Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 1: Awakening
Chapter 2: Iron Horse of Speed
Chapter 3: Explosive Welcome
Chapter 4: Unexpected Find
Chapter 5: A Painful Truth
Chapter 6: Hot Pursuit
Chapter 7: Lunatic Asylum
Chapter 8: Back to Square One
Chapter 9: A New Perspective
Chapter 10: Hello There
Chapter 11: Back on Track
Chapter 12: It's Where?
Chapter 13: To the Edge
Chapter 14: Paradigm
Chapter 15: Broken Steel
Chapter 16: A New Direction
Chapter 17: The Answers We Seek
Chapter 18: No Choice
Chapter 19: Confrontation
Epilogue

Prologue

Prologue

My name is Crystal. I’m twenty six years old, and a crystal pony from the Crystal Empire. Sadly, I have never had the sparkle of a crystal pony, since my ill health has kept me in a state of depression which has left my pink coat and yellow mane dull and gloomy.

When I was born, they said I had a weak heart and needed several operations before I could even be taken home by my parents. It left me in a state of constant pain as I could feel my heart beating with irregular patterns as it tried to keep working. I could never go out and play with other foals or do anything that would make me exert myself as it would put too much stress on my heart. You can say I had a bad foalhood.

A weak heart was only the start of my problems as I was also getting infected with basic and curable illnesses on an almost regular basis. A doctor told my parents and I that I had a weak immune system which meant I could easily contract illnesses from viruses and bacteria that a normal healthy filly wouldn’t suffer from. Thankfully, most of them were curable but meant a trip to the damn hospital each and every damn time.

When I was five, my parents moved down into Equestria so they could seek out better medical facilities to better support me. I had contracted the flu from somepony on the train down to Las Pegasus, which meant I spent the first day in our new home in the hospital. I didn’t like it for a while since I hated the sun and the heat, but after several years I grew used to the heat of the Marejave. It was definitely a change from the cold north.

When I was around eight years old and at school, I suffered a trip and tumbled down a short flight of stairs which was like what, um, five steps? Anyway the result was that I landed on my ass hard and that fall broke my hip. Again finding myself in a hospital to get treated it was discovered I had brittle bones, which meant a hard enough fall or impact like what I had in school would fracture or break my bones.

My life was a complete and utter mess as I missed out in a lot of school, from spending time off sick to the fact that I couldn’t live like a normal filly. I couldn’t have friends over to play as I could probably either get sick from them, break a bone while playing with them, or drop dead with my heart giving out. I was a miserable filly in my youth.

Things just wouldn’t work for me no matter what I was given or treated for. Then, the war broke out between the zebras and us. The war hit us hard, and my father was forced to give up his job to enlist. My mother would have been drafted too if she hadn't been required to care for me. She had to quit her job too as she needed to take care of me, and her job wouldn’t allow her to take much time off since the war was requiring a lot from many companies. My mother thought the newly built Fluttershy Hospital in Las Pegasus would finally be able to help me as the war was pushing for better medical care, and withFluttershy, being the strong, compassionate pony that she was, may have had something to help. Unfortunately, the focus wasn’t on health problems like mine, but rather war related. Her hospital did give better medical care than the older General Hospital did, but it wasn’t enough though. I was still going in and out on a regular basis.

I managed to finish school with some qualifications, not good ones mind you, but at least I got some when I was sixteen. I got a job in a warehouse, standing or sitting by a computer and processing parcels to be sent off to wherever they needed to go. It was thankfully not a job that needed much exertion, so it didn’t put pressure on my weak heart or my brittle bones. I was able to at least earn a wage. I even made a couple of friends there who didn’t think of me as a freak for my medical conditions. I actually felt happy for a short time in my job as I could experience a normalish life for a change, but of course, that didn’t last. Being a warehouse, the place was dusty. It was so dusty in fact, that some boxes that have sat on the shelf for a long time were nearly black. The dust I was breathing in soon began to affect my breathing, making it hard for me to breathe properly. I stupidly didn’t complain about my breathing until I collapsed from lack of breath one day, after eight months of working there. Unfortunately, I had to resign as I couldn’t work in that sort of environment anymore, which put me into another depression.

Thankfully, the damage to my lungs was healed at the hospital as my lungs were thankfully healthy unlike the rest of me. Though this meant they’d recover, it also meant I could never take another job like that again due to the health risks.

I ended up getting a job where I could work from home: this was being a Sales Pony for Stable-Tec when they opened up a branch in Las Pegasus. At first, when the war was in its infancy, the products were more or less everyday items created by Stable-Tec, and it was a boring job then as barely anyone would be interested. I spent maybe a couple of days a week phoning up customers to try and sell something and they would either say they were not interested or just hang up as soon as I began. Those days were quite frustrating. As the war dragged out and things began to grow more intense, Stable-Tec started to get me to sell guns, armour, spells and other things that seemed to fit more with the war, rather than everyday life, and my career in selling took off then as lots of ponies were pretty interested in those things.

The front line soon came to the Marejave as Luna’s soldiers began holding Horseshoe Dam against Zebra attacks. It was said on the news that the Zebras were attempting to burst the dam. That would have been horrible for more than one reason. One, the loss of the dam would mean Las Pegasus and the surrounding area would be without power. Two,the many towns along the Coltorado River would be swept away, taking thousands of lives.

With the war growing more and more intense, and things getting more desperate, Stable-Tec began building their Stables in and around the Marejave. I stopped selling things and was told to sell places at the numerous Stables being built. The demand was high, and I ended up talking to some rather abusive customers. Stable-Tec later gave me a questionnaire; I was to ask customers to see if they could be eligible to be sold a position in a Stable. They didn’t want the wrong type of pony getting a place, since they said the purpose of the Stables was to save ponies worth saving.

For eight years that had been my life, phoning up ponies to sell them shit. It wasn’t so bad, as being able to work from home meant that I wasn’t in and out of the hospital that frequently. My visits to the hospital in those eight years however, were becoming more and more worrisome. To save explaining everything, I will simply say that with my health problems, my body was now beginning to shut down on me. I was going to die. It hurt beyond all reason to know I was going to die young. I never had a special somepony or even a crush. I never got to experience the finer things in life. My mother was distraught as well. She has spent most of her life looking after me and to know she was going to lose me broke her heart.

When I turned twenty five was when my body finally decided it didn’t want to work for me anymore. I was admitted to the hospital when things got really bad for me. It turned out that my body could no longer support itself, and was breaking down. There was nothing that could have been done apart from keep me comfortable as possible. I can’t begin to describe how horrible it was to know you were dying. I didn’t want to die. Nopony does, really, but I didn’t want to die because I never honestly had a chance to live, and I went as far as to pray to Nightmare Moon herself for a chance to live. Yeah, I know, that’s pathetic of me but I was desperate.

After my twenty sixth birthday, I could barely move my limbs with how weak I felt. I had been given only months to live after that. A few days after my birthday a doctor, well I think he’s a doctor, came to visit me. He looked a lot more serious than the nurses and doctors I’d seen but it didn’t matter.

“Good afternoon Miss Crystal. I won’t insult you in asking how you are doing since I know how bad things are for you. I am very sorry to have learned about your situation and, it pains me to know a young mare such as yourself will die young and without having a chance to live your life to the fullest. I can see you are tired so I’ll cut to the chase. I am with the Ministry of Peace’s Medical Research department and I would like to offer you a chance to help future generations of Equestria from suffering the illnesses that have robbed you of your life,” He said in a sincere and kind voice.

I didn’t think much on it. I mean, if it means that future foals don’t get to suffer what I suffered, I’d be happy to help how I can. “I will be happy to help any way I can,” I answered. I thought I saw a ghost of a smirk appear on his muzzle but it was most likely a trick of the light as he wore a grateful smile as he approached my bed and levitated a document over to me.

“Thank you Miss Crystal. Please sign this contract so that when you eventually pass on, we will have possession of your body so we can conduct our medical research. I am sure, with the research we will be able to conduct with your body we can spare hundreds, maybe even thousands of foals the pain and suffering you have had to endure.”

I nodded weakly as I took a pen he had offered to me into my mouth, and sloppily scribbled my signature on the dotted line he indicated. Once I had signed the piece of paper, he took it back with a grateful smile. I opened my mouth to say something, but instead, started to hack and cough.

“Oh dear, here, have a drink,” He said sympathetically and offered me a drink from a plastic bottle filled with a filmy looking liquid inside it. I accepted his drink and took a big gulp of it, which thankfully cleared and soothed my throat but made me cringe due to the taste. I hate lemons.

He gave his thanks and sympathy one more time before he left the room. All I can do now is lay here in this hospital bed, and await my death. I yawned feeling extremely tired, and decided to close my eyes to get some sleep.

XXXXXX

The doctor walked down the halls of the hospital after leaving Crystal’s room, looking sad until he exited the hospital and got into his Ministry of Awesome issued chariot. With a nod to the driver, he sat back into the plush seat as his driver began to pull him away from the hospital. Now, in the privacy of his private chariot, he allowed a sinister smile to grow on his face.

“That went as well as I predicted,” He said to himself as he lifted his left foreleg and activated his broadcaster.

“Doctor Pear Shape, the subject has been acquired,” He said into the device.

“For the thousandth time it’s just Pear,” Came the reply from the pony on the other end. “So are we ready to get started Colonel?”

“Indeed we are doctor. The subject has signed her body to us and we’ll be ready to collect her in the morning. I have administered the serum to make it appear she has died,” He paused for a moment. “Do we have everything we need from Project Steelpony?” He asked to double check.

“Yes sir we do.”

“Good, and the replacement heart from Project Chimera?”

“Yes sir, and a pair of lungs since the medical report did say the subject had an issue with her lungs in the past.”

“Well then, yes, we are good to go. I want you to have the stasis chamber prepped and ready to receive its cargo for oh eight hundred in the morning to transport her to our Manehattan lab”

“Yes sir it will be prepped and ready.”

“Good, tomorrow we finally begin Project Infiltrator,” The Colonel said with a dark smile on his face.

Chapter 1: Awakening

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 1: Awakening

“Is it going according to plan?” A strong commanding voice asked.

“She, but yes Colonel. I have implanted her brain into I-01’s skull and decided to use both the Chimera grown heart and lungs since we know they are both undamaged,” Replied a braytish accented female voice, sounding annoyed about her superior’s inability to see their project for being more than a mere thing.

“It’s looking rather well, should the heart be beating right now?”

“Yes sir, once we extracted her brain from her head, we only had a few minutes to get it into the skull of I-01 and connected to the circulatory system. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and the heart and lungs are working fine to keep the brain alive.”

“Good, well then, keep me posted. I want to know how everything is progressing.”

There was the sound of a door closing before the doctor sighed.

“She, colonel, despite the fact she’s going to be more machine than pony, she is still a female and will still be alive.”

XXXXX

“How is it coming doctor?”

“SHE, sir, is coming along swimmingly,” Growled the braytish mare.

“When will it be ready?” He asked, ignoring the doctor’s frustration.

“She’ll be ready for her trials in the next month. We still have plenty of slight modifications to make regarding her chest and cranium.”

“Modifications?”

“Zebras are very strong melee and unarmed combatants and if our latest reports into some of their abilities are to be believed, they can break solid rock with their hooves. So, we are increasing her mechanical skeleton’s durability with titanium. Especially around her chest and head, since they will be protecting her brain and heart.”

“Very well doctor...” He trailed off as he looked over at the mechanical skeleton. “Are its eyes supposed to be glowing red?”

“What?” The doctor cried out in surprise. “Oh bollocks.”

XXXXX

“What do you mean you’re moving her?” Dr Pear asked in outrage.

“Project Infiltrator has been compromised, doctor. Pinkie Pie has got it into her head that some of the ministries are trying to sell out to the Zebras or are hiding something. Which of course we are. She has gone off the rails much harder than usual. She is currently digging through all MoA archives and using all kinds of backdoor access codes to get into restricted areas. Infiltrator is on the very secure archives and she’ll discover it eventually if nothing distracts her. When she does, we do not want her to find I-01, nor us.”

“We can’t move her just yet.”

“I can only give you twenty four hours before we have no choice but to move it.”

“That should be enough time for me to finish what I need to do right now. But where are we moving the project to?”

“Back to Las Pegasus.”

“For the love of Celestia.”

“Sorry doctor.”

“Fuck off! You’re not sorry. You just want results. I can’t rush this; this is damn delicate work. Normally, it’ll take a day or two for the application of her living flesh but you’ve forced me to rush here.”

“Will you be able to apply the skin before we move it?”

“Yes sir, I’ll have to work throughout the night but it’ll be done.”

“Those eyes are glowing again.”

“What, oh for fuck sake.”

XXXXX

“...having to move you my flank. They just want to keep you to themselves and use you like an expendable thing. They want to make fully mechanical versions of you now. I wanted to make the perfect infiltrator but I never wanted to make a fucking army of machines like this. I wish I never accepted this position but I can’t stop now. I need to finish you before we move.”

The doctor sighed with a heavy heart. “I hope you’ll forgive us when the war is over Crystal.”

A ringing sound followed by vibrating interrupted the doctor. She sighed as she levitated a mobile phone out of her lab coat pocket and answered it.

“Dr Pear here... What, Manehattan General? Are you insane we can’t... Stasis pods? But sir civilians will see... You mean the private ward, but again civilians will... Shit, ok sir. She’ll have her flesh graphed to her endoskeleton in time for the move.”

The doctor sighed as she hung up her phone and approached a console. “Stupid, this is so stupid. Now they’re saying Pinkie is surprise raiding MoA R&D labs. This is insane. This has pushed my timetable up. Computer, initiate flesh application.”

“At least you’ll still be alive despite being more machine inside. I can hear your heart beating even with the gentle beep from the heart monitor on your chest plate. I hope when they finally get the combat training chips and reprogram your mind, you’ll remember you’re alive. Don’t worry, we’ll be making a copy of your original mind so we can give it back when the war is over. I made damn sure they wouldn’t kill you for real by doing that.”

“Four hours until the procedure is done, and we can move you to stasis in Manehattan General before the train ride back to Las Pegasus. It’s a damn good job I know what I’m doing here and... oh for Celestia’s sake, why won’t you stay offline?”

XXXXX

“Attention all ponies with Stable passes. Please report to your assigned Stables immediately. This is not a drill. Repeat...”

“No, not now. We can’t abandon her here like this!” Dr Pear cried as the colonel began to drag her away.

“There is no time anymore, doctor. The war is over and so is Equestria. I just got word that a Pink Cloud bomb had gone off inside of Canterlot’s shield. The princesses are dead. We are on our own now. We are the future of equine kind now. It’s up to us, now come on.”

“But sir, she could come with us.”

“It’s just a machine, Pear Shape. Now come on.”

“But sir, we can’t leave her to die here.”

“It’s already dead, remember? Now move.”

“But sir...”

XXXXX

“Warning, insufficient power to stasis chamber, repeat, insufficient power to stasis chamber.”

“Initiating emergency wake up procedure.”

I groaned to myself as I started to wake up. I could hear voices talking but couldn’t make them out clearly with my sleep addled brain waking itself up. There is a hiss and a mechanical grinding noise as something in front of me moves which then allowed a breeze to flow in and across me. Suddenly, my nose is assaulted with the most disgusting smell I’ve ever smelt. I wish I knew what it is, so I could describe it, but it’s the foulest smell I’ve ever had the misfortune to smell in my entire life. It certainly woke me up. My eyes flew open, and I found myself to be inside a hospital ward, surrounded by other pod like devices. I remember seeing something like these in a ward I passed when the nurses wheeled me back to my room after one of my operations, though I never asked what they were. However, I didn’t recognise the grimy walls or the ward I found myself in.

“Where am I?” I asked out loud to myself as I shakily pulled myself out of my pod and landed with a thud on the floor. Groaning to myself, I tried to get my unresponsive limbs to work. It was like I haven’t moved them in like forever, and they were taking a minute to catch up with my brain’s commands.

“Ow…” I moaned as I slowly pulled myself up off the floor and onto my hooves, only to land flat on my face. I blinked in surprise as my ears were swivelling around, trying to pick up any other noise, but no matter where my ears twisted to, all I could hear is silence. “What’s going on?” I asked myself with a shaky voice that I didn’t recognise but with the sense of fear creeping over me, I didn’t think about it.

My limbs felt heavy as I began to walk around the room, and I looked into each pod that I passed. Growing more confused by the second, I could see rust, dust and other grime covering every surface, making the place look centuries old and in disrepair. I didn’t know what had happened but my gut was telling me something really bad happened. I came to a pod that had a large crack in the glass cover but what may be inside is hidden by a thick layer of dust. Gently using my green overall covered foreleg to clear away the dust, I immediately jumped back and let out a scream of horror. My scream echoing throughout the building only made it feel far creepier and scarier than it already was.

A half decomposed pony lay in the pod. I’ve seen stuff like this before only in movies, but they didn’t look as horrifyingly disgusting as this. It looked like the pony was melting with how its body was peeling off the bone. I don’t know how long it would take for a body to completely decompose, but this looks like it’s been here a while. Sick to my stomach, I charged out the open door to get away from the horror and the smell. Standing outside the door, I panted and screamed out my horror at what I saw again. I only just woke up and had been treated to the sight of something I would only see in my nightmares. Definitely not something I want to wake up to.

Taking in some deep breaths, I composed myself and looked around. I found myself in a long hospital corridor that looked like someone did the Running of the Leaves in here. Everything was a shambles. Tables, beds, chairs, you name it were scattered all over the place, and the tiled floor had many of its tiles missing or broken, while also being covered in piles of rubbish. The hallway is dark and there seemed to be only a hoofful of lights working, but most importantly, there wasn’t a single pony anywhere in sight and the silence. I couldn’t hear a single thing, which added to the creepy feeling. I lived most of my life in and out of a hospital so I am very aware of the sounds of a hospital. The moans of patients, the many conversations blending together, the beeps and bops of machinery and etc. There was nothing, just the deafening silence.

“Where the hell is everypony?” I asked with my growing sense of fear making me start to shiver.

"Anypony here?" I shouted as loud as I could. My shout just echoed throughout the empty hospital without a single reply or sound. I'm truly alone here. This gave me more reason to be scared.

I looked up and down the corridor that I was in, trying to get a sense of direction, and noticed a sign half hanging from the ceiling above my head. I craned my neck to get a better look at the sign, and saw that it had a grimy white arrow pointing at the door behind me. I moved around a little to better see the sign from the side, and gasped in shock at what the sign was pointing at.

“Stasis Ward?” I cried out in shock. It’s clear now. I hadn’t been my hospital room before I fell asleep, and somehow, I wound up in stasis. I have heard of stasis before. Stasis is a form of suspended animation that preserves the body outside of time, preventing it from aging or degrading any further until it is released. I don’t understand the magical mechanics but I get the gist. Wait a minute! If I’ve been put into stasis, how long have I been asleep for?

I didn’t know how long I’d slept for in stasis and the idea that I’ve slept throughout the war and Celestia only knows how long into the future scared me to my core, making my already fast beating heart thump harder with my growing anxiety. I didn’t want to stay here any longer, with my fear induced brain telling me to run; I bolted as fast as I could over the rubbish strewn floor to the nearest door. I could see with a lot of light shining through it.

Bursting through the door, I found myself in a large reception hall. Behind the large row of desks at the back of the room, I saw writing. However, before I could read it, my hooves caught in a pile of mess and I fell hard onto my chin. I cried out in pain as the fall wound up with me biting my tongue. I whimpered and cried in dismay as I lay panting on the floor, gathering my breath. That was of course until I saw what I had fallen over and it wasn’t alone. My eyes bulged out of my skull in absolute horror at what lay around me. The entire reception was full of blackened skeletons with tatters of clothing still clinging to them. There had to be hundreds of them all piled up in here. I screamed my lungs out, jumped to my hooves and charged to the wall of glass that was the front entrance to the hospital. I dived out of the broken glass doors and skidded to a stop as I behold the city around me and just froze.

Everything was destroyed.

I stood ramrod stiff as my entire body locked up as I gazed fearfully at the jagged and crumbling buildings around me. I didn’t recognise anything. The architecture of the buildings still standing despite being wrecked is completely different to Las Pegasus, and the cold air again is a reminder that I’m not where I fell asleep. Las Pegasus was never cold even in winter but here it was freezing. Slowly, I regained control of my legs and turned around to face the hospital I came out of and,my mouth fell agape when I finally discovered where I was now.

“MANEHATTAN?!” I screamed in complete shock. “HOW DID I GET HERE?”

This is insane. It makes no sense. I’m in Manehattan. A city on the east coast of Equestria. But that’s impossible, how could I have gotten here? I shook my head. The number of questions to my current situation and to what happened here just kept growing, and it was making my head hurt. I sat down and started to weep from all the stress and confusion.

I don’t know how long I cried for, but the sound of crumbling brick and mortar made me stop and get to my hooves. I looked around frantically for the source of the noise and stopped as I looked up at the ruined tower of the hospital. It was leaning precariously towards me, and with every crack and groan of the old brick and steel, it leaned even further forward. It didn’t need to take genius to know what was going to happen so I turned tail and ran as fast as my legs could carry me up the rubble strewn road. I jumped over holes and cracks in the road and weaved between the many abandoned chariots as I ran.

“This has to be a nightmare,” I cried when there was a sudden bang and then a cascade of wrenching metal and crumbling brick filled the air.

There was an almighty crash as the building kissed the pavement. I didn’t dare look back as the ground shook violently, causing small fissures to open in the road, and one of my hooves caught in one of the newly opened cracks causing me to fall hard onto my chest and I cried out in pain as my body, carried by its momentum, scrapped along the road, rolling over onto my side and came to rest as I skidded to a stop after crashing into a bus. I whimpered and moaned in pain as I felt numerous scrapes on my hide but again, felt utter confusion as I didn’t break a bone. A fall like that would have shattered my sternum but it felt fine. My only complaint from that fall is the scrapes I got. I then noticed my heart beat. Despite its speed, the rhythm is perfectly normal. After all the running I’ve done since I woke up my heart, would have felt like it was about to give out on me before I fell asleep but no it feels fine, it’s never felt fine. What happened to me?

No matter what I could think of, I couldn’t explain my new found health. It honestly felt fantastic to feel like this. My chest hurt from the burn of my lungs trying to gather oxygen and my heart thundered in my chest, but I didn’t feel like I was about to drop dead like I’ve felt like before when I’ve exerted myself in the past. I felt a small amount of joy that I could experience a healthy life now, but that pleasurable feeling was dulled by all the destruction and death I could see all around me.

There was even more death outside the now collapsed hospital and it made me feel sick to my stomach to see all these blacken skeletons. What made it worse was also how many foal skeletons I could see. What the hell happened here? I couldn’t even begin to think of what happened, but I know for certain I’ll find out eventually.

My ears perked up as I began to pick up the sound of crashing water somewhere up ahead. I pulled myself back up to my hooves and weaved around the bus and stared ahead as the lines of destroyed buildings gave way to an endless green horizon. I walked for about ten minutes until I came to a rusty guard rail overlooking a rocky sea wall. What I can see is both beautiful and horrifying. A green tinted ocean laps at the sea wall calmly, but the rolling dark grey clouds gave the impression that a huge storm is on its way. I’ve never seen such a scene before in my life.

Lights caught my attention to my right and I turned to look and found a sight that gave me hope that there is still life in this city. I could see a small island not too far from the Manehattan shore and I could see a long bridge connecting the island to the city. As I gave my full attention to the island I began to see other things such as guard towers and ponies in those towers manning huge guns and pointing them out over the bridge. I immediately didn’t want go anywhere near that island nor those ponies with guns. I turned around and began to walk along the sea wall away from the island.

I must have walked for about an hour before my progress was halted, as I came across a wall that had metal spikes sticking out the top of the wall to prevent anypony from climbing over it. The wall was pretty much intact leaving barely any damage for me to look through. I also noticed by now the sky was darkening and this made the dead city feel even scarier as the deep shadows everywhere only grew larger and more ominous. I followed the wall around until I came to a large iron gate, which unfortunately is chained up tight. I am able to see through the bars in the gate and found myself looking into the Gold Star Line’s Manehattan Harbour; I could see the sign on a building in the distance. My jaw dropped when I saw the giant great white ship sitting in her berth. The RMS Celestia.

Well, I now have a vague time line now. I saw the news coverage when the RMS Celestia was announced and then the ceremony when the first piece of the ship was laid. Princess Luna attended in the place of her sister that the ship was named after, and hammered in the first rivet. I found it funny watching her on the TV since she looked uncomfortable doing something in the name of her sister. It was also kinda sad since after the assassination attempted on Princess Celestia, she attended public appearances less and less until we barely ever saw her. So, if the Celestia had just been started before I fell asleep and now since she is complete I would estimate I’ve been asleep for over five years. FIVE YEARS! No, maybe more considering the state of the ship. She looks extremely rusty and grimy and the fact she has sunk in her berth. She was sitting too deep in the water to be floating. Further observation of the ship also shows that her aft mast has collapsed and fallen over her starboard side and into a dockside warehouse. The bow mast looked to be leaning a little too far back, and the steel cables meant to keep the mast in place looked to be straining heavily to hold the mast from falling back. I don’t think they can last much longer. With the state of the ship I am going to now say more like ten years. Ten or more years, oh Celestia my mother must be beside herself in worry about me or... Oh goddesses, she must think I’m dead. Oh, oh mummy. I need to get home.

Something flashed in the corner of my vision. It looked like an exclamation mark. I turned my head to my right where I saw it flash and looked around trying to find it. What was that? Suddenly a heavy weight slammed into the gate causing me to stumble backwards slightly.

“What the hell?” I shrieked out in surprise from the sudden impact. What I saw lying in a broken heap on the floor made the air in my lungs catch in my throat in fright. What I can see can only be described as a zombie, a real life zombie. A walking corpse. This is impossible, this should not exist, it can’t, and it makes no sense. Trying to make sense of what I am seeing ,I could only think of old horror movies where the dead were reanimated by spells gone wrong or from viruses but all that stuff was make believe but here right now I can see a real zombie and it looked hungry. The monster pulled itself back up to its broken hooves and opened its lipless mouth and let out a loud hiss like cry as it charged at the gate again and began to push against it as it tried to get to me. Oh my goddesses this is sickening and disturbing. My eyes widened as I noticed more coming towards the first. There had to be hundreds of them and they were all coming for me. I don’t wanna be eaten. Seeing an army of the living dead I did the only thing a sane filly would do in this situation. Scream and run like hell in the opposite direction.

I ran for as long as my lungs could gather oxygen. I stopped, panting heavily as I sat down on the cold cracked concrete of what looked to be a high street full of shops. I clutched at my chest as my lungs burned for air and my heart thundered. I sat and rested until my chest no longer hurt and I was breathing at a more normal rate again. So much stress can’t be good for me. I’m going to need to find some shelter soon; it’s getting really dark now. I started up the street. Maybe I can find a news agent so I can find out what the heck happened to this city and why it’s deserted and filled with the living dead.

This street is an absolute mess. Just like the rest of the city. Every window is either boarded up or broken. Some of the buildings have collapsed internally, leaving a shell behind. My stomach growled with hunger as I trudged up the road. Wow, I didn’t realise how hungry I was with all this running for my life. I hope I can find an intact shop that sells food. I walked for at least another five minutes before I finally found what I was looking for. A news agent where I could find a newspaper so I can find out what happened.

I pushed open the half broken door and stepped into the shop, half expecting to greet the shopkeeper but of course like the city, the small store is deserted. I frowned as I walked through the aisles, looking for the newspapers. The shelves were pretty much devoid of anything edible and what was left was no good. Grumbling to myself about the lack of food, I walked up to the counter and found a stack of mushy pulp that had once been a stack of papers. I didn’t give up on finding a news paper as I climbed over the counter and jumped down behind it. I smiled when I saw a box sitting on a shelf below the counter marked with the symbol of the equestrian news. I pulled the box out and opened it. Inside, I found a stack of old yellowed newspapers which thankfully were intact but discoloured from age. The headline of the paper made my jaw drop to the floor as it told me what happened in one single word.

“ARMAGEDDON”

It can’t be, they can’t have, can they?

“Armageddon, Equestria launches WMDs in retaliation to Zebrica’s launch of their Balefire Bomb arsenal...”

So the war is over and both sides lost. No wonder this whole city is a wreck and... Oh my goddesses. It’s not just here, it’s the whole country and that means... Oh Celestia no, my mother! I then saw the date on the paper and that just confirmed my worst fears. The paper is dated five years after I fell asleep which means my mother is most likely dead, since we didn’t get a place in a Stable. Oh mother, I never got to say good bye. I couldn’t help the tears that fell from my eyes as I broke down again. I’ve lost so much, I can’t handle this.

“Well, well, well what do we have here?” A sinister male voice said from behind me. I shrieked out in surprise and spun around to see two stallions standing in the doorway wearing what looked to be makeshift suits of armour made from cobbled together rubbish.

“A fine young zebra cunt that’s what,” The first stallion’s companion answered with a dark lustful grin.

“I’m not a zebra,” I cried out as I got to my hooves.

“Heh, whatever you say bitch, you still got a fine ass,” The second one said as the pair of them walked closer towards me. I didn’t like how the two of them were looking at me and I backed myself up until my rump hit the wall behind me.

“Nowhere to run little bitch,” The first one said as he opened the counter door.

“Stay away from me!” I shouted as I jumped over the counter and made a break for the door. The second stallion was quick to get in my way and forced me to grind to a halt inches from his yellow tooth smile. I saw the exclamation mark flash in my vision again and then suddenly I felt a weight on my back and a pair of forelegs tightly hugged around my waist. I let out a cry of surprise and then felt something hard, warm and wet poke at my flanks as the stallion who had mounted me started to gyrate his hips. Oh Celestia No! “Get off of me!” I screamed and bucked hard. To my surprise I lifted him into the air as I pushed off with my hind legs. In his surprise, he let go of my waist and as he was still in the air, I kicked out with my hind legs and bucked him in the chest, sending him clear over the shelves to land against the counter in a heavy crash. I stared in shock at what I just did. I just threw a fully grown stallion off my back like he was nothing and then sent him clear across the store with a single kick.

