thought to myself, and locked it away in a corner of my mind. Sunrise and Pond finished up their stuff, and we set out to somewhere, Bean leading the way.
    A sweet violin solo streamed from my box radio in my saddlebags, I almost forgot I still had that thing on. I let the music flow through my ears, filling the would-be silence of the traveling party. We moved through various streets and out the backdoors of a few buildings before reaching a small staircase leading down into a basement door. I felt they made the path complicated to remember just for me. Basements and sewers were always a bad deal, no matter how safe you thought they were. I looked to Bean, and she smiled at me. Her smiling was among the top ten creepiest things I have seen. Everypony besides me walked down the staircase, and then through the door. This screamed to be a trap, but I followed anyway. They had already shot me, and still led me to their base. I opened the rusty metal door, and walked in.
Footnote: Level Up (4)
Skill Note: Sneak: 75
New Perk: Work Horse: You have the stamina of three normal ponies, Traveling long distances with all your gear has built up your constitution. Sprinting for extended periods of time barely wind you, and you can carrying weight increases by 50 lbs.
((A/N: Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Any and all feedback is much wanted and welcome))

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                  Chapter Four: Hierarchy                  
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Chapter Four: Hierarchy
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Chapter Four: Hierarchy
“The higher up you are, the less you feel for those below you.”
    The rusted grey metal door slammed shut behind me, a green magical field locked the door from the inside with a large metal bolt. I had walked into an underground tunnel, rusted pipes lined the stone walls and ceiling and water puddles formed in various spots on the floor where the stone eroded over decades. The air was oddly cold and humid; a slight fog filled the tunnel obscuring any vision further down with the only light coming from the occasional fluorescent lamp built into the wall.  I slowly crept away from the door, glancing left and right. Why did I follow them down here? I looked over to Sour Bean and her group, they had already started walking.
    “Hey, is there another way to wherever we’re heading right now?” I called out sounding rather shaky. Bean looked back at me, and smirked.
    “Oh sure, there is a grand detour with some lovely sights to see. I’m sure we could even find you a scooter or wheelchair to push you around on.” Bean replied. Sarcasm wasn’t an attractive trait when it was being used against me. I looked down the tunnel to foggy darkness, and saw one of the lights flicker.
    “Ha ha ha, funny. Seriously, do we have to go through this place?” I nodded towards the bolted shut door, “Just, ya know, unlock it. We can find another way to your hideout.” All three of my new companions just stared at me, like I was suggesting something stupid.
    Bean turned around and sighed, “No, we can’t. This is the only path that doesn’t require us going through enemy territory. If you are going to help us, just suck up whatever your problem is, and come on.” She turned back around, motioned to the other two, and they started walking again.
    I glanced back at the locked door and shook my head. This was so friggin’ stupid! Why couldn’t they see that we were in a deathtrap? I trotted up after them, my hooves splashing in some small puddles on the way. This looked like some old maintenance tunnel, but why was it so wet? I caught up to them, and lined up next to Sour Bean. My radio’s song cut off sharply, replaced by a light static that was drowned out by our voices.
    “What is up with you about this path?” Bean asked. If she had to ask, she didn’t get it. I glanced over my shoulder, and then over the other.  I don’t know how anything could come from behind when it’s straight and empty, but it still creeped me out.
    “Uh, Bean, right? You’re lucky I was paid to do this, or I would never go down here. This whole atmosphere screams death trap, or some monster lair that’s going to eat us. You say this is your path to your base, so that means you have travelled it before. That’s a little reassuring, but this is such a bad idea.”
    She laughed, “Aww, are you scared of some big bad tunnels? I am more scared of those raiders above us and them shooting us dead.” Pond and Sunrise started chatting to each other while me and Sour Bean had our own conversation.
    “I would rather take on a town of raiders than go underground. The friggin’ monsters down here could eat an army of raiders.” A light flickered as we past it, casting the entire area in brief darkness that caused me to jump. Bean just stared at me, “Anyway, what are raiders even doing in the city? Not that there are any walls stopping them from coming in.”
    Bean snorted. “There are walls further in where the real city is at, the part we ponies lived in. Those stupid idiots that we called our leaders went insane and let an army of slavers and raiders inside, and are trying to capture anypony they can get their hooves on. So now we are at war, and they outnumber us pretty bad.”
    I just stared at the wet stone ground at we walked, taking in this information. This was a lot bigger than I thought, damn Mourning and her favor. “When you say an army, how big are we talking?”
    “I’m not sure on the exact number, but we last counted about sixty, maybe seventy ponies. Our numbers are half that, one less with the loss of Paperclip. If he didn’t shoot down those raiders charging at us... I don’t think we would have made it out.” Bean said, and stared straight forward hard. That was a lot of ponies, even if most of them are raiders. Wait, slavers as well? What the hay was going on? I know slavers and raiders don’t always kill each other, but since when did they team up?
    “You said slavers as well, any chance that some of their numbers are just slaves forced into fighting?”
    Bean looked like she was thinking hard for a moment. “...Yeah. I think most of the ponies that got captured in the first raid are slaves fighting against us. I don’t know how many there are though. They should have ran faster, now it’s our problem to deal with them.”
    That was harsh, but at least this gives us a better chance. If we could convince the slaves to turn on their slavers, that would maybe even the odds. “Looks like we’re here.” Bean said, a similar rusty grey metal door lit up by a light at the end of the tunnel. If this whole way wasn’t a straight line, I would’ve thought that we ended up back at the entrance. Bean walked up to the door, shushed the rest of our group, and knocked four times in slow succession.
    “Code” a muffled stallions voice came through the door.
    “Green.” Bean replied. The sound of metal grating came from the other side, probably another bolt lock, and the door opened up. Our whole group walked inside.
    A smooth stone rectangular room with two doorways, one ahead opposite of us, and one to our left. Large desks and filing cabinets filled most of the area in the room, broken or torn apart terminals sat on every desk along with hundreds of papers littering any surface.
   A purple stallion walked out from behind the door, and greeted us. “Welcome back, how did it go?”
   Bean snorted. “Terrible, didn’t even find one, unless you count the large group of raiders we killed. We lost Paperclip in the fight against them.”
   The purple stallion sighed, his eyes looked like he had been up for days. “Luna help us, this is getting insane.” He looked to me, “Who is that?”
   “Some mercenary who was paid to help us out.” Bean answered. I wanted to state I was paid to end the conflict, I was never told which side to help. Considering what I had seen though, I was with the right side. Sunrise and Pond left us, and headed through the left side doorway.
    “Then he can make up for your loss of a pony.” the stallion stated.
    “Hey, I didn’t lose a pony, why is it my fault like I am the leader?” Bean threw her hooves up in the air for a moment to exaggerate.
    I interrupted their conversation, “I thought you were the leader, since you did all the talking and decision making.” Bean gave me a shocked look, complete with a gasp. “That... that is because none of the others would do anything! I had to tell them what to do, or nothing would ever get done.” she replied.
    “And that makes you the leader.” the purple stallion said. “The assembly will be in an hour by the way, you almost missed this one.”
    “Yeah, whatever. I’ll take this guy,” she nodded to me,” and watch him until it starts.”
    “Alright, it will be your fault if he ends up a spy or kills us all.” Bean shrugged, and walked to the doorway in front of us. I trotted up beside her, and we left the room. I glanced back to the stallion, he closed the door and bolted it shut again, and went to a desk. He opened a book up and started to read. I guess he had to do something while sitting guard over a door.
    Bean led me down a couple hallways, all with smooth stone walls and dim lighting, doorways with metal doors jammed open or completely removed. After the third hallway we entered into a small bedroom, or at least that’s what it was being used for. Everything that was in here before must have been cleared out, there only being four storage lockers, and two sets of bunk beds. Bean walked over to the closest locker, and opened it. We had been walking in complete silence, except for my radio static. It was becoming a bit uncomfortable.
