Part 1, Day 2 (+66,792)

“Some ponies say there’s no rest for the wicked. They’re wrong, of course. What the wicked are truly denied is friends.”

I woke up to my second ever day in the wasteland, and to a cold drizzle of rain on my face.

Also, to some asshole shouting.

“Get the buck down here, you idiot bird! Time to get moving!”

I hopped down to the ground floor, shaking off some water that hung onto my feathers. The wagon was already loaded, the slaves were hooked up, and Scrapheap was waiting impatiently. I was surprised he’d wasted the time to wake me rather than leave without, but then I saw how hungover Junklamp looked. I’d never seen anyone make a multi-drug cocktail like that, so I could only guess what kind of side effects he was going through.

“Well, I’m up now, Scrap.”

The unicorn slaver glared at me, but snorted and turned back to the wagon. “We’re getting to Acros today, so we get to unload all this baggage and get paid. You get some of a share, but you weren’t here the whole trip, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, let’s move, right?”

“Right.”
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From that point onwards, we were travelling through what was left of Acros. The ruins of the towns that I’d once called home. It was… unique, seeing the buildings that had lasted the test of time. Rich, arrogant ponies’ homes that were little more than dust in the wind, next to a coffee shop that looked like it would open any second now. I’d thought the way time ravaged the countryside was strange; the way it changed the town was even more pronounced. Like the buildings just rolled dice to see how crushed they’d end up.

Scrapheap was ever vigilant as we went through the ruins, and by consequence, so was I. I had no desire to find out what kind of things the wasteland considered dangerous, when one of us was loaded with two seperate assault rifles. I’d seen the raiders yesterday, and after the way a cow was mutated, I suspected I wouldn’t like how actually dangerous animals ended up.

Thankfully, after all the travelling yesterday, we were pretty close to our destination: the downtown area. I remembered that area pretty clearly; after all, I ‘d been in jail there, gone to trial there, had ponies throw bottles at me there. Downtown was where every hardy government building had been built in the town, and I could see why a group would settle down there.

What I wasn’t expecting was what a post-war settlement would look like. I could see the clock tower on the courthouse from a distance, so I knew we were getting close. The rain was even drizzling off so we got a clear view. We came around a building, and the fort was visible. Several entire blocks of the town had been fortified by destroying everything near them. A few of the houses I remembered had been torn down to foundations, creating a wall at least two stories tall all around the slaver fortress. We were headed straight across the clear area towards a street-wide gate in the wall I was pretty sure had been welded together out of entire skywagons.

The closer we got to the gate, the more guns I noticed in our direction. At least one sniper, a few mounted machineguns, several pony-portable guns… we were downrange of an arsenal. Scrapheap didn’t seem too worried as he pulled the cart right up to the gate before ordering the slaves to a stop.

My skywagon theory was about spot-on, because just to the right of the gate was an entire van with the front end sticking out towards us. We’d only waited for a minute before the van’s passenger door opened and a coal-black unicorn in fucking power armor stepped out of it, helmet off. He looked straight to Scrapheap. “Name?”

“Scrapheap, returning catcher.”

“Declarations?”

“Two helpers, one temporary, one permanent. Fourteen total slaves, and a confiscated wagonload of scrap.”

“One moment.”

The stallion cast some sort of spell, throwing a field of light over all of us and the wagon, before apparently being satisfied. He turned and nodded to someone we couldn’t see on the wall above. “Head on in.”

The gates were a truly impressive sight as they swung open. Wide as the street, thicker than a pony, two stories tall, they came open to allow us in. The streets inside were far more full than I’d expected. I’d thought that there’d be a few dozen ponies. What lived there was hundreds of ponies, packing the streets and going in and out of the buildings. Just from the gate I could see signs for shops selling guns, food, ammo, and every other conceivable thing.

Especially slaves.

I hadn’t been sure how prominent slaves would be, but they were everywhere. In collars. In chains. In cages. Being sold in store windows, on auction platforms, from the backs of wagons. Our wagonload was totally unremarkable as it trundled through the street.

The three of us hopped up top with the slaves, just so Scrapheap could see over the crowd. The lack of rain had significantly improved his mood. “Alright, we just have to go meet with Salt Shackle, the head of this whole place. Then we can sell off this batch and get on with our lives.”

He steered the wagon straight to the center of the town, and parked it outside of the courthouse. Several armed ponies watched over it while the three of us headed inside. The lobby was just how I remembered: fancy, large, and obnoxious. A reception desk in the center, doors to either side, stairs on either side leading up to a second floor balcony. The receptionist was, surprisingly, a slave herself, but she pointed us up the stairs.

Just at the base of said stairs, Scrapheap turned to me. “Wait here. We’ve been through before, so talking to Salt won’t take long. Rather keep this as simple as possible.”

“Got it.”