"Haha, you just got your ass hoofed to ya by a mare Billy," The second stallion laughed in the doorway.

"Oh shut up," Billy groaned as he climbed over the counter in pain.

The stallion blocking the door continued to laugh but kept enough control of himself that he craned his neck back and pulled a rather large knife from a tattered saddlebag on his back and held it with the blade pointing at me. I began to quake in fear as the stallion continued to giggle manically around his knife while still he blocked my escape.

"I'm gonna fuck you good for that bitch," Billy said as he slowly began to approach me from behind.

"No please" I begged as I looked around fearfully around, looking for any other way to escape. I quickly dashed down an aisle to get some distance from the two bad stallions.

"Stay in the door, don't let her escape," Billy growled.

I don't believe this, what happened to these ponies? Ponies never used to be this dark.

"There you are."

I screamed and began to charge up the aisle and away from Billy. I rounded a corner and found myself running straight at the other stallion. In my panic I poured on the speed and just kept running. I could see the stallion grinning as he blocked the door but his grin began to fade the closer I got while still running at full pelt.

"She ain't stopping, oh shit."

He quickly dove out the way as I charged through the door. My vision blurred as tears threatened to blind me as I ran for my life. Why me?

"You fucking coward Crowbar," I heard Billy yell.

"Dude, she threw you off her like you were nothing, I ain't gonna let her bowl me over"

I ran as fast as I could into the street to get away from my attackers. I could barely see with how my teary eyes blurred my vision and then I saw the exclamation mark flash again. I looked in the direction I saw it flash but that momentary distraction stopped me from seeing the bus in front of me. I looked forward again just in time to see the large rusty steel vehicle. Oh no. I let out a scream of pain as I collided head first into the bus and staggered backwards. My head hurt badly, and my vision began to swim.

"Haha she ran straight into a bus," Crowbar laughed as the two stallions casually approached me.

I moaned as I turned around. I could barely stay on my hooves with how badly everything was swirling around. I felt so dizzy.

"Let's help her relax," Billy said as he pulled a large plank of wood off his back, covered in nails.

"Pl...please," I begged while I spread my legs to keep me up.

"Nighty night," Billy said and swung his nail board.

I screamed in agony as I felt the nails dig into my cheek but then felt the heavy impact of the wood against my head and everything went black.

XXXXX

The zebra mare collapsed to the floor unmoving as she took a nailboard full force against the side of the head. To Billy's surprise his weapon exploded into splinters along with his teeth being rattled and he dropped the now useless piece of wood.

"You really need to take better care of your shit," Crowbar laughed.

"Fuck you, argh damn, that felt like I hit a brick wall," Billy groaned as he worked his jaw.

Crowbar continued to laugh at his friend's expense as the two vile stallions approached the unconscious mare.

Down the street just out of sight of the two raiders a beige pony with a brown mane dressed in bloodied doctor scrubs watched the scene while hiding behind a rusty red mailbox. "That poor mare." Suddenly to his surprise he watched as the downed mare picked herself back up like nothing happened.

"What the fuck?" Billy yelped.

"She should be out cold after a hit like that"

The zebra mare turned around to face her attackers. Her once baby blue eyes had taken on a now threatening red.

"Self defence protocol initiated, engaging hostile targets," She spoke in a monotone emotionless electronic voice.

The two stallions blinked in confusion as the mare showed no signs of the concussion she should have taken from the two heavy impacts to her head and she calmly approached the two males with her red eyes boring into them. Crowbar got over his surprise first and grinned as he took hold of his knife again.

"Ya wanna go bitch, alright then, come on," He mumbled around the grip of his knife as he went in to slash at the mare. The zebra tilted her head to regard him and with a quick fluid flick of her foreleg she blocked the strike. She pushed up with her other foreleg to free it from supporting her weight while still holding the blade back with her other foreleg she thrust her free hoof out with lightening speed at the stallion's exposed chest. Her hoof connected with his chest and a loud crack reverberated throughout the street as her hoof broke his sternum and pushed into his chest. Crowbar let out a gasp before collapsing, dead. Her strike had pushed his broken sternum against his heart with enough force to stop it.

Billy gasped in shock as he watched his lifelong friend die from just a single punch to his chest. His mouth fell agape when he saw just how deeply the mare's hoof had sunk into his chest when she pulled it out of the hole she made. Her hoof had sunk at least an inch or two into his friend's chest.

"You... you killed my best friend... you fucking bitch!" Billy yelled in rage as he quickly dug out a ten millimetre pistol.

The zebra calmly turned to face him, not seeming to even notice the gun now pointed at her and began to approach him.

"Die" Billy yelled over the mouth grip and fired three rounds at the mare. Three loud bangs echoed down the street, which were then followed by three dings.

Billy dropped his gun in complete terror as the red eyed mare continued to approach him despite being shot in the head three times. The bullets themselves had bounced out of the holes they dug into her forehead.

"What are you?" He cried out in panic as he began to walk backwards.

The zebra didn't speak; she kept her gaze locked on him as she continued her approach. Suddenly, without warning, the mare jumped forward, landed on one forehoof then twisted her body around, spinning on her hoof until she had her back to the stallion. He had just enough time to let out a cry for help before two hindhooves found themselves slamming into his head. The double hoof kick to his snout broke his jaw and nose, sending shards of bone into his brain but the strength of the strike also threw his head back hard enough to break his neck. Billy was dead before he hit the floor.

"Holy shit," The wasteland doctor gasped as he watched the mare defeat two stallions with a single blow each. He was also curious about this mare, something didn't seem right about her since she had collapsed from two hits to the head but then fought two stallions like nothing happened and also got shot in the head. Part of his mind was telling him to run before she killed him too but the injuries she had taken needed treating, and the good doctor in him couldn't allow him to run to leave this mare to likely get an infection in the deep gashes in her left cheek where the nails had dug into her from the nailboard. He slowly crawled out from behind the mailbox, and began to approach the mare slowly.

The mare raised her head as if sensing something and turned to face the approaching stallion. After a moment of regarding him she began to approach him. The doctor noticed that the mare had seen him and stopped. He sat on his rump and held his forehooves up to show he was unarmed.

"I mean you no harm," He spoke as confidently as possible as the red eyed zebra came within inches of him.

He cringed at the sight of the gashes in her cheek and he was sure he could see some teeth through one of the holes in her cheek. The mare moved her head closer as she stared at him and he did his best to not break eye contact. After what felt like forever and a day the mare pulled back from him.

"Self defence protocol disengaged," She said in the same lifeless tone as before and then her red eyes faded back to their baby blue colour before rolling into the back of her head as she collapsed.

"Oh shit, are you alright?" The doctor cried out in surprise as the mare fell. Seeing that she was unresponsive he attempted to pick her up only to find he couldn't budge her. "Goddesses you weigh a ton," He groaned before giving up trying to move her. "Brutus, get your fat ass out here!" He yelled out.

A large black spotted Brahmin trotted out from behind the corner and approached his master. "You called sir," The left head spoke in a calm voice.

"We need to get her to my clinic now, I can't lift her."

The two headed cow nodded, and allowed the doctor to assemble his makeshift stretcher he had in the Brahmin's large bag and with the help of the mutated cow, pulled the unconscious mare onto the stretcher. The doctor made sure his patient was secure, before he tied two ropes from the Brahmin's saddle to the stretcher and with the cow’s strength began to haul the mare towards his clinic.

XXXXX

I smiled to myself as I snuggled close to my mother's soft pink sparkling fur. Despite all my pain and suffering from my illnesses I could always find comfort with my mother. She bent her head down and gently licked the sour on my cheek, her soft tongue calming the burn from it.

"Sweetie you got to be more careful, you know you are more fragile than most other fillies and colts" She spoke softly.

"I know mum but it was a really fun game," I chirped.

She giggled softly, her sweet voice making me smile happily. "Oh, I know darling, but you know how rough some of those colts can be."

I cooed happily as I snuggled close to my mother's side. She shifted away from me after a few minutes and I looked up in confusion. I blinked in confusion to see the sparkle from my mother's crystal coat had faded away leaving her looking dull and sad. I then realised I am fully grown again and that I'm dreaming. My fondest dreams are mostly of me as a carefree filly.

"You, you have to go away for a while sweetheart," My mother said as tears built up in her eyes.

"What, but mummy I don't want to leave," I whimpered.

"I know you don't sweetie but you have a lot to do now and Equestria needs you," She said breaking down as the door to our house exploded as two ponies dressed in black outfits with face wraps stormed into the house and seized me. As soon as they grabbed me the entire house morphed into a clean steel grey corridor and I found myself strapped to a gunnery being pushed along by the two stallions. We drew near a set of double doors which as we got close to them opened and a blinding light filled the hall but a silhouette of a large stallion stood in the middle. I felt a shiver run down my spine as the shadowed stallion smiled.

"Excellent timing, we are ready to extract her brain," He said in a ghostly voice as everything faded to black as I felt myself being pulled away from the land of nod.

I woke up with a start from the strange dream I had which was now starting to fade from my memory but the voice of that shadowed stallion still lingered making me shiver. What was all that about? I never had a dream like that before. I went to move a foreleg so I could rub my forehead since I can feel something pressing on it and froze when I found myself unable to move it. I tried to move my over limbs and found myself completely bound to whatever I'm lay on and incapable of any movement apart from useless wriggling.

"Help!" I screamed out in fright.

"Ah, you're awake" Came a soft male voice from my right. I tried to turn my head but found I couldn't move it like the rest of me though I was able to see him with my eye. The beige stallion walked up to the table or whatever I'm on and sat down. He didn't look threatening and his soft voice didn't give any malicious intent.

"Help me, I can't move," I whimpered.

"I'm not going to take the chance until I know you are safe to release. You did kill two stallions with one hit each before collapsing again. Not to mention you are not even a pony, I don't know what you are," He told me as he looked over my prone body.

"I, what?" I shrieked. "That's impossible I..." I remembered I was hit by a nailboard and was knocked out. "I was unconscious, I couldn't have done anything"

He stared at me for a while before speaking again. "You're eyes were red at the time but they are blue now, but I suppose you weren't in control either. Who are you?" He asked.

The bit about me having red eyes confused me but I let it pass. "My name is Crystal Éclair. I'm a Crystal Pony from Las Pegasus," I told him truthfully.

He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at my answer. "Crystal?" He asked. I nodded my head with how much the strap on my head would allow me. "You look more like a Zebra than a Crystal Pony but you aren’t all Zebra either," He told me, looking over my body to which I began to feel strange sensations in multiple areas on my body like a cool breeze blowing over an uneven surface.

"What, what are you talking about?" I cried in confusion.

He simply reached up to the table and flicked his hoof against something and the strap holding my head became slack and he gently pulled it off my head.

"Have a look," He told me.

I weakly lifted my head and looked at myself. For the first time since I woke up in the hospital, I took the time to actually see myself and finally understood why everypony was calling me a Zebra. My once dull pink coat and yellow tail had changed to the white and grey stripes of a Zebra. I don't understand; how did this happen to me? What did this to me? But then I saw the gaping holes cut into my body; there were like several holes dug into my flesh on my chest, belly and legs and disturbingly, they were not bleeding but it was what lay within those holes that made me scream.

"What the hell has happened to me?" I screamed as I struggled against my bonds. I could hear and see the mechanical, skeletal like limbs moving and straining with me. It's like it is my body. I can feel everything trying to move. What's happened to me?

"Do you still believe you are a Crystal Pony?" He asked me.

I looked at him with tears now streaming from my eyes. "CELESTIA YES!" I cried. "I was born in the Crystal Empire, moved to Las Pegasus with my mother and father and lived there until I was twenty six," I wailed.

He frowned as he looked sympathetic. "I believe you. No machine can emulate that much raw emotion. I could see it all in your eyes. I don't know who did this to you but I can certainly tell you what they have done," He said as he began to undo the straps holding me down. I just lay there and cried, letting all my anguish out as he freed me. I wept until I had no more tears. The pony was patient with me as he let me calm down. I slowly hauled myself up so I'm sitting upright on the table and looked at the bloodstained pony. My eyes widened at the blood, and he followed my gaze.

"Oh, don't mind the blood," He said dismissively. "It comes with the job of being a healer."

I nodded and looked back down at my holed body and whimpered. "Why am I all cut up?" I asked looking at a large hole cut into my chest to reveal a steel breast plate with a green screen which I recognised as a heart monitor.

"I can explain that," The doctor said looking sheepish. "I might have got a little carried away.”

"What did you do?" I cried.

"Let me explain... Um, right. You collapsed after you killed the two stallions and I noticed that you had several wounds on your body so I brought you here to my clinic to treat you since I'm a doctor and all. Anyway, when I was examining your gashed cheek, I noticed a metallic gleam so I thought one of the nails from that nailboard had been pushed in much deeper so I had to cut you more to get at it, but as I did, I discovered it wasn't a nail but your skull. I got curious and when attending to your chest which was pretty scraped, I discovered metal under your skin there too, and one thing led to another and I had revealed you entire skeleton to be mechanical. It is rather remarkable since you have living tissue on top of a robotic body and also this thing," He explained with an excited tone. This just horrified me, to know that I've somehow been turned into a machine and not only that into a different species all together. The doctor pulled a pink diamond that is set into a blue steel ring out from his scrub's pocket and then held it in his hoof to show me. "I had to pry this out your chest to stop your body from reforming while I examined you."

"You took that out of me?" I yelped and looked at my exposed chest and sure enough there is a circular indentation where something did sit.

"Don't worry I'm going to put it back, since I know you aren't going to kill me."

I just blinked.

"Anyway, this is weird. It's a zebra made regeneration talisman and is used to heal injuries and illnesses and whatever, but this is the strange thing. When I was cutting you to examine you, a simple cut didn't prompt it to heal you, but cutting a sizeable chunk out of your flesh it would then regrow within seconds. I performed a magical scan on it, and this blue ring seems to be controlling the flow of power from the talisman. It suppresses its healing capabilities if the injury isn't major say, like a cut or a scrape then the ring forces the talisman to not heal the damage and since your flesh is alive it would heal on its own eventually."

This is all too much. I'm just a machine now is that it? Oh Celestia what happened to me?

"So I'm just a machine now, I'm not alive?" I asked with a fresh set of tears starting to build up.

He frowned for a moment. "Hold still," He said as he pushed the strange diamond into my chest and with a click I felt it settle in the groove. My eyes widened in surprise as I felt a wave of energy rush through me and then I felt a tingling in all the areas I had parts of my body cut away and in total shock I watched as the holds slowly closed until I was whole again.

"Incredible," The doctor said as he looked over my now healthy looking zebra body. "Oh and to answer your question about being alive. I can safely assure you that you ARE alive," He said with all the seriousness of a pony who was held in high authority. "I performed several medical scanning spells, and to my surprise I found that you have a living brain in your head although there is a small computer in there with it, and a set of lungs and a heart in your chest which are pumping blood and oxygen to your brain to keep it alive. Because you still have those you are very much alive.”

I let out a sigh of relief to know that I'm still in some way alive and not just a machine.

"Your mechanical body is also very unique, well to me it is. It seems like it was designed to emulate a living pony completely, because not only do you have your organic brain, heart and lungs but you also have synthetic organs. You have a synthetic stomach and intestinal tract, so you can still eat food like a normal pony but also I've discovered you can also eat metal and gems. You also seem to have a repair system built into your mechanical body similar to that of a Steel Ranger's armour so I believe that is why you can eat metal but also your power cells are very weak, won't last you for a week but its genius," He gushed. This pony seemed to know a lot about this. "Your body is designed to recharge itself from you eating food and gems on a regular basis. Whoever made you seemed to have designed you so you could blend in with the all organic ponies or zebras. I've never seen anything like you before, not even the ponies I've met from Stable 101 who are all big on cybernetic modification are anything like you. I learned a lot from those ponies and with how many cybernetic ponies I've met lately I'm glad I learned from them."

Well now I know why he knows so much about my mechanical parts. I have conflicting emotions right now. One part of me is sickened and horrified with what I've become while the other side is overjoyed that I'm still alive and healthy for once, and I suppose that side was winning as I couldn't help a small smile.

"Um thank you doctor for making sure that I'm ok, even though you cut me full of holes."

"No problem. I couldn't leave a helpless mare lying outside in the middle of the street like that."

I smiled a little brighter. He thankfully was like the doctors I used to know.

"Um, can you tell me what's happened please? When I was put into stasis none of this had happened, I mean the end of Equestria," I asked.

He frowned, and then recounted what he knew of the end of the war and Equestria itself. I listened and was horrified to know the whole country had been laid to waste along with Zebrica. I can't imagine how many ponies and zebras died that day. He went on to tell me that thousands survived in the Stables and that many did survive in the wasteland but then came the biggest shock since I found out I'm mostly machine. He told me it's been a hundred and ninety years, give or take a year or two since the bombs fell. That blew my original estimate out the water.

"A hundred and ninety years!" I screamed in complete shock and then I broke down for another round of crying, as that just confirmed that by now my mother is long dead.

"Hey what's the matter?"

"I thought I've been asleep for five or so years so there was a chance I could get home to my mum but now I know I have no chance of that since she'd have been dead for over a century," I cried. I feel like such a cry baby right now.

"I'm sorry," He said as he turned and trotted over to a locker and opened it. "So, what are you going to do now?" He asked as he rummaged about inside.

"I... I don't know," I answered. What am I to do now? I got no pony to go home to and no home to go back too. I'm totally alone out here and have nothing left. I looked down with a sigh and regarded my zebra body and I felt a surge of anger. There was something I could do. "Actually, I think I'd like to find out what happened to me."

"Oh and how are you going to do that?" He asked as he turned around, carrying a bungle on his back and trotted up to me.

"Well the last thing I remember before waking up here in Manehattan was going to sleep in my hospital room, in the Las Pegasus Fluttershy Hospital, so that's where I'll start."

"That's on the other side of the wasteland; there are a lot of dangers between here and there."

"Um, you wouldn't know a safe way back would you?"

"Actually, there is a train that still runs between the east and west. It's not entirely safe but, it’s quicker and safer than walking there. The train won't be here for another few days yet, but if finding out what happened to you is what you are going to do, then I'd suggest checking out the Ministry of Awesome hub here before the train arrives."

"Why the MoA hub?" I asked as he set the bundle on the table beside me.

"The Ministry of Awesome's insignia is etched onto your metal skeleton," He answered as he then patted the bundle. "Here, you might find these useful; you have a Stable-Tec Jumpsuit and a Pipbuck-3000 here. Dressing in this suit and wearing the pipbuck will help convince ponies you are a Stable-Dweller, and not just a random zebra. Most ponies still don't trust them much. They belonged to a Stable-Dweller who I was unfortunately unable to save. The pipbuck is a very useful tool and will help you greatly. Hmm, maybe I can directly integrate it into your system for easier control."

"What do you mean?" I asked as I slipped into the tight jumpsuit.

"I mean so you can control it with your mind as it'll be a part of your body with its direct link to your mechanical system. Your brain controls your body, and the automated systems will aid in your control, but you can still use it manually too."

"If you think it'll help me then sure."

"Ok, hold still," He said as he took a clean scalpel from a tray of tools and brought it to me left foreleg. I began to shiver as he brought the blade to me leg and then cut into me. I screamed in pain, and yanked my leg back as the small blade cut into my skin.

"That hurt," I cried.

"Remarkable, you can still feel pain," He then coughed. "Erm, well, I'm sorry I didn't mean to hurt you."

I held my foreleg as I watched blood seep from the cut. But after a few minutes, the pain subsided along with the blood flow. I've cut myself before from accidents, and they still hurt longer after I did them, but I can't feel this one at all right now.

"It doesn't hurt now, I can barely feel it."

He gently pressed the small cut, applying pressure and parting the wound until I let out a grunt as the pain returned.

"It seems you now have a high pain threshold. It's amazing she can still feel pain too."

I rolled my eyes as he spoke that last part quietly to himself.

"I can try again if you wish; I'll proceed slowly as to not overwhelm you"

I nodded and grit my teeth since I knew what to expect. He brought the blade to my flesh again and began to cut into my lower foreleg. I grit my teeth hard as my leg spiked in pain again as he cut a sizeable length, and using his magic, he pried the cut apart to expose the mechanical leg beneath. With the cut open, he brought the pipbuck over and opened the back panel connecting a wire to a port and then slipped the wire into the cut. I didn't watch, as watching him doing something inside an open wound like that was actually making me feel sick. Just feeling it in there was making me queasy. I felt a spark from my leg, and then my vision was awash with text until all that remained was a flashing line that read.

"Pipbuck system installed successfully."

"It worked!" I shrieked in surprise.

"Eyes Forward Sparkle acquired, initiating..." Another line said as it replaced the last and then I found a compass appear in the bottom left of my vision and a chart on the right with empty spaces below, but on top it had several bars with AP next to it. "Eyes Forward Sparkle installation complete. Thank you for choosing Stable-Tec."

"There, your pipbuck is online," The doctor said as he then fastened the device to my leg.

I cringed as the device squeezed my leg, and caused a slight rise in pain as it agitated the cut beneath it for a moment. "Thank you doctor," I groaned.

"Not a problem."

I gently pushed myself off the table and landed with a thud back on all four hooves.

"Oh and you weigh a hell of a lot by the way," The doctor whined from my heavy impact with the floor which caused the nearby shelves to rattle.

"Err, ok, um, thank you for helping me doctor."

"My pleasure, it's always good to help a pony in need... or in your case a bio-mechanoid zebra."

I smiled as I turned to leave.

"Oh wait here," He said getting my attention so I turned around to face him. He gave me a piece of paper with what looked like directions on them and then he gave me a pistol. It was a gun I recognised from some movies. A basic 9mm Pistol. "The directions are to the train station that'll take you back to Las Pegasus or as it's called today, New Pegasus, and the gun you will need for your protection. There is a lot out there that'll try to kill you, so be careful."

I nodded. "Thank you again. Good bye doctor."

"Take care, Crystal. Good luck."

I stopped and turned back to him with a sheepish grin. "Um, how do I get to the MoA hub?"

XXXXX

I looked around with more apprehension at the ruined city as I walked into the downtown district of Manehattan, where I would find Tenpony Tower. The doctor told me I'd find the MoA hub near by the tower. By now, it was the dead of night and to my surprise, a good portion of the streetlamps were working. I did notice several spark batteries connected to some of them as I passed. It's really odd and disturbing to see that this city still tried to live without ponies to maintain it. I came to an intersection and looked up at the rows of buildings ahead of me and saw one tower that still had lights on. The doctor had told me that Tenpony Tower is pretty much the only building still intact in this city and contained a pony settlement. I might be able to get some supplies while I'm there, that is if they let me in being a zebra and all. Ugh, I can see this becoming a problem in the future.

While I stared up at the tower in the distance I then noticed red bars appearing in my EFS compass along with the exclamation mark flashing above my AP metre. It was now I finally understood what the flashing exclamation mark is. It's a threat warning.

I quickly turned around and found a small group of ponies dressed similarly to the two stallions from earlier but in this group I could see mares along with them.

"Little Zebra, you killed two of my Raiders today. I can't have a cunt like you making us look bad," A large buff looking stallion said as he stepped forward. I gulped in fright and backed away as he advanced with his group behind him.

The large raider smiled darkly as he could read how scared I am with how wide my eyes are. "The bitch is scared. Awww," He taunted. He then unexpectedly stopped and looked up with his eyes growing wide. Against my better judgement I turned and looked as well only for my jaw to drop as I saw two balls of cackling green energy streaming right for us.

Chapter 2: Iron Horse of Speed

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 2: Iron Horse of Speed

Green light bathed the area as the two hoofball sized balls of energy flew down from above towards us. My eyes could only see the crackling spheres. Everything else around me didn't matter, all that mattered was what's heading right for me. I turned my head back to the raider who had confronted me and without another word I did the only thing that came to mind which was to avoid the energy balls and that was to drop to my stomach, clutch my head in my hooves and scream in terror. Oddly enough with my eyes closed, my EFS was still visible and I could see my threat warning flashing even as my fur stood on end as the energy spheres flew over my prone body. I cringed and held my head harder when suddenly, my ears were assaulted by a blood curdling scream that abruptly stopped mid scream. The half scream was then followed by a wet squelching noise and splashes. I could see a green glow through my closed eyes and stupidly, I cracked an eye open to see what was causing the glow, and immediately regretted it because the glow belonged to the raider who was now dead. He had turned into a pile of goo, with his skeleton collapsed into a heap in the pile of sludge. I took a deep inhale of breath, ready to scream my lungs out at the horror before me when a shadow passed over my head and then four purple legs landed hard in front of me. Blinking in confusion at the new arrival, I removed my hooves from my head as I looked up to see this new arrival to the scene. A purple pegasus stallion stood in front of me with his back to me, his wings spread out to the fullest to make him look as big as possible and crackling on either side of him under his wings were two plasma rifles.

"Don't you assholes have anything better to do than to terrorise a defenceless mare?" He yelled angrily. "You better get the fuck out of here before I turn you all into slush puppies."

The remaining raiders looked at each other for a moment before they all turned tail and ran away. I suppose seeing their leader get liquefied was enough to scare them off. I remained on the floor as the raiders ran off. I myself am scared too, of this stallion who is wielding two powerful weapons. For all I know, he wants to hurt me himself. The stallion held his pose for a few moments longer before he relaxed, folding his wings to his sides and shifting his stance to a more casual stance. He turned around and bent down slightly.

"Hey, are you alright?" He asked sounding concerned.

I blinked and looked up at the purple stallion. He wore a worried look on his handsome face even with a few locks of his messy darker purple mane falling in front of his eyes.

I nodded weakly in response and he offered his hoof. I smiled softly and took his hoof and he helped me up to my hooves.

"Good thing I was in the area," He smiled smugly at me now that I am stood up.

Now that we were facing each other I could see he was wearing a battlesaddle designed to hold medium to large weapons and the two weapon holsters were taken up with MK1 Plasma Rifles. The two weapons however, looked ready to fall apart.

"Thank you for saving me, mister..." I paused as I didn't know the stallion's name.

He grinned and put a hoof to his chest smugly. "Tooty Fruity is the name but you can call me Fruity," He introduced himself with confidence.

I smiled at his attitude, it was certainly a welcome change from the grim nature of the last few ponies I've met today beside the doctor.

"Nice to meet you Fruity, my name is Crystal Éclair, though you can call me Crystal," I said, smiling.

He looked at me funny when I gave him my name.

"What?"

"Err, nothing, just an odd name for a zebra that's all," He said while he began to fiddle with his battlesaddle.

"Um, I suppose my parents wanted to be different with me," I suggested.

"Heh, fair enough..." He replied before groaning in annoyance. "C'mon you piece of shit," He whined as he pulled at a stubborn strap. As he pulled, the strap suddenly snapped. The sudden release made him lose his balance and he toppled over onto his side which I found quite funny, and couldn't help the small giggle that escaped my lips.

He groaned to himself as he picked himself up, fluffing his wings up in agitation. As he stood, his battlesaddle fell to the floor. "Stupid piece of junk," He growled at the saddle now on the floor.

"Why did you take it off?" I asked surprised.

"I used what they had left in saving you. Kinda pointless in keeping them now since finding Plasma Rifles to repair them with are next to impossible in this shit tip and repairing or buying new ones would cost me a leg and a wing," He answered with a sigh. "Literally," He added after a moment's pause.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Huh, don't be," He dismissed my apology. "Anyway, what is a pretty mare like you doing outside at this hour? It's dangerous and will get a whole lot worse soon."

"Um, you don't mind that I'm a zebra?" I asked.

"Can we talk about this later, like when we are safe inside somewhere?" He asked looking up at the darkening sky nervously.

"Um, sure, I was just heading to Tenpony Tower before I go to the MoA Hub here," I said, answering his previous question.

"Ok good, I know how to get to Tenpony, follow me and please keep up, we don't have much time bef-" He was cut off when a loud shriek rang throughout the streets.

"What was that?" I asked looking around fearfully.

"Oh no, we only have a few minutes before they come out. C'mon Crystal move that ass," He urged as he turned and began to run down the street towards a rusty iron staircase leading up to the overpass. I didn't have to be told twice and ran after him with my growing sense of fear.

We began to thunder up the stairs. Well, I thundered, Fruity just flew up, and we came out onto a dual lane overpass for Manehattan's train network. We ground to a halt as in the distance we saw the last bits of light fade, night taking completely over the day now and plunging everything into darkness and then we saw the streams. All around us we could see streams of things flying up into the sky. It was like something out of a horror movie.

"Oh shit, this way now, RUN!" He cried and began to run down the tracks towards the tower still lit up. There was then another loud high pitched screech and I let out a fearful cry and ran after him.

"What are those things?" I cried when I caught up to him. At least this mechanical body has some benefits.

"Since you're new out here, um, think of them as giant vampire fruit bats but instead of fruit juice they suck on pony juice," He yelled as we ran. I didn't like the sound of that.

As we ran, we dodged and weaved around chunks of rubble and rusted old heaps of what had once been the city's metro trains, jumping over holes and all the while the sounds of flapping leathery wings grew louder and louder.

"There, we have to get to that station," Fruity cried as he began to fly parallel with the floor.

Up ahead, we could see a train station bathed in light, the only source of light on this overpass. I grunted, feeling my heart beat hard and fast in my chest, the familiar burn seeping over me as I ran. The sense of fear making my pulse race and the anticipation of reaching our safe heaven blotted out most of what's around me. The bats were drawing in so close now that I couldn't ignore them as I focused on the station that was only a couple of hundred feet away but just felt like miles.

I heard a hiss close by, and then felt something slash my exposed flank. Crying out in pain, I kicked out with my hind legs. I felt one of my hooves strike something, which then crashed into something else. I hissed with pain as my working muscles agitated the wound. I know I don't have muscles anymore, but it still feels like I do though.

"Whoa, hey," I heard Fruity yell up ahead a little and looked up to see him just in time to see a giant bat miss him. "Hah, you gotta do better than that to get me you filthy flying rat."

