Chapters The wind, rain, and sleet stirred in the decrepit snowy park as she rustled through the massive pile of frosty broken appliances and rubbish that had been carelessly dumped at its centre over the seasons. Nearby, rusted playground apparatus long unused by children creaked and groaned disconcertingly as the forlorn weather teased them into movement every now and again. Their erratic animation was greatly more unnerving to her than the depressingly petite skeletons resting in the park's patchy confines, many sitting frozen in time amongst the old metal structures.
The deepening cold pierced into her jacket as Celestia's Sun was almost dipping at the horizon, and she grunted in annoyance again at the weather that had decided to so quickly change its course. It was winter, yes, yet it had been a fairly clear sky not too long ago with a light mix of rain and snow, while now the wind was picking up and the snow had given way to heavy rain that was liberally falling from grey clouds. Beyond the harrowing incident of the event itself, without weather teams to corral it anymore the sky was always a strange mix of weather patterns.
It was too bad that her jacket wasn't enchanted or lined, or made of leather like her gloves and boots ─as much as she disliked the material, it had several uses that couldn't be ignored─ because at least then she'd be a great deal drier and warm while she searched about. Pausing for a moment while she shifted the weight of her pack and two precious weapons around, she resumed her careful rummaging with a quick and wary glance to the surrounding area from under her hood.
Everything was still, nothing but fallen snow on old ash.
Applejack didn't stand out too much in the fading light of the day, however that didn't mean she wouldn't be a tempting target for anypony that might happen to pass by. She had more than enough to be shot and killed for what little she had on her person, and these days even having just a few small pouches might make a pony a target. Besides her main weapons, she possessed a Nova grenade for escaping danger attached to her backpack, a Phobos Instrument for detecting deadly anomalies or heavy pockets of magical radiation, a single bottle of clean water and a ration bar, and a military-issue gas mask that hung loosely around her neck.
The Nova was concealed quite well being wrapped in cloth, the mask and detection device currently hidden by an old poncho over her jacket, all purposely done as the grenade gave off a cool blue glow that would give her away, and the mask was an extremely valuable piece of equipment and rather rare to come by intact, and even though a Phobos Instrument was fairly common it was an excellent source of parts, both technological and magical, so she had to be quite careful with it all. Even covered up, anypony with a keen eye would make out the grenade, or the items under the poncho simply by the shape they made. A good reason to add to the stack for her camouflage, such as it was.
Her jeans were darkened the same as her jacket and poncho, as much from dirt and grime as the soot and ash she'd rubbed into them, and the same mix in her clothing was also darkening her face, mane, and tail too; it all helped to keep her profile less visible. An orange coat and light blonde hair weren't exactly inconspicuous after all when it came to wandering in the evening, although unfortunately she couldn't do much about her strikingly bright and glowing jade-coloured eyes. The gloves on her forehooves helped hide her coat, while the boots on her hindlegs did the same job as well as being acceptable protection from the harsh elements, and she'd accept that the hoof-wear being leather might possibly catch some small measure of light for the trade-off.
Maybe she focused too heavily on it, but she felt it helped keep her safe.
What she really needed for actual worthwhile protection was a decently enchanted coat or duster of some kind, and as much as she'd kept a keen eye out she still hadn't even managed to scavenge a normal one for a basic level of security. It was very tough going when a majority of places had already been ransacked to the point of completion.
She had no protection for her body beyond the soaked jacket, no protection for her head besides a hood, and absolutely nothing to stop a bullet in its tracks if she was sighted from afar. All she really had was the paltry camo and her quick wits. The most that she could hope for at the present moment in time was that she spotted anything dangerous long before it could harm her, and if the enemy was nearby and armed with the drop on her then she had the Nova grenade attached on her pack to hoof. While its loss would sting considerably, dying wouldn't be preferred.
Perhaps coming this far into Threshold's boundaries had been too large a risk, although that would only be a certainty if her venture didn't pay off. She'd left the relative safety of the worn-down train station on the dilapidated city's outskirts, just to make the trip into the city proper for food and components that she desperately needed, and she really did need them as she had another mouth to feed, a radio to repair, and one of the invaluable weapons she had on her back was on the fritz.
Sleek, pointed, and mostly made of dark crystal polymer; the pulse rifle was a Unicorn's take on what a real firearm should be, and certainly wasn't her weapon of choice as it was wholly too reliant on the magic part of magitech for her tastes, but that was why it still functioned, and it truly helped deal with the disturbing monstrosities that lurked in the darkness of night, seeming to be one of the few things that harmed them to any decent extent.
She didn't know precisely what all of them were and she honestly didn't care for the specifics, she just knew they were fast, deadly, and very hostile. The pulse rifle burned through their hides, rain helped to hide from them, and radiation healed them if they didn't just heal themselves. Some of them did strange things to the mind too, she'd watched once as one of the larger ones had mesmerised a pony into walking right towards it to be devoured.
There was nothing in them but hate she felt, much like the roaming groups of bandits that occasionally roved through the city on the prowl. She had an old-fashioned shotgun for those nasty cretins though; it was a classic lever-action with a capacity for six shots, very good range and reliability, and it didn't need gems to function. Just good old Earthen ingenuity, and she prized it quite a bit.
She had the hoof-dusters and a combat knife for when things got far too up-close and personal.
Failing all that, her innate magic might possibly save her... she hadn't needed to test that one just yet though, and she wasn't eager to try either as it would take a lot out of her, to use it in the midst of a fight would have to be decisive otherwise she'd be a sitting duck.
A few more minutes of shrewd rummaging and she suppressed a laugh, smiling triumphantly and exhaling instead, relieved upon finding not one, but two tiny emerald gem-cores that she could utilise. They wouldn't exactly be a perfect fit as they came from microwaves, and one of them was slightly cracked, yet it wasn't going to stop her from bundling them together into the pulse rifle's power socket later.
She'd discovered that small trick while bored one night; while a single gem-core of the smallest size wouldn't fit into a larger socket commonly found on things like pulse weaponry or a radio, she found that she could shave their edges and just about manage to force two of them into the slot. It wasn't ideal as it compromised the maximum power that could be stored within the two smaller cores with every charge that was fired, until they couldn't hold enough juice for even a single shot, however it worked well enough for her purposes and was her current method as she didn't possess a properly sized gem-core that fit in the rifle.
Maybe she'd find a few in the pocket of an enchanted longcoat?
Right, maybe she'd find a Remnant too.
Further scavving yielding nothing major beyond a few fairly intact strips of metal that had yet to rust, and some springs and smaller comps she pried from various destroyed magitech trinkets. Hopefully she remembered the right things she needed, and it never hurt to have spare bits and pieces on the off chance she might manage to trade with somepony, as rare as that was. She had a very small stockpile of odds and ends squirrelled away for when she managed to find somepony trustworthy enough to do deals with.
Done with one of her tasks, she turned about and carefully left the way she'd come, keeping low and taking slow steps across the fallen snow that hadn't quite yet turned into ice or slush, moving out of the dead park as deftly as possible while still staying alert, and keeping her ears perked as she followed along a set safe path she'd mentally mapped out.
Applejack hadn't survived this long by making noise and running amok like a madmare, and she'd seen a few folk that had met their end that way by getting themselves captured or shot, and seen a few more carelessly walk into a pocket of radiation and promptly keeling over, or be dismantled by the malefic magic of an anomaly. She stringently stuck to the edges of cold stone and metal buildings as she went down the gloomy street past the numerous looted shops, burned-out terminals, and snowbound skeletons of both vehicles and the dead, making sure to stay under overhangs and utilising low walls where possible, her eyes scanning for any sign that something wasn't right.
As she went, her eyes caught movement and she froze for just a second before realising it wasn't motion from the living, the tension bleeding out from her limbs and relaxing a little easier as she'd just seen the barest reflection of herself in an old dirty terminal screen that somehow hadn't been shattered yet, somewhat hidden beneath the fallen archway of an old library that had seen far better days.
Vaguely curious, she walked over, ducking under the crumbling arch and stepping through a mess of useless rubbish and snow towards it, wiping off the frost covering the machine with a hoof as the bitter wind pulled at her clothing as it sharply blew into the crevice. She tapped the blank face of it to find, quite unsurprisingly, that nothing interesting happened. Nothing generally made of magitech from before worked at all anymore unless it was wholly made with magic like the pulse rifle, otherwise parts would need to be scavenged intact and the item rebuilt. Very few creatures ─herself definitely included─ actually possessed the know-how in order to do that for complex things like terminals, as it was a specialist Unicorn's domain. She knew enough to get a simple enough device like a Phobos Instrument or radio running, but she still needed all the right gizmos to put into place, an important task she was currently working on in regards to the latter.
She yanked the terminal's face off with a rough tug, innate strength easily winning out and besting the frozen machine, although expectedly the gem-core inside was long burned out and cracked through its centre, most certainly from being overloaded. Sadly, it seemed that all the wiring was fried too. Nearly every common device that could exist had once been nothing but wires and metal, and when some very smart ponies had come up with magitech, the clever combination of Unicorn magic and Earthen technology, such things rapidly replaced the older systems as it was far more efficient for the modern day. Now though it was a curse, all the main components of most magitech devices were simply dead, and it wasn't often that she found anything in functioning condition.
If only the terminal worked and another somewhere else also did, she'd be able to contact somepony halfway across Equestria with the press of a button. She frowned at the screen she'd placed on the ground, she shouldn't be getting distracted.
Leaving the crevice and walking away she slowly continued on, picking over anything she might have missed on her way in, perhaps to find something useful lost by another. She paused her sneaking as she passed the smashed glass window of an old holovision shop, silently glancing over the ice and snow that had blown in across the tiled floor and rested across everything, the dead torn-apart junk inside containing nothing of use anymore. She'd already had a hoof in gutting this place for parts a while back, not that she'd found very much, the magitech devices that projected a hard-light surface were one of the first things to get broken down into components. There wasn't any use for HV if there was nothing to watch on them, after all; wafer-discs with recorded film had been magitech too, all fried in the event, and she somehow doubted anypony was going to get together to make new shows.
Distractions.
She snuck down a couple more lonely streets past countless remnants of what had been; rust, ash, dust, and snow were all a constant fixture wherever she looked, so many things long abandoned and forgotten. She felt herself jolt as there was a light screech overhead, quickly frowning up as a few Hewbats swooped overhead from leaving their nest somewhere above within an open building, though she didn't reach for her shotgun. As temperamental as the ugly and leathery overgrown things were they didn't tend to attack unless directly provoked or somepony was near dead, or they were already a corpse.
Keeping on for what felt like an hour of cautious movement with her Phobos remaining mostly quiet, she warily slowed her gait along the icy pavement again as she came upon a twisted lamp post that was all bent out of shape, hunched over like a weeping willow thanks to the crashed propulsive wrapped around its cold iron base. A few skeletal remains of the driver were still present, frigidly fixed in place atop the vehicle's bonnet and topped in fresh snow. It was a landmark of sorts, and for her it marked the initial intersection into the city just a short distance ahead.
She hadn't encountered any issues entering from Threshold's outskirts and often didn't because of her wary nature, there had been one or two ponies though they'd seen her and immediately bolted, but damn this intersection in particular... It was extremely troublesome, and she'd been shot at while crossing it in and on the way back many times before. It was a certain point that worked well for ambushes, where if she'd been spotted moving into the area, an inhabitant that had holed up in a high-rise or maybe an opportunist also scavenging would wait patiently for her to return, and then snipe at her from down the long streets that intertwined at this section due to its congestion. It vexxed her because thus far she hadn't succeeded in locating another path in or out on this side of the city that was safer once she was inside, as radiation or anomalies tauntingly rested in places she would have preferred to travel between, along with a plethora of the creepy eldritch beasts that were drawn to such deadly areas.
Stopping herself short of a pockmarked corner that had been heavily subjected to withering gunfire ─definitely from past firefights; the proof of frostbitten bones, endless bullet holes, and old scorch marks around the area was testament to it─ she gently leant back on her haunches as the rain poured beyond the overhang. Taking off her backpack after laying the lever-action shotgun down beside herself from its sling, she undid the clasp on the top of her pack and fished out a modestly-sized mirror that used to belong to the side of a propulsive. It didn't catch any of the already waning daylight as she'd long since covered its chipped face with a measure of dirt, just enough that it wouldn't reflect a glare and that she could still use it.
Holding it steady in her hoof she gently edged it into the open, facing out towards the street to her right where she'd been attacked from in the past, and keeping it angled so she could look at the reflection.
The mirror sharply exploded in a glittering shower of brittle crystal fragments and water droplets the moment she'd fully extended it as a bullet forcefully punched through its face, the shot reverberating loudly through the forlorn street.
"Fuck!" She exclaimed, quickly pulling her hoof back and turning away from the shards so they didn't get in her eyes. A scant few seconds passed as the miniscule slivers settled, and she took a deep breath.
Adrenaline pumping now, she slung her pack on along with the shotgun and psyched herself up. It was the same sniper in the tall apartment block at the end of the road, she was almost certain of it. Same sound from the rifle, shooting from the right street and not the left. He'd definitely have chambered in a new round by now, she figured at this point it was probably a bolt-action as there was always a short pause between his shots. She was quite happy it wasn't a semi-automatic, otherwise she'd probably never cross at all.
Glancing around and grabbing an old dented can from the pavement, she rubbed its grimy surface with her edge of her glove until it had the barest semblance of a shine. Again, she slowly moved it towards the corner, heart beating loudly in her ears.
Within almost a split second of it poking out into the rain the can gave a resounding wet clang and went flying as it was shot out of her hoof, and she immediately bolted into a sprint from her position towards the opposite side of the intersection. Her heart thundered as the heavy rain and snow pelted into her, the wind whipping the hood from her head, and she ducked and weaved between the numerous metal frames of the surrounding decaying vehicles hoping to the Princesses that a bullet wouldn't find her.
She stumbled then, as a frozen skeleton beneath her noisily crunched underhoof as she ran, and in that unfortunate moment the sniper took the chance to fire.
It was sheer dumb luck that she only felt it zip past the back of her ponytail like an angry wasp rather than decorating the icy ground with the contents of her head, and she hurriedly reoriented as she forced herself on, the sharp sting of the bullet having tickled her neck swiftly travelling down her spine. A few more seconds and she'd be across, the overhang of the building ahead beckoned to her with the long stalactites of ice that hung down from it like a neon sign. Another shot took a small chunk out of the road below her as she jumped between a worn concrete barrier and the crashed vehicle ahead, so either the shot had been completely botched or the sniper was going for the body now.
Thankfully it didn't matter, as she leapt forwards again from the open street and behind the safety of the old building in front, the next bullet harmlessly whizzing through her tail as she fell to the cold pavement on all fours. She still tucked herself in and waited, just in case. She greedily breathed in despite the chill and refilled her lungs until her nerves calmed, shakily glancing around for the next thing that would happen, waiting for the howls, yet nothing came.
