Fallout: Equestria - The Ranger of Seamane

Kindness is to be given, not held hostage. Kindness is a selfless action, with only the thought of how to help others and not one's self. To plant a tree for those who follow to enjoy the shade.

For too long I had accepted being here; being in this hospital, being subjected to tests, being jabbed, bled, cut, and examined. Every last feather was cataloged as I was used to create an extensive, detailed biomorphy of a gryphon hen entirely without my consent, without the ability to refuse. Property was the closest descriptor to how I felt.

An object, not a person.

Now? Now it was time to repay their kindness with my brand of generosity. I was leaving and I had gotten one of the attendees to lend a hoof in my escape. He was an earth pony, treated only marginally better than myself but well enough that he was able to return my things to me. My barding was useless unfortunately and, as it was raining outside as always, I was going to sorely miss it despite its damaged state.

Emil's revolver, and the ammo for it however was going to be very useful.

"Thank you.” I said as I checked the last of my gear. “Now like I said, curl up in the corner. I'm going to rough you up so it looks like I forced you to help me. I understand how these fuckers think."

He nodded. "I wish there was more I could do."

"Well... which way to the roof?" I asked him.

"Uh, down the hall, take a left, go straight past the next left, then take the left after that. Should be an unlocked, push bar door that will take you up." He explained. "But with the rain, it is going to be hard to fly."

He wasn't wrong; flying in the rain sucked but I needed to get some distance and Emil had said I was built for distance and power, not speed. This wouldn't be the first time flying in a storm and I just hoped it wasn't too rough or this escape was going to be a very short one.

"Thank you again and be safe, Rhubarb Pie." I smiled, ruffling his mane before helping him look the part of an unwilling accomplice. "Sorry for everything."

He was whimpering. I hadn't held back as much as I should have but I wanted to keep him safe and the only way to do that was to look like the villain here. With a dramatic turn I headed for the door, pulling the hammer back on the revolver. I didn't want to hurt anyone while leaving but I needed to push an image: violent, ready to draw blood, and not to be fucked with.

Opening the door I came beak to muzzle with the good doctor who had been in charge of my suffering. She blinked then balked as my claw went around her muzzle and I dragged her into the room to glare down at her.

"Brightheart." I said standing there, finally in full control of a situation with her. "I am leaving, don't try to stop me."

I took a breath and felt the bravado melt from me. "I don't want to hurt anyone, don't want there to be any more reasons to go after me. And no I do not want to stay here and if you or any others make escape impossible I am going to take option three."

Her eyes asked the question and I answered by making a finger gun with my talons and made a show of firing it at the side of my head. "Option three."

"Right, enough fucking about." I muttered. "Thank you for healing me and I hope your research saves many lives but don't fucking look for me."

I wanted to hurt her but she did what she could not to harm me while doing what she was forced to do. I believed her when she said that others would be less gentle and she seemed to at least have some internal angst over the situation.

Regardless of all that, I let go of her muzzle and rushed down the hall, following the path given to me. Reaching the top floor, I saw that while the storm had been bad before it was now just misting. Not ideal but it was also night and I had the old skyscrapers illuminated by the glow of Seaddle's lights as my guide.

A shiver ran through me as the cold wind set in. No time like the present to leave.

As I got to the edge to gauge my path, I heard hooves, and talons, behind me.

"Stop, or we will maim you." Shouted a stallion.

"Hen, your service is not yet done." Said a rooster with the ponies.

I slowly turned to regard them. A phalanx of ponies in thick heavy combat armor with heavy ballistic shields glared back at me, horns poking out of the helmets. Two gryphons stood there, one looked too posh for the wasteland, and the other held a bomb collar. The intent was clear.

"I signed up for nothing.” I spat. “I am captive for experiments. Fuck that noise."

"All gryphons are bound to her service and that includes you!" Shouted the posh bird.

"Who the fuck is her?" I asked, staring back at them entirely unamused.

