Fallout: Equestria Rise from the Ashes

Chapters

Chapter 2 - The First Taste of Blood
Chapter 4 - The Distance We Travel
Chapter 5 - The Broken Home
Chapter 6 - The Burdens of the Present
Chapter 7 - The Sins of the Past
Chapter 1 - The World on Fire
Chapter 3 - The Beast Called Rage

Chapter 2 - The First Taste of Blood

Chapter 2 - The First Taste of Blood
...the idea of possibly killing again stopped my heart.

“Ow.”

Every step sent a throb of pain through my wounded hind leg. My PipBuck displayed that, while not injured, it was in horribly poor condition. The pain was slowly starting to dull, thankfully, but I doubted it would wane enough for me to manage more than a slow trot.

“Wuss,” Skydive muttered. I sighed in response. We were almost to Prim now, the large roller coaster helped me keep track of the distance we covered. It also made me question why a town would just build a roller coaster. We’d run across a couple of geckos along the way, but Skydive took them out with the pistol she stole from Doc Crutches. Come to think of it…

“Why didn’t you give the doc his gun back? Ow…” I forgot to grit when I stepped on my left hind leg.

“And tell him I stole it twice in the same day? No chance!” She had the reserved respect in her voice again. I wonder why she cared about the doctor in such a way. It wasn’t the type of respect one gave to family, it wasn’t that profound. But then, what did I know about the subject? Well, probably a lot, but nothing I remembered. It just felt different. Or off… stupid broken brain… I’d just ask her later, she would probably tell me. Maybe when we weren’t walking, after we got to Prim and had a minute to rest.

“Yea, somethin’ about burning in Hell, right? You’re real religious?” I asked. She stopped walking and turned to give me a rather pissed-off glare. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I added quickly, “just asking.”

“Kind of,” Skydive turned back around and began to trot again, “but drop it. I don’t feel like talking about it.” Before I could even respond, the hissy, high-pitched whine of a gecko sounded from our right. Skydive immediately drew ‘her’ gun and aimed toward the noise. The little monster ran at her mouth gaping. I heard a couple of soft clicks sound from Skydive’s pistol, but she wasn’t shooting.

“Any time now…” I said pointedly, readying myself to pounce the creature if it got too close.

“Fuck, I’m empty,” she said, spitting the pistol into her wing. The gecko was only a few yards away from her as she was pulling out Dune Thrash’s revolver. There was no way she’d get a shot off in time. I dashed to her side and crouched into a position to leap; the moment the little bastard got close was the moment I crushed it.

It took no notice of me as it continued its single-minded advance. It was about three yards away when Skydive finally drew the revolver from her bags. Two yards as she loaded a single bullet into the top of the chamber. One yard as the gun fumbled on her wing and she nearly dropped it.

“Forget it,” I growled as I crouched back on my hind legs and leapt at the creature. My wounded hind leg screamed in protest as its muscles were forced into action. Using both of my forelegs, I crashed down on the gecko, resulting in a loud, wet crack as its head snapped off the rest of its body. My right foreleg ached from its own injury, but not nearly to the extent of my yet unhealed hind leg. My body just… hurt. Was the Med-X even helping? Did I really want to find out? Maybe it already wore off and I needed more. Maybe-

My thoughts were interrupted by a clattering sound behind me. I turned to see Skydive had dropped the revolver on the pavement. She was staring at the dead gecko next to me. “Sheesh,” she mumbled, shock evident in her voice. “You mentioned you’d crushed a Stalker underhoof, but… literally…” That about summed it up. I had freaky strength and a burning touch. Glancing over to the gecko corpse, there were red scorch marks where I’d struck it. I sighed; why could I do these things?

Skydive picked up the revolver and holstered it along with the Doctor’s pistol. I noticed the holster seemed a bit too big for her, needing readjustment every time she moved it. “Took the Doc’s holster along with it, huh?” I asked.

“Obviously.”

“Then you’re gonna say that little rhyme twice?” Oh, the look I was getting from her was bad… definitely shouldn’t have said that.

“I said drop it.”

* * *

The rest of the way to Prim was silent save my occasional grunt of pain. Whatever Skydive’s deal was with her religious… whatever it was, she had no intention of discussing it. Not with me, anyway. I tried to apologize, but she wasn’t listening to me anymore. Fair enough.

Approaching the road into Prim itself, I noticed a pony leaning on a large brick wall. He was wearing barding (yet another trivial fact I remembered) that looked like a uniform. The stallion took notice of our presence and started a quick paced, seemingly practiced trot. A word surfaced in my mind that suited him perfect: Soldier. But, what army even existed anymore? Why did I know armies existed in the past; why did I even know what an army was? Ugh, so many questions…

“Hold up!” the stallion shouted at us. His voice was heavy; not incredibly deep, but stern and disciplined. Yes, ‘soldier’ fit him perfectly.

“Oh, hell…” Skydive muttered. As the soldier drew closer, I noticed his barding in more detail. It looked moderately heavy and had several holsters, one of which held a pistol. There was a path on the front depicting a two-headed Ursa. Yet again my stupid brain decides to know something… stupid! Why did I know so much useless, trivial junk, but nothing about myself? I swore I could hear a soft, raspy chuckle.

“Prim’s off limits,” he spoke as he approached, “whole place is overrun by a group of escaped convicts.”

“Convicts?” I asked.

“Uh, thanks for the warning, sir,” Skydive replied, “we’ll watch out!” She gave an uneasy laugh as the tan-coated soldier nodded.

“Just keep to the right side – uh, your right, that is – if you don’t want to get shot.”

“Wait,” I called out as he trotted back toward the wall, “what about the people living here?”

“Far as we can tell, they’re holed up in the casino in town, the one across from the Buffalo Chief hotel,” he responded. After a moment, he cringed slightly and asked, “You’re… not thinking of going in there, are you?”

“No!” Skydive answered quickly. “No, we’re not. Thanks for the warning, and we’ll be on our way.” She turned to face me and nodded toward the street the stallion had deemed safe. I threw a questioning glance her way, but followed her lead anyhow. We walked past a small makeshift shack that had a couple of ammunition boxes inside. After mentally scolding my defective mind for what had to be nearing the hundredth time, I decided to ignore it from now on. It was starting to add to my annoyance and, overall, the information was better to have than not. Who knew, maybe something mildly useful would come up.

We trotted a little way down the road before I stopped and asked, “So… what’re we gonna do?”

“Find another town. Obviously,” she replied.

“What about the people trapped in here?”

“NCR’s problem,” she replied bluntly.

“But they’re not doing anything!” I protested.

“Never do,” she muttered. “And you think we should? For once, just once, I think it might be better to follow the NCR’s example.” Skydive clearly had some bad blood with the NCR, but was she really willing to leave these ponies in danger because of it?
“Why? We can help them,” I pushed.

“Yea, and get ourselves killed trying. I said it’s the NCR’s problem, and if they can’t handle a couple of escaped convicts, then it’s their loss, not mine. Or yours,” she said pointedly as she began trotting down the road again.

“Yea, their loss. Loss of ponies’ lives perhaps, loss of a whole town.”

“So?”

“So what if there’s children in there, Skydive? Colts and fillies too young to defend themselves; you’re willing to let them die just because you don’t like the NCR?” I raised my voice, pinning every bit of disgust and shame as I could into the accusation. She stopped her trot in front of the overpass that led into town. When she turned, she had anger burning in her eyes and matching spite in her voice.

“You want to know something? They have a problem with me! They just sit on their tails while shit like this goes down! And ya know what? They blame me! Just because I’m En… because I was Enclave…” she trailed off a moment before picking back up, “and nopony’s exactly fond of them, in case you didn’t notice! So before you go telling me I’m leaving a bunch of defenseless ponies to die, remember who’s supposed to be helping!” Her yelling had caught the NCR soldier’s attention; he was now watching us rather intrigued. I briefly wondered if it was sheer boredom; that he’d been standing against that wall all day with nothing to do. She’d be right then. He could be trying to help the town instead.

