Fallout: Equestria - Sunny Days and Lonely Nights

Chapters

Chapter 1: Baltimare
Chapter 2: The Wall
Chapter 3: City Scum
Chapter 4: The Wandering Doctor
Chapter 5: High School of the Dead
Chapter 6: Unraveling
Prologue: It Ain't Sunny in Equestria

Chapter 1: Baltimare

Chapter One: Baltimare

“The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.’”

The noise from the rotary blades was unbearable. We may have all been safely — in relative terms — locked up inside the cabin of this Griffonchaser and secure from the howling wind outside, but the sheer amount of noise emanating from those damn blades had only been lessened by an obscenely small amount. The walls were only paper thin, so even when the slavers closed up the hatch and gave the all-go to the pilot for take off, the noise tore into my ears and forced me to fold them back against the sides of my head. I would have used my hooves to shield my ears instead, but when you’ve got those same hooves cuffed to a long metal bar underneath your seat things were made a little more difficult.

That was about twenty minutes ago, though, and by now my ears had gotten used to the noise. Well, for the most part. I still kept them pinned against my head, but at least it didn’t feel like both of my eardrums were going to rupture into a rather painful display of an angry ear volcano. I had more time to look over to my right and in front of me and get a good look at the other captives who happened to be joining me on this unpleasant ride off to the middle of Luna-knows where.

Off to my right sat Estoc, a dark brown bat pony who happened to be my partner-in-crime back before these slavers got us. He’s pretty average sized for a stallion, certainly larger than me given that I’m pretty small compared to most mares. He appeared to catch my gaze as he shifted his blue wings uncomfortably against his sides, wings that matched the colors of his mane and tail. Did he think I was looking at his cutiemark? I’ve seen that yellow crescent moon and white feather many times before, and trust me, I’ve got no interest in biting it right now given that we’ve got bigger problems at the moment.

The two ponies sitting across from us were a pale green stallion and a deep blue mare, both earth ponies with similarly colored grey manes. If I’d hazard a guess those two might be siblings, but judging by the steely stare that these slavers kept giving the lot of us I wasn’t very inclined to ask. I don’t even know if those two would have even responded given that they were quivering on their bench. Their cuffs jingled against the bar underneath their seat more so from their shaky hooves than the turbulence from the Griffonchaser. I almost felt kinda bad for them, if they weren’t incessantly staring at me.

Alright, so I look a little different than a normal bat pony. I have red irises instead of yellow, so what? I’ve got the mane and tail to match my purple wings and it’s not like my coat color clashed horribly with everything else. It was grey, for fucks sake.

“Hey, pilot, when’re we landing?”

I snapped my head over to one of the slavers riding with us, a fairly large griffon who carried a hunting rifle with a scope on top. He had had his talons draping over the seat back of the pilot who was in front of him.

The pilot looked back at him. “What, gettin’ a lil’ sick there, pal?”

“Shut up and answer the question.”

The griffon did look a little green around the gills. Whaddya know, a griffon who gets airsick? That’s ironic. I couldn’t help but snicker to myself a little bit.

“What do you think you’re laughing at, rat?”

Oh, he heard that. Can he really blame me, though?

“Need a bag?” I wiped the smirk off of my face, but it didn’t seem like my mouth was done just yet. “You’re starting to look like the stallion over there.”

Next thing I knew I felt my head slammed up against the wall of the Griffonchaser and the griffon’s stupid mouse claws digging into my jaw. Oh, wow, I couldn’t see straight. It looked as if he had grown another pair of eyes all of the sudden.

“I’d suggest you stop flapping your lips, lil’ rat, or I’ll shove this gun barrel so far up your ass you’ll start seeing stars.”

I blinked a few times. “At least I’ll get more out of it than if you shoved your tiny, knotted dick into me.”

“Sunny, shut your-” Estoc whispered over my way, but he was too late as I felt my head connecting with the wall of the Griffonchaser again. Damn, I think that one was harder than the first time. Forget about the gun barrel, this guy was doing an awesome job slamming my head against the wall.

“Ay, cool it back there!” The pilot was looking back at us. “You can ‘ave your fun wit’ ‘er later, aight? We’re o’er the cemetery now so shut your fuckin’ mouth an’ sit down.”

Even after the griffon had let go of my jaw, I still felt the stinging pain that followed from his talons digging into my skin. I shook my head in an effort to dull the pain and caught Estoc staring at me. He was giving me one of those annoying, judging stares that made me feel like an idiot. You know, the whole narrowed eyes and flat lips deal.

“What?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “One of these days your mouth is going to get you killed, you know that?”

“I dunno, it’s helped me out a few times as well.” I bounced my eyebrows to emphasize my point.

Estoc looked like he was about the respond, but another griffon sitting on the other side of him grabbed onto his mane and yanked his head back. “Mister pilot said shut yer fuckin’ mouth, so shut it.”

The entire Griffonchaser lurched when it touched down, nearly knocking me off of my seat. That was a bit of a rough landing, but at least the rotary blades were winding down enough so that it didn’t feel as if we were stuck in the middle of a fucking monsoon.

“Lower the hatch!”

What fun. Looks like it’s time to unload the precious cargo.

The hatch at the back of the Griffonchaser clicked, unlocking itself before it started gradually descending with a whirring noise that clashed horribly with the still-rotating Griffonchaser blades outside. I couldn’t see much beyond the hatch, just that we sure were sitting in the middle of a cemetery judging by all of the crumbling and cracked headstones that lay outside.

Seems like it wasn’t going to be long before I saw the rest of the outside, though, with the griffon who slammed my head against the wall earlier unlocking the cuffs that kept me strapped to the steel bar underneath my seat. Estoc and the other two ponies were having their cuffs taken off as well, then we were all hauled onto our hooves and shoved out of the Griffonchaser.

Quite literally.

I was the last one out, but before I could even take one step onto the hatch leading down into the cemetery, the griffon behind me decided to give me a good push. He laughed as I tumbled down into the deadened grass. Fucking prick.

The pilot walked up next to the griffon, holding up a bag in his talons.

“Now then, you all’ve been gathered here today to take part in quite the momentous occasion. Ya see, while we do all call ourselves slavers because we round all you lil’ buggers up and wait ‘round for you to be picked up for a purty penny, some of you get to be lucky! Instead of gettin’ one a those nasty collars fastened to y’all’s scrawny necks, you get to play a lil’ game with us big boys.”

The pilot tossed the bag at our hooves and out spilled several pistols along with their magazines. At the same time all of the remaining slavers on the Griffonchaser pointed their guns at us, so we didn’t dare reach for the bag.

“Y’all ever ‘eard of ‘cat’n’mouse?’ Well, think of us as the cats while y’all are the mice, and you’ve got a big ‘ol arena for yourselves to play in before we get back. There’s lots of fun lil’ toys and ponies for yourselves to get ahold of, so I’d suggest digging in before we get back an’ hopefully you’ll prove to be some interesting sport. Fuck knows it’s been purty boring ‘round here.”

While the rest of the slavers cracked up again, the pilot disappeared back into the Griffonchaser. Moments later the hatch whirred to life once again. So we were really part of some kind of sick and twisted game for these slavers. What else could it possibly be?

“Have fun in Baltimare, lil’ ponies!”

“We’ll be seeing each other again real soon.”

I growled at the Griffonchaser as it lifted off from the long, brown grass of the cemetery. The wind from its blades whipped our manes back and forth and kicked up so much dust that we were forced to look away lest we risk trying something akin to acupuncture on our eyes. As much as I would have prefered to glare that those damn slavers as they took off, they’re not the last thing that I would have wanted to see forever.

With the Griffonchaser flying back the way it came, the four of us were now alone in the middle of this graveyard. Headstones rose up out of the ground in all directions until they rubbed up against the walls that marked the edge of the cemetery. There were gazebos placed here and there that were entirely overgrown by weeds and shrubbery, giving the entire garden quite the eerie and abandoned kind of look. I felt the urge to check each of the stones, just in case my name might have already been written on one of them.

The cemetery was just the beginning, though. Beyond the walls, crumbling high-rises reached up for the sky, the buildings dull and grey to match the unending clouds that continuously rolled overhead. None of them were quite as tall as the high-rises from the Manehatten Ruins, but they no less looked ready to topple over if you so much as sneezed in their general direction.

Further still was a long, lumbering wall that seemed to span the entire outer perimeter of the city, and no matter where we turned our heads the wall was still there. Large guns mounted on turrets rose up periodically over the wall, making it feel like instead of being placed into some kind of arena that we were shoved into an internment camp. Whether those guns still worked and were used to keep us fliers from escaping I had no idea, but I still couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of claustrophobia shiver down my spine.

“Hey, you gonna hog all of the guns there or are you gonna throw one to one of us?”

I snapped myself out of my trance to look over at the mare. She looked at me warily while the pistols were still at my hooves, as if she thought I was gonna pick these up and run off with them. I mean, that’s not a bad idea, these two look like they’d never be able to hit the nearest tombstone with one of these things so it’d probably be best to leave them here for the slavers. Still, four of us against those slavers is better than two.

Even so…

I picked up one of the pistols, a 10mm, and loaded it with its magazine. “Do you two even know how to use one of these things?”

“Well enough.”

“So if I just pointed at you and…” I put the pistol in my mouth and pointed it at the stallion. “...pulmm thm triggm, yoom knwm wha happn?”

Oh ho! Look at those two raising their hooves like they actually thought I was going to shoot them. Yeah, right.

I tossed the 10mm over to the stallion and he successfully caught it in his mouth. “That’s good enough for me. Let’s get your little marefriend hooked up with one, too, and we’ll head out, yeah?”

Estoc already had a .45 pistol holstered on his back leg in a holster he always carried around. He tossed me a loaded .44 revolver, which I put in my own hind leg holster, then tossed over the 9mm to the mare. She caught it in her mouth before looking over at her brother.

The way those two looked at each other with those pistols still in their mouth felt very off putting. In fact, Estoc and I, like the fucking dumbasses that we are, had our weapons holstered already while these two had their pistols pointing directly at us and looked as if they had no intention of lowering them. Smooth move.

“We’ll be taking your guns as well.”

I’m gonna kill that mare. You know, we’re right in the middle of a city with Luna-knows what lurking in it, and these two are already stripping weapons off of other ponies. What the hell was I expecting? We’re still in the Wasteland, just with a bit more desperation added to the mix.

“You guys sure you really want to be doing this?” Estoc asked. I had no words for these two, instead the edges of my lips curling into a growl. “You dunno what’s out there, but I can guarantee you that there’s going to be more bullshit than rainbows.”

“Just shut up and gives us the guns,” the mare said. Yup, I’m going to kill her. “We don’t care what’s out there, but if we’ve got your guns then that means we’ve got a better chance than you two and that’s all that matters. Better you freaks than us.”

Oh, nice. It’s because we’re bat ponies. “Is it the eyes? It’s the eyes, isn’t it?”

The mare pointed her gun at me. Wonderful. “How many times do I have to say it? SHUT UP! Give us your fucking guns, we’re not going to ask again.”

“Ten caps says you will.”

The mare pointed the gun at my hooves and fired, causing the bullet to bury itself into the dirt with a puff of dust. I jumped back because, you know, just in case it ricocheted.

“Fucking cunt.” I pulled the revolver out of my holster and tossed it at the stallion’s hooves. Estoc did the same with his .45, then the two of us took a step back. Better to keep putting some more distance on ourselves if those two really did have plans to kill both of us.

“Why’d you stop? Keep backing away,” the stallion said to us, nodding his head like he was emphasizing his point.

Estoc had stopped backing up. Fucking help me, Luna. I tried to catch his gaze by shaking my head at him, but he appeared to be much too focused on the stallion.

“How far do you think you’ll get?” Estoc challenged. “It’s almost dark and none of us have any idea of what’s out there. You think you two are going to do better on your own than taking us with you?”

“We’ll do far better!” the mare replied, switching back to pointing her gun at my partner. “You really think that the two of us would want some bat ponies following us around as we try to look for a way out?”

I shook my head. “Seriously, is it the eyes? There’s nothing that we can do about that.”

“Sunny, will you shut up, please?”

Well, fuck you, too, Estoc.

The mare snorted. “No, it’s not the eyes! Well, that’s partly it, but what’s to stop one of you from ripping into our necks and draining us dry? You really think we want to risk something like that?”

Here we go. We haven’t heard that one before. Next thing you know they’re going to be lacing their bullets with garlic next time we run into them.

I had opened my mouth to give yet another witty reply, but Estoc beat me to it, “Really? You know what? How about you keep those guns. You’ll have a better chance of one of them misfiring and launching the bullet through your tiny-ass, mud pony heads. Think of it as a good luck gift.”

The mare sneered at Estoc before both she and her brother picked up the pistols that we had thrown at them and started backing up. On the far side of the cemetery was a bit of wall that had crumbled away, revealing the streets that lay just beyond it, and it looks like that was their exit. It was the quickest way to get to downtown compared to the stone arches that marked the actual entrance behind us.

I’m going to take a guess here. As soon as those two are a good distance away from me and Estoc, they’re going to break into a little run for their lives.

“Just be grateful that they didn’t shoot us as soon as they grabbed those guns,” I heard Estoc say, but my eyes were still fixed on the retreating siblings.

“Grateful my fucking ass, those little fucksticks took our guns! You have any idea what’s out there? Because I sure fucking don’t, and if there’s one thing you learn out in the Wastes really quickly it’s that having a gun… No, you know what? You’re not a dumbass yet, so you know how great guns are.”

“Yeah? And I also know dumb luck when I see it.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped forward. Those two siblings were still backing away towards the crumbling wall a bit too slowly for my liking, so might as well speed them up.

“Alright, I gave ya enough of a head start! You’d better start running fast because guess what? I HAVE WINGS!”

Hopping into the air with a mighty powerful flap of my wings surely did the job. Both of those mud ponies jumped several feet into the air before high-tailing it towards the hole in the wall. They didn’t even manage to get a shot off at me before fight-or-flight kicked in, and who would have guessed that as soon as something more than a bat mare caught off guard would send them running with their tail between their legs?

Once those two were long gone through the broken wall, I landed back down next to Estoc with a big ‘ol grin on my face. It always felt good to send a few dumb ponies running as if they’d just seen a whole heard of Hellhounds charging straight for them.

“You know, I wonder about you sometimes,” Estoc said.

“Huh?”

“While those two were running for their lives, you could have dove on one of them, knocked them out, and took their guns. Instead you chose to float there and laugh at them like you were playing some kinda game.”

“And what happens when the other one turns around and shoots me? Hm?”

Estoc chuckled at me. “I wouldn’t have been far behind you.”

“Then why didn’t you do anything?”

“And ruin letting you listen to yourself be clever?”

This was getting ridiculous. I hated that damn smile on his face. I hated the way he looked at me. The way he was so amused by riling me up the way he does. I have no idea how he does it, but I wanted to wipe that stupid grin off of his face. We have better things to do than bantering back and forth here in the middle of this cemetery.

“Is that all?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Well, also for the fact that if they did happen to turn around and shoot at us, we’d probably drop faster than you do after you’ve been taking it up the ass for an hour.”

Okay, that’s it, wise guy. I swung my hoof against Estoc’s face as hard as I could, hearing a satisfying clap when my hoof connected with his cheek. He hardly stumbled back and my hoof stung, but I feel like I had delivered quite the appropriate message. I hope. He was still grinning at me while rubbing his cheek.

“‘little bit too much?” Estoc asked me.

“Ya think?” I felt my nose scrunching up as I glared at him. “And you’re the one telling me to shut up.”

“While you were flailing your lips when we had those guns trained on us, I was only getting under your skin.”

“Yeah, ‘only.’”

I rolled my eyes and started off towards the actual entrance to the cemetery. The path leading down to the moderately sized archways wound its way between rows upon rows of headstones, each headstone looking unique to the one that sat next to it. Most of them were covered in brown moss or overgrown and totally covered by the grass or weeds surrounding them. For the very few that I did see that weren’t obscured by shrubbery, the names written on the stones were almost entirely illegible. It’s not easy to preserve these things when there’s no one around who actually wants to do the work.

This place was a little eerie, I’m not going to lie. Estoc and I passed by a statue of a pony rearing up onto his hind legs. He was dressed in some of the most ornate armor that I had ever seen. I could make out all of the little details of his chest plate even though the statue itself was covered in dirt and grime. Tiny runes were inscribed over the armor and seemed to wrap around underneath his armor only to come back around over his shoulders and end at the star protruding from his chest. He carried a spear in his mouth and held it high.

The statues laying all around the Manehatten Ruins looked nothing like this one. Most of them depicted ponies with or without guns, but from what I’ve seen, there hasn’t been one carrying a spear and wearing metal armor.

I stared at the statue as Estoc walked passed me, and I asked, “I thought most ponies used guns by the time the whole Great War thing was going on?”

“They did.”

“Then why’s this guy holding up a spear like some kinda fanatic?”

Estoc stepped up next to me, looking at the statue as well. “I read somewhere about these guys called ‘Royal Guard’ who wore more ‘traditional’ armor and whatnot. This could be one of them, although why he’s in a cemetery is beyond me. Maybe he was important?”

My eyes had long since drifted from the statue of the armored pony in front of us, instead scanning around the cemetery until they landed on an obelisk that lay further down the pathway. The obelisk stood much taller than any of the headstones and other armored pony statues inside of the cemetery. The very tip top of it had come off, now laying next to the base, but at least it still stood out from practically everything else in the cemetery being that it was so tall. I’m thinking that you could probably see this obelisk from outside of this place, too.

“Hey, don’t you think we should get moving?” Estoc called out as I was making my way over to the obelisk. “It’s getting dark out and we’re going to need to find some shelter.”

“Hold on a sec.”

Yes, well, since the time we were kicked out of that Griffonchaser it’s gotten much darker. Estoc and I might have been bat ponies and can see in the dark better than most, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything out there that couldn’t see in the dark as well. Even so, this obelisk here currently held my attention. I could see the inscriptions on the stonework from where Estoc was still standing as well as the plaque that was mounted at the base. I just couldn’t resist. Stuff like this piqued my batty curiosity.

The plaque read, “In the memory of Commander Macintosh, the citizens of Baltimare erect this obelisk to commemorate him on his defense of our glorious leader, Princess Celestia. We honor the sacrifice he made to all of ponykind. He will forever be in our hearts and souls.”

I slowly looked up from the plaque at the inscriptions written on the sides of the obelisk. “AJB3ST120NGS1S” was written on two sides while “May hostilities subside so that the skies can be free once again” was written on the other two sides.

“Satisfied?” I heard Estoc ask behind me. “Or are you going to keep staring at that thing until the slavers come back?”

“If it’ll get you to stop whining then yeah, let’s get going. It’s just another monument for a dead war hero.”

Although there was something off about it. You don’t see very many monuments made for dead guys laying around cemeteries unless the dead guy happened to be buried there, too. This Macintosh guy, though? If you’ve done remotely even a little traveling around the Wasteland you would have heard of his name or seen one of the monuments made for him. Kinda strange, if you ask me.

We trotted the rest of the way down to the large archways marking the entrance to the cemetery. They looked like the barbican to a castle of sorts, but the black gates that had once barred its entrance were completely blow open, making it quite easy for us to step out onto the street.

“Would you look at that,” Estoc breathed.

The street itself had fractures running through the asphalt while the sidewalks on either side accommodated the sickly weeds which sprouted up between their cracks. Broken street lights lined the edges of the sidewalks. Not a single light fixture emitting any kind of light despite the darkening sky overhead. In fact, from this cemetery I couldn’t see any kinds of lights that were coming from the city.

The buildings themselves looked to all be in very sorry states of decays. In front of us was what looked like a laundromat, but many of the machines inside had been either torn apart entirely or were completely covered with bullet holes. Most of the glass had been shattered out, and the sign hanging over the store that said “Laundromat” was missing several of the letters from it. The “n” in particular was lying in front of the door.

However, what Estoc was referring to were the skeletal pony bodies lying outside of the laundromat, as well as several other buildings. While the bodies weren’t literally covering the streets and sidewalks, there were more than enough to make these first steps out into Baltimore to feel like this was only an extension of the cemetery.

“Looks like not too many of ‘em strayed away from the cemetery,” he added, stepping across the street towards a pony who was clutching a fire hydrant.

I followed after him, although my eyes drifted over to the bones of another pony lying against a streetlamp. “What’s the use of hanging around here once the slavers have left?”

“Desperation maybe.”

I snorted. The pony lying up against the streetlamp had what looked like a weathered teddy bear wrapped up in their hooves. That doesn’t seem normal for a slave to be carrying around with them.

“What, desperate to see if the slavers will take them back and fit them with those nasty-ass collars?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Stupidity always seems to surprise me, I guess.”

Estoc looked like he was ready to turn on me, but before he could swing fully around he stopped dead in his tracks. I heard them before I even saw his ears perk. The soft clip-clop of hooves on hardened asphalt. These weren’t the same kind of hooves that you’d hear from a pony moseying on down the street, steady and even. Maybe even a little methodical. No. These hoofsteps were the same kind that you might hear from somepony who was shambling along. Uneven, labored, heavy.

Turning our heads towards the corner of a building located only five hundred feet away, we were just in time to see five ghouls hobble onto the same street as us. They were pony in shape, but that was it. Depending on which one you looked at they were missing large chunks of their flesh, their manes or tails, their coats, their eyes, pieces of their jaw, and the list goes on. Let’s just say that if you’ve seen a decaying, animated corpse before, it probably looked like what the two of us were gaping at right now.

“Let’s start running,” I squeaked.

Before the first of the zombies could let out one of their blood curdling howls, Estoc and I were already spinning around on our hooves and galloping down the street. Without any weapons of our own, going up against a bunch of zombies would have been a very, very stupid idea. You shoot those things in the head and it isn’t guaranteed that they’ll go down. What the hell would hooves do against that? Tickle them?

Unfortunately the zombies appeared to be much better at sprinting compared to their eerie stumbling. In seconds the small mob gave chase after us. Their hooves exploded into a roar of clip-clops, clashing with the guttural, howling cries they uttered like a bunch of wild dogs who had picked up the scent of a freshly wounded animal. I glanced behind me to see their rotting bodies gradually catching up to us. Holy shit these things were fast.

“We need to get onto a roof!” I shouted.

Estoc already spread open his wings alongside mine, and with a powerful flap the two of us took off into the air. We landed on top of a steeply sloped roof of a run-down chiropractor, our hooves dislodging several roof tiles and causing us to stumble. Luckily none of the zombies appeared to know how to jump up onto the roof with us, but we couldn’t just stay here and try to remain out of sight of them. What, you think that zombies would simply stop trying to chase us because they can’t see us anymore? Pfft.

We took off along the roof, more tiles snapping off under our hooves. The zombies continued to chase after us, fully intent on seeing us as some kind of meal for them to eat. Or to simply kill. Probably just simply to kill.

“Sunny, look!” Estoc called back to me, drawing my attention from looking over our shoulders. Ahead of us was a hole gouged out into the side of an apartment complex, allowing us to swoop inside once we cross the wide street between it and the row of roof tops we ran on top of. “C’mon, we’ll fly across and lose them in there!”

As we reached the last rooftop before our flight towards the apartment complex, a chunk of shingles snapped out from under one of my hind hooves. I lost my balance, tripping over onto my side before rolling off of the eave of the roof. I threw one of my hooves out for Estoc to take, seeing him twisting around to reach for me before I fell down to the street, but he was far too late. I landed right onto my back.

Ouch.

The wind was clearly knocked out of me, but I had bigger problems than that. One of those zombies was already on top of me, trampling me as he attempted to pull himself to a stop. I felt his hoof slam into my gut, forcing me to yelp painfully. Another zombied brought herself to a halt on my side, sliding almost, before she lunged at my foreleg and tore into my skin with her teeth.

With another yelp I kicked my hind legs upwarps, smashing them into the side of the zombie’s face with a loud crunch. Her teeth were promptly and agonizingly ripped from my foreleg, with some of my own fur with it, but at least she was off of me. Another zombie was already lunging at me, though, once again in an effort to bite me and this time for my neck.

Before the ghoul could effectively sink his teeth into my neck, however, Estoc slammed down onto the his head and drove it into the ground. His face exploded into a bloody display of fireworks, coating both myself and Estoc’s belly and legs in blood and brain matter.

“Get up!” he yelled at me, grabbing my hoof. Instantly he had me back on my hooves again and pushed me towards the entrance of the building I had just fallen down in front of. All of the windows were boarded up, but the single door leading inside was slightly ajar.

“We need to get inside now, Sunny! One zombie’s down, but there’s still four more and only two of us. Let’s go!”

“Fuck you, I know what I’m doing!” I screamed back at him before throwing myself through the door. By the looks of it, we had just locked ourselves in a convenience store.

I spun around just in time to see Estoc zip into the store behind me and shut the door. He slammed his body weight up against it with only seconds to spare before the door was met with a very rough ram from one of the zombies on the otherside.

Estoc pointed over at one of the empty aisles of shelves. “Grab one of those and bring it over here. I can’t stand here all day and hold this damn door closed!”

The door lurched a second time as the ghoul rammed into it again.

“Alright, quit complaining and give me a sec!” I shouted back at him.

The closest empty shelf was only a few feet away from us. As I grabbed it with both of my forehooves to pull it from the aisle, however, the whole thing pitifully scooted less than five inches.

“What the hell’s wrong?” Estoc asked, grunting as the zombie impacted the door a third time. “Too heavy for you?”

“No,” I groaned in reply, dragging the shelves another measly few inches. “I can handle myself just fine!”

“We can switch roles.”

