Fallout: Equestria - The Ranger of Seamane

“Keep Dockland Weird? How much weirder does it need to be, it has two fricken names?!”

• Disgruntled Dockland Resident

Anxiety had its teeth firmly planted on my throat. In the end, I only managed a few hours of sleep. While Riptide’s gaze freaked me out at first, I actually managed to sleep better cuddled up against her as the big spoon. Given Riptide had let out a large sigh when I rolled over to spoon her I got the feeling she hadn’t fallen asleep either. Sil had tried her best to be my big spoon but we were equal size so that didn’t work that well.

I didn’t sleep that many hours. My EFS helpfully reminded me of that fact every time I opened my eyes with a cute rendition of the sun and moon, small deformed versions of Luna and Celestia resting over the time readout.

Sisters help me, the diagram of the two as cute small ponies is really growing on me despite the fact that they were supposed to be super powerful alicorns that moved heaven and earth with their horns.

Growing up I had respected them for their power and their magical knowledge, and, for a short while, a spiritual reverence for them. Still, there was a desire to believe that the Sisters were out there watching over us but I doubted they interacted with us on any level.

Regardless of that, there were more mundane things that required my attention and were worthy of inspiring worry within me. Riptide’s family for example would probably be confused, distraught, and distraught at her arriving late and without her family; even though they’d more than likely celebrate the fact that she was even alive. As far as the ponies in Dockland knew, Riptide and her family had failed to arrive and were gone, lost to the wasteland as many others were.

Ugh, questions for the morning and the trip into the city. Oh Luna, of all the nights why couldn’t you give me your gentle embrace tonight?

I sighed. Maybe I just needed to bleed off all this excess energy or, more likely, it was the sudden shift in sleeping patterns from an evening pony on night patrol to a morning one. It wasn’t that hard for me to go entirely nocturnal all that long ago, which has definitely contributed to me being wide awake at three in the morning.

That and the pit of anxiety currently eating away at me: the fear of Riptide’s extended family hating me, or her, or just… us. Certain post-war ponies weren't so open with our sort of relationship, something I’d seen in prepper communities with their hard line on ‘keeping the family line going’ and all that crap.

Too many unknowns.

I wondered what it was like having an extended family. I had never met my father’s side of the family; he had left them long ago, leaving the heartland in search of greener pastures. Ended up going to a lot of places; Manehatten, Las Pegasus (well the ground part of it), Appleloosa, Baltimare, Vanhoover, and then worked his way back down the coast to Saint Clover. Somewhere in all that he had bumped into Majar and Sil’s mom and the rest is history.

As for my mom’s side of the family, I just never got to meet them. Mom had a large number of siblings growing up but, one by one, the wasteland took them along with her parents.

I gave another sigh and pushed my face into Riptide’s mane, trying to block out my EFS. All that did was tune out everything but the greenish EFS. I stopped myself from lashing out in frustration and instead took a long, deep breath, scenting the smell of the ocean in Riptide’s mane.

It struck me as silly that she still smelled of the ocean, after so many baths and showers, but maybe it was just ingrained into her. Still, it made me think of home, and that made some of the anxiety wash away, like a wave receding from the beach.

Home…

A pang of sadness reverberated through me at the thought that I wouldn’t be home for Hearth’s Warming but I hoped that I would have a new family to spend it with instead. Failing that, I still had Sil, Winter, and Ocean; I would pry Riptide away from her family if I had to so we could all have our own little family gathering for Hearth’s Warming. While it would hurt not to get to spend it with Mom, Dad, and Silver I would still have the family I chose, my friends and lovers.

What was home then? I guess I needed to redefine it, not that redefining it would make it stick right away.

I suppose home was not where I grew up or where my parents lived. Home was going to have to be where I was most welcome; that was at Riptide’s side, at Sil’s side, around Winter and Ocean. A place where I could rest and let my guard down, that was home now meant though I guess it always had. I just had it as a fixed location instead of as a concept.

It still would be nice to have some kind of base of operation once we hit Dockland since we would be staying there for winter but I had no idea what kind of space Riptide’s extended family had in the city. Pioneer Square had been mentioned as a place to stay so I made a note to see if I could just buy a room instead of renting one out.

I let out a groan of frustration and opened my left eye to check the time. Only five minutes had gone by. Sisters damn me I was too far into my own skull that I was driving myself insane and keeping myself up all night!

With deep regret, I accomplished the feat of extracting myself from two snuggly mares I deeply loved. I selected a thick blanket to take my place and help keep them cozy on this cool autumn night before heading out of the tent. The chill of the late-night air hit me immediately upon stepping outside into the darkness; the lights had been turned off at some point in Hoofview.

“I thought you knew better than to wander off from your post.” Ocean’s voice chided before I felt her hoof mess up my mane.

Turning to face her I sighed. “Brain is being a fuck tonight. You?”

“I’ve been on edge.” She answered. “Haven’t slept well since we stepped out of Saint Clover.”

That was something I could relate to; even with Sil and Riptide to help ease my mind, sleep wasn’t the easiest to come by since we left, not to mention I was now sleeping lighter due to everything that happened in Four Corners. Waking up to fight the scaly horrors of the apocalypse was not fun.

“Got a vector or are you just wandering tonight?” She asked me.

“Wandering,” I replied. “Hoping to find something to distract me for a while,”

Ocean nodded and trotted with me, the weak green glow of my horn guiding our trot through the sleeping town. Both of us had left our stuff back at camp; no need for guns and armor here, plus neither of us wanted to arouse suspicion with the supposed thefts that had been going on.

