In the morning I was still awake and I didn’t feel like sleeping, I didn’t want to sleep at all until Diamond was safe.

“Good morning, Fire.”, I heard her say behind me,

“Good morning, Diamond.”, I answered with a smile on my face.

” Something I wanted to ask you”, I said, “Do you know how to shoot a gun?”, she looked at me with big surprised eyes,

“I… I… No, I don’t want to shoot, I don’t want to kill!”, she muttered back,

“Well in the wasteland you are going to kill someone sooner or later and personally I would prefer that you have a weapon to shoot and not get nearly deadly injured.”, I said worried, I really didn’t want to lose her,

“No I will not kill, I will not wield a weapon!”, she said. So, she doesn’t get a gun, ok means I have to keep her safe. As Bone walked down to us, he asked:

“You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”,

“No I didn’t.”, I answered, well I somehow activated overprotective mother mode with that.

“What?!”, Starry Diamond looked shocked at me, “You didn’t sleep?”,

“Yes so you wouldn’t get captured!”, I said back,

“We are not leaving this place before you slept.”, she told me,

“We don’t have time for this!”, I said,

“Then we are going to take the time, that is final”, she ordered, she looked cute when she looked at me angrily with her big eyes but of course I didn’t say that, so I just teased:

“Ok mom…”, she looked satisfied even ignoring the little tease and I walked upstairs into the first bedroom and lay down in the bed and tried to sleep.

I stood on a wide-open field full of flowers, I liked it. This was not the wasteland, this was what Equestria looked like before the Bombs fell. I took a deep breath and took in the scenery. The field ranges as far as I can see , flowers everywhere, except for a little place three meters away there was a little round plaza and on one half of the outline there were six statues, each one of them displays one of the ministry mares and everyone has a little sentence under it. I approached the first statue, the one of Pinkie Pie the ministry mare of the MOM her statue said……

I woke up back in the bed in the dinner, woken up by gunfire. Starry wasn’t the only one with a overprotective core, so I jumped up and grabbed my rifle from its sling and rushed downstairs. As I arrived and pulled up my weapon I only saw Bone standing over a guy with a bullet in his foot and Bone whispered to him:

“Listen up you bloody degenerate, run your bloody ass back to your boss and tell him if he wants this fucking file he can move his useless ass to me and rip it out of my lifeless hooves if he has the fucking balls to face me!”. You could see his rage manifesting in his face and he just let the guy go while putting a bullet into the head of another guy who was crawling towards Diamond. I go to her and asked,

“Are you okay?”,

“Yes I think I am.”, she answered smiling at me. Ok Diamond is ok now to Bone.

“Did you find something usable?”, I asked,

“You aren’t gonna ask me how I am?”, he asked with a snicker,

“Is it that obvious?”, I asked blushing like mad,

“Even more that you think. Tell her!”, he said half teasingly half actually trying to give good advice,

“It´s time to go you two!”, he announced as he reloaded his pistols. We walked out of the diner to the relaxing voice of Sweetie Belle and are greeted by the corpses of more slavers, I looked stunned at Bone and asked:

“How many did you kill and how do you still have bullets left?!”, he just simply answered:

“Killed everyone who came and refilled at the armory back in the dinner.”. Oh, right the armory I completely forgot about it. We continued our journey and ran into a few raiders, as expected they mostly were killed quite quickly and gave a good bit of close quarter combat practice. We walked along a railway until we reached a bunch of hills.

“Something is wrong here I can feel it.”, I said. Oh, how I hate to be right! Just as I said that the ground began to shake and around us as a bunch of Guls jumped up and charged at us.

“Diamond behind me!”, I shouted as I pulled out my rifle and began to fill the ghastly creatures with bullets but they just stood back up. One Gul jumped me and I lost my gun, I just tried to prevent him from biting my head off with my hooves. Suddenly I saw something flying and a knife impacted the Gul´s skull.

