Wandering... Somehow it blurs the lines between the hours and days... Time sorta just passes by in a blurry haze until something comes along to break the spell.

I spent my time trudging along staring at the sky in thought... Not much thought to be fair... But at least I could take my eyes off the ground and ponder about why the sky looked like it was covered in dryer lint...

As I wondered what flavor grey cotton candy would taste like I felt a searing pain in my hindleg and the echo of a distant gunshot, EFS put a red dot on my compass, I swung my head around and looked at it, just over a low hill I could see a little red triangle above something moving around... I pulled out my 10mm and began to walk towards it... Another shot rang out, this time it bounced off the dirt below me, I began sprinting and used my short wings to pick up a bit of speed, the pain in my leg flared up like a bitch but the threat of being shot again was more important. I rounded the hill and saw a dirty pony in dark green barding wielding a rifle, I took a few shots at him and kept moving, I swapped magazines in the pistol and Turned on SATS, I picked his head and let the spell take over for the brief second in time, four rounds fired, two hit him in the head, blood spraying from the wound in slow motion.

The spell ran its course and time returned to normal... The pony lay dead and flopped over backwards and his rifle sat in the dirt next to the body.

"Holy shit.... I.... Just killed a pony... Holy shit....." my brain finally done with the adrenaline rush, began to comprehend what I did.... Briefly after I realised that killing would probably be a pretty normal thing If I was to keep living in the wasteland..." well... Shit... Might as well see what he's got...

I sucked it up and bent down to see if he had anything useful, I took a couple healing potions, a bit of ammo, a bottle of Sparkle Cola, which somehow looked drinkable.. His helmet and some cobbled together barding. .. And for some odd reason... Bottle caps... Quite a few in fact... Some odd 20 of the things in his pockets... I decided to look in the wasteland survival guide to see if they had any meaning.

If ya ever kill anyone in the wasteland or find anyone dead... Most likely you'll find Bottle caps on them... Sometimes a fair few of them... But why? Theres a good reason... Bottle caps are Money! Aka you can trade em for all kinds of stuff. Some factions have their own money, but they'll usually exchange caps for their own cash, so pick up as many as you can find! The more you have the richer you are!

I pocketed the caps and strapped on the still bloody barding, and began to tend to my wound... It was a glancing shot just above the hoof, it still tore a good chunk out of me but it wasnt as bad as it felt. I took one of my healing potions and dribbled it into the wound and drunk the rest of the tiny vial. It stitched itself back together within a minute or two, alhtough a hairless piece of skin still remained.

I picked up the stallion's rifle... It turned out to be a single shot shotgun as evidenced by the 12 gauge ammo in his pack... Most of the ammo looked like improvised slugs, created by pouring wax into a shell full of pellets, along with a few rounds of buckshot... It seemed to explain the time between shots and the poor accuracy... I took the shotgun and put it in my pack along with the ammo... Maybe a bit of punch could help my cause...

Most of the trip was uneventful... Hardly a living thing in sight... I only had to kill the one pony, I saw a few more a few miles out but Decided to avoid them because I didn't have the skill or ammo to take on that many at once... And considering how "thirsty" Thirsty Mare 2 was, I wouldn't have nearly enough to pick them off if I came within range.

I made it to The airbase within a week, I only had a few bullets left after killing a few giant scorpions on the way, and I was on my last bit of food....as disgusting as vitamin bread was It still kept me alive... And now I was on my last brick...

I used a big rock to bust the lock from the gate and walked in... Still very few signs of life. There were two large hangars and a couple smaller buildings scattered around the base. A large empty runway sat in the middle of the compound, the tarmac cracked and uneven from two centuries of neglect.

As I approached the nearest of the two hangars the sound of many chitinous legs on concrete alerted me to the presence of another scorpion... I turned around and gave it some bullets to the face and watched it crumple... I had officially depleted my supply of 10mm now all I had was Sparkle's sanity which was reasonably charged , and my last few precious rounds of 12.7 magnum for Lobotomiser....not good.

My stomach made its needs clear once again. And seeing as the dead scorpion was the only thing edible I pried off some shell and cut a chink out of the fleshy innards and took a bite, It tasted like shit but It was food... Albeit mildly radioactive food... My geiger counter mounted in the pip buck began clicking occasionally... Not much, but it worried me a bit... Radiation poisoning was not a good thing to have. Scorpion would probably taste better cooked... But for now it worked well... I pocketed some more meat and entered the hangar.

Inside sat some aircraft, To the left were some old fixed wong aircraft... Something probably used for scouting based on the small frame and fabric wings and the right side had a couple vertiBucks... The plane's fabric coverings had all but crumbled away, so I decided to check out the VertiBucks... One was in pretty poor shape... As if it was in the process of being repaired when the world ended... The other one... An A/CV-2 based on the label on the inside of the craft... It was fairly bulky, and seemed to be more or less intact... And reasonably armed... A chin gun, a rear gun, some missile racks, and a fair cargo space inside with soace for door guns or a shit ton of other crap... Although finding ammo would be tough... But...meh...flying totally out weighs the difficulty of servicing it...

