Prologue: Scavenger's Haul
Mosscow
I woke up, groaning. The sound of gunfire reached my ears. Were those Freedom and Duty Stalkers trying to kill each other? Or raiders attacking other raiders? I’d have to check once I found a window.
I stood, and gathered my bearings. I’d fallen asleep in an office building. Right and I was on the ground floor. I’d been scavenging the terminals and robots for parts to maintain the terminals and robots at Exhibition, my home town. We needed those for defense, especially since the attacks had begun.
We didn’t know who or what was responsible, but they were deadly. Several guards had been killed in the attacks, and my father knew that there were going to be more joining them in later attacks.
I shook my head to clear away those thoughts. Not every one of the attacks had injuries as a consequence. But, I was a scavenger, so I was usually away scavenging pre-war buildings for technology to trade to other villages, merchants, or the various factions, except raiders. I hated them, so did everyone else, well, except for other raiders, obviously.
I walked toward the door leading into a large office. Approaching the window on the far side of the room, I pulled out my submachine gun and looked out onto the streets. Yeah, raiders alright. Fighting bandits, of course. The two factions were basically the same, so I never understood why they fought. There was probably some minor difference that set them apart.
The bandits wore black jackets and the rear half of a blue track suit. They died very easily during combat.
The raiders, on the other hoof, wore armor made out of anything they could get their hooves on. I’d seen some wearing tires as shoulder pads, bizarrely enough. I found them easy enough to kill.
The gunfire stopped, as the two sides had thinned each other’s ranks and those that were alive were slowly bleeding out.
I exited the building and approached the scene of the fight. I systematically checked the fallen raiders’ saddlebags for anything of interest. Any raiders that were still alive I shot, and searched their saddlebags.
Then, I checked the bandits. Shooting any survivors and checking their saddlebags, I came across several interesting things. I mumbled to myself as I found them, “One Zebra Assault Carbine, broken, one half of an unidentified shotgun, possibly an IF-88, multiple pieces of power armor, the other half of the shotgun, and… one disassembled Balefire Egg Launcher.”
How did these bandits get a Zebra Assault Carbine and a Balefire Egg Launcher? They weren’t going to talk, obviously. But bandits tended to have a PDA on them. I found one, on the pony I assumed to be the bandit group’s leader. He was wearing a black trenchcoat instead of the black jacket, that was really the main difference between him and his underlings.
I delivered a kick into his side. “Idiot,” I told the dead stallion, “you should be more careful. Wait, you’re dead. You can’t be more careful now. Too bad.”
I should put my helmet on. If I take an unlucky shot to the head, I’ll be a fool for not having it on.
Right. I flicked up my Sunrise suit’s hood using obsidian magic and pulled on my helmet using the same.
The color matches the color of my suit and it comes with a flashlight to help me see in the dark, at the expense of giving me away. There are better helmets out there, but you do the best you can with what you’ve got.
I decided to scavenge one of the smaller buildings around the office building. The building I picked was one of those ‘convenience stores’ that I’d heard my father talking about in my youth. I knew there was pre-war food in the store, possibly. If there wasn’t, I’d just rip the parts of the terminal on the counter and the cold storage machines. I caught a glance of myself in a mirror as I passed by it.
I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror. Removing my helmet and hood, I appraised myself. Crimson mane topping my head with a horn protruding from the mass, teal eyes staring back at me, surrounded by the mulberry of my coat. I noticed the tops of some dark stripes on my neck, standing out against my coat. I smiled, noting them. I flicked up my hood and pulled on my helmet.
Scavenging the convenience store was less than fruitful. None of the cooling machines had any functioning parts, and the terminal had been smashed. I did find a couple bottles of Sparkle-Cola, though. I looked down at my submachine gun. The weapon, an imported military variant, was very good at killing my enemies.
Shouts of surprise alerted me to the arrival of more ponies. I drew my submachine gun and took cover, pressing myself against one of the shelf racks. I looked around the corner of the rack and saw the ponies arrive. I sighed. More damn bandits.
What is with these guys? They’re almost as bad as the raiders!
I was going to have to fight these guys to get out of here with my haul. I exited the building. “Hey, you there, stalker!”
I suppressed the urge to glare at the speaker. I wasn’t a stalker, I was a scavenger.
“I’m a scavenger.”
“You’re wearing a Sunrise suit. That usually means you’re a stalker.”