"Our Matron, all gryphons of the region are bound to her!" He cried back over the wind. "Stop and you won't be punished."

"Too bad I'm not from here." I replied before sighing.

I had an inhaler of modified Dash and six shots ready to go. They had magic, shields, two flyers, and maybe a couple of guns. The solution was, given the birds were trying to block the unicorns from me with their extended wings, was to clip them. They'd live but most importantly nobody should be able to give chase immediately. Seconds mattered here.

"Let me think." I mockingly said. The posh bird looked hopeful.

The more observant, bomb collar-totting rooster blinked and then began to lunge as I pulled the inhaler out.

The drug hit my system hard. Time slowed as I tossed the inhaler away, having used every dose left in it. Probably an unsafe dosage but it mattered not.

Time stretched, colors became more vibrant and I got momentarily lost looking in the raindrops as they hovered frozen in time before focus returned. The revolver found its home in my talon and I fired off two shots, one to each bird, one wing each. With a hop, I bounced over the lunging rooster and watched as his face smashed into the retaining wall around the roof edge.

I let out a chirp of laughter before bounding into the air. The unicorns struggled to follow me as I swooped through the air, my wings leaving a swiftly swirling current behind me as they thread the spaces between droplets.

"Let's go home." I told myself as I felt my long unused muscles strain with madness-induced strength.

The cold was sinking into my extremities as I pushed hard. My forelegs felt chilled as the rest of me burned, rowing my wings through the cold wet night sky.

-=O=-

It took a minute to sort out when and what I was again. Anchoring feelings, like my body shape, gradually crept back into my mind; my hooves, my horn, my equine biology. With a groan, I stretched and winced seeing a familiar tile ceiling above me. For a split second I was back in Seaddle, but this time as my unicorn self on that table again and subject to the Family's twisted minds.

Ugh, okay, let's not do drugs again, or at least whatever the fuck the tranquilizers here were. Also, I am unhappy to now know I have a history of Dash use.

Shoving the thoughts out of my head I used a leg to shove myself from my side to my stomach. Said stomach growled at me and I realized my EFS and its reminders were still down. I fished out an MRE and quickly swapped the pipbuck’s batteries while the meal’s heater started doing its thing.

My mind inadvertently slid back to the memories I had been forced to relive but I immediately shook my head to dismiss them. I was almost done here so I needed to focus. Only two more buildings to clear though neither looked easy to clear.

"So much for doing this quickly. I'm sorry Sil, I am probably stressing you out."

My eyes slid onto the terminal in the room and I let a ghostly talon of familiar shape and shade manifest to push the power button. As the machine came to life, I went through a mental checklist. Hydration was a must so I started drinking. However, on the second bottle of lightly irradiated water, my body decided to breathe instead of swallow, leaving me hacking up precious water and my eyes watering.

I sneezed out what little water remained and started to worry when I looked down at the hooves covering my snout. Blood and water. I needed to see a doctor the moment I got back. Before a spa date, before another pipbuck, before checking for a letter from Riptide.

EFS warnings came back online then, though none looked immediately concerning. Namely, no taint, not yet at least, but there was plenty more hospital left to explore.

I took the moment to stretch, letting out a groan or whimper as I popped joints and stretched out tense muscles.

"Next time, I need a bedroll or something."

The terminal chirped out in readiness and, now more limber and less sore, I started interrogating the terminal as I let my food cool; the heater had run longer than I had intended it to, the steam wafting off of the non-descript brick of essential nutrition.

"They sure did treat our troops nicely." I snorted as I began to flick through the computer, this one not even needing a password.

I quickly found that it was corrupted and would have been a nightmare to work with. I groaned in resignation and shut it off before opening a couple of nearby cabinets with my magic. This bore more fruit as it was heavily stocked and everything had labels. A nice morale boost in the moment. I excitedly clapped my magic talons together while I switched to look at memos and documents.

