Fallout: Equestria - Choice Millionaire

My lungs would first constrict themselves to death before they allowed me to take another step. The mutiny did not stop at the lungs; from the hooves to the heart, I was engulfed by the pangs of exhaustion. As my body succumbed to defeatism, all I could was lean on Creed and try to stay conscious until the next breath.

That we were even alive after that ambush in the donut shop… miraculous. Bittersweet was a bit like those action stars from the movies, knowing at all times how to move with the absolute certainty that she would survive. Split second choices. Grenade fired, escape route created. We must have run through twenty buildings or so at sprinting pace. Twenty seconds were all she needed.

Those corporate raiders from Raunchy Cavalry hardly had a chance of catching us with all the debris and dust we left behind. So we were safe for the moment. At least as safe as you could get in a city of raiders.

By the Godde—by me, the air in this alley was heavier than the saddlebags on my back. Sweat was pouring into my eyes, and my jumpsuit was starting to cling to me. On the dimly bright side, I could finally fit into this outfit without gaining weight. With that one bit of good news, I was feeling just peachy. Never mind the loss of my only ticket to Baltimare. I had talked enough about the death of hopes and dreams. Besides, I was hardly the worst one off in our party of four.

Aside from a fixed glower on his face, Creed appeared as indifferent as ever. The pony he was keeping an eye on was not faring as well. March Mint had slumped against the wall, curled into himself, holding his hooves to his face. All I heard from him were these sporadic, shallow breaths. He was going to be unreachable for a while. As for Bittersweet, well…

“Damn them to a seepage pit in the depths of Night’s Veil!” she cursed at an innocent trash can. Taking a note from Grapeshot, Bittersweet kept her voice confined to a whisper. “They should’ve shot me instead. Do their jobs right like proper mercenaries. She was never supposed to be targeted… She never even had the package.”

Bittersweet shut her eyes and steadied herself with a hoof on the wall. After that display of combat competency in the Joe’s O’s, I was inclined to believe she was our best chance of getting out of Hawkthorn alive. Knowledge of the city’s layout and its inhabitants were in high demand at this point, what with having every company in Megacorps likely searching for us.

Not that Creed was a pushover in the pony killer department. Yet I doubted he could resist making a detour on our way out and slaughtering a few dozen corporate raiders. Miracle worker or not, I had to rely on someone who seemed to keep our survival the top priority.

That was exactly why Bittersweet needed to stop grieving the dead and start saving the living. Let us be honest—we need to be pragmatic in the wasteland and remind one another of the importance of staying alive. So no one could justly call me insensitive.

I stepped forward, but Creed trotted in front of me and reached out first.

“Softlock was one of your dearest friends, and you probably feel like there was more you could do to save her. But you don’t need to feel responsible for her death. You didn’t have any part in the shot that took her life.” His words to Bittersweet were deliberate and gentle. They were the kind of whispers that echoed within the listener’s head, becoming her thoughts.

“We don’t have time now to honor her memory, Bittersweet. Although there is something we can do to make sure she didn’t die in vain.” Creed said. She opened her eyes with white sclera and no tears to shed, appearing haunted all the same. When the pegasus withheld his words, the old soldier took her hoof off the wall and gave him her full attention.

Those violet eyes, locked on hers, might as well have been hypnotic pendulums. Creed knew he could persuade Bittersweet of anything in her state. Not that manipulating someone emotionally distressed was really all that difficult. “We can get revenge. We can kill the ponies responsible and prevent them from letting anyone else feel that pain. Do you want to avenge her?”

Bittersweet took a deep breath and broke eye contact momentarily. “I just want to thank you, Creed, for trying to save Softlock.”

The corner of Creed’s mouth twitched in the second she was looking away. I would have been frustrated too if I was not getting the answer I wanted.

Bittersweet fixed her stance, steadying herself on her legs. “She was beyond saving, but you dragged her off the street anyway.”

Creed frowned sadly—his eyes softened, his breaths slowed—and remained silent. Certainly he was feeling compassion… for a desperate… and lost… It was exactly the same expression he had given me, when I told him my sob story.

Bittersweet faced the street outside the alley. “You’re right, though. Grieve later; focus on the present.”

March Mint was still curled up, grieving in the present. Understandable. He had many more friends to mourn.

“Then you’re ready?” Bittersweet dragged her eyes from the street to her hooves. Only then did she nod. “And you, Nova?”

“Just about,” I answered. I had my breath back, which was the best I could expect from this weak, treacherous body of mine.

“Great! We’ll be set to follow you out of here in just a moment, Bittersweet.” Creed dug through his saddlebags with his muzzle and emerged gripping a chrome combat knife. He set his eyes and blade–wielding smile on March Mint. “One thing first.”

The sole survivor of Money Shot kept his head bowed inward as his executioner approached. If he even noticed Creed’s hoofsteps, March made no motion to indicate so. His company was dead, and he was likely as lost as a child without a family. No one could imagine how he felt. Now March would die in an alley to a raider’s greatest fear.

“Creed, just let him be,” I muttered. The pegasus turned his head, but kept walking toward March. “Creed. He’s already worse than dead. You don’t have to do this.”

March stirred. His eyes appeared from behind his forelegs like a stage actor parting the curtains.

“Don’t start empathizing now,” Creed groaned.

“He’s just lost everyone he loves.”

“Good. That means no one will miss him.” There was no way I was going to talk him out of killing the poor fellow.

He paused just long enough for Bittersweet to turn around and deduce his intention. Her eyebrows scrunched up, and her horn lit up. The knife swung free from Creed’s grip, jerking his head in her direction.

“Great. Now you two have cocked it up.” Creed backed up a couple of steps at the insistence of Bittersweet’s requisitioned blade.

“I turn for a few meditative breaths and you try to stab one of us to death. What are you thinking?” she hissed.

“Slit the throat, when he isn’t aware. He wouldn’t have enough time to scream and give away our location.” Despite his overriding bloodlust, Creed was capable of practical thinking. Too bad it was entirely devoted to efficiently killing ponies.

“So that’s what you were thinking while cheering me up? Cutting down someone else who was mourning their lost loved ones?” The knife made jabs through the air following each question.

“I thought you would know better than to feel sorry for his kind. He—” Creed pointed a hoof at March. The raider scooted himself closer to the wall behind him. “—causes this kind of sorrow and suffering for his own enjoyment.”

March suddenly spoke up, “But—”

“Shut up.” And he quieted down.

Even as Creed adjusted himself to face Bittersweet, his hoof stayed on the trapper. “He and his kind. They killed Softlock, and they may have already quartered her corpse. A leg in each district and the head on top of Oasis Tower! It’s only right to put them down before they hurt anyone else. Don’t you want to avenge her?”

Bittersweet bared her teeth—surprisingly yellowed by negligence—and shot Creed with an expression far too remote and too venomous to be characteristic of her previous outbursts. The knife leveled to the height of his chest; it remained unwavering, aimed at his heart.

“You’re using my dead friend to justify your murders. Get me joining in as your accomplice.”

Creed brought his hoof back down and stood as straight as possible. Even as he was being threatened, he still had the gall to look down on her. “You killed well over a dozen raiders in that ambush. Why’s this one different? Because you feel sympathetic?”

Creed gave me a sidelong glance. It told me all I needed to know. That he was accusing me of disloyalty to him and everything he stood for; that I was wrong about Creed and everything he fought for. No psychopath could act so composed. He may truly care for the well–being of weak wastelanders. That was just the extent of his compassion.

“You’re using my dead friend to justify killing someone on our side!”

“He’s not on your side. You just paid him to provide security.” Creed gestured around the alley with a hoof. “Not a good investment as it turned out.”

“Pay’s got nothing to do with it anymore, Creed.” Bittersweet began stepping around the pegasus to the spot March occupied. “I can trust… umm…”

“March Mint,” I murmured.