The sniper certainly wasn't going to leave their safe position either, not unless they'd actually hit her, she'd wager. Who knew; maybe they were just shooting for the fun of it, she'd seen it before from bandits. Perhaps she'd catch the sniper one day when they ventured out of their hole for supplies, and she'd be the one laying in wait to ambush them instead. Getting to her hooves and checking herself over she found no injuries besides a small cut or two from a crystal shard on her cheek and feeling some slight aches where she'd thrown herself down, although she had a new hole in her hood and a burning sensation across the back of her neck where the bullet had grazed, showing just how close she'd come to death. It wasn't deep enough to warrant bandaging despite the slight warmth of blood she could feel and it would clot soon enough, but it still hurt.
Everyday was just survival... She swallowed a lump as she pulled the hood back up, shaking herself off and scattering waterdrops before she kept on carefully down the building line under the overhang, breathing evenly to settle her nerves.
The sun was almost gone and it was getting colder, the city looked harsh and sinister in the muddy midnight-tinged orange glare that was still being cast by what remained, with the weather adding to the sombre feeling. She needed to hurry with her task and leave before the twisted monsters came out to play, as many of them commonly stuck within the city where radiation tended to be heavier and rarely left its confines, and they might come out during the day but the night was their preferred domain. Getting out before they amassed was an absolute necessity, as her pulse rifle likely only had enough power for a few light bursts that would only anger the larger horrors rather than kill them, and her shotgun would essentially be a club for all the good it would do against their tough hides. She only had five shells at current and it would take two or three to kill the type of monster more oftenly seen and encountered, maybe a single shell if one got close enough for her to fire into its maw, though she didn't want to let them that close in the first place.
Speaking of which, she quickly shifted the shotgun from her back and loosened its sling so it was ready beneath her as she was coming up on the location she wanted just down this section of the street. As she neared the run-down grocery store she knew still had some supplies she took a quick breath in, forcing herself up onto her hindlegs into a bipedal stance, and took the shotgun in hoof.
It was something she'd known how to do for quite some time, although she couldn't move too well as that required practice she'd not had, or proper training and discipline for firearms that was taught in the military. She was right-hooved, so that one was in the lever-hook to cycle the action after firing while her left was resting under the frame. Carefully, she stepped forwards one hoof at a time until she approached the grimy cracked crystal of the shop window, her heart beginning to ramp up its pace again.
Bracing herself, she moved fast by the still-intact window and into the doorway as the wind whistled into the building, keeping the shotgun pointed up into the old family store as her mind raced, instantly sighting a figure in the gloom between the shabby aisles.
"Stop right there!" She shouted out, the figure immediately jumping and turning about to face her as she trained the shotgun on them. "Don't you move."
Her eyes sharply adjusted to the level of darkness as dust and ash flitted about while sleet blew in behind her, and she saw that she was looking at a young Unicorn stallion with a choppy mane, and possibly a pale coat, though she couldn't make out his true colours given that he was just as grimy as she was. He was clad much the same as her, in worn clothing that likely wasn't great against the weather, with a shawl around his muzzle to help ward off the winter chill, and a messenger bag slung around his torso. Like her own, his pretty golden eyes were the most obvious aspect, quite luminous in the darkness of the store, and they were fixed on her.
"I'm not armed." He stated clearly, his eyes wide in alarm.
"I can see that... an' what about yer friend back there?" She snapped, a terse edge to her voice as her vision flicked to the shelves he'd been looking through.
Her shotgun slightly craned left as the second stranger carefully moved out from behind the aisle over, revealing a grubby grey-gold Gryphoness in patchy dark clothing with her claws up, one claw gripping a knapsack by its strap. Her glowing eyes were a murky shade of green. Applejack tensed a little more, she didn't fancy letting her guard down around a Gryphon when they were so fast to move, they didn't have any sort of innate magic but even starving they could cross a short distance as quickly as she could blink.
"I'm not armed either." The Gryphoness said, her voice somewhat grave and low-pitched like most Gryphons' tended to be, moving the claw with the knapsack down and chucking it forward. "Just take it and piss off."
"I aint here to rob ya." She told the hen plainly, glancing between the two ragged survivors before scanning the rest of the ransacked shop. "I'm guessin' you've checked the back rooms?"
"Yes." The stallion said in a breath.
"Shoulda been some cans an' a sealed box of porridge in one of 'em."
"T-they're in my bag." He sighed.
She kept the shotgun steady while her eyes went to the knapsack.
"An' in there?"
The Gryphoness scowled at her with disdain but answered. "A Phobos, bits of junk. Food wise, a couple ration bars and some dried fruit."
Water dripped off of her as she stood silent in thought, time was rapidly dwindling, the rain was letting up outside and that meant less cover. While keeping her weapon aimed in their direction she shuffled her backpack off and let it hang for a second, quickly dropping her left hoof from the shotgun so the pack could fall to the floor, before snapping her foreleg up to the frame again.
She snaked a hindleg around her backpack and kicked it forwards across the gap between them, scattering resting ash as she met the stallion's gaze and nodded to his bag, evenly keeping the hen in her peripherals.
"No magic, do it by hoof; put the porridge an' four of the cans in mah pack. There were seven last I was here, an' I doubt anypony wouldn't just take the lot if they'd checked in here since."
"So why didn't you ?" He wondered, slowly folding his hindlegs until he was sitting, and quickly taking her backpack in hoof to start to transfer the goods from his bag.
"Same reason I aint takin' 'em all now, 'cause I figured some folk might need 'em." She replied honestly, then sighing to herself. "But I guess I will rob ya; I'll take that fruit, been a month or so since I've had any."
He nodded quietly, reaching over and grabbing the knapsack to then take out a few silvery packets. She hoped, quite wistfully, that one of them contained apple slices. After he was done he shoved her backpack back across the dirty floor to her and cautiously stood up to all fours again. It took a little effort to do, but she managed to lean down almost to her haunches without falling over and hook her foreleg through the correct strap while keeping the shotgun mostly levelled, awkwardly shrugging it on and raising back to a full bipedal stance. She strained out a quick clouded breath after the fact, making dust motes in the air scatter.
A few seconds passed without anyone speaking.
"Alright then." She simply stated, eyes on the Gryphoness as she began to back off.
The stallion regarded her with a confused expression. "Why didn't you take the Phobos?"
She paused, vision flicking to him briefly. "I already got one, aint needin' another. I know how important they are, an' I don't need yer deaths on mah conscience knowin' you'd walk into radiation or an anomaly an' dyin' without one."
The Gryphoness gave a curt nod. "Thanks, I guess."
"Don't mention it. Really ." She grimaced, taking another few steps back into the doorway before lowering the shotgun and slinging it around herself as she went to all fours to make a swift exit.
She didn't have time to bring herself up and draw the weapon again though, as the door at the end of the small shop burst open and out came an Earthen stallion already in a bipedal stance with a rifle in his hooves. She dropped herself to one side as he fired, the shot going wide and shattering the shopfront window anyway from poor hold or it being hip-fired, and she scrambled back while hastily grabbing at the shotgun to bring it around.
"Ceri, stop!" The Unicorn stallion shouted, his horn flaring in a brilliant golden aura in an attempt to wrestle the rifle away, but Ceri continued on towards her regardless.
He growled as he fumbled with his rifle while the Unicorn tried to stop him from reloading, and she realised it was a bolt-action. "Fuck off, Aloe! I'll kill her, that's our food, we found it!"
She took the precious opportunity to get hooves onto her shotgun properly, and just brought it to bear as Ceri finished reloading, quite squarely pointing his rifle at her now where she lay on the damp pavement outside the shop, and before he could shoot she squeezed her trigger first. The other two threw themselves wide as the shotgun roared, and Ceri screamed out in pain.
Breathing heavily through another adrenaline spike, she kept her shotgun pointed forward and cycled it. The mechanism pushed back and she saw the shell eject from the corner of her vision while waiting for her eyes to readjust from the bright flash and back down to the shop's ambient light level, as Ceri loudly moaned in agony from inside. When she saw he was prone and his rifle was on the floor, she quickly pushed herself off the ground onto her haunches and shakily forced herself onto her hindlegs again, with moderate trouble. At this point it was taxing from having already stood so long, her forelegs were trembling and the graze across the back of her neck throbbed. She was sweating despite the winter cold as well, although maybe that was simply due to the amount she'd already exerted herself running through the intersection.
"Ceri, you fucking moron..." The Gryphoness growled, rubbing her sensitive eyes as she got up from the grimy floor, ignoring his wailing as she came over and now without a care that a gun was currently pointed at her, though given her demeanour Applejack doubted she'd actually attack. She knelt over him and her beak raised in disgust as she saw the extent of the damage. "You're gonna lose that leg."
At such a close range her shotgun possessed a moderately tight spread even without a choke, and his right leg was a mess of gore below the thigh even though she hadn't hit directly. She didn't wait around to assess the situation further. She quickly swung the shotgun back and settled onto her hooves to leave as fast as possible, her head then sharply turning the way she'd been walking previously. Her eyes widened and her ears folded in alarm, as from further down the street came a disturbing throaty wail that sent fear coursing through her.
She knew that sound.
"Aberrant!" The Gryphoness hissed, quickly rushing to grab her knapsack.
The brazen gunfire at ground level had obviously spread throughout the ruined city and alerted the horrors to crawl from their holes maybe a tad sooner than usual, and the worst ones were going to be on top of them soon, they could always smell blood. She spared a brief glance at the trio in their pitiful state, then back to the street at the rain lessening in the darkening morbid dusk ahead, and decided this wasn't her problem anymore. With a parting look of regret at them she broke away from the shop, her tail whipping behind her as she galloped as fast as her hooves would allow.
Her legs were quite leaden yet she pushed herself to a greater extent for the sake of her life, as in her tired condition she wasn't likely to survive an encounter, especially not with an Aberrant of all possible monstrosities. There was a tinge of shame in her chest as she raced down the pavement and the howling grew louder behind her, but she had a higher priority and it wasn't the strangers.
Luna's Moon had started its slow ascent and was partially free of the horizon as she soon reached Threshold's broken edges. Ahead of her across an ashen cauterised terrain lightly covered with forming snow lie a fairly dense copse of blackened trees she had initially come from, twisted by fire and never quite recovering since. In defiance of her haggard state she kept going across the wide stretch of no mare's land through the secure path she knew to avoid anomalies, her pack feeling like a massive boulder, and every instance her legs cycled in the sprint her weapons jostled to slightly drag her towards the earth with their weight.
She only allowed herself the barest of respites when she finally reached the safety of the withered treeline, all but collapsing as she laid heavily against one of the husks, her chest heaving with her mane plastered to her face and back. She could feel the froth across her coat where her clothing stuck to her, her neck stinging from the sweat, and right now she couldn't find the energy to care. Wearily looking back at the city she knew nothing had chased her, or she'd have heard the ravenous howls following in her wake, although it didn't stop her from taking a look around in her highly alert state.
She was alone.
She wasn't fond of that, it left her with her thoughts.
She'd gotten what she'd come for, and it had certainly cost others their lives. She'd very likely killed that stallion called Ceri, and his friends too, albeit indirectly, as there was no back exit out of the shop and they'd have nowhere to go as they were boxed in by the monsters. Blood was a fiery beacon for anything mutated and predatory, and she'd fired the shot that'd spilled his. His rifle had been loaded, his hoof on the trigger, and the barrel pointed directly at her, so her actions were in self-defence but it didn't make the situation any better.
When she was a filly she'd been told by a soldier in the military that taking a life should never be easy, yet she'd already learned early on into all of this that taking lives was actually incredibly effortless, and later on she'd learned that the soldier hadn't meant the act itself.
The guilt that rested on the conscience was far worse. It was something that slowly accrued with every instance she caused harm, emotional ichor that just kept on building up, like poison on the surface of her soul. She couldn't forget any of the faces, the one's she'd seen die in front of her were the heaviest weights and she was thankful her sleep wasn't troubled with them, as that was what the soldier had experienced. This was just a few more to add to the stack, and she knew it would all crash down on her eventually.
She pushed it all away and glanced up from her thoughts as faraway screeches echoed from within Threshold into the early nighttime, likely unrelated to the shop incident and probably other people getting caught. Scanning around she was still alone, the air was getting colder and so was she. Her breathing was under control again, and the frothing had stopped, so she pushed off from the tree and started walking in the direction of the train station. She'd promised she'd do her best to make it back before dark, so at least she wasn't coming back with nothing to show for her lateness.
A small sigh and a shiver escaped her as she trudged through the hardening snow, she was stiff and tired, and the weather was still biting into her dampened clothing. At least it had stopped raining, she noted, watching the eerie moon as it crawled skyward through the swiftly dispersing cloudline. It was slightly different these days, and similarly like the sun it gave off a subtly different glow that illuminated everything in a certain off-putting light. It just didn't feel like it used to. With a brief glance over her shoulder at the city, she headed for home.
She'd be fine when she got back and had a nice fire to relax in front of.
Doesn't feel like that long ago, still.
I'm not sure, keeping time wasn't a priority It was around 1241SC that it happened, roughly about a year ago, maybe a little less, I'll update if I find something more accurate.
When the event, whatever it was, the Singularity I suppo Singularity hit, the event that caused all this, it took out just about everything across Equestria, and likely the whole of Equus. Whatever happened in the sky that day burned away anything and everything that wasn't inside a building or behind something heavy, and even then folks got burnt some, while every object made of normal glass exploded into thousands of shards so anyone that hadn't been immolated by the blastwave were instead burned and shred to ribbons if they'd been sitting in front of their windows. It hadn't ended there though as the sky kept on pushing out flame over the course of a few hours, just these giant pillars of pure starfire beaming from the endless abyss, sometimes just for a few seconds at a time, and when they stopped nothing was left of whatever they'd passed over but molten glass.
Those first few weeks were utter chaos but we stuck by one another, the equine spirit shone through and we came together as all communities should. We're a We were a small village, Ponyville had been one of those nice places where folk always banded together through the tough times, and we knew we needed one another. We buried what was left of our dead, mourned, and tried our best to get along with what we had on hoof until help came.
Except it never did.
No help came from Appleloosa, they were in the same situation as us, and Cloudsdale was a sore point to even look up into the sky for as one of those burning pillars had passed right through the centre of it, the only place close enough we could look to was Canterlot.
We'd thought maybe with the Royal Palace being what it was, the Princesses being who they were, that they were somewhat fine as the sun and moon were still rising and falling, and at most we'd be holding out a month at best as the town hall always had enough emergency supplies for three months if rationing was done properly. We'd all be a little skinnier by the time help came, but we'd be alive. The phone lines were down and the radios didn't work, a propulsive that one of the richer townsfolk had was completely dead, the train lines had been destroyed miles out from the town thanks to the pillars of fire, and even the one terminal kept securely in the town hall's basement for situations like these wasn't functioning, so for a while we just sat tight.
