Chapter 1: Welcome to Scion

The scent of crisp mountain pines and purest snow lies thick on the air, the muscles in my juvenile legs only now beginning to fill out, my breath misting in the bright morning air as I pull the trolley full of firewood behind me.

It trundles pleasantly, the rattling of my harness pounding a gentle massage into my shoulders and back, a goofy smile on my face as I take another deep breath and blow it out of my exposed nostrils.

My scarf gets a little bit of snot on it, but I don’t care. It’s a good scarf, warm and fuzzy, and I can already see the cabin that dad built before I was born on the horizon.

Gooey sap flings itself into my path from over my shoulder as the little wagon hits a bump in the hoof-worn path as we make it into the yard, making my father laugh in amusement as my cries of “eww, get it off!” fill the otherwise quiet air around our quaint mountain home.

My voice squeaks. I’m big for my age, but my voice still belongs to a colt two years my junior. I look up at him as he continues to chuckle, pouting with my lower lip as I struggle not to cry. Even at eleven, I think the world of him. He’s one of the only two ponies that I love, and the only one that I’ve ever been able to call a hero.

He stands there, towering over me as the cape sewn onto the back of his armor flutters as he disengages from the harness of his own wagon, easily half a ton of wood stored safely inside of its sturdy embrace, my little snot-nosed face barely reaching his knee. His voice is stern, but kindly as he bends forward at the neck, putting us as close to the same height as he can without landing belly first in an undignified sprawl on his belly.

I only have to crane my head up three-fourths as far as it’ll go to look him in the eye now. He’s still really big, though. Even without that armor’s helmet on, his head’s as big around as my stomach. He’s got it slung over his back like he always does when he’s not wearing it, its strap holding it between his shoulders and the cart harness.

“Long Shot?” he asks, his voice like a big teddy bear with metal insides, all huggable and squeezable on the outside, but perfect for smacking bullies over the head with if they start to get too rough. “Remember what we said about screaming around the house? You’ll upset your mother, and she needs her rest right now,” he reminds me, gently rustling my spiky, childish shock of blue-grey-silver hair with one hoof.

He’s wearing his boots, the big, metal ones with the studs on the front, all of them polished nice and clean just the way he knows mom likes. “Don’t give me that look, son. Come here, I’ve got something else to tell you, but you’ve got to keep it secret. Promise?” he queries, his face morphing from paternal to mischievous, although I’m too young to really understand the difference.

“O-okay,” I reply as I look up. I’ve ducked my head in shame as he reminds me not to be so loud while mom’s belly is so full, because what she’s got in there is very heavy and can give her a stomachache if we upset it too much.

I’ve reached the age where my father is nothing short of a god to me, literally representing the very best that a stallion can aspire to, and I look up at him with enraptured sapphire eyes.

I begin to smile a bit and wipe my snotty muzzle with one of my fluffy hooves, feeling better since he’s decided to trust me with a secret. “I promise, I’ll keep your secret, dad!” I say, careful to be enthusiastic and not squeaky like normal. I’m only partially successful, but he doesn’t react to it this time.

“Alright, then. Come closer,” he commands. I shuffle a little towards him, putting about a foot of distance between us.

“Here?” I ask, still looking up.

“Closer,” he says, that sneaky smile of his getting bigger, the playful light in his eyes brighter with every step I take.

“Here?” I ask again, five inches away.

“Just a little more,” he coaxes.

“HeaaAAAAAH!” I squeal as I get within licking distance and he slurps his tongue across the back of my ear, the fur there becoming damp as I rear up on my back legs and struggle to wipe his spit off of my head. I realize that I look ridiculous, dancing around on two legs, but I don’t care.

I hate that feeling, and knowing that my fur’s gonna be so nappy that mom forces me to have three baths this week instead of just two. Dad is sitting next to the carts, chuckling away at me as I glare at him, my foalish pride wounded by his antics.