“You really want lil’ ‘ol me to stand there and hold the door closed?” My ears flopped back as soon as the ghoul rammed against the door again, this time splintering the door frame. Estoc winced. “My point exactly. Now hold that fucking door closed!”

Pulling these shelves over to the door was a damn chore, but once I was close enough from Estoc that he could reach out and grab one end, I hopped around to the other side and pushed. Between our combined efforts, the shelves slid into place in front of the door, only to visibly shake when the zombie headbutted the door yet again.

Estoc leaned against the shelves. “Help me hold it in place!”

THUMP

I pushed myself up against the shelves as well. “You really think this is gonna work!?”

THUMP

“You got any better ideas?”

“I wouldn’t be fucking asking if I did now, would I?”

THUMP

Estoc and I jerked against the shelves as the door frame splintered again.

~~~

After about an hour of guttural howls, wood splintering and splitting, and a bunch of sore shoulders, Estoc and I sat behind the counter of the convenience store towards the back. The zombie ramming it’s head into the door finally gave up when his head exploded. Blood and more brain matter covered the outside of the door, or at least what we could see from one of the cracks in the door that the stupid monster lay behind. Luckily that appeared to be the cue for the other zombies to fuck off being that we didn’t hear their heavy, labored breathing anymore.

We had spent the better part of the next hour scouring this whole convenience store for supplies, but surprise surprise. There was hardly anything that we could scavenge. Baked beans, a lead pipe that we ripped from the bathroom sink, and some old paper towels from the bathroom that Estoc was using to try to clean my bite wound.

It looked nasty. That zombie had really gotten his teeth deep into my skin, but neither of us were skilled enough with injuries to do anything but try to clean it with some towels. The bite mark burned a little bit whenever Estoc touched it, but beyond that it was only the look that was the nasty part.

“I think I should start calling you Twinkle Hooves,” Estoc muttered, smirking to himself.

“Oh, look who’s trying to be the funny guy.”

“It’s fitting considering how you let those two ponies slip away and then fell off of a roof into a pack of ghouls.”

“Did you see how old those damn shingles were!?” I felt my nose scrunching up into a menacing glare.

Estoc shook his head and touched me on the nose. He touched me on the fucking nose! I tried to bite him in retaliation, but he pulled his hoof away.

“I made it just fine, it was you who slipped,” he said.

“You weakened them. You were in the lead, dipshit!”

“Someone had to be.” He rolled up the last dirty paper towel into a ball and tossed it into the corner of the store where a bunch of other paper balls were already settled. He picked up the can of beans, then, and started glancing over the faded print stuck to the side of it. “We need a plan to get out of here.”

I looked down at the bite mark again. Well, that was as good as it was going to get for now.

“How much do you wanna bet that there’s a reason why all of those turrets on that massive wall are still intact?”

“I’ve got ten caps that says there is one.” Estoc put down the can of beans between the two of us. “And I’ve got another ten caps saying that it’s for keeping ponies like you and me in.”

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously. Only questions is is how does that work? Are there slavers operating those things?”

“Could be. Then again, who knows when it comes to pre-war tech?”

I grabbed the can of beans and and tore the lid open by sticking my fang through the aluminum top and twisting. It popped off easily enough, and after a quick check there didn’t seem to be any sort of fleshy substance hiding away in this can. Safe enough to eat.

I put the can up to my lips and used my tongue to slurp up a mouthful of beans. “I think we should go check it out.”

Estoc gave me one of those doubtful looks. “You want us to walk up to one of those turrets with a lead pipe? What if there are slavers watching that thing?”

“We’re only going to take a look.” I slurped up another portion of the beans, then gave over the rest of Estoc. He grabbed the can gratefully before downing the rest in one big gulp. “It’s not like we have to walk right up to one of those things and poke around inside of it to see if it’ll go bang.”

“And if there doesn’t appear to be any of those slavers operating the turrets?” Estoc asked as he tossed the can into the pile of paper towels.

“Then it looks like we might have our way out of here.”

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Flight (Rank 1) - You can lift yourself off the ground and drift by at a slow pace. You’re a fucking embarrassment to the Enclave, soldier!

Chapter 2: The Wall

Chapter 2: The Wall

“If I am an angel, paint me with black wings.”

“Now that’s a big gun,” Estoc whistled.

Estoc and I hid ourselves on top of a two story condominium complex located just several blocks away from the massive wall, from what we could tell anyways, encasing the city. The wall itself was gigantic, able to tower over the twelve story apartment complex that was butted right up next to it. It must have had at least another two or three stories on the apartments, its grey, lumbering face overshadowing the red brick which made up the majority of the building. Who the hell would have wanted to live on the side that was squashed up against several metric fuck-tons of concrete? Unless there was only one side of the complex that was built with windows.

More importantly, however, was the large gun mounted on a turret atop of the wall. A single long barrel was attached to some kind of circular metal construct that could swivel itself around in any direction. Several wires hung over the side of the wall, glinting from sparks beading off of the wire tips as they still remained attached to the underside of the metal dome.

“That gun is somehow being powered by something in the city,” I said. “Look at the sparks coming from those wires.”

Estoc shook his head. “Does it still work, though? If those wires have been disconnected, there’s a good chance the gun is either malfunctioning or doesn’t work entirely.”

“Some disconnected wires doesn’t mean shit. For all we know those wires could have been the safeties to those guns. Whoever worked on it thought it better to disable the safety with a bit of brute force rather than manually.”

“Good point.”

I stepped to the edge of the condo’s roof and unfurled my wings. Walking to these condos had taken the better part of an hour since we had to take a detour to avoid the same ghouls we ran into earlier. During the hours that we were holed up in the convenience store they had wandered several blocks towards the wall, effectively blocking our route. We didn’t have much of a choice but go around around them, stopping by a ruined coffee shop along the way that was in relatively good shape.

It was strange. As we made our way over to the wall it became more and more apparent that either ponies hadn’t gotten to looting this part of the city or there simply weren’t enough ponies to do the looting. The cash register was still full of pre-war money and in the back room we found cans of beans, dried fruit, pasta, you name it, all of which we stored in some saddlebags that where laying on one of the tables. Even stranger were the gas masks sitting in the back room as well, which we tried on and found that they fit our faces perfectly well.

With our saddlebags loaded with food and the gas masks hooked to the saddlebag straps, we returned to approaching the wall. In addition to the unlooted buildings we came across, the bones of long-dead ponies continued to litter the streets along the way. I uneasily looked at plenty of the skeletons that we passed. In the back of my mind I wasn’t thinking that these were the remains of ponies who had been brought here by the slavers. I might not be some kinda Wasteland surgeon, but it doesn’t take a brainiac to figure out that these ponies look almost as old as decaying ruins around us.

But back to the here and now. The wall. Apartments.

“Let’s sneak over to the apartment complex and climb to the top,” I said, shifting my gaze to the only highrise that stood out among the sea of one and two story buildings.

“You want to leave ourselves exposed in the dead of night while we’re climbing a highrise?” Estoc questioned as he stepped up next to me. “Either we’re flying up to the top of the building or we’re taking the stairs.”

I gritted my teeth. He was right. If we scaled the wall we’d be leaving ourselves exposed for too long in the dead of night. Ghouls might not be able to climb, but can we really make the assumption that ghouls are the only things slithering through these back alleys? No, I wouldn’t. For all we know the complex could be swarming with bloodwings.

“Looks like we’re taking the stairs,” I sighed.

Together we hopped off of the roof of the condos, and with a flap of our wings we landed safely on the ground. The alley we stood in was filled with old, rotting debris that had fallen from the buildings all around us. Bones lay scattered about amid the debris, although from a cursory glance it was difficult to tell whether or not these bones were actually from more ponies or from something else that may or may not have been a Baltimare monster’s meal. I don’t think I wanted to know, either.

It was a straight shot to the apartments once we left the alleyway. Apparently the wall had been built on a large street that ran in front of the highrise, which ultimately led to the front doors of the building opening up to nothing but concrete. There was still a sidewalk laying between the wall and the building leaving the doors accessible, although it appeared to be more practical to enter through the side door from the street.

“Looks like someone had the same idea as we did,” Estoc mused. He gently pushed on the door, causing it swing open with a creak. With a closer look, I saw that the frame had been ripped clean off from the doorknob.

“You go first,” I muttered.

“How noble of you.”

Once Estoc had made his way through the door, I crept in after him. The building was old and dusty, the walls and ceiling all around us rotting away. So much so that if you were to peer into one of the open apartments we passed you could see ceilings that have collapsed in on themselves.

“I’ve got the better hearing out of the two of us,” I protested. “You keep your eyes forward while I’ve got our rear, ‘kay?”

Estoc snickered. “You handle our rear the best.”

“Shut up.”

Ridiculous sarcasm aside, I was glad that Estoc was the one leading us through the complex. Out of the two of us, his eyesight was much better in the dark. Any traps or living, angry things that we’d come across he’d probably see first. Confined to a tight space such as an apartment complex didn’t do well for my hearing, especially when somepony could literally hide behind a door and wait for us to walk through before springing on top of us.

Even so, with my ears twitching about, I would have expected to at least hear something other than the groaning rebar stakes. We slipped through the first floor without hearing anything other than our own baited breaths and soft hooves walking over the rotted carpet. Then the second floor. Then the third floor. It felt as if this complex was just as empty and devoid of anything as the rest of Baltimare appeared to be. Every apartment we looked into was either caved in or totally and absolutely vacant aside from the useless pre-war junk that was lying about.

It wasn’t until we reached the seventh floor of the building did my ears finally twitch at the sound of something bumping around somewhere inside of the complex. It was difficult to tell from inside of the stairwell.

Then came the sound of tiny legs scurrying about further down the hall. I stuck my tongue out in disgust.

“Radroaches.”

Estoc stopped advancing up the stairs, bringing us to a halt. I saw his ears twitching as well as he undoubtedly listened in to the same scurrying I was hearing. “What do you think? A few doors down the hall on the left?”

“Let’s check and find out.”

Estoc and I slid up to the wall of the corridor and inched our way further along. Towards the end of the hall a strip of track lighting had fallen partially from the ceiling and was flickering, lighting up that end of the floor with an inconsistent shower of sparks. Each flicker illuminated the paint that was peeling off of the walls as well as the decrepit paintings that undoubtedly had given this hallway a little flare of decor.

The sparks didn’t throw off the sounds of the radroaches shuffling around several doors away, however. From the amount of noise they were making, something inside of the room must have made them into an excited pack of disgusting, irritating critters.

We slid up to the partially opened door which the radroaches were hiding behind and instantly we scrunched our noses in disgust. The rancid smell of decaying flesh wafted from just inside of the room. Something in there had died, and it must have died pretty recently, too.

Estoc took a deep breath and pushed himself in the room. My ears flicked back as I heard all of the radroaches within the room go scampering off to different corners. Must be a bunch of hidey holes that they could use if they weren’t all trying to swarm out the front door.

“Hey Sunny, c’mere and take a look at this.”

I poked my head inside the room and instantly regretted it. There, lying in the middle of the floor right underneath a ceiling that had caved in on itself, were four ponies, all of which were shriveled up like prunes. Their eyes had since fallen out of their eye sockets while the radroaches and flies were having a total field day with their skin, making them look even more grotesque than a ghoul.

“Can you warn me first?” I croaked, swallowing hard.

“Calm down, look.” Estoc stepped closer to the bodies and kneeled down. “Look at their skin. They’re all nearly hairless and pale. They’ve had the blood sucked out of them.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic. Radroaches suck blood now.”

I pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside to get a better look. The rubble from the collapsed ceiling had been cleared away to underneath the window on the far side of the room. In fact, whatever furniture or junk that had been left within the room was pushed up against the walls of the apartment, pretty much opening up a large space for the bodies to be piled into.

Estoc grabbed one of the bodies and pulled it from the pile. “Radroaches don’t suck blood. They’ve been busy gnawing away at the skin if you can’t tell. They’ve left some sizable holes here and-”

“Why not tell me what they have on them rather than what’s eating them?” I asked through gritted teeth. Right now I had every intention of staying in this room just long enough so we could search these bodies.

I grabbed another one of the bodies from the pile, a unicorn who’d had his horn broken off while his hind leg lay buried underneath the other two ponies who were still left. It felt as if I was touching an old, well-used sponge when I gripped on his foreleg and I pulled. Or tried to pull. The stallion’s leg was caught on something underneath the two other ponies in the pile.

Oh, please don’t let his leg be broken.

I pulled again, harder this time, which just happened to be enough to set the leg free and send me careening back onto my flank with a squeak. Looking down at his leg to find out what it was that had caught on the other two ponies, I caught myself staring at a revolver tucked into a leg holster. With a grunt I pushed the unicorn sideways so as to rotate his leg towards me, then pulled the revolver out of the holster and gave it a quick look over. Nothing appeared to be wrong with it. The barrel was dirty and worn, but what wasn’t anymore? The trigger was certainly in working order along with the hammer, and while the grip felt a little greasy it was otherwise alright. I flicked open the cylinder and was pleasantly surprised to find all six rounds still in their chambers. Looked like .44 ammo.

Smiling to myself as I snapped the cylinder back into position, I slid the revolver into my own leg holster and turned the unicorn over to see if there was anything that I could grab off of his body. However, my smile slowly dropped as I spotted two giant holes dug into his side. The holes looked clean. Nothing like bullet holes, especially considering that the two holes didn’t have any blood caked around them.

“Estoc, you were saying something about radroaches not sucking blood?”

Estoc looked up at me the same time I looked up at him.

“These holes aren’t bullet wounds,” he said, his voice trailing off.

“I gathered that.”

“Too wide to be pony teeth, too…”

I growled and stood up. “It was something bigger. Obviously. Hurry up and see if these guys have any other weapons on them, then I suggest that we mosey on up to the top of these apartment as fast as our little legs can carry us.”

While Estoc was busy searching through the rest of the corpses, I spread my wings and flapped up to the second level. Big mistake. As soon as I flew through the collapsed ceiling my nostrils were filled with the the stink of hundreds of rotting, decaying bodies. I gagged and my wings locked up, and if it wasn’t for the momentum propelling myself up to the next floor I probably would have come crashing down right on top of Estoc.

No, instead I slammed onto the eighth floor of the complex and slid to a stop in front of another pile of corpses. I squeaked and scooted myself back seeing as every single one of the bodies was the same as the first four that we already saw. In fact, several of them were in a worse state of decay. Much of the hair from their bodies had fallen off while things like their eyes and tongues had fallen out. These bodies looked nothing more than skeletons with skin stretched over their bodies like some kind of protective coating.

I spun my head around to look at the rest of the stinking room that I sat in and felt my blood run cold. Many of the walls on this level appeared to have been knocked down, revealing more piles of these blood-drained corpses strewn all over the place. Many of the piles varied in size and decomposition, but none of them changed the fact that we were in some kind of den to a blood-sucking monster that preyed on ponies for its meals.

“Estoc, we need to go now,” I whispered, hoping I was just loud enough for him to hear.

Apparently it was enough. Estoc floated up next to me, but stumbled and coughed as soon as the stench of death touched his nostrils. He nearly collapsed on top of me when his hooves touched the floor, but I pressed my hoof against his shoulder to keep him steady while he regained his bearings. In his leg holster I saw that he had managed to scavenge a 9mm pistol from one of the bodies below, which fit awkwardly in his .45 pistol holster.

“What the fuck,” Estoc gagged. His eyes looked as watery as mine felt. “There’re more piles? Did we just walk into a building full of dead, blood-dry ponies who had the same idea as us?”

I let go of Estoc and rushed down the corridor towards the stairwell at a brisk trot. “Probably, but I don’t want to sit around a find out if we’re going to be joining one of those piles. Whatever lives here hasn’t detected us yet, so lets get up to the roof before that changes.”

“Not gonna have us check each individual pile to see if we can find anymore weapons?”

“We don’t have fucking time for that!” I squealed through gritted teeth. “You want to go sifting through some more spongy corpses? Be my guest, Estoc.”

“If these are bodies of the ponies that were set loose by the slavers, there’s a good chance more of them are carrying ammo for us to loot.”

I stopped before I could reach the stairwell and turned around to face Estoc, who had stopped as well to give a cursory glance over towards a pile of blood-dried ponies that was only fifteen feet away from us. “Hm, more ammo or keeping all of the blood that is flowing through my veins? I think I’m going to have to go with-”

A thud from the floor above us stopped me mid-sentence. It sounded like the same thud we heard when we reached the floor below us, and it certainly sounded louder than what any radroach could have made. I don’t think ten or fifteen radroaches have the ability to push over a heavy couch simply because they have the intention of spooking us.

My ears twitched when I heard another thud and I looked up at the ceiling, eyes fixated on the spot where I could have sworn the thump originated from. Estoc looked up with me, and together we tracked whatever the hell was moving around upstairs. From what we could tell, whatever was blundering around had started halfway down the corridor, but with each new thud it was getting closer and closer to our position. It got to the point where it stopped just overhead, and we heard labored, heavy breaths of something that must have been five times our own size. At least.

I slowly unfurled my wings, ready to make use of the open space that had been provided on the our current floor, but then the breaths stopped. The entire apartment complex fell silent yet again so the only sound that rang in my ears was my own heartbeat. I looked over at Estoc uneasily.

“Quietly,” he whispered over to me.

I nodded my head and put my hoof on the stairwell door, but as soon as I pushed it open it released an ear piercing squeal. My blood ran cold and I cringed, waiting for whatever was above us to smash through the ceiling and rip us to shreds. But it didn’t. Even though the door’s squeal must have echoed throughout the entire building, all that was left were the rapid thump-thumps of my own heart pounding within my ears. What luck.

“Phew,” I sighed, taking a step through the door.

A bone shuddering screech ripped through the complex, tearing into my ears and causing me to crash to the floor. My head felt like it was being slowly split open, sharp pangs stabbing at my brain and crushing my eardrums while what was probably the most painful sound in existence reverberated within this fucking building.

The screech came to an abrupt stop, being replaced by the sound of the ceiling exploding into a shower of drywall and dust. I turned my head just in time to see an enormous bat come crashing down onto the same floor behind us. Its wingspan had to be at least as wide as long as the building was, patches of its fur were missing from its body, replaced by enormous, festering burns, and its huge mouth had long rows of jagged, blood sucking teeth.

“Shit!” Estoc shouted, pushing himself up onto his hooves. “Go go go go!”

Although my head still felt like it had been shoved into a trash compactor, I got back onto my hooves and dashed the rest of the way through the door into the stairwell. Estoc was right behind me, making it through the doorway just before the giant bat slammed itself headlong into the wall that surrounded the door itself. The concrete making up the inside of the stairwell visibly cracked from where the bat had hit the wall, prompting me to continue my climb up the stairs to get to the next floor.

Each step shook as the giant bat ploughed its head over and over again against the wall, causing the crack in the concrete to grow larger and larger. Estoc and I tried to climb these stairs as fast as we could, but it wasn’t long until the stairwell below us erupted into an explosion of concrete debris. The bat threw itself after us, screeching yet again before it looked up in our direction. Again we stumbled, but luckily this time the screech wasn’t enough to throw us to the ground, and instead we forced ourselves through the door onto the eleventh floor.

The whole building seemed to rumble and shake as the giant bat forced itself up through the stairwell after us, breaking through the stairs that lay in its way to get onto the same level as us. I looked behind to see it shove its nose through the open doorway. Its jaws snapping together viciously while we sped away down the hall.

“The other stairway’s out!” Estoc shouted.

I spun my head back around to look dead ahead, and sure enough, the stairway on the opposite side of the corridor was totally blocked by rubble from a previous collapse. It was impossible to pass through unless we started digging, and we didn’t exactly have the time for that. The bat smashed its head against the wall, splintering the drywall as it attempted to get continue its pursuit.

An idea popped into my head and I looked over at the windows on the edge of the complex. “Follow me! We’re going to have to fly the rest of the way to the roof!”

“Are you fucking crazy? That thing’s going to have no problem following us!”

I turned towards the windows and broke into a gallop. “You see anywhere to hide up here? I didn’t think so! Now shut up and jump!”

As I approached the windows, I tucked my wings in tight against my sides and lept forward. My head and my shoulder collided with the glass, effectively shattering it into large shards upon impact and releasing me back into the stale Baltimare air. Tempered glass? Aren’t we lucky.

We were definitely eleven stories up. The buildings and roads beneath me looking like nothing other than large doll houses. I could hardly even see the skeletons filling the streets being as they looked more like trash rather than a bunch of pony remains.

But now’s not the time for sightseeing. I spread open my wings and rolled in midair so that I was looking up at the top of the building. It was only a little flight upwards, so with a single powerful pump of my wings I propelled myself up onto the roof and landed pretty heavily on my hooves. I then spun around and whipped out my pistol, keeping my eyes trained on the edge of rooftop. It was pretty barren up here, the roof consisting of vents and air conditioning units all sitting on a flat concrete top. We were just underneath the gun that we were investigating earlier, however, and it was now possible to hear the zaps from the draping wires hanging over the side of the wall.

It wasn’t long until we heard the wall collapse from several floors below us, the giant bat thudding across the eleventh floor and following our trail to the shattered windows. My breaths became more and more labored as I felt my blood running cold, threatening to keep me rooted in place. Its heavy movements still shook the entire building, quickly making my legs feel like they would turn to jello.

When I saw the first of its wings grab onto the edge of the rooftop, I gripped my revolver tighter in mouth and steeled myself when it would raise its ugly head. The concrete scratched underneath its wing thumb, causing the bat to slip and nearly fall before it could get its second wing up onto the roof as well. Then it reared its head, opening its mouth wide to reveal those long rows of jagged teeth again, and giving us a much better view of the its fangs, right before it let loose another agonizing screech. Once again it felt as if needles were boring through my skull and into my brain, forcing me to release a pained yelp through the grip of my revolver.

In the midst of my screech-induced migraine, I caught the giant bat trying to swipe at me and Estoc with one of its massive wings. It was all I could do to leap out of the way, stumbling on my hind hooves and nearly toppling over from my wobbly legs. I still had my gun in my mouth, however, so I wrapped my tongue around the trigger and took aim at the giant bat.

BLAM(blamblam)

BLAM(blam)

Estoc’s 9mm and my revolver unloaded into the giant bat, blood spraying across the concrete rooftop. Another horrible screech pierced our ears as it squealed in pain. Bullets dug themselves into its face and ripped through its wings until it dropped from the side of the apartment complex and vanished totally from view. The whole building shook, and my ears flopped back as I realized that thing had only dropped back down to the eleventh floor with a heavy thud. Given a few more seconds it was stomping around below us until it finally found a corner to lie down in.

“Fuck me, it’s still alive,” Estoc wheezed after he slipped his pistol back into his holster.

I shoved my revolver back into my holster as well. This city’s got a giant, blood-sucking bat that just tried to turn us into its next meal. The irony was not lost on me.

“Sounds like it’s licking its wounds,” I replied, taking several steps back from the edge of the roof.

“It’s only a matter of time before it comes back after us. Although…”

Estoc walked forward until he reached the end of the roof and then peered over the side. Was he really walking to the same spot the giant bat had been in?

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” I hissed at him.

“Didn’t you notice how it didn’t even try to climb onto the roof?” he asked. “It used one of its wing thumbs as a grapple to hold itself in place on the side of the building while it tried swiping at us with its wings.”

“So? What are you suggesting?”

Estoc stepped back from the edge of the roof as a few thuds rumbled from down below. “It had ample opportunities to get up onto the roof after it stunned us with that screech. Instead it just swiped at us, and while it might have some long wings, we only had to leap back a foot to avoid it. Something up here’s got it spooked.”

“This is an… energy turret?” I asked slowly.

“It would explain the disgusting burns covering the bat.”

“So these things are still functional.”

Estoc frowned. “Well, at least one of them has to be.”

I spun around back towards the edge of the roof the giant bat had latched on to. While trying to attack us without climbing onto the roof, one of its wing thumbs must have crushed some of the rooftop edging. Several pieces of concrete lay in a heap next to a gouged out piece of roof edging. Most of the pieces were small, but I spotted one sizable chunk that was at least the size of my head.

Without another word I dashed across the rooftop over to the concrete pile and picked out the largest piece. It was quite heavy, enough to make me grunt as I hoisted it with my forelegs, but as I spread my wings and gave an experimental flap, it was clear that I would be able to lift both myself and this chunk up to the turret.

Estoc muttered something behind me as I took off up towards the turret. I felt a shiver crawl down my spine as I flew closer, the dull hum of the capacitors managing to overpower the erratic sparks emanating from the hanging wires. Now that I was practically next to the turret I saw the wiring that was connecting all of the capacitors and resistors twisted up around the dome into the metal plate on top, vanishing from view. That’s where the tracker must be stored for the turret, although I couldn’t be sure if this particular tracker was used for movement or something else.

Rotating myself around and hoisting the concrete chunk closer to my chest, I took aim at the open air just on the other side of the wall, then threw. It required my whole body rotating almost a hundred and eighty degrees and all of the foreleg muscle that I could possibly manage, but the concrete chunk cleared the wall in a nice arc before falling back towards the ground on the other side. The turret didn’t even move.

Maybe the tracker inside of this turret was broken?

It was a huge risk, but I’d feel fucking ridiculous to turn back now and figure out that the tracker inside of this turret was actually broken. Right here was my chance to float right across the wall separating me between freedom and a turkey shoot, and if a concrete chunk could make it across, so could I. Taking a deep breath and holding my forehooves close to my chest, I slowly started floating across the wall.

Biggest mistake of the night yet.

When I was only a quarter of the way across the wall, the turret itself started rotating to point its gun barrel in my direction. Instantly I flipped myself around and pumped my wings as hard as I could to push myself back into Baltimare. The tracker inside of that thing was definitely still working, it just didn’t track movement!

I banked downwards to fly back towards Estoc, but when I looked back behind me at the turret, the thing nearly had its gun pointed at me and probably wasn’t going to stop rotating until it did.

“Shit shit shit SHIT!” I shouted. “Run! Fucking run!”

Estoc saw the turret turning itself towards me as well and his eyes widened. He turned just as I soared over him and took off, both of us sailing over the apartment rooftop and in the opposite direction of the turret.

As if that did us any good, though.

As soon as it had its gun trained on me, I banked sharply downwards just in time to avoid the searing energy beam that fired from the gun with a deafening roar. The tips of my fur on my back felt a little charred, but luckily instead of vaporizing me, the energy beam tored into a two story shop several blocks away, melting a huge hole in the roof.

I tucked my wings against my body and dive bombed back down towards street level, managing to dodge another shot from the turret and instead send the second energy beam corner of the roof of the apartment complex. The giant bat from inside released a terrible screech, but there were no signs of its pursuit by the time I reached street level and landed next to Estoc.

He looked pissed. His nostrils were flared while his ears were pinned back dangerously against his head. Meanwhile my head felt like it was on file while my legs shook like they were made out of rubber.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Estoc snarled while shoving me back several paces. “You threw a piece of concrete across the wall, and because the turret didn’t shoot it down you thought it was okay to just fly across yourself?”

“Someone had to do it!” I whinnied. “You think we were going to figure out how those turrets work just by sitting on the roof and staring at it while that giant bat was going to heal up?”

“I’m pretty sure that turret is the reason the bat’s covered in burns!”

“Then why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“I did, didn’t I?”

I huffed and stamped my forehoof on the ground. “You said it wasn’t necessarily that turret. If we didn’t test to see if that turret was working, how would we have known that it was dangerous to fly over the wall or not?”

Estoc stomped up to me to glare down at me. “Do you want to go testing each and every turret on the wall to make sure that they’re all still working as they should be?”

I glared back at the asshole, but he did have a point. We couldn’t go around testing every turret to check and see if they were working well enough to stop us from flying over the wall.

“No,” I muttered, looking away, “but now at least we know why the slavers were so confident leaving our wings tied and intact.”

“You’re lucky you still have your wings after that bullshit.”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

Estoc stared long and hard at me, his eyes flicking up and down almost as if he was sizing me up. The corner of my lip started to curl up into a snarl, but he finally turned away and shook his head.

“Yeah, you are,” he grumbled. “If only barely. Next time you come up with some kind of hare-brained idea, why don’t you run it by me first so that we both don’t risk getting instantly vaporized by an enormous energy turret again.”

Before I had a chance to reply, he had already broken into a trot down the street. What was with him? We understood why it was impossible to fly over the wall now, although I wouldn’t like to try that again. Having the tips of the fur on my back seared off by a magical energy turret was good enough for me to understand that we were going to have to figure another way out of this city. Taking these kinds of risks can be stupid, but we’re not going to get anywhere if we try to puzzle every mystery out without any hoofs-on experience.

After what felt like an hour of venturing along the same street, Estoc in the lead while I took up the rear, the shops and businesses that had been all jam-packed together opened up into a battered suburbia. Many of the houses were old and shanty, looking like their ramshackle state dated back from before the megaspells dropped. Many houses had collapsed, while the ones that hadn’t looked as if one simple breeze from a stray gust of wind could knock them over.

It was a nice change of scenery anyways. Along the way, Estoc and I stopped at several promising shops only to find them either locked or mostly looted. It appeared as if we were entering a part of the city where ponies were feeling more brave to scout out these buildings to see what they could find. Now that we were walking among these houses it was more clear to see which ones had been looted while the others that had been barely touched. You could mostly tell because the looted houses usually had their front door smashed open or looked relatively thrashed when you peered inside.

Eventually Estoc led us up to one of the shanty houses that still had its roof intact and pushed the front door open. Being that it was located in the corner of a cul de sac, it wasn’t at all surprising to find the house was still relatively untouched, although lacking in anything inherently useful anyways. A few cans of food that we could store into our saddlebags and a ton of household cleaning and construction supplies that had either expired or didn’t have any use to us at the moment.

As I turned to leave after our rather unfruitful search, Estoc grabbed onto my tail and yanked me back.

“The fuck do you want!” I squeaked, looking back at him.

“Let’s stay here for the rest of the night,” he said, sitting down on his flanks and letting his saddle bags slide off of his back.

“There’s still a bunch of houses we’ve got left to scavenge on this block.”

“We’ll do it in the morning. Look at your legs. They were shaking back at the apartment complex, and now it looks like you can barely stand.”

He was right. Looking down at my legs, they were visibly shaking. Catching sight of them instantly made me collapse to the floor, and I slid my saddlebags off of my back. Oh, it felt so good to lay down and take a rest.

“Alright, fine, let's camp here,” I conceded. “Not like we’re going to find anywhere better than here anyways.”

“We did find a house with a sizable bathtub a few blocks away,” Estoc mused as he moved to put his back up against a wall.

I cocked my eyebrow at him. “With no water to fill it with. Unless you want to make a bet on whether or not these pipes are still working.”

“I know how to make a water filter out of dirt and rocks.”

“I dunno how well that would work considering the dirt could be just as irradiated as the water.”

Estoc rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever, sourbitch. I’ll take first watch, alright? You get some sleep.”

I smirked and stuck my tongue out at him, then rolled over onto my other side and closed my eyes.

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Clever Prancer - Through agility and reflexes, you have become deft at striking where it hurts while preventing your enemies from doing the same. You gain +2% to your critical success chance for attacks, and reduce your opponent's chance to score critical hits by 25%. If wearing light armor or no armor, these bonuses are doubled.

Chapter 3: City Scum

Chapter 3: City Scum

“Insanity is just a synonym for imagination.”

Crackle

“Good morning, Baltimare! Today is day number seventy thousand five hundred and ninety eight since the implementation of the Baltimare Preservation Project!”

I jerked awake with a snort by what sounded like a megaphone blaring into my ear. Sitting up straight, I saw that the first shafts of morning cloudlight penetrated through the tattered curtains that had been left closed for who knows how long. Tiny particles of dust floating up through the air and light shafts, giving more authenticity to the atmosphere of this run-down house.

“Morning routines start now. Don’t forget to take a shower and put a smile on your face for your lovely mayor! Have a wonderful day.”

My ears folded back against the sides of my head in an attempt to drown out that horrible, chipper voice. Slowly I looked from wall to wall and spotted the offending megaphone nestled into the corner of the ceiling on the opposite side of the room. I pulled out my revolver and took aim at the absolutely ridiculous noisemaker, but before I could get a shot off it crackled once again and shut itself off. Asshole.

With a big, chittering yawn, letting the revolver fall out of my mouth and drop to the floor, I rolled over onto my belly and stretched my back out. I heard a few good pops that put quite the satisfactory smile on my face. Oh, I could just fall back to sleep right now. I couldn’t have slept for that long and we were tucked away in the back corner of this cul de sac, so what harm was there?

“You weren’t going to shoot that megaphone with your revolver, were you?”

I squeaked and my eyes shot open, spying Estoc watching me from the entrance to the kitchen. What was he smirking at? He didn’t catch me off guard or anything. I’m still waking up, damn it.

“What about it?” I grumbled after another yawn, sitting up onto my haunches.

“I know how much of a morning pony you are.”

I scrunched my nose up at him. “That thing was loud as fuck! You heard it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, something about another one of those military projects and how the nice mare was wishing you a good morning,” Estoc said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a megaphone built into someone’s house. How’d you like it if there was one of those things installed in your wagon back in the caravan and I woke you up every morning just like that?”

He leaned against the kitchen door. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

My cheeks flushed with heat while the tips of my ears burned. What the hell did he just say to me? I’m trying to prove a point here! Who wants to be woken up by none other than a nagging voice so that they can get their day going? Not that my voice is nagging or anything.

After giving Estoc a brutal stare, I quite intelligently said, “Fuck off,” and turned to look away from him. I can’t be put up by his sarcastic humor right now.

I heard the soft patter of Estoc’s hooves as he stepped closer to me. “Can’t let someone appreciate your constant, grumpy barking for one minute?”

“I appreciate it as much as the stumpy pecker between your legs,” I said, catching him sitting down next to me out of the corner of my eye.

“Shots fired. Lighten up a little bit.”

I sniffed. “I am. I’m making jokes about your dick, or does that not count anymore?”

“Have it your way,” Estoc chuckled. “You want a can? We’ve got plenty.”

I almost told him no, but the sudden pain in my stomach at the mention of food stopped me. Luckily we had picked up more cans on our way to wall and we were well stocked, but then again we’ve got to think about how long we might be stuck here. I doubt zombies and that giant bat eat old pre-war food, but they can’t be the only ones roaming around this city.

