Chapter two: Raidertown
Sleep left as fast as it came, I blamed whichever pony was stupid enough to wake up the sleeping Wastelander who had more than three guns by banging on the door to the room they're sleeping in. I grumbled as I climbed out of bed, my chronometer decided it was about 7:34 am after some deliberating. Shaking out and stretching my forelegs I walked to the door and flung it open, ready to shoot whoever was there. "Whaddya want?!" I demanded to the pony that was assaulting the door.
The small security buck squeaked and shook, then stammered, "O-overmare wants to talk to y-you." of fucking course she did.
"I'm leaving soon, so she better be fast. Tell her I'm packing and then coming." I told the shaking stallion, who nodded and ran around the corner faster than anything I have seen before. Rolling my eyes, I turned back to my saddlebags and slung them over my back, then slung the Sparkle over my back and slipped the revolver into its holster. I strapped on my armour and stepped out into the corridor to make my way back to the overmare's office.
Marina opened the door before I could knock and looked angry as she sat behind her desk. "Why do you think I've called you here Relic?" she asked.
I let my usual dead pan sink into a smug grin, "Most likely to tell me off for giving that piss annoying mare Promise a pistol and telling her to shoot a photo." I said without hesitation.
She nodded and pulled the pistol out from under her desk, dropping it on the desk with a clatter. "I welcome you into my stable, I pay you for a job well done. And what do you do within my comunity, you give a mare a pistol!?" she shouted at me, with absolutely no affect on my smile.
I nodded, "Yeah, pretty much. To be honest she'd do a better job than your security, yesterday ehe they let me in, nearly all of them stil had the safety on." I mused, "Anyway she wants to leave. Tired of your schedual. Don't blame her either, wouldn't want my life dictated by a computer."
"She wants to go out into the Wasteland?! Don't be obsurd!" She slammed both her hooves onto the desk for effect, it had no effect at all. I ended up taking the gun from the desk and checking if it was still loaded, the answer was no. All ten rounds had been fired, it looked like I would have a new partner for a while.
I stood up after tucking the gun away."if youd excuse me, I have other deliveries to make." I said, feeling her she lock a cold hard stare on me. "And a mare maybe not to keep waiting."
And with that, I flashed the overmare of stable 56 a cocky smile and strode out of her office, ignoring all her demands to come back in. She'd most likely order her security to kep me and Promise in the stable, it wouldn't work considering what I had seen of her security team. And anyway, I had a promise to keep.
It wasn't long before my theory was proven, I found promise struggling with two other security ponies in the door to an accommodation room and decided to forcefully remove them. Pressing the barrels of two pistols to the backs of their heads made them go completely still. It didn't surprise me when the mare whimpered and let go of Promise, the stallion following shortly after. I motioned for the two to run along with a flick of a gun and they scarpered pretty quickly. "Promise, I take it you're coming with me?" I asked the crimson and charcoal mare infront of me. Getting a nod in reply.
"Yes Mr. Relic, I did what you told me to." She seemed excited and dug out a picture of another mare with a charcoal mane, but green, not red. Her mother I guessed. It had ten bullet holes in it from a 10mm. "So can I come?"
I nodded. "Leaving now, packed?" I mumbled, looking at the odd mare and the picture she was holding in her hooves. I received a nod in answer to my question and Promise turned to show me the saddlebags adorning her flank. "Food, water. Caps?" I asked her.
"No food, schedule doesn't let you take food randomly, yes I have water, you can get a drink anytime. And I don't have many caps." She answered and I nodded.
"You're gonna have to get used to cram then." I said as I fished out the rifle I had made yesterday and the pistol I had given to her. "If you're in the Wastes, gonna need more than just your hooves, take these." I said and floated the guns towards the mare, who took the pistol in her mouth and slung the rifle over her back. I floated some rifle and pistol clips from my bag and into hers.
"If... If I don't like it, I can go back into the Stable, right?" She asked looking apprehensive for the first time.
I nodded, "Tha's if your overmare let's ya." I said, the crimson mare nodded once and put on a brave face. I floated out a spare pistol holster and attached it to her jumpsuit, she slid her 10mm into the holder and nodded at me, ready to go.
I let a ghost of a smile cross my face. "Do you have anything you could use to cover your mouth and nose?" I asked her, remembering the terrible stench in the tunnel we were about to enter. She shook her head so I floated out a spare bandanna, tying it around her muzzle and earning a surprised squeak front the mare. “Trust me. You'll need it, once we step outside the stable door, you're going to see the Wasteland at its worst." I told her and she nodded again.
We both trotted towards the stable door and I was rather pleas belt surprised to see it wasn't guarded. Promise had stopped and was fiddling with her pipbuck. "Damn thing says I have to go to medical, on the other side of the stable." She whined and showed me the alert on her pipbuck. I shook my head and started to work the console. The stable's over mare wanted me gone, I'm more than happy to oblige.
I finally managed to find the right button to make the sirens wail, the door starting to roll slowly aside. I unslung my Sparkle and loaded a battery into the dock of the rifle, motioning for Promise to load hers too. Soon I heard shouting and cursing, then jeering and the sound of metal on flesh.
"Brill, raiders. Promise, these here are bad ponies and will hurt you if they get the chance. Don't give them that chance." I told her, flicking the Sparkle into shotgun mode and watching the firing mechanism rearrange itself and the sight ring disappear into the sleek rifle. The door once gave almighty squeal of rusted metal and rolled aside, letting us see the raiders infront of us.
There was about six of them, all frothing at the mouth, all armed with clubs and rebar, one had a worn pistol that looked about a week past sell by date and another had found a shotgun. They all had their assorted weapons levelled at me and I had a laser shotgun levelled at them. Promise screamed and ran to the side of the door out of the firing line as two of the raiders with rods of rebar in their rotted teeth ran at me, giggling madly.
One of them received a laser barrage in the face, which enveloped them in a rosy glow and they melted into a pool of glowing slime, and the other learned how to fly as I spun and bucked them in the face and shot them out of the air with my shotgun like one would to a clay pigeon.
I heard the shotgun roar and the scatter of hot lead crack against one of the plates of combat armour I wore. It was a double barrel so could only hold two shots before it needed reloading so I kept my armoured flank between me and the shotgun wielding pony and focused my own shotgun on the pony with a pistol. Within moments, he had fired four shots, one of them grazing my side and he had received a hole melted through his chest.
The shotgun pony yelled something incomprehensible and shot at me again, the shot thumping into my side before cracking the gun in half and jamming two more shells home in the smoking pipes. The mare with the chunk of rebar in her teeth was stunned into not moving and I had more important things to deal with at the moment anyway. I heard the shotgun fire again as I jumped to the side and pulled the sixgun from its holster in my magic, aiming it at the shotgun wielding pony and sliding into S.A.T.S. I toggled three shots from the revolver, one to her right front knee, on in the chest and one at the mare’s head. I exited the targeting spell and fired, the first shot streaking through her knee and forcing her to kneel, screaming in pain. The second knocked her off her hooves and made the shotgun clatter to the ground, the last silenced the crying mare forever.
I felt an impact on the back of my head that knocked me head over hooves, breaking my concentration and forcing me to drop my revolver and sparkle. I felt the impact again on my back and cried out in pain. The madmare with the rebar battered me over and over again, only stopping to curse me and say what she was going to do with my body.
As soon as it started, it stopped with the sound of a gunshot. I heard the rebar clatter down next to me followed by the raider mare, a hole right through her forehead. I struggled to my hooves and saw a shaking Promise holding her 10mm with a smoking barrel in her mouth. I picked up my pistol and reloaded the three bullets I had fired and checked the charge on the battery, almost full. That’s one of the things I love about the sparkle, takes a small amount of power and amplifies it.
“I… I just killed… just killed that pony.” Promise stammered, putting the pistol back in her holster.
“Yep, yer right, you did. An’ it aint gonna be the last pony you kill if you stay out here in the Wastes.” I told her pointedly, I wasn’t going to shield this mare from the harsh truth of this place.
“She’s dead.” Promise shook, and I nodded, slinging the sparkle over my back and holstering my revolver.
