One way in, no way out...

Stairs. It seams like the Equestrian Wasteland was littered and held together by stairs. The way out of my stable had a staircase. The way up to the vantage point that I used to get rid of the three Slavers chasing after me was linked with stairs. Now, as I fly down the pathway that was given to me by a filly in need, it had stairs too. I'm starting to guess that at one point the previous civilization that lived up here had a weight problem and they installed stairs instead of elevators in order to try and counter that issue. I shrugged it off. It was a mystery for later. I had to deal with Raiders.

I also should note, once more, at how much I am blessed with wings. We pegasi, are given unique advantages over most other ponies that we at one point probably took them for granted. For example, we have lighter bones than Earth Ponies therefore making us be able to hold our own weight while in the air. We did not have a horn, but we had wings. These extra two appendages on our bodies give us the gift of flying that only the most inventive of Earth Ponies or the most skillful of Unicorns can ever strive to have. All the others... well... they are just stuck on the ground being gravity's bitch while I enjoy the comfort of a possible cloud or somewhere out of reach that nopony else can get me at.

I turned on my repeatedly neglected Eyes-Foreword Sparkle and stopped dead before I rounded the corner on the staircase and into the room where the filly emerged from a few minutes ago. There was a trio of red signals and an entire random splotch of yellow clustered up behind the three hostile signals. How the EFS knew who was hostile and who was not now turned into another question on the incredibly long "what the hell is up with this thing" list that was continuing to grow with every new thing I find. Unfortunately the program was severely limited on its use as it did not tell what the enemy was or how well armed they were. Using the magnificent magic of probability, I concluded that the three ponies down there were just now another small group of Raiders. I swung the shotgun around so that the barrel of the gun pointed around the door frame and used the other repeatedly neglected tool of the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell.

The unfamiliar sensation of time slowing down and a blue hue filling my vision hit me the instant my hoof left the button to use SATS on my PipBuck. I read in a book about PipBuck's once when I was back in Stable 37's library when I was off duty and I had nothing else better to do. It said that, popular to contrary belief, time does not actually slow down. However, the users perception is increased dramatically. Now that I am experiencing it on my own, I think I have to agree with the ponies who say that say that time slows down because this felt like a really strange method of time-travel. Still gripping my shotgun in my wings, I let out two shotgun bursts at the first Raider in my field of vision and released the spell. I then saw and heard the bright yellow cone of gas spew out of the muzzle of the gun and loaded the first Raider with a deadly and spectacular show of lead and fire. The first shot slammed into his chest and sent him stumbling backwards and the second turned his head into a bright red mess of blood as if I shot a red spray can. He stood up a second and fell over dead.

That was not, in any way, going to go unnoticed by the other two Raiders in the room as the one buck pulled a shotgun similar to mine but in poorer condition and the other mare pulled a piece of wood with several rusty nails driven into it. My eyes widened as the shot gunner galloped towards me with his weapon floating a foot from his face in his orange telekinetic grip and fired multiple times in my direction. Soon fire was being exchanged back and forth from me and him as we took cover behind any sort of cover that we could find. It took longer than I had liked for SATS to recharge enough for me to try a killing shot at the Raider's head. Unfortunately I only had one shell left as the lack of SATS made me burn through bullets like a wooden match as I fired like an inexperienced idiot at the Raider who was obviously outside out in the Wasteland long enough that he was shaped into the killing machine that he was now. My eyes searched the room in desperation for anything within my reach to use as a temporary weapon before I totally ran out of...

A small metal apple fell between me and the stack of crates that I was hiding behind and rolled to a stop. It was pretty clear that the Raider threw it at me and it was also pretty clear that I did not want that thing anywhere near me. Dropping the gun in less than a heartbeat, I grabbed the apple in my wing and hurled it back at the Raider with the intent to just get rid of it. There was a soft pause as the Raider, I would assume, grabbed the thing in his magic and tried to throw it back at me. He, much to my relief and horror, failed to get it far enough from him as he and the hallway around it exploded. Shards of wood and concrete flew in all directions as the noise made my left ear begin to bleed from the bombardment of the sound of gunfire and now this terrible explosion. My ears are going to me ringing for the next week if this keeps up. That implies that I survive for the next week though.

