The gates of worlds came crashing open, a creak a groan a sigh...

Unknown. Many fear it as it is something no one can or will understand. Once we know what it is, it no longer is The Unknown. Its is now something. That "something" then makes you want to know more about this "something" and then you gain a better understanding of it. Once that happens, it is now just a "thing". You give the "thing" a name and now you think you know what the "thing" is now and what it does and why you think it does what it does. There was one thing that people do not understand about the "thing" they think they know now. You truly never know what something is fully. Every little bit of everything is unknown.

BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEP!

Click.

The alarm of my PipBuck broke the serenity of dreamland and I was forced awake by the loud echoing of the alarm system as the sound played ping-pong with the walls with the noise being the ball and the walls being the two paddles. I shut it off. There was a warm and disgusting mucus film covering my tongue and a ache in the base of my skull. The kind of weird film that you get when your either sick or you just had a terrible time sleeping. I was betting that it was the fact that sleeping in the dark where only Celestia knows where I am was the cause of it all. My eyes slowly opened as I still contemplated whether or not I should wake up or not. Then a horrid smell hit me like a speeding apple cart and my eyes burst open so fast that I was afraid that my eyeballs would fly out. It was still as dark as it was the night before and there didn't seem to be a way to make it any brighter.

I facehoofed. I had a PipBuck. The screen itself is brighter than most of the flashlights that us electricians where assigned with in Electrical Maintenance back in the stable. In fact, the light that it emits is brighter than most unicorn illumination spells. I staggered around, trying to get an idea of where my hooves were planted and tapped the glass screen on my PipBuck that brought it out of idle. Pressing the little gear symbol on it, which lead to the settings menu, I pressed a little green-yellow arrow and turned the brightness settings on my PipBuck screen to maximum brightness. It was at that moment, when the screen became illuminated with a near emerald green color, that I realized what I was sleeping in. A catacomb.

There were dozens upon dozens of skeletons scattered in piles all along the walls that was now glowing the sickly green color that ponies get when they come down with the flu or some other stomach virus. I stammered back in horror at the grotesque sight of concentrated death that lined the walls like three-dimensional wallpaper. I then remembered the soft green light of an old PipBuck that gave me an idea of where to sleep not even four and a half hours before. I turned, slowly, to the approximate location of the small screen and backpedaled in terror. The screen was attached to a pony. She, at least I thought it was a she, unlike the other bodies was not a complete skeleton. There was still some rotting flesh and dried blood covering most of her chest and over the area where her cutie mark would be. Several flies buzzed around the decaying corpse of a pale orange unicorn with some strands of dark burgundy hair. No... her hair was a light brown. The blood that came from a large hole in her forehead just above where the rest of her broken horn would be oozed into her mane and turned it into the brownish-red color that it is now.

Soon my body felt weary and my brain began to drown in an ocean of thoughts. Then I tasted bile. My stomach lurched and I threw up. I could taste the acidic but also strangely sweet taste of my stomach acids as it expelled the one thing I had the night before I walked out of that door, iced tea. A bit of my throw up landed on the screen of my PipBuck and I swiftly cleaned it off so the smell doesn't linger on it for the next week. The stench of bodily fluids and decaying pony mixed together in such a way that, if I didn't move to somewhere with better ventilation, then I would throw up again or pass out. I galloped away from the smell. I had no particular direction to go, I just had to go somewhere where the air was in better condition and did not have a bad smell to it rather than breathe the air that I was breathing in now. I then came upon a set of concrete stairs that seemed to go up. The only reason why I knew they were concrete was the fact that I tripped over them and fell face first into one of the ascending steps. I brushed myself off and run up them both in fear and in curiosity.

On top of the steps was a small wooden room. It was peppered in small holes where small rays of light poked through and broke the odd darkness of the cave that I ran from not even a minute ago. I threw all of my weight onto the door to the room that was wet and weakened with age. I was then struck with a surge of light. It was so swift and unexpected that I couldn't help but put my wings around my eyes as I tried in vain to shield them long enough to give them time to adjust to the light. After a minute of blindness, I closed my wings and finally got a first look of what Stable 37 was trying to hide from my for my entire life. It was finally time to learn the secrets of what was on the other side of the gate.