While I was busy mulling over our food options, my stomach growled and gave my hunger away. Fucker. Hunger doesn’t matter when we need to conserve food.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Estoc said, getting back up onto his hooves to walk over to his bags.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” I said with a huff.

I moved myself over to the window looking out onto the front lawn of the house while Estoc got us some cans. Tiny, deadened wisps of grass blowed lazily from an early morning breeze, hardly improving the ramshackle look of the house itself. A crooked mailbox sat out near the street, looking ready to blow over and down the sidewalk as soon as the breeze picked up anymore than it already had.

It’s hard to say which I prefered more; the scattered, ruined houses out in the Wasteland or the admittedly more preserved houses inside Baltimare. They all look like they’re ready to collapse, but at least paint still clung to the walls and all of the windows hadn’t been shattered quite yet. It gave Baltimare a little bit more life to it. Well, as much life as there is in a withering old dog who’s on their last limbs before curling up under a bush to die.

“I got you vegetable soup,” Estoc said, setting a can down on the window sill. I didn’t even hear him walk up behind me.

I glanced up at him before popping the can open with my fangs.

“Thanks, Estoc,” he continued, mimicking my voice very poorly. When he failed to get any response out of me other than a casual eye roll, he added, “You think of our next move since you’ve been peering through these blinds?”

Oh. Oops. Yeah, sure…

“G-give me a second to gather all of my thoughts together,” I muttered, digging into my can.

“Ya huh, take all of the time you need.”

I fucking hate him sometimes.

Okay, so, turrets make flying over the wall a no-go. They’re getting power from something in the city. There was that apartment with the working lights, too… A city this big couldn’t be running on a centralized power grid, though, could it? I mean, we didn’t see any power stations on our way to the wall and on our way over here, so it’s possible.

“There’s gotta be some kind of running generator somewhere,” I said quickly after my brief silence. “That turret can’t be the only working turret in the whole city, and you saw how the apartment complex was still getting power, too?”

“The fluorescent lighting, right?”

I nodded my head. “Yeah. There might be a centralized power grid that’s giving power to both the wall and the rest of the city. I mean, what sense would it make for both to be receiving power if they weren’t connected in some way?”

“That means that our next destination’s a power station.”

“If you know where that is, feel free to lead the way.”

Estoc turned around so that he could lean his back up against the wall next to the window. “If we can get our hooves on a city map then I’m sure we’d be able to find it. One problem, though. This power grid’s funneling power to the turrets, right? And the turrets are what keeps ponies like you and me inside of the city, which means that the slavers are going to have their slimey talons clamped down hard on that power station. I don’t know what kind of equipment they have access to, but if they’ve got working Griffonchasers, then I can only assume that they’ve got access to other powerful pre-war tech.”

I grimaced. Estoc’s right. The turrets were half of the slavers’ plan for containment so of course it’d be pretty likely that any power station directing power to them would be well guarded. Worse yet, what if the station isn’t even inside of the city? What if it’s somewhere outside of the wall? It could be that the slaver base where we were loaded onto the Griffonchasers is Baltimare’s central power station.

There was another option, though.

“The Griffonchasers can fly freely over the wall, right?” I confirmed, watching as Estoc slowly lifted his eyebrows. “Couldn’t we steal one of those?”

“Steal a Griffonchaser?” Estoc asked. “You haven’t told me any stories about how you were dropped on the head as a filly. Do you understand how insanely risky that would be?”

I nodded. “Yes. I saw what those slavers were packing when they dropped us off. I’m not saying that we go back and wait for a Griffonchaser right now. We’ve got two pistols between us.”

“And I’m dry on ammo.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t hear you fire off fifteen shots.”

“Only because whoever used it last must have fired the gun himself before he was viciously drained of all of his blood.”

I felt myself grinding my teeth together. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“I figured that I’d find some more ammo while we were out scavenging,” Estoc replied with a shrug, “but nope. All I found was some .308 and more .44 ammo.”

My eyes widened. Oh, that dick.

“You found more .44 ammo and didn’t tell me!?” I complained.

“You were asleep,” Estoc said calmly.

Oh.

“I decided to do some more scavenging and searched through all of the other houses in this cul de sac,” he continued. “Found three more rounds to top off your revolver, the .308 rounds, as well as a gun safe. I didn’t try to crack the safe, though, since I figured that you might want to see inside when we do get it open.”

“You could have woken me up,” I muttered.

Estoc looked like he was about to respond, but something that made his ears twitch caught his attention. He spun around to sit next to me and pulled the drapes out of the way of the window to get a good look outside with me, and that’s when I heard it. Several voices echoed from further off down the street. They were muffled and unintelligible, so it was impossible to discern who it was until they came into view.

And of course they would be raiders. There’s raiders everywhere, don’tcha know?

Two earth ponies and a unicorn wearing blackened, spiked armor came strutting into the cul de sac. The unicorn wore his spiked armor on his shoulders and hind legs, carried what looked like a battle rifle on his back, and had a blade that ran up along the length of his whole horn that I can only imagine was used for impaling other ponies. One of the earth ponies only wore one spiked shoulder pad, but he had armor covering his belly and back hind legs and carried a machete on his side, while the other also wore one spiked shoulder pad and had armor covering all four of his legs. He carried a long spear that looked as if it was just a knife blade attached to a long stick.

The unicorn walked ahead of the two earth ponies, mania emanating clearly through his eyes as he gave the cul de sac a quick glance over. When his eyes started to move towards our house, Estoc and I quickly hid behind the drapes and perked our ears. When our own eyes met, we both cringed and waited for someone to break the dead silence with their voice or gun fire.

“Alrighty, boys!” one of the raiders said in a nasally tone. “We need these ‘ouses searched and we need ‘em searched pronto! Don’ try an’ carry anything, just take inven’try and move on, got it? Yeh? Moe, you get this side and Curly get that side.”

My eyes darted towards the other side of the living room where there was a door leading out into the backyard. Luckily this house was more towards the back of the cul de sac so we had some time to maneuver around these guys.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered, my eyes returning to Estoc.

“Already way ahead of you, filly,” he replied, placing his half eaten can on the ground.

I did the same, and together we gathered up our saddle bags as fast as we could and crept over to the backdoor. With my ears perked, I heard the raider closest to us fumbling around in the house only a few doors down from us. He tossed what sounded like furniture and glass around, probably searching for bullets or anything that shines a little bit to wear around his neck. What fucking vultures.

Estoc lined up behind me when I reached the back door first, so I twisted the handle and pulled. Luckily the squeaks from the old, rusty hinges hardly echoed any louder than a dropped pen, so we shuffled our way out into the backyard and closed the door behind us. The back was in no better condition than the front. Dirt covered most of the ground while old, rotten shrubbery covered the rest, struggling against the cloudy sky and arid landscape to stay alive just a few days longer.

A concrete wall blocked us from crossing into the next house over in the other cul de sac, and we didn’t dare fly over the top in case we were spotted, but on either side of us it was wide open so that we could move into either neighbor’s yard. Of course, being that we didn’t want to stick around here any longer than we absolutely had to, we advanced along the shortest route to get us back out onto the main street and out of this cul de sac.

As we reached the edge of our house we stopped. I stuck my head out around the corner to check the gap between the two houses and the circular, open roundabout ahead. No raiders. We could still hear them rummaging through the houses, but they weren’t out on the street anymore, giving us some freedom to continue on.

The next house did have a fence surrounding it this time. A little gate had been left open with a patch of tall grass growing in the middle of it, so I made a beeline straight for it so as to avoid risking crawling over the fence posts and making some noise. The posts themselves were spread evenly apart to leave little gaps between them, so in the other yard you could see that significantly more dead grass was growing here, replacing the ugly dirt that covered the last house.

At the edge of the gate Estoc and I halted again, craning our necks up to see if we could look into any of the back windows. And we couldn’t. They were either covered by drapes just like the last house or boarded up. All clear then. I took a step through the gate.

CLICK

Next thing I knew, searing pain ripped through my right hind leg and coursed into flank. It felt as if something’s jaws had just clamped down onto me, tearing into my skin and rooting me in place. I couldn’t help it. I let out a shriek before quickly clamping my mouth shut to look back at what had caught me.

A bear trap.

Thick trails of blood trickled from where the rusty teeth of the bear trap had sunk into my leg, running down and soaking the fur around my hoof. A massive rail spike had been driven through the last link in the heavy chain connected to the edge of the trap to keep it rooted in place, but it’s not like it was possible for me to move my leg anyways. Simply yanking on it set more hot, painful flares up along my leg and threatened to make me squeal once again.

Speaking of, Estoc and I took a moment to perk our ears and listen in on the raiders. Dead silence.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” I wheezed, sitting on my flank and grabbing the bear trap’s mouth. “No no no, c’mon.”

“Hold on, lemme do it,” Estoc whispered, sitting down next to me. He placed his hooves on either side of the trap’s mouth, but when he pulled the thing hardly budged. “Shit, open damn it!” He pulled again, but it still refused to open.

“I think we caught somethin!” one of the raiders shouted. “You ‘ear that?”

“Les get ‘em!”

I slapped Estoc’s hooves out of the way and tried pulling at the bear trap’s mouth myself. Still no use.

“Why won’t this thing fucking open!?” I whispered hastily. The more I tried to free my leg from the trap the more it seemed to clamp around it and squeeze. The pain was unbearable. It felt like that thing had managed to drive its teeth so deep into my leg that it was scraping against the bone. Anymore and my leg might actually snap in half.

Estoc shoved one of his hooves into my mouth, prompting me to stop fumbling with the bear trap and stare back at him. He was giving me a hard, conflicted look. Oh, I was not gonna like what he has to say next.

“Stop!” he hissed. “It’s a bear trap. We’re not gonna get that thing opened with our hooves, alright? We need a special tool to decompress the springs.”

I ripped his hoof out of my mouth. “Where are we-”

“From the raiders. They were probably the ones who laid the trap so they know where it is, which means we don’t have much time so don’t protest now. Trust me?”

Do I have much of a choice at this point?

“So long as you don’t saw off my leg,” I said through gritted teeth. My ears flicked as I heard hoofsteps thudding on the concrete out in the middle of the cul de sac.

“You get to keep what’s left of it,” Estoc said as he reached over me and pulled the revolver from my holster. “Remember that safe? I’m gonna go crack it. You sit here and keep them busy until I get back.”

As Estoc placed my revolver behind the fence line in the tall grass just inside of my reach, my eyes went wide and I started shaking my head. He can’t be serious. He’s just going to leave me here? With raiders!

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” I squeaked. “They’re raiders!”

“What is it that you always say? Improvise? Well, here you go, put your talents to the test. And don’t take the revolver out until I give the signal, alright?”

Before I had a chance to ask him “what signal?” he had already flapped his wings and climbed up onto the roof. Just in time, too, because as soon as he was gone, the three raiders came sauntering around the corner, and I was right in their line of sight. All three of them stopped, their mouths curling up into wry, sadistic grins enough to send excessively cold shivers creeping down my spine. Fuck me, I bet they could sum me up into one, three-letter word.

Fun.

“Would’ya lookit that, boys!” the unicorn said, licking his lips. He’s the one with the nazely voice.“We got ourselves a live one skulking about here in the backyards. Forget about takin’ invet’ry, eh?”

“Look at her wings!”

It was just now that I realized that both of my wings were lying spread out on either side of me, totally limp from the pain fuzzing up my head. I quickly retracted them and put my hoof closer to the revolver.

“Uh… Y-you boys care to help me out?” I asked, wincing. “This fucking thing got my leg and as you can probably see, it’s kind of painful.”

“Help ya?” the unicorn repeated, sounding as if he was astonished. He nodded and the two earth ponies started advancing on me. “There’s only certain kinds’a help that we can offer ya, ‘lil pony, and I gotta say... this? This looks outta our league.”

“C’mon, look at me!” I pointed towards my leg, the blood having effectively soaked my entire hind hoof now and coating itself over the trap’s mouth. “You want some kinda payment? Huh? Look, I’ve got some cans here.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out a can of broccoli soup, then tossed it into the dirt between the two earth ponies. They were merely paces away from me now, and looked down at the can before looking back at the unicorn. When he shook his head, they returned their gazes to me and grinned even wider than before. Holy shit, how could they possibly manage that? It looks as if their faces are going to split in two at this point.

Next I pulled out a can of baked beans, then tomato and basil soup, and then a can of peas. Cream corn, chili, potato soup, cream of potato, asparagus, lentils, tomato rice. By the time I pulled out the last of my food, cauliflower cheese, there was quite the pile of cans in between the earth ponies, and yet they still wanted something more. Well, of course they wanted something more, they were raiders. Just gotta keep playing dumb.

“What?” I asked, scrunching my nose up at them. Fucking hell, c’mon Estoc, I know you’ve got to crack a safe, but look what I have to deal with here! “Want something else? Here, take my bags.”

I pulled my saddlebags off of my back and threw them on top of the pile. The entire time I’ve been tossing cans between those two earth ponies, none of them have said a single word. Instead, their eyes locked onto each individual can and watched as I chucked them over. They did the same with the saddlebags, but now that I had nothing left to offer them, they reinvigorated that apprehensive stare that they first gave me. Those damn beady eyes were almost boring through my skull now.

“Looks like yer all outta stuff, bat,” one of the earth ponies said, stepping closer. Now that he was within a leg’s reach, I could smell the mold and dried blood wafting from his armor. “So we’ll just be taken that an’ ‘avin a lil’ fun with you, too. How’s that sound?”

Fun? Alright, I can work with this. I’m fresh meat for these raiders.

“You know,” I started, laying down on my side and splaying my legs out, “if you’re looking for some fun then you’ve come to the right mare. You ever gone on a ride all night ‘till you’re all but dry come morning?”

The other earth pony started chuckling and looked back at the unicorn, who had managed to move closer to the three of us by now. “You listenin’ tuh this? Not even a lil’ fazed.”

“Well then, what’re you waiting for?” the unicorn asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

Next thing I knew, one of the earth ponies drew his machete while the other advanced on me so that he could stand over me. He gave me a quick sneer before kicking me in the right in the ribs, effectively knocking the wind out of me. I coughed and wheezed, my lungs feeling as if they had shrunk down to only a quarter of their original size while I tried to catch my breath again. The pain that had accompanied the kick was quickly overwhelmed by the stabbing agony that persisted from the bear trap, however. My senses returned, which allowed some strength to flow through my muscles.

I tried backing myself out of hooves reach, but he kicked me yet again. Harder this time. I collapsed onto the dirt in a heap, once more totally out of air and hyperventilating like a damn, panicked filly. My ribcage felt bruised, maybe a little cracked, but it was honestly impossible to determine what kinda damage had been done when every struggle I had made to avoid being hit by this guy resulted in the bear trap’s teeth digging themselves more into my leg. I couldn’t help myself anymore. Up until now I hadn’t released even a peep, but now I was left whimpering and curled up on the ground, watching these raiders slowly surrounding me.

“W-wait, c’mon,” I pleaded, one of my hooves digging into the ground and pulling me closer to where Estoc had placed my revolver. “I offered m-myself to you fucks! Take my b-batty ass, but p-please, let me live. Let me k-keep my l-limbs!”

“Oh yeh, you offered,” the unicorn jeered, “and we’re happily gonna took what’s ours. Curly? Why don’t you put her to work, eh?”

The earth pony with the machete, supposedly Curly, nodded his head and stepped over behind me. He kicked me in the other ribcage this time, forcing me back onto my belly with a whine, then plopped himself down right onto my back. He crushed one of my wings, scrunching it up painfully under his legs while he yanked onto my mane with a hoof.

“Oh, she givin’ a bloody blowjob, Larry?” Curly asked while he still had the machete in his mouth. “Moe sure does love ‘em bloody blowjobs.”

“Of course he does,” Larry said, sitting down in front of me. Carefully he peeled off the lids of two of the cans, then dropped the cans themselves onto the ground with a thunk. Their contents spilled out of them completely, soaking the ground and the dead grass as well as splattering everyone with chunky liquid who happened to be within the tiny blast radius.

Then the unicorn started tearing the lids apart, splitting the metal as if his own unicorn magic was being used as some kind of metal-cutting scissors. He didn’t cut the lid up into little pieces, though. Instead, he bent the edges of the lid in different directions so that it looked like some sort of jagged and jank throwing star.

And lastly he levitated both of them in front of my mouth. I felt the sharp edges poke my lips as if they were trying to tease their way between my lips.

“N-no, fuck fuck fuck,” I squealed, twisting my head as much as I could manage to the side. So this is what they mean by ‘bloody blowjob?’ For fuck’s sake.

“Open wide, lil’ bat,” Larry teased, jabbing the lids against my cheek.

No, I couldn’t. C’mon, Estoc, where the fuck are you? I’ve been playing this damn game for long enough! I’ve got three raiders all around me, trying to shove some half-ass throwing stars down my throat only so that I could gag on one of their dicks. I don’t wanna slice my throat up, choke on my own blood, die. I don’t want to fucking die, so if you could just-

BOOM

The unicorn’s head suddenly exploded into a shower of blood and brain matter. The two other raiders and me became absolutely soaked by the gruesome goop, aside from a small patch on my cheek where the unicorn had been holding the serrated lids up to my cheek. That is, until a sloppy piece of skin or eyeball or whatever slowly began to drip down towards my chin.

Both raiders turned their head towards the source of the noise, laying eyes on the top of the roof from the house next to us, which forced Curly to let go of my mane. My head slumped back down into the dirt, weakness from both the pain still screaming in my leg and the deafening noise from the gun’s dicharge overtaking my neck’s muscles. Now wasn’t the time to rest, though. I still had a raider on top of me and my revolver was only inches away…

BOOM

Another gunshot erupted from the roof, and this time the earth pony, Moe, nearly had the entirety of his head blown clean off. The bullet buried itself into his shoulder just below the neckline, allowing for his head to almost tear itself from his body right before it came tumbling to the floor next to me. Again, Curly and I were absolutely sprayed by Moe’s blood even before he had a chance to slam against the dirt to the floor.

But that didn’t matter now. I had the revolver in my hoof. I pulled it up to my mouth and twisted myself around underneath Curly, grabbing his attention. He looked down at me, machete in his mouth and wide eyed as myself and the barrel of my gun were staying up back at him. I almost wanted to wonder what was flashing through his mind, although, let’s be honest here, it was probably nothing. A raider who thinks is a slaver.

I pulled the trigger.

BLAM

A massive hole tore itself right through the center of Curly’s face, blowing away his nose, parts of his eyes, the entirety of his mouth, and then it was possible to see the massive exit wound on the other side. The force from the bullet sent him toppling backwards off of me, and also careened the back of my head into the ground. Hard. Harder than when that slaver slammed my head into the side of the Griffonchaser.

It was enough for me to black out.

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Dark Mare - You do extra damage to opposite sex, and extra +5 speech for seduction purposes on other-gender individuals (whose barn door swings that way).

Chapter 4: The Wandering Doctor

Chapter 4: The Wandering Doctor

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

I don’t know which hurt more, my leg or my head. As I felt consciousness slowly returning, the pain that burned both in my leg and in the back of my head returned in full force, coaxing a strangled squeak out of me. Burning, stabbing, tearing; it was all there. All that I needed right now was to fall right into a radioactive puddle of leftover goop from two hundred years ago and my agonizing return to the land of the living would be complete.

Wrestling my eyes open, I found myself staring up at a splintered ceiling. Rays of light still shone through the clouds, allowing me to see the dust floating around within the attic between the large holes that cut into the roof. This certainly wasn’t the same house that I had woken up in earlier. Obviously the holes in the roof were a significant difference, but the air was much closer here, more musty. The color of the ceiling was different, too. Brown instead of a dirty white like the other place.

Still, pain. Pain was taking precedence here. With a groan I propped myself up with my forehooves and looked down at my leg. The ache festering in the back of my head certainly didn’t like that, causing myself to wince as it felt like I had been hit in the back of head more than once with a sledgehammer. Fortunately, I still retained my consciousness and saw that where the bear trap had snapped around my leg was now crudely wrapped up in a dirty and blood-soaked cloth.

Well, that answers whether or not Estoc finally got the gun safe open.

The cloth hadn’t stopped the bleeding entirely, however. Or, at least, stopped it from getting the couch I was laying on soaked as well. I must have bled for a while longer after my leg was wrapped up as there was a dark stain covering the cushion that my mangled leg was laying on. Everything was dry now, but fuck me, Luna, I bled a lot. Estoc must not have had an easy time getting me out of that trap.

Speaking of which, where was he?

I looked around the room, fighting the throbbing in the back of my head as my growing headache screamed at me to lay back down. The whole house was a complete mess. Piles of rubble lay scattered about the room from where pieces of the ceiling had either collapsed or where furniture had disintegrated. Most of the windows were shattered or heavily cracked and a trail of blood, which was undoubtedly mine, ran from the edge of the couch all of the way to the back door located in the corner of the room. Or from the door to the couch if you wanted to be more precise.

When my eyes finally drifted to a hallway that led further into the house, I spotted Estoc’s saddlebags, his pistol holster with the gun still in it, and a large hunting rifle propped up against the wall. There was also the battle rifle sitting on the floor, although it was in a state of disassembly at the moment, and my saddlebags and revolver were laying next to it.

Smart thinking, buddy. With these two rifles we’re not gonna have to rely on our pistols anymore. So long as we have ammo…

With Estoc still nowhere to be found, I slid myself off of the couch only for my face to meet the floor with a THUD. Oh fuck me, my leg gave out from under me before I could even put any kind of significant pressure on it. Not good.

I dug my hooves into the floor and pulled myself across the dirty carpet over to the scattered pieces of the battle rifle. The stock was scuffed to all hell and was covered by a thin film of dirt, the barrel was caked in black soot, the sights were missing entirely, and the list could go on. All in all, this gun was in very bad shape and it was pretty clear as to why Estoc had taken it apart. Probably trying to clean it or something.

As I picked up the rifle’s stock to take a closer look at the scuffs littered across it, the back door opened. I whipped my head around, my headache protesting quite painfully, and found Estoc pushing himself in with a first-aid kit locked in his mouth. He looked back at me, raising his eyebrows.

“You’ve got the whole “deer in some headlights” stare going on,” he said.

I quickly looked away, going back to inspecting the rifle stock. “No I don’t. Fuck off. You just walked in suddenly. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“And I wasn’t expecting you to be up and about already.” He put the first-aid kit down on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted him looking at my leg. “Have you been able to walk?”

I put the rifle stock back down, although I pointedly continued staring at the rest of the other gun parts lying in front of my hooves. At the mention of walking, the pain in my leg seemed to intensify out of sheer spite, making me wince. Estoc must have seen that, or maybe he noticed my long silence, because the corners of his mouth turned upside down into a frown.

“I tried,” I finally said.

“That bad, huh?”

“What do you think?”

Estoc picked up the first-aid kit again and walked over to me. When he sat himself down, he placed the kit in front of the two of us, but didn’t open it. Instead, he put one hoof on the top of the box before turning to me and giving me a look that clearly meant business.

“While you were out I did some more scavenging and found this,” he said, tapping on the box. “There weren’t any healing potions or salves, but I did find Med-X.”

My eyes darted to the box under his hoof. Something inside of my chest stirred, tightened. I felt cold and overheated at the same time. I licked my lips and smooshed my forehooves into the ground.

“Estoc, you can’t be…” I started.

I squeaked when I felt him touch my shoulder with his own hoof. “Sunny, look at me.” I did, tearing my eyes away from the box. “Your leg’s fucked up right now. You can’t walk, you can barely sit. You’re fidgeting like an anxious filly.”

Now that he mentioned it, my bad leg couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position.

“And I can’t carry you around everywhere, either,” he added. “We need to get on our hooves and keep moving. There has to be more raiders out there and we’re not going to be safe staying in here scrounging around for healing potions for several weeks. I know you have a bad history with Med-X, but you’ll only be taking it until we can find some healing potions, alright?”

Numbness. Euphoria. Nonchalant. No one could possibly forget what taking Med-X felt like, especially not when you’re hooked. Nothing mattered so much anymore. Life was mellow and sweet. Your body and mind are lax, no longer confined to the stress that the Wasteland can present to you on a daily basis. It was like experiencing life from the point of view of an apathetic optimist.

And of course there was the whole “pain med” aspect of it as well. My leg did hurt a lot, after all.

I reached for the box, but Estoc swatted my hoof away and glared at me. He moved the first-aid kit further away, but instead of chasing after the box, I firmly planted my hoof back onto the floor and gritted my teeth. Fucker.

“Estoc, you said it yourself,” I said, shifting my eyes back to him when I realized I was still staring at the box. “When I pulled myself off of the couch, I couldn’t even stand for a second. My leg gave out from under me. I face planted. I’m not okay to be running about, let alone walking. Give me a syringe.”

“I’m not suggesting that you shoot up Med-X so that you can relapse and get strung out again,” he said, still glaring at me. “You keep eyeballing this box like you have been and I’m going to throw it into the fireplace and burn it. You’re sacrificing your dope sobriety so that we can get out of this shithole, do you understand me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I growled, narrowing my eyes at him. “You don’t think I remember what I was like when I was high out of my fucking mind? Well, I don’t, but with how often you told me stories about the kind of pony I was I got the idea. I chose to get help and wean myself off of it, didn’t I?”

Estoc visibly relaxed, although he still refused to pull the first-aid kit closer to me. “You did. That still doesn’t give you a free pass to drug yourself up when I open this box, though. You’re going to get addicted again and who knows if we’re going to be able to find any help for you while we’re in Baltimare. I doubt that there’s a neuroscientist who was conveniently dropped into this city as well.”

The box is right there. Right there! When will he stop lecturing me and just give me a syringe? What is he waiting for? The sun to come out and shine on some kind of better alternative? Yeah right, buddy.

“Estoc, do you want a compromise?” I asked, tapping my hoof on the floor. “Name some conditions. Anything. If you think it’ll keep me from going crazy, the go ahead and say it. I’ll do what it takes if it means I’m not going to be the deadweight here.”

Estoc gave me a long hard stare, letting silence swallow the room while he undoubtedly mulled some compromises over. It was pretty uncomfortable, his eyes trained on me like I’d reach for the first-aid kit while he had let himself relax. He said it himself. Med-X is the painkiller that’ll get me walking until we find some healing potions, and we need to get walking fast before something else discovers us. We’ve already had two close calls between the giant bat and those raiders. I don’t think either of us want to press our luck by waiting in this house until my leg’s healed up enough.

Besides, the whole euphoric high is only a side effect. A nice side effect, but just a side effect. We’re doing this for my leg.

Finally, after what felt like hours (but was probably only five minutes), Estoc pulled the first-aid kit closer to me and opened it up. Inside were five syringes all neatly arranged in a row, protected and held in place by individual foam cutouts. They were all in immaculate condition, the glass unscathed and each of the needles appearing to never have been touched. I lifted my hoof to reach for the box, but when I saw Estoc’s eyes narrow at me I promptly put my hoof back onto the floor and shifted my entire body to make myself feel more comfortable. It didn’t work. My leg was still restless.

“Here’s the compromise,” he said. “I will be carrying this first-aid kit with me at all times and you will have to ask me to get another dosage of Med-X. No reaching into my bag, no demands. On top of that, you will only be getting one syringe every eight hours. No exceptions. Got it?”

“Yeah, got it!” I said.

I looked at Estoc, and after a few moments he finally nodded his head. I pulled out one of the syringes and gave it a closer look. Ten milliliters of clear liquid had already been loaded, and when I pressed down on the plunger a few droplets spewed out of the needle. It worked just as well as it looked, surprisingly.. Five doses over the course of forty hours was going to be more than enough to keep me going to find a healing potion for my leg, even if towards the tail end of each of those eight hours I’ll probably be miserable.

In the midst of looking for something to wrap around my leg, Estoc gave over a spare, bloodied rag that had been lying on the floor. I took it and tied it tight just above my knee on one of my forelegs, enough so that when I flexed my leg my veins and arteries screamed at me from being constricted. It did the job, though, because when I ran my hoof from my other leg through my fur I felt my veins bulging out of my skin. Good thing I’m so skinny and don’t have deep veins or this shit would have been a total bitch.

With my veins exposed, I jammed the needle into my leg and carefully pushed onto the plunger. Slowly I felt Med-X seeping itself into my bloodstream, and in an instant relaxation overtook my senses. A wave of heat rushed over my body, turning my brain into butter while the stinging sensation in my leg faded away like it had never existed. The musty air felt fresh all around me, the gentle breaths from Estoc’s nose echoed within my ears, and his yellow eyes shone vibrantly like I’ve never seen them before. Better yet, with my headache gone and my leg no longer howling at me to lay off of it, I felt like a new pony.

I deposited the syringe on the ground and then pushed myself onto my hooves. Yeah, I was a bit wobbly at first, but when I applied pressure on my bad leg not even a sharp twinge ran up my spine. It was as if I’d never stepped into the bear trap in the first place, so long as my eyes didn’t drift down to the blood soaked bandages, of course. Oh, this is exactly what I needed.

“How’re you feeling?” Estoc asked, snapping me out of my gleeful trance.

I grinned at him. “Never better. You’re a real hero today, Estoc, you know that?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he grumbled.

“Oh, c’mon now, don’t be all gloomy. You just saved your best buddy from a whole world of misery and hurt. Blasted away some raider faces, got me out of that bear trap, and then got me back up onto my hooves in no time.” I gently shoved his shoulder. “Not even feeling a little proud of yourself?”

“A ‘thank you’ would be nice.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself!” I beamed, then turned to look at the mess of battle rifle parts still littered across the floor. “So, in the process of cleaning this thing?”

“You’ll never change,” I heard Estoc mutter under his breath. He then stepped up next to me and grabbed the rifle stock. “This is after I’ve cleaned this thing. We don’t have any alcohol or cleaning supplies, so the grime that’s pretty much engraved itself into the barrel, stock, trigger, you name it, isn’t going to come off with just a rag. The raider that carried it never took it apart once.”

“Eugh,” I groaned, sticking my tongue out. “This thing’s going to jam like a motherfucker.”

Estoc sat down and started reassembling the battle rifle. He was quick, putting each piece of the rifle back together deftly enough that it appeared to defy what pony hooves are usually capable of. Putting the bolt into the receiver, then putting the spring back on, stuffing the barrel back into the stock. You know, gun reassembly stuff. All of the pieces appeared to still fit together quite nicely, but even after whatever cleaning Estoc had managed to do with just a rag, the rifle still looked to be in as good a shape as it was when it was on the unicorn raider’s back.

When he’d inserted the trigger back into the stock, he turned and held the rifle out to me. My muzzle contorted and I glared at him.

“Why’re you giving this piece of shit to me?” I asked, suddenly imagining the rifle as some kind of horrible, Taint-infested metal slug monster.

“I opened the safe, I killed those raiders, I get the hunting rifle,” Estoc said, the brooding look he’d managed since he walked in through the back door replaced by a stupid smirk. He shook the rifle in front of me as if that would somehow convince me to take it. “Don’t want it? Well, I could always rig up a battle saddle and-”

I snatched the battle rifle out of his hooves and hugged it against my chest. “If this thing jams and blows up in my face, it’s your own damn fault.”

“Oh, yes, I understand, Sunny. Would you like to take it apart yourself to make sure all of the parts are in working order?”

I looked down at the rifle and frowned. Obviously the trigger comes out first, but…

“Very funny, Estoc,” I grumbled. “Why would I do that when it’s your job?”

“Calling it a job would imply I’m getting paid for it. Do you pay me?”

“Last I remember, you said that giving head counts.”

Estoc closed up the first-aid kit and shoved it into his saddlebags before slinging them over his back. “Then I must be getting a pretty big tip on top of my pay because you give way more than just head. It’s not just because you like snuggling out in the middle of the cold Wasteland at night anymore, is it?”

I puffed my cheeks out while I slipped my own saddlebags over my back.

“Asshole.”

Oh, yes, witty comeback. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything else left to say to him at that point. He crossed the line with that snuggling comment. It gets cold in the Wasteland, and when you don’t have much of anything to sleep under, body heat is a great way to keep warm. Everyone knows that! Would he rather have hypothermia? I didn’t think so.

With my saddlebags comfortably situated on my back, I slid the battle rifle through one of my bag straps on the opposite side of where I kept my gasmask. The barrel stuck out just past my shoulder a little bit, making it easy for me to grab onto it and pull it out quickly enough so that I could line up a shot if the need ever arose. Lastly, I slipped my pistol holster with my revolver in it onto my uninjured hind leg.

By the time I was done, I looked up to find Estoc already geared up and ready to go by the back door. He had a shoulder strap for his hunting rifle, allowing him to wear it comfortably across his back while still having the barrel easy to reach with his mouth. Which reminded me…

“You went snooping around without your weapons, didn’t you?” I asked.

Estoc’s eyes widened. “Are you crazy? Of course I took them.”

“Then what were they doing sitting up against the wall?”

“I was out back contemplating giving you the Med-X while you were asleep.”

Oh. Well, uh...

Before the situation could get any more awkward, the faint sound of rotary blades roaring off in the distance perked our ears. We both looked at each other for a split second, then went racing outside, which was a mistake on my part. I was instantly blinded, stumbling over my hooves and frantically rubbing my eyes as they gradually adjusted to the piercing cloudlight. It’s like that moment when someone shines a lantern in your face, and not even a dose of Med-X could shield me from the sudden fuckload of light that destroyed everything resting in my eye sockets.

When my eyes finally adjusted to the outside world I was greeted to very much the same scenery as the cul de sac from before. Much of the ground around me was barren, devoid of most plants. Only a few managed to fight against the sunless sky and dry earth, but their numbers were few and far between. The entire yard was fenced in, but the fence was low, allowing me to spy into the neighboring yards only to find that they were in pretty much the same state of death. The houses didn’t look much better, either, and from where I stood it was impossible to find even a little scrap of building didn’t look like as dull and withering as the ground.

I spun around and glanced up at the roof, spotting Estoc already having floated up to the ridge. The constant whir of rotary blades came from that direction, and so with a spread of my wings I flapped up next to him. Together we huddled on top of the roof, peering just over the top and looking in the general direction of the noise.

Sure enough, over in what looked like the same cemetery that we had been dropped off was another Griffonchaser coming in for a landing. Already it had its rear ramp opened up, but the thing was so far away that it was impossible to see whether or not anything was flying in or out of it.

“Looks like the slavers came back just like they said they would,” Estoc snarled. “Probably dropping off a band of themselves to come hunt us.”

“They weren’t kidding about the whole cat and mouse game,” I replied, feeling a cold shiver run down my spine. “I hope they go after and kill those stealing fucks first.”

Estoc took his eyes off of the Griffonchaser, looking sideways at me. “One way or another, we’ll probably find out soon enough which way they went. C’mon, let’s get moving and cover as much ground today as we still can.”

I nodded, but while Estoc slid all of the way down off of the roof, I took a second to stare at the Griffonchaser as it took off from the cemetery. Whatever cargo it had been carrying was already unloaded, and in no time it zipped away in the opposite direction they we were headed. The hum of its blades faded out, allowing for the desolate silence of Baltimare to return.

We needed one of those, no doubt about it.