“Well, I’m not. I bought this suit to replace my armored jacket.”
“Oh. Anyway, do you by any chance happen to have a complete Balefire Egg Launcher that’s been disassembled? Or a Zebra Rifle?”
“No,” I lied, “no, I don’t.”
The bandit smiled slightly. “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?” I asked, flicked my submachine gun’s safety to automatic fire.
There were six of them, including the wounded, trenchcoated stallion I’d kicked and then mocked earlier.
“Bourbon here says you looted them from his men’s bodies.”
“So?”
“So, we gotta kill ya. That’s all.”
“Your funeral,” I replied, smiling.
The bandit raised an eyebrow. He fell first. Two rounds tore into his torso, while a third finished him. He gurgled as he collapsed.
The fallen bandit’s comrades drew their weapons. Pistols and a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun. I laughed softly. These guys were rookies.
The eyes, that’s how I know. That’s how I know whether or not a pony will shoot me. The eyes, the greatest traitors of all.
A smile crept onto my features. I advanced toward them.
Their weapons wavered. I kept advancing. One fired, the round sparking off of my helmet. She fell to three of mine, and I felt a pang of guilt for her.
Should’ve told ‘em to run. Maybe they would’ve ran. Doesn’t matter now.
The shotgun bandit died next. He rushed me, trying to get his gun in my face. So, I dropped him with another three rounds.
Sixteen left. Provided they don’t run, these three should only take nine, max.
The other two, getting an idea, ran. They died, too.
Can’t let any escape. If they do, they’ll get more.
“Hey, scavenger,” it was that wounded bandit, Bourbon, “you gonna shoot me or what?”
I flicked my submachine gun’s safety back to safe and walked over to the stallion. “How’d you live?”
“You kick me, mock me, gun down my comrades, who were going to probably shoot me anyway, and the first thing you do is ask me a question?”
“Yeah. I thought you were dead.”
“Oh. Took a few rounds. Then some raider whacked me over the head with a baseball bat, or something like that. Woke up to find Softie over there slapping my face.”
Softie, the bandit who called me a stalker.
“Then you show up, and do everything you’ve just done in the past two minutes.”
I pulled a healing potion out of my bags and offered it to him. A dark green aura enveloped the bottle. I released the bottle.
Bourbon pulled the stopper out of the bottle, and he eagerly drank the red liquid. He smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure it’s gonna bite me in the ass later.”
Bourbon sighed. “I know this is weird, but… could you take me along?”
I thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah. But we need to get you out of that trenchcoat, or the guards back at Exhibition will shoot you dead.”
“Valid point.”
I levitated a suit of armor out of my bags and laid down it in front of the bandit. “A merc suit,” Bourbon said, “you’re kidding me, right?”
“Better than a trenchcoat.”
“Yeah. I want to live longer.”
“Yep, thought so. Put it on, then we’ll get going.”
Bourbon nodded. "Hey, can I have my PDA back?"
************
“So, Bourbon,” I prompted, “why do you get called that?”
“My name? Oh. My full name’s Topaz Bourbon, but everyone calls me ‘Bourbon.’”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m always drinking it.”
“I see.”
“So, Mr. Badass Scavenger,” Bourbon asked, “what’s your name?”
“Jasper Star.”
Bourbon nodded in understanding, “I see. Glad to see that they’ve got a kid.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
I raised an eyebrow. I shook my head, some ponies were like that, knowing something you didn’t but not telling you.
Gunfire drew my attention to my right. “Bourbon,” I said, “you hear that?”
Bourbon drew an assault rifle, hopefully his, confirming my suspicions.
Approaching where the gunfire came from, I noted a fallen figure in a blue uniform. “Stable Dweller.”
Bourbon nodded. Ducking behind a wrecked sky carriage, I heard the gunfire stop. I glanced at Bourbon, but he shrugged. “Look at this,” a voice said, “one of them Stable ponies.”
A second voice asked, “Think he’ll make a good slave?”
“Dunno,” replied the first voice, “maybe.”
Slavers. I looked at Bourbon. He nodded. I went around the corner of my side, and Bourbon did the same. “Hello,” he said to the slavers.
The slavers started. “Hi,” said one of them, the one who asked about the Stable Dweller’s slaveness.
I spoke, “I’ll take that Stable Dweller off your hooves.”
“He isn’t for sale,” replied the other slaver.
“I wasn’t asking.”