The world was immense. It was the biggest thing I have ever seen. There were no walls and a ceiling of grey that I instinctually recognized as the sky. Even if I was a pegasus that lived under the ground for twenty-three years I've seen enough pictures of the sky from story books back in Stable 37 in order for me to recognize what the real thing looked like. It, however, was not the brilliant light cyan blue that the pictures always depicted it as; moreover it was a solid slate grey colored blanket sheet that seemed to span off in all directions for what seemed to be infinity. I finally looked back down in front of me to observe the land that only my hooves touched and what my wings defied. It was a very expansive and very flat patch of grayish-white. Small patches yellowed grass sprouted from the white earth unevenly as the flat ground soon dipped up and down making hills and, very far off but still visible, mountains. Several small and nearly bare trees dotted the landscape and many more smaller ones did so as well. They were an unhealthy brown as a few sickly brown leaves still clung to the branches.

I cocked my head a bit to the odd sight. I have never seen a leaf that was not a green color. It was always a simulated "spring" in the apple orchards of Stable 37 and the leaves never changed color. They had no reason to change, there was no season change. Being outside for no less than two minutes already had me experience the sky, dead leaves, and the sound of silence. It was absolutely quiet. I could hear my heartbeat in my chest and the sound of my large pegasus lungs breathing in the fresh cool air from the outside world. It was never quiet in Stable 37 as there was always the low hum of the arcane lighting system or the electrical lighting system. Sometimes even both at the same time. The absence of those two sounds was very relaxing and very pleasant. My unnaturally large ears picked up no noises. My heart and soul felt as ease as I now understood the sound of absolute nothingness and enjoyed it for the next few minutes. Absolute nothingness was absolute bliss.

A soft clicking noise pulled my wandering mind back into reality. I looked down at my forehoof and checked the screen on my PipBuck. On it, a little gauge turned on and began to softly click away. I have never seen this attachment to my PipBuck and, if I have seen it before, never really gave it much attention as the only thing it was really used for was to listen to Stable 37's radio broadcast and to help me find the safest path to reroute electrical power so I don't electrocute myself while working on wiring. This dial cheerfully bounced from the little green part and very close to the yellow-orange part of the meter. It then became clear to me what the dial was meant to detect at my stomach once again gave a slightly painful lurch. It was a radiation detector, something that I did not even know that it had. I coughed a bit and flew a few feet into the air feeling the true freedom that is flight for the very first time.

In Stable 37, there was always a ceiling. There still is a ceiling on the outside, but so much higher than the ceilings in the stable. The highest roof that I have seen up to now was the one in the stable atrium and yet those were only about thirty feet high. The roof of the outside was so big and expansive that I could have sworn that the sky had its own gateway to another world above me. The cool air breezed through my blue and black hair and down my electrician's barding as it lowered the temperature of my entire body from terrifyingly hot to refreshingly cool in about a minute. Aside from the slight trace of radiation that lingered on the ground and sometimes in the air, I had no idea why nopony else in Stable 37 visited the outside world more often.

Finding a nice spot to land that didn't have a noticeable amount of radiation, I landed and folded my wings to my side as the now cool feathers that touched my sides gave me a slight shudder. I was still in the middle of nowhere, but now in a middle of nowhere that did not have a radiation problem. Looking around in all directions again, I found out now that there was only one logical direction to move in. Forward. I turned in circles for a second and trotted off into a seemingly random path to nothing. I did not have a heading, I just wanted to go somewhere and see something. There was something everywhere. I wanted a piece of that something.

***

It did not take more than what felt like an hour for me to realize why nopony else left the stable and went up here. There was a city that I came across. It was no longer a city, more like a graveyard marked with giant tombstones that towered into the sky and almost pierced the blanket of grey that separated whatever was up there from all thing things that were down here. Most of the buildings that were not a massive pile of rubble were charred black and crumbling with age. Most, if not all, the windows on said buildings were either shattered or destroyed in nearly identical fashion. The asphalt road was crumbling away around the edges as well and were eroded away until several patches of dirt were poking their way out of the several pony size pot holes. My little light of hope that somepony, or something for that matter, lived out here was dying rapidly. With a sigh, I took to the air and began to search for anything of either value or interest to my current situation.

Thirty minutes past and there were no signs of life except for the little RadRoaches that were constantly a problem for Stable 37's water purifier. The little scanner, another feature I recently discovered on my PipBuck, helped give me an idea of North from South and Left from Right. The device, now called an Eyes-Foreword Sparkle, also came with a few other trinkets that I never knew existed like the Stable-Tech Arcane Targeting Spell. I still had no idea what SATS does, but I have seen enough soccer from the teams that use it to get a basic understanding of the fact that it was some sort of targeting spell. I'm not a unicorn, all I know is that it had something to do with helping soccer players who don't know how to aim manage to get at least ten feet within the area of the goal net. To me, it was a just a devise for the trajectory impaired.