“Dad! Why did you do that? Don’t you know mom’s gonna think I look funny! She’s been even worse since she started getting bigger,” I say as I start to run at him, my usual reaction to this sort of thing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Mercy!” he cries as he breaks into a full-on laugh, sliding out of my way and breaking into a slow trot, goading me into chasing him around our front yard. I begin to give chase, my gangly colt legs churning up the snow behind me, carving a gash through the pristine whiteness that had fallen since we’d set out when the sun hadn’t woken up yet.

I’m faster than I used to be, but dad’s faster still, and I wonder once again how someone that big moves that fast. Then I just chalk it up to him being dad. There’s nothing he can’t do!

Still, I have to try to catch him. It wouldn’t do for me to just give up and go sulking back into the house like a baby just because he’d fooled me, and soon enough I was laughing alongside him, enjoying the morning together now that our hard work for the day was done. We didn’t have much time before . . .

“Enjoying yourselves?” a mare’s voice comes from the door as mom heaves her belly out of the slim, wooden entrance to the cabin, her thick winter coat stretched to the breaking point trying to keep her and her roly-poly stomach contained. She smiles gently at us, the two favorite men in her life, her fangs gleaming white even as her husband moves over to kiss her, his great emerald-webbed wings fluttering just a bit as I make gagging noises behind him.

Grownup ponies are so gross! I’m never going to get all kissy-kissy with a mare when I get to be as big and strong as dad is!

“I missed you two. Why were you gone so long, Sure Shot?” she asks with lidded eyes as she looks up at my dad, her long, slender legs letting her get within a couple hands of his impressive height. It looked kinda funny with that big ol’ gut of hers hanging down a good foot or so.

She’s still got her gun strapped on her leg, its polished black length hanging dangerously inside of its smooth leather sheath. She never takes it off. It’s always, always, always with her, even when she and dad sometimes boot me out of the house to play grownup games that always leave them really sweaty and tired. I don’t think it’s good that dad makes mom yell that loudly while he tickles her, but I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I won’t tell them about the little hole in the side of the cabin right beside their bed.

“We weren’t gone that long, honey. A few hours at the most,” he says as he finally breaks away from her nuzzles and kisses, coming back over to the big cart to slide himself back into the harness. It hoists it off of the ground effortlessly. I run up next to him and grab my own little trolley, though it’s a bit harder for me to get comfortable than it is for him.

“That’s still too long,” she says in a pouting voice, although the way she says it tells me she’s not really mad at dad. She never stays mad at dad, even when she wakes us up in the middle of the night telling him she wants a glass of iceberry juice, half a dozen pickles and some peanut butter to smear on them.

“And what about Long Shot? He’s still too young to go out with you this early in the morning. He’s a growing colt and he needs his rest,” she says, a bit more seriously, her smile replaced with a straight line as her face changes a little.

“He’s eleven now, Hot Shot. He’s old enough to help his dad with the farm work. In a few years, he’ll be big enough to take over for the both of us and do all the work himself,” he jokes as he looks down at me, a warm smile directed my way as pride gleams in his eyes at his little colt.

“Yeah, mom! I’m gonna be the biggest, strongest buck in the valley!” I exclaim happily as I rear up, forgetting I’m in my harness and getting dumped on my face, much to my chagrin. Mom and Dad laugh. I laugh too. I have no idea it’s the last laugh I’ll ever get to share with either of them.

*** *** ***

The rest of the evening goes just about how I’d expected it to, with mom and dad cooking dinner after we chopped and stacked all the firewood –mmmm, roast yak- the both of them lying down on their big, fluffy mattress with a blanket pulled over it while I took to my little cot in my comfy corner by the fire. Mom is in a very good mood, I learn. She lets me go to bed without a bath tonight, since I helped dad go and collect firewood for the first time. It makes me feel proud, knowing that I’m growing up and making myself useful.

Stomach full, I roll over in my cot and yawn, falling asleep as I try not to listen while mom make dad do kissy-face one more time. She’s been doing that a lot ever since she got fat.