We sent out fliers to Canterlot the week after just in case, and they never came back.
The second time they didn't come back either, and we stopped trying that.
Canterlot wasn't safe to travel to and we didn't know why, and we figured there were plenty of theories as to the reason. We got a semblance of an explanation when people started getting ill, not just those that had survived the Singularity. Though it wasn't something any medical professional in the town could diagnose as it wasn't like normal radiation sickness, they reckoned it was a special kind of solar radiation from the Singularity's blasts, and unfortunately there usually wasn't any sign of it until a pony just collapsed. They could be fine one minute and the next they were overwhelmed from something laying dormant inside them. The local hospital was completely swamped with cases of a sickness they couldn't treat well enough, and the meds that we had quickly ran out into the second month.
Back then we didn't have the remedies we do now, so more started dying and we couldn't do much but try and make them comfortable, and we assumed that Canterlot being a lot closer to the sky had gotten hit worse so the area was likely unsafe, maybe the why of our fliers not coming back was that there was more radiation in the city than below in the countryside.
It was the least of our concerns as we were getting desperate into the third month; our supplies were almost gone and no crops could grow that the land was so saturated with fallout. The few Phobos Instruments we'd managed to fix up were also starting to wear down from the constant use and we didn't have replacement parts for all of them and everything else we wanted to fix. We tore up just about every machine we had for what working electronics we could get just to move about without dying, as the radiation might shift, and the strange clusters of magic we coined anomalies started to appear and follow us around like our shadows wherever they fancied to catch us by surprise, nearly every morning we'd find they'd settled somewhere new.
The only upside was that some of us weren't dying. Everypony got ill, no matter what, yet the sickness didn't kill a small number, it seemed to be random who recovered and who didn't and that was when we realised ─
"Hey."
Applejack looked up from her notebook with a curious expression.
"Yeah?" She asked her sister.
"Ah can't find the screwdriver." Applebloom said, Applejack's battered stetson atop her head. It bobbed as she gently tilted right. "Aint in yer backpack."
She gave a curt nod towards the back of the room. "Steamer trunk. Should be on the left side last I put it, probably buried under the other tools."
Applebloom smiled. "Thanks." A pause, as she then leaned over the notebook with a cute frown. "You writin' pointless stuff again?"
She tutted with slight amusement as the hat blocked the notebook from view. "Aint pointless. I've taken to writin' about the Singularity rather than just mah trips out an' takin' inventory. Somepony unlucky to be born in this time of the world might not know the how of why it's the way it is."
"'Singularity' ?" Applebloom questioned as she looked up, an eyebrow raised.
Applejack nodded again. "You recall that crazy feller that got pinched a while back? He kept yellin' about the 'Singularity that destroyed the world'. I thought it didn't sound too bad."
"Uh-huh... so yer a scholar now?" Applebloom smirked, eyes scanning the pages upside down. "Hm. 'Giant pillars of pure starfire beamin' from the endless abyss' , forget that, yer tryin' to be a poet."
"Just seems appropriate, kinda like how you'd read in them old books Twilight used to keep in her library." She shrugged. "Go on now, do yer tinkerin', ya interrupted me when I was gettin' into the flow of it."
"Ah will do mah tinkerin'." Her sister said, turning away with a level of mock-airs to her tone. "Ah'm gonna keep fixin' that radio up, an' you can write yer weird poetry."
She scoffed as Applebloom trotted over to the trunk. "I was plannin' on workin' on it tomorrow, another day aint gonna matter none."
"An' ah can do it now though, since ya found parts." Applebloom replied casually over her shoulder. "Can't sleep anywho."
She smiled, relaxing back against the wall where she'd chosen to sit and rest and watching for a moment. "Keep ya occupied I s'pose."
Applebloom had gotten rather tough in the time since the sky fell, far less scared and more sure of herself. It was nice to see her turning into a confident young mare even with their unfortunate circumstances, and this type of life was seeing her become a little more lean and tough than plump like most her age should have been, though there was still a measure of blooming femininity to her reflected through the ragged fleece coat and padded jeans she wore. Applebloom looked back after a moment of rummaging about with the screwdriver in her mouth, grinning around it triumphantly. Her eyes glowed a lovely and fiercely brilliant reddish-orange, beautiful like how Celestia's sunsets used to be before the world changed.
"Is the window secure?" Applejack asked.
"Yehp." Came back the mumbled reply around the screwdriver.
"Keep a low light."
Applebloom nodded. "Ah 'noh."
It was the pitch black of night, and Luna's Moon had reached its apex and subsequently stopped glowing as brightly. It couldn't be explained, but it happened nearly every night, and there was usually only enough light to see just in front of oneself, if that. Having a fire or too bright a light from a torch might bring trouble, so they only risked a fire when they needed to cook food and they'd already eaten earlier when the moon was still keeping things fairly lit.
She let herself be mesmerised by the flickers of light that still danced through the embers of the fire they'd had burning an hour or so before, basking in what little residual heat still remained. It was hard to keep the room warm for an extended period of time when it had a giant hole in it besides a smashed window, and she hadn't found enough tarpaulin out on her scavenging runs to cover the damage over and keep in the warmth, only having enough to just cover the window and opening both to hide the inside of the shelter from a distant view.
She'd like to find another sleeping bag for comfort's sake too, but until she could properly seal the breaches it was better that they pooled their heat in the single bag they possessed so that they didn't freeze. This was the first winter coming since everything had happened, and it was only getting colder as the weeks dragged on towards it, the snow getting far more intense. She'd been trying to find decent clothing for them yet she'd only managed to find the fleeced coat Applebloom had on, and had resorted to stuffing rags into their clothing to have some form of insulation.
Her task tomorrow was going back into Threshold as per usual, only now she was going to go around the downtown area with the task she'd set out to do today completed. It wouldn't be easy going as she'd not really mapped that route, though it wasn't far from her current one she'd been travelling. The park she'd been scavving around had been near a huge road off from the main leading through the city, leading along to a shopping centre containing several outlets going by an old sign advertising such, and while everypony and their mother had no doubt descended on the place to hoard supplies in the initial wake of the Singularity there might still be something to be had.
She wagered that very few would have been interested in winter gear back then, and there was apparently a decently sized supply store for outdoor hiking within. Some survivors had definitely been there by now as winter was on its way, though if it was her personally, she wouldn't overload herself with several coats and the like, just take what was needed and then come back if she needed more. She was betting, hoping on that being the case for others, although larger groups could carry greater amounts of course, so it might be that a few groups of bandits had cleaned the place out, there was no way of knowing until she got there.
It was her own fault they didn't have certain items like warm clothing or an abundance of ammo and food. She'd been content to search forgotten smaller shops already checked through on and near the main road to avoid trouble and barely diverted from it unless hostile groups, monsters, or radiation and anomalies had forced her to adapt her path. Most clothing stores she'd passed through didn't have winter clothing from the previous year, as a majority had been dominated by summer wear, and the common garments ponies tended to fixate on were dresses, frocks, and petticoats, some of which were currently the shredded rags in their jeans.
Hopefully she would remedy some more of their problems tomorrow. In all fairness she hadn't exactly planned for them to stay here as long as they had, maybe it was about a month now since they'd settled, but it was all they had at the current moment and she didn't want to risk moving somewhere else until she knew it was safe. Maybe it had been foalish but they'd not expected the wider world to have grown so hostile, and her own naivety had cost them dearly chasing a rumour, so now they were staying put. Like it or not, this was where they were going to be staying for the foreseeable future, even if the radio was working right now there was no guarantee the girls had any communications up-and-running too, and she wasn't going to dare risk the trek back either until she damn well knew the way was clear to meet back up with them.
She wished she'd never left Ponville, wished she could have stayed together with them, yet the circumstances hadn't permitted it. There simply weren't enough supplies in Ponyville and once again she and the girls were the town's only true hope, so they'd decided to do the right thing.
Their plan had been to spread out to other locations to find anything they could to help the small village; mostly food and supplies, the idea being that the larger cities would have been where a majority of relief efforts were concentrated, and if they could get their hooves on enough of it they could return, perhaps set-up trade between surviving groups as they'd brought things with them others might need. It was a gamble even taking what they had as the village sorely needed it, but they had to hope giving it to her and her friends would work out.
Pinkie had stayed in Ponyville to keep an eye on things as she'd still been recovering from the solar radiation, while Twilight and Dash had gone in the direction of Manehattan, Fluttershy and Rarity had gone towards Los Pegasus, and she had been due to go to Vanhoover solo. She'd been loath to part from them, her family, and the farm, but it was an utter necessity, and though Big Macintosh had offered to come with her she wanted him to stay as he was one of the few who could help try to fix the land and grow food, look after Granny and Applebloom, and be something of a guardian to what remained of Ponyville.
She'd set off alone, yet she hadn't been planning for stubborn little sisters that snuck out from Ponyville to trail her, however. At first she'd been angry, but Applebloom was confident and wanted to do her part rather than sit and wait while the town needed to be saved again for the umpteenth time. Applejack couldn't find it within herself at the time to send her sister back, and now she couldn't anyway thanks to her fuck up.
They never made it to Vanhoover, of course.
They'd ended up moving towards Threshold, the smaller city they were currently camped outside of laying out towards the Western Ranges , previously named the Undiscovered West. The abandoned station was one of the first places they'd discovered, partially destroyed and completely desolate, though they were so weary and run down that they'd slept in it anyway, and figured it was a good enough place to stay a few nights. A few nights had turned into a few weeks, and well... they were still here, there weren't any other options and she was trying to make it work.
She had to for bringing Applebloom along, for what she'd caused, she still struggled with it though whenever she'd brought it up Applebloom would tell her it had been her own decision to come, the consequences thus were hers to bear, and Applejack should stop beating herself up, so she'd reluctantly dropped the subject and kept such misgivings within her mind. It didn't change what had happened though, she was going to make up for it as best she could and get them out of here, and if she ever found those bastards again she'd catch them, then give her shotgun to Applebloom to do with what she will.
She breathed out, a lump caught in her throat. She put the pen she'd been writing with into the notebook's spine and placed it over to one side, getting up from where she'd been idly sitting while getting stuck in her own head and quickly going over to their sleeping bag. She could beat herself up some more later, right now she needed to sleep so she could be awake and alert for tomorrow's trek.
"I'm gonna rest. Don't stay up too long an' join me soon, y'hear?" She said softly to Applebloom. "Don't want ya freezin' through the night."
"Gotcha." Applebloom nodded as she poked away at the old radio she'd retrieved from the steamer trunk, along with a mess of smaller pieces that had been scavenged, including bits from today's run. The small torch Applebloom was using to illuminate her workspace was covered over with some thin lengths of cloth to lessen its intensity, just as Applejack had asked. Good girl.
She laid down and got comfy, immediately grateful for the semi-immediate halt to the cold and slowly building warmth as she tucked herself into the bag and zipped it up. She watched Applebloom as she slowly drifted off, knowing if there were any problems that her sister would immediately rouse her. Her vision briefly landed on an empty silver packet near the fire's embers that had contained apple slices alongside some empty tins, another guilty pang rising up before she squashed it and finally closed her eyes as Applebloom worked away.
Author's Note
Much like Luna's tiny bottom, your comments excite me so.
Applebloom was snuggled into her chest when she awoke.
With a gentle yawn she carefully detached herself from the smaller mare, smiling as Applebloom gave a grumble at the loss of warmth while she left the sleeping bag, and swiftly zipped it up to keep the cold out. It was bright enough that she could see around the room of the worn down station they were in, everything being bathed in a mute hue of green as the sunlight diffused through the leafy-coloured tarpaulin barely covering the massive hole in the building's side. She breathed out and frowned at the small cloud of mist that formed as she stood up properly, immediately noting the lower temperature and the slight powdering of snow built up around the tarp's edges, suppressing a shiver as the morning whistled into the room. It was always quite bad in the mornings until the sun fully rose, and it seemed that it was delayed again today.
The weather didn't make sense anymore. Beyond the idea that the sun and moon would rise and fall in due time, just about everything else was unpredictable and chaotic. A week after the Singularity she'd watched massive lightning storms form just past Appleloosa that had thankfully dissipated a majority of energy before they fully hit the town, though there had still been plenty of damage. She'd been given permission to take the necessary supplies and travelled out to meet with her cousin Braeburn to check the wellbeing of the town, finding that it had thankfully been mostly structural with minor injuries to the townsfolk.
She hoped he was still alive, and still doing well. They'd been holding on even if they were in the same dire straits as Ponyville had been, though that had been a few months before she and Applebloom had set out.
Sighing, she glanced to the window still covered over with a cut section of tarp and went over, slowly freeing and lifting one side to peer out. From the window view lay the immediate open area of the station and its damaged rusted joint tracks down between the platforms, though the station was less than it should have been. The platforms were blackened and discoloured to a certain point, the bricks on the far side slagged and settled into something akin to eroded concrete, with a massive furrow that cut across the site and dragged on into the distance before abruptly stopping. A brazen result of a pillar of fire coming through the area, still obvious despite the ice and snow that had built up within the mighty gouge, the station itself barely being spared by chance.
Beyond the station following the cauterised scar and outward was the barren ashland laid over in white, the sheer heat from the fiery pillar had rendered the surrounding area desolate, and radiation had done the rest. A few lone gnarled shrubs or stubborn tufts of mutated plant still dotted the landscape further on, breaking up the wide stretch of snowy nothing until she rested her eyes on the desiccated woods she commonly travelled between and Threshold not much farther beyond that.
She didn't spot anything nasty lurking out in the flats, this part of the Western Ranges was often clearer as there wasn't much to be had out here for bandits or monsters. Everything worth having was within Threshold or one of the other cities or smaller towns, it was partly why she'd chosen this location to stay in even with the drawbacks of being somewhat open to the elements.
Everything seemed normal for now, as far as normal could be these days.
She moved back across the room and sat for a moment before the remnants of the fire, picking up an unmarked tin of what she suspected were probably carrots. With what she'd gathered yesterday they would have enough for the week, though she'd like to find more so they could actually have full bellies for once without having to worry too much. Opening the tin with a can opener lying near the precious pile of food she raised an eyebrow in surprise to see baked beans in a sauce, far better than carrots. She ate half the contents cold and left it atop the others, Applebloom would see it and finish it off soon.
Done with that she began to gather what she'd need for the trek out, getting up and grabbing her pack to double-check everything. She'd already cleared and sorted it last night but she didn't want to haul anything that wasn't necessary. Inside was the bottle of water and ration bar she'd held off of having yesterday, a spare filter for the gas mask, and a smaller bag of hex bolts, nothing else. She hadn't needed the bag yesterday really as she'd used known paths and her Phobos hadn't been alerted to anything, yet today she was braving a less travelled route, and she did feel safer having it to hoof.
