You can't be from the future! That's not scientifically possible! YOUR not scientifically possible!

Hope. Something that the Wasteland tries to steal from everypony. We hope that somepony will do something to fix all of this. We hope that we are not alone in this fight. And we hope that someday, we can look at what was above the cloud cover set by the pegasi. From what Sawbones had informed me about the clouds, it was to act as a protective barrier between radiation and other threats to the pegasus people. That excuse would have only worked for about ten years after the end of the world I'd give them that. But after two centuries? I think that they just forgot about us ponies down here. With how the pegasi live their lives in isolation it is a surprise that they still might be alive if they don't get food from the surface. In fact, who would? All of the vegetables are mutated and dangerous and the only thing that seems remotely safe to eat is two-hundred year old food. I had no problem with that. If there were sweet foods in the Wasteland, they were all mine!

I wish I had my own bed though. Sleeping in an actual bedroom in Foxes should have appealed to me more than it actually did. Mostly due to the fact that there were shop vendors every five feet and they seemed to not have a problem with taking other ponies goods when their backs are turned. This problem was solved with me shoving a few balls of cotton and wax into my ears and sleeping in the broom closet with Sawbones keeping watch outside. If anypony started doing something stupid like singing, I wouldn't hear them. Hell, I could probably sleep through a close proximity grenade detonation. I wish I could've had something to dream about...

***

I woke up with my face to the floor and my muzzle coated in slightly glowing saliva. Hauling myself up to my hooves, I took out another piece of minty chocolate and began chewing half expecting to wake up and half expecting to fall right back to sleep. Thankfully, the chocolate woke me up enough for me to notice that my one wing was wrapped around a metal bucket. How that got in here I might never know. Oh wait... this was a broom closet. Yep, that made more sense.

Getting back to my hooves and walking out of my room, I saw Sawbones still floating not too far away. His glassy telescopic eyes seemed foggier than when I went to bed. Now that I was awake and able to make rational thoughts about my surroundings, I could see that the hallways of Foxes were covered in a thick fog.

"Sawbones," I whispered.

The robot didn't say a word. He didn't even move.

"Sawbones," I said again with more urgency.

He still did not move or speak.

"Damn," I grunted through gritted teeth as I dug around the broom closet to get my gear.

It was all gone! Every cap, every bullet, every gun, and every bit of armor was gone! All there was left was the almost finished mint chocolate bar on the floor. Frantically I tried to turn on my EFS but that was dead. My PipBuck was dead too! Every function was lost to the fact that the PipBuck itself was a mess of melted metal and glass with some remains of plastic buttons and knobs.

"What the actual fuck?" I asked aloud hoping to get an answer from somepony.

Anypony.

Hell, I would speak to Worm Gear if it came down to it. But I had to be the one with the broken PipBuck and broken Mister Handy.

Then the door behind me was pulled off of its hinges and a great beast appeared in the door frame. It was tall and emaciated with skin so wet and slimy that I was already thinking that it was going to drip right off. Its jaw was an elongated mass of razors that all curved inwards leading to a tongue that had a hook like tooth of its very own. The creatures' orange eyes looked down at me with the intent of burning holes through my skull just with a glance. It had no mane, no tail, no cutie mark. It was something that is only still going by the force of shier rage. I stood in front of it, paralyzed in terror.

Then it's mouth dislocated itself and the monstrosity let out a scream that nopony would ever dare to make by themselves without losing the use of their own vocal chords. I could feel the blood trickle down my ears as the sounds were becoming more faint and as if they were underwater. Then the creature galloped full force at me with a reckless, suicidal charge. I let out one final scream that I couldn't even hear.

***

I snapped back into reality covered in cold sweat and feeling as if I was going to throw up. I was still wearing my Stable 37 Electrician's Barding with the two yellow Thirty-Sevens embroidered into each side of the collar. My stuff was still where I left them a few hours ago according to the PipBuck's Chronometer and one yellow dot displayed by my EFS told me that nopony even thought about trying to steal Sawbones without some significant planning and luck. I know I would never be that lucky so why should they?

