Fallout Equestria: Oasis

Chapter Three – Strays

"Hell I'll kill a buck in a fair fight… or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if there's a mare, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly when I'm gettin' paid. These raiders though. Eating ponies alive? Where's that get fun?"

The rain started after I stepped onto the main road. I put on my abused second-hoof hat to keep it out of my eyes. It felt nice and soothing on the burns so I didn't mind being soaked at all. Even with Med-X dulling the pain it felt like my hide was a size too small.

Rain. I suppose I should have felt awe at the water cascading from the vast vault of clouds above me. It was another one of those vague things that had only existed in books. The film it lent to the air softened the harshness of the wastes around me at least.

The walls of the Stable were a monotonous gray that my coat almost matched. Some parts of the Stable were painted with murals to break the dullness, but even unadorned I wouldn't call them ugly.

The wasteland was ugly.

I hadn't let myself look at it. I mean really look at it, since I left the cave. There had been a certainty somewhere inside me that my mission would be quick. A jaunt Outside to grab what was needed followed by a mad dash back to what was safe and familiar. Everything that had happened would just be a few bad memories washed away by a good hot shower and work shifts spent getting Socket to smile more.

Instead I was empty hoofed. No talisman, my PipBuck a dead weight on my leg and there was nothing but death to look at. Dead grass, dead bushes, and the blackened trunks of dead trees. Not to mention the dead ruins of buildings dotting the landscape. The two dead stallions I saw when I closed my eyes. The only things living were twisted nightmares of what they should have been. I had to wonder if that extended to ponykind as well. How could it not when surrounded by so much ruin?

I stopped in the middle of the road and blinked furiously to clear my eyes. It was just rainwater getting in my eyes from the bullet holes in my hat. All that work risking my life and nothing to show for it but odds and ends of scrap. I tried to choke down the disappointment and ignore the growing horror. Ignore the useless anger at those long-dead ponies who'd let it come to this.

The rain had gone from soothing to simply cold and I shivered. There were better things to focus on. I'd met a few good ponies, found an actual community despite the ruin. Soon I'd have a little pile of caps and be back on my way to saving the Stable.

I just hoped that Spark's affinity for technical things extended to PipBucks. If not, at least I knew Maneford was on my list of places to search. Even if I recovered the list of possible locations for a water talisman and exhausted it I would just find other likely places. I wouldn't quit until I turned the whole goddess forsaken wasteland upside down twice if I had to.

A positive attitude was what I needed. It was the only thing that really made living in the Stable bearable and the same was likely true for the wasteland. Positive, but still wary.

Not quite wary enough.

Stabbing pain erupted in my flank but quickly dulled thanks to the Med-X circulating through me. I looked to see a chitinous spine sticking out from the center of my mark.

A grotesque insect looking creature was struggling to stay airborne some distance away. I danced sideways as it puffed itself up and fired a volley of needle-like spines in my general direction.

"My cutie mark is not a target!" I screamed at the dimwitted bug, giving vent to my mounting frustration. Was it too much to ask for just a little while of nothing trying to kill me for no reason?

My burns hurt, in a dull and removed sense, as I dodged another volley of spines. I pulled out my revolver, sighted and pulled the trigger.

Click.

I swore something inarticulate and dropped the pistol in the mud. Of course I'd forgotten to reload the thing. The magnum shook in my telekinetic hold as I dragged it out of my bag. I focused on steadying it just for a second. My horn started to throb in protest as I pulled the trigger.

The recoil shattered my grip on the pistol, sending it whizzing past my face and into my shoulder. The bug exploded into a mist of carapace and insect goo.

Boom. Heh.

I laughed, I couldn't help it. Something about watching it explode was immensely satisfying.

My shoulder was already bruising. It was going to be a doozy later, but it didn't hurt at the moment. I picked up my pistols and put them back in my bags after reloading both. Checking the corpse would be a waste of time since I doubted giant bugs carried anything valuable. That and I'd vaporized it.

I wrenched the spine out of my flank and tossed it aside. The hole didn't even bleed much. That was good. I was beginning to see why Morale considered the shooting ranges therapeutic.

The rest of the way back to Bridleton was spent being doubly cautious. I had a new appreciation for how much of an advantage my PipBuck gave just with the EFS alone.

The painkiller wore off before I reached town. What wasn't burned was bruised, and I could not remember being hit with anything that would leave bruises other than the magnum. It hurt to move, to stand still, and just to breathe. The only blessing was the cold, cold rain that numbed me somewhat. I tried not to look at the burns. None of them were pretty, but the worst was the one on my chest. I couldn't be sure the healing potion I'd poured on it had done anything at all.

I had to move slow and try not to breathe too deeply. It was that or scream and cry the whole way back to town and attract every nasty in hearing range. I would have given a hoof for just one more dose of Med-X. The Steady kept me from collapsing into a quivering heap, but it did nothing for the pain, and I'd used the last of that too.

My whole world narrowed to simply putting one hoof in front of the other and moving forward. How long it took me to reach the gate I can't say, there was only pain and breathing and moving.

"Who goes there? State your business." I looked up to the top of the gate and the hunting rifle aimed at my face.

I meant to tell the guard my name but the world suddenly skewed sideways and went fuzzy.

~*~

"Children," Sapphire's voice cut through the excited tittering of the foals, silencing them almost instantly. "Now I know you've been studying very hard, so it's time to put that study to the test."

Tests. I hated tests. Why couldn't we just do this in the normal classroom? The room teacher had herded us into was completely bare save for the ornate circles etched in the floor. None of the class set hoof in the circles, instead sticking to the walls while Sapphire stood in the center of the room.

"Line up now children, and come stand where I am one at a time," the mare's gaze swept over us and with some jostling and shoving we all fell into line. "Good, now just cast the spell we've been practicing."

I slid to the back of the line. I didn't want to do this – I hadn't gotten so much as a spark out of my horn with all the practice we'd been doing. Trying would just give the others another thing to make fun of me for.

Cinder jostled her way to the front as she always did and stepped into the middle of the circle with Sapphire. Without a moment of hesitation a ball of light popped into existence at the tip of her horn, growing brighter and brighter until I had to look away.

"That will do," Sapphire said.

The light went out instantly and the blood-red filly gave the others in line a smug smile before trotting out of the circle. She snapped the tip of her fiery orange and red tail in front of my nose as she passed.

"I can't wait to see what you can do, blank flank," she tittered.

My ears drooped as others took their turn. They all conjured their own little glowing orbs with varying amounts of effort. None of them cast the spell with quite the speed or lack of effort Cinder showed, some like Shale Gust even struggled before completing the task, but they all passed.

I gulped as I stepped into the circle, wrinkling my nose at the smell of ozone. Splash's orb exploded with a static sizzle rather than simply going out, earning him a frown from the teacher.

I just needed to concentrate, everything would be fine. I could do this – it was just a silly test after all.

All the steps ran through my head. I closed my eyes, took a steadying breath, and focused on what I wanted to happen. A tingle ran through my horn and I could feel pressure building in my skull behind my eyes. I just had to will it into being.

I could hear the other foals in my class starting to whisper to each other. My horn almost hurt with how hard I was focusing.

Something gave way. It hit with a shock, icy water running through my veins. Finally, finally I'd done it. But there was no brightness pressing on my eyelids. I could feel something at the tip of my horn, an extension of my energy. At least, that's what the book said it would feel like.

"What – what is that?" Cinder almost sounded frightened.

I opened my eyes and looked up. There was no ball of light to greet me, instead a sphere of perfect black danced at the tip of my horn. That wasn't what I had tried to conjure at all! I backed away from the thing, just hoping it would go away. The orb trailed after my horn.

"Whisper, just keep calm – just let go so it can dissipate," Sapphire's voice was soft and calm.

I backed away further. I wasn't holding on to it – I wanted it to go away! It was cold, I realized, freezing cold as it kept moving with my horn. I shook my head, trying to get the thing away from me.

My horn grazed the orb. The pearl of black stuck and stretched, and started to tear.

A blast of icy wind tore through the room as the orb broke. Smoky black something poured out of the thing, splashing on the floor and flowing through the air like ink in water. It splattered over my legs, cold and slippery and tickling my belly with cold wisps as it flowed.

My classmates screamed as Sapphire ushered them out the door into the hallway. I could only stare at where the orb had been, a point of nothing spewing liquid blackness into the room between me and the door. A faint glow filled my vision and I felt myself lifted from the floor as the teacher's levitation took hold of me, dragging me to safety.

~*~

I awoke with a start, a chill slithering over me. I hated that dream, hated remembering that first magical fuck-up. It took me a moment to realize that the chill rolling over me was actually the tingling of the healing bandages covering me from horn to hoof. This time I felt mattress under me rather than Night's operating table. That was a good change.

When I opened my eyes the room looked to be one of Gin's. Even better. A certain charcoal unicorn was pacing back and forth through the room, a piece of machinery floating in front of her as she paced. She turned it over and over, scowling.

"No no no," she growled.

The machine exploded into a cloud of smaller parts that swirled around and began sticking back together. The parts stopped moving when she glanced at me.

