Fallout Equestria: S.T.A.L.K.E.R

Chapter 42: Gambler

A crystal clear broadcast filtered through a private frequency.

<"Is this thing recording? Hey... Aurora, may you-can you... help me out? What's that, it is? Ok. Hey Nikolai! We've reacquired most of our heavy weapons. Carrots... What was it you said about them? You remember, don't you? Come and find us.">

[Message repeats]

Neigh Jersey was only marginally less miserable than Manehatten.

Pouring rain, the heavens had opened up at dusk. The sound of heavy footsteps across gravel filled the evening air amidst the flash of a stalk of lightning somewhere off the coast. He looked both ways, then ran across the gravel, splashing grimy water against his pants. He raised his rifle and flagged the open wall of the decaying half built brick warehouse in his path. Another flash of lightning filled the sky, thunder came a second later.

Something bounded out from his peripheral vision.

"Drop that rifle or I'll shoot you dead!"

Nikolai ducked behind a rusted out excavator and a covered pallet of cinder blocks. Too bright out for his night vision device, too dark to make out shifting figures in the shadows of a warehouse thirty meters southeast distant.

They might not have heard him through the muffle of his mask, they might have ignored him. Maybe they didn't care.

Something barked and screeched somewhere in the direction he had come from. Too far from him. It was moving away.

With his eyes and ears open, The Stalker fished out his night vision device and scanned the warehouse and used its focus feature to edge his way across the darkness. A set of glittering slit eyes stared back. Eyes that weren't attached to the body of a mutant. He smiled when he saw the figure look at him and pull off its hood and its cowl to reveal the goofy fanged grin underneath. Nikolai bobbed and weaved out and around old construction equipment.

"Me and my escapades, eh?" Nikolai remarked to the sniffling grey thestral as the two clasped hoof and hand and shook firmly, the pony bounded up onto his hind legs to reach Nikolai's chest height, where The Stalker wouldn't have to bend down to reach him.

Willow felt... Nostalgic, maybe a little surprised? Here his friend was, walking in from a cold storm like he had left for only a few minutes. "You've been missin' for four days! Did your radio get busted in the fall or something?" Nikolai peeled off his gas mask and rolled down his soaking wet coat hood once he was under cover.
"I did not fall from that tower!"
"Then where have you been? Taking the scenic route through the Manehatten Ruins? Don't tell me you went back for the hide of that giant radigator, did you?"

Nikolai could hear the crackle and pop of low flames deeper inside of the building. Willow nudged Nikolai's right knee and whinnied. "C'mon," He raised his voice. "Hey, guys, guess who's back!?"

"I wonder who?" Aurora's voice echoed down the hallway, filled to the brim with light sarcasm and a pair of chuckles.

"Didn't you have a hat at one point?" Nikolai asked the shrewd pony trotting beside him.

"I've still got it, just don't need it." Willow responded quickly. "I stand out enough. I sure like the look and feel of it-but those things draw attention-And I... Really didn't want any, what with the company I've got; Aurora and... Y'know, Flashpoint."

They had made it to their indoor campsite. Flashpoint and a power armor clad Aurora exchanged warm hellos and snarky remarks with Nikolai. He sat down and rolled his rucksack off of his back, then did the same with his vest and his coat. He scanned the ground for loose glass or nails, and pulled off his boots to set them alongside the edge of the fire. Interest dissipated away from him while he peeled off his socks and snatched a fresh pair from his pack. Well... Not fresh per say, but it was certainly dry.

"I'm gonna go back outside and keep watch." Willow whispered to the group. He fluttered his leathery wings and ducked back into the shadows.

"Do you still have the water talisman? Our canteens were getting a little sparse and playing guessing games with rad counter-"

Nikolai groped around in his stuff until he found the little device they had taken from the SPP tower. He fiddled with it, and a near instant later the pot sitting by the fire was full to the brim. The three equines breathed a collective sigh of relief. That was water taken care of again. Unfortunately the guide to spells and the Wasteland Survival Guide sitting at the bottom of Nikolai's meager belongings didn't say anything on the topic of magical food generators. Except for a little segment on "earth pony magic".

They didn't have any unicorns with them-they didn't have any earth ponies with them either. Flashpoint, while he did know a fair share about improvised explosives- he sure didn't know how to make a potato appear out of nothing. That left the old fashioned hole-punching method.

Bang! Crack!

