Fallout Equestria: Southern Glow

Chapters

1. Prototypes and Pool Cues
2. Rage and Rampage
3. Batty and Ballistic
4. Instinct and Infiltration
5. Fast and Ferocious

1. Prototypes and Pool Cues

My life was generally a boring one before I left my home town. Sure there was the occasional raider problem or a bloatsprite issue, but compared to what life outside of a town is like, the real story of my life started the day the old story of it burned to the ground. The day was like every other day, unending overcast of clouds, sun hidden behind them. I had just gotten done with my bimonthly physical when things started to change.

"How can you only have 3 points in Endurance? To be honest Glow I don't understand how you survive." My doctor, Bonesaw, commented and I just rolled my silvery eyes at him.

I had been born with what doctors had referred to as paper skin. More than once I had broken ribs as a child just from tripping a little too fast. I had been taking some training since to build up endurance, but it never rose above three points on a SPECIAL scale. But with my pretty black fur and pale pink mane why would I want to have to live a painful life?

"I get along just fine, thank you." I slump off of his examination table and stretch before walking across the open clinic to my brewing stand.

I paid the doctor by helping him brew some various things he needed, in this case I was brewing some poisons to kill off some radroaches that had burrowed into his basement. I once asked him how he planned to vent out the poison afterwards, but he just shrugged at me. I started the brew with a few vials of ground bloatsprite mixed with a solution of tainted water and other plants. I scraped the resulting mess into a jar and capped it. Within thirty minutes it would begin secreting a poisonous cloud that would hopefully kill all of the radroaches. There were at least fifty down there and who knows how many more in their tunnels, so overkill was a good option.

"You know, you don't have to take over the bar. I can find plenty of use for you around here." Bonesaw commented, taking the finished product out of the bottom of my bowl.

"You know I can't give up the bar. It's the only thing she left me. I sigh and look out at the street.

The bar I had sat at the end of town, in what had once been a barn before the war. My mother, Long Wing, died two weeks before this and left me with the bar, making me the fourth most important pony in town after the mayor, Bonesaw and the weapon's dealer, Carnage. Though in a town that was composed of one street and maybe twenty ponies, it wasn't hard to get there. Other than that she left me nothing including nothing about my father or where I was born. Not that I cared at the time, I was still trying to think about what to do.

We were interrupted from our conversation by a gunshot ringing down the street. Normally one or two a day didn't bother anypony, there was always the occasional annoying radroach or firearms test by Carnage, but this one was accompanied by screams and several more shots. Doc and I both ran through the door to see the damage. What we saw made use wish we had hidden in the basement and gone to war with the roaches.

At least twenty ponies clothed in a mix of leather, rusted metal, bones and blood had just broken down the gate and were beginning to terrorize anypony in reach. Raiders, and more than had ever attacked before. How they managed to get close enough to the front without being seen I had no clue. The Doc's place was at the back end of town so while we were safe at least. However the farmers near the gate were not so lucky, I remember seeing little Pepper get a pole cue rammed through her skull, small amounts of brain matter spraying down into the sand. Meanwhile her father was gutted and her mother dragged back into her home. I wish she had died before then.

A few ponies ran to help and fight, but the doc and I ran to the bar. The bar was the only building in town big enough to hold everyone conveniently and the plan for a raider attack was to hide in the bar until a solution was worked out. As we ran I saw Carnage pulling a shotgun and a pistol off his shelves with his magic. By the time he stepped out into the street a bullet had already found its way through his chest and he fell with a dull thud. Fear began to really set in. Whoever was leading the raiders had thought about it, the only ponies that got shot at were me, Doc, the mayor and Carnage. It made sense; we were the only ones who could help ponies.

I flew above the crowd going to the bar in an attempt to get there first; being the only pegasus had major perks. A few bullets grazed me before I could land. The pain streaked across my body, but I managed to land at the door before taking serious damage. I reached into my vest for the key and opened the door about five times faster than usual. I stumble into the dusty barn and hold the door for the small crowd behind me. As soon as they ran in I closed the door before screaming in agony as a bullet tore through the door and into my right flank.

"Damn it! Doc, get your fat flank over here." I yelled at Bonesaw even though he was right next to me. "And could one of you get me a drink?"

"Bring two; we'll need something to disinfect the wound." Doc revised and I felt the bullet slowly getting pulled out by his magic, "You're lucky your mother put in that metal door, or you'd be out of commission."

Somepony brought the drinks which were weak apple brews. I gave mine to the Doc to put on the wound. I knew how little alcohol was actually in them. I cringed as the alcohol stung the wound; Doc wasn't a fan of telling you when he was going to hurt you. The wound was only an inch or two deep so there wasn't terrible damage, but I stayed on the floor while things started to heat up.

"Everybody calm down, they've stopped shooting and we're safe in here." The mayor tried to calm down the group from the top of the bar while everyone fidgeted nervously.

"None of us even brought a gun? How are we safe if they can come in here at any time?" Mort, the town builder scoffed and most of the remaining dozen ponies agreed.

"Those raiders don't know that we're unarmed. If we keep up a bluff we'll be able to keep them off of us a little longer." The mayor tried to reason but nobody was really convinced.

"They're not worried about that Root. They know we don't keep ourselves armed," Doc shouted across the bar, "They're either here for caps, guns or mares. Most of which are in here." He was right, out of the dozen of us that were left, eight were mares and the bar had the second highest collection of caps, the highest being in Mayor Root's safe. And of course the fat stallion kept the key on him at all times.

"Well surely Crimson keeps a few guns on hand." At this everypony turned around to where I was sitting. To be honest it pissed me off a little, but that might've been the pain talking.

"Of course, I've got an armory underneath the floorboards," I joked and nobody laughed so I stopped, "Look, I've got an old .44 upstairs, but it's only got six shots." I stood up, but kept weight off of my injured leg.

"And in case you didn't notice mayor, we've got more than fifteen raiders out there." One of the mares spoke up before the door flew open.

"Twenty-three actually," a unicorn with a large set of three ponies' skulls on her chest walked in like we sent her an invitation.

"Did nopony think to lock the door after I got shot?" I thought aloud and stared at her from what was a mere few feet away.

Her armor was more metal than bones and she levitated two 10mm pistols, not that we would've attacked anyway. Her mane was shaved, leaving her with nothing but a stained yellow coat. On the upside she seemed to be hospitable enough considering she could've killed us in no time if she wanted to.

"And I'm dreadfully sorry about that love, I meant to kill the doctor, but you got in the way," she smiled at me and I keet my peace with her gnarled teeth. The last thing I wanted to do was anger her.

"Well let's just let that go for now. I'm guessing you don't have any plans to hurt anypony here."

"Not at all, I don't want to risk damaging my boy's new playmates," she purrs and I notice everypony backing away. "That is assuming you hand them over now, along with your caps."

"I don't think we can give them to you quite yet." I shifted uneasily, I didn't have a right to be negotiating, but my mouth was working faster than my head.

I could tell I stuck a chord based off her eyes narrowing, but also because of the pistol that moved to my chest. I felt like a complete jackass for that blunder.

"Please, love, tell me why that is?" She moves closer and the pistol presses harder into my skin.

I took a breath before talking again, trying to regather my thoughts, "Well, look at them. They're all cowering in fear and they'll probably try to run if you take them now," I paused and motioned to the mares behind me, noticing that the entire crowd had moved behind the bar and was watching in pure fear, "Sure you could chain them and beat them, but you said you didn't want to rough them up."

"So what would you have me do; just wait around forever for them?"

"Just give me half an hour to calm them down. They'll come to terms with it by then and they'll be easier to handle."

She actually paused for a second and considered the idea, which was more than I had hoped for. I thought she'd storm out and tell her group to come tear the mares out by force, but I would be left with my life which was a plus. That was one of the longest moments of my life as she moved the gun away from my chest and softened her gaze.

"Twenty minutes, but I need to have something to bring back now if this is how we're gonna do it."

"Of course," I turn back at the bar, "Roots, give her your damn safe key."

The fat mayor peeked his head out from beneath the bar and stared at me like I had just shot his dog, "Are you stupid, Glow? Give her whatever's in your safe!"

"My safe is upstairs fat ass; do you really want to have her waiting down here while I fly up there?" Mom and I never put in stairs to the second floor. Why would we when we had wings?

"B-but..." Stars above, I hated him.

"Doc, just take it from him." I commanded more than anything and the doc riped it out of the mayor's pocket while he groveled, "His safe is under his desk in the building next to this and the house up from the doctor's place has a safe underneath their rug." I lie about the second safe, but I doubt she would check herself and she'll probably just call her raiders stupid for not seeing it.

"One more thing before I go," she snatched the key out of the Doc's magical grip with her own, "I want you and all of you caps ready to go with me when I come for them."

"Excuse me?" I did a double take, which pleased her on some level.

"You heard me; you're going to be coming with me when I leave. I could use somepony who knows how to do more than just shoot. Not to mention with you around they should be less likely to cause trouble," She gestured to the mares.

"And what if I try to run, or cause trouble of my own?" I sighed.

"Well then I guess I'd have to do something with those friends of yours," she moved in closer to me, "and you don't want that do happen, do you, love?"

"I'll pack my things then." I resigned myself to her; it's not like I was holding the gun.

"And I'll be back in twenty minutes for my prizes." She turned and walked out with a swish and a flick of her pink tail.

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and slumped to the floor. I had never needed to negotiate for anything more important than a shipment of cider before, and those didn't involve guns. I flip the lock on the door which should've been done in the first place before anypony even started to move away from the bar. The reaction I got was much worse than I expected.

"Well that was great. You just gave her whatever she wanted a silver platter. Now, almost all of us are going to be sold into slavery, by you." Root stared me down and there was an essential murmur of consent from the others.

"What would you have done? Told her about your smaller safe on the back of your roof and given her everypony right then and there just so she could come back later to get the key for the real safe?" I retort, but it doesn't take any steam out of the mob.

"I at least would've tried to keep some of my ponies safe from that awful life; you just accepted her conditions without even fighting back. Better at least a few of our citizens be safe that all of them damned." I didn't respond to him again, he was right about me not trying to bargain for more.

"At least he got us some time to think about what we're going to do," Doc stepped in for my defense, "At least now we can try to think of a plan."

"Like what? We only have one gun, six bullets, and we're outnumbered."

"Well get thinking. Thanks to Glow we've got another twenty minutes to figure that out." This calmed them down somewhat, but I still had some icy stares being sent my way. Ungrateful, spineless, whelps, was my only thoughts for them.

"I might as well go grab my gun. We're going to want it either way." I rose from my spot and flapped my wings a little before rising up to the second floor.

The upper level was essentially just one small room that at one point at been a loft for various bits and pieces. Mother and I used it as our room and it was also where we kept our safe which I had never been allowed to open. I flew over the two mattresses to the exposed safe. We never bothered hiding it since we were the only two in town who could even get close to it. I wish I wouldn't have wait until two weeks after she died to open it.

Inside I found the snub-nosed .44 sitting in the front, fully loaded, but with the condition it was in it wouldn't last very long. You can't really tryst a gun from the discount section of a store that's most powerful weapon was just a shotgun, but it was mostly a scare tactic for rowdy patrons. Behind that was a bag of only a couple hundred caps. Pretty much everything we made went into repairs and product, so our stash wasn't very large given many years of work. I pocketed both of the items before noticing a scrap of paper nestled in the back corner. It was browned with age and neglect but the writing on it was worth more to me than anything at the time.

To my loving son,

I assume if you're reading this that you've either finally managed
to pick the lock or I've passed on. Regardless, I suppose it's
time that you go and learn something about yourself. But
the things that you need to know I cannot tell you. I stole
that knowledge from myself years ago. The only thing I
can tell you is that there is a cellar hidden beneath the
floor behind the bar. The things I leave there are yours.
You don't have to listen to me, but if you want to know who
you are, where you come from then go to the south.
There you will find the town of Maremoros. Speak with the
doctor there, she can lead you further. Just remember,
once you step onto this road, you won't be able to go back.

Love,

your mother

I stared at that paper for a few minutes without moving or thinking anything. The last thing my mother had told me before that was good bye and to make sure I locked the door before I went to sleep. Never once had she mentioned anything about this. The biggest secret she had ever kept from me was who she was fooling around with, and that was only because I never asked. The idea that the mare that told everyone's secrets to anyone that asked keeping one from me made me feel uneasy. That's putting it mildly though. I didn't move until I heard shouting down on the first floor. I pocketed the note, slammed the safe shut and flew down to see that the center of the commotion was the mayor trying to plead with the raiders outside.

"Come on, let us at least keep some of our caps. How do you expect us to go on without anything?" He cried at the door while everypony else just watched on in silence. I assumed most of them had come to terms with what was going to happen, and if not, they still had fifteen minutes to get used to it.

I avoided the crowd and landed behind the bar unnoticed. Not that it would've mattered if they saw, but at the time I wanted to see what was in store for me by myself. I went to the back end that clung to one of the walls and began to examine the floor. At first I didn't see anything odd about the old wooden boards, but then I started to creep back from the wall. A few yards away from the wall there was a small strap of thin wire over one of the boards, thin enough that you wouldn't see it, but strong like fishing wire. I grabbed the wire in my teeth and gave it a pull. At first it didn't budge, but after a few tries a small section of the boards pulled up from the floor with a small plume of dust. The cover was set aside and I dove headfirst into the hole.

I couldn't really believe my eyes when I saw the inside. It was white, but pristine pure and untainted white. The room looked like it had never even been entered, just made spotless and left. And soft, like I was standing on a big pile of cotton. It felt like a huge expanse of purity. It was all clouds I now know, but at the time I had never actually felt or seen a cloud that wasn't looming over head like a giant lead sheet. Of course, thinking back, it was only about 50 square feet of space and pretty easy to keep clean.

Aside from the blindingly white walls, there was one metal rack along the wall that held the things that were my inheritance. At first, it was underwhelming. For a shelf big enough to hold a full battle saddle, you'd think the contents would've been amazing, but instead they were sparse. All I saw was one black leather front harness, some type of metal bar with a leather grip on one end, which I assumed to be a knife and a weird metal ring with a few pins and circuits exposed. It's pretty safe to say the only thing I understood was the harness. Thankfully my mother must have taken into account my inability to magically know what things are and left another note for me, taped above the center of the shelf.

Contents
-1 standard issue griffin hide trappings
-1 Prototype X-89 Energy Blade
-1 Z-13 Cybernetic Eye Implant, covert ops edition
Glow if you find this after I'm gone then please don't let Bonesaw try to install that implant. Have the doctor in Maremoros do it; she's a whole lot more of a doctor than our quack is. As for the blade, keep it with you at all times. It can't work if it isn't used by you.
-Mom

The note gave me more questions than it answered. When I read the first note I thought that maybe the doctor would just point me in the right direction to find my father, or maybe just his tombstone so I wouldn't have to wonder about that my whole life. Now I was just trying to figure out who the fuck my mother really was and why she had this weird stuff down here. I was hoping for a real gun but instead I got some leather that wouldn't do me any good, a defective sword and an implant that I might never even be able to use.

"Just where did she get this stuff from?" I thought aloud before picking up the griffin hide from the rack in my teeth.

It wasn't very heavy and it definitely didn't feel like it had any protective value, but it was sleek. The straps adjusted easily as I climbed into it and they fit snugly around my forelegs and back. Now I wish it had been a full body harness, but at the time I just felt silly for putting it on. I took the pistol I had with me into one of the two holsters on the harness and put the knife into the other slot where I could easily grab it with my teeth, not that I expected to be fighting with it at first. When I pulled the straps tight on the hilt I noticed a small red light turn on at the bottom of the otherwise black hilt. Thankfully that prompted my curiosity enough to actually pull the blade out.

The grip was soft in my mouth and tasted like oil, almost revolting enough to make me drop it, but I ignored it and quickly pulled out the knife. What came out was less of a knife and more of a sword. The original hilt was only about eight inches long including the mouthpiece, but the blade I pulled out was as long as my own body. It was composed of pure red magical energy that hummed pleasantly, but the blade dissipated after only a few seconds in the open air. As the magic faded all that remained was the dull hilt and a small bit of technology that I assumed manifested the blade.

"Prototype, eh? You'd think they could've made it last at least a little longer." I complained, not really knowing who 'they' was, but I assumed that wherever this stuff came from would tell me something about my mother.

A sudden lack of whining upstairs reminded me of more pressing matters than trying to figure out a mystery I had next to no clue about. I took the implant and clipped it onto a loop in the harness where I had moved my caps to and left the basement quickly to see how the situation was. It was far less than optimistic. The mayor had changed his plan of action from begging to pessimistic sobbing, the doc was pacing back and forth trying to figure out a plan even though everypony knew that fighting was something he knew nothing about and everyone else sat in a dejected huddle, some crying softly, others looking like they had given up on their lives completely. Old Barrel was dead in a corner, blood pooling from her neck. At most, we had another five minutes until we were going to be taken.

"Alright, everypony get up right now!" I shouted at them are rose up above the bar with a flap of my wings, "Look, I know that right now you're all thinking this is a completely hopeless situation and you're probably right. But does anypony here feel like giving it a shot with me?"

Not the most convincing speech I had ever given, but at that point I was getting well beyond the point of caring about them. I was pissed. I was pissed at the raiders for coming here, the townspeople who tried to fight instead of following procedure, the bullet that had to be pulled out of my leg which still ached like hell, at the mayor for being weak and especially at my mother for leaving an idiotically cryptic message about me learning where I came from. I was going to go south, figure this crap out and no raiders with guns made out of old wood and scrap metal were going to stand in my way. I was ready for war, with a whole six bullets and a broken sword.

"And just what's your plan? Go out there with just that gun and kill two dozen raiders? It can't be done, Glow." Even the normally chipper doctor was less than optimistic.

"Well when you put it like that it just sounds stupid." I knew how stupid I sounded, but it's not like my plan was that simple, "Do you still have that poison I gave you, Doc?"

"Yes, but it's not like it's going to be strong enough to kill them. It was meant to kill slowly over a lot of time." With that he pulled the container out from underneath his lab coat, a sickly yellow gas having already filled the jar.

"That'll work fine, it's just a distraction," I flew down next to him, everypony else had stopped listening anyway, "I'm going to go out there and try to talk to them for a moment. As soon as the shit hits the fan I need you to lob that out into the street. With any luck they'll scatter and I'll shoot the ones near me and get another gun. From there I really don't care what you do, but don't try anything stupid, there's only one way out of town and nopony is going to just let you walk out."

"We'll just hide in here, no need to complicate things." He complied but I wasn't so sure he didn't just do it because he wasn't any good at fighting.

Without another word to any of them, I walked outside to test my luck. The day seemed to be altogether different than when I had ran inside just half an hour earlier. The sky was still the same endless overhead of clouds, but it felt heavier than usual. Everything seemed darker and less real than I had left it and before me were two dozen ponies holding various shotguns, pistols and oddly enough pool cues. Around them the heads of the ponies they killed on the way in were put up on pikes. It was then that I realized I was shaking in fear.

"What's the deal, love? You've still got another three minutes before you need to be out." The mare in charge called at me and I moved close to where they stood until a gap of only ten yards lay between us.

"I couldn't stand to be around that depression any longer. They've all pretty much given up on hope in there."

"And what about you? I don't remember asking you to bring a gun with you." With this one of her 10mms moved closer to my chest while I felt my heart rapidly skipping beats.

"I came to appeal to you one last time," I grabbed the sack of caps in my teeth and threw it to her, "All of that is yours, now please reconsider what you're doing."

"Oh no, love. We had a deal, I get everything and you get twenty minutes to say good bye. We can't go back on that." She backed away from my position, but left her gun at my chest, "Now why don't my boys get you some chains? They are all the rage this season."

With a flick of her tail, two bloody and dirt covered stallions came over with heavy iron chains in their mouths. I waited for the right opportunity and gave a quick glance from the gun in front of me to the leader. I figured if I was fast enough to the punch then her first shot would miss. The trick would just be making sure both of the chain raiders died at the same time. As soon as they were both within a yard from me I made my move. I pulled the energy blade from its sheath and took a large step in at the chain raider on my left. A faint crackling from the blade and the resulting gunshot were the only motivators I needed to swing with all of my might at the poor sap.

The first had no time to react as the blade connected with the soft flesh just at the base of his neck, which rapidly began to bubble and burn around the contact area. I think butter puts up more resistance than his skin did. The second held his chains up in defense, but that did him no good against the magical energy. The blade severed the chains and carved through him before dissipating halfway through his sternum. As if I needed another reminder that it was a fucking prototype. Not that I had time to complain, within the entire three seconds that took, the raiders had already begun to fire on me. I took a dive to the right side of the street where there was an alleyway I could hide in.

I barreled into one of the walls in the alley just in time to have a surge of pain crack from my left hind leg as three separate bullets tore through the soft flesh. I cried in agony from the gunshots, the hard concrete wall and the subsequent landing on my injured leg because my wings couldn't flare out in the small area of the alley. The gunfire broke up a few seconds later when the doctor threw the poison into the crowd, but that did little to help my situation. As soon as I had put back the blade and drawn the .44, another raider was on me.