“Well,” I began, slightly stunned by her sudden outburst, “it’d be kinda hard for me to know this sort of thing, wouldn’t it? I’ve been told that you were the one dragging my half-dead body into Doc’s house, remember? I sure as hell don’t! You’re telling me I don’t know what the hell the Enclave or NCR are because I wasn’t paying attention? Really, Skydive?”

“Exactly!” she started to yell, “you don’t know! You don’t know anything! You’re trying to say this is all my fault, like everypony else does, because you clearly know so much about me. Hell, you don’t know anything about you!” Okay, she was getting on my nerves. Where did all this anger suddenly appear from? Why was she so angry at… everypony?

“Oh, and I suppose you know so much about me then, huh? I’m such an idiot because I want to do the right thing, but because I have some stupid case of amnesia, you can blatantly disregard every fucking thing I say! Well good, nice to know the super-religious thief has the right to make my decisions for me!” I bantered back at her.

“Will you QUIT!?” Skydive screamed, her voice filled with overwhelming fury. “For Celestia’s sake, you get your ass kicked by random ponies, then a few Goddesses-damned Stalkers, and you step on one gecko, so you’re suddenly Mr. Badass? You think you can just canter on into that town, which may I remind you the NCR can’t even do, and save the damn day? Where the hell is that confidence coming from, huh?”

“But-” I began, not entirely sure how to respond to her when she was this angry.

“‘But’ nothing! Do you know anypony in this town? Anypony at all? Well?” I shook my head. “Then there’s absolutely nothing you care about in there! You don’t go chasing after random strangers! Helping ponies you don’t even know, let alone care about, is liable to get you killed! So drop it! Drop your stupid religious questions, drop your Mr. Tough Hero crap, and drop this stupid FUCKING TOWN!”

My mouth was open like I was about to speak, but I couldn’t say much after that. When she yelled before, it was sort of cute. In light of this, perhaps she had been trying to be; the way she was yelling now was nearly terrifying. I’d thought I’d seen her angry before, but this… this pegasus had too many shades and levels of emotion for me to comprehend, and her ability to jump between them at the drop of a hat was too chaotic to keep pace with. I slowly closed my mouth as I tried to gather and sharpen my thoughts, the stun waning slowly. Stunned... she was doing that a lot. I might be a medical mystery to her, but at the other end of the spectrum was her, a confusing emotional enigma that I doubted I could solve. I looked back up at Skydive and could see a clear drop in rage just from her expression. She was still pissed, but not… whatever that was anymore.

“Then… you know me?” I asked, “You know who I am, and you’re saying you care?”

“What?” she bewilderedly responded.

“You’ve saved me. Twice at this point. If I’m a complete stranger, and you truly believe what you just said, why would you help me like you have? Why are you even here?” I kept my voice quiet, not wanting to hear anymore shouting.

“W-well…” she stumbled to respond, thankfully matching my own level of volume. “I… I saw that fire you burned Dune Thrash to a crisp with. It’s not like I went out to get you because I knew you were in trouble. I didn’t do it to save you; I did it to protect New Trottingham. People I knew and cared about, see?”

“Yea,” I said feeling slightly dejected. The feeling didn’t make much sense to me, as I barely knew Skydive, but it still felt… bad. It felt bad knowing what I was about to tell her, but it felt like every moment I spent out here arguing with her was another moment that ponies were in danger right beside me, another moment when I was doing nothing just like she’d claimed the NCR did. “You protected your friends, that’s all. And that’s over and done with. So, why are you even still here?”

Her eyes flitted back and forth a few moments with a baffled expression on her face before finally deciding on “What?” as her response.

I sighed and started walking toward the overpass. “Go home, Skydive.” The three words more fell out of my mouth than were actually spoken. Why did saying this feel so bad? I hardly even knew this mare, and on top of it she was crazy! Why did telling her to leave me, who only pissed her off, to go back to her friends feel bad? Wasn’t this better for both of us?

“What… w-what?” She had clearly not expected this response out of me. “You can’t just walk in there alone; whoever’s got the townspeople scared will tear you apart!”

“NCR’s problem,” I responded sullenly. At that thought, I glanced over at the soldier buck and saw him shaking his head softly as he trotted back to his post. Seems he thought this was suicidal as well.

“You can barely walk without the Med-X I’ve got anyway! And you don’t have a weapon! And there’s got to be several of those convicts in there that you’ll be alone against!” she kept arguing, but I just continued my trot toward the overpass, walking right past her as I turned to go over it.

“Then it sucks to be alone. You don’t have to be; go back to New Trottingham and apologize to Crutches. Help Ice Pack clean the carpet Crutches said was stained. Go be with the people you know, and I’ll be busy trying to help those I don’t like an idiot.”

“But…” she began, apparently running out of reasons for me to stay out of Prim.

“Look, you made it clear this is a bad idea and you want no part in it. So, don’t be. And…” I stopped, that stupid, nonsensical ache in my chest amplifying again, “and don’t be here when I come back.” I waited a few moments to hear a response, but it never came. So I started walking again.

That was all I needed to do; put one hoof in front of the other. I’d get into Prim, get out of the heat, and tell the townsponies I was there to help. They’d… they’d thank me, maybe. Perhaps get me a bottle of water? I only had one left. Maybe they’d have the Med-X I needed since I’d no longer have Skydives. There’d probably be several convicts, like she said, but if I could just get close I could stomp on them just like the gecko and the Night Stalker. Yea… this’d all work out. Just put one hoof in front of the-

*BEEP*

“Huh?” I looked down at my hooves where the sound had come from. A small tan disk with a flashing red light was right beside me. My defective brain remained clueless as to what the object was. That was about all I had time to render before I was forced off my hooves and sent flying across the overpass. The resounding explosion sent small, stinging rocks and metal shrapnel flying as I crashed to the ground.“Ow…” I muttered, dazed by the explosion. What the hell was that explosion? I started to try and get up, my ribs sore from getting sent flying.

Wait… why did the blast only cause my ribs to be sore? Why not my already poor-condition leg? Why-

There was a cough beside me.

“W-wuss…” Skydive muttered as she brushed herself off from where she laid beside me. I was yet again stunned by her. After all that arguing and yelling, after me basically throwing her away, she still came to save me? Again? For the love of Celestia and Luna, just… just…

“Why?” I finally spoke aloud.

“Is that really how you,” Skydive was interrupted by a couple of coughs, no doubt caused by taking the brunt of the explosion, “how you thank someone?”

“Why did you… I told you to just go home!” I ignored her question.

“Hey… if I can’t tell you what to do, you can’t tell me either,” she smirked, taking a moment to regain her balance. Seeing her wince reminded me that she might have burned herself shoving me. I couldn’t spot any scorch marks on her, though.

“Why do you keep saving me?” I questioned.

“Why do you keep needing saved?” she replied as she dug a healing potion out of her bags. How come she was just… just ignoring what she said earlier? What I said earlier? Did she just not care? Was this her way of admitting she was wrong?

“Dammit Skydive… you are so confusing!”

“I am?” she asked in the most innocent voice I’d heard her use.

“Yes! You’re perfectly content with Trottingham’s dec-”

“New Trottingham.” She interrupted.

“Okay… New Trottingham’s decision to throw me out of town, but then you follow me out into the wastes? Not only that, but you continue to help me despite preaching that you shouldn’t bother. Oh, and even before that, you rush out to where I got shot and killed someone, just to see what happened, and then you go and rush me into Doc’s house to save my life. Do you like me or hate me? You contradict yourself so often I can’t even tell!” For as much as I was complaining, I felt relieved that she chose to come with me. At least, she chose to make sure I didn’t die before I even crossed the bridge.

