Chapter Four: Differences
“..Knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do.”

We set off into the wasteland to find my parents a cure. The two of us walked through the downpour that had begun while we were inside, the rain streaking down my power armor. I looked over to Sparktrail, who’s wet mane draped her face as her leather overcoat went from grey to a deep ebony color from the water, the rain making the plating of her armor shine. Besides the loud clanking footsteps my armor made, we walked in silence for quite some time, which allowed me to take in key details about Sparktrail. When she walked, her rear right hoof moved like it was stiff, causing her to limp slightly, most likely the result of a broken leg that healed improperly. She carried herself highly, and her eyes delivered a steely gaze to anything that crossed her path. The scars that covered her face told an interesting story, one that I am interested in hearing at a campfire some night. Her rifle was a specially crafted and modified semi-automatic, it was dark grey with a silvery gunmetal finish underneath where the wear and tear showed. She had etched “Thread Cutter” into the side of the barrel, and the scope was sitting on a side mount rather than on the top rail to accommodate for the way she held her rifle in her magic when firing. The rain began to get worse, and Sparktrail levitated out a clear rain cap and draped it over her head, then offered a spare to me, of which I happily accepted.

“Hey, what happened to your hoof?” She asked.

“Well then I would have to explain a lot of things. How old are you?” I responded

“Relatively young. That’s as far as I’m willing to tell you.”

“Well what if I told you that I was actually older than my parents?”

“I’d ask you to share whatever you’re on.” I went on to explain how I was alive before the war, how I went into the Stable, how the raiders attacked and my hoof as well as my parents. The whole story left her in awe once I lifted my head from the sadness that had overtaken me upon talking about my real parents.

“You are . . . very hardcore for a Stable-dweller.” The one chance to say something genuine and nice, and this is how she used it.

“What do you mean?” I was completely confused by her statement.

“Well Stable-dweller are usually stereotyped to be soft and squishy little bitches.” I had no idea this was a legitimate thing. “But not long ago, you walked right into a settlement full of slavers, got beat around by flame spewing Sentinel, and then told a slaver who had powerful friends that if you ever saw him near a mare again, you would chop his cock off. You’re no squishy dweller.” I honestly hadn’t anticipated a compliment from her.

“Thanks, I guess. Not many ponies know about that, so that’s probably why I never heard of that stereotype.” I looked over to see her grow visibly sadder. “Want to share some stuff about you?” She didn’t respond to the question, and looked away when I turned towards her.

“How did you get your mark?” She finally asked after we resumed walking.

“In the Stable, one of my friends almost got hurt by a falling stack of crates. I pushed her out of the way and took the hit myself. When I was pulled from under the mess, I had my mark. Everypony figured that I was meant to shield others from danger, which they found odd when I wanted to pursue medicine like my Mom rather than join the security force like my Dad. They of course still enrolled me in the security training programs, but they hadn’t started when those raiders attacked.”

“Ever wanted to hunt those bastards down?”

“That was over two centuries ago. No way they’re alive.” I explained, again. I guess she only payed attention when I was discussing what happened to my hoof, which to be fair, was the only thing she cared about in the first place. “What about your mark?”

“Shooting . . . things. With a laser weapon.” I’d seen her proficiency with a rifle, so there was no debating that “shooting things” played a pretty major role in her destiny. However, the pause indicated something much more troubling in her story behind her mark.

“Is that it?”

“Yup. Nothing else. Just shooting things.” She didn’t want to open up at all. She must have had an awful upbringing. Never have I met such a stubborn mare before her. After some more dreadful silence, we trotted slowly up a hill. The rain made the ground soft and muddy, which caused the armor to sink into the dirt. Upon reaching the top of the hill, five figures appeared into view near the bottom. Using the binoculars I had stored away, I examined them from a distance.

“They look like they’re..”

“Slavers.” She finished my sentence for me as she took aim with her rifle. I quickly stepped in front of her, blocking her view.

“Fuck are you doing, dumbass?” She grew agitated when I continued to move with her to disrupt her line of sight.

“There’s a filly with them!” I argued.

“I don’t care! A slaver is a slaver, don’t matter their age.”

“No, you’re not killing them. We’re going to walk by them, and hopefully they’ll be decent about it. If not, shoot away. But please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“You have too much faith in ponies. Whatever, but if they plant one between your eyes, I’m not dragging your corpse back to your parents.” Fine with me. They looked starved and disheveled, so hopefully they would be intimidated by the armor and wouldn’t try something stupid. I descended down the hill and was soon walking close to the slavers, they however no doubt heard the obnoxious clanking of my armor. Yet they didn’t react aggressively, only seeming to attempt to look smaller, lowering their heads and looking away from me. At least the rain had stopped.