~~~

Gun shots exploded several blocks away from where Estoc and I were busy scavenging, breaking the tense silence that we’d come accustomed to since we left the derelict house. In an instant our ears perked while we stared out of the shattered windows of an old diner. Faded, red chairs lay scattered about the floor, most of them knocked over or pushed away from the tables that they had once accompanied. Old glasses, plates, and silverware were strewn about all over the place, either mixed in with the chairs on the floor or lying on the tables and counters as if they had been left in a hurry by the ponies who had once eaten here. Or maybe died eating here considering all of the skeletons curled up on the floor around the diner.

More gun shots rang out, but this time they were shortly accompanied by a panicked squeal from a filly. I glanced over at Estoc, and he must have caught the look of determination on his face because he slowly shook his head and frowned.

“We don’t have time for this, Sunny,” he said. “You know why we’re out here.”

I stamped my hoof on the tile floor. “We’ve been searching for hours with no luck. House after house, store after store and we haven’t found a single healing potion! There’s nothing here, Estoc. Whatever first-aid kits we’ve come by have been empty and every medicine cabinet’s had nothing but rotten bandages left in it. Clearly we’re not looking in the right place.”

“And you’re guessing that whoever might be screaming out there would know?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to ask them, would it? Beats going from house to house rummaging through mold and more bullshit.”

Estoc cocked an eyebrow. “And what if those screams are a trap for ponies like us? Would-be do-gooders. Or maybe the screaming’s coming from a raider while the gunshots are coming from some distrusting scavengers?”

“And what if it’s neither of those?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow challengingly back at him. “I didn’t hear any return shots, did you?”

“No.”

“Then there’s a chance that there’s a damsel in distress just waiting to be rescued.” I kicked a red chair out of the way and headed straight for the door out of the diner. “Unless you want to keep sifting through musty, broken house after musty, broken house. Do you?”

“Not really, to be honest,” Estoc sighed.

Four more shots echoed through the city streets, although there was no scream to accompany them this time. I glanced behind myself to find Estoc following behind me, looking about as enthused as a somepony learning that there’s a band of Steel Rangers about to pass near their town. He didn’t protest anymore, though. Thankfully.

We stepped out onto the desolate city street just as a gentle gust of wind picked up to rustle our manes. In the hours since we’d got my leg temporarily working, we’d traveled along one of Baltimare’s wider suburb streets, which eventually took us into a more commercial area. Smaller shops like pedicure salons, clothing stores, a post office, and so on sat alongside all of the houses, most of the time bunches of these stores being placed at the entrance to individual cul de sacs. It gave the whole street more of a convenient feel to it, allowing only what I could imagine ponies to go from home to the store and back without much of a hassle.

Still, the rest of my feelings about this place all amounted to one simple word: bad. No matter where we walked, turned, or looked, the remains of ponies from years and years ago continued to follow us. Bones littered the streets with the dirt and sparsely growing plants, and large cracks ripped through the asphalt and cement streets to complement the peeling paint, ruined windows, and slouching roofs of the buildings that they ran between. Not even ghosts would want to live here.

Twenty nine gunshots and three blocks later, Estoc and I finally got within range of a bunch of voices from just down the next street. Although we couldn’t make out the words, we could make out the rough tones of a few stallions as well as the sobbing, strangled tone of a single mare. The gunshots had stopped for now, but whatever those stallions were up to really wasn’t in the filly’s best interests. Clearly.

We rounded the corner, peering down a wide street full of one or two-story shops. A pile of debris from a ruined coffee shop lay just several paces in front of us, and ahead we spotted the unmistakable heads of several raiders all grouped together, laughing to themselves. There was no sign of the mare, though. There was a good chance that she was out of sight of us because I still heard her quiet whimpers. I just hoped that she wasn’t lying underneath that gang of filthy fucking pricks. If these guys were keen on forcing mares to give them bloody blowjobs, I can only imagine what other shit they’d managed to come up with. It was enough to make me shiver.

The corner we hid behind didn’t provide a clear line of sight to the raiders, and being that they hadn’t noticed us or were even paying attention to anything but themselves, Estoc and I moved up to the pile of rubble. We crouched low, using the pile as cover in the off chance that a raider might turn around and spot the tips of our ears moving closer. Not that it mattered anyways, because by the time we crawled up to the tip top of all of the shingles, bricks, and dust, the raiders still had their heads turned towards what had been their entertainment; the mare.

Talk about a literal damsel in distress. Her coat was as dark as chimney soot whole both her large, flowing mane and tail were as golden as polished gold itself. She wore a raggedy dress that was absolutely covered in thick, large splotches of dirt, making it nearly impossible to tell that it had once been white if not for the tiny patches of fabric that had been left only partially unscathed. Her eyes, though. If there was anything about her that stood out the most, it was the brilliant, bright blue eyes that stared helplessly back at the group of raiders standing no more than twenty paces away from her. A chain dangled from the shackle locked around her neck, which was connected to a rail spike that had been nailed into the ground to prevent her from venturing too far.

“Will you hurry the fuck up?” one of the raiders asked impatiently to an earth pony. He was a tall, lanky unicorn with burns covering his entire body. “We came out here to teach the pretty mare to dance and you’ve been sitting on your ass for the past five minutes loading your fucking magazine. Think ahead next time, fuckboy.”

“Piss off,” the earth pony loading the magazine snarled back. On the ground next to him was an assault rifle that looked to be in no better condition than my battle rifle. “We’ve burned through the two fucking magazines we have. You think you can load faster with your tiny prick? Fine, go ahead. Unless you think you’d have better luck with your little pistol.”

The unicorn snatched the magazine and bag of bullets that the earth pony had been using, sneering. Two other raiders, both also earth ponies, were too busy shooting googly eyes and cooing at the indisposed mare to pay their two bickering buddies much attention. She was the only one facing our direction, but judging by the way she still had her eyes on the raider group she hadn’t noticed me or Estoc yet. Probably for the best considering that if she had spotted us, it wouldn’t be too long before all of the assholes having fun with her would spot us, too.

“You likin’ the break over there, sweetcheeks?” one of the other earth ponies asked. “Make sure to stay limbered up! Wouldn’t want anything to happen you!”

“P-please!” she shouted back at him, fresh tear tracks streaming down her face. “Don’t do this. Let me go! I’ll do anything for you guys if you just let me go!”

The whole group broke into a fit of laughter that sent a chill up my spine. While the unicorn was still busy loading up magazine, the three earth ponies all started to mock her by poorly mimicking her pleas and whines. I slowly pulled the battle rifle from my saddlebag strap, ignoring the disapproving gaze that Estoc gave me out of the corner of his eye.

“You said the same thing yesterday when we wanted to take you bungee jumping!” one of the earth ponies said. “You want us to keep finding new activities for you to do? Don’t be such a bore, cutiepie.”

The mare frantically shook her head, rattling the chain. “Wh-what if one of th-the bullets rich… ricochets off the ground into me?”

“You’d better hope that doesn’t happen!” he said, snickering again. “Mag loaded yet?”

The unicorn popped the last bullet into the magazine before levitating it over to the earth pony. “Ready and waiting. Pop it in and get her to dance again, she’s had a long enough break.”

While the mare broke into a fit of sobs, tugging at the chain, the earth pony shoved the mag into his automatic rifle and cocked it. I couldn’t bear this anymore. I looked over at Estoc, battle rifle in my hooves, and narrowed my eyes.

“There’s another pile of rubble just on the other side of the street,” I whispered, pointing at the debris in question. “Take up position there, okay?”

“Are you out of your damn mind?” Estoc asked, keeping his voice down as well. “It’s four against two, and the moment we open up on these assholes they’re liable to shoot her first.”