“—March Mint. I can trust him more than you. In fact, I’ll need his help in my mission.”

The trapper cocked his head and gaped at Bittersweet. “You will?”

Creed squinted. “Mission?”

The old soldier pinned me down with her turquoise eyes. Suddenly, I found myself the scapegoat for all the cruelty of the world. How else was I supposed to explain the contempt in that look she gave me? “Tell him.”

“What?” I breathed.

“Tell your companion what you and the major arranged.”

Out of us gathered in the alley, I was the only one who could not be blamed for anything that happened! Yet a string of unlucky circumstances have brought me here to make me confess that I am indeed a liar. Neither my mistakes nor my attitude screwed me over; instead, it was the whim of someone who seemed not to like me from the way I looked. What a world we live in.

“Nova… you didn’t mention anything about a bargain,” Creed muttered.

“It’s a package delivery. That’s all.”

Creed shook his head and bit on something inside his mouth. “How much did he pay you?”

“600 caps,” I waved my left hoof. “We needed the caps to pay Softlock. So yeah, I lied, because your damn generosity would’ve lost us another thousand caps!”

Bittersweet still had contempt in her eyes, but I suspected she must have felt a little self–satisfaction in making a fool out of me. Her eyes were still focused on mine. She probably wanted me to sing an old timey from the radio for her next.

“And what’s the package for?” She levitated the cardboard box out of her saddlebags. Bittersweet really was going to talk about her plan right in front of March.

“Do we have to do this here?” One of her suppressed pistols flew out of its holster, safety flicked off, and aligned its barrel with my forehead. Surprisingly, the novelty of a loaded gun in my face was lost the second time around. I sighed, “There’s bombs in there. To bring down Oasis Tower.”

Creed went from glaring at Bittersweet to giving me a confused frown. Then he did a double take. Without a word to say. March Mint on the other hand looked as though he had swallowed his tongue.

Bittersweet tucked away the package and withdrew the pistol. She kept the knife floating where it had been this whole time. “All the CEO’s are gathered in Oasis Tower. I’m going to cut off the head of Megacorps with that package. March is going to help us.”

Even if March was still too shocked to give his confirmation, Bittersweet continued, “Blockades and sentries surround the tower. The CEO’s really want to make sure no one gets to them, so they’ve decided not to cut corners for once. They’ve poured a lot into security detail, so I assume there’ll be last minute traps set up inside the surrounding buildings. Being a trapper, March should be able to help us avoid setting those off.”

“You’re pulling this out of your butt to spite me, aren’t you?” Creed stated.

“I will admit, Creed, I only remembered that possibility very recently.”

“We don’t even have any reason to believe that March will help us.” As much as I loathed Creed’s bloodlust, I had to agree with him on that point. Looking at the corporate raider now, I could only tell that he was thoroughly confused by the way this argument was progressing. You and me both, March Mint.

“He has a perfectly valid reason. Seventeen reasons actually.” Bittersweet paused for a moment, concentrating on something on her barding. “Dropped them at the pastry shop. Hmm. Where was I… Didn’t you find it odd that we caused so much property damage around that intersection, yet no one interfered? None of the companies would’ve tolerated that much risk without the sanction of upper management. Especially at the heart of the city. The whole board would’ve needed to approve an ambush like that.”

Creed and March were watching Bittersweet. I was just wondering how long we could squat in this alley before a Megacorps search party found us. Like the afternoon heat, we had settled here and failed to move a meter since. We could have left March here and moved on; now that he knew what Bittersweet was planning, we had to bring him along. Between the killer angel and the mad soldier, enough tantrums had been thrown to make me consider surviving on my own.

Of course, I realized instantly that was suicide.

“We’d never know which CEO gave the order ultimately.” Bittersweet put her hoof on March’s shoulder. The trapper immediately flinched at the touch. “So we might as well eliminate the uncertainty and kill them all. For Money Shot—”

“What the hell happened to using dead friends to justify murder?” Creed hissed. He stomped his hoof down and took a step toward them.

“I don’t have a psychotic, bloodthirsty intent. Thus, this is entirely different.” Bittersweet pressed her advantage on the moral high ground with a feint. Reacting reasonably to a knife in front of his face, Creed pulled back.

“Now I see your point perfectly. Murder a poor little raider out of revenge, and I’m the bad guy; murder a dozen well–off raiders out of revenge, and you’re suddenly the good guy. Thank you for helping me see the error of my ways, righteous one.”

“I thought by now you’d realize it’s more practical to bring March along than it is to gut him for an attack he had no part of.”

“I find it’s practical not to bring along a born backstabber with us on your special mission.”

“Loose the chuff! Did raiders burn down your hometown or something?”

Alright. This argument was going nowhere.

“You can’t be so dense as to trust a raider you met a couple hours ago.”

I had to stop these two before they started dueling for honor.

“I met you that long ago, and you’ve shown more violent tendencies that he has in that time.”

“I’ve shot an alicorn through the eye with a shotgun from 1500 meters away,” I proclaimed. Creed and Bittersweet stopped and snapped their heads around with flat–browed expressions of zero amusement. “Good. You’re listening. So let’s wrap this up and get out of this damn alley. How about we skip all the debate and just ask March Mint if he wants to help us.”

Bittersweet snorted. “Of course I—”

I shook my head. “Nope. No. You didn’t.” It seemed like we had spent months here already. “March Mint, do you want to help us destroy Oasis Tower?”

The trapper gaped and froze on his first word: “Well, uh—” I could feel Creed twitching and longing for blood outside my peripheral vision. “Yeah. I want to bring down Megacorps… for what they did to my company!”

As March got to his hooves, I closed the distance between me and Creed—I had to jump to his left side to avoid cutting myself on the floating knife.

“Put that away,” I told Bittersweet. The blade remained right where it was—poised to strike Creed’s heart. “Please move the knife away. You’ll make this part harder than it already is.” She raised her left eyebrow as high as physically possible, as though I had trouble reading her mind. With some ponies, it came as easily as understanding the message of a billboard sign. With her point made, Bittersweet finally pulled the knife away.

Once that threat was out of the way, I pulled Creed’s muzzle to me, staring him in the eyes and making certain he was not aiming at March. His eyes were a slightly dull hue of violet. That was something I had not noticed before about him. “Creed, just forget your burning hatred until we’re out of this city!”

“He’s got to die, Nova. We can’t trust raiders to watch our backs.”

My tail whipped the ground. Through clenched teeth, I urged, “Please don’t kill him. You do that and we’ll lose Bittersweet. Then we won’t have a guide to help us escape this city. And sure… getting out will be easy for you. But for me?” I gulped as my imagination conjured up the worst scenario. Creed did say they might have quartered Softlock already. “You kill that raider, Creed, and that’ll mean two things—my time wasted for a silly argument and my life sacrificed for your stubborn beliefs.”

Creed looked at me and said nothing. That was not a guarantee.

“Think about the long term, Creed. How about getting to Baltimare? You remember that plan? Let’s not abandon that plan. Asking the smuggler didn’t work out, but all roads lead to Baltimare, right?” What did that even mean? Stop spouting nonsense, Comet. You make a living out of saying the right words.

But how do you change the mind of someone out for blood?

The epiphany found me before the question through the magic of déjà vu. I remembered a lesson from a similar dealing in Fillydelphia—do not dissuade, incentivize.

Confidence sold everything, and now that I had the right words, I was the most confident mare on this side of the wasteland.

“You could kill March Mint right here in this alley, and nothing would change. The world couldn’t care less.”

“Hey!” March rasped.

I shrugged an apology his way. Now the selling point: “But think about the consequences of bringing him along. Have the other corporates see one of their own helped the ponies who brought down Oasis Tower and killed their CEO’s. Once the dust clears, accusations will fly as the various companies claw at each other’s throats for control of Megacorps.”