The cool night air didn’t bother me, if anything it was comforting. Hefty mist formed from our breaths as our quiet hoofsteps filled the air. The wind blew softly, whistling through the abandoned buildings around us. Lightbulbs and branches clinked and rustled in the breeze.

“This part of town seems more run down.” Ocean mused.

Given the proximity to the Five, I figured it was an active choice to leave these abandoned to keep raiders from having easy targets. Sacrificial buildings you might call them.

One caught my eye though.

“Ah, a bookstore? Of course.” Ocean giggled when she noticed me staring.

I rolled my eyes and playfully hit her shoulder. “Yeah, and?” I snorted. “It’s not like I have a book on my flank-- oh wait I do.”

“Come on, let's get in and out of sight. I know you’ll find a way to fill the night with something in there.”

The rest of this block the bookstore had sat on was long abandoned and gave a heavy aura of abandonment. Sweeping away built-up dust on the glass front door though, we could see that it had once been well-loved before the bombs. After? It looked like some people had swept through it to find anything immediately useful post-collapse. I doubted anypony had taken time to go through it for the novel pleasure of books.

Entry was simple; I could see the basic deadbolt upon leaning down and to the side of the door. With a twist of my magic, the door was released and swung open.

A wave of fresh air swept past us as we entered but even after shutting the door behind us the air inside still felt heavy, pointing towards some form of rot affecting the place.

“I can see why you don’t practice lockpicking much.” Ocean teased as she poked abandoned periodicals that were strewn across the floor.

“Why lockpick if I can see the release?” I giggled. “Plus lockpicking is rarely useful. What’s going to be in a safe? Prewar bits are about all that will ever be useful in them.”

“Fair that but remember that doors exist.” She remarked dryly.

“Yes, they are useful, like in Fillymath.” I agreed. “Now let’s, uh, try to be quick on finding something to do. The air in here might make us sick.”

Ocean made a face as she bit back a reply. I hazard a guess that she had wanted to tease me, which wasn’t hard. Sexual jokes used to be common between us.

We slowly made our way through the store, cautiously weaving around weak-looking areas while finding all sorts of novels, history books, magazines, and technical manuals. Useful for murdering boredom as well as learning but none of it called to me. In the end, we found a section on magic.

Ah, it always came back to magic with me, didn’t it?

My horn lit up as I used said magic to brush over each book, skimming the titles. A lot of what was left were things like teaching your foal basic spells and how to control a foal’s magic. ‘Earth Pony’s Guide to Raising a Unicorn’? Did that happen often enough that they needed a book? I quickly banished the thought with a shake of my mane.

The rest of the listings remained in the more mundane fields of arcane science and so we pushed on into the back of the store, only to pause at the sight of a skeleton. Ocean motioned for me to make certain it wouldn’t stand up and pester us for our employee credentials, given we were in the employee-only section now. A magical tap on the hollow skull was all we needed to prove it was not a sleeping undead skeleton. Not that I had heard of those existing outside of monster manuals Winter had gifted me a decade ago.

Ocean soon found an office with a functional terminal and had me chew through its security over the next hour, with me taking my time trying to figure out the password and reset it. While the security wasn’t tight they had been clever about it but eventually, I managed to crack the system open anyways; thank the stars for low-security systems having bypasses for repair technicians.

Once inside I noted a few logs still on the terminal, most from before the War but two of them were post-war. However, trying to open them revealed that the directory was corrupted.

I let out a wistful sigh. I had hoped to read something by somepony from before the end. Oh well. With a few more keypresses, I accessed the inventory and was presented with three options: Reserved Inventory, General Inventory, and Unlock Safe.

There was a safe? I hadn’t seen one.

I looked around and definitely didn’t see one in the office.

Odd.

I unlocked the safe and then selected ‘Reserved Inventory’, only for the terminal to crash before rebooting. I let out a frustrated sigh and powered it down so I could inform Ocean of my findings. This building only had so much space to it. I’ve seen a good portion of it with the office and the general inventory section so where is this reserved inventory?

My question was answered when I heard a crashing noise. Cantering over, I found Ocean in a hole leading to the basement; lying on top of a pile of rotted flooring and nursing a bruised ego rather than any actual bruises. I quickly hopped down after her, my magic helping to slow my fall.

“Stop being a majestic fuck.” Ocean hissed as I helped her up.

“What? I didn’t trust anything I could land on.” I replied as I turned on my Pipbuck light.

Soft, green light filled the room, revealing to us rows of dusty shelves. Ocean and I nodded to each other and we restarted our search for anything useful. The light from the Pipbuck reminded me of my own magic, a question for later as the light reflected off of aisle labels and book titles.

As we passed a section on consumer magitek devices, my mind lingered on the oddities of the tech we smashed together to make the Pipbuck Zero. Such as the fact I hadn’t had to replace the battery felt wrong unless it’s been taking some of my magic to fuel itself. Maybe in our downtime, Sil had figured out how to augment its power supply.

My eyes quickly skimmed through the indexes held in my magic to see if anything held some documentation for the tech. Of course, it was inevitable that I found nothing; Stable-Tec wouldn’t have had secrets like how one of their most prized pieces of tech worked outside their facilities.

While not as omnidirectional as my horn light, the Pipbuck light was more reliable in the event I got disabled for whatever reason and as such did most of the illumination for us.

Ocean suddenly pointed to a shelf and the books on them. It took a few moments for me to realize her point; the books down here were definitely not fit for more public consumption.

“I’m fairly certain mares' breasts don’t get that big even when pregnant,” I muttered to Ocean who just giggled and browsed more of the covers, as did I purely out of curiosity and a little bit of incredulousness. “If I saw a stallion this well-hung I’d probably be more interested in checking their blood pressure or fleeing before they got near me. I can already imagine my internal organs being crushed.”