Searching through my bag, I picked out another one of the pieces of mint chocolate and chewed on it. At this rate I would need to buy some more off of the pony who runs the candy stand near Nescolt's office. I sure hope that I had the caps for it because chocolate isn't cheap in the Wasteland; especially around cold places like Detrot where chocolate doesn't grow. Sugar Cinnamon, the owner of the shop, explained that she traded with a zebra frequently to get the chocolate in exchange for gems or bullets once every year. The year was almost over and the zebra was going to arrive in less than a month. Maybe I could get some for myself? Go into the candy business? No... that wouldn't work. I would eventually eat all the chocolate before I sold it all.

The door to the broom closet swung open as Sawbones appeared with his mechanical claw holding a Sparkle Cola in front of me. I gave a slight nod and thankfully took it from him. The carrot flavored fluid felt good in my stomach. Whatever the original ponies made this drink with did a hell of a good job.

"Thanks Sawbones," I said taking slow drinks from the bottle.

The robot's one orange eye then produced the thin line again that swept back and forth across me before it faded and he asked,

"Quantum, how do you feel?"

"Like I was thrown into a rock crusher," I answered sneezing on the robot before I had the chance to change course.

"Quantum do you even know what a rock crusher looks like?" he added as he used the end of his clawed hand to wipe some of the glowing green mucus from his aluminum shell.

"No, but I have the basic idea. Its a big machine that crushes rocks," I said giving him a slight grin.

The robot was silent for a long second before he continued with,

"You currently have a case of acute viral nasopharyngitis."

I gave him a blank look that should have indicated that big words are not good for Quantum.

"A cold Quantum. You have a cold."

"Oh. Why didn't you just say so?" I asked getting up onto my shaking hooves.

"I did. My recommendation, don't do anything stupid for a while. Take a break."

"A break?" I balked.

Turning to look at Sawbones I noticed that he was serious. Well, as serious as a robot like him could display. He didn't do emotions very well. I knew that he could fake that kind of emotion through voice but not actual expression. I coughed and rasped,

"Three days into the Wasteland and I need to take a break? Sorry Sawbones, but no. I have to find Beanie and...,"

"And then what?" he interrupted.

I hadn't thought of that. The typical mindset for a Stable 37 worker was to take priority of time as well as their own work. PipBuck Technicians were always working to make sure that every pony who had a PipBuck had their software up to date. Stable 37 had at least ten or so PipBuck Technicians with how many times a PipBuck from one of the several thousand ponies failed and needed to be fixed. They had to worry about the next week.

Stable 37 Teachers had to worry about the past so that, when we eventually went up to the surface, we would know what went wrong and what to do so that we would prevent something like that from ever happening again. They did a decent enough job with that even if I never actually took part in those classes because I went to tech school and graduated to be a maintenance pony.

The Maintenance Ponies of Stable 37 had one priority; Now. That was the traditional mindset. We didn't think about what would happen later, we cared about what would happen now if we didn't get our job done. The Electricians and the Waste Management ponies knew that all too well. Oh, I forgot to throw in Atmospheric Processing. Those were the main three jobs that needed that idea hammered into our heads because, if we didn't, our job wouldn't get done or it would be a poor job. Klink-Klank did a shit job of taking priority of now and, as a result, the lighting system failed. Again. Then, when I had to go and see what that noise was, I ended up pulling open a large metal door and my life changed within seconds. All because I was too worried about the repair and not the consequence.

The wise can sometimes be the fool too right?

"You want my advise?" Sawbones said as he floated himself in front of me, "Go over to that one medical booth near the emergency exit. The one with the zebra running it. He might have something that might help with your cold."

"Don't you know that I'm already paranoid about things that I don't make unless I see how its made?" I sneered back at the robot.

"What about that chocolate you keep eating?"\

"Sugar Cinnamon makes it so that everypony could see," I retorted.

"Quantum, trust me on this one. While you were asleep I took a survey of the building and analyzed the potions the zebra made. They're clean."

I rolled my eyes. Fine. I'll throw Sawbones a bone and do it. If it comes back to bite me in the tail, I'm blaming him first.

