T.R.O.T.T.E.R. Shadow of Cheernobyl

Chapters

The Bar
The Zone
The Line
The Heart
The Waste
The Hunt
The Discovery
Part One: The Clear Sky

The Bar

"But that's just it," The young unicorn Komodo spoke. "Sure, lots of crazy things happen in the Zone, but there's gotta be limits."

"Well of course there are," Razor retorted. "What's your point?"

It was game night in the Hundred Rads Bar. Erik and Razor were playing at the end table. Despite their complaints that checkers was getting boring, neither remembered the rules of this "chess" game very well. Their endless arguing over moves and demands for arbitration by Snitch had turned the match into a spectator sport. At this early hour, however, there weren't too many other patrons around other than a few random ponies, a Duty earth pony named Snitch, and Komodo himself.

"What I think the kid means," Snitch cut in smoothly, "is that the stories some ponies tell are... pretty far-fetched even for the Zone."

Komodo nodded in agreement. "That's it."

"Anypony with half a bottle of sense knows that," Erik argued, scooting a pawn forwards with his hoof. "Your move, Razor."

"I don't mean all the bragging," Komodo insisted. "We've all heard trotters come back from a day in the Wild Territory and say they found some artifact nopony's ever seen. I'm talking about the... the weird stories. The stuff that's even scarier than the Brain Scorcher or bloodsuckers."

"Oh," said Baldy. "You mean like what that one colt claimed he saw over at the Agroprony last winter, how some poor foal got sliced up with a knife held by nopony?"

Komodo nodded. "Exactly... Or how about the ghosts in the old Dark Valley labs, how somepony met one and it told him to stop disturbing their work. That couldn't be real, right?"

"I doubt it," said the blue pegasus Sonic. "I remember back when Freedom was still set up there, they had a colt in their bar who'd tell that one all the time."

"Yeah..." Komodo glanced at Snitch. "What do you think?"

"I dunno and I don't care," Snitch replied stiffly. "Unlike some ponies, I have no time to waste pursuing every rumor, myth and legend which passes through this place."

"Never through I'd hear that from you," Erik sniggered through his gas mask. "The one and only dealer of choice information passing up hot stuff?"

"Ahem," the earth pony cleared his throat. "I deal in facts, not fantasies." He cast a brief look at Sonic before taking a swig of his high-caffeine energy drink. "Speaking of which, there are plenty of stories in the paper. Changelings attacking Canterlot, the Crystal Empire returning..."

"Not interested," Erik said curtly, keeping his eyes on the television set behind the bar. "We know all about that."

Razor moved a pawn of his own, sliding it diagonally and removing one of Erik's pawns from the board. "Your turn."

"Oy, you can't do that!"

"Yeah I can. It's called an 'in passing' capture." Razor looked to Snitch. "Can I?"

The one in the coat nodded wearily. "You can."

"Fuck..."

"Hey Barkeep," Komodo called from the end of the bar. "What do you think about all the stories?"

"Me?" The burly earth pony, bottle for a cutie mark, rested a tattooed hoof on the bartop. "You know I don't go out all that much. I hear the same stories you do."

"But you've been here since the Disaster," the teenager pressed. "You must have some stories to tell us."

Barkeep shook his head. "I just run this place. Sid would be the one to ask."

"Sid, huh?" Sonic wiggled a hoof under the lip of his mask and scratched his jaw. "Either a genius or the world's luckiest fat bastard... Come to think of it, Barkeep, didn't you originally work the other side of the Zone perimeter? You must have heard some juicy tales back then."

"I wouldn't call it juicy," Barkeep said gruffly. "I did handle some transactions for the early trotters, no secrets about that. Back in those days nopony was quite sure what to think of the Zone. Anypony could make a claim and somepony else would believe it... Mind you, I was nopony too important back then - it was Sid in the Cordon who ran that whole show, running supplies through the Quarantine."

"Wow," Komodo sighed wistfully. "I wish I could have been a trotter in those days. Fortunes from a single artifact, boldly blazing new paths into the unknown..."

"Hah!" Razor's tone was scornful. "You wanna know about that? Go find Night Stalker. I'm sure he'd be overjoyed to tell you all about it."

Erik and Snitch glanced at him apprehensively. Some of the other ponies in the bar also took curious glances at him.

"Uh... Night Stalker? Who's that?" The young trotter inquired. However, the curious glances he was getting were starting to answer the question on their own.

"You... don't know who Night Stalker is?" Razor uttered disbelievingly.

Komodo shook his head.

"... An old trotter." Snitch explained curtly, obviously not wanting to elaborate.

"You're probably too young to remember him. I... guess I could tell you a bit of the story." Barkeep hesitated. "As much as I know, anyway."

Komodo's eyes lit up. "Could you?"

"You really want to hear an old pony reminisce?" The pillar of Hundred Rads rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The true story, you say. Well, it starts the tale of how I first came to the Zone... But I'm a bartender, you know, not a storyteller."

It was Razor who took the hint and leaped to the occasion. "Another round of drinks for everyone," he announced, stepping away from the chessboard long enough to place a bag of bits on the bartop. "I want to hear this."

"Well, if you insist." Barkeep pocketed the money and set a row of fresh cans and bottles on the bar. "Help yourselves, boys."

Once the others had picked their poison of choice, he cleared his throat. "It was right before the Running of the Leaves, not quite twenty years ago now... I remember it very well because I was staying with my brother-in-law at this little clinic where he worked with his twin sons, a ways up the river from Stalliongrad. The Cheernobyl Disaster was on the sixteenth, so.. it would have been roughly a week or two after that. We were trying to figure out what the hay going on when we got a visit from some military types, who requisitioned the place for their own use, treating Mareines who'd been caught in the infant anomalies."

"And they let you stay there?" Komodo asked.

"Yeah. I was no doctor, but they needed every hoof they could get." Barkeep frowned. "Some of those colts were real pushy; that hasn't changed. Now, one of the patients was a lieutenant named Lightening Blitz. He'd fallen into one of the first documented burner anomalies and gotten pretty roasted. His superiors didn't figure he'd survive, so they told me to just ease his pain until he passed."

"Did you?"

"As best I could. He was the tough sort, staying awake almost to the very end. And he shared something interesting with me." Barkeep paused for a moment in thought. "You know, maybe this would make more sense if I told it chronologically... Yeah."

Barkeep opened a can of soda and took a sip. "Here, let me back up and start from the beginning. Night Stalker and some of his friends were playing in one of the small swamps outside Ponyiat when the blast came. They tried to run and get help, but there was no way they could warn the others. One was caught in the open and instantly melted to goo. The second was incinerated without a trace. The third, though... that was Night Stalker. Son of a station worker."

"I'm impressed," said Sonic. "How'd he survive?"

"Night himself didn't know," Barkeep replied. "But a week later, Blitz and his squad were patrolling along the south edge of the Zone when they spotted the starving Night Stalker crawling through a field of gravity anomalies. The officers wouldn't risk a PTR or Crocodile to save one little colt, so Blitz dropped his hoofrifle and magazines to the grunt next to him and started filling his pockets with stones."

"Stones?" Komodo echoed.

"Didn't have a bag of bolts handy, did he?" Barkeep took another sip. "It took the lieutenant an hour to work his way out there, and another twenty minutes to follow his hoofprints back with this kid over his shoulder. Carried him all the way to the transport, in fact. The higher-ups assumed the lucky filly might know something, so they whisked him off right away and sent the soldiers back to the Quarantine. Then the first emission moved the border and Blitz got burned."

"A good colt, no doubt," the one Duty trotter present weighed in.

"That's the funny thing," Sonic mused. "I guess everyone expected him to..."

The narrative trailed off as an earth pony walked into the room, wearing a long coat with a hood. He had a Moosin hoof-rifle on his front leg, just like the one on the old military recruiting poster above the chessboard. As he quietly approached the bar, the others glimpsed the a Browning cannon tucked into the vest he wore under his coat and a black artifact detector clipped to his belly.

Barkeep nodded politely. "There you are. Good to see ya, Strelok."

"Sorry I'm late." Strelok's voice was as soft and unobtrusive as his physical presence. "I have what you asked for," he went on, indicating the metal strongbox in the crook of his left leg.

The owner of the establishment motioned to Garik, head bouncer of Hundred Rads, who stepped aside long enough to give Strelok passage into the back of the bar.

"As I was saying," Barkeep said when he had gone, "A particular mare from Ponyiat survived the Disaster by hiding in a cave, which promptly got blocked off by the blast aftershocks. A cave filled with poisonous snakes, no less. She survived off them for a while before some ponies heard her and dug her out. The story got out and they called her Snake Eater ever since."

"I've heard of her myself." Razor looked up from the game board. "Wasn't she some government spy or something?"

"Whatever she was, Snake came across Night Stalker after the military truck carrying him crashed near the Cordon. Guess the filly had been tortured for some reason or other; Sid told me later that his horn and two of his legs were broken."

"Wow..." Komodo whispered, "Those bastards actually tortured a foal?"

Barkeep nodded and shrugged.

"Interesting," Snitch commented. "How do you know all this about Night Stalker?"

Barkeep replied. "I met him myself years later, when I was getting knee-deep in this business. That was after he had grown his... well, reputation as a trotter who could sense anomalies and butcher entire military platoons by himself. He wanted to know the best way to get past the army patrols and out of the Zone."

"Out of the Zone?" Komodo repeated.

"That was about the time when things started to go bad for us - Clear Sky vanished into thin air, and famine hit the Zone after Sid's suppliers in the military got ratted out. And then came the Battle of Limansk. Night Stalker banded Duty and Freedom together to get supplies moving back into the Zone, and got themselves in a war with a battalion of Celestia's finest. The whole city burned to the ground in the fighting."

"You mean they fought the military head-to-head? Sounds exciting!"

Erik turned his head away, his eyes falling to the ground. "Not really."

"Well, Night Stalker got himself captured, along with his fillyfriend Raindrop. A few days later, a couple trotters launched a raid to save him only to find the base burned to ashes and Night gone."

If Komodo had been sitting down, he would be on the edge of his chair. "Where is he now?"

The earth pony shrugged, "Night Stalker was never seen again after that. But Neo knew him much better than I do. You should ask him if you want to learn more."

"Speaking of Neo, I haven't seen that colt in a while." Sonic commented.

"I heard he was in the Cordon just yesterday." Razor moved another piece, prompting a curse from his opponent.

"Is he still alive?"

"You mean Neo? Oh yeah." Barkeep paused to finish his drink. "Don't know what he gets up to most of the time, but he's certainly around. Kind of a solitary pony, though he supposedly did some work for Clear Sky back in the day. Anyhow, that's all I know for sure."

"For sure?" Komodo perked up a little. "There's more?"

Barkeep leaned over the bartop. "Only a rumor which I heard once... Some ponies claim that Night Stalker may still be alive after all these years. The more superstitious say that his soul was condemned to eternally wander the Zone as a ghost, biding his time until he can claim revenge against Equestria. Others say he died out there and got himself revived though some kind of black magic... But that's all just rumor and hearsay."

"Black magic, eh? Sounds like somepony who'd fit in with those zebras." Erik made his move. "Check."

"Wow..." Komodo shook his head. "Either way, thanks for telling me all that."

"My pleasure," Barkeep grunted. He turned as Strelok reappeared from the back room. "Good colt. You want the usual?"

"Yeah." Strelok wandered over to the bulletin board and scanned it placidly.

"All set." Barkeep placed a bundle wrapped in waxed paper on the bartop. "Anything else?"

"No, thank you." Strelok picked up the bundle and walked out, quietly humming a song. Had the patrons been watching the chess game and not Barkeep, they might not have noticed his coming and going at all.

The Zone

Daylight.

Komodo was ready to leave. He mumbled his goodbyes to Barkeep and grabbed his hoofgun and headed out into the dawn. The power of Celestia's sunlight filtered down through the clouds, turning a sickly color in the dewy morning fog.

The walk down the Lonesome Road - the old Highway 16 that once ran all the way to Ponyiat - presented Komodo with no problems. Though it was a main artery of traffic in the southern Zone, he seemed to be the only one out and about as this hour.

That would probably change once he came to the sprawl of radioactive junk mountains and vehicle graves collectively known as the Garbage. There were always a few ponies around the place, mostly lone scavengers poking about for a low-value artifact in the anomalies which bred like flies on the ionized scrap heaps. The area had been home to a sizable bandit operation once, but the changing power balance after the Zone's last fit of tremors years ago and Duty's establishment of a fortified checkpoint where the road continued north had marginalized their influence.

Komodo, for his own part, didn't expect the status quo to last. Rama - unlike his predecessor Yoga - had ambitions far beyond petty mugging and extortion, a defensible base in the gloomy reaches of the Dark Valley to the east and a growing corps of cutthroats and corsairs who seemed eager to follow his lead. Duty theoretically had enough trotters and enough supplies to give the mafioso a solid thrashing, but they couldn't let go of their obsession with exterminating Freedom long enough to make good on that potential.

Sooner or later the situation would boil over... but until then, ordinary ponies like Komodo and his family were the ones feeling the pressure. For now, day-to-day considerations like keeping food on the table prevailed.

The sun continued to rise above the treeline as the colt wandered past the wrecked Bridle transports and ambled through one of the smaller vehicle yards, passing between rows of cargo trucks, fire trucks, buses. The airships brought back memories from his childhood, identical machines prowling over the dusty landscape of the western Zone hunting for his fellow trotters. Some of the sky chariots and wagons were marred further with the old skeletons of the poor ponies who were struck dead or mortally wounded by the Disaster, but whose bodies were not wiped from existence entirely.

In the midst of this scene Komodo noticed that he was heading in the direction of the road to the Cordon, though he had made no conscious decision to. It didn't matter. He was on the hunt for a story.

Something about Night Stalker had compelled his interest. The young colt couldn't put his hoof on it, but in order to sate his burning curiosity, he had to find Neo. And if he could learn where Night Stalker was in the process, even better.

...

"... Retarded or something? Cough it up or get out of here, trotter!"

Komodo was right about the bandits. Two of them had ambushed an older colt by the swampy area at the southern edge of the Garbage and were shaking him down, though apparently without much luck.

"I told you already," the exasperated pony was saying. "I've got nothing of value with me. If you want loot so badly, why don't you get a detector and go search for it like the rest of us?"

"Quiet, asshole!" The bandit doing the shakedown was a youngish pegasus in a drab windbreaker and tracksuit pants. A kid like himself, Komodo thought. "Bet ya gotta nice stash somewhere, eh? Lemme see yer PDA!"

"Fuck you, you parasite!"

"Wanna lose yer balls too?"

Komodo probably would have stepped in if the other bandit weren't pointing a battered submachine hoofgun to his head. That one looked older and wore a threadbare trench coat. "Cool it, brother," he advised. "Let's not start shooting before it's the right time."

"Gonna do worse if this dipshit don't cough up or get the fuck out soon...!"

He couldn't watch this anymore; he had to do something. "Excuse me?"

The Tracksuit Pants pony turned to find Komodo standing close by. "What... !" he sputtered. "Howja get there, eh?"

"I... walked here," The pony replied dryly. "Are you collecting road tolls?"

"We are as far as you're concerned kid," Trench Coat retorted warily. "You looking to contribute?"

Komodo briefly eyed the irate loner with the flared nose and the leather jacket. He carefully took out a bundle of bits; his entire pay for helping Barkeep the past two days. "Is this enough for the two of us?"

"It'll do," Trench Coat cut in quickly. "Toss it over."

When the trotter did so, the thief flipped through the bundle with his hoof before dropping it into a pocket. "On your way now," he ordered. "And no sudden moves."

Komodo placidly strolled past the bandits and resumed his walk to the Cordon. There came sounds of hustling and the older pony - a yellow pegasus - fell into step beside him.

"Thank you very much, young colt," the pegasus bowed. "Those flies cause trouble for everypony around here, don't you know? It's about damned time they got some trouble on their own plate. If I had my gun with me..."

"If you shot them, others would come after you." Komodo shook his head. "Rama would make sure of it." He turned around to leave.

"Hold on, take this!" The pegasus took out several loaves of warm bread and his own small pouch of bits, "It's the least I can do for a fine young samaritan like yourself."

Komodo looked away. "I don't know what to say... Thank you, sir."

...

Wolf hated surprises.

To be fair, he hated a lot of things – Celestia, bandits, warm soda, soldiers, and nerds all drew his ire reliably – but most of them simply ceased to matter at this point. Not so for surprises, however. It had been shaping up to be a really nice day, a quiet day when he could sit by the fire with the new generation and enjoy a drink in peace.

The pine-green earth pony was used to watching the youngsters take their first steps – the Disaster survivors hadn't established the Cordon just because they liked the scenery, after all. It was also where the Quarantine obstacles were thinnest, where young colts and fillies with nothing to lose but their chains crawled under barbed wire fences and through minefields in order to feed their families.

Not all of them returned each day, although the number of deaths had declined in recent months with the supply runners taking over logistics.

Ponies young and old wandered about their business, trading goods and sitting around. Fillies scurried to and fro, playing with the makeshift dolls and old balls they loved so much. The Cordon never slept; indeed, it was an organ of the Zone. It resembled a junk heap of old boxes, but none could deny its unique place in trotter society and lore. In a strange way, it had the same near-mythical status as the Bar or Ponyiat or Cheernobyl itself.

Today the sun was up, and two unknown ponies had been spotted. The two newcomers' only resemblance to the average supply runner was the dirt on their garments. The first was an old mare, a unicorn with silvery hair tied up in a bun and a face which reflected the trials and troubles of a long life. Her smudged coat didn't fit very well. The second was a younger pale-white pegasus with denim coveralls and a polymer hard hat thickly painted over in olive drab. She carried a large bag, an entrenching tool and a surplus military detector.

The trotter had to give the young mare credit; she looked better prepared than most. The old one, though... the Zone wasn't a place where that sort could survive.

Realizing that the two were making steady progress in his own direction, Wolf was suddenly stricken by an absurd desire to tidy up the camp, or at least hide away all the empty cans which had accumulated next to his favorite spot.

The one in the coveralls hailed him. "Hey, which way to Sid?"

She doesn't waste time. "Over there," the loner said aloud, pointing down the row of crumbling houses. "In the bunker by the graves."

"Thanks." The pair changed course, leaving Wolf to contemplate the cluster of youngsters around the fire with a little wariness. They'd witnessed everything, of course, and the new arrivals stirred their interest like an unclaimed Meat Chunk. Could he trust the kids to behave themselves? While the children murmured amongst themselves, the veteran in the camp quickly dumped his empty cans into a discarded milk crate, laid a couple of planks across it and sat down to observe them.

"Wolf." It was Sid, his rough voice coming from the radio on the trotter's belt. "Got something for you."

Wolf sighed. "I'm not looking for work right now."

"This one's easy – just escort a couple of pretty girls up to the camp across the rail line. You like pretty girls, don't you?"

Trust the fat old weasel to pull that one, he thought. "I'm married," Wolf growled. "What's it worth?"

"Standard rate."

"... Fine."

"That's more like it. Have fun."

Wolf just shook his head. He was such a pushover around girls, wasn't he? He put his thoughts aside as the mares reappeared. The young one was carrying a Windchester which Wolf recognized immediately, not that there were any other lever-action hoofrifles in the Zone to confuse it with. Rising, the loner collected his shorty AK and waved. "Ready to go?"

"Yes, please." The old mare smiled at Wolf, suddenly looking very much like his late mother in her last years. "Please forgive us for burdening you."

"It's okay," the loner answered gruffly. "Before we leave, I should fill you in on the hazards around – "

"No need," the pegasus cut in. "I talked to some ex-military folks on the outside. We know about the anomalies and mutants." She emphasized the point by digging a fistful of nuts and bolts out of her pocket.

Wolf shrugged. "If you say so." He turned away, motioning for the pair to follow, and led them out of the village. "I see that Sid gave you Mantis' shooter," he observed once they were in the clear, relieved that the weapon's new owner looked like she knew how to handle it. "How much did he charge?"

"Most of what I brought," the pegasus replied ambiguously. "Who's Mantis?"

"An old friend of mine, except that he got captured by Mareines not too long ago. He got away, but it changed him – it wasn't that he actually snapped, but he became totally single-minded about them... He'd actually learned ventriloquism somewhere, see, and what he'd do was, he'd set up fake campfires in narrow ravines or gutted buildings right next to the Quarantine."

A wild mutant dog paused to sniff in the trio's direction, then loped away.

"Then he'd hide close by, imitating conversations until some military patrol came over looking for easy prisoners... He did it all through that winter and pretty much drove the the Mareine squads out of the Hills for a while, until they got together and went after him in serious numbers." Spotting the telltale shimmer of a gravity anomaly, the guide reached for his bolt bag. "I hear it cost the bastards eight of their own, and he still made it back to the Cordon before bleeding out."

"Sounds like quite a guy," the Windchester-wielder remarked. "A Mantis, a Wolf and a Beaver. Interesting names... Oh, before I forget, I'm – "

"Don't say it." Wolf interrupted his bolt-throwing to raise a hoof. "Out here, two kinds of ponies use their names: fools and those who are so badass or well-connected that knowing their real identity can't hurt them. No offense, but you don't look like you're quite there yet."

"Well," said the old mare with dignity, "I don't think I have much cause to worry... But if you insist, Yili will have to do."

