Chaos Rules in the Wasteland

"Damn this gun!" shouted Garl's voice. "Damn this gun! Damn this stupid, piece of shit gun!"

Twilight walked into the building to see what Garl was so upset about.

There were only two people in the room. Garl was standing over a table with a long rifle that Twilight had never seen before on it. He was appeared to be jabbing a knife into the trigger mechanism. Gwen was leaning into the corner of the room and watching, her expression unreadable.

"You, Twilight!" shouted Garl, making Twilight jump. "Do you know how to fix this damn thing?"

"Possibly," answered Twilight carefully. "I am fairly certain that I should at least be able to discover what the problem is. It may not be possible to fix it without spare parts, though."

"The problem is that the damn trigger is stuck as hell!" shouted Garl.

Twilight approached Garl. Garl groaned in frustration one last time and threw his hands up. "I'm done with this shit. You figure it out."

Twilight picked the rifle up in her magic and tried the trigger. Sure enough, it was completely immobile.

"So..." said Garl. "You're a witch."

"A what?" asked Twilight, stopping her examination to give Garl a confused look.

"A witch. Like out of those damn stories we tell our kids. They kill people with magic."

"I- I'm not a witch!" Twilight insisted. "I'm an alicorn!"

"Whatever you want to call it," said Garl dismissively. "Of course, I'm pretty sure the witches in the stories are supposed to be old human women with warts on their noses and stuff."

Twilight ignored this. "I have figured out what the problem is," she declared. "This trigger mechanism has been worn away with age, and there is debris inside obstructing the trigger's movement."

"How can you tell?" asked Garl.

"With... magic."

"Ah. So, witch."

"Which what?"

"You. Are. A. Witch."

"... Oh."

"So, can you fix it?"

"The debris is clinging to the metal. I can rub it away, but it's not easy. How old is this gun?"

"Technically it's over one hundred years old," said Garl. "It's pre-war. Most sniper rifles these days are manufactured by a group down south called the Gun Runners, but they keep their merchandise very well protected. But the caravan that my father raided and found that thing on the body of a guard wasn't a Gun Runner caravan."

"You murdered a traveling merchant and their guards?" asked Twilight, aware that this should not have surprised her.

"Of course we did," answered Garl. "Usually the weapons that they carry are nothing more than SMGs or hunting rifles or the like, but this one time, one of the guards was armed a little better than usual, for whatever reason. It's not often that you get a score like that. As tribe leader, my father naturally claimed it for himself."

"And... your father gave you this gun when he died?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Garl with a nasty grin. "I challenged him to a duel to the death. Fists only. And I murdered him. I won leadership of the tribe that day."

Garl stopped and looked at Twilight's horrified expression, then burst out laughing.

"Stick to traveling alone," he said to her between laughs. "You wouldn't last a day traveling with a group before someone stabs you in the back."

Twilight still did not respond.

"Anyway," continued Garl, his laughter dying down, "if you get that thing fixed before these mutants show up, feel free to use it yourself. I'm going to just stick to my good old reliable rifle. Dunno why I even bothered dragging that old thing out. Never could even use it properly. But you sure as hell better give it back after this is all over."

Twilight nodded and then turned her attention back to the sniper rifle.

A moment later, there was a strange, low noise. "What is that?" asked Twilight with concern, looking back up.

"That's Petrox sounding his Brahmin horn," said Gwen. "Which probably means that we have company."

Twilight's eyes wen wide, and then she pried on the debris in the trigger mechanism once more. It popped free. Using her magic, she pulled a grey lump of unidentified material out of the sniper rifle and tried the trigger again.

BLAM

Garl whirled around at Twilight and raised his eyebrows.

"You didn't tell me that it was loaded!" cried Twilight.

"Well," said Garl, "it works, at least. Grab that ammo under the table there, and then come on. Let's go see what the commotion is about."

Garl disappeared out of the door frame, followed closely by Gwen.

Twilight looked under the table and found the shoulder bag full of ammunition. She had to wrap it around her torso twice for it to not drag into the ground. When she was finally ready, she dashed out of the door.

