Chapter 7: The Scavenger Life

The ghouls were closing in, and I’d just emptied my shotgun. Panicked, I pulled out my 10mm pistol, undid the safety and started shooting. As expected, it wasn’t nearly as effective as the shotgun, but I just didn’t have time to reload that one. I felt myself starting to shake. Was I going to die? I couldn’t die here. I just couldn’t. This wasn’t even my fault. I couldn’t die because of somepony else’s mistake!

After I emptied my first magazine, I immediately switched in the other. The pack was drawing closer and closer, and nothing I did seemed to push them back, even slightly. My mind was racing. I had so few options. At this rate, I would have to attempt a teleport. Could I even manage a teleport? I pulled the trigger again, and again. Damn it, I wasn’t being smart with my shots. I only had five bullets left. No no no no. With every shallow breath, my head only spun more.

Four shots. Empty magazine. I’d miscounted! How? I was screwed! My rifle? No. Didn’t shoot fast enough. I started casting the teleportation spell, only to have it fizzle midway.

I reached for my shotgun. My shotgun? No, no ammo! Think, think, think, think, think, think, think!

What would anypony else do in my situation? Probably pray, interjected the cynical part of my brain. I didn’t have time for this!

Cynical or not, it did have a point, didn’t it? I was about to die. Nothing I could do would save me, but if I was to die, I may as well. Instinctively, my thoughts snapped to that moment beneath the sky, and to those lone few stars above me. Those beautiful, beautiful stars.

They’d saved me once, and here I was, ready to let myself die? Screw that! After seeing that, I would not allow a few ferals to be the end of me! I still had a few moments before they would pounce. Seconds, at most, but I could still do something.

I turned around to face the idiot who’d gotten us into this mess, enveloped her in my aura, and meticulously performed the setup for teleportation, guiding my magic down corridor upon corridor of intricate spell design as fast as I dared. The path had been engraved into my memory from the many attempts; I only needed to follow it.

As it finished, a realisation hit me. The spell would cancel if there was no space below us, but I didn’t have the time to redo it! I didn’t even know how to redo it! When the nearest ghoul raised its hoof, I let go of the spell.

The energy meandered, festered. I’d failed! No, I hadn’t! Perhaps out of instinct, maybe out of sheer luck, I pushed. I poured everything into the channel, shoving the energy somewhere, anywhere else. No, not anywhere! Towards the staircase! The ghoul brought down its hoof, but I only felt the spell snap back like a rubber band, sending shockwaves of agony through my horn and into my head, as my world turned red and my ears began to ring. I squeezed my eyes shut as a thousand hot nails buried themselves into my skull. But I was alive, and the pain was easing.

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw Candy, slumped over the railing and sobbing.

When I startled her by clearing my throat, she stared at me for a few moments, wide-eyed. She shook her head and faced the pack of ghouls, who remained clumped up, as if the ones in the back hadn’t even noticed I’d disappeared. One after the other, they turned towards Candy, who by now had run down the flight of stairs while I stayed on the first storey.

From this new perspective, the crowd seemed tiny. I must have culled a good portion of them earlier. Now I could finally bring out my varmint rifle and get to work. I started lining up shot after shot, instead of haphazardly dumping my magazine into the mob whenever it came too close. I was still angry at Lockpick’s mistake, so slaughtering some ghouls was an excellent way to let off some steam.

Unfortunately, my frustration caused me to occasionally miss a shot. That, in turn, only angered me more. Blowing up ghouls’ heads just wasn’t as cathartic as I wanted it to be. Now, pony skulls… No! Bad brain! Murder was wrong. Well, it was okay as self-defence, or to protect somepony else, I guess. Candy had killed Silver to save me. But even then, she’d said it was only okay because he was a bad pony. Was it okay to kill anypony so long as they were bad? I groaned. Not the time for deep philosophy, Iron.

I had ghouls to kill. If only I could stop missing those easy shots! This was all Lockpick’s fault! I wanted to shoot her, too, for screwing up this entire plan and for forcing me to waste so much ammo! Would serve her right! But… it would be wrong.

And it wasn’t even the whole of it; I ultimately didn’t want to hurt her. I’d saved her, after all.

Not even two minutes after my last-second escape, the ground floor was clear of ghouls once again. Ironically, I hadn’t missed a single shot while lost in thought. I also hadn’t paid much attention to the ghouls, and was now getting frustrated that I hadn’t had enough fun. Maybe I’d gotten used to it.

A few red bars had popped up on my EFS, but given that I couldn’t see any of them, I suspected they were simply on other storeys and had been roused by the gunfire.

After the last ghoul fell, Candy ran over to me, hugging me and incoherently babbling about how she’d almost lost me, her tears dripping onto my back and shoulder. Part of me wanted to cry with her, but the rest of my mind shot it down immediately.

When Candy eventually let go, I turned around to look at Banter and Petal, who were both staring at me. I hadn’t paid them any mind until now. They’d been here since the teleportation, and Lockpick had run in between them, now desperately clinging to Petal.

The latter seemed slightly less bored than usual, while Banter appeared genuinely impressed. At least some good came from the situation. “Damn,” he muttered, “I’m starting to believe you might have taken on those raiders alone, with that skill with the rifle.” To be fair, I hadn’t been very good at aiming back at the train station, I’d just gotten lucky. Now I hadn’t pulled off any particularly impressive feat—sniping ghouls from less than twenty metres away was not difficult in the slightest—but if it impressed him, all the better.

The next hour was spent hunting down individual ghouls with Candy, while Banter and his friends stayed in the reception. We were now sure that a vast majority of the ferals had been taken care of. We’d found the first crowd of ghouls in the reception area and in the waiting room. A lot of ponies had died of radiation poisoning there, so it made sense that a lot of them had ghoulified as well.

The rest of them were in the various rooms in the emergency wing, staying here until they had a reason to move. They probably hadn’t heard the gunshot from Candy’s weapon, given how deep in the building they were. Or maybe they just hadn’t been able to open the main entrance. In either case: Stars, that was a lot of ghouls.

My mood only marginally improved; I was still terribly irritated, but I no longer felt the urge to kill something.

Eventually, we met up in the reception area, near the statue of the Ministry of Peace mare. We decided to explore the underground part of the hospital next. At a glance, it seemed like the only way down was through the use of the elevator, which—of course—was out of commission.

While everypony else looked for another way down, I was told to stay with Lockpick here—just in case there were still some ghouls around. I was far from thrilled at the idea of staying in the presence of the filly who’d almost gotten me killed.

As a way to pass the time, I decided to take a look at the elevator shaft. Maybe I could do something, maybe I couldn’t. I unscrewed the control panel and peeked inside.

After less than ten minutes, I figured out how it worked, what was wrong with it, and even how to repair it. Not that it was difficult; I just needed something that could act as a wire. One had broken off and had probably fallen to the very bottom of the elevator shaft. It was such a simple fix that part of me wanted to believe that it would be sufficient to get the machine working again.