“I do?” she repeated the voice again.

“Will you quit that voice?” I requested, stifling a giggle. It was funny! This wasn’t the time for funny!

“Instead of sitting here talking to me, don’t you have a town to save?” she asked, thankfully using her normal voice.

“Yes,” I answered, “can I assume you’ve decided you want to join me?”

“Depends. Gonna step on any more mines?”

“Any what now? Wait… is that what that explosion was?”

“Um… yea,” she said, sounding like I’d just said the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “You’re pretty hopeless, aren’t you?” I just sighed.

I turned and began to trot down the road towards the Buffalo Chief and started walking. Skydive’s change of heart was rather abrupt and unexpected, but hopefully it meant she’d stick with me.

“So, you’ve decided to stick with me, then? For real.”

“Yea. Who else’ll stop you from setting ponies on fire for the fun of it?”

“And you will?” I asked, with a forced tone of disbelief. I wasn’t worried about whether she could or not, but how.

“Yep,” she replied casually.

“And, uh... how ya gonna do that?”

“Well... you’ve survived a bit of lead before.” Okay... what? Wait, what!? She was... just gonna shoot me?

“You’re just gonna... shoot me?” I repeated my thought aloud.

“Mmm... yea.”

“...Just fire away and hope you don’t hit my face? And I’ll be fine?”

“Well... maybe not that last bit.” She was actually serious? She started chuckling a bit; a stifled laugh that gave away that she was joking. She... was joking, right? She wouldn’t actually shoot me. Right?

“Well... let’s go have some fun then.”

“If this is your idea of fun.” We both looked down the road leading into town. Staring back at us was a large building; specifically, the one with the roller coaster on it. Again, just... why? In front of it stood a massive, slowly rotating sign depicting... something I didn’t recognize. It also had writing on it: Buffalo Chief.

Other than that, there was a building on either side of our path. As we began a slow trot forward, I noticed a side path down to our left that led to some run-down shack. Skydive kept heading forward, so I ignored the extra path for now. I looked up at the rotating sign once again. Had they fixed it to rotate again, or had it actually survived the apocalypse? The buildings in town, save the shack I’d just noticed, didn’t seem all that devastated, so maybe the town wasn’t hit as hard. Maybe not at all, and the wear on the walls was just from time and weather. The wasteland sure left a lot of questions to be asked.

A red bar appeared on my EFS. Then a second.

“Skydive!” I half-whispered, half-shouted at her. I didn’t want whoever it was to hear me; I had no idea what the effective rage on my EFS was, and I wasn’t going to take the risk of giving us away. She stopped, thankfully, and turned to me curiously. I pointed toward them and whispered, “Red bars.” She nodded and crept up to the corner of the building on our left where I’d indicated the threat. Peeking around, she suddenly jerked her head back and backed up from the corner. We both stepped back a ways so we could talk without fear of them hearing.

“There’s just two that I could see, how many did your Pipbuck say?” she asked.

“Two. Where were they?”

“One was out in the middle of the road, pacing I think, but there’s one right on the other side of that corner.” That explained the jump, then. “So... I take the one at the corner, you take the one in the road? That one didn’t have a gun so far as I could see.”

“Wait... you just want to walk up and kill them? Don’t you want to try talking to them first?” Skydive didn’t seem the triggerhappy sort, but she was immediately suggesting violence?

“Well, you said they were red bars right?” I nodded. “Then I’m fairly sure they’ll be letting their weapons do the talking. Red means they’re already hostile if I’m not mistaken, so we should get the jump on them if we can.” I understood her reasoning, especially after her rant on getting killed helping strangers. I silently nodded in agreement.

We quietly moved back up to the corner, Skydive having peeked around to make sure the pony further back wasn’t coming this way. She drew the pistol from its holster and curved her wing to hold it. “On three, we rush them. If we take them by surprise, they hopefully won’t be able to react,” she whispered. I nodded and got into a galloping stance. Skydive deftly tossed her pistol into her mouth and prepared to take flight. At least, it looked that way.

Tap.

She readjusted the gun and got her tongue around the trigger.

Tap.

I mentally prepared myself one last time. Hopefully, this would be over quickly. And painlessly.

Tap.

We took off like bullets, she above and I below. The pony at the corner dropped the cigarette out of her mouth, stunned by our sudden appearance. I was to leave her for Skydive. The other red bar, a light orange unicorn stallion, had quick reactions, unlike his friend. He drew some kind of metal object from his barding, something I couldn’t recognize. Whatever the tool was, I wouldn’t let him hit me with it.

At least, that’s what I thought to myself as I closed the gap between us. I leapt at him once I was close enough. A sharp pain flared across my back as I was forced to the ground. I had enough sense to roll to my left as the metal thing came crashing down where I’d fallen. In my reckless charge, I’d forgotten that “unicorn” meant magic. As in, telekinesis. He had range even with a melee weapon.

Gunshots rang out behind me. Some I could recognize as the doctor’s pistol, but at a slower rate sounded much deeper bangs that must’ve belonged to the mare she was up against. At any rate, I had no time to worry about her now. I ducked under my own opponents next swing. I dared not leap at him again until I could determine how quickly he could swing his weapon.

As it turns out, rather fast. The stallion immediately took the opportunity to slam the implement across my face. Damn I was going to be sore and bruised after this. As for now, adrenaline was dulling most of the pain.

I quickly backed away, getting outside of what I hoped was his effective range, but not before taking a hard hit to my back several times. I could simply wait for Skydive to finish her enemy if necessary; her gun should prove more than sufficient for him.

But then, did I really want to continue to rely on her? She was up against someone far more lethal than I was, at least by weapon standards. Wasn’t I not a half hour ago, hell, less than ten minutes ago, telling myself I’d be just fine without her? She’d saved my ass once already since then, and twice before that. And this was all over the course of, what, just over a day? I had to handle this myself. I would handle this myself.

I started to think about how, thus far, the only thing I’d done right was killing one stupid gecko. I’d gotten shot in the head by ponies I was now hunting down, ambushed by Night Stalkers, and I’d gotten one of two ponies in all of Equestria who were willing to help me pissed at me. All because I was just so... so stupid!

Wait... stupid... I looked up at the unicorn I was facing. I’d been stupid here too. I jumped head-first into this fight. That strategy (or lack thereof) might work against animals, but this wasn’t an animal. I couldn’t just be stupid about this and expect to win. And if I couldn’t be stupid, then I’d have to be smart. So I did what I expected a smart pony would do in this situation.

Analyze.

I already knew my opponent had a range advantage on me. There were other factors though; his weapon hit at an alarming rate, possibly due to its weight. This meant I couldn’t afford to cringe or flinch on being struck, or he’d only get to hit me more. That thing hurt, too, I doubted I could take too many blows.

I shifted my gaze and focus from the weapon to the pony behind it. Well, to the right-ish. It was floating after all. He was standing there with an angry frown on his face, clearly not wanting to change his position. Being a unicorn, I had one big advantage on him: he was a poor melee combatant. I, being an earth pony, had a much more solid build than him, meaning he needed to rely entirely on his weapon and telekinetic range. That dependence could be used against him.

Unicorn magic had to have its limits. I knew he had an effective range I could get outside, like I was now. Or at least, he didn’t seem to want to attack this far out. But if I could get outside of it, then... could I also get inside it? If I got too close, would he have issues using his levitating metal... thing? If I got close, that also made the fight into the simple matter of strangling him. I started going over different plans of how to get to him without his weapon cracking me upside my head again.

Then it hit me: he always went for my head. Judging from the awkward angle his metal tool had struck my back during my retreat, he might’ve just missed and clipped me. The strike I dodged also sounded rather close to where my head had been. If this was the case, then I’d need to rethink my plans again.

