“From this moment forth the night shall last FOREVER!”
The E.F.S. of my PipBuck was picking up ten red dots from my place of cover; a rusted billboard, scorched and scoured to the point of being almost unintelligible. All one could make out was the faded image of a rearing pony clad in magical power armor, above which only the word “safe” could be made out. How ironic.
I looked down with my binoculars. Definitely raiders; they’d set up shop at the base of the cliff face below the billboard, having built a curving wall of junk, the cliff serving as the foundation and as a means of them not being taken from behind. The stench of rotting corpses was strong from my vantage point; courtesy of some poor pony who’d been strung up onto the wall with barbed wire, carved open with his intestines draped around the wall like putrid tinsel, and his ribs had been splayed out.
The central yard was occupied by a small bonfire, sharpened lengths of pipes adorned with the skulls of ponies rising from the flames. Three raider ponies were laying around the bonfire; seemed to be sleeping. I veered towards the back end of the camp; the cramped corner seemed to be their holding pen for their prisoners; made of a picket fence of all things. They had two ponies penned; one a young mare with a long pitch-black mane, the other was undoubtedly a foal, huddled up as far back as physically possible. The mare was standing defiantly at the pen’s gate, glaring at who was likely placed to guard them; in the dim I could only make the pony out as a stallion. Otherwise the best I could do was use my imagination, and raiders left little for it. Four raiders were sitting around a garden table playing cards. At the front end of the encampment was a gap between the wall and the cliff face; the only way in and out, with one guard lazing by the wall’s side, with what appeared to be a large wrench at hoof’s reach. The tenth raider was not visible, likely hidden inside the tent pitched up against the cliff face.
Overall I’d say they were pretty well settled; for raiders who didn’t have the luxury of a pre-war building to infest. The wall looked sturdy enough to hold off gunfire, but a grenade would send chunks flying easy. Also no defense for attacks from above. I was almost tempted enough to drop a grenade down and see what hijinks would ensue, but I couldn’t. My meal ticket was in that pen, the mare. Plus I wasn’t about to leave a foal with these degenerates.
I could see and vaguely hear the penned mare saying something to the guard; based on her posture it was a threat. Her guard was sneering at her, when the raiders looked up from their game and one at the campfire stirred before promptly letting out a very clear “Shut the fuck up”.
Good, arguing. Perfect timing. I put away the binoculars and shed my olive duster, hanging it off a protruding steel beam acting as a perfect on-hoof rack. I spread my wings and leapt. I caught a good current as I silently glided around the wall. The ponies down below were oblivious to my existence; they never expected a pegasus. I slid through the air, guiding my way towards the front end of the encampment. Just as my hooves were about to touch the ground below, I caught myself and gently, quietly set myself down just beside the wall. I raised a hoof and lightly tapped the surface, a patch of aluminum roofing giving it that satisfying ting.
I heard the guard startle awake (amateur). The sound of hooves against dry, cracked ground permeated the night air. I huddled against the wall, dreading the thing would fall over if I put too much weight on it. The hoof-steps became louder and soon, around the bend I spotted the raider pony’s head, spiked mane and bloodshot, baggy eyes and all, the wrench clenched in his teeth.
All that could be heard afterwards was the thump of a pony’s head hitting the ground, followed by the rest of his body. The raider’s head rolled a few hooves away, the eyes vacant and oblivious as the muscle tension in the jaws loosened and the wrench slid out of its teeth. Blood came spraying out of the neck where I’d sliced into it, pooling around the body before being sucked up by the parched ground like a sponge.
Gladius grasped in my teeth, I hunched down and soundlessly snuck around the bottlenecked entrance into the encampment. That exhilarating sense of tension crept in. My heart pounded in my chest as my eyes were darting left and right; between the four raiders playing their game and the three sleeping around the bonfire. E.F.S. did not pick any additional hostiles. I kept my breathing slow and steady, staying low to remain as surreptitious as possible.
