Fallout: Equestria - Friendship is Power

Chapters

Blood Ties
Live Wire
Foundation
Lessons Learned

Blood Ties

Friendship is Power
Chapter One: Blood Ties
“Blood, as all ponies know, than water's thicker/
But water's wider, thank Celestia, than blood.”

Living in a Stable is hard. I mean, I know that objectively, somepony out there has it worse than I do. A lot worse, but it's hard to keep running that through my head in the middle of a long shift, tending the lonely, almost forgotten lounge in the deep recesses of Stable 20. I work the bar, you see, and spend all of my time waiting on customers that spend all their time trading with the local settlements, or rooting out the small, isolated groups of raiders in the hills around the Stable entrance. Fun stuff. Interesting stuff. I get maybe four ponies a day in here. Maybe. It's an exercise in patience that I always lose, electing to take a nap instead of stare at the door waiting hopelessly for a customer.

But wait, you ask yourself, what kind of Stable has a bar in it, of all things? Well, Stable 20 had much more than just a bar. It also had an indoor swimming facility, a gymnasium, fully equipped bathhouse, and auditorium. It was a “luxury” Stable, or was as close to being one as any other Stable I've ever heard of. Of course, that meant a lower than average population for the same space, but I digress.

Our Stable had been open and trading with the rest of the Wasteland for almost a decade. We were Stable ponies. Strong, able-bodied, well-supplied. We traded food and water, the two things we could always get more of, for guns and ammo and armor. Ponies came and went as they pleased, for the most part. Some joined us from the neighboring towns, some left to find their fortune, some were born, some died. Population was more or less constant. It was the next best thing to a fortress our corner of the wastes ever saw. The guards knew each other, had worked together for years, and could kick any wanna be raider's ass twice before they could even think about it once. Friendship is power, and we knew it.

Unfortunately for us, we weren't the only ponies to figure that out.

Oh, how rude of me. I've forgotten to introduce myself. My name is Mint Julep, but everyone who's known me for any length of time just calls me Julie. It's something of a running joke with my regulars. Most of them always order a mint jelup to start the evening, and always make a crack at my name. I'm just glad I don't look exactly like one. Mint blue with a forest green mane and eyes that match my coat make it a little irritating, though. It's a close enough match to be funny. The first dozen times, at least. At least my cutie mark is a martini glass complete with olive instead of a mint garnish. My quarters were actually connected to the bar, and I was the only one who ran it, so I spend the vast majority of my time sitting behind the counter. I left for meals and a thrice weekly exercise regimen and didn't say anything to anypony unless they talked first. They never did, and I lived my life all but friendless and eventless.

Like I said, I work the bar. It's hard stuff, staring at walls. I wished my life was more interesting. I wished my life was more exciting. I wished it was anywhere but here, anywhere but mixing the same drink for the same two ponies everyday. I had no idea just how horribly right my wish was going to go....

* * * * * *

I woke from a particularly relaxing nap to the angry sound of a blaring alarm klaxon. I could hear... something echoing down the halls. It wasn't on this level, no, it had to be at least two levels up. That meant whatever it was was really, really loud if it was going through three meters of air and steel. I was still wondering what the blazes it could be when a quartet of shouting ponies rounded the corner and charged into the bar. Two of them came in dragging a third, with the fourth levitating some bag or sac or something alongside.

“Hey, what's going on up there?” I asked, this whole happening still little but a curiousity. They were clearly worked up over something, but I had no idea what, and it didn't excuse them from barging in like this so rowdy and loud.

“Clear a table, now!” the one levitating the... whatever it was, yelled at me. I froze for a second, the shock at being so rudely ordered around not doing anything to help my blossoming confusion.

“I beg your pardon? I asked you a question!”

The unicorn, the only unicorn of the bunch, gave me a piercing glare. “NOW!” That did it. A quick flash of my horn (I'm a unicorn, if you just missed it) shoved everything on the table closest to the door to the floor with a crash. The two carriers hefted their cargo up onto the newly cleared surface, and I finally got a good look at who they were carrying.

It was Ratchel. My best and only friend Ratchel. Ratchel, and a lot of blood. A whole lot of blood. “Goddesses! Ratchel! What happened?” The blood, more blood than I ever wanted to see, spilled over the edge of the table, splattering the spotless floor in a macabre inkblot pattern. I couldn't even tell if Ratchel was still breathing. A small, tinny voice in the back of my head was bitching about how irritating cleaning this up was going to be, but I stomped it out as hard as I could before it got out of hand.

The unicorn didn't waste any time explaining. “Raiders. Hit the entrance, cut through to the cafeteria and the armory in minutes. Infirmary is full of them, and there are going to be more ponies coming in here. I need you to clear the rest of these tables and keep the floor clean so we can work.”

“Raiders?” I gulped, a feeling of dread spreading from the pit of my stomach to the rest of me. “Are they going to reach us down here?” An entirely justified feeling of panic was very quickly shutting down my basic thought processes.

“Hey! Stay with me. Clear these tables. Now.” That voice was... I don't know how to describe it. It was simultaneously compelling and conforting. Even a demand like that, the likes of which I would never suffer silently on a normal day, soothed my nerves. I found myself responding to the command instantly, horn flashing, dishes crashing to the floor.

The stench is always what bothers me most. It sticks to everything it touches, cloying the air, invading every space it can reach with the smell of blood and death. My bar became a grim picture of the worst the Wasteland could do in a matter of minutes. I didn't think I would ever be able to sit behind the counter again and mix a drink without seeing my bar as the portrait of hell it was. I knew, right then, that I would never be able to let this go unanswered. There were a dozen ponies on my tables, on the floor, wherever they would fit, their blood leaking from their bodies as nurses and doctors frantically tried to identify those with injuries serious enough to warrant a healing potion, and those that could be treated with a few stitches and a bit of antiseptic. From what I could see, almost all of them needed potions. Most of them never got one, and a lot of them didn't make it.

In the middle of this carnage, mopping the new coat of crimson paint from the floors, my coat specked with blood, sweat, and tears, I realized something. I was a stranger in my own Stable. Aside from Ratchel, I recognized maybe two other ponies sprawled out in my lounge, neither of them by name. I didn't know the doctors. I didn't know the nurses. I didn't know anyone. I felt like I didn't know anything. There was just one thing that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt: the raiders had to pay. They had to pay, and I was going to make them.

The Stable was normally well stocked, but one of the places the raiders targeted first was the infirmary. The health potions we could use were limited to personal stashes and first aid stations in the halls. In other words, not near enough. I stayed up through the night, tending to the wounded and sometimes dying ponies that I didn't know but should. I'll never forget the moans and whimpers, each one feeling like a personal condemnation. Like I should have been up there with them, like I should have know what was going on while there was still enough time to help.

Ratchel died before they got a healing potion to her. The rest of my friends and the bar's regulars I had no news on. In the utter chaos of the situation, I couldn't get a good answer out of anypony. I drifted between groups of ponies, some injured, some not, all panicked and scared and irrational. None of them knew what to do next.

I needed to find the overmare. She would know what to do. I had to find her, and she would tell me exactly what I could do to help the Stable. I felt like I needed to help. Needed to make up for sleeping through most of the attack. Needed to make up for being useless. There was just one major problem with that plan.

The Overmare was gone.

No one knew for sure what had happened to her. She was still alive and in the Stable, but hiding away. No, she was dead and her body hadn't been found. No, she'd abandoned the Stable and led the raiders here. No, she'd been taken by raiders, for Goddesses know what reason. One senile old buck even claimed that an alicorn had taken her away before the fighting. An alicorn! The Goddesses had left Equestria 200 years prior, and he expected me to believe that one of them had come back? There were other rumors, even more fantastic and nonsensical tales that I gave even less passing interest to.

Still, they all agreed that in some way or another, she was unavailable. Not good. But I was not so easily shaken from my quest. I was going to help this Stable. I had to, for the ponies I didn't know and would now never know. Ponies who had never known I existed, or cared if they did. I was tired of being a drain, an insignificant speck at the bottom of the Stable. I took a moment to run through my options. What pony here would know what to do?

The unicorn! The one with the commanding voice, he would know what to do. I had to find him. I made my way up to the top level of the Stable, to the Overmare's office. I could start there and make my way down.

I immediately regretted my decision when I stepped into hallway outside of the real infirmary. It made what my bar had been turned into look immaculate in its cleanliness. I recoiled in horror as I realized that some of the lumps on the floor were pieces of ponies. Maybe even a pony I had known. The stench was even worse. Blood and death mixed with filth and bile and everything the raiders brought with them.

It was more than enough. I vomited. I had to get away from that vile pit. I practically galloped the rest of the way to the Overmare's office, and it still wasn't enough to avoid glimpses of the horror that filled the halls. Even a low population Stable had a lot of ponies, and raiders have a variety of ways of dealing with a 'surplus.' I finally broke out of the area the raiders had managed to claim before leaving, finally able to get out of that slaughterhouse.

Once I got out, the stench abated enough that I could breathe. I found myself in the upper level dormitories. The entire level seemed deserted. I could see why, being so close to that horror even if I couldn't see it set me on edge. I set off for the Overmare's office. It was luckily located at the other end of the dorms, so I wouldn't have to go back through that hell.

I got lucky, and the unicorn was in the first place I looked. He looked terrible. Ragged mane, haggard eyes, and a blood-stained coat told me he hadn't slept or refreshed himself since the incident. The sight of him, obviously miserable and desperate for rest, almost made me wait until tomorrow. Almost.

“Sir...” I trailed off. I didn't even know his name. A spike of trepidation almost made me back away and slink back to my little den. No, I was going to do this, Celestia dammit! I cleared my throat and started again. “I want to help.”

Wow. That sounded lame. The image of myself as a hero that had been slowly building faded in the awkward silence that ensued. The unicorn colt simply stared at me, as if he hadn't even heard what I said. “Sir?” That seemed to break him from his silence.

It wasn't exactly the response I expected. “Seriously?” his expression brightened, “it's about time somepony decided they wanted to actually help instead of just bitch and moan about how they should get special treatment while the Overmare is gone. I don't know how she handles it.” His smile faded slightly. “But now I have to, until she turns up again.” He stood up, wobbling slightly, exhaustion clearly evident in his posture and movements.