"You're awake." She managed to sound both relieved and angry. "You know I was kidding about needing the caps, right?"

She glared at me. I laid my ears back and tried to look apologetic.

"I just put you back together and you come back even worse! Do all you Stable ponies have a death wish? The last one to come through was just like you. Crawled into town all shot up – went chasing after something or other as soon as he could walk again. Probably got himself blown to pieces half way to Maneford."

The parts began swirling around again. She didn't even seem to be focusing on them or paying attention. Show off.

"Doc's the one that always saved the others, though. You – you're the pony I saved. The first one." She stared at the parts floating in her levitation magic. "I thought you weren't going to make it when Spark first brought you in. Others died on me hurt less than you. Cuts and scratches and things are easy enough – but ponies are harder to fix than broken motors when it's something big."

The last few pieces clicked into place. Night scrutinized the piece of machinery a moment before slipping it into her saddlebag. I just watched the charcoal unicorn. I didn't know what she wanted. Trying to apologize to a pony I barely knew for her having to do her job felt stupid.

"I had to cut off the dead tissue in the burns, but you should be fine by tomorrow with the bandages and all the potions I put in you. Pick up the bill after you settle with Umbrage. You should rest for now."

"How long was I out?" I said, interrupting the mare as she turned to leave.

"Two days."

Two days? Two days!

I jumped to my hooves, or rather, I tried to. Pain shot through every inch of my hide as I started to move. My breath hissed through my teeth as I bit down on a scream.

"Can you do that spell and numb me a bit?" I said through clenched teeth as my eyes welled with tears.

"No. Pain exists to tell you when you're hurt and doing something stupid." With that rebuke she left, shutting the door hard behind her.

~*~

The bandages were soothing, so long as I didn't move. The moment I tried to move they shifted, rubbing and scratching my poor, raw hide. I left my bag in the room since the mere thought of trying to put it on made me hurt. So long as I moved very slowly I could walk without too much pain.

Night meant for me to stay in the room and rest but I couldn't afford to do that. Couldn't afford to waste another day not getting what the Stable needed. Getting down the stairs to the bar was pure agony. Sweat made my burns sting and soaked into the bandages, wrapping me in a tingly, scratching and stinging hell.

The few ponies at the bar didn't pay any attention to me as I stood at the bottom of the stairs, gritting my teeth fit to crack them and fighting tears.

"You okay, hon?" the barpony said. "Night asked me to bring you up somethin' later, said you'd be resting."

My jaw was starting to ache from clenching it so hard. I tried to blink away the stinging in the corners of my eyes and force another step forward. Just a couple steps to the bar and then I could rest a moment, I promised my body. Just a few steps, that was all.

I made it to the bar somehow and leaned against it with my bruised shoulder, waiting for the pain to become tolerable again.

"I'm fine," I lied. "Just – fine."

Apple Gin didn't buy it either. "You really should rest. You're going to hurt yourself."

"So I keep hearing," I grinned. At least I hoped it was a grin.

I flinched as one of the bandages shifted, which only made it move more. My vision started to get watery so I pushed myself away from the bar before Gin could notice.

"Well, I have things to do, ponies to see. My things are still in the room if that's okay," I didn't hear her reply above the roar of blood in my ears as I forced myself to walk as normally as I could manage out of the bar.

The walk to Umbrage's shop dissolved into a haze of pain. As long as I kept going, momentum and force of will were enough to keep me from collapsing into a whimpering pile. As much as I wanted to lie down until everything stopped hurting, I couldn't. There was a job to get paid for and a merchant pony to talk to about fixing my PipBuck. After two days, I wasn't sure she was still in town. It would be just my luck to have missed her leaving for Maneford.

"That's two hundred for the job," Umbrage said, dropping a bag of caps on the counter. "Find what you were looking for?"

"It didn't have what I needed, but it had a lot of other things in it," I said, surprising myself by how bitter I sounded.

"What sorts of things?"

I rattled off the names of some of the machine components I remembered from the shipping manifest. As I did the earth pony's expression turned thoughtful, then his eyes narrowed. He ducked under the counter for a moment and came back up with another bag, dumping out caps and quickly gathering them into a small pile.

"That's another hundred to keep your mouth shut about what's in that warehouse," he added them to the bag with the two hundred for the warehouse job.

I shrugged, doubting anypony would bother asking me about it, but I wasn't going to turn down more caps. The shrug made the bandages grate against my burns and I hissed softly.

This pain wouldn't do at all. My eyes lit on the Med-X nestled amongst the assortment of other drugs on one of the shop pony's shelves. I snapped up the syringes in my magic and dropped them on the counter.

"How much?"

The old stallion named a price and I didn't bother trying to haggle with him. I'd had enough agony for one day.

The moment he took my caps I jammed one of the needles into my shoulder through the bandage. Sweet numbing relief swept through me and I couldn't help but sigh at being able to relax muscles held taught against the pain. I took the syringes and what was left of Umbrage's payment and walked without wincing or cringing to the door. The shopkeeper was watching me with an odd expression, but I didn't care. For the first time since waking up I didn't hurt.

I tucked the collection of needles and was left of my reward under one of my bandages for lack of anywhere else to put them and left Umbrage's shop.

~*~

Spark didn't seem to be anywhere. She wasn't in the tavern, the restaurant or at Night's clinic. At least, she wasn't in the clinic from what I saw. I didn't want to chance another lecture about proper rest and healing from the resident medical pony.

After walking up and down the street looking for her, and another Med-X, I was starting to think she had left town without me. I couldn't blame her if she had. She probably had better things to do than wait on someone who got themselves shot up doing a simple job.

"You don't think it's a problem? My caravan got hit comin' up the pass. Highfort is just one big raider nest now, and you don't think it's a problem?" I knew that voice!

I looked up at the wall to see Spark arguing with what I assumed to be one of the guards. He had fancier barding than the others on the wall with a star that looked like it had been cut out of a tin can pinned to the shoulder piece.

"Even if I wanted ta, an' I don't, there ain't enough competent fighters here to clean them out and make sure the town stays safe while we're gone. If some mercs wander through, we'll send 'em Highfort's way – till then we just sit nice and safe behind the walls."

Spark shook her head and snorted. "How 'bout I hire some of your guards?"

The stallion stamped and scowled, "Damn it filly, no."

"Fine, I'm tellin' every group I meet on the way to Maneford that this town refuses to protect them," Spark huffed. "When the raiders get glutted enough to be confident, bored, or hungry enough to come and knock down your little walls to nibble on your citizens, you'll wish you'd been a little preemptive."

"Now wait here, it ain't like that," the stallion held up a hoof to stop her, but Spark spun on her hooves and trotted down the ramp back to street level.

The mare stopped at the bottom of the ramp and stared at me a moment, blinking. "Whisper! Shouldn't you be –"

"Resting – I know," I interrupted, holding up my PipBuck. "One of your grenades fried it, can you fix it?"

"That shouldn't have been possible," Spark frowned. "PipBucks are very sturdy; the grenades I made weren't supposed to be powerful enough to do anything to it."

I shrugged. "I pushed the button and it went off before I could toss it."

She grabbed my PipBuck with her hooves and sat on her haunches before I could put my leg down and started fiddling with it – poking at the buttons and little dials. The mare kept pulling and twisting on the PipBuck, forcing me to hop closer.

"Spark batteries shouldn't have had enough juice to get through all the shielding," Spark muttered to herself as she tapped on it. "Unless – unless I put an overcharged cell in by accident. Did I have any?"

The mare sighed and let go of my leg. "I think it just needs a restart. I could do it in a jiff but I don't have the tools."

"Let me guess, Umbrage," I didn't even want to think about his price for specials tools considering what the buck wanted for some simple barding.

Spark just shook her head. "He doesn't have them."

"Maneford's a larger town, isn't it? Maybe somepony has those tools there," I said. I could deal with not having my PipBuck for as long as it took to get there and get it fixed.

"It's likely. There are more than a few stable ponies in Maneford, there's probably even a mechanic who can reset it for you."

I shuffled a bit as she stood back up and shook herself off. It sounded like she wasn't planning on going with me.

"I thought you were going to Maneford?" I said.

"Can't, not yet," she bit her lip and threw a glance up at the ponies on the wall. "I know it's been a few days, but I have to see if anypony we left behind when we got attacked is still alive. I thought I'd get some help from here sooner – but you heard the sheriff. He won't help, and he won't let me take any of his guards with me."

"What about the stallions who were with you?" They had seemed capable enough, considering one of them shot me dead in the chest, in the dark, on reflex.

Spark shook her head. "They had delivery schedules to keep."

I needed to keep searching for a talisman, helping Spark would be moving in the wrong direction. On the other hoof, she'd paid for my room and meals at the Bit and Bridle, not to mention making weapons that made clearing the warehouse possible. Even with the faulty one trying to fry me, I had no illusions about my chances of getting out of there alive if I'd only had the pistol and shotgun.

"I could help you," I said. "You just need to look, right? I can get in and look around without anypony catching me."

