Raiders, Monsters, and Opportunists) Inevitably a Stable Dweller is going to make a scene at some point after those initial 24 hours, it always happens. There are many theories as to why, old world courage, stable tec brand stupidity, a desire to do what's right because it's the right thing to do, all of the above, etc. But regardless of what you believe the fact is still true, there's something special about Stable Dwellers that makes it possible for us to do great things if we live long enough, and back then, there were very powerful groups that thought the same way…… and it scared the hell out of them...

Entry 3: It's been a day since my last entry, I poked around some of the blasted out houses near the storm drain. They’re spaced out a good distance from each other, but the amount of houses quickly begins to grow the further you get from the hill. There wasn't much in the houses, actually there wasn’t much left of the houses themselves, just blasted out frames of houses. There wasn’t many signs of pony life either, just the occasional radroach skittering around, I didn’t bother wasting my bullets on the giant mutated roaches, as my hooves had more than enough experience crushing the rat sized pieces of shits whenever they dug into maintenance over the years. Still I was able to get my hooves on a can of some pork and beans, a box of ‘sugar apple bombs’ cereal, a bottle of dirty water, and a tin of ‘cram’. I ate the cram for lunch, it was alright, it was slimy and really salty, but also kinda tasty. I also grabbed some more bits of scrap metal and two broken radios, one of which actually looked pretty salvageable. I decided to wait to go into the outer limits of what seemed to be Apple Hills proper, with far more houses bunched up closer together. But right before I turned around to head back, I noticed a body lying next to a nearby fence.

It was an earth pony mare that had a black hole surrounded by burned off flesh in her neck. Flies had shown up, and there wasn't anypony around either, and by the stench she had probably been killed a while ago. All she had were the rags she wore and her weapon that laid in front of her. It was covered in rust, looked to be made out of old pieces of pipe attached to a rough wood stock with bailing wire, and worked by moving a bolt sticking out of the side up, back, forward, and down to load and eject rounds, at least, most of the time. Like I said, when I picked it up it was clear right off the bat that it was in pretty bad shape, my pipbuck also confirmed that observation by listing my new ‘Pipe Hunting Rifle’s condition as ‘bad’, the bolt stuck, bullets would either not load or they would fail to leave the barrel, it was a piece of shit. But it was still another weapon, and one that fired much bigger and more powerful .308 rounds.

Carrying the rifle with me, I trotted back to my storeroom and spent the afternoon making the place more livable. This consisted mainly of walking back to the junction and grabbing the empty foot locker, medical box, and the comforter and remaining pillow from the tower bed. So now that I had a place to securely store my belongings and medical supplies, and more comforts for my sleeping arrangements, I set to work fixing up the old rifle, trying to clean out some of the dirt and grime from the mechanism and taping the stock on a little more tightly, I was able to get the status from ‘bad’ to ‘very worn’. I also got a good look at how the inside worked, it was pretty simple when you got down to it, almost the same as how the pistol worked, but instead of moving the slide on its own, the user would have to move it themselves between each shot. The magazine also didn’t appear to be removable, as whoever made it had screwed the magazine into the stock itself, so if a pony wanted to reload it, they would have to shove them into the top of the rifle with the bold in the back position.

I then cooked the beans (a small amount of scrap wood from the houses and the papers in the desk made good fuel) in their can and ate them, savoring that yummy thick liquid with those 240 year old beans while I cannibalized one radio for its parts and fiddled with the other. After a while I settled in for the night early, choosing to write a new entry tomorrow when more stuff happened.

And happened they most certainly did.

I woke up to the chime of my pipbuck’s alarm at 6AM, I knew I didn’t need to stick to my old scheduled wake up, but I wanted to head into apple hills proper today and I sure as hell didn’t want to get caught in a storm in the middle of the fucking night again, so I decided to leave early. I clicked my alarm off and stretched, “ungh, this cot sucks. OK, note to self, find an old mattress while in town to steal, maybe two, or even three for good measure, I’ll make a nice stack out of them to sleep on, then I can pitch this piece of garbage into the sewer water”. I floated my barding and gun belt up to me, putting them both on, then I floated up my bag and foot locker. I actually took inventory of everything in another page, I’ll just copy what I wrote here.

• • Stuff I’m carrying:
  • my utility Barding
    • MY Screwdriver
    • Flip Lighter
    • Duct tape
  • Mailbag
    • Canteen
    • Journal
    • Healing bandages
    • Sugar Apple Bombs
    • Roseluck Pest Solutions Passcard
  • Security Belt
    • Pistol
    • Pistol Clip x3
  • Dog Tags
  • Pipe Hunting Rifle
  • Stored
  • Bottle of Dirty water
  • Scrap metal x3
  • Scrap electronics
  • Audio recorder
  • Mentals (3 tablets) [+1 INT, +1 PER]

Sufficiently geared up, I locked up my service room and went out of the drain and up to the top of the hill. I sat down at the top, facing the east, as I ripped open the top of my cereal. This was the second reason I didn’t want to sleep in again, yesterday when I left the drain, I realized I missed the sunrise, something I immediately regretted. So this morning I woke up a bit earlier hoping to catch it, and thankfully my usual wake up landed right in the middle of that gray time between night and day. I think it was called….. Twilight? Yeah, twilight, a nice name, (I think I’ve heard that name used in another circumstance before but I can't seem to remember it right now). So I sat there on the hill eating the sugary goodness in my box as I watched twilight give way to day as the sun rose over the horizon. I was beautiful, and I didn’t have large clouds or train cars blocking my view, I was able to watch unimpeded, as the sun rose into the clear sky and cast light down upon the dead city of Apple Hills.

It wasn’t a city in the sense of large skyscrapers (though there were some higher buildings farther out), but it was still just as wide, bringing true meaning to the phrase suburban sprawl. I was just beyond the outskirts of a large field of small, almost identical houses.

I threw my empty cereal box to the side and made myself a to do list, as I was in need of some different things.
TO DO:
-Find more food
-Find a real mattress
-Find a spark battery for radio
-Find another living pony
I set off into the suburb proper, walking past the dead mare that was still buzzing with flies, and began searching houses. There wasn’t much, just more scraps of trash, and nothing of any particular value to me. By the third house I found a locked safe (sigh) and a terminal on a desk next to it. I was able to hack in pretty easy, and there was an option to open the safe! I clicked the button and heard a simultaneous click from the safe. Opening it, I found a recipe for ‘dash’, a sawn off double barreled shotgun, a box of 10 12 gauge buckshot shells, and a bag full of bits! (1,000!). I took everything except the note, which I just held over my pipbuck screen for a second or two until I saw a notification saying ‘note added, Dash Recipe’, then dropped it on the floor. It was a of drug made out of fertilizer and chemicals from melted plastic and then put inside an inhaler, it was also Rock’s main staple back in the day. Who knows, maybe I could set up my own drug ring someday, “that is if I can FIND ANYPONY!”, I yelled at the roof.

I listened for a minute, waiting for something to respond, but was just met with more silence, great. I continued picking around the scraps of the suburb, eventually I did find two old belts that I tied together to use as a carrying strap for my rifle. I opened the shotgun and loaded in two shells before returning it to my belt, then took a swig from my canteen as I continued walking down the road. My geiger counter clicked a little with the sip, I was still well in the green, but I still didn’t feel comfortable being irradiated whenever I got a little thirsty.

I walked out into an intersection at the end of a road with some bigger buildings on it. This street had small one story stores lining either side, with a post office towards the middle on the right side, a small police station on the far left corner, a small pharmacy next to me, and at the very end of the street there was a small church, with a three story high bell tower overlooking the street. When I looked at the top of the tower I saw him, a piss yellow buck looking out from the steeple to the east.

“Hello!?” I called out. The pony in the tower looked my way startled, the dropped down out of sight. “Wait! I just want to ta-” the buck popped out holding a rifle!

