Two, fucking days I stumbled through that desert. It passed faster than I thought, because the next thing I knew I was being shouted at by somepony. I didn't give a shit, shoot me if you want. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. Serious dehydration can make a pony cocky.
I tripped over a rock and landed muzzle first in the hot sand.

"Stay there! Do not move a hoof!" the voice called out. I don't give half a bloatfly's ass about what you say you fuck. I would've said it too, if I could move my mouth in anyway. Lack of water had made my mouth sticky and dry, and the flesh stuck together.
A shadow fell over me as the pony continued yelling warning to me as he tied up my legs and muzzle. Heh, no point in doing my mouth, can't move it anyway you shithead.
Sadly, the opportunity for witty repartee was rudely cut off as I blacked out.

=====

I woke up in an old, comfortably worn bed. Something warm was laying next to me, I turned to see another pony - I guessed they were a stallion by the musculature and build - laying down on the bed with me, one leg draped over my body.
I recoiled from the strange, turquoise pony. Rattling my shackles and causing a guard pony to come bursting into the room, gun raised with his telekinesis. The blue stallion woke up a little slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before picking up his glasses from the side table and perching them on his face.

"Good morning! how are you today?" His joyful cadence unsettled me, nopony in the wasteland should be that Luna-damned happy.

"I'm, uhh, good. I guess"
He bounced around the small grey room for a moment before stopping and saying something to the guard, who promptly left the room.

"I'm Wishful Pearl! Nice to meet you." He shook my hoof vigorously before dashing over to a machine tucked into the corner of the room and mumbling under his breath.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"Oh, well I'm not supposed to tell you." Wishful bit his lip "But I don't think that it makes much difference anyway. I'm running some tests on you." Again with the huge smile.

"Why?"

"You were super dehydrated when Thunderstrike and Mole brought you in. The doctor was gonna look at you, but you started having a seizure before she could get to you. So you got put in my care." The machine emitted a loud DING. "Aaand that should be the test results!" Wishful Pearl bounded over to the machine.

"Oh my." his body drooped as he turned to face me. "Oh sweet Celestia..."

"What is it?" bright blue stallion trotted over to me with a grim look on his face, the print out from the machine held in his mouth. I studied the graph, but couldn't make sense of the squiggly red line. What I could understand was the X-Ray of an earth pony skeleton with a large dark mass in the chest of said pony.

"That's me, isn't it?" Pearl nodded solemnly. "What the fuck is it?"

"That's just it, I have no idea. My guess at this point is some form of cancerous tumor, but if it was, you should be dead. Unless it's taint, which could be considered a form of cancer is my theory is correct. And if it is taint, then it would confirm my other theory about sunshine and rainbows." the energetic stallion was beginning to ramble.

"Ok, stop. What are we gonna do about this?" I cut him off mid sentence.

"I'm gonna have to take you the doctor."

"That won't be necessary Pearl." a stern, mare's voice called from the door. I turned and saw a pink unicorn with a white mane in a lab coat slowly walking towards me, her horn glowing bright white.

"This is going to hurt." she said before her horn glowed brighter and I felt a tugging sensation in my chest. Looking down, I could see the scabs on my chest enveloped in the same white glow as the mare's horn.

"OH FUCK CELESTIA THAT HURTS WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!" I screamed as my chest was forced open with magic. The mare leaned in close to peer through my ribs. Why was something ticking?

"That is a most interesting development." she said.

"Oh, wow! Your heart is all metal and funny looking!" Pearl exclaimed.
Now you may know how hardy earth ponies can be, but even we can't put up with having our chests ripped open for the purposes of medical examination. In other words, I fainted.

=====

I woke up to the sounds of gunfire. I jerked up reflexively, I did NOT want to get shot today. I looked down at my chest, it had been sewn back together and was beginning to scab up nicely.
But that still didn't change the fact that I was shackled to the bed. Fuck.

A pony burst in through the door, his brown coat was covered in gore, a massive grin was plastered on his face. Basically, he was a raider. A raider with a large rusty cleaver in his mouth. And then there was me, chained to a bed. Double fuck.

The raider ran straight at me, giggling from behind the handle of the cleaver. As he came within my reach I lashed out with my hind hooves, bucking him square in the jaw. Yeah, that wasn't supposed to bend like that. The raider fell to the floor, twitching as blood gushed out of his mouth. I reached out and began to inch the cleaver closer to me, inch by painfully slow inch. GAH! Why couldn't I have been a unicorn?

Finally, I managed to get the cleaver in my mouth, and I began hacking at the chains connecting me to the bed. On the fourth chop, they broke. I looked over the raider for anything I could use, then turned to the rest of the room when I saw that he had nothing but bare rags on his body. Nothing else in here but some clipboards and other scientific stuff that I didn't get.

Gripping the cleaver firmly in my mouth I headed out the door. I followed the creaky wood corridor outside, where a huge battle raged. From what I could see, a large band of raiders had decided to attack this place, and the local townsponies were trying to fight them off. And losing. Bodies littered the streets, and blood soaked the rough yellow sand.

Another raider rushed me, though this one was easier to deal with now that I had a weapon and full use of my hooves. I blocked his attack with a shove to his chest, then stepped in close to hack at his throat with the cleaver.