“Fucking no way!” one of the raiders across the table, a mottled sandy brown unicorn mare with a khaki short Mohawk for a mane, boomed as she stomped against the table and jerked a hoof. I tensed back; did these degenerates spot me already?
“Card Shark, you cheating son of a bitch!” she snarled at one of the ponies seated on my side of the table, my guess the one on the left, seeing as I could spot his cutie mark; a bisected deck of cards, “I oughta blow out your brains right now!”
“Oi!” said the raider Card Shark, “What‘cha blamin’ me for? You’re the one who cut the cards!”
“Right, and these cards came from?” the mare glared at Card Shark, so intense it looked like her eyes could burn the flesh off a pony’s face.
Card Shark pointed at the pony next to him on the right. This earned Card Shark with a rough jab in the ribs. In true raider fashion, the quartet was embroiled in a feud accented with them drawing weapons on each other, the mare brandishing a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun with her magic, Card Shark had produced a cleaver and was holding it in his teeth, the earth pony stallion next to him was grasping a small caliber 5-shot revolver while across from him another mare, earth pony, kicked up the mouthpiece of a battle-saddle, but I could not make out what type of ordinance it was applied to.
“Oh for the love of-!” the mare sleeping near the bonfire from earlier got up, staring daggers at the four while the other sleeping raiders were roused from their sleep. Things were going from bad to worse by the second. For fairness, I blame Card Shark for it.
“Can’t you shitters be fucking quiet?! I have a bitch of a headache enough from the psycho, I-” her eyes, they were trained at me. Just perfect…
Before she had time to alert the rest, I darted at her with a wing assisted leap. She hadn’t a chance as my gladius cut through her overly exposed neck like it had the density of water; her head and body slumped separately onto the mud stained mattress she’s been sleeping on. I made use of the shock of the raiders and quickly darted at the mottled mare with the shotgun, going for three. She had enough wits to dodge, my blade instead chopping off most of her horn.
With a scream, the mare fell over, screaming about “her fucking horn” as the other mare, a strikingly dark red earth pony with a highly contrasting white, greasy, matted, unkempt mane trained her battle-saddle at me, some form of rifle. With still enough momentum retained from my two-part dash, I spun around with a rearing buck and knocked the table over before leaping over it. The familiar sense of tinnitus came as she fired, the bullet punching through the cheap plastic table like it was nothing, leaving a sizable bullet hole: Definitely a higher caliber hunting rifle.
Card Shark had scrambled away, dragging with him a legful of a pile comprised of caps and scooped up dirt. In retrospect one could see why these other raiders clearly hated him. The other earth pony stallion, his coat a mottled greyish green and no mane fired two shots from his revolver. One struck my barding right over the sternum; not strong enough to punch through, but it still sent webs of pain through my chest. The other, by sheer luck, struck the pommel of my gladius, and the thing came dislodged from my grip. Spitting out my weapon, I charged him, extending my right wing, permeating a metallic “shing”, twisting my body in the midst of my attack. My wing-blade cut through his scrap barding, between his neck and shoulder. A deep wound, but not immediately fatal. The stallion yelped, dropping his weapon. As I was preparing to finish him off, the dark red mare was taking aim with her hunting rifle. All I could do was dash to the side when the shot rang out. Striking the stallion right through the temple. In the split second I had for her to discard the spent casing, I rammed her with the toppled table, knocking her over. Just then I felt a sharp pain in my right flank and the sensation of something warm washing over my coat.
I turned around and kicked the table further against rifle mare with my better leg as I faced the next attacker, a wiry, very tall unicorn stallion with a muddied orange coat and a grey and green mane, half of it long, half of it shaved clean off, who was using his magic to swing my own gladius at me. I swerved away from another cut and ducked under another, he was clearly not suited as a swordpony; the swings being all force, but no technique. I spun again, my right foreleg digging into the ground as I brought my left hind leg up with the momentum and plowed him square in the jaw, then using the gained momentum to leap over the capsized table and the rifle mare.
