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

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."