*** *** **

The machine gun rips through the upper half of our cabin like a dragon’s claw through rotten flesh, chunks of burning roof falling onto me and my parents as the molotovs set the thatch and straw on fire. The cabin’s wooden walls catch the flames and the fire starts to consume them, peeling the walls apart like a hoof will peel off a scab from a fire ant bite when it can bear to be touched.

My dad is up on his hooves in an instant, his naked grey fur stained ruddy red in the light of his dying home, his rifle in his hooves as he grabs hold of the pack that contains his armor and helmet. Mom never lets him sleep in it anymore, not since she’s started to grow fat. I’m beginning to hate her for letting herself get so out of shape.

Mom used to be fast, even faster than dad, an amethyst-eyed blur in her signature brown vest as her pistol cracked out to signal the end to another raider’s miserable existence. Now she’s sloppy, fat and slow, her belly weighing her down, mocking the agility she used to boast, threatening to get her killed as she shuffles weakly out of the way of a falling beam.

“Sure Shot! The baby!” she cries, sitting down on her haunches and drawing in gasping breaths, trying to get any clean air she can into her lungs. She’s coughing, unable to stop, too tall to get her head underneath the smoke without lying on her stomach.

Baby?

What baby? There’s no baby in here. I’m not a foal anymore, dammit. I’m eleven years old.

That doesn’t stop me from crying as our home crumbles around our ears, broken wood and ash threatening to crush us to death, or burn us alive if the weight of the house doesn’t kill us.

Dad has his helmet out of his pack, and pulls out a smaller gasmask, the one he keeps in his emergency kit strapped to the side of his armor, pulling back the straps so that he can snug it to mom’s face like a big, plastic bug of some kind before he puts his own helmet on. He flicks the power switch on the side of the box that’s been bolted to the side, its flash light cutting through the smoke and fire with its brilliant cyan beam.

I crawl over to mom and grab hold of her hoof, trying to tug her desperately towards the door, wiping my tears and snot on one fetlock to keep them from blinding me anymore. The smoke is horrible. My eyes can barely stand it, as sensitive as they are, and I have to blink all the time in order to see.

Dad grabs hold of my hoof and yanks me away from mom, slinging me onto his back as he goes charging at the back wall, smashing through the weakened timbers with his bulk and dumping us both out into the snow. The cold shocks me, and I yelp in pain as my right wing gets caught in the wood-pile we’d made earlier, only to have it yanked free by my momentum to the sound of crackling bone and tearing webbing.

I scream.

I should have saved it for later.
Dad is back inside of the house before I can scrabble to my legs, returning just as fast with mom on his back, his wife groaning with pain and clutching at her stomach with the hoof that isn’t wrapped around dad’s neck. She’s sweating, and covered in soot, and her teeth are chattering from the cold. I realize I still have my scarf on from when I cuddled to sleep with it next to the fire, so I try and jump up to wrap it around her neck. I make it, but I squeak as my wing spatters a little bit of blood onto the ground next to me when I land.

“Come on, son. We have to get out of here, now!” my dad says through his helmet’s metal faceplate, his voice muffled and menacing from the lack of clarity. He doesn’t stop to check on me, or to make sure I’m following. He knows I’m too tough to get left behind. He knows how much I worship him.

I sprint as hard as I can, following his track through the snow, only keeping up because he has the awkward weight of mom and his armor pack on his back to weigh him down. He can’t fly with all of that on him. Even if it were only mom, he’d still not be able to carry her to town through the air. Not with the way her gut hung underneath her like that.

Or with me.

I’m slowing them down.

I start to run harder, suddenly ashamed of my inability to help, and I feel a sodden, angry disgust at the tears and snot running down my face. I need to be like dad. Dad isn’t crying. Dad isn’t afraid. Dad’s the toughest stallion in the world, and he’s going to get mom and me to town, then come back here and beat the crap out of whoever was shooting at our house.

The shame turned to burning anger, then back to shame, then to fury all over again in the next few minutes, pushing me onwards, even though I’d long since started to pant and wheeze. Dad started to slow down too as the snow started to thicken. I realized that we were headed uphill.

