Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

Fallout: Equestria: Honest Herds

By sargecadet

Chapter 3: A Continuing Education in Effective Violence

"Fifteen years as a unified nation, and this is what we have to show for it? I expected better from us."

Alive, but only for the moment. My ability to breath, given to me again by the repair done by the potion, quickly left. I could still feel blood gushing around inside my neck and became acutely aware of the hole still in my wind pipe. Those two injuries were not a particularly good combination. I was soon gasping for air once again and coughing up dark crimson blood.

"Shit!" Lily yelled, "What level of potion was that?" she shouted to Threeblue.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the dark blue unicorn mare trembling. "I gave him a point-seven solution potion! That's all we have!"

"Oh fuck!" Lily turned to Twoblue, "Do you know any healing spells? Please say yes!"

Their voices were beginning to sound faint. "You know I don't, dammit!" he paused for a second, "But I know something we can do. Lily, I need you to cut an incision in his neck barely to the right of his esophagus." Wasn't cutting my throat more of the opposite of what I needed?

Lily thought it seemed stupid also. "Are ya fucking, Luna-damned, bloodwing shit insane?!"

"Just do it, dammit!" With that Lily took out a big, sharp knife, and precisely made a two-inch long cut vertically in my throat where the potion had just healed it. I felt a force- magic, I realized- pressing against my bleeding artery and covering the holes in my throat. "Give him Med-X." he said to my other companions, almost whispering. I felt a needle stabbed into my side and immediately began to feel my pain dulled. Not gone, for sure, but lessened. It felt like hours as Twoblue stood there, keeping me from bleeding out, suffocating, or both. I breathed slowly. The pain had started to return when Two started removing a little pressure, apparently deciding my blood had clotted enough, from the inside of my throat and began wrapping bandages tightly around my neck. "Give him two more healing potions." again, almost whispering.

Threeblue carefully handed her brother two more bottles of purple magic, which he poured into the side of my half-open mouth with the utmost steadiness. "These potions aren't good enough on their own for the major arterial injuries you have," he explained, "but after what I've done you should heal."

I nodded slightly, not wanting to move the bandages. I hurt like hell, but I was alive and breathing. It was then that I realized that without these ponies, these ponies I had only met that day, I would have died. Had I run into this same group of raiders alone a would just be another corpse in the desert. My life, and by extension the lives of everyone in my tribe, had been saved by my new friends.

So there we sat. I was dizzy from the amount of blood I'd lost and the others stared at me hoping I wouldn't just keel over and die. Well I didn't die, but I certainly keeled over. I fell into a shallow, blood-loss induced sleep.

When I came to I was being carried in Two's magic field, and he looked really tired. I wasn't exactly the lightest buck around, after all, even without my saddlebags which Three was carrying. "I can walk," I croaked. The others turned to me.

"Oh, you're awake." replied Twoblue, "Are you sure you should walk. I mean, you did just lose a shit-ton of blood just three hours ago."

Three hours?! I'd really been out that long? I nodded my head. "Yeah, I can walk. I don't want to slow any of you down." With a quietly mumbled 'okay then' he set me down. My legs felt like jelly, and I would have fallen over if Three hadn't rushed up beside me to let me lean against her.

"It's fine, I'll walk with him." she told our companions.

Lily and Two shrugged. "Fine, where to next?" Lily asked. I checked my Pip-Buck map. It showed we were almost directly south of our objective.

I looked to the sky, discerning west by the position of the sun based on the time of day, then pointed north. "Straight that way." I growled. My voice reminded me of Lyra, they way it was gravelly and lower than normal. We resumed walking to our objective.

It felt like we had been walking beside each other for an hour before Three spoke again. "I'm sorry." she apologized in a whisper. There was pain in her voice, regret and sadness.

"Why? You didn't try to kill me." If anything I should be apologizing for making them waste three potions and a roll of bandages on me because I couldn't to kill a psycho. This kind unicorn mare didn't need to be sorry.

She sighed. "I was supposed to be scouting ahead, and I got lazy. If I had seen the raiders..." she sniffed quietly, "You almost died, Fall. Even though we just met I can tell you're a good pony, and good ponies shouldn't die. I want to be like the Stable Dweller because she saved ponies. You could have died, and I don't want anypony to die because of me."

