Chapter Five: Beginnings
“From small beginnings come great things”

“I still say we just take off with the medicine. A settlement doctor would have greater use for it, and they could pay us!” Sparktrail protested.

“No. We give the filly what she needs and then some, after that we can sell what’s left.” I responded. “And that’s final.”

As we passed over the hill, the slavers came into view. I quickened my pace as I realized they were all huddled around the filly again. We reached the group and I quickly undid the crate of rad-away, instructing them to make the filly drink one of the pouches. I also gave them some food as well as some water, mainly for the mother and the filly, all of it much to Sparktrail’s displeasure.

“Thank you for all of this. We talked and decided to give you what we had in caps.” The mother said, trying to give me a bag filled with caps. I promptly dumped half of it into a bundle of my own, gave that to Sparktrail, then floated the rest back to the group.

“I don’t want your money. My payment comes from knowing that filly will be okay.” This statement left half of the group dumbfounded, while the yellow-green one stepped towards me.

“You aren’t a Steel Ranger, are ya?” they asked.

“Nope. I’m just a pony who wants to help.” With that, I let the group think about what they did next and set off towards.

Some hours later, I was attempting to light a small fire while Sparktrail watched me struggle. We had walked in silence the whole way, and the only sound still was my occasional swearing as I attempted to get the still damp debris to light. Once the fire was lit, I sat awkwardly in front of it, the armor making actually sitting difficult, while she laid out a bed roll, not speaking the entire time. I had to break the silence before I went mad.

“The fuck are you so mad about?” I questioned, finally tired of the cold shoulder from her.

“First you offer to help a bunch of slavers with a sick filly, without even questioning if the filly was any of theirs. Then you give them the medicine they need and some of our food, only to turn down the money they try to pay you with.” She retorted.

“And? What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’re so blinded by a ‘need to help’ that you’re gonna get the both of us killed! I know you were raised into a life of scavenging, so why you would turn down money for services rendered is completely beyond me. You are either the dumbest or the kindest stallion I’ve ever met, but I’m leaning towards the former because of some of the shit you’ve pulled since I started travelling with you today alone!” So she was irritated that I refused the money from those ponies.

“Oh, well I’m sorry that I just wanted to help a dying filly, I guess I should have just let her die.” I said, and edge picking up in my voice.

“I don’t care that you helped the filly, I’m glad you did that, but I hate that you wouldn’t even let the pony-napping slavers pay you!”

“You’re upset that I helped out a group of ponies, no slaves in tow, who just so happened to by doing the right thing and trying to get medicine for a filly? That’s the most ignorant statement I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been around a lot of ponies racist towards zebras.”

“You could be helping good ponies instead of cozying up to murderers.”

“No shit. However, you weren’t out trying to help when I met you, instead you were guarding a caravan whose main purpose was to cheat ponies out of their money. Please, point me in the direction of the nearest settlement so that I can help them. But you can’t, because the only settlements you’ve been to are the ones where the caps roll and the fucking is good!” I yelled. I didn’t yell often, but she was seriously pissing me off. All I’ve done since leaving my home was try and help anypony I could. It didn’t matter to me who they were or what they looked like, because if they needed help, it was my duty to do so. The only thing Sparktrail had done so far was shoot things and then continue to shoot things, never once offering help and even trying to kill the ponies I was helping. Still, she had the nerve to criticize what I was doing, when I’m the only one actively aiding the inhabitants of the wasteland.

There was a long pause of silence, and I had thought Sparktrail had fallen asleep, as she was laying down facing away from the fire. However, I was soon aware of a quiet sniffling and . . . crying? It seemed that I had upset her with my blowup, which was incredibly odd, as she didn’t come off as the kind of pony who couldn’t handle being yelled at. I debated apologizing, but stopped as she quit making any noises, and her previous shaking slowed to a rhythmic breathing.

After drinking one of the brews for maintaining awareness, I noticed that Sparktrail slept fitfully. She jerked and whined often, waking up to even the slightest sound of something like the autocannon on my armor scraping against the side plating as I shifted around. Once an hour or two had passed, I figured out that I could make the armor sit in way when I was out of it that made it appear as if somepony was inside. With that settled and an alarm set on my Pip-buck, I attempted to sleep for a few hours.