It was noon when I found a building to explore and get some sort of idea of where I should go or do next. It was what I assumed was a hotel that had no intact glass windows and the foundation was crumbling away reminding all who went near it that all big things will one day fall. The front double doors were boarded up and chained shut. The lock on it was slightly rusted, indicating that it was either made of stainless steel or that it was placed there recently. Either way, I wanted it off. The building, despite how worn away it was, looked like it was the only building with adequate shelter from other weird crawly things that were outside. Taking my flat head screwdriver, I jammed it into the lock itself in hopes that the lock would somehow open. I realized that it was a very dumb mistake as the end of the screwdriver snapped off and was now stuck in the lock further adding a layer of protection to the internal components that I was trying to trick into working. I leveled the screwdriver to my eyes and started to seethe with rage. Now there was no way in there. I threw the broken screwdriver onto the asphalt with enough force to leave a small chip in it and growled at it angrily,

"Fine. Lets try a different approach..."

I opened up one of the saddlebags attached to my Electricians' Barding and pulled out a small angle grinder. It ran on a rechargeable spark battery and was one of the few tools that showed little use in my field. I unbolted the bit on the end and put in a new abrasive saw blade. Gripping it tightly in my wings, I flipped the small switch and the powerful hunk of steel cutting material began to spin at hundreds of revolutions per minute. I took a deep breath and touched the blade to the lock piece. Sparks erupted in all directions as microscopic bits of metal debris were being flung in all directions bouncing off the boarded door and the ground like will-o-wisps. The metal on the lock soon fell away as the blade sliced through it without a problem. In a petty display of victory that I knew nopony else could see, I kicked the lock as hard as I could and began to undo the chains to the door. As it turns out, somepony did see it. And he was right behind me.

"Well aren't ye proud of yerself?" the raspy voice of the being next to me said coldly.

I turned around, very slowly, to see whoever spotted me. Instead of finding a pony, I was face to face with the end of a big and scary looking weapon held not even five inches from my head by a field of teal colored magic levitation. The origin of that field of magic was a menacing looking clover green unicorn with very spiky orange hair that ended in tips of scarlet red color. I hoped that the red pigment was not from his own blood like with the orange unicorn back in the tunnel connecting to Stable 37. There was a great red gash across the left side of his face near his mouth that oozed with fresh blood and was covered with dark red dirt that was stained with that same blood. His steel grey eyes held not emotions as far as I could see and they were staring at me as they pierced into my soul as if he was trying to dig up a secret that I didn't know that I even had. I gulped and gently put the angle grinder on the ground as to not damage it or the new cutting blade.

"Well... are ye?" He asked with the metal thing he was floating in his magic inching dangerously closer to my head.

"... uh, um, I-I guess," I choked as I was trying to throw together words and hoped that they would make a sentence good enough for his own sake.

"Aren't ya eh? Well...," the unicorn stallion cooed as he looked from my hooves to my wings, "I never imagined that I would meet a pegasus that wasn't dead. What are you doin' down here?"

One thing about him that managed to get on my nerves for no apparent reason was the fact that his accent was not the same as any of the ones in Stable 37, but I decided to put that on the back burner in my brain as I obviously had more urgent problems to deal with at the moment.

"I-I thought that we were all over the place. What do you mean 'a pegasus that wasn't dead'?" I asked trying to change the subject.

The unicorn blinked.

"Are ye' some kind of idiot?" I answered with a question.

I blinked.

"Um... no. I just want to know..."

"Hey Lucky Draw, who did ya' find now?" another unicorn asked as he interrupted my statement.

Another red unicorn with maroon hair that was not stained with blood trotted casually over to the green unicorn, now known as Lucky Draw, with two other earth ponies with strange machines on their backs with weapons just as deadly as Lucky Draw's that ended in long metal bits that extended up to their mouths. The two earth ponies were biting on the bits as if they expected me to do something stupid. The unicorn however had no, what I assumed now were, weapons drawn.

"Is this the damn fool whose making that noise?" he asked casually as his eyes wandered from Lucky Draw to me several times.

"I werd ershum," the golden yellow manned and purple coated pony with a helmet on her head on the red unicorn's right side mumbled through the strange mouthpiece.

Lucky Draw turned to face the three other ponies behind him, still pointing his weapon at my forehead. He cleared his throat and in a somehow more gravely voice than the one he was using to talk with me he said,

"Assume nothin'. The lock is sliced through. If he somehow was a unicorn a minute before I arrived, there was no way he was gettin' in that buildin'."