Creed’s lip twitched at the corners. No need to hide the smile, you killer angel. “Soon enough, there’ll be more dead raiders across the Southern Wasteland than you could ever realistically create… yet it’ll still be your doing.”

All I had to do was smile along with him and indulge his desire. I felt something twist in my stomach as Creed wore that satisfied smirk of his; I had difficulty smiling as the memory of that Buck Crusader’s shattered skull came to mind.

“You know what. Let’s bring March Mint along,” Creed said. Bittersweet cussed under her breath. “Though I need a guarantee that I get to kill him if he does anything suspicious.”

Bittersweet tapped her hoof on the ground. “That reasoning makes me sick to my soul, but whatever gets you to stop trying to kill one of our own… Check your gear. I’m making a report.” She stared back and forth between the knife and Creed, but eventually it wound up back in his possession. A boxy military transmitter emerged from her saddlebags.

As Creed tended to his battlesaddles, March made baby steps toward the pegasus. I kept an eye on those two while I tried my best to figure out the shooting mechanism behind my new shotgun. In the middle of loading a new clip into his guns, Creed spotted the corporate raider. A dour frown quickly lifted into a forced smile.

“Your name is Creed?” March asked. “The Angel of Mason Road?”

“Yes,” Creed replied. He went back to reloading.

“You won’t try to kill me after this is all over, will you?”

His hoof stopped over the piece that cocked the guns. “Depends on if you’re still with us by that point.” Creed pulled the piece back to a two–note tune of mechanical clicks, his grin wider than ever before.

March started backpedaling. “Okay. Just making sure. Glad to be working with you…”

“I need quiet,” Bittersweet muttered. The transmitter was pressed against her ear. “Come in, Major. This is Private Bittersweet, reporting that everything has gone to Tartarus and split that dustbin right down the middle… They knew about the package. Probably someone on the inside… Well, some of us are still alive. Softlock’s dead.”

Bittersweet’s pistols floated before her, spinning into different angles at her convenience. All I could make out from the transmitter was static at this distance. Through a little experimentation and some pointers from Creed, I learned that pulling the pump on my shotgun made it cycle a new round. Fortunately, no one asked me to check my missing pistol.

Bittersweet continued, “Yeah, I said the same thing… Of course I’ll finish the mission. Just make sure you have that wine ready when I get back… I suspect Azure Bloom… cause he’s enough of a fake to wear an eyepatch for ‘cool factor.’ Make sure he doesn’t run. I want him to myself… Copy that. Over and out.”

The radio and pistols were stored away. The moment Bittersweet turned and saw us, she commanded us to “Forget the guns. Use something that won’t make a lot of noise.” With that limitation, all we had for range were Bittersweet’s pistols and March’s crossbow. Creed certainly did not mind restricting himself to a knife; I just had a shovel.

At the entrance of the alley, Bittersweet peered out into the street and signalled us over one by one. “Get behind me March. Stack up behind him, Stable pony. You watch our backs, Creed. Follow my lead.”

A quick glimpse of my Pipbuck map informed us of our location. Very far west of the Joe’s O’s; close north to Oasis Tower. However, the straightforward path intersected with some major roads, which were bound to be barricaded by Megacorps. Ruined blocks such as the one we were walking in provided much more cover than the streets we took into the city. As a result of collapsing infrastructure, different stories just blended together into one grand heap of rubble.

The flimsy apartment buildings barely survived the bombings, even though entire floors had been swept onto ground level. The trails of brick and concrete left behind provided convenient ramps into higher areas. That meant we could more easily sidestep the destruction left behind by such intense defenestration. Entire portions of the street were just concrete, bricks, carriages, personal belongings, and skeletons compressed into the tight space.

An apartment complex called the “Fairest Tree” was the next destination on our route. It had a sister building across one of the main roads, which was blocked by a series of checkpoints and armed corporates. According to Bittersweet, this place held the only safe path through the security on the road.

The Fairest Tree was about twenty stories of tannish red blocks, arranged by the mind of a child. It had an uninventive design that had clearly sacrificed aethestics and symmetry to fit as many rooms on a floor as it could. With the way the building bulged at its wings, I would not be surprised to learn that it looked like a big figure eight from the air.

But I may have been too hard on its appearance. Unlike the sleek apartment buildings we walked through on the way, the Fairest Tree had not suffered any collapses. Its interior was relatively well–preserved. If someone just decided to clean up the two centuries’ worth of dust and molding, this place could turn into a luxury hotel. The moment we set foot in the lobby, we discovered that one company may have had the same idea.

Indistinct conversation was exchanged in one of the backrooms at the end of the hall. The four of us tiptoed past a number of apartment doors, forced open likely by the same raiders we were sneaking up on. With every other meter we covered, Bittersweet had March ask me how many I was seeing on my E.F.S.

Two reds. One yellow. Three individuals behind one closed door.

The chatter was comprehensible now that we were basically hugging the door. A stallion was saying to his female colleague that “We have to take advantage of this new asset! This is a profitable market to tap into with a low price.” It seemed like he was situated right where the windows would be.

The mare stepped back and forth across the width of the room. She scoffed, “Us? Opening up a venture in their market? The last CEO who tried busting that trust wound up declaring bankruptcy.”

“That’s exactly why we do this off the record. Slash the price level, remove the regulations, and ensure customer loyalty.”

The mare stopped pacing right where the stallion was. They were both red blips. The yellow one had not moved for over a minute. “I didn’t realize you adhered to Gold Racket’s philosophy. I thought that school of thought was… banned.”

Bittersweet’s horn lit up with a subdued glow. Her magic shot out in two beams into the hinges of the door. A third beam wrapped around her pistol.

“If only because the CEO’s brought back the damned system after he was gone.” The stallion sighed. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Bittersweet lifted her pistol and pulled the slide back. Oddly, not even a soft click could be heard. Her hoof went out to the door and started pushing it inward. The rest of us stood back and let the old soldier take the lead.

The door gradually swung open without a sound. The two raiders stood in the light filtering through the window, staring into each other’s eyes as their conversation continued.

The mare wrapped her forehooves around her companion’s neck and said, “You can’t change the system when you’ve got no friends in upper management. And you can’t get friends unless you’re profitable. Of course, the net income doesn’t have to be reported.”

With the door set against the wall and with the room scouted out, Bittersweet set the gun’s sights on the two corporates.

The stallion gaped. “So you’re okay with going on this venture with me?” Receiving a nod in reply, he smiled so wide that his gums showed.

The pistol reeled back, an adrupt noise akin to a cough echoed from the barrel, and the female raider slumped instantly. The other one went wide–eyed as the weight of his dead colleague fell upon him; a bloody hole in his forehead appeared before he could recover from the shock. The two raiders crumpled in a pile by the windows.

Bittersweet trotted to the two raiders, shooting both of them again before approaching for a closer investigation. I looked around the apartment in the meanwhile, looking for the feature that excited these two corporates so much. The television set was cracked open; the kitchen had been taken over by moss; the beds were just unsanitary, even by wasteland standards. If they were hoping to re–open this place as a motel, the effort would have required a level of renovation on the scale of a megaspell. There was surely nothing profitable about it.

“Stable pony.” I turned to face Bittersweet. “That yellow blip. Where did—”

The sound of flowing water disrupted her. A flush of water. And it was muffled behind a wall. We all looked at the only closed door in the room, the one in which the yellow blip was currently moving around in.

A third raider opened the door and skipped out shouting, “I just can’t believe a toilet like this still works! Everyone will want to use—” He reeled his head back and stopped two steps out the door. A crossbow bolt had flown through the side of his head. The yellow blip disappeared as the raider was falling to the floor.

Looking from the dead body to March, Bittersweet commented, “Good job.” The trapper remained in place, holding the crossbow to his chest and keeping an eye on Creed. Likewise, Creed was keeping his eye on March.

To my surprise, Creed smiled at him and echoed Bittersweet. “Good job.” He broke eye contact after doing so and allowed March to breathe easier.