    “So, what happens at this assembly?” I asked, trying to both start up some conversation and get more info on what was going on.
    Bean took out some ammo, slammed her locker shut, and yelled at me. “Goddesses, why can’t you just stay silent.” She flicked her head toward me, her eyes looked tired. “Fuck... today has sucked enough.” I took a couple steps toward her, empathizing with her. I’ve had those kind of days. She levitated the ammo over to the left bottom bunk, and sat down on the mattress. She faced away from me, I heard her sniffling.
    “Hey, are you okay?” I asked, wow was that smooth. Everypony wants to hear that when they’re sad. She wiped her face with a foreleg, got off the bunk, and walked right up to me. She punched me in the shoulder. Same. Exact. Spot. “I am not crying, tell anypony and I’ll shoot you.” she sniffled again, and walked back over to her bunk. I rubbed my shoulder. mouthing out ‘Ow’ soundlessly. It was a conspiracy among all mares to hit in that spot.
    I joined her next to her bunk, sitting on the ground instead of on it. “What were you not crying about?”. Bean sniffled again, and met my eyes, “Oh fuck no, I’m not talking about this. Especially not with some random pony who says he is a goody-good mercenary here to save the day.”
    I shrugged. “Why not? Better than telling somepony who knows you personally.” Beans raised her hoof to punch me again; I flinched. She froze for a moment, looked around the room, and lowered her hoof. “Alright, whatever. You know that stallion who died today? We grew up together. Yeah, I put on an act in front of other ponies. You know, to not seem like I’m weak, typical shit. I am actually pretty fucking sad over him dying. His death saved our lives, and I love him for that, I just wish he didn’t have to rot in the street with those damned raiders.”
    I put a hoof to my scarf, and stroked it. “Yeah, I know that feeling... I really do.” I looked up into her eyes, and she met mine. Then she sneezed in my face, I felt her snot cling to my fur. She bursted out laughing, falling onto her back and clutching her ribs. Eww... I wiped my face on her dirty bed sheet. “Hehe, oh Luna, that was a fucking moment.” She said, still laughing. I just stared at her rolling around on her bed until she stopped.
    I sighed. “So, really, what happens at this assembly that’s in a bit?”
    “Oh, just the usual announcements that Oaktree gives out every day.” I stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate. She just looked at me like I was an idiot missing common sense.
   “Who’s Oaktree?” I asked
    She facehoofed. “You come to help us without knowing anything? Oaktree is the leader of our little rebellion. No, he did not make himself leader, he was given it because he basically saved everypony who survived the first raid.” I opened my mouth to ask how, but she answered it before I spoke. “He was the only pony from our city council to say ‘hell no’ to whatever the others planned, and warned the citizens about it in time. He organized the evacuation to our current base that the other leaders don’t know about, and has pretty much kept us all safe while we go out to look for any other survivors.
    My mind thought about this, he must’ve been a damn good pony. “Bean, you think I could meet with Oaktree?”
    She shrugged, “Sure, just walk up to him or his office and say hi.” Odd, I didn’t detect her usual sarcasm. “No really, you can. Like I said, we made him a leader. He isn’t holed up in a security bunker behind walls of bulletproof glass, he is just a pony.”
    “Do you think yo-”
    “Whatever, yeah, sure. I’ll take you to meet him after.” She interrupted me. I smiled. Being able to meet the boss and see what I could do to help end this as quickly as possible was easier than just running around on what little information I had.
    I shifted in place, unsure of what to do. We still had at least forty minutes until the assembly. “So, you have any idea why the council turned on the city?” I asked. Bean gave me a stare, opened her locker telekinetically, and levitated out a worn chessboard and pieces. I scooted away from her bunk, and she set them down between us.
    “How about we play a game since we have some time,” she said. I raised an eyebrow, and looked at the chessboard. I knew how to play, but that was about it. “Each time one of takes a piece, we get to ask the other a question.” She smiled creepily. I admit, I was scared when she smiled. It seemed fair enough though, so why not?
    “Sure, but I get to go first.” Bean rolled her eyes, and set up the pieces with black on her side and white on mine. I immediately moved my farthest left pawn up two. Thinking of a strategy would be hard, so I just thought in the present.
    “Chess is a great game, trains your mind to think ahead dozens of steps while keeping your reflexes to unpredictable moves sharp. You outwit opponents by reading their thoughts based of even the smallest motions or habits.” Bean said, while telekinetically moving the pawn in front of her left bishop forward two.
    “Really?” I asked, moving my right knight out of his box to the left.
    Bean laughed, “Hell no, it’s just a game. For fun. I figured if we were going to talk, might as well do it with something I like.” She moved her left rook pawn forward two, with me moving my king pawn forward two right after. Bean moved her right knight out to behind her pawn.
    “I wouldn’t have guessed you were a chess player, no offense.” I moved my right bishop in front of her left forward pawn. I looked up from the board to see Bean staring at me, but not in an angry way.
    “I will chalk that up to this being the wasteland and that nopony has time to play the game.” She moved her king pawn up two. I saw that my knight could take the pawn she just moved, and went for it. When I nudged her pawn with my knight, she levitated it over to my right side along the edge of the board.
    Bean shrugged, “First kill is yours, ask away.”
    “You know why the council turned on the city?” I asked.
    “Some of it, Oaktree told us what he knew after we had escaped. It wasn’t much, just that they had a deal going with this slaver group. If they turned over the city, they would get anything they wanted. I figure being city leaders wasn’t good enough, and they went power crazy at the chance.”
    I rubbed my chin, trying to think of what gang has that much influence. Bean moved her knight to take mine, and then levitated it to her right side off of the board. “My pawn has been avenged, and now it is my turn. Now, Silent, why are you really here?” She asked.
    “What? I told you, I was paid to come solve this conflict.” I replied.
    “Oh, I know that, but it isn’t good enough. Give me the real details.” She said, looking nonchalant. I scratched the back of my head while sighing.
    “Look, I got paid to solve this problem, but I wasn’t told which side to go for. We have commissions by both your group, and the other group, and our higher ups couldn’t decide what to do. I’m here unofficially; a really good friend asked me a favor. That’s why I’m trying to get information about what is really going on here. So far, I’m leaning hard in your side’s favor.”
    I moved my left knight pawn forward one to protect my bishop from her knight. Bean moved her queen pawn forward one. I moved my right knight pawn up one. “So your merc group, or whatever, got asked for help by both sides? I don’t remember there ever being an announcement about our side doing that.”
    She moved her queen forward one space, followed by my queen pawn going up two. “Huh, well I wasn’t told who actually came to request, I came here soon after I was asked,” I said. Bean moved her knight forward, putting my king in check. I moved him to his right, and moved her queen down right to put him in check again. Dang, this was bad. I moved him to his upper left, and let out a breath. She moved her knight back left, taking my pawn and putting my poor king is check again. Jeez, I was bad at chess.
    “Oh, my turn again? Good. I know you saw our fight with the raiders, why didn’t you help us? We might have all made it out if you stabbed them in their backs, literally.” She gestured to my javelins. Well, now it was awkward.
    “I wasn’t going to go risk my life against a large group of raiders for ponies I didn’t even know, especially considering this city’s situation. I’m a mercenary, not a friggin’ hero.” I moved my king in front of her knight, Bean moved her right knight out into the battle to the left. I moved my left bishop to its upper left, putting Bean’s king in check.
    “Alright, I can get that,” She said while nodding her head with a mild expression. She used her furthest back knight to block my bishop. I moved my queen one space to the upper right. She moved her knight that was in front of my king back, taking my bishop.
    “What are you planning on doing if you meet Oaktree?” She asked.
    “Ask him what I can do to help.” I moved my pawn to take her leftmost knight.