“Look here Promise, if you stay out in the Wasteland, you’re gonna do some pretty fucked up shit, you’re gonna have to kill stuff because in my line of work, you have stuff other ponies are gonna want to steal.” I started to loot the raiders, stripping their armour off and removing their cap stores, “So are you gonna come with me and do all of that and not be cooped up in that hole o’ yours, or are you just gonna duck your head and not see the world for what it is?” I asked her and she put on her brave face again. “Good, put this on.”
I hoofed her some of the raider armour, which made her grimace, but she accepted it and put it on over her stable barding. With the spiked, blood soaked plates over her barding, she looked like a combination of the world before the bombs fell and the worst of the Wastes. I do not think I had ever seen anything more comedic. Neither of us had any head armour, I needed to fix that as soon as possible, my next delivery had me set on a town which I was hoping had a market where I could sell all my extra gear and buy some helmets.
“Are there more ponies like her?” Promise asked, I nodded bluntly and she swallowed as we walked down from the platform.
“Yep, and they’re all real pissed with me for stealing their guns.” I hopped off the stairs at the bottom and pulled out my revolver again, floating it out in front of me. I hoped the raiders I had stolen from were asleep, but knowing the Wastes, I wasn’t going to have any such luck. Sure enough, I rounded the corner to see about twenty raiders milling about, cursing and swearing my death in the most painful of ways. There were too many to deal with in hoof-to-hoof combat and I had a couple extra grenades than usual. Floating out five of the silver apples, I breathed out and Promise walked up next to me to look at them.
“What’re those?” She questioned in a voice lower than a whisper as I pulled the stems from them, and held down the leaf on each. I set them rolling into the crowd, moving them around the ponies’ hooves.
“Grenades.” I grunted and let the leaves pop up, four seconds. Three seconds.
“Grenades?!” She squeaked and jammed her hoof over her muzzle.
There was a cry of panic from the crowd and one of the raiders yelled out, “Fucking nades!”
I jumped on top of the panicked mare and clamped my hooves over her ears before the grenades went off, shaking the tunnel and sending bodies flying everywhere. There was a couple of survivors of the blast I had sent off, but I had planned for this and stood up holding my revolver and Promise’s 10mm in my magical grip.
There were five unscathed survivors, bang, four. Bang bang bang, three. I stepped over the body of the pony I had just shot in the chest three times and levelled my pistols at another of the raiders that was rushing me with a shovel. Bang bang, red wept out the two bullet wounds in their chest and neck as they dropped. Two. I Reloaded the revolver and levelled the 10mm at one of the wounded and ended their crying with a bullet between their eyes. There was another of the rushing raiders almost upon me before I spun and bucked them hard in the chest, kicking them into the air before they landed hard on their head, I heard something snap and they lay still, their head bent at an odd angle before I walked past them and blasted a hole through their skull. One. The last surviving raider was a small mare with the small remnants of a dark blue coat and lighter blue mane. She wasn’t running at me at all and just stood there shaking, I levelled the revolver to her forehead and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. The weapon had jammed.
I had just killed five ponies, nothing wrong with sparing one of the murdering raping bastards.
“Go.” I growled at her. “Leave now.” I repeated and pushed her away, she started limping away, I shouted at her to pick up the pace before I unjammed my gun and shot her in the head. She got the idea and broke into a gallop, dropping her bent piece of rebar on the way as I fiddled with the pistol in my magical grip.
“Relic?” Promise stammered behind me. I slowly turned to her and she backed away a little. “That was horrible.” She was shaking a little as she picked up her pistol and reloaded it then slid it into her holster, she extended a hoof out to me in an attempt to help me up which I accepted graciously. I hauled myself to my hooves and silently went about looting the radier’s bodies, which seemed horrifying to Promise.
“But that’s not your stuff!” She complained at me.
“Whatever you find in the wasteland is yours. I found this bottlecap.” I held out one of the metal discs. “So it is mine.” With that I tucked it into my saddlebag and kept up removing things from the raiders and the crates of crap they kept. In all I found fuck all useful stuff besides the caps and bullets.
I had left some of the stuff behind for Promise to loot and carry, good practise for her. As I was rummaging through a bag on the back of a deceased raider, I heard a piercing shriek then a gunshot. Whirling around, my revolver out in my magic grip, I saw a shaken Promise with her pistol between her teeth and a now dead raider at her hooves. “He not taken out by the nade?” I asked her and she shook her head, returning the pistol to her holster.
I walked over to her and dropped a helmet at her hooves, “Put it on.” I ordered her and she picked it up in her hooves before slipping it over her ears. “Don’t want your head getting shot off.”
She clipped the helmet down under her chin. “If I have to wear this thing, shouldn’t you wear a helmet too?” The curious mare asked and I shook my head.
“I can’t find another that’s not filled with raider brains. Im not even going to try selling one coated in blood, we’d be misinterpreted as raiders.” I replied before kicking over one of the other helmets scattered around the tunnel, revealing it to be coated with grey matter and crimson blood. “Anyway, I just washed my mane. Im not dirtying it again.”
She small mare locked her eyes on me and clamped her hoof over her muzzle, a wicked smile across her mouth. Soon she was stifling giggles then trying to stifle full blown laughter as I blushed slightly. She had just seen me murder twenty ponies, then complain when a hat would make my mane dirty. Fuck the Wasteland and what it did to ponies.
Making our way out of the tunnel was easy enough, there weren’t many more raiders, and those that there was weren’t that hard to pick off, for most of them I used the Sparkle’s sniper function to messily remove their heads from across the tunnel and there was only one that caused us any bother. He had chewed out his tongue and cut off his lips to show his sharpened teeth. I had to jam my revolver into his eye and unload three shots into his head before he stopped squirming on the floor. When I pulled it out, the barrel was covered in blood and I wiped it mostly clean on the raider’s battered coat before we moved on.
When we came to the exit of the tunnel, we were confronted by two things, the first being daylight. Lots of it, forcing both Promise and I to cover our eyes with a hoof. The other was a pony, we couldn’t see them well because of their brilliant white coat, but we could see their piercing red eyes as clear as a lake. They reared up on their back hooves and let out a loud whinny before bringing their front hooves back down and disappearing before our eyes.
“Who the heck was that?” Promise asked me and I shook my head in answer, rubbing my eyes.
“No fucking clue, if they’re in this bit of Detrot and have that teleporting shizz about them then they’re bad fucking news.” I grumbled, walking towards the place where the white pony had stood. Looked like they had appeared, whinnied then buggered off with little between them. Right now I didn't have time to care about magic ponies deciding they were gonna come and bug me for no other reason than to be a pain in my flank.
"What's wrong with this part of Detrot?" Promise asked, and I smiled evily.
"What's wrong with this bit of Detrot? It aint called Raidertown for nothing!" I said to her dramatically as we stepped out of the tunnel. We were on the side of a huge hill overlooking part of the city, all you could see for miles around was building after burned out building. I heard clicking from Promise's pipbuck and saw that there was radiation present, that didn't surprise me considering that there was a bomb crater infront of me us, a huge scrap metal wall erected around it that was surrounded by swathes of jeering raider ponies. Hundreds of bodies were dotted around the blast site where prisoner ponies were forced to fight eachother to death and sometimes they were pitted against feral ghouls. I felt so sorry for anyone made to battle it out in Radarena as it was named, quite aptly considering the amount of radiation filling up that hole.
The arena was the central meeting point where all the raider territories met, to the north, where we were was the Tunnlers, Blackeners down one side of the hill and over the other side of it was Keepers Castle. East was mainly radiantion and little else and housed the Ghosties, all ghouls, still mad as fuck, but somehow they weren't feral. South was the area controlled by Shanks, Skallions and Buckaneers, they were constantly fighting over who owned the most land and most of their battles ended in bloody massacre. West was in the control of Druggies, Westers and Righteous. Then in the sewers, there were Vaulters, raiders with pipbucks, doesn't go down well so most of the other gangs leave them alone.
"Quickly now Promise, home's that way, stay close to me an' you'll be safe." I started walking down from the tunnel with the confused mate staring at the sky. "Pretty cool, ain't it?" I called back to her, receiving a small nod in awknowlegeement, Promise's eyes were totally fixed on the sky.
"I never thought the outside would be this big." The crimson mare mused. "Is there anything above the big white ceiling?" She asked, completely oblivious to the question she had asked.