Bittersweet stepped out of the newly opened door with a smirk on her face. “A toilet. They’d found a working toilet for themselves. No sense letting it go to waste. Relieve yourselves and take a break.”

March Mint was the first to take up the offer. He trotted right over the raider he killed. I frowned and asked, “Is it really a smart idea to stop so close to the raiders for a bathroom break?”

Bittersweet kicked the bathroom door shut. “Either you go now, or you wait until we get back to Celestia’s Folly,” she said. That settled the matter immediately.

Bittersweet did keep my concern in mind as we took turns using the bathroom—how that toilet still operated was beyond my knowledge. She simply cast the same spell that was used on the door and her pistol; she muted the sound of the toilet flush. The effect likely faded over time, given that I heard her pistol clack as she checked her clip. Still, that was a type of spell I had never seen used by unicorns up north and a very useful one at that.

Our purpose for visiting the Fairest Tree laid in the basement of the complex. An underground passage ran between this building and its sister across the road. The metal walls and claustrophobically low ceiling reminded me of a Stable. The tunnel even acquired a Stable’s survivability. It would hardly be surprising to discover that someone stole the design from Stable–Tec.

The place was just as creepy as a Stable thanks to Donut Joe. Or rather his likeness on the posters and merchandise scattered across the floor. We waded through mounds of goods belonging to the Joe’s O’s franchise. Everything from thermos bottles plastered with his face to advertisements for jelly eclairs at half price.

“What the…” I muttered. It seemed that anywhere I looked, there was Joe staring right back at me.

March Mint snickered to himself as we walked. “So that’s how they did it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Whitewash Cleaners,” the trapper answered. “They were paid to liquidate all assets of Donut Joe… His merchandise, his stores, his existence. I’d heard tales of the bonfires at the start of Megacorps, but I always thought that method was too time–consuming and expensive. Not to mention how angry the real estate guys get when they see smoke blocking out the view of the skyline.

“Seems the Cleaners thought the same. So they dumped it all in this passageway and forgot about it. Problem’s out of sight and out of mind.” March chuckled at the revelation. These corporate types were characters I was never going to understand.

Once we were across the road, the rest of the journey was straightforward. Oasis Tower was just three blocks down the street. What might have once been a shining skyscraper was now an empty steel cob with dark holes where windows used to be. Its eight faces were marred with partial collapses and bent beams. Even though Oasis Tower had survived the bombs and centuries of neglect, the scars showed that the building barely remained standing.

Now we were going to deliver the coup de grâce.

Within a block of Oasis Tower, we stopped at the foot of an office building with a double skin curtain wall. Here we faced the brunt of Megacorps’ security detail—the entire plaza underneath the skyscraper was filled with suited raiders. Barricades had been erected on the roads, some of which boasted machine gun nests. At the front entrance, an armored taxi carriage stood guard with a gun turret that looked long enough to lob tank shells across the city. There was a good probability too that snipers were posted in the buildings around Oasis Tower, just in case any intruders sneaking in wanted to receive the Softlock treatment. The CEO’s had spared no expense.

I pulled my head back behind the corner of the office building. Which one was more impossible—escaping out of Hawkthorn by myself or getting inside Oasis Tower? I had been hoping I would tag along on this whole mission without ever having to do anything myself. No one shooting at me so long as Bittersweet knew a way around these raiders; no one asking anything of me so long as Bittersweet had those explosives. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

“You wouldn’t happen to know any more underground passages—” I turned and ended up staring at only Creed. “—Bittersweet? Where did she go?”

I found her further east by an entrance into the office building. Bittersweet was tapping her hoof on the sidewalk, staring inside the glass doors.

Creed and I walked over to her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes after barely looking even a second at me. “Breaking in.”

March strolled out the doors right on cue, holding up a net of shotgun shells with his left hoof. “All the traps in the lobby are cleared, Bittersweet.” He glanced at me and held out the shells. “I saw you had a shotgun, so I unloaded the ones rigged to tripwires to get you some ammo.”

My surprise lasted only a few seconds. It was hard to pass up on free ammo. “Thank you,” I said after the shells were in my bags. March smiled at the words of gratitude.

“Inside,” Bittersweet ordered. She waited to close the door behind us.

We filed into a dark lobby that essentially consisted of a security checkpoint, a mail room, and a hall for elevators and stairs. The simplistic architecture was embellished by rainbow streamers on the ceiling, motivational posters on the walls, and decaying newspapers on the floor. Strung up by wires above our heads, huge letters in bold red welcomed us to “Hoity Toity Media Center.”

My forelegs were stepping on sensationalist news headlines that were just hilarious to read—Baltimare Mayor Caught Bedding Mules! Equine Blood Again Spilt by Salad Bowl Savages! War’s Over After Lecharo!—but in a darker sense of humor. Most of this garbage was propaganda… some of it was outright hate speech against any non–equine species. This newspaper—the Hawkthorn Inquirer—was worse at informing its audience than a DJ in a Tenpony suite.

It was fine to learn about the local newspaper, but that did not clear up—“Why are we here?” Creed asked. He kicked away a few newspapers under his hooves, wearing a grimace that deepened with every second he spent looking at the headlines.

“Hold on a moment,” Bittersweet said. Her horn lit up and cast her silencing spell on the metal detector that restricted access to the hallway. The turquoise magic seeped into the frame. “Go through quickly.” Our possessions immediately set off the detector and bathed us in red light. The actual alarm, however, was soundless.

Once we were all gathered by the stairs, Bittersweet addressed the question: “We’re still going to bring down Oasis Tower, but we can’t realistically get inside that building with the security out front…” She looked to the stairs and back. “I’ll explain on the way up.”

This building was almost as tall as Oasis Tower, and that was sixty stories high. And the elevators did not work. And we were ascending by way of the stairs… There better be something valuable to pilfer from this place.

Looking up the first flight of those concrete steps, I found my wish granted. My enabler was the ministry mare herself—Pinkie Pie—on a workplace announcement plastered to the wall. The image was a picture of her holding a massive calender scheduled with various wacky activities and events—Cupcake Monday, Prank Tuesday, Gaming Wednesday, Treasure Hunt Thursday, Cupcake Friday, Waterboarding Saturday. “Come visit me in my office if you don’t feel at home!” Pinkie Pie urged me in fat pink text.

The media center was the headquarters for all Ministry of Morale operations in the city. That meant there were all sorts of important war–time artifacts gathering dust in here. The ministry mare herself set up her office in this very building, leaving behind confidential documents, personal trinkets, and possibly even memory orbs. My customers ate that stuff up back in the north! I could make a killing!

Bittersweet led us up the stairs in single file, talking about her plan as we went. Maybe she might mention something about Pinkie Pie’s office at some point. “I did reconnaisance of this area not long after the siege of Celestia’s Folly began, posing as a real estate buyer. I knew that the CEO’s convened at Oasis Tower for their quarterly reports, so that’s where I started.”

March held us up each time we passed by the door to a new floor. He kept examining the frame for some reason.

“While the structure of Oasis Tower was certainly weakened, it couldn’t be brought down by a concealable amount of explosives. The media center, on the other hand, is an older building that I had access to blueprints for. The right amount of charges at the right spots should topple this place right on Oasis Tower. The force of one skyscraper falling on another will likely do the trick.”

“Bittersweet,” March whispered. Bittersweet stopped and turned her head toward us, bathing the lower steps in a turquoise glimmer. “…all these doors have been tampered with. Likely booby–trapped.”

She made a quick glance at the floor sign and nodded. “Understood. Can you go ahead and clear the doors to the 12th, 18th, 25th, and 39th floors?”

“No problem,” March answered. He started racing up the steps ahead of Bittersweet.

She pointed a foreleg at Creed. “Go with him to the 39th floor. Our contingency exit is up there. I need you to do a sweep in case we need to use it.”