Thankfully I realized that they didn't notice the angle grinder at my hooves. As quietly as possible, I unfolded my wings and gave them an impression that I was just stretching them. Gaining that five seconds of opportunity that these ponies didn't realize slip by them, I grabbed the angle grinder in m wing and tucked it away in one of the saddle bags in my electricians barding. After I made sure that the thing wouldn't turn on while I was flying, I quietly fluttered my wings and began my quiet escape. Big mistake. I managed to only make it about ten feet in the air and I heard the purple earth pony mouth through his teeth,

"HEY!!"

The other three then turned towards me again and that little metal thing that Lucky Draw was holding to my head not even a minute ago was aimed at me again. This time at my wing. I gave it a confused look and that moment of delay gave him enough time to make the little metal thing on the back of the weapon swing forward and hit the device itself. Everything happened in an instant. A flash of yellow white light, an ear bursting sound of an explosion that was so terrible that I only can compare it to one other instance in my life, and the feeling of immense pain exploding in my right wing. I hovered in the air for a less than a second after that and soon spiraled out of control into the concrete ground below. The crash landing did not help the fact that the pain in my wing was almost blinding. I howled. I have never experienced pain like this before and I want it to stop.

I did not even have enough time to find a safe direction to go. The sky was now impossible until I had my wing fixed. I was grounded and I had to move before I ended up six feet in the ground in a box. I picked myself up and a new sensation of pain burst to life in my left shoulder. I probably broke it with my luck. There was a cut on the side of my face and warm crimson colored fluid began to flow out all over my face and into my right eye making the colors of the world gain a red hue. Fighting through tears, I ran as fast as I could from the four fully armed and very angry ponies now in hot pursuit of a defenseless and beyond terrified and grounded pegasus. The embarrassment alone would kill me.

I took a sharp turn around a decaying street lamp and bolted into a mostly intact skyscraper that towered into the sky. It was not as tall as most of the other ones but that did not matter. All I cared about was getting away from the very irate ponies that were still chasing me with murder in their eyes and the stench of the dead floating along with them like some sort of revolting invisible fog. Scampering around an already overturned desk, I planned to wait them out before leaving again and going for that door I recently opened. The only problem was that I did not know how long I would have to wait before they finally caught up with my method of escape. These ponies did not look, or smell for that matter, like they were very well educated as compared to me having a degree in engineering and twelve years of basic schooling. They did however had something that I did not have and it was called experience. They have been out here for what would possibly be years or possibly even decades while I only showed up after spending my life in isolation from the outside world. It was an unfair advantage but one I would have to learn how to get around in order to even have a chance to survive out in the Equestrian Wasteland. Low intelligence, high experience. It was never a good mix. I had intelligence on my side and I suddenly figured out how to get myself out of this mess without resulting in my own death.

I along the way thought that this is I was already dead. I had left the stable for less than six hours and I was already dead. Embarrassing. I left to find out what was up here and why we cant be up here. It took less than a day for me to figure out why nopony else was making annual trips up here but I was going to be damned if I wasn't going to learn about what else was up here. That, at least, was something I thought for only a few minutes before the gears that were locked together from years of routine roared to life and began to turn and I started to make plans. Looking around at my surroundings, the first thing that I knew needed to be fixed was my wing. I couldn't do anything with this in this state. There had to be a way to at least make a splint for something like it so it can stay in place while it heals. Thankfully the building I was in was a hardware store at one point or another and, despite it being looted for supplies only Celestia knows how many years ago, there were probably still a few bits and pieces of tools lying around that I could use. At least, that is what I hoped.

As quietly as my torn body would allow, I moved about the building in search of anything I could use either to fight back or to help heal myself. Most of the metal drawers, as I predicted, were empty except for the few bits of old exoskeleton that came from long dead RadRoaches that used to call the little space home. A few however, had some things that I was able to use to my advantage. A head from a rusty hatchet, a few feet of very old but surprisingly well preserved rope, a piece of rebar, and a very large bottle of Wonderglue. Unfortunately for me, the Wonderglue was empty. That didn't bother me as much as it would have on any other occasion as I didn't even need Wonderglue, or even a cup of tea to help me think, to help me figure out how to set my plan in motion. I opened my shot wing and examined the damage more closely. I winced a bit but the gunshot wound looked worse than it actually was. Using my other wing, my non-dominant wing I might add, I wrapped some of the rope around it and reinforced it with the rebar. It was a temporary fix. I would need a real medical pony to fix this before it got infected.