“If you really want to help, we need to find where those raiders went. They took everything they could get their grubby hooves on before scooting on out of here. Food, guns, medical supplies. Everything.” He paused for a second, gathering his thoughts, or maybe waiting to see if I would say anything. I didn't, too focused on the state of the Stable that I had until recently completely ignored. “That means we're in a bad spot. A really bad one. No food, we starve. No guns, the next time they come back, we won't escape with anything. No medicine, we get sick and die or the ones that get wounded eventually die. That means we need to get it all back, somehow. What I need you to do is track the raiders back to where they took our stuff, miss...?” He trailed off, waiting for an answer.

“Julep. Mint Julep, but everyone who knows me calls me Julie,” I replied, and realized that I didn't know his name either. “And what's your name?”

He shook his head quickly. “It's unimportant. Call me Doc for now.” Any protest I mustered died on my lips at the look he gave me. I felt the echo of this kind of... cloudiness permeating my thoughts. You know, it really was unimportant all things considered. He saw my reaction (or rather lackthereof) and gave a curt nod before continuing, “Good. Now, Miss Julep, I need you to find the raider camp in the wastes. Normally I'd send someone who knows the area, or at the very least which end of a gun the bullets come out of, but security took a beating in the attack. You're quite simply the only pony in this vault that's come forward to help, and I need all of security here in case they come back.”

That took even dull thoughts aback. The only pony? Really? I started to have my doubts. Were these ponies worth helping? Just how much did I not know about this Stable? “But... how am I going to find the raider camp? I've never been outside this vault before.”

“Trust me, you'll be able to find them. I want you to go see Officer Buckton and get outfitted for the wastes. He should have a pistol or something you can have. I'm not about to send you out there unarmed. It's very important to me that we not lose as many ponies as we possibly can, you included.”

Just who was this pony? In a matter of minutes, using nothing but his voice, he had given me direction, purpose, and the means to make a difference. There was no way I could have missed him. Somepony, somewhere must have mentioned him. Damn this fog, making it hard to think.

“Well? You have a job to do.” His voice cut through the fog and thickened it at the same time. I vaguely felt myself moving out of the office and toward the armory.

The next few minutes were a wonderful blur to me, talking to a security pony, getting issued a pistol and ammo. I don't even remember passing back through the slaughterhouse. I didn't know what kind it was, or really how to use it. The inventory spell on my Pipbuck helpfully labeled it a “10 mm Pistol.” I had three of what the guard called a 'magazine' and he showed me how to work the slide back to make it ready to fire, and then how to push the trigger button with my magic. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time or ammo for me to waste either precious resource practicing.

My Stable 20 jumpsuit, a handful of caps I pulled from the bar register, the pistol I didn't know how to use, and the pipbuck I never used except to listen to the Stable radio station were all I had, and as far as I was concerned, all I would need for my assigned task.

I didn't give the situation a second thought as I walked out into the wasteland, stepping over but not noticing the corpses of ponies I might have called friends once. I might never have left the Stable myself, but I knew ponies that had. Ratchel went into town every once in a while to barter for some spare parts, and liked to tell stories at the bar of what she did. This frequently involved obviously exaggerated tales of fighting off bloatsprites, radhogs, radigators, and all sorts of other dangerous creature. I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. Now, looking back, it's obvious that I didn't. I had no clue what I was getting into.

I needed to get out of that Stable, and onto the trail of the raiders. That was really the only thing that mattered to me at that moment. I stepped into the entrance cave, ready to take on the world, and I wasn't about to let that trail get cold.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Thicker Than Water – You've seen enough blood that you never want to see it again, and will go to great lenghts to avoid seeing more. Your Medicine skill is increased by 10.

Live Wire

Friendship is Power
Chapter Two: Live Wire
“What world do you live in? Out here in the real would, blood flows, man. Blood flows....”

I wished the trail had gone cold. At least then the Stable's entrance cave could have been cleaned up before I left. I did my best to get out of the immediate area before I lost it. Almost made it, too. At least I found a bush this time so I didn't have to look at what came out of my stomach.

Once I'd cleared cave, a breath of fresh air pierced the fog still lingering over my thoughts. Leaving aside my lingering nausea, I felt good. No, I felt better than good. I felt great. I was outside of the Stable. I was doing something productive. I was, for the first real time in my life, actually living.

There was a house a hundred yards away, and a trail leading from about where I was standing to the front door. No other structures were visible from where I was standing, and the trail I was on curled lazily toward the Stable cave before vanishing within. I didn't have any landmarks loaded in my Pipbuck, and I wasn't about to go charging aimlessly into the Wastes, so I started toward that lone house. My next move was laid clear before me. I loved it when things were simple.

The house was a two-level affair, surprisingly well cared for considering in was probably upwards of 200 years old. The paint wasn't even peeling, and the windows were all unbroken, which surprised me. In fact, the whole thing seemed a little too good. There was something off about the place, but I just couldn't afford to pass up any lead I could take. Just to be safe, I brought up the help file on my Pipbuck and turned on everything I thought would help. Eyes-Forward Sparkle? I didn't even know what that was, but on it went. Stable-Assisted-Targeting-System? That name was a bit more helpful, and it got turned on, too. Compass, at-a-glance health indicator, weapon status, it all got turned on now, before it came back to bite me in the flank for forgetting it later. I trotted up the front steps, pausing at the door. The map function somehow figured out it was called the “Tourist Trap.” Not sure how it knew that, wasn’t about to complain. Before I walked through I drew my beat up old pistol and made sure it was ready to use. Just in case.

I don't know how it knew, and I doubt I'll ever really figure out how it works, but somehow my E.F.S. lit up with a livid crimson bar as I knocked on the door. Everywhere else it's used, red is typically code for “bad,” and I wasn't about to second guess my gut out here. My horn flashed, pistol coming up, and I dove to the side, out of the door frame. Not a moment too soon, either, as the portal exploded into splinters as half a dozen bullets slammed into it. The crack of gunshots was deafening and terrifying, especially for somepony who's never heard them before. A bullet thudded into the small porch next to me, sending more splinters flying, cutting shallow gashes in my Stable jumpsuit. This thing obviously wasn't going to stop much more than a sharp stick as I was walking along, much less a bullet. My E.F.S. alerted me to another enemy, this one not inside the house, but instead at the top of a nearby hill. They evidently had a rifle of some kind. It flashed, another bullet shattered the window behind me, and the report echoed across the intervening distance.

This was definitely not good. I couldn't move into the building because of the pony in the house, and I couldn't stay here because of the pony with the rifle. I was pushing my luck just by staying here this long. Muttering fervent, panicked, and entirely too profane prayers to whichever of the Goddesses would listen, I rolled to my side and up onto my hooves, ducking frantically over the edge of the stairs and as far out of the way of the rifle as I could. Not quite good enough, and only luck saved me as the bullet deflected off of my still raised pistol. The jolt of the hit shocked me into pushing the trigger, and a much, much louder crack momentarily deafened me.

I dropped the pistol, it was probably useless now anyway, and reached out with my magic toward the door. I was never the best at levitation, and even worse at using my magic to manipulate objects I was already carrying, but I had to do something. The door swung open, twisted, and buckled at the hinges before finally tearing away entirely. I now had a shield, and my desperate prayers were answered as the rifle thudded into the solid wood but failed to penetrate. With cover, I could think out what I was going to do. First things first, make sure this wasn't just a horrible misunderstanding.

“Hey! Just wait a fucking minute! I haven't done anything to you!”

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't the hysterical laughter that followed. Insane laughter. The pony in there was very clearly absolutely out of touch with reality in a big way.

Raiders. I froze in place. The damn butchers were right here! Why couldn't I move? I sat there, frozen, while bullets continued to slam into my makeshift shield. I was going to die here. I could feel it. I ducked as far into the corner as fast as I could, my magic wavering, shield dipping. A few more minutes, and they'd come out after me. It was all but over. There were more red dots now, at least three in the house now. Hysterical laughter echoed out of the house, now coming from not just one voice.

No no No NO NO! This was not happening! I was not going to let these ponies close in an butcher me. This strange, unfamiliar red-hot rage burned through the ice gripping my heart and evaporated my indecision. A guttural scream ripped itself from my throat and I vaulted back onto the porch and dove through the door hopefully fast enough that rifle-raider couldn't get a clear shot at me. I felt a strong tug at my hindquarters and I stumbled and fell, barreling headfirst into the first raider I saw. I couldn't feel anything wrong with me, but I was certain that I'd just been shot. No matter, it wouldn't stop me. These raiders would feel my rage whether they killed me or not.

We went down in a tangle of limbs. Apparently even raiders aren't in the habit of shooting at their own if there's a target on top of them. Good. The raider was wearing some grotesque collection of metal, bone, and what I was dreadfully certain was pony flesh half rotted away. I should have known they'd smell horrible. My gun was gone, my flimsy jumpsuit was full of holes just from falling on top of the collection of pointy bits the raider called armor. I was locked in hoof-to-hoof combat with one raider, there were two more staring at me with greedy, hungry eyes. I couldn't see what weapons they had, but it didn't matter. I had something they didn't.

I had an effective melee weapon.

My magic may not have been the strongest, but that doesn't seem to matter much when the object I was swinging was a solid wooden slab of a door. I rolled to the side and kicked the raider away from me a few inches. It was all I needed. The door, which I had somehow kept grip on during the incredibly brief struggle, hung in the air above the raider's neck.

I dropped it.

I've never broken a bone. I've never seen or heard a pony break a bone before. I watched the door crush the raider's neck under the impact. That hysterical laugh morphed into something grotesque, a wheezing, rasping cough as the utterer tried to draw breath through a shattered windpipe. Insane glee painted on his face morphed before my eyes to horrid realization. He was a dead pony.

Were it not for the other raiders around me, I would have just sat there to watch him die. I wanted to do nothing more in the world than watch this festering pox on the face of ponykind shudder and go still. But there were other raiders around me. I'd get to do it again. That thought kept me moving on to the next raider, moreso than any real sense of self-preservation.

The raider had been a unicorn, his weapon a gun that was bulkier than my pistol, with a magazine separate from the grip. I grasped it with my magic, my Pipbuck helpfully telling me it was a 10 mm Submachine Gun. A wicked grin spread across my face. This was even better than the pistol that was probably still smoking outside. I got to my feet, turning to look at my remaining two opponents in the house. One was an earth pony, the other a unicorn. Fortunately, only the unicorn had a gun, a pistol that looked worse than my old one, and the other raider only having a rusty knife that had definitely seen better days.