A little hillock I’d never seen before, with some kind of bowl-shaped depression at its peak. We crawled into it and laid down to rest, although the crack of gunshots through the air told us our pursuers were still after us. They hadn’t wanted to burn the house just for fun.

They’d wanted us dead.

“Quite a merry little chase you’ve led us on,” says an oily-slick voice from the bottom of the hill, the sound of ponies milling about reaching my sensitive ears. I’m not very good at tracking ponies by sound, but I guess that there’s at least six. Maybe seven, since the talking voice doesn’t seem to be moving. It belongs to a mare.

“It’s him,” dad mutters angrily through his helmet, taking the chance to dump his armor out of his pack and slip into it. With mom’s help it goes quickly. Maybe the work of thirty seconds or so. I wish I was wearing armor, too. The cold bites at my wings and makes the boogers hanging out of my nose harden in the chilly air. I try to wipe the little crystals away, but I’m only partially successful.

“I thought we shot that little shit dead. I coulda sworn I pegged him right in his ugly little bastard-face,” mom replies, scaring me a little. She’s always had a swearing problem, so much so that we used to have a swear jar in the cabin, but I’d never heard her talk about a pony with this much hate in her voice before.

“This is your last chance, Hot Shot. Come down here and put on this nice little necklace I’ve got for you, or we’ll crack your husband’s skull open and make your kid eat the brains out of his head and keep going, until he’s got the shakes so bad he can’t stand up without pissing himself,” comes the voice again.

“When I told you that you were going to marry me, I didn’t fucking mean run off with fatso up there. A good slave-bitch oughta know when to follow orders!”

“Go to Hell!” both of my parents reply in unison as I start to vomit on the opposite side of the little hillock, the stress of being attacked in the middle of the night and running at a full sprint for a good twenty minutes finally catching up to me. I’m woozy, faint, and I fall over, barely avoiding my own vomit with my face. I get a mouthful of snow instead. It’s not much better. “Long Shot. Keep your head down!” they order.

I nod meekly and comply. They don’t have to tell me that.

I hear the voice shout “Fire!” and then everything really did go all to Hell.

I’d practiced shooting guns with dad ever since I could hold the little .22 that’s probably a burnt mess back in the cabin, working our way up from just getting the thing to fire at cans, all the way to small game like radroaches and the odd baby ice tortoise.

He’d shown me how to handle a rifle safely, how to take down a target humanely without making it suffer. He’d even show me how to tear it down and clean it so that its pieces flowed over each other like oil over water, smooth and buttery so that it was easy to use.

I’ve never been in the middle of an actual battle before. There’s absolutely no way I can ever compare plinking tin cans to lying down in the ice and screaming as machine guns, rifles and other types of guns go off with the intent of killing you and your family.

The smell of warm urine hit my nostrils, and even through the panic I had the self-awareness to flush with embarrassment.

Mom and dad haven’t noticed yet. They’re peeked over the edge, dad’s big lever-rifle letting out huge BOOMS every few seconds, while mom’s pistol is constantly firing down the hill, a rapid, staccato snare beat to dad’s thundering bass.

I can hear the screams of raider ponies as bullets tear into them and their crappy armor. I think whoever had the machine gun is dead, because it’s just rifles and pistols now. I can’t hear the ratatatatatatatatat of it going off anymore.

“Stop fighting! You and that baby are mine!” the voice shouts again, enraged that so many of her soldiers are dead, and that my parents are fighting them so damned hard.

The fighting goes on for maybe five minutes. There aren’t many raiders, they’re in bad cover from standing at the bottom of a hill, and mom and dad are the best shots in town. There’s no way in hell that the raiders can win.

I smile.

For a minute.

Just for a minute, I start to calm down, to think that things would be alright. I even snort a little bit as dad lets out an excited “yeah! They’re gone!” and mom leans over to kiss him on the cheek of his helmet to congratulate him on his last kill.

I guess it makes sense that a pair of former Desert Rangers like them get all kissy-kissy at the end of a fight. They’ve always told me that it “takes a special kind of crazy” to be in that outfit.