"Yeah, the rest of the world, and the Pegasi." I muttered, "Fuckers." I didn't hold the pegasi in very high standing since they had asked me for a delivery of what turned out to be diseased fruit. I gave them to a nice family and when I came back that way when I was on a Flash Fillies contract I found them all raving mad and eating some poor traveller. Hair-Trigger and I couldn’t put them down, just barred their door and left them. "Don't trust those Enclave fucks. And never eat anything they offer you… Just don't." I told her before she could interject; she caught onto my deadly serious tone nodding frantically.
"Don't trust Enclave ponies, ok!" She agreed with a brisk nod of her head. My little protégé was undoubtedly making a huge mental list of things to and not to do in the Wastes. And I wanted her to stick to her list if it killed her.
Raidertown wasn’t actually that bad, you just didn’t fuck with the wrong ponies in the wrong places. As long as you kept to that basic rule when traveling through this place, you weren’t gonna have your eyes stabbed out and served boiled with a side of your pulped innards. I was just the pony lucky enough to know who not to fuck with at any one time.
“Down there, the hoofpath.” I pointed with a hoof to the side of the mountain away from where the jagged asphalt of Old Detrot Bridge had been sundered away from the tunnel by the balefire bomb. “I will be right behind you Promise.” I told her, smiling a little as we both started to walk down the little hooftrodden path leading down into the centre of Raidertown.
Before we entered Raidertown, I stopped my new friend and smiled at her, before giving her something new to add to her list of dos and don’ts in the wasteland. “Most of the stallions down there are gonna want to take you back to whatever hole they crawled out of, steal all your stuff, strip you naked, then fuck you. They’re then most likely to either tie you up or cut your achillies, or just plain out shoot you.” I mused to her, her scared eyes watching me with every extra detail I explained.
“What!?” Promise squealed, panicking a little, leading me to smile a little, “So they want to have sex with me?!” She shook, obviously unsure onto how to process this. “I don’t wanna have sex with a stallion!” She wailed into the sky.
I chuckled and kicked a stone off the road in front of me, “Fillyfooler?” I asked her, and she nodded a little, even with her facing away from me I could see the blush raising on her cheeks. “I guess you didn’t have anyone in the stable in that case?” She shook her head and lowered it a little.
“Don’t worry about me,” She muttered, and I decided it would be best to drop the subject. “I’m safe with you, right?” She asked, pausing for a moment.
“You’re never safe in the Wasteland, but here, stick close and nopony will look at you wrong.” I told her, trying to make my voice as reassuring as possible. She seemed to relax before long and slowed down to let me catch up.
“How long has this place been around?” She questioned, regaining her irritating questioning persona and making me sigh.
“Don’t know, don’t really want to know. When I crawled out of my hole it was here.” I spat, the place had always been here killing innocents simply to get more caps and guns. I had heard that the Reapers in the Hoof had organised one of their ‘Stomps’ to try to level the place to the ground, and failed, barely scratching their numbers before they were repelled.
“What do you mean by, your hole?” The questioning mare asked, making me pause, I didn’t like to think about where I came from. From beside me, she saw my hesitant look and lowered her head a little. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.” She said, looking away for a moment.
“Well at the moment, I don’t want to; maybe I’ll tell you some other time.” I muttered, remembering the accursed dark corridors and the endless flickering of all the broken bulbs and equipment alongside the groan of old machinery trying to come back to life just to strain and fall to pieces. Remembering those three days I spent down there trying to escape haunted me, I knew I wasn’t the only one down there, I couldn’t have been, that part of Detrot was where all the off the books projects belonging to the O.I.A were stored. Project Steelpony had its subsidiaries, such as the project that brought me back from almost being very dead. I know what it did to me, but I could never remember exactly what it was called, I also wasn’t sure I wanted to remember it.
“Ok Relic, I won’t ask again.” Promise said, lifting a hoof to cross her heart before squeaking, I knew exactly why too, there were a collection of red bars beginning to show themselves on my E.F.S and I guessed if they were showing up on mine, they must also be showing up on hers. “There’s some more bad ponies down there.” She whimpered as her head went down to the handle on her 10mm.
“Just because they show up as red on your E.F.S doesn’t mean you have to go and shoot them instantly.” I told her, using my magic to force her head away from her pistol. “You can reason with ponies, there are some things in the Wasteland that you can’t reason with.”
She begrudgingly raised her head, then mumbled, “What if they start shooting at us, or try to stab us with something?” She started to panic again. Panic was never good in the Wasteland because it killed ponies.
“Calm! Calm down Promise.” I told her before she started freaking out again, “We cannot just go up to everypony we meet out here and point a gun at them!”
“But! What if they point a gun at us?” She stammered, sinking down into a sitting position, “I should never have left 56.” She whimpered, covering her face with her hooves.
I growled low and turned to her, “It’s too fucking late for me to go and carry you back to the stable; you’ve seen what the world is like out here and how ponies have to fight say and night just to stay alive!” I slammed a hoof down into the ground, startling the panicked mare and making her jump. “If you want to go back to your boring life of following your pipbuck’s every command, be my guest, but I’m not walking you back to your stable. So you either need to pick your ass up off the ground and come with me, or drag it back to your boring whitewash of a home!” I snorted and glared at the shaken Promise who swallowed before nervously stammering.
“I want to come with you Relic; I’m bored of doing the same thing over and over again every day.” She said as she pushed herself up to her hooves. “You don’t do the same thing over and over out here, do you?”
I shook my head, then started walking down towards Raidertown again, “Just, don’t pull your gun on anyone in here, trust me, we’ll both be dead well before you’ll be able to shoot whoever you pull it on.” I heard her dainty hooves behind me clicking against the stony path.
Before long, we were both near enough to Raidertown to pick out the barbed wire barricades surrounding the small gates that used to be toll booths, they still were to be honest, but now the ponies manning them were more interested in my newfound friend’s flanks.
“Keep your tail down and your head held high, also, stick next to me.” I growled under my breath at her and she nodded, walking slightly closer before we got too close to the toll booths.
One of the raiders looked up at us from whatever he was doing under his desk and eyed us as we walked closer. As we walked up to the booth, he called out to us, “Wastelanders?” I nodded and floated twenty caps out to his desk, he shook his head, and “Twen’y caps ‘aint ‘nuff anymore, Sixton said twen’y caps each ta get in.” He pointed at my friend, which made her let out a scared little ‘eep!’ and then shudder a little. “Either that or I’ll take that fine piece o’ flank of your hooves an’ you can come in fer free.”
“No, this mare’s coming with me, I’ll pay your toll.” I growled as I the extra twenty caps dropped onto his desk. I heard a more than audible groan of disappointment from the raider buck before he swept the caps away into the nether and pressed a button on his desk to unlock the turnstiles. Promise and I walked through them quickly, most likely her faster than me.
Walking through the turnstiles seemed to give both our pipbucks an extra buck into high gear as they began click-clicking with the amount of radiation they were picking up, undoubtedly form the crater blasted by the balefire bomb that landed in this part of the city. All around us were brothels and drinking dens, chem dealers selling their toxic wares to anyone that showed them a cap and more raiders than one could count. All wearing some arrangement of scrap metal and leather armour, many of them looked hooked on some chem like jet or rage.
This was the central part of Raidertown, where there was the least fighting and the most ponies, it was like a little zone of calm in the surrounding chaos that were simply known as the areas. Everything in the town was constructed by slugging some sheet metal together with some nails and some old burnt pre-war bricks. There were a few shops and other ‘businesses’ that were set up in the pre-war buildings that had survived the bomb such as the brothel ‘BuckFuck’ that is just full of coltcuddlers. The place I was going required I go to such a building. I had another delivery to make within the town then I would be off back to my place of residence near to Detrot O.I.A offices. My home was a small burned out shack I had found half an hour’s walk away from the office that had housed a feral ghoul called Leftie (according to the logs he had left his, now my terminal.)
“Here I just have to make another delivery to a friend of mine before we go to where live.” I told Promise who was slowly becoming more and more overwhelmed by the amount of ponies in the crowd and by the fact the ceiling wasn’t three hooves from her head. “Just stick close and you’ll be fine.” She nodded and edged closer to me, obviously unsure about the amount of raider ponies glancing at her with ridiculously sexual grins on their faces.
The journey to our destination was largely uneventful, our journey eventually ended up with us both staring up at the M.O.M headquarters. This was the home of the raider party that currently ruled over Raidertown, Blackeners. They had entirely lived up to their name with their excessive use of black paint and other methods of darkening the exterior of the perfectly white Morale HQ.