I liked my odds. Now I just had to pick which one of them to e--

Pain exploded in my chest, a red-hot spike that dimmed into a constant, heavy stream of the worst pain I had ever felt. An unpleasantly wet, warm feeling spread quickly from the center of the pain, dripping down my sleeves and onto the floor. Every throb of my heart intensified the feeling. I knew what it was, and instantly knew that what I had been so certain was a hit before had been nothing. But I wouldn't die, not yet. I grit my teeth against the pain, and before the smoking pistol could fire again, I depressed the trigger on the submachine gun. I wasn't expecting the stream of bullets to come out, and the muzzle drifted quickly upwards, tracking bullets across the gun-raider's torso and into the ceiling. Red mist blossomed out of the neat little holes that appeared in the raider's chest and neck, and then a bullet took the top of his head off.

Even in the middle of combat, I vomited again. Didn't matter if it was the middle of the fight of my life, didn't matter if I did it or somepony else did, watching cranial tissue decorate the other-wise decently clean walls put me over the edge again. Oh, Goddesses that hurt! The muscles in my chest spasmed, renewing the red-hot pain in my chest as it did so. I just wanted to curl up and die. Anything to make it stop.

NO! There was another one left! Whipping the submachine gun around with my magic, I depressed the trigger again. This burst stayed on target, but this raider had much better armor than the other, and they mostly skipped off barding or buried themselves in bits of leather and metal. The gun clicked empty.

Shit.

I really hate raiders. You know, in case you didn't pick that little bit up. But what I hate most about them isn't their dressing habits, it isn't their propensity for wholesale slaughter. It's their laugh. Their never-to-be-sufficiently-damned laugh. I got to hear it closer than I ever wanted to right then. Apparently my last raider was a mare. My knees buckled, and I found myself staring at the floor, the spasming in my chest not helping at all. The pain burned through my feeble fortitude, and the blood loss was really starting to get to me. I heard but couldn't see the raider approach. My vision was blurry, my hearing tinny and small. Thundering heartbeats threatened to drown out everything else.

Instinct took over. I lashed out with my magic, dropping the empty gun and instead grabbing for the knife in the she-raider's mouth. I got lucky. She was either so startled she dropped it, or I'm a lot stronger than I ever thought I was, or I wrenched it in just the right direction to free it. Whatever the reason, I now had a knife, and she-raider didn't have anything.

Laughing hurt too much, but swinging a knife with my magic didn't use my chest muscles at all. Thank the Goddesses for small favors.

There was no finesse in my technique. There was no grace in my swing. I just swung that knife and kept swinging, punching through armor and flesh and scoring bone. Kept swinging until I heard a thud and saw a pool of blood that wasn't mine spread across the floor. I barely kept from vomiting again. Only the knowledge that throwing up would wrack me with terrible pain kept the bile down.

Staying here would leave me dead in a pool of my own blood. I had to find medical supplies, and fast. The bathroom was the most likely place for that. My luck, such as it was, held out on me; the bathroom was right in front of me, the door not ten feet from my hooves.

Crawling to that door was the single most agonizing thing I had ever done. I wanted to stop. I wanted to die. I wanted to curl up in a ball and wait for that last raider outside to finish the job. Anything to make the pain stop.

Sometime later, I don't know how long, but it couldn't have been too long or I'd have bled out, I made it. There it was. A medicine box hung on the wall next to a mirror over the sink. Goddesses be praised!

Locked.

I wanted to cry. So close. I was going to die withing hoofsreach of the thing that could save me.

There was a bobby pin on the sink. Sometimes the register jammed, or I lost the key, or some other abject terror befell the bar in its worst moments, so I knew my way around a lock. Luck must have just been with me that day. The lock was simple, didn't even have to move the bobby pin from where I jammed it in. The lock clicking open was the most glorious sound I had ever heard.

Inside was a pair of empty bottles, a blood pack, and a healing potion. Luck was truly on my side. I downed it in seconds. Immediately I could feel the bleeding stop and the pain subside. Anatomy isn't my strong suit, and I'm fairly certain that the bullet missed most of my vital organs, but feeling the parts of my insides it did reach rearrange themselves, molding back together to not even leave a scar unsettled me in ways I can't really explain. It was unpleasant, but I wasn't about to complain about being alive. Well, not too loudly, at least.

I got back to my hooves slowly, not wanting to test the quality of my healing overmuch until I was sure I was safe.

The mirror saved my life. I got a glimpse of the last raider charging through the wrecked doorway with a rifle clenched in her jaw. I ducked and dove into the tub in the back as the mirror shattered under the raider’s fire. Fortunately, the tub was one of those metal dealies and could more than shrug off the rifle's bullets. I popped my head up so I could see what to do and almost lost an ear to a near-miss. Fortunately, the raider's gun was a piece of shit and her aim wasn't that great either.

It was just me and her, and I already knew how this would end. The rifle jammed, and a grin split my face from ear to ear. “Looks like luck isn't on your side, but it sure as hell is on mine.” She spat out the rifle and charged at me. I'd been out of the Stable for a grand total of ten minutes, green as green could be. She'd lived in the wastes her whole life, at least some of the time as a bloodthirsty, hardened raider. It shouldn't have been this easy. By all rights, she should have practically eaten me alive in hoof to hoof combat.

I brought the knife up, it flashed twice, hamstringing her hindlegs and sending her tumbling to the floor. It flashed again, cutting a gash down her flank, exposing a graphic representation of a pony being spit roasted over a bonfire.

It pissed me off. How fucked up did a pony have to be to get a cutie mark that told the world their special talent was fucking cannibalism? It sparked a deep, seething rage in me that wouldn't be satisfied by just killing this monster. She wasn't even a pony to me anymore.

The knife would be too quick. I tossed it aside and grasped for the door again. She was helpless, trying to crawl forward at me with just her front legs. There was still that murderous glint in her eyes, that hint of insanity. It was justification enough for me. The door blindsided her and sent her crashing into the wall. I don't know what broke and where, but it was evidently enough to make her stop trying to crawl toward me and instead just collapse in a heap. She was still alive, still breathing, but now pinned against the wall by the heavy door.

I grinned. It was a cruel, evil grin. “You and I are going to have a little talk. I want to know where my friends are. You are going to tell me. And then you're going to die. Any questions?” The knife, rusty as it was, glinted in the light of the sun shining at an angle through a window above the door.

She just spat in my face. That was okay by me. I could work with that.

“Alright, let's get down to business.”

I don't know how far into our little session she died, but I know it wasn't quick. It also wasn't at the end of it. I realized I didn't really care, either. I got what I wanted to know, and I got what I wanted to get, in the end. The sun had already halfway set behind the hills off to my left as I exited the house. The submachine gun and all the former-raider's ammunition found its way to my saddlebags, along with the knife and all of the medical supplies I didn't use while I was in the house, which amounted to one healing potion, a syringe of Med-X, the blood pack, and strangely a trio of bobby pins, which makes four. Still not a collection to write home about, especially since home was all of 200 feet from where I was walking. The rest of the house was barren and looked like it had been looted and left to rot years ago.

Thanks to my favorite raider, I now knew where the largest of the settlements in the area was. Unfortunately, she wasn't a part of the raider group that butchered half of my stable, so I didn't get that information, but now I had a definite starting place in the form of a mid-size town that the locals called Cantilly. At my current pace, I'd get there a few hours before dawn. My bloodthirst had been sated for now, but that still gave me more than a few hours for planning just what I'd do to all that scum when I finally got my hands on them.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Surgeon – Through careful experimentation, you've discovered a lot about how the pony body works. All strictly academic, of course. Your Medicine and Melee Weapons are both increased by 5.

Foundation

Friendship is Power
Chapter Four: Foundation
“The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house;
yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Traveling with a companion was wonderful! Even though I may have been pretty observant under ideal conditions, I just didn't know enough about the great outdoors of the Wasteland to recognize and avoid the dangers hiding under every rock and bush. Jasper sure did. He even took the time to point out the signs to avoid for some of the more common creatures. Thanks to him, I now knew exactly what a bloatsprite nest looked like, and how to avoid the things if they were out and about. I would never have guessed that what I had previously thought were beehives (at least, that was what the picture books from when I was a filly told me) were actually bloatsprite dens. Learn something new every day.

In between my lessons, we talked about where we were from, how we'd grown up. You know, the kind of things people talk about when they're bored, traveling with each other, and met for the first time only recently. At first, it was hard (although decidedly not frustrating) trying to get him to open up a bit. For the entire first hour of the trip, I swear he didn't stop stuttering and blushing for more than ten minutes, unless he was talking about the wastes or I challenged one of his skills or the other. I think sometime around the end of the second hour something clicked and he realized we'd be in close proximity for at least the next couple days, and maybe beyond that. He was still adorably nervous, but had a tighter rein on it. Even then, despite my best efforts, he neatly sidestepped or redirected every question I threw at him, and none of my best charm and persuasion got him to give up anything.

Jasper and I were about five hours travel from Cantilly, as near as my pipbuck clock and map could tell me. We weren't hurrying, and good thing, too. Hurrying would have gotten us there sometime around sunset, and fighting raiders in the dark did not appeal to me at all. No, instead we took a leisurely walk down the road, and were about two hours of decent walking from the general area of the raider encampment according to Bonesaw's directions when Jasper told me now would be a good time to make camp.

His reasoning was simple enough. In the middle of the overcast night it was magnitudes harder to scan for all the little signs and give aways that kept our trip here trouble-free for as long as it had been. Plus, fighting in the middle of the night is a lot more hazardous and difficult than a broad daylight gunfight, assuming we weren't the ones doing the ambushing.

I wasn't personally one for camping, much preferring a nice warm bed and roof than wide open sky and whatever bedroll you brought with you, of which I did not have one. Fortunately, Jasper had two, which I found out after an absolutely hilarious little exchange where he tried to make a joke about sharing a bedroll but only got halfway through the delivery before stuttering to an embarrassed halt, blushing so much that I thought his face would catch on fire or something. When asked why he carried around two bedrolls in his saddlebags, he declined to comment.

Before tonight, I had never actually spent a night outside that didn't consist of me fighting for my life against mutated insects. With a nicely burning campfire, a comfortable bedroll (I was certain he gave me the better one), and a companion who knew exactly what he was doing, it was quite the experience. Even under the oppressive cloud cover intrinsic to the wastes, the night was wonderful. Not too hot, not too cold, not rainy, not too dry.

