Fallout Equestria: Nuclear Winter

Chapters

Chapter 1: Hit the Ground Stumbling
Chapter 3: Twenty Questions
Chapter 4: Memory Lane
Chapter 5: Rio a la Plata
Chapter 6: Law of Attraction
Chapter 7: Checkout at Eleven
Chapter 8: Neanderthal
Chapter 9: Floral Shoppe
Chapter 10: The Morning After
Chapter 11: Smugglers and Sex Cucumbers
Chapter 12: Tall and Wide
Chapter 13: Dereliction of Duty
Chapter 14: Remnants
Chapter 15: Pied Piper
Chapter 016: The Battle of Milk Creek
Chapter 17: Bed and Circuses
Chapter 018: The Big Bad Wolf
Chapter 019: Pale Moonlight
Prologue
Chapter 2: Things That go 'Bump' in the Night

Chapter 1: Hit the Ground Stumbling

Chapter 1: Hit the Ground Stumbling

“To the west, you can see a natural light. For the first time in your life, you are looking at the outside world.”

Tuesday, September 2nd, 4347

Dear Diary,

For the second time in my life, I woke up not in a bed or a sleeping bag, but on the cold, hard floor. Looking around at my dimly lit surroundings, I found myself in a small concrete bunker, the only adornments being the iron pipes which clambered up the otherwise barren walls. It was cold too, lacking any source of heating or ventilation, and aside from a single steel hatch, it offered us little protection from the elements of the outside world.

I wasn’t in the Stable anymore, but I wasn’t outside yet either. We had spent the night in a small chamber at the top of a tall spiral staircase which descended into the Stable. It wasn’t the main entrance, but rather one of several “emergency exits” which provided alternatives in the event that the main entrance was blocked, which it was. For some reason, the contractors who built our Stable insisted on adding them, to “Comply with the local building code,” even though they clearly weren’t part of Stable-Tec’s original plan.

I don’t think any of us ever went in thinking we would come out using the emergency exits. When you first come in through the massive gear-shaped steel door, you get the feeling that you’re entering a bank vault: tough and durable, able to survive the most extreme conditions with only minor damage to its exterior, and absolutely none to the contents inside. You think that one day either you or your descendants will emerge from the Stable, its door opening much the same way as it did when you entered it except in reverse, but still completely intact after however many years, at an age when all other doors of the same size and material would have been pried or rusted open long ago.

And of course, if there had been only one entrance to the Stable, then what would we dwellers do if it had been blocked? Even if the door itself never breaks, what about the tunnel connecting it to the outside world? I mean, I understand that the purpose of having a Stable in the first place is to protect us from the outside world, but is it really such a good idea to risk trapping everypony inside forever just to keep a few rads out?

Thank Celestia for fire escapes. We still had a way out-- we can finally leave! We can be free of the stable and return to the surface, breathe the fresh air, and rid ourselves of this twisted experiment in pony habitation… at least, the three of us.

You see, I kind of destroyed part of the staircase while we were leaving. I had to-- there was no other choice. We can’t afford to let what’s taken over the Stable infect the rest of the world. Although it blocks off the only escape route I know of, I know there are others. Unfortunately, they’re pretty well hidden, and hardly anypony knows they even exist in the first place. I just hope they can hold out against the madness, at least for another two weeks, so we can go out there and find help. There has to be something, something out there in this wide, wide world that can help us reclaim the stable, or at least what’s left of it.

“Come on, wake up!” I said, nudging one of my sleeping companions awake. I gently rubbed a forehoof through her poofy purple mane, then lightly jabbed her belly and its semi-fluffy light green coat.

“Noooooo,” she moaned, rolling over so her back was facing me and curling up into a ball.

“Come on, Grapevine,” I said, jabbing her harder. “We’ve got to go.”

“Just five more minutes,” she whined, somewhat incoherently, through the combination of an otherwise perky southern accent and drowsiness. I responded with an exasperated sigh.

“Fine,” I said. “Five more minutes. But if you’re not up by then, I’m leaving without you.”

I started walking to the massive blast door and stopped right in front of it. Fishing a plain blue cloth and a black hair tie out of my saddlebags, I cleaned my glasses as well as I could and pulled my medium-length blonde hair into a ponytail. I think it goes well with my slate grey coat, although ponies keep saying I look like a certain imbecilic delivery pony who I’d rather not be compared to. I probably look horrible right now given that I spent a good portion of last night running from crazy ponies trying to kill me, but I suppose that’s not much different from my usual look. The fillies at school used to call me frumpy, which I resented, but never bothered to do anything to make them think otherwise.

Next I put on some clothes. In addition to the rubbery stable jumpsuit I was already wearing (standard issue clothing down in the stable,) and my lucky necklace (a silver pendant shaped like a bullet; my mom had a sense of humor), I put on my trusty old evergreen trench coat and a parka on top of that, a beanie, brown leather gloves, black leather boots, and a scarf. It’s a bit much, but I’ll need the extra padding until we get down from the mountains. I’ll remove the beanie, scarf, and parka once we get low enough, depending on the temperature.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the door was the blinding light of the outside. I adjusted to this quickly, however, because it wasn’t nearly as bright as it had been the last time I was on the surface. The second thing I noticed was just how big the sky was. This wasn’t the first time I had seen the sky, but after nearly a year of living in an underground bunker, you kind of become used to living in a hole in the ground. The third thing I noticed was the frigid coldness of the air. Not just any kind of cold air, but freezing cold air. Almost like stepping into a freezer, except way bigger. Then I took my first step and panicked as I slipped and fell on some ice, landing hard on my tailbone.

“Owww! Oww Oww Oww Oww!” I shouted (rather quietly), wincing in pain. It took a good minute or two until I was finally able to get back up again, very slowly, as my plot was still in searing pain. A part of me was a bit irked that the pony standing at the edge of the cliff didn’t see me fall or ask if I was okay. However, I could understand why he didn’t: first, the whistling of the wind was very loud up here, so it would be hard for him to hear me. Second, I knew, and he knew, that I’m the type of pony who doesn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to herself, especially when it’s something as minor as me getting an injury. And third, well, I would have just said, “I’m fine,” if anypony did ask if I was okay.

When the pain in my butt had settled down to a point where I could start to walk, I did so, albeit very slowly, over to the pony who was gazing at the scenery from the edge of the cliff.

Only, he wasn’t a pony; he was a changeling, a member of a race of black buglike shapeshifting pony-like creatures from a foreign land. Most ponies are frightened by them, and I must admit I still find them a bit creepy myself, (especially when they’re in their natural form!) but I’ve known this particular one for quite some time, and grown used to his company.

As I grew near, he turned his head and asked me, “Well? Is she coming?”

“Soon,” I replied. “It’s frustrating, having to mother somepony who’s almost twice your age. And to think, she used to be my boss!”

The changeling chuckled. Then he said,

“You’re almost eighteen now,” he said. “You should start expecting to have responsibility over other ponies.”

“Yeah,” I said, “But she should at least be able to wake herself up in the morning.”

“We all had a rough night last night,” the changeling assuaged. “And concrete floors make terrible beds. You can’t blame her if she wants to sleep in.”

“I know,” I sighed, “But we can’t just stay here. We’ve got to get moving. With all this snow and ice on the ground, it might take us three days to get out of this forest.”

“I understand that you want to get moving as soon as possible,” he said calmly, “But you have to learn to wait for others. Not every pony is as goal-driven as you are.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the squeak of steel hinges, an enormous yawn, and the sound of hooves plopping into the snow. The two of us turned around and saw Grapevine, now awake and ready.

“Ya know, ah still can’t believe you were a changelin’ this whole time,” she said.

“Well, I am,” said the changeling. “How’d I do?”

“You sure had me fooled,” replied Grapevine, “And I think ya had everypony else down there fooled too.”

“Thanks,” he said, glowingly. “That was the longest I’d ever gone in a disguise.”

“And yer sure Silver Bullet ain’t a changeling too?” she asked, eyeing me with suspicion.

“No,” I said with a twinge of annoyance. “I’m a unicorn and nothing but.”

“So…” Grapevine continued, “the whole him bein’ yer father thing… that was just…”

“Part of the ruse,” said my changeling ‘father.’ “Really, I’m an honest pony… well, I try to be… but sometimes we have to sacrifice our morals just to survive.”

“And you were okay with it?” Grapevine asked me. I nodded.

“Well, it was a little bit strange,” I admitted, “Especially considering that when we first met he threatened me at gunpoint,” I replied, “But then we figured out a way to make it work: he let me do whatever I wanted, and in return I’d play along with the charade.”

“Sounds more like a classic case of Stockholm syndrome,” she said.

“You could say that…” I said. “But he really isn’t a bad guy. Besides, it was either move in with him or get put under the custody of somepony else, being a minor and all...”

“Guys, we can talk about this later?” said the changeling. “We should get moving.”

“Right,” said Grapevine. “But where are we goin’, anyways?”

“First we should go down to the parking lot in front of the Stable’s main entrance and search for supplies,” I said, “Then work our way towards the ski resort. Once we get there, we’ll head west. ”

“Good idea,” said Grapevine, gazing blankly into the distance. “Ah don’t know where any of those places are, but it sounds like a plan.”

“Our pipbucks can help us navigate,” said the changeling, holding up the portable computer attached to his hoof. “If not, we can always find a map.”

Grapevine peered over the cliff.

“An’ how are we gonna get down this mountain?”

“This way,” I said, leading the way. “I know a part that isn’t as steep where we can climb down.”

Grapevine looked at the changeling in confusion. Equally as confused, he shrugged and started to follow me. After a few seconds, Grapevine started to follow me too.

The hike down the mountain was slow and fraught with danger. With snow and ice everywhere, we had to be extremely careful with our movements (to avoid further injury), and we almost slipped several times. Fortunately we made it down in three pieces, though we had to throw all our saddlebags down the mountainside to ease our descent. Then we had to find where our saddlebags landed when we got to the bottom. We eventually did find them again, but after their tumble down the mountainside they were all damp and covered in snow.

“Ugh, so heavy!” Grapevine said as she tugged on the strap of one of the bags, trying to pull it off the ground. “None of us are particularly strong. Did we really have to pack ‘em to the brim with stuff?”

“Yes,” I said. “Raiding the armory and the cafeteria was the best decision we ever made. We have plenty of guns for defense and hunting, and we’ve got enough food, water, and medicine to last us the whole trip, or at least until we reach a city where we can scavenge for more. I don’t know of any other Stable ponies who can say they’re half as prepared as we are.”

“But is all this really necessary?” she asked. “I mean, we’ve got four types of pistols an’ half a dozen hunting rifles each.”

“We need to pack multiples in case they break down,” I said. “Trust me, we have all the weapons we’ll ever need. There’s no guarantee we’ll find more in good condition.”

“We can also trade them for supplies,” the changeling added.

“With all this firepower, it’s more efficient to just rob them,” I said. He shot me a glare.

“But we aren’t going to do that, right?” he said in a half-scolding sarcastic tone. I was a bit taken aback by his reaction.

“No, it was a joke,” I said flatly.

“It better be,” he replied, walking over to his saddlebags. He knelt down and yanked them out of the ground, tossing them into the air in a way that would ensure they landed squarely on his back. They did, but the sensation startled him.

“Ugh, so cold!” he groaned. “Just how cold is it, anyway?”

Grapevine checked her pipbuck’s temperature sensor.

“It’s about… 238.52 kelvin.”

“Kelvin?” asked a confused changeling.

“Oh, sorry,” said Grapevine, rapidly adjusting the settings on her pipbuck. “Okay, -38.63 degrees Celsius.”

“Can you give it to me in Marenheit?” asked the changeling.

“Ah’m a chemist,” replied Grapevine. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s thirty below zero,” I said, reading from my pipbuck. “Marenheit,” I added for clarification.

“The average temperature in this region at this time of year would be around 25 degrees Celsius,” interjected Grapevine, “or about 77 degrees Fahrenheit for y’all non-metric plebeians, or roughly 298.15 kelvin, so if ya do the math you could say that it’s…. twenty percent cooler... than it was this time a year ago! Eh?”

The changeling didn’t get the joke. I did, but instead of being amused I facehoofed.

“We can make weather jokes later,” I said, walking away. “Right now we have somewhere to get to.”

My companions ended the conversation and followed behind me.

We stumbled around the forest for half an hour. Even though our pipbucks had both a ‘world’ and ‘local’ settings, the ‘world’ map was mostly blank and had no labels except for ‘Stable’ and ‘Secret Access Hatch 12.’ Obviously this wasn’t very helpful, so I used my memory and sense of direction to guide us forward. Eventually I stumbled upon across a narrow dirt vehicle trail called ‘Access Road #872’ and followed it back towards the mountain. Although the ground was covered entirely in snow, the road and topography markers on my pipbuck’s map and the clearing between the trees showed me where to go. Eventually the road led us to a parking lot in front of a high mountain cliff, surrounded by a chain link fence. The sign above the main gate read:

STABLE-TEC LIFE PRESERVATION CENTER #76

-NO TRESPASSING-

The changeling tried to pick the lock, but to no avail because it was frozen shut. Grapevine got out her flamethrower and tried to melt it, but burned it to a cinder in the process. With the lock now broken, we went in.

Inside the parking lot were the busses Stable-Tec had used to get the ponies out of the city, plus a few other vehicles. There was also one of those portable office trailers off to the side that was probably left there by the contractors who built the Stable. Protruding into the middle of the cliff that the far end of the lot there was a large cave sealed by another chain link gate. Deep within this cave stood the massive gear-shaped steel door of Stable 76, the great vault where we thought we would live out the next few decades of our lives, or possibly the rest of our lives, depending on when the surface was determined to be inhabitable again. I’m pretty sure we had soaked up quite a bit of radiation from our little trek in the snow, so obviously this was not the right time to return to the surface, but things don’t always go as planned.

Now here we were, outside of our Stable and beloved home. Maybe someday we would return, but after the events of the past few weeks, life in the Stable would never be the same again. We definitely can’t go back now, because the situation hasn’t improved, and unless we can do something about it, it’s only going to get worse, if such a thing is even possible.

We entered the portable office, this time managing to pick the lock without completely destroying it, and hung up our coats to dry while we ate lunch. There was some food in this building, but everything that wasn’t laden with preservatives had spoiled. Thus, our lunch was a delicious yet unnaturally sweet meal of Sparkle Cola, potato chips, Dandy Buck Apples, and Fancy Buck’s Snack Cakes. Yum.

“Ya know, ah never really got yer name,” said Grapevine between bites. “And ah really should, given we’re gonna be travelin’ together.”

“Dmitry Belka, at your service,” said the changeling with a bow. “But my friends just call me ‘Didi.’”

“’Dmitry,’ huh?” said Grapevine. “That’s a weird name. Kind of… unponylike.”

“Grapevine!” I chided. “That’s kind of rude.”

“It’s alright,” said Dmitry. “I get that all the time.”

Then after a sip of his Sparkle Cola, he added,

“My parents were immigrants. It’s actually quite a common name where they’re from.”

“And where’s that?” asked Grapevine.

“Changica,” replied Dmitry. “I’ve never been there myself, but my parents told stories about it all the time.”

“Ye’ll have to tell us some of them stories sometime,” said Grapevine, getting up to leave. “But fer now, ah’m gonna go see what’s in that other room.”

And with that she dashed off into the adjacent room and slammed the door.

“Is she… always like that?” asked Dmitry.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said with a shrug. “Predictable as a parasprite.”

Dmitry shrugged too, finished his lunch, then said,

“I’m going to go out and loot those busses to see if there’s anything valuable inside. Wanna come?”

“No thanks,” I replied. “It’s too cold out there.”

“Alright,” he said as he got up. “Suit yourself.”

And then he left. I remained in silence for a few minutes finishing my lunch, and just as I had finished, the door to the adjacent office opened and Grapevine stumbled back in, looking somewhat hazy, and sat down in a chair.

“Found anything?” I asked, somewhat puzzled as to what took her so long.

“Nope!” Grapevine chirped, followed by a giggle. “Well, nothin’ useful.”

I preoccupied myself for the next few minutes trying to hack a computer terminal while Dmitry broke into the busses and Grapevine sat in her chair staring off into space. Now, I’m no computer expert, but hacking computers isn’t nearly as difficult as it seems. Back in the stable, Dmitry taught me a method that hardly required any programming knowledge at all – however it’s extremely time consuming because it’s mostly guesswork.

Basically what you do is start the computer and type in these really obscure commands or whatever and it opens this program called DEBUG/ACCOUNTS.F, which fills the screen with gibberish. Hidden somewhere among this gibberish is the correct password, and you only have four tries to guess it before it locks you out permanently.

Now here's the thing: you can restart the computer to replenish your tries. Shutting the computer off and turning it back on again after every three tries is tedious, but it still beats getting locked out forever. Keep doing that over and over again and, like a monkey on a typewriter, you’ll crack the code… eventually. It really puts the ‘monkey’ into ‘code monkey,’ because any noob can do it.

Wow, no wonder why so many corporate and military secrets got leaked during the war- it’s because the security on these things sucks! I wonder if the programmers even knew about this? Surely they had to, but then why didn’t they fix it? I don’t even get the point of the DEBUG/ACCOUNTS.F application, anyway. What does it even do? It seems like all it does is serves as a loophole for hackers like—

“Hey guys!” cried Dmitry, poking his head back in through the door. “Check this out!”

We followed him outside and to the end of the row of busses, and behind the last bus was this great big black SUV— the kind all my neighbors used to park in the driveways of their McMansions to show how rich they were.

“Pretty neat, huh?” he asked. “I forged a copy of the key using some bobby pins. And guess what? It works!”

“Wooooieeee!” cried Grapevine. “ROAD TRIP! I call shotgun!”
And with that she flung open the door and hopped in. Dmitry and I stayed outside for a few seconds looking at the car, me looking it over and him admiring it.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, now looking at me.

“I have a feeling we’re not supposed to do this,” I said.

“Do you object to me hijacking this car?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that,” I replied. “It’s just that… I have a gut feeling that we’re breaking some sort of unwritten rule or something...”

“Hey,” he said, wrapping a hoof around me. “We only need this vehicle for a few days, maybe two or three weeks at most. What are the chances that whoever owns it will come out of the stable looking for it during that time? Or… ever?”

I glanced nervously back at the car. There was only one pony I could think of who would put ‘RMAGEDN’ on his license plate, and he certainly wouldn’t be coming back.

I shrugged the feeling off and climbed through the passenger door.

Inside the SUV was nice and dry. Still cold, but not nearly as cold as the outside.

“This is great!” I heard Grapevine exclaim. “With this baby we’ll be outta this dang forest in no time!”

“Alright, fasten your seatbelts everypony!” said Dmitry as he turned his makeshift key in the ignition. “It’s go time!”

“Woooo-hoooooo!” yelled Grapevine, throwing her forehooves up into the air.

“We aren’t even moving yet,” I told her.

“Ah know,” she said, “But this is just soooo excitiiiiiinnnnnggggg!”

“Alright, now to figure out how this thing actually works,” said Dmitry. “It has one of those fancy computer systems that all the new cars have, and apparently it has GPS too.”

“Great,” I said. “Plug in the coordinates for ‘Sandy Shades.’”

“Okay,” he said, typing the letters into the GPS. “’Sandy Shades.’ Enter.”

“DESTINATION SET FOR: SANDY SHADES,” said the GPS in a feminine computerized voice. “CALCULATING ROUTE.”

We waited a minute as the GPS calculated the route. While this function normally would have been completed in a couple of seconds, the GPS was taking a lot longer than that.

“RECALCULATING… RECALCULATING…” said the GPS.

After about a minute or so it timed out.

“ERROR: COULD NOT FIND SATELLITE SIGNAL. WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY AGAIN?”

“The cloud cover’s too thick,” I said. “I doubt it’ll work in this weather anyway. Hit ‘No.’”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to navigate the old fashioned way,” said Dmitry. “I’m sure we can find our way.”

Then he put the SUV in reverse and pressed his hoof down on the gas pedal.

The wheels began to turn, but we still weren’t moving.

“The wheels are stuck,” said Grapevine. “Go faster!”

Dmitry slammed on the gas pedal, which made the wheels turn even faster, but the SUV still didn’t move.

“Does this thing have chains or anything?” asked Grapevine.

“Um…. No,” admitted Dmitry.

“How about studded tires?” she asked.

“I… don’t think so…” said Dmitry. “But I’m sure we could find some snow shovels around here and—”

“Forget it,” I scoffed, unbuckling my seatbelt. “That’ll take too long. And even if we could get it working, I doubt there’ll be any working coolant stations out there. Let’s just loot the car and continue on hoof.”

Disappointedly, Dmitry turned off the engine and got out. Grapevine rifled through the glove compartment while I checked the seat pockets and the trunk. I’m not sure if she found anything besides the vehicle registration papers, but at least I was able to find a road map and a first aid kit.

Then the three of us headed back down the access road in the direction of the ski lodge. Trudging through the snow was hard work, especially in the places where the snow was knee-deep. We filled most of the afternoon bantering about, of all things, the weather, and why things were acting so weird lately.

I swear that, at exactly this same time last year, it wasn’t this bad. Normally, the weather in Equestria is manipulated by the pegasi weather teams, through methods ranging from complex machines and such to actions as simple as moving clouds by hoof, to ensure a balanced ecosystem, prevent disasters, and optimize agricultural output. Granted, the weather’s always been a bit wild here in our little corner of Equestria, and during the war, a lot of the ponypower was drafted and sent to the battlefield, and as a result, functions like weather manipulation were neglected. But even without the weather teams, what we have here is ridiculous! Even in the dead of winter, we rarely get subzero temperatures, so for it to be this cold in the beginning of September is unheard of! I’m certain this is a record low for our region, if there are still ponies keeping records, and I can’t see this ever happening again.

Now that I think about it, the cloud cover might have something to do with it. For it to be so thick and so opaque, so omnipresent and overbearing, and not a single break in it all day. I haven’t seen the sun at all today! It makes me wonder if it’s still there at all, whether it’s still being maintained, or if it too has lapsed into disarray. Grapevine says we’ve entered another ice age, and that it’s going to stay like this for quite some time. Dmitry doesn’t think it’s that bad, but he agrees that something’s off. I hope it doesn’t get that bad, and that this might just be an isolated incident unique to our area, but I’m not so sure.

We eventually reached the Timberwolf Highway late in the afternoon. Although the highway was covered in snow, it was much bigger than the access road, and was thus more clearly defined. The various signs which appeared every so often warning us of important hazards and landmarks up ahead told us that we were now on the road well-traveled, and that it was only a matter of time before we reached civilization. Also, unlike the access road, the highway was actually paved.

However, seeing these signs of pony life just made Grapevine sad.

“What if we’re the only ones left?” she asked in a quiet, despondent. “On the surface, I mean. Of course the ponies in the Stables are all fine, but what if the surface is just one big radioactive deathtrap? I mean, we’ve been walkin’ all day and haven’t seen a single pony.”

“But we know there are ponies out here,” I said. “The Stable made contact with some HAM radio operators back in March.”

“Yeah, they told us a buncha tall tales like dog-sized scorpions an’ glowin’ green rain,” she replied. “How do we know they weren’t just some punks in our Stable tryin’a trick us into thinkin’ they were survivors outside?”

“Well...” I began, but couldn’t come up with an argument. She had a point.

“Or, what if there were survivors back then but they’ve all since died from the radiation?” she continued. “I mean, we haven’t seen anypony all day. Are we walkin’ into our deathbeds?”

“We haven’t seen any ponies yet because we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Dmitry said. “I’m sure plenty of ponies survived, just like we survive everything else.”

“Yeah!” I said. “Do you have any idea how many refrigerators there are in Equestria?”

We all laughed at that. But by some strange twist of fate, our laughter had summoned a small group of ponies-- about five or so-- who had jumped out from behind some bushes and trees. They were thin as rails, dressed in rags, and looked like they had been through hell and back. They didn’t look too happy to see us, but that didn’t matter because the three of us were just happy to learn that this new world wasn’t just an empty void… until we noticed they had weapons drawn. Knives, broken bottles, and battered old pistols that looked like they barely worked weren’t much of a threat, but a threat was still a threat.

“D-D-Don’t move!” said a periwinkle unicorn mare with a soft and quiet voice, who stood in front and seemed to be their leader. “This is a holdup. Just give us all your food and there won’t be any trouble!”

I could see in her wide eyes and the shaky telekinetic grip on her pistol that she didn’t like the situation any more than I did. Now don’t get me wrong-- I was scared too-- but seeing how hesitant she was made me somewhat less worried. I decided to test her by stepping forward. She flinched and almost stepped back, but then remembered what she was doing and stubbornly stood her ground.

“I said give it up!” she said, this time a bit louder and mustering all her forcefulness (which wasn’t much). “Don’t move another inch, or I’ll… I’ll… shoot you!”

“Oh, really?” I said, whipping my weapon, a handy IF-64 assault rifle, and pointing it towards her. I glanced behind me and saw that Dmitry and Grapevine had also procured their weapons, another assault rifle and a flamethrower, respectively. I then stared the mare down with a smirk.

“Did you really think it was a good idea to threaten us?” I asked.

She tried but failed to think of a response, so she just shut her eyes tightly and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, her marksmanship was pretty bad. My eye tracked the bullet as it flew past and landed in the snow a hundred yards behind me. I looked back at her. Perhaps if I were a more arrogant pony I would have uttered some sly comment about the situation. But I’m not that kind of pony, so I just opened fire instead.

The periwinkle mare leapt out of the way and into the bushes, allowing the pony behind her to take the shots instead. I kept the trigger down as I moved the barrel to try to hit her as she leapt, but she was too fast and I sprayed another of her companions with lead instead. Dmitry also opened fire and Grapevine jumped forward while shooting flames. Each of them took out a pony on the group’s flanks.

Now three ponies lay on the ground writhing in agony from their bullet wounds as a fourth ran around in circles aimlessly screaming while his body was engulfed in flames. He then turned too sharply and fell over, then rolled around in the snow to extinguish the flames. It worked, but when the frigid snow came into contact with his charred flesh he screamed in immense pain. Then he just curled up and lay there sobbing. The sight was… pathetic beyond words. And really, really sad. It made my heart sink, believe me. Now, I don’t know much about medicine, but I did know that he definitely wasn’t going to survive like that, especially in this weather, without a thorough medical intervention and being carted off to a shelter for several weeks of rest. And I wasn’t about to pull some ‘good samaritan’ shit, especially for a guy who just tried to rob me. However, I did feel for him, so I walked over, pulled out my trusty Mountain Griffon pistol, and put him out of his misery.

With my guilty conscience eased, I turned around and ran into the forest to pursue the leader. She hadn’t gotten far when I tracked her down and tackled her.

“No, please don’t!” she cried as I levitated the pistol to the side of her head. “I had no choice-- I’m not that kind of pony!”

“Only a criminal robs a pony at gunpoint,” I replied.

“I did it to save my children!” she cried.

I heard a small whimpering noise off to the side. I looked and saw four foals, none of them older than ten, and the youngest only about five or so. They stared at me with their big innocent eyes, stunned into silence. Their expressions seemed to say, “Please let mommy go.” It was almost too much to bear, and if any of them had actually said it I might have had to shoot them all right on the spot.

“We were starving. We ran out of food, and you looked like you--”

My head snapped back to lock eyes with the mare.

“Shut up,” I said coldly. “If you really needed food, you could have just asked. But you didn’t, and it’s too late for that now.”

“I’ll do anything, anything you ask!” she said. “Just please, PLEASE spare my children!”

“I won’t harm your children,” I said. “They didn’t do anything wrong… but you did, so you deserve to be punished.”

But how was I going to punish her? She didn’t have anything of value, and even if she did I didn’t have room to carry it. There wasn’t anything she could do for me, either… well, except for the unthinkable. She deserved at least a week in a cell, but there weren’t any cells around and anything less would be a slap on the wrist.

I cocked my pistol. The mare was startled.

“No! Don’t kill me! How on earth will they survive without me?”

I took a deep breath and thought about it for a moment. The kids didn’t deserve to be orphaned, especially in a place like this. They were too young to take care of themselves. Without a guardian, they were probably just going to wander around in the woods until they froze to death. Even if they did manage to survive, the psychological scars would fuck them for life. Not even the naughtiest foal deserved to be deprived of a loving mother. Few ponies know that better than I do.

“Alright, I’ll let you live… for them.”

I lowered my gun.

“Oh, thank you. Sweet Celestia, thank you!” the mare cried. “Alright kids, come this way. Let’s get out of here before...”

I took a closer look at the kids. They seemed very thin and skeletal.

“Wait,” I said. They stopped and turned around. I reached into my saddlebags and fished out five of my six boxes of Saddlesbury Steak.

The joy on the foals’ faces could make anypony melt.

“I hope you aren’t vegetarians,” I said as I passed the boxes over.

“No we aren’t,” the mare replied. “In this weather, we can’t afford to be.”

“Good, they need more iron and calcium,” I said, glancing back at the kids, then back at her. “Maybe instead of robbing ponies at gunpoint, you should consider begging.”

“We’ve tried that,” she replied. “But most ponies aren’t even half as generous as you. Most just ignore us. And the last time, my oldest almost got foalnapped, so...”

While she was talking, I noticed a large protrusion from her belly. From afar, I thought it was just malnutrition, but then I noticed something was moving around within. I gave her my last Saddlesbury Steak and one hundred rounds of ammo that I’m pretty sure she didn’t have the gun to use.

“Go down to the valley and find a doctor to take care of that thing.”

It was up to her to decide what to do with it, though I can’t for the life of me wonder why anypony would want to keep it in a place like this. At least, if you were alone…

Alone.

As I watched them walk away, I realized that the ponies I had just killed were probably family members, or at least close friends. What the hell was I thinking? It’s gonna be damn hard for them to survive with only one adult. At least she’s herding them in a detour away from the corpses, but… of course they’ll remember. And what the heck do they think of me, some kind of monster who saves them from starvation just to doom them to more starvation later?

“What have I done?” I asked. “Oh, what the everloving fuck have I done?”

I heard hoofsteps plodding through the snow, but I didn’t care. Soon, a pony knelt down beside me and placed his gentle forehoof on my back.

When I returned to the road, I began scooping up the bodies and rolling them off the side of the road. We would have to come back this way tomorrow and I didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened here today. It would also give the kids a head start so we wouldn’t have to meet again. Once everything had been cleared from the road except the blood, it looked a lot less like the scene of a homicide.The alibi I would tell myself tomorrow about a hunting party now seemed believable enough, allowing us to begin on the final leg of today’s trek.

I took a deep breath and watched as the air wafted into the air like smoke. It was definitely starting to get colder, just a sneak peak of what nightfall would bring. I shivered at the thought of what was yet to come.

“It’s getting cold,” I said. “We should really get--”

Grapevine gently pulled the trigger down on her flamethrower, releasing a thin, continuous stream of flame that barely escaped the mouth of the thrower.

“Need ta warm your hooves?” she asked.

I glared at her. She smiled sheepishly back. I looked over to the spot where we had both seen the stallion burn to death just minutes before, where little flakes of charred ash still covered the ground. I turned back and glared harder.

“New rule: no more flamethrower until we get out of the forest,” I said. She gave me puppy eyes in return. I rolled my eyes and glared even harder.

“We wouldn’t want to burn down the whole forest, now would we?”

Soon enough, we saw the silhouette of the Timberwolf Lodge, a long multistory building built of pine logs from the surrounding forest, standing against the dying daylight. It was a big log cabin, essentially, albeit one capable of housing hundreds of skiers and providing them with all the amenities they could ever desire. Even though the parking lot was nearly full, there was nopony in sight and the lodge itself seemed eerily quiet. However, the faint light glowing in the windows of the lobby seemed promising. To our surprise, all of our pipbucks emitted a soft ‘beep’ simultaneously. On mine, a small notification appeared which read:

‘Location Discovered: Timberwolf Lodge’

I checked the map. In addition to the previous two, a third icon depicting a bed had appeared on the map.

“Oh, great. Does this mean we have to ‘rediscover’ places we already know?” I asked.

“The world’s probably changed a lot,” said Dmitry. “Some places might be unrecognizable.”

“Maybe it’s sort of a scavenger hunt,” said Grapevine. “Like Stable-Tec’s way of incentivizin’ you to walk around and collect data.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But I don’t wanna collect data right now. I’m getting kind of tired. And cold. Let’s get inside so we can go to sleep.”

We approached the front doors. There was nothing to indicate the lodge was open, but there was nothing to indicate that it was closed either.

“Hello?” Grapevine yelled as she pushed open the front door. “Anypony home? Hellooooo?”

The three of us stepped inside, closing the door behind us. The building was oddly quiet, the only audible sound being the echo of our hoofsteps through the empty lobby. The room itself was a mess, with tables and chairs flipped over, couch cushions mutilated, and blood strewn all over the place.

“Are those… pony legs?” asked Dmitry, looking towards the ceiling. Grapevine and I moved our eyes upward and saw, hanging from a chandelier, several appendages that looked like the rotting legs of several ponies.

“Something’s not right here,” I said.

“Something’s definitely not right,” added Dmitry.

“Can we go somewhere else?” asked Grapevine. “I feel it’s not safe here.”

“We can’t,” I replied. “It’s too dark to travel.”

“It’s also getting colder,” added Dmitry. “Best thing we can do is to rest here until morning.”

“Fine,” groaned Grapevine, “But don’t blame me if some big, fat, scary monster tries to eat us in our sleep.”

We made our way into the lodge’s dining hall, which wasn’t in any better condition. Somepony had taken some blood and a bunch of silverware and made a dartboard out of the ceiling. An ingenious idea, I have to admit, but they had terrible aim. All of the dining tables had been turned on their sides and turned into a makeshift soccer arena, a decapitated pony head serving as the ball. There was also an oddly delicious smell coming from the kitchen.

The kitchen was almost completely covered in blood- the countertops, the floor, the walls—everything except the cooking utensils themselves. For some reason, these were clean— somepony had at least been following part of the provincial food safety guidelines. But the most peculiar thing about the kitchen was that there was a bowl of stew on one of the stovetops: not too hot, not too cold, but just the right temperature for eating.

We helped ourselves and sat down to eat. As far as cooking goes, the stew was okay. It was obvious that the cook hadn’t used any spices, but this was forgivable given the circumstances.

Aside from that, it was also clear that the cook’s skill was mediocre at best, amateur at worst, but far from atrocious. It was clearly a meal that this chef had made before.

But what was most interesting about the stew were its ingredients—or rather, ingredient, as there was only one: meat.

Now, this may sound weird from an Equestrian, but I’m actually pretty okay with eating meat, and I’ve done it before. Most ponies from around here aren’t really bothered by it—it’s always been a part of our region’s culture, and during the war it made a bit of a resurgence as the price of food went up. Of course we have vegetarians too, but not as many as they do back east—especially in backwards places like Trottingham and Ponyville, and really stuck-up places like Manehattan and Canterlot. It’s one of the many disputes we have with the national government: over the years there’s been a surge in illegal slaughterhouses and poaching on public land, but the local authorities always turn a blind eye…

Back to the main topic: the stew. This stew was definitely not any ordinary stew. The meat in it had a lean, chewy flavor that clearly didn’t taste like rabbit or pork. And it wasn’t fish, either. I suppose they might have hunted a bear if they had to, and the lack of vegetation caused by the abnormal weather could easily explain the lean-ness. Yet… it still didn’t seem right. It had a flavor that tasted… familiar, like I’ve tasted it before but not in the same way.

But still, food is food, and I was hungry. My companions also seemed sort of disturbed by the stew, but they still ate it and didn’t complain. All three of us ended up having seconds and thirds because the day’s trek had exhausted us, and because we hadn’t eaten breakfast either.

Eventually we emptied the bowl and looked around in the refrigerators for something to eat for dessert, but all the sugary foods had already been eaten. We checked the walk-in freezer too, but all we found were more cuts of what I presume was the meat that had been in the stew.

After an entire day of travel and what must have been the most filling meal any of us have had in months, we decided it was time to go to bed. We ‘borrowed’ all the key cards from the front desk, then we scoured the hotel searching for rooms that, A: still had doors, B: still had locking doors, C: hadn’t been defiled like the rest of the lodge, and D: didn’t smell like vomit. There was only one room that fit all of these criteria, so that was the one we stayed in. After locking the door and checking under the beds for boogeyponies (at Grapevine’s insistence), we all found our beds, Grapevine sent a prayer to some dragon deity named ‘Corey Powell’ to protect us from the “one eyed one horned flying purple pony eaters,” and then she and Dmitry went to sleep while I updated my diary.

Silver Bullet’s Traits:

Good Natured: You studied less combative skills growing up. Your combat skills start at a lower level, but other skills are substantially improved.
+5 to Barter, Speech, Medicine, Repair, and Underwater Basket Weaving, but -5 to all weapons and fighting skills.

Four Eyes: You wear glasses. NERD!

+1 Perception when wearing glasses, but -1 Perception when qualifying for traits.

Status Ailments:

Butthurt: Your butt hurts.

-2 Agility.

Silver Bullet’s SPECIAL: (Raw and Modified)
Strength: 3 (3)
Perception: 7 (8)
Endurance: 6 (6)
Charisma: 6 (6)
Intelligence: 7 (7)
Agility: 6 (4)
Luck: 5 (6)

Progress to next level: 175/200 XP

Author's Note

4/16/17: Parts of this chapter were rewritten, and it has now been updated to reflect that.
8/5/19: More rewriting, and another scene added.

Chapter 3: Twenty Questions

Chapter 3: Twenty Questions

“Now all you need is some direction. Might I suggest west?”

Thursday, September 4th, 4347

Dear Diary,

In some ways, today was a lot more stress-free than yesterday. There were no scary nightmares, no meals prepared by ghost chefs, and especially no barbarian axe murderers trying to kill us. Instead, this morning went more like ‘wake up, eat breakfast, and go,’ but at a rather leisurely pace. Another plus is that we’re almost out of the mountains, so it isn’t nearly as cold. It’s still fairly cold, but no longer antarctic temperatures (Grapevine said it was -10 this morning, and she actually used Marenheit this time!). The weather looks like it’s clearing up, so I might be able to shed my parka in a day or two.

In other ways, things have been getting a little more stressful lately. The village we spent the night in is at the edge of the forest, with a little river separating the two. The river may be frozen over now, but there’s a clear difference between the two sides of the river: on one side, you have the Mt. Hoof National Forest, which is mostly wilderness -- except for the various roads and trails, logging operations, and the occasional clump of buildings, it’s practically untouched by pony hooves, and little evidence besides the impossibly low temperature and lack of animals that it’s facing anything worse than your typical once-in-a-century snowstorm.

But once you cross the river, you really start to notice just how much things have changed. Beyond the forest is the valley, which has mostly been clear-cut for farming, dotted with little towns and hamlets with the occasional city here and there. Normally there would be ponies every couple of miles: working the land, sitting on their front porch, hitchhiking, or whatever -- even the most obscure country roads had at least some traffic. However, today we saw nothing -- just house after house, farm after farm, derelict and devoid of inhabitants.

At first we thought they might have been hauled up inside their houses. After all, who’d want to be outside in this weather? But after a while, it became clear that practically all of these houses were abandoned. Some had their windows boarded up. Others had parts of their roofs caving in. Granted, many of these houses and barns were not in the best condition to begin with. But just one year after the apocalypse, even the newest buildings looked like they had sustained ten or twenty years worth of damage. So a thirty year old barn would be more like a fifty year old barn, or possibly even older.

We scavenged what little supplies we could from these houses, but most of what we found was junk. What was especially in short supply was food, since most of it was probably eaten by the residents before they left. Every so often we’d find a box of snack cakes or a microwaveable meal that somepony missed (or left behind on purpose), but in most houses there was simply nothing to eat. I suspect that the very reason these houses were abandoned is because the ponies living in them ran out of food, and either left in search of it, or just starved to death.

Sometimes we’d find corpses strewn across a floor or a bed. These corpses had clearly been dead for weeks or months, but they were surprisingly well preserved by the cold temperatures. We tried to stay as far away from the corpses as possible, because one: they’re CORPSES, and two: there’s probably bugs and germs all over them. Their thin, skeletal forms confirms my theory that most, if not all of them, died of starvation.

I admit, it’s really creepy and unnerving when you actually see the ruins of a world you once knew in person. A real post-apocalyptic world is a hell of a lot different than they portray it in the movies and in video games. The media simplifies things, and treats everything with artistic license… although I suppose they have to. A real post-apocalyptic world is a lot more… boring than the fictional ones. And after three days of traveling, I don’t think I’ve seen even a single mutated plant or animal. Maybe we’ll see some when we get closer to whatever remains of the cities.

Speaking of cities, that’s where we’ve decided to go: the city. It’s become abundantly clear to us that we won’t find anything (or anyone) if we just wander around the countryside. That was kind of the plan all along, although it was never official until Grapevine called an impromptu strategy meeting today.

“So, uh…..” hesitated Grapevine, “Where exactly are we headed, anyway?”

Dmitry and I stopped in our tracks and stared at Grapevine. She stopped too and stared at us with an equal amount of confusion.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know,” said Grapevine, “Where are we goin’? Like, what’s the point of wanderin’ around like this?”

“Would you rather be in the stable?” asked Dmitry, “With all those crazy ponies in there?”

“No, of course not,” said Grapevine. “But is there anyplace in particular we’re headed towards, or are we just wanderin’ for the sake of it?”

“Good question,” I said. “I was kind of leading us in the direction of the city.”

“But there’s so much stuff in the city!” said Grapevine.

“Grapevine’s right, “ said Dmitry. “Are we looking for anything in particular, or just wandering around and scavenging?”

“Well...” I began hesitantly, “I was thinking that, you know how Stable-Tec has a local satellite office somewhere around here?”

“Yeah?” said Dmitry.

“Well maybe,” I continued, “Just maybe we could go there and find something, or somepony, who could help us…”

“Save the stable?” asked Grapevine.

“What’s left of it,” I said.

“What makes you think we’ll find anything there?” asked Dmitry.

“Don’t you get it?” asked Grapevine. “This is Stable-Tec we’re talkin’ about! If what Stable-Tec builds is truly ‘built to last,’ then surely their office is still there!”

“Hmmm… I don’t know,” said Dmitry. “It all seems a little far-fetched.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” I asked.

“No,” answered Dmitry. “Not really.”

“Since we don’t have anything better to do, we might as well head on over to Stable-Tec,” I said. “And besides, it’s probably our only hope of getting our stable back.”

“Well, alright,” said Dmitry. “I’ll go with your plan, although I still think it’s really far-fetched.”

“Great!” said Grapevine, with a noticeable bounce added to her step. “Don’t worry Didi, I’m sure we’ll find somethin’!”

“‘Didi?’” I asked, confused. “Are you…?”

“It’s fine,” said Dmitry. “I had a friend who used to call me that.”

“Hurry up, slowpokes!” yelled Grapevine, who was practically bouncing down the road. “We’re gonna go to the ci-ty! We’re gonna go to the ci-ty! We’re gonna go to the...”

We continued walking down the highway towards the city. After a few minutes, I got sick of Grapevine’s chattering and random noise making, so I fished out a pair of ear blooms from my stable jumpsuit’s pocket, put them in my ears, and listened to what few songs I had on my pipbuck, while Dmitry plugged his ears with a hoofful of snow. Eventually she shut up, which was a great relief for me since remixes of remixes of DJ Pon-3 songs get old pretty fast. Seriously, why do I even have these on my pipbuck? I don’t remember putting them on there. Actually, I don’t remember putting any music on it, for that matter. If you can even call dubstep ‘music’ to begin with…

Finally, just as evening was starting to settle in, we saw a faint glow coming from a cluster of buildings on the horizon. When we approached, we found a town, albeit a shell of one. Most of the buildings were vacant and many were boarded up. The ones that hadn’t had seen their windows smashed and were mostly empty of valuables. However, there were lights coming from what was once the downtown area, which was now surrounded by a large makeshift wall. Where the highway met the wall there was a gate.

As we approached the gate, we saw a team of ponies, about six or so, on their way out of town. Four of them were pulling a wagon brimming with junk while two unicorns walked ahead, brandishing shotguns. As soon as they were three blocks out, several scruffy looking punks jumped out from behind some abandoned houses. Some began shooting while others charged towards them bearing machetes and sledgehammers in their mouths. The unicorn guards panicked and dove for cover, while the teamsters struggled to remove their yokes. I had no idea who those ponies were or what they were doing, but I felt the need to run in and help them.

I galloped forward a few yards, knelt down, whipped out my trusty hunting rifle, and pressed a button on my Pipbuck to activate SATS, the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. As its name implies, it’s a targeting system developed by Stable-Tec. I’m not exactly sure how it works, but it slows time to a crawl (or rather, speeds up your thought processes in comparison to everything else) and creates a visual interface that assists with aiming weapons in combat situations. I’m not sure why they even included it on what is essentially a PDA, but it’s come in handy in many situations, such as this one. While time is slowed, a number of actions can be selected based on the availability of what are called ‘Action Points,’ and S.A.T.S. will assist you in carrying them out once you close the interface. For example, I had enough points to line up two shots each against two of the ponies attempting to charge at the wagon, aiming at their legs in hopes of stopping their advance and deterring further action. With its aid, S.A.T.S. informed me that I had about a 75% chance to hit, so I lined the actions up and let it go. For the next few seconds, my body was essentially on autopilot as the spell took over my horn, using my own telekinesis to aim the gun and pull the trigger in slow motion. It’s quite a surreal experience.

Three of the shots hit their targets, lodging .308 rounds into the raiders’ legs. The one who took two shots collapsed immediately and began clutching his injured leg while the other one merely paused momentarily, turned to his left, and began charging towards me instead. S.A.T.S. would take a few seconds to recharge, so I had to fall back on my admittedly very mediocre shooting skills, which I had honed in my Stable’s makeshift shooting range against stationary targets but not moving ones. I pointed my gun and fired off a round but completely missed. Then I had to reload, but it was too late: the raider had already closed the distance. As he attempted to pounce me, I leapt out of the way, then swung my rifle around and smacked him upside the head with the butt. This disoriented him long enough that I could have kicked him, but Grapevine jumped in and whacked him across the face with a baseball bat instead.

With that guy taken care of, I had enough time to fish out some more rounds and refill my gun. Then I went forward to try to deal with the rest of the ambushers. Nopony was charging at the wagon anymore, but a few were still holed up inside an abandoned house, having a shootout with the wagon’s guards. As soon as they spotted me, one of them started shooting, so I jumped over a low picket fence on one of the houses across the street. Using the fence as cover, I could safely snipe at them until I got a hit or they ran out of ammo. By this time S.A.T.S. had completely recharged, so I used it to get four more shots out. I managed to cripple the forehooves of an earth pony and chip off half the horn of a unicorn. While I was reloading my gun, the ambushers stopped shooting and left the windowsills. I suspected they had given up and were trying to make a run for it. I kept my gun aimed at the house’s front door, and after about a minute of waiting it finally opened just as I had let my guard down. I tried to hit them in the hooves again, but they were really fast and I only got to knock down one of them while her three friends got away I figured they had learned their lesson and didn’t have the numbers to try this again, so I didn’t attempt to pursue.

I quickly searched the house to ensure that none of the ambushers were planning another ambush. Finding the house was empty, I met back up with my companions. The pony who had charged at me earlier had been knocked unconscious during his scuffle with Grapevine, and the fleeing pony I had downed had lost the will to fight, so we confiscated their weapons and dragged them towards the gate. The wagon ponies had also tied three of the raiders up and taken their gear. One of the unicorn guards approached us with a look of gratitude.

“Thank you kindly, strangers,” he said. “I’m not sure what we would have done without you. It’s not much, but take this to cover your troubles.”

He gave us a box of .308 rounds and two healing potions.

“It’s our pleasure,” Dmitry said. “We’re happy to help. You’re the first ponies we’ve met in a while who haven’t tried to shoot at us.”

The guard laughed.

“Same,” he said. “Except for this town. They’re pretty nice folks. But it’s getting late and we’ve got to get going. See ya ‘round.”

The teamsters began pulling the wagon down the road, each quietly saying, ‘thank you,’ under their breath as they passed. Then we walked down the road towards the town. When we got close, they opened the gate very slightly and we were greeted by five ponies. Two of them looked non-threatening, and the other three carried rifles on straps around their necks but weren’t prepared to use them. All five smiled politely. When we were about two yards away, Dmitry stopped in his tracks like he’d forgotten something at home.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We’re entering a town,” Dmitry said. “Maybe I should have transformed into a pony before we came close, and--”

“There’s no need for that,” one of the rifle-bearers, a bat pony, said as she stepped forward. “This town is pretty accepting. Most folk these days are happy to see anything that isn’t a bandit or a mutant. Also, we spotted you coming like, ten blocks away.”

“I see,” Dmitry said. “Well, in that case...”

One of the unarmed ponies, a brown cat-like mare who seemed absolutely delighted to see us, stepped forward.

“Why don’t you three come on in?” she said. “Welcome to Sandy Shades. My name is Katrina, and I’m the town greeter. My job is to greet strangers and welcome them to our town.” With a quick glance to the shotgun bearers, she continued, “We… find that there are fewer problems if you listen to what I have to say.”

“Tell us about this place,” I said, inviting her to indulge us. She obliged.

“You are standing in Sandy Shades. We are but a small town in a large world, just trying to survive amidst the wastes. Before the war we were known as the gateway to Mt. Hoof, and we used to get a lot of travelers passing through. These days, not as many, but we’ve all been pleasantly surprised at how many we’ve gotten this year.”

“Wait,” said Grapevine. “Ya mean y’all still get travelers? In this weather?”

“Oh, yes,” said Katrina. “Although it’s mostly just ponies traveling the IH-5 trying to steer clear of the city. And I don’t blame them -- only the most adventurous of ponies would try to go in.”

“Well, of course,” said Dmitry. “The city center’s probably decimated.”

“Of course! It’s an absolute deathtrap over there,” shuddered Katrina.. “The radiation will kill you instantly. There’s nothing intact to salvage either, so don’t even try.”

“What about 205?” I asked. “It bypasses the city center. Can’t they just use that?”

“Well, yes,” said Katrina with a little hesitation, “It isn’t irradiated, and I hear most of the road’s still intact, but I’d still stay away if I were you. Travelers who go that way always tell me they have to turn back because they get overrun...”

Katrina looked nervous, especially as she said that last word, so I decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further. I changed the topic back to Sandy Shades, which she was more than willing to do. She happily told us about the various merchants who sold supplies and directed us to ‘check in’ with Barlow Road, the town’s mayor.

As she walked into the town and my companions followed her, I stopped and took a look at the three rifle bearers. I noticed one of them was wearing a County Sheriff’s uniform and hat.

“Why didn’t you step in and stop the ambush?” I asked.

“I did,” she replied. “I provided fire support from up there.” She pointed to a balcony above the gate where two lookouts sat. Then I looked down the street and saw that the gate was part of a tall makeshift wall which extended downward for several blocks, with a platform for lookouts or snipers stationed every so often. It continued in the other direction too. Then I realized that the survivors in this community had essentially turned the downtown into a fort.

“I would have expected a sheriff to take a more active role in law enforcement.”

She looked down at her uniform.

“Oh, this? Well, I’m not a sheriff anymore. Now I’m a militiamare. My jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond these walls.”

“Why not?” I asked. “This place could use more law enforcement. You saw what just happened. And two days ago, some ponies tried to rob us near Timberwolf Lodge.”

She looked concerned, but merely sighed.

“I’m sorry kid, but it’s a whole new world out there. One where we can’t really enforce the law like we used to. We can’t maintain our patrol cars, most of the force has perished, and there’s no longer a tax base to pay our salaries. The County Commission unanimously abolished itself back in December, and my Department with it. Aside from this town and a few others, there technically isn’t even a law to enforce anymore. I’ll always protect ponies, but these days we have to use our resources very selectively, and it doesn’t make sense to patrol the countryside on the off-chance I’ll encounter a criminal when they need an active deterrent here.”

I looked back outside the gate where the five tied up bandits still sat. The unconscious one was starting to come to, and the others were still licking their wounds. They might die if they didn’t receive medical attention soon.

“Well, what about those guys? Are you at least going to put them in jail?”

“Well, we have a few cells, but they’re only for residents of the town,” she said. “We don’t really have the food or medical supplies to spare for some bandits from out of town. But you’re right, we can’t just leave them there. I’ll go deal with them.”

She and one of the other rifle bearers went out to where the bandits were while the third stayed behind to guard the gate. I walked forward into the town to go join Katrina’s tour, but halfway there I stopped to look back. Outside the gate, I caught a glimpse of the former sheriff towering over the subdued bandits, nonchalantly executing each with a revolver. It was honestly a little sickening, so I looked away.

We walked through the town center, passing by the various businesses and storefronts with windows that had been boarded up, most of which had been converted into housing. A few ponies shuffled around outside, bundled up in dirty jackets and coats, milling around and chatting with friends at the end of the workday. I took note of which stores were still selling stuff, as I intended to visit them later.

At the westernmost end of the town there was an inn. We negotiated with the innkeeper for a room and two meals for the cost of a hunting rifle and several .32 caliber rounds. They had us cornered since they were the only lodging in town (and because the ‘common houses’ were for residents only), but with the promise of a comfy bed inside a walled and guarded compound plus a complimentary breakfast, we couldn’t complain. Besides, since we’ve made it three days in a post-apocalyptic wasteland without dying, I supposed we deserved a treat.

Our room was rather dirty, having not been properly cleaned in ages. The sheets were stained and no vacuuming had been done, but it was still a noticeable improvement above our previous night’s stay in a derelict house. Come to think of it, all standards for cleanliness and sanitation have gone down since the apocalypse. Even back in Stable 76, ponies stopped cleaning up after themselves just before ‘it’ happened, and now the place is a complete mess.

Speaking of messes, I was already starting to get hungry for dinner. There was a restaurant that had been converted into a mess hall of sorts, and I traded two .32 pistols for three meals. Curious to see what was on the menu, I wandered into the kitchen, where I saw a busy cook preparing a meal. When I got close to see what she was cooking, the cook turned to me and said,

“I’m too busy to talk right now. I’ve got to get this meal ready!”

“Hmm! That smells really good,” I said. “I bet it tastes great!”

“Why, thank you,” said the cook. “I’m sure you will enjoy it. Thanks for the compliment. I’m going to tell all my friends about you.”

I was a bit shocked at the cook’s reply to my simple compliment, but in this day and age, I guess kindness really does go a long way. It seemed like it would take a while before the meal was ready, so I went outside and had a look around town. I visited each of the shops to see what they had, but I ended up not buying anything; my saddlebags were already crammed with supplies I had looted from Stable 76’s stockrooms, and I wasn’t particularly low on anything.

After having made my rounds through all the shops, I went back to the mess hall only to be told it would be another half hour before dinner was ready. Feeling in an unusually social mood, I tried to occupy myself by chatting it up with the locals who were shuffling through the streets, but aside from the “Good day” or “Nice to see you,” the townsfolk didn’t really have anything to talk about. I literally couldn’t get more than a vague sentence out of any of them! Strange.

With everypony being rather standoffish, I instead bided my time by poking around the common houses. The rooms were furnished with some very nice looking beds, chairs, and simple yet well-made rugs. There were also some sturdy wooden bookshelves, which contained mostly tattered old books but also a few other pieces of junk.

The only decorations were some finely crafted wooden bowls and a few pretty clay vases, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary in the makeshift dwellings, except for maybe a mixed-breed canine or two. That was, of course, until I met Tandy.

Tandy was an earth pony filly with a brown coat and a jet black mane. From head to hoof she was dirty and unkempt, but there was a glimmer in her muddy-green eyes. A glimmer of excitement that fillies have when they see something new. She was also the only pony I had met in this town who was my age. I found her in what I assumed was her bedroom, an office room inside the town’s firehouse, which had been converted into the town firehouse/police station/town hall/guard barracks/armory/hospital/coroner’s office. Until she saw me, she had been working away at a computer, hammering down lines of code for some sort of a computer program.

“Hi!” she said, jumping up from her screen and brimming with enthusiasm. “I heard there were some travelers in town, but I was kinda skeptical until I saw you. My name’s Tandy, what’s yours?”

“My name’s Silver Bullet,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness. I’ve always felt uncomfortable meeting new people, especially peers.

“Well, Silver Bullet,…” she asked, “how do you like our little town? Bored yet?”

“Hell, yes. There’s nothing to do here and nopony wants to talk.”

“Finally!”she cried, tipping her head up to the heavens. “Somepony else who sees! It didn’t used to be this way, but ever since the bombs fell and refugees started heading our way, everypony’s become a lot less trusting of strangers.” Then after a few seconds, she added, “Of course, you’ve probably been everywhere, so this must be hell for you.”

I don’t know where she got the idea that I’m some sort of globetrotter. I only left Stable 76 three days ago, and even before then I never did as much traveling as I should have.

“If you’re so bored, why don’t you leave?” I asked. “It’s done a lot to cure my boredom.”

“Me, leave? she asked, as if my suggestion was an unattainable pipe dream. “I wish! I don’t know enough to survive out there alone and nopony else wants to go. And worst of all, my father says he would have a heart attack if something happened to me.”

Huh. When I left my prison of a home, I had never let a lack of survival knowledge or a lack of companionship keep me there-- I just up and left. And did my dad have a heart attack? I doubt it, but he probably had a conniption fit. Although I considered it payback for seventeen years of bad parenting. Though, I suppose if she was one of those fillies who actually love their dads, leaving would be more of a challenge for her. I mean, maybe if my mom was still alive, maybe I’d stay, but without her there to counterbalance things, my family was just unbearable.

“Tough situation,” I said, unable to offer any advice for her. “Can I ask you a few questions, though?”

“Sure, I guess,” she said cheerfully, though somewhat reluctant. “I’ve never been out of here since the bombs fell, and I’ve never been out of town very often before then, so I don’t know what help I can be. So, what’cha need?”

”What else is around these parts?” I asked as if I were a complete foreigner to the area, prompting her to elaborate on any abnormalities or things I should be aware of.

“There’s a big city to the northwest,” she began. “There are still some survivors living among the ruins, but most of them just raid travelers and hoard supplies. But since you’re such a great traveler, I’m sure you knew that already.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically, hinting my distaste for her comment on my traveling experience.

Part of me thought she was mocking me and wanted to slap her across the face for that, but another part thought she was just extremely naive and wanted to correct her by telling her that I had literally been living under a rock up until a few days ago. However, I wanted to remain polite, so I held my tongue.

“No problem,” she said cheerfully, oblivious to any discomfort her comment may have caused me. “Anything else?”

“No… that’s about it,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”

Tandi’s cheeriness began to fade.

“Well, thanks for… talking,” she said. “We don’t get many visitors here anymore, and it’s always good to talk to new people.” She gave a wistful sigh, then perked up to end the conversation on a happy note. “Well, see ya!”

“Bye,” I said, walking away.

It felt awkward leaving the conversation like that, but it was apparent that she didn’t have anything interesting to talk about. Not that our conversation wasn’t somewhat interesting-- it’s just that she didn’t have anything significantly more interesting than anypony else around here.

Back at the mess hall, most of the townsponies had arrived for the evening meal and had already been served. During my conversation with Tandy I had found that she didn’t really understand the concept of ‘personal space,’ so I made it a point to avoid her for the rest of my stay. I didn’t really want to sit by any of the other townsponies either, so I took my food to a booth on the far end of the dining room where I hoped to eat my food in peace. Then my traveling companions came and sat next to me, which I would rather they didn’t, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them to buzz off. Then two brown stallions came and joined us, forcing us to scoot over to make room, leaving me squished between Grapevine and the wall.

“Hey there,” said the first, a dirt-brown pony dressed in pre-war casualwear, with very thin yet well-combed hair. “Name’s Road, Barlow Road, though most ponies call me ‘Uncle Road.’ Welcome to Sandy Shades. I’ve been the mayor of this town going on twenty five years, and I like to meet our visitors.”

“Hello, Mr. Road,” I said. “My name is Silver Bullet.”

“And um… how old are you, Silver Bullet?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” I replied.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “My daughter Tandy is about your age. Have you met her?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I have,” I said. “We had an… interesting conversation.”

“I’m sure you did,” he said. “My girl, she has a real knack for computers, pip-bucks, and all the other electronics you youngers have that I don’t know the first thing about. Why, I’d call it her special talent, if she didn’t already get her cutie mark in leathercraft! It just makes you wonder, ya know?”

He gave out a heart laugh, then went on a tangent about parenting. I wasn’t listening, and my mind wandered to other places while he kept on talking. Grapevine and Dmitry appeared interested though, but that’s probably because they’re adults.

“Hey,” said a voice.

I looked up and saw that it came from the other stallion, a greyish-brown one, who looked like a seasoned traveler.

“You’re a stable dweller, I see,” he remarked. “So, what brings you up to the surface?”

“Something’s wrong with our stable,” I said succinctly.

“Let me guess… broken water talisman?” he asked.

“Ummm… not exactly,” I said. “The problem is… everypony’s killing each other.”

“Oooh,” he said with a grimace. “So you’re fleeing?”

“No,” I said, “we’re going to do something about it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to submit a maintenance request at the nearest Stable-Tec satellite office.”

I expected him to laugh himself out of his seat, but instead he just sat there, pondering my mission. Finally he said,

“Well, you just might find something there,” he said. “I’ve scouted this area enough to know that the suburb where the Stable-Tec office is survived the apocalypse quite well. Even if you don’t find any ponies there, you might still find a robot or two, or maybe some help documents.”

I perked up at this. I didn’t really expect to find any ponies there, but if what this guy said is true, then there just might be some resources available for us to use.

“As for the other Stable-Tec facilities, they didn’t survive quite as well,” he continued. “The Seaddle office got leveled, the San Flankcisco one is practically underwater, and the Los Arboles one’s been ransacked by thieves. I can’t say much about Bronco City, Salt Lick, or Las Pegas, but of all the metropolitan areas I’ve observed, this one seems to have fared the best.”

“How much traveling have you done?” I asked, astonished at how he could have visited so many places under conditions such as this.

“Quite a lot,” he replied. “That’s my life-- I’m a traveler. I’ve been drifting from place to place for a while now. I support myself by buying and selling rare artifacts.”

“Rare artifacts, huh?” I asked.

“Eeyup,” he said, sliding a pre-war business card across the table. “Goosey G. Gaggleskein, dealer in curios, trinkets, knickknacks, bibelots, and baubles of uncommon varieties. I also trade small quantities of precious metals.”

“Precious metals, eh?” I asked. “What’s the going rate for silver?”

“It’s about… nine bits per Troy Ounce,” he said.

“NINE bits!?” I exclaimed. “Only nine? I swear it was at least ฿3,200 last October.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out that precious metals really aren’t all that valuable after the collapse of the monetary system and all,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Gold has been hurting too, but it’s still considered slightly more valuable. Though, I’m confident that these prices will rise as society rebuilds itself. Check back in a year and I’m certain you’ll see significant gains. Also, there are a great many ponies out there who still believe the old myths about the inherent value of these metals. Buying some Gold, Silver, or Platinum would still be a good investment in the event that you come across some of them. However, Palladium doesn’t produce the same effect because nopony knows what it is. How many ounces of Silver can I get you down for?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m looking for something more… practical. Do you have any advice for first-time travelers?”

“A knowledge-seeker, eh?” he asked. “Well, ‘knowledge is power,’ that’s your first piece of advice. Any more will cost ya. Wait, let me cut you a deal: if you give me 240 bottlecaps, I’ll let you ask me 20 questions on anything about surviving in the wasteland, and I will answer them to the best of my ability. What do you say?”

“Fair enough,” I answered, “but why bottlecaps?”

“I’ll answer that after you pay me,” he said. “And no, I won’t accept other payments. I’ve already got enough food and bullets on me right now, but I’m really, really low on caps.”

“Can you at least tell me where I can find the caps?” I asked, “Or is that something I’ll have to pay for as well?”

“Anywhere in the wasteland really,” he replied. “Trash cans, especially. Just use your head! Sometimes you’ll find them in the most random of places, like inside of desks and what-not, but most of the time they’ll be in trash cans or anywhere you can get bottled beverages. You can even take them from unopened sodas, but you should at least drink what’s inside, since throwing the actual soda out is wasteful.”

As I scavenged around Sandy Shades’ outskirts looking for caps, I thought about what my 20 questions would be. I stressed myself out way more than I should have, but it just seemed so important at the time, and I felt as though someday in the future I would be in a situation where my life would hang in the balance and all I would have left to save myself is what Iearned from Gaggleskein, so asking the wrong questions would give me useless information and--

“Wait a minute. I’m overthinking things again, aren’t I?” I asked myself (I tend to do that a lot). “Let’s just focus on the task ahead and think about the questions later.”

The last of the sun’s rays had retreated beyond the horizon, leaving the wasteland almost pitch dark. Fortunately I knew a flashlight spell, so by the light of my horn and the glow of my Pipbuck’s screen I could continue searching. Everything was made twenty times scarier by the darkness: the rustle of the wind, the creaking of the floorboards and door hinges, even my hoofsteps. The night isn’t that scary when you have an abundance of electric lamps to pierce the darkness, and it tends to lull you into a false sense of security. It makes you believe the darkness isn’t that bad, that you can handle any kind of situation no matter how dark… but you never know true darkness until you have to live without electricity. Only then does the prospect of an ‘eternal night’ sound like a nightmare. And if you can’t even see the stars? Then it becomes hell.

I thoroughly searched the first house on the block, opening every drawer and scanning the floor for bottle caps. Despite the thick layer of dust that lay upon everything, it still felt like somepony lived here and that I was invading their privacy. After all, I hadn’t been invited in, which made me a trespasser. I kept looking over my shoulder every time I heard a loud noise, fearing that I might get caught by whoever owned the property, or a police officer out on patrol. I had to keep reminding myself that nopony lived here anymore and that everything was fair game. I also had to keep reminding myself that the police no longer existed and that I had absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

With each successive house, my search became quicker and quicker. I knew to check the trashcans and the kitchens since that’s where all the caps were, and I thought it was foolish how thoroughly I searched the first house.

“Stupid Silver,” I told myself, “Nopony puts bottlecaps in dressers and desk drawers!”

By the time I reached the end of the block, my search time was only a fraction of what it had once been. Though I had to fight off the feeling that I was missing out on some good loot by skipping most of the drawers and cupboards in the house. I made a note to myself to come back later and check them, but I knew that I wouldn’t follow through on it. I couldn’t spend all night here because ponies were waiting for me-- my friends might get worried if I didn’t return after a few hours, and the town’s guards usually don’t let anypony in after dark, and had been generous in granting me a few hours extension. If I wasn’t back by the time they changed shifts, I would have to either be really persuasive, or wait until dawn before I could come back in. This was unacceptable, because I had paid for that hotel room, and it would be a waste if I couldn’t even sleep in it.

After I exited the last house, I turned my sights to the west where another block of houses lay waiting for me across the road. I still had 146 bottlecaps to go, but it was almost ten o’clock. I groaned in frustration at my shortcoming.

“Seriously, not even a hundred bottlecaps?” I asked a nearby telephone pole. “What am I supposed to do now?”

The telephone pole -- or rather, the face of a mare advertising her foalsitting services on a flyer -- grinned at me, with a smile that seemed mocking and callous to me under the circumstances.

“Why did I ever agree to this?” I asked. “Two hundred forty? And bottlecaps, of all things! Stupid, stupid bottlecaps! I mean, I know that we need to find alternate means of exchange after the apocalypse and all, but bottlecaps? What a trick! I should have just laughed in his face when he said ‘bottlecaps.’ Heh, some wise man he is. What other advice would he have for me? ‘There’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow?’ ‘Follow a herd of lemmings to get to safety?’”

The telephone pole just stood there placidly listening to my little rant. I gave it a long, hard look, waiting impatiently for a response, half-forgetting that I was just talking to a poster. Then all of a sudden, it whispered to me:

“You like the sight of your own blood?”

I furrowed my brow and stared at it for a second. Did that poster just talk? And did say ‘blood?’

And then I realized that it came from behind me. I turned around slowly, and saw the grinning face of the mare from the poster. But this face was covered with scars and dirt and blood. It was also attached to a body, also covered in scars, dirt, and blood. She also wielded a sharp combat knife in her mouth.

I screamed and ran. This mare, who the poster described as ‘upstanding member of the community,’ was now chasing me with a knife between her teeth. I could hear other ponies behind her, egging her on and threatening me with torture and death. I rounded a corner and slipped inside a house, locking the door behind me. I quickly went to the kitchen and locked the back door, and found to my pleasant surprise that all of the windows on the first floor had been boarded up. For the moment, I was safe.

I went upstairs and crept into a bedroom. I could see a dim light outside the window, and I slowly crept over to investigate. Outside I saw a small group of barbarians, including the mare from the poster, standing in the roadway, illuminated by the light of small torches they had planted in the snow.

“They’re all boarded up,” said a stallion plodding away from the house.

“Well, fuck,” scoffed the mare from the poster. “How are we gonna get her now?”

I had taken the opportunity to quietly get out my shotgun and aim it at one of the ponies before they could see me.

“Well, maybe we could find a ladder and climb through one of the upper--”

Bang! It was a miss.

“--windows...” finished the stallion as all of their eyes trailed over to me. I had been spotted, and all of them quickly took out firearms and pelted me with lead… or they would have, had my reflexes not driven me to seek cover. The barrage continued, but I hid behind my wall and waited for them to stop firing. As soon as there was a lull, I went back to the window and tried to get an aim, but couldn’t because they started shooting at me again. I tried to pop back up and shoot them again a few times, but each time I missed and they just fired back. Bullets hit the walls and furniture, and I wondered how long the building could hold. Of course, they couldn’t keep shooting forever because they’d run out of bullets at some point. But then there was the siege element: how long until I ran out of bullets? And what would I do then?

I decided to change my strategy. Crawling along the floor, I made it into the hallway and went into a bathroom. The room itself was much smaller than the bedroom, but so was its window, giving me more protection against the raiders’ shots. The window stubbornly refused to move, so it took a heavy push to open. Unfortunately, the push gave my new position away and they started firing in my direction. I waited for a lull, then made a few shots in their direction. Again, these were all misses, except for one which hit a stallion in the hind leg. But this wasn’t enough to disable him, because he kept on firing at me.

I changed my tactics once again, going back to the bedroom and lobbing out a grenade, then ducking for cover. Judging by their voices, I must have missed, but I had clearly startled them.

“Woah-- what the fuck?” exclaimed one. “She had a grenade!”

“Bitch probably has more,” said another.

“Then we should change our strategy,” said the poster mare. “Bardo, get that torch!”

I peeked out the window as one of the stallions in the group picked up one of the torches and began to approach the house. The others aimed their guns at the two windows, ready to shoot in case I tried to lob another grenade or snipe the torch stallion. They were going to set the house on fire!

All of a sudden, a bullet hit the torch stallion and he fell to the ground, the torch falling out of his mouth and into the snow. The others all turned towards the origin of the bullet, which had come from a sniper hiding behind a parked car. They all turned towards the car and started firing, giving me enough time to take aim and get a headshot on the poster mare. Two of the remaining ones saw their comrade go down and turned their fire back towards me, but two were a lot easier to take down than seven.

I took one of them down, and the other decided I was no longer a worthwhile target and ran. Somewhat rashly, I decided to go downstairs and unlock the door, to finish off my attackers at a closer range. I found the remaining three in a shootout against the pony behind the car, but with their attention focused on that they made easy targets. However, during the firefight, one of their bullets had hit the engine, and it began to smoke. Recalling several bad car accidents I’d seen on the news, I made the wise choice to run away just before it exploded.

KA-BOOM!

The deafening roar of the explosion reverberated throughout the neighborhood, and the flames burned for several minutes. I waited until the flames subsided and the smoke began to clear, then ventured forth cautiously. A figure emerged behind the plume of smoke. Could it be the mysterious stranger who broke the barbarians’ siege? Or maybe it was one of the barbarians-- in that case, I readied my gun to fire at a moment’s notice. Or maybe the mysterious stranger was a barbarian, or a bandit, or any other kind of evildoer who wanted all the spoils for themselves? Then the stranger came forward.

“Dmitry?”

“Silver!” he cried, and came over and hugged me. “I was worried about you,...” he said, but was interrupted when another pony emerged from the smoke and approached us..

“I’m… *cough, cough* ...going… to… *cough, cough* eat… your...”

I shot her and she fell to the ground.

“...So I came looking,” continued Dmitri. “The guards are changing shift soon, so we should get back to the hotel.”

“Can I loot the corpses first?” I asked. “I don’t want this trip to be a total waste.”

“Go ahead,” he said, “But do it quickly.”

I rifled through the barbarians’ bodies, taking only ammunition, healing potions, coins, and other small items that wouldn’t drag me down too much. Upon finally reaching the mare from the poster, I found a small sack in her position, the contents of which jingled when I shook it. I undid the string and found nothing but…

Bottlecaps!

One hundred and fifty seven, and I had counted them twice. Lining them all up in groups of twenty across the hotel room floor, I was now certain I had enough to pay Gaggleskein. And if the whole bottlecaps thing is just a joke, (which it better not be!) then I’ll sock him across the face for it, because I had a hell of an evening just trying to collect them.

“You know, she’s a lot like a child, the way she lines those bottlecaps up,” Dmitry told Grapevine, and she nodded in agreement. They were sitting on one of the beds, watching me count my caps, talking each other, Dmitry wrapping his hoof around Grapevine’s shoulder and-- wait, what? Was he really… or am I just imagining things? Surely they can’t be that close, what with them barely knowing each other and all…

“You know what? Maybe I’m just tired,” I thought. It was quite late, so I gathered up all the bottlecaps and put them back into the bag, then headed into the bathroom to wash up before bed.

Progress to Next Level: 185/550

Author's Note

8/5/19: Added another scene to flesh out the setting.

Chapter 4: Memory Lane

“I tried friendship and it’s just not for me. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

Friday, September 5th, 4347

Dear Diary,

In retrospect, I really should have consulted my friends on this one.

I had been it over all night, and for all of the morning before breakfast too, but I couldn’t think of anything. If I had more time, I’m sure some ideas would come to me naturally as they always do, but when I have to think of twenty questions to ask, right away, that could mean the difference between life or death, then I get stuck and can’t think of anything.

The questions I did end up asking Gagglestein when I saw him at breakfast today tended to be vague and nonspecific, open-ended ones that forced him to put far more effort into formulating answers than I did in formulating the questions.

Or, on second thought, maybe I had been played. The way his eyes lit up when I plopped the bag of bits down on the table really indicated that he may have just been using me for cheap labor. His answer to my first question, “What’s so important about these bottlecaps?,” confirmed this.

“Oh, it’s just that some of the ponies from down south have started using them as a currency,” he began. “It was actually an idea that started over on the east coast and spread west through vagabonds like me. As random as it may sound, it’s surprisingly effective since they’re easy to carry, much like bits before the hyperinflation. The idea still hasn’t gained traction in this region though, so you’ll probably have to barter for everything. Though you may want to start collecting some bottlecaps now, just in case your travels bring you across merchants who accept them.”

Most of my questions went something along the lines of, “What should I do about…?” And most of the answers went like, “Get more ammo,” “Get more guns,” “Get better guns,” “Get some armor,” “get more food, water, and medicine,” “carry a wide range of tools and weapons,” “carry what you need and discard or sell anything you have a better version of,” “Be careful around ledges, stay on the lookout for tripwires near raider encampments, and keep far away from any red barrels, especially if there’s any glowy stuff leaking out of them.”

The one piece of advice that I probably didn’t need though, was “Make some friends.” I understand why it was important, but I feel as though it just didn’t apply to me. I mean, what good are friends, anyway? I know, I know, it’s stupid to try to argue with someopony about whether having friends is a good thing. It is, and everypony knows that. But some ponies have trouble making friends, and for those who can’t, life is just better without them.

As I thought about this, I kept looking back at Grapevine and Dmitry, who kept straddling behind me as I walked down the highway. Are they my friends? Well, I guess they are, given that I’ve known them both since my first month in the Stable. However, I’ve never been close with them. Isn’t that what friends are for, for sharing your innermost secrets with and sharing special moments?

I’ve always had trouble defining the boundary between ‘friend’ and ‘acquaintance.’ I’ve had many acquaintances over my life, but hardly anypony I could truly call a ‘friend’ in any sense of the word. At school, I would often count other ponies as friends even if they really only knew me as an acquaintance. I knew far more about them than they ever would about me. Socially I was invisible, existing but never coexisting. I hardly talked to anyone, and they hardly ever talked to me.

Life without friends is… lonely, to say the least. But when you’re an introvert, does that really matter? I’d feel bad about myself here and there, but then tell myself to suck it up and move on with my business. Having friends is burdensome because of all the energy you have to spend maintaining those relationships. Endless social functions and trivial conversations about the most banal of topics, smiling politely and pretending to agree-- it’s exhausting! Why go to a party when you can have more fun alone? Who needs friends when you’ve got yourself?