So I stood and waited as the two of them headed on up the stairs, heading through the huge office doors on the balcony.

Then I waited.

And waited some more.

I was starting to wonder what happened to them when the question was answered for me. The office door crashed open as Scrapheap came flying out. He just nicked the railing, then smashed against the wall over the door we’d come in. By the time he hit the floor, there was no doubt at all that he was dead.

The mare that stormed out of said office was the largest pony I’d ever seen. She was twice the size of a normal pony, with gunmetal blue fur and a flaming red mane. Where her name had come from was a total mystery to me. She stormed down the stairs, right past me and Scrapheap’s corpse, out to the wagon we’d rode in on.

“SON OF A BITCH!”

I and every other pony on the street stood back as Salt Shackle slammed her hooves into the ground hard enough that the asphalt street around her cracked. She had, I noticed, aimed away from all the ponies around her, but the display of sheer power was still plenty terrifying. Then just like that, she was calm, stepping back into the lobby and looking over to the receptionist. “Anypony else come in with those two?”

I didn’t really want the mare’s attention on me, but it wasn’t like I was going to avoid it. Instead, I raised a claw. “I did, ma’am.”

She stared at me a moment, then snorted. “Ma’am, huh? I like that. Follow me to my office.”

She headed back up the stairs, and I swallowed nervously before I followed. Her office was grand, probably once some judge’s. A huge oaken desk sat in the middle of it, but the desk still looked a little small with Salt seated behind it. Being dwarfed by the mare speaking to me was… uncomfortable, to say the least.

“So, do you know what just happened?”

“My travelling companions just died?”

“Exactly. I assume you don’t know why.”

“No Ma’am.”

“They died because the wagon you so helpfully rode into my town formerly belonged to one of the few merchants I could convince to travel here. Now it is here, and he is not, and I would appreciate an explanation.”

Apparently explaining hadn’t gone so well for Scrapheap and Junklamp, but I gave it my own try. “We encountered the wagon yesterday, under attack by raiders. I was scouting ahead, got fired at, and killed the raiders before returning to our group. I led the others to the wagon, where the two survivors were burying their dead, then started looting the bodies. I was called over to help get the collars on them, then I butchered their brahmin while Scrapheap hooked slaves up to the wagon. Then we travelled here.”

“Assuming that was all true, who were the two survivors?”

“An… indigo unicorn mare, and… an earth pony filly. I think she was blue.”

Salt turned to a guard that I hadn’t even noticed behind me. “Go get them.”

The guard obeyed, and I got to sit off to the side as Salt interrogated the two recently-enslaved ponies. They backed my story, though they added details that I didn’t even know, like the caravan master being called Powderburn and the leadup to the encounter with raiders. Like I’d thought, it was an ambush. I did feel a little bad, since the filly thought I’d come to save them. Whoops.

Once the explanation was done, Salt sent them away, still collared. “So, noe that your story is backed up, I can take it that you are the current owner of the caravan and its contents.”

“Thank you ma’am.”

“How long have you been in this business?”

“A few days, ma’am.”

“Then I will give you a choice. You can take your merchandise out on the street and try selling it there, or you can sell it to me. I’ll offer you five hundred caps a head for the slave, two thousand for the delivery Powderburn was supposed to make. Nine thousand in total for you, now that you don;t have to split it.”

I really had no idea what caps were worth, but I had to guess that she wasn’t horribly cheating me. “Deal.”

Salt scratched out a note, and handed it over to me. “Take this to the… “receptionist” downstairs. She’ll get you the caps.” I started towards the door, but she called my attention back halfway. “Oh, and my personal shops are the block to your left as you leave. I’d welcome some of those caps back, naturally.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

I headed out, and gave the note to the receptionist as ordered. She ended up leading me deeper into the building, giving the note to a guard, so on and so forth, but the moral of the tale is that I got paid. The wagon and everything in it was gone when I got back, which made me a bit sad. I’d had some perfectly good steaks loaded up in there.

Now that I wasn’t with anypony, and I wasn’t escorting any goods, I got to look around the city. The slavers and other ponies around the area were pretty rough looking, and I’m sure that a lone mare would’ve been in trouble. A gryphon at least commanded some respect, especially seeing as I hadn’t bothered to clean the blood off from yesterday. The slaves were in… pretty varied shape, actually, depending on the seller. There were a few places where the slaves looked healthier than the surrounding buyers, and there were places where the slaves on sale looked a few steps out of a shallow grave. If nothing else, though, wandering the markets gave me a fair idea of the value of caps. The prices I’d gotten were… actually pretty good, for slaves that Salt hadn’t even inspected before her offer.