    “How many leaders turned rogue other than the one who saved y’all?”
    “Four. Shorttail, Éclair, Star Wind, and Peaches. All unicorns except for Peaches.” Bean moved her pawn between her right knight pawn forward one, and I followed with my left knight forward right. I think I was trying to win too much, and not just capturing any piece I could get. Bean moved her right bishop forward right, checking my king. This was getting ridiculous, my poor king always in the assassin’s gaze. Did I have a move to save me?
    “Having trouble?” Bean asked.
    “It wasn’t a turn for a question,” I said; she rolled her eyes at me. I saw my only chance, and moved my right bishop pawn forward two, blocking her bishop. She magically pulled my pawn off, and replaced it with her bishop. “You’re pretty well equipped, yet I don’t see a gun. You have one?” Bean asked.
    I nodded toward my saddlebags, “I carry a 10mm Pistol, but I prefer not to use it.” I nudged my king into her bishop, her floating it to my small pile of kills.
    “That’s weird, bringing a spear to a gun fight.” She moved her right knight pawn forward, checking my poor king. If he wasn’t an object, he would’ve died from stress of all the oncoming attacks.
    “When you kill somepony with a gun, it was just a pull of the trigger. When I take a life with my spears, I feel the weight of the pony I had just killed, even if it was some sick raider. I guess it’s more personal.” I used my king to take her pawn, swift justice unleashed.
    “That is pretty morbid you know,” Bean said as she shrugged, and moved her right rook left one space; king checked again.
    I shifted in my spot, not sure what to do. I hesitantly moved my king to his upper left. “Now,” Bean said, moving her queen all the way back, to the left of my king. Checkmate.I heard a click from the right side of my head, her rifle floating in the corner of my vision. “Which side are you on?”
    I started to inch my hoof toward Bean, and was stopped by the sound of a her rifles lever loading a bullet. “Uh uh, don’t try anything and just answer the question, it is my turn after all.” This was very unprofessional of me, falling for a trap to be forced on a side. Unicorns and their magic, I swore under my breath.
    “Interesting interrogation technique, are you forcing me to choose sides?” I said.
    Bean shrugged, “Can’t let you meet the boss without having you on the team. It’s a risk and all.”
    “I could just lie to you, say I’m on your side and still jump your leader.”
    “I don’t take you for a liar, some mercenary code or such. Or you’re just a good pony, who knows.” I paused, it wasn’t like I was going to not choose their side anyway, I just didn’t like being threatened into it.
    “Fine… I’m on your side, playing for your team, in your square and all whatever else ways I could say it.” I stared at Bean, and she cocked an eyebrow. After a couple seconds passed, “Put away the gun?” She made a surprised face, seeming to have forgotten she had me at gunpoint.
    “Now that that’s settled, let’s get going. The assembly is soon. Or it might have already started, whatever,” Bean said, putting her rifle back on her harness. I looked at the harness, and saw her cutie mark underneath, a patch of dirt with a yellow two-leaf sprout that matched her tail color. Funny how I didn’t think to look for it until I thought it might be a chess cutie mark.
    “You know, that was actually fun… one sec,” she said, opening her locker magically again. She floated out a small set light faded brown leather saddlebags, and stuffed some equipment and her chess game into them before strapping them on.
    She headed out the doorway, didn’t bother waiting, and walked off. I trotted to catch up, and we went to the assembly. Bean tossed me a glance, saying, “You’re terrible at chess you know, we should work on that.” She let out a villainous laugh, a sure signal of fun in the future.
    A few hallways and a set of stairs later, we walked through a thin blue metal door into a large stone room. It seemed like a makeshift auditorium, a stage crafted out of scrap wood and metal at the end of the room, dozens of broken and scrapped tables shoved alongside the walls to clear the area. Dozens of ponies were already in here, with two on the stage. Bean led me closer to the stage, and we stopped about halfway into the crowd.
    We arrived just as a blue mare was walking away from a podium on the stage, swapping with an older brown stallion, his moss green mane greased straight back, though with what I wasn’t sure. His horn glowed with a lighter green glow. Bean leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That there is Oaktree, seems we arrived just in time.”
    Oaktree cleared his throat, the sound magically enhanced to a greatly louder volume. “Greetings my comrades, as I am sure you are all aware, this battle against the corrupted ponies that have invaded our home is at its peak. This last week we have rescued over ten other survivors, and in the process brought many of our enemies to justice. Although we have all lost loved ones in the attacks, we continue to stand together as a whole and persevere through this brutal time. I have received news that the majority of our enemies forces have camped in our City Hall. I am afraid they are trying to retrieve the water talisman that we use to sustain our community.”
    Almost everypony gasped, myself included. They had a water talisman? That alone could be the whole reason for this fucking war! Oaktree continued, “Now now, as frightening as this information is, I was in charge the water talisman. It was, and is still my job to protect it from harm, so I have hidden it in the building before I was run out. Though, I am afraid that will only buy us so much time. We cannot let them have it, so I propose that we attack them before they can find it,” Oaktree let out a magnified sigh,” I know this is reckless, but that water is our life and trade. I am sorry it has come to this, but I will go with any pony that will follow me. So I ask you, if you will not come with, please leave the city for safety.”
    Silence permeated the room, I looked around to see everypony standing tall and staring at the stage. Each stallion or mare had determined looks on their faces. The blue mare that was on the stage next to Oaktree spoke up. “Would we all be here if we were not ready to follow you to the end?”
    Oaktree looked around the room, and smiled. “Thank you all… We shall be victorious in defending our home, or die fighting for it!” He saluted the crowd, which everypony returned to him. He bowed afterward, and walked off the stage, exiting through the door on the right. The blue mare walked back up to the podium, and proceeded to list off names that she wanted to gather in a meeting room in an hour to discuss the attack. Bean’s name was on that list, apparently she was thought of as her group's leader by others as well. After that, the assembly was over and everypony left the auditorium.
    “That was definitely not our average assembly. So this thing is finally going to end huh? One way or another. Come on merc, let’s go meet up with the boss.” Bean said. We trotted over and through the door right of the stage. We entered a T-shaped hallway, and walked to a door right in the middle at the end of the intersection. Bean pushed open a pair of thin blue metal doors, and we walked into a meeting room.
    A large wooden table sat in the middle of this wide square room, maps and papers scattered over the top. A few working terminals were embedded in the side of the walls, and a chalkboard stood a few hoofs away from the table. This is what I would imagine a war strategy room looked like. A few ponies were talking amongst each other, operating the terminals, and other stuff. Oaktree and that blue mare stood behind the middle table, concentrating on the papers.
    Bean walked up to the table with me following alongside. The other two didn’t seem to notice us, as they continued looking back and forth between the map and papers on the table. I looked to Bean who was staring straight ahead, waiting to be called on. A minute passed before Oaktree looked up, and released his tensed posture.
    “Ah, Sour Bean my girl, what brings you here ahead of time?” He looked to me, but waited for Bean to reply anyway.
    “This is Silent Step, a mercenary from out of town. He told me he was hired to come here to aid us in our conflict. I didn’t know we sent anypony to ask for help from mercenaries.” Bean said, raising an eyebrow.
    Oaktree rubbed his chin, “I was not aware that we did either. Perhaps a survivor made it out of the city, and was kind enough to send help,” He looked over and examined me, “I recognize the uniform black duster, you are a mercenary of South Station?”
    “Yeah, we’re not too far from here, but I have never been to Ciderside before. I’ve only recently heard of it. No worries about payment, I got it before I came here.” I said.
    “Silent, what rank are you within your unit?” Oaktree asked.
    “I’ll be damned, you know our ranks? Ahem, I’ll formally introduce myself then. I am Corporal Silent Step, 7th Unit of South Station Mercenaries. Since you know about that, you should know I’m currently without my unit for this mission.”