Well, I probably wouldn't be caught, so long as I was lucky and didn't do anything stupid. On the bright side, it was unlikely there would be any ducts with running fans to crawl through, or pipes full of muck. Or working trash compactors, or any of the half dozen or so things I vowed not to get stuck in again back in the Stable.

"But you're still hurt. I couldn't ask you to do that."

"It'll take time to get ready, won't it? Night said I'd be fine tomorrow," I tried to give her a reassuring smile. I was actually starting to feel more than a little woozy. The numbing of the Med-X was fading and taking all my energy with it.

The mare's eyes lit up with something that could only be hope and she started to smile. "I'll make sure we have everything we need, just – get some rest."

I nodded and started to amble my way back to the bar. My burns were starting to hurt again, getting worse with each step. No more shots though, no matter how much I wanted to slip one of the little syringes out of where I'd tucked them. I knew they were bad for me – I'd actually paid attention in health class and the ponies in medical made sure to keep a tight rein on any meds they gave out if a pony got hurt.

Gin waved at me when I came into the bar. I gave her a smile in return, I wasn't sure I wanted to try waving back with how much my burns were hurting. The place was busy and the barmare's attention was quickly diverted as I made my way up the stairs.

The mattress in my room was a welcome relief from standing and moving.

~*~

"I hope this will be enough." Spark said as she dumped the contents of her saddlebags across my bed.

I washed the last of a can of peaches down with a swig of Sparkle Cola and tried to take stock of what the mare dumped on the mattress. Most of it was ammunition, .44 and .357 shells for my pistols, a few shot shells and more than a few spark batteries. Spark busied herself with sorting the mess into piles, shoving the ammunition for my weapons into one, the batteries into another. A last pile was devoted to healing bandages, potions and… other things, vials of Med-X, Steady and a bottle with a bucking pony on it.

"I noticed you didn't have any holsters," Spark said, tossing a tangle of belts and holsters my way.

It took me a moment to untangle it all, leaving me with two pistol holsters and their straight-forward leg straps and a scabbard for my shotgun.

"That belt goes around your barrel, the other goes over the shoulder and across your chest," the mare helpfully pointed each out as I held the arrangement in my magic. "I wanted to get you proper barding too, but this was the best I could do."

She held up a bit of cloth for me to see.

"Socks?" I stared at her, a little incredulous. Sure, she wasn't asking me to pay for any of this – but what good were a set of socks going to do me?

"Not just socks," Spark said, bristling a bit. "These are infiltrator leggings, tear resistant with Kevlar reinforced impact plates – the hoof caps are ballistic steel with shock absorbent padding, so they don't make noise. Some armor is better than none at all."

She added the socks to my pile of ammunition and started putting everything else back in her bag. I started to follow suit, putting the bullets and shells into my bag.

"Sorry," I said. "You got all of this for me and I should be more grateful."

Spark just shook her head. "Think of it as part of your payment if you want. We didn't even agree on a price for your help. It's nice that you volunteered to help me – but some ponies might take advantage of that out here. You should be more mercenary."

I didn't know what to say to that, so instead I fiddled with the socks – er, infiltrator leggings, and tried to sort out which one went on which leg. There was only one problem.

"These aren't going to fit over my PipBuck."

Spark nosed into her bag for a moment before pulling out an odd looking screw driver. "Gib me yer hoof."

I held up my foreleg for her and the mare jammed the tool into one of slots on my PipBuck. With a quick twist and pop the cuff unlocked and fell off my leg. A convulsive shudder ran through me as I looked at the PipBuck on the floor. It might just be dead weight on my leg as it was, but I hadn't taken it off since – well since I'd gotten it and started working in the Stable.

"I thought you didn't have PipBuck tools," I said.

"There's a different one I need to reset it."

Spark locked my PipBuck back in place after I pulled the sock on. I walked around the room and gave myself a good shake after getting everything buckled and strapped. The shotgun at my shoulder felt strange, the pistols on my right foreleg and left hind leg only added to it; I'd become a walking armory.

I watched Spark wrestle with her own armor. It was a bulky affair that looked like it had taken quite a beating in the past. Scratched and scuffed plates went over a material that looked a lot like what my "leggings" were made of, only thicker. There were chest, shoulder and side plates, as well as ones the mare strapped over cannon and fetlock. She didn't seem to have anything for her haunches or flanks, leaving a conspicuous amount of the mare unarmored. More than anything it was interesting to watch the earth pony manipulate everything into place, to get it synched and strapped and settled without the help of magic.

There were patches of her armor, the shoulders and top right of the chest that looked like something had been scrubbed off with a wire brush. The mare gave me a long look when she caught me squinting at them.

"We'll have to move quick if we want to get there before dark," she said.

~*~

Keeping up with Spark made me realize one important thing; living in a Stable does not prepare one for overland travel. The mare's pace wasn't quite a trot or a canter but more of a lope. My sides burned as I struggled to keep from falling behind.

She didn't look at all winded, or seem to be sweating from the exertion. Worse, she was the one wearing heavier armor and carrying the lion's share of the supplies. Maybe it was another earth pony thing, being tireless. Or it came with having large open spaces between one place and another. I pondered that for a while, probably much longer than necessary, but it distracted me from thinking about how much my sides hurt or how chafing my equipment was as I slicked it all with sweat.

I was so preoccupied with distracting myself that I almost didn't notice Spark stopping and barely stopped from crashing into her hindquarters.

I didn't question the sudden stop, just fell back on my haunches and tried to catch my breath. When the burning in my chest eased a bit I took a moment to look around.

She was just sitting in the middle of the road facing a little pile of rocks and a bit of disturbed dirt. It nagged in the back of my mind, this bit of road, as I looked around. Without my EFS I couldn't be entirely sure nothing had noticed us stopping. There could be a swarm of something spiny and unpleasant in the bushes and I'd never know.

The back of my neck started to prickle as I kept looking around. I didn't like sitting in the middle of a bloodstained road like this. I blinked.

I bopped the side of my head with a hoof. Of course she would stop here. It hadn't been all that long since – since I'd watched a pony bleed out with his friends being helpless to stop it.

The silence started to drag on and I scratched at my mane as I kept a lookout. I wanted to say something, but nothing seemed right when I ran it through my head. Finally I stood up and started to pace to keep my legs from stiffening up too much, making sure to give Spark her space.

Sorry for your loss? That sounded trite even in my head.

I decide to investigate some of the bushes by the roadside. They were very interesting. Like most of everything I had seen since coming out of the Stable they were dead – or mostly dead. At best they were sickly with a few dried up leaves clinging to branches, but there were some rusted out cans under them. One of the cans even had a few empty bullet casings in them.

Spark finally stood up and shook herself, rubbing at her eyes with a fetlock and taking a deep breath.

"Sorry I took so long, just had to say good-bye properly," Spark started walking again, thankfully at a much slower pace.

I abandoned the can I'd been toying with and fell into step with the mare.

"Were you close?" I cringed a bit at asking something so obvious.

"We kept each other warm," Spark sniffed and shook her head. "We were going to settle in Maneford for a while, maybe even – well it doesn't matter now. You got anypony waiting back at your Stable?"

"Maybe," I folded my ears back and focused on the road. "I hope so."

The mare gave me a sidelong look after I stopped talking.

"Well?"

"I don't know," heat started to rise in my cheeks as I tried to dissemble. "Sometimes Socket acts like she – but she's nice to everypony."

A grin spread across Spark's muzzle. "A marefriend eh? Tell me about her."

"S-she's not my marefriend," I sputtered, the heat in my face becoming a full blush. "Besides, she's on the breeding roster so she'll have to spend most of her spare time with her mate."

Spark gave me a quizzical look. "Breeding roster?"

I nodded. "The Stable maneframe picks out mates to make sure nopony has foals with anyone too closely related."

"Wouldn't ponies just know if they were?" Spark said.

"How? The whole Stable is family. I have three foster mothers and fathers and a foster brother. No pony knows their birth parents or siblings."

The mare looked thoughtful. "Huh, I guess that's not so different from what my Chap- ah, home town did. Everyone looked after the foals, treated 'em like their own."

Something exploded out of the roadside bushes in front of us. A stampede of tiny bodies moving too fast for me to get a good look at them followed by a larger one that stopped in the middle of the road and screeched at us before hopping to the other side. The thing's hopping movement and long ears brought to mind a rabbit, but it was hairless and emaciated with beady red eyes. I was also fairly sure that rabbits didn't have fangs and claws.

Spark watched the thing hop away without concern. "It won't attack if we leave the babies alone. You were tellin' me about your friend."

The sudden interruption gave me a chance to regain my composure and cool my blushes.

"She's a maintenance pony and she'll probably be the next head of Maintenance when Spanner retires. I think she can make or fix just about anything if you give her some parts and scrap metal. Socket's also the only one in the whole Stable who didn't shun me after I got in trouble."

I looked up at the mountainside as we passed the sky diving shack. Somewhere up there was the cave leading to a Stable full of ponies counting on me.

"What sort of trouble?" Spark said.

"Same thing as always with me, sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. It's my special talent," I kicked a bit of broken asphalt, sending it tumbling into the brush with a metallic plink. "I snuck my way into the Overmare's quarters because I was bored and had a look through her files. I also might have left a note or two in a locked footlocker and cabinet."