Wrapping the shotgun in my wings, I peaked over the crates and saw a small crater left in the floor and a thin coating of fresh blood and gore pooling on the bottom where the Raider was seconds ago. I let out a breath that I didn't know that I was holding and trotted back to the room full of captured children. The Raider mare took this opportunity and kept from behind another crate and pinned me to the floor before I could even react and defend myself. She brought her piece of wood over her head and swung it down at my hide where my cutie mark of a quasar was on. Pain exploded from the swing as the rusty nails drove home into my flesh and began to tear meat and bone apart in my body while I was still alive. It was as if she injected me with some sort of carnivorous bug that crawled around your body and slowly ate away the tissues from the inside out.

As I howled in pain and mercy, the Raider put on an evil grin that she apparently looked the part for it. She licked her sharpened teeth and bit into my waist just above where she hit me with her weapon. The pain suddenly stopped as the mystical powers of adrenaline kicked in and I threw her off of me with a sharp kick to her chest. She flew backwards as if she was a stuffed toy and she slammed into a stack of crates knocking a few over and burying her hooves underneath them. I could not imagine them lasting for long though. I grabbed the shotgun and pointed the barrel between the mare's eyes. At this point in the fight, SATS did fully recharge but I didn't need it as I pulled the trigger and the final shot tore her head apart into hundreds of pieces before my very eyes. Blood and brains flung in all directions, some getting tangled in my mane and on my face. I heaved a bit and brushed the pony bits off of me. That only rewarded me with a blood smear that ran from my hooves to my head and another dry heave. I shook my head and promised myself that if I ever had to do that again, I would be wearing a face mask before I pulled the trigger.

Of course there would be no way that the other Raiders didn't hear that. They may be oblivious to gunfire and screams. Hell, I would go out on a wing and say that it was a common occurrence in this particular building. But explosions? No, they were going to hear that. From behind me, I heard the shouting of blood thirsty Raiders as they began to charge down the staircase they were all occupied in.

Well, that was ok. They were all going to pay, one way or another. The Raider that I exploded with a metal apple was preserved well enough that he still had a some supplies I could scavenge. He had thirty bottle caps, four shotgun shells in his shotgun, an extra metal apple, and five more shells in his bag. He also owned a small healing potion bottle that was now empty due to the fight, but I pocketed it anyways. The mare did not yield much however as she had two bottle caps and a broken spark battery casing. I rolled my eyes and picked up the crude wooden weapon and added it to my arsenal. Quickly running to the help of the fillies and colts, I shut the door that lead to the staircase above us and pushed a desk with a still functioning terminal in front of it. The children looked it me with disbelief. They never expected somepony to come and rescue them, especially in this Celestia forsaken place.

I held one of my feathers to my lips and gave them a soft hush. They didn't need one as they were as quiet as the dead even before I galloped in to save them. One of the fillies, a unicorn with a greyish-blue coat and a green mane that covered her one eye asked in a painful whisper,

"Are you a Reaper?"

I shook my head no. I didn't know what a Reaper was and, by the sound of it, I probably didn't even want to know. All of the seven children all ran up and wrapped me in their hooves in thanks. At first I was stunned, then I gave them a hug in my tattered and still blood covered wings. A blue coated colt with orange hair and distinct orange fetlocks looked up at me with an expression that teetered on either elated joy or mortified terror as he croaked with a sound that was as if his lungs were lined with course sandpaper,

"Who are you?"

"I'm Quantum," I answered with an easy smile, "and your all getting out of here."

I could only imagine that, if circumstances were very different from now, that they would all be bouncing around me in glee. I took the looks of confusion and hope as an answer of acceptance. Another filly gave me a red shotgun shell that she snagged off of the shotgun pony. I carefully loaded it into mine and told her thanks. I searched the pony that I killed earlier. He was better armed than the other two as he had a revolver that fired massive bullets. Upon closer observation, the bullets that the revolver needed were the same ones that the Raider with the wooden plank had when I looted her stuff. The PipBuck said that it was a ".44 Whinnychester" and it had a price of one-hundred caps. How the hell did my PipBuck know that?