    Oaktree looked back down to the map, “That is too bad, a whole unit of you mercenaries would change a lot…”
    Bean looked to me confused. “Are you really that strong or something?”
    I shrugged, “Or something. Anyway, I’m here to help. What can I do for ya?” Oaktree looked from to the map to me, then to the blue mare next to him. She met his eyes, he gave her a nod, and she walked out of the room to do something.
    “I have a job for you and Sour Bean, and it will be extremely dangerous,” Oaktree waited a moment before continuing, “We will be charging City Hall at night, hoping the element of surprise helps us. I want you two to sneak in the building before the attack, and try to retrieve the water talisman. We cannot risk it being stolen or damaged in any way. Any more ponies than just you two would be too many for such a stealth mission.” Me and Bean shared looks, her face full of pride.
    “I’ll go with Silent, and I am sure he will go because he was paid to.” Bean said.
    I nodded, “Of course, I’m rather good at being covert. Where do we have to go?”
     Oaktree levitated an old blueprint out from under the city map, a large prewar government building, an actual city hall with huge stone pillars and domed roof. The blueprint showed a basement with more levels than it had above ground. Why did friggin’ old ponies build so many things underground?
    “It is here,” he pointed to a small room on the second level of the basement, “in the boiler room. It is in a locked locker, one of a group of five. It’s the one in the middle. You will need the key to open it. Bean knows her way around the place, but I will give you some time to memorize a path. You and her will have to find your own way in, I do not know of a completely safe one.” I scanned the building’s blueprint, trying to memorize it. Oaktree scrunched up his face in concentration, his horn glowed bright green. A brief flash of light and a small metal key appeared on the table. I picked up the key, and put it in one of my coat pockets.
    “You two go prepare for your mission; we will be attacking an hour after sunset. Bean, I will make sure your ponies know what is going on.” Oaktree said.
    “Thanks for that Boss. Wait, sunset is in a couple hours,” she looked to me, “Come on merc, we got work to do.” I shook my head and laughed, this was one crazy day. We turned to head out of the room. As we got to the door, I stopped and glanced to Oaktree. “I hope you guys win.” I said, and exited through the double doors.
    We started walking back to Bean’s room. So, a water talisman hunt inside an enemy base full of danger at night. Also, it was underground. It sounded like a suicide mission, and probably was, but it was important.
    “Hey, you need anything before we head out?” I asked Bean. She gave me a flat look.
    “Are you suggesting I need something?” Our walking pace slowed down.
    “No, I mean, just that maybe you would like some barding?” Bean continued to stare at me.
    “No, I’m good.” Why do ponies not want armor? “Though I could use a bite to eat.”
    Come to think of it, I was pretty hungry as well. We trotted back to her room. I had no idea why we went to her room if she was hungry, didn’t they have a cafeteria or something? When we got there, she magically opened her locker, and levitated out a box of potato crisps. I gave her a questioning look.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Don’t you have a place where all the ponies eat?”
    “Yeah, but I like eating in here. Alone. I will make an exception for you this time, considering the circumstances.” She opened the box, and ate the crisps slowly. I opened one of my saddlebags, and pulled out a box of Fancy Bucks Snack Cakes. We ate in silence, except for the chewing and smacking sounds. I pulled out my radio, and turned the dials trying to get anything other than static.
    “You won’t get anything down here, no radio waves can get through the walls.” Bean said. Great, I turned it completely off, and put it back in my bags. After half an hour of Bean’s painfully slow eating, we got up and Bean led us back to the previous tunnel we entered from. The purple stallion who let us in was sitting at a desk, reading a book. When we entered the room, he looked up from it.
    “Me and him,” Bean nodded to me, “We’re heading out. Secret mission and such.”
    The stallion sighed, unlocked the metal bolt and opened the door. “Don’t get yourselves killed.”
    What great advice, I would be sure to take him up on it. Bean and I hopped through the door, it closing immediately behind us. I stared down the dim lit and foggy tunnel I came through to get here. We walked down it until I saw the door at the end.
    “Finally, we can get back out onto open land!” I exclaimed.
    “Only to go into a basement later,” Bean said with a smirk. What a killjoy. She magically unlocked the bolt and opened the door. A rush of fresh air filled my lungs, and we walked out onto the stairs. Bean shut the door behind us, and I heard the bolt lock after it was shut. The light of day was almost gone as we climbed up. When we reached the top I heard a click. I looked to my left to see down the barrel of a revolver, its hammer cocked back. A group of three raiders stood before us, all armored with their usual bloodied barding and masks.
    “Well well well, look what we got here.”
Footnote: Level Up
Skill Note: Speech 40
New Perk: Depth Diver: Whenever you are underground, you gain +10 DT from being alert, but have -1 Perception for being paranoid.
Faction Joined: You have joined the Ciderside Rebellion. All members of it are friendly to you, but all their enemies are now hostile to you.
((A/N: Sorry for the long delay on the chapter. Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Any and all feedback is much wanted and welcome))

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                  Chapter Five: Deception                  
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Chapter Five: Deception
Fallout Equestria: Salvation
Chapter Five: Deception
“Why can’t we all just get along?”
    This was not how I had planned my evening. I was staring at the three raiders who ambushed Bean and I as we came out of her underground base. The middle one, a teal unicorn, was levitating a cocked revolver at my head while having a smug look of satisfaction.
    “Well well well, look what we got here,” she said, “a couple of rats coming our of their hole.” Bean started backing away. The unicorn turned her levitated revolver onto Bean, “Ah ah, no scurrying off little rat.”
   A bullet ripped a small clean hole through Bean’s left foreleg, right below the knee. She clenched her mouth shut, and breathed heavily through her nose as she fell back on her haunches. Bean held her other hoof over the wound, blood dying the coat of her forelegs a murky brown.. The teal pony and one other raider laughed, but the third who was wearing a goggled helmet didn’t. He looked really nervous.
    “Guys, we don’t have time for this. Just kill them and let’s go, the boss will be mad if we’re late,” the goggled raider said. Since when did raiders have a boss? The teal mare looked back over her shoulder at him, practically snarling.
    “Shut the fuck up, we didn’t wait out here after following these fucking idiots just to kill them quickly!” She turned her pistol in her magical grip, and pistol whipped the goggled raider’s head, knocking him to the ground from the blunt force.  She looked back at us licking her lips, “No, we’re going to do this nice and slow.”
    Oh hay no, I wasn’t going to go without a fight. I charged the teal raider without warning, her eyes widening in shock. Right before I body slammed her, a gunshot rang out as a bullet pierced her neck, crimson liquid squirting from both holes as she fell to the ground while holding her forehooves to each hole trying to scream, she barely managed a pained gurgling sound. I saw the goggled raider getting up, his hunting rifle battle saddle looked very threatening. I jumped at him, and slammed my spiked hooves into his face, the flesh ripping apart. I felt his neck snap back sharply, his body going deathly limp afterward. I stepped off his head to try and take on the last raider.
    Fire lanced from my shoulder, spreading throughout my entire body as I felt something pierce deep into my hide. A long machete was buried into my shoulder really deep. I shut my eyes in pain after I saw the earth pony raider. He laughed and twisted the blade, I yelled in pain as I fell to my knees.
    I peeked through the blinding flame that gnawed my mind to see a hunting rifle floating at the back of his head as its bolt slid back, loading in another cartridge. The trigger clicked, and the inside of the pony’s skull splattered all over the side of my face. Bean was still sitting at the top of the stairs, holding her hoof over her bullet wound.
    “Hey, I’m going to pull that stupid thing out. On the count of three,” Bean said. I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out a healing potion. I nodded to confirm, and clenched my jaw to avoid biting my tongue in surprise. A green magical field surrounded the hilt of the machete. “Three.” She yanked it out, blood flowed quickly from the gash now that the blade that was blocking it was freed. Immediately I opened and drank the potion down, feeling the burn dissipate and my wound magically knitting itself back together.