"Call me Willow," the younger one added.

The loner nodded. "Works for me." Three bolts' sacrifice showed him the way forward, and he moved on. "I take it you lived out here?"

"I did," She confirmed. "Many, many years ago... I wish I could see Ponyiat one more time, but they tell me it's impossible."

"Yeah... Unfortunately we still don't have a safe route that far north – everybody wants one, but nopony knows how to find one."

...

A few minutes later, they found Beaver ensconced in the second floor of the house on the right side of the road, across from the gutted shell of a small farm.

The pale-blue earth pony was much as Wolf remembered him, with his trademark whiskers growing strong as ever and his collection of notebooks undiminished. Beaver was the sort who could go a long way; like Wolf, he'd been in the Zone since it began.

Leaning against the outside wall, Wolf briefly listened to the muffled voices of Yili and the other mare conversing. The former had asked to stop for a short rest before going on, and was using the time to inquire about various places she once frequented. How did it feel, Wolf wondered, to have memories of life in this poisoned land before everything changed?

"Hey." Willow appeared from the hole in the wall, cradling the Windchester with confident ease. "Thanks again for getting us this far."

"My pleasure," Wolf grunted. After a few moments of quiet, he posed a question. "Where are you heading, anyway?"

"The Bar," the other replied. "After that, I'm not sure."

"Your mother's got guts."

"My mother... Oh!" Willow laughed a little, wisps of raven hair falling down over her sky-blue eyes. "Yili and I aren't related."

"Sorry." Wolf fixed his eyes on the abandoned farm. "I gotta ask, how does she expect to survive?"

"She doesn't," the pegasus said quietly. "She came back here to die, not to live... She looks good for her age, I know, but that's just on the outside."

"I see." The loner's voice was uncharacteristically solemn. "Then you're... helping fulfill a last wish?"

"That's right." Willow took out a cigarette, turned it over in her hoof and then, thinking better of it, put it away. "We met by accident, looking for the same path."

"What about yourself?"

"Hm..?"

"It's almost unheard of for a civvie to take up supply running," Wolf pointed out. "What drove you to it?"

There was a bitter chuckle. "The Stalliongrad economy won't be booming any time soon. Plus, my husband is in... dire straights."

"I know that feeling," Wolf agreed. "My Milky, now... We've had fights, but I still share what I can. It's the right thing."

"I guess." Willow sounded noncommittal. "I used to date a Mareine guy who was stationed at Camp Ajax, would you believe?"

The loner colt raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"He didn't talk about it much, and six years ago..." Willow looked at the ground before her. "It hit him hard – must have been all the friends he lost in that Limansk bloodbath. Got to the point where I had to just end it while we could still face each other. After that, he disappeared." She raised her head. "I'm rambling, sorry."

Wolf swallowed at the mention of Limansk. "It's fine." He dismissed. "Hey, if you're looking for someone to learn the trade from, there's a fellow named Bee in the Garbage who's sort of a mentor to the kids up there. Tell him I sent you and he'll set you up."

"Thanks for the tip." Hearing the creak of the wooden ladder inside, Yili stuck her head through the gap in the bricks. "All set?"

"Yes, yes," Willow answered. "We'll take our leave, Mister Wolf. Thank you so much."

By this stage the loner had gotten more thanks in a day than he had in the last three weeks. "Take care," he called, setting off before any more surprises could ambush him. "See you 'round, Beaver."

Climbing down the stairs and exiting the rotting building, he headed out back onto the dirt road.

Limansk. That hellhole he had tried so hard to forget for the past six years. He couldn't let the memories come back to him, so he thought of the here and the now.

And the now was that he could look forward to another day of peace and quiet. With more money in his picket, he could relax with a cool soda and...

"Hey Wolf!"

Just when he thought he was done with surprises for the day. He instinctively turned around to face the noise. Down the road was a familiar green unicorn galloping towards him, who he immediately recognized as Komodo

As much as he hated having another surprise, Wolf couldn't be too angry at the teen for long. Komodo was a good kid, positive and youthful without being clinically stupid like most of the new generation. Wolf didn't expect to see him out here of all places though.

"Well, look who we have here."

The green unicorn's smile spread across his whole face.

"You look like you're in a hurry kid." Wolf tilted his head. "Where you off to?"

"I'm on my way to the Cordon." Komodo took a few quick breaths. "I need to find somepony."

"Guess we both have the same idea." Wolf shrugged, "Here, I'll go on back with you. Haven't seen you in a long time, kid. How's the family?"

The colt's ears drooped, his expression now depressed. He lowered his head. "Not too good. Grams couldn't remember my name yesterday, and Sis isn't so hot either. She doesn't eat or sleep much anymore. It's almost like she..."

"Nevermind. Sorry I asked." Wolf interrupted his younger charge.

"... Well, I'm doing my best for them."

Wolf smiled, "I'm sure you are."

...

"Attention everypony!" The infuriated voice of the commander at the military checkpoint down the road washed over the camp, broadcast far and wide by the outpost's loudspeaker. "One of you stupid fucks thought it'd be funny to put out a cigarette in my drink. When I find you, I'm gonna rip your head off!"

The two trotters were just close enough to the village to hear the laughter from the ponies already there.

"Look's like somepony didn't get enough coffee this morning." Wolf commented, earning himself a loud chuckle from Komodo.

Wolf noticed the new faces around the Cordon campfire as he approached: his old unicorn friend Fanatic, a stallion hidden under a long hooded coat and the wall-eyed pegasus Clumsy.

The last set Wolf's teeth on edge: Clumsy was one of the youngest and least useful trotter. Wolf himself had felt sorry for the orphan once, but his patience was long ago dashed to pieces against Clumsy's thick skull.

"Welcome back," he said to Fanatic, noticing that the nuisance foal was sitting funny. "How did it go?"

"The kid fucked up big time." Fanatic jerked his head in Clumsy's direction and took a swig from his Cossacks podka. "Twisted his hoof running away from some bandits. Reaper here carried him halfway back with them chasing us." He grimaced. "Now the swine are moving to the Valley in larger numbers... Rama's up to something again."

"I'm not surprised," Wolf said wearily. "Did you make it to the crash site?"

"Yes." Reaper spoke for the first time, keeping his eyes on the half-eaten sausage and loaf of bread in his bag. "There was nothing in the transport. The bandits stripped it."

Wolf tried to keep his mind off how much the quiet trotter creeped him out. "No goodies for Sid, huh?"

"Not really," Fanatic confirmed. "But we hear you had an interesting assignment."

"Girls," Clumsy chimed in, interest overcoming his humiliated silence. "Were they hot?"

Wolf rolled his eyes. "One was old enough to be your mom. The other was old enough to be your grandmother."

"What about her?"

"The hell..." Wolf shook his head, "You're not serious!"

Fanatic's lip curled. "Give up. You've never scored with a mare in your life and you wouldn't score with that one."

"Yeah, well..." Clumsy momentarily held back his retort - inapplicable to the openly homosexual Fanatic - and then flung it at Komodo instead. "I bet you haven't either!"

"Oooh," Reaper, who had been content to just watch the conversation unfold, squinted at his fellow rookie. "That's low, dude."

"It's probably true, though," the offender proclaimed before Wolf could stab him in the face. "Isn't it?"

Wolf replied before Komodo could retort, "So fucking what?"

From a decript house, all of the ponies suddenly heard a number of children start hollering like an ice cream chariot had come to town. They gathered around a light-brown earth pony, a large guitar slung over his back.

Uh oh, looks like Ingram's in town. Wolf sighed loudly; all he wanted was a uneventful day off. First the supply runners, then Komodo, and now Ingram.

"Here comes the party," snorted Fanatic.

Ingram took a seat around the fire in the center of the tiny village. Everypony in the Zone knew him; he had wandered the Zone playing melodies and serenades since before Komodo could remember.

A thought came to Komodo's head; Ingram had been here for as long as he could remember. Maybe he knew where Neo had gone off to. As the guitarist sat down around the tiny fire and plucked a few strings, Komodo approached him. Wolf, Reaper, and Fanatic seemed too busy talking to each other to notice.

"Hey Ingram," The unicorn interrupted. "Sorry to distract you. I just wanted to ask you something."

"Oh no, I was just warming up my hooves. What you need?"

"Do you know anything about Neo?" inquired the unicorn.

"Neo..." He paused. "I haven't heard that name in a long time. Don't know a lot about him though. You... wouldn't happen to be looking for Night Stalker, would you?"

Komodo's eyes widened, "How did you...?"

"... I was looking for him too a while back, and I've heard about Neo claiming to know where he is. I met Night Stalker myself years ago; hell, I wrote a song based on him."

"Really?"

The earth pony smiled. "Oh sure! I was gonna play it right now, in fact."

Komodo promptly took some of the remaining bits out of his bag and tossed them into the cup.

The moment he began strumming his guitar, a veritable flock of young fillies and colts gathered around. Komodo himself couldn't catch up with their hyperactive chorus, but they were obviously happy to listen to him play. The young boys and girls chatted as they sat around the fire laughing and hitting each other. The older trotters all turned their attention to him.

His guitar notes formed a melancholy tune, a melody reminiscent of days gone by; a song of silent solitude that would not have been out of place had they been travelling down a long, winding road.

Ingram began to sing;

"On a lonesome highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of mana, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
'This could be Paradise or this could be Hell'
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say..."

The trotters around the campfire - young and old, male and female - began to sing along. Even Komodo found himself softly chanting;

"Welcome to the Hotel Cowlifornia
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place!)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel Cowlifornia
Any time of year (Any time of year!), you can find it here!

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the jellyfish bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty colts, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the captain,
'Please bring me my wen'
He said, 'We haven't had that spirit here since two-thousand and ten'
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say

Welcome to the Hotel Cowlifornia
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place!)
Such a lovely face
Livin' it up at the Hotel Cowlifornia
What a nice surprise (What a nice surprise!), bring your alibis!"

His music slowed down, his tempo changing. All else seemed to fade into silence as everypony in the village fixed their eyes on him;

"Mirrors on the ceiling,
Death and champagne on ice
And he said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab him with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
'Relax,' said the night colt,
'We are programmed to receive.'
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!"

As the vocals ended, Ingram went straight into a guitar solo that captured the spotlight. The younger children clapped and stomped their hooves as the earth pony continued to play. But Komodo noticed nothing like that on the features of the older ponies looking on. Most of them had their heads turned away, like they didn't want to hear his words. Wolf had his hooves in ears; he made no secret how much he hated this song.

And just like that, his song finished. The kids surrounding him cheered and babbled. The few older ponies lurking around the buildings dropped bits into his cup, earning themselves gracious Thank you's and Faust bless's from the musician with every donation.

When the chorus died down enough, Komodo rose to his hooves and leaned to the earth pony. "Nice song."

Ingram did a small bow in gratitude. Despite how good the tune was, Komodo thought less about the music and more about the lyrics. If they were really telling the story of Night Stalker...

Fanatic suddenly appeared next to Komodo, jolting him out of his thought. "Hey, come to think of it... Wolf here told me that he ran into you this morning coming down from the Bar. That's a ways away; what did you need here so badly?"

"Oh, I'm looking for a pony." The unicorn replied. "His name's Neo."

Clumsy tilted his head. "Why you want to find him?"

"None of your fucking business." Wolf then turned his attention to the unicorn. "Sorry kid, can't help you with that. But talk to Sid if you want, he'll probably know more. He's over in that old bunker... the usual."

Komodo nodded. By now, his curiosity grew by the minute - and Ingram's song had only solidified it. He had to find Neo.

"See you round, kid!" Komodo faintly heard Wolf call out behind him before he descended the stairs into the concrete bunker buried under the hill.

...

Sid wasn't facing the door when Komodo entered the dimly-lit chamber. Instead, his chair faced towards an old flickering television behind the counter. The stallion didn't even acknowledge his entrance.

He watched the small television thoughtfully, in complete silence. Komodo couldn't help but take a peek at the program.

At first, he didn't understand what was happening. He had heard about mares wearing those kinds of clothes at weddings, although he had never actually seen a wedding dress himself.

A number of beautiful mares in dresses surrounded the handsome blue-haired stallion, dressed in an impeccable crimson uniform. Komodo recognized the imposing form of Princess Celestia herself stood presiding over the grandiose celebration.

Komodo had heard references here and there of a big event in Canterlot, but the colt could hardly believe the scale of the festival on the tiny screen. How could they have gotten all those decorations, the music, the food? It utterly boggled his young mind. And they all looked... happy, like there was nothing to worry about. No fighting, no conflict, just happiness.

"Sid?"

The earth pony, startled by the intruder, whipped his head around. His face marked by age and stress, Sid still bore the courage and intelligence of the pony who saved the trotters from starvation and kept the Zone running. "Oh, sorry I didn't see you come in. Just watching some old news of my family members getting married without me."

"Family members..." Komodo inquired, putting the pieces together by himself. "So... you know that pony on the screen?"

"Know him? He's my nephew." Sid smiled, "Prince Shining Armor, that's him. Captain of the Canterlot Royal Guard. Looks like my old uniform fits him like a glove."

Komodo also heard him mutter something, but he couldn't make it in his chair slightly, he pointed his hoof at the lavender mare standing next to Shining. "And that purple one's my niece Twilight." The grizzled stallion peeked over his chair to Komodo, "Has she grown or vhat?"

The young unicorn did a double take in response to this news. "Wait, back up! Your nephew... is a prince? That means... you're royalty?"

"Unfortunately." Sid's crooked smile covered his face. The unicorn couldn't believe the story.

"That's amazing! You should talk to him and congratulate him." suggested Komodo, "I mean... You can talk to them with all that fancy radio gear, right?"

Sid shook his head. "Bah, I haven't even seen them since they vere foals - years before the Disaster. And even if I vanted to, it'd be far too dangerous." With a long sigh, the fat stallion switched off the television with a push of the hoof and spun his chair around. "Enough of that. So... vhat can I help you vith today?"

Taken aback by Sid's subject change, Komodo had to pause to remember what he had come for.

"I'm looking for a pony named Neo."

Sid sat backwards in his seat, "Neo, eh? I know the name. If you'd come here yesterday, you'd have caught him. He steal from you or something?"

"Um... No?"

"Vell, I don't give a shit why you vant to find him." Sid rummaged about under his desk for a second. "Neo lives near the svamps vest of here - a hut by the old church. Dangerous route, though. I vouldn't recommend a pony of your age going there... but if you really vant to find him, I suggest using the railway tunnel to get to Budpony and going down the river from there. Just be careful of patrols on the way to the dock. And watch out for the old priest wandering around that area too: heard he's a little... off."

Since the military had long dynamited the abandoned tunnels which connected the swampland to the Agropony, the only practical option left was to follow the rail line west from the Cordon to the dock on the Budpony river. And Komodo knew that required good weather and a hefty bribe to the sympathizer Major Typhoon for the sake of diverting the random pegasus patrols elsewhere.

Now he regretted paying off those bandits back at the Garbage. The weather wouldn't be a problem - provided it didn't start raining - but Komodo doubted he had enough to convince Sid to pay off a military colt. Looks like he was on his own.

"Alright then. Thanks for the help." said Komodo, "Prince Sid."

The fat stallion grinned.

"Tell your grandma I said hello. Oh, and give this to Wolf on your vay out." Sid winked as he laid a bag of bits on the table, "Good hunting, trotter."

The Line

Getting to the marshes wasn't easy. The footpath southwest from the Garbage, the preferred route of old, was now so radioactive that Komodo doubted even a pricey SEVA suit - or even the radiation nullification of an Astarte flying suit - would get a trotter through that gauntlet unscathed. And with the destruction of the tunnels leading south from the Agropony Institute, he had been forced to take a path though wild country and the watchful eyes of the Equestrian military.

Suffice it to say that Komodo didn't have much incentive to visit the marshes on his own, and it had been quite a long time since the parade of odd jobs on which he lived provided him with a reason.

Komodo knew quite well that his search for Night Stalker could easily turn out to be a total dead end, but what else did he have? Questions without answers, and maybe a tenuous lead or two. If this little adventure of his didn't pay off, he was back where he started. He wasn't sure what he was actually looking for, yet even now he was absolutely certain that it, whatever it turned out to be, was important.

He exited the decaying railway tunnel into the mid-day sun. The coordinates uploaded to his PDA showed the church rather far away from his current position.

And by "far away" it meant halfway across the swamps and down the Budpony River.

Komodo stood in silence for a moment, then magically pulled his binoculars – a compact pair, not the bulky military ones most trotters used – from their case beside the artifact detector in his bag and panned them across the wide landscape. He could see the old pump station to the south, a rickety wooden structure among the reeds and pools, and a watchtower looming in the haze past it.

Turning his eyes towards the northwest, the young trotter could make out the ruins of a farmstead, a derelict garage and, further off, the collapsed husk of a small factory. He could also make out an angry shimmering in the air over the dry land between them. Sickly grass forested with blackened trees covered the scattered little islands. New plants grew around them, feeding on their corpses.

The ruined village in the distance was as Komodo faintly remembered it: a cluster of structures still mostly intact – apart from one which an anomaly had bitten through – bordered by a fringe of crumbling foundations and bare chimneys already claimed by the creeping waters of the swamp. On the north side, a few stalwart trees offered shade. A dirt road led east to the machine yard, while a winding series of footpaths and wooden walkways offered access to the boat park a short distance northwest. Another path ran due south across sandy islets and clumps of scrub to the pumping station.

A squealing, snarling pack of "Rodents" – the name was applied loosely to the lanky mutant gerbils – swarmed around the foundation struts of the rusting elevated pipeline down the hill in front of him. Otherwise, they ignored him. Komodo walked along the top of the rusted tube undeterred.

He checked his bag to make sure he didn't drop anything on the other side. He carried his usual traveling gear; PDA, AK-74p hoofgun, extra ammunition batteries, medical kits, bandages, food, painkillers, a magic suppressor for stealth. He also carried his beloved Slime artifact, given to him by Wolf as a reward three months ago for helping him clear out a nest of mutant dogs.

...

"What the fuck? There's a pony right there!"

Komodo froze like a deer in headlights at the dour male voice that confronted him from the reeds as he took a few steps onto solid land. He was tempted to hide, and was only stopped by the sudden appearance of four stallions and a mare out of the bushes to his right. All of them with hoofguns trained at his face.

"Stop! He's one of us." Spoke one of the mercs, an earth pony mare completely covered up in a suit and gas mask.

The dark-blue pegasus with a ragged mane and jet-gray jacket tilted his head. "What the... What's a little kid doing out here?"

"Hey bro." The red earth pony with white tattoos striped on his body introduced himself. "Name's Badger."

"Hold on." The gas-masked pegasus slipped off his device to get a better view. "Komodo? That you?"

Komodo recognized the pony almost instantly. "Vergil!" He greeted.

"Hello hello." Vergil nodded. "Long time no see. Where you off to this fine day?""

"I need to get to the old church down the Budpony."

Vergil and Badger glanced at each other.

"You're fucking kidding, right?" Hound spat. "You need to go home kid, before you get hurt."

"Lay off, Hound." The only mare in the group argued.

Before Komodo himself could reply, Vergil pushed the pegasus. "He's old enough to handle himself." He turned to the young unicorn. "You can stick with us to the Clear Sky base, but we're not going any farther. After that, it's up to you."

Komodo didn't mind the conditions, all things considering. "Got it. I won't be trouble, I promise."

"Good boy." The light-red earth pony smiled. "It's settled then. Let's move out, the pumping station is just up ahead." He took out a pair of binocs and swept his gaze over the area.

The mercenary commander, Hound, stepped towards him. "Well?"

Vergil shook his head. "Change of plans. The road to the station is impassible. I can see the anomalies all the way from here."

"Damn," the merc muttered. "What about the middle?"

"It doesn't look so bad," Vergil replied. "But we may not be able keep our hooves dry all the way."

"We can handle it," Hound asserted. "Let's go."

Hound's impatience and arrogance were typical of mercenaries in the Zone today. Komodo hadn't been around to see the very first trotters at work, but he did remember a time when the mercs were more respectable. But today, one certainly couldn't trust a merc to share his last can of meat or spare medical kit anymore - treatment a trotter in need could nearly always expect.

...

"Clear?"

The unicorn mercenary Fisher nodded. "It's clear."

"Good. Five minute break, ponies."

Komodo would have been perfectly happy to press on, but he didn't mind a brief stop.

Taking advantage of it, he climbed to the roof of the pumping platform and took out his binoculars once more. He could see the watchtower better now, as well as the tumbledown fishing shacks in the hamlet behind it and the vestiges of the Clear Sky base beyond. The smaller watchtower to the southwest must have collapsed since his last visit, since he could make out no trace of it.

"How's it look?"

Komodo tore his eyes away from the vista to find the mercenary Lynx peering up at him. "I don't see any problems," he answered noncommittally. "Wait... Some boars in the hamlet ahead."

"Oh?" Lynx ascended the steps to where Komodo stood. "Lemme see."

Lynx spoke in a rough, curt voice with a faint Stalliongrad accent and Komodo imagined her having a short, masculine haircut to match; a notion bolstered by the unfeminine figure she cut in her gas mask and vest. Her L1A1 hoofrifle with its SUIT optical sight and jungle-taped magazines was an added novelty, unlike the surplus L85s which had flooded the Zone's underground economy in recent years.