Still shaking the ear ringing noise from my head, I trotted up to the top window and poked my head out to get an idea of where my pursuers went. I only had my head out of the window for about seven seconds before the wood that made up the window frame above my head exploded, sending bits of wooden splinters in all directions. The shot did no real damage to me, but it sure gave me a scare. I pulled my head out of the window and brushed some of the shrapnel out of my mane. From not too far away, I herd the red unicorn's distinct voice cry out,

"I know your in there pegasus! Come out and we'll consider letting you live long enough to meet your new home in a cage!"

Is this unicorn stupid or something? I honestly was thinking that he either was stupid or is just playing games with me. I had no idea what he was getting at if he wasn't joking and I did not want to find out any time soon.

"Go and take a long walk off a short pier!" I yelled back.

I didn't see the unicorn's reaction or any of his fellow associates but I was guessing that it was pretty amusing. Even if I had time to look and see what they looked like, it would have probably resulted in me getting shot in the head and I was fairly certain that you couldn't wrap a piece of rebar around it and expect it to at least be semi-attached to my neck. I now realized that today was going to be the day that my big mouth was going to kill me.

No.

No it wasn't.

That day can wait.

Soon the ponies stormed into the building with murder in their war cry and the stench of death following them. I galloped to the staircase up to the room I was in and pulled the large filling cabinet that was full of nothing towards the edge. I knew it wasn't going to stop them, all I needed was a little bit more time. The ponies soon came into view and thundered up the stairs. They made it up halfway before I gave the filing cabinet a mighty buck and it fell down the stairs. With an earsplitting thud the metal boulder slammed into the ponies and pinned them to the floor. Not even a moment later, after hearing the cracking of old wood, the floor gave way beneath my pursuers and they plummeted down into an inky darkness as they bellowed out their screams of fear along the way before finally smashing into the floor that sounded like it was at least two floors down. After a meaty crash, everything fell silent.

Puzzled, I flew over to the hole and looked down into it. I couldn't see anything. The ever present stench of decaying death filled the air and was now more prominent than before. I coughed.

"The damn fool had it coming to him," said a voice that I only heard very briefly one time before.

Next me, the yellow coated unicorn with a purple mane and a helmet with the machine on her side quietly snuck up from out of the shadows. I stammered back in fear. This pony was willing to shot me like her other earth pony partner. I backed away from her and tried to find something that I could use to defend myself from what she would do to me.

"N-no! NO! Get away f-f-from me!" I screamed in terror with the throbbing pain in my wing and the sharp headache worked hand in hand to make a very uncomfortable sensation in my body that only got worse with the present situation.

The yellow unicorn held out her hoof and said gently,

"Its alright. I'm not going to hurt you. I didn't shot you. It never even crossed my mind. That was Cue Frame that took the shot at you through the window."

I relaxed a bit. Was this a trick? A trap that would lower my guard so she can pull a shot off at me while I had no chance of defending myself? I considered offering my hoof in return, but soon pulled it back.

"Why should I trust you?" I asked still shaken from the near-death experience that I just had.

She paused for a second. Pulling her hoof back, she opened her saddlebag and pulled out a bottle of purple liquid from it and tried to hand it to me. I resisted.

"Its a healing potion. There is nothing to be scared of."

I shuddered a bit from shock and slowly grabbed the potion in my one good wing. I lifted it to my muzzle and bit the cap off and spit it in some random direction. I took a little sip and I automatically felt a little bit better. Soon I was downing the whole potion and felt the new sensation of healing magic flow through my body. I could feel the wound on my head close and see the bruise around my left shoulder fade away. In stark realization, I unwrapped the makeshift cast around my wing and could already see the gaping hole begin to close. It was miraculous. Impossible even. So that is what magic felt like. For a split second, I felt cheated out of it by not being a unicorn. Then I remembered that unicorns couldn't fly and that changed my opinion on the subject in an instant.

"T-thank you," I said weakly.

The earth pony nodded.

"What is your name?" she asked still with the same sweetness that she used before.

"Quantum. M-my name is Quantum," I answered nervously.

"My name is Iron Melody. It is nice to meet you Quantum."