I frowned as I reached a conclusion. My retreat, while quick and mildly haphazard, was the smartest thing I’d done that fight. It’d gotten me hit the most, though likely due to his frenzied swinging. In any event, the headlong charge earned me a strike across the face whilst a more sensible retreat garnered several bruises for my torso. His slow pacing back and forth across the small area he’d been doing so in led me to believe he didn’t want to risk being caught unaware by another rush. I had gotten close. Thus I came to a rather anticlimactically simple plan.

Feign being stupid by... well, being stupid. Smartly. That was a thing, right?

I made a sudden gallop down the broken road toward the buck, apparently stunning him, if only for a split second as his face reverted from shock to the serious demeanor that read an all-too-ready intent to kill. I noted he didn’t seem to follow his weapon with his eyes as the metal arced through the air toward me. His eyes were locked on my head, just as I’d suspected. I raised my Pipbuck-bearing leg and let the blow deflect off the sturdy machine, jarring my leg slightly but leaving me otherwise unharmed.

I didn’t slow whatsoever from his attack. On the contrary, I galloped all the faster. I could close this distance. I could get inside his range! The weapon flew back at me, but I ducked my head under its arc. I was so close! Another arcing swing struck my side from outside my field of view, but I ignored the pain. Either he was getting desperate or I had gotten too close for him to aim properly. Time felt slowed as only a yard remained between us. I had him now!

Two feet. Panic became evident in his eyes. He couldn’t aim proper anymore.

One foot. His horn lost its glow as he raised a foreleg to defend himself.

It was too late for that now. I ploughed into him with all my might, momentum carrying him almost another yard away. He cried out in pain, either from the force of impact or the probable burn he now had. I couldn’t tell, and honestly didn’t care. I did it! I was going to win, without Skydive’s help! I could fight on my own, survive without help! I wasn’t useless!

I dashed over to the unicorn, still on his back. On seeing me, he raised both forelegs in defense. It wouldn’t help, not against my unnatural strength. His legs would snap like toothpicks. I reared up on my hind legs to bring my weight down on him. This was it then, I’d succeeded. I could do it!

“Do what?” a familiarly scratchy voice asked. Oh, not this guy again... “Do what?” it repeated.

“Succeed,” I responded aloud unwittingly.

“Succeed at what?”

“What does it look like?” I replied bitterly; I had no time for a crazy, stupid ghost voice to play twenty questions with me.

“It looks... like murder to me.”

“Survival,” I corrected.

“Is it, though? You’ve disarmed and overpowered him. You could just force him to leave, perhaps let the NCR deal with him. Killing this pony is your personal choice, not ‘survival’.”

I looked down at the stallion. Memories of a Night Stalked pounded to paste and a headless gecko corpse flashed in my eyes. All I had to do was drop... crush him. I could strangle or burn him to death if I wanted. A loud part of me yelled to end him; I’d won, he started it, his life was forfeit! But... another side of me, quiet and horribly overpowered by the other, asked: Why?

A cacophony sounded in my mind and was bringing back the headache I woke with in Crutches’ house. Or maybe the medicine was wearing off. Hoo, I didn’t want to think about that. Head-splitting pain? Pass. But that wasn’t the issue at hoof here. I’d been given a choice: Kill this pony, or show some mercy and spare him?

“Skydive spared you. Crutches too,” the smaller voice murmured.

“He didn’t try to kill them first!” the other voice responded.

“But he’d killed Dune Thrash,” the first voice argued, pitifully weak against the rage-filled opposing voice that craved blood.

“Kill him!”

“Don’t...”

“You can, you won, prove it!”

“Please...”

“Are you that pathetic!?”

“Are you that cruel?”

“SHUT UP!” I yelled in frustration. All of the noise in my head... arguing... screaming! It needed to stop, now! My gaze still lay on the stallion beneath me. His eyes showed pure fear. I... I didn’t have to kill him. The NCR could do something... right? I faltered a bit on my hind legs, I wasn’t meant to stay on them for too long. Not the injured one, especially. I’d just back down, tell him to leave, and-

My eyes were drawn to his horn. It was glowing.

So was the knife in his pocket.

The angry scream in my head matched the one I made aloud as I dropped my full weight on his head. I felt it split even before I heard it. The feeling was just as sickening as the sound. His skull was no more difficult to break than glass under this unnatural strength I possessed.

If Skydive was still shooting, I couldn’t hear. Hell, if she was right in front of my face I wouldn’t have noticed. My eyes were glued to the corpse I just created; the rest of the world seemed to just... fall away. He was no more difficult to kill than the gecko. Than the Night Stalker. Why hadn’t I cared then? Why was I so... so upset by this now?

Sound and light were ever so slowly beginning to register in my mind again as I finally began to see just what I’d done. Oh Goddesses, that was a lot of blood... and.. oh sweet Celestia, was that... I felt dizzy as I stumbled backward and fell onto my haunches. Why was my stomach so far up my throat?

I reflexively turned and lost the contents of said stomach on the asphalt next to me. I hadn’t even eaten anything since regaining my memory. My headache was beginning to reassert itself for certain now, I assume the loss of undigested medicine was to blame. I could also feel the pain in my legs returning as my adrenaline began to wear off. I was just plain miserable, but after what I’d just done... I wasn’t nearly miserable enough.

“Even though it was his fault?” the disembodied rasp asked. “He was ready to kill whoever rounded that corner. And when you showed hesitation to kill him, he did quite the opposite!”

“We attacked first,” I mumbled, still too nauseous to talk too loud. “He could’ve just been a civilian for all I know... just panicking from the convicts’ presence.”

“Your Eyes Forward Sparkle said otherwise.” I recalled stopping Skydive in response to noticing the two red bars. Red meant hostile... hostile meant we were... were justified, right?

“Or does it? Like you said, he could’ve just been panicking. What if you just killed one of the ponies you so desperately tried to get Skydive to help you save?”

“What... was I right, or... why the hell are you doing this? That’s contradicting what you...” I couldn’t speak well enough to make fluent sentences at this point. Crazy bastard could hear my thoughts anyway. He knew what I meant.

“Why? Hah... you really need to ask? Well, I suppose your brain is a bit dysfunctional. More than usual, as it stands. I’m doing this... because I like it. You, miserable, and me the cause? A lovely change of pace. This is just the beginning... murderer.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I somehow... felt him fade away. I can’t describe the sensation, but I was certain he left. At any rate, I felt a hoof on my shoulder. I turned my head to see Skydive standing over me with a pitying expression. Why... I’d beaten him though. Why was she pitying me? I looked a bit... pitiful, sure, but I still was doing fine. More than I could say for... oh Goddesses, I didn’t even know his name. I was still standing, though. Well, metaphorically, anyway.

Was she actually worried about me? Or did the medical pony in her react to seeing me get sick? I was fine, why was she looking so... sad? We were both fine, by the looks. A million ideas ran through my mind about what could lead her to look this way. I was so... confused! Between her and that Luna-damned voice, my head was spinning. Mental images and ideas, flashes of bits of information trivial, important, and everywhere in between blinked in my head as a hoarse chuckle sounded through it all. I wanted to scream, but didn’t for fear of straining my jaw and worsening my headache.

“-otta stand up, come on.” Skydive’s voice suddenly registered in my head. Had she been talking this whole time?

“Huh?” I finally managed to speak.

“You need to stand, there’s bound to be more of them. We need to get inside the casino, okay?” she repeated and tugged lightly on my shoulder. Wait... my shoulder…

“Wah!” I yelped and jumped away from her as quickly as I could. She gave me a slightly baffled look in response. “You... you were touching me,” I told her. She raised her eyebrow a bit. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Um... yes?” she responded.

“How?”

“Why wouldn’t I... oh...” realization dawned on her. She jerked the hoof she’d held my shoulder with up to her chest. “Oh!”