The mare had significantly less armor than the other raiders, but charged me with a bladed pool cue. I turned as best I could, but the blade still cut a large gash down my right side. I focused my pain into shooting the mare twice, once in the chest and the other through her nose. At this point I was largely regretting my decision to fight. I had been shot three times, cut by a pool cue, used a third of my ammo and all I had to show for it was three dead raiders with no guns. I needed to start playing it smart and safe.

I waited for a few seconds to see if any more enemies came into my alley before moving out into the already cloudy street. To my advantage the main street was entirely deserted, allowing me to fly on top of the two story building I had recently impacted without notice. I kept what weight I could off of my left hind leg, but that put pressure onto my ever bleeding side. Whatever I was going to do was also going to have to be done fast. I didn't have the constitution to deal with too much bleeding. I limped to the back of the roof and peered down at the space below. Eight raiders, most of which were armed with shotguns, were below me, keeping a hard watch between the alley I was in and any entrances from the main street.

"Poor bastards don't even think about my wings." I muttered, taking aim on a particularly well armed raider with a hunting rifle and a full set of bones as armor.

I did feel a little bad about taking that cheap shot, but watching the raider fall from one shot to the head was very satisfying. The aftermath of said shot was not satisfying. I immediately switched to the closest pony to the first and tried to shoot twice. The first bullet hit just behind the head, but the bastards starting firing back when I was going to fire the second time. Thankfully, I managed not to be shot for the first time that day. I was kept with my head down on the roof for a good twenty seconds before a voice rose above the gunfire.

"Torch the place boys! I'm done with these fuckers," The leader's voice came from across the street and a second later a Molotov Cocktail was thrown into the bar followed by many like it.

Within the brief span of maybe ten seconds there were fires in more than half of the buildings in town, including the one I was on top of. I could hear the screams of the ponies in the bar over the flames, but there was nothing I could do for them, the door was already covered in flames and any windows already had cocktails thrown through them. The only upside was that it took the focus off of me long enough for me to stare at my home burning. I memorized the patterns of their cries instantly, and I can still hear them to this day. The mayor's was the first to die off, then a few more, some ran out into the street only to die moments later, and I swore I could see the doc staring at me through a window until his flesh was gone. The rising smoke was the only thing that brought me out of the trance. And it brought me out angry.

I threw myself off the back of the building and right into the crowd of raiders with my pistol already drawn. I took my shot just before touching the ground, the bullet finding a home in the head of a shotgun raider. I dropped the pistol instantly and grabbed the shotgun just as it was falling from the body's mouth. I turned to my right while they were still surprised and loaded the chest of the unicorn next to me with buckshot, but at the time I lacked the strength to actually keep the shotgun in my mouth and the force of the recoil sent it flying and my neck into a twist. Now I had no gun, no element of surprise and my neck hurt like hell; not that any of that was going to stop me. I recovered in time to get another bullet through my left ear, but luckily most of the raiders were still trying to get their guns back out from the fire-starting. I took the blade back in my mouth and dived at a unicorn levitating both a Molotov and a revolver that looked like it was in worse condition than mine was. She took another shot at me, but thankfully missed where as my blade slashed through her body from chest to tail. I didn't even try to kill either of the other two shotgun raiders next to me; instead I flew straight up and away from them. Neither one of them seemed to notice the Molotov falling until they were already on fire. My luck must've been improving, because I was able to make it back to the roof without being shot again, though I attribute that to smoke and ashes that were beginning to burn my eyes.

I landed with a dull thud and desperate tried to cough up the ashes I was inhaling. Blood loss was finally starting to get the better of me and I doubted I'd be able to fight anymore, especially without a gun. I noticed my blade sitting inactive in front of me, I guess I had dropped it to hyperventilate, but that this point I didn't care.

"You couldn't have left me a gun, or some armor. Then again, I guess you didn't expect me to have to use these in a fight so soon." I wheezed and replaced the hilt in the sheath.

I guess if you think about it seven dead raiders wasn't a bad outcome given the circumstances, but there were still at least sixteen or more of them to deal with. By all accounts I had given up on making it out alive. So I decided I might as well try to kill a few more just for the sake of the townspeople that died. Not to mention there was no way I could stay on that roof any longer without suffocating. For the last time, I took a dive off of the roof and into the fray.

Only, there wasn't a fray. There wasn't even a single raider where there had once been a group of them. Only the bodies, or rather pieces of bodies, even gave away that there had been a fight. I found my pistol and quickly hobbled out into the main street. Just in time to see the raiders leaving town. Logically speaking it was a the smart move, their potential slaves were all dead except for me and they had almost all of the caps the town had to offer, but all it did was fuel my rage. I spotted the leader at the back of the crowd, both pistols still drawn.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" I yelled rather idiotically at the mare before pulling the tongue trigger.

However that shot never came. I felt the trigger snap when I pulled and the hammer literally fell off the gun. I was distraught to say the least. I has been shot, sliced, almost burned and had everypony I knew killed at the hooves of this mare, and now a broken gun was keeping me from getting revenge on her. However, no such problem was going to keep her from killing me if she wanted to. I dropped the broken gun and waited for death.

"We're leaving, love. There's nothing left here for us and we've already lost more comrades than we wanted to," oddly enough she put both pistols back into their holsters on her side and turned away from me, "Maybe I'll see you again, love, but you're probably going to die if you don't do something about those wounds. I'll pray for you."

With that she walked out of town and left me alone, with a cloud of mildly poisonous gas, a few buildings still burning to the ground and no remaining energy. All my adrenaline left me and I slumped into the sand, unconscious. I expected death, but at that point I couldn't fight it. After all, I came farther than I thought possible at the time. My life had fallen apart in just the course of an hour.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Fast Hooves- Years spent mixing drinks and doing tricks to entertain patrons actually had a real payoff. You now draw, holster and equip weapons 15% faster than normal.

Author's Note

Well, that's round 1.

2. Rage and Rampage

I didn't die that day, though it wasn't for lack of trying. When I first came to I knew that I was alive; death couldn't be that painful. Sand had been blown into my wounds and was stinging my insides. However, the clots of blood and sand were also stopping my bleeding. I opened my voice to call out, but only a hoarse whimper came out into the night. I wanted to just go back to sleep and shut off the pain, but if I did that I knew death wouldn't be far away; so I opened my eyes to face what was around me. A full moon gave me a perfectly dim illumination of everything despite the cloud cover.

I saw the sand beneath me died a deep red with my blood and my fore hooves out in front of me. Ahead most of the town had burned down thanks to some strong gusts which left smoldering piles of ash everywhere. Above everything else I could see the faint outline of the moon peeking through a thing spot in the cloud cover. I wasn't dead yet, and I damn sure wasn't ready to just die without anypony else around. I summoned strength I thought I didn't have and stood up.

The doctor's clinic seemed to be a building that had been mostly untouched, given that it was flanked on either side by old prewar masonry I wasn't surprised. I hobbled over as best I could while using my wings to help balance my steps. I winced every time I moved, but, compared to what I had been through, it was manageable. The door to the clinic had been ripped off of its hinges and thrown into the street. Needless to say that didn't bode well for what was inside, but nevertheless I went inside.

"Son of a bitch." I heaved, seeing the state of what was my only hope.

Every shelf was empty, every cabinet opened and the entire interior looked like it had been hit by a frag. I walked the whole place over to see if any one bit of medicine had been left. However I found nothing but dust and shattered glass; the raiders must've spared no time looting while I bargained for time because every shelf in the clinic had been cleared out of any supply of medicine. Well, any immediately visible supply of medicine that is. There were two other stores of medicine that I assumed would be untouched, but neither seemed like a good idea. The first was the cellar which was infested with radroaches that I was in no condition to try to fight and the second was the chem stash hidden underneath the doc's old bed. I assumed that would still be there since a few of the farmers had something of a jet problem and the doc kept it well hidden. The problem of course being that none of it was real medicine as far as healing goes, but I had a half baked idea to deal with that.

I managed to push the mattress out of the way before collapsing. The floor hurt at first, but also felt pretty nice. I almost fell asleep on that cold concrete, but a syringe and an inhaler in a small hole caught my eye. I had never used Rage or Dash before, but I knew the effects of them well enough. I pulled both of the drugs out of the hole and stared at them for a moment, considering my actions. I knew that I probably shouldn't use them, but a little voice in my head kept telling me my chances of surviving without them were low. Well, it is only once. I thought before sticking the needle into my chest and taking a long drag of Dash. The effects were... immediate to say the least.

The entire world seemed to stop in front of me. The inhaler dropped to the floor with painstaking slowness, I felt like I was going to run out of oxygen from how slowly I was breathing and I could count each individual dust particle, of which there were 1958 in total, floating in the room. The Dash finally hit the floor and everything sped up. I jumped off of the floor in a heartbeat and dashed back into the main treatment room. I tore the rug from the floor and dove right into the wooden trap door that led to the cellar. I could barely see, but all around me I could hear the roaches chirping at me. I could see them, but I could also feel them walking around me, every little click taking a year to end. Not that it mattered, because I was pissed. I wasn't pissed at the roaches, pissed at my aggravated wounds, pissed at the annoying fucking thumping of my heart, but just pissed.

I took one step forward, smashed a tiny roach underneath my hoof and then it was on. I've never been good at hoof to hoof combat, but that little voice in my head kept telling me to smash them all, so I did. The cellar was only about 200 square feet of open space and shelves on the walls, so there was plenty of space to rampage. After the first roach I ran forward and trampled another three before one managed to bite my left hind leg. I stared at the nuisance for a split second before squashing it against the wall. Sadly that split second gave the other twenty-five or so roaches time to gang up on me. Before I could yell I had them on my back, my chest, my ass and my wings, but now I was really furious and things were beginning to slow down even more. I slammed my flank into the wall to shake some of the roaches off and my head into the floor for the rest. Another pounced at me, but I bit it out of the air. The disembodied head squirmed in my mouth for a second before I spit it out along with some blood. If roaches could feel fear, they were feeling it now. A few backed off while I kicked and chewed on any more that tried to attack me. I killed another twenty roaches before I realized that there weren't any left in the room.

"Where'd you little fuckers run off to?" I was actually trying to taunt radroaches. I am ashamed of that.

I frantically scanned the room for another one, anything to vent my rage at. Then I noticed a pony sized hole in the floor, and felt something rising from it. Before I could jump down to meet whatever it was a giant radroach came out. Now I knew why the doc wanted to use poison to kill them. The beast was as large as I was and had a few scars to prove its age and durability. I noticed the mandibles on it were large enough to sever my head from my body just in time to slice through the whole thing with one sweep of my sword. It's not like you could expect much of a fight from a big roach. The separated halves fell down into the hole and with them my high started to fade.

The Rage left me first, which was probably a good thing since I was about to jump down the hole for a better fight. However that also meant that my pain tolerance was gone and I could now feel the blood pouring out of all of the new openings as well as all of the old ones. I screamed in agony once before the dash wore off. Now to top off the pain I felt like I had just been turned into a snail, a very slow, bleeding, tiny snail that needed a healing potion since last week. I looked at the only two shelves in the room and gave a sigh of relief. There were two glimmering bottles of magical healing potions. Even better, they were on the bottom shelf!

I fell to the floor and dragged myself across the room like the snail I was; leaving a trail of my blood for my slime. I felt like dying there on the floor when I made it to the shelf, but I managed to pull myself up enough to grab a bottle. I figured most of my bullet wounds were through-and-throughs given that they were all around the edges of my legs, so downed the medicine in one glorious gulp. I could feel my legs healing and the gash in my side closing before the bottle had even left my lips. I dropped the empty and stood up to drink the other potion. Thinking back I don't think I really needed two potions, but when you've been bleeding out for the past eight hours, you don't really care. By the time I had thrown the next empty onto the ground I was back in top condition, save for the fact that I still felt like a snail.

Standing up without wanting to fall over was definitely a weird feeling, but a good one and my mind was actually clear enough for once that I could take inventory of what was left to loot. There was a small package of bandages, a single magical healing bandage, a single dose of anti-venom both of which I clipped to my somehow still immaculate harness. There was one package of antibiotics, but I used those immediately to ensure the radroaches hadn't infected me with anything while I was being bitten. Sadly that was it for the medical supplies, though there was a set of small leather bags that I gladly took and organized my things into. That was everything though, doc had moved most of his storage upstairs when the roaches first showed up and sadly that was all stolen.

I flapped my wings and rose out of the cellar. The first thing I wanted to do was sleep, but I knew that sleeping unarmed in what was now a completely undefended and almost deserted town wasn't a good idea. That, and I was starving. I walked out and over to where Carnage's Guns and Goods store had once stood, but found it to be completely burned out. I didn't say anything and just walked past it back to where I had killed the raiders. I was getting oddly used to my first plans being shot down. I danced around the small piles of ashen bodies to hunt for a still usable weapon.

I found two shotguns, but dismissed them both given a lack of ammo and my inability to get more than one shot off with one. Thank Celestia that there was a usable hunting rifle. It had a short stock and barrel, which made it seem more like an oversized pistol than anything, but the mag looked like it held a good ten rounds, which was better than anything else around. I would've given it a test fire, but with limited ammo I was just hoping it worked well. I strapped the rifle in where my revolver had once been before moving on.

The only produce we had readily available was corn which I greedily ate off of the stalks. I ate my fill and then some before even thinking to set some aside for the road. I constantly looked over my shoulder to make sure I was safe. Not that there was a reason to be worried when I was the only one left. I think that was what I was afraid of though. I was afraid of even allowing myself to think that I was alone. I distracted myself again after gathering food by going through the remaining homes and taking anything valuable, which was only a small mirror and four canteens which I filled up at our water pump. It was irradiated slightly, but it was still water. My distractions had finally run out though and without them I was left with only one thing to do, remember my situation.

I looked around for the first time that night without real purpose. I saw the tiny body of a filly still impaled by a pool cue through the eye and a decapitated stallion a few feet away. I saw that almost every building had been decimated by flames and the ashen piles with bones still poking out. I looked down the street and saw the large black heap that had once been my home. I walked over at what seemed like a painstakingly slow pace and stared into the pile. I looked at the bones and the black and wondered at what I had done. There had been a first option, an option to just accept slavery and see where it took me, but I had chosen the second option and gotten everypony but myself killed. I had, however, gained my own freedom at that cost. I had used the lives of a dozen innocent townspeople for my own gain.

I did not feel any sadness or remorse though. I did not cry for their deaths or wish vengeance on the raiders who caused this for killing them. I didn't know what to feel. I think at them time I genuinely lacked the emotional capacity to feel anything for them. All I felt was a heavy determination. I had a place to go. I had a purpose for myself beyond slavery, or farming or being a greed mayor for a backwater town. I told myself that they had been unfortunate and when I thought of how they had acted before I went to fight, I thought that they had largely deserved their fates.

"Thanks doc." I whispered at the pile before walking away.

On some level I did feel sad for that loss. The doc had taught my minor brewing, followed my plan to a T and it was the supplies he left that had allowed me to survive thereafter. His death was the regrettable one; the other deaths were just ones that I added to the pile that would drive me. I had been the cause of twenty one deaths in my life to that moment. It wasn't much, but that number was how I chose to remember them.

=-=/

I left the next morning without looking back. I took with me what I had found the day before along with the remainder of the doc's drug stash. I hoped I wouldn't need it, but an extra dose of Dash and Rage couldn't hurt. I took the road south to Maremoros, but I had no clue how long it would take. I could remember my mom going there once or twice, but the trips had taken anywhere from a week and a half to three weeks, which wasn't very helpful. However I had been to a small settlement about three days travel away once before and assumed I would be able to get proper supplies and some directions there.

The road south was much safer than the road to the west and I was thankful for that. To the west of my home there was nothing but a large expanse of dunes that were infested with bloatsprites. My direction had a different type of enemy, luck. While essentially void of any animals besides the occasional pack of radhogs, the southern way was extremely flat. I walked along the cracked pavement and could see for miles in any direction. While it was nice, it also meant that any rock could just be a hiding space for a scavenger looking for an easy kill.

Flying was even less advisable. While it would've definitely been faster than walking, it also made me an extremely vulnerable target. I figured that, as long as I could make it to the valley, I could then feel safe enough to fly, but that was still at least a day's journey ahead. I left myself to the mercy of the wasteland and traveled on, a sitting duck in an open pond.

=-=/

I made it twelve hours before my luck ran out. I was almost thankful for the action, the most eventful thing I had been doing was drawing my blade constantly. The valley, and with it safety, had been in my view for some time. Two large hills rose out of the sand for no seemingly good reason and the road between them snaked through like a river. The valley was generally safe because it was at a point where water of any kind was at least a day away, not counting a return trip. I was only about a mile away when the first shot rang out.

The shot impacted the sand a few feet to my right, but I jumped away regardless. I took a quick scan of what was close to me, but sadly I was at a point where there weren't any rocks to hide behind. A second shot came and hit just in front of me, but that helped some. I at least knew the shooter was in front of me and most probably to the right. I took off flying toward the valley with all my speed. I assumed that since the sniper couldn't hit a still target that a moving target would've been outside of their skills. I also assumed there was only one shooter.

My second point was proven wrong by a sudden mass of bullets flying past me. Most of them were just as bad as I had hoped and only a few bullets managed to graze my fur. I could also tell where the shots were coming from now. There was a small boulder about 200 feet ahead of me where I could see and hear lead flying. If I could make it past there without being hit, I would probably be fine. I pumped as much strength as possible into my wings, but by the time I was a mere fifty feet away a bolt of pain racked my body. I had been shot just through the front of my left leg and out the left side of my flank. The injury wasn't going to kill me, but it did take me out of the air. I hit the concrete hard and skid along like a sack of bricks for a good twenty feet. I didn't have much strength, but I managed to detach my blade and knot it into my mane. All I could do was hope they didn't kill me or notice it.

My ears were ringing from the impact, but I could hear some muffled voices in my delirium. I turned to where I thought my attackers were and saw a few blurry outlines. After a few moments the voices stopped and a sharp spike of pain to the back of my head knocked me out.

=-=/

I woke up to the dull hum of florescent lights and to a throbbing pain in my haunch. I opened my eyes to see a steel walled room filled with an array of different pipes snaking around and a single door ahead of me. My fore hooves were shackled around a pipe above me and my back legs around another below. I pulled as hard as I could, but the metal was strong while I was still exhausted. I checked for my weapons, but saw that my bags and rifle had been taken. My harness remained at least and somepony had taken the time to bandage my wounds. All in all, it could've been much worse.

"Well look who decides to wake up." As if on cue a pony in raider armor walked in through the door with a lead pipe floating beside him.

"Where am I?" I croaked, realizing how dry my mouth really was.

"Stable 107, or at least that's what the door said until we blew it open, but seeing as nopony really knew about it until we got here you'd probably know it better as one of the two hills in the valley."

"You mean to tell me that we're in a stable, inside of a hill, and nopony ever found it? Why don't we stop the charades?" This comment earned me a slam from the lead pipe on my back.

"Don't call me a liar boy. It's only because I'm going to find this funny that you're even alive, not because I'm merciful."

"What's going to be funny, beating me with a pipe?" I manage to mock even though I got another strike.

"I'm going to leave you in here and watch you die. I'll give you just enough water to stay alive long enough for starvation to kill you. I'll watch the weeks go by as you beg and cry for food and then death. Every day I'll peel away a little more of your skin, slowly remove and muscles underneath and then bandage you up and drug you just enough to keep you alive and in pain. I think it'll be quite the show."

"And why do you want to torture me like that? I doubt you put this much effort in every prisoner." I was more confused than scared. After all, I still had an ace up my sleeve.

"Most prisoners didn't kill my sons." Thankfully he put the pipe away.

"Your sons?" I started to have vague recollections of two bright green raiders I had killed and how both of their weapons and armor had been better than the rest. "Oh shit."

"That's right. You killed both of my boys back in your backwater town and even had the audacity to take one of their guns for yourself. I will thank you though; your actions made it much easier to take control of this little outfit. Nopony objected after that shit show," he turned and left the room, "Which is why I'm giving you one day of rest before the torture begins."

I was once again left alone with my thoughts and the humming lights in that cold room. Damn it, why did I have to kill them? If I had killed the old leader I might've even been welcomed here with open hooves. Now I'm stuck in this prison with nothing to do but die. There was a silver lining though; if I hadn't killed his sons, I probably would've been killed on the road. I took a deep breath and shut out my complaints. I just need to get out of here, nothing else.

I pulled myself up enough so that my hooves could reach my mane. I started to fumble around as best as I could until I found where the blade was tangled. I had never been so glad to have not combed my mane. I spent the next fifteen minutes just trying to pull it out without having to cut off my precious length, or my neck for that matter. I did finally manage to grab it out in my right hoof and breathe a sigh of relief. That led to the tricky part though, cutting myself loose without cutting off a leg. I didn't really have a plan being as I couldn't see behind myself and the blade didn't exactly have a lifespan for precision work. So I winged it pulled the blade out. It cut through the shackles on my fore hooves easily, but I also managed to cut myself about half an inch deep on my right leg. I muffled my yelp and landed on the floor with a dull throb of pain. I quickly sheathed and drew the blade again to cut my hind legs free in case anypony had heard me.