"And stay down." I said as I dropped a hoof down into his skull. I needed a better weapon. I looked around, and saw a building that looked sturdier than the others, its exterior covered in armour plates. There was a large group of ponies resting behind sandbags on it's roof sniping any raider who came into their sights. From personal experience I concluded that that was either the armoury, or where they kept the drugs. Maybe both. I trotted out into the open and shouted around the cleaver.

"Hey I'm friendly, don't shoot!" They did, once anyway. "Celestia! Don't you ponies have ears?" I yelled back, not having anything to shoot back with myself. Fortunately they decided not to shoot again, realising that I wasn't out to kill them. A group of ten or so raiders decided to swarm the street I was on at that very moment, preventing me from trying to get a gun from the townsponies.

Bullets whizzed past me as I ran straight towards the raiders. My skill with a cleaver wasn't very good, but I'll be damned if I'm going down without a fight. I smashed into the first raider with my entire body. I stomped a hoof into his face, putting him down permanently.

Next came a unicorn mare hovering two long serrated blades in her telekinesis. I spun around and kicked one of the knives out of her magical grasp before turning back to face her and jutting my head in close to chop one of her legs, dropping her to the ground.

Before I could finish her, two green ponies jumped me. Both of them were wielding sharpened shovels in their mouths. Well, one was slightly sharpened, the other was extremely dull. I had to back up a few steps to get a hoofhold with them. I ducked beneath ones swipe and pushed into the side of his body, forcing his shovel into his twin's throat, who promptly fell down with long streams of blood spurting from the fresh wound. I pushed the other pony to the ground and swung my cleaver into his head with such force that it lodged in his skull.

Picking up the sharper of the two shovels I continued on to the next raider in line. Sadly, his head exploded in a fine red mist. I grinned a little, the locals were covering me. I turned to a pony with a bolt action rifle strapped to his battle saddle. He died quickly as I decapitated him with my shovel. I was about to continue on to the next raider when I felt something jump onto my back. I turned my head to see a small blue foal biting at my mane, trying to beat me into submission with his hooves. I almost chuckled at the comedy.

"AH FUCK!" I screamed as I felt knives in my back, the little fucker had blades attached to his hooves. I flipped and landed on my back, crushing him with my weight. The death of the foal weighed on my mind, but before I could think about it too much a hot bullet streaked across my flank. I looked for the shooter, a unicorn mare floating a small arsenal of pistols around her. Something about her seemed more intelligent than the rest of the raiders. I could see the lucidity in her eyes. Her armour was a patchwork of a blue fabric and dark leather.
We locked eyes for a moment. Then she brought the full might of her pistol battery down on me.

Bullets streaked through and past me, causing blood to fly through the air and patter across the sand. I dropped to my knees, unable to hold myself up anymore. The world was starting to fade away. At least my last sight was going to be a decent looking mare.

Suddenly I felt strength coursing through my veins, holey as they were. I rose back to my hooves, a new sense of determination inside of me. I stomped on the handle of a knife laying on the ground, flicking it up into the air. I spun and bucked it with my hind hooves, sending it spinning towards my well armed adversary.
The knife landed point first in her flank. She screamed profanities at me, some of which I'd never even heard before. Luna-eclipsing orgasms? What?

She turned around and ran back down the street while returning fire blindly with her pistols. Shit, why could nothing ever be easy? I dove behind a building as bullets pierced my side, more blood flowing from my body. I waited a moment, and when the sounds of gunfire had stopped I walked back out into the street.

Bodies were everywhere. The raiders that I had charged were all in one cluster. Most of the others were scattered about, having spread out to provide more targets for the snipers on the roof. I walked back down the blood soaked sand to the armoured building.

"Gonna let me in now?" I asked "Or are you gonna shoot me for helping you out?" The ponies muttered among themselves for a few minutes before that turquoise stallion bounced out from the door.

"Oh, I'm SO glad that you're alive!" He beamed at me, hugging me close. "But not for very much longer if I don't patch you up." He frowned, then pulled two purple healing potions from his saddle bags. I popped the corks and gulped the contents down.

"Thanks. Wishful Pearl, right?" I asked, already feeling my body return to a healthy state.

"Yuppers! Glad to help, always happy to help somepony who helps Crossway." He smiled uncannily at me. I gave a half attempted smile back. More ponies came out of the building, mostly mares and foals, but a few stallions were in the mix as well. Damn, there were not many ponies left after that raider attack. Ok, I was assuming at their previous numbers, but thirteen ponies, most of whom are foals? Yeah, no that's not really enough for a stable community. The armed guards began to loot the bodies of the raiders. I was tired from blood loss.

"Got a place I can crash?" I asked Wishful Pearl. He nodded and led me inside the armoured safe house. There were ammo crates everywhere. But Pearl simply pulled open a trap door and walked down the stairs. Below the safe house was a fairly large room filled with cots. A kitchen peeked in through a serving window, and it looked like there was some kind of tunnel in one of the walls.
I just flopped onto one of the cots and fell asleep in seconds.

Author's Note

Level up!
You are now level 3
Perk gained: Little Leaguer: '+5 [(Melee Weapons) OR Unarmed, Explosives]. Mastery: 5 extra points in each of these skills.