I thought I had been so clever, I might have gotten away with it all if I hadn't left behind the notes or messed with the pictures on the walls, but getting caught had been part of the point too. What was the use in being good at something if nopony knew about it to appreciate the skill, after all?

Spark nickered and shook her head. "I suppose your Overmare wasn't too happy."

"That would be an understatement. Now I'm out here because," I puffed myself up and did my best impression of the Overmare. "My talents could keep me safe so I can find a replacement water talisman."

"That seems like a big burden to put on one pony."

I wanted to shrug the comment off, make some witty retort, but she was right. Even sending just one of the other Stable ponies with me would probably have saved me a lot of pain, somepony from Sciences or Security, or really anyone.

~*~

We continued on for a long while in silence toward what Spark said was the crest of the pass. The road was disturbingly clear. I could tell it was making Spark nervous. Her ears would cock to catch every rustle of grass and brush even though it was only the wind in every case. We hadn't seen so much as a bloatsprite bumbling in the distance.

"This isn't right," the mare muttered. "Something's scared everything off, or killed everything."

We stopped for a break at the top of the pass. Spark offered me a Fancy Buck snack cake and a bottle of water while I rested my aching legs.

I expected the snack cake to be stale or soggy, but I should have known better. It could only have been a feat of dark magic to keep food so perfectly preserved for so long.

"Highfort is there," Spark said. I followed where her hoof was pointing but all I could make out through the scrub and husks of trees was a vague ruin like any of the others that littered the landscape. "It is, was, a watering hole for caravans coming up the pass. A couple families lived there, giving travelers a place to rest if they needed. It's just raiders now, we need to be careful."

I nodded and finished off the bottle of water, standing up slowly to stretch my legs.

The air grew thick with a cloying, foul scent as we crept closer to Highfort. Spark slowed the pace to a crawl and insisted we get off the road. Something about the smell made my mane prickle, everything about it was wrong – something every instinct screamed at me to avoid.

The mare stopped at the edge of a particularly dense copse of dead trees.

"This is it," she said.

It was not, as I expected, just a smaller version of Bridleton. Highfort was a single building not too different from the Stable-tech warehouse, just taller with more windows – some of which were intact.

I found the source of the smell.

I wanted to look away, to be sick, to do anything other than just stare at the horror in front of my eyes.

The stench was rotting pony flesh.

Corpses were laid out, impaled or strung up like obscene party decorations. Some were horrifyingly fresh, blood clotting to what was left of their hides, others looked they had been picked over by birds and bloatsprites. Some were flayed open, viscera heaped below while others were little more than parts and pieces mangled beyond recognition.

I fell back on my haunches, trembling and fighting the bile rising in my throat, feeling the taint of the place soaking into my fur and seeping into my lungs with every breath.

"How," I managed to choke out. "How could ponies do this?"

"Raiders ain't ponies," Spark's voice was flat. "They forgot how to be. They let the Wasteland grind 'em down to nothin' and that's what they became."

I tried to ignore the grisly décor and look for a way in. There were several to choose from, broken windows on the second floor and a few holes in the outer wall that looked more recent than the end of the world. One was more than large enough to walk through and the most likely to be guarded, the other was a bit too small for a normal sized pony and would be a tight fit for me – and might make more noise than it was worth getting through that way. There didn't seem to be any gaps in the barricades of the first-floor windows and I certainly didn't want to scale my way through the second floor. The front door was probably a bad choice as well.

"I'll go in through there," I pointed at the larger of the charred holes in the wall. "Any idea where you friend might be?"

Spark simply shook her head.

I would just have a look … everywhere, and hope anypony inside wasn't paying too much attention. Hopefully the inside was a cluttered mess with plenty of places to hide if needed.

It took a few deep breaths to curb most of my trembling. I really didn't want to see what the inside of a raider nest looked like. Still, I was a bit giddy despite the fear. It was another chance to put my useless talents and magic to work.

"I'll try to be quick, but I don't know how long it'll take to look around in there," I said.

The faint tingle of magic spread from my horn and crawled down across the rest of my body after a few moments of concentration. I figured it would be best to leave the trees with my blurring spell working. Hopefully nopony watching from that hole in the wall would notice me coming out of the trees or slipping inside.

Spark stared at me, her mouth agape.

"I've never seen anythin' like that, least not from a unicorn."

I shrugged, the mare's eyes darted back and forth as the distortion in the air my magic made moved.

"It's nothing special – just my only good spell," I said before starting to pick my way toward Highfort.

~*~

I tried to move along the edges of the larger clumps of dead grass. If the probable guards watching saw anything at all they might dismiss it as the grass moving with the wind.

My horn was starting to hurt as I finally pressed myself up against the wall next to the burned out opening. I tried not to think of the foul scent coming from the raider's decorations, or the even thicker fumes coming from that hole. Did raiders lose their sense of smell when they went crazy?

It was too dark inside to see anything from outside, even compared to the growing gloom. Slowly, as slowly as I could stand, I crept up on the corner of the breach and just barely poked my head around.

There was a loud, cavernous yawn.

I froze in place, heart pounding.

"Hey Split, wanna ditch this crap and see if they left any Porona?"

"Nah, Cook took it all, said it would make the turkey nice and tender when 'e cooks her up."

They… they were bantering? That wasn't what I expected at all. From Spark's reaction and what was decorating the outside walls I'd expected something far less sane.

I crept around through the gap, carefully stepping over a trip wire. The guards weren't even paying attention. They must have expected anypony coming this way to trip whatever trap they'd set to alert them.

Sweat prickled all over my coat and not just from the effort of keeping up my magic. My heart was pounding so hard I was surprised they couldn't hear it. Sneaking through the Stable had never been like this – but then, sneaking in the Stable never had the consequence of catching a face full of bullet if I messed up.

One of the raiders was sitting on a stool, rocking from side to side idly, shotgun propped against a wall in reaching distance. The other was twirling a knife in the air, the pale yellow haze around it and his horn casting odd shadows on the wall and ceiling as it danced about.

Neither of them paid any attention to the wall I crept along. A warning twinge shot through my horn as I moved, belly almost touching the floor, toward the closest door.

I found myself in a hallway and was tempted for a moment to just drop my spell to give my horn a rest. A heartbeat before I relaxed another raider limped into the hall almost on top of me. She turned her head and looked straight at me.

It took every ounce of will I had to keep from bolting. I held my breath, every nerve screaming that she could see me. The mare was close enough I could smell her, and suddenly I knew why they didn't care about the stench of the place. Her mane was matted against her neck and I couldn't tell what was coat and what was dirt and soot. In blinding contrast the bandage wrapped around her foreleg from fetlock to shoulder was almost immaculate other than a few patches of dark red.

She stared at me for far too long before finally shaking her head and turning down the hallway.

"Damn Med-X is makin' me see things," she snorted and shook her head again.

I peeked into the room the mare had come from but it held nothing beyond a filthy mattress, a pile of what I guessed was armor and used bandages. The sound of ponies talking drew me down the hallway, though I stopped to look in every room along the hall. They all seemed to be offices turned bedrooms. The only "doors" in my way being cloth strung across the doorways of rooms that held sleeping raiders.

So far all the raiders I'd seen other than the guards were injured. Were all the others off somewhere else?

If that was the case maybe there was a chance of rescuing Spark's friend. Assuming she was still alive, and I didn't get caught before finding her – and that I could figure out how to get her out of this place without both of us getting killed.

My head was starting to throb with my pulse and my horn was nothing but a ball of ache. I'd never held my fading spell this long. Just moving was starting to get tiring as keeping the spell going sapped my energy. I needed to find somewhere safe to hide and take a rest.

Somewhere safe ended up being the first room I'd found with an actual door. Shoved up against a corner was a desk with just enough room for me to squeeze behind and hide under. The small space wasn't very comfortable but I let go of my spell with a sigh. It wasn't really any worse than curling up in a ventilation duct and with the way the desk was facing a raider looking inside the room wouldn't be able to see me.

I just needed a few minutes to rest and let the ache in my horn ease a bit before I started again. Sneaking around this place without magic was probably a death sentence so I didn't have any choice but to rest. Just for a bit. My eyes felt a bit heavy so I closed them, just for a second.

~*~

The roar of a shotgun combined with an equine scream jolted me awake. I slammed the back of my head against the underside of the desk as I thrashed, squirmed and kicked my way out of the hiding spot.

I shook my head as I tried to gather my wits.

Stupid, stupid pony – I'd fallen asleep.

That scream. I just prayed to whoever might be listening that it hadn't been Spark, both it and the gunshot had definitely come from the same way I'd come in.

I threw open the door with a little burst of magic and charged into the hallway. The crowd of raiders I expected to be in the hall wasn't there. Either nopony cared, or they expected the guards to be able handle it.

The hall seemed much shorter going through it at a gallop.

"Looks like we caught a new toy, hope she doesn't bleed out before we can have some fun," the unicorn buck with the knife said.

I slid to a stop just barely through the door of the guarded room.

Spark was on the floor, hindquarters covered in blood.

So much blood.

