Chapter 5: New Detrot

I woke up to complete darkness, on a comfortable mattress. Nothing like the scratchy, dusty, or rock-hard stuff I’d slept on the past few nights. Well, Stockpile’s mattress hadn’t been terrible, but still not as comfortable as this.

Above me, I could barely make out a rounded wooden ceiling and a shelf. Where was I? I tried to turn on my back, only to immediately regret it. My “mattress” moved with me, and my vain attempt to keep my balance sent nails through my entire left side. Tears welled in my eyes, and I finally remembered the previous night. I squeezed my hind legs shut, and sighed as I felt a distinct lack of discomfort. At least he hadn’t gotten to me.

Shaking myself out of it, I turned on my PipBuck light; I was in his wagon, but why? The restraints on my hooves were gone, and only a slight soreness remained where they’d dug in. In the corner stood a small magic lamp, which I promptly turned on. And where was Candy? I checked below the hammock, but found nothing. What if something had happened to her? We’d killed him, but what had happened afterwards? She had to be alright, and I needed to find her.

My worries only partly melted away as I slowly, painfully, extracted myself from the hammock and found a white bar behind me. What if it wasn’t her? I shook my head. It had to be. Climbing down the ladder proved just as challenging as leaving the hammock, as I winced with every step. At least my headache was mostly gone. Or maybe everything else overshadowed it. Couldn’t I go two days without some kind of painful injury?

Above me, my jumpsuit hung on a wire strung between the two sets of shelves, stained red where his blood had landed. My own coat was just as dirty, caked in dried blood from now three different sources. I touched my face—grimacing as another spike shot through my torso—and the dried blood sticking to my fur and mane, like a layer of mud, glueing most of my mane together.

For the first time of my life, I genuinely felt dirty. I hadn’t worked up a mild sweat after a short run. My mane wasn’t slightly greasy because I’d forgotten to use shampoo. I was filthy—coated in dried pony blood and brains.

I put my muzzle up to my foreleg’s fur and took a sniff. I reeked; the smell of blood, fresh and old, coupled with rotting sweat nearly made me gag. In just a few days, I’d not only done irreversible damage to my body, but also neglected hygiene more than I ever thought possible. It felt so incredibly wrong after a lifetime of cleanliness. Was it really such a good idea to stay out here? Maybe Mother would have taken me back, and—

I snapped out of my nightmarish train of thought. Now was not the time to wallow in self-pity and regret. When I opened the door, I squeezed my eyes shut due to the blinding light, and found myself face to face with my new worst enemy: a ladder.

To my surprise, the wagon hadn’t moved at all. To my left, Candy sat in front of a smouldering fire, facing away from me, perfectly still. She hadn’t even noticed me.

I held back tears once when I walked down the steps and made my way towards the pit. Somehow, Candy still didn’t hear me approach.

My heart sank when I saw her face. She stared vacantly into the embers, dark bags over her swollen, red eyes. The deep, bloody, angry gashes from her restraints made my stomach churn. How desperate she must have been to cause herself such wounds… I didn’t want to think about it. And here I had the gall to complain about the state of my body? I’d been lucky.

In front of her lay a small notebook with a black cover. “Candy?” I softly called. She blinked and turned to face me; it took all I had not to break down as my eyes met hers, hollow and empty.

“Oh, it’s morning already,” she said in a perfectly even tone. It was almost noon.

I wanted to say something, anything, but no words came to me. Nothing I could tell her could fix this.

She turned back to stare into the fire, and I sat down next to her, blinking the tears out of my eyes. From here, I could read the text in the notebook. The first line was the date of the day before yesterday, and the rest was written in elegant cursive.

Dear Diary,

Tomorrow I will have fun. As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been staying at Stockpile’s inn for the last few days. I’ve mostly been putting off returning to New Detrot. Not just because the trip is a huge pain, but also because I have been feeling rather wistful. I’m not sure why. Maybe my age is starting to show? I’m not as old as that pile of bones Stockpile, but I suppose I’m one of the older ponies in the Wasteland now. I digress.

This mare and her filly—they might also be sisters, it’s hard to tell—arrived at the inn today. They’re very clearly freshly out of a stable, and they’re in a difficult monetary situation. So I think to myself: golden opportunity, right?

Of course, my first idea was to earn their trust, lead them to the nearest slaver, and knock them out with my usual blend, but when, when the dusty old kook suggested she whore herself out, her reaction was priceless. At that point, I knew I had to have my way with her before I sold her off, even if it will complicate the logistics of selling the two. Prudes are always the most delightful to break.

I’ll admit that I considered fucking the filly in front of her, but that little shit honestly gives me the creeps. There’s something in how she looks at me—how she looks at everyone. Just don’t want to deal with that.

Anyway, the two accepted my offer. For a moment, I thought the filly saw through me, but in the end she kept her mouth shut. At least she knows her place.

I’ll keep this short and sweet, since otherwise I’d probably just write in circles. I’m very excited for tomorrow.

Actually… maybe I could pretend like I’ll let both of them go if she accepts to do various favours for me. Whatever, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Yours Truly,

Silver Tongue

I was shaking. Not with fear or because of the cold, but with burning hatred, stoked by the fact he was already dead, that I could no longer do anything to him. I wanted to make him suffer. Wanted to make him beg for mercy. Wanted to shoot his legs off and let him dangle above the fire. Wanted to watch him cook to death, scream for release. Wanted to sneer at him. Wanted to—

Candy’s voice burst my bubble. “You know. The hardest thing about this whole situation is realising that he really did deserve to die.” With my head back in the here and now, the atrocity of my thoughts finally struck me. What was wrong with me?

Candy sighed. “I… spent half the night crying. I’d just killed a pony. Not some weird pony-shaped creature that had the strength to cave in a skull.” Tears ran down her cheeks, and she gulped. “I lied when I said I would do the same as you in your position. Truth is, I understood why you did it, but somehow still thought I was above that…”

She grit her teeth. “I— I always… believed nopony actually deserved to die. When I asked myself how I would feel if this happened to me, I was somehow under the delusion that I could just… forgive,” she mumbled, jaw quivering. Then, she added in the faintest whisper, “Well, I fucking can’t.”

I merely listened, leaning against her and stroking her mane as gently as I could with my telekinesis. I wanted to touch her, feel her comfort, but not with these filthy hooves. “A-and even when I did k-k-k-kill him—” she sobbed “—I regretted it. I hated him and wanted revenge, but killing him still felt wrong. So very fucking wrong. But I needed to save you. But that too felt wrong. I was choosing your life over his.

“But then I found his diary, and now I can truly say I understand how you felt when you killed Uncle Concerto. Silver Tongue was the most vile, sadistic pile shit to ever walk this planet.” The icy tone of her voice chilled me to the core, but I agreed from the bottom of my heart.

“I wasn’t the only one. We weren’t his only victims, just the latest. We weren’t even the ones who got the worst of it. I’m genuinely glad things worked out as they did, because otherwise I would never have been able to rid Equestria of his pathetic life. Even if I did get raped, that’s just going to have to be a scar I’ll have to carry from now on.” I desperately wanted to ask what ‘rape’ meant, but now was not the time. “And now, I know for a fact I made the right choice by choosing your life over his. He deserved to die, and you deserve to live.”

She embraced me, gently enough to not hurt my rib. How she was able to touch my filthy fur was beyond me, but I didn’t dwell on it. For a long while, we sat there, basking in each other’s comfort.

Eventually, Candy spoke up again. “We should get going.” Hearing her talk in such a flat voice hurt me in ways I had never considered; it made me furious. “We’ll eat some apples on the way. You should get on the cart, and I’ll pull it. You’re far too hurt to walk any long distance.”

Thus, we got ready. As I settled at the front of the wagon, the northern wind chilled me. I felt a sneeze coming up and tried my best to hold it in, only for my efforts to prove completely futile.

My world exploded in pain, and I thought I was going to lose consciousness again. After what may as well have been hours, the pain faded, as did the dizziness. How could a single sneeze hurt so much?

The rest of the day crawled by in silence, with neither of us daring to break it. The atmosphere was just too heavy. It felt like Candy would never be the same, like she was permanently damaged, just as I’d physically been broken.

The guilt hurt almost as much as my bruised ribs. I tried telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t shake the truth. If only I’d spoken up. If only I’d said anything at all… Then what? She would have just dismissed me as a dumb child. I know damn well adults don’t care about my opinion. No. Candy wasn’t like that. She genuinely cared about me, didn’t she? I could have prevented this…

I pushed the thought aside. I could always ask her about it later. And then what? “Hey so you were beaten up because I thought you wouldn’t listen to me.” No, I couldn’t tell her about my mistake; knowing that would only hurt her.

Didn’t I want to push the thought aside? I guess it’s just hard to get rid of the guilt. This was all my fault, after all. But was it really? Yes, I could have prevented it. But so could have Stockpile. And so could have Candy, and certainly I wouldn’t consider blaming her for this. No, blaming myself didn’t make sense. I could have prevented it, but that didn’t mean I had caused this. No, that was Silver Tongue’s doing. He and only he was to blame. What I needed to do, and the only thing I could do, was learn from this.

Never again would I let Candy trust a stranger blindly. Then again, I doubted she would do so either; not after what happened to her.

I sighed. A big part of my mistake had been to assume she knew better, when in reality she was completely clueless.

I had known better, and I could have stopped this. She might be an adult, but she isn’t perfect, and my foalish assumption had brought her harm. She protected and looked out for me, and I needed to do the same. I would be the sister she needed right now.

I looked over to Candy, slowly pulling the wagon with her unsteady gait. She had said she would be fine, but I hadn’t really bought it. Still, I figured she would know best. I would not make that mistake again.

It took a little bit of courage for me to open my mouth. “Hey Candy?” She turned to me without stopping. “I think we should call it a day soon.”

“Why? We’ve only been on the road for a few hours,” she countered. “If you want, you can try to sleep inside. I’ll get us to New Detrot.”