I watched the door with anticipation for a full five minutes before calming down enough to breathe. I reattached the sword to my harness before checking my wound. The cut looked gruesome, the skin was stretched and discolored, but the muscles and blood vessels underneath seemed to have burned together enough to keep it from bleeding. I would have to remember that slashes and grazes wouldn't be very deadly with this weapon. Regardless, I walked over to the door and put my mouth on the hilt. 3... 2... 1... go...

I dived through the opening as soon as it was large enough, slashing at the open air. Nopony was there though, just a single staircase up and forward. Wherever I was, I was at the bottom, and I didn't like the idea of having to fight my way out of the belly of the beast. With no small amount of trepidation, I ascended the steel stairs. The humming lights were already starting to wear on me. The steel walls were one thing, but how anypony could live in a pit with this constant hum I would never know. Granted, I guessed they weren't exactly made for comfort so much as survival. At the top of the staircase, I was faced with an option, left or right. I could hear many voices to the left and I heard nothing from the right which ended in another doorway. I took the right; the other seemed like a death wish. I walked down the hallway quickly to the door and stepped on the pressure plate to open it. On the other side was a brown staring right at me in wide eyed surprise. Before she could scream I had separated her head from her neck. It was officially on now.

I took no time to try hiding or looting the body, instead just rushing into the room with reckless abandon. Not my brightest idea. Inside were another four raiders huddled around a metal table with some bits and pieces of technology. It took a few for them to react to the unexpected intruder. None of them expected an attacker from within, and I used that time to analyze them. Two of them were unarmed while the other two had 10mm pistols. I dove at the armed pair and managed to get a swing in at one of them. I cut up the mares chin and through her skull, but I also took a buck to the ribs from the raider on my right. I felt a couple of ribs crack and threw up on the dead body, dropping my blade in the process.

"Fuckers!" I cursed and rammed into the other gun toting raider.

At that point I had two objectives, make sure nopony fires a gun and kill the remaining three raiders. The first part was going fairly well at that point. I had a much lighter build than the earth pony I rammed, but the surprise was enough to make her drop her pistol and step back. I spun on my hooves and gave the mare a hard buck to the head. She dropped without protest, but now my element of surprise was completely gone and I still had two stocky earth ponies to deal with. I was cornered on either side of the table, and it's not like I had anywhere to run, so I braced myself as best as I could for the brawl. The on my right attacked first, driving a hoof into my right side and in turn I slammed my own left leg into his chin. We both stumbled back before the other raider took the opportunity to ram me against the wall. I wheezed out the remainder of corn in my stomach before biting her snout as hard as possible. This got her to wince back enough for me to take another charge at the male raider. Despite his weight, I was able to push him down to the floor with the speed I gathered. Not one to waste a moment, I found my hilt on the floor and slipped it back into the sheath. I now had a weapon, but I also noticed the mare fumbling with something on the ground.

"Oh no you don't." I sliced at her, cutting off most of her lower jaw.

The bones and muscled and burned together around the wound and prevented her from even screaming in pain as the pistol she grabbed fell back down. I stared for a moment at the hideously brownish-red merging of tissues before slashing her again, this time cutting her head straight up the middle. I did a feel a little bad about that one. I turned back to the remaining attacker just in time to dodge another bucking. I took advantage of the gap in his attack to relieve him of his hind legs. He yelled, but I quickly cut him a second time across the neck. Prototype blade or not, I was really starting to love it. I had taken out five raiders single hoofedly and it didn't seem like the rest were any the wiser. I took a moment to catch my breath and look around the room.

The design was relatively the same from what I had seen, steel walls and annoyed lights were so~ in season. Though I will digress and mention that the raiders were already starting to redesign with various 'fluids', piles of excrement and bloodied cages. There were also a few faded posters that seemed to be promoting something with the slogan "Metal! It makes more than better weapons, it makes better ponies!" and a picture of a mare with a prosthetic leg shooting at an unseen enemy. What was on the table really interested me. Mostly it was just a bunch of relays, circuits and power bridges, but in the center was some type of thin mechanical collar with gems wired into it. I had no clue what it was for, but it felt valuable. I decided to make a mental note of this room for later. I just needed to find my things so I would actually have something to carry that crap in. I then noticed that the mare I had bucked was still faintly breathing on the floor next to me. I thought about sparing her for a moment, and then remembered just where I was. If I left her alive it would only be matter of time before she'd be able to contact her friends. I cut clean through her skull and gave her a quick death. I also grabbed the better looking of the two pistols and the extra mag from the worse one. Now I needed a plan. There were two doorways, one back to the hallway and the other to the unknown. I still wasn't a fan of the hallway and decided to see what was beyond the room I was in. The door was locked, and I damn sure didn't have any bobby pins to make use of. I started to dig into the pockets of the dead raiders. I found about thirty caps that I put on the table, some ammo that I left and a few different keys. I tried every key until I found one that fit and the door lifted like a feather.

I definitely recommend seeing what's beyond; it pays off quite well. I found myself right in the center of what seemed to be their armory. There were a good dozen ammo boxes, a few guns and some real saddlebags, not the normal bags I had been using before. I slipped into the saddlebags and started going through every box for what it was worth. Sadly most of the boxes were empty and those that weren't only contained about fifty 10mm rounds, thirty or so shotgun shells that I left and exactly seventeen .50 caliber bullets which I took with glee. Considering I couldn't shoot a shotgun, I doubted I could fire a .50 cal, but I damn sure wasn't going to just leave perfectly good building killing bullets with some raiders. The guns were all beyond me, a big fucking pile shotguns and a few .32 pistols that I did toss into the bags even though I couldn't find ammo for them. I also found a few more of the weird rings, further confirming my theory that they were valuable in some way. The armory didn't give me much, but the extra guns and bullets were nice, though I would've traded half the 10mm bullets for a couple of extra mags. The main advantage was knowing that most of the raiders on that level were probably unarmed and I was between them and their guns.

I left the room, locked the door and attached the key ring to my harness. They weren't getting back in there without my death. I took the tech from the table and stared at the door that led to the hallway. Just me, a fuck-ton of raiders and two twelve round clips. Trying to steel my nerves wasn't really working. I stepped on the pressure plate and the door slid open. Whether I wanted to or not, I was back in the fire. The hallway was still empty and I dashed as fast as possible down it. At the end I came to yet another sliding door on my right side and behind it I could hear the boisterous celebrating of a crowd. It was a shame really; I had always enjoyed a good party and now I had to crash one. I drew the pistol and let the door slide open.

Inside were seventeen raiders drinking, playing pool and in the case of five shameless ones, bucking each other's brains out. At first none of them paid any mind to the newcomer, then I blew the brains out of a raider that had a shotgun. Needless to say that got their attention. Through a sudden onslaught of curses and screams, I took another three shots, two landing in the chests of the ponies closest to me and the other in the belly of one of the *ahem* 'mating' ponies with a hunting rifle. I shot again, but missed the head of the target by a few inches. Now they were all ready for a fight. The remaining four or five with guns started returning fire and I dived back through the doorway, but not without taking one shot to my ever popular flank and another grazing the back of my neck. I turned out and starred at the still open doorway from a few feet away.

"I gotta give you some credit. You raiders don't mess around," I yelled as much as I could through the mouthpiece and shot a pursuing raider in the throat, "but you need to think a little more."

I got another cheap kill on a mare stupid enough to follow after her comrade and got one between the eyes for it. That's when they got smart and I started to feel like a jackass. It started simply enough, one of them peeked quickly with a revolver and we both missed each other by a yard. That was just a precursor though. A minute later after a couple of muffled conversations a double barrel floated through the doorway and stared me down.

"FUCKERS!" I scream and hit the floor while a hail of buckshot flew over my back. I hate unicorns.

I wasted no time and scouted forward to see around the opening. Before they had even noticed me, I popped a unicorn through the jaw and followed with a gut shot to the revolver raider. I flapped my wings to get up and fired twice more, only managing to hit the wall. Then I had a pool cue rammed into my right shoulder, pushing me into a wall. I roared with pain as a bullet soon followed into the same shoulder. I tried for another shot, but my clip was empty.

"Looks like I'm back to the old way." I muttered when I dropped the pistol.

The pool cue broke in half when I was pinched between it and the wall, leaving me free to lunge at the raider who had picked up that fucking revolver. He was cut from mouth to tail within the next five seconds. I regretted that move instantly. I was trapped in a room with eight raiders with nothing but a half baked weapon. I didn't bother turning to face them because I was already surrounded. On the upside, they were being cautious because of my weapon. I did a couple of fake outs to try and keep them on edge, but to be honest I had no clue what to do next. Considering I hadn't been shot at again, I assumed they were all more or less unarmed, but the most I could kill without having to sheathe the blade was two. I spied a familiar annoying revolver on the ground just behind a pair of unicorns. This is literally the definition of a win-win.

I swiped at the legs of the pair at an upward angle, taking only one leg off of the first unicorn, but slicing cleanly through the chest of the second. I dropped the hilt and grabbed the revolver, giving a firm buck to the disfigured raider. I jumped away from the ring with the aid of my wings and turned back to face the group. If they were afraid before, they were terrified now. I shot two of them in the head by the time the remaining four snapped out of it. One picked up the remaining end of the pool cue and stabbed in me, brushing along my left side, I unloaded the last shot of the revolver into his chest before dropping it and taking the pool cue. For once I'd like to hang on to a weapon for more than thirty seconds. I thought and took at stab at an earth pony picking up a hunting rifle from the floor. The wood drove a little bit into his skin, but I was left open for the shot. The bullet flew into the front of my left shoulder and out the other end. I felt my glass bones shatter and cursed my luck.

I jabbed him again, this time in the neck, before dropping the stick. Finally, I took the hilt from the pile of guts under me and dispatched two raiders looking for a weapon on the ground in one sweep through their skulls. The last raider gave me a final buck to my right side that finished breaking apart three ribs. I took great pleasure in killing her afterwards. I quickly killed the few raiders that had survived my initial attacks before they could try to get up. My problem was now that I had broken ribs and a bullet still lodged in my flank. I took a look around and noticed just how lucky I was.

The room was the same Stable-Tec steel, but the raiders had spruced it up with a few old mattresses, a pool table, a dart board, plenty of blood (though that might've been me) and a pretty good supply of apple whiskey. So at least infection wouldn't be a big issue. I hobbled over to the whiskey, drank a whole bottle without blinking, while dosing my wounds with another. Then came the painful part. I found a switchblade on one of the bodies and started doing what I could to dig shrapnel out of my flank. I was doing my best to try and bite through the handle, but I managed to get most of the lead out. I wrapped myself up with some torn rags from the bodies and walked over to where I had dropped my 10mm. I ejected the clip and reloaded it before fitting it back in and holstering it. I pocketed the rest of the alcohol, the caps from the bodies and noticed that all the raiders had the same metal rings combined into their necks. It just kept getting weirder and weirder.

But I didn't try to pry into it. Instead, I faced the only way that I had left to go, up a staircase from the party room. I noticed another poster on the wall just inside the stairwell with a happy looking pink mare and a semi-cheerful pony with metal along his back his legs ("Metal, mares, and parties. It doesn't matter if you were built for war. WE CAN ALL LEARN TO HAVE FUN!"). I tore down the poster; something about the way the eyes stared at me didn't feel right. I ascended for the last time that day and found myself face to face with the raider leader again.

"I guess my boys just weren't enough for you. You had to go and kill all my little followers too." The nameless raider levitated a shotgun next to him.

The room was large, at least 900 square feet, and had a large operating table with various machines all around with an array of saws and probes. A terminal on the opposite wall was giving off a dim pink light behind a large circular desk, but I was more worried about the gun in my face.

"I'm only killing who I have to kill. If you want to stop waving that gun in my face, I'd be glad to just act like I never saw you."

"You really think you're in any position to bargain with me? I'm the one with the gun, I'm the one with the keys outside and I'm the one who's going to kill you." With this he pressed the barrel of the shotgun into my neck. I was sweating bullets at that point.

"Killing me isn't going to solve anything. You kill me and you're still stuck out here alone, and, no offense, but with the way you look there isn't a town within any distance that would take you in. You'll just die here, alone and trying to scavenge the last bit of your life. Let me go and I can convince the next town to let you in. I can get you another chance to be good." I took a couple of steps toward him, pushing the gun aside.

"But what about my sons? What about the raiders you've killed? I'm not going to just let you go."

"That's the thing, you won't have to." He was well within the distance for me to strike and I flew at him with full speed and separated his front legs.

"Ahhh, you fucking bastard!" I quickly cut off his horn to make sure he wouldn't get a cheap shot in.

"No, no, no, you're the fucking bastard here. You thought that you could just keep me down in that hole and then you thought that I just might be willing to right the wrong of killing your sons by giving you a second chance. But you know what's so funny about that?" I leaned next to his ear and whispered softly, "You and your sons are nothing but trash that tried to stand in my way."

He started to yell some jumbled profanity at him, so I cut off his lower jaw, then his left hind leg, then the right, then an ear, and then I finally gave him the coup de grace of decapitation. The whole time he screamed from his mostly closed mouth in pain. I felt nothing for what I did. I meant every word I said, when I cut him and when I killed him. Something just wouldn't click; so I let him die and looted his body. There were seventy-eight caps, thirteen extra shells and two small toy ponies. I pocketed the caps and stared at the tiny toys, each one with a name engraved on it (Buckshot and .308 to dad). That did it. I felt something like sadness. I could see it, two little colts just following their dad as raiders without any real perspective. I understood the dad that just wanted to see his sons grow up to be strong like him. I saw myself in a mirror just across the room, covered in blood and intestines, with my pink mane in a mangled heap and wrapped in rags that were stained with about every bodily fluid imaginable. I stared for a long time, wondering just when I stopped thinking about each kill, wondering when it was automatic. I saw that to them I was a monster and that they were the monsters to me.

I stopped and went back through the Stable to count each pony I had killed and remember how many had died back in town. I wasn't going to lament what I had done, and I was still proud that I had gotten revenge on the ones that had brought me so much pain. I had no problem with the killing, but I didn't want to stop thinking about it. I was proud, but I also gave myself a few rules that day. I was going to stay clean from the filth I encountered so that I wouldn't ever look like a monster again, and I was going to keep track of how many ponies I killed. To that day, it was forty-five.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Scavver- You've got a twinkle in your eye that makes everything look a little nicer. You now scavenge 15% more items than those around you and can sell materials for 10% more than their normal price.

Author's Note

Round 2.

3. Batty and Ballistic

I returned to the room the leader's body was in after counting the dead. The other rooms had all been re-purposed by the raiders for various things, but this room seemed to have been left alone. The walls were much cleaner than any of the others, the different posters promoting mechanical innovations were untouched, the mechanical operating table seemed to be in near perfect condition and the only thing added to the room was a single bloody mattress. Given all of the saws and needles on the table, I checked the terminal behind the desk first. Thankfully the raiders had been kind enough to unlock the terminal for me because I had no clue how to hack anything at that point.

I tapped a key and the display lit up with a few lines of pink text. There were only five selections, Overmare Instructions, Vault-tec support, Personal Logs, Resource Conditions and Implant Options. I wasn't sure if most, or any, of those things were important; so I selected the instructions because it was first. The screen changed to a new format and I read the instructions. I cannot remember the exact text, but the vault was to conduct an experiment to see if war could be used for an almost purely beneficial outcome. It said that every ten years they were to open the passageway behind this room to the lower levels of the vault. Twenty of their best fighters would be sent down. Once there, they could open the second tunnel in the lowest part of the vault. Then they were locked in until one of the two factions had killed or incapacitated 50% of the other. The other group would be sent by Stable 106 from the other hill. The losing side would have to give 25% of their resources to the other stable for five years. The idea was that by minimizing deaths and establishing a regular trend to the wars, the two groups would learn to handle warfare in a responsible and almost civil manner. All of it sounded like total bullshit to me, but those asshats at Stable-Tec were probably willing to try anything in the name of survival. Besides that, there were only the options to open the passage to the lower tunnels and to contact the other Stable. I tried the option for contacting, but received an error which forced me back to the main menu.

I assumed the other Stable had probably been cleared out and moved on. The Stable-Tec option gave the same error, but the personal logs loaded to an extent. Most of them came up with the name File Corrupted, but there were five that were readable. The first was from the first overmare and gave an overview of the stable's resources; iron deposits, a water talisman, an apple orchard, five small boxes of magical gems and the technology for advanced engineering. I assumed those most all be in the upper levels of the vault being as I hadn't seen any of them. The second file was from the fourth overmare and was only dated thirty years after the other. It mentioned a breakthrough in medical science that they hoped would let them win their next war. The devices would allow for their ponies to utilize advanced stealth technologies. Their goal was to simply to become invisible and kill the entire enemy group at once. The third entry proved that their plans were useless. Only a few months after the breakthrough, the stable lost more than the scheduled war; they lost their lives. The other Stable unleashed a toxic cloud on them and, according to the log; the gas expanded and ate through all but the strongest materials. The gas spread through the vault rapidly and they had no time to install the proper enchantments to guard against the cloud. The recorder mentioned that it was probably a result of their Stable having won every single war to that point. I guessed Stable-Tec's plan didn't allot for bad blood between the communities. The text ended abruptly right as they were going to mention how to guard against it. I didn't realize at the time how useful information like that would come to be.

The next two logs were from the raiders and much more interesting to me. The first was made by the lovely unicorn that spearheaded the attack on my home and the second by the dead unicorn only a few yards away. I remember both perfectly.

"Entry One,

Wow. Just wow. This place is the fucking best. We've got water talisman that still works, more space than we could need, food and these new thingies. Well, I call them thingies, but old Ribcracker calls them cybernetics, but it doesn't matter because these things make you invisible!1!! Like, completely. They don't really last that long, but think of the possibilities. We could actually start raiding whole towns now. Before we wouldn't have a chance, but now they wouldn't even see us coming. We're going to start with that dump to the north, there isn't much there, but it should be a good practice run before hitting up any large towns. I can feel it though, things are about to get a whole lot better for us."

That solved quite a few mysteries for me. I stopped going through the files and pulled out one of the collars I had picked up. So this is what got everyone killed. I struggled with the urge to toss them all on the floor, trample and then burn them. One side of me wanted to destroy what had caused the death of almost everypony I had ever known, but the other side kept telling me that these things were valuable and that breaking them was a waste. After a few minutes of standing there with the implant in my mouth, I put it back in my saddlebags. I had taken enough revenge for that day and these had to be valuable to somebody. This also explained just how we had managed to be so easily blindsided. I took a breath and read the last log.

"Entry 2,

They're dead. My boys are dead. Something went wrong on the raid and they got kill by some pegasus. Apparently whoever it was killed half of the entire group like it was nothing. I rallied the others into getting rid of the old leader. We bound her up and I sent a few of the boys to go sell her off. I put her guns in the desk. I'll find a use for them eventually. They just caught somepony on the road and said I would want to see him. I don't think there's anything that could make me happy at this point, but if they think it'll help, I'll give it a shot."

This entry gave me a few insights. The first was that the mare who left me on death's front porch was still out there somewhere and not that far ahead of me. I thanked Celestia that the opportunity to get revenge was still alive and well. I guessed that in the next town I would need to ask where any slaves might be sold, but I also doubted the reliability of that plan. The second insight was the location of loot. I turned around to look at the pre-war desk.

All of the drawers were missing except one with pad lock over it. I had no bobby pins and no keys, so I did the logical thing. I bucked that old fucking desk. The particle board splintered and fell apart without protest; leaving a pile of items on the ground, including the pistols, the hunting rifle from before and my weird implant. The first things that caught my eye were the twin 10mms I had recently been acquainted with. Both were fairly standard, but had been modded with extra large magazines and a full auto receiver. Automatic weapons had never been my favorite, but with such nearly perfect condition and two shiny mags I couldn't refuse them. Next was a small pouch of about 100 caps that I gleefully added to my collection.

I didn't take the rifle though. I knew that I had no purpose for it and the money it would fetch would be next to none. I chose to leave it with the dead father on the floor. It wasn't much, but at least I did something for them. I hooked the implant back into my harness and went back to the terminal, leaving the father and son together.

There weren't anymore logs to go through so I back out to check the resource conditions. A small map of the vault came up with various points highlighted with different points of interest. The water talisman still had 50% purity and I mentally noted its location near the vault exit. The electricity wasn't in any danger of failing anytime soon, but the food stores were down to just preserved pre-war food. I didn't really like the idea of having to eat all of that sugar, but it was food so I noted that location. Nothing else had any interest to me, so again I backed out. The last option changed quite a bit for me. Implant Options was by far the most valuable section. The screen gave me three selections when I went in; Install Implant, Add New Implant to Terminal and Select Available Implants. The first one scared me, so I went to the selection first.

"Well fuck me." I muttered when the screen changed.

There was only the option to install the invisibility mod, but it was followed by (Earth/Unicorn pony only). That pissed me off more than it should've. I mean, I didn't plan on adding any cybernetics to my body, but t just hurt to be told that I wasn't even an option. I took my aggression out on the desk again. I had torn down half of the desk before I remembered something that I should've though of before, a gift left to me by a dead mare. I went back to the terminal and went to add an implant. A small metal tray slid out of the wall and I looked down to the little metal ring. I had a lot of reserves about this. As things stood, I still could've just made it to another town and continued my life in relative peace, but if I did this I felt like I would be bound to my path. I thought about everything that had happened and about how much things had changed in two days. I was leaning towards just leaving without it, but then I remembered something. I remembered that the note said "once you step onto this road, you won't be able to go back". I had already taken a step down that road, and I knew that, even if I went and tried to live near normality, I would find myself still wanting the answers that I was looking for now. I set the implant in the slot and pushed it back into the wall.