"Alright Sawbones. Lead the way."

And so he did. We weaved through Foxes and saw many different ponies that weren't hear before. They seemed to be newcomers per say but they had probably been out in the Wasteland their entire lives. Well, except for the one or two Steel Rangers. They always looked the same with their heavy metal suits on. There were also a dozen or so ponies with large cowboy hats and old leather jackets that wandered Foxes as they looked for food, bullets, or things of the like. They obviously weren't from Detrot. They were shivering so much that I thought that they would shake themselves into little pieces. Everypony else who was a Detrot native was walking around with minimal armor and not even paying the cold much attention. I guess that this was Detrot's way of getting rid of the weak. It was sort of like Hoofington with this stuff that DJ-Pon3 calls Enervation that supposedly degraded your healing potions if you didn't use them fast enough.

Yeah right. Like something like that would ever exist. Even if it did, why would anypony want to live there?

Most of the Detrot natives gave the robot mixed looks. Whether they wanted to steal Sawbones or they were just intimidated by the fact that a pony fresh out of a stable could manipulate the internal components of a machine in such a way that he could get it working for himself like a little companion was beyond me. All I know is that Sawbones could probably handle himself in a fight as long as the enemy didn't have any weapon relating to electricity. Like... a Stable 37 Standard Issue Electron Gun that was used primarily by Stable Security, all of the Overmare's associates, the Overmare herself, and the occasional paranoid pony who could afford one.

And no, I did not have one. If I did, I would have remembered to take it with me before I left and most of my injuries would have never happened. I wish I had one though. That would make my life SO much easier right now.

***

A few minutes later we arrived at the potions stand. The zebra who ran it wasn't there though.

"Oh well, we tried," I shrugged as I turned around to leave.

"Not happening Quantum," Sawbones replied as he grabbed the collar of my barding with his claw thingy and forced me to a stop.

I rolled my eyes. A damn robot was telling me what to do? What was he, my doctor? Apparently he was. I'll make sure to work that out of his programming so that it wont bother me later.

The door to the outside behind the stand swung open and the black and white form of a zebra stepped in with a mouthful of seemingly normal looking plants and mushrooms in his mouth. How the hell could mushrooms grow in Detrot? It is way too cold for that right?

The zebra looked at me with a dissatisfied look and spat the cluster of miscellaneous things onto the table in front of me. I cringed a bit as I tried not to question the reason behind a few mushrooms and dead leaves. Logically, a mushroom shouldn't even be able to grow up here. That must mean that he grew it himself or that somepony here was selling mushrooms. Giving me a cross expression, the zebra asked in his strange but slightly fascinating accent,

"Who is this that comes to my store?"

"This is Quantum," Sawbones said as he flopped my hoof around like a rag-doll much to my disagreeing stare, "And I'm Sawbones. We are here to purchase some potions off of you to help his cold."

"A cold?" he asked.

"Yeah," I rasped trying to keep myself from going into a coughing fit.

The zebra raised an eyebrow and gave me a slight smile. For what he was smiling about I hadn't the foggiest.

"How much would a treatment like that cost?" Sawbones asked.

"Hm..." the zebra chucked as he looked at me as he brushed the hair away from his brow.

He then looked at me with his one scarlet eye and his other blue eye that was an identical copy of the ones I have. Wasn't this what the members of Medical back in Stable 37 called "Chimerism"? I could only imagine what this zebra had to deal with growing up in the Wasteland with two different colored eyes. Weird.

"How much are you willing to pay?" the zebra asked as he looked deeper into my blue eyes with his red one.

"Uh...," I droned on as I was totally stunned by what he was doing.

I couldn't move or think. His one eye seemed to look down into me and read me like an open book. He was searching for something I could feel it. But I couldn't think past that point as the zebra continued to stare at me with that one red eye and that unnerving smile.

"Quantum, are you alright?" Sawbones asked as he lifted me up higher in his claw and looked at me better.

"Oh I can assure you, he's fine," the zebra added with a grin. "I'm just seeing what is truly wrong with him."

"Zikar, that's enough!" another voice yelled from outside in that same zebra dialect.