“I’m not that sleepy, but you seem about ready to keel over.” She had stayed up a long time before, and that had led her to making a very poor decision, albeit one that benefited me. I doubted she would have left the stable and joined me outside had she been fully rested. Now, she was already in a bad place mentally, and the sleep deprivation likely did not help at all.

“What do you mean? I’m fine,” she said right before tripping on a rock and landing face-first on a wooden plank.

I stood up and immediately regretted the motion, wincing. “Are you okay? That looked painful.”

Defeated, she turned her head to the right, towards the snow covered fields, and replied, “You know, I think you’re right. I need to sleep, or I’ll get us both killed.” My heart sank. So she was ready to listen. She would have listened if I told her Silver was suspicious. Shut up, brain. There was absolutely no reason to feel this way. There’s nothing I can do to fix it now, so please shut up! Stop making me feel terrible…

“It’s just…” she continued. “I’m not sure I want to sleep after this. I took a nap earlier, but woke up from a nightmare. At least when I’m awake he can’t hurt me anymore.” She let out a heavy, heart-wrenching sigh. I wanted to hold her so badly that I almost hopped off the wagon. Only the prospect of the pain in my ribcage stopped me. “But I suppose it won’t help if I hurt myself instead. Let’s stop for the day.”

Since the area around the rails was rather open, we took the opportunity to free the way for any other potential caravans wanting to pass. After I said I’d stay outside and look out for trouble, Candy went inside the wagon. There was no reason to believe we were in immediate danger, but I preferred to take the safer option. After all, what was to stop raiders from taking the tracks, too?

I still had a few hours to pass before sunset, and before I would grow sleepy again. I painfully climbed onto the wagon for a better view and started killing time by disassembling and reassembling my rifle. It didn’t take as long as the first time, but that just gave me more opportunities to marvel at how amazing this work of engineering really was. Even rusted and barely functional, it was still gorgeous. After that, I decided to use the gun to practise with my telekinesis. In particular, I was training how steady it was. After all, aiming a rifle would probably be the one application that benefitted the most from stability.

Eventually, I got bored of staring down a rifle and keeping it as immobile as possible. On the bright side, it was starting to come more naturally to me. Still not “second nature”, like the magazine had described, but it was slowly becoming easier. Or so I thought. I really couldn’t tell without a point of comparison.

After my magic training, I was finally motivated enough to finally delve into the Big Book of Arcane Sciences. Unlike The Mechanical Marvels of Firearms, this book was more like a lexicon. Well, a compendium to be more exact. In practice, this meant each section was mostly unrelated to other sections, and that I could start anywhere and read up on any topic.

I gleaned over the summary, a few topics and sub-topics catching my attention. I was trying to figure out where to start when I saw a subject that I had been meaning to explore—teleportation. The category it was found in was labelled ‘Superspells’. I opened that page first.

“Superspells are, as the name suggests, bigger, more powerful spells. There are two factors that can qualify a spell as a superspell: complexity and power requirements. Often, a superspell is both complex and power-draining. The category of superspells was until recently not well defined, and any spell that was technically difficult to perform could be labelled as such. Over the past two decades, significant strides in magical research allowed for a mathematically robust formalisation of the definition of a superspell:

“A superspell is an arcano-technical construct requiring more than 500AOpC (Arcane Operations per Cast). This seemingly arbitrary limit was chosen as a rough approximation of the cutoff at which a standard ruby-amethyst spell-matrix would consistently outperform an average unicorn.

“Unfortunately, due to space constraints, this book will not delve into the details of what constitutes a single Arcane Operation. For the avid reader, we can only highly recommend Prof. Sunburst’s thesis that led to this entire field of research.”

Were superspells related to megaspells? I checked the book’s publishing date and found that it had been written many years before the official announcement of megaspells’ existence. I shrugged and, satisfied with this definition, found the section about teleportation.

“Teleportation. Believed to have been originally invented by Starswirl the Bearded, this spell allows a unicorn to cross vast distances in the blink of an eye — leading to one of its casual nicknames, the ‘blink’. In its original version, only the most magically adept unicorns managed to learn and master it, while the contemporan one is accessible to most unicorns interested in the topic.

“The recent version, invented and formalised by Prof. Sunburst, utilises modern arcano-mathematical theory to create a spell that is easier to learn, more efficient, and safer than its ancient counterpart. Additional failsafes have been built in to prevent users from ending up inside solid objects.

“Like with the majority of superspells, the algorithm invented by Prof. Sunburst is the most reliable way to learn it, and is therefore depicted below in arcane code format. However, unlike most arcano-programs, teleportation has self-correcting elements, meaning that a mostly correct cast will produce a fully accurate result. Alternatively, if the spell-cast is too far from correct, the code will simply prevent the spell from executing.

“Prof. Sunburst deemed it a good idea to make the spell more approachable to beginners, giving stronger feedback in the event of an incorrect cast. However, advanced users might think it beneficial to skip the code responsible for error-checking, as it does add a non-negligible cost at cast-time. However, it is highly discouraged to skip those safety measures: they prevent a pony from materialising inside a wall, or even another pony.”

Unfortunately for me, I had no idea how to read or interpret arcane code. It just hadn’t been on my curriculum. Partly because it was fairly advanced magical theory and would thus require a lot of time to learn, but also because, as the future overmare, I had much more important topics to learn about first. Iodine’s words to Mother echoed in my mind. “A damn shame, really. Filly’s got the perfect horn for magic.”

Thus, I looked through the book’s summary once again. I found the keyword I was looking for near the end, as an appendix. “Arcane Code — an Aide-Mémoire” was the section’s title. A small disclaimer read:

“This appendix only aims to act as a cheat-sheet for unicorns familiar with arcane code. It does not teach any of the basic concepts. The full concept of arcane code is far outside the scope of this book, and deserves its own volume entirely. Fortunately, many such books can be found. At the time of writing, Prof. Sunburst and Dr. Arcane Spark’s Full Guide to Arcane Programming can be regarded as the golden standard on the matter. However, it is worth noting that the author of The Big Book of Arcane Science has plans on publishing a comprehensive guide to magical theory as well.”

Ah. Back to square one it was, then. I wasn’t giving up here, though. Once again I turned my attention to the summary table. At the end of the part on superspells, a single title stood out to me. “Learning superspells for the average unicorn”. Sounded promising.

“Not everypony has had the opportunity to learn arcane description languages. For this reason, this section has been written to give a few tips and ideas to help unicorns willing to put in the effort to learn difficult spells. Keep in mind that if you find yourself often learning new superspells, you would likely be able to save a lot of time by learning the description language used in this book, commonly referred to as arcane code.

“Now, to learn a superspell without knowing what you’re going for would normally be difficult. The normal hoof-wavy techniques do not apply when the spell you are learning is orders of magnitude more difficult than normal spells. A very motivated teacher is therefore required to help you.”

I almost gave up right then and there, but was too engrossed with the topic and too bored to stop reading. Who knew, maybe I’d meet a pony able to teach me a few of those ‘superspells’.

“That teacher would have to be somepony willing to demonstrate the spell as many times as necessary, in many different situations. The learning unicorn can then easily observe the magical patterns formed. When the student is ready, she or he may start practising the channel, and have the teacher observe and correct certain patterns.

“In practice this proves fairly difficult, which is why telepathy or memory transfer spells may be used to facilitate the process. However, the latter is mostly beneficial during the first phase, and is rarely of help during the second part—the teacher needs to be able to respond immediately or at least very quickly if the student makes a mistake.”

Oh, so not everything was lost. I only had one usage to compare to, but I’d felt it many times. It was far from an ideal learning environment, but it did seem feasible to use it to teach teleportation to myself. I turned to my saddlebags, finding the memory talisman. I dreaded watching the entire memory for one short moment, but it was my only option. I wanted to start working on learning the spell immediately, but I knew I needed at least a small refresher.

On the other hoof, I did not like the idea of leaving myself and Candy vulnerable while I viewed a memory. Then again… I hadn’t seen anypony in several hours, even on the day before, and it was getting fairly late, so most groups would probably stop for the day. Meanwhile, the wildlife, whose red bars still occasionally flickered on, seemed just as unlikely to attack. Screw it, I needed a useful spell, and the sooner I learned it, the better.

As usual, I recorded the time of entering the memory, and compared it with the exit time. Twenty minutes. I was pleased to find my EFS momentarily empty, save for Candy’s bar. Not wanting to waste any time during which I might have forgotten some of the spell, I started channelling magic. Some like this, some like that, no no, that wasn’t quite right. Maybe... The energy gathered at my horn fizzled.

“Ponyfeathers,” I cursed to myself. I needed to try again. So I did, only to fail in a very similar manner. This was going to prove itself even more difficult than I first thought. I had gotten a bit further, though. The tricky part was focusing on my magic while attempting to remember what I needed to do next. The easy part was that I knew the spell well enough that I immediately felt it when my magic took a wrong turn. Or maybe that was part of the spell’s error correction?

It took me many more attempts until I was finally able to reproduce most of the spell. I’d stopped counting after thirty, and my headache had reawakened enough to make me consider eating a mint, but I suppressed the urge.

I liked to think I was pressing on out of sheer willpower alone, but that wasn’t true. Every time I took a break, boredom eventually outweighed magical fatigue and I found myself trying “one more time, just in case it’s the one.”

This one, however, would be my final attempt. I’d promised myself that seven times now, but I knew I had to stop sooner, rather than later. If I failed this, I would give up for today. Part of me doubted that thought as it crossed my mind. After all, even my headache hadn’t prevented me from breaking that promise.

My surroundings lit up in red as I shoved a large amount of power into my spell. I’d found that channelling more magic than necessary helped the flow of the spell. It was probably because Arcane’s cast was finely-trained and bare minimum, while I had to go with the brute-force approach.

Lines and corridors gradually formed the labyrinth that made up this spell. I was getting close! Don’t let that distract you. Thankfully, my aside thought didn’t distract me, and the spell continued as intended, until… I had it. I had it! This felt right! Everything just… connected! I released the energy I’d gathered, letting it run its course exactly as intended.

Pop!