There were khans all over the rooftops of the buildings. A few that were lucky enough to have scoped rifles had large groups of other khans trying to peer through the scope.

"Holy shit..." she heard one of the Khans say. And then another.

In fact, quite a number of the Khans appeared to believe that this phrase was the most appropriate thing to say under the circumstances.

Twilight flew up and toward the main entrance to the town, which was barricaded with metal sheets and reinforced with piles of debris. Most of the people around her were ignoring her for once. Instead, they were all focusing their attention on the enormous green men lumbering toward the town. Twilight could see that some of the townsfolk had managed to acquire weapons and were waiting fortified positions, such as behind makeshift cover that had been prepared, or simply behind the corner of a building. Twilight landed on Aredesh's rooftop.

She fumbled with the sniper rifle and brought it up to use the scope. She gasped in surprise at how far the scope zoomed in. She could clearly see the forms of dozens of individual mutants as they marched on. They did not appear to be conforming to a particular formation, but the mutants at the front all were holding large tubular weapons.

"The mutants in the front are carrying missle launchers!" she shouted. "They're going to blow the walls up!"

"Shit!" shouted several Khan's who were standing on makeshift scaffolding behind the walls, who immediately began leaping down.

"Everyone stay where you are!" shouted Garl's from an a location that Twilight could not determine. "If you run, I will shoot you myself."

"And what the fuck," shouted a random Khan, "are we supposed to do about rocket launchers?"

"Shoot them, you idiots! Shoot their weapons to shit! What are you morons waiting for? Shoot the shit out of those things!"

Suddenly several rifles began going off at once. Through her scope, Twilight could see that the mutants were reacting to this, primarily by breaking into a sprint toward the town, but no visible damage was being done. Twilight marveled at the mutant's speed. Even carrying weapons that probably weighed as much as a person, they could attain speeds much greater than their usual lumbering gait would suggest.

Twilight realized that she should probably be joining the rest of the Khans. Garl had given good advice. She attempted to steady the crosshairs on one of the mutant's weapons. Although she was able to keep a quite steady aim, it was still nearly impossible to target the mutant's launcher as it shook back and forth on his shoulder.

Twilight tried timing the mutant's swinging motion. When she felt quite sure that she had aligned the sniper rifle with the spot that the launcher would be, she fired.

The gun kicked back much harder than she had been expecting. She silently ridiculed herself for not remembering everything that she had read about the weapon. She had no way of determining whether or not her shot had done any good.

Suddenly, her vision was filled with fire, and shortly after, she heard the sound of an explosion. She looked away from the scope to watch as the mutants blundered into the minefield that the Khans had set up.

Most of the mines that the Khan's had placed were placed ahead of the front entrance of town. It was a gamble whether or not the mutants would try to approach from that direction, but they had listened to Twilight's advice. The mutants had, as predicted, chosen a straight forward assault. They had been expecting to rush into the town with little resistance and massacre or kidnap unarmed humans. Instead, they were in for an all out battle.

Many of the mutants stopped the forward charge and hesitated. This caused one to be pushed forward by his over-eager comrades and fall face first into another mine, which exploded and enveloped the mutant in fire.

The rifle shots had never stopped, but Twilight could now see that the Khan snipers were landing several hits on the mutants, judging from the way that many of them dropped their weapons to clutch at various parts of their body in pain. This spurred the mutants back into action. As the enraged and slightly injured mutants ran forward, apparently not caring about their probable demise via explosion, the rest of the mutants followed their lead.

The launcher carrying mutants fired their weapons at the town's wall.

There were several cries of "Look out!" from the Khans on the wall. The distance had been great enough that a number of the missiles ended up flying overhead, but some exploded on the wall, blasting apart the concrete and sending everything in the explosion flying.

Twilight's heart sank even as she continued to fire the sniper rifle at the mutants. Although the mines had managed to kill or cripple a significant number of the mutants, there would be no stopping the remaining portion from pouring into town like ants.

