Part 1, Day 4 (+66,792) First

“I regret to announce that — though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you — this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!” - Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings

Waking up in my own bed felt… simultaneously nostalgic and painful. And at that moment, I could barely even remember how I’d gotten there. Sitting up, I looked around the room with the slightest headache of a hangover. It was dustier than I remembered… and right there in the middle of the floor was Storm Rider, who’d apparently placed both of our bags in the corner, and pulled the sheets over me.

Climbing out of bed, I gave him a nudge, and he started awake. “Hey, Storm. Anything happen while I was out?”

He stood quickly, trying to act more awake then he was, for sure. “N-not really, you stumbled in, explored the house, then lay down and relayed your entire life story before you passed out. Nothing happened after that that I heard.”

“How… ‘entire’ is ‘my entire life story’?”

“You… started with how happy your parents were about the house, and ended with… something about chips and ice?”

“Shit, that all actually happened? Well,” I placed a claw on his head, making him tense, “I guess you know more about me then any other pony alive does. Fuck, you probably know more than any pony ever did.”

I think that Storm kind of expected me to kill him right there, my claws hanging down the back of his neck. I didn’t, obviously. Instead I stood up and pulled my bag back on. “You ready to go?”

“Ready, yeah.”

“Good. I should’ve left this damn place yesterday. Fuck, I should’ve left a few hundred years ago.”

I walked out of my room, and to my parent’s room again. This time, when I put my claw on the door handle, I was stone cold sober. This time, I was leaving. I opened the door.

On my parents’ bed lat two gryphon skeletons, protected from the corrosions of time by the house around them, locked in an eternal embrace by death. Seeing them like that brought a sad little smile to my face.

“Mom? Dad? I wanted to stop by one last time. I love you two, I know you love me too, and I wish I could say that I’m going out to the world to make you proud. I can’t promise that much. Just that I’m going out into the world, on my own, like you always said I would, and I’m gonna be myself as hard as I can.”

I reached into my backpack, and pulled out a lighter. Sparking it, I held it to the corner of their bed, and watched the flames spread.

“Bye Mom. Bye Dad. I’ll see you both someday.”

Then I walked out of the room, and left my life to burn.
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I said that, when I left the slaver fort, there was no real moral to that escape. That was still true. But leaving the town I’d grown up in, and leaving my childhood in flames? That had a moral. That was symbolic. I was leaving behind everything in life that I’d ever known, leaving it destroyed even, and travelling out into a world I barely understood, to some vague objective at the other end of the world, with a stallion I didn’t know a thing about.

Like any young adult, really.

Since I didn’t want to be followed, we took to the air, as fast as we could go, in the direction I knew for northwest. The map Salt sold to me had a couple of wasteland settlements marked on the map, though the fact that she’d probably learned about them from slavers gave me pause. Given the slavers I’d listened to as I shopped the other day, the towns had pretty were just as likely to be real towns as they were to be raider fortresses, or plain burned to the ground. The town I was heading for tonight though was just labelled “Runfeld”. I couldn’t remember a town there by that name, but it didn’t seem to be too near the beaten path, so I deemed it a safe bet to stay the night in.

Assuming, of course, that we got there safely.

Judging by the ground beneath us, that wasn’t exactly a foregone conclusion. Every large rock and fallen tree seemed to be home to some weird animal. Half of them Storm could identify, the other half were… just plain strange. Mutants like three-headed dogs and what I was fairly sure was a winged snake. We didn’t fly close enough to make sure.

We passed over a crashed truck, which had several spilled barrels of rainbow fluid. Storm informed me that it was called “taint”, and I vaguely remembered something similar in a factory I’d once toured for school. Looking at the creatures that moved in the truck’s vicinity, I was very glad I was high up in the air.

