"Uuugh"

Another drab morning in Vanhoover. That usually meant the day was off to a good start. Any day that didn't start with getting rained on first thing in the morning was off to a good start. However, life is a roller coaster, when you go up, you're soon on your way down. This particular down was a noticeable lack of food, that meant a trip to the Salvage Post, a trip to the Salvage Post meant going out into the wastes, and going out into the wastes meant I was at risk of disembowelment by whatever form of nastiness I ran into first.

Slowly pulling myself from the pile of rags I called a bed, I grabbed the slightly harder pile of rags I called barding from under my head and slipped it on. Then reaching under the softer pile of rags I grabbed my armament, nothing fancy, just a battered 10mm pistol and a couple of boxes of ammunition. I sighed, levitating a magazine into the gun, then sliding the gun into the holster I'd fashioned on the left foreleg of my barding. I was ready to head out.

The Salvage Post was nothing too special, a few vendors selling and buying whatever junk, food or water other's brought in. It had sprung up years ago, far before my time as a way of keeping the small community of Pentown from killing each other over things needed for basic survival, like food and water. The town itself had once been a prison of sorts, back when the world wasn't an irradiated wasteland. Iron Lock Penitentiary, that's what I was told it used to say on the sign at the gate. At some point someone had managed to pry the letters off and rearrange them to say "Pentown", using the two "r"s to make a "w". At that point the town had a name, four defensible walls and a way to pass resources around without killing anyone (most of the time). If you wanted something from outside the town, someone was probably willing to go fetch it, for a price of course. That's how I scraped by, I was on good terms with the owner of one of the fetching services, a rather large, greenish-brown earth pony who went by the name of Crate Haul. He'd take in orders that people had for items, or failing that, he'd have somewhere to send me for a food run, either way, it gave me what I needed to keep going. Just barely. Not enough to move out of "The Yard", which was the name given to the communal living space in which I had claimed my pile of rags (the ones for sleeping, not wearing). If one had the caps, they could purchase one of the cells, which had the luxury of having a concrete roof and lockable doors.

With the largest open area allocated to living space, Pentown's residents had decided that the cafeteria was the next best place to house the Salvage Post, having enough open space to house all the vendor's booths. Making my way inside, I tried to make myself as discreet as possible, while there were rules against fighting residents, there were some scary ponies in here, rough haircuts, tattoos, facial scarring, the works. I, however, am not quite as scary-looking. I was lacking in the facial scars department, my yellowy-green mane came down and encircled my neck, and the tough, almost scaly texture of my brown hide made getting tattoos rather difficult. Also, the way in which my horn curved back and tapered off in two ends was the final nail in the coffin for me ever being able to truly converse with others normally.

I feel like now is probably a good time to mention that I'm not exactly a pony. I mean yeah, I have four hooves and a tail, but it's admittedly a rather different looking tail. I mentioned earlier that during the war many of Equestria's non-pony residents tried to evacuate to the Crystal Empire but were detained on the way there. Among these failed evacuees were several groups of Kirin. After the war ended, many of them tried to make their way back home, I don't know what happened to them, but seeing as we never heard anything from them afterwards I can assume what happened. Nowadays there's not many of us left in Pentown, and the few that are mostly keep to themselves, myself included. Fighting between residents may be forbidden, but I evidently none of us saw any reason to make ourselves bigger targets than we already are, after all, there are some scary ponies in here.

Okay, history lesson over, back to present day.

As I approached Crate's stand, he picked me out of the crowd and waved me over.

"Heya Oak!" He said enthusiastically

Definitely a job, he was always extra friendly when giving out jobs

"Hey Crate, what've you got this time?"

He noticed my dry tone of voice and toned it down a bit

"Should be an easy one this time. Shipping warehouse about 30 miles out from here. It's only on the outskirts of Vanhoover so it shouldn't be too bad, so long as you're okay with a bit of a walk."

I gave him a flat look "The last time you said it was going to be easy I almost got mauled to death by mutated baby dragons." Crate began to object. "And the time before that I almost lost a couple of legs to that family of radigators." Crate began to open his mouth again. "And before that was the incident with the toaster." At this, Crate kept his mouth closed and conceded the point.

"Alright, but this time it's going to be easy, it's a small warehouse, the boxes inside are labelled and organised with serial numbers, and I have the number here that you're looking for. The client was even nice enough to have the key for it as well." He said, handing me a piece of paper with "#0115935" written on it alongside a blue key card with a yellow stripe.

I sighed, taking them both. I was so going to die

Author's Note

Here we are, chapter 1. I feel like I've once again just dumped a lot of exposition without getting anywhere. Hopefully I can actually start telling a story in the next chapter rather thn just telling you about the setting the story is in.

Here's to hoping I don't suck.