The old fashioned, long range hole punching method. Hunter gathering-hunter scavenging.

A suppressed rifle shot rang off the buildings outside and reverberated into their interior campsite. Willow's rifle. They had all probably heard its report a hundred times by now. He had either shot a marauder creeping up on them, or a mutant that was soon to be in their bellies. The industrial park they had taken shelter in was rife with food on four legs. But Nikolai wanted rest, and he collapsed lopsided against a brick wall in the time it had taken Willow to return that looked like a large groundhog and was almost entirely devoid of balefire mutation.

Aurora shooed away in disgust when she saw that the bat pony's muzzle and fangs were matted dark red with fresh blood.

In Nikolai's absence, Willow had sort of taken the other two ponies under his wing, which led to an awkward situation in which the zebra/bat duo, having grown accustomed to The Stalker's weird pseudo leadership, were left to make decisions as a group. And Aurora, in her inexperience and dread, found herself going along with almost everything they said. She had arrived on the surface a long while before Nikolai came here, but where he seemed to thrive, Aurora found herself invariably looking to two Wastelanders she had barely known for more than a few weeks. She had a goal: She wanted to find her lost friend, she wanted to do good. Willow and Flashpoint were aimless, not to say that they were bad creatures, no-the exact opposite. But they would have ended up as drifters if they hadn't been drawn to Nikolai's bizarreness.

Nikolai had a goal too: He wanted money. He wanted lots of money. He wanted to use that money to make even more money.

Aurora had dared to try meat a few times since she had joined up with them. She liked it, she tolerated it, at least. What she could not tolerate quite so easily was Willow's sanguivorous hunger. He devoured his meals like a wild animal. To the mare raised up in the clouds that still creeped her out. His charm sort of made up for it. Kind of. Nikolai was loud, Flashpoint was polite and quiet when Nikolai wasn't around. Willow had some clever wit in him though...

Aurora shut her thoughts up and tore at a segment of boiled flesh, cursing herself for being so hungry.

**

Something thundered in the distance. The storm had passed.

Out of the dead forest and scattered rural homes lay a thin line of rail which stretched off in either direction. A beep from his PDA and Flashpoint's PipBuck told him they were within a few kilometers of a place called Troton.

Another play on words, The Stalker imagined.

Flashpoint cantered ahead and stopped in the middle of the tracks. His tail twitched, he sniffled.

"Flashpoint, what do you know about trains?" Nikolai pressed him. The zebra knew nothing about trains. It wasn't really on his big list of priorities in life.

"Nothing." He replied honestly, turning to Willow with inquiry written across his scared face. "You?"

"Nothing."

Aurora jumped in ahead of Nikolai, trying to act like the voice of reason. "Are you asking if he's ever seen a train before or are you asking if he knows how one works?"

Nikolai stood idly by with his back to a dead oak tree a little ways off the tracks. He smiled under his mask like he was watching a circus. All of this played out without him saying a word until finally he pushed himself away from the trunk.

"Ah, forget it. Which one of you can figure out if a big fast moving metal object with a lot of living things inside of it has passed through an area recently?" The three equines stopped and looked up at him. "It was my fault, I should have clarified." He began to gesticulate furtively with his hands.

"You see-after the bullshit at Tenpony Tower, I don't really want to pay toll fees or entry fees or god forbid what else, I don't think any of you want to either. So here is what will happen; We will wait for a train to come down the tracks, we will wait behind a tree, and then-we will jump onto the train and climb inside! As long as we stay hidden we should be fine. We will ride the rust-bucket as far south as possible, then, we will jump off once it begins to slow down!"

"What about sentries?" Aurora asked him. "What if we're spotted when we try to board it?"

Nikolai cleared his throat and paced across the tracks. "We'll just have to be sneaky then, yes?"

"And how do you plan on doing that?" The pegasus pressed him. Nikolai paced away from the tracks.

"Wait and see, wait and see. We will hide in the little rut alongside the tracks, below their line of sight. We will wait until night time, when their visibility is poor. Assuming, of course, that they don't have the same night vision capabilities that we do,"

"We'll be able to get onto the train without them ever getting the chance to notice." Flashpoint finished his sentence, his ears drooped a little.

"How are we supposed to know if one will ever show up?" Nikolai took a knee beside one of the rail ties. He pulled one his gloves off and swabbed the track with an index finger, holding it up for the others to examine. He began to exposit.