The mare groped at the holster on her foreleg and drew the fancy gun she'd been trying to sell in Bridleton. Her shots went wide of the raiders, searing yellow bolts splashing harmlessly against the wall and ceiling before she dropped the weapon.

The raiders looked at each other and laughed like foals that'd just had their favorite treat dropped in front of them.

Spark's ruined leg kicked out and she howled in pain. My mane stood on end as she started to roll and thrash.

"Spark!" Both of the raiders turned in surprise.

I hadn't even thought about drawing my pistol, but it was there as the raiders turned to look at me. They were between me and Spark, and they certainly had no intention of helping her. I aimed at the unicorn first and fired two quick shots. The second opened a hoof-sized hole in his throat.

He staggered and fell, forehooves groping at the wound as the glow from his horn flickered and went out, knife clattering to the ground. I dove forward and to the side as the other, an earth pony, turned his gun on me and fired.

The shot tore a chunk out of the floor where I'd been standing.

He followed me as I scrambled to my hooves, grinning around the bit in his mouth. The raider didn't see the pistol floating next to his head.

I winced away from the mess and ran to Spark.

She'd stopped moving, stopped screaming.

Goddesses, I didn't know anything about treating wounds. I barely knew how to open a healing potion.

She was still breathing, that was a good sign. There was just the bleeding to stanch. I dumped her saddlebags on the floor, grabbing up the healing potions and bandages as they fell out.

Most of her hind leg was a mass of shredded meat that looked terrifyingly close to some of the corpses staked to the walls outside. I poured a healing potion into the wound and waited to see if it did anything.

The bleeding slowed and finally stopped but nothing else seemed to happen. I unstopped another vial and poured the faintly glowing purple liquid into the open wound. It started, slowly, to close – bits of flesh twisting back together and squirming in a way that made my stomach turn. I tore my eyes away from the sight and poured a third healing potion down Spark's throat.

She groaned, her eyes opening slightly.

"Med-X – bandages," she coughed. "Don't let it close up – fletchettes."

I gave the mare a shot of Med-X and tried to bandage the partially healed wound as best I could. The result was a mess that took a combination of hooves, teeth and magic to get tied but it didn't look like it would just fall off.

"Did you find anyone?" Spark said.

I shook my head. "I didn't get that far in before…"

The mare grimaced and pointed at her pistol.

"Then take it with you and keep looking."

I shook my head emphatically. "I don't know how to use that –"

"Just point and shoot," she said.

"And," I continued. "You'll need it if any of them come back this way."

With my luck Spark's arcane pistol would just explode or catch fire if I tried to use it anyway. I checked both my pistols and shotgun, making sure to reload the .357, and made sure my ammunition was at the top of my pack. All the gunfire had to be drawing the rest of the raiders to us.

It would be better to run into them when they weren't ready, I decided, and without having to worry about Spark. There was still the rest of the nest to search as well.

As I made my way down the hall a second time nopony came running. It didn't make sense. Even if gunfire and screams were normal occurrences the commotion should have at least brought the curious to see what was going on.

Unless, unless most of them really were gone and the only ones left were a few guards and others too hurt to be useful in a fight, like the mare I'd almost run into.

I drew my shotgun and started trotting down the hall, stopping to poke my nose into the curtained off rooms. The raiders that had been in them were gone.

What was going on?

The hall made a turn at the end. I rounded the corner expecting more halls and skidded to a stop.

Guns. All of them pointed straight at me.

A chunk of the door frame the size of my head exploded next to me with a single roaring gunshot.

"That's the bitch tha' killed Split Lip an' Hoofrot – who ever kills 'er gets her hide!" one of the raiders yelled from the pack.

I scrambled back into the hall as the wall behind where I had been was pelted with a hail of bullets and buckshot.

Stupid over-confident, reckless pony! Running through a hallway with all the subtlety of a minotaur.

Something bounced off the wall and rolled toward me. It was metal and vaguely apple-shaped.

I only had time to stare at the thing rolling along the wall.

The explosion knocked me off my hooves and sent me tumbling away from the blast. My hold on the shotgun was broken, flinging it down the hall ahead of me. Pinpricks of vicious heat peppered my right side from neck to haunch.

I struggled to get my hooves back under me, my vision swimming and ears ringing with a high pitch whine.

Hide – I needed to hide and try to gain the advantage on them. I staggered down the hall, blinking and shaking my head to clear the fog.

My shotgun was just a bit further down the hall; I picked it up with my mouth and shoved it into its holster. Streaks of red were running down my side, but I looked more or less intact. At least nothing hurt so much that I wanted to take the time to dig out a healing potion or shot of Med-X.

The ringing in my ears slowly faded until I could hear the raiders yelling at each other.

"How we gonna skin her if she's blown to bits?"

"Bits are good. Bits can go in Cook's stew." A shudder ran through me. Murder, mutilation and cannibalism to round it out? I revised my opinion on the seeming sanity of raiders.

"Did that get her?" said another.

I had to get around them somehow, draw them away from the hall and Spark.

"Go and check," said a mare's voice. She sounded like the one that I'd almost run in to.

As I strained to listen the shuffling and clamor sounded as though a number of them were moving closer to the doorway.

"Why me?" complained a new voice.

I backed into one of the side rooms and focused on my magic.

"You threw the popper, you go see if she's pony bits or not," the mare said.

The tingling of my blurring spell slithered over my hide and I crept back into the hall. One of the raiders poked his head through the doorway and slowly came around the corner. I slipped past him as the buck looked about nervously. Like many of the others he sported fresh bandages, one on his hind leg and another around his barrel.

The gloom of the nest seemed to be helping more than a little. He didn't so much as glance my way as I slid past. A stab of pain through my horn that immediately became a throbbing ache told me a little nap was not nearly enough rest to keep using my magic like this.

"Well? She itty bits or what?" the mare yelled after the buck.

"N-nothin," the buck yelled back. "No bits or blood – just nothing."

I moved excruciatingly slowly against the wall, creeping into view of the doorway. Four of them were sitting a mere pace from the door frame, guns trained on the wall. My heart started to pound painfully. They were staring straight at me and it took everything I had to keep still and breathe slowly.

They couldn't see me. They couldn't see me! I was fine. It was okay.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I moved a hoof and carefully put it down to inch forward just a bit. I could do this. There was just enough haze and dust in the air and enough rubble around that I could just be dirt shifting about.

My head was starting to pound with the effort of holding on to my blurring magic. The raiders needed to move or give up or something, anything that let me get past them and somewhere I could let go of the spell.

I was so focused on moving slowly and holding onto the spell that I didn't notice the buck coming back up the hall.

"I checked all the rooms, there's nothin'" he said.

"Maybe she ran off – maybe she's hidin' somewhere else," the mare that seemed to be in charge growled. "The lot of you go through the rest of this place, she mighta gotten upstairs."

The raiders started to disperse, a pair of them walking past where I'd pressed up against the wall.

Finally I was alone. A stab of pain shot through my horn, a searing hot spike driving through my forehead to the base of my skull. I fell back on my haunches, grabbing my head in my forehooves.

The tingle of magic faded from my hide as my spell fell apart. I felt naked without it. I was completely visible.

I just hoped none of the raiders doubled back this way.

Everything was blurry when I forced my eyes open. It hurt to look around even in the relative darkness.

Needlepoints of pain dug into my horn and behind my eyes when I tried to open my saddlebag with just a touch of magic. I opened it by mouth and rummaged around for the hooffull of syringes that should be near the top.

I wasn't even sure Med-X could do anything for my horn. At the very least it would ease the pain in my head – I hoped.

I found one of the little auto-injectors and jammed it home in my shoulder. There was a flash of pain as the spring-loaded needle shot into the muscle followed by sweet numbness.

The stinging along my right side faded away, the ache in my head and horn eased to being bearable.

I tried to pull the pistol holstered on my right foreleg. The shadowy unglow of my magic wrapped around it, but the pistol refused to move. There was no stab of pain through my horn in response, only the sense of trying to push against something too heavy to move.

Not good.

I would either have to fight them hoof-to-hoof, and I had no illusions about how well that would go, or try to use the mouth grips of my guns. I knew how, in theory, to use them that way but it wasn't something I'd ever done. There was never a reason to before now. Even my wimpy levitation had been enough for the training range pistols.

Reloading would be problematic.

I grabbed the pistol in my mouth, grimacing at the awful taste of the bit, and cautiously slinked into the next room.

It was wide open, more or less. The room looked like the floors above had collapsed into it, exposing the hallways into the floors above and pancaking whatever had originally been that part of the ground level.

Some of the rubble had been used to build ramps to the higher floors, and a few tables and ruined desks littered the periphery of the room. The arrangement reminded me of the little street-side stalls in Bridleton. This place had probably been the market square before the raiders.

Now it was littered with trash, spent bullet casings and marred with fresh scorch marks and bloodstains. The ponies living at Highfort had tried to fight and lost.

I kept to the wall, slipping from a beat-up desk to a table knocked on its side. Most of the raiders seemed to have gone up the ramps. They weren't quiet as they searched for me, stopping to yell questions and insults at each other as they hunted.