I awoke some time after falling asleep to Sparktrail lightly smacking me in the face. She gestured to the beeping Pip-buck, of which I turned off and began to clean up our little camp. Breakfast was short and quick, then we were walking on the road again, hopefully towards a settlement that wouldn't get attacked when we showed up. At about mid-day, we were within the lower area of Baltimare, which the landscape was no longer tied together shops and businesses. The new area we found ourselves in seemed to be mostly suburbs, which one barely surviving town of settlers was situated.

The town consisted of seven run-down, barely standing pre-war homes. There were no walls, the only source of water was an irradiated pond, they subsisted on mutated plants, most of which barely grew on account of the nutrient dry soil, and the only form of defense was one ghoul earth pony who had laser weapon that was crank operated and looked as if it was cobbled together from a sprite-bot’s internal pieces.

“Excuse me mister, but can you help us?” A small grey colt with a light blue mane had silently moved close to me. He was half starved and had an infected cut along the side of his face.

“What’s wrong, little one?” I asked, lowering my head to see him.

“These really mean looking ponies came here a couple days ago and took our friends away.” He responded. So this was gonna be a rescue mission.

“Static, come back over here please. We don’t know them.” An elderly lime colored stallion with a bedraggled grey mane had walked into the doorway of one of the homes, and a small gathering of five ponies all had their eyes on us. I lifted my head to speak to the stallion in the doorframe, but before a single word left my mouth, he had begun to speak.

“I-it’s you! I’ve seen you before, a-and you’re finally here!” The pony stammered. I, however, had never met him before.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t think we’ve ever met.” I responded. Their ghoul was slowly walking towards me, and I kept watch over the actions of the other.

“He has these. . . visions. Something we call the ‘prescience’. He’s able to see stuff before it happens.” The guard stated, with a gruff East coast accent.

“I’ve seen you before. You’re searching for something, but you just don’t know where to look.” The elderly stated. How in Luna’s starry flank did he know that? “You and your friend are destined to do great things, and your journey begins here.”

“What was that you said about my search? Can your visions help me?” I questioned.

“I cannot at this moment. I can tell you more, if you rescue our members and bring me a few select chems”

“Do you know where your friends are?”

“They are but workers to an evil pony, one who operates under the gaze of an eye of red. The captured ones are forced to create metal dug from the land and send it across the wastes.” Was all that he answered with. After talking to the ghoul and the other settlers, we were certain that the slavers were holed up inside of an old steel factory, under the command of who we believed was one of Red Eye’s most trusted lackey’s. The facility was just north of here, situated in the hill side.

This group happened to have power armor and flamers, and suburb situated around the steel plant was full of feral ghouls, so it was easy for them to move in once they secured the building. However, as the ghouls formed quite a threat to any pony that dared approach the facility from the ground, they didn’t need to exert extra forces into taking the town because nothing short of a group of well trained mercs could easily move into the ruins, but even then the raiders themselves were extremely ferocious, using the furnace within the plant as an initiation ritual. They apparently killed any who whined, whimpered, flinched, or even looked a different direction when undergoing the rituals, which resulted in only the toughest of the tough actually surviving.

“Well, how are we gonna do this? Should we sneak inside or just blow the front door open?” Sparktrail asked, but before I could answer a murmur erupted within the small gathering around us as an orange colored unicorn mare with bandages wrapped around her face, torso, and rear walked out from one of the nearby houses.

“What happened to her?” I questioned as she neared the crowd.

“She was one of their victims when those slavers last came through. Her and her coltfriend tried to stand up to them, and they shot the stallion and did just awful things to her.” The ghoul responded. The mare walked up to me with a look of determination and a yearning for revenge in her eyes.

“Are you going after the rest of our members?” The bandaged mare asked. There was no doubt about it.

“Yes, we most certainly are.” I responded.

“You understand that they’re dangerous and ruthless, right? I would leave her here.” she said, motioning to Sparktrail.

“I know the risks, and I can handle myself in a fight.” Sparktrail stated in that cocky manner.

“Then there is something I want to teach you.” The mare told me. “Do you already know shield spells?”

Half an hour later, we were making our way towards the Baltimare Steel Plant, with some extra potions, bandages, bullets, and a new spell. When I focused on it, I was able to cast an orange tinted bubble shield either entirely around me or in a much larger half circle in front of me, both of which would be extremely useful against flame spewing maniacs.