I walked over to a lamp that had fallen to the ground, and, pouring all my strength into my magic, ripped out the cable. My headache did not appreciate that; I felt like a red-hot metal bar had been stabbed through my skull.

A few minutes later, I’d replaced the missing part, and hopefully repaired the elevator. I doubted it, but dared to dream.

As a test, I pressed the button, and to my amazement, I heard the sound of movement coming from inside the cage. After a few seconds, the doors opened, and a skeleton that had been resting against the door fell out. It would have hit me if I hadn’t jumped back. It ever so slightly startled me, but I didn’t make a noise. I certainly didn’t shriek. A certain other pony would have, had she been closer to it.

I took a look inside, and my happiness faltered as I realised that the button leading down was missing; in its place was a simple key hole. Ponyfeathers. Would it be possible to shape my magic like a key and unlock it like that? Well, I’d probably need to see the key for that. Or was there a way to figure out the key shape from the lock? Not that I knew of, so that avenue of thought seemed pointless for now.

I tried looking into the internals, to see if I could maybe circumvent the security measure, but the elevator itself, unlike the panel on the outside, was tightly locked, with no way to access the internal wiring. Of course, the one way to access maintenance… seemed to be another key. Amazing. I let out a groan of frustration. “Ugh. Who puts a lock on a maintenance hatch? What’s the point?” I understood the point very well, but given my mental state, I really needed to let off some steam.

I noticed that Lockpick had perked up at the mention of a lock, and she slowly walked over. “D-do you need my help?” she asked in that annoyingly meek voice. Despite her shyness, she sounded like she genuinely wanted to help and had an oddly optimistic tone.

That was the straw that broke the pony’s back, and I snapped, careful to keep my voice level. “Haven’t you already helped enough?” I turned to face her, enjoying the fear on her face. “You stupid, inconsiderate, spoiled brat,” I hissed as quietly as I could, ignoring the white bars on my EFS. Maybe she could help for real, but I was too angry to care.

I didn’t care if somepony overheard this. “All you had to do was shut the stars-damned door. But what did you do? You shrieked like a small child and attracted the attention of every ghoul in the building. You almost got us both killed.” She was on the verge of tears. Good. A trick I’d learned from my mother was to stay quiet when expressing anger. It made you much scarier—especially if you were prone to voice cracks. “Not only are you useless in a fight, you’re also—”

“Iron, calm down,” said Candy. I was about to snap at her as well, but as I turned to look at her, her worried eyes cooled my anger, so I merely groaned. Lockpick’s gentle sobs quieted down as I moved towards the receptionist’s desk, if only to hide my satisfied smirk. Served her right.

I sat down, crossing my forehooves before pulling out my rifle and beginning to polish it, if only to have something to do while waiting. However, my head still hurt whenever I used magic for anything other than the most basic telekinesis. The teleportation had clearly taken a toll on my horn. I groaned. I was now also craving Mint-als. Today was not my day.

For some reason, my feeling of accomplishment had faded, and I was even more annoyed than before. I pulled out one of the novels. I needed to get my mind off of things. At first, I managed to concentrate on reading, but after just a few short pages, my mind started drifting, and I had to make an active effort to keep my attention on the text. Even then, no matter how much I tried to focus, my thoughts would always end up on the sad look on Lockpick’s face, as well as Candy’s disappointed expression.

I sighed and looked back towards the others. Candy said to Lockpick, “It’s okay, I know she didn’t mean any of that.” But I did! Candy then draped a leg over Lockpick, pulling her into a hug. Why was she hugging that useless brat? She should be hugging me! Why did that feel so bad? “I’ll try to get her to apologise later.” What was there to apologise for‽ If anything, she should apologise to me for almost getting me killed!

I tried very hard to get back into my book. No luck. I wasn’t just angry anymore. I was… sad? And maybe guilty—no. I was not feeling guilty.

Why was my mind under the impression that I’d done something terrible? No, I wasn’t feeling guilty. I was simply afraid of repercussions for having spoken my mind. It was as simple as that. That had to be it. Why would I feel guilty over making some stupid foal cry? She’d almost gotten me killed, so how could I possibly be in the wrong here? Brain, you aren’t making any sense. Leave me alone. She deserves to feel terrible. Not feeling guilty.

Why was I so upset? It wasn’t the first time I’d almost died. Was it because I’d willingly risked my life for somepony else? No, that couldn’t be it. I hadn’t even meant to do that.

My unfruitful attempt at reading was interrupted by a sudden, “Got it!” Lockpick’s voice wasn’t very loud, but it was still enough to echo in the empty lobby.

I soon found out she’d apparently picked the lock to access the clinic’s basement, and I ended up reluctantly following them into the elevator, along with Candy.

The other two joined us as well, and we spent the rest of the day scavenging the underground floor. We mostly found medical supplies, though, as expected, very little Rad-Away or Rad-X, as the ponies here had likely used up most of their stock on the day the megaspells fell. The only remaining doses were those that had been overlooked somehow: in the back of a cupboard, or behind some furniture.

As I explored on my own, I eventually found a terminal with a skeleton sitting in front of it, surrounded by empty vials and a syringe. A text document was still open—Stars, those things were resilient. I started reading.

“World-is-fucked log, part 2” What an imaginative, original, and poetic choice of words.

“Fuck. I went upstairs to check on things. Part of me still hoped the world wasn’t fucked, but fuck was I wrong. Shit’s even worse than I could’ve expected. Just… death. Fucking death. Nothing except a sea of corpses. Even the ponies who weren’t outside when the spell hit have died hours ago. Fuck me, my eyes must have deceived me, as some of the corpses seemed to move.

“Now that all hope’s lost, I’ll just take the peaceful route out. I’m just gonna have to take enough of the stuff to skip the unpleasant side effects of an overdose and go straight to unconsciousness.”

I backed into the parent directory and found the document that was presumably part one of this log—given it had an earlier date and was the only other element in the folder.

“Fuck, we’re all gonna die. Well, the ponies upstairs probably all died already anyway. I figure there’s much less radiation down here.

“Screw my oath, I don’t wanna die of radiation poisoning. It’s not like I could help anyway. We’re out of meds. What could I even do, assure ponies they’re gonna die a painful death? Fuck that. I’ll take the cowardly approach. I’ll find a way to off myself before it gets too bad. Thankfully, I should have more time to do so down here.”

I turned the terminal off and rummaged through the desk it stood on. Inside, I found a tin of Mint-als. I could take it and sell it. Or maybe, keep it in the case of an emergency. What if I needed the sug—the high to do something I couldn’t do normally? What if we—

No. If I took this box, I would likely end up hiding it from Candy and eventually taking one in secret. I wasn’t some kind of idiot, and I wouldn’t fall for this. I threw the box behind a medical cupboard. Hopefully that would be enough to dissuade myself from taking it with me.