He flipped around to avoid another bat but he ended up heading right for a large pole bent over the overpass while his attention was on the bats.

"Fruity look out!" I cried while jumping over another hole.

"Huh, OH SHIT!" He cried and without time to avoid the pole he crashed into it with his chest, his momentum causing him to spin around the pole a couple of times before he was roughly deposited onto the floor.

"Ow," He groaned as he quickly picked himself up.

"Are you alright?" I asked as I ran up to him.

"I'm fine, c'mon," He replied as he took off again.

I nodded and ran after him again just as there was a loud shriek from behind me, and then something impacted the ground where I was just moments ago.

We were now mere feet from the station and its lights of safety. "We're almost there!" Fruity shouted. "Yo, little light over here please!" He shouted towards the station.

I let out another pained cry as something slashed my leg this time. "Please," I cried. I saw a pony look out from a guard tower built onto the station before the guard looked to his left and then a spot light burst to life and bathed the tracks we are running on in a bright harsh light. I blinked rapidly as my vision had been blinded by the light, preventing me from being able to see where I'm going.

"Crystal watch..."

I cried out loudly as my forelegs collided with the lip of the platform and I slid on my chest and crashed into a concrete bench.

"Nevermind," Fruity said as he landed on the platform.

I looked up and out over the train line to see a flock of huge black, red winged bats cry out in agony from the intense light, before they scrambled away from the light along with white spots. Thankfully, the spots faded away as my eyes readjusted.

"What the heck are those?" I asked while ignoring the pain in my forelegs from my crash.

"Those, miss Zebra, are what we call Bloodwings," A gruff voice answered as a pony wearing tan coloured combat armour stepped out onto the station.

"Phew, nice going there Slick," Fruity said as he recovered from his flight.

"What are you doing here again Fruity, you've been kicked out twice, you know what will happen if you get kicked out again."

"He he, yea, I know but... this was an emergency."

"Ugh, yes I can see that, there is no way I'm gonna let you back out there with those bloodwings flying around out there..." He then looked at me, the guard pony's eyes narrowing slightly. "You know how ponies feel about zebra's right?" He asked looking back at the purple stallion.

"Oh c'mon dude she's fresh out of a stable, look," He whined waving a hoof at me.

The guard pony looked at me again and regarded my now slightly torn Stable-Jumpsuit. "Alright, wait here," He groaned as he walked over to the double doors at the back of the station and began to talk into an intercom mounted on the wall beside the door.

I sighed as I stood up. I could feel the gashes in my flank and leg gently oozing blood but thankfully it was nothing to worry about. Like I have to worry about bleeding to death, considering how much of me is synthetic.

"Hey, are you alright?" Fruity asked as he approached me.

"Um, yeah I'm good thank you and um, thank you for helping me. If it wasn't for you I think I'd probably get torn apart from those things," I shivered at the idea.

Fruity smiled a little smugly. "Don't mention it, can't expect a Stable-Dweller to know the dangers of the Wasteland."

"Alright you two, you can stay inside but..." He turned to look at Fruity. "You better stay the hell away from alcohol this time," He warned with an annoyed tone.

He smiled sheepishly. "Hehe, they're still sore about that?"

The guard facehoofed. "You screwed a mare in the mall level fountain."

"You what?" I cried out in shock surprise at this.

"Heh heh, it happened a long time ago, I've not touched a drop of booze since it happened."

"It was last month," The guard known as Slick sighed. "You better not drink any alcohol, you turn into one horny bastard when you get pissed, and I don't want to have to throw you to the Bloodwings. By all means fuck a mare in your assigned room but keep it inside the room," He sighed again and turned around "Follow me, I'll take you to your room."

We followed close behind the guard as we entered the tower and into safety. It felt good to be inside now, and not outside with those bats. That good feeling soon faded as we walked out into a large open space lined with shops and other services along the walls, and despite the late hour, there are still a good number of ponies walking around. It was good to see ponies that looked normal, but the disapproving stares that were being directed at me made me feel small. My ears wilted as some ponies gave me some rather angry glares.

"What is that bitch doing in here?" A rather large looking stallion who looked so ripped his muscles threaten to burst out his suit growled as he approached us.

"Stand down Biceps, she's alright," Slick moaned at the rather large pony.

"Why did you let her in?"

"Couldn't force her to stay out with the bloodwings and its clear she's just an innocent mare since she's fresh from a Stable. It wouldn't be right now back off."

"But she's a Zebra!"

"C'mon dude, it's been two hundred years since the war. We can't blame her for any of that can we?"

"Who asked you Dashite," The stallion yelled at Fruity which made him wilt and cower slightly from the big earth pony.

"Alright, Biceps, if you don't back off I'll have to call the guard. Do you want to suffer another trade ban for unlawful behaviour?"

The large stallion stopped and looked at the guard worriedly. "Fine, let the swine stay," He growled as he backed away and then walked off.

"Ugh, that guy is always a knob," Fruity whined quietly so the retreating mass of muscles couldn't hear him.

"A knob that brings in good business," The guard retorted as we turned and entered a lift.

The small lift felt a little cramped, and it was taking a long time to get to the residential floor. I suppose it's my fault, considering I weigh more than twice a standard pony would. After a few minutes, the lift reached its floor and we stepped out into a marbled floor corridor with equally elegant marble walls, and corner carvings to simulate Roamane columns.

"Wow," I muttered out loud as we began to trot down the corridor, past an intersection and then around a corner to a red wood door.

"For the time being, you can use this room. A guard will come along shortly and keep guard. I've been given orders to not let you out of the room until morning. If you require anything, ask the guard who'll be on duty when he arrives."

"Thank you sir," I said politely as me and Fruity entered the hotel room.

"Don't be thanking me Stripe, I don't trust your kind as much as Biceps does, but I'm under orders to put you up for now plus..." He sighed. "I'm not a monster so I couldn't leave you out there for the Bloodwings."

"Well, still, thank you."

The guard nodded and shut the door. Fruity quickly made his way to the two single beds in the main room and flopped down lazily on one and I followed him to over to the free bed and climbed onto it where it then groaned loudly from the weight I put upon it.

"Well isn't this cosy?" The pegasus yawned as he turned his head to look at me.

"Well, it's better than being out there, that's for sure," I answered as I looked out the window, which dominated the entire wall beside the beds. I could see the streams of bloodwings in the darkness, and many lights still working throughout the city. The level of destruction I could see in the darkness was far worse than what I first imagined.

"What were you doing outside this late at night anyway?" He asked as he sat up. "This city is deadly at night, surely you would have discovered that already."

"In all honesty," I said turning back to face him. "I only set hoof into this world this afternoon."

"Wow really?" I nodded. "Huh, you are as fresh as they come I suppose."

"Yeah I know, I've got a lot to learn about this new world. The doctor that helped me earlier gave me a general idea."

"I know we only just met and all, but in good conscience I can't let you go back out there on your own, and I've got nothing better to do down here to spend my days in this hell."

"You want to come with me?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. Well thinking about it, this stallion knows the dangers that I'll likely run into and he did save me from a bunch of raiders and helped me get here. His help would certainly be appreciated.

"If you don't mind me tagging along."

"Um, well, sure. Celestia knows I could certainly use your help out there."

"Awesome. So Crystal, what made you leave your cosy little underground world?" He asked to make conversation.

Crap. I haven't really had time to think of a cover story to why I'm really out here. I'm gonna have to wing it as they say. Thankfully I worked for Stable-Tec as a salespony and sold many places for Stables to ponies so I had a good working knowledge of the facilities and I was given a tour around Stable 34, which was the closest Stable to where I lived and it looked pretty cramped inside. I honestly couldn't imagine hundreds of ponies living down there for long periods of times.

"Well, I was sick of living in the tight confines, and I couldn't really get a moment to myself since there aren't many places you can find that are private enough. I needed to get out and see the real world," I lied.

"Bit of a bad idea huh?"

"Should have waited till morning really shouldn't I?"

"Eeyup," He agreed. "What's your plan now then now that you're out here, doubt they'll let you back in now?"

"Well, first, I need to check out the Ministry of Awesome for anything..." I paused for a moment. I nearly blew my cover. What could be a believable reason to want to go there? "...related to my ancestor's work in creating a cybernetic spy." I mentally facehoofed, that's a little too close to the real reason.

"A cybernetic spy huh, cool."

"Heh, yea, um, apparently, my ancestors who worked on it got set up to take a fall and I want to find some answers. If the Hub is a bust,, I at least know I'll find some answers in Las Pegasus since they started work there and were moved here.

"Las Pegasus? Oh you mean New Pegasus. Wow, that's a long way to go for some answers."

"I got to know for sure, their name has been tainted ever since."

"Fair enough, well going out west will certainly be a welcome change from here, but how are we going to get there from here?"

"The doctor that helped me said there is a train that does trips from one side of Equestria to the other, and he gave me directions from here to get to the station."

"You certainly got this thought out," He nodded with a smile.

"What about you Fruity, why are you down here and not up there?" I asked pointing to the ever present clouds.

Fruity's facial expression soured. "I've been cast out of my home," He said solemnly.

I cringed at his sad expression as I had hit upon a sore subject.

"I'm sorry," I said sadly.

"Heh, not your fault but it's a subject I don't like to talk about."

"No its ok," I reassured and shifted on the bed to get comfortable when I felt the gash on my flank tear which made me cringe. I quickly got off the bed to prevent my blood from seeping onto the clean covers. A bathroom was set in the corner next to the front door of the room, and I quickly trotted over to the open bathroom door and stepped inside the clean white tiled room.

The bathroom brought back memories of my home as the layout and styling looked pretty similar. A bath filled the room at the far end, with a shower attached to the wall and a shower curtain hung on a rail spanning the width of the room. Beside the bath sat a sink with a large mirror above it, and nestled in the corner by the door was the bog. It felt good to be in something familiar, and I felt safe for the first time since I woke up. I looked into the mirror and just gawked as I finally saw what I actually looked like. Yep, I look like a zebra alright. I'm white with grey stripes covering my body and my nose. I frowned at the mohawk mane. I don't like that at all, I want my long wavy mane back. My cutiemark is gone, replaced with what looked like a large dot with lots of lines flicking off around it, which kinda made the whole thing look like an eye. Whatever that was supposed to mean, I have no idea. I can't say I'm that sad to see my cutiemark is gone. Sure, it was what symbolised my special talent, but I barely ever got to enjoy it with how often I wound up in the hospital with my diseased body. All it was was just a chocolate éclair with a couple of crystals around it to show my love of making éclairs. My gaze then fell onto my eyes, MY eyes, my baby blue eyes. They were the same as what I had before all this. I felt a joy fill my heart as I realised I still carried my own eyes, so happy to know that not all of me had been changed. I let out a sigh of relief since I know now that not all of me had been replaced.

While still looking into the mirror, I turned my body around so my rear faced it so I could get a better look at the gash in my flank. The gash on my leg I could tend to easy enough without the mirror. Wow, my plot is larger and rounder than it used to be. Well I suppose this is a true mare's rear. I was underweight due to my illnesses, so I suppose this is just an average mare's plot.

I turned back to face the sink and used a hoof to turn on the cold water tap. Folded up neatly on a porcelain bowl sat a small hoof towel. I took the minty tasting towel in my mouth and held it under the running water to get it good and damp before pulling away and then twisted my neck around so I could reach my flank. I looked up at the mirror with my eyes as I reached back to the bloody gash and when I was over it on the mirror, I leaned down and gently ran the towel over the gash softly to clear the dried blood away. I could see that once the blood has been cleared the wound had sealed itself again. I heal fast. I repeated the process with my hind leg that got cut and that too had closed. Once I was finished with the towel I chucked it into the skin to rinse it off and then put it back on the bowel.

By the time I left the bathroom I could hear snoring and giggled quietly when I saw Fruity fast asleep on his bed. He looked so adorable. He lay on his back, his wings spread wide and his legs in the air which twitched every so often. That looked so cute. I giggled quietly to myself as I made my way to my bed and laid down on it. Might as well get some sleep.

XXXXX

Shortly after dawn, Fruity and I made our way down the train line towards the Ministry District. Thankfully, all the Ministries had their own high level stations. Saved us from going down onto the ground and getting harassed by raiders every two minutes. We passed all the other Ministries on our way to the Awesome Hub, and each one looked worse for wear than the other as we got closer to the Manehattan Crater. It so happened that our destination was the last one. The Hub looked like it had a massive fire rage inside and out, as it looked totally charred black. I didn't hold out much hope that we'd find anything worth finding inside that burned out wreck, but we had to try; I had to try.

We entered the tower from the station and found ourselves inside a reception hall. The inside showed major fire damage and in several areas, the floor had collapsed to reveal the huge holes that looked into the floor below or straight down to the bottom. To our good fortune, we found a working terminal on the reception desk. After clearing the charred screen and to find it wasn't locked, we were able to out where to look. It felt too easy to find out where to go as the computer simply labelled the floor we wanted to check out as. "Spy Department". If I'm to find anything at all in this place related to me, I'd find it there. Annoyingly, its fifty floors above us. After a moment of searching, we found a shaft with stairs leading up and down and began our ascent.

"Aren't you tired you yet?" Fruity asked, sounding baffled as we made our way up the stairs. Well, he hovered in the centre while I trudged up the steps. Surprisingly, I was not feeling tired. At this point, since arriving, we had climbed about half of the stairs to our designated floor. A climb like this for any normal pony would have had them wheezing and probably collapsing with their legs feeling like jelly, but not for me. I may have been breathing a little harder than when I started to climb, but my legs still felt as strong as they did from the start. I could probably climb this entire tower and still not feel dead on my hooves. I suppose I have high endurance now too with this mechanical body.

"I feel fine," I answered him while turning to head up more steps.

The pegasus shrugged as he flapped his wings a little harder to climb faster. He stopped and came to a hover just five flights up.

"You're gonna need to find another way up; the stairs up here are blocked by the rest of the stairs going up."

"What?" I whined as I started taking the stairs two at a time to get to his level. "Aww poo". He was right. It looked like the stairs on this side of the shaft had all collapsed down onto each other from here all the way up to the top of the tower.

"Yep, definitely need to find another way up."

"Ugh, yea, um where are we?" I asked as I looked around. Thankfully, we didn't have to search long as a door just down half a flight of stairs held a sign on it saying. "Level 59". We had another eleven floors to go.

"I found a map," Fruity called from a few flights up. He could keep going up since he can fly and wasn't restricted to the stairs. "Looks like there is another shaft on the opposite side of the tower with stairs in it," He said as he fluttered back down and landed on the landing of Level 59 beside me.

"Ok, thank you Fruity, this shouldn't take us much longer," I said while opening the door.

"Oh awesome, maybe we can get back in time for Aqua Marine's fish lunchtime special," He grinned stupidly.

The mention of food made my synthetic stomach release a loud gurgle, which in this empty burnt out office floor, sounded like a roar with the echo. That prompted a light laughing fit from the purple stallion. I shot him an annoyed glare.

"It wasn't that funny!"

"Yes it was," He giggled as we made our way into the rows of cubicles. His giggling soon died down as we passed each cubicle, inside nearly every one of them we saw a burnt skeleton looking to be in the process of evacuating their station. One such victim had made it to the exit of his or her cubicle as the skeleton lay half in and half out on the floor.

"What the hell happened here?" I asked, feeling my gut churn.

"The bomb hit not too far from here, the blast must have washed right through this tower, incinerating everyone before they could leave."

"Thanks for that beautiful mental image," I whined sarcastically.

He gave a sheepish grin as we continued onwards. It didn't take us long to reach the other shaft, and thankfully, the stairs were intact, leading up on this side and so we began our ascent again. I may not have been getting tired from walking up all these stairs but it was certainly making me wish to never see another stair case again. I must have climbed several thousand steps in the space of an hour.

"What are we looking for exactly, any ideas?" Fruity asked as he flapped up the middle.

"I don't know, anything that might give me some answers," I answered looking up to see our destination on Level 70. Nearly there, thank Celestia.

We entered Level 70 to find another office like space like below, with charred and burnt cubicles along with many more skeletons. I had seen enough death in my first twenty four hours than probably the entire war did before the bombs fell. I can't believe it devolved into this. Just how desperate did we get?

"Well, this will be like trying to find a fart in a cloud jacuzzi," Fruity sighed as we walked along the aisles of cubicles to see if there is anything at all that could shed any information at all.

"Hmm, maybe we should split up. You check one half of the room and I'll check the other; we can be done quicker and be out of here before it gets late."

"What am I looking for again, so I don't discard something you might be looking for?"

"That's a good question, hmm. "Anything that you might find important or about making, um, the perfect spy."

"Alright." He nodded and turned to go down an aisle to search the other side of the floor.

I was finding it hard to walk into the booths of the dead ponies to look for clues. I felt horrible, just stepping into the same place these ponies died trying to escape. It felt like I was grave robbing as I pulled open these pony's desk draws or looking in their filing cabinets and the more I looked the more it made me feel sick. After ten cubicles I had to stop. I felt dirty.

"I'm sorry," I whimpered as I looked at the last pony's skeleton I stepped over.

I groaned as I looked up the aisle to see many more cubicles. I know I want answers to why I've become this machine but, is it worth treading over the graves of the ponies who died here and disturbing their rest? I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. Yes, it is worth it. I've had my life taken from me even though I was going to die. That would have been my natural course but my life had been stolen from me and now I've been made into this machine that is only ten percent organic. I'm not really a living thing, my brain, heart and lungs are being kept alive by my mechanical body. I need to know why so I'm sorry that I'm doing this.

I looked up to see how many cubicles there are on my side and sighed. There are loads. While I scanned over the tops of the cubicles, I noticed an office in the corner. Perhaps that's where the head of the department resided. If I were to find anything at all, that's where I'd find it. With determination, I stomped out of the aisle and made my way over to the closed door of the office and took hold of the knob with my hoof and turned it. The door didn't budge.

"Locked, great," I moaned in annoyance. The door was wooden and didn't look all that sturdy. It wasn't as charred as everything else in here but it does look to have been weakened. It looked like I might be able to break it down. With my back to the door, I reared up and bucked at the door as hard as I could. The door exploded into splinters when my hind hooves made contact with the slightly burnt wood, and with my momentum plus my high weight, I was pulled off my forehooves and fell backwards into the office. "Stupid metal body," I grumbled to myself while I lay in the wreckage of the door. Suddenly, the entire floor seemed to quake, causing everything in the office and everything outside to rattle about like an earthquake had just hit the tower, but after a few moments, it stopped. It was enough to get me back on my hooves in the excitement. "What was that?" I whimpered feeling very unsafe right now.

I looked around the office briefly and sighed with disappointment. Whoever this office belonged to, it looked like it had either already been ransacked, or the pony that owned it left in a hurry as the shelves to my left were bare, apart from the stray pieces of yellowed paper and the wall the door had sat in looked to have had any and all posters or charts taken down. The other two walls were just the windows overlooking the destroyed cityscape below. Looking out the windows, which were unfortunately smashed, I could see over a huge impact crater and rimming the crater were the remains of other towers and buildings. I suppose we are at the very edge of the effective destruction radius of the explosion which is probably why this tower still stands but burnt to a crisp. Finally, my eyes fell upon the large desk in the middle of the room and the terminal sitting on it. I edged around the wall with the shelves to stay away from the windows until I reached the desk and sat on the floor as close to it as I could. Leaning over the charred wooden table, I reached over and turned the terminal around to face me and thankfully it is still working too. Stable-Tec made things to last. I pressed a key to wake it up, and was immediately treated to a flashing screen displaying a message.

"All data transferred to Marejave Production Facility."

Damn it. If I were to find anything, it would have been here. But it was confirmed now that my answers would lie in my old home state of Equestria. Where I supposedly died. I stood up to leave before I caught a nameplate attached to the terminal casing.

"Colonel Ironside. Head of Spy Department"

I blinked at the department name. I better remember that name though as it is my only lead.

The tower quaked again, this time a little more violently, and it was followed by a loud metallic groan. "I think it's time to leave," I said to myself.

"Yeah, it sounds like this whole floor is gonna fall," Fruity agreed from behind me.

"Gah!" I cried out in shock and spun around to see the purple pegasus trying not to laugh. "How long have you been there?" I whined since I didn't even hear him land or approach.

"Only about a minute." He laughed before coughing and looking serious. "C'mon, we better buck."

I nodded, and we quickly made our way to the stairs just as a portion of the floor collapsed, creating a sloping edge towards the windows beside us. We entered the shaft again and began our way down as fast as we could. Fruity flying down the middle with me running down the steps. Thankfully, going down was a heck of a lot easier than going up, and we were making good progress when the tower quaked again, causing me to lose my footing and I started to roll down the stairs, bouncing off the corners to roll down more. I cried out loudly with pain as I bounced off each and every step and wall until finally I crashed into an open door that had opened inwards into the shaft. I cried and groaned in pain as I could feel multiple lacerations, some of them felt like my endoskeleton was exposed. I whimpered in pain as I lay there until I felt a warm glow in my chest then the lacerations started to close and heal. The glow in my chest felt warm and soothing, but as the feeling was starting to make me feel better it suddenly stopped when Fruity landed on the landing beside me.

"Holy shit, Crystal?" He gasped in surprise from my sudden tumble. "Please be alive."

I groaned and pulled myself back up to my hooves. "Yeah, I'm alive."

"Fucking hell, you are one lucky Stripe."

I groaned in pain as I tried to put my right forehoof down, and quickly picked it back up. It felt like a sprain. I guess during the fall, I had twisted my hoof pretty badly.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine, come on we better get out of here," I urged. I looked around to check to see which floor we are on. Thankfully my fall had brought me down a couple of floors above the reception hall we entered eariler. I descended the stairs as fast as I could with three good legs, and soon we found ourselves back in the reception and shortly after that, we were back out onto the train tracks.

"Ohhh yea feels good to be outside again," Fruity cheered.

I nodded and smiled since we did get out before anything really bad happened, considering the state of the tower. Now that we weren't really in any danger I became aware of a flashing blue image in my vision and when I focused on it, I could see the image is of my endoskeleton lower foreleg and a red square was highlighting the joint between my hoof and lower leg. It seemed to tell I had focused on it, and then a window flashed under the image with words.

"Minor servo and control rod damage," It said. I don't know how I'm supposed to fix that or unless it supposed to fix itself eventually? I guess I'd find out soon.

"C'mon, if we hurry we can catch Aqua Marine's fish special," Fruity said as we began to walk back towards Tenpony. That's three times now he's mentioned that. It must be good for him to keep repeating himself, and well, my stomach was growling with hunger just thinking about a fish dinner.

About half way back to the tower, I caught the sight of several white cylinders above some buildings as we moved and then a little further up a gap in the buildings allowed me to see into the harbour and the cylinders belonged to the giant white oceanliner. I stopped and looked out into the harbour and the ship. I shivered upon seeing it swarming with the undead.

"Um Fruity?" I called.

"Yello?" He said turning his attention to me.

"Why is the Gold Star Line Harbour full of zombies?" I asked.

"Not sure to be honest with you, but from what I've heard, apparently, the RMS Celestia was supposed to have her maiden voyage the day the bombs fell and there were like four thousand ponies in the harbour and boarding the ship when the Manehattan bomb hit and the proximity to the blast washed the harbour with extreme heat and magical radiation, and the end result were four thousand walking corpses," He explained

"Oh Celestia that's awful."

"Yeah, I know. They were unlucky that they lost their minds during their ghoulification, leaving them all feral like that."

"I was nearly eaten by one of them and... ghoulification?" That's something new. Eeyup, I've got a lot to learn about this new horrible world.

"Huh, oh, they aren't really zombies Crystal, they're what the wasteland calls Ghouls. Don't ask me how it works, cause I haven't a clue. Anyway, Ghouls are just normal ponies that have the unfortunate downside to looking like a walking corpse. There are thousands of Ghouls in the wasteland who were alive before the bombs fell. They're just like you and me and calling them a zombie is a great insult to them. However, the Ghouls that are known as Feral are Ghouls that have lost their minds and operate on primal instincts, so they are pretty much zombies."

"Really?" I asked in surprise.

"Yeah, if we meet one of the wasteland's many Ghouls, try not to shoot'em."

"I'll... I'll try to remember that."

While we looked out over into the harbour, our attention was torn from the giant ship as the pops and bangs of gunfire rang out somewhere behind us. It was just another reminder that we weren't truly safe outside, and with a nod, we both began our trek back to Tenpony Tower as fast as my limp would allow.

XXXXX

We had moved at a brisk pace, despite my limp, as to get back to the tower without hanging around too long in any one spot to attract attention, and we made it to the tower without incident. We met Slick at the gate again and he assigned a guard to shadow us around the tower again, as to prevent any unwanted confrontations with the inhabitants, and I really didn't want to run into another pony like Biceps.

The Mall Level was a lot more crowded than it was when we first entered it last night, and the number of baleful glares I was getting deeply unsettled me and made me very nervous as Fruity and I walked along the balcony overlooking the large fountain with a restaurant section in the middle.

The walls were lined with many shops ranging from simple trade shops, to speciality shops like barber salons or blacksmiths. The crowds were thankfully mostly giving us a wide birth as we walked along, and I was glad for that as I really did not want to bump into one of the ponies giving hateful glares, but it was upsetting that being a Zebra like this was driving ponies to avoid me.

"So where is this fish restaurant Fruity?" I asked as we walked along looking at each shop window.

There was no response.

"Fruity?" I turned to look at him only to see that he had stopped to look in a window several shops back. Oh no.

"Oh my, the rumours are true, they did let a Zebra inside," An enthusiastic mare's voice said from in front of me.

I turned with a start to see a lime green mare with a silvery mane that was done up into like a beehive with elegant curls that hung down on either side of her head smiling at me. She was also wearing a green and white dress with an open back, which kinda made it look like it was made for a pegasus.

"Oh its sooo good to finally meet a Zebra. I've wanted to meet one for so long. Oh and your mane, I've always wanted to style a Zebra mane," The mare gushed as she leaned in extremely close.

"Err," I croaked dumbfounded by the mare's enthusiasm.

"Oh where are my manners?" She gasped as she pulled back out of my personal space. "My name is Diamond Sheers and I'm the owner of Diamond Sheers Salon," She smiled softly and genuinely.

"Um, hi, err, my name is Crystal Éclair," I greeted nervously.

The mare wore a funny look when I told her my name. "That's a strange name for a Zebra, I was expecting something exotic," She said with her voice losing some of its enthusiasm.

"Err, my parents wanted to be different," I said lamely.

"I see," Her gaze then shifted up to my mowhawk. "Oh, that mane, I never styled a Zebra made and I would sooooo love the opportunity to work on one. Would you please stop by my salon later?" She asked almost begging.

"But I don't have any money."

"Oh don't worry about that, just the chance to work on a Zebra mane will be more than enough," She smiled brightly.

"Um, ok, thank you."

The stylish mare beamed as she began to walk again. "Oh thank you Crystal, can't wait for your visit," She cooed as she walked away.

"Looks like you made a friend," Fruity smiled as he stood next to me without making a sound again.

"Gah, where did you come from?" I cried.

"Oh, about the time she was gushing over your mane," He laughed. "C'mon Crys, the restaurant is this way," He said as he began to lead me again.

I followed Fruity down a flight of stairs to where the restaurants were all situated, and we came to a shop that looked like a Braytish Chippy. The Braytish Chippy takeouts were growing increasingly popular in pre-war Equestria, and a common but popular dish was battered cod and chips. Wasn't bad for a quick meal on the go.

We entered the relatively small restaurant, or rather takeou, and walked up to a counter with a display case showing several deep fried looking products including the famous battered fish and scallops. I know a scallop is a small sea critter inside a shell, but scallops in a chippy are deep fried battered potato and were actually quite nice the last time I had one.

"Ah, good afternoon Aqua Marine," Fruity smiled brightly as an aqua green mare approached the counter to take our order.

"Fruity, they let you back in?" She asked surprised.

"Yep and got a new friend," He beamed with a silly smile. "I'd like two of your fish specials to go please as payment for favour you owe me."

The mare blushed brightly, trying to hide her face behind her darker green mane. "S-sure, I'll be, be with you in a, um, in a minute," She stammered as she hurried through a door.

"What was that about?" I asked confused with the mare's change in demeanour when Fruity mentioned this favour.

"She owes me one," Fruity said blushing brightly himself. "Remember that I've been kicked out twice, well the second time I took all the blame so she wouldn't suffer a mega fine and have her takeout shut down or getting kicked out herself," He explained.

I just blinked. That's the mare he did in the fountain and he took all the blame for it? Something tells me she had something to do with it, but I kept my mouth shut. Last thing I want to do is offend somepony and get kicked out or worse.

After a couple of minutes, the mare returned and hoofed over two paper wrapped bundles in a plastic bag.

"Here are your specials, thank you for coming," She said smiling nervously at us as Fruity collected the bag with his wing.

"Thank you Aqua," Fruity smiled happily as we turned and headed out. The guard shadowing us told us we couldn't sit and eat at the tables provided since it seemed "I" was disturbing the other customers. It is a good thing Fruity asked for our meals to go, as we decided it'll be easier to just go to the room we had been provided to eat.

I smiled to myself as we entered our room. It felt good to be out of the public view since I didn't have hundreds of eyes all staring at me everywhere I went. I sat on my bed as Fruity hoofed me my meal. I gently laid the paper wrap on the bed and unwrapped it to reveal a typical fish and chips meal.

"This is the special, what's so special about fish and chips?" I asked incredulously.

"It's haddock," Fruity grinned with a broad toothy smile. I blinked and then groaned while facehooving. This guy must be one card short of a full deck. I decided to leave it there and eat my meal.

The fish was gorgeous and the chips had the right amount of salt and vinegar on them. It may not have sounded like it was like a five star dish, but it tasted better than most things I had eaten in my last few months before waking up here. In that regard, it certainly was special, and it managed to fill a hole in my stomach.