The zebra blinked and I automatically felt like I was going to throw up. A spell of dizziness washed over me and the world spun for a brief moment. Sawbones promptly shook me back into reality. Through the door, another slightly older zebra mare stepped in with a large collection of bags tied to her belt. Zikar stepped back outside to leave me, Sawbones, and the new zebra be.

Yeah you better step out or I'll get Sawbones to tear a hole in your chest with his saw before you even get the chance to do that again.

"Don't mind my son Zikar," the zebra said scowling in the direction Zikar went, "He is not used to the Detrot natives yet and I'm afraid that his red eye is making ponies suspicious."

"Or hypnotizing ponies in Quantum's case," Sawbones added in a fake electronic chuckle.

"Do you want your Hard Drive removed Sawbones?" I growled looking back at him with a stare that would do any Raider proud.

"Please Quantum, even if you could, I have you by the hoof. How could you possibly..." he laughed before he was interrupted by me unscrewing his outer service port and removing a processing unit that controlled his arm movements.

I dropped to the floor and watched Sawbones's arms droop down and then lock up. He glared at me and I glared back.

"Don't do that again Sawbones," I coughed.

"Fine," he sighed as I put the processing unit back into him and his arms worked themselves back to life.

"You have a talent with machines?" the zebra asked curiously.

"Something like that," I answered as I straightened my collar and sleeves.

The zebra looked up and down at me with curiosity. She then said with a warm smile,

"My name is Xerona. What can I do for you Mister Quantum?"

"Its just Quantum."

"Well then... Quantum... what brings you to my shop on this day?"

"Quantum is looking for a treatment for his cold," Sawbones interrupted as his arms reprogrammed themselves.

"A cold you say?" Xerona asked.

"Yeah. Apparently my robot companion is now my mother," I said coldly shooting Sawbones a glare in the process, "That aside, do you have anything for..."

There was a small glass flask of swirling blue and green gunk sitting on the table in front of me. The smell of it was the second thing that hit me and, when it did, I would have honestly preferred fighting the cold naturally and it wasn't even open. If this was a topical solution, then I'm going to change my mind about this whole thing. I don't care if zebras turned out to be an honor code or something, my nose was almost as developed as my ears and they are telling my brain 'No'.

"This should help with your cold feathered one," Xerona smiled as she pushed the flask to me.

"Um... thanks Xerona," I said sheepishly, "but I think I'll pass on it."

"Don't be afraid of what you don't know young pegasus," she answered cryptically, "be afraid of what happens if you don't try."

"I'm Twenty-Three for your information," I replied quickly.

"Quantum you know the saying," Sawbones joined in, "Nothing ventured..."

"Nothing gained, yeah I know."

Then I decided that Sawbones was right and I popped the cork off of the top and tried to ignore the wave of sulfuric stench that flooded out of the bottle. It took all of my strength to keep myself from throwing up and I still had to drink it. With one final look at Sawbones that I hoped would signify total destruction of a specific robot, I took a swig of the bottle.

Screw the strength of all the princesses and all the saints in heaven! If I could think of anything that tasted worse than this I would have forgotten it in an instant and know nothing but the absolutely horrid taste of this potion! I couldn't help myself; I threw up a great deluge of glowing blue-green vomit with specks of glowing red and yellow all in it. My eyes started to water as the combination of both the smell of the vomit and the smell of the potion mixed together and put me on the road on vomiting again.

A road that I, in fact, took.

"Wow," I heard the voice of Zikar say, "I have never seen a pony with a worse gag reflex than yours."

"Zikar, get a mop and clean that up when he's done please?" Xerona asked quietly.

"Holy sweet Celestia and all of the heat of her sun that was foul!" I yelled trying to keep myself from doubling over again.

Sawbones then floated down closer to the floor and his little orange scanning light beamed onto the still half full bottle of potion in my hoof. Something in it must have spooked the robot as he snapped back up to the zebras in a tone of urgency,

"Why are there traces of Nightshade plants in here?! Are you trying to kill him!?"

"Absolutely not," Xerona answered in shock and disgust.