Searching through the other drawer, I found an odd device. It… looked like it was made to interface with my PipBuck. Though it was much larger than the device itself. If it was made for PipBucks, then it likely was designed for the older models, like Candy’s. However, I had a sneaking suspicion it was forwards compatible with mine as well. I placed it into my saddlebags, and saw it labelled as a StealthBuck. Given that I didn’t find any other interesting objects in the room, I decided to regroup with the others.

Banter’s group had retreated to sleep in their tent next to their cart—the latter being much too small for more than one pony to sleep in. They mostly kept it for merchandise and things they’d scavenged. I was to stay up for the first half of the night, while Candy would take on the later hours, up until morning. I didn’t like not getting enough sleep, but it was our duty to keep everypony safe, and this region was supposedly particularly dangerous.

We were sitting on the back of our own wagon when Candy spoke up, “You know, you really shouldn’t hate Lockpick for what happened today.”

I sighed and took a deep breath. “I… I don’t hate her,” I admitted, much to my own surprise. “It’s just… I got so angry. When she opened that door, she just froze there and screamed, instead of closing it.”

She wrapped me in a hug. “I understand.”

I shook my head as I leaned into her. “This isn’t even the worst part. When she was jumped by that ghoul, I knew the best course of action was to just run away and find a safer spot to shoot from. I knew that if I tried saving her, I’d just end up attracting possibly a lot more ghouls. I knew saving her was the wrong choice, and that it would lead to us both dying. And yet, my body acted on its own. It’s almost like I wanted to save her.” I felt incredibly stupid. I blamed myself as much as I did her.

“Oh Iron, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a pony, it’s in our nature to care for eachother.” She squeezed me tight. “If anything, I’m so very proud of you; you made the right choice.” I felt a few tears roll down my cheek and land on her armour.

We sat there in silence for a few long, comfortable moments before she spoke up again, “You still need to apologise to her, though.”

“I know…”

“Though there’s one more thing that I don’t understand, why didn’t you teleport sooner?”

When I finished my explanation, she hugged me even tighter, before eventually going to sleep.

We were headed for the western side of Detrot, to a town named Scrapyard. We weren’t on the fastest route, because that would require passing through the territory controlled by Frozen Graveyard, and the ghouls there had become very hostile towards normal ponies over the past year.

I was sitting on our wagon’s roof, binoculars floating in front of me. As usual, nothing ahead, nothing behind. Ghost red bars were still floating on my EFS, but I knew the forest’s animals wouldn’t attack us; I was more worried about things that wouldn’t remain hidden. Things like ghouls.

Or hostile ponies, though the latter had unfortunately not appeared. ‘Unfortunately’? Calm down, brain, we don’t want to encounter any of those. I knew it would weigh heavily on Candy to have to kill another pony, and we wanted to avoid that. Besides, it would be dangerous—but fun! I shook my head. Why was I so damn bloodthirsty? Something had to be wrong with me.

I groaned. I needed a distraction. Reading on the job didn’t sound like a great idea and neither did magic training. I had to stay alert. I looked behind me at the three ponies we were guarding. Petal was pulling their chariot, while Banter and Lockpick quietly walked alongside her. It couldn’t hurt to chat them up, could it?

Especially since I still needed to apologise to Lockpick for berating her.

I took a step towards the ladder, but decided to take the opportunity and practise my teleportation. I breathed in and channelled the spell, forcibly redirecting the flow of energy at the last moment. It felt terribly wrong—partly because the spell itself snapped back violently, but also because I knew this was an incredibly silly way of doing it. It was like rereading parts of a book to find where you’d left off, instead of simply using a bookmark.

Still, this trick got me where I meant to be, and if I wanted to figure out how to do it right, I had to train. One downside was that it took an incredible amount of effort, and as a result I would avoid doing it more than twice a day, out of fear of burning out. The other downside was that the sheer amount of force needed to cast it this way left my horn sore and my head aching.

Once more, I experienced the feeling of a magical rubber band snapping back and painfully hitting my horn, and I materialised a good three metres in front of the group. I stopped for a few moments to rub my temples while they reached me. “Uh, hey,” I said, slightly awkwardly. My goal was to eventually lead the conversation to a point where I could just casually apologise. “So how did you three end up travelling together? I assume you’re not siblings.” They didn’t look anything alike, after all, though that didn’t completely exclude the possibility.

Unsurprisingly, it was Banter who answered my question first. “My parents were travelling merchants; did some scavenging as well, but never to a big extent. Their life came to an abrupt end when we got attacked by bandits. The bandits didn’t wanna kill a foal, so they just took everything and left me to myself. Eventually, I met Petal, Blue, and then Lockpick, and we were like a family.”

“Blue?”

“He… was an earth pony colt. Didn’t even have a cutie mark yet. Really curious about everything, but the raiders got him.” His voice sounded calm and collected, but the look on his face betrayed his sadness.

My mind scoured the memories of the gore in Foal Mountain’s train station, and I could swear I remembered a small blue corpse. Was I remembering correctly or was I just imagining things? “I’m… sorry to hear that,” I replied, hoping to sound as tactful as I could.

“It’s a tragedy like many in the wastes.” This time, a timbre of melancholy reached his voice, despite his best efforts. He cleared his throat. “Petal, you should tell your story.”

“Dad owned an unusually sunny plot of land. Cherry tree grew there. Raiders happened. That good enough?” As unsatisfactory as this reply was, I couldn’t help but feel a tad of respect for her. I was usually the quiet one, after all.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I was starting to sound like a broken record. I had a hard time feeling much empathy for her, given her tone, but I did not envy her, either.

Banter leaned towards me and whispered, “You’ll have to pardon her, she was hit the hardest by the loss of Blue. Hasn’t been very talkative since.” That did make sense. Then, he told Lockpick, “Do you wanna tell her about your past?” The blue filly just stayed quiet as we all marched forward. I understood; why would she want to talk to the pony who’d made her cry less than two days ago. “I see. Maybe you should tell us a bit about yourself, Iron. All we know is that you’re from a stable.”

“Why do you think I have an interesting story? I’m a stable filly, shouldn’t that normally make me boring?” I wasn’t dodging the question, but I did want to buy some time to think. Besides, I was curious what he would say to that.

“You are way too mature for your age. It’s a sign you’ve gone through shit that made you grow up faster than you should have. Usually an indicator of trauma.” Wait, really? I’d never heard of that. Then again, I hadn’t read any psychology books, and my novels had never approached such subjects either. My mother was likely to blame, come to think of it. Wouldn’t want me to realise I was in a bad situation, now would she? She’d played me like a fiddle. Made me into what she needed.