"Don't," I demanded, "blame yourself. It wasn't your fault you didn't know those ponies were there." She began to cry soft tears. I lifted a hoof and put it around her shoulders. "It wasn't your fault, and for as long as I'm with you all I'll make sure no ponies who should live die because of you, got it?" For the moment it made her feel a little better. I could tell that something bad had happened in her life. She tried to cover her pain with a buoyant and happy attitude but sometimes, like now, the facade cracked. But I would protect her.

I should have known better than to make promises I couldn't keep.

Desert Outpost 21 was bigger than any settlement I'd ever seen. Concrete houses, barracks, depots, armories, and types of structures I'd never heard of before stretched out in vast rows into the quickly darkening horizon. In its time before the war it must have been the home of a thousand ponies, a home away from home hundreds of miles away from Equestria proper. I could also immediately tell that its purpose had been a mostly military one. Ancient rifles and other weapons of war lay scattered through the streets, giving me the feeling the D.O.'s occupants left in a hurry.

We cut out a section of the razor wire fence and crept through into a monument to Equestria's greatest failure. The stories I'd been told had described Equestria before the war. A kingdom under the immortal rule of the Princesses Celestia and Luna, always at peace with its neighbors, a paradise. Until the war the nation's most advanced technology was steam trains and its biggest conflict was fought with pies. But this Outpost was not from the Equestria I'd been told about.

Twoblue lit up a minor illumination spell to light our path and I switched on my Pip-Buck lamp. This type of darkness felt foreign to me, the type of darkness where the buildings are close together and cast their own shadows on our path. In Iron Hide all the houses and halls had been much more separate. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic, but I didn't let it show. I didn't want my new friends to think that not only was I worthless with a gun but also that I was afraid of narrow streets. We kept walking until we came upon a large rusted hunk of metal with wheels. From her saddle bags Lily drew out a wrench and got to work on extracting the spark battery from under the wagons hood. Two kept watch while her back was turned, as did Three. I had regained the capacity to stand on my own again, but I wasn't sure what to do with myself to be useful. I wandered over to Lily.

"Anything I can do to help?" I asked our mare mechanic, hard at work extracting the big black block.

"Yeah," she grunted, "hold y'all's light up."

I lifted my leg to shine my Pip-Buck's lamp on the twisted metal. Using a wrench and some leverage, she was able to lift out the battery and set it on the ground.

"Hey, Two," she called to the unicorn stallion, "first one down, forty-nine to go. Carry it." Twoblue wrapped the large battery in a field of magic and followed after Lily, who had already started working on the next vehicle. I just repeated the job of holding the light, and Threeblue kept guarding.

Fifteen batteries later it was getting pretty dark.

"Fall, what time is it?" Twoblue asked. I was amazed he was able to carry all those spark batteries with just magic.

I glanced at my Pip-Buck. "Eight fifty-two, why?" My companions looked at each other. Lily started extracting the battery she was working with more quickly.

"We need to get inside one of the buildings." she said.

"Why?" I asked, "What happens if we aren't?"

"Nine was curfew for these old outposts." Three explained to me, "After that the automatic security protocols activate. And that means metal ponies and turrets with beam weapons." she saw my confused expression, "They can flash-burn us to ashes." Oh. That didn't sound nice.

Lily grunted as she pulled out the last battery of the night and gave it to Two. "Alright," she announced leaderishly (I know that isn't a word, but it fits), "we need a house or something, preferably one without a turret system in it. Fall," she turned to me, "y'all've got a sledgehammer, right? Go smash a door down."

I found a suitable looking dwelling (labeled "House 2096") and drew out my hammer. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my neck injury and when I slammed my sledge against the door. I experienced a whole new wave of pain and found myself wishing for that Med-X stuff I'd been given earlier. I put my hammer back in my saddle bags, half sticking out so I could easily reach it, and we entered House 2096.

The shelter stank of dry rot. Mold grew up the concrete walls. In the far right corner of this entrance hall lay two unicorn skeletons wrapped in each other' hooves. The larger one was draped in a disintegrating military uniform. The smaller pony couldn't have been any older that Cactus Flower. I suddenly and powerfully had the urge to run back home and hug my littlest sister, but that was impossible. Scattered around the two deceased ponies were lots of small Med-X syringes, all empty.