Ugh. Focus Quantum! Seven children, a bunch of Raiders, remember? Get your head out of the clouds and worry about the currency system of the Equestrian Wasteland later. You have bigger problems.

The dead Raider also gave me a box of .44 caliber rounds that were obviously for the revolver. I pocketed them and looked back at the door. I turned back to the children and asked,

"Do you know of anyway out of here other than the front?"

They looked at me with blatant expression of "your an idiot". The one colt then answered.

"There is a way out through the docks."

"Brilliant. We'll get out through there," I said as I tried to show as much confidence as possible.

***

The children then showed me the way to the docks and, with final warning about the Raiders, told me to be back for them. I shrugged at them and made sure that I would be back. There was an electronic lock that lead to the room that the foals were in and pulled out my rewire tool from my barding. I realized that it was a blessing that I still had it after this mayhem.

Back in Stable 37, if your were an electrician or you worked on the ventilation, you were assigned a special devise that would allow you to work on wires and other electrical devises safely. The RHT, also known as the Rerouting Hardware Tool, was a very useful and tricky device that only few in the stable could use and even fewer could master. It, like a PipBuck, had some hidden properties that I was still trying to figure out. For one thing, it acted like a storage devise for data files and information like a PipBuck and could translate many lines of code and execute a file in it remotely if necessary. It also reroutes electrical/magical power in terminals and other computer systems in order to suit the needs of the user. This devise was the reason why we had so few electricians and PipBuck maintenance ponies back in Stable 37. All you had to do was find somepony with a RHT and ask them to reboot your PipBuck or clear away some of the bugs in the mainframe. There were thirty RHTs assigned in Stable 37. Twenty-nine now because an insanely stupid and overly curious electrical pony left with one of the most important and most expensive pieces of equipment in the entire stable. I didn't care though. If there was one thing that was going to keep me alive, other than my PipBuck, it was going to be the RHT that I now carry.

I hooked the contacts to the electric lock and flipped the switch on the back. With a little electric pop, the wire terminals hooked onto the lock and forced the door to close with a promising click. The RHT beeped and I separated it from the terminal just in time to avoid a Raider that snuck up on me and swung a fire ax through the air in his cyan colored telekinetic hold. The ax smashed through the door where my head was and left a small dent in the plated steel that sent sparks showering onto the ground. He recoiled and brought the weapon back to bear as he stared at me with his piss colored eyes with pupils that were so constricted that they could be thinner than any wire I have ever worked with in my time of work.

"Rip and Tear!" The black Raider with a neon orange mane and a number eight ball on his flank yelled. "Rip and Tear until there is nothing..."

Just as he was going to finish his demonic chant, I brought my shotgun underneath his chin and pulled the trigger. His head erupted from the top like a miniature volcano with red rain and bits of grey matter falling from a few feet in the air. Once again, blood and brains coated my mane and coat. Somehow I managed to throw up some liquid from my stomach as some of the Raider bits landed on my lips and made all of my organs do a triple back flip in my body. If this was going to be a common occurrence, I really needed to either get a new mane cut or start wearing a helmet so I wouldn't lose my body contents every time I blew the head off of a Raider. I remembered Iron Melody wearing a helmet in tandem with poorly made Wasteland Gear. A crap helmet and a crap suit of armor would be better than nothing but electrician's barding that could barely take a bullet. Oh I wish Iron Melody left me more than a few healing potions and bottle caps. Oh well... beggars cant be choosers right?

Soon another pinkish Raider flung herself from a section of railing overhead and landed on the body of the black unicorn with a very important cluster of nerves missing with a resounding crack signifying that his rib cage and spine were probably nothing but a fine white powder. The Raider literally landed on him and she couldn't care less about him. I guess it was to be expected as she didn't care about raping poor and innocent fillies and colts either. She had an outrageously large socket wrench that was longer than either of our forehooves clenched tightly in her mouth. She didn't waste a second as she brandished her weapon wildly and the heavy metal tool made contact with my windpipe. I stumbled back, coughing and wheezing for air as she ran all around me acting like a very annoying two year old and taking cheap shots at me like with the female unicorn with the shotgun.