Eventually, though, we had to land to have something to eat. I tried to pick a rock where I didn’t think anything would sneak up on us, but like I said, everything in the wasteland was apparently a shelter for some critter or another. We ended up having to fight off some giant roaches (“radroaches”, I was informed) just to sit down and enjoy some jerky. The jerky made up for it though. Meat was a luxury food in pre-war Equestria. I’d barely had any at home, and certainly never had any in prison. If I could have meat, I was going to, every chance I could possibly get. When Storm told me that some ponies would eat the radroaches we’d just killed, I ended up carrying some radroach meat with me too.

We’d had an early lunch, but it was afternoon by the time that I saw my first ponies. Six ponies, two being led on ropes by the other four. At first I thought they were slavers, but a lower swoop revealed frames far too gaunt to be like any slaver I’d seen. Slavers took care of their appearances, because they had something to sell. Raiders, though, didn’t need to bother with that.

I focused my sight down on the two ponies being led along. “Um, implant? Can you give me a quest to help them out?”

/Negative. Danger cannot be confirmed/

I started to point out that they were being led along on a rope, then cut myself off as I realized that I was leading Storm along by the pack of explosives on his neck. Expanding the catalog of “threats” for my implant wasn’t exactly in my best interest.

I looked over to Storm, flying besides me. “I can’t attack them head on, they have to attack me first! If it goes south, drop on them or something!”

I started to drop down towards the group before Storm could respond. About halfway down I remembered the warning the slavers had given me about not trusting your slaves if you could help it, but, I mean, I’d literally passed out in a drug haze the night before, and I woke up alive. That counted for something. That and… I didn’t really like the thought that I might’ve fucked someone I couldn’t trust.

I swooped down to a hover just in front of the raiders, a grin on my face. “Hey guys! How’s it going?”

And then I got shot in the chest.

Shot in the chest with… I think a .32. Something small enough that my armor stopped it, but a bullet was still plenty big enough to take the wind out of me. I dropped a few feet before I regained my stability, and then there was no time for waiting for my implant to realize it was self-defense. I dove down at the leading raider (also the one who just fucking shot me) but he was with it enough to actually dodge out of the way, and I barely raked him.

Well fuck, now I was down on the ground with a bunch of raiders. Still manageable, though. I’d fought against bigger gangs in my short stint in open prison, I just had to kill them this time. Landing on my forelegs, I swung my hinds around in a sweeping attack. The two closer raiders dodged back, but the one mare was too slow, and I clawed her right across the face and neck.

“Buck! Radish is down!”

Seriously? These were supposed to be terrifying raiders! The fuck kind of name was Radish?

A distracting one, apparently, because in the moment I focused on that the earth stallion who’d shouted slammed a combat knife into the base of my wing. Thankfully, I didn’t fully need wings to fight, or I’d have been right out. Still hurt like a buck from Luna though, and I squawked in pain. Grabbing the offending stallion by the neck, I slammed his head into my claws hard enough the tips came out near his ears.

As I looked at the last two raiders… my heart sank a bit. Both of them had taken cover behind their whimpering prisoners, and were pointing guns much larger than .32s at me. The one on the left, an ugly unicorn stallion with more scars than face, sneered at me. “Alright, birdy, how about you stand nice and still so we can perforate you.”

Two guns were plenty of dissuasion for my instinct to tear off what remained of his face. Shit. I needed a bluff, and I needed it fast. “I’d love to, but there’s one thing you don’t seem to be taking into consideration.”

“Oh yeah?”

My bluff became much more real when I noticed a streak of blue in the cloudy grey sky. “Air superiority, you little bitch.”

Storm Rider had no technique, in fact, I’d wager that he’d never been in a fight before, but he used one of the most effective rookie tactics a pegasus could: he landed all-four-hooves-first on the back of the raider who’d been threatening me. There was a gunshot as the stallion reflexively pulled his trigger (of course that would be a reflex in the wastes) but he’d lost focus on his gun and the shot disappeared.