Had I succeeded? If so, why was everything dark? And why was my EFS suddenly crowded with red bars? Thankfully, none of them seemed to be in my immediate vicinity. Still, if it appeared on my EFS, it was too close. My initial stupor fading, I realised I could hear water whooshing close to me. In the distance, I could hear tiny squeaks and fast-paced clicks, like tiny claws on concrete, but I couldn’t tell if the noises originated from the bars.

Given that I had no idea where I was, I focused my telekinesis on nothing in particular, wincing as the state of my horn rekindled my headache. I just wanted a small source of light that wouldn’t overwhelm my eyes like my PipBuck’s flashlight, damn it.

I found myself in a semi-circular tunnel, barely large enough for a regular pony to stand in. Of course, being shorter than the average pony, I had ample room to move. In the middle, water flowed along a small canal. On either side, a pipe emerged every few metres into the channel, water trickling out of it. Was this a sewer? I didn’t understand the purpose, given this place was nowhere near a settlement of any kind. Maybe it helped evacuate excess water from the fields? No matter, I had more pressing issues.

My first idea was to attempt the spell again. Now that I’d succeeded in casting it, that little bit of challenge was gone, and I didn’t like the idea of putting myself through that pain again. A low, growl-like noise echoed through the tunnel. Yeah no, I’m getting the heck out of here.

I’d managed it once, so I couldn’t think of a reason I wouldn’t do it again. As I channelled the spell once more, I managed to follow the pattern exactly, and… the spell failed. Up until the end, the cast had felt correct, but then it had suddenly snapped back like a rubber band, sending ripples of pain through my fatigued horn, hurting my brain even more. But why? Everything went right… Had I already misremembered? I massaged my horn for a few moments; a futile attempt to make it feel better. Then, I attempted the spell again, only to meet the same painful fate. Why?

Then it hit me. I knew how to teleport in a specific direction. But I did not know how to teleport somewhere else. I was such an idiot. That would explain the problem; I’d probably ended up in this tunnel because the fail safes on the spell had adjusted my destination to avoid materialising me in the ground. I gulped. How could I be so reckless?

I snapped out of my thoughts and looked left to right, trying to find an exit, but no such luck. I suppressed a panicked thought that suggested I would be stuck here. I still had options.

In both directions, red bars could be seen. Only two on the right, though, so I picked that direction and started walking, but not before unharnessing my rifle. After a few seconds, a loud “brooooooooaaaap” echoed in the sewer. In the distance, illuminated by my red light, stood a bloated, brightly coloured frog. Naturally, my first reaction was to put a bullet right through it, putting into practice my aim training.

The shot echoed through the canal, reigniting my headache. Immediately after, the frog burst, sending bits of itself flying everywhere. The places hit by its innards started smoking and hissing, leaving behind shallow indents.

To make matters worse, my PipBuck started slowly clicking, and a sharp pain spread through my lungs. I tried to hold back a cough but failed, and tears pooled in my eyes as I pressed on.

Behind me, another toad was rapidly hopping towards me. In front of me, my EFS only indicated one hostile creature. I didn’t like the plan that formed in my mind, but I needed to flee at any cost. Fighting more of those toads was not an option.

I took a few steps backwards, and took in a deep breath. I bit my lower lip as my bruised rib shifted. Then, I ran as fast as I could through the poison cloud; my eyes stung and my PipBuck clicked like crazy. Above my EFS, a small red number appeared. At its apex, it read “50rads/s”. I only stopped running when it disappeared and the clicking died down entirely.

In the distance, my eyes caught the glint of a ladder leading upwards. My way out! Unfortunately, the frog stood right in front of it. Killing it was out of the question, and that only left me with one option.

I braced myself for the pain in my chest, and sprinted past the frog. It simply croaked in response. Thankfully, they weren’t very agile—or maybe just not that interested in me? Whichever it was, I managed to reach the ladder safely. At the top of it, I could see a round metal hatch. With a wince, I started climbing, every rung bringing in another round of pain.Then I felt a sharp burn on my right hindleg.

The frog had wrapped its glowing green tongue around it. With an abrupt pull, it made me lose my grip on the ladder, and I landed on the concrete floor, banging my head. The world went black and the ringing in my ears returned. I snapped out of it as quickly as possible, only to realise that I was being pulled towards the frog’s mouth. I only saw one way out of this situation. I lifted my rifle and the tunnel regained its familiar red lighting. I took a deep breath and held it before pulling the trigger, making the toad explode.

Somehow, the fire in my leg had spread to my nose, and I nearly screamed as my body burned. My PipBuck clicked. If I wasted another second I would die. I jumped to my hooves, blinked tears out of my eyes, and ignored how my head spun. I just bit my lip, and my mouth started filling with the familiar taste of iron.

I practically jumped up the ladder, forcing my telekinesis through the hatch, and ripping it open. Daylight blinded me and dirt fell in my eyes, but I climbed out. I was safe.

My leg, nose, and lip bled profusely, but I was safe.

My lungs were on fire, burning with every breath I took, but I was safe.

My broken side pulsed with pain, every heartbeat and breath sent ripples throughout my body, but I was safe.

I lay there for a few long minutes, marvelling that I was safe. I couldn’t believe that mere minutes ago, I’d been idly experimenting with magic, fighting boredom as well as I could, and now I was just happy to be alive.

I was safe.

I lay there Stars knew how long as my PipBuck idly clicked by. Eventually, the clicking started to worry me enough to overcome the exhaustion and soreness. That dial being in the yellow could not be a good thing. My lungs hurt, but I managed to hold back coughs when I limped back to the wagon—I’d teleported almost exactly under it, judging by how far I’d needed to run underground.

I painfully climbed onto the back of the wagon and took the time to inspect myself. My stable jumpsuit was tattered where the toad had… licked it. Underneath, a crust had formed above the chemically burnt flesh. It looked so much worse than it felt, and it felt absolutely miserable. The only other part of me that hurt in a similar fashion was my muzzle. Some acid had landed there, hadn’t it?

I’d never really liked my facial features so much, but the thought of having a scar—and this was definitely going to scar—in the middle of it… it saddened me. Then, a scarier thought crossed my mind. This thing hadn’t hit my eye, but it had gotten close. Much too close.

The idea of losing my eye terrified me. I’d always liked my eyes; their vibrant red had always helped me feel… more myself. Even disregarding their nice and pure colour, they were amazing at their primary function. I had vision better than anypony in the stable—Iodine had told me that—and I was proud of that.

I took a deep breath—well, as deep as I dared—and slowly started calming down, considering my options. I really wanted to heal myself, but I couldn’t afford to waste supplies on these wounds. They were not an immediate threat to me, and we were starting to run low on medical supplies. Although… we hadn’t searched the wagon we’d inherited from him. He probably even had some weapons. I sighed. Well, at least we had supplies now, even though we’d gone through Tartarus—Candy more so than myself—to acquire them.

My mind flashed images of the dimly lit scene. He’d hurt me more with his simple kick than my father ever had. Why did they even bother doing things so slowly if they could hurt me like that? Maybe Concerto had wanted to avoid breaking ribs, but what reason did Silver have? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. If it were me, I would just have hurt them as much as possible—without killing them, obviously—instead of messing around back there.

An icy gust broke me out of my train of thought, and I decided to call it an early night, and to go to sleep. Falling asleep was difficult, as my leg itched and hurt, but exhaustion took over quickly enough.

I awoke to Candy bandaging my foreleg. I noticed she’d also put a bandaid on my muzzle. She’d taken off my jumpsuit and was rolling the magically imbued cloth around my leg with practised grace. No, not practised grace: there was some hesitation in her telekinesis. She didn’t have much experience in this, but it came naturally to her, probably just like I was able to aim rifles so well.

“Uughh,” I groaned, shifting to sit upright, a slight discomfort in my chest.

“Careful,” Candy replied, the slightest tint of worry in her voice. “I cast an anaesthetic spell on your chest and leg. It may not hurt, but you might injure yourself because you don’t notice when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be. Not that you should be able to move around easily to begin with.” Yeah, most physicians would recommend against fighting frog monsters after a fracture. Or a bruised rib. Or whatever it was.

“Ah. Any reason you didn’t use it on me yesterday? I could have used it on several occasions.”

“Well, as I said, the pain is there to stop you from doing any movements you shouldn’t be doing, and I don’t know any weaker pain-numbing spell. Besides, you’ll find it difficult to move properly. There’s not much you can do about a fractured rib other than giving it time to heal,” she explained in her usual calm and happy voice. “Healing potions might make it mend quicker, but we only had one of those, and it wouldn’t have been a miracle cure.”

“I thought we were out of those? And what do you mean ‘had’?” I interrupted.

“Well, I found some in the cart, but now we’re out again.” I cursed myself for making her waste our only potion on non-fatal wounds. “As well as a shotgun that I could use as backup if mine ever has any issues. And I don’t think I’ll be running out of shells anytime soon, either.”

“Can I have it? I prefer rifles, but having a backup weapon for close quarters sounds useful,” I chimed.

“Oh, sure, I guess. You’ll just have to be careful not to shoot it if you’re behind me; it’s hard to tell where the pellets will go.”

“I know, I know,” I reassured her. “Remember, I’m the pony with a gun cutie mark here.” I stuck out my tongue at her. I was surprised at how light the mood was, especially compared to the day before. As usual, firearms improved my mood.

Candy giggled playfully. “Now, miss ‘gun nut’, could you please slowly stand up so I can bandage your chest as well? I’ll help you up. I think the magic should speed up your rib’s recovery, if only a bit,” she teased. I wanted to protest, but as the memory of the pain resurfaced, that desire was silenced.

We continued our chat while she wrapped another roll around my midsection, and we eventually ate breakfast—Sugar Apple Bombs. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but both of us wanted to start moving—no point staying here if it was already bright enough to see. It was best if I didn’t try to keep up with her, and so I simply sat down at the front of the wagon again. Candy’s gait was back to being bouncy and happy.

“Hey, Candy, are you okay? You seem awfully peppy, compared to yesterday.” There was no point hiding my worry. It might just lead to her getting hurt again.