It felt like a set-up. I don't know how or why I thought that, but I did.

Then I realized: I couldn't hear anything besides the crackling fire and Jasper finishing up his latest story.

“...And by the time we got the bucket off, the whole place was on fire!” Despite my sudden unease, it was a legitimately funny story, and I laughed along with him. It didn't look like he noticed. Time to fix that.

As he started in on the next part, I cut him off, “Jasper, wait. Listen,” I stopped to give him a few seconds to listen and come to the same conclusion I did. Complete silence came over the little camp as he did so. “I don't hear anything.” I was on full alert, looking at every shadow like it was some horrid monstrosity waiting to jump into the light. “What does that mean out here in the wastes?”

His smile was gone, replaced by a grim expression that didn't leave me any better at ease. “Well, it can mean one of two things,” he started, “either we just got really lucky and everything in the area is away from home hunting or foraging or whatever and isn't around to bother something, or...” he trailed off.

Seriously, not helping. “...Or what?” I pressed, not really looking forward to the answer.

“Or there's something around here that's big, nasty, and mean enough to scare them all quiet.” Yeah, definitely had not been looking forward to that. If there was something nasty enough to do that to the kind of monsters living in the wastes, what chance did we have against it?

“And can you think of any creature that fits the bill, off the top of your head?”

Jasper just shook his head. “A manticore might, but there hasn't been a manticore within ten miles of Cantilly for as long as I can remember.”

A chill made its way down my spine. A manticore? No, wait, he said no manticore. “Anything else?” I inquired, still intensely ill at ease. My eyes darted around our surroundings, desperate to pick out what could be wrong with the scene. As quietly and unobtrusively as I could, I slipped my combat shotgun out of my bags and loaded it. Two buckshot, one slug, two buckshot, one slug. Hopefully whatever it was wasn't looking for a fight, and the buckshot would get it to go away without seriously pissing it off.

Jasper was just as quietly readying his battlesaddle, or so he called it. Considerably quieter than I was being, actually. I figured just with how heavy it was that it would make noise, but he seemed to know exactly how to stop that from happening.

He stood up, motioned me to stay here and be quiet with a few hoof gestures, and then melted into the night. I wouldn't have a made a sound even if he hadn't bidden me to, seeing him there one minute and gone the next rendered me speechless. I couldn't hear or see him at all. The ease at which he disappeared what simply unbelievable. He didn't even show up on my E.F.S. as the tell-tale blue pip of 'friendly.' Unreal.

Time passed agonizingly slowly. I couldn't tell if it had been minutes or hours since he vanished. Every passing moment had me looking more fervently into the darkness, paranoia fuelling my still slowly rising apprehension.

Jasper appeared next to me so suddenly that it was a monumental exercise in self-control not to scream like a little filly. I managed, barely.

“We have to leave. Quietly, and right now.” I opened my mouth to protest and immediately reconsidered. Yes, argue with the experienced wasteland survival expert in the middle of the night with something presumably large and dangerous lurking around the corner and you've been out of the Stable for a grand total of a day and a half. Brilliant plan.

Instead, I did the smart thing and packed up as quickly and quietly as I could. My pipbuck light stayed in the securely 'off' position as we made the best time we could through the darkness, going only as fast as we could without raising too much of a commotion. In other words, not as fast as I would have liked. We even left the campfire burning instead of extinguishing it in our haste.

Nearly a full mile and the tensest hour I could ever remember experiencing later, we slowed to a stop. We were situated in the depression between a pair of decently large hills. He was scanning for something, checking the horizon as well as he could in the dark as if there should be something silhouetted against the clouds. After a few minutes of careful observation, he let out a relieved sigh, and I realized that I could hear the local wildlife again.

“What the hell were we just running from?” I was still greatly confused. Terrified, of course, but confused. “I never saw or heard anything.”

“Nor would you have. What we just avoided was an Ursa.” His voice was deadly serious. “Near total invisibility, the size of a large house back in Cantilly. Very quiet unless it's in the middle of a fight. It's probably the most dangerous thing you will ever encounter in the wastes, bar none.”

Well, that was comforting. “We have to tell Cantilly. There's no way anyone there knows about it yet, or Bonesaw would have warned me before we set off. At the very least, would have warned you.”

“That's for sure. Unfortunately, we're too far from the town to get back anytime soon. It didn't look like it was headed for Cantilly, but honestly I could barely tell where it was, much less where it was going. Travelling at night around here is a Bad Idea unless you want to end up on the wrong side of an ambush, and it'd take half a day to get there.” He shook his head, and then continued, “no, we've got to keep going.”

I didn't like it, and I told him as much. It didn't shake him.

“Trust me, that town can take care of itself. These raiders are honestly a bigger threat just because they have a reason to stop at the town if they wander by, the Ursa doesn't.” I'm glad he was so calm about it, that put me at ease more surely than him just saying it. He knew what he was talking about.

We set up camp quickly, getting ready to make the most out of what time we had before dawn. I checked the clock on my pipbuck. Near midnight. Dawn would be in about six, maybe seven hours and I wanted to be well rested before sneaking around a raider camp, but not so much that I'd neglect to keep watch. “You get some rest first. I'll wake you in a few hours to change shift.” He seemed surprised that I came up with that myself. I was slightly offended. I may be new to the wastes, but I wasn't stupid, and I was a quick learner. I gave him my best glare, and he shut his mouth without arguing and curled up on the bedroll. A few minutes later, I could hear his light snoring.

One thing I hadn't remembered was how paranoid I was. Every shadow became a monster waiting for me to nod off. Every shaking brush was an Ursa, come to finish the job it missed the first time.

Three very nerve-wracking hours later, I nudged Jasper awake for him to take his shift. He gave me a nasty look, but got up all the same. Being on a bedroll instead of awake and staring at shadows didn't make it any easier to go to sleep. I kept imagining the worst possible outcome, and how if I were to fall asleep, it would undoubtedly happen.

The next thing I knew, Jasper was shaking me awake, telling me it was time to move. It was still dark, yes, but a subtle lightening tint lifted the intense feeling of gloom that had plagued me all night. The fire was already extinguished, and he was already all packed up, battlesaddle loaded and ready for any unwanted surprises. I made sure my shotgun was loaded (still) and shoved it in my saddlebags such that it would be easy to whip it out at a moment's notice.

I nodded my readiness, and we were off. Being so close to the raider camp, only a couple of miles at most, meant we were trying not to be too loud on our approach. We had a few simple objectives. One, get in without getting caught. Two, find the supplies from the Stable. Three, identify the raiders' strength, equipment, and leadership. Four, find the statuette. I'd filled Jasper in on the first three, but the fourth felt more like a personal obligation. Should all be easy enough. The trick was getting in and out without being caught and killed. Yeah. Easy.

It was a larger camp than I expected. It was also situated adjacent to an abandoned town that looked like it had been abandoned at least since the balefire bombs dropped that my pipbuck helpful and inexplicably labeled “Everfree Mills”. I was quick to note that the raiders seemed to have erected barricades between all of the buildings closest to the camp that they could. That made me immediately nervous. If the raiders were trying to defend themselves from that direction, there must be something nasty in there, even if I couldn't see it from here.

The camp itself was a haphazard collection of a half dozen ancient buildings and about a dozen tents. The tents combined with the buildings to fill out a roughly rectangular area only a little removed from the closest town buildings. It looked like a couple of the camp buildings weren't even being used. We were currently situated near the top of a nearby hill (not the very top, silhouetting yourself is bad), which gave us an excellent vantage point on the raiders walking around below.

In a few ways, it was too good. They were raiders, with everything that entails. I might not be able to smell everything as well as up close, but I could see the 'decorations.' In turn, I decorated the side of the hill a little bit. Repeatedly. That was going to be a problem. If I was voiding my guts just by being within sight of the damn place, it was going to be an exercise in futility to sneak around down there.

“Jasper?” I asked tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“I need a distraction.” There. Might as well be blunt about it.

He just blinked. “Uhm, are you crazy? There has to be two dozen raiders down there! Being a distraction would be suicide!”

Okay, looks like being blunt didn't work, now to try for smooth. “You're a big, strong buck, aren't you? I'm sure it'd be a piece of cake.” I gave him my best flattering grin and suggestive wiggle. “I'd be ever so grateful if you did it.”

He stiffened up so much I thought he was going to fall over. Wasn't that just adorable? “I'll take that as a 'yes'.”

We took the time to formulate a plan. Wouldn't do to get killed because we didn't know what the other was doing. It was pretty simple, not too difficult (relatively) for either party, and, most importantly, it existed, as opposed to a half though-up scheme that we would just wing though anyway.

Jasper would 'entice' the raiders patrolling the immediate area with a few well placed rifle rounds, hopefully thinning the ranks by a few before he had to move. When he did, he would head straight for the abandoned town. He knew all the signs and what to avoid for the most part, so I wasn't worried about him. He would lead the raiders that went after him on a merry chase through the abandoned buildings until they got bored, all died, or I finished my job. While doing this, he'd take mental notes on what the raiders were carrying, and hopefully who was leading them.

While he was doing that, my 'job' was to scour the raider camp for the stolen supplies, look for any survivors in the cages and tents down there (assuming I didn't vomit myself into unconsciousness before I got to them), and look for the statuette. I didn't tell him that last part. Didn't seem particularly important. When my job was done, I was to send up the signal, in this case a simple, harmless bolt of light from my horn like a flare.

Jasper readied his weapons again, little more than a calming exercise before he set up in a decent vantage point where they would be able to see him when he opened fire, but wouldn't be able to close very rapidly. The whole point of the distraction was to buy time, after all.

I crept as close as I thought I would be able to without being seen to by the patrolling raiders and waited for the first shots.

They were louder than I expected, twin thunderclaps that almost hurt my ears even from two hundred yards away. The raider closest to my position blinked off of my E.F.S.'s display. The twin hammers cracked twice more in quick succession, dropping another red bar from the display but only wounding another. His very loud curse was pain-laced and slurred, but he was still alive.

Jasper fired one more time, finishing off the wounded raider before sprinting for the town. A mass of red pips lit up my E.F.S. Before most of them started moving in his direction. Five, ten, fifteen dots trailed after the lone blue dot on my scope. Several stayed. Well shit. I kicked myself for not expecting the raiders to leave guards.

No matter, I'd just have to deal with them. I crept around the outside tent and got a good look at the 'courtyard' between the buildings.

I threw up.

I kept going.