I didn’t like talking about it, but it only made sense to reply to his question. Besides, why would I ask something I wouldn’t want to answer myself? “I… was beaten and raped by my father. Then things happened, and he ended up telling me to leave the stable with him. As naïve as I was back then, I thought I had no choice but to do as he said. I only realised he didn’t have power over me when I held a gun to his head and ended him. Also happens to be how I got my cutie mark.” I didn’t want to mention my mother, since my relationship with her had been much more complicated, and I didn’t want them to believe I was any more of a nutcase than they already thought.

Everypony was staring at me in shock. Even Petal had dropped her usual stoic and annoyed façade for a concerned expression. I understood that my childhood was far from usual, but I hadn’t expected such a reaction. Banter had told something roughly as bad in a similar tone of voice, and it hadn’t been a problem.

Surprisingly, it was Petal who broke the silence. “Shit, I’m sorry. If I’d known, I woulda been kinder to you.”

What? No! “I wouldn’t want you to treat me differently based on this. Treat me based on who I am, please.” I didn’t need her pity. Part of me insisted I should learn to use this to get on other ponies’ good side. It’s what my mother would have wanted me to do.

“Yes, but I thought you were a spoiled stable brat who’d never known hardship in life. I was rude to you because of a stupid assumption.” I didn’t mind, really. She hadn’t acted worse than my mother on most days.

After that, the conversation died down, with no one having anything to say, and I didn’t muster the courage to awkwardly apologise to Lockpick. I returned to Candy with the intent of just watching the road and maybe chatting her up if a topic happened to come up. I needed a new plan to say sorry. I couldn’t have imagined it would be this hard to bring myself to do this.

Before I could ask her for advice, I was surprised by Lockpick walking up to us and asking to speak with me. We distanced ourselves from the group, moving further ahead. I kept my eyes on our path, on the lookout for ghouls.

Now that we were alone, and apologising was no longer as awkward, I finally realised the reason I was so afraid of it. It wasn’t awkward, I just had to swallow my pride, and that was much easier said than done. I had no excuses now, though. Then why couldn’t I bring myself to just say sorry?

She interrupted my thinking. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for my fuck-up yesterday. I lost my nerve and almost got us killed.” Wait, why was she the one apologising? I know I’d thought she needed to apologise, but that was in my angry state. Now that I was calm, I realised it was irrational to be angry at—why was I thinking this? I ought to be saying it instead!

I looked her in the eyes. “Why are you apologising? I’m the one at fault here. I blew things way out of proportion. It isn’t like you chose to react that way. You were in just as much danger as me. I know very well what it’s like to be frozen in fear, unable to do anything, and yet I got mad at you. I’m sorry, Lockpick.” Textbook apology. I mentally patted myself on the back.

While some of my own anger had been justified, bringing up that fact would have deflected the blame and detracted from my apology. It’s what I would have done if I wasn’t trying to be genuine about this. It turned out that knowing how to fauxpologise—in other words, how to apologise like a politician—helped you genuinely admit guilt. Who would have thought.

“Apology accepted, though I still think your reaction wasn’t completely unfounded either.”

A few minutes went by in silence as we continued. Neither of us really knew where to continue with the conversation. We’d made peace, but we still weren’t friends. We barely knew each other. I knew she liked locks and…? Come to think of it, I didn’t have too many interests either. I liked guns and reading, though lately I hadn’t had time to do much of the latter.

“So, is there anything you like doing?” I asked, hoping the question wasn’t as silly as it felt.

She thought about it for a few seconds. “I like listening to music, if that counts.”

“Oh, then how come you’re not listening to the radio?” I’d seen one amongst their possessions in their cart.

“The stuff Airwaves plays isn’t much to my taste, truth be told. I prefer what DJ Pon3 plays on his station, though for some reason his broadcast isn’t available in Detrot. I really like Sweetie Belle’s songs.”

“Oh, we had some of her music in the stable. Wasn’t my favourite, but I could appreciate it nonetheless.”

“I just love the way she sounds. I wish I could sing like that.” She beamed.

“Do you practise?”

“What do you mean?” asked Lockpick

“Do you practise singing? You’ll never get good if you don’t practise.” Maybe I wasn’t in a good spot to give this advice, considering that I’d given up on music after a few weeks. Then again, unlike her, I didn't have any sort of interest in music past attempting to get my cutie mark.

“Well… no, I don’t. I don’t really have the time.”

“What about all this time you spend walking? I’ve known you for less than a week, and I’ve seen you looked bored the entire time we were en route.”

“I can’t. I’m too embarrassed to sing in front of Petal or Banter.” Splitting from the group alone wasn’t an option, either. I wanted to offer her to split from the group with me. I knew I wasn’t gaining anything through this, but somehow, I wanted to help this filly. I didn’t understand my feelings. It was the same thing as back in the hospital. It wasn’t the logical choice, but it was the one I wanted to make. Why were my feelings pushing me to try and be kind to her? I barely knew her!

It wouldn’t benefit me, though would it hurt me? At worst it would cost me a bit of time, and I was bored anyway. I could always retract my offer later if it became inconvenient for me. But at the same time, she was embarrassed to sing in front of her long-time friends, surely she wouldn’t dare do it in front of a nigh-stranger.

A few moments of silence dragged on.

“You know, we could always move away from the group. I can keep you safe, and you can practise in peace.”

“I’d still be embarrassed! And I don’t have recordings or anything to base my singing off of. I don’t know the songs by heart, so I would have to sing along.”

“I could record them when they come on the radio and play them back for you.”

“But I’d still be embarrassed!” she repeated, and fell into silence again.

“I understand,” I replied, giving her a smile that I hoped was as reassuring as Candy’s.

Half a minute later, she said, blushing, “Alright, if you can get a good recording and you promise not to make fun of me.” I couldn’t promise not to mentally mock her, but I could vow not to vocalise it.

“Alright, I promise.”

A few days later, we were getting ready to leave Scrapyard, packing our purchases. The town was built, well, in a scrapyard. The buildings here were all made out of pre-megaspell vehicles; broken skywagons, decommissioned train carts, or regular caravans. A notable exception was the giant welded roof over the area that acted as a marketplace.

Banter had managed to sell and trade off some of the supplies we’d scavenged from the hospital. True to his word, he split the profits with us, and we shared the rest of the loot as well. Now that we finally had some savings, we bought Candy a helmet.

A proper set of barding for somepony my size would have needed to be custom-tailored, and we just didn't have that kind of budget. And I'd grow out of it regardless.