Perhaps it’s just the ponies I’m surrounded by. Teenagers don’t really have much in the way of interesting conversations. It’s all about vanity for them: celebrities, gossip, trashy fashion, reality TV, sports, soap opera dramas and romances, sitcoms written for the lowest common denominator-- ugh! Nothing that interests me. I’d rather be forever alone than dumb myself down just to be popular.

It’s not that I don’t want friends-- I do. It’s just that I’ve found very few ponies who are on my level. Usually other ponies just drag me down… just like Dmitry and Grapevine behind me here. If they keep this up, then we might not make it to the city by nightfall. Then again, their slowness gives me time for little breaks here and there. Hold on, let me check the map-- ok, we’re making good progress.

I stopped my angsty mind-rant and took a look around. We’re still in the middle of nowhere, but this time it’s a good nowhere. A close nowhere. A familiar nowhere. Like all nowheres, most of it was just empty space with a road going through it. Around the edges there were a few trees, some of them leafless and barren, like burnt griffon claws reaching out from beneath the earth, while the rest were hardy evergreens, bearing out the cold wrapped in thick, dark green hides. The latter kind were especially common in our region, and one such tree stands proudly on our province’s flag. Perhaps it’s a symbol for the toughness of our ponies, who have survived not only twentysomething years of war and the bombs, but also the coming of a second ice age!

Nowhere. The word seems to embody this land even moreso than say… a year ago. Before you could at least see the tilled fields and know there were still ponies who tended to these lands, but now… now it looks like it’s been abandoned for years.

I start to veer off the road towards a barn when suddenly, with a yelp, I fall. But only for a second-- landing on a pile of soft snow, I realize quickly that I’ve simply fallen into a ditch on the side of the road. Dmitry and Grapevine peer over the side, looking worried.

“Silver, are you okay?” Asked Dmitry.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with a somewhat embarrassed blush. “It’s actually pretty comfy in here...”

Then I trail off as I suddenly remember something. Something that I either thought or wrote a long time ago:

“Even the ditch on the side of the road looked like a comfortable place.”

I climbed back out of the ditch and took another look around.

“Yes, I remember this place,” I think. “If I’m not mistaken, this is the exact same stretch of road I was on when I thought that thought, way back on that day, the day when… when I… when the…. LAST OCTOBER.”

I look back at the ditch and realize that it’s also the exact same ditch.

The. Exact. Same. Ditch.

Then I randomly got a notification on my pipbuck. I opened it and saw that it had ‘found’ a new location: ‘Wanderer’s Ditch.’ Strange. This wasn’t on the map before, and it just appeared, instead of immediately once we arrive like it usually does with places. Did my pipbuck just create a new location marker all on its own? Or maybe it’s just getting a bad transmission from whatever GPS satellite it’s hooked up to or something, I don’t know.

Whatever the case, we entered the barn and set our packs down for a while so we could warm up from the cold. Grapevine gathered a pile of dry straw and tried to start a fire while I curled up against a wall and opened my diary (that’s you!), flipping back to the very first pages. Lo and behold, I had found it:

“The tiredness that had nearly overcome me before had now returned, and was even heavier and more determined than before. All I wanted was to curl up somewhere, in a barn or under a bridge perhaps, and just go to sleep. Even the ditch on the side of the road looked like a comfortable place. Yet I pressed on, promising myself all the sleep in the world once I got to where I was trying to go.”

I experienced that feeling that you feel when you’re reading something you wrote a long time ago and you still remember why you wrote it. This entry was dated October 23rd, though it was written at one or two or three o’clock in the morning, so it was more like October 22nd. I was on that road, headed east towards the mountain, not knowing where I was going or when I was going to get there, only knowing that I was headed for a safer place. I had never expected that I would come back, in this year or next year… or even at all.

At the end of the day, we arrived at another eerily familiar place: the Provincial Guard roadblock on the outskirts of Greyham. Here, a long wooden fence running north to south separated a labyrinth of single family homes from a large field of tall brown grass. Interrupted only by the highway, the massive fence separated the city from the country, dividing the land into two different worlds. In between the two fences, a small barricade made up of concrete highway dividers had been placed from one end of the fence to the other, blocking all traffic except for one narrow, heavily fortified chokepoint near the middle of the highway. Aside from that, the checkpoint really hadn’t changed that much, given that the army truck and the tent were still there and the ponies manning it appeared to be in uniform (albeit much dirtier ones).

“What’s that sign say?” Asked Grapevine, squinting her eyes at a metal sheet hastily hoofpainted with red letters in the distance. I was about to say, but then she answered her own question.

“‘Toll Road: Pay us 20 bullets, any kind (please don’t fire them at us!) PER PONY, or go away. Price is final, no bartering. Ponies attempting to cross without paying will be shot.’ Huh. Looks like the army’s strapped for cash. Never thought this day would come.”

We laughed at her joke, but then the gravity of the situation quickly set in.

“Twenty bullets?” I exclaimed. “Are they kidding us? That’s sixty pieces of ammo just to get in!”

“It looks like they’re doing it on the other side, too,” said Dmitry. “That’s 120 for a round trip.”

“But that’s insane!” I cried. “We’d have to give up all our 10 millimeter rounds.”

“What choice do we have?” Asked Dmitry. “There’s no way around, and paying the toll is far safer than trying to break through. They’ve got a military grade arsenal, after all.”

“That fence over there is pretty low,” said Grapevine. “I bet we could climb over it.”

“No,” I said. “That fence is covered in ice. We couldn’t possibly climb the ledge.”

“We could always make a way through,” said Grapevine, eyes glowing as she began to pull out her flamethrower.

“NO,” I said firmly, gently pushing the flamethrower’s barrel towards the ground with his hoof. “In this temperature that would take forever. You’re going to burn up all your fuel.”

“She has a point,” said Dmitry, backing me up. “Besides, they’d realize what we were doing soon enough, and they’d be on to us.”

“I guess you’re right,” sighed Grapevine as she disappointedly slid her flamethrower back into her saddlebag.

We approached the roadblock to pay the toll when suddenly the eyes of one of the ponies lit up in astonishment. Pointing at me, he turned to his colleague and said,

“Hey! It’s her! That fucker who almost got us court-martialed!”

His partner’s eyes also lit up.

“Holy shit!” She exclaimed. “It really is her!”

“Fuck. They remembered,” I think.

A third, who had just been walking out of their tent when he overheard their conversation, took one look at me and fumed into a burning rage.

“THIS is for getting us in hot water with the Colonel!” He cried, picking up a minigun and opening fire at us.

Startled, we scrambled out of the way just before the bullets hit where we were standing.

“Run away, run away!” I cried.

And so we did. We ran and hid behind the ruins of a blown up car parked on the side of the road, a safe distance from the soldiers.

“Silver, what the hay was that all about?” Asked an exasperated Dmitry.

“They just took one look at her and suddenly they all had a vendetta against her,” said Grapevine. “Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.”

“No, no, no,” said Dmitry. “I grew up in the ghetto, I know all about spontaneous rivalries, and this isn’t it. She clearly did something to piss them off before.”

“What on earth did you do then?” Asked Grapevine.

They both stared at me with probing eyes.

“Well, I uh...” I began, but then I hesitated. Should I really tell them about what happened that night?

“I uhhh… can we talk about this later?” I snapped. “Me explaining my life before I met you isn’t going to stop them shooting at us, you know.”

“Okay, okay,” said Dmitry. “I guess you’re right. Let’s swing around South and try the next road in.”

“But how ah we gonna get out from behind this hunk of metal?” Asked Grapevine. “I bet they’ve got their sights trained on it, just waitin’ for us to make a move!!”

“I’ll fly up there and create a distraction,” said Dmitry, taking his saddlebags off, “while you two make a run for it. But I’ll have to leave these here, otherwise I won’t be fast enough. Later one of us can sneak back here and get them, or maybe one of you could stay here and bring them back once they think we’ve all escaped, I dunno. I’d probably get all shot full of holes, but I’ll do it for you guys.”

“Wait!” Exclaimed Grapevine. “I have an idea. Just trust me on this one, okay?”

“Okay,” said Dmitri and I in unison, not knowing what to expect.

Grapevine jumped out in front of the car, sprinted a bit, then hurled an apple-shaped grenade at the encampment while screaming “TI KALLISTI!!!”

The grenade landed within the concrete barriers. The soldier ponies ducked for cover on our side of the barriers, making prime targets. However, as soon as Dmitri and I could draw our guns and aim them, one of the soldiers, a unicorn, had enveloped the group within a shield. I was still kind of happy though, because as long as they had their shield up, they couldn’t shoot at us.

We all waited for a bit, but nothing happened. A fourth soldier pony, who had been holding back but waiting in case his fellows needed reinforcement, cantered over to where the grenade lay. He poked at it with his hoof while everypony else watched. Then he picked it up with his telekinesis and held it for everypony to see.

“See this?” He asked his comrades. “Nothing to worry about. It’s a dud. A DUD! What else you got for us, ya stupid hooli--”

Then it exploded. And rather conveniently too, since the thing was only a few hooves away from his head. The blast obliterated his skull, but also mutilated the rest of his body for good measure. Okay, I admit it was a little unnerving, even for me, but since he was taunting us, it was okay.

His comrades just stood there in shock, mouths agape, and literally frozen in place with horror. They shouldn’t have, however, because the grenade’s explosion had also punctured the motor of their huge army truck. I watched it smolder for a little before I got to my senses and shouted,

“Rrrruuuuunnnnnnnn!!!!”

KA-BOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

My friends and I had gotten out just in time. The soldiers, on the other hoof, did not.
The blast must have been too much for their shield because when the smoke cleared, they were literally toast. I swear there must have been a stash of kerosene somewhere nearby because the explosion was a bit larger than it should have been. It also caught one of the nearby houses on fire, even though the roof was covered in snow.

We waited for a while until the truck stopped burning and what was left of the housefire was a reasonable distance from the road. Then we crept right through the roadblock, low to the ground, trying to stay away from smoke and out of sight of any ‘soldiers’ who may have survived the blast and were still hanging around. On our way through we raided what was left of their ammunition supplies (which admittedly wasn’t much), then headed into the city.

We found a rather nice place to settle tonight: a small, colorful little victorian style house on the edge of a construction site that’s not too large (which makes it easy to defend) and is very cozy. Dmitri had to go through several bobby pins in order to pick the locks on the door (it had three deadbolts!) and all the doors and furniture were really tiny, like the place was meant for midgets. Although it was somewhat unnerving living in what seemed like a literal dollhouse, it’s still extremely homey.

What makes it even weirder are some of the possessions of its former owners. On top of the fireplace there’s this huge painting of, what appears to be this very house, at the top of a waterfall. On one of the bookshelves there’s a dusty old jar labeled ‘Paradise Falls’ (which sounds like a rather nice place to visit =D ) containing, I kid you not, a moth. I don’t know how that thing got in there, but I’ve sealed it with a cork to prevent myself from swatting, squishing, shooting, or otherwise killing it before we leave (And even then, it’s still pretty creepy). Grapevine also found a shit ton of balloons and helium tanks in one of the rooms, way more than anypony would ever need. Either somepony had a job selling balloons or they just really really really really really really really liked balloons.

Well, that about wraps it up for this day’s events. I’m going to go to sleep soon, just after I finish writing this entry. I feel very cozy right here under the sheets-- my only complaint is that Dmitry and Grapevine made me sleep on the couch in the living room, right next to that creepy moth thing. They claim it’s because “I’ve been a bad girl” for getting us into trouble with those soldier-renegade ponies, but I know the real reason is that there’s only one bed in this house.

Level up!

Level 3: Stable Dweller

Next perk at level 4.

Status Ailments:

Your butt no longer hurts. Your agility has returned to normal.

Stats:

Ponies Led: 2

Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2

Price of Silver: 7 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

This story was originally going to be written in chronological order, with diary entries starting the night before the apocalypse. However, I soon found that that it would have been completely boring, so I decided to just start from when the main characters leave the stable, and possibly insert the missing chapters throughout the story, possibly every 10 chapters or so. The earlier diary entry that is recalled in this section was one of the first chapters that was written, in which Silver is going towards the stable. In this chapter she is going away from it, and has encountered a landmark from her prior trip.

It would also be helpful to know that the impetus for this story was 100% pure teenage angst.

Chapter 5: Rio a la Plata

“We must live by the living, not by the dead.”

Saturday, September 7th, 4347

Dear Diary,

Today was a big day. After waking up and having a delicious breakfast of snack cakes (because fuck healthy eating), we set off.

“So how are we gonna find that Stable-Tec office in this jungle?” Asked Grapevine as we departed the cottage. “This place has, I don’t know how many suburbs, an’ if it’s in the downtown, then...”

“Then we’re fucked,” interjected Dmitry. “You heard what Katrina said about the city center. If the office just happens to be there, then there’s no point in trying.”

“Well, it’s not,” I said, digging out a tiny booklet from my saddlebags. “I put this in here and almost forgot about it until a few days ago. Look what it says.”

I showed them the ‘Welcome to Your New Home’ booklet that the Stable officials gave out when we first entered. I think most ponies recycled theirs since pretty much all of the information it contained was stuff they had already told us, but I had kept mine since I rarely throw things like that away. On the inside back cover it had what we desperately needed right now:

Have any issues with your stable that your overmare can’t solve?

Call 1-800-STABLES or Visit our us at:

Cascadia Province Satellite Office

20078 SW Greenspan Rd. Suite 262

Tigertown, CS 33734

Our trusted customer service is open 24/7, regardless of rain, snow, sleet, or radiation!

“Well, whadaya know, Tigertown!” Exclaimed Grapevine. “Don’t they have like, a mall there or somethin’?”

“Swishington Square?” I asked. “Yes, they have that there, but there’s not going to be anything in it. Everything useful is has got to be looted by now.”

“I know, but I just want to visit it,” said Grapevine. “Just one more time, you know, for old times’ sake.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “We can visit Swishington Square Mall, but then we have to get going. It could be anywhere in Tigertown, and I’d like to find it as soon as possible.”

We stuck to the highway because it would provide a clear and direct route to where we were going. Since speed wasn’t a factor, it would have been shorter just to take the side streets, but we didn’t know what lay ahead of us. There was also the possibility of getting ambushed in those narrow streets by survivors desperate for supplies. After all, our jumpsuits and pipbucks brazenly advertised that we were from a Stable, and likely carried fresh supplies.

Although I didn’t think of that part later. Mostly what was on my mind when we left was the fact that I didn’t know this part of the city that well. Or at all, really. My family lived further west, and so I never got many chances to visit this part of town. Our pipbucks didn’t really help with navigation that much, given that their ‘map’ feature only seemed to map the areas we’ve already explored. Everything else is totally blank except for a little marker far off in the distance in the general direction of Tigertown.

As much as it infuriates me, I’m beginning to think that this thing is a lot more intelligent than I give it credit for. Somehow it knows exactly where we’re going, it can count and alphabetize everything in my saddlebags, and seemingly create new place names at random. The thought of a pipbuck being alive scares me, especially since it’s attached to my leg and all. I it were to become self-aware, who knows what it could be capable of?

At Grapevine’s urging, we took a short break from our trek to loot an abandoned shopping center. We didn’t find much-- just a few .45’s and .32’s from a few corpses. It looked like they had been trying to defend themselves against some bandits. Sadly, the robbers won since they were all dead and didn’t have any useful supplies left. It looked like this had happened rather recently, since there were flies buzzing around and… walking all over their… eww.

“Is it just me, or are these flies a bit bigger than usual?” asked Dmitri as he observed the bugs on the corpses.

“You’d know better than any of us,” said Grapevine as she rummaged through some empty boxes.

“Uhh… didn’t you tell us you once worked in agriculture?” asked Dmitri.

“Yes. Viticulture specifically, ” she replied, “But ah ain’t our resident entomologist.”

That remark stung Dmitri fairly hard.

“We’re not bugs, you dipshit,” he rebuked.

“Really?” she asked. “‘Cause ya kinda look like one.”

“Guys, stop it,” I hissed.

“Looks aren’t everything,” Dmitri said bitterly. “Everypony knows that… except for dumb hicks like you.”

“Well, ah know ah’m a hick, and proud of it,” spat Grapevine, “But ah ain’t dumb!”

“Guys!” I tried to interject.

“Really?” asked Dmitri. “‘Cause you kinda sound like you are.”

“Guys!”

“You think yer so tough, eh?” asked Grapevine. “Well, let’s see how you--”

I took out my pistol and fired a shot at the ceiling.

“Stop it. Stop it right now!” I yelled. “You, go sit in that corner over there. And you, go sit in that corner over there. I want both of you to stay in your corners for five minutes with no talking!”

When we got back on the road, I ordered Grapevine to the front of the pack and Dmitry to the back of it, while I stayed in the middle and kept them apart. I didn’t do it to punish either of them… well, maybe a little bit. But I really just wanted them to shut up about the whole ‘changeling-bug’ thing. If those two want to continue following me, then I don’t want to hear any more of that speciesist bickering, even if it was the mud pony who started it.

We walked in silence for a while, traveling along the highway’s citybound lanes. This highway and the streets around it, completely devoid of life and littered with abandoned cars-- it all had this great big empty feeling, as if we had entered a void. And in this void, little could be heard aside from the whistling of the wind and the sound of our hoofsteps. The breeze was sharp and chilly. The ground still had quite a bit of snow on it, but not as much as when we were up in the mountains. In fact, I was certain it was getting warmer, as if the weather of the few days before that was just a cold spell. Much of the snow had begun melting into slush, and much of the slush had begun melting into water, although it wasn’t melting as fast as it could have because the clouds still hadn’t cleared from the sky.

We came across a larger group of corpses lying on the ground near some parked cars. They were obviously dead, and had been for quite some time-- their bodies were already in the process of decomposing, which may have been stopped during the latest snowfall. With the weather warming up, they would start decomposing again, the remains of their flesh eaten away by bugs and bacteria for weeks on end until they were just piles of bones. I stood over the corpses for a little while and studied them, contemplating mortality or something deep like that, and Grapevine found a stick and began prodding them.

“Look at this,” she called to us, and Dmitry and I came over to look. She had found one particular corpse that, when she prodded the muscles in the abdomen, its leg twitched.

“Muscle reflexes,” I said. “Nice. But… how are they still moving?”

“Why, electrical impulses, of course,” she replied, still gleefully poking it.

“I know that,” I said. “But how can there still be any electricity inside something that’s this dead?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Magic, I guess. Hey, maybe we can make it dance.”

She began poking vigorously, but it stopped moving altogether. She stopped and a grimace appeared on her face. However, it didn’t stay there for long because then one of its legs began moving.

“Is it working?” asked Dmitry. “Is it really going to dance for us?”

“I hope so,” said Grapevine. “It seems to be getting up.”

By now all of the corpse’s legs were moving, and indeed it seemed like it was trying to get itself upright. When it was finally standing up straight, it turned to look for us, and I found its lifeless face unnerving as it seemed to stare at us.

“Gwwwaaaaauuuuggghhhhh!!!!” It said, opening its mouth wide open to reveal a mangled tongue and the yellowest teeth I have ever seen in my life.

“Ooh, it talks!” said Grapevine, excitedly. Meanwhile Dmitry was slowly inching backward.

“Uhh… I think you should get away from that thing,” he said. “I don’t think it’s friendly.”

“Shucks, it’s totally friendly!” she said. “See?”

It reached out its hoof and smacked away Grapevine’s stick, then began groaning some more as it shuffled towards her. Some liquid from its mouth-- either water from the frost or saliva if it still had any-- sprayed everywhere, including on Grapevine’s face, although she didn’t seem at all perturbed by that. Then some more of the bodies began trying to get up while the first one slowly made its way towards us. By now we were all scared, and had realized exactly what these things were:

Zombies.

“RRRRRUUUUUUUNNNNNN!!!!!” I cried, and all three of us broke into a sprint. Meanwhile, the other zombies had also begun sprinting, effectively giving chase.

“Ah didn’t know zombies could run that fast!” Grapevine cried.

“I didn’t know they could run at all!” I replied.

We ran down an offramp, hoping to find some cover in an abandoned building. To our dismay, most of the doors had either been boarded up or blocked by rubble or large objects, severely limiting our options. Once we were about one block in, I stopped and turned around. The zombies were still chasing us, but we had a sufficient lead that I could use to thin the herd. I took out an assault rifle and loaded a full clip, then fired vigorously. The thing was difficult for my inexperienced self to handle, and much like a firehose in that regard: a giant burst of projectile that knocked me off my balance and ruined whatever aim I had. The result: water (or in this case, bullets,) spilling everywhere. Most of them landed on the ground or lodged into objects, but I did manage to hit all the zombies. They appeared insensitive to pain, falling back only due to the impact of the projectiles, but recovering only a second later. It took almost all of the clip, but eventually I got all of them to fall down. It seemed as though their bodies could only take so many bullets before they were torn apart.

Dmitry and Grapevine stopped running, and the coast was clear… but only for a few seconds. Several of my shots had been enough to pierce the hood of a nearby parked car, which began fuming. Fortunately we were far away enough not to be harmed when it exploded, but the reverberating shockwave from the detonation of its engine seemed to wake up dozens more of these zombies from all around us.

We had to run even further down the road, this time in urgent need of a building to hide in so the zombies couldn’t get us. However, it seemed as though everywhere we went, all of the doors were either barricaded or tightly locked. We ran until we reached the end of the road. There was a cross road, but there were zombies coming in from both sides. It looked like we were going to be trapped by at least a hundred zombies closing in from three sides, and a large building blocking what would have been the fourth.

Suddenly there was a large explosion to our right, followed by some gunfire. I turned and saw a grey donkey wearing a dirty brown trenchcoat and cowboy hat, shooting and kicking down the zombies that occupied that part of the street. Once he killed the last zombie, he looked at us and simply yelled, “This way!” and ran down the street. Given that we still had two streets’ worth of zombies lurching towards us, we had no choice but to follow him.

The stranger led us down the street a little ways, then into an alley when we spotted another group of zombies down the street. I spotted him on top of a building, so we climbed the lowered ladder of one of those metal fire escape thingys on the side of said building, pulling it up again just in time to prevent the zombies from grabbing onto it. Then we climbed the rest of the stairs until we reached the top.

“Thanks for saving us back there,” Dmitry said to the stranger.

“My pleasure,” he replied.

He opened his mouth to say more, but just then a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, followed by rolling thunder. Its light, and the clouds above us as well, looked unusually green.

“Let’s get inside that building over there,” he said. “Quickly!”

He took off running across the rooftops towards one of the taller buildings and we followed. We jumped through a window, one by one, with all of us getting inside just as the first raindrops began to fall. I looked outside as a shower of rain fell from the eerily green sky, along with the fierce howling of wind. A few drops spilled onto me, and I jumped back in shock as I heard what sounded like the clicking of my pipbuck’s radiation counter.

“You’d better stay away from that stuff,” said the stranger as he placed a sheet of metal over the window. “It’s radioactive.”

“I… see...” I said, not really knowing what to think. I mean, I knew that living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland was dangerous, but I never thought that even the rain would be a hazard!

The windows of the room we were in were already boarded up, but the four of us retreated into a windowless room for extra protection as we waited out the storm. This had been a break room inside an office building, although its table and chairs had been removed and replaced with a campfire and several small wooden crates. In one corner, a stained mattress lay among a pile of tiny bones.

“What are you doing here?” asked the mysterious stranger as he threw some leaves into a kettle and put it over the fire. “The city’s not safe anymore. It’s far safer to go back to your stable.”

“Our stable is no longer safe,” explained Dmitry. “A couple of psychopaths inside it attempted a coup. Then they raided the armory and started a race war.”

“Seventy-six, I presume?” he asked. We all nodded.

“I met some travelers from there a few days back,” he said. “They told me the whole story… in gruesome detail.”

He stared right into our eyes as he said ‘in gruesome detail,’ which almost scared the absolute shit out of me. Grapevine was also scared, Dmitry not so much.

“None of them could agree on why it happened,” he continued. “One of them thought their leader was a hypnotist. Another thought somepony had released some kind of fear gas into the vents. The third one was a changeling just like you. He swore they were planted there by Stable-Tec to root out the... ‘undesirables.’”

“Shadow Doubt?” asked Dmitry in surprise, then snidely stated. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a conspiracy theorist.”

“Conspiracy theory or not, there’s something fishy about those stables,” the stranger continued. “I had a bad feeling about them from the very beginning, especially those executives. The white one was always way too cheerful about the whole thing; the yellow one too confident in her designs; and the orange one, well, that little filly always acted like she was hiding something.”

“She was,” said Dmitry. “Many things. But let’s talk about you for a minute. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“You never answered my question,” he replied. “But I’ll answer yours.” He leaned back against the wall behind him and clasped his forehooves together as he solemnly told his life story. “My real name is… kinda embarrassing… but ponies call me ‘Gaucho.’ Family moved here when I was nine, parents were looking for work. I would have rather they didn’t, because I had always dreamed of joining the rodeo circuit. Grew up farther north, on the streets, in the barrio, had to look out for myself and my siblings. Then it happened. Fortunately, got to the basement and survived. As food ran short the looting got worse, so we relocated to a refugee camp run by the Ministry of Peace.”

He paused and peeked inside the kettle for a moment, then continued.

“Then, well… it was around the end of December. The Hearth’s Warming Eve betrayal, we call it. The Provincial Guard unit that was stationed there to protect us, they just took all the food they could carry and left. Some of us tried to stop them, I was one of them, but then they took hostages and we had to let them go. Some of the more vocal ones were shot. Then raiders came and attacked the next day and stole the rest. I joined a group that tried to find them, but to no avail. And when I came back… all of my family had been murdered.”

By this point, he was visibly trying to hold back tears. He got out a hoofkerchief and wiped his eyes, and then acted like nothing had happened.

“That was the saddest story ever!” Grapevine sobbed.

“Yeah? Well, that’s life in this wasteland,” he said. “But it isn’t all bad, either. From that day forth, I made a vow to protect the innocent, to provide justice in the absence of the law. I’m no hero, but I did manage to track down those raiders and get my revenge.”

He checked the kettle again, and determined that this time its contents were ready.

“You’ve just got to learn to survive,” he said. “If something bad happens, grieve, but don’t grieve too long or else you’ll never move forward. Now who wants some tea?”

After a hearty meal and some good conversation, the rain finally cleared up. After reassuring us that the rainwater didn’t stay radioactive for long, we headed back down to the street and go our separate ways. The sky was beautiful and there was a small break in the clouds, filling the sky below with a bright golden beam of sunlight and illuminating a green-tinted rainbow in the distance.

“You mentioned some ponies from our stable earlier,” said Dmitry. “Did you see where they went?”

“Of course I did,” said Gaucho. “They went north along 205, towards the airport, but I wouldn’t--”

“We HAVE to go after them!” Grapevine exclaimed.

“Don’t,” warned Gaucho. “It’s too dangerous--”

“Exactly!” Grapevine interrupted. “This city’s crawlin’ with danger! We’ve gotta find ‘em and tell ‘em to go back inside the stable and wait there until we can make things better again!”

“No!” exclaimed Gaucho. “That’s not what I--”

“Of course,” added Dmitry. “They’re our neighbors, after all.”

“C’mon, I know a shortcut!” said Grapevine, and she and Dmitry galloped off.

“Wait! You don’t know what you’re….” Gaucho shouted, but my friends rounded a corner and vanished from sight.

“...Doing...” His ears drooped in disappointment, and then he looked at me. “Ugh, they never listen. You’re not going after them, are you?”

“I have to,” I replied. “Who else will save them from themselves?”

“Not me,” he said. “Look, if you go after them, just be careful because you’re walking right into a sea of zombies, and this time I won’t be there to help you.”

“I’ll make sure they’re at least somewhat careful,” I said. “Thank you, by the way, for saving us back there.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “In your travels, keep an eye out for my friends, Vaquero, Huaso, Chalan, Guajiro, Jibaro, Llanero, Chagra, and Charro. We aren’t heroes, but we do what we can.”

I ran a few yards down the street when Gaucho called my name. I stopped and looked at him. He had a faint smile on his face.

“When you’ve reunited your stable friends again,” he began, “If you meet a jenny named ‘Yerba Mate,’ tell her that her little ‘Galleta’ is doing alright.”

I eventually caught up with my friends, and we spent the rest of the day traveling. Along the way we met two groups of scavengers and chatted a little. They echoed the same warning about not going near the airport, which we politely listened to, only to ignore once they were out of our sight.

Traveling became much easier once we reached 205, as it cut a clear path straight through the dense city. The tiny bit of sunlight that managed to break out of the clouds was having an effect on the remaining snow, melting it further and creating large puddles, muddied by all the dust, dirt, and ash that had accumulated in the streets over the past year in the absence of street sweeping and regular vehicle traffic to clear it away. In some places, the road was several inches under slightly irradiated water.

I dashed through these puddles as fast as I could, gripped with fear at the thought of millions of magical radiation particles, the silent, undetectable killers, entering my body. All that civil defense education back in school and the stable had instilled within me a somewhat unreasonable fear that I might stand in a radiation puddle for too long, soaking up rads without realizing until it was too late, simply because these new irradiated puddles felt no different than the pre-war, radiation-free puddles that I used to splash around in when I was younger. My pipbuck’s built-in radiation counter is truly a lifesaver because it tracks every single unit of radiation that enters my body, allowing me to check my dosage without having to carry around a big old Ungulgeiger counter and constantly scan myself with it. Instead, it used modern archanotechnology to cast a passive spell around my entire body, one which I could not hear, see, feel, smell, or…

Wait... undetectable magic particles affecting my body? I’m starting to feel nervous about having this thing bolted to my leg.

But my thoughts quickly turned to the dimming light: it was getting late and we had to find a place to stay for the night. We found a place called the Chestnut Tree Motel at the Spark Street exit. We broke into the main office to raid it for food, but the place was just teeming with these giant cockroaches the size of a hoof! I knew that cockroaches would survive the apocalypse, but I never thought they’d grow so big!

We also investigated an eerie glow coming from the motel manager’s office. It turned out to be a computer, still on after a long abandonment, with screensaver and automatic sleep mode disabled. It was open to a review site, which could only have been accessed before the bombs fell. The manager had apparently been personally replying to every single review that was posted, writing long, apologetic comments that often exceeded the length of the reviews themselves. They were all composed using the same formula, beginning and ending with the same sentences but with slight variations in the body. None of them addressed any specific points brought up in the reviews, instead replying with vague expressions of happiness, gratitude, or sorrow. The comments were written with an extreme degree of manufactured enthusiasm, such that seemed impossible to compose in the small, dimly-lit, windowless room without injecting oneself with drugs, and as if they were written by Pinkie Pie herself (whose portrait indeed sat on the desk). This only made it all the more jarring when I opened the desk drawers and found cyanide pills and a .44 pistol.

We didn’t really find much, since most of the food was spoiled and whoever locked this place up had taken most of the nonperishable stuff. There was a lot of wood furniture, which we easily broke down into firewood. We also erected massive barricades in front of all the stairs to fend off against any zombies and would-be bandits who tried to attack us during the night. Having retreated to one of the second floor rooms (which we unlocked using a key from the front desk), we ate a small dinner of prepackaged food and then went to bed.

Progress to Next Level: 675/1050

Author's Note

In case you hadn't noticed, the chapter name is a pun on 'Rio de la Plata,' a river/bay/estuary in Argentina. 'Rio de la Plata' roughly means 'River of the Silver,' while 'Rio a la Plata' means 'River to the Silver.'
There will be more precious metal themed things later on.

Chapter 6: Law of Attraction

Chapter 6: Law of Attraction

“Water, fire, air and dirt. Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?”

Sunday, September 8th, 4347

Dear Diary,

I woke up early today. Rather unusual for a teenager, but I just had an urge to get up and go outside and have some time to myself before the rest of the group woke up.

It was crisp and cold, not unlike your typical late-summer morning, but twenty degrees colder… at least. The clouds still hung low and heavy over the city. In the sun’s absence, the clouds’ soft tint of orange was the only atmospheric indicator that it was morning.

Sighing, I slouched down along the railing of the Chestnut Tree Motel’s balcony, gazing down at the small parking lot below. Shortly beyond that was the intersection of 97th and Spark Street, and across from 97th there was another abandoned motel. I noted that, if taken together with a few houses across the street, then these two motels would make a good location for a small settlement. Of course some work would need to be done, mainly building a fence to enclose the central would-be courtyard from zombies and bandits, and I don’t know what they’d do about food, but the beauty about these buildings is that they’re already subdivided into sleeping spaces, and there’s still plenty of room to house shops and community spaces. Plus they already have furniture! I remember the housing they had in Sandy Shades, which amounted to little more than a menagerie of mattresses on the floor partitioned by curtains, inside the buildings that were once prime retail space. Here there’s plenty of space to house one or two hundred ponies, and maybe a few visitors to boot.

However, trying to maintain a settlement here would be rather difficult. Its urban location might make for some prime scavenging, and the parking lot of that diner just across Spark Street could be removed for cropland, but even then it might be difficult to survive without trade. Perhaps if the area was a little safer, then 205 and the rest of the highways could become major thoroughfares once again, if only because their paths are relatively straight and well-marked.

Speaking of safety, I wondered just what was up near the airport that made it so dangerous. From what I heard, it sounded like it might be full of zombies. It was a logical conclusion, since the airport was always busy in the mornings, making it a perfect target. Maybe it was even the source of the zombies: a zebra bioweapon, perhaps, detonated at exactly the same time as the balefire bomb downtown, or maybe shortly after; thousands of ponies trapped inside the terminal, suddenly exposed to some deadly neurotoxin secretly developed in a government laboratory like the one my uncle used to work at. Within hours, the toxin has seeped into their brains, turning them into lifeless shells who neglect all hygiene and medical attention: within months, their skin has shed off and the exposed flesh eaten away by flies-- but the ponies feel no pain, because their brains have been hijacked by a deadly virus that rewires its victims to redirect all their remaining energy to a singular and monolithic pursuit: eating the brains of the living!

Ha ha. I really shouldn’t be thinking about this, since we’re dealing with the excruciating deaths of actual ponies here, and thinking about decomposing insect-eaten flesh in detail actually grosses me out, but injecting a bit of levity into these things every now and then is important for keeping ourselves sane in the face of this super depressing world.

What terrifies me most about going to the airport to save our friends and fight the zombies is not the zombies themselves, but their sheer numbers. Last time we were trapped and saved just in time by a mysterious stranger; a mysterious stranger who explicitly told us that he wouldn’t come around to help us again. This is extremely disappointing, since the mission we gave ourselves was to protect the stable and its inhabitants. If we can’t even save three, then what chance do we have of saving the others?

“Why the long face, sugarcube?” asked Grapevine. Her sudden appearance startled me, and I twirled around to answer her, almost dropping my gun in the process. She was dressed warmly and had a shotgun slung over her shoulder, which caused me to remember that she had been out here on early morning guard duty.

“Uhhh….” I said while trying to think of how to state it. “Well, I’ve just been, um… worried. That’s all.”

“Worried ‘bout what?”

“Worried about what we’re going to run into today. About zombies and stuff. You remember that horde we ran into yesterday, right?”

“‘Course I do,” Grapevine said smugly. “Well, what about ‘em?”

“I’m worried there’ll be too many. That we’ll be swamped before we ever find those ponies.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout that,” she said. “We just hafta be on the lookout for high ground to retreat to. As long as we have a shit ton of weapons and explosives, we’ll be safe.”

“But I’m not that good using either,” I said. “I wasted several clips with my poor aim yesterday, and I’m deathly afraid of using my grenades because I’m worried that I won’t throw them far enough and they’ll explode on me.”

“You just gotta work on your aim, that’s all,” she said. “Try ‘em out here, on those zombies once they get close.”

She pointed down Spark Street where a band of about eleven or twelve zombies was straggling down the street. They moved slowly at first, but once they spotted us, they began to straggle faster. I threw my first grenade, expecting it to go farther but it barely flew a yard from the balcony. I then threw another, only to get the same result.

“Ya gotta release it sooner!” Grapevine yelled. “Like this!”

She took out a grenade of her own, plopped it down squarely in the frog of her forehoof, then pitched it with the dexterity of a softball player. It knocked one of the zombies in the head and then exploded a couple seconds later, mutilating it and knocking three other zombies to the ground.

I took another grenade and lobbed it, still missing the zombies by a long shot but this time beating my previous distance by a factor of 3.

“There ya go!” Grapevine congratulated. “Just keep practicin’ and you’ll be a pro in no time.”

We pitched a few more grenades together, Grapevine’s for the zombies and mine for practice. She got most of them, killing all but three. These remaining ones nearly reached the motel proper when Grapevine got up to leave.

“You take the honor of finishin’ them off. Imma go start breakfast.”

The three zombies gravitated towards the nearest stairwell, which we had boarded up the night before. As they clawed at the boards, I pondered my next course of action: should I just drop a grenade down there or not? Dropping the grenade could kill them instantly, but it might also demolish the boarding, leaving us vulnerable for attack. After wasting what seemed like a whole minute just trying to decide, I eventually went with the grenade, reasoning that any zombie that survived I could just kill off with my gun and hoping that nopony would try to bother us while we were eating breakfast.

I gently lowered the grenade with my telekinesis, and then gave it a little push in their direction as I released. I assume it went right to the base of the stairwell, and I waited for twenty seconds but it never went off. Then I realized that I forgot to pull the pin on that one, and quickly pulled the pin out of another one and dropped it to correct my mistake. In my haste I had forgotten to throw it under the balcony, so instead it just fell in a straight line down from the balcony’s edge. However, this time it did go off, and from the sound of meat splattering on the ground, it had obliterated at least one of them.

After going down and finishing the surviving one off with my pistol, I returned upstairs and ate breakfast with my companions. We were starting to run low on food and discussed various options for replenishment, including going back to Sandy Shades, hunting, scavenging old buildings, or even trying to steal from one of the Provincial Guard camps. We ultimately decided that we’d try and search around the airport when we got there, assuming that the zombie hordes had scared away enough scavengers that there might still be some loot there. What use would zombies have for food, anyway?

We packed up and head out, continuing to follow 205 towards the airport. It wasn’t very far from where we had stayed, and I fully expected we’d arrive before lunchtime. Walking in front as I always do, I kept glancing behind me to see if Dmitry and Grapevine were playing nicely. So far so good; neither of them had said anything about yesterday’s fight, and it didn’t look like it was on either of their minds this morning. Every so often they would make small talk, but Grapevine kept craning her neck to gaze at the sky.

“What are you looking at?” asked Dmitry, after a full fifteen minutes of not hearing anything come out of Grapevine’s mouth.

“Ah’ve been thinkin’,” she said, bringing her head back down to earth to look at us, “Y’all saw that break in the clouds yesterday, right? With all the sunshine an’ stuff?”

“Of course,” Dmitry said. “Who’d have missed it?”

“We’ve been on the surface for almost a week an’ that was the only time we’ve ever seen the sky,” Grapevine continued.

Dmitry’s eyes widened. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. “The entire time we’ve been out here, I haven’t seen the sun either. I wonder how that could be?”

“Ash, I guess,” I remarked. “I’m no expert on megaspells, but I’ve read a bit about ‘em.”

“But if it was ash, wouldn’t it have cleared by now?” asked Grapevine. “Ah mean, how can all that ash just stay up there in the sky like that ”

“Who knows?” I asked. “Maybe all of our science on this is wrong. Nothing like this has ever happened before, so all we had before the war were just predictions.”

“But surely it all would’ve come down by now?” asked Grapevine. “Ah mean, what about gravity? Or wind an’ the jet stream?”

“Maybe it’s magnets,” I replied. “Maybe magnets are causing all the ash to stay up there.”

Dmitry and Grapevine stopped and stared at me like I was crazy.

“What?” I asked. “It could happen. It could be electromagnetic energy from stuff all the way down here, excited by the EMP from the megaspell blast, pushing the ash into the air and counteracting the force of gravity.”

Grapevine facehoofed. “No, just… no. Physics does NOT work like that.”

I was so surprised by her taking my offhoof comment seriously that I reflexively tried to defend it.

“It could!” I blurted. “I mean, we don’t really know how magnets work, right?”

“Of course we know how magnets work!” Grapevine exclaimed. “Scientists like myself studied ‘em for centuries. Who the hell taught you about magnetic energy and EMP’s?”

I felt incredibly stupid, and I knew my answer would only make me appear and feel more stupid, but she asked me a question and I had to give an answer. I grinned nervously (and probably blushed as well) as I spoke:

“Umm… rappers?”

Grapevine tried in vain to explain the workings of magnets to me, but between her accent, fast talking, extensive use of jargon, and the sheer complexity of the science behind it, it all went in one ear and out the other. I stopped listening altogether when she started talking about ‘orbitals.’

“So, magnetism is caused by spinning electrons?” I asked, after she had completed her unnecessarily lengthy explanation.

“Basically, yes,” she replied. “Though it’s a bit more complicated than that. Ah still can’t believe ah hired you as my lab assistant back in the Stable without knowin’ just how little you knew.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I said. “I would have left the opening available for somepony with better science grades, but I really needed a job and--”

“No, no, no,” Grapevine said. “Ah mean, ah’m surprised that the education system’s gotten this bad. I mean, high school juniors don’t even know how magnets work?”

“I have to admit, I’m an adult and I don’t even know how magnets work,” Dmitry piped in.

“We were in school years ago,” Grapevine said. “Surely the schools have gotten better since then?”

“On the contrary, I’m afraid they’ve only gotten worse,” said Dmitry. “There’s still a lot of things that prevent students from learning, like gang violence...”

Dmitry trailed off and just started staring at the road ahead, as if something had stunned him. Grapevine and I looked at where he was looking and were also stunned at what we saw.

Before us stood two groups of ponies facing off on the top part of a highway overpass, where 205 crossed over some random expressway. The group on the right was big a gang of thugs: big, bulky stallions wearing hoodies, oversized sports jerseys, and sagging pants. Around their necks hung gold chains, more than it could possibly be practical to carry, and their coats were thoroughly defiled with garish tattoos depicting various religious symbols, drug references, and the names of dozens of ex-fillyfriends written in cursive. To top the freakshow off, they all wore snapbacks with the phrase ‘I <3 haters’ written on them. In short, they were enormous douchebags.

The group on the left, however, consisted of several well-dressed stallions wearing trench coats, suits and ties. They were clean-shaven, well-groomed, and carried themselves with confidence and class. Upon their heads they wore fedoras, the mark of a true gentleman. They were outnumbered 5 to 1, but they carried submachine guns against what I presumed were pistols and knives. My heart fluttered at the thought of ~~one of those brave stallions sweeping me off my feet and rescuing me from the litter that lined the other side of the road~~ some real ‘gangsters’ showing those posers how it’s done, and I was giddy with anticipation for the upcoming fight.

“Da fuck you homos doin’ ‘round here?” said one of the gangstas.

“None of your damn business, ya damn hooligans,” said a gangster. “Now scram before we give ya a fistful of lead!”

“Ayo, now who ya callin’ a hooligan, homie?“ retorted the gangsta. “Dis be our turf, faggot. NowGTFO ‘fore I bust a cap in yo ass!”

“Damn piggers,” the gangster muttered. “Now listen here, punk: nopony, and I mean NOPONY messes with Skittery Malone’s gang and lives to tell the tale. Now you get outta our way or we’re gonna cream ya!”

“An’ we be da Widdalawn Park Guts!” said the gangsta. “Ain’t nopony mess wit us who don’ get creamed!”

“Juses Crust, it’s the Witherlawn Park gang!” griped the gangster. “You pansies have been harassin’ our dockside operations for far too long. Maybe I should just shoot ya right now and put an end to it!”

The gangsta shot him in the head and he fell to the floor. The other gangsters were awash with shock and horror, which soon turned to a seething rage when the gangsta spoke again.

“Syke, fuckboy!” guffawed the gangsta. “Told ya no bitch-ass mudafukas fuck wid da Guts!”

“Dude, uncool!” exclaimed another gangsta.

“‘Ey, da zigga had his toe on da trigger!” retorted the first gangsta. “Dude was utterin’ threats ‘n shit. You never gonna survive on deese streets ‘less ya always ready ta fight!”

“If it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get!” cried another one of the gangsters.

Then they fought. Half the gangstas charged in with knives, but they were quickly gunned down by the gangsters. The remaining gangstas shot at the gangsters, but they were severely hindered by their pistols’ low capacity and firing rate compared to the gangsters’ tommy guns. When it became clear that they were losing, the gangstas started turning tail and running away while their foes were reloading. Some of them tried to salvage the overpriced shoes of the other gangstas, but this made them easy targets for the gangsters, who quickly gunned them down.

In total, the fight lasted less than ten minutes. Nevertheless, me and my companions sat on our haunches and watched it like a game of flag hoofball (the only real difference was that it lacked bleachers and snacks). Once it was done, I couldn’t help but clap excitedly at the mob’s victory against the morons. However, this euphoria would end shortly after they spotted us.

“‘Ey, whaddare day smilin’ about?” asked one of the gangsters. “Prob’ly snitches. Cream ‘em!”

“But baws,” another protested, “How can dey be snitches if dey ain’t no cops ta snitch to?”

“I dunno, anutha gang maybe?” the first gangster replied. “Better safe than sorry. Now cream ‘em!”

We ran over to the side of the road and down the side of the earthen highway ramp, then we ran in a roughly westward direction down the expressway, zig-zagging our paths to throw our pursuers off their aim. We ended up running quite a ways before we got tired of running, then we kept walking until we were certain that we had lost them.

“I’m pretty certain we’ve lost them,” Dmitry commented.

“That’s good, but we’re going in the wrong direction,” I said. “We need to be going north, not west.”

“Ah sort of recognize this area,” announced Grapevine. “There’s a REX station nearby, and a big road goin’ north nearby.”

“Great,” I said. “Once we get off this expressway, we’ll find that road and follow it. Hopefully we can avoid more violence and get back on track.”

Sure enough, we found an onramp leading to a large street going due north. We strode past several silent storefronts before stumbling across the baseball field of a local high school. On the field there was a lone magenta mare pitching baseballs out into the field. Her mane was a deep purple with white streaks, and was styled into poofy curls, like a cross between Pinkie Pie and Sweetie Belle’s manes. She was also wearing a uniform for the school’s team, which fit perfectly on her despite being several years older than the fillies who would have played for it.

Once we were within speaking distance, she stopped her pitching immediately and turned to face us, not at all surprised by our sudden arrival, as if she had seen us approach through eyes on the back of her head.

“O hai there,” she said in a perky voice. “Wanna see me hit that bird over there?”

She pointed to an eagle perched in a nest on top of a tree within the bounds of a nearby golf course. The tree had to be 100 hooves tall at least. And yet here she was, getting ready to pitch a baseball in its general direction.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “You can’t hit that fucking bird.”

“Fuck you I can’t hit that fucking bird,” she said. Then she placed the ball in the frog of her forehoof, raised it up like she was pitching to a batter, and then threw the ball with tremendous force. Lo and behold, she actually hit the damn thing right in the gut, knocking it off of its perch.

“Man, I’ve never seen a pony throw a baseball that far!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, that?” she said. “It’s nothin’. Hey, mind helpin’ me collect the body?”

The four of us climbed the fence and ventured onto the course. The grass was tall and thick, its uniformity tarnished by weeds and clovers. They had grown unusually quickly since their last trimming a year ago, which Grapevine explained was likely due to an abundance of nitrogen from overfertilization. Case in point, we would later stumble across the shed where they stored the fertilizer, which in addition to being high in nitrogen, had also been “enriched with industrial waste.”

“Here it is!” the baseball pony said upon spotting the bird. It lay lifeless on the ground, likely having broken every bone in its body during the fall, and its its . Still, the rest of it was in surprisingly good condition. I’m no expert in taxidermy, but with a little work I’m sure it would have made a good trophy.

The pony removed the baseball lodged deep inside its torso, wiped the blood off, spit on it and wiped off some more blood, then said, “eh,” and stashed it inside her saddlebag. Then she gently wrapped the bird’s body in a cloth and placed that in her saddlebag too.

“I don’t think we’ve properly introduced ourselves,” said Dmitry.

“Oh! Where are our manners?” exclaimed the baseball pony. “How about you give me your names, then I’ll give you mine.”

We introduced ourselves.

“My name’s Katie,” said the baseball pony. “Catherine Casey, but everypony calls me ‘Katie’ for short.”

“‘Katie?’” Dmitry asked. “Now that’s a name you don’t hear very often.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” said Katie. “But that’s why I like it: it’s different. In a society where everypony else’s name is a one, two, or three letter combination of random nouns and adjectives, it’s unique and empowering when your name is simply a collection of letters that can’t be used in any context besides referring to you.”

“I totally get that!” Dmitry exclaimed. “But it also opens the door for other ponies to pick on you, too.”

“Yeah, but that’s only out of ignorance,” she replied. “Adjective-noun naming is rare among non-equine species. I mean, take the griffons, for example: names like Gilda, Greta, Grover, Guto… To ponies it seems strange: why would any parent name their child a random word that has nothing to do with their special talent?” And, do griffons even have special talents?”

We all laughed at that. We kept listening to her ramble on about the peculiarities of our reality while walking eastward through the course, seemingly pulled by some subconscious supernatural force. The force relented once it had dragged us to where it wanted us to go: a big shed full of engine parts and landscaping equipment. The four of us went in and had a look around to see if there was anything worth taking; there wasn’t, at least for us, aside from a few medical supplies from a first aid kit, but Katie seemed especially interested in the machine parts. She rifled through boxes and drawers ravenously, throwing what she didn’t need behind her with no regard for where they landed. A few of these pieces knocked boxes off shelves, causing them to spill their contents all over the floor. When she was done rifling through whatever she was rifling through, she would turn around, look at the toppled boxes, shrug, and then rifle through those. By the time she was done, the whole place was a mess with random machine parts everywhere.

“Aren’t you going to put those back?” I asked.

“Nope!” she said, smiling. “I think it looks better this way: nice and chaotic, much like modern art. The way I see it, I’m doing the world a service.”

She wrapped one forehoof around my neck and used the other to make a large sweeping gesture in the air in front of us while she spoke, then used it to point to various locations in the room to provide a visual aid to her explanation.

“Just imagine: a gang of thieves stumble across this, and their leader decides that the nice, secluded location would make an excellent hideout. The back room could be a living quarters for up to 20 ponies, and all of the shelf space I just cleared out would be perfect for storing their loot, and all the scrap metal strewn out across the floor would make the perfect security system. When night falls, you can’t see the floor, and if the loot is spread out among the junk, a would-be burglar would have to take a lot of steps just to get enough loot to make a break-in worthwhile. Given that the odds of stepping on something would be completely random in this situation, you merely have to discern the junk-to-floor ratio and compound that several times to get a 99% chance that anypony who comes in here after dark will step on something and scream in pain, like, stepping-on-one-of-those-little-plastic-building-blocks type pain, alerting the occupants of their presence. The burglar would also most likely spend the next minute or two clutching their damaged hoof, crying in pain, or otherwise licking their wounds, giving the resident thieves enough time to mobilize for attack. If they disable the lightswitch over by the front door while keeping the one by the door to the back room on, they could have full control over the lights in this room and only turn them on when they need to flush out burglars. The sudden illumination of the whole room would blind the burglar for a few seconds-- but not the resident thieves, since they’d already be used to the light after having turned on the lights in the other room when they woke up. They’d have several seconds of a head start on nabbing that burglar, who would undoubtedly make several blunders such as running into things stepping on more machine parts while trying to make a panicked escape from an unfamiliar location. But for the thieves, getting through their own security system is a mere hop, skip, and a jump due to home field advantage. With such a security system in place, they wouldn’t need to put up any night watchponies, freeing up more ponies they can put into raids during the day.”

“Umm… how does strengthening thieves do the world a service?” asked Dmitry.

Katie facehoofed.

“Uggh, you ponies are squares,” she groaned. “My point is that seemingly useless things can become incredibly useful if you just think about them in a different way.”

We left the building and stood around, trying to get our bearings. Grapevine checked the time on her pipbuck.

“Holy cow, we spent a lotta time in there!” she exclaimed. “It’s a little after noon. Waddaya say we go find some lunch?”

“Good idea,” said Katie as her eyes drifted towards a parked golf cart. “Say, do you think we could get that thing going? It would save us a lotta walking.”

“I could try,” said Dmitry. “Gimme a few bobby pins and I’ll see if I can crack the ignition.”

We waited around a bit while he did that. When he was done, the engine roared to life. It still had plenty of fuel in its tank.

When you don’t get to do it very often, riding in a golf cart is a thrilling experience. Maybe it’s because it’s an open air experience with no doors or windows separating you from the outside world. You actually get to feel the wind, which would normally be shielded from you in a traditional car. Or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t ridden in a motor vehicle in nearly a year. I imagine that the kids of the future will feel this same excitement, multiplied by a great deal, upon riding anything self-propelling, given that they’ll be growing up in a world filled with vehicles but hardly ever getting to use them. There might even be kids in the future who live their whole lives without ever riding in a car! Now that’s a scary thought… for me, at least. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have automobiles (before the apocalypse, that is), but there are many ponies who still can. Isn’t it strange how quickly we can adopt new technology?

There was a small road that passed by the shed, which we followed to the north edge of the golf course. Once there, we kept going north, driving past blocks of pitiful looking abandoned houses. For the first time, I noticed that almost all of their windows were shattered, presumably from the bomb’s air blast. We were already on the periphery of the blast radius, even though we were still a few miles away from the city center.

The road we were traveling on dumped us into the middle of a big busy street-- or, what used to be. On it there was a long, nearly endless line of cars all heading away from downtown. All four lanes had been opened to traffic fleeing the city, but even it could not handle the sheer volume of cars. At some point further out, something must have happened that held up the line indefinitely because all of their drivers and occupants had gotten out and left. These ponies were fortunate that they could get out alive, but there were probably many closer to the blast who didn’t-- the ones who got burned alive, or fused to their seatbelts and forced to die a lingering death from radiation. It adds a whole new meaning to the song ‘Stuck in my car,’ doesn’t it?

There was a grocery store across the street, but Katie explained that we shouldn’t grow near because a group of ‘raiders’ had taken up residence inside. Instead, she directed us to a nearby take-n-bake pizza place where she had made a hideout. It didn’t have any ovens, but she explained to us that she had created one by reverse engineering one of its large commercial-size refrigerators and hooking it up to a generator. She threw in a pizza, the eagle meat we had collected earlier, and several other cuts from various feral dogs, birds, and rodents she had collected on other excursions.

We sat around telling stories while the food was cooking, and when it was done we continued talking over a delicious meal of pizza, Sparkle Colas, and eagle wings. We mostly just listened to Katie talk because she was by far the best storyteller (I can’t tell a story to save my life!). Though, even after a full hour of conversation, I still felt like I knew astonishingly little about this pony and her life. I got the sneaking suspicion that a lot of her stories were made up, given that they were all outrageous and downright bizarre. But the most bizarre thing was something she actually showed us.

Throughout much of the meal, Katie had been staring down at her crotch with a concerned look. This isn’t completely out of the ordinary for mares (you’ve gotta do what you gotta do), and I waited for her to take a minute to excuse herself but she never did. Was she worried we would take off with her stuff if she left? I didn’t think so given how candid she was about everything else in her life. Or perhaps she was just trying to be a good host and safe face instead of abandoning her guests? She didn’t seem like the type to do that either.

All of a sudden she started groaning.

The rest of us stopped chewing our food immediately and stared in shock. I spat out my half-chewed bite of eagle breast and asked, “Holy cow, are you okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” she said, as if nothing was bothering her. And not, ‘as if nothing was bothering her’ as in, ‘something is actually bothering me but I’m trying to pretend nothing is bothering me,’ she actually seemed completely unconcerned with her previous fit of pain.

“I think I might have a little blood down there.”

She pulled down her pants right in front of us without the least bit of embarrassment, then tore off her panties and pulled something yellow out of her vagina. It was long and thin with slight ruffles along the edges and had little cream colored dots on it, as well as several drops of blood. At first I thought it was just one of those decorative panty liners or something, but then it started to wiggle.

Dmitry and I were too stunned to spreak.

“What… is that?” asked Grapevine.

“It’s a nudibranch,” Katie explained. “And her name is Marigold. Say ‘hi,’ Marigold!”

The nudibranch turned what I assumed was its head around, extended one of its little ruffles, and waved it like it was a hand.

“Nudibranches are some of the best pets,” Katie explained as she began feeding hers little bits of eagle meat. “They’re so small, which makes them cute and portable!”

“Ah get that,” said Grapevine. “But… aren’t they also… carnivorous?”

“That’s another great thing about ‘em!” said Katie. “When I go hunting there’s a lot of meat left over that I don’t want to eat, especially the fatty parts. They also make really great vibrators, and--”

“Why in Equestria...” Grapevine started, “...would you… keep… a… carnivorous sea slug… inside your frickin’ vagina?”

“Well, like I said, the vagina is an excellent nudibranch carrying pouch,” replied Katie. “Nudibranches also make excellent tampons. They suck up menstrual blood better than anything I’ve ever used, ‘cause to them it’s like horchata. As for the whole carivorous thing, well, she only bites when I forget to feed her…”

“Do you have any other nudibranches in there?” asked Dmitry.

“No, I think Marigold prefers to be alone,” said Kaite. “I tried to give her some boyfriends, but she kept eating them.”

“There’s a huge difference in PH between a healthy vagina and saltwater,” Grapevine said. “So either yer vag is too alkaline, or yer pet is gettin’ fried in acid.”

“Marigold is perfectly healthy!” Katie protested. “I’ve done everything I can to give her a habitat that resembles her natural home.”

“So yer vagina is alkaline,” said Grapevine. “Mind if I take a look at it? You might have an infection.”

So Katie let Grapevine take a look at her vagina, and sure enough she found something.

“You’ve definitely got a yeast infection,” Grapevine said, “But it’s nothin’ like ah’ve ever seen. Yet it seems so familiar...”

“Well, I’ve never had a problem with yeast,” said Katie, sticking her own hoof far up her vagina. “In fact, it’s quite useful. Oh, I think this one’s just about done!”

She pulled out a freshly baked loaf of bread, which looked and smelled no different from a normal oven baked loaf. Except… it wasn’t, for it had a face, I think. And then it began talking to me, taunting me, in a deep, scary voice.

“Beneath the skin, we are alllllready one,” the loaf said.

I looked at the others, but they seemed completely oblivious… except for Katie, who just smiled and gave me a wink.

“Was it not your sin that trapped the unicorn?”

“What unicorn?” I wondered. “What sin?”

The bread just laughed. We were communicating telepathically at this point, time slowed, and our surroundings darkened.

“Even now, the evil seed of what you’ve done… germinates within you.”

An image appeared in my head: a unicorn, a dead unicorn, lying on the floor covered in blood. And not just any image. A flashback. From the stable. A scene I’d witnessed only a few months ago. Something that was admittedly my fault.

The bread laughed as feelings of guilt and shame washed over me, then quickly it all went away. No more death, no more flashbacks, no more evil laughing. I was left with just a regular old loaf of bread and my own thoughts.

I swear, that bread was taunting me.

Our meal ended prematurely because none of us felt like eating after Katie had taken away our appetites with her ‘show-and-tell.’ After Katie put the leftovers away in the fridge, we went back outside only to find that somepony had put our golf cart on cinder blocks and stolen the wheels.

“Noooooooo!!!” cried Dmitry, falling to the ground and raising his forelegs towards the sky. “How could this happen?”

“This is a pretty ghetto part of town,” I said. “I’m sure things get stolen all the time here.”

“B-but, this is the first working vehicle I’ve found all week!” Dmitry said. “And now it’s already taken from us?”

“Ah think Silvah may have been right about that ‘unwritten rule’ against vehicles earlier,” Grapevine commented.

Dmitry sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “Maybe the universe just hates us. Not enough to kill or injure us, but just enough to make us walk everywhere.”

“Couldn’t ya just fly?” asked Grapevine. “You know, since ya have wings?”

“I could,” Dmitry replied, “And it would be a little faster, but then I’d outpace the rest of the group.”

“Is it ‘cause ya need us ta feed on?” Grapevine asked.

“No,” Dmitry said in annoyance. Then he added, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I genuinely like your company?”

I thrust my body between them and pushed them apart. “Guys, cut it out. We’re making a terrible impression on our guest here.”

I turned to look at Katie, who for a second had an excited grin on her face. When she noticed I was looking at her, the grin was instantly replaced by a frown of surprise, followed two seconds later by an embarrassed smile and a blush.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just… um… excited… about our next destination.”

“And that is…?” I asked. “We’ve got to get to the airport.”

“Oh, I’m heading that way too!” said Katie. “But you don’t want to approach the airport after dark, oh, no. Come with me, I’ll show you a safe place we can rest tonight.”

We followed the road as it relentlessly glided to the northwest, slicing through the neighborhood’s otherwise rectangular blocks like a knife cutting just the frosting on a large cake. When the riverbank of storefronts was disrupted on the right side by a large cluster of trees, Katie told us to follow her onto a sidestreet going into the mass of foliage. We did, and we soon came across a chapel that had been completely ransacked by ‘raiders.’

I began to recognize where we were: we were on the site of a large prayer garden called ‘The Cavern,’ which was split in two by a massive ridge. We were at the bottom of the ridge, where the main chapel, parking lot, and visitor’s center were located, as well as the eponymous ‘Cavern,’ which really wasn’t much of a cavern at all: just large enough to hold a large altar and several shelves for small candles. Shortly after the apocalypse, there must have been a mass wake for the 95% of ponies who had died, as there were several framed photographs and withered bouquets piled in front of it. Surprisingly, there were only a few candles, all of which had burnt out, and were either near or at the end of their usefulness. The rest, I realized, must have all been stolen. There were also the clear outlines of pews on the ground, which stood in stark contrast to the mossy stone all around them. These outlines spread out in a semicircle around the cavern and stretched very far from it, intended to hold an audience of a few hundred. Strangely, the pews themselves were missing, also likely to have been stolen.

I had been here once or twice before with my family, but we’ve never really been all that spiritual. What interested me most was the massive garden at the top of the ridge, accessible by an elevator not too far from the Cavern itself. Katie now took us to that elevator, which to my surprise, still appeared to be in working condition. There was also a very hostile-looking, assault-rifle-wielding pony guarding the entrance.

Unphased by the less-than-gregarious gatekeeper, Katie approached the elevator until she came face-to-face with the guard while the rest of us held back.

“Stop right there,” said the guard. “Who the hell are you?”

“We are your friends,” said Katie, taking a step closer.

“Bullshit,” spat the guard. “All my friends are up there.”

The guard pointed to the ridge at the top of the elevator, which was surrounded by a large pulsing purple shield, which the elevator shaft cut through.

“Except for us,” Katie replied. “And we need to get up there to make your statement true.”

“No way,” said the guard. “You are not my friends, ”

There was a pause, and then Katie asked the guard in a quiet voice, as if speaking to a child:

“Tell me, little pony, are you friends with yourself?”

Another pause, and then the guard replied in a confused stammer:

“No,” the guard said, confused. “How I be friends with myself?”

“If you aren’t friends with yourself, and in your worldview everypony who isn’t your friend is your enemy, then technically you are your own enemy, therefore you can’t trust anything you say because you might be trying to deceive yourself. And if you, an enemy, say that we are not your friends, you cannot trust the validity of that statement because its speaker may be trying to deceive you. Therefore, you must assume that that statement is false, and that we are your friends, but because we are down here and not up there, it contradicts your earlier statement that all of your friends are up there. That is a logical error, and unless we correct it, the program will crash. Now let us through, please.”

“Wait, that doesn’t make any--”

Katie pressed her hoof to the guard’s forehead and said,

“Would you kindly let us through?”

The guard reluctantly punched a code into a keypad that had been installed where the elevator call button once was, and opened the elevator doors. We went in nervously, trembling before the guard’s nervous glare-- well, all of us except Katie, who strode in triumphantly and unphased.

The elevator ride up was a short one, but when we reached the top we seemed to be in a different world altogether. The view of the urban sprawl below seemed almost surreal, as it looked completely different from up here compared to what we saw walking those streets at ground level. It was as if we were standing atop a mountain, or even on a cloud. The feeling of separation from the surrounding wasteland was amplified by the massive violet shield which enveloped the ridge, and reinforced the dreamlike aura of the place.

We crossed the narrow concrete bridge that connected the top of the elevator to the top of the ridge, where we entered the garden proper. The garden, despite being dark, dilapidated, and unkempt, seemed angelic compared to the city below. It still retained a hint of peacefulness and splendor, its serenity having been dampened by the apocalypse but not completely dead. Yet for us, our visit had all of the effect of a visit to the garden before the war, because it offered a peacefulness that seemed to exist nowhere else on the surface of this earth.

There were a number of paths branching out from where we stood and the others seemed a little confused over which one to follow, so I took the reigns of the group once again and led them, to the best of my memory, towards where I remembered the buildings were. We strolled along a path that winded through a forest of trees and vines, their branches and tendrils in the process of reclaiming the landscape and returning the land to its dense, bushy forest. Periodically there would be a cracked bench or the base of a broken lamppost, or a pedestal surrounded by chunks of a statue that had been deliberately smashed and sledgehammered to pieces. At last, we came across a clearing containing a mass campsite cut in half by a small creek. A paved path circled the clearing, but numerous dirt paths had been trod by ponies between numerous tents and campfires. Despite all their care to preserve the forest around them, these ponies had completely destroyed the lawn that had been here before.

The camp was populated by dozens of ponies dressed in military fatigues with touches of hippie and grunge fashion such as dyed manes, numerous piercings, necklaces, bracelets, and the like. They mostly sat around their camp, which was a bizarre cross between a military base and a hippie music festival, chatting loudly, making art, or getting high. As we trod through their camp, many of them stopped what they were doing and we began receiving looks, some of confusion and some of derision, from the ‘soldiers’ camped here. The further we went, the more this happened, and soon everypony in the camp was staring at us, even the ones who were too high to care. Nopony dared cross our path, and the ones standing in it politely stepped out of the way. All of this made me feel incredibly nervous. So was Dmitry, and to an extent, Grapevine, though she was more confused than anything else. Katie, however, seemed to enjoy the attention.

“Who are these ponies?” Grapevine whispered to us.

Katie seemed to pay no attention, leaving the answer up to me and Dmitry.

“I think they might be the O.L.F.” whispered Dmitry.

“O.L.F.? What’s that?”

“‘Occidental Liberation Front,’” I said. “They’re a… umm… group of...”

“Terrorists,” Dmitry scowled. “Spread all kinds of crap about how they’re going to overthrow the government and create a utopia. Err.. that’s what they did. Back at the Ministry, we had to deal with them all the time.”

“So now they’re just a bunch of unemployed rebels?” said Grapevine.

“Pretty much,” I said. “Though I don’t think they really had a plan to begin with.”

We stopped once we had gotten to the other side of the camp. Here there were was a chapel made of yellowed stone, flanked by a few red wooden sheds. I presumed that if there were any ponies we were supposed to talk to, they would probably be found here. In front of the open door sat a red-eyed stallion in a collapsible stool idly blowing smoke circles into the air. He only noticed us when we got close up to him.

“‘Suuuuuuup?,” he said. “Lookin’ for somethin’?”

“Why, yes, we are,” said Katie, stepping forward. “Do you know if Oleander is here?”

“Why, ‘f course she’s here,” said the stoner. “She’s always here. Like, t’s why we have, like, that shield an’ everythin’.”

“No, like, is she inside the building?” Katie clarified. “Like, right now?”

“Pro’lly,” slurred the stoner. “That’s like, where she always is, man. Day an’ night, always readin’ these dusty old books.”

“Well, that sounds like a stupid way to spend the your life,” said Grapevine. “Hauled up in a tower reading books all day.”

Dmitry was taken aghast for a split second, then looked ready to tackle Grapevine before she said anything else potentially offensive about this armed group and its leader. I held out my forehoof in front of him pre-emptively.

“Yeah, I’m always tellin’ her to lighten up a little,” said the stoner. “Jus’ enjoy life, ya know?”

The stoner took a deep whiff of his blunt, then blew a large puff of yellow tinted smoke into the air. It wafted upwards towards an open window at the top of the chapel’s steeple. The stoner looked upward in satisfaction.

“If that doesn’ get ‘er atten’n, I don’ know what will,” he said. “She reaaaalllllly hates it when I do that.”

Just then, we heard hoofsteps, and a large grey unicorn with a curved horn and jet black hair ending in upward curving purple tips appeared in the doorway. She had a serious demeanor about her, going out to the camp like she had done a million times before, but only for a second, because the moment she saw us, she just froze in shock. An aide followed closely behind, and kept exchanging glances between us and her superior, unaware of whether she should take action or wait for a cue. The moment lasted only for a few seconds, but the awkwardness seemed to last a whole minute.

“Good afternoon, Oly!” Katie chimed. “Thought I’d drop by with some friends and spend the night, show them around the camp, you know. You always were one of my favorite clandestine terror cells. Who knows; after dinner, maybe you could show them some dark magic.”

The aide looked at Oleander as if to ask, “Who are these ponies?” Oleander looked back in equal confusion and just shrugged.

By this point, the rest of the camp had begun crowding around us, curious about the new arrivals and how their leader would respond to them. Oleander saw the crowd too, and tried to keep her cool while not knowing what to do. Then she swallowed and said,

“Welcome...er… friends… welcome to our little camp. It has been a long time since we’ve had visitors… a verrrrrryyy long time. Sooooo… you’re welcome to stay… for the night… as long as you don’t interfere with our operations. ”

“Umm… thank you, miss Oleadner,” said Dmitry. “We appreciate it.”

“You’re very welcome,” she replied. Then, turning to her right, she called, “Glory! Why don’t you show our… guests… to their… accommodations.”

A very large and very angry griffin approached, then beckoned for us to follow her. We did. Once we were out of earshot from Oleadner and the others, Glory gave us a stern warning.

“Look, just because Oleander said you could stay doesn’t mean you’re welcome here. I’m keeping my eye on you guys, and the second any of you try to pull some shit, I’ll rip your faces to shreds with my bare claws. Is that clear?”

We all nodded our heads in fearful agreement, except for Katie, who just smiled cheerfully. Glory stopped and gave her a long, hard look, but Katie didn’t stop smiling. Glory soon realized that she couldn’t intimidate Katie, so she just spat in her face to express her disgust and moved on. Katie kept on smiling after that, but once Glory’s back was turned, her grin morphed into a malicious smirk, as if to say,

“You fool. Soon I shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine.”

Dinner was… vegan… which meant a bunch of vegetables and rice lathered in exotic spices. I ended up settling for the only option that didn’t set my mouth on fire or look like barf: a pile of granola in a small plastic bag and a canteen of water.

“We got that shit for, like, emergencies and stuff…” explained Blackberry Fuzz, sister of Blackberry Prickle, the guard outside the elevator. “Y’know, like if we run out of eggplants and quinoa and stuff, but, like, some of the team just eat that and nothing else! Like Oly, for example, that’s like, all she eats, that granola stuff. Like, don’t get me wrong, granola’s still good, but, like, that’s all she eats, three meals a day: granola, granola, granola! Well, not counting her midnight snacks when she like, breaks into the storehouse and binges on yogurt—it’s an open secret, no worries—but like, other than that, all she eats is her stupid granola!”
I was only half-paying attention. I was too hungry after a long day on the road to talk, and the smells of all the food in the mess area made me even hungrier. So I just thrust my face in the bag and gorged on the granola, not even bothering to use my horn or my hooves. There would be no middlemare between my mouth and my food. I knew that table manners weren’t enforced there, so I ate just how I wanted to at that particular moment.

“Just like that!” exclaimed Blackberry Fuzz. “Just. Like. That. That’s, like, exactly how Oly eats.”

Then she was struck by a pang of guilt.

“Omigosh! Please don’t tell her I said that!” she hurriedly added. “Oh, please, please, pleaaaase don’t tell her I said that. She might like, court-marshal me or something if she finds out!”

I pulled my head out of the bag and looked at her in confusion. She seemed equally confused by the confused look I was giving her, and by all the granola bits stuck to the edges of my mouth.

“Relax,” said Dankon, the stoner we met earlier. “Nopony’s gonna snitch. Right, guys?”

“We won’t snitch, we promise,” said Dmitry, holding up his hooves. “We’re pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“That’s dope, man,” said Dankon. “Never was a good snitch… except for the ones that leak stuff from the government.”

“Worrrrrdd!” bellowed a stallion two seats away. Then they leaned over for a hoofbump.

Dmitry furrowed his brow at this, then went back to his food.

“Hey, I’m kinda worried about your friend there,” a random pony next to me said.

I stopped eating and looked at him to see if he would elaborate.

“There’s just something… off about her. You know?”

He pointed to Katie. She had finished most of her meal, and had busied herself with drawing something on a napkin using a single grain of rice as a pen. She periodically dipped the rice in a puddle of dark sauce on her plate, then went right back to drawing. I sat up and craned my neck to get a better view and I saw that she was sketching out some sort of advanced technical diagram, almost from memory. It had the precision of an engineer’s work, but it had the style of a child’s drawing. I couldn’t tell just what she was making (it was too complex), but the dotted lines emanating from various pipes on its edges pointed at stick ponies with X’s for eyes told me it was something incredibly dangerous.

Sitting here inside this tent, I lie awake in my sleeping bag, trying to get to sleep but continuously thinking about that drawing. It’s an eerie reminder of something I drew when I was really little, around 5 or 6 years old. It was a crude yet graphic depiction of a battlefield based on what glimpses of the war I saw on the news. After our teacher had displayed all of our drawings on the wall, one of the parents spotted it, and then all the adults started freaking out and trying to find out who drew it.

They went through all the colts in the class asking them if they did it, and each of them said ‘no.’ It was funny how they never expected it was me, even though I had scrawled my initials in the corner. Funny, but also kind of sad. They eventually dropped the search after they couldn’t find a culprit, but there was enough unease about that drawing that I took it down when nopony was looking and hid it in my backpack. It had been only a year or two after Littlehorn and all the adults were still on edge. That, and several other moments scattered throughout my fillyhood, taught me that there are some things that every sane pony will just to keep to themselves.

Level up!

Level 4: Stable Renegade

The Kind of Pony Everypony Should Know: By some strange twist of fate, everyone you meet has decided that you are important. Whether they see you as a savior, a harbinger of doom, a chess piece, or just a friend, you get +10% Initial Reaction when meeting a character or faction for the first time.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 3
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2
Price of Silver: 7 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

Another cringeworthy attempt at 'random access humor,' though at least this one makes more sense.

The perk gained is 'Presence' from Fallout 1 and 2, just renamed to be more pony themed. I chose it because I noticed that she's left a significant impression on pretty much everypony she's met thus far. I also felt like she hasn't really done much yet besides meeting people, and since she's still a low level character, she doesn't qualify for much else.

Chapter 7: Checkout at Eleven

Chapter 7: Checkout at Eleven

“Oh my god, she’s so annoying.”

“I know! Just get rid of her.”

Monday, September 9th, 4347

Dear Diary,

Last night I couldn’t sleep well. I had another nightmare again, and it went like this:

I was walking down a street in my old neighborhood, past all of the houses that were there, and looking for mine. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find it. It was late at night, and most of the houses were completely dark, but some of them had lights on in certain rooms. At first, I couldn’t see what was going on inside because the shades were up, but as I kept going down the road, I saw more and more houses without shades. And inside the rooms, I could see groups of ponies-- no, families-- doing things together: watching TV, eating dinner, playing games, dancing… all kinds of stuff. But the most important things were that they all resembled each other enough to look like actual families, and that they all seemed to be having fun.

No dysfunction, no resentment, no missing members, no nothing. Everypony was there, and everypony was enjoying themselves. Wow. I can’t remember the last time my own family acted like this-- must have been years ago-- or if we had ever been like that at all.

I continued walking, becoming more and more desperate to find my home. All of the houses on the street began to look exactly like my house, but I knew that none of them were. Even the house numbers became the same, but I still knew in my heart that none of them were mine. Even if the lights weren’t on, even if nopony was home, I just wanted to get inside and be with the furniture-- they were as much a part of my family as any pony was. But the more I looked, the more things I found that were just unfamiliar to me.

Then I came across a long dark stretch where none of the houses had any lights on. It was in this stretch, on the right hoof side, that I eventually found it. I crept up to the window and looked inside, finding everything exactly as I had remembered it, all down to the dimness of the lighting. The only new addition was that of an adolescent filly of about medium height, wearing jeans and a midnight blue sweatshirt, and saddle bags hanging from her sides. She was wistfully examining framed pictures on a shelf, pictures of a family that once was happy but no longer was, giving each of them the careful attention of a last goodbye.

But she didn’t stay for long. Soon, she headed towards the front door and opened it. I didn’t want her to see me, so I dove into the hedge in front of the living room and watched her from there. The filly closed the door, locked it, and then headed down the road towards a very tall hill in the distance. I lept out of the bushes and continued following her, wanting to know where she went while half-knowing just where she intended to go, and maybe even stop her from getting there. But then she just kept walking faster and faster, until she was walking so fast that I had to run just to keep up. Then the houses ended and the hill began, the road going up and up but never turning, until it finally got to the top of the hill. The filly walked over the peak and down the other side, disappearing from view. I couldn’t lose sight of her for long or else I would lose her forever, so I ran as fast as I could up that hill. It was hard work, but eventually I reached the peak and lept… over a cliff?!?