Of the memos, there was one that took priority, the one that explained what was going on, sent just as the bombs fell. Thankfully it wasn't a long tortured spiel about the fate of the world but one from a professional staying laser-focused in the face of a crisis. It made sense, after all they were the Head Nurse, one Stainless Heart.

Due to the detonations across Equestria and the loss of contact with other cities, we have instituted a lockdown. Per the procedures laid out, staff must make certain all patients are moved to safety in In-Patient Care. Those who are capable are to be discharged and sent home or to shelters around the city. Once those patients are taken care of, all supplies must be moved to In-Patient Care to sustain the hospital as long as possible. It is very likely in the next few hours, as well as the following years, we will see a large influx of patients. We don't know when resupply will be but we will not turn anyone away. As long as we have the supplies, the power, the water, we will help until we are without supplies or life.

-Head Nurse Stainless Heart

Tears welled up as I sat there having finished reading the memo. It was timestamped around when the clocks had stopped, as soon as contact was lost. This meant Dockland had time to know their doom before it landed when I had assumed they wouldn't know till it happened. How horrific. It pained me to think of how this mare’s hopes had been buried in this irradiated city, days, weeks after the bombs fell.

No resupply would ever come. The Pegasi never came to help.

Pushing myself, I looked through the rest of the notes and found some information on possible locations for stables in the area; one by Mt. Hoof, another in the city itself and the one in Seaddle that I knew and did not enjoy the reminder of.

Logs from the other employees of the FMC wrote about when the black rain began, thick with radioactive ash, before the glowing snow arrived. They wrote about the pain they felt at seeing irradiated survivors coming to the hospital only to die. Then the radiation spiked and the skywagon crashed into the building a month after the end. The driver was dead long before the crash. The abandoning of the other buildings fell behind schedule.

Emil had told me about the Pegasi and their first atrocity. I wasn’t taking the sun and moon from us but kicking every bit of radiation out from above the clouds and even out of them, drowning the world below. The loyalty that they had was to themselves and not Equestria.

I realized I was scowling so I took deep breaths to recenter myself, letting my emotions flow through me and out of me.

Chewing through more entries, I started seeing complaints about burning through resources, then some kind of radiation madness, thought to be from extreme pain. The descriptions told me everything I needed to know. Feral ghouls.

Not long after the survivors ended up in In-Patient Care, with the sane ones moving to ER eventually but not before they all got a lethal dose of radiation. The logs stopped soon after but not before a collection of them practically screaming their frustrations, damning the Princesses, the Pegasi, the other Ministries, and the Zebras. They railed against everyone and I could sympathize with the simple need to scream into the void and hope it made you feel better.

And now only one entry was left, one last memo.

I sat there and drank it in.

This is Head Nurse Stainless Heart. When the bombs fell everything Fluttershy had worked for had been validated with Communally Assured Reciprocal Existence, or C.A.R.E. Her ‘care’ for treating the illness was in conflict. She was both right and wrong. Her megaspell was the cure but not for the suffering and the war. Unfortunately, the War adopted our cure and used it against us, turning our treatment into a vector to spread more misery. We were but reacting to a sickness not anticipating its mutations.

I foresaw this and began work on spells to deal with this after seeing the first balefire bomb detonation by the Quabians. It was horrific. That day I knew things would never be the same, that the Ministry couldn’t just stand by and respond to injuries after they had happened. We needed to understand what would come tomorrow and be ready today to treat these novel threats.

I brought my research to Luna and Twilight and for my effort I was ‘banished’ to this quiet city. It was a mixed blessing I suppose. While publicly my research was ignored, the Ministries refusing to admit that Equestria would ever be harmed despite the ongoing Stable project, I later found out through others that Twilight and Luna had at least disseminated the data privately among the Ministry of Arcane Science. I take solace in knowing that my research will be used by Stable-Tec to protect and rebuild a sliver of Equestria’s population.

There are still things I haven’t figured out how to fix but my time on Equestria draws close. I lived a short life compared to my ancestors but I did what I could to uphold Fluttershy’s ideal of kindness, and I hope that my research will spread this very kindness across this new Equestria.