We were tempted to get ourselves better firearms as well, but I didn’t have the need for a larger calibre rifle. Did I want one? Oh yes. Very much so. However, my saddlebags, my shotgun, and Patricide—the name I’d given to my 10mm pistol—were already heavy enough that adding another weapon to my collection would be impractical, especially one that needed such expensive ammunition. It broke my heart, but it was the rational choice.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my rifle was apparently a rather common model, and that this place carried many additions for it. I opted for an extended magazine as well as a suppressor. I could have bought a scope as well, but the disadvantages outweighed the benefits. At the ranges for which a scope would have been beneficial, the .22LR rounds were starting to show their weakness. On top of that, the added weight was a big detractor for me. Coupled with the price of the one long-range scope the vendor had—a measly seven-power at that—I had virtually no reason to get one. Still wanted one though.

Naturally, I also bought larger clips to reload my rifle, though I would likely always keep my five-round magazine loaded just in case.

Patricide also got an extended magazine, though I didn’t bother with a suppressor; it would have made the pistol nearly a third longer.

We ended up stocking up on ammunition. .22LR rounds were light, small, and cheap, so I always tried to keep around fifty on me. Candy carried another hundred as a reserve. We also bought many 20ga shells and slugs. Candy’s shotgun was her primary weapon, and thus it was reasonable to stock up on those as well.

After the nigh-calamity at the hospital, we also decided to get me some proper crowd control shells. Explosive shells, to be exact. For safety reasons, I kept them unloaded unless they were actually needed, but they would likely help tremendously, should I find myself cornered again—provided I load the shells a priori. Fun—but wrong!—thoughts of using those on a pony’s head crossed my mind more than once.

Banter’s group and us decided to split up for the time being; they didn’t have a reason to keep us around as guards, though we could have joined them in scavenging. Given that we’d grown to like them, we’d almost accepted the offer. However, they planned to search through the north-western industrial zone, while I really wanted to visit Arcane Spark’s home in the residential area.

We would try to meet up again here in Scrapyard, two days from now, and decide what to do from there.

Next, we would pay somepony to keep an eye on our wagon while we explored the city. Apparently it was a common enough demand that one of the ponies living here offered this service. In the past twenty years, scavengers had started coming to the region to attempt to get rich, but pulling a cart around the city’s rubble was far from convenient—we were inclined to agree.

Of course, we’d thought long and hard if trusting those ponies was worth it. Banter had deposited his cart here already, so he obviously did have confidence they wouldn’t rob him. However, Candy and I barely trusted him, so faith by proxy was out of the question.

What ended up convincing us was that they had no reason to steal from us, given their fairly steep daily price. If we found they stole anything, we simply wouldn’t pay them. At least in theory. I groaned internally. It was really hard to trust anypony after what Silver had done to us. My gut feeling was telling me I could trust the ponies here, but I knew better than to trust a gut feeling. I just hoped we weren’t making a mistake.

The pony responsible had apparently momentarily gone away, leaving a sign that announced her intent to return within five minutes.

While we were waiting, I noticed a zebra I’d spotted earlier approach us. I hadn’t known how to react to her, so I’d simply opted to ignore her. Stars, why was she approaching us? Was she going to curse us? Did zebras even do that? I knew the pre-stable textbooks had heavy bias against zebras, and the few texts that had been written inside Stable 4 all called out the bias, but didn’t seem to know what exactly the bias was.

The mare was staring at us intently with her wide open, bloodshot eyes, slowly approaching. I tried looking away, pretending she didn’t exist. Hopefully she’d leave us alone. When she spoke up in her exotic accent, however, those hopes were promptly crushed.

“Young mares, fresh out of fool’s paradise, I hope you do not mind some advice. I see your light mostly undimmed, for as long as you follow your own wind. However, should the tempest you oppose, then you shall find a death most morose.” Was that a curse? What did that mean? How did she know about the stable? No, that much was pretty obvious, we’d already established. But still, what was she talking about?

“Shoo! Don’tcha bother mah customers, ya loony! Scram!” yelled a mare. The zebra immediately turned around, attempting to bolt, only to trip and fall on her rump, before scrambling up and galloping away. Well, okay then… The owner turned to us. “Anyway, sorry ‘bout that. She’s our local druggie,” she fake-whispered. “Never try Mint-als, y’all.” I gulped. “Given yer wagon, I take it y’all’re here for me?”

When we first entered the city, I felt watched. I'd felt this way near the clinic as well. It was the same feeling as when somepony was behind me, except that nopony was there.

Occasionally, a red bar would appear for a split second, but that was nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing consistent. My mental health was really going down the drain, wasn’t it? I would have thought it would improve after escaping the horrible hole that was Stable 4. I resorted to ignoring the feeling. Hopefully, it would go away.

After an hour of walking around Detrot’s residential area—carefully avoiding ghouls since we had no idea how likely we were to get swarmed—we finally found ourselves on the street I recognised. At the very far side, however, buildings were missing; they’d likely been the primary target of the zebra megaspell.

It took me another twenty minutes to find the exact spot where Arcane Spark had materialised. The challenge would be to figure out which building she’d lived in. I trusted the simplest solution and decided to check the closest building.

“I still don’t know why you care this much about this dead mare,” Candy said to me as we walked towards the entrance. I’d told her about the memory orb already, but I understood her hesitance.

“Curiosity, plain and simple,” I replied. “And we might find some valuables there, so it’s not a complete waste of time.”

“I see.” I thanked the stars for this mare's kindness. My mother would have told me to act my age and ignored my request.

I noticed that the mailboxes to the right of the entrance had occupant names on them. I wondered how mail delivery services had worked in a city. Their system was probably fairly well optimised and—I cut off that thought to pay closer attention to the names printed on each box.

I scanned row after row, until I arrived at the top row, where I started losing hope. However, those fears were promptly extinguished as my eyes locked onto the text. “Arcane Spark & Zephyr Aurora”. Zephyr's name was crossed out. Underneath it, a sticker read “No Advertising”.

Unfortunately, that didn’t tell me which storey or flat she'd lived in. Given the length of the teleport I’d etched into my brain, it likely wasn’t ground, first, or even second floor.

As we started climbing the stairs, we found that, thankfully, there were only four apartments per floor—each of them fairly sizable, but not gigantic.

The first few floors’ entrance doors had been broken open, so I was starting to lose hope we’d actually find anything valuable in Arcane’s home. However, as we reached higher floors, some doors remained closed, while others were open but not broken. Had whoever been here before us simply decided this place wasn’t worth looting?

Luckily for us, doorbells were also labelled with the names of the ponies who’d lived there. Unluckily for us, when we finally found the entrance to Arcane’s flat, it was locked. Candy, however, surprised me by levitating out a bobby pin and a screwdriver. She inserted the former into the lock and applied torque with the latter.

I watched as she moved the pin back and forth. I could tell by her hesitant movements that she barely had an idea of what she was doing. “You can pick locks?” I asked. She clearly wasn’t very good at it, but she seemed to know the basics.

“Eh, sorta?” she replied without looking away from the lock. “I mostly just know the theory, and when I saw LP doing it last week, she made it look easy.” As if on cue, the bobby pin broke, and she let out a groan.