I almost had a panic attack when the first metal fork I used to eat with broke inside my mouth when I took a bite of the battered haddock and swallowed it out of reflex. Fruity was oblivious while he ate his meal and I discreetly discarded the broken fork and retrieved a couple more. As I put the fork in my mouth again after picking up a chip with it, I took the bite slowly and to my surprise as I pulled the chip off the metal prongs I could feel the steel utensil soften and flex in my mouth and strangely I got a taste of spearmint from the steel. I would have had a freak out if I didn't remember what the doctor had told me when I woke up after the raiders had knocked me out. With my mechanical body, I can eat metal now and I suppose the solid metal softening to a more chewy sweet in my mouth is what its suppose to do. I was able to finish my fish and chips without biting off more fork ends by taking it easy.

"Best damn fish ever," Fruity sighed happily as he crumpled up his paper wrapping and chucked it in the bin like a basketball.

"I might have to agree," I smiled.

"Hmm, so what should we do for the rest of the of the day?" The pegasus asked as he lay back on his bed.

"Well, I was offered a free hair cut and I need to find out when to expect the train."

"I can find out when the train will arrive, you go enjoy yourself," He smiled.

"Thanks."

XXXXX

Diamond Sheers was very enthusiastic and very good at what she did. She had asked me how I wanted my mane, and I explained to her how I once had shoulder length wavy hair, and I asked her if she could restyle my horrible mowhawk to resemble how my old mane style used to be. Thankfully, her special talent lied in hair magic and she was able to grow my mane so it would be long enough. Using an assortment of hair products, combs and curlers, she was able to get my mane back into a similar style to what I used to have as a Crystal Pony. She applied hair colour changing magic to rid all of the grey stripes in my mane apart from the stripe at the very front. I quite like how the end result turned out, and I expressed my gratitude. She had simply told me it was her pleasure and that she now had bragging rights to her competitors that she had worked on a Zebra's mane. I left her salon feeling better with myself now that I had a new mane style and felt more like my old self, though I did attract more looks.

Later that afternoon I met up with Fruity back in our temporary room, and he told me that the next train to the west would arrive within the week. At first, he suggest we could just hang around the tower until the train was to arrive, but I managed to convince him to show me the station as I wanted to know how to get there, and a part of me wanted to see more of Manehattan.

The station from the front looked like a large long stone building, dominated by ticket windows and a steel canopy displaying the names of Equestrian cities along its length. After we walked through the open doors by one of the ticket offices, we entered into a gigantic steel and glass roofed structure, almost like an epic greenhouse without glass walls that covered the entire area with the several platforms and the shops and cafes. It was certainly an amazing building, and the wrecks of several old Equestrian and Braystish steam trains added to its grandeur despite them being wrecks. We guessed we found the train's platform when we came to one where the two lanes of track were clear of all rubble, and appeared to be maintained and well used if the clean metal on the tops of the rails were any indication.

"Wow this place is amazing," I said as we walked up and down the platform.

"Yeah" Fruity agreed as we came to a large poster on a notice board that detailed the Ministry of Arcane Science, with a picture of Twilight Sparkle holding a book in one hoof and a flask with a glowing liquid in the other.

"So how long until..." I got cut off as a loud whistle rang out in the distance beyond the station. "Was that the train?" I asked looking west in surprise.

"That can't be it, I mean it'll be a week early if it is."

As we watched the ruined horizon, we began to see the plumes of grey smoke that only a steam engine could produce, and then the sounds of the pistons chugging away. I watched in amazement as the huge steam train approached the station. It looked amazing, something I've never seen before even in Las Pegasus, and the several train journeys I had embarked on when visiting family back in the Empire. I never once saw a Braytish engine like the one that just pulled up into the station.

The locomotive steamed into the station and grinded to a halt, before reaching the end of the platform, and once it came to a complete halt, the driver stepped out from the cab and walked along the length of the tender before he disappeared into the gap between the tender and the first car. Another pony came out of the first train car and looked around for passengers, while more doors along the length of the train opened and passengers disembarked and began to rearm themselves before making their way to the exits, thankfully completely ignoring us.

Our attention was then redirected towards the steam engine as it let out another whistle and began to pull away from the train. The engine itself wasn't like cylinders on wheels that I remember, this one seemed to have a wing like shape appearance, and its sloping front and straight walled boiler gave it a very streamlined appearance.

"Where is it going?" Fruity asked as the engine disappeared out the station and out of sight.

"The locomotive needs to be turned around before it can pull the train back west," A stallion said as he approached us.

The unicorn stallion that approached us wore a black jacket over his grey coat, and his mane was mostly hidden beneath a conductors hat. His face was dominated by a thick handlebar moustache and a monocle over his left eye.

"Oh," Fruity said and then chuckled to himself, feeling embarrassed at his silly question.

"I'm the Conductor for this train and I'm to assume you will be riding with us today?" He asked.

I stepped forward and the Conductor raised an eyebrow as he saw me. "Um, yes sir, we'd like to get to Las... err, New Pegasus," I told him while giving my best smile.

"Hmm, alright, is that a single or a return ticket?" He asked as his horn began to glow.

I looked at Fruity. "I've been drifting from place to place since I got kicked out of the clouds. I don't mind if it's a one way trip. Would be a nice change of scenery," He said with a smile.

"Two single tickets please."

"That would be a thousand caps for the both of you," The Conductor said as he made two golden tickets appear in front of him.

"HOW MUCH!" I cried out in shock. I knew train tickets were expensive as a return ticket to the Crystal Empire and back was around five hundred bits. I don't know how much a cap is to a bit, but a thousand caps for a single ticket just sounds ridiculously overpriced.

"Here you go," Fruity said as he chucked the Conductor a bag that jingled noisily when he caught it in his magic.

"Thank you and here are you tickets," He said giving us both a ticket each while he stuffed the pouch into a pocket. I just gaped at Fruity.

"What?"

"That was a thousand caps!" I cried.

"Yeah, don't worry, it's easy to make caps out here, you can sell practically anything for a good price. Heh, as a pony once said, "Trade will save the Wasteland"

"But that was a thousand," I said still unable to comprehend him readily shelling that much out.

"Don't worry about it really, I'm happy to help," He said giving a goofy smile.

Before I could argue further, the wing shaped locomotive puffed back down the line on the opposite side and disappeared again behind the cream and brown Pullmare passenger cars. Wait a minute! Pullmare, that's the name that's plastered on the sides of like the most luxurious train cars in all Equestria. Well I suppose I can understand the huge price tag then since we'll be riding in these top of the range luxury cars.

"This way please," The Conductor said as he turned around and began to lead us down the length of the train. This was a long train. It was ten cars long and each car was around sixty feet in length. It was amazing the locomotive could pull these. The cars were all brown, with a cream strip running the length of each car that ran along the level of the windows, and the roofs of each car were either cream or grey. Each car also wore the name "Pullmare" emblazoned in large gold gild letters around the mid way point of the cars. We passed a brake car at the end, then passed a couple of open parlour cars and then stopped as the Conductor opened a door to a corridor car.

"Thank you," I said as we entered the car.

"You can use any of the cabins on this car," The unicorn said as he stepped on after us. "There are also toilets on either end of the car. You will find a buffet car and a bar in the next two cars towards the front of the train if you feel hungry or thirsty during the three week journey across the Wasteland."

"Thank you," I said again as the Conductor stepped back onto the platform, and we opened a door in the narrow corridor to a luxurious cabin. Both walls were lined with deep red cushioned benches, a white cloth covered table fixed to the wall under the window in the middle which had a beautiful brass lamp fixed to the table and the whole cabin was lined with mahogany. I couldn't imagine how much this must have cost back in its day.

"Holy shit this is comfy," Fruity exclaimed as he sat and reclined on one of the benches. "Hmm, feels like the cushions are filled with clouds."

I smiled, watching him lounge comfortably as I too took a seat on the opposite bench. I gently eased my flank onto the plush cushion, and eeped quietly as my rump sank deeply into the fabric, but thankfully it held my weight. After a moment I smiled at the softness of the bench. "Wow this is comfy."

Fruity opened his mouth to say something, when the whole train shuddered and rocked back slightly. "The heck was that?" His question was then answered when a loud whistle rung out from up ahead, and then the Conductor shouted at the top of his lungs. "ALL ABOARD!" which was then followed by another shudder and loud chugging before the train began to move.

"Ah, we're moving, awesome," Fruity said as he looked out the window as we passed out from the station.

The train let out another couple of whistles before its speed began to increase rapidly, until before long, we were speeding down the rails at a great speed. I stared out in horror at the passing countryside as everything I saw was dead, poisoned or destroyed, while the ever present cloud cover kept everything in a perpetual darkness which added to the horrible scenery.

"It's all destroyed?" I asked leaning close to the window.

Fruity opened his eyes, looked out the window and sighed. "Yeah. Everything has been destroyed. The war ruined Equestria greatly. I may have only lived in this Wasteland for five years but I can see why the Enclave made damn sure that coming down here was against the law," He said with a pained look in his eyes.

"Is that why they cast you out?" I asked softly.

Fruity simply nodded but didn't say anything. I didn't want to press the issue, I'm sure he'll tell me when he's ready and I suppose I can tell him my secret too soon.

XXXXX

For most part of a week the train journey was uneventful. We learned the locomotive pulling this train was a Braytish streamlined locomotive called the "Union of Equestria" and that it is capable of maintaining a hundred and ten miles per hour, and could reach over a hundred and twenty but pushing the old locomotive to those speeds would be dangerous. This locomotive's impressive speed was also why it arrived at the station a week early, as a standard Braytish engine pulled the train before. It turned out the locomotive’s original fuel source was coal, the substance the war originally was over until Princess Moonbutt made it about a show of force and destroying our enemy. But since coal was no longer available or too expensive or scarce, the machine's tender had been filled with as much flammable material as possible to keep the loco powered.

During the week, we stopped off at several places such as Dodge Junction and Appaloosa where we picked up more passengers. Thankfully, the train was also guarded so the slavers in Appaloosa didn't try anything. I decided to stay in the train car since as more ponies boarded, the more hateful stares I got when moving between cars to get something to eat or drink.

I yawned loudly as I woke up on the seventh day of our trip to find Fruity staring out the window looking worried.

"What is it?" I asked beginning to feel uneasy.

"We got trouble," He said not taking his gaze off the window.

I followed his gaze to see a small group of heavily armed Griffins flying close. They all looked menacing as they carried their weapons in their eagle talons. I gulped as I took in the weapon in their claws.

I could see several Zebrica Assault Rifles, one Anti-Machine Rifle and one AER-14 Magical Laser Rifle. I didn't know how I knew what the weapons were. I had never seen them before in my life, but yet I knew what they were from just one glance. I think it might have something to do with the computer in my brain because each time my eyes focused on a weapon I felt a tingling in the back of my head. It was a deeply disturbing thought that I've been programmed to know all these weapons.

"Oh shit!" Fruity cried out when a new Griffin flew into view holding a missile launcher and fired a missile at the train.

All hell broke loose, and then there was the train guard and the Griffins began to exchange fire. I watched, frozen in horror, as the missile streaked closer and closer. Bullets and laser beams began to fly back and forth, but some of the projectiles seemed to be focused on the missile, as it grew closer and closer until the missile exploded into a gigantic fireball that washed over one of the train cars further up the train.

"Holy Celestia! ”Fruity exclaimed, when the train rocked violently as we came to a curve in the track that allowed us to then see the train car the missile had been aimed at. The missile must have been an incendiary missile as the train car was on fire.

The Griffins flew all over the train, while the guards defended to the best of their abilities. The guard focused their efforts on the missile wielding Griffin which they managed to dispatch quickly, since all fire was directed at him. I didn't know how many guards were lost, but after several long minutes of fighting, only two Griffins remained and they flew away defeated.

I got out of my seat and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Fruity asked still in shock.

"C'mon, we gotta help put that fire out," I said, not wanting to just sit around and do nothing when I could be doing something to help. "If we don't do anything that fire could spread."

"Right," Fruity said as he got out of his seat and followed me.

We squeezed passed panicking ponies along the corridor cars, and the buffet and bar cars until we were stopped by two guards at the gangway door to the next car, which was wide open, showing a raging inferno on the other side. Fire crews were using fire extinguishers to keep the fire from spreading to the next car.

"Why are you just holding it back, it could burn this whole train to the ground!" I cried.

"Relax, the frame is reinforced steel, the fire won't destroy the train. It'll just burn itself out when all the wood has burned up," One of the guards said dismissively.

Another guard sporting a rather nasty looking gunshot wound to his shoulder approached us. "Has the car been evacuated?" He asked as he leaned against the wall for support, while pressing a hoof to his shoulder.

"Yea, it’s empty," One guard said with a bored expression.

"Is it?" The other guard pressed.

"Yea..." The guard repeated but got cut short when an Earth Pony mare came charging up the corridor and headed right for the door to the burning car. She bowled past me, but the two guards at the door managed to grab her and stop her from getting through.

"Whoa, hold your horses you can't go in there."

"MY FOAL!" The mare screamed still trying to get through.

"What?" I yelled hearing her cry.

"I thought you said it was evacuated!" The injured guard yelled angrily.

"No sane pony would sit in a burning car," The other guard retorted.

"Yea, but a foal wouldn’t be able to do anything."

"It's too late now sir, it's way too hot and full of smoke for us to do anything."

"No my little filly," The mare cried as she broke down.

I looked up from the crying mare and stared at the burning interior of the opposite passenger car. A little filly was likely burning to death inside that car. A filly who would never experience the gift of life. No, I couldn't let an innocent filly die like this without her living her life. I narrowed my eyes in determination and looked at the mare.

"Where is your filly?" I demanded.

The mare blinked at me in confusion.

"Where is she? I'm going to get her."

"Are you crazy?" Fruity shouted in shock.

"I can make it, I'm a Zebra remember?"

"Yea, but you are still flesh and bone," He argued. It hurt to hear that since I really wasn’t just flesh and bone. I may have flesh, but under it I am just a machine, and that was why I believed I can save this filly.

"Where is she?" I asked the mare again, ignoring Fruity's protests.

"Mi...middle cabin," The mare croaked through tears.

I nodded and made my way to the door. I was scared, scared of burning to death, but I just couldn't let this filly die without trying. I beat my fear down with a stick to keep it from paralysing me. One of the guards got in my way to stop me, but I just kept walking, even when he put his forehooves on my shoulders to stop me. I was glad my limp healed in the week I've been on this train, as I was able to put all my strength into my steps. I couldn't help the smile that appeared on my face at the guard's shocked and confused expression as he was being forced back without any effort on my part.

"Let her go," The injured guard told the one blocking me.

The guard nodded and jumped aside to let me through, and I stepped into the burning corridor car. Immediately, my threat warning flashed a constant red, and a message appeared at the top of my vision.

"Warning, temperature levels exceeding safe parameters.”

Pain began to lance its way through my body as I took each step. The floor felt like I was walking on a frying plate, and I could feel my skin starting to blister from the heat. This was so a bad idea. I squinted in pain as I looked at the doors to my right, counting each one I passed. I remembered the car that Fruity and I were staying in it had seven compartments, and that meant the centre compartment was number four.

I grunted in pain as I came to the fourth door and pushed it open. Thankfully, the fire hadn't reached into the room yet. I looked around frantically until my eyes fell upon a bundle on one of the benches. I hissed with pain as the belt of my stablesuit burned into my skin as the heat was turning the metal segments into red hot pokers. I bent my head down and held my ear close to the filly's muzzle and to my great relief she was still alive. As gently as I could, I wrapped the sheets she was sleeping in around her to completely encase her in attempt to protect her from the fire and smoke. The smoke wasn't affecting me it seemed, I must have something inside me keeping the smoke from doing anything, more questions I need answers to. I would have to run, taking the filly out of the cabin would be exposing her to the full force of the heat and I doubt she'd survive long. After ensuring the filly was tightly wrapped up, I picked her up in my teeth and began my way back. The fire had intensified in the corridor when I left the cabin and only a few steps after leaving, I felt a searing pain running up my back. Sparing a quick glance behind me, I had to grind my teeth hard to stop myself from screaming in agony as I watched my tail burn away. I began to gallop. My flesh ripped and torn from the bubbling blisters bursting along my body. The pain was indescribable especially, when you're on fire. Suddenly, a door beside exploded into splinters and I reflexively turned by head away to stop the shower of splinters from hitting my face, and more importantly, the helpless filly. But then, I felt more searing pain as the flames from the cabin set my mane and suit alight. It took every ounce of willpower not to scream as I felt the fire burn my mane away and cooking my neck and head along with my stablesuit disintegrating and melting into my skin.

"Why the hell am I doing this?" A part of my screamed in my head.

"To save an innocent life," The rational side would shout back.

"Is it worth burning to death?”

"It's better than sitting around letting the foal die."

A siren rang in my ears even as one of them burned off. My vision began to flicker and grow hazy as warnings flashed around the edges of my vision. I could feel my mechanical body starting to fail on me. The heat was overwhelming. I could feel my boiling blood running down my legs and anywhere else blisters had burst. I have to get out NOW!

I rounded the corner just as I lost vision in one eye, and saw the open gangway door. Not wanting to spend a single moment more in this oven I ran as fast as I could. The guard at the door didn't have a chance to get out my way as I bowled him over and quickly gave the mare the bungle. Thankfully, my muzzle hadn't burned up like the rest of me. Once the mare took the bungle I let out an agonised scream in the cool environment of the not burning train car. I could still feel my flesh cooking.

"Oh my gosh Crystal," Fruity cried as he looked me over.

I whimpered and hissed in pain as I looked at myself. My stablesuit was long gone, burned off and melted into my flesh. The metal segments of the belt looked to have sunk into my skin. My saddlebags had disintegrated which also meant I have lost my 9mm Pistol. I was bleeding slowly from multiple burst blisters all over my body and I looked to have lost small chunks of my flesh and I think I can see parts of my metal body showing in some of the deepest holes. I kinda looked like a ghoul.

"Somepony help her!" The pegasus yelled.

A pony with a familiar pink cross badge ran up to the mare, who by now, had unwrapped her foal and was hugging her tightly as tears of joy ran down her cheeks.

"She's alive," The mare cried happily. The mare then looked up at the train doctor. "No, help her first."

I panted hard to rid my lungs of the hot air as my vision swam, and the gentle oscillation of the train felt like I was being thrown about and forced me to sit down hard. That was a bad idea as it felt like my flesh stuck to the floor.

"I don't know how I can treat third degree burns like this, especially on a full body," The doctor said sadly. He opened a medical box strapped to his side and pulled out two bottles filled with a glowing purple liquid. "These Super Healing Potions should stabilise her condition until you can get her to a hospital." The doctor said more to Fruity. The doctor opened the bottles and held them to my still intact muzzle and told me to drink them which I did eagerly. Within seconds of consuming the strong potions, I could feel the gaping holes and blisters seal themselves.

"Thank you," I croaked, feeling the burning in my skin subside although it left me looking like something out of fire victims nightmare with my misshapened burn skin.

"C'mon Crys, let's get you back to our cabin," Fruity urged as he gently draped a wing over my back let me lean on him as we began to walk.

"Thank you so much miss Zebra, thank you for saving my filly," The mare cried happily as we slowly made our way back to our cabin.

It felt like it took us hours to make it back to our cabin, and as soon as we entered, I flopped down onto one of the benches feeling utterly drained.

"Warning, power cells at twenty percent, gem consumption required for substantial power replenishment." Flashed in my vision as I lay on the bench.

Fruity sat down on the bench facing me as I closed my eyes. "You stupid mare, looks what's happened to you!" He almost yelled but he sounded on the verge of tears.

"I couldn't sit there and do nothing Fruity, I couldn't let an innocent child who hasn't had a chance to live die like that," I moaned cracking my eyes open. "What would you have had me do?"

"I..I don't know, just not aimlessly put your life at risk like that," He said, despite my damaged vision I could see tears starting to well up in his eyes.

"I'm a pony of the old world Fruity, life was more precious back then and, I never got a chance to live my life properly because of my health problems," I sighed. "I couldn't let a foal not have her life like I didn't," I mentally slapped myself as I stupidly told Fruity that I wasn’t from a Stable.

"What do you mean you are a pony of the old world?" He asked.

"Err, just Stable talk," I groaned out quickly.

"Um, ok," Fruity said, leaning back as his welling tears ran down his cheek. I sighed internally that he believed me. "You really scared me back there, I've never felt so scared for anypony in my life."

"I'm sorry."

"I suppose it's ok, you're here now, alive, it's better than you being a roast pony."

I gave him a weak smile before closing my eyes again. This train journey started out so well.

Chapter 3: Explosive Welcome

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 3: Explosive Welcome

The pink steam engine and its colourful assortment of passenger cars puffed away from the station, leaving me standing on the platform. I wore a long hooded cloak that kept my body entirely concealed, and was enchanted with an invisibility spell so nopony could see me. The last thing my mission needed was for somepony to freak out from seeing me before I made it to my target. The large crowd of passengers from the train began to disperse, and I began to move to prevent somepony walking into me. I looked up to see my destination: the spire of the Crystal Palace beyond the gate to the Crystal Empire... Something in the back of my mind was telling me I was born here, but that didn’t make any sense since I'm a machine.

This was no time for feeling some misplaced nostalgia; I had a mission to complete and I was wasting time. I began to walk forward, being careful not to get too close to any of the ponies entering the city. I knew the cloak will keep me hidden from the Empire's shield detection spell but I was still a physical presence, so I would be discovered if somepony happened to touch me. The main street leading directly to the palace would make the fastest route but it was also densely populated with a high risk area of accidentally bumping into somepony and since I’ve been here on multiple occasions as a filly, which again makes no sense, I knew a good number of backstreets I could use to be out of the way and still get me to my destination without much difficulty.

The back streets were less populated as I had expected, and I was making good progress through the streets towards the palace. The empire seemed so peaceful. Everypony was just minding their business without a care in the world. Didn't they know there was a war on? Didn't they care if they died? I had heard that the empire was staying neutral and that they didn't want to be involved, but they were still a part of Equestria after all, since a Princess and a Prince from Equestria's royalty had taken over when the empire had been returned and when Tyrant King Sombra was defeated at the claws of Twilight Sparkle's little drake. Celestia knows we could’ve used the resources the empire had, specifically the Crystal Heart. If we could harness the shield spell within the heart we could properly protect our cities and towns from attack and the ever increasing threat of balefire.

I had stopped to make sure I am going in the right direction when my eyes fell upon an elderly couple sitting in their front garden on lounging chairs. Squares appeared in my vision around their heads, and words began to appear from the lines coming off the squares as the computer in my brain worked to identify who and what my eyes had focused on. After a moment, the two crystal ponies had names next to their squares. "Chocolate Éclair" for the elderly stallion and "Strawberry Éclair" for the elderly mare. I groaned to myself as I held the back of my head as a sudden pain ran through my brain. Memories of a dull, pink and yellow filly splashing in a garden paddling pool, giggling and laughing as her grandparents gently splashed her and played with her, celebrating Hearths Warming and opening large presents and other memories involving the two elderly ponies pushed themselves into my head like they had been suppressed. I felt conflicted; did I know them? Should I know them? Why did they seem important to me? I didn't know, and these strange memories were slowing me down. With a shake of my head to dislodge the memories holding me, I tore my gaze away from the couple and continued on towards the palace.

I walked slowly while I tried to get my brain under control; it just wouldn't stop filling my head with memories of a pony that wasn't me. I was a Zebra, and more importantly I was a bio-mechanical Zebra. I wasn't born; I was built for the purpose of infiltration, assassination and sabotage. It didn't make any sense why I had these memories, but they were also filling me with a sense of pain I couldn't explain either. I closed my eyes tight, and focused on shutting out the memories so I could focus on my task. "Neural processing stabilised" Appeared in my HUD, and I sighed with relief while I continued.

After a good twenty minutes, I came out of a backstreet and into the palace plaza near its western leg. I could see the heart spinning slowly in the centre of the magic circle that surrounded the palace and being held in an anti-gravity field by the two small nodes protruding from the bottom of the palace and the floor. Thankfully, the plaza wasn't as well populated as I had thought; it would make getting to the Crystal Heart that much easier. I quickly made my way to the spinning crystal. As soon as I took the heart, my invisibility cloak would light up like a firework on bonfire night, so I’d need to make my escape fast, as Princess Cadence and Prince Armour would be on my tail within seconds.

I discarded my cloak, and turned around, lifting my tail. Nano-fibres in the hairs of my tail allowed me to tightly grip the crystal, and then yank it from its anti-gravity field. I let out a soft groan of pain as the Heart pulled on my tail hairs, and it fell without the support of the magic nodes. Almost instantly, the clear skies of the empire began to shimmer and ripple like a stone dropped into a pond.

"Time to make my escape," I said out loud to myself as I pushed off with all my strength with my hind legs and began to run as fast as I could. My heavy hoof falls cracked the crystal road as I galloped past civilians and the occasional crystal guard.

"She's got the heart!" A pony yelled in shock surprise, which then prompted more civilians to gasp and cry out.

"Get her!" I heard another shout, and soon I was having a large mob chasing me, but my enhanced strength was allowing me to pull away from them.

In a bright flash of light in front of me, I saw a snow white stallion unicorn with a two tone blue mane appear,, looking pissed.

"Prince Armour, Ex-Captain of Celestia's Royal Guard. Speciality, Defensive Shields," Appeared next to the identified stallion as I focused on him and then dug my hooves into the crystal road and grinded to a halt.

"Return the Crystal Heart immediately," The Prince barked angrily.

I looked around to see if I could make a daring dash to some alley or ginnel to make an escape, or throw them off, but I found myself surrounded by crystal pegasus guards.

"I repeat, return the Crystal Heart immediately!" The Prince yelled more forcefully this time.

I tightened the grip of my nano-fibres around the heart as I lowered myself into a fighting stance. All around me, I could hear civilians and guards starting to murmur fearfully as the sky dulled from a pleasant clear blue sky to a dark cloudy gray and a cold draft began to blow through the city as the illusionary shield generated by the Heart collapsed.

Suddenly, as Prince Armour was about to make a move, another flash signalled the arrival of another being. A bright pink alicorn princess stepped forward, looking hurt and upset. That emotional combination didn't suit Princess Cadence well at all, and it made me cringe internally.

"Princess Cadence, Empress of the Crystal Empire and Alicorn of Love."

I really didn't want to get into a fight with an alicorn. Well, it was safe to say I had failed in my mission to acquire the Heart.

"Please, you don't know what you are doing. Please return the Heart," She pleaded sadly.

I lowered my tail, but still held the Heart tightly. Throwing the Heart into the air would draw their attention and with it off me, I could make a break for it while they scramble to stop the Crystal Heart from crashing into the floor.

A powerful gust of wind tore through the street, which was then followed by a biting chill in the air as the artic winds that the shield spell kept out came in unobstructed now that the shield had completely collapsed. Snow began to fall into the city and then three distant booms were heard. It seemed only the royal couple and I had heard them as only the three of us looked up to the sky beyond the city limits.

Princess Cadence paled as three cylindrical objects appeared in the sky, heading towards the Empire at high speeds.

"You brought the war to us," Prince Armour spat with venom as he disappeared again in a bright flash. Seconds after he had disappeared, a bright purple shield dome soon surrounded most of the crystal city.

"My husband may be talented in his shields but he won't be able to stop them. It is too late now to return the Heart, the missiles will hit before I can put it back into place and for the shield to reform," The alicorn said sadly as she sat down defeated.

"…I'm sorry," I said lamely. I had just brought death to an entire civilization, and I couldn't think of a single word to express how sorry I was for it. I may have been designed and programmed to assassinate specific targets, but I felt no joy in killing, and killing innocent lives just felt utterly wrong to me.

The first missile slammed into the purple shield, and it shattered like glass, raining purple sparkles all over the city, but the shield held long enough to deflect the missile. The missile swerved off course and flew beyond the city to hit somewhere in the frozen wastes. The horizon was lit up by a tremendous green explosion and mushroom cloud when the missile detonated.

I watched as the second missile descended. Following it trajectory it would strike the Crystal Palace. Oh Celestia, what have I done?

There was a bright purple flash as Prince Armour reappeared and pulled his wife into a tight embrace. They hugged and cried as the second missile slammed into the palace and in a brilliant green explosion of balefire and radiation the palace disappeared as it was vaporized. A wall of heat and radiation rushed over use, tearing most ponies apart and shattering the buildings close to the impact zone as the bomb unleashed its power of death upon the Empire.

Princess Cadence and Prince Armour remained in their tight embrace as fire and radiation tore through them. I watched with horror as the two ponies burned in green fire and turned to ash. The two ash ponies locked in their embrace soon disintegrated as the shockwave passed through them, scattering them to the winds.

"WARNING, FLESH COMPROMISED.... EXTERNAL HEAT LEVELS BEYOND SAFE LEVELS."

I looked down at myself and saw that I too was consumed by green fire, burning my skin and flesh from my endoskeleton.

Suddenly, a bright green flash caught my attention, and as I turned my head, I saw a pony walking towards me. My vision suddenly lost colour, and everything became a shade of red as my organic eyes burned away. I couldn't believe this pony wasn't burning in the balefire as she approached me. If I could widen my eyes they would have when the pony came into focus. I recognised her. I couldn't tell what her colour was from the red haze of my synthetic eyes but I knew. She was pink with creamy yellow hair in her tail and mane. Her most striking feature however was her eyes, the baby blue eyes that were identical to my organic eyes. I didn't know how it was possible with me but she was my mother. I could feel a part of my brain wanting to be let out, to remember everything but all I could get was that she was extremely important to me and that I loved her more than anything. It is also why the look of utter shame and disappointment on her face hurt me deep in my beating heart.

"Crystal, I am so disappointed in you," She said shaking her head when the last missile struck the ground behind me.

My mother instantly turned to ash and blew away from the explosion which also ripped away what was left of my own skin.

"NO MOTHER!" I screamed with true emotional pain.

The blast wave slammed into my robotic body and threw me off my hooves. I cried out as I could feel my reinforced endoskeleton starting to break apart as I bounced and scraped along the jagged crystal roads and then I bounced off a large jagged crystal boulder at the rim of the first missile impact crater. With my vision going fuzzy, I stared down into the pit of balefire as I began to fall into the flames.