“Agreed, though it does make me wanna see how big you’d get with a foal.” Ocean teased me.

“Why do I keep thinking you’re just purely straight when all you want is to ride my face while Winter rails me?” I sighed.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She giggled back.

As we continued down the pornographic section of the store I became dumbfounded that what was on the shelf hadn’t been annihilated by the Ministry of Image on the basis of sedition.

“How did they get away with making porn of the ministry heads and princesses?” Ocean asked.

“My thoughts exactly. I doubt they agreed to uh… do these shoots.” I pondered aloud. “I hope we get to the end of this stuff soon. I am getting tired of looking at all this lewd material.”

“Don’t blame you, we both have… plenty of chances to enjoy lewd materials when we desire.” She agreed. “After all, we just need to ask someone to pose for either of us.”

We finally found a section on magic, the not-so-public-accessible stuff due to how advanced it was. Smart decision too to keep these out of laypony hooves; these tomes contained ritual magic.

I reached out to one of the books only to have it disintegrate at the slightest touch. I felt my eyes tear up as I looked at the pile of dust where it had been. It wasn’t fair. I had time now.

Ocean gently hugged me seeing how distraught I was. She always did care about me after everything we’d been through and while it did make me feel bad I knew that everything had been forgiven. Still stung.

“Thanks, Ocean.” I sighed, leaning into her. “I think I needed that more than I thought.”

After a short, much-needed break we moved on to the rest of the tomes. After around thirty or so crumbled to dust, dashing my hopes and dreams in the process, we finally found one that stayed in one piece.

I hugged it gently as I sat on my haunches. This tome I would cherish and take care of. This was my own spellbook now. Its care was my duty.

“Think it will hold up for long?” Ocean asked, looking hopeful it would, at least for my sake.

It was a good question and as my thoughts were drawn to its preservation my mind landed upon the mending and restoration spell I recently learned for taking care of possessions, clothing, and equipment.

“I think I might have something to help with that,” I whispered as I let my magic flow into the book.

As the frog of my hoof ran across the spine of the book, I could feel its rough cover smoothen, the loose yellowed pages shuffle back into place and brighten, entropy reversed.

“Time may have hurt you, ponies may have left you alone but I’m here now,” I said to the magic book in a soothing voice, petting it like one might soothe a crying foal. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Ocean gave me an odd look, which I returned.

“What?” I asked, to which she just grinned.

With that adventure out of the way, we turned our attention to the rest of the bookstore. We salvaged one book and with luck, we would get a few more useful ones. Eventually, we managed to find two other books that piqued our interest. Though neither were spellbooks, one described a form of unarmed combat while the other discussed locksmithing.

I had always been curious about how locks actually worked and not the uninformed way I had been taught to pick them.

“Let me read those once you’re done. The one on punting apples looks fun.” Ocean giggled in amusement though I could tell she was sincere.

“Of course.” I beamed.

A quick check of the final backroom revealed that it was mostly filled with dirt. I shook my head and made to move on when I felt something… off, almost like the taste of mint in my mouth. Going on instinct, I began to hunt down the source of it, Ocean keeping a curious eye out as I did.

A half-buried wall seemed to be the source and, upon contact, my hoof went through it, that mint taste in my mouth suddenly going from small but noticeable to strong but refreshing.

“Huh… hidden wall,” I explained to a confused Ocean. “Weird that I could sense the enchantment for it.”

“I mean... How many active, long-term enchantments have you come across?” She countered.

“Good point. As far as I know, I’ve never seen one like it.” I replied before giggling, tapping my horn with a hoof. “But I guess it makes sense I could sense it with the whole magical antenna on my forehead.”

“So what’s in there?” She asked, peeking past me.

The illusionary wall had a thickness of nothing so I barely had to poke my head through. To my amusement, I saw the aforementioned safe, half-buried in the dirt.

“A safe, but I say fuck it, let’s head out. I ain’t diggin’ through all that dirt to get someone’s tax files and inventory printouts.” I snorted.

As we returned from the bookstore I heard something flutter overhead, it wasn’t like a bird or an insect, maybe a bat? Looking up all I saw was the night sky. Ocean herself had paused and was looking as well, given the puzzled look she also failed to catch sight of the source of the sound.

“Come on let’s get back to the caravan, I don’t know what that was,” I said to Ocean, and she gave me a nod.

Upon returning to Ruby’s camp and sitting down outside the tents where the glow of my pipbuck wouldn’t wake anypony up and read the two books. I was going to save the spellbook for the ride into Dockland. Then I could figure out what I could quickly learn from it and what would take longer to study than a few-hour carriage ride.

An hour into reading I was done with the first book and onto the second, now it was around five-forty in the morning. At this point, two guard ponies walked up to me, and both looked annoyed.

“You.” Said Nightstick glaring at me as he pushed my book closed with his nightstick.

“It wasn’t me I went into the old bookstore when I came out I heard something fly over but I didn’t catch what it was. Was around, give me a sec.” I looked at the time on my EFS. “An hour and ten minutes ago? It was headed east given the breeze I felt, must have jumped over me and into the air or something.”

“And how can we be certain it wasn’t you?” Shield said, leaning on his riot shield.

“Uh, simple, this has been going on for how long? Week? I spent roughly that long in Four Corners and I can collaborate with Ruby and her group. A good day of fighting raiders and a hydra shoulder-to-shoulder with the townsfolk. I could barely stand after being poisoned.” I replied.

“Mhm. And you were just out for a night’s stroll?” Nightstick asked dangerously.