Two were still on this floor, that left three or so that I'd seen. It sounded like they'd split up. That would make things easier.

As long as I could catch one by surprise.

As long as I didn't miss.

This whole thing was not going how I'd hoped. Gun fights had not been in my plan. Killing ponies, nasty as they were, had not been in the plan either. I didn't want that blood on my hooves.

I didn't want it, but it was them or me. Worse, it was them or Spark.

Spark.

Fuck.

I paused at the foot of the ramp to the second floor. The two on the ground floor were still searching. If they found Spark…

I turned around and started back down that damned hallway. There was still nopony in the little side rooms, and no sign of the two raiders.

The room with the hole in the outer wall was empty except for the two corpses and a pool congealing blood where Spark had been.

I looked around frantically. Had they found her? If they had, they'd been quiet about it.

A smear lead out of the pool toward one of the other doorways I hadn't checked yet.

The blood smear dwindled quickly, replaced by hoofprints that were almost impossible to spot in the faint light on broken and rubble littered floor.

I kept an ear cocked for any sounds of the two raiders left on the ground floor. The others above were not being quiet about their search. Their muffled taunts and cursing were just loud enough to be indistinct.

The other two were being distressingly quiet. Either they'd joined the others upstairs or they were stalking me as much as I was them.

The hoofprints stopped at a closed door. I tried to reach out with my magic to open it but nothing happened. I couldn't even produce an aura from my horn anymore. Rather than think about the headache that awaited me after the painkiller wore off I made sure my grip on the pistol bit was firm and shoved the door open with my hooves.

The business ends of a shotgun, knife and energy pistol greeted me along with three sets of narrowed eyes.

Spark blinked and let out a sigh of relief, the muzzle of her arcane weapon lowering. The other two glared at me until I spat my pistol back into its holster. The knife and shotgun were slowly, almost reluctantly, withdrawn and I realized the ones wielding them were foals.

I closed the door behind me, crowding the four of us into a room that was hardly larger than a closet.

"Is that her?" said a unicorn filly. She was willowy and nearly as tall as me, with a cyan coat and white mane that would have been striking if not for the dirt and patches of what I hoped wasn't old blood.

Spark simply nodded after slipping her pistol into its holster.

The filly gave me a long, scathing look. "Are you sure?"

"I was expectin' somepony bigger," said the other, a stocky tan unicorn colt. "With more guns – she's hardly bigger 'n Tumble."

I bristled. "If I were any bigger I'd have been shot full of holes by now."

The colt just shrugged and shifted the shotgun he was holding awkwardly with his forelegs.

"And who are you?" I looked to Spark for an explanation but the mare just shrugged and put her head on her forelegs.

The bandages on her hind leg were soaked through. She needed to be in Night's clinic, not here while I wandered around a wreck of a building.

"I'm Rough House, she's Tumbler Lock," the colt said. "We're Crusaders."

"Crusaders for what?" I said.

The colt stared at me, confusion clear on his face.

"Just Crusaders," he said after a moment. "Don't you know anything?"

"Of course she doesn't know anything," Tumbler said, pointing at my PipBuck. "She's a Stable pony. They don't know nothing."

"I know lots of things," I started, folding my ears back.

I stopped, realizing I was about to argue with foals and this was definitely not the time or place.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"Same thing as anyone caught by raiders," Rough said, looking at the floor.

"At least until Miss Spark found us," Tumbler said. "We were locked in here 'till the raiders decided to make us join 'em or – or until they got hungry, or bored."

The filly shuddered and scraped at the floor with a hoof.

"Are there any other prisoners?" I changed the subject, mostly because I didn't want to think about what they had been through. There wasn't anything I could do about it other than getting them away from here.

"There was a pegasus," Rough said. "But they took her away a while ago."

"She was nice, for a grown-up," Tumbler said.

"I'll find her one way or another," I said to Spark.

I started to open the door but stopped when I suddenly had two armed foals flanking me.

"We're going with you," Rough said. "You obviously need the help."

"No."

The idea of having them follow me made my mane stand on end. I wasn't sure I could look after myself in a fight, much less a pair of foals.

"Spark needs somepony to stay with her," I said, trying to cut off their protest.

"Three ponies are better than one in a fight," Tumbler said.

"I don't plan on fighting," I said. "I'm going to pick them off one at a time, with as little fight as possible. Please look after Spark."

I didn't wait for a reply before slipping out the door and back into the hall.

~*~

They didn't follow me out. That was a good sign at least. I just hoped that they would stay with Spark.

Most of the rooms I checked were caved in. Others were furnished with piles of rags and bits of broken furniture and the occasional rotting mattress. I took a moment to scrounge in the cabinets, finding a few caps, a couple tins of with no labels and a random assortment of bullets that I couldn't use in my guns.

I had hoped to find another weapon or two, preferably loaded so I wouldn't have to worry about reloading my little arsenal. No such luck, but there was one place left.

The door at the end of the hall only had some scraps of cloth in place of a door. I approached it slowly. There still hadn't been any sign of the two raiders so they had to be in that room. Or they climbed up one of the cave-ins to the next floor, but that didn't seem likely.

I stopped just short of the curtain, cocking my ears and straining to hear anything from inside the room. There was a faint sound of shuffling, a soft grunt. Somepony was definitely in there.

The urge to rush in and start firing overwhelmed me. Take them quick and by surprise. My heart started pounding as I gripped tighter on my pistol, tongue poised to pull the trigger. Carefully, ignoring the impulse to simply rush in, I poked my nose into the room.

My mind froze at what I saw. It was the two raider stallions all right, but they certainly weren't looking for me.

One had his eyes closed, muzzle nearly touching the floor while he made little pleased noises. The other had his forehooves planted on the other's back while he groaned and –

Oh sweet goddesses.

I backpedaled away from the door, my face burning. Some piece of rubble slipped under my hooves as I scrambled away and I fell hard on my rump. The expected reaction to the racket I made didn't come.

Of course not, they were – were busy. With each other. They probably couldn't hear anything over their … busy-ness.

Part of me wanted to laugh. It was absurd. There was a murderous intruder in their nest, namely me, was this really they time for – for that?

It was stupid, maybe even suicidal, to just leave them there but I couldn't just gun them down. At least not while they were… I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Some things were just too cruel, even if they were evil, cannibalistic psychopaths.

So there were two out of the equation, at least temporarily, which left at least three in the upper levels.

~*~

I took the ramp to the second floor cautiously. My plan was simple enough; ambush one of them. The gunfire would bring the rest and I'd hide if I could to catch the rest by surprise. Failing that, I'd be stuck shooting it out with whoever was left. Without my magic that was more likely than being able to ambush more than one.

Finding them was easy. They were trying to flush me out, yelling taunts and tossing the furniture in the rooms they searched.

I followed the unicorn stallion searching the second floor carefully, trying to pick the best time to strike. He was easily twice my size with a light red, no, pink coat and washed out green mane.

"Come out you slippery bitch, I wanna give you a ride before skinning you," he said, almost cooing. "If you're a good enough rut maybe I'll keep you as a pet 'stead of killin' you."

I pressed up against the wall just outside the room he was rummaging in and waited, pistol aimed at head height.

A short barrel rifle wrapped in a yellow-green aura floated out first followed by the pink-coated stallion.

My first shot went wide, hitting the doorframe above him. The raider started in surprise, his rifle quickly pivoting to point at me. I fired again in panic.

The raider screamed, a high pitch, piercing wail. The aura around his rifle sputtered out of existence and it fell heavily to the floor. He fell back, blood coursing down his face from the shattered stump of his horn.

He threw up his forehooves to fend me off.

"No, please!" he said, trying to scramble away.

I fired until he stopped moving and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

The others came running far faster than I'd expected. They fired as they ran, not seeming to aim. Chips of plaster pelted me as bullets missed their target. I kicked the dead raider's rifle into the room he'd been searching as I dove for the door. Heat skimmed my flank as I moved. Something heavy slammed into my back leg, sending me tripping to the floor.

I looked quickly in panic but there was no hole, no blood, just a pockmark and some torn fibers on my sock. However there was a furrow across my flank above my mark, a near miss. The graze welled with blood as I looked at it, painting my cutie mark in red.

The raiders were still firing, one with an assault rifle. They didn't seem to care about wasting ammo on the wall they were slowly cutting holes into.

"Red, we need that rifle and your ass down here right now," the raider mare yelled during a pause to reload.

I put my little pistol back in its holster and grabbed my shotgun. Reloading the pistol by hoof wasn't worth the effort. I still had my magnum revolver too.

They didn't seem to be willing to charge in, I just had to wait for the right moment. The assault rifle went silent, probably to reload again. One more salvo and I'd make my move.

A metal apple thumped against the far wall and bounced through the door.

Fuck. Me.

I sprung, diving forward as far as my legs could carry me. Into the hall.

A deafening boom filled the hall and part of the wall above where I crashed into it exploded.

The goddess-damned apple didn't do anything. It was a fake, or a dud.

Three raiders grinned at me behind an assault rifle, an automatic pistol and the biggest damn rifle I'd ever seen.

No thinking, no planning, just move.