The pegasus gave me a grin and started up the stairs. Bittersweet’s foreleg blocked his way when he reached her. She spoke through clenched teeth to Creed, “And don’t kill him once he does his job.”

Creed kept up his smile, which was remarkably devoid of its usual arrogance. “I’m starting to think you have a sour opinion of me.”

“That’s how I view ponies who draw knives behind my back.”

Creed ascended without another word.

Bittersweet faced me at last. “I’ll plant charges on particular weak spots and pillars. They’ll be set to blow by a timer, so we have to move quickly.” I raised my hoof halfway up my chest. Bittersweet’s stony–faced gaze was the reason why it never made it any further. “What is it?”

“This is the southern headquarters for the Ministry of Morale, right?” But I knew it was. If I gave Bittersweet an excuse to avoid seeing my face, she would have to accept. I could get my way with anyone, even a pony who seemed to detest my very appearance. “I want to visit Pinkie Pie’s office real quick.”

“Why.”

I pulled my lower lip up and raised my eyebrows. “To pick up some artifacts. I’m genuinely curious about the history of Equestria.” When I spoke, the words spilled out quickly and cleanly; of course I made sure not to spout off like an auctioneer with a full bladder.

Bittersweet blinked. Her tongue was moving around in her muzzle, but the lips stayed shut. “…22nd floor. Meet March on his way down and get him to open the door.”

“Thank you, Bittersweet.” I climbed deliberately the steps nearest to her before picking up the pace on the next flight. The next flight after that was no problem. Likewise with the next flight after that. The prospect of discovering some wartime mementos belonging to Pinkie Pie revitalized my fatigued body. The realization that buried treasure was within reach was an invisible elixir that turned mares dead on their hooves into the fastest ponies alive.

My forehooves had to drag me over to the wall, so I would not have to rest with my face on the floor. That was it. The last flight my legs would take me up. This was my stop—no, it was just the 21st floor. What I would do for a helping hand.

“Nova? What happened to you?” March Mint stepped down the stairs, looking no worse than if he had just woken up from a nap. He inspected my limp form with darting eyes. “Doesn’t look like you got hit by anything.”

“22nd floor,” I muttered. “Open the door please.”

March immediately went up the stairs again, only stopping halfway to ask if I needed help getting up there. Normally, I would object to letting someone carry me around—not out of fear of getting dropped, but rather out of concern for how badly such a sight would hurt my image. Fortunately, there were no witnesses, and the trapper, adhering to some kind of code among corporates, could be trusted to secrecy.

“Thanks for the help, March.” I took small steps toward the door to ensure I could trust my legs again.

“Anytime. Providing assistance in any form is just procedure for my… my company…” The raider coughed into his foreleg, shielding his face from view for a couple of seconds. With a sniff, he continued, “Here’s my business card, if you ever need my help again.”

I took the card and shook March’s hoof. As a businesspony, he had performed better than anyone in the Wasteland could have expected. I would have even paid him for his help had he asked. But he headed down the stairs without another word.

The stairway door led right into the reception room for Pinkie Pie’s office. Visitors had the choice of lounging on designer sofas or baking a snack in the kitchen. Judging by the disco ball in the middle of the room, there was probably a concealed DJ set for dance party emergencies. The warm color scheme, availability of baked goods, and plethora of security cameras all seemed characteristic of the Ministry of Morale. There were the standard security measures as well, but they had either been disabled by neglect or destroyed by raiders. A few busted ceiling turrets and the three skeletons with ripped suits hinted at that much.

Mahogany double doors separated the reception room from the office. They were closed. Given that raiders were not exactly renowned for their etiquette, the sight of these doors—closed and apparently untouched—was enough to turn my chest taut. Assuming the survivors of the turrets went inside, I had to guess Pinkie Pie had one more surprise left to sort them out.

I pressed against the wall and tapped on it with a hoof. There was definitely steel behind the pink paint job, which meant it could shield me from most automated guns. Maybe not so much against killer robots with laser eyes, but if those were inside, I had the sensible strategy of running for the stairs.

I took a long sip from my trusty canteen. You could not become rich without taking a few risks.

The doors opened at the slightest prod of my shovel, unveiling the spacious office of the ministry mare. Just a desk and two chairs for visitors. That was it. Not even shattered glass from the back of the office, from which a cool breeze swept through the non–existent windows.

I poked my head out into the threshold and scouted out the corners of the office. Nothing showed on my E.F.S. No mechanical whirring or gun clicking or lazer charging. There were just the desk and the chairs. The whole design was a ruse. It had to be.

Even as I was walking straight toward that desk, it was still a ruse. The fact did not change as I walked around and stared at the framed family photos. Nor was I convinced otherwise when I sat back in Pinkie Pie’s chair—this thing was bolted to the floor as it turned out. I dared not reach for the drawers or the mysterious briefcase sitting square in front of me. That was the sort of play that might trick a zebra infiltrator, but I was wiser than a simple spy.

I started walking along the edge, taking in the size of the room and the disappointing dearth of density. Splashes of yellow, purple, blue, orange, and white tinted the walls—that was the extent of expression in this office. The rest was perfectly modern, emphasizing an impersonal atmosphere during personal meetings.

The view up here at least was captivating. I could see the western portion of Hawkthorn, including the crater of a megaspell detonation. From kilometers away, it looked like a burnt pothole that rainfall had filled with debris and greenery. More barren was the ring around it at ground level, flattened utterly into an urban desert with ashes for sand. Any building that existed outside that ring could count itself lucky.

There were more suburban developments further west, but those were rapidly overtaken by forests—whatever remained of them—and the mountains. Anything higher up was obscured by a stagnant fog. Sharp’s River flowed to the right, disappearing into the mountain range. I could see a castle on its northern bank, yet it was a larger complex than Celestia’s Folly with a settlement built around the walls.

Since I have been able to pace this room and admire the view without setting anything off, the only option I had now was to search the desk. Hopefully, the previous visitors had taken care of the remaining security measures before they disappeared; hopefully, they left the contents of the desk untouched as they had the door. I reached out for the latches on the briefcase, throwing my eyes from the left to the right to my E.F.S. as I did so.

“Huh?” I tugged at the latches, but they stayed in place. The briefcase itself was not moving from its spot at my pulling. I tried the drawers afterward, but they were not budging either. Eventually, my hooves were just touching everything on the desk to see if I could move anything. This stuff was bolted in place.

Nothing sprung out to kill me either. I had just tried to steal some items from the ministry mare’s office, and the security could not care less. Sure, I was happy to still be standing, yet the lacking resistance meant there was nothing here to take. The disappointment was irrepressible. This place was a ministry headquarters! Documents, orbs, and technology from a ministry were worth thousands in the market.

Pinkie Pie beamed right at me from all the photos. That was a knowing smile. She was probably laughing in her grave right now. Here was the fool, Comet Scotia, who thought she could steal secrets from the head of national surveillance. Fair enough. I was not leaving with any government property.

But a photograph could still have value to the right customers, especially one that was personally valuable to a ministry mare. The joke was on her. I brought my shovel down on photo frames, cracking the glass with the back of the blade. Here we had a photo of Pinkie Pie and her family, a photo with just her sisters, a photo with her best friends… and a small red switch behind it.

I flipped the switch instantly. Behind me, I heard mechanisms in the wall groan. Soon there was a new doorway in the office. Jackpot.

“You thought you were clever,” I giggled at the photo on my hoof. The pictures went into my saddlebags, which were sadly light now that I thought about it. Having some government property to fill them up would sure be nice.

Two ceiling lamps provided all the lighting in this room. I had my Pipbuck’s flashlight on, which revealed the vast server farm to my immediate left. That and the table piled with Party–time Mint–als on my right. I dropped twenty–seven full containers into my saddlebags. Pinkie Pie’s real workspace was right in front of me—a curved desk, a spinning chair, thirty–three surveillance screens.