Annoyance with them grew and I let myself wear it clearly on my face as I answered them. “I’m meeting one of my marefriend’s extended family for the first time tomorrow. At the same time, they are getting the news that her parents and siblings kind of got killed and flayed by psychopaths.” Calmly I placed a bookmark in the spellbook and looked directly into Nightstick’s eyes. “So excuse me since I’m a bit stressed out. But, as a guard for my hometown, I know how dealing with bullshit for over a week can make me extremely snippy and suspicious of newcomers.”

The two guards looked at one another and Nightstick opened his mouth to speak but I snapped at them. “Back home I was used to rotating shifts for patrol. Which meant that sleeping today in the coach put me on the same night watch schedule as you two and left me laying in bed drifting in and out of sleep overthinking like a complete basket case.”

“Fine, didn’t ask for your life story, bitch.” Shield said, rolling his eyes.

I felt my eye twitch as part of me snapped at them and unleashed my inner watch commander. Instinct told me to make them into glue, an instinct my mom had tried to train out of me after seeing my rage. The anger I inherited from my father, a rage that he had tried to tell me got him into a lot of needless fights. Like it was threatening to do right now. It would be all too easy to just crush their throats, use my knife to silence them, or pull their own pistols on them.

Breath, they’re just assholes and they’re just doing their damn job, let it go. Plus it really isn’t worth it.

“Come on, let’s go look around more, at least now we have an idea which way the fucker flies out of town,” Nightstick said to shield as the two walked away from me, at some point, they had turned around and gotten a good twenty feet away, and I hadn’t noticed.

Sisters help me control myself. I can’t afford to lose myself to the wasteland.

I turned my focus back to my book, and as I turned the pages to find where I was, I found myself looking once again at the Nightmare Moon card. I didn’t remember placing the card as a bookmark. It was supposed to still be in my bags or had I taken it out without thinking?

This lack of sleep is making me lose it.

The sound of shuffling paper filled my ears as I turned the pages in my magic and placed the card at the end and began to read from where I left off.

Morning arrived with all its subtleties. Between the gentle fade-up of light to the little Celestia posing in the corner of my vision as sunrise occurred. Ponies began their day, some shouts from the town as ponies became aware of the overnight theft but it wasn’t my problem today. I hadn’t gotten a good look at what it was or where it went, if I had I might have offered to help. Also, I was a bit sour after my run-in with Nightstick and Shield last night. Had altered my opinion of the town a little. I also had other things to do today.

Instead of eating at one of the restaurants again, I had some of my packed pre-war snack cakes and a Sparkle-Cola, it wasn’t like the rads hurt me anymore. Though the sugar was probably going to catch up to me.

Guess I’m in that mood today, huh? Well, let’s hope we can wash it away by the time we meet with Riptide’s family. I want to be neutral, not nearing sour or throat-crushing spine-ripping angry. That would leave a bad impression.

Of course, part of the lack of will to eat out again was the lack of will to deal with the social engagements that it involved. I doubted that the Dealer would be there again. I grunted at my own annoyed mood as I set the drained Sparkle-Cola down and closed the second book having finished it. I was better than this, darn it. Sure I had my anxieties and insecurities but I could handle this.

I sunk my muzzle into the grimoire that I had found in the bookstore. The beginning part was typical of any grimoire. Your typical warnings of not to use magic to harm others, only as a last resort use spells in self-defense to disable. Practice spells with a superior mage. The initial spells were your typical light, telekinesis, shield, and note-taking. Mundane stuff, things nopony would bat an eye at. I flipped back to the index and glared at Luna staring back at me and then moved her aside as I read the table of contents.

This book was broken up into degrees of difficulty to cast, graduating from daily useful spells that were easy to more challenging spells. I smiled seeing teleportation listed, an item recall spell as well. There were some odd-sounding ones of “bend surface” and “magic mirror”. All in all, it was extensive and would take time to learn from. However, I did note the dearth of offensive spells or healing. So it was obviously a spellbook from before the Ministries.

I would need to find something to cover those grounds for the Ministry of Peace, as for Arcane Warfare, well, I knew it wasn’t popular. The Ministry of Peace though had unicorn medics sent off to war, they didn’t fight but healed the injured after battles. Damn brave souls. Arcane Warfare though… The Ministry of Arcane Science would be my only bet. I don’t have any idea of any other ponies who would come up with spells for fighting. Maybe the EUP… That would mean the military base that ate a balefire bomb. Well, good thing radiation isn’t as much of a concern.

My mind drifted to those cards again and so I pulled them into my hooves again and looked them over in the daylight. Nightmare Moon’s card caught my eye and her eyes felt like they were staring back into mine. Given they were given to me by a spirit I wasn’t surprised that they all seemed to slightly move. The cards weren't in the best of condition, but the art was beautiful, terrifying, and mystical. In a moment of frivolity and arrogance, I used my magic to attempt to restore them to their prime condition.

Something isn’t right. I mean, sure they’re likely slightly magical, but they aren’t possibly outright magical artifacts. Right? … I fucked up big time, didn’t I? Shit, these are actually cards from Luna’s personal deck.

Riptide broke me out of my focus and I looked up at her, my EFS dutifully told me it had been a few hours, and my horn hurt. Taking a glance at the cards it was easy to see they hadn’t changed at all. In somewhat freaked-out haste, I stuffed the cards into the spellbook, one for each spell I wanted to research, teleportation, surface bending, and magical marks. I’ll figure out what happened later.

“Are you alright?” Riptide asked, the look on her face said everything I needed to know there was worry and she had wanted to ask something else before I had reacted the way I did.