***

Iron Melody didn't stay with me for very long. Within that time however, she gave me a few tips that I would need in order to survive in the Equestrian Wastelands. Ways to get food, how to get non-radiated water from irradiated water, and what other kinds of ponies I would probably meet out here. She told me that the Equestrian Wasteland was separated into five main groups: Slavers, Raiders, Ghouls, Steel Rangers, and Survivors. Slavers were ponies like iron Melody's partners. They usually kept to themselves unless they were hired to bring in captured Survivors, Raiders, or even other Slavers to their boss and cash them in for ammunition, food, or supplies.

Raiders were simply disgusting murderers that did awful things to the ponies that they captured and sometimes their bodies after they had killed the pony that they captured. They leave behind many warning signs on buildings and walls with blood or other gross things. Iron Melody explained that she hates Raiders with a fiery passion that was hot enough that she insisted that her group took no Raiders alive. They never listened to her.

Ghouls were a strange group. They were normal ponies, like myself, at one point but they became mutated by magical radiation. This happened very often during the first few years of the Wasteland existing but soon they slowly stopped appearing. The threat of them around the area I was in was severely low, but it does not mean that they don't occasionally show up. They too were relatively easy to spot as they are literally walking pony corpses. They usually don't mean good company, but sometimes you'll get lucky.

Steel Rangers were also relatively easy to spot because of the "magical power armor" they wore on them that literally covered every part of their body including their tail. They were fierce, blood thirsty artifacts of a pre-war era that acted like Raiders but took older technologies from other ponies or old ruins that they think belongs to them. Iron Melody made it very clear that if you spot a Steel Ranger the best course of action is to run and hope that they didn't manage to get a clear shot of you while your trying to escape. They apparently had weapons that most Raiders and Slavers both feared so much that it was every pony for themselves when one starts firing, or they love the beautiful things so much that they have dream of doing "things" with the guns themselves. I soon got the image of a Slaver, like one in Iron Melody's group of long dead companions, having increasingly lewd dreams of them with the guns that made me both shudder in fear but also have me question the sanity of both Raiders and Slavers alike.

Then there were the Survivors. She explained that they were the Equestrian Wasteland's version of normal. They lived in homes that they constructed, traveled often to sell goods or get supplies, had one or two traveling companions with them, and sometimes lived in small towns that were scattered all around the Wasteland. Though these little settlements were filled with just as many residents as in an average stable (for some reason, I could not imagine a town up here in the Equestrian Wasteland having a town full of at least twenty-three hundred ponies like in my stable) they were incredibly rare to find and trying to find one usually results in ending finding a Raider/Slaver town instead.

"When that happens," I remembered Iron Melody explaining, "your chances of survival go from twenty percent all the way down to zero percent in ten seconds flat."

Revisiting that thought always gave me a shudder. At least she gave me a little bit more help with my injuries before she left me and went back to her boss. She told me that she did not know a bone reform spell, but she did give me two small Restoration Potions, a small I.V. bag looking thingy with orange liquid that was labeled "RadAway", and a few... bottle caps? She left me afterwards saying little more about the Wasteland that I should know about except for the fact that I need a weapon, preferably a long range one, and a set of armor to protect against all of the weird things that live out here. The last thing she said to me before she left to do whatever she did was,

"Oh and one more thing, try to avoid the bridges. They're homes to all sorts of weird stuff."

With a final nod and a good luck, she turned and left. I was alone and terrified again as I already missed Iron Melody's company. Funny, a Slaver who met me for about an hour was the closest thing to a friend that I ever had. I was rarely seen back in Stable 37 as us electricians were usually on the very low maintenance levels on the bottom of the stable and we very rarely came to the upper floors and we were only there just to replace one of the Overmare's light bulbs or just to manage the emergency breakers. Nothing too big of course. Out of sight, out of mind. We were essentially the ghosts of Stable 37. We were there, just scarcely seen. Therefore it was a shock to me that somepony like Iron Melody would be so welcoming so quickly.

I thought to myself a lot about Iron Melody as I trotted through the ruined streets and degrading homes with my wing now fully healed. Well, if you count the fact that it no longer had a hole that pierced all the way through it but it still felt very sore and very stiff. Despite all of that, I had enough strength and willpower that allowed me to still hover a foot or two off the ground trying to keep some pressure off of my shoulder blade that was shot and was probably broken with my luck. I then remembered the reason why I got into this much trouble in the first place and turned back towards the padlocked door that had the now sliced apart padlock.

Grinning a little I grabbed the padlock in my teeth and tore it off of the wooden door with ease. It pained me to think that I didn't even need the angle grinder to break it open as the wood tore away with the lock. A fuse broke in the back of my head as I realized that I could have saved myself two hours of daylight, some blood, and some spark battery charge if I just tried to pull on the lock as hard as I could and hoped that it would snap off. One thing bothered me about it though. I eyeballed the lock now lying on the ground closely and asked it,

"Why would you be one a door like that?"