“If we’re careful with our shots, it’ll be just two against two.”

POP

We took our eyes away from each other to watch as the earth pony opened up on the ground at the mare’s hooves. His bullets bounced off of the asphalt, and in an effort to try and dodge the shots, she tried dancing and prancing this way and that. She squeaked and squealed, thicker and stronger tears trailing down her face as she used all of the effort she could just to avoid getting her legs torn up.

“One of these days you’re gonna get me killed,” Estoc grumbled after the earth pony had fired two more shots.

While Estoc was busy slinking across the open street to the other pile of rubble, pulling the hunting rifle off of his back with his teeth, I laid myself down at the very tip of the pile and took aim. Luckily the mare hadn’t seen Estoc crossing the street, or simply didn’t have time to react being that she King Sadist was using her as target practice. Without any sights it was difficult to tell whether or not my shot was lined up on the earth pony in question, but I figured that if I aimed at his neck I’d at least hit something vital.

As I was getting ready to make my shot, I heard the mare scream out in agony. Oh shit, this is just what we needed. I took my eyes away from staring down the end of the barrel to look over at her. She had fallen onto the ground, clutching her hoof. It was difficult to see, but thin streaks of blood trickled down over her hooves and slowly started to form a small pool underneath herself.

“Get up, you fucking bitch!” the earth pony shouted at her.

To her credit, she did try to stand back up onto her hooves again, but as soon as her wounded leg felt the pressure from her own weight she flopped back down onto the floor. In that instant I’d managed to catch a glimpse of her hoof, and let me tell you, it was not pretty. I’m sure the only thing preventing a river of blood from flowing out of her leg is that the bullet was still lodged inside of her.

“You dumbass, look what you did!” the unicorn shouted at the earth pony. “Don’t aim at her damn legs, aim at the ground underneath them!”

“What the hell do you think I was doing!?”

“Aimin’ at her legs like the fucking idiot you are.”

The earth pony spun around, glaring back at the unicorn. Before he could open his mouth to argue, however, the unicorn continued, “I already know what you’re gonna say, so don’t fucking say it. You honestly think that Lucky’s gonna take her back like this? No, better for us to blast her Celestial brains out and tell him that she was shot up by a lucky-ass griffon.”

I took aim at the earth pony again, the end of my barrel pointed directly at his head. My ass you’re gonna be killing her, fucknut. Estoc had better be in position because I’ve about had it with these perverted, ugly bastards.

“What? Now?” the earth pony asked. “You don’t think I could have some more fun with her fir… Hey, who the-”

BANG

The earth pony had spotted me by now, probably seeing the tip of my barrel and my tufted ears poking up over the top of the pile of rubble, but it was too late for him. The bullet from my battle rifle tore right between his shoulder and his chest, and was enough to spin him around a full one hundred and eighty degrees before he hit the ground with a yelp. He was bleeding profusely, but was still alive. His assault rifle had flown out of his hooves and clattered onto the street out of his reach.

BOOM

Estoc fired shortly after, the bullet cleanly piercing through the side of the unicorn’s head and exploding out of the other end. It literally cut half of his skull clean off. His body toppled lifelessly to the ground without even a peep.

“Oh shit! Fuck!”

Our ambush had been enough to send the remaining two raiders into a panic. They reached for their guns as quickly as they could while running over to the cover of a collapsed telephone box. I managed to fire off another shot at one of them, but I missed and the round punctured into the concrete box instead.

“Fuck you, you necrophiliac pissmonkeys!” I shouted back at the raiders.

They’d both managed to find cover behind the telephone box, but that wasn’t enough to stop Estoc from firing off another shot. Unlike mine, his shot pierced right through the small windows of the box and hit one of the raiders on the other side. The raider howled in agony as he collapsed backwards from his rather shit piece of cover, his blood showering both the telephone box and his buddy next to him.

I heard a satisfying “fuck” emanate from over behind the telephone box, but it wasn’t enough to send the last guy hightailing it out of there. He popped his head up with a pistol in his mouth and turned to take several shots at Estoc. He was too late, however, as his bullets hit only air and rubble while Estoc already ducked behind his own cover.

Perfect time for me to come in. I pushed myself up above my own cover and took a couple of shots at the exposed raider, firing my battle rifle as fast as I could. Out of the five rounds I fired, three of them embedded themselves into the telephone box or in the sidewalk behind while the last two blasted right into the side of his head and neck. The raider’s head didn’t explode as intensely as when Estoc took a shot, but it was enough to cover the entire sidewalk in the last guy’s blood and brain guts.

This wasn’t over, though. Three raiders dead with one left bleeding out and crawling across the street towards his gun. Now that wasn’t going to do. I clambered up over the top of the pile of debris and then slid down the other side, kicking up a cloud of dust along the way, before dashing over to the gun and pushing it even further out of his reach. The raider looked up at me with a fantastic terrified expression stretched out across his face.

“Don’t even fucking try it,” I growled at him. I had one round left in this magazine, and I knew exactly how to use it.

A small whimper ripped me from my moment of triumph, and I looked up to see that the mare had backed away from me as far as the chain would allow her, and she had flattened herself against the ground while still holding her wounded hoof. She wasn’t looking at me, though, even as I stood over the raider with my battle rifle pointed at his head. Instead she looked passed me, and it wasn’t until I heard the clip-clop of Estoc’s hooves echoing off the street did I realize what she was staring at.

Estoc walked past me, hunting rifle slung over his back and a crowbar in his mouth (I’m guessing one of the dead raiders was carrying it to yank the rail spike up), and up to the mare. He stopped at the rail spike, then jammed the flat end of the crowbar until it was underneath the spike’s head and grunted.

“Wh-what are you doing?” the mare asked quietly.

“Freeing you, what does it look like?” Estoc replied dryly. He then slammed down on the other end of the crowbar and the rail spike popped out of the ground.

I looked down for a split second and saw the raider trying to crawl towards his gun again, so I lifted a hoof and pressed it down onto his festering bullet wound. He cried out, rolling onto his back and trying desperately to swat my hoof off of him, but I wouldn’t budge.

“How bad is it?” Estoc asked. I took my eyes off of the earth pony again to find Estoc removing the mare’s leg from her wound. It was still bleeding, but not quite as bad as it must have when it first started. Probably thanks again to the bullet being lodged in there.

“I… h-have supplies over in my bags,” the mare said, looking over at a bag left next to a dilapidated lamppost.

Estoc nodded, then walked over to the lamppost to grab her bag. When he returned, he plopped it down onto the ground between them both, but before he had a chance to look inside she swatted his face away and started rummaging around inside instead. She finally pulled out a full roll of clean bandage wraps, cotton balls, and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. She dabbed the cotton balls with the whiskey, then pressed them against her wound with a squeaky protest before wrapping them up with the bandage.

Me, Estoc, and even the raider sat patiently in silence while she bandaged herself up. Well, relative silence since I couldn’t resist digging my hoof even deeper into the raider’s bullet wound. That got a few more pained yelps out of him.

Eventually, Estoc spied into her bag and frowned. “You don’t have any healing potions?”

The mare was in the process of cutting the bandage with her teeth when she stopped, eyes going wide. She looked as if she was taken by surprise, and in an instant her eyes shot to my wounded leg.

“O-oh… oh no! Is it her leg?” the mare asked frantically. She tore the rest of the bandage and smoothed it onto her leg. “No, I don’t have any, but I know how-”

“It was just a question,” Estoc said quickly, interrupting her. “Calm down, alright? The name’s Estoc.”

“I’m Sunny,” I added confidently.

“And I’m Tempest,” the raider said hopefully.

“She might haaaaaaaah!” The raider shrieked again when I finally dug deep enough to find my bullet in his shoulder. Not bad.

The mare cringed at the sight of the raider, eventually turning to look back at Estoc. Her large ears flopped back against the sides of her head and she bit her lip. Think we’re going to kill her still, does she?

“I’m… Bluebell,” she said. “Who bandaged up her leg?”

Obviously she meant me. I looked back at my wounded leg, again seeing the blood-soaked, frayed rag that acted as my bandage. After several hours of walking it looked to be in an even worse state, covered in a thin film of dirt that made the whole thing look disgustingly crusty.

“We didn’t have any banda-” Estoc started slowly, but he didn’t get the chance to finish as Bluebell pushed past him.

And right for me.

“Woah, woah, woah!” I squeaked, spinning myself around on top of the raider to put him in between Bluebell and myself. “Hey, what in Luna’s splotchy ass do you think you’re doing?”

She ripped my battle rifle away from me and held it behind her towards Estoc. “Keep an eye on Tempest while I tend to Sunny’s leg.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Estoc said, taking the battle rifle from her and then pointing it at the raider. He had a thin grin stretched across his face, apparently finding the whole situation amusing.

“Hey, look, I’m fine!” I protested, but she knocked me back on my flanks before I could effectively push her away. “I took some Med-X. The pain’s gone, you saw that, right?”

“Any previous history with drug abuse?” she asked, pulling the rag off of my leg. She scrunched her snout up in disgust, and for good reason. The gashes left behind by the bear trap looked discolored and left my leg looking mangled.

“I… I uh…” I trailed off. This was all too weird. First this mare was sobbing, crying, and absolutely terrified of us even though we’d saved her from those raiders. But now that she’s seen my leg? It’s like she’s suddenly taken charge. ‘Work mode,’ I guess?

She glared at me. “You’re taking Med-X while you’ve had past addictions? What are you thinking!?”

While she pulled out her bottle of whiskey, I scrunched my nose up in protest. Who does she think she is? Does she not see my leg right now?

“Do you not see my leg right now?” I said. “Estoc, this was all your idea, why don’t youohhhheeeeeep!”

She would dump a metric fuck-ton of whiskey on my leg mid-sentence, wouldn’t she? Not even Med-X could save me from alcohol stinging the shit out of my gash, although it was only short lived and in no time the only pain left in my leg was a dull throb. Still, I had to fight back some tears and bite my lower lip to keep myself from shrieking more.

“Doesn’t matter who’s idea it was, you still agreed to it,” Bluebell said, dabbing my leg with the cotton ball. “You start abusing addictive drugs again and there’s an extremely high probably that-”

“I understand how addictions work!” I interrupted, which caused Bluebell to jump in surprise. “Look, I couldn’t even stand worth shit with this leg, and Estoc couldn’t find any painkillers aside for this shit. Get it, filly?”

Bluebell squeaked and quickly nodded her head. “Y-yes! Sorry…” Estoc gave me a dirty look, but I got the message across. I had no choice! It’s not like we’re carrying a bag full of medical supplies around. Medical supplies that are lacking healing potions, for that matter.

When Bluebell finished wrapping my leg up in a proper bandage, she took a step back and uneasily rubbed the back of her head. She did a good job. Much better than what Estoc managed, but I suppose he still should get credit since he stopped the bleeding. If it wasn’t for him I would have bled out, mostly likely. When I took a tentative step on it, however, the sting from the alcohol still going at my wound sent a gentle shiver up my leg. Fuck me, I hope that wasn’t from the Med-X wearing off already.

Oh well, patched up again and we still had the last remaining raider to deal with it. I walked up next to Estoc and took the battle rifle from him, but instead of pointing it down at the sorry son-of-a-bitch, I held it out for Bluebell to take. She squeaked, merely staring at the gun like I had just furiously rubbed killing joke all over it.

“C’mon, take it,” I said, shaking the gun in her face. “Don’t you wanna kill the asshole who shot your leg yourself?”

It still took her several moments before she finally took the battle rifle from my hooves. Clearly she didn’t want to take it, holding it awkwardly in her hooves as if she was offering it back to me. I had to imitate like I was holding a gun for her to finally hold it right.

“H-hey, look, I’ve been quiet all of this time!” the raider begged, holding a hoof up. “You ain’t dead right? Nothing to worry about, sweetcheeks!”

Bluebell frowned and suddenly had a much tighter grip on the gun. She shoved the barrel up against his muzzle, actually sticking the tip into his nose. That froze the asshole right up. His frightened eyes changed to that of pure terror, suddenly not so confident anymore. It’s almost as if he thought we weren’t going to kill him. Hah! He couldn’t be more wrong.

But Bluebell never pulled the trigger. She simply stood there, glaring down at the pitiful earth pony while he continued slowly bleeding out onto the street. I couldn’t imagine what might have been running through her head, or why she was even hesitating. Before I could ask what the hell was going on, though, she pulled the barrel out of his nose and sat back onto her flanks. She looked as if she’d just taken a huge weight off of her shoulders.

“I won’t kill him,” she said quietly, holding out the battle rifle for me to take.

“Wait, hold on, what?” I asked, stupefied. “You can’t be serious, that’s a fucking raider right there!”

“I can’t do it. I don’t care if he shot me in the leg, I’m a doctor. I heal ponies. You, on the other hoof…” She waved the gun at me, almost as if she was teasing me for doing it to her earlier… “You can do it yourself, can’t you? Finish what you started instead of letting me do it.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” I said, taking the rifle and grinning.

“W-wait, hold on, let’s work this out!” the raider shouted. “Sunny, right? How about I serve you? I’ll leave Lucky’s gang and help you start your ow-”

I shoved the barrel into his mouth, effectively shutting the sniveling fucking asshole up. Was he really just begging to join up with me? Oh, I hope his snot juice taste really grody. He won’t taste them for long, though!

I pulled the trigger.

The trigger wouldn’t budge.

I tried again, still the same thing.

Jammed.

“Fucking piece of shit!” I screamed.

I yanked the battle rifle out of the raider’s mouth, but all that did was allow the lucky fuck to break into a fit of laughter. It clearly hurt judging how he was wheezing and laughing at the same time, but that didn’t offer me any comfort at all. I was just robbed of literally blowing this guy’s brains out with an oversized round at point blank range, and the guy who I was just trying to kill is laughing at me. Even Estoc and Bluebell were snickering a little bit.

Growling, I flipped the gun around and gripped the barrel in my teeth, then swung it across the raider’s stupid face. There was a satisfying crack as his head whipped to one side and his cheek slammed into the street. Got him that time. Who’s laughing now?

Not me, admittedly.

I tossed the battle rifle onto the street with a grunt, then picked up the assault rifle and slung it onto my back. I also took the raider’s bag of bullets, but to be honest I wasn’t very confident that this gun would last much longer than the other one.

Silence. Guess it wasn’t just me who wasn’t laughing anymore.

“So, you… you guys said you were looking for healing potions?” Bluebell asked finally and quietly. So quietly, in fact, that it took me a second to realize that it was her talking and not some kinda fly buzzing around my ear.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, I don’t have any potions on me, but I do know how to make healing potions. Both of us need one, so I could travel with you.”

Before I had a chance to voice my own opinion, Estoc already opened his mouth and said, “Sure, why not? We could probably use someone like you.”

“Estoc!” I complained.

“You said it yourself earlier. Do you really want to keep sifting through musty, broken houses?”

I kept my mouth shut, but that didn’t stop me from scrunching my snout up at him. He’d just agreed to let this filly join us without even asking me! Granted, obviously she was good with medicine and whatnot, but still!

“That’s what I thought,” he continued with a smirk. “So, Bluebell, you’re the healing potion expert. What’re we gonna need?”

“Oh,” Bluebell squeaked, perking her ears up. “Well, we’re going to need some Med-X, something that’s made up of eighty percent ethanol at least, a broc flower, and three hours to let the potions brew.”

“Any idea where to start looking?”

“There’s a high school not too far from here, but I never looked inside because it’s filled with… ghouls. I saw a whole bunch of them roaming around the front.”

School’s full of ghouls...

“Great,” I grumbled. “More zombies.”

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Lack of Fucks - You gain the ability to ignore penalties to skill rolls from a chosen source. For every rank of Lack of Fucks you take, you may use this ability three time. This perk has an unlimited number of ranks -- you can lack as many fucks as you want to spend perks on.

Chapter 5: High School of the Dead

Chapter 5: High School of the Dead

“I’d sooner ask what makes me an undying son-of-a-bitch than spend any thought as to why they crawled to lifehere.”

Heritage High School. Not exactly the name I’d use for it now.

Perched atop of a small hill sat the high school that Bluebell mentioned earlier. It was old and shabby, most of its brickwork faded and crumbling while pretty much all of its windows, on the first floor at least, were shattered entirely. The tower that once stood over the entrance to the school had long since collapsed, leaving behind an impassable pile of brick, glass, dust and concrete. Another section of the school towards the eastern end had disintegrated as well, exposing two levels of classrooms and hallways that still had their dirty, old desks and broken chairs accounted for. It looked as if it was possible to actually enter the school from that end if we managed to climb over the debris, but the real problem was getting to the top the hill.

Me, Estoc, and Bluebell all sat huddled together behind a broken window of a restaurant that had once specialized in serving beer-battered vegetables. We hid from the horde of zombies that shambled their way across the open, inclined field. The only stuff to offer us some cover between the school’s gate and the school building itself was a few scattered boulders and the remains of a downed vehicle that I couldn’t quite make out at the moment. The boulders weren’t even large enough to fit more than one of us at a time behind them. Not ideal, if you ask me.

“There’s got to be at least fifteen of them,” Estoc whispered. He propped himself up against the wall, only allowing one eye to peer out the window while he had his hunting rifle in his hooves. “Hey Blue, are these the same ghouls you saw a few days ago?”

Bluebell hid on the other side of the window, her bag slung over her shoulder. She watched the zombies hobbling across the field while she had herself tucked up into as small a ball as possible. It’s as if she believed that she was gonna be seen through a wall.

“I… think so,” she said uneasily. Her eyes darted across the field. “I remember there being some kind of armored ghoul out there, though.”

Reavers? Oh c’mon. “Did it’s skin look armored or…?”

Bluebell shook her head. “No, it was wearing armor and some kind of gas mask. The mask looked like the masks that you two are carrying, but the eyes glowed green, like it was wearing power armor.”

“It’s not strange for ghouls to be wearing the same kinds of clothes that they died in,” Estoc said. “We see it all of the time. It just means that they might be harder to take out because of it.”

I joined Bluebell in scanning the hillside. “At least that thing doesn’t appear to be here anymore,” I murmured. “If it’s not here, then we don’t have anything to worry about, right?”

“Yeah, no. We’ve still got all of those other unarmored zombies between us and the school.” Estoc frowned. “We might have some better luck if we tried from the other side.”

“Or we might get lucky…”

As if something on the far side of the campus now occupied the horde’s attention, together they all moved away from the boulders. It wasn’t gradual or stagnated like they’d found some ponies who thought that they could dash across the open field to the school. Each one of them turned their heads and proceeded to drag themselves across the wispy grass to a plateau of hoofball fields located at the very edge of the school’s campus. All at the same time. There was nothing over there except a crumpled, metal hoofball cage and some ruined, wooden bleachers that had long since toppled over and been left to rot. I couldn’t spot a single soul that would have otherwise gotten their attention.

I looked back at Estoc and Bluebell. They had the same confused expression that I undoubtedly had plastered across my face. Bluebell tugged on her mane and looked back at Estoc while he cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Should we go for it?” he asked quietly.

I nodded my head. It was now or never. I climbed over the window sill and dropped down onto the sidewalk, my hooves echoing off of the concrete just loud enough to break the tense, still silence encapsulating the empty street. Estoc and Bluebell followed after me, their hooves clip-clopping just as loudly, before we made a beeline straight for a wall of dead bushes that divided the school grounds from the sidewalk on the other side of the street. It wasn’t much cover, the dry shrubbery hardly doing anything but obscuring our coat colors slightly, but it was better than having to commit to a mad dash so early.

Once all three of us were hunkered down behind the bushes, I took a moment to pop my head over the top to monitor the progress of the ghoul’s migration to the other side of the campus. They were surprisingly slow and methodical with their hoofsteps, taking their time to cross the field as if they moved like a patrol unit. Well, looks like we had a bit of time to come up with a plan while we waited for these guys to move further out of range.

“So, who’s going first?” Estoc asked, peeking his head up over the bushes with me.

I glanced over at him. “You made the suggestion, why don’t you go first?”

“There’s three of us now so I say we do a popular vote.”

“All of us are going to vote for someone else to go first!”

Estoc looked over at Bluebell, and when she met his eyes she frantically shook her head and held her hooves up.

“Y-you two have the guns!” she protested. “You think I’m going to be useful leading us up to the school? I just knew how to get here, not how to sneak past a plethora of ghouls!”

I smirked. “Then Estoc should buck up and take the lead, right?”

“Well… yes.”

Estoc rounded on me, jabbing a hoof at my face. I wasn’t fazed in the slightest by it, instead covering my mouth with my hoof to suppress a snicker. He wanted to do a popular vote.

“You bitch,” he complained. “I’m always the one taking the lead. Why don’t you do it for once?”

I sat on my flank and folded one foreleg over the other. “Because I’ve got the hearing and you’ve got the eyesight, remember?”

“Ladies first.”

“First I’ve heard you be gentlecolt-y.”

“Last time you’ll probably hear it, too,” he huffed, returning his gaze to the open field between here and the first boulder. “Alright, fine. I’ll take the lead. Just make sure that when I wave at you two to follow, you follow. Don’t make me look like an idiot flailing his hooves from behind a rock.”

Before either of us had a chance to nod an affirmative, Estoc hopped over the bushes and galloped straight for the nearest boulder. He was quick, but due to the arid ground he ran across, his hooves managed to kick up enough dirt to leave a thin dust trail behind him. We’re lucky we’re dealing with feral ghouls because there’s no way in hell that they’re smart enough to process what a cloud of dust could possibly mean, but in the future it might be a good idea to take this into account. As fucking psycho as raiders might be, sudden and random dust clouds might be a bit too obvious.

Estoc waited for the dust to settle before waving one of his hooves over at us. Bluebell looked over at me with a stupid look on her face. I rolled my eyes and grabbed her by the mane, pushing her towards the bushes.

“You hop over and go first,” I said. “Best that we keep you in the middle, unless you’d like to carry a gun around?”

“No no, it’s fine!” Bluebell said hurriedly. She took a deep breath before jumping over the bushes and racing across the field. Huh, I wasn’t expecting her to be that quick. She might look all pretty and scrawny, but she sure could hoof it if she really needed to. In no time she reached the boulder, another thin cloud of dust behind her, just as Estoc broke cover and raced to a second boulder.

This was going surprisingly smoothly. The ghouls hadn’t noticed a damn thing, still meandering their way across the campus away from us while we were kicking up a larger and larger cloud of dust behind them. Not a single one turned their heads, still hell bent on moving to wherever it is that they wanted to go. Or thought to go. I don’t actually know if feral ghouls think like that, or if they instead go wherever there is something that’s interesting to them.

Eh, whatever. It was my turn to race across the field, so with a hop, skip, and a jump I soared over the dead bushes and zoomed across the field towards the boulder. Bluebell had already left, so when I came to a stop behind it I used it as an unconventional break. The side of my body slammed into the rock, but when I poked my head out around the side to check whether or not my sprint had caught anyone’s attention, the zombies still had their heads turned forward. Perfect.

From rock to rock we moved, zipping between cover as fast as we could while letting our clouds of dust settle afterwards. By the time I’d reached the third and final boulder, the zombie horde still hadn’t seen the three of us, and it was much easier to make out the downed vehicle that was between myself and the school.

It was a Griffonchaser. The steel hull was heavily rusted over while a rotary lay in a heap only several feet from the wreckage. Only one its landing gear remained intact, and there was a massive hole in which Bluebell had climbed into that would allow her to exit through the back access port once she stepped inside. From what I could tell from my vantage point, the air intake and exhaust systems were completely shot, there had once been a gatling gun mounted to the front of the aircraft judging by the swivel hanging from underneath the cockpit, and the engine connected to the rotary arm lying on the ground looked like it had been sufficiently stripped.

While I examined the Griffonchaser from my rock, Bluebell bolted out of the rear access port and left me an opening to switch positions. I caught my breath and peered out from behind my rock, and my eyes immediately locked onto what could only be the armored zombie that Bluebell described earlier. Clad in a ragged, brown trench coat that was worn over an equally brown and armored hazmat suit, the unicorn ghoul painstakingly limped from behind a corner of the school to right behind the horde of zombies. Various vents stuck out on several parts of its trenchcoat and suit, and it wore an armored, heavy gas mask with glowing, green eyes that covered its entire head.

The filters from the gas mask must not have been changed in a very long time because I could hear the thing wheezing from all of the way behind the rock. Instantly I felt panic and chills run up my spine, and I covered my mouth because it was all I could do to keep myself from releasing a squeak before disappearing back behind cover. Was that a magical energy rifle on its hip? I didn’t dare try to snatch another glimpse of whatever the hell it was, instead looking over through the hole in the Griffonchaser.

I could just barely make out Estoc and Bluebell hiding behind a crumbling planter bed, Estoc’s hoof clamped over Bluebell’s mouth. At least they saw it, too, but the question was whether or not it had noticed us hiding over here. I perked my ears, straining to hear the chilling gasps and coughs coming from the armored ghoul, and I could just barely make them out. He must be further away now.

Steeling myself, I poked my head out from behind the rock. The armored ghoul was gone. I checked where I had first spotted him, but the corner of the school was totally empty. I didn’t even see him following behind the horde. He was simply gone. No fucking way was I seeing things, Estoc and Bluebell clearly saw it as well. We all were hiding from it.

After double checking to make sure the armored ghoul was no longer in sight, I finally made a break for the Griffonchaser. My hooves thudded against the metal floor as I blundered inside, and in an effort to make sure that the creepy zombie hadn’t poofed back into existence again and seen me, I leaped up to the cockpit and peered outside. Nothing.

Better safe than sorry, though.