I had to find the supplies, any captives, and the statuette. Supplies, captives, statuette. I repeated them in my head like a mantra to keep me from losing my breakfast again and again. The raiders had apparently left six on-duty (or off-duty, I wasn't sure) guards in the camp when they headed out. The one closest to me was walking around the ring of tents slowly. Maybe he was doing laps around the camp, maybe he was on a patrol, maybe he was just so batshit crazy that he though he was walking in a straight line. I didn't particularly care. I found an alcove that was hidden from view of the rest of the guards that I could see (four in all) between a pair of tents on the lone patrolling guard's path. I readied my knife; the shotgun would bring them running, and then I'd be fucked.

He passed in front of me, and I threw the knife as hard as I could with my magic. It was a beautiful throw. The knife stuck in the back of his head and he went down like a sack of bricks. I didn't think any of the other guards saw, mostly because there were no shouts, no gunshots, no raiders-come-running. Excellent.

The handiest thing about telekinesis, I think, is that you don't have to be right next to the thing you want to move. I grasped the knife stuck in his skull from my hiding place and tugged until it came back out. The blood on the blade made still made me heave, but at least I hadn't had to shoot him.

By some miracle of circumstance, the tents nearest me all had flaps facing out of the circle, meaning I could get in and out without stepping into the wide-open middle of the camp. Oh yeah, and the mutilated corpses all around it. That was a nice bonus, too.

I could check four tents without wandering in front of a guard, from the looks of it. I idly wondered if they had a schedule to keep, but dismissed the thought. They were raiders, how organized could they be?

The first tent had nothing of note, not even a sleeping mat. Just a dirt floor and four tent walls.

The second tent had a footlocker with a 10 mm pistol almost identical to the one I'd left the vault with, a dozen 10 mm rounds, and three shotgun shells. Now this, I could use. The 10 mm rounds were the same kind as the ones I'd put through my SMG against the bloatsprites and raiders, but the shotgun shells threw me off a bit. They weren't the same as the buckshot and slugs that I already had with me. These ones were marked ‘4/0 buck’. I had no idea what it meant by that, but I kept them anyway. More ammo was always useful.

I was in the middle of looking through the third tent in the row (this one actually had a legitimate bed in it. I was impressed) when a raider walked in on me. Surprise widened her eyes, her horn flashed, and up came a pistol that I'd never seen before. That wasn't really saying much, obviously, but it was significantly different from my 10 mm. It was a revolver, for one, but the biggest difference was the scope, of all things, mounted on top. My shotgun left its rudimentary holster as she fired her first shot.

Sweet Celestia! That was almost as loud as Jasper's rifles! It's a very good thing she missed, even if that huge crack was the only meter to judge its potential lethality. My shotgun didn't. I have to admit, shotguns cover that base pretty well. Pellets found chinks in armor, and perhaps more importantly exposed flesh in the form of her head and neck. Unfortunately for me, that shot didn't kill her.

If the shots we'd just exchanged weren’t going to bring the whole camp running, the wounded howl she gave next sure would. Strips of flesh hung from her ruined face and blood trickled out from the dozens of small perforations in her exposed neck and where the pellets had gone through armor. My bile rose, and I had to push it down hard.

I must have blinded her or something, because she started firing as fast as she could in my general direction. I dove out of the way behind the bed, hoping that the flimsy covers and mattress would at least slow the bullet enough that I'd survive a hit. A couple of them even hit my general side of the tent. The gun clicked empty after only five more shots (very useful to know) and she tried to get out of the tent before I returned fire. She half made it, and then got very lucky when my next shot missed. At the very least she was out of the fight for now, and I would welcome any favors I could get, seeing as I now had a half dozen angry raiders descending on my position. They'd be here any second.

I had two choices. I could hunker down in this tent, try to find some cover, set up an ambush, something like that. That felt like a bad idea, considering there was no cover in the tent, and it was a tent, with the canvas-thin walls that implies. So I ran for it. As quietly as I could, which probably wasn't very quiet, all things considered.

I knew, or rather suspected, that the building closest to this tent was currently unused. At the very least, it wasn't decorated, and there hadn't been any raiders walking around it outside. It was my best option; the door was hanging off its hinges away from the doorframe, and the coast looked clear. I covered the three dozen yards in between in a matter of a few seconds. Not quite fast enough to outright escape detection from the incoming raiders. At least one of them saw me enter the building. I heard shouts as I bolted through the door, but any incoming shots missed horribly enough that they didn't even hit where I could hear them as I quickly took in my surroundings.

The room looked like the main room to a bar, complete with bartop, behind the counter area, scattered stools, and a few ruined booths. My immediate instinct was to dive behind the bar with my shotgun and wait for the raiders to walk through the door. Panic was strangely absent from my thoughts, fortunately, and I realized that if it was the first thing I thought of, it was the first thing they'd think of too. Instead I kept moving straight through the building, looking for an exit. There wasn't another door to be found, but I did find a staircase in the next room and took it without hesitation.

Upstairs had to be sleeping quarters or guest rooms, with a long hallway that split at the end of the hall with single doors down the length. I could hear the raiders entering the first level. Not good, I didn't have much time. I ran down the hall, looking for a door that wasn't locked. No luck, no luck, no luck, no lu--. The fourth one I tried stuck for a second, and then gave up, swinging into a room that was obviously lived in, and just as obviously not home to a raider. I slammed the door behind me and turned to inspect the room.

Surprise found a spot on my face when I saw, prominently displayed on the end-table next to a surprisingly comfortable looking bed, the figure of Pinkie Pie. Unreal. The one door that hadn't been locked. I felt like getting this lucky now would end up biting me in the flank later on.

Better not waste it now. I intended to just grab the figurine and hide, no questions asked, but when I enveloped it in my magic, the shock almost made me drop it. I couldn't really explain it. I felt... sharper. Like I could see and hear better than ever. I examined the statuette a little more closely. Around the bottom it read “Awareness! It was under “E”!” I didn't know exactly what that meant, but it felt significant.

Reality snapped back into focus. I heard the raiders rummaging around the building below me, making sure I wasn't hidden away on the ground floor before sweeping the upstairs. I could hear muffled mutterings through the floor as raiders called to one another that one part of a room or the other was clear. Dammit! If only I could hear what they were doing more clearly, I might be able to set up an ambush.

A sudden flash of inspiration struck me. I channeled a bit of magic into my horn, and carefully, tentatively, hopefully pressed it against the floor. My hearing dulled and became muffled for half a second, and then slowly came back into focus, but with one major difference. Now I could hear the raiders' every word.

“Stark, Cut, check upstairs. Blast, cover the way we came in. I'll check the basement. Move.”

I heard a chorus of affirmatives, and one quietly added “that bitch is going to pay. Health potions are expensive.” Shit, the raider I thought was out of action was down there too. A small, ignored voice thought that these ponies didn't sound like raiders.

Think, think, think! How could I even the odds? There was the sound of footsteps headed up the stairs, I had maybe thirty seconds before they found my room, and me in it. I shifted my horn to the wall adjacent to the hallway they were in. Muffled voices flashed into clarity again, and I could hear everything. One of them was just muttering various profanities, most often “bitch, cunt, twat” and the like. I figured that was scoped-pistol raider. I still couldn't see them, and without that I couldn't set up anything that could possibly be guaranteed to get both of them.

I tried something else. My horn flared brighter, and the sound faded away entirely. Instead, it was replaced by a very blurry image of the raiders walking down the hallway. Disappointingly (if I could be disappointed at how awesome this newfound ability was), I could only see them from a point on the wall directly where my horn touched. No matter, now I could see everything. Including the grenades hung across the rear-most raider's bandoleer. Cue wicked grin.

I tried to use my telekinesis, but it felt magnitudes harder than usual. I strained, pouring every ounce of my power into pulling the pin on one of those grenades. A small voice in the back of my head was cheering about how awesome this was going to sound as a story I told my foals someday. I couldn't see it, eyes clenched shut in concentration, still magically staring at the grenades taunting me on the other side of the wall, but an overglow stretched around my horn, fully illuminating the room I was standing in. The strain was actually starting to hurt. If it didn't happen soon, I was going to be a sit--

The pin popped free with a metallic clink. Success! A wave of dizziness ended with me pulling my head away from the wall. Good thing, too. I heard the curse loud and clear even without eavesdropping, and the explosion that followed still knocked me to the floor, even through the door.

In retrospect, probably a very good thing that my horn came away from contact with the wall, or I would have seen the carnage happen firsthand. As it was, I still vomited when I staggered out of the room anyway, as soon as I saw the new wallpaper.

Hoofsteps thundered up the stairs as the two raiders downstairs rushed to investigate the explosion. I readied my shotgun and aimed down the hallway, half-ducked into the door to get the most cover I could. The first raider came charging into my field of vision and went down in a spectacular spray of blood as my shotgun slug buried itself deep in his torso. Holding down the bile was easier that time, although that might have been because bits and pieces of raider still decorated the hallway and made my expressionist painting session seem a little less significant.

I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. I'd killed and/or seriously injured four raiders, one of them twice without taking a single hit. There was just one thing that bugged me about this whole thing.

None of them felt like raiders.

The first one I'd killed I hadn't been close enough to get a good look at, but he hadn't reeked like the raiders in the house that I'd encountered first, and like most of the raiders we'd seen looked like they would smell like. I'd pulled the pin on the one decorating the hall without getting a really clear look at him. The one that I had first shot and then presumably knocked out with the grenade explosion (she didn't look quite dead yet) had been entirely justified in calling me all sorts of mean and hurtful names. After all, I did shoot her. The room I had just busied myself rummaging through was decidedly not a raider hovel, judging by the courtyard outside.

Who were these ponies?

I didn't have very much time to ponder my newfound question. A grenade sailed up the stairs and bounced down the hall. I quickly wrapped it in a field of my magic to send it flying back down the stairs to the stupid idiot who threw it up against what he knew had to be a unicorn.

It exploded before I even fully wrapped it in magic. The explosion blinded and deafened me momentarily, and opened a score of cuts along any exposed part of my coat. A dozen small cuts on my face and lower legs contributed a dull throbbing ache to my sensory issues and headache, and a few more major shrapnel wounds threatened to make major issues of themselves unless I got some kind of attention before trying to get anywhere exceptionally fast. All things considered, I was probably pretty lucky, but I sure didn't feel like it.