BOOM!

A straight streak of lightning fired from the rifle into the pavement next to me, sending me sprawling on my side in shock, quickly scrambling to cover behind a mailbox as another shot hit near me.

“I’m gonna fucking kill ya! HA HA!” I heard from down the street.

“What the fuck man! I’m friendly! I just want to talk!”

“Great! It'll make killing you a lot easier!”

I leaned back against the blue box as I muttered to myself, “great, the first living pony I meet up here is a fucking psychopath”. Suddenly a shock went through the metal box, sending me into a five second spasm on the ground. “O-oh game O-ON M-M-MOTHERFUCKER!”

I pulled out my rifle and peeked out from cover, I tried lining up a shot, but had to jump back behind the box when a shot missed my head by an inch, this wasn’t going well. I took a deep breath, then bolted into the pharmacy next to me. The inside was a wreck but I didn’t care until that belltower fuck was dealt with. I jumped over the counter where the glass barrier had been broken down, and ran out the back door, following the alley down to the end.

I took a careful peek around the corner, the yellow buck was staring down the street towards the pharmacy where I’d been. I pulled the rifle up, lining up the crosshairs with his head, then pulled the trigger. The rifle nearly flew out of my telekinetic grasp as the rifle kicked back, the shot went wide though, hitting the wooden siding just under him.

“SHIT!” He yelled as he turned and fired at me.

The white bolt grazed my poor right foreleg as I dove back in cover, making a blistering red burn. “AGHH!”, I yelled, tears formed in my eyes as I dropped the rifle and pulled out my bandages and wrapped the wound. Then I picked my rifle back up, and jumped out from behind the corner, aiming my rifle at… where did he go?

WHAM

I had the breath knocked out of me as I was tackled to the ground. I looked up at the buck in time to have the rifle’s stock bash into my face, breaking my focus on my rifle as everything started to spin. He knelt down on my shoulders as he pressed the lens at the end of his rifle against my forehead, I watched as he rotated a crank on the side, making the glass jar at the end crackle with blue electricity.

“Time to die bonehead!” He said as he moved his right hoof to fire the rifle.

“You got that right”

I telekinetically shoved the rifle to the right and his head towards me a split second before he fired, biting down hard on his ear before he could pull away.

“AGH! GET OFF!” he yelled as he yanked his head back, but I held onto his ear like my life depended on it. I began to taste blood a second before he yanked back hard, sending him sprawling back while leaving his ear behind in my mouth. “AAAAHH! YOU FUCKER!” he yelled in pain.

I shoved him away from me and pulled out my shotgun as he grabbed my dropped rifle.

Click BOOM!

The sounds of his trigger pull and my shot were separated by half a second, but my gun was the one that fired, turning his head into red chunks. I just laid there for a second before spitting out the ear I had bit off. I kept lying there when I saw a notification ‘objective complete: Find another living pony’, I snorted and laughed, “that's not what I meant!” I said through a chuckle, “I meant a sane pony!”.

I sat up and picked up my hunting rifle from the dead earth pony's hooves. Floating it over I tried the trigger… nothing. “OK, cards on the table, I know you fired first”, I said to the corpse, “so why am I not the one dead on the road right now?”. I moved the bolt back and forth, figuring it might have been a dud bullet, only to see an empty casing fall out instead. “What the-” I closed my eyes and sharply inhaled as a realization hit me, “oh I am a fucking idiot! I didn’t put in a new round! You died because of my stupidity!”. I pushed the bolt forward and put another round.into the barrel, reloaded my shotgun, then threw the rifle back over my shoulders, now looking at my new rifle.

I floated the weapon over to me, it was as long as my hunting rifle, with a glass jar that looked to have a small cloud trapped inside it at the end. There was a crank mechanism attached to the back of the jar with a handle protruding from the weapon’s right side. When I cranked the handle it rotated a piece of metal that went through the middle of the jar, agitating the cloud and making sparks of lightning appear inside. Underneath jar was a wood stock that had a flat hoof-trigger on the bottom in lieu of a traditional mouthgrip (no wonder the buck was holding it weirdly in his hooves). When the trigger was depressed, it made a capacitor at the front of the jar make contact with the rod, causing the lightning to arc through the capacitor into a crystal at the other end, which then jolted forward to a magnifying mirror suspended further forward from the jar with what looked like half of a broom handle. The end result was a bolt of lighting fired at an enemy. I looked at my pipbuck, it had named it as a ‘Lightning Musket’, (which was pretty fitting, since it fired lightning). It wasn't nearly as big of a bolt as the one that struck the other night, but it was still a gun that fired lightning! After a test fire or two (or three… Ok several) test shots, I found that the gun had no recoil and that more cranks = more power, but the cloud couldn't seem to get more agitated beyond two cranks. I shot the gun one more time, as a new idea processed into my head. I would need some metal rails and some actual tools, but I was pretty sure I knew what I could turn this thing into.

There was also a string with some pendant wrapped around the stock, with two feathers tied to the pendant, one crimson and the other orange, which I found kind of odd.

I searched the body next, surprised to find that he had been wearing an apple hills police vest, along with some sports knee guards. I took all of them and put them on, since the police vest provided light damage protection and the knee pads gave me... knee... protection. There wasn’t much else on him, so I decided to check out his belltower.

The church was a wreck, with the pews covered in skeletons, all centuries old. They all probably came here to pray when the sirens blared, with no hope for survival they must have seen holy salvation as their only hope, instead of doing something rational like getting to somewhere remotely safe. I got to the back of the church and went up to the belltower.

When I popped out of the hatch I found the bandit’s stash piled on a sleeping bag in the corner. Three cans of cram, a bottle of pure water, two boxes of cereal, three healing potions, two inhalers of dash, a pair of binoculars, and a skillet ‘objective complete: Find More Food’, “yes indeed pipbuck, yes indeed”. I pocketed all of it and walked back down to street level, spitting on the bandit’s corpse as I trotted by.

I took things a bit slower now, going through back alleys and moving from cover to cover when I crossed an open street. I was trying not to run into any more “raiders” as my pipbuck informed me, which turned out to be a good idea as I almost ran into two different groups of them at different places, pretty clearly marked out with camps and buildings covered in dismembered pony corpses. It also helped that my EFS marked them out as red bars on my compass, giving me an early warning, like when I saw a group moving towards a corner ahead of me. I ducked behind a shed, but kicked an empty can as I did so.

“You guys h-hear that!?” shit

I quickly scrambled through a bedroom window above me as I heard hoofsteps run around the corner. I threw myself against the wall and floor under the window. There was no way I was going to be able to kill five of these guys on my own.

“Twitchy, what the fuck you twiggered bitch!” I heard one mare say right before I heard another one get smacked “You nearly gave me a heart attack! Run off like that again and I’ll beat your ass! You hear me!”

“But I th-thought I h-heard sssomething!” she slurred out.

“NO! All you heard was some bullshit you're dashed off head thought it heard you good for nothing bitch!”

“Oh lay off her rusty”, a buck said, “I thought I heard something too”.

“You did!? Then why didn’t you say something!”

“I just did you stupid bitch. Plus pit did find that dead mare the other day with a hole cooked into her neck, and only that gun Lemons ran off with could do something like that”.

“Fuck, I wish we would just find where that little rat ran off to by now! The boss has done nothing but flip his shit ever since his special gun went missing!”. I looked at the gun I had cradled in my hooves, and now wanted to be anywhere else.

“Maybe h-he’s hiding out at-t the park!” Twitchy said brightly, receiving another smack immediately after.

“You dumb bitch! No pony is crazy enough to go anywhere near the park, not even you!”, there was a pause, “actually, I'm not so sure!” I heard a mare get tackled to the ground, then I heard a mare choking “so let me get this through your head. Do. Not. Go. To. The. Park. I don't need you leading something back to kill us all, especially me or Blade. You understand?”, She said in a low, serious tone.