Of course the lock did not respond. It was a problem that most of the other electricians managed to look over. The fact that I frequently talked to inanimate objects and expected them to answer back was nothing new or unusual to them as they were exposed to it for what amounted to six years of electrical work. Now with me being outside in a place where one wrong noise could bring hell down on you faster than you could even imagine, I guess I had to try to cut down on my one sided conversations with nonliving things for my own safety. Besides, the objects never answered my questions. Except for that one time when a section of ventilation fell on my head and I got a concussion but that was different.

I stepped over the lock and pushed open the door where it gave a creak of protest. I stepped in, turned on the lamp function on my PipBuck, and immediately the room was filled with the familiar green glow of the hoof micro computer. My eyes narrowed. The walls were not glowing green with the same light as my PipBuck. They were glowing red. The walls were covered in blood and gore that resembled stuff out of my worst nightmares. Half mutilated corpses hung from the ceiling bound in rusting chains that were near disintegration themselves. Like before with the Slavers, the stench of the room hit me like a concrete wall and made my stomach churn. My body soon could not keep the contents of my stomach in my stomach anymore and I heaved. Nothing came up. I already wasted it on the skeleton hallway and I soon realized that I was very hungry and he only thing that kept me from falling over dead now was Adrenaline. I staggered to myself a bit as I mouthed to myself,

"Oh sweet Celestia have mercy..."

After gathering up a bit of control over my internal organs I took a deep breath and slowly walked into the room. Obviously the ponies above me on another room did not notice the noise of gunshots and the sound of an angle grinder because I could hear them doing things that were loud enough to counteract the skirmish outside. For example, I could hear the obvious thumping of two living things as they were doing something that I did not even want to think about at the moment. Actually, scratch that... I did not want to think about it anymore as long as I lived. Then there were a few bangs of some small bullets. Nothing like the massive ones that penetrated through my wing and out the other end. Target practice maybe? I decided to think about that later. I have a building to explore and I'm not going to miss out on it because of seven or so ponies that were probably worse than the Slavers I met beforehoof.

After a few minutes of trying to get an idea of where a staircase was, I found one, went down it and was soon face-to-face with a unicorn mare with fresh blood on her horn and carried a a stick that was larger than Lucky Draw's gun but probably had the same concept in mind in a field of purple levitation energy. Her pinprick eyes with yellow sclera around a pair of red irises quickly scanned me from hoof to ear tips. She then let out a twisted grin and pointed the big stick at my face. I jumped out of the way just before the gun discharged and filled the area I was just in with the tormented sound of an explosion from an old cannon and giant holes that dotted the room like a sponge. Big, big gun. Big gun, louder sound. I threw myself behind a door frame and frantically scattered around for anything to use as a weapon or a shield. I facehoofed and let out an annoyed groan. I had a weapon before this. It was the piece of rebar that I used to tie up my wing. It was still probably still laying near the hole where the Slavers fell down in when I crushed them with a filing cabinet.

"You know Quantum, for an electrician, you can sometimes be incredibly stupid," I though to myself as I regretted not taking the solid piece of iron with me.

Thankfully, there was a baseball near a fresh corpse of a earth pony mare. I could just levitate it across the room and I would finally a weapon to use against...

Dammit Quantum, your not a unicorn. I suddenly felt a sense of envy towards the unicorn race as I was not gifted with a horn and magical abilities. Such things would help me out so much right now. The Raider was now growing impatient and I was feeling pitiful over the fact that I could not hold a weapon in midair? No. This bastard was not going to use a weakness like that against me. I was something better than a unicorn. A species so rare in a stable, and maybe even in the entire Equestrian Wasteland, that she probably did not expect to meet one in her time. I was a pegasus for Celestia's sake! I leaped into the air and soon came barreling down on the Raider successfully disarming her and pinning her to the ground underneath my hooves. I jumped backwards and kicked her in the jaw with as much force that I could pull together at that moment. The feeling of bones snapping shut and some teeth breaking apart in her mouth went through my hooves and I could hear, see, and feel the mouth being crushed into multiple pieces. That was honestly a cheep shot and I was probably not going to have that happen again.

