Chapter 3: Where the Junk Falls

Chapter 3: Where the Junk Falls
(Vision)

As we head out from Whiskey’s Bar, the atmosphere switches from being combative, yet calm to a very eerie silence. Taking a deep breath, we approach the gates of this shithole that these ponies call New Appleloosa; I finally have a moment to see the area around us. I see the odd mix of green from the forest in the distance, the gray of the mountains to either side, and the putrid browns of the ground below us. All in all, it looks about as crappy as I imagined it would from up above; also smells like someone beat us with fish, or maybe rotting corpses?

Our new ‘friend’ Tolson has clammed up now that we are underway, which is rather odd considering how talkative he was earlier, and how aggressive he seemed with Mister Roasted Jackass over to our side. Speaking of the nutless bastard, he was also keeping silent for the most part with small unintelligible mutterings. I would have listened closer, but I don’t tend to listen to stupid; however, with Rogue’s tendency to stay quiet and observant of our surroundings, conversations were rather lacking in this group in the first place.

After hours of following the train tracks towards the raider camp that Tolson had previously talked about; whether or not it was an actual camp or a hollowed out tree, I’m not too sure about. Either way, following this blind bastard was definitely not helping the general mood. On top of this, it was starting to get dark, and I’m not thrilled to find out what kind of monsters are lurking in the darkness. Considering we’ve got a blind pony, a half blind nutless idiot, and Rogue on our team, I don’t fancy our chances of fighting whatever’s out there. Especially without shelter.

As the last rays of sunlight set over the mountains on the horizon, Rogue drops down next to the group, stretching his wings from his earlier scouting. He finally breaks the silence while looking over all of us, “Hey guys, we should probably set up camp; I’d rather not cross this bridge in the dark. Unless you all want to burn it to light our way?”

I give a soft chuckle at this, and notice Roasted flinching slightly at the wording; weird, but alright. I look over at Tolson, who is still walking and was about to hit the bridge, “Hey, Asshat, you sure you wanna cross that at night?”

He stops for a moment, looks over his shoulder and gives a goofy grin, saying, “It’s night? Eh, whatever.” He steps to the side of the bridge and leans against some of the rock, likely waiting for the rest of us to either walk across or sit down.

I was about to make a comment on his, uh, strange tone, but before I could Rogue gives a shout, “Hey guys, we got a problem.”

I snap around as Roasted turns with me, his horn glowing a fiery red; huh, wonder where that came from. We look past Rogue as we see a large shadow move behind a much larger rock; however, the Jackass’ flaming fiddlestick causes the random rocks and debris around him to cast shadows that dance across the surrounding boulders, which makes it hard to focus on just one. Could be a trick of the eyes, but Rogue doesn’t miss much. “What’s up Rogue? Some shadows spookin ya?”

Rogue leans closer to me, his rifle trained on the rock; it’s hard to see in the darkness, but there is definitely something there. I lift my sniper and look through the scope as Rogue whispers, “I saw something move over there, we’re near that raider outpost, so it might be a scout. There could be something worse in these wastelands though; we don’t see as much above as they do down here.”

As the darkness envelops my scope, I follow the trail of light from Roasted’s horn. The light keeps flickering back and forth; it’s starting to irritate me. Roasted pipes up, “We are close to hellhound territory guys; although, if it was one of them, I doubt we would still be talking right now.”

I shrug for a moment, my reticle never wavering from the rock as I motion Rogue to move closer to the bridge; I’d prefer a quicker route out, but that will do if something really is a danger here. Before Rogue could even take a step, a gigantic figure steps out from behind the rock; easily the second biggest pony I’ve ever seen. As this figure approaches, it starts flailing as if it’s charging, “Incoming! Get across the bridge!” I shout as I immediately holster my sniper and slam into Roasted, getting him moving.

As we step onto the bridge proper, Tolson finally notices everyone moving; at least I think he did, since his eyes were completely focused on me. The next thing I felt was falling off the bridge underneath Tolson’s front legs with Roasted pressed to his other side; Rogue quickly changed direction and started freefalling next to us. I assume Tolson was saying something to Rogue, but being squished against Tolson’s chest and seeing the creature above us looking… worried? Either way, that made paying attention to them rather difficult considering with the ground coming up very quickly upon us, and my wings are bound.