“Can I try? If you tell me how.”

She gave me her tools. “The idea is to ‘trick’ the lock into being open by pressing down the pins exactly like a key would.”

That… was incredibly vague. “Any other tips?”

“Apply torque and brush on the pins, they’ll get stuck in place.” Not a very good tip either.

I had a hard time grasping what she was telling me. Nevertheless, I wedged my screwdriver into the lock, forcing it to turn very slightly. I moved the bobby pin back and forth, like she’d implied with the word ‘brush’, and found that one of the lock’s pins clicked down. Encouraged, I kept going… to no avail.

After that first one, none of them wanted to move. Eventually, after a few minutes of heated struggle with the lock, I loosened my grip on the screwdriver, causing the pin to spring back up. I noticed I was gritting my teeth and consciously unclenched my jaws.

Again I brushed across the inside of the lock, and the same pin got stuck in its down position. I struggled a bit more, then, somehow, another pin got stuck. Once more I was filled with motivation.

After a few minutes, said motivation all but evaporated, leaving behind frustration. Why was this not working? Maybe I needed to try again. I let go of the lock and dropped the screwdriver. It was getting in the way of my bobby pin, and my magic was good enough to apply torque on its own. Come to think of it, even the bobby pin was superfluous.

I attempted to pick the lock with only my telekinesis, but quickly noticed that this required more concentration than I had the ability for right now. Maybe with a Mint-al… but those were off the table forever.

I picked up the bobby pin again and went to work. This time, I got stuck on the first pin again. Anger was starting to pour into my mind. Maybe if I pushed hard enough…

Or maybe…

No, no, no, no! This wasn’t working

I groaned. This wasn’t worth my time. I walked back from the door, loaded an explosive shell into my shotgun, and blasted the door open with a shot at the lock. Wooden shrapnel flew my way, painfully impacting my face while my ears began to ring. Candy, further down the hallway, screamed in surprise. “Fuck! At least warn me!” Hadn’t she seen me load the shell?

“Sorry. I’ll admit this was not my brightest moment.” Understatement of the century. “Thought it would be alright, since there are no ghouls around.” Come to think of it, the lack of skeletons or ghouls in this place was disturbing. Could it be that they all tried running away? That would have just killed them faster… not that they would have had any chances of surviving the radiation this close to the blast.

I pushed open the door and stepped inside, Candy in tow. The inside was the familiar room with grey concrete walls, except the paint had peeled off in most places, leaving behind… more grey, just of a different shade and texture. The windows had long shattered, and the carpets and textiles covering furniture had rotted away.

As a light gust blew in through the destroyed window, I felt a droplet of blood flow down my cheek. Raising my hoof to touch my face, I noticed a large splinter embedded in it. How had I not noticed the pain until now? It hurt. I turned to Candy, and she was as shocked as me when she saw it.

She rushed over to me, telling me in her soothing voice, “Sit down, I’ll take care of it.” I did as I was told. “Okay, I’m gonna need to pull it out. It’s pretty deep in there, you’re lucky it didn’t hit your eye. I’m gonna yank it out on three.” I closed my left eye. I didn’t want to see it come out. “One… Two…” She pulled it out. My vision filled with tears, and I led my thoughts to stars for comfort.

Candy pulled out a bottle of antiseptic and a piece of cloth, wiping the wound with the soaked tissue. The liquid stung, but not as badly as the original pull. With a pair of tweezers, she pulled out a few more pieces of wood that had broken off the big splinter. It hurt, but I stayed strong.

After another disinfection, she poured a bit of healing potion onto the wound, holding it closed with her hoof. The pain slowly diminished, until it became no more than a slight sore. Candy rubbed the closed wound, asking, “Does this hurt?” I shook my head. “Perfect. Now, I would lecture you about blowing up a wooden door, but you’ve already learned the lesson, haven’t you?” I had, and I was grateful she wasn’t berating me about it. I felt stupid enough already, and didn't need to get yelled at. I nodded. My ears were still ringing, rubbing more salt onto my wounded ego. How had it not crossed my mind that this would happen? Was a little frustration really enough to cloud my judgement?

After I swallowed my pride, we started searching the apartment. My gaze immediately wandered to the bookshelf in the back of the room, and I trotted over to it. The contents were very similar to the one in her hut on Foal Mountain. There were many normal novels, some textbooks, and many comic book magazines. “Hey, Candy?” I called.

“Yeah?” she answered from the kitchen.

“Would you mind carrying a few books? I can take a few, too.”

“Sure!”

That opened up my possibilities quite a bit. Still, I wouldn’t want to overload either of us with books. Out of the scholarly books, many interested me at a first glance. While the many mathematical textbooks didn’t look like anything on my level, my curiosity still wanted me to read them. I put them aside—it wouldn’t hurt taking them with us if there wasn’t anything else of value. Mathematics were fascinating, after all. I just didn’t know much past early calculus. Thankfully, I’d already finished my maths curriculum by the time I’d left the stable—just like with magic, concepts were easy for me to grasp. Unlike magic, however, it was actually interesting.

As I levitated the last two books over, I noticed the side of the pages was covered with mould. I opened the book and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of mildew and found that the inside had completely been eaten away. Almost dropping it out of sheer disgust, I closed it and set it on the floor far away from myself. Gross.

A horrifying thought crossed my mind: what if every book here was unreadable? I decided to skim through the maths books. To my utter dismay, most were indecipherable. Out of four, only one seemed to be relatively legible still. And of course, its contents were so advanced that I doubted I had any of the prerequisite knowledge.

I inspected each individual book in her library, only finding four—five if I counted the textbook on advanced discrete mathematics—that were still mostly readable. Groaning in frustration, I lamented the loss of knowledge, but was happy that some at least had survived. In particular, a single book on memory magic and its applications piqued my interest. It wasn’t the one I would have picked, but I did like the topic; it could prove itself useful.

I ignored the comic book magazines; given that most looked ready to fall apart, I doubted they were in any better shape than the books. Instead, I looked at the novels she owned. Not too many titles seemed particularly interesting, but I did end up picking up five of them that were in a still-readable state of decay. Hopefully they’d be more interesting than their covers.

I placed the seven books I’d decided on on the coffee table. Just that made me crave the bitter liquid. Wait. I thought I didn’t like coffee? But the thought back to it made me realise that maybe I did. Was this what an acquired taste was all about? Could it be the same with whiskey? No. No way in Tartarus could that actually taste good to anypony. Ponies only consumed that to get drunk.

Next, I headed towards the bedroom while Candy continued to rummage around in the kitchen. The walls here were covered in paintings and posters. The paintings were cracked, but all represented nature in some way or another. The posters, on the other hoof, were all faded or rotten. A lone terminal stood on her desk, in the corner of the room.