"They must have overdosed." Three said. I hadn't noticed her next to me and her voice startled me. I looked back again and noticed a full syringe I hadn't seen before.

I felt another twinge of sharp pain in my neck, but looking at these poor overdosed ponies made me lose the urge to use that last full Med-X. "Why... why would they overdose themselves?" I asked my friend, dropping my voice to a mere scratchy whisper in reverence.

She pointed to the radio on the counter nearby. "They must have heard about the megaspells. Lots of ponies just thought the world ended. Suicide was really common when the bombs went off, I've heard." Suicide. As strange as it may seem, I'd never heard that word before, but I was able to figure out it's meaning: Death by ones own hooves. That never happened in my tribe, and if it did I'd never heard about it. I shuddered. I couldn't imagine the fear and hopelessness these ponies had felt. I wanted to bury these two-hundred years dead ponies.

But then I started thinking (like I've said, it wasn't something I did often). Those raiders from earlier, what had happened to them?

"Hey, Three?" I asked, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Fall. What is it?"

"Did you guys bury those raider's?" I was hoping she'd say yes. My conscience was hoping for it. In the White Hooves, all the dead had to be buried whether or not they were with the tribe, but the wasteland was uncivilized and I didn't know how NCR ponies treated their enemies' corpses.

Her answer made me cringe. "Nope. Why would we? They're just raiders. We took their stuff and left."

Because they're ponies! my mind screamed, but at the same time I guess I understood. Nopony had the time to bury the psychos that tried to kill them out here. The creepy dark pony who taught me about life in the wastes had warned me that kindness could get a pony killed out here, and I suppose kindness to the dead was no exception. So instead of subjecting her to a lesson in my tribes sense of morality I just shrugged and lied, "Oh, no reason. Just wondering."

Lily's voice sounded out from the adjoining room. "Hey, guys, y'all should come see this."

The other three of us- myself, Two, and Three- rushed in to find Lily standing with her hat off in the center of a room full of the skeletons of young ponies, some older, some younger than the little pony in the other room. Each of the skeletons had one bullet hole in the top of their skulls. A compact assault rifle gun laid on the couch in the far corner of the room with the clip empty and ejected. How could a pony do this to all these little foals? I thought I was gonna be sick again. Lily looked even worse: her expression was cold, and that scared me. Twoblue, his saddle bags loaded down with salvage, laid down on the ground, crossed his legs over his eyes and began to weep. Seeing the strong unicorn buck who had saved me from bleeding out and carried me telekinetically for three hours cry like that scared me even more than Lily's steely cold lack of sadness. Three walked over and laid down next to her brother, stroking his mane.

I didn't know what to think. That pony in the other room, the one in the uniform, they must have killed all these foals. I could almost understand their suicide, but murdering almost twenty young ponies with precision like that, and then letting yourself die an easier way? What the FUCK!? I was angry! I wanted to kill a two-hundred-years-dead murderer who had probably been scared out of their mind when they committed their atrocity. My faith had taught me to feel sympathy for those who were morally weaker and to respect the dead, but all I wanted to do now was bring them back to life so I could kill them again.

I left the room of dead foals. I just couldn't take it anymore. Lily followed behind me. I came to a large box in the wall with the logo "Chill-Master 10,000 Refrigerator" and opened it by the handle. Old boxed food rested on shelves. It didn't look particularly appetizing, but I was hungry. I tore open one box of something called "Mini-Cherry Cupcakes" and was mildly surprised to find they still looked edible. I popped one in my mouth and found it crunchier than I'd expected cupcakes to be, but still food. I swept the rest of the refrigerators contents into my saddle bags and swallowed my mouthful of cupcake, feeling a twinge of pain as it traveled down my throat.

"Ya look angry, tribal." Lily said.

I snorted. "Damn right, I am. Aren't you? How can you not be when you see murdered foals?"

"I was raised a raider, remember?" she replied, "Murder was a part of life."

I turned to face her. "Killing doesn't bother you? Not a bit?"

