Fallout: Equestria - Sunny Days and Lonely Nights

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)

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.