“Oh, yeah. I just needed a good night of sleep to reset my system, I suppose. No doubt it will stay with me for a long while, but if I focus on the here and now, I’ll move forward and eventually overcome it.” She sighed. “It also helps when I take inspiration from you.”

“From me?” The words left my muzzle before I even had a chance to realise. “Oh right, because my father beat me too. Sorry, spoke too quickly.”

“Well, not just beating, but also…” She stopped herself. I couldn’t see her face, so I couldn’t hope to figure out why. Did she see something and got distracted? I waited a few more seconds before asking.

“But also… what?” I inquired, unwittingly tilting my head to the side.

“The…” she hesitated. The silence lasted much shorter than the previous one. “Nevermind. Please forget I said anything.”

“But I’m curiooouuus,” I whined. I quickly regretted that decision, as I realised that she probably had a good reason for her words.

Candy stopped walking to turn around and give me a serious look. “I’m sorry, Iron, but I really wouldn’t want to open up that wound for you. And frankly speaking, I would rather keep that book closed myself.”

I was still as lost, but at least it felt like she was being real with me. “I understand. Can I ask you one last question about this, though? I think it’s related, but I can’t tell for sure.”

Candy didn’t hide her reluctance, but after a while she did reply. “I suppose so, if it helps you feel better.”

“What is ‘rape’?” I asked. Given the context, I couldn’t help but feel like I was asking something terrible, but I needed to know.

She blinked at me for a few moments, then her brow furrowed as she looked for words, all without losing her serene smile. After a short while, she answered in a neutral, yet odd tone. “Rape is non-consentual sex.”

“Oooh, I see.” I nodded in understanding, though that left a question. “What’s sex?” I had my suspicion, but I wanted a precise definition.

Candy’s jaw dropped, any hint of her smile disappearing.

What?

During our entire conversation—for which we had stopped—she had been very flustered. I couldn’t understand why one would blush this much when talking about a simple biological function of the equine body. Well, perhaps simple wasn’t the best way to describe it, given the complicated terminology surrounding it, but it definitely didn’t seem like anything to be ashamed of.

I’d often wondered why some stallions were beating their wives during my walks in the stable’s vent system, him on top of her. My mind was dragged to my father, but I quickly shook the thought away.

I hadn’t found anything on the subject within the books we had at our quarters. If it was a requirement in order to produce foals, I could understand why it was done by seemingly loving couples.

“What I still don’t understand is how your parents never taught you about it. Foals normally get curious and ask their parents something along the lines of ‘where do foals come from?’” Candy pondered.

“I did ask Mother, but she replied that I would learn about it ‘in a few years’ once I tackled biology. When I heard that, I just waited, because there wasn’t much point in rearranging my curriculum other than to satisfy my curiosity.” Well, I had been pretty impatient at first, but eventually I’d gotten over it.

“That sounds like she just dodged the question. If that’s the case, then that likely means she was an accomplice in what your father did to you.” Candy looked me in the eyes, frowning.

“Could be,” I shrugged, “but I think she just didn’t want to give me a too general overview of the topic. From what you’ve told me it sounds complicated and would deserve full lessons.” My mind continued wandering around my mental model of the stable and its politics. Those were what really mattered for a future overmare.

“I’m not very convinced, but you do know her better than I do, so I shouldn’t assume. Still, this is a pretty big thing to completely omit to your child, especially since you likely already had your implant. I wonder when she was planning to tell you; after she married you off?” My thoughts landed on Zinc. I must’ve made a face, as Candy asked me, “What? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just that my would-be future husband crossed my mind, and the thought of having to agree to this whole sex thing just to have a foal… not pleasant.”

Candy grimaced. “Oh. I am so sorry you had to go through all that. To think…” She shook her head, before letting her smile return. Moving in to nuzzle my neck, she gently stroked my mane. “It’s okay, you’re fine now, we’re far from all that.”

She was right. “Yet another reason to be happy we’re out of there.”

The lavender pony nodded, then looked puzzled before asking. “What did you mean by ‘future husband’? Were you going to have an arranged marriage? With who?” Whom, my mind corrected.

“Zinc, Iodine’s grandson. Mother never talked to me about it, but it was as clear as the atrium lights that I would need to marry somepony wealthy in order to become the overmare.”

“Who said you had to be overmare?” Candy asked, sounding surprisingly naive.

“Well, my whole education revolved around me taking on that position eventually. Mother did want me to find my own cutie mark, so that I could do something while waiting to take on the role.” Wait, who would become the next overmare after Mother passed away? No matter; she probably had a plan.

“Are there really no other options? Surely you would have had a choice.”

I shook my head. “No. Well, it would have been either him or you. Otherwise, there would have been the chance that somepony could take the position from me mid-term.”

Candy’s mouth contorted in a horrified scowl, and for a moment she stared at me slack-jawed. “Me…?” she mouthed.

“Yeah, don’t you know that your side of the family is amongst the wealthiest in the stable? Only reason Zinc would have been picked over you is because same gender marriages are usually avoided for the overmare position.” I took a small break to catch my breath. “And I think I understand why, now that you’ve told me about sex. Especially given that the previous overmare had to abdicate in the middle of her term due to her lack of living relatives. Had she had children, the situation would have been different, because they could have supported her until she was ready to retire,” I replied matter-of-factly. It felt nice to be more knowledgeable than Candy for at least certain matters.

“I can’t say I’m too fond of that idea…”

“Me neither, though I would have much preferred marrying you over Zinc. At least you’re smart and kind.” Another realisation crossed my mind. “And I wouldn’t have had to have sex with you, so that would also have been a big plus.” Wait… “Actually, when I think of it, I think I would even have liked marrying you.”

“Uh huh…” Candy turned around and attached the cart’s harness to herself. “Well, we should get going. We took way too long of a break.” An awkward silence fell upon us. I had a hard time accepting it could be because of something I’d said, but I wasn’t certain. I didn’t think Candy would be the type to be offended by a pragmatic marriage, given how common they were for ponies of our standing, but I couldn’t fully chase the thought away. She probably just wanted to get to New Detrot as quickly as possible, and I was just imagining how awkward this silence felt.

The rest of the day’s trip went by quietly. I couldn’t find a topic to bring up, and even considered taking one of my candies to help me think, but decided against it. If I had an unlimited supply of them, I could use them on things like that, but as it stood, I had to conserve them for more important matters. Instead, I spent my time polishing and inspecting my rifle, despite my latent magical fatigue. With enough time and patience, this thing would eventually return to full functionality, though I suspected I needed to swap out some parts first, either by making my own, or by dismantling another rifle of a similar type. The latter option seemed easier, but it required finding another gun like mine and hoping the set of damaged parts was disjoint.

I was even able to polish the inside of the barrel, careful to run my telekinesis alongside the grooves, rather than over them; polishing them away would have been counterproductive.

Eventually, Candy broke the silence by asking me how I had gotten injured, and I explained the whole situation to her.

We arrived in a train station, with the two parallel tracks turning into three, then four, then a half dozen. I watched my PipBuck intently as we approached it, until it flashed the new location onto the map. For the briefest moment, it labelled it as ‘Foal Junction’, before switching over to ‘New Detrot’. How did it do that? It was probably far beyond my current understanding, but I hoped to one day know enough to figure it out.

Ramps led up from the tracks onto the platforms; they’d obviously been added after the original construction, possibly even post-war. On top of the roof above the platforms, I spotted the silhouette of a winged creature. I could tell it wasn’t a pony, but if it was capable of wielding a rifle, I owed it respect. I couldn’t see very well, but the gun seemed much bigger than my own, and I found myself seething with envy.

When we were within ear shot, she called out to us in a deep, but distinctly female voice. “Hey!” As she approached, I finally got a good look at the griffin—I presumed; she matched the description I had read long ago. Her armour reminded me of Candy’s, sharing the same blue textile, as well as the black plating. “Oh, stable dwellers. Stockpile mentioned you. Come on in.”

Candy looked back at me, eyes wide. I whispered, “I think she means under the roof. I’ll help you push the wagon up the ramp,” before hopping down from the wagon as gently as I could.

“No, don’t push it in your cond—” I simply tapped my horn and she stopped herself. “Right, I keep forgetting other unicorns actually have strength behind their telekinesis.” Was her horn really that feeble? She had been able to use potent nerve magic, so she couldn’t really be that weak… right?

As we pushed the wagon onto the platform, I noticed two more white bars pop up on my EFS. Given that I couldn’t see them, I suspected they were on the roof along with the first griffin, who flew down, landing next to us. “Welcome to New Detrot. I need to get back to guard duty, but you should meet Gust inside the main building.” That name rang a bell… Right! He had my bounty for killing the raiders.

She pointed to our right, where a large concrete structure extended past platform one. “With how cold it’s been the past few days, we haven’t had many new visitors, but you’ll find a few traders inside.” She turned to take off again, but then looked at us again. “My name’s Gale, by the way.”

After the large bird took off, Candy whispered to me, “I’m not sure if we should trust her…”

“We don’t have to trust her,” I replied. “Let’s just not put ourselves in any situation where we might have to.”

“Well, yeah, but you’ve seen how well-armed she is. She could just kill us.”

“Yeah, and she hasn’t. I completely agree that we shouldn’t turn our backs to strangers, but if she and the other pon—people on the roof wanted to hurt us, they probably would have already tried something. By the size of that barrel, that rifle would be accurate at least five hundred metres, maybe more.” Unless it was one of those stupid old calibres that traded most of its velocity for mass. I was getting distracted. “I’m just as on edge as you, but if they’re all this well-armed, they don’t need to drug our food to hurt us.”

“There are others?” she questioned, incredulous.

“Yeah. I can see them on my EFS. All white bars, though.”

“Ah, I see.” She paused to think for a few seconds. “I believe we should lock the wagon and chain it to one of the pillars. It’s ours now, and I wouldn’t want somepony to steal it, and I don’t trust the guards to not at least attempt it.”

I nodded and, five minutes later, we were crossing the train tracks. I regretted this decision when I realised I would have to climb back onto the platform. With Candy’s help, it ended up much less painful than if I’d tried doing it alone. I wished I could just teleport us—or at least myself—across the gaps. That, in turn, brought back memories of the noxious rad-toads, or whatever they were, and I dropped the idea.