"Oh, don't misunderstand me. The senseless slaughter o' innocents makes my blood boil. But those foals were killed out of mercy, or at least mercy all twisted up." she shrugged, "But no, I don't mind killing. The first time I killed another pony I was about four. I actually enjoyed it a little. Still do, sometimes."

Sweet Goddess Celestia, have mercy on her soul. I walked away. I wanted peace. I wanted sanity. Most of all, I wanted to bury the bodies of all those little foals.

I laid down on a decrepit mattress I'd found with my barding laying next to me. I lit the pages of "Story of the Goddesses" with my Pip-Buck lamp as I nosed through it, trying to find a passage in it explaining why the world outside of the Ghost Lands sucked so much, but so far was finding nothing. Eventually I closed the holy book with disgust and shoved it back into my saddle bags. I rolled over onto my back and stared out into Luna's sky through a missing chunk of the ceiling.

I needed to talk to a seer, say a confession, do something to get rid of the fear and hate I felt. The stars were beautiful. Little spots of light in the overwhelming dark. There was probably a good metaphor in it, but I couldn't see it.

What did the Goddesses want from me? They had a purpose for everything, right? Right now I just wanted to not be in this house, but the thunking hoof steps of the metal ponies I'd been hearing outside made leaving seem like a bad idea. Lily walked into the room. She'd taken her armor and hat off, presumably to be more comfortable since we weren't in any immediate danger. I noticed that her cutie-mark was a skull being shattered apart by a bullet and surrounded by spots of blood. A fitting talent for a mare who had admitted earlier that she enjoyed killing.

"Hey, tribal..." I cut her off.

"My name is Fall. Fall Goddess-damned Hammer-heart. Stop calling me tribal, dammit." I rolled off the mattress and pressed my face up against hers, staring with all the anger I could muster into her eyes. She returned my gaze in an annoyed way.

"Fine, what the fuck ever, Fall." she replied, "Just came to tell ya I'm taking first watch, and y'all're taking second. After that ya wake up Three for third watch. Get some sleep if ya want it." She turned to trot away.

"What about Two?" I asked, "Is he taking a watch also?"

"No," she replied, "and don't bother him when you wake Three."

"Fine. Good night." I laid back down on my mattress. I began drifting off to sleep before a small voice interrupted my rest.

"Fall," whispered Threeblue "are you awake?"

I grumbled. "Yes, I'm awake." I faced towards her, "What is it?"

Her face was tear stained and downcast. She shivered even though it wasn't cold. Something about her just seemed off. When I'd first met her she was happy and hyperactive, definitely not the mare I saw now. "I, um, I was wondering... this is going to sound stupid..." she stammered, leaving me unsure what she was trying to say. Finally she drew a deep breath and voiced her request. "Can I sleep with you tonight?"

I was a little taken aback. A mare had never asked to sleep with me before, and I wasn't quite sure how to react. My mind replayed part of one of the Arch-Seer's sermons: 'Above all else, the words of Element Bearer Fluttershy teach us to always be kindness. Whether that kindness is genuine or not depends on you.' I would needed to show kindness, if not out of genuine love for this mare then at least to comfort her. And, in truth, I needed companionship to.

"Sure, you can stay here tonight." then a thought worried me, "Your brother doesn't mind you doing this, right?" I really didn't want to get in a fight with a unicorn whose self professed special skill was choking ponies to death for sleeping with his sister.

She shrugged off her black barding and laid down next to me on the mattress. "My brother just wants to be alone, and right now I really don't want to be alone. I'm sure he'll understand." she nuzzled her way into my forehooves and pressed her head against my chest. Her horn dug into my bandaged neck. "You're a nice pony, Fall. Please, don't ever change." She drifted off to a quiet sleep, her tears occasionally wetting my coat.

I didn't want to change, Three, but I fear the wasteland has changed me.