Undoubtedly, this place was the panic room. Memory orbs or statuettes would have been nice finds, but I figured that Pinkie Pie would keep the important goods in her office at Manehattan. Eleven tapes of surveillance footage were all that remained after decay had ruined everything else on the desk. They were each labeled with a date and a pony’s name. Donut Joe was one of those names.

I examined the screens and the hardware behind them, hoping to find at least a way to restore power. While it was easy enough to completely lie about the contents of these tapes, adding some half–truths to the lie always helped to sell my products. Besides, I had time to preview at least one tape before we rendered this building into dust.

The double doors outside closed shut with an echoing thud. Previewing would have to wait, it seemed. I swept the tapes into my saddlebags and sauntered out into the office. Bittersweet stood by the doors with a neutral expression. She raised her glasses up slightly, her eyes focused on the view outside, and asked, “So you found the panic room?”

“Yeah. Wasn’t really that hard to find.” I walked toward her.

Bittersweet’s tail swished around. Her eyes went to the desk. “You didn’t touch the briefcase first, did you?”

“Of course not. I wasn’t fooled.”

“Good thing too. These panels have deluxe industrial fans behind them. They would’ve blown you right out of the building.”

So that was your last line of defense, Pinkie Pie… defenestration.

“I made sure to disable them once I found the panic room.” Bittersweet scratched her neck and shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes were now on the ceiling.

“Did you set the bombs?”

“On the lower floors.”

“How long do we have?”

“Enough time.” Bittersweet stared me in the eyes. “Listen. There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you since I found out you were in the Southern Wasteland. About Old Appleloosa.”

Oh, this story again. How did I tell it before? I mentioned a slave revolt… Stealthbucks… something about an evil griffon. I remembered the most important details.

She trotted around to my left, still looking at me with her body facing the west. Her horn lit up, even though my Pipbuck provided enough light to illuminate the room. “I just wanted to know how you took out all those slavers.”

I sighed, contorting my face to display a little sadness in recollection. “That was a while ago. It was certainly a tough fight.”

Bittersweet smirked. “Yeah, I’d imagine so, when the alicorn appeared.”

Wait. Did she just mention an alicorn? That was not something the DJ had talked about in her news report. I thought only the traders of New Appleloosa learned about the whole story. Why did she mention that?

I cleared my throat, speaking with some genuine surprise in my tone. “How’d you know there was an alicorn involved?”

She shrugged. “I’d heard the story from someone in Amos.”

That was impossible. The only witnesses there were freed slaves, and they would have to relay that information across the Equestrian Wasteland to get it near any caravan going south! No, there were not even caravans that went this far south. The only northerners I knew that moved down here were Talons and… slavers.

“Not going to lie. I was pretty surprised to come face-to-face with the Stable pony responsible for killing a green alicorn. Their shields can withstand some heavy firepower. That you managed to drop a boxcar on one left me in utter disbelief.”

Bittersweet was a few steps to my left. If I could pull out my shotgun as I turned to face her, I may be able to shoot her before she pulled her pistols out. Her reflexes were way faster than mine, though. How could I possibly distract her?

Damn it! I had no chance of defeating her! I had to run for the panic room and seal it shut. My only reasonable option.

I would be shot in the back though. Maybe I should fight and hope for a lucky shot?

“You wouldn’t happen to have a horn hidden under that stupid mane of yours, would you?”

Alright, here we go. I gave a shaky laugh at her question and started turning right. Then there was a poke at the back of my head. It was too small to be her hoof. Any denial dissipated once I heard the click of her pistol’s priming mechanism.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

I had been caught in my act. By someone working for Red Eye, in fact. That was how she knew. What a stupid mistake this whole idea was. And I was doing so well up to now—I was just kidding myself. If I had to be honest, my fate had practically been sealed the very night I messed with the Talons. That was the whole reason why I was not counting my caps in Friendship City right about now.

Considering that Bittersweet had not shot me yet, I had to guess there was a verbal beatdown coming my way. “Stealing the identity of a praised hero previously thought to be dead… can’t say I’ve heard that one before. But ponies like you… I’ve encountered all my life.

“Luckily, barely anyone knows enough about the Stable Dweller to realize that she comes from Stable 2, not Stable 13. You probably didn’t even know that yourself. Gladstone was very selective with DJ Pon3’s broadcasts before she cut them off for good.” General Gladstone, Bittersweet’s boss, had intended to keep the Stable Dweller dead. It seemed that I messed with Red Eye’s slavers just by coming here.

“Whatever good you’ve done so far doesn’t change the fact that you’re a filthy liar.” She sure took her sweet time rolling over those last two words. I imagined she was smiling, taking enjoyment in abusing an unarmed enemy. “To profit off of others’ trust. To manipulate them into doing your bidding. To have them kill or die if it means advancing your goals.”

I took a deep breath and tried my luck: “Didn’t you say something similar about ponies who draw knives behind backs?”

Bittersweet said nothing. Hopefully she was mulling over the hypocrisy. If not, she was going to speed up the execution.

“You’re a smart pony, Nova, and you’re right. But that doesn’t put you on the high ground when you’re the bearer of dishonesty.”

So now she was speaking with morality on her side? Virtue really was twisted by the wasteland. “That’s a line of crap coming from a slaver.” What I said from this point on did not matter anyway. If she wanted me dead, no amount of sense would stop her.

“Slaver?” Bittersweet whispered. “I’m no slaver.”

“Now you can cross ‘telling a righteous lie’ off your bucket list,” I said. My heart was counting down to the gunshot. “The only way you could have learned what happened in Old Appleloosa is if you were talking to the survivors or if you were working for Red Eye. His forces control the radio tower and hence all the broadcasts that come down here. Only slavers would know the truth. So admit it!”

She was not saying anything; she was not pulling the trigger. My life could end in the next second, and I could not do anything more.

“I was a slaver,” Bittersweet muttered. “But I retired. Before then, I fought with slavers at the Valley. My hometown is a base for slavers. Some of my friends are slavers. I’m not a slaver.”

The pistol pulled back from my head. My heartbeat returned to normal. I turned to face Bittersweet, but her glare stopped me. “I won’t kill you, because you’re just an inexperienced stable pony way in over her head.” She holstered the pistol and stared out west. Her expression lightened up a little. She sighed. “You make stupid mistakes, but I can forgive you for making the mistake of—”

When Bittersweet turned to face me again, my shotgun’s barrel greeted her. “—lying to me.”

You did not survive in the wasteland by trusting someone who both admitted to being a slaver once and pulled a gun to your head. It was her fault alone for looking away after taking pity on me. Now I had my sights trained right on her muzzle. How was that for irony?

“I am an inexperienced stable pony in over my head!” I said to her. “And if you make any sudden movements or light up your horn, I’ll panic and fire!”

“That you will,” Bittersweet acknowledged. Her expression was more upset than furious, seeing as it was barely strained. “I suppose this situation is more favorable to negotiations with you.”

“You’ve gone ahead and outed me as a liar. Now it’s your turn to talk.” I shook my shotgun for emphasis. “What association do you have with the slavers?”

“I fight for the Baltimare Republic now,” she answered. “You already met my commanding officer, Major Buccal Lift.”

“You could also be a spy.”

Bittersweet performed a horribly faked gasp with her tongue out. “That profession’s suited to the dishonest and wicked. I can’t stomach the work.”

I did pull the pump already. At least I thought so. My gun should be loaded and ready. “You didn’t answer the question,” I stated.

“Need I repeat myself? I left the slavers after my tour in the Valley was finished.”

“You could be telling me only a partial truth. Then you’ll shoot me in the back when the opportunity arises.”

Bittersweet covered her face with a foreleg and shook her head. “I could’ve shot you a minute ago with my pistol to your head.”

…She did have a point.