XXXXX

I bolted up on the bench gasping for breath from the nightmare that had just plagued my dreams. I couldn't believe I had just dreamt that; I could have been responsible for destroying the Crystal Empire. My birthplace for Luna's sake. I certainly hope I wasn't used for anything like that in the five years I had been unconscious. I just didn't have a clue if I’d just been sleeping through whatever had been done to me, or if I had been functioning. I certainly hope not. Being a bio-mechanical zebra was so going to be a pain in the flank.

Blinking my eyes to rid myself of sleep, I looked towards the window to see that it is still kinda dark out; I thought it was morning, but this constant cloudy grey sky was making it difficult to get a sense of time.

I let out a yawn, feeling a little weak while I sat up on the comfy bench and lifted my left foreleg to look at my pipbuck. As my eyes focused on the screen, it turned on. Hmm, the doctor had said he had connected it directly to my system, and that I should be able to control it by thinking at it. Well, might as well give it a try. I concentrated on wanting to look at my status tab, which would give me a reading of my health, time of day and date. Nothing happened for a few moments and just as I was about to think it wasn't going to work and that I would have to do it manually, I felt a prick at the back of my mind, like a spark sending a little shock throughout my brain, and then the screen flicked over to the status tab.

"Huh, it worked," I said out loud in astonishment.

SNORT!

I jumped in surprise as Fruity snorted loudly as he woke up. It was only then that I realised just how quiet it actually was on the train this early in the morning. The only real sounds I could hear were the rhythmic clickity clack of the train wheels going over the joints in the track, or the occasional bang as they ran over a rather rough segment. I caught a glimpse of the time before Fruity's snort and it was only gone four in the morning.

"No don't revoke my licence again...huh, oh right.... dream, phew," Fruity moaned as he sat up and rubbed his eyes with his forehooves. "Stupid Enclave, stupid Mutfruit," He muttered quietly, so quietly I had to strain to hear him even with my cybernetic hearing.

"Are you ok?" I asked feeling concerned.

"Ugh, yea I'm...HOLY SHIT!" He screamed as he looked at me. In a blink of an eye, he propelled himself into the air and flew across the small cabin, standing before me. His sudden appearance surprised me, and I instinctively pushed myself back against the bench as Fruity leaned in close and began looking me over.

"Fruity, what...?" I squeaked out before he interrupted me.

"Oh Celestia, thank the heavens you are alright," He said, growing a bit teary.

I blinked in confusion and then took the time to look at myself. To my relief, my hide wasn't melted or burnt like it was when I passed out last night, but instead it was like nothing happened to me. My fur was pristine white with light grey stripes again. I smiled happily as I placed a forehoof onto my chest, and pressed just hard enough so that I could feel the talisman imbedded into my chest piece.

"I guess I took those potions at the right time," I said, remembering the two super healing potions I drank after I rescued that filly. I couldn't tell him the real reason, no, not just yet. Though I wanted to. I was scared of what the outcome would be.

"I was so worried for you," He said, sitting back with relief washing over him.

"You were worried, aww that's so sweet," I smiled playfully, and teasingly to try and lighten the mood. "It's nice to know you care."

Fruity blushed beet red. "Um, well, yes of course, um you are my friend after all."

I smiled warmly at him. "Thank you Fruity, I'm fine."

Still blushing, he let out a silly giggle. Suddenly, there was a loud rumble which originated from my stomach. I giggled, embarrassed at the loudness of my stomach's complaint.

"Wow, somepony is hungry," He laughed.

"Hehe, yea," I blushed and stroked my empty stomach.

"Err, I'll, um, go see what will be for breakfast," He said, and before I could tell him how early it was, he was out the door.

I giggled softly to myself. It was heartwarming to see a pony as nice as him, and he seemed pretty cute when I teased him. I was glad he found me in Manehattan; if not for him I could be pretty much lost or dead right now. I leaned back against my seat again and let out a content sigh, before suddenly a warning message flashed across my vision in bright red letters.

"WARNING, ENERGY LEVELS AT 11%, GEM CONSUMPTION REQUIRED FOR SUBSTANTIAL ENERGY REPLENISHMENT."

What? Eleven percent. But it was at twenty when I passed out. I looked down at my pristine body again, and then at my chest. The talisman had had to reconstruct my entire burnt skin and regrew my fur. I suppose the nine percent drop was from the talisman rebuilding all the damage I had taken. Well this was also now very worrying because, where was I supposed to find gems? I was on a train that was heading for New Pegasus and I couldn't get off to go looking for gems. I'd most likely run out of power before I even find any. Oh this was bad.

I could feel panic setting in as I began to look around in worry about losing power. The table lamp caught my eye, and I wound up just staring at the softly glowing brass lamp fixed to the table. Why did the lamp look important all of a sudden and why did I feel drawn to it? I scooted over to get as close to the table, as I could and gently tilted the lampshade, up to reveal the bulb or should I say, Light Crystal.

A square appeared around the gem and text began to scroll down the side of my vision as something in my brain identified the crystal.

"Light Crystal, small magical light emitting gemstones most commonly used in household lighting and small portable lighting devices aimed for use by pegasi and earth ponies. Light Crystals come in a variety of strengths, ranging from the common household 40watt to 60watt gems to high powered gems, for example police spotlights."

I let out a groan with that familiar electric tingle in the back of my head as my brain was flooded with the information about the glowing crystal.

"Accepted for consumption," Then flashed across the top of my vision.

I could eat that? Wait, of course. The doctor said I had a synthetic stomach that could process food, metal and gems to recharge my power cells and for repairs. I did eat a fork by accident the previous day. I licked my lips while I stared at the gem, feeling unsure. This was a magical gem, what would it be like to eat it? Would it be like the time your best friend dares you to lick a square battery that gives you a jolt, or will it be like eating a chilly pepper or a sweet that'll dissolve in your mouth?

I sighed as I plucked the gem out of its brass cradle with my forehoof, and held the small pebble like gem before my muzzle. I hesitated about putting the magical gem into my mouth. I mean it wasn’t something a normal pony would do. I knew dragons eat gems like this but not ponies like me, err I mean zebra. But, I wasn’t a pony anymore though was I? My stomach growled noisily in protest with my hesitation. I needed to recharge, and I didn't want to run out of power so I didn’t really have a choice. Closing my eyes, I opened my maw and chucked the gem into my mouth and closed it.

My eyes flew open as the gem settled on my tongue and turned into the consistency of a chewy Wham Bar, a chewy fruity strip from before the war. Not only that, my mouth was filled with the taste of bananas. Hmm, I love bananas. I cooed happily as I chewed on the banana flavoured Light Crystal for a few seconds, and then swallowed. As soon as the gem hit my stomach and was processed, I felt a wave of energy rush through my body. I could feel my entire endoskeleton powering up. I could feel each and every joint become more responsive and smoother in its function. I felt more alert than before. I hated to say this but the sensation felt good.

"Power levels at 16%."

Wow, that one little gem gave me a five percent increase in power. Eating that gem wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I might just be able to get used to this... I hope. It was still weird.

"Bloody hell," Fruity muttered as he backed in through the door to our compartment.

"Fruity?" I asked as I turned to face him. He had his back to me, and his head stuck out the door looking down the corridor.

He pulled his head back in a minute later. "Just saw three dudes wearing overcoats and they looked like a nasty bunch, not to mention one of them had one of those drum fed combat shotguns."

"Well, let's not get in their way then."

"Works for me," He said as he sat down on the bench opposite.

"When will they be serving breakfast?" I asked him to change the subject.

"Huh... Oh right. Um, breakfast won't be served until seven."

"So, less than three hours," I groaned as my stomach rumbled again. That gem did nothing but give me a little boost.

"Yea, we just gotta sit pretty for a little while."

He shifted on his seat so he could lie down on his back and for the first time since I met him, I noticed his flank and his cutie mark, or lack thereof. Instead of a cutie mark he seemed to have had the Ministry Mare Rainbow Dash's cutie mark's outline stamped on his flank, and it looks like it was burnt on.

"What happened to your cutie mark?" I asked with confusion, or rather blurted out.

He let out a deep painful sigh. "I lost it when I became a Dashite," He said with pain in his voice.

"Dashite, what's a Dashite?"

He let out another painful sigh. "A Dashite is a pegasus that has gone against Enclave Law and is cast out of the clouds and forced to live on the surface in exile."

"Against Enclave law? You're a criminal?" Cried out in shock.

He bolted up right and looked at me with fury in his eyes. "No, I am not a criminal Crystal. The worst I ever did was put Mutfruit in some of my cocktails, that was it. I swear. The term Dashite originally was what pegasi who willingly left the Enclave to return to the surface called themselves, and even marked themselves. But the Enclave made a Dashite a punishment, branding and casting out pegasi that broke their laws repeatedly."

"I'm sorry… I didn't mean to offend you Fruity."

He took a deep breath calm himself down. "It's...it's ok. I'm sorry too; I shouldn't have snapped like that, you don't know about the Enclave after all."

"Still, I'm sorry, it wasn't my place to accuse you like that," I said apologetically. "So, what was your cutie mark?"

He gave a weak smile at my question. "It was a pair of cocktail shakers to symbolise my talent in drink mixing and making," His small smile turned into a frown and he looked out the window to the rolling grey clouds that were getting lighter from the rising sun behind them. "I miss my job."

"What was your job?" I asked, hoping to see that smile come back a little more while he talked about something he loved doing.

Thankfully, his smile did come back, if only a little. "I was a bartender at a local cocktail bar. I was rather popular there with my showponyship with how I could mix drinks together and everypony, mostly, would comment on my cocktails being the best in New Reignno." Then his smile disappeared again. "That was until I got busted for serving drinks with Mutfruit in them."

"I'm sorry," I said sadly for bringing up bad memories for him, again. To avoid making things worse, I decided to change the subject away from his past.

So, to fill in the three hours before breakfast I began to ask him other things regarding the wasteland that I have woken up into. I asked about the Crystal Empire, like if it was still there and he told me he didn't know but there had been no records that it was ever attacked and that he had heard rumours, that involved the Empire had tried to help Equestria after the bombs fell but soon abandoned Equestria after all its social structure collapsed. I hope it was still out there.

Fruity asked me about my life before I 'left the Stable' and I had to lie again. Lying was a bad thing, don't ever do it if you can avoid it, really. I felt bad for lying to him but I was still not up to revealing myself to him in fear of scaring him away. I had to think for a moment, but using my past job as a Stable-Tec sales assistance or warehouse operative I was able to come up with a convincing story about working as the Stable's shop keeper and inventory keeper. I could certainly talk bollocks for hours when the right idea pops to mind.

XXXXX

The Pullmare Dining Car is huge. Unlike the passenger car that Fruity and I were using on this journey which was a corridor car with cabins, this dining car was open from wall to wall. I could see that it had a single aisle down the middle between the two gangway doors, and several tables lining both sides apart from the left side where the small kitchen resided and the buffet bar sat, filling the midway point of the sixty foot car.

Looking around, we could see a few ponies sitting at the tables already as well as a couple of ponies acting as waiters. We walked down the aisle and sat at a table around the middle on the right side. The bench I sat on creaked in protest with my weight, I wonder how much I actually weighed now, but thankfully it held, and was just as comfy as our cabin's bench. Like our table in our cabin, the tables in the dining car were also covered in a lace white table cloth and had a brass lamp on them and I found myself staring at the softly glowing gem under the lampshade. I subconsciously licked my lips while I stared, and it was noticed by my pegasus friend.

"Hungry?" He asked innocently.

I shook my head to snap myself out of my stare and gave him my full attention. "Yes," I nodded with a dumb smile.

He turned around and began to wave a waiter down near the door we came in from. While he was occupied I quickly plucked the gem from the lamp and popped it into my mouth, swallowing it as he began to turn back around after getting the waiter's attention. I felt a rush of energy again run through my body as it was processed.

"Power level at 21%."

"May I help you?" The waiter asked in a posh voice as he approached our table.

"Could we have a menu please?" I asked, only just noticing there weren’t any on the table.

"Certainly Ma'am, I'll be back in a moment with your menus," He said, bowing slightly before he turned and headed for the kitchen.

"I hope they do a full Equestrian breakfast," I said out loud to myself. I used to enjoy going out with my parents in Las Pegasus on a weekend morning, usually a Saturday, to one of the local cafes to get a full breakfast.

"I don't care as long as it’s edible," He groaned.

"What do you mean?"

"Half the shit I've scavenged since I started living down here has been sat on the shelves for nearly two centuries. Sure, it's been pumped full of preservatives but in some cases that means naff all and is rotted to hell or you can't just bring yourself to eat two hundred year old junk," He ranted, but yeah, I could understand that. I didn't think I'd be too comfortable trying to eat something that was two hundred years old.

The waiter soon returned with two fancily decorated, yet old and worn menus which also had several items crossed off. I supposed that was because the ingredients were no longer available to acquire in this dead world. The waiter left us once he placed the menus down while saying he’d come back in a few minutes to see if we had decided on anything.

Thankfully a full breakfast was indeed on the menu so I knew what I’d be having. The waiter soon returned to take our order, but Fruity didn't seem to have made his choice yet. He looked to be struggling with the selection available.

"Are you ready to order?" The waiter asked politely.

"Err..." I said looking at Fruity.

He groaned and closed his menu in a huff. "Sod it; I'll have what she's having."

I giggled lightly at that, and turned back to the waiter. "I suppose we'll both have a full breakfast."

The waiter nodded and using his unicorn magic, wrote it down on his little pad.

"And to drink?"

"I'll have a coffee please."

Fruity made a gagging face when I mentioned coffee. Heh, somepony doesn't like coffee; it's a good pick-me-up for early mornings.

"I'll have an apple juice," Fruity said.

"Very good, two full breakfasts, one with a coffee and one with an apple juice," He said out loud to confirm our order and with a nod from me, the waiter headed back to the kitchen.

"What marvellous service," Fruity joked when the waiter was out of earshot. I snickered at his fake posh voice. At least we could still have some fun with how things are right now.

While we waited, I looked out of the large window we had sat next to. I frowned at the sight. I could see nothing but dead land with many dead leafless trees filling the land and the remains of a fence and farm buildings on the small rolling hills. We soon passed over a river running through the farm, and I shivered in disgust as the water was a yellowy green colour that, to me, seemed to actually glow in the low light of the morning. Through the hundreds of twigs I could also see a mountain range in the distance. Hmm, looks like we were starting to enter central Equestria.

"Oh ponyfeathers," Fruity groaned quietly.

"What's wrong?" I asked as I turned to face him, my newly regrown mane flopping into my left eye as I did.

He simply lowered himself down to the table, and then pointed with a wing behind me. I turned to follow his point, and saw three stallions wearing overcoats with black cowpony hats on their heads, standing in the gangway door at the far end. I noticed the middle one more than the others. My eyes roaming over his large muscular frame and the semi-automatic, twelve shell, drum fed, 12-gauge combat shotgun strapped to his back. How in Tartarus did I know that? That was something that was scaring me about my new body, how I seem to know exactly what a weapon is by a single glance.

The three intimidating ponies began to slowly walk down the aisle, until one of the trailing ponies patted the middle one on the shoulder, and then pointed at me. The larger stallion looked at me, and then he immediately scowled with hatred twisting at his features.

"Well what do we have here? It's a little Stripe," He snarled as he approached our table.

"Um, is there a problem here?" I asked, feeling intimidated by him.

"Yeah, there is a problem here, and it’s sitting right in front of me," He sneered. Oh, and there's the flashing exclamation mark.

"Wh-what did I d-do?" I stuttered, moving back instinctively, and plastering my ears against my skull.

"You and your kind aren't welcome here," He growled.

"Oh c'mon dude she..." Fruity's defence was silenced by a powerful hoof slamming onto the table.

"Shut the fuck up Stripe lover," The larger stallion shouted angrily. "You are no fucking different you deserting sack of shit."

"Now hold on a minute!" Fruity tried again but this time, he was met with a hoof to the face. I watched in wide eyed shock as Fruity let out a cry of pain from the strike. I felt a burning desire then and there to lamp the stallion in response, but my fear outweighed that desire. However, I did let out a growl of anger at the unprovoked attack on my friend, but that little act of aggression made the stallion turn his attention back to me.

"You are not welcome here and you are going to leave now before I throw you off this train," He ordered forcefully.

I looked around for help, but found that there were no guards in the car, or any of the other ponies in the car making any attempt to intervene. Whimpering, I looked back at the stallion as he moved closer.

"B-but the train is still moving."

"Well then, I guess I'm going to have to throw you off."

"Is there a problem here?" Shouted a strong, authoritative voice. We all turned our heads to the gangway door towards where we came in, and another large earth stallion stood. He seemed as muscular as the hater in front of me, but also wore a familiar-looking Stable type security armour, familiar because I sold a few for Stable-Tec.

"It doesn't concern you Marshal," The overcoat wearing stallion said as he turned back to me.

"It does when you are threatening ponies on this train!" Marshal shouted as he began to approach us, followed by a familiar looking tiny mare who stayed behind, but very close to the large stallion. My eye's widened when I realised who she was; she was the mare whose daughter I had saved.

"But she's not a pony, she's an it and is about to leave this train by the nearest window."

"Help!" I cried out, frightened.

"This train is neutral ground, she has as much right to travel on it as anypony else," The large earth pony countered as he approached our table. "Now back off and leave her alone, OR, will "I" have to throw "You" off this train?"

The hater growled as he had an internal debate about what he should do. After what seemed like an hour, he sighed. "Fine," He said with a huff before he turned around and began to walk away. "You better watch your back Stripe," He called out as he and his little posse left the dining car. That last shout filled me with a dread.

"Are you two ok?" The Marshal asked.

"Yes, we are fine," I said. "Thank you for getting rid of him."

"Speak for yourself," Fruity whined as he rubbed his now bloody nose "I got sucker punched in the face!"

The Marshal reached into a pocket of his armour and pulled out a healing potion. "Here," He said, dropping it on the table in front of Fruity.

"Thanks," Fruity said as he popped the cork and drank the potion. I watched with fascination as his damaged nose healed up instantly. The pegasus rubbed at his snout and sighed with relief. "So much better."

"Who are those jerks?" I asked.

"I don't know, but there have been several complaints against them since they boarded at Dodge Junction," The large stallion answered. Huh, we must have stopped at a station while I was passed out. "Don't worry, miss. I will see to it that they do not bother you again."

The stallion then looked down to the small mare for a moment. "Do you mind if we join you for a moment, we want to talk to you about what you did for us."

"Um…sure."

Fruity fluttered into the air and over the table before he settled down beside me, our rumps pressing together as he settled into the seat. The contact made me blush slightly.

The Marshal and the small mare took the bench in front of us. Wow, the stallion was like three times the size of the mare.

"My name is Black Slate and I'm this train's Marshal." He then gestured to the small mare. "And this is my wife Tulip Blossom, and she tells me you are responsible for saving our daughter's life during the griffin attack and the fire."

I nodded. "My name is Crystal Éclair." As expected, my name got an eyebrow raise from both of them.

"And I'm Fruity," The purple pegasus announced.

"I'm glad to see you are fine, Tulip told me how horribly burned you were," He said with a relieved smile.

"I guess I drank those potions at the right time," I offered.

The Marshal nodded. "What you did for my wife and I, we can never thank you enough. You brought our daughter back to us even though it put your life on the line. We are forever in your debt."

Tulip nodded her head but then turned to her massive husband. "I'm so sorry Slate," She said with her voice cracking as she began to tear up.

The huge stallion gently held his wife. "Hey, we talked about this, it's not your fault, and you didn't know that would happen."

"I know but I shouldn't gone to the toilet and left her alone."

"Shhh, it's ok, she was sleeping and you could have left her unattended for a couple of minutes, don't keep blaming yourself."

"Where were you when it happened?" Fruity asked. Ouch, Fruity, you shouldn't be asking that. I quickly gave him a shocked look after he said that.

"I was on the far end of the train helping to fend off the griffins; it wasn't until after you rescued our daughter that I became aware just where the fire was."

"Um, we have brought you a couple of things as thanks, it's not much but we thought you could use them," Tulip said quietly.

"Oh you didn't have to," I said just as the small mare lifted two bags onto the table. One of them jingled nosily like it contained coins, or was it caps now? And the other one made a dull clunk like it was full of rocks.

"These two bags have a thousand caps worth between them, this one..." She said indicating the one that jingled. "...has um... how much was it again dear?"

"Seven hundred and fifty caps," Slate answered.

Tulip nodded and then indicated the other bag. "This one contains about um, was it two hundred and fifty caps worth?" She said unsure and looked at her husband. He nodded in reply to her question. She smiled and repeated herself. "This bag contains two hundred and fifty caps worth of gems that we had collected."

Gems! Oh what luck. "Um, thank you," I said with appreciation. I took the back of gems while I passed the bag with caps in over to Fruity.

"What's this for?" He asked, clearly not expecting me to hoof him anything.

"You did pay for my ticket and saved my life before," I said with a big smile. He blinked for a moment then smiled in return as he took the caps.

"I would like to also give you something as thanks as well" Slate said as he bent his head back to a larger pocket on his armour. After a moment of fiddling about, he pulled his head back around with a pistol holster and when he put it down, there was clearly a gun in the holster too. "I believe you lost your gun during the rescue," He said almost matter-of-factly.

"Um, yes, it was a nine millimetre pistol."

He nodded. "Yes, I found it among the wreckage; the fire was hot enough to render it unusable. So I would like to give you this, it has been the best gun I ever had and I hope it'll serve you well. It's called Lucky 13, thirteen because that's how many times it saved my life."

I was about to reject the gun until I remembered what Fruity had told me about Raiders and also from what I've seen and experienced so far. I'd likely need a gun for my protection out in this wasteland. Resigning myself to accept the inevitable, I reached over the table with my forehooves and pulled the holster to me and then gently slipped the gun from its home. I had to admit, it was a beautiful weapon. Oh and there was that familiar tingle in the back of my head.

"Colt-Army .357 Magnum Revolver, six shot cylinder revolving pistol. Weapon has been modified with a longer barrel and refurbished materials increasing weapon's condition and overall damage."

This instantly knowing about these guns was going to drive me crazy. The revolver looked like a piece of art with its black metal finish and intricate golden gild patterns ,as well as the white enamel mouth grip with the number thirteen etched into it, which looked like a more recent addition.

I gave Slate an appreciative smile. "Thank you, I'll be sure to take good care of it."

He smiled and nodded. "You are welcome; it's the least I could give you for saving our daughter."

The mare slipped off the bench. "Yes, thank you ever so much for saving our daughter," She said gratefully.

"I was glad to help," I smiled as they began to walk away.

"Well, that was nice of them," Fruity said while eying the contents of the bag I gave him.

I made an agreeing comment just as our food arrived. It wasn't until after I ate the eggs, hash browns and beans when Fruity told me those were all two hundred years old. That little revelation nearly had me gagging in the middle of the dining car, drawing a few stares. I could have strangled Fruity as he began laughing. At least the breakfast also helped to increase my power percentage by two.

After breakfast, there wasn't much else we could do apart from walking the length of the train, catching a movie in the train's cinema car or having a drink in at the bar. With the way things were looking, it looked like Fruity and I would die of boredom before we made it to the Marejave.

XXXXX

While resting my head on our table in our cabin, I noticed the compass of my EFS start moving. We had been heading in a westerly direction for most of the trip, but now, we were heading north towards the mountain range. Well, this was a train, so we could only go where the track takes us. As Luna's night began to make way for Celestia's day, we were drawing near the Canter Mountain Range in Central Equestria.

"So bored…" Fruity muttered to himself as he tried to make a tower out of his bottle caps.

I opened my mouth to agree when the Conductor's voice blared out of a speaker in the top corner of our cabin near the door.

"Attention passengers, we'll be stopping at Trottingham to restock on flammable material and water. Passengers will have three hours to stretch your legs while we refuel. We will also be passing through Pon'evil shortly. All passengers are to remain in their cabins as we accelerate to our top speed to pass through the town as quickly as possible, thank you."

"Ponyville, what's so bad about that?" I asked confused.

"It's not what you think it is. Ponyville or as it's called now, Pon'evil, is a raider town and one of the worst places you could ever imagine." Fruity then went on to remind me why raiders were to be shot on sight as they would do worse to me if I didn't. Some of the things he told me that he had seen were so horrible, I knew he wasn't making it up. I couldn't image how he felt when he witnessed some of the nasty things he said he had seen.

The train soon accelerated, and minutes later, we were roaring through the destroyed town. Unable to resist the urge to look out the window, I bore witness to public sex, brutal fights involving blunt trauma weapons and other unsightly things. I was thankful my stomach was synthetic because I was sure I would have thrown up at some of the horribleness I saw. While we sped through the town, some of the raiders attempted to attack us and chase us, but there wasn't a chance in Tartarus that they'd be able to run after a hundred plus mile an hour train or hit us.

Thankfully, we passed through the town without incident and stopped in the deserted run down town of Trottingham. It was once a big lively town back before the war, and was famous for its milk. Needing a change in environment, Fruity and I stepped off the train. The silence was eerie and creepy, despite the background noise of the steaming monster and the crews working to refuel it. We walked over to an old engine shed still in view of the train.

"That gun, know how to use it?" Fruity asked as we stepped through the open doors of one of the locomotive bays.

"I know how to use a gun; it's simply pulling the trigger right?"

Fruity nodded. "That's half of it, yeah. Ever used one before though?"

I shook my head.

"Right, since we got some time to kill before we set off again, why don't I teach you how to shoot?"

Normally, I would have declined his offer but I was not in the Equestria I remembered and since waking up in this world it seemed the law had changed to "Kill or be killed" and with my current experience in this world along with everything I've heard or been told, it was like nearly everything would like to rape or kill me, so learning to fight was essential to survival. With a sigh I agreed.

I had the holster strapped around my right foreleg; I bent my neck down so I could get a hold of Lucky 13 with my mouth.

"Using a gun isn't just pointing and pulling the trigger; you need to look down the sights to get your aim. Hmm, ah there, look down the sights and try to hit those tin cans on that buffer stop there."

I nodded, since holding the gun in my mouth and having my tongue against the trigger made it difficult for me to talk. I didn't feel the magical sensation in my mouth for when I put metal or gems in my mouth and I couldn't feel the enamel grip softening or the trigger either. I supposed my mechanical body was programmed to recognise what was edible or not and trigger whatever causes things to become soft in my mouth so I could eat it.

I held the gun tightly in my mouth, the sleek black and gold gilded revolver sticking out to the right side of my muzzle. Closing my left eye, I found that the barrel and the sights of the gun lined up perfectly with my eye, allowing me to get a straight aim.

"Looking down the sights, you'll want to line up your shot so your target is where the top of the middle prong is on your gun barrel. Where that is, is usually where your bullet will go."

I nodded again as I lined up the barrel of Lucky 13 with a can of beans sitting on the bugger stop. Satisfied with my aim, I pulled the trigger with my tongue. I expected there to be some resistance against my tongue, but the trigger pulled easily enough and with a loud bang, the gun fired when the hammer struck the bullet. I was so surprised by the sudden boom and jerk of the gun from the recoi,l that I let go of it and it fell to the rubbish strewn floor.

"You ok?" Fruity asked in concern.

"Yeah I'm fine, it just startled me."

"Ah, you'll get used to it. Heh, the first time I fired my plasma rifles, the magical surge from the discharge had my feathers puffed up for an hour."

I giggled to myself at the mental image of his wings all puffed up.

"Wow, nice shot," Fruity said as he inspected the can. I picked up my new gun and looked over to Fruity to see that the can had exploded and spewed its contents all over the back wall. "How many shots does that gun have?" He asked as he picked up another can from the floor.

"It's a six shot weapon, so it has five rounds left."

"Ok, so let's go five more times; that should be enough for now to give you a good idea of how to use it."

I nodded in agreement and prepared for another shot.

XXXXX

Fruity's advice with my gun was very valuable, his own experiences in the wasteland helping in his explanations with what and what not to do with your gun. Thankfully, maintenance wouldn't be an issue since not only did my electronic brain supply me with all the data on the revolver it also gave me detailed information on how to maintain it.

Fruity seemed rather impressed with my performance in the engine shed. I had hit each can almost dead centre each time. Fruity had asked me if I was sure I hadn't used a gun before and I dismissed it as just being beginners luck, but I feared it had something to do with my mechanical body. I barely felt the recoil of the revolver when I fired it. I supposed my mechanical skeleton could take the forces exerted by the weapon better than if I were entirely organic and I didn't feel like my teeth were gonna fall out from the vibration of the gun fire. I was beginning to feel less and less like a pony with the more things I discovered about my synthetic body.

After target practice, we still had time to kill, so we walked around the ruined train yard that we had stopped in to refuel. I felt I was back in Manehattan while being surrounded by so much destruction and decay. My nose was being assaulted with all the bad smells of nearly two hundred years of decay, and it was absolutely foul. The constant clouds and the nearly collapsed buildings gave a very eerie and dark scene. I for the first time took note of my EFS compass displaying friendly and hostile targets and despite Trottingham apparently being deserted, there were quite a lot of red bars in range of its sensory range. Not wanting to find out what those red bars belonged to, we stayed near the train.

By noon, we were ready to go, and steamed north towards a place called "Zebra Town". Thankfully, the train turned away from the town as it came into view at the foot of Mt Canter. The town had to be one of the creepiest places I had ever seen with how most of it was shrouded in a pink mist. I noticed some pink waterfalls, and following the falls up, I gaped at their source. Canterlot sat up above the town, and I couldn't believe the state of the once famed capital of Equestria, now that was truly a horrifying sight and cemented the claims of the princesses being dead. That was still a fact I am finding hard to accept but every day I woke up to this hell I was beginning to accept it more and more readily.

I was glad that Zebra Town and Canterlot were behind us now as we steamed west. If we made good progress we'd arrive at New Pegasus within a day and a half.

Several hours after we left Trottingham, I decided to go for a walk alone. Fruity wanted to accompany me, but I declined his offer to join me as I wanted some time to myself to get my head around some of the things I had discovered earlier. He was sweet and seems to be very caring despite his immature nature and I do like him, but a mare does need some alone time after all.

