Equestrian Scavenger

I snorted and slid out from underneath the bed to stand on my hooves. A PDA I’d found a week earlier had told me that the Mad Guffaws had hidden some loot in the storage sheds south of Camp Neighling, but the trash littering the room told me that the intel had long gone useless. I trotted out of the storage shed. taking a moment to pick up the crowbar I had used to break the shoddy lock on the door.

I slung the tool over my back and took a long, deep breath. Pausing a little ways from the doorway, I gazed at the ruins of the town around me. My nose twitched as the scent of ash drifted by. Looking up, a plume of smoke alerted me to the direction of the fire; west, towards the Earth Pony Enclave. After making sure that I hadn’t left any of my gear behind, I left the modest town.

I huffed in exasperation as I reached the hill’s crest. I walked over to the tarp shelter I had set up recently and laid down, pulling my binoculars from my neck up to my eyes with my hooves; I had long since stopped bothering to use magic for such a small thing.

“There you are,” I muttered as my eyes met a familiar patch of forest, home to the Earth Ponies’ Enclave. My binoculars swiveled around as I surveyed the area around the dense forest, looking for any signs of life in the area. I gawked at the sight I was met with instead.

The forest was burning. The northernmost part of the Everfree Forest, was burning. Fire, a true forest fire was taking place right in front of my eyes. My ideas of a small campfire spun suddenly escalated into the ramifications of a forest fire, the magnitude of which that nopony had seen in decades. The reading I had done after finding a couple of legible history books long ago had told me that pegasi were the only ones who would be able to douse a forest fire, and that was with the help of earth ponies and unicorns. It was too bad that the pegasi were not interested in rebuilding Equestria, all they wanted to do was keep all of their resources up in the sky, away from the apocalypse below.

I shook my head and tore my eyes away from the billowing black pillar of smoke and stood. I had paid my debts to the Earth ponies long ago, but once you knew where the Earth Ponies lived, you would go out of your way to make sure they lived. After all, they taught me how to create tannin. Making sure to grab my gear from under the tarp, I galloped down the hill and into the fray.

I’d once read from a book that fire was a beautiful, and terrifying thing. My body shivered as I stood before the fiery blaze engulfing the Enclave’s home. I heard nothing around me but the crackle of fire and the falling of trees. The forest somehow seemed scarier filled with sound than when it was filled with silent, stalking tribals.

“Help!”

“Damn it,” I muttered; I wasn’t in the mood for a rescue. I ducked into a nearby bush and began to sneak towards the still crying voice. watching the nearby trees carefully for any embers. The fire was nearby, but wasn’t close enough to warrant extreme caution. Despite that, I still watched the trees warily; I had been lured into a trap like this before, and would never let my guard down again.

I continued onwards despite my hesitation and peeked into a clearing ahead. Lying on the ground almost right in front of me was a mare, and it was graphically apparent that she’d taken quite the fall. She had fallen from a drop behind her, presumably when she wasn’t paying attention in front of her, resulting in the mare tripping over a large log and plummeting right onto an Enclave trap. The noose for the trap was tightly clamped around her neck. Luckily, the mare seemed smart enough to stay put and try not to move. Those traps were built to tighten if one kept struggling; crazy Earth ponies and their technology for you. I took a quick peek around the trees around her, only to find them clear of any life. I took a slow, deep breath, and stepped out into the clearing.

The unicorn mare had a nice white coat, and a long black mane that came down past her neck. She looked more like a city mare than a scavenger. As expected, the mare flinched back as I came towards her, but otherwise halted her screaming, thankfully saving my hearing for another time. Her ears flattened against her head as I anxiously took some steps, looking around me in a hardened suspicion.

“Please… H-help…” I turned towards her and held up a hoof.