They weren’t paying attention.

They got cocky.

They got distracted.

They paid for it.

Dad’s head explodes into dozens of little pieces as the AMR round flies through his skull, painting mom’s face in blood and gore as her husband flops lifelessly to the ground, never uttering so much as a peep as the bullet punched a hole through his life and let the mess drain out into her hooves.

She doesn’t react for a good ten seconds, just staring at his corpse as tears well up in her eyes. She prods him with a hoof.

“Sure Shot. That’s not funny.” Another poke. “Sure Shot, come on, stop it!” she says, her voice getting louder. “Sure Shot, wake up, come on, wake up!” she yells, standing up to her full height. “Dammit, Sure Shot, wake up! You can’t leave me here alone! You can’t be dead, you’re not allowed to die!” she shrieks as those tears become streams down her cheeks.

She’s pushing his shoulders with both hooves, rocking him back and forth, his body going stiff and cold as snow begins to pile on it and wash away all the blood.

She keeps it up until another mare tackles her to the ground and pins her on her back.

“Finally got you,” says the puke-yellow earth pony mare as she clamps down on mom’s arms and legs. The voice from earlier belongs to her.

Mom spits in her face and begins to scream incoherently, bucking and shaking violently underneath the mare who’d done this to us, her frame quaking with rage and sorrow and a complete lack of the womanly gentleness I’ve known her for since I was born. The sight is terrifying.

The mare doesn’t care. If anything, she’s enjoying it, her cheeks flushing hotly, like two flowers tossed onto a puddle of piss and left to soak up the ammonia-scented juice.

“Just for that, I’ve decided your little boy’s gonna watch~” she coos as she looks over at me, her ivory-colored eyes boring into mine.

“No!” Mom protests, trying desperately to get out from underneath the other mare.

“You sit right there, brat.” she hisses as she reaches into her saddlebags and pulls out a thick collar of some kind, slipping it around mom’s neck with a snap. A little red light flicks on in a little panel on the front. "I've wanted to do this to your mommy since the day we met. You shoulda been my foal, but you're shit outta luck on that account," she sneers.

“You move so much as an inch and mommy’s head’s gonna pop the same way I popped daddy’s.”

I never remember the details of what happens after this point, only a vague feeling of disgust and guilt as I watch the mare play grownup games with my mom. Mom looks ashamed, and hurt, and scared. She won’t even look at me as I lie crying in the corner.

I don’t understand why the mare wants to play those games with mom. That’s what dad does . . . did . . . with her when they wanted to make each other happy.

I’m not even allowed to look away. The mare yells at me every time I try. I just go numb, eventually. It’s morning before the mare stops, and mom is crying. She won’t stop sobbing.

I look down between her legs as the yellow mare gets up.

I see blood.

Mom’s bleeding down there.

I pass out.

Mom and the mare are gone when I wake up, and her pistol is cradled in my lap.

So is dad's severed head.

*** *** ***

I wake up with a pained and shuddering gasp, tears forming in my eyes as I blink back the shock of yet another nightmare. I’ve never quite been able to get used to them, each one like a large scab that refuses to heal over no matter how many times you yank it off of the skin.

The zebra was standing over my bed when I finally come to, my head and face making their protests known in the form of ‘fuck-you’ stabs of pain across my flesh where I’d been hit. The worst of was centered on the back of my skull and on the left side of my mouth, though the acidic taste of old vomit lining my teeth and tongue wasn’t helping matters either.

It was like someone had placed the butt of an automatic shotgun against my face and held down the stud, slamming it into my jaw over and over again until I'd blacked out, then taken the spent shells, turned them inside out and made me lick them clean.

I was looking up at him and he was looking down at me, neither one of us moving as the bowl of hot soup he was carrying in his right hoof steamed and bubbled merrily away, filling the room with the scent of fresh vegetables and the gut-teasing aroma of stewed yak-meat.

He set the soup down on a nearby table and smiled at me as he pulled a chair up next to the bed, a warm, friendly smile that reminded me a little of my dad, especially since that gods-awful dream was still fresh in my mind.