I unfolded my already exhausted wings and, with all the effort I could pull together at this particular moment, took off into the air. The Raider watched in aggravation as she shook her hoof in the air and mouthed through the wrench,

"Cheater!"

I'm the cheater? She swung a socket wrench into my damn windpipe!

I landed on the railing that the pink Raider was perched on and pulled a Healing Potion from my barding and greedily sucked down the healing liquid that was noticeably harder to choke down because of the fact that I could barely breathe. Soon the nice and warm feeling of healing magic flowed through my veins and helped to calm down the swelling in my throat and the blood seeping from my nose. I took some labored breaths and watched the pink Raider try as hard as she could to leap back onto the railing from atop a stack of wooden crates. I shucked in amusement as she continue to try in vain to hop onto the metal railing and grab a bar so she could attempt to pull herself up. I had my high ground and she wanted it. It was some sort of very disgusting and very deadly game of King of the Hill. I had the advantage of course.

I pulled the Whinnychester out of my barding to look at it a bit more. It was faded with the stainless steel plating turning into the oxidized blue color it gets after being in the elements and seeing action for a long time. Honestly, I could not imagine it not being put through mayhem and overuse and the multitude of scratches and dried blood stains around the revolver's cylinder gave me the impression that the gun was probably used for more than shooting. I opened the cylinder and loaded five more shots into the gun. With this taking longer than I would have liked, I once again cursed the universe at the fact that I wasn't born a unicorn. Wings made excellent hands but they were worthless when trying to manipulate small round things. That is why I did not take the "Mechanical Engineer" spot back in Stable 37. Not only would I have to deal with wrenches, screwdrivers, drills, and wielders every other day, I would be dealing with grease and that would make it nearly impossible to hold anything in my wings.

Finally closing the gun, I wrapped the gun in my right wing and held it down at the ground as I peered over the railing for the pink Raider. She wasn't there. Damn it I knew that I took too long to load the thing! I wish I had something that would speed up the reload process for the gun so I'm not scrambling to shove a bullet into a tiny gun just to fire it about five seconds later. Something that would help out immensely would be... oh I don't know... a fucking horn!

A slight groan of old metal hit my ears and turned towards it bringing the Whinnychester to bare. The earth pony was... floating? There was a field of golden telekinetic magic floating the mare onto the railing. I felt at least twenty brain cells die right then and there.

"Are you fucking serious?!" I screamed as I watched in both awe and anger as I watched the pony gracefully glide up higher and higher into the air.

The pink pony's pupils widened as I pointed the revolver at her. I activated SATS and time slowed down once more. I used enough charge to target two well placed shots into the Raider's head. The spell released itself and the precisely aimed shots tore through each of her eyes as they tore four bloody holes. Two holes in the front for the entry wound and two bigger ones in the back for the exit wounds. The gun was surprisingly quiet for its size and the force that sent the bullets into the Raider's head was something that even a fellow Raider would envy. The direct impact of the two shots nearly tore the mare's head off. So that was why the Security Forces, the police of Stable 37, liked to use them. They were quick to kill. They were so well trained with them that they could hit something with a gun of the same caliber and of the same type as the one I have that they would be able to hit something with a kill shot from three times the recommended firing distance. Thankfully, even if the gun was very tricky to aim because of recoil, I still managed to aim it well enough with SATS to make a kill shot.

After calming down a second, I checked my EFS for anymore hostiles. Sure enough there was another Raider just underneath the catwalk. I peeked over the metal guard rails and found a surprisingly healthy unicorn mare with a charcoal coat and orange hair nearly identical to the color scheme of Number Eight Ball Raider. The hair was even styled the same which probably indicated that they were either close relatives or twins. I've only seen one set of twins back in Stable 37 but I heard that it was not too incredibly rare to have a set of twins before the end of the world. I stared down at her in fascination a bit to long before she took out an automatic pistol and started taking sporadic shots in my general direction. Some of the bullets bounced off of the metal with a loud twang as clouds of dust and debris filled my vision and started to make my eyes sting.