As I lost all sense of control, I fell, backwards, into a deep abyss of gaping darkness. Having nothing to grab onto to stop my fall or even to comfort me during my fall, I screamed. Falling, falling, with nothing to break it, this was ten-- no, twenty, no, a hundred times worse than the steepest roller coaster. What made it even worse was the knowledge that nopony could do anything to save me, and that nopony would even hear my screams… well, one pony would. I looked up in the night sky above the hole and saw the stars and the moon, symbols of Princess Luna’s divine reign. Perhaps she would see me, and at least inform all the other ponies of my demise… or would she?

As I fell deeper into the hole, it closed in around me and made the celestial objects appear smaller and more distant. Darkness closed in around me until I could no longer see the stars, just the moon set on top of a background of dark blue-purple the size of a porthole window, surrounded by complete darkness. Then I could no longer see the moon, and I knew then that not even the astronomer princess could find me. I kept falling and falling, and right before the darkness enveloped me completely, the dream ended and I woke up sweating.

I stood inside a large marble structure overlooking the city through the metal grid of what was once a glass wall. The city was dead and lifeless, but sounds echoed through the ruins, as if the buildings were a giant seashell made of steel and concrete. The echoes of a long lost civilization, once vibrant and alive, but now only existing in memories. And if those memories die… then so will everything that millions of ponies have spent their lives working so hard to achieve. There was another break in the clouds up above, this time much bigger, and through it I could see the stars shining brightly overhead, their great numbers highlighting the emptiness of the scene below.

For the first time since leaving the Stable, I began to feel sad. I sat on a bench, feeling sad for… well, I really don’t know. Was it for the cruel fate of millions of ponies I had never met? Or was it because sixteen years of my life had just vanished in an instant? All I can say for certain is that I felt a sadness, a level of sadness that was enough that it clearly showed in my face, but not sad enough to make me cry (I really don’t cry all that often).

Suddenly, a foreleg wrapped itself around my neck and a hoof landed squarely upon my shoulder. I turned my head around and saw Oleander with a calm smile on her face. It made me feel uncomfortable to feel somepony I didn’t know all that well touching me like this, but it also made me feel better.

The discomfort must have shown more prominently, since Oleander took her foreleg off me and her smile turned into a small frown. She also backed a few inches away, giving me a little space at one of the few times I didn’t need it.

“No...” I said, wanting to say more, wanting to ask her to stay and hug me again, but I couldn’t get the words out.

“I’m not leaving you, Silver,” she said, most of the usual ice having melted out of her voice, but the firm, authoritative tone remaining. She stepped a few inches back and sitting next to me on the bench. “Now tell me, what’s wrong?”

“I-I’m just worried,” I said. “Worried about what’s going to happen next. About where I’m going to go. If I’m even going to have a- a- ugh, I just-- had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“You’re worried about your future?” Oleander asked. I nodded very slightly.

“You must to have hope,” she said. “You have to believe in yourself.”

“But how can I have hope or believe in myself if I don’t know where I belong or what I’m supposed to do?” I asked.

“Why don’t you tell me about your dream first?” Oleander asked.

So I did. I told her about my dream, but only what I could get into words, which was… admittedly little. It was a very basic rundown of the dream, which I hoped was still sufficient for her to interpret.

“From what I can gleam,” she said, “It would seem as if it is a manifestation of both your greatest desire, and your greatest fear. You want to be accepted and you want to be loved. Unconditionally, for who you are. If you cannot attain this, you are perfectly willing to walk away and search elsewhere until you find what you’re looking for. Your greatest fear is that you will be rejected by everypony, and that you will die alone.”

My jaw dropped at the sheer accuracy of that statement. I was certain she must have used some mind-reading magic because even with the information that I withheld from her, she read me like a book. However, it still didn’t quite make complete sense.

“But-- why would I be afraid of being alone?” I asked. “I’m not afraid of being alone. I like being alone.”

“Sometimes, yes,” she replied. “But not forever. You do need other ponies, but you tell yourself that you don’t because you refuse to accept that you’re dependent.”

“Dependence is not a bad thing. You are nothing without the support of others, just as I am nothing without my magic. You may not conceive of your life that way, but it’s still true, and maybe one day you will come to understand that. The sooner you can accept your nature, the overwhelming desire to attach to something, the better.”

I thought about this for a minute, and although it seemed pretty accurate, it didn’t quite sit well. I don’t think my problem is necessarily dependency per se, but one of how I relate to the world.

“So, what I want most in my life is to find someplace to belong?” I asked.

She smiled. “Precisely. In the coming months, you will scour the world in search of companions. If you find many who you find agreeable, then you may satisfy your desire and find inner potential that you never knew existed. You will reach your goal when you have finally found a place to call home. I too was once cast out of my community at a young age, though not by choice. After a long journey, I found my place, as will you if you do not succumb to any temptations along the way. And perhaps...”

She paused for a minute and looked at the stars.

“Perhaps… Luna will help you.”

We stared out at the stars together for a few minutes.

“However,” she declared, turning to face me, “Forgive me for being blunt, but you cannot stay here, and neither can your friends. I built this organization as a tight-knit clan held together by shared values. And from what I can sense of your soul, you do not share those values. And in dire times such as these, we cannot risk allowing strangers to mingle freely among our ranks.”

“I understand,” I said.

“And that... friend of yours,…” Oleander continued, “she pulled some shit with my guards to get you in, I have no doubt. I’m merely pretending that you’re my guests so the others still think I’m in control--so they can think they’re still safe. Imagine what a disaster it would be if it were discovered that I, the great Oleander, ultimate authority on all things relating to the dark arts, couldn’t even maintain a simple shield spell without letting something slip in.”

Then, turning directly to face me, she said,

“Tomorrow morning, you and your friends have to leave.”

“That’s what we were planning to do in the first place,” I said.

“Good,” she said, beginning the walk back to her quarters. “It is better for us both that way.”

“Uh… goodnight,” I said meekly, uncertain if she would hear me, or even care.

To my surprise, she briefly stopped, turned her head around, and returned my farewell.

“Goodnight.”

The next morning, we awoke to find it was snowing outside the shield. Everypony seemed to move 20% more lethargically today, as ponies are apt to do on snow days, so me and my friends took our time in eating breakfast and getting ready to go. I would normally be excited, or at least somewhat happy, to have a snow day, but because we had some traveling we had to do today, I was not. I was anxious to leave, and many in the OLF were anxious to see us go, and even though we had a legitimate excuse, their patience was visibly wearing thin. Dmitry also seemed to share my feelings, suggesting that we leave several times this morning, but Grapevine vetoed every proposal because, in her words, “It’s too cold.”

However, I was most worried about Katie, who seemed to delight in trying the OLF’s patience, and spent the whole morning poking around other ponies’ stuff. I swear I even saw her steal a few things here and there, not because they were of any use, but simply because she could. We really needed to get out of there before Katie got herself, and us by association, into trouble.

At 11:00 sharp, we were standing around near the elevator when an off-duty Blackberry Prickle marched up to us wearing a wry smile and then started pushing us towards the elevator.

“Chop-chop, fillies! It’s time to go. Come on, move it, move it, you’ve overstayed your welcome and it’s about time you leave. Come on, get to that elevator, it’s time for you to leave, Oleander’s orders.”

“Wait-- did she really say that?” asked Dmitry.

“Nooo...” said Blackberry, “But if I say that she said it, they’ll believe it.”

She motioned behind her to a small crowd that was gathering behind her. Half of them seemed happy that we were finally being forced to leave, and the other half were angry that we weren’t moving toward the elevator fast enough. Glory was at the front, gently tapping the smooth part of a nail bat against her palm.

“We’re going to leave now,” I said, quickly putting on my saddlebags and trotting over to the elevator. The mob advanced, forcing us to retreat to the bridge. I smacked the call button and waited desperately for the elevator car to save us. Glory and Blackberry were halfway across the bridge, both grinning with the zeal of a school bully about to beat the pulp out of the protagonist, just like that scene in every school-related movie ever. If I wasn’t at risk of getting beaten up by professional terrorists, I would have found such a scene laughable.

After a minute that seemed like ten, the elevator’s doors opened and we scrambled inside. I hit the ‘Lobby’ button, then the ‘Close Door’ button, and after another overly long minute, the doors finally closed. By then, the mob had come right to the doors of the elevator, essentially trapping us completely.

At the last minute, Blackberry slid her way into the elevator, brandishing a machine gun. I didn’t know if they were changing the guard or what, but she seemed to go out of her way to make herself intimidating to us.

When the elevator opened at ground level, Blackberry pushed us out of the elevator, then followed closely behind us as we stepped away from it. The on-duty elevator guard seemed utterly confused by what was going on, but I wasn’t: Blackberry had followed us down here to make sure we left. And we sure did, mindful of the intimidating eyes watching us from the mob on the elevator bridge. At the moment, I had forgotten about the shield and was genuinely worried that they might shoot me if I didn’t back away fast enough.

We kept going, but Blackberry had stayed put, standing next to the elevator and watching us walk away. Once we had gotten several yards or so away, she yelled,

“And don’t come back! Especially not you!”

Pointing to Katie, who innocently asked us, “Who, me?”

“Yes, you,” said Dmitry. “You almost got us killed back there-- at least a dozen times. What were you thinking, leading us in there like that?”

“I was just looking for a place to stay overnight,” she said. “I mean, a safe compound guarded by a bevy of trained soldiers and an insanely powerful mage? That’s a true luxury these days. Most places make you pay for that kind of stuff. Not to mention the free food.”

Dmitry grumbled, but said nothing.

“And besides, I wanted to broaden your horizons,” Katie added. “How many ponies get a guided tour of a real-life terrorist training camp?”

Dmitry just glared at her. Grapevine seemed impressed.

“So, what is it ya do for a living?” asked Grapevine. “Err.. did ya do?”

"I'm an inventor," Katie replied. "I invent stuff."

"Ooh, cool," said Grapevine. "What kind of things?"

"I've invented lots of things," said Katie. "Like the noodle fan. And toilet golf. And the solar-powered cigarette lighter. And the car exhaust grill. And the egg cuber. And lipstick made entirely of butter. And diet water. Pretty much whatever I feel like."

"Oh my gosh, you were the one who invented diet water?"

"Diet... water?" asked Dmitry.

"Yup," said Katie. "That was all me. And it was a breakthrough invention, too. The one that made me rich."

"I love that stuff!" exclaimed Grapevine. "Can I have your autograph?"

"Sure."

They stopped so they could sign the autograph. Grapevine spent five whole minutes rifling through her bags to find some paper, not finding any, then looking again but still not finding anything. So then she turned to me.

"Umm... Silver? Can I have some paper?"

"Alright."

So I tore a piece out of this journal and gave it to her. Then she looked through her bags but couldn't find anything to write with. Then, turning back to me, she asked:

"Ummm... a pen too, please?"

"Alllright..."

A little annoyed at how long this was taking, I reached into my bag and gave her a pen, which she turned around to give to Katie, but she had already produced a writing utensil-- an eagle feather, to be exact-- which looked like it had been dipped in…

"Oww!"

I felt a prick in my shoulder like a needle had been stuck in it, and stretching my collar to see what had happened, I saw a dollop of blood. What was even stranger was about it was that nothing had pierced my coat or stable jumpsuit.

"Oh, I'm out of ink."

I reflexively clenched my shoulder in case it happened again, but instead I heard Dmitry say "ow." I looked up and saw him clutching his shoulder.

"Aaaand... done!"

Katie gave the paper to Grapevine and stuck the feather in the brim of a black tricorn hat which had somehow materialized on her head.

"How... did?" I asked, but the question seemed so absurd that I decided not to ask.

We continued north, eventually crossing under the highway 30 bypass, bringing us into a sprawling industrial park at the far north of town.

“We’re almost at the airport, guys,” I said. “But maybe we should find a place to stay tonight before going into the airport? It might take us all day to search the place top to bottom.”

“Good idea,” said Dmitry. “There are lots of hotels around here. Do you have any preferences?”

“How about the Consulate Suites?” I suggested. “I stayed there once. That place is amazing.”

“That sounds good,” said Dmitry. Then he asked the others, “Any objections?”

“Yeah, I have an objection,” said Katie. “What if we can’t make it there in time?”

“Of course we’ll make it in time,” said Dmitry. “We’re only thirty minutes away.”

“Well, on the off-chance that we aren’t able to make it...”

“We’ll make it, don’t worry,” said Dmitry. “It’s only about noon. We have plenty of daylight left.”

As they were arguing, I looked at the road ahead and noticed it was snowing again. The snowfall had come on rather suddenly, rather suddenly, like, starting less than a minute ago, and it was steadily getting heavier.

“Well, if we can’t get to a hotel on time, then we’ll just have to seek shelter in the nearest building,” Dmitry replied. “Does that answer your question?”

“Why yes, yes it does,” said Katie.

Then snow began growing harder. And harder. And harder still. And then I realized it was hail.

“Oh shit, it’s fucking hailing!” I cried as my head began to be pelted by pebble-sized chunks of frozen ice.

“We have to find cover!” said Dmitry.

“Where?” asked Grapevine.

“There’s a Ministry warehouse just over there,” said Katie, pointing at a large yellow warehouse made of corrugated iron Come on, let’s go!”

It seemed like an odd choice, but it was the best option, as it happened to be the warehouse that had the closest pickable door. Left with no better options, the four of us bolted towards it, with Katie taking the lead.

The last time I remember being in a warehouse like this was when I was doing a school play. Dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of costumes in all colors, materials, and sizes lined the walls of a blocky room, with nooks and crevices twisting and turning outwards like a knot of roots at the base of a tangle of poison ivy. Normal warehouses were square or rectangular. This made no sense.

Neither did Katie's thought process as she scampered about the building, picking up random odds and ends: styrofoam cups, straws, bowling pins, empty cans, those little party blower things-- It seemed as though she was just picking up anything that happened to catch her eye. It was completely counter-intuitive, since she traveled on hoof and should be traveling light.

But this was how we spent our afternoon, poking around a Ministry of Morale warehouse while waiting for the storm to subside. I kept going over to the front office and checking the window to see if it was clear, but it was to no avail. My checks became less and less frequent because nothing changed, and it seemed as though we would be trapped here until the next morning... assuming we ever got out at all.

The warehouse interior was like a house of horrors throughout. The gaudy and kitsch designs, combined with the dim lighting of the place, created an atmosphere you would find on the grounds of a carnival on a dark and stormy night. It was unnerving, to say the least, and the deeper you got the more likely it seemed like a clown holding a bloody knife would step out of the shadows. But so far, the only other living things we saw in here were the occasional ant or spider who had made their home in the crevice between boxes of junk and fed from the decaying sugary baked goods stored near the facility's kitchen. The frequency of bugs increased exponentially as you neared the kitchen, and I dared not enter for fear of finding something extremely disgusting, like a mega-spider or a zombie clown chef.

Strangely enough, the building still had a supply of electricity, which alleviated some of my fears because it allowed me to navigate the building in the comfort of the yellow lukewarm fluorescent lighting you can expect from any government owned building instead of stumbling through this haunted house of a building in the dark with nothing but my pipbuck’s flashlight.

Given the circumstances I described above, I’ve made it a point to spend the night in the one part of the building that seems normal: the front office. Having a door to the outside made it an even better choice because I can quickly escape if anything went wrong. It’s not like I’m scared or anything… well, maybe a little bit. I’m just… concerned. Concerned about the look of this place. This is honestly the sketchiest warehouse I’ve ever been in, and being all abandoned and infested with bugs only makes it sketchier.

Because of my insistence on sleeping in the front office, even though there were other rooms with much softer things to sleep on and I would have to listen to the hail rapping against the window all night, Dmitry also decided to sleep in the front office because he didn’t want me to be alone. Grapevine also joined us, leaving Katie, who really wanted to sleep in one of the MoM’s bounce houses, to go off and sleep alone.

It was kinda nice having just the three of us again, especially after being dragged into highly suspicious lodgings two nights in a row by a pony who gave rather dodgy answers to all personal questions.

“Tomorrow morning, I say we ditch her,” Dmitry declared. “She’s been giving us nothing but trouble for the past… thirty-six hours!”

“Why? Ah think she’s pretty cool,” said Grapevine.

“Well, I’d like to get away from her too,” I said. “She’s kinda creepy, and mysterious, and hasn’t really told us much about herself.”

“Neither have you,” Grapevine said wryly.

It was true. I hadn’t really told either of them much about myself. But they could at least trust me, seeing as we’ve all known (or at least been aware of) each other for several months. We were stable buddies, united by a common purpose and all having been to hell and back. But this… Katie… she just appeared out of nowhere.

“You know, I don’t even think ‘Katie’ is her real name,” said Dmitry.

“Why not?” asked Grapevine. “She’s been pretty friendly.”

“Because I can feel it,” said Dmitry. “Even the first time she introduced herself, I knew in my gut she was lying. Besides, what kind of pony names their kid ‘Katie,’ anyway?”

“Well, what kind of changeling names their kid Di-di… di… Dimimi?” Grapevine retorted, her mouth tripping over her tongue as it does when she’s trying to pronounce anything that sounds remotely foreign. “Why not something simple, like ‘chrysalis,’ or ‘thorax,’ or ‘pupa’?”

“Well, ‘Chrysalis’ was one of the most popular fillies’ names before the revolution...” Dmitry mused. “...And we had a defense minister named Pupatov, and-- hey! Are you implying us bugs again?”

I felt I had to jump between the two before things got out of hoof.

“Okay, that’s enough, you two. Grapevine, you’re sleeping on the floor tonight.”

“Me? Why???”

“Because you started this,” I said sternly.

“I was just asking a simple question...”

"Well, you're being insensitive."

Grapevine said nothing.

"So, I think it's decided: we need to ditch her," I said, scanning the room for the others' approval.

Dmitry seemed pretty satisfied with the proposition, (or at least my approval of it since he proposed it in the first place,) while Grapevine remained silent, realizing she was overpowered.

"Ditching her outright might arouse suspicion, or hurt her feelings," I continued. "But I think we might be able to keep her out of the airport if we insist it's dangerous enough."

"I don't know," said Grapevine. "She kinda likes danger."

"We'll think of something," said Dmitry.

"Yeah, we'll think of something," I said. "If not, we could always just ditch her."

"Or maybe we could be honest with her about our feelings," said Grapevine. "Maybe if we just tell her we need some space, she'll grant it."

"Yes, maybe," Dmitry said yawning and lying down on the couch. "Well, I'm going to sleep now, and you two should too."

"Hey, I thought Silver was going to sleep on the couch," Grapevine protested. "Does that mean I get to sleep on the beanbags?"

I looked over at the mass of giant black beanbags in the corner and realized that they made a pretty good bed. They were even arranged to form a mattress, possibly Grapevine's doing in anticipation for the night. I chucked my coat onto the beanbag mattress, where it landed in a small clump.

"No," I said. "I will sleep there after I finish my watch. You get to sleep on the floor, or you can clear off that desk and sleep on top of it if you really want to."

"Wait-- maybe we can do hot bunking?" proposed Dmitry. "I'll sleep there after my shift, and you can sleep there until then. We only need two beds, and It's kind of cruel to make her sleep on the floor in these temperatures."

I conceded to this, and agreed that we would punish Grapevine in some other form at a later date.

After they went to sleep, I stayed up alone, sitting at the desk trying to work out a strategy for our attack on the airport, although I quickly realized that since I don't have any intelligence on the place yet I can't make any informed decisions. I have the feeling that going directly through the front entrance would be undesirable, and perhaps suicide if the zombies were waiting for us. Do zombies even have the ability to plan and think ahead? Perhaps we'll find out. In any case, it might be better if we start at one of the concourses and work our way through. That would allow us to make a coordinated sweep through the place.

Another question that I thought about was whether we should go in guns-a-blazing, or if we should move cautiously and rely on stealth to minimize engagement? We might run out of bullets if we just shoot everything in sight, or end up killing the very ponies we’re trying to save. Well, in any case we won’t know until we get there, though I feel nervous about going into this situation unprepared. The only thing I know for certain is that, if experience has taught us anything, we’ll need to stick together, since it’s easy to get lost in a place that big.

Progress to Next Level: 225/1700

Chapter 8: Neanderthal

Chapter 8: Neanderthal

“Why should only penguins survive?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with being a duck?”

“They’re weak.”

Tuesday, September 10th, 4347

Dear Diary,

Today I woke early and waited patiently. The hail had melted and there hadn’t been much new snowfall during the night, which was what I was hoping for. Our disappointingly poor progress yesterday was getting me worried about our mission today.

Luckily, we received some good news over breakfast: last night Katie had gathered the last parts she needed to make her latest invention, and would be returning to her workshop starting this morning. Since her workshop was far south of here, we parted ways as soon as we left the warehouse. While her departure from the group left us one pony shorter, it eliminated a liability and possibly deadweight from our party just before embarking on a mission that would likely require group agility.

I knew that going into the airport wouldn’t be easy. Many of the ponies we’ve met spoke of the Airport in fear, but all we knew for sure was that there would be zombies. Lots of zombies, of course, since a few zombies wouldn’t be enough to warrant such fear. There had to be a sea of zombies out there, based on the traffic that airport got before the war.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to go in there?” I asked as we got ready to leave.

“Absahlutely!” Grapevine exclaimed.

“If it means rescuing our stablemates, we’ll do everything it takes,” said Dmitry.

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s go in there and make it count. Do you have any idea where they could be?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Grapevine. “They’re pro’lly holed up in some cranny somewhere. We’ll hafta do a clean sweep.”

“Unless we can find some clues to their whereabouts, said Dmitry. Hey, what’s the chance that the security cameras are still working?”

“Pretty slim,” I replied, “Though that’s a start.” I suppose we could start at the security office, wherever it is, and maybe stock up on ammunition while we’re there.

“That’s the spirit!” chimed Grapevine. “Now let’s go, time’s-a-wastin’!”

We parted ways with Katie, who said she needed to go back to her workshop somewhere to the southeast. The rest of us headed north, and we didn’t have to go far until we spotted the wide snow-covered plain that held one of the runways.

“Okay guys, I think we need a plan,” I said. “Now, if what Gaucho and the ponies back in Sandy Shades said, there’s gonna be a heck of a lot of zombies in there. If that’s the case, then going in through the front would be a terrible idea since it was so heavily trafficked. Let’s go in through one of the concourses so we can slip in unnoticed.”

Dmitry and Grapevine thought it was a good idea, probably because it was one of the only things we had that vaguely resembled a plan.

There was a fence around the runway, but we happened to be near one of the main gates and Dmitry made quick work of the lock. We then trotted along a service road that ran along the edge of the runway area. We could see the big white control tower marking our destination in the distance. The whole time I kept my head low, fearing that an airplane might swoop overhead and decapitate me with one of its wings. Consciously I knew this was unfounded since no more planes would ever fly here, but like my similar fear of getting hit by a car when walking down the middle of the road, it simply persisted out of habit.

“Hey, look at that.”

Dmitry pointed to the control tower, where we could see what looked like a few pegasi flying around it. They wore some kind of dark uniform, as if they were elite flyers or something.

“Huh,” I said. “Are those shadowbolts?”

“I dunno,” Dmitry replied. “It’s unlikely. I mean, why would they be down here, and why would they be flying around the tower like that?”

Meanwhile, Grapevine was busy fiddling with the radio on her pipbuck. Channel surfing-- just for fun, I guess, but there was admittedly little fun to be had when all the stations were static, mixed in with a couple of distress beacons and repeating messages. Suddenly, she stumbled upon something that sounded like words:

“This is Tortoise-6 to Hare-6, Radio Check, over.”

“This is Hare-6 to Tortoise-6. Radio Check Lima Charlie, signal strength 4 by 5, over.”

“Roger. Requesting status update on recon, over.”

“Recon complete. Tangos appear to only occupy Control Tower Building, nothing else. Energy rifles confirmed, also in possession of three large weapons, believed plasma cannon or energy minigun, experimental Novasurge unlikely. Bridge to parking garage is booby-trapped, assault from garage not recommended, over. Be advised, tangos appear to possess at least one hostage, over.”

“Roger. Prepare assault on east entrance to Control Building. Send papas one at a time to minimize fire exposure. Regroup before entering, then engage Battle Drill 6a.”

“Roger. Wilco, over.”

“Good luck, Sergeant. Out.”

“Didja hear that?” Grapevine exclaimed. “They’ve got hostages!”

“And they’re in the control tower!” Dmitry said. “Silver, do you know how to get there?”

“I think it’s over by the parking garages,” I said. “But we should stick by our original plan and go through the terminal, then disarm the booby traps on the bridge. If we approach it directly, we might enter a war zone.”

“Good idea,” said Grapevine.

“Do you think we’ll have enough time to take the long way?” asked Dmitry. “We don’t know if those ponies on the radio are friendly or not.”

“The fact that they seem concerned about the hostages indicates that they’re not raiders,” I said. “Besides, it sounds like they’re launching their assault from the ground floor. The pegasi in the tower will probably try and keep them from getting to the top, so their inevitable battle should buy us some time.”

“The longer we stand here, the less time we’ll have ta save our friends!” said Grapevine. “C’mon, let’s go!”

And so we ran. Of course, we had to stop our breath a few times, but our friends from Hare Squad bought us some time by delaying their attack (one of their fireteams got lost in whatever building they were in).

As we approached Concourse A, where they had all the regional jets, I started to hear some growling among the snow. I abruptly stopped and motioned for my companions to do the same.

“Hold on,” I said. “We’ve got company.”

I prepared a shotgun and looked around, but I didn’t see anything. Then I checked my pipbuck’s EFS combat targeting spell. There were several red ticks in the area representing hostile elements, but I couldn’t see any actual creatures. The spell directed me towards a heap of rotting flesh lying on the ground, which it labeled ‘Feral Ghoul.’ I didn’t know what that meant, (probably just a more formal name for ‘zombie,’) but the EFS said it was hostile, which meant I had to kill it. Even though it was lying motionless on the ground, my pipbuck said it was at full health. Thinking back to our first encounter with zombies on the freeway, I knew it would ‘wake up’ and attack us at some point. I wondered how close I could get before it did…

A few yards, apparently. Then it began to rise and I had to shoot it. Still, it startled me to see something that looked so dead come to life, so I fumbled a bit and lost control of my gun for a few seconds. By the time I had recollected myself, the zombie was beginning its mad dash towards me, and several of its friends were also awakening from their slumber. I backpedaled rapidly and began firing, aiming towards its head because I presumed it was the weakest spot.

The EFS only allotted me a few ‘action points’ that I could spend on using it before I needed to recharge, and boy did those run out quickly! After just two shots in EFS, I had to switch to aiming my gun manually. This made shooting the zombies rather difficult because I hardly had any practice shooting, and what little I did was mostly with pistols. I guess I missed plenty of shots, but between the three of us, all the zombies on this section of the tarmac were dead within minutes.

“Phew!” said Grapevine. “Glad we’ve got that over with.”

“Silver, you should probably switch to a different weapon,” Grapevine advised me. “That shotgun doesn’t fire fast enough, and you nearly got clawed by those zombies!”

“Yeah,” I said as I reloaded my shotgun, then placed it into my bag and took out my assault rifle.

“Yeah!” Dmitry exclaimed. “Now we’re talkin’!”

“I shoulda used a couple of mah grenades,” Grapevine said.

“No, it was good that you didn’t,” said Dmitry. “We’re surrounded by jet engines and service vehicles. You’d have set half the tarmac on fire!”

“Ah like fire,” Grapevine muttered absent-mindedly, before shaking the thought out of her head and refocusing. “But if it keeps y’all safe, ah won’t.”

Then after a pause, she asked, “Can ah use mah grenades inside the terminal?”

“As long as neither of us are within the blast radius, then knock yourself out,” said Dmitry.

“I think we should all prep some grenades,” I added. “I’m expecting a literal sea of zombies in there. Anything we can do to thin out the herd.”

We found a door into the terminal, and Dmitry picked the lock with ease. We found ourselves at the end of the Concourse, but if I remember correctly, it was one of the shorter ones. A mass of sickly, rotting animated corpses soon arrived to greet us with their ghastly groans, but the three of us were prepared. We unleashed all we had: grenades, flamethrowers, and assault rifle fire. Our vision was obstructed by a continuous orange glow of flames and sparks, yet we kept shooting into the crowd. A silhouette of a pony emerged in the flow, I shot it down. Another emerged, Dmitry shot it down. Two more emerged, Grapevine doused them in flames. Eight more show up, we lob a grenade. It was hella scary, but the adrenaline made the experience exhilarating as we held our line against the onslaught of zombies. This process continued until the mass had slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief now that we were out of immediate danger.

After the battle was over and our weapon barrels no longer glowed, Dmitry stooped down to loot the corpses.

“No,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Come on!”

We raced down a hallway until we reached a room with two escalators and a staircase. At the top of the escalators stood an enormous abomination of an equine, a gigantic zombie made up of three zombies melded together. Protruding upward from its colossal rotten potato of a body were three heads, and protruding downward were six pairs of hairy legs, each bent outward at a 90 degree angle and appearing more arachnid than pony.

Hoping it wasn't a hydra, I targeted one of the heads. So did my friends. Except we didn't each target a different head like I was sort of expecting; two of us targeted one head while the third targeted another, leaving one head free. I couldn't really tell who was shooting at what, but in the heat of the moment it didn't really matter. After taking several repeated blows, the head eventually exploded into a burst of gore. I waited for a few seconds, half expecting it to regrow, but fortunately it didn't. Then we made quick work of the others.
I suppose the huge rotting pile of a corpse would have had something useful to loot if we had looked close enough, but we continued on because we were pressed for time and the thing was disgusting. I also didn't know how a beast that big would carry loot, unless it had swallowed something in the course of a rampage. But then we'd have to cut open the chest, and...
No time for that. Gotta stay focused on the mission. After climbing the stairs, we were now in the B concourse, which was the shortest part of the airport. There were a hoofful of zombies scattered about here, but we cleared them out easily with a quick sprinkler spray of gunfire across the room.
We advanced into a large atrium which connected the B and C concourses to the main terminal building, where we came upon a huge mass of zombies. Some of them began to charge at us, so we cut them down. But the noise alerted the rest, who began shuffling towards us, some of them began making huge running lunges. We tried gunning them down, but there were too many, and some of them started getting far too close for comfort.
"Fall back, fall back!" I yelled, and then turned tail and bolted. I felt selfish for running away from them on a whim like that and worried that they might be too entangled with zombies to get out. I considered going back and trying to help them, but fortunately when I looked back I saw they were doing exactly what I told them: running.

We retreated into the B concourse where I ran behind a row of chairs. I figured that some sort of a barricade would be useful, even though I was aware I was also cornering myself: In the nook that was ‘Gate B1,’ if the zombies ended up surrounding us then we would have no ways to escape except through the door to the jetway (which was most likely locked), or to smash the windows and jump out.

The plan hinged on the cooperation of my friends who, luckily, were good at picking up on hints and following ‘directions.’ Shortly after I arrived and took up position, they also arrived and took up position alongside me. Together, the three of us squatted awkwardly on the seats, peering over their backs towards the long wide corridor where the zombies were fast approaching. Then I realized that one of our gun barrels was not like the others.

“Grapevine! You have a flame thrower. Get up and go guard our left flank!”

She seemed confused and hesitated.

“Ummm,”

“Just do it, or it’s all our asses!”

Okay, that was not the best response, but it was in the heat of battle and I had bigger worries than hurting somepony’s feelings. However, she awkwardly got up and staggered over to the space left of the seat benches.

“This good?”

I was about to answer ‘yes,’ when suddenly a zombie lunged at her and she reflexively pulled her trigger. A split second later, a zombie thrust its forehooves into my personal space, and not knowing what else to do, I thrust my gun outward, holding it sideways, to block the attack. It worked and pushed the zombie away a few inches, giving me enough time to realize what was going on and what I should do. I then turned my rifle around so the barrel was facing outward and began to fire…

We kept shooting from our little barricade for... I don’t know how long. Five minutes maybe? But it felt more like fifty. A wave of zombies came, we mowed them down, we reload, rinse and repeat. I don’t know how much ammo we went though, but it was a lot. The end result was about a hundred corpses lying on the floor and twenty times as many empty cartridges as well. As we got towards the end we became exhausted, but it also became easier because the advancing zombies kept tripping over the corpses from the previous waves.

After we had a minute to catch our breath, I decided to press onward.

“Alright, let’s go!”

So we rushed forward, back into the atrium and then towards the security checkpoint, which was a total mess because everything had been knocked over. We had to be careful here since we still had to get through, slowing us down like a bog as we had to carefully trace our footing,
while also shooting at a few zombies rushing towards us from up ahead.

Beyond the confused mass of collapsed metal detectors and felled line stanchions, we found ourselves facing more oncoming zombies in a terrain that was mostly open, and very dark because there were no nearby windows. We hid behind two large conical support beams, which didn’t help us a whole lot since the zombies didn’t return our fire, but made me feel safer anyway while I was fighting them because at least I had cover.

Following that was a mad dash into the ticketing lobby. Here there was ample lighting and a very high ceiling, providing a sense of spacious emptiness when looking up. It was a very large and long room with ticketing counters on one wall and windows and doors leading to the street on the other. It was curved at the edges, which had the effect of making the entire room look like it followed a slight curve the whole way through. Luggage was strewn across the room, most likely abandoned during the craze of the bombing. Stanchions from the lines in front of the ticketing counters had been knocked down, but they were more spread out than they were in security.

The room was also crawling with zombies.

"Heeeelllllllp!"

The cry came from somewhere off to the left. There was a mob of zombies swarming around what appeared to be an obese red earth pony stallion.

We rushed towards him and felled the zombies like we were cutting through tall grass with a machete. Once there were no longer any zombies in the immediate area, we approached him.

"Wow, you saved me!" he exclaimed in amazement. "I thought I was done for. Thanks a million!"

"You're welcome," I said. But before I could say anything else, Grapevine interrupted us.

"Uh, guys... can we cut the chit-chat? I think we've got company..."

We looked and saw a massive wall of zombies approaching us in the distance.

"Holy shit," I said quietly. I whipped out my gun and prepared to shoot.

"Um... some advice, if I may..." said the stallion. "You might need that minigun over there."

He pointed towards a minigun which lay among what appeared to be a couple of suits of power armor.

"Does that even..." I asked, going over to investigate. I opened the magazine and saw that it still had quite a bit of ammo left. I then tried to lift the minigun to fire it, but was just barely capable of getting it off the ground.

"Mount it on the suits," Dmitry said as he came over to help me.

Together we were able to lift the gun on top of the power armor suits. The zombies were within shooting range now, so we pulled the trigger. The minigun took a few seconds to wind up, but then it unleashed a hail of bullets across the room. It took our combined strength to keep it steady, spraying a yellow jet of bullets towards the mob kinda like those pictures of policemen spraying crowds with fire hoses to break up protests. Moving it gently from side to side allowed us to spray the fire across the room, greatly thinning out the mob.

Grapevine covered our rear with her flamethrower, and together we quite literally lit up the room. We kept doing this until the minigun ran out of bullets and Grapevine's flame thrower ran out of fuel, but by this point we had culled the crowd down to manageable levels. From here we could just shoot them down with our regular array of weaponry.

After we couldn’t see any more zombies, the stallion let out a cry of relief.

“Phew!” he said, wiping some sweat off his brow.

I cantered over to him and asked him the most pressing question on my mind.

“What the HELL are you doing here!?!”

“Silver--” Dmitry scolded, but the stallion didn’t seem the least bit offended by my outburst.

“The name’s Carpetbagger, m’lady,” he said, tipping his hat. It was a fucking fedora.

“I travel the world collecting carpets,” he continued. “Day of the bombs I was up at Carpet-con in Vanhoofer. Figured I’d make a clean sweep down the west coast for all the carpets I’ve missed.”

He continued talking as he rummaged through his enormous carpet bag, a dusty red maroon sack with a gaudy floral design on it.

“I heard they were going to replace this with an updated design. Such a travesty. I mean, even though they’re trying to keep the same spirit of the original, it’s just not the same! Originals are always better than remakes, and this applies to carpets as well. I mean, have you even seen the updated design thing? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad design, but it just isn’t nearly as iconic as the original. I’ve seen thousands of carpets in my lifetime and believe me, this is the finest carpet I've seen in a good while!"

I looked at the carpet. It did look pretty nice. I watched him as he took out a special kind of knife and began cutting a sample straight from the floor. Then I remembered where we were.

"Carpets!?" I yelled. "Carpets!? You almost got yourself killed in here, just for a piece of carpet?"

He replied nonchalantly, without even looking at me.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Hey, that's an awesome hobby!" said Grapevine.

Carpetbagger had finished cutting his sample and now examined it in the light.

"Hmmm... I definitely could use a better sample. Perhaps one that isn't in the lobby."

"You could try the end of the 'E' Concourse," Grapevine suggested. "Not a lot of hoof traffic goes through there."

"That's a good idea," said Carpetbagger. He carefully laid the carpet inside his carpet bag, then closed the bag and hoisted it up onto his back.

"No. You can't go there," I objected. "It's too dangerous. We haven't cleared that part out!"

"Not to worry," he said. "I have you lovely ladies to protect me."

"We're not going to protect you," I said. sternly. "We have more important business to do, over there."

I pointed in the general direction of the control tower.

"In the parking garage?" he asked confusedly.

"Yeah... in the parking garage," I answered as I began nudging my friends towards a pair of derelict elevators.

"Oookie Dokie then," he said. "Wish you luck. I'm sure I can defend myself."

We crossed the bridge over the passenger pickup and dropoff areas, scurying towards the enormous parking garage that stood between us and the control tower. Although the terminal was cold, outside it was freezing and wet. The space between the garage and the terminal, was also covered by a large plexiglass awning that remained mostly in tact. This unintentionally created a wind tunnel, which channeled frigid gusts from a storm that was brewing outside.

I couldn't resist looking down, where two rival squads ducked behind concrete barriers and poles engaged in a heated firefight. One of the squads was an elite-looking group of pegasi decked out in special ops gear, while the others were a disparate collection of earth ponies and unicorns wearing standard army fatigues that were tattered and dirty. Despite being special ops, the special ops seemed to be losing the battle, and in desperation, one of them took out a plasma grenade and threw it.

One of the regular soldiers saw this and responded by throwing a regular frag grenade. The special ops responded by throwing a hail of plasma grenades, with an almost immediate response from their opponents.

"Holy shit, get down Silver!"

Dmitry tackled me, just as an enormous tsunami of flames erupted from below and blew across the bridge in our direction. After a few seconds, the flames passed and were replaced by soft waves of gasoline-scented billowing smoke.

"Thanks," I said as soon as I realized what he had done, but the merely replied curtly with, "We have to keep moving."

We crawled the rest of the way across the bridge until we were in the safety of the parking garage which, while colder than the terminal, was still very protective, quiet, and dry.

I surveyed the scene, half-expecting someone or something to be out there, but all I could hear was the wind echoing throughout the complex and the gentle crackling of the fires outside. Not satisfied with the apparent calm, I studied the possible dangers we might encounter here.

"Okay, I think we need to proceed very cautiously," I told my companions. "There could be more zombies in here, but we can't afford to hit any of the cars or else it'll start a chain reaction of explosions and kill us instantly. Just stay quiet and follow me. We'll try to use stealth and snipe them, one at a time."

We switched out our assault rifles for shotguns and crept down the dark halls of the parking garage. The eerie nature of the place only grew more apparent as we crept closer and closer towards the center, tip-toeing past row upon row of deceased vehicles. Many of the spaces weren’t completely filled, but there were enough cars to block our field of vision. I could hear the soft rumbling of distant explosions, the ebb and flow of the wind, and more closely, we could hear the sound of rain droplets or clumps of dirt falling from the walls.

It sounded exactly like I was inside a cave.

Closer to the interior, it became steadily darker. The eerie and pulsating noises were almost hypnotic, drawing us inward, closer and closer such that I let down my guard.

“Raaawwwggghhhh!!!!”

A zombie lunged out of the shadows, shoving me to the ground. I tried to get up and fight back, but it kept trying to claw at my face. Just trying to hold it back took all of my strength, and even though I would have liked to punch it, there was nothing I could do except waiting for my friends to save me.

Almost immediately after it had appeared, I heard the steady shots from their guns. Many of their shots just missed and hit the pavement, some of them barely grazing me, but eventually they wounded the zombie to the point where it stopped resisting.

I shoved it to the side and got up, about to thank my friends for their help but then more appeared, having been lured by the sound of our shots. I picked up my gun and started shooting, using my EFS to target their chests and make sure I didn’t miss. Accuracy was crucial in this moment, and I aimed directly for their hearts, thinking that would be the most effective at pushing them back, only to realize towards the end that they might not even have hearts, and that targeting them wasn’t really doing anything.

After they had all been shot, I looked at the others, but they merely nodded at me, so we kept going. Quietly we made our way through the complex, until we stumbled upon a small machine with flickering blue lights. Upon closer examination, it was merely a kiosk where you could go to pay for your parking ticket, which had at some point become damaged and was now malfunctioning. A tiny plume of smoke arose from a hole in its side about the size of a bullet, and the damage appeared to be quite recent.

The machine was close to a bank of elevators and a staircase. I tenuously began ascending the stairs, my steps becoming more confident when my companions followed suit. We climbed two stories, then I stopped to quickly catch my breath. I looked around, noticing that it was significantly lighter on this level. There were a lot less cars, meaning we could move around more, but we could also be attacked from almost every angle. It was also brimming with white misty fog.

Wandering through the fog, we stumbled upon a pair of zombies. They noticed us and shuffled towards us, but this time we were prepared. I was able to get out two shots into one of them before it got within striking distance of me, then I proceeded to club it with the butt of my gun until it collapsed. I shot it again to make sure it wouldn’t rise again, then I heard the growl of another zombie a couple of yards away. I repeated the process with that zombie, and then with another, but then found myself facing a cluster of several zombies. Luckily, there was a ramp going up to the next level behind me. I ran up the ramp, periodically stopping to shoot or to reload, and had thinned the herd down to a more manageable three or four by the time I got to the top.

I kept retreating and shooting until I had felled the last zombie, and only noticed my new surroundings while I was reloading my shotgun afterward: I was now on the roof. While the fog still covered the floor, the entire top half of the structure had been removed and replaced with the empty grey sky. For a pair of eyes that were still adjusting from the darkness of the floors below, it seemed very bright considering that the sky remained under a thick layer of storm clouds. It was also much windier, and colder, and little flecks of snow were starting to fall from the sky. I looked around and could not see either of my friends.

I wasn’t thinking, so I just assumed that they would catch up with me soon. I kept going, walking cautiously through the fog wary of zombies that might be lying in wait on the ground. I found a few, but each was alone and thus easy to dispatch. I kept walking at a steady rate towards the white tower which stood at the end of the garage: tall and imposing, flared outward towards the top part, and standing guard over the entire airport complex. At the top, a dark figure moved inside the windows, surveying the surroundings with the vigilance of a prison guard. I crouched down to cloak myself in the fog a few times to evade detection. I felt tense, like I was trespassing or trying to break out of jail.

As I approached the tower, it became harder to hide. The tower grew larger and more ominous while the fog subsided, leaving me with few options. Luckily, the garage itself could help me: on the side of the garage just left of the tower stood a large building on top of a concrete platform. I knew it was an office building for the Port Authority, but it looked like a fancy house, even having a porch with a garden in front of it. It gave me the perfect place to hide, under the concrete platform where it was dark and the pony up in the tower couldn’t see me. I wandered through the underbelly of that palace of bureaucracy, which apparently served as an employee parking lot for the offices above. The cars were slightly fancier than those of the travelers throughout the rest of the garage, and most of them still looked fairly serviceable. I giggled at the thought of trying to hijack one of them, but then realized that Dmitry might actually try to do it, and looked around at all the cars to see if he actually was.

It was at this point, when I was looking around me, that I realized that the others had not caught up to me. They had likely gotten lost inside the garage, or maybe they were just looking for me on the lower floors. I knew that the right thing to do would have been to go back and look for them, but at that moment I didn’t care. I was so close to our goal, the tower, and I wasn’t going to turn back now. Then I heard some thundering and went to the edge of the garage to see where it came from.

Apparently, the tower’s occupants had begun shooting at something on the ground with their laser cannon. A resounding clap, like thunder, could be heard throughout. Or maybe it was actual thunder? I looked at the sky and saw what I thought might have been a few flashes of lightning, but all I could tell for certain was that it was snowing a lot harder now than it had before.

I found a wall made of glass, separating the garage from a small room which contained three elevators and a couple of pairs of doors, one of which led to a short skybridge going towards the tower. I tried the pair of glass doors that was in the wall, but they were locked. I turned my rifle around and prepared to bash it into the glass, but then hesitated, fearing that it might set off an alarm and draw attention to myself. Then I figured it probably didn’t matter, so I smashed the gun’s butt into the glass and broke a small hole. I proceeded to break more holes until I had created a gap large enough for me to walk through.

The glass doors that led to the skybridge were also locked, but I couldn’t just break the glass because the shards would set off one of the numerous mines strewn across the bridge. I tried to pick the lock, but found it difficult, so I had to go upstairs into the office building and find a key. I eventually found one, and returned to unlock the door. Then I had to carefully disarm the mines one by one. Grapevine had shown me how back in the stable, but I was now expert. I wished she was there to help me, but I used it as an opportunity to hone my skills. I stayed low to the ground and moved very slowly and deliberately. It was tense. But it had to be done. After each mine I disarmed, I placed them in a pile against the wall. Eventually I had disarmed them all, and counted them: fifteen in all.

I would have just left them, but then I got the idea of using them to guard us while we slept. It seemed like a good idea, since we could just disarm them in the morning and they would wake us all up if anypony tried to attack. I had used enough supplies in the past week that I had room to store them all in my bags.

Then I heard explosions. It sounded like the battle was heating up again, so I hurried up and went inside the control tower. This was a hostage crisis, after all, so we had no time to waste.

I raced up a spiral staircase, then slowed to a crawl when I got to the top of the tower. Opening the door slowly and then sliding in, I found the control room to be mostly empty, except for three pegasi who were preoccupied with shooting at several ponies down below dressed in Provincial Guard uniforms. Seeing this gave me mixed feelings, because on one hoof, the guard protected our country, but… they did try to shoot at me. Twice. And extort travelers for passage. And they imposed martial law on the entire metropolitan area in the weeks before the bombs fell. And they robbed a refugee camp and left its inhabitants for dead…

Okay, maybe the Guard weren’t the good guys in this situation. But then… who are these ponies? There are three of them in this room, and probably more of them downstairs. They’ve got several laser guns, including what look like specially-made laser sniper rifles (now that’s something I haven’t seen before). Now what about their uniforms? Well, one was wearing a black officer’s uniform that I didn’t recognize, while the other two were wearing black power armor with a few blue spots and yellow lightning bolt trim… wait a minute-- are those Wonderbolts? What were they doing down here?

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t supposed to be in here, and they didn’t seem to notice me. With those ponies preoccupied with the firefight outside and my movements concealed by the ambient sound of gunfire, I swiftly scanned the room until I found a pony hiding in the shadows, slouching against one of the control consoles. I approached him, finding rather disappointedly that he was the only one. Still, he was a hostage, and I needed to rescue him.

“Don’t worry,” I said in a hushed tone as I approached. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Silver Bullet?” he asked in a calm, raspy voice. “You’ve grown so much...”

I was stunned. I wasn’t rescuing some pony from my stable… I was rescuing a pale, middle-aged zebra in a lab coat!

“Wha-a-a… who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, my apologies, I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “I am Dr. Zeitgeist, megaspell scientist for the Zebra Empire and close colleague of Dr. Balefire.”

“You...” I said. “You were his best friend...”

“Yes,” he replied. “I think I was his best friend. I suppose he was my best friend too, though I have never put much thought into it before. In all honesty, I think he needed me more than I needed him.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I am helping the Pegasus Enclave find a rare piece of technology called the SPP Control Chip. They secured me because they think I know where it is.” He chucked. “I actually have no idea. But as long as they don’t know that, they’ll think I’m still useful. And what are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for some other ponies from my stable,” I said. “I heard they came to the airport, then I heard there were hostages in this tower.”

“Hostages?” he asked. “Oh, there are no hostages here. I am here of my own free will, more or less. I could leave any time, but I choose not to for my own safety. As far as I know, I am the only guest these gentleponies have, unless they’ve taken some of the Testudos as prisoners, but I doubt that.”

“The Testudos?” I asked, confused.

“The guardsponies,” he clarified. “Err.. former guardsponies.They think they’re still the guard, but they’ve clearly gone off the deep end.”

There was a pause as we observed the carnage outside. Then he asked,

“Have you ever thought deeply about death, Silver Bullet?”

“Sometimes,” I replied. He waited for me to elaborate, but I became lost in thought.

“I have,” he said. “I am fully aware of my own mortality. I have been shot, and I believe I am dying right now. The Enclave can’t save me—they need everypony they have to defend this position. And even if they could spare a medic, they don’t have the supplies to save me.”

He showed me wound, a big glaring scar across his chest. A bullet had grazed him quite recently, at some point within the last thirty minutes, and it had cut deep. It was surrounded by maroon scabs of dried blood, some of which had also gotten on his clothing.

“I have been preparing for this moment for a long time,” he continued. “I have thought about death so much that the prospect of my own no longer bothers me. It is inevitable, and for all of the things I have done in my life, I think I deserve it.”

“I bear a great share of the responsibility for this war, which has caused the deaths of billions of sentient beings. Trillions, if you count the animals and insects. This war, which has caused so much loss of life, would most certainly qualify as a mass extinction. We were in the midst of one before, from all of the carbon and waste and deforestation and hunting of our industrial economies, but this war has made it clear to all who doubted it, that the actions of just a few species have brought forth an endless wave of death.”

“This is not the first time there has been a mass die-off of animals on our planet. There have been five before us, six if counting the war as its own, and each time there has been a gradual recovery… except for now. This time, the pace of death has been fast, outpacing anything that has come before us. Whether anything will survive is doubtful, but from what I have seen, oxygen levels don’t seem to be in any real danger and the ecosystem appears to be hanging on. I have even seen some new life growing out of this, and it awaits to be seen how it will fare, but I am confident that life, in some form, will go on. Although we don’t have exact numbers, it is likely that this extinction has not been the worst—it would take a lot to top the Great Dying of the end Permian with the killing of 96% of all marine life. It may be slightly unusual in how soon it occurred after the last mass extinction, a mere 66 million years ago when the average span between mass extinctions is 84.8, but there was a similar gap between the Ordovician-Silurian and the Late Devonian.”

“My point is that it is not unusual to experience mass waves of death on our planet. It happens cyclically, and is therefore inevitable. Therefore we should not be afraid, but welcome it—after all, we are witnessing with our own eyes a once-in-a-lifetime event, something that for years we could only speculate on. Just like the passing of a comet or an alignment of planets, we are witnessing the forces universe in action, we have front row seats to the spectacle that is the final act of the cycle of life: that stage which is death and rebirth!”

He threw his forehooves up in excitement, but brought them back down one second later. Even the slightest bit of physical exertion caused him massive pain, and I had begun to see the full extent of his injury.

“As you can clearly see, I have a deep personal interest in paleontology. When looking at the bones of our ancestors, I cannot deny a feeling of… fraternity… with our evolutionary predecessors.”

He reached into a bag and pulled out what appeared to be a bony white orb.

“I want you to have this.”

I took it in my own hooves and looked it over as he talked.

“This is the skull of ‘Dinohippus.’ At first glance it can easily be confused for that of a modern pony, but if you look closely, you can see differences. Its skull is pointier and boxier, its jaw larger, and its brain smaller, but still an equine nevertheless.”

It was indeed a skull. It was significantly more beastlike than any modern pony’s skull, but the resemblance was there.

“This particular specimen belonged to a young mare who lived 3.5 million years ago. Dinohippus was one of the first modern equines, in both anatomy and behavior: It used stone tools. It hunted with spears. It built huts. It used fire for cooking and warmth. It traveled across continents. It lived in bands of extended family. It had the beginnings of language. It may have even coordinated its hunting and cared for the sick and injured. All of these things, which we take for granted today, were pioneered by ancient equines such as this.”

“Her real name is lost to history, but I have taken the liberty to name her ‘Artemis,’ the feminine form of ‘Artamos,’ which means ‘Butcher.’ And a butcher she was, as the rest of her bones had been broken many times through combat. Ultimately, the butcher became the butchered after a critical blow struck the mare right through the ribcage. She was buried, in a cave, not by her own kind—they didn’t practice burial—but by another—the victor in combat, perhaps—who either greatly respected her as an opponent or thought she was one of their own. Most likely the former.”

“But who killed her? A more advanced form of equine, perhaps. There were many species of equines on the Earth in those days, all living simultaneously side-by-side. Contrary to popular belief, evolution is not a steady streamlined progression from one species to the next, but rather a patchwork of species on a timeline that spawn new ones to replace them. One species does not immediately go away once its successor arrives; there is often a lag in which they coexist before the old one is finally killed. Sometimes this lag is short, sometimes it’s long. In the case of Dinohippus, it took 1.8 million years to die off once Plesippus showed up to replace it. Artemis lived near the final extinction of Dinohippus. She lived while her genus made its last stand, fighting valiantly for precious resources against three others: Plesippus, its immediate successor, and the newly arrived twin genii of Hippidion and Equus—that’s us. Being outnumbered and physically and mentally inferior, Dinohippus was no match for the others, thus it met its tragic but inevitable end.”

“You see, the struggle for survival is a war—a war without end, and a war that will never change. We fight, we die, we all must do our part to help our side win. Just as empires rise and fall with the tide, so too do species. No species can resist, no matter how hard they try. Sooner or later they will all fall—yours and mine included. The fossil record is brimming with cycles of birth and death, and each species must eventually face its own extinction. In birth, many species ‘branch out’ from a parent species as a means to experiment with new traits to determine the ones that are objectively better for survival in a particular environment.”

“Artemis herself was a victim of evolution’s vicious cycle, but she was also a product: her genus, Dinohippus, was descended from Pliohippus, a sister genus of Hipparion. Both were descendants of Protohippus, and both competed to be its successor. Pliohippus won, Hipparion lost, and Plio went on to sire Dino. Dino in turn sired Plesi, but stubbornly refused to give up its position, so Plesi returned with its children, Equus and Hippidon, to beat the living daylights out of Dino so it could take its place. Eventually, Plesi went extinct, leaving only Equus and Hippidion. Now tell me, which of the twin genii eventually won?”

“We did,” I answered. “Equus”

“Precisely,” he replied. “The genus Equus beat out the genus Hippidion. Both were competent creatures in their own right, but one was objectively better at tribal life. We, the Equids of Equus, had better speech, better brains, better dexterity—we were simply better. Hippidion, of course, had its own strengths—namely in raw strength—but you need brains, not brawn, to live in a complex society—so the Hippidion went away.”

In hindsight, I should have said something. I should have objected and called him out on the absurdity of his logic. I should have pointed out that the ‘forks in the road’ in the equine fossil record were spaced out and that it hadn’t been long enough since the last divergence for there to be another one. I should have pointed out that evolution takes millions of years, and in the big picture, the anatomically modern equines have only been in existence for a mere two million, and that we haven’t been around long enough for any significant change to occur. I should have pointed out how fallacious it was to apply his model to individual species when all his other examples focused on genuses, and how since how ponies and zebras are both part of the same genus, we’re technically on the same team—that we should be working together in this fight, not clawing at each others’ throats. I should have pointed out that there’s been so much interbreeding between ponies and zebras that he himself likely isn’t ‘pure.’ I should have pressed him more on specifics of just how many points of difference were was between us, and shown him how many of them were only cosmetic. I should have said something to stop him, but at the time his argument was just too convincing. It was well-reasoned and well-structured, complex enough to explain everything yet simple enough to understand.

Although I didn’t agree with his conclusion, I couldn’t help but see some truth in it. Maybe we ponies were inferior. Maybe we were inherently more violent and selfish, and maybe we were responsible for bringing about our own deaths. His argument was that since we ponies were going to die anyway, and since we were likely to die right now, I should just accept our extinction as fact and become complicit in it, or at least not attempt to interfere.

“Here is the point;” he concluded. “Ponies are obsolete. You had a good run, but all good things must come to an end. Now, with this war, we have been brought to a population bottleneck. The forces of evolution are determining who is truly superior, and ponies are very clearly losing. Anarchic and greedy, backstabbing and primitive, violent and unrepentant-- I had always suspected you were monsters, but not until my hometown became the front line of your war did I fully realize the depths of your depravity.”

“Now, I know this all may seem strange to you, to any eavesdroppers we might have, to anyone at all-- these are ponies we’re talking about: those cute, cuddly little lumpy horse creatures stuffed with sugar and cream. But for every cupcake you bake, every rainbow you place in the sky, for every sweet apple you pluck from a tree, there is a massacre hidden in the shadows. Your entire civilization is built on white lies. Just look at your cities: Canterlot, Manehattan, Las Pegas-- all built on appearances and deceit. She can’t really afford those luxury clothes-- she bought them with a credit card, which she pays for by using another credit card! He doesn’t really care about the orphans, he only donates money so he can signal his virtue to the world. They don’t really like each other-- they only pretend to like each other so they can hide their petty feud from the world! But in this city, you have the worst of all: those ponies you call ‘hipsters,’ who fetishize authenticity to the point that they merely make a caricature of it, reinforcing the social, economic, and political systems that they claim to oppose.”

“Once you understand this, then it is no secret why your cities are so devoid of morals and purpose. But it doesn’t stop at the suburbs; oh no, the depravity permeates your culture so strongly that its influence is felt even in the most remote village. Consider the ministry mares for example: all six of them once lived in Ponyville. But even these supposed paragons of virtue could not overcome their own base nature. The truth is that the ministry mares couldn’t stand each other; they only pretend to be friends for appearance’s sake. The ministry mares! Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, guardians of this kingdom. Supposedly they’re best friends, but under the surface all they do is bicker and fight. How come there’s so much overlap and redundancy between their ministries? It’s because they don’t trust each other to do their jobs. It’s because they seek to backstab and replace each other, to jockey for influence and the favor of the Princess. Remember when Goldenblood was arrested for treason? He was planning a coup! To overthrow the ministries and take power for himself. See, ponies are actually despicable, backstabbing creatures, you merely pretend to like each other while you plot sororicide in the shadows. Imposing rules of civility didn’t solve the problem, they only drove it underground. But now, with no rules and no society, your true nature has resurfaced at last. Without your Princesses to keep you in line, ponies run free and do what they’ve always done for centuries.”

I remembered the stable. I remembered the violence. I don’t even remember when it got bad, I just remember a clear difference between what it was like before and after. Life used to be normal, until one day it just wasn’t, and then ponies started dropping dead like flies. We all realized that the overmare was useless. She couldn’t keep control. Did she ever have control? She failed us when we needed her most. And then there was Balefire-- he only made things things worse.

By the time I left, the survivors were just barely hanging on. Half of them had become monsters, every bit as frenzied and soulless as those that they call ‘raiders’ here on the outside. Except in there, you couldn’t run from them. In the stable, you were trapped.

“You’ve seen what ponies do without leadership,” Zeitgeist continued. “They devour one another. If you need convincing, just look outside.”

Outside the battle raged on. A pegasus Testudo zipped by shooting at the Enclave troops. He was struck by a crimson beam from a laser cannon, causing his entire body to glow a dark red for a second. The white outline of his skeleton was visible within the glow like an eerie X-ray scan. Then the beam stopped, leaving the pony’s charred and ashy lifeless corpse. It then fell to the ground like a brick.

But the pegasus had gotten at least some comeuppance: one of his bullets broke through the cracked plexiglass window, hitting the laser cannon’s operator square in the eye, with tiny glistening glass shards making cuts around her mouth.

In the opposite direction, two of the Testudos were carrying a heavily injured comrade away from the battlefield on an improvised stretcher. An Enclave pegasus swooped by and shot both of them in the head, causing them to slump down to the ground and drop the stretcher. The injured comrade fell into a puddle on the ground, where a radroach crawled out of a drainage grate and began gnawing at the wounds.

And further still, I saw a group of zombies swarm another group of zombies, completely unprovoked, ripping the rotten gangrenous flesh right off of their faces and bellies with their bare teeth and gnawing at their exposed intestines like sausages. The fact that they were both zombies made no difference, as the cannibals continued to chew their way through the skulls of these other zombies, who had done them no harm.

For the first time in my life, I actually felt sorry for a zombie.

“Look at them. That’s how ponies are. You know. You’ve seen this. You’ve been this! Ridiculous, pathetic, aren’t they? You can save them from themselves. This is what Balefire saved you for. Silver, this is your destiny.”

“You will complete our life’s work. We did the legwork and killed most of them, and many more will die of hunger and exposure to the cold and the radiation. But there will always be holdouts. The ponies in the control Stables, for example, the ones that don’t have experiments: they are still alive, and they must be killed. Our taxonomic tribe can’t advance if they aren’t. And you… you have a talent for killing. Your destiny is to aid us in bringing about the extinction of ponies as a species.”

“No!” I said. “I won’t do it. I can’t do it. I may be a renegade, but I’m not a monster!”

He was visibly disappointed with my words.

“Very well then, Be that way. I had a feeling you wouldn’t take me up on the offer, but it was worth a shot. You’re all going to die eventually, so I guess it doesn’t matter how...

“But you see my point: you are free to kill anypony you please. There are police officers or courts to stop you, the laws are not enforced; out there it’s pure anarchy where you can do whatever you want with no consequences. Even in the enclaves of civilization and order that remain, they are so small and so spread apart that you can commit any crime, even murder, then run away and never get caught. How can they spare a search party when they barely have enough guards to fend off raids?”

“Look, if you only kill one more pony, then make it the pony who murdered your mother.

“My… mother?”

“Yes, your mother. She wasn’t killed, Silver, she was murdered. It didn’t happen by accident. Somepony created the circumstances that caused her to die. And I know it was a stallion because I know exactly who did it. But I’m not telling you who it is. That’s something you will have to figure out for yourself.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, but I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him, intensely, likely glaring, but possibly giving him the saddest puppy eyes he had ever seen in his life. If it was the second one, which I doubt because I never do puppy eyes, but if it was, then I think it might have been the most effective of the two.

Either way, it managed to wash away the pride in his face and replace it with either pity or guilt.

“Okay, fine,” he relented. “I’ll tell you. His name is--”

Suddenly, the side of his head erupted in a splash of blood as a stray bullet from the firefight tore right through his brain. He hollowly gasped, then collapsed. I caught his head in my hooves.

“Zeitgeist?”

No response.

“Dr. Zeitgeist!”

I grabbed his face and looked into his big grey eyes. They winced in pain, but focused on nothing. He may not have even been conscious.

“Dr. Zeitgeist!” I sobbed.

But it was too late. The bullet didn’t hit him in the frontal lobe, but it clearly caused irreparable damage and was probably fatal. Even if he was still conscious, the trauma would have been too much for him to say anything. He was dead, he had gotten his wish, and he would never tell me who killed my mother.

If I had been thinking straight, I would have just left. But in my grief, I was not. Instead, I figured I would try to cremate his body or something like that, as a way of paying my respects. We were surrounded by pavement, so burial was out of the option, and I didn’t feel like lugging his corpse down a dozen flights of stairs anyway. I thought about getting a lighter, but then I realized that I needed something stronger to burn his still-wet internal organs. So I grabbed a Moltotov Cocktail, then another, and then another, set them beside his corpse, and lit them. I smiled at the scene: six Moltotovs in a circle, their rags softly burning like the wicks of candles. It was like a candlelight vigil, but with only one pony in attendance and cut extremely short.
Then I produced a grenade, yanked off the pin with my teeth, pressed the lever, set it in the center of the Moltotovs, and ran.

The explosion was huge and probably jeopardized the whole tower. I could hear the screams of the three ponies still in there, but I didn’t feel any guilt. The officer was a goner, but the other two had armor, so they probably survived… or not. The flames probably burned their manes, seared their wings, and gave them third degree burns on their faces. You know? On second thought, they were probably killed… or dying, but it wasn’t something that spending thirty minutes immobilized inside a burning tower couldn’t finish.

Okay, was that the right thing to do? Well… no, not really. I mean, those ponies never did anything to me, but then again… the pegasi and their ‘Enclave’ wasn’t exactly doing anything to alleviate the suffering of the ponies on the ground. After all, what was this SPP Override Chip, and what, if anything, could it do to alleviate ponies’ suffering?

Then again, what was I searching for? What was I doing to alleviate other ponies’ suffering? Had I really left the stable to go seek help for those still inside, or did I really just leave to save my own ass?

In the end, I don’t think it really matters. The odds of coming across a murderer like that, or anypony for that matter, in a post-apocalyptic world where he has the head start is infinitely miniscule, nearly zero, because even if we did happen to be in the same place at the same time I might not notice or recognize him. He would have to have not changed his appearance at all, which would be insanely stupid for a fugitive to not do. If he went on to commit other crimes, then police evidence databases might provide clues, but ever since the push to digitize all the records, I’ll only be able to access them if the computers are still working. And even then, I don’t even know the first place to begin. I mean, he could be anywhere, maybe even on the other side of the country, or possibly in a different country, or even on another continent. It would take nothing short of an expert detective, a mountain of luck, and a series of incredibly contrived circumstances to find him.

And yet, I still feel inspired to get revenge, or at least some sort of comeuppance for what he did, not only to my family but for all his victims. So I’ll keep my eyes peeled on the off-chance that I ever come across him. For now though, I have to stay focused on my original mission: get to the Stable-Tec office and see if I can find anyone-- or anything-- that can save my stable before it’s too late.

Level up!

Level 5: Stable Delinquent

Next Perk at Level 6.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2
Price of Silver: 10 bits per Troy Ounce

Chapter 9: Floral Shoppe

Chapter 9: Floral Shoppe

“Make sense? Oh, what fun is there in making sense?”

Wednesday, September 11th, 4347

Dear Diary,

"No. No, no, no, no, no! We are NOT going to go looking for them."

“But they might be in danger,” said Dmitry. “They can’t have gone far...”

"We are not going to go any farther. We've wasted too much time dilly-dallying already. We need to get going and find that chip!"

"But what about our friends?" Grapevine asked.

"If they had any sense, they'd have already left the city by now," I said curtly. "And they probably did. Life above the gorge has got to be better than the city or the stable."

"I suppose you're right," Dmitry said. "But that tower... it's all the way on the other side of the city. Surely we aren't going through the downtown?"

"Of course we aren't," I replied. "We're going to swing around south, following 205, and maybe passing through Lake Oneighgo as a shortcut."

"Sounds like a good idea," said Dmitry.

So we got on the road again, this time heading south. Despite yesterday's storm, the weather was calm today and snowfall on the road wasn't too bad. It was a largely uneventful day as well, which was good since it meant we weren't in any danger... but it was also incredibly boring.
My mind drifted, as it's apt to do in situations like these. I pondered the meaning of the doctor's words. Did he really try to convert me into a mass murderer as part of a sick depraved plan to eradicate an entire species? It didn't make any sense-- my uncle had always talked fondly of him, and yet he had made it his life's work to destroy everything that I am. I mean, I express revulsion about it here, but at the same time I don't actually feel very disgusted at all. I actually considered taking up his offer. I think I actually get where he was coming from. We ponies are a horrible people and we've done a lot of messed up things, not just to other species but to each other as well. And sometimes I just want to end it all, but not without taking a part of this cruel society with me...

But surely not all is lost, right? Though ponies in this new world are few and far between, several have shown our group some degree of kindness, or at least restraint, despite us being total strangers. I couldn’t just murder them all in cold blood. Could I even bring myself to it? Maybe… but only in the circumstance of self-defense. Otherwise, I just don’t think I could murder an innocent pony.

His plan also happened to be so logistically complicated that it would have been impossible to complete. Just one pony alone could not murder an entire species with just her bare hooves. Reduced as our numbers may be, there are probably still too many survivors out there, thousands of them, all spread out over the entire world. Even to comb across all of Equestria would take a lifetime, let alone any ponies who happen to be on other continents altogether. And then you would have to take into account those who might still be sealed up inside stables. They certainly aren’t going to open their doors if they hear there’s a mass murdering psychopath running around killing everypony in the outside world. And there are likely several combat veterans still around too, who could bring me down with superior training.

Obviously this isn’t a video game. You can’t just kill everypony in the world with no consequences. Though, I did agree to kill one pony. A very specific pony. However, finding him in this vast world would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, inside of a haystack made of haystacks, made out of even bigger haystacks. Though it would be very satisfying to get revenge, it’s very unlikely that I’ll find him… or, if I do, that I could possibly overpower him. I only have a vague idea of where to look: down south, and probably in a ghetto of some sort too, but nothing concrete. It’s possible that he may have even changed his name or gotten plastic surgery or something to avoid detection… in any case, I guess I’ll kill him if I find him, though it’s not going to be a priority.

Speaking of ghettos down south, we came across a group of very unseemly looking gentlecolts near the Chestnut Tree Inn.

“We seem to have come across a group of very unseemly looking gentlecolts,” said Dmitry as we noticed them on the horizon. “Should we take the exit ramp and continue down one of the streets?”

So we did just that. We got off the highway and began taking one of the city streets southward instead, selecting 82nd street because of its relative distance from the unseemly gentlecolts on the freeway and because its great width prevented us from being ambushed by bandits.

Hawberry Avenue was an unassuming side street branching off of 82nd. Farther west it was a major thoroughfare, even having the distinction of having its own bridge across the river downtown. However, this far east it was just another two lane street among the banks of densely packed cottages that characterized the city’s urban sprawl. On one corner sat a used car dealership. On the other, a small florist’s shop that looked like it was run by hipsters. Across the street was an oriental grocery store and a tire store. Behind the tire store sat a small yard full of used tires, set alight by an arsonist, which mysteriously continued to burn in spite of the cold weather and recent snowfall.

This was the neighborhood we had stopped to rest this afternoon. Grapevine went into the florist to poke around and came out five minutes later with reports of a working toilet. Each of us took turns using the toilet while the others sat outside and speculated on the age of the tire fire and whether or not it preceded the bombs. I was in a rather generous mood at that moment, so I let Grapevine and Dmitry go first, in that order, before I took my turn. It should be noted that Grapevine took quite a long time to do her business, somewhere between fifteen or twenty minutes, but came out looking like nothing had happened and giving evasive answers to our questioning.

The bathroom part was quick, but afterward I took a deeper look at the shop itself. From the front windows it had appeared cluttered, with several overgrown potted flowers of various colors. Inside, however, the store seemed barren, displaying its wares on low tables made of light wood, and with minimal decoration save for a few dusty marble statues and a large image depicting a computer generated Manehattan with a reddish atmosphere and harbor. The flowers on the tables were somewhat overgrown, but not too much-- their branches and leaves mostly just draped down the sides of the display tables. The walls were painted a hot pink, and the floor made of linoleum tiles-- half black, half the same color as the walls-- arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The ceiling was also painted hot pink like the walls, and its white fluorescent lights burning with a sterile glow that was-- wait, why are the lights on?

Some slow, tranquil, dreamy, and somewhat hypnotic shopping music began to play, and a mysterious vapor filled the room. I sniffed it and smelled a sharp citrus scent. It was sweet and refreshing, so I took a deeper whiff, before furiously exhaling it when I began to suspect it was a trap.

“Doo, doo doo, do do do do do, dooo dooooo….doooo dooooo….” a soft voice cooed. I looked towards the clerk’s counter at the end of the display room and saw a pink pony with a purple mane lying on the counter and wearing a set of skimpy white lingerie like the kind they use in banner ads for second-rate fantasy MMO’s.

“What?” I asked, deeply confused by all of this.

“Come play, my lord!” she said in a seductive voice. “It’s free forever!”

“Wha-aa… this doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “I’m not even a--”

“You don’t have to be,” she said, then in a flash of light she suddenly transformed into a beefy red stallion. “I can.”

“What? No!”

“Or I can be both,” she continued, transforming into a changeling, then back into herself, but wearing very androgynous clothing. “Or neither.”

“No,” I said more firmly. I began moving towards the door. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I want no part in it. Go find another john, you dirty whore.”

She put up some puppy eyes, as if I had hurt her feelings, but the look was as fake as plastic. I continued backing towards the door. Then she suddenly teleported between me and the door, taking the appearance of a young yellow filly wearing a white apron, a red bow in her mane, and more puppy eyes.

“Filly… Applebloom?”

The shopping music playing in the background suddenly sped up into an upbeat dance tune as the filly began singing.

“I don’t understand it ‘cause you won’t say yes,

But you don’t say no.

Sayin’ no shouldn’t you keep holdin’ out,

But you don’t let go.

I’m givin’ up on trying

To sell you things… that you ain’t buying,

It’s your move!”

I looked at her, then I looked at the door. I looked back at her, and she just stood there smiling. Then I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

“...The fuck?” I said. “Let me outta here!”

Then the music slowed down again, to the psychedelic pace.

‘Applebloom’ drew close, rubbing her body against mine. Her apron had been replaced with a leather suit, and her bow had also been replaced, with a leather one.

Then I felt something heavy drop onto my back, and I fell to the floor.

I was about to scream, when a hoof plugged my mouth and the pony softly whispered,

“Shhhhhh… just let it happen. It’ll all be over soon.”

I began to feel very sleepy.

“Wha--aa-- what are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, just teaching you a lesson,” she began.

“You act like you’re guided by some greater purpose. You aren’t. You think this little mission of yours is going to make a difference? It's not. Just like the last one, you'll go in expecting one thing but find another. And what happens when you don't get what you set out to get? Failure, that's what happens. Everything in this world is a game of chance, and you've been on one long losing streak ever since you were twelve.”

“You go from goal to goal, place to place, wandering aimlessly throughout your life. You've always been this way. The apocalypse hasn't changed anything, you're still stick here, drifting from place to place. You have no connections, you've never fit in, you've never done anything right, you've never accomplished anything of note. All this time you've had your family to cover for you, to tell you otherwise, to trick you into thinking you were special. You /are/ special, but in special as in 'retarded,' not gifted. Why would they do this, you ask? We both know that you know the answer. These are your thoughts, not mine.”

“Am I even real? Is anything real? Or am I just a voice in your head, telling you things, making you hallucinate, to see and feel all kinds of things that are normally alien to you. Or maybe I'm just some all-seeing, all-knowing monster who thrives on torture, one who digs into your deepest, darkest thoughts, especially the ones you just want to forget and suppress, and then parrot them back to you, bypassing your defensive walls to confirming your worst fears.”
This is our world now. And by 'our,' I don't mean you. I mean me, my daddy, the raiders, the bandits, the mobs, the gangs, the psychopaths, the monsters, the mutants, the zombies, even the windigos. Yes, windigos. This is our world, completely free of any arbitrary standards of morality or codes of law. And it's our job to keep it that way. You're welcome to join us if you like. Otherwise, you'd better just stay out of our fucking way, okay?”

Then everything went dark.

I woke up groggy and delirious, uncertain if I was still dreaming or had come back to reality. My limbs felt clunky and cumbersome to move, but I managed to stand up straight and have a look around. It was dark in the florist shop, and there was no light save for what little came in through the windows. It appeared to be evening, and the place looked like it had been abandoned for years.

I found Dmitry and Grapevine outside skipping pebbles across a large puddle.I stood there for a few moments, groggily waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light and trying to get my bearings. Eventually Dmitry noticed me.

"Hey," he said.

"What... time is it?" I asked.

"Five o'clock," he replied without even looking at his watch.

This was shocking news to me.

"Holy fuck!" I cried in exasperation. "It's been that long?"

"Yeah," said Grapevine. "Had a nice nap?"

"It wasn't a nap!" I snapped. "I was unconscious!"

"Ya don't need to get all defensive about it," she said.

Upon hearing this, Dmitry became concerned.

"Whoa. Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm... fine," I said. "Really, I'm fine."

"Sampling the merchandise, were ya?" Grapevine teased. "Don't worry, I've done that too many times to count. Who wouldn't?"

"No, I wasn't 'sampling,'" I protested. "Well, not deliberately."

"How do you not deliberately sample it?" asked Dmitry with an air of suspicion. "What, did a salespony just jump out of the shadows and give you a hard sell?"

"Not exactly," I said. "That would actually be kind of an understatement. Come on, I'll explain it while we walk."

We started on our journey again as I explained what had happened, in very general and non-specific terms. With my mention of the pink pony, Grapevine grew excited and asked lots of questions, but Dmitry became concerned and advised that we quicken our pace of travel.

We went several blocks southward before the question of tonight's lodgings arose. It became imperative as the sky seemed to get slightly more orange with every minute, indicating sunset. We eventually settled on a sketchy-looking extended stay motel called 'The Unicorn Inn' because it was the only hotel in sight and because we thought the name was cool.