The screen started running through a bunch of gibberish that was useless to me before finally coming up with some proper text.

(Note: The text here was like this at first, but I changed it for readability. So this color is what it would really be. Sorry.)

New Implant Type Detected: Scanning for data on device
...
...
Implant Type: Non-Invasive Optical
Available Species: Pegasus
Product Description: Mk Z-13 Stealth Overhaul.
Available features: Modified S.A.T.S programming, environmental awareness display, lock picking array.
Features Currently Disabled by programmer: Stealth Buck modulator, hacking integration, Enclave response beacon, acoustic sensors, persuasion modifiers.
Install now? [Y/N?]

I took a deep breath and tapped the Y. There was no going back, and I could feel the weight of the decision on my shoulders, but if mom thought whatever it was, was so important that it had to be kept hidden until the right time I was willing to trust her. Though I will admit, the whole Enclave response beacon freaked me out. I had always been told to never fly near the clouds or talk to any other pegasi save for my mother because of how dangerous the Enclave was and still is. At least it was disabled.

The medical table behind me began to sink into the floor as the other tools retracted into various slots in the ceiling. What was left was four clamps on the floor that lit up with green lights. Logic told me that allowing an almost hundreds of years old machine preform eye surgery on me for a device it had never even been in contact with before was a bad idea. However, I was not about to deny a gift like that. For the record, I'm very glad the me of that time was so determined that the idea of having his body modified with something unnatural for the rest of his life was nothing at all, as I am now I would've really had to think about it.

I stepped into the clamps and they tightened themselves around my legs until I couldn't walk away even if I wanted to. Another metal frame came up and locked my head to where I could only look straight ahead at the door out. A long mechanized arm with the implant on the end came out of the ceiling, positioning itself directly in front of me. The arm ended in a claw with a few small, pristine white drills. I tried to shift away from it, but my body had no way of moving. The drills started to spin up and inch toward my right eye. I closed my eyes thinking that somehow that would stop the machine. Then the pain came. I felt the fur around my eye getting moved and then the small stinging as the outer flesh was torn away. However, it didn't take long for the drills to reach the bone. When the bone was it, my eyes shot open and I screamed out in pain, struggling against my metal bonds. It felt like the insides of my brain were being pulled and twisted around like a chew toy and my eye was a burning fire. Then came the implant. I felt the drills stop and pull out of my skull before the implant took their place. Three small metal prongs latched into the wholes and bonded with the bone and nervous system. My visions become flooded with a wide array of alerts and notifications before I passed out from the sensory overload. The entire ordeal only lasted about fifteen seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

=-=/

I woke up three hours later on the cold steel floor. A positive was that it was the first time in a while I had been knocked out without waking up in a pool of my own blood. I still couldn't really see much out of my right eye because of all of the notifications that had appeared. I didn't try to stand up, but instead just sat there and dealt with the notifications. Somewhat mockingly, all of the text was in the same pale pink as my mane and the terminal, but at least nobody was going to see that.

(Again, think of it like this, but I put a different color so it would read easily.)

New user detected: Would you like to run first time user protocols? Y/N?

I focused on the Y and a new layer of text appeared.

Welcome to your new Enclave covert ops implant. Your device has come pre-loaded with features to assist you on any missions you may be sent on. These features include; a lock picking subroutine that can levitate any objects usable for lock picking though whether or not you succeed is still up to your skill, an environmental awareness indicator that will warn you of irradiated areas, enemy presences, friendlies and points of interest within your vision, lastly is a modified S.A.T.S. array that will activate upon the users will and give them an edge in combat and helpfully sort registered inventories. There are also some features that are not immediately available. You will need to access the proper permissions modules to make use of; the Stealth Buck modulator, Hacking Subroutine, Acoustic Sensors and Persuasion modifiers. We notice that an Enclave Broadcaster is not properly installed on your device and recommend you see your supervisor for a repair. Is your current theme satisfactory? Y/N? Ok, then please enjoy your enhanced self.

The box of text disappeared and left me with a minimal overlay in my vision. A compass was at the top and a small meter in the bottom left-hoof corner marked AP. Another three small boxes were in the corner with it, marked INV, STAT and RADIO from top to bottom. I didn't check the INV or RADIO options being as they were self explanatory, but I did check my status for the sake of seeing if I was in any danger of death given how many times I had been shot today. According to the module, I was currently in no danger of death, given I find a healing potion or a magical bandage within the next five hours. That did scare me, but I assumed that a medical storage area must be close by. The radiation amount was also clicking very rapidly between zero and one, so I assumed I would need to fix that at some point. I played around with a few various features afterwards, trying out the radio, sorting stuff in my saddlebags for convenience, that sort of crap.

I wasted a solid thirty minutes before leaving through the stairway back up, leaving the trail of dead bodies down in that pit to rot.

=-=/

I found my way out after another hour of shambling through the Stable. Along the way I had found three healing potions, two more doses of Dash, the water talisman and some various snack cakes. I did use two of the potions to fix myself up and some water to take a quick bath. When all was said and done, I found the remains of the Stable door and walked out through a small tunnel to the outside world. Outside it was pitch black and I stood atop one of the hills in the valley. A small marker on me compass marked the door for future reference. I spread my wings and took to the skies for what seemed like the first time in years. Even in the dark, I knew how to make it to where I could find directions to anywhere I needed to go, Graymare.

=-=/

I touched down outside of the five building compound early in the morning. Graymare was never a large settlement, only having a general vendor, a gun salesman, a small stand that sold food and drink and two guest houses for raiders and travelers respectively. It was, however, hailed as one of the safest settlements at the time. The reason for this was their policies. Anyone from anywhere could come and trade, nopony was allowed to fight and anypony in their walls had to do give a cut of anything they sold to the town council fund. The fund was used to pay for protection from raiders and slavers as well as to bribe any do-gooders who might try to attack someone within the walls. This was the reason for the ton's stunted growth, but they chose security over having to pick a side. Considering the town was just five dilapidated buildings surrounded by concrete walls, nobody questioned the idea.

I paid a fifteen cap entry fee at the gate and walked inside to see the same place I had seen three years ago. There were still terrible wannabe thieves hanging around the collapsed bookstore that now sold guns. Traveling merchants and families stuck near the guest house, only the bravest of them leaving to go barter for supplies and absolutely everybody stopping at one point or another to stare at me. Being a pegasus with a metal ring stuck around your eye has that effect.

I paid little mind to it though, and walked up to the gun shop. The owner, Randis, and I were acquainted solely because were the only two left within a day's distance who could fly. This is not to say that I liked that smug griffin. I knew that he would always try to arrange the negotiation to suit himself from the get go and that he had no real sympathy and he knew that I knew it. However, one emotion I did not expect to see on his face was fearful disbelief.

"Glow? Glow, is that really you?" The wide eyed shopkeeper just stared at me and poked my chest from across the counter.

"Yes?" I nudged the talon away, still not understanding just what the big deal was.

"But how? We heard that everyone from your town was killed in the raider attack."

"How did you hear about it? I should be the only one who knows." Being as I was the only one left besides the raiders who had attacked, it made no sense for news to have gotten to Graymare this quickly.

"Have you not listened to the radio? Some asshole down south got an old pre-war beacon working and has been giving news non-stop for the last year. None of us believed him at first, but everything has been completely accurate. Until you, I guess," again, he started poking at my implant with that damn talon, "How did you survive?" I had no way of knowing there was a radio station playing. Nopony in my town had one because there simply wasn't anything on the air at the time.

"I pretended to give myself up and then attacked them. I only managed to kill a few, but I wasn't in the bar when it burned down."

"But your eye, and these guns..." he trailed off and I think for the first time he wasn't thinking about business, which also made it the perfect time to strike.

"It's a long story Randis. For now, I need to sell you a few things I picked up on the way here." I wasn't about to give an ounce of information about the Stable or what I had been through. In this town everything was for sale and I didn't want anyone catching wind of me. I unloaded the five shotguns, three .32s and the ammo for both on the counter. "How much?"

"Sixty caps." He said after quickly glancing at the weapons, but not really examining them.

"120 caps. We both know those shotguns are good enough to sell for twenty-five each to these raiders and the pistols are at least fifteen a pop. At this rate I'm giving away the ammo." I lied; none of those guns were worth more than ten caps, but in his current state of surprise he had a hard time arguing.

"Eighty is the highest I'll give you. Take it or leave it." The only trick he knew was to give the other pony a hard choice. Luckily I knew he was never ballsy enough to deal with someone calling his bluff.

"Have it your way." I grabbed a double-barrel from the table and turned to one of the raider-types that had been watching, "Twenty caps and it's yours." I mumbled and saw instant surprise in her eyes and fear in Randis'.

"Fine, 125." He conceded and I grinned.

"That's funny, I remember saying 135." I set the gun back down.

"What do you mean?" That pissed him off.

"Well according to the current market these things are worth a little more now. 135 caps and they're yours, ammo included."

"Fine. Take your caps." He took pre-sorted stacks of ten caps and paid me. "I think I know why you survived that fire now."

"Oh, why?" I smiled with transparent glee; Randis had never been a good negotiator.

"Because you're the devil himself." He sneered and I walked away, the sounds of him selling the guns back to the raiders at thirty caps each behind me. I didn't let the insult get to me. After all, he had only pretended to care about me. Not once did he ask for details about their deaths or how I was feeling.

I spent another half hour and fifty caps buying a screwdriver, twenty bobby pins, food, water and some basic tools to modify circuitry, though I could've definitely used more tools. Regardless, I walked away from the main stalls and found a quiet corner by the traveler guest house. I wanted to go sleep properly for the first time in the last seventy-two hours, but I still had things to do before that could happen. Namely, figuring out just who that fuckhead on the radio was. I brought up the radio menu, and sure enough, there was a signal coming through. I tuned into it and a loud, overzealous and frankly annoying voice started to reverberate inside of my head. Given that nopony made notice of it, I assumed that only I could hear it.

"Top of the morning wastelanders, ghouls and asshole enclave soldiers with a good taste in music, it's Cordless and I'm coming at you live for a special report. Now I'm sure you all remember the news about the massacre at Colting. Well listen to this. It turns out, I made a mistake. I know it sound impossible, but yes, after five hundred seventy-two consecutive reports I finally made a mistake. And I know you're all probably thinking it was just some small mistake, like there were thirty raiders instead of two dozen, but no, this is big. Like, I don't know how 'I missed it' big. There was in fact a survivor. Some crazy stallion with a knack for surviving if you ask me. I just got a tip from one of my sources earlier who says that they heard rumors of some black pegasus leaving the town the morning after the attack with a few dead raiders behind him. Then another with the same pegasus being captured by raiders in between Colting and Graymare. Now my source didn't believe any of this until this morning when, wouldn't you know it, that little fucker flew right over her head toward Graymare. Now listeners, I know this sounds pretty far fetched, but how many midnight black pegasi with pink manes who aren't dashites are around Colting? I know it seems unlikely, but ask yourself this: would I, the all knowing Cordless, besmirch my own record if I wasn't sure? So if you see the little bat out of hell, remember that he's tougher than he looks and could use a friend. And kid, if you're listening, come find me if you need someone to talk with. That is it for this special live report, and now, back to the music."

The voice trailed off and was replaced by booming show tunes that I immediately turned down to be nearly silent. I was uplifted by the idea that at least somewhere out there was somepony willing to put aside some time to genuinely care about my predicament, but at the same time it terrified me to think about how something I had only done a little more than an hour ago was already being broadcast over the air. It made me angry enough thinking that the ponies in this town were trying to learn about what happened to me, let alone to have somepony miles away knowing everything about me within no more than an hour. Needless to say, I also shivered a little at what would happen if I ever did anything wrong. Regardless, I pushed the idea out of my head. There was nothing I could do about it except keep one eye looking over my shoulder for anypony following me.

I detached the energy sword from my harness and drew the blade out so I could take a look inside. I popped open the sheath first and stared at the collection of wires and circuit boards. I didn't really know much about technology at the time, but from what I had read in various magazines I could make out the batteries and how they connected. Or in this case, how there didn't connect. The batteries were laid out in five different groups of three energy cells in the center of the hilt. Only one of those fifteen cells was actually connected to the system. It was the same size as the other, but it wasn't the same yellowish container. Instead it looked like it was made of lead with a small set of green rings around it. Whatever the case, it looked brand new. All of the others had been damaged to the point where they were useless or the wires connecting them had broken off. At first I hadn't really planned to mess around too much with the system, given that it was probably delicate, but I didn't figure reconnecting some of the still usable energy cells could hurt. I carefully removed the broken cells and rearranged the two good cells next to the original. Once that was done I took some cheap wiring I had bought and reconnected them. I was still about twelve cells off from a complete set and that wire probably wasn't a very high grade, but it would do for now. I really wanted to take out the weird cell, but my better judgement told me that I might break the thing if I tried that. I refit the side that I had removed and put the sheath back on my harness.

I did manage to open up the blade's hilt, but that thing was a true mess. Everywhere inside was filled with wires and circuits and small sets of gems laid in specific patterns. I didn't dare mess around with something I knew nothing about, so I closed it up and sheathed it. I pulled out some snack cakes (500% of your daily value of sugar) and ate quietly while waiting to see if what I had done worked at all. From what I could see on the little bar that read the power, it still wasn't charging past the point of a red bar, but it wasn't flashing anymore. I swallowed my food with a gulp of dirty water before giving it a shot. The sword still drew just the same, and was the same length as it was before, however this time it took almost twenty seconds to actually dissipate. All in all, I'd say it was a fairly good upgrade.

Finally content with myself, I staggered into the guest house, paid the fifteen bit fee, and dropped dead into a corner. The sounds of old world tunes guided me into sleep. ...so come on down, take a look around cause the bombs are falling doooown.

=-=/

I didn't wake up again until sunset. I was still pretty intent on sleeping, but I also recognized a need to eat and get some information about where Maremoros was so I could leave immediately in the morning. So I picked myself up from the bare wooden floor, checked to make sure nothing had been stolen, and went back outside. The scene was more of the same, but most of the raiders had left to return to their own groups for the night while most of the travelers were bedding down in the guest house. I caught the attention of Randis just before he could go uptstairs to sleep in his store.

"What do you want?" Given the sharp tone of voice, I assumed he was still pretty pissed about me cheating him earlier.

"I just wanted to ask for directions."

"Ten caps, take it or leave it." He smirked, obviously enjoying the idea of getting back at me.

"Fine, take it." I grabbed the caps from my pouch and gave them to him. Nopony else around here could be trusted for reliable directions, and he knew that.

"Where to?"

"Maremoros, and any place around here where I could find a slaver settlement."

"Why'd you bother asking the same thing twice?" He raised a brow and I was confused.

"What do you mean?"

"Maremoros is the place where you'd find any slavers around here. Ever since two years ago that town has done nothing but auction off ponies, zebras, griffins, you name it," he chuckled and pointed off to the southwest, "Just follow your compass straight southwest. If you leave in the morning then you should be there by tomorrow night. Why would you want to go..."

I never heard the rest of what he said. I took off into the darkening sky the moment he gave a direction. I flew fast out of panic, following the little radar to the southwest. According the AP meter I was draining my stamina at an extreme rate, but I didn't care. Two year, two whole fucking years they've been there. For all I know, there not even anything left of what she was going to leave for me. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Logically, I knew that getting there quickly wasn't going to change the fact that I was two years late to get what I needed to get and that I had only learned about the things a few days ago. However, for the first time since I left my home, I was very scared. Not for life or for the items, but now I think I was scared because if those things weren't there; I would absolutely no clue what to do with my life. I flew fast until I lacked any remaining energy, and then allowed myself to just glide in the right direction. I repeated this until I was able to make it there. What I found there, was no paradise.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Science! (Rank 1)- You're no master of electricity and geodes yet, but you're on your way. You now have the ability to modify and create minor upgrades for energy based weaponry.

Author's Note

Round 3, the shortest round yet! Next one will be longer, just needed to pop something out given that college has been an asshole. Love yall.

4. Instinct and Infiltration

I didn't stop flying until dawn broke. The jaded light of the sun peaked through the clouds and before me I could see a large collection of metal buildings on the horizon. Maremoros was usually a full two day's travel from Graymare, but I had made it in only twelve hours. The town was entirely post war. Who started it was a mystery, but every building was a collection of scrap metal at least two stories high, and the ones at the center three or four stories high. Before the slavers had taken over, it was a trading hub for the area. They only dealt with the respectable types of people and generally speaking everyone there was making a pretty good go of it. Then the slavers came. The town had made the mistake of acting as a sort of safe haven for slaves which obviously didn't sit well with the local slavers. They mounted a full assault on the town, killing any resistance and enslaving the others. The survivors of the Maremoros Incident could be found as far north as the crystal empire and none of them were free. Ever since then the town boomed even more than before. A large steel bulwark now surround the thirty seven building town, the central building were taller than before and more caps were being spent there than thought possible. However, ninety percent of this progress was made through slavery which makes the results a little hard to agree with. Regardless, I was hoping for two things; for the old doctor's office to be easily accessible and for the little raider I was hunting to be happy to see me. Neither of those two things actually happened though.

I touched down a few miles away from the walls and shifted my saddlebags around until they hid my wings almost completely. This was nowhere near comfortable, but the thing that sucks about going to a new place when you're a pegasus is that you never know how they're going to react. It could be anything from immediate execution to nothing at all. Given that the slavers had a pretty backwards sense of right and wrong already, I didn't plan on taking any chances. It still took me another hour to get to the place and find the gate, but that did allow me plenty of time to think about just how I was going to get in. After all, it's not like I expected this place to just have open doors. In front of the iron door that served as the entryway was a pair of brown earth ponies, one had a shotgun that had been pointed at me ever since I turned the corner to the gate and the other giving me a death-glare, so we were off to a good start.

"Hold up you little freak. Just where do you think you're going?" The one without the gun snarled when I got within ten meters of them

"Inside to see your boss, and you'd be smart to get that gun out of my face." At this, the one without the gun laughed.

"And just know does Mr.No-name think he is that the boss just has to see him."

"I think I'm the guy who's going to be kicking you two out of this dump for holding up my business. And if you really want to see just why I'm so important, get one of your superiors out here and I'll show them why." I spoke with much more authority than I really had, but I either had to bluff my way in or just turn around and leave.

The shotgun slaver somehow spoke perfectly through the mouth piece and looked at his ally, "Do you think we should do what he says?"

"Why would we? He's just trying to waste our time and piss of the boss. I say we kill him here and save ourselves the embarrassment." The other replied and I tensed my body to dive at him if things went wrong.

"But what if he is important? We only do guard duty twice a week so we might not have seen him before. For all we know he is important. Why don't we just call for Chains? It's not like we could get in that much trouble for it." Thankfully the one with the gun was going along with my plan, and ultimately he had the power.

"Or we kill him now and act like we never saw him. It's not like anyone would specifically blame us if he never turned up." That was what I was afraid of. That kind of thinking was going to end with me being fed to the hounds.

"How about I just show you why I'm here." I didn't make any sudden moves for my saddlebags until the one with the gun nodded in agreement. I then reached into the bag and pulled out the water talisman by a small rope around its end. Originally, I wanted this to be my hidden bargaining chip, but now I was going to have to use it just to get in, "Think of how happy your bosses will be if you let me give them this."

I didn't account for the ignorance of slavers.

"What's that?" The unarmed one asked, and they both looked dumbfounded.

"It's called a water talisman. One of these things and you'll never have to worry about fresh water again." Even now the small artifact was dripping a minute amount of clean water into the sand. "Go get any of your bosses and they'll probably know about it."

"And what if you're just being all talk? I think I would've heard about these if they were so important."

"I'm not. I already told you that I'm expected. Now go and go someone in charge before I kill both of you and get them myself." I dropped the talisman halfway through and glared hard at the colt. If I wasn't worried about my wings being seen, I would've flared them.

"As if you could kill us, now why don't you..." He never finished because I took a dive and slashed away most of the barrel on the shotgun. Technically speaking, it would've still fired perfectly fine, but the now three inch barrel wasn't going to have hardly any range or accuracy.

"Now just who could I not kill?" I said after sheathing the blade. The one that had the shotgun was frozen in fear and the other was still slightly awestruck at what I had done. After all, it only happened over the course of a second or two. "Now go get your damn boss before I actually do kill you."

The one furthest from me ran off inside without another word, leaving me with the one I had nearly killed. I would call that fiasco a major stroke of luck for me. I had been aiming to kill the one with the gun, but my lunge came up short and actually gave me a better situation than I had planned for. I stepped back and smiled shyly at the remaining slaver.

"Sorry about your gun buddy. I just needed to make sure my point got across." He made no response, but kept staring down at the end of his gun. He was far beyond conversation, and I grabbed the water talisman without pushing him. All things considered, it could've gone worse. Though now I wish I had just tried to bribe them into letting me in.