I tried to wipe to wipe the smokescreen away from my eyes as I returned the Raider's gesture of kindness by returning fire with the Whinnychester. The final four rounds that were in the gun fired in all directions and I did manage to hit the Raider on her left ear successfully tearing it off leaving nothing but a bloody stump. She wailed in pain as she clenched the bleeding part of her head with one hoof and held the gun in the other. She stood up on her rear hooves and was now shooting more precise and carefully aimed bursts of bullets at me. I have to admit, she was a very good shot as she sent a few burning pieces of lead in my side. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes as I gritted my teeth and turned to find a good place to shoot from.

Quantum your an idiot! If she could float another pony with her field of magic, what is going to stop her from levitating up here and get a better aim? And, if she did decide to go with that plan, what would stop her from gunning me down with every single bullet she had until I was nothing but Cream of Quantum Soup on the floor? Maybe she enjoyed annoying me. I guess I should make sure that I returned the favor.

As my fears came true, the unicorn Raider wrapped herself in her own magic and began to lift herself from the concrete floor and up into the air. To my relief, it looked like making yourself go aloft with magic was far more difficult than levitating somepony else and it sapped every ounce of strength and concentration that she had in order to keep herself from being pulled back down by the all powerful hoof of gravity. I pulled the little apple out of my saddlebag and pulled the stem off of it. The little metal handle thingy then sprung off and I threw the bomb at the unicorn. Somehow she caught it with her telekinetic sheath and tried throwing it back at me. The grenade exploded midway between us and I was knocked to my haunches while she was flung out of the air and into the concrete below. For some reason, I found it very amusing to see a non-pegasus spiral out of the air while trying to fly. I let out a little chuckle.

"Leave the flying to the pegasi!" I yelled over the ever annoying ringing in my ear.

I guess that she was not to happy about that as she crawled back to her hooves and stared at me with those diseased orange eyes that pierced into my soul. My PipBuck beeped at me and the little red bar that identified the charcoal unicorn turned to yellow. She put on a slight smirk and closed her eyes. With a bright flash of pale orange light she vanished into thin air. Now I know little about unicorns and their magic, but I had a pretty good idea that whatever she did was probably not a good thing. I climbed over the railing and glided down to the spot where the unicorn disappeared. There was a spot on the floor marked with a yellow glow similar to her magic color and it was quickly followed by the soft clicking from my PipBuck's radiation detector telling me that it was obviously radioactive. The circle had a strange shape burned into the floor with multiple elegant lines and curves that created an abstract symbol of arcane nonsense that I did not understand. Unicorns. Not only do they have weird magic powers, but they also have their own writing style. It was just another reason my I hated unicorns because of their weird magic tricks and even weirder language.

I rolled my eyes. What was there for me to do? She was gone and probably warning other Raiders to come and get the pegasus that might be tasty in the docks. Finally after a minute of waiting for other Raiders, my PipBuck once again beeped and the Auto Map came up with a new entry. It read "Detrot Boat Launch". So the colt that told me that it was a good idea to go here wasn't lying after all. After getting a second look around I realized that somepony was going to start shipping something before the bombs fell but they never got the chance to. I was guessing that they were war materials like bullets and rations. A box labeled "Spritebots" Ship to M.O.M. Hub in Manehattan". The box appeared intact so I took the rusty hatchet head back from the building the Slavers chased me into and busted the lock apart. I was not about to make the same mistake with the Angle Grinder again.

After five long minutes both the lock and the hatchet shattered into tiny metal fragments and the wooden crate swung open. It was mostly empty but the few things that were in there were boxes full of fading pink cardboard and bright yellow lettering that announced "Spritebot" with a pink pony with hair that looked like it was made of a pink cloud that seemed like it was never combed appeared to want to bounce right off of the box and materialize right in front of me. I grabbed one of the boxes with my teeth and tore the old paper away. There was a purple metal ball sealed in plastic wrap with a large black screen on the front. The thing itself had an odd shape that resembled a hoof ball helmet mostly in part by the heavy metal muzzle guard plate thing on the front near the bottom of the little ball of metal. I looked at the box and groaned a bit when it stated in red lettering, "SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED".