I trotted the length of the train, passing through the bar, the dining car and the cinema, also disturbed the movie being shown with my entrance, and continued down towards the front of the train until I stepped out onto the burnt out train car. Most of the roof had collapsed when the fire weakened its upper structure. I had been in my own world with my thoughts about coming to terms with the world I was in now, and that the princesses wouldn't be coming to our aid, when I was brought back to reality as a rather loud door slam startled me.

Looking up at the source, I saw one of the overcoat wearing ponies standing in front of the gangway door, blocking my path. I noticed my EFS again, and the pony blocking the door was showing a red hostile tag on the compass. Not wanting to deal with him, I turned around to walk back the way I came, but as I turned around, the other one closed the door and stood in front of the it, leaving me trapped in the burnt out car. If those two were here then that means...

"I told you to watch your back Zebra scum."

Oh horseapples.

I turned back around to see the large overcoat and black stetson wearing stallion standing in the corridor. My ears flattened against my skull as I shook with fear as his facial expression was screaming bloody murder.

"Please, I don't want any trouble," I whimpered, while taking a step back.

"Well you found trouble," He sneered as he began to approach me. Oh this is bad; my threat warning was blinking in my vision repeatedly. I backed up to keep away from him but as luck would have had it, my butt hit a burnt metal wall where I then stopped, shaking in fear of the huge stallion. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest with my fear; it was still good to feel it beating despite the situation.

"I'm going to kill you Stripe, and then I'm going to throw you off this train," He growled and lifted his left forehoof, pulling it back ready to strike. My threat warning flashed brightly as the stallion began to throw his hoof forward in a punch. I quickly dodged to the left, and his hoof barely missed my head and hit the ruined metal wall behind me. He pulled back and reared up onto his hind legs so he could use both his forehooves, and then he began to throw them in a series of punches. With each throw of his hooves, my threat warning flashed at the point his punches began towards me and it gave me just enough warning to dodge the incoming strikes.

"Hold still!" He yelled in annoyance from my dodging.

In his fury, his attacks sped up, making dodging difficult. Ultimately, one of his punches struck me in the cheek. It stung, but didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I was expecting; it felt more like a gentle slap but my instinctive reaction was to swat his hoof away. I swung my right foreleg out hard and fast to smack his leg away and I felt and HEARD his leg bone break like a twig from my hoof's impact, I really need to learn how to control my mechanical strength. He let out a cry of pain and backed away, holding his damaged foreleg.

"My leg, you fucking bitch, you are dead," He growled painfully and grabbed his combat shotgun off his back with his mouth, and held the gun practically point blank in my face. Eyes widening in fear, I reacted instinctively and grabbed the gun with my hoof, pushing it out of my face just as it fired. The buckshot pelted the wall behind me, leaving a hole behind. Something then clicked in the back of my mind, and all fear seemed to leave me and was replaced with a cold dead feeling of self preservation which made me act. I moved a hind leg forward to better balance myself, and then struck out with my free forehoof into his chest. I tried to dial the strength down a bit, but it was still pretty strong as it knocked him back, along with breaking a few ribs, but I didn't hit him hard enough to kill him, thankfully. I'm not a murder but I'm not a pony or zebra either, am I…?

"You fucking..." I cut him off when I grabbed the shotgun by its mouth grip with my maw, and held the gun pointing at him. His eyes widening at the realisation he was no longer in control of the situation.

"Leave me alone, I didn't do anything wrong, leave, now!" I practically mumbled around the mouth grip.

One of the two other ponies rushed to his friend's aid. "Boss, let's get out here," He said and supported the injured pony.

"Mark my words Stripe, this isn't over" The boss growled painfully as he and his minions retreated.

I stayed still, keeping the shotgun pointed at them until they left through the gangway door. Once I was safe, I dropped the gun and let out a cry from the emotions running through me. Fear, panic, surprise, anger and rage had all rushed through me in the space of a minute. I then looked at my right foreleg, and noticed blood staining my fur. I hit him, I actually hit him. I wasn’t a violent mare by nature, but I also had never been put in a situation where my life depended on my actions. Was that actually me that struck out against him, or was that the machine part of me? Sighing, feeling emotionally drained, I picked up the shotgun again and walked back into the train. I had something to give to the Marshal.

The train became eerily silent as I walked through each car. I could feel dozens of eyes on me as I walked past. I guess they noticed the blood on my foreleg, and most likely the shotgun slung on my back. I tried to ignore the stares as I passed through the cars. After a good ten minutes I finally found the cabin where Slate and his wife Tulip were now using and knocked on the door.

The door opened to a very surprised looking Tulip. "Oh, hello Crystal."

I smiled slightly. "Hi, Tulip, is Slate here?" I asked.

"I am," I heard him confirm as Tulip opened the door wider to allow me entry until...

"OH MY GOSH!" She shrieked upon seeing the blood on my foreleg, and she also seemed to be staring at my cheek. "Are you alright?"

Marshall joined his wife and narrowed his eyes upon seeing the results of the fight. "What happened?"

I sighed. "Those three from breakfast."

"I warned them, " He said angrily and was about to push past me when I held out a foreleg and stopped him.

"It's alright, I dealt with them and here, " I said as I then plucked the shotgun from my back and gave it to the Marshal. "This was the main one's shotgun, it's yours now. Also I don't think he'll be a problem for anyone for a while since I broke his leg and a few ribs, " I informed him regrettably .

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you had it in you," He said.

"Neither did I but he did put me in a corner."

He nodded and took the gun. "Thanks."

Suddenly, the cabin filled with the loud wailing of a foal crying. Tulip quickly rushed to her bench and pulled her baby against her, starting to gently rock the foal back and forth. I smiled happily at seeing the mother with her daughter. A feeling of pride filled my heart. If it weren't for me, this young mother would have lost her baby. I smiled and nodded to them before leaving. Seeing that, seeing the family happy together was just what I needed to life my spirits.

I opened the door to our cabin shortly after my visit with the Marshal to find Fruity fast asleep on his bench. I had to cover my mouth with my hoof to stifle a giggle at what I saw. Fruity had fallen asleep with his chest on the bench and his forelegs out stretched in front of him with his head laying on his legs. His rear end however was high in the air as his hind legs were stood up. I used to have a pet dog that did that. Feeling a little mischievous I reached out with my tail and grasped the handle of the door and quickly yanked it closed, causing it to slam loudly. The result was perfect.

"GAH!!!" Fruity yelled in total surprise as he was rudely awoken by the door slam and shot up into the air and smashed his head against the ceiling, before he drifted back down to the bench holding his head while his wings fluttered.

Even with my hoof over my mouth, I couldn't stop the giggles from escaping as I snickered in amusement.

"Bloody hell Crystal, you scared the living daylights out of me," He whined cutely.

"Hehe, sorry, I couldn't resist, you looked so silly the way you were sleeping."

"I was sleeping with my ass in the air again wasn't I?" He asked with a groan.

I simply nodded.

"Ugh, some guy got the wrong idea about that once."

Oh goddesses. I burst out laughing there. Fruity chuckled too for a moment until he then let out a surprised cry. "Holy shit are you alright?" He asked as he got within my personal space looking closely at my cheek.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?" I asked.

"You got a big fuck off bruise on your cheek," He explained. "What happened?"

I sighed and pushed him away gently so I could get to my bench and sat down. Fruity settled onto his bench while I told him about my encounter.

XXXXX

Twenty four hours passed, pretty much uneventfully and peacefully. We had left central Equestria behind, and were steaming at high speed into Equestria's desert region which means we were closing in on the Marejave. I felt a little nervousness creep into me as the dead land began to change to that of a more sandy and dry appearance. I was heading home after two hundred years of being away. I didn't know what had become of Las Pegasus; if it was anything like Manehattan then my once bright built up city home would be reduced to a shadow of its former self even if the city still stood. I also fully intend to go and visit my family home in the outskirts of Las Pegasus. I... I just had to see it... and say good bye to my mum. I hope she didn't suffer too much when the end came.

I was woken up early in the morning on the fourth day of our trip as the bright sun shone through our window. Hang on, bright sun light. I quickly sat up and looked out the window, and my eyes were treated to the most beautiful sight since I woke up in Manehattan. The sun: Celestia's heavenly body shining brightly over the horizon in clear blue skies.

I reached over the table and started to prod Fruity while I stared out the window. I could see the cloud cover to our right though, which would be behind us right now, that seemed to just suddenly end like at a boundary.

"I'm up, I'm up," Fruity groaned.

"Look," I said pointing at out the window.

"What am I looking at?"

"A clear sky," I cried almost happily.

The tired pegasus groaned as he turned his head and looked out the window. He yawned loudly. "Yeah? It's a nice sun rise. Sun rises are always lovely in the mornings in the sky."

"Um, Fruity, we’re in a train on the surface, not in the sky."

"Hmm…" He looked out the window again and yawned. "Huh, would you look at that."

"You’re not a morning pony are you?" I asked with a sigh.

"Eenope," He yawned again.

I waited for him to wake up properly before gesturing to the rising sun in the clear sky again. He seemed puzzled and confused at first, but then his face shifted to a look of realisation.

"I suppose the rumours of the SPP Towers not working this far west are true," He said with another yawn.

"The what?" I asked, totally confused.

"You don't know about the Single Pegasus Project?"

I simply shook my head. He then went into a lengthy description about how the project was created during the war and was designed to control the weather. Apparently, it was supposed to hurl hurricanes and other terrible storms at the enemy which would have been very effective. It was also designed to better the weather for Equestria, or it could be used to do what it has been doing since the world ended: create endless clouds to blanket the land and blot out the sun. I was amazed to learn that the clouds around the towers had solid properties to enable the growth of crops to support the pegasi communities. But that then begged the question, why was this region clear of the clouds and I voiced that question to him.

"Hmm, I don't rightly know to be honest, but I heard that there had been some problems with the western towers, and that some hadn't even been finished before the bombs fell," He shrugged.

"Attention passengers, we have now entered the Marejave and will be arriving at New Pegasus within eight hours."

I smiled happily. We were almost there. I could finally... My train of thought was suddenly derailed when a horrific metallic screeching sound reverberated throughout the entire train and I was thrown out my seat and onto the table, which collapsed under my weight. The whole train screeched to a halt.

"What the in the buggery is going on?" Fruity cried out.

"ATTENTION, EVERYPONY ABANDON THE TRAIN IMMEDIATELY, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, ABANDON THE TRAIN!" The Conductor shouted in a panic over the tannoy.

"Abandon the train, what, why?" Fruity asked.

I groaned and picked myself up from the floor. As I stood I looked out the window and saw that we had stopped on a bend, and I could see the engine at the front of the train and it was spewing out steam in places it shouldn't be.

"We better go, like NOW!" I urged.

"What's going on?"

"The locomotive is going to explode!" I yelled and threw the door open, breaking it off its hinges in the process, but at this moment I couldn't be bothered. We ran to the nearest door which was on either side of the gangway door on either end of the car. Thankfully, somepony had already charged out of one and we both ran out into the hot desert air.

We ran, or in Fruity's case flew, until we were at a safe distance from the locomotive. My sensitive ears could pick up the sound of popping rivets. Many ponies were flocking out of the train and scattering around to get to safety; unfortunately a few ponies I could see met a gruesome end when they were shot by a popped rivet.

"Heh, well Crystal, welcome back to the Marejave," Fruity said with a weak smile.

At that moment, the streamlined iron horse exploded in a cloud of steam and fire, violently ripping itself apart along with the tender and most of the brake car behind it. The shockwave flung several ponies, who were unfortunately too close, off their hooves and smashed them against other ponies or into the many large rust coloured rocks lying around. The shockwave passed through me harmlessly, but still had enough of a kick to make Fruity stumble a little.

"Holy hell…" Fruity muttered.

I opened my mother to agree when my threat warning flashed again. Looking back towards the train I saw a huge piece of metal flying right towards Fruity. I quickly shoved him aside with my right foreleg.

"Crystal, what was tha.." He was cut off when a long piece of steel dug into the dirt between us. "Ahh... fuck."

I sighed with relief that it missed him. I could feel my pulse thundering through my body with the worry and fear I felt for Fruity.

"Are you alright?" I asked looking to see if he was ok.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks to you, thank you," He replied thankfully.

"My pleasure," I smiled as I walked around the long piece of steel. The steel was part of the locomotive's drive gear; it was the rod that connected to each of the drive wheels on one side and delivered the power from the cylinders to the wheels. This one piece was so long because it had to connect to three, two metre diameter wheels.

A familiar pony trotted up to us. The Conductor sighed with relief as he saw that we are ok. "Thank Celestia you two are ok."

"Thank you conductor, but what happened, why’d the train explode?" I asked, helping Fruity up.

The middle aged stallion sighed. "When we accelerated to top speed to pass through Pon-evil earlier, the locomotive developed a problem. The crews were being forced to open the safety valves frequently to reduce stream pressure, but the valves soon stopped working. I had been told last night that this would happen if we didn't stop to fix the problem."

"Then why didn't you?" I shouted in anger at this revelation.

"It would have taken at least three days for a replacement engine to come down here to tow us to the depot and another two days hauling us the rest of the way. Time is caps and a fast service attracts more customers. The crews said if they left all safety valves open and reduced the heat of the fire and increased the water to cool it down a little we might have been able to reach Tom City. Stopping there wouldn't have hurt us as much as being left stranded in the middle of the desert."

Money, it's always about money when something like this happens. Ponies scrimp on safety features if it means saving a bit or two here and there. I shook my head and grumbled angrily as Fruity and I stormed off. Good thing we were on a train because that meant we could simply follow the tracks to get to where we were going. As we began walking, we walked passed a stallion in dirty overalls muttering to himself angrily.

"Fucking knew she wasn't ready, fucking rushed her restoration and fucking put her on the line before her trails could be done. Wanting to make headlines with the fastest trans-equestrian travel from west to east and back, you fucking got it because the locomotive we spent twenty years restoring just went boom you fuckers," He ranted to himself, supporting my mental claim on this being all about bits or caps in this world.

The passengers of the train soon scattered into their own travelling groups and headed out in whatever direction they wanted to go. Fruity and I, plus several other ponies who had had the same idea about the tracks followed them through the desert.

As we walked, I concentrated on my Pipbuck and got it to display the map of the region. Thankfully, Tom City was only a few miles away, close enough that we could make it before sunset with a few hours to spare. Many tiring hours of walking later, for Fruity at least, we finally made it to Tom City as the sun began its decent. I gawked at the city or really, town since it wasn't that big, or really what was left of it. The town was absolutely destroyed; only a few buildings at the town's limits were still intact, while everything else was either in disrepair or totally blown to pieces. The middle of the town showed the most of this heavy destruction, with a mountain high wall of rubble sealing it off from the lesser damaged outer limits. I feared a balefire bomb had hit the town, but the damage looked more recent and I couldn't detect any hints of magical radiation.

We walked onto a street that only had one side with intact buildings and these included a bar, which Fruity stood longingly in front of the door too for a while before I had to drag him along, a store and several more buildings that had their doors all boarded up.

"What should we do?" I asked.

"I think it would be a good idea to stock up on supplies," Fruity said while gesturing to the shop with its working neon "Open" sign in the window.

"Good idea."

"You still got that bag of gems?" He asked.

I nodded, though the bag was a lot lighter than it was earlier. I had eaten good few of the gems to get my power cells back to one hundred percen,t but my Pipbuck was still telling me the bag had a considerable value.

We pushed open the door and I immediately had a Whinnychester M1887 Lever-Action 20 gauge Shotgun shoved into my face by an angry looking elderly stallion. I was really starting to hate knowing all these guns at first glance.

"You Stripes thing; you can just walk on in here and help yourself to my stuff, I don't think so," He growled angrily.

"Whoa, hey, pops she's cool, she's with me," Fruity said hoping to defuse the situation.

My vision flickered red for a moment before I closed my eyes and shook with fear, fear of having my head blown off and of the tingling in the back of my head.

"Please don't shoot!" I cried.

The stallion kept the gun pressed to my face for a moment before finally pulling it away. "Sorry, but with the last bunch of zebras you can't be too careful. Anyway, welcome to my humble little shop," The old colt said, doing a one eighty in personality; now, he seemed like a happy go lucky sort of pony. "Bastard's the name, or you can call me Right Bleeding, all my friends do, well, did."

"Why, what happened?" Fruity asked.

I facehoofed, oh, Fruity why did you ask?

"I killed them," The old stallion replied without a change in his current mood. "Now what can I get ya?"

Fruity and I exchanged a look and Fruity lifted a forehoof to his ear, thankfully out of sight of the stallion, and traced a circle in the air and nodded to the stallion. Yeah, I thought he had a screw loose too.

"Um, we’re just here to buy some supplies," I answered.

"Well, I've got pretty much anything, just got these new snacks in: Monkey Toenails, Cheese and Onion flavour." He paused for a moment. "Well… they’re just cheese really and they’re pretty strong."

"No thanks," Fruity and I both said at once. Damn, those sounded revolting.

"We'll have a look and get back to you," I said and mister Bastard nodded and went behind his counter.

Mr Bastard was right that he had pretty much everything, and we picked up plenty of things that should cover us for a while. Boy, what a name, I kinda felt sorry for that old guy.

"Um, excuse me Right Bleeding..." Fruity covered his mouth to stop a snicker from escaping. He quickly calmed himself down so he could finish. "Do you have any changing rooms?"

"Sure kid..." The old stallion stepped out from behind his counter and gestured to the open door behind him. "Just close the curtain."

Fruity nodded and quickly made his way through the curtain with a bundle under his foreleg that I didn't notice him pick up. What was he doing? Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long as he stepped out a minute later dressed in a brown duster that had holes cut into the back to let his wings through and a brown stetson hat rested on his head.

I blinked in confusion. "What are you wearing?" I asked, with a tilt of the head.

"What, we are in the Wild West aren't we? Thought I might as well look the part," He said with a goofy smile.

I couldn't help the smile that spread across my lips. He was so likeable. I looked down at my white and grey striped body, hmm, I suppose a change of clothes was in order since my Stable Suit went up in flames. I had to suppress a shudder at the memory of my suit burning up on my body, and the metal utility belt melting into my hide. Celestia, that was a dumb thing to do. I shook my head firmly and checked out what clothing items were still left. I found a rather skimpy looking nurse’s outfit that made me blush when I picked it up to look at it, and quickly put it back with my cheeks burning at the mental image of myself wearing it swimming around in my head. Practically everything indeed. I picked my way through the other clothing attire until I found a similar outfit to Fruity's.

"Is there a mirror in there?" I asked as I approached with the bundle.

"Yea, though it's a bit cracked."

I nodded and entered the changing room. I first slipped on a faded grey undershirt and then throw on the brown duster. The long coat covered my flank and my tail, though the bottom portion of my tail poked out from under it. Secondly I sat on my haunches in front of the mirror. Thankfully it wasn't cracked too badly; I could at least still see what I'm doing. I reached up with my forehooves and pulled my long mane back so it went between my ears and held it there while I used a free hoof to pluck out a blue braid I had picked up earlier, and then tied my mane back into a ponytail. Lastly, I then slipped a black desperado cowpony hat onto my head with my ears going though two holes so it could sit properly on my head. I took a step back to check myself out, and to straighten my outfit out, after I was happy with it, I smiled to myself. I certainly looked the part now, especially with my revolver sitting in its holster. Satisfied, I stepped out of the changing room.

"Well with that outfit as well, that brings the total up to six hundred and sixty six caps," Bastard said to Fruity as I rejoined him.

"That's a bit steep," I said, a little shocked.

"Steep? Its f-ing vertical."

"Hey, a pony's gotta make a living," Mr Bastard defended. I think I could see why he was called that now.

"Fine…" Fruity moaned as he began fishing out his caps. I did the same with my gems, plucking out a number of gems, while still leaving me with some as I'd need them later.

Right Bleeding Bastard spent a good five minutes estimating the value of the gems I had put down and then he counted the caps Fruity had and gave him back at least three hundred and fifty.

"Pleasure doing business with you," The old pony said as he stuffed the money and gems into a bit register.

"Err thanks."

Fruity and I then spent a few minutes evenly separating the supplies out so we had an equal share, although I got all the .357 Magnum rounds for Lucky 13, and Fruity had bought a combat knife. The dusters seemed to have enchanted pockets, so we could stuff as much of our stuff as we could into the pockets, and yet our coats weren't bulging. I believed the Pipbuck's item sorting spell would be needed to sort out what I wanted to pull out of the pockets in the future.

After making sure we had everything packed away, we bid Mr Bastard farewell and left. We resumed our previous motion of following the rail line. I smiled to myself at the familiarity of the heat of the sun beating down on me, the dryness of the air and the sandy, rocky landscape. It looked as if the Marejave escaped the devastation that had destroyed central and eastern Equestria, I could only hope.

As night fell, so did the temperature and if I thought it was cold in Manehattan during the day, dear Luna it was nothing compared to a desert's night.

"Fuck me it's cold," Fruity whined as a long strand of snot hung from his nose.

"Heh, welcome to the Marejave!" I joked. "And you might want to blow your nose."

He rolled his eyes and wiped his nose with his wing, then flicked it away.

"Ewwwwwwww."

I stopped walking as red bars began to appear in my EFS to our right. I could see movement in the corner of my eye, and it looked to be a big group of things.

"What is it?" Fruity asked as he noticed I had stopped.

"Hostile targets," I said and nodded in the direction of the movement.

Fruity looked and in the low light of the moon I could see Fruity pale. "What did you see?"

"I fuck ton of big lizards and they’re heading this way. And they look hungry," He said, backing away.

I turned and looked, and he was right. I recognised the look of the lizards to be similar to what geckos were like, but these were many times larger. I counted two dozen of them, way too many for us to take on. Looking around frantically, I spotted a building in the distance.

"There, run!" I shouted while pointing in the direction.

My shout alerted the geckos that we had noticed them and they all started to run after us. We galloped as fast as we could, jumping out rocks, jumping a rusty barrier beside a carriageway, jumping a concrete divider, over another barrier, running over more sand and rocks until we made it to the building. My Pipbuck alerted me to discovering the MASA (Marejave, Astronomical Space Agency) Headquarters. That’s where we grinded to a halt. The doors were locked.

Chapter 4: Unexpected Find

Fallout Equestria

Influx

Chapter 4: Unexpected Find

Predictably, the door to the building was locked and we didn't have time to mess around or search for an alternate entrance because those mutated geckos would be on us in seconds. Fruity slammed into the door in a shoulder barge but the door resisted and he bounced off with a painful moan.

"Ah shit, Luna fuck me sideways that door is solid," He groaned getting back up.

"We haven't got time for this." I cried. I might as well put my mechanical weight to good use and bust this door open myself. I jumped forward, landed on my forehooves and spun around and thrust my hindlegs out in an applebuck against the door knobs. My buck, coupled with the momentum and my weight, overwhelmed the door's lock and it burst open, the two doors slamming into the walls inside.

"Inside." I yelled with urgency.

We both dashed inside as the geckos let out a roar as they continued to chase us. We grabbed a door each and slammed it closed, but because I busted the door's main lock, we couldn't shut it.

"Shit." Fruity whined as he held the door closed.

I looked around frantically for something to barricade the door with, but there was nothing close. However, I then noticed something at the bottom of the door. With hope filling my rapidly beating heart, I looked up and let out a cry of happiness. The door had deadbolts.

"The deadbolts," I cried and jumped at the two at the bottom, quickly grabbing the metal rods and jamming them into their holes in the floor.

"What, yes." Fruity said as he looked up and quickly jammed the pair at the top of the door into place to seal the door.

Once the bolts were locked in place, we then pressed ourselves against the door just as the geckos crashed into it. We dug our hooves into the dirty tiled floor as we held the doors to keep the little monsters out. They bashed and crashed against the door repeatedly for a good ten minutes before they gave up. We listened until we couldn't hear them anymore, before we slumped to the floor panting.

"Phew that was close," Fruity whined as he pulled himself up before he held his hoof out to help me up. Taking his hoof, I pulled myself back up as well.

"Yeah, but we're trapped in here for a while though. I don't think it'll be safe to go back out with those things nearby."

Fruity nodded in agreement as we began to look around the lobby of the MASA Headquarters. The place was a mess, papers and other junk littering the floors and other surfaces. The reception desk was trashed, its terminals broken and smashed and the filing cabinets behind it seemed to be missing all their drawers. In the middle of the room a large model of a rocket stood but looked like someone had beat it with a sledgehammer constantly for weeks with its body all dented and out of shape. We could see several doors in the room, one large door stood open in the far left corner, two doors leading to toilets sat in the back wall and to our right we could see a blue security door with a cardkey terminal on the wall beside it and laying dead in front of the door were four bodies of ponies wearing the same kind of cobbled together armours we know from Raiders.

"The hell happened to them?" Fruity asked no one in particular.

"Beats me." I added, not approaching the bodies. Fruity, on the other hoof, walked up to the corpses and began to root through what possessions they still held.

"What are you doing?" I gasped out in disgust.

Fruity looked up with a confused expression and then looked back down at the corpse that he had his hooves stuffed into the saddlebags of. "Taking their shit, what does it look like?" He deadpanned.

"Have you no respect for the dead?" I asked, shocked.

He looked confused again as he looked down at the dead raiders. "What, these guys?" He asked before giving off a soft laugh. "I'd piss and shit on their graves."

My mouth dropped open in absolute shock, I mean, how can he be so disrespectful to the dead?

"Crystal, these are Raiders. These guys are the worst of the worst, remember, they don't deserve respect. They would happy violate your dead corpse, believe me, I've seen it," He sighed as he finished looting from the raider and moved to the next. "In this world, looting the dead can mean the difference from life or death, the sooner you learn this and accept it the better it'll be, this is a harsh world as you've seen so far. It'll never be easy."

I opened my mouth to argue, but then closed it as I thought back to since I woke up in that stasis pod. He was right. I wasn’t going to like it but he was right about both things. "Alright." I said as I approached the bodies.

"Oh ho ho yeah, jackpot," Fruity suddenly yelled happily as he flipped the dead body of a mare over and pulled a slightly bloody MP12 Plasma Rifle off the floor. "Thank you raiders."

The raider at my hooves was a stallion and seemed to have had been armed with a Colt-Army .357 Revolver as one lay beside his corpse. Upon inspecting his body, I pulled his armour off his chest and found him riddled with small holes. My vision flashed red as squares began to appear and highlighted the multiple holes, in total thirty nine separate holes were punched into his chest. I heard a beep inside my head and then a report appeared in my vision. I swear this'll drive me mad one day.

"Analysis complete: Puncher wounds caused by anti-infantry ammunition of 5mm. Likely weapon of use, Ironshod XM214 Minigun" That doesn't sound good. What in here could possibly use such a mean sounding weapon? I looked at the other corpses and they all had multiple puncher wounds in their chests and lots of them. All the corpses also were facing the door which told me that whatever killed them was behind that door. A spark caught my attention from the card reader and it looked like it had been tampered with. I suppose the raiders tried to force their way through the door and probably triggered the security system since it was a security door.

"Apart from the Plasma Rifle, these guys had jack shit. Sure, there were a couple of pistols and a ton of drugs but nothing much useful," Fruity sighed as he pocketed the things he found on the other corpses while I pocketed what I found on the stallion. Beside the revolver I found a hooful of ammunition, a couple syringes of Med-X, a bottle of Buckout and something called Hydra.

"Wait a minute," I looked back up at Fruity who was now examining his salvaged rifle closely. "Ah bollocks, the trigger system's fucked." He slumped sadly. He shook his head and tore a long strip of fabric from one of the raider's armour to create a strap and tied it to both ends of the useless Plasma Rifle and slung onto his back.

"Why are you carrying it if its trigger won't work?" I asked.

He shrugged as he stood. "Could sell it to a merchant or if we're lucky we might find another one somewhere to repair this one with." Fair enough I suppose. Fruity walked up to the door and lifted a hoof to press at the terminal. Not good.

"Whoa wait," I cried out.

"Huh, what is it?"

"These guys," I said gesturing to the dead raiders. "They must have been tampering with the card reader and set off some sort of security. Whatever killed them came from behind that door."

The purple pegasus looked from the raiders and to the door a few times before backing away from the damaged card reader.

"So little miss zebra, what should we do while we wait for those geckos to bugger off?"

"Hmm, well we could explore this place, you never know we might find something useful," I suggested.

"Heh, better than doing nothing I guess."

I smiled softly, nodded and began to trot towards the open double doors in the far left of the room. The door opened up into what looked to be the beginning of a museum full of containers and barrels.

"What is this place?" Fruity asked with a raised eyebrow as he looked over the room.

"Um, the MASA Headquarters, a place that deals with space," I answered while also taking in the odd museum like room, I couldn't help the feeling of familiarity washing over me. It felt like I've been here before.

"Plasma?" Fruity questioned as he stepped up to an exhibit with several containers full of glowing liquid of different colours. "What does plasma have to do with space exploration?"

"I dunno." I replied and stepped into the museum. Suddenly a security shutter slammed down over the door, blocking our exit.

"What the hell?" Fruity cried as he spun around to face me.

I looked back in shock at how close that shutter had been on slamming down on my backside. "I think the security is still active…" I whimpered.

CLUNK!

We spun around to face the sudden sound and saw that a section of the far wall between two exhibits had moved back slightly.

"Now what?" Fruity asked as he rejoined me.

Just as soon as he finished his question the sunken wall segment slid to the side to reveal a secret compartment, which contained a big robot.

"F-Fruity, what is, what is that?" I whimpered fearfully.

Fruity's eyes widened in horror as they tracked pony robot moved into the museum. It looked like a robot pony painted in military green and mounted on a set of tracks and appeared to be armed with a minigun and a missile launcher. I guess we know what killed those raiders now.

"It's a Sentry Drone," Fruity whispered.

"That's bad isn't it?" I asked while feeling my knees start to quake. Fruity simply nodded in reply.

"Intruders detected, lethal force authorised." It droned out as it rolled out of its hidden room. Yep, definitely not good.

"SCATTER!" Fruity yelled suddenly and beat his wings hard, lifting off the floor and zipping out the door next to the robot leading deeper into the building.