The mine I stood in was littered with the bones of foals. They cried out to me in cold voices 'Save us, save us,' but I couldn't help them. I just walked over them. I could see daylight at the exit of the mine, but it was still far away. The bones of small earth ponies, unicorns, pegasi, lay littered, scattered around my hooves. They grabbed at me. I took out my hammer and smashed them to fine powder. Their screaming stopped. It was the merciful thing to do, right? The corpse of the dead unicorn foal-murderer looked at me with frightened eyes before I kicked her head into the wall and watched it brake apart into red mush. The raider who had bitten my neck now pleaded for its life, clutching the head of the mare who had been carrying the club in its hooves. I pointed the deranged pegasus' own machine gun at its throat and pulled the trigger. I couldn't miss from that close. I saw the Fire Hairs earth pony whose legs I'd blown off with dynamite slithering towards me. She begged for help, but I couldn't help her. I left her to bleed among the other fallen. I reached the mine's exit to find my village burning and my littlest sister with a hole in her head like all the dead foals. I scooped her small body into my hooves and hugged her to my chest as I cried over her. The dark mare stood in front of me. Her mushroom cutie-mark glowed in sickly green brilliance. A sickly green cloud rolled toward me from behind her as she spoke to me. "Fall, what are you doing?" I wanted to talk to her to tell her I had no idea what I was doing, but I was rendered mute. "Fall, are you okay?" No, I'm not okay. I couldn't handle the death I'd seen, the cruelty, the evil inherent in the wasteland. I couldn't be a warrior, and I was going to let my tribe down. "Fall? Fall?! Fall! Fall, you're hurting me!"

I awoke. Threeblue stared into my eyes with a pained expression. I released my tight grip on her and felt the thick beads of sweat that covered me.

"Are you alright?" she breathed. The way she spoke sent chills through me. I'd almost really hurt her. "You had a dream, didn't you?" I nodded. "What was it about?" she asked with a softness that was new to me.

I sighed. "I was having a nightmare about..." I wasn't sure what it had been about, "It was just really bad."

She wrapped her legs tighter around me. "I have dreams like that sometimes. They always start the same, but I can never see the ending." I could feel the warmth of her body pressed against me.

"When did you start having those dreams?" I asked the mare I was sleeping with but knew next-to-nothing about.

She shivered. "Don't ask me about that. Good night again, Fall."

Oh, wrong subject I guess. "Goodnight, Three."

I drifted off into a (blessedly) dreamless sleep.

"Fall, you fat tribal, wake up. It's y'all's turn for watch." I opened my eyes to Lily glaring down at me disapprovingly. After sliding my leg out from under Three, I crawled off the mattress, grabbed my stuff, and followed Lily to the front door I'd knocked down. I noticed Two laying on the decrepit living room couch as I walked past. What was that in his hooves? It looked like one of the foal skulls, but in the dark I couldn't be sure.

Lily cleared her throat. "Watch from here and make sure nothing gets in, got it?"

"Sure."

"If something does try to sneak in, no matter what it is, kill it, okay? Nothing good sneaks around at night in the wasteland."

"Understood."

"Got everything ya need?"

I patted my hammer and a box of two-hundred snack food. "Yup. Got my stuff."

She cleared her throat and smirked. "So," she whispered in a distinctly twitty way, "y'all and Threeblue..."

I interrupted her. "...are just friends. That's all."

"That isn't what I saw." she poked my chest with her hoof, "Must be something about y'all that makes her trust ya. I don't."

I blinked. "What?"

"Y'all heard me. I'm keeping ya alive 'cause Red wants ya alive. Far as I'm concerned, Fall, y'all're just another tribal an tribals ain't good ponies when they deal with the NCR. Never."

I was really feeling pissed at this mare. "And what does this have to do with Three?" I think I already kinda knew the answer, but I really just felt like being a jerk to Lily.

She rolled her eyes. "If y'all and her are an item, that makes trouble for the company. That's 'cause if y'all leave she might decide to go with ya. If she convinces y'all to stay that means I have to keep watching out for y'all's sorry flank. Plus, if ya haven't noticed yet, those twins got enough trouble on their own without ya getting mixed up in things."

The last part of her statement confused me. "What exactly," I interrogated, "are the troubles you're talking about?"

She searched for the right words. "Let me put it this way: the twins used to be triplets. Ever wonder why they're Two and Three instead of One and Two? That ever strike ya as odd?"

To be honest, I hadn't really thought about it. I'd just chalked up the weird names to 'NCR ponies are crazy' and shoved it to the back of my mind. "No, I hadn't thought about it. But what's it matter? Three and I are just friends, anyways."

"Sleep with all ya female friends, Fall?" she pointed out, then tossed in a small verbal grenade, "Is sleeping around with ponies ya just met that day a tribal thing?"