The slavers’ eyes went wide as realized what I meant. Bourbon glanced at me. “You sure about this?”
“Yes. Hand the Stable Dweller over, and you can walk away from this unharmed.”
The slavers drew their weapons. What is it with ponies and trying to kill me? I sighed, and shot one of the slavers. He collapsed, a hole in his forehead and larger hole most likely in the back of his head. I turned my head to look at the other slaver. He lay in a pool of his own blood. I grimaced. “You do this, Bourbon?”
“Yeah,” was the answer.
“Fair enough. Help yourself to their bags.”
I walked over to the Stable Dweller. I nudged him with a hoof. He didn’t move. I nudged him again. No response. “He’s out cold.”
“Yeah. And in the cold, too.”
I nodded, a pony dressed like the stallion at my hooves would freeze to death in a half a day. I bent down and began inspecting the pony, talking to myself as I did so. “Handsome, strong-looking, and… has the scars of a pony who’s been out in the wasteland a while. Interesting. PipBuck is worn around the edges. He’s got a blue sash with a strange sapphire flower on. What’s this on his leg? Huh. Hey, Bourbon, come here.”
Bourbon walked over, “Yeah?”
“You know this mark?”
“Nope. Never seen it around.”
“Alright.”
I hefted the stallion onto my back. Bourbon raised an eyebrow. “You extending mercy to him?”
“You can go with that. I’ve no idea how long he’ll be out. So, I want to make sure he’s somewhere warm. I also want to know what this mark is.”
"You're a good pony, you know. He'll probably regard you as a hero."
I snorted, "There are no heroes. Heroes don't exist in these times. Not in a world like this."
"Rather pessimistic, are we?"
"Quiet." I barked, "In the Wasteland, there are four kinds of ponies: the survivors, the thrivers, the exploiters, and the takers. No heroes. No villains. There are 'messiahs,' though."
Bourbon chuckled to himself. "Besides," I continued, "I'm no good pony. I've had to shoot innocent ponies to get my haul sometimes. What I'm doing is making sure that a fellow survivor lives longer."
I started walking. "Come on, Bourbon.
************
Two hours later, and two hours colder, I entered Exhibition’s Clinic with Bourbon behind me and the marked pony on my back. “Hey, mom! I’m back!”
The whirring of servos alerted me to my mother’s approach. Her cybernetic right leg always let me know when she was near. She hugged me. “I’m glad to see that you’re back and in one piece.”
I returned the hug. “So,” she said, “who’s Mr. Sleepy here?”
“I dunno. He’s got some sort of weird mark on his leg.”
“Lay him on the table over there, I’ll look at him. Bourbon.”
“Hello, Minuette. How are you?”
Mom just snorted in response. “Yep,” Bourbon observed, “still the same. Good.”
I laid the stallion on the table Mom indicated. I stole a glance at the mark the stallion had. It was an acronym, printed in dark, capital, blocky letters on his green fur.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I turned away. “Mom, take care of him, okay? And Bourbon, too. When I met him, he’d been shot, knocked out, and kicked. I’m going to see Dad.”
My mother nodded, floating up a box of medical equipment. I left the clinic and went to see my father.
************
I entered my father’s workshop, on the other side of the village. It was a house that my father had turned into his personal work area. Disassembled weapons littered the various tables and benches in the building. “Dad, you in here? Dad?”
My father appeared from around the weapon racks on the opposite end of the room, grease smeared on his face and front legs, obscuring his stripes. “Hey, Jasper. Whatcha got?”
I levitated my haul. “One broken Zebra Assault Carbine, two halves of a shotgun I don’t recognize, and one complete Balefire Egg Launcher that’s been disassembled.”
“Oooo. Sounds fun. Put them over there on that workbench.”
I nodded, and placed the weapons on the indicated workbench.
A pony burst into the room. “Octavian,” she said, “the outer guard post has been destroyed!”
My father looked at me. We both knew that the attacks hadn’t been aimed at harming the village in anyway, before now. “Assemble the militia,” he said, addressing the mare, “have a few squads meet me and my son at the guard post.”
The mare nodded, and left. “Well,” my father said, looking at me, “it seems that we’re at war now. Come, we need to investigate.”
************
Jasper Star
Scavenger
Strength: 6
Perception: 7
Endurance: 6
Charisma: 5
Intelligence: 8
Agility: 5
Luck: 6