The mercs fielded many of the distinctive assault hoofguns, but just in the last year they had begun buying Dodge PA-VZ carbines to supplement the finicky Appaloosan pieces. In this squad, however, everypony except Lynx and Hound still used old models. Badger, the colt on point, also carried an indigenous Fort-500 shot hoofgun with a folding stock.

"There's a big male in the pack," Lynx commented, peering through her sight. "Vergil!"

"What is it?"

"Four boars on the path. Want me to take 'em out?"

"I don't care," Vergil grunted. "If it'll make our job easier, go ahead."

Lynx nodded. "Well, kid? You can keep the hooves as a little bonus."

Komodo watched the mutated animals for a few seconds. He had kept himself and his family alive this long on a single principle – the less trouble you cause, the less trouble you get – but the alternative to culling the four-eared creatures was a twenty-minute detour through dense vegetation and anomalies. He had no special love for boars, and they were hardly endangered anyway.

"Are you a fast shot?" She asked, magically loading a battery into the top of the hoofgun. Komodo took it with his own magic and slipped it onto his leg. The straps felt a little loose, considering they were fitted for a bigger pony.

"Pretty fast, yeah."

Lynx was probably raising an eyebrow behind her tinted lenses. "You can hit 'em with iron sights from here?"

"I'll try." Either way, he needed the practice. With some fidgeting and adjustment, he fit the hoofgun over his leg. With his other hoof, the teenager twisted the old hoofrifle's cocking piece to the ready position, the battery glowing green. The stock's varnished wood was cool against his shoulder. A deep breath, hold and...

Crack!

"Not a bad shot kid," Lynx remarked in an undertone as Vergil led the mercenaries through the fishing shacks below their perch. "Very nice placement. I was a bit faster though."

"Yeah," called Badger from below. "Prime hooves there, too. We'll have to collect those on the way back."

"No such luck," Lynx corrected. "I promised them to Komodo."

"Shit..."

"You can have them, I'm going on ahead from here."

"Cut the chatter and get down here," Hound ordered. "Well, trotter?"

"Just ahead," Vergil replied, motioning towards the thicket in front of the group. "The going is treacherous, so stay close."

...

Vergil abruptly signaled another halt. "I see the village," he said in a soft voice. "Spread out, stay low and watch your step. Badger, you're on point."

"Got it." The stripe-tattooed stallion took his battle rifle in hoof, easing the safety off as he navigated between patches of thick reeds. The ground was soft and moist, but his boots were up to the challenge.

"Nothing in sight," Badger informed Vergil. "Nothing living, at least."

"Anomalies?"

"Clear."

"All right... Tread lightly."

The others did so, though not without commentary. "Tread lightly?" Komodo stage-whispered. "I don't see any graves. Are there those ghost creatures here?"

"No," Hound deadpanned, "but the swamp bloodsuckers do a good impression."

"What's the difference between a swamp and a regular sucker, anyway?" Fisher asked.

"Swamp suckers are sneakier, and those bastards can jump." The stallion growled. "Some call them demons; I call them bitches."

Lynx and Badger laughed as they exited the tiny village and ventured the outskirts of the Clear Sky base.

The roof of the mechanic's workshop had fallen in since Komodo had last entered this secluded place. The old bar wasn't looking too solid either, but the main building and the trader's garage appeared relatively sound. The defunct PTR by the garage was sinking into the sand, the fire pit nearby almost wholly erased by the tide of time.

"Wow," said Badger. "This used to be a faction base? Must be some good stuff around here."

"You're about to see plenty of it," Vergil answered, flashing hoof signals rapid-fire. "Hound, check if that roof is sturdy enough for you. Komodo, Lynx, Badger! You three check the garage and the bar. Fisher, you look for what we came here for. Call if you find anything."

"We're up, then." Lynx motioned to Komodo and advanced on the designated target, shotgun at low ready. "These Clear Sky guys, would they leave booby traps?"

"I don't think so, from what I've heard about them," Komodo replied cautiously, "but if anypony else has been here..."

"Good point." Badger switched on the electric lamp attached to his vest and moved inside.

The building was empty. Sort of. The body of a black-coated bandit hung from the ceiling, filled with dozens of metal spikes crusted with dried blood. A spell on its hooves was keeping it from falling to the floor, even after death. The mercenary moved towards the nearly skeletal corpse which lay against the front of the trader's counter below the bandit corpse, an open medical kit in its rotted lap. It wore the tattered remains of a typical armored suit. A worn AKMS leaned muzzle-up against the counter, a canvas magazine pouch and an Echo anomaly detector beside it.

Komodo tasted bile. The sight was horrific.

"Ah, shit. Vergil, got bodies here!"

"Fresh?" the leader called from across the central clearing.

"Nope..." Lynx turned to Komodo. "Stand back, kid."

"Poor bastard," Badger muttered. "Must have crawled in here and bled out before he could treat himself... Ugh, I can smell them even through this damn filter."

Ignoring the bodies, Lynx took out a pocket flashlight from her pack and shone it about. "There's not much left," she observed.

"I prefer ponies who shoot bullets." Badger growled. "Ya can't wrap a bandage around being turned to a pincushion!"

Komodo thoroughly agreed.

Badger straightened, lifting the orphaned Kalash. "Here kid," he said. "You take this... Hound! This guy walked into a bullet somewhere outside, and some bandit got it too. There's nothing else here."

"All right. Come help me with the main building, will you?" The merc called from outside.

Komodo dropped the rusting AKMS as he followed the earth pony out of the building. "Are you certain the artifact you want is here?"

"No idea," Badger returned cheerfully. "But the client insisted it was and if the client wants to pay us to look for it, more power to the client."

"Ah..."

"I hope he was right, though. Clear Sky must have really run things on a shoestring – there's no loot in this fucking dump at all." Badger climbed onto the main building's skirting walkway and helped Lynx up. "And to think, the faction just got up and vanished. Straight to the station and not a word more... Guess the Monolith goons took them out, eh?"

"I suppose."

"Hey kid! Vergil wants to talk to you inside." Hound suddenly called from the roof of the main building.

Shrugging his shoulders, Komodo did as he said and carefully entered the main room of the ratty wooden lodge.

Two tables on his right beneath the windows had their fair share of garbage spread about haphazardly, as well as some large rolled up papers that Komodo assumed were more maps. A radio crackled quietly in the corner of the desk. Vergil himself stood next to it.

"There you are. We gotta move out before the patrols pick us up," Vergil explained, "or else it's a one way trip to Hotel Cowlifornia." He pointed to a large map that had been laid on the table.

Komodo always had a passion for maps since colthood. He would look for hours at maps of Equestria and lose himself in all the glories of exploration. But at this point in his life, the world had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a young colt like himself to dream about. Now that he was old enough, he knew all about the dangers lurking in every square inch of this land.

"If you're going to the church, you better take a look at this. This here's the old Thoroughbred Co. warehouse, just up ahead. The dock to the river is there too."

Komodo followed his hoof to a small black line conjoining two masses of land.

Satisfied, Vergil continued, pointing to a hastily scribbled marker down the river. "The church is here, a stone's throw from Lake Cantar and nestled near Camp Shetland in the Quarantine. Anomalies are really bad around the river, so make sure to stick near the buildings and paths. And whatever you do, watch out for ponycopters. They're everywhere."

Ponycopters, the stuff of nightmares. Komodo only heard about them, but he never wanted to see one face-to-face.

With that, Vergil walked out of old bedroom, leaving Komodo to mentally check if he could remember the route the map was showing. Considering it was only a few centimeters northwest on the map, it shouldn't be too difficult. He checked the map on his PDA; it seemed correct as well. Komodo followed the pegasus outside, where he was waiting for Komodo by the top of the steps.

"Gate's over there. That's where you need to go." Vergil pointed a hoof to the wooden fence and gate on the other side of the compound.

Badger suddenly gave the young unicorn a clap on the back as he passed. "Hey, thanks again," he said. "Saved us a lot of trouble, you know? When I get my squad, I ought to hire you." Moving ahead, he waved over his shoulder. "Don't get plugged by the grunts, now!"

He smiled again and nodded. "I'll... try my best."

...

Long grass crunched beneath his belly as Komodo crouched and scurried to the Thoroughbred warehouse perimeter.

A number of rusting containers took up the middle of the warehouse area, lined up diagonally with each other. Scattered around the grounds were piles of garbage, debris, and metal boxes.

Komodo was detecting life signs up ahead, four red indicators positioned in the middle of the complex. Looking to his PDA again, he noticed that it was also picking up several radio transmissions.

"Watch out for that Vortex." The PDA picked up a snippet of diologue ahead. "And don't wander off, there're worse things here than magic rifts."

"Why the fuck are we even out here anyway? Shouldn't we be at Fallabella dealing with those runners?"

"Are you gonna shut your mouth Private, or am I gonna have to shoot it off?"

"No, Sir!"

Just as Komodo had feared; a Mareine patrol had beaten him to the dock.

He Geiger counter crackled menacingly, detecting the invisible presence of radiation. He could see the distinctive shimmering of anomalies all around, and four soldiers - maybe more - stood in his way.

There was no way he could get to the boat without being spotted and filled with lead. He checked his hoofgun; could he fight them off? It was probably his only choice.

All he had to do was be stealthy... and remember the things that Wolf taught him about what to do in firefights.

1. Keep moving.

2. Close the gap.

Komodo couldn't remember the third step.

4. Profit.

With his magic, he screwed the suppressor over the short barrel of his hoofgun and inched forward as carefully as he could, cursing the crackling of the grass below him. He aimed, holding his breath. With his leg muscles, he gently pushed the firing button underneath the mechanism.

The black-coated soldier didn't even make a sound as he crumpled, the shot going clean through his hood and skull.

"PONY DOWN!" A male Mareine voice screamed from behind the truck. "We got a trotter around here! Stay frosty!"

Oh yeah, that was stealthy. Komodo might as well shoot himself next time.

"Somepony get to him now!"

"Too late, he's dead! Search the area and find that fucking trotter scum!"

Time to leave. Komodo crouched behind the wall and waited, hearing hooves running about just around the corner. It was now or never.

He turned the corner - right in front of a gas-masked Mareine.

"CONTACT!"

With a yelp bordering on girly, Komodo quickly removed himself from the line of fire.

Komodo sprinted through the nearby garage door, making a mad leap for the ground behind an abandoned red wagon. It looked like something a farmer would use to transport his prized pig from one contest to another. As it was, all it held were some very boring looking wooden crates. The Mareine continued his endless barrage, probably figuring that Komodo would have to come out some time.

Stupid! How could he possibly have been so stupid? In his panic, he had trapped himself in a corner with four battle-hardened soldiers outside waiting to kill him. If he were here, Wolf would've killed Komodo himself for making such a mistake.

Judging from the hoofsteps and voices, the whole Mareine squad was outside. His breathing was erratic. He didn't dare close his eyes to try to calm himself. For Faust's sake, he was being shot at. That entitled him to feel anything but calm.

"Come on out, pussy. We only want to kill you!"

He heard hoofsteps outside coming closer and closer. Deadening his nerves, Komodo raised his weapon, keeping a firing zone on the door opening. A pony-shaped figure immediately turned the corner right around the entrance.

Komodo didn't even think.

He thought he fired an entire battery's worth of ammo at the pony, because there wasn't much left of the poor colt afterward. His blood began to seep across the ground towards Komodo's hooves.

"Pony down! He's in the warehouse!"

The trotter got up and moved to the door - doing his best to tune out the ventilated remains of the soldier he had just murdered - and peeked out of cover.

Komodo only got a glimpse of a female Mareine unicorn rising from behind the steel girders before the mare opened fire with a burst of magic bullets.

His right hindleg promptly seared with excruciating pain as he pulled himself back into cover behind the wall of the warehouse and dragged himself back to his corner spot. He only got a glimpse of his wound; a smoking tear opened up his joints.

Focusing as much as he could through the terrible agony, he pulled the magic-laced medical bandages from his pack. He tried wrapping his bleeding hindleg, but the bandages were meant for cuts and gashes, not gaping holes. It was soaked with blood and sliding off almost before he had finished wrapping it. He tossed the bandage and tried again, this time pulling the bandage much tighter. It too soaked bright red, but at least it stayed.

Errant suppressing shots continued to ring outside. If he stayed here, he would die for sure. He needed something to get them away from him.

Then, glancing at a nearby chunk of rubble, he had an idea. A long shot - but he didn't have a choice.

He dashed past the opened warehouse doors to the other end of the small building. The Mareines, still hiding behind cover, didn't detect him as far as he could tell.

Concentrating as hard as he could, Komodo lifted a piece of debris with his magic. He tossed it out the right warehouse door directly into some nearby reeds.

"He's trying to flank us! Swamp, ten o'clock low!" One of the soldiers shouted. The Mareine behind the truck and the one behind the stack of boxes sprinted out of their cover to move in response to the noise.

Right into Komodo's line of fire.

He aimed through the right warehouse door and let out as accurate a burst as he could. The first Mareine flopped to the ground like a fish, the bullet piercing his mask right under his helmet. The second one - the unicorn mare who put a bullet in Komodo's leg - dropped with several bullet wounds center mass. He checked his PDA.

That was two. One more left.

He couldn't see him, though. He scanned the yard with his weapon raised. He heard whimpers, even though he could see anypony nearby. He checked his PDA. A red dot moved to the left of the building Komodo was in.

There he was. The colt, dragging his deceased squadmate by the tail, froze solid. Reacting without a moment to pause, Komodo fired his hoofgun, taking down the straggler.

The cowering colt before him looked younger than Komodo himself, his eyes filled with terror. His hoofgun - a rare LR-300 assault weapon - lay next to him.

He slowly advanced towards the cowering pegasus, aiming for the head. He hindleg burned, but he tuned it out as best he could for the moment.

Weakly, he whimpered. "... I don't want to die..."

At first, Komodo didn't know how to respond. He couldn't just murder a colt in cold blood - especially one so young as him.

Then he remembered Wolf's training. If he let him go, more would come looking for him. Plus, who could say if the colt would just shoot him in the back once he turned around?

"I'm... I'm sorry."

Komodo turned his head away and closed his eyes. With a couple of shots, the pony before him was no more.

The young colt swallowed, his mouth completely parched with tension. His mind raced with a hundred different thoughts simultaneously. He had just fought off a platoon of Celestia's finest, and he had murdered four ponies in the process.

They had tried to kill him, sure, but guilt still washed over him. These ponies may have had families, children, spouses. He had just taken their loved ones away from them.

It was the adaptation that worried him the most. The way he had gone so fast from young adventurer to clumsy killer was difficult to deal with, to say the least.

Komodo began to look over the bodies of his slain enemies. Looting the dead felt wrong; but the cold, rational part of him murmured that they didn't need it.

Taking the young one's LR, he also found some spare 5.56 ammo for the weapon. Even if it was a bit large for him, he could sell it for several days' pay when he got back to the Cordon.

The other ponies had various odds and ends; journals, photos, ammo. One of them had a spare ration can, the "tourist's delight" in trotter parlance.

But his looting was swiftly interrupted. The distinctive brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbr of rotors assaulted his ears in the distance. Made of a metal framwork, the machine was powered by a uniformed pony using pedals to turn the rotors and was equipped with enough magical ordinance to level villages.

It was like all of his nightmares were coming true in a single day.

Without even taking a moment to think it through, he glued himself behind the pile of rusting beams just as a barrage of magical death courtesy of two MPA-60 magic cannons strafed the compound. Clouds of dust shrouded the area, tiny pieces of rock lodging themselves in Komodo's back.

As the ponycopter came around for another try, Komodo darted away as fast as he could from the large entrance of the garage, pressing his back to the concrete wall of the building to its left. He took a breath, resting his head back and looking up.

After a quick glare that he hoped would make the ponycopter spontaneously combust, Komodo started galloping, darting around the rusting containers.

The same familiar, growing whine filled the air, and Komodo knew what was coming. He looked for somewhere to go, and, finding only closed containers, decided that they would do.

The first bullet managed to hit him in the shoulder armor, turning him in mid-run and sending him tumbling to the ground. However, he still managed to crawl around and put a stack of boxes between them, the metal taking the lion's share of the punishment.

His suit took the round, so he'd be okay for the time being.

Using the boxes as leverage, Komodo managed to shimmy his way up to a standing position and dash into a small hut across from it. The ponycopter came around so that it could see him. The ponycopter's gun whined as it prepared to fire again.

Komodo increased his pace to the other side of the hut as the bullets blasted through the wall, sending large shards of wood exploding out behind him as he galloped. His back to the wall beside the doorway, Komodo poked his head outside. Another red container sat sternly in front of him. No sign of the ponycopter above, although he could sure as hell hear it.

With only the slightest of glances back up to the sky, Komodo wiped his sweat soaked brow and dashed outside once again, slamming far too hard into the container before shimmying along it. He slipped around it and came to another container. On the right, he could see the pathway that would take him to the dock.

The ponycoptor swung around and faced towards him.

Komodo let his head hang. "Oh… come on…"

Now he was out of places to hide. He dove into the reeds as fast as he could, laying flat on his stomach. The sleek form of the ponycopter swooped into view, taking account of him.

He was sure the vehicle could see him. Komodo shut his eyes tightly and prayed.

The sound of something being sliced apart suddenly assaulted his ears, but was quickly followed by some loud crashing and a resounding, ear-splitting tear. Komodo whipped his head around as he tried to ascertain what happened. Peeking from his hiding place, he watched as the last remains of the ponycoptor sank beneath the surface of the filthy irradiated marsh near the dock building. A cloud of, debris, mud, and reeds swirled and spun in the sky like a tornado in the shimmering air.

Komodo instantly connected the dots; a Vortex anomaly, and a big one at that. So big that it would probably collapse and disappear by tomorrow.

He felt himself over for a moment. He was alive. He was actually alive. And he immediately made a vow to himself; never try my luck against a ponycopter again.

His filth-covered Geiger counter crackled loudly in warning. Komodo moved his tongue along his teeth, collecting spit, and when he spat it came out green. Bits of algae swam in the bubbles. His hooves were caked with muck and filth. The smell was unbearably thick. He could taste metal in his mouth.

Of course, he would've assumed that it was radioactive, but it was difficult to think about that while being strafed by a flying death machine.

Wiping his body off as best he could, he stumbled to the dock hut and sat down. He swallowed another painkiller and retrieved his bag. Despite the grime, the contents were intact. He ached to take a break, to rest for at least a few moments. As relaxing as laying in radioactive mud and killing soldiers was, he wanted very much to lie down on something. Preferably soft.

At least nothing else seemed to stand against his epic quest to find a boat. Making sure that nothing else was about to ambush him, he moved as best he could towards the pier.

Several energy canisters sat around the dock, scattered around a small whaler. Komodo checked the gas; it seemed full, like it had just been filled by somepony. Probably the Mareines from before, he suspected. Considering the keys still laying conspicuously on the seat, that was probably true.

Komodo gave the power switch a good twist and started the boat on its way, skipping across the water like a stone until he managed to reign in the damn thing.

He could practically taste the flavor of freedom.

...

The sky was no longer sunny. It was gray and cloudy, and he couldn't remember how it had gotten that way. Hell, nopony knew how the clouds moved or changed. He heard rumors that the ponies who lived beyond the Quarantine could control the weather, although he couldn't imagine how that was possible.

Fatigue took over. This day's events were a strain on both body and spirit. His muscles - especially his shoulders - were weak and achy. His body still hurt from the bullets he had taken. He felt emotionally played-out. He needed to sleep.

But sleeping here was probably a horrible idea. If he woke up at all, it could be in the hooves of soldiers or possibly worse. But going back, finding someplace better, it just wasn't on the table. He was in no shape to test his luck against another Mareine squad - let alone another ponycopter.

No, he had to be alert in this area. This wasn't the Cordon or the Bar.

With he magic, he lifted a can of energy soda from his packed and chugged it down, ignoring its unpleasant taste. That would keep him alert. He scanned the water ahead for anomalies, although it seemed largely safe for the time being.

He rummaged through his pack, taking account of his stash. He still had a few backup ammunition batteries left. But he was down to his last painkiller, and his Slime could only cut the bleeding.

His horn buzzed as he lifted the glowing green object from his bag. He pressed it up against his wound, hissing loudly at the pain. He could feel the magical energy cause his torn skin to stretch and bubble like jelly.

It was something. But it took more than bandages and a weak artifact to fully heal his wounds.

It must've been hours since he escaped from the dock. At least, that's what it felt like to the pony resting on his drifting craft. His gas was holding up, so probably would make it to the church. Where was he, anyway? By this point, he should at least seen some sort of church building close by.

He did a mental double take as he looked at the information on his PDA.

The Budpony river didn't even go in that direction. It curved west according to the map that Vergil showed him, but his PDA map and his compass said he was heading north. Indeed, the PDA's arrow that pointed in the direction he was facing northeast... and it wasn't even placed on the river.

What the hell? Unless he drove the boat into another river without knowing it, his location didn't make physical sense.

"Piece of crap..." Komodo muttered under his breath. He didn't know why his information was inaccurate, but he had other things to worry about.

He continued down the river, hoping he could find the church before rain started falling.

...

As his raft slowly made his way around the bend of the river, he eyes became drawn to a strange sight.