As we entered the outlying homes of the suburb, the steel plant looming overhead like monster about to pounce on its unwary prey, my E.F.S didn’t light up with dozens of red dots like I thought it would. Perhaps the slavers decided to clear out the town after all, which would mean they had numbers remaining inside the town itself to make sure it isn’t overrun again. Which meant their forces would be spread thinner than originally anticipated, or perhaps they got reinforcements.

As we made our way onto the mainstreet of this suburb, one red dot appeared in my E.F.S, and as I looked for the source of the danger, a terrifying sight befell my eyes. On the other end of the street sat two large, grey, four story office buildings that were connected by a tunnel between the tops of each building, and hung from this overpass were dozens of mutilated, bloody corpses. However, the most terrifying aspect of this nightmare scene was the earth pony standing in the overpass who had just flung a firebomb at me.

“Oh Celestia's sunlit ass!” I exclaimed as I attempted to focus on casting a shield in front of me, all while Sparktrail dived behind me for cover. Just as the protective barrier fully formed, the bomb impacted the shield, bursting into flames as the fuel inside sprayed over the ground and the shield. The heat was incredible, but at least I was alive. Sparktrail, not missing her chance, quickly fired a round directly into the pony’s skull.

As she did so, my E.F.S lit up with dozens of red enemy indicators, all of them seeming to come from all around us. There wasn’t anything out in the open yet, but I noticed a mass of blurred figures moving on the second floor of the left tower. Of course! They were all hiding within the buildings.

“Topaz, please tell me that missile launcher is actually loaded!” Sparktrail pleaded as she turned my attention to a horde of ghouls running through the streets behind us. I spun around and, using S.A.T.S, targeted one ghoul in the middle of the mass of shambling would be corpses, and fired. The missile tore through the soft part of that ghoul’s neck, striking a pegasus ghoul and exploding, raining blood and other entrails down around us. My E.F.S indicated about 15 more coming from the building on the left of us, and used another missile to blow the bottom level of that structure apart, causing the entire building to collapse into itself, eliminating most of the dots immediately.

With almost every ghoul dead, a task which proved to be much easier than initially thought, we were able to move through the streets up to the steel plant, where we got our first taste of what kind of maniacs and psychopaths were living here. We approached the front entrance, of which was hardly fortified, with the exception of a few guard platforms and watch towers. A slave drawn wagon was being pulled into an open bay door on the building, the driver whipping the poor ponies relentlessly as they struggled to pull the cart uphill into the facility.

“Shoot that fucker.” I demanded, to which Sparktrail promptly responded, placing a bullet right in the driver’s ear lobe before quickly dispatching the other four guards that sat out front.

“Now what? Still sticking to the original plan?” my companion asked.

“You saw what they were doing to those slaves. Of course we’re still kicking the door down.” I responded.

“Why not go through that open door over there?”

“That’s where most of the slaves will be. We’ll need to go through a different door if minimizing the chance of casualties is what we’re after. Draw the slavers to us and away from the ponies being forced to work.”

I moved towards the main door, taking a moment to take in the layout of the building as well as the outside. The outside of the steel factory was covered in faded prewar signs. Upon entering the facility, we were nearly deafened by the roar of furnaces and the clanging of metal. The walls and ceiling were covered in a heavy layer of rust, while the concrete floor was covered in blood, dust, and scrap metal. Catwalks hung from the ceiling, with guards constantly patrolling and watching the slaves work below them. I noticed that different work appliances had numbers on them, all ranging from one to seven. Area one appeared to load chunks of raw ore into cards, two pushed to the carts to three and helped one, three dumped the ore into one of the large smelting furnaces, four poured the smelted ore into various frames and shapes, five removed the barely cooled steel, six stacked the steel, and seven loaded it onto carts and wagons.

“Station four, pick up the slack or you get no rations, a whipping, and a night in the guards’ quarters.” A unicorn pony with a steel plate grafted onto his face shouted with an evil grin. The six starved and battered ponies at station four struggled to keep up with the work order, causing the other stations to que up around them. One pony, a frail mare that barely had enough meat on her to keep her skeleton from popping out of her skin, fell on the stairs when she tried to release the lock on the furnace bucket, and found herself unable to stand.

“Hey, get up!” Faceplate yelled as he levitated up a battered old hunting rifle and aimed it at the mare. Using S.A.T.S, I targeted the rifle, and with one quick burst of my autocannon, the gun was blown into three different pieces. The boom of my weapon caused silence throughout the entire building.