Walking up to the door got some guns pointed at us and I had to stop Promise from making the fatal mistake of pointing her own gun back, because that is a mistake that will get us both shot. I simply strode up to the first pony that looked like a guard and stopped, “Delivery pony. I have something for Boss.” He grunted and held out a hoof, I dug through my bags and brought out a large egg. “Radigator. You have your egg, I’d like my caps please.” I asked the guard who grunted again and lit up his horn, a few moments later a line of bottlecaps started to make its way into the mud at my hooves. I counted about five hundred caps in total, I had asked for a thousand but I knew better than to argue with the raiders. I nodded, pretending that there was the right amount.
“Nice doing business with you.” I muttered and swept up the caps in my magical grip, the guardspony grunted again then took the radigator egg inside the M.O.M building. Promise didn’t look to happy as I walked back to her, she was being stared at by a group of drooling raiders. I gave them all a stern look and indicated my Sparkle which made them think twice about harming my friend before we moved on.
“Are we going to have to stay overnight here?” Promise asked as we rounded another dirty street corner to unveil more scrappy raiders brawling in the street over what looked like a box of dash or some other chem. I nodded in answer to her question making her groan in dismay. “I don’t like it here; all the stallions here look at my ass and start drooling!” She complained and snorted, flattening her ears against her head.
“That’s because think your ass is sexy. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the shape of a mare’s derriere.” I said as we walked past the brawl, I noticed her small blush and smiled a little. She snorted again and lowered her head. “Just keep your tail down and your legs together.” I told her and she immediately corrected her poise, one of the stallions on the ground sighed and got on with burying his opponent’s face in the mud.
“You still didn’t answer my question, are we staying here overnight.” I shook my head and kept walking, walking around a mare curled up in the middle of the street, what had to be about six dash inhalers on the ground around her. “Good… I don’t think I could survive a night here.” She said, skittering around the drugged up mare warily.
“We leave here as soon as possible; there are quite a few ponies here that want my head on a pole.” I told her, Most of the Westers for one and then quite a few Druggies. “We go out the South gate and pick our way through the Skallion’s territory; either that or we go through the sewers that’ll get us killed.” I pointed south then to one of the sewer exit hatches.
“What’s in the sewer?” She asked, looking a little apprehensive. “What is down there that’ll get us killed?”
“Raiders are down there. And they are Vaulters, notoriously bad mannered and they have pipbucks.” I answered pointedly, a raider with a bracelet that aimed their guns for them, you really couldn’t ask for anything else.
“So they have access to S.A.T.S?” Promise squeaked and I nodded. “I think going through the south is the best idea!” She decided and started walking down towards the south gate with me following close on her crimson heels.
It wasn’t long before I was recognised by some rowdy folk, Westers in their spiked armour, the characteristic ‘W’ painted in red on their shoulder guards. All the gangs had their own symbols painted somewhere on their armour to distinguish them when they all looked pretty much the same.
“Oi! Aint that the delivery pony that fucked us over?!” One of the raiders shouted and his comrades all nodded in agreement, I was in for a little bit of a tousle that I didn’t want or have time for particularly. There were four of them and two of us, I didn’t like these odds. In my previous experience, you couldn’t just leave your survival chances to how big your gun was, having seen Hair-Trigger murder a radigator with a 9mm pistol exceptionally efficiently.
“I would prefer it if we didn’t have any fisticuffs over something that happened five years ago.” I told the group of angry raiders, what they were angry about was me delivering a dud bomb to them, I stuck by my principles of it being my job to bring you something and not my job to see if it working. “You told me you’d pay me for bringing you a bomb. I was not going to test said bomb to see if it functioned as an explosive.” I told them confidently, I wasn’t going to get into a fight with these ponies if I had a choice.
One of them grabbed me with a disgusting forehoof. “Sticks told you to bring us a big bomb for caps, you bought us a box filled with grenades all tied together.” He spat at me.
“And, if you had operated it properly it would have functioned perfectly well as an explosive.” I said, shaking his hoof off my back before carrying on walking alongside Promise.
My friend looked a little spooked by the three stallions swearing at me and had quickened her pace. “Who are those ponies?” She asked, her quiet voice quivering on the edge of her fear.
“Westers, they’re all pissed at me for giving them what they think was a dud bomb.” I answered, noticing the three ponies behind us begin to follow.
“Westers? Is that a gang or something?” She asked, still very unsure of the three.
“Something like that, now keep walking Promise.” I said to her and lit up my horn to secretly float the sixgun from my holster on my leg. “Don’t draw until they start shooting.” I whispered and she nodded slowly.
“Oi! We weren’t done chatting fucker!” Another of the Westers shouted from behind us and I heard the clicking sound of a gun being loaded.
“Yes, I think you will find we are done chatting my friends.” I said over my shoulder to them and waved my gun at the four ponies, making them start for a moment. Then one of them raised a nasty looking sub-machine gun at us.
“We decide when we’re done talkin’.” One growled low, his horn glowing to pull out a clunky looking magnum and point it at us. “Put down your fuckin’ gun.”
“I feel threatened; I am going to wave my gun around as much as I want.” I said, the pistol dancing around my head in my magical glow. “Now can I just go home, or do I have to shoot you to get there.”
“That’s a fuckin’ nough! Fuck him up!” The middle pony shouted and started unloading his high power pistol at us, with the worst aim I think I have ever seen. The SMG started to shatter at us, sending a deadly stream of lead at us. The burst from the SMG splattered against my chest armour and did little else, I activated my S.A.T.S, toggling a pair of shots at the front two raiders’ legs, the other two behind them were still in the process of bringing out their respective weapons before I released the spell and fired twice. The bullets from my gun streaked straight along their course and thudded into the knees of the two raiders at the front, the one with the magnum shrieked in pain and dropped his gun, his blood splattering across the mud; the other grunted in pain and fell to his side, splattering his side with mud and grime before his knee started leaking like a burst pipe all over the ground.
“Are so sure about fucking me up?” I chided the two grounded ponies, who growled up at me in agony while their compatriots decided on the best course of action and were running away through the on looking crowd. “Now I’m going to leave and you’re both gonna lie down there like the good little ponies you are.” I chastised them as I reloaded the two spent cases, flicking the spinning barrel shut and dropping the revolver into my holster.
“What just happened?” Promise asked, more than a little shocked at my lack of remorse.
“I shot a pair of stallions in the knee.” I said, not sparing her any doubt. “Now we’re leaving Raidertown and little is going to stop me from doing so.”
Getting out of town was easy now, the onlookers were too terrified of me and my friend to try to stop us, there were some that looked at me more with respect than fear as they moved out of the way. We came to the gate blocking our entry to the south part of Detrot and pushed our way through the exit turnstiles that offered as much resistance as the crowd from before.
I turned around to face the crowd to make sure nopony was following us just in time to see a stark white mare stepping out of the crowd, yelling something unintelligible over the raucous din of the crowd of cussing raiders. Her mane was long and dishevelled, hanging around the bright white horn on her forehead and she had the look of a seasoned dash addict written all over her face as clear as day. She raised her left forehoof in some form of harsh salute and locked her pinprick pupils on me for a mere moment before swiftly spinning on her heels and vanishing back into the crowd. The crowd was pushed out of her way quite forcibly which quite surprised me considering her small frame but in the Wastes, you never knew what you were going to find.
“Come on Relic, I want to go and see more of the Wasteland!” Promise demanded from a few idle steps down the road and I spun to catch up with her, “How far is your house?” She was back to questions then, what fun.
“About a three hour walk, if we were going in a straight line, but we need to go through a specific raider territory because they’re the least likely to shoot us on sight.” I answered and started fishing through my bags for a packet of radaway which floated through the air towards my crimson and charcoal friend.
“What’s this?” She asked, giving the orange flavoured gunk inside a cautionary sniff before tasting some and sticking her tongue out. “Euck! What the fuck is this stuff?”
“Radaway, will make you feel better after you’ve gotten irradiated.” I told her, sucking on a packet of my own, I had bought a load of the lifesaving rancid orange at my last visit to Tenpony tower and was nowhere near running out of the amazing essence of hazmat. “Good stuff, tastes like shit. Drink it unless you want to be a ghoul and or die from some horrible tumour.” I finished my packet and tossed the empty plastic into my bag, watching Promise gag and balk over drinking the orange flavoured goop, eventually she gulped it down, but only alongside a large swig of water from her bottle.