Within my grimoire are new spells for healing, for purging the radiation caused by the bombs, and designs for new megaspells, though I have no idea if they will work. I managed to scale down the original version of Fluttershy’s healing megaspell. Unlike hers, which healed a whole battlefield, this is meant for a singular individual. I doubt it would affect the long dead but those recently deceased will likely be able to be brought back.

Sadly this megaspell and others require facilities and pony power I lack, and those who were working under me are now nothing more than corpses. A sad fate but I am glad they are finally resting. They have earned it, they earned it even before the bombs fell. And now I’ll join them in eternal rest as well. May Equestria rise once more.

-Former Head Nurse Stainless Heart.

I sat there numbly for a minute before the tears began to flow and I let myself weep for this irradiated mausoleum. She had watched her friends and colleagues work themselves to death as she sat high up above the radiation, safe enough to continue her research. Now her office sat atop the feral ghoul-filled building which explained the lack of anyone retrieving her work.

Now it was my turn to try, I guess. I don’t know if I can do it but her Kindness, the gift she wanted to give to the wasteland in the form of knowledge to help the world recover, to help make things right, sounds like something I should at least give a shot.

"Well, I doubt there are supplies in the ER but there should at least be some useful equipment. And probably more ghouls." I muttered to myself. "In-Patient is next then. Alright, let's eat and go."

I didn't want to linger and feel my emotions destabilize again. I needed to keep my head on straight. After all, I had clearing the rest of this building, then diving into a building full of feral ghouls to look forward to. I had to at least try to make this building safe from all the robots electrocuting and drugging anyone who tried to explore.

It didn’t take long to find the aforementioned crashed sky wagon on the next floor. Unfortunately the moment I opened the door to the floor, a trickle of glowing, rainbow fluid splashed over my hooves before I managed to react and teleport a short distance away. Panting, I checked myself to make sure I wasn't mutating visibly and sighed when nothing looked amiss. Not yet at least. My EFS was screaming about it but I squelched the warnings; it didn't do me any good to have a reminder of my likely horrific mutations to come.

Well, I know it wasn't a lot of taint at least. Definitely didn’t like worrying about how this is going to twist my body though.

As if to taunt me, I felt my insides twist and writhe, making me gasp and double over as tears slipped from my eyes.

Now I really hoped her spells would do the trick because I definitely needed to learn how to either undo taint exposure or stop it long enough to get myself and the spells to a doctor.

The fifth floor was a ruined mess from where the sky carriage had smashed into the building. A quick sweep of what remained revealed a small stockpile of supplies and some robots warding people away from the crash site. The latter did not move after me so I stuffed my packs then booked it for the sixth floor.

This floor served as administration, which would have been unremarkable if it wasn’t for the one prize I found amongst the paperwork; the shut-off override switch for the hospital’s robots, which I happily pressed. Aside from the normal office supplies, the only other thing of note was a set of orange-gold orbs, something I recognized as memory orbs without memories. I eagerly stuffed these in my bag.

Something I was less eager about, locked in a nondescript office that was almost glowing with rads from the crash site below, was a preserved, unopened bottle of scotch. The label told me this vintage was more than 200 years old but, sadly, scotch smelled like paint thinner to me and my first thought was to turn it into a Molotrot Cocktail.

Dad would be oh so disappointed in my feelings on scotch. Oh well, he isn't here to berate me over it.

Once out of the room, I took five to catch my breath, grumbling at how I was getting weaker as time went on. I was resistant but with my rads slowly creeping higher the necromantic magic was starting to eat away at my body. I debated on teleporting out or taking the stairs down but pragmatism won out in the end and I started for the stairs, sucking down one of my limited RadAway's as I kept my eyes on the EFS for any contacts. The last thing I needed was to get another visit by the lovely mechanical nurses here.

Luck favored me until I got to the bottom floor. While most of the machines on the way down were either shut down or ignored me, the machines in the atrium were still active. And hostile.