“I’m… anxious, that's why I wasn’t in bed this morning. I’m a bit wound up about meeting your family.” I admitted, feeling my shoulders relax a little with the admission as I stacked the books with my hooves.

My horn was still steaming the morning air around it. I didn’t want to tempt fate this early in the day.

“Oh, well. I am as well, it's been a while if that helps your nerves at all.” Riptide replied looking at where the Nightmare Moon card poked out of the spellbook.

“You were really focused on those cards when I came over, anything special about them?” Riptide asked.

“I was trying a spell out on it, trying to restore them, but it didn’t work. I don’t know why but I kind of got lost in poking at it trying to make it work.” I half lied.

“Oh, that’s weird. Well, maybe they were made like that?” Riptide offered as she tried to help make sense of the situation.

“Maybe, it would explain why the repair spell failed. Can’t make something better than it was.” I admitted as I logged her idea as a possibility, a strong one at that. “I’ll poke at it later, I found them last night and I’ve never seen anything like them. When we settle down someplace tonight I’ll let you look at them. Don’t want them to get blown away while we're riding up the Five.”

“Yeah, without glass it might fly out the window.” Riptide teased. “I mean we have our magic but why risk it.”

“Yeah, those bumps can startle us, lost my place in a book more than I care to admit on the trip from Wayhill.” I giggled, those bumps were hard enough to jam my horn into the coach roof and make my magic implode.

As Riptide moved off to help break the camp down Sil caught up to her and asked her. “So is she okay? Her horn smoking isn’t normal.”

“Apparently she fucked up a new spell.”

“Ah, that would do it, still, best if we try to keep her from doing magic for a few hours.”

“Agreed, though we don’t have the privacy to do it my way.”

Sil giggled and gave Riptide a gentle push. “There are a lot of other ways to distract her.”

“Yeah, I know, but that way is really fun.”

With a shake of my mane and a roll of my eyes, I got to my hooves to help finish breaking camp down and get back on the road.

-=O=-

The trip to Dockland was an interesting one. To be fair in general the trip had been an interesting one, not just this last leg of it. Was mostly about the last leg of the trip from Hoofview into Dockland itself. While where we started out in Hoofview was nice and green the further north we got the more damage from fires was visible, even the air itself felt more sickly and stale. While the scent of death didn’t fill my nose there was an expectation of it, but it smelled like old fire and dust. Which was fitting for a balefire-blasted wasteland. Here there were fewer trees and less complex plant life whittling down the number of bushes, ferns, and then eventually just grass until that was sick brown grass. Blackened husks of towns, long sighing structures begging for the touch of ponies once more. No signs of raiders though, no cages hanging off of bridges, no smoke, no nothing. It was quiet and lonely. I wouldn’t want to walk this road alone; it was a lonesome road.

We broke east and into another valley, the Willmanemette River was to our right as we sat on the highway hundreds of feet above the banks. Mudslides had closed off the highway on the other side of the Five some time ago. Before us lay a city two craters smoldered within it off to the northeast, and a river far wider than the one we were next to lay to the north. Many buildings I could see were darkened husks on the east side of the Willmanemette but, on the west near us, they seemed tired. The hills were black on the west with burned-out trees, places were bare to the rock of the hills where soil had slid off over the centuries taking buildings with it.

We were still a few miles away but we had made it to Dockland. I felt something in me ease at the sight and the feeling of wonder washed over me. The Mill was a large town qualifying as a city. Wayhill had been a city as well but Dockland was the biggest city between Applewood and Seaddle and it showed. I had no idea how big it really meant until now. The valley itself was just a city with buildings sprawling from the valley wall out to the horizon. Twisted, burned, ruined, battered, but it was there. Two scars from the war were obvious by the green glow and ruins around them, the skyport crater the most obvious due to it even causing the Columbmane to make columns of steam rising into the sky. I knew there was one more crater to the northwest but it was obscured by the hills. The daylight hid any glow from the blast sites.

“We made it, Riptide,” I said softly looking out over her shoulder as we drank in the sight.

“Yes, we did,” Riptide replied as I felt her relax against me.

“I never thought it would be so huge,” Sil murmured.

“Yeah, it just goes on.” I agreed with Sil. “I don’t think I’ll have issues with spending time picking through the city while we wait out the winter.”

“Don’t go too far without me.” Riptide teased.

“I know, I’m going to stick close to Pioneer Square until everything is settled,” I assured Riptide.

“Good, I don’t want to hear you went out and got yourself killed on the slopes of Mount Hoof or something.” Riptide huffed.

In return, my magic ruffled her mane. I understood her worries and I had worries about her, worries about her family and how they’ll react to the news. How they will react to me and Sil. Hopefully, those worries wouldn’t bear fruit. And it was easy to understand that she didn’t want her mare to wander off too far if she was indisposed with her family. But I had the others with me so I wouldn’t be going anywhere alone, at least too often.

“That’s if your family doesn’t just let me in,” I added, Riptide looked like she hadn’t considered that, or hadn’t recently considered it at least. “I’m still going to stick close to the Marina. No point in wandering off and splitting us all up. Just would end up being a headache if we need to group up to tackle something.”

“Glad to hear it, hun,” Riptide said before leaning over to nuzzle under my jaw.

The coach started to move again as we headed downhill into Dockland proper, it wouldn’t be long now. I felt excitement finally flow into me. I was happy to feel some emotions push out the fear and anxiety after the past few days. I was practically giddy. Even with the nibbling worry at the corners of my mind.