She took the smaller bag out and clipped it to her upper foreleg, then doing up her pack and bringing it over to her weapons. She'd not cleaned the lever-action when she returned last night, she'd been too tired, but it was sturdy and she really didn't need to strip it every day. She had spent the time to fit the pulse rifle with the two newer gem-cores from the park though, so it should be fine for at least twenty good shots, hopefully more. It would take encountering a monster to test the level of output though, she wasn't going to waste what charge it had otherwise. She slung both weapons around herself and threw the pack on after, confirming the Nova grenade was still securely attached, then sheathing her knife and taking and fitting on her hoof-dusters.
She finished up by chucking on her boots and gloves, and placing her gas mask around her neck and the Phobos in a pocket, throwing on her poncho to hide them from sight. The weight of everything she carried wasn't detrimental yet, though she'd certainly feel it when it came to getting into a fight or needing to run away, she'd manage it the same as usual.
A brief glance towards the steamer trunk and she saw that Applebloom had tidied away all the spare bits and tools, and the radio itself looked complete, but she knew they still lacked a majority of electronics for its inner workings, so maybe she'd find something usable on today's venture and get them that much closer to getting out of here.
She turned back to where she'd kept her weapons and picked up a hefty revolver with an attached magitech hoof-brace built around it, it was the only other gun they had. It was a bit big for Applebloom yet she handled it well enough, they'd taken it from a dead mare during a firefight they'd been in the crossfire of, luckily getting out with their lives and the gun. She'd spent quite some time fixing the hoof-brace's mechanism to make the pistol workable for hooves again as it had been damaged, using parts for it that could have gone into the radio, but having good protection was paramount to their immediate survival. She checked the gem and its basic connections were all still intact and brought it over to the sleeping bag.
"I'm heading out, 'Bloom. Need ya up." She said, watching as the bedding shifted.
Applebloom yawned as she unzipped the bag and stuck her head out, raising up a hoof to take the weapon. Applejack hoofed it over and watched her sister also check the revolver's condition as she'd been taught to do before fitting the brace around her right hoof, slowly stumbling to all fours and shivering as she trotted over to the firepit to finish off the half-eaten tin left for her. She thumped onto her haunches and picked it up along with a spoon, quickly digging in and turning back to Applejack.
"Can ya try an' be back before sundown?" Applebloom asked her through a mouthful of beans.
She shrugged. "I can only promise that I'll do mah best to. I gotta go the alternate route, that sniper might be waitin' again, an' there aint no tellin' if them folk I wronged are holed up along the main road in an' wantin' to get revenge."
Applebloom frowned. "The way ya told it, their guy shot at ya first, an' all ya actually stole was some fruit."
"Don't mean they aint gonna be sore on both counts." She said, moving to the room's main exit and lifting the makeshift bar they'd set up across it to block entry from this side. She placed it down and shimmied her gear around to get it more comfortable. "I aint riskin' it, an' the alternate route should be pretty clear by now. How many shots does yer pistol have?"
"Four outta six."
"That's right. Be sure to-"
"-Put the bar back across, keep quiet if I do some work, monsters aren't likely to show up but hide in the floor if they do, if bandits show up hide until the last possible second an' aim fer their heads." Applebloom recited, sounded a little weary. "...An' save the last bullet fer myself, ah know, Sis."
Applejack nodded solemnly. "I know ya do, 'Bloom. I just worry when I aint here fer ya."
"So then get back as quick as ya can, or lemme come with." Applebloom said, a slight smirk on her muzzle.
She smiled back a little hollowly, swallowing the lump in her throat she got everyday when she left the station, and opened the door into the open room next to them, cold air breezing and light spilling into the building from the destroyed walls and ceiling. It didn't matter how damaged the station looked, one day she knew somepony was going to come exploring and she just hoped she was here when it happened. She looked out of the gaps and still saw nothing in the surrounding area, moving back and giving Applebloom a tight hug and a well wish before shutting the door.
As soon as she heard the bar go back, she turned and made to leave, putting her hood up to hide her mane. She knew she'd feel a little less worried once she got going, Applebloom was a capable young mare and had proved she could protect herself if she needed to, and she'd hide away in their little hole if anything or anypony came along until she couldn't. It was a very unsuspecting spot and with any luck anypony with less than friendly intentions would focus more on the unattended food and parts than a notable lack of people in the room, perhaps believing that they'd gotten lucky and discovered the station while its occupants were elsewhere.
It was just another risk they had to deal with. What scared her were the unknown variables, and that was everything these days. She had always found solace in structure and routine, her fastidious nature got along with such things like a house on fire, yet there was no semblance of any clear paths to take anymore beyond a general idea, and the future was dark and uncertain to the point that she found herself afraid of whatever lay ahead. She feared these waking moments, the simple ever-present fear of danger that surrounded every movement and never went away no matter how hard she pushed the feeling to the back of her mind.
All she could do was bury it as much as possible and keep soldiering on. Her friends were likely in the same boat, and she couldn't imagine what Applebloom must feel like having lost the normal future she should have grown up with, and even with their troubles and what she'd caused, Applebloom was emulating her big sister and keeping a stiff upper lip, refusing to cry and staying strong for everypony else's sake.
She was waiting for it to come crashing down, and she'd be ready to hold Applebloom when the time came, the realisation and existential dread that came from truly thinking about what the future held and the possible hopelessness of their plight. It would hit her at a moment of weakness and Applejack would need to be there to pick her back up.
They had to believe they had a future.
Shaking her head at the dark thoughts, she watched the flats ahead before she hopped down between the platforms onto the cess, pacing between the burnt sleepers of the tracks and across to the opposite side, though she didn't pull herself up onto the platform above at first, instead moving to one of the boxy gaps underneath that was tightly covered over, and a small bucket just outside it much the same. She quickly checked the bucket, lifting the makeshift lid and checking the special filter to see that it was apparently still working, though she was a little disappointed at the level of water. Opening the gap she saw the cultivated soil inside and didn't see much progress in it, and she removed a glove for a moment, pushing a hoof into the dirt.
She breathed deep and let her innate magic surge briefly, letting it flow into the earth and the seeds that still hadn't shown much growth. The mushrooms hadn't progressed either which was rather unfortunate. She'd done her best to contain the area to keep out the hazardous elements, gathered soil where she could that wasn't irradiated, used filtered water they could have drunk to help the plant life flourish, though sadly not a lot was happening and radiation was probably still bleeding in. It might have been better had she some fertiliser, but that was something of a pipe dream, this was currently as good as it got.
Maybe it might show some progress over the next week.
Putting her glove back on she securely covered the gap again and pulled herself up onto the platform above, seeing the flats were still clear. She eyed the giant dark scar in the land as she moved on ahead, taking the usual path around it. Here and there were small rocks buried into the ground, a few covered with a small layer of snow which she brushed off as she stopped by them so she could find them later. They were spaced oddly, differently shaped, and far enough from one another that it shouldn't arouse suspicion as to the route they mapped out, forming a guide to keep her clear of dangers as the flats weren't safe from radiation or anomalies either, her Phobos now even gently clicking when she passed certain markers. She'd gotten out and back yesterday without getting held up, though it didn't mean she could every single day.
She stopped suddenly as her Phobos ticked quicker approaching another marking stone, glancing around and not seeing anything strange around herself, no distortions or flickers in the air or snow swirling about in a small wind. It was never good if the Phobos was ticking heavily and there weren't any obvious signs as to why, she'd heard about undetectable anomalies before and she hoped never to encounter one. Grabbing the small bag on her foreleg she reached in and took a bolt, sharply throwing it out in front of her. She held her breath as the bolt sailed through the air, and she watched it land some distance ahead from the marker without any issue, but her Phobos was still warning her of something. She threw out another to her left, flinching back a little as it travelled a bit before squarely stopping in place, a strange echo keening through the air as it then slowly melted down into dross while falling to the ground.
Just her luck, this hadn't been here yesterday.
Most folk she'd encountered called them Melts, because that's pretty much what they did. Metal objects would almost instantaneously and simply melt down into nothing, rather quickly the smaller they were, but a Melt didn't immediately kill a pony, instead, if they found themselves absently stepping into one they'd get incredibly warm and begin to have severe migraines and muscle cramps. They would have very little time to get out of it again before they started to bleed from their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as then their organs began to melt. There did exist a similar anomaly known as Slags that for some reason only damaged inorganic material, and while it would make one feel uncomfortably warm and give varying degrees of headache or migraine it didn't kill outright, though she wasn't about to test if this was one or not.
Her breathing quickened as she did feel a slight increase in warmth, and she carefully took a few steps to the right bringing the marking stone with her to reposition it, and throwing another bolt out towards the direction of the giant scar, feeling thankful it touched down without incident. She made it to the next marker without any trouble as the Phobos calmed down, and she relaxed a little better as she safely moved to the one after as well.
Such things had to always be kept in mind even when going around familiar places, the land could shift overnight or even hourly in certain areas. She took a moment to breathe as she soon passed the flats into the beginnings of the gnarled forest. Granny Smith would have called that encounter a bad omen, and it didn't bode well for the rest of her trip. Regardless, she continued onward towards Threshold moving on to a well travelled hoofpath outside of the city that soon led parallel to a road leading inward, and she broke off to follow another way around the outskirts. The beaten path she came to had been laid by others in the past simply by way of walking it a great deal, with plenty of old and obvious landmarks or objects that had since built up and overlapped to the point that it was simply clutter.
The only real use now was cover to utilise from the overlooking city, and she kept between corroded burn barrels and worn wooden barricades, moving along the semi-clear dirt road while keeping ready for any trouble that might come her way. On the route she paused by a makeshift metal structure built out of old iron pipes appearing to be somepony's attempt at recreating a radio tower on a smaller scale, that held a sign reading Hocks Place , with 2 miles written beneath it, the sign pointing towards the direction she was going.
Hocks Place, as it turned out, had been a small outpost within the city near the eastern side where she assumed people had once traded with one another. When she'd gone to check it out a few days after initially arriving near Threshold however, she'd only found a deserted and empty shop with numerous bullet holes riddling the place and old blood stains on the floor, and it had remained that way since as she'd thought setting up there wouldn't have been within the best of ideas.
The sign was a simple mark of history at this point, it made her wistful.
She trod past the tower, boots softly crunching in the snow underhoof as she went and continuing on her trek for some time, wary of her surroundings but thankfully unnoticed by anything. Her breath wasn't clouding as much as time progressed, so the temperature was going up, she could feel the gentle warmth of the sun as it climbed into the sky. Following the way this far along past the tower signalled a minor waypoint, a small cairn of sorts marking what she supposed had been a death, and she shifted her shotgun down to rest beneath her as she soon came up to a long-since disused military checkpoint. It only held a few rusted trucks with rotting tires, everything that might be of use long-since looted in the aftermath of the Singularity, and she moved up behind a shot-up sandbag emplacement to listen out for a few seconds.
She didn't hear very much except the gentle flow of wind through the area, whistling between the old vehicles as she looked around for danger, so she quickly trotted over to one of them and snapped off its still-intact mirror, rubbing her hoof into the dirt and then onto the mirror's face. It was slightly bigger than her last one, so hopefully it wouldn't affect what she could easily put into her backpack without having to screw around organising it. Shoving it into her pack, she went past the truck to move along an actual side road leading in that the checkpoint had been set up on, not bothering to keep to the cluttered path that continued along around to the main road on the other side of the city.
That way lay a sizable encampment just a few hundred hooves down a hill, she'd spotted it before in the distance along with numerous ponies and a few Gryphons milling about it and not looked back. There was no trusting they weren't simply bandits, and she wasn't going to risk her life checking, as if she could see them it was a certainty they could have seen her, and she refused to stick around long enough for them to get any ideas.
The side road she went on travelled toward Threshold only for a short period until a few remote buildings started to appear, the small and damaged roadside shops of brick and wood once having sold produce. She stuck to the edge of the road and kept close to the rundown shops when she came up on them in case she needed to duck behind one, though she also wanted to gently poke her head in or peer through their broken windows to see if anypony had taken up residence since her last trip this way. She went as quietly as she could and didn't find anything out of the ordinary until some distance had been crossed, her Phobos once again ticking up as she neared a half-collapsed shop that she suspected somepony had once set a grenade or two off inside of given its poor state.
Before she could utilise the bag on her foreleg, there came a low throaty growl from within the ruined building. Her breath hitching as she realised the sound and quickly went for her pulse rifle. She slipped it off her back and moved upright onto her hindlegs just as a mutated and strongly-muscled hairless paw moved out from behind the nearest broken wall, crunching onto the crumbled bricks around it as the rest of the oversized twisted beast came into view, its large disfigured head turning in her direction. A Direwolf, of all fucking things. It bared yellow teeth as large as railroad spikes, its growl deepening while suddenly lurching into a rush toward her, and she got the rifle up and her hooves securely in both its trigger and hoof guards as it crossed the distance between them.
She swiftly lined up a shot, immediately backing off and aiming for its huge head while squeezing in the pulse rifle's blocky trigger so that it could charge, the pointed tip at its fore glowing with purple light before she released, the rifle emitting a flash as it fired out a bright bolt of scorching energy. She missed the Direwolf's head in her agitation as it came for her, but the bolt struck its side and made the Direwolf howl and fumble as its flesh was burned away. It was a good enough shot despite her missing her main target, the rifle's power was about at the right amount she hoped it would be.
Squeezing the trigger in again she knew she'd land the headshot, though before she released the trigger there was a sudden flare and crack as the Direwolf lunged for her and the space next to it suddenly arced out with furious thunder, making her fumble back and shout in alarm as the area was all-too-quickly bathed in electricity from a triggered Strike anomaly. She cursed as her shot went wide and she landed on her rifle, ignoring the ache in her ribs and scrambling back to get away from the violent energy crackling through the air. She could feel her mane stand on end as she watched the Direwolf be struck by multiple bolts of lightning, the huge beast failing to get away from the maelstrom and crashing to the ground, and yowling in pain as the anomaly continued to rage on.
Several more streaks from the Strike thumped into its prone form until the Direwolf shuddered and went still with a growling sigh, and she remained frozen in place outside of the Strike's range not daring to move an inch lest she be struck. It seemed an age until the anomaly stopped fluctuating and finally settled back into inertia, and she felt like she could breathe again properly, a metallic tang to the air as she took a few steadying breaths. Slowly gathering herself, she got back onto her hooves as her nerves calmed some, keeping the pulse rifle below her rather than the shotgun and slowly moving past the Direwolf's corpse while keeping keenly aware of the Strike's distance to activate.