While I waited for the dust cloud that I kicked up to settle, I took to examining the inside of the Griffonchaser. Aside from the central display unit, which had been totally ripped out of the console, all of the other avionic displays were intact, other than having a few cracks here and there. That didn’t mean that any of the systems were still working, of course. Many of the wires inside of the cockpit were left severed or frayed, and the ones that still remained in place were wildly corroded and black.

The cargo bay was in much worse shape, however. Many of seats were torn out from the sides and much of the tubing that ran along the ceiling was missing entirely. The wires in here were just as corroded as the wires inside of the cockpit, too, bringing me to the conclusion that this Griffonchaser wasn’t worth scrapping at all unless you were looking for scrap metal. Thinking back to the rotary arm lying on the ground just outside, the metal casing on the outside had been pried off so as to get to the engine inside. This piece of junk was totally useless.

Checking one last time to make sure that the armored asshole hadn’t returned, and seeing that the zombies had disappeared entirely behind a different wall of bushes, I stepped out of the Griffonchaser’s loading ramp and trotted over to Estoc and Bluebell. Both of them still remained behind the planter bed, but Estoc had long since taken his hoof from Bluebell’s mouth. He had his hunting rifle out again, but with nothing in sight but the three of us, he lazily held it over one shoulder.

“Took you long enough,” Estoc said dryly. “You saw that thing, too, right?”

I snorted. “Yeah, of course I saw that thing. I was trying to avoid getting seen, thank you. Not getting vaporized. I dunno if you noticed, but it had a M.E.W. on it’s back.”

“I did notice, and I also noticed it staring at your rock. When you ducked behind it, I thought you were getting ready for a hasty retreat rather than sitting put and hoping for the best.”

“And the best did happen, didn’t it?”

“The best would have been that thing not showing up at all.”

“Can you two please stop arguing so that we can get inside?” Bluebell quietly butted in.

Both Estoc and I shut our mouths, tearing our glares away from each other in favor of looking at the impromptu mediator. She was thoroughly spooked, her fur standing on end and making herself look fluffier while her face was contorted into a worrying frown.

“It m-might still be out there,” she continued, “and I really don’t want to be waiting around for you two to finish in case it comes back.”

When my eyes met Estoc’s again, I scrunched my nose up and hurriedly looked away. We got across the field just fine, what the hell’s he complaining about? It’s not like we were expecting for that guy to just pop out from around a corner and look in our direction. Can’t he ask if I’m alright, for once?

In any case, the three of us skirted around the side of the school back towards the collapsed wing. Now that we’d climbed to the top of the hill, we had a much better view of Baltimare from the sidewalk in front of the restaurant all of the way to downtown. To the right of downtown we could see the cemetery, and to the left was an an expansive bay that opened up to an ocean just beyond it.

It was spectacular. Morbidly spectacular, if you could even consider that a thing. While we could see all of the way to downtown, the ruined suburbs and stores leading to the crumbling highrises reminded me of the barren flats and rolling hills of the Wasteland. Granted, there was far more metal and concrete in here compared to all of the dust and mud out there, but all it did was change the scenery from brown to grey. The cemetery was too far away to make anything out, and the bay to the right reminded me of somepony who was sick with the stomach flu. Green, blotchy, and incredibly dull.

Once we reached the collapsed section of the school, the three of us looked up at the second floor. A mound of loose debris led up to the classroom above, but to be honest I wouldn’t trust my step walking up that. The slope was too steep and there was too much dust to reliably make it to the top without slipping and sliding down a few times.

“Sunny, can you go scout ahead?” Estoc asked.

I spun around on him. “Nuh uh, we have a deal here, buddy. You’re scout for today.”

“Would you like to be the one to carry Bluebell up to the second floor?”

I glowered at him, but I kept my mouth shut. I could probably manage carrying Bluebell up to the classroom, but given my size she wouldn’t be very secure on my back. Could fall off at any moment and impale herself on one or two rebars that were sticking out of the rubble.

“No?” Estoc asked rhetorically. “Well then, why don’t you fly up and make sure that there’s no ghouls waiting for us inside, alright?”

“Fine,” I replied, unfurling my wings.

I turned back to the debris, then gave my wings a powerful flap and flew up to the second level. The classroom didn’t have much space to land, half the floor covered in toppled chairs, tables, and pieces of the ceiling while the other half was totally missing. There was a square free of junk near the door, so I dropped down onto my hooves and then pulled out my assault rifle.

The air here was thick. Peering down the corridor just beyond the door, several light shafts poked through the holes in the roof and illuminated the musky haze. It didn’t smell at all, though, so I suspected that there was so much dust inside that it was enough to obscure my vision a little. So, finding nothing immediately dangerous about the whole building, I tentatively stepped through the door and out into the hallway.

Lockers and doors lined one side of the hall while the other side was occupied by long, cracked windows. The windows were so caked in dirt that it was nearly impossible to see outside, or into whatever rooms that happened to have doors with windows in them. Well, that made my job just that much harder. Without being able to peer into the rooms from outside to make sure that it was clear, I had to open each door and potentially open myself up to whatever the hell might be hiding inside. Fuck me, this was usually Estoc’s job.

Holding my assault rifle in my mouth, I kicked open the first door and poked my head inside. Nothing. I found myself staring into another classroom with chairs and tables once again strewn about all over the floor, but at least it had remained much more intact. The windows on the far side of the room were just as dirty as the ones behind me, broken closets and cabinets lined the wall, and a podium sat at the front of the disheveled rows of desks. There was also a chalkboard right behind the podium, and drawn all over it was someone’s lewd explanations of what they wanted to do to whichever poor fuck had been stuck in here. And some penises.

I walked into the room to get a better look at the board, but what caught my attention were the three audio log tapes piled on top of each other inside of the podium. It was strange that they were still in well enough condition and hadn’t just disintegrated from sheer old age. I picked up one of the tapes and inspected it closely. Well, isn’t that fantastic. If only that I had a PipBuck on me at the moment, but I doubt that we’ll find some random Stable Dweller roaming around here that would be willing to lend us theirs.

PipBuck or no, though, I stuck all three audio recordings into my saddlebags and went back to looking at the blackboard. “Don’t stay in here too long, purty birdie, or Patches’ll have your ass.” “Booty Call.” “I Wuz Ere.” And so on. Yeah, Wasteland cleverness definitely wasn’t lost here.

I turned back towards the door to return to the hallway and saw one of those propaganda posters that you see all over the place. You know, “Pinkie Pie is watching you FOREVER,” “Violence will not save us…” Those kinds, but I’d never seen this one before. A blue unicorn with a darker blue and white mane wore a formal suit on the front, and was staring off at, well, I’m not actually sure what she was staring at. “Motivate and Investigate” was written at the top of the poster while “Ministry of Magic: Baltimare Division” was written on the bottom. Recruitment propaganda in a school? How prudent.

After checking two more classrooms that were in very much the same state, all of which contained the same damn poster in the same damn spot in each room, I finally came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything up here. I holstered my assault rifle and returned to the gaping hole in the side of the school where Estoc and Bluebell were still waiting for me. As soon as Bluebell saw me, she climbed up onto his back and wrapped her forelegs around his neck.

“You’re an eager-fucking-beaver, aren’t you?” I called down to them. Estoc frowned up at me while Bluebell looked away. “It’s all clear up here. Come on up.”

As I returned to the hallway to give Estoc room to land, tiny aches ran up my damaged hind leg. I winced and sat down on my flanks, giving me a chance to get a better look. Well, Bluebell’s bandage still held and was relatively clean, but the Med-X was wearing off. Drowsiness gripped me as I no longer stood on my hooves. Another chill went up my spine. Woah, okay. I was feeling a bit woozy now that the stress of face-checking those individual rooms wasn’t giving my adrenaline the ability to kick in anymore.

“Are you alright?”

Bluebell stood over me, face still ladened with worry. I quickly got back onto my hooves, having to brace myself against one of the window sills to make sure I didn’t go falling back over, and then looked her square in the eyes.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “The Med-X is just wearing off. Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a handle on it, okay?”

Thankfully Bluebell didn’t say anything more, instead gazing at me for a few moments longer before walking off. Once I wasn’t in her sights anymore, I slumped against the wall and inhaled deeply. This was bad. It felt as if all of the strength had been sucked out of my legs and it’d only been, like, what? Five hours since shooting up? I knew I’d be experiencing the withdrawals again, but I must have forgotten how utterly ridiculous they were.

I had to keep my head in the game. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep, but of course that wasn’t an option at the moment. We’re stuck inside of this school so that we can turn over every desk and chair until we find ingredients for Bluebell to make the healing potions, all the while hoping that those ghouls don’t wander in here. That is to say if they haven’t already wandered in here.

“Hey Sunny, you coming?”

I looked up and saw both Estoc and Bluebell staring back at me.

“Yeah,” I said, sounding out of breath. I waited a second before continuing to fix that. “Yeah, I’m coming. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

It was impossible to hide the slight limp that went along with my walk as I strode over to Estoc and Bluebell. The nasty gash slowly reinvigorated the the painful tingles that ran up my leg, but at least it wasn’t so bad that my leg was about to give out. I just wasn’t gonna be running for a while, and given that I had wings it wasn’t the most terrible handicap that I could possibly be facing at the moment. I still had enough mobility to follow Estoc and Bluebell as we explored further into the school.

When we neared the end of the hallway we stood at the top of a staircase that descended to the first floor. Either there were no windows on the first floor or there was something blocking them because it was significantly darker down there. Estoc and I could still see, but who knows about Bluebell.

“Stay between us,” Estoc said, glancing at Bluebell.

“You’re taking the lead, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ll take the lead. Stay alert.”

We descended the stairs to the first floor and instantly we were hit by the stench of something rotting further away. I gagged, my mind flashing back to the hordes of shriveled up bodies back in the apartment complex. To think I’d been able to flush the horrible smell out of my nose only for it to return in full force. It burned. It filled my throat. I could even taste the mold on the back of my tongue. It was so bitter that I could have mistaken it for bile.

“I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to smell this again for a while,” I whispered.

Bluebell glanced over at me. “Smells recent.”

“I gathered that.”

Regardless of the smell we pressed on. The first floor was in a much more ragged shape than the second, and it wasn’t only because whatever was lying dead down here attracted a swarm of flies. Paint was peeling off of the walls and the tiled floor looked as if it had suffered significant water damage. Old bags, mutilated books, locker doors ripped off of their hinges. It was all scattered throughout the hall as if some kind of miniature tornado came tearing through. Many of the doors to the classrooms had been forced open, revealing the confuddled mess inside that vaguely showed pile after pile of wood splinters and metal chair legs. Of course there were also more desks and chairs that had been left intact, but that was relatively speaking.

After checking through several rooms it quickly became apparent why the first floor was so dark. Most of the windows were boarded up with the blinds shut on the other sides of the boards. It was impossible to see in or out. What wasn’t apparent, however, was why just this floor was boarded up and not the second? There wasn’t any barricade at the top of the stairs, or any remnants of one, that would have indicated that someone tried to seal off the entire first floor. Instead, everything was locked up tight enough that it felt like we were inside of an airlock down here.

It wasn’t long before we discovered what was giving off that damned awful smell as well. In a classroom just before the main commons of the school with the collapsed tower were the bodies of two dead griffon slavers. Both of them wore blood-stained, studded leather jackets and pants that had leather armor pads strapped to the shoulders and legs as extra protection. By the looks of it they were missing their guns.

Estoc kneeled down next to one of the dead griffon slavers and started pulling at the leather barding.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Getting us armor,” he replied. He pulled off one of the leather pads from the griffon’s leg and hoofed it over to me. “Put it on.”

“Are you kidding me? No!”

Estoc sighed. “Is some bloody armor suddenly icky to you now?”

“It was worn by a griffon,” I huffed. The armored pad looked like the most disgusting piece of filth I’d ever seen.

“Oh, come on. Seriously? You’re gonna let your racism triumph now?” Estoc shoved the leather pad into my chest. “It’s minimal protection, but in the off chance that you’re hit by a stray bullet, the limbs that stick out the most will at least be protected. Just fucking put it on and stop whining.”

I looked down at the leather armor pad, taking in its greasy, inner padding and the crusty armor on the outside. Out of anyone it could have been, why’d it have to be the griffon slavers in particular? They’re a bunch of oily, feathered fuck sticks and there’s no way that putting that armor on is going to be healthy for my wounded leg.

Before Estoc had a chance to protest some more, however, I swiped the leather pad out of his hoof and clipped it onto my bad leg. The extra pressure made me whimper out in pain, but hey, I suppose it’s protected now. He continued to pull of each of the leather pads before giving them over to me, and I continued to begrudgingly strap them to my legs and shoulders. When it was all said and done, I looked at least a little more protected that relying on my skin to stop incoming bullets.

Bluebell refused any armor on the grounds that she still didn’t want to carry a gun with her, so Estoc took the leather pads off of the other griffon and put it on himself. Compared to him, the armor looked larger on me and the shoulder pads stuck out enough to make turning my head a little bit of a chore. It made pulling my assault right out a little more tricky, but after reaching back a few times to grab the barrel in my mouth I felt like I finally got the hang of it.

After we’d gotten all suited up in our new armor, we set out again to keep scouring the school for Bluebell’s supplies. Walking into the school’s commons left us with several different directions that we could go, allowing us to head down a hallway on the far side of the room that looked identical to the one we’d just come down or through some doors that were closed. Thankfully, the sign and map hanging side by side together next to the debris from the destroyed tower were still in decent condition. The school’s clinic was located past the double doors, and judging by the map it was just three doors down on the right.

But of course the double doors would be locked, wouldn’t they? After Estoc tried throwing his weight against them a few times, neither of them would budge.

“You picked the lock to get the gun safe open, didn’t you?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow when it looked as if he was about to charge the doors a fourth time.

“It’s just a door.”

“I’ve got a screwdriver and some paper clips,” Bluebell offered.

Estoc looked hellbent on charging the door again despite what we said, so I sandwiched myself between them.

“Give them to him,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on Estoc.

Bluebell reached into her saddlebags and pulled out a screwdriver and a few paper clips, but Estoc glared back at me for several moments before finally taking them from her. He then pushed past me, grumbling and sitting down on his flank to get to work. I made sure to give him some extra room, so I took a few paces back until I stood next to Bluebell.

“Do you two always argue this much?” she whispered.

I smirked. “You’re going to have to be much quieter than that if you don’t want Estoc to hear you.”

Estoc’s ears twitched, but all he mumbled out was a louder than average growl as he continued fiddling with the lock. The tips of Bluebell’s ears and her cheeks turned to a slight tinge of pink.

“O-oh!” she squeaked. “I… I thought that you had the better hearing…”

“Next time just take us several more feet away from him,” I said. “But to answer your question, it’s called a tactical disagreement. When we’re divided on something, we put our heads together so that we can figure out a solution.”

“She only calls it that when she wins,” Estoc rudely grumbled.

“You always want to fucking argue with me! You always want to carry the disagreement out further and then it becomes an argument!”

Estoc looked away from the lock and back at me. “So would agreeing to wear the armor be considered a tactical disagreement?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. I mean, yes, technically that would have been a tactical disagreement in my book being that we didn’t really argue, but he can’t win just like that!

“Are you two having a tactical disagreement right now?” Bluebell asked. Rhetorically, I’m guessing.

I scrunched my nose up and snorted. “No, this is an argument because Estoc wants to keep arguing about this.”

“I thought we were having a tactical disagreement about what a tactical disagreement is?” he annoyingly replied.

“Will you focus on picking the fucking lock!?”

As if Luna herself enjoyed watching me squirm and wriggle, the lock to the double doors clicked and Estoc pushed both of them open. I was kind of expecting for this section of the school to look like it was in much better shape, but we were still greeted with the same damaged floor, peeling paint, and clutter characteristic of the rest of the first level so far. What was more, sections of the ceiling had collapsed to reveal doors and broken windows leading to classrooms on the second floor. There was even a continuous stream of what sounded like air hissing out of a pipe that echoed down the hall.

“So, what was it that we were talking about?” Estoc asked as he put the screwdriver and paper clips into his saddlebags.

“You’re hilarious,” I replied dryly.

Pushing past him, I took the lead down the hall this time. The first door we passed on the right was labeled as the principal's office, but while the door was missing, the entire room had been barricaded with a whole bunch of chairs and tables. There was no way of getting in there, so we moved onto the next room, and quickly found that it was just a storage closet. We looted it anyways, grabbing several pieces of scrap metal and glue that Estoc said we could use for weapon repairs. Beyond that, there was nothing left besides expired cleaning supplies and dust.

Then we finally came to the door leading into the clinic, which was locked of course, but the heavy door located directly across from it caught my eye. The hissing was coming from beyond there, so while Estoc pulled out his lock picking tools again to get to work on the door, I stepped over to the other side of the hall. The lock appeared to be broken entirely, and instead a heavy metal pipe acted as a bar to keep it closed tight. Looks like someone wanted to make sure that this door stayed closed.

Well, that wouldn’t do now, would it?

I popped the metal pipe off, letting it clatter to the floor, then grabbed onto the door handle and pulled. The door wouldn’t budge, the frame hugging the sides a little too tightly for a simple pull to swing it open. I flattened my hooves against the floor and grabbed onto the handle with my teeth, and then pulled. Slowly the door slid against the door frame, noisily screeching enough for me to pin my ears against the sides of my head.

Finally the door swung open, shortly followed by a sickly yellow cloud that filled my nostrils. My lungs felt like they were being incinerated and my throat closed up tighter than a virgin’s asshole as the gas poured out around me. Oh dear fucking Luna it burned. There was so much.

With all of my might I swung the door shut again right before collapsing to the floor. With the gas no longer about to waft out into the hall, the rest of the cloud floated away, but fuck me the pain was still there. I devolved into a coughing fit, my throat and my lungs screaming at me every time I inhaled to cough some more.

“Sunny! Oh no…”

Next thing I knew Bluebell was standing over me, lifting my head up so that she could stare into my eyes. I could barely see her, my vision blurring so intensely that her blonde mane was the only bit of her that really stood out.

“Estoc, I know this is a stretch, but check to see if there’s any diphoterine in the clinic,” she added, glancing over at him. “Whatever that cloud was, she’s showing similar signs to inhaling tear gas.”

“Got it!”

Estoc must have gotten the door open while I was busy breathing in that poisonous cloud because I heard a door swing shut behind him. Meanwhile, I could barely make out Bluebell rustling through her saddlebags. Shit, why’d everything hurt so much? Why’s everything so blurry? It was just a whiff of a little cloud of colorful gas.

“This is gonna hurt,” Bluebell said briefly.

Before I could even attempt to wheeze out some kinda protest, Bluebell splashed water from her canteen over my eyes. I don’t know whether the hissing that followed was still from the gas leak beyond the door or if it was from my eyes themselves, but whatever the case it felt like my eyes were melting right out of their sockets. Bluebell had to cover my mouth to suppress the my ear piercing screech. This was fucking worse. My eyes were going to sizzle away before Estoc even got here with that di-what-the-fuck-ever it was called.

“Give it here,” Bluebell commanded.

Between the time that Bluebell poured water into my eyes and now, Estoc had returned with a bottle of whatever it was that she’d asked for. Fantastic, she’s going to pour more bullshit into my eyes. She didn’t even let me recover a little bit after pretty much lighting my eye sockets on fire, so I did what I could to keep my eyes open as she dumped this new stuff over my face.

I was expecting for the searing pain in my eyes to renew as soon as this stuff washed over my face, but much to my surprise it left nothing more than a sting. In fact, after blinking a few times I thought that I could see Bluebell’s face and the bottle that she was holding more clearly.

Estoc grabbed my hoof and butted himself into my view, taking my eyes off of Bluebell. He smiled at me, although I could see the fear still glazed over his eyes.

“I thought you were about to go blind there for a sec,” he said.

“Move a little faster next time,” I croaked. I couldn’t stop blinking, but judging by the little nod that Bluebell gave me, I might as well keep doing it.

“Don’t be unreasonable. It’s a mess in the clinic. You’re lucky I found that bottle as fast as I did.”

“I’ll be as unreasonable as I fucking want.” I coughed and lifted a hoof to rub my eyes, but Bluebell quickly forced it back down. “Next time get the bottle before the sadist tries burning my eyes out.”

“S-sadist?” Bluebell squeaked. “I was trying to dilute the acids left behind by the cloud!”

Finally things started to come back into focus. I could see Bluebell’s facial features more clearly. She looked pretty panicked with her cheeks tinted pink while she pulled at a long lock of her mane. Estoc had since sat back, still holding onto my hoof and shaking his head.

“Is it supposed to feel like you were trying to scoop my eyes out with a spoon?” I asked, my voice still raspy.

“If I didn’t do something, the capillaries in your eyes could have begun to swell,” she said hurriedly. She offered me her canteen, so I snatched it out of her hooves and drank greedily. “The effects are clearly not as nasty as the Pink Cloud, but if you’d inhaled anymore of that gas you might have gone blind or… or worse.”

I took my lips away from the canteen. “So making the pain worse than the cloud had managed to do so far was a good idea?”

Before Bluebell had chance to frantically reply, Estoc interjected, “She’s fucking with you, you realize that, right?”

Bluebell looked positively stumped. She sat staring at Estoc for several moments with her mouth agape as if she was in the middle of trying to say something. Then she looked back at me, and when she saw my slight grin, the tips of her ears and her cheeks turned an even darker shade of pink.

“O-oh…” she muttered, looking away.

I bit my lip. “Lighten up, Blue-”

BANG

BANGBANG

BANG

The three of us jerked to attention as we heard gunshots rip through the school. The way each blast rebounded through the whole school told me that whoever fired off those rounds was probably inside with us. So far that could only mean two options: raiders heard us or the slavers found us.

“Help me up,” I wheezed.

I had to put a foreleg around the back of Estoc’s neck after I struggled to my hooves. My legs still felt weak after the whole poisonous gas ordeal, and the pain in my wounded leg had returned in full force. Taking a step towards the clinic nearly caused me to fall right back over, but Estoc yanked me back upright when my hoof began to slip from around his neck. He held onto my hoof with his own, keeping me in place and walking me into the clinic on only three legs.

It was relatively small inside, with a cluttered desk pushed up against the corner, several gurneys occupying the opposite corner, and dust and trash covering the counters and floor. The window looking outside was just as sufficiently boarded up as the rest of the windows on this floor, and the track lighting hung loosely from the ceiling. It was enough to get in our way as Estoc drug me over to the gurneys, forcing him to push them out of the way and earning him a shock on the wing from the loose wires.

“Fucking asshole,” he grumbled, depositing me on the floor next to the gurneys. “Blue, hunker down next to Sunny.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh no you don’t. You think you’re gonna take on those bastards alone?”

“You’re not exactly in battle-ready condition,” Estoc argued, pointing at my leg. “You can’t even walk.”

“And your vision hasn’t returned one hundred percent,” Bluebell added, sitting down next to me.

“Give me another dosage of Med-X then!”

Estoc hesitated, and when I looked over at Bluebell she hurriedly looked away from me. They were gonna be hesitant about this, even now?

“Estoc, don’t be an idiot and go charging headlong into these fucks,” I pressed. “You really want to risk being our lord and savior? You against however many of them there are?”

Bluebell shook her head. “We don’t need you depending on Med-X to get through a firefight.”

“Do you really doubt that I can handle a gun while high as balls?”

“No,” Estoc sighed while Bluebell simply stared at the ground.

There was a long pause as Estoc clearly still contemplated giving over the case full of syringes, which was eventually broken by the sounds of talons clicking on concrete. Slavers.

“Ya sure we shouldn’t wait for the three of ‘em to come out?” one of them asked. “Reports’re coming back ‘bout a Ghost Pony hangin’ out ‘round here.”

“I don’t care about no fuckin’ Ghost Ponies,” another one of them said, sounding grittier than the first. “I didn’t fly all of the way out here to play no fuckin’ waitin’ game.”

“It’d be better than trapping ourselves between one of those fuckers and Zoe,” a third guy grumbled.

“Zoe doesn’t hunt over here, fuckstick!”

I glared at Estoc, and it was just enough for him to relent and pull out the syringe case. I grabbed it out of his hooves and opened it up. Four syringes left. I pulled one out of the case and tested the needle, watching as the clear, sweet liquid squirted out.

“Hey, I don’t remember these doors being open,” the third guy said.

Oh shit, it’d make sense that at one point one of them must have come through the school at least once. It’s a promising-looking building at the top of a hill, of course it’s attracted other ponies in the past. They must have seen us climb inside after I was done scouting the second floor out.

“Guns ready,” the gritty griffon growled.

No time to reliably find a vein. I jammed the needle into my leg and pushed down on the plunger, and in an instant I felt pure bliss pulsing through me. The dull pain in my eyes melted away, the incessant throb from my leg disappeared entirely, I could see, smell, and hear like never before. I was a whole new pony all over again, and I never felt better.

I pulled my assault rifle from its snug little spot on my side and looked at Estoc.

“Ready when you are.”

Estoc glanced over at Bluebell. “If you can find any medical supplies in here that you think will help us survive this, start searching.”

Bluebell nodded her head before bounding over to one of the cluttered counters, leaving Estoc and I to take up positions on either side of the entrance to the clinic. We put our ears up to the door, listening as the griffons’ talons clacked against the floor tiles while they slowly made their way down the hall. From the sounds of it, by the way they clinked as they walked, one of them either wore some heavy metal armor or was lugging around a battle saddle. Wonderful. Just what we need, some fucker who’s harder to take down than normal.

When the slavers finally reached the door to the clinic, they stopped entirely. They must have seen that the pipe was laying next to the puddle of water and di… Di-whatever. That’s the only explanation for them to just conveniently be standing right outside despite only knowing that this new section of the school had been opened.