My back was… sort of killing me with the whole “there being a knife stuck in it,” but there was also one raider left, and he was turning his gun towards my slave. With a combined squawk of pain and battle cry, I leapt at him, splitting his attention as his gun was right between the two of us. He finally started pointing it at me a moment too late, and I was already tackling him over the hostage he was hiding behind. He went tumbling head over hooves, I went tumbling head over claws, and holy fuck did that drive in the knife. Worst idea I’d ever had.

Still, that attack certainly hadn’t killed him, and I really didn’t want him to shoot me, so I staggered to my feet. An action that was apparently unnecessary, as I turned towards my opponent. He was still on the ground, and standing over him was the mare he’d been using as a hostage. With tear-filled eyes, the hostage slammed her hooves down onto the raider’s face. Then again, and again, and again.

I didn’t stop her. For a long time, I was just sitting there with the realization of what the wasteland meant slowly sinking in. I was a predator, I killed ponies, that was a given. Storm was mine, he fought like me. But the wasteland was a place where I could sit in shock as I watched a crying, unarmed mare crush a downed enemy’s head until it was far from recognizable as a pony.

The pony who finally stopped the mare was, in fact, the other hostage. She stepped forward and just put a hoof on the other mare’s shoulder. The bloody mare looked down at… what was left of the stallion’s head, and then she just sat there. And cried.

The other hostage turned to me. She was an earth pony, with a teal mane and a coat so dirty I wasn’t really sure what color it was. Still, she gave me the slightest of smiles and a quiet, “Thank you.”

I… honestly wasn’t sure what to do here. I wasn’t sure if I’d come down here to kill raiders or to save the mares in front of me. With how I felt about ponies in general, I was leaning towards the former. That didn’t change the fact that I’d saved them.

“Um, you’re welcome, I think? Are you two… ok?”

The mare winced, and I could see her tail tense. There were a lot of stains on her flanks, and the pattern… oh. “No. We aren’t. But now we have a chance to be, one day. I can’t pay you for this-”

“I didn’t do it for caps.” That was true, really. I’d done it to kill some shitty ponies.

I’m not sure if she understood what I meant by that, but she nodded anyway. I looked over at Storm, who was standing still by the other pony. “How about her?”

“I don’t know… her horn is…”

Horn? I’d assumed that the mare was an earth pony, but now I took a closer look. Her mane had swung to the side with her head down, and I could see that her horn had been smashed off her head. I don’t want to say that lightly. It was nauseating, and frightening. If a gryphon loses their wings, they have claws. Their claws, they have their beak. If we lost something, we had something else. Unicorns… everything a unicorn has is packed up in their horn. Breaking a horn was a deeper violation of a pony than rape was, hell, probably deeper than murder was.

There weren’t a lot of things that could make me care about a pony.

Walking over to the mare, I slipped a claw up under the rope on her neck, and cut it away. She just stared at me, as wordless as ever. “You’re free now, alright?”

I turned to the mare who, you know, talked. “Do you know where you are?” She shook her head, so I pointed, “Back that way is Acros, the slaver city. You probably don’t want to go there.” Opposite direction. “We’re headed to a settlement called Runfeld, that way. I don’t know what it’s like yet, but it’s probably your best bet for the closest safe area. Take the raider’s shit, I don’t need it.”

“A-alright.” I started to get ready to fly… then was swiftly reminded I still had a fucking combat knife stuck in my WING.

“On second thought, I think I’ll hang around for a bit. Hey Storm?” He trotted over curiously. “I kind of… have a knife in my wing. Can you pull that out?”

I closed my eyes, bracing myself as he walked around behind me. I could feel him put his hooves on either side of the knife, and I had to stifle a wince when he bit it, making it wiggle. I just had to be ready for- “OH fuck me with a mountain that hurt!”

Sow the fuck was pulling the knife out more painful than when it went in? I fumbled around in my pack for one of the healing potions I’d bought and poured it back. We never could’ve afforded these before, so I was glad to feel that it worked just as advertised. After a minute I flexed my wing. It was stiff, but I could move it. I’d just rather not fly on it immediately.