"Fuck!" I swore.

"Miss Grimoire, you need to return to your *bzzzt*" The spiderbot spouted before collapsing into a twitching mess.

I had pulled out my pistol in my magical talons and dumped three rounds into the spiderbot. The 'nurse' compatriot found its path blocked by its companion's body and dumbly flailed about trying to get to me

"Hey, machine, network status!" I barked.

It paused. "Network adapter damaged. Error! Defaulting to prior instructions."

That would explain it. No idea why it was damaged but I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste. Out came the rifle while it was distracted but as I aimed, the machine finally lunged over its dead companion. I saw the glittering tips of its electric barbs and fired twice just as they launched at me. Electricity screamed into my body and I howled for a moment before the shock abruptly ended with the machine’s demise.

"Well, that's one loose end done." I whimpered, shakily getting back onto my hooves. I could smell my fur smoldering.

I took a moment to close my eyes and try to recenter myself. Well, now these machines couldn't hurt anyone else at least but that still sucked. My eyes drifted over my body; I was caked in my own fluids, my fur was singed, and I just looked overall miserable. I definitely needed a break once I was in Pioneer. At the very least I paused to dress any open wounds using what alcohol I had.

-=O=-

A brisk trot across the yard (lawn, court? Whatever) and I was at the In-Patient facility. This place made my mane crawl, what with the scattering of gurnies within the lobby, grimed with some ancient material that had long turned black, coarse, and sticky. I flicked it off my hoof before using more alcohol to clean the gunk from my nail.

"Ugh... this is going to suck." I sighed aloud.

I heard something creak at my voice. I slowly panned my vision around, willing my EFS to show itself then saw bars start to appear. It was then that they started to filter into the lobby.

Ghouls. Very fucked up ghouls. I kept quiet and moved slowly to take cover behind an overturned sofa, sharing my resting spot with the skeleton of a much less fortunate prior visitor. I saw a shotgun by its side and quickly grabbed it, finding it empty and in poor condition. Regardless, it would add to my firepower and give me at least three shots before I had to reload it.

I peeked carefully over the sofa and saw an obvious green glow coming from one of the ghouls. I started feeling cold and my rad counter started to click even faster. One or two ghouls I could handle, but twelve with three glowing with more radiation than I could heal through? I was in trouble.

But the more important question was simple:

WHY DO GLOWING GHOULS EXIST?!

What really started eating at my sanity was their constant muttering; the melted, shambling corpses somehow retained the ability for speech even if it likely wasn’t even any kind of Ponish.

Oh Sisters please let them just want to kill and eat me.

I tried my best to not focus on the strange voice-like sounds they made and instead on how all of them were handicapped in some form. A good number of them were in casts or braces while those that weren’t were reduced to wet, squishy, glowy, mushy creatures.

Think, Moonlight. Feral ghouls, soft tissue targets, low caliber will be the best for this. Radiation is pretty thick so I can take some scrapes and scratches, but I can’t let them get to me or I’ll be torn to ribbons. I need a better shotgun, the two I have do not work for long engagements…

I grabbed my pistol and slotted in a fresh magazine, leaving a round in the chamber.

Okay, that’s eleven plus one in the chamber, good start. Knives will help but fuck if I’ll be able to recover any of them in this. By the Elements do I wish I had a grenade so I can make a lot of glowy chunky salsa right about now. Okay, so what can I do? Ghouls are typically pretty blind, relying more on their sense of sound over scent. So, what, I just dash between objects? Better to go low and slow in any case instead of teleporting so as not draw any attention with a big old flash.

My lips curled as I whispered, “Ah, that’s a plan.”

Then the ghouls’ moaning paused as if they were listening before they all howled. I looked back over the sofa and saw them shuffling as best they could towards me.

With my cover blown, I vaulted over the sofa I was behind and charged down the hall.