“Yea, you touchy, I burny, freaky pony with freaky powers? Ringin’ any bells?” I said. She seriously forgot that already?

“Yea, yea, I know, I know,” she said, staring at her hoof. “Weird...” I noticed she didn’t seem burnt from shoving me away from the explosion either. Also, the ghost voice in my head was gone fully. For better or worse, I welcomed the internal silence. “Anyway, strange lapse in normal burning skin aside, we need to move before anymore of them show up.” I nodded and slowly got to my hooves, another wave of dizziness passing over me. She started trotting toward the building we’d come around the corner from. As I followed behind her, I had to use all my willpower to ignore the dead pony I was trotting past. The thought of it alone forced me to pause from nausea. The raspy voice echoed in my head again, though only from my memory.

“Murderer.”

* * *

Skydive and I had explained ourselves to the ponies in the casino. They’d heard the gunfire and believed they were next. A rather old-sounding (and looking) stallion, who’d gone by Ash, had defused the situation and apologized. Sky had told him we just needed a place to rest since we’d had a rough night prior.

I was lying down on a sofa while she was resting on a mattress on the floor. When adrenaline from the fight had worn off, I was left exhausted and in pain. Skydive fared little better. She’d given me one of the Med-X syringes, but warned me that dependence on them was not about to happen. It dulled the pain enough that I could rest, though, so I failed to see the problem. In her fight, she’d been grazed by one of the convicts’ - who went by Crystal Gangers, so I’d learned - bullets. Instead of ‘wasting a healing potion’, she wrapped the wound in some gauze she’d brought with her, claiming it would heal quickly enough on its own.

She was as exhausted as I, already nearly passed out. This was the first real rest she’d gotten in almost three days at least, and likely much longer for me. As I lay quickly falling asleep, I remembered that I had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask. Now seemed the perfect time; we weren’t travelling, we weren’t in immediate danger, and we were inside. I was too tired to ask everything I wanted to though... and I doubted she would have the energy to answer them all either. I had to ask something though, I might not get another chance for a while. I decided to ask what was most prominent on my mind.

“Hey Skydive?”

“Hm?” She sounded half-asleep already. This had to be quick, she sounded like she might fall asleep answering!

“Why did you look so... sad? When I’d... well, killed that Ganger.” Images of myself busting his head open were fresh in my mind. My hooves were still coated with blood and... urk... I was going to be sick again if this kept up.

“When you killed him,” she paused to yawn, “you kinda just... sat there. Stared a while. It was nasty looking for sure, but it’s something most ponies have gotten used to. You even got sick after a minute. Why didn’t you have that reaction when you snapped the head off that gecko? That was pretty gross too.” She yawned again, and I did the same a moment later.

“I... don’t know, really,” I answered honestly, “I was asking myself the same thing. I guess it was just worse. Somehow.”

“What made it worse?”

“I don’t know... well... I swore I,” I paused, recalling it nearly made me vomit alone. I took a deep breath before continuing, “I swore I had his... his....” I couldn’t keep calm, it was just so horrifying... “I mashed his fucking brain in, Skydive!” My sudden yell made her sit up. When she looked at me, she had that same pitying look in her eyes. “It... it was just wrong! Sick! Who... why would anypony...” I was too distracted to notice Skydive had moved over to put a hoof around my shoulder again. “Dont!” I yelped, making her jump away. “Don’t hurt yourself...”

“I’m sorry...” she mumbled.

“It’s not your fault. I’m the freak who burns everyone.”

“I’m sorry for what I said.”

“What?” Now I was a bit confused.

“When I shouted at you.” Oh... that. I was going to tell her not to worry about it, but she picked up again. “If you tell anyone back in New Trottingham I said this... I’m gonna deny it. But... I was wrong. When you said you wanted to help the ponies in town here, I thought you were either trying to play Lightbringer or you wanted the convenient excuse to go killing. I wasn’t exactly sold on the fact you didn’t remember anything.

“My original plan was to follow you into town and see what you’d do. If you just started killing anypony you came across... I’d shoot you dead. But then you set off that mine and didn’t react. I saw them before, and thought for sure you had too. I guess you just didn’t know what they were. When I heard the buzz, I shoved you out of the way as fast as I could. At that point, I had to walk with you, you knew I was still there. Turns out, it was a good thing; those Crystal Gangers would’ve attacked on sight. If I saw you fighting them, I... I might’ve killed you.” Skydive sighed heavily before continuing.

“But... you wouldn’t have fought them. You said you wanted to talk them down first. They’d have killed you before you knew what was happening. When you said it, though, I thought it was just a trick; you were trying to get me to believe you were kind or something. Thinking back, I was so stupid... so paranoid. I was almost sure I was right when I saw you take that guy down, though. That rush was brutal, and... well, you looked like a raider. Especially how you killed that buck. When I got closer, though, you... you were just sitting there wide-eyed and... frightened. Then you got sick, like some stable pony seeing his first corpse.” I remembered questioning why, too. I still was.

“Now I just feel... I don’t know, guilty I guess. You really did just want to do the right thing. And I wanted to stop you... all because I was so arrogant and paranoid and... I just feel awful. So, I’m sorry. My trust issues got you hurt worse than any bullet wound.” She yawned again, clearly all the more exhausted from her emotional crash just now. I didn’t really know how to respond to it; it was kind of... sudden. But once again, she seemed to show a completely different side of herself out of nowhere. I laid my head back down on the arm of the sofa.

“Yea... I’m sorry too. I got us in here, got you shot, and both of us a headache and an emotional breakdown.” Skydive laid back down on her mattress.

“Well, most of it’s my fault anyway. Remember,” another loud yawn, “if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. Vehemently.” I chuckled before echoing her yawn.

“Fine, fine.” I closed my eyes. “But you know, you want to really apologize?”

“Don’t milk this too much. I don’t admit being at fault often. ...what?”

“Not now, but eventually... tell me why you thought I was a bad guy. Why you really didn’t trust me.” If I could get that answered, that’d be a million confusing encounters solved.

“...I’ll think about it.” It wasn’t a no! And on that note, I slowly drifted off into sleep, expecting nightmares to await, but at least I’d finally get some real rest.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Well. I was on fire again.

“You know, this hurt a lot more the first time,” I called out to the raspy voice that was bound to be here somewhere. “I’m getting a bit used to it. You should try something else.”

“Is that so? Well, that’s too bad. We are aflame in sleep as we are awake, are we not?” it responded.

“I’m burning to the touch, not actually on fire. Yet... am I gonna burst into flame anytime soon? I’d like some fair warning for that.”

“Who knows. Or maybe you’ll just melt on the spot.”

“Yea... hey, as much as our conversations are... creepy... and all, I’d really like to get some sleep tonight. Not just be charred in my subconscious,” I told the voice. I’d rather not talk right now, I had nightmares to get to anyway.

“No. This is as ‘asleep’ as you get. So long as I can help it, anyway.”

“Oh, yea... you’re kind of an asshole, aren’t you?” I recalled him confusing me during and after my fight. “What’s the deal with that, anyway? If I remember, didn’t you say ‘I’m you, yadda yadda’ or something like that before? Aren’t you kind of just hurting yourself by making my life miserable?”

“Oh, you and I are the same. That much is certain. That just means I won’t kill you; you dying would have... undesirable effects on me as well,” the disembodied voice explained.

“Oh, I get it... I die, you die, right? I get hurt, so do you then.”

“No, sorry, you’ll be taking all the physical damage, but our lives are tethered.”

“So you’re willing to be an ass when I don’t need your attitude, and I’m assuming you’re the one behind my body heat, too, but you’re polite enough to say ‘sorry’ when explaining things? Pick a side, buddy, or you’ll end up like Skydive.”

“Oh, I’m not sorry for you. I’m sorry, for me, that I have to be stuck with you.” Its hoarse tone changed enough for me to detect malice in its voice. “Malice indeed. Plenty of malice. And you think I’m making your life miserable now? You haven’t seen the half of it yet.”