“Fucking hell, I hope I won’t have to drink a lot of that stuff.” She whined, sticking her tongue out as I floated the packet into my bag.
“Its good stuff Promise, saved my ass many a time.” I told her as she wretched; I took her empty pouch and stuffed it into my bag for use in… something later. Believe me, I’m grateful to whatever mind in the M.O.P that thought up a concoction to get rid of radiation. I am less grateful to whatever motherfucker decided to put orange flavouring in it.
We were walking along before long, the yelling and racket of fighting from the town behind us fading like a distant memory. Outside of the walls of Raidertown, it was a constant struggle against the other gangs to stay alive and pick out enough loot from the deserted houses before somepony else did. “We’ll be walking for about five hours, plus probable interruptions and a break for lunch; we should be home before long.” I told my friend who was jumping to the top of a pile of rubble like a mountain goat. “We’ll be out of raider territory before long, don’t worry your ass too much.”
Promise nodded and jumped down from the top of the rubble, landing gracefully before walking next to me and peppering me with questions about the Wasteland. Neither of us noticed the odd white mare skipping from hiding spot to hiding spot like a rogue shadow behind us, her eyes fixed upon me constantly.
Footnote
Level up (17)
New perk: I used to be a raider like you. Higher chance to cripple a limb using a firearm.
Chapter one: Relic, Wasteland Delivery Pony
Chapter one: Relic, Wasteland Delivery Pony
So, let me start my little tale with a little information on exactly who I am. I am as some would say, a product. Off the books. Somepony that doesn’t actually exist, haven’t for about two hundred years, not since the bombs dropped and I leapt into one of the armoured stasis pods lining the walls of the Detrot O.I.A offices. I can’t remember my actual name, it was stripped from me when I agreed to go through with this, steelpony procedure, I was dying from a zebra curse and it was the only way I could keep on going. I had nothing to lose, so I kind of just thought, Fuck it and went through with the surgery to turn me into a cyberpony. I was put to sleep and woke up a machine. So I searched my memory and found a name fitting of my situation, Relic. I was a two hundred and thirty years old artefact, A relic from the war that decimated everything.
Also a relic that was fucking bored of waiting around in the fucking rain while a pack of Detrot raiders raped and ate his previous wasteland partner, leaving little else but bones and the little titbits of junk they saw no value in. “Damnit Hair-Trigger” I whispered, lowering my head in respect to my deceased friend. I wanted to lift the little pistol I carried and pull the trigger on all of them. All twenty of the stinking, swearing fucks. I had no chance at all considering that I had all of eight bullets in the clip and the gun was on the very brink of falling apart in my metal hooves. The water was logging in my green mane and my blue coat was becoming heavy with the never ending rain.
No, by the way, I was not an entirely synthetic pony. I was only about 44.521% machine. My hind legs were metal, alongside with some of my organs, being my liver, kidneys, heart and my eyes also most of my bones were steel, but not my spine. I had access to an E.F.S or Eyes Forward Sparkle and a S.A.T.S assisted targeting system, all linked up to my brain. Also I had what could be best described as an inventory system that stated whatever was inside my bags at any one time. I essentially had a pipbuck interface in my brain.
All of this was not at all helping my boredom for the next hour till the swearing mob of raiders moved on to find and most likely fuck their next target. I slowly came out from behind my cover, my wide brimmed hat flopping down over my eyes with the still increasing weight of the rain upon my head. My back legs vented and sprayed steam across the ground behind me as I crouched down next to my friend and closed his eyes on his mangled face. The raiders around these parts always left the eyes alone. I shook my doubts off of my back and started picking through what was left his belongings. A couple of bullets they had missed out, four caps, some more junk, six spark batteries and a stealthbuck. I dumped my small stack of loot in my saddlebag and sighed, sitting next to my old friend until his dusty coat was washed clean by the waning storm clouds.
After I had paid my last respects to Trigger, I mechanically rose to my hooves, turning away from the bloody carcass on the cracked asphalt behind me and continuing on my now lone journey to stable 56.
The stable had contacted me a while back to get their prissy little hooves on a new reactor core for their faulty matrixes. I had the core and just needed to make my delivery. One problem, 56 is in the middle of a fucking raider territory so I will most likely not be able to make my delivery of a priceless reactor core for meagre pay at this time.
I stayed true on my path, getting closer to the little marker I could see off in the distance on my E.F.S. I also tried to steer clear of the red bars, they signified something wanting to tear off both my ears and all my legs, then club what’s left of me to death with them. Raiders, all of them insane ponies, wearing nothing but leather and the very occasional piece of scrap metal strapped to their wretched bodies as makeshift armour.
It wasn’t long before I came across a group of fetid raiders I couldn’t skirt past. They didn’t have much in the way of guns, or maybe they just didn’t have any bullets. Anyway, I neatly stepped into the alley where they were loitering and slid into the targeting nirvana of S.A.T.S.
There were four of them, the fetid stinking ponies all turned to me in slow motion, and I toggled a pair of bullets from the little pistol I held in my magical grip. As I exited the spell, the gun fired, leaving two of the raiders as corpses on the ground, their heads ruptured and in pieces across the ground while the other two carried on running at me, a sharpened piece of rebar and a tire iron in tow. The first one leapt on me, and received a hydraulic hoof in the face for his troubles, spiralling back across the alley and snapping his neck as he impacted the wall. The mess of a pony slid down the wall almost comically, crumpling in a heap on the floor while the other frothing raider bared down on me apparently oblivious to the fact all three of his friends had just been killed.
Obviously, he also had no idea that pissing off a pony with a pistol while armed with a chunk of rebar is not the best idea as he ran face first into the still smoking barrel of the firearm I was wielding. The trigger pulled and he looked exceptionally surprised as he hit the ground, a hoof to the hole in his throat. That was four dead raiders, in assorted states of decimation, they had fuck all on them, the best I found was a grenade they had forgotten they owned. Reloading the pistol, I carried un my brisk trot towards the stable. I intended to stay there for a couple of days then move on again after most likely having stolen some more bullets and maybe a rifle, if I can find any, that is.
On the rest of the way there, I had few other confrontations, my E.F.S. helping me skirt past most of the fetid ponies. The subway entrance was directly in-front of me and it was dark as all fuck, almost rivalling the Detrot night time. Taking my careful way, I started inside, blinking three times and making my eyes light up, like a wartime pipbuck’s lamp function, just better, I swept my vision across the dingy walls, a torch beam following me wherever I looked, the walls were cracked and splattered with profane graffiti, all red, most likely blood, and no mattering the graffiti, the amount of pony bodies hung around the ceiling, I gagged and wretched at the smell of decomposing bodies and that they all seemed to be looking directly at me with their terrified eyes.
Carefully I stepped into the tunnel, tying a bandanna over my muzzle to block out the rotten reek of pony bodies, it didn’t work overly well, but was better than nothing. I never thought raiders could really be just this bad. It reeked of shit and all types of rot as I delved deeper into the pitch black open space knowing very well that the place was more than likely infested by more fetid raiders.
I was glad I hadn’t found any… so far.
After exploring the desecrated tunnel for a while, I found it mostly deserted besides the occasional radroach that I simply crushed underhoof or splatted with a piece of debris, the only raiders I found were either dead with bloated stomachs and gore splattering their mouths or sleeping, in my previous experience, you could drive a train next to one of these sleeping looneys and get away with it, so I didn’t bother trying to be overly sneaky, which would have slowed me down severely. The little bar at the top of my modified E.F.S. system telling me if anything could see me, it only flashed occasionally as a scuttling radroach became interested in me and came over just to receive my hoof squashing it for its trouble. I guessed this was the raider’s nest due to the amount of bodies and food, alongside the amount of random trashed weapons and spare bullets, which I kindly helped myself to. I had lost my precious L.D-Sparkle rifle a while back, an elegant magical energy weapon that charged a single blast using spark batteries and amplifies a small amount of energy into a wide range of effects, such as it could be a sniper rifle one moment, then a shotgun the next by use of the M.A.S beam refraction tech. I am not going to ask how many ponies got diced when making and testing the deadly weapon.