In-Patient was a much bigger building than the other two had been. There was space here for hundreds of ponies, four to a room even on this floor. If the pattern was maintained on other floors, that was a lot of potential ghouls. Fortunately, the process of ghoulification wasn’t always successful so that would mean that some, if not most, ponies here would just be corpses and not shambling zombies hell-bent on eating me alive while their radiation-venting buddies kept regenerating me.

“Okay, mental image, please go the FUCK away.” I cried out as I toppled a glowing ghoul by shoulder checking it. “I don’t want to think about being an eternal food source for zombie ponies. Fuck that’s terrifying.”

My pipbuck screeched as the ghoul’s radiation swept over me and I fired point-blank into the poor ghoul’s heart three times to make certain it would stay down. I landed on my back and rolled over, hurriedly getting to my hooves as ghouls continued to awaken and appear on my EFS.

“Oh fucking great, if they’re asleep they don’t even show as a green bar?!” I shouted around the handle of my pistol, having thrown stealth out the window like a train full of balefire eggs into a blocked tunnel.

I looked behind me and felt my body tense in terror when I saw the gathering swarm.

“Fucking great, it’s like one of those fucking pre-war night of the living dead movies!” I swore as I threw an arcane bolt; the ghoul it impacted had its front explode into gore across the hallway, the unshielded light above sizzled as the fluids cooked.

Unfortunately I should’ve been facing the other direction because I suddenly felt an impact before screaming as I felt broken teeth sink into my neck. My pistol skidded away as I tried to turn my head so my horn faced the ghoul that was working on cutting a chunk of my neck out for itself.

I couldn’t focus, couldn’t concentrate enough to send the damn ghoul to her overdue grave with my magic so I did the next best thing: I rolled and pinned the ghoul. She didn’t mind; I hadn’t gotten my neck out of her mouth yet so she still had my meaty neck to chew on. My vision blurred as tears from the pain mounted. Finally slipping a knife into my hoof, I slammed the blade into her rotted brain over and over until I was released.

I scooped up my pistol in my magic as I rose and continued my labored run. I knew I had to keep moving because if I stopped I would just be swarmed. I couldn’t afford any more stupid mistakes.

Even as I ran I felt blood rolling down my neck, the radiation beginning to overwhelm my body even as it tried to fuel its regeneration. I had to keep shaking my head to get my eyes to focus.

I reached the end of the hallway and found myself in a little lift lobby. Howls, hisses, and slams thundered around me. I felt a warm trickle go down my hind legs as I quickly surveyed the room. The elevators still seemed to be working but as I hit the call button I drew back.

Eenope, too long. The swarm is closing.

I saw the sign for the stairs bathed in the glow of a red light and made my decision. I grabbed a table ahead of me and rammed the door with it.

The stairwell had a dry and stagnant air to it and even my pipbuck calmed down a bit. I didn’t let myself chew on this information though. I quickly slammed the door shut and shoved the table against it, pinning the table edge between the door and the railing.

Not satisfied with that, I grabbed the spellbook I had on me, flipped it open and once I found what I was looking for, deformed the floor to help give the table more purchase. I let out a sigh of relief and returned the book to my saddlebags before starting up the stairs. If Stainless Heart had survived all of this she’d clearly be higher up, away from all this radiation. Of course, I was assuming she hadn’t turned into a ghoul which was now a lot to be betting on.

“Five to one odds she’s an insane ghoul unicorn and given her dedication to healing magic I’m going to experience an internal organ exploding from her death magic rays or something,” I muttered as I cantered up the stairs. “Or accidentally healing me, realizing radiation does just that, then keeping me alive to test new methods of healing the injuries she gives me.”

I coughed as my mind raced. “Or she could just simply use me as her immortal buffet. Because that was always a healthy thing to be an option.”

I stopped to catch my breath on the third floor’s landing before looking at its door. Said door was broken outward and caked in blood, as was the immediate area outside of the doorway. A light just inside was flickering and casting creepy shadows into the stairwell.