Okay, that pissed me off. I stomped my hoof against the floor. "Just go the fuck to sleep and leave me alone, Lily."

She shrugged. "Don't listen to me. Whatever. Y'all's funeral." She walked away. I watched her unarmored body saunter off into the dark of whatever room she'd chosen. Curse my traitorous mind: I realized I actually found Lily more physically attractive than Threeblue. Luna have mercy on my soul.

Sitting just in front of the smashed door watching the empty street was more boring than any day of smashing rocks. Large, clunking metal ponies walked by occasionally, but after taking a quick glance at me they continued their patrol. Oversized roaches occasionally approached me. I dispatched the ugly critters without hesitation by a quick hoof-stomp. Other than that almost nothing happened.

I glanced at my Pip-Buck. Two in the morning. Awesome. I sighed. Had I really messed things up by letting Threeblue spend the night with me? I had accepted her out of kindness, but that probably didn't change anything. I think that Lily had interpreted Three and I sleeping together as a sexual thing. As far as I was concerned we were just friends, and friends comforted each other, right? She was a pretty mare and she seemed to care more about me more than my other two companions, but I didn't love her. I remembered back to life before I left my village. My sister Cactus Flower used to sleep with my parents when she had nightmares. Then, one night, they said she would have to mature and she couldn't sleep with them anymore. So she chose me. When I realized that was the type of comfort Three wanted, spending the night with some pony to help guard you from your fears and not... um, something else, I actually felt more comfortable. But I'm rambling. I should get back to the story.

It was still the early morning, and I was still bored as hell. Stuck here doing nothing and I was tired. Fantastic.

"Mind if I sit with you?" a gruff voice said from behind me. I turned to see Twoblue standing behind me.

"Sure, go ahead." I patted a patch of floor next to me. He sat and I decided to try make some small talk. "What's it like where you're from?"

He snorted. "I'm from Junction Town, capital of the New Canterlot Republic. It used to just be a small town, then everypony started trying to move there. We left because they only way to afford a life around there for ponies like us is to join the army or do mindlessly stupid odd jobs. But overall, nice place." He nodded, apparently agreeing with his own statement. "What about you? What's your hometown like?"

Dear Goddesses did I ever miss Iron Hide right then. "It's, um, a nice place. We're generally far enough away from the fighting that it doesn't affect us much. Life was nice. Boring, but nice." All I wanted then was my boring life. Right now, I would give what's left of my soul to have never left my village, my tribe, my family.

"Damn, I wish my life were boring." Two grumbled.

"How did you know how to save my life?" I asked once I realized I'd never thanked him. Fall, you moron, learn how to be more polite and considerate.

A smug grin. "I had no idea what I was doing. Remember when said I was good at choking ponies? That was what I did, but inside-out and backwards. Made it up as I went along." That... was a bit disconcerting. "At least it worked though, right? I mean, you'd be dead if it didn't. Choked to death on your own blood. What a way to go." He paused for a moment before he decided to really get threatening. "If you hurt my sister I'll kill you."

Alright, Fall, just play it cool... "What do you mean?"

"My sister likes you. A lot. I can see it in her eyes. Like a good brother, I get suspicious when my sister falls in love with a stallion she met that day." He jabbed his hoof into my neck where the raider bit me.

I gulped. "She... she's just a friend to me." Then why'd you let her sleep in your bed, Fall?

"Then why the fuck is she in your bed, Fall?" Wow, sure hadn't seen that question coming...

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How do you know about that?" Great job not incriminating yourself, genius!

He lightly chuckled and jabbed harder into my throat. "Do I look stupid to you? Lily took the far room, you took the middle room, I took the living room. My sister wasn't with me when I woke up, and she doesn't like Lily much. That... only... leaves... you." He poked my throat at each word of his last sentence. If he was trying to intimidate me, he was doing a fairly good job at it.

Oh, come on, Fall! Grow some Luna-damned balls and stop being such a pushover! "So what?" I asked, "I let her sleep in my bed because she didn't want to be alone, and you didn't want her around." I knocked away his hoof for added forcefulness, and delved into what I divined as the root of the problem. "The dead foals affected all of us badly: you broke down in tears, I got pissed at some dead army pony, Lily got bitchy and philosophical, and your sister just wanted some damn comfort. So don't start blaming your problems on me!"