Twitchy sounded like she was trying to respond, but all that came out were more chokes. “I can't hear you!”.

“Yo lay off Rusty, you’ll kill her at this rate”.

“Fine”, she said in an irritated voice before releasing her, “besides, I get to have fun with that new slave back at the Shithole!” She said brightly as they all walked off, with Rusty debating just how she was going to flay that ‘fresh earth pony meat’ alive.

Once the voices were gone I peeked my head over the windowsill. “Wow, now she is a real piece of work”. I thought through what they had said, I had already killed Lemons (also, LEMONS!? I nearly got killed by a pony named Lemons! I don't know whether I should feel amused that the big bad sniper had a comical name, or ashamed that he would have killed me if I had actually used my rifle properly) and taken his rifle, a rifle that some bandit boss wanted badly. There was also some park that the bandits were deathly afraid of, to the point of not searching. I looked at my map, and there appeared to be a clearing in the houses not far to the southeast of where I was.

I knew it was a bad idea, but I placed a map marker on the park and started making my way there. Part of me wanted to see what had these bandits so scared, and a part of me wanted to try and get away from what was clearly bandit territory and back home along a route that they wouldn’t be on.

I got outside the area where the raider’s had their roadblocks and patrols pretty quickly, and soon found myself dealing with just the usual wildlife. The Lighting Musket (It needs, no, deserves a better name), took out most of them no problem as my pipbuck identified them, radroaches, radhogs, bloatsprites (fucking nasty fleshy blobs with wings that shoot stingers), the only touch of trouble I had was when some big wolf thing called a ‘watchman’ almost as big as me jumped out of a ruined house and pounced on me! Thankfully I had started to develop a reaction to at least throw up my forelegs before it landed on me. I jabbed the barrel of my shotgun right into its forehead and blew its head off right next to mine, covering my head in blood all the way down to the blue collar on my barding. I stood up and washed the crimson blood off as best as I could with the water from my canteen and the fur on the dead watchman while the ringing in my ears cleared away. There was still some blood on me, but I wasn’t dripping anymore. The thing looked like some kind of big wolf, but it had four large claws at the ends of its forelegs, two shorter ones at the ends of its hind legs, a mashed in snout, a long rat like tail, and bushy coarse black fur.

I staggered to the side and continued walking. Despite the whole ‘I may die’ part, I was actually starting to like killing things, I wish I hadn’t had to kill Lemons, or that security guard, or Ticker, but one was in self defense, one was on accident, and one got in the way! Shooting the mutants is fun though, radroach, BOOM, radhog, BOOM, I also got in some more practice with my pistol, finishing off the remaining two rounds in my clip and using up an entire other one getting the hang of it. Guns were fun! I wish I knew how the inside components worked, but I don’t want to rip apart something as vital as one of my guns and not know how to put it back together. I did some more thinking as I walked, I wondered how things were going down in the stable, a murder was already a pretty big tragedy, a double murder was unheard of! Plus normally the stable would get retribution by hanging the culprit in the atrium and moving on, but in this case the murderer escaped… I escaped.

That last thought made me stop for a moment, I’m a murderer, even if what happened to Ticker was technically ponyslaughter, I still murdered a security guard in cold blood for doing his job. I even have his gun…. I hope it wasn’t Rock, I mean we weren’t really friends, but he was the pony who opened my eyes to the truth and was the only pony I could ever talk to, and I always felt owed him for that. I mean, I had to do it, there was no way I was going to be able to prove the truth about what really happened to Ticker.

What scares me the most though is the fact that I don't feel bad about killing another pony, I feel bad for being a murderer. I thought maybe it was just the adrenaline at the time but even now, thinking back on it, the minor amount of guilt I feel isn't because I ended another life, it's because what I did was wrong. But deep down, I don't care, and that scares the shit out of me. I had a reason to do it (even if it was selfish), so I did it….. But can I really apply that kind of cold logic to just take another pony's life so easily? I guess so….. Maybe, I just don't want to become some kind of monster out here, killing whoever I like because I feel like it.

My arrival at the park ended my internal concerns, It was a square surrounded by houses, with a school at one end and a pond in the middle with a single forlorn swan boat floating in the center. I hid inside an adjacent house and scanned the park with my binoculars, “ok what’s living in this park, giant radioactive spiders? Mutant ponies? Zombies? Invisible chupacabras with automatic weapons?”. I spent an hour scanning that plaza but there wasn’t anything, no monsters or mutants, nothing. There were signs posted at the end of the street that I came from reading ‘keep the hell out!’, ‘The Authority left something behind!’ and ‘SWAN’ in dark red paint, whatever those meant. As a last test, I threw an empty can out of the window into the road, nothing, just silence.

I made sure my rifle was charged and slowly stepped out, “Hello!? Anything out here!?”. After a couple minutes of silence I dropped my guard, “ok... so much for all the hype”. I started to trot towards the large school building, as I had been scanning the courtyard my attention was drawn to this place multiple times, the windows on the south side of the building were all covered with plates of dark shiny steel, with the doorknob on a side door replaced with a metal rectangle that had a glowing orange light at the bottom. All the metal parts appeared to be fairly new too! Like somepony had placed them within the last couple decades.

I trotted towards the building, pondering why the raiders were so scared of this place. Was there something in the building? In that case I probably shouldn’t go in there…. But I was still going to, because I’m an idiot I guess. The sign said something about some Authority leaving something behind, but it didn’t say what, and the other sign just said SWAN. I stopped across the street from the school and looked back at the swan boat, with its paint peeling and a wing missing. I pointed my rifle at it and fired a shot into it because I could, then turned back to the school.

That's when I heard a roar from behind me that made my mane stand on end.

I turned around to see a giant, two story tall, monstrosity of a pony in the middle of the lake, with giant mounds of white flesh, large tubes running into and out of various parts of its body, a bunch of metal plates built into its body in various places, a metal hatch on the top of its head, the old swan boat tied to its back, and a large glowing red lens for a right eye, with a red beam of light focusing on me.

I screamed, pissed myself, and ran like I never ran before towards the school.

I ran to the closest doors to me (the main ones) with the the thing chasing me, I didn't dare turn around, but I could feel the ground shaking as it caught up fast! I threw open the doors with my magic and cleared the doorway right as a massive, putrid white hoof struck through the door, sending me flying across the main hall and smashing to a halt into a display case. I laid on the floor disoriented as I watched the massive thing try to reach me through the doors, thankfully too large to fit. Red light washed over the room as it looked through a second floor lobby window, narrowing in on me before it let out another roar that could probably be heard all the way across town. It bashed its body against the wall a couple of times, sending concrete dust and pictures frames falling to the floor, before stomping away.

I dug out two healing potions and drank them, healing my bruised body, and stood up. I was still a little rattled, but thankfully the building seemed capable of keeping it out…. For now.

I was in the middle of ‘Apple High’s’ central lobby, with doors leading off to different wings of the school from both the bottom floor and the balconies on the second and third floors. All the doors to the south halls had been covered with more sheets of metal, all except one in the middle of the second floor balcony, which had been removed and replaced with a glowing orange field. I tried to put my hoof through it, but the thing felt like a solid wall right before my hoof was shocked back! “OW! Fucker”, there was a hexagon shaped screen attached to what I assumed was one of the shield’s emitters. It displayed a message ‘SHUT DOWN SHIELD?’, but I didn’t see any buttons. “How do I turn you off!?”, I smacked the screen with my hoof, and the screen changed to ‘ACCESS DENIED’ briefly. I cocked my head to the side and tapped the screen with my hoof again, ‘ACCESS DENIED’, “huh, so you just touch the screen to put in input? That's… actually kinda cool”. There wasn’t any kind of port for me to jack my pipbuck into, so I decided to put that little mystery on hold for now, maybe there was another way around somewhere.