“Top floor? Top floor it is. Fuck dealing with this shit.” I told myself as I pushed onwards and upwards.

Yeah no, let’s not go onto the floor where everything obviously exploded into fucking gore. Sisters, did someone turn into a fucking blood balloon and then explode? Nope, don’t picture it. Too late, ew. I shook my head as I rounded the landing midway to the fourth floor.

I slid to a stop at the sight of some sort of creature resting there, blocking the stairs. I took a moment to catch my breath and then teleported past it. The thing wasn’t showing up on EFS but it looked living enough. My eyes were drawn to spines of bone impaled into the opposite wall and I traced their trajectory back to weird holes all over the weird fleshy thing. I crept to the next landing, where a solid door lay, before allowing myself to take a breather, confident that the shambling horde would be sufficiently slowed down.

However, a minute into my breather I heard a screech that made me lock up before I heard scratching on the other side of the wall. Not the door, the fucking wall.

“Okay, running time!” I cried as I bolted.

What the fuck was here that would do that?! That’s not something I heard of ghouls being able to do!

Whatever it was it had sensed me through the wall and was trying to burrow its way to me, a terrifying prospect. I cast a few arcane marks ahead of myself and infused arcane bolts of ice into them as I bounded up the stairs.

Only three more flights to go.

I slowed down and caught my breath on the sixth floor’s landing, eyeing the door there warily. I would have to stop away from the doors from now to be safe. Thankfully nothing came for me this time and I pushed on once I felt less winded.

Keeping low and quiet, I moved past the last few floors without incident, eventually arriving at the very top, the ninth-floor. The door here was ajar, lovely. Weak but steady incandescent light flowed between the gap. I pulled my pistol out using my mouth and kept it there as I slowly opened the door with a hoof.

The main area of the ninth floor was unlike the ward of the second. Just past the elevator doors sat a desk where an administrative assistant would have worked and further beyond was a hall that branched off into the distance. Despite the dim light, the head nurse’s office was clearly labeled. Was it really going to be that simple? Well, why wouldn’t it be if she wanted her spellbook found?

Using my shoulder, I slowly pushed open Stainless Heart’s door to reveal the shadowed figure of a pony sitting behind their desk, their face obscured by a terminal. I kept steady aim on the pony’s head with my pistol and carefully crept into the room.

I shifted the pistol to my magic talons, the glow from my horns acting like a torch. If she hadn’t seen me now she either wasn’t alive or was asleep.

“Hello?” I asked just in case. Only silence replied. “Unfortunate.”

I sighed as I put my pistol back into its holster and walked up to Stainless Heart.

Her body was mostly preserved despite the lack of radiation, the almost freezing air up here probably contributing. An empty syringe of what looked like painkillers was embedded into a forehoof. Scratch that, several syringes of painkillers; one in her and many more on the floor, all of them empty. More than enough to put a pony down with no chance of failure. She had known she was at her end and picked the quiet way out from the pain of having lost her world.

“I can’t blame you, Stainless, you did good. You earned your rest. I hope the Sisters took you home.” I whispered as I sat down and paid my respects to the dead mare.

After a minute, I gently moved the mare to the sofa in the corner with my magic and laid what remained of a fire blanket over her. Given I could see inside of her body cavity, I knew she wasn’t going to resurrect which gave me a small modicum of assurance. I then proceeded to power on Stainless Heart’s terminal and rifle through the desk drawers while it booted.

I immediately felt like a fool because I found a hoof-bound book with the Ministry of Peace’s logo on it even before the terminal could finish its start-up. I felt a warmth to the tome that made me recoil. A book shouldn’t feel warm when everything else here feels cool.

“I found it, Stainless Heart, your grimoire. I’ll make certain copies of it go out to others. I won’t let what you worked for die here with you, or with me.” I said looking at the covered body of Stainless on the sofa. “I hope it helps your soul rest well.”

I lifted the spellbook in my hooves, the worry about its unnatural warmth soon turning into an equal measure of comfort as I kept hold of it. With that important task out of the way, I had one last thing to do here at Fluttershy Medical Clinic and that was to do my due diligence and check the ER’s status.