“It’s just one of them. What do we do?” I heard one of their group ask, a light red stallion with scrap metal for armor and ratty black mane.

“Doesn’t matter. A Ranger is a Ranger, and even one is incredibly dangerous. Let’s just hope he leaves us alone.” Another one, a yellow green stallion with a red, short cropped mane responded. Without warning, the filly traveling with them heaved a large puddle of yellow liquid with quite a bit of blood in it before almost collapsing into it. One of their group caught and picked up the filly before she could fall completely over.

“Is she okay?” I asked aloud as they began to huddle around the sick filly.

“What do you care?” Responded the yellow-green one.

“Because I’d hate to see a young pony die like that.” They all turned to look at me, but were convinced by the expression of genuine care and worry on my face.

“No, she ain’t. Got rad poisonin’, and we’re trying to find something to help her. Don’t s’pose you got anything in that fancy armor of yours?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t. But I’ll find some for you.” The pony who had picked up the filly, a tan mare with a blue mane, probably her armor, with bags under her eyes and a malnourished look in her eyes, stepped forward. She must have been the filly’s mother.

“You would seriously risk your hide just for a lowly filly? Didn’t think you Rangers actually gave a fuck about anything other than your damn technology. There’s an old clinic not far from here, and far as we know, only thing there is a pathetic little raider gang. We were hoping to sneak in once they all got sleepy and stole something from the stores the place must have.” She explained. I observed the condition of their entire group. Some had no armor or weapons at all, others seemed starved, and one had a broken hoof. No way things would go well for them if they caught the attention of less kind souls.

“I’ll go ahead and clear them out, then bring you anything I find. You all should stay situated here and rest.” I began to turn and walk ahead, before remembering I brought one of my general purpose healing brews. Stronger than a potion, more readily available ingredients. “Here, give this to her. Should stabilize her until we get back.” I floated out the bottle and gave it to them before heading off towards where they were walking.

“Mind explaining just what the fuck you’re doing?” Sparktrail demanded.

“Helping.” I stated plainly.

“Helping how? By getting medicine for a group of murdering, raping, slave trading jackasses?”

“I could give a shit less what they are. They have a dying filly with them, and I refuse to let her die.”

“How do we know that’s even one of theirs?”

“You saw that mare. Bags under her eyes, starving more than any of the others. She’s the mother, and you know it.”
“So what, you expect them to just quit dealing slaves after this one act of kindness?”

“Nope. Ponies have their nature, and I don’t expect them to just change on a whim. One of them had a cage for a mark, for Celestia’s sake.”

“Then why help them?”

“Because when those raiders attacked the Stable, they grabbed the friend I had earned my mark protecting. My destiny is to protect, and I couldn’t protect her!” Tears were starting to stream down my face at this point. “Not only that, but when Eulogy and Zara found me, they took a chance on me. I could have been a trick used by raiders to rob them. I could have been an ambush. Regardless, throwing their own safety aside, they took me under their care and brought me up to this. That’s why I’m helping those ponies. I need to cast aside my own concern and help those who genuinely need it. It’s the least I could do to start repaying the kindness I was showed so many years ago by Zara.” She had stopped walking with me, and just stood stationary. “So, Sparktrail, I honestly don’t give a fuck about your personal preference when it comes to helping those in need, but I’m going to aid every pony I possibly can. Even if it one day bites me in the ass.” With that, I allowed her to choose whether or not she followed me and continued blazing the trail laid ahead of me.

As I crossed into the outskirts of the ruins of Baltimare again, Sparktrail slowly caught up to me, eventually walking in stride with me. We walked passed a yellowing and peeling billboard, which somehow still was legible all this time after it was put up. The Ministry of Image left no room for imperfections, apparently, even in the middle of a war.

As we turned the corner to avoid walking through a collapsed building, a sign loomed into view. I was large and green, with “Clinic” and a big arrow pointing straight ahead plastered in white lettering on it. We were almost there. All we had to do was kill a dozen mildly well armed and drug crazed raiders, and break into the storage room of the clinic, all while praying that the raiders hadn’t gotten that idea first. How hard could it be?

We walked up to what my Pip-buck, further extended by my Eyes Forward Sparkle, labeled as the “Baltimare Lunar Clinic”. The outside of the building was decrepit, with broken windows and cracked walls where the foundation had settled over the years. Splayed and mutilated corpses were hung from and tied to the ancient light poles outside, some disturbingly fresh while others were rather old. Upon entering the missing front door, our noses were overwhelmed by the stench of decay, and the buzzing of flies was nearly deafening as we moved silently through the lobby. Most of the chairs and benches were missing, likely having been used as fuel for a fire by the survivors and the raiders living here, but some chairs remained, however with long dead skeletons still sitting in a few. The walls were a sickly brown combined with crimson, but bits of the original white wallpaper stuck through in areas.