“I think we should find a way around, maybe take the stairs below. The platforms seem to be connected underground.” It wasn’t a very difficult or shocking conclusion, it almost felt like I was stating the obvious.

Underground, yellowed white paint was peeling off the tile walls. Our hooves clacked loudly against the concrete floor, echoing throughout the entire tunnel. The unpleasant odour of dried urine hit my nostrils. Why would anypony pick some underground tunnel, out of all the options in Equestria, to relieve themself? I groaned. The attack on my sense of smell ended when we climbed a staircase, leaving the tunnel.

When we finally entered the train station building—this one much bigger than the one near Foal Mountain—we found a few ponies sitting inside on benches, chatting. Leaning against the back wall stood a griffin, carefully eyeing Candy and I. His Stable-Tec security armour holstered both a baton and some kind of short automatic rifle.

On the sides, tables had been arranged as trading stands, with merchandise sitting on top. Even though the room looked far from empty, I could tell many more merchants could normally have stands here. One earth pony’s stand sold produce that looked relatively fresh. Another one, occupied by a unicorn, sold various pre-war items, like eating utensils, clothing, and soap, but also—somehow still edible—packaged food.

The last stand that had items on it almost made me drool. A rifle, a shotgun, and several pistols lay on the table. They all looked in better condition than my varmint rifle, but none of them looked fresh like the shotguns me and Candy had taken from the stable. Well, mine was broken, but if we ignored that small detail, it looked much better than those.

Still, these weapons looked amazing. I wanted to try all of them, but then I remembered—we had no money. It was then I realised that I had, in fact, been drooling. In my defence, it wasn’t much, but Candy did give me a look.

The last table did not seem to have any merchandise on it. Instead, a griffin male—presumably, given that he looked gruffer than the other members of his species we’d encountered—sat at it, writing idly on a sheet of yellowed paper. The wall to his right was covered with posters tacked onto the wood. Could this be Gust? He must have noticed my gaze as he perked up, meeting it with his green eyes.

“Hello, welcome to New Detrot, how may I help you?” Realisation dawned in his eyes. “You’re the stable dwellers Stockpile mentioned, aren’t you?” he said in a flat, neutral voice. It ever so slightly reminded me of Mother’s voice.

“I think so,” Candy replied. “Unless there were more of us that I’m not aware of.” She let out a small giggle, and Gust also chuckled.

“Well, I have fifty caps for you. If you spend them here, we can just figure out a tab and save me the trouble of counting all of them out.” He shrugged. “I just can’t stand counting caps any more than necessary.”

Candy turned to me, seemingly awaiting my input. It felt… odd to have an adult not only care for my opinion, but to actively seek it out. I shook myself out of my stupor. “Well, I don’t see why this place would be any worse than others. And we need supplies anyway.”

She nodded in reply. “That was my thought as well.” She turned back to Gust. “Alright.”

Then, he announced our credit to the whole room, and gave us a sheet of paper for the merchants to write how much they’d charged us. We first approached the produce merchant. Given our extra day of travelling—even with the things from Silver’s chariot—we were almost out of food, and we preferred something fresh.

That turned out to be a mistake, as the vegetables and lettuce seemed to cost five times as much as the other stand’s packaged foods. Neither of us could tell how much a cap was truly worth, but ten of them for one apple was definitely not within our budget. Maybe once we had a more substantial fortune and source of income, they would be, but for now we needed to stick with the cheap option. With twenty caps, we bought what would hopefully last us for two days.

We decided it would be a good idea to set aside some caps. Gust hadn’t said we needed to spend all of them, just that he didn’t feel like counting out such an amount. Fifteen caps were spent on ammunition for my rifle. Thankfully, .22LR rounds seemed to be some of the cheapest. It made sense, given how much smaller they were. Because of their size, they were also able to reach very high velocities, but didn’t have much destructive ability compared to larger rounds.

I packed the dozen small bullets into my harness’ pouch and asked the merchant, “Do you have anything that could help repair my rifle? It’s in fairly terrible shape. I might not be able to afford it, but I’d like to ask anyway.”

“Well, I don’t have any individual parts, but I do have a fairly unusable varmint rifle I could scrap to repair yours. Wouldn’t be that expensive, probably twenty, maybe thirty caps since it’s a fairly simple gun. Depends which parts I can swap out.” He shrugged. “You could also have our local gunsmith, Double Feed, to fix it for you. Would be a proper fix, but it would be even more expensive.”

We didn’t have that much. I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “How much would just the gun cost?” I was pretty confident I could do it myself. After all, I’d spent a lot of time rummaging around the inner workings of mine, how difficult could this be?

“Well, I probably wouldn’t sell it for more than five or ten caps, but just giving it to you would be a waste, I feel. So unless your sister really knows her way around guns, I’d rather just do it myself.”

“I don’t need the whole rifle. I just need to replace the firing pin because it’s bent—somehow—and sometimes misses the rim of the cartridge. Thankfully, the chamber is mostly intact, but the receiver is dented in certain places and rusted through in others and I worry the gun might just fall apart. I don’t have the tools to fix it, so I’m thinking of just replacing it,” I stated flatly, staring him down. Technically, even the barrel needed to be replaced; this entire weapon was in a terrible state.

“Or maybe you know your way around guns. Fine, I’ll sell it for five caps, but I don’t think the receiver is in great shape, either. Dunno about the firing pin.” He shrugged and reached into the duffle bag behind him, and wrote down another line on our tab.

Just like that, we’d gone through forty-five of our caps. I wanted more ammo, but Candy insisted we were better off holding onto some money, and I had to agree. Still, we needed to find a way to make more, or to scavenge for food.

We approached Gust’s table again, and he took a quick look at the sheet before digging out the caps from a bag behind him. When he handed them to Candy, she asked him, “Is there any job we could do around here?” Glancing at the posters behind him, she then quickly added, “Preferably one not involving murder.”

“Well, there are always some errands to run,” he replied. “We have a notice board, but I actually have something a bit more pressing. You see, our resident radio host, Airwaves, has gone missing. Again.” He rolled his eyes. “Yesterday afternoon, she said something about scavenging old electronics for her station, and today she’s been missing the whole day.”

Candy nodded in understanding. “And you want us to find her?” If she was still alive. In this cold, she would have died if she spent the night outside. And where would we even start looking?

“Correct. She always scavenges for electronics in the old metro tunnels. I suspect she might have gotten swarmed by ghouls, since those things tend to flock underground when it’s as cold as now. She’s pretty nimble, being a pegasus and all, so I doubt she got caught. Most likely, she just barricaded herself in a room and can’t leave due to the ghouls.”

Once more, Candy Cane looked at me. It was still hard to fully wrap around the fact that she cared about what I thought. But then again, she wasn’t just an adult, she was also my friend. It made some sense, after all. “It sounds awfully dangerous, don’t you think? And how would we find her, anyway?” If a proper wastelander couldn’t handle those ghouls, then what odds did we stand?

“I’m not asking you to necessarily bring her back, just to find her. I have her PipBuck tag written down somewhere, that should help you find her. With your EFS, you should be able to tell if there’s a crowd. If there is, you can just come back, if there ain’t, well… they likely ate her and dispersed.” Oh, of course those things ate ponies. Somehow, that hadn’t crossed my mind…

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” said Candy. “But why us? Surely you have somepony better for the job.

Gust shook his head. “None of my griffs are available, and it would take someone a day to search every metro station around here. You two have PipBucks, that already makes the whole thing easier.”

I furrowed my brow. “Why does nopo—nobody else have another PipBuck?”

“Only the best of us get PipBucks, and those tend to work in more important places. She had hers before even working for me. What’s it matter to you?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing, I’m just curious.”

We agreed on the terms. Twenty caps to walk East for less than an hour, according to the PipBuck map. If we had the opportunity to and did bring her back, we would get a bonus—even if we only brought back a corpse. He explained the directions to us, and to my amazement, my PipBuck showed a marker on my EFS. Candy seemed to have it too, as she turned to look in its direction, but unlike me, she wasn’t awed.

We decided to leave our cart here. We’d taken most of our valuables out of it, and the New Detrot train station was well enough guarded that nopony would try to steal it without the guards’ accords. While we didn’t like the idea of trusting the armed griffins—or anypony in New Detrot, for that matter—there was also no real reason for them to steal a cart like ours. Would be bad for business, after all.

After maybe fifty minutes of walking, I was still surprisingly energetic. Then again, I hadn’t had too many issues walking down Foal Mountain, so maybe a day or two of rest was all I’d needed. Though I probably also needed to start eating properly again. In the week I’d spent outside, I’d gotten slightly skinnier, and given I’d always been skirting the line to underweight, this was definitely not a good thing. My ribs prominently protruded from underneath my coat. This was why Candy was confident none of them were broken.

I attempted to turn my attention away from my chest and towards the road. Thinking about it seemed to make the pain worse, but forgetting about it led me to do reckless things that made it hurt much worse. There was no winning with this injury, was there?

We eventually reached the entrance to the metro our PipBucks had been pointing to. Gust had discouraged us from entering the tunnel prematurely, and so we’d ended up walking most of the way above ground, despite the cold. We found out that the green and the red metro lines met up in Marey Junction, which was a day—roughly ten hours—from New Detrot on hoof. The sheer scale of the region baffled both Candy and I.

I’d read about it prior—about the rapid growth of the region during the late Celestian rule due to a sudden golden industrial age—and knew how it had led to one of the most spread out centres of population in pre-war Equestria. Seeing it in person, and having already walked so much, however, was a very different experience. Fifty kilometres did not seem like a lot until you had to cover it on hoof.

As we walked down the ramp—there were stairs, but my injury made me avoid those—red bars started appearing, one by one. By the time we arrived at the bottom, there were six. No, seven. The bad part was that they all roughly coincided with our target marker. “I think this is good enough. We know there’s a crowd of red bars there, that should be good enough. I don’t think we can fight this many ghouls, so I would rather remain unnoticed,” I told Candy.