A pony figure made of reeds and metal bars stood crucified on a tall rusting pole on the soil of the river's turn like a big scarecrow. Covered in splashes of red paint, it was adorned by what looked like faces.

Komodo leaned over the side to take a look, and he soon realized they weren't faces. They were skulls. Pony skulls.

A large piece of wood hung from the neck of the demented effigy. Crudely scrawled, in piercing blood-red, were a series of misspelled phrases.

Komodo steered his boat closer to read it; "THREW ME IS THE WAY TO ETERNAL WOE, THREW ME IS THE WAY TO EVERLASITNG PAIN, ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE"

He didn't know what that could mean and could only barely understand the wording, but it sounded like a warning. Warnings were bad.

As his raft slowly made his way around the bend of the river, a loud bellow made him duck down instinctively.

"For it was said, they had become like these peculiar demons which dwell in matter, but in whom no light may be found!"

The boom of the stallion's voice made Komodo lurch backwards, almost tossing himself into the oily black by accident. He waved his hoofgun frantically around in trying to spot whoever it was. No-one.

The voice was deep, guttural. A thick accent, too, just like Sid. Now, Komodo thought, if the mysterious voice had been talking about the Way to Find Night Stalker...

"May they become like dust before the wind! May Night Stalker pursue them to the ends of the earth! The power of the false and lying Princess cannot hold him!"

That was the answer he was looking for. Komodo's ears perked up. Night Stalker... Could this stallion know where he was?

He recognized the shape of a pony silhouetted by the cattails. He was partially hidden in shadow, his features mostly incomprehensible. A hole in the roof of the tiny watchtower down the river from Komodo gave the stallion plenty of room to gesture wildly.

"What, who is this? Another soul to enlighten?" The figure, who Komodo could surmise was bald and perhaps a bit paunchy in the middle, thrust a commanding hoof into the air.

"Hello!" Komodo called out. "My name is Komodo! I'm looking for a pony named Night Stalker. Do you know where he could be?"

"So you do seek enlightenment!" The stallion laughed loudly. "As you should! Wait here, I shall be but a moment!"

A few seconds later, Komodo saw the priest from before emerge again, the hoofgun attached to his leg seeming somewhat bigger than it was before. Light from the behind him still obscured his features, although it wasn't as difficult to make out the messy stubble and worn clothing now that Komodo's boat was closer.

"I am Father Apostle... but you can call me Gabriel." The priest beckoned him forth. "Drive your craft up here. I have a more suitable gun for you. Catch!"

And so, with as little warning as that, the good Father tossed the weapon through the air.

Komodo caught the large hoofgun with his magic, slowly levitating it to the boat. An old hunting shot hoofgun, an over-and-under.

"Make free use of my weapon, but be careful not to hurt yourself," he chuckled, because clearly, Komodo blowing his own head off was amusing. The stallion's head flickered up to somewhere behind Komodo.

"Behind you!"

With the hoofgun attached to his other leg, he aimed and fired, the gunshot echoing starkly in the reeds as Komodo whirled on his hindquarters. From the clearing where Komodo's raft had emerged, one of the thin, wiry mutant dogs lurking in the shadows thumped to the ground, a large bullet hole gaping in it's front. Komodo looked back to his companion, nodding his thanks.

The stallion returned the gesture. "Be vigilant against the servants of the false Princess! Now, keep that weapon close. I have left ammunition under the awning across the river; they do not seem to find much interest in anything without…" He grumbled a little, as though uncomfortable with the sentence. "… blood. If you could retrieve it and bring it to me up ahead, I would be most grateful!"

Komodo looked the weapon up and down before finally giving the pump-action hoofgun a healthy yank with his magic. The shell casing popped out of the top and bounced hollowly into the water. It felt good, having something so powerful in his hooves.

Another chorus of bays and howls chanted somewhere in the distance. Gabriel put up a silencing hoof.

"Hush… They come." Casting his gaze slowly about the maze of growth, Gabriel suddenly settled on Komodo and brought up his rifle.

Eyes darting about like an animal, Komodo wasted no time dropping to the floor of the boat as his companion's rifle boomed throughout the swamp. He couldn't see what the stallion aimed for, but he assumed there were animals lurking around the banks

Now he could see his prize; the steeple of an old wooden church building rose in the distance. And on the opposite side of the river, a small group of torn tents and pitched awnings also rose up.

Komodo started looking for a way to the cache. It was only a few clicks over; he didn't estimate it would take him that long. As far as distance went, anyway. He turned the engine off with his magic and raised it so it wouldn't catch on the shallow riverbed. Pulling the craft to shore with his magic so it wouldn't get swept away, he stepped out and turned towards the tent cluster.

Well. Here went nothing.

Instead of going for his hoofgun, Komodo instead activated his hoofknife from its scabbard on his left leg with a push of his leg muscles, ironically feeling more power from holding a metal blade than he did a device of immense magical energy.

It was often the simple things in life that were the most satisfying. Who was it that said that? Komodo was sure he had heard Wolf saying it. Or was it his mother?

A painful twang in his chest made him pause for a moment. His family. A part of him was glad that his parents weren't around to see him growing up like this. Another part… well, everypony would want a chance to see their parents again.

Thunder cracked the darkened sky, jolting him from his thoughts. The Zone just couldn't give him a break.

He found the bag laying on a rusting crate half-sunk in mud. Sure enough, an entire armory's worth of shotgun ammo lay inside it.

Komodo took a step forward, and something else came to his ears. A snarl, nasal and vicious, getting louder and louder. The sound didn't come from a boar or wild dog. It was demonic. The same one feared across the Zone by trotters and military alike, a noise that meant a painful and brutal death.

And then he saw a shape in the reeds before him. It was skinny, it's frame even more slight than Komodo had been in his foal years. But, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

His heart turned to ice, breath leaving his lungs in a single exhalation.

Oh fuck me with Celestia's horn!

He raised his shot hoofgun and fired wildly into the tall grass at the shape. His shots ended up hurting the plants more than the horror stalking him.

"Quickly, child! Into the sanctuary!" The voice of the priest called across the water, followed by more distant shots.

Komodo tried to get his bearings. The sky continued to split with lightning on the horizon. And behind him came a chorus of roars in the blackness.

There was no time to get the boat ready. Looks like he'd have to swim... As best he could, at least. The good news was that the river was shallow enough to stand.

His lack of swimming ability wouldn't doom him today. No, that would probably be his heavy pack and the thing coming up right behind him.

He heard rustling behind him, and paused for a critical half-second to look back.

The reeds parted and bent on the shore. And before he could even turn to get away, something big tackled him from behind, cause him to fall helplessly into the water.

He tried to stick his head up, but couldn't. A pair of leathery hooves kept his body down strangling and ripping at him even as he tried to get his head above the river. With iron grip, the hooves slashed and smacked him even as he struggled against the inevitable. The water around him starting going red with trickles of blood.

Komodo panicked, thrashing against the thing pinning him. Filth poured down his throat and up his nose with his every attempt to struggle.

So this was how it ended. There were no options, no tricks, no other ways out. He was going to die here. Like this, drowning in shit and goo.

His world spun around him and faded to black.

The Heart

Komodo opened his eyes.

The room was dark, but light poured in through a cracked window. He was laying... somewhere. A bed. But every time he tried to remember exactly where he was, or how he got there, the memories slipped away.

His body felt wrong. He ached, and felt horribly weak. He had chills when he wasn't sweating profusely. He moaned, rolling on his side. Unpleasant warmth rushed through him, and his head and stomach churned with nausea. He itched from dried mud. His mouth tasted strange and mushy.

He was laying on a filthy cot in a ramshackle wooden cell that stank of damp wood and rot. He tried to push himself up, his legs trembling weakly before giving out. He fought to get up, only to fail again. And he found he was quite hungry. His mind was a horrible, shifting haze, filled with faint specters of a gunfight and horrors chasing him through a swamp.

He barely heard a faint voice from the bed. But he could make out some of the words through the partition. It sounded like... prayers. An exhortation of some divine power.

The doxology suddenly stopped, and Komodo heard hoofsteps coming closer and closer. In a second, the rotting door to the tiny cell opened. A large stallion made his way in.

"I see you are awake, my child." Gabriel announced as he entered. "And so we meet at last. Apologies if I woke you; I always have morning prayers."

"... Who are you?" Komodo peeped.

"Who are you?"

Both ponies paused, staring at each other. That is, until Gabriel began to laugh. "Night Stalker has truly blessed me with your presence! Hold still. I must check your wounds."

Komodo hadn't even noticed the bandage on his leg until now. It looked clean, like it had just been replaced. He also noticed other smaller dressings elsewhere on his body, some of them still red.

Then Gabriel carefully removed it. Small white larvae-like creatures squirmed in the bright-red gash, crawling and wriggling underneath his skin. Komodo nearly screamed at the sight.

"Do not worry about your leg, child. It was badly infected, but the insects will eat the infected flesh... and leave the healthy leg alone as they die." The priest explained. "I am sure it is preferable to getting it taken off." The priest firmly secured a new bandage on the leg.

Komodo had to agree there. He smiled as best he could and nodded. "Thank you."

"It was nothing," the priest replied, waving a dismissive hoof. The skin was cracked and worn like old leather. Cuts and grazes peppered his legs, as well as a few badly healed scars on his bald head. "You nearly perished out there, but I saved you from the horrors of the marsh."

He remembered the vision, the creature stalking him as he retrieved Gabriel's ammo supply. It was a bloodsucker. The demonic roar, the leathery spiked hooves. There was a swamp bloodsucker across the river. Probably more than one. It ambushed him as he got the supplies...

At first, Komodo was about to thank the priest. Then - in a murky haze of memories and signs - he also recalled what he saw on his way to the church. The statue, the hideous effigy lined with the skulls of his fellow ponies.

"... Why? I mean, why did you save me?"

Gabriel paused for a moment and smiled. "It is not your time child. Night Stalker has a plan for you."

Without another word, the good Father turned and left the cell.

A few minutes passed while Komodo got his bearings and his upset bowels in line. Then he slowly sat up, and attempted to stand. He wobbled a little, but he felt okay soon after. Slowly and surely, he exited the filthy cell into the nave.

The church was a mess, the walls blackened and charred, light shining in through holes in the ceiling. Most of the religious icons in the church were either desecrated or broken entirely. Puddles of water pooled under the holes in the roof. A small glass window, showing what Komodo could just recognize as a beautiful rendition of crimson-haired Faust and Her creation, was cracked and seemed like hours away from shattering entirely

Blinking his thoughts away, Komodo noticed Gabriel waiting beside an old, beaten table with ammunition for all manner of weapons. Shotguns and revolvers included, it seemed. And food - bread, soya sausage, military rations, water.

Komodo nodded inquisitively to the table. "May I…?"

Gabriel himself also nodded. "Of course, of course. Everything I have is yours. Your bag and your possessions are underneath the table."

Komodo, not bothering to wait, immediately began shoveling them in his mouth like a starving wolf sinking into a calf. He guzzled down the fresh water canteen to wash down the food.

Gabriel continued speaking as Komodo magically took his weapons from his bag and loaded them, starting with the shotgun and trying to look professional as he did so. One wouldn't want the crazy priest thinking one had no idea what he was doing, would one?

"You are to be commended for making it here in one piece," Gabriel said, smiling. The grin faltered somewhat as he went on. "Normally I do not get visitors here, but these days, I find time for nothing but the work of salvation." He raised his hoof to the heavens to accentuate the point, but it seemed like a half-hearted gesture. "So... If I may ask, child, what has brought you all the way to this place?"

"I... I was looking for Night Stalker. I'm not sure where he is, but I heard about a pony nearby who did. Do you know?"

The priest took a deep breath, "I could tell you where Night Stalker is, child. But can you see it?"

"... Excuse me?"

He smiled. "He is within you, child. Night Stalker's power is within all of us. He is truly pony, and truly divine. It is admirable that you have taken this pilgrimage, child. Now, you can find the spirit of the Lord within you!"

Komodo didn't have time for this. He needed answers, not pseudo-religious dragon shit metaphors. After fighting through a Mareine squad and getting shot in the leg, he wasn't in the mood for philosophy.

He asked a different question. "Well, enough about Night Stalker. Do you know where a pony named Neo is?"

"Neo?" The earth pony looked up in thought. "You speak of the Prophet, yes? A great stallion, a true warrior-poet and scholar."

"Could I... talk to him?"

"You don't talk to Neo, my child. You listen." The priest waved a hoof in the air. "Sometimes when you say hello to him, he'll just walk right by you. Then he'll grab you and throw to the floor, and then he'll say 'Did you know that if is the middle word in life?' I am a little colt... but he is a great colt! I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas..."

Komodo frankly had no idea what the priest was babbling about.

Apparently realizing that he had lost the teenager entirely, Gabriel stopped his witnessing. "Oh! My apologies again. I see you have come a long way to find Neo. I suspect you have little wish to remain here, so I will show you the quickest way to him when you are ready."

A nod was Komodo's only reply at first, but then his gaze traveled to maze of islands and reeds outside, dull even in the dawn and hiding so many nightmares within.

He looked back to Gabriel. "What about you?"

Smiling and shrugging, the priest clutched his weapon tighter. "A shepherd must always tend to his flock!" He chuckled loudly.

Komodo settled for a slow nod. Looking into the stallion's eyes, he saw something, but it didn't feel like insanity. Passionate, definitely. But crazy?

Checking to make sure all of his possessions were in order - Slime, ammo boxes, food, PDA - he stepped outside to follow the priest. The morning sky was a misty blue, but Komodo could tell from the damp, crisp air that it had not been that way for long. Usually he enjoyed the peace that came with seeing the day begin. Now it just unnerved him.

Gabriel pointed ahead of them to a path of wooden boards already in place across the watery muck. A cemetery rolled out behind it, the low metal fencing making a maze out of it.

He noticed shapes in the water. Then he saw that they were bodies. Rotting corpses - their uniforms in tatters, skin bloated with decay - lay in the water around the boardwalk. He could see at least four just standing where he was, clouds of accursed flies marking each one. They looked exactly like the ones he had killed in the Thoroughbred warehouses. And the smell... he recognized it as the same stench from the Clear Sky base.

Desperately trying to hold back vomit, Komodo paused in his tracks. Maybe this stallion was crazy after all.

"Um… Sir?" He murmured, particularly aware of just how silent this place was.

"Hm?"

He swallowed. He wasn't sure how to put this. "How long… that is, you…"

Gabriel smiled. "How long have I been carrying out the Lord's will?" He gestured towards the landscape around them. "Freeing these cursed souls?"

Well, that wasn't exactly how Komodo would have put it. He just nodded his agreement.

"I am uncertain." The priest's gaze travelled up to the darkened clouds above. He looked to Komodo with a wry smile. "No calendars. But… from what I have been able to ascertain… Twenty years."

Komodo's voice was barely a whisper. "Twenty years?"

"Or more. It is, as I have said, hard to tell."

"But-" he stopped himself and cleared his troubled throat as quietly as he could. "How?"

"I am afraid I do not understand the question, child."

"I mean… how do you go on with yourself? The… the violence and… and killing…"

A confident hoof thrust itself towards the sky. "Night Stalker. He guides me in all things. Gives me hope. Reassures me that I am freeing imprisoned souls from these… hellish bonds." Finishing his rhetoric, he grinned. "But you must know better than most, child. Your ease with the Lord's work… how long have you been carrying out His will?"

Komodo opened his mouth and then closed it again. How was he supposed to respond when he barely knew who Night Stalker was?

He sighed. "My... Well, my whole life."

Gabriel stopped, and so did Komodo. The priest was studying his face. Finally, he lay a hoof on Komodo's armored shoulder.

"I am sorry, I merely assumed…" He shook his head. "But now that I have seen your eyes… such suffering for one so young. A great shame."

With a saddened smile and pat on the shoulder, Gabriel continued moving. Komodo watched him go for a few moments before following along, closing his eyes to avoid the horrible sights around him.

"So you do not believe in Night Stalker, my child?" Gabriel seemed concerned. "Or any God?"

He shook his head again. It was a rhetorical question, Komodo knew. But the reply just… spilled out of him.

"You know... If I seriously believed that there was some all-powerful, benevolent, kind being that was supposed to love us and care for us… and it let all this happen…"

Komodo thought about the Zone. About the children in the Cordon. About his grandma and his sister. About his encounter with the Mareines in the warehouses, and his near-death at the hooves of an inpony monster.

His voice shook. "I honestly think I'd… go insane."

At first, Gabriel didn't reply, and Komodo was afraid the priest was going to do something violent and sudden. But his response was soft, careful.

"Then I would recommend, child, that you find faith in somepony or something. And quickly. For if you do not… I fear for your soul… as well as the sanity of which you speak."

Gabriel turned and walked away. Komodo numbly watched him go for a moment before following.

The priest pointed ahead of them across the water, to the fences blocking the path to the cemetery.

"We are close. Neo lives just beyond this plot. However, getting through will be difficult. A gathering of the cursed is there, lurking in the darkness. I like to think that some aspect of their true selves is what draws them here; a desire to be welcomed into the hooves of Night Stalker." He glanced over at Komodo and smiled. "If you believe in such things, of course."

Komodo shrugged apologetically, but Gabriel waved it away, instead looking to the graveyard ahead.

"Are you ready?" Unaware of Komodo's conundrum, Gabriel gestured behind him with his rifle. "Follow me child, and tread lightly!" He warned gently. "For this… is hallowed ground."

Cocking the shotgun, Komodo waited for the shell to hit the grass silently before nodding. With that, the bald, slightly more than middle-aged colt of Faust turned and shot off towards the darkness. Komodo followed, wondering how many more times he would have to follow someone of dubious mental capacity into unknown dangers.

With a crick of the neck that was so loud he was worried he may have broken something, Komodo crept forward, moving slowly and quietly

The boardwalk took them to the old metal fence, the black paint peeling and bubbled from age and rust. Arrowheads on the bars of the fence were obviously meant to ward off errant visitors once upon a time.

Hopping over the fence behind his portly companion, Komodo crept along, copying Gabriel's hunched posture. He wasn't sure if it was going to do them any good, but at least it felt safer. Komodo was tempted to switch on his PDA, but Gabriel seemed to know where he was going. And besides, anything that could attract attention wasn't good.

A grunt came from up ahead. Komodo whipped around to the source of the noise. Then he saw a body, laying ahead of him next to a half-broken grave. Its eyes were open, beady-white and staring in wrong directions.

It was still alive.

The poor creature blinked at Komodo, then tried to get up, only to fall over to one winged side. It stared plaintively, pawing at him like some sort of animal.

"Mash potaduuuuus..."

He was staring at a zombie. A zombified trotter, he corrected himself. Unlike ponycopters, Komodo had met zombies before. One of Wolf's first jobs had him finding two of them stumbling into an outpost by mistake. Not like that experience helped. The job haunted him for weeks afterward.

At least this zombie didn't have a weapon on him. Her. It. Komodo didn't want to know. The more he thought about gender and identity, the harder it was to kill these things.

Komodo was then treated to the sight of another zombie lumbering around the corner, limping awkwardly as it slowly made its way towards him.

"Vashileeeee..."

This one had a hoofgun.

Like it could barely control its own limbs, the mindless pony lifted its leg and fired a burst. A hammer hit Komodo in the back, although the pain rapidly subsided afterward.

Komodo knew he had been hit. He made a momentary glance backward; the bullet hit his vest, but it deflected off the armor. His armor must've been enchanted with a luck spell. Twice already on this liittle journey, he had narrowly avoided serious bullet wounds thanks to it.

Komodo scrambled to his hooves as Gabriel raced past him. "Woe to thee!" He cried as he poured buckshot into the head of the creature.

More were coming, alerted by Gabriel's charge. Komodo could hear them moaning, pleading for help in their own tortured, muffled way; "Mash potaduuus... Egberrrr... Vashileee..." Komodo didn't know if they were fully aware underneath or not. But he had seen the after-effects, impaled to walls, clawing at yourself, screaming even in death…

He blinked, and shook his head. And he was never going to eat mashed potatoes again, that was damn sure.

From down the other end of the cemetery around the right turn, several zombies lurched into view. And then several more. And several more after that. Gabriel hadn't been kidding. They really did like to congregate here.

Some of them starting firing their hoofguns, their aim so conspicuously terrible that some of them ended up shooting each other down as they marched. It would've made Komodo laugh if they weren't also heading towards him.

The priest nodded to Komodo, who returned the gesture. Heading forwards, they started firing.

The zombified ponies were slow enough that the shotgun fire of the duo took care of them, emptying their weapons in a wall of shot. Komodo instantly rifled into the box wedged in his sack, producing the box of bullets he had snatched from the church.

Empty. Komodo mentally smacked himself upside the head. Of course he had taken the empty box by mistake.

Komodo was treated to the sight of another zombie lumbering around the corner, limping awkwardly as it slowly made its way towards him, hoofgun wobbling even as the abomination fired. Gabriel was already leading on ahead, laughing and firing away. It almost seemed random, but every shot found its mark, zombies dropping with nothing but a dying growl. Komodo followed on, slipping off the shotgun and pulling out his AK and hoofknife.

More cries of "Mash potaduuuus..." and "Vashileeeeee..." echoed about. Then three more appeared behind a gravestone to his right, both armed and dangerous.