The Melt earlier really had been a bad omen, if encountering both a Direwolf and a Strike at the same time was any indication of her luck. Her Phobos was slowly ticking away due to her close proximity to the anomaly, but it had discharged a majority of its energy now and would take a while before it built up such a level of power again. That didn't mean it wouldn't hurt her if it was activated a second time; though the effect wouldn't be as strong it would still likely burn her quite badly. She guessed she should actually count herself rather lucky the Strike had been there, as if she'd managed to miss her shot on the Direwolf then without it she'd probably still be tussling with the beast.
That or she'd have been its breakfast.
A small huff escaped her as she glanced back at the dead Direwolf laying near the side of the road, she'd honestly have quite liked to butcher it for the meat. With snow all around it wasn't a terrible idea to get as much as she could and pack it into a mound to freeze while she did her errand, then she could transport it back to the station later and freeze it again, ultimately keeping it for trade or, Celestia forbid, eating if they ran low on food. She knew that quite a few ponies had turned to eating meat rations in the months following the Singularity, and it wasn't as if they couldn't eat it. There had been no laws against it before the laws had collapsed, and plenty of hardy northern ponies around the Frozen North living on its harsh tundra's had happily subsisted mainly on fish, but personally it just didn't sit quite right with her.
She'd leave it for the time being, with any luck the corpse would still be there later.
She wanted winter clothing far more.
The Phobos stopped its lamenting once she'd gotten far enough away from the Strike. Threshold's taller buildings loomed as she approached, blocks of derelict flats and ruined skyscrapers both looking down on everything else ominously. There was an odd sound to the city early in the day as the wind picked up and blew through its endlessly ruptured surfaces, and she had to make a point of keeping an ear out for others as she went, as between the occasional distant shot of a gun firing, baying howls of creatures braving the day, or the sound of hooves or boots against the ground, there was much to keep vigilant for.
Case in point, she swiftly moved and ducked behind the corner of the nearest building as quietly as possible when there was an audible crunch up ahead beyond the ruined vehicles of a hoof stepping on something, likely old bones, and she peeked out while readying her shotgun to soon see a small group of three moving through the area, two stallions and a mare. They were all dressed a little like her rather than in rags, all of them armed, the mare having a heavy coat well-suited for the weather. Almost immediately one of the stallions glanced up, most likely seeing her in his peripherals, and she held and kept his gaze as he quickly alerted his two companions to her presence, their heads turning towards her as well as they tensed.
"No trouble!" He shouted over at her after a moment, and the group promptly moved on, though they looked back over their shoulders at her occasionally, probably to see if she'd try to shoot them in the back.
Everypony was wary of one another, which was good, it helped them live longer.
When she was sure the group had moved on she left her spot and weaved through the broken down vehicles and crashed propulsives, roughly knowing the way she needed to go from here to get to the shopping centre. Thankfully she didn't have to follow behind the trio, that would have made them very uncomfortable and likely to actually open fire at her, thinking her a bandit or prowling outlander waiting to strike while they got gaskin-deep in shit. Her Phobos ticked on occasion and she avoided small pockets of radiation built up in alleys or around large chunks of irradiated stone within craters smashed into the ground. She'd done trade with a stallion in the past that had told her when the Singularity had hit that some buildings made of certain types of stone had absorbed a heavy level of radiation, and nopony could safely traverse them all the way up to the top because that was where most of it had been concentrated. Over time the buildings had crumbled from the damage unleashed from the resulting insane weather and crashed down below to create numerous unsafe areas that monsters liked to lurk around.
It was just good she hadn't encountered any more yet, cluttered streets were dangerous to move in.
She neared her destination as just the sun was around its zenith, the sizable shopping centre coming into view as she turned onto the same road that linked up with the abandoned park she'd scavved in yesterday, hastily getting between broken down vehicles as another gunshot rang out not too far from her current position, though luckily it wasn't at her. She was quite sure it had come from within the shopping centre but it could have possibly been behind it, that wasn't good in either case as it meant activity around the area. While she'd expected that she might possibly encounter one or two people seeing as it was daytime, she'd been hearing far more gunfire than she was used to, especially over the past few days.
She had to wonder if it had anything at all to do with the malicious rumour that had initially gotten her and Applebloom stuck here in the first place. She didn't doubt that there had been others like them or the group of scum they'd encountered to be interested in the story. A slight growl left her as she knew she shouldn't let herself dwell on it.
As soon as it was quiet again she paced out from behind the wrecks and snuck along the nearest underhang so her line of sight was clear behind and in front, trudging through the layered snow and ash that had piled up and subconsciously putting a hoof on her shotgun. She sat down for a scant moment as she retrieved the new mirror from her pack, and checked the upcoming corners with it for any signs of danger as she went. There was a sizable distance between where she waited on the edge of the overhang and the shopping centre with the two-way road sat between them surrounding the building, and only a wide open vehicle park awaiting her with low walls and a few derelicts for any form of cover.
She tucked the mirror's stalk into the neck of her jacket, a little uncomfortable against her chest but that was fine, and she steeled herself before she broke into a gallop, and didn't dare slow until she'd jumped the wall and gotten down between two parked cars corroding with rust. No shots at her yet. Taking another breath or two she sprinted again towards the only entrance she could see, avoiding piles of rubble as she ran and slowed only when she was a few hooves from the double doors. They were already open with their glass plating smashed, and she went as carefully and quickly as possible as she stepped through onto grimy marble flooring, immediately dipping into the nearest store through its broken window to get her out of the open hall.
An old clothing store, she noted as she tucked herself into a collection of musty summer wear, the garments mouldy where the damp had blown in. She kept low and breathed gently, not hearing anypony moving around, and waited a bit longer just in case somepony had heard her approaching the shopping centre and also hunkered down to catch her unawares. A few minutes passed while she waited, and maybe she was simply being paranoid, but she could have sworn she heard hoofsteps much deeper within the building.
But she didn't want to stay here all day either, so she slowly rose and trotted over through the worn racks and shelves towards the store's main exit, pulling the mirror from her jacket again as it was certainly going to be invaluable in here. She edged it out and checked the left hall, then turning it right and seeing both ways were clear for now, all that she could see was built-up rubbish and blown in leaves alongside the layered frozen detritus covering the open floors, up the escalators, and around the high pillars the first floor was connected to, the once proud banners hanging from the ceiling that depicted happy ponies shopping and the amazing sales they could have now tattered and faded, the rot eating those away too as mould crept over their lengths. She could surmise the overall floor plan, it was rather simple with the hall she'd come into from a side entrance going along to another set of double doors, but connecting and going left at the middle to branch into another connecting hall with the same openings, the overall shape of the shopping centre resembling a letter H with stores on every available bit of space around its edges.
There were three floors, but the first floor held the outdoor store that she was after, somewhat central on the opposite side to her, according to an information board she could read in the face of her dirty mirror. She had another look both ways again just to be sure and tucked the mirror back into her jacket before carefully moving out of the clothing store, tense with her shotgun still ready beneath her. Creeping towards the escalator she scanned the upper level for any danger, not hearing anything or any voices or seeing anypony, and thinking that maybe she'd simply heard an echo of her own movements as she'd come inside. The escalator was somewhat icy as she stepped up its metal-plated stairs, noting the imprints of boots in the frost that she couldn't be certain were fresh or not, though it just added to her paranoia.
There were numerous stores dedicated to clothing and hobbies when she reached the first floor as she had a quick glance around, turning right towards the outdoor store and feeling a little peeved to see that it was extremely barren. It was far smaller than she had expected it might be, and she could already see the walls, shelves, and racks were spotty in what they offered, but what was there could be made to work if need be. She promptly moved into the store, gently pushing aside broken glass underhoof before putting her boots down against the wooden flooring and soon moved up to the nearest coats, though many of them were in terrible condition, the fur utterly mouldy where the coats had been left alone to battle against the elements.
The most that she found was a slightly less tattered one, first thinking on something for Applebloom, until she started searching in the back area, moving between the broken metal shelving units and seeing that there were a few sealed boxes amongst many torn open ones with their contents carelessly strewn around, also partly worn down from the cold streaming in and affecting them. Tearing open a larger box herself that hadn't been too damaged by the damp, she only found some woolly beanies but took several of them just in case, shuffling off her backpack and stuffing them in, and left the pack there momentarily as she tore open another. She grinned finding a good mix of assorted foals hiking wear, seeing a larger sized fur-lined coat in excellent condition as she rummaged around that would fit Applebloom perfectly with room to spare. The coat being on the bigger side would be good for both layering and for Applebloom's continued growth. She took some gloves and hoof warmers for her as well as it was going to get very cold within the coming months.
As she turned to search around for something for herself her ears twitched, as she heard voices echoing from some way outside the store and in the halls down to the right, freezing up momentarily before hastily reasserting control, grabbing her pack, and sneaking as fast as possible into a small alcove indenting the wall that would readily hide her from view. She threw the pack down and pushed herself up onto her hindlegs into a corner with her shotgun prepped. She waited tense and listened out, the voices getting closer as a sweat started to build up her back. She didn't fancy her chances against a group at all, even if only one of them came in she'd be in trouble.
"Guppy, go check that one real quick, grab me a jacket or something, and Zip some gloves, we're gonna go up a floor."
"Yeah."
Shit .
She felt wound up like a spring as she breathed as gently as possible, hearing the crunch of Guppy's boots on the broken glass covering the floor as the stallion stepped through a store window. She heard him indiscreetly step around the store looking for the items and knew there weren't any gloves that he'd find in good condition until he looked near the till where she'd seen some behind it on a rack. That was much too close to the back for her liking, if he came through then she was going to have to fight him. He shuffled through rubbish and clothing she'd already kicked through for a few agonising minutes that stretched on forever, and there was a brief pause as she heard him reach the tills and quietly exclaim upon seeing the gloves. She hoped he'd already seen a good jacket or cared less about their condition so he'd leave soon enough, and then she could get out of he-
No, he was moving into the back, this was going to go from bad to worse.
He was passing through the door, and he'd soon be walking right by her. The alcove was big enough that she'd be hidden from his sight until he was right on top of her, yet even if he wasn't looking for anypony he'd still immediately spot her in the corner of his vision. Contact was going to be unavoidable. It was just him right now, his group was elsewhere, she had to be careful about this in order to get out quietly. She readied her hoof-dusters, flicking them onto her coronets and thinking on the shotgun just in case she had no other options, but a hoof first went to her combat knife. She felt a slight chill up her spine and her stomach drop as she withdrew it, and held her breath as Guppy's shuffling grew more audible.
The split second he entered into her view, as she expected he snapped his head towards her with his vibrant blue eyes going wide in shock, and she lunged at him.
"Oh shit! " He shouted as they collided.
He yelped in alarm as she just managed to wrap her hooves around his torso and gun hoof as they fell to the floor, he was a Pegasus and she didn't want him using his wings to bat at her, grab his gun from its brace, or make a fast exit, though he smacked her in the face with his free hoof before she fully threw herself forwards and headbutted him squarely on the nose in return. It delayed him enough that she followed it up with a hard punch to his jaw with a hoof-duster, shifting her leg to bring the knife in her other hoof up to his throat as he was temporarily stunned by the attack. It put an immediate halt to his struggling, his wings going deathly still as she pushed the blade against his skin, and he sucked in a breath as she threateningly held it there, her free hoof moving to his down to his side and tearing the semi-automatic pistol out of its brace, momentarily tucking it into one of her jacket's outer pockets.
"That's right, nice an' quie-"
"Hey Guppy, what the fuck was that?!"
She glowered at the voice coming from outside the store, pushing the edge of her knife against Guppy's throat just a little harder. "Hewbat , tell 'em."
"U-uh... just a-another fuckin' Hewbat, took me by surprise!" Guppy shouted out after swallowing his shock, his blue eyes looking back at her with fear. "Be out in a sec!"
A very tense few seconds passed, nopony came to check the situation.
"Good, that's good, I don't wanna hurt ya, Guppy." Applejack whispered, frowning a little at her words. "Well, anymore than I already did, I jus' wanna get outta here without gettin' shot."
"M-my buddies wouldn't-"
"I can't trust that, an' I won't." She cut him off, keeping her voice low. "I'm surrounded by unknown people, a group I aint sure aint bandits that'd shoot me fer being alone an' easy pickin's. Would you trust that with yer life, Guppy?"
"...Probably not." He conceded.
"Exactly."
A few more seconds passed, and Guppy spoke up. "What now?"
"Now? Well, I would have had a look about fer a coat, an' now there aint no time, so I'm awful sorry but I'll be takin' yers, it looks to be in better condition than mah jacket is." She said, as she'd seen that he was wearing a basic duster, and even though it was made for Pegasi with holes in the back for their wings to poke through, it was in very good repair. It wasn't a coat but he got the idea, and quickly nodded. "I'm gonna back off, an' you take it off real slow, an' don't go makin' any quick movements or shoutin' out otherwise I'm gonna have to shoot ya. Most likely yer group'll gun me down, but I still got a chance of gettin' out, though you'd be dead 'fore ya hit the ground."
He swallowed, nodding again, and she abruptly shoved off and upright, bringing her shotgun up fast with a hoof and keeping it partly level as she sheathed the knife so she could fully support the frame. As she'd ordered, he carefully got to his hooves and shifted the duster off using his wings, gently tossing it forward and waiting for what she would do next. She didn't hear Guppy's friends coming to check on him yet, so she carefully stepped over to a shelf that had some worn thermal undersuits she'd not have minded having were they not so mouldy, and took them off with a hoof, a little awkward with her hoofing as she moved back over to him.
"Turn."
Guppy mutely faced about and she had to make the conscious decision to let the shotgun hang on its sling as she took one of the undersuits and pulled it taught, the material long and stretchy enough that she could pull it around him, and he didn't attempt to push her off with his wings as she chucked it over his head and tied it in a quick double knot around his midsection, just about managing it with the length. It was probably a bit tight as Guppy grunted from being jostled about while she did the second knot up, but he'd be found soon enough by his friends once she left.
She took her hooves off of him for a scant second to ready the second undersuit in order to gag him, her heart doing a somersault as he instantly made an attempt to bolt, struggling at his bindings while she lunged forward to grab him, a foreleg going around his head. He tried desperately to shake her off to no avail, and she grabbed for her knife to pacify him into compliance again.
"GUYS! GUYS CO-"
Before he could keep shouting her knife had left its sheath and the blade was stabbed upwards under his muzzle, and she clenched him tightly as the knife very easily pierced through the soft flesh up towards the back of his throat and he spasmed and grunted in agony, his words cutting off and his wings erratically twitching as he gasped trying to keep shouting out. She felt a fast-welling lump rise in her throat and tears threatening at the corners of her eyes as she gripped his head harder with both hooves as he struggled, feeling the blade sink deeper while a warmth of his lifeblood flowed over her foreleg from the fatal wound she'd inflicted. Slowly, his spasms subsided into gentle twitches and he wretchedly gasped as he died from the shock, his fluttering wings easing and going limp, and she released a quiet distressed cry, struggling to breathe in the scent of his blood as she held his corpse against her chest.