“Fuuuuck. Hell with it, I guess I’m walking with you guys. I’m Butcher, flyboy here is Storm Rider.”

The mare looked pretty relieved, learning I wasn’t leaving them to the wasteland. “Oh! I’m Sea Breeze, and… I don’t know her name. They had her before me.”

Since I was groundbound, I helped loot the dead raiders while Storm did a quick aerial patrol. He couldn’t go too far with the collar, but he could at least keep an eye over the area. Breeze and… Nameless Unicorn were far better at looting bodies than me, if that could be considered a skill. Seemed that’s been something they did for the raiders, outside of… other things. Breeze tried to offer me their guns, but I turned them down for me. I couldn’t use them. After some thought, I handed one to Storm.

Being a slave sure didn’t keep him from looking at me incredulously. “Are… are you sure?”

I shrugged. “You heard my story yesterday. I literally can’t use a gun, and if you were going to kill me you’ve had at least two chances just since I bought you.”

He took it, but the interaction had gotten Breeze’s attention. She looked at Storm, and it was like she hadn’t noticed the collar on his neck. “Is… is he a slave?”

“My slave, yeah. And to be clear, I bought him because I was horny, and ‘traumatized foalnapping victim’ isn’t exactly my type.”

“You’re a slaver?”

“Not anymore, really. I worked as one for a bit, the guy who hired me died, now I’m wandering.”

Oddly enough, the casual mention that I was a “former” slaver (I mean, you have the job until you find a better one, right?) didn’t really put the mares at ease. Given where I’d just rescued them from, I wondered if they’d have reacted better if I told them my other past: cryo cell mass murderer.

I pocketed another tube of Dash, since Breeze had said she didn’t want the chems, and stood up. “Alright, if we’re gonna get to that town, we should get moving. I don’t think anypony followed me this far, but I’d rather not be the idiot that hung around to find out.”

In retrospect, I was probably saying about every thing I possibly could that would make the two mares I’d helped trust me less, but eh. They probably wouldn’t shoot me. Not until we hit town, at least. I waved Storm down, and together, the four of us started along the path my compass marked.
_____________________________________________________________________

“I fucking… hate… the wasteland.”

I panted as I shoved… something off me. I think it was a deer, but the teeth were way too sharp for one of those. You know, all the animals and shit down below were neat from the sky, but from down here they were fucking dangerous.

“So, chip, I really can’t use guns, right?”

/Confirmation: Firearm use is restricted for non-military citizens/

“So… if I joined the military I could use a gun?”

/Confirmed/

“Please add an objective for me to join the army.”

/Objective added: Join the Equestrian Army/

Once again, I remembered that ponies were staring, and I was talking to myself… about joining a several-dozen-years-gone army. Thankfully Storm was able to pretend that was somewhat normal.

“So… you want the meat off the deer?”

I shook my head. At the rate this was going, if I tried to eat every weird thing that attacked me, I’d end up fat or as mutated as they all were. Also, I’d run out of room in my meat bag. Standing up again, I looked around. “Shouldn’t we be close to the town by now? We’ve been travelling almost the whole day.”

Storm shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not like somebody got to carefully measure that map. Maybe we’ll be able to see it from that hill up there, though.”

I had to agree with him. The hill ahead was massive, like a dirt plateau. It ramped right up to about forty feet tall, and spread out to at least half a mile wide. The group of us tromped our way along that way, and shockingly made it the last half mile to the hill completely unmolested by weird wildlife. It was a hill, the dirt was firm, and even the ponies could ascend it without difficulty.