The most notable building in the market that wasn’t the main hall was tucked away in the back alleys, almost out of view of the street. I only noticed it because I noticed a few slavers hauling a chained mare off the street. I’d figured they were going to rape her, but when I glanced after them I found I wasn’t quite right. They were taking her to a business, a brothel, by the looks of it. And smell of it. Holy hell did I smell it. The kind of smell that put a little itch under my tail. Come to think of it, it’d been a while since I scratched that itch… but that was a thought for later.

Inevitably, though, wandering the market led me to the place that Salt had pointed me. A small collared mare sat just outside the door of a full-block complex, with a practiced customer service smile. I’d have thought she was a normal employee at the stores I was used to.

“Welcome to the Salt Market! What are you here for today?”

What I was there for… hell, at that point I had a list.“I’m looking for some barding…”

“Wooden building, high quality goods are on the second floor!”

“...food…”

“Restaurants and vendors are to your right!”

“...and sex.”

That didn’t even faze her. “What kind?”

It did faze me, though. “Say what?”

“If you’re looking to rent a slave for a night, then they’re on the third floor of the jail. If you want to just buy a slave to keep, they’re on the first two floors of the jail!”

I… kept that in mind as I walked past her. I had been thinking like a bar or something, but I supposed a slave-based market would certainly point me towards their products. It was certainly an intriguing thought, especially if they had something- well, someone to my tastes. That after shopping. Shopping first.
______________________________________________________________________________

Several hours of haggling later, I was done. Salt’s products, and her merchants, were a step above the stuff on the street, and my limited knowledge of the wasteland economy was a bit of a problem in our haggling. In the end I got gryphon-fitted leather barding to cover my full torso, and a little leather bag on my back to carry the rest in. “The rest” being food, some medical supplies, water. Booze, and a blanket. No weapons though, the implant still yelled at me about those. Not that I needed a gun when my claws could tear a pony up just fine.

In the end, outfitted like a proper wasteland slaver and a nearly a thousand caps lighter, I ended up in front of the jail. The slave-selling part of the Salt Market.

The first floor was the sort of simple slaves that I saw all over the streets, a few at a time shoved into cells for buyers to look at. Salt was at least smart enough to not shove mares and stallions in the same ones. Looking over them gave me a good chance to think over what I wanted. There were workers in here too, not slaves this time, and after a while a young unicorn mare approached me.

“Are you here as a buyer?”

“Yep.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something that can keep up with me, and something I can fuck when I need to relax.”

To my surprise, the casual mention of sex made her blush. “A gryphon, then? We have a few on the second floor...”

I snorted. “Spoken like someone who’s never fucked a male gryphon.”

The mare actually cowered a little. “Did… did I say something wrong?”

“Nah, but anybody who's ever had one of those things inside them would understand. A gryphon’s dick is covered in little knobs. Unless they’re very strong or you’re really loose, they’re gonna be yanking that thing out each time they want to thrust.” The mare was pink all the way to her ears, so I smirked a bit as I kept explaining, “See, a gryphon is great sex if you want to walk funny for a few days. I want sex, so I’m here for a pony. Pegasus, preferably.”

“Um, r-right. We have a few on the second floor as well…”

She led me up the stairs to the fabled second floor. It was obvious that this floor was the premium products; it was cleaner, brighter, and even had guards posted at the intersections. The slaves we were passing had been put in single cells, rather than the group cells I’d seen down below. The mare showing me around led me to the back, to a short hall with three seperate guards: two just at the start of it, and one at the back. Sadly, there were only as many slaves here as there were guards.

“So, um, here’s all the pegasi we have.”

The first pegasus was… broken. I was picking up some words being around slavers all day. Not that there hadn’t been prisoners like him back in the days I remembered. There was no life in his eyes, no real motivation. I half expected I’d have to tell him when to get hard. I’d have gone right past him if I hadn’t noticed something about his flank.

“The fuck happened to his cutie mark?”

The mare took a look, and sounded the most business-like she had since I’d met her. “He’s a Dashite. You know, one of those pegasi that got banished from the clouds? I hear the other pegasi do that to every one of them.”

I shuddered a bit as I looked at the burned black flesh on the stallion’s flank, making some sort of cloud and thunder mark, then carried on to the second cell. The pegasus inside was unfortunately a mare, but if I’d been a male I’d have bought her in an instant. Sure, she had the same mark as the last one, but she had silky brown fur and the sort of flanks I wasn’t sure a pony could fly with. Seriously, what did she eat to get an ass like that?

Coughing aside such thoughts, I proceeded to the last cell, and finally found something possible worthwhile. The stallion inside had sky-blue fur, a dirty yellow mane, and the only intact cutie mark in the hall. Looked like a lightning bolt, or maybe a laser? The damn things never made much sense to me anyway.

“How much for this one?”

“Well, he’s a surface born pegasus, so he’s rare as-is, we just haven’t found a good buyer. We priced him at a thousand caps.”

A thousand caps was… a lot. As much as I’d spent on all the rest of my stuff. No wonder Salt had so much money. “Can I inspect him?”