“Ah, you see bars? Well, I’d rather check out the crowd anyway. I’d feel bad for half-assing a job. We don’t need to get that close, just close enough to make sure.” I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but she did have a point, especially since Airwave’s bar hadn’t appeared yet. What worried me most was how dark the tunnel was, but that could work to our advantage as well, especially since we had PipBucks, and they likely did not.

We slowly advanced into the darkness, careful to not make any noise, until eventually, a single white bar appeared, slightly to the right of the crowd. I tried to whisper to Candy, but she was too far to hear me. I considered my options. I could either call out to her slightly louder, or catch her attention in other ways. If I touched her telekinetically, she might get shocked and make a sound, but I suspected it wouldn’t be louder than her hoofsteps. I tugged on her saddlebags. Big mistake, as she audibly gasped. Louder than her hoofsteps.

Immediately, steps could be heard as the red bars started moving. Candy immediately took a combat stance, shotgun floating by her side. “Iron, if you could light up the tunnel side-to-side with your magic, that would be perfect.”

I telekinetically unharnessed my rifle, and started channelling more and more magic into my grip until my horn glowed blindingly red, illuminating a huge portion of the underground metro.

I’d never channelled this much energy into simple telekinesis. I might have used a similar amount when popping the raider’s head, but never had I poured this much power into holding a relatively light object.

I couldn’t have predicted what came next; suddenly, I could feel every nook and microscopic fissure on the metal’s surface. I could even notice how it moved alongside my breathing. This would come in handy for keeping my gun steady, and would help me aim. Granted, short-range it wouldn’t make a difference, but it was still a good trick to remember. I furrowed my brow. This probably happened because the extra energy wasn’t being used as raw strength, and instead translated to sensitivity.

I snapped out of my brief reverie to find a flock of ghouls rushing towards Candy. With my improved control, it wasn’t difficult to swing my rifle exactly where I meant to. However, channelling this much magic wasn’t practical, since I had to split my concentration between aiming and maintaining my telekinesis. Instead, I just slipped into SATS and queued two shots at two different ghouls’ heads, the spell estimating the likelihood to hit at ninety-five percent each.

As I pulled the trigger, I felt everything. I felt the hammer release, accelerated by the spring, slam the firing pin, the latter hit the cartridge, the primer ignite, and the explosion spread to the gunpowder. The entire experience sent shivers through my whole body. It was as pleasant as a hot shower, but not in the same, relaxing manner. To my telekinetic touch, it felt like a gorgeous, upbeat tune sounded to my ears. It was like touching a soft fabric with my hooves. It was all those things together, but also just so much better.

My telekinesis stopped my rifle’s recoil dead in its tracks, but I lost some sensitivity as the gun exerted a force inside my grip. Then, I felt my telekinesis pull back the bolt, the magazine feed another .22 calibre round into the chamber—nearly jamming in the process—and the bolt slide back into place, guided by my magic. The firing process repeated, feeling just as exquisite as before, sending ripples of ecstasy through my horn.

When the spell ended, I found myself panting. The reason was beyond me, but now that I was out of SATS charges, I started worrying I would have to go for body shots. I had a hard time focusing on the spell, so I doubted I’d be able to land hits on moving targets. Not to mention, I didn’t have .22 calibre ammo to waste. Instead, I pulled out my 10mm pistol. I had more bullets for it, and they were slightly more destructive when going for body shots—at least according to my theory. Ideally, I would have used my shotgun, but with Candy this close to me, I didn’t want to risk any stray pellets reaching her.

Shot after shot sent waves of pleasure through my horn and mind, and I started laughing every time my shots sent sickly green fluid flying. On average, I needed three shots to down a ghoul. I didn’t pay much mind to Candy, but I could tell she was smashing ghouls, and probably having just as much fun as I did. My pistol’s hammer clicked on an empty chamber, and I noticed in horror that one ghoul was still running at me.

My telekinesis fumbled for my spare magazine, and the world slowed to a crawl as I realised that it was futile. I was about to get killed. I regretted not having grabbed for the rifle instead, knowing very well it was now too late to shoot it. I entered SATS, but the spell refused to do anything. Was this the end? I released the spell, hoping it wouldn’t be painful.

Instead of pain came a shotgun’s roar, and next thing I knew, the ghoul lay on the ground, shredded up by lead pellets. Candy then turned around to the last red bar, and squashed the ghoul’s head between the wall and her right hindleg with a swift and powerful buck, before wiping her hoof clean on the concrete. She turned to me and asked if I was alright. I nodded in reply, heart racing, hooves shaking, breathing heavy. She then made a comment on how much she hated ghouls.

I turned on my PipBuck’s flashlight and stopped channelling huge amounts of magic into my telekinesis. I immediately missed the hyper-sensitive touch I’d had for the past minute or two. Then, my head throbbed. I hadn’t realised how much power I’d been pushing until I’d stopped, and the sudden stop hit me like recoil. How long could I even have kept going? Now that it was gone, my magic sense felt… empty, in a way. It was like when sometimes my eyes would lose focus and my vision would blur, and I’d end up staring into blank space.

The door in the wall opened, and a dirt grey pegasus mare cautiously stepped through the frame. To my surprise, she was neither armed nor armoured. “You here to rescue me?” she asked, squinting her emerald eyes at the harsh PipBuck light. I quickly aimed my flashlight away from her.

“Yeah,” replied Candy. “We weren’t originally supposed to fight the ghouls, we were just here to confirm what was happening.”

“Neato. You gals wanna help me carry some of my loot to my place?” Airwaves asked. “I’ll pay you, and buy you a drink or two,” she added nonchalantly, tucking her white bangs back behind her ear. What an… interesting character.

We agreed, and each of us started packing some of the delicate electronics Airwaves had extracted. All that remained was a single heavy-looking metal box. Airwaves looked at it and sighed. “I guess one of the griffs is gonna have to come get it.” She glanced at Candy. “Although… You look strong enough that you might be able to carry it, if we strap it to your back. What do you say, for an extra fifteen caps?”

Candy just nodded in reply, and we decided I’d help her get the box onto her back. Part of me was hoping the pegasus would be amazed by my strength. As I started channelling energy into lifting the heavy box, something felt off. My magic felt… sore? That was the best way I could describe it. It almost felt like a muscle I’d overused. That had never happened to me before.

Finally, the box lifted off the ground, right as my headache was reaching its apex. Kssshhhh… The red glow faded, and the box promptly fell back to the ground. The pain in my skull was pounding. What was going on? I tried again, only to find that my magic wasn’t responding at all. I tried again, but only got a pulse of pain as a result.

“That’s… unfortunate,” whispered Candy. “Did you burn out?”

“Burn out? What’s that…?”

“I’ll… explain later.”

The two mares scrambled to attach the block to Candy’s back, while I sat back, too embarrassed to speak up. My magic had never failed me, why did it have to right after meeting someone for the first time? I wanted to disappear into the ground. Did she think I was some kind of show-off?

During the trip back, Airwaves complained on and on about how it was Gust’s fault she had been stuck down there. Apparently, the griffin had told her that she needed to wait a few days until he could send one of his Talons along with her. She told us she couldn’t wait that long, and so she decided to scavenge on her own, safety be damned. How stupid and reckless of her. Then again, I was perhaps not the best pony to comment on that.

When we returned to New Detrot, Gust gave us our payment, as well as a bonus of fifteen caps for also bringing Airwaves back. It didn’t cover the cost of the ammunition I’d expended, but since it wasn’t in our agreement, he refused to pay extra. However, with the added thirty-five caps from Airwaves herself, we did turn a profit. Candy had been happy to help a pony in need, but I didn’t really care. A griffin would have rescued her eventually anyway.

Airwaves invited us to come by Double Shot’s bar for a drink in a few hours. Given that it was starting to get dark, Candy and I wanted to find a quiet place to hide the wagon and later sleep. As she pulled it away from the train station, she started a conversation. “You know, that was really impressive, in the metro.”

“You… think so?” I replied. My ego was still hurt by my inability to lift a simple box. I should ask her about that. Or maybe I could find some information on it in the Big Book of Arcane Science (Definitive Edition).

“Yeah. Your aim was really good, I’m proud of you. On top of that, knowing you had my left side covered allowed me to fight better than I otherwise could have.” She turned to me, shooting me a smile that instantly made me happier. “Of course, that overglow you channelled helped me see, so I suppose that was even more important, thanks.”

“I’m glad to help, but what do you mean by overglow? I think I saw that word in the Big Book of Arcane Science, but I didn’t have the time to read about it yet.”

“It’s when you pour more magic than needed into a spell, or something like that. I never paid much attention in magic class, but I’m surprised you didn’t even hear of it. Come to think of it, it’s even stranger that you didn’t know about burnout,” she said, turning her gaze forward again.

“Well, like I told you, the focus of my education was mostly on stable and pre-stable history. Magic was mostly something I experimented with during my free time, and when Mother gave me time to explore my cutie mark options. Could you tell me more about burnouts?”

“We say that unicorns ‘burn out’ when we overuse our magic. Most of us experience it as young foals, so I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. Though your explanation makes sense, and it even explains why you would have used overglow instead of a simple light spell.”

“There’s such a thing as light spells?” I said, perplexed. On second thought it made sense, but the possibility had never crossed my mind.

She replied, “Yeah, it’s a basic spell found in any foal’s magic book.”

“Oh, Mother told me I could skip those, since magic came so naturally to me.”

Candy stared at me for a moment, wide-eyed, then she raised an eyebrow before saying, “It’s odd that your cutie mark isn’t related to magic, given how strong yours is.”

“Well, just because my body is able to, doesn’t mean I need a cutie mark in it. You don’t have a ghoul-kicking cutie mark, do you?” I countered.

“You do have a point,” she conceded. “Still, I can’t help but think Aunt Brass should have taught you more magic, to at least some extent.”

“I did learn a few spells,” I retorted. “But magic just isn’t the most interesting thing to me. It’s a cool tool and does have intriguing aspects, but I wouldn’t really wanna learn it just for the sake of learning it.” Well, I’d gotten curious about teleportation, but that had severely backfired, and I’d learned my lesson.