"You could never do this in Ukraine, not in the wet season at least. Not ever, really. Travel by rail is popular in Europe, where I am from. Too much traffic. But, when I traveled to America, that was not the case. Most over there prefer to go around using automobiles; cars. And so, outside of a few, well traveled lines used for cargo transportation, most rail lines will lie dormant for long periods of time. Dust will accumulate on the tracks without ever being blown away. This track is nearly clean, it has been used recently."

"So what?" Aurora prodded him anxiously.

Nikolai withdrew his PDA and showed them the map, pointing to Manehatten, then to Troton.

"This," He kicked one of the tracks with a boot. "This rail line has been used very recently. Perhaps even as recent as a few hours ago. Whoever went down those tracks will eventually have to come back." The Stalker pounded his right fist into his left palm. "And then, we strike. And hitch a free ride all the way down south to who-knows where, and then,"

"And then what?" The three pressed him collectively.

They weren't going to believe the answer.

**

Thump thump thump

Hours had passed, they had made themselves a little cold camp just inside of the tree line, within view of the rails. The sky grew darker. Nikolai checked his watch: It was dusk. Something was coming down the northern portion of the tracks. He peered through his rifle scope, squinting with clenched teeth. Through the black fog he was able to make out the glowing head lights and smoke stack of the train, it looked old, even from here.

"Stay low and get ready!"

Nikolai and the three equines crawled on their bellies until they were almost up against the tracks. The lights at the head of the train grew brighter, Nikolai tried to focus his eyes past them. Up atop the train he could see protrusions that looked like gun barrels. He wanted to stay below the elevation of those. Nikolai and the others reached up, and, as the train rolled by, they caught ahold of one of the exterior door brackets and, without slowing pace, Nikolai and Aurora pried the door open and pulled themselves inside, Willow and Flashpoint followed a moment later.

"Never boarded a train before," Willow remarked. "I didn't think it'd be that easy."

"It shouldn't be." Nikolai replied. They waited an instant. The Stalker pushed deeper into the car. Nothing, there was nothing there. Crates, metal boxes, pallets of... Stuff. But no living things. They made a little cold camp inside of the cart, using flat-topped crates and their own meager sheets as bedding.

Nikolai and Flashpoint were asleep, again. The Stalker's radio would pang with garbled static or something from that Zone FM station from time to time, each time roused Nikolai from his sleep, and each time he grew just a little more irate. Willow sat at the threshold of the open door, staring out into the inky blackness, dusk had turned to night hours ago. Through his slit pupils and yellow eyes he could see everything. A chirp of echolocation revealed creatures, ruined buildings, tree husks, and more nothingness. He could smell everything within a hundred meters of the tracks. He could hear the voices of ponies in the other compartments and cars of the train, muffled and murky, but not hostile. A belt of ammunition rattled around somewhere in the distance.

Aurora's heavy hoofsteps stopped behind him, his ears twitched.

"What are you thinking about?" Aurora whispered to him. Willow didn't take his eyes off the darkness, his tail twitched: A sign for Aurora to go on and take a seat beside himself. The hexagonal orange lenses of her helmet reflected the glint of Willows eyes.

"Something." He finally replied. "We walked quite a ways from that warehouse, jumped onto a moving train-"

"And?" Aurora waved her hoof, signaling him to continue.

"And Nikolai hasn't told us why yet. This train is headed south. Judging by its size it might be going as far south as Charlottesfilly, past Baltimare and Savanneigh, maybe even out to the edge of the Badlands."

"I've never rode a train before." Aurora watched Willows face contort with amusement. His leathery wings shuffled off his cloak as he moved a little closer to the doors threshold. "There aren't any in those cloud cities? Figures." They both laughed, quietly. It lasted a moment, then Willow's face grew serious.

"It's... Bumpy." She resolved. "But still, think about it... Where are we going? Nikolai got us on this train... Where do you think it leads? More importantly, where does Nikolai think he's taking us?"

"Hoofington." The Stalker stirred, coughing into his fist and picking up his rifle he strolled over to Willow and made a space for himself in between the two ponies, he pulled himself forward with the palms of his hands and slung his feet out into the open.

"Hoofington?" The word struck him like a sack of errant potatoes. "That's about as far south as somepony can get without crossing into Zebrica."