"Our family recipe has always included plants from the Nightshade family in it. It hasn't killed a pony yet. All it does is make it more palatable," Zikar added.

"More palatable my ass!" I shouted back spitting a glob of red into my pile of sickness, "That shit was the worst fucking thing I have ever tasted!"

Oh Celestia and Luna almighty please grant my stomach mercy.

"Were leaving," Sawbones proclaimed in a tone of finality as he once again grabbed me by the collar and dragged me off.

"Have a good day!" Zikar laughed.

"Luna rape you with her horn!" I yelled back shaking my hoof at him in frustration.

I'll get him back for this. Only him. Xerona probably didn't mean to make the potion taste like the worst thing ever but I had an assumption that Zikar was the one that must've poisoned the brew. Even if its the last thing I'll get done before I die, I'll make sure its of me making Zikar lose his lunch and dinner all at once. Then I'll watch and laugh like he did.

"Luna rape you with her horn? That's a new one," Sawbones chuckled as he continued to drag me off to the broom closet, "I might have to use that sometime."

"Don't Sawbones. Your too smart for that."

"And apparently you aren't?"

"Fuck you too."

***

Despite the taste of the zebra potion, it did work after about an hour of sickness that was worse than before I took the potion. Regardless, I put a few of my differences aside about Xerona and paid her the full thirty cap price. The same could not be said about Zikar though. He was a lose cannon that apparently had magical eye powers that I didn't want to deal with at the moment. So I fixed the problem by staying as far away from him as possible while completing my purchase with Xerona. She also gave me a few other non-Nightshade potions as compensation. I took them and promptly made sure that Sawbones got a good look at them before I drank any more zebra made crap. He confirmed that the rest were safe to drink... in moderation.

"Sawbones do you by chance have a special locator that finds specific ponies?" I asked the robot as I sat in front of the broom closet and drank down another one of the zebra potions so they wouldn't get stale with age like Xerona said.

"Why?" the robot answered with a question.

"Well, before I found you, Phantom Wing and I were out looking for a pony by the name of Beanie for his parents. Neither of us had any luck with it."

"Does he have a PipBuck?"

"Probably not."

"Then I can't help you there. I have a PipBuck Tag Identification System but I cant do anything about ponies who didn't have one. Goldenblood, my original owner, had a PipBuck during the last few months of the war and wanted something that was PipBuck compatible. At least, that was what I was put into production with the specific parameters for."

Now I didn't know much about PipBucks, mostly cause I never took one apart and rewired it, but I knew that something like a Tag Finder existed. My one friend in Security named Baton Pass told me that the PipBuck Tagging System was mostly used to find other ponies that you didn't know the exact location of another pony if you had their tag name. In fact, the very same Security Pony who explained this to me had used the very same system to find me after the incident with my parents.

It was a very hard day. Nova and Quasar had a double shift with the stable air talismans and electronic synthesizers all down in the very lowest levels of the stable. Someplace where even the EFS would start to fail and the Tag Identification System would follow with it. This was actually not that uncommon for my family since Nova and Quasar both heads of Maintenance Staff B, the largest staff out of Staffs A through H and something was always going wrong. The night proceeded like any other with only the occasional call from mom to tell me to stay out of the apple storage and from father to tell me to make sure the heating talisman for the showers were working correctly. I never did figure it out, much to his efforts. That thing was probably the only electrical conduit that I never did figure out.

Usually Piled High, my neighbor in Storage Level G, would show up and essentially acted as my babysitter until my real parents came back and then she would return to organizing the extra stuff the stable had lying around. I liked Piled High, she was a nice unicorn with the best apple pancakes anypony could've made. That night she was running a few hours late, which was odd for her. Then, when I was about to go to bed, the door to my "apartment" slid open and a pony walked in with a frayed dark blue coat with a hood over their head. I trotted out half expecting to find Piled High but stopped in my tracks to find that it was another unicorn with a pair of hard, charcoal eyes. Keep in mind that it was simulated night already and the only thing that was easy to tell about the pony was the whites of their eyes.