"Well," I said to the little purple thing in the box, "two hundred years late is better than never right?"

Of course, the Spritebot didn't answer.

***

When the M.O.M., whatever that was, meant that there was some assembly required for the Spritebot to have it even begin to work they weren't lying. It took the better part of an hour just to piece together the circuit board of the arcane devise so that it's CPU can run a full diagnostic check on the two century old machine's parts. They fillies and colts that I managed to save earlier went on their way once they retrieved the guns and saddlebags that were all taken from them when they stumbling into this place. Before that though, we took care of the few Raiders that were still housed on a floor or two above me and the children. The fight was short as we had numbers and a pegasus on our side instead of them. Now the Raiders lye in a bloody and rooting heap in the water as the three or four of the unicorns of the group dragged them down the stairs and tossed them out of the building as if they were nothing but a carton of eggs. I offered to go with them until they were safe, but they politely declined my offer.

Again, before they were completely out of my line of vision, they told me to stay away from the bridges. I had no idea why they kept telling me that along with the ever obvious suggestions of "don't drink the tainted water" and "don't take a shower here".

"Is there anything I can do?" I remember asking the foals as they broke off into small groups and left.

"You could die. That's an option," the blue colt answered me with a flat emotionless voice.

I shook the thought out of my head as there was a little machine to fix. Maybe I could use it to help give me a warning before shit got bad? Company? I didn't really had a good reason why I decided to work on the robot, all I know is that I did in order for me to gather my thoughts and try to figure out what to do next. I also wanted to figure out if the RHT would work on something other than electric locks and wires. To my surprise, wiring a circuit board and making a computer that was centuries older than me was within its capabilities. After assembling the outer shell of the robot ball thing, I slid the power grid into the machine and it sparked to life. Its wings began beating at the air as, little by little, the Spritebot took off. As it ascended, it started to play some music. It was tinny at first but then it soon roared to a brilliant mix of saxophones, harmonicas, and accordions. The little screen on the Spritebot began to glow as two little purple "eyes" appeared and stared off into a random direction. The Spritebot began to bounce up and down in tune to the music and fly away towards what my PipBuck labeled as Lake Erie. I turned towards the exit before a slight crackle of static stopped me dead in my tracks.

"Hello," said a metallic voice from the Spritebot as its music died.

Slowly, I turned my head and looked at the little machine. It hovered in the air near the edge of the dock and stared it me with empty, soulless eyes. I cocked my head to the side as was rewarded with a sharp pop from one of the joints in my neck. There was an odd moment of silence before I answered weakly with the universal greeting of Stable 37,

"'Ello?"

"Thank your for building this. There is a slight decline in Spritebots in the area and any more would do me good," the metal ball said.

Despite having a monotone voice, the robot somehow seemed to still sound thankful that I built another Spritethingy. He must have mistaken my look as confused instead of processing and added,

"You can call me Watcher."

Again, I cocked my head and was again rewarded by the popping noise in my neck.

"Watcher eh? My name is Quantum. I'm a bit new here," I answered with uncertainty.

"It would seem so. Your from a stable too?" Watcher said hesitantly.

I nodded.

"I don't know why there is a sudden release of Stable Dwellers in the Equestrian Wasteland, but all I know is that your the first Dweller that is not a mare nor a unicorn. I didn't think that there were pegasi down here other than the occasional Enclave pegasus and your prominent Feral Ghoul."

"So there are more out there?" I said as I was shocked by the news.

The Spritebot bobbed up and down as if it was trying to nod.

"You need some advise?" Watcher asked.

If that robot had a face I could imagine it raising an eyebrow. I nodded. Any advise was better than none.