~\o/~

Within the next half hour, a slightly better mannered slaver, though he was still involved in one of the abominable jobs in this forsaken wasteland, came and guided me their leader. The building that the raiders had chosen for their headquarters was actually just one of the three story buildings, because all three of the four story buildings had been converted into storage for weapons and slaves alike. For the amount and quality of land they owned, the slavers were much less wealthy than I had expected. The average slaver I saw on my trip to the top brass' room wore only a tattered boarding of cloth and chains and the most expensive weapon I saw being carried was an assault rifle. However, compared to my simple harness and saddlebags, I envied the idea of having their armor, even if it was only some likes of metal.

I did not envy the slaves. Compared to the horror stories of slaves being bound in bloodied rags, being constantly tortured and raped before being tossed to the next pony to have the same done for a minor profit, these slaves had it slightly better. The ones in the cages were all in rusted shackles and stacked on top of each other like bricks to form the walls of some buildings. The purpose of this was both to make it easy to bring slaves out to the daily auction, and to make any do-gooder who wanted to attack, have to find a way to shoot at the slavers inside without killing the ponies they wanted to save. Both the state of their slaves and the efficiency of their operation impressed me, though that's not to say I wasn't repulsed by the idea of buying and selling lives. I'm just the type of guy who recognizes when things are being done in a... proper manner.

When my guide, a rust colored earth pony named Chains, opened the door to the headquarters, I began to see why the rest of the place looked fairly poor, despite the amount of caps that must've been flowing through the city. The place was immaculate. The first two floors on the way up had just been a store run by the top and a registration floor for buying slaves. The third floor was so much more. The walls were almost blindingly white and glass cases hung from the walls. Fluorescent lights lit the room, in contrast to the sickly colors of the sunlight outside. A pristine pre-war desk was at the opposite end with a pony who wore a flashy red suit behind it. In a holster at his side was a well kept combat shotgun. The yellow unicorn looked much more content and well-fed than the other slavers. On the desk was a pre-war terminal, a few various bullets and a leather bag. It was safe to say that I know knew where all of the caps were going.

"My workers tell me you put on the quite the show out there." His voice was smooth, but I could hear the malice at the end of every word, "I hope this talk of a water talisman isn't just a waste of time."

"It isn't Mr.?" I crossed the room to him and heard the door close behind me. Considering that they were willing to leave me alone with him after what I had done at the front meant that I wouldn't be able to just take him out without a fight.

"Just call me Shackles. And you?" He was very reserved, but I didn't forget for a moment that somewhere under that red mane and in those red eyes was the terrible pony who had managed to create one of the biggest slave operations around.

"Crimson Glow, and I'd like to make a deal with you."

"And so would I, it's not every day a pegasus with something as valuable as a talisman comes to trade with us."

"Then we're on the same page," I was surprised he had found out about my wings so quickly, but I made no reaction to it and pulled out the talisman and laid it on the table. "Fresh from a stable and it still has 70% purity. If you have this then think of all of the caps you'd save on bringing in clean water." I lied about the purity, but it wasn't like he could check.

"I'll be the judge of that." He got more aggressive and, as if on cue, Chains reappeared with a large tub of dirty, irradiated water dragging behind him. "That will be all Chains."

The earth pony nodded and left without a word. Shackles magically grabbed the talisman from the desk and threw it into the tub. Within the span of only a few seconds, the water turned clear and the small particles of dirt and mud were absorbed into the small pendant. A discerning eye, at a close range might've still seen some small particles remaining, but Shackles was neither close nor discerning. He smiled a very pleased smile and turned back to me.

"What do you want for it?" He surprised me this time. I hadn't expected to be the one to make the first offer.

"I want to be able to pick a slave for free from your supply, before today's auction and I want to be able to take five sets of armor and weapons of my choice from your store afterwards." This was a very hefty price given that a slave could sell for up to two thousand caps and that amount of armor and weaponry basically amounted to all of their reserves. However, clean water in the middle of a desert is extremely valuable and having room to negotiate is always needed.

"Out of the question. The slave you can have, but you're going to have to come down." Shackles was not somepony that was easy to negotiate with. If he had given me a counter, I would've known what he was and wasn't willing to budge on. In this case, I was going to have to show him that I was extremely reluctant to back down.

"Fine. The slave and four sets of armor and weapons." He was unimpressed.

"You can have the slave or you can have three sets of armor. You will not get any combination of both." He stood firm, but I still was more than happy to keep dropping my offer. The key was just going to be keeping him from knowing that.

"The slave and three sets of armor. It's either that or I walk." I stared him down as much as I could, but I think he was just as aware of the difference in our status as I was.

"What makes you think you can walk? If you try to leave with that talisman we are going to kill you and keep it for ourselves. I'm only offering you a trade because you're probably more useful to me alive. So I'll ask you again: three sets of armor or a slave. Hell, I'll throw in an extra shotgun either way. Make your choice." He slammed his hoof on the floor and I heard a few ponies enter the room behind me.

Now might be a good time to mention that I was developing a nasty habit of bluffing when I'm up against a wall. Logically I know I should just shut-up and take a deal, but I came in with an idea of what I wanted and I was damn sure going to get it.

"I wouldn't advise that Shackles. I doubt my friends would like that too much. We went through hell for this talisman and if you kill me, they're going to come for you. Will you survive the attack? Sure, there's only twelve of us, but think, if we kill two of your workers for every one of us, then you're going to lose almost a quarter of your force. And I know that some of the more righteous places out there would love to take you out while you were still weak." I stopped for a moment, and the cocksure unicorn stared at me aghast. He was imagining things, and that was what I wanted. I wasn't sure just how much people wanted to take out these slavers, but I could imagine it's been a looming issue, "All I want is some armor for my group and a little toy they can amuse themselves with. And trust me; we will be valuable to you."

"Bullshit," he spat back after an instant and I was afraid I had overplayed my hand, "just what makes you think that I'm afraid of some half-assed no name group who can't even give their fucking leader some armor?" He drew his gun and pointed it between my eyes.

"You're right we aren't anything great," I tried to appease his anger," but I think we can be useful to you if you take out offer."

"How?"

"There's still crap left in that stable. We had to leave it behind because of the security turrets. You give us what we want now, and we'll trade you the rest of what is in there. After that, we'll work for you." His face was stone and I had no way of knowing what was going through his head, but at this point all I could do was lie until he believed me.

"One slave and three sets of armor and weapons. You pay for the ammo you need, and you only get the third set when you bring us back our share of the reward. Given how valuable this talisman is, I'll let you stay in charge of your group when you join us. Agreed?" He finally conceded to my demands, but not getting the third set of armor was a minor blow. Then again, most of his conditions didn't mean a thing to me given that they were based off of the lies I had told.

"Agreed, but I am going to need to borrow one thing until I get back." His eyes narrowed, but I smiled a harmless grin. "Don't worry; all I want is a tool to interface with a slave collar."

~\o/~

After a quick hoof shake and a trot out of the building, it was over. I heaved a sigh of relief and Chains chuckled next to me. Shackles had assigned him to follow me around and help me get the things I had traded for. In all honesty, I was cheated out of so much of the real value of that talisman, but at the time I had only known that the thing was really valuable (a very vague idea) and I was happy to have made it out with my life.

"Not so puffed up anymore, huh?" He asked and I glared at him.

"I'm just glad you're all smart enough to make a deal. Now take me to where your newest arrivals are." He returned back into the silent guide that I preferred and led me toward one of the tall buildings.

In all honesty, save for the fact that he made his living selling lives, Chains wasn't a seemingly bad pony, but I had no time to pal around with the scum of the earth. I was looking for the scum that had made me get down on the level I was at and I was starting to grow excited at the idea of holding her life in my hooves. I didn't let that show though, being as the slavers preyed on any emotion. Still, revenge was at hoof.

Chains led me through an opening in the cage walls and all around I heard the resigned sighs and groans of the slaves in their cages. I scanned them all and say that these were not the types of slaves you might find in a raider hideout or in service to a wealthy merchant. These slaves were all clean and there was no bloody and stained hay for them to sleep on while dying of rape and disease. These slaves did not beg for help either; they just stared blankly at me, their spirits broken. They knew that anyone here was not here to save them, but to buy them. On the outside, they seemed like normal ponies that were even cleaner than a slaver, but every single one of them was going to end up either working themselves to death as a guard, being passed from raider to raider like a toy, or die in a futile attempt to kill their master. They all knew it and didn't even try to fight it. After all, no pony ever escaped Maremoros. I felt bad for them, I truly did, but they were not my priority. I had grown up knowing of the injustice of the wasteland, and I knew that I could only help myself.

"We keep the new arrivals over here." Chains led me to the far corner of the room where there were actually solid steel walls. I assumed that they did that so the new arrivals could only hear the resigned moans and groans of the already broken slaves. "We only have one though, and she is feisty. When they brought her in, we had to do some major work to get her to a level we could sell. Her mane was shaved and her tail had actually been dyed if you can believe that. But we have our ways of getting them up to par."

When I saw her, I couldn't believe it was the same mare from only a few days before. Her coat was still the same reddish-yellow that I remembered, but her tail was now a stark scarlet. This, and her mane, which before had been shaved, was now long and luxurious. If it wasn't for the sudden and fearful spark of recognition in her face, I would've thought that I had found the wrong pony. Silently, she mouthed the word 'you'.

"What do you think? Is she enough to keep your boys happy? You will have to make sure to keep her on a short leash though." Chains looked at me, not noticing or not caring enough to comment on the scene.

"She'll do perfectly. Just go get me that collar control tool." I said without thinking and the onlooker scurried away.

"What are you doing here?" After another solid minute of staring, she spoke first and I noticed that all of the bravado I had seen before was absent. Either that or it was hidden.

"Well," I started, but I had no answer.

Up until now, I had a plan of action. Find the raider, and make it to Maremoros to find the secret my mother had left for me. The latter part was still in the works, but, now that I had achieved the first part, I was clueless. I just looked at her. Of course she was the slave I wanted to pick, but once I had her life in my hands I had no clue what to do next. One voice told me to kill her in revenge for everything she had done to me. Another told me that I had killed enough in the name of vengeance. I saw the metal ring stuck into her neck, just below the explosive collar, and was reminded that she might still have some use. If not, I still held her life in my hooves.

"I didn't come here to find you, but since you're here I plan to make use of you."

"Screw off. I'm not helping you with anything, and I'm not about to be a slave either; so don't think I need your help to get out of here." My momentary pause had given her the time to compose herself again.

"Really, because from my point of view it looks like you could use a helping hoof." I tapped her cage idly with a hoof.

"It's a work in progress, love. Besides, I still don't know just how you even managed to get here so I'd bet your luck is about to run out. How about you just run along, and I'll forget I ever saw you." She was pissing me off, and she knew it. Though thinking back, she was right. The only reasons I had made it this far were luck and flying over most of the dangerous terrain.

"Just role with me for now. After all, I am your ticket out of here."

"And just how do you plan to get me out of here, love? Last I checked you were dirt poor." She taunted as Chains walked up with a small access tool in his mouth.

"Here you are, sir. Is she to your liking?" He asked after giving me the tool.

"Perfect, Chains. She'll be perfect." I put the facade of being overly important back into play and saw a look of fear on the mare's face. Just perfect.

~\o/~

"So, what do you know about this place?" I asked the mare beside me, who refused to give me her name at the time.

"Even if I did know anything I wouldn't tell you." She retorted from her place about three yards behind me.

Chains had pointed me to the shop where I could get what I was promised and left after explaining how to operate the collar mechanism. The collars could explode under three conditions; I could remotely detonate the collar, if the collar moved too far from the registered owner, it would explode then as well, and if my heart stopped beating, the same would happen to her's. Currently, I had the distance set to three yards, which was the lowest possible. Every now and again her collar would start beeping in warning when she lagged behind.

"The fact that I haven't killed you is already enough mercy on my part. You can at least tell me what I want to know."

"Look, I don't know where you get off thinking that I'm going to even act like I owe you. I didn't ask for you to help me and I'm not going to repay you for it. If it wasn't for this damned collar, I'd already have killed you and been on my way."

"Then why did you let me live then?" I reminded her of our showdown at my hometown.

"That was because I enjoyed the thought of you, alone and dying in a pile of sand while your home burned down around you. Putting a bullet in your head would've been too boring, love." She dashed in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.

"Then you underestimated my luck," I pushed past her, into the general store, Collars and Killers, "now pick yourself out some armor." I increased her improved range to fifty yards, plenty to survey the store.

"Excuse me?" She asked, dumbfounded.

"You heard me. If you're going to be of any use to me, then you're going to need some proper armor. You'll also be given these back once we are outside." I gestured to her pistols that I still had strapped to my sides.

"Just what is your game? You come into town, buy me of all ponies, and now you're even planning to give me back my guns. You must have some sort of plan."

"Not at all." I lied and walked away from her. I had slivers of a plan forming in my mind, but until I could learn of where the doctor's office once was it remained in slivers.

I distracted myself from my objectives and instead looked for some armor and weapons I could make use of. At first, I was very interested in the various small pistols, but I was turned off by the idea of having to share ammo with my unwilling compatriot. Not to mention the fact that if something was within range of a pistol, I was most likely going to want to conserve my ammo with the blade. No, I had been promised three weapons of my choosing and I was going to make sure both were fully usable. I searched around and found two weapons that I thought would be the most beneficial. One was a submachine gun, that, while somewhat cumbersome to aim at the moment, would work well at medium range and allow myself to use easily once I had the balancing down. My companion was going to get the second weapon, an assault rifle that I assumed would be much more useful to her if she found herself against a faraway enemy. My preference would've been more to the effect of a shotgun to kill armored ponies, but none were available. Whether they had been hidden, or there simply were none, I could not know.

I found my armor next. What I choose was not very special at all, but I was smart enough to recognize that wearing a full getup of metal armor, no matter who much it would stop me from being hurt, was not smart. I wasn't very strong and most of my fights thus far had been won by some manner of mobility. This did mean a fairly, hodgepodge setup, however. I found two pieces of pre-war combat armor that were meant for my fore hooves, a pair of leather guards for my hind legs and a few metal plates that I fit into my saddlebags to keep any bullets from getting though. It looked utterly ridiculous, but it was either that or wear raider armor and get shot at by any sane pony. The fact that I found nothing to keep my head safe except some pre-war sunglasses was disheartening.

My companion, however, had no such troubles. When I made my way back to the front, she was waiting in a full set of raider armor that had been slightly modified to look less threatening. There were no skulls adorning it, or blood caked onto it, but it was still the distinctive bronze color with small netting of rebar around the shoulders and chest. She was smiling, happy to be back in something that felt like a second skin to her, I guess. This did make me feel better. A happy mare was more likely to talk. Chains was behind the counter, explaining the situation to the shop owner.

"But those are some of my most expensive items! How am I supposed to make a living if you people keep taking the best pieces without paying?" He shouted, but Chains looked unshaken.

"Yours is the only shop we don't charge a rent from. Yours is the only shop we sell things we have no use for to. If you'd like to keep complaining about that, then I suggest you go to Shackles and renegotiate. Good luck with that by the way."

"But, but..."

"Look, you should count yourself lucky that we're still going to make them buy their ammo and general supplies from you. Keep it up and you'll be giving it to them for free." This was clearly a recurring conversation for them, the way Chains spoke was callous, but lacked the any real anger or emotion behind it.

"Fine." The shopkeeper said in defeat.

The shopkeeper then turned to me and my companion, and we were both slightly embarrassed at the fact that we had been staring quite obviously. I renegotiated the third weapon I was supposed to receive, and instead got thee mags for the assault rifle, two for the submachine gun and about a hundred bullets for each. This was still only after selling the scraps that nobody in Graymare had wanted and shelling out a few caps for the difference. After some healing potions and a couple of days worth of food, my store of bottle caps was dreadfully low, only about ten or so. However, I didn't do any real bartering with the shopkeeper, mostly because I felt bad for the extortion he was already under; so my sudden lack of funds was my own fault. That, and bullets and magazines are fucking expensive. Sure I could've just bought one of each and enough for the mag, but then I'd had to be praying constantly to find some raider using one so I could get more, and frankly, that just sounded stupid. I'd rather be poor, but armed, than rich and defenseless.

After that, Chains guided us to the exit quickly and kicked us back out into the wasteland. There was urgency to his step that I found unsettling. He kept pushing ponies out of the way and didn't stop to chat with any other slavers as he had before. When I walked past the still frozen guard at the door, I started to understand why. Before I was even fifty yards away from the base, I turned back and saw that the little compass that had been guiding me was filled with the usual non-hostile markers, but then slowly they all tinted to deep red. After consulting the help menu for my implant, I realized that this meant that in some way, I had just made an enemy I didn't want.

~\o/~

We walked for away from the place for two hours in almost complete silence. Between glances over my shoulder to make sure we weren't being followed, I tried in vain to get my partner to tell me her name or really anything. The last thing I wanted to do was have to call her 'you' or 'slave' in the next town. Hell, I still had to keep the distance set low on her collar because she wouldn't even be near me.

"Look, all things considered, you could have it a lot worse right now." I tried to reason as we stopped by a rock outcropping, which for some damn reason my compass actually marked as Lone Rock Pillar. The entire place had been graffiti-ed with everything from a picture of apples made with the dried blood of some long forgotten pony and a tasteful depiction of somepony impaling, themselves on Luna's horn. Regardless, it was our home for the night, and I did finally get a word out of her.

"Get me some food." Not the words I was hoping for.

"Excuse me?"

"Food you asshole. You're carrying all of it and I want some." She held a hoof out to me, but I didn't move an inch towards my saddlebags.

"And just what makes you think that I should give you any? I saved you from that hell and I think I deserve some respect for that." I pulled out a can of pre-war applesauce (Now with 200% more apples than before!), and started eating merrily.

"Oh don't act like you're a saint. You only brought be out of there to torture me. If you were really kind, you would've saved one of the other ponies in there and let them go free." I tried to ignore her, but that wasn't easy when the dying light of the wasteland makes no sound. "Do you know that some of those mares were pregnant? Sure those slavers don't deal in foals, but the little bastards are going to be raised as slavers. You could've saved two lives, but instead you chose me for your own enjoyment."

"Shut up." I grumbled, finding it difficult to swallow my food.

"What? Do you not like the facts? Little prince of nowhere comes to make something of himself and he's still just as selfish as the rest of us."

"I said shut up." I glared, but it was forced.

"Oh please. You know it's true. I bet that you're-" I stopped her.

"Shut up and take your god damn food, and if you so much as look at me again I will kill you!" I roared at her and threw a can of carrots at her face. She didn't speak again to my credit.

My first thoughts were that it was a stupid idea to have given her two complete hours to think of what to say to me and the second was how right she was. I had given the other slaves there absolutely zero consideration. They had all stared right at me and I had brushed off their looks casually. Just as I was beating myself up over it, a voice broke through the music on my radio.

"Now isn't that a great sunset out there children? Well I mean, we can't really see it, but I'd guess some of you night people are happy. Now my ears on the ground are telling me that right now you're all wondering just what I'm on here to tell you about this late in the day. Well what else would it be, if not the news? It seems like the little bat out of hell from yesterday just likes to make my job annoying and to ruin my track record. Remember how I said I was rooting for him? Well, not anymore. The little cunt just did a 180 and it's pissing me off. You know about the slavers out in Maremoros? The well armed ones that nopony can seem to kick out? Well now, we might never get rid of them! Some asshat decided that it would be a good idea to give the slavers a water talisman and now, even if we tried, there's no way we could keep them from having clean water. And I'm sure that by now, you all know just who gave them that talisman. Yes, it was the little bat, and now he's been seen leaving the place, with new armor, some actual weapons, and a slave of his own. I don't know children; I guess things are just weird like that. And if you hear this, wherever you are, I'd like you to stop and think for a second about what you're doing and what you plan on doing." The pompous, but still flat voice finished while the words echoed inside my head.

I turned down the music and starting thinking pretty hard about what my plans were while I finished my food. I already knew that I needed a way back into Maremoros. The plan originally for that was to try and find some of the ponies that wanted to fight the slavers and rally them to fight them with me. It was a long term plan and I knew it would keep me from learning about my mother for a while, but it also was going to let me keep from going too far down in the world. Now, I had a different problem. I hadn't thought for an instant that the deal I made for the weapons that would let me execute my plan, would be made public in less than a day. Now, I figured I would be shot at within any distance of a respectable settlement. I needed a new plan and I spent the last half hour of light creating that plan. I thought over what I could still do and what things I still had with me. By the end, I had a plan that only a barbarian would be proud of. However, it could work.

"Ready to get going?" I said, standing up and looking at my partner who was still busy trying to lick all the possible juices out of her can.

"Where are we going? There's not going to be any light for much longer." She spoke idly, which was more than I expected.

"Where else, back to Maremoros."

~\o/~

In the following three hours it took us to get back to the now glowing town (most of said time having been spent fumbling around in the darkness guided only by my compass), I had explained my plan to my unwilling follower. My plan was simple. I take out the two guards at the gate with my sword, easy considering the lack of lighting at the gate. Then, we would move inside, using the many empty buildings as cover and make our way to the central office I had been to. The reason, as my follower was finally so kind as to tell me, was because that building was what once had served as the clinic and I assumed that if we took Shackles as a hostage, we could convince the slavers to let us and the slaves go in return for their beloved master. I also assumed that the townspeople wouldn't help the slavers much, if at all, given the display earlier.