Komodo ducked and blasted the first zombie in the chest, threw himself back to avoid another, blasted that zombie as he hauled himself to his hooves, thrusting the tip of his hoofknife into the belly of another beast. He pulled it out, rolled and brought the AK around, firing off another burst and tearing through the flesh of the creature.

This did not go unnoticed by Gabriel, who looked to the battle, and then glanced back to Komodo with a broad grin. Though the moans didn't stop, Komodo didn't hear any more hoofguns or see more ponies who needed to be "saved".

Komodo caught up with Gabriel. "I think that was all of them."

Then he saw the other zombified ponies - ten of them at the very least - still sitting and shaking as if nothing had happened. They continued to moan and look around, but did not take any notice to the two ponies who had mowed down their lobotomized brethren.

"At least the unruly ones." Added Gabriel. Then he pointed to the rusting chain-link gate across the path of graves and weeds. He ran forward to a small wheel next to the opening. Turning it, the gate lifted half-way with a grind of protest. "Here, I will hold the gate and keep watch on the cursed!"

Komodo didn't need any more encouragement. He hurled himself underneath the gap. The gate hit the ground with a dusty thud behind him, the cloud permeating around him as he got to his hooves.

Looking around, he watched as Gabriel approached from the other side. "This is where we part, child." He thrust his hoof into the sky.

Komodo clenched his hoof around the fence. "Wait, Gabriel! Come with me. You can come down to the Cordon. You don't have to stay here and fight!"

"I am afraid I cannot. My place is here, serving the will of Night Stalker. Do not fear for me, for I am the instrument of the Lord!"

With a deft turn of the hoof, he locked the gate's wheel in place with a resounding click.

"Well... Thank you for everything, Father!" Komodo called to him, "I'm forever in your debt."

The priest stopped in place and turned.

"May Night Stalker illuminate your path for all your days. May the false Princess never take hoof of you." He bade the trotter adieu. "Go, and canter to your salvation!"

He loaded up his hoofgun, turned back, and disappeared through the reeds, laughing all the way. Komodo didn't even try to stop him. It was a first for him, simply standing by without even attempting to help. But he saw something in Gabriel's eyes, a determination and passion.

And Komodo had somepony waiting for him. He turned and walked away, trudging up the overgrown path.

He heard a grenade explosion. Komodo didn't turn back.

...

Komodo continued down the marshy, weed-covered path. He froze at every little sound, checking whether it was a bird or bug - or some terrible beast he had never met before that could drown him or disembowel him or something equally irritating. Though the clear morning sky had been replaced with clouds, it seemed like most of the rain in the area fell yesterday.

He still felt slight nausea - which he assumed was yesterday's radiation exposure. Taking a quick stop, he checked the bandage on his leg. He removed the nylon, and watched curiously as the maggots placed in the bullet wound by Gabriel fell to the ground harmlessly.

His leg looked almost healthy again - if still red and rather sore. Still, he secured the bandage back on just in case. Infection was omnipresent in the Zone.

But his mind kept wandering to Gabriel. He knew that Gabriel would probably die back there. However, Komodo equally knew that he would never have been able to help him.

His morose thoughts were interrupted by something he wasn't expecting.

A beautiful mare's voice, possibly the sweetest he'd ever heard (or, at least, a close second to his mother's) began to echo and emanate through the air and tall grasses ahead of him. It reminded him of the loudspeakers outside the Hundred Rads. Except there were no loudspeakers here.

The ethereal voice guided him, singing its ghostly aria through the bushes. As he grew closer, he began to hear the lyrics to the strange music.

Miraculous crystal
Given by stars
I can foresee the future
In fabulous glass
Lie spilt on the caves
Mock scribbled on us
Doom is close

"Hello? Hello!" He called to nothing in particular. Was it a ghost? Maybe it was a signal. He checked his PDA just to make sure, but found nothing. Either way, he could tell it was coming from up ahead. He slowly approached the source of the sounds.

Dancing on the ashes of the world
I behold the stars
Heavy gale is blowing to my face
Rising up the dust
Barren lands are desperate to blossom
Dark stars strive to shine
I still remember the blue ocean
In this dying world

The voice, and the song she sang, was so solemn and sad and filled with despair that it made his mind go to unhappy places. He soon felt like crying, and had to force himself not to.

The seas overdumped
The rivers are dead
All world's cities turned a deserted land
Annihilation declares its day
Life slowly
Utters me remain

Oh, this was unbearable. Komodo's heart was breaking, and he wasn't even sure why. It was just a song. He felt silly for getting emotional over a song, especially considering what he had already been through.

But from what his PDA told him, he had made it.

Sitting in a clearing of reeds - a boat dock and shallow riverbed in - was a cottage. It probably was beautiful at one point, but now long-consumed by the decay of the Zone.

Komodo hesitated as he approached the ancient cottage. Part of him felt like Neo wouldn't be there at all. The more jaded part of him also didn't trust the ominous hut to not contain some booby trap set by bandits - or worse. The music from the radio sitting on the ground outside didn't help.

"Well, I'm here." He muttered. Komodo half-hoped somepony had heard him, although he knew it wasn't the case.

It was time to find the truth.

He approached the crumbling, worn-out door to the hut. Sure enough, laying next to the door was a small radio, speakers still turned on. Picking up the radio and turning it off caused the music to stop dead.

Komodo knocked several times before opening it as carefully as possible.

"... Neo?"

An absurd fear of impoliteness struck the young colt, so he didn't step inside. He was silently praying that the "Prophet" would be here at the moment. Then he heard creaking from the shadows inside.

"Good morning." A voice, strong and virile, called to him. The boy's heart sang with relief.

"Excuse me. I, uh... I didn't mean to disturb you. Are you Neo?" The teenager leaned into the door. "My name is Komodo. I'd like to talk to you."

There was a short pause. "Come in."

Komodo obliged and entered. He immediately noticed a muscular stallion sitting in the old wicker chair across the living room. A cigarette flickered dimly in his mouth. His eyes scanned up and down the teenager before him, but he did not take his gaze from the unicorn.

"... You're one of Sid's, aren't you?" He observed. "Could I see you PDA?"

"Sure." Komodo reached into his bag and magically held his device in the air to show the pony.

"Closer, please."

The teenager complied and lifted it slightly closer to the stallion across the dingy living room.

"Closer."

Komodo, now at least somewhat unsure of Neo's motives, magically placed the PDA on the coffee table next to the wicker chair. The sitting stallion looked over it carefully, investigating every inch of it like an artifact.

"That's an old model." The stallion's switched his gaze to Komodo's eyes, making the teenager quite uncomfortable. "You're new blood, aren't you?"

"Kinda." Komdo's ears rolled back. "I just started doing jobs and looking for artifacts."

The host's eyes lowered beneath Komodo. It took him a few seconds before the young trotter realized the pony was now staring at the bandages on his hind leg.

"Not very successfully."

Komodo, embarrassed, looked away while he tried to think of how to respond. The owner of the hut apparently ignored his bashfulness. "So Sid sent a new trotter to me? He's pretty desperate if he's getting kids searching for that Night Stalker."

"I first heard about you from Barkeep yesterday, actually. That's how I first heard of Night Stalker too." Komodo explained. "I came here on my own to learn from you. Maybe you can decide for yourself whether I'm good enough to do that."

A tiny, almost unnoticed smile crawled across the pony's features. "Clever."

The teenager's eyes drifted to two small painting, somewhat faded and worn, hanging by worn threads on the wall. Despite how faded the artworks were, he could still make them out.

A burning city, bodies in the streets, cities turned to dust. In the dead center of the first painting was a mare wrapped around her little foal, a futile barrier against the orange-black swirls of fire and death closing in around them. The painting next to it was rather similar. But instead of a mare and her daughter, a colt holding a dead mare in his hooves replaced it, head turned to the sky in a silent scream. Words that Komodo could not understand were scribbled around it. The content - not to mention the artistic quality and the time probably need to make them - absorbed the teenager's thoughts.

"You like them?"

Komodo's attention snapped abruptly from the artworks to the stallion in front of him.

"All that detail... I didn't know that anypony could paint so well. What're they about?"

"Memories." He replied bluntly. "Memories are what I have left, Komodo, instead of a view. The only view I have is Gabriel, as you probably found out on the way here. You did see him, right?"

Komodo paused, privately surprised that Neo could know something like that. "Yes I did."

"He's been like that forever. He worships me as some damned prophet." Neo slowly stood up, taking a short glance at Komodo. "I'm no prophet."

The stallion suddenly placed a large glass bottle on the table next to his chair. Steerlichnaya - Premium Podka, the words emblazoned on the side said. Then he sat back down in his chair, flicking tuffs of ash from his cigarette. "Drink up."

Komodo, being as young as he was, had only tasted alcohol a few times in his life. Magically holding the bottle, the bitter drink went down smoothly. He had never liked the taste of the podka universally abused in the Zone, but he always minded his manners in front of strangers.

"Keeps you healthy, makes you strong." Neo took the bottle and guzzled the alcohol right down. Komodo noted the amount he drank would've easily knocked any normal pony cold on the floor.

"Well, I heard that it had to do with something that happened in Limansk, and I guess... I wanted to hear what happened to Night Stalker. Please." Komodo begged.

The stallion then took a long cigarette drag, a drawn-out sigh escaping from his lips.

"So you came all the way out here just to find me?" Neo seemed annoyed, almost suspicious. "Well, here's my question; why would a little colt like you care?"

Komodo paused before a retort came from his mouth. Considering what he had gone through to get there, had been wondering the same question himself. It was a question that had plagued him all night.

"I... I..."

"Of course. You don't even know what you're talking about. Go back to the Cordon. You're wasting your time and mine."

"But... What?!" Komodo demanded. "Why?"

"I know you may have gone through a lot to get here, but you've focused so much on whether you could find Night Stalker that you never stopped to think if you should." Neo took another cigarette puff. "Now turn around and go."

Komodo couldn't believe what he was hearing. A mix of desperation and anger filled him. After everything he had seen and went through just to get to this damned cottage...

He wasn't going to take it anymore.

Komodo raised his hoofgun and aimed it right at Neo's face.

"Tell me NOW or el-"

And then the teenager froze like a statue; Neo also had a hoofgun attached to his leg - aimed squarely at Komodo's head. A massive PMRI Desert Cobra, enough to take out a bear in a single shot. Komodo just stood for a few moments, breathing heavily.

Now there was a smile on the Neo's features. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Sit down." He gestured towards the three-legged table next to his chair.

Closing his eyes, Komodo let his head hang. He magically loosened the straps holding the weapon to his leg and gently placed it there before sitting in the other wicker chair. Neo slowly lowered his hoofgun.

"Listen... I'm... I'm sorry! Please, I didn't mean to... It's just..." Komodo stammered a quick apology.

But Neo did not appear angry about Komodo's outburst. "It's not the first time I've had a gun to my face." He held up a hoof and waved away the boy's apologies. "I get it. You went through quite a bit to get here. You're jumpy and angry... Stressed. You saw something you can't forget. Or you did something that you feel bad about. You killed ponies?"

"How would you know?"

"Because I went through the same thing the first time I killed a pony. We all did. Guilt, regret, anger... And you know what Komodo? That's good. It means you understand."

"Understand what?" Komodo inquired, taken aback by his quick forgiveness.

"Understand why I'm here today." Replied the stallion cryptically. Komodo desperately tried to understand Neo's logic without success.

The stallion paused, noticing the teenager's confusion. "You see, Komodo... the early Zone wasn't like the one that you grew up in. For many years, the Zone was much like today; violent and random, but civilized at the same time. The trotters rebuilt their pre-Disaster society and lived in relative peace. The military left us alone for the most part, unless we tried to escape. Then came Clear Sky and the blowouts."

"And then Limansk, right?" Komodo interrupted. "I know the history of the Zone - well, most of it - but what does that have to do with Night Stalker?"

Neo's expression gave Komodo all the answers he needed.

"Have you ever asked yourself, 'Why am I here?' or 'Why can't I be free like other ponies'? Or maybe even, 'Why did Celestia forsake me?'" There was a pregnant pause while Neo flicked his spent cigarette away. "Well, there's one reason we're still here today, and one reason only. It's the same reason that Night Stalker disappeared, the reason Clear Sky and the blowouts and Limansk happened at all."

"Well, what is it?" Inquired Komodo. "What's the reason?"

Neo took another drink from the Steerlichnaya before continuing. "The reason... Well, I can't really explain without telling you the story of Night Stalker. But it'll take a while. It happened years ago and even I don't know every little detail. And I suppose if you came all the way out here, it would be rather anticlimactic to snub you now..."

Komodo's mood improved almost instantly. Looks like all that adventuring had paid off.

"... Very well then. I'll tell you what happened to Night Stalker. And I'll tell you something else too."

"Huh?"

"The truth, Komodo." Neo enigmatically replied. "I'll tell you how the magic of friendship died... here in the shadow of Cheernobyl."

The Waste

It was another long, hot, dry day. Everypony was out and about doing whatever as long as it was constructive.

Around the rusting hulk of the mighty HMS Jupiter, life in the Zone moved as it did for the past twelve years. There were watches to be done, sentries to be posted, business to be concluded. Compared to the blasted land around it, this forsaken dried-up river was like a little patch of heaven - which said a lot on its own.

Until they arrived. A gust of air blew through the hatch as a black stallion in an armored jacket stepped through, followed closely by a mare. Everypony in the Jupiter's cargo hold saloon stopped what they were doing when they saw the mysterious duo, and instantly knew they had seen many, many battles.

The stallion, his head bereft of a mane, took much of the attention. Two unicorn horns, curved like a bull or minotaur, jutted from his skull. A bright-yellow biohazard cutie mark adorned his scarred flank, visible under the folds of his attire. He carried two powerful AK-series Enforcers on his legs. Beside him, a dull-blue earth pony mare with a sky-blue mane and tail followed him, her mane styled in two small pigtails. Her moderately pretty form was also crisscrossed by heavily faded scars on her stomach.

Idly chatting and laughing at each other, their conversation soon getting drowned out in the hustle and bustle of the cargo hold and the saloon that had been built inside it.

...

"... and then I said 'Oatmeal, are you crazy?'"

The mare laughed loudly as the two ponies ascended the metal stairs to the rear corridors of the cargo ship. "I can't believe I missed so much!"

"I can't believe that I found you all the way out here."

The stallion gave the mare a big hug, and she responded in kind. "It's great to see ya again, Snow."

"You know Night Stalker, there's something funny about that story of yours."

The stallion turned and opened the murky door upstairs, the pale lights from the other side merging with the sickly red coming from the corridor. Without any further comments, they turned and walked into the expansive room beyond. It was a rather tall corridor, and thin going from left to right. Another corridor in the bottom left of the room, accessible only from a stairway crossing in front of the two ponies, led on and into another room at the far end. A rusted guard rail that crossed in front of the drop down to the corridor below provided him with something to rest his hooves on.

The young mare with Night, however, had become involved in the quick process of vaulting over the guard rail, landing deftly on the other side without even a whisper. She looked up to her best friend expectantly.

He looked from her to the guard rail, and back again. He walked to the stairs and lightly jogged down, coming to a stop directly in front of her.

"Funny?"

Snow looked like Night had just done a legstand and started clapping his hooves together.

"Sorry?" She said, laughing.

Night shrugged. "You said it was funny."

After a lingering blank look, Snow shook her head, smiling. "Oh! Right. Yeah, sorry. We've tried to drive out Yoga and those bandits from the Valley so we can get more supplies through." She started walking down the corridor and into another room beyond, speaking over her shoulder as she went. Night kept astride of her easily, listening attentively. "It's a dangerous route through the Quarantine. But Freedom moved their base there, so we're finally on the verge of having a better way."

"That's good news, I guess." Night wasn't one to follow every little strategic movement of Duty and Freedom, considering his personal sense of strict neutrality. "We've got problems of our own though."

"So I've heard. Those Mareine patrols must be a pain in the ass out here."

"And to top it all off, the ship's water purifier broke yesterday."

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh is right. We gotta check in with Einstein before doing anything else."

The two ponies continued through the ship's corridor, overturned cabinets and crates on the right hand side.

"Wait, where's Dell? I thought he was the mechanic round these parts. Can't he just fix it?"

"Dell moved south with Duty."

As they stepped through the compartment door, the familiar noise of a printing readout machine came to their ears. The chamber - a converted storage hold - opened up in front of them. On the left wall ran a long table, random artifacts of unknown origins scattered over it. The table led to a rack of shelves in the far corner, almost a dozen screens flickering away as they monitored different areas around the ship. On the wall opposite him, they could see a closed metal door, the kind that usually led to some secured object or area. A keypad beside it ensured that they wouldn't see whatever it was without permission.

His eyes drifting over past some lockers beside the metal door, Night found himself looking at an upper level, the windows overlooking the hold boarded over securely with thick planks of wood. Crates and old computer screens littered the upper level, and the area beneath didn't look better. On his immediate right, a table held the readout printer, the continuous splurge of papers falling neatly into a recycling crate. The desk was similarly littered with various scientific tools, papers and pencils strewn about haphazardly. Behind it, tucked into the far corner of the room, two small vats of luminescent orange liquid bubbled, a monitor beside it keeping a close eye on whatever was being experimented on.

A white unicorn wearing a labcoat over an armored suit muttered to himself as he typed up a document. "Just a few more words…there! Finished my report on Flesh migration patterns. Let's see the other scientists laugh at me now when I present this baby at the next conference…"

He was interrupted from his daydreams of laughing maniacally at his colleagues, all of whom were bowing to him to prove their inferiority, by a voice saying "Ring ring ring!"

The scientist pony absent-midedly looked up. "Oh, hello Night! Just a moment please." He trotted to a small pet crate in the corner. "Now, blast that little… where did she get to? Lassie!"

Night Stalker laughed as he walked over, giving Snow a roll of the eyes as he went. "Everything all right Einstein?"

Still not stood to his full height, Einstein glanced over at the couple, still keeping his head firmly in the cage.

"Oh. Hello Night. Looks like Lassie's gotten out again." Finally, the scientist pony stood to his full height. He thrust a deducing hoof into the air as he walked past the stallion, musing as he went. "If I didn't know better, I'd -" His words stopped in his throat as he almost bumped headfirst into Snow.

"My goodness." His grin matched Snow's. "I didn't even notice you there. It really is you!"

Night poked a hoof Snow's direction, a wry smile on his lips. "I found her wandering around outside." He turned and winked. "Bit of a troublemaker, isn't she?"

Einstein put up a silencing hoof as he spoke, his bespectacled gaze firmly set Snow, as though he might disappear if he took his eyes off him. "I owe a great deal to you two."

Before any further comment could be made on that matter, Einstein bustled past the two ponies, heading for his train-wreck of a desk.

With only a cursory glance at Snow, Night walked over to stand beside Einstein. "Hey, I just got you the parts for your little cannon gizmo. I can't take any credit. Speaking of parts, how's the purifier doing?"

"Oh, it should be fixed by tonight," He explained, "There's no need to worry. But don't leave yet. I do have something else that is very important you could do for me."

"Sounds like bad news." Snow couldn't help but laugh.

The scientist ignored her. "I hired some mercenary fellows two days ago to retrieve a package at the mill up the road. An old friend of mine outside the Quarantine got his hooves on some military documents."

Night cocked an eyebrow. "Huh... What are they about?"

"No idea, but the pony who sold them said it had something to do with some... experiment." The scientist unicorn shrugged. "I guess it's valuable information. It costed me a fortune. If only those mercenaries ever made it back."

Night Stalker had already connected the dots. "So you want us to go get 'em?"

Einstein nodded. "Standard fee, of course."

"Fair enough. Let's get going, we should try to get there before sunset," said Snow. The two ponies exited the lab the way that they came.

...

Night crossed the main road with Snow close behind, passed near the old pipeline – noticing as he went that Piranha still hadn't posted a proper sentry – and followed the concrete track.

Curving with the flow of the blasted landscape, the road was dusty and cracked and barren. Only the irradiated pine trees provided any shade. Snarled bushes carpeted the ground, eternally wilted and devoid of life. Decaying buildings and facilities dotted the horizon around the valley, spires and apartment complexes of the Ponyiat outskirts visible far to the southeast. On a clear day, the cooling tower of the MPP itself stood tall, forever taunting the ponies of the Zone with promises of glory and wealth. But the weather did not allow that at the moment.

"... Heaven Eyes?" Snow. "Never heard of her."

"She used to be one of Yoga's girls. Then she split and made her own bandit gang. Moved up here and started causin' trouble ever since." Night explained as they walked down the broken road. "Word around here is she made them into a cult."

"At least Freedom keeps the scum away from the Valley." Snow spoke. "I've heard too many loners rant on and on about how much they hate Duty and Freedom..."

"Well I don't really like them either, but even they're better than bandits." Night interrupted. "If not much. Even Yoga's alright if you don't piss him off, but the others..."

"Exactly!" Snow nodded, "That's what I always say. Those bandits, they're like a Faust damned cancer. Take out one group, another pops up."

A rare smile slowly came to Night Stalker as he thought of an apt comparison; gophers.

The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as the two ponies approached the mill, a raft of clouds massing to the north. Holding up her PDA, Snow looked up the general radio chat to see if there were any messages from the mercenary group and found nothing.

"Weird... Place seems awful quiet."