"You stupid bastard, why'd ya go an'... w-why'd ya... ya stupid..." She whispered into his ear while she gently cradled him. "...m'sorry..."
"Guppy? What's going on, dude?!"
She stiffened again, the voice was rapidly approaching, she needed to move right now, she needed to leave right now . Trying to keep down her revulsion she let go of Guppy's lifeless body, holding back a sob with tears blurring her vision and fighting to stop herself choking as she shakily picked up his duster, making a futile attempt to wipe off his blood and only succeeding in smearing it and covering her other glove, the front of her jacket already stained a darker colour just like her foreleg. She trotted over and quickly stuffed the duster into her backpack, along with the mirror and the gun she'd put in her pocket, clasping it shut and swinging it on as she heard boots crunch onto the glass within the store's entrance area.
She wouldn't be able to hide anywhere, and the next stranger would soon see Guppy and either shout out or run away to alert his fellows. Taking a few breaths to steady herself she swiftly repositioned and waited by the door into the back, forcing herself upright again and weightily resting against the wall as she pointed the shotgun at the doorway. Her heart was beating so fast, and she was trying to keep her breathing under control as she blinked away tears.
She really didn't want to have to kill anypony else today.
"Hey, you having trouble with the Hewbats in here, Guppy? Did one bite you on the dic-" The stallion, a navy Unicorn, said as he stepped through the back door, then seeing Guppy's corpse, and her instantly afterward with her shotgun in his face, the smile on his muzzle abruptly vanishing. "Oh, what the fuck ..."
"I don't wanna kill ya, I jus' wanna leave, please." Applejack whispered, her eyes flicking to his horn and over the pump-action shotgun on his back. "Take yer shotgun off, no magic, alright?"
"Go fuck yourself, my friends are gonna kill you slow." He growled at her.
"Take it off now ." She said back a little sterner, her heart rate picking up again. "Please don't make me shoot ya, I don't wanna kill nopony else but I will if I have to."
He was clearly sizing her up and seeing if she'd follow through on that statement, or he was trying to delay her and waste time, but he relented with a sigh fast enough, and very slowly grabbed his shotgun by its middle and began to ease it off from around himself.
...Before he then swiftly rushed at her, knocking aside her shotgun as she tried to fire at him and failed as his horn flared and held the trigger, and he pulled her to the floor while trying to shove his horn into her face to gore her through an eye. Adrenaline pumping, she yelled in frustration as a hoof came up and the hoof-duster solidly connected with his chin in a weighty impact of metal on flesh, and his head snapped back from the heavy blow while she surged, smacking forward with her other hoof into his side and making him shout out in pain as his ribs were also struck by the brass. She didn't let up, Earthen strength allowed her to compel herself up onto her haunches even with his full weight atop her, and she hastily threw another punch as he fell back though it struck into his raised forelegs as they beat down at her.
She launched herself at him despite his attack and managed to smack at his horn as he tried to use his magic to lift his shotgun at her, the action stopping his casting and sending him into nausea as it did all Unicorns, though he still wildly flailed and scored a few lucky hits at her face. She grunted past the pain and brought down another heavy hoof across his face, hearing a crunch as her hoof-duster broke his nose and he choked out a cry of pain. She punched him again in the side she'd already hit and heard something crack there as well, letting up as he fell back and groaned in agony.
"Stay where ya are." She ordered, stepping back as she got to all fours, and then willing herself upright and getting her shotgun into place. "Don't try to-"
His horn glowed and he ensnared his own shotgun, quickly trying to bring it around.
"Don't! "
He still tried along with trying to rise, his pump-action getting about halfway with his magic clearly surrounding the trigger ready to fire, and she beat him to the punch as she was already raising her lever-action, her shotgun roaring at the last possible second. He animalistically convulsed back to the floor as his chest was blasted with a close concentration of pellets, some finding his neck and legs and tearing in. She couldn't force herself to look away as he wheezed at his torso being ripped open, he could hardly breathe and was only able to take in pitifully strangled gasps as he laid there staring into the ceiling with a painful shock across his bleeding face, a dark redness rapidly spreading through the undershirt beneath his open coat.
"I-I warned ya..." She told him uselessly as she cycled the action to let the spent shell eject, and knew she couldn't stay and help him. "I'm sorry."
Sorry really didn't cut it for murder.
Both downed stallions' friends were quickly approaching, she could hear the loud shouts of alarm and anger from outside the storefront. She only had the three shells left, and they'd be bearing down upon her soon, she didn't know how many there were or what they were armed with. She flicked the hoof-dusters up and swiftly went over on all fours to the dying stallion, barely sitting as she lifted his shotgun and ejected its shells and seeing that they were slugs rather than buckshot, that would do just fine. Swallowing her discontent, she put a hoof on what she suspected was an ammo pouch hanging off of his coat and opened it to find more shells inside, a random mix of slugs and buckshot both. She undid the buckle and slipped the pouch with its strap out from around him, putting it around herself and re-clasping it as fast as possible.
"What the fuck's going on in there?! Guppy?! Crow!?"
"Who's shooting?!"
"Get the fuck out here, whoever you are!"
That was at least three hostile strangers, and she wagered they weren't just going to simply walk in, nor did she think she was going to be allowed to leave freely. She carefully moved back to the wall before the doorway and let the backpack shift forwards, unclasping the Nova grenade off of it before shrugging it back into place. She gently put a hoof on top of it and twisted the cap, priming it for a one second delay rather than its current three seconds, taking another sharp breath to steady her frazzled nerves.
"Hey there... y'all out there." She shouted out a little lamely.
"What did you do to Crow and Guppy, you bitch!"
"Guppy's dead, and Crow's in a bad way, I don't think he has long." She replied to the voice as she glanced at Crow, his breathing had grown shallower and he was barely moving, a wealth of blood completely reddening his front. "I'd be more than happy to let one of ya come back here with only medical supplies to fix him up, iffin' ya can."
"What, and give you a fucking hostage? Dream on!"
"I... hadn't been thinkin' like that at all." She said back, frowning at the idea. "I jus' wanna go home, I didn't wanna kill nopony! I just wanted to leave peacefully, they gave me no choice!"
"Well you're not leavin'!"
"Yep, you're dead, Guppy was my best friend!"
She yelled out in surprise as one of them unexpectedly opened fire with an assault rifle, and she fell to the floor and tucked in as best she could while the bullets perforated the wall, plaster spraying in clouds, clothing exploding in puffs of musty air, and shelving units pinging as bullets rained through into the back area, before one voice shouted for the shooter to stop. She stayed where she was, breathing heavily as her heart pounded in her ears, and she got herself into a low crouch with the Nova grenade at the ready again.
The second she heard two sets of hooves step further into the store across the broken glass she pushed forward and slapped the top of the Nova grenade, throwing it out into the main area and tensing up in preparation. There was an urgent shout of alarm and then she glanced away and blinked heavily from the massive flashing pulse that spilled past the doorway, and felt the blasting shockwave and crackle of energy from the Nova grenade's detonation. One of the trio promptly opened fire with a shotgun as he was blinded, the impact hitting a different wall out front rather than the one she was taking cover behind, before they were quickly told to stop as well before they killed one of their own. The Nova kept on pulsing for a second or two, and when it ceased she swiftly seized the opportunity to bolt, rushing out and instantly galloping towards the exit. She flicked a hoof-duster down and threw a hard punch into a stallion's face as he heard her and lifted his assault rifle in her direction even while blinded, the blow knocking him down from the sheer surprise of it as she flicked the hoof-duster back up and kept on running.
She barrelled into the lithe stallion standing in the doorway, he was also a Pegasus and she easily forced him aside as she smashed her larger body into him, making him crash back into the walkway railing overlooking the ground floor with a meaty smack. The Nova grenade tended to blind people for several minutes at a time but she didn't trust that somepony might happen to recover much faster than usual, they hadn't been invented with the Singularity in mind, and instead of taking the stairs she decidedly leapt over the rail. She was a little disorientated from the grenade as well, she didn't trust that she wouldn't tumble down the escalator, and this was quicker.
It was a bit of a drop but she knew she could take it, landing hard on her hooves in a loud thud when she touched down with a loud exclamation of discomfort as pain shot up her legs, mostly her right from landing more on that side, and she collapsed to the dirty marble floor onto her front for a short moment with the weight of her weapons and pack bearing down while she recovered from the fall. Stumbling back up as fast as possible, she broke back into a run as best as she could on her pained legs after a few deep lungful's of stale air.
There were shouts above her from the blinded trio as she kept going, a gunshot from a rifle in her general direction being fired but easily missing by a mile as she rounded a corner out of the shopping centre, her weapons jostling on her back as she alternated between sprinting and jogging thanks to the pain that was throbbing through her body. She growled with the effort and willed herself to move as the strain didn't ease up, taking off towards the direction she'd come in from towards the east side of the city and clumsily weaving through the vehicle park as the shouts kept up behind her, loudly echoing from within the shopping centre. She pulled herself over the low wall a little slower than she'd have liked, going back into a poor run-jog-run cycle while taking her chosen path.
With any luck she'd find somewhere relatively safe to hole up in until the strangers had given up on pursuing her, hopefully recover quickly from her self-inflicted fall, and then, well... maybe reflect on the choices she'd had to make.
Author's Note
Sorry for the re-up.
She took in greedy lungfuls of the chilly air as she collapsed against the stacked rubble, heavily rolling about to face the broken ceiling and the glimpses of overcast sky that peeked in through its fractured face from the floor above. Pain arced through each of her legs from both her lengthy fall and her running, and subsequently her back where she'd just thrown herself down against everything she carried, yet it was a minor note in her raging mind.
She clutched her precious shotgun to her chest in her hooves and kept her frantic eyes on the slanted partially-buried entrance she'd fallen through. She quickly edged herself into the corner of what appeared to be a small lobby of the dilapidated building she was now taking refuge inside. The minor details were almost lost to her; the smashed pictures on the walls, the ruined and rotting seating crushed by debris, the frozen desiccated bodies of those that had died, it was all out of mind. The signs that something had once also nested in here were apparent by the bodies missing flesh, and the filth that had built up in places, though these things were just as secondary as the immediate threat mattered more.
Applejack couldn't relax, and refused to let herself. They were certainly still coming for her. If it had been her friends that had been killed she'd be tearing down walls with her bare hooves to get at their murderers. Whose childhood memories had she irrevocably tainted with the knowledge that the precious others weaved into them were now gone forever, their candles snuffed out by a strange mare that had been hiding in a barren shop. She tried her best to push it down but it was no use. The stallion she'd murdered with her knife, Guppy, his blood was still fresh on her, the stallion she'd blasted with her shotgun, Crow, she could still see his pained grimace. She felt nauseous and breathing was hard, her throat felt blocked and her eyes stung with tears that weren't just the result of her hastened run.
Two more deaths she'd caused, added to her list.
She'd already killed three the previous day...
The only possible solace that she could take in both matters was that she'd never intended to do any harm. She wasn't bloodthirsty and she didn't want to kill, she despised that she had to kill at all. Her attacks on others were and had been in defence of herself and so she could protect Applebloom. It wasn't exactly comforting, but she clung to it all the same.
She clenched her eyes shut as she did her best to deeply breathe in and out, in and out, trying to calm down and ignore the smell of blood. She simply tried to breathe, to slow her heartbeat, doing her best to rid herself of agitation as she opened her eyes again to keep them fixed on the doorway. Now was not the time for trauma, there wasn't any room for it at this moment. Compartmentalise now, deal with the trauma later. Much, much later. Slowly, slowly she felt herself shake less as she got herself under control and the adrenaline abated bit by bit, hefting the shotgun and keeping it raised at the open gap in front of her. There were no other ways in, the wide window on the far side was blocked with collapsed debris from the building having fallen on that side, and she had a good angle on the half-buried door. Her eyes cleared as she blinked the tears out of them, the seconds ticked by as they dried on her face and her breathing became more even.
Lock it all down.
No following danger yet, it'll come soon.
She waited tensely, still shaking a little from the comedown as her ears perked for any hint of a cry or a shout, any possible sound that might inform her that the group she'd wronged was pursuing her. She didn't hear much but the shrill whistling of the wind through the streets and ruins. While the sound was unnerving it at least meant she was alone for now. After a few more seconds there were some distant gunshots, though those weren't anywhere near her, and she almost believed herself to be in the clear until she heard the distant crunch of a boot on gravel.
It was faint but she definitely heard it.
She partly cycled the action, nudging the lever down to peek into the shotgun's breach and finding it had a shell loaded. Thankfully she had already cycled it after the last shot, she just hadn't recalled if she had done so or not in the heat of the moment. Carefully letting the lever move back up into the resting position, she kept her breathing low and the barrel as steady as she could currently manage. She pushed herself back against the rubble to brace as the heavy steps became louder. There was likely nothing for it, she was probably going to have to shoot somepony again today.
"Hello? Hey, are you alright?"
...Maybe not? That voice didn't sound hostile, but that trick was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
She kept the shotgun level.
"Hey, lady? Saw you running like a pack of fucking Hounds were on your tail, you alright?"
The voice was sharp and bordering on grave, almost a bassy baritone. She felt like she could hear a certain level of concern in it underneath the heavy layer of wariness. It was a voice that was also used to being tricked, a voice that belonged to a creature that was certainly keeping a weapon at the ready and looking around for the ambush. She slowly took in a deeper breath and held it while the stranger approached her position, her shotgun prepared to fire if she needed to. If she saw the hint of a weapon first...
The heavy steps stopped.
What?
Applejack waited for a couple of seconds without anything happening before she breathed out and carefully lent to the side to try and peek for the stranger, but to no avail. They must have either realised where she was hiding and were waiting for her to move, or they were simply listening out for where she might be. If they had grenades then they would have thrown them in already had they guessed where she was. Maybe waiting was the best play for now.
"Hey."
Her eyes went wide and she gasped in alarm through another spike of fear as she quickly snapped her head up, her shotgun moving with her and her hoof ready on the trigger. She saw the Gryphon peeking at her through the gaps in the damaged floor above as her shotgun began to point in his direction, before he quickly darted down in a flash, a forelimb moving imperceptibly fast as he grabbed the barrel in his claw. Before she could pull the trigger or fight back he'd snatched the weapon from her grasp and partly caught her legs up in the weapon's sling. She was prevented from moving too easily by it, so she tried to edge towards grabbing her pulse rifle instead.
"Calm down, lady. I'm not gonna shoot you."
She tried to pull her weapon back but it was futile, snorting in anger at him in the attempt to thrash out of the sling. The sound of her brief struggling echoed slightly off the walls around them. It was more an annoyed gesture of being caught stupidly unaware if nothing else. A few seconds passed, and instead of trying to kick at him she allowed herself to ease up just a bit, the Gryphon staying in place with a partial smirk on his beak. She reasoned that he could have shot her with a weapon that he could easily pull from elsewhere by now, and he also could have already shot her from above while she'd been focusing too hard on the doorway, and he hadn't. Unless he was the sadistic type then she wasn't going to get a bullet in the back either.