For now I figured I would explore the northern side of the high school, I wasn't going anywhere with that giant monster rhythmically walking around the building, occasionally roaring and bashing itself against the building trying to get in.

I walked down the locker lined halls of the school, the classrooms were all locked and/or barricaded. Looking through the little windows in the doors, I saw piles of skeletons on the floors, but curiously enough none of the windows had been barricaded, just the doors, like they didn’t want something to get in from the hall. There were a lot more loose items lying around, like yellowed papers and schoolbooks. I snagged a copy of ‘The Big Book Of Arcane Science’ off the floor. I also found a skeleton with a ‘Shop Class Key’, and I felt myself get a little giddy, if that room was what I thought it was, I was about to have a great day! (or at least a better one considering what was outside). I continued my trot around the empty halls, halls covered in scattered papers, the occasional skeleton, empty shotgun shells, bullet casings, and ancient explosion marks on the walls and floors. I couldn’t help but think about how my life would have been different if the bombs never dropped. In all actuality I probably would have never been born, (parallel timelines and all of that crap considered). But still, what would I have done? Been a terminal technician? A mechanic? Would a school like this have prepared me for that career or would I have been just shoved through a one size fits all program like I was back in the cramped schoolroom of 54? Probably the latter, since that education system had to of had its roots somewhere. I knew I was just wasting time trying to keep my mind off of the rhythmic thumping that shook the building, but honestly I didn’t have any other options yet.

As I re-entered the lobby and was turning towards the stairs I noticed a glow coming from a large window nearby. ‘Main Office’ a sign read above the locked door (I really need to learn how to lockpick), on the other side of the thick, mesh lined glass, in the far back behind a second glass window was a desk with a small square display case on top of it. Inside it was a rock with a strange glow coming from the other side. My sense of curiosity took hold, and I really wanted to get a better look at that rock. But pounding on the glass and a solid applebuck didn’t even leave a scratch on the window, so I shelved another mystery for now.

I climbed the stairs to the top floor and continued to wander, this time there were no skeletons in the hall, though everything else was the same. I was drawn by the sound of loud music to a janitor’s closet that was open, inside there was one skeleton on a cot and another on the floor in front of me, with a nurse’s uniform and a suit of maintenance coveralls lying on the floor next to it and a music player playing some music on repeat. The closet and skeletons were covered in bullet holes, and there was a pile of empty shells and casings at the doorway. I walked in and switched off the radio, as I turned to leave I noticed the inactive Mr. Handy behind the inward opening door. I switched it on, watching the levitation talisman underneath its round central chassis light up, lifting the robot into the air as its three spider like arms moved into standby position, its three cameras turned to focus on me.

“Mr. Handy Online and ready for service!” it said in a funny butler accent. “Oh my! It appears as though you are skipping class! AND ALL OF THOSE WEAPONS! Why, that won't do at all! I will have to ask you to please wait here while I call security”.

I took a step back, “uh, look, I’m not a student, and I don't think security is coming. So how about you just help me ou-”

“BAH! No response from security, looks like I’ll have to detain you myself!”, He then quickly rotated out an arm with a glowing white talisman on it towards me.

I drew my shotgun and went to pull the trigger as a white light blinded me, “what the-”.

And then I was standing in a classroom and my shotgun was gone, “-fuck!?.... Wait”.

I looked around, I was in a small classroom with the words ‘detention’ written on the chalkboard at one end of the room. My bag and belt felt lighter too, and sure enough, all my guns and ammo were gone, “aw shit, now how the hell did I get here?”.

The room only had desks and the larger desk at the front, the door was locked (of course it was), and on the roof was a white talisman just like the one on the robot’s arm. “Oh so that's what he meant by detain me himself! The fucker had a teleporter talisman!”, despite how bad my situation was, I did have to admit that that was a really effective way of dealing with troublemakers and intruders. I searched the desks but there wasn’t a key of any sort lying around. I sat down on the big desk sitting before the board and started trying to think of options, the door is getting me nowhere, and if the skeleton curled up under the desk was any indication, I shouldn’t expect rescue any time soon, the room didn’t have any other exits or windows either.

I drank my bottle of water and chowed down on a box of Sugar Apple Bombs while I dug through what I had left in my bags. The robot had taken all my guns and ammo, but otherwise I had everything else, though I doubted a frying pan would help me escape.

So yet again I was stuck with time to ponder my thoughts. I wondered where I should go once I got out of there (I was trying to remain optimistic). I could probably wait for the creature to round one side of the building and make a break for it. But after that I was at a total loss, the only ponies I’ve run into are raiders and it only seemed to get worse as I got further into the city. I could try taking my chances out in the open wasteland, but with very little supplies I probably wouldn’t get far. Fuck me I wish I could find somepony to talk to, at the very least so I can get directions.

I kept feeling a draft as I was sitting there, and that’s when I looked up.

I have no idea how I missed the giant square vent above the desk, but there it was! I backed up, floated my screwdriver up to the vent and undid the screws, letting the cover fall onto the desk. I then stacked a table onto the top of the desk and scrambled into the shaft. It reeked of rust and dust (hey that rhymed!), and I had to crawl on my belly the whole time, but I was moving. I checked my local map and I seemed to be on the south side of the building, crawling towards a large space at the very end.

I felt the vent jerk, “oh shi-*SCREECH*-IIIIT!”, I yelled as the section of vent I was in tore away from the rest. Sending the part with me in it pivoting down to a slamming 45 degree halt on a table, and depositing me roughly onto the floor. “Ow... well that could’ve gone better”, I said as I rubbed my shoulder. *SCREECH-BOOM!*, the rest of the vent fell down flat onto the table behind me, “yeah definitely could’ve gone better”.

I switched on my light, revealing the wonderful workshop around me! Tools! Workbenches! Hell there were even thick square rods of metal and scrap parts just lying everywhere! The lightswitch even still worked! There was power! Oh if only I had my lightning musket, I could have made my modifications right then and there! I did sharden the point on my flathead though, I’ve had enough close encounters that it was time I had something I could stab other somethings with.

I unlocked the shop room with the key and stepped out into the hall, there were A LOT more skeletons on the floor, old burn marks from explosions, and bullet holes here. I walked past a cafeteria, where chairs were strewn everywhere and a couple of tables looked destroyed.

Something bad happened here just before the bombs fell, that much I’m certain. I’m guessing the students had barricaded themselves in the classrooms to separate themselves from whatever was causing all the old damage. With the way the skeletons were dispersed, I think it’s a safe bet it started somewhere on this side of the building. Also…… there were explosives? Ok so maybe I’m not the greatest detective but at least it was something.

I continued trotting down the dark halls, all of the windows here were covered and the hall lights were off. I eventually came out the doors to the school’s gym. The court had tall windows that were all covered in metal on the far wall, I could hear the steel supports that ran along the roof groan from rust and decay. The basketball court was covered with metal beds, cages, and pony sized bags filled with what I assumed were more bones. Spotlights were shining light down from the running track on the second floor that ringed the gym. I climbed some stairs in the corner up to the track, where I saw abandoned monitors, desks, and other things that gave the inclination that this was once a serious operation, one that I had a chilling feeling wasn’t to help others.

Despite all the furniture here looking newer than the rest of the school, every desk, box, and container was completely empty. I was about to give up when I noticed a Blue light coming from an active terminal screen on the other side of a window. The sign above the double door read ‘Weightlifting’, but there wasn't any weightlifting equipment in there, that was for sure. The doors were locked, and a stray chair didn’t even leave a dent in the wire-mesh reinforced window, even after several telekinetic bashes.

But there was a vent.