I landed on my hooves and watched in both bewilderment and horror that the Raider mare got back up onto her hooves as well. She spit out a mixture of saliva, blood, and bone and gave me that same devilish grin with the remaining teeth covered in the dark red fresh blood. It was equal parts funny and terrifying to see that. She chuckled and growled,

"I've always wondered what pegasus tasted like. I hope the blood will make it that much better."

What the hell? Is she actually planning on eating me? What. The. HELL? Without sparing her a second glance or giving the subject a second thought, I turned and ran to the baseball bat and grabbed it in my wings while she went for her gun. She grabbed it in her levitation field and started firing wildly in all directions. A sharp pain exploded across my chest as I had most of the wind knocked out of me. That did not stop my charge at the mare as the baseball bat made a connection with her face and she dropped to the ground. Her magical aura imploded and the gun clattered to the ground with her. She didn't move. A pool of blood started to form from out of her mouth and added to he strange decor of the Raider encampment. She wasn't dead... right?

In stark realisation, I answered myself.

"I just... killed her," I mumbled to myself with tears in my eyes and a sickness in my stomach.

I have committed murder. No, she attacked me first. It was self-defense. It was a justifiable act in Stable 37. If somepony goes up to you with the intent of murder and you kill them, you were just defending yourself. The thought of self-defense, I realized, was a lot harder to do than to think about. A heavy iron lump hit me in the gut and I threw up in a corner of the room where the smell could not get any worse. I answered it with a Healing Potion and soon the little holes that punched through my electrician's barding were sealing shut as the magical energy coursed through my body. I needed to get out of here now. Screw figuring out what was in here; I prefer my life over curiosity.

I threw the bat aside and picked up the shotgun and eyed it curiosity. It was in semi-decent condition with the only thing wrong with it being the slide being a bit sticky and the trigger having a slight coating of rust on it. It thankfully, did not effect the performance of the gun in anyway. Unfortunately the Raider fired enough shells in the gun to only have two remaining in it and she only had three more shells strapped to the butt of the gun. I turned to face the unicorn. Maybe she had more? I hate to admit it but I might as well see if she had more. The Equestrian Wasteland was my home now and I have to take every advantage I could in order to increase my odds of survival. I opened her saddle bag, held back more vomit, and searched her bag. She had five extra shells, a box of hoof-gun rounds that was nearly full, a Healing Potion, and some bottle caps. If I hadn't met Iron Melody before killing this Raider, I would have left the bottle caps behind but because I knew she gave me them because they might actually do something out here I took them anyways.

After loading the last five shells into the shotgun, I held it in my wings and turned to run for the door and leave this damned place. I was about to start sprinting before a soft wimpier pierced the sound of silence and I turned to see what it was. It was a filly. A orange coated filly with a pink mane and tail who didn't even have a cutie mark. Her small teary green eyes looked up at me and she mumbled,

"Are you a Reaper?"

"A what now?" I answered as I obviously looked stupid to the kid but I guess she didn't notice.

There was a moment of silence between the two of us before she ran up to me and threw her hooves around the one hoof with the PipBuck around it. Getting a better look at her, I noticed that she had a missing ear. It was a recent injury too as fresh blood still seeped from it and coagulated in her mane. There was blood around her flanks. She was... no. They wouldn't have. They couldn't have. But they did. The Raiders raped the poor filly and she didn't even have her mark.

Suddenly a spark ignited in me and soon the spark turned to a fiery inferno of rage. It took ten seconds for me to realize one other thing about Raiders. Not only were they crazy, smelly, disgusting, and probably cannibals, but they were also rapists. That little fact alone added so much steam to the generator of anger that was building every second that I knew that any one of these bastards was still alive. They needed to pay. Apparently he filly saw the expression too and she smiled. I looked down at her and asked,

"Are there anymore of you here?"

She nodded.

"How many more?"

"Seven. There are seven more of us locked up," she began as she turned her head to face the hallway downstairs, "down there."

I looked in the direction that the filly looked and understood now where the Raider came from and why there was blood on her horn. The mere thought of such a vile thing, even for a Raider, made my blood boil. I put on a slight grin and said to the filly,

"Stay out of sight. I'm gonna' get you all out of here. You can bet on it."

She gave me a weak smile that suggested that she had heard that sentence all too often before and nodded with just as much weakness. I turned around and flew down the stairway in hopes that some more Raiders were down there. I wanted to give them a piece of my mind and a few more pieces of lead.

Author's Note

LEVEL UP

NEW PERK EARNED

FLYING TARGET LV.1

They cant hurt what they cant hit! You gain +25% Damage Resistance and +25 Energy Weapon Resistance while flying or sprinting.