“Why don’t you get on the ground and help her!” Sparktrail yelled as she leveled her rifle, sending a round right into the eye of his faceplate.

“Kill those fuckers!” One of the guards ordered as I targeted two more slavers, allowing the cannon to roar as it ripped through my adversaries. Three more slavers appeared on the catwalks above us and started to fire, but ceased to be an issue as I fired a missile, taking the catwalk out with them and cutting off any possible reinforcements from above.

“Get one of the big guys in armor in there!” A pony in a nearby room screamed. Never fought a pony in power armor before. This should prove to be fun and destructive. The two things Sparktrail seemed to enjoy.

Suddenly, a pony in a full suit of power armor crashed through a nearby wall, sending rubble and other debris across the room. His armor, however, was unlike mine. It had only one weapon, a side mounted flamethrower, and presumably a large fuel tank encased in what I assumed was multiple layers of steel. The armor itself had thick plating on the front of the legs, chest, and head, but it lacked in thickness on the backside.

The pony began to spew flame in our direction, however the fire merely rolled off my shield, leaving Sparktrail and I unharmed. While holding the barrier, I simultaneously targeted the chest piece of the flame pony’s armor with S.A.T.S, the three rounds impacting the plating and causing the pony to stumble backwards slightly. I was surprised to find that the crumpled rounds didn’t fall out of the steel, they instead remained inside the dented chestplate. No wonder the armor plating was so thick, there was no repair matrix within the suit!

“His armor doesn’t repair itself!” I informed Sparktrail, but I was fairly sure she already had the same idea - shoot him until that armor can’t stop anything. She began to fire relentlessly at the pony’s head as I let the rounds from the autocannon continually impact his chest. After a couple dozen shots, the welding cracked on the plating, causing the largest one to fall off, giving Sparktrail the opportunity to fire a shot into the soft area his under armor mesh. He dropped instantly, much to Sparktrail’s delight.

“You’re in need of a heart transplant, and I’m the surgeon!” She declared with an insane grin. I should never piss her off. Eight more attackers had moved out from the hole in the wall, and three more were beginning to push through the rubble where the catwalk collapsed, all while another five moved through the door behind us. They slowly pushed us into the work floor of the plant, and all the workers were beginning to move behind me and my barrier in order to avoid the hellfire raining down on us. I was unable to stop every bullet that impacted the shield, and I was strained to maintain the barrier as it was, and the heat of the smelting furnace next to me wasn’t helping my increasing exhaustion.

Another round pierced the shield tore into Sparktrail’s front right hoof, causing her to buckle from pain. I moved and stood over her to protect her as more and more rounds made it through the barrier. One pierced the upper part of my left ear, tearing the tip off, and another grazed my cheek. I heard a pony scream behind me, and I turned to see that bullet had hit her flank, and like that, I was failing to protect ponies again. These slaves had gained hope when I literally kicked the door in, shot Faceplate’s gun, and blew the catwalk off of the ceiling. Now I was failing to protect them, as was what I came here to do, what I used this armor to do, what I was meant to do.

Slipping into S.A.T.S one last time, I targeted the rear hoof of a slaver who had steel grafted onto his front hooves, letting the rounds blow his leg apart and impact the casing on the fuel tank on the dead pony with power armor, tearing the plating open and exposing the container inside, then fired my final missile at the tank. I pushed all that I had left of my magical stamina into bolstering the shield as the fireball erupted, swallowing the the advancing slavers in the flames.

After the flames cleared, I helped Sparktrail stand up and bandaged her hoof, then went around bandaging and cleaning each of the slaves according to their condition. The poor ponies were from settlements all over the wasteland. Some were from the Tenpony Tower area, some were from Dodge City, Northern bits of the wasteland, Southern areas, all over, but most were from the suburb settlement that had sent us here. Perhaps the most interesting pony of them all was one named Brandy Bottle, a caramel brown mare with a dark brown mane, orange eyes, and a bottle as a mark. She looked interestingly close to Sparktrail, and said she wished there was “more ass-kicking ponies like you” when talking to me about a small settlement protecting army she had been in some years ago before a group of raiders slaughtered most of them.