I dropped down into the room in a heap. There was a fan blocking a straight route, so I spent the better part of half an hour trying to find an alternate route, then getting lost, then finding my bearings, then repeating the process. “OK, next time I go into a vent I’m drawing a map”. I looked around, the room was still pretty sparse, but there was a working terminal on the desk next to two large square crates, one of which was labeled ‘EXPLOSIVE’. After some debate I checked out the terminal first. It looked like a more advanced version of the standard Stable Tec ones you normally see, made of that familiar shiny, dark metal. I jacked in my pipbuck and hacked in, it was a five digit password, ‘magic’. Most of the data was erased, but there was a prompt titled ‘READ ME’. Of course I clicked it.

This location, Field Test Site #3, has been officially shut down as of 4/24/2280 by the acting Chairpony Life Bloom. Even though this location is no longer active, an executive decision was made to leave an emergency munitions stash on-site in the event a unit is separated from resupply in the area, as there will be no active outposts in the city following site shutdown. The final subject will also be left behind to guard the premises from intruders.

OK, so this was some kind of research center, at least until it was shut down by some pony called Life Bloom. I turned over to the crates and picked up the large tubular device on top. The thing was heavy, and took a bit of effort to lift with my telekinesis. When I flipped a switch on the side a square screen folded 90 degrees outward, I checked my pipbuck, Authority Rocket Launcher. My EFS showed the ammo count at zero, so I lifted out one of the large, boxy clips from the crate and inserted it into the square opening on the side of the tube, then watched as a panel on the side slid back, allowed a rocket to enter the barrel, then slide forward with a mechanical *thunk*.

“Alright, let's see what you can do”, I pointed the launcher at the window and squeezed the trigger. The Rocket flew out of the barrel and blasted the window in a loud and powerful explosion! “H-holy crap”, I said looking at the launcher as it loaded another rocket, “you are the best thing I’ve found all day, my mind is spinning with the possibilities you’ve just opened up”, I turned to the crate filled with three more clips, each holding five rockets, I scooped them into my bag, “yes… I'll bring your friends too”.

I was about to search the second crate when I heard a loud roar and felt the building shake as the outer gym wall was struck, only this time I saw the wall bend inward through the window. “Oh shit”.

I jumped out of room’s smouldering window back onto the track as another bash sent metal plates raining off of the tall windows. I ran for the stairs down, reaching them just as a finally bash sent me sprawling to the floor from the shockwave as the wall was shoved down.

The red spotlight focused on me, and the giant creature let out a giant roar before charging. I scrambled aside before it rammed into the stairwell, tearing it down in a thrashing rage.

I stood up and started running along the track, firing at the thing as it continued to chase me, occasionally trying to crush me on the track. My shots were going wild as I wasn’t really aiming and the launcher’s weight made it hard to handle, but the thing was big enough I was still hitting it, of course it wasn’t doing much more than charing it’s metal plates! I smacked in a new clip after the first one ran out and was automatically ejected from the weapon. This was going nowhere fast, and sooner or later I was going to get tired or he was going to land a hit! I turned on SATS to try and hit something vital and realized something was off.

First, instead of just slowing time to a crawl like usual, now time was actually still, nothing was moving! Second, I now had a bunch of scrolling text on the left side of my vision, on the right, a message reading Target Lock Available, and at the bottom of my vision, a message reading External Automated Targeting Processor connected.

“OK, this thing thing deserves a to be given a name…. If i survive this that is”, I thought as I tried to target a part of the Authority Behemoth. But that was weird as well, instead of just giving me the usual head, body, and legs options, I know had even more options like eyes, hooves, spine, pelvis, etc. It was even giving me options to shoot inanimate objects like tables! I also wasn't getting any of the usual projections on my chances to hit either.

Well I was getting pretty sick of that blinding red spotlight.

I queued up a shot and fired at its eye. I watched in slow motion as the rocket shot out of the barrel, flew towards the creature, and turned mid flight in an arc that hit the thing dead center in the eye!

The behemoth fell back a couple of steps, roaring in pain as blood and sparks spewed out of the hole I made.

Then it went ballistic.

It started roaring nonstop as it thrashed at the track, smacking me clean off onto the floor below and smashing a support beam in the process, sending a section of both the track and the roof raining down, partially burying the creature, if only for a few minutes. I stood up on three shaky legs, my right hind leg burned in pain like it was on fire, and the rest of my body wasn’t much better, I was getting alerts telling me that my right hind leg was broken, and that the rest of me was about to be. The thing was almost free, and there was no way I would make it to the door, but as I saw small pieces of roof tiles fall my attention was drawn to the red rusted girders above me, and I had a really stupid Idea.

As the Behemoth left the pile, I started scrambling away as I pointed the launcher up at the roof, firing at the supports at the edges, causing event more pieces of roof to come tumbling down as the behemoth started to chase me. Adrenaline coursed through me, helping me to ignore the pain as I let out more speed, running around the gym in a circle as I sent more and more roof raining down. The behemoth was getting hit by continually bigger pieces before a large girder stabbed into its back, sending it to the ground. I smacked in my last clip and kept firing, now dodging a large amount of debri myself as I ran for the door, my last rocket left the launcher and I poured on more speed. I’m not an athlete, not by a longshot, but adrenaline is one hell of a drug, and an entire half of a building falling around you is a pretty good way to get that stuff pumping. I must’ve hit something structural, because the walls and rooms along the sides of the gym were starting to fall inward. I lunged through the doors I originally came from just as it finally all fell down, blanketing me in a cloud of concrete dust.

Then, lying on the floor, with the sounds of collapsing building behind a wall of rubble subsiding, the adrenaline wore off, and I blacked out.

“Uhh”, I slowly opened my eyes, blinking out the dust that covered them, I looked around the dark, silent hall. I started to move and pain shocked through me like lightning. “Ahh!”, tears formed in my eyes as I checked my vitals, I was in bad shape, not only was my right hind leg broken, but the rest of my bones were close to breaking too, and my body was beaten to hell and covered in cuts, some light and some deep, from falling debri. I used almost all of my healing bandages, covering various parts of my body, then focused on my leg. It was bent inward a little, but it didn’t have any bones sticking out, so that had to be a good thing, right?

I pulled out my last healing potion, I could’ve sworn I remembered that there was some special rule when it came to broken bones with these things but I couldn’t remember what. I eventually said fuck it and drank it down, allowing my leg to be mended as well as my body to a certain extent. I wasn't great, not by a longshot, and my leg didn’t seem to heal quite right. It was still bent inward even though the pain was gone and the bones were mended.

Then I remembered that rule from first aid. If you used a healing potion with broken bones it would heal them in that broken position and a doctor would have to re break them in order to heal them properly, “Oh fuck”. Great, now I needed to not only find another sane pony, but I needed them to be a doctor too!

I was able to move on at least, and the magic in the bandages would help the rest of me out over time.

My Rocket launcher wasn’t so lucky. I saw the front of the bent barrel poking out from under the edge of the rubble. I touched my hoof to the cool metal, “aww, why? We could’ve done so much more for each other… You even had a guidance system!”, I let out a final sigh as I mourned the poor, innocent weapon.

Hobbling along, I walked across the cafeteria to the other hall, then made my way up some stairs. Walking by, I peered into the library hoping to find some more books, but found the whole room empty with a sign on the door, Library contents under review by the ministry of image. Ministry of Image? They used to talk about the ministries in school, they were formed when the war began to take a turn for the worst to help run the country. There were the Ministries of Magic (in charge of magical research), Moral (was a government police force that dealt with traitors), Wartime Technology (in charge of all the technical research and industry, obviously the best one), Peace (ran hospitals and charities for those in need), Image (regulated the news), and…. Awesome? Yeah, The Ministry of Awesome, that was definitely the sixth, (I know because it was the one I always thought was the trick option on tests, because who in their right mind names a fucking government branch The Ministry of AWESOME!?). What was the Ministry of Image doing reviewing library contents? I thought they just made sure all the newspapers reported events accurately. Did they check school books too? I pulled out my (240 years old) new copy of Big Book of Arcane Sciences and checked the covers for a publisher, sure enough, despite the large endorsement of the authors at the Ministry of Magic, in tiny print in the back cover was a small message..