"Can I have mah gun back?" Applejack asked in a huff after a moment.
He raised an eyebrow. "You gonna try and shoot me?"
"Not unless ya pull a gun first."
He grinned, the answer seeming to satisfy him as he let go of the shotgun's barrel. Applejack caught the weapon as she saw him move back just as fast as he'd caught her out, wings gusting wind as he moved a little higher up onto a rubble stack. He didn't draw anything as she got a hold of her weapon properly and leant back again with it in her hooves, though he certainly had his claw on one of his own as she got herself sorted out. She stood tall on all fours and let the shotgun rest, and he then dropped back down, his tufted tail swishing as he landed on his booted paws with a weighty crunch on the debris-strewn floor around them. He stood up to his full height as well with one claw resting on a holstered pistol on his opposite hip, vibrant azure eyes assessing and staring down at her.
His upper half was probably silver in colour, his down and lower being varying shades of gold, and he was very well protected in what was clearly military-issue body armour and kit, sans a helmet. The standard assault rifle of the Royal Gryphonian Legion rested on his back besides just the pistol in its holster, as well the usual items most had on them like the Phobos secured to his chest rig or the gas mask at his side. It made her wonder if she was actually rather lucky to be as decently equipped as she was.
Similarly like her, he'd covered himself over in a mid-length poncho, though he had a scarf too. Oddly, both were a strange mix of patterns ranging through shades of grey and white. It was strange as his armour was also a dark grey, and she could only assume that it was something recent to the Gryphon's of Equestria's military before the Singularity. The usual soldiers she'd seen beforehand had always been fitted with the standard wheat-coloured drab. Something that was definitely unique to Gryphons and Dragons though were the open-toe boots he had on his paws, each digit spread out with the claws dug in on the floor below them for purchase.
She nodded at him and he returned the gesture with the same grin on his face.
"Howdy." Applejack greeted him.
"Hey," he said again, his claw relaxing off his pistol. "You look like a capable mare, what were you running from?"
Applejack shrugged, glancing over her shoulder. "None of yer business," pausing as she took a breath and looked back. "No trouble out there then, I take it?"
"Nope, pretty empty streets today. Except you, of course."
She nodded. "Yeah, well... see ya, thanks fer not shootin' me."
She moved off, still careful in how she went to the doorway as she peeked out. As the Gryphon had said, it was apparently clear, and she warily stepped out to keep on going as she had recovered from her panic. She could always head back with what she had, maybe go and cut up the Direwolf she'd shot for meat, but she wanted to find some electronics for the radio and general equipment now that she'd gotten the winter clothing she needed for her and Applebloom. As much as it would have been ideal she couldn't return to the shopping centre anytime soon. Frankly, she didn't want to. It would have been handy to go and look there again as there had been an appliance store on the ground floor, however right now the idea made her sick to her stomach.
She glanced around at the street she'd gotten herself in, not seeing much to indicate where she was. This part of the city was rather new to her, so really it just came down to exploring and hoping for the best. Thankfully her Phobos hadn't triggered yet so she hadn't needed to slow her pace and throw any bolts, there was apparently a lack of monsters too which was─she paused as there was movement behind her, unmistakably the Gryphon. A tense jolt quickly crawled up her spine as he didn't mask his steps and casually thudded on the damaged roads. She stopped and glared back at him and he just smirked at her in return.
"Can I help ya?" Applejack said dryly as she went.
"I don't know, can you? I haven't seen anypony in a while that wasn't openly hostile," he shrugged, coming up and walking along behind her, still on his hindlegs. She was about to point out that she would have shot him had he not stopped her, but he quickly raised a talon. "You were clearly surprised by me, I don't count that one for civvies."
"So yer actually military?" Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Former," he clarified. "I doubt you want the specifics."
"Ya guessed right. So long as ya aint a bandit I don't much care what yer history is," she said, scanning her immediate surroundings.
"I've already scouted the area from above when I saw you running like a madmare," he supplied for her. "There's some commotion further out to the east between some bandits and the Rebirth lot, their people have been pushing into the city a little more lately, but other than that there's just a few strays here and there like yourself."
That didn't mean much to her. "Rebirth?"
He gave a grunt of confirmation. "Some wannabe paramilitary idiots that popped up from the north-east. It was a small town community that had a wealth of supplies, it made them into kings after the event. You could say they have a bit of a monopoly on the outlying area, and they've been adding more to their numbers lately. You haven't heard of them?"
"New info to me," Applejack said as she relaxed a little, then regarding him again. "How long were ya trailing me?"
He shrugged. "Not long. Saw you running down a street away from a shopping centre as I was flying, covered in blood and not looking behind you as if a pack of Hou-"
"-Hounds, yeah, ya said," Applejack cut in, glancing down at herself and sighing. "...Shit."
She felt herself tremble as she looked over herself, a wave of sickness passing up her throat as she saw she was still quite obviously damp with Guppy's blood. It had soaked through a majority of her front. A section of her poncho was also stained, and it had spread over her forelegs, even areas of her neck if the stickiness there wasn't simply just sweat from running. Her jacket was a normally sage green in colour, usually a little darker as she rubbed soot into it, but right now it was a disgusting dark reddish brown where the blood was slowly drying.
It made her want to vomit... made her head swim.
"You alright? Why don't you sit down?" The Gryphon said to her left.
She swallowed the nausea and gently shook her head. "No, can't stop, I got things to be done."
"You're limping as well," he stated. "You might need first aid."
"I'm fine."
He relented with scoff and a light shrug. "...Alright then."
Her legs did hurt, though it wasn't anything she couldn't power through. If she had any fractures then she'd already feel where her legs would have been swollen, and she'd really be having trouble taking steps if any of the fractures were in her forelegs. The Gryphon's dubious concern was somewhat appreciated, if a bit queer. It was rare these days to have anypony that looked over others as anything more than competition. Granted there were a few that might offer help, but it was always in order to gain something in return, and she was suspecting as much from him as well.
She made it another few streets before she decided that the blood covering her ─and the Gryphon following and side-eying her as if she was about to keel over─ was bothersome enough to take a short break. She had completed the task she'd set out to do, it was okay for her to take some time to recover from the ordeal, if at least eat something.
Applejack carefully dipped from the cold street into a thankfully unoccupied side alley, her Phobos also blissfully silent as she took wary steps into the cramped space. It was a dead end, so there wouldn't be any surprises coming from that direction. Other than some old heavy bins that weren't currently overflowing and a general scattering of snow-topped debris, it was a clear and passable place to recuperate.
She threw off her weapons and her backpack, placing them to one side as she settled onto her haunches against the side of the alley. A deep sigh of relief escaped her from the lack of their weight, a brief shiver also running through her from the cold ground pressing through her jeans. Her vision flicked up briefly as she watched the Gryphon brush off and sit down on a chunk of stone opposite her, thankfully silent for the moment. She turned her attention back to her clothing and pushed down her discomfort as she lifted the poncho over her head, holding her breath as it passed her nose so she didn't get the full scent of blood. Throwing that to the ground, she unclasped the buttons of her jacket at its centre and drew down the zip, feeling a lot less disgusting as she swiftly shrugged it off.
She gently shook her mane and took in a fresher breath of air, feeling a lot less constricted with the clothing now free. It was a little odd to feel underdressed in front of a stranger, though that was an odd feeling to have, and she ignored it as she took a little comfort in the cold breeze that travelled up through the alley for the sheer freedom she felt. She shouldn't be down to her fur for too long as it was much colder than it should have been. These early days of the first winter since the sky fell were getting a great deal chillier, and the snow was already reaching far higher levels than they'd faced in previous years even well into the later months.
Taking off her hoof-dusters and gloves she removed her jacket completely and looked it over, sighing at the revolting mess across it that was turning brown at its edges. Her poncho wasn't as stained but it was definitely going to need cleaning too. Her gloves were leather and weren't as susceptible at least. She allowed herself a little more time to feel the lack of restriction that came with not being bound in protective gear before she soon started to dress again, until the Gryphon cleared his throat to get her attention.
"You're clearly not used to that, you look like you're about to puke," he observed. "Let them dry for a while, it lessens the smell."
Applejack nodded after thinking on it for a second, taking the jacket and laying it out flat on the ground along with the poncho. That done, she slowly exhaled, closed her eyes, and leant her head back against the wall. She heard the Gryphon fleetingly rummage around and she then grunted as something soft collided with her face, her senses instantly being filled with a utterly bizarre smell. She opened her eyes as she dragged the offending item from her face, looking at the Gryphon's own oddly coloured poncho in her hooves.
She glanced up quizzically to see him putting on a second poncho from his backpack.
"Always best to carry a spare. Wear that for now, keep yourself warm. Not that I don't like seeing a pretty mare in the buff but it's best you don't catch a cold. It's not as if you can head down to the local pharmacy for some tablets," he said, readjusting the poncho until it was comfortable and digging back into his pack again to pull out what appeared to be some oddly stiff-looking sachets, full of a transparent ruby-tinted liquid. She immediately realised what they were. He held them between his claws and snapped them, an audible crack sounding, and he then tossed those over too. "Put those under your clothes, they should be alright without hanging them up."
She'd been hunting for heat packs ever since the ones she'd had were stolen, when she and Applebloom had been accosted all that time ago. They were extremely rare and one of the most sought after items around besides probably a Remnant. She imagined a Remnant that generated heat was even more treasured. They landed in her lap, and the quickly building heat was both surprising and welcome as the ones she'd had before would usually take a while to increase in temperature. Military heat packs must have been a little more potent. As much as she wanted to simply hold onto them, she placed them under her jacket and poncho as instructed.
The Gryphon went into his pack again, pulling out two ration bars and glancing up at her. "Want one?"
She gave a slight nod. "Sure?"
Catching it out of the air this time as he chucked it over, she unwrapped it to find that it wasn't the usual fare of a bland hay or hardtack ration, but instead an oat-and-nut bar. She even smelled honey. She took a small bite and chewed very slowly, savouring the taste, the Gryphon lightly chuckling as he saw her expression change to one of bliss. Wrapping it up after having half and putting it away into her pack for Applebloom, she swallowed the mouthful and retrieved the bottle of water she had with her.
"Why are ya helpin' me?" Applejack asked bluntly after unscrewing the cap and taking a few invigourating swigs.
The Gryphon shrugged. "Why not?"
She sighed and shook her head as she lowered the bottle. "Things aint worked like that fer a while now, what are ya after?"
He chuckled at her again. "Not much, seriously. Just trying to help a civvie that looked like they needed some help. It's what I'm meant to do."
Applejack wanted to believe that, she heard a hint of honesty in his voice, it was just that the idea was almost foreign now. She'd had so many run-ins with those who'd tried to pull a fast one on her that somepony actually being genuine was a rarity. She studied him as she met his vision, holding the gaze for a time before he raised his brow questioningly. She had heavy doubts in her once-strong ability to unconditionally discern the truth from others, yet she couldn't find much fault in his expression and it was almost alien to behold.
She sighed as she looked away. "Fine. I appreciate it."
"Glad to have your approval," he scoffed, amusement in his tone.
They sat quietly in what could be considered companionable silence until a distant howl made them both glance to the mouth of the alley. The howls picked up and the Gryphon began to reach for the assault rifle on his back, until the howls were then followed by an equally distant burst of gunshots and further silence. The instance broke up the tense monotony of simply waiting without talking. Applejack usually had Applebloom to keep her occupied, her little sister always humming a tune under her breath or talking away. Even if it was to herself about something that she was doing it generally kept things from being completely quiet. The Gryphon was apparently the silent type when he wasn't pestering anypony, seemingly quite content with the long stretch between their conversation.
She looked up to him again after a while of staring at the cold ground, seeing him idly checking over his Phobos. He had removed its main face panel and was likely ensuring its inner components were all properly intact and functioning correctly, something she'd already done herself with her Phobos the previous night. He held a tiny black screwdriver in his talons, part of a small contained tool pouch beside him. That specific type of set was something that wasn't common in the hardware stores she'd come across. It was a specific kit that might rarely be sold in a specialist store, but they were far more common in places such as police or firefighter service buildings. Some engineering workshops had them for getting into and working on certain types of magitech devices found around junctions or utility buildings, like the terminals that no longer functioned.
She had a similar kit back at the train station, one that she'd found still unharmed inside the side-pouch of damaged webbing wrapped around a desiccated and burnt corpse, one that had been part of a destroyed security checkpoint near the giant scar just outside the station itself.
The Gryphon's claim of being former military was ringing true, and not just from the decent calibre of equipment he possessed. It was rather clear that he carried himself differently to others. She'd taken full note that regardless of his steps being devoid of any stealth that they were still deliberate, each one taken had been so that he could have the best stability upon the icy ground. The way he sat was different too, and she could see that he was actually tensed up like a spring despite his apparent relaxedness, as if he was ready to jump into action at a split-second's notice.
She always had to second guess a pony when they told her something, most often being the offer of trade that she wasn't really certain was legitimate, reading into possible context clues that led to them secretly wanting to pull a weapon. There had been plenty that she'd had to quickly deal with during the following months after setting out from Ponyville, travellers on the road that had rapidly eroded her high trust in others when they pulled a weapon rather than the goods they claimed to have.
The Gryphon being this upfront was incredibly damn refreshing.
But that didn't mean she was going to throw caution to the wind and blindly trust him either.
"I'm pretty but I'm not that pretty," he mused, as she realised she'd been staring at him a mite too hard. "What's on your mind, lady?"
Applejack laughed a little despite herself, she was hardly a lady. "Nothin'..." she said, her expression quickly becoming serious. "What did ya mean when ya said ya were former military? I woulda thought the military was still established in a bunch of places, settin' up safe zones and the like."
"Not exactly," he smiled darkly as he paused his work, it wasn't a happy look. "After the event hit we obviously tried to maintain some level of order and do that, but that broke down pretty fucking fast when our supplies started dwindling. Things got dire, people were dying all over the place, and then we got the order to abandon our posts from the higher-ups that were still around and retreat, and that was it, everyone else for themselves. Only a few of us didn't like that very much and tried to stick around."
She frowned. "So there's like, no military left? At all?"
He paused as he thought for a moment. "Hm, there's definitely still some Guard presence up near Canterlot, though it's heavily diminished; that place got hit hard by the event. Last I knew they were maintaining a wide exclusion zone because of the heavy radiation, no one is allowed in."
Maybe not allowed in, but maybe that meant-
"And no; trying to go to Canterlot is a bad move, before you consider it," he stated, interrupting her thoughts as if he'd read her mind. "I already tried and got shot at for the trouble, twice, they really don't want anyone coming near the place."
"Not even former military personnel?" Applejack wondered.