In retrospect, we might have been satisficing. We could have gone down any of the side streets and found a plethora of houses to choose from, but we weren't thinking about that and ended up choosing this. I suppose it doesn't actually matter, though we would probably feel a bit guilty if we just broke into somepony's house and slept on their bed, even if their house was completely abandoned. Their houses are still filled with their personal stuff, after all, which I definitely feel guilty about using. It’s strange how we still feel that those who are long gone are still somehow entitled to privacy over possessions that they no longer use. With this feeling, sleeping in hotels makes you feel a lot less guilt since they’re intended for transient stays such as ours. However, I still wonder if breaking into somepony’s house would have been a better idea.
Why do I say this? Well, instead of grabbing the first room that was convenient for us, we had to go through the entire hotel and look for the room that was the least bad. Seriously. Virtually all of the rooms smelled of drugs or tobacco to some extent, which Grapevine could identify using only smell (She admitted having "firsthoof experience" with most of the substances OUTSIDE of her professional work). I caught Dmitry wavering near the in-room telephones several times, admitting that he couldn't help but feel the urge to call the cops for a drug bust.

Aside from the smell, the rooms were fairly no-frills. The furniture was fairly old, and much of it broken, but the pieces that weren't were serviceable. There were a lot of stains on the walls, the carpets, and even the 'clean' sheets. It took over half an hour to find a room that was suitable, but the time wasn't all lost; in the meantime we had developed a comprehensive rating system for assessing the livability of sketchy motel rooms (A detailed outline will be provided at the end of this entry).

Once we got settled, concerns immediately turned to dinner. Given the kind of neighborhood we were in, it was unanimously agreed that we needed to get something close by, especially since it was pretty dark outside by the time we were ready to eat. Luckily, there was a seafood place right next door. While I was initially somewhat skeptical about the healthiness of eating seafood way past its expiration date, it had been a long time since I'd last eaten any, so I agreed on the condition that we wouldn't eat any clams, mussels, scallops, or "Anything else with a shell." Grapevine asked, "Well, what about crustaceans?" and I replied that crustaceans were fine, just nothing that looks like a clam.

We were able to get a fire going with Grapevine's flamethrower, but she was starting to run low on fuel. It was decided that tomorrow we should keep our eyes peeled for any hardware stores where we could potentially acquire some more flamer fuel or "a suitable substitute." Once we got the fire going, Grapevine showed off her cooking skills by making us some shrimp gumbo. She rattled off a list of spices, which I objected to adding, but she insisted were necessary ingredients to any proper gumbo, so I went off to look for them. After searching up and down the restaurant, I couldn’t find any spices, except for a rack where I presume they were supposed to be. However, somepony had stolen all of the spices, leaving nothing but an empty container of paprika and half a pound of salt. On a nearby shelf, the presumed thief had left a few lines of salt arranged in thin lines in the shape of a baseball and a screw...

...Which Grapevine suddenly ingested through her a straw, thinking it was... something else. I kept thinking about that image throughout the night as I kneaded the dough for the matzah balls (which Grapevine insisted was a key part of the gumbo recipe). What did it mean? It was likely a cuite mark that the thief had left as their personal mark on the crime, although it may have also been a pictoral message. Telling us what? That we had been thrown a curveball? That were screwed?

This question remained on my mind for the rest of the night, until just a few minutes ago, while I was on watch duty and my friends were asleep, giving me some quiet time alone to think about it. That picture, it was a cutie mark! It was the cutie mark of that pink pony in the shop, who, come to think of it, looked awfully familiar, a lot like that other pony we met a few days ago…

That one who called herself ‘Katie Casey.’

Progress to Next Level: 325/2500

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2
Price of Silver: 7 bits per Troy Ounce

Chapter 10: The Morning After

Chapter 10: The Morning After

“My tea’s gone cold and I’m wondering why I got out of bed at all...”

Sunday, June 29th, 4347

Dear Diary,

I woke up groggy and drenched in sweat. Although the room was dim, the bright light coming from behind the shades was too much for my eyes to handle. A dense fog lay over my mind as I tried to make sense of my surroundings: where was I? Had everything before just been a dream? My brain was slow to activate, like an old computer, but even in my partially awake state I was beginning to make out my surroundings. Without my glasses, I could make out that I was in a bedroom of some sort, with yellowish wallpaper and a thin grey carpet. On the wall directly across from me there was a dresser, a flatscreen TV, a mirror, and a set of sliding double doors. To the left there was a set of drapes with a bright light emanating from behind them, separated from my bed by a good distance of two or three yards. To the right, the room abruptly ended with a wall, leaving only enough space between the bed and the wall for a pony to get to her feet and walk away. Aside from the wallpaper, the right wall was rather barren, containing only a blurry painting of a landscape and a white wooden door at the far end.

Was I in… a hotel room? Had everything before just been a dream?

Given the intensity of the light streaming in, I guessed it had to be late morning, or possibly early in the afternoon. I felt compelled to get up, but my body clearly wanted me to stay under the covers and go back to sleep. All I could do was let out an audible groan like a dying mammoth.

There was rustling and voices in the other room. Were we having relatives over again? They probably wanted to see me, but I didn’t want to leave my bed. They would have to drag me out if they wanted some ‘quality time.’

Then the door opened. A large blue stallion with a rapidly graying black mane entered the room cautiously and looked at me from the foot of the bed.

“What… time is it?” I asked the blue figure.

“It’s 10:15,” he said in a calm, deep voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh, good,” I muttered. “It’s not afternoon...”

“...yet,” he added. “How are you feeling?”

Two other ponies, both fillies about my age, quietly entered the room. One of them an energetic dark blue pegasus , the other a quiet, demure light pink colored earth pony.

“Not good,” I replied. “Do I still have to go to school today?”

The three laughed.

“It’s a sunday during summer break,” said the dark blue filly. “We don’t have to go anywhere!”

“I think we should just let her rest,” said the pink filly. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”

“Well, we didn’t have anything fun to do, anyway,” replied the blue filly. “Damn, now I wanna go back to sleep.”

The blue filly trotted back out the door.

“And leave me all alone?” said the pink filly, galloping after her.

They started bickering, but my mind was too numb to make out what they were saying. The blue stallion followed at a casual pace and locked the door behind them. Then a faint flash of green light emanated from the other room accompanied by a soft whooshing sound, and Dmitry returned with a thermometer.

“Okay, I think you’re supposed to put these under your tongue? But I’m not really sure...”

He gave me the thermometer, which I lazily grabbed with my telekinesis and floated into my mouth. Even that most simple of tasks I found to be mentally taxing. I savored the sweet yet electricy taste of the bulb in my mouth for about thirty seconds until the device had made a firm judgement and emitted a few short but cacophonic beeps. I didn’t even bother using telekinesis to return it, I simply yanked it out with my hoof.

Dmitry took it and read it.

“One-o-three point seven,” he read. “Is--is that normal?”

“Normal is about 100,” I replied. “Anything above 101.5 is fever territory.”

“I see...” he said. “Normally I don’t do checkups.”

I wanted to make a snide comment about how his ‘medical training’ was just a crash course in the living room with a bunch of textbooks we borrowed from the library, but my brain just wasn’t working today.

“Huh,” he said. “I remember seeing a documentary on primates once that said their normal body temperature was around 98.6 and assumed it was the same for us.”

He began to leave the room, but stopped in the doorway.

“I’ll go get you something to eat. Do you want me to leave the lights on?”

“No,” I shouted, though in my state it was only a half-shout. “Turn it off.”

“Oh, right, so you can rest.”

He turned the lights off and closed the door. There was still plenty of light coming from the windows, even when filtered by the shades. By now I was conscious enough to realize I was inside the stable, as evidenced by the bold ‘76’ emblazoned on the jumpsuit which hung limply over the back of a chair.

I coughed a little, which prompted Dmitry to quickly return with a glass of water, but other than that I was left alone. Thanks to the faux-sunshine streaming from the ‘windows’ over to the left, it was light enough to see, but thanks to the shades it was still dark enough to go to sleep. Even if I wasn’t sick, I had little desire to open the shades because I knew what was behind them: just windows into a tiny alleyway that ran between the rooms featuring some perfectly trimmed hedges along the walls with only enough space for a thin stone walkway in between them, with a ceiling made entirely of bright blue panels. Upon closer inspection it was a poor imitation of what prewar housing would have been like, but as long as you just glanced at it, it was eerily calming.

Since I was already awake, I thought I would do something productive and read a book. It would either help me finish my summer reading assignment for school, or it would just help me fall back asleep (I was personally betting on the latter). I thrust my hoof out and grabbed the book from the nightstand and reeled it in, then opened to the page I had bookmarked:

The door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then he lost his head and nearly made a great mistake.

Fearing the old mare would be frightened by their being alone, and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he took hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old mare from attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the door back, but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged her out with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway not allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She stepped back in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared with open eyes at him.

Wow. Really not feeling it today. Just wanna go back to sleep. Oh, well. Maybe I can just skip some of the descriptions and get to the dialogue.

“Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began, trying to speak easily, but his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. “I have come... I have brought something... but we’d better come in... to the light....”

And leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed.

“Good--

The door flung open, startling me enough that I dropped the book.

“Good heavens! What do you want?!?” I exclaimed.

Dmitry had returned, this time with a tray containing soup, toast, and a glass of orange juice. He giggled a little.

“Sounds like you’re really into that book,” he said. “So much that you’re mimicking the dialogue.”

“Wha--- really?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ve never heard you say ‘Good heavens’ before.”

I realized he was right and blushed sheepishly.

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But I’m not that into it!”

Dmitry set the tray down on the nightstand on my side of the bed and then reached for the book, which lay on the sheet near my lap.

“What are you reading, anyway?” he asked, and turned the book to look at the cover. “Oh, that’s a good one! Have you got to the part where he kills--”

A jolt of energy thrust through my body, forcing me to sit up and shout, “No, don’t spoil it!”

Dmitry was confused.

“Okay, I won’t,” he said, giving the book back to me, “but I thought everypony knew about that. It happens in, like, third chapter in.”

“Well, I’m on chapter seven and it hasn’t happened yet,” I said.

“Well, it’ll happen soon,” he said. “But yeah, it’s one of the main parts of the book.”

“Just let me read it then!” I said.

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave you to it,” he said, backing towards the door. “When you’re done with your food or if you need anything else, just let me know.”

“Okay,” I replied.

Dmitry disappeared into the other room and closed the door behind him, leaving me with total peace and quiet to continue reading.

[quote “Why, Alyona Ivanovna, you know me... Raskolnikov... here, I brought you the pledge I promised the other day...” And he held out the pledge.

The old mare glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared in the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a-- Blah blah blah, boring descriptions, just get to the point.

“Why do you look at me as though you did not know me?” he said suddenly, also with malice. “Take it if you like, if not I’ll go elsewhere, I am in a hurry.”

He had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said of itself. The old mare recovered herself, and her visitor’s resolute tone evidently restored her confidence.

“But why, my good sir, all of a minute.... What is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge.

“The silver cigarette case; I spoke of it last time, you know.”

She held out her hoof.

Heh, ‘Silver.’ I’m Silver, my parents are Silver, my brothers and cousins and sisters and aunts, they’re all Silver. We have a lot of ponies named after objects in our family, but I don’t know if we’ve got anypony named ‘Silver Cigarette Case.’ Probably. Maybe a distant ancestor or something.

Anyway,

“But how pale you are, to be sure... and your hands are trembling too? Have you been bathing, or what?”

“Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You can’t help getting pale... if you’ve nothing to eat,” he added, with difficulty articulating the words.

‘Fever,’ hmmm… how’s my temperature?

I placed my forehoof over my forehead just below my horn. It felt exceedingly warm, and so did my back. In fact, my whole body did, so I thrust the covers off to the side of the bed.

His strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like the truth; the old mare took the pledge.

“What is it?” she asked once more, scanning Raskolnikov intently, and weighing the pledge in her hoof.

“A thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it.”

It still feels really weird, seeing my name like that. I mean, yes, it is both a color and a material, so it’s not much different from than if my name was Gold, or Stone, or White, Black, Brown, Green, or whatever. Still, seeing it capitalized like ‘Silver’ is a clear indication that it’s a name and that it’s talking directly to me. If it was all lowercase like ‘silver,’ then I would probably just assume it’s talking about, well, actual silver.

But when it actually says, ‘Silver… Look at it,” that seems more like an instruction directly to me. I looked around the room, but I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Unless it’s telling me to look at some actual silver, but I don’t have any with me. I do have something that looks like silver, even though it’s steel.

I reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer. Inside it, sitting on top of one of those prayer books you find in every nightstand, was a small and compact pistol with a shiny steel casing. I began levitating it out of the drawer, but was instantly reminded me of something I’d rather forget, so I put it back and closed the drawer. Then I picked up the book and started reading again.

“It does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!”

It truly does not… why am I sitting here in bed doing nothing? I should be outside doing stuff!
...At least, that’s what my dad would say… minus the ‘outside’ part. But then again, I can’t really go ‘outside,’ now can I? I kinda wish I could, though. I haven’t felt any rain in forever. Even if it’s as radioactive as the Overmare says, I sometimes wonder whether dying of radiation poisoning is worth getting five minutes of fresh air again, of being alone in the woods with a cool breeze and actually ‘living’ again. It certainly seems attractive when contrasted with sixty to seventy years of merely ‘existing’ (but not ‘living’) inside what essentially amounts to a climate controlled bank vault with a minibar.

Speaking of minibars, I’m kinda hungry. I’d better start eating some of this food that’s been generously provided for me before it gets cold. I set the book aside and moved the tray from the nightstand onto my lap and began eating, starting with the soup. I usually leave soup for a few minutes to cool, but this soup I had left too long and now it was kind of cold. But that wans’t the worst part: the soup itself tasted salty and watery and overall bland. The carrots were mushy and the noodles broke apart in my mouth like strips of dampened paper. It all tasted like paper too, so I could only eat little bits at a time to moderate the bitter taste in my mouth. Is this what soup is going to taste like for the rest of my life? Maybe this kind is just a super cheap variety that Stable-Tec bought in bulk to ensure each stable had a lifetime supply. It had to have been at least one year past its expiration date. If we have to stay in here even longer, will all future soups just taste even more like this? I suppose the stable’s farming modules might be able to grow ingredients to make new soup, but given the recent damage they’ve sustained, they say we might have to supplement our diets with preserved foods for at least a decade.

I busied myself with watching the bubbles drifting in the oily broth. I tried to pop them with my spoon, but they were highly resilient. They seemed to disappear when you stirred the broth around, but they would always come back when the broth settled down.

If only I could be that resilient.
When I couldn’t see any more noodles from the surface, I raised the bowl up to my mouth and tipped it, sucking in the broth like some kind of putrid yet still potable water. The water level in the bowl dropped and more noodles became visible.

Next came the toast. As I bit into the toast, I found it had a hard wooden texture and was extremely dry, but moistened into a sticky, doughy texture as it sat in my mouth. The floury taste was poor in comparison to pre-apocalyptic breads I’d tasted, and the butter on it was clearly an imitation made from corn syrup, but both were a welcome alternative to the noodles and broth of the weak soup.

With the food complete, I set the tray back onto the nightstand and returned to my book. I still had some orange juice left, but it was as bland and tasteless as the rest of the meal. It would be better to slowly sip it while my mind was focused on something else, like reading.

Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet…

Again, unnecessary description. Fuck, why does changeling literature have to be so damn long? It’ll skip to the dialogue and-- wait, what did that say again? Something about an axe and a noose?

He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right forehoof under the coat.

Ooh, something’s actually happening for once! I’ll keep reading…

His hooves were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.

“But what has he tied it up like this for?” the old mare cried with vexation and moved towards him.

He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.

Wait, what?

The old mare was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited…

Blah, blah, blah, get to the point.

As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hooves to her head. In one hand she still held “the pledge.” Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face;

And teabagged her?

...she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively.

He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)—the same right-hoof pocket from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his hooves were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood....

Holy shit. Is this what he was telling me about? This scene? Where he fucking hills a pony with an axe?

I kept reading, but he just killed the mare’s sister and then escaped. Barely.

Damn.

Then my mind flooded with flashbacks. Mostly of last night: a dark hallway. A scream. A gunshot. A body on the ground, a face covered in blood and guts. Blood pooling all around it. Another scream. My scream, both of them. Me looking up and looking around. The faint glow of a unicorn’s horn, disappearing behind a corner. Me swelling with rage. Galloping after her. A tackle, but hitting the ground instead. Getting up, saying “Aw, fuck it,” and shooting. One, two, three, five gunshots. Hearing voices down the hall. Fleeing. The fear. Sneaking back into the room. He’s not here, but he’ll be back later. Stashing the gun, the blood stained clothes, and and then waiting, in eerie silence. In darkness. Trying to get to sleep, but can’t. Lying awake. Will I get caught? I hope not. What will happen if anypony finds out?

They won’t.

They better not.

But even if they don’t, I’ll still have to live with the knowledge.

Perhaps it’s counterintuitive to write something down in a diary that you don’t want anypony to know about, but what else can I do? It’s the only form of therapy I have. Nopony’s ever found this diary yet, and as long as I’m alive, I’ll make sure they never will.

And, come to think of it, I haven’t flat out said “I did it,” have I? I don’t think stable security has the same forensics technology that the prewar police departments did, and I don’t think I left a trail, so maybe they won’t know. There are plenty of suitable scapegoats throughout the stable, like the numerous resident gang members, who are way more likely to do it than some mild mannered doctor’s daughter.

Besides, this isn’t the first murder that’s happened in our stable. If the last two months have taught me anything, it’s that within a few days, somepony will retaliate, and everypony will focus on that instead.

Flashbacks don’t receive experience points or level-ups.

Progress to Next Level: 325/2500

Stats:
Ponies Led: 0
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 0
Price of Silver: 2 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

If you notice the date, it takes place two months before she left the stable.

Chapter 11: Smugglers and Sex Cucumbers

Chapter 11: Smugglers and Sex Cucumbers

“Well, she always was a little shy. But for a while there, she was really starting to come out of her shell.”

Thursday, September 11th, 4347

Dear Diary,

Today was mostly smooth sailing. And by 'smooth sailing,' I mean that it had rained heavily last night, dousing everything in rain, but other than that it was rather uneventful. Last night's rainfall had flushed away most of the slush from the last snowfall, and the temperature was warm enough that there was no more ice.

Going to the seafood place last night was a mistake, since we all woke up feeling sick and queasy. So for breakfast we just traveled southward a few blocks until we found a convenience store and ate there.

We continued our incessant trek south, which was thankfully uneventful. The lack of bandit attacks or other travelers made us seem like the only ones in the city, which created an eerie feeling. It was made even more eerie when we reached the intersection with Colgate Blvd, where there was a large cemetery on the right side of the road. The tombstones alone would have made the scene feel eerie, but there were also large piles of corpses throughout the grounds, each accompanied by a hole. Some of the holes had been completely dug while others had only a few shovelfuls of dirt removed. In addition to each hole there were also the mounds of dirt that had been removed from the earth to create the hole, which had become soggy from the rain but somehow had not turned into complete mud. Little weeds growing from the mounds indicated that they had been dug some time ago, perhaps shortly after the bombing.

The whole site appeared to be a half-finished mass burial for victims of the bombs, but the diggers were nowhere to be seen, having left their shovels in neat little piles and their bulldozers parked off to the side, as if they had finished their work for the day and intended to come back tomorrow. Only they hadn't come back and the job was left incomplete. Either they had all succumbed to radiation poisoning, or they had collectively just said "fuck it" and started focusing on their immediate survival instead. If so, then I completely understand their point: in a world like this, why waste your time honoring the dead when you can squeeze a bit of fun out of your short and pitiful life before you too become a corpse like them?

Speaking of expiration, we had lunch at a fast food restaurant today. Well… what was a fast food restaurant. All of the meat had gone bad, so the only thing we could eat were the buns. Seriously, the whole push towards ‘never frozen’ beef back before the war has ended up backfiring, since now there’s a ton of meat at nearly every fast food joint that’s just been wasted. In a world without functioning supply chains, that just makes it inconvenient to those of us who are just trying to survive. Then again, there’s no electricity for the grills, so un-thawing frozen patties would have been completely useless.

It was also about now that we saw the first signs of recent pony activity in a while. Across the street there was this huge mall which I suspect must be a raider hideout. How do I know this? Well, many of the streetlights in the parking lot had mutilated corpses hanging from ropes, and a trail of blood leading towards one of them suggested a recent kill. However, we chose not to go inside to investigate because we’ve been making good progress and I didn’t want to waste time getting killed by psychopaths.

Shortly after, 82nd Street terminated and rejoined the freeway. It was about time that we changed roads and started going east. A short trek later, we found ourselves on the bank of a large river, traversed by a narrow bridge.

However, the bridge was guarded by a unit of gatekeepers who had fortified themselves in a position on the hump at the top of the bridge, so we hid behind the corner of a building to plan our course of action. Charging it would be throwing ourselves into a hail of machine gun fire, walking up and asking them to let us through nicely would have been suicide, and trying to swim across the river, well... that would just lead to zombification. I don't know which of those three is worse.

"Did either of you happen to pick up a sniper rifle?" I asked.

Both of my companions shook their heads.

"Okay... Grapevine, how good is your aim?"

"Ah played softball in high school."

"So... pretty good?"

"Ah dunno... our team never won a game."

"Are you fucking serious?" I gawked. Then, regaining my composure, I asked, "Okay, but do you think you could hit them?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Okay, then here's the plan: Grapevine will throw some grenades at them, then we'll go up and charge them. It's not ideal, but we don't really have any other options."

So Grapevine threw a few grenades, but they all missed. Half of them exploded several yards short of the gatekeepers, and the rest just fell into the river. She threw some more, but her luck was no better. She was about to throw another when I stopped her.

"Okay, that's enough grenades," I said. "Now we just have to go ahead and charge them."

We were about to jump out from behind the corner and charge them, but then I noticed that the gatekeepers were all riled up for some reason. I'd expect them to be on edge after being targeted by a bunch of grenades, but they were all running around their little encampment in random directions with their guns aimed in front of them, yelling battle cries, like they were NPCs in a video game that knew someone was out there but didn't have the sense to figure out what direction they should be looking in. Then two of them left the fortification and began charging down the bridge in our direction.

Their tactical folly led us to a rather fortuitous change of plan: instead of charging immediately, we ambushed the two just as they passed our position. They were stunned by our sudden attack, giving us a split second where we could shoot them again. Then they took another second to aim their guns at us, so we shot them again, killing them before they even had a chance to fire back. Then we charged the bridge, facing considerably less resistance than we otherwise would have from the distracted guards, who seemed to be looking for us in every direction except the one where we actually came.

After making quick work of the gatekeepers, we spent a few minutes looting some supplies from their camp before continuing on our way. Surprisingly, there wasn't much, but food is always useful and our ammo and grenade supplies had been heavily depleted back at the airport.
On the other side of the river lay the community of Lake Oneighgo. It was a wealthy suburb, evident in the architecture of its buildings, the proliferation of trees, and the snobbish attitude of everyone from this place I've ever met. I had a lot of contempt for this place because of the latter, but admittedly I have never really visited here. The three of us were somewhat taken in awe by its beauty-- or former beauty, given the state of the world-- and moved at a much more leisurely pace than I would have preferred.

We walked along a tree lined avenue in the middle of town. This, I presume, was the main commercial street, as it was wide and contained several upscale boutiques and coffee shops. Though somewhat damp and crawling with mold and mildew, the town was relatively well-preserved, having been shielded from the bomb's blast by the presence of a large hill to its immediate north.

We casually looted the stores as we went, but to our dismay they had already been looted, so we eventually just stopped our looting altogether and just pressed westward. Then the shops ended and it began a residential section shrouded in deep forest. Despite being de-leaved, the trees filtered much of the natural light, creating a dark environment that was only made darker by the beginning of the sun's descent below the horizon. Here there was a fork in the road, and we had to choose one route over the other.

“So which road should we take?” I asked.

“Um… maybe the north one?” Grapevine suggested.

“No, we should take the south route,” Dmitry said.

“Why the south road?” Grapevine asked. “There’s more trees, so we’re likely ta get ambushed there.”

“But the south one goes by the lake, so there’s less ground to get ambushed from,” Dmitry responded. “Besides, the north one goes by the country club.”

“But the lake’s a better place to build a raider camp,” argued Grapevine. “Won’t we be more likely ta get ambushed if we go towards the camps?”

“Not necessarily,” said Dmitry. “If we’re quiet, we could sneak right under their noses. And how would the lake make a better site for a camp? It’s probably radioactive.”

“Yeah, but that’s where all the expensive houses are,” said Grapevine.

“Raiders don’t give a damn about property values,” said Dmitry. “Only the most trafficked routes to raid.”

“Sure they do. They’re the best places ta loot. And live. Ever think that raiders might care about luxury too?”

“Luxury? They’re common criminals! What do they care about fancy houses except the joy of defiling them?”

“Comfort, quality of life, a nice place ta live… they’re also bigger so they’ve got more room to house their big raider families.”

“Raider families!?! Raiders don’t care about families! They only care about themselves!”

“With all that that drugged up sex, they’re bound to start havin’ babies...”

“And what are they gonna do with babies? Abandon them? Rape them? Eat them?”

“Babies are cute! Maybe you changelings see them as disposable…” She paused to think of a good term to use. “...sex cucumbers, since you have so many of them, but to us ponies, babies are special and need to be protected.”

“There you go with race again. And no, not all of you think babies are special. In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve seen way too many cases of filicide, most of them committed by filthy mud pony mares like you!”

Then I noticed a bat pony slowly approaching from the southern route. She had been coyly eavesdropping on our conversation the entire time, and only now began to approach us.

"Take the southern route," she said. "There's a trading post on the lake just off Mulberry Street."

Since she seemed friendly enough and didn't look like a raider, we followed her advice, taking the southern route down towards the lake and taking a left at Mulberry Street. This brought us to a road lined with large lakefront manors, all of which looked abandoned. We approached the least dilapidated looking one, a relatively small one nestled among several trees, and knocked on the door.

Nopony answered.

We knocked again, but still no answer.

Then we knocked a third time, even harder, but we were met with dead silence.

“Huh,” said Grapevine. “Maybe we should try the rear?”

“No, we should get out of here,” said Dmtiry. “It might be a trap.”

“Well, maybe we should at least try,” said Grapevine. “Maybe they’re just busy.”

“Oh, and now you’re the one saying we should take the southern route!”

I thought about breaking it up, but it was the end of the day and I was too tired to intervene. Instead, I wandered over to the shore and looked out across the lake. A bright streak of orange light broke through the clouds and shimmered across the murky green water, creating a scene that was both serene and otherworldly. It was the kind of moment you wished could last forever... but, like life, it didn't-- it would all have to end eventually, just like the day, just like your life, just like the world around it. I knew in the back of my mind that staying here would make me a sitting duck for any would-be raiders, but I figured that I could just enjoy the moment for now, like the brief moment of calm in an unending storm that it was.

Then I spotted it: the soft glow of lights from one of the houses. They had just kind of blended into the scenery, as I had been so used to seeing electric lighting during twilight hours such as these. It's still taking me a while to adjust to this whole 'post-apocalyptia' thing, coming to regard the strange as normal and the typical as anomaly. The very fact that electricity, something which had been so ubiquitous throughout the world, was now a scarce commodity, was still taking some time getting used to.

But nevertheless, there it was: light. And among the lights I could see the faint outlines of ponies milling about.

"Guys?" I called out. "I think I found that trading post she was talking about."

The trading post had been set up on Emerald Head, a small island just off the shore of the bay, connected to the land by a straight wooden bridge just wide enough to drive a car across. On the island stood a modest villa, its walls plastered with off-white stucco and its roof a cluster of tightly-packed yet orderly terracotta tiles. The building was covered in a blanket of dirt and dust, and appeared to have taken quite a beating from the elements over the past year, but appeared to have taken no structural damage. It was shielded from the world by a cluster of oaks and pines which formed a thick ring around the perimeter of the island, rendering it seemingly impervious to anything the outside world could throw at it.

I could see why whoever built this house built it here, and why its current occupants decided it was the perfect place to set up shop: it was close enough to the major roadways to ensure they would get business, while feeling isolated enough that they didn’t have to worry too much for their safety.

That being said, they still took great precautions to ensure that nothing could harm them. The gate on the mainland side of the bridge had been reinforced with wooden boards, barbed wire, and automated turrets. A small shack had been built to house a pair of guards, who vetted all visitors with the same stern demeanor and unwavering professionalism you’d expect from customs agents.

“Oh yes, here at Emerald Head we keep everything under lock and key,” explained Shuffled Papers, a former customs agent at the port who now served as the settlement’s chief of security. “On this island, the Arstotzka family keeps everything under lock and key.”

Dmitry later explained to me that the Arstotzkans were an illustrious yet reclusive family of nobles who were rumored to have extensive dealings in the criminal underworld. Despite Grestin Arstotzka being one of the hardliner ‘law and order’ guys on the House of Lords’ international trade committee, his family’s company, Red Eagle Shipping, allegedly made regular smuggling runs throughout the world.

“On paper, we had numerous sanctions against Changica and a complete embargo against the Zebra Empire,” he said. “But in practice, arms, luxury goods, and money flowed freely between the three.”

The secret to their success was their relationship with local customs officials, which was maintained with frequent gifts of imported vodka, cigars, and literal under-the-table cash payments. That, and them constantly ratting out smaller and less established competitors to the authorities. That way, the officials had a steady stream of arrests, making it look like they were solving the problem while secretly colluding with the biggest offenders.

Of course, we didn’t mention any of that during within earshot of the guards. We were, after all, their guests, and Shuffled Papers had been kind enough to show us around. The villa was nice, even if it was built with laundered money, and you had to admire the guards for their vision: a serene, safe paradise in the middle of a turbulent world where there’s no crime or drugs (ostensibly). The most important thing was the feeling of security, which ponies would pay a forehoof and a hindhoof for in today’s economy.

"Unfortunately, all of our rooms are booked," said the front desk clerk.

See? Perfect example. Even though it cost nothing to squat in a building or pitch a tent in somepony’s yard,

"Are you sure? Isn't there at least somewhere we can stay?" Dmitry asked. "The lobby perhaps, or the dining room, or even the maintenance shed?"

"I'm sorry," the clerk said, "But we can't do that. It's against our policy to house guests anywhere but a room, as the Arstotzka family does not want their estate to become a shanty town. You're allowed to stay until 8:00, at which time all visitors are required to leave. Until then, you're welcome to trade, wander the grounds, or finish up any business you otherwise have here."

It was delivered with the kind of blunt, matter-of-fact sentiment that you wish hotels and airlines and customer service reps in general would use whenever they try to beat around the bush, but always feels biting and hurtful on the few occasions it actually happens. Here we were told that, even though they clearly had the space to house hundreds of ponies, they were intentionally limiting themselves to a quota because it kept the place aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps the feeling of security also factors into it, seeing as it's a feeling carefully cultivated by controlling for many factors, but regardless, it still sucks to be excluded from such a wonderful place for a seemingly arbitrary reason such as "there aren't enough rooms" when there is clearly more that they have the power to do.

Well, rules are rules, and we weren't able to persuade the clerk to give us a pass. We spent the rest of the evening trading weapons we didn't need for more ammo, treating ourselves at the post's restaurant, and admiring the grounds on the island. The weapons we traded fetched a far lower price than I expected they would, with a .44 pistol only being worth 33 .44 rounds as an example. I would have expected a much higher price, since the rounds would be completely useless without the device to fire them, but the shopkeeper was pretty inflexible with his prices and all of the traders had retired for the day, so we had to accept. At least we still had the ammunition, which we could exchange for other things like ‘meal vouchers.’

It was about dinnertime anyway, so we just took the meal vouchers and whatever 5.56mm rounds we could get. Then we went over to the cafeteria, which had a rather limited selection mostly focused on meat and prepackaged food, but merely having access to food that was warm was an improvement over the last few days.

The gardens were somewhat overgrown and hadn’t been weeded in some time, but they were the most beautiful thing I had seen in a long time, especially at sunset. We took a few moments to admire the priceless beauty of it all, set against the backdrop of an orange-ish sky and the tranquil lake.

However, all good things must come to an end. We decided to leave while there was still a little bit of light lingering in the sky because we still needed to find a place to stay for the night. Grapevine thought she knew a shortcut, but ended up stranding us in a thickly forested park, with nothing but an overgrown trail to guide us. The thick canopy filtered out virtually all light, forcing us to use the 'night mode' lighting setting on our pipbucks for illumination. They made poor flashlights that couldn't light more than three hooves away from you, but it was all we had.

"Oh, great. Now we're stuck in the woods," I griped. "In the middle of the night."

"Well, we know who's sleeping on the floor tonight," Dmitry said.

"At this rate, we're 'all' going to be sleeping on the floor tonight if we can't find shelter," I replied. "Hold on-- listen."

We stopped and heard some branches cracking in the distance, and the faint traces of a voice. I turned off my pipbbuck light, and my companions quickly followed. We stood there, listening, as the sound of cracking branches and crunched leaves came closer and closer.

"Somepony's coming," I whispered. "Let's get off the trail."

We crouched down behind a bush and readied our weapons as the noises came closer and closer until I could clearly make out what it was: the voice of a young pumpkin-orange unicorn mare, singing something, and the faint sound of music…

Then she emerged: she was, indeed, a young mare. And she was, indeed, singing the lyrics of some stupid pop song. The muffled sound of music was audible from the headphones blaring it into her ears, and she came jogging down the path, seemingly oblivious to the immense danger that she was putting herself in. And she was dressed in sheepskin boots, black yoga pants, and a hot pink sweatshirt. She kept jogging towards us, and I was desperately hoping that she would take no notice of us and pass by, but then she stopped. Right in front of us. Apparently she had dropped something. She looked around, then knelt down to pick it up. She found it, but then Grapevine had to sneeze.

The mare looked towards us, picked the thing up, then stood up straight and looked at us more closely. For a while she seemed curious and confused, but suddenly her face lit up in delight.

“*Gasp!* Like, OMG! Bullet? Is that really you?”

“Silver, do you know her?” asked Dmitry.

“Yes,” I groaned. I had suspected it might have been her, but seeing her face and hearing her voice confirmed who it was.

“I knew her from school.”

“It’s been, like, soooo long!” she said. “We have to catch up sometime over coffee.”

“Silver, why don’t ya introduce us to yer friend?” asked Grapevine.

“She’s not my--” I said, but was cut off by the new pony, who promptly introduced herself as Pumpkin Spice, then yammered on about herself and her dog for quite some time.

It took almost forever, but we were finally able to stumble our way out of the woods... partially. We found the end of one of the trails, which led us into a neighborhood that was heavily forested, but at least had paved roads. It turns out that paved roads are really important when wandering around in the dark because they sort of tell you where to go. The only question left is which paved road to take when you come across an intersection. That part alone made it seem like nothing had changed, because we were still groping our way through the dark trying to find a way out.

Eventually we did reach a major street and were able to keep going. With the navigation thing taken care of, my thoughts began focusing on some seemingly more mundane matters, like the bitch we had just picked up. Damn, she was annoying. And when I say she was annoying, I mean that literally every single aspect of her fucking irritated the shit out of me! Everything about her: her body, her clothes, her voice, her personality, the life she led, that fact that she was all upbeat as hell about everything... but most of all, the fact that my 'friends' seemed to actually like her! I mean, we just dumped another filly like this, only to end up with another one who's even worse! Pumpkin Spice makes 'Katie' seem tolerable by comparison, no joke!

Anyway, there were some practical concerns that lingered in the back of my mind while this whole thing was going on, but I put them on the backburner so I could mentally bitch about petty high school girl drama. Pumpkin Spice's loud and obnoxious voice rambling on and on about the most insignificant trite wasn't just a threat to my sanity, it was also a threat to our group's safety. I mean, here you had four ponies wandering around in the dark, guided only by Stable-Tec's shitty excuse for a flashlight and a vague sense of direction, with a whiny voice broadcasting our presence for miles. We were sitting ducks just begging to get ambushed. The fact that we were on or near a major caravan route only heightened the chance that we would come across a group of bandits eventually. Bandits who, despite Spice’s seemingly magnetic personality, couldn’t be talked out of a fight.

This point eventually came to the fore when we got near the freeway. Despite passing by several buildings that would have served as adequate shelter, Spice insisted on sleeping somewhere with beds. Come to think of it, we could have just gone into any of the houses back in that neighborhood, but I guess we were so concerned with finding our way out of the woods that we chose to ignore that option. Also, knowing Spice, she would have objected to breaking into a building, or anything that would have violated a pre-war code of morality, even though you could make a pretty convincing argument that any notions of ‘morality’ got thrown out the window after Littlehorn. Yeah, I realize that this contradicts the point I made two chapters ago about feeling guilty over trespassing, but when it’s getting late after a long day, sometimes you just want to lie down on the first bed you come across.

Given that we had finally come across some suitable beds, I was pretty excited, and I presume the others were pretty excited as well. But then disaster struck and our hopes were dashed.

It didn’t come all at once: at first, it was manageable. Dimly illuminated by torches, I could see a group of griffons on the overpass just past the hotel, and they didn't look friendly. However, they weren't looking in any direction in particular, and seemed to be too engrossed in a heated argument among themselves to notice us. As long as we turned off our flashlights, moved slowly, and didn't make any noise…

"OMG! Is that, like, a Burned Bean? It's been soooooo long since I've had a mocha!"

Damn it. She found a coffee shop across the street and galloped towards it like a puppy whose owner has just come home from work (I guess you could say Burned bean has made her its bitch, ba dum tsss!). And, while I think having coffee this close to bedtime is counterproductive and stupid, I normally wouldn't mind if it weren't for those griffons on the bridge, who had heard her exclamation and stopped arguing.

"Let's get them!"

These guys were a little bit harder. Armed with assault rifles and leather armor reinforced with metal plates, we had to duck into the bushes in front of the Burned Bean to avoid getting sprayed with bullets. After their first charge, we engaged in a little firefight: not my preferred activity before bed, but we didn't really have much of a choice, did we? Sadly, they were much too strong for us to hold back, and we eventually had to retreat. I swear, they must have been on drugs or something to have been that obstinate against our defense.

We ran across the parking lot of the shopping center where the Burned Bean was, trying to zig-zag out of the path of their bullets. They probably had extended magazines or something, because at this point I hadn't seen them reload even once. I ducked behind a parked car for cover, then remembered that these things were highly explosive and would probably blow at any time, so I had to dash between cars to avoid the fire while getting out of that parking lot before the whole thing went up in flames.

The parking lot exploded in a magnificent chain reaction just after I got to safety. One car after the other, it was truly a spectacle of physics that would have been enjoyable under any other circumstance. Although it did get rid of most of the griffon raiders, one still survived, emerging from the wreckage covered in orange flames but otherwise appearing as if nothing had happened. How anyone could survive an explosion as big as that without serious injury or third degree burns was beyond me, and could be described with only one word: legendary.

This ‘legendary’ griffon was also frenzied, as blowing up a bunch of cars to kill him and his friends obviously wasn’t very nice (even though they were the ones who hit the cars, not me). In his infinite rage, he chased me down the street. All I could do was run, occasionally turning back to take a few shots at him or ducking behind a tree to avoid a spray of bullets or grenades. It took a while, and a lot of running, but I finally felled him with a well-placed shot in the neck (thanks, SATS) which may have cut through his jugular vein.

The sputtering beat fell to the ground, clutching his neck with its talons and coughing up blood. But the talons were sharp and just cut its neck, making him lose even more blood. It was absolutely pitiful. Dmitry and Grapevine, who I presume had been providing support from behind, came over and the three of us solemnly stood over the fallen griffon.

“Is there anythin’ you can do to, umm…?”

“No,” I replied. “It cut pretty deeply into his neck and probably pierced his throat. Barring some kind of crazy spell, I’d say he’s pretty much dead.”

Then Pumpkin Spice waltzed over, levitating a mocha and not bearing even a single scratch from the battle.

“Hey guys, I’m back. I went in but there was nopony there and the lights weren’t on so I thought it might be closed, but they didn’t have their ‘closed’ sign up so I thought maybe they were open but just doing something in the back so I rang the bell but nopony came so I went in the back and nopony was there so I thought maybe they were just on break so I just used my coffee roasting spell and left the money on the counter, and what happened here?”

She abruptly stopped and looked down at the griffon, who had stopped moving and bleeding and was now, for all intents and purposes, a corpse. Spice looked at Grapevine and Dmitry but they just looked at each other. Then she looked at me. I looked down at the beast and simply said,

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

It was definitely getting late and we needed to find shelter, especially now that the sky was now pitch black and it was getting really cold. During the fight we had also lost our sense of direction, and ended up going north even though I told them that the hotel was to the south. We quickly stumbled upon a grand white building with several spires jutting out of it.

Pumpkin Spice gasped.

“Like, OMG, this is the temple, guise” she said in a hushed, reverent tone.

“Great,” said Dmitry. “Can we go inside?”

“Well… nonbelievers aren’t really allowed into the temple,...” Pumpkin Spice said, “...but since you’re with me, I’m sure you can come in as guests!”

The building was surrounded by a large green wrought iron fence. I tried to open the gate, but it didn’t budge.

“Huh,” Grapevine said. “Doesn’t look like they’re accepting any guests right now.”

“That’s strange,” said Pumpkin Spice. “It’s always open.”

“Have you even been here in the past eleven months?” I asked sternly.

“Nope, not since October 20th,” she replied. “I kinda need to work on attendance. I can’t believe I missed last year’s Hearth’s Warming service. And this year’s Bunny Day service. And the annual bake sale!”

“No need to worry,” said Dmitry. “Already got the lock open. It was kind of a flimsy one, too.”

Pumpkin Spice gasped in horror.

“You could have just knocked!” she cried. “You didn’t have to break in!”

“But...” said Grapevine, “...the door’s all the way over there!”
“Okay, well, you still could have called them. Somepony would have picked up the phone and opened the door.”

“But we don’t even know their number!” Grapevine exclaimed.

I couldn’t tell if Grapevine was simply humoring her or if she was that stupid. But it seemed pretty obvious that Pumpkin Spice had become either profoundly ignorant of the world around her, or profoundly delusional. I mean, she was always an idiot at school before the war, but now she’s straight up denying reality. Now, I could give her the benefit of the doubt that this is just some bizarre coping device, but that would imply she has even a shred of self-awareness.

Anyway, after a little bit of drama and an offhoof remark about Changelings being natural-born thieves, Pumpkin Spice took us into the temple. Now, I think believing in magical sky fairies who will solve all of your problems if you worship them enough is bullshit, but I couldn’t help but be awed by the splendor and majesty of the temple. If I was going to pray, this was certainly the place to do it, with the white walls, regal furnishings, and faint rays of light beaming down from the windows above. To Pumpkin Spice’s dismay, she couldn’t find anypony anywhere inside, remarking that it was very unlike the staff to completely vacate the building. However, I think this is a good thing. If any ponies were going to occupy this place today, they would very likely be the type who would take pleasure in defiling it.

The only problem with sleeping here tonight was that we couldn’t find any beds. I suggested just sleeping on the pews since they were long enough, but nopony else wanted to because they were hard and even the slightest noises echoed throughout the room in the main prayer hall. So we kept looking around until we came across a place called the ‘Celestial Room,’ which had couches, and decided that it would do. Mysteriously enough, I found another one of those blue puzzle pieces wedged in between the cushions, like somepony was trying to hide it there. I quickly stashed it into my saddlebag before anypony could notice.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I thought about that most celestial of ponies, Princess Celestia herself. Was she still alive, in some form or another? Probably not, since Canterlot surely got glassed during the war, but what if she still existed in some spiritual form out in the aether, watching over us? Guiding us? Could the rumors I heard back in the stable about her ascension to godhood have any truth to them?

Personally I have always admired her sister, Luna, but what chance is there that she could be out there too, still existing in some form or another, in spite of all the zebras’ attempts to destroy her?

Level up!

Level 6: Wasteland Noob

Demolition Expert’s Apprentice: You’re getting pretty good at blowing things up, but you’ll still need some training before you can become an expert. Do 20% more damage with explosives.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 3
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 13 bits per Troy Ounce

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself or get worse, depending on your endurance, rest, and actions. Curable with antibiotics.

Chapter 12: Tall and Wide

Chapter 12: Tall and Wide

“Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

Friday, September 12th, 4347

Dear Diary,

The four of us got up pretty early considering just how late we had gone to bed the previous night. We had a quick breakfast, then we set off on our adventure. We needed to cross the freeway so we had to go back to the bridge, which fortunately was free of griffons this time. It's amazing just how different a place looks between night and day, with the daytime world appearing much bigger and feeling vastly more safe.

As we crossed the bridge, I looked down at the freeway below and saw a lifeless ditch full of parked cars. Most of them had been broken into. A few articles of clothing, atlases, vehicle registration papers, and other stuff littered the roadway, things that were presumably thrown out of the cars when they were being cleaned out by looters. Strangely, none of their car alarms were sounding, so either the looters had found a way to disable them, or the alarms had been left to blare until the car batteries ran dry. Instead, a chilling silence rang through the air, now devoid of all the noise that one takes for granted when living in a city. Nothing moved except for a few crows picking around the decaying bodies of the griffons we had fought the previous night. The ominous silence and the emptiness of our surroundings seemed to indicate that we were now entering dangerous territory, a land of death from which, if we returned alive, would forever change us.

The others in my party also seemed to feel this, save Pumpkin Spice (who, need I remind you, had never been invited to travel with us in the first place). She had retained that same carefree attitude we had seen since we’d (I’d) met her. When the road we were following turned into a highway and we ascended the ramp, Pumpkin Spice was suddenly nervous and insisted that we take another way because “we might get hit by a car.” Now, I admit that even I felt nervous when I first started walking on roadways like this, but she insisted that we were doing something dangerous, and I don’t think she was joking at all. Later, when we told her that we were going to the mall, she got really excited and talked about what she intended to buy there.

At first I just thought she was being dramatic, but then I realized that this was just part of a long pattern of behavior: the casual clothing, loudly singing in an ambush zone, her mad dash towards the coffee shop, the reluctance to break basic laws like jaywalking or trespassing or burglary even though they were no longer enforced…

I don’t think she quite understands that all of that is now in the past and that we’re not in Equestria anymore.

What the hell was this? How could she be so dumb? I mean, I knew she was a bimbo before, but how could anypony possibly be this stupid? I don’t know if it’s just some weird coping device or if she’s actually delusional or what, but I-- just-- I can’t even.

As annoying as it is to travel with somepony who seems this detached from the world, I realized that I could use this to my advantage. She didn’t participate in the fight last night and seemed distraught at the sight of the ‘legendary’ griffon’s corpse. Perhaps if we were to get ourselves into a really dangerous situation, (like the one we had planned to go into today), then maybe...

We took the ‘Greenfield Road’ exit, which I had correctly guessed was just before the mall. It also happened to pass by the office park, which allowed us to do a little bit of what I call ‘flyby recon.’ From the outside it looked completely abandoned, but then I realized that the windows on three of the five red brick buildings had been boarded up with scrap metal and there were a few ponies on the roofs, likely snipers. To my great disappointment, I reasoned that the complex must have been taken over by some raider group, or possibly by this ‘Pegasus Enclave’ thing, but I was too far away to make out any details. I guess we’re going to find out in a few hours when we storm the place.

We kept traveling down the road a short ways to get to the mall, passing by a graveyard on the way. When we finally got to the mall, we discovered that most of the exits had been boarded up, so we circled the building until we finally found an entrance almost back where we started. The entrance in question had been the entrance of a sporting goods store, where two glass doors had been boarded up to protect the building from the outside while still remaining usable as a doorway, with a small block of wood bolted to the inside (but no the outside) of each door to serve as makeshift handles. Several indentations on the inside edges of each door indicated that some robber had managed to pry these doors open with a crowbar-- apparently it had never occurred to whoever had made their nest inside to install a padlock. These doors hung wide open, inviting any who wished to enter the structure’s cavernous depths.

We entered the mall, only to find the messiest building we had yet encountered. Messier yet than all of the abandoned retail establishments we had passed thus far, completely trashed in the panic before the bombs and further trashed by scavengers and squatters. It was almost as if the new owners of this mall were deliberately trying to be messy, as if to rebel against “the social construct of cleanliness” or some shit like that. In addition to the normal dust and dirt you would expect from a heavily trafficked building that hadn’t been cleaned in a year, many food wrappers lay strewn across the floor, many of them flattened into the ground by repeated hoof traffic. The advertisements of the old mall still remained on the walls, but most of them had been defaced or plastered over with vulgar graffiti.

In this store, most of the merchandise had been piled against the walls and shoved aside. Much of the camping gear and sports equipment which could conceivably be used for combat had been looted, but the store had enough in stock that it would take an army to remove it all in one trip. Grapevine eagerly galloped over to a pile of propane canisters, eager to find something to refill her flamethrower, but was quickly disappointed to find that they had all been emptied. Strewn throughout the room were numerous canvas chairs and sleeping bags arranged in circles around campfires and grills. Most of these had half-rotten corpses in various positions, though many of the ones in the bags had been clutching their throats. The fur and skin had been pierced through in many locations by very tiny, irregular holes. Their bodies were extremely thin and pale, but it didn’t appear like any of them had died of starvation; if I had to guess, they had died of some other cause, then have insects dig into their bodies and devour all the edible tissue. I soon began to notice several trails of dead ants and flies throughout the room, as well as several strategically placed pest traps. Perhaps the insects had resorted to eating these after they had run out of corpse?

The air smelled musty and putrid, indicating a lack of circulation, as if every conceivable hole had been blocked. The rot was made somewhat bearable by the smell of propane, which hung throughout the air.

Towards the back of the room, I stumbled upon a corpse in a sleeping bag with some sheets of paper sprawled out in front of it. A pen next to the corpse’s hoof, identifying it as the author. The hoofwriting indicated that the author was probably a mare. I will slip these papers between the pages of my journal for you to read:

December 18:

The world ended almost two months ago. I should feel lucky to still be alive, I guess, but I don’t. Every day since then has been a living nightmare. Most of our friends and family are gone, and everything just feels empty. Roving gangs of looters walk the streets, pillaging everything they can find and killing anypony who gets in their way. We’ve all begun to run out of food, so we need to go out there and scavenge.

It doesn’t make any sense to live in suburbia anymore-- we all live so far away from everything and each other. We’ve all decided to pool our resources and live here, in this old mall. We’re abandoning the creature comforts of our homes, but to be safe and have a community again makes it all worth it.

December 20:

It’s cold, unbelievably cold. We’ve had on and off snowfall since the End, but it’s the dead of winter and it’s starting to get colder than any of us had ever imagined. The temperature dropped below -20 today, and three layers still isn’t enough to do it. Hank wants us to start boarding up every window, door, vent, and crack there is except for the front door to keep the warmth in. Sure we’ll be blocking out all the sunlight, but Hank assures us we have enough propane to keep the lights on for a while. In the spring we can think about installing skylights, but for now we just have to survive the winter. He made it clear he wants absolutely no windows left unboarded-- we’re trying to keep robbers away by ‘playing dead’ and pretending this place is abandoned. I just hope this all works.

December 23:

We’ve finished boarding everything up, just in time for Hearth’s Warming Eve. It’s already making a difference, and we can comfortably dress down to two layers now. Still, we’re going to sit and sleep close together to stay even warmer. It’s funny-- we’re huddling close in a cave to keep warm, just like our ancestors did on the first HWE. Maybe Equestria will be reborn this way, just like the phoenix, our national bird. It’s a shame that only two of the tribes are represented though. There were a few pegasi with us at the beginning, but we took a vote and decided to ban pegasi for the treason of their fellows. They were nice ponies and I wished them well on whatever their next endeavour is, however slim their chances of survival out there may be. I just hope the rest of us can recreate the magic of Hearth’s Warming without them.

January 7:

Happy new year, I guess. It doesn’t really matter anymore, anyway. We’ve started to notice that some of our ill, old and infants are starting to suffer from some strange disease. There aren’t any doctors among us, so many ponies are freaking out and racking their brains trying to think of what it is. Yellow Canary keeps yapping about some Chollima magic called “fang-shooey” and how the rooms themselves are giving us all bad luck. I have no idea what she’s talking about-- it sounds too far fetched for me.

January 14:

The disease is spreading. A few have actually died. We’re getting desperate now and willing to try just about anything.

January 15:

It worked! We all moved to another part of the compound and it actually worked! It stopped spreading and the infected are beginning to recover. I guess those rooms really were cursed, weren’t they?

January 30:

Just two weeks after we thought we cured it, the curse of fang shooey is back. Maybe we didn’t move far enough? Hope this works.

February 7:

More sickness. It seems to follow us wherever we go. We moved again and quarantined the infected rooms, but we’re all afraid that it might not be enough…

February 15:

Some soldiers moved into the office park nearby. That’s where I wanted us to settle, but all the supplies are right here and nopony wanted to carry them over, so here we are. These guys aren’t thugs like all the others-- they just mind their own business and ignore us. They aren’t any more friendly though, and keep telling us to go away. They’ve started to board the towers up just like we did with their place. We offered to let them move in, but they said something about it distracting them from their ‘mission.’

February 18:

The sickness is back! We’re going to quarantine the area again, but this time leave all the ill inside to die with it. Nopony wants to do this, but we don’t know what else to do. We don’t have a doctor, and those soldier ponies refuse to lend us theirs. Are we going to have to wear masks or something?

March 3:

A big snowstorm’s coming, everypony can feel it. We’ll all be huddled inside for a day or two. We’ve got just enough propane to last us a week, and we know where we can find more after the storm passes. A few ponies tried to leave because of the curse, but Hank insists that we can only survive if we stick together.

March 5:

Bad storm. Can’t leave. Everypony sick. Air too thin. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Bodiz turn purpl.

Fang Shooey

After reading these notes, the creepy environment suddenly acquired a sinister and deadly feeling. Despite knowing that this ‘curse’ or ‘disease’ was likely not going to affect me, I wanted to make my time in this deathtrap as short as possible.

Grapevine had come over and began reading the list as well. Towards the end, her eyes lit up.

“Woah, that’s one serious curse!” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

“It wasn’t a curse,” I said. “They were burning all this propane in an unventilated space. They clearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Grapevine blinked, then looked around at all the grills and propane canisters. Then it clicked.

“Ohhhhhh! That makes perfect sense. Uh, I mean-- I totally knew that all along!”

“Riiiiight,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now, with the door pried open it’s probably safe, right?”

“Of course,” said Grapevine. “Though we should prob’ly limit our time here. Y’know, just in case is a curse.”

“Totally,” I said. “By the way, where’d Pumpkin Spice go?”

“Deeper into the cave,” she said. “Can you go in and find her?”

I went deeper into the mall in search of more supplies. Unfortunately, I was only met with mountains of junk: cheap plastic trinkets of all kinds were stacked in mounds within each store, simple mementos of a bygone age. Everything useful to a survivalist like myself had been looted long ago, either in the two months before the mall had been inhabited or in the five months afterward. Anything remotely edible had either been eaten, looted, or spoiled and thrown out or consumed by insects. Of course, I had learned from my earlier adventures of dumpster diving that useful items can be found anywhere, but I certainly wasn’t willing to stay in this place for very long.

And why would I? It was the perfect horror movie setup: dark and dismal, somewhat confining, and with the occasional sound of dripping water or bits of rubble falling from the ceiling. All I could hear was the sound of my own hoofsteps-- not even rodents were willing to venture into this place, and that’s telling. There were occasional lights in the darkness, where the old skylights once stood. The apocalypse had done some serious damage to this building and probably broken many of these skylights. The squatters had attempted to patch these holes up, but they did such a hasty job that some of the planks had already begun to fall down. Through these holes water and snow had fallen, and created large puddles in the middle of the hallways. These mixed with the dust and dirt which had accumulated on the unclean floors to create mud. I noticed a trail of fresh hoofprints wandering down the hall and towards a large shoe store, next to a trendy clothing boutique, next to a....

She would probably be here for a very long time.

Grapevine and I walked outside to reunite with Dmitry. We found him talking with a merchant outside of a ‘Quills and Sofas’ outlet that was detached from the main mall.

"Oh, are those your friends?" asked the merchant.

"Yep, there they are," Dmitry replied. "Hey, where's Pumpkin Spice?"

“I thought it best that we leave her here while we go storm the tower,” I said. “She isn’t really much of a fighter.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern for your friend’s safety,” Dmitry said. “And since we’ll probably have to rely on stealth, the fewer of us the better.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The three of us already work well as a team. I don't think she could keep up."

Dmitry turned to the merchant and asked, "Do you happen to know anything about that office park just down the street?"

The merchant trembled.

"Oh, I wouldn't go there if I were you," she replied. "It's occupied by some really dangerous thugs."

"We survived the airport," Grapevine said. "I'm sure we'll survive this."

"I don't think you understand," the merchant said. "Those guys have military grade training and weaponry. It's generally believed that they're defects from the CPG."

"Well, they have something in there that we need," I replied. "Something that we can't get anywhere else."

"What is it?" the merchant asked.

"A... umm..." I hesitated to think of some kind of an object we could look for so I wouldn't have to explain the complex reasons for why we really left.

"A... a water chip," I said. "Yeah, that's right, a water chip."

"A 'water chip?'" asked the merchant. "Did you mean water crackers? You can get those anywhere. Heck, I have some with me right now."

"No, it's definitely called a 'water chip,'" I said. "It's a pretty important piece of technology crucial to our water purification system."

The merchant paused in thought. "Hmmm.... Nope, don't think I've ever heard of those before. Then again, water purifiers are outside of my expertise. Though you should probably buy some water crackers. They may be bland, but they last forever and taste slightly better than hardtack."

“I think we have enough food for now, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be back at the stable in a few days.”

“Ya know, we might get thrown for a loop again,” Grapevine said. “We haven’t exactly gone from point A to point B, and the stable didn’t really have much food to begin with.”

“Alright,” I said. “How much?”

As Dmitry and Grapevine bargained for the water crackers, I stared at the top of the office park tower in the distance and wondered how we were going to get past the snipers.

“Thank you kindly,” the merchant said as she received her payment. “And here are the crackers. I’d love to keep talking, but I have to get going. I have to go trade at the mall, then get to Emerald Head by sunset.”

“Yeah, you definitely don’t want to be by the lake at dusk,” Dmitry replied.

There was a brief pause as we each gathered up our stuff and prepared to move out.

“Oh, by the way,” the merchant added, “If you do end up storming the tower, I think they had a hostage.”

“A hostage, eh? Funny story about that,” Dmitry said. “A few days ago we were at the airport and heard that some raiders were keeping a hostage inside the control tower. Turned out to just be a rumor, no hostages whatsoever. I think it might have been a trap.”

“Oh, It isn’t a trap alright,” the merchant said. “It’s real. I actually saw one of their patrols the other day in Marewaukie. They had a captive they said they got from Sandy Shades. They were pretty nice as far as foalnappers go. I felt pretty sorry for her. I offered to buy her freedom, but they wouldn’t sell. So we just kinda traded some supplies and then parted ways.”

“A captive?” asked Dmitry. “Huh. What’d she look like?”

“Let’s see...” said the Merchant. “Well, I remember she was a brown earth pony with a jet black mane, kinda dirty, and she had these big mud-green eyes.”

Then she looked at me.

“Oh, and she was about your age.”

“My age?” I asked. The merchant nodded.

My eyes went wide.

We galloped towards the tower as fast as we could.

“A ‘water chip?’” Dmitry asked between breaths. “A ‘water chip?’ You could have just--”

“It would have taken too long to explain,” I said quickly with a hint of annoyance. “Unless you already told her, did you?”

“Um, no, I didn’t,” he answered. “I merely told her we were on a quest to save our stable, but she didn’t inquire further. It was almost as if she’s encountered ponies like us before.”

“She has,” he said. “She’s met ponies from Stable 75, 74, and even some from 73 from across the river. Can you imagine, rafting across the Coltumbia?”

“I’d love to hear about it, but not now,” I said. “Right now, we’ve got a hostage to save.”

We kept running until we got to the office building.

We entered a spacious lobby which I imagine had once been designed and furnished according to the height of modern architecture, but had since fallen into disrepair. Sleek, stark forms permeated the room and everything seemed to be at an angle, which only served to disorient me. Under any other circumstances I would have stopped to admire it, but at this moment I had three combat trained soldiers shooting at me from behind fortifications made of overturned office furniture and two more shooting at me from the balcony of the floor above. The entrance, which we had so foolishly barged into, was inside a sort of cavity which placed it lower than the rest of the room. The only way we could get out of the cavity without leaving the building was by ascending a short, broad flight of stairs in the middle of the room, which had been barricaded at the top.

Quickly assessing the situation, I realized there was no cover, and if we stood out in the open like this we were sitting ducks. I instinctively dove towards the only place I thought safe: the edge of the cavity just below their barricades. Grapevine and Dmitry, having no other options, followed suit. It turned out to be the perfect place since it was out of their lines of sight and fire. As long as I stood there, they couldn't hurt us, unless they got smart and dropped a grenade over the wall. I sincerely hoped they wouldn't do that.

My luck paid off: instead of taking the obvious choice and trying to flush me out, the soldiers on the ground actually opened the barricade and 'came down the flipping stairs' to fight us. Big mistake for them, because I was ready. Being momentarily stunned by our assault rifle fire, I quickly ran around behind them and up the stairs. Ducking behind their barrier, I had turned the tables on them and now possessed the high ground. Two of them tried to charge up the stairs to retake their position, but a direct spray of bullets pushed them back down. Meanwhile Grapevine had set them on fire. Then I casually tossed a grenade down the stairs to finish them off.

Once all three of us were inside the barrier, the guards on the balcony went to go look for the stairs. We were out of their sight anyway, and they may have gone to fetch reinforcements or better weapons. I didn't know when or where they would attack us, but we had a little time to heal our wounds and prepare.

We found some well-stocked ammo containers behind the barrier which, along with looting the corpses, more than made up what we had expended here today. We began looking around the room for other stuff to loot, but it had already been stripped clean of useful items. There was even a small convenience store coming off of the lobby, but all of the shelves had been emptied. We picked the lock on the stockroom expecting some goodies, but it too had been cleared. Then we sat around the lobby for a few minutes waiting for the two balcony snipers to show up to face us, but they didn’t.

“Come on, let’s go through the corridors,” I said. “They’re probably preparing a big surprise for us if we just stay here.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we look at the directory first?” asked Dmitry, pointing at a directory of the building.

“Why didn’t I notice that?” I chided myself.

Getting the location from the directory, we ventured into the hallways. They were dimly lit and very long and narrow. It was deadly silent except for the sound of our hooves quietly trodding along the carpet.

“This has ambush written alllllll over it,” said Grapevine.

“You’re right,” I said. “Okay, when we get near corners, stick to the walls.”

So we stuck close to the walls, keeping an eye out for anything that might jump out at us from behind a corner or a door.

“Hey, why are we going this way?” asked Grapevine. “Shouldn’t we--”

“Shhhh!” I shushed. “Speak quietly. They might hear us.”

“Sorry,” Grapevine whispered. “It’s just that… shouldn’t we be goin’ down that hallway instead of this one? The elevators were over there.”

“I’m trying to confuse them,” I replied. “They’re probably expecting us to go that way. They know this building better than we do, so we can’t afford to let them ambush us.”

“She’s right,” Dmitry said. “And besides, we don’t even know if the elevators are still working. Or if they have enough power to run them. Just look at how dim these lights are.”

All three of us looked up at the lights and saw that they were, in fact, pretty dim. Even with the sun blotted out by clouds and again by the metal plates over the windows, the lobby was still way lighter than this hallway was.

We kept stalking down the corridor, jumping at every sudden noise just to be safe. I came to realize that I had no idea exactly how many of these ‘Testudos’ there were. There could be a hundred, or two hundred, or a thousand… or maybe they’re only around 30 or 50 ponies. I didn’t know, and I don’t think anypony outside knew either, since these guys tend to keep to themselves in this little compound… aptly fitting that they named themselves after the turtle.

Just as I thought, we arrived at the end of the hallway and found a stairwell. As we climbed it, I looked up and saw that it went all the way up to the building, some twelve stories, and I imagined all the different rooms there were for these ponies to hide in. The thought was dizzying.

We reached the landing for the second floor and I was about to open the door when I suddenly forgot which room we were going to.

“Does anypony remember what the room number was?” I asked.

“Hmmm...” Dmitry thought, then shrugged cluelessly.

“Ah think it was 626,” said Grapevine.

“Are you sure?” asked Dmitry. “626 seems a bit… high.”

“Ah remember it had the numbers ‘6’ and ‘2’ in it,” she said, “and that the first and last ones were the same.”

“Well, your guess is as good as mine,” said Dmitry.

I had a gut feeling it was supposed to be on the second floor, maybe something like 222 or 226, but I didn’t press the issue.

After climbing four flights of stairs, I stopped before opening the door to the sixth floor. The others, who had gone at a slower pace, arrived less exhausted but took longer to get there. By the time they reached the sixth floor landing, I had already caught my breath.

“How can you get up here so fast and not be out of breath?” Dmitry asked.

The truth was that I was panting heavily when I first got up here, but I just smiled and said, “Magic. Now ya ready to open the doo--”

I looked and saw that the door was already open.

“Wha-- how did--?” I asked.

Dmitry smiled and just said, “Magic.”

Then I realized the telekinetic aura was still glowing around his horn and the doorknob.

I gave him a ‘touche’ look, then walked through the doorway.

The sixth floor felt a lot more… lofty… than the first or the second. I could see through the cracks in the window plating that we were definitely very high up. I began to feel a bit nervous because of this, even though I knew consciously that I had nothing to fear and there was no risk of falling off.

We also weren’t as careful when stalking the hallways this time around. Chalk it up to forgetfulness or simply feeling more comfortable in a previously unknown location (even though this was the 6th floor, the hallways looked exactly the same as the first, just slightly more luminous), but my friends didn’t stick to the walls this time and I didn’t remind them.

This may have cost us dearly.

As we got nearer and nearer to Suite 626, I began to feel like somepony was there. But when I looked around, I saw nothing, and when I listened carefully, I heard nothing. I suspected that something was behind a door, but I couldn’t tell which.

Then we reached the entrance to Suite 626, which was distinguished from the rest of the hallway by a set of glass windows looking into a small lobby, with a set of glass double doors in the middle. This setup was shared by roughly all of the suites, with the exception of the ‘Suite 626’ printed next to the doors and the presence of the tenant’s logo, a storm cloud with purple wings and a tricolor lightning bolt shoved up its ass… or was that a tail? Who knows and who cares? Still a strange logo for a utility company. The office inside looked just like every other office we’ve passed, except it was somehow… tidier?

Dmitry noticed the logo and stepped closer to take a good look at it. “Hey, it’s the MoA Office of--”

I was about to go inside when Grapevine gently pried open an unmarked door, her curiosity getting the better of her. Inside was a dimly lit control room filled with tiny glowing lights and screens filled with spreadsheets and graphs. One screen showed a rooftop camera pointed at Mt. Hoof, and one wall prominently featured a map of the province studded with little lights near each major town and city, a few of them glowing. And worst of all, there were three ponies inside the room, one dressed like a scientist and two others in military fatigues.

“Hey!” one of them yelled, and all three drew their guns.

“Come on, this way!” I yelled, running further down the hallway. I presumed that this side of the building would also have a staircase, given the building’s symmetrical design. Just as we got inside the stairwell, we heard a few more soldiers running up the stairs from the floor below. This left us with no choice but to run up the stairwell to the seventh floor, where we had to get off because somepony had spilled a drink on the next flight of stairs.

We bolted down a hallway going towards the back of the building, which worked for a while until we stumbled across a patrol coming from around the corner. Faced with hostiles coming at us from front and back, I had no choice but to duck into an office suite and take cover behind a row of desks.

“We might as well make a stand,” I said as I brought out an assault rifle and aimed it at the doorway. When the first soldier appeared in the doorway, I made quick work of his forelegs, forcing him to limp back into the hallway and out of range.

It was a minute or two before they made their next move. Realizing we had taken up position and that charging wouldn’t work, they got smart and decided to throw a grenade. I set a mine and tossed it out like a frisbee, landing squarely in the middle of the room just before it exploded. I ducked to avoid the explosion, but instead of shrapnel or gunpowder, the room filled with smoke.

“Clever,” I thought, realizing that they intended to blur our field of view and then charge us. “But not clever enough.”

Three of them charged in and set off the mine, not seeing it in all the smoke. They too were injured, and had to drag themselves out of the room to safety. I would have liked to shoot them to finish the job, but the smoke still lingered in the air, preventing seeing and breathing.

Then it took a few minutes longer for them to leave. I considered just getting up and going, but then second-guessed myself; they could just be waiting to ambush us, after all. Finally, they arrived, using probably the silliest mode of attack I had ever seen from a professional soldier: three of them came in riding on the backs of some swivel chairs they pulled from another room like tanks. Protected behind the backs of the tanks, they were protected from anything we could shoot at them, which I admit was actually pretty clever, but there was still one fatal flaw in their strategy:

I simply chucked a grenade over their heads and it exploded behind them. Boom. Totally ass-devastated from the explosion (literally, their asses were devastated). One of them just sputtered to a stop, while the other two reflexively kicked the ground, propelling their chairs towards desks. I decided this was a good time to make a break for it.

In hindsight, maybe I should have waited, but as it stood, there was nopony waiting outside to ambush us except for the ones we had already injured. Our escape was clean, and we continued down the hall we were going, in search of another stairwell.

Upon opening the door to the sixth floor, we were greeted with a hail of bullets. We quickly clambered back up to the seventh where we had came, but found that somepony had locked the door. Dmitry offered to pick it, but then the soldiers on the sixth floor opened the door to the stairwell and we had to keep climbing.

When we reached the eighth, i was alarmed at how much junk there was in the hallways: furniture and crates were piled along the walls, severely limiting our field of vision and ability to run. But it also provided a bit of cover.

We set some mines just outside the stairwell and took cover. The soldiers bolted through the door and right into our trap, instantly taking out the first two or three in their group. Then I threw another grenade, expecting the rest to storm out into the open. But they didn’t. Seeing what had happened to the others, they decided they had better chances just hiding behind the door and shooting at us from behind it. I was certainly disappointed, as it locked us into a long and arduous firefight. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to hit them as long as they stayed behind that door so I stopped shooting, but kept my gun pointed at them in case they came out.

It kept on for ten minutes, though gradually the other side stopped shooting as frequently, and then altogether, creating a tense de facto ceasefire for about five minutes.

We had kind of let our guard down, which I suppose the ceasefire was intended to do, because suddenly we were startled by some gunfire coming from further down our side of the hallway. Grapevine was the closest so she handled the response, but it was a shock for all of us, which distracted me and Dmitry long enough for the stairwell squad to move forward and establish a foothold in the hallway.

We were brought into a long, mahogany paneled, dilapidated corporate boardroom with a set of wide windows on one side, overlooking the sprawling cityscape. For miles upon miles we could see neighborhoods and industrial parks spreading, with generous helpings of half-dead trees interspersed between them. Little grooves of asphalt cut through the scene throughout, but only the biggest streets were discernable as such, and some, like the highways, ignored all patterns and simply meandered through the landscape like rivers of concrete that could be tamed by nothing short of a dam. The horizon was hemmed in by a mountain range, emerging from an endless field of trees beyond the city and each peak reaching for the sky, though all but a few fell drastically short. The highest and most prominent peak stood directly in the middle of the field of view, its imposing majesty made all the moreso by the addition of a large grey tower jutting from its peak, which climbed endlessly into the sky until it disappeared above the clouds.

Standing in front of this landscape stood a young-ish stallion wearing a thick brown coat on top of a standard military uniform. He was fairly disheveled and looked as though he had not showered in a week, and had probably given up on shaving or grooming his hair months ago save for the occasional comb. There were visible creases on his face, borne out of the perpetual frustration of a leader who has just barely kept an organization from collapsing entirely. He stood in front of the window, carefully studying the scenery, which I got the impression that he did a lot. The moment the door opened, his eyebrow raised reflexively in annoyance and he slightly turned towards us, but upon seeing the prisoners, he became more curious and pleasantly surprised than annoyed.

“Well, good. You actually surrendered instead of trying something ballsy,” he began. “I was worried that your little rampage would make its way all the way here.”

He spoke with a continuous shout, obviously passionate about his goals but also as if he had an endless reservoir of rage he needed to vent.

“You’ve made a quarter of this force into casualties,” he continued. “This greatly limits our operational capabilities and completely derails our plans, and I despise you for that. Luckily, you didn’t actually kill any of them, and I must admit I’m also impressed with your combat ability. Who would have thought that three civilians could take down a fortified compound like this? You had a solid grasp on small unit tactics up until the end there. I’ll have to have the sergeant analyze the CCTV footage and archive it for training purposes.”

“Are you their leader?” I asked.

“Commanding officer,” he corrected. “And yes, I am. I am Major Whiplash, and I have been the highest ranking officer in this regiment ever since our lieutenant colonel was betrayed and murdered in cold blood by her own HQ staff.”

“This hardly looks like a regiment, Major,” I said.

“It isn’t,” he replied. “It’s a company. My company. It’s been my company since before the apocalypse, and will remain my company until I die.”

He paused for a second and looked back at his emaciated and weary crew.

“But you’re right, in its current state, it’s hardly even a company. It used to be bigger, but mere survival has taken a heavy toll.”

He lowered his head and began plodding away from us towards the window.

“Which is a shame, because now we can’t help civilians as effectively as we used to...”

"Your troops at the city limit down in Greyham don't seem very interested in helping civilians," I scoffed. "They've been harassing travelers, and they nearly killed us."

"They are not true soldiers," Whiplash scoffed. "They're former soldiers-- Deserters! Hell, they're even worse than that!"

"Then what are they?" I demanded. "And how are they any different from you?"

Whiplash gave a deep, heavy sigh, and then explained, "What makes us better than them, or you, for that matter, is that we do things with a purpose. We have stayed true to our duty to restore peace and order to this city, while those rogues out there on highway 20, or IR-5, or WHEREVER-- they go through life with no greater purpose. They have no mission, no objectives to achieve. Instead, they just sit behind their barricades, waiting for ponies to come along so they can harass them for supplies. They're beggars, kid. Beggars armed with military grade weaponry. They've resigned themselves to simple survival, working only as hard as it takes for them to get tonight's meal, but no more. They care about nothing else apart from their own survival, so to me they're no different than the gangs."

"We, on the other hoof, we stayed true,” he continued. “We hunkered down and kept in the fight. After the bombs fell, the whole city fell into chaos and everypony began hoarding supplies. Our regiment tried to keep order, but as the winter set in, most of the unit realized it was much easier to join the gangs rather than fight them, and there were desertions left and right. Even the fucking officers abandoned the cause! But my company kept on fighting. We had our fair share of desertions as well, but we rebuilt ourselves by cobbling up the loyal remnants of the other companies. We used to actively protect civilians, guarding merchants and refugee camps and all that, but when we realized that we could stop the winter, the real source of all the misery and hopelessness, I was forced to divert all of our resources towards achieving that goal."

Sensing his monologue wouldn’t fix the world, he cut it off and trotted back toward us with an air of impatience.

“If I didn’t have as much respect for what you’ve done, and if we weren’t so short on ammo, I’d have you three shot. Releasing you into the wastes isn’t going to do anypony much good, especially us if you decide to come back and try again. But, since you were willing to surrender, maybe we can come to an agreement. What the hell do you want from us? If it’s food then forget it, ‘cause we’re down to 11,000 calories a day*. If its ammo or medicine, you’ve just severely drained our stocks of both.”

“We’re not here to raid your supplies, Major,” I said. “Our only demand is that you release the mayor’s daughter.”

“And maybe us too, if you don’t mind,” added Dmitry.

“Oh, the filly?” Whiplash asked, somewhat surprised. “That’s it? You did all this just for her?”

“We also wanted to search the Stable-Tec office,” I added. “That’s what we came for originally, but rescuing hostages is also important to us.”

“We don’t take hostages,” Whiplash said. “There’s nothing that village can provide us that we can’t get ourselves. We’re merely requisitioning her services to fulfil our own goals.”

Grimaces of disgust formed on all three of our faces.

“No, that is not an innuendo,” Whiplash said with a facehoof. “I meant her computer skills. That’s what we want. I have no desire for STD’s or pregnancies in my company.”

"Will you at least release her after you're done?" I asked.

"We will keep her as long as we need her," Whiplash stated. “Afterward, you can have your friend back. And only if you don’t cause any more trouble.”

“And how much longer will you need her?” I asked. “We’re not leaving until you release her.”

“Is that a threat?” Whiplash asked.

Realizing the implications of what I had just said, I had been caught totally off guard. I may have just jeopardized our position by threatening this stallion who very much had the means to kill us if he wanted to, and was only a hair’s breadth away from doing so. After a moment of nervous panic, I turned my head around to judge my companions’ opinions. Grapevine was also shaking with and only watched helplessly, putting the onus to act on me. Dmitry was also nervous, but to my surprise the normally diplomatic and good-natured changeling was slowly nodding his head.

Turning back to answer Whiplash, I mustered as much courage as I could, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Yes, it is.”

Whiplash soured, but said nothing and simply growled in frustration. Our attempt at intimidation seemed to have worked, as it forced him to carefully consider his response.