I still had the wrecked carcass of my close weapon, but looking at it for anything more than a moment told you that it was too dangerous due to the amount of damage it sustained when my late partner and I stepped on a mine, luckily it was my tread that set off the explosive and my cybernetic hoof absorbed most of the explosion and Trigger was quick enough on his hooves to roll away from the boom before any real damage could be done… the unfortunate thing about that encounter was the mine’s shockwave had cracked the refraction chamber on my beam rifle and then we had to deal with a group of raiders, which had caused my precious gun to explode in my face, sending the highly powered beam of magical energy rocketing straight into the chest of one of the attacking ponies, burning a hole straight through their sternum and melting their lungs. All I had besides that was my falling apart pistol which was more falling apart now.
I sat down against a door rusted shut and took the bandanna from over my muzzle, the stench properly reaching me and making me wretch, nevertheless I managed to choke down some water and eat some of the food I was carrying. Also I took the time to start to pick through the belongings I had purloined from the raiders, few of the guns were in better condition than the one I was trying to keep together with a combination of wonderglue and duct tape, but the little mouthgun was on its last legs three fights ago and now it just needed burying. I took the parts of it I could still use, being the clip and the four bullets left in it.
After another hour of searching and stripping weapons down for spare parts I had picked the raider nest pretty clean, I had managed to fix myself up with a duct taped carbine rifle of my own design, I thought myself quite resourceful when it came to making weapons out of other bits of weapons. I kind of just knew what bits of random weapons would work together into a workable firearm. I managed to test it out on it with a few rounds of hollow point on a raider’s head as she raised from her sleep groggily. Also I had managed to pull apart a number of the pistols I had purloined from the tunnel and assemble them into a set of pistols and I chose the best quality firearm as my own, unfortunately I didn’t have an opportunity to test it as my rifle shots had started to stir some of the other raiders around me from their sleep.
I had about twenty seconds to slip from the tunnel before I was seen and the raiders noticed they didn’t have their guns. This would most likely just piss them off more. I managed to get out before any of the stinking ponies had noticed me, staggering to their gnawed hooves one nudged the mare I had shot with her nose, then a hoof, then he burst into giggling, prodding the bullet wounds with his hooves and watching the blood run down her mottled hide and onto the cracked ground. Then he opened one of her glassy eyes and stared into it, then mumbled something to her.
“Shit! All of you fuckers! Sixgun’s been shotted! We got a fuckin’ interuderer in the hideyhole!” He yelled into the crowd of raiders who stood stunned for a few moments, then all jumped to where I had stolen their guns from them.
‘Shit’ I thought as it dawned on them that their weapons were missing.
“And whoever shotted Sixgun stole my fucking gun!” The raider pony that had prodded Sixgun yelled. Double shit. “Find him and make ‘im fuckin’ shotted, then get me my fucking gun!” He ran over to a pile of rubble and grabbed a chunk of rebar in his broken and rotten teeth. Brandishing the sharp metal stake in the air then charging away out of the tunnel, being followed by most of the other raiders.
I began to pick my way across the tunnel to the dark slowly as to not get noticed by the raiders that had lagged behind to play with the unfortunate mare’s corpse. There was seven in total in the hidey hole with me and they were all giggling maliciously as they poked and prodded at the poor mare’s body. My Celestia raiders could be disgusting.
Eventually I made it across the chamber and started on my way away from the raider nest, staying to the shadows and keeping the eye on my E.F.S. closed, there would be nopony finding me… “Shit… stable doors are fucking loud with all the sirens and the metal squealing.” I mumbled to myself quietly, the problem is that once I had gotten into the stable, I would have to fight my way out of the tunnel, not that I am unable to do that, but because I didn’t like killing anypony that didn’t want me dead, in reality I didn’t like killing at all. But in the Wasteland, you did whatever was fucking necessary to keep you alive and if you can your family and friends, we had learned all of that from the stable dweller marching herself around near Tenpony tower and the Security Mare shooting the fuck out of the Hoof, and probably herself and everyone around her knowing that accursed place. I had had a bad run in with it when making a delivery to the Hoofington Reapers, got myself stuck in an enervation field around this place called Chapel and a unicorn pulled me out and nursed me back to health.
Weird ponies in the Hoof, this unicorn, his name was Priest, asked me if I had wanted to make the pilgrimage, I said no of course, I had a delivery to make. But when I had asked him what the pilgrimage was he turned away from me and went silent. While I was there, I managed to get a bunch of conversation out of the Crusaders, a group of kids that knew the hoof like the back of their hooves… and there was their vendor, her name is Charity. I do not think I had ever heard more of a lie in the entire time I have been alive in the Wastes, that filly had a nose for caps and seemed to know how to milk ponies for them every which way.
My saddlebags were definitely lighter when I left that place to go and make my (now slightly late) delivery of four sets of powerhooves to the Reapers. Their leader, Big Daddy had been much more sympathetic to me than I had expected and paid me more than he should have because of my run in with one of the many curses of the hoof and then denied doing so.
As I said, strange pones in the hoof. The ponies around Detrot either wanted to fuck you, fuck your cap reserve over, or fucking kill you. All different flavours of fucked. Personally, I didn’t really like any of those flavours of fuckiness so I tried to steer clear of those areas of Detrot, which meant most of the ruined city. One of the zebra balefire bombs came down just outside of the city and cooked about half of its inhabitants, left the others to try to scamper into stables like the one I was trying to find at the moment. Some were what I have learned to call Dystopian Stables. Experiments by Stable-tech to learn more about pony psychology and how to prevent future wars. Guess that was a little bit of a long shot because of the two hundred years that passed between the doors closing and the present day of the Wasteland.
The one I was traveling to was lucky enough to be one of the normalish stables, Stable 56. And it wasn’t long till I found it, and the group of raiders trying to cut through the door with a jury-rigged laser cutter. I ducked quickly out of sight before they heard me and turned around.
Hearing what they were talking about made me sick, they were discussing how they were going to kill the stable dwellers and what they were going to do with them before they died.
Fucking sick ponies, but the laser cutter they had put together meant they had somepony that knew what they were doing with tech, it was, albeit slowly, burning a hole into the stable. I may be able to salvage a few parts from the cutter to repair my beloved L.D-Sparkle. There were five of them bristling with pointy things and firearms, and one of me. I would have to deal with them before I made my way into the stable to make my delivery and take my pay.
I couldn’t decide whether to see if I could take on the raiders head on, or try a stealthier approach. Eventually I decided on trying to be a sneaky pony and slunk through the shadows towards the raised platform the five raider ponies were standing on, swearing and fighting amongst each-other.
They didn’t notice me at all as I pulled a small silver apple from my saddlebag and pulled the stem from it. I gently placed it on the platform and let go of the single leaf stopping it from going off then rolled under the scaffolding. I heard a shout from above then the resounding explosion of the grenade. Then nothing but the steady whir and buzz from the laser cutter. I came out from under my protective scaffolding and pulled myself up to the bloody and blackened platform to switch off the cutter. There was little left of the five besides a number of bloody lumps and the caps I took from them.
Starting to disassemble the cutter I managed to salvage enough parts from it to mostly repair my precious Sparkle, all I needed now was a high voltage resonance crystal, each stable had hundreds of them in the lights that illuminated them. I just needed to ask for a light bulb as an added payment for having to go through so much raider territory. It’d be silly of them to force me to steal it, because I might steal a couple more things alongside it.
I put the salvaged parts from the cutter in my bags and moved over to the intercom system between the stable and the Wasteland, slamming the button down I growled into the microphone “Delivery pony, let me into your stable or im leaving with your battery.”
A few seconds later, a female voice came over the speakers, “You are the delivery pony Relic?” she asked, “aren’t there a bunch of bad ponies out there, they’ve been trying to break into the stable!” the mare panicked.
“Do you want me to put them back?” I growled back at her and she squeaked, then I heard muttering on the other side of the speakers and after a few moments, the sirens declaring the huge gear shaped door was about to open began to blare. I backed away a little as the door started to squeal and tilt to the side, beginning to roll open.
I saw light spilling from the crack in the door as the Clackson siren kept on wailing over my head. The rusted door was taking its sweet time opening and if it took any longer I was going to start hearing raiders swearing and cursing at me… then throwing things at me, then worse, I couldn’t hold them all off, at least not without my Sparkle rifle.