    “Thanks, I would’ve probably made it worse trying to get it out.” I got up, and trotted over to Bean. She closed her eyes in concentration, and I saw the bloody bullet and some fragments of it float out of her leg. She dropped them, floated a healing potion of her green pair of saddlebags, and gulped it down.
    “Fuck, they must have been waiting out here after following us. Two healing potions for killing three of them though, not a bad deal.” Bean said. That was true, my mind and body reacting almost instinctively as I walked over to the fresh corpses, and started to loot their equipment and items. I could almost feel Bean looking at me funny behind my back though it is practically a rule of survival.
    After a few minutes of searching, I ended up with enough to make up for our unfortunate event. These raiders had a lot of useless junk, but I gained four healing potions and some chems, along with the weapons they were using besides the battle saddle, which I just took the ammo for. You wouldn’t catch me ever actually taking their armor and hoping some poor merchant would actually buy it.
    “All in all, we came out ahead from this if you don’t count blood loss.” I glanced left and right, “Which way do we go?” I asked.
    “It is ten minutes from here, though it might take us longer if we don’t want to get caught again.” Bean reloaded her rifle, and put it back on her harness. We made our way out of that alley right into another, sticking to the shadows as we trotted toward our destination. While we crossed buildings and dashed across streets I didn’t see any other enemies around. The wall that she had said protected their actual city came into view. Large slabs of concrete, practically entire walls off of buildings were stood upright and put together to form a massive circular wall, metal sheets covering any gaps and steel girders forming supports to keep them in place.
    “How are we going to get past that? They’re bound to be watching any gates.” I asked. Bean looked at me with a frown, and nodded to a half collapsed building that stood close and slightly over the height of the wall. I stared at it, and looked back at her confused. Was she suggesting we jump over it?
    “Come on,” she said, walking to the ruin. We arrived there and climbed up three flights of stairs to reach the roof. I looked out over the wall, and saw what the true Ciderside City. It was a decent size, the protective wall encircling a dozen multi-story buildings with the City Hall in the center. The large courtyard area in front of it had several campfires with tents surrounding them, though I still couldn’t make out any pony shaped figures.
    “So, how are we doing this?” I asked.
    Bean levitated a small rope out of her green saddlebags, “It isn’t much, but it’s better than falling the whole way.” The length of the rope would lower us maybe halfway, leaving over a whole story drop. She tied a noose and hooked it on a sturdy jut of stone, pulling to test if it would hold before nodding to me. She tossed it over the side. “When you get down there, I’m going to need you to catch me.” This was a horrible idea.
    I walked up, wrapped the rope around my forehoof and took the rope in my mouth, gripping it hard and fell over the side. The rope jerked in my jaw as gravity took hold of my body, my firm jaw grip the only things keeping me from falling to my death. I squeezed the lower part of the rope between both my hind hooves to try and gain a hoofhold, and slowly released a little bit of my grip on the rope. My descent was extremely slow and unpleasant; my jaw started to cramp. When I reached the end of the rope, I looked down to see no rubble that would break my body should I have fallen on it. I swung my body a bit, gained a little momentum, and released as I was swinging toward the wall. I descended quickly, and halfway down I reached the wall. Before I rammed against it, I twisted my body in mid air, kicked off the wall with my hindlegs, and landed on the ground with a roll to spread the impact across my body..
    “Damn, that was some crazy shit,” I heard Bean say from above. My body was friggin’ sore between that dangerous stunt I just pulled and getting shanked back in the alley. I just noticed that I was terrified, my breathing was really heavy, and my heart was racing. I walked under the rope as Bean positioned herself to climb down. When she was halfway down the rope her jaw must have gave out as she slid down extremely fast. I positioned myself to catch her on my back, and she wrapped herself in a cocoon of telekinetic energy. Her descent slowed quite a bit when she was only a decent drop above me before her field burst, and she landed on my back hard. I groaned as my entire body struggled to stay standing up, and waited until she slid off my back onto her hooves.
    I gave her a threatening look, “Never again.”
    “Agreed,” Bean replied. That would have been a sad way to die, falling to my death trying to scale a wall, or better yet, breaking my spine trying to catch a mare who was falling to her death. I was tempted to chug a healing potion just to get the ache out of me, but that could be a healed fatal injury. Instead I pulled out a bottle of dirty water and took a couple drinks, because purified water was better spent elsewhere. I tossed the rest of the bottle to Bean who finished it off.
    “Alright, follow me, and make sure to be quiet,” she said, leading the way behind the buildings on the opposite side of where all the fires and tents were. We passed behind three buildings before reaching the back side of City Hall. I looked around, but the only door was blocked by a bunch of debri.
    “Over here,” Bean whispered. I walked over to her; she was pointing to an open window above a dumpster bin, easily big enough for us to climb through. Excellent, I climbed up onto the metal dumpster, making almost no noise, and proceeded to jump through the window.
Crack crunch crack
    What the? I looked down to see I landed on a pony skeleton. I gazed around the room I had jumped into, it was a standard single restroom with a broken sink and an already looted open first aid box. The poor pony that I was standing on must’ve died on the toilet, what a way to go. I wasn’t sure if the apocalypse caught him unaware, or that he was killed after it. I walked off the bones to the sink on the wall and waited for Bean. There was a sound of somepony stomping on metal, and soon Bean jumped through the window and landed on the same thing I did.
    “What... Ugh, this fucking sucks.” She kicked the bones away, and walked to the door next to me. She cracked it open and peeked through to see if anything was there, then trotted into the hallway. I followed her, my life as of late seemed to be nothing but tunnels and hallways, I had to break out of this rut. The floor was made out of what once was beautifully styled tile, the walls were old smooth polished stone that was mostly intact besides the cracks and small holes.
    “I think I know where we are, follow me,” I said. I walked stealthily to where I remembered a set of stairs were. I looked back and made sure Bean was following as I reached the corner of the hall. I looked around the edge, and saw that it was clear before advancing down that too. At the end of this hall was a single doorway, the door long gone for some unknown reason, and inside a set of stairs both descending and ascending.
    “This is weird, isn’t this whole place supposed to be filled with raiders?” I asked, they couldn’t have been all sleeping. When I reached the first step down, my body froze. Going underground twice in one day, I was sure I was insane. Bean looked at me, and rolled her eyes. “I’m telling ya, these things are death traps,” I said as we started down the stairs.
    “Yeah, it is weird, but I say it’s a good thing we haven’t ran into anypony. If we started shooting,” I looked at her, “we as in raiders and I, the whole place would rush us,” Bean said. As true as that was, it still bugged me. Water talismans are a holy treasure of the wasteland, I doubted they would just leave it like this unless they had already found it. We reached the first basement level, and found that the way down to the second level was blocked off by a collapsed wall.
    “There should be another set of stairs across the building from here,” I said. I leaned out of the exit of the stairwell looking for any threats. With none spotted, I walked out into the corridor and took a right. The lighting was terrible, just barely enough light to see in front of you. I could hear Bean’s hoofsteps behind me as I turned left. I saw something on the roof a little bit down this next hall, a small glowing red light.
    “Hey, I think I see-”  I didn’t get to finish my sentence, the red light lowered itself down.
Whirrrrclackclackclack
    A flurry of bullets hit me in my side and chest, embedding themselves in my armor and hide. The pain jolted my brain in action, my reflexes activating in my legs, I jumped to the side, opposite of Bean and got out of the opening. I leaned against the wall as the whirring slowed down, its target no longer visible.
    “Holy mother of the goddesses...” I said, and held a hoof to my chest. I could feel the bumps where the bullets were stuck in thick leather, my heartbeat resonating through them. I lifted up my hoof to see blood, and pulled out a healing potion.