Quiet in more ways than one. While Snow had been tipped off by the stagnant atmosphere about the area and the lack of any messages from the prior trotter party, it was the absence of that inexplicable awareness of others which alerted Night. Now, walking along the tracks which ran towards the eastern complex, the mill's brick chimney looming high in the twilight, the trotters began to suspect that the place was simply deserted.

"Try your radio again," Night suggested.

Snow cocked her head. "What if they still aren't taking calls?"

"Then we look for them."

...

"Nothing here."

"Nor here." Night swept his light over an expanse of crumbling wall, following the beam lashed to his right hoofgun's barrel with a length of twine.

"This place gives me the creeps," Snow complained. "I hope there aren't any bloodsuckers around."

It wasn't exactly the right habitat for those fearsome mutants, but even they knew how to sneak up on the unsuspecting. And even they couldn't elude Night Stalker. But the suckers were absent.

"There's nowhere left to search over here," he stated. "Let's check the back door."

"The what?"

"This used to be a base. The gap in the collapsed wall on the west side was called the 'back door' because mutants and the odd bandit would attack through it."

"Gotcha." Snow glanced back over her shoulder. "Kind of like a fort, isn't it?"

That had been the belief of those who once settled here, Night remembered. Then a change in the wind brought a better fort within their reach: the tractor factories where the Hundred Rads bar and Duty headquarters were now dug in beside the aptly named Wild Territory, a maze of concrete and steel teeming with anomalies, mutants and worse things.

"Yeah," he concurred. "A fort without a garrison."

"So why'd they leave, anyway?"

"Duty was relocating south and they got tired of fending off the dog swarms. Not to mention the 'zombies'."

Snow's ears perked up, "Zombies?"

"Yeah, something about ponies losing their minds and becoming feral. They don't really come here though."

An electrical anomaly had appeared on the road itself, crackling around the derelict truck next to the entrance, so the couple detoured up the hillside below the complex's crumbling wall, following the barrier until he arrived at the back entrance to the facility.

Aiming his light around the corner of the end building, Night spotted a flash of green fabric.

"I see a body. Get over here."

Snow did so, adding her headlamp to the meager illumination of the scene at the back door.

"Shit," she hissed. "They're all dead!"

It was a mess. Night had seen plenty of massacres and gunfights, but he hadn't seen one this bad for a while.

The party had been six in number. Five of them lay in smears of blood around several maintenance hatches leading to an underground tunnel, one of several under this old industrial plant. The apertures had been welded shut long ago and the trotters had not succeeded in opening them before they met their end. It appeared to Night and Snow that the sixth trotter had covered their backs. Each corpse was rent with multiple bullet wounds, still quite fresh.

Trotting to the corpse of the sole unicorn in the group, Night picked up the hoofguns with his magic and struggled to put the larger ones into his saddle bags before giving up and throwing the rusting weapons away. Snow had already stripped the other ponies of goods, carrying a bag filled with wild boar hooves in her pack.

"I don't get it," said Snow, inspecting an empty RPK-74 light machine hoofgun. "They just opened up on each other?"

"No." Night investigated the bodies and the casings laying around. "These bullets are from a single type of gun. Doesn't look like the mercs even got a shot off. Whoever did this is thorough."

The attacker had finished their work by putting a single shot into their PDAs. The dead told no tales, and their effects would tell none either. Letting the shattered pocket computer fall, Night Stalker gingerly reached out and lifted the gas mask of a corpse next to the manhole. What he saw prompted a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth.

"What's wrong?"

"His name was Widowmaker," the long-coated one explained. "He used to be a liason for the supply runners by the Banei station."

"So was he, you know... unstable?"

"No, not at all."

"Well, then... Maybe a controller got them?" The idea put Snow even more on edge.

"We haven't seen a controller for five months." Night Stalker replied. "Plus, I don't think the average controller would be able to take this many ponies completely by surprise. C'mon, in here."

The two ponies stepped through the mill building entrance. It had been stripped of tools and supplies years before, but it still gave good shelter.

Both of them promptly saw a young filly in the corner of the ground floor - maybe only about nine or ten - laying face down on the concrete with a pool of red around her. She wasn't wearing armor, and didn't have a hoofgun or a bag. Next to her was a piece of cloth attached to a long stick, pitched like a makeshift tent inside the building. The girl had obviously been living here.

A curious Night Stalker - his hooves stained with blood just from stepping near it - turned over the body.

The filly's face came up. Except it didn't, because there was no face there. All he could see was a shattered mass of red and a black hole that had been her mouth. Below it was a litter of white that he at first thought was rice. Then he realized it was her teeth; what was left of them.

Snow recoiled in horror with a loud "Ugh!"

Night respectfully turned the corpse back over, wiping his hooves as best he could. He shook his head. Bandits, outlaws, whatever. Whoever did this was no-good scum and Night was going to make sure that they would pay.

But the carnage seemed a bit extreme even for mere bandits; no hostages, no extortion or ransom demands. Night put the thoughts out of his head for the time being.

Faded bloody hoofprints led away from the filly to the stairs leading to the second floor.

"Upstairs." Night motioned to Snow and readied his right Enforcer, making sure it was loaded with his favored 5.45x39mm BP rounds. Snow did the same with her PP-5A submachine hoofgun

Ascending the stairs of the building with hoofguns at the ready, the two ponies came upon an old conference room strewn with half-rotted chairs and tables. Sure enough, Night almost instantly noticed a counter top on the wall - and a cream folder laying on top of it. The macabre trail of blood stopped in front of it.

He gestured to it. "Over there."

Checking the corners, Snow scanned the room for any surprises or ambushes while Night picked up the folder with his magic. The words "CLASSIFIED" stuck out on the folder like a sore hoof, the file emblazoned with the faded symbol of a pegasus silhouetted by a sun.

Snow cricked her neck and lowered her hoofgun. "Hey, at least we got them."

Thunder rumbled outside as clouds dark as coal rolled in. A storm was approaching from the north and presented a menacing front. The dusty valley was swallowed into darkness by the monster as it circled above the land. The lake valley matched the clouds above in a montage of grey on grey, made hazy by an advancing screen of precipitation.

A beep came from the PDAs of the two ponies, signaling a vital message from Beard or one of the faction squads in the area.

"Attention trotters, a rainstorm is about to hit. Take anti-rads or find shelter as soon as possible. Medicines are available at the Jupiter if required."

Night switched his attention from the PDA to his best friend.

"Well, we're not going back to Jupiter in this weather. Let's camp in the top floor for the night." He slipped the folder into his bag. "It's getting too dark to find anything more anyway."

"Yeah," Snow said reluctantly, her ears rolling back. "Don't know if I'll sleep after this, though."

Night could sympathize with the sentiment, though it was by now a remote one for him. His two horns glowing crimson, he magically rolled two tiny, worn sleeping bags out on the floor.

"I'll stand first watch," he volunteered. "In the morning we'll deal with the bodies."

Blearily, Snow dragged her pack to the window and dropped down.

...

Rain.

What had started out as a light drizzle was a gusty downpour by midnight with ambitions towards a brutal deluge. The darkness shrouded the valley as the water polluted the dead world. The Geiger counters in Night's bag crackled unceasingly.

Night listened to the rain dance upon the pavement, drenching it with poisonous filth. Taking out a drink of purified water from he canteen, his eyes drifted to the folder sticking out of his pack. The one with the military symbol.

Wheels in his head began turning. Maybe there was something in here worthwhile; stash locations, a new artifact, anything that could be helpful. A peek wouldn't hurt, and there wasn't much else to do anyway. So he took out the folder and began to read the documents.

Entry One:
Had a surprise inspection from Command yesterday. We pretty well knew it was coming, and I'd been given instructions on what to do; but I couldn't believe how smoothly it went! We slip them a small percentage of the special product, and they give us clean marks? Even if they were dirty, I couldn't understand why they wouldn't bring the cage down on us. Seemed too good to be true.

So I did a little digging (unreadable) who claims to have an inside peek gave me this; according to him, the head mare of First Cav herself actually loathes the new contraband laws. And since she enforces those laws, that means all sorts of artifacts are slipping into Equestria right under the Princess's nose, apparently in exchange for weapons and food. I figure this means as long as she says golden delicious, we're golden delicious.

The first entry was ancient, apparently dating back maybe a year or less after the Disaster. The others were all much more recent. Some of the pages were missing, others stained with dried blood that covered up the words. A few were just plain incomprehensible to Night's mediocre reading skills.

He continued as best he could, using his hoofgun's flashlight for illumination.

Entry Two:
Finally wiped the crap from the AA complex. Three-hundred plus documents that I have absolutely no use for (and many of which it's probably best there not be a record of). All except that one damn file from forever ago with the weird-ass flag on it that prevents tampering. And trust me, I've tried. Fucking magic spells.

Don't know why we even bother keeping record of where we send the goods, since they're all going to the same damn place anyway. I don't know what (unreadable) all these foals for, but unless (unreadable) whatever it is has one hellish rate of attrition.

Boss is more worried about the attrition rate in transit. A third of these fuckers don't make the journey, and they ain't paying us none for corpses. I'm supposed to figure out a way to keep the damn (unreadable)

Entry Four:
I've finally convinced the boss that we need to start a little side business in intel market. The young ones are easier to corral, control and train. Sure, we have to play up the "investment" angle, since they (unreadable) there are plenty of ponies out there who see the potential. Unfortunately, she ain't one of (unreadable)

Turns out, (unreadable) What happens to them after he gets his hooves on them ain't none of my concern. Still got to talk about going a bit easier on them though. Might suggest swapping out which prisoners (unreadable)

Entry Ten:
The cells in the old lockup have been perfect for holding. The pre-Disaster locals might have constructed a lot of this place with an eye to speed over longevity but they sure knew how to make a holding pen. I'd even (unreadable) in the list of stuff I'm glad they left when they all kicked the bucket.

Turns out, gathering foals has made hitting isolated regions a better risk. The adults have a tendency to get annoyingly shooty when we come to claim them, but they also take such great pains to keep their little ones out of the fight that even if we have to kill off all the adults, we still get good intel.

Entry Seventeen:
What a fucking cock-up! A whole platoon slaughtered. Damned trotters fuck everything up. Now I hear that Canterlot is sending a "special representative" to take a look-see at our operation. Sounds more to me like they're planning on taking over. I think they're in for a surprise. And this "special representative" best watch her tail.

Got a new herd of POWs ready for (unreadable) Another benefit of dealing in foals: you only have to kill one of them in front of the others to take the fight out of them.

Project Sol-

Most of the page was torn off. So were the next several pages of the logs.

Entry Twenty-Two:
The last week has been beyond words. Canterlot was playing it close to chest with that "special representative" business. I never had any idea! Let's just say I was shaking in my shodding when our new boss heard about some of the stuff I'd been saying back when we didn't know him. But I guess it's easy to be understanding when you're connected (unreadable)

The rest of the intact documents were either diagrams of technology than Night could barely even read - let alone understand - or maps of various Zone regions.

Some areas were circled with red marker. The AA complex to the south and the machine factory to the southeast were the closest. A few of the more stable anomalies also happened to be circled - Oakpine, Circus, Scar. Even farther south, several locations near the Banei station were also marked. The next map was torn, but Night could still recognize the area; the Dark Valley on the other side of the Zone, and then another circle near Lake Cantar even farther south.

Not the documents Night had expected a scientist to need, that was for sure. But something in them was obviously important enough that some unknown pony would murder kids to get it.

In particular, the information about kidnapped trotters intrigued him. Night hadn't heard any stories about young ponies disappearing... but he had been out of the loop for a while on news from other parts of the Zone.

Night checked his PDA; a few hours before sunrise. He'd talk to Snow about all this in the morning. Time for bed.

The trotter gently shook the body of the mare sleeping across the room from him. Smacking his hoof away, she rose with a loud yawn. With her at the watch, Night Stalker lay down on his own bag and slowly closed his eyes.

...

Sleep came in fits and starts.

Night saw ponies loading into a passenger wagon. Families on their way to a day of laughter and fun at the opening day of the Ponyiat amusement park - parents smiling warmly as their colts and fillies pranced in place with anticipation. He saw mothers urging their colts not to climb on the seats, fathers checking to make sure their cameras had film. And a great wall of sinister magic rushing towards them that somehow nopony could see.

He saw a pony leaving a message on the door to her apartment, grinning as she assured herself that her whole life was about to change. He saw her walking away from that door even as he called out to her to come back, knowing that if she left, she would never live to see her little home again.

He saw ponies giving their loved ones kisses. He watched as they - bright and colorful and living ponies - trotted into their homes, the clocks on the walls above them counting down the minutes until their doom.

The land faded to black. Words in the darkness pierced his ears, under the wail of sirens and klaxons.

"Breaking news! A meltdown has occurred at the Cheernobyl Magical Power Plant. One of the magical reactors has been damaged. The effects of the accident are being remedied..."

...

Night Stalker woke up much the same as he did most mornings; to the cawing of the scavenging birds eagerly hunting for their next meal. Snow was nowhere in sight.

He dressed quickly, grabbing his bag, hoofguns, knife and anything else he would need. He all but ran down the stairs, stopping at the bottom of the steps.

The filly's body was gone, although a dark smear of blood still remained. No sign of the other corpses either.

Night stepped outside and looked around for anypony. He saw nothing. The cloud ceiling had not yet dissipated, casting the Zone into a dreary grey. Fog had started to roll in, putting the stallion on edge. It made seeing and reacting much harder.

He also felt something in his horns; a soft vibration, like a message creeping up and down on his mutated appendages. Artifacts were nearby. Night had no idea where or what kinds, but they were certainly close.

"Morning sleepyhead." A smiling Snow stood a short distance away, her mask under the crook of her leg chewing on some dried boar meat.

He aimed his hoofgun at her instinctively.

"Oh, didn't mean to scare ya." Snow smiled mischievously. She calmly approached him, "When did my favorite colt get all jumpy?"

Night Stalker let out a long sigh and sulked in response to her teasing. "For fuck's sake, Snow... Now, where are those bodies from yesterday?"

"The mercs? I buried them after the rain stopped." Snow looked around, pointing at the nearby hill with small piles of rocks stacked up. "Never thought it would rain that hard in a place like this."

Sitting on the sealed manhole cover next to her, he magically took out a piece of bread and a rolled-up hunk of soya sausage. Breakfast in the Zone wasn't fancy, but enough to keep a pony moving and fighting for a while.

Without warning, Snow took out a small denim rucksack glowing with a myriad of colors. "It looks like that dead filly had a few secrets of her own. Look what I found this morning."

Night took a peek and nearly choked. Chugging down a drink of water to get his food down, his eyes feasted upon the discovery. At least a dozen common artifacts lay inside the pack - Droplets, Jellyfish, Gravi.

"You saw it too right?"

He didn't take his eyes off the bag and its contents, particularly the light-blue object buzzing around the other artifacts. "That Soul?"

"A Meat Chunk too." She grinned, pointing at the glowing red-orange crystal hidden on the bottom beneath the other lesser magic objects.

Night switched his gaze from the treasure trove to his friend. "Where the hell did you find this?"

"A stash inside that garage." She turned and pointed. "It was hidden really well too, in a tube underneath some boards. I only found it cause I dropped my detector and saw it was picking something up." Then her expression darkened. "That filly... She was probably looking for it."

"Or protecting it." Both ponies paused, thinking about the young girl's horrific fate

Snow eventually spoke up, putting the gruesome images out of her head. "Either way, there must be a few thousand bits right here." She counted the artifacts. "Even more with that Meat Chunk and Soul."

Night swallowed a rancid piece of flesh. "We're not giving the Meat Chunk and Soul."

"Why?" Snow sounded incredulous, "Thousands of bits, remember! Your favorite thing in the whole wide world."

"Come on, Snow. Don't tell me you haven't heard the stories of ponies getting brained and surviving? Those things are lifesavers."

"Money money money..." Snow batted her eyelashes.

He gave her a stony expression as he swallowed the last of his food, but did not say anything.

She huffed and rolled her eyes, "Oh fine, have it your way."

Night Stalker slipped the artifact bag into his pack, just as he remembered the documents. Then he recalled the things he read about in said papers. Magically lifting a pack of smokes, he lit one up with a match. He offered one to Snow, and she politely refused with a hoof wave.

"I took a peek at the documents last night."

"What d'ya find?"

"Not sure, but mostly scientific crap and stuff about machines. Most of the logs were missing, but a couple referred to ponies being abducted. You know anything about that?"

The mare, visibly confused by his information, shook her head. "Only gossip from the Freedom grunts, but I've never seen it. At least, not in the Valley."

"Einstein probably knows more about it then we do." Night tucked the folder safely back in his bag and took a nicotine hit. "The fog's getting thicker. Let's head back."

...

Night and Snow went to the saloon bar while the others clustered around the table by the door.

"Hey, is Einstein in today?"

"Naw, he's off somewhere sendin' a message to his partners in Cantar. Why?"

"Oh. Well, he hired some mercs to go to the old mill for some papers," the former began. "They didn't call back, so he sent us to look."

Beard cocked his head. "What about it?"

"We found the bodies last night," Snow chimed in. "Somepony ambushed them. We buried 'em up the hill from the factory."

"Yes," Night confirmed, placing a large, thick-walled bag with a heavy zipper on the bar. "We did recover some of the paperwork though. And they had some common artifacts among them," said he, adding the bag of boar hooves and the merc hoofguns to the assortment. "Two thousand for all of this."

The colt across from him opened the artifact bag and briefly looked over the hoof-sized lumps inside. ''Eighteen hundred."

"Nineteen hundred," Night pressed.

"Eighteen-fifty."

"Done," said Night before Snow could protest. Ignoring the other's disappointed look, he rested his hooves on the bartop and placed his gaze on the old television set while the earth pony rummaged about for the trotters' payment. Today's feature entertainment appeared to be a bootleg of an old film about a group of soldiers during the First Equestrian War being sent behind enemy lines to find one of their own. The bootleg's subtitles were rife with translation errors.

"There ya go." Beard set a bag of gold coins on the bar.

Night quickly divided the money between him and Snow, and slid a few coins from his portion back to the trader. "Pass me a bottle," he said. "I need to get off my hooves for a bit. Snow, you want something?"

"I got it." Snow tossed a few bits of her cut over as well. "Podka please!"

Beard promptly placed two opened Steerlichnaya bottles before his customers. The two ponies gave each other a small toast.

"Great to have you round Snow. Bottoms up."

Snow gave him a simple nod and a bright smile before taking a long swig of the bitter alcohol.

"Away with the old, embrace the new, right mates?" Gray earth pony Mantis clopped his hoof on the counter. "Hey Whiskey, another of your specials!"

Whiskey, the bartending unicorn who ran the ship with Beard, poured him another glass. Then, as all the other ponies in the cargo hold watched, he lined up seven large berries on the counter - beautiful healthy ones quite unlike the pale irradiated ones common in the Zone - and waved his horn over them, magically transforming them one-by-one into bottles of delicious, pain-numbing, mind-easing fermented beverages. Snow clopped her hooves on the floor in applause and several ponies in the saloon let up a whoop.

"It aint the Hundred Rads, but it'll do!" Mantis took one and passed the others to the adult ponies hanging around the saloon. Snow and Night both politely declined; Night because he preferred his trusty Steerlichnaya (even if Whiskey's specials were tempting), Snow because the last Whiskey special she drank gave her a few difficult shits afterward.

"Don't spoil it, I haven't been there yet." Night chuckled.

"Ya don't know what you're missing mate! Speakin' a missing, I thought we were gonna go ta Boiler yesterday!"

"Sorry bro. We got called for a job and then it started raining." Night scratched the back of his head. "Some mercs were getting Einstein some papers and got shafted at the old mill. Probably Heaven Eyes."

Mantis's ears perked up and he gave him a look of shocked confusion. "That sheila wouldn't come all the way out here and kill ponies just for a book report."

"You do know what Heaven Eyes does to ponies who piss her off, right?" Night spoke. "You know, like us? She's the only pony I can think of who could take out a whole mercenary group by herself."

Snow gave him a light punch in the shoulder. "Other then you."

The pegasus sitting next on Night's other side known as Lech looked at him with even deeper confusion. And then broke into a too-riotous laugh. "What, Heaven Eyes?" He turned to the rest of the bar. "Hey, everypony. Horns here thinks Heaven Eyes killed a whole merc team by herself!"

"The fuck?" Cried one of the drunken ponies down the counter from them, "Heaven Eyes ain't nothing but a loony puffed up prancer!"

"Wrong." A trotter standing at a table called Rattlesnake interjected. "She's a ruthless backstabbing scumbag. Y'all would do well to stay out of her way."

"Yep, Horns's right." Another colt by the moniker of Claw also took sides. "Not a pony ya wanna meet in a dark room."

Lech and Claw started arguing with each other over the din of the saloon, but Night had tuned out the noise around him. Something was coming. He could feel it in his gut. But he wasn't sure what it was.

A loud knock came from the entrance hatch leading to the ship's hull breach. Then multiple ones in rapid succession.

"Hey, who's that bangin' on the door? Come on in trotter, it's open!" Pressing a button located behind the counter, Beard remotely unlocked the hatch.

A ragged earth pony nearly tripped as she stumbled in. Her armored jacket nearly ripped to shreds, blood dripped from her hair and down her face. She panted and wheezed with exhaustion.