"Fruity!" I cried out in shock and disbelief. The robot didn't follow the fleeing pegasus as its focus appeared to be solely on me.

"Priority target identified, Zebra scum." The machine droned out as its minigun began to spin.

"Oh no." I quickly dove behind an exhibit platform, which had a model of a mound of dirt with a bunch of small barrels sticking out of it. I slid on the dirty floor until I stopped behind the exhibit as the machine began to spray bullets wildly and at high speed around where I had been standing moments before. I held my head in my forehooves as the machine proceeded to destroy the exhibit with its hail of bullets while it turned to follow me. Oh Fruity, why did you leave me?

The hail of lead stopped and the sound of the machine's tracks grated against the floor as it began to move replaced the minigun's soundtrack. The bucket of bolts was after me! Whimpering in fear, I crouched as low as I could go and moved around the exhibit to stay out of the machine's field of view. I couldn't fight it, there was no way I could destroy it with Lucky 13 and its minigun and missile launcher would probably destroy my body before I could even get close to it. I have no idea how durable my endoskeleton after all so I can't risk going hoof to hoof with it. Oh Fruity, where are you?

I peeked around the next corner. I could see the door Fruity had flown off through and that the machine wasn't in my line of sight which meant it was now behind me. Suddenly, Fruity landed in the threshold of the door and he seemed to be holding a small cylindrical object in one of his wings.

"Hey, rust bucket!" Fruity yelled to get the robot's attention. "Catch!" He then unfurled his wing quickly and flung the object he held into the room and at the machine. "Crystal, run!"

Only one thing came to mind to what Fruity had thrown for him to yell at me to run and that was a grenade. I pushed myself up onto my hooves and began to run as fast as I could towards Fruity, my hooves slipped a few times on the dirty floor which threatened to trip me up as I ran. The machine's minigun began to fire again and I felt a round punch into my hind leg as I dove through the threshold. I crashed onto my stomach again when a bright blue flash filled my vision which was followed by a burst of crackling electricity. I pushed myself back up onto my hooves and winced at the biting pain in my injured leg and then I groaned as I had a sudden wave of vertigo, along with my eye sight flickering and momentarily going deaf.

"Warning, disruption field detected." Flashed into my vision in red.

Disruption field, what?

"Disruption field... Negative." Flashed again but in green. Whatever this Disruption Field is, it messed with the mechanics of my mechanical body.

"Hey, are you alright, you looked like you were gonna puke!" Fruity asked in concern and it was then I realised he was holding me with his forehooves on my shoulders.

I shook my head to clear myself of the sudden vertigo and looked at my concerned pegasus friend. "Ugh, yeah I'm fine. What did you do?" I asked, feeling concerned about whatever Fruity had used as whatever it was affected me as well.

He gave a cocky smile. "I just fried that bitch with a Disruption Grenade," I tilted my head in confusion since I didn't know what one of those was. His smile faded as he realised I didn't understand what he was talking about. "Oh right, stable po... err, zebra. It's basically a magic grenade that fries the electronics of machinery."

I had a sudden realisation, which I kept from making my eyes go wide. I didn't know what it was that Fruity had thrown, I had guessed it was a grenade but I didn't get that tingling feeling in the back of my head and the influx of knowledge that usually accompanied it. I suppose I don't know every weapon after all. Thank Celestia.

"Oh." I felt dread fill my heart at what one of those grenades could mean for me. If I were still in that room when that thing went off I'd likely be dead as one of those grenades could possibly shut my body down for good.

"Is that why you flew off on me?" I asked, sounding hurt.

He wilted slightly at the hurt in my voice. "Yeah, sorry. I knew had one and needed a moment to find it."

Looking back into the room, we saw that the robot had indeed been fried as it was standing in the middle of the room, leaning slightly to one side with all its weapons pointing to the floor and smoke seeping out of several places. The spent grenade's casing lay at its tracks. I definitely do not want to be anywhere near one of those things when they go off.

"Where did you get that anyway?" I asked.

"One of those raiders I searched had one funnily enough."

We approached the sealed door and began to examine the shutter that had come down when we entered the museum. It was one of those high security shutters that were designed to lock in place once down and strong enough to take severe punishment. These shutters were likely installed to prevent thefts from the museum, but the Sentry Drone…that seemed a little excessive.

"There is no way we are getting out through here, looks like we have to trek further into the building," Fruity sighed as we turned to find an alternate exit. "We get ourselves out of one mess and into another,"

"Tell me about it." I groaned as we entered the next room of the museum. This room held exhibits of model rockets, and tucked away in the far left corner, there appeared to be a display platform showing a large dome.

"Oooh?" Mused the pegasus, eyes alight as the details of the scale rocket models crossed his view.

I, however, was hit with another wave of familiarity. This was bugging me now. This place felt so familiar but I just couldn't place it. We trotted into the rocket exhibit, Fruity admiring the many models of rockets that had once been used to send satellites or ponies into space, while I, on the other hoof, was preoccupied with my sense of déjà-vu. I stopped, closed my eyes and shook my head trying to clear it. Upon opening my eyes I found myself standing before the dome and its exhibit tablet.

"MASA Test Site Launch Facility." My eyes widened as it suddenly clicked.

A group of fillies and colts crowded around the exhibits in an excited manner while their teacher tried and failed to get their attention or to get them to calm down while on their school trip to the MASA Headquarters' Public Museum Floor. There was, however just one pale pink filly who stood off to one side to be away from the hazards running amuck. Ever since her short tumble down a few steps at school which resulted in breaking her leg the filly kept a good distance from other fillies and colts that were moving quickly that could result in a crash or a bump into her and risk injuring her again. The teacher, a mulberry earth pony mare by the name of Cheerilee, groaned as she stood close to the pale filly.

"Why did I agree to substitute on my vacation?" She asked herself. "The little ponies back home were never this disobedient or obstructive."

The adult mare looked down at the young filly. "Are you doing ok, Crystal?" She asked with concern; she had been made aware of the filly's medical problems before the trip. The small pink filly nodded with a weak smile as she felt safer with the teacher. The mulberry mare turned around to the exhibit behind her. "Well, at least I can still teach one student," The mare said with a smile as she began to explain what the exhibit of the dome meant. "This is a model of the dome at the MASA Test Site a few miles south of here and..."

I blinked as the sudden flashback faded back to memory and looked down at the floor. A hundred and ninety five years ago, I stood here during a school trip. I smiled weakly at the reminder that I thankfully still had my memories after whatever happened to me.

"NO FUCKING WAY!" Fruity yelled suddenly. I squeaked in surprise and spun around to find him standing before a model of a rocket motor. "This engine is what the current Enclave Raptor propulsion engines are based on."

I joined my excited friend and looked down at the plaque sitting on its stand. "Revolutionary Plasma WRX-374 Rocket Motor..." The rest of the plague unfortunately was unintelligible.

"What's an Enclave Raptor?" I asked looking to my purple friend.

"Oh err, a flying battleship, pretty much," He replied hesitantly. That didn't sound good for the ground dwellers like us. "You... um, don't really need to, err, worry about those right now," That didn't exactly fill me with much confidence. "Shall we move on?" He said in more of a statement rather than a question as he turned away from the model and to a set of double doors and shutting down any chance to continue the Raptor conversation for now. Well I suppose any subject on the Enclave would be a sore topic for him considering what they did to him.

He pushed open the doors to reveal a room full of...

"ROBOTS!" I screamed and dove for cover behind the wall outside the room.

Fruity started to chuckle, which devolved into a full on hysterical laugh. I glared daggers at him as he laughed.

After a good minute he finally calmed down but continued to smirk. I pouted as he tried to regain his self control. "I'm sorry, but that... *snicker* was just hilarious,"

I hesitantly peeked around the door frame to see the room full of rusty old defunct robots of various models and purposes. I sighed with relief and looked back up at my still snickering pegasus friend and a light in my HUD caught my eye. Focusing on what caught my attention I realised it was my compass, but the light I saw was just a single white bar exactly where Fruity is standing. In that instant I internally facehoofed and felt embarrassed at my earlier reaction to seeing the robots as I had completely forgotten about my EFS and that the compass could identify friend from foe.

"I'm such a featherbrain," I groaned, actually facehooving this time.

"Huh?"

"I completely forgot about my EFS," I clarified.

"Oh, so, is it safe?" He asked, gesturing to the robot filled room with a wing.

I stepped back up to be at his side again and surveyed the room. The compass in my lower left vision shifted but remained empty of any threats but I had a niggling feeling that it wasn't going to be empty for long. "Seems clear." I said as I took the first step into the room.

The robots all looked old, well of course they were, like me they were all over a hundred and ninety years old but what I mean was, back in my time, these seem like old models of the robots we were familiar with now. To my left was a rather large four legged pony like robot with two huge miniguns that looks like a predecessor to the Sentry Drone we are very familiar with. One robot on the right towards the top corner looked like one of those spider leg like hovering bots and one robot sitting next to the open door on the right resembled a sprite-bot but what stood out the most about it was the ridiculously huge antenna sticking out its head that looked like the sort of antenna you'd see on a roof for catching television signals.

We entered the room and like when we first entered the museum, a security shutter slammed down behind us.

"Ah, son of a bitch!" Fruity exclaimed jumping forward and tucked his tail between his legs.

"Are you alright?" I asked, looking from him to the shutter and back.

"That bastard took a chunk out my tail." He whined. Sure enough when examining the shutter a little closer I could see a tuff of purple hair stuck under it.

CLUNK! CLUNK!

We froze and slowly turned our heads towards the back wall where two sections of the wall had shifted backwards between two display stands.

"I don't suppose you have any more of those grenades do you, Fruity?" I asked with fear gripping my words.

"Sorry, all out." He replied, looking just as nervous as I was.

The two sections of wall slid aside to reveal two Sentry Drones but only one of them seemed to be active as it rolled out of its hiding place. The other drone looked as defunct as the display robots.

"Intruder alert, engaging hostile targets."

"I don't have enough bullets for the two pistols I picked up to even do anything to that but you got plenty for that revolver of yours. You have a Pipbuck, so use SATS and shoot something vital, I'm gonna act as cannon fodder to give you a clear shot," Fruity said just as nervously as before.

"Are you insane?" I shrieked. "That thing will..."

"High priority target identified. Die you striped son of a bitch!"

"AHHHHH!" I screamed as the machine's twin miniguns opened up and I ran for the nearest cover which was a gap between the old model sentry and the wall. There was one thing I knew for certain right now, I HATE THIS PLACE.

"Oi, you glorified toaster, ya mother was a dish washer and your father was a rubbish compactor," Fruity yelled from somewhere above. Yeah, like throwing insults at a robot will get you a reaction, they don't have feelings. I could hear bullets now pounding into the display robot above me as the machine kept firing. "Hey, I'm talking to you." I just about heard over the roar of the miniguns a faint pop and suddenly the gunfire stopped.

"Armed target detected, threat priority target."

"Crystal, shoot it now!" Fruity yelled as he began to fly around to the room. The hulking robot had turned its back to me as I peeked out from behind my cover. Fruity was doing his best flying around the open space around the top of the room to keep the machine occupied. C'mon Crystal, he's giving you a chance. I grabbed the revolver from its holster and held it tightly in my mouth and looked to the machine nervously. I quickly stole a glance at my Pipbuck and then back at the robot and concentrated on the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell built into the device. Suddenly everything seemed to freeze as if time had stopped. Fruity was in the middle of doing a barrel roll while avoiding two streams of five millimetre bullets. The robot had turned slightly giving me a good view of one of its two miniguns and plenty of places to shoot. The robot became surrounded in a white aura and then separated into multiple segments, tracks, body, guns, head and a small square at the back of the machine's neck which when I focused on it said it was called the "Combat Inhibitor", well that looked important. It seemed I would also have a ninety five percent chance of hitting it which was good, I wasn't that far from it so I could understand the good chance but I wouldn't be surprised if my being a bio-mechanical zebra had anything to do with it also and poured all the action mana points I could into the spell. The spell queued up three shots and I ended the process and time began to flow again. I hope this works. Through the effects of SATS I pulled the trigger on Lucky 13 three times in quick succession, firing off three .357 magnum rounds and with my mechanical vision I was able to see two of the three bullets impact the small plate covering which shortly afterwards began to spark and fizz. I guess I hit something vital.

Fruity looped around when the machine's rapid gunfire cut out all of a sudden and landed back on the floor beside me. "You got it," He said with surprise.

"I hope so." I replied, while watching the machine as sparks began to fly from the damaged inhibitor. I have a bad feeling about this.

The panel covering the inhibitor suddenly blew off the machine with a puff of black smoke and the drone began to move and resume firing its guns. The drone was moving in random directions and shooting anywhere, both its miniguns were aiming in entirely different directions, not practically aiming at anything really, just firing randomly, the thing was going completely crazy.

"Err, what did you shoot?" Fruity asked as we dove for cover behind the same prototype sentry drone model as I did earlier.

"Um, the Combat Inhibitor," I answered.

Fruity facehoofed and groaned. "Oh ponyfeathers, that thing will be on total rampage,"

"Give me a break, I've only been in the wasteland for the best part of a day or two," Fruity opened his mouth to retort and I suspected he'd mention the week on the train. "The train ride don't count," I quickly added to which he shut his mouth. "So, what do we do now?"

"We make a break for the Planetarium..." He said while gesturing to the door with a sign hanging from the ceiling saying Planetarium. "...with it going barmy it won't focus on us, too busy pissing bullets at the walls or ceiling to care about us," He moved around to the other side closer to the left wall where the only open door in the room sat. "Just gotta time it right."

I rose up slightly so I could see over the display platform. The drone was crashing into the other exhibits while it continued to fire. It drove into another stand and ground its tracks as if it was trying to push the stand. Fruity tugged on my foreleg, getting my attention and then nodded to the door. Sharing a nod we quickly ran for it. Unfortunately, the machine got itself unstuck and turned around firing.

"Oh fuck!" Fruity cried as he dropped when we ran through the door.

I let out a pained cry as I felt several pains bite into my flanks as the machine's bullets found a target, but thankfully only a few hit, though it still hurt. As soon as we were both through the door, another shutter slammed down locking us in the planetarium. We held our breaths for a short while, waiting for the clunking sound that usually accompanies the shutters but this time around there wasn't one. We both let out a sigh of relief and slumped to the floor while we could still hear the drone behind the shutter going nuts.

"Hey, you good?" Fruity asked?

"Hmm, I think it got me," I replied with a groan.

"Where?"

"My butt,"

"Mind if I have a look?"

"I beg your pardon?" I cried out, my face tinged with a blush as I couldn't believe he just asked that.

"Whoa, hey, I meant the wound, not your plot," He said waving his forelegs defensively. "I swear,"

I eyed him for a moment before turning my head again and groaned. "Ok." I said, trusting his word.

I felt the long coat of my duster being shifted off my flanks, bringing a fresh wave of pain as the movement of fabric irritated the bullet wounds which made me grit my teeth and hiss.

"Damn girl, you got ten holes in your ass," Fruity said sounding impressed. "Getting shot in the ass ten times would put even a big stallion like that prick Biceps down for good, you are lucky," Luck has nothing to do with it Fruity. "The wounds don't look that bad, a healing potion should take care of that, oh and the hole in your leg too, I'm surprised you could walk and run without the pain driving you mad,"

"I got a high pain threshold," I threw out there, hoping he'd accept it.

"Hah, no shit." He laughed before an ominous moaning sound echoed throughout the large open room. The Planetarium was a huge room painted black and speckled with white dots to simulate stars and in the middle hanging from the ceiling was a model of the Equus Solar System. The large orange sun was the only source of illumination in the room. I smiled to myself as this room looked exactly the same as the last time I saw it as a little filly.

"What in the fuck was that?" Fruity asked fearfully as he looked around for the source of the moaning noise.

"Don't worry, it's the ambient music for this room, a whale song I believe, was suppose to give a sense of atmosphere," I replied automatically as I stood back up started for a blue door I saw on the other side of the room while also fishing out a healing potion from my duster's pocket.

"How do you know that?" I froze, Oh Celestia I can't believe I blew my trap like that (By trap I meant my mouth). I need to think fast, um...

"I read it in an old magazine once in my Stable's old stores," I quickly responded. I felt so bad lying to him.

"Ok." He said slowly. Oh no, he doesn't believe me. I held my breath while I expected him to question me further but nothing came. He either accepted it or has decided to let it slide for now. Oh, I want to tell him the truth, I really do but I'm so scared of what the outcome would be. I don't want the only pony I've come to like see me as a machine or a monster. I shivered at the thought of losing him to my condition.

The blue door opened up to a stairwell, it was dark inside. That's never a good sign.

BANG!

"Now what?" Fruity whined as we whirled around.

Surveying the star speckled walls in the planetarium, it was nearly impossible to see where the corners of the room were or if the room itself was square but thankfully the dull light from the model sun reveal a section of wall that was slightly bowed out thanks to it being oddly shaded.

"Oh come on, just how many drones does this place have?" Fruity cried out in annoyance. I shared his annoyance. Why did this place have such things for museum security? It just felt a little overkill for that. I guess we now knew why we didn't hear the clunking sound like before, the door for this drone failed to open.

"Apparently a lot," I deadpanned as another bang rung out and the bowing section of wall slid out a little more. "C'mon, let's keep moving before it sees us."

The purple stallion nodded and we made our way inside the stairway. I reached out with my tail, wrapping the hairs around the door handle and pulled the door closed quietly as not to alert the robot where we are and... I stopped and blinked as I looked back at the now closed door to see my tail wrapped around the handle. A flash back to my nightmare flashed into my head, where I used my tail to grab a hold of the Crystal Heart thanks to something in my tail hairs. Nano-Fibres! If it's true, I have Nano-Fibres then, could that mean... Oh sweet mother of Luna please no, that nightmare couldn't have been real, it just couldn't.

I was brought out of my horrible thoughts as Fruity knocked on my metal forehead. "Hello, Equus to Crystal are you there?" He asked and waved his hoof in front of my eyes.

"Huh, what?"

"You spaced out on me there, are you ok?" He asked in concern.

"Yeah I'm fine," I replied with an obviously fake Pinkie Pie smile as I headed up the stairs and into what looked like a control room of sorts.

"Crystal, you can tell me if something is bothering you, you know, I want to help, your my friend," Damn it Fruity, stab me in the heart why don't you. Ohhh, I really want to tell you what's wrong but I... I can't.

"I'm fine really, I think this wasteland is getting to me, I, um, have spent my life, err, in isolation after all," Poor response there Crystal, poor response.

"Alright, but please, don't bottle it up, it'll drive ya nuts."

I nodded and smiled at him. The control room was dark and wasn't much to look at as most of the room was made up of rusty machinery and a couple of control panels. Unfortunately it wasn't the sort of control room I was hoping it would be, by that I mean security. This room was most likely the control room for the Planetarium.

"Whoa, watch out!" Fruity said as he bit down on my tail and yanked me back slightly, making me cry out from the sudden pain at the tug.

"Ow, hey," I whined, shaking my tail once he released it.

"Sorry, but you nearly stepped on a dead body," Fruity responded bluntly.

"I what?" I shrieked and jumped back. Sure enough, slumped against one control panel lay a long dead skeleton of a pony which still wore the tatters of what had once been a MASA jumpsuit. I looked over the skeleton in horror as it brought back memories of my first day outside of that stasis chamber. No, pull yourself together Crystal. I shook my head to jar the horrible memories away. With a clearer head I noticed something under the hoof that was resting on the control panel. "Hey, I see something under its hoof."

Fruity looked over to the skeleton and clocked onto what I had seen and fluttered over the bones to land on the control panel and gently, as to not disturb the skeleton too much, pulled the flat red object from under its hoof.

"You'll never guess what I just found," Fruity said in bafflement.

"What, the security key?" I asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Eeyup," I gave him a disbelieving look. "No seriously, look," The pegasus flapped his wings and jumped over the skeleton and landed gracefully in front of me holding the small red card by his teeth. He wasn't kidding, the card was indeed a security key. According to the card it was an Lv2 Security Key. Huh, what were the chances of finding the security key in this place just lying there for anyone to see? Ten to one, hundred to one, million to one?

"We'll likely need that, keep a hold of it Fruity." I said with a smile at the stroke of good luck. He nodded and tucked the card into one of his duster's pockets.

We approached the only door in the room and Fruity pulled the door open. He immediately balked and gagged as he stumbled backwards away from the door. However before I could ask what was wrong I found out. The smell that came through the open door was overwhelming. It was a reminder of my first waking hours in the wasteland when surrounded by death. The stench of rotting flesh.

"Holy... ugh, damn, who died?" Fruity whined.

"Everypony," I deadpanned.

"What I'd give for a peg right about now." Fruity said to himself as we entered the hallway of what looked to be the office floor for the MASA HQ from the style of the deteriorated decor.

We chose a direction at random and began to trot quietly down the hall to the right. I took note of Fruity's ears, which were twitching every so often and moving around as if listening out for anything out of the ordinary and I found myself subconsciously doing the same. The second floor was very dark and dank, perfect for hidden horrors to lurk. I quickly glanced down to the bottom left of my HUD and balked for a second at the number of red bars filling the compass.

We stopped as we came to a T-junction, to the left the hallway would take us deeper into the building but according to the sign on the wall, the path to the right would take us to some stairs that would lead us to the lobby as the sign shown "Lobby" with an arrow pointing down the right path.

There was suddenly a crash, and the sound of breaking would and the sound of something being thrown hard and striking something somewhere in the building. Maybe that rampaging sentry just broke something.

"Let's just get the hell out of here." Fruity said and we quickly began to trot towards the stairs. Our hopes of finding our way back down died when we came to the stairs. The stairs were completely filled in with rubble which looked to have fallen through the ceiling. "Ah, bollocks!" Fruity whined.

My threat warning flashed into my vision and that was quickly followed by a hideous hissing growl from down the hall. We whirled around to see a pony stumble into view. No, wait, it wasn’t a pony, it was a ghoul.

"Z...z...zombie," I whimpered stepping back as the undead creature turned to face us, its lifeless dead eyes boring into mine. It opened its hole riddled mouth, its broken and rotten yellow teeth being put on show as it let out a lifeless but feral roar and began to approach us at a quick trot. I suppose with how degraded its body was, the zombie couldn't manage much more than that.

"Cr...Crystal, you, you gotta shoot it," Fruity urged as he pulled his serrated combat knife from its sheath on his left foreleg.

"B...but it's a... a zombie," I whimpered fearfully, my knees shaking with my fear.

"It's a feral ghoul, it was once a pony like me and you, you gotta kill it, you'd be doing that poor soul a favour by putting it down, now shoot it, the quicker you learn this shit the better we'll be in the wasteland." Fruity yelled over the mouth grip of his knife.

He was right, this wasn't the semi-peaceful world I grew up in. It was a horrible and violent world full of monsters and bad ponies and other nasty things that'll likely kill you if you look at them funny. But, would I still be a good pony, or Zebra, if I kill, could I still be good if I kill others to survive? We'll find out in the future...

I pulled Lucky 13 from its holster and clamped my jaws around the grip. The monster by now was only a few feet from us and I had no alternative so I steeled my nerves and pulled the trigger repeatedly, until the hammer of the revolver was hitting empty chambers. All but one of my shots hit the undead pony. My enhanced vision caught the impacts of the five .357 magnum rounds as they punched into the ghoul. One in the chest, one in the shoulder, one in the neck and two in the head to which its skull exploded in a shower of gore which disgustingly enough, speckled me with bits of rotting brain matter.

"Eww, get it off, get it off!" I shrieked in a rather girly fashion.

"Hold still," Fruity commanded. I closed my eyes and didn't move, too creeped out to consider moving and not wanting to dislodge the rotting organic matter now speckled all over my face. A shiver ran down my spine when I felt Fruity delicately use his wing to brush at my face, his surprisingly soft feathers flicking away the bits that landed on me. His wing also brushed over my hat as I could hear the feather grinding against the rough fabric of the old Stetson. "There, all better,"

"Thank you." I sighed with relief but internally I had conflicting emotions about what I just did. A part of me was mortified that I just killed something but a primal part of me was glad I did. This is going to take a while to get used to and I've not fully gotten used to my mechanical body yet either as it keeps springing something new upon me.

I sat on my haunches and held Lucky 13 in one forehoof while I pushed out the cylinder with the other and then tipped the gun vertically so the spent shells could fall to the floor. Once the cylinder was empty, I reached into one of the deep pockets of my duster where I had put all the ammo I had acquired. Focusing on the item sorting spell in the pipbuck with my mind I willed the .357 magnum rounds to the top. I felt my hoof collide with a speed loader and upon pulling it out, I found that it had six bullets arranged so that I could push all six in at once. Thankful that I wasn't going to have to manually put each bullet in the cylinder one by one, I inserted the bullets and pushed the plunger so all six bullets were deposited into the revolver and then put the loader back into my pocket and snapped the gun closed now fully reloaded and then put that back into its holster.

"We're gonna need to find another way out," Fruity sighed with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "There's gotta be another way down."

I nodded my agreement and we began up the corridor, deeper into the building.

The second floor was a right mess. As we walked the halls, we saw that some walls had collapsed giving us easy access into other office spaces or the rest rooms, to which the back wall to one of the toilets had collapsed, opening a way into a room with a computer.

I was still taken aback with the level of damage everything had taken from nearly two hundred years of no maintenance. This was still a big change for me considering everything I remembered was pristine and intact. So much had changed. I sighed deeply as again I was reminded that I was no longer in the world I knew.

As we walked the halls and explored the offices while we tried to find our way out, we encountered more ghouls. Some of these undead monsters I was able to see in some of the still working lights and was able to see that they were wearing the remnants of what used to be their uniforms. They used to work here. Fruity was right, killing them is the best thing we can do for them. Fruity reminded me while we explored that a Feral Ghoul is a Ghoul who had lost their mind completely. How bad could it be too loose yourself, to feel you mind slipping? After thinking about it more and with those reasoning's, the most equine thing to do is to put them down. We did encounter a few more as we moved deeper and killing them got easier after each one. Deep down I was scared about that because I could feel a part of me that seemed to enjoy it, the thrill of the battle or the use of a firearm. What scared me more about that though is that I didn’t know if it was ME or the MACHINE since part of my brain is synthetic. I still didn't know just what had been done to me, for all I knew whoever built me could have programmed me to like violence. That in itself was a horrifying possibility.

We covered about half the second floor before we found a way up to the third floor. We opened a door to what looked like a staff room as there were lockers against one wall, a fridge next to the door and a table in the middle of the room. However the ceiling to most of the room had collapsed, crushing a lot of what was already in here to begin with and a section of the fallen ceiling made a ramp up to a door in the room above but to get to it we would have to get through three more ghouls.

"Just how many of you buggers are there?" Fruity asked rhetorically.

I groaned as I pulled Lucky out of its holster. I had used thirty bullets since we got here and I was down to my last three speed loads of six bullets. I could hit a stationary target no problem, but a moving target, whole different thing.

"I got the one on the right." Fruity said as he branded his bloodied knife and flew at a ghoul who hadn't noticed us yet.

I nodded and took aim at the closer of the remaining two ghouls and fired two shots. Both shots missed by a mile as the bony ghoul limped and turned to face me. The ghoul opened its mouth to let out its bellow and I fired another two rounds. The first grazed the bony remains of the ghoul's nose but the second bullet flew into the ghoul's decayed mouth and blew the creature's brains out the back of its head. The ghoul collapsed into a heap on the rubble strewn floor with a massive hole in the back of its head. I cringed at the horrible sight, my lapse in concentration allowed the last ghoul to gain ground and I failed to notice the flashing warning light in my EFS until it was too late.

I felt a heavy thud collide with my side, making me stumble sideways a little but failed to knock me over or really hurt for that matter. "Crystal watch..." Fruity tried to yell in warning but stopped as he was too late. The ghoul lay on the floor and looked to be in a daze. I would be an all if I crashed into eight hundred pounds of thinly padded steel. "...out." He finished lamely as he pulled the knife out of the neck of the ghoul he attacked.

"You must be built like a tank to not get knocked down after taking a tackle like that." Fruity remarked in astonishment. I inwardly cringed at how close he was to describing what I could be inside.

My ears perked up as I heard the ghoul shifting behind me as it struggled to pull itself back up onto its broken hooves.

I sighed. "Sit down." I groaned and kicked out with my left hind leg. I didn't try to restrain myself so I think my body put every ounce of mechanical strength into the kick as I heard a wet tearing sound followed by a spurting of liquid shortly after my hoof connected with the ghoul's chin. Fruity's mouth dropped, and if this was a cartoon, it would probably have hit the floor and rolled out the door with how he held his mouth open in shock surprise. His shock prompted me to look at the ghoul and I gasped at what I saw, at what I did. My kick not only broke the ghoul's neck, it tore its head clean off its shoulders and kicked it clear across the room. That explained the wet tearing and liquid spurting noises. Dear goddesses, just how much strength did my endoskeleton possess?

"What?" I cried as Fruity was still gawking.

He shook his head to recover from the shock of my kicking a ghoul's head off. "Dude, I knew you zebras were strong but, fuck me!"

"We fall in the same category as Earth Ponies so we have superior natural strength," I think...

"Remind me to never piss you off, I don't I could handle you giving me a slap," He said with a smirk as he passed me to move towards the ramp.

"Oh har har."

The pegasus slowly walked up the incline to the door at the top. I, on the other hoof, stopped at the foot of the ramp. The broken section of roof didn't look safe or sturdy and with my weight it would certainly give way.

"Um, Fruity, that doesn't look safe." I called up to him.

The pegasus jiggled the door knob and then moaned in annoyance. "Blast, locked," He let go of the door and slid down the steep broken floor to the ground before me without turning around so he was still facing the broken ramp. There was suddenly a loud crumbling crack and the ramp seemed to split in half one half fell level to the floor while the other remained flush with the wall as it slid down. "Oh, piece of candy." He said seeing a shiny object on the collapsed section of floor and stepped up back onto the broken floor. The crumbling sound continued and my warning system flashed again. I looked up to see the other half starting to fall over and it would crash down on Fruity.