Twilight's next shot caused the missile launcher that the targeted mutant was holding to explode. Twilight watched in awe at the bloody mess she had caused.

Well, that was lucky, she thought. I hope my luck doesn't run out too fast.

The mutants finally reached the wall and began climbing over the wreckage with surprising agility. Some stopped to fire their weapons. Twilight suddenly was aware of a minigun showering the area around her with bullets. Panicked, she leaped off of the rooftop and retreated further into the town. She didn't dare attempt to fly now, as that would certainly draw attention to herself and would result in her death.

Twilight scrambled up a ladder on the side of another building. This particular rooftop had an elevated portion which she could take cover behind. Twilight grimaced when she saw the corpse of a khan lying facedown on the rooftop, a grim reminder that, even with cover, she wouldn't be safe. But, of course, at the moment, nowhere in all of Shady Sands was safe.

Swarms of Khans were jumping out of hiding spots and ambushing mutants that were charging too deep into the town. The mutants didn't go down without taking at least one khan with them, however, and quite frequently more than one. The khans had to simply hope that the mutants chose to go after the guy next to them and not themselves.

Twilight didn't see any more mutants holding missile launchers. The ones who had been carrying them were now all either dead or had forsaken their weapon for something that worked better in the close quarters of the town. Twilight took aim at a mutant that she saw was about to run into another Khan ambush. She watched the Khans jump out at the mutant from behind a building and start firing their weapons. The mutant stopped to howl in rage as it revved up it's minigun.

BLAM

Blood exploded from the mutant's head as it was violently forced into the ground. The Khans looked up at Twilight in surprise and signaled their thanks before returning to their hiding places.

Twilight stared in astonishment for a moment. More than any other weapon she had seen, the gun in her grasp apparently scoffed at the mutant's thick leathery skin.

Suddenly she realized that the mutants were taking notice of her. A group of eight had managed to get close while she had been preoccupied. Twilight watched in horror as a pair of giant green hands grasped the edge of her building. The moment the mutant's head appeared, she fired.

The mutant's head actually visibly split open from the point blank shot. Twilight tried to shake the image of the resulting gore out of her head as she turned to deal with the other intruders, but, to her horror, three of them had managed to completely climb up and the rest were following suit.

The nearest mutant was brandishing a sledgehammer over his head, preparing to beat the life out of Twilight.

Time seemed to slow down to a fraction to Twilight. She lifted up her weapon to fire off the last round left in the gun at her assailant. However, a small, temporarily ignored part of her mind wondered Is this what it is like before a pony dies?

The sound of Twilight's rifle firing seemed dull and low to her ears. She watched in morbid fascination as she followed the bullet's flight path and watched it embed itself in the mutant's face, causing another shower of blood. The mutant fell forward, barely missing Twilight, instead falling on the tip of her gun, pinning it to the ground.

Twilight barely cared in the moment, however. She had already fired off the last round. Something far more interesting was holding her attention instead.

When the body of the mutant fell forward in slow motion, it had slowly revealed a man standing behind it. The man was unlike anyone else Twilight had encountered in the entire wasteland. His clothing suggested that he was neither a Khan or from Shady Sands. She had no idea who the man was or where he was from. She would have remembered a man wearing a brown fedora and a tan trench coat.

And she knew that he had not been anywhere near that spot a moment ago.

The strange man did not look at Twilight. Instead, he raised his arm and pointed a magnum revolver at a mutant.

The bullet made a much bigger mess of the mutant's chest than Twilight had expected.

Without hesitation, the stranger aimed at the next mutant and fired again, with a similar result.

And again.

And again, and again, and again.

And Twilight was surrounded by mutants that had been turned into mangled bodies.

Twilight blinked. Suddenly, thoughts returned to her.

Where did that man go?!

She rushed to the edge of the building to search for the man in the streets below, but he was nowhere to be seen. She blinked a few more times.

Argh! I must have missed what happened! I think my brain just shut down for a moment there! I'll bet my perceptions were altered as a result!

What other explanation for what just occurred makes any sense?