"It's suicide." She said as we waited a little ways away from the entry. "There's no way it would work without us being seen and even if we did manage to take him hostage, all they would have to do would be shoot you and they'd kill both of us."

"Just trust me when I say that I have a plan." I told her, not yet wanting to spill the beans about it.

"Come on, at least I'm talking to you." It was true, and I was about to tell her my plan when the guards finally changed shifts.

The two new guards were a unicorn mare and an earth pony stallion. One had an assault rifle while the other had a combat shotgun. They stood next to each other in the center of the lighted area near the entrance. I silently crept up the edge of the light by the unicorn and made my move. I ran headlong across the opening with the blade out; the unicorn fell without protest and the earth pony had to no time to fumble with his shotgun to save his head. After looting the body for the gun and a couple of caps, I grabbed a hoof on the headless pony and pulled it off into the shadows were it wouldn't be seen. Then I came back for the head. By that time, the unicorn had already moved the other mare's body and head away and tossed the sand around enough to hide the blood, what little there was.

"That explains how you were able to survive up to this point." She commented, pointing at the now sheathed blade.

"So far it's been better than any gun I've found." I said while passing her her pistols, the assault rifle and the ammo for both. I might mention that, while she did not say it, she looked more than extremely grateful to have her weapons back, and smiled in glee when I brought up the rifle.

"Well, love, I guess you can do some things right." I made no note of the comment and walked inside with her behind. I would've preferred to have flown in, but I was not strong enough to carry all of the weapons, her and myself over the barricade. I had a suspicion that they would be looking for a pegasus for a while.

Guided by my E.F.S., which I was falling in love with, I maneuvered us away from the patrolling slavers in the center of town and made it into the more abandoned portions. In that place was where I learned of a major flaw in this E.F.S.'s design. Things were going fairly smoothly for us. My partner was definitely louder than I was, given that she was being burdened by such heavy armor, but as far as I could see there were no slavers nearby. As we moved, we occasionally stopped to check a building for anything possibly valuable and look to make sure we were headed the right direction. I could've flown, but the eternal cloud cover was thinner that night, and I might've been seen. We were able to round about half of the distance we needed to be behind the HQ before we ran into trouble.

We stopped to go through a two story shack and check our location again, when we heard a crashing below us. We looked at each other in panic. Both floors had just been single, open rooms and if they came up here, we would be found. Wordlessly, I snuck over to the staircase, barely avoiding a pile of tin cans left by the previous occupants. A minute later, and I saw them come up. One unicorn stallion and an earth pony mare about as stuck on each other as they could get without having two backs, if you catch my meaning. I looked up and saw my partner curled against a corner, trying to act like a pile of scrap metal. The slavers, though distracted and most likely inebriated, still noticed the oddness of the shaking metal. The unicorn pulled out his revolver and the mare grabbed a loose board. I listened for a second longer to make sure nopony was still downstairs before I cut through the two of them. The unicorn died cleanly, but I had to take a second slash at the mare being as the first one only managed to separate her fore hooves from her body. She cried out just before the blade got to her and I felt my blood run cold. We were still a fair distance from the center of town, but considering that my E.F.S. Didn't show me these ponies, I was certain there might be more.

Dear Celestia, were there more. About a minute after the scream my compass was filled with flashing red markers. I pulled out the submachine gun and got ready for war. The stealthy approach had failed.

My partner levitated her assault rifle alongside her, noticing the seriousness of the situation, despite her inability to see the number of enemies. At least I had learned something; the E.F.S. only shows enemies that are actively looking for me. Whatever jackasses designed it needed to be fired and sent for psychiatric help.

"We ne'd to get moving, now." I mumbled through the mouth piece as two raiders walked into the stairwell. I fired about ten shots and they both fell before they could return fire. Half of those shots missed and I realized that shooting this thing was going to take some getting used to.

I didn't have the time to get used to it though. I did a quick spin to see if there were any openings in the encirclement, but there were none. I heard the window on my left break and a small metal apple fell to the floor. While I was busy wondering just what the hell it was, my body got me out of there. I grabbed the mare and flew through the open window as fast as I could, but not before the grenade went off with a deafening bang. I felt burning shrapnel rip through my hind legs, but I kept myself my screaming out. I landed on the roof of another nearby building, setting down my partner first. The upside was that we weren't being shot at yet. I imagined they were checking the last building to see if the grenade did its job. I checked my legs and found about seven small holes bleeding profusely. My instincts told me to gulp down a healing potion, but my experience with the dead doctor told me to dig out the shrapnel first. I pulled out a set of tweezers and set to work on them. My partner, if you could even really call her that, was busier looking around at the streets below with her pistols than whether or not I was fine. Her assault rifle, I realized later, had been lost in the escape. It only took a few minutes of work to dig out the metal shards and bandage my legs. Running would be hard, but workable.

"I'm gonna fly us down. We get down there, you follow me and we move fast. If we can get to their base, then we'll still be able to get a hostage advantage." I commanded and she nodded without speaking.

When we touched down, I began a hurried trot to the center. There were still a few targets in the way, but most were still focused on searching elsewhere. Our luck was pisspoor and we ran into two ponies before we had passed a single house. One took a wild shot with a shotgun, but somehow missed by a mile, and we were able to kill both without damage. However, that also meant everyone else knew where we were. I kicked the pace up, flying quickly over the earth and using the submachine gun to instant pelt any slavers I saw. We only encountered another three slavers on the way there, but I could still see the crowd on our tails.

The town center was deserted. The slaves had woken up and were staring wide eyed at us, but I ignored them completely. I had come to save them, but I had no time to be unlocking cages and disarming collars. We made it into the headquarters without further issue and found the place utterly deserted for the first two floors. We barged into the third floor and found Shackles at his desk with three other slavers at his side. Things went according to plan here and I sprayed down two of the guards while my follower killed the last one and shot Shackles at the base of his right foreleg. A few bullets had grazed by my stomach, but adrenaline had kept me from noticing at the time. The pony roared in pain, dropping his revolver to the ground. Without wasting time, we crossed the room and she shot him again in the other leg.

"Celestia damn it! Fuck off, both of you." He screamed and I slammed a hoof into his maw.

"Quiet," I yelled and stared into his eyes, "you kept your mouth shut and work with me and you might just survive." He nodded to me and I turned to my partner, "Keep your guns on him while I do this."

She nodded and I took my hoof out of his mouth. I fished the collar access tool out of my saddle bags and started working with her collar, much to his distain.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" She growled, but didn't take her eyes off of the crippled slaver.

"Getting this damn thing off." I said as the tapped the release and the collar popped off of her neck.

This was where my plan got very sketchy. I had no way of knowing how she would react and to be honest, things could have gotten very bad very quickly. Instead, she just looked at me like I was the stupidest stallion alive. I pretended to ignore her awe and grabbed the collar from the floor, quickly snapping it around Shackles. I set the distance to about the size of the room and stepped back.

"You make any wrong moves and you'll die. You get me?" He nodded again through pain and fear, "Good, now tell me the password to that." I pointed to his terminal.

"There isn't a password, only Chains and I could read to begin with."

I figured I still had time before the slavers came back to give their boss a report; so I logged into the terminal and found the oldest files I could. Most were just logs of needed medicines or of specific reports on injuries, but two actually told me something I needed to know. The files were titled "She's Alive!" and "Sorry.".

"Personal log: She's Alive!"

"I don't know how, but Scarlet is here. Last time I saw her was at the tower being crushed by rubble, but now she's here with the test foal. They both looked worse for wear, but she said that they didn't have to go far from here and now she's going to leave before nightfall. She told me a few things about what happened, but none of the details. Said she's been trying to break up her past as much as possible and gave me a few of her things to keep safe for the foal. I'm not sure what her deal is, so if she talked to you, Duster, I'd like to know."

From, Chems."

"Personal log: Sorry."

"I'm sorry kid, but I'm not gonna be there to tell you what she wanted you to know. And if any of you fucks don't know what that means, get off this damn terminal, leave it and if a black colt with a pink mane comes through here, you let him read this. I may be dead, but don't think I won't screw you over from the other side. Anyway, I'm not going to be there for you. Slavers are trying to break down my door as I type this out, but I figured you need to know what I do more than I need to struggle fruitlessly. So here's the story. Your mother, myself and a few others were Enclave. We left when what we thought might save the wasteland become something that might destroy it. We thought your mother died when we were escaping, but she didn't and somehow the two of you managed to end up at this far flung end of the south. But I can't tell you anymore than that. We all did things to ourselves to keep the knowledge of what we worked on from being exposed. One of those things was scrapping pieces of our memories. Even now, I can't remember what we were working on, or exactly what made it so dangerous. But I can give you the small clue that I do have. If you're in my office, then I need you to get behind the painting and into that safe. The things that are in there can help you get somewhere. Godspeed kid; you're gonna need it."

I processed the information as quickly as I could. Signs had already pointed toward my mom being involved with the Enclave, which severely dampened that blow, but the idea of her being involved with something so dangerous that she managed to scrap not only her mind, but the minds of everyone she worked with. Hell, I didn't even think that something like mind wiping was possible. I also knew just why the slavers had so readily turned against me; their boss probably remembered the message vaguely when he saw me, then clarified the message. I turned to look at the painting and found myself snout-to-snout with the yellow unicorn.

"Why?" She asked calmly, even though her gaze felt like I was going to get physical wounds.

"Why what?"

"Why I'd you take off my collar?" She clarified and I could see one pistol pointed at me.

"So he wouldn't be able to do anything when we traded him for our escape."

"And what if I killed you and made my own escape? There's nothing to stop me if you can't kill me."

"I trusted you," I grimaced. "I bet on the fact that you wouldn't till me because I had saved you from being sold and hadn't gotten any revenge on you for what you did to me."

"You trusted me, the mare who ruined your life?"

"Trust me, with everything I'm learning about my life right now, happened there is just s drop in the bucket," I shoved past her. "Besides, they won't just let you walk free if they find out that you're the one who got their leader killed."

She didn't like my answer at all, I could tell, but I was right in that she needed Shackles alive and I was needed alive for that. I walked to the back of the room and tore down the charcoal painting whose image had been blurred by time, behind it I found a cloud safe nestled into the wall.

"It's useless, we've all tried and nobody has been able to even touch that safe, let alone open it." Shackles comments just as I grabbed onto a lever and pulled it open.

"Seems to work for me." I smirked and his draw dropped a few inches.

What was inside, was underwhelming to me the, but I now find invaluable. There was another one of those odd magical energy cells like the one in my blade, a small microchip with a note that said "insert into eye implant when safe", and a folded up black skin suit. My immediate thoughts were that the microchip must be the important thing, but, after remembering just how important the mare had at least thought these things were, I gathered them all and put them into a pocket of the saddlebags where I hoped they wouldn't be damaged. Before I could turn around, I heard the door open and twin 10mm gunshots. I turned and saw a dead slaver on the floor, blood oozing from a pair of holes in her head.

"Please tell me you actually have a plan for this part?" The unicorn looked at me incredulously.

"Of course, from here on, it's diplomacy's job."

~\o/~

After half an hour of trying to calm down the slavers outside with their leader, I managed to get a proper negotiation going. Chains, who I learned was Shackles' right hoof man, negotiated with me in the office, both of us disarmed of weapons, and we came to an agreement that superiority benefited me. First, they had to release every slave and let them walk out the front gate of town with me watching from the tower. Second, I would set the distance on their leader's collar to a point that was far enough for me to walk out of town and afterwards they would be able to disable the collar. Nobody gets shot, and I accomplish what I set out for. The problem was that I had to send out their leader before I was allowed to walk out, which meant that I had to be fast or else they would disable his collar and end me.

"I'll be going out with the slaves. Consider this goodbye and don't look for me again." My partner said while helping herself to a combat shotgun that was on the floor.

"Any chance you're going to tell me your name at least?" I asked knowing full well I wouldn't get an answer.

"Not a chance, love. The last thing I need is you chasing me around like a puppy." She smirked.

"You know, you don't have to leave. It's not like I have any plans to kill you considering what help you've been here." I actually wanted to plead and beg her to stay, but I didn't want her to know that I was just afraid of being alone.

"You're too much of a goody-goody for me, love. Not that I don't like your way of doing things, but I'm a raider and you kinda cramp my style." She walked out the door and I felt sad now that she was gone. After all, I was alone again in the middle of a death trap.

I took a deep breath pushed the feeling aside and went to the window to watch the slaves leave. The last of them were by the gate when Chains walked in to get Shackles. The rust colored earth pony looked me up and down and I noticed a collar access tool, revolver and spear clamped at his side. That worried me more than anything else could have. Our agreement specifically said that he would not bring any weapons or tools with him.

"Woah, you know the deal; no weapons or I kill him." I pulled the detonator from my harness and he actually had the nerve to laugh at me.

"Go ahead if you want to, see if I care." He didn't move from the doorway, but that didn't make me like it.

"E'use me?" I mumbled through the detonator.

"I said, go ahead. You'd be doing me a favor honestly. I've wanted him out of the picture for years and now I've finally gotten a good opportunity." Shackles started to curse and scream through the gag I had put on him and I stared Chains down.

"Just wh't are you ge'ing at?" I narrowed my eyes.

"You kill him, and I let you walk. Of course, they'll all want to come after you, but they would do that anyway. I'm just asking you to do me this favor."

"And if I say no?"

"Well then let's just say that those slaves won't be making it any further." He grabbed the detonator and I felt my blood chill, "Come on kid, what's worth more to you that sack of shit or all of those slaves?"

I knew he was serious and I was stupid enough to listen, "Fine." I pulled on the mouthpiece of the detonator and watched as Shackles' head exploded into a violent red mess. "Happy?" I didn't feel bad about killing him, but it did piss me off that I had to do for somepony else's gain.

"Gullible idiot." He mumbled and I heard his detonator click. "And now to tie up the loose end."

I saw him draw the shotgun and I dived behind the desk on instinct, but I was still in shock. They were dead. I hadn't seen them die like I had seen Shackles die, but I knew Chains wasn't lying. I could hear a scream get cut off in the far distance that confirmed my beliefs when it was cut off. I was about to burst into tears when the first volley of buckshot pelted the desk and drew me back into the fight. I was sad, but unlike before the one I could be mad at was right in front of me. It was time to kill.

I waited for the next shot and then jumped out with the blade drawn. I made the mistake of lunging into the wrong spot though. Chains had moved to flank me and I had jumped where he initially was. However, we both took a moment to realize what to do, and mine was shorter. I jumped again and took a slash at him, but he turned and spearhead slashed across my neck. I flapped me wings quickly to avoid the fatal damage, but the cut still hurt like hell. The gun fired again and I felt lead pack into my right fore hoof. I roared in pain and rushed him with my wings. I knew it was a losing battle, but I had one shot. I ducked below the spear and felt it graze a line down my back, but I still went for the killing blow. Then the blade had other ideas. I heard a sudden popping from the hilt and the blade dissipated a mere inch from his neck. I cursed my luck and hit him head on. I didn't manage to budge the heavier earth pony much, but I did manage to push him to the window. He was still stunned when I made a final ram and sent him through the bay window. Wind gusted in and I heard a deafening thump as his body hit the ground outside. I heaved a sigh of premature relief. However, my luck had run out.

"Fuck, blow the damn place! He killed Shackles." Chains yelled and before I could make a jump out of the window, the floor suddenly shifted under me and the sounds of explosions filled the air.

I put the worthless blade back into its sheath and dived under the desk, praying for safety. Finally the floor gave way and I went into free fall. I saw the ground dropping beneath me and closed my eyes fearfully. Something punctured my left flank and went through my cutie marks. I managed to get a scream of pain out before I opened my eyes and looked down to see a concrete brick just as my forehead slammed into it and the work went dark. All in all, it could've been worse.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Primal Instinct- You may not always know what's going on around you, but your body sure does. You now have a 20% high chance of dodging thrown weapons and melee attacks.
Quest Perk: The Bluff- Time spent in negotiations has taught you how powerful the right lies can be; both for you and against you. Your charm now makes all lies 25% more believable, but the consequences of having your bluff called are 30% more detrimental.

Author's Note

Round 4. That and I was soooooo tempted to just post this without even a spell check. I also realize that the whole partner/follower bit was annoying, but to this point, he didn't know her name for reasons I have thought out. But I will Pinkie-toe promise yall that I won't do it again. Now go read something quality, like the original Fallout Equestria.

5. Fast and Ferocious

What happened thereafter was a blur to me. I awoke once only a few minutes later and could hear muffled gunfire and explosions reverberating through the concrete, but I drifted back into the darkness before I could call out. Then again, but this time everything was quiet, I couldn't hear anything and nothing moved. I screamed with all my might and tried to move, but pain exploded through my hind legs. I couldn't see, but I reach back and felt to see what was wrong. I was horrified as I felt a metal bar going through one haunch and out of the other. I cried out again and passed out. The third time I heard something above me give way and a bright ray of light showered me. I strained to look up, but before I could see the daylight my strength left me. From there, all I can remember are voices. I heard many voices, but I could not cling to consciousness long enough to register what they were saying. By all accounts, I felt like I was experiencing death, but at a speed slow enough I could ~~enjoy~~ process it.

(^~^)

Death must have preoccupied that night, or else I assure you that that would have been my end. Instead, I woke up and found myself in a bed. Well, not a bed, but an old army cot with a paper thin blanket and surrounded on all sides by a patchwork green curtain. Given the pain that I still felt in my legs and the severe lack of pearly gates, I was pretty sure I wasn't dead. However this did raise the question of just how the hell I was alive.

I lifted the blanket to look at my legs and found them all attached and functional, though they were bandaged heavily. I pulled up my eye display to get an idea of what was going on, but the compass looked like it was being jammed and the E.F.S. was gone with it. However, it was kind enough to tell me that I had made a complete recovery. Now, I had different issues. I was by myself in a room I couldn't fully see, put here by ponies I didn't know and without any of my equipment. I was almost naked in every sense of the word. Like I said, almost. I had hidden a bobby pin and a small bit of a knife I broke in my hair before the assault. Mainly they were for if I ever got captured and had to pick my way out. More than ever did I feel like past me had done present me a pretty big solid. Did I forget to mention that I was missing all of my lovely mane? Because when I reached up to pull out the items, my fucking mane was gone. Well not completely gone, but I was cut down to a scruffy little splotch that pissed me off. I wasn't so much angry that the bobby pin and blade were gone; those I could scavenge. But my mane, the mane that I enjoyed just as much for its looks as for its ability to hide things, the loss of that is what made me angry.

I hopped off of the cot as quietly as I could and got ready to leave. I didn't know who or what was on the other side of the curtain, but I wasn't going to let them come to me. Even if they had been nice enough to fix me up, I wasn't about to go trusting ponies so easily after Maremoros. I crouched down and crawled underneath the curtain on the side opposite of the opening in it. I thrusted a glance in all directions and saw nopony around me before looking at the rest of my surroundings. From what I could see, I was in a large interior or underground room with concrete walls, low ceilings, hanging lights and five other little curtained areas around the room. I turned my head to look at the other side of my area and saw a unicorn mare, sitting at a desk wearing some odd red robes and looking down at a clipboard. Behind her was a door that I assumed would get me out of here. However, with the lack of shadows and low ceilings, I had no way of getting to that door without her seeing me.

Then I had an idea. I slipped back under the curtain and gave the cot a once over. The entire thing was made of rusting iron with the fabric more or less draped over it, but it was solid. However the thing about cots is that they need to be able to be packed and moved which meant that some of the places where the metal had been impacted or bent when moving were closer to breaking off. I bent down and grabbed on to the rubber end of one of the legs and gave it a hard pull. At first it didn't want to budge, but a couple of more pulls and the rubber end pulled off, taking with it some of the weaker metal. Celestia is kind like that. The next part was the tricky part. I took the end back outside the curtain and looked at the light hanging on the far side of the room from me. I had no confidence in my ability to throw things neither far nor accurately, however, I figured that a broken light might be enough to draw the mare's attention long enough for me to slip through the door. I prayed for mercy and threw the damned thing as hard as I could. It flew through the air like a brick and landed halfway between me and the light with a light clanking. I often wished I had been a unicorn.

Right as I was about to begin wallowing in my defeat, I heard hoofs beating on the floor and a small 'oh shit' from a mare. The gray mare trotted past where I was without a sidelong glance at me. I had no clue how somepony who was supposed to be on guard could be so imperceptive, but I took it at face value and flew over to the door before the opportunity was lost. The door worked the same as a vault door and opened when I hit a small pressure plate. I was out before she even knew what was on the floor.

(^~^)

Stupid. On so many levels was I stupid. The moment I slipped through the door I found myself face to face with a pair of hulking metal... ponies. They dwarfed me by more than half a foot and stared at me dumbfounded, but their heads were definitely pony. They were completely encapsulated by a metal shell of armor that looked like it would break a normal pony's back with only half of its weight. I only knew they were like me from their heads protruding from the top. It took me a minute to even realize that I was being talked to.

"Hey, you alright? Lookin' a little jumpy." One of them, a beige earth pony stallion, asked me and I realized I had been shaking.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine, just a little hard walking right now." I held up a hind leg feebly.