I didn’t trust him at all, especially remembering the way I’d been shot, tackled and knocked out. My shoulder throbbed petulantly as I adjusted my position a little bit, making ready to spring up and away from the bed and the zebra if he made it necessary.

“My name’s Needler,” he said in a soothing voice, his tones a rich tenor despite his average-sized frame. I noted that he let his mane grow naturally, rather than keeping it cut into a trim bun or mohawk like many zebras. “Take it easy. That’s quite a bump you got on your noggin’.”

My mind, paranoid as it was, began to run through the possibilities.

Option one: I was captured by the raiders after they knocked me out, dragging me back to their lair and preparing to either kill me or to eat me. Not necessarily in that order.

I dismissed this one immediately. Raiders as a rule were neither smart, nor complex, explaining why the ones outside the norm were so excessively dangerous. This pony was clean, enough that he still had all of his teeth, had them in the right place, and didn’t smell of shit, old blood and rape. He was also a good twenty or so years older than me, judging by the streaks of grey running through his mane and fur.

He was also pretty well dressed in a neat brown robe that reminded me of a celestial monk’s attire, very simple and tied at the waist with a brown belt, though the lumps underneath the breast of the cloth told me that he was packing some pretty serious heat There was one large hoof-gun and a knife in there at least.

He was also pulling down my blanket, unraveling the bandages that someone had put on my gunshot wound and began applying a salve to it. I noticed I’d been stitched closed by a competent medic, so that must mean the bullet had been removed while I was unconscious. I also had a hard time moving that limb. Or anything, really. My legs felt like mashed gelatin.

Option 2: This stallion was a slaver, and has drugged me, bandaged me up and is preparing to move me somewhere so that he can put me to work, or get me ready for sale to a different owner.

This one didn't really stick, either. No collar, no chains, no nothing to keep me restrained to the bed once I'd eventually gotten my strength back, and it was growing easier to move by the second. Whatever was keeping me still had only been active for as long as I was unconscious, or had been a side-effect of getting hit on the head with something made of metal. There weren't even any guard ponies, something that most slave owners had on hoof whenever dealing with a potential captive.

The room itself didn't scream 'slave-den' either, owing to the simple but tasteful collection of carved zebrican totems, pre-war Equestrian posters, and what looked like a functional stove across the way, its heating elements still cherry red from where they'd been heating up the bubbling bowl of soup on the nightstand. No, definitely not a slaver. Slavers didn't bother to cook delicious food for their captives. By necessity, this ruled out the Zebra Legions as well.

Option 3: Average Wasteland pony with some medical training and a kinder heart than most.

As unlikely as it was, this was the option I was leaning towards, simply because what I could consciously glean from the pony and his environment, as well as what my gut was telling me. I'd learned long ago that strong hunches were often rooted in subconscious observation of hard fact, and this zebra reeked friendliness like a Hellhound dribbled saliva. The only thing missing was a medical kit, but that could easily have been hidden in the bulky, hard-sided saddlebags draped over his haunches.

"Needler?" I finally asked, my voice weak and rasping, my throat burning from dryness. I'd been out a long time, if it was that sore. "Where are we, and how did I get here?"

"Shh, no questions now. Only needles," he replied in a decidedly spooky voice before he pulled a long, thin acupuncture needle from underneath the sleeve of his robe, jabbing it into the side of my neck just underneath my jawline.

My first reaction was to give myself a mental kick in the balls for letting myself get this lax. I'd just stared up at the back that had ended my life with barely a flick of his fetlock, and now my body was probably going to get dumped into a snow field somewhere right after I'd been chewed clean, left nothing but bone to mark my passing.

My body took to the warm, buttery sensation flowing over my skin much more readily than my mind did, its aches and pains disappearing, like they'd been shunted down into my hooves and allowed to dribble free into some kind of cosmic gutter where they couldn't bother me any more. Even my gunshot wound, as irritating as it was, felt like more of a bee sting or roach bite than the leftovers of a hot metallic projectile boring its way through my shoulder.