The door finally let out a squealing shriek and rolled aside, revealing a group of ponies in combat armour aiming at me with 10mm pistols that would most likely do nought but spark off my lightweight Stabletec armour, unless they were modified to be able to fire AP rounds, which at a glance, I could tell they weren’t.
“So are you going to stop pointing your peashooters at me and let me in?” I growled at them and started walking over the bridge that was extending towards my platform. They shook when they saw what was left of the raiders I had dealt with and most of them lowered their guns, a couple keeping their sights trained on me. They were obviously scared of me, especially with my eyes glowing and having metal back legs, no mattering me being a wastelander. Fucking stable ponies, could never do anything right, a couple of them had left the safety on when they had opened the door. I was going to have some fun here before I left.
“Who’s overmare?” I said, making a few of them jump, one young buck swallowed and stepped forward, slipping his pistol into his holster before addressing me.
“The overmare is called Marina, she is in the office at the moment.” He stammered then backed away as I turned towards another mare who had left her safety on.
“Would you care to direct me?” I said to the earth pony mare, who squeaked and started trembling. I smiled a little at her, terrifying her more and I saw her reach out to the trigger on her pistol and pull with her tongue. Nothing happened, quite obviously. I took the gun and flicked the safety with my magic, then pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger and it let off a resounding bang, making a couple of the ponies in the group scream and im pretty sure one of them feinted.
“Fixed it.” I said casually and dropped the pistol, I turned away and started walking through the clean stable before it clattered to the floor followed a few seconds later by the sound of an earth pony mare hitting the steel floor. “Oh and you’re going to want to close that before any of those raiders out there work out you’ve opened the door, because I pissed them off.” I told them and sent them frantically scrambling at the controls to close the door.
I worked my way around the stable, ignoring the terrified looks of all the jumpsuted occupants until I got to the office of the overmare and walked in, not bothering to knock. “Marina? I have your battery. Now I want payment and a courtesy payment of a couple lightbulbs, a night’s rest, a hot shower and directions to a workstation for having to trawl through all that raider territory.” I demanded, walking into the tidy office, getting a curious stare from the mare behind the terminal.
“You must be Relic?” Marina asked as she stood up from her desk, her curly yellow mane bouncing around her blue shoulders. “Can I have our battery first; I have learned the hard way not to trust wastelanders.” She said firmly, placing a hoof on her desk. I grunted in reply and floated out the yellow cylinder, dropping it on the desk in front of her. “Is it functional?” she asked.
“Not my job to find out, not my job to care.” I said, rolling my eyes and earning a hard stare from the stable pony. “Yes I believe it is functional, at least it was before I yanked it out the back of a dead protectapony.” I growled after giving out under her stare, reminded me of somepony close to me, probably my mother, she was dead now, I didn’t care.
She smiled with her thin mouth and nudged a box with her hoof, the contents rattling. “The right amount of bottle caps I hope, you can go down to maintenance, take some light bulbs for whatever reason you want them for. Then you can stay in an empty room, I will have the stable guard find somewhere for you, the workstations are in maintenance.” She told me, taking the battery into her immaculate hooves. “Please don’t scare anypony else. If you don’t mind.”
I simply grunted and floated the box up, shaking it, full of caps, about 2000. That was right, I asked for 1500, won’t complain about a few extra. “Nice doing business with you. And also, I stopped a gang of raiders from cutting through your stable door.”
“That’s what the extra five hundred caps are for, we are deeply thankful for your assistance in that too.” She interjected, answering my question before I asked it.
“Thanks, now I have a gun to fix, please excuse me.” I growled and started to make my way out of the room before she stopped me with a question.
“What happened to your legs?” She asked, completely innocent.
“Accident, I keep it personal, don’t ask again.” I told her without turning around. This was my answer to this question every time it was asked.
She was silent for a moment, then, with a very apologetic tone said, “Sorry, I will leave you to your weapon.” And with that I left the room and she went back to her desk.
It wasn’t long before I had picked up company, a rather small mare. She was red with a charcoal mane and had an incessant need to ask questions about everything. Her name was Promise and she was turning out to be a royal pain in the flank.
“What happened in the Hoof? Why are you called Relic? What’s your cutiemark? What are you going to fix? Why do you need lightbulbs?” She incessantly questioned, I ignored her completely, walking along to the maintenance section of the stable. “Why do you have metal legs and glowy eyes?” She asked, now walking backwards in front of me.
“Coz I do, drop it.” I told her, not looking at the small mare.
“Are they uncomfortable?”
“No, stop asking.” I told her, now looking at her deep blue eyes.
“Are they super strong?” She asked again, now she was pissing me off.
“Yes, now will you leave me alone, because if you ask me another question I will demonstrate how strong they are by kicking you into a wall.” I growled at her and she very quickly shut up. But still walked next to me.
“Um… Mr Relic?” She asked and I sighed.
“Yes?”
“You just walked past maintenance.” She pointed out, and was completely correct.
“Thank you.” I sighed, and turned around. “Youre still going to follow me, aren’t you?”
My question was very quickly answered as the crimson mare spun on her hooves and trotted up next to me. “What’s the Wasteland like?” She asked, this time genuinely curious.
“It’s like a bad time went and fucked an apocalypse, then that child had a baby with Nightmare moon.” I said bluntly, earning an astonished look form the small mare before she gave an exasperated giggle. “And that’s the Wastes on a good day” I added pointedly.
“Well if it’s that bad, why don’t you go and live in a stable?” She asked.
“Because it’s boring.” I said, nothing more to it, and the small smile on the mare’s face said that she agreed.
“You want to come with me, don’t you?” I looked at the small mare, she’d be good for sneaking into small places, but she also looked as if she would run and hide at the hint that a gun was going to go off. “It’s a shitty place out there. You won’t like it, then it’ll kill you and rape your body.”
“I… I don’t know” She stammered, “But it’s really boring being cooped up in here with all the grey… and the grey… and the routine.” She said, pointing to her pipbuck.
“Routine?” I asked as we walked into the maintenance wing of the stable.
“Yeah, the pipbucks tell us what to do inside the stable and when we do them… and how to do them. Im on my break at the moment, but soon I’ll have to go and do… something.” She said, a little sad.
“So it is a dystopian stable.” I said to myself, smiling a little.
“Wha?” She said, turning to me.
“Nothing, just a theory I have.” I said to the little mare as we walked into the store room and were confronted with row upon row of boxes of stuff. I set about looking for lightbulbs while the mare went back to peppering me incessantly with questions.
In the eighteenth box I searched I found the bulbs I was looking for and took them to the workbench in the corner of the room and sat at it.
“Whatcha doin’” the small earthpony mare said, appearing next to me.
“Fixing my gun.” I said, pulling out the carcass of my precious L.D-Sparkle and lying it on the bench.
“It looks really odd for a gun.” She said and prodded at it with a curious hoof.
“That’s because it is a laser rifle, sniper and shotgun.” I pointed out, starting to unscrew the chambers.
“How can it be all those different types of gun?” She sat down, a confused look on her face.
“Because it can, that’s all you need to know.” I had the barrel of the gun off and had put the bent pipe in the vice to bend it back into shape. I let the autoforge begin to straighten the barrel before I began to disassemble the firing mechanism.
“But if it is all those kinds of gun, won’t you need to take it apart and put it back together over and over again?” She said, and it made sense, you would have to with the M3 intachangeagun. But it proved too much of a faff in battle and was replaced with the L.D-Sparkle rifle.
“With previous models of the gun, yes, but this one is special, and better.” I added in answer to her question, I floated the battery matrix up and removed the shattered resonance crystal with my magic and tossed it over to the overcurious mare. “That is what makes the gun do different things.”
“Oooh! So this gem thingy makes the lasers do different things?” She caught the gem in her hooves and held it up to the light. I lifted up a stabletec lightbulb and smashed the glass casing against the table, making the mare jump. “Hay! What was that for?!” She squealed at me.
“Because I need the gem that is inside the bulb. It’s what makes them change colours.” I said, floating up the gem, the ones used by Stabletec had a shell on it that made the light resonate without becoming dangerous. But I needed the shell off to be able to use the clear crystal in my gun.
“But that can’t be used in a gun, it’s a light bulb.” She said, brushing the glass off her front.