"Well hell that does look like a pretty big fuck up to be dealing with. What's your name?" He asked, poking at the leg.

"Crimson Glow." I responded without thinking and cursed myself. Fake names should have been second nature, but I still wasn't thinking entirely clearly.

"Yeah, but what's your rank? Initiate, knight..." He trailed off and I stared at him blankly. At the time, I had no clue what initiate meant or what a knight was, but I knew I had to say something.

"Initiate, just initiate."

"Really," he moved up to me and even more did I feel small compared to his hulking frame, "because I was pretty sure we didn't have an initiate by the name of Glow." He looked right into my eyes and I did my best not to shrink back at him. "But, I guess even an elite like me can't notice every little initiate in the works. Little old for an initiate though aren't, ya?"

I breathed finally and noticed just how much I missed it, "I'm a bit of a late bloomer, sir."

"Well you get one now and again I guess," he held out a hoof, "Crusader Gatling and my friend here is Knight Fryer." I shook the metal hoof and smiled shyly. "So, why don't I walk you back to the initiates' barracks? Just to make sure you don't fall."

"No, no, that's fine. I can make my way back myself." I quickly started to walk off, but a metal hoof stopped me.

"Oh come on, you're not even going the right direction. I'll walk you back and then you can brag to your friends about how your got hurt and about how you met an elite like me." He forcibly pulled me between him and Fryer and between the pressure on either side I was unable to move.

I descended further into the belly of this beast I didn't know. What I did know was that I was scared. As we walked through hallways and down stairwells I saw more ponies, some in robes, some in jump suits and other in the same faint metal husks carrying weaponry I didn't even have names for yet, like a mini gun or a machine grenade launcher. Yet through it all, my hosts were telling each other jokes and poking at me to laugh. Whoever these ponies were, they were well armed and psychotic, which scared me more than anything. The entire facility had low metal ceilings and lights built into the floor which gave off a dim hum like those of the vault. The humming grew louder as we went deeper in and eventually we arrived at a giant blast door. Gatling walked up to a terminal and punched in a few things before the door opened.

The inside was completely dark and the sounds of metal rattling and the humming both intensified fivefold. Before I could protest they had pushed me out into the darkness and I heard the door slam shut behind me. At that moment I knew two things, they hadn't bought my shit for a minute and this was not the initiates' barracks. I wasn't given time to think about that though, because a moment later the lights turned on and I found myself surrounded on all sides.

Behind me were Gatling and Fryer blocking the door, two my left and right were two more armored ponies with mini guns with the barrels already spinning. In front of me were three old ponies in robes and behind them was a giant generator that took up more than half of the room, which was already big enough to hold the entire bar I grew up in.

"Fuck me." I groaned and looked at the three in front of me, "so what do you want from me?"

"Excuse me?" The one in the center of the group, a smallish teal unicorn mare with a hood hiding her mane, asked.

"Well you obviously don't want to kill me or else you already would have, but you also aren't going to be taking no for answer based on these two," I gestured to the two guards at my sides. "So what do you want?"

"Don't act so entitled prisoner, you're only alive because of her." The one on the right, a volatile green stallion named Axeheart, barked and pointed to the teal one in the center.

"Oh shut up Axeheart. Everyone here knows that we couldn't have gotten through those slavers without his distraction."

"An operation for which you had no approval. Our job isn't to clean up some wasteland trash heap."

"Nobody died and now we have more weapons at our disposal. I hardly see an issue here." The mare huffed and looked at me for a moment. It felt like she was trying to be reassuring, but it only lasted for an instant.

"The issue here is that we've got an asshole on the radio spitting out the story like it's going out of style. Our goals are to remain hidden, not to be the hot topic of every bar from here to Canterlot."

"Look; we left in the dark, he doesn't know where we are, and it's not the first time we've been on the news."

"But this is the first time it's been about something this close to home, and that is the problem." The mare on the left of the group finally spoke up, "and bringing back him wasn't on the agenda at all."

"He was dying in a pile of rubble. Were we going to just leave him there after giving us such an opportunity? That really sends a good message about us, Pins. Steel Rangers: Abandon your friends!"

"I'm not saying you should've left him to die, but you didn't need to take him with you. Now we can't let him leave without anyone with more than a ten second attention span asking him about what happened." Pins, a rather old red mare with streaks of gray in her green mane, shut down my only benefactor quickly which set me off.

"Excuse me, but I don't like how you're all talking about me like I'm not here." I finally spoke up, but Axeheart didn't miss a beat.

"You shouldn't even be here. The moment you wake up, you try to sneak out and you insult us by claiming to be one of our own. Someone like you doesn't even deserve to be in our presence."

"And yet here I am. So why don't we get down to what you want from me?"

"We don't want anything from you except for a reason to keep you alive." Pins said and I turned to her.

"And I don't want anything from you except my stuff. If you give me that, I can be on my way to and nobody has to know about you."

"Normally we would do that, but there is the problem of your equipment." The teal mare, who I later learned was named Ripper, said and I made a face at her. "You know what I mean; your blade, your implant and all of the other implants you were carrying with you. These aren't the types of things that we can just set you loose with."

"I really don't see why it's any of your business what technology I do and don't have."

"Actually, it is our business. We specialize in finding and confiscating items that would be too dangerous in the hooves of normal ponies."

"Forgive me, but that all sounds like a crock of shit." I spoke my mind and the old mare looked at me, aghast, "Sure, we shouldn't have somepony out there running around with a mega spell halfway up their ass, but an old half-broken sword isn't going to destroy the world. So why don't we get down to the real issue here." I pointed to Ripper, "She saved me when I supposed to die and now you're trying to think of how you can control this situation and get rid of me with some petty reasoning. Am I in the ball park?" Nopony said anything or would even look at me, but I did hear snickering behind me, "I'll take that as a yes. So here's what I propose. You give me all of my stuff back, except for the neck implants and in exchange I'll tell you everything I know about them before you sneak me out of here. You get the best of the tech, and you get to act like you did the right thing for your Celestia damned guidelines."

I took a big gulp of air and looked at the three for their response. Axeheart still looked like he wanted to tear me limb from limb, Pins still looked like she was thrown for a loop and Ripper was smiling devilishly. I've learned one thing in my life, having people smiling in negotiations isn't a good thing unless the deal has already been closed. She turned to both of her colleagues and whispered something to them separately and I saw both of the opposition look more content.

"We'll accept, but with one small condition." Ripper looked me in the eye and I sighed.

"Which is?"

"We're going to need you to do something for us in exchange for the value of the tech that we're letting you keep."

"Again: which is?"

"Nothing much, we just need you to go somewhere and get something."

"What? Do you want me to go to hell and back for a kettle?"

"Well, it's a bit more like I want you to go to Crenimare for a little folder."

I didn't know where Crenimare was or else I never would've accepted, but like an idiot I blurted out, "agreed."

(^~^)

Afterwards I spent a good half an hour telling Ripper in more or less exactness as to what had happened to me from my home burning to why things had gone south in Maremoros. I didn't mention the stable and concocted a lie about the raiders being camped out in the hills, but that I found no record of where they got the implants from. She didn't look like she was buying it, but she did agree to keep the enclave part of my story to herself until I could verify the information. From there, Gatling led me to a small metal room with a single table in the center and gave me a file of information that would serve as my briefing.

Crenimare. If you were going to compile a list of places you didn't want to go in the south, Crenimare would probably be just shy of the top five. Before the war it served as a base of mega spell launching and could control the detonation of the spells remotely and guide them to the correct location. And while none of the mega spells that leveled entire cities were housed there, that didn't mean it was safe when the control station was hacked into and remotely destroyed. The entire town harnessed energy from a controlled mega spell under the center. But without the control station to keep the mega spell contained, it grew rapidly and eventually engulfed the town, forever changing the inhabitants and eventually dissipating about ten years ago. This meant that things previously unobtainable were now open for any would brave enough to fight through the inhabitants. After all, the prewar maps still served as perfect guides since no buildings were ever destroyed. The only reason it fell from being in the top five was because so little was known, and three of those places are megaspell blast points that would cook you before you could get to them. The things that survived in Crenimare are not like any normal wasteland creatures.

Reports varied about the details. Some said that the ghouls there could disappear into thin air, others that they could all levitate objects that would take a group of ten unicorns to even attempt lifting. However, there was one thing that all the reports agreed on; they were fast and they didn't go down easy. Besides that nothing was known for sure.

Thankfully, my 'mission', if you could call it that, was to go to the abandoned control center which meant that I was going to be far from the center of town where most of the heavy shit was. The plan was that I would get in, make my way to the top floor where the controls were, and recover a folder detailing different launch locations and codes for them. The codes were worthless, but the locations could still hold dormant artillery and other materials. It sounded easy, but the severe lack of details in the mission plan made me more than uneasy. I wish I had never accepted the task.

"So what do you think?" Gatling asked from across the table and I cocked an eyebrow at him.

"I hate it. It lacks details, there's no concrete idea of what I'll be fighting except that they're fast and frankly I feel like I was given this so I would die trying that way and you wouldn't have to deal with me anymore."

"Well, you're not exactly wrong. As far as Pins and Axeheart are concerned that's the entire point of sending you there."

"Then why not just shoot me and be done with it?" I asked and put the various papers back into their folder. I had more to read, but there was still a day's travel ahead of me.

"Because while Elder Pins and Star Paladin Axeheart are two of our three leaders, Star Paladin Ripper still has a large amount of support among ponies like me who do the actual fighting. Pissing her off isn't a good idea."

"And yet she's the one who suggested this idea. If she wanted me alive I'd think she would've tried harder."

"She's confident in your abilities. Not to mention that if she didn't at least do that much they wouldn't have agreed."

"Well it's not like I have much of a choice if you're going to be stuck up my ass the whole time. Now let's go get my stuff." I moved for the door, but he cut me off.

"Look, I've been nice because you're not really familiar with our system around here, but I can't have you mouthing off to me the whole time. You address me as Crusader Gatling from here on and you give me all due respect. Are we clear?" He was still smiling, but his tone gave off more weight than I thought him capable of.

"Clear." I didn't like it, but it wasn't in my best interest to piss him off.

"Good, then let's go get your crap, outsider." He led me out through the door.

The base was much less confusing after seeing a map. The exit was a single, quarter mile long, tunnel that ran only a few meters under the surface of the desert. The tunnel was filled with traps and automated security to get rid of any uninvited guests and reinforced to prevent forced entry. At its end was an elevator that went down to the main atrium. After that, it just split into three wings that each housed a different department. The east wing for research and development, the central wing for barracks, offices and the generator and lastly the west wing served as the armory and storage area.

"How did you all manage to build this place?" I said aloud as we walked about the facility and added as an afterthought, "Crusader."

"We didn't build it, outsider. This was an artillery launch site before the mega spells hit, but we've converted it into a usable base. The fact that the elevator once housed a missile large enough to wipe a zebra village off the map is what lets us haul in larger pieces of technology." Gatling rattled off in a matter-of-fact tone as we walked into another small room with my things spread around on a table and Ripper standing behind them.

"Glad to see you could make it, outsider. I've taken the liberty taking those implants from your items already." She said, but I noticed that my blade, the microchip, the body suit and the magical energy battery were all out on the table.

"I also see you've helped yourself to looking through everything else." I said slyly and got a glare from Gatling, "Star Paladin."

"You're going to have to start watching that tone if you get around Axeheart or Pins, but yes, I did look through the rest of your things and I have to say, I wish I had asked for the blade instead." She said, flicking some of her black mane out of her face.

"And why is that?" I asked while I sorted through the things that had been left in my saddlebags. Honestly, I wanted to just grab everything and slam the door on my way out, but I knew it wasn't smart to piss off my only lifeline in this place.

"Well, I haven't had time to properly inspect it, but do you see this?" She levitated the green striped battery in front of me and I nodded, "This magical battery isn't like the other ones you'd find in a normal magical energy weapon, it's been made to harness a different type of magic. And this blade seems to utilize that type specifically. Sure the normal energy cells will work, but whatever energy it is that the blade uses causes them the break soon after," she opened up the blade and I saw that the two energy cells I have moved to make it last longer had both busted, leaving hollow husks. "The odd thing is that both of these different batteries have no charge in them at all."

"Then where is it getting energy from? It stops working after a few seconds of being drawn, but I thought that was just a wiring issue." I asked.

The mare shook her head, "I'm not sure. I already tried using the normal methods to recharge the cells, but they don't respond to anything and there's no form of generator in the hilt itself." She quickly pieced the hilt back together, removing the broken magical energy cells and adding in the new one I had gotten in Maremoros, "Try using it like you normally would, I want to see it."

I didn't really want to indulge the little mare's curiosity, but she seemed much more technically inclined than I was and I needed that knowledge. So I took the blade in my teeth and drew it the usual way. It worked like a charm. The same red energy blade came out and I accidentally made a small cut in the side of the metal table with it. Before Ripper could inspect it, the blade had already faded away.

"Amazing, when I tried it nothing even came out, but for you it works." She proceeded to prattle on about how odd it was because of that fact that the blade lacked any DNA coding materials while I took to ripping off my bandages. As it turned out, it had been three days since Maremoros and because the doctors had simply given me a dose of Hydra, I was already perfectly fine. The doctors did recommend that I not try it on myself though and that they had only done it because I had rebar stuck through five different parts of my hind legs and little blood left. "What an odd cutie mark."

I turned back to Ripper since I hadn't heard her, "Hmm?"

"Your cutie mark, what's it even for?" She clarified and I turned back to it.

My cutie mark was always something that confused me, but I had become complacent to it. It was a burning black heart with small red cracks running through it. I had had it for as long as I could remember and my mother said that shoe couldn't remember when it had shown up, which I believed to be true after I had learned in Maremoros.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"You mean you don't even know what it is?"

"Not a clue, Ripper. Last I checked my heart wasn't burning." I pulled the black body suit from the table and started to try and slip into it.

The material was slick and water resistant, with zippers along the chest and legs bordered with a silver lining. It fit quite snugly around me, but given that it was a water tight suit, I guessed that meant it was a perfect fit. There wasn't anything in the way of a helmet with it; so I wasn't going to be diving anytime soon, but I would at least stay dry up to my neck. In the center where the zippers came together on the chest was a silver metal ring where something was supposed to fit into it, but I didn't pay any mind to it because as far as I could tell the suit was in perfect condition. I grabbed my harness and fit it over the suit along with my remaining armor, though the only remaining pieces were the combat armor guards. The rest had been lost somehow.

"Somepony is eager to get going." Ripper smirked, eyeing me up and down in the skin tight suit, which I will admit was probably not going to give me any added protection or stealth, but it made me feel more professional and if it was important enough to be locked away, it must have some benefit.

"If you keep staring I'm going to blush." I shot back and started fitting my weapons back into the harness. It felt good to have the blade back into its proper spot on my chest.

"Oh please, the last thing I need is some outsider fawning over me." Ripper blew off the comment and looked again at my equipment, "You don't think you'll need a gun?"

I glanced down and noticed that I was again without a gun. The submachine gun had been crushed by the rubble, rendering it unusable. I felt painfully naked without a gun, and if it wasn't for the daggers digging into my back as Gatling starred me down for my lack of military respect, I might've had the nerve to ask for one.

"I'll be fine. I can't handle the kick of most guns anyway." I waved her off with an idle hoof and scooped the microchip back into a pocket in my saddlebags for later. I noticed Ripper eyeing the piece heavily and sighed, "No; I don't know what's on the chip and no; you can't look."

"Fine." The mare deflated a little and pulled out a small folder from the folds in her robes, "take this. It has some information that I think you'll find more helpful than what Axeheart was able to scrounge up for your file."

I grabbed the folder and set it into my saddle bags by the other folder and my remaining caps.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" I decided not to prance around the question because I needed to get a move on if Gatling and I were going to reach Crenimare by daybreak. I could fly there in only a few hours, but again I had an earthbound pony holding me back.

"Because unlike Elder Pins, I think that somepony who had the balls to go hoof to hoof with a town of slavers, essentially by himself, is somepony we need with us. A lot of ponies disagree because of what happened to the slaves and how foolhardy it was and I can see their point. However, you did by yourself what no group of ponies has been willing to do for years now and you almost made it happen." I cringed a little at the mention of the slave ponies I had tried to save, but I pushed the feelings aside. I had almost succeeded, but Chains had outplayed me. Nopony could blame me for what had happened. Or at least, that was what I told myself to keep me going. "Not to mention half of the ponies around here are sticks in the mud like Gatling or stuck in the old ways. We need a little fun now and again." Gatling bristled a little at the comment, and I almost smiled.

"So your idea of fun is sending a greenhorn pegasus into a hellhole, by himself except for a single Crusader meant to retrieve any of my tech if I die. Hell, he's not even allowed to step one hoof into the city until I'm dead." The Rangers had been so kind as to implant a small chip into my fore hoof that kept an eye on my vitals. If I died then Gatling would know and his suit's guidance systems would lead him to my body. However, they assured me that even though it was set by the bone, the chip could be easily removed on my return. It also came with the added benefit of being able to produce enough electricity to kill a manticore if I tried to run.

"Yeah, something like that." Ripper smiled innocently and I left the room.

(^~^)

"You should really learn your place here. If it wasn't for the fact that Ripper likes what you did, you would've been beaten for insubordination." Gatling prattled on as we rode the elevator to the exit. He was right, that thing was big enough to haul a pair of tanks if they needed to.

"Look Gatling, I know that your whole ranking system is important to you, but I'm not part of your group. I can try to be polite, but don't ask for much because I'm still fairly pissed about the whole situation." The larger pony slid his helmet on and I shivered a little at the sight of a complete metal pony. With that armor he could quite literally stomp me into paste, ignore most radiation he came across, and enjoy almost complete protection from most bullets and melee attacks.

"You and me both." His voice sounded dull and deep through the face plate and before I could react his armored hoof flew into my chin, knocking me out cold.

(^~^)

When I woke back up, I found myself on the ground by the same rock outcropping where I had eaten before Maremoros. I quickly looked myself over and found all of my equipment was still there. I looked up and saw a hulking metal pony staring me down with grenade launchers on either side of him. I jumped off my hooves and hovered away before I remembered who it was. Once I remembered I was on him in an instant. I did my best to beat him with my hooves, but you'd need to be a master of martial arts to even think about hurting a steel Ranger with your bare hooves.

"Calm down. I only did that because we can't have you knowing where the entrance to our base is." I managed to hear him explain about ten seconds before I was planning on slicing off a leg.

"You could've warned me at least you fucker." I screamed into his faceplate and a hoof sent me to the ground.

"If I had warned you, you would've dodged. Now come on. We need to get moving if we're going to get this done." He actually started dragging me by my tail before I clambered back to my hooves.

"I'll walk on my own, thank you." I trotted alongside him and he said nothing.

We didn't go far though. We had walked for an hour in almost complete silence when both of our E.F.S. indicators lit up with red. The steel ranger turned up the brightness on his helmet's torch to where it illuminated a complete cone in front of him. Manticores, fucking manticores with poisoned stingers and claws made to rip through flesh and bone alike and we were surrounded by five of them in the dark. Well, I was in the dark, but Mr. Crusader Gatling had a perfect cone of light and grenade launchers.

The first manticore lunged while I was still trying to figure out just what the hell they were. I remembered vaguely their mention in a book about wasteland survival just in time for a well placed shot from Gatling to blow the thing into shreds. The sudden deafening sound of the explosion brought me back into the fight. I would've liked to stick to Gatling like glue, but I knew that even with his firepower fighting off the remaining four would be difficult without help. I stood back to back with him and used my E.F.S. to gauge their general location. My goal wasn't so much to kill them as it was to just keep them from ganging up on Gatling. Another shell exploded and for a brief moment the night around us lit up and I could actually see the two I was fighting in time to dodge out of the way from a stinger. The appendage drove into the ground where I had been standing and became stuck for a moment. I used that moment to severe the stinger from the manticore before taking a dive at where it had come from. A mighty roar rang out just before the red marker disappeared from my radar. Another grenade went off and I was able to see a manticore claw just in time for it to send me flying.

Pain erupted through my side and skull as I landed, but thankfully I had been hit by the back of a paw instead of the front. This didn't mean that I wasn't writhing pain when another explosion went off and the last manticore was obliterated. Gatling did a quick 360 to confirm out safety before turning back to me.

"Clear."

"What the hell were those?" I asked, picking myself up off the ground.

"Young manticores. Nasty little assholes, aren't they?" Young; those were only adolescents and they were still one and half times as large as I was. I didn't want to ever see a full grown one.

"Very. So are we gonna get moving again?" I stretched and felt the aching in my bones, but getting a move on seemed more important.

"We aren't moving until morning. If we keep going we're just going to get into another fight in the dark."

"Then are we just supposed to wait here?"

"Look, you can sleep if you want to, but I'm not moving until I can see without the flashlight." He said matter-of-fact-ly and I considered my options.

If I wanted to, I could try to escape by flying away, but with how good of a shot Gatling was with those launchers, I wouldn't make it. That basically left me with nothing to do but try to convince him or give up and get some rest. To be honest, I gave up without a fight. The hit had reminded me of just how tired I was and next time I might not be so lucky. However, I didn't go straight to sleep because I figured that that would be the only time I'd get to use the microchip and go over the rest of the folder.