The rifle mare and the wiry unicorn approached me, the unicorn continuing to swing my sword in a frenzy whilst the mare growled at me, kicking the table away as she maintained her distance. Just then I felt someone grab my injured leg and I was downed. The sandy brown unicorn, or whatever you call them if they lose their horn, had her forelimbs around my leg, violently pulling at it. I could hear the pen guard running up from behind, not knowing what weapon he had, and I could see from my peripheral vision the last of the raiders from around the bonfire approaching, swinging a chain with his mouth.
“Bang!”
Just as things were getting interesting, a shot rang out from above and the rifle mare fell over with a bamboozled expression, minus a good portion of her left eye, which was now a bloom of gore. The wiry unicorn was looking up, which gave me time to kick the hornless mare right where my blade had taken it off, making her hold her head in pain before leaping at the one who dared to try and appropriate my sword. He had enough fortitude to block my incoming right wing-blade, when with one more charge I slashed his throat open with the left. The magical aura vanished from my gladius and it fell harmlessly to the ground as the unicorn began to gag and choke from the fatal injury. I managed to reacquire my blade when I heard the pen guard shouting “Hot potato!” I cringed and dashed away as fast as I could.
“You motherfucking-” the hornless mare screamed. I do not know quite how that instant went down, but after hearing the grenade go off, I saw her dead, most of her head marred by shrapnel, while the pen guard was down, grasping at injuries to his chest. I guessed the mare had tried to kick the explosive away, back towards the one who threw it. Fortunately I didn’t seem to have been harmed by the shrapnel, though I felt like something had struck my barding, but had not caused any major injury, aside from extended ringing in my ears.
At first I knew the only remaining raider I’d seen was the one with the chain, but in the midst of the ruckus, he’d gone to their leader, who’d been in the tent. She was a large mare, almost twice my size, her coat a shade of, of all things, hot pink, with a dark purple mane that had been fashioned into a tall mohawk, almost like a zebra’s, and looked almost solid, like she had dunked her head in roofing seal. Her style of dress was remarkably higher end than her cohorts’; unlike the rest of them who adorned the typical scrap and other on-hoof materials cobbled together into some semblance of armor; hers was a decently assembled set of metal armor; the plates were slightly dinged and dented here and there, a few patching sheets, but otherwise it looked like it could fend of bullets better than my barding. The front end of her body was protected by a sturdy breastplate, her shoulders had spaulders strapped to them which had been reinforced with thick, conical spikes, and the ends of her hooves had been adorned with bracers. She even wore what looked like horseshoes, also adorned with vicious looking spikes; no doubt for offensive purposes. Even her flank had been adorned with similar spiked spaulders, slightly obscuring her cutiemark, a walnut being cracked with an aura of force. Her face was adorned with black facepaint styled in the likeness of a skull. On the left side of her breastplate was a crudely painted symbol of a blue sideways gator head.
Seeing the symbol on her armor made the scenario make more sense. These raiders were just unorganized, chem abusing thugs, but she was not the same. It clarified how these ponies were able to abduct my target; just hired help under the employ of another faction.
The mare took a few steps towards me and perused me with a sideways glance; seeing my hoofwork did not faze her. She pouted her lips with a look of amusement.
“So you like to play with knives, little pony?” She asked with a rough tone, laced with amusement. With a confident grin she drew a large blade, similar to a machete, from a sheath on her flank. She tossed it into the air, letting it twirl as it came back down and she caught it in her teeth. She plowed her forelegs into the ground, and snorted, rearing her body backwards, “Let’s make this interesting!” she mumbled through her teeth before charging at me, the ground feeling like it was shaking under her heavy metallic steps.
She closed the distance between us with surprising speed as she swung the blade at me, I managed to dodge, though my right flank protested. She charged me again, her next swing managing to shave off a lock of indigo from my mane. Though she did not know it, I was grinning through my sword grip. It was not often in the Vanhoover Wastes that you got into a one-on-one sword duel like the knights of the old Equestria, the one before Celestia had had even claimed her throne.