I staggered against the room door and fell over, deliberately directing my fall into the room instead of out into the hallway. I pried open my eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to clear the splotches before the last whatever-he-was came up after me. I staggered to my hooves, readying my shotgun.

The first indication I had that something was wrong was a nasty buck to my flank that knocked the wind out of me and dropped me back to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Dammit! That pony was either impossibly fast, or I'd taken far longer than I should have in recovering. I struggled to draw in air and struggle back upright. A hoof pressed against my neck put a stop the latter pretty quick.

In the time since the grenade went off, my ears had recovered from “completely deaf” to “bell tower ringing” to something that passed for listening devices. Well, for the most part, at least.

“... the hell you are or what the hell you think you're doing here, but I want to know right now where the fuck you got this armor.” His request was punctuated with a none-too-subtle application of pressure with his hoof. Resisting or refusing to answer suddenly seemed much less attractive than it did a few seconds ago.

“Bo- -cough, hack- Bonesaw. Doctor in Cantilly. Sent me here to scout raiders.” I wasn't in a hurry to piss this pony off. Telling him whatever I thought he wanted to hear sounded like the best option available.

That only seemed to make him press harder, for reasons that made no sense to me, or, more probably, made no sense to any sane pony in general. “Don't lie to me, bitch. Tell me. Where. Did. You. Get. This. Uniform!”

The pressure on my throat made it hard to breath, especially after everything that had just happened, and what was still going on, for that matter. “Not lying!” I gasped out. “That's what he told me.” I sucked in air. “Big buck, tan, golden-brown mane and tail. Cutie mark was a medical saw,” I spat out as fast as I could. I really didn't relish the thought of dying like my first raider.

Suddenly, the pressure was gone. I took a massive, shuddering gulp of air. No sooner had I started breathing regularly again was I roughly jerked to my feet to look my de-facto captor in the eyes. His face was pretty horribly scarred, missing half of an ear, what looked like massive claw marks running from left eye to his chin, reappearing on his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his armor. His coat was some kind of pale blue color, like the displays on my pipbuck, and his mane was a much darker blue. One eye was this red/pink color, and the other, the left one, was just a white sphere. He'd probably lost it when he got the scar.

“You're a lucky little cunt, you know that? If you had just told me anything, and I do mean anything else, and you wouldn't have gotten back up. Ever. I'd have left you here for the raiders to have their fun with, especially after you did this to my team. But now, I want you to take a message back to the pretentious asshole that gave you this.”

I was very clearly deeply involved in something that went back more than just a raider camp. I gulped nervously. “And that is?” I probed, eager to get out of here, but also even more nervous about setting him off. He seemed to be neither the most stable nor the most... forgiving pony in the wastes.

There was a barely contained fury just waiting to find an unfortunate target, seething under a carefully controlled facade. “You tell him this, and exactly this: 'Sparky knows what you did, and you're next.' Word for fucking word.” He stormed out the door and was down the stairs by the time I made it to the door.

The female unicorn that I'd already almost killed twice today gave a feeble stir. Looked like she wasn't dead after all. I wasn't above sucking up to the very-angry pony that had just exited ahead of me, and decided to help the poor mare. She was in bad shape. I assume she'd had a healing potion, because her face wasn't a bloody mess in and of itself. The shock, overpressure, and shrapnel from the grenade had ruptured something important. Blood was spilling from her mouth and nose, and her ears were missing the tips and also bleeding. Shrapnel had torn large holes in her barding, even if most of them hadn't plunged deep enough to do serious damage. She looked like she had maybe an hour without attention. Two, at the most.

I had a healing potion, but I was loathe to use it if I didn't have to. I checked through her bags (and unloaded her weapons as I found them, just in case) for anything that might help. There! She had another health potion. Another two, actually. I snuck one into my saddlebags even as I practically fed the other one to her.

I almost left right then and there, before she fully regained consciousness. All things considered, it would have been the smart thing to do. I'd almost killed her twice in the space of ten minutes. But, unfortunately, I'm not always the most clever pony to ever live.

She punched me in the face. I reeled back, blood flowing from my nose as she stood up. She punched me again. Have I mentioned just how stupid of an idea this was? Then she rummaged around in her bags, pulled out her pistol, and shot me.

She wasn't aiming to kill, just hurt, and badly. I couldn't really blame her, not really. It still hurt, a brilliant white pain shooting into my flank. It hurt a lot. Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as vital of an area as the last shot I took had gone. Getting shot in the ass is hardly as life-threatening as taking a shot to the chest.

“I know you've got a healing potion. Now we're even.” Well that was good, at least. It game me some cold comfort as I writhed in pain in the middle of the floor.

As she left, I popped the healing potion I took from her bags out of mine and downed it. Oh, Luna that was so much better. My shrapnel wounds closed back up, the bullet in my flank was ejected and the entry wound closed back up. My bruised neck even felt better. Now I could get back to my mis--

My mission. Shit. How long had I spent doing this? I still had to find the supplies and rescue any captives I could before I launched the flare. Well, still had to find the supplies. I'd gotten a better look at the pile of “decoration” in the courtyard, and that pretty thoroughly disabused me of the thought that raiders kept prisoners long enough for there to still be a few I needed to help. I trotted downstairs, not really sure if I'd get shot at again or not. Fortunately, “Sparky,” or whatever his name actually was seemed to need me to get to Bonesaw alive. Good on him.

I searched the raider camp top to bottom, or as near as I could in ten more minutes. I found a dozen shotgun shells, another combat shotgun that I took in case I needed more parts, a pair of unused grenades, two (two!) more healing potions, and an assortment of other, smaller guns that I didn't particularly care about. Oh, and a cool hat. It was done in what I learned as a filly was “Appleoosan” style, with a wide brim to keep the sun out of your eyes. I thought I looked rather dashing.

Nowhere did I find supplies. The way Doc described it to me, the supplies-gone-missing were substantial, hard to miss. They weren't here, full stop. Not good. I high-tailed it out of the camp, reached the rendezvous point, and launched my magic flare.

Jasper coughed lightly behind me, making me jump. I hadn't even seen him there when I walked up, but he was there, nonchalant as a pony could be. I arched a quizzical eyebrow in his direction.

“I've been here for a while, now. The raiders followed me into the abandoned town. I had long enough to separate and cut down every single one of them in the time it took you to scout the camp and get back here.”

“That was fifteen raiders. You've got to be kidding me.” I was incredulous.

He just grinned at me. It was insufferable. “Alright, alright. I guess it doesn't matter what actually happened to them as long as we accomplished the objective.” There, diplomatic.

“And, aheh, in your case,l- looks like you picked up a little something, uh, extra,” he nickered, “nice hat.”

I couldn't really tell if he was being serious or sarcastic, so I took it in stride. “Why thank you. I think it's rather dashing.”

I filled him in on the details at the camp, about the not-raiders. He seemed surprised, especially at the part where their leader let me go (relatively) unharmed.

“...And he told me to tell Bonesaw that 'Sparky knows what you did, and you're next.'” I finished. “I have no idea what it means.”

He played it off as if it were a mystery to him too, but I saw the subtle change in his gait, the tightening of the stride. Whoever Sparky was, it must have spooked him. Curious. That was something to ask about sometime later, though, when we weren't still seven hours from Cantilly.

The inventory spell on my Pipbuck might have been wonderful at cataloging and sorting my items and notes, but I liked to go through it myself to keep a realistic handle on what I was carrying around with me. It was doing that I discovered the note.

'Stark Contrast – Mercenary at Arms

Contract information available through

the Manehattan area contract board.'

On the back was written: 'You've proven your worth. If you ever need a helping hoof, check in at the boards and ask for Stark. They'll know what to do.”

Well. That was certainly unexpected. Had I somehow gained an ally in the wastes by almost killing her? The concept was alien to me, but that didn't mean I was blind to the possible benefits. Having a hired gun might not be a bad idea out here from time to time. I'd sleep on it, at least for now.

I switched on the radio and searched for a channel to break the silence during a lull in the conversation on the way back; we didn't have so much to talk about that we'd fill the entire fourteen hours round trip with it. I eventually settled on a station. Some haunting but beautiful music was playing at the moment that I'd never heard before. Hardly a feat, but it was s till something new. More specifically, something new that didn't want to kill me.

“...let me get it right!” The song trailed off and I was left feeling strongly for whatever mare had been doing the singing. Beautiful.

“This is DJ Pon3, and that was Sweetie Belle, singing about that one great truth of the wasteland: every pony has done something they regret. And now, my little ponies, it’s time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you ‘bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable Two? Well...” Oh, so this station played the news, too. Excellent, I needed to find a way to keep up with the wasteland anyway. Then again, this 'Stable-Dweller' as the DJ called her sounded almost too good to be true. My confidence flagged a bit. Looks like I'd have to find a new channel.

I decided to humor it for a few more seconds. “In other news, it looks like one of the towns around Manehattan is about to get a whole lot safer. My sources tell me a pony no one in the area or anywhere has seen before walked into Everfree Mills and cleaned the place out. No more raiders. You know what that means...”

What. My brain practically shut down. That had happened literally hours ago. How the hell had this... DJ Pon3 even heard of it, much less gotten it on the air so fast?

“... and the locals, at least around Cantilly, just call her 'Barkeep.' Nice and simple, I like it. One last thing....”

Jasper, meanwhile, was just chuckling at my apparent cluelessness. When I asked him how the hell the DJ could already know something like that, let alone turn it into something so blatantly over-exaggerated, he just replied with, “DJ Pon3 always knows. If there's one good thing in the wasteland that never changes, that's it.”

Okay then. I gave up trying to figure it out. Besides, being known in the area always comes with a few perks. Maybe I could give this a try.

My mind was awash with possibilities as the next Sweetie Belle song drifted forlornly out of my pipbuck's speakers.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Open Season -- In combat, you do +10% damage against male opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex.
Quest Perk: Magic Eavesdrop – Using a bit of your magic, you can now listen or see through solid walls as if they were doors or windows just by pressing your horn again them.
Companion Perk: Expert Survivor – As long as Jasper remains in the party, your Survival is increased by 10.

Lessons Learned

Friendship is Power
Chapter Three: Lessons Learned
“They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson in life who does not every day surmount a fear.”

Trekking across the Equestrian Wasteland very quickly taught me two important truths. One: traveling at night is a bad idea, especially if you're alone. Two: bullets are very, very, very finite. Perhaps more immediately relevant but less philosophically profound was the discovery that a submachine gun burns through bullets very quickly.