We rounded a corner and were greeted by a pony sitting by a small fire and dining on some questionable meat. Quietly, Sparktrail crept behind the raider as she telekinetically held a combat knife. She plunged the blade into the stallion’s neck and yanked it out violently.

“Hey!” she whispered. “Look, this door says ‘Operating Room’. Maybe there will be supplies in there.” I nodded for her to try and open it. She nudged the door lightly with her hoof, only for the door to suddenly fall inwards and land on a trip wire that was rigged to a shotgun pointed directly at her.

“Watch out!” I hissed, but it was too late. The gun rang out, the pellets all crashing into the armor plating on her chest and sending her flying into a filing cabinet. I immediately rushed over to her and examined the damage. The armor plating had caught most of the pellets, but she’d live. I turned to face the door we had entered from as maniacal laughter began to resound through the hallways. Well, I suppose this was as good as a time as any to test how this machine gun worked.
The first raider appeared in the doorframe as I adjusted myself into S.A.T.S, or the Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting Spell, and targeted the chest of the pony in front of me. The gun let out a three round burst, blowing out the side of his chest cavity as it flung him against the wall.

“Ooh, a big gun for a big boy! I’m gonna fuck you with it!” Declared a mare in the hallway. Two more stallions walked into my field of vision next as I let the machine gun tear into the two. I could hear them shouting to each other as Sparktrail shakily stood up and levitated her rifle to shooting position, immediately killing a mare who had tried sneaking through the operating room. She nodded that she was okay, and I turned back towards the door. There were seven red dots slowly moving towards the center of the compass, so I decided to meet them in the middle.

Stepping out into the hallway, the raiders greeted me with a couple of rapid, inaccurate pot-shots as they dove for cover behind walls and counters.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? This fucker has power armor!” One of the raiders called out as he hid behind his would be barricade.

“So? Bigger target!” Another stated as he levitated his gun, a rusty and battered 10mm pistol around the corner and fired at me. I brought my hoof up to protect my face as one of the bullets impacted the armor’s chestplate, which it promptly crumbled and fell off as the automatic repair matrix kicked in.

“Above you!” Sparktrail warned as a nimble mare jumped from a hole in the ceiling that led to the second floor, rusty knife in mouth. I leaned forwards and brought my rear hooves up, bucking the mare into the wall as her body connected with the metal hooves of my armor.

“You mother fucker! You killed her!” a light yellow stallion turned the corner with a submachine gun and began spraying bullets down the hall madly. He was inaccurate and entirely blinded by rage, which made it easy to pop into S.A.T.S and let off a burst into the stallion. I advanced forwards and let the cannon on my side roar as it made easy work of the unlucky three currently in my sights. However, when I turned to address the last two, I was met with a chair to the face. The hit caused me to stagger backwards, but as the unicorn who had thrown the chair lined her gun, a rifle that seemed to be constructed out of pipes, wood, and scrap metal, up to my head, something ripped through the side of her head as a gunshot rang through the building.

“Well so much for the element of surprise. That cannon of yours is incredibly loud.” Sparktrail stated matter-of-factly.

“Don’t forget that you are the one who knocked the door down.” I responded, giving her a playful nudge. “How are you feeling after that, by the way? Are you hurt?”

“One of the pellets grazed the side of my neck. Nothing major.” She said as she peeled the neck of her coat down, revealing a centimeter large chunk missing out of the nape of her neck that was bleeding profusely. I made her move into the operating room, which luckily was used purely for the trap door and nothing else, where I stitched and bandaged the wound before making her drink a healing potion.

“Why are you so insistent on patching me up?” She complained.

“Well, mainly because I’ve lost track of the amount of times you’ve saved my ass, so it’s the least I could do. Plus, I have to protect every creature I come across to the best of my abilities.” I retorted. “Hey, my Pip-buck told me there was seven raiders in here. Did you kill another beside the one with the chair?”

“No, I didn’t. Just her and the one in that came at me from in here.” Her smirk disappeared and her eyes darted around. “Hopefully he just decided to run.”

I hoped he was sensible and decided to flee. We searched through the bottom floor, but found only blood stained beds, a kitchen full of skeletons, and a locked steel door. We agreed to clear the rest of the building before checking the room behind said door.

The upper floor of the clinic didn’t hold much hope for finding something better, but it was slightly cleaner than the first. This floor was mostly offices, with the odd examination room here and there. Most of the rooms were just full of smashed and broken desks, complemented with destroyed terminals and rusted and torn apart filing cabinets. The only items particularly of note within each room was the sterilized surgery equipment, which would sell for tidy sum of caps to any wasteland doctor worth their title. In the office which must have been the head doctor’s sat a safe which had been beaten and shot over and over, the raiders clearly attempting to break into it, but to no avail.