"You don't know a fucking thing about my problems! Your just another fucking tribal, you slimy piece of sister-stealing filth!" he telekinetically grabbed my throat and pushed me high against the wall, giving me a free first-hoof demonstration of his skill. "I don't know how you White Hooves shitbags do things, but where I come from if you hurt my family I will fucking end you! Got it?!"

I would have answered if I could breath, but I couldn't, so I didn't. Lily and Three rushed out. Lily took a running jump and tackled Twoblue to the floor, breaking his magical grip on me. I crashed to the floor in a gasping heap. Three ran to me, checking to make sure I was okay and that my wound hadn't reopened.

Lily kept him pinned. "What in Fluttershy's name happened? Why were y'all trying to kill him?!" she shouted in his face. He turned his face away.

I spoke for him ('Sometimes a lie is easier to take'). "Nothing. We were just arguing about... something. It's not important." Everypony looked at me as if I'd just spoken a different language.

"Is there a problem here, resident?" said a metal pony who had been patrolling. Awesome, freaky two-hundred year old mechanical ponies were trying to solve our problems now. The wasteland was just full of damn surprises.

"Uh, no problem at all, um..." Lily glanced at the faded name written on the walking tin can, "um, Unit Twenty-six. Just a small disagreement among friends, that's all." She mustered up a huge lying smile. The artificial pony turned and trotted away.

She stepped off of Two and glared at both of us. "Look," she chided, "I don't know what happened and something tells me I don't want to, but we almost just got the damn house searched by robots. Fall, ya suck at keeping watch. Two, I have no idea why y'all want to kill him, but please don't ruin our map until after we get back to Waypoint, okay?" We nodded. "Okay then. I'll finish off tonight's watch and in the morning..."

Two interrupted her. "I'll keep watch. I need time to think."

Lily shrugged. "Whatever. The rest of us will get back ta sleep then. See y'all in the morning, Two." She walked back to her room. I grabbed my sledgehammer but left my box of food behind, half as a weak peace offering, half because I felt to lazy and tired to take it with me. Three and I trotted back to our room and laid down on the mattress.

I expected Three to say something, to ask me why her brother tried to kill me, something like that. Instead she just wrapped her legs around me tighter than before. It seemed like she was trying to keep me from going anywhere. She didn't say anything, but I should have. I should have asked what had happened to make Two so protective, or where her nightmares came from, or what happened to her other sibling, or if she had even wanted to leave her hometown with her brother. Instead, I just asked nothing and relaxed into sleep in her hooves.

Three, I'm so, so sorry.

The morning awoke me with the sun shining on my face through the gap in the ceiling. Three looked beautiful (not that I loved her like that though, right?) and at that moment I didn't want to leave. I glanced at my Pip-Buck. Six-thirty. Way earlier than I used to wake up in Iron Hide.

I slid my leg out from under her, trying not to wake her up, and began slipping on my barding and saddlebags. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Good morning." she murmured.

"Good morning to you also, Three. Sleep well?"

She glanced around at her surroundings. Scrunching up her face in confusion, she asked, "Were we sleeping... together?" Huh?

"Uh, yes? You don't remember?" I was confused...

She shook her head. "Nope. Can't remember anything. Did we, um, you know...?"

"No. No we didn't. Our night together was perfectly innocent."

Three tilted her head. "Was I drunk?"

I would have said no if Lily hadn't peeked her head in. "Up an' at 'em, lovebirds! Found a map of this base in a desk, and now I know 'bout a garage where we can get a shit-ton o' spark batteries!" My Pip-Buck pinged the new location: D.O. 21 Repair Depot. How did it do that? Lily bounced away wearing a face-splittingly big grin, eager to get a 'shit-ton o' spark batteries.'

I looked back to Three. "I'm pretty sure you weren't drunk." Was I? I'd heard of drunkenness but I'd never seen it. When traders first brought beer to Iron Hide the Arch-Seer, acting as moral compass of the tribe, quickly banned it after it started a fight between two warrior comrades. For all I knew Threeblue could have been very drunk.