Then they open fired on the clinic we were hiding in.

Bullets smashed through the wooden clinic door and sprayed into the room, forcing Estoc and I back from the door unless we wanted to get peppered, too. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bluebell dive behind the counter she’d been searching through, although whether or not she’d managed to avoid the hail of bullets was impossible to tell at the moment. Even if I wanted to, until this asshole stopped unloading his magazine into the door we were very much rooted in the spots we’d already taken cover behind.

Finally, after my ears had been thoroughly decimated by that LMG, the bulletstorm came to a stop. The door was mangled enough that I suspected I could easily blow on it and it’d disintegrate entirely. I didn’t dare peek through one of the holes, though, and I didn’t really need to, either. A bunch of slavers stood right outside with some really big guns.

“‘ey, check an’ make sure that they’re dead,” the first griffon said.

I looked over at Estoc, being that he was standing on the hinged side of the door, and saw him slowly lifting his hunting rifle into position. Way ahead of me, it seemed.

Slowly the door opened, revealing the barrel of a pump-action shotgun sticking into the room. Estoc already had his hunting rifle pointed directly at the griffon who had been volunteered to take a peek into our hideout. He must have seen it, too, because the shotgun stopped creeping into the room and I picked up a gasp coming from right outside.

“I think your buddy missed,” Estoc said, then pulled the trigger.

BOOM

A thin splatter of blood coated the inside of the door and showered Estoc’s hunting rifle as the rifle shot punched through the griffon’s head. His shotgun clattered to the floor, and then it was my turn to peek out from the door and take aim at the big guy carrying a battle saddle with a single LMG mounted on it. I opened fire, pouring lead across the hallway straight at the other two slavers, and missed almost every single shot. The condition of this damn rifle was so atrocious that the only shot that’d even come close to doing any damage just barely skimmed over the back of the third guy’s head.

“What the fuck, they’ve got some big guns!” the third griffon said.

“Take cover, you fucking idiot!” the gritty one squawked, who also just happened to be equipped with the battle saddle.

The two of them retreated back down the hall, but I still had rounds loaded in my mag. I peaked out around the corner, using the perforated door as cover, and took aim as they ran for the debris pile over by the exit to the commons. However, when I went to pull the trigger, it was stuck. Of course.

I tried and tried again to pulled the trigger, even when the two griffons dove behind cover, and if it wasn’t for Estoc pulling me back into the room I probably would have had as many holes in me as the door did. A torrent of bullets soared down the hallway, some of them tearing enormous sections of the door off while others buried themselves into the door frame.

“Are you stupid?” Estoc snarled, looking down at me. “What do you think you were doing out there?”

I growled back at him. “My fucking gun jammed!” I slammed the gun down on the floor for good measure. “I haven’t gotten a single decent gun to use ever since we were dropped off in this shithole!”

“So you think hammering on the trigger while there’s a million bullets flying past you is suddenly going to make your gun work?”

“Will you two please stop arguing?” Bluebell cried.

I looked over and saw her clutching her shoulder, a bloodsoaked white cloth pressed under her hoof. She probably ripped it off of her own dress judging by the giant tear in the side of it. There was also a nasty gash on her back leg from where a bullet must have grazed it, but she didn’t seem all too worried about the blood covering it.

“Bluebell’s injured as well,” Estoc added, pointing at her. “We don’t have the-”

Bluebell frowned. “Stop arguing! Can you two figure out how to take care of those slavers, please? I’d rather not die in here with a bullet in my head!”

Estoc flinched as another bullet punctured through the door and sent splinters flying everywhere. “Alright alright! Sunny, do you…”

I already had my eyes locked onto a rusty vent grate located in the back corner of the clinic. It was just above the gurney’s so it wouldn’t be so hard to get to, and I didn’t have to fly in such a confined space.

“You keep them distracted here and I’ll use the vents to get around them,” I said quickly, then looked down at the shotgun at my hooves. It was in relatively good condition, and was probably still fully loaded being that the feathered fuckhead slaver hadn’t managed to fire off a single round. It even had a strap, so I picked it up and slung it onto my back.

Estoc spared a glance over at the vent. “Alright, but be careful. I’ll keep them busy.”

While Estoc hunkered down and Bluebell tended to her wounds as best she could, I climbed up onto the gurneys and peered into the vent. Wow, it was really dusty in there. I saw the thick, fluffy residue coating the walls at every angle, and it was piled high enough that I could have filled a mattress with just however much lay in front of me. This shit was gonna fill my nose and make it tough to breathe.

Unless I used my gas mask.

Before I set to work on pulling at the grate, I unstrapped my gas mask from my saddlebags and fitted it onto my head. The straps made sure that there was a good enough seal around my face and the respirator allowed me to breathe just as normally as I would otherwise. Only problem were that the two eyepieces made it harder to see. Now I had two large holes to act as my sight rather than relying on my peripheral vision as well.

Whatever, I needed to get going. Initially, I tried ripping the grate off with my hooves, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the strongest pony out there. The vent wouldn’t budge an inch until I started hammering it with the butt end of my shotgun. Eventually the rusted screws holding the the thing in place gave way, and it tumbled to the floor underneath the gurneys. Well, that was easy enough. Now to actually crawl through this thing…

I just barely fit in the vent, my shotgun scraping against the inside walls while I had keep my body entirely prone to even shuffle forward. Worst yet, while large piles of dust might appear cozy to lay and crawl on, they aren’t. It’s really gross. It gets stuck in your mane, your fur, underneath your armor, in your saddlebags. By the time I’d manage to crawl from the clinic to the principal’s office I was absolutely covered in the sticky, fluffy shit. If I even tried to rub whatever was on me off, more would stick on in its place. I eventually just gave up and pressed on.

There was a vent grate leading into the principal's office, so I decided to snag a quick peek. Some desks, old papers, a filing cabinet, a safe that was locked as far as I could tell, and a working computer. Well, that pretty much confirmed my theory that power is being routed through the whole city. The apartment complex and the school are too far away from each other for it to be coincidence that they both have power running.

As much as I wanted to break in and take a look at the working computer, I needed to go and take the heat off of Estoc first. Luckily, the vents snaked around the outer wall of the principal’s office, and once I got to the other side there was another vent grate leading into the commons area. Right behind the slavers. From what I could see, it was just as rusty as the first one.

Now that I was on the inside of the vents instead of the outside, I put my hooves up against the inner bars of the grate and pushed with all of my might. I heard the rusty screws groaning as the whole grate slowly detached from the wall, until it finally popped off and crashed to the floor with a clang. Oh shit, whoops. I did not mean to do that.

“Wait, was that…” the larger griffon muttered. “One of them’s behind us!”

I pulled myself out of the vents and hurtled to the floor face first. While the gas mask was enough to keep me from getting a black eye, there was no doubt in hell that I was gonna have a ring around my face from the mask itself. Bruises at least.

BOOM

“Shit!”

Okay, good, Estoc was keeping those two locked down behind all of the dirt and debris. I pulled myself onto my hooves and took the shotgun off of my back, holding it close while I crept along the wall towards the double doors. Another one of Estoc’s shots rang out through the school, and the bullet embedded itself in the wall on the far side of the commons. Maybe not so good. Hopefully that son-of-a-bitch doesn’t hit me instead of those fucking slavers when I pop my head out.

As I neared the double doors, I heard the larger griffon let loose a barrage of bullets from his battle saddle. Looks like he managed to pop up while Estoc was busy loading another round into the chamber of his own rifle, but more importantly so it meant that the smaller griffon could break from cover and retreat my way. He sped through the double doors, flapping his wings and holding an assault rifle in his talons, and twisted around to take a shot at me.

BLAM

Shotgun pellets ripped that griffon apart, blowing his arm off in a fantastic display of blood and twisting him through the air some more until he landed on his back. At the same time, a single shot from his rifle pierced through my foreleg armor and embedded itself into my skin. I could tell it wasn’t deep, but by fucking Luna did it hurt. I nearly collapsed to the floor, driving the butt of my gun against the tile in order to keep myself standing. Blood trickled down my leg, soaking the padding on the inside of my armor, but at least it didn’t beat the splatter show that the slaver put on. He’d managed to paint an entire red mural across the floor right in the center of the commons.

There was still one griffon left, though, and he’d long since stopped unloading his LMG down the hall. He didn’t have anyone left to get him out of a sticky situation here, so now he was a total sitting duck for my less-than-illustrious flank. Grimacing as I lifted myself off of my rifle, I continued creeping along the side of the wall until I did finally reach the double doors. I wasn’t feeling all too confident just poking around the corner and unloading into the griffon blind, however, because he could still be waiting for me. Instead, I stuck half of my face around the corner to see what it was that I was dealing with.

It was at that moment that the fuckface decided to lunge at me, although much to my dumb luck all he managed to do was careen right into the wall and fall down onto his side. You know, this wasn’t really how I expected this fight to end. Him getting gunned down or getting shot in the back maybe, but instead because he failed the depth perception test and slammed into a wall to stun himself? You won’t see me complaining, but that’s pretty sad.

Before the final slaver had a chance to recover from his unimpressive attempt to grapple me, I put the shotgun up to his face and squeezed the trigger. His head exploded into hundreds of thousands of tiny little globules of blood and brain goop, which left an impressive splatter across the tile underneath him.

That was a close one.

I slung my new shotgun over my back again and looked up to see Estoc racing down the hall with Bluebell in tow, all patched up. She had a little bit of a limp to her gallop, but it wasn’t enough to noticeably slow her down. Might have been because of the motivation of seeing my bloody leg from all of the way down the hall, because by the time the two of them reached me she already had my foreleg in her hooves and inspected it.

“Looks like you found a use for the gas mask,” Estoc commented, sitting down next to me. He had several light grazes across portions of his legs that weren’t covered by the armor, but otherwise he was totally unharmed.

I honestly had forgotten that I was still wearing it. After I undid the straps holding the gas mask to my face, I let it clatter to the floor.

“I don’t think either of you would want to crawl through a tiny-ass vent while inhaling a metric fuck-ton of dust,” I replied proudly.

“No, I don’t think I would. In fact, I don’t think I want to stay in this school for much longer.”

“The ghouls probably heard that whole gunfight going on, too,” Bluebell said, not taking her eyes off of my leg while she undid the armor. “I… I don’t wanna be around after they come back, especially if that… what did they call it? A Ghost Pony? I don’t want to be around if that Ghost Pony’s still with them.”

I grunted as Bluebell carefully pulled the armor from my leg, showing the bullet casing only buried halfway into my leg. Oh, that’s still nasty.

“Yeah, I think we’ve explored enough here,” I agreed. “Let’s look for the rubbing alcohol and get out.”

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Shotgun Surgeon - When using shotguns, regardless of ammunition used, you ignore additional points of a target's Damage Threshold. This reduction is applied before any other effects that increase or decrease the target's DT.

Chapter 6: Unraveling

Chapter 6: Unraveling

“We must create our own reasons to exist.”

WHUMP

Ow… I’ve really gotta stop crawling out of these vents head first. My gasmask survived the beating from me landing on my face, but I dunno how my head will continue to hold up. I already felt the bruises underneath the mask throbbing, practically chastising me for getting back into the vents in the first place.

I couldn’t resist, though. Getting a peek into the principal’s office set off my curiosity earlier, so once Bluebell patched me up I had my gasmask back on and was crawling through that tiny hole once again. Yeah, okay, we really should get out of here in case the Ghost Pony or any of those ghouls heard the gunfire, but I couldn’t leave an unhacked computer behind so readily. I had to at least try to see what was on it. You never know what kind of useful information was in one of these things.

With a groan, I picked myself back up onto my hooves. Everything inside of the room was still in very much the same state as I saw it. Desks, old papers, some filing cabinets that had nothing but some loose paper clips, and then the safe and the computer. The safe was one of those safes with the dials, so it was impossible to pick with a simple screw driver and a paper clip. Not that I’d try, I’m shit at lockpicking anyways. Sometimes the computers next to the safes could remotely open them.

I sat down in front of the computer and pressed one of the keys, prompting the screen to flicker from its blank, dark green tinge to display a string of characters across the screen. Normal bullshit reminding you that it was StableTec who built these computers, those kinds of things. Then the password screen popped up, showing two lists of passwords and random characters on either side of the screen. All of the possible passwords were only seven characters in length, making me giggle a little to myself.

This supposed security system was laughable. A bunch of potential passwords were displayed on the screen, with only one password being the right one of course, and it was the “hacker’s” job to figure out which of the passwords was correct. You randomly pick a password and the computer will actually tell you how many characters was correctly guessed right, and from there it’s a matter of matching up characters in their correct places for the other passwords. There are technically a limited number of tries, but if you match opening and closing brackets together on the same line you can give yourself more attempts.

Stable Dwellers always had it easier, though. If they used their PipBucks to remotely access the terminal, they could trick it into forgetting the number of guess attempts made and start over. Me? Well, I had one try, but with only seven characters that wasn’t a problem.

Most interestingly, though, was that passwords sometimes appeared to be themed around wherever the terminal was located. So, when I chose “teacher” as my first guess, I wasn’t too surprised when I was told that I had successfully logged in. I smiled and patiently waited for the file screen to load.

Data logs, personal messages, and disengage lock were the only uncorrupted directories that I could select from the main menu. A little disappointing, but there’s only so much that you could expect out of technology that was several centuries old by now. Most terminals that I’ve come across are either destroyed beyond repair or utterly fried.

First thing was to check the data logs, but those proved to be incredibly boring collections of spreadsheets documenting students and faculty who attended school each day. The only thing that interested me about them is that each spreadsheet had been forwarded to the Ministry of Image. I couldn’t tell who it was sent to specifically, so my only guess was that there was some server that must have collected each of the spreadsheets instead. Judging by the logs, whoever had operated this terminal consistently forwarded these spreadsheets for almost a full year before abruptly stopping.

Well, with the data logs giving me nothing useful, I opened up the folder containing all of the personal messages. Many of the files were exchanges between various faculty members and were largely uninteresting at best, but what caught my eye was a message from the Ministry of Image and some kind of congratulatory message from StableTec. I opened up the message from StableTec first.

“Greetings from StableTec!

You have been selected among a vast number applicants to reside within Stable 36! While the Stable has not yet reached completion, we recommend that you start planning your move ahead of time. In the event of an apocalyptic attack, we would like all of our residents to be safely situated within their appropriate living space. You will be mailed a list of recommended items to take with you as well as a list of items that will be provided for you while you are living within the Stable. Pets are allowed!

From your friends at StableTec,

Sweetie Bell

Head of StableTec Public Relations”

There was an attachment provided with the message, which was a map of the city with a big arrow labeled “Stable 36” pointing to somewhere within downtown. Huh, okay, so Stable 36 wasn’t the same Stable that Estoc and I had been kept in before being set loose in Baltimare. It seemed to be located somewhere underneath one of the huge high rises.

I opened the message from the Ministry of Image.

“This is a message from the Ministry of Image,

As you may know, continued aggressions with the Zebra Empire has led to several breaches of security within the city of Baltimare. While we respect everyone’s desire for privacy, sacrifices must be made during times of war and we cannot allow further infiltrations to become common happenstance. As such, the Ministry of Image and the Ministry of Arcane Sciences would like to officially announce the initiation of the Baltimare Preservation Project, a project which aims to eliminate the distrust and tensions growing among the Baltimare citizens. It is in our best interests to keep the ponies of this great city safe, and as such we ask that those of you who receive this message to take it upon yourselves to assist us.

So, in accordance with the Baltimare Preservation Project, your institution is required to submit weekly reviews on the attendance of all staff and guests that visit your grounds. Please submit all reviews to one of the four secretaries provided in this message. Failure to comply or meet weekly quotas will result in immediate disciplinary actions or suspension from your institution.

We thank you for your assistance,

Dr. Gear Turner

Director of the Baltimare Branch

Ministry of Image”

I snorted and backed out of the personal messages folder. Useless. This was all useless. Being that this was the principal’s personal computer I would have thought there’d at least be some written notes on the wall, the massive guns, anything. Instead, after scrolling through countless messages, my largest lead on anything significant was this Baltimare Preservation Project, and even that was limited. No details, no names, no locations. Just some vague instructions. Maybe the Ministry of Image knows more, but I don’t even know where that building’s located.

Defeated, I opened up the “disengage lock” directory, and the safe next to me clicked. Well, at least one thing went according to plan here. I pulled the safe open and checked inside. On the first shelf was a bag of pre-war money and several old photographs of an orange stallion in the middle of a group of ponies who all had similarly colored coats. He had a small filly on his back while a mare smooched his cheek.

The shelf below it contained an envelope, and inside of it were several documents and an audio recording labeled “Last Words.” I stored the audio recording into my bags before sifting through the documents. At the top of each piece of paper was an insignia for some Johns Trotkins Hospital, while the rest went into detail about a complicated treatment plan for some kind of life threatening cancer. Sad, but not really what I’m looking for. You were alive a long time ago, buddy.

Johns Trotkins Hospital? Well, a hospital would be the perfect place to find some restoration potions, or the supplies to make some. Question was where was it? Looking through page after page didn’t yield anything to point me in the right direction, just a bunch of medicine jargon and data. Maybe Bluebell would know more, though.

I picked up the shotgun shells and rifle ammo littered on the bottom shelf of the safe, then closed it up and stuffed the Johns Trotkins papers along with the ammo into my saddlebags. With nothing left in the room for me to scavenge, I hoisted myself back into the vent and crawled my way back to the clinic. It was easier crawling through the vent the third time around. Having crawled through it already twice, the dust left behind was almost nonexistent. Mostly because it’s stuck to my damn coat already.

Once I was back in the clinic, I stretched my hooves out to touch the table propped up underneath the vent. It was pretty nice not having to fall out of the vent face first, and in no time I jumped back down to the floor and tried brushing some of the lint out of my fur.

“Hey Sunny, you back?” Estoc called. His voice sounded muffled. Probably from his gasmask.

“Uh, yeah?” I called back.

“You should come look at this. Give us your input.”

With my mask tightened around my face and my coat looking splotchy from the dust, I walked out of the clinic to find the door across the way wide open. A thick, yellow cloud already had clustered around the entrance, swirling menacingly as if it wanted to swallow me up. On top of that, just beyond the door were the silhouettes of Estoc and Bluebell. They hadn’t ventured far into whatever that room was, but they were fully enclosed by the cloud regardless.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” I shouted at them. I wanted to step closer, but the cloud hanging in front of the door turned my hooves into concrete slabs.

Estoc’s silhouette gazed back at me. “If you keep your mask on you’ll be fine.”

“Wh-what about it touching your skin?”

“Your coat should give you enough protection from the cloud,” Bluebell said.

With a snicker, Estoc asked, “Are you calling her fluffy?”

My cheeks burned while my lips curled into a snarl. “I am not fluffy! I have just as much fur as you, asshole!”

“I’d ask if you looked at yourself the last time you took a bath, but I don’t actually remember when that was.”

“Probably just as long as you!”

“Oh, Sunny, do you really want to share that story with Bluebell standing right here?” Estoc asked. Although I couldn’t see his face through the darkness from the cloudy room, I just knew he was making that stupid, toothy grin again.

I saw Bluebell’s head turn, probably looking away from Estoc when he mentioned that ridiculous and totally uninteresting story. She seemed a little bit more reserved to me. Doesn’t quite possess the kind of sense of humor that Estoc or I have. Relatively speaking, that is. Half the time the jokes Estoc made weren’t even funny.

That wasn’t relevant right now, though. If Estoc and Bluebell were fine standing in the middle of that thick, yellow cloud, then I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try. I tentatively crept across the room towards the door, inching my way into the cloud hair by hair. Slowly the world around me changed to a sickly yellow blur and I felt my fur stand on end. It was as if I was soaking wet and stepping out into the frozen night air, but there was a noticeable lack of the frigid temperatures to go along with it. Instead, all I felt were clumps of my coat crusting over, threatening to mold me in place like I was a piece of clay.

My lungs didn’t burst into flames, though, so that was good. I admittedly held my breath even with my mask on, refusing to risk a gulp of air until I was standing behind Estoc and heard his mask filter working. The air smelt sickly and stale, the stench able to enter my mask despite it doing a surprisingly great job at keeping out whatever it was that threatened to disintegrate my lungs and melt my eyeballs. I finally felt like I was able to breathe easier, so I looked around the room to see what Estoc and Bluebell were fussing over.

We were in a square room with a staircase leading down into the basement of the high school. There was nothing really spectacular about it, save for the enormous gashes dug into the sides of the concrete walls. I squinted at a grouping of four gashes. They extended from the top of the stairs all of the way down to the bottom, and had gouged out enough of the wall so that I could probably wedge the butt of my revolver in there.

“What the fuck…” I whispered, trailing off.

“Great input,” Estoc muttered.

“What? You think I’d be able to tell where the fuck these came from just by looking at them?”

Bluebell stepped up next to me, lifting herself onto her hind legs while she braced herself against the wall with her forehooves. She traced over the gashes, frowning.

“I’ve heard about the Hellhounds from Splendid Valley,” she said, “but I never thought that they had claws this big. These look more like talons or… or something like that. Not a dog’s claws.”

“So, what, you think that we could have Hellhounds here on top of the slavers and raiders?” I asked.

“W-well, I never said that these came from a Hellhound, just that the gashes look like they came from something with really, really big claws.”

“Well, whatever it is,” Estoc interjected, “whoever was here before us clearly wanted to keep it from getting into the school. I saw the metal bar. There’s no way that it wasn’t crafted to specifically lock the door leading down here to keep whatever made these gashes out.”

Oh, Estoc had a point. The door had probably been sealed to keep whatever was down here out, and now we’d opened it up and were staring at a bunch of gashes left by something that could cut us in half. We still had the whole basement of the school left to search, but after letting what Estoc and Bluebell said sink in, I’d rather move on. You know, like we’d planned.

I peered over the railing, spotting the doorway leading towards the rest of the basement and the collection of scratches that covered the jambs. I felt a shiver run up and down my spine.

“I think we should get going,” I muttered.

Estoc was peering over the railing with me. Apparently he’d caught sight of the gashes leading all of the way down to the door, as well.

“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” he replied.

The three of us exited the stairwell and shut the door with a groan. We stared at the door for several moments, almost expecting to hear angry thumps running up the stairs after us, but even though I strained my ears until they hurt, the entire school was dead quiet. There was nary a peep beyond the sounds of our respirators working. I looked to Estoc, and he carefully nodded his head before picking up the metal bar and sliding it back on in front of the door.

Between the cloud and whatever may or may not be living down there, keeping the door closed seemed like the best decision. Maybe in the future someone will have it in themselves to keep it shut instead of, like me, ripping it open and getting a big whiff of sour-smelling death. As far as all three of us are concerned, there’s absolutely nothing down there that’s worth risking our necks for. Lesson learned, and hopefully we won’t have a repeat of that again in the future.

Now that the basement had been shut off, the sickly, yellow cloud around us quickly dissipated in no time. We pulled off our gasmasks, taking in a fresh gulp of stale, musty air. Well, it beats having this thing suction cupped to my face. Even if it meant that the unfiltered air of the school was hardly better than the filtered air of the death-ridden school basement, I finally was able to regain full use of my vision. No more looking through those tiny damn holes.

“Hey Blue, did you manage to find what you were looking for in the clinic,” Estoc asked after he hooked his gasmask back onto his saddlebags.

“N-no,” Bluebell stammered. She still had her mask in her hooves while she sat on her flanks. It looked like it was made for a griffon with how broad the muzzle was. Probably took it off of one of the dead slavers.

“I wasn’t expecting to find Broc flowers in here,” she continued, “but there wasn’t even any traces of hydrogen peroxide anywhere. I found some empty needles, a few empty brown bottles, but otherwise the place is picked clean.”

“Do you think that there might be somewhere else in the school that’d have some?” he questioned.

I grimaced while I secured the straps of my mask to my saddlebags. Well, this was great. After that big firefight with a bunch of slavers and avoiding a horde of zombies, all we got for our trouble was shitty armor and some bittersweet information about the city that was practically useless. Well, actually, almost useless. My eyes lit up and I fished into my bags to pull out the Johns Trotkins papers while Bluebell and Estoc were still going back and forth on a new plan of action.

“...might be some clinics downtown,” Bluebell said, rolling her mask around in her hooves.

Estoc frowned. “You sure we want to go there? I’ve seen my fair share of downtown cities and it’s always a mess of ponies wanting to steal from you and ponies wanting to kill you before stealing from you.”

“We could try skimming around the wall, b-but city centers are where all of the best stuff is.”

“Usually comes at a price…”

“Hey, guys, eyes over here,” I interjected, holding up the Johns Trotkins papers for them to see. “While I was digging around in the principal’s office, I found these. Hospitals would be carrying lots of medical supplies, so they’re bound to have some of that hydrogen peroxide, right?”

Bluebell snatched the paper’s out of my hooves, reading them over herself. She flipped through them faster than I had, but I saw an eager smile stretching across her face.

“I remember one of the raiders who kidnapped me talking about this place,” she said, looking up. “They mentioned how ponies were skulking about it or something a few days ago. They didn’t say why or what happened to them, just that this place seems to be fought over pretty heavily by whoever’s in the city. If there’s ponies fighting over it, then there has to something worthwhile in there.”

“With medical supplies being as scarce as they are, I can imagine,” Estoc mused.

Bluebell nodded her head. “Mhm. Hydrogen peroxide is pretty common, or it’s supposed to be. Even if that place has been looted pretty thoroughly, there’s bound to still be some left for us.”

I frowned, uneasily scratching the back of my neck. “Did the assholes say anything about who in particular was fighting over it?”

“No, just that it was going to be their turn to ‘snatch up looters’ soon.”