"My advise, get yourself a weapon and some armor. Some medical supplies are a good idea too but I guess that is implied with the armor thing. Next, you need guidance. There is a building near a large body of water from here. In it, you should find a book. Take it, you might need it. After that, make some friends. Friends are more important than any bullet or armor plate," Watcher explained as if he told somepony else the same information more than one time.

"Is the building your mentioning locked with a rusting padlock and chains and filled with Raiders?" I asked disfavoringly at the fact that he was telling me about a place that I am already at and already took care of the Raider issue.

The stunned silence that Watcher gave me made me chuckle a little bit inside. Watcher let out a heavy sigh and said slowly,

"Yes. That one. I guess the map didn't pick this place up on my monitor yet. I'm guessing you took care of the Raiders?"

"Yeah. I honestly did not think that they were ponies anymore. They seemed more like they were," I paused, "I don't know. They were just that bad. Up until now the only thing I had to deal with was the occasional RadRoach back in Stable 37. Nothing too big."

"Did you find a gun?" Watcher asked as if he knew that I wanted to change the subject or something.

I showed him the Whinnychester, the shotgun, and the crudely made piece of wood with nails driven in it. He was impressed. I told him that I didn't come with these weapons and got a little bit lucky. With my luck, Murphy's Law would kick in and twenty minutes later the board with nails would poke through my saddlebags on my electrician's barding, pierce my skin, give me a bad case of Lockjaw, and I would slowly starve to death. That was just my family's luck and how it played out. Most of my fellow associates called me "Folly" as I had worse luck than every other electrician that ever lived. But, unlike ponies like Klink-Klank, there was a difference between having bad luck and just being bad at your job. I knew that I was destined to have bad luck when the... the thing happened that one time. Long story short, both of my parents died at the same time, in the same place, by the same thing, from the same ponies who started it.

My brain pulled an imaginary Whinnychester and shot the idea dead before it got bigger and the little .44 bullets that controlled my emotions became worthless and I would start crying. I took a long sniff and asked Watcher,

"Do have any ideas of the making friends thing?"

Now I know that the Spritebot was an inanimate object but somehow I knew that if it was alive it would be smiling.

***

The book that Watcher told me about was not that hard to find. It was hidden in a locked room that I assumed was the bosses office because of all of the legal paperwork and stacks of books that was shoved in a corner with the skeleton of a unicorn with an old name tag still wrapped around her neck. I knew it was a she and not a he because the name read,

"Autumn Light"

The room itself yielded few treasures. It did contain an old box of two hundred year old carrot cake and an empty Sunrise Sarsaparilla bottle that depicted an image of a yellow pegasus with a long pink mane and butterflies for her cutie mark holding a bottle of the very same drink she was advertised on with glee. Inside one of the filling cabinets was a small pink orb that appeared to be made of either polished glass or a really strong plastic. I stuffed the orb into my saddlebags and my PipBuck labeled it as Strawberry Jam Memory Orb. At that point, I decided to stop questioning the weird things that the little devise can do and continued scavenging. There were also a few bottle caps left around the entire building that I took as well. Most of the Raiders did not have guns so the few bullets I managed to get from them did not fit any of the guns I had. One of the rounds had a solid aluminum bullet with a white tip that seemed to glow. My PipBuck's Radiation Detector clicked softly as I held the bullet closer for examination. It was of the same caliber that the Whinnychester took and sliding it into the gun was no different than loading a normal bullet. The PipBuck then labeled that as Spire Point Bullet. It did not have a price assigned to it so I guess that meant that it was either really expensive or just another bullet. All I know is that I can sing better than I could use a gun.

I suck at singing by the way.

All of that aside, I am just lucky enough to be able to tell the difference between the barrel and the butt of the weapon and how to pull a trigger. I thought back to Watcher's comment about the other Stable Dwellers and how they were both unicorns. The idea of the two being able to reload a gun with ease because of the magic of levitation gave me a slight chuckle. They probably never had to deal with dropping a bullet because of the fact that their wings are shaking so much that they just drop the bullet before you could load it in. They could just float the bullets in without a problem.

