Fallout Equestria: Special Delivery

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.