Then we reached the top, and found ourselves on a large, round dirt ridge. It was quite a bit bigger than I’d first assumed, but what mattered was that we didn’t step onto a hilltop. We stepped onto what was, in fact, the outer wall of a settlement. Completely hidden from the surrounding area, maybe twenty feet in from the ridge we stood on, was another wall of metal and wood scraps, nearly as tall as the first. And behind that was, as far as I could tell, a town. We’d have missed it completely if we’d gone around the damn hill.

Unfortunately, from where we stood, there was no gate in sight, or any guards on the walls, so we had to go around the town until we found one or the other. Not at the top of the ridge, of course. I was too much a fan of not getting shot from the wasteland. Instead, we got down and wandered along the gap between the two.

We got about thirty degrees around the place before we finally found somepony sitting up on the wall. He was an amber earth pony buck, in metal armor that told he was probably a guard like we wanted. He also didn’t seem… particularly attentive. That is, he was sitting in a chair sleeping.

Since flying up to him seemed like a terrible idea, I just yelled from where I was. “Hey, you!”

The guard exploded into motion, with no real coordination. His chair went flying, a Sparkle Cola went flying, and he just about dropped his rifle right off the wall in front of us. Then he finally woke up, looked down… and saw us just kind of standing there. Personally, I had to hold back a bit of a laugh. That’d been a show right there.

“Who- who’s there?”

After how well trying to explain my past had gone last time, I’d discussed with Storm what my backstory would be next time I got asked. Time to test that out. “Two mercenaries, and two raider refugees.” Breeze said that was probably the best term for what they were, at least, the best that could be said in public.

“Mercenaries? What group?”

“None! Solo operative!”

“What are you here for?”

“I just want to get us into the town! Where’s the frickin’ gate?”

He winced, rubbing a hoof along the back of his head. “Oh, the gate… there kind of… isn’t one, right now.” I raised an eyebrow at him, and he stammered on. “B-but you have wings, right? I can show you where the gate normally is, and you can fly in!”

“If I’m just gonna fly over the wall, couldn’t I do that right here?”

He glanced down behind him and shook his head. “It’d make ponies nervous if we just let gryphons and the like fly over the walls wherever they wanted.”

Yeah, I couldn’t really argue that point. So we stayed on the ground outside while the guard walked along the wall. Not that I was done talking to him, of course.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Um… Bug Fossil. You?”

I’d long since given up on ponies and their stupid names, so I skipped right over that topic of conversation. They seriously couldn’t name him Amber? “Butcher. The others are Storm Rider, Sea breeze, and a mare with no name.”

Fossil (Bug?) jerked. “The mare with no name?”

What? A reference I understood? I sighed with mock sadness. “Nah, unfortunately not. She just doesn’t talk, so I don’t know her name.”

“Oh. Right.”

There was a bit of silence as we went a little farther yet. I guess we’d basically come up to the back of the town. “So… what happened to the gate, anyway?”

“Raiders, of course. We think they were trying to get the gate open so more of them could come in, but they got caught, and blew up the mechanism instead. Now nopony can open the gate.”

“Seriously? How damn heavy is the gate?”

“Well…” Fossil grinned for the first time since we’d met him, “You’ll understand when you see it.”

We came around a curve (well, the whole wall was curved, but you get it) and Fossil laughed. “Here’s the gate!”

I looked at the gate, and it was instantly obvious why nopony could move the thing. Fuck, I’d be surprised if a minotaur could.

Because welded into the center of the town’s gate was a stable door.

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Footnote: Level Up! (Level 5)

New Perk Added: Fuck the Ground - You’ve developed a particular dislike for walking any distance where flying is a perfectly feasible option. You travel 20% faster overland while airborne, but have 30% more random encounters when you’re on the ground. You’re the first to take this perk, so you get to name it!

Author's Note

Took me a bit to figure out what I'm doing with this town, but I think I've got it. As always, leave me a comment on anything!

Also... that just seemed like the kind of perk that Aya would have.

Edit: I cut this off because that just really felt like an end-of-chapter statement. Not because I have something big planned, because I do not plan that far ahead.