My savoring of this possibility came to an end when I felt something cold and hard wrapping around my throat, managing to go past my barding’s collar and bind tightly around my windpipe. As I managed just barely to glance off a blow from the giant mare, I was pulled off my hooves by a hard yank. My sword slipped from my teeth as I found myself unable to breathe, cursing in the back of my mind how we ponies didn’t have digits.
“Bang!”
Another shot rang out from the darkness above and the chain snapped. I gasped hoarsely as my lungs filled with air again, though my throat felt like it was burning, and my breathing was uneven and rough. I just managed to roll away as the mare brought down her steel clad hoof down on where my head was, feeling the ground tremble from the sheer force behind the impact. Now I see where this mare gained her namesake and her cutiemark. But a nut? Clearly and underestimation of her ability.
I saw the pony last wielding the chain rush for the shotgun the now dead and hornless, and faceless, unicorn had dropped. I wouldn’t be able to close the gap soon enough-
“Bang!”
The pony fell and slid into a halt following a third shot from the darkness. I could see the giant mare looking around warily to the sky, her attention darting between me and the blackness. I stuck my gladius into the ground.
“Still-” I coughed violently, blood splattering onto the ground. I wiped my mouth with a forehoof and tried again, “Still want to make this interesting?” I grinned, “I can assure you my backup will permit a good, fair fight.”
She snorted, her clear violet eyes looking like they were aflame with fury. Glancing up one final time, she literally spat her machete-sword into its sheath, “I’m not dying over the brat,” she snarled, rearing on her hind legs threateningly before galloping past me, ramming into the encampment’s wall head first (I could swear that I heard her roar “Oh yea!” as she made contact) and burst through, disappearing into a haze of billowing dust and darkness.
As the dust settled over the now decimated encampment, I picked up my gladius and slid it back into its sheath. Right on cue my duster came descending onto my back.
“Sorry about the loss of your duel man,” came a lax, soft-spoken voice from above as some dust wafted off the ground under the buffeting of wings larger than mine.
Down came Grey, my partner, though officially he was meant to be my boss, he just insisted on it being too harsh, as well as using his strange term “man” as he often did; whatever it meant. Then again, seeing as he was a gryphon, perhaps it was their definition for a stallion. I’d never gotten wind of how gryphons labeled gender regardless.
When somepony mentions a gryphon they are often thinking of the image of the strong, overly proud and powerful mercenaries, Talons as they’ve come to be known in the Wasteland. Grey was the biggest exception I’d ever come to see. He was big… well, bigger than most ponies anyway, sleek, sharp eyed, had a coat of dark grey and a white head with the odd grey streak in his face with a pointed arrow-shaped beak. He’d be a pretty intimidating sight to anypony, were it not for the old world, khaki colored baseball cap he wore all the time (I swear I had never seen him without it, not even to wash his coat) that contrasted starkly with the black Talon combat armor, the eponymous Talon symbol emblazoned onto the breastplate, and the vicious wing-blades he adorned, just like me.
It was his personality that would forever perplex me; he was the most lax, laidback individual I’d seen in the Vanhoover Wastes, and he was a mercenary.
I cleared my throat, spitting out a wad of blood mixed phlegm, “Would have been interesting,” I concurred, finally daring to look at my flank; it wasn’t a serious cut; it had sliced through the skin and some tendons clean, staining my viridian coat with a red and brown trail of blood and crust, just below my… my cutie mark; three slash marks. As I turned back, Grey was holding out a bright red vial.
“Might wanna take this man, before that turns gangrenous. That’d be way heavy.”
I snorted, popped the cork with my teeth, grabbed the bottle and guzzled the healing potion down in one go. I immediately felt the tingling in my flank as the inherent magic began to regenerate the severed tissues.