“Really?” I asked with sarcastic interest, “Well, I say you’re a shitload of talk. You’re just some angry voice in my head, aren’t you? Upset that I’m the one in control? You can make me burn people, sure, and you can jabber away like the annoying bastard you are, but really? What can you do? Far as I’m concerned, you just don’t like me, but you’ve decided to be an ass about it instead of being mature and just getting over it.”

“Get over it?” it asked; I’d clearly struck a nerve. Or whatever disembodied voices had. “You have no idea what I went through under you! You... oh, no, you won’t get a piece of your past from me! You don’t deserve it. But what you do deserve... you want to know what I can do? You forget, in here, you’re in my house. Your subconscious is my domain. You don’t have the mental strength, the discipline, that you used to. No, I get control here.”

“The hell are you getting at?” I asked.

“You said it yourself, all I can do is talk... and make you burn. And if I keep talking, all I’ll do is turn into Skydive, isn’t that right?”

“Yes... but I doubt you’ll ever be as confusing. Get to the point, you stupid voice.”

“Really, now? Well... maybe I’ll just, mmm, eliminate the competition, then.” A strange, eye-shaped area in the field of flames opened to reveal what my sleeping body was looking at. Did I really sleep with my eyes open, or was this guy just doing that? Skydive was sleeping on the mattress, her chest slightly rising and falling with her breathing. Wait... why was the field of view shifting? Was I... moving? How?

“You... you can control me?”

“Perhaps...” The field of view got closer to Skydive, and I saw my foreleg enter the scene. Wait, was he…

“No...”

“Oh yes,” the rasp laughed. No... no, this was bad!

“Don’t!” I yelled.

“Oh? Don’t? Or what?”

“You’ll hurt her!”

“I’m supposed to care? Yes, with the flaming touch you have, she’ll be burned beyond any healing potion’s capacity to fix. And it will be all. Your. Fault.” Each syllable hit me like a hammerblow. Skydive didn’t know about him, and only telling her after he hurt her... she wouldn’t believe me. He was serious about this?

“You’ve made your point! Stop this!” I pleaded. This was going too far!

“Made my point? No, I’ll have made my point when you suffer as much as I did! I’ll have made my point when I leave everything you know in ashes! I can kill her right now, and what can you do to stop me?”

“What do you want?” I shouted.

“I want out!”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I slammed my hoof to the ground the moment I regained control of my body. Skydive jumped a bit at the sound. I scrambled to get away from her; what if he was still here? Could he take me over whenever he wanted? Oh dear Luna, please don’t let that be the case!

“Are you okay?” Skydive asked sleepily. No, I really wasn’t! But... I couldn’t tell her about this, she’d think I was a freak! Well, more than the freak I already was! This wasn’t don’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-burn-you freaky, this was I’ll-kill-you-in-my-sleep freaky! This was downright frightening! Oh, Goddesses, what was I going to do? He almost scarred her, or worse! I couldn’t... there was no way... but I... I…

“Hey,” Skydive interrupted my panicking train of thought, “are you alright? What happened?” I needed to tell her... she needed to know, to know it wasn’t me. But... it was me! Ugh, this didn’t make sense, how could I tell her? I had to, though... if I did and she left, it’d be better if I didn’t and I hurt her... I couldn’t explain this, though, I just... no, no, I had to tell her!

“...Yeah, I’m f-fine. Just... bad dream.” I sighed. I couldn’t tell her... she’d leave, and after almost telling her to before, I realized I really wanted her to stay. Somepony to watch my back was necessary; I had enough problems watching my front! But... Celestia save me if I hurt her... that bastard, he would’ve done it!

“You need to get some sleep,” she yawned, “lay back down.”

“S-sorry I woke you, Skydive. I... I need some fresh air.” I stepped towards the door; I couldn’t stay near her anymore. Not now.

“Hey,” she called out, clearly drifting back off, “Call me Sky. Everypony back home does.”

“Okay... Sky. I’ll... I’ll be back.” I trotted out the door silently, shutting it behind me. Oh Goddesses... why was she starting to trust me now of all times?

To my surprise, most of the ponies in the casino were still awake. The sun had set, and darkness was shrouding the town. I didn’t dwell on it long, I needed to get outside... away from anypony that damned voice could hurt! If I hurt any of them, they’d kill me, and probably Skydive too! I quickly trotted past Ash and opened the door outside, letting it close on its own behind me. I immediately slumped against the wall and slid to my haunches. The air was much cooler at night, which normally would be a welcome thing since I was sweating so much, but I already felt... cold! I was freezing and sweating at the same time, was that even normal?

I looked across the road at where the dead body lie, and immediately regretted raising my head. That was only, what, an hour ago? I... I still had... him on me... his blood, and worse, dried on my hooves. I was... I could do things like that. Sweet Celestia, I was able to shatter skulls with ease! And I burned everypony! Dune Thrash, this guy, almost Skydive! I was nothing but misery to everypony I crossed paths with! I was only two days into my life, why... why was I already so... so... I couldn’t even think straight!

“What am I?” I muttered aloud. I was shaking uncontrollably now, and my eyes were damp. I was so messed up... why did that voice hate me? Why would he threaten to hurt Skydive for no reason? He said he wanted me to suffer, but for what? Why couldn’t he tell me what I did? Why all of this, why everything! So many questions that I should know the answer to, but I didn’t because I had my memory taken! “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Can’t say as Ah know,” a familiar drawl sounded next to me. I jumped a bit, not quite remembering who it was at first. “What’cha beatin’ yerself up for?” Ash trotted over and sat down next to me. The stallion was older than Crutches, but sounded rather similar. It gave him a familiar feel despite being a stranger. And despite for how little time I spent with Crutches. Even then, I’d spent half my life under his care. The thought of just how fast events had gone past was sickening.

“You don’t want to know...” I said, still shaking.

“Wouldn’t‘ve asked if Ah didn’t. C’mon, what’s ailin’ ya?”

“Everything... why do you care?”

“‘Cause it ain’t right to see a tough lookin’ feller like yerself all worked up ‘n’ not knowin’ why. Leastways, not in mah book.” I remained silent; if I told him, he’d run me and Skydive out of town. Who wants a freak as dangerous as me around anyway? New Trottingham had the right idea…

“Problems with yer mare?” he asked. Wait... what? With my mare... wait, he thought…

“No! Nononononono, me and Skydive are not like that!” He raised an eyebrow and gave a smirk. “Seriously, we’re not. And for Celestia’s sake, don’t let her hear you saying things like that; she might just shoot you.”

“Ah’ll take yer word for it,” he laughed a bit. “Now, really, what’s got’cha down?” I didn’t answer. “Ah’ll have y’know Ah’m the most stubborn ‘n’ tenacious pony yer likely t’meet out here. Been in this town thick ’n’ thin fer many a year, ‘n’ these here Crystal Gangsters what have ya ain’t even the worst Ah’ve seen. Ah can wait.” I sighed.

“I’m just... I’m dangerous,” I muttered, my shivers slowly disappearing. “I just seem to hurt everything I come across... I almost hurt Skydive, and I couldn’t stop it...”

“What’cha mean by that?” he asked. Oh, shit, I shouldn’t have said that!

“Y-you don’t want to know. I don’t care if you asked, you just don’t. Please...”

“Alright, alright. So... this Skydive’s yer mare, huh?”

“Yea... wait, no! I told you-” he had a humorous grin on his face. “Good one... Skydive’s my... I don’t know really. She saved my life, like, four times now, but I don’t think she’s really my friend quite yet. It’s hard to explain...”

“Mmm. So what brought ya ta Prim?” he asked, lighting a cigarette.