The terminal had finally booted up and there wasn’t even a password for it anymore. Helpfully it had the option to kill the lockdown and I immediately did just that. It was almost as if she had meant to do it before she passed but failed to for whatever reason.

Browsing the rest of the terminal, it felt wrong to read her research logs over the years. Stainless Heart didn’t need me looking at her frustrations when she had already given me her solutions. I would give her answers to the wasteland, her kindness to the wasteland.

I finally looked up from the terminal and immediately froze seeing a figure standing in the open doorway, a door I had sworn I had closed. With trained practice, I pulled my pistol from its holster with my magic while also shooting a spent syringe through the door with a light spell attached. It stuck to a ghoul’s head, hissing as it clawed at the distraction. It didn’t take long after I spotted the shadowy shapes moving behind it that the howls rang out, soon followed by a clamor of skittering.

The throng of undead had blocked any path out.

They found me! How? How in the name of all things did they find me? I mentally begged. One of these things is not like the other~

Maybe the necromantic curse that held them could also sense any life that wasn’t plagued by their affliction of undeath, leading them straight to me.

I glanced behind me; there was only one way out and I couldn’t see the ground. I needed more time so I shoved my pistol back in its holster and instead used my magic to grab an inhaler of Dash and one of Stainless’ chairs. The latter I shoved at the ghouls scrambling to get through the doorway. The former I inhaled without missing a beat and, with a swift turn on a hind hoof, I looked out the window and teleported outside.

For a second, gravity didn’t work. Be it adrenaline or Dash, the laws of physics slowed to a crawl. It invariably began to drag me down into a lethal embrace of the ground, mist beginning to collect on me as I started falling faster and faster.

I wrapped myself in my telekinesis like I had tried to with Riptide and Sil back in Four Corners. I felt myself falling faster. The pain I felt in my horn got shunted into tomorrow as I forced more magic through it and then back into myself with one goal in mind; lifting myself, slowing myself, anything to let me survive the fall. I had no desire to become a pony pancake on the pavement.

There were only five stories left to go. My horn was glowing and I was still falling fast.

Damn it, if only I still had my wings.

A silly thought hit me and I quickly made a barrier in the shape of wings, looping it through my armor. That worked somewhat and I wasn’t just falling but gliding away from the building. However, I still had too much downward velocity and no proper landing spot.

I teleported again, this time higher and closer to the building, leading to my forward momentum smacking me into the side of it. I shoved a hoof through a window and hung there, swaying weakly as the fog swirled around me, blocking sight of the ground and sapping my heat.

How long ago did I pull myself up by one hoof with a full pack? Never? Right, never…

I removed the forty-four rifle from my pack and fired three rounds through the window below me before shattering it with a kick. With a clear line of sight, I teleported into it and collapsed to the ground, whimpering in pain from the chunk of the window from the floor above embedded in my foreleg. My pipbuck also chimed in that I was critically injured.

One shot of painkillers, a rag to bite down on, and a yank later and my wound was mostly clean. I then went to work on treating it the rest of the way before downing another ancient healing potion. As much as I hated to rest more I needed time to take a break. I could just blast anything that did show up if I needed to. Fuck if I didn’t need some rest.

Level up! Welcome to level 10! You’ve been doing a lot of carrying as of late so it feels fitting to reward you with something along those lines. Congratulations on gaining the Strong Back perk! Enjoy the additional 30 kilograms of carry weight!

Quest Perk Added: Fragment of Kindness. You have found the life’s work of a pony who dedicated herself to kindness, the degree of which has rubbed off on her very work. To say she put her soul into her work would be to repeat the obvious. As Earth ponies can put a fragment of themselves into the work they do, Stainless Heart’s fragment came about through her hard work, her kindness, and her desire to help those who came after her in an uncertain future. Let her kindness join with yours and grow into a greater sum.