“It can’t be used yet, I need to get the inhibitor off it, is there anywhere I can get a hacksaw in here?” I asked, floating the crystal up and looking through it at the light. In the resonance caused by my magic, it bathed me in green light, the same colour as my eyes.
“Hacksaw? I think there should be one in the toolbox under the bench.” She answered me, mesmerised by the green light created by the crystal. I went and looked through the box, and sure enough, there was a hacksaw that I floated out and used to carve the gem free of its magic inhibiting shell. The moment that the shell came off the gem, the light shining through it began to heat up and I needed to clip it into the battery matrix before it cooked me. I waited for my weapon to accept the new crystal. I slammed a spark battery into the dock and the light that came on was green, the matrix was completely intact and had accepted the modified crystal.
“That was cool!” Promise said next to me. “I wish I was a unicorn like you.” She whined while I began reassembling the Sparkle. The firing trigger needed a little jimmying before it accepted the new crystal. But before long I had my rifle back in working condition. I switched it between the different modes, watching the scope slowly click and smoothly rise out of the ornate gun. A while back I had visited a market and bought a new scope for my gun before it broke and I hadn’t had chance to change them. I ejected the spark battery and turned my gun over to press the button on the underside, turning it to exchange mode. Where the gun started to come apart, its basic frame exposing itself and the different parts clicking apart from each other. I removed the sniper scope and slotted in my new one, then swapped a couple of other parts of my gun that were becoming worn.
“There we go.” I said, flicking the switch again, making the gun reassemble itself with a pneumatic hiss. “One working gun.” I aimed down the sight ring available for rifle mode and pulled the trigger on the unloaded gun, imagining the canister of something I was aiming at exploding into flaming debris.
“It looks very dangerous.” Said Promise, who was marvelling at the weapon.
“Shit, I think she has the basic idea of a gun.” I snarked at her.
After about another thirty thousand questions I had managed to assemble and repair another four other guns, I was planning on selling them to a market. I never imagined a pony could physically be as curious as Promise. Under great strain I managed to get all my work done before she killed all my brain cells.
“I have to go and talk to your security ponies now to get my room. As long as it isn’t your room or near your room, im going to be happy.” I said to her, packing up the weapons I had repaired and slung the Sparke over my back, slotting the sixgun I had just repaired into a holster on my front leg.
She hung her head, a little put out by my insult but perked up again pretty quickly, excitedly she voiced her idea, “Can I come with you?” She said as I was walking out of the room. “Please please please please please!?” she begged, stopping me in my tracks.
I sighed, “I will sleep on it. But you must remember that in my line of work, I kill ponies, and I sit around doing fuck all for long periods of time, and there’s fuck all to eat out in the wastes.” I said, turning around to face her widening eyes.
“K-kill ponies?” She stammered.
“Why the fuck do you think I carry a gun, two guns at that.” I asked her as if she was stupid.
She nodded a little put out. “I don’t think I would be able to kill a pony...” She whimpered a little. “But I still want to come with you!” She looked up at me with a determined face on.
I sighed again, then nodded and passed her one of the guns I had just repaired and attached a silencer to it. “Get a picture of somepony you love, imagine it is really them. Put it on your wall and empty the clip from this gun into it.” I passed her a clip of ten 10mm bullets. “That goes in there, you bite down on there and use your tongue to fire, that is the safety.” I explained, indicating all the parts of the gun. Her wide eyes were telling enough that I might not have another companion in the wasteland for a while. “Prove you have done that by the morning and I’ll take you with me.”
She nodded and put on a brave face. “I will. I’ll do it!” She said determined.
“If you do, pack everything you can carry and then a little more.” I told her, making my way away from the determined mare. “And, by the way, im going to have to tell you, we are going to have to fight our way out of the stable and out of the tunnel to get out into Detrot.” With that, I walked out of the room and left the mare to her own devices.
A short walk later, I knocked on the door to the security offices and quite surprised the pony who opened the door.
“Marina told me you’d set me up with a room.” I growled at the surprised unicorn mare and she nodded quickly and indicated to follow me.
“Marina said you wanted a hot shower too.” The security mare stammered, walking towards the accommodation wing in the stable. “All the accommodation rooms in the stable are equipped with a shower facility and toilet. You may use them both at your leisure due to your delivery, thanks for that too.” She said over her shoulder.
“Thanks.” I muttered, more worried about my shower than anything else at the moment, I had a bloodstain in my mane that I hadn’t been able to get out for so long.
After a few corners, she stopped in front of a door marked with ‘042’ and opened it. The smell of recent cleaning came through the door and smacked me right in the nostrils. “In here, overmare says you’re welcome to stay three days, then we’re gonna have to ask you politely to move along.”
I nodded and walked into the room, stretching out my forelegs I closed the door and locked it. I stripped off my saddlebags, rifle and armour. Then the garments I had on under them, there was a full body mirror in the bathroom and I stood a little way away from it to look at myself. “Fucking hell…” I whispered under my breath at the sight of me.
My blue coat had become more of a mottled brown with the amount of mud and congealed blood in it, my mane was more black than anything else. I locked eyes with myself, wild eyes, pinprick pupils I looked like a pony fresh out of insane asylum dosed up with a little more crazy than before. My back legs were still blood splattered with the ponies I had bucked into the next life. I needed to be clean. Stepping into the shower I turned it on and gasped at the cold water that hit my back instantly, then smiled as the cold was quickly replaced by warm then hot.
I just stood there under the shower for a good ten minutes, letting the hot water run over my shoulders and back before floating the soap up from the rack next to me and beginning to scrub myself back to being blue. I removed the blood coating my mane and coat with little difficulty, once I had all of that off did I realise how many scars I had across my whole body. Bullet wounds everywhere and the slash wound I had received when trying to escape the O.I.A. office, I would not be going back there anytime soon.
I got a good look at my cutie mark, an ancient dagger with a gemstone resembling an eye embedded in it's hilt, it didn't make sense when I got it at the age of five... The relic on my flank made more sense now since it was the name I hated taken for the Wastes, couldn't remember my old name anyway. Didn't matter that I couldn't, only thing that mattered in the Wasteland was if you got to see tomorrow. And if you didnt, then tough bloody luck. In my eyes, if you didn't see the sunrise, you were either dead or blind, eitherway, you fucked something up.
After spending a good hour in the shower I took the liberty of actually brushing my mane and tail, the knots and tangles were becoming irritating and I had a brush in my room and nothing to do. After sorting my hair I put my jacket back on and went to the door, my sixgun resting in its holster on my leg and unlocked it, pushing it open with my nose I sought out a member of the security team and drilled them on how to squire food in this stable.
"You need to wait till the schedule tells you to go and eat." The spooked mare had told me, pointing a shaking hoof at a large door. "The canteen is in there." After telling me that she had bolted so I went to the door which opened for me. In front of me was a large group of stable ponies, all looking depressed and all looking surprised to see me in here.
"What's the Wastelander doing in here?" I heard one whisper.
"Must be trying to steal our food." Remarked another.
I whirled on them, my temper quick to break. "Want to know what I go through every fucking day to get food and water?" I pulled the pistol from my holster with my magic and pressed it one of the mocking ponies' knees, "so, do ya?!" I shouted into his face, his quick shake of his head answered my question for me, he had no fucking clue.
I was shown where to get food from and was politely denied it by the robotic voice, "We at Stabletec apologise, but you do not seem to have a Stabletec patented pipbuck, your unique interface does not link with our schedule and therefore we cannot offer you food, please visit security to acquire a patented pipbuck and try again." I swore in multiple shades of red, green and brown then grumbled. I had no right to ask for food from the stable ponies if the stable itself wouldn't give it to me.
After that catastrophic failure of a dining experience I made my way back into my bedroom and tucked into a few cans of cram and a sparkle cola I had collected. When I had finished my meal I slid out my scrap-slot and fed the cram cans to the desperately hungry hole in my back leg, I felt my internal organs start to repair themselves and I coughed up a bullet that had been lodged in my chest for a while and shoved that in the slot too.
A good night's sleep was a rare thing in the wasteland, but as common as radiation in the stables, I lay down on the soft bed and slid the revolver under the pillow, I didn't have much chance to think about taking Promise with me before I closed my robotic eyes and shut down for the night.
Level up (16)
New perk: A rested body is a rested mind: Sleeping for a night removes some Rads aswell as healing limbs and damage.