We made it half an hour towards Dockland before things went wrong. Of course, things went wrong but, my mood didn’t sour, or maybe I had a screw loose. Someone decided to shoot at us and blocked the road with upturned wagons. So I hopped out of the stagecoach and grabbed my pistol. My rifle was stuck under too much other cargo for the time to dig it out. With care and speed, I cantered my way to the side of the Five breaking from the caravan into hardcover to break contact.

More shots rang out as everyone else fired back at the overpass the pullers had fallen back as the upturned wagons were in a kill zone. With a quick look around the front of an overturned wagon, I spotted a few ponies duck down as chunks of concrete were blasted away by gunfire. This wasn’t a one-pony operation, which meant this needed to be sorted fast and I was the one in a position to quickly end this. The blockade wasn’t going to move so that wasn’t an option, even with my magic.

The easier solution was to move closer or so I thought until I felt a tripwire snap on my rear hoof. Trap sprung it seemed as barrels rolling down the off-ramp. Well, that wasn’t that bad, with the grasp of my magic they were brushed aside and then gently stacked, they weren’t that heavy or even moving fast, to begin with. That is when I felt a searing pain in my hind followed by the thump of a shotgun. Looking back I saw that behind the wreckage of a coach there had been a shotgun set up with a light sensor.

Clever fuckers.

“Celestia forgive me for I am going to flay these bastards alive,” I muttered as I grabbed the shotgun out of its mount before I limped forward.

Grasped in my magic a carriage wheel floated ahead and another two to my sides for protection and to set off more traps that might lay ahead. Very quickly my appreciation for my own foresight became a secondary thought. Because there were so damn many fucking traps.

When I arrived at the top of the offramp the carriage wheels were only recognizable as once-circular objects made of metal. They had been made of metal but now they had gone from weathered and whole to what passed for two hundred years of raider target practice. Suffice it to say their protective abilities were exhausted. The brief thought of how bad my head would have hurt if I had tried to use a shield spell instead passed through my mind, it likely was something someone had planned on.

The makeshift shields rolled off after my magic released them, useless for any purpose other than to tell a tale. And my priority was cleaning wounds and making plans now so they’d get to rest until someone else found them. Because one thing I learned long ago was to not leave buckshot in your ass. While doing triage and first-aid I cataloged what the raiders' position had against what I had gathered on my way up. On the trip up there had been more shotguns but easily spotted, and disarmed their ammo was now mine to use against their owners. The downside to that was without anything to hold ammo and weapons my magic was being spread thin doing inventory management. Thank the Stars I didn’t have to handle everything with just two talons.

This was a terrible plan, but I had two guns, a shotgun, and a pistol. So it could have been a much worse plan.

At the top of the ramp I looked across the overpass and saw six ponies all in a line like a bunch of smart ponies, they were using the concrete wall between them and the caravan. The curb gave them a nice bit of shoulder-high cover to keep their heads from being perforated by those passing below. Not smart for them as the constant gunfire had hidden the sounds of my approach and now that I was in position I let out a wall of elements to freeze them in place. They felt the ice as it built upon them. It wasn’t enough to kill, but it was enough to hurt them, slow them, for some of them couldn’t move. Poor raiders, oh well they made the bad life choice of shooting at us.

Up came the shotgun, it was a nice short sawed-off coach shotgun. I just walked forward, letting loose an arcane blast into the nearest pony who had managed to not get completely frozen to the concrete, his legs shattering on impact. Even if he was still mobile the ice had done a number on his flesh and bone, without legs well he was nothing. I finished him with a suppressed pistol shot to the head. The next two were finished with point-blank shotgun shells to the skull. I faintly was aware of the blood splashing on me as I executed the raiders.

I took a minute to loot the raiders of ammo and healing supplies, the guns I left behind. They would have been too much work to make worthwhile. Pipeguns and all. However, I took the magazines and even ejected the rounds out of the chamber. I felt sorry for whoever came through and thought they had a jackpot on their hooves. This was just a bloodbath.

When I returned to the coach I got a splash of water from Night. “No blood in the Coach unless you got shot while in it.”

I paused looking at the pool forming around me, there was a fair bit of blood, almost none of it mine. “I only got scratched, guess I got a little too close when finishing them off.”

With a thought my magic strained me, pushing the water and blood out of my coat onto the ground around me before I climbed back into the coach. Additionally, the new acquisitions and ammo were deposited with the rest of our gear, never knew when you needed more shotgun shells, pistol rounds, and small caliber rifle rounds. Plus I doubted Ruby and her crew needed my help clearing the road now that those who had obstructed it were dead.

“You probably should have said something and I would have gone with you,” Sil said.

She wasn’t wrong, but something made me just act without really thinking, training, instinct, or need, it was hard to say what drove me to act that way. Maybe I just needed to blow off some steam, which if that was the case suicidal one-person flanking strikes were a pretty bad way to do that and my ass was very mindful to remind me of that with the fading buckshot wounds aching.

“More ponies sneaking together makes it infinitely more likely that the group gets caught. But, yes I should have two is the ideal number of sneakers.” I replied, ignoring the old billboard for sneaker hoofshoes in my line of sight behind Riptide advertising how quiet they were.

“I understand, but.” Sil started and then sighed. “I just need to act instead of waiting for permission don’t I?”

It was what we were taught to do, but Sil was always cautious, asking before doing in new situations or situations she hadn’t been in for a long while. It was reasonable, and as such I couldn’t fault her for it, but she needed to get that instinct back. Because that would have been easier with another glued to my ass. Sil more so due to her knack for disarming traps.

“It's probably best when I start going off on my own like that,” I admitted. “That or learn how to lasso me.”

Sil pondered as she put some thought into the second option it seemed.