"Fruity look out!" I cried and acting on instinct, I grabbed him by his tail and yanked him back.

"Yeow!" The stallion cried as I tugged on his tail.

BANG! The broken segment slammed down where Fruity was standing moments before, kicking up a huge dust cloud that had us both choking.

"You *cough* saved my *hack* life," He coughed out.

"Hmm, you've *cough* saved me before, it's *cough* bout time I saved you *hack* for once."

He gave a grateful smile as we left the ruined the staffroom and continued on our way trying to find a way out. We turned a corner and stopped as we saw a fluorescent green light at the end of the hallway. I got a bad feeling from that light when it appeared to be moving and then my pipbuck's Geiger counter started to tick.

"Um, Fruity, my pipbuck's started to tick, is that bad?" I asked unsure.

"If it’s ticking, then there must be magical radiation in here,"

"But this is a space agency, what could they use that would be radioactive?"

"No idea, but there are ghouls in here so that could mean..." He trailed off as he looked down the hall fearfully.

"Mean what?" I asked shakily. As if to answer my question, a Feral Ghoul stalked out from around the corner and was apparently the source of the light as the ghoul was glowing as if it was a nightlight.

"Fruity, what the hell is that?"

"A Glowing One," He replied.

I turned and looked at him with a disbelieving raised eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Hey, it's not like I named it, that's what everypony calls those glowing ones." He defended.

The ghoul reminded me of a villain from the old Batmare Beyond cartoons as it looked so much like a radioactive villain from the show who was called "Blight" and not to mention its skeleton was clearly visible, silhouetted by its glowing form, giving the creature a more terrifying appearance.

"What do we do?"

"Why don't you punch it?" Fruity suggested. "That kick worked well on the other ghoul."

It would save using up what little bullets I have left and well, being mostly machine has its benefits. I took a deep breath as I started to approach the glowing ghoul that, for the moment, was busy admiring the cracked plaster wall in front of it.

"Hey, wait, Crystal! I wasn't being serious." Fruity gasped out.

I didn't think he was but it was either run out of ammo and likely get mauled to death or make good use of my mechanised body. At least I could put my body to good use this way and defend my best friend, yeah, best friend. Fruity had been the only pony I've been able to grow close too who wasn't part of my family.

The ghoul turned its head to look at me after it finally noticed me. It opened its glowing mouth and let out hungry roar as it charged at me, faster than I was expecting. My threat warning flashed and I ducked to avoid a swipe from a foreleg it raised to hit me with at the last second. The creature skidded passed me as it missed but turned around quickly to come back in for another attempt. I reared up onto my hind legs and focused on the ghoul's head. As my gaze focused on the ghoul a reticule appeared around its head as if I was locking onto it. The creature came in close for a tackle and when the reticule flashed red, I brought my full weight down on the monster. I was surprised at the timing as my hooves drove into the creature's skull and with my weight I pushed it down to the floor. The glowing monster was still alive however, helplessly squirming under my hefty weight. I placed a forehoof onto the creature's back to keep it down while I raised the other, putting as much strength as I could into the leg, I could feel the control rods and servos tensing up as it built up tension before I then brought my hoof down on the creature's head. The impact pulverised its head, leaving a messy mush beneath my hoof.

"EWWW!" I cried in disgust.

"I ain't cleaning your hoof with my feathers this time." Fruity said while cringing at the glowing bits of brain stuck to my hoof.

"Eww," I whined as I began to drag my hoof across the old carpet like you would if you stood in dog crap. "I hate this place." I muttered loudly.

Fruity nodded his agreement as we continued down the corridor to get away from the radiation emitting from the dead ghoul. The corridor ended with a door to which we opened to check inside as it was our only way forward. What we saw inside stunned us. Not because it was a massive mess, not because we saw more ghouls, not because there was no floor, but because the room was completely out of place and totally unexpected. We stood in the doorway to the large room gazing out around the area, taking in all we could see. There were tables and workbenches piled high with pieces or energy based weapons, computer terminals on some of the tables with filing cabinets dotted about the place, and covering the walls were old deteriorated diagrams.

"What the hell is this?" Fruity asked in bafflement as he gestured to the whole room with a wing.

I slowly scanned the room, taking in everything on the walls and lying around on the tables and workbenches. As my eyes focused on several of the items, reticules appeared telling me what I was looking at. I saw plasma triggers, magical conductors, firing mechanisms, charge capacitors, focus optic lenses, pretty much everything needed to build an energy weapon and the diagrams on the walls, with what remained of them I deduced to being weapon schismatic's.

"Looks like some sort of weapon's research and development,"

"Where are we again?" Fruity asked trying to understand the room.

"Um, the MASA Headquarters," I replied while looking at my pipbuck map again just to be sure.

"And that is?"

"Err, a space exploration and um... monitoring agency...," I paused trying to think if there was more to it than that but shrugged when nothing came to mind. "I think," I added sounding a little unsure.

"Then what's all this?" The stallion asked unable to understand the weapons R&D room. "It makes no sense, what does any of this have to do with space?"

"I don't know, but I have a feeling we are going to find out." I said as I began to look around at the various parts and schematics.

We began to look around the room. Fruity quickly got over the shock of the unexpected room and seemed to be in hog’s heaven as he picked up and pocketed most of the still good pieces of energy weapon components until he found what he could use to fix the Plasma Rifle on his back.

"Oh sweet, a trigger system compatible for the MP12 Plasma Rifle." He cried out happily and pocketed the piece. "I'll be fixing you later," He said to his slung rifle.

"I'm sure you could build your own gun out of all this stuff,"

"Hah, I wish, I'm not that technical," He laughed. I smiled as I looked over to him as he pulled the top off a metal crate and then screamed out in happy surprise, which made me jump. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I HIT THE MOTHER LOAD,"

"What?" I asked after recovering from his sudden shout.

"Micro Manna Cells, lots of them." He smiled as he began to pluck each and every MMC out the box. "Oh wow, fifteen cells, that's three hundred shots worth of power cells,"

"Now you can assist in shooting something,"

"Once I repair this thing, I'll be back on my game," He smiled as he looked back at his Plasma Rifle. His smile faded as he regarded his rifle. "Wait, this is a newer model, aww damn, this requires twice as much juice to fire than the ones I used before. This ammo stockpile I found is only good for half the shots I mentioned with this rifle," He sighed.

"Still a lot."

He shrugged before he resumed his scavenging. While Fruity was making a mess with his scavenging, I looked into the filing cabinets. I found a lot of old pulped up paper and documents that were either too deteriorated to read or were so technical I couldn't make sense of them. After checking a few drawers, I opened a drawer that held a single red plastic folder. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. Inside it held a sheet of paper that looked like to be some sort of signed agreement or official document as the seal for Princess Luna was still visible in the top left corner. Sadly, the elements had deteriorated the document enough that it was illegible in some areas. The first couple of paragraphs were readable and talked about the success of the Plasma powered rocket engine. The last paragraph that was still readable talked about the manufacture of plasma based weapons as a side project to better benefit the Equestrian soldiers.

"I think I know why there is a weapons lab here," I said while re-reading what was still legible on the document.

"Oh?"

"Err, from this, it looks like the government was impressed with that plasma rocket engine we saw downstairs and wanted them to build weapons based on it."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case, the Enclave liked to get their hooves into everypony's business." He replied bitterly. Yeah, the pre-war government bought into a lot of things that would produce new weapons. It seemed Luna wanted nothing more than the complete annihilation of the enemy.

The second door in the room opened up into another hall way that had a T-junction, the connecting corridor branched off somewhere to the left and the path up ahead also turned a corner going left as well.

"How is it looking out there?" Fruity asked as he joined me.

"Clear." I replied and we cautiously began up the corridor.

As we drew closer to the T-junction a small green and white sign on the wall made me smile, the sign was a fire exit sign. I quickened my pace, eager to get to the fire exit door and get out of this hell hole. My face instantly dropped as we looked down the corridor, it was filled to the ceiling with rubble, just like the stairs to the lobby. I grit my teeth in anger at having our hope of a possible escape being shot down yet again and screamed with the combined stress.

"I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE!"

"She can swear!" Fruity exclaimed and then started to laugh. "Haha, ohhh, I've been waiting all week for you to finally curse at something,"

I blushed with embarrassment from losing my temper. "I'm sorry, I wasn't brought up to be foul mouthed." That just made him laugh harder, which increased my feeling of embarrassment.

"Haha, oh come now Crys, this is the wasteland, every fucker swears fifty times before breakfast," Fruity laughed. We continued down the corridor and to the left hoof turn. "You should curse more often, it'll help relieve stress and all that."

"Really?" I asked sceptically.

"Eeyup, helps when you vent your emotions and stuff,"

"How does that work?" I asked as we came to the corner and we continued up the corridor.

Fruity turned and gave me a slightly annoyed expression. "What do I look like, a psychiatrist?"

"Sorry," I apologised with my ears wilting.

"Hey don't worry about." He said with a soft smile and petted my withers with his wing as we came to a flight of intact stairs going up.

Fruity walked up the stairs first with me taking up the rear, going slowly. The stairs may have been intact but they were old and deteriorated to a point and my heavy weight was causing them to groan loudly. Couldn't they have built my body out of something lighter?

We stepped out into a wide landing with two open doors ahead of us and next to the door for the stairs we just came up we saw a rusty metal door for a lift. Holding onto a little hope, but highly doubting it, I walked up to the lift and pressed the call button. Predictably, nothing happened.

"Wow, somepony had an explosive shit." Fruity joked as he stood looking into the mare toilets. Stepping up to his side I saw what he had seen. All the cubicle dividers were blown down against one another and away from the centre toilet and the back wall had been blown down into a room that looked like it contained the building's mainframe. The funny thing about this scene however was that the toilet itself was completely intact and it succeeded in bringing out a chuckle.

After a brief look around and the emptying of two medical kits, we found still attached to the walls we deduced we had no other option but to go through the hole in the toilet wall and into the mainframe room. The room held a huge cube like computer system that did seem to still be working and little else save for a safe tucked away in the far corner. Unfortunately, neither of us had a bobby pin so we couldn't pick the lock and quite frankly, I didn't want to waste anymore time in here by messing around with a safe. Not to mention I don't know the first thing about picking a lock.

We pushed open a pair of double doors that opened up into a very spacious office that looked like the floor was about to go, as the carpet was in tatters and the floorboards were broken in several places and the centre of the room had sunk down slightly. Fruity flapped his wings and hovered over the damaged floor while I cautiously walked around the more sturdy outer edge, keeping close to the wall while also avoiding the filing cabinet that would have threatened to make me step onto the damaged area.

"This place is just getting worse." I moaned as we came to another set of double doors and pushed them open.

On the other side, a surprise awaited us. Hovering a few feet from the door to the office we just left was a ball like robot with three spider like limbs, three ball like optical units on extendable arms and a thruster mounted to the bottom of it keeping it in the air. I vaguely remember seeing this model of robot in the Stable-Tec inventory as a Mr Hoofty personal assistant. To see one here and still functioning was indeed a surprise.

The machine seemed to have noticed us as it turned around and regarded us. Thankfully, its tag in my EFS was showing up as white, meaning it was a non-hostile.

"Third floor is for executives only, please identify." It buzzed.

Oh no.

"Shit." Fruity said out loud.

"Pass phrase incorrect,"

"Damn it,"

"Pass phrase incorrect,"

"Fruity shut up," I cried but then immediately shoved my hoof into my mouth and groaned at my own stupidity.

"Pass phrase incorrect.... Intruder alert, intruder alert..." The machine began to blare out loudly.

We had found ourselves in a wide hallway, to our right was the end as it was just a wall, to our left the hall branched off to the right. As the Mr Hoofty began sounding the alarm, a section of the wall beside us sunk back with a loud clunk.

"Oh not these guys again." Fruity and I whined in unison and as the wall began to slide away to reveal the Sentry Drone on the other side, we tore down the hall and ran around the corner before the drone could have left its birth.

"Fruity, it just occurred to me why we ran into Sentry Drones downstairs," I said as we entered another small landing with a door and a lift.

"Oh yeah?"

"That weapons lab downstairs," I panted.

"Huh, you're right, it makes sense now."

CLUNK!

We whirled around to the right of the lift and door as a section of wall sunk back.

CLUNK!

We whirled around to the wall on the left as it sunk back as well.

"Oh for fuck sake." Fruity whined and before we could say hello to tons of robot and bullets, we crashed through the door and fell rather unceremoniously down a flight of stairs.

"Uhhh, are you ok?" I groaned, laying on my belly with my legs splayed out and aching all over from the tumble.

"Surprisingly yeah, I had something rather soft to land on." Fruity said as he picked himself up into a sitting position and it was then I realised he was sat on my rump.

"You can get off me now," I moaned as the pain started to subside.

"Nah, you are rather comfy." Fruity laughed.

I rolled my eyes and stood up which made him loose his balance and fall off my rear and onto his back.

"A little warning next time." He whined.

I replied by sticking my tongue out playfully. However, my playful expression soured to that of disgust as the rotten smell from before returned with a vengeance.

We found ourselves now in a long corridor, the end of which however I could see was filled with rubble. Another T-junction was up ahead about half way up the hall and past it I could see two doors. With little choice as to where to go from here we began to walk up the corridor. As we drew closer to the junction we began to hear the sounds of hissing and laboured breathing. My threat warning was glowing a constant red right now and my EFS had a few targets clustered together on the right which put them in the hall down from the junction. We stopped as we came to the junction and cautiously, we peeked around the corner. I had to cover my mouth to stop myself from letting out a gasp. The hall had six Feral Ghouls standing in it and in the distance behind them I could see more milling about, it was like we just stumbled into a horde of zombies.

"If it's not one problem, it’s several," Fruity quietly moaned.

"No point moaning about it, let's get to those doors, quietly." I stressed. Fruity nodded and we crouched low and began to slowly creep our way passed the junction and up the corridor.

The floor boards creaked and groaned under our hoof steps, mine more than his, but thankfully the ghouls didn't notice the creaking over their own movements. As we drew closer to the doors one of them turned out to be a door to an office while the other was a blue security door with a card reader like the door next to the lobby.

*CRACK!*

My hoof went through a rotted floor board. "Oh no," I whined.

A ghoul let out a raspy moan from down the corridor. We looked back fearfully, my heart was pounding in my throat as a shadow began to move into the corridor.

"Fruity, cardkey," I whimpered as I pulled my hoof out of the floor.

"Huh?"

I nodded to the blue door. "Oh..."

A ghoul stepped into the corridor and looked around before its dead gaze settled on us and it opened its broken mouth and let out its disturbing roar.

"Quickly please." I urged as I backed up towards him as he plucked the card from his pocket and went to swipe it in the card reader.

The ghoul's roar had alerted its brethren and before long, we had ten to twelve ghouls slowly approaching us. Oh Celestia this is more terrifying than the robots. Then there was a sound that sounded like heaven had just granted us access as the door lock released as it accepted the security card.

"Quickly, inside." Fruity urged as he threw the door open. I didn't need to be told twice and quickly bolted through the door as the ghouls roared in hunger and charged.

We found ourselves in an office with no way out, but for the moment, we had worse things to worry about and once we were both inside we slammed the door shut. However fate decided it would be funny with us and now the door was stuck in a permanent open state. The cardkey had opened the door but now there was no lock to keep the door closed. Thinking quickly, I ran over to a filing cabinet that was devoid of its drawers.

"Crystal what are yo..." He began to complain as he held the door closed but he clocked onto what I was doing as I began to drag the cabinet over to the door to barricade it. Fruity quickly jumped away from the door as I gave the cabinet a shove to knock it over. The Ghouls reached the door just as Fruity jumped away from it, and then the door got slammed back into their faces as the hefty cabinet crashed against the door and held it closed. We breathed a sigh of relief as the ghouls banged on the door but failed to budge the cabinet.

"Ain't this ironic, we came in this building to get away from the geckos, and now we’re trapped in here to get away from the ghouls." Fruity sighed as he began to pace.

I didn't say anything; there was nothing to say that would better our situation or to lighten the mood. I hung my head as I trotted for a corner desk to sit down on the chair still beside it. I got to about the centre of the room when all of a sudden the floor sagged with a deep rumble and a crack. I looked up at Fruity with fearful eyes at what was about to happen and suddenly I was free falling, for about a second, and crashed into the hard floor below me with plaster and bits of wood raining down all over me as the crumbling floor above collapsed.

"Holy shit, Crys!" Fruity yelled and jumped down the hole after me. Being a pegasus, jumping off things didn't bother him at all. He landed on the floor beside me and started to push pieces of wood and broken plaster off me. "Shit, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I landed on my butt." I moaned as I flopped onto my back and groaned. I was in fact hurting all over. That hard impact with the floor had rattled my entire body, and my vision had alerted me to a half dozen minor faults regarding my rear legs, but thankfully, the repair system had kicked in almost instantly to ensure my legs remained functioning but I still felt like I had just smashed a metal bar with a cricket bat. You know the feeling when you accidently hit something solid at full force and it sends a wave of pain rushing through your mouth or forelegs, depending on how you used the bat.

"Where are we?" I asked sitting up.

"Umm, I dunno, looks like some sort of store room." He replied as he began to look around.

I moaned in discomfort as I pulled myself to my hooves. I found myself facing a corner with a terminal mounted to the wall, damaged by the fallen ceiling and a heavy duty security door. The kind of security door with locking clamps. Great, still trapped.

"Oh sweet!" Fruity cried out in excitement.

"Huh, what is it?" I asked, my ears perking up.

Fruity happily fluttered out from behind the collapsed ceiling carrying a Plasma Rifle in his forehooves. The one he now held was brown in colour and seemed to have an extra three knobs on the top.

"It's a prototype Mark II Plasma Rifle. This one is called the "Q-Matter Modulator" or so the plaque on its containment tube said,"

"Now you can join in with the battles," I joked half heartedly.

Fruity nodded. "We need to get out of here first."

I nodded in agreement and checked the damaged terminal and unfortunately it refused to turn on. I bet this terminal controlled the door as well.

"Terminal is busted," I sighed.

"Hmm, these clamps are all connected by a central shaft," Fruity said to himself as he examined the door and where the locking clamps control rods joined in the centre behind a metal wheel. "A plasma bolt dead centre should melt the connection and release the clamps."

We didn't have another option really so I kept quiet and let Fruity do his work. He reared up onto his hind legs and began to flap his wings to keep himself balanced while he stood upright and used his forelegs to hold the rifle. One of his hooves held under the barrel before the super conducting emerald discharge barrel and the other held the curved hoof trigger.

With the way he was holding the weapon, it was telling me it wasn't a Mark II like he believed.

"Unable to identify weapon." Flashed across my vision as I took in the weapon more inattentively.

Fruity pulled the trigger, and with a pop and a whoosh, the weapon released its super heated green bolt of magical energy. I could feel the heat from the ball of energy as it whizzed past me and struck the door dead centre. The impact area began to glow a bright green and the sound of metal being stressed began to groan out from the door. The wait was agonising as we listened to the metal stressing under the superheated affects of the plasma strike, but we were rewarded for our patience when two metal pops rung out and the door's locking clamps released and gravity took over and the door dropped into the floor like a lead weight.

"Good shot." I praised.

The purple stallion smiled as he sat down and quickly made another strap so he could carry the Q-Matter Modulator. "Q-Matter Modulator, that's a mouthful..." Fruity muttered to himself as he fastened a new strap to the weapon. "Q-Modulator, that sounds better."

The door opened up to a rather short corridor which looked to open up into a small office space at the end. The hall also contained another T-junction going off to the left but from here we could see bits of rubble sticking out so that told us it was likely blocked off. A sign hung from the cracked ceiling and our hope at finding our way out was restored. The sign had an arrow pointing straight ahead saying "Security/Lobby" and beneath it, it had an arrow pointing to the rubble filled hall saying "Offices". Wait, offices? Then that meant, that was the staircase we found earlier that was filled in and forced us to go through that zombie hell.

"Yes we can leave at last," Fruity sang as we started for the security office.

"Some fresh air will be greatly appreciated," My nose could certainly use it after smelling all that decay.

"Oh yea." Fruity agreed.

We had just made it to the office when a hulking Sentry Drone wheeled out in front of us.

"Oh shit!" Fruity and I cried in unison from the surprise appearance.

"Unregistered facial pattern detected, valid security badge detected, temporary access granted," It droned out automatically when it seemed to detect the security key Fruity held in his pocket. The machine was about to turn when it noticed the Q-Modulator. "Unauthorised removal of classified equipment, theft will not be tolerated!"

"Oh come on you have got to be yanking my chain I haven't took owt like that," Fruity whined as the large machine turned so it's twin miniguns were aimed at him. He responded to the miniguns by pulling the prototype rifle off his back and holding it again ready to shoot and he pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. "Shit, I should have checked what charge was left in that Mana Cell." He whined as he began to struggle with the MMC's cradle to which, at this point, the sentry's miniguns were spinning up.

I felt utter dread that my best friend was about to be turned into swiss cheese and that was something I did not want to happen. I couldn't let that happen, I just couldn't. I felt something snap inside me and my vision drained itself of colour until all I could see was everything in a shade of red, multiple lines of code began to run around the edges of my vision as a reticule focused on the sentry drone's head and then I charged at it. The drone turned, sensing my advance, and since I was closest I was the more important threat. I ducked as it began to fire, getting under and then, between its streams of bullets, I reached the machine to which I then jumped up. I planted my rear hooves onto its chassis and held onto its shoulder with my left forehoof while I drew my right hoof back. I could feel the tension in my leg, the servos and control rods struggling to apply more and more tension before I finally threw my hoof forward. I hit the machine square in the face with my unrestrained punch, the mechanical pony head exploded into a shower of sparks and my hoof continued until I had drove it about a foot into the machine's body and it puttered out and died with its control system destroyed. My unstrained attack however turned out to be a double edge sword because not only did I kill the machine but the impact had broken the connection between my hoof and fetlock and the broken metal of the machine acted like multiple knives now cutting into the flesh of my foreleg.

"HO...LY... SHIT!" Fruity gaped as he stood there gawking. "I knew you were strong but, dude."

"Ow, I couldn't let it, ow, hurt you," I whimpered as I carefully extracted my damaged leg from the machine's husk. My leg, apart from the broken hoof, had been cut to ribbons and one cut was so deep I could see the metal skeletal limp underneath. I cringed with new found pain as I held the damage.

"Thank you," Fruity said with gratitude and then unexpectedly nuzzled my cheek which set off a fiery blush across my cheeks. "Here, let me help with that." He offered as he shoved his head completely into one of his duster's pockets. I almost began to worry he would suffocate in there until he then pulled his head free with a roll of bandages and a healing potion. I smiled softly as I accepted the potion and held my leg out for him to bandage. I cringed and moaned in pain as he held my hoof and put it back into position as he wrapped it in bandages. The healing potion would fix the shredded flesh, and the bandages would help keep my hoof in place for my repair system to fix whenever it kicked in, I might need to eat something metal before that though.

"That was the bravest and kindest thing anypony has ever done for me," Fruity said softly when he finished bandaging my leg. "Or the stupidest," He muttered quietly, but in a playful tone.

I giggled. "Oh don't ruin the moment," I then surprised myself by returning his nuzzle. I've never felt like doing that to anyone but my parents before. Do I really like him that much? With a slightly goofy smile I turned and started to limp towards the blue door to the lobby. "C'mon, let's finally get out of here,"

"Yes ma'am." He chirped fluttering in the air like he was shot with cupid's arrow.

Fruity swiped the cardkey into the card reader and opened the security door to the lobby. The main doors were open. One of the double doors had been shattered, and the other had swung back against the reception desk and almost looked like it was about to break in half. Something had managed to break open the doors even with the deadbolts in place.

"That can't be good." Fruity sighed.

Cautiously, we entered the MASA Headquarters lobby again. Whatever broke those doors open might’ve still been here. As we moved around the model rocket in the middle of the lobby we saw something that filled us with dread. The security shutter that had first locked us into the museum had been pushed up slightly in one corner, giving enough clearance for something around our size to squeeze through. What could lift a security shutter like those?

"We should leave, like, right now!" I urged, not wanting to be around to find out what could life a steel door like that.

"Yeah I'm with you there, let's scarper."

We turned and fled as fast as we could, wanting to get as much distance from that hellhole and whatever had broken in.

XXXXX

*Several hours earlier*

"Attention... Attention... I-01 detected within the Marejave region. Repeat. I-01 detected within the Marejave region." An electronic female voice droned out throughout the empty control room.

A large computer monitor dominating a wall turned on automatically, showing a map of the Marejave desert and a yellow blip marked with "I-01" moving at high speed up a rail line heading towards Tom City. The map screen then shrunk down to a fifth of its original size and moved down into the bottom left corner and a green wireframe face of a stallion filled the screen. The face turned and angled down as if to look at the map screen.

"After two centuries I finally have my opportunity to finish what I started." The stallion said in a deep commanding tone before the head looked up and out into the room. Its gaze settled on a door in the far wall off to the back corner. The wireframe pony's eyes flashed and the door slid open to reveal a pitch black room.

Two red lights appeared in the darkness and began to sway slightly as it drew closer to the open door. Soon a black metal robotic pony that looks skeletal in appearance and with a tail made of many black fibres, left the dark room and stood before the computer.

"It is time I gave you a purpose I-02 IS," The wireframe stallion said as it looked over the robotic skeleton. "And it is important that you succeed."

"What is my mission?" The robotic skeleton buzzed in an emotionless electronic voice.

"You are to retrieve I-01 and bring it back here intact," The computer commanded. "It is imperative that you bring it back intact for it holds the key to make my plan a reality."

The machine nodded. "Affirmative."

The yellow blip on the map lost a lot of speed as it reached Tom City before again slowly making its way up the rail line.

"I-02 IS, use any means necessary to bring it back but again, do not destroy it, failure will not be tolerated and I would hate to lose you. You are the only I-02 not sealed within the vault," The stallion ordered. "All thanks to that traitorous wench..." The computer muttered to itself quietly. The robot didn't react to the unusual behaviour of its commander.

The door in the centre of the opposite wall facing the computer opened to let the robot out. As the black metal robot skeleton turned an alarm rung out from the computer.

"Warning, I-01 signal lost, repeat, I-01 signal lost... Disruption Magic detected before signal loss. Last known location, MASA Headquarters."

"No, I can't lose it now. What are you waiting for, go and bring it back." The wireframe stallion shouted in anger.

The robot turned and broke into a fast trot as it navigated the corridors of the facility until it came to the exit and left. The machine walked through a dark and dank cave until it emerged into the blistering early morning sun light bathing the Marejave desert. The machine found itself on the top of a rocky hill with a good view of everything around it.

To the northwest it could see the old Las Pegasus Industrial District, north were the ruins of Las Pegasus itself along with the smaller walled off section of the city that has been named New Pegasus, northeast were rocky hills and mountains beyond Lake Meadow, east lay the great Horseshoe Dam, southeast lay the Coltorado River, south were more hills and behind some hills lay Tom City, southwest lay open land and salt lake flats with a few settlements dotted about and to the west lay Nightmare Mountain and at its base, the MASA Headquarters.

"Target location identified. Open ground between here and there, chance of being seen, high..." I-02 IS said to itself as it regarded the distance to its target.

As the machine contemplated what it should do to remain hidden, it saw a pony completely glad in armour. The armour looked like old riot police armour with a large trench coat covering it and a full head helmet with an air filter to one side of the muzzle and two red lenses to protect the eyes.

"Acceptable."

The robot began to move down the hill towards the pony that appeared to be busy peering down into a valley. As I-02 IS drew closer it became aware that the pony was armed with an Anti-Machine Rifle fitted to a battlesaddle. Coming up behind the armour clad pony the robot began to move slowly and quietly as to not alert it.

The Desert Ranger got a feeling like something was watching him and then he could hear the dirt shifting under a heavy weight coming up from behind him. Thinking a raider was trying to get the jump on him he waited until he assumed the assailant would be in striking range and quickly spun around to surprise it. The Ranger found himself almost muzzle to muzzle with a black robotic skeleton.

"Holy fucking shit, what the fuck is that?" The Ranger cried out in a medium toned but smooth voice.

Suddenly the machine lashed out. Before he could mount any sort of defence, the robot had firmly grabbed him around the neck with its black nano-fibre tail and constricted around his neck, not enough to choke him nor damage the armour but enough to make it very uncomfortable.

"Voice calibration in progress," It buzzed as it hauled the Ranger off his forehooves with its tail. "Talk, equine." It demanded.

"Talk, what the fuck?" He choked as he struggled to free himself. "Let me go,"

"Keep talking," I-02 demanded as it used its tail to slam the struggling Ranger into the dirt floor.

"Son of a bitch, you bastard, let me go right now," He yelled as he bashed the fibres with his forehooves.

"Keep talking," The machine repeated.

"Piece of shit, let me go, you're killing me." The Ranger pleaded and then trigged his battlesaddle, hoping to hit the machine but his body was facing off to one side so his fifty calibre shot went wide. Suddenly he was released from the fibre tail's grip.

"Calibration complete," He heard the machine say and as he picked himself up to be able to strike the machine he felt two impacts to the sides of his head and found that the machine had grabbed his head with its hooves. "You're usefulness has ended." The machine said in an exact copy of his own voice. The machine had just copied his voice. The machine then violently twisted the stallion's head, breaking his neck and killing him.

The robot carefully peeled the dead pony from his armour and then slipped into it itself. The suit of armour fit perfectly and nopony would think its fibre tail to be any different at a glance as it threaded it through the hole in the rear. Once in the old riot armour, the machine then strapped the battlesaddle into place and found that the firing mechanism connects to the helmet. After making sure the battlesaddle was securely in place the machine then picked up the helmet, its deep set optical units scanned over the full head encompassing helmet before it slowly slipped the helmet over its head and into place, and with a click, the helmet was fastened into place and the connection to the battlesaddle made. To finish the ensemble the red lenses of the helmet began to glow.

The disguised I-02 IS grabbed the dead pony with its tail and dragged him out of sight before it casually began to walk in the direction of the MASA Headquarters.

Chapter 5: A Painful Truth