Unknown to me at the time, that very same pony came to kill me and my family for some reason. Something about "bloodlines and revenge" and other things that I still don't understand. A few hours before, he had sharpened a metal pipe into a spear and stabbed my parents to death with it only a half hour beforehoof. After looking at him blankly for a minute, he grinned and said so coldly and softly that any other normal pony wouldn't hear but me. He said so slowly and so sure of himself,

"The gates will be your undoing."

My only saving grace at that moment in time were my ears being able to pick up the slight movement of the pipe behind his coat. I ran from his attack just as he lashed out with the pipe and ran back into my room to look for anything I could've used to help defend myself. There was nothing. So I did what any sane pegasus would've done and flew up to the ceiling, pulled the grate of the ventilation duct off its framework, and escaped into the vent. Thank Celestia for small favors as the pony with a pipe did not know know to use a Tag Finder himself. What was four or five hours to find me in the vents after the fiasco felt like an eternity for me. After they found me curled up in a ball in a vent and pulled me out, Piled High, Baton Pass, and several other Security Ponies told me that the pony who did this was caught and now in custody. Legally, I became Piled High's colt after that incident.

And I will never forget that one ponies smile...

"Quantum," Sawbones said as he tapped my shoulder with his grabby claw.

"Wha-wut?" I stammered as I tried to pull myself back into reality.

"You were staring off into space for the past ten minutes. Are you alright?"

"Yeah Sawbones. I-I'm fine," I stuttered getting back up to my hooves.

If Sawbones had an actual face rather than a metal casing and four eyes, he would have looked cross. I could just tell.

"What's the plan now?" he asked.

"Plan?" I repeated before it clicked into my mind, "Oh! Plan! Right, right... Um..."

"Do you even have one?"

"Of course I do! Why wouldn't I?" I asked sheepishly.

Probably because I had about two thousand thoughts running through my head at the same time.

"So... lets hear it then," Sawbones chuckled as he crossed two of his four metal forelimbs in front of the one eye that remained focused on me.

Come on universe! Do me a favor for once and give me something to do!

Then my ears twitched to the familiar sound of gunfire. A whole lot of gunfire. Faint and distant there was the heralding cry of an army of guns that seemed to storm up out of nowhere. That meant one of two possible things. The first being that somepony was having fun throwing away good bullets that were worth good caps for no distinct reason and the second being an assault or surprise attack.

All of my caps were on the second option.

"Sawbones. Does your programming include a 'Flight or Fight' response in it?" I asked as I slowly turned my head to the robot.

"No," he answered without thinking, "Why?"

"Because this would be the time that I would remove it from your programming," I answered as I pulled my Double-Barrel Shotgun from my saddlebag and telekinetically loaded two red colored shells into the breach.

"This is the plan? Fight?"

"What else is there to do at this point? I'm open for ideas," I replied as I took to the air and darted towards the symphony of guns.

***

A volley of bullets greeted my arrival to the main door of Foxes Theatre. That and most of the pony vendors who had shops and businesses all of their own. Most held rifles, others held pistols, while most wielded any random objects as a melee weapon. All of them however, were acting as a wall that separated the Wasteland from the semi-civil population in here.

"HOLD UP! FRIENDLY FIRE!" I shouted as I ducked low to the ground and covered my ears with the soft feathers of my wings.

"Seize fire!" Keeper yelled and the gunfire died down for only a second.

I got up and Keeper trotted up towards me with a look mixed with rage and disgust. I tried putting on my most sympathetic smile that I could, but it did nothing to change her expression. She then took her one heavy pistol and hit me so hard on the temple with it that I swore that there were little Phantom Wings flapping around my head silently laughing their victory.

"You bastard!"

"Oi! What did I do now?" I asked while giving myself a vigorous shake in order to try to lose the oncoming headache.

"I knew that there was something up with you! I just knew it! Stable 37 IS in the middle of Appleoosa! Not only that, its full of Steel Rangers!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your some sort of spy sent by the Rangers and you have been fueling them with information needed to take us all out," another plum purple mare with a white mane with little light blue symbols on the ends of her locks added.