Riptide sighed and shook her mane. “Well, you did say that meeting my family was distressing to you, did that help at all?”

I went to answer then put a hoof to my chin and thought. As I sat pondering the coach started to move again as we rolled into Dockland past what was hopefully the last thing stopping us from our destination. Though not our goal, as that was Riptide’s family. But, letting loose and putting down those raiders helped? It was, no, it wasn’t the act of killing that helped, though part of me was bothered that it wasn’t until now I was starting to feel the negative effects of having been up close killing those ponies. I couldn’t remember my emotions when I killed them, or my expression, it likely had been one of overwhelming neutrality.

No, what had helped was getting up moving, and doing not just thinking and planning but planning and executing the plan. Though now it began to gnaw at me having done it up close and personal and I felt nothing. I couldn’t accept being like that.

“It wasn’t about the raiders, it was about figuring out a way to deal with them, and doing that helped. I needed to do something more than sit on my rump and run around inside my skull. Even when doing patrol duty something was needing fixing, some turrets broke down, some generators needed restarting, and a relay needed to be dusted. Somepony needed to be let out of a locked room or somepony needed me to dig a splinter out of their ass. That last one happened more often than I want to remember. Ugh, I’ve seen so many pony butts because they forget to sweep with their tails and then sit so they get stabbed in the ass.” I sighed trying to not think about the rears I had worked on, changing my thoughts to a different type of work and then wincing as instead of Riptide coming to mind first, Winter did.

“That bad?” Riptide asked.

“You end up losing interest in pony’s rears when you spend so many damn hours pulling things from them. Sometimes from inside of them. I swear the stupid shit some ponies get up to on their watches is infuriating.” I muttered. “The fact that I’ve had to reference a Sisters’ damned magazine twice because they ended up doing something an article was written about says something.” I just buried my face in my hooves.

I understood how boredom was one of the worst things in the world but the cure wasn’t figuring out if you could fit random things into your cavities. I was just glad I only had to deal with ponies in the guard who fucked up on duty, though apparently, things were a lot better on the civilian side due to bored ponies could just go find a whore or use proper toys.

“Ugh, now I’m thinking about weird things in marehood’s again. I don’t need to nor do I want to remember this.” I whimpered as I tried to crush the memories out of my head. “Please use devices as directed to you morons.” I whimpered to myself. “I really don’t want to have to deal with that ever again.”

I could feel Riptide turn away from me. “Is what she’s saying true?”

“She’s told me stories in far more vivid detail. And I’ve seen the aftermath a few times.” Sil sighed. “Boredom is the worst thing for a pony in the wasteland, and more so on guard duty. That’s all I have to say on that.”

I looked up at Riptide to see her face carry a mix of concern and amusement. “Well, I have you but your rants make me a bit scared of what you have gone through. And what you might do.”

“Good, on both fronts I think.” I finished feeling dumber remembering all the stupid things mares and stallions got up to on their watches. “Maybe this is why Luna blessed me with the inability to remember my dreams, so I didn’t dream about this sort of stuff.”

Riptide just gave me a nuzzle.

We pulled to a stop and I looked outside, it had taken roughly fifteen minutes from the raiders to get here. There were a series of buildings with skyways between them, the letters “DU” were a shadow on the walls with rubble having been made into fortifications on the street opposite of them. The gate was opened and we were let in as a mist fell over the place. My EFS helpfully labeled this as Dockland University Campus. Looking outside I saw a lot of well-armed and armored ponies, though, no power armor. Combat armor though, battle saddles, and the occasional magical energy weapon. Nopony was outside milling about, just guards. We pulled through another gate past the buildings I had seen into a small park.

As I looked south and north it seemed to extend for a few blocks and once large trees stood as guardians over crops that grew below them. Meger little things. Wait, crops in autumn? That didn’t make sense, this was the wrong season for crops. Curious…

I heard Ruby hop off her seat and I opened the door grabbing the book Crash Cart had given me. I had made a duplicate of the book during my insomnia in Hoofview while I had not read it yet it would be of use to give to the ponies here with the… Duplicate in the metal casket.

There were more ponies here in this area behind the buildings, some spared me a few looks, though mostly at my pipbuck. A couple looked to take notes. I couldn’t imagine why maybe just making a note that somepony had arrived in town. After a few minutes in the mist, helping unload a few items from the coach three ponies arrived, two earth ponies and a unicorn trailing them. All three were in white coats and one had a cart. I guessed they were here to collect the goods Ruby had brought.

“Hey, here’s your shipment, and Crash Cart had us bring an oddity up with us for your biology team?” Ruby said as she nodded to the almost coffin-like box. “It’s dead, or should be.”

“Great, another Canterlot Ghoul?” The lead earth pony stallion grumbled.

Knowing what the package was I spoke up. “No, it is something… Weirder, definitely not a ghoul. Copied… Me, my looks but not the psyche or anything. Tried to hug a friend of mine to death, I think. It happened when I was isolated in Four Corners and they were looking for me. They couldn’t really cut it open, but they were able to confirm that it wasn’t like a pre-war changeling.” I trailed off feeling the memory of wrongness wriggled through me again.

“Whatever it is or was, it isn’t anything accounted for by our limited pool of knowledge,” I explained then I pulled out the book Crash Cart had given me. “Crash Cart had given me this to read when I was ready, it details what he found; however, that thing just gives me bad memories. So you should have it if somepony here is going to study that… Things.”

“Well okay, consider it in the queue for analysis. Given the box doesn’t have any air holes, bullet holes, or burn marks it’s pretty safe to say it didn’t get out, and it’s dead.” The lead stallion said.