    “Can you pull out the bullets?” I asked Bean. She nodded and I felt the metal pull out of my chest, immediately downing the potion after I saw the glowing green scrap that had almost killed me. Was a day of not being in a life threatening situation too much to have? Of course it is.
    “What was that, an automated turret? I have never seen these here before,” Bean said. She peeked around the corner, long enough for the turret to shoot a few bullets at her. She pulled her head back, “I got an idea.” Her horn illuminated the area in green glow as her hunting rifle levitated off its harness. She poked it around the corner and fired a few blind shots, and pulled it back right as the turret shot at the rifle.
    I took a quick glance around the corner, not long enough for it to shoot at me, and heard the whirring start and stop. “I’m going to try something crazy, keep the area lit for me,” I said. Bean looked at me like I was stupid.
    “What, are you going to charge right at it?” I looked around the corner to get a good view at where it was a few times, quickly pulling my head back so it didn’t get shot full of holes. I took a javelin in mouth, walked a ways down my end before turning around. I turned my head to my left, and dashed straight forward. As soon as I entered the opening and saw the turret in my right eye, I twisted my neck, released my grip on the spear, and sent it flying.
Whirrclackclackclackclackbzzzrt
    Bullets had hit the wall a second behind me as I sped past, the sound of the turret malfunctioning was sweet music to my ears. Me and Bean both walked out into the hallway, my spear was lodged above the gun barrel between it and the roof mount. The javelin had managed to destroy some wiring and electronics that probably made the turret function, or gave it power. You would have had to ask a smart science pony.
    “Damn, that was a good throw,” Bean said.
    “Years of practice, though you think you could get it for me?” She rolled her eyes, and magically pulled my spear loose, floating it back to me. I took it in mouth, and we continued past the sparking gun. I was surprised that this building still had power running through it, let alone have automated defenses.
    “I expected enemy ponies, not machines on our not-so-little mission. That gunfire has probably attracted them too. It’s a left up here,” I said as we reached a T-intersection. I took one step out before I heard the sound of death again.
WhirrBANGBANGBANG
    I jumped back, bullets hitting the tiled floor where I was, smashing it to pieces. Woah, this one had packed a lot more power than the other. I backed up slowly, I couldn’t pull my last trick without running straight into a wall.
    “What the hay do we do now?” I asked.
    “Is there another way down?” Bean asked. I shook my head, only an elevator which I was positive wouldn’t work. She looked down in thought for a moment, then levitated out a metal apple.
    “Woah now, that could cause more problems than what we have.”
    Bean shrugged, “It is the only plan I have for you.”
    I looked around, the area lit in green light from her horn. An idea popped into my head, “How much can you lift with your magic?”
    “Enough, why?” Bean replied, putting the grenade back into her bags.
    “Think you could bash that turret with a chunk of rock?” I asked. A smile crept onto her face, giving me slight shivers.
    I led her back to the collapsed stairs, and she levitated a few large chunks of the broken wall back with us. When we got back to our corner, she floated up a chunk the size of my head. We peeked around the corner as she swung the stone at the turret. It whirred to life, and shot at the incoming projectile instead of us, bullets breaking apart the chunk of rock. Another stone floated past my face towards the turret as the first one smashed into it, only denting it. The automated turret continued to blast away at the rock, it falling apart as the second chunk slammed into it, bending one of its barrels badly. She repeatedly smashed it against the turret, both breaking in some way or form. I heard Bean start chuckling to herself as a third floated past us, I think she was enjoying it a bit too much.  The stone on metal beatdown continued for another few minutes before the turret just fell off its mount to the ground as a mess of busted scrap.
    “That was pretty fun,” Bean said, walking around the corner and stepping over the pile of metal. I followed after her into the stairwell, the path going down to the level beneath us completely intact. I thought about how unicorn magic could be useful as we climbed down one flight of stairs to the second basement level. I wondered why there were still no guards coming to tear us apart.
    I guessed after we caused so much noise, we were abandoning stealth because Bean kept her horn lit as we entered the second level. We were in yet another hallway, I was starting to think prewar architects gave up on creativity. We proceeded swiftly and cautiously toward the boiler room while looking out for any more turrets.
    “So, what does a water talisman look like?” I asked Bean as we turned into another corridor.
    “You don’t know? It’s like this... thing... Fuck, I thought you knew,” she said. Great, I hoped it would be exactly where we were told, otherwise I didn’t think we would recognize it. “I know it is small, and a gem. Maybe it glows because it’s magic?”
    “Let’s hope-” I shut up quickly, and stopped dead in my tracks. Bean slowed down when she saw me, and aligned herself next to me. I listened for what I had probably imagined, but wasn’t going to take that risk. I could hear something from up ahead, like somepony banging metal against the ground. I started to back up as it got louder, Bean following my moves. I looked to her, and signalled to her horn, moving my hoof across my neck. She snuffed out her magical light, the hallway descended into darkness. All of it except further down the hall. A white light appeared around the corner, illuminating what I had heard. A large metal pony figure, at least a head taller than myself, rounded the corner into our hall. The entire upper half of its head was a some kind of casing from which the extremely bright light shown from. It slowly stomped its way toward us, a robotic voice coming from it.
    “Please cease your activities and prepare to be eliminated. Thank you.” It said as it opened its mouth. A square barrel extended from the back of its throat  and fired a red energy beam that scorched the floor in front of us.
    “Oh shit, run!” Bean yelled, we both turned tail and bolted back. She levitated her rifle backwards, and fired shots at it every time she glanced at it. I saw the bullets spark off the metal plating of its body, it continued to slowly march toward us. We turned left when we reached the turn. The lasers had stopped, but the sound of its metal hooves didn’t.
    “How the fuck are we supposed to get past that?” Bean asked.
    “We can either fight it, or run.” I pulled out a javelin, shifting it in my mouth until I got a good grip. I crouched down while angling the spear upward. Bean ejected all her rifles rounds, and swapped them with armor piercing ones.
    “I only have a few of these,” she said. Hopefully it would be enough to bring this thing down. The metal hoofsteps grew louder, until it turned around the corner.
    “Please cease your running and prepare to be vaporized. Thank you.” It said. I thrust my spear straight below its jaw, the spear pierced its thinner metal armor and into the barrel of its weapon. When it fired, the laser hit the spear jammed into the barrel. Its entire lower jaw turned bright red before the jaw and my javelin melted into sludge. I heard the fire of Bean’s rifle, and a bullet hole striking the glowing casing of its head causing a crack. I ran to the side of the robot as a line of plates from the middle section to its shoulders opened up, and an small automatic rifle sprung out of each side. I turned around and bucked its hindlegs as hard as I could. It fell over as it fired its shoulder guns, the bullets barely missing its target.
    “Holy fuck, fucking die!” Bean screamed as she shot another armor piercing bullet at its glowing head, another crack appearing. She fired another, and another, then her last, each making a crack but not breaking it. She levitated her rifle over, turned it against, and smashed its stock into the robot’s head, finally destroying it. The light winked out and it stopped moving. I looked at Bean, she was breathing hard with her eyes wide in shock.
    “Nice save,” she said, putting her gun back on her harness.
    “I’m tellin ya, the underground is a deathtrap. And I just lost one of my weapons; today friggin’ sucks.” I kicked the robot for good measure. I took out the machete I looted from the earlier raider, and cut and pried off one of the extended shoulder guns exposing its insides.
    “What are you doing?” Bean asked.
    “It was shooting us, meaning it has bullets. Might as well take them to sell later on,” I replied, cutting out wiring and chunks of important machinery. I found a large box in the middle of its chest, and had Bean levitate it out as I cut away anything connecting to it. I put away the machete, and pulled out my multitool, popping the screwdriver out. I began to undo the screws holding the metal box together. With the final screw out, a wall of it fell off revealing almost the whole thing being full of standard 5.56mm bullets.