"Damn," she muttered, "that's so weird. I don't remember being with you at all last night." She squinted at me. "Are you sure we didn't..."

"Yeah, Three, I'm sure." I cut her off with a slight smile, "I think we should get going."

She stepped off the mattress and started putting her barding on, murmuring to herself. I walked out into the front hall where the bones of the murderer lay. Despite looking at the bones through my gaze of hate I suddenly noticed something I'd missed before. The pony's uniform had rotted, causing a small, dark orb to drop out of a pocket and into the murderer's chest cavity. I reached to pick it up. Written on the side were the words 'My Sin: Last Confession of Army Corporal Camera Recorder' in very small white print. I almost left it behind, but something told me to keep it. Who knew? Perhaps it would be useful later.

The repair depot was unfortunately all the way on the other side of the base. We were forced to navigate our way through piles of rubble and more abandoned vehicles. Two and I hadn't spoken to each other all morning, which made his sister hanging around me most of the entire time feel like I was tempting fate. I wasn't that keen on the idea of accidentally giving Two a reason to kill me.

It was a really strange morning. Three couldn't remember anything that happened from when we saw the dead foals until when she woke up. Lily was shooting every deactivated robot pony she saw and taking bits of metal from them. Like I said, Two hadn't talked to me that morning. In fact, he hadn't said anything to anypony, not even his sister. That meant, obviously, that Three had no idea her brother had tried to kill me last night, making everything more awkward.

I could see the garage of the repair depot after we crossed over one last big pile of concrete. Unfortunately it wasn't as abandoned as the rest of the base. Fire Hairs soldiers milled around the area with raiders. What was strange, however, was that the raiders weren't trying to kill them. In fact, they were talking!

"Remind me again why we're here?" a Fire Hairs buffalo said to a grime smeared raider unicorn. The buffalo didn't even try to hide her disgust towards the filthy pony.

The unicorn rolled her eyes. "Because we need scrap and you need scrap, and somepony has to decide who gets it."

Great. Raiders and battle-hardened Fire Hairs warriors were already scavenging the place we were going to scavenge, and there were about five times as many of them as of us. I felt a tug on my tail and fell back down the rubble pile. My coworkers looked to me.

"How many of them are there?" Lily asked.

"About twenty," I replied, "but their might be more inside."

Two glanced at Lily. "We've had worse odds." he deadpanned. Wait, what? Worse odd than four-plus to one?! And they survived?

"Yeah, but the last time that happened the company lost half its workforce." Lily reminded him. Okay, so bad odds with a bad ending. That seemed more realistic. "Three, I want y'all to go invisible and get an exact count, inside an' out."

"Aye, aye, ma'am, sir, ma'am!" Three threw a happy salute and quickly vanished. Two opened his mouth in protest, but shut it when he realized his sister had already left. It seemed to me that Three was back to being the joyful and energetic mare I'd first met. But why did it feel wrong?

Four minutes later she got back. "How many?" Lily asked as soon as Three un-vanished (that's a word, right?)

"Fifty-seven," she replied. Damn, that's a lot for the four of us to take on. "Plus a really big robot."

Lily tilted her head. "What type of robot?" Seriously, Lily? All you cared about was the robot? Not the other crap-ton of battle hardened murderous ponies?

Three chewed her bottom lip. "The robot... is really big. And it has a rocket launcher. And a flamethrower. And a grenade launcher. And a minigun."

As soon as she said 'minigun' the big garage door exploded outward.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuckity FUCK!" screamed a raider from amid the stream of ponies running like all hell had broken loose through the blasted door. The really big robot rolled out slowly. Really big was an understatement: It was bigger than I thought possible. I'd never seen something so big that could still move! Why would anypony ever build that?! And that's when I noticed the crazy grin on Lily's face.

Lily leapt on top of rubble pile. "Come on, ponies!" she shouted back to us, "We've got an order to fill and a robot to kill! So let's go kill us a giant fuckin robot!" Shit. The rest of us glanced at each other, then followed her. We couldn't let our leader get killed, right?

Everypony shot at the robot. The robot shot, blasted, blew up, and burned back. It was Discord-tier chaos. This was my life now.

Footnote: 25% to next Level
(Special thanks go to Kkat for writing the original. Because the original is always the best.)