He shook his head. "Not unless we went with them initially it seems."
She stewed on that for a bit, it would certainly explain why no assistance ever came from Canterlot following the Singularity. It was a rather bitter pill to swallow. She and many others had held an abundance of hope that the Princesses would have been able to survive and restore things to how they were before. If the military command structure had collapsed except for a few remaining pockets and weren't helping anypony but themselves, then it was highly likely there was no true leadership left to rally them.
She started to piece together a few different snippets in her mind with disturbing clarity.
For one, the military checkpoint on her alternate route had been shot up and ransacked, and she'd thought it might have come long after everything else from others having utilised the place for cover. Now she could see at the onset an increasingly desperate populace and directionless military clashing over what remaining resources they had as the supply chain ceased to exist. Across roughly a dozen different locations she'd come across similar scenes that had played out.
It had only been one of a few theories as to why certain areas were in such a chaotic state, and yet it would explain a great deal. With the Gryphon's own testimony it lent a lot of weight behind it towards being factual.
"Well that's just great," Applejack grunted at the floor. "We really are on our own."
"Unfortunately it looks that way," he agreed.
They soon slipped back into silence, the only sound in the alley other than their breathing being the wind that blew through. Applejack felt it was slightly awkward given that she honestly would have preferred to be alone. However, given that the Gryphon seemed like the decent sort and was trying to help her out, she didn't feel as if she could tell him to leave her be. Having another person around to keep an ear out for danger wasn't unwelcome either.
"So... what happened back there?"
She looked up from the ground again to meet his curious gaze as he fitted his Phobos back onto his rig. There wasn't any judgement there, just his mild level of curiosity and little else. Of course he was probably also wondering as to why she was covered in blood. Whether he was hiding any obvious thoughts to what she'd done under the surface she couldn't tell, but it didn't really matter.
"None of yer business," she stated evenly. "I'll thank ya not to pry."
He shrugged as he leant back. "Fair enough," he then nodded to her weapons that rested beside her. "What about those?"
She raised an eyebrow. "What about 'em?"
"They're good equipment, and you know how to maintain them in a pinch it seems," he said just as evenly. "The shotgun's in great condition, and there's not many that would think to jury-rig lesser gem-cores to get a pulse rifle functioning without a proper core."
He had a very keen eye. It wasn't as if the pulse rifle's socket was hidden from view, though most people would simply look it over as some surface damage. It usually would have required a Unicorn's magic to open the socket, but she'd simply brute forced it so that she could get it working in the first place.
"I asked ya not to pry," she frowned, a certain level of grit in her tone. "Why'd ya keep askin'?"
"Sorry, like I said, you seem like a capable mare," he smiled.
Applejack sighed as she looked elsewhere, gently shivering after another breeze travelled through. She glanced at her clothing laid out on the floor and decided they'd probably been sitting for long enough, picking up her poncho and finding it quite warm to the touch thanks to the heat pack. There was an unmistakable tang of iron in the air from where the warmth had affected the blood soaked into it. As unpleasant as that was, she found it was much drier than it was before as she padded a hoof over the affected areas. Checking the jacket she found it in the same condition. Both didn't smell very nice given that she hadn't had the time to give them a proper wash lately. A mixture of stale sweat, dried blood, and whatever grime she'd used to darken them filled her senses, though she felt it was better to have an amalgamation of them rather than only being able to focus on the scent of blood.
She took off the Gryphon's poncho, shimmying her jacket back on as well as her own poncho and found she could breathe much easier without feeling ill, the cold already cooling them and lessening the impact that the heat had on the odour. There was nothing that she could do about the dark stains across them right now, but that was something she could deal with easily enough when she was safely back at the train station.
She picked up the heat packs and wrapped them up within the patterned poncho, throwing them across to the Gryphon who caught the bundle in his claws with a brief nod of thanks. He stuffed them into his backpack as she got to her hooves and began to get everything together. He was already standing by the mouth of the alley waiting for her as she finished fitting on her second hoof-duster over a glove, simply observing her process.
"Can I ask where you're headed now?" He said with a slight grin. "Or would that be considered prying?"
She rolled her eyes. "Prying."
"Thought so."
Moving to the alley's exit alongside the Gryphon, they both peered out and didn't see any immediate threats. She flicked her eyes to him and looked over the way she stood, leaning upright against the wall for cover as he checked the direction to their immediate right. The way he was leaning was almost suggesting to her that he was assuming she would cover the left direction herself, which she was to a degree.
It didn't seem right to her that he should place even that level of trust in her given that he knew so little of what she was like. Obviously she wasn't going to shoot him, but he had no true way of knowing that. She couldn't imagine trusting something that important to a complete stranger. She doubted he was stupid at all, and as she stepped out towards the left side and watched her path forward he automatically withdrew his pistol in a claw and kept himself in cover much as she would have done as he moved out to the right, partially leaving himself exposed to her when he moved between positions.
He really was trusting that she would cover his flank.
While he had possessed ample opportunity to get the drop on her, she hadn't felt any sense that he might try to. He hadn't drawn his sidearm until now, and even while he had talons he hadn't brandished them at her either. He'd made no threats, and there had been no suspicious edge to his voice or sinister look in his expression that she could pick up on that suggested ulterior motives. He'd only given freely of what he had without asking for anything back in return.
At this point she almost felt guilty that she was still doubting him. Why would he waste resources on her if all he was going to do was eventually kill her? Her mind jumped to the extreme that he might be wanting to gain her trust in order to lead her into a group lying in wait, as that would be easier than killing her and carrying her gear by himself. As much as she was justified in thinking to that extent, it still didn't feel right. She knew that if the girls were here they'd be telling her that she had to place a measure of trust in others again at some point.
She didn't know his motivations, however she could extend an olive branch.
"My name's Applejack," she said after a couple of minutes.
"Ah, so she does have a name," he said while keeping his eyes forward, though they flicked to her for a brief moment. "You look like an Apple. I knew an Apple once, any relation?"
Her brow raised, surprised. "They're muh kin."
"Huh, small world," he commented, the crook of his beak raising in a smirk.
"More likely that we're pretty spread over," she returned. "If you were about Canterlot before all this then ya probably knew one of cousin Strudel's family, she had plenty of siblings and children."
"Probably that then, it was just a corner shop I commonly dropped by," he nodded.
"Sounds like cousin Syrup's café," Applejack said. "He makes some great pies."
The Gryphon nodded, smiling to himself. "That was the one, small little café off the corner of Duchess's Street."
They slowed and paused as they came up to a T-junction exit on the next street, both checking their immediate directions again and passing their vision over the many weathered buildings towering over them. Applejack didn't spot anything that might indicate trouble along the icy street or around common clutter sprawled through it; the few lonely vehicles and propulsives that lay abandoned along her way were devoid or anything she might think to be a trap. She scanned the dead buildings again just in case, the many hundreds of smashed windows above were also clear and unobstructed. It was the boarded or covered up ones that she was always wary of. The rusting vehicles that had stopped at the exit out which they were utilising were rather good cover too should anypony take a shot at them.
A quick tap came at her shoulder and she turned her attention the Gryphon's way. He was holding up his claw, his face a mask of concentration as he appeared to listen out for something. She understood as she sharply felt a disturbing sense of unease, a chill crawling down her spine and tensing as she heard it before she saw it. It was a gentle whisper in the air at first, and it was gradually climbing into a scream. She immediately backpedalled as he tugged hard on her shoulder, moving with and forcing her back as there came a horrendous keening echo that warped her vision. She stumbled over her own hooves across the ground, broken glass and hardened snow crunching underhoof as she corrected, a second echo with a much deeper wail punching through her thoughts and staggering her further.
She fumbled away until she couldn't see straight and threw herself behind another vehicle further down. It was all she could do to cover her ears as the bizarre anomaly soon haphazardly tore through the street somewhere ahead of them, however she wasn't sure if it helped her whatsoever. Her vision swam as the distorted screaming increased in pitch and a multitude of painfully tortured voices reverberated off of every single surface that the sound could reach. Darkness filled with blinding stars edged in around the sides of her peripherals as the intensity of it pierced into her brain. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, the discomfort having rapidly turned into a profound agony that deeply ached through the rest of her body and made her fall limp.
She felt as if she was on the verge of passing out before she was tackled into an embrace by the Gryphon, his forelimbs wrapping around her while the pain from the anomaly slowly and inexplicably began to lessen. He held her tightly against his chest while she blinked away a worrying glint of red through her disorientation, blinking until her vision cleared up and she could see better. She felt she could begin to breathe a little easier as the maleficent anomaly continued on its way, its vicious howling decreasing the further away it travelled.
The Gryphon released her after a short period, his tufted tail lashing in agitation as he wiped at his eyes with a cloth, fixing her with an intense glare as he offered her the rag. "Are you alright? That was the most intense fucking Banshee I've ever seen."
"I-I'll live," she swallowed past the lump in her throat, wiping at her eyes with a cleaner part of her sleeve instead. She'd never encountered that type of anomaly before, and sweet Celestia the damn thing could move. "Thanks fer the save. How come ya aint too outta sorts?"
He regarded her for a moment, looking partly distrustful for the first time since she'd met him, before he opened and reached into one of the pouches on his rig. He pulled free something that almost appeared to be a misshapen stone, except it seemed to be formed from some kind of dark opaque crystal and she almost felt like it played tricks on her eyes. She knew what she was looking at.
"Remnant." Applejack said.
"We called it a Nox. Found it in a black patch of what I'm fairly sure was a Siren," he said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. "It seems to give some protection against shit like that."
She raised a concerned eyebrow. "Aint seen a Siren either."
"It's what a couple other guys called it after their buddy walked into it," he explained, pocketing the Remnant again. "He just kept on repeating how beautiful the singing was and how nice the ponies were, over and over again. Then he just collapsed and died."
"It sounds like it lures ya in."
He gave a nod. "It does. If you ever hear singing in a language you can't understand, or see a silhouette of a pony standing nearby, you plug your ears and run away."
She would remember that. "Noted."
They could still just about hear the Banshee wailing off in the distance if they listened out for it, and she was glad that the way it went wasn't the way she was going to go. She still felt quite out of sorts, it was a highly powerful anomaly that was par for the course. She already expected that she'd not found all the types of crazy that the Singularity had created just yet, she'd grown a little complacent as of late. Now she had knowledge on two more. Her mind was settling as she slowly recovered, the pain that had settled in her chest was getting better and her limbs ached less.
"I'm Gwaine, by the way."
She looked up at him from the road she was staring into. "Nice to meet ya."
And it was, she thought. He'd helped her and then he'd saved her, she didn't know what would have happened had he not been around to shield her from the Banshee. She didn't want to think what could happen if she had passed out in the street, she'd be easy pickings for anypony or any monster that came along. She might not know him well, but in the past she'd declared herself friends with other ponies for far less, and the girls would have greatly insisted on friendship by this point. Pinkie would already be making up a song too... Even so, she wasn't going to call him a friend just yet, but he'd earned some of her trust and that was more than she'd given others in a long while.
"Gwaine," she said. "Thank you, truly."
He waved her off with a grin. "It's fine. Like I said, it's what I'm meant to do."
Gwaine chuckled as he moved past her, his boots crunching on the road as he neared the spot ahead between the vehicles again. He glanced out both ways as he held low, gently waving her forwards as he kept watch. He was being a lot more cautious thanks to the encounter, and she was glad as they'd both be better off for it.
"Think I can ask where you're heading now?" Gwaine asked as she came up behind him.
She huffed, glancing out as well. "Why d'ya wanna know?"
Gwaine grunted in return, looking at her.
"Alright, so..." Gwaine sighed. "I said you seemed capable, and you are. That's important. You're green when it comes to shit made by the event, but that's most civvies," he paused as he weighed his words. "The thing is... I can't tell you why just yet, but I can watch your back."
And that was why she didn't blindly trust, there was always an ulterior motive.
"I'm good, thanks." Applejack frowned, slightly annoyed. "I got things to be done, general scavving and the like. Aint no particular place I'm going an' I doubt ya wanna tag along."
Gwaine perked up at that. "I know some place that has supplies. Some food and ammo, not a lot, but, some. I haven't had much need for them, but if you do... I can take you there."
Her frown deepened. "Why wouldn't ya have already taken them fer stockin' up?"
"See, I might not need them, though," he shrugged. "I also can't get to them."
She sighed. "So what makes ya think I can?"
"Together we can, no problem," Gwaine smirked. "It's a two person job. Admittedly, it would be easier with a Unicorn, but an Earthen can do just as well."
Ah, so it was like that.
She didn't like that she was seriously considering it. He'd only helped her out to get help in return, and he was probably quite over the moon that such a nasty anomaly had made an appearance. It had allowed him to save her, and she owed him for that. He knew it and she couldn't ignore it, yet neither did she want to go into something unknown and dangerous with somepony she couldn't fully trust.
"And if I don't want to?" Applejack poised.
Gwaine sighed, tapping a talon off his leg. "Then I guess I'm fucked on that one," he looked at her properly, shifting around. "Look, I get it, I'm a complete stranger, that's hard to trust, but how about you just see what we have to do first?"
"Yer really tryin' to sell this, huh?" she raised an eyebrow. "I aint stupid, ya want into them supplies fer somethin', ya just aint tellin' me what."
Gwaine nodded. "Alright, look... fine, I'll be honest. There is something I need from the stash," he quickly raised a talon. "But just the one thing, I don't really need any of the rest of it. You can have everything else and that won't be any feathers off my back, I swear."
He clearly didn't want to tell her what 'the one thing' was, so she suspected it was probably a Remnant or something similar. They were extremely rare and powerful oddities, and many ponies would try to search around the areas of anomalies in order to find them. From what she understood it was where they formed, and Gwaine had said that was where he'd gotten his Nox. She couldn't imagine risking her life for the damn things, personally. Yes, they granted protection from the bizarre creations of the Singularity, but they were also of the Singularity. That didn't sit well with her at all, there was no telling what effect they might have on a pony, in mind or body.
Regardless of her own misgivings however, there was an opportunity here.
It was also a clear goal instead of wandering blind.
She didn't want to consider it, and yet she was; she and Applebloom needed more than they currently had, and Gwaine was providing her with a way to get more. She scanned his face for any signs of deceit, but try as she might she couldn't see any hint of dishonesty to what he'd said. He'd told her the basics and she could easily guess the rest of it from here. At the very least, if he did have further ulterior motives then she wouldn't allow herself to be caught unaware, not again. She'd be ready for it this time.
Applejack regarded him, and soon exhaled through her teeth. "...Okay. If it's too dangerous then I aint gonna do it, but otherwise if it looks to be doable then you've got a deal."
She held up her hoof.
Gwaine grinned, taking her hoof and shaking. "Good enough for me. I'll lead the way."
Author's Note
I imagine Gwaine as sounding something like Steven Blum, personally.