"Da, yes, yes I am. But I am not after just any portion of it." Nikolai answered him. A sliver of moonlight poked out from the clouds, highlighting the three in a pale silver glow while Flashpoint snoozed off behind them. Nikolai looked over the edge of the car and noticed that they were crossing a bridge. He looked up at the triangular steel cross beams which held the bridge together.

"The Core."

"The what?" Aurora mused, ever the skeptic.

"The Core, is... Well-at the core of the city. It's shrouded in this sort of... Green glow, and from what I have heard, it's an absolute deathtrap. But, but! Since it is so hard to get into, and so dangerous-everything in there is ripe for the picking."

"And how exactly do you know all of this?" Willow posed, "The last time-" He laughed morbidly and turned to face Nikolai. "The last two times that you wanted to go someplace abnormally dangerous (Canterlot and Manehatten) We all very, very nearly met our end-And what did we come away with?"

"Stuff! Cool stuff!" Nikolai insisted, jabbing the plasma carbine folded away in his rucksack; thinking of his strange bug-eyed night vision device and that little mysterious shimmering pink crystal locked away in a lead lined container.

Or the information he was about to share with his compatriots.

"DJ-Pon3 told me." Willow's docile slit eyes went wide with apprehension, he sniffed the air, trying to determine if Nikolai was lying based upon his scent: He was not. Nikolai noticed the skepticism and cracked a grin.

"Yes, that DJ. I met her! Yes, DJ-Pon3 is female, don't spill the beans to anyone-eh? Anyhow-"

"Who the hay is DJ-Pon3?" The pegasus' wings moved beneath her cloak.

She had never really been one for the radio, she had never heard any foreign transmissions on the surface during here time here. When she had found that Nikolai was an avid listener of the channel from his homeland, "Zone FM" she hadn't quite known what to think of it. She thought that the music was a sign of poor noise discipline. However, she found it charming to listen to something besides military propaganda. Some of the songs she even liked. And of course, The Stalker had been sure to talk down on Equestrian music on more than one occasion.

"A radio personality, the news... and music. You know," Nikolai offered, waving his explanation away." The lady who gave me all the answers I needed, including some information on Hoofington! And its center! Military installations, research laboratories, spooky stuff."

"I can't help but think that you're underselling it."

Nikolai was honest with them: "Friends, if I'm underselling it then that's only because I don't know too much about it-but! That is soon to change, yes?"

"Hoofington..." Aurora tapped a hoof on the floor. "Thunderhead is nearby."

"Thunderhead?" The Stalker inquired.

"Yes, Thunderhead. It's an Enclave city, there's a skyport there, if I remember correctly. I've never been there before."

"A sky port?"

"It's a giant dockyard for pegasus cloudships and aerial craft. This one is a military installation, but if I recall they're fairly lenient with their policies on trade with surface dwellers, at least compared to the rest of the G.P.E."

"If that is the case, do you want to make a stop?"

Aurora stared blankly though her visor at Nikolai, and suddenly seemed to jolt awake. "What-Yes-I mean, no! No. Thanks- I mean, no. No. Let's keep our distance."

"Why?"

She thought long about a good answer she could give them, the best one she could provide was Nikolai's ungainly appearance. Which made The Stalker chortle with laughter.

Nikolai's legs swung back and forth. He scooted himself back away from the edge and grabbed his rifle. He pried the dust cover off of his AK 101, then extracted the magazine and pulled the charging handle to the rear to eject the round of ammunition still in the chamber. Just like he had done a hundred times before. The dust cover came off easily, and the bolt underneath, which had been shiny and almost brand new when he had acquired it. Now it was more of a tarnished tin color, with bits of rust toned browning around the extractor and gas tube.

The rifle still worked fine, in spite of the thousands of rounds he had fired through it with only the most basic of cleanings from time to time. It still shot true, and was just as accurate as the day he had first tested it. He glanced down the barrel, cleared his throat, and unscrewed the rifle's suppressor from its mounting bracket on the muzzle. After a bit of inspection he set it aside, and began to search for his cleaning kit which he had placed somewhere in his pack.

The hours drifted on. They nibbled on rations, and Nikolai found himself drinking until he was fully jovial and enthusiastic, and all too willing to brag about his mediocre 'fotbol' skills back on earth.