I rolled back toward the door. Another ear splitting roar and part of the floor disappeared. The assault rifle fired two shots and jammed. While the raider buck fought with his weapon, the mare started firing. I ducked and wove, scrambling side to side to try and throw off the unicorn mare's aim.

She screamed in frustration as fresh furrows opened across my back, along my belly, across my shoulder and cheek. A hit to my armored foreleg sent me stumbling but I kept moving forward. Her pistol clicked on empty as the stallion cleared the jam. I wanted to be closer, to be absolutely sure I couldn't miss but I had to fire before he did.

The recoil hurt even through the Med-X. The buckshot tore into the raider, shredding his face and neck in an eruption of blood that splattered the wall and the mare next to him.

I came to a stop just short of the stallion's corpse and dropped the shotgun from my aching jaw. The mare slammed a fresh magazine into her pistol and took aim.

I turned and kicked with all the strength I could muster. My hind hooves met flesh, the mare making a strangled grunt as she thumped against the wall. I fell flat on my face, the force of the kick overbalancing me.

The unicorn staggered and shook her head, the cyan glow of her horn flickering on and off as she groped for her dropped pistol. The other raider started giggling as she trained that enormous saddle-mounted rifle on me. Her tittering quickly shifted to a maniacal cackle as I gathered my hooves under me.

I scrambled away from where I'd fallen, running ungracefully into the dazed unicorn.

The roar of the rifle so close was felt more than heard. I felt the impact mere hoof lengths away. The unicorn's eyes locked with mine, filled with a look of profound confusion and disbelief, before she coughed blood in my face. What was left of her spilled from the cavernous hole in her belly as she collapsed.

The last raider had stopped laughing, she kicked frantically at the reloading lever of her saddle-rigging but it only clicked in response.

I bent to grab my magnum, looking back up in time to see the rifle crash heavily to the floor. The mare was fast, and big. Much bigger than me, all scarred hide and muscle. The magnum rounds hit her with meaty thumps but did nothing to slow her charge. I missed some of the shots badly, the pistol's recoil throwing me off.

In a heartbeat she was in front of me, rearing up to smash me into paste with her forehooves. Blood poured down her chest as she reared, mouth twisted into a snarl and the pupils in her too-wide eyes mere pinpricks.

I threw myself forward, sliding through the other raider's blood toward the mare's back legs. Her hooves slammed into the floor with such force the entire building must have rattled. With a wrenching twist I turned and fired my last round into her belly.

The mare whinnied in pure rage, writhing and dancing away from me in a way such a large pony shouldn't have been able to manage. I scrambled to my hooves, wanting to run but almost certain she would charge me down.

She was on me the moment I was upright. One of her forehooves glanced my shoulder as I tried to dodge out of the way. Pain exploded through my shoulder, the Med-X in my system did almost nothing to dull it.

The next strike I managed to evade cratered the wall.

She was slowing down, the wounds in her chest and belly finally starting to take their toll. The mare was slowing, but her strikes didn't carry any less force; she seemed utterly determined to turn me into a smear on the floor.

I danced away from her, trying to wear her down. It wasn't working. She was getting slower but not by much. One of her kicks missed my muzzle by a hair as I balked away.

She'd managed to herd me into one of the side rooms without my realizing.

I was trapped.

She hemmed me into a corner, feinting and forcing me back until my haunches met wall. The raider reared to her full, impressive height. There was nowhere left to go.

I lurched forward and up, tilting my chin down. It had worked once, on accident, why not again?

My horn met the base of the mare's neck squarely, her downward momentum driving it deep and crushing me to the floor. She thrashed atop me, hooves pounding at my flanks and back as her weight and the blood flooding my nostrils smothered me.

The raider finally went still and I started to squirm and push my way out from under her. I'd thought the bandit had been heavy, but that stallion had nothing on the mountain of mare I worked to extract myself from.

When I finally got free my forequarters were matted in the mare's blood, my armor was soaked through and it was in my mouth. I just hoped it hadn't soaked through my pack.

I gathered up my weapons and the raiders', reloading my shotgun and magnum, adding the assault rifle from the earth pony's saddle rig and the unicorn's semi-automatic pistol to my arsenal, as well as the other unicorn's snubbed bolt-action rifle. The mare's rifle I left, it was too big and too heavy; it looked more like a small cannon than something that was meant to be saddle-mounted.

I kept my shotgun out and ready, there were still two raiders on the first floor. They hadn't shown up yet, but that didn't mean they wouldn't.

There was still more of the ground floor left to search for Spark's friend. Or what was left them. The foals hadn't seemed optimistic about her survival and they were in a better position to know.

I felt – numb. Every fiber of my body was exhausted. I wanted to be done with this hellish place. There was just that little bit of searching left to do, and figuring out how to get Spark back to Bridleton. The blood drying into my coat was making my hide crawl, the way it made the fabric of my armor feel stiffer was annoying and my shoulder throbbed with each step, but I forced myself to walk normally and not limp. The Med-X was slowly losing its hold, leaving me to drag my hooves as the pain in my horn and head returned with a vengeance.

The quiet of the place was unnerving. The market area was utterly still and I skulked through it as silently as I could, trying and failing to keep from kicking empty brass and tripping over bits of detritus. Most of the other doors were blocked off with chunks of concrete or lead to rooms no bigger than closets that looked like they'd been the stock room of a stall set up in front of them.

One door lead to, surprise, a hallway. One branch of the hall lead to the building's proper front door. The ponies living in Highfort before the raiders had knocked the walls out of the offices near the door and put in fencing for a guard post or security room. The fencing was shredded, the room ransacked and holding nothing of value – just empty shells and old blood.

The other hall ended at a kitchen.

It was another make-shift room. The walls of adjoining offices had been knocked down to open space while leaving the supports standing. Cooking implements hung from spikes driven into the supports, skewers, pans covered in charred … something and cleavers that looked like they'd never been cleaned. The far wall had been converted into a fireplace large enough for a pony to stand in.

The blood and rot stench overpowered everything. I didn't want to think about what was hanging from the ceiling, some of it char-roasted, some of it not and coated in flies.

The fire was burning low, a large pot hanging over the flickering flames. I stayed away from it.

The fitful light cast odd, squirming shadows across the room. I tried to look for any sign of Spark's pegasus friend.

I found her at the other end of the room.

The massive table was filthy like everything else, encrusted in layers of blood and viscera. Atop it was a purple-blue pegasus mare on her back, hind and forelegs bound and her wings splayed out across the table.

I wondered why she stayed like that until I got close enough to see the rail spikes driven into her wings, nailing the mare to the table.

Only the faint movement of her breathing gave any indication that she was alive. I touched her gently on the shoulder. She didn’t start or balk at the contact; she simply opened her eyes slightly.

The pegasus didn't say a word, only looking at me with resignation. I'd expected some amount of relief at being rescued.

Then I realized I looked like one of them, matted in dirt and blood.

"I'm going to get you out of here," I said.

She just closed her eyes in response.

First I needed to get her wings free. Cutting the binding on her legs would be simple. There were plenty of knives to choose from.

I found a crowbar hanging from one of the hooks on the wall and set it in place while trying to not think about what I was doing.

"This is going to hurt," I said softly to the mare.

The pegasus didn't respond. I set my forehooves on the far end of the bar and leveraged my pitiful weight against it.

The spike made a hideous screech as I pried it from the wood. The mare didn't make a sound as I pulled it out. The hole in her wing started to ooze sluggishly and I quickly moved to the next rail spike.

She watched as I wrenched the second spike out of her left wing. I could feel her gaze boring into me. She still didn't so much as whimper as I pried her right wing free.

I grabbed the closest knife, patently not thinking about what was on the handle as I took it up in my mouth, and sawed through the ropes on her legs.

Spitting the knife away turned into a dry heave and I took a few breaths before nosing into my pack. It was not full of raider blood like I'd feared.

The last of my bandages went to crudely wrapping the mare's wings. The wounds and the blood didn't seem quite right. Another thing for Night to see to. At least I was good at bringing business to the medic pony's door.

"What're ya doin' with my turkey?"

I spun to face the voice, my head swimming a bit at the sudden movement. A unicorn in a cooking apron glared at me, a swarm of cutlery wrapped in a dull red haze floating to either side of him.

My weapons were holstered and there were blades, far, far too many blades pointing at me.

"Ah, boss wanted 'er fer –" I started to lie, trying to sound like one of them and bluff my way out being turned into mincemeat.

A tan streak shot through the door. The colt barreling through the door leapt onto the unicorn's back, planting a shotgun between his shoulders.

The blast was wet and muffled, excavating the raider's chest and painting the floor under him as he collapsed.

"That's two for me, Tumble!" the colt yelled toward the door.

"Looks like she needed us after all," the filly said as she came through the doorway.

"Thanks, you saved my hide" I said. "I don't think he was going to buy my act."

Rough looked at me and grinned before busying himself with wiping the blood on the shotgun on the raider's hide. I stared at him as he carried on with all the bounce of a colt that'd just aced a test or managed to nick an extra treat off the meal line without anypony noticing.