Everypony in the saloon fell dead silent in an instant, staring at her like a being from another world.

Then she screamed a single word at the top of her lungs.

"PSEUDOGIANT!"

The Hunt

"Attention all trotters! A pseudogiant has been sighted in this immediate area. All guard hooves report to decks three and four immediately. Report any and all sightings."

Nopony needed to be told twice. Indeed, every able-bodied mare and colt had already grabbed their gear and headed out before the message had even finished blaring through their radios. Fog had closed in, shrouding much of the surrounding landscape in white.

Night was among the first ponies out. A pseudogiant pelt could buy a lot of supplies. A lot of supplies meant he could take a break from his barrel-to-hoof-to-mouth existence and get lost for a while.

On the face of it, this was many a stalker's dream employment: a straightforward hunting trip. But Night knew better. Hunting a giant wasn't like taking down a flesh or a bloodsucker.

"You didn't tell me about pesudogiants, Night!" Snow huffed as she appeared behind him.

"Because they don't come this close to the ship." He retorted.

"Well I don't want a repeat of-"

"No, that's not gonna happen again." assured the stallion.

Less than a minute of walking later, Night's PDA suddenly picked up an incoming radio message.

"Jupiter, this is Amazon." Night's PDA picked up a strong female voice over the waves. "We got tracks by the cranes. Uploading coordinates now."

They had to start somewhere. And the best chance they had was to get up high and have a look around. With a cursory nod towards Snow, Night checked the circle on his PDA map and began to make his way across the desolate riverbed.

...

Before the Disaster, the Ponyiat River served as the main trade route between the city and the rest of Equestria. Rusting cranes marked the station where ships like the Jupiter would dock and trade their wares. Like everything in the Zone, it did not long survive Cheernobyl's devastation.

The towering dock cranes would be a perfect lookout.

Looking to his PDA again, Night noticed that it was picking up another radio transmission.

"Jupiter, this is Amazon. We've picked up more tracks leading east."

"Hey, what's that? Over there!" Another voice suddenly interrupted the mare's.

"Where?"

"Through the bushes, right there!"

"There's nothing there. What are you talking abo-"

An ear-splitting roar and a series of screams cut him short. Then the radio erupted into chaos, a frenzied cacophony of roars, static, and hoofgun fire drowning out everything else. Even without the PDA, the tak-tak-tak of bullets echoed over the horizon.

"Amazon, this is Horns. I picked up your transmission, do you copy?"

Static.

"Amazon, this is Horns, do you copy?"

More static.

Snow hurriedly prepped her hoofgun, "Time to move."

Night had already begun to gallop up the steep slope to the base of the towering dock cranes.

The surrounding buildings and warehouses were almost barren; anything of value that had survived the Disaster had long been looted, leaving only scraps that nobody wanted but that time itself seemed unable to erase. Rusted shoes, boxes of soaps for scrubbing ships that no longer existed, a pitchfork with a shattered handle, a cart.

According to the PDA, the pair were on top of the circle. Night didn't sense anything as he crept forward, animal or pony. That made him nervous.

Snow stepped beside Night, L85 at the ready while she view the devastation before them. "Where are they? This is where Amazon said, right?"

Then Night smelled something, a foul and putrid stench that filled his nostrils and caused him to flinch. Moving around a derelict cart, the smell began to get stronger. He recognized it all too well.

A footprint several feet across lay sunken in the ground. Next to it was a splatter of fresh blood and a particularly gruesome sight.

He froze. "I think I found Amazon."

Then he heard Snow gag loudly behind him. "I think I found her too."

Night turned around to find Snow standing above the front half of the poor mare, entrails scattered around, laying next to another animal track. Literally nothing of other ponies remained but tattered pieces of body armor, splashes of blood, and a severed hoof. One earth pony's body, still whole but broken in a physically impossible shape, had defecated on the ground in its death throes. Several more track lay sunken in the dirt nearby, telling the duo everything they needed to know about the cause.

Snow turned from the sight and groaned. "Fuck that smell..."

"These giants are getting bold." Night crouched down to take a better look at the bodies. "Really bold." He didn't get any closer, the stench horrid even to his jaded senses.

"Hey, you two! Yeah you, colt with the horns!"

Night spun with his hoofgun aimed at the ponies who snuck up on them. A tan unicorn stallion, garbed in a familiar pine-green uniform, froze in place with his right hoof up high. Behind him, two other ponies approached; a pale-blue earth pony colt and a teenage brown pegasus colt.

Night slowly lowered his weapon. "You heard it?"

"The radio? Yeah, we were just passing through and heard something going on."

"Came up here to investigate it myself too." The Freedom pony looked at the remains around him. "Didn't think I was gonna find this."

"Hey wait a second... Bloodflag? You're-" Snow suddenly perked up. "I've heard of you! You're that... that markspony who led First Company against those colts in the Garbage, right?"

The unicorn laughed it up. "Oh stop it, you're gonna make me blush."

"I've been in the Valley for the past few months helping against Yoga, so I've heard all about you. The name's Snow."

"The ponies round here call me Horns," Night introduced himself, "but I'm okay if you call me Night Stalker. By the way, that's a nice gun you got, the Dragonuv."

Bloodflag glanced at the scoped long-barreled hoofgun on his leg. "Oh, well thanks. So you use your real name." The stallion smiled, "Guess that makes two of us."

"I'm Dixon. This is my little bro-"

"Leeroy." The brown pegasus introduced himself before the blue earth pony finished speaking. "Ready and willing to kick some ass!"

"Well I don't mean to cut our little date short," Night checked his PDA, "but if we wanna catch up to that giant, we need to get moving."

Bloodflag cocked the charging handle of his Dragonuv. "Follow the blood."

...

"... Out here, everything is dangerous. Your survival ultimately depends on your own ability to react to hazards. Do exactly as we tell you and you should be fine."

"I'm not a foal, Dixon!" Leeroy facehoofed. "And I ain't afraid of no giants."

Night was trying to ignore the arguing between the two ponies, lost in his own mind as they followed the path of their quarry east across the river valley.

"There are worse things than giants out there." Bloodflag suddenly butted in. "Let me tell you something kid. Before I was in Freedom I used to be a mercenary, a good one, but just being good doesn't cut it out here... Two years back my old team and I almost died near the area we're heading for now. We walked into a spot where space was twisted into a loop – every direction we tried led back to the place we started at."

Snow perked up. "I've heard stories of those. How'd you get out?"

"Our fellow mercs and some Freedom guys found a way to get us out after a few days, but that's not an experience you forget in a hurry... So you see, no matter how smart or fast you are, the Zone is never a picnic. Always keep that in mind."

"Wait... If you've been to this forest before," Leeroy complained, motioning towards Night, "why do we really need them?"

"Good question." Snow slung her L85 on her leg. "Do you believe in miracles?"

"Not particularly, no."

She gave him a wry smile. "You will."

...

The fog lifted by early afternoon, revealing the landscape of the western Zone beneath a sky of rolling, angry grey. The fire team walked above it, traveling single-file along one of the twin tracks of the old Percheron Line.

All around them, the rubble of vehicles and building created shadows and obstacles. Night regularly had to check his PDA to make sure they were still headed in the right direction. Even Leeroy grounded himself to avoid losing the others. In all directions they saw collapsed and gutted buildings, blackened chariots and wagons, detritus and blown litter.

The living creatures, ponies and animals alike, had been reduced to nothing more than radioactive ash, mixing with the ash of Ponyiat's holocaust as it carried by the winds of Cheernobyl all those years ago.

Only the occasional suicide - fresh bodies still swinging from trees, old corpses with hoofguns lodged in their mouths - broke up the solitude.

Night signaled a halt when the entourage came to a tree-shaded gate on the road next to the rail line, briefly checking around the abandoned taxi stop before slouching against its concrete face. The checkpoint happened to be sandwiched between a bloodsucker-infested marshy area and a rocky hill marked the border of the Jupiter's communications array. Past this place, they would be on their own.

"Jupiter, this is Horns. Pseudogiant tracks spotted outside Dead Mare's Alley." the horned pony gave a final report to the ship. "We should hold here, and check equipment."

"Good idea." Bloodflag obliged. "Anything you guys need to fix, fix it now."

Ignoring the impatient looks from Leeroy, Night took advantage of the break to adjusted the slings which supported his hoofgun on his leg. His Enforcers were pea-shooters, useless against a walking tank like a giant.

Fortunately, he always had other weapons on hand. He rummaged through his pack, and soon found what he wanted.

Typhon, he called it. The words inscribed on it did the weapon justice; "None are beyond reach, None are above death." The Abakan - thoroughly cleaned and maintained - sat ready. Its hardened straps slipped onto his leg like a glove. He slid a 5.54 ammo battery into his beloved partner and it glowed with approval.

"How far is it to the Red Forest from here?"

"In the old days, not far." Night shrugged. "There were roads running right to it... Now it depends."

"Depends?"

"On what's in the way," Night supplied.

Snow nodded. "If we're fortunate, we'll get there before dark."

"And then?"

"We'll have to camp," said the mare. "If I'm remembering this area right, there should be a few good places to hole up provided the critters haven't claimed 'em."

When Night appeared ready to move on, he straightened. He took only a few steps forward before he sensed it, and immediately threw a bolt in front of him. It began to fizz before it even landed in the dirt, magical corruption spreading over its surface within a few seconds.

"This way," said Night, cutting to the right. "Let's go."

...

In the days after the Cheernobyl Disaster, massive deposits of radioactive material and ejecta thrown out by the exploding plant killed wide swaths of the region's pine forests. Those trees were long gone - destroyed by the energy blowouts during the first years – but their dying colors inspired a name whispered in terror by those foolish or suicidal enough to journey there.

Dead Mare's Alley was the trotter name given to the only passable area of the Red Forest, the only part not turned into an impassable deathtrap by skin-melting radiation or anomalies or madness-inducing horrors that could not be physically described in words.

The world was quiet and still here. No birds sang, no critters scurried about. Even insects did not nest. Ash covered the rotting trunks, the ground almost entirely bare of life. Beside the ravenous mutants, some of the most frightening anomalies occurred here. Night himself had only heard rumors of them, but those rumors were more than enough.

"So... This is Dead Mare's Alley." Leeroy tried to lift the silence.

"Yep, still dead." Snow quipped.

"Masks on everypony. We don't want you sprouting another nose." Night took out his gas mask and fastened it tightly over his head. The other ponies with him quickly followed. "Filters?"

"Got enough for seven hours." reported Dixon.

"More than enough time to get through the worst." Bloodflag readied his Dragonuv. "Snow, any readings?"

The earth pony mare looked at her PDA and tapped it a few times with her other hoof. "I'm getting a signal just a few dozen yards away."

Night checked his own PDA; he saw a red dot. "Let's finish this quickly. We really don't wanna stay here long."

...

The fire team was entering the outskirts of the Forest proper now. Night felt a tiny pang of disappointment that he couldn't properly see the rest. Snow and Bloodflag had taken the lead. His frequent attention was as much to spot hostile creatures as to navigate.

The area's terrain wasn't going to make the hunt easy. The ground was uneven and rocky, with few reliable paths. A deserted gem mine offered potential shelter to any takers who didn't mind clearing out dens of snorks, though the lookout post across the river offered superior warning of unwanted company.

Here and there, half-frozen puddles of radioactive sludge steamed and sizzled. The sun shined dimly through the cloud cover on them.

"Well?" Leeroy demanded after some hours of walking, following Night's meandering path among whatever menaces lurked just out of sight. "How much further?"

"'The sun was low in the sky," Dixon dramatically intoned, describing the group's surroundings in a solemn voice, "and its rays shone dimly between the twisted branches overhead.'"

When nobody laughed, he let out an annoyed sigh. "This is the edge of the Alley. The real hazards are straight ahead... Night?"

"Yes." Night pulled out the folding stock of his Abakan with his teeth and moved the fire selector to the automatic position with a quick swipe of his other hoof.

The path ahead led into a narrow pass, the steep slope on either side crowned by dense vegetation. A gravitational anomaly lay ahead, sitting just to the left where the pass gave way to more open ground, its presence betrayed to the casual observer only by a subtle rippling in the air. For Night this was no challenge.

"Stop," the loner commanded, bending to pick up a stone from the path.

Classical physics dictated that the stone would follow a downward arc upon leaving his hoof. Zone physics scoffed at that and instead sent it spiraling into a tight vortex: a hissing filled the air as the upset anomaly pulled in all the loose leaves, pebbles and clumps of soil within reach, the force of its suction drawing a harsh wind over the onlookers. The noise grew to a fevered pitch, then ended altogether with a sharp crack as the matter exploded.

Within a few moments the anomaly had reverted back to its idle state as Night placidly cut to the right and walked past the patch of warped space.

A flash of gray shot past them from behind - a magnificent flying creature both terrifying and graceful which spread its wings and circled as if taking the group in measure. Its multiple eyes seemed to glow and licks of saliva fell from its curved toucan-like beak. Its oversized talons raked effortlessly through dead underbrush.

"What is that?" Leeroy asked with a tone of awe.

"Harpy," Snow replied, whistling slightly. "Strange place to find one."

"Imagine having one of those for a pet." said Bloodflag.

Night shook his head. "They like to stick their beaks down your mouth and tear out your throat from the inside. Good luck."

The bird completed its circle, then swooped down and away as it threaded through shadowed alleys of dead trees. That's when Night began to sens-

SPLAT!

The animal instantly fell to the ground with the speed of a bullet, its body promptly exploding into a million bloody chunks. Gore spiraled through the air in an arc, carried up by another example of Zone physics.

"Oops." Dixon quipped, with Bloodflag and Snow chuckling. "Well, we're not going that way."

They began to move again around the gravity trap, all except Leeroy who just stood there as if mesmerized. Eventually, he broke from his trance and rejoined the group.

The fire team soon approached a large clearing where a past outburst of the Zone's deadly magic had plowed a twisted furrow in the ground, seeding a raging cloud of anomalous magic. The air shimmered and undulated, with hundreds of tiny rainbows exploding and dying. To the north of the crater was a nearly pristine ponycopter sitting inexplicably among the trees, and past that was the old home of Forester.

Night saw a mound of… something coming out of the ground in the distance next to the furrow. It was a pale grey color, whatever it was. With a wary glance at each other, he and Snow slowly made their way over.

As they approached, they could see that it wasn't a mound; it was a pit. A pit with the faint green glow of pure mana emanating from within. Both of them promptly sidestepped and bypassed the obstacle, followed by their companions

"So," Dixon muttered once the lethal trap was behind them, "where shall we pretend to pitch our tent? The mine or the river outpost?"

"The outpost," Night opined.

"Fine by me, if you can justify the extra distance."

...

"What's that?"

"The edge," Bloodflag answered curtly. "The edge of the world, as far as we're concerned." He turned away from the churning fog beyond the railroad embankment and the rusted drawbridge which disappeared into its swirling whiteness. It was oppressive, terrifying, bearing with it a subtle impression of things long dead.

"Stay away from it." said Snow.

Leeroy wasn't quite ready to give up. "So what's over there?" He demanded, looking to Night.

"There used to be a town. Skyfall, I think." The loner was no more verbose than Bloodflag. "Now, nopony knows."

Dixon looked across the river thoughtfully. "And I'm not sure if we want to know."

Night ascended the decaying steel steps of the outpost's watchtower. It had weathered the winter well, numerous bullet scars regardless, and it appeared that no other party had already staked a claim to the structure – he'd been right to prefer this place over the old mines.

"All quiet?"

"Yep," Bloodflag reported. "We can settle ourselves and get these damn masks off."

"Guess it's my turn tonight," sighed Snow as she trotted down the stairs of the tower. "See you boys at oh-four-hundred."

...

Night Stalker settled into a corner and drew his long coat close around him. The others were sound asleep. Sleep, however, had not been prompt in visiting the trotter. Instead he found himself thinking back to Leeroy's earlier question as he leaned on the watchtower's balcony.

Skyfall wasn't a place where the average whinny could make some bits. Between the walls of secrecy and anomalies, many trotters had never heard of Skyfall or thought it a mere legend even today. The old pegasus town had been completely inaccessible until a minor blowout shifted some of the anomalies surrounding the ruins just after the Cheernobyl explosions. Night himself had been on the far side of known territory when the town reappeared, drawing swarms of trotters eager for a shortcut to the Center.

It was just as well that he missed out on the action – the last of the post-Cheernobyl emissions resealed the path over the bridge by the watchtower, taking all who rushed into the unexplored wasteland with it. Duty and Freedom platoons, bandits, mercenaries - none of them were seen or heard from again. A fog shrouded Skyfall during the following night and remained forevermore, neither spreading nor dispersing. Those who walked into it never walked out. Even Heaven Eyes and her cultists, who marched with impunity where none else could survive, avoided the town.

But there was a great pony who once lived out here. Forester, they called him. His disappearance still haunted Night. "Another youngster comes to dedicate his life to the cause," the old hunter had chuckled when the two first met. "What can an old stallion do for you?"

He shook away his thoughts as he reached into his pack. Be strong, he repeated to himself. Be strong. Be strong.

Night lit up two cigarettes and stuck them in his nostrils. A good deep smoke would clear his head. Narcotics filled his throat and lungs with every snort. He felt better now.

A snork howled mournfully in the distance as Night left the balcony, returned to his corner, and quickly fell asleep.

...

"There." Night pointed across the wide clearing as the thicket on the far side began to move. "It's coming out."

Bloodflag was already in place, the other ponies backing him up. They had let the Freedom sniper get the bait for them early in the morning, in the form of three mutant pig carcasses heaped near the eroded anomaly crater. It'd taken ten minutes to set the offering out and nearly an hour for the real target to show itself.

The pseudogiant was a horrid caricature of nature; part pony, part bear, part dinosaur. A thick lump of a body with a vaguely equine face, it stomped about on two enormous overgrown arms that doubled as its legs. Its raindrop-shaped form was covered in sagging, pale skin spotted with red and brown patches. Its eyes bulged with a serene, almost idiotic gaze. The teeth - each the size of a pony's hoof - were smooth, perfectly sharp, and creamy white. Despite its huge muscles and bones, the monster could outrun a pony several times over. Einstein and his colleagues at the scientists' bunker had long debated how the rare creature sustained the massive diet its prowess logically required.

And somehow, with no discernible emotions or expressions to speak of, it still managed to look angry all the time.

"Good Goddess..." Leeroy breathed.

"It's times like this I wish I was a unicorn." Dixon whispered. "Set that thing on fire or turn it into a rabbit, ya know?"

Night gave him a puzzled look. "... You do know spells don't work against giants, right?"

"Sorry to disappoint you buddy, but we're gonna have to do this the hard way." Bloodflag aimed his beloved Dragonuv, the blissfully unaware monster just beginning to messily feed upon the bait. Leeroy and Snow quickly jammed their hooves into their ears.

Whaboom!

The pseudogiant rocked backward, blood running from the expertly-placed hole in its forehead. It swayed on its feet for a moment or two, then let out a piercing roar and charged up the hill. Tree trunks and rocks flattened before its unstoppable rage.

Whaboom!

Snow, Night, Leeroy, and Dixon all opened up at once, firing head-on at the raging mutant, but eighty rounds were not nearly enough.

Leeroy broke his old double hoofrifle open while Snow and Night yanked out their empty magazines with their teeth. Whatever his sundry other faults, the young trotter was at least a decent shot and a quick reloader: the old rifle was up and on target before Night had reached Typhon's charging button.

There was a double blast that left ears ringing, and the giant finally broke off its assault before retreating down the slope and disappearing behind some fallen logs.

"Fuck," Snow muttered hoarsely, eyeing the blood covering the bushes. "That secondary brain or whatever it's got, that's really something!"

"Well we can't let it get away!" Leeroy cried out as he charged down the rocky hill.

Dixon cursed as he followed. "Faust damnit, Leeroy..."

But as the fire team came to a slow cantor, they found nothing in the clearing. Not even tracks were visible on the ground.

Leeroy spun around, trying to make sure he didn't get jumped. "Where'd it go?"

Something grunted loudly behind Night. Something alien. And something big. Night just knew it had to be big. In fact, that particular grunt sounded familiar-

A large rock promptly exploded out in a shower of dust, and an enraged pseudogiant twitched and snorted irritably. Or furiously. Night wasn't very good at reading the emotions of mutated monsters.

It whipped over to look at him like a surprised Tom glaring at Jerry.

Night didn't even think. He galloped away, looking for some sort of mouse-hole. He found one in the form of a literal hole, albeit partly blocked by dead branches and rocks. Behind him, Snow and the others fired at the distracted mutant.

Hefting Typhon around as he galloped, Night spared only the quickest glance over his shoulder at the approaching horror.

He jumped, turning mid-leap and blasting away, nearly getting caught in a tangled web of ash-covered branches before sliding on his back like a baseball player reaching for home.

Was that right? Reaching for home? Maybe it was stealing home. He had no idea and he didn't care at the moment.

The beast was coming for him and obliterating his cover with every step, so Night scrambled out of his natural protection and vaulted dramatically (and painfully) over a fallen pine tree, coming to a crouching stop.

There were times when Night wished he had the invisibility bloodsuckers had and not a sixth sense. Now was one of them. He glanced over as the raging pseudogiant bore down on him, and Night sprang back so he was laying on the ground, facing the monster.