The hours passed by quickly. Nikolai had done his best to the working mechanisms of his rifle, The Stalker was grateful that it was built like a tank. He backed himself into a corner and fell back asleep. When he awoke, only Aurora was awake. Willow was hanging from a tie in the ceiling with his wings curled up around him, and Flashpoint looked half delirious. In the little space of the train car, there wasn't much room to do anything but sit around and wait. Sleeping seemed to pass the hours whenever they ran out of things to talk about. The next day Willow announced to the group that the eastern slopes of The Smokey Mountains were coming into view. Great banks of fog drifted over the range only to peter out upon reaching the valley.

On the second day when Nikolai was busy running through his morning stretches in an attempt to stave off the soreness in his legs he found his PDA beeping with life: They had traveled almost 350 kilometers. About two or so weeks of travel by foot completed in just shy of two days. According to the updated map on his PDA he was at roughly the same latitude as Canterlot. This gave him hope, based on the map data and information Homage had provided him with he could expect to reach the religion east of Salt Cube City by tomorrow, the badlands within the next two days, and Hoofington before the end of the week.

Compared to his normal traveling routine all this downtime was almost boring. He flipped through his journal entries and determined that he had to at least be halfway into his second month here in Equestria, if not more. He was losing track of time, the days were so fast paced that they all seemed to almost blend together. How he managed to stay on a sustainable sleep schedule was something that only his subconscious seemed to know.

He looked in a pocket mirror at his dirt and sweat stained face and determined that he needed a shave, and a haircut. He gave himself the best he could with his knife, not wanting to contaminate the medical shears in his pack or waste the supplies that would be needed to re-sterilize them for their intended use after the fact. The three equines watched in belayed amusement as he ran through the motions of trimming his growing facial hair as far to the skin as possible, and bringing the hair on his head to just about forehead level, he did the same with his ears, and the back of his head. He dumped the shavings off the side of the train car and celebrated with more vodka, cold from its time in the back of the train. He gave Aurora vivid descriptions about some of the things he had seen while on his own, in turn she answered sporadic questions about her life in the Enclave, though she either avoided or redirected many of them.

She asked a few in return, mostly about her lost friend, Vivacity. Of course, the chance of finding her in the vastness of the Equestrian Wasteland was slim but-that didn't matter to Corporal Aurora Borealis. Nikolai also asked her why she went by Aurora, rather than Borealis. She claimed that she just liked her first name better, and that was that.

The Stalker spent most of Day Three pacing back and forth with his artifacts, trying to determine how to use them better and better. He wanted to give the crystalized pink cloud he had found in Canterlot a name, every anomalous Artifact from The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone had a colorful name attached to it which denoted either its use, or its appearance. It only made sense that he give the ones he had found during his time here names as well.

"Cottonburn." He decided. He would call the magical pink crystal that could heal, to his knowledge, almost anything, Cottonburn.

On the third night, Nikolai again found himself again studying The Wasteland Survival Guide and "A Foals First Guide To Sorcery" all the while wondering who else was on the train besides himself and his compatriots.

He set his first pamphlet down and began to toy with his .380 ACP Makarov pistol. The ammunition it used was slightly smaller and less powerful than nine millimeter, and at the same time more uncommon. A short detour through the scorched and blasted ruins of Naval Station Neighfolk on his way to his friends had yielded plenty of useless parabellum cartridges, some still in its original packaging. But he none of the caliber he was searching for. He had a magazine and a half of ammunition remaining for his sidearm, and he promised himself that he would take as much of the lower caliber round as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

His plasma carbine sat folding in a canvas pouch on the left side of his rucksack, unused- but still wanted- With only a tiny quantity of ammunition space allotted to it. It was too impractical for normal gunfights, it seemed to work wonders against tough to kill mutants and ghouls that didn't feel pain, and thus required precise hits with actual firearms to bring down. With plasma weapons though, it only took one or two hits to bring down a medium sized, unarmored, fleshy target. Even with Aurora's help he was still hesitant to try and take it apart. That was probably for the better.

Willow and Aurora were sitting guard again, neither of them said sparsely a word to the other. Aurora's ears had been drooping for a while now, a bit of body language which Nikolai had long since learned meant that a pony was at ease. She looked up into the sky and her ears shot up. She pulled her hood over her head and drooped it low over her visor, backing away from the entrance. Nikolai watched her for a moment as he slowly stood upright and walked on over to the threshold. He peeked out, and up just far enough to be able to see what was must have been bothering her.

He fetched his binoculars from his plate carrier and looked up into the cloud cover.