Contents approved and published by the Ministry of Image.

I’ve read this book millions of times and I’ve never noticed that, but OK, if they regulated the news, why not branch out to education too? I mean it's not like they did much else.

I put the book away and kept hobbling down the hall, eventually finding another set of stairs, these ones bringing me to hall that had the energy shield from earlier on one end, and a large gaping hole on the other. Walking down to the hole, I took in the large mound of concrete rubble and rusted metal that was once a gym, and the particularly bloody mound that was once a monster that the world was honestly better off without. It was also very dark out, I must’ve been out for a good couple of hours, so I guess my plan of getting back home before dark was a bust. Oh well, at least it was a clear night out, so I could finally look at the stars and mo-

Why is the moon blown up

“What…. The….. Fuck….”. I couldn’t believe my eyes, there it was, the moon, a beautiful cratered ball that gently glowed white light down upon the world…. And an entire quarter of it was blown up…. Leaving a giant crater on one side and leaving smaller pieces of the moon floating next to it like debri! My hind legs gave out from under me out of shock (and a little bit from exhaustion too). I mean…… almost three quarters of it are still there… but then there’s a large round gaping hole in the other quarter!

I just…. It looked so beautiful, more so than I ever could have dreamed, and somehow even the moon itself was broken like the land below.

I let out a mournful sigh and turned back to the hall, hobbling down to the field and finding some kind of weird, glowing cylinder generator in a room next to it, I pressed the button to turn it off and walked back into Apple High’s Lobby.

I heard a familiar robotic voice coming from down below. Looking over the second floor railing, I could see that the main office doors were now open. I walked in and saw the Mr Handy from earlier talking to the desk in the back room, with all my weapons piled on top.

“-I just cannot comprehend why a student would bring so many weapons onto campus!? Oh I wish you would come out so we could discuss the great number of rule violations sir”, One of its three camera eyes turned towards me, “Oh! I see Mr. Rule has let you out of detention. I suppose you’re here to apologize to your principal”.

“Not exactly, I actually wanted to tell you something”, my horn glowed.

“OH! And what did you want to say?”

“You’re fired”, I shoved my shotgun into the space between where the arm for one of its eyes met with its body and pulled the trigger, sending the robot flying to the side in a shower of sparks and crashing into a chair. I levitated the rest of my weapons and ammo to me and put everything back into their places, then cracked open my shotgun only to realize I was out of ammo for it.

Sliding the shotgun back into its holster, I floated up the small display case on the desk, inside was some black rock about as wide as my hoof, with a weird glowing spot on the front of it, every time I looked at it it seemed to get blurry, but I could’ve sworn I could see a symbol. I smashed the case and pulled the rock closer, the light wasn’t hurting my eyes at all, I squinted as I brought it closer. I reached up to tap it with my hoof, “What are yo-”

BOOM

I was surrounded by blackness, the dirt under me was dry and hot. I thought I saw something move in the darkness, something dark and powerful. I couldn’t see it, but it could see me, I tried to turn on my pipbuck’s lamp, only to realize I didn’t have it anymore, I didn’t have anything. I could feel it staring at me, I was confused, I didn’t know where I was or what had happened, the last thing I remember was touching a glowing rock….

And…. did it explode?.... Yeah, I think it exploded!

“Umm, am I dead?”

I waited for something to respond, but I heard nothing. I felt cold and tired, but I kept sensing movement out there.

“Hello… Is somepony out there?”, nothing. Great.

I sat down, trying to think of what to do now. I kicked a small stone in front of me.

“Great… killed by a fucking rock”, I lifted the stone up with my magic, causing the rock and my horn to give off a low grey light…. And then I saw it.

A mass of what looked like black blood twice as big as me mere feet ahead, slowly shifting in on itself, and occasionally giving off a violent shudder. I saw a small tendril snake out towards me, stopping just in front of me. I swallowed, cautiously reached out with a hoof, and gave the tendril a gentle tap.

The moment I did the entire thing gave a massive thrash and flashed green, the tendril wrapped around my hoof. I pulled it back, expecting it to hold firm, but instead went back with me as if it were made of floating water. Where it touched my coat felt warm and made me feel stronger. The tendril then spread up my foreleg to my shoulder and it flashed green again, the mass thrashing even more violently, and making the tendril hot.

Now it couldn’t stop thrashing, and even though it was really hot, it also felt good. I slowly reached out my other foreleg to touch the mass directly. This time a much thicker tendril shot out and paused next to my outstretched hoof… then it shot past it into my heart.

Some blood gushed out from the edges of the hole in my chest where it had lodged itself. I no longer felt my heart beat like normal, instead I felt beating in rhythm with the masses thrashes, I held my hooves to my chest as I felt the heat spread through me. My breathing became fast not from pain but panic and shock.

Then the entire mass lurched and moved at me. I fell to the ground, thrashing as it pushed itself into me, stabbing into my body in various places as I felt a fire light inside of me.

And then It was over, I thrashed on the ground as I felt the thing inside me burn, feeling a primal urge to move with it. I felt it moving inside me too, like it wanted to move with me as well. After a while, its movements became less and less sporadic, and mine fell in tandem with it, until finally we both moved as one, as if it had always been a piece of me, and me a piece of it. But the fire kept burning, It made me want to move, it made me want to use that fire.

I stood up and breathed slow, deep breaths. I felt stronger, wohler, and I noticed one small strip of the mass floating in front of me, glowing a solid green. I stretched out my hoof towards it, inviting it in to be a part of me as the rest had. It flashed back tentatively, then slowly, cautiously reached forth as if our positions from earlier had been reversed. When it made contact I felt a spark, and it crackled with green lightning. It proceeded to wrap itself around my foreleg, then snaked its way around my body, giving off even more sparks as it went, making it feel like something in me was waking up, until it went back to floating in front of me.

Then it flashed like a bolt of green lightning right into my head, above the left side of my left eye. I fell to the ground, limp, as the fire turned into an inferno with no end. I was surrounded by black again, with a small shaft of green light emanating from where the last tendril had entered my head. My vision turned dark as I fell asleep…...

I woke up on the floor of the office with a start, breathing in a sharp breath as the world came back to me. I quickly stood up and looked around, heart thundering in my chest. I was still in the principal's office, there were chunks of the rock scattered all over, buried into holes in the walls, roof, ceiling, and even a piece or two inside my police vest. A trickle of blood fell into my left eye as I became aware of the pain I was feeling on the left side of my forehead. I scrambled over to the nurse's office as I used my left forehoof to try and slow the bleeding.

Looking into the mirror, I saw that that rock had left a nasty gash in my forehead right above the left side of my left eye. I couldn’t get into the medical cabinet (who. The. FUCK. Locks a goddess damned MEDICAL CABINET), so I used what little healing bandages I had left to wrap my forehead. I also removed my old bandages since the healing magic in them had already done their work and closed my wounds. In fact, with the exception of my new head injury, every part of my body was in perfect health, even my improperly meded hind leg was as good as new too, “what the fuck just happened?”

I checked my pipbuck’s clock, 12:35. It was still night, and as much as I wanted to just hole up and sleep I just wasn’t tired, actually I felt pretty energized, but maybe that was just head trauma. I stepped back into the principal's office and hopped onto his terminal, there wasn’t even a password!

There wasn't very much, apparently this school routed most of its files through a central server, one that has been “down for maintenance” for almost two and a half centuries. Still, it seemed that the principle did leave his personal logs on the local drive….