“We needed somewhere to stay, if only for a while. I didn’t have much in the way of supplies; I desperately need water. How you ponies stand this sun is beyond me. All I had on me were three bottles and a Sunrise Sarsaparilla. Only one left, and that won’t last me long. Skydive will need some too. When that NCR soldier told me the town was overrun with these convicts, I wanted to help. Skydive told me I was stupid, but... I think she wanted to help too. She said she wanted to make sure I didn’t just end up killing everypony, but she’s a good pony at heart. I know she is.”

“Mmm, the NCR ain’t doin’ much t’help us, guess they don’t want ta take the risk. Mighty kind of ya ta come to our little town’s aid. Been a sight worrisome, what with them Crystal Gangsters havin’ taken our lawman hostage.”

“They did what?” I asked.

“They’d killed our sheriff when they showed up, but the damned deputy got himself taken. Dunno what he was thinkin’.”

“Is he still alive?” I asked, getting to my hooves.

“Reckon so. These ain’t the Fiends we’re dealin’ with, they wouldn’t just kill him fer no reason.” He gazed up at me and said, “Y’ain’t thinkin’ o’ goin’ ta get him, are ya?”

“I am now. Where is he?”

“Now, ah ‘preciate the thought, but there’s a whole heap o’ them raiders in that hotel. Unless ya think ya can sneak in well enough, ah don’t think ya can do it son,” he said sullenly.

“I want you to look behind me and tell me what you see,” I told him.

“Couple o’ dead Gang- oh. Well now... must’ve been some pretty high-caliber guns ya got ta make that kind o’ a mess.” I held up my hoof, still coated in blood and... worse.

“I don’t have a gun.” His eyes widened a bit, followed by a sigh.

“Dangerous indeed. If’n ya really think ya can do this, Ah won’t hold ya back. But come back alive, y’hear? Basset’s not worth yer life.”

“I’ll try. I need to go there; I don’t have to worry about hurting anypony if they’re all bad guys, right?” I asked. Ash just looked at me for a few seconds, as though gauging the question

“Reckon not. Goddesses be with ya, kid,” he said, and walked back into the casino. Right... now I didn’t have to worry. That voice wouldn’t let me get killed, and there was only one pony I had to worry about getting hurt. I turned and glanced up at the still-rotating sign and sighed.

“Here we go...”

* * *

“Shit!” I yelped as bullets pinged, just shy of penetrating the crude table barricade I hid behind. Of all the rotten luck, I walked in as one of the Gangers was walking past a doorway straight ahead of the entrance. One of his friends immediately joined him, both armed with low-caliber(thankfully!) semi-automatic pistols that were going to chew through the barrier I was using any moment.

One of the two stopped firing, and I heard him eject the clip from his pistol. I took the moment to dive out from behind the ramshackle barricade and land behind the nearby wall. The other pony had tried to follow my movement but couldn’t aim properly while turning his head. Well, now I had better cover... but how was I going to get out of this? The table barricade was close enough to the wall that they’d have to get rather close to me to get a shot off, so I could grab one and knock him out. No more crushing... never again... hell, I didn’t feel like killing anypony in any way anymore.

The problem remained, however, that whichever one I took down left me wide open for the other to gun down. They’d have to be really stupid, or I really lucky, for me to get out of this unscathed. Hell, getting out alive was going to be difficult! Both my opponents were earth ponies, meaning I didn’t have to worry about a levitating gun coming from around the corner. I sighed, why were they taking so long? I was a bit anxious, what with being in a life-threatening situation, couldn’t they try to kill me a bit faster?

I heard the two muttering things to each other through the guns in their mouths. The broken words were hard to string together since they were quiet on top of poorly enunciated. From what I could make of it, it sounded like one wanted to get backup, while the other made fun of him and said they could take me on their own. If one left, I was taking the opportunity to head straight out the door I’d just come in; screw fighting more than two at once!

I heard one of them start walking, their hooves quite audible on the wooden floor. He sounded like he was getting closer. I crouched low, hoping my awkward position would make him unable to aim in time before I disabled him. I was knocking them out, not killing them. He was getting closer, I could hear him right on the other side of the wall corner.

I saw one of his hooves at the corner edge, but he stopped moving. Was he taking aim? I couldn’t make a move until I had a clear shot at his neck. Was he anticipating that; did those two actually come up with a plan in that conversation? Please don’t be that smart…

He moved forward again, pistol aimed right where my head would’ve been as he rounded the corner. The moment his head was in view, he fired several times before noticing I wasn’t there. I leapt up the instant he stopped firing and locked my forelegs around his neck, pulling him out of view of his friend still in the opening. He desperately scraped at my legs with his hooves, trying to get me to let go. He’d dropped his pistol to try and breathe, but I had his windpipe completely blocked off. I heard the other pony yell something, but it was still through the pistol, so I couldn’t make it out. After a few more seconds, the pony in my grip stopped struggling and went limp.

Wait... oh no, I’d burned his throat! How did I forget that! I prayed to the Goddesses that he was still alive as I turned him around to see... nothing. There wasn’t a single spot of burned coat or exposed flesh on him. What in the... did that thing in my head turn off the heat or something? Could he even do that? I started mentally searching for his presence, but couldn’t find it. What in the hay was going on with him? Or it? I shook my head a bit to clear my thoughts; this wasn’t the time for a million questions.

“Hey!” I yelled out to the other pony, who hopefully wasn’t charging around the corner quite yet, “I didn’t kill him, but you start shooting and I will! Drop your gun and I’ll leave both of you alive!”

“Ah right! ‘Ull kih ee ah oent ah alk oer!” he rather sloppily responded.

“Drop the gun so I can understand what the hell you’re saying, at least!” I heard a small clatter after a second or two.

“Fine, but I’ve still got weapons on me! Try anything and you’re dead! Hell, you ain’t leavin’ alive anyway! What the hell you thinkin’ you was doin’ comin’ in here anyway?” Finally, he was actually understandable in speech.

“You’ve got a hostage I heard. Town deputy, right?”

“Hah! You came in here for that assclown? Pussy’s all tied up in the kitchen; whines every time we walk past. Yea, we got the coward, but you think we’re gonna just let ‘im go ‘cause ya walked in here and asked? Ain’t much sense runnin’ through your brain, is there?” he taunted.

“I don’t remember asking you to let him go. Far as I can tell,” I laughed with fake confidence, “I’m just gonna walk on in and take him. If you two are all I’m in for, I don’t have much to worry about.”

“Big talk, I saw you when you walked in. You ain’t got a gun on ya, ya ain’t even got barding! One or two shots, and you’re fucked. What you think you’re gonna do when there ain’t a wall to hide behind?” I sighed.

“You see your friends out there in the street?” I asked, loathe to bring up the topic.

“You’re the fucker that blew Crash away? Or the one that put a shotty to ol’ Clamp’s head?” he questioned, clearly angry over their deaths. At least he had some sense of equinity still in him.

“I’ll take it I’m the second one there. Clamp’s the one with his head in pieces, right?”

“You ain’t got that shotgun on ya now, though, so what’s the point in bringin’ ‘em up?”

“I never had a shotgun. I bashed his head in with my bare hooves. You don’t believe me, you can have a look at his blood on my legs after you drop your weapons and walk over here.” The Ganger just laughed.

“Even if you did just smash him - which, by the way, that’s a terrible bluff - what’s to stop you from just doing the same to me after I walk over? I ain’t dumb.”

“Then you know that if you try anything, I’ll snap his neck and pound you into paste without even trying. I don’t want to kill anypony in here, but if you don’t give me that choice, I’m plenty capable.” More than I wanted to be. The raider was silent for a few moments before sighing.

“Fuckin’ shitty pistol... how’re we supposed to fight when all we got is these pea shooters? Fine, you fucker, but I’m warnin’ you... if you so much as look at me wrong, I’m gonna kill your sorry ass, you hear me?” he spat.