“You wouldn’t be able to shoot me anyway. Not with that stance.” Bittersweet pulled the foreleg away and pointed at my shotgun. “You’re holding it the wrong way.”

“I know how to use a shotgun,” I grumbled. I checked just to be sure though. Admittedly, the way I held it now was sort of uncomfortable. The weapon was so long that just aiming the thing involved some unnatural twists and the placement of my hooves where—at that moment, a blue aura emanated from the shotgun.

The shotgun was gone from my grip. I was blinking at air, yet my mind refused to accept what just happened. It was snapped back to reality at the sight of my shotgun floating by Bittersweet. I fell back on my haunches.

Bittersweet smiled. “Now I can believe you when you say you’re an inexperienced Stable pony.” She placed the shotgun down before my hooves. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

To say I was flustered would be an understatement. Maybe I was a little red in the face, but I had an unshakable command over my outward appearance. Besides, this slip–up of mine had happened as intended! Bittersweet still suspected I was someone from a stable, which meant she would protect me out of pity, if nothing else. That was the best outcome of this encounter I could hope for.

Bittersweet opened the doors with her magic. “Let’s get a move on, Stable Dweller. Those bombs won’t wait for us to get to safety.” I followed her out after scooping up my weapon. The doors swung shut after us.

We heard March Mint’s ragged breathing before we climbed the next flight. The trapper was jumping the stairs three at a time to reach us with his eyes popping out of their sockets.

“Morah commeth… Fawnda trahs we… desrammed.” March was speaking in hieroglyphics in his exhaustion.

Bittersweet held up a hoof. “We can’t understand you. Catch your breath.”

I offered him some water from my canteen and soon regretted my generosity. March drank the whole canteen dry.

“Your free service is appreciated,” he rasped. After clearing his throat, he told us the bad news, “I was on my way out after the job was done, just as you permitted me to, when I spotted some employees from Skullcavers and Grillers Incorporated checking on those traps I disarmed. They’ve left, but it’s likely the whole company will be back to sweep the building for us.”

“Skullcavers and Grillers Incorporated?” I repeated.

“Cannibals in suits,” Bittersweet frowned. “We’ve got to hurry up and plant the final charges. March, disarm as many booby–trapped doors as you can and run to the 39th if they get near.” March raced off down the stairs. “Stable pony, you’re with me.”

I fumbled with the canteen, nearly dropping it down a flight. “What? Are you sure you don’t want me up on the 39th too?”

Bittersweet was already heading up to the 25th floor. “I need someone to watch my back while I set the charges.”

I followed close behind, trying and failing to match pace. “I’d really recommend Creed. Creed’s whole reputation is built on killing raiders.”

“Exactly why I need him elsewhere.”

Speaking of the devil, Creed was standing by the stairwell door for the 25th floor, standing ready with his battlesaddles aimed at us. He diverted his guns as soon as he noticed me. “As I was admiring the view, I couldn’t help but notice the twenty or so raiders running toward the building.” Creed opened the door for us. “I know a pony of your craft shouldn’t be rushed, but we’re short on time.”

Bittersweet ran right for a support pillar near the stairwell door. The entire floor seemed to be a workspace for journalists, judging by the big billboard declaring the “RULES FOR WRITING A MINISTRY–APPROVED ARTICLE.” Those rules stretched across most of the wall. Desks were separated by low dividers; sections were divided by tight walkways. A fissure split one half of the office from the other.

Once her saddlebags were set on the floor, Bittersweet immediately piled up all her explosives—enough cannisters and grenades to dig into the Earth and strike oil. “Take these,” she ordered Creed. “We need to keep Megacorps’ attention away from the media center.”

The pegasus picked up one of the cannisters and held it to my Pipbuck light. “That’s a lot of bombs, Bittersweet. Do you give me full discretion with these things?”

Bittersweet looked at Creed momentarily. Then her attention fell to the charges she was setting on the pillar. “Yeah, whatever. Go wild. Just don’t burn down the building before we can leave.”

Creed saluted with an electrified grin on his face. “I’ll find you on the outside.” He took off for the windows and dove out into open air. Bittersweet and I only needed to wait ten seconds to hear screams and detonations on ground level.

Now that I had a good look at some of these rules, I was beginning to notice a correlation between the ministry’s standards and the newspaper’s headlines…

1. Do not discuss confidential information of the government or military.
2. Give no names to members of non-equine species.
3. Do not publish opinions that aim to disrupt the war effort.
4. Any article on the Battle of Lecharo must not mention the Volunteer Stripes Regiment, Cows from Hell Brigade, or Mules’ Armored Corps.
5. Any article on the Battle of Lecharo must mention the heroic actions of the 8th Air Engineer Corps and the 1st Armored Division.
6. Any articles written about zebras must include at least three adjectives that are synonymous with “treacherous.”

“Stop looking at the wall, Stable pony!” Bittersweet shouted. “They’re coming up the stairs.”

“My name is Nova, by the way.” I shut off the Pipbuck light and leveled the shotgun at the door.

Bittersweet picked up her saddlebags and headed for another pillar. There were twenty cannibal raiders already inside the building, and I had to be the one to hold them off. I could hear them in the stairwell, shouting to each other about open doors and a corporate spy in a white suit—March Mint without a doubt. In a few seconds, someone was going to bust through that door.

The muffled voices were growing louder, and their steps were like a rolling thunderstorm crashing over my head. I crouched behind a divider, using the slim surface to steady the shotgun. My hooves had trouble keeping the sights on the door.

There were at least two of them on the floor right now. Their steps stopped outside that door. It was as simple as pulling the trigger and pulling the pump. No other thoughts, Comet.

The door slammed open. The weapon kicked back with a concussion that stabbed at my eardrums. All the bullets wound up hitting the door frame, missing the first raider in. The striped suit corporate did a double take in the threshold, holding a golf club between his teeth.

Pull the pump. Pull the trigger.

The follow–up shot still sent my ears into a world of hurt. At least it sent the raider out of the world of the living. The body dropped at the door. His friend floated up a machine gun, firing the entire clip in a wide cone. The gun–toting raider then hid behind the wall.

I pulled the pump and fired again. It struck the door frame. So I pulled again. And again. My bullets struck the wall right where the raider was hiding. The body slumped on top of the first raider.

“25th floor! I want you guys up there now!” someone in the stairwell shouted. The rest of the company was on its way.

“Bittersweet? Bittersweet, are you finished?” I asked. My shotgun was loaded again, aimed right at the door.

“Last charge. Keep them back.”

Gunfire buzzed right over my head. I brought my head down until my eyes were right above the divider. Another raider with a machine gun had emptied the whole clip into my general direction.

Pull the pump—how many were there coming up again? Forty? Seventy? Forget it. Forgot it.—and pull the trigger. The buckshot made a mess when it struck the skull. But that was another raider on the pile of dead.

There were enough corpses blocking the door that the other raiders were unable to see outside. I could see their manes sticking out. Somebody resorted bucking at the bodies, nudging them forward by millimeters.

Pull the pump. Pull the trigger. My gun clicked. When I repeated the cycle, I received the same result. Shells. I needed shells to load the shotgun! Revolvers could fire six times, yet shotguns had only five shots? Why did no one tell me about this fact?

I jabbed the shell at the bottom of the shotgun, in which shells were supposed to be loaded. Eventually, I managed to stuff it inside. That was when I noticed the grenade bouncing close to the body pile.

“Bittersweet—” The grenade turned into a high pressure fist of shrapnel, punching back everything within the vicinity. My divider fell on top of me in the shape of ribbons. Burnt paper was snowing from the ceiling. I was lying on my back with a painful ringing in my ears.

That was probably why I could not hear the screaming. That is, the screaming raider hovering a scythe in her magic and making a beeline for me!

Pull the trigger. No, pull the pump! Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger.

The scythe came swinging at me. But it only struck the shotgun, veering it to the side and letting my shot embed itself in the raider’s shoulder.