[Special Disciplinary measures]

Cobalt has been placed in a Ministry of Peace juvenile reeducation program following his most recent incident involving the theft of some terminals from the school. Hopefully the program will set this delinquent straight. If not well…. I'm sure his new personality will almost certainly be an improvement.

New personality? What could that mean?

[The Janitor]

Dusky and Ms. Pears have been having an unprofessional relationship on school grounds. I’ve never been able to gather proof, (every camera I have put in his damn closet keeps getting found and “lost”), but I’m almost certain this is the case, the way they look at each other, how they keep “meeting” in that horrid supply closet upstairs, It disgusts me. What does she see in him that she doesn’t see in me? I thought moving her office here would help, but it hasn’t changed anything! Just you wait you janitor filth, I'll find a way to get you out of here.

[Cobalt returns]

Cobalt came back and has been absolutely delightful! Sure he doesn’t talk to anyone besides his old friend Tiny, but he doesn’t cause any more trouble! And in the end, that's all that matters! He even came by and said he was going to find a way to thank the school for everything we’d done for him! I should see if I can't get the board to let me send even more kids to the good old MoP!

Damn, this guy was a real prick. I looked down at the skeleton curled under the desk, with a “Principle of the year: 2076” award curled within its hooves. I turned back to the terminal as I took a piss onto the garbage underneath.

[Saving Money]

I was rewarded with a special commemoration by the board for managing to have the gym and its adjacent rooms renovated for only an eighth of the projected cost! Of course the board has no idea that the way I did that was by going through a cheaper contractor, but honestly, who needs a building to last for 5 centuries!?

[Mr. Handy Failure]

My attempts to convince the board of a rampant “delinquency epidemic” did not have the effect I was looking for. Instead of letting me have the ability to send more kids to the MoP, they ordered a teleportation apprehension system for the Mr. Handy. It’s normally used in prisons, if an individual is being a little too rowdy, the robot simply teleports them to a confinement cell (in this case the detention classroom). However the damn bot considers simply raising your voice to be sufficient to be sent to detention. Finally I had to have the dirtbag janitor (apparently I have to have solid proof of misgivings in order to fire him, fucking union) disable it and put it in storage after it teleported an entire HALL of students into detention at once!

[A gift]

Finally! I have been pestering the board for months ever since that little stripe’s family moved in to get him removed from the school, and finally they’ve done it! He’s going to be given private tutoring, and has been told its because of his high grades, but then it gets even better! He apparently is under the impression that I’M responsible for pushing the board to give it to him! So he came into my office today (his LAST day) and gave me some weird rock with some symbol cut into the front and THANKED ME for helping him! (he thanked me for kicking him out and didn’t even realize it!). I shook his dirty hoof with the widest smile I could as he said some bullshit about how it was a totem from his tribe, that it has to do with some stupid myth from his home, and some other crap I couldn’t care less about, then left. Now I was tempted to throw it out but then I thought, hey, I could keep this as a monument to remind me that no matter what, I'm in full control of this school, MY school, not the board, not the union, ME.

I looked back at the scorch mark on the table, “I think he was trying to kill you buddy”.

[Tragedy]

Cobalt wasn't fixed. The MoP made him worse! He set off a bomb during lunch and now he and Tiny are running around shooting EVERYPONY with rifles and shotguns they snuck into school this morning. I locked my office, they tried to shoot me but the glass held, so then they taunted me, said they would kill me, even executed a few other students in front of the glass. But there was no way I was ever going to open that door. Shortly after it started the sirens started wailing, at first I thought it was a drill, but then the shockwave hit the building. Now the shots have stopped and it’s quiet, I'm not leaving this office, I'll sit here and wait for the police. I mean they have to come right? There's children and award winning staff here that have to be evacuated!

I got off the chair, grabbed the Mr Handy, and walked out of the office, with a lot of the pieces to what had happened here finally clicking into place. I made my way back through the ruins to the workshop classroom and got to work on the design I’ve had floating around in my head since I picked up the lightning rifle.

As I removed the broom handle and lenses that had initially been the barrel, I finally started thinking about that dream (what can I say, tinkering helps me think). I have no idea where that dream came from, I’ve never had dreams like that before, especially never a dream as lucid as that! I mean that had to have been a dream, but, it felt real, my breathing, the heat of that mass, the feeling of it coursing into me, the memory of it is burned in my mind. I don't feel some otherworldly inferno now of course, just some pain in my forehead where the gash was, maybe the end of the dream was because of the pain from that injury. Then there was the question of how my leg got better, was I wrong about healing potions? Was my leg ever really broken? Did I injure my head enough to have false memories?

Do I have brain damage? A concussion? I have no idea what the symptoms are but I don’t think so. I paused as I was grabbing some metal bars from the wall, “can a person with brain damage even realize they have brain damage? *sigh* you know what, I feel fine, so let's just say I don’t have brain damage”.

I cut the square bars down to length, then mounted them onto the rifle where the original barrel did. I pulled the scrapped Handy over next, pulling out various electronics from the body. “*grunt* well this has been one hell of a day don’t you think? I nearly got killed, killed another pony, got a new rifle that shoots lightning, avoided some raiders, pissed off a giant, found a rocket launcher, dropped a roof on the giant, broke the rocket launcher, had a rock blow up, hallucinated-”, I set up the last of the electronics and started bolting the whole assembly together with nice and thick industrial bolts from a drawer, “no wait- had a lucid dream while knocked out? yeah , that sounds about right”.

Finally, I attached the thin plates on the side of the projectile chamber and held up the gun, giving it a couple of telekinetic shakes to make sure everything was bolted down sturdy. Then I gave the crank two good turns and pulled the trigger, watching electricity flash between the rails. After that I took a piece of metal and shoved it into the chamber, with the clips on the inside holding it in place, I aimed the gun at the wall, cranked the handle and pulled the trigger.

click-BOOM

The rifle fired the metal with a white electrical flash, and left the bar sticking half out of the concrete wall. I smiled as I looked at my rifle, my railgun. I had read about the concept in some old engineering books in the stable, the idea was pretty straightforward, if you create enough of an electrical current in two metal objects, you could create a magnetic field to send objects forward at high speeds. I tried to build a weapon like this back in my stable, but I could never get a powerful enough energy source without getting caught, so I had to make it bulkier to accommodate the power supply I had available and was restricted to using bar magnets I stole from the classroom.

But with the cloud-crank mechanism on the lightning rifle I finally have the power source I needed, and as an extra plus I don't need to worry about carrying extra batteries, just crank, load, and shoot. How effective this thing is will depend on what I use for ammo and how many cranks I give it. I pocketed a couple of blocks of metal to use for now.

“Now I just need to find something living to test you on”, I said looking at the rifle.

“As long as it’s not me”, another voice said behind me, making me freeze. “Drop the gun and turn around, slowly”.

I did as he asked and turned to look at him, he was an ash grey earth pony wearing a patched up black jacket, a grey wool cap, two saddlebags, and some kind of harness that had a rifle on his right side and suspended a bit in front of his mouth.

I relaxed a little, “umm, you're not even holding your gun”.

He bit the bit in front of him and the rifle fired three shots into the wall next to me. I jumped and froze when he pointed it back at me.

“You dumb piece of sheit, dont you know what a battle saddle is?”

“Until now I haven’t ever even seen a battle saddle!”

He narrowed his eyes, “Bullshit. How could you not know what a battle saddle is, you would have to be fresh out of your stable to not know that”.

“Well maybe that’s because I’m fresh out of my stable you asshole!”, if I jumped to the side I could get behind a worktable, but I don't think I have anything that could stand up to a rifle like that!

“How fresh? Because fresh stable dwellers spoil pretty quickly”, he said with a smirk in that thick accent he had.

Oh fuck please don't be a cannibal, “Today was my third day outside”.

He kept looking at me for a little longer, almost like he was trying to size me up. Wait, that was what he was doing!