Before we hit the ground and went splat in a pancake-esque fashion, Rogue grabbed Tolson and slowed our descent; although the landing didn’t kill us, it still hurt like a son of a bitch. Groaning, I stand up and look at Tolson; my eyes widen as I see him currently being held above the ground by a thick metal rod going through his right foreleg and out through his hoof, “Tolson, are you alright?” I mutter as I start checking his leg to see if it can pull it out safely, or if it is beyond saving.

Roasted, to our side, gags a bit as this crazy bastard begins to try shimmying his way off the pole. Without as much as a flinch, a curse, or even a groan, he rips his hoof off the pole with a look of calm annoyance. His hoof starts bleeding profusely as he rips it out, and he quickly wraps it up to heal. I wonder how many times this has happened to him given his lack of emotion or self care.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, we hear a new voice from up above us, “WOW, I was not expecting you guys to just jump off the bridge like that!” Then there is a thunderous kaboom as the hulking shadow lands and we see a mammoth of a pony staring at us, with what I can only describe as a childlike smile. It’s honestly quite disturbing, considering his size.

“That gives me a new idea though, I can make, like, a slide that goes from up there to down here! I can’t believe I never thought of this before.” The behemoth starts rambling to himself, listing idea after idea and pointing all around this… uh., well now that I got a good look at it, I notice the area is actually rather bright; candles of all shapes and sizes have been thrown every which way, and there is even a sign. It’s not a good sign, but it’s a sign.

“Junker’s Junkyard Fortress, Where it All Falls don!” I read aloud, shocked that he managed to spell this stuff correctly. Aside from the ‘down’ part; I think the junk that was holding that up got…. squished? Most of that sign had gotten hit with more junk then we have. Looking closer, I realize the W that was misplaced was actually the pole that ran through Tolson’s hoof.

The monster of a pony pipes up again, “So what brings you guys out this way? I don’t get a lot of travelers...well aside from Martha.” He grows a giant grin and pulls out, a, uh… giant ball of metal. It appears to have the word “Martha” taped onto it, superglued, and welded onto the ball. After looking at our confused faces, he spins it around to show off what is quite possibly the most horrifying impersonation of a mare’s face that I have ever seen. Which is saying something.

I was about to ask what he meant, before he lifts up this… Martha, and says in a rather high pitched voice, “So, Junker, who are your new friends? I really like the look of the white one. I just love a pony in uniform. Wink, wink,” He appears to mutter the word ‘wink’ rather than actually saying it; I honestly don’t know which would have been worse.

“Oh, they are probably some kind of angels, they fell out of the sky after all; although one may be a devil, considering he got rammed.” He gives Tolson an odd look, for a moment. Then, he throws Martha over one of the walls and acts like nothing happened. Roasted steps forwards, either trying to process this, or trying to bleach it out of his brain. Hopefully with the fire coming out of his horn; although he may want to remove it from his ass first. “Well, good pony, we are attempting to get to the raider camp just west of us. I must ask, however, what are you doing down here? And what, pray tell, are those contraptions that are laying on the table?”

Roasted points towards one of the tables closer to the entrance to this Clown House, and on top of it are a variety of random pieces of… junk. Ah, fitting. Most of them don't look like much; one of them looked like he took two rockets and shoved them together. At this point, Tolson began to look at the rockets and pull out a notebook, which he began to sketch in. I wasn’t aware a blind idjit could even read or write, but apparently his hooves work like his brain; dented.

Another one on the table kind of looks like a train car that was violently torn apart and then possibly put back together, and seemingly forgotten about halfway through fixing. The giant clown of a pony beams before running into his fun house, causing most of the walls and fences to shake and shiver. He must weigh more than my dad, which makes sense, considering he’s an earth pony and seems to be wearing power armor as if they were normal clothes..

“Oh boy, I forgot about these when I went to go follow all of y’all, see I ‘found’ this new rocket; twice the power, twice the boom!” He holds up the rocket I noticed earlier, and he throws it. It doesn’t actually go very far considering the engine was off, and it hits the ground with a thud. Tolson then mutters, “Well, that was anticlimactic.” The big guy’s smile frowns a bit, “It’s uh… still in progress.” Then he downs some pills and his smile returns.

I frown a bit, having a drug addict following us does not typically spell anything other than disaster. Better to get out of here as fast as possible than stick around with him; for all we know, he could hug us and break us. “Oh, I also have my latest creation! I call it “The Wazer Wifle!” All of a sudden, it fires off a deep red laser that very nearly fries my tail off. “Sorry about that, its got a hair trigger.”