” Decapitate them that’s the only way to kill them!”, Bone shouted and I pulled the knife out with my teeth and slashed it through it´s throat. The head came clear off and I jumped to Diamond to ensure she doesn’t get bit. I pulled out the Winchester and quickly realized that filling their throats with shots was quite the effective way to decapitate them.

“Holy fuck where did those bastards come from!?”, I shouted after we finally killed the last one. Note to self, decapitate a Gul to kill it, there is no other way. We continued our journey and soon arrived at a village my pip buck marked as New Appleloosa. We were greeted by the mayor and brought to a hotel where we rented out a room so we could stay the night.

You might think that after nearly getting eaten by Guls the wasteland would cut us some slack, but nope the wasteland wasn’t that kind of nice. Before I could even prepare my bed, we already had the next problem. Diamond went to Absolutely Everything, the local shop, to get some food and as I looked out of the window I saw a bunch of what I could only guess were slavers waiting with knives in front of the shop,

“Bone we have some folk waiting in front of Absolutely Everything with knives. I’m gonna go down there and look that they don’t make problems.”, I explained and he just nodded. I went down there and just as I wanted to approach them Diamond walked out of the store and gets grabbed by the leader, a brown unicorn, who puts his knife to her throat.

“Hey!”, I shouted as I approached him, “Searching for me?”, then I pulled out my Winchester and filled his four lackies with bullets, each one with two, two bullets remaining.

“You are going to come with me and I am going to release your little friend here.”, the buck said,

“How about I just put my last two bullets through your head!”, I shouted back,

“I wouldn’t do this!”, he said as he pulled his barding aside and I could see a shit ton of explosives along with a dead pony’s switch he levitated out.

“Didn’t you forget something?”, Diamond asked the buck, “Absolutely Everything has absolutely everything”, I could see her horn glow and then she dropped a metal apple with a blue stripe on it. The apple detonated and I could see the light of the switch going off and then suddenly her hind hoof struck the pony’s private part causing him to drop the knife then she turned around and boxed him in the face so he fell down backwards and she picked up the knife to fixate him where he lay and then she just lifted the groceries up again, walked past me and said:

“Dinner is in half an hour.”. It took me some time to process what just happened then suddenly I felt a coolness creep from my hind and as I turned around, I just saw a blow dart and everything went black.

As I woke back up my eyes felt heavy and it took me some time to see straight. The first thing I realized was that I was sitting in a chair at a rather fancy looking wood table, then I realized that my forehooves were chained to it so I couldn’t stand up, then I realized that at the other end a earthpony stallion sat, his coat was a deep grey and his mane and tail were the darkest black I have ever seen but something still was off, one of his hooves tapped on the table but that wasn’t a normal hoof, for one it was made completely out of metal and it had claws but the buck could move the claws.

“So you finally are awake?”, he asked, the only thing I could bring out was a weak:

“Where am I”,

“You are at the headquarters of the Wanderers and I am very interested in a certain file on that pip buck of yours.”, he answered back still tapping his claws on the desk. The wanderers? Oh fuck I thought, I was actually kidnapped by one of the factions who are after the power armor,

“The only problem is”, the buck explained, “that we don’t have to decoder, so you are going to decode this for us.”,

“And what if I don’t want to?”, I shot back,

“Well”, he answered pressing a button on his part of the table with a claw, “in that case I would be forced to use an object of pressure.”. A screen lit up on one of the walls showing Diamond and Bone sitting in a cage surrounded by various ponies in armor pointing weapons at them.

” Ok I will do it just get me to a terminal and give me some time.”, I said

“Great!”, the buck answered and tapped another button on his desk part,

“Boys bring our little friend to the terminal.”. Two armored ponies walked in and one of them opened my chains and they started guiding me through a hallway full of armored ponies. Note to self, everypony except big boss claw hoof seems to wear full body armor. They escorted me into a small room and to a terminal, which already had the file and a programming software open, here´s to hoping that this recognized simple Enclave commands. I sat there for I don’t know how long when big boss claw hoof came in and asked:

“Are you finished?”,

“Nearly but I need advanced admin rights on this thing to run the decoder.”, I answered, he nodded to one of the soldiers who hammered on the keys and entered the admin password.