    “Hey, I’m taking these, I need more ammo for my rifle.” She floated them into her smaller brown saddlebags. I shrugged, her having bullets meant me having covering fire. I put away my tool and we trotted to the boiler room.  We didn’t run into any more threats. I opened the door and waited for some kind of attack before walking inside. The room was about as big as a standard bedroom.
beepbeepbeep
    I looked down to my left to see a proximity mine. Panic filled my mind as I thought of a way to live. Seeing that the explosion would kill me, I quickly moved to the mine trying to disarm it before it blew me apart. The beeping stopped as I was fixing to turn it off, the mine still sitting there with its light glowing red. I got up, and stared at it cautiously. Must have been a dud. Bean looked inside, then at the mine. In hindsight I could have just backed out of the room instead of going toward the device of my death.
    “Just go get the talisman while I keep watch out here.” I thought she just didn’t want to be in a room with a mine, dud or not. I trotted over to a set of five lockers, going to the middle one. I pulled the key out of my pocket, and looked for a lock to open. Oddly enough, there wasn’t one. I put away the key, and pulled the middle locker open. It wasn’t locked. Inside on a shelf was a padded pouch. I opened the bag to see a perfectly pristine diamond prism, half the size of my hoof. I knew gemstones were talismans, but didn’t know if this was it. The pouch was where I was told it was, so I put it away in my saddlebags in a safe spot. I didn’t want it to get damaged in any way. I glanced at the lockers, and had an urge to search everything. I looted the other lockers, gaining some random bits of ammo and another healing potion.
    I trotted out of the room saying, “I found it, come on.” I closed the door behind me.
beep
    An explosion rocked me on my hooves, the door bending outwards from the blast inside the room. I could hear the building shake as dust fell from the ceiling. Bean gave me a death stare, “What? I thought it was a dud.” I said in my defense. She just left me there, I trotted behind her as we retraced our steps back up to the bathroom door on the base floor. The explosion below somehow caused the doorway to the bathroom to collapse, and would take too long to clear it. Yet again hindsight tells me that I should’ve disarmed the mine, dud or not.
    Bean groaned, “Fuck, let’s find another way out.”
    We explored the back part of the building trying to find any exits, but all of them seemed to be blocked off or inaccessible. We entered a large rectangular office, five desks lined up to form a long table, with five chairs behind it.
    “This is the council room, or was until we reclaim it,” Bean said. I walked around the room, and spotted four semi-fresh corpses.
    “How long has this conflict been going on again?” I asked, examining the bodies.
    “I’m not sure, the time kind of blurred together since I don’t get much sleep. I guess two weeks, why?” she replied. Yep, the bodies looked about that old, or I was just acting smart and they were just kind of rotten instead of skeleton. I motioned for her to come over here to check it out. When she saw the bodies, she facehoofed. “What the fuck... these dead idiots are the fucking council!”
    I looked back to her while I was looting the bodies and shoveling everything I could get into my bags, not even bothering to check what some of it was. “Then who are you ponies fighting? They didn’t die yesterday, not by the stink.”
    “Whatever, we got the talisman, and these idiots are dead. Let’s just go,” Bean said, walking to the front of the building. I trotted to her side, apparently with her main enemy dead we were just going to walk out the front door. We exited the council room into the front lobby, the ceiling a couple stories high with a warped chandelier hanging from it, it must’ve looked elegant in its younger years. We past a reception desk, heading toward a set of glass doors that was the front entrance. Something was clawing at my mind while I followed Bean, the thoughts of all the information I had forming something in the back of my head. The light of the campfires shown through the doors as Bean opened them, and walked out of City Hall.
    Bean froze in place as soon as she set a hoof outside, and I trotted out to her side to see what was going on. I took one look, and realized why things seemed so wrong. Out in front of us were torn tents and several campfires, an army of raiders just standing there all with sadistic grins on their faces. The rebellion was defeated, dozens of ponies were freshly gutted and mutilated, their corpses strung about the ground. Any pony that had survived wore thick black collars and were all shoved with their backs against a wall surrounded by their slavers. All of this was frightening and would shatter anyponys hope, but that wasn’t the real deal breaker. I heard Bean start to cry beside me, looking out at this horrible scene that almost made me want to as well.
    Standing in front of it all with a smug look on his face was a brown stallion with a greased back moss green mane, “So, did you retrieve my talisman?”
    “What the hell is going on?” I yelled. My mind was in a state of panic, horror, confusion, sadness, and curiosity. We were gone maybe two hours, how had all this happened in that time?
    “Mister Step, answer the question. Do you have my talisman or not?” Oaktree asked impatiently. Bean was still crying over seeing her friends and family murdered.
    “Is the water talisman really worth all this?” I asked while motioning to the slaughter around us, the sadness apparent in my voice. The raiders laughed at me as if they even needed a reason to kill ponies.
    “Yes, and much more. Now hoof it over,” He said flatly. Did he seriously expect me to just give him an object that had almost gotten me killed, and what he killed a whole city for? I looked around for a way to run, but we were in a walled city with the only gate in front of us behind our enemies.
    “Not a chance in hell,” I said, glancing back at the City Hall entrance thinking I would probably be shot to death by the time I even got through the door.
    Oaktree smiled, and levitated out a metal pad with a red button on it. “Now, don’t say that. I’m willing to trade this detonator for the talisman. Detonator to what you ask? Why, all these surviving ponies’ slave collars!”
    My jaw dropped. I looked at the cowering ponies against the wall, and back at the raiders. The trade was obviously stupid, they would just kill us all anyway. I wasn’t a hero, I was a mercenary and this talisman seemed to be the only thing keeping me alive.
    “No deal,” I said. Oaktree looked frustrated at my denial, and I saw Bean staring at me in the shock of just dooming all her remaining comrades.
    “Sad to hear it. Sour Bean, my dear, I am offering you the same deal. Kill the mercenary for the talisman, and trade it for these slaves lives.” Bean looked between me, the slaves, and Oaktree before laying on the ground and continuing to cry.
    “How did this happen? I don’t even see the smallest dent in your group; I don’t think the rebellion went without a fight,” I said.
    “Oh, they tried, but it doesn’t do much good when you are led into a trap. I sent them straight into an ambush. Those who gave up were rewarded with survival,” Oaktree said, waving a hoof at the enslaved ponies. The raiders around him groaned, bored with the talking, and most of them continued to mutilate and loot the corpses while acting like children with new toys. The few next to Oaktree kept their weapons trained on me.
    Bean stifled her crying, “Why? Just, why the fuck did you even rescue us in the first place if you were going to just kill us anyway!?” she asked, yelling in anger. Oaktree paused for a moment, then gave a condescending laugh.
    “Hah, yes, that was indeed a great plan. You see, when The Spectres contacted me to get that talisman in exchange for a valuable position within the group, it was in the possession of a certain pony who found out what I was planning. Unfortunately, that pony was Starwind, a councilpony such as myself. She turned on the buildings long-dead defenses and had it stored for safety. I killed the her and the rest of the council, which was one of my best moments, and let my friends here in to do as they please. I gathered some ponies and pretended to be their saviour, sending them out on missions to find the stragglers who had hid. Every now and then I’d send a pony or two with a fake key to try and retrieve it for me, but they never succeeded. That was until you brought back this mercenary. I guess I bet a lot of you two, but it all worked out.” Oaktree finished.
    “You fucking monster...” Bean said. The raiders were starting to get anxious about killing us, it showed on their faces. Oaktree swung around the detonator remote in his telekinesis while rubbing a hoof on his chest.
    “Sticks and stones, my dear. I do not want to risk damaging my prize, so would you two give it to me? I give you my word that you will not be killed, merely turned into a slave. It is the least I could do for retrieving it for me.”