As I wagged my leg, feeling the stinging pain abate, Grey walked off towards to pens, his large high-powered rifle, the “Backbench Diplomat” he calls it, slung over his shoulder. I adorned my duster over my own Talon combat barding before trotting after him. The mare who had been held prisoner was nudging the foal, a filly, to her feet. In the glare of the bonfire I could make her coat as a shade of green; her mane was very long and wavy and pitch black with a healthy sheen, an earring of a bullet hanging off her left ear. Her cutiemark was three large bullets. The filly in turn was a baby blue coat with a teal green, drooping mane, definitely too young to have her cutiemark.
Grey opened the picket gate to the pen, held shut with just a peg. I entered the pen; the smell was absolutely abhorrent; nothing like bringing the raider décor to full. I slowly approached the mare and filly, trying to come off as soft as I possibly could;
“Caliber?” I asked, my voice still hoarse from my attempted strangling.
The mare looked at me, her eyes seeming wary, particularly in regards to my wings. The filly huddled closer to her, the little one undoubtedly traumatized by whatever the raiders did to imprison her. It was to be expected, when foals meet violent, armed ponies, no doubt any armed pony will elicit the fear response.
“I am Caliber, yes,” she spoke, still looking me over, “Did Gauge send you?”
“That’s affirmative,” called out Grey, flashing an gesture of a-okay with his talons as he leaned lazily against the picket fence, “Me and Clip are here to get you and the little dudette out.”
That was a lie, we were here to only get Caliber, but I wasn’t going to mar the good image of the Talons in abandoning a filly to a disaster zone.
“Can she stand?” I asked, indicating the filly who was huddled up against Caliber’s leg.
The green mare seemed to relax when I showed concern for the little one. She placed a hoof around her reassuringly as she addressed me; “She should be fine. She’s not had any food or water for a while, but she should be fine when we get her to the city.”
I snorted half-interestedly, “Well then, let’s move.”
“Whoa, whoa man,” said Grey intercepting me, “We’re not seriously going to escort a filly when it’s pitch black out?”
Before I had a chance to protest, Caliber walked up to us, not letting the filly out of her sight, “I agree with mister…?”
“Grey; just Grey,” he said, flicking the peak of his cap.
“I agree; it’s too dangerous for her out there. We should wait until sunrise before going off,” said Caliber in earnest.
“Our contract was to get you out of this dive,” I interjected, “Are you honestly recommending we spend the night in a raider encampment, considering two of them got away. What’s to stop them from coming back and killing us in our sleep?”
“You’re Talons, aren’t ya?” the mare glared at me, “Aren’t you supposed to be the best in the business? Not to mention if something were to happen to me out there and you flew off to save your own hides, do you think mom would let you off?”
An ultimatum from the person we were being paid to rescue and return to Bitspur? Her definition of “best in the business” might have been put into question. Still, considering who her mother was, and the wage being promised for her safe return, no doubt affected if we let something befall that filly she’d grown attached to, I could imagine her mom taking our pay down by a zero or two if we didn’t give into Caliber’s demands.
Accepting defeat, I turned away and trot out of the pen, “Fine, we stay, but as soon as the sun’s up, we are getting back to Bitspur, pronto,” I informed her, feeling her contentedness over beating me with simple economics, and her socio-political stance, “Come on Grey, might as well get rid of these corpses from further stinking up the place.”
“Way ahead of you dude,” said Grey as he dumped the de-horned unicorn into the bonfire, barding and all, her movables lying in a small heap by the gryphon’s feet.
Seeing as we were going to be there for a while, we took the time to begin salvaging whatever loot or items the raiders had stashed, burning their bodies and setting up watch. Grey volunteered for first, taking off and perching up onto the billboard above. When all that was required to ensure we survived the night, I willed myself to lay down near the bonfire, looking off into the distance through the sizable gap left in the wall by the mare who’d galloped off. As I listened to the hypnotic cracking of the fire, in spite of the odor of burning pony flesh, my eyelids grew heavy. Trying to resist the desire for rest, I slowly found myself unable to stop my head slumping against my outstretched forelegs and dozing off.