"I'm a spy!? What the hell would the Steel Rangers want with a pegasus in the first place? As far as I'm concerned, Steel Rangers are always Earth Ponies!" I retaliated.

"The hell if I know!" Keeper screamed with murderous rage.

The doors to the outside caved in for a second then bounced back into place due to the shier weight of the ponies that were holding it shut. Whatever was trying to get into the door was using some very, very heavy ordinance that scared me more than anything else the Steel Rangers could possibly carry. Then, I thought for a second.

"Are any of the Rangers out there painted with a purple design or the color grey?"

"They're all green damnit!" another pony with an ironically grey coat and a black cowboy hat answered as she fired six shots in rapid sucession from her revolver that she held in her hooves.

"No they're brown, Lever Action!" another mare with a faded yellow coat and a red and blue mane argued as she shoved a long rifle through a crack in the door made specifically for shooting.

"Your colorblind Florana!" Lever Action countered as she reloaded her gun, "You should know this by now!"

"They're green Florana," the plum mare added.

"Green Rangers?" I asked tilting my head and making sure the rifle had enough bullets.

"Elder Whistler's Toledo Contingent," Keeper answered levelly as she went back up to the doors and poked another rifle barrel through, "Though, I don't understand why he would want to deal with Detrot. We don't have any MWT tech for them!"

I facehoofed.

I HAD AN EFS FOR CELESTIA'S SAKE AND WHY WAS I NOT USING IT?!

It is at these moments in my life that I actually scare myself with how much of an idiot I am. The only reason why I would turn it off was to go to sleep because I didn't want to hear it anymore. Now that I was awake, I should turn it back on right? Compensating with the deactivated advantage giver, I turned the EFS back on and immediately the outer edges of the EFS exploded with red and the ring closest to the center exploded with yellow with only a few scattered targets of both colors in between. Those few targets that went in between did not stay lit for very long.

At this point I should have asked what the MWT was, but it was probably a better idea to figure out what they want and how to get rid of these Rangers before they turn Foxes into a pile of rubble. I leaped into the air and put myself into a hover.

"On my mark, open the door," I ordered getting into a position that would allow me to take off in air.

"Are you fucking mad!?" Lever Action yelled back as she tried pulling a sliver of concrete shrapnel from out of her one hoof and reloading her gun at the same time.

"You heard him!" Keeper hollered in authority.

With a low rumble from all of the other ponies holding the doors in place, they too positioned themselves in such a way that one door would swing open for only a few seconds. I grit my teeth. Was I really going to take on a mess of Steel Rangers just to prove that I wasn't a spy? Everything about this was a bad idea. Maybe there was another way. Maybe there was something else I missed.

When I glanced down at the ground there was the frightened and tearful face of Cherry Bud as she held a sharpened piece of rebar in her mouth and a rusted pistol in her magic. That gun should've been my Whinnychester, not some poor excuse for weaponry! Her big blue eyes looked up at me and I could read the acceptation of defeat in her face. The acceptation of failure.

The acceptation that a certain white pegasus once had as he held a broken piece of sharpened pipe in his mouth and asked why somepony would kill his parents... with those same blue eyes...

"NOW!"

The door swung open and, along with the typical rush of snow and cold air, a series of bright yellow and orange flashes accompanied by the steady percussion of firing guns and bigger pieces of artillery burst through. The smell of cooked flesh and sulfur hit me like a speeding pegasus. Now, however, was not the time to recognize that fact.

Today, I was not an Electrician.

Today, I was a Security Pony.

And, like a Security Pony back at my stable once said,

"Security Saves Ponies."

Today, that was exactly what I was going to do. Save Foxes. And with a cry of war, I shot through the door and straight up into the sky.

Author's Note

LEVEL UP

NEW PERK

ZEBRA-AUGMENTED PONY

You have allowed your body to be permanently enhanced by zebra alchemy. You gain plus 10% resistance to Fire and Poison damage and your ears become less effected by high pitched noises. You also gain +3 to your Damage Threshold. (Note: Zebra-Augmented Pony and the cybernetic implant perk Cyberpony are mutually exclusive.)