Finally, he walked over to a white courtesy phone on a desk and dialed a number.

“Warrant Officer Colon, how much longer will you be needing the filly?”

“Not much longer sir,” replied a rather youthful stallion. “We’ve just broken through the firewall. Should be only an hour or two.”

This news greatly surprised the Major, who tried to hide his excitement under a veil of ambivalence.

“A-hem, well then,” he answered us. “She may be ready to leave sometime this afternoon, depending on whether she can breach the security system. If not, she will need to stay another day. As for you three, you may stay here until evening as long as you don’t wander off or get in the way, but you must be out of the building by 18 hundred hours or once your friend gets discharged, whichever comes first. Got it?”

The Testudos parked us in a breakroom on the floor below, mostly because Grapevine started complaining of hunger in transit. In this room, every single aspect about the furnishings, fixtures, and placement of objects appeared to have been deliberately calculated to maximize its convenience or pleasure inferred upon its users, out of some form of feng shui bastardized by an HR department cynically bent on extracting as much utility out of its employees as possible.

In other words, everything felt fake.

On one of the walls, a large sign bearing a sleek, formal-looking corporate logo ominously loomed, as if to remind ponies not to have too much fun because they were still at work:

PEON

Asset Management

A Goldenstar Company

And as an even subtle reminder of who lorded over them, pink plastic flowers were placed in vases at the center of each table, flowers which Grapevine informed me, were called ‘peonies.’

The Testudos had much changed the original character of the room, primarily by not cleaning it, but also by placing some of their little green storage bins around the edges and by picking the locks on the vending machines and eating their contents. They now served as pantries to store the food they had scavenged outside, and to their credit, it almost looked like nopony had ever touched them… if you excused the rather haphazard placement and crumpled appearance of the items as the work of a drunken restocker…

Apparently, they also trusted us enough to leave three hungry wastelanders alone with their food stash. Okay, more likely they just didn’t have enough ponies on hoof to guard us. I assumed they had at most maybe a hundred ponies, and given the circumstances that’s a fairly generous estimate. Now take those hundred ponies and subtract everypony who is out doing a scouting or scavenger mission, then subtract all the wounded. That might leave them with two half-depleted platoons with which to guard the building, in addition to guarding their other ‘guest.’ Then again, they did choose to spare us when we were a hair’s breadth from death…

Progress to Next Level: 911/3450

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself or get worse, depending on your endurance, rest, and actions. Curable with antibiotics.

Chapter 13: Dereliction of Duty

Chapter 13: Dereliction of Duty

“Bravo ponies, bravo! Harmony in Equestria is officially dead.”

Friday, September 12th, 4347

Dear Diary,

We waited for about half an hour until we started getting hungry. We decided not to exploit our captors’ goodwill and eat food from our packs instead. We had a couple of Salisbury steak TV dinners, the kind you usually put in the microwave, and Grapevine heated them up a little by holding a lighter below a sheet of metal and using it as a makeshift frying pan. While we were eating, a couple of Testudos came in on their lunchbreak, sniffed the air, and asked us what we were eating and if we could share. We had a few more left, so we did.

“This is awesome!” one of them told us as they were eating. “We haven’t had steak in a long time!”

“Really?” Dmitry asked. “You can find these all over the place.”

“We don’t usually raid grocery stores,” the soldier replied. “Far too dangerous, they’re usually gang strongholds. And even if we do find something good in our scavenging, it gets eaten really quickly, usually by the pony who found it. So aside from Pork and Beans, which there’s plenty of, we don’t get much in the way of protein.”

“And yet you do all these operations all over the city?” I asked. “There’s no way that can be healthy for you.”

“It isn’t,” added another, who had a medic’s patch on his shoulder. “When I see ponies with thinning manes and flaky skin, I can hardly tell whether it’s from radiation or protein deficiency.”

“Probably both,” I said before stuffing another bite into my mouth.

“Heh, that describes every pony we’ve seen this past week,” Dmitry said. “Even the ones who live miles away from the city.”

“True,” said the medic, “but the ponies outside the city look a lot less pale than the ones in it. Maybe they’ve got better huntin’.”

“Actually, I’ve seen a lot more wild animals in the city than outside it,” said Grapevine. “Plenty of rottin’ corpses fer the carrion, and plenty of prey too.”

“Speaking of corpses,” I said, “Are you allowed to tell us what exactly you were doing at the airport the other day?”

“Sure we can tell you,” said a third, “And I’d be happy to answer your questions.”

He was a lieutenant, whose voice I recognized from over the radio that day (and later learned was Lieutenant Larynx, the leader of the ‘Tortoise’ group). “We had some intel that those pegasi, the so-called ‘Enclave,’ had an important piece of technology called the SPP Override Chip. The Major has been hunting it for months, sort of obsessively, because he’s convinced that it’s the only way he can bring order to this wasteland. We can’t do it by simply protecting people, because raiders can strike from literally anywhere. And we can’t do it by going after the raiders because there’s way too many of them. And even if you could get a large enough army, there’s no guarantee you could hold it together long enough to make a difference. Even in our unit, small as it is, we’ve had problems with cohesion. Much of our original regiment deserted, and even within our group we’ve had problems with insubordination. Well, have, because after the Major ordered a few executions we stopped having problems.”

“But what does this chip do?” asked Grapevine.

“And what does the filly have to do with it?” asked Dmitry.

“Good questions, both,” replied the Lieutenant. “Normally this would be classified information too secret even for us in the CPG, but nopony’s gonna come after us so I’m just going to spill it: During the war, the SPP, or ‘Single Pegasus Project,’ was a scheme by the Ministry of Awesome to automate all of Equestria’s weather control so it could all be controlled by a single pony. No more winter wrap-ups. No more rainbow factories. The time-honored pegasus tradition of weather-culture, all replaced by machines, in order to free up pegasi for combat duty. That’s what that tall tower on top of Mount Hoof is for: fully automated weather control, all overseen from a room in Canterlot or Hoofington or wherever.

But when the plan was submitted to our otherwise useless Parliament for rubber-stamping, there was an uproar. Some of the MP’s thought that granting total control over the weather to a single crown-appointed agent was giving the executive too much power, so they invoked an obscure law (from the reign of Queen Tiffany, no less,) to force the MoA to create thirteen ‘override chips,’ devices which, when inserted into a special port, could seize control of the system and allow the user to wrest control of all or part of Equestria’s weather away. One chip was given to each of Equestria’s provincial governors, to be used in the event that the pony controlling the SPP failed in their duties as a ‘weather czar’ or something like that.”

“Now, you’ve been in the wasteland for what, a little over a week now?” the lieutenant asked.

“Twelve days, to be exact,” Grapevine said.
“Okay, so a week and a half,” the lieutenant continued. “And in this week and a half, what have you seen? Chaos, looting, murder, and above all, lots and lots of snow. All of this was present before the war, but never to this extent. Between the weather and the anarchy, society has completely collapsed! Everypony is bunkered up in their homes, if they have them, or wandering aimlessly among the ruins. What kind of a life is that?”

“So… you want to use the override chip to take control of the weather and rebuild society?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. “Major Whiplash was never one to sit idly by when there’s a problem. Our hope is that if we can clear those clouds and make the weather great again, everypony will come out of hiding and rebuild. Maybe we could even convince some of the stables to open, giving us access to more ponies and supplies, though based on what you’ve told me about 76 we’ll have to cross it off our list.”

“Well, that was just ours,” said Grapevine. “And we had some rather… unusual circumstances… 75 and 74 should still be fine.”

“Probably,” said the lieutenant. “After all, what Stable-Tec makes is built to last. We’ve been meaning to send a scouting party to investigate whether those stables are still inhabited, but lately all of our time has been wrapped up with scavenging supplies and locating the override chip, which-- in answer to your original question-- is why we were at the airport.”

“But why are you looking for it here?” I asked. “If it belonged to the governor, shouldn’t you go down to the capital to look for it?”

“We did,” he replied. “I led a small team down there at the beginning, while the rest were busy fortifying this building, and I got it from the governor herself that it was up here. Apparently it had been sent here for repairs and was due to be returned, but due to extenuating circumstances it was lost. Our operation at the airport was a raid on a group of kooky ex-air force guys who call themselves ‘The Enclave’, in part because we feared they might have it, partly because we needed supplies, and partly in revenge for them harassing our scouting parties. Apparently they’re looking for it too because they want to keep the sky cloudy and stormy. Those partypoopers.”

We talked for a little while longer after that, finishing our meals and making jokes about the ‘Enclave’ guys and their previous incarnation, the chair force, until all of a sudden a mare came bursting into the room, panting heavily.

“Lieutenant, we’re under attack!” she said. “Major wants all hooves on deck. They’re mounting an assault from the roof.”

“From the roof?” he asked, stunned. “But if it’s an attack on the roof, and it’s that serious, then, this could only mean...”

The soldiers quickly got up and ran out of the room. The mare stayed at the doorway for a few seconds with a look of mild disgust and said, “You too, civilians. Major’s orders. If any of them get through the perimeter, they won’t hesitate to kill you.”

When we got up to the roof, the Enclave’s counter-raid was just about to start in earnest. Earlier there had been a small skirmish between the Enclave’s scouts and the Testudos’ sentries, but several pegasi were visible in the distance and estimated to arrive in one or two minutes. Expecting attacks from all directions, the Testudos were spread out along the edges of the roof to attack them as they flew towards us, with a few stationed in the center to protect the door. We were instructed to use whatever weapons we had on us for the time being, until they could bring up the sniper rifles and rocket launchers from their armory in the basement.

This pretty much just left me with a hunting rifle and some grenades.

Well, this is going to be fun.

I looked out at the afternoon sky. The clouds still hung ominously over the air, and at this height it felt like they loomed low overhead. A dense fog had rolled in during our absence, obscuring most of our surroundings from view. I could just barely see the mall, which wasn’t really that far away.

“Pegasi incoming at 9 o’clock!” yelled a sergeant (who was ironically a pegasus himself).

On cue, a squad of about a baker’s dozen pegasi in lightweight olive-green armor flew in a V-shape overhead, raining a hail of bullets down from light machine gun battlesaddles mounted to their sides. They were only above us for a quick second, and I only had enough time to get out two shots (both of which probably missed) before they were out of range. Then, just before they disappeared into the fog on the other side of the building, they split into three smaller groups of roughly equal size, and turned around for another flyby. One group flying toward the north end of the tower, another toward the south, and the third flew in a rounded arc going upwards, aiming to slice back through the center.

Being on the west side of the building and close to the southwest corner, I chose to focus my aim on the south group. I aimed my rifle well and got off three more shots, one of which I think grazed a lavender mare’s wing. Despite being rather similar in form to the standard issue infantry armor, this Enclave’s armor was somewhat more intimidating, especially their helmets, which gave them a more insect-like feel. The scariest part, in my opinion, is the eyes, or rather lack of, because the helmets’ orange lenses completely obscured the pupils. Because of this, you couldn’t tell exactly what these soldiers were thinking, and so they appeared completely indifferent as they zoomed past machine-gunning ponies who not too long ago would have been their allies.

After my third shot, I had to reload my rifle, and in the process completely missed the next flyby. In my defense, I’m not used to using hunting rifles, and probably only used it in a single training session back in the stable before now. However, even if I did know what I was doing, the reloading process seemed needlessly complicated for a gun that can only fire five rounds.

Just then, a few ponies came up to the roof with the first of the guns; however, they had only brought missile launchers, and only enough to equip half of the ponies in the center.

“No relief for us yet,” said the pegasus Sergeant. “Keep going with what you’ve got.”

Another wave. This time, they had broken up into four groups of three and attacked from the corners, then swerved left to spray a bank of fire on us ponies at the edges. Just as my trio of targets flew overhead, I remembered that my pipbuck, that handy little stable-issued hoof-mounted personal computing device, had a feature called the ‘Stabletec Assisted Targeting Spell,’ or ‘SATS.’ Something I had actually used several times before in the past several days, but very sparingly before then or even during this battle. I activated it immediately, and instantly time slowed around me… or rather, the neurons in my brain simply sped up relative to my surroundings, so that it merely seemed as though everything else had slowed down. Never before had SATS been so useful, as I could now focus my shots on the pegasi’s individual body parts with, according to my pipbuck’s calculations, 50-60% accuracy. Those odds would be terrible in regular combat, but against something zooming past you at rapid speed, that’s pretty good. Perhaps with a little more experience doing this, I could bump it up to 70.

BAM! Right in the wing. I shot her again in the same place for good measure.

It was super effective. The mare lost control of herself and careened towards the roof, hitting it with a loud Thud! And possibly a faint Crack! Too, but I could barely hear it. With such blunt trauma to the head and neck, she’s pretty much done for unless somepony hauls her off to an ER with a trauma surgeon right now.

One of the other ponies in her group looked back nervously, but then his stone-faced squad leader said something that made him jerk his head forward again. It looked like the casualties were starting to pile up for them, and after this maneuver they would have to regroup.

When each of the four groups got to the end of its side of the building, each made a hard right turn and began converging on the center of the building. Our gun runners, who had brought out miniguns this time, had to drop them and duck for cover behind some rooftop air conditioners as the pegasi flew in with a hail of bullets. When they all got to the center, the pegasi flew around in a circle a little bit while I got off two more SATS-assisted shots which both missed the wings but managed to graze their legs.

Then the pegasi all began to fly upward in what I assume was some sort of high-altitude tactical retreat. However, congregating in the center was a grave mistake, because one of the Testudos with the missile launchers fired off a rocket that took two of them out.

While I waited for SATS to recharge, I reloaded my rifle, taking care to memorize each of the steps so I could do it faster the next time. Except… there was no next time, because the pegasi flew off and didn’t come back. We waited for a few minutes to see if they would return, or if they were just trying to lull us into a false sense of security, but we couldn’t see them anywhere on the horizon.

Some of the Testudos began chatting amongst themselves, and Grapevine let out a loud “Wooooo!” I simply wiped my brow with a quiet “phew” and set down my gun.

“Don’t get comfy yet guys,” hollered Lieutenant Larynx. “Those were just the skirmishers.”

“Wait--” I gasped in shock. “...skirmishers?”

As if on cue, a large airship burst out of the fog on the western horizon.

“Ho--leee shit,” Grapevine muttered under her breath. “That’s one hell of a doozy.”

Three large doozies, in fact. Three of them. ‘Vertibucks,’ as they were called, were an all-purpose cross between a helicopter, a jet fighter, and a small passenger plane. Capable of quickly dropping in and landing on small surfaces, they were designed to quickly airdrop soldiers into a battle without the need for any pesky parachutes. They also had turrets and missile launchers, which were very unwelcome additions to this fight.

“Hit the deck!!!”

We all hit the ground just as the vertibucks fired their missiles, which flew past us and landed near the center of the building, exploding on impact. A few of the Testudos poked their heads up, but quickly retracted them as the vertibucks drew near with their miniguns spewing beams of lead. The vertibucks flew over us too quickly for anypony to react, except for Grapevine, who moved with lightning fast (and likely drug-assisted) speed to lob a grenade using SATS with enough speed that it broke through a glass panel on the cockpit of the closest vertibuck. It produced a big explosion inside just as the aircraft landed, killing the pilots and disabling the controls.

We all faced towards the vertibucks, which had landed in a triangle around the center of the roof. We expected the cabin doors to open and greet us with a rain of minigun fire, but only the doors on the interior of the triangle opened, as if they had no intention of dealing with the rest of us. After a moment’s hesitation, everypony switched to small arms and began charging towards the center. I swapped my hunting rifle for my 10mm and a combat knife, and considered bringing out some grenades to lob at the invaders, but decided against it, figuring the risk of friendly fire was too high.

A huge mass of ponies gathered in the center, with several more trying to get in through the gaps between the vertibucks. I was left on the outside with no way to get in or contribute to the battle. I could only assume it was a bloodbath in there.

After a few minutes of waiting around for an opening, one of the Testudos came up to me and asked, “Can you help me climb over that thing?,” pointing to the nearest vertibuck. Eager to do my part, I happily obliged him. However, carrying another pony is a lot harder than it looks on TV, and I swear I almost broke my back trying to help him climb up to the top of the cabin. Maybe if I was a bit stronger this wouldn’t hurt as much?

Just as I finished helping the Testudo climb the vertibuck, a crimson stallion enveloped entirely in sleek black armor popped out from behind the vertibuck and started shooting red lightning every which way. He appeared to be wearing a battlesaddle with some kind of energy weapon. His armor was heavier and looked even more buglike than the strike force we dealt with earlier, complete with metal plates to protect his wings and some kind of scorpion tail-like appendage in the back that effectively turned his tail into a whip. I found that out the hard way, because he smacked me right in the ass, and the shock made me fall to the ground with a thud. I looked behind me quickly enough to see him prepare to zap me with his gun before one of the Testudos tackled him to the ground. I needed a few minutes to recover from the stinging pain in my buttocks, but I was able to levitate my pistol behind me and shoot him in the wing, on the bottom where the wing plates didn’t cover. His wings reflexively shot up in searing pain, allowing me to get a few more shots in.

“I might not be able to get you in the butt,” I thought, “but I can still return the favor.”

By the time I was ready to get up again, the battle was almost over. Despite lacking the thick metal armor of the Enclave, the Testudos managed to beat back the Enclave with fewer casualties. What little remained of the Enclave’s strike force scrambled back into a vertibuck and took off hurriedly with the grace and precision of a drunk pegasus with a concussion. Lieutenant Larynx calmly ordered his troops to hold their fire for a minute, then ordered all the rocket launchers to concentrate their fire on the vertibuck’s left rotor. The rotor exploded, causing the aircraft to wildly spin as it fell to the ground, then landed with a magnificent explosion squarely on top of the mall which totaled the craft and ensured there would be no survivors. Then the mall’s shoddy construction manifested itself as the impact caused widespread structural failure and most of the building collapsed in an enormous cloud of dust.

A crowd gathered on the northern edge of the building to observe the scene. The Lieutenant calmly walked to the ledge, gave one glance at his handiwork and scoffed, “Heh, always knew those tin cans were garbage,” then walked back towards the stairs.

Fighting a battle is one thing, but cleaning up after a fight is an ordeal all to itself. First, all of the casualties had to be taken down to the clinic for treatment, or in some cases, a last-ditch effort to save their lives. Then there were the Enclave casualties, most of whom still retained some degree of consciousness but were unable to do anything but writhe in pain. Seeing as they were already low on food and medical supplies, the Testudos certainly weren’t going to treat them, but they still had to do something about all the soon-to-be corpses strewn across their rooftop. The pegasus sergeant from earlier, a certain Sergeant Stratus, suggested they just throw the bodies off the roof, an idea which became popular among the privates once somepony suggested they make a contest out of it. However, Lieutenant Larynx shot the idea down after Sergeant Subglottis pointed out that they might be able to salvage the armor and guns from the corpses. He also suggested, in hushed tones that I happened to be close enough to hear, that they could harvest some meat off the bodies so they’d have something to feed the troops if push came to shove. Larynx seemed to agree with this, and ordered Subglottis’ squad to stay behind afterward for a “very special mission” after the armor, weapons, and ammo had all been salvaged. There were also the massive puddles of blood, which they normally would have left alone, but were now deemed a suitable task for a couple of ponies who Major Whiplash had wanted to discipline.

After all the ammo had been scavenged, I took a look at the corpses myself to see if there was anything of value left to take. Strangely enough, these soldiers had been carrying around all kinds of useless junk in their pockets, from tin cans and screwdrivers to baby rattles and rodent teeth. Since none of it was worth anything, I just left and went downstairs.

After the battle and treating three officers to lunch, I felt like the Testudos trusted us more. Not a lot-- just a little, but enough that they no longer felt we needed to be kept in a room and baby-sat like toddlers. The three of us passed the time exploring the vast office building which we had zipped through before. Most of it was abandoned and disused, but we managed to scrounge a few bullets, healing potions, and even a few bottlecaps from various containers.

Our exploration ultimately led us down to the basement. We stopped by the armory where Dmitry managed to convince the quartermaster to trade some bullets that we needed in exchange for some that we didn’t. Then we went down a long corridor past several storerooms and maintenance areas until we reached an unassuming door near the end of the hallway leading to an unlabeled room. What made this door different from all the others was that it was propped open.

“Sergeant Sinus here told me you’re almost finished,” said Major Whiplash from within. “Is this true?”

“Almost done, sir,” said a familiar filly’s voice in an uncharacteristically nervous and subdued tone. “I think this is the last layer.”

The three of us quietly entered the room and observed from a distance. In a dimly lit room filled with computer servers, Major Whiplash and a few other Testudos stood around a mainframe computer terminal, and seated in a chair was none other than Tandy, the filly I met back at Sandy Shades. I was too far away to read any of the text on the screen, but I could tell there was a popup window with a nearly filled loading bar in the middle of the screen.

“Okay, I’m through,” said Tandy with a sigh of relief. “Will there be anything else, Major?”

“We just need to know if this will work,” Whiplash said. “Enter the password and hit ‘confirm.’”

After at least forty carefully pressed keyboard clacks, the computer gave off a ‘beep’ and another loading bar appeared, but filled itself within five seconds. Then an error message appeared, accompanied with a soft ‘dun’ sound.

“Y:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\EC-1776 not found,” Whiplash read. “Please insert SPP Override Chip to continue...”

He pulled himself away from the computer and then thrust his forehooves against the wall.

“RAAAHHHHH!!!!! Is there ANY other way to do this?!?”

“We’ve tried everything we can think of,” said Sergeant Sinus, a green stallion with a very large nose. “But they all keep leading back to this. It seems as though we just can’t hack the towers remotely. Now, maybe we could actually go to the tower and hack it directly...”

“No, it’s supposed to be controllable from here,” said the Major. “We ran the network diagnostics on at least six separate occasions and everything was perfect.”

“What about...” Sergeant Sinus trailed off in thought, then swiftly turned around. “You there, Changeling!” he shouted. “Can you help us?”

Dmitry was skimming through a stack of notes on a table.

“Nope, sorry,” he said. “Half of these operations I don’t even understand. Regular terminals and low-level corporate stuff I can do, but high level ministry terminals… that’s beyond me. I mean, some of this stuff I’m pretty sure is illegal to do without at least a gamma level ministry security clearance.”

“Wha-- how do you…?” asked one of the privates.

As if by habit, Dmitry whipped out his wallet and removed an ID card. With a tinge of annoyance, he said dryly, “Dmitry Belka, Ministry of Awesome, Loyalty Inspection Division, Cascadia Region: ‘Filling in the MoM’s incompetence since… whenever.’ Notice the white triangle inside the red box. That’s a delta, as in, one level below gamma.”

Most of the other ponies looked at each other in astonishment.

“Wow,” said Sergeant Sinus. “I’d heard about Dash’s Loyalty Police, but I didn’t think they actually existed!”

Major Whiplash was merely bemused, but not surprised.

“MoA agent, huh?” he said. “That might explain how you got in here...” He then cleared his throat. “It’s a lost cause, anyway. I don’t think anypony short of Rainbow Dash herself could break into this thing. And even then, it would probably just tell her to piss off, too.”

He turned towards Tandy, then said, “Alright, you’ve been at this for long enough. Seeing as it’s virtually impossible to get in, you held up your end of the bargain so you’re free to go.”

A look of surprise overcame Tandy’s face.

“R-really?” she asked. “B-but, I don’t know my way around the city. I might get lost, a-and--”

“Luckily for you, you have some friends who came to rescue you,” said Whiplash, gesturing towards myself and my companions. Tandy’s eyes lit up upon seeing me.

“Silver!” she cried. “You came all the way here… for me?” Then her joy faded, and she added, “My dad didn’t put you up to this, did he?”

“Actually, we heard about a foalnapping from a merchant,” I said. “We had no idea it was you.”

“We would’ve come here anyway,” Grapevine added. “We needed ta get some info off’a Stable-Tec’s computers. Would you mind helpin’ us do it?”

“Oh, certainly!” Tandy said, before turning towards Whiplash. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”

“Fine by me,” Whiplash said. “Nothing on those old things concerns me. As long as you’re all outta here by sundown.”

“Great!” said Tandy. “I’m sure we’ll be outta here by then.”

“Good,” said Grapevine. “‘Cause I’d rather not stay for dinner.”

We spent the next hour or so scouring through the Stable-Tec records, trying to find something-- anything-- that could be of use to us: the whereabouts of the Stable-Tec employees? The location of a secret supply cache? A secret army of robots? The only thing of use to us were the locations of other stables within the region, but from the reports written about them, it didn’t seem as though any of the nearby ones would be of much use.

Then we came across a program which contained estimates of the populations of every stable in the region, based on the number of pings their central computers received from the ‘active’ pipbucks (meaning they sensed they were connected to a hoof with living flesh) within the stable or nearby. The data was collected in intervals of five minutes each, and could be displayed in tables or graphs, scaleable over any period of time. Stable 76, for instance, had a minimal caretaker population of three or four ponies though most of last October, then experienced a surge during the morning hours of October 23rd. After that, it remained mostly stable through the winter months with a few new additions from fillies and colts coming of age to receive their pipbucks. Then there were a few drops during the late spring and early summer. Through July and August there was an enormous slump, leaving only a tenth of the initial population by the first of September, and since then that number had declined by half. Keep in mind that the data does not differentiate between ponies who have died and ponies whose pipbucks have stopped working or have gone beyond the signal’s range (In our case, our departure correlated with three pipbucks going off the radar shortly after noon on September 2nd). However, most of those who departed 76 did so involuntarily, and in a spiritual sense.

To be honest, this kind of just left me stunned. I mean, I knew ponies had been dying back in 76 since late spring, but seeing it visualized left a far deeper impression. My companions must have felt the same thing too, since a grim silence hung over the room for far longer than I would have liked.

It took a while before anypony was able to say anything. Tandy, being the outsider of our group, was the first to break the silence by suggesting, “Why don’t we look at something else?”

So we looked at records for other stables instead. About half of them had sustained damage to their mainframes or broadcasting equipment, leaving them unable to broadcast any recent data. Stable 74 seemed to be having problems with either its computer or its power supply, as its connection would go down for days at a time before restarting again, and presently retained about half of its initial population. Most stables weren’t so lucky, having suffered enormous dips that careened into the bottom of the graph. Even though our stable appeared to be heading towards the same fate, it had held out a lot longer and had a far less precipitous decline. Out of the dozens of stables in the database, only a few reported populations consistent with their initial intake.

Tandy recognized that none of this was cheering us up, so she switched to viewing files about the company itself, and its various facilities, business contracts, payrolls, and the like. These files were mostly walls of text filled with legalese and corporate jargon, which changed the mood from grim to dull, and instead of huddling around the computer screen like we’re watching the series finale of our favorite TV show, we now pulled back and looked on as if we were doing research for a school assignment. At one point, Grapevine just went to the other side of the room and stared at the flickering of the server’s indicator lights, seemingly deriving more entertainment from that than what we were doing. Dmitry was much more intrigued, especially since he had a penchant for looking through other ponies’ stuff which I observed firsthoof during our time living together in the stable. We skimmed through pages upon pages of land surveys, minutes from corporate board meetings, shipping manifests, fraudulent accounting sheets, and the like until we had had enough.

“Well, I hope you guys found what you were looking for, whatever it is,” said Tandy.

“Meh, not really,” I replied. “There didn’t seem to be much on there of use to us.”

“At least we know our stable’s still alive,” Grapevine said.

“Yeah, but just barely,” said Dmitry. “At this rate, there won’t be anypony left by the end of the month...”

“We still have some hope,” I said. “Stable-Tec has a large warehouse down in Deer Creek. If the records are correct, they have a large army of construction and security robots down there.”

“Deer Creek?” Grapevine asked. “That’s like, two hundred miles south of here. Can we even make it in time?”

“We’ve traveled fifty miles in two weeks,” I said. “If we don’t distract ourselves with any more sidequests, we can probably make it there and back before winter sets in.”

“We’re kind of already in winter,” Grapevine said.

“Hey, an army of robots actually sounds kinda nice,” Dmitry said. “Maybe they can pull a carriage for us so we don’t have to walk back.”

“C’mon, let’s get outta here,” Tandy said. “If we’re gonna go anywhere before sunset, we’ve gotta leave now.”

By the time we got back on the road, the sky and clouds were beginning to develop the distinctive orange tint we had begun to recognize as a wasteland sunset. Without an actual sun visible in the sky, we had to learn how to use the color of the sky and the shadows on the ground to tell time. Of course, we also had clocks on our pipbucks, but learning how to tell time using the natural surroundings remained a useful skill to have, especially while traveling.

As we traveled south, we had noticed a large plume of thick black smoke rising over the skyline and into the clouds from a small shopping center we had passed by earlier but took no notice of. We were in such a hurry to get to the tower that we didn’t notice there was a settlement here… well, the remains of one, at least. We decided to leave the highway and investigate. As we got closer, the little specks of ash wafting up in the smoke, gentle crackling of flames, and the trail of bloody hoofprints on the road indicated the worst.

The shopping center was an L-shaped building centered around a large fabric store. A makeshift palisade built from vehicle parts and store shelves connected the center to a few adjacent buildings. The main gate was wide open, and as peered in the first thing I noticed was the large parking lot, upon which the residents had spread a hoof-deep layer of dirt and attempted to grow various grains and vegetables. Much of their crop had been trampled, but what little remained was meager and pitiful-- even by wasteland standards, but a noble effort nevertheless. As I looked around I saw several overturned baskets and the occasional corpse, mutilated almost beyond recognition. The worst irony was the walls, which had been painted with murals in bright colors depicting idyllic scenes of ponies working the land and celebrating bountiful harvests under grey skies; the settlement’s dream of itself, shattered by numerous bullet holes, scratches, and splotches of blood. Worst of all was the fire consuming the main building: not only did it prevent entry into the building, but it was powerful enough to significantly raise the temperature of the surrounding area and choke the air with smoke.

I considered trying to scavenge the place, but I felt too guilty about what had happened here, as if doing so would just needlessly twist the knife in an already stabbed corpse. Besides, anything of value had probably been looted already, so the best course of action was to just leave. As I left, I noticed a few ponies emerging from the shadows across the street, judging that we were not a threat and it was safe to come out. They came from under bushes and trees, from under wrecked cars, and one even from under a manhole. They stared humbly at the ruins, with the fear and trepidation of one who has lost his home. One snow-white stallion fell to his knees and broke down in tears.

“I can’t believe it...” he said softly. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

“Well, you can’t just keep staring at it all day,” I said.

“This was everything I had...”

“You should get going,” I said. “It’s getting darker… and colder. Find some shelter, preferably far away from here in case they come back.”

He didn’t listen. I stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the fire. I moved my body in front of his and looked him straight in the eyes.

“You have to move on,” I said. “Stop living in the past.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he said with annoyance as he turned away from me, got up, moved a few paces, then sat back down closer to the fire.

“This is all that’s left of the community,” he said, staring blankly into the flames. “A community I’ve been a part of since long before the war. They took me in when I needed it most, accepted me without question, and gave me everything I could ever want in life. I belonged there. You can’t just abandon something like that just because you don’t like a few of the people or some of the rules....”

He briefly paused before later adding,

“...It wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t always that bad. But after the war, there weren’t much of us left… except for those… ponies. And they were the only ones who seemed to know where to go or what to do, so I couldn’t help but follow...”

He continued to stare silently into the flames.

Now, I may not be very empathetic, but even I could understand that this was a pony who desperately needed some love. So I gently put my hoof on his back and said,

“I know a place where you can go. It may not be the same, but it’s a community, and they can provide you with a home. And a job. And company. And as far as I know, it seems like a very accepting place. I’m sure you’ll like it there.”

We found about two dozen survivors from both this and another settlement the raiders had sacked earlier in the day. Sixteen decided to follow us out of the city. I was somewhat disappointed by the other eight’s rejection of my offer, but it was their loss.

“Follow me,” I said as I began moving. I was followed by my companions, and then by the group of survivors, who all moved as a single mass as if driven by a collective consciousness. I decided to try using the city streets this time instead of the freeways, betting on my navigational skills to guide us through the suburban maze. My reasoning was that it was nearing dusk, and if there were any raiders out there looking for a quick ambush just before bedtime, they were probably going to do it on the more well-traveled routes that everypony knew, and there would be fewer places to hide during an ambush. Nopony questioned my logic, so the question was settled.

However, this may not have been the best idea. We were able to navigate okay and avoid any time-wasting wrong turns by sticking to the arterial roads and asking around whenever we got to an intersection and didn’t know which way to turn. However, I began to wonder if the trip was even worth it at all as the shadows got longer and the sky’s orange glow grew fainter. To the annoyance of the others, I kept a brisk pace and encouraged everypony else to keep up. Many of them struggled with large sacks of scavenged belongings or injuries from the raids. I too was recovering from an injury from the earlier battle, but I struggled through the pain and kept going, since only a brisk pace could get us out of the city before it became too dark to see. I considered slowing down, for my sake and for the others, but kept deciding against it for the simple reason that navigating by flashlight would merely be giving a beacon for anything malevolent out there to attack us. I wouldn’t risk anything that would get our party of war-torn refugees and walking-wounded attacked again.

The sluggish pace of the group was both a blessing and a curse to me. Although it severely hampered our speed, it at least gave me an excuse to rest a little on several occasions as I waited for the others to catch up. My admittedly brisk pace was kind of exhausting, and I likely would have just called it quits much earlier if it weren’t for our escort mission.

I was taking one of these short rest breaks shortly after entering the suburb of Gallopbreath. I sat down on a bench at a bus stop and opened a bottle of Sparkle Cola to quench my thirst, remembering to save the bottle cap in case I ran into Gaggleskein again. I looked down the road and saw the others crossing a bridge about 300 yards away. After about a minute, Dmitry arrived and sat down next to me, looking kind of exhausted.

“Silver, you need to slow down,” he said. “You’re going way too fast.”

“We have to keep moving,” I replied tersely. “If we’re going to leave the city by nightfall, we can’t stop to rest.”

This irked him.

“Like you’re doing right now?” he asked. Before I could respond, he continued, “Look, the others are tired and need to rest. Maybe we should stop for the night in that building over there.” He pointed to a “Leaving the city might be too lofty a goal for tonight.”

“No,” I said. “We have to get them out of the city as soon as we can. It’s too dangerous for them here. Besides, that building is too big and has too many unsecured windows.”

“We don’t have to secure all the windows,” Dmitry replied. “We could find a room or two on the inside and lock ourselves in. If we start preparing it now, we’ll have a secure place for everypony to sleep before it gets dark.”

“No,” I said. “We have to get going. Once we’re out of the city, we won’t need to worry about raiders at all.”

“What you’re asking is completely unreasonable!” he exclaimed. “We can’t make it to the city limit in time.”

“Only because you think you can’t,” I shot back. “You’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t push youself. Why, I once walked all the way from Beavertown to Mt. Hoof in a single night.”

“That’s only because you walk fast!” he said. “A lot faster than most ponies. And I highly doubt you did that during a forced march, with no breaks, a sprained fetlock, and a 50 pound sack on your back!”

I got up in a huff.

“Fine,” I said. “If you want to hole up in this dump, then go ahead. I’ll meet you on the south side of the Whinnyamette, outside of the city. At your pace, it’ll probably take you all morning tomorrow to get there.”

I looked around to see where the others were. They were about thirty minutes away, in between the library and a bank on the other side of the street. Suddenly, gunshots rang out from the windows of bank and the refugees fled in all directions. Some beefy bear-like raiders brandishing machetes and butcher’s knives shot out from the first floor of the bank and tackled the ponies fleeing in their direction.

“We’ve gotta help them!” I exclaimed, then ran towards them.

“No shit!” Dmitry said, coming after me.

I stopped in front of a grizzly looking green stallion who had the white pony from the mall pinned down underneath him and was about to chop him to pieces with a butcher’s cleaver. I got out my .32 and aimed with SATS at his head, knocking the knife’s blade out of his mouth and landing a few shots around his ear. The raider fell down on his side like a sack of potatoes. His victim looked at me, half-grateful and half-horrified.

I gave him a quick smile, then went in for another target. This raider was also about to mutilate a pony, but he heard me coming and spun around to contend with me. SATS had only recharged enough for two more shots, so I aimed two right into his face. He recoiled at this, giving me time to fire off another two rounds right into his stomach. He fell backwards, landing in a heap right on top of the pony he was going to slice. I shot him twice more in the head to make sure he was dead, and his red mark disappeared from my targeting system. However, his victim was still trapped underneath his lardy corpse, so with much effort I had to roll it off her like a massive boulder so she wouldn’t lay there like a sitting duck. Once I had the body off of everything except her hoof, she yanked it out and quickly thanked me, then scurried off into a shrub to hide.

I then turned around to see how many more raiders we had to deal with. There were only two more of the knife wielders, one of them currently engaged in hoof-to-hoof combat with Grapevine, and another being held down by three of the survivors as a fourth fumbled around trying to reload a pistol he didn’t really know how to use. Then there were four snipers on the second floor of the bank, firing their weapons into the bushes. I realized that the bushes, where several of the survivors had hid in, provided very poor cover since they had all lost their leaves. However, trying to flee to better cover would only expose them more, so they just stayed huddled in the bushes and tried to cover themselves as best they could. I realized that I would have to take out the snipers next. My hunting rifle was running low on ammo, but I had enough shots to take the sniper ponies out. I aimed my rifle at them and targeted their heads in SATS, but they quickly noticed me and ducked their heads just below the bullets could hit. I waited for them to pop back out again, quickly aimed, but again they ducked and my bullets only hit the wall behind them. I thought about throwing a grenade at them, but Grapevine was the only one of us who could aim that high and she was busy. I decided that instead of playing whack-a-mole, I would have to go into the bank and take them out directly.

Inside the bank, I found the door to the upstairs was locked. I looked outside but couldn’t find Dmitry, meaning that I had to pick the lock myself. It took three bobby pins and a lot longer than I would have liked, but I managed to pick the lock on my own and open the door. As the door opened, I heard a soft beeping noise and looked down. The raiders had affixed a makeshift explosive device to the inside of the door frame, set to go off whenever one opened the door. I ducked for cover behind some chairs, escaping the explosion just in the nick of time.

When it was safe to come out, I went through the door and began climbing the stairs. I heard some hoofsteps up above, indicating that they must have detected my presence when their door bomb went off. The staircase took the form of an L, and as I rounded the corner, I came face-to-face with one of the snipers descending the stairs. Both of us were frightened by each other’s presence and screamed, but my reflexes were quicker, allowing me to get over my shock a split second earlier and fire my pistol straight into her chest. The raider heaved, which was my chance to shoot her again, this time in the throat. She collapsed onto the ground just barely alive, but I had to take care of her fellow snipers before I could finish her off. I climbed over her body and up the rest of the stairs, then went down a short hallway and burst into a conference room along the wall facing the library.

The other three snipers were caught off guard by my arrival, allowing me to take the initiative and fire a few shots into the first one’s face. She fell like a stone, shocking one but only emboldening the other, who began to fire back. I ducked below the conference table and reloaded my pistol while SATS recharged. While I reloaded, the emboldened sniper walked around the table and appeared in front of me and fired. I dodged, then shot her four times in the back, felling her to the ground. I turned to face the third sniper, but she merely bolted into another room. I followed her in, but she merely jumped out a window along the north wall and bolted westward down the street.

When I came out of the bank, the last sniper had already vanished. The last two knife wielders had been dealt with, and we were finally safe. However, only five of the surviving survivors crept out of hiding. I was about to call out to the others, but as I surveyed the corpses, I realized that these were the only ones left. Six lay motionless in the bushes, four flayed out on the street. The one that stood out the most to me was a small teal filly, filleted and hacked by knife beyond recognition, with entrails spilled out on the ground. A few flies, bloated to the size of baseballs, had begun gorging themselves on her corpse. I fired a shot at the pavement beside her, which was enough to scare the flies away. I approached the corpse solemnly, noting two tiny wings on her back. She was a teal pegasus, and probably hadn’t even learned how to fly yet. In the fading flow of the cloud-veiled sun, the filly’s face took on somewhat of an orange hue.

We looted what we could from the bodies and the raider base for ammo and supplies. We didn’t find much, but it offered a slight recompense for what we had just been through. One of the survivors suggested we bury the bodies, while another pointed out it was getting dark and that we should get going before the raider that got away could come back with friends. We reached a compromise where we dumped the bodies of the other survivors in a nearby river, with one of the living ones created a miniature funeral pyre, lit it with a flip lighter, and gently set it down in the water. We watched it until it went out of sight (in our case, when it went past the bridge), then continued on down the road.

We left the raiders’ bodies out to rot, as fresh pickings for the other wasteland carrion to feed on in our absence.

We also decided to take the freeway the rest of the way. Despite it lacking places for us to hide in the event of a raid, it also deprived any potential raiders cover to ambush us from. If anypony wanted to attack us, they would have to run out to the middle of the road, where we would be ready for them.

Having a smaller group should have made me feel safer, since there are fewer ponies we needed to keep track of. But instead, I felt lonely and vulnerable, as if somepony had cut off my tail-- a thing that should be part of your body, but you never notice until you’ve lost it. The fact that two thirds of our group had left us-- and not voluntarily-- really scared me. What if we were attacked again? Then the raiders could outnumber us. And seeing how it took four of these ponies to take down one raider, and there being only three semi-experienced fighters in our group… that did not bode well for us. My fear for the group’s safety made me really slow down and keep pace with the rest of them. I wondered if walking slightly ahead of them could provide some valuable scouting knowledge, but I had to balance this against any potential morale gain I could get from sticking with the pack-- not for me, but for their sake.

Eventually, Dmitry approached me and again asked me about stopping to rest.

“Not to bother you with this again,...” he began, “But I really think we should find a place to stop and rest for the night. It’s getting really dark.”

I looked up at the sky. The orange glow was now getting faint, and the shadows of the buildings and trees loomed over the highway as staunchly and solidly as the overpasses did. I admitted to myself that yes, it was getting pretty dark and that I might soon have to break out a flashlight to see ahead of me, but I didn’t want to admit this.

“No,” I said. “We have to keep going. The last time we stopped for a break, we got attacked.”

“The last time you stopped for a break,” Dmitry retorted, rather harshly. “Nopony else got a rest. And besides, the only reason why we got attacked right then and there was because somepony decided we should keep on going, instead of… oh, I don’t know… stopping at that hotel ten blocks earlier. Or the one twenty blocks before that. Or--”

“You suggested we stop at that library,” I said. “You know, the one right across the street from a frickin’ raider camp! Maybe you should let me pick the rest stops from now on, since you don’t seem to be very good at it.”

“Oh, look who’s talking!” he responded. “You’re the one who picked that raider-filled route. You’re also the one who walked five hundred yards ahead of us. You were the scout, but you utterly failed at spotting those raiders before it was too late!”

“First, I asked if anypony objected, and there was silence,” I replied. “Tacit consent, all around. And second, maybe if anypony else cared about logistics, you would have been up front, with me, then we could have had enough guns in our group to deter them from attacking us!”

“Oh, so you’re blaming a pack of exhausted and injured ponies for not keeping up with your death march?” Dmitry asked mockingly. “Well, maybe if you actually cared about these ponies, you’d stick close to them instead of just running ahead and smelling the fucking roses!”

“Running ahead? Smelling roses!?!” I gasped. “Well, maybe to you that’s what I’m doing, but I’m fucking LEADING! If I didn’t propose we get out of the city, you’d all still be standing in a heap of rubble, waiting for that raider gang to circle back for seconds!”

“I’m this fucking close to just taking the others over there and turning in for the night,” Dmitry said, starting to boil over. “Honestly, I’m surprised any of them are still following you after you got most of them killed! Remember, we followed you because we chose to follow you, because we trusted you, not because the Princesses appointed you to be our leader. And you’d better respect that or we’ll kick you out. You just got eleven ponies killed by your negligence. You should be the last pony to be acting cocky, because YOU just got two thirds of our group KILLED! Why, if this was the military and you got two thirds of your squad killed, you would be relieved of command and fucking COURT MARTIALED!”

I had never seen him get this irate. Ever. Not at anything we’d seen in the wasteland, not at any of the fucked up shit that went on in our stable, and I’d never heard of him acting like this before the war. I didn’t even know he had it in him. But now here he was, chewing me out. I don’t know if he had mind reading powers or if he just knew me that well, but the part about leadership and getting court martialed really hit home for me. I shut up after that, looked away, and generally stared at my surroundings while sulking over my failings as a leader.

Ever since I was a little filly, I had always walked at the front of the group. I don’t know why, it just always came naturally to me. As naturally as how some ponies swish their tails from side to side as they walk, or tilt their ears down when they’re sad, even though neither seem to fulfil any functional purpose. Was it because that’s where the adults were, and so I could ask the guides questions on tours? Partly, but that didn’t explain everything. Did I just like being first at everything? Not exactly that either. I had once read an evolutionary psychology book stating that in prehistoric pony herds, alpha ponies would try to place themselves at the front of the pack to assert their dominance. This same behavior can also be found in other social animals, such as wolves, and that even though that behavior is generally discouraged today, it’s still deeply ingrained in our psychology. However, I read a different book that said alpha status was usually given to the largest pony. So, did that mean that ponies followed me because I’m assertive, or did they follow me because they thought I was fat?

Anyway, being in front was always something I just did, mainly because most of my peers didn’t really care about being at the front of the group. But in effect, I was leading, wasn’t I? I’ve often thought I might make a good leader, if not a decent one, and I’m far from the worst pony to do it. But Dmitry’s statement about me being a failure because I didn’t protect the ponies I had said I would protect, about leaving me because I had failed, well… it really got to me. Under my skin, on a deep and emotional level, powerful enough that it just shut my argumentative mouth down right then and there. It really made me think. Was I really that bad of a leader?

Even though everypony for the past week or two seems to have been treating me as one, I have never felt like a natural born leader. Quite the contrary-- despite my proclivity for walking at the front of the herd, thinking of things in a big picture perspective, and an intense interest in all things political, for most of my life I have been more of a follower. Before all this, before the Stable, before the war, during my childhood-- I rarely ever took the initiative. There would always be somepony else who was willing to take charge of things and call the shots. Somepony like… like Pumpkin Spice, who was always in the spotlight and being seen by others. Even during group projects at school, which everypony hates, somepony would always take charge and start telling everypony else what to do. That pony was never me- I was merely content to follow instructions and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But then that all changed. Perhaps it was that night back in the stable, a desperate situation where I was first asked to protect other ponies’ lives. I accepted the challenge, and thought I would rise to it… and yet here I am, with the blood of eleven ponies resting on my hooves, including a filly who could never have made it alone. I had failed her. I have failed them. How could I possibly make it up when what was lost is completely irreplaceable? And I should know. I have lost all the family I have ever had, never to be returned, forever forcing me to live on my own. Being on your own is fine when you know in the back of your mind that you have family to fall back on, but when that is lost, it becomes truly terrifying.

But wait-- why should a sixteen year old be put in charge of escorting adults to safety? Shouldn’t they be escorting me? Maybe they think I’m older than I really am (I kind of act like it), but that still doesn’t excuse anything. And yet everything has transformed into this topsy-turvy world where children must guide adults, asphalt sticks to the sky instead of the floor, and inmates are now literally running the asylum. If the authorities actually went out of their way to help people instead of holing up inside their little forts, then none of this would have ever happened. I wouldn’t have had to defend these ponies, the raiders would have been dealt with by trained professionals, and maybe eleven ponies would not have died today. But instead, the police are nowhere to be seen, the military stays in their little bunkers and has petty squabbles over technology that doesn’t even work, and semi-competent vigilantes have to step in to do the jobs of both! It’s ridiculous! And yet, this is the world we live in now, where ponies who swore oaths now freely break them without consequence, authority figures abuse their power for selfish gain, ponies are dropping dead all around like falling leaves, and nopony even gives a damn about it!

And then, just as my frustration was about to burst, right in front of me they appeared: the very ponies responsible for our unfortunate situation. On a bridge crossing a great river sat the soldiers, who took an oath to protect our country, its people, and the principles it was founded upon, just sitting there and helping neither. Sitting, relaxing, just waiting there for some hapless victim to walk along that they can extort for ammo and food. They’re called ‘The Gatekeepers,’ but the gates they protect are made of salt and sand and protect no one but themselves. Because being part of the solution was too much effort, they had chosen to become part of the problem instead. They had given up, not only of their duty, but all morality they may have once held. Like Whiplash had said, they were no better than raiders.

But what of Whiplash and his crew, the Testudos? A group of lazy do-nothings who hide in their tower all day, only leaving to chase after a fantasy and kidnap fillies? They’re no better than that Grubby Pegasus Enclave, and both make themselves even more useless by wasting their firepower fighting over some stupid gadget that doesn’t even work! Useless, the whole lot of them! And yet they get away with it all, because they have more firepower than anypony else and have forsaken all principles guiding the application of it…

The others had seen the Gatekeepers and began to hide in the bushes on the side of the road. But I stepped out into the middle of the road, seething with rage.

“Silver, what are you doing?” Dmitry whispered.

I pretended not to hear him. Instead, I brought out my trusty Changeling assault rifle and popped in a fresh cartridge.

“Silver, get down here!” Grapevine whisper-shouted.

I took a careful yet firm step onto the bridge. Then another, then another…

“Silver!”

I didn’t care. I kept making careful, prodding steps towards the encampment at the middle of the bridge. I don’t know how long it lasted, but the ex-soldiers were too busy drinking and cavorting to notice me until I was well within shooting range.

I must have looked absolutely ridiculous: a lone teenager almost frothing at the mouth with rage wielding a rifle-- a one mare army looking to exact revenge against trained professionals. But I didn’t care. I was angry-- furious-- and I wanted revenge.

As I approached, their heads slowly turned one by one. They fell silent and just stared. One of them discreetly switched off the boombox they had been using to play garish pop music on for their little gathering. They kept staring, unsure what to make of me, until one raised his voice and spoke. Until then, I had their complete and undivided (albeit inebriated) attention.

“You...” I began, in a voice more deep and menacing than anything I could ever pull off with a clear head.

“I... respected you...” I continued, glaring over them one by one.

“Hey, isn’t that--” one stallion whispered.

“I RESPECTED you!” I shouted at him, my voice bordering on hoarseness and my anger exacerbated by his interruption.

“And this… THIS is how you repay me? THIS is your GRATITUDE?!?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” a mare whispered back.

“HIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”

I let loose a hail of gunfire, spraying them all as if I was cutting their heads off with a blade. Before they could draw their weapons, I reloaded my weapon and flung my empty cartridge right at the stallion’s head. It hit him in the face, knocking him backwards into their campfire, where his whole body caught fire and he began thrashing about in unbearable pain.

The mare recoiled in horror, giving me enough time to slip into SATS and send a burst of bullets straight into her face. But then a stallion came charging at me from my left, and I only jumped out of the way just in the nick of time. Once he had passed, I went straight into SATS again and aimed a kick square in his nuts. This incapacitated him long enough for me to yank the bayonet off his rifle and affix it to mine, then stab him in the back of the knee. As I pulled the bayonet out, its tip was covered in blood. I brought it up to my face and sniffed it. There must have been some good game across the river, because his blood was rich in iron... and it smelled delicious.

But I couldn’t stop and smell the roses for long. I sensed one of his comrades running up behind me, so I spun around to meet him. He stopped just short of crashing into me, paralyzed with fear as if he was face-to-face wtih the toothy grin of Nightmare Moon herself.

Was I grinning? I didn’t think so, but I can’t be sure. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter because he didn’t live to tell the tale. I thrust my bayonet into his neck, and his forehooves shot up reflexively to clutch his neck and stop the bleeding. I tried to wriggle my gun out of his grasp, but his grasp was too strong. I tried pulling the trigger, which only lodged a bullet into his neck and made the bleeding worse. Unable to wrest my gun from his grasp, I just had to drop it and switch to my pistol. As soon as I let go, there was nothing holding the front of the stallion’s body up, so he fell face-first onto the ground.

There were still two more of the bastards left, and they were panicking. By now SATS had fully recharged, so I singled out one who was standing in the open for multiple headshots. He tried to run across the bridge and flee, but I was too quick and felled him with six quick shots to the noggin. Once he was down, I reloaded my gun as I walked towards him, and was about to aim a point blank at his heart to finish him off when I heard galloping behind me. I turned and saw the other unwounded one, who was still scared but had resolved to attempt to avenge the deaths of her companions. She leapt, I ducked, and she flew over me and over the rail. I went into SATS and clumsily aimed a shot at her head. It missed but hit her groin instead. I wanted to shoot her again, but she had fallen too far for my shots to be effective, so I just had to watch her fall until she landed in the river below with a splash. Considering the small plates of ice built up around the edges of the bridge’s pillars, she would probably die of hypothermia if she didn’t get to shore quickly, a feat made doubtful by her injured leg.

I surveyed the damage I had done and felt satisfied. “These charlatans had been vanquished,” I thought, “and will never extort anypony ever again.” I decided it was best that I leave the bodies where they lay, to send a message to their counterparts throughout the city that their behavior will not be tolerated. The only change I made was to empty their pockets just a bit (hey, if I didn’t then somepony else will) and to retrieve my gun from the the clutches of that one pony who had it jammed in his neck. By then he was dead, so I could retrieve it with ease…

“Aaaaaahhhhhhhh...”

I turned around and saw that one stallion I had stabbed in the groin. He was still sitting there, softly crying in pain as if he had a chronic toothache. I almost felt bad for him, but I couldn’t let myself feel any sympathy for the bastard. Besides, after all that he’d been through, the best thing I could do for him was just to put him out of his misery.

Bang!

He fell flat on the ground. I watched the blood spill out of his brain and into a puddle on the ground. I was surprised at how quickly the puddle grew. Then, as if it had filled an invisible vessel, it began spilling out into fat rivulets reaching toward the edges of the road. When the blood reached the gutters, it spread out in search of a drain to crawl into.

Sometimes I could use a drain to crawl into.

I stood up and looked around. The last of the sunset, a few salmon-colored streaks, clung to the underbelly of the clouds like the scratch of a tiger’s claw. The rest of the world was shrouded in darkness, save for the vicinity of the Gatekeepers’ campfire and the charred corpse inside it.

I cautiously walked back to where the rest of the group was. I began to regret my rage-filled outburst. Had they been watching? What would they think if they saw it? It didn’t matter, since the sight itself was enough to scare anypony away. I used my flashlight spell, illuminating my horn like a torch to get a better view of my surroundings. I saw two dim figures of Dmitry and Grapevine standing there in stunned silence, but none of the others. Had they been scared away?

“Were you watching me this whole time?” I asked quietly when I was close enough for them to hear.

“Oh, yes, we saw every second,” Dmitry said.

“Was that too much?” I asked.

“It was a bit… overkill,” he replied, “...but it was all within your right to do. We won’t abandon you over that.”

I breathed a sigh of massive relief.

“It also taught me to keep my distance when you’re angry,” he added.

I looked around, but saw and heard nothing.

“What about the others?” I asked. “Did they see it too? Did they leave?”

“We told ‘em to hide in the bushes while we took care of the guys on the bridge,” Grapevine said. “Ah don’t think any of ‘em saw what happened, though they certainly heard.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “But we should probably go back to them and make sure they’re okay.”

Level up!

Level 7: Wasteland Neophyte

Next Perk at Level 8

Stats:
Ponies Led: 8
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 31 bits per Troy Ounce

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself but based on your actions so far, likely to get worse. Curable with antibiotics.

Butthurt: Getting tazed in the butt is never fun. -1 Agility.

*Because ponies are much heavier than humans, their diets cannot be judged by human standards. I did some research and calculated that an average adult pony would require around 14,000 Calories for an average workload, and around 10,000 to simply sustain their body. For a group of soldier ponies living in a post-apocalyptic ice age, 11,000 Calories would be starvation rations, especially if they lived in a society where food was plentiful before the war.

“Did you miss me, Celestia? I’ve missed you.” -Discord
“I can’t picture anything. It’s too dark.” -Twilight
“Bravo ponies, bravo! Harmony in Equestria is officially dead.” -Discord

Dr. Zeitgeist speaks like the G-Man from Half-Life, minus the awkward inflection.
Major Whiplash: Somewhat like Elder Maxson from Fallout 4?

Author's Note

Chapter 14: Remnants

Chapter 14: Remnants

“What’s that, friend? We’re lost? *Laughs until she coughs*” [Pinkie, MLP movie]

Saturday, September 13th, 4347

Dear Diary,

After the fight, it was too dark to continue any further, so we had to settle in for the night. I correctly predicted that we could probably find a suitable building on the other side of the river, but the others insisted we lodge in a motel on the north side that we had recently passed since we knew it existed. Remembering what Dmitry had said to me earlier, I decided not to argue and deferred to his judgement. Part of why i wanted us to sleep on the other side of the river was because I was worried the Guardians might supply reinforcements to the bridge during the night, and that I would have to fight them all over again. I still can’t believe I was able to do it all single-hoofedly, and even if I did, I could never purposely recreate the rage that enabled me to do so.

Fortunately, the bridge remained exactly as I had left it. The site now looked even deader than before, now that the campfire had burnt itself out and the corpses had begun to rot. I had considered going out there before we left and rearranging the corpses before the others saw them, but ultimately decided I wouldn’t have enough time to do so without suspicion. I resorted to simply hoping the others wouldn’t notice.

When we crossed the bridge, we still had to fight the roaches that were feasting upon the corpses, but roaches are far easier to take out than fully grown pony soldiers. A part of me wondered if it would have just been safer to pay the toll, but with the size of our group that probably would have taken all the bullets we had left. Plus, based on their reactions to me, it seemed as though they still held a grudge against me over something that happened nearly a year ago. Whether or not they knew about what we did to their counterparts over in Greyham would depend on the degree of coordination the Gatekeepers had as a whole, which really didn’t seem like much.

We left the freeway at the first exit across the river. This put us out in the country, where it was a lot colder and a lot windier than it was in the city. There were a couple of houses here and there, but the vast space in between consisted solely of barren, desolate fields and clumps of dead trees.

“Hey, since we’re going east, why don’t we go back up to the river and hijack a boat?” one of the survivors asked.

“Nah, it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” replied another. “Besides, what if somepony’s siphoned out all the fuel?”

“We don’t need fuel, we’ll be floating downstream,” said the first. “And it’ll save us lots of walking.”

“That river moves hella slow,” said a third. “It’ll take all day just to go one mile!”

“It’ll just seem slower,” said the first. “But trust me, it’s faster. All these roads go twisting and turning, while the river goes straight through.”

“An’ how will ya know where ta stop?” asked Grapevine. “All those riverbanks are covered in trees!”

“She’s right,” said the second pony. “If we go too far, we’ll just float right back into the city, and all our traveling will be for nothing. If we go way too far, we’ll sail right into the blast zone.”

“Too bad,” said the white stallion I met earlier. “I’d have loved to see the downtown by boat.”

“We can still do that,” said a fourth pony. “I’m sure radiation suits aren’t that hard to find. In fact, I heard there’s a lab somewhere out here...”

“Yeah, a crop lab,” said the second pony. “Not a radiation lab. Why would they be exposing our food to radiation?”

“I dunno, I heard they’re actually doing something like that,” said the third pony.

“Okay, maybe somewhere,” the second pony replied, “But there’s no way they’d do that near a major city!”

I had taken heed of Dmitry’s advice yesterday and deliberately slowed my pace so I wouldn’t leave the others behind. That turned out to be the right thing to do, since their arguing filled what would have otherwise been a pretty monotonous journey through the middle of nowhere.

“No, the river goes east, then north. We need to go east, then east.”

“Then maybe we could just ride the boat until the river turns.”

“But how will we know the difference between its many small turns and the one big turn?”

“Trust me, you’ll know.”

“But what if we miss it anyway? Then what’ll we do?”

“I just remembered there’s a waterfall in Cascade City. We won’t go downtown.”

“A waterfall would be fun.”

“A waterfall would certainly not be fun! And what if we fall down it?”

“We won’t fall down it. I’m sure we’ll spot it before we get there.”

“What if we don’t have any gas in the boat? Then we can’t turn back!”

“Well, I think a waterfall will be the least of our worries. If we drift too far, we’ll have to get past the Gatekeepers again!”

“We’ve handled them before and we can handle them again. No need to worry.”

“I dunno man, that firefight sounded pretty scary.”

“Um, guys,” said the white stallion, “I think that waterfalls and Gatekeepers might be the least of our worries right now. It appears we’ve just run out of road.”

Everypony looked ahead, including me. Admittedly, their conversation had distracted me, because I had unwittingly led us down a gravel path which led us through somepony’s farm and ended in a clearing surrounded by trees.

“What now?” he asked me. “Do we turn back?”

I thought about it for a moment. Then I finally said,

“No.”

This confused the others, so I decided to explain.

“We didn’t pass any signs or roads going south for a long time, so if we try to go around, it could cost us hours. Since we know we’re going east, I thought it would be best if we just went straight through. Eventually we’ll find a road to help us find our bearings.”

Still confusion. I realized my explanation probably wasn’t very helpful, since the others didn’t have pipbucks with road maps.

“She’s right,” said Dmitry, looking at his pipbuck. “The closest road through here is a ways away. Cutting across here might be our best bet.”

The survivors shrugged began trodding eastward toward the thicket.

I almost immediately began regretting my decision. Consciously, I knew that there was very little chance that anypony else was in these woods, but recent events had me worried. I also began to worry that perhaps this was the more time consuming route, despite being potentially shorter, due to our slow progress. The undergrowth teemed with branches and vines, which tried even us three semi-experienced adventurers. After all, we got out of Mt. Hoof using trails and roads. It felt like we were wandering aimlessly, with no path to follow or landmarks to distinguish one place from the next. All we had to go off of was the pipbuck’s compass, which had been pretty accurate so far and gave us no reason to distrust it.

Eventually, we heard the sound of running water and saw light through the branches. We emerged on the bank of a great big ribbon of blue. It was fairly dark, but the numerous tiny ripples on its surface indicated that it wasn’t too deep to wade across. It was too big to call a creek, but it didn’t seem like the sort of place you could float a boat down, either.

“Really?” one of the survivors asked. “Are you going to make us cross that?”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” said another. “Are you telling me you don’t know how to swim?”

“It’s not that deep, guys,” I said. “And there’s an island on the other side. You won’t be in the water for long.”

“Fine, we’ll go,” the survivor said. “But I’m not going first.”

I couldn’t help but glare at her, but she had a point. I looked back at the water, then at my own clothing. I wasn’t exactly dressed to go in the water and my boots were made for walking, not wading, but I had backed myself into this and didn’t really have a choice. I plunged my hoof into the water and almost yanked it out because of how cold it was. However, I kept it there and put my other hoof in to let them adjust to the cold. Instead, they started to numb, but the others were looking on with suspicion so I had to get going. What, could they hear my pipbuck’s geiger counter from all the way over there? I stepped forward, then put both of my hindhooves in. As I waded in, I moved slowly and tried to keep my balance on the slippery rocks admidst the swift current of the river.

By the time I was halfway across the river, the water was already up to my belly and my hooves had gone numb. I stopped to catch my balance and looked back to see if the others were following. They were, but with greater difficulty than I had. And with some hesitation too, probably from the radiation. Ironically, standing there worrying about it would only kill them faster. I considered going back to try to help them, but at the same time I didn’t want to spend any longer in there than I had to. Although I was absorbing rads like crazy, radiation was an afterthought for me compared to freezing my hooves off. But scrambling over to the shore would have been very rude and seem like I was rubbing my success in their faces, so I took a halfway approach and kept going at the steady (and safe) pace I had been going at until the water was only fetlock-deep.

The island had little to offer aside from several tufts of dead grass. There weren’t even any stool-sized rocks for us to sit on! However, it was dry land, which was all we were asking for at that point. Our entire group had to sit on the gravel for about ten minutes or so just to warm up, myself included. It felt like we were wasting time, but I also recognized the importance of it, especially in giving our hooves time to warm up. Most of the others took off their waterlogged shoes, but I didn’t; I weighed the pros and cons and decided that the convenience of not having to put them back on again outweighed the risk of hypothermia in my hooves or a fungal infection in my boots. Instead, I’d try to walk around and warm my hooves up that way. My forehooves though had gloves instead of boots, which I could easily take off. I was shocked to see that my forehooves were almost white with numbness, and spent several minutes furiously blowing air on them and rubbing them together until sensation and color returned.

The distance between the island and the east bank was far shorter, and the water was less than knee deep. We could quickly cross that part, but the earlier crossing had left our clothes soaking wet, and therefore frigid. We didn’t have time to properly air them out, nor did we have anything to replace them with. Some of the survivors had packed extra clothes, but unlike our zipper-lined vinyl stable-issued saddlebags, their bags were mainly made of cloth and had button-fastened flaps instead of zippers, which resulted in their articles being soaked with water during the crossing. Given a choice between two pairs of clothes that were both waterlogged, all but one chose not to change.

I wondered if the continuation of the thicket on the other side would give us shelter from the howling winds that swept across the barren fields, but the forest soon drew to an abrupt end when we happened upon an open field. This field was much larger than the clearing on the other side and as evidenced by the large wheel line irrigation pipe, was intended for growing crops, although whatever was growing there last year had either been harvested before the bombs fell or beaten into a muddy pulp by the continuous rain which fell after it.

From there, we found a dirt road that took us to an actual road, which took us to another road which took us to another road which brought us into a small town called Canterby. Much like Sandy Shades, Canterby was also a small town before the war consisting of several blocks of suburban housing surrounding a small downtown core built around a highway. Much like Sandy Shades, Canterby had also responding to the war by shedding its residential periphery and building a makeshift fort in its business district. In Canterby’s case, the town now housed around one hundred ponies inside six blocks of stores, with all the gaps on the outside gated or barricaded. Much of their wall appeared to be made of steel plates ripped out of automobile bodies. However, there was one major difference between the two towns, and no, it was not the fact that Canterby had both a retirement home and a chiropractor inside its walls.

“Who goes there?”

A haggard griffon eyed us from the battlement above the north gate with the gaze of a hawk.

“Who goes there? Friend or foe?”

“Friend!” I shouted. “We mean no harm. Are you open for trade?”

“Trade?” he cocked his head and looked at us like we were speaking some alien language. Then he perked up.

“Trade, ah, yes, very good. Trade. Ah-hem. OPEN THE GAYYY-TE!”

As the gate began opening, the white stallion from earlier whispered to me,

“Was this the place you meant to take us? It doesn’t look very friendly to me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I replied. “We’re just stopping here for supplies, and maybe lunch.”

Upon entering the gate, we were greeted by three militia ponies in their early 20’s, standing at attention in a line near a very scruffy and inebriated officer with a mustache and thick sideburns. Upon seeing us, his eyes lit up and he began salivating.

“Ooh, lookie here,” he muttered. Then he cleared his throat and announced, “Welcome, welcome, welcome y’all, to our… humble… fort,”

His eyes scanned our group, but kept coming back to me.

“Ah am major Sibley Tent. While we ain’t got the finest of accommodations, we have plenty of… amenities… that are rather uncommon in this wasteland of ours, makin’ it a fine place of lodging fer any ladies an’ gentlecolts of a discerning variety...”

Then he added in a soft, seductive voice,

“Especially the ladies...”
And licked his lips. He seemed to be staring directly at my body as he said this. Most of my companions grimaced awkwardly, and Grapevine seemed particularly annoyed. All of this attention was making me feel awkward.

“Well,....” I began, “I’d hate to be a bother... um… you seem busy. Maybe we’ll just leave you alone then...”

I began turning towards the gate.

“No, wait!” the Major cried in desperation. “We’re plenty open fer company, we’re--”

A calm, authoritative voice interrupted him.

“That’s enough, Sibley. At ease.”

A mildly annoyed middle-aged dark blue stallion with goldenrod hair approached, and all of the guards saluted. His uniform was spotless and his face was spotlessly clean-shaven, a feature incredibly rare among wasteland stallions and placed him in stark contrast to his unruly subordinate.

“Good day travelers,” he said , “ah am Major General Edward Richard Sprigg, retired, an’ I apologize fer the actions of my subordinate. May it be mah pleasure to welcome y’all to our humble fort. How may we be of service?”

Major Tent shut up and stepped aside apologetically. The General’s presence and professionalism put my group at ease, myself most of all.

“We were looking to trade some supplies,” I said. “We’ll be here for about two hours, at most… sir.”

“There’s no need fer formality,” he said. “An’ please, take all the time you’d like. We’d be happy to trade with you, as we were runnin’ low on certain goods ourselves. Ah presume you’ll be joinin’ us fer lunch?”

The arrival of eight extra guests posed a logistical problem since the kitchen staff had already begun cooking. This would be solved by making a second batch of food after the first. Also, the General and three of his officers chose to give their spots at the lunch table to have a private meal with myself and three companions of my choosing (to make up for the impolite behavior of his officer earlier). While the rest of our group was dining with the others, I took Dmitry, Grapevine, and the white stallion from earlier with me to do the group’s trading. However, we were given some very unclear and convoluted directions to the supply depot, and we wandered off into a dark hallway where we were--for lack of a better term--ambushed-- by Major Tent.

“Mah ‘pologies fer mah earlier behav’r,” he began. “Ah suppose we got off on the wrong note.”

“We forgive you,” I said.

“Good, good,” he replied. “Let that be water under the bridge, then.”

“Aren’t ya supposed ta be on scullery duty?” blurted Grapevine.

“Why, yes, yes ah am,” said the Major. “But ah can’t clean the dishes ‘till after the meal’s over. But enough about me. Y’all seem lost.”

“We are lost,” said Dmitry. “Can you direct us to the supply depot?”

“Oh, the supply depot’s located far, far back,” the Major said. “We can make the deal right here. As the official quartermaster, ah have that authoriteh.”

“Oookay,” I said. “Well, we’re running a bit low on food.”

“Food, yes?” he said. “We’ve got plenty. But what’ll ya trade in return?”

“Mostly weapons and ammo,” I said. “Will you accept those?”

“Why, yes, we were runnin’ low on those,” he said. “An’ ah see you’ve got some fine ones on ya, if ya know what ah mean...”

I let Dmitry and the white stallion do most of the trading, partly because they’re better at it than I am, and partly because I still found the Major to be kind of creepy. Grapevine wasn’t good at bartering either, so she kept to herself, muttering angrily.

“We’re both true blue southerners, yet he goes fer the city girl...”

The trade seemed to go without a hitch, though I felt like our bags were a lot lighter coming out of the trade than they were going in. We gave up some pretty good weaponry and a lot of ammo, in exchange for a vague promise that we’d be supplied with edibles when we left the fort. The Major justified this by claiming that the prices had to be adjusted to recoup the cost of the food they’d been serving us, although the General had made no such indication when he invited us to dine with them. We ended up relaying these events to him during our private luncheon.

“Quartermaster?” he said with surprise. “No, he ain’t the quartermaster, he’s in charge of patrols an’ drills, not supplies. Are y’all sure ya heard him correctly?”

“We’re all certain,” Dmitry said. “If I had known better, I could have recorded our conversation.”

“Hmmm,” said the General. “That ain’t like him. Ah know he might rub off on y’all the wrong way, but trust me, he’s a good pony at heart.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get better directions,” said the actual quartermaster, a green mare who owned a hardware store before the war. “If I had known, I would have met you inside and shown you the way. I was just told you’d be coming, so I stayed in the depot and waited.”

“After lunch, make sure the order goes through,” the General told her. “We won’t let you leave without yer supplies.”

“I think that’s enough on this topic,” said another officer. “So aside from that, how have you been finding our camp?”

“Well, it’s… fairly clean,” said the white stallion.

The quartermaster giggled.

“Yes, we strive to keep everything neat and orderly,” the General said. “We adhere strictly to army regulations in everything we do.”

“Huh,” said Grapevine. “Ah didn’t know there was an army base around here.”

“There ain’t,” the General replied. “Ah had actually come here to retire from the army some time ago, but when we were attacked by vicious looters, they asked fer my help. Ah’m not the best fighter, but ah know how to run a fort.”

“Interesting...” I said. “So you were essentially able to draft the entire civilian population of this town into the military?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘drafted,’” said the quartermaster. “It seemed more of an obvious choice for survival.”

“A shame ya had ta be yanked outta retirement,” Grapevine said. “Even after the war ta end all wars, ya still can’t get any peace.”

“No worries,” the General said. “Ah’ve been preparin’ fer this mah entire life. It’s like Spitfire said; ‘Old soldiers never die..”

“...they just fade away,” I added.

The General turned toward me with a small smile of approval on his face. “Hey, ya got it,” he said. Then, he turned back to the others and said, “Ah’ve been readin’ Spitfire’s memoirs recently. Great book. Any a’ ya read it?”

“I used to have an autographed copy,” I said. Everypony turned and looked at me, with reactions running the gamut from astonished to apathetic.

“Woah there,” the General said with amazement while still retaining his signature calmness. “If ya don’t mind my askin’, how’d ya get it?”

“Well, it was about five years ago, on a Saturday in March,” I began…

I can still remember it rather vividly. My mom was meeting colleagues at some art show in the Opal District and wanted to bring at least one of her children to show off. I was the only one who agreed to go, mainly because she had promised to take me to Towell’s World of Books afterward. The show itself was boring and completely forgettable, and I wouldn’t have really remembered the visit to the bookstore if I hadn’t wandered off to the second floor. There I found a table all laid out for a book signing, and sitting behind it was none other than Spitfire herself. I couldn’t believe it! The most famous name in the Air Force (behind Rainbow Dash, of course) was right here in our inconsequential little corner of Equestria, and now I had the opportunity to meet her in person!

I hid in one of the aisles between bookshelves for a while, trying to calm myself and plan out what I was going to say so I didn’t make a fool out of myself. No, I wasn’t some raving fanfilly about to burst into a scream at any moment because I had just seen my idol-- because I DON’T have ‘idols,’ but I guess you could say she was a bit of a kinda-sorta idol who I thought was really cool. ).

Eventually, I worked up the courage to come out of hiding and actually walk up to her. She looked up from what she was doing and appeared really curious as to what some young filly was approaching her for.

“Um, hi...” I said, before starting to choke on my own shyness. I could feel myself shaking a little, and desperately hoped that she wouldn’t notice. “...miss Spitfire,” I finally added a few seconds later. Then I realized I had made a mistake and quickly corrected it. “Er… General Spitfire,” I quickly added.

Spitfire chuckled at this.

“Just ‘Spitfire’ is fine,” she said. “I’m surprised a filly your age knows who I am. I’m not exactly as famous as I used to be.”

She sighed and gazed out into space and muttered, “Otherwise they wouldn’t have shelved me here like an old book.”

I looked around. Unlike downstairs, this section of the store had the atmosphere of a library. It was almost shocking to see just how deserted it was, especially on the busiest day of the week.

“But I’m not mad,” she continued. “I mean, I get it, times have changed, I’m not in the Wonderbolts anymore. All my work for the past twenty years was behind the scenes. Planning air raids in a war room against targets hundreds of miles away that you’ll never see with your own eyes isn’t exactly glamorous...”

She was definitely past her prime. This was especially obvious when contrasted with the much younger version of herself on the cover of her book, ‘Memoirs of a Wonderbolt Captain’. Despite attempts to dye it, her mane was getting greyer and more brittle. Her skin was also starting to sag (especially under the eyes) and she just seemed a little lethargic overall. She could never go back to the Wonderbolts now, even if she wanted to.

Then she looked back at me.

“Umm… you aren’t lost, are you?”

“No, I was on my way to the history section right over there,” I said, pointing to it.

“History, eh?” she asked. “Well, I guess that’s a fitting new home for me then.”

“Actually, I think they put you in front of the ‘Military’ section,” I said, pointing to the sign behind her.

She turned to look, then smiled slyly back at me.

“I’m just jokin’, I know that,” she said. “I’m just at the part of my life where I reminisce about things, ya know? I’m old enough to be your grandmother, after all. Besides, I pretty much am history at this point, since I’m retiring...”

“So it’s true?” I asked. “Are you already retired, or not yet?”

“Welllll…. It’s complicated,” she said. “I still have a few loose ends to tie up, and I play an advisory role every now and then, but for the most part, yes, I’m already retired. How else’d I have the time to go on this book tour?”
Then she picked up a book and displayed it in front of me.

“So, kid, ya wanna buy my book? I’d really appreciate if you did. There’s action, adventure, all sorts of funny stories, and a whole lotta life lessons.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take one.”

Looking at the big stacks of books on the table, I asked, “Slow day today?”

“Yeah, kind of,” she answered. “But I think there’s a lot less interest in this town than usual. In Manehattan and Filly I always had lines.”

“There’s a lot of anti-war sentiment out here,” I said. “Where’s your next stop?”

“Seaddle,” she said. “Is it any better?”

“Ten times worse,” I said. “We’re like a mini-Seaddle.”

“Shoot,” she said. “Well, it can’t be that bad. The worst they’ve done was pelt me with tomatoes in San Flankcisco… though I guess throwing coffee’s a lot worse, huh?”

“Just a heads up, there’s a couple of weirdos protesting you outside the entrance,” I said. “There’s only five of them, but they looked really, really angry. You should go through the back entrance when you leave, or better yet, the underground parking garage.”