“Quiet,” I hissed, shutting her up quickly. “I don’t know how long somepony can survive in an EPE trap, and I don’t think you want to find out.” She stayed silent. I took that as my queue to close the gap between the two of us. Thankfully, it seemed that a rookie tribespony had made this knot; it was loose enough to untie her. Sitting down, I began using my hooves to undo the noose as the mare sat there, hanging uncomfortably about an inch of the ground.

“W-why don’t you use your magic?” Uneducated, huh? Maybe she wasn’t a city mare.

“Because,” I began, accidentally pulling a little too hard on the rope, making her choke. “If I just used up all of my magic on little things that I could do physically, then I would be drained all the time. Haychigan has little magic in it to begin with.” Her eyes shimmered with a hint of curiosity for a moment, and she looked up at me, mouth slowly beginning to open.

“No, not now. Questions later.” She took the hint and shut up, thankfully preventing me from hearing her barrage of questions. About a minute later, I had the knot undone. She went to stand up but yelped and fell harshly onto her opposite side, revealing a long gash beside her stomach on the side she had fallen on earlier. Blood was dripping out slowly, but the deep looking wound seemed bad. Bad enough that it might require a bandage and some tea. I cringed and looked between my bag and her.

Your medical supplies are low, just leave her here and go, my mind growled at me.

But she can’t even walk, what kind of pony would you be if you left her here to burn alive? Plus, you can always boil up some more clean bandages and tannin. As I continued to argue with myself mentally, I failed to notice the mare trying to use her magic. Before I had time to respond, she let out another cry of pain, clutching her head as she lay on the ground.

“It hurts…“ She whimpered pitifully. Ah, buck it. Curse my good samaritan side, and curse this stupid mare for trying to use magic while she was clearly unable to focus. I levitated the now free mare out of the rocks and onto a nice patch of dead, brown grass. My head throbbed for a moment after I set her down. I groaned, rubbing the sore spot.

“Don’t use magic, the pain is going to make it harder for you to focus, and I don’t need you to bleed out both literally and mentally.” She grunted in reply to my statement. I went to work, pulling out a good hoofful of clean rags. I lifted out a plastic bottle, looking for some tannin tea to use as an antibiotic, but there wasn’t any left. A loud groan escaped me.

“You better be worth it,” I muttered pulling out my bottle of reserved Diamond Dog whiskey I had been saving for my return to Detrota Central. I sanitized a rag with a good pour of the whiskey, and applied it to the wound. She hissed in pain, but was able to stay still.

“You got a name?” Her eyes were shut tight, giving me a chance to shamelessly look over at her cutie mark; a pink star with five other pink stars surrounding it. It looked so out of place on her otherwise pristine white coat. One could only wonder what this mare’s story was.

“T-Twilight Sparkle,” she gave up after a moment of hesitation. I nodded and kept wrapping the bandages tightly around her side and the wound, careful not to hurt her as I went. So it was Twilight Sparkle, huh? Such a strange little name to be born into this world with. It reminded me of some of the names elder ponies in Detrota had; bright and cheerful.

As I continued to work on her side, my sharp eyesight allowed me to spot quite a worrying thought not too far from us in the forest ahead. Slowly approaching us were flames, and with them the sound of the fire.

Buck it, I thought to myself. I gave up on using my hooves and let go of her, finishing up the work quickly with my magic. She let out a quiet moan of pain.

“We have to go, the fire’s coming.” Her shut eyes refused to open. Celestia dammit all, the mare was getting tired.

“Twilight, we need to go.” Still, Twilight refused to stand up from the ground. She would owe me so much for this now. I pulled her up with my telekinesis and set her across my back, careful not to set her down on the fresh bandage and the end of the crowbar across my back.

“Thank… Thank you,” she muttered out to me drowsily. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the way I had come. I pushed my way through the foliage, allowing both me and the mare to pass through without any more scratches.

When I made it out of this forest with this stubborn mare, I wanted some answers, and maybe a little bit of payment. Make that a lot of payment. Whiskey isn’t cheap, after all.