“You’re not bullsheiting me… are you”, he looked a bit surprised, then started laughing, “holy crap! How does some stable snowflake end up looking as shity as you do, do that!...”, he said gesturing to the collapsed side of the building,”and live only three days out!”.

“Honestly I have no idea, and who the hell are you calling a snowflake”, I said, narrowing my eyes.

“You silly!”, he let out another chuckle, “whenever you stable dwellers come out of the ground, I always hear the same sheit. They don't know nothing, they’re imbeciles, they get squemish over the smallest piece of sheit! I mean you didn’t even know what a battle saddle is! I bet you don’t know what an assault rifle is!”. I looked down a little as my ears flattened, I didn’t know, “I knew it, hell, I bet you don’t even know who the authority is!”. He paused after that, a look of realization coming over him.

“What? Who are the authority?”, I asked.

He looked at me with a calculating look, “they’re umm… well I probably shouldn’t tell you this, after all I could probably take advantage of the fact that you don’t know that but… fuck it, the authority are a group with very powerful technology, that like to take in stable dwellers”.

“Really?”.

“Oh yeah, food, weapons, shelter, training, they have it all!”, he said with a smirk.

“But didn’t they make that thing from earlier?”. I said with a gesture towards the collapsed gym.

“Probably, but you’d have to ask them why”.

“So… what are we going to do now? I mean you are holding me at gunpoint”.

“Honestly? Let you go”, he said with a smirk as he turned towards the door.

“Wait, really? Just like that?”, I said a bit confused.

He looked back at me, “yeah kid, I thought you were just another wasteland asshole by now, I didn’t know you were fresh out, I’m camping out in the lobby though, so feel free to join me if you want”, and then he just walked out, I watched his blue bar on my compass as he walked down the hall.

I picked up my railgun and went down the hall and up the stairs, when I got to the hall, I decided to go to the lobby. I knew I probably shouldn’t have, after all just a couple of minutes ago he had me at gunpoint, and something just felt off about him, but he is the first pony I’ve met that has changed his mind about killing me since I got out here.

He had taken a metal trash can, filled it with ruined schoolbooks, and was trying to light it using a knife and some square block by making sparks with them. I trotted up to his side, “how’s it going?”.

“*sigh* could be going a lot better if I hadn’t lost my lighter. I found this on some raider’s body but it doesn’t work for sheit!”.

I let him keep try for a few more minutes while I took off my bag and my holstered rifle, then pulled out my lighter and lit the edge of a book on fire. He looked at me with an irritated scowl, “You could have done that earlier you little sheit”.

“But I wanted to see if you could get it, after all, you were really getting into it for a minute there”.

He threw the fire starter onto the floor in disgust, then sat down and pulled a scuffed up metal flask out of his saddlebags. I sat down and pulled out a can of cram, pulling my railgun in front of me as I took a bite of the slimy, salty, yet still tasty meat.

I noticed he was looking at me kind of funny, “what?”.

“You know you’re supposed to cook that right?”.

“What? But it says fully cooked on the side of the tin”.

“Yeah, but it tastes ten times better when you heat it up”.

“Really? Huh”, I put the meat back into the tin, opting to wait and try cooking it on my skillet, “so what’s your name?”.

“Flask; trader, scavenger, and professional opportunist at your service”, he said with a joking bow, “though my friends all call me Bourbon”.

“Professional opportunist?”.

“Yeah, one of the things I’m best at is spotting a golden opportunity for what it is, and exploiting it, it has landed me some pretty nice paydays and saved my ass more times than I can count”, he took a swig from his flask, “of course it's also landed my ass in all that trouble to begin with, but honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way”.

“Is that why you didn’t shoot me? Because I'm a ‘golden opportunity’ you can get rich off of?”, I said in a completely flat voice, “of course I don't mind, I’m just curious”.

“Yep, in more ways than you know”, he said with a smirk, “for one I saw that little display from earlier. I normally skirt around the park to avoid raiders when traveling through here and I saw you casually piss off a literal pile of armor and muscle”.

“Wait… you were watching me?”.

“Yeah, anyways I figure you were either some kind of badass who didn’t give a shit, was suicidal, stupid, or all three. Then I had a perfect view of you shooting the giant thing from the catwalk, getting knocked down, and finally dropping down the entire roof on it! I thought for sure you had died!”, he said with a chuckle.

I couldn't help but laugh a little back, “I almost did, the launcher wasn’t so lucky”, I said mournfully.

“Daymn! A buck could do a lot with one of those. *sigh* it will be missed”, he said raising his flask before taking another swig. “Anyways, I came into the building looking for loot just a little bit ago when I was scared shitless by the sound of thunder underneath me! I came downstairs and sure enough there you were firing a gun that shoots bars of fucking metal!”.

I laughed, “yeah this thing is pretty terrifying isn't it? The first prototype turned a security pony into PASTE!”, I said with a smile and getting a satisfying look of surprise from him.

“Yeah well now you understand why I immediately went with the ‘badass’ theory from earlier and drew first, after all you just dropped a roof on a behemoth and yourself, and looked like you had killed a whole lot of other sheit beforehand!”.

“Really? I mean killing that behemoth was pretty sweet, even if I did come pretty close to dying, but what made you think I killed a bunch of other shit before that?”.

He let out a small laugh, “you haven't looked in a mirror lately have you?”.

I looked down at the beat up, shot up, and bloody police vest on my chest, “umm, not really... I mean I looked in the nurse's office mirror to put the bandage on my head, but I didn’t pay attention to the rest of me”.

He just looked at me with a mildly shocked expression, “well go look now”.

“Uhh, sure”, I got up and trotted into the office, I mean I couldn't look that bad. I turned on the light and got a real good look at myself.

“Oh”, it wasn't too bad, but it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, a LOT of blood from that watchman had been left behind on me even after I emptied my canteen trying to rinse it off, so my face was covered in a small layer of dried on blood, my head was wrapped with a bandage that was stained dark red on the left side from my wound (I would definitely need to rewrap it later), my police vest was shot to hell and battered from years of abuse, even my barding looked worse for wear, even though most of it was superficial, the entire thing was covered in a layer of grime and dried on mud, the collar was stained a little red from blood, and it was missing most of its right sleeve, leaving just enough material to leave the small pocket on the top of its side.

Flask walked in behind me, “Damn, I see what you mean, I already look a lot like a dirty surface pony like you! Where's the nearest shower, I if I don't clean up soon I might turn into a savage with a weird accent!”, I said mockingly.

He gave me a light smack on the back of the head, “a dirty surface pony who could kick your ass! Besides it’d take a lot more than dirt to give you a voice as beautiful as mine”, I looked back in the mirror, and he joined me, looking at my reflection himself.

Fuck I was a mess, I couldn’t even imagine what i’d look like a month from now.

My teeth were still white though, so there was at least that.

“Welcome to the wasteland kid, where everything is shit and we kill each other over scraps”, he said with a beaming smile, “now what do we call the wasteland’s newest resident?”.

“Call me Shepherd”.

Footnote:
Perk Added: Nerd Rage: You’ve been pushed around long enough! When your HP drops below 20%, you are able to ignore crippled limbs, gain an additional +2 points in agility, and your strength is raised to 10.

Trait Added: The Argent Mark: You’ve become one with a powerful strength, your soul has been altered into something else, and your body has been branded for life. For now, your strength is in its infancy, but as you grow, so will it. Your damage increases as you kill more targets consecutively up to 25%, but this effect will wear off the longer you go outside of combat or rest. Special perks will be unlocked based on your experiences that will add further effects to this trait.

Author's Note

Author’s Note: I just wanted to take a moment to once again thank KKat for writing Fallout Equestria and Somber and Tofu for writing their expansions to the already large FOE universe. I also wanted to thank all of you, the readers, for reading my story. I’m having a blast writing this and it feels great when I know that someone, anyone, is reading my work.