Everything around him seemed to slow down to a crawl. He fired two shots, aiming at the eyes. His bullets made their mark, but he wasn't in the clear. By the time Night had scrambled to his hooves, the creature already appeared on top of him.

The giant raised its right leg high over its head, and pounded the ground with the strength of an angry goddess.

Night felt the ground leave him for a few moments before he violently slammed into a tree trunk. Pain shot through every bone in his body and he could see open cuts all over his unprotected body parts.

Machine hoofgun fire sounded, and Night hoped to Faust the others were firing at the mutant monster. Bringing his blurred vision forward, Night managed to eschew himself into a sitting position, crawling as he watched the smudgy battle unfold.

The pseudogiant turned and heaved in desperation, its two overgrown, lumbering legs obliterating the rocks and bushes around it. Bullet holes and thin trickles of blood covered its body.

Finally, with a low, raspy groan, it seemed to wander aimlessly for several seconds, then lost its balance and crashed to the ground.

"YEAH!" cried Leeroy as he charged the monster, "HERE COMES THE PAIN!"

He and the ponies with him poured several more rounds into it. Only when the giant stopped twitching did they hold back.

As Dixon and Bloodflag cheered, Snow helped Night to his hooves. "You okay?"

Night stretched. "Yeah, just making sure all my bones are still here."

He moved with dizzied unease to the steaming bloodied corpse before him. His hoofknife sprung from its sheath mechanism, and with great care he began cutting across the leathery flesh.

Finally, when he was satisfied with the size of the skin flap, he wrapped the pelt in a plastic bag and slipped it into his pack. He shook the blood off his legs.

"All right," Dixon announced. "Now we just need a picture." He produced a camera from somewhere on him and handed it to Snow. "If you'd be so kind..."

"Go ahead," Night murmured. "I'll watch your back."

The mare nodded, following the colts back down to the crater. Leeroy and Dixon quickly struck their poses beside the fallen mutant, the former cradling his shotgun and grinning nearly ear to ear, while the other trotter peered through his scope.

Night silently prayed that they would hurry up and finish having their fun. By now the entire Red Forest probably knew they were here.

"Say cheese!" She took the picture and promptly gave the camera back.

Something at the edge of his sixth sense's range caught Night's attention, a faint signature across the clearing behind the others. It ceased moving and was joined by a second, then a third.

That smaller animals would be drawn to the kill was nothing strange, but even in the Zone few beasts had the courage to approach a pseudogiant - even a dead one - and so soon after the gunfire. That meant it was probably either snorks or pseudodogs...

Or else...

"Snow," he called, pointing over the others' heads. "Company!"

The first two shots came at nearly the same instant, hitting Dixon neatly between his shoulders. He went down with barely a sound.

Less than a second later, Snow fell behind the pseudogiant, swearing incoherently while light automatic fire whizzed around. She held a bloodstained hoof on the base of her neck as she crawled to cover behind its carcass. Night jumped into the cover of a large rock, frantically wondering when and where these assailants had taken a level in subtlety.

"DIXON!" Leeroy cried as he tried to get near his companion, only to be met by a hail of projectiles.

"Don't move!" Night called out. "Snow, you hit?"

The mare quickly got to her hooves. "I'm fine, I'm fine!"

A near miss prompted more curses out of her mouth. She popped up long enough to squeeze off a burst with her L85. The return fire hit only cooling flesh and gave Night a better fix on the attackers' position. Leeroy had dragged the completely incapacitated Dixion by his tail behind a rock.

"Bloodflag," the loner shouted, fumbling with the Abakan, "can you shake them up?"

"Just a sec..." The other trotter swapped his magazines and took a deep breath. "Freedoooooom!"

The suppressive fire worked admirably, forcing one of the enemies to displace as Bloodflag's bullets zipped through the concealing bushes. Aiming over the top of his rock, Night zeroed in on the flurry of motion, tracked it briefly and squeezed the hoofgun's firing button with his leg muscle.

Pow!

The lone trotter was already slamming his bolt closed on a fresh battery as a struck assailant fell and tumbled down into the clearing. She wore not the brown vest and mottled urban camouflage of a cultist, but the gray and blue of a mercenary. Night wasn't sure which made less sense: that a groups of neutral loners and a respected Freedom member had been ambushed in Dead Mare's Alley by assailants, or that said assailants were out in Dead Mare's Alley at all.

"We gotta fall back!" the loner shouted to his companions.

"Working on it!" The Freedom sniper grunted, reloading his hoofrifle again.

"Okay, get ready!" Night laid his pack against the rock's well-weathered face. "Now!"

Snow and Bloodflag broke cover, zigzagging up the hill while Night fired short bursts at the mercenaries and enemy bullets peppered the dirt under their hooves.

"Nice work," the horned pony panted, rolling behind a shielding rock. A bullet promptly glanced off it, flinging chips of stone at him. It wasn't until they had gotten into cover that they realized that Leeroy hadn't come with them. He was still by the body of Dixon.

"Wait, what the... Leeroy, get your ass back here!" Bloodflag yelled.

The pegasus turned, bloodstains covering his jacket. "Not without Dixon!"

"Okay okay... fuck!" Night nearly yelled, "Alright, we'll give you cover. Get to the mine entrance, we'll try to meet you there!"

"On three!" Bloodflag called, "One... Two... THREE!"

All three ponies rose and unleashed punishing suppressive fire on their assailants. With dizzying speed, Leeroy heaved the colt on his back and flew up the hill out of sight.

The Freedom markspony swore under his breath as he crouched again and pushed the Dragonuv's muzzle over the top. "Those clowns better not be from my old crew!"

Night didn't expect it to make much difference, the bandits of today being who they were.

"Let's retreat to the mines and try to shake them off," he suggested.

"Good by me." Bloodflag fired several shots, then another and ducked. Then he started fiddling with his rifle as it started glowing bright-green.

Sparks suddenly began flying from his hoofgun's barrel. "Hang on, I'm jammed..." He fiddled with the weapon. "Piss – not jammed, broken!"

Night, digging into his pack, tossed him a low-grade spare Kora 919 hoofgun with his teeth. "Use this."

"Thanks!" Bloodflag snuck a fast peek around the rock while slipping his new weapon on his leg.

"They're advancing... This is gonna be fun." Snow put a fresh clip in her own hoofgun.

Fun wasn't the word Night would use. There was no adequate cover between the rocks and the mine entrance up the hill which offered their best – if not only – path of escape: they'd have to make that dash completely exposed. The mercs – at least ten of them – were rapidly closing the range of engagement, breaking cover but spread so wide that a full thirty-round battery wasn't enough to effectively suppress all of them.

The loner leaned out and pulled a snap shot with the Abakan, narrowly missing his mark. Bloodflag must have come to the same realization, since he switched from suppression to aimed fire and dropped two opponents in rapid order before the first of the survivors made it to the cover of the cooling pseudogiant.

"I'm almost out of ammo," the Freedom trotter warned. "Soon or never, buddy!"

"I know!" Night's next shot struck a crouching merc's exposed shoulder, putting him out of the fight. By his reckoning, that left the odds at two against seven. "Let's – wait... Bloodflag, do you hear that?"

Somewhere in the distance, a horn blew. The remaining mercenaries could also hear it, per the sudden lull in their shooting.

"Time's up," Bloodflag muttered. He bent to pry a fist-sized stone from the soil beside his hoof, then wound up to pitch it. "Let's play... catch a grenade!"

It was a brilliant feint: Night heard a startled yelp as the "grenade" landed and saw a merc dive away from the assumed center of blast – leaving him wide open.

Typhon's old frame thumped reassuringly, magical power blasting through the flank of the unfortunate colt's charcoal-tone vest like a fist through a wet paper bag. Night Stalker's nose filled with a sulfurous stench.

Then he realized that Bloodflag wasn't at his side any more. The Freedom trotter must have started moving as soon as his decoy was in the air, running while the enemy was distracted.

Night felt like an idiot: he'd squandered his chance to retreat so that he could get a few more shots off.

Worse, he now realized that he had neglected to pay attention to what his sixth sense revealed about his surroundings – Bloodflag had moved out of range, and new company was coming in fast.

"Glory to the Zone!" A battle cry rang out clear as a brazen bell among the trees. "Punish the heretics! Crush the unworthy!"

Heaven Eyes and her fanatics never skimped when it came to launching raids against the outer parts of the Zone, always attacking in great numbers with nary a care for their own survival, giving no mercy and expecting none.

There was one rule for dealing with them: kill them before they kill you.

And now the odds had seesawed from two against one to one against twenty and counting. His empty Abakan wasn't up to this task, and there was no time to get his Enforcers out.

Night Stalker waited just long enough for the ponies pouring from the woods to engage the remaining mercenaries, then started galloping away.

He covered all of three and a half meters before a soft pocket in the ground caught his hooves and sent him tumbling. A projecting rock jabbed into his ribs as he landed, the impact only partially dampened by his thick coat and vest.

The loner rolled over, gasping in pain, and was greeted by a dumbfounding sight.

Five of the fanatics stood only a few feet from him. But they weren't shooting at him; they weren't even aiming at him. In fact, the nearest one raised a hoof as if in greeting.

Night simply sat where he was, completely baffled, as the clear leader of the group directed his companions with a series of hoof signals. Half of them spread out, taking up defensive positions around the clearing while the rest began checking over the bodies of the fallen. The leader watched these proceedings briefly before approaching the trotter, the muzzle of his AK and attached grenade launcher aimed at the ground. He was followed by a young teenager with a Shortbred carbine.

The teenage pony scanned him over in a strange mixture of fear and awe. "Is that... No, it cannot be so..."

"You're not hurt." The captain's voice was deep, in a way which reminded Night of an opera singer. "What happened here?"

Night just blinked, wondering if he hadn't actually hit his head and knocked himself silly. The adept, however, didn't look the least bit silly when he flipped out his hoofknife and held it to Night's face.

"Answer him, Marked One," he spat.

Those two words struck many conflicting emotions into Night's heart. They knew who he was.

"We were hunting a pseudogiant," said Night hesitantly, too muddled to concoct a plausible lie in a hurry, "We came out here and the mercenaries attacked us, and then you came. That's all."

The adept's expression of contempt and revulsion only expanded. The captain's face was hidden behind a sturdy gas mask, but he actually seemed satisfied.

"Of course," he said, nodding to himself. "You speak truly, Marked One."

The adept snorted. "What does it matter if he speaks the truth? There is no good in letting the Archenemy stay alive to blaspheme the – "

Something abruptly clicked in Night's mind.

"Save your breath dumbfuck," he cut in flatly. "You ponies are just as crazy as she is." Might as well say his part while he was still alive, he reasoned. The one round left in his trusty Abakan couldn't save him now.

The confrontational colt had obviously made up his mind before the fact. "You are no less a blasphemer if you seek the granter of wishes, vermin."

Night had never been one to be easily insulted, but that retort pushed exactly the wrong button.

"I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about," he muttered dangerously. Raising his head, the loner glared straight into the junior fanatic's hardened eyes. "But whatever dragon shit Heaven Eyes or whoever is feeding you, it's wrong and you know it."

The adept's breath hissed through clenched teeth as he drew back his leg. He would have spit Night on the blade for sure had the captain's hoof not blocked his path.

"Silence!" the latter roared. "Forgive him, Marked One. It is not long since he was enlightened, and the Zone does not bestow its wisdom all at once."

Turning to the adept, the higher-ranked follower addressed him like a father correcting an errant child. "You are right – our duty is to protect the Zone with all our hearts and souls... But we never harm the children of the Snake, the ones borne with the Mark."

"What...?" The adept looked from his commander to the equally nonplussed Night Stalker and back again. "Brother, what do you mean?"

The captain didn't answer directly, instead bending to gently pull Night upright.

"Only Our Lady has the right to challenge him," said the former. "That is the path which the Zone has set, and its reasons are its own."

His voice, while respectful, became serious. "We cannot remain here. If there is nothing you require, we must depart. I ask only that you not speak of this to those who are unworthy."

Night wanted to gun the cultists down on the spot, but he knew it would probably be suicide.

"Fair enough... Uh, can I ask you a few questions before you go?"

"You may," the earth pony replied graciously, "but I cannot promise that I will have answers."

"Fine." Night cleared his throat. "Do you know what happened to Forester?"

The cultist shook his head. "It is said that he walked into the deathly fog, though I hate to believe a colt capable of such madness could be the same graybeard who dwelt in this forest."

It was true, then. "I see... Then you don't know what's past the fog either?"

"It is a cursed place," the adept interjected darkly.

"Indeed," the captain added. "We know not what dwells there now. But the Lady has desired that we find a way."

"Thank you," Night returned, hoping he sounded sincere. "One last question."

"Very well."

"Where is Heaven Eyes?"

"Ah." His tone of voice suggested that the captain knew. "That I cannot answer. Forgive me."

"I... Okay," the loner replied quickly.

"Then we part ways here." The captain stepped back and, surprise on top of surprise, saluted. "Farewell, Marked One."

"One last thing!" Night called out to the ponies who had spared him.

The captain turned around while the adept under him kept moving. "Yes?"

Night knew exactly what to say. "If you see her, tell Heaven Eyes I will find her... and when I do, there can be only one."

"Of course." The captain nodded. He promptly vanished into the gray of the forest with his adept in tow.

The cultists had already stripped everything from the merc corpses and made off with the pseudogiant corpse. It was only a matter of minutes before his senses told Night that he was quite alone in the clearing.

After reloading his weapons and collecting the empty magazines from around the bullet-chipped rock, he made for the mines.

...

"Bloodflag...?"

A flashlight clicked on, revealing the barrels of several hoofguns aimed at the tunnel entrance.

"Wait, hold it... Night Stalker?" the addressed hissed, aiming around the bottom of an overturned mine cart.

The stallion heard a familiar mare nearly gasp in relief. "Thank Faust..."

"It's just you, right?" Leeroy popped his head up from behind a rock.

"Yeah, it's just me," Night confirmed. "The bandits didn't linger."

"Phew," Bloodflag breathed. "I thought you were right behind me till I got to the mine and turned around!"

As Night's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed Snow laying against the wall with a bandage wrapped around her neck. Next to her lay a motionless Dixon.

He approached. "You alright?"

She grimaced as she sat up, but still managed to crack a smile.

"It just grazed me, I've taken worse hits!" She chuckled weakly. "How'd you get away from them?"

"I fell on my face." It was technically true, and the amount of dirt on Night's already earthy-hued clothing lent credibility. He scanned the cave, his eyes soon falling upon Dixon's motionless body. Blood oozed from his forehead.

Snow lowered her eyes. "He's in bad shape. Bloodflag stopped the bleeding, but he still might not make it."

As Night looked into his pack - still reeking with pseudogiant flesh - he got an idea. He took out a small bright-pink crystal, its glow illuminating the cave.

Bloodflag immediately knew what it was. "A Meat Chunk?"

Night tossed it to the colt. "Try this."

Without delay, the brown pegasus held the artifact to his brother's injury. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then it began to glow, and the skin began to fold and slowly mend itself. Then the pony shifted about.

Leeroy gasped, "He's alive!"

"He's a lucky bastard, that's what he is." Snow got up and swept her own flashlight around the mine tunnel. "Let's not wait for them to make another pass, eh?"

"Yeah..."

Bloodflag shook his head. "I'm really not looking forward to the flak back at base," he admitted. "Knuckle will be pissed 'cause I didn't get a report, Screw will be pissed 'cause I broke my shooter and Skinflint will be pissed 'cause he'll have to get me a replacement."

"It wasn't your fault," Night pointed out. "Anyway, there's nothing around now. Leeroy, grab Dixon and let's hurry out while we can."

...

"Home sweet home," Snow sighed as the river valley and the Jupiter came into view, painted warm orange by Celestia's sun plunging towards the treeline. Leeroy had already gone ahead to the ship without them.

"Guess I'd better get straight to the boss... Oh, and you can have this back," Bloodflag surrendered the Kora. Night accepted it with no objections.

"You can stay the night at Jupiter if you want." suggested Snow.

"I'll be on intelligence duty for a while after this," Bloodflag replied glumly. "I think I'm just gonna get going."

"Okay... Well, nice meeting you. See you around, I guess." Night began to walk away.

"If you need anything, you know who to call."

The grizzled Freedom markspony grinned, "Of course. Nice meeting you too, Snow."

Heading back to the Jupiter seemed like the best thing to do now. Night needed a safe place to mull over what happened. He still wasn't entirely sure how he could be alive at this moment, but it didn't matter.

The pelt wasn't going to sell itself. And he had come one step closer to finding her.

Author's Note

Sorry this took a while to make.

The Discovery

I do not own anything from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, except for original characters. MLP is copyrighted by Hasbro.
...

T.R.O.T.T.E.R. - Shadow of Cheernobyl

Death comes easily here - death above us, death below us, death in the air, death in the soil and the water. You can catch a bullet for speaking out of turn, stepping on the wrong patch of grass, or possessing anything of value. You may share bread with a pony, and be forced to kill him in self-defense the next day. You face peril in every place and at every hour, from the bored bandits deciding whether their victims live or die to the most horrifying monsters imaginable lurking in every shadow. You may go out for a day and never come back, vanishing in woods filled with gnawed corpses. Or you may simply rot in a muddy hole, magic radiation melting away your body. You will die, and you will not understand what happened, except that your end was not quick enough.

But if you survive, good for you. If you succeed, well done. If you make it out, never look back.

Such is life in the Zone.

Anonymous

...

"... Hello?..."

The big-bellied earth pony shifted in his wheelchair, taking another bite out of a piece of bread. He tried to get the radio in his bunker working, to very little effect. Fiddling with the dials as best he could, loud static was all he got in response from the outside world.

"Faust damnit..." He cursed to himself, turning the dials more in a vain attempt to boost the signal. Three hours wasted on this piece of junk.

It had to be the military blocking the magic signals somehow, or maybe it was the freak atmospheric conditions. He didn't really know or care at the moment. What mattered now was that he had no contact with the outside world. And without finding sources of clean food and water, starvation would set in before the ponies trapped in the Cheernobyl exclusion zone would even see it coming.

Needless to say, the earth pony knew that their survival was up to him. He had to keep the holes in the military cordon open for as long as possible. And how was he supposed to do that with no radio to contact his scouts?

The small blast door in front of his stall suddenly opened. A light-green unicorn, garbed in worn fatigues, entered the chamber. Sid noted that she looked more like a filly playing soldier than a well-known pioneer of this new world.

"Vhat have ya got?" Sid asked to the unexpected guest.

"... A body, from a military truck." She stated. "And he's got a mark."

Sid deftly propelled his wheelchair over to the counter so he could take a peek. The tiny colt looked no more than a few years old at the most. His skin and hair was a deep jet-black, almost like it was scorched in a fire. His mane looked gray and sickly, a wilting mess of hair covering his head. Scars and lacerations crisscrossed his body.

"Huh." The obese earth pony shrugged. "He's probably dead anyvay. Just leave him in..."

"He's alive."

Sid recoiled in his chair. "Dragon shit! You're lying!" He spat, glaring venomously.

"The Zone take me if I am, Sid." The mare retorted. "He's malnourished and dehydrated. One of his legs looks broken too. Not sure if it was from torture or from the crash."

"Let me see!"

As carefully as she could, the mare maneuvered the young pony on the stall counter. He had to see this for himself.

Sure enough, investigating the broken colt, Sid noticed the letters "T.R.O.T.T.E.R." cut into the flesh on the back of his hind leg. The colt began stirring, almost like he was dreaming.

"I'll be damned..." That was the third one they found yet - and the first living one. Guess they were getting desperate for information if they were roughing up a little kid this badly, Sid thought. "Vhat's his name?"

"No clue." The mare replied. "He's pretty much out cold."

"Vell... If I were you, I'd put a bullet in his head and be done with it." Sid suggested. "I'm having enough problems trying to get the supply trains through that damned military blockade." As much as he detested suggesting the death of an innocent child, the kid probably wouldn't survive his injuries anyway.

Her voice turned deadly serious. "I'm not going to do that, Sid."

The earth pony snorted. "Ohhhh, so you vant to be his mommy now." Then his expression turned deadly serious. "I'm telling you, he's not gonna make it."

Snake Eater paused. "What other chance does he have? If it comes down to it, then I'll gladly take care of him by myself."

Sid could see the "look" in her eye, that motherly twinkle that denoted a mare's willingness to do anything for a pony she cared for. He had seen it many times before; he knew that there would probably be no convincing her.

"Vell, you can do vhat you vant, Snake Eater. None of my business." He nodded slowly. "If you think you can save him... then I'll believe you. Ve need all the help ve can get anyvay."

A soft cry droned from the new arrival's mouth. The little colt shifted slightly, eyes fluttering open and mouth agape in a silent scream.

"Must... run... please... no... no..." His good leg twitched, and he groaned. Then he was still once more.

The green mare fastened her gas mask firmly onto her face using her magic. "I don't have any meds left. If you could maybe watch him for a little while, I could go find some more."

"I'll help him as much as I can, but no guarantees." Sid offered, earning himself a grateful nod from the adventurer. "Good hunting, trotter."

Snake Eater saw herself out the door and pulled it shut behind her.

Part One: The Clear Sky

Part One: The Clear Sky

"Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not."

Nathaniel Hawthorne