“Of course.” The mare nodded to the guard by us, and he came forward to unlock the cage. Stepping inside, I looked even closer at the pegasus, who stood obediently still, though he didn’t have a collar at the moment. I suspected the guard outside was plenty of incentive to behave.

“Your name?”

“Storm Rider, ma’am.”

Not a bad name, as ponies’ weird-ass names went. What mattered to me though was that there was no anger in his answer, nothing that told my prison instincts “watch your back” or anything like that. He looked like a perfect mix of obedient and independent. A perfect slave.

There was just one thing I needed to check, really. Without a word of warning, I ducked low and swept his legs out from under him, knocking him on his back.

/Warning! Do not attack ponies!/

I could hear sounds of surprise from the two slavers in the hall, but what I’d come for was sitting right in front of me, Storm being too afraid to hide it. Perfect.

I turned back to the slaver mare with a grin on my face. “I’ll take him.”
______________________________________________________________________________

I admit, I expected some sort of fanfare when I bought a slave, but it was more like shopping for skywagons back in my day. They brought Storm out of his cage, put a collar on him, and sold me a detonator. (another hundred caps, apparently they weren’t too easy to make) There was a bit of warning about him being my responsibility now (boring) and another about making sure he didn’t murder me in my sleep (not boring). Then I forked over some caps, and walked out with Storm Rider following me close.

Of course, then I had to buy him saddlebags, (I sure as fuck wasn’t carrying his food) and said food to fill them up with. By the time I was all done with my shopping, I realized that it was already getting on into the evening, and I hadn’t even eaten since last night. The way my stomach was growling had a couple slaves and other ponies keeping their distance. So I walked over to one of the bars that served food too, and ordered some dinner. Storm obviously wasn’t planning on joining me, and I basically had to shove his feathered ass in a chair. I wasn’t really used to this slave thing.

Storm was obviously uncomfortable being across the table from me, though it was hard for me to pin down just one reason he would. There were probably lots. He wasn’t speaking, though. Probably trained not to.

Finally I broke the silence. “So, what do you think?”

“Um… of what, Master?”

“Ugh. Never call me that again, first off. Call me Butcher, or ma’am if that title is too hard for you.”

“Yes, Ma- um, Butcher.”

“Good. Now, I wanted to know what you thought of me.”

“... I don’t know. I’m not sure what you bought me for, or how you’re treating me?”

“Easy. I bought you because I’m horny as a dragon right now, and I’m treating you weird because I’ve never had a slave before. They didn’t even exist, back where I’m from.”

He sat there for a good long time mulling that over. “...Sex?”

“I can explain the subject, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out, flyboy.”

“...yes ma’am.”

The food came about then. I’d ordered some radscorpion steaks, more out of curiosity than anything else. I could see Storm’s hesitation about eating it, like he wasn’t sure it was really for him. Oh, right, did he eat meat? There were several ponies in here doing so. After a minute of me staring at him staring at his food, I spoke up. “You gonna eat that, or am I gonna have to? Trust me, you’ll need the protein.”

That finally got him eating, and I bit into my steak as well. It was a bit rubbery, but juicy too. Drips od scorpion juice were running down my beak as I took to eating with gusto. Like I said, I hadn’t eaten all day. I ended up ordering another one, and eating that one with just as much ferocity. Scorpion was expensive, but I had the caps, and it was good.

It was dark by the time we were done eating, but this bar was everything. Bar, restaurant, and most importantly, inn. I’d already rented a room that I happily pulled Storm Rider up to. My belly was full of meat, and soon even more important parts of me would be too.

The room was spartan; just a bed and a bathroom in the back. I locked the door as we entered, shedding my barding. When I turned back, Storm gulped nervously. “A-are you really going to…”

I smirked, pushing him back onto the bed, his legs up in the air. “We certainly are, flyboy. And believe me, I am going to get my money’s worth.”

/Daily Report:/

/Misdeeds noted: 2/

/Punishments issued: 0/

/Objectives completed: 0/

/Good deeds: 0/

/Report sent/

/Goodnight/

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Footnote: Level Up! (Level 4)

New Perk Added: Hard Love - Having sex with anyone, as long as you are a consenting partner, gives you the Lover’s Embrace buff for 12 hours afterwards. There is a chance your partner suffers a temporary penalty to Strength or Endurance.

Author's Note

Fun Chapter Notes:
1. This is probably the fastest I've ever written a chapter for any story I've ever worked on
2. Storm Rider almost had a blue/pink color scheme, and the name Cotton Candy. It took me a minute to decide that I really didn't want to name my slave character Cotton anything.
3. Still not sure what Aya looks like
4. I skipped out on a lot of market time and eavesdropping here, so Aya does now have some idea about the wasteland around her. At least, from slaver's point of view.