“Hmm. I suppose you can’t just force an interest.”

We’d hidden the wagon in the garage of a pre-war house, making sure nopony had seen us. As usual, we took our actual valuables with us. It did weigh us down, but it was better than taking an unnecessary risk.

We entered Double Shot’s bar. At the entrance, a sign read: “Mom’s Kitchen. Stir up trouble and you’re getting shot.” Charming.

The inside was surprisingly similar to the small diner in Stable 4, with a large metal counter to our left, surrounded by tall stools. Tables with regular chairs were scattered in the rest of the room. Many ponies sat around the counter, some engaged in casual discussion, laughing, while others quietly enjoyed their drinks or meals.

Most of the tables were either empty or packed full, except for the one occupied by Airwaves, who vacantly stared in the general direction of the counter. When we approached her, she immediately brightened up and greeted us. “If it ain’t my two saviours! Have a seat!” In front of her stood a bottle branded ‘Wild Pegasus Whiskey’, full of amber liquid, as well as three glasses. Opening the bottle, she asked us if we wanted any.

It certainly looked better than wine, but did it taste any better? Before I could accept, Candy spoke up, “Well, we’re both too young to drink. Or maybe not? I’m not too familiar with the laws out here—are there even laws?” Wonderfully awkward, Candy.

“There ain’t, but people will look at you weirdly if you get a kid drunk.” Anyway, I don’t buy that you’re too young to drink.” She pointed to me. “Her? She’s pretty short, so I’d believe she’s a filly.” I was surprised she didn’t immediately think of me as one, “But you? At the youngest, you look a couple of years younger than me.” Airwaves furrowed her brow. “Actually, I guess it might be different in stables.”

Candy smacked her lips. “I… I don’t know about this…”

“What? You worried I put something into it? Watch.” She poured herself a glass, before immediately downing it. “See? Perfectly safe.” She stared at nothing in particular for a few seconds, brows high and lips puckered. “Actually, maybe limit yourself to half a glass. Stuff’s pretty strong, ’specially if you’ve never had booze before.”

“Fine, I’m curious enough to try,” Candy replied.

After Airwaves poured the two drinks, she turned to me. “What about you? Or are you actually as young as she suggested? It’s hard to tell, ‘cause you have this gloomy look on your face. Oh, and the scar certainly gives you a more mature vibe, y’know?” Was she always such a chatterbox? Or was that just the alcohol? Was she even drunk already? How long did—

Candy set down her glass, grimacing from the taste. “Absolutely not.”

For a moment, I almost accepted her word for it, but she wasn’t Mother. She couldn’t make such choices for me, and she had to respect my opinion. “I’d still like to try, if only a little bit.”

“Splendid!” said Airwaves.

“Not splendid! She—”

“Come on, loosen up. Kid wants to try, what harm could there be in a couple of sips?” When Candy only scrunched up her muzzle and looked away, Airwaves poured me less than a third of what she’d given Candy. “Oops,” she added sheepishly. “That’s more than I intended. Oh well.”

I smiled up at her. “Thanks, Miss Airwaves.”

“No problem,” she replied with a wink. “I get the feeling, you know? I’m a kid at heart.” She rolled her eyes. “Though others try to claim I’m ‘immature’ or ‘irresponsible’. Pricks, the lot of them!”

A chuckle escaped my mouth, I grabbed the glass in my magic and drank half of it in one gulp. Big mistake: it set my mouth and throat on fire, and I found myself coughing hard enough that I almost vomited. By the Stars, this stuff was vile! After a few agonising seconds, I was finally able to partly regain my bearings. Candy stared at me while Airwaves tried her best to avoid bursting out laughing. I swallowed my pride—it tasted less disgusting than whiskey—and asked, “Can I get some water, please?” Water was one of the things we’d left in our wagon.

Without wasting a moment, Candy walked towards the bar. I needed to get rid of this aftertaste, and I doubted water would do the trick. Ugh. Fine, this was an emergency situation, and it warranted using some of my limited supply of candy. It was late enough that the sugar crash wouldn’t be an issue, anyway.

I turned to my saddlebags and levitated out my tin of mint-als, placing one underneath my tongue. It… slightly helped. Maybe the water would do better. I looked up at Airwaves, who now only blinked at me, wide-eyed. She opened her mouth, but when I let my glare harden, she remained quiet. Good, I didn’t really want to talk until I had some water to rinse my palate.

Candy returned, fuming, carrying a water bottle in her pink telekinesis. “Thirty caps for some clean water, would you believe that‽” Stars curse me. Had I just wasted thirty of our caps? Too late to complain now. I grabbed the water and took several large swigs, lodging my mint in between my teeth and cheek to avoid swallowing it. Did she get ripped off, or was water really that valuable out here?

“That’s the price you pay for the fancy, purified water,” commented Airwaves. This answered that.

“Well, it was that or dirty water,” whined Candy. She levitated her glass to her lips and took a gentle sip, and somehow didn’t almost die, unlike me.

“It’s not that dirty. I mean, you won’t die immediately after drinking it, but it’s probably not great for you in the long run. Still, clean stuff’s expensive ‘cause it costs power to produce-slash-purify, and that’s not something we have a lot of around here.”

“I’m surprised there even is any power at all,” I commented. “Judging by the state of the world.”

Airwaves giggled at my comment, and gave me an amused look. “You think over a hundred and eighty years would pass by, and ponies wouldn’t at least try to rebuild the world?” She took a sip from her poison.

“You… have a point. It’s just that everything seems to be in such terrible shape,” I replied, feeling silly.

“Honestly, if it weren’t for those Celestia-damned pegasi, we’d be much further along in the reconstruction. Agriculture is our biggest concern, and our biggest power-drain.” She swooshed the liquid around in her glass before taking another sip.

Wasn’t she a pegasus? What did she mean by that? I had to find a way to ask that without sounding clueless. Then again, would it really be the end of the world if I sounded clueless? Yes, because she would judge me. She’d think I’m stupid. And I wasn’t stupid. With this mint, I’d be smart enough to properly ask what I meant, and—

“What do you mean by that? Aren’t you a pegasus?” asked Candy.

“I meant the Enclave.” She giggled and stuck out her tongue.

“The what?” was Candy’s response.

“Right. Stable dwellers.” She sighed. “I’m not in the mood to give you guys a proper history lesson on the wasteland and how fucked up it is, but I’ll tell you this much. You ever wonder why the clouds never lift?”

Candy nodded. “Well, I was starting to wonder when we would see the sun.”

“Likely never. Maybe once, if you get lucky. Pegasi use the clouds to grow crops so that they can stay up there and let us rot. They’re fucking cowards, willing to put the comfort of a small population of their own over the well-being of the entirety of Equestria.” She finished her glass in one swift swig, and I cringed at the idea of doing the same.

“Growing crops on clouds? How does that work?” I asked, perplexed, while the white pegasus poured herself another glass.

“Fuck if I know, I’ve never been up there.” My eyebrows furrowed on their own.

“You… Can’t get up there?” I knew I was asking an obvious question, but I genuinely wanted to know, whether I look clueless or not.

“I could try, but I’d just get roasted by their magical energy weapons.” She gave a dry chuckle. “Yeah no, I can’t. Never been up there, never plan on going. Fuckers cast out my mom for saying things they didn’t like.” That was… interesting. What were their internal politics like for them to be willing to go to such lengths to censor their people? The stable had never needed anything along these lines.

“I’m… sorry to hear that, miss,” said Candy. Somehow, she’d already gotten through her glass of whiskey.

“Well, it’s not like I care. I’d honestly rather live here, no matter how tough it gets, at least I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for fucking over thousands of other ponies.” I was starting to get tired of her swearing. As a matter of fact, I was starting to get tired of her entire attitude.

“But there’s something bugging me,” remarked Candy. “We saw fresh produce in the main hall, how is that even possible? It should be too cold to grow anything, on top of not being sunny enough.”

“It’s part of why power is so scarce here. We have a group of five earth ponies growing crops in greenhouses, but they use up a ton of electricity to run. We’re constantly running into issues with the substations, but the main issue comes from just a supply. The little power we currently have comes from the Hoofer dam, but that thing is half broken, and tryna’ fix it will just getcha radiation poisoning. On top of that, it’s so far north that even getting there is a huge pain in the ass.” She took a large swig directly from the bottle, not bothering to refill her glass. “Hic!”

“Are you sure you should be drinking this much?” Worry was clear in her voice. Why was she concerned for this annoying, loudmouth pegasus? Well, if anything happened to her, we would lose our source of regional news, but I doubted she would die from drinking too much. She looked much too used to this to accidentally overdo it. Wait, was I judging her unfairly simply because she could drink so much of this gross stuff?

“I’ll be fiiiiine.” Yes, I was judging her, but it was perfectly fair. Now, even I was able to notice the effects of the alcohol on her. Her speech sounded slurred. If I remembered correctly, drinking large amounts of it made your brain work slower, and I just couldn’t understand why a pony would willingly subject themself to both the taste and the effect. I’d get it if it at least tasted good, but as it stood, I was utterly and completely confused by adults, once again. Candy didn’t seem to love it as much, as she only drank small sips of the stuff, but she didn’t seem to hate it as much as I did, either.

I lost track of their conversation as I was distracted by the room instead. It was full of all types of ponies, as well as a griffin, but Airwaves was the only pegasus, partially confirming what she’d mentioned earlier. There were a few large earth pony stallions that looked strong enough to give Candy a run for her bits—or caps, I suppose—but most people here were scrawny and short. In the crowd, a dim grey unicorn with a green mane caught my eye. He wasn’t nearly as thin as everypony else in the room, and while he was only as tall as the average pony in the room, he seemed to stand above the entire room. He had an aura of nobility to him, reminiscent of Mother, yet didn’t seem haughty, only slightly arrogant. I turned my attention to the rest of the ponies in the saloon.

As I looked through the small crowd, I recognised some of the merchants from earlier, and it got me thinking. What were all these ponies doing here? Not the bar specifically, but I couldn’t tell why New Detrot of all places. Was there no other option? What were their occupations?