I found myself berating my lack of forethought for not realizing the first and panicking about the second while a steady stream of spines thudded into the hillock I was hiding behind. Dirt spewed into the air, showering me with clods of earth when a projectile grazed the top of the mound but went through instead of just burying itself harmlessly.

My jumpsuit was a filthy wreck. It was a mottled, dark burgundy color where blood had stained it, mostly from my gunshot wound earlier in the day. Rips and tears were everywhere, whether they were from splintering wood, the sharp edges of that one raider's armor, or the aforementioned gunshot. Some of the holes were big enough to let the chunks of dirt through to the interior, making the entire get up hugely uncomfortable. If I was going to survive out here, I was going to need something much better.

Ah. Right. Surviving. First I had to get away from these... whatever they hell they were. Roughly spherical bodies that floated on gossamer wings. At least, I assume they used to be spherical. Now they were grotesque and deformed, hideous flesh that looked like it was almost coming off as it flew, strange bumps and bulges belying a body that wasn't what it should be. Some of the bulges had spines protruding from them, and they could apparently fire them at whatever they wanted.

I lifted the SMG over the top of the hill, keeping my head way down to keep it from being taken off. Spines plinked off the gun, nicking the metal casing but otherwise doing no damage. Thank Celestia for small favors. I fired off a burst at the deformed insects, missing horribly. Of course. They weren't near as bad as I was. One spine went through my ear, and beneath the immediate prick of pain I felt a tingling. It spread very slowly from to the tip of my ear and then towards the rest of my skull. Uh oh. I had to finish this soon, and then hope that the poison or venom or whatever it was didn't kill me.

The SMG clicked empty and I swore. I was down to just one magazine and then a handful of bullets left over. Counting the red pips on my compass told me there were four of the things floating slowly toward me. I still didn't know how much it would take to kill one of them, and I wasn't about to sit here spraying until I finally hit one and pray that one bullet killed it. I had to find some way to event the odds.

They were close enough that I could hear their wings thrumming. Running out of time. Had to find something to help. Inventory? Everything was useless. They were closing in, and so was panic. I had nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In my panic I must have pressed a button or something; I don't remember how it happened. I just know that my attention was brought to rest exactly on the lead creature. Time slowed, and I the thing's wings stopped in mid-flight, but it didn't fall. I marvelled at the sensation of not being able to move but still being able to think, and used that peculiar property of whatever was happening to think about how to kill the blasted thing. Time abruptly sped back up, and my SMG fired a burst of shells that ripped into what I now somehow knew was a “bloatsprite.” It popped like a balloon. A water balloon filled with a twisted, tainted sludge. Strangely, I didn't feel the urge to void my guts. Maybe that only happened when I saw pony blood and guts? No matter. I now knew I possessed something to help me kill these abominations. I just had to figure out how to use it again.

It's strange how quickly panic can morph into pleased excitement.

My pipbuck flashed a warning at me, telling me that “S.A.T.S.” was depleted. I recognized the name from the list of features I had enabled before I entered the door, but hadn't used. Didn't know how to use. Apparently that was what I had killed the bloatsprite with. Hell, that was probably how I found out it was a bloatsprite in the first place! Half of the things in my pipbuck I would never know how it worked or how it knew what it knew. Probably didn't want to know anyway.

I had to find that button again. My life probably quite literally depended on it.

Found it! I pressed it, relieved that I could end this objectively pretty pathetic fight (a bunch of mid-sized insects pinned me down and sent me into a panic) and be on my way.

Nothing happened. Shit. My pipbuck flashed me the message “S.A.T.S. Recharging” and showed a me a bar that was slowly filling back up to what I assumed was full. Fine. I could be patient if I needed to.

Okay, I thought I could be patient. I found myself constantly pressing the button, ignoring the flashing message until it finally let me re-enter the spell. I blew away another of the sprites with another burst. I felt like I was getting good at this. Duck into S.A.T.S., kill a sprite, duck back into cover, repeat. I couldn't seem to fire much less than half a dozen shots even if I wanted to though, which made ammo a concern again. I was down to less than a full magazine for my SMG.

Two left. A burst from my submachine gun. One left. Ducked behind cover, waited to recharge, popped back up, fired... and missed.

A small voice in the back of my head bitched at me for thinking that this nifty new spell would make me immune to missing. Of course I could still miss.

So I did. Twice more. Frustration boiled up in me, and it took almost all the self-control I was able to muster to not just charge the last annoying sprite and stab it to death. My ear still burned, and the burning was spreading across the top of my head and down the side of my face. A light cloud was drifting over my thoughts, making it more difficult to think. More difficult, but not impossible. Just enough to know that there was something wrong.

I heard a buzzing, much closer than it should be and looked straight up in time to see the last sprite crest my little mound of dirt, spines already firing. I felt a few of them embed in my all-but-completely-exposed flesh through my coat. A few more missed, and the last were inexplicably halted by my ruined jumpsuit. I cried out in shock and pain, feeling the poison/venom already burning beneath my skin. The sprite was close enough to kill without S.A.T.S. at least. I did so, with a sense of great satisfaction. Nevermind the bloatsprite guts now seeping into my suit, as unpleasant as that was, I had just survived another encounter in the wastes, against something I had never seen before, outnumbered, in the middle of the night. Take that, Wasteland.

Then I felt it. The tingling. It was a burning sensation, no, it was worse. It made my mane itch and my skin crawl. Any exposed part of my body that the sprite's guts had covered was shuddering in revulsion. This stuff was evil. I had to get it off. Right now.

I tried scraping it off with my hooves, but that just made them tingle and crawl too, and the parts of me that I “cleaned” still practically screamed that something was wrong, even if less so than before. In the midst of all of this, my pipbuck was clicking at an alarming rate; I was picking up rads like I never had before. It scared me.

I shed my shredded jumpsuit as fast as I could, wiping away as much of the tainted material as I could. I was naked now, yes, but I felt much safer, all things considered. Most of the guts were gone, and the parts that I couldn't clean entirely didn't feel like my skin would crawl off and leave at any second anymore. The only parts of my clothing that I kept were my saddlebags. I had the feeling I was going to need those.

I took stock of my situation. I still had my submachine gun, now looking much the worse for wear, and ten bullets left for it. My knife, healing potion, and four bobby pins, with 40 caps stuffed into a pocket. Pipbuck working better than ever, now that I actually knew how to use it.

A quick look at my map was a welcome surprise. Those horrid creatures had ambushed me just over a mile from Chantilly. If not for these hills, I probably could have seen a few of the lights from here.

I took a step forward, toward the town, and almost ate the dirt right then and there. The Goddesses-damned bloatsprite spines were making me dizzy. Most of my body felt like it was on fire. I had to get to the city, and fast. I doubted a healing potion would do much to stop the poison (funny how imminent bodily danger makes up one's mind rather quickly) for very long, but I kept it ready, just in case.

The poison was making walking hard, and thinking harder. I was basically on autopilot at this point. I had to get to the town, so I followed the blinking arrow on my compass. I'd get there eventually. I had to. This fog. Hate it. Poison. Not good. Had to... town.

* * * * * *

The next thing I knew, I was waking up on a bed that wasn't mine, staring at a ceiling that wasn't mine, naked. What the fuck? Where was my bar? Where were my clothes? Where the fuck was I?

Wait. I remembered. I was in the wastes, looking for the raider camp. The camp that butchered half of my Stable. I had to get back out there! I had to--

Head met ground as I flopped off the bed. Stars blossomed in my vision.

“Whoa there! Take it easy there. You were pretty fucked up from those bloatsprites.”

The voice was entirely unfamiliar to me and had the exact opposite effect of calming me down. Panic flaired, and I flailed my limbs, trying to right myself and stand up. They weren't quite working how I wanted to them, responding half a second too late to everything I wanted to do. It was like being drunk except my mental processes weren't nearly as impeded.

“I said, take it easy!” I felt myself enveloped in a field of magic. Apparently whoever this pony was, he was a unicorn. He rotated me to face him and spoke veeeery slooooowly, as if I were too stupid to understand him. To be fair, I hadn't really given him any indication otherwise, but it was still insulting. “Caaaalm dowwwn.”

“Fine, just put me down. This is humiliating.” I had the feeling this buck could wipe the floor with me again, so arguing didn't seem like the most constructive thing at the moment. Still, a bit of dignity would go a long way in my mind. Fortunately, he relaxed and complied. “Thanks. Now I've got a few questions.” Okay, kind of blunt, probably not the best way to open the next part of the conversation.

“Hold it, missy. Mine first.” I hmph'd but didn't say anything else, and he kept going. “Who are you? You shouldered your way into my shop and passed out on my floor first thing in the morning. I don't think I've ever pulled as many spikes from a living pony before. And you apparently rolled around in the thing's guts after you killed it.”

I perked up at his question. I was in Chantilly? The last thing I remember was walking along the straight line path I'd picked to get to the town, eyes glued to my E.F.S. for red dots, making decent time. And then... Damn bloatsprites. I must have muttered it out loud, because he gave a little chuckle. “Ayup, you were just studded with their spines. I'm don't know how far you came, but if it was any sort of real distance I'm very impressed.”

My expression must have been one of horror, or something, because he quickly continued. “Now now, don't you fret any, I patched you up, removed the spikes, even cleared the taint you managed to pick up. My treat.” His face turned more serious. “But the next time it happens, I'll have to charge you my going rate. Sixty caps for a basic patch up. Another forty for a taint cleansing. Get both at the same time and you get a free rad-cleansing. Your little treatment is a hundred caps of my goodwill. I won't collect on it now, but I might ask for a favor done later, m'kay?”

Huh. Well, that wasn't as bad as it could have been. This doctor seemed like a good pony. “I'm still waiting for an answer,” he probed. Oh, right.

“Oh, right. I'm Mint Julep, from Stable 20 across the hills a few miles. I'm looking for some raiders. They attacked our Stable, and took enough to seriously threaten its survival.” That seemed to surprise him.

“Raiders? Attacked the Stable? Damn, they're getting bold. That's bad.” He paused lost in thought.

“Um, excuse me? I do need to find them.” Figured I'd just throw that out there.

That seemed to startle him out of his thoughts. “Oh, yeah. Tell you what, I'll call in that favor now, actually. You're looking for that raider camp? I know the general direction.” He paused, as if conflicted. “I want you to scout it out. Figure out how many raiders there are. How well they're armed. What their leader looks like. Take that information to the local sheriff, goes by the name Splinter. You'll know him when you see him.”