A variety of old plastic bottles of lotions stood on her bedside table, as well as a framed portrait of a mare that I immediately recognised: Zephyr Aurora. A black ribbon was draped over the frame.

Next to it, I spotted another one of those memory talismans. The impatient part of my brain screamed at me to take a look at it, but the rest of my mind knew it would have been superbly idiotic to lock myself in a memory while Candy scavenged the flat. No, I’d look at it tonight. Just like the orb from the chalet, it wore a label, “best night ever pt1”. I wondered where part two was.

Next, I opened the bedside table’s drawer, to find… part two, as well as medicine. I recognised some as headache medicine, but most of the pills were foreign to me. Deciding I would tell Candy to look through them later, I pocketed the “best night ever pt2” orb.

I searched through her desk, only to find a diary—completely illegible. I groaned. I couldn’t help but notice how many empty plastic bottles were strewn about the room. Had she not understood the concept of garbage cans? In any case, her room mostly seemed to be paperwork and trash. How sad.

Finally, I decided to take a look at the terminal. To my surprise, it turned on. However, the first message that came up was simply “Please enter password to decrypt storage.”

I tried “Zephyr Aurora”, but it was declined. “4 attempts remaining.” Ponyfeathers. Knowing old technology, it would wipe the entire drive once those four attempts were spent. Connecting my PipBuck to the terminal, I tried to initiate the transfer from there, only for “Handshake rejected” to flash on my screen. I groaned again, and went back to help out Candy.

Eventually, Candy and I had found everything worth our time—she’d managed to scrounge up a lot of preserved food—and left the small apartment. I told her about the two memory talismans that I’d watch later on.

“You still wanna check out that old office building?” she asked me. We’d talked about the possibility of scavenging in a place with actual loot. Individual apartments and houses were usually fairly safe, except for the odd ghoul out. Public buildings, on the other hoof, were a gold mine.

“Of course.”

As we approached the Stable-Tec building, I noticed some red bars inside. The building itself was badly damaged, like everything around it. Not even a hundred metres further, however, things were in much worse shape; we were near the crater. Occasionally, my PipBuck would give a quiet click. Any closer and it would likely be ticking the entire time.

Through the broken windows, I could see a few pony-shaped robots inside, walking around. Huh, I’d never fought a robot before. I briefly wondered about how fun they’d be to destroy.

Before we entered, I started taking shots at the robots—they were clearly going to attack us on sight, so we were better off striking first. SATS informed that they were apparently called ‘protectaponies’. Sparks flew around with each shot that landed. As fun as that was to watch, it wasn’t very exhilarating and quickly became boring.

After the three robots were dealt with, we stepped into the reception. Most furniture in the large lobby had either been broken or had decayed over time, with the notable exception of the receptionist’s desk. The room looked nothing like in the memory. The continuing presence of red bars worried me, but I figured they would all be as easy to dispose of as the robots we’d already scrapped.

Oh, maybe I could still find some usable parts on the robots. I doubted I would find anything useful for fixing guns, but it wasn’t like my knowledge of mechanical systems couldn’t be extrapolated to machines in general.

I managed to extract a few servo motors, as well as many gemspark batteries. They weren’t as heavy as spark batteries, but they also held a small fraction of the magical power. Meanwhile, Candy looked through the rest of the room. When she stepped in front of a door, it suddenly burst open, revealing a large robot. Unlike the previous three, it wasn’t pony-like at all.

It was bipedal, but instead of legs it had tracks. Because of that, its movements were much smoother than the protectaponies. Its left arm consisted of a large calibre barrel, presumably .308, while the right one had a much wider one. What kind of bullet was that made for? That had to be at least 40 millimetres! Unless it shot some kind of explosives. I prayed to the stars that it didn’t shoot explosives.

Candy dove behind cover—a pile of rubble. I took a shot at the machine, but was sorely disappointed as my bullet simply plinked off its metal plating. Stars curse my luck. I hid behind the receptionist’s desk. We had to flee.

“I’ll keep it busy! You run away!” Candy shouted, and her bar began moving as the robot started shooting. Could she really get away from this thing? She’d need to run through a very large, open area. For that matter, could I get out of here without leaving cover? I’d have to teleport an awfully long distance, and I wasn’t sure my horn had it in it.

Occasionally, I heard her shotgun roar. I hoped she’d loaded slugs, else she wouldn’t even put a dent in it. Forced to run circles, she soon lapped back behind me, and bullets whizzed past me. A sharp pain shot through my shoulder, and blood squirted out. Fuck! I bit my lip to avoid actually saying it.

I blinked the tears out of my eyes, and began loading my shotgun with explosive shells. I was done running. Candy had done so much for me, risked her life time and time again, and I had a bad feeling about leaving her behind.

The robot was still shooting at Candy while she was running around it, blasting it with a slug every time she could. How was she moving faster than it could turn? This mare never ceased to impress me. Maybe she could have gotten away from it, but it was too late to change my mind.

I took aim and hit it square in the side of its torso. It stopped following Candy and instead started turning towards me. Oh ponyfeathers. I ran, ignoring the searing agony in my shoulder. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up, but if I stayed in place, I would end up a sieve. I still wasn’t a fast runner, but fear for my life acted like a wonderful stimulant.

My heart was pounding and my lungs burned. I was about to slow down. I was about to die. No, I still had my teleportation trump card up my sleeve. I didn’t want to risk it, but it seemed like I wouldn’t have a choice. I mentally ran through the maze, then forcefully redirected the energy. There had to be a better way to cast this spell!

I rematerialised behind a pillar, panting heavily, horn throbbing painfully. At first, I didn’t dare peek out from behind the pillar, but as I heard its machine gun rev up again, I knew it was going after Candy once more. I took a look and noticed Candy was zig-zagging straight towards my position. Good, if we both found cover, we might be able to find a way out. Burnout be damned, I would teleport us out! Things would work out! I still needed a bit more time to catch my breath, though.

I stared at its right arm as it fired. For the few fractions of a second, the projectile flew through the air, I was able to notice it was not a bullet. It impacted the ground behind Candy, several metres in front of me, and the explosion thundered throughout the atrium. Dazed for a short instant, I didn’t see when she had been thrown forward by the explosion, only realising what happened when she crashed against the wall next to me with a cracking sound that tied my gut into a knot.

A leg was not supposed to bend like that.

She was not getting up.

I needed to act now, or we would both die here.

A risky plan formed in my mind, and I started channelling power through my horn once again, bracing for the whiplash.

I released the spell and accidentally closed my left eye as pain shot through my head. I reappeared behind the robot, closer than I’d meant to be. After raising my left leg to shield my face, I entered SATS.

When time crawled to a stop, I realised I had not actually clicked the button. It had to be the same link that allowed me to interact with the user interface. Knowing this earlier would have been useful; I could have avoided so many injuries, like when that ghoul had hit me! Damn it, Iron, what was I doing theorycrafting? SATS or not, I had no time to waste!