"Damn." He pulled the binocular lenses away from his eyes. "Oh no, no, nyet. Nope. Oh-ckya! Why now?" He cursed. The shapes high above them looked mortally familiar. Living beings, obviously. Too small and too agile to be griffons or, heaven forbid, dragons. They didn't glow or twinkle like alicorns did: They were pegasi, no doubt about it.

Nikolai had spotted two of them, flying in formation at the edge of the cloud layer about a half kilometer off the trajectory of the train. They weren't directly paralleling the trains course, but they had intersected the tracks several minutes ago. They flew for a little while until they were almost at the edge of Nikolai's field of view, then they turned back and intersected the train's path, this time buzzing a little lower, they must have only been a couple of hundred meters off the ground. And The Stalker could see that they were bulked up in sleek, black armor with side mounted weapon hardpoints and barbed tails. There were only two of them, of course there have been more, waiting above the clouds or perhaps amidst the rubble of one of the adjacent low, boulder speckled hilltops on either side of the tracks.

Nikolai, Willow, and Flashpoint noticeably freaked out. That was of course to be expected. But Aurora-for actually being a member of the Enclave, seemed almost as distressed as they were.

"They're only scouts." She observed. "They don't look like they have any heavy weapons with them- They were probably flying a patrol and spotted us through the clouds."

"Surely by that you mean they spotted the train through the clouds, yes?" Nikolai asked her gravely, she flexed her wings and perked her head up.

"Nikolai I know what you're thinking and no, she isn't ratting us out." Nikolai crossed his arms and shook his head. "Hey-Wait a moment, I never said that. You know that I believe you both whole-heartedly, I just want an explanation. Because I have not seen a single member of The Enclave in over a month. Beyond you, of course. But you're cool. So that does not count." The Stalker gesticulated to the whole of Aurora. He shifted an index finger up, towards the cart's ceiling.

"They are probably not so cool, yes? If they see us, and they see weapons, they will shoot, yes? And I do not want to get into a gunfight aboard a moving train! As badass as that sounds, I am..." He tried to think of a quick excuse.

"Not in the mood! Yes, yes. I am not in the mood, I am sure no one here wants to get shot by a plasma rifle, so..." Nikolai was beginning to gesticulate with his fists instead of his hands, the three little equines sitting around him got the gist of what he was trying to say.

And so they sat and watched, they watched as the little swarm of pegasi far above them disappeared above the clouds for a little while, and returned later with a third pegasus in tow. Nikolai and Aurora watched them with sporadic interest between quiet talk amongst themselves. For a while Nikolai wondered if he might be able to catch onto any stray radio chatter they were letting out amongst themselves, but he didn't try out of sober worry that they might be able to trace it back to him, ending in a repeat of that incident at the airbase where he had just barely managed to escape with his life.

A half hour passed when Willow heard a sudden commotion arise in one of the cars closest to the train's engine. Then he heard the creak of one of the armored machine gun turrets spinning around.

Thump! Thump! Crack! Crack!

One of the turrets fired off a burst, Nikolai watched the barrels recoil backwards. The pegasi stopped for a moment, then two of them spun around and dove towards the turret. The armored heavy machine gun emplacement atop the train barked with more automatic fire. When the pegasi came within about 100 meters a flash of red light lit up the sky and four simultaneous red bolts of magical energy struck the roof of the train car. Willow could hear even more commotion from the forward cars as additional machine gun batteries turned skywards and trained themselves on the two flies, who wheeled back around and strafed the train with more laser fire.

The turret that had initially opened fire exploded into flames after taking six bolts of energy through its ceiling. The armor plating melted away under the heat of sustained fire. Shouting and commotion filled the air.

"Shit, shit shit shit." Aurora complained to herself. "What were they thinking?" Nikolai scanned the sky through his binoculars and frowned.

"They're coming back around." The Stalker turned to Willow and Flashpoint, then to Aurora. "Lay low to the cart, flat on belly! Pile your shit on top of yourself and be quiet, ok? Ok."

Nikolai crept towards the entrance and peered up at the pegasi through the glass of rifle optic. An unguided rocket launched itself from somewhere close to the trains engine and struck one of the diving pegasi, sending them tumbling to the ground in a plume of smoke. More red bolts streaked down from the sky: Nikolai heard more screams, and more silence.