That stroke of luck gave me seconds. With my shotgun emptied, I had just one weapon left to defend myself. My teeth went around the handle, my head shot forth, and my shovel came unsheathed from the saddlebags. I was fully aware what my weapon’s reach was, and I knew I was not going to miss. The blade swung from underneath the chin, cracking the raider’s head back in an uppercut.

I was back on my hooves before the body bowed forward and fell face–first on the floor. The other bodies had been blown away by the explosion, leaving the doorway wide open. A dazed raider ran through the threshold with a pistol. He was too far out of reach.

Right as he spotted me, two holes ripped out of his suit. “Let’s go, Nova!” Bittersweet told me. The raider crumpled at her hooves. Both of her pistols were out, watching the door—whatever was left of it anyway.

I grabbed my shotgun and stored it in my saddlebags. My shovel was holstered. We had to get to the 39th floor now.

Bittersweet stayed behind for a while to pile the bodies on the stairs, forming a low barrier to slow the other raiders on their way up. Even though she had to shove fully grown ponies with her magic, the old soldier had no trouble catching up to me on the 29th floor.

There were ten more flights to climb. Full sprint. And cannibal raiders were chasing us. Knowing my life depended on my endurance did not make me run any faster! There was sweat stinging my eyes before we even made it to the 30th floor. My lungs were begging for reprieve by the 33rd. Do not even get me started on how my legs were feeling by the 34th.

“Hurry up! Go!” Bittersweet called out to me. She should try lifting this foreleg—it weighed well over fifty kilograms.

I forced myself up six more steps at her urging. That should be enough, right?

“No. You can’t stop now!” Bittersweet fired her pistols over the railing. “You want to get cut up and fried? You want to know how these raiders treat ‘seized assets?’”

I already felt like someone had run me through with spears. Just lifting my legs… it just hurt so much. I could not keep going.

Bittersweet glared at her pistols and holstered them. All of a sudden, I was wrapped in her magic and dragged up the stairs. Her face contorted in the effort, her horn glowing brighter than ever before. We were on the 38th floor.

Halfway up the next flight, I stopped moving. Bittersweet gasped and released the telekinesis spell. “You’ve got to. I can’t carry you anymore.”

The raiders were so close. So many hooves. The sound of an approaching army. I lifted my legs even with my muscles burning. Although my lungs signaled otherwise, there was still air circulating through them. I was carrying my body up each stair by my will alone. It would be better if I died in the effort.

Bittersweet bucked the stairwell door open to the 39th floor. “March! Get the glider ready!” she croaked, stumbling into the room.

I was close behind, having just as much trouble walking as Bittersweet. The desks had been cleared to the sides, leaving a stretch of open floor from the door to the broken window. The black glider was right in front of us.

“You… You must be… kidding.” I trudged toward our contingency exit with some help from March Mint. Bittersweet was already by the glider, readying it for flight.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem,” March uttered. “There’s black smoke everywhere. I can’t see much anything outside this window.”

He was not exaggerating. They were spiraling plumes that had ascended all the way from ground level. If I craned my neck out, I could see the source—the streets were engulfed by the smoke and puddles of molten gold. Everything down there had been set on fire.

Bittersweet chuckled and slapped her forehead. “Aren’t I a daisy? I gave Creed every last thing I had. And it was all incendiaries.”

I stumbled over to her. “I think… he used them to their full potential.”

“Close the door will you, March?” Bittersweet looked out into the smoke. She pointed at something directly across from us, but what that could have been was beyond me. “We have to fly this thing to the Hawkthorn Stock Exchange.”

I could see a slice of the city through a slit in the smoke. “You sure we can make it?”

“Don’t delude yourself. We’re not making it to my original landing point on the roof. We’ll have to hope that our glider flies through one of the lower floors.”

“Can this thing even support all of us?”

Bittersweet shrugged. “I haven’t tested for that, so I don’t know how the weight proportion would work. But it’s either the exchange or the street.”

March Mint walked over. “Comet should take center. She outweighs us all—”

“What?”

He paused, swallowed, and continued, “—because of her loaded saddlebags. Her bags give her the most weight of us three. If she takes center, then we should be able to retain course for the exchange.”

Bittersweet stared at him, then stared at me. “What he said.”

My head was pounding. The fact that Bittersweet was shouting five commands at me every second was not helping. Once I was drilled in how to run and hold a glider, the two of them set about squeezing me in between.

March looked out into the smoke, breathing a little heavier. “It’s a far distance that we might not make with our combined weight. Visibility is reduced considerably by smoke. Manufacturer of the glider is unknown. In conclusion, there’s a low chance of profit. I don’t like this venture at all.”

“That about sums it up,” I muttered.

“On my mark,” Bittersweet began.

That was when a knock came at the door. “It’s time for reimbursement!” a raider shouted on the other side. The door was blown into splinters right afterward.

“Run, jump, fly!” Bittersweet shouted.

We moved our hindlegs as fast as we could—the other two mostly—kicking our glider toward smog–filled air. There was ground underneath my hooves.

Now the ground was many stories beneath me. I did not see much of the world from a bird’s eye view, since we were within the clouds a moment later. Our flight suffered all sorts of turbulence and of course blindness. For all I knew, I could have been flying through space—no sense of direction, no way to judge depth perception.

Then we were cast back into open air with the whole city stretched before us. And we were falling very quickly.

“The grey building that looks like a jukebox!” Bittersweet shouted. There were thousands of structures in our immediate path. How did she expect us to find—oh, it did look like a jukebox.

We were closing in fast, but the pavement was approaching at the same speed. You could see a building the size of a bottlecap at one moment, and you could see the building for its true size within an instant of that first realization. That was how we struck the stock exchange.

We had flown well below the roof to a hollow floor with the entire exterior wall missing. Our glider slammed into the ceiling and dropped its velocity to zero on impact. We the passengers were still moving at the same speed, however. I went head over heels onto the floor, rolling right into a cardboard box. Not a soft landing, I assure you.

I stared at the floor and my sprawled legs. I knew I was alive, but my body seemed paralyzed as if the fact had not occurred yet. After just a minute of flight, we were back on solid footing. That minute felt like a lucid dream.

“Oh my god,” March whispered. He crawled out of a cubicle. “We survived.”

“Yeah, uh, I’m still alive,” Bittersweet said, sitting up a few meters away. “How about you, Nova?” I waved my hoof. “That’s good. That’s good. Now then—”

A series of explosions resounded from the south. As we looked out, Hoity Toity Media Center was engulfed in several fireballs across its lower floors—the charges had detonated. The skyscraper was several blocks away, yet the shockwaves made me consider how safe we really were here.

A defeaning roar came from the collapsing building, and it had nothing to do with explosions. Steel beams were bending and breaking under the weight. The media center began to lean toward Oasis Tower, filling the immediate area with a flood of dust in the process. The skyscraper crashed into its neighbor like a domino, but the effect was more like an implosion than a chain reaction. Oasis Tower’s top portion bent inward and fell upon itself as the media center disintegrated.

The dust cloud was a tsunami, emerging from the disintegrating foundations and pouring over several city blocks. The cloud eventually reached even us, blotting out the city and the collapse of Oasis Tower.

Comet Scotia

Current reputation
Southern Wasteland: Liked
Red Eye’s Slavers: Hated
Gawd’s Talons: Hunted
Megacorps: Vilified

Perks
Putting on the Mask – You have taken up the identity of “The Stable Dweller.” The Southern Wasteland remains unfazed. Others are more likely to hand you errands… I mean quests.
The Old Soldier – Bittersweet is more familiar with the wasteland’s conflict and its factions than anyone else. With her as your companion, interactions with the various factions are facilitated, even if they hate you.
Token Evil Teammate – March Mint has expertise in business interactions. With him as your companion, your bartering options are considerably improved. After all, merchants are reluctant to say no to a corporate raider.