“Noted,” Spitfire said. “I’ll keep an eye out for ‘em, though they’re usually gone by the time I’m done. If there’s one thing the military’s taught me, it’s how to survive chronic boredom.”

At this point, she laid the book down, opened it up, and

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“Silver Bullet,” I responded.

“Silver… Bullet,” she repeated as she wrote it down. Then she quickly scrawled out her signature, closed the book, and gave it to me.

“With a name like that, you’ll do well in the army,” she said. “Especially as a sniper.”

“But I don’t want to be a sniper,” I replied. “I wanna be an officer, just like you.”

She smiled a bit.

“Then follow this book to the letter,” she said, “Conquer your fears, and never, EVER give up.”

I was so excited that I just squealed and galloped away, completely forgetting to thank her.

Behind a bookshelf, I immediately opened the book and read the message Spitfire had written for me, though I can’t remember what it said. Then I skimmed through the book itself, gazing at the pictures and smelling the freshly printed paper… at least until my mom started calling my name.

The others laughed at this last detail, but that wasn’t the end of the story. There was another detail that, seeing just how much they respected her, I purposefully chose to omit: after I replied, “Coming!” to my mom’s call, I looked back at Spitfire and found her slouched over over her table, drinking a huge swig of vodka straight from the bottle. She looked disheveled, pathetic, and overall a mere shadow of her former self.

I carefully approached her, unsure of whether or not she even noticed me. I think she did, but happened to be too drunk to care. In her drunken stupor, she had knocked over one of the books that had been displayed upright, again seeming not to care for it. When I reached the table, I gently propped the book back up, Then I leaned into Spitfire’s ear and whispered,

“If it’s any consolation, I think you did the right thing in the Battle of Dassiestad. Even if everypony else hates you for it.”

“SILVER BULLET!” My mom cried from across the store.

“Coming!” I yelled. Knowing my time was short, I simply looked at Spitfire (who still appeared to be dazed), patted her on the head, then began walking away.

I was halfway across the room when I heard a loud “Hey, kid!” from behind me. I turned around and saw Spitfire, still hunched over but looking ahead with a weak smile on her face.

“Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

As we were preparing to leave, three colts who were about half my age approached us with beige sacks filled with some type of grain.

“Major Tent sends his regards,” one of them said, and I nodded, knowing he had kept his word.

As we were leaving the fort, one of the survivors asked me, “So where are we going next?”

“Shady Sands. It’s to the east, and then north a bit.”

“Will we be able to make it there by tonight?” she asked.

“I’m… not really sure. Can anypony help me out?”

“Ah kinda know this area,” Grapevine added. “Probably not. Ah’m pretty sure there’s also a river we’ll hafta cross.”

“A river?” the survivor asked. “A big river, or a small one?”

“Pretty big,” Grapevine said. “Not as big as the Whinnyamette, but much bigger than the one we just crossed earlier.”

“Can we please cross the next river on a bridge?” another survivor asked. “My clothes still haven’t fully dried yet.”

“Yes, we’ll cross all rivers on bridges from now on,” I said. This seemed to appease everypony, but it made me worry that we might not make it to a town before sundown.

We also made a point to stick only to paved roads. This ended up working well enough as we weren’t wandering into any forests again, but I felt even less sure of where we were going. We were wandering through country roads in an area I had never really been to, and for the first time since leaving the Stable, I began to feel truly lost.

Grapevine assured me that there was a highway in the area that would take us up north again, but she forgot what number it was. This I found only mildly reassuring, because if we happened to miss that highway, then we would be walking back up into the mountains again, getting ourselves even more lost. I only worried about this more and more as I noticed a growing number of conifers in our surroundings as the afternoon progressed. Frequent checks on my pipbuck’s compass confirmed my suspicion that we were drifting southeast, towards an area I knew to be very sparsely populated.

Eventually, Grapevine abruptly stopped at an intersection, grinning with delight.

“Ah-ha!” she exclaimed. “Two-eleven! That’s the highway ah was tellin’ ya about. An’ look! A milepost!”

Across the street, there was a signpost bearing the highway marker and a green sign containing distances to two towns in each direction. The two towns in the northward direction were Springwater (4 miles) and Cicada (8 miles). One of these would have to be our resting place for tonight, since the clouds were already beginning to be overtaken by the dim orangeness I had come to associate with sunset.

“It’s eight miles to Cicada,” Grapevine said. “That should net us two or three hours of travel, assumin’ we leave right now.”

“But that’s too far,” one of the survivors objected. “Springwater is way closer.”

“Springwater ain’t nothin’ but a church an’ a grocery store at a crossroads,” Grapevine replied. “Only Cicada’ll have enough beds.”

So we set forth to Cicada. I personally had my doubts about if we would make it there in time, but we managed to make it just before dusk. However, when we arrived the town was completely abandoned. No shops, no hotels, no traders, not even any lanterns. It was a town, of course, but with all of the buildings darkened and boarded up, it didn’t look very friendly or safe.

“Hey, what’s this?”

All of us crowded around the white stallion from earlier, who had discovered a wooden sign tied to a lamppost. It was homemade, but the letters were large and bold with perfectly straight lines, painstakingly created by somepony who had way too much time on their hooves. Above a big bold arrow, the sign read:

Rearing Hill Heights
Visitors and Traders Welcome,
Ruffians And Raiders Keep Out.

“C’mon, let’s go!” Grapevine exclaimed, and took off in the direction of the arrow. We followed the arrow as it brought us along a chain of signs leading to a subdivision that was walled off from the rest of the world by a neat oak fence. The road leading in had been sealed with a makeshift wooden gate with a small watchtower standing shortly behind it. The bored-looking yellow filly manning it lit up when she saw us approach, and grew excited.

“Visitors! Visitors, everypony, we have visitors!”

“How do ya know they ain’t just passin’ by?” asked a grumpy old stallion behind the gate. “You said that about the last twenty times.”

“If they’re coming by at sundown, they’re probably looking for a place to sleep,” the watchfilly replied.

“Are we allowed to open the gates this late?” asked a third, a young stallion who sounded unsure about his duties.

“I’m sure Ms. Gloomfeather won’t mind,” said the filly. “...Or notice.”

“Just make sure ya get a good look at ‘em,” said the grumpy stallion. “Ya sure they don’t look like raiders?”

“I’m sure,” the watchfilly said. “They’re carrying sacks and stuff, and only three of them have guns.”

Now we were standing in front of the gate, anxiously looking up at the watchfilly.

“Hi!” yelled Grapevine. “Do y’all have any beds ta spare?”

“Certainly!” the watchfilly replied. “I’d be happy to let you in, but Grandpa Grumps wants to know if you’re friendly or not. Are you friendly?”

“With the possible exception of one or two individuals, ah can certainly atest that everypony in mah party is ‘friendly,’” announced Grapevine. Dmitry and I glared at her.

With a shrug, the watchfilly said, “Good enough,” and then signaled to the younger stallion to unlatch the gate. He approached the gate and undid the padlock with an upward thrusting motion, then casually kicked the door open as if he’d done this hundreds of times. As we walked in, the periwinkle Grandpa Grumps pouted, but was powerless to stop us from entering so he just walked away. The watchfilly scurried down the watchtower’s ladder bubbling with excitement.

“Omigosh, I’m soooo happy to meet you!” the yellow filly exclaimed. “I’m Lofty Balloon, and I’m on evening lookout duty. We don’t get many visitors around here, so I’m really happy whenever I get a chance to meet new friends!”

Then she pointed to the young stallion, a sky blue unicorn with an indigo mane.

“This is Switch Flipper, he’s an electrician’s apprentice. Last month the dam that powers our town broke, and thanks to him the lights are back on!”

Upon mentioning working power, I looked around and noticed that the town was unusually bright. Most postwar settlements relied on torches and oil lamps, eschewing light to save their precious generator fuel for turrets, computers, and medical equipment. Here though, the entire town was awash in light from the houses and still-functioning streetlights. We had just crossed a fairly large river before entering town, so there must be a fairly intact dam somewhere around here.

“That guy over there is Bah Humbug, but most ponies just call him Grandpa Grumps. That Griffon over there is--”

“Lofty, your shift isn’t over yet!” said a grey griffon wearing a fairly clean but somewhat worn business suit. Her feathers came in two different shades of grey: a smoky bluish grey and a charcoal grey, modulated by a patch of milky white on her chin and neck. Her suit was even darker than her charcoal feathers, but not jet black, instead being merely an even darker shade of grey that I never even knew existed.

“Oh, of course!” exclaimed a startled Lofty, who clambered back up the ladder to the watchtower.

“Are we letting them stay?” asked Switch Flipper, who had his telekinetic aura gripping the gate’s handles.

“Yes, you may close the gate now,” said the griffon, who I presumed was the Mrs. Gloomfeather who Lofty had mentioned. Then she turned to us and confirmed it.

“Hello, travelers, and welcome to Rearing Hill Heights!” she said with the kind of professional rehearsed excitement one would expect from a pony trying to sell you something expensive, like a house or a car. “I am Gladys Gloomfeather, Chairwoman of the Rearing Hill Heights Homeowner’s Association, and may I be the… second to welcome you to our humble community. Would you like me to take you on a tour of our town?”

“Thank you,” Dmitry said, “But I think we’d rather settle down for the night.”

“We’re also kinda hungry after a long day on the road,” added Grapevine. “Do ya have any restaurants here? And are they still open, or is it too late?”

“Of course, of course,” Gloomfeather said. “Yes, I’m sure our cooks would be happy to make something for you right away! But first, let me show you to an inn...”

We were taken to a two story house which had been repurposed for lodging guests. We were told the family that had lived here before the war had left town (though I later learned that they had actually died during the town’s brief cholera epidemic last November). Most of their furniture and belongings remained, though family pictures and many of the more personal items had been removed. While most of the downstairs had remained virtually unchanged, the upstairs bedrooms were crammed with two or three beds apiece, beds which had obviously been brought in from other houses in the neighborhood but had clean sheets and were in fairly good condition. There were enough beds in the house to accommodate our original party, a fact which only reminded me of things I would much rather forget.

We were very much encouraged to help ourselves to the house’s two showers before going to sleep, but most of our group was dead tired and went to sleep almost immediately upon settling in, pressing the dirt and dust from their coats and clothes against the freshly laundered sheets. Not wanting to exploit our hosts’ generosity, my companions and I chose instead to comply with our hosts’ wishes. Of the three of us, I waited to take my shower last.

Once my companions had finished their showers and went off to sleep, I was left alone in a quiet house with nothing but my thoughts. It was 11:00. I was normally wide awake at this hour, since I had fully adjusted my sleeping schedule around my guard shift, which ran from whenever the others went to bed until around 1 AM. The calmness and lack of danger made me nervous, considering that we had spent most of our nights in the past two weeks camping in abandoned buildings with nopony to watch us but ourselves. I wondered if this town had a night watchpony, so I went outside and sure enough, I found somepony occupying the watchtower at the front gate. There was also a pony who prowled the streets, presumably in search of troublemakers from inside the walls. He had a menacing look about him and his face seemed to have been contorted into a perpetual scowl. It was my luck to narrowly avoid him, choosing to sneak through the yards and hide behind bushes and boulders and porch railings and such instead of traveling down the main street right in the watchpony’s path. Stealth is fairly easy since it’s mainly about staying quiet, something I happen to be quite good at. Having a very dull coat color also comes in handy. And to top it all off, an invisibility spell I can use in short bursts, which I unintentionally taught myself through many years of wallflowering my way through social events. Unfortunately, wishing I could be somewhere else has never given me the ability to teleport… yet.

Upon returning to the inn, I locked myself in one of the bathrooms and removed my stable jumpsuit for what was probably the first time in three weeks or so. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was incredibly cold since the furnace no longer had access to a regular gas supply, but fortunately the bathroom at least had a heat lamp. While waiting for the water in the shower to heat up, I sat in the corner with a towel draped over my shoulders and observed the effects of my wasteland advenuring and those last hectic days in the stable upon my body.

The stable jumpsuit was rubbery and elastic-y and felt very tight and stiff when I had first put it on, but after being forced to wear one every day for nearly a year, it came to feel like a second skin. ‘Is this what it feels like to tear the scales off a snake?’ I wondered as I pulled it off, feeling the pain of ten thousand bandages slowly being torn off every inch of my body. My coat reeked of days upon days of sweat matted to the hair, and my mane felt more oily than ever before. Now, some of this comes from not bathing in three weeks and then wading across a river, but holy cow! This has to be the most unbreathable ‘fabric’ I’ve ever seen… if you can even call it fabric. The only thing this material should be used for making is tarps. And the design? So tacky! I mean, who the hell thought it would be a good idea to make us wear these for… well… the rest of our lives, I guess? They’re a purely utilitarian outfit only suitable for lab rats.

Perhaps the one redeeming value of these jumpsuits is that they at least have a plethora of pockets, which at least makes them useful for maintenance work and adventuring, I guess.

Progress to Next Level: 1025/4550

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself but based on your actions so far, likely to get worse. Curable with antibiotics.

Butthurt: Getting tazed in the butt is never fun. -1 Agility.

Chapter 15: Pied Piper

Chapter 15: Pied Piper

“Come little children, the time’s come to play

Here in my garden of shadows...”

Sunday, September 14th, 4347

Dear Diary,

The next morning, we received our tour of the town and I got to know the neighborhood a bit better. The settlement consisted of several one-and-two story tract homes built around a road called ‘Rearing Hill Loop’ which, as its name implied, was intended to form a ring. Contrary to “popular belief” (which I later learned simply meant “anypony who had the fortune to not listen to one of Gloomfeather’s sales pitches), the road at the back of the settlement was not part of ‘Rearing Hill Loop,’ but was merely meant to bisect the loop. However, due to the war, mass depopulation, and the subsequent collapse of the entire global housing market, the second half of the loop was never completed and remained an empty field, which the residents had attempted to cultivate last spring, with mixed results. Granted, some of it was not their fault, what with the constantly overcast sky, acid rain, mutated wildlife, and such, but I was pretty sure that at least some of their problems came as a result of giving a bunch of gardening hobbyists free reign over some vacant lots, all the time in the world to tend to them, and no internet to look up how they’re supposed to do it! Well, at least they were trying. And as long as there was no one in town who was better than them, then they were happy.

In the center of the half-loop was a cul-de-sac consisting of more tract houses. I inquired if there was anything important about these houses, such as if the settlement’s most important ponies lived there, only to be told that no, not really, maybe one or two of the residents were engineers or doctors or something but that was it. On a map, it didn’t really form a horseshoe since it wasn’t exactly symmetrical, but maybe a thermometer put in a mouth… or maybe something… else? >=)

The town was surrounded by a wooden fence which was mostly uniform in its appearance and very sturdy and well-made. The few houses which did not have their backyards fenced in by prewar contractors had since erected their own out of whatever scrap wood they could salvage in town, and the difference in style and quality showed. However, Gloomfeather maintained that every length of fence was very sturdy and did its job well, because the Homeowner’s Association had set standards for that. She also pointed out how everypony’s lawn was well trimmed and completely free of weeds and trash, because the Homeowner’s Association had set standards for that. Or how no house had a coat of paint above or below a certain range of wavelengths within the visible spectrum of light, because the HOA had set standards for that. Or how all the flowers in the front yards were hypoallergenic, or how there weren’t any dangerous or exotic pets, or how… well… you get the point. I could tell she had been a realtor before the war and probably missed doing it because she seemed to be really trying her hardest to get us to make an offer. Then I noticed that it had already been an hour and had to excuse our entire group so we woudn’t miss breakfast.

Eavesdropping on some of the conversations between the survivors, they all seemed to agree that the place was too ‘conformist’ for their taste, and worried that they would not be able to freely express themselves there. I had to agree with them, since it reminded me way too much of the neighborhood I had grown up in, yet I was also disappointed since I was hoping they would like it enough that I could just leave them here and get this escort mission over with. Then again, we still had to return Tandy, who I nearly forgot about because she’s been so uncharacteristically quiet.

At breakfast, I had the fortune to sit with five of the local teens and hear their take on the town over cereal. Well… cereal without milk, of course, since there were no longer any functioning dairies nearby.

“It’s boring as hell,” they all said in unison.

This surprised me more than the jittery kick of the ‘Cinnamon Frosted Sugar Bombs.’

“Why?” I asked. ”You’ve got movies and books...”

“Yeah, but they aren’t making any new ones,” said S’mores, an orange half-dragon half-pegasus who kinda resembled Scootaloo in both appearance and temperament.

“You’ve got video games...” I said.

“Once you’ve beaten them, they aren’t fun anymore unless you can talk about them or download mods,” said Gallium, a bluish-grey griffon.

“You’ve got… um… well...” I struggled to think of anything good about the town. “At least it’s friendly and safe.”

“But it’s fucking boring!” said Febreeze, a beautiful sweet-smelling pegasus who must have been hoarding all the makeup and perfume in the province to look and smell that way. “Are you telling me you don’t know what it’s like to be bored out of your mind?”

I had to admit, I did know what it’s like to be bored out of my mind. Before all the problems started, Stable 76 was safe and clean, but it was also confining and you eventually ran out of fun things to do. And before the apocalypse, I had several years of sitting in school waiting through classes for that final bell.

“No, trust me, I know what it’s like,” I said, “But it’s incredibly dangerous out there. Everyone and everything wants to either rip you off or kill you. When I came in last night, I was dirty and grimy as shit because there’s nowhere to safely bathe. You’ll have to scavenge for most of your meals, you’ll get ambushed by raiders, you’ll--”

“That sounds like fun!” said Glorieta Pass, a short, plucky earth pony wearing a cowboy hat and a denim dress with a coat colored like parched grass. “I could finally get a chance to live!”

“Yeah, we know it’s ‘dangerous to go alone’ and all that, but we’ll be safe ‘cause we’ll be traveling together,” said Valverde Ford, a slackerish blue-green colt. “There’s nothing that can’t be overcome with the power of friendship. Why, just a week ago, a traveler told us about a group of three brave ponies who singlehoofedly destroyed a raider toll booth on highway 20!”

I was shocked to hear this. Were tales of our exploits really traveling this fast? I guess I was mostly just surprised to hear that somepony actually gave a damn about something my friends and I did. Then again, I suppose destroying a toll booth on a major thoroughfare was kind of a big deal. It was also a huge blow to my argument since it clearly inspired them.

“Are you really trying to recreate the feats of some random adventurers?” I asked. “With no combat training, no weapons, and no idea what you’re doing?” This got some of them to pause and think. I liked that. “You don’t know anything about these adventurers. For all we know, they could be some cyber zebra death uber killing commandos trained in some top-secret MoA program or something like that. Or maybe it’s just a rumor and it never even happened at all.”

This really got them thinking. I did all I could not to smile from either the satisfaction of having beaten them in an argument or of the ridiculousness of what I had just said. None of these three anonymous adventurers were zebras, cyborgs, or professionally trained commandos, and only one of them had any ties to the MoA. Personally, I’d rather that it just be a rumor, and stay a rumor. I’d rather stay as far out of the limelight as I could and just blend in with the shadows. But this rumor was easily verifiable since there was physical evidence left at the scene and nopony these days could be bothered to clean it up. I just hoped that these wide-eyed kids wouldn’t see through my bluff.

“Maybe she’s right,” said Febreze. “Maybe they had some kind of military background. Or maybe it never even happened at all.”

“Of course it happened,” said S’mores. “We’ve had more travelers from Greyham over the last few days than we did all summer!”

“Well maybe the raiders just left on their own,” said Febreze. “I doubt it’s a profitable route. There’s nowhere to go out here except here and Sandy Shades.”

“But we don’t have to be awesome commandos,” said S’mores. “We’ll just do small stuff, like killing a raider here and there, and let the rumor mill handle the rest. Fake it ‘till you make it, ya know? Before long, we’ll be treated as heroes!”

“Yeah!” the others exclaimed.

There was no dissuading them-- their minds were set and they’d turned my own argument against me. I couldn’t help but facehoof at their obstinance. I couldn’t argue against this new plan-- it was an underhoofed scheme to gain popularity, but something that teens like themselves are quite good at. If they could pull it off, they’d be living large. If they couldn’t, well… they’d probably end up dead. But they didn’t seem to care because none of them had anything to lose for it.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “You can come with us and we’ll show you the ropes.”

“Yes!” Glorieta exclaimed. “That’s it! Thank you. You’re our ticket out of here!”

“Wait, we can’t leave with her!” cautioned Febreze. “It’ll look too suspicious! We should wait a while and then sneak out. Meet us at that restaurant near the bridge. At midnight.”

“Tonight?” I asked.

“Yes, tonight.”

And a deal was made.

The trip to Sandy Shades was pretty much smooth sailing. The only hiccup was an attempted holdup on Griffon Creek bridge by four bandits who were too pathetic-looking to pose a threat. We just told the others to hide behind some trees (which there were plenty of) while we dealt with them. I gunned two of them down myself, and felt guilty about doing so since they looked so scared and emaciated, and were probably just trying to get some food. However, instinct took over and made me kill them, something which had almost become automatic at this point. They were also kind of asking for it by trying to rob us instead of just asking to trade. Then again, they didn’t have anything of interest on them when we checked their bodies except for a few bullets, which they probably weren’t willing to give up.

We later found what I presume was their encampment, which was merely a gas station at the intersection of two country roads. Inside the food mart all the shelves had been emptied, and on the floor I found nothing but a few dirty mattresses and several empty cans and bottles. The only thing of value I could find was a wad of bills inside the cash register, which wouldn’t buy anything but might make some good fuel for a fire.

As we approached Sandy Shades, Tandy began to look worried. Scared, even. Why would she be so apprehensive about returning to her own home?

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Aren’t you happy to return home?”

“Well…” Tandy said with unease, “That’s just it. I left for a reason.”

“Wait-- you left?” I asked with surprise. She nodded her head.

“On purpose?” I asked. She nodded again.

“But-- I thought you were foalnapped!”

“Well, I snuck out and then got foalnapped,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d just slip out and see the world for myself, like all the travelers that stop by our town do. Honestly, I was kinda jealous of you.”

“Me?!?” I asked in disbelief, before quickly realizing what angle she was going at.

“Yes, you,” she said. “We’re both pretty much adults now, but you get to travel the world and have adventures and stuff, while my father keeps me penned up in town and treats me like I’m ten years younger.”

“At least you have a home,” I said. “You know why I left my Stable? It’s not because I was bored, oh no, it’s because it was literally burning down! I didn’t leave because I wanted to, I left because I had to. And your dad might be overbearing at times, but that’s only because he truly cares for you. At least you still have family, because all of mine are dead.”

Her eyes widened and she grew quiet.

“Wow,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “It wasn’t a great family, anyway. Just be thankful for the cards you’ve been dealt and move on in life.”

As we approached the west gate, I saw a familiar face: Rep, the green dragon guarding the gate, next to some other pony I didn’t recognize.

“There’s a group of travelers up ahead,” the other pony said. “They don’t look like raiders. Recognize any?”

“Yes, I remember the grey one and the green one,” Rep replied. “They were traveling with a changeling before, and… wait, is that...”

“Tandy!” they both exclaimed. Tandy was flustered.

Rep threw down his gun and ran over to meet us, embracing Tandy in a rapturous bear hug. Despite his scrawny appearance, he was still able to squeeze her like a bean bag. Between his arms, Tandy mumbled, “Stop it, you’re embarrassing me.”

Upon hearing this, Rep released her, and she breathed heavily to restore the air he had pushed out of her lungs.

“We were all so worried about you!” he said. “Your father especially. He’ll be greatly relieved to find you’re alive and well.”

“Yeah, let’s just meet him and get this over with,” Tandy said.

“Tandy? Is that you?” Barlow Road cried.

The process repeated again, but this time the hug was much longer and many tears were shed.

“Um, dad, can you… let go of me now?” Tandy asked.

“Of course, darling,” Barlow said, and released her. “I’m just so glad to see you’re back. And alive. And unhurt! Oh, I hope your friend Silver Bullet here taught those foalnappers an important lesson!”

“Actually, about that...” Tandy said, but kind of trailed off. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Certainly, I’m all ears,” Barlow said. “But first, how about we get a little food in you? You look famished! Quick, somepony go tell the restaurant staff to prepare a meal-- a big one. I bet our heroes and their friends are all pretty hungry for lunch, huh?”

Now don’t get me wrong-- I love myself a TV dinner as much as the next piece of trailer trash-- but microwaveable salisbury steak just doesn’t really seem like a meal for heroes. Although, to their credit, they at least tried to dress it up a little to make it seem home-cooked, and nopony aside from myself and Grapevine seemed to notice that everything on our plates originally came in a box.

“Now what was it that you were going to tell us?” Barlow Road asked.

Tandy took a deep breath, then began, “Well, there’s something that I think you need to know. It’s about-- well, it’s about the foalnapping.”

Barlow began to look worried and started sweating profusely.

“Oh no, they didn’t… hurt you, did they?” he asked.

“No, they didn’t do anything to me,” Tandy said. “They just--”

“Oh, if only we could have been more on top of things we could have paid the ransom!” Barlow exclaimed. “You told them that, right? ‘Cause of course I’d have given them anything, but none of us knew where they--”

“If they wanted a ransom, they would have left a note or something,” Dmitry said. “From what we could tell, they foalnapped her because they wanted to hack a computer.”

Barlow breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Well, thank goodness!” he exclaimed. “I feared the worst. Glad you’re safe, honey. But still, it worries me that they even got in here in the first place. None of the guards reported hearing or seeing anything, and we couldn’t find any signs of a break-in...”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Tandy said. “The whole thing was… actually kinda my fault.”

“What do you mean?” Barlow asked. Now everypony else at the table, and the adjacent tables, was leaning in close to listen.

“Well…. How do I put this?” she began. “I-- um… I… I ran away from home!”

Shock and confusion abounded throughout the room, especially from the townsfolk, and the air filled with the noise of gossipy murmurs. Even I was surprised, though more by the reactions she was getting since she had already told me.

“So you… weren’t foalnapped?” a stallion at the next table asked.

“No, I was, but that was after I snuck out,” Tandy said.

The town ponies were still confused.

“But… why?” Barlow asked. “Why would you sneak out like that? Why would you leave us? Why would you leave me?”

“Because it’s fucking boring here, okay?!?” Tandy snapped. Then during the moments of shocked silence which followed her outburst, her eyes widened and she held her forehooves over her mouth, her face consumed with guilt as if she had just insulted royalty. After what had seemed like an eternity, she tried to explain herself in a calmer tone.

“What I mean to say is--” she began, but was cut off.

“No, no, I understand,” Barlow said. “I suppose I underestimated just how badly you wanted to explore. You were always kinda like that, running off like that. Why, your mother and I almost bought a dog leash just to contain you!”

“Don’t remind me,” Tandy said flatly.

Barlow chuckled a bit.

“Okay, I won’t,” he said. “But all I wanted was to keep you safe. Especially since you have so much of your mother in you. I always feared that if you left you might never come back, especially after what just happened.”

“Actually, they--” Grapevine blurted out, but Dmitry gently placed his hoof over her mouth to keep her from saying more.

“I never wanted to leave forever,” Tandy said. “But I had to, because I didn’t know how you would react. I thought you might punish me really really badly or something. I know what you’re like when you get upset...”

“Honey, the only things that make me angry are bad deals and hoofball matches,” said Barlow. “...and maybe ant invasions. But I would never, ever hurt you. That’s why I wanted to keep you here--”

“It was hurting me inside!” Tandy said. “I understand you just wanted to keep me safe form physical harm, but staying in one place can be just as harmful, especially for a pony like me.”

“It’s a good thing ya never got into a stable,” said Grapevine. “Then you’d die of boredom!”

“Actually, I had applied for a spot but we didn’t get in,” Barlow said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my family safe.”

“I appreciate your devotion, but you’ve got to learn to let go,” said Tandy. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m almost eighteen!”

“Yes, eighteen,” Barlow said sorrowfully. “I would have had to send you off to college, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes, you would have,” Tandy said. “But now that that ain’t happening, I was afraid you’d just keep me around forever.”

“That’s because I know how dangerous the world’s become,” Barlow said. “When I was only a few years older than you, I wanted adventure too, so I joined the crew of a merchant vessel and sailed the seven seas.”

“Yes, you’ve told me about your sailor days a bazillion times,” Tandy said. “I prefer my adventures on land.”

“But there’s one part I never told you about,” Barlow said. “The part that finally made me quit and move back here. That was the one and only time I had ever encountered pirates...”

Tandy was super interested now.

“Whoa… pirates?”

“Yes, pirates,” said Barlow. “But not the old-timey swashbuckling pirates you see in the movies… actual hardcore pirates.”

“Tell me what happened!” Tandy said.

So he told us. It was a long-winded story that seemed like it went on for hours, but it had Tandy on the edge of her seat the entire time. It probably had a lot of special significance for her, hearing about this side of her father that she never knew. I couldn’t help but feel jealous of her, since my father was such a dingy, boring, play-by-the-rules fuckface with an intense phobia of anything that was even remotely dangerous… except for the slow killers, like trans fats, screen-induced retinal damage, and the crippling depression fomented by a pointless existence… but there’s no way she’d trade for that.

The gist of his story is that he was sailing off the coast of Zebrica near the ominously named ‘Skeleton Shore’ when they were suddenly attacked by a group of zebra pirates bent on stealing their cargo of energy gems. Eight of his crewmates managed to escape to the mainland and get help, but it took two weeks until the Wonderbolts could rescue them. The raiders rampant throughout the wasteland reminded him all too well of those pirates, and a chapter of his life he had sought to keep buried. But in revealing it, Tandy had grown a newfound sense of respect for her father, and they committed themselves to working out a deal, first taking her on some hunting trips, and then after a while letting her travel with the caravans if she still wanted to.

The survivors we were escorting were so touched by what had happened that they asked if they could stay and were welcomed with open arms, exactly as I had predicted. In particular, the white stallion would have made an excellent town greeter, which Sandy Shades desperately needed since Katrina had mysteriously disappeared three days ago, leaving only a cryptic note saying she had “business to attend to” with some old friends.

Now that there were only three of us, we could travel a lot faster and more quietly. This was demonstrated when we returned to Griffon Creek, only to find that the supply of raiders had mysteriously been replenished after we had been there just a few hours ago. However, our smaller and more agile pack quickly caught wind of this as we approached the gas station and heard what sounded like an argument. I checked my pipbuck and sure enough, four red ticks registered on my EFS. They weren’t really much of a challenge though, as we simply snuck up behind the food mart and then opened fire, taking them all out by surprise.

We entered Cicada around 4:00, leaving eight full hours until we rendezvoused with the runaways. We sure as hell weren’t going to return to Rearing Heights while we were harboring plans to essentially foalnap some of their children (there wasn’t much to do in that town anyway), so we ended up loitering in an optometrist’s office until we found a spider the size of a rat. Killing it was pretty easy, but it caused Grapevine and I to get into an argument over whether or not spiders are insects. Finally, Grapevine said,

“Well, let’s ask one. Hey bugface, are spiders insects?”

Dmitry stopped picking the lock on a cash register and glared at us.

“First off, I’m not an insect, I’m a pony,” he said. Grapevine smirked at this but said nothing.

“And second, I don’t fucking know. Go look it up in a book or something.”

“Good idea,” Grapevine said. “But where are we gonna find a book about insects?”

“I think I saw a school just down the street,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find one back there.”

So we headed down the street to the school. It was an old brick building which had, up until last October, housed the local middle school. At present, it appeared vacant, but the bloodsoaked floor and intestines hanging from the ceiling of the atrium suggested otherwise.

“Uhhhhh….” Grapevine struggled to think of something to say. “Does this remind y’all of somethin’?”
“It reminds me of those ‘decorations’ they had back at Timberwolf Lodge,” Dmitry said. “Whoever made it had the same taste in ‘decoration.’ ”

“Something’s showing up on the pipbuck,” I said. “Draw your weapons and keep quiet.”

We crept down the hall until we reached the classroom where the raiders were, passing several corpses hanging by their necks from ropes, chains, garden hoses, and even intestines which had been affixed to the ceiling. Their corpses had been mutilated, with their bellies cut open and the entrails removed, leaving a muscly, bony husk to hang there and rot. They smelled, and they smelled bad. I’m not normally one to get nauseous, but it took everything I had not to vomit right then and there.

After walking two thirds of the length of the hallway, we found the classroom where the raiders were. There were nine of them, outnumbering us three to one, but all nine were sitting in a circle smoking… something that actually smelled much worse than the rotting corpses out in the hall. They had also removed the door to the room, which would allow them to see us (if they were paying attention), but also allowed us to sneak up on them.

I stepped back from the classroom and motioned the others to follow me into an empty room. This room, a former cooking classroom, held the remains of an excessively sloppy culinary operation which converted pony entrails into… any dish that could be made with pony entrails, of course. Some of the counters had cookbooks open to recipes involving meat, which was presumably being substituted with pony guts. Blood dripping from the doors of the refrigerators indicated that they were being used to store the raiders’ creations as well as the raw materials used to create them. Several low rumbles were also audible, indicating that the dam powering Rearing Heights was producing a bit more than they needed. Bad for Rearing Heights, which was unwittingly aiding its enemies, but good for us since the rumble of the fridges would conceal our voices.

“Alright, here’s the plan:” I said. “We’ll throw some grenades at them, and catch ‘em off guard, then we’ll shoot down any survivors. If they start charging at us, retreat and ambush them in a classroom. Don’t let ‘em stab you ‘cause their blades are probably infected with all sorts of bacteria.”

“Good idea, but somepony else’ll have to throw the grenades,” Dmitry said, “Because I’m out.”

“Mah aim’s not quite as good as it was when ah played Softball,” Grapevine said, “But ah can still hit pretty good. Ah’ll do it, but ah ran outta grenades two days ago. ”

“Alright, I’ll give you some of--” I looked into my saddlebags and found nothing. I checked and double-checked my pipbuck’s inventory spell, only to confirm that I was out of grenades too.

“Well shoot,” I said. “Alright, plan B: shoot ‘em up with your fastest firing weapon, then--”

“Wait, ah’ve still got a couple’a Moltotovs,” Grapevine said, holding up a brown bottle with a strange liquid in it, capped with a rag. “Not as effective, but still good. Ah just need a light.”

“Okay, go ahead,” I said, giving her a matchbox. “In fact, let me hold them while you throw them. I bet we could get three or four off before we have to start running.”

“Good idea,” said Grapevine.

We returned to the doorway to the raiders’ classroom and executed our plan. I held the Moltotovs telekinetically, which made Grapevine apprehensive about taking them, (I get it, shiny floating objects are kinda suspicious,) but she took them anyway and made quick work of the raiders. I was pleasantly surprised at just how effective they were, each spreading a burst of fire around the room upon impact. After the third one, the raiders were nothing but charred corpses, although I realized that this was partly due to a large oil slick covering most of the room’s floor and spilling into the hall which--

“GET OUTTA THE WAY!” I yelled, shoving my friends and thrusting myself to safety.

A wave of flame zipped out of the classroom and down the hallway until it reached a pair of wooden double doors at the end of the hallway which blocked the oil slick from going any further and forced it to condense into a small pool. The flames zoomed right up to the puddle and began to climb up the doorway.

Suddenly, there were white flashes of light and a several bursts of what sounded like a whistle being blown at regular intervals. Stunned, I looked around, then cursed myself for not recognizing the sound from a decade of drills in school: the fire alarm had gone off! I began galloping down the hall, only to realize after ten seconds that I wasn’t in school anymore and didn’t need to line up in the parking lot. Finally, after what seemed like the longest delay, the sprinklers finally started and sprayed water everywhere. Being a grease fire, the fire only grew bigger… for a few seconds, then started dying down as it was overwhelmed by water. After a while, the fire was vanquished and the sprinklers and alarms shut off automatically.

“Well that was a stupid idea,” said Dmitry, breaking the silence. “Those Moltotovs just started a fire and got us all wet.”

“Are you kidding?” Grapevine asked. “That was awesome! Let’s do it again!”

“Let’s not do it again,” I said, cleaning the water off of my glasses. “Besides, we should save our Moltotovs since we’re almost out of exposives.”

“Ooh, ah can make more!” said Grapevine. “I’ll go find the school’s chemistry lab. Y’all fetch me some turpentine from a janitor’s closet.”

Dmitry and I searched the school until we found a janitor’s closet. I asked if I could pick the lock this time, and Dmitry stood back and coached me. I still broke five bobby pins trying to get the angle and pressure just right, but eventually I cracked it. We only found seven bottles of the stuff, but when we returned Grapevine reassured us it was plenty.

Just then, there was a flash of green light followed by some rolling thunder. We looked out the window and saw the clouds were lower and much greyer than usual.

“Looks like it’s going to rain again,” I sighed. “The bad kind.”

“It’ll take a few hours fer me ta make these,” Grapevine said. “By the way, we’ll also need some adhesive and cloth.”

“I’ll go find some glue,” said Dmitry. “You can get the cloth.”

“How much do we need?” I asked Grapevine.

“A single rug’ll probably be enough,” said Grapevine. “Or maybe two shirts. Or two curtains, dependin’ on how long they are.”

I set out to find the cloth, starting with the adjacent classrooms. All of the windowshades were made of those retractable plastic strips instead of cloth, which only made my job harder. Then I went back to the atrium, only to find that the rugs barely had any cloth at all and had thick rubber undersides. I grabbed a pair of scissors in case I needed to cut anything, then began my adventure through the school, starting by retracing my steps towards the janitor’s closet.

The raiders had mostly stayed in on section of the school, leaving the rest of it relatively undisturbed. This meant no more gore lying around, but it also meant that there was dust everywhere and everything now smelled like it.

I had hoped that maybe somepony would have left a coat or something behind in the confusion of the bombing, but all of the classrooms were empty. It was almost as if they had been locked up on the night of the 22nd and simply abandoned, although a few of the teachers had written things for their first period classes on the chalkboards. This meant that the bombs must have gone off long before school started, and the busses had either returned the kids home or taken them to a shelter somewhere (though I doubt they’d build any shelters for a town this remote). Anypony who was here at the time would have just calmly packed up their stuff and gone home.

I made it all the way to the end of the building where the school’s theater was located, but found nothing. I was starting to panic at this point and wondered if I would have to get a knife and cut the padding off the theater seats, before realizing that the seat backs were probably made of wool or plastic fiber, neither of which are particularly flammable.

I swung back around on the second floor this time, but all I found was a colony of cockroaches the size of my hooves. Their size and speed made them difficult to stomp, but I considered it a waste of ammo to shoot bugs, so I tried to stomp them anyway.

Boy, was that was a mistake.

Their size also made their carapaces a lot stronger compared to my hooves, so I had to stomp with all my weight to break their shells. To make matters worse, there were about a dozen of them and only one of me, so I was quickly surrounded. I thought maybe if I just jumped up and down that would kill them quickly, but as I killed one, the rest would start climbing all over my body and I had to spend time picking them off as they tried to bite me. Fortunately, the stable jumpsuits are thick enough to mute most of the damage from their bites, but it still feels like somepony is pinching you. I eventually learned that every time I pick one off I should lay it on its back so I can stomp on its softer underbelly. Eventually, I was able to whittle them down to more manageable numbers where picking them off and flinging them down the hall could buy me time to deal with the rest.

After I finished stomping roaches and made sure there were none left nearby, I went into a science classroom and used one of the sinks to wash all the roach guts off my hooves. As I did, I made a mental note to stock up on bug spray the next time I went to the store. Assuming that radiation hasn’t significantly altered their DNA, it should still be poison and kill them quickly, even if I need to apply larger amounts than normal.

As I was leaving the room, I noticed a biology textbook sitting on the teacher’s desk. I opened up to the table of contents, and sure enough it had a chapter on insects. I pocketed the book as I went into the hall, as it likely contained the answer to the stupid question which had brought us to this infernal building in the first place. Right now, I had more important things on my mind: finding some flammable cloth and-- ow! The pain of the roachbites.

I thought about going to the school nurse’s office, only to remember that schools don’t really have dedicated nurses anymore for some reason (they’re run by cheapskates!) and they make somepony in the office do all the nursing stuff instead. This reminded me that the school had an office and that if there were any fancy rugs or curtains in the school, they were probably in a principal or guidance counselor’s office. While I didn’t find any of those things, I did find that they had been selling T-shirts and hoodies at the front desk, which would suffice for our needs.

As I strolled into the chemistry lab, Grapevine hollered, “What took ya so long?”

“I ran into some bugs on the way,” I said. “Really big, nasty, bitey bugs.”

“Tell me about it,” Grapevine said. “Ah’ve been stuck with one fer what feels like an hour.”

Dmitry just grunted and rolled his eyes.

“Also, there’s hardly any cloth in here,” I said, tossing her the shirts. “The only ones were in the last place I thought they’d be.”

Grapevine looked at the shirts mournfully.

“Ah hate to hafta destroy a precious memento such as this,” she said, pointing at the cute animal mascot on the shirts, “But if it’s the only thing you could find, it’ll hafta do.”

“I also found a biology textbook,” I said, pulling it out and opening it. “So now we can answer that question. Hmm, let’s see… ah, here it is! Nope, spiders are arachnids, not insects.”

“But aren’t arachnids a type of insect?” asked Grapevine as she soaked strips of the cut up T-shirts into a flammable liquid.

“No, they aren’t,” I said, reading more into it. “‘Although it is commonly thought that spiders are insects, this is a misconception; they are actually arachnids, a separate class of creatures within the same phylum.’ Ha! I was right! Also, Arachnids have eight legs while insects only have six.”

“Alright, ah was wrong about that,” Grapevine admitted. “But ah’ll best you yet, just you wait.”

“Insects have six legs?” Dmitry asked. “All insects?”

“Yes, all insects,” I said.

“And changelings only have four,” said Dmitry. “Looks like you’re wrong on two counts.”

“No, changelings have six legs,” said Grapevine. “Look, you’ve got one, two, three, four, five,” she said, pointing at his tail, “and uh… uh… your dick!”

Dmitry and I both burst into laughter.

“Wow, I don’t know if I should be flattered by your opinion of my penis or offended at your insistence on calling me an insect,” Dmitry said.

“Does that mean that male changelings are insects while females aren’t?” I asked.

“There are male and female changelings?” Grapevine asked.

Dmitry and I both facehoofed.

“YES!” he shouted. “We had a fucking queen, you know!”

“Ah thought that was just a title they gave ta the biggest changeling,” Grapevine said. “Wait, does that book say anything about changelings?”

I flipped through the book then scanned the index, but I found nothing of use.

“It mentions that they exist,” I said. “But it doesn’t say anything about them.”

“Well, that’s just a middle school biology textbook,” Grapevine said. “Those aren’t supposed to be very informative, just give ya the basic outline. One day, we’ll find a real biology textbook and all our questions will be answered.”

Once the cocktails were done, we had eight in total. Dmitry and I each took one and we agreed that Grapevine should take the other six, since she was now our official explosives expert. I didn’t feel safe having only one explosive, but this was all we had for now and we could always acquire or produce more later.

After we cleaned up the lab, Grapevine announced that Dmitry and I should stay out of the kitchen because she wanted to surprise us for dinner. We were left to wonder whether or not she was trying to apologize to Dmitry or just wanted to show off her cooking skills. The conversation eventually wandered over to raiders, and the two of us decided that it wouldn’t do to have a fully electrified raider base within walking distance of Rearing Heights, so we decided we’d turn the power off just before we left. We then spent the next forty five minutes wandering around trying to find where the main power switches were. Eventually we found them and then plotted the closest route out of the soon-to-be darkened building. Of course, we couldn’t turn it off now while Grapevine was still cooking dinner, but when we left we would do it. Simply pulling some levers wasn’t a permanent solution since the building was still connected to the grid and somepony could just turn it back on again, but it would certainly make it inconvenient for them to move back in, and simply turning off the lights might trick would-be occupants into thinking the power doesn’t work.

Around 11:00, we packed up and left the building, remembering to ‘turn off the lights’ as we left. It was only a few blocks away, and the whole town was illuminated, but I couldn’t help but feel scared, like we were being watched. I kept looking around but couldn’t find any raiders, cops, or sprite-bots anywhere.

We soon reached the restaurant where we had agreed to rendezvous. They were all sitting inside looking bored out of their minds except for Febreeze, who appeared to be on watch.

“Hey! Guys! It’s them, It’s them!” she exclaimed as she spotted us, and ran inside to tell the others.

“Are you sure it’s them?”

“It’s us, alright,” I said.

“Wow, I can’t believe how late you are!” Glorieta Pass scolded.

“What?” I exclaimed. “But we’re forty minutes early!”

“I was just teasing you,” Glorieta said. “We can hardly wait. Let’s go!”

They all got up and headed towards the door. I was going to join them, but then I felt something fall on my head. It was very light and didn’t hurt at all, but just kinda felt weird. Were my nerves just playing tricks on me? I instinctively looked up to see the source, a dripping water pipe perhaps or a hole in the roof, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. I knelt down and tried to find it. Again, the only thing out of the ordinary was a thin blue plastic-y thingy that sort of shined in the light and was fairly symmetrical, but not quite. I held it up to the pale moonlight to discern what it was:

“Another puzzle piece?”

“Hey! Silver! Ya comin’?” S’mores called. The others were already on the road and preparing to cross the bridge.

“Yeah, I’m comin’!” I replied, stashing the piece in a pocket and hurrying out of the restaurant.

The journey was relatively quiet and uneventful. As we got farther and farther away from Cicada, it also got darker until it was nearly pitch black. That didn’t bother me too much since my eyes began to adjust to the lack of light. It didn’t seem to bother the others too much either, though there was a bit of grumbling about it. It was generally agreed that we should keep quiet just in case there were some raiders on the prowl looking for easily ambushable targets, as unlikely as it was there would be any travelers at all at this time of night and this far away from any major population centers (prewar, at least). Still, we kept quiet, save for some hushed conversations between the kids. Heh, ‘kids.’ Even though we were roughly the same age, I still felt like more of an adult compared to them, like I was their chaperone. After all, I carried a gun and was walking in front while they were defenseless and followed behind.

Early on, I had asked them if they were carrying any weapons. S’mores and Gallium had brought baseball bats, Glorieta and Valverde had stolen knives from their parents, and Febreeze had brought a can of pepper spray. In all honesty, it seemed pretty pathetic, and I had to keep myself from just laughing and calling them cute. Instead, I commended them for their ‘preparedness.’ In all honesty, they weren’t prepared for the wasteland at all, but I got the impression that they were relatively sheltered lives and their parents never let them handle anything remotely dangerous (otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to run away, now would they?).
To really be prepared for the wasteland, you’d probably at least need a gun. Their parents probably either didn’t own guns, or if they did, didn’t allow them access to them. Given the circumstances, this didn’t make any sense: sure in the prewar world it was considered ‘responsible parenting’ to do this, but in the post-apocalyptic world? Those bastards are lucky they live inside a wall.

Come to think of it, they packed very little in the way of supplies, too: just a couple of granola bars, water bottles, a compass, map, and pocket knife? What? We’re not going fucking camping. This is a warzone. A deathtrap. A deathtrap infested warzone!

But then again, how would they know any of this? They’re just kids. Sheltered, coddled kids. All they know about life-threatening danger is what they’ve seen in the media. And hearing them talk about all of the stuff they plan on doing makes it sound like they think this is all a video game. In fact, Gallium is under the impression that they’re just going to stumble across some free guns, because that’s literally what happened to him in a video game! Can you believe it? I guess that also explains where their delusions about heroism come from too.

You know, I really shouldn’t be too hard on them. I was in their shoes not too long ago. When I first left home, I was just as ill-prepared. However, unlike them, I wasn’t under any illusions: I was fully aware that I was likely going to die. And I was completely okay with that. Maybe if I could teach them to also accept death, they’d turn out okay?

Speaking of death, I began to feel like I was dying. A fever began to overcome me and I started coughing a little… or a lot. Periodically one of the others would ask if I was okay, and I would always tell them I’m fine, because we needed to keep going. We couldn’t stop now, not without a safe place to rest. Not while there was even the remote chance that somepony from Cicada would catch us taking their children. And not while said children are still naive and untrained in the ways of the wasteland. Heck, I’m still not an expert on this stuff, but even just two weeks out here can make a difference. And they haven’t even spent two hours out here…

...Or have they? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell because time seems to move more slowly out here than anywhere else. We must have missed the road back toward Canterby, because we just kept going straight until the road curved and brought us into a new village I don’t remember ever seeing before. There weren’t very many buildings here and they were all spaced very far apart. I couldn’t make out what they were, though, since it was almost too dark to see.

“Everypony, keep quiet!” Dmitry said. “In case raiders might try to ambush us.”
“Omigosh, we’re going to fight raiders!?” Febreeze squealed. She would have said more, but Gallium very forcefully shushed her.

However, the village proved to be completely deserted. Nothing could be seen except the silhouettes of buildings and trees and nothing could be heard except for the whistling of the wind and our own hoofsteps against the ground. Once we had proven there was nopony else here, we collectively agreed to take a short break...

...which was good because I needed to pee really badly. Which I did, by habitually going inside one of the buildings and sitting on the toilet, not even caring that it no longer worked (I didn’t expect I’d ever be returning to this house anyway). But what was supposed to only take fifteen seconds ended up taking fifteen minutes as I sat down on the toilet and had some of the worst diarrhea I’ve ever had. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure there was blood in there, too. But worst of all was the pain-- I couldn’t tell whether or not my asshole would burst open or I’d poop out my colon.

After thoroughly washing my hooves with soap from the house and water from my own canteen, I returned to the group where I felt everypony was staring at me. Then Grapevine approached me and softly asked,

“Are ya okay, sugarcube?”

“I’m fine,” I said, before falling into a mini coughing fit.

“Are you sure?” Dmitry asked. “If you need to, we can--”

“Absolutely fine,” I said flatly with a hint of annoyance. “Let’s get going. Where to next?”

“We’re going wherever you’re going,” said Valverde Ford.

“Grapevine seems to know this area better than either of us,” Dmitry said to me. “Let’s ask her.”

“Well,” Grapevine began, “The pipbuck map ain’t much to go off of, but if this road is what I think it is...” she said, showing us a faint wiggly green line running horizontally across the screen toward a much thicker line running diagonally down the left side of the screen. “...Then it might take us to the main highway.”

“Good idea,” said Dmitry. “If we stay on IR-5, we won’t get lost like yesterday.”

“We’re bound to hit it as long as we’re going west,” I said. “So let’s just go west.”

We went west. We made it over to the next town without a hitch. This town was also an abandoned village that didn’t appear to have any more permanent inhabitants, but unlike the last one, it wasn’t completely deserted. As we approached, I saw what looked like a torchlight in the distance.

“Hold up,” I said. “There might be somepony there.”

“Do you think they’re raiders?” Gallium asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think we should just stay quiet, lay low, and let them pass. If they find us and they’re friendly, they’ll let us know.”

We stood off to the side of the road behind some trees as the torch bearers approached. As they did, we could begin hearing the thumping of their hooves against the pavement, the gentle clanking of pots and pans hanging from saddles, and several gruff voices chatting under their breaths. I stayed behind a tree and watched them for signs of their intent. They all looked gruff and hardy and carried rifles. They almost looked like raiders, and certainly had the grumpy temperament of raiders, but something about them just didn’t say ‘raider’ to me. Maybe it was how they weren’t totally disheveled and seemed to hold just a slight bit of care about their appearance. Maybe it was how they carried themselves: gruff and rowdy, yet organized enough that they appeared to be marching in lines. Maybe it was because they were all sober and not one of them was flying off the rails on some drug high. But the most notable indicator that they weren’t raiders was the presence of a somewhat well-groomed stallion wearing a spotless grey uniform marching at the front of the pack with two aides. His chin had been shaven, but he sported a large mustache that seamlessly melted into sideburns on the side of his face. He looked familiar, and this gave me a bad feeling...

“Get inside!” I whispered to the others, pointing at a nearby building. They all quickly funnelled into the doorway. Once the last one was in, I followed suit.

“Who are they?” asked Febreeze. “Are they raiders?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But almost...”

“Whadaya mean they’re ‘almost’ raiders?” S’mores exclaimed in disbelief. “Either they’re raiders, or they aren’t.”

“I guess... they are raiders,” I said, “...but they should know better… at least, their leader should.”

Then I realized something deeply surreal: a few ponies in the group were softly playing marching tunes on fifes and drums. The others were baffled, except for Glorieta and Valverde, who found it amusing, and S’mores, who almost burst out laughing (and blowing our cover) until a pink hoof and a yellow talon clamped her mouth shut.

I too found it kinda ridiculous that a troop of ponies resembling historical war reenactors was walking around like this at night (or at all) when they could very easily be ambushed by a group of raiders, but I could at least come up with a plausible explanation: this was a forced march. It’s kinda out there, but think about it: for centuries, militaries employed musicians to maintain a steady marching pace and boost morale. Their brisk pace and the fact they were doing it this late indicate that their leader wants to be at a specific place fairly soon.

But where? If I kept watching them, maybe somepony let their intentions slip.

“A hundred bits to the pony who finds mah hat,” said one.

“Right now ah could use a cawfee and a ciiiii-gar!” said another.

“Coffee, sir?” asked a third, who had been part of the front row but had sped up to catch up with his commander.

“Sure,” the commander said, yanking a steel mug away from his subordinate. “Ah’m pretty damn tired right now.” He brought the mug up to his lips and then raised his head to the heavens, drinking the oily black liquid down in one long gulp. When he was finished, he brought his head back down again and shoved the mug straight into his subordinate’s chest, as if he was a protagonist in a zombie movie effortlessly stabbing a zombie without even looking.

“How long ‘till we get there, anyway?” he asked.

“Why, if I’m not mistaken sir, I believe we’re in Cedardale,” the subordiante replied.

“Cedardale?” the commander asked in disbelief. “Cedardale!?! That’s east of Sandy Dell.”

“Yes it is,” replied the sub. “We turned right at the country store.”

The commander stopped dead in his tracks. After a few seconds’ delay, so did the ponies behind him and their musical accompaniment.

“YOU IDIOT!!!” he shouted. “We were supposed to go WEST!”

Both of their faces were flushed with red: the commander’s with anger, and the subordinate’s with embarrassment.

The commander began walking around his soldiers while they stood where they were in total confusion. The sub hurried after his commander, whose hoofsteps pounded the ground fitfully. Once he had reached the end of the troop, he bellowed, “FORWARD, MARCH!”

The music started up again and the ponies behind him all turned around and one by one, each line began marching in the direction which they had come. Once they had disappeared beyond the horizon and we could no longer see the faint glow of their lanterns or hear their music, my companions cautiously crept out of hiding.

“Where do you think they’re going?” Febreze asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “The only town I know of between here and the Whinnyamette is Canterby.”

We continued westward for a while, trying to balance our pace between not going too fast to catch up with the rogue army while also not going too slow to make any progress. Among the silence and darkness of the night, I found it difficult to keep my head up and fell into a half-asleep trance. I paid little attention to my surroundings, and ‘woke up’ to find myself no longer at the front of the pack, but near the middle.

“Which way should we go?” Valverde asked. He stood in the middle of a four-way intersection. There didn’t appear to be any signs here, and if there were it was too dark to see them. All of the roads appeared identical, except the one to our right, which crossed over a small creek and into a thicket on the opposite bank.

“Hey! Who goes there?” a stallion shouted in the distance.

“We might not have a choice,” Grapevine said. “This way!”

We all scrambled across the bridge as a volley of gunfire erupted from the opposite direction.

We passed out some guns to the kids, and for a few minutes we attempted to put up a defense in the thicket, but we were clearly outnumbered and outclassed. Among us, only Dmitry had any formal firearms training, and it clearly showed. Additionally, our attackers appeared to be a “well-regulated militia” in every sense of the term, including a steady aim and strict discipline.

Just when three of the kids ran out of ammo and had to reload, the militia prepared to storm across the bridge.

“Fall back!” I yelled. “Fall back! Retreat!”

We ran for quite a while up the road. Although the running provided me with the energy to stay awake, it had also jolted my stomach and all of its contents. I was now hyper-aware of my surroundings, but simultaneously had to fight the urge to vomit.

By the time we finally stopped running, I was winded and needed a while to stop and rest. I shoved all the would-be vomit back down my throat with some long, deep gulps of water, but at the expense of emptying my canteen. Fortunately, there was a reservoir nearby where I could refill.

“Is she okay?” Gallium asked Grapevine. Before she could respond, I flatly barked, “Yes, I’M FINE.” My tone was enough to shut him (and everypony else) up, but seemed to do the opposite of reassuring them. But at that particular moment, I didn’t particularly care about anypony’s feelings, only about getting us to safety.

I led them north along the narrow country road. The The ‘thicket’ turned out to be an entire forest, albeit one that was privately owned since it didn’t appear on my pipbuck’s map. As we traveled, the others began to quietly chatter amongst themselves.

“Does she really know where she’s going?” Febreze asked. “Are we lost?”

“I dunno,” S’mores said. “Hey G, do you know where we’re going?”

Even Grapevine, who probably knew the area better than any of us, seemed confused but tried to hide it.

“Well, ah hope so… --er, ah mean, of course she does,” she said. “We ain’t goin’ to the city, we’re just tryin’ to avoid… those guys. Eventually we’ll hit a major road that cuts across here an’ continue west.”

“Sounds like she doesn’t really know either,” said Glorieta.

“I heard that ponies can get all delusional when they’re tired or thirsty,” Febreze said. “Like, they think really slowly and start seeing things that aren’t really there.”

“I think you mean ‘delirious,’ S’mores corrected her.”

“No, I’m pretty sure she’s delusional,” Febreze said.

I was frustrated by their lack of confidence in my leadership, but I was starting to get tired again and didn’t have the energy to confront them. As long as they kept following me, that was enough for now.

Eventually the road we were on turned right on its own and we were heading west again. However, it didn’t last, and we were soon faced with an intersection with roads going in every direction except west. To the west, there was simply a gravel driveway leading to a farm atop a hill.

“Which way now, boss?” Gallium asked, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. I picked it up, but was too tired to feel offended.

“Ummmm….” I hesitated, had to double-check my pipbuck, then pointed right and said, “North?”

“Ugh, where the hell are you even taking us?” S’mores demanded. I was going to respond, but as I opened my mouth the answer suddenly disappeared from my mind. In retrospect, it was probably something stupid that wasn’t worth saying to begin with.

“See? Told’ja she was delusional,” Febreze said. “Let’s go south for once.”

“No, we don’t even know if that’s a through street!” Glorieta said. “And if it is, that’s where the raiders were!”

“I’d rather fight raiders than get lost in the woods,” S’mores said. “I second her decision.”

“Valverde, help me out on this!” Glorieta said.

Valverde, who was kicking pebbles around on the pavement, merely looked up and shrugged.

“I don’t care,” he said with disinterest. “I’ll go wherever you go.”
“Well, you’re outnumbered two to one,” she said. “We’re going south.”

While they were arguing, I had begun making my way up the driveway on the western hill. Galium noticed me and pointed.

“Hey guys, she wants us to go west!” he exclaimed.

“No I don’t, I’m just scouting,” I replied, but it came out too quietly to hear.

“What the fuck?” S’mores asked. “Don’t see why we’re doing this, but okay.”

The entire group began to climb the hill.

“No, I’m just scouting,” I repeated, but this time it came out even quieter and was just barely a murmur.

Suddenly, I had to go, really bad.

Somepony had already broken into the farmhouse, leaving the door unlocked and partially opened. Something had fallen through the roof, a big chunk of snow perhaps, which had put enough pressure on the door to break it off its top hinge. Turning on my pipbuck’s flashlight revealed that the house had been completely ransacked, with furniture knocked over and all cupboard doors opened. The entire house had been stripped of anything holding even the slightest value, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was a clean toilet and a roll of paper, which the house fortunately possessed.

More diarrhea. I was beginning to accept that maybe something was wrong with me, and that maybe I should seek out a doctor... Nah, I shouldn’t. Where would I even find one in this wasteland, what would they prescribe me and how could I pay for it? I was starting to run low on food and ammo, and I only knew of one pony who took bottlecaps as payment. Besides, it probably wasn’t anything too serious, and I could probably just take care of it myself once I found the time to diagnose what it actually was.

When I left the house, I looked around and couldn’t find anypony. Then I saw Grapevine peeking out from the corner of the house.

“C’mon, we’re going this way,” she said, and gestured me to follow.

They had apparently thought I was leading them straight into a forest behind the farmhouse. We ventured deep into the trees in a single file line. I didn’t know who was leading it, as I was trailing in the back, reverting to the half-asleep state where you don’t really talk or question anything. This continued for some time, before S’mores had had enough, threw her hoooves in the air, and screamed.

“aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” she roared. “Where the FUCK are we FUCKING GOING?!?”

“Silver wanted us to go this way,” Galium said. Then after a pause, he added, “By the way, where is she?”

Everypony started looking around in confusion, except for Grapevine, who simply said, “She’s right here,” and pointed toward me. All of their eyes landed on me, but I wasn’t really awake enough to comprehend why.

“What?” I asked. “Is there something on my face?”

“De-loo-sional,” Febreze taunted. S’mores facehoofed.

“I guess she is,” S’mores said. “I say we head back, and take the south road this time.”

“North!” Glorieta cried. “Let’s go north! The south road doesn’t lead anywhere!”

“And how do you know that?” S’mores asked. “You don’t even know where we are!”

“Neither do you!” Glorieta said.

“And what makes you so certain we should go north?” S’mores asked.

“It didn’t look like it went anywhere,” Glorieta said. “What makes you so certain we should go south?”

“I have a hunch,” S’mores said. “That’s all I need.”

“A hunch doesn’t prove anything!” Glorieta said.

“Then fly up there and see who’s right,” S’mores said.

“I’m an earth pony. I don’t have wings,” Glorieta replied. “But you do. That’s your job!”

“I don’t need to,” said S’mores. “My intuition is correct 95% of the time.”

“And what about the other five percent?” Glorieta asked.

“Bllllllluuuuuhhhhhh!!!!”

I suddenly began to vomit profusely. Although I didn’t mean to, the argument stopped right in its tracks. After six or seven discharges, I finally stopped and started heaving, reeling at the disgusting taste which now filled my mouth.

“Let’s just set up camp for the night,” Grapevine said. “In the morning we’ll be able to actually see where we are and make a more informed decision about where we want to go.”

There was nodding of heads and general agreement all around.

“Sure, but on one condition,” S’mores said. “Can we do it somewhere else? This place smells like barf.”

We went a little deeper into the forest until we found a suitable clearing that did not smell like barf. The other ponies began to clear out little patches to sleep in. Dmitry and Grapevine gathered some twigs and started a fire. I think they might have even started cooking something, but I wasn’t sure. All I wanted to do was… literally nothing, actually. So I lay down behind a tree on the edge of the clearing and closed my eyes. As a wave of slumber overtook me, I put up no resistance, and before I knew it I had drifting off to sleep…

Level up!

Level 8: Student of the Wastes

Entomologist: You read a book on the subject and did some field work, so now you’re an expert! Inflict 50% more damage against mutated insects such as radroaches, giant ants, bloatsprites, radscorpions, mole rats, and breezies (Changelings are considered half-insects, so this perk grants 25% damage against them, but only if they are mutated).

Stats:
Ponies Led: 7
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 39 bits per Troy Ounce

Status Ailments:

Advanced Food Poisoning: -1 Perception, -2 Endurance. A case of minor food poisoning left untreated. Treat it before it gets worse! Curable with antibiotics and/or plenty of rest.

Minor Sleep Deprivation: -1 Intelligence, -1 Agility. From not getting plenty of sleep when you’re sick.

Butthurt: Getting tazed in the butt is never fun. -1 Agility.

Chapter 016: The Battle of Milk Creek

Chapter 16: The Battle of Milk Creek

“Stop trying to think like an officer, Jetstream. You don’t have enough brain damage.”

Monday, September 15th, 4347

Dear Diary,

We were awakened at the crack of dawn with a bugle call. I jolted awake and looked around, thinking we were under attack, but instead all I heard was some shouting and gunfire in the distance. I crept out of the thicket in the direction of the noise, and stumbled across a large golf course with a creek running through the middle of it. On the other side of the creek there were two groups of ponies, one group all wearing blue uniforms like the ponies at Canterby, and the other in plain clothes (most of them had white shirts and brown or black pants), except for one wearing a clean grey uniform.

I went back to the clearing and told everypony what I saw.

“Oh, goodness,” said Glorieta. “Should we help them?”

“Of course!” said S’mores. “This’ll be fun!”

“No, it’ll be dangerous,” said Dmitry. “...But it’s the right thing to do.”

“I’d like to, but I’m out of ammo,” said Valverde.

“So am I,” said Gallium.

I rifled through my saddlebags, but I was short on everything except for .308 rounds. Grapevine and Dmitry had the same problem.

“Alright, we’ll just use these,” I said, and tossed all five of our hunting rifles at the teens. I would try to rely on my sniper rifle and pistol for the upcoming battle.

When we were all ready, I led the group to a line of trees on the golf course.

“Take cover behind these trees,” I said. “They don’t notice us yet, which is good. Let’s keep that as long as we can. Don’t fire until I say so.”

I scanned the battlefield for an opportunity. Both sides were kind of clustered among trees. Then I saw a squad of cavalry gallop onto the field from the greycoats’ side. I aimed my sniper rifle at them and said,

“Fire.”

My companions all fired in unison. Two of the cavalry fell, as did two more of their infantry.

“Good work,” I said. “Fire again.”

Only one of the cavalry fell this time, but two more of the infantry did. Admittedly, my shot missed, probably due to my lack of experience with hitting moving targets.

I re-aimed at the cavalry.

“Fire.”

We went through the cycle three more times, never felling more than three soldiers at a time. However, between us and the blues, the cavalry squad lost half of their unit before it could reach the blues’ line. The survivors were shaken and began to retreat.

“Good work,” I said. “Reload your weapons but don’t fire until my command.”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” said Glorieta, “but it appears we’re being shot at.”

I looked across the river to see some of the bluecoats firing at us.

“Alright, who shot at the blues?” I demanded. “Those guys are friendly!”

“None of us,” said S’mores. “We know who the bad guys are.”

“I might have accidentally hit one of the blue guys in the last volley,” Febreze said. “I didn’t mean to, it was an accident!”

“Friendly fire then,” I said. “They probably think we’re with the greys. Keep going, and focus all fire on the grey guys’ line. Maybe that’ll convince ‘em which side we’re on.”

We kept shooting. After a few more cycles of fire and reload, the greys’ numbers had been whittled down enough that they started retreating. Before I left, I spot a glimpse of the bearded officer from last night. I could have sworn it was Major Sibley from Canterby!

“Alright, the enemy is in retreat,” I said. “Let’s cross the river and meet up with the blues.”

My companions followed close behind as I led them to the bridge. We laid low fearing they might start attacking us, which they did once we got to the bridge.

“Stop! We’re friendly!” Grapevine shouted, but I could barely hear her over the gunfire, and neither could they.

“Anypony got a white handkerchief?” I asked. Glorieta gave me one, and I tied one end to a stick to make a white flag and waved it around.

They only shot harder.

I lowered the makeshift flag and examined it. It wasn’t exactly a white flag-- rather, about a quarter of it was completely stained with blood, forming a vertical red banner along the edge opposite the stick.

“What? I get really bad nosebleeds,” Glorieta said.

“Okay, but I asked for a white handkerchief,” I said. “Completely white.”

Febreze gave me another one that was completely white, which I used to replace the blood stained one.

They stopped shooting.

“Great, they stopped shooting,” I said. “Now put down your guns to show we mean no harm.”

I walked across the bridge, and was greeted on the other side by a mustached lieutenant pointing a pistol at me, flanked by two privates pointing shotguns.

“Stay where you are and don’t move an inch,” the lieutenant ordered.

“We’re friendly!” I said. “We were helping you this whole time!”

“Really?” the officer asked, with one of his bushy eyebrows raised.

“If we were with them we would have retreated,” I said. “And I’m not wearing one of those grey uniforms.”

The three soldiers looked at each other. Finally, the lieutenant said, “Okay, follow me. But don’t try anything funny or you’re as dead as they are.”

We received a warmer welcome at the golf course’s clubhouse, where Major Chives Onion had made his headquarters.

“I’m deeply sorry about all the confusion,” he said. “I’m deeply grateful for your help, and once we set the record straight, the whole unit will be too.”

“I’m glad we could get it all sorted out,” I replied. “It looked like you needed help, so we helped.”

“You’re good people,” he replied. “We could use more of you in this forsaken world.”

“...Well, we also kind of have a score to settle,” Dmitry said. ”Do you happen to know who was leading them, by any chance?”

“As much as it pains me to say it, their commander was Major Sibley Tent,” Major Chives said.

“Ah knew it!” Grapevine exclaimed. Then her face sank into a scowl. “Ah knew he was up to no good!”

“Now wait just a minute,” Major Chives said. “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions about his character. Trust me, I’ve known him for a long time. I wouldn’t say he’s a bad pony. He was one of the finest soldiers I ever saw. I’m not trying to excuse any of his actions per se, and his betrayal pains me more than anything, but you have to evaluate the situation with some nuance. I suppose, if anything, he just became a victim of his own ambition...”

“‘Betrayal?’” I asked. “Let me guess: he raised an army of mercenaries to take over the town because he wanted to be in charge. ”

“Well… that’s a very blunt way of putting it, but basically, yes, he did,” the Major said. “And it’s a shame too, because the General was just about to promote him.”

“But it’s all good now, right?” asked Valverde. “His force was wiped out and they’ve retreated. We’ve won the battle, and he’ll no longer be a threat.”

“If he’s smart, he won’t bother showing his face around here ever again,” said Gallium.

“Well… not exactly,” the Major said, with a very un-reassuring look on his face.

“Whadaya mean, ‘not exactly?’” Grapevine asked. “Are you tellin’ me he’s got more?”

“If my scouts are to be believed, that was only a detachment,” the Major replied. “I’ll stay here and keep a lookout, but it’s possible that skirmish may have just been a distraction while the rest of his army slipped by.”

“Oh dear,” said Grapevine. “You should send somepony to warn Canterby before they get there.”

“I’ve already sent a messenger,” the Major said. “Now all that’s left to do is wait. If I can confirm that they’ve passed us, we can go in and attack them from behind.”

“How can we help?” S’mores asked. “I’d rather not sit around waiting. We should go ahead and attack.”

“I need more intel before I can make any moves,” the Major said. “So for now, I’m staying put until my scouts report back.”

“Hey, we could do some recon for you,” said Glorieta. “We’ll go on ahead and see if we can find the rest of his army.”

“Yes, please!” the Major exclaimed. “That’s perfect. Just what we need.”

“Alright,” I said. “Where should we start looking?”

“Check Milk Creek Road,” he said. “It follows the creek and goes due northwest from here. That’s probably the quickest and most direct way to Canterby. If he’s making a rush, he’d probably go that way.”

We traveled down the road at a brisk pace, keeping our eyes peeled for any signs of activity. However, we saw nothing except dead, desolate farmland along the route. Additionally, the entire landscape was covered with a thick grey fog that made it impossible to see more than a few hundred yards.

“Are we there yet?” Febreze whined.

“Does it look like we’re there yet?” Gallium asked snidely.

“No, but I wish we were,” Febreze replied. “I’m booored!”

“Hey, can it, will ya?” S’mores hissed. “You’re gonna give away our position!”

“To who?” Gallium asked. “There’s nopony here.”

“To whom,” Febreze corrected.

Gallium facehoofed.

“To whomst,” Valverde said.

“To whomst’d” Febreze said.

“Whomst’dve” Gallium corrected.

A confused Dmitry turned to me and simply asked, “What?”

To which I replied, “Whomst’dvely”

Grapevine chimed, “Oh, ah know this!”

Then she took a deep breath and exclaimed:

“Whomst’dvely’yaint--”

“Woah, hold up!” Febreze exclaimed. “I think we’re there!”

Ahead of us the road turned right, away from the creek which had been following the road and separated by a line of trees. Just before the turn, a few wagons were parked on the side of the road in a clearing.

“That’s just a caravan,” Gallium said.

“Can we go talk to them?” Febreze asked.

“No, because we don’t know if they’re friendly yet,” I said. “Let’s approach slowly and quietly and keep our weapons out just in case.”

As we crept closer, we could begin to see their campsite from behind the trees. It appeared to simply be a normal campsite set up by some normal travelers. They were filling their canteens in the creek, drying clothes on a line, chatting over coffee, and cooking food. Their knives pistols remained holstered, but their larger weapons had been laid off to the side and the group in general appeared nonthreatening.

“Wait, I see something!” said Glorieta. “Look, that mare’s wearing one of those grey uniforms!”

She pointed towards what appeared to be the commander of the caravan, who stood on the bank of the creek. She looked very non-threatening as she was lazily skipping rocks across it and appeared to be completely oblivious to her surroundings. However, she was unmistakenly clad in one of the trademark grey uniforms of Sibley’s army.

“Alright, weapons ready,” I said as I prepared mine. “Stay low and keep quiet as we approach. Fire on my command.”

They were caught completely off guard by our attack. Half of them instinctively began to flee before realizing they were supposed to guard the caravan and turned around. However, it was too little too late: despite outnumbering us four to one, their delay allowed us to pick off most of their comrades before they could counterattack. After getting only three or four volleys of shot out, their morale broke and the remaining soldiers began retreating, leaving about a dozen wounded behind. However, we weren’t in the business of providing care, so we just left them where they fell and looted their bodies for weapons, food, and ammo.

‘So… what do we do about their wagons?” Glorieta asked. I pondered this for a bit: while it looked like there was a lot of good stuff in there, there was way too much loot for us to carry without slowing ourselves down. I didn’t want the supplies to go to waste and considered taking as much as we could, but we had a mission to do and couldn’t afford to waste time pillaging. In addition, their main force could be close by and would have certainly been alerted to our presence by the gunfire. There was only one reasonable thing left to do:

“Hey Grapevine, got a match?”

She didn’t, so we just went with a Moltotov instead. I ordered everypony to keep a safe distance before Grapevine threw it. She only needed to hit one wagon, as we had doused all the wagons and the ground between with some kerosene we had found. The fire spread quickly and engulfed them all within seconds, followed by a series of explosions. Some of them were much larger than I expected, engulfing most of the campsite in flame. I can only assume they must have had a few Balefire Eggs stashed inside those wagons.

The others wanted to stay and watch the fireworks, but I reminded them that one, we had to find the army before they reached Canterby, and two, these explosions would draw a lot of unwanted attention our way and that we should flee the area before Sibley sent a large force our way to investigate.

I was right: a little while down the road, we encountered an entire platoon rushing down the road. We just narrowly avoided a fight by diving into some foliage on the side of the road.

As they passed us, S’mores took out her gun and pointed it.

“What are you doing?!?” I said in an exasperated but hushed tone while pushing the barrel downward.

“I was gonna pick some of them off as they went past,” she said. “They’re the enemy, remember?”

“Yeah, but we can’t risk a confrontation,” I said. “There’s too many of them, and they’ll all start firing if they hear even a single gunshot. We’re a recon team, not snipers.”

S’mores grunted in frustration, but backed down as she was told. Gallium had also aimed his gun to fire, but got the message and backed down as well. The whole group watched them run by, and they seemed to ignore us…

Then a mine detonated in the street, turning three of the soldiers into mangled corpses and sent them flying. The rest went into high alert and began looking around for culprits.

A gunshot rang out.

“It was an accident, I swear!” Febreze said. “Just a little trigger hoof, that’s all.”

The soldiers started firing at us.

“That little ‘accident’ just gave away our position!” I shouted. “Fall back, fall back!”

We fled west for a block, then north, as half of the platoon chased us. We sought cover in the first place we could find: the parking lot of a large warehouse at the edge of a town. Big mistake. In our panicked state, I had forgotten that motor vehicles have a nasty habit of exploding when their engines get shot. Fortunately, we were reminded the easy way: a car far behind us exploded rather than one in front.

“We’re not safe here!” I yelled. “Quick, get into the building! Stay away from the cars!”

The nearest accessible entrance that wasn’t boarded up or locked under a heavy steel door were the glass doors of the office on the other side of the parking lot. The lot was a long thin strip of pavement running along the front of the building with two rows of parking spaces, one on each side. It gave us a clear straight path to the office, albeit one with large bombs lining the edges. The only solution was to sprint to the end.

After making it out of a chain of explosions by only the skin of our teeth, we made it to safety behind the doors of the office walls. From the safety of the office, we put up a good enough fight through the windows that our attackers decided to pull back and retreat. However, as they retreated, the sound of gunfire didn’t abate; instead, it only got louder.

“What the hell is goin’ on ‘round here?” Grapevine asked. “Ah thought they retreated.”

“Look over there, across the street,” Glorieta said, pointing to the windows at the back of the office. We all went over and saw a battle occurring in a cemetery on the other side of the road.

“Wait, I think I recognize that guy,” I said, looking through the binoculars. “Is that Sprigg?”

“Lemme see,” Grapevine asked. I gave her the binoculars, and within seconds she nodded in the affirmative.

“Ah believe so,” she said. “What’s he doin’ out here?”

“Trying to stop them from reaching the fort,” I said. “Which means we’re pretty close. Come on!”