“Thank the Stars for that,” I muttered.

With that, I helped unload the goods Ruby had marked for the University. Once that was done we bid the university farewell and I was informed that if I ever wanted to check in for results on the doppelganger, I could always come back and ask for the Department of Anomalous Wildlife. Apparently given we were with Ruby we were given a pass for returning. I had no interest in returning for now though. I just wanted to just let the University ponies do their thing for a while.

I needed to regain my footing within reality and had other priorities. Plus research took more than five minutes to do. We also still had two more stops to go. First, according to Ruby, was a place in the Pearl District. I figured it was Pioneer Square. While we were in the University District currently. There we would be dropping off everything except for us. Then Ruby and Night Dust were going to walk us to the waterfront where Riptide’s family apparently had a town, simply referred to as the Marina.

Another fifteen minutes later we arrived at Pioneer Square, the place I had been told about. Pioneer Square, was apparently named for the ponies who had settled in the area after following the Columbmane early in the settling of Equestria. Though most ponies here seemed to just call it Pioneer now. It was a busy town. Many of the buildings had once been living spaces, government offices, business offices, commercial storefronts, and restaurants. With three blocks together and the old city, trains derailed and turned into walls, there was security, safety, and a lot of ponies. While not every inch of the place was inhabited, it was more populated than I had expected. There were at least a couple hundred ponies living here. All of them were armed, and all of them had known the wasteland to some degree I imagined. Here they had made a home, cleaned away the debris for what was theirs, and used the rubble to block access but two access points guarded by gates.

One thing I did notice was the only ministry building here was the Ministry of Morale, it also happened to be the building that had a spa in it. Go figure, the best way to keep morale up was pampering, food, parties, and all that fun stuff. Oddly, it was right next to the courthouse. Maybe because ponies had too much fun while partying. The ponies in town didn’t regard us with much interest as we offloaded goods, I guessed it was common, or with so many ponies living here, we were just more faces a crowd. It was an odd feeling.

In Saint Clover, we had gotten to the point where it was getting close to being hard to remember who was who, but this was a different feeling. I shook my mane and focused on helping unload the stagecoach. I felt it was only proper to help after Ruby had gone all this way to take us here, even if we had paid for passage. As well as for our own food and lodgings. And I had done most of the heavy lifting with regard to threats to the trip.

I slipped on my bandoliers and saddlebags. I was busy sorting out the ammo I had collected into one saddlebag and tucking the shotgun halfway into the other when Ruby walked up to us.

“The others can take care of gettin’ the goods to their owners and gettin’ our pay. You lot already paid and I aim to deliver you to your destination. So, it’s time for us to go to the waterfront.” Ruby explained. “It’s not a long walk, and it’s patrolled reasonably well.”

“Moonlight, while you handle that we’ll get some rooms for us. Two obviously.” Ocean explained as she and Winter stood apart from the rest of us. We did need to take care of that sooner or later.

“Sure, we'll see you two in a bit. Try not to get into too much trouble.” I giggled.

“Make certain our room has a big bed.” Sil snorted.

“Yeah yeah, we also are going to not get a room next to yours.” Winter retorted.

“Hey!” I stammered feeling my face turn red.

“Gotcha.” Winter chuckled. “You stay safe.”

“Same to you,” Sil replied while I tried to get my cheeks to keep from catching fire. I didn’t snore that badly.

Night Dust joined us and took up rear guard while Sil and I flanked Riptide. Ruby took the lead for our group. It was clear as purified water that we were protecting Riptide but I wagered out here that would mean ransom over a murder. While the waterfront wasn’t that far away on hoof it still took half an hour to get there. During that time I got to drink in the sensation of walking between the towering buildings of a proper city while they didn’t scrape the clouds above they groaned, creaked, and occasionally still dropped glass somewhere. Without incident, we made it to the waterfront. While we had been on guard the area was supposedly well-patrolled which meant that this was a trade route to other towns within the ruins of Dockland the Marina was likely one of them. If they had working boats in the Marina I could imagine how they managed to stay separated for so long yet function off of trade.

I looked at the docks across the river. I saw half-sunk cargo ships, even a few still floating military ships of some kind. On this side, there was a mix of sailboats, yachts, and houseboats filling the small harbor. Around the marina was a wall topped with turrets, a few ponies sat in watchtowers, and what surprised me most were ponies swimming in the bitterly cold water while others sat by fishing lines.

“This, well I didn’t know what to expect, but this isn’t it,” I said looking at Riptide.

“This is about what I expected but I didn’t think there'd be so many! Do you think they’ll throw a party for us?” Riptide asked as she pranced in place.

Sil trotted up beside me and whispered. “Feels overly defensive doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does. Well, there is only one way to find out how we will be received.” I said with a dismissive shake of my mane. “Thanks, Ruby, it’s been a pleasure.”

“No problem, Moonlight, don’t be a stranger if you see us. No free rides though, maybe a discount.” Ruby teased as we bumped hooves before she and Night Dust turned to return to Pioneer Square.

“Well, let’s go meet your family Riptide,” I said with a nuzzle to Riptide. “Let’s hope no shotgun weddings are involved.”

“Would that really be so bad?” Riptide snorted looking back into my eyes before trotting ahead leaving my cheek with a brush of her tail.

Sil patted me on the shoulder. She started to say something and then just let it die in her throat as she giggled while looking me in the face.

Level up! Welcome to level 8. New Perk added: Suck it Up! Physical Status’ now affects you for one turn less. Maybe it’s all the physical trauma you’re soaking up, maybe it’s just that you’re learning how to roll with the kicks. So enjoy handling getting the shit beaten out of you easier now!