I was outraged by this massive idiot of a clown here, and was about to shove my hoof so far down his throat, it’d meet his over sized asshole. Unfortunately, just as I’m about to rip into him, Roasted pipes up, “How the hell did you figure out laser technology!? I’ve been working on that for months now, and I don’t even have a working prototype!” I stop halfway to this hulking monstrosity, and just stare at Roasted. So old nutless here is an egghead? Just my luck, I remember back at the academy beating the shit out on guys like that. If you want to go to war you need more than just brains.

“I found this pretty looking crystal that bends light in an odd way, so I just thought it would be cool if I could somehow focus it.” Lasers are cool and all, but a bullet will work anyday. Roasted, on the other hoof, has his jaw slamming into the floor. In the corner of my eye, I can see that Tolson fucker looking at the rocket; he pokes it a little and then picks it up.

“You do know it’s not turned on, right?” Tolson asks the psycho pony. Considering how he’s fiddling with it, he must know his way around some explosives. Either that, or he’s as stupid as he is blind. Junker look confused by this as he walks over and looks at it.

“Hmm…well, I don’t really understand things that go boom all that well; I like things that go ‘pew pew!’, but mostly things that smash other things HARD. You can have it if you want; I have like, 10 of them. I like to get up close when I fight anyway.” Those could come in handy if we needed to blow a hole in a wall or blow someone up; however, while it’s nice to know that he isn’t going to kill us and all, I think it’s time that we moved on now.

“Look, Junker is it? It’s been fun and all, but we need to get going now. Got a raider camp to… raid.” As I shake my head at how bad my joke was, I turned to walk away as Tolson shoved one of the rockets into his bag with a grin. I hear Junker next to him make one of the worst noises ever…a loud squeak-like squeal. He jumps up and down all happy about something, what that is though is beyond me.

“You guys are looking to get to the camp? I can take you there! I know a shortcut…uh, probably short, maybe, hopefully, possibly...not really. Made it myself though; follow me!” He runs off deeper into the junkyard; I look to Rogue on his opinion as to if we should follow, and he gives me a shrug for the most part. Thanks a lot, Rogue; that was so helpful. I hear Junker’s voice echoing as he calls back, “I get to show ponies my awesome hole! Don’t worry, you guys can all fit!”

With a sigh, I start walking in his direction, the other ponies following behind. Tolson appears to be picking up, well, everything he can hold, really. We follow Junker’s voice to a wall of scrap metal; with the push of a button, an engine roars to life and it’s moved to the side to reveal a tunnel leading down into the ground. Junker stands up on his hind legs and ‘presents’ it to us with a big smile over his shoulder. It’s still just as creepy as it was before. “I love my hole, it’s one of my greatest achievements, well, aside from my massive ‘sword’ anyways!”

The group looks at him in minor confusion, some horror, and I think Tolson is staring at a tree, as Junker goes back onto all four legs, and runs into…his house? I think you could call it that. He comes back out with what I can only describe as a massive hunk of metal that looks like he ripped it off a bank wall, and then beat it with a rock into the shape of a sword.

“Uh, that’s…a sword? I’ve seen many swords and that doesn’t really look like one,” I muttered as I look back at the hole in the wall “So, this is the way to the outpost? Because it looks like a giant death trap to me.” I poke a part of the wall, and parts of the ceiling fall with a loud clang.

“If by outpost, you mean the camp, then sure! Also, Betty is as safe as a newborn Hellhound,” He grins at me before swinging his massive sword at the hole, burying it in the wall, and somehow not causing the entire thing to crash on us. Huh, I guess it is safe, technically.

Welp, we’re not going anywhere by standing here, well, unless we starve, “Alright group, and… new friend? Time to-” Junker interrupts me by slamming his entire body uncomfortably close and staring me right in the eyes, “Did you just say friend? We’re friends!? Yay!”

I blink as I attempt to regain some kind of composure. Tolson then lifts Junker away from me; I’m surprised he can even move Junker at this point with his hoof injured. Somehow, this is still not the weirdest day of my life. Junker pipes up with a look of sadness, “My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.” He then slams down some more pills before practically hopping towards his massive gaping hole with a grin. “Welp, no matter, off we go to fortune, glory, and candy! Whatever that tastes like!”

I groan as the group starts walking into this hellhole, which is somehow worse than the hellhole outside. Today is going to be a very long day.