“Well, it isn’t beyond raiders to sit and prey on unsuspecting ponies and steal whatever valuable supplies they might have taken out of there,” Estoc said. “That doesn’t sound very promising considering that they must be preying on ponies for a reason. Looting the hospital sounds like it’d be a much quicker way to gather the supplies they need.”

“I wouldn’t give raiders that much credit for having figured that out by now,” I snorted.

Bluebell sighed and stored the Johns Trotkins papers in her bags. “Well, whatever the case may be, both of you have a point. We’re gonna need to be careful investigating this hospital. It could be occupied, or raiders could be lying in wait for somepony to do their dirty work for them.”

~~~

Once we were outside again, it wasn’t too hard to find the hospital. The high school had a spectacular vantage point where we could practically see the entirety of downtown Baltimare, including Johns Hopkins. The H’s plastered on several rooftops gave it away, and also informed us of the actual scale of the hospital. It was huge, the collection of moderate skyscrapers towering over the rest of the buildings in the vicinity only adding to the fact that the hospital spanned across several blocks. My jaw dropped a little bit, imagining the amount of time it might actually take to explore the whole thing.

I looked towards Estoc and Bluebell, checking to see who would be the first one to announce that we should move out. They both returned my uncertain stare, probably just as anxious about the amount of ground that we’ve gotta cover both from here to the hospital, and then inside the hospital itself. A mile out in the Wasteland was practically nothing, but a mile in a city like this felt like an eternity, and there looked to be several miles between us and where we had to go. Too many buildings, too many corners, too many hidey holes. It was claustrophobic.

We had no choice, though. I felt the drowsiness from the Med-X returning, and soon so would the pain in my leg and the headaches. Bluebell didn’t look much better having taken several bullets to her leg and her side, and while she’d patched herself up she had almost as bad of a limp as I did. It was only Estoc who still hadn’t needed a little bit of fixing up, but with how cramped and unpredictable this city was it was only a matter of time. Without finding a restoration potion I couldn’t see us lasting a few more days here.

With neither Estoc or Bluebell willing to take the lead, I huffed to myself and started down the hill. The trip down was so much more of a breeze compared to the trip coming up here now that there were no ghouls in sight. Good thing, too, since we couldn’t help the resulting miniature dust storm that our hooves kicked up. It was even worse than when we first climbed up to the high school, enough to leave a sizable cloud that anyone could see if they simply looked up in the direction of this hill.

So, naturally, we practically galloped the rest of the way down the hill. Well, it was some sort of gallop. For me it was more like a quick hobble, but we all made it to the street below so it didn’t matter.

♫ “The world is the same, you’ll never change it

As sure as the stars shine above

You’re nobody, nobody ‘till somebody loves you

So find yourself somebody” ♫

At the bottom of the hill the three of us stopped, perking our ears as we heard the faint voice of some stallion singing not too far from where we were. Their voice was smooth and clean, sort of like Buck Martin or Sweetie Belle if she was a colt. It was like listening to the sound of flowing water with a bit of relaxing swing in the background.

We all glanced between each other, tossing the idea around about whether we should investigate this or not. It was like a silent debate, filled with head nods, head bobs, and some furious shaking from Bluebell in particular. In all honesty, though, it couldn’t possibly hurt to take a peek where the source of the music was coming from because, I mean, this was some seriously good music. So, after Estoc and I pointed several times in the direction of noise, Bluebell finally hung her head in defeat and nodded.

The singing was coming from several blocks over, and when the three of us piled on top of the corner turning down it, we caught sight of a lone, dark grey griffon swaying in a creaky rocking chair. He sat out in front of some kind of shop, it was impossible to tell while we were on the same side of the street as him, but upon first glance he didn’t appear to be a slaver. Instead of wearing their leather armor or carrying a decently maintained gun on him, he wore a big, dirty apron and had a butcher’s knife at his hip.

♫ “Gotta get yourself somebody

Because you’re nobody ‘till somebody loves you

You’re nobody ‘till somebody cares

You may be a king, you might possess the big fat world and its gold

But gold won’t bring you happiness when you’re growin’ old” ♫

Bluebell pulled back behind the corner. “Maybe he’s friendly?”

“Doubt it,” I grumbled, sitting on my flanks and folding my hooves. “He’s probably insane if he’s sitting out in the street like that singing his heart out.”

“Doesn’t look like this is out of the ordinary for him,” Estoc whispered, still peering around the corner. “I wouldn’t necessarily call him a local, but maybe he’s been here for a while?”

I shook my head. “Staying in this city for any extended period of time would be enough to make anyone go fucking insane. Besides, that’s a griffon over there. He might not be wearing the armor, but how do we know he’s not affiliated with the slavers, hm?”

Estoc pulled back behind the corner and frowned at me. “If he’s with the slavers, then why’s he out here rocking in a chair and singing in front of a storefront like he’s some kind of manager?”

“I think we should talk to him,” Bluebell added, moving in to stand next to Estoc. “If he’s been here for a while then maybe he knows about Johns Trotkins?”

My eyes shifted between the two of them, first giving Estoc a hard stare that he returned, and then giving Bluebell an equally hard stare that she shied away from. She didn’t give any ground, though. I bet that if I told them no that they’d go up and talk to him anyways because of majority vote and all that bullshit. Hmph.

“Alright, fine,” I growled, “let’s go talk to him. Don’t say that I didn’t fucking warn you, though.”

As soon as we left our cover, the griffon stopped his singing and looked over at us. None of us had our weapons drawn, prompting him to push himself out of his chair and open his wings in what appeared to be a friendly demeanor. He was larger than any of us, even Estoc, who stood half a head taller than I did. His wings were littered with bullet holes, some of which looked to be infected, and upon closer inspection he looked to be missing a piece of his beak and several of his talons look as if they broke off at one point or another.

“Now whadda we have ‘ere?” the griffon asked as the three of us stopped several yards away from him. “Bunch ah potential customers lookin’ for some grub, eh?”

“Er, what?” Estoc blurted out. “Customers? We just heard you singing an-”

“Oh yeah, for my lil’ cafe over ‘ere.” The griffon pointed to the building he’d been rocking out in front of. It really didn’t look in much better condition than any of the other buildings standing next to it, but at least it had a working neon sign which read “Greasy Spoon.” The windows were all boarded up, though, which was a bit strange to me considering that this was supposed to be a cafe.

“How do you maintain a cafe when you’re in the middle of a city like this?” Bluebell asked, squinting at the sign.

“Scavengin’, for the most part,” the griffon shrugged. “The name’s Firefly Joe and no, before any ah yous think to ask, I do not belong to them slavers. The missus and I were brought here by them to be part ah the same game that yous all are. We jus happen to ‘ave survived this long.”

Bluebell smiled weakly. “Well, in that case, my name’s Bluebell.”

“I’m Estoc,” Estoc said.

“Sunny,” I grunted, looking away from both the griffon and his stupid cafe.

“You don’t ‘ave much of ah sunny attitude, do ya?” Firefly Joe chuckled.

Oh, he just had to fucking say it. I reached for my shotgun, but before I even had a chance to grab the barrel with my teeth Estoc had me by one of my ears. He yanked me back, glaring at me. It appeared that my aggressiveness didn’t go unnoticed by the griffon, either, as he took a step back.

“Woah woah woah, alright then,” he said, folding his wings back against his sides. “Won’t ‘appen again, ya got me?”

Before I had a chance to speak, Bluebell stepped forward. She moved to stand directly in front of me and Estoc, apparently taking control. Pfft, like either of us needed to be controlled right now. Situation resolved, right?

“No no no, please, it’s okay,” she said hastily. “Look we just came from the high school and we’re all under a little stress. She’s no excuse.”

“Oh, so all that shootin’ was you three?” Firefly Joe speculated. He glanced at me for just a moment, and I sneered back.

“Didn’t happen to run into the Ghost Pony did ya?” he added, diverting his gaze. “The entire time I’ve lived ‘ere and he’s always been there.”

Bluebell shook her head. “No, a couple of slavers. We won but… well, you can probably see that we really need to find something better than a couple of bandages to heal these wounds.”

“You three must be new ‘round these parts then. C’mon inside and rest for a bit. I don’t ‘ave the medicine that you’re looking for, but I could get the missus to whip up some hot food for yous three while I try to help y’all find what you’re lookin’ for.”

The inside of the cafe looked surprisingly well refurbished considering what the outside was like. While a lot of the tables and chairs were either rotting or in such a haphazard state that they appeared dangerous to sit on, they were arranged neatly around equally wasted tables. The whole place was relatively free of dust, and at the counter towards the back of the cafe a cash register and a soda fountain were neatly arranged, with a tall, white female griffon standing behind the cash register. Her eyes lit up as she spotted us walking into the cafe.

“You brought us customers, Joe?” she quipped.

“Not quite,” Firefly Joe replied, “but get started on making them some hot soup anyways.”

She nodded before disappearing into the back room, and Firefly Joe led us to a table that looked to be the least ramshackle out of all of the other tables in the cafe. After we plopped our saddlebags and weapons onto the floor, we all took our seats. I was surprised that none of the chairs collapsed under any of our weight, the griffon’s chair in particular as he seemed to just barely fit in it.

“You know, we don’t have any caps to pay you with,” Estoc said.

Joe waved a talon back at him. “Don’tcha worry about that, we don’t pay with caps ‘round here. Most ponies use a barter system and decide on what is a fair trade. Bullets for food, food for medicine, medicine for weapons, you name it.”

“What if we traded food for food?”

“Normally I’d ask yous what ya got, but how ‘bout this meal be on the house for all ah ya? Yous all seem to be able to handle yourselves pretty good, not to mention that yous didn’t shoot at me on sight unlike a lot of other assholes seem to do over in this part of town.”

Estoc smiled. “We appreciate that. Right, Sunny?”

I grunted and took a vague interest in one of the propaganda posters covering the wall. It was another one that I’d never seen before. A crowd of ponies encircled what looked like somepony who was wearing the same armor that the Ghost Pony had been wearing earlier. It had a piece of paper held in its magic and pointed to the crowd, as if giving some kind of motivating speech. At the top of the poster were the words “Preservation and Deliberation” and “The Rangers Need You” was written on the bottom.

While I was busy rolling my eyes at the poster, Bluebell furrowed her brow at Firefly Joe.

“Does everyone mistake you as a slaver,” she asked, “or does that have to do with there happening to be a lot of raiders around here?”

“Funny that yous should mention raiders,”Joe chuckled. “Their leader, Lucky, set up shop just three or four miles south ah ‘ere near the waterfront. They usually leave us alone, though. It’s the new comers, like yous, that like to take a crack at us. Fortunately they’ve all missed, and here’s to hoping that they’ll keep on missing.”

“But what about the slavers? Don’t they bother you?”

Joe shook his head. “Nope, they’ve come to like trading with us whenever they drop by. Don’tcha worry, though, I don’t go flapping my beak to them whenever they come ‘round, and they never ask. I think finding y’all’s part of the sport to them.”

“You’re stuffed full of insightful comments,” I muttered.

“If they like trading with you, why didn’t they take you back to work for them?” Estoc questioned, blatantly ignoring me.

“Think of my little cafe like some kind of pit stop out in the Wasteland,” Joe explained, holding his talons out. “You’ve spent all day wanderin up and down ‘ills when you finally arrive ‘ere and can take a very needed break. They like leavin’ me alone out ‘ere because I’m always a friendly stop. Hell, even ponies who shoot first and apologize later are welcome in ‘ere so long as they don’t try shootin’ a second time. Me and the missus are useful, even Patches sees that.”

“We’ve heard that name before. Is he the one who’s leading the slavers over here?”

The griffon nodded his head. “She be the one, yeah. Muscled together this whole army and built this place ‘erself, according to the guys who stop by ‘ere. Real charismatic, that one, and as ruthless as a ‘undred angry gods. I’d be careful pissing her off, if I was yous three. I learned that early on and look where I am now, eh?”

Bluebell leaned forward over the table. “If you’re such a friendly stop, then you’ve got to know plenty about this city, right?”

“About as much as anyone who’s been livin ‘ere for a few years,” Joe grinned. “That’s why I invited you in, ain’t it?”

I refocused my attention on Firefly Joe. The griffon had a smug grin stretched across his face, sitting slouched in his chair with his forelegs folded over each other while his wings relaxed against his sides. Maybe he was used to company? Or enjoyed it? He had every right to be if what he’s saying about his cafe being a pitstop was true, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the longer we stayed with him and his “missus” the more off it felt. He looked at all three of us like he’d just cleaned us out in a game of poker.

My eyes darted back towards the rear of the cafe and I spotted the griffoness staring back out at us through the window separating the counter from the kitchens. I couldn’t tell if she was listening to the conversation or if she was just giving us a creepy stare. Whichever it was, when she finally caught on that I was looking back at her, she smiled and waved at me before getting back to whatever it was that she was doing.

“We need medical supplies,” Bluebell said determinedly. “Specifically we’re looking for hydrogen peroxide and b-broc flowers.” She reached into her saddlebags, pulling out the Johns Trotkins papers and setting them down on the table. “This is our only lead on where to find the stuff we need, but we don’t know much about this place beyond that it’s a hospital. Is it occupied? Are there chemical spills? Has it been picked clean already?”

Firefly Joe pushed himself from the seat back so that he could get a better look at the papers. With one talon he reached out and slid them across the table towards him, scanning over the first page intently. His eyes stopped shifting, probably landing on the insignia at the top of the page.

“So yous want to explore the uptown ‘ospital?” he asked, looking up at Bluebell. “Now that I wouldn’t recommend to the three of yous. Better go huntin’ elsewhere for your supplies unless you want to wind up deader than anything that’s stupid enough to brave Canterlot.”

Bluebell shook her head. “W-we don’t have a choice, Joe. Time matters. We can’t spend the next few days looking for the s-supplies we need. Johns Trotkins is our only lead.”

“Would you believe me if I said that during the time that I’ve lived here I know nothing about the place?”

“Joe, are you g-going to help us or not?”

Firefly Joe heaved a heavy sigh and pushed the Johns Trotkins papers back across the table towards Bluebell. He’d replaced his smug grin with something a little sympathetic, but to me it didn’t appear to be sincere. While his cheeks drooped, he still had a predatory gleam in his eyes as he looked the three of us over.

“If it’s really yous intention to explore that place then I’ll at least give you a lil’ advice,” he said, his beak clacking as he spoke. “Now, me and the missus haven’t exactly explored that far south all too often, but we’ve ‘eard more than a plenty of stories. None ah them pretty, yeah? The ‘ospital’s occupied, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s occupied by a pack of abducting and demonic beasts.”

“Demonic?” I repeated, cocking a skeptical eyebrow.

“Is so,” Joe continued. “The stories from the raiders and the slavers were never quite straight, I’ll admit. One guy’ll tell me the beasts are tall while the other’ll say they’re short. Tentacles sprouting from their faces or tentacles sprouting from their assholes. Eyes or no eyes. It’s a conjumbled mess, but one thing’s for certain. All them had a grim stare plastered across their faces and fear in their eyes. Couldn’t ever forget that.”

“Then why were the raiders talking about other everyone fighting over the hospital if it’s overrun by these ‘demons?’” Estoc asked.

“If yous can get in and get out without dying, then you’ll ‘ave grabbed yourself a fat bag ah medicine,” Joe interjected before Bluebell could reply. “Yous three are right in thinking that this place’ll be a good source ah medical supplies. Everyone I’ve talked to says it’s like an untouched Stable in there.”

“Then the raiders probably are just waiting for everyone else to walk into the hospital, take what they can carry, and then ambush them later to steal it all.”

Before any of us had a chance to continue any further, the griffonness plopped the first bowl of the stew in front of us. She caught me off guard, causing me to jump a little as I hadn’t even heard her sneaking up behind me. I glared at her, narrowing my eyes, but she just smiled at me before putting the rest of the bowls down in front of everyone else.

The stew was interesting to look at, honestly. I’d eaten plenty of brown things in my lifetime, beans mostly, but this was totally alien to me. It was super watery like a stew and had a really pungent smell like a stew, but there were these long, leathery strips of something floating around inside of it. My first thought was maybe soggy cabbage or even tree bark, but neither of those sat too well with me. I doubt these guys had cabbage or tree bark considering that there’s no trees or farms around here.

I looked over to Bluebell first as she took a whiff, and she immediately recoiled in her chair. I’m guessing that those meaty-looking strips didn’t sit well with her, either. She quickly pushed the bowl away from her before hurriedly looking at Firefly Joe.

“I-is this… p-pony meat?” she asked.

Wait what? Pony meat?

Firefly Joe cocked his eyebrow. “Oh? Whatever do yous mean?”

I slowly slipped a hoof down under the table, reaching for my revolver.

“Th-the soup…” Bluebell continued, glancing down at the stew again for just a moment. “Wait, h-how… how did you say that you got your food again?”

“By scavengin’ ‘round, like I said,” Joe said, that smug grin returning. “Yous three never asked me what I scavenged for.”

“You were pretty quick to change the subject from what I remember,” Estoc growled as he pulled his own pistol out from his holster and pointed it at Firefly Joe.

Compared to how much he recoiled earlier when I reached for my shotgun, now that Joe had Estoc’s pistol against his head he seemed calm. His eyes shifted in Estoc’s direction, still grinning.

“Let’s not be too hasty now, yous three ‘ear?” Firefly Joe chided. “I’ll give it to the pretty mare, she’s got a good pair ah eyes.”

“So it is pony meat?” Estoc asked, grinding the barrel of his pistol against Joe’s head. “Where’d you get it from, hm? Tell us why you were so eager to let us into your store, and I suggest you pick your next few words very wisely.”

Wait a minute, where’s the griffonness?

CLICK

I ripped my revolver out of its holster and spun around to face the noise, and what I saw was the griffonness locking the front door to the shop. It was too late by then, however. Firefly Joe moved so fast that I didn’t even have time to aim before he had his talons wrapped around Estoc’s leg and was flipping the table on top of me and Bluebell. With a crash the bowls filled with steaming hot pony stew clattered to the floor, dousing the two of us in scalding water enough to make us scream in agony. We both toppled to the floor, my revolver flopping out of my mouth to skid to a halt several feet away.

Oh fuck that table was heavy, but luckily my hooves had enough traction on the floor to pull me out from underneath it. I reached for my revolver again just as the griffonness darted back to the table from the front door. She clamped one of her massive, taloned paws down on my leg, stopping me in tracks, before grabbing onto my mane and twisting my body around. Holy shit the pressure. She was gonna break my fucking leg.

Before my bones had a chance to snap in two, Bluebell plowed herself into the side of the griffonness just enough to know her off balance. She let go of my mane, my body rubberbanding to slam myself back into the floor with a very painful thud.

“Sunny, shoot her!” I heard Bluebell shout.

While I heard a pained squeak come from Bluebell behind me, I clamped my hooves around my revolver and twisted around onto my back. Unfortunately, I happened to catch the griffonness at just the right moment when she staggered Bluebell from three nasty scratches she received across her neck, shoulder, and chest. She was ready for me, so as I pulled the trigger she knocked the revolver out of my teeth. The bullet missed wide, embedding itself in the ceiling, but by Luna’s tiny asshole the noise that followed was enough for me to believe that I’d permanently gone deaf.

Thankfully it seemed as if the griffonness was in as much pain as I was. She broke off her attack so that she could cover both of her ears with her talons. As if that’d work. Still, with her stunned I twisted back onto my belly and shakily reached for the revolver again. My hooves were so unsteady that the first time I tried to pick my revolver back up I only managed to knock it even further away from myself.

BANGBANG

I felt the first drops of blood splatter against the back of my head before they even reached the floor behind me. Definitely wasn’t mine, I knew that much. I was still clearly alive, plus there was no searing pain ripping through my whole body forcing me to keel over.

Spinning back around, I caught sight of the griffonness’ body falling over next to me, rivers of blood spraying out of her neck and the side of her head. The life was already gone from her eyes before she even had a chance to hit the floor.

BANGBANG

BANGBANGBANG

I whipped my head back around and found Bluebell unloading what looked to be Estoc’s pistol into the side of Firefly Joe. Shot after shot punctured him in his neck, through his ribs, and in his stomach, spraying huge globs of blood all over the overturned table and floor in thicker and thicker splatters. Finally the gun was dry, but Bluebell still furiously squeezed the trigger over and over again as if she could get one or two more shots out of that thing. I couldn’t see her face, but her whole body visibly shivered the longer she tried to squeeze the trigger.

“Woah woah woah, Blue, stop!” Estoc shouted. He came running from across the room, one of his wings hanging limply against his side while deep talon marks marred his face, his chest and the same side as his limp wing. By the night goddess’ balls, the griffon must have chucked him across the room while I was trying to get a grip on my damn revolver or something.

“You motherf-fucker!” Bluebell shouted at Firefly Joe. The griffon was long dead judging by the sheer amount of blood that was leaking out of him. “D-don’t you ever… try to feed me pony meat! Do you h-hear me!?”

Estoc knocked his pistol out of her hooves before clamping his own hooves on her cheeks. “Blue, stop! Simmer the fuck down, okay? Take some deep breaths, they’re already dead.”

I groaned while I pushed myself back up onto my hooves. Well, for once I seemed to have come out of this fight better than either Bluebell or Estoc. Less scratches, no bullet holes, just some tender skin and sore bones from that big fucking table crashing on me. Though, if it wasn’t Bluebell I probably would have come out of this a whole lot worse.

She’d wrapped herself up in a full hug with Estoc when I turned to look at her. Why is she…? No, fuck it. The better question is why is she so hesitant to hold a gun? It may have been at point blank, but she still never missed a shot as she unloaded into both of those damn birds.

I turned my attention down towards the griffonness and the pool of blood that was growing underneath her. She was shell shocked from the revolver, I saw that, and she’d still managed to land two bullets right through the neck and the head. Now that’s… wait. I spotted something tucked up underneath the griffonness’ wing, and when I moved her wing out of the way I saw that it was nothing other than a StealthBuck. Well, something that closely resembled a StealthBuck. It was more compact and was easily hid underneath her wing, and also seemed to have a faster recovery time on the magical charge. So that’s how she must have snuck up on me and over to the door without anyone noticing.

Cooking ponies up in stews, using advanced StealthBucks, being left alone by both the raiders and the slavers. “Who the fuck were these two?” I whispered to myself.

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Team Player - You have learned the basic skills of teamwork and sharing. Good for you! Whenever all members of the party are within moving range of youself, each gains a bonus to all skills.

Prologue: It Ain't Sunny in Equestria

Prologue: It Ain’t Sunny in Equestria

“Everyone’s mad in Wonderland.”

Everyone hears stories about what life in Equestria was like hundreds of years ago. It’s a little something to reminisce about when the grittiness of the Wasteland starts to feel like it’s too much. The desolate hills, ruined cities, unending cloud cover, and inhospital wildlife really put a dampener on everyone’s mood, which makes staying sane out in the middle of fucking nowhere all that much harder. Losing your sanity in the Wasteland was akin to losing yourself entirely. No hope and no sincerity meant no virtue, right? And with no virtue you’re honestly no better than a raider.

Or in this case, a horde of griffon slavers.

Currently I’d been trapped underground in a renovated Stable for I don’t know how many days. The cages weren’t spacious given how many ponies occupied each one, and they smelled even worse than they looked. Luckily, I’d been dumped into one that wasn’t too full, but just several days later I was taken back out so that I could be marched back up above ground. Funny, given that I’d only been down here for a few days while many of the others were obviously here for probably several weeks or months. Being moved didn’t give me much comfort, though.

I thought back to the stories that mom and dad used to tell me about the world before it had been annihilated so absolutely. Canterlot used to be a collection of white buildings rather than an enormous pink cloud, Ponyville was known for its friendliness rather than its raiders, and, well… Actually Fillydelphia didn’t change much. It’s still as much the manufacturing shithole as it used to be, just changed hooves, although I suppose you could argue that Red Eye is a worse owner than either of the princesses were.

What I thought about most, though, was what if the seamless emptiness of the Wasteland wasn’t so dreary? Green trees, meadows, and the sun and the moon continuously switching places in the sky day in and day out. It sounded like the Heaven of all Heavens, more so than a bottle of purified water or a huge feather mattress. Who’d need to think about feather mattresses when an endless field of grass was more comfortable and spacious than anything ponykind made before?

But, of course, ponykind took all of that away. Now we were left with desolation and a whole lot of sadism, and fuck me did it get old after a while.

I stepped out through the enormous exit out of the Stable, instantly blinded by the cloudlight and deafened from the noise of Griffonchasers. It took me a while to adjust to the light, all the while the slavers pushing and prodding me down the rocky slope of the hill towards a makeshift helipad. Oh, I wonder if these guys made a healthy profit off of me. Having been locked down inside of that Stable for only a few days could only mean I’d been sold off to Redeye or something, right?

The griffons wordlessly pushed me into a Griffonchaser that already had its rotary blades spooled up, then sat me down next to a familiar bat pony. He looked over at me, cocking an eyebrow.

“Looks like they picked you, too, huh?” he asked quietly.

“You got any idea what these feathery fucks are up to?” I growled.

“Does “no good” help at all?”

“No. No it do-”

Pain. Lots of pain on the side of my head. I groaned, trying to lift my hooves up to my head to put some pressure from the throbbing that quickly followed afterwards, but they were yanked back down. I squinted at the griffon in front of me, watching as he chained my forehoof manacles to a metal bar underneath my seat. I looked down, spotting that my batty friend already had the same done to him.

“Sit down and shaddup, rat,” the griffon snarled. “You’ve got a long flight ahead of you and we wouldn’t want you losing your voice from flapping your gums already, would we?”

Oh, great. Something tells me that slavery isn’t what these guys had in mind.