He paused again, as if waiting for me to weigh in. When I didn't, he kept going. “You do that for me, and I'll call us even. Hell, I'd even give you a discount for services provided in the future, if'n you ever need them.”

Well then. I'd been awake in this town for a grand total of ten minutes, and I already had another job to do. Fortunately, coincided with what I was already doing, but still. I didn't need anything getting in my way. On the other hand, he was offering a discount, and I didn't have many caps to my name. A discount might go a long way.

I thought it over for a few more seconds. “Alright, but I could use some supplies too. And I still don't even know your name, mister...?”

“Bonesaw. I know, it sounds gruesome, but don't get caught up on it.” He trotted over to a cabinet in the corner of the room, a room with only one door and no windows, I noted for some strange reason, and pulled out an object before handing it to me. It was some kind of armored barding. Not very heavy or the best protection you'd ever find, but a hell of a lot better than anything I had with me or ever used. “Years back I used to run with one of the smaller gangs around Fillydelphia, before Red Eye really moved in and cleaned up the place. Called ourselves the 'Delphia Delvers. Made our living and got our kicks exploring the ruins of the inner city. The gang is gone, scattered across the wastes, but this was our uniform. It's better than it looks, trust me on that.”

It certainly didn't look like much; it'd take a lot to disappoint. The old uniform fit me better than I thought it would, especially considering how much bigger Bonesaw was than me. What I assumed to be the gang symbol, an old spelunking helmet, was emblazoned on each flank where it covered my cutie mark. It wasn't much, and wouldn't stop the kind of rifle the raider I encountered yesterday had, but it might have stopped the smaller pistol bullet that gave me a lot of grief. Much better. My only gripe was that it was heavier than I was used to.

“You're gonna have to find your own ammo for that peashooter though. I don't bring guns in here, and even if you'd have been conscious I'd have taken yours and left it in the waiting room before letting you back here. It's on the end table as you're leaving.”

I graciously thanked him for the help he'd given me already. Just as easily, he could have either let me die, or taken everything I had and I would have been powerless to stop him. Instead, I was fully healed, and now I had something that might actually stop more than a particularly persistent tree branch from poking a hole in me.

Before I left, he marked on my map the general direction of the raider camp. It was a fair distance away, further than Stable 20 was, but in a different direction. “Anything else I should watch out for on my way there?” It didn't hurt to double check.

Bonesaw shook his head, “not that I know of. Don't mean there's nothing, though. You be careful.”

That was all I really needed from this place. I bid him farewell, picked up my SMG and the less than a dozen bullets I had left for it and headed out into the street. Walking out into the open air made me flinch a little bit, but I'd already spent the better part of a day on the surface; I would be fine. I exited the building into what had to be the brightest part of the day. Apparently the much better part of the day, it must be nearly noon already, maybe even past that. That told me roughly how long I'd been out, at least.

The town I was in spectacularly failed to impress me. There must only have been a couple score ponies living here, spread over enough distance that no two houses stood together and most were separated by a hundred feet or so in most directions. A general store, complete with fluorescent sign and “OPEN” sign greeted me just across the street, and a rudimentary inn stood down the street, proudly proclaiming itself to the the “Sandpony Inn.” Really, not impressed, especially coming out of the Stable.

Unfortunately, beggars can't be choosers, and I trotted over to the general store. I did need ammo rather badly, after all. The door was open, if you considered “hanging off its hinges” to mean “open.” Walking in, I was greeted by a very stern looking mare who was very quick to tell me that troublemakers were not welcome and would be dealt with immediately. I'm not going to lie, she was pretty intimidating. Any non-existent thoughts I had of making trouble swiftly became even moreso.

The counter was right in front of me as I walked into the shop, with a jovial and rather large (and definitely less muscular than not) stallion manning the helm. I really took the gruff mare's words to heart as I approached. “I need some ammo.” There. Quick, precise, and to the point.

The stallion just chuckled and said “like hell you do! What you need is a proper piece of weaponry! What the hell kind of a gun is that? How hard did you have to look to find a knife with more rust than steel? No, that just won't do.”

I fancied myself a decent barterer and a fair-to-middling salespony, but this buck blew me out of the water at the ease at which he relaxed me, lowered my guard, and opened me to the concept of spending all of my money right then and there. Fortunately I wasn't entirely wrong, and managed to get a few good points of my own into the haggle that I never expected to get into. I sold my SMG and the ammo I had for it (it really was junk, and I couldn't afford to support it) for a few quick caps, and then turned around and spent them all, and all of the 40 caps I started with on a decent quality shotgun and three dozen shells for it, about eight of which were slugs instead of normal buckshot. I kept the knife. There was something special about it, in my eyes.

“You come back now, ya hear? Customers from out of town that come back more than twice get a one-time bit of store credit.” Damn he was good, somehow just him mentioning store credit made me want to come back. I was really starting to like this town. Might even come back here in a few years, after all this business was done, the Stable was back to normal, and I was able to con some poor pony into running the bar for me. Some day.

The whole town was circled by a picket fence. It was more of a “watch out, town here” sign than any serious kind of deterrent to anything that wanted to get in. On my way to the gate, I realized why the houses were so spread apart: nearly all of them had little farms around them. About a dozen ponies were actively out in the fields, weeding rows of crop, repairing small barbed wire fences that cordoned off the individual plots, or doing laundry, or any number of chores. It felt just laid back enough to be comfortable, and just hard working enough to feel something close to safe. I almost didn't want to leave and finish my mission at all.

Almost.

I almost at the gate when one of the townsponies, a mare, caught up with me. “Hey, you, newcomer. You're not headed for that raider camp, are you?”

Goddesses, how did word travel that fast? I tried to downplay the matter, and probably failed. “I might be. Why?”

Yep, definitely failed. Her eyes lit up and it looked like at least a little weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “My name is Dacquoise. The raiders... two months ago, they took my son when he was scavenging for equipment along the road south of here.” South? The raider camp, according to my map, was a decent distance north-east of the town. Wariness crept into my mind. “I hold no illusions that he's still alive, they are raiders after all, but he had a precious family heirloom with him when he went missing. I need it back.”

Two months. I guess that made more sense than the few days or hours that I had been thinking. You know what, why the hell not? I was already heading that way, I might as well look for this heirloom she was talking about. “I look out for it, but I can't make any promises.”

That seemed to satisfy her. “That's all I'm asking. Trust me, you can't miss it. It's a small statuette of
one of the old Ministry Mares, Pinkie Pie. It was given to my family as a gift before the war ended, and we've kept it in the family ever since. It means so much to me. Those raiders may have taken my son, but I'll die before I let them keep that, too.” I admired her dedication to the ideal of causing raiders pain. I know I just said I wouldn't make any promises, but this had just jumped to near the top of my priorities list.

“I'll do my best.” We parted ways, her spirits considerably raised, my motivation considerably boosted now that I had another way to hurt raiders.

I actually got out the gate this time before I got stopped again. “Hey, are you headed to the raider camp?”

My patience was wearing more than a little thin. Was I really that easy to read? How could walking in this general direction unequivocally mean 'going to raider camp'? “What is it this time?” I snapped at the newcomer.

He was a light gray earth pony stallion with a darker, charcoal mane that drifted into his eyes and around his nose. Probably around my age or maybe a little younger and most definitely easy on the eyes. Well, at least I thought so, which probably wasn't saying much considering I spent most of my time up to this point staring at walls all day. Not the point. The point was that he was a very handsome piece of work.

“Oh! Uhm, sorry about that,” I said sheepishly. Why was I so flustered all of a sudden? “I'm just trying to get out of town and do my job, and ponies keep stopping me.”

Wait a second, did he just blush? I couldn't be sure, what with the dark(ish) coat and the mane partly covering his face, but it sure looked like it. “I, ah, well... I saw you walking this way and, uhm, I, well, thought you could use some h-help? Maybe?”

Oh, well if that wasn't just adorable. Definitely younger, or maybe didn't get out much. I thought over his offer. It was true I could use the help. If there was anything my two encounters with the things the Wasteland could throw at me was any indication, I would be hard pressed to deal with an entire camp of raiders without leaving my body decorating the ground in the middle of nowhere. Or some raider-pony's armor. Okay, moving on from that pleasant thought.

I probably – well, okay, definitely put more show into mulling it over than I actually did, just to see his reaction. He looked so nervous! It was definitely cute, and that quality about him was honestly not a non-factor in my decision.

“I don't know, can you handle yourself in a fight?” Simple question, important question, and, I thought, fairly warranted. It had the unintentional effect of blasting all that cute nervousness away like fog on a hot day.

“Probably a lot better than you can, from the looks of you when you stumbled in earlier,” he said with a fierce but not unfriendly glare. Ooh, ouch. Well, that was certainly true. It was about then that I noticed what he was wearing. It was some kind of armored gear that I had never seen before. It had what looked like a pair of rifles mounted on it with imposingly large barrels, and the way he carried himself told me he knew how to use them. Well, he was certainly more intimidating than I was.

I winced. “Point taken. You can come along if you want, just know that I'm not headed there to slaughter the camp. I'm just looking around.”

My response didn't bother him in the slightest, if looks were any indication. “I know, Bonesaw briefed me before I set off after you.” Hmm, looked like I owed Bonesaw twice now. Maybe even three times, depending on how this little jaunt went.

“Did he know? I'll have to have a word with him when we get back.” I started off in the direction of the camp. These delays were getting tiresome; I didn't want to have to travel by night again, especially since it looked to be cross-country again. I looked back. He wasn't following. “Hey, are you coming or not?”

He kind of stared at me for a few seconds, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. “You're not from around here, are you? It's faster to take the roads around here, and you're much less likely to run into something nasty than if you're just walking across the hills.”

Well didn't I feel stupid now. With quiet indignation I trotted back to the road and turned the direction that looked like it would take us closest to the camp, according to my map. Ignoring that little mishap, I tried to strike up a conversation. “So, Bonesaw sent you did he....”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, yes he did. I was worr- I mean he was worried about you getting there and back in one piece. Uhm, no offense.” Now that I apparently wasn't challenging his stallionhood or doing something stupid, it looked like he was getting nervous again. Oh, this was going to be fun!

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Hard Bargain -- Your bartering expertise can save you a lot of caps. You now receive an automatic 5% better prices during any transaction.