I queued three shots at the robot—as much as the spell allowed me with the pump-action shotgun. I took a few SATS-seconds to brace myself for the impact. I was very close to the sentry bot—the name SATS had given it—and I was about to fire at it at point blank range. This would not be pleasant, but I knew very well I wouldn’t survive an attempt to get some distance between us.

I let go of the spell and felt my aura pull the trigger. My world became heat, pain, noise, and more pain. Sharp twangs of agony echoed throughout my body as shrapnel pierced my skin. I could feel the metal embed itself into my chest, left foreleg, and right shoulder. My leg and lower face burned, as my magic, guided by the spell, pumped the shotgun. I was not ready for another shot, and wanted nothing more than to stop the spell and let myself die.

Yet I stayed strong. More heat and pain, but this time, all I could hear was ringing.

The third shell left my gun, and the world resumed. Because the universe really wanted to punish me for my stupidity, the last two shells exploded within the magazine. If any of that shrapnel had hit me, I certainly hadn’t felt it.

My EFS informed me that the threat had been defeated. In fact, the entire interface was free of red bars, now. How? The burning in my left leg was also gone, probably overshadowed by the shrapnel wounds and headache.

I walked three steps towards Candy, then lost consciousness.

I awoke in a dark room to Candy bandaging my leg. I noticed the familiar lack of feeling that came with her anaesthetic spell and was oh-so grateful for it. At least four bottles of healing potion and a single Med-X vial lay strewn about in the closet.

Her right front leg was resting in a cloth attached to her neck. “Is your leg broken?” I attempted to ask, but couldn’t hear myself over the ringing in my ears. I felt my vocal cords vibrate, but no sound came.

Still, she turned to me. Her mouth was moving but no sound was coming out, at least none that could overpower the ringing. Oh. Of course I was still deafened by the blast.

“I can’t hear you, Candy. I think my ears are messed up.” I tried speaking a bit louder and still could barely hear myself. Her lips puckered as if she was trying to shush me. An idea came to me.

I levitated my PipBuck hoof to have the device face me, then opened the text editor on a new file. “Type on this,” I said, attempting to stay quiet.

She furrowed her eyebrows, mouthed “Later”, and finished bandaging my leg. When she was done, she turned her attention to my PipBuck and started to type using the tiny keyboard. Unlike a terminal keyboard, this one only consisted of a five-by-four grid, and one had to press each key multiple times to cycle through the multiple letters assigned to each button. I wondered how earth ponies could press the tiny keys, and was once again glad to be a unicorn.

While my mind wandered around irrelevant topics, Candy finished typing her message. “Removed most shrapnel. Not all. Healed your face burns. We need to wait until numbing spell wears off. Also, dont be loud.” I’d figured out the last part on my own.

“What about your leg?” I asked, at the lowest volume I could.

“Broken,” she clicked.

“Isn’t there anything you can do? This… looks painful.”

She started typing again. I could tell she was getting the hang of this, slowly but surely. “Wud need to set it. Cant do that with my hooves, magic too weak.”

“Do you think I could do it with my magic?” I offered, then added, “With your guidance, of course.”

Keyboard clicking. “Wud be hard if u cant hear me.”

“I don’t need to hear you, I can just help you add power. You can make the motions, pull and push where it’s needed, and I’ll provide the strength.”

“U think u can follow my movements precisely?”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t particularly difficult. I’d been asked several times to help funnel power into a spell that I didn’t fully or even partially understand.

“Fine then. I trust you.”

She undid the loop and wrapped her aura around her leg, not letting it droop. I focused on the currents of magic flowing into the telekinesis, strengthening the spell. It was easy to push along a river, as long as it didn’t make any sharp turns. Candy’s eyes widened, and her expression changed to… admiration?

She bit her lip, anticipating pain, and swiftly set the bone. I didn’t exactly understand what was going on, but I could grasp the general idea. Tearing up, she finished the healing potion next to her, then proceeded to bandage the leg. She broke a broom with a swift buck, then wrapped the bandage tightly around her leg, using the pieces of wood to immobilise her limb.

In the end, her leg was back in the cloth loop hanging from her neck. However, it was no longer painfully contorted.

When the anaesthetic spell gradually wore off, I started regretting every single action that had led me to here and now. My leg’s burns pulsated painfully underneath the magical bandages, and the shrapnel that Candy hadn’t removed grated agonisingly against my muscles and bones, trapped beneath the flesh that had regrown through the potion’s influence.

As I tried standing up, I felt extremely disoriented. The world spun, and I fell back down on my rump. I was fairly certain I let out a yelp at the strain. I officially hated robots. Not fun to kill, very deadly, and hard to destroy.

Candy motioned to my PipBuck. I lifted it and let her type. “We shud get going. You need medx?” I nodded at her, and she dug through her saddlebags, then inserted the needle into my right foreleg. A thought hit me. Wasn’t Med-X also a drug? Didn’t I risk getting addicted if I kept having to use it? Hopefully I would remember to ask Candy about it when I got my hearing back.

As the pain melted away to a more manageable level, I slowly stood up, trying to get used to the unexpected motion sickness. Then, as she put the empty syringe back into her saddlebags, I spotted something shocking. She had a tin of Mint-als.

I wanted to ask her about it, but I feared that opening my mouth would lead me to lose my lunch. How could she do this? Why would she do this? Was she planning to sell it? If so, that would explain why she hid it from me. Still, it… hurt that she would keep a secret from me. Maybe I shouldn’t keep secrets from her either?

That didn’t matter right now, however. We needed to get to a safe place to let ourselves rest, as this building was still crawling with red bars; some of those would likely be exactly like the sentry bot that had put us in this predicament. I suggested Arcane’s apartment complex, since we knew it was ghoul-free.

On the way there, I lost my lunch, and after that it took a lot of effort to avoid retching some more. Again, I felt observed, but I ignored the hallucination. We needed to get to safety as soon as possible, and I couldn’t waste any time thinking about my sanity.

Footnote:

New Perk: Teleportation I — You’ve learned to move your body and everything you’re carrying instantaneously from one spot to another. In theory, you can also teleport small objects away from you, but anything larger than a soda bottle must travel alongside you. Your range is limited to your INT score in metres. Additionally, due to your inefficient way of executing it, this spell can only be cast up to your END score times a day.

New “Perk”: Hearing Loss — Your inner ear was permanently damaged. As a result, you effectively lose 5 points off your PER score in scenarios involving listening. Your overall PER score is unaffected, as your other senses sharpen to compensate. Your sense of balance is also affected; you chronically experience extreme disorientation.

New “Perk”: Brain Damage — After such a spectacular series of bad decisions, the universe itself must have decided you were not making good use of your intelligence. Or maybe you just hit your head too hard, too many times. Either way, you lose one point of INT.