The contents of the folder were less than stellar to say the least. Mostly it was just general knowledge of how the Steel Ranger hierarchy was constructed and different merits that might be required for advancement. It did give me more of a reason to show respect to the different ranks, but that didn't mean I was just going to change on a dime. Though Gatling would've wanted otherwise. The extra information Ripper had given me was small bits of her background and the background of Pins and Axeheart. Where the last two had risen solely through military efficiency and adherence to the code to preserve technology, Ripper had risen more through technical work and making improvements to the overall arsenal and base. This at least told me that what she had said about the blade and the magical energy cell was at least trustworthy.

It took me a few minutes of tinkering around with the implant before I finally found the option to, as it put it, 'insert additional devices'. It seemed oddly named, but when I select it a set of small frames ejected from the bottom on the implant. I put the chip into one of the slots and pushed them closed. From there the programming took over as text rapidly cycled in my vision. After a good thirty seconds it finally ended on a single line of text.

Initiate Software Playback: Y/N? (Warning: All senses and perceptions will be disabled for the duration of the event. Proceed with caution.)

I already knew about this from the terminal and given the abilities of my current watch dog I felt safe enough to accept. Again the text rapidly flew by my vision until finally everything went dark.

(^~^)

My blood ran cold as my body fell into the pseudo sleep and I couldn't move. I tried to look around, but the darkness was everywhere and I couldn't even crane my neck to look around completely. Panic was beginning to set in when finally something happened; my mom appeared in front of me. Before I could scream she appeared, but not like I had ever known her to be. She was wearing the same type of suit I was wearing, with a blade strapped into a leather harness. Where once she had had a luxurious lavender mane and a beautiful rose coat, there was just a short scruff of her mane remaining and the fur was marred with blood and dirt. And she was looking at me with a deep disappointed stare that reminded me it was her. I wanted to scream and yell out to her, but I couldn't even speak within this space. That and she beat me to it.

"So you fucking went and did it, huh? It wasn't enough for you to just live the life I left for you; noooo you just had to go and see what I left for you." She sounded much more pissed off than I could ever remember her sounding in my entire life. "And yes, I know you can't respond, so let me give it to you like this. I didn't want you to do this. I didn't want you to go on some forsaken journey just to find what's at the end. However, I can't guarantee that the me after the memory wipe will feel the same and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," she inched toward me and for a moment I actually felt like I could feel her breath on my fur. If it wasn't for the fact that she was so intimidating, I think I would've been crying just from seeing her again. Instead she just sighed and looked away.

"Look kid, I'm gonna give you some advice, because I know what you've gotten up 'til not probably hasn't been that great. Go home if you value your life and if you don't then keep going. There's nothing good to be found here. But I know you probably didn't come this far without wanting some answers and I'll give you what I can." She turned back to me, even though I doubted she could see me given it was a recording, "You probably already know this, but, yes, I was with the Enclave and, no, I don't know what I did for them. What I do know is that it involved you as its center and that the only way to ensure the safety of the ponies down here was to keep you away from the Enclave. Myself and five others worked to escape from them and they all went their separate ways afterwards. You and I were assumed dead afterwards because we had been crushed underneath the base we were in, but I survived and found the rest. You'll have to find the three that are left from here since they have the rest of my memories, but I'll give you a few warnings." A clipboard suddenly appeared next to her and she read quickly, "Stay away from large bouts of radiation. I know that should be common sense, but it goes dou-no- triple for you. Don't even consider turning on that Enclave beacon unless you want everything I've done to be for nothing. Eat a proper diet. I worry about you. Lastly, you should be able to find Duster somewhere in Crenimare. I know I said that radiation was very bad for you, but you should be able to find him somewhere around the edges, or at least a note from him. If the radiation layers haven't receded by the time you get there, get a rad suit and be careful. If they have receded then move quickly. If nothing else, remember this: Duster is putting quite literally his life on the line living in an irradiated hell hole just because he doesn't want anypony to come looking for him there. What we did was important." She stopped and the clipboard went away, "I don't even know what you're like, but please be safe son. If things get hairy then just stop. It's not worth your life."

With her monologue finally finished, she looked to me and smiled halfheartedly. She didn't say anymore, but came up and put her head forward slightly to where it rested on my shoulder. I was just standing there trying to process everything I could. Crenimare, the hellhole I wanted to avoid was the next stop on my journey and my mother was speaking to me when I thought I would never see her again. I couldn't move to cry, but I wanted to with all my heart. I ached for the times when I could complain and cry to her and be done with it. Now I lived in a world where I had nobody to complain to and nobody to cry on. A world where I had been responsible for the deaths of so many ponies and the indirect cause of the death of so many slaves because I couldn't be bothered to plan ahead. A world where I was about to walk into a death trap she would rather have me avoid. I tried to weep for a good five minutes while she just sat there comforting me. Just before the simulation ended I heard her whisper, "If this doesn't look right when he watches it then I'm coming back to haunt you, Chems." That at least got me to laugh a little.

(^~^)

I woke up and saw the morning sun rising ahead of me through blurred eyes and clouds everlasting. I brought a hoof to my face and wiped around my eye, removing the tears and removing my drowsiness. It wasn't the same as before, but I was able to cry on her shoulder again and that made me feel better than the full night's sleep. I did take note of how long the session took for future reference. The conversation may have only taken ten minutes or so, but the effect had lasted more than six hours. I stood and saw Gatling looking down at me, the frozen expression of his helmet glaring at me.

"Bad dreams, outsider?" He asked and actually did some sympathetic despite the metallic reverberation of his voice.

"No, just... I had a dream about someone important to me. It made me feel better, Crusader." I added the title without thinking. My mind felt like it was working much faster than before and things weren't completely feeling like a drag.

"Ready to get moving then? We've a lot of ground to cover if we want to reach Crenimare before midday." He reminded me and I nodded, motioning for him to lead the way.

As we started walking, I noticed a small indicator flashing in the corner of my vision. When I selected it I found that the hacking subroutine of the device had been enabled. With it I could hack terminals without access tools, but I would still need some level of proficiency to divine the password from the machine. Still, a very worthwhile trait given that any basic level terminal could be hacking into without the need to even mess with the code. The sound on my radio suddenly picked up as a robust voice broke through the music. I currently had it set to increase the volume when the news came on.

"Hello, hello, and hello naughty little wastelanders. It's me the one you know and love. The jockey of discs, the player of hits, and the teller of tales tall and short, all of these are my titles. And of course, Papa did come with some news. Now I know you're all chomping at the bit to hear more details about what happened in Maremoros, and I've got them for you. A short recap: our little Colting survivor finds a water talisman, trades it to slavers for some weapons, gets hated on by yours truly, goes back and fucks those slavers up the ass while the rest of us were too busy sleeping, gets the slaves released, gets played by the slavers, who proceed to kill the slaves and topple the building he's in, with their leader inside and then the Steel Rangers show up and wipe the place clean save for a few escapees. Got all of that? Cause here's what's new. Of the slavers that survived, one was the previous right hoof man of the old boss and now the new boss, Chains. If you see him, kill him and next time prioritize your targets Steel Rangers. I know you only came there for the weapons you self righteous pricks, but do us a solid now and again will ya? Second, the total survivors of the slaves that were able to actually get free of their collars in time now numbers to fifteen out of the sixty released. It's not great, but hey, it's more than the rest of us ever did. And lastly, and you're all going to love this, he's still alive. The little prick from Colting who loves to make me look bad has just been spotted with a steel ranger in a location I won't disclose. I know you all don't like when I do this, but I'm not about to piss off the Rangers. The important thing is that he is alive, though maybe a prisoner. If you can hear me kid, and I've got a feeling you can, don't let them get to you. You're doing an ok job, you little hell raiser. That's all for this morning and I'll leave you all with a tip: if you choose to eat manticore, remember that it's best served rare and with a side of snack cakes."

The volume died again and the voice was replaced by music, and again I found myself surveying the area quickly. I say nothing but a bloatsprite a mile away, a few hills and the ever looming towers to the sky. I did not see a single place where somepony should be able to spot us easily. Gatling didn't pay me any mind because he still had his head up his ass worrying about manticores. Given that they usually hunted at night and we had radars that could see them coming, I didn't share the concern. Nothing else happened on our way to Crenimare except a few grenades destroying some bloatsprites beyond dissecting, but I did take swift looks over my shoulder now and again to check for anypony trailing us. I didn't see a thing though.

(^~^)

Crenimare was an oddly constructed town. Your average building was maybe two stories high and would've been used for housing or maybe a small store and some larger buildings strewn about such as the town hall, libraries and police stations. However, the war had been the start of rapid changes in the town. Every so often there would be a hole in the neat array of homes, filled with military barracks, arsenals or officers buildings. Even from my current distance I could see road blocks blocking entry and even more were in the town proper. It was still a fairly large town and I couldn't see anywhere near the center without having to fly and I'm now grateful for that because I would've been too curious to avoid going there.

From our position about a mile away from the edge of town, Gatling and I had a clear view of the control tower I needed to get to. It was eight blocks into the city according to Gatling and he had been kind enough to give me a map of the town to navigate with. The shortest route had been planned out, but since reconnaissance in that area was terrible at the time, there was no way of knowing what I would run into. He also mentioned that if I wanted to be nice, I could mark any particularly dangerous areas I came across and any obstructions to my path. After he had opened a radio connection to my implant, he sent me on way, leaving the details for me to iron out.

To be honest, I had no clue how to even begin ironing out the details. As I walked up, I still didn't see a single ghoul, on the ground or in the sky and a storm was coming on. For the moment I would just have to follow the oath and role with the punches. Needless to say, I hated that way of doing things, but without more information there was nothing I could do. When I finally go to the first building I noticed the entire town was tinted a slight shade of yellow. From the asphalt to the wood to the broken down carriages, everything was at least dimly yellow. As soon as I stepped onto the soil I knew why; a small radiation monitor popped up and warned me that I was gaining a minute amount as I stood there. I remembered the message's warning, but then ignored it again and chocked it up to motherly over protectiveness. I did pick up my pace though; radiation poisoning was hardly in style.

Between glances at the map and the E.F.S., I noticed that the doors to almost every home were boarded up from door to window, and none of it was the shabby work of wastelanders. I had no idea why the town would've been closing homes so fervently, but as I went deeper it began to make more sense. Around the first turn was a dry crater with the wreckage of a military carriage in the center and the skeletons of the soldiers close by. Instinct told me to find a different way around, but I still went up and looked through the wreck. A few rifles were there, but they were mangled beyond even salvage and every bit of armor on the soldiers was irradiated to the point where it was unusable. I did manage to pull a small recording from one of the bodies nearby and stow it away for later. I considered stopping to gather the bodies together for a light funeral, but the fact that I was soaking up radiation and still not even a quarter of the way to my destination kept me from it. The rain was now starting to fall.

I turned away from the wreck and froze in my tracks. Only two blocks away was a lone, glowing yellow pony jerking its head sporadically around the area. Before I could hide, it turned to me and began staring me down with pure white eyes. I could see that it was wearing a half mangled set of combat armor and that its left hind leg was just a hideous growth. Then, without warning, it charged me. When the report said Crenimare ghouls were fast, it was lying. This thing was almost supersonic. I saw the hooves move and a half second later I was reeling on the ground from the impact.

"Celestia fuck me." I coughed and looked up to time to be sent flying again into the wall of a building.

I felt my ribs start to give and quickly flapped my wings to get airborne. The ghoul slammed right into the wall and popped out the other side of the building looking dazed. My problems weren't over though. Two more ghouls came out of the building afterwards in civilian clothing, both unicorns. They both looked to me and I felt lighting crackle onto my body, dropping me from the sky onto the roof of the home. For a moment I thought it was real lightning, but the magic of Crenimare ghouls was on a whole new level. They didn't have to charge a spell and the force of it seemed significantly stronger that what a normal unicorn might manage.

I spammed for a few minutes before I regained control of my body, thankfully my attackers lacked a pegasus and lacked the constraint to properly jump to my position, instead just trying and overshooting the landing or firing more wild lightning bolts into the sky. The roof had a flat top and kept me hidden from their vision. I could hear Gatling screaming into my head as I came to, but immediately shit him off. These things were fast, but they were stupid. I could use that.

I thought fast and started ripping shingles from the roof. Once I had about five of them together, I wrapped them with a small string and threw the bundle over the edge of the left of where the lighting was coming from. I heard the spells crackle again and my ears ringed. I did not lose my focus though. As soon as I saw the light, I leapt from the roof and dived at one of the unicorns. Before he could react, I drew the blade and sliced through his face. I turned and finished the mare unicorn, but not before another spell hit me in my chest. If it wasn't for the fact that the suit was fairly nonconductive and her spell ended as soon as her head was separated, I think I would've died.

I took a moment to breathe, which was a bad idea considering that the remaining ghoul used it to slam into me at full force. I hit another wall and felt three ribs finally break almost completely. It was safe to say I couldn't take another one of those and survive. I thought fast and looked around. I couldn't risk have another building open given what had happened to the first one, so dodging wasn't an option. My blade was sitting over by the ghoul's hooves so I couldn't counterattack. I glanced to my left and saw the broken carriage sitting alone about twenty feet from me.

"I can make it." I heaved, though it was more like I 'had' to make it.

I ran as fast as my hooves could carry me and dived behind the carriage just as the ghoul attacked again. The entire wreckage was knocked over my head with ghoul in tow, landing about ten feet away from me. I knew it had to be stunned based off of what the other building had done and ran to my only weapon. I picked it up and shoved it into the sheathe just as the ghoul managed to stand up again. It was bleeding from its right fore hoof and had a large piece of metal protruding from it. However, this did nothing to stop it from rearing up for another charge. I grabbed the blade and got ready to draw it when the attack came. I wanted to fly away, but the rain and wind had picked up so much that it wasn't a feasible option.

The glow around the ghoul began to grow as it stood there until it was almost blindingly bright. Then it happened. I saw the light flicker for an instant and heard splashes moving toward me but most of all I could actually see the ghoul coming at me as a blinding yellow blur. It wasn't much, but all of these at once gave me the quarter second I needed to draw the blade. I was exhausted, but still managed to strike out at the blur. A moment later I heard the head and body drop into separate puddles more than thirty feet from where I stood. I looked ahead and my eyes widened in surprise. The blade had always been as long as I was, but this time it had extended to more than double my length. The blade was cracking pleasantly in the air before it finally receded after almost a full minute in the open air. I looked at the ground by the two unicorns and saw small, but deep cuts in the pavement. I knew it wasn't a result of the new battery, but I also couldn't think of anything that would've caused it. I heard the radiation meter clicking again and remembered where I was.

Setting aside the issue of the blade, I went over to the body of the ghouls I had killed and stripped it of its combat armor. I wasn't a fan of wearing armor that was going to constantly irradiate me, but I knew I would need the added protection when I saw another ghoul. I threw away my old, almost broken, pieces of armor and put on the full set of irradiated combat armor which was in great condition given its age. There still wasn't a helmet and my Geiger counter informed me that I was taking slightly more radiation than before, but I was nowhere near a critical point. In fact, the one thing that didn't cross my mind, even as I took a healing potion and adjusted the ribs somewhat back into place, was that that my radiation level had been reset to zero when that fight had ended.

(^~^)

I waited a few minutes for my body to recover before I went into the house that had been opened. To be honest, I didn't like the idea of going in there where there might be more enemies, but at the same time my curiosity forced me to check the place for anything valuable. Light was no issue given that everything in there, my armor included, was glowing. There was only one story to search and not much of it was worth looking at. The kitchen had nothing but spoiled food, the living room seemed almost perfectly kept, but with nothing of value and the bathroom was, well, a bathroom. The only thing I managed to find was another recording to look at later in the bedroom. The thing that struck me about the place though, was the perfectness of it. Nothing was broken, torn or oddly placed. It was as if the ghouls hadn't even been there for the hundreds of years they must've been there. Hell, there was even a half eaten breakfast in the kitchen. I didn't have time to think about it or look at the recording though, my radiation levels weren't getting any better and the rain was beating down harder. I braced myself for the worst and struck back out into the town.

(^~^)

It was the work of another half an hour to make it to the tower. In that time I had seen another ghoul, but I hid myself and watched it. Like the other it was jerking its head rapidly to look for anything that might interest it, but without anything around to set it off, it didn't move. It seemed oblivious to the pouring rain and the lightning overhead, but when I threw a rock into the side of a far off building, it rammed into the concrete wall immediately, killing itself on impact. It was like they were just sentries trying to guard their home.

The radio tower was deserted on the outside thankfully. According to Gatling it should've been free from ghouls given that it was near the edge of town and actually had some defenses against radiation. It showed given that it was the only building that wasn't yellow. The outside was clear of any ghouls and I took an option rarely available in the wasteland, the front door. Given the lack of radiation in the building, I hoped the inside would be safe. It was a dumb hope I now know, but as I stepped into the lobby which was clear of radiation entirely I figured I was safe. I was still taking a small amount of radiation from the armor I looted, but I was negligible enough for me to keep it on.

The lobby area comprised most of the first floor and was in moderately good condition. The door had been broken down some time ago, but it seems to have been weathered slightly, so whatever broke it should've been gone. Around the room were various benches and flower pots around the room, long dead flower petals around them. A desk was on the far end with a staircase behind it. The terminal on the desk was busted, but I did manage to collect a few bottle caps out of the trash bin underneath and found one of the drawers to be locked. I activated the lock picking program in my implant and it floated out a bobby pin and think knife for me.

The system lacked the ability to do any more than levitate the items for me, but I could freely manipulate them to make the task easier. I spent the better time of three minutes raking across the lock before it opened. I had lost three bobby pins, but it was worth it for what was within. The contents were a civilian grade laser pistol, some energy packs and a set of keys. The pistol wasn't very strong and probably wouldn't be able to punch through much armor, but without a gun of my own, it was like a gift from Celestia. I also took the keys on the off chance I found what they were for. Satisfied with my looting, I went up the staircase to the second floor.

The second floor was the offices of the building with the stairs to the third floor where the codes were held in the CO's office at the back. I still didn't hear anything and assumed I would be safe to check out the cubicles for anything good. I was disappointed to find that almost all of the drawers were entirely empty and those that had anything left were just filled with scraps of paper. The terminals were all useless and to be honest it was hard to believe it had ever been an office of any level. I decided to do one more sweep before opening the door to the CO's office just to be sure. It was then that I started to notice a trend.

I accidentally knocked a terminal off of a desk while trying to reach for a bottle cap underneath it and the back popped off when it landed. Inside the terminal were the various general issue components, but it was missing a few key things. The power supply had been removed along with the main memory gems used to store the data and all of it had been done quickly based off of the bent and mangled fittings. A few more disassembled terminals and I found the trend was common among all of them. Even the daily agenda that was once on a whiteboard in the office had been erased in a half assed way. I didn't know who, but somepony didn't want anything to be learned from this place. Whether it was the original military forces or looters, I didn't care, but something was fishy.

With curiosity driving me, I opened the door to the office with the pistol drawn just in case anything was in there, but again there was nothing. The office was basic with a desk and terminal, some wall paper peeling off the concrete underneath and a cabinet on the back wall with the stairway behind it. As expected, the terminal wasn't working and had the same missing parts from the back. However, this one was a sloppy job. It had everything gone that the others did, but this one was a more advanced model. Whereas the old ones relied on separate memory crystals to hold data directly, the new models made use of an intermediary crystal held by the operating formation. More than once, my mom had had to get data back for the mayor when he fucked up his old terminal and I picked a few things up; so I knew that I should be able to access some small bit of data through the crystal as soon as I could find a proper terminal. Thankfully, I knew just the people to ask.

The desk was worthless, so I tossed the crystal into my bags, making sure to wrap it slightly to keep it at least in an o.k. condition. The locker was just filled with two hundred year old dust and spaces where weapons should have been. Whoever had left had done it in a hurry, but mostly not by halves. Given that there was nothing left to loot and that Gatling was probably about ready to start asking what the problem was, I moved up to the third floor.

The walls there were glass facing toward the outside of the city and concrete again around the other three edges. The stairs came out into a small intermediary room with all glass walls meant to act as a buffer in case an intruder tried to get to the codes and the glass was reinforced to where nothing short of a charge of C-4 could crack it. Outside the rain kept beating down on the roof, but the lighting was still off in the distance. Cabinets lined the walls, and in the corner was a sleeping bag with a small terminal set up nearby, the screen still working and plugged into the larger launch panel. However, I didn't notice any of this immediately, and nowhere in my mind did I even thing about stopping to take a look around.

The reason I noticed nothing was because just on the other side of the glass wall from me, was a group of fifteen glowing ghouls that were ready to kill and they were all looking right at me.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Lightning Hooves(1)- You're a little faster on your hooves than most ponies. Hell, a lot faster. Movement speed outside of combat is increased by 10% and in combat speed is increased by 20%.
Quest Perk: Hacking Subroutine- Ability to access all standard terminals acquired. Terminals relating to Zebrican technology or those of non-pony species must be analyzed properly before being available. Terminals of very easy rating unlock instantly.

Author's Note

Round 5. Will he make it out alive? Well probably, I'd be dropping a the story pretty suddenly if he just bit the dust I guess. As always, go ahead and tear me a new one in the comments.