The craft was in decent shape... But it Did have some problems... Exposed wires, broken or missing body panels, flat tires... But It looked serviceable, and once the reactor was running again... It could be extremely useful...

"maybe I could be a courier Pilot.... That oughtta pay for maintenance and ammo... Maybe join some military faction..."

I mumbled to myself as I began working on the aircraft... To be fair it wasnt that badly damaged so repair wouldn't be hard so long as I could find the right stuff to do it with...

2 weeks later

I finally fixed the Vertibuck... Which turned out to have more problems than it appeared to... It's left engine was in need of repair and the main reactor was
Sketchy, I had to scavenge parts from almost every aircraft in both of the hangars... But now it seemed happy so that was all that mattered... And now I was spending some quality time with the manual on how to fly the damn thing... I read it several times already just to make sure I wasnt going to screw up and crash immediately.

once satisfied with my knowledge of the majestic beast I got up and rolled open the old hangar door, the cockpit window glinting in the sun a bit as its rays were allowed to touch it after almost two centuries of darkness. I used the built in motors to slowly wheel the craft out of its hangar and onto the tarmac airstrip.

Once it was In place I cranked the reactor to full output and began the preflight check... And mentally checking all of the boxes... It was about as good as it was going to get, So I unfurled the wings from their folded position alomg the fuselage the props soon following after, I checked the control surfaces and various other things. With baited breath I gave it some throttle and let it idle... The two props slowly began to rotate, the blades each made a very loud "FWOP" noise as they passed the fuselage... The turboshaft motors whined in protest but eventually the props were spinning.

"Okay... Time to fly" I pushed a switch and two wing braces unfolded from the ceiling and clamped onto my wings, at least I had enough wing left to still operate the controls... Poetic really... Too short to fly but just long enough to take the reigns of something much larger. I gave some more throttle until it slowly began to rise from the ground... The rotors were kicking up tons of dirt from the ground and made an impressive cloud of dirt as it slowly rose up, I gave the controls a wiggle and the behemoth of an aircraft responded with a wobble side to side, I tested all of the main functions and began to gain altitude
Almost immediately I felt uplifted... Maybe it was just the vertibuck, but I felt like I was greeting an old friend by flying... As if I was meant to be here all along, once I got to a few thousand feet I had some fun... Probably the first time Ive ever had some true unbridled fun, I let myself zip around like a majestic steel bird, diving, stalling, hovering and even doing a barrel roll, it all felt so natural... I eventually decided to come back down to pack my stuff onboard, and maybe something else.

With a bit of a wobble and almost forgetting to re deploy the landing gear the Vertibuck finally settled down onto its wheels in the middle of the tarmac, I shut off the engines and got out, I tossed my junk into the rear compartment and began a quick search of the base to find some goodies.

I ended up finding a couple IF-89 LMGs, a few cans of ammo, a crate of rations, and a few small guns... Especially assault rifles, combat shotguns and 10mm pistols, I ended Up walking away with two of each of the rifle length weapons and a whole crate of 10mm pistols, along with a homemade combat shotgun "Pistol" and a fair few bottles of water and cola.... But the best thing I found was paint... Lots of it, dark blue, white, rust orange, yellow, and black were the most common. Today was a good day.

Since today was so good I decided to make sure it stayed that way by painting the vertibuck for the rest of the day instead of doing anything else, to avoid the chance of being shot at.

I ended up painting some large stripes on the aircraft with the orange and dark blue, and I used the other colors to write a name and attempt to make some nose art.

"i Dub this aircraft LULU!!" I loudly proclaimed to nopony as I poured the dregs of my sparkle cola over the side of the Vertibuck, as I had just finished my sleep deprivation and soda fueled painting extravaganza. I wrote its name in big Blue letters on the side and painted a picture Of Princess Luna resting in a sultry pose on a crecent moon... Probably the best damn thing I ever painted....or quite possibly would ever paint.

I slept in the cockpit that night and woke up to sunlight streaming in through the windows like searing beams of retinal death as I was blinded When I woke up, I covered my eyes with a hoof and went to the rear compartment to strap down all of the junk there with old wires and pieces of rope.

Once I was pretty sure that It wouldn't flail around like it was in a tornado I strapped into the pilot's wing harnesses and Took off into the hazy grey yonder once again.

Author's Note

Note: picture belongs to original author I take no ownership of the image.

The vertibuck is more of a suggestion on the appearance of one and what Ill be loosely basing my interpretation on.