    We were in a terrible situation, with pretty much no hope of escape. It seemed that this gemstone was worth more than an entire city of ponies to them, so I did the only thing I thought I could do at the time. I quickly poked my head into Bean’s saddlebags, and pulled out the grenade with my mouth. Oaktree’s eyes widened in fear while the raiders stopped what they were doing and all glared at me menacingly. Apparently the talisman was worth a lot as a hostage. I rested the grenade on my hoof next to my mouth, the stem between my teeth.
    “I reckon this grenade could destroy a lot from point blank, including your precious talisman,” I said.
    “Careful now boy, think about what you are doing,” Oaktree said trying to intimidate me.
    “Are you crazy?” Bean said. Yes, I was definitely crazy at that moment. I started to back up slowly, every step back matched with the large group of raiders taking one forward.
    “Get inside.” Bean ran inside quickly, as soon as she got in I pulled the stem and threw it at the raiders. I turned around and ran inside, hearing Oaktree yell behind me as I closed the door, “Kill them! Kill them both,and do not damage that talisman!”
    “Hurry, up to the roof. I have a plan,” I told Bean. An explosion went off outside, and a few screams following it. We ran back through the council room and into one of the stairwells. I heard the sound of the raiders bust down the glass door, the grenade giving us a decent head start. We climbed up four flights of stairs before we reached the blue metal door that led to the roof. I tried to open it, but it didn’t open. I started to panic, turned around, and bucked the door off its rusted hinges. We ran out onto the left side roof.
    “Now what?” Bean asked. I looked around, and spotted the building closest to our left. Its roof the same height as the one we were on. “Silent, what do we do now?” Bean pleaded.
    “You are going to float us to the next roof,” I stated. I searched the roof, and found what I needed. I grabbed four scraps of metal large enough to safely walk on.
    “What!? I’m not powerful enough to do that!” She replied.
    “No, look, you float these pieces of metal, and I will carry you across. Magic can work like that, I’ve seen a superior pull this trick once. The distance isn’t that far... I hope,” I explained. She probably thought I was insane, then we heard shouts come from the stairs..
    “Alright, not like we aren’t going to die anyway.” I walked to the edge of the roof, Bean floating the pieces of metal in front of my like stepping stones. She jumped on my back, and I put my left forehoof on the metal. When I didn’t plummet to our deaths, I continued one hoof at a time, picking up the pace as I got used to it. I kept looking forward, making sure to not look down. I don’t have a fear of heights, but this was completely different. When we were a bit over halfway I heard the raiders get out onto the roof and start yelling at us.
    “Hurry, I... can’t.. hold this... much longer!” Bean gasped out, stress in her voice. Gunfire rang out, most of the bullets flying past me. Thank the Goddesses that they were terrible shots. We were almost there, only a few more steps. Bean grunted as a bullet hit her shoulder causing her magic falter. I jumped off the floating metal only a second before they fell down four stories, I faceplanted into the floor of the next building's roof. Bean gasped for breath, exhausted from the task of saving our lives. I looked back to see the raiders firing a couple more shots before retreating down the stairs.
    I walked to edge and looked down to the courtyard to see Oaktree standing there, glaring at me from below. I backed up until he couldn’t see me, and pulled out one of my last two javelins. I was angry, afraid, and blamed it all on him. I wanted justice and revenge for all the innocent ponies that he had gotten killed. I walked back to the edge of the roof, reared up, and threw the spear down at him at a lightning fast speed, gravity increasing its velocity. I got to see him turn to try and run, the spear piercing straight through his spine and stomach and embedding itself in the ground. I smiled in satisfaction, then quickly looked in horror at the remote detonator fall from Oaktree’s now dead magical grasp. It turned in the air, time seemed to slow down as it fell to the ground, landing on the button. The next sounds I heard were twenty-two small explosions sounding out from below in a chain reaction, the slave bodies leaning against the wall that was now painted with crimson gore.
    My mind blanked as I stared at what I had caused in my moment of anger, the feeling drained out of my legs as I stood there staring down below as the pile of headless bodies dyed red. I felt a hoof on pull be backwards, I looked to see Bean. Her eyes were filled with tears and her expression pained and fearful.
    “Snap out of it, we have to go!” She said, pulling me by my neck to the opposite edge of the roof. She stopped when I was right at the drop off point, and pushed me over. I descended to my death, staring up as Bean watched me fall, the only thought going through my head was that her killing me would be justified as I had just gotten many of her friends killed by the drop of a button. This lasted all but a few seconds as my back hit something cagey and metal. I groaned, got to my hooves, and saw that I was on a fire escape that led to the ground. Bean jumped down to my side, and starting hastily down the stairs. I followed her, going down to the bottom set. She kicked down the drawn up step ladder, and we ran down it. My body moved on its own, following Bean wherever she went. We galloped to the large makeshift gate, or the gap where it used to be. I glanced over my shoulder to see the raiders standing around in the yard looking at the dead slaves and Oaktree run through by my spear.
    “Fucking run while they are distracted!” Bean yelled, they saw us at the entrance and ran after us, some firing their weapons and missing. We continued to move as fast as we could, Bean’s shoulder bleeding from her earlier gunshot wound. She was running remarkably fast for an injured pony, or I was so out of it I was not even going half my top speed. We ran through several streets before Bean collapsed mid-stride, tumbling along the ground until her body stopped. I ran to her, I assumed she had passed out from the stress of everything that had happened combined with all of the blood loss. I bent down, hoistered her onto my back, and hid inside the nearest building. I found a door to the basement, gulped as I weighed the situations compared to going back underground, and went down. There was no light, so I slowly walked down a metal set of stairs, or that was what it sounded like as I descended into darkness. I set Bean down gently on the floor, pulled my lighter out of one of my coat pockets, and lit it with a flick of a hoof. I tilted my head to the side to let the flame burn up as I got a look to where I ended up. I heard sounds come from outside, mostly the sounds of ponies running.
    The basement was just a small cellar, four simple stone walls and floor with a couple wooden shelves that held jars that were broken or filled with something long gone bad and covered with dust. I removed the jars without cutting myself on the broken ones from one of the shelves and smashed the shelf into pieces, and lit them with my lighter after gathering them to make a fire. I moved Bean closer to it to keep her warm, the thoughts of the entire past day haunting my recent memory and keeping my mind active. The flame of the fire flickered, and I fed it another strip of wood whenever it seemed to get low. I pulled out my multitool, opened up the tweezers while scooting over to Bean, and removed the bullet from her shoulder. She groaned as she woke up, I pulled out a healing potion and put it to her lips. She drank it slowly, laying back down to sleep after finishing it.
    I pulled out the pouch with the water talisman, and opened it to reveal the diamond prism that looked perfectly new. I held it up between my eyes and the fire, just staring at it. Was it really worth all that had happened? I thought about just burning it, destroying the gem and making sure nopony ever gets it, but then today’s sacrifice would be meaningless. I could make out the colors of the rainbow as the light of the fire shone through the gem. It didn’t sit right with me, it wasn’t how I envisioned water talismans. Maybe as a nice sapphire, or any color of blue. I continued to stare at the diamond in the light of the fire.
Footnote: Level Up
Skill Note: Sneak 80, Melee Weapons 80, Speech 50
New Perk: Push Through the Pain (Rank 2): When you are suffering from high damage or ill effects, you find the endurance to continue onward without losing consciousness. +3 Damage Threshold at all times.
Quest Perk: Raider Hater: You become enraged at the sight of raiders and tend to lose your temper. +1 Strength and +1 Agility when fighting any raider, -1 Intelligence for losing your cool.
((A/N: Woo, longest chapter (not counting prologue). And they will only get longer! Thanks goes out to Kkat for creating the Fallout Equestria world, and to the many other sidefics of FoE for making me love the universe. Any and all feedback is much wanted and welcome))