I took Watcher's advise to heart. Maybe a friend or two would help out here in the long run. I just hope that "making friends" as Watcher so vaguely explained did not mean getting married. That would be a massive issue on my own and I would rather be shot to hell and back before I got married to another mare. The fact that all of the mares I have meet out in the Equestrian Wasteland thus far have either been cannibalistic rapists or mysterious figures that teleport away from you before they give you any answers. Well, except for Iron Melody. She was a different story all in her own despite being a Slaver.

After fully looting the building for anything important or life saving and coming up with nothing but a few extra caps and another RadAway I set out again in no particular direction. It was darker outside than before so I assumed that it was either going to start raining or it was night time. Either way, I trotted up and down the ruined streets and past the scared monoliths of skyscrapers trying to find somewhere to camp out for the night. I probably should have hunkered down at the docks, but the rainbow colored water and the fact that was a Raider nest not too long ago gave me the shivers just thinking about it. All of the atrocities and horrors that they did to all of the innocent foals. How long were the Raiders there? How long were they doing what they did? Did anypony try to stop them? All of those thoughts just added to the goosebumps that were gradually climbing up my spine.

"Damn it," I mumbled though chattering teeth, "why the hell is it so cold?"

From the sky a strange white substance started to fall gracefully to the ground. I stared up at it like an idiot as I waited for it to get closer so I could get a better look at it. One of the bits of white stuff landed on my nose and it sent a deep chill that cut like a razor across my face. It was not rain. It was something else, but I couldn't think of what it was called. Whatever the case may be, I held my wings over my head as the little white crystals of cold energy continued to fall from the clouds above. Instead of turning my nose into cold metal, it began to send signals to my brain telling me that the powder stuff was even colder on my wings. Trying to ignore the sharp pain all over my body except for the parts covered in my electrician's barding I ran to a small staircase that went up into a stone building. Its windows were all broken or missing and the wind that eventually picked up slowed me down as I tried to warm myself back up.

The deluge of white powder kept getting worse and worse and soon I would run the risk of Hypothermia. That would be an embarrassing way to die out here. Probably more so than starving to death because you did not loot a Raider for a can of prewar food. Despite all of the cold, the adrenaline, the fear, and the disgusting things that I have seen out here I felt more alive than ever. It was weird, I was accustomed to being electrocuted one or twice a month back in Stable 37, but that was an occupational hazard. Being cold was never new. The heating talismans in the stable sucked ass and they only really worked in the showers and the stoves that made our food from the gardens that used the last bit of energy from the devises in order to make our food for the stoves to cook and for the ponies that maintained the showers and the water talismans to allow us to take a shower and stay clean. The adrenaline was always there when you were working with electrical equipment and it usually came hoof-in-hoof with the fear that you would get shocked so much that your heart would stop. As for the disgusting things... I have been down to Waste Management once or twice so I could replace a calculations unit in the Waste Processor. It was not a pleasant smell.

The main difference between Stable 37's fear factor and the Equestrian Wasteland's was probably the fact that all of the things I have mentioned before happen all at once. Not individually like back in the stable, all at once in the right way that was alien but welcoming in its own strange way.

I sat down in front of a decaying book case, its books long gone and the strange tinge of death filled the room despite having no visual bodies or dead things. I didn't care where it came from. As long if I wasn't surrounded by it, I didn't care. I just took my saddlebags off, pulled out the fire blanket we electricians use just in case something catches on fire, and slipped beneath the covers. The tilled floor only amplified the cold outside but I didn't care. I faced Raiders and Slavers. A cold floor was not going to stop me from sleeping tonight. Right now I could sleep through an explosion.

This is what I need. Sleep. I closed my eyes and let Luna take my tired and cold body in me as I pranced to dreamland with a grin. Night was my favorite part of the day.

Author's Note

LEVEL UP

NEW PERK EARNED

ACTION STALLION LV.1

You gain 15 more action points for SATS. Effects are cumulative.

QUEST PERK ADDED

LIGHT AS A FEATHER

You are agile, lucky and always careful. You never set off enemy mines or floor-based traps when walking and your wings never make a sound when flying.

SKILLS NOTE

Repair = 50%