During a gap in Candy and Airwave’s discussion, I asked, “What kind of place is New Detrot? Who comes through here?” I hoped she was still functional enough to answer this. Given that I’d only zoned out for at most five minutes, I dared hope she was.

“Mostly merchants and prospectors~” she replied in a sing-song voice. What was wrong with this mare? “Ujually there’s much less ponies ‘ere, but with the cold a lot of them are staying over. S’good for business.” Oh great, now she wasn’t even trying to sound normal anymore. “Gust lets ponies trade safely here, and in exchange they pay a small tax. It’s win-win. We also make money from the local inn and the bar. Almost everypony in the region has to pass through here at shome point.” She was moving her head back and forth, seemingly amused. Was she enjoying the loss of balance? Was that even a symptom of alcohol intoxication?

Then, it was Candy’s turn to ask a question, “How do you get by, by the way?” Wasn’t her job to be the news mare? Or did she not get paid to do that?

“Oh, I work directly for Gusht~ He says it’s good for business to help ponies stay safe. I’m glad I get to do it, ‘cause I love my job, and I’d do it regardless of the capz.”

I lost myself in thoughts again, catching bits and pieces of other conversations. I felt ever so slightly lightheaded and suspected it was from the tiny amount of alcohol I’d drunk. Then, I noticed two stallions walking towards our table. The larger of the two approached Candy. “Good evening, missy. I noticed you across the room, and I gotta say, you’re lookin’ mighty fine. You wanna get outta here and have some fun?”

Candy’s eyes shot wide, but after a second she regained her composure and replied with her usual soft and gentle voice, “No, but thank you for the offer.”

The other stallion, shorter but just as muscular as the first told him, in what appeared to be an attempt at whispering, “Try the turkey, she looks hammered enough that she’d fuck a chair.”

Airwaves clearly heard him too, and she turned to smirk at him. “No thanks, I ain’t drunk enough to fuck the likes of you. Maybe if you looked more like furniture.” Huh? She sounded more sober than when she was sober.

The larger stallion hit the other in the ribs, making him yelp and massage his side. Without thinking, I touched my own side. The shorter stallion, once he was done complaining, turned to me. “What about you, eh?”

“Someone’s desperate,” quipped Airwaves. “Third time’s the charm, isn’t it? Age is just a number, and you never learned to count, did you?”

“Why don’t you fuck off and let her decide on her own, featherbrain?” He moved closer to me, “So, what do you say? Want me to make you a mare?”

He tried to take another step towards me, but Candy blocked him and grumbled, “Touch her, and I’ll crush your fucking skull.” Her voice was ice cold and sharp like a razor, sending shivers down my spine. The stallion gulped and took a few steps back. I couldn’t blame him; she had scared me as well, and I knew she was on my side.

Suddenly, I heard a stallion clear his throat, and I noticed the bartender, Double Shot, standing next to our table. “Is there a problem here?” she asked, a hoof on the sawed-off shotgun hanging from her neck.

Candy replied, her voice amicable and warm again, “No, of course not. We were simply telling these gentlecolts we weren’t interested in their generous offer.” Suddenly, everything she had done for me these past few days came together, culminating in a warm, cosy feeling. For the first time in years, I felt safe.

She turned back towards Airwaves, who stared at Candy slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Candy just smiled, restarting their previous topic—mostly complaining about the cold—but I could tell Airwaves was not listening. She was clearly too busy staring at Candy. Was this what Arcane had looked like during her first day at work? Or was I misreading things?

“So, what else can you tell us about the region, Miss Airwaves?” I was glad the discussion returned to an interesting topic.

Her conversation partner slurred out her reply, “Weeeell… There ain’t as many ponies livin’ ‘ere as there are everywhere else. ‘Cause it’s so hard and hard to s’rvive up here.”

Candy raised an eyebrow. “Then how come ponies live here at all?”

“Speshifically because there’s so few ponies here.” She paused and contemplated her glass for a second, glanced over at the bottle, and shook her head. “There’s a whole heap o’ pre-bomb settlements ’round here, which means we get lots of very small, very isolated communities all ’round the region. New Detrot is actually the biggest non-ghoul settlement in aaaaall of midnorthern Equestria.” She gestured above her head with both hooves.

“That’s a lot of information to take in at once,” admitted Candy. “How common are these settlements?”

“I dunno, if you go north or west or south-east of here along the metro tracks, you’re gonna see small suburbs every few hours. I wonder what those damn pre-war ponies thought. Why spread out over an entire region like this? I don’t get it. And why did they even call their train tracks metro lines? More than half of it is above ground!”

Against my better judgement, I spoke up, “Actually, I can answer that. You see, in the late Celestian era, the Equestrian economy boomed, as did the manufacturing industry.” Sweet Stars, why did I have to open my mouth? “Over a few years, a lot of companies started outsourcing their production needs to Detrot, which created an large number of jobs in the industrial area, which quickly started outgrowing the residential areas.”

When I paused to take a sip of water, I half expected, half hoped they would return to their chatter, but as they stared at me, expecting me to continue, I cursed myself. Now ponies would think I was a show-off…

I swallowed another sip of water. “Because… because of this, ponies started living a bit further away, since rent was much cheaper, and transport only took a little longer. Metro lines were established, and this trend continued. Living further away from the city was both more comfortable and cheaper for a lot of ponies.” The words kept coming, as if they weren’t mine at all. “The region only really stopped growing when the coal shortages began, and suddenly many ponies lost their jobs but could not move away. Owning property that no one wanted to buy left them stranded in the region. It only partly recovered when armed conflict started, and manufacturing was needed as part of the war effort.”

Airwaves and Candy continued to stare at me, expressions indecipherable. Finally, Airwaves broke the silence: “Wow, you are a nerd if I’ve ever seen one.”

I opened my mouth, but suddenly no words came to me.

Candy shot her a glare. “Don’t be rude, Airwaves.”

Airwaves rolled her eyes. “Was just makin’ an observation…”

“You know, I’m pretty sure I had that in school as well, but I don’t remember any of it. I’m actually impressed at how good you are at remembering stuff like that.”

“So this is normal knowledge for stable folk? Damn…” So now that Candy was impressed, this was suddenly impressive knowledge? Hypocrite. Before long, their dialogue returned to things I didn’t care about.

I once again lost track of their conversation, and started looking around the room again. I couldn’t tell what compelled me to—I’d seen everything there was to see. However, my movement didn’t really feel like my own. Was I imagining things? Was this related to alcohol? Was it maybe the combination of alcohol and sugar rush? Were my movements influenced by the drink, or was it my perception of them that was altered? It really was hard to tell, but this almost felt like that memory talisman. Unlike that, however, those movements were still mine, just… odd.

I walked out of the bar, and into the night, following behind Candy. Feeling the sugar crash, I’d told her I was sleepy, and she decided it was time to leave. By now, my movements were entirely alien to me and my step more hesitant than ever. I was almost hiding behind Candy, and felt ready to jump underneath her the moment danger presented itself. Part of me doubted it was simply the alcohol, but I had no other explanation. I wanted to ask Candy or Airwaves, but didn’t manage to open my mouth.

She eventually split from us, taking to the air. Half a minute later, I could have sworn I heard her crash into a wall, but Candy didn’t react. Wasn’t any of my business, though I suspected Candy would make it her business if she found out.

As we slowly walked to where we’d hidden the cart, I noticed something odd in the corner of my eye. I wanted to turn to it, take another glance. Not that I could look if I wanted to. It was probably nothing.

Moments later, a pony emerged from the shadows, running towards Candy, a large knife in his mouth. Right behind him ran another pony, this one coming for me with a metal bat. The haze disappeared, and my movements were my own again. Within two seconds, I unharnessed my pistol. Within three, I slipped into SATS, queuing three bullets to his head. Within six, the bullet exited through the back of his skull. I started cackling. This had been the idiot that Candy had threatened earlier: the smaller of the two stallions.

I glanced over to her, and noticed she’d restrained the stallion, despite him being significantly larger than her. With a blow to the back of his head, she made him drop the blade before kicking it away. She then ran over to his buddy, presumably to loot his corpse. I took the opportunity to finish off the larger one. Candy turned around the second she heard the gunshot. She stared at the puddle of blood flowing from his head, gasping in shock. “Iron, what the fuck did you do‽ There’s nothing to smile about, either!”

My heart sank. “I… wasn’t supposed… to kill him? But he was attacking us…”

“No! I incapacitated him, he was no longer a threat!”

“I just wanted to help…” That was a lie. I’d killed him because I wanted to. I hadn’t given it a second thought. I was given an excuse, and I took it. Just what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be normal? Why couldn’t I be the pony she wanted me to be?

Her expression softened, and she hugged me. I cried on her shoulder, while she gently caressed my back. I didn’t deserve her, but Stars did I not want to let go.

Footnote:

New Perk: Telekinetic Sense I — Your telekinesis allows you to feel the finer details of the surface of the objects that you pick up in its aura. Additionally, you no longer need to see what you want to reach with your magic—your sense of touch can now work as well. In practice, this means you can spread your telekinesis inside objects.

New Perk: Teleportation ½ — You can teleport! Sort of. You’re able to teleport diagonally straight down, as long as you aren’t carrying too much weight.

Author's Note

2024 Edit: Whee, I love editing nearly 18k words of mediocre writing. I didn't have the time to entirely lift the chapter to my current standards for prose, but I've gone ahead and gotten rid of the worst of it. I've also fixed some characterisation for Candy, Iron, and Airwaves. ~~Seriously why tf did I think such a long chapter was a good idea? Half of it is exposition ffs~~

Fun fact the first: When I first started writing this story, I knew nothing about guns. When I wrote this chapter, I thought I knew about guns, and was clearly at the top of the Dunning-Krueger curve (also known as Mount Stupid). I've gone ahead and make the gun-talk less obnoxious and less stupidly wrong.

Fun fact the second: when I first wrote this chapter, my reference for chest pain was the time in the early 2010's when I bruised a rib from coughing. Funnily enough, this happened to me again. Last week.