” Oh, and a little tip”, I said, a smile forming on my face, “Never ever fuck with the tech pony!”, I hit the button to run the program. The armored soldiers putt their hooves to their heads screaming in pain and as the claw hoofed motherfucker looked around, I punched him in the face, I might not be a particularly strong pony but my hoof still had enough force to it to make the buck fall back several steps. I just scooped up a pistol from one of the soldiers and ran. At the end of the hallway was a door to a big atrium and there I met back up with Bone and Diamond.

“Care to explain to us what in Tartarus just happened?”, Bone shouted as we ran to what a sign marked as the Armory.

“Simple”, I answered while opening the door, “They wanted me to program a decoder for the power armor file, and stupidly let me to a terminal. So, I wrote a program that sounded an alarm bell at maximum volume through the speakers in their helmets and then opened the cage you were in, then I let one of those idiots give me admin permissions so the program wouldn’t get blocked by some security software.”.

We walked into the armory which was surprisingly unguarded and I found a crate labeled “CONVICTS”, as I opened it, I saw not just our weapons and gear but those of presumably earlier prisoners. Bone and I grabbed our belongings and ripped a scope from an old broken sniper and I picked up a pistol in the hope I could persuade Diamond to at least carry it with her. We ran through the complex and by now we encountered one or two enemies who actually put of their helmets to get rid of the sound, this left them very vulnerable to head shots, we ran for ages until we came to a hatch we climbed through.

We now stood at the foot of a mountain and my pip buck flashed the name of a village near us: “MOUNTAIN HIGHTS”. We climbed up the hill and towards the village, we were greeted by an earthpony mare who introduced herself as the mayor and she let us to a little building called Rocky Mountain Inn. We went to the receptionist a bored unicorn mare and asked:

“How much are three rooms for one night?”, she didn’t even look up as she answered:

“250 caps.“, I looked down worried on the 205 caps we had, then she did look up and said, “but for you 200 Mr. Outlaw.”. Well looks like my reputation is already paying of but how she could know that I was the outlaw and not just Enclave I just had to ask:

“Here you are, but how did you know I was…”,

“The Outlaw? The Dj described you this afternoon saying if we come across you, we should do you a little favor for keeping the wasteland clean of those raping fuckers.”. Only then I realized that the song coming from the loudspeakers was from the Dj´s broadcast, if I ever came across him I had to thank him, this was the first favor he made us and already it decided if we had a warm place to sleep tonight or not.

She gave us the keys and we walked to our rooms. Thankful to finally sleep I put away my armor and my gun, only keeping the pistol under my pillow for emergencies and I final went to sleep.

I once more stood on the wide flowerbed, but this time something was different, as I looked towards the statues one socket was empty and a pink mare sat on the plaza.

“Miss Pie?”, I asked as I approached,

“No silly my name is Pinkie!”, the mare answered bouncing around me,

“Ok fine, Pinkie but why are you here?”, I continued asking,

“Because you showed awareness against those nasty no good ponies.”, she answered,

“Awareness?”, I asked now completely confused,

“Yes awareness, it was under E!”, she chanted as she still bounced around me. I felt as if I could hear Twilight Sparkle sigh, I wondered why. Then finally I took a closer look at Pinkie´s socket: “AWARENESS, IT WAS UNDER E”, read a small little engravement,

“But why do you show up in my dream?”, I continued asking,

“I don’t know, you´ll have to figure it out. Uh, my Pinkie Sense, you´re about to waked up.”. I wanted to take a moment to process all of this but then I actually woke up.

Author's Note

Well I finally finished this one and with over 5 pages in Word and over 2500 words this is my longest chapter of any story yet. First if you like what you see please give me a follow cause theres a lot more where that came from and second I am of course no kkat or Somber so if you have any criticism fell free to write a comment.