“You’re a scavenger. Open it.” Sparktrail demanded.

“You are incredibly bossy for a pony who looks like prewar taffy.” I said as I set to work picking the lock. Two of my bobby pins broke off due to excessive damage to the keyhole, but I eventually got it to turn over. Inside was a stack of folders, a paper which turned out to be the deed to the clinic, and a laser pistol, which was an odd discovery.

“Did doctors always carry, even before the war?” Sparktrail inquired.

“Some, but that was in the cities under constant threat. Dunno why the one in this quaint little clinic has something this advanced though.” I answered. She wasted no time floating the weapon into her saddlebags.

“Mind if I ask a question?”

“You just did.” I responded like a smartass. However, she wasted no time in jokingly smacking me with her rifle.

“Okay, jackass. As I was gonna say, the fuck is taffy?”

“It was a chewy treat that was super sweet and not at all good for you. The stuff came in a variety of colors, but my favorite was the kind that was purple and green, a combination of two different flavors. You happen to remind of that particular kind, hence why I call you ‘Taffy’ sometimes.”

She slightly blushed before putting on an angry face. “Well knock it off, cause you seem to forget that you don’t have a helmet and that I’m often standing behind you.” Was that a threat? Or maybe she was being playful.

We went back downstairs to the locked door only to find it unlocked and standing ajar. It let down into a basement, and there were rapid hoofprints descending the dusty stairs. I stepped in front of Sparktrail and slowly made my way down. Each board creaked and moaned loudly, and I feared that the weight of the armor would cause the two century old stairs to collapse. I landed the stone floor of the basement, and my companion followed not far behind. This basement clearly hadn’t been opened in the 200 years since it was locked, as the amount of dust that the pony hiding down here picked up made it incredibly easy to track them.

This main room in the basement was quite disappointing, with only washing machines, dryers, and spare blankets and sheets sitting on the shelves that covered the walls. There was one closed door that was in the opposite direction of the hoofprints, but I continued following the tracks as they led to the corner of the room.

“I can’t see shit down here, can you?” Sparktrail whispered.

“No. I don’t suppose you have a light or something, do you?” I asked. The light flooding through from the open door at the top of the stairs didn’t illuminate much past the base of the stairs.

“I’ve got a lighter, and I could probably tear a chunk off of these stairs.” I nodded to her, and she ripped a piece off of one of the steps before lighting it on fire with her lighter. She passed the torch over to me and picked up her rifle. I followed the prints in the dust over to a shivering mass huddled in the corner between two shelves. I physically had to push down the barrel of her rifle as she brought it level to the pony’s head. She looked at me quizzically as I mouthed “no” to her. I reached out and nudged the pony gently, however, right as I did, he spazzed out and turned to face us while beginning to blubber uncontrollably.

“I’m sorry my idiot friends tried to kill you and your friend! All we wanted was food, nothing ever comes by the clinic so we thought we could take you because we didn’t want to staaaarve.” He elongated the vowel as he began to sob. “Just please, don’t kill me!”

“If you want to live, get up and walk. Out of this basement, out of this building, and don’t stop until you are certain my friend can’t pick your head off with her rifle.” I ordered, looking over to Sparktrail as she began to smirk in an evil manner.

“Make it twice that.” She laughed maniacally. “After all, I’m incredibly precise with my lobotomy tool.” She shook her rifle menacingly as her pupils slowly began to narrow. The stallion immediately rose and bolted from the basement, crying in fear the whole way. She then turned to me, smiled, and walked towards the unopened door. This mare scared me more than Mom did.

Once I joined Sparktrail by the door, I promptly turned and kicked it open. I was delighted as this appeared to be the storage room. The shelves were lined with rags, operating masks and suits, potions, surgery tools, and a large assortment of extra supplies. Against the wall sat two ice boxes, and once open, revealed stores of rad-away and old blood samples. I moved all the radiation purging medicine into a crate, tied it to the armor, and filled one of my saddlebags with potions and other miscellaneous supplies. After checking through the weapons of the raiders for ammunition and guns in decent condition, we stepped through the door and followed the path back to where I last saw the ponies with the filly.

Author's Note

Level up! Persuading personality - your good morals and hopeful outlook combine with your reassuring voice, tipping arguments in your favor. Ponies are now 20% easier to persuade.

Thanks again to Kkat for inspiring me to write this, and to all of my friends who have helped in many ways, from grammar to lore checking and even persuading me to continue writing. I owe you all so much!