Fallout: Equestria - Sunny Days and Lonely Nights

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

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.