The Canterbians seemed to be losing the battle, as it appeared that they had been continuously getting pushed back, and would soon be expelled from the cemetery entirely. A line of shrubs formed the western boundary of the cemetery, and I figured that if we attacked from there we could flank the greycoats’ assault and possibly push them away from the town. Unfortunately, just as we were getting into position to flank them, we got flanked ourselves.

“Fire!” somepony yelled from behind us. I had only enough time for a quick glance behind us, saw a squad of soldiers about the same size as ours aiming rifles at us, then jumped through the shrubs just in time to avoid their fire. I looked around and found that all of us had made it through safely, but we were now on the eastern side of the hedge where the battle was raging. No sooner did we get our bearings when we heard a bugle call announcing a cavalry charge. From our right, a squad of lancers was charging in our direction, and we had to run.

Eventually the lancers turned around to pursue their true target (Sprigg’s rear), but they had pushed us, either by accident or on purpose, into a lot in front of a maintenance shed on the northwestern corner of the cemetery’s grounds, where we were cut off from the rest of the battle by a chain link fence with only one entrance. We could have rejoined the battle, but the squad that had ambushed us earlier popped out of the bushes again and had us trapped. Our only chance was to hide inside the shed and lock ourselves in.

There were no doors or windows on this shed except for the large windowless door from which we had came in.

“Well, now what?” S’mores asked.

“We wait in here until it’s safe to come out,” I replied.

“And how long will that take?” Febreze asked.

“It shouldn’t take long,” Glorieta said. “Those bluecoats looked like they were on the verge of losing.”

“Yeah, but the greys saw us come in here,” S’mores said. “I bet they’re just gonna force us out.”

“We’ve got enough food for a few days,” said Valverde. “No worries.”

“Yeah, but we have only a day’s worth of water, at most,” I said. “Nothing in here is edible or drinkable.”

“We could drill a hole in the roof and drink rainwater,” Febreze suggested.

“One, that water’s gonna be highly irradiated if there’s another of those radiation storms,” Gallium said. “And two, they’ll probably just stick a gun barrel through there and shoot at us while we have no way of fighting back.”

“So what, are we doomed?!?” Febreze asked with a hint of hysteria setting in.

“Nah, ah’ve got a better idea,” said Grapevine as she lugged a machine of some sort with a long metal tube protruding from it across the room.

“And just what would that be?” Galium asked with a raised eyebrow.

“We dig our way out,” Grapevine said, standing upright and holding the machine’s handles by her forehooves, with the end of the metallic tube touching the metal wall of the shed, revealing it to be a jackhammer. She pushed down on the levers on its handles and the entire thing began to jiggle.

“If we do it now, they won’t hear us over the noise of the battle,” she explained, raising her voice so it was audible above the machine’s noise. “If we can break our way out through the back, we might be able to sneak up on them. Now grab some picks and help!”

So we grabbed all the pickaxes and saws and hard hats we could find and took turns helping her break out of the back door. It took about an hour, but eventually we poked enough holes in the wall that we could just push it down, giving us a second doorway. To our luck, the battle was still going and making enough noise to cover our tracks, but it was starting to die down. Three yards away from the back wall of the shed was a road separated by a chain link fence. Just as we had all gotten out, I saw Sprigg and his staff running down this road, giving us an ominous sign.

“We need to get out of here, NOW,” I said.

“But what about the battle?” Glorieta asked.

“The battle is over,” I said. “The blues have lost, their commander has left the field. Sibley’s troops will be here any minute now.”

“What, you mean we’re gonna climb over that fence?” Grapevine asked.

“Or fly across, if you can,” I said. “But yes, we’re jumping that fence. Once you’re over, stick around and provide covering fire until everypony’s across. Keep your eyes peeled and your guns ready, in case they attack.”

There were a few disused boards and sheets of metal laying on the side of the shed that we picked up and used as shields. They came in handy, because a few minutes in we were spotted by the squad that had ambushed and trapped us. Whether or not they had been keeping guard the whole time or merely came back to check on us, I couldn’t say, I can only tell you that they wanted to keep us from escaping. Fortunately, my plan worked perfectly and we didn’t lose a single pony. We climbed over one at a time, and Dmitry stayed behind to shield the ponies climbing and, once we had enough ponies across, toss shields over for use as cover. When it got to the point where I was the only one left, I simply hid behind the corner of the shed and cast an invisibility spell on myself.

The ambush squad finally decided to charge forward during a lull when my entire squad had to reload. They came around the side of the shed and looked around. Two of them peered curiously inside the shed while the rest stood guard on the outside and resumed firing at my squad. Soon, the ones who went inside the shed returned after having found nothing. They didn’t seem to notice that one of their enemies had gone missing, but it did worry my allies, and it showed in their faces. I wanted to reassure them that I was still alive and hadn’t gotten lost or gone missing, but my escape relied on me not blowing my cover. I really wanted to sneak up behind one of the enemy squad and shoot or stab them from behind, but this too would blow my cover. Instead, I scaled the fence very slowly, restricting my movement to short bursts when there was gunfire to cover the sound. After what seemed like forever, I finally got to the top and began my descent.

Might I mention that this was the first time I had ever scaled a fence before? Crazy, I know, but a combination of a fear of heights and a fear of wrongdoing had prevented me from ever climbing more than one or two steps. It’s crazy how the fear of death seems able to overpower all others.

Coming back down was easier, because halfway through I could just jump to the bottom. This produced a light ‘thud’ on the ground and emitted a small cloud of dust, which attracted the attention of one of the enemy soldiers. Before she could respond, I whipped out my pistol and used SATS to shoot a few bullets at her head. Due to the chain barrier between us, only one of them actually hit, but it knocked her off guard long enough for me to escape to cover. This attracted the attention of everypony else on the battlefield, so once I was behind my friends’ shields, I revealed myself. This shocked them and made them lose their focus for a few seconds.

“Whoa, you scared me!” Dmitry exclaimed. “Don’t do that!”

“You know an invisibility spell?” Valverde asked.

“Awesome,” said S’mores.

“Can you teach it to me sometime?” Febreze asked.

“You don’t have a horn!” Gallium yelled.

“I just wanna know how it works!” Febreze replied.

“I’ll show you later,” I said, “But right now we need to finish with these bad guys first.”

In just twelve hours, I had somehow managed to train a group of teenagers who had never fired guns before into seasoned soldiers who could now hold their own against a slightly larger squad of hardened veterans, and with good leadership, defeat them. I felt a sense of pride glowing within my chest as I watched the ambushers fall to the ground one by one, and the last two flee in terror. Yet I was also incredulous-- were they really that good, and was this really my doing? It couldn’t be-- I barely had any experience of my own! And yet, somehow it all turned out like this.

The warehouse, the cemetery, and the shed had all been on the outskirts of pre-war Canterby. We quickly traversed the deserted blocks between the cemetery and the downtown, where the newly consolidated post-war Canterby now stood. Though we were entering through a different gate with a different gatekeeper, the three familiar faces at the head of our group were instantly recognized and we were granted entry.

“I’d love to talk right now,” said one of the officers I had dined with on my last visit, “But we’re kinda in the middle of a battle for the fate of the city right now.”

“That’s why we came,” I said. “We’re here to help.”

“Great!” she said. “We could use some more ponies on the eastern wall.”

The ‘Eastern Wall’ consisted primarily of the back wall of a supermarket, a movie theater, and a makeshift gate blocking the road which ran between them. Before them lay a long and narrow parking lot, followed by a long and narrow field. There was very little cover that an enemy could hide behind, making an assault from this angle suicidal.

Rather ironically, immediately outside the gate stood a prewar war memorial, dedicated to all those Canterbians in the five branches of the military who gave their lives for freedom...

...the freedom for us civilians to fight about stupid shit.

Right on cue, the ‘stupid shit’ of a pony who started this whole mess, Major Sibley Tent, came forward with two assistants, one of them carrying… a white flag?!?

The others began whispering to each other. More soldiers came to our wall, along with a few officers and finally General Sprigg himself.

"What's all this about?" the General asked.

"A pleasure to see you, General," Sibley said. "At last we meet... on equal footing."

The General gave a contemptuous snort.

"Equal?" he balked. "We ain't equal. After your betrayal, you've sunk shoulder-deep into the mud, Sibley."

"I meant in rank," Sibley said tersely. "I'm a general, you're a general, we're both generals now. It doesn't matter how either of us got here. In war, ethics don't matter; only power does."

"Even if we were to assume you weren't leading a mutiny against your former commanding officer,..." the General replied, "your rank is still illegitimate because you can't just give yourself a promotion!"

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Eddy," Sibley replied with a snark. "'Cause this ain't MY army."

A familiar looking brown cat-like mare had been casually pawing her way up the field, but I only noticed her just now as she approached Sibley and wrapped her forehooves around his neck in a loving embrace. I could have sworn I saw her before, just not in a maroon-colored dress with purple-pink fur on its edges.

"So typical of you to insist on following convoluted procedures and outdated codes of conduct,” Sibley continued. “Day in and day out, it's always the same ordeal. If we were more pragmatic about things, we could get ten times the work done in half the time."

"The rules and procedures are what makes it an army," the General said. "Without them, we'd just be another band of thugs."

I smiled at the wisdom contained within that quote and chuckled a little at its wit. But my joy was short-lived, as a few seconds later, one of the town's regular lookouts tapped me on the shoulder and said under her breath:

"He's just stallin’ while his army approaches. Look!"

She pointed at the ground behind him, where several soldiers were slowly crawling through the grass, their brown uniforms appearing almost identical to the dead grass.

A stallion next to me cocked his shotgun and aimed it at the camouflaged soldiers. As I did the same, so did the rest of the ponies on the wall except for the General and a few other officers.

"Just whatch’a tryin’a to pull here, Sibley?" the General asked wryly with the raise of an eyebrow.

“Ah ain’t tryin’a pull anything,” Sibley said, recoiling in feigned offense. “After all this senseless fightin’ today, my boys are exhausted. Let’s just agree to bury the hatchet and go our separate ways.”

“If you really wanted peace, ya should have said so before killing twenty four of my men,” the General said. “Ah can’t have let them die in vain, nor can I let treason go unpunished. The answer is NO.”

Sibley’s ears drooped backward and his brow furrowed. This was one of the few times that he didn’t have that shit eating grin on his face. Although I knew he was playing a game, he looked convincing enough, and was a fairly decent actor in his own right.

“Fine then,” he said, lowering his head to face the ground. “Ah offered an olive branch, but it looks like we’ve got to fight it out ‘till the bitter end. Which means...”

“Sibley, I’ve got something to tell you,” the cat-pony said seductively.

“Not now darling, ah’m in the middle of somethin’ here,” Sibley replied in a soft, tender voice.

“But it’s important!” she whined.

“Not now dahling, ah’m in the--” he said in a firmer, angrier voice, pushing the cat-pony off him.

“Sibleeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!”

“What in tarnation is it?” he growled, facing her with a head-on glare. "What on earth could possibly be so important that it should interrupt my negotiations with the enemy?"

"The supply train hasn't arrived yet," the cat-pony replied innocently.

"The supply train can wait," Sibley said tersely. "It's supposed ta stay a little behind us. Otherwise--"

"It still hasn't reached the cemetery yet," she said.

A look of concern appeared on Sibley's face.

"Well... maybe it's just been, uh... delayed a little," Sibley said with a slight quiver in his voice. "Yeah, that’s right, it’s prob’ly just a delay. You know how the roads are around here. Lots of mud and potholes and--"

"Completely silent on the radio, too," she replied. "Signal Fire's repeatedly tried to ping them for the past half hour and not a single reply. All the other units still work. She double-checked the equipment and everything."

Sibley appeared genuinely concerned by this news, but regained his composure within seconds.

"Well, it doesn't matter whether or not they've made it," he declared. "We can search for them after the battle. Better yet, we'll have the supply cache of the entire fort under our control!"

"But what about the... um... those bale full-of-egg things?" the cat pony asked.

"What about 'em?" Sibley asked.

"Didn't you say we needed them for the assault?" the cat pony asked.

"I didn't say we absolutely needed them," Sibley replied, "I just said that they would be nice to have."

"We put them in the wagons," the cat pony said. "Which means they've gone missing."

"I-I-... well, I-uh, I know that!" Sibley said flusteredly. Then, angrily he shouted, "I know that, and because of that we're changing our plans. All units, begin attacking the fort right now!"

At once, dozens upon dozens of ponies rose up from beneath the tall grass, popped out from behind buildings and trees, and a few Pegasus burst out of some low-hanging clouds. It seemed as though the fort was being besieged from all sides. Even in the grass, where I had seen them approaching, their numbers seemed overwhelming. I could have sworn that at least some of them knew invisibility spells or used stealthbucks.

"Get behind the parapets, now!" a lieutenant cried. I immediately ducked, as did most of the others on our side of the wall, and a hail of bullets flew over the wall just a split second later.

"Phew, that was close!" said Valverde Ford. He began to rise, saying "now let's get back up there and--"

"Not so fast!" Glorieta Pass said, pulling him back down. "They're still shooting."

"What's going on?" Febreeze asked hysterically. "Is this a siege?"

“No, a siege would just be them sitting around and trapping us here,” S’mores said. “They’re actively trying to take this fort.”

“Well, duh, I knew that!” Febreze retorted.

“They’re providing covering fire for an assault,” Dmitry said, peering out of a small hole in the parapet. “They’ve got teams of ladders and big spears.”

I could only imagine what those teams would have looked like since it was still far too dangerous to peep above the parapet, even for just a second. I anticipated with dread the moment when they would actually mount their assault from the ladders and wondered when it was or where they were going to scale it. I reached into my bags to grab my 10mm pistol (which I still had plenty of ammo for), when suddenly there was a faint beeping followed by a large explosion outside. Everypony, myself included, was momentarily stunned and confused by his change of events. The firing slowed to a trickle, as presumably their rank-and-file were just as confused about what was going on as I was.

Then there were two more explosions, both preceded by the faint beep. More ponies were paying attention now. One mare even screamed.

More explosions followed in rapid succession. This time, the explosions were often accompanied by cries of pain and agony. I didn’t dare lift my head above the parapet yet, as it appeared to be complete chaos out there. When the smoke finally cleared, I cautiously lifted my head over the wall. Close to where the enemy line had been, the ground was now barren and scorched to a point of near total blackness. Thin wafts of smoke floated up from the epicenter of each explosion, and the faint smell of charcoal lingered in the air. Every hundred yards or so, a squad of corpses lay beneath pieces of charred wood, presumably the remains of ladders. As for the enemy lines, they were now fragmented, with most of the soldiers either dead or dying slowly from third degree burns and shrapnel wounds. The minority who had managed to escape relatively unscathed had retreated towards cover for the duration of the explosion, and were just now beginning to creep back into the open.

“Get ‘em while they’re weak! Fire!” shouted the lieutenant, and gradually the ponies on the wall began aiming their guns and shooting. The ponies in the field panicked, and some bolted for cover again while the more disciplined among them stood in their spots and attempted to fire back. As much as I admired their bravery, I knew it wouldn’t save them from their doom. Within three minutes, all who remained had been gunned down. A few minutes later, some reinforcements came up from the southeast, but we were ready for them.

After that, there was quite a bit of waiting. At first it was a welcome moment for everypony to catch their breath, but it started to get boring real quick. However, the officers were cautious and wanted to keep everypony on the walls in case they came back for another attack. After about twenty minutes, it became clear that they weren’t going to attack any time soon, and gave most of us permission to descend back into the fort.

“Woohoo, that was awesome!” Febreze exclaimed. “Can we do it again?”

“Probably not,” I said. “It seems that the battle’s over.”

Her smile quickly collapsed into a frown.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” Gallium said.

“Not so fast,” said an officer (a captain, based on his rank insignia), a big burly muddy grey stallion with an enormous and impeccable moustache. “Some escaped and might be regrouping with whatever reserves they still have. We’re sendin’ out scouting parties to search for ‘em. Y’all interested?”

We were assigned to search through Burrow, a small village just west of Canterby, and its immediate surroundings. The kids' ecstasy over receiving another combat mission soon soured after we spent twenty more minutes just wandering around the village, searching through houses and stores for any signs of life. Instead, all we found were some abnormally sized rodents and cockroaches. They quickly became bored again, until we reached a nursery on the edge of the village.

"Hold up, do you see that?" asked Glorieta. "It looks kinda like a--"

"Like a bear?" asked S'mores. "Gimme the binoculars, let me see!"

I passed the binoculars, which she swiped out of my hoof.

"Yep, that's definitely a bear alright."

"Bears aren't green," Gallium said flatly.

S'mores took her eyes out of the binoculars and glared at him like he had just called her fat.

"They are if they're irradiated!" she replied. "Come on, you've seen giant irradiated animals before."

"Yeah, in science fiction movies," he said. "Made long before the war. Radiation doesn't actually work like that. Most of the time, it just kills you."

"I saw a two-headed deer once," Febreeze said. "Two weeks ago. It was outside the walls, and its veins were green, and its flesh was rotting off and everything!"

"Yeah, and I saw a house floating up in the sky just the other day," Gallium said sarcastically. "Look, this place has been pretty barren. There's so few living plants and animals that it's a miracle any pony is still alive outside of the Stables."

"Personally, I'd rather live out here than back in the stables," Dmitry muttered. "It's much more quiet out here."

"We've only been out here for two days," said Valverde. "Actually, less than a day. I'm sure there's plenty we haven't seen yet."

"Technically, we've only been out here for twelve hours," Breeze said.

"Twelve hours is plenty," said Gallium. "Hell, you can get the feel of a video game in just two or three. I'm not complaining about what's out here, I'm just saying it's really fucking barren."

"Hey, y'all," the green monster said, and the teens all screamed and hugged each other for dear life.

"Help, it's gonna eat us alive!" Breeze screamed.

“Calm down, it’s just Grapevine,” Dmitry said.

“Yeah, calm down, it’s only a grape vine,” the green monster said.

Febreze breathed a sigh of relief.

“Phew, I thought you were a mutated ursa major,” she said.

“Damn, I was hoping you’d be a mutated ursa major,” S’mores said dejectedly.

“Don’t you worry,” Grapevine assured them. “Grapevines are like ursa minors of the wine world. Someday I’ll grow up to be a big and strong vineyard. Then you’ll be scared!”

“I don’t think anypony’s afraid of vineyards,” Gallium said.

“I’m afraid of vineyards!” Febreze said quickly and with trepidation.

We all stared at her.

“What? It’s an irrational fear I’ve had for years. I genuinely am afraid of vineyards, and have been since I was a little filly! They scare me!”

“How’d that happen?” Valverde asked. “Was there an incident in your early childhood?”

Febreze began entertaining the others with her story about ‘The Vineyard Incident,’ while myself and my Stable buddies began leading the group back into town.

“Where the hell were you?” I asked. “You disappeared right when we needed your explosives skills!”

"Looking for materials," she said. "I burned through the fort's stockpile when setting up the perimeter, so I figured I'd help them make new ones."

"So it was you who laid those mines?" Dmitry said.

"But wait, how did--?" I asked.

She lifted her right fore hoof and showed off a device she had acquired: it consisted of a circular disc tied to her hoof by a leather strap, a red button and four dials on the edge of the disc, and a concave dish which folded out from the top.

"A Stealthbuck, eh?" asked Dmitry. "That explains a lot. Where'd you find it?"

"I... don't quite remember," Grape vine said. "Somewhere back in the Stable. Probably bought it off the black market. Those guys owed me a loooooot of money."

"You'll have to show me how it works sometime," I said. "I want one of those for myself."

"I don't think you need one," Dmitry said. "Your stealth skills are good enough."

"I can show you right now if you want," Grape vine said. "In fact, I'll show all of you." She turned to the others and yelled, "Hey kids, watch this!" And once their eyes were all on her, she pressed the red button and almost completely disappeared. I could see the faint transparent outline of a pony and some rippling of the light within it, but she was transparent enough that you couldn't really see her unless you were looking for something.

"Whoa, cool!" the kids exclaimed.

She began running around, which made her already difficult to find body become almost impossible to see, just a dash of light identifiable only by her unsilenced hoof steps. She then plucked a feather from Gallium and Breeze's wings, then used them both to tickle Valverde. Once the joke got old, she then pressed the button again and undid the invisibility, then bowed to the group's applause.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"I don't really know the details, but it basically creates a refraction field around you that reflects light," she said.

"No, I meant what do those dials do?" I asked.

"They're for fine-tuning the refraction field, since not everypony's body is the same" she said. "I'm not really sure how they work myself, I just stood in front of a mirror and tweak the dials until I couldn’t see myself anymore. There’s one dial that just accounts for race.”

“Is ‘changeling’ an option?” Dmitry asked. Grapevine shook her head.

“Nah, just the three standard types of ponies,” she said. “I’ve heard of ones with settings for dragons and changelings and shit, but this is just the standard version.”

“Do they have to have a special setting for the crystal ponies?” I asked. “Or do they just fit under earth pony?”

“I don’t know,” Grapevine said. “You’d think that their coats would mess with the refraction field. I thought I saw one at a Stealthbuck exhibit at a museum once down in San Horse...”

“Damn, it’s a shame we won’t going there any time soon,” said Dmitry. “I’d love to see it.”

At that moment, I saw something moving on the horizon.

"Stop," I said. "I think there's some pony there."

Day brought out his binoculars. "Not just one," he said. "There's a whole pack."

"Are they friendly?" Glorieta asked.

"I can't tell," Dmitry said. "Wait-- it looks like they have prisoners."

"Then let's free them," Valverde said, and he charged forward. His friends followed suit.

"Wait!" I called, and began running after them. "We can't just run in there! We have to be cautious!"

"Caution won't save them!" S'mores called back. This retort only made me angry, and I began running faster.

The kids burst into the yard of a machine shop, and stopped abruptly in front of the group that had been assembled there. Inside this yard, nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary. Heaps of scrap metal and broken machines lined the edges, as well as a few abandoned cars and trucks. The space in the middle was completely clear, as well as the space directly in front of the metal building which housed the shop itself. The only unusual thing here was the large mass of uniformed ponies standing in a sort of semicircle in front of the shop all looking towards the wall. They were startled by our approach and all looked shocked and panicked, some of them pointing guns.

Then a familiar voice (presumably their leader) called out, "Stand down boys, they're friendly."

As I ran through the gates, the crowd put down their weapons, except for a few in the middle of the semicircle, whose guns had been aimed toward the shop wall the whole time.

"What's going on here?" I asked, approaching the crowd and nudging my way through it. When I got closer in, I saw what was inside the center: seven unarmed ponies sitting against the wall. Three of them wore gray uniforms. In the middle of this smaller group was Sidney himself.

Chive Onion walked over to me and gave a curt bow.

"Let them through, please. Let them all through," he told the crowd, and they parted to allow my compatriots into the center. As soon as they were through, the crowd closed in behind them.

"These," he said triumphantly, "are the fruit of our labors: the enemy's leader and the remnants of his general staff, disarmed and out our hooves. And since you guys helped us thwart his plans, I figured I’d give you the honors."

“What honors?” I asked.

“Of dealing with them, of course,” Chive replied, gesturing towards the captives with the barrel of his revolver. “We were just about to do it ourselves, but then you guys showed up.”

The rest of my party began digging out their rifles and loading them with ammo.

“Hey, use these,” one of the soldiers said, and passed a box of bullets around. Each of them happily took five bullets from the box and unloaded their rifles, switching out the old ones for the new. None of them took any issue, except for Dmitry who raised an eyebrow when glancing at the box, but raised no questions and simply took them, then passed them to me. I looked at the box and gawked.

“Soft point bullets?” I read. “Aren’t these illegal?”

“They were,” Dmitry said, “But apparently none of the old rules apply anymore.”

“Hey, in times of war, anything goes,” Chive said. “And you can keep the box, there’s plenty more where those came from.”

The others finished loading their weapons with the new bullets. Then everypony started looking at me. I started to get nervous.

“...Well?” one of the soldiers asked. “What are you waiting for?”

“Do we really have to do this?” I asked. “Couldn’t we just… you know, exile them?”

“Of course not!” Glorieta gawked. “After all they’ve done? They tried to kill us!”

“Multiple times,” Gallium said.

“They ripped us off!” Grapevine exclaimed.

“They betrayed those who they swore to serve,” Dmitry said. “That’s treason. And treason is punishable by death.”

“Okay, but do I really have to kill--” I asked, but was cut off when both Dmitry and Grapevine shouted into my ears,

“JUST DO IT!”

I furrowed my brow and took a deep breath. Then, I stepped forward and, trying not to tremble, I gave the orders.

“Get in a straight line,” I said.

They got in a straight line facing the prisoners.

“Ready your weapons.”

They readied their weapons.

“Aim.”

They aimed their weapons.

“Fire.”

Progress to Next Level: 3850/5800

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2
Price of Silver: 108 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

This chapter was several months in the making, and I'm finally glad I could finish it and move on. It was a random idea I had decided to put in there, loosely based on an obscure battle from the American Civil War. This and the next chapter will conclude the first major story arc, allowing us to move onto the second, which I anticipate will be kind of fun to write.

Chapter 17: Bed and Circuses

Chapter 17: Bed and Circuses

“We need to make sure she gets some rest today!”

Wednesday, September 17th, 4347

Dear Diary,

I was awakened by the distant sound of gunshots. I sat up, got up, and started looking around for my stuff. I eventually found my saddlebags, I soon realized that something wasn’t right. For starters, I didn't remember putting my stuff over there. That's not me-- I always keep it close to my bed. But then I noticed more stuff that wasn't right. I didn't remember there being any motel rooms in Canter bee, so why was I in one? Or me ever getting into this bed, when I'd even had dinner last night. I didn't really remember anything that happened after we left Canterby.

Still, gunshots mean fighting, so dug through my bags to find a weapon suitable for long-range fighting. I felt groggy and tired and my mouth was dry, but despite the fog in my mind I knew that I had to do something. There was a fever burning within me that made me sweat.

I thrust open the door and darted out into the hallway. It was long and thin and I'd never seen it before, but the exits were clearly marked so I knew where to go. I took off running but quickly lost my balance and careened in an arc towards the wall.

Bump!

I fell to the ground, clutching my head in pain and groaning loudly. One of the veins on my head flared up, and I wondered if I had cracked my skull. Meanwhile, doors began opening, ponies were talking, and I felt all their eyes upon me. A couple of hooves approached me and stopped right in front of my face.

"What are you doing?" a mare with a southern accent asked.

"I gotta.... save.... the badguyz...." I said feebly.

"Save who now?" she asked.

It then occurred to me that I didn't really know what was going on or who I was supposed to save.

"You know..." I said, "The ponies. There's danger and they need help. The shooting--"

A stallion chuckled.

"Oh, that happens all the time. We're not in any danger."

I felt myself being lifted up and carried on the backs of two ponies. I soon realized that the southern mare was Grapevine due to her green fur and the bushiness of her tail, which I had the unpleasant experience of having my face half-buried in for the duration of the ride. Although it smelled like the kind of chemical imitation of flowers found in modern air fresheners (and thus was the best smelling thing I'd smelled in quite a while), it still felt like I was invading her privacy, even if she didn't seem to mind.

When they had reached the bed, they gently plopped me back down into it and took a few steps backward.

“Relax, we aren’t in any danger,” said the stallion, whose coat was the color of a coffee stain. “And neither of you. You need bedrest.”

“You’ve been out of it fer a pretty long time,” Grapevine said. “Ya spent most of last day sleepin’.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” I said. “We spent the day traveling, remember? We fought that battle, then we left Canterby and--”

“That was Monday, the day before yesterday,” said Dmitry as he entered the room with some food on a tray. “Yes, we left Canterby and took 99 south. And around four o’clock, you collapsed into a heap in front of that weigh station. So we took you to the nearest town...”

“...that was still inhabited,” added Grapevine. “There was some ghost town that we thought was here, but it wasn’t.”

“It was maybe four miles north of here,” Dmitry continued. “It was a miracle we could get you here before sundown. You’re so...”

“Fat,” Grapevine blurted out. Dmitry glared at her.

“...I was going to say ‘big boned,’ but that’s also true,” he concluded. “Anyway, we’re just glad we could get you here. We worried you might be dying.”

“And between your symptoms, diet and activities history, and the brief answers you were awake enough to give me yesterday, I’ve concluded that it isn’t anything too serious,” said the coffee stained stallion. “Just a bad case of salmonella left untreated, paired with sleep deprivation. Your friends think you got it from eating a can of rotten oysters about a week ago. I think it will clear up in a few days, but I gave you some antibiotics just in case. Have any questions?”

“Just one,” I said. “How long until I can leave?”

“I would normally advise a week’s worth of rest, but in your case we could lower that to three or four,” he said. “Please, just get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, and enjoy your stay as much as you can before going back out into that hellhole of a wasteland.”

The coffee stained doctor left, leaving me alone with my two companions. Dmitry set the food tray in front of me, and I examined its contents: a glass of water, some toast, a bowl of chicken and rice soup, and a fat green pill. The toast appeared to be burnt, but upon closer examination, it was just made of poorly ground whole wheat flour. As I began to eat, I found that it was some of the best food I had had since leaving the Stable, as everything except the pill was fresh and had been recently harvested.

“So what was that shooting for?” I asked, “If they say it’s somehow normal?”

“Some kinda fight with the folks across the street,” Grapevine said. “I don’t know too much about it either.”

“I asked around,” began Dmitry, “And this is what I can gather: after the bombs hit, the survivors here in Woodpile split into two camps: the ‘beds,’ or ‘breads’ and the ‘circuses.’ They’re called that because the ‘breads’ insisted on being responsible by planting crops, building walls, and looking out for their survival needs, while the ‘circuses’ just wanted to have fun doing drugs and vandalizing things, so they formed a gang and moved into the stripmall across the freeway. The ‘circuses’ called the ‘breads’ ‘beds’ because they built their compound around this motel, two apartment complexes, and a retirement home. It was supposed to be derogatory and imply they were boring, but the ‘breads’ eventually adopted the label and used it to symbolize their hospitality towards guests. Several months in, the ‘circuses’ ran out of food and started begging. When the ‘breads’ refused to give them any, the ‘circuses’ resorted to launching raids on this settlement and any travelers in the area. I went over to their side yesterday to take a look for myself, and found that there’s actually plenty of farmland they could use right behind the mall; apparently they just don’t use it because they’re lazy.”

I clapped a little.

“Tell me another story, daddy!”

He smiled, said, “Alright,” pulled up a chair and grabbed a phone book. He sat down, opened the phone book, and flipped through it a bit.

“This one’s called ‘A Tale of Two Ministries; Why Pinkie Pie is Trash and Rainbow Dash is Awesome.’ Ahem! ‘It was the best of--’”

“No, tell me about what happened on Monday,” Grapevine said. “Ya know, with the battle and stuff. I get that there was a fight and that one dude betrayed everypony, but, why? And what was up with that cat girl?”

“Ha, even I was awake enough to remember that,” I said. So Dmitry and I began to explain exactly what went on that day and all the background behind it, based on the bits and pieces we’d collected from talking with the ponies at the fort. Since you, diary, weren’t fully conscious of what happened either, I’ll explain it to you to the best of my ability:

From what I can tell, Sibley himself didn’t have any motivations beyond just pure ambition. He had a big ego and was tired of being told what to do all the time, so he decided he’d orchestrate a coup and make himself the General instead. He couldn’t find enough support within Canterby, so he reached out to various gangs and mercenaries and promised them spoils in exchange for service.

Meanwhile, that ‘cat girl’ he was with during the battle, was Katrina, the town greeter from Sandy Shades. She was secretly the kingpin of some kind of drug cartel with operations as far south as Valleyville, who hid beneath the facade of being a local bartender in Sandy Shades. After the war, she got the town to hire her as an official ‘town greeter’ merely so she could intercept incoming drug shipments and hide them from the local authorities. After the apocalypse, the cartel only became more powerful since there was less law enforcement and it could more easily ‘dispose of’ its rivals.

The two met when Sibley was on a recruiting drive disguised as a salvage hunt and hit it off well. There’s a lot of debate over whether Katrina actually loved him or was just trying to manipulate him, but they entered into both a business and a romantic relationship at that time. The cartel had a lot of wealth, but with everypony living in such close quarters after the war, the officials of Sandy Shades were starting to get on her tail. It was a match made in hell: Sibley’s army had men but needed equipment, Katrina’s cartel had assets but needed a new base, both were scheming and manipulative, and a plan was formed: assemble and train an army in the eastern foothills where nopony would find it, then swoop in one day and attack before anypony would realize what was going on.

Fortunately, the plan started to fall apart before it even began. Just as Sibley was leaving to go get the army and bring it to Canterby, one of his co-conspirators snitched, allowing General Sprigg to send out a force under Major Chive Onion to try to intercept Sibley. However, he underestimated the size of Sibley’s force, and might have very well lost the battle if a gang of meddling kids didn’t intervene.

As for the fate of those meddling kids, they all thought the battle was really cool and wanted to join Canterby’s ‘army’ afterward. And I let them-- after all, I wasn’t their mother, they had no obligation to obey me, and I had no obligation to keep them. After all, as nice as they were, they were kind of a distraction. We didn’t enter the wasteland to babysit, we came to serve Stable 76, and in that capacity, we are obligated to venture southward until a cure to its ailment could be found… for my illness may not be fatal, but the Stable’s is.

But for now, all I can do is rest. And while I rest, maybe I can read a book I recently picked up. As a reward for helping him out, General Sprigg gave me his copy of Spitfire’s Memoirs.

It turns out that General Sprigg had an extra copy of Spitfire’s memoirs lying around. He told me it had come through on one of the caravans. To my surprise, when I opened it up I realized that it was my copy, autographed by Spitfire herself! I was too overjoyed to care that somepony had been rummaging through my old bedroom. Surprisingly, I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat down and read anything more than the first few pages of this thing. I’ll have to study it thoroughly if I want to be the best pony I can be. Between this bedrest and the long, lonely nights of guard duty, I’ll have plenty of time to read it.

Level up!

Level 9: Student of the Wastes

Next Perk at Level 10.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 108 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

This is an unusually short chapter for this story, but I can't think of anything else I should add. I just needed this to wrap up some loose ends from chapters 13-16 and to serve as a lesson on why you shouldn't leave infections untreated.

This wraps up the first major story arc. I'm planning to have about six in this Act. I'm greatly looking forward to writing the second.

Chapter 018: The Big Bad Wolf

Chapter 18: The Big Bad Wolf

“I have waited for the day to send this greedy wolf away...”

Friday, September 19th, 4347

Dear Diary,

After only two days of resting, I had had enough and was eager to get out. My illness was receding, I felt well enough to travel, and I was confident that it would clear up within a few days as long as I got enough sleep. I also realized that lodging was expensive, in addition to all the medical bills I had been racking up. We were quickly bartering our supplies away just for my sake when we had begun to run low on necessities. This had become abundantly clear when we took a pit stop at a truck stop between towns.

"Hey, Silver, ya got any tampons or pads?" Grapevine asked. "I just ran out."

"Sure," I said, digging through my bags. I found that I only had one small box left.

"Here, take this," I said, giving her the box after I had removed a few for myself. "You probably need them more than I do."

"Do you have enough to get through your next period?" she asked.

"Only half of it," I said. "It's fine, I'll just grab some toilet paper and--"

"No way," she said with the stomp of her hoof. "Friends don't let friends stuff toilet paper up their crotch. Soon as we reach the next town, we're getting you some proper sanitary products."

"The way I see it, we'd better get used to using toilet paper," I said. "They don't make tampons anymore, and sooner or later we're gonna run out. Just look at this convenience store, and all the products were looted ages ago."

"Truck driving is a male-dominated profession," Dmitry chimed in. "They didn't have much here to begin with. I'm sure there are plenty of tampons out there."

"I hope so," I said. "I'd hate to have to trek all the way to Mexicolt just to have a pleasant period."

"Hey, that's a great business opportunity!" Grapevine exclaimed. "We could make trips down to Mexicolt and back to bring cotton up here."

"And what are we going to sell them in return?" I asked.

"I don't know. Something we have a lot of."

"Like what?" I asked. “Rain? The color green? Crippling depression?”

“Rain might work,” said Dmitry. “Clean water is important.”

“We’d drink it all by the time we get there,” I said.

“She’s right,” Grapevine said. “And it ain’t that hard to set up a basic filter. I was thinkin’ we could sell trees.”

Dmitry and I started laughing.

“Trees?” he exclaimed. “Do you realize how heavy a tree is? We’d need a truck or a train to carry them down.”

“Or we could just use balloons...” Grapevine said quietly, staring off into the distance.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dmitry said. “And speaking of trucks, we’ve been here long enough. I know of a pretty decent motel up ahead that we might be able to reach tonight if we leave now.”

We packed our things and headed out, but Grapevine’s eyes remained fixed in the sky. My curiosity eventually got the better of me and I looked too, seeing what appeared to be a house, floating high in the air and suspended by balloons. I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I turned away, blinked several times, and looked back. I swear I saw that same house for just a few seconds before it suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. I looked away, blinked, and looked back again, and saw only the grey skies of the wastes.

The floating house left my mind for a few hours, but reappeared when we reached the outskirts of the nearest city. On the very edge of the city, the first thing that greeted travelers on the freeway was a baseball stadium. The stadium itself was preceded by a small clump of trees, which hid it from view at a distance so that it just pops up when you get near. The effect is no less dramatic whether you're traveling by car or by hoof, and the sudden emergence of the stadium caught all of us off guard, even though Grapevine told us it would be the first thing we would see as we entered town. The effect was doubled because just above the stadium, we saw the floating house slowly descending.

"What's up with that house?" I asked.

The others just gave me shrugs and blank looks of confusion.

"Should we investigate it?" I asked.

"Why not?" Grapevine said. "I'd like to know how it's doing that."

"No, it's probably just some prewar publicity stunt," Dmitry said. "We should scavenge some supplies from that nearby mall and get going."

My pipbuck rumbled a bit and gave out a light 'ping.' I looked at it and it displayed a notification in a small window that said 'New Quest Added: Investigate the Anomaly above the Stadium,' and below it two buttons labeled 'Okay' and 'See Details.' Never having noticed such a feature before, I pressed 'See Details' and it presented me with a menu that I never even knew was a feature.

"Huh, I never knew that feature existed," Dmitry said.

"You didn't?" Grapevine asked. "I thought you were our designated computer guy. How do I know more about this than you?"

"How did you find out about this?" he asked.

"I got one of those pings every time I decided to go out and get a midnight snack," Grapevine replied, showing us the quest tab on her pipbuck. It was full of completed 'Acquire Sustenance' "quests."

"I'm pretty sure that's not how these are supposed to work," I said. "Otherwise, our pipbucks would be full of midnight snack related 'quests.' Maybe yours just has a glitch?"

We approached the stadium and, seeing that there were no gates along the side of the fence that faced the freeway, we went around the side to come in through the main entrance. A chain link fence surrounded the parking lot, and surprisingly we found the gate was unopened. Inside, there were several trucks and vans parked in lines. Some of them belonged to the Ministry of Peace while others belonged to the army. There were also several tents set up, in varying arrays of repair. Notably, most of these tents were MoP tents, while spaces that likely would have housed army tents had been abandoned and left large stains on the ground.

"Keep your guard up," I said. "This looks like a raider feast."

We cautiously advanced along the stadium's walls until we reached its main entrance. Curiously, although the parking lot was unlocked, the stadium's gates had been locked pretty tight with multiple locks and reinforced with chains.

"Ooh boy, this looks tricky," said Dmitry. He set to work on the locks while I kept watch for intruders and Grapevine just stared into space. For five minutes, nothing happened, but once Dmitry was working on the last lock, a loud groaning sound emerged from behind the vehicles. A zombie emerged, appearing every bit as tattered and grotesque as the ones we saw at the airport. Its leg looked like it had been half gnawed off by an animal or a cannibal, so it could only move in a slow shuffle. I wondered if it was still capable of feeling pain to some degree, because its leg looked unbearable. I'd certainly be groaning loudly if I had to walk on that, even if I was as brain dead as it was. Still, the sight was incredibly unnerving and I didn't want any of my legs to end up like that, so I pointed my pistol at it, aimed for the head in SATS, and fired.

My shot lodged deep into its skull, but it simply stumbled backward for a few seconds, then regained its bearings (what little it had) and began shuffling forward again. I shot it a second time, then a third while it was stunned. The damage of the third was enough that it fell to the ground and couldn't get back up, no matter how hard it tried. Still, I didn't want to take any chances, so I walked over and shot it two more times in the torso at point blank range. These last two did the trick and it stopped moving altogether.

However, we were soon greeted by several more noises, all groaning in unison. I looked around and saw more zombies coming out from behind the tents and trucks. It wasn’t a huge horde like you see in the movies, maybe around thirty of them in total, but it was enough to overpower us, especially when one of us was trying to pick a lock and another needed to reload her gun.

To make things worse, a thundercrack roared throughout the sky and little drops of rain started falling. Very tiny droplets, but unlike typical rain each droplet had a faint green glow to it.

“Um, guys, a little help here,” I called out. They both stopped what they were doing and looked out at the approaching horde. Grapevine drew her weapons, while Dmitry just cursed under his breath and tried to work faster. He had only one lock to go.

When the horde got close enough, I threw a Moltotov and it just barely missed, but luckily there was an oil spill on the ground that brought the flames over to the zombies. However, even though the zombies’ bodies were consumed by the flames, being on fire didn’t faze them one bit.

“Grapevine, throw some frag grenades!” I said.

“Can’t,” she replied. “Sold all of mine to pay for your medical bills.”

“Damnit,” I said under my breath. “Those would have actually been effective!”

“Whatdidja say?” Grapevine asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just keep shooting!”

But the horde kept coming closer and closer, forcing us into the shade under the roof in front of the stadium's main gate. It seemed like we were going to be overrun, when suddenly a small, fast-moving object about the size of an orange but with a white texture smacked one of the zombies on the side of the head. It stumbled backward a few steps, then stood up and looked upward toward the source. Another such object fell and grazed its face. Then a third fell and smacked it in the gut, causing the zombie to collapse.

Once I realized that these projectiles weren't going to harm me, I resumed shooting, first targeting the fallen zombie to ensure it wouldn't get back up, then I moved onto the next closest one. I soon found that the fastest way to take them out was to target ones that had just been hit on the head with the mysterious projectiles to incapacitate them before moving onto the next one. I could save bullets by simply getting them onto the ground, then stabbing them dead with a knife after the fight, which I ended up doing.

Once none of the corpses were moving anymore, I checked the Pip buck's targeting function to confirm they were all dead, shown by an absence of red bars on the screen.

"What were those things?" I asked Grapevine. "They looked like albino oranges."

She laughed, then picked one up from the ground to examine it.

"I wish. They're actually baseballs."

"Can baseballs even fly that fast?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "We'd need a speedometer to confirm that, but I have a hunch that those flew 20% faster than normal baseballs."

"Maybe there's a machine?" I asked.

"Nah," Grapevine said. "Most of those were curve balls. That's gotta be a pretty advanced design if a machine can do that."

Suddenly, five more balls fell from the sky in rapid succession.

"Curveball, slider, slurve, knuckle-curve, and screwball," Grapevine said. "Probably not a machine. Those all require wrist movements to throw."

"Definitely not a machine," said Dmitry. "They all fell just when you were talking about pitching... by the way, I finally opened the gate."

Just as he said 'gate,' I saw the weirdest baseball pitch I've ever seen in my life: one that not only curved 90 degrees just before hitting the ground, but landed right on the gate, pushing it open. All of us stood there for a moment in shock, and not a sound could be heard except for the creaking of the gate’s unoiled hinges as it opened.

Finally, Grapevine broke the silence.

“Alright, let’s see just who’s behind this,” she said.

We walked out from under the awning and looked up, but aside from a house suspended by a million balloons floating over the stadium, we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nopony was there, but one of the doors on the house was wide open.

We entered the stadium but we didn't find anypony. Or, really anything, for that matter. It just looked like an ordinary stadium, save for the giant shadow over hanging directly over the diamond... and only over the diamond... except not quite. It was definitely centered on the pitcher's mound, but the corners of the house seemed to be slightly off from the bases... or maybe I'm just seeing things.

Also of note was the giant anchor resting on home plate. A long rope stretched from the top of the anchor all the way up to the floating house.

I descended the stairs on the lower set of bleachers to get a closer look. However, as soon as I reached the bottom and rested my hooves on the railing, the faint sound of a music box began to play over the speakers. Then a loud 'boing!' sound came from the floating house. I looked up and saw a familiar magenta pony in the center of a cloud of dissipating smoke and glitter. She was still wearing a baseball uniform, but this time it was for the local team. As soon as the smoke cleared, she leaped off the house's porch, then latched her hooves onto the rope and gracefully slid down the rope until her hooves touched the anchor. She then leaped off of it and landed, gracefully, on her hind legs. As soon as she touched the ground, an explosion went off in the distance, and she began to bow to a nonexistent crowd as canned applause played over the speakers.

"Just what is going on over there?" I muttered under my breath as I stormed off to the side in search of a staircase down to the field.

As I approached home plate with my companions in tow, I found her giving an interview, or being interviewed by, a broomstick.

“Imagine: a perfect, cloudless day. The sun is warm and welcoming. And on the horizon, they appear... like knights of yore, armed with bats of ash… and hickory. Their name: the crapital cuckolds. Their purpose: to make you, dear Equestria, revel in the joys of sport and sunshine, if only for an afternoon. Now, ask yourself--”

"O hai, Mark," she said, finally noticing me once I was nearly within striking distance.

"I don't know just what you think you're doing,..." I began.

"Oh, I do everything," she interrupted.

"...But I came here to--" I continued.

"--Thank you for saving our lives!" Grapevine exclaimed, before proceeding to engulf the purple pony with a bear hug.

“No problem!” the magenta pony exclaimed. “It’s just another day’s work for the greatest pitcher in the world!”

"Those were some great pitches you threw!" said Grapevine. "They should call you screwball."

"They do-- err, they did," the magenta pony said, correcting herself. "Back in high school... which I never went to..."

For a second, I thought I saw her uniform's logo morph into that of a high school-- my high school, before changing back to the local Minor League baseball team.

"...The classes, I mean. Yes, I skipped classes. Doesn't every pony? So boring! Now who wants lunch?"

Now, I swear to God, this is exactly what I saw happen next: First, spaghetti began to drip out of her pockets. Then she stretched her fore hooves four or five hooves long like elastic and grabbed a pristine dining table seemingly out of nowhere, complete with a tablecloth, plates, glasses, silverware, a candle, and even a salt and pepper shaker. Then she reached over and grabbed four chairs for every pony, as well as a phonograph playing Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons.' The spaghetti fell square onto each plate into a perfect little pile, and came with sauce, meatballs, and a little bit of parsley garnish mixed in.

Our 'chef' sat down and enjoined us to dine.

"Come on, let's eat!"

Day and I reluctantly sat down at the table and inspected the food while Grapevine started eating it right off the plate. It looked and smelled like freshly cooked spaghetti made in the conventional way, but I remained skeptical.

"What's wrong?" our ‘chef’ asked, having swapped her baseball cap out for a chef's hat and donned an apron while I was paying attention to the 'food.' "Try it, it's good!"

"I still can't get over the fact that this came from your pocket," I said.

"So?" our ‘chef’ asked with a raised eyebrow. "Doesn't matter where it came from. Food is food."

"It came from your freaking pocket!" I restated.

"Sure, it's not somewhere you would expect, but you'd be surprised at just how good pockets are at cooking food. They're obviously very warm, but they also provide the perfect amount of pressure to simulate a conventional oven. Plus they save a lot on your electric bill. And who cares where the food comes from, right? As long as it's good, then it's edible. And your friend over there seems to be enjoying it quite a bit."

She pointed to Grapevine, who has finished scarfing down all the food on her plate and was now disappointed there wasn't any left. Her sadness was soon placated by our chef procuring another plate and swapping it out for the old one. She then took the old plate and flung it into the air behind her like a Frisbee.

“Did she really enjoy it that much, or--?” asked Dmitry.

“She always eats like that,” I replied.

Since I hadn’t seen where this newest plate of spaghetti had come from, I decided to pretend that it, and the rest of the food, had come from a completely normal and not-at-all-unusual kitchen. I twirled some of the noodles around my fork and bit in. Surprisingly, it all tasted exactly like it would if I had made it with my (very) limited cooking skills out of store bought ingredients. Well, everything except the breadsticks. Those were restaurant quality.

“Where’d you find all these ingredients?” I asked. “And why’d you anesthetize me back at that flower shop?”

“Oh, you know, I do a lot of traveling,” the chef-pitcher said. “And in that traveling, I’m mostly just looking for parts to add to my airship. But every now and then, when you’re scavenging, you make a really great find such as durum wheat or ripe tomatoes that make you say, ‘wow, this would make a really good meal!’ So you just take it, you know?”

“An airship?” asked Dmitry. “So that’s what this is?”

He gestured towards the floating house.

“Pretty much, yeah,” said the pitcher-chef. “I prefer to travel the wasteland in style. You’ll never get harassed by bandits in the air. As for the second question, why’d I anesi-- anesti-- an-es-th-eh-what?”

"Anesthetize," I corrected. "It means ‘to administer an anesthetic.’"

"A what?" she asked.

"You put me to sleep!" I replied.

"Oh, /that/," she said. "Well, I was just trying to broaden your horizons. You struck me as the kind of pony who really needs to get out more."

"I've spent most of the past two weeks on the road," I said. "I'm also more or less homeless."

"By 'get out,' I meant 'lighten up,'" she said curtly. "You're a very dour pony who only looks at things from a single point of view."

"I'm rational," I retorted. "I view things in the way that makes the most sense. But what does this have to do with--"

"Oh, but for all your rationality, you still find things that utterly confuse you," she replied. "Sometimes you need to drop the rational angle and see things irrationally. That's what I was trying to do there: to teach you. And I may have ground up some hallucinogenic mushrooms and disseminated them through the air as a fine mist, buuuuut--"

"You made her ingest magic mushrooms?!?" Dmitry exclaimed.

"I dunno. The dealer didn't call them 'magic mushrooms', she just called them 'shrooms,'" she said. "But there's nothing wrong with that, because one, they aren't illegal anymore owing to the fact that every drug law was repealed eleven months ago, and two, it was for an educational purpose!"

Dmitry held his hooves up in confusion.

"What kind of 'education' involves hallucinogens?"

"Dude, you'd be surprised what kinds of stuff they get up to in universities these days," our pitcher-chef-pharmacist said. "On some campuses, getting stoned is no longer just an extracurricular."

"Can confirm!" Grapevine exclaimed.

"Well, they do research at universities," Dmitry replied.

"Precisely! I do research too," said our pitcher-chef-pharmacist-researcher. "And what I did to Silver here was just one of my many projects."

"Yeah, a 'research project' with a sample size of one," I replied. "And there wasn't even a consent form or anything!"

"Consent is a spook," the magenta one said, waving her hoof dismissively. “A fiction. A social construct. All that really matters is the ability to impose one’s will on--”

"Alright, that's it! I’ve had enough of this,” Dmitry shouted as he got out of his seat and began storming out. “We should leave this mad hatter to her tea party before anything bad happens. She’s probably drugged all the food with who knows what."

I got up and followed him, but Grapevine stayed in her seat.

"Awwww, but I wasn't done yet!" Grapevine whined.

"Come on!" Dmitry said. “Or else we’re leaving without you!”

Faced with the choice between her friends and more pocket-spaghetti, the choice was clear: Grapevine reluctantly got up and followed us.

The magenta pitcher-chef-pharmacist-researcher-egoist was indignant.

“Fine! Be that way, party poopers!” she cried. “Now I have to cover the whole bill myself. Well, if you end up going into the city, and I mean into the city, not just taking the highway through it, just be really careful, especially if you go downtown. And STAY AWAY from the Capital Mall, you hear me? Just-- don’t. It’s a really dangerous place, full of zombies and mutants and stuff. FULL of them, okay? Like, really, really dangerous. Well, not for me, but for a couple of SQUARES like you, it’s really deadly. Okay?”

By this point, we had climbed up the stairs, through the bleachers, and were now about to leave the stadium through the front gate.

“We heard you,” I called back. “‘Stay away from the Capital Mall,’ okay, bye.”

"Whatever you do, just STAY AWAY from the Capital Mall!"

Upon leaving the stadium, we decided (by a ⅔ majority) that from now on we will avoid this crazy pony, but agreed to take her parting words of advice. We continued our journey south... or rather, resolved to after we attempted to loot the mall next to the stadium, but we found that nearly everything of value had already been looted. Then we proceeded south, after resolving a disagreement on which road to take.

"Hey, that sign says 'Capitol Parkway,'" Grapevine said. "I wanna go on the parkway, it sounds fun."

"A parkway is just a type of road," I said. "It's not actually a park."

"She's right," Dmitry said. "It's just a fancy type of road and it wont' get us to where we're trying to go. We need to stay on the freeway if we're going to get to that hotel in time."

"It's kind of a park," Grapevine replied. "They're usually lined with trees."

"Yeah, lifeless, dead trees," said Dmitry, rolling his eyes. "So pretty."

"I'm gonna have to side with Grapevine on this one," I said. "It says this is a business route, so we're likely to find more supplies over there. I'm sure we can still make it to the hotel in time. After all, both roads head south."

"Alright, fine," Dmitry said. "I'm outnumbered. I suppose we can take the parkway."

We traveled down the parkway, only to find there were fewer stores than I expected, and most of these were just car dealerships. Still, you can be pleasantly surprised at just what you can find in certain places, and we were able to find quite a bit of ammo.

After a while we reached the end of the parkway, which deposited us in the middle of a city, where we got lost. We traveled in a general southbound direction for several blocks. The city was completely abandoned save for the occasional zombie or two, but their incessant moaning made their presence known well in advance and they traveled in small enough numbers that we could easily defeat them. What's more is that some of them carried ammo, refunding the bullets we expended to kill them, but most carried supplies. For us, these tended to be facts, medicine, and even clothing. Their clothing tended to be much nicer than the clothing of the zombies we saw at the airport. It was just as worn and dirty, but the choice of clothing implied that these ponies had become zombies either during or right after the Great War.

Eventually we reached an area where towering buildings of stone and brick rose four or five stories into the sky. We were clearly in the downtown, and after spending so long running around the countryside, it made me feel small.

We stumbled across a park consisting of a large open field with very large trees scattered throughout it and forming a thick wall along its edges. I imagine it would have made a calm, quiet place to escape from the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city had the trees still had leaves and the grass been mowed recently. Instead, the barren branches of the trees did little to hide the city and made the place look more like a cage. The long brown grass of the park's fields furthered this image and appeared more like bedding. Then, as if the appearance wasn't revolting enough, came the smell.

"Eww, that awful smell!" I exclaimed. "What in Equestrian is that?"

"Witchweed," Dmitry said. "A powerful, dangerous, addictive drug. Stay away."

"It actually ain't that bad," Grapevine replied. "Smells kinda pleasant if you get used to it. It ain't addictive and it's great for relieving stress. Y'all should try it sometime."

He just glared at her. I rolled my eyes, since I'd heard both arguments a hundred times.

"I know what it is," I said. "There isn't a single teenager who doesn't. I just want to know why the hell we can smell it from here!"

"Somepony's been smoking it recently," Dmitry said. "Somepony we shouldn't associate with. Come on."

"Witchweed smokers are some of the nicest ponies I've ever met," Grapevine protested. "Especially when they're smoking. Maybe they can point us to where we should scavenge, or at least where we shouldn't."

She began walking into the park. As repulsed as I was by druggies, I decided I'd go along hear what they had to say (and so we'd still have the information in case Grapevine forgot it again). Then I stepped on a round, circular object under my fore hoof. Fearing it might be a mine, I reeled back in terror, then noticed that the object was simply an empty syringe... one of many which had been strewn across the field.

“Grapevine, come back! They’re doing hard drugs!” I cried, but she didn’t listen. She kept going until she was halfway across the field. Suddenly, the eerie silence which hung over the city was interrupted by a chorus of hoarse groans. They came from the other side of the park, where one of the streets ascended into an overpass, creating a large covered area where you might expect to find a congregation of drug-addicted hobos. The groans of a drug-addicted hobo and a zombie are virtually indistinguishable, but hobos don’t usually groan in a chorus. Nor do they emerge from their dens in a mass.

At the sight of the wall of equids that emerged from under the bridge, Grapevine stopped, stared in horror, then ran back to us. Then they started to run after her. Then Dmitry and I started running too.

We ran a block down, but the zombies were much faster than we anticipated. They moved in a peculiar way, alternating between lethargic shuffling and rapid sprints at a speed I thought was only possible to obtain with military-grade experimental steroids. However, their sprints were fairly easy to counter simply by side-stepping or running in a zig-zag pattern, since they would continue running in the direction you were in and wouldn't correct their course mid-sprint (probably because they lacked functioning brains). Sometimes this would result in them hilariously crashing into walls and hitting their heads, or into fire hydrants and hitting their... other heads.

But after just a block of running like this we were starting to tire out, and there were too many zombies for us to disable. We had to find cover before they could mob us, and fast.

"Over here!" Grapevine exclaimed, heading towards a parking garage. Dmitry and I hesitated.

"Seriously?" I asked. "More exploding cars?"

"What choice do we have?" Dmitry asked. "There's nowhere else can take cover in time."

"We'll lure them into a trap!" Grapevine replied. "Fewer cars on the roof, we'll be safe up there!"

"Or in a stairwell," Dmitry said. "That would be safer."

The argument was compelling, so Dmitry and I followed.

We ran into the garage and up the ramp to the second floor. But when we got to the top, we were greeted by another group of zombies to the left hoof side. We veered right, ran around the side of the ramp to the other side, but came across another group of zombies.

"We're trapped!" I said.

"Head for the stairs!" Dmitry replied.

We veered left and headed towards the stairwell in the corner of the structure, but then more zombies emerged from there.

"The other stairwell?" Dmitry suggested.

We turned left again and began running towards the stairwell in the other corner, but the first group of zombies had advanced and now blocked our access.

"Wait, I saw another stairwell in the middle!" I said.

We turned around and dashed into this stairwell, which fortunately did not have zombies in it... yet. I spotted a pair of glass doors leading into a sky bridge leading into the next block. I pulled on the door handle, and to my surprise it actually opened.

"Quick, in here!" I said.

My companions ran inside, and I bolted the door by sticking a hunting rifle through its handles.

"That door's made of glass," Dmitry said. "It won't hold long."

“Get over there,” Grapevine said, pointing to the pair of glass doors on the other end of the bridge. “I’ll plant some mines.”

We got over there, but to our dismay the door was locked.

“Wait, I’ve gotta pick it,” Dmitry said, studying the lock and reaching for his equipment.

“There’s not enough time!” Grapevine exclaimed, as the zombies began to bang on the glass.

“It’s bolted shut!” I said, spotting a piece of wood between the handles on the other side. “We’ve gotta break in!”

Dmitry stopped what he was doing and looked up, then promptly put his stuff away, procured his assault rifle, and stood on his hind legs.

“Stand back!” he said, then raised the gun and struck the panes with its butt. It didn’t break.

“Let me help,” I said.

“No, let me--” he said, but I whipped my gun out and stood on my hind legs, then tried to break the glass. I couldn’t break it either, but with the two of us working together, we were eventually able to break the glass…

...with a small hole. A measly hoof-sized hole. Not enough to fit a whole body through. Dmitry prepared to lay another blow, but I got an idea.

“Stop!” I shouted, then I tried removing the board telekinetically. It was wedged pretty tightly in there, but I was able to muster enough force to pop it right out.

Dmitry pushed the door but it didn’t open. Then he pulled it and it did.

“It’s open,” he called to Grapevine. We went on through, then Grapevine followed and re-bolted it with the board.

“How’d ya get it unbolted?” Grapevine asked.

“Telekinesis,” I replied.

“Why didn’t ya do that before?” she asked.

“Telekinesis can’t go through solid objects,” I said. “We needed a hole to break through.”

“Oh,” Grapevine said, looking dumbfounded.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Dmitry said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Can Changelings even do telekinesis?” Grapevine asked.

Dmitry raised his eyebrow. His horn had been continuously glowing to hold the assault rifle after he stopped using his hooves to bang it against the glass. To make it clear enough that even Grapevine could notice, he moved the rifle in front of him, pointed it at her, and cocked it.

“Okay, okay, point taken,” Grapevine said. “Sheesh.”

Just then, the faint sound of broken glass rang throughout the building. On the bridge, the zombies had stopped tapping against the glass and were now banging against it, even rearing up on their hind legs like feral cats trying to claw their way out of a cardboard box. They had broken a hole large enough to stick a forehoof in and move it around, and they probably could have dislodged the rifle bolting the door. In fact, one unicorn zombie tried just that telekinetically, but it couldn’t focus and instead made little sparks appear everywhere in front of it, like it was blind and trying to feel its way around the room.

“They’re getting closer,” I said. “Let’s move away so we won’t get hit when they finally break through.”

“Lemme lay a couple mines near the door first,” Grapevine said. “I’m not sure our initial trap will be enough.”

We wandered through the large building we had found ourselves in. There weren’t any windows inside so it was too dark to see without the flashlight feature of a pipbuck. But later on, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, it became clear that we were inside a department store. At first I worried that we might have to deal with more zombies, or perhaps a rodent infestation, but no, it was simply just a store that looked really creepy because it was dark and had been abandoned for quite some time. Several objects were out of place and it looked like somepony had attempted to raid it, but very little of the merchandise had removed from the store. As it turns out, designer clothing really isn’t worth much in a town full of zombies.

The only really important thing we found in this store was that the entrances to the street on the lower level had been deliberately boarded up, but not the entrances leading into a room that was well-lit and had a different set of tiling.

We entered this area and found it was an actually an atrium. The ceiling contained skylights which brought in what seemed like a plethora of light to our darkness-adjusted eyes, and the room seemed even lighter with the beige wall paint and faux marble tiling on the floor. On the walls around us were several storefronts, and I realized that we were now inside a mall.

“Didn’t that purple filly tell us not to go inside any malls?” Dmitry asked.

“Only the ‘Capital Mall,’ Grapevine said. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

“This is the capital city,” I said. “And this is a mall. Put two and two together.”

“Okay, it’s a mall, and it’s in the capital city,” admitted Grapevine, “But that doesn’t mean it’s the ‘Capital Mall’ she was warning us about. It could be called something else.”

“Capital cities name everything after the capital,” I said. “It’s always capital this, capital that. Why wouldn’t they name this mall after the capital?”

“Plus, we’re in the downtown,” said Dmitry. “The Capitol isn’t very far away.”

“Well, okay, maybe it is the ‘Capital Mall,” Grapevine admitted. “But what if she’s wrong? What if she just said that to scare us? We’re inside this mall, which may or may not be the ‘Capital Mall,’ and we haven’t found anything yet.”

“Keep looking,” said Dmitry. “It seems calm, but there might be something lurking around, especially in all this darkness.”

“Like what? Like a changeling?” Grapevine asked. “They’re so dark you can hardly see ‘em in the shadows.”

A flash of green light shined through the skylight, followed by rolling thunder.

“Changelings can be very dangerous,” said Dmitry, feigning calmness. “Especially when they’re mad. Don’t piss off a changeling.”

“And what exactly would a changeling do, impersonate me?” Grapevine taunted. “Ooh, big fucking deal.”

Drops of rain began to tap against the skylight.

“Are you seriously implying that’s all we can do?” Dmitry asked.

“Pretty much,” Grapevine said. “What else can you do? What else have you guys done?”

He brought the assault rifle back in front of him and pointed it at her face.

“We built this,” Dmitry said. “And we can use it, too.”

“Guys, I don’t know what the heck you’re arguing about, but can you please stop it?” I said angrily. “Whatever it is, I can assure you it isn’t nearly as important as you think it is. Why don’t you make yourselves useful and help me scavenge through this place? We’ll be here a while. Grapevine, you take the downstairs, Dmitry take the upstairs, and I’ll… well… I’ll go check out the next building.”

They did as I told them, which I figured would keep them separated and occupied for at least thirty minutes while I scouted out the rest of the mall. According to the directory, there were four buildings connected by sky bridges on the second floor. Scavenging it all would give us plenty to do while we waited out the rain, but I hoped it would end before sundown because I didn't want to spend the night in such a large, empty, eerie building. It just didn't feel safe.

As I Wandered through the mall, I found it was mostly just a repeat of the department store: most of the wares had already been sifted through but ultimately discarded, and virtually everything of value had been taken long ago. I was ironically able to find a few things of value, such as bottle caps, an unopened Sparkle Cola, and a few perfectly good rounds of ammunition in some trash cans. I considered looking through all the trash cans in search of more treasures, but I remembered that some of them still held the rotting remains of food waste in them.

New policy: only loot trash cans without food waste. As desperate as I may get, plunging my hooves inside a can with rotting food will never be worth it.

When I came back to the first building, I didn't see Dmitry anywhere. I wondered if he had wandered off into one of the other buildings without me noticing, but I didn't attempt to find him. I felt thirsty, so I decided to go check out the food court and see if there were any water bottles left to scavenge. Just before I entered the court, I spotted a vending machine selling acne medication. Recalling the numerous breakouts of my early adolescence, I figured I'd get some. At this point I realized that really could have used Dmitry's help, but I decided to try my own hoof at lockpicking for once so I could hone my skills and not have to rely on him all the time.

After about five broken bobby pins (which I didn't mind because there were plenty of those here in the mall), I managed to crack open the lock and open the door. It's been so long since I've really had much time to look in the mirror so I don't know if there's any acne on my face right now. Since nopony's ever run away screaming yet, I guess that's a good sign. I reached in and removed a single three-step kit, just in case I ever needed to impress somepony.

“Hey smoothskin,” said a gravelly voice.

I was startled and turned around. I didn’t see anypony around except for a dark figure peering out from behind one of the darkened storefronts.

“What? My name’s not ‘Smoothskin.’ Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“Yes, you,” the voice said. Under its breath, it softly muttered, “You smoothskins are all the same.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your compliment, but--”

“It’s not a compliment,” the voice said. “It’s supposed to be an insult.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound very insulting to me,” I said.

The figure emerged from the shadows. It was a zombie.

“Eek! A zombie!” I screamed, and shot it in the face.

“All the same,” the voice whispered. But as the voice spoke, the zombie’s mouth appeared to be moving in tandem with the voice.

Did that zombie just speak?

Before I could think about it more, several more zombies emerged from behind the restaurant counters at the food court all groaning their zombie-hobo-druggie groans and I had to run.

Somehow, somehow I was able to kill them all, but only after fleeing into another building, missing half my shots, running out of ammo for the assault rifle and breaking the 10mm pistol, and throwing bedsheets at them. At one point I had to resort to fending them off with coat hangers because I didn’t have time to fish a knife or a crowbar out of my bags. I would give you a better description of what happened if I was able to remember more than a few details. It all happened so fast and in a dark room that you couldn’t really tell what was happening.

What is certain, however, is that I found myself utterly exhausted and a bit angry that my friends didn't come to help. Come to think of it, i hadn't seen either of them in a while, ever since I had told them to split up. I wandered around the mall for a while looking for them, found nothing, and came back. Still no sign of either of them.

Then I heard a loud clanging noise from below, as if some pony was dragging several chains across the floor. I peered into the darkened chasm that was the first floor. I realized I had forgotten this part of the building even existed, so I brought out my .32 pistol, one of the only working weapons I still had ammo for, and descended the escalator into the abyss below. To my pleasant surprise, some pony had, fairly recently, moved one of the potted plants scattered throughout the store up to be just a few hooves in front of the bottom of the escalator and started a fire inside it, providing some illumination to the surrounding area. The plant was obviously made of plastic because it failed to catch fire, though it was starting to bend a little as the plastic slowly melted from the heat. I looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary, except for a large number of twisted and broken bobby pins scattered across the floor.

There was also a faint clicking noise. I checked the Geiger counter on my pip buck, but it showed no signs of radiation nearby. Then the clicking stopped and Day emerged from one of the shops.

"Where were you?" I asked. "And why didn't you help me with those zombies just now?"

"Sorry I couldn't help you," he said. "We had some zombies of our own to deal with. We also had to break into this."

As he gestured to the store, Grapevine came out and dumped several boxes of ammunition at my hooves.

"It's a genu-wine motherlode," Grapevine said. "I couldn't break in myself, so we've been working together."

I realized they had just broken into a gun store. Together. I smiled at that.

"Good," I said. "I think the rain just let up. Let's finish up here and get going. I'd rather not spend the night."

We left the mall fully stocked with ammo and weapons in working condition. In addition to replenishing our original arsenal, we took extra guns and ammo that we could either salvage for parts or barter for supplies if needed.

To find an exit that wasn't boarded up, we had to spend a while searching, but eventually we found a backdoor that we could simply unlock. As we emerged into the gloomy city, everything seemed shrouded in bright light, although nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

We only traveled one block, passing a large bus station on the way. The block immediately after the bus station contained a large, white, rectangular building surrounded by trees and lawns. The structure itself seemed very imposing, and rose from the ground in three stages: first a broad two story base with wings, then a third story excluding the wings, then finally a tower at its center adding three more stories. All throughout, the building’s windows were large, darkened panes of uniform size arranged in rows. The window frames looked more like bars on a jail cell than anything else. Each floor was separated by pilasters that divided the floors into sections. All of these pilasters taken together looked like a giant cage surrounding the building. The structure itself obviously wasn't a prison because it lacked any exterior walls and appeared to be open to the public, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with law enforcement. A police station, perhaps?

In front of the building stood five or so ponies in thick metal suits of armor surrounding three ponies in clean business suits. One of these armored ponies spotted us, then said something to another armored pony and pointed at us. They both stared at us, but since their faces were obscured by their helmets, I couldn’t tell what they were feeling. Given the circumstances, they probably regarded us with suspicion.

I looked up to the building again, this time to observe a curious statue on its roof. It was grey, in contrast to the white building, and it stood on the edge of the roof of the tower, looking out upon the world with a cautious gaze coming from its amber eyes. The creature itself resembled a gargoyle, but was instead a canine and lacked wings. For some reason the sculptor had decided to give it a brown robe, likely made of bronze. It would have actually been impressive if there had been a park across the street, but instead there were just some office buildings and a small parking lot between them.

Then the ‘statue’ leaped from the building into the air, landed on the branch of one of the trees in front of the building, then leaped from the branch and landed on top of a bush, virtually destroying it in the process under its weight. It then began to dash towards us at an impossible speed, snatching one of the unarmored ponies, an apple-green earth pony with a bronze balance for a cutie mark, as it went.

As it came towards us, I nearly panicked, but managed to pull out my hunting rifle and fire off a few rounds in SATS, carefully aiming my shots at its legs to both slow it down and to avoid friendly fire against its captive. All four of my shots hit squarely in the calf with one even blowing through to the other end, but the beast remained unfazed.

The beast ran straight in our direction as if it wanted to ram us. We only scattered just in time to avoid being pummeled. It was such a close call that I could hear and feel the ‘whoosh’ of cold air as the beast passed me. After it passed, the armored ponies opened fire with the miniguns built into their armor, sending a hail of bullets after it. Most of these missed, but the beast was still hit with at least two dozen. Only about six or seven punctured its skin while the rest just appeared to have bounced off.

The beast tried to run into a coffee shop across the street from the bus station, but one of the armored ponies launched some missiles at the building making the roof fall down. The beast was perturbed, but simply turned on a dime and went the opposite way towards the terminal of the bus station, a rectangular brick building with a recessed entrance and four floors of office space above. The armored ponies shot some more missiles turning the building’s second floor into rubble to block the entrance. This time, the beast skidded to a near halt, but then began running to the left towards the corner of the building, presumably to take cover behind it.

Completely forgetting the beast had a hostage, I used the fifth and final shot of my hunting rifle against the rear of a bus parked on the edge of the bus lot and very close to the corner. When the beast got close to the bus, it tried to stop again, apparently recognizing the smoking engine as a threat, but stepped into a puddle of oil and couldn’t change its direction.

Then the bus exploded, setting off a chain reaction of exploding busses. Each explosion created a large cloud of dust which obscured the scene. After all the busses in the lot had exploded, enough of the terminal’s ground floor had been taken out that the entire building fell on its side, burying the remains of the transit mall in a heap of bricks and kicking up an even larger cloud of dust that obscured everything. As the dust began to settle, a silhouette reached its forelegs out of the rubble, thrust the rubble on top of it away, and then climbed out. It looked in our direction for a second, then with its hostage in tow, it scampered off into the dust. When the dust finally cleared, the beast was nowhere to be found.

"Well, at least you tried," said a tinny, muffled stallion's voice behind me. I turned around and saw it was one of the ponies in power armor.

"Yeah, we tried," I said. "Are you going to go after it?"

"Nah," he said. "He's too fast and agile. But we know where he lives. If we had more ponies, we might be able to take him down."

"We can help," I offered.

"No, he meant more Steel Rangers," said one of the other armored ponies, a mare who was noticeably smaller. "We're tied down protecting settlements and doing all these escort missions."

My eyes widened.

"Did you say 'Steel Rangers?'"

"The one and only," the stallion said. "Who else has power armor like this?"

No pony did. Only this elite branch of the military had such armor. The thought of some part of the military not only surviving but actually protecting civilians, especially in large numbers, filled my heart with joy.

"Do you really need Steel Rangers to protect settlements?" I asked. "There aren't any Steel Rangers up north, yet the survivors are doing just fine."

"No we don't," the stallion Ranger replied. "CPG and civilian police work just fine. The main problem is we're spread thin, and our commanders are hesitant about resorting to militias or mercenaries. They think it sends a bad message."

"You should have some sort of reserve so you can deal with things like this," I said.

"I agree, but we don't make the decisions," the stallion said. "Our commanders make the decisions and we just carry out their orders."

"If you really want to, you might be able to help," the mare Ranger said. “Go talk to our CO's yourself. Given the circumstances, they might consider hiring mercenaries to deal with this problem."

“That was Habeas Corpus, the Chief Justice” said one of the non-armored civilians. “Mention that and they’ll have to say yes.”

“Chief Justice?” Grapevine asked. “I could have sworn my last ballot said she was on the Court of Appeals.”

“She was,” the civilian replied. “But in light of the circumstances, she’s been promoted to Chief Justice of the provincial Supreme Court, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge of three dozen Circuits, President of the Cascadia Bar Association, and acting Mareion County District Attorney. There is one other judge who’s more experienced, but since most of his experience is on the Tax Court, the Governor thinks it doesn’t count.”

“They should have just gone with the Tax Court guy,” said Grapevine. “If he’s the guy I’m thinking of. That guy can survive anything!”

“Bullet Dodger?” asked Dmitry. “Yeah, he’s survived a dozen assassination attempts, at least. He’s immortal. You’d never have to worry about him.”

“Those were all by the same pony though, said Grapevine. “Some crazy grudge from a bitch who thought she could avoid payin’ taxes by pointin’ out what she thought was a spellin’ error ‘cause she thought ‘employment’ was spelled with an I, insisted the course go to court, then became ass-devastated when the judge just took out a dictionary an’ corrected her.”

“Boy, you seem to know a lot about this case,” said Dmitry. “Did you have any connection with this so-called ‘bitch?’”

“Oh, I might have sold her some RDX at some point, but I thought she was just a fellow exploding toilet enthusiast.”

“A what?” asked Dmitry.

“Why ‘Bullet,’ though? I thought ‘Bullet’ was a girl’s name. Hey Silver, is Bull--”

“As far as I know, it’s unisex,” I replied. “But none of that really matters. Why do they bother keeping any judges around? This place will probably be under martial law forever, Just look at it!”

They looked at it, and simply shrugged.

"Honestly, it doesn't look all that different from before the war," said Grapevine. "Just... quieter."

I face hoofed.

"Well, look at it when we get back to a business district," I said.

"She's right," Dmitry said. "It does seem kind of pointless. It seems like summary executions are the norm these days, but who knows? Maybe the Steel Rangers are a strong enough deterrent to prevent total bloodshed. Speaking of Steel Rangers, can either of you make heads or tails of their directions? Are we on the right street?"

We were walking up a street in a neighborhood full of quaint, old-time cottages nestled between large deciduous trees with the occasional conifer, which still retained its leaves. Even with most of the plants being dead or overgrown, the neighborhood still had a certain charm to it. The ponies who owned them must have been very old (or had government jobs) because they seemed to have way too much time on their hooves for gardening. The roads in this street seemed very narrow by modern standards as they had been built in an era before the proliferation of automobile transit. The entire neighborhood also seemed to be somewhat tilted as there was a visible upward incline as one traveled westward.

"I'm pretty sure this is the right street," I said. "They told us to turn at that landmark, so we're on the right path."

"None of these look like mansions though," said Grapevine.

"They said it was kind of hidden," said Dmitry. "We need to look carefully and not miss anything."

"Why would the Governor's Mansion be hidden away?" I said under my breath. "Are they trying to hide something?"

"What did you say?" Grapevine asked.

"I said, 'that one over there kind of looks like a mansion,'" I replied.