He waited, waited for one of those pegasi up there to try and turn its munitions on him and his compatriots. At the altitude they were strafing the train, he knew that he wouldn't miss with his rifle. But he went unnoticed, and the car he and the others were in chugged along, untouched. An explosion rocked one of the cars behind him. And then, finally, silence. Without the commotion Nikolai was able to fully observe the sounds of the foreign sets of wings, growing further and further away until he couldn't hear them any longer.

In hindsight Nikolai recalled that his rifle wouldn't have done much to stop the armored pegasi anyhow.

"I think they're gone." Aurora informed the others.

"They weren't here for us," Flashpoint coughed a little. "Those turrets-"

"Forget Hoofington." Aurora pleaded. "Let's get off as soon as this thing slows down." Nikolai checked his watch and sighed with disapproval.

"They're gone, I can tell." Willow defended Nikolai. "Give it another day, we've been here for over three already. Look how far we've made it. We'll be in sight of Hoofington soon, then we can get off. How does that sound to you Nikolai?"

The Stalker nodded, and gesticulated down towards the smoking cars ahead of them. His pale face cracked a grin.

"Good idea. Sound idea. We can talk more about it once we're off of this train. From there, we will book it to the nearest settlement, ok?"

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

The sound of wheels and axles breaking and sparking against rusted tracks filled the car and roused Nikolai from his slumber. He threw open the door and was greeted with a gust of hot, dry, savannah air. The smell of old metal and dead grass filled his nostrils as he fitted his mask over his head and strapped on his rucksack. Willow was already awake.

"Ain't that Hoofington?" He asked him, placing her hoof over the collection of spires off in the distance. Nikolai frowned.

The Stalker strained his eyes and spotted the glow in the distance, and, after investigating it through his rifle optic, Nikolai spotted a titanic jet black tower which stretched up beyond the cloud layer. He cracked a smile.

"Yes, yes! It is. We must have come upon it last night, pack your things-" He turned to the two sleeping equines in the back of the train car.

"Aurora! Flashpoint, blin-Wake up!" He clapped twice. "We have reached our destination!" With a flex of his left hand he withdrew his PDA and examined the map. He looked down at it, and then up at the ruins slowly coming into view through the haze.

"Breakfast?" Aurora queried groggily. Nikolai shook his head, "We will eat once we are on solid ground again. Pack up your stuff. We'll disembark in five minutes."

Flashpoint stirred and groaned in the darkness, but shot upright when he noticed that Nikolai was staring at him.

"Rough night?" Willow joked sympathetically. Not too rough." The Zebra slumped back and blinked the sleep out of his greenish-yellow eyes.

**

"Hagh! Opf!"

Nikolai grunted as his boots struck the ground on the side of the tracks, he landed with one palm against the ground and nearly lost his balance. Flashpoint landed beside him, Willow and Aurora glided in behind them. Nikolai spun his head around and watched as the final cars of the train flew by down the tracks.

"We didn't forget anything, did we?" Nikolai asked around, they had everything- minus the alcohol and food they had taken with them five days ago.

Nikolai led them southwestwards to a wooded area, about a hundred meters from the tracks. They made a little fire and ate their first hot-albeit meager meal since Neigh Jersey. After a while, Nikolai stepped away from the group and walked until he came to a break in the trees where he could clearly make out the Hoofington skyline. It was equal parts eyesore and beauty. Glowing ruins, that vast black spire, brackish rivers, industrial and military facilities, ringed in brown grasslands that stretched from horizon to horizon. Was it dead, or alive? He couldn't quite tell. He checked his PDA: The city limits were thirteen kilometers south-southwest.

He checked his watch and grinned. This was the last peace and quiet they were going to get before they dove into Hoofington proper. By midday they would probably be knee-deep in trouble. He could hear bursts of gunfire in the distance. A ways off, but still there. Nearly indecipherable, but still there. Kilometers off, but still there. An unearthly howl pierced the calm.

He heard a tree branch crack behind him. His friends were calling. The Stalker closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, and walked back towards the little cooking fire.

"Willow."

"Nikolai." The bat pony announced himself from the peek of a treetop, wearing his wide brimmed oak desperado hat atop his hood.

"Ready to leave?" The Stalker made a circle in the air with an index finger.

"Eyup."

"Where are we going?"

Nikolai stared dryly at the thestral through the opaque eyepieces of his mask and folded his arms. He badly wanted to respond with some sort of snappy joke that would make the cat-eyed grey and green furball up in the tree tumble to the ground in a fit of laughter. He really did. But he didn't. And couldn't for the life of himself figure out why.