Brandy offered to guide the liberated slaves back to the suburb, and Sparktrail and I moved to find the leader of this operation and shut it down for good. We moved through the hole in the wall and up a flight of stairs with “Offices” labeled on a sign next to them. We ascended the stairs, and heard a distinct shouting coming from the level above us.

“Steel Rangers, that bitch ass little militia group, nothing!” A stallion screamed. “Not one of those were able to make it past the front fucking door! Why is this dipshit and his stupid whore marefriend able to slaughter our entire force! You are an absolute failure!” A gunshot rang out from the upstairs, and I noticed that Sparktrail was grinding her teeth. We moved up another floor, and heard what I figured was a mare in the same room.

“M-master, maybe i-if you leave n-now, you can come b-back and take over again.” A meek sounding mare said. Wonderful, a pony who had been raped to the point she loved her captor.

“I’m going to kill that cock sucker by making him choke to death on his own dick!” Sparktrail angrily declared. At this point, I’d help her remove it. I had an odd sense of having been here before, and that was when I remembered the field trip my class had been on, to this very steel plant, in order to meet a pony in power armor.

Assuming the stallion thought we were outside shooting at his forces, I used the element of surprise to ram the door to his room in, and continued the charge in order to knock the stallion off his hooves, causing him to drop the revolver held in his mouth. He impacted the wall on the opposite side of the room, and I pressed my hoof onto his back to keep him from getting up. There was a mare and, strangely enough, a stallion chained to the nearby wall. I awaited Sparktrail’s dark humored joke or a quick quip or anything, but all I found was her standing in the doorway with a shellshocked expression on her face.

“Get off of… Oh my, how nice to see you again, my little slut.” The stallion said as he saw her. I immediately extended his front right hoof and stomped down on it as hard as I physically could. “Gah, fuck!” He exclaimed as I lifted my hoof off of his horribly bent and deformed limb. “What, can’t handle your marefriend getting called what she is? Seven different stallions in one day!” He jabbed, turning his attention to me. How dare he insult my friend, to call her a slut, to suggest she’s a whore, any of that.

“Shut up. I’m going to tell you that I have an excellent understanding of medicine, not to mention that I was raised by a zebra. Basically, I know how to cause you as much pain as possible without you passing out or dying.” I hissed. The slaver began to giggle maniacally, his blue eyes staring at me in a crazed manner. His deep blue body was covered in scars and markings, his black mane with streaks of deep crimson laid in a shaggy manner on his head.

Suddenly Sparktrail was beside me, a look in her eyes giving me the immediate indication that I should move now. She allowed the stallion to slowly stand before immediately spinning and bucking the stallion in his rear leg with a resounding crack!

“Yes, there was seven different ponies each day, but I was a filly!” She screamed as she kicked him in the face. “I bet you love to fuck fillies, don’t you, ya sick bastard!” She levitated out her knife, driving it directly into the downed pony’s eye. He began to scream from the pain, but he was silenced when she brought the stock of her rifle onto his muzzle with enough force to crack out four of his remaining teeth.

“You… were always a little bitch.” The stallion stated. “You cried if a stallion even looked at you!” My gaze wandered away from my companion as she beat who I assumed was a former tormentor of hers, and noticed that both the chained up mare and stallion had burn marks on them, except they weren’t burn marks. The burns were brands. Sparktrail looked to me and followed my gaze to the furnace in the corner of the room, with an already heated branding iron sitting in the coals. I looked back to her, then to the tied up mare, then back to Sparktrail, and I nodded to her.

“I’ll show you who’s the little bitch!” She growled, levitating the glowing steel rod over to her. She yanked the stallion’s tail away, and grinned as he began to whimper, and jammed the red-hot iron into his rear end. His scream echoed throughout the building, and I found myself cringing as Sparktrail smiled wider and twisted the rod left and right. His body eventually gave out from the shock, we released the chained slaves from the wall, and left the Baltimare Steel Plant.

Author's Note

Level up! - Destructive force - Due to your time and training with your power armor and its weapons, you now have an increase of up to 20% accuracy when targeting critical areas in S.A.T.S.

I want to take this moment to thank my readers, I appreciate you guys taking the time out of your lives in order to read my story. Seriously, you guys are the best! I also need to express my gratitude to my friend and editor Stellae, because not only did you convince me to write this story, but you’ve also pushed me onwards when I wanted to quit, not just the story but life itself.