Indeed it did. On the left side of the road, we saw a large house which strongly resembled a medieval-era country manor for the nobility, partially tucked away behind a clump of trees and bushes. It also had a very nice lawn and the property was surrounded by a low hedge.

"It might be," said Dmitry, "Although I think the Governor's Mansion would have better security..."

"No, this is a mansion!" Grapevine exclaimed. She raced over to the next block and stood in front of a large Colonial style red brick mansion, complete with a portico outside the front door supported by four long, thin columns, a driveway shaped in a semicircle that started and ended at the street and rounded its way up to the front door. Between the driveway and the street was a large lawn.

“No, it’s gotta be more discreet than that,” said Dmitry. “That mansion is an invitation to every robber around here to ransack it.”

“Not if it has a good security system,” said Grapevine. “Appearances can be highly deceptive.”

“Look at that tiny sign near the entrance,” I said. “That’s the logo of a private security company. This can’t be the Governor’s Mansion. Let’s keep going up the street and see if we can find any others.”

We kept going up the street, finding other mansions with various landscaping and architectural styles, but we could never agree on an undisputed candidate for the Governor’s Mansion. Then, right where the road we were on ended and turned left to join another road, we found a huge clump of trees obscuring a tudor mansion. The few parts of the lot’s perimeter that weren’t blocked by clumps of trees were separated from the street with an iron fence. The driveway in particular was blocked by an iron gate bearing the seal of the provincial government. The gate itself was flanked by the flags of our province and our country protruding from the top of each fencepost, and there was an intercom one one side and a card reader on the other.

“Okay, we’ve found it,” I said. “But how are we going to get in?”

“Well, obviously breaking and entering is off the table,” said Dmitry. “Let’s try the intercom.”

“It won’t work,” said a voice. It came from a unicorn stallion in Steel Ranger armor with his helmet removed, smoking a cigarette on the front lawn. He began walking up to the gate. He spoke and moved with a coolness that is often attempted but seldom done right outside of movies.

“They won’t let anypony in who they don’t already recognize. The Governor isn’t exactly keen on receiving visitors.”

“You mean the Governor is still alive?” Grapevine asked.

“Of course,” the Ranger said. “There’s a bunker underneath the house. She’s been living there for nearly a year and she refuses to come out.”

“There’s no way that can be healthy,” Dmitry said.

“I agree, but no matter what we can’t convince her it’s safe out here, so we just have to work around that,” said the Ranger.

“Well, we’re here to help you work around that,” I said. “Have you heard the news?”

“No, I haven’t,” the Ranger replied. “What news?”

“Habeas Corpus has been foalnapped by some giant dog-thing,” I said. “We tried to stop it but it was too fast.”

"Whoa, that's really bad!" the Ranger said. "Here, I'll let you in."

He pressed a button on his foreleg.

"Control, we've got a few ponies at the gate who say the Chief Justice has been foal napped by a dog. Can you confirm this? Over."

"Yes, her guards informed us fifteen minutes ago," said a voice on the other end. "They mentioned three mercenaries would arrive to discuss it with the Captain. Please stand by while we verify their identities with the escorts. Over."

A few awkward minutes of silence passed as they verified our identities with the Rangers we had first met. The radio was still on, so we could hear a faint voice asking several questions punctuated by silence as they listened to the response in what seemed like the world's longest game of 'Guess Who?'. It was quiet enough that we could hear the whistling of the wind, and I realized that the world just seemed very empty without the rustling of leaves on the trees as the wind blew through them. Instead, there were only barren branches protruding into the sky with not a single leaf remaining. Meanwhile, the few trees which retained their leaves, the conifers, did not extend their leaves but held them close to their trunks as one would a cloak on a cold, rainy day.

"Alright, we have confirmed their identities. You may let two of them in, but stay out there to keep watch. We're sending some pony to escort them. Over."

"Roger that, over," said the Ranger.

The gate opened slightly with a little click.

"Just two?" Grapevine asked. "Why not all or just one?"

"Changelings," the Ranger curtly replied. "The Governor is... sort of... really concerned about security, understandably. But maybe we... could... admit three of you if you swapped the changeling out with that friend of yours over there keeping watch."

The ranger pointed to a clump of trees across the street.

"Friend? What friend? There's no--" Grapevine asked. I wanted to muzzle her on the spot, but instead said,

"Why, yes, our friend... over there. Our blue-maned stallion of a companion who we have known and trusted for a very long time."

Dmitry furrowed his brow.

"Fine, I'll switch places," he said reluctantly.

He plodded over to the trees and went behind them. I looked up to the sky.

“Gee, looks like it might rain again soon,” I said.

Grapevine looked up and was confused. Aside from the cloud ceiling which had always been there, there were very few low-hanging clouds that could really rain on us.

Then there was a green flash of light.

A blue unicorn stallion with greying black hair came out from behind the trees, wearing the same stable jumpsuit and bags that Dmitry did, but had a completely different body. Even though I knew it was him, it still felt a little unnerving.

“Great, much better,” said the Ranger. He opened the gate wide enough for us to come in. “May I be the first to welcome you to Marehonia Hall!”

Grapevine went in first, followed by me, and not-Dmitry last. As I passed the ranger, I asked him,

“If anypony asks who let us in, what should we say?”

“They call me Placeholder,” the Ranger said. “That… wasn’t always my name, but that’s who I am now.”

Then, as Dmitry passed him, Placeholder leaned in and whispered to him,

“Don’t feel bad, there’s more of us inside.”

Dmitry’s eyes widened and his mouth curved into a small smile.

“My name is Lovebug. Follow me.”

The Mansion was big and grand, but it felt very unwelcoming. In contrast to most buildings, the mansion’s interior had sustained virtually no damage from the apocalypse or the elements. Instead, the furniture remained in tact but unused, most of it sitting beneath dust cloths while the features that didn’t had accumulated a fine layer of dust.

“I used to dust this place every week,” said our chaperone, a petite light green pegasus who was extremely nervous and jittery. I would later learn that she was generally like that all the time, but it was more pronounced whenever she was in the presence of somepony important.

“...but lately I’ve been so busy that I just didn’t have the time. Eventually I stopped dusting altogether.”

Then with a cheeky smile she said, “Since she never leaves the bunker, she doesn’t have to know.”

We went around the grand staircase in the foyer and stopped in front of a door behind it. I was expecting either a broom closet or a staircase into a dingy cellar, but instead we were presented with an elevator which still looked pretty new. She inserted a key card into a slot that replaced the usual call button, and a few seconds later the doors opened and we entered the car.

“Beneath the cellar there’s the electrical and HVAC equipment,” she explained. “Beneath that there’s the control center which leads into the bunker itself. Only thing below that is the reactor, but I don’t have the proper clearance to go there.”

The elevator stopped at the control center, where we disembarked in an area which strongly resembled the entrance of the Stable, featuring thick concrete walls covered in metal support beams and pipes. The floor was tiled with spotless light green linoleum, and the room itself was awash with artificial light from fluorescent tubes. There was no natural light whatsoever, as we were presumably several yards underground. Instead, only artificial light which was designed to mimic natural light, but took a while to get used to and simply appeared eerily unnatural in the meantime.

The room was I-shaped, with narrow hallways on the ends leading to storage and utility closets, connected by a wide corridor leading from the elevator to a downward staircase at the opposite end of the room. Two large metal boxes raised on platforms stood on each side at the middle of the corridor, creating a bottleneck in between them. Both of these boxes had windows with metal bars on the outside. The one on the right was a control center where three ponies wearing headsets monitored several computer screens, while the other appeared to be some sort of armory. The hallway between them was further divided into two by a large desk

In the hallway between them, a unicorn police officer sat at a desk with a small gate on each side. He put down his book and stared at us until we reached his desk.

“Can each of you give me your name, age, and prewar address?” the officer asked in the dullest, most routine manner possible, as if he just wanted to get back to his book. All of us (except for Lovebug) gave the information, which he recorded on his computer.

“Now I need to inspect your bags. Put them on the table.”

We put them on the table and he quickly rifled through each.

“Yeah, we’ll have to keep these here,” he said. “Remove any items you think you need. No weapons are allowed inside. You may retrieve your things on the way out.”

“I don’t think we’ll need anything inside,” I said.

“Okay,” the officer said, then gestured to another officer, who approached the desk from behind and began taking the bags into the armory room.

“Now I’ll need to scan your bodies one at a time.”

His horn glowed an emerald green color that matched his eyes. A green-tinged black cloud emerged around Grapevine’s hooves, causing her to flinch, then it gradually moved around her body. The cloud produced an X-ray vision of her bones, which appeared white while her tissues and internal organs appeared in dark blue. When the officer had examined her entire body, it moved onto me. I instinctively braced for some kind of physical impact, but instead it just felt like a soft breeze.

Dmitry was getting nervous. The officer looked at him with some suspicion, then said, “I’m randomly selecting you for an enhanced scan. Follow me.”

“Umm… ok.”

Dmitry complied while trying his best to contain his shock. The officer led him into the side hallway behind the armory while the other officer stood just behind the gate and watched us. Shortly after, Dmitry and the original officer returned to his desk.

“Each of you take a visitor’s pass and return it here when you leave. Have a good day.”

The second officer stepped aside and allowed us to pass after we had taken our passes.

“Well, isn’t he cheerful?” Grapevine remarked sardonically.

We descended the stairs and were greeted by a familiar sight: the gear-shaped door featured at the entrance of all Stables, and a more iconic emblem for Stable-Tec than their actual logo. This door was wide open, with the giant gear stored off to the side within the Stable’s walls. As I passed through it, I was greeted with vivid memories of my own Stable, with this very room being one of my last experiences inside it.

We continued down another corridor of concrete and steel before re-emerging on the second floor of the atrium. Before us stood a large open space constructed out of metal beams painted brown to resemble trees. The walls consisted of large concrete slabs between these beams, painted white. The floor was paved with dark green linoleum tiles and the pipes running along the ceiling were painted blue. The color scheme was an obvious reference to our province's flag and the symbolism which inspired it.

The atrium was on two levels, with the second level consisting of two parallel walkways running along the long ends of the room. These two were connected by two bridges at the edges of the room and one at the middle of it. At the far ends, there were stairs connecting the first and second floors. Just shy of the railings on the two parallel walkways the ceiling sloped upward at a very steep angle, creating more space up above. This feature, combined with the tree-like support beams, made the entire room look a little like the hut of a jarl in an ancient Helm village. At the other end of the room, a large circular window rested high above the second floor, casting a watchful eye upon every pony below. The window sat inside a U-shaped frame with wings on each end. This was Stable-Tech's logo, and it appeared around the window to the Over mare's office in every stable, but here it was made entirely out of gold, shining down like the sun. The jarl of this village was inside, but siting at her desk with her back to the window. I wondered how often she looked out of it, gazing over her domain?

Probably pretty regularly, as the atrium itself was spotlessly clean. The ponies wandering around here stood up straight and didn't dally on their way. The only exception to this was the large mass of ponies huddled in the far left hoof corner of the first floor, in what appeared to be a dining commons. They were safely in a blind spot of the otherwise all-seeing window.

As we walked through the atrium, we saw several doors and windows built into the walls for various service areas, such as a general store, a hairdresser, and clinic. From the middle of the room were two doors, leading out to long, wide corridors containing the residential areas for most of the stable's inhabitants. Although there were many ponies congregating on the first floor, our handler seemed to be in a hurry to deliver us, so we wasted no time crossing to the other side of the room. Here we traveled down a short hallway past the doors of several individual offices on one side and a large communal office on the other. Through the windows of the communal office, I could see several ponies in cubicles working frantically even though the normal working hours were over. At the end of this hallway, we traveled up a staircase which led to a small reception room. The receptionist stopped filing her nails and eyed us with suspicion, then slowly reached for the button on an intercom.

“Your Honor, the mercenaries are here,” she said.

“I’m busy,” came the reply. “Could you have them wait a few minutes?”

A few seconds passed. Then the seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned into what felt like hours. Boredom began to set in, so I thought like this would be as good a time as any to update my diary.

Progress to Next Level: 4028/7200

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 108 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Note

Beginning of a new story arc here. They're going to spend a couple of days in this area.

Chapter 019: Pale Moonlight

Chapter 19: Pale Moonlight

“Why would Luna do this? Why now?”

Friday, September 19th, 4347

Dear Diary,

Like a typical stable overmare’s office, it was a sizeable room with dark wood paneling and hardwood floors, framed portraits on the walls, a large desk and chair in the center, and leather sofas and chairs off to the side. However, since this office was for the overmare of the entire province, it needed to be about 20% more official than a typical overmare’s office. Hence, in addition to the provincial government’s seal on the desk and the province’s flag on the wall behind it, you had actual rugs on the floor instead of rubber mats, more pictures, sculptures, and other trinkets on display throughout the room, better leather on the furniture, more beer cans in the wastebasket, and half of everything had to be either gilded or gem-encrusted. Even the ballpoint pens. The room itself was heated fairly warmly, but it still gave me chills due to how eerily reminiscent of the principal’s office at the school I went to before the war: just add a bunch of trophies, a few layers of dust, and dim the lights, and you’ve got it. I had only been there once, and ever since I had tried my hardest to keep away from that place... and from the demon who claimed the room as its lair.

I'm uncertain of whether or not this was an intended feature, but the overmare in this stable glowed with an air of extreme conceit. Was this typical of stables? I had only been in one, and even her strongest supporters would acknowledge that she was cowardly and weak-willed. On one hoof, it was nice to see a stable with a strong, confident leader for once, but did she really have to be so haughty? Throughout our very brief (but telling!) interaction, she conducted herself with the self-important air befitting an heir to the plucking throne. All of this information was contained in the single glance she gave us upon entering.

The three of us approached the desk, and my companions gave deep bows. I was surprised, as she wasn't part of the nobility or anything, but reluctantly followed suit with a much smaller and less demeaning bow of my own.

"You may rise," the Governor said.

We did. I did so very quickly.

"My guards tell me that Justice Corpus has recently been foal napped," she said, fiddling with the Newton's cradle on her desk as she spoke.

"Yes, your Honor," Day said. "We were there when it happened. We tried to stop it, but--"

"Yes, I know," the Governor replied tersely. "I would send some of my own guards, but we're a bit overextended at the moment. Which is why I have decided to delegate the task to you three. Your task is to track down that thing and kill it without killing the Chief Justice. Don't bother bringing her back here; simply escort her to the nearest Steel Ranger and they'll take it from there. Don't think of yourselves as mercenaries-- it's against my policy to farm out my work to hit mares. Think of yourselves as citizens impressed into service to perform a patriotic duty on behalf of the Princess, your fellow citizens, and justice itself."

"Are we still getting paid?" Grapevine asked. Day glared at her and almost lifted his hoof, (presumably to jam it into her mouth,) but managed to restrain himself.

"Why yes, of course," the Governor replied dismissively. "Adequate compensation will be given, but only after you complete the task and all of its conditions. Discuss the details with the Captain of the Guard."

"Why are you sending us against a monster that five Steel Rangers couldn't kill?" I asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense to have us guard somewhere so you can free up more Rangers?"

Day and the Governor were horrified; Day by my bluntness and supposed impropriety, and the Governor by... who knows what?

“No, of course not!” the Governor said. “Of course not! I-- er… the citizens would never trust some random mercenaries in their settlements. They want soldiers with training and discipline. And would certainly lose faith in us if we resorted to that. As much as you want to help, I cannot let you. You are contractors. You have one assignment. You are to put all of your attention and energy into completing that assignment until Justice Corpus is brought back to us. Any additional work will be given at my discretion. Do I make myself clear?.”

“Yes,” I answered. Then, hesitantly, I added, “...Your Honor.”

“And do I have your word that you will follow my instructions to the letter?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Good. That’s what I like to hear. You may leave now,” she said with a dismissive hoof gesture.

We quickly bowed and left.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I had been on edge during the entire meeting, fearing that one slight misstep could lead to some sort of reprisal. My companions also seemed to relax a little. Once we were out of the receptionist’s earshot, we began talking.

“Wow, does she really have to be that stuffy?” Grapevine asked.

“No, but she’s kind of entitled to be that way,” Dmitry replied. “She is, after all, the Princess’s representative.”

“Well, she isn’t representing the Princess that well,” said Grapevine. “She may be super formal, but she ain’t haughty.”

“We shouldn’t talk bad about the Governor while we’re here,” Dmitry said. “Let’s eat dinner here before we leave.”

“Wow, it’s been ages since we’ve had food this fresh!”

Technically, this wasn’t true; in several of the towns we’ve visited we had some vegetables that were harvested pretty recently. What Grapevine meant was that the fruit and vegetables sold in the stable’s cafeteria were much bigger and a lot greener than the dry and bitter crops grown on the surface.

“And how long do you mean by ‘ages?’” asked a mare sitting across the table.

“Two months,” Dmitry replied.

“And even longer for apples!” Grapevine chimed in.

Coincidentally, I was biting into an apple just as she said this. Unlike most ponies, I never really liked apples all that much, but this one was the tastiest and juciest one I’d had since last October.

“The hell?” gawked a gruff-voiced stallion wearing one of those weird orange utility jumpsuits that Steel Rangers wear under their suits… or astronauts wear under theirs. “I thought 76 was close by. A few days walk at most. Ya got lost in the wastes or something?”

“We did a few loops around Roseport, then we came straight here,” Grapevine said. “We’ve been out for about two and a half weeks.”

“You guys seem kind of...” the mare across the table began, lost for words. “...emaciated.”

“Grapevine looked down to her body, then at the bodies of her companions, then at the ponies across the table, then at ours.”

“Huh,” she said. “I don’t feel emaciated.”

“How much food did they give you at mealtimes?” the mare asked.

“As much as we wanted,” Grapevine said. “Though most ponies just took as much as you did.”

The mare was getting visibly frustrated.

“Then how--?”

“Our food supply was cut off,” Dmitry said. “There was a… hmmmm, how do I put this? Um… there was a revolt--”

“A revolution!” Grapevine exclaimed.

“There was a civil war,” I said, my first contribution to the discussion.

“That’s a much better way of describing it,” said Dmitry. “A civil war slash rebellion. That was instigated by--”

“There was this mad scientist guy who called himself ‘Doctor Balefire,’” Grapevine began, “...and he liked to go on these long rants about how there wasn’t enough racial purity in the stable or whatever and claimed there were a bunch of changelings an’ zebras an’ bat ponies and shit ‘hiding among us’ and all the pegasi were traitors to Equestria or whatever an’ that the overmare was incompetent for some reason and he formed this gang that went around randomly murdering ponies… come to think of it, was he actually a real scientist? ‘Cause I’ve never actually seen him do any research or anything.”

“No, he was a real scientist,” Dmitry said. “He was brought on as the stable’s ‘resident radiation expert,’ I think. Honestly, I think he did a pretty good job explaining what he thought was going on outside, and his rants were tolerable until he decided to inject himself into stable politics.”

“‘Tolerable?’” asked the sympathetic mare. “What’s tolerable about racism? Especially when it’s vile enough to cause murders?”

“By ‘tolerable,’ I meant ‘avoidable,’” Dmitry said. “We didn’t always have to deal with that guy, then all of a sudden everything became about him.”

…

There were a few minutes of heated silence. Then, just as the mare was about to ask another question, I intervened, desperate to change the subject.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I suggested, desperate to change the topic. “Can anypony tell me about that giant wolf thing downtown?”

“Oh, you mean Attila?” the Steel Ranger asked. “Yeah, he’s been a thorn in our side fer several months now. He’s mostly just harassed us and stole supplies, never doin’ anything aggressive until now... ”

He trailed off in thought for a few seconds, then added,

“...Come to think of it, I think he’s been gettin’ more adventurous by the week. I think he’s testin’ us.”

“He used to be one of those Diamond Dogs before the war,” said the mare. “He was a common criminal, constantly going in and out of jail. The day the bombs fell, they were escorting him and some other prisoners to the county courthouse for trial. When the air raid sirens went off, the guards panicked and locked them in the prison bus and fled to shelter. They eventually broke free.”

“Then he mutated into… well… whatever he is now,” the Steel Ranger said. “Don’t know if it was the initial exposure or the fallout. We started getting reports of a werewolf about a month or two later.”

“Great….” I said sarcastically. “...How do we kill him?”

“Well, I’m guessing you’ve seen what he’s capable of,” said the Steel Ranger. “His hide’s awfully strong, since normal bullets just seem like papercuts to him.”

“So we know what doesn’t work on him,” I said, “But can you tell me anything that does?”

“I know something that works,” said a second Steel Ranger who had just walked in with a squad clad in nearly spotless chrome armor. His helmet was off, revealing a silvery-grey stallion with a mane as white as ice. His amber eyes seemed to light up as he spoke.

“A twelve gauge shotgun filled with explosive rounds,” he said. “That got my squad out of a pinch once.”

“Explosive rounds?” Grapevine asked, eyes growing wide. “You mean… rounds that explode?”

“Just like a grenade,” the silvery ranger answered. “And you can’t find these rounds just anywhere-- they’re strictly for military use. But… I have a personal collection I’d be willing to part with in exchange for some Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.”

“Really, Rhodium?” asked the mare. “You’re asking them to smuggle in junk food?”

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” the silvery ranger replied. “Besides, it’s just a treat for special occasions. Like when we finally kill Attila.”

“Sounds more like you’re trying to bribe Platinum again,” said the first Steel Ranger.

“Hey, It isn’t a bribe!” Rhodium answered sternly. “She’ll be asking-- no, begging me for them. Everypony knows she has a huge sweet tooth beneath that stoic facade.”

The three descended into an argument over Rhodium’s intentions. Dmitry took the opportunity to ask me about our strategy.

“Do we really need these rounds? If they act like grenades, why don’t we just use grenades instead?”

“That’s a good point,” I answered. “Let’s ask our resident explosives expert. Hey Grapevine, what do you think?”

She was busied herself with playing with her fork, which she held between her teeth. When I asked her, she stopped and stared blankly at me.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think we need explosive rounds to kill that monster, or could we just use grenades?”

She spat the fork out and started pondering.

“Hmmm… I reckon we could use grenades or mines, but I’d need to do some tests in the field to know for sure. But an explosive round would probably have a better chance of piercing its hide or shell or whatever and actually causing injury. If it’s as thick as they say, then our options may be limited to explosive shells, cleverly placed mines, or Celestia forbid, a Balefire egg.”

“Let’s go with a kitchen sink strategy then,” I said. “We’ll get those shells, then throw everything we’ve got until we know what works.”

When we returned to the surface, the sky was pitch black and the air seemed… cold. A lot colder than usual.

“It feels like it’s late October,” I said. “Winter’s coming early this year.”

“Considering we’ve seen snow this early, we should expect the worst,” Dmitry said.

Right after he said this, a flash of lightning illuminated the sky, immediately followed by a thunderclap.

“Damnit, ya jinxed us,” Grapevine said.

“We should find a place to sleep tonight,” I said. “That castle-house seems like a good fit.”

We went back a few blocks to where we saw the manor-like house, navigating through the darkness by the glow of our pipbucks. After sweeping the house to ensure that nothing had taken up residence there already, we set about boarding up some of the windows on the second floor with tools and boards from a small garden shed behind the manor. This had gotten our blood running, so even though it was late at night none of us felt like going to bed yet, so we hung out in the living room for a while and waited, as if exhaustion was a houseguest who was on his way and would knock on the door at any minute. I kept pacing around anxiously because I had something on my mind but couldn’t find the right words to express it. Eventually the others took notice.

“Is something wrong, Silver?” Dmitry asked.

“I’m having second thoughts about this ‘mission’ of ours,” I said. “Why are we wasting our time fighting some invincible monster that even the Steel Rangers can’t defeat? We already have a mission to complete, and we don’t have time for useless sidequests like this. At this rate, it might take us until November to finish it, and it’ll probably be the dead of winter by then. Unless we find nothing and have to travel to Seaddle or San Flankcisco instead. Then by the time we return it’ll be too late and everypony will be dead.”

“But this might be the key to saving the Stable,” Dmitry responded. “If we help them, maybe they’ll help us. If we can bring just a squad of Steel Rangers back with us, we can stop the bloodshed and start rebuilding again.”

“They’re already overstretched,” I replied. “If they can’t even handle one monster, how can they handle a dozen?”

“Maybe they’re just testing us,” Dmitry said. “Sometimes police will hire PI’s to take on cases that are too dangerous for themselves.”

“That’s even worse!” I exclaimed. “If they have the resources to do it but won’t, then that just shows how little they care.”

“Well, we can’t back out now,” Dmitry replied. “Regardless of the government’s motives, this Attila guy is clearly a threat to civilians.”

“And what about the Stable?” I asked. “There are civilians there too!”

“The stable can wait,” Dmitry said. “We have a more pressing mission here. We can’t just quit now.”

“Earlier today you said we should get out of this town as soon as possible,” I said. “What gives!?”

“It’s because we found civilians here,” Dmitry said. “They need protection against that big monster. If the government can’t provide it, then it falls to those of us willing and able.”

There was a pause. Then he added,

“Besides, we gave our word. You gave your word. YOU said ‘of course!’”

“We didn’t sign a contract or anything,” I replied. “We didn’t take any payment, so we have no obligation to do it. They probably half-expect us to bail anyway, so why don’t we?”

Dmitry raised his voice a little, which startled me because it’s something I’ve rarely seen him do.

“We still gave our word. We promised. It’s not honorable to break a promise.”

“It’s amusing that we’re talking about honor when this is the Governor we’re talking about,” I retorted. “The fucking Governor. Since when does Governor Hayes keep her word? She probably won’t even pay us.”

“Look, I don’t like her any better than you do, but we still have to follow through on our commitment,” Dmitry said. “If we don’t, then we’re no better than she is. And besides, we still have to respect her authority. She is our Governor, after all.”

“Well, she’s not my governor,” I said. “I didn’t vote for her. What basis does her authority rest on? Having an army?”

“None of us voted for her,” Dmitry replied. “She was appointed. Her authority comes from Princess Luna deciding she was the best fit for the job.”

“Why would Princess Luna appoint such a terrible governor?” I asked. “Did she even consider it? Or did she follow the recommendation of some advisor since our little corner of Equestria is so insignificant to those ponies?”

“Like it or not, she is a duly appointed representative of the Crown,” Dmitry said. “It’s our duty to obey her.”

“Well, I don’t think her authority is legitimate,” I said. “She doesn’t act like a leader, so she deserve it. Her own guards say she hasn’t left that bunker once, even though they’ve proven that it’s completely safe. What kind of a leader leads from behind and won’t visit her subjects in their time of need? A fucking coward, that’s who!”

“Her legitimacy is not up for debate,” Dmitry said. “She’s probably the highest ranking royal official left. Do you think Luna or any of the other Princesses would want us to subvert the chain of command?”

I gave a deep sigh.

“No, I don’t think they would,” I said. “But who cares? Princess Luna isn’t here to tell us what to do. And even if she was, that still doesn’t give me an obligation to obey her if her own fucking army won’t. There’s nothing special about ‘The Crown,’ or any other country’s Crown, for that matter. The rest of your species realized that years ago!”

Dmitry was horrified. In retrospect, my words probably constituted treason, and maybe blasphemy to some extent.

“Hey, don’t bring Queen Chrysalis into this!” Dmitry exclaimed. “Her authority was 100% legitimate, and the usurpation does not change that!”

Throughout this, Grapevine had remained silent and watched from the sidelines, becoming more and more concerned as the argument heated up, but until now she had nothing to contribute and no reason to intervene. The mention of Queen Chrysalis changed all that. Now, armed with a list of atrocities and equine rights abuses supposedly committed by the deposed monarch and her regime, she went full frontal into the argument. Now, I admittedly know very little about changeling history, but I think I know enough to hold my own in an argument against a laypony. I felt bad for Dmitry having to face an ignorant tirade against his country and people, but since we had just come out of a heated argument, I felt no particular need to defend him, so I simply walked out of the room and let the two duke it out.

In contrast to the living room, which exploded with light and noise like the interior of a combustion engine, the night was cold, quiet, and dead. It also stretched all around me, enveloping my surroundings in a shroud of darkness, or unlight. It felt like I had left the safety of a spaceship and now wandered through the infinite void of space. As the realization of my own vulnerability dawned on me, I began to feel naked and afraid.

‘I would kill for one of those power armor suits,’ I thought. ‘And those metal helmets with lamps on top.’

I thought so much about space that I started to believe I actually was in space, and began to choke on the thin air and feel weightless. Then, realizing what I was doing, I stopped and took a deep breath. Then another. And then another. The extra oxygen helped my brain snap out of it, and now I was fully aware of my surroundings. It no longer felt as cold or looked so dark. It now merely seemed like I was out for a walk on a cold winter night, something I would often do before the war. I also recognized the invisible tether which kept me from straying far from the spaceship of the house. I whipped out my pipbuck and tuned it to the ‘local map’ feature. Between that and my own senses, I was confident I could navigate on my own. I mentally severed the tether and ventured out into the night.

Then, hiding between some trees, I spotted a pair of red bloodshot eyes glowing faintly in the night behind a bush. I blinked, then stepped closer to get a better look and confirmed that yes, I did see a pair of eyes. They seemed to be staring at me. I slowly backed away until I was on the other side of the street, then slid behind a tree. I then activated my invisibility spell and crept out from behind the tree so I could move into a nearby bush, moving slowly and deliberately to avoid making any noise. Once was crouched behind the bush, I brought out my hunting rifle, took aim, and fired.

But just before the bullet hit its target, a claw emerged from the bush where the eyes were and swiped the bullet away, sending it flying down the street where it hit the side mirror of a parked car. My jaw dropped in awe. But as I marveled at the precision, the beast jumped out of the bush, dashed across the road, and before I knew it, its face was inches away from mine. Unmistakably, it was Attila, the werewolf I had seen earlier and heard so much about.

“Leave,” it said in a deep, gruff, husky voice that you’d only hear from a dark lord in a fantasy movie, spoken through a mouth teeming with sharp pointy teeth. As it spoke, it let out a warm, soggy breath-- that of a dog’s, but somehow even worse.

“You can talk?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m insulted you would think otherwise.”

“Well, I just thought that maybe--”

“I may be a mutant, but I still have more sense than any of the ponies in this town. If you had any sense, you would leave.”

“But I have a job to do,” I replied. “I can’t leave until--”

“I have no quarrel with you, pony. This is between me and the Governor. Stay out of it.”

“First, release the innocent bystander you foalnapped,” I said as firmly as I could. “Then I’ll leave.”

“As long as she works for the government, she is not a bystander.”

He paused for a moment, then smiled with a monstrous grin and asked,

“And how do you know she’s still alive? For all you know, I may have eaten her already.”

“Then give me the body,” I retorted sternly. “My orders are to return her, dead or alive.”

“So you saw through my trick,” he said bemusedly. “You are clever, pony, but you are stubborn. I will tell you again: leave this place. Abandon your mission. Continue on your merry way. You are not the first mercenary that hag has sent for me, and you will not be the last. The smarter ones understood that and live to tell the tale. The fools I keep as trophies.”

“I won’t let your threats deter me,” I said. “Why don’t you just kill me then, since I’m clearly one of the fools?”

“I don’t want to kill you. As I said, this is between me and the Governor. I am giving you a choice. If you and your friends pack up and leave at the break of dawn, I will not pursue you, and it shall be as if we had never met. If you linger, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt for three days. If you remain past the third day, I will consider you a threat and will not hesitate to kill you. If you attempt to pursue me, I will consider you an employee of the Governor, and I will act in self-defense. Choose wisely.”

He stood up on his hind legs, his towering body casting a long shadow in the pale moonlight. Although I guessed he was about seven hooves tall, from my position on the ground he appeared to be at least twenty hooves. He looked around and, upon seeing nothing, crouched down on all fours again, turned around, and scampered off into the night.

Only when he was gone did I begin to slowly get up on my hooves. I looked around for any signs of the beast, but he had left. The only trace was a large footprint he had left in the ground. It was about three inches deep and seemed to resemble a dinosaur’s foot. I placed my own hoof inside for comparison. It was about an eighth of the size.

I kept walking down the road, feeling very confined between the houses and towering trees surrounding me. I pondered my choices: either hunt him down or vacate the city. With my Stable collapsing in on itself, sightseeing was off the table. Although the Stable was in dire straits, the fact that my fellow Stable-dwellers had survived this long against all odds gave us a bit of hope and some leeway. The main limiting factor was winter. If this year would be anything like last year, travel would become nearly impossible and we’d have to hunker down until February at the earliest. I doubt the Stable can survive that long. Therefore, we would have to find our solution by mid or late October and return by mid-November at the latest. Black Friday would be stretching it, but it’s a good mental deadline. According to my Pipbuck’s calendar feature, that would be the 28th of November.

Knowing this, we have two options: spend time fighting this werewolf thing for a chance that the government might spare some troops to help us fix our stable, or continue south to the Stable-Tec facility in Deer Creek, where there, although far from a guarantee, there’s a much better chance we could get help. Barring that, we might have to go up to Seaddle or down to San Flankcisco. Staying here seems like a waste of time, especially since the target we’ve been asked to kill seems near-invincible. It’s not something I want to do, but I may not have a choice: Dmitry seems pretty set on finishing this, so I’m kind of stuck here. There’s also the fact that this monster just threatened to kill me. Though his terms were pretty generous, allowing us a few days to sightsee. But I’m not here to sightsee, and it wouldn’t be very enjoyable anyway if we have some beast constantly watching us.

I had reached a park, an open space where the trees and houses parted allowing a clear view of the sky. In the sky, a gaping circular hole had appeared in the clouds as if somepony had punched through it. Through the hole I could see the bejeweled night sky, and with it, the crescent of a waning moon.

Moon.

Like Luna, that quasi-goddess who used to lead our country. I always liked her a bit more than her sister, and always believed she was doing the right thing for our country, no matter what her critics said. And she had a lot of critics. They say that before the war, she knew some kind of spell that let her ‘walk’ through the dream realm and visit ponies’ dreams like rooms in a house. They say that she would seek out those who were troubled and talk to them about their problems, earning her the nickname ‘Equestria’s Guidance Counselor.’ Then during the war, additional duties were thrust upon her so she did that less and less. Eventually, these dream appearances became so rare that somepony set up a website to track them. Last time I went there, there had been four months without a sighting. I used to hope she might come to me, but I lost hope after realizing that I had better odds of winning the Cascadia Lottery. With that, I’d only be competing against the rest of my province.

“Where are you, Luna?” I asked.

Then, after getting no response, I shouted,

“Damnit, Luna! You’re less reliable than a lottery ticket!”

More silence.

“Fine, ‘Princess’ Luna. There, I used your title. Not that you care, anyway. You’re too humble for that… unlike the bitch who runs this place. Why couldn’t you switch places with our Governor and run this place instead?”

Still no response.

“Alright, I take that back. I’m asking for too much, aren’t I? Can you at least give me a sign that you’re still there?”

I stared at the moon for a bit and waited for some sort of response, but there was only an eerie silence. Even the sound of wind blowing through leaves would have been welcome, but there were no leaves, only the empty whistling of the wind as it swept through the barren streets.

“Fine then, be that way!” I shouted. “Abandoning us just like you always do. I don’t even remember why I liked you.”

Of course, I did remember why I liked her. It was because, between Equestria’s Princesses, I had always found her to be the most relatable. After all, we only had two: the happy-go-lucky perfect one and the dark, brooding one (we actually had more, but most of them were essentially just variations on each other, with the former of the two coming in white, pink, or purple varieties while the latter was unique and unreplicable). I don’t particularly hate any of them, but I just can’t bring myself to sympathize with flawless and popular. But a dark, brooding, introverted princess who’s made some big mistakes and been ignored for most of her life? That sounds exactly like me… minus the princess part.

And where was she now? Probably dead, as I’d expect Canterlot was bombed pretty hard. Though there would probably be bunkers in the city, so maybe not. Maybe she got consumed with guilt over not being able to stop all this and committed suicide. That’s probably what I’d do in her situation.

A few blocks away I encountered a large concrete river with shops and offices lining its banks. On the other side stood a former donut shop where a grey pegasus sat on a bench facing a small fire inside of a ceramic pot. Off to the side, a small pile of dirt and a shriveled up shrub confirmed that the pot had once housed a potted plant. The plant had died at some point during the past year, either from a lack of sunlight caused by the perpetual clouds above, or from a lack of water caused by the roof overhang and an absence of ponies to water it.

I approached the pile of dirt and studied it, wondering whether its removal from the pot left it feeling like a paroled convict or a laid-off millworker. I suppose it depends on what it thought its purpose was and whether or not it had a sense of belonging or a feeling of confinement within the pot.

The pegasus, who I recognized as Gaggleskein, greeted me with a quiet ‘hello,’ but I was too fixated on the dirt to respond. Finally, I turned to him and asked,

“Do you ever find yourself yelling at the sky?”

Without looking up from the fire, he responded,

“When I was your age, I often did. But over time, I learned to accept the world as it is.”

I looked down at the fire. In one hoof, Gaggleskein held a small pot over the fire. The contents were concealed by a lid, but I recognized the smell of oatmeal. Suddenly I began to feel hungry, but I was craving meat.

I could feel Gaggleskein staring at me as I thrust my head into a nearby trash can and began sifting through a nearby garbage can and chucking things behind me, taking care to avoid throwing anything in his direction (though even a slight gust of wind could change that). At last, I found what I was looking for at the very bottom: as ill-fitting as Sparkle Cola and Donuts may seem, they still sold it here, and there quite a few bottlecaps left in the trash to prove it.

“Ah-ha!” I exclaimed as I finished digging. I counted the caps, put them in a paper bag I had also found in the trash, then quickly wiped the dirt and grime off my clothes and face before turning around and returning to the fire.

“I left my stuff with my friends, so I didn’t have any bits on me,” I explained.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Well, it looks like you’ve been following my advice,” he said. “I remember you balked when I told you that.”

“Well, they’re not really friends,” I said. “More like… acquaintances who travel together.”

“These days, anypony who can tolerate your presence for more than fifteen minutes is a friend,” he said, then quickly added, “I don’t mean that as a knock against you, but as a general statement.”

“None taken,” I said, moving towards the bench next to sit next to him.

Then he blocked the spot with a forehoof.

“Hey, hey, pick up your trash first!” he scolded.

I looked back at the trash, grabbed it all telekinetically, then put it back into the bin.

“There you go,” he said as I sat down. “You know, you could have just dumped it out on the ground instead of diving into it.”

I stopped and stared at him for a second, before saying, “I knew that!”

He chuckled, then turned back to his cooking. He removed the lid from the pot, inserted a spoon, and stirred it around a little. He decided it was good enough and placed the pot on the table behind him to let it cool. Then he turned to me and asked,

“Do you want some?”

“Actually, no, I was wondering if you happened to have any meat on you,” I replied.

“A few bags of jerky, but nothing fresh.”

“Jerky will do. I just really want meat right now for some reason… how much?”

He brought out a small packet wrapped in wax paper.

“Ten caps per bag. Each is about ten ounces, the same size as the packets you’d find at the store.”

“I’m not sure if I’m hungry enough for ten ounces, but I’ll take one.”

We made the trade, and he set the bottlecaps down on the table beside him. Upon opening the package, I found myself with several pieces of very hard meat that I could only eat in tiny nibbles. Sometimes it would take multiple bites just to tear a piece off. As I struggled, Gaggleskein laughed softly.

“Just like in the olden days, ain’t it?” he said. “Long before there were roads and shops out here, this is what ponies ate.”

I stopped eating for a bit. In addition to the slow-burning fire raging in my mouth from the pepper liberally infused into the meat, some of my teeth were starting to hurt.

“Was it really this hard?” I asked.

“Yup. Nothin’ to look forward to but aching teeth, aching hooves, and aching spines. Makes you wonder why anypony would even come here, doesn’t it?”

“I know why they came here. They came for land.”

“Well, some did. But not all of them. Certainly not the ones who came first.”

“Of course. They followed the animal migrations.”

“No, I’m not talking about the tribes. I’m talking about the first ponies. What did they come for?”

“For the ani--”

“No,” he interrupted, mostly calm but with a little hint of impatience. “They did not come for the animals.”

“But they were trappers,” I replied. “Trappers collect fur.”

“But why would a pony become a trapper?” he asked. I furrowed my brow and began to think, but he supplied the thought for me.

“Freedom. Absolute total freedom. Hundreds of miles away from civilization, no bosses or contracts or laws. No relying on others for food or shelter or protection or whatever. Money only matters if you let it matter. That was the life that existed out here not too long ago. And who did this life appeal to? Who answered the call? All kinds of ponies: explorers, artists, convicts, religious and political dissidents, the poor and downtrodden fleeing from destitution and misery. Scions of wealth and power fleeing from duties and obligations they never asked for. And, I like to think, here and there a pony from the middle who got bored with his day job, wanted a taste of fresh air, and liked it so much he never returned. Those were the ponies who roamed this province and built it up to where other ponies wanted to move here. If you want luxuries, you have to work for them.”

“And which kind are you? The latter?”

“I embody each of them to some extent. But yes, I am primarily the last type. Although I suppose I straddle the line of another class which I forgot to mention...”

“And what would that be?”

He smiled as he slid the bottlecaps over the edge of the table and into a small brown pouch made from the skin of some kind of animal. “The merchant. As it turns out, there are some luxuries that even hermits and vagabonds can’t live without. It’s less lucrative and far more risky than many conventional forms of business, but it’s highly rewarding in some other aspects.”

“Like what?”

“Shhhhh… listen,” he said softly.

We sat in silence for a while as nature slowly overtook us. Again I could hear and feel the howling wind, which blew even harder and louder here as the large roadway and the buildings around it created a wind tunnel of sorts. But unlike in the park, there was another sound, the soft crackling of the fire, whose flames danced playfully in the face of the relentless stream of wind. And then, after several minutes of listening and decluttering my mind, there came a third sound. Very softly, through the broken windows of the beauty salon directly adjacent to the donut shop, came a soft noise which I had not seen in nearly a year. Somewhere inside that shop, lodged snugly into some crevice in a dark place, I thought I heard the slow and steady chirping of a cricket.

This revelation seemed to kindle a fire of sorts inside me.

“Crickets,” I said calmly, so as not to disturb them.

“Exactly,” Gaggleskein replied in an equally hushed tone. “Even in a Celestia-forsaken place such as this, we still have treasures such as these.”

“If crickets survived, there must be other insects out there too!” I exclaimed. “That means there’s hope for the future. Equestria can rebuild.”

“Not so fast,” Gaggleskein admonished. “That’s just one cricket. Perhaps it’s just a lucky one. I don’t imagine there’s much food in that store, and if it runs out it will likely die. Its life could end at any moment due to predators or disease. And if it can’t find a mate, then after a while there’s no more cricket. This may be the last cricket you’ll ever hear.”

I felt a large frown overtake my face.

“Are you always this pessimistic?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s pessimism. In my family, we simply consider the worst and prepare for it. For instance, consider that perhaps the bombs irrevocably destroyed the ecosystem, and that the survivors have simply been cannibalizing each other. At some not-too-distant point, the last animal will run out of food and die. Then the microbes will consume that animal, run out of food, and die as well, leaving the world a sterile, lifeless husk wandering aimlessly through space until it is devoured by the sun, which--”

“That’s extremely pessimistic!” I exclaimed. Then, afraid I had disturbed the cricket, I lowered my voice and tone. “I mean, you can’t really prepare for that since there’s no way to survive.”

“Of course you can prepare for that. You temper your expectations and accept your fate. Death comes easiest when you accept your fate, and hardest when it catches you off guard.”

I pondered this for a moment and decided to accept this as wisdom, but I still had some objections.

“You don’t actually believe that all life will end, do you?”

“No I don’t. I was simply trying to get you to think. But who knows? In this fallen world of ours, anything could happen.”

I took a minute to think about that. Was he anticipating that I was going to die soon? It certainly was a possibility. Just minutes ago I had seen death face-to-face. I wondered if he could somehow predict things, so I asked him another question.

“Does Luna still travel through dreams? Is she still alive even?”

“I have met ponies who claim to have seen her in dreams…” he said, staring out into the sky. “... But they always describe the dreams as blurry and garbled. Very unlike her fabled dreamwalks. It suggests that these were merely normal dreams, which take items from their memories and order them randomly. I highly doubt the Princess survived. From what I’ve heard, Canterlot was hit hard.”

“Bullshit, they had to have built tons of bunkers under Canterlot,” I argued. “She had to have survived.”

“If the Princess survived in any capacity, the news would have spread rapidly across the continent. Everypony would have known by now, even the Stables.”

He stood up and trotted towards a bucket of brackish water sitting off to the side.

“I’ll give you that there are many bunkers below Canterlot though,” he continued, lifting the bucket in his hooves and gently fluttering above the ground as he returned. “Enough that several government officials, nobles, and at least one of the Ministry Mares probably survived. But as you can clearly see...”

He gently thrust the bucket forward, sending a wave splashing onto the fire, instantly dousing it.

“... Canterlot has abandoned us.”

“What about the Governor?” I asked. “She’s the Princess’s representative. She’s still alive, and--”

“Don’t be fooled,” he retorted sternly. “You know as well as I that the Governor only cares about herself. Even if she had a working line to Canterlot, she would sooner cut it than follow an order she doesn’t like. Besides, her power is stretched thin. She only controls a hoofful of small camps scattered across four or five counties. Everywhere else is completely free.”

Noticing the time and my own drowsiness, I decided it was time to go back to the house. It was unlikely that my companions’ argument was still going on, and I hoped they had the sense to end it in a somewhat amicable ‘agreement to disagree’ rather than a mutual cold shoulder (though personally I wouldn’t mind the quiet that the latter would bring to our travels). Or at least, regardless of how it ended, hopefully they’d sleep it off and be on at least semi-amicable terms in the morning. I anticipate that we’ll probably have to work together to complete the task ahead.

"I have to go," I said, getting up and walking away from the fire. "Thank you for the food... and your company."

"My pleasure," he said, chuckling. "I didn't expect to make a sale this late at night."

"Speaking of money... can you tell me what the price of silver is right now?"

"Hmmm..." He couldn't remember off the top of his head, so he fished a small notebook out of a pocket and flipped through it. Then his eyes lit up.

"Well, would you look at that!" He looked back at me. "One hundred and eight! Bits per ounce, that is. Still nowhere near prewar levels, but it's made massive gains over the past three weeks. It's gone from essentially worthless to the nominal price of a candy bar."

Then he stared right into my eyes.

"Keep up the good work and it might become a worthwhile investment."

Level up!

Level 9: Student of the Wastes

Next Perk at Level 10.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 108 bits per Troy Ounce

Prologue

“Soon....”

Time: Tuesday, October 22nd, Year 4346.

As I activated the memory orb, I was engulfed in a blinding light. When I awoke, I found myself staring into space with nothing but glittering lights scattered across my field of view. Then I began to spot patterns, with most clustered along a line, a few moving at steady speeds above and below it. Then I looked down and saw tall buildings arranged along streets leading up to a waterfront.

I must have been inside one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city.

My host, a large, muscular, and somewhat overweight pony, stretched his wings for a second to get his blood flowing through them and then retracted. He then turned around and looked at his surroundings: an employee’s lounge of sorts with a row of windows covering an entire wall, fine leather couches facing a large TV, and a small kitchen area with granite countertops and sleek black appliances. Much of the furniture featured a corporate logo, a yellow pyramid inside a circle containing a square, a compass, the letter ‘G’ between them, and an eye floating just above the compass.

My host became distracted by the television, which had been left on some sort of news program.

“A spokespony for Governor Hayes has denied rumors that the State of Emergency will end this week, stating quote: ‘The Roseport metropolitan area will remain under martial law for at least two more weeks to ensure that the upcoming general election occurs without interference from those whom the Minister of Morale refers to as, quote: “Bad, no-good, bad-awful ponies.” The Governor reserves the right to extend the state of emergency if needed, and is willing to maintain it until December if necessary.’”

My host yawned and raised a forehoof to scratch the back of his head. It was getting late.

“The next story in our series on the growing unrest across Equestria takes us to another west coast city, where a signing ceremony tomorrow will complete the merger of two of Equestria’s largest banks, Goldenstar Financial and Manticore Holdings, whose merger will create the largest bank in the world. Activists who believe that financial institutions already wield too much power and influence have announced their intent to demonstrate against what they see as ‘a monopoly in the making.’ Tonight, we met with the leader of the march to ask...”

My host was inattentive and struggled to keep his eyes on the screen. They instead drifted upward, falling on a clock. After a few seconds, he finally registered that it was almost 11:30, causing him to jump with a shock and scramble down the hallway. Galloping past a maze of cubicles, conference rooms, and corner offices, he finally reached two sturdy steel doors at the end of the building and swiped a badge through a keycard reader. With a loud beep, the doors opened to reveal a large surveillance room. The ceiling lights had been turned off, but the monitors on the wall opposite the door provided a dim light which suited the skeleton crew of bat ponies that manned it. Directly in front of the door was a large desk facing the monitors, with two bat ponies lounging in swivel chairs in front of it. A small radio placed on the desk played the opening chords of a somewhat dated upbeat pop song.

Sweet music -- ooh, sweet music
That’s what I hear when you appear
Sweet music -- ooh, sweet music
Life is in tune when you are near

My host gently scanned the room and noticed that all of the bat ponies were gently bobbing their heads to the beat… except for one, who was sleeping.

“Sleepyhead! Wake up!” he bellowed in a deep voice.

The sleeping bat pony awoke with a start.

“How many times do I have to tell you? No sleeping on the job! If the chief catches you--”

Then everypony heard some hoofsteps approaching from down the hall and were so startled that they froze for a few seconds.

When you are gonnnnnne, the song just isn’t thereeeee….
But then I see your face again, and music fills the air--

A tall, photogenic unicorn stallion with a yellow coat and a neatly combed black but slightly greying mane entered the room. His emerald green eyes glimmered in the light.

“Fills the airrrr!” he sang, then laughed.

Upon seeing him, the bat ponies immediately saluted.

“Goldenstar!” the two behind the front desk said in unison.

“At ease, gentlemen,” replied Goldenstar. “Nothing unusual, I assume?”

“Nothing tonight, sir,” one of the two bat ponies in the front said.

“Good,” Goldenstar replied. “And a good choice of music, too. An oldie, but a goodie. It’s a shame the band broke up… speaking of up, I’d like you to come with me, Pound Cake.”

My host began to follow Goldenstar down the hall.

“My mom loved that song,” he said. “She played it all the time when I was little. What happened to the band?”

“Oh, they broke up years ago,” Goldenstar replied. “There are all sorts of rumors why, but if you ask me, it’s because the world changed and they just couldn’t adapt. When their genre devolved into a parody of itself, ponies started calling for something more ‘sophisticated’ and ‘authentic.’ That’s why you hear so much swing music on the radio today: out with electric keyboards, in with the real keyboards; out with Melody, in with Sweetie Belle.”

Turning a corner, we entered a much shorter hallway with a bank of three elevators at the end.

“It’s a real shame though,” Goldenstar continued. “I’ve known Melody for a long time. Why, it seems like it was just yesterday she came into my office with her first royalty check, complaining about how her five member band had to share a three bedroom house. So I loaned her some money and she bought a big mansion on the coast.”

We reached the end of the hall. Goldenstar pressed the call button.

“She hasn’t made a mortgage payment in four months. If she doesn’t pony up the money by next Friday, she’s getting evicted.”

The central elevator’s doors opened and we stepped in. Goldenstar pressed the highest button and the elevator began to ascend very rapidly.

“She isn’t the first ex-celebrity I’ve evicted, and she certainly won’t be the last. In fact, all of Applewood is built around luring in young talent, chewing it up, then spitting it out. Only the best of the best can last for more than a decade, and even then it’s largely based on luck. Most ex-stars quietly accept their fate, but not Melody. She stubbornly clings to a house she can no longer afford and refuses to take the sensible option of moving to Las Pegasus like all the other has-beens.”

The doors opened to reveal the roof. It was mostly dark and empty, save for a nearby stairwell and several large air pumps for the HVAC system. Several yards away to the left was the western edge of the tower, where a gilded sky yacht was moored to the tower ready to go. We began walking towards the ship’s gangway.

“It’s a sad fact of life that change is constant and inevitable: you have to adapt or get left behind. A lot has changed ever since that one Summer Sun Celebration nearly thirty years ago. The only thing that hasn’t changed is...”

“Mister Goldenstar!”

A nervous-looking petite pink unicorn mare ran after them.

“Uh… Mr. Goldenstar, sir,…” the she said nervously. “I uh… just wanted to see you off before you go.”

“Certainly,” said Goldenstar. “Any news on our friends from Manehattan?”

“The executives from Manticore just landed at the airport fifteen minutes ago, and are en route to their hotel,” replied the mare.

“Good, good,” said Goldenstar. “When they come tomorrow morning, bring them straight to the boardroom without delay. Offer them refreshments and make them comfortable.”

“Will do,” said the mare. “But… may I ask you a question? Regarding… the acquisition.”

“As long as it does not pertain too closely to the details of the acquisition, then certainly.”

“Well, it’s just that… um… why is it that you’re leaving for that trip, like right now, and not be here for the biggest acquisition in the history of the company? You presided over all the other ones yourself…”

Goldenstar narrowed his eyes a bit, and then said in a low voice,

“I’ve been planning this trip for a long time. And it’s simply not something I can afford to miss. After all, I promised my niece I would attend her wedding no matter what. The acquisition deal came at the last minute, after I had already scheduled everything. And besides, I need…. A much deserved vacation. You know how long it’s been since I took my last one.”

“Oh,” said the mare, who was somewhat surprised. “B-but I thought you didn’t have any nieces...”

All the geniality flushed out of Goldentstar’s face.

“Don’t you have a report to prepare?,” he asked sourly. “For the meeting tomorrow?”

“Yes, yes, of course! I’ll get right back to it!” said the mare. “But it just doesn’t make any sense that--”

Goldenstar’s horn began to sparkle. Suddenly, the mare was enveloped in a golden aura began to float. She was pulled upward, then turned upside down so that her head hovered at a height of three hooves above the ground. She tried to scream, but her teeth and lips had been jammed shut by some invisible force and she had lost control of her hooves.

“You were my best secretary you know,” he said as he padded towards her. “You really were. And trust me, I’ve had many since I founded this company.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued,”The good ones tend to have a habit of getting too smart for their own good and ask too many questions. You see, it’s all about trust: good employees trust that their boss knows what’s best. Good employees will take initiative within a limited scope, and not interfere with matter that do not concern them. Soldiers aren’t allowed to question orders, and that’s why the army works as well as it does. Civilians however…”

He turned towards me and tiled his head towards the secretary.

“Finish it.”

My host stepped forward and raised his forehooves into the air. He grabbed the secretary’s head and twisted it like a pickle jar until he heard a faint crack. Her eyes bulged out for a moment, then her eyelids fell shut and her face began to grow pale. He drew his hooves back and saw they were covered from blood.

Goldenstar inspected the body and its severed head. With his telekinesis, he plucked the jewelry off her body and fished the wallet out of her purse. He gently lifted a wad of bills out of the wallet and brought then to his nose, then inhaled deeply.

“I might as well claim damages,” he said as he slid the money and jewelry into his pocket, then threw the corpse onto my host’s back and gave him a towel. “Now dispose of the body. Wipe your hooves before you walk back.”

He nodded and walked over to the edge of the roof, where he reared and thrust the corpse off his back. He wiped the blood off his forehooves, balled the towel up, then chucked it off the roof as well before trotting back.

“Why’d you--” he began to ask, but Goldenstar shushed him.

“Shhh! I think we have company.”

The faint sound of startled hoofsteps came from near the elevator, but there was not a pony to be seen. Goldenstar’s horn began to sparkle again and a golden aura appeared next to the elevator, revealing an invisible equine. It tried to run away, but it could only flail its hooves around as Goldenstar lifted it into the air and brought it towards him. When it was in front of Goldenstar, he ripped a small electronic device from its forehoof, causing the invisibility spell to disappear. His prisoner was a black insectlike equine with holes in its hooves, wings, and horn.

“Ugh, another one?” he groaned.

The creature quivered in fear and was too shocked to say anything. Goldenstar levitated it into the air until its head was slightly higher than his, gripping the creature by its neck.

“Your boss sure is persistent, isn’t she?” he asked. The creature responded with a weak nod.

Goldenstar moved the creature closer to him until their faces almost touched, and began talking to it as if it was a camera.

“I know somepony’s listening to this. Whoever you are, forward this message to your superior.”

He cleared his throat.

“I know you’re listening, Rainbow,” he began, “and I have to say, I would normally admire such effort if it were being used for anything but this. I don’t appreciate you snooping around in my buildings like this; who I choose to do business with is none of your concern. If it weren’t for my generous donations, your entire organization would cease to exist. You and your friends’ Ministries burn money faster than Pinkie pops pills with useless and redundant projects like this one... that is, when your subordinates aren’t outright embezzling it. Compare that to my company: very clean and efficient. Everything would be just fine if it weren’t for you and your constant meddling.”

He put on a smug grin for the camera, then concluded:

“You were always one of the smarter ones, Rainbow, but you were never truly wise… so let me give you a word of advice: don’t bite the hoof that feeds you, lest it decide to choke you instead.”

With that, he tightened his grip on the creature’s neck until its bones cracked and its head was severed from its body and fell to the ground.

On board the yacht, my host gazed at the city below as the ship sailed past Candlewick Park. The serenity of the night was shattered by four sailors dragging a stallion to the edge of the ship and thrusting him overboard. As he fell into the bay, his screams quickly faded into the night and were soon masked by the sound of the wind and the gentle hum of the ship’s motor.

Then hoofsteps. It was Goldenstar.

“Pound Cake, after careful consideration I have decided to name you Chief of Security. The title’s previous holder seems to have forgotten that we bribe the MoM agents, not the other way around.”

My host began to shake a little.

“Uhhh…. It’s a great honor, sir,” he said. “But why me?”

“Because trust is important,” Goldenstar replied. “And it will become even more important over the next few months. You see, a storm is coming...”

A lightning bolt flashed in the sky, soon followed by a thunderclap.

“Whoa, you can control the weather too?”

“No, you idiot. It’s a metaphor.”

Goldenstar began leading my host towards the door to the ship’s cabin.

“Let me explain it this way: every month for the past ten years, we run dozens of simulations on the ORACLE, to predict future market conditions and identify opportunities for investment. In other words, we use a supercomputer to try to predict the future. Most of the long-term geopolitical simulations end in disaster, and we get this result consistently. We thought it was highly likely that the war would go red-hot, with the megaspells being deployed and everything getting destroyed, so the board and I decided to prepare for it...”

“What about Stable-Tec?” Pound Cake asked. “Their Stables are going to save us, right?”

“Well... ” Goldenstar began hesitantly. “That’s what they say. But, as one of the largest shareholders in Stable-Tec, I pressured them into divulging some secrets about their operation that they would never tell the public. Let’s just say that most of the stables aren’t going to be saving anypony.”

Pound Cake was shaken by this remark.

“Then, if Stable-Tec won’t save us, who will?”

“That’s the issue here. We predict that many ponies will survive the blasts, with or without Stable-Tec’s help. They will all be starving, homeless, sick, desperate, and afraid. The government will not help them; it’s far too corrupt and top-heavy already, and if the capital gets hit, the rest will become fragmented and collapse within a matter of weeks... especially if the Princesses are lost.”

Pound Cake shuddered at the thought.

They had stopped right before the door. Goldenstar opened it and they went in. Pound Cake was temporarily blinded by the light emanating from within, which seemed bright at first but wasn’t actually much brighter than the lights on the ship’s deck. As his eyes adjusted he began to see a long oak table with several velvet chairs on each side and at both ends, suitable for conducting business meetings or serving meals. Tonight it did the latter, featuring a meal which fell far short of a proper banquet but was considerably larger and more luxurious than anything the typical family would eat. Its smell was a testament to its quality, a mix of flavors which I suppose nopony except the most experienced gourmand could accurately described. The main course appeared to be some sort of rare bird.

“That’s where Project Phoenix comes in: GFS will bail Equestria out as it has so many times before,” Goldenstar continued. “We’ve nearly bankrupted ourselves stockpiling supplies, building an army, and planning. But by Celestia, it was worth it.”

Only a third of the seats had guests. They all stood up and made shallow bows. Goldenstar gestured for them to sit down and began making his way to three empty seats at the head of the table, beckoning Pound Cake to follow.

“Earlier this month, my contacts informed me that the Zebra high command was starting to lose hope and began debating you-know-what with the Caesar. At that point we knew it was all over. We later learned the exact date and times.”

Goldenstar sat down at the end of the table and motioned for Pound Cake to sit at the seat on his left. Goldenstar turned towards the

“How much time do we have left?”

A small equine figure in a black cloak slithered in from the shadows. It was a short, skinny winged pony, with a coat as green as the unicorn’s eyes, and eyes a golden yellow, almost identical to the yellow of the unicorn’s coat. It pulled a small golden stopwatch out of its pocket, which it proceeded to read.

“Precisssely sssix hoursss, fifty-five minutesss, and twenty-one secondsss,” replied the winged pony in a slithery, serpentine voice.

“Excellent,” said the Goldenstar. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this.”

“And ssssso have we,” said the winged pony.

I could feel the confusion on my host’s face.

“Oh, right,” Goldenstar said. “Pound Cake, this is Sheguai.”

“Bu-but isn’t he a--?” Pound Cake sputtered.

“A chollima? Yes, yes he is,” Goldenstar replied.

“But we’re at war!” Pound Cake blurted out.

“Not for much longer!” said one of the guests at the table.

“After tomorrow, none of those old world political squabbles will matter,” Goldenstar said. “Tomorrow, we turn a new leaf, and all prior transgressions will be forgiven.”

“To the unity of our two lands!” cried another guest, raising a glass.

“To unity!” the guests said, and raised their glasses for a toast. Pound Cake raised his reluctantly.

“To Goldenssstar,” said the hooded pony. “Or, should I sssay, Lord Goldenssstar.”

Goldenstar chuckled.

“It’s too soon for that right now. Although, I suppose it isn’t too early for me to begin wearing this.”

From his pocket, he produced an arrowhead shaped amulet made of grey steel. In its center, a red diamond-shaped gem glistened in the faint light, and its shaft was a black unicorn’s head with tiny, angry red eyes. The great black and red wings which flanked the head on both sides only made it look even more menacing.

“Yes,” Goldenstar continued, pausing so he could don the amulet. As soon as he did so, his jade green eyes flashed with the same crimson hue as the amulet.

“To me!”

The next hour or so passed by in the blink of an eye. Bright lights and colors danced before my eyes as Pound’s vision became a blur. Sounds also became a muddled mess and the only distinct noises were laughing and the clinking of glasses and silverware. The next thing I knew, my host was outside again, lurching towards the prow of the ship. He bent over and almost vomited over the side, but something suddenly clicked and he no longer felt nauseous.

Then he just stared into the distant night for a while and brooded. The ship was now far away from the city, rendering the land below into a blanket of darkness, crumpled at points to denote rolling hills and ridges. The sky above was cloudless and featured a tapestry of constellations surrounding a waning crescent moon. The scene was calm, serene, and… almost too good to be real.

“I may not be the brightest tool in the shed, but somethin’s up,” Pound Cake brooded. “Those squinty-eyed pegasi across the sea who sided with the fucking zebras… an’ my boss is doin’ business with ‘em?”

He still held a glass of wine from the party in one hoof. He gently shook it to stir up the wine without spilling any, then watched as the blood-like substance swirled around in the glass, gradually losing its momentum until it barely moved.

“Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should let bygones be bygones, hold hooves and sing Kumbaya just like Twilight did at that school of hers...”

Then he picked up the glass and threw it on the ground, where it shattered into countless fragments.

“Damnit! I didn’t lose half my squad to those traitors for nothin’! Goldenstar might trust those fuckers, but when they backstab him just like they’ve backstabbed everypony else, I’ll say, ‘I told you so!’”

He looked down at the broken remains of the glass. The stem and the base had remained in tact. Pound Cake swung back his hoof and kicked it flying across the deck like a soccer ball, until it hit the cabin and shattered. Pound Cake gave a smug smirk at this accomplishment.

“And in the meantime, I won’t ever let them forget what they did… ‘Cause war… war never changes.”

Author's Note

~~I'm planning on rewriting this chapter soon. It will hopefully add more context to the rest of the story. Although he seems kind of superfluous, he will gradually become more and more important, and the first half of the story is just building up to when Silver finally meets him in person.~~
The chapter has been rewritten. I have also removed the 'introduction,' since it's just fluff that doesn't really contribute to the plot. We already know about the unchanging nature of war and don't need another soliloquy about it.

Chapter 2: Things That go 'Bump' in the Night

Chapter 2: Things That Go ‘Bump’ In The Night

“Monsters are real, ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.”

Wednesday, September 3rd, 4347

Dear Diary,

Today was a bit more exciting than yesterday. It all started off with this really weird nightmare I had, where I was dreaming that I woke up around one or two o’clock in the morning and I went down the hall to get a glass of water, even though the faucet in our bathroom works perfectly fine.

I opened the door to room 237, but instead of another hotel room I found a grand gilded ballroom, filled with tables and chairs and set up for a party, but completely devoid of any guests. There was, however, a bar, which I started walking towards. Aside from the echoes of my own hoofsteps, the only sound in the room was a soft jazz song playing from one of those old-timey phonographs.

When I reached the bar, I slumped down into a stool and buried my face in my hooves for a while. When I brought my face back up again, I saw—of all things—a unicorn bartender standing behind the counter.

“Ummm…. Hiiiii,” I said in an awkward attempt to break the ice. I looked around the room to see if any other ponies had mysteriously appeared out of thin air, but the two of us were alone. I turned back to face the bartender and asked, “A little slow tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, miss Silver,” he replied.

How did he know my name? I pinched myself and, feeling nothing, was reassured that it was all just a dream.

The bartender stepped forward and spread his forehooves on the counter, then asked, “What’ll it be?”

“I’m awfully glad you asked me that,” I replied, “Hair of the dog that bit me. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Certainly, ma’am,” said the bartender, and he set about to preparing the drink.

“Good pony,” I said congratulatorially. “You set ‘em up and I’ll knock ‘em back, one by one.”

The bartender set the drink down on the counter in front of me. I looked closely at the drink, sniffed it, then gave it a small sip to see if it was actually bourbon. It was.

“How much?” I asked as I took out my wallet. A moth literally flew out of it and I frowned heavily.

The bartender held out a forehoof in a stopping motion. “No charge to you, miss Silver. Orders from the house.”

“Sweet,” I said, and, being the kind of pony who never passes up a free drink, I downed the whole thing in one long gulp.

Setting the empty glass back down on the counter, something suddenly clicked in my head.

“Wait—” I asked the bartender as he reached back for the bottle, “You’re not going to card me either?”

“Your identity’s no good here,” he replied, pouring the bourbon, and passing the glass back to me.

I gazed into the glass for a while, trying to comprehend what he just said. Then I looked back up at the bartender’s face and asked,

“So, what do they call you around you here?”

“Grady, sir,” replied the bartender. “Lloyd Grady.”

I took a sip of bourbon, then proceeded to ask,

“You a married stallion, Mr. Grady?”

“Yes ma’am.” Said Grady. “I have a wife and three daughters, ma’am.”

“Interesting,” I replied. Then after another sip, I asked, “Where are they now?”

“Oh, they’re somewhere around the lodge,” said Grady. “I’m not quite sure at the moment, ma’am.”

I looked at my Pipbuck and noticed that the little clock in the corner of its screen read 4:20 A.M.

“I uh…. Have to go,” I said, getting up. “Maybe I’ll see them around.”

“Take care, miss Silver,” said Grady. “And have a good night’s sleep.”

Upon leaving the unnaturally calm room 237, I felt a bit more relaxed in the darker hallway, although this feeling wouldn’t last for long. The hallway was somewhat cold, which was reasonable for a hotel like this in the mountains. I got halfway down to our room when I stopped and saw three fillies—an orange pegasus, a yellow earth pony, and a white unicorn—all about the same height and age, wearing matching blue dresses. They stood in a line blocking the hallway and they stared at me blankly. The one on the left, the pegasus, looked like a younger version of…

“…Scootaloo?” I asked, perplexed.

“Hello, Silvie,” the three fillies said in unison. “Come play with us.”

“Forever…” added the unicorn.

“…And ever…” added the earth pony.

“…And ever!” said the Scootaloo-like pegasus.

It was at this point that I awoke with a scream. And believe me, I never scream. Only if something is really, really scary will you ever hear me scream. And sweating all over, too!
Needless to say, I stayed awake until the crack of dawn, jumping at every sound and clutching my combat shotgun for dear life.

Grapevine was the next pony to wake up. She woke up around 5:30 or so, with a drowsy, “Hey, Sugarcube,” followed by a yawn that lasted the better part of a minute. Then, after wiping the sand out of her eyes, she began jumping around like she’d just had seven cups of coffee. Dmitry was awoken by Grapevine’s jumping around and tried to go back to sleep, but the ever-cheerful Grapevine ripped the two of us out of bed.

“Grapevine, can’t you let us go back to bed?” asked Dmitry. “The sun won’t be up for at least another hour.”

“Ah know, but ah’m a mornin’ pony!” she whined. “And besides, doesn’t Siler Bullet here wanna get on the road as soon as possible?”

“Only if we can see where we’re going,” I responded. Then I gave a great big yawn.

“Why were ya up so early then?” Grapevine asked.

“I had a nightmare, I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “Did either of you happen to have any… weird dreams?”

“Well, now that ah think of it,” said Grapevine, “Ah had this weird dream that ah was explorin’ a never-endin’ hedge maze.”

“And I had a dream that I was sitting in front of a typewriter, but couldn’t think of what to write,” said Dmitry. “But it wasn’t just your ordinary writer’s block—it went on for hours and hours and hours…”

“And what about you?” Grapevine asked me. “What did YOU dream about?”

“I had a dream…” I began, “That I was alone in a big ballroom with this bartender who gave me free booze.”

“And how old are you?” asked Grapevine.

“Seventeen,” answered Dmitry. “I helped plan her birthday party back in the stable.”

“Do ya normally dream about these kinds of things?” she asked me.

“No,” I replied.

“Ooookie dokie lokie,” she said. “Maybe we all ate something last night...”

“Like the mystery meat?” asked Dmitry.

“Yeah, like the mystery meat,” said Grapevine. “Or maybe it was laced with somethin’.”

Since it was still too early to hit the road, we returned to the kitchen to get some breakfast. And sure enough, there was a pot on the stove, and a meal already prepared for us.

“Spaghetti?” Dmitry asked, looking at the pot’s contents. “Spaghetti… for breakfast?”

“Hey, it’s free food,” I said. “This is the last hot meal we can expect for a while guys, so we might as well eat it now.”

“But what about all the weird dreams we had last night?” asked Dmitry. “What does our resident chemist have to say about it?”

“Well,…” said Grapevine, “Given that most effects of benzodiazepines subside within the first twelve hours after consumption, we shouldn’t get any bad dreams from this stuff if we eat it now.”

“I don’t understand any of what you just said, but I’ll take your word for it,” said Dmitry.

We grabbed plates and began eating.

“Still, it isn’t ours,” said Dmitry. “Somepony else made it, and they might come back.”

“Yer complainin’ about this now, after all that stuff we looted from the Stable?” Grapevine asked.

“It wasn’t looting!” said Dmitry defensively. “We were merely borrowing it.”

“How can ya ‘borrow’ seven boxes of Fancy Bucks’ Snack Cakes?” asked Grapevine.

“We would have eaten them regardless of whether we left the stable or not,” said Dmitry. “And besides, you took almost as many as I did!”

“Guys, shhhhhh!” I hissed. “There’s somepony coming.”

They shut up. We heard a door being thrown open and heavy hoofsteps plodding through the dining hall. We crawled behind a counter as the intruder approached. Then he barged into the kitchen, revealing himself to be a thick, beefy unicorn stallion covered in blood and dressed, literally, like a barbarian from a movie or a comic book. He levitated a rusty shotgun in front of him. I could smell him from behind the counter, and I thought I even heard a few flies buzzing, as if he hadn’t bathed since the apocalypse… or earlier.

“When I find you, I’m gonna eat your spleen!” he said in a gravelly, hoarse voice.

“Actually, there’s three of us,” said Grapevine, loud enough for him to hear us. Before I could stick a hoof in her mouth to keep her from saying any more, the raider corrected himself, saying,

“When I find you guys, I’m gonna eat your spleens!”

“Awww, can’t you leave some for us?” whined a hoarse mare’s voice from the dining hall.

Two more barbarian ponies, equally as dirty and blood-stained entered, a unicorn mare levitating a rusty desert eagle pistol and an earth pony stallion wielding a giant battle axe in his mouth. The axe looked comically large and almost unreal, in a size and style you could only find at a comic con.

“When we find you guys,” the first stallion corrected himself, “we’re gonna eat your spleens!”

As the barbarians stalked towards the counter, we crawled behind another counter further away, and when they stalked towards that one, we crawled for a third. When they reached that one, we had no more counters to escape to, so we just ran for the door.

“Let’s split up!” I suggested when we got back to the lobby of the hotel, and so we did. I headed up the stairs to the second floor and down a corridor, and soon found myself being chased by the axe pony.

Unfortunately, the corridor didn’t give me any corners I could lay an ambush from, so when I reached the end I was trapped with no way out. There was a stairwell, mind you, but the windows were all boarded up and some sadist had carefully glued a cascade of thumbtacks down the entirety of the staircase. I contemplated sliding down the rail, but a hoarse “You like the sight of your own blood?” rapidly brought me to the conclusion that I didn’t have time.

Instead, I ducked into one of the hotel rooms and locked myself in the bathroom, hoping the raider would just give up and go away. He didn’t. Instead, he rapped his hoof against the door.

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in!” said the raider, with what I could only imagine was the most psychotic of smiles.

“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!” I replied, then added, “Or for my damned fetlocks, for that matter.”

“Then I’ll huff,” said the axe pony, “And I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”

Then he began to swing his battle axe at the door. Despite my initial impressions, the axe was actually very effective, and had broken a huge hole in the door after only a couple of swings.

Either that, or the pony was just really strong.

Then the pony stuck his head through the door, mile-wide grin and all, and said,

“Heeeere’s Redrum!”

Then craned his neck downward to undo the door lock with his mouth. However, I was prepared. I grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from my saddlebag and fired it at his skull, point-blank.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!” he yelled, stumbling backward.

I stuck my gun through the hole in the door and shot him a few times more. When I was sure he was dead, I unlocked the door and looted the body before going back to find my friends.

I found them back in the lobby, Dmitry and Grapevine were already waiting for me, having saved themselves through their quick thinking and ingenuity: Dmitry got the shotgun stallion caught in a bear trap that was lying in a hallway for some reason, and Grapevine blew the mare to pieces with a grenade. The three of us then decided we should leave the lodge immediately before anything else happened.

The rest of the day wasn’t nearly as exciting: just hiking, hiking, and more hiking. I think the weather was just a little bit warmer and clearer than yesterday, but there was still no sun. After lunch, my companions started arguing over whether raiding our stable’s pharmacy for combat drugs was really necessary, with Grapevine insisting that it was and Dmitry remaining skeptical. They went at it for at least half an hour before I made them both shut up.

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about the weather, mainly Dmitry and I naming off various locations across Equestria and the Crystal Empire, and Grapevine calculating the temperature at which merely stepping outside of one’s home would turn you into an ice block.

Then I said, “Tartarus,” to which she replied, “When it freezes over,” giving us all a good laugh.

Then Dmitry asked if she thought Tartarus was already frozen over, and Grapevine replied, “Hmmm… nah,” then tried to lecture us on the thermodynamics of volcanoes. Then Dmitry cut her off and said,

“But wouldn’t it be great if it did? Then that would eliminate the risk of any of its inmates ever getting out.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Grapevine. “It might be kinda nice if we had a fireball-spewing centaur to keep us warm.”

Dmitry laughed. “Not if he insists on enslaving everypony. I’d much rather have a pet phoenix.”

They then spent the next hour debating whether a phoenix or a dragon would make a better pet, with Dmitry arguing for the phoenix and Grapevine for the dragon. This time the argument was playful and more subdued, and ended with an agreement that the question of which would make a better pet depends on whether the owner needs a speedy mail delivery system or has a horde of gems that they don’t want to be eaten.

By evening, we finally reached the edge of the forest, and found a village along the highway where we could spend the night. Strangely, the village was entirely deserted, which was disappointing, but not as disappointing as being unable to find food in any of the houses. We resorted to eating some of our own food, microwaveable mac and cheese that we had to cook in a fireplace because none of the houses had working electricity anymore. The good thing is that we can now spend the night in a nice little cottage free from blood stains, dream-altering foods cooked by ghost chefs, and sadistic barbarian ponies.

I’m just about done with this entry and ready to hit the hay. Once Grapevine finishes praying to ‘Corey Powell,’ then we can blow out the candles and go to bed.

Level up!

Level 2: Stable Neophyte

Thief: ‘Good Natured?’ Horseapples! You know how to steal things and when to do it. It’s almost as if the blood of a thief runs in your veins! You gain an immediate +5 bonus to the ‘Sneak’ and ‘Lockpick’ skills.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2