My motor control returned as well, and I took the opportunity to get out of bed, tossing the covers aside and leaning against the zebra when I started to stumble a little from weakness. Rather than feeling jelly-legged, it was like I had stepped out of a sauna or massage parlor, my muscles slack and relaxed from being overloaded with pleasurable sensations. Fortunately, Needler had pulled the poker out of my neck before I started flailing around, saving me the stupidity of accidentally stabbing myself to death on his medical tool.

"Damn. Where'd you learn to do that?" I asked as I looked around the room, hoping to find my equipment lying in the corner somewhere. I was disappointed to see that it wasn't hidden anywhere in plain view, but Needler seemed to know what I was after without asking, and moved over to a side closet to reveal my armor, weapons and packs laid out neatly on the wooden shelves inside.

I could tell from here that they'd cleaned and polished my clothing and satchels, but my weaponry had been left untouched aside from what was needed to keep them functioning. That immediately gave me a clue as to where we were, and I felt my pulse quicken at the realization.

"I sound Equestrian, but I was born in Marembasa," Needler explained from behind me as I started to get dressed, the ranger armor flowing onto my naked form like it belonged there. I'd filled out quite a bit in the past twelve-or-so years, and could wear my father's old equipment very comfortably. "It's a small commune of zebras that have left the Legion, and taken to trading with the local residents," he continued. "It is a healer's paradise because of the many medicinal herbs that grow there, as well as its therapeutic hot springs, although many there consider my specialization in acupuncture to be somewhat unusual."

I checked to make sure that the riot plate on the chest sat where it was supposed to, the duster hung low over my haunches to protect them from dust, the bandoleers were just right on my torso so that I could reach down and open them with either mouth or hoof, and the sturdy metal boots - scoured free of rust since the last time I had worn them - fit snugly and didn't chafe. I felt much better after I was dressed.

Even for a stallion as big as I am, there's a certain confidence that comes with wearing an excellently crafted armored uniform, like just having it on made me even more dangerous than I already was. It was a good feeling.

"I can imagine a lot of doctors wouldn't be too excited about having medicine turned into a weapon," I replied, getting a raised eyebrow from the other buck. "You had that thing in my neck before I could move, jelly-legs notwithstanding. You know how to throw them too?" I ask, giving the zebra a small, knowing grin.

"You're good at reading ponies, mister bat," he said with a nod of acknowledgement. "The wastes are a dangerous place sometimes. If I could hone my medicinal abilities and learn to defend myself at the same time, I felt it would be more practical than learning two separate disciplines, although living in New Cannon tends to familiarize one with firearms very quickly," he said with a smile of his own.

"So we are in fact in New Cannon?" I asked as I grabbed hold of my father's helmet and stowed it in my saddle bag, pushing aside the small survival kit already inside of it to make room. Someone had been kind enough to add several cans of food to my non-existent rations. My bolt-action rifle and dad's old carbine went onto my back and left side respectively, and mom's revolver was slung into the holster I kept on my upper-right foreleg. It felt good to have their weight on my again.

"Step outside and see for yourself, mister bat. You seemed to have been heading this way on purpose, so you ought to recognize where you are." He moved over to the simple wooden door and pushed it aside, blinding me with the brilliant white of a mid-day snow as the sun beat through the light-grey clouds like streams of air through a thin filter. I stepped outside and reached down, grabbing hold of mom's pistol again and bringing it to bear.

"Hello, Long Shot," said the mare with the bandaged forelegs as she stood in front of me, the pegasus who'd jumped me earlier standing behind her and a little to her right with an automatic pistol in her teeth.

"Welcome to Scion."

Author's Note

Writing from the perspective of a young child is very difficult for me. So much so that this is the first time I've attempted it in any published work. There's a simplicity you have to maintain in the mind of a kid who's not excessively intelligent, and it's hard to restrain the imagism I like to use in my writing when I'm trying to tell a story through the eyes of a panicked foal. Thanks for the faves and the votes. As always, comments and critiques are welcomed and appreciated.