A rush of dizziness made my head swim. I turned to look at the pegasus as she slid off the table, wobbling a bit after her hooves touched the floor. The colt went from cleaning his gun to hoofing at the raider's body and looking disgruntled at the apron's lack of pockets.

"You should see what we found," Tumbler said from the doorway.

The knife floating next to the filly glistened wetly in the firelight. She looked as unconcerned as the colt. Maybe it helped that that had been the last raider. Maybe this kind of thing was normal.

Normal.

I tried to shake off the dizziness and disorientation, earning a throb of protest from my shoulder and a stab of pain in my head.

"Miss Spark is already upstairs going through it all," she said.

The pegasus perked up at Spark's name and started limping toward the filly.

"Through what?" I said.

"Just come see," the filly said, backing out the door.

I followed behind the pegasus back toward the main room with the ramps. Rough followed behind me, all bounce and energy. He darted from one pile of trash or rubble to another, hoofing through them and making little exclamations upon finding some bit of shiny scrap. Both he and the filly had gotten saddle bags from somewhere, the colt's were fairly bulging already. I couldn't remember seeing much worth taking. Then again I hadn't been looking for loot.

Before I even realized it our little procession was on the third floor. There didn't seem to be much that was actually accessible, just a bit of hallway off the ramp.

"Spark's in the next room up the hall," Tumbler said before darting through a door.

I looked in the room the filly had gone into and stopped.

Guns. Piles of them.

At a glance it looked like they'd been piled based on size, nestled amongst them were boxes of bullets. The filly was digging through the stacks, shoving most aside after a glance and stuffing a chosen few into her saddlebags.

The pegsus froze for a heartbeat mid-step at glancing into the room but continued on to the next.

"That's," I stared, but I had no words.

I'd seen the Stable armory once, with its prim racks of meticulously maintained firearms but it didn't hold a candle to the sheer amount shoved into the small room.

"It's mostly trash," Tumbler said with a disgruntled huff. "The real good stuff is in the next room."

She made a shooing motion with her hoof.

The next room was full of bombs. At least that's what I had to guess most of it was. One of the open crates was full of those metal apples. As for the rest, I'd never seen anything like it and I couldn't guess as to what it all was.

Ruby Spark was sitting in front of one of the crates just staring at it. When I got close I could see a faint greenish glow emanating from egg-shaped things inside it.

She looked up as we entered the room, her eyes going wide at seeing the pegasus.

"You're alive, thank goodness," Spark blinked and rubbed at her eyes with a fetlock. "Did any of the others make it?"

The pegasus just shook her head and pointed at Spark's bandaged leg.

"My own stupid fault," Spark took a look at me, ears lying back even flatter than they already were. "You look horrible."

"Thanks," I said, trying not squirm at how disgusting I felt. "What are those?"

"Balefire eggs. This room has just about every kind of explosive in it. Most of it is worth a pretty cap too," She sighed. "Snap, can you find me a detonator?"

The pegasus ducked her head in response and started looking around through the boxes.

"The raiders are all dead," I said.

Spark shook her head. "The ones here weren't even most of 'em, rest'll be coming back – they must have gone further down the pass or we'd have run into them."

Snap returned holding a little olive green box with a toggle switch and an antenna. Spark took it with a tired smile, unclipped a bit from the box and stuck it in a wad of something that looked vaguely like clay.

"This should do the trick," the mare said, placing the hunk of whatever it was in the box of balefire eggs. "We should be gone before the rest of the raiders get back."

Spark heaved herself to her hooves and started to limp out of the room.

~*~

The foals rushed down the ramps ahead of us. For all their exuberance they didn't let their guard down, stopping at corners to peak around before dashing forward. The three of us were a sorry lot in comparison.

Spark favored her injured leg badly, my slapdash bandaging was soaked completely through and needed to be changed but I was out of bandages and potions as well. The pegasus' head drooped, she looked as spent as I felt and the bandages on her wings were just as ruddy as Spark's. I did my best not to limp, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder and back as well as the throbbing ache in my horn and behind my eyes.

The earth pony faltered, her injured leg giving out under her. I lurched forward, catching the mare before she fell on her side. My legs trembled as I strained to hold her up.

I was sure now, earth ponies were needlessly heavy and I was weak.

"Thanks," Spark said as she sank to the floor. "I don't think I'm going to be able to walk out of here."

"It's not that much further," I said, trying to cajole her. "I'm not strong enough to carry you, and your friend isn't in any state to try either."

The mare struggled to get up for a moment before giving up. The pegasus nosed at her side but the mare just shook her head.

"I'm done," she said. "There's a bottle in my left pack, take a few of the pills – should help you."

"What are they?" I nudged her when she didn't reply. "Spark?"

Her eyes were closed and she'd gone limp, but she was still breathing.

Great.

I rifled through her saddlebag and found the bottle. It had a faded picture of a bucking pony on it and was full of chalky-looking pills. Night was probably going to be full of lectures when I got back to Bridleton.

The pills were just as unpleasant as they looked and I washed them down with a bottle of water. For a while nothing seemed to change, I wondered if maybe they were expired or something and useless.

It hit with a rush.

My heart started pounding double time. I could buck the whole goddess forsaken building apart with my bare hooves. Every muscle twitched with energy ready to be put to use. I felt stronger, was stronger. I knew I was.

The pegasus stared at me until I met her gaze, then nodded at Spark. I looked at the unconscious mare.

Right. Things to do.

There was a bomb anyway, and that would be much faster than tearing the place down with my hooves. Though maybe less fun.

After some wiggling and help from the silent pegasus I managed to get Spark on my back. She was still heavy, part of me still knew that, but I also didn't care. Whatever was in those pills made her light at the moment and put more than enough bounce in my hooves.

I caught up to and passed the foals. There wasn't anyone left to be worried about and even if there were I'd pound them into paste like that mountainous raider had tried to do to me.

We finally reached the breach in the outer wall where all this started. I pranced in place, waiting for the other to catch up, I couldn't help it. My hooves were light, light and strong and bouncy even with a heavy pony across my back.

The raiders I'd killed in this room had been stripped of their equipment; probably the two unfoal like foals. Spark's blood was still a congealing mess across the floor.

Seeing this place reduced to rubble would make me happy.

I ducked out through the hole as soon as the others entered the room and started up the hill. Spark started to come around as I trotted up to the copse of trees we'd stopped at earlier.

"Take the detonator and flip the switch," her voice wasn't much more than a harsh whisper. "Further up the road though, it's going to be – big."

The little green box thumped on the ground next to me and I turned to pick it up with my mouth but not before trying grab it with magic and earning a stab of pain in my head.

I retraced our path back up the pass to where we left the road. The others were lagging behind and even the foals had slowed quite a bit. Highfort was easy to see now that I knew what I was looking for. Further down the pass an indistinct mass was moving up the road.

"Looks like someone's on the road," I said.

Spark shook her head and shifted on my back, craning to see.

"It's them," she said. "Wait until they go in."

Rough, Tumbler and Snap finally caught up as I pulled the detonator from where I'd wedged it between my holster strap and my side. The mass stopped in front of Highfort and milled around for a bit before filling inside.

"So, explosions?" Rough said enthusiastically.

"They might have prisoners," I said, hesitating.

"You've seen what they do to people Whisper, you'll be doing any captives a favor," Spark said. "Quick and clean."

I looked at the others. The foals were staring intently down the pass, Snap nodded in agreement with Spark. There wasn't any way I could do anything for them if there were captives. It was a town's worth of raiders, likely healthier than the few I'd fought.

Spark was right – and yet the feeling in the pit of my stomach said this was wrong.

The switch toggled with a click. For once a switch or button didn't just break when I tried to use it.

Highfort disappeared in a ball of roiling green and orange. The ball of flame crawled upward spreading as it went, fiery orange and red snaked through with leprous yellow and pallid green. Flames clawed upward after the fireball, the malformed talons of some horrid beast grasping skyward. The shock flattened the trees an instant before they burst into flames.

The balefire moved slower, flooding away from the explosion in gouts in every hue of yellow and green, sliding across the ground like a living thing before sputtering out.

A blast of hot, foul wind accompanied the roar, echoing and reverberating off the mountainside. A piercing wail undercut the thunder, setting my mane on end. It was the scream of something insane and I hoped I only imagined it, but a glance at the others only confirmed they heard it too.

Then it was gone, the fires guttered into columns of smoke. The rising ball of flame cooled into an oily plume. Chunks of Highfort blasted into the air started to rain down.

The raiders were gone; their tomb was a smoking crater.

Spark slumped with a sigh as I turned back toward Bridleton.

Footnote: Approximately fifty-five days of water remain.

Level up!

New Perk: Gallop n' Gun – You are adept at shooting on the move and suffer less of an accuracy penalty when moving.

Quest Perk: No Kill Like Overkill – When you murder something you make sure it's atomized. You gain 15% increased damage with all types of explosives. Boom baby.

Skill Note: Firearms 40, Sneak 40

(A/N: Wow, this was a long time coming. Thanks to my editor Koneko and to Moonlight, DoctorHam, and everyone else who prodded and poked me into finally getting this finished. Onward – but I make no promise of how long it'll take.)