“I could say the same. Now walk over slowly. I can kill this buck in an instant, don’t make me.” I warned.

“Yea, yea.” I heard another small clatter followed by his hooves on the wooden floor. He stopped at the corner and put a foreleg out for me to see. “I’m comin’ ‘round.” As he walked around, I got a good look at him for the first time. His coat was dark brown and he had a mane of which had it’s color long since covered up by dirt and blood. He was wearing the same blue barding as the pony I had hostage. His dark red eyes stared angrily into mine. “There. Now what?”

“Now, you walk out that door and get the hell out of this town.” I told him.

“To what, the NCR taking me right back into custody? Fuck that,” he spat.

“There’s no NCR if you don’t cross the overpass. Take this guy with you and leave, before I change my mind.”

“Whatever. You’re gonna regret fucking with us, you better believe it,” he said as he took his unconscious friend onto his back.

“That’s my problem now. Go.” The Ganger huffed and started walking toward the door. I stepped out from behind the corner and trotted toward the opening they’d come from. Hopefully there weren’t too many in here, or at least not all grouped up. I doubted I could repeat this, despite it’s effectiveness.

Speaking of which, I let out a relieved sigh and smiled. I’d gotten past them without killing them! A small accomplishment, sure, but it still felt good. I looked down where he’d dropped his weapons and…

There was a knife laying on the ground. Weren’t there two clattering sounds? Where was the... gun... oh dear…

“Regre ih yeh?” I heard his voice once again muffled and distorted by the pistol in his mouth. Before I could even turn around, I heard the gun go off and jumped, landing awkwardly on my side next to the chairs in the hallway in front of me.

“Do you?” a familiar voice quipped. It couldn’t be... I turned my head to see Skydive standing behind him, pistol in her wing.

“Skydive?” I asked in shock.

“Who else would save your ass?” she replied. I got up and trotted over to her. “The hell are you doing in here?” she asked in an upset tone.

“Ash said that these guys have their deputy held hostage, but that he’s prob-”

“Yea, yea, I know that,” she interrupted, “I mean why were you standing in front of that guy about to get your head blown off? You can’t seriously be so stupid that they somehow got behind you and you didn’t notice.” I explained what had just happened to her, making her facehoof. “You actually tried to talk them down?”

“Well... yea. And it worked! Except, he still had his gun…

“I shouldn’t be surprised at this point,” she sighed, “I know that the one guy outside was hard on you. But really, these are bad ponies in here; they aren’t called escaped convicts because the title sounds good. Everypony in here did something to have the NCR jail them. Most likely murder, I might add.”

“I know, that’s why I came here. Because then, if I hurt anyone, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. But, I just... I couldn’t kill them, not after Clamp.”

“Clamp?” she asked.

“Oh, the guy I killed outside. That one who was trying to shoot me had told me his name.” I explained.

“Right... well, you seem to need my help then. If you can’t kill them, I’ll handle it.”

“N-no, you don’t need to. I’ll be fine. You should be asleep anyway!” I stammered; her being here ruined the whole reason I came here in the first place!

“So should you,” she replied, “and what’s the deal? Think I can’t handle myself or something?”

“It’s not that, it’s just...” I sighed, “I don’t trust myself right now. It’s not them I’m scared will hurt you.”

“Oh please,” Skydive snickered, “you don’t need to worry about getting me hurt. I can take care of myself, you worry about you. Now are we gonna get that deputy out, or what?”

“Skydive...” I muttered, already knowing I couldn’t argue with her anymore. She wanted to be here, I couldn’t make her leave if I tried.

“I told you to call me Sky,” she said. “It’s what my friends call me.” I just looked at her for a minute. She smiled, but only for a moment. “Are we gonna do something, or are we just gonna sit here and talk forever?”

“Fine,” I said, returning the brief smile, “let’s go.”

We walked through the archway and into a large hallway. There was a room to our left that Skydive immediately went into. I followed her, but there was nothing notable inside. It looked to be an old gift shop, destroyed either by the Gangers or by other looters. Skydive poked around a bit, and I noticed her picking up all the bottlecaps that were on the counter. There were also several bits on it as well, of which she also scooped into her saddlebags.

“Hey,” she called me over, “know how to pick a lock?” She was looking at a safe on the floor. Rather, a safe in the floor. There were several more bits all around it, as well as a book (Tales of a Junktown Pony Peddler, it read.) and some more bottlecaps. Why were there so many of those just lying around, and why did Skydive want them?

“Not that I remember,” I answered.

“Well, shoot,” she said disappointedly. “I bet there’s a bunch of money in there.”

“Wouldn’t it belong to whoever runs this place? I mean, it used to be a hotel for the ponies in Prim before these Gangers moved in, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Ah, nopony’s gonna miss it,” she responded. I shrugged as she walked out. For good measure, I grabbed the book on top of the safe along with the bits. I just stared at the bottlecaps for a moment; why did she want those, and why did I have some? I shrugged again and followed Sky out. We walked down the hallway a bit before she stopped and flew over to the chairs next to the wall, holding a hoof to her mouth in a ‘be silent’ gesture. I trotted as quietly as I could next to her.

“What?” I whispered. She just put her ear to the wall and waited a minute. She pouted and whispered back.

“There’s somepony on the other side of this wall just pacing and muttering to herself. I’d rather not tangle with her, let’s see if this door over here can’t get us around her.” She turned and flew over to a large blue door I hadn’t even noticed was there. Sky pushed on the bar, but the door didn’t budge. “Dammit! Are you sure you can’t pick a lock?”

“Well...” I walked over to the door and looked at it. There was a lock placed at it’s hinges, but it wasn’t like the one on the safe. This one was a simple padlock, rather rusty from the couple hundred years it had been there. I looked at it for a minute and got an idea. Turning, I braced myself on my forelegs as my hind ones wound up before giving the lock a solid buck. It snapped loudly and the door flung open, slamming on the wall inside. “Picked it.” Sky just stood there, mouth agape. I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. She grabbed me and pulled me through the door before quietly, albeit quickly, shutting the door behind us. “Um, you know touching me generally gets you burned right?”

“You said you didn’t burn the pony when you knocked him out. Beside the point! I said to pick the lock, not destroy it!” she half whispered, half shouted at me.

“What’s the difference?” I asked. “Still got the door open.”

“Picking locks is quiet! You’re lucky if that mare didn’t hear that! Hell, you’re lucky if you didn’t wake up Ice Pack back in New Trottingham with that!”

“Now you’re just being silly,” I told her. She opened her mouth to say something, but just sighed in annoyance.

“Let’s just see where this goes.” I nodded and walked down the hall beside her. It turned and led into another room. There were a bunch of hanging pots on the wall, along with a table covered in some kind of cooked meat on a bunch of plates.

“Jackpot,” I quietly cheered. “That guy said they were keeping the deputy in the kitchen, this should be it.” Sky nodded. I let her fly ahead, her wings almost silent, whilst I stayed back in case anypony was in the room. They would hear my hooves on the tile floor. Skydive peeked around both corners of the door before jerking her head back like before, and flying back over to me.

“There’s nopony in the room itself, but there’s wide double doors leading into the hotel proper. I saw a fire going, so they’re mostly going to be gathered in there. I think I saw Basset on the other side of that table.”

“That’d be the deputy,” I said. “If nopony’s there, let’s see if we can’t sneak him out. if we get behind that table, can we be seen through those doors you mentioned?”

“No, and they don’t have direct vision of the deputy either,” she answered.

“Well then, let’s go.” We moved as quietly as we could down the hall. Sky checked around the corner again to make sure the coast was clear before quickly diving behind the table. I followed her, not quite as silent, but effective nonetheless. Next to us lied Basset, tied up in ropes against the table. His silver mane was in stark contrast to his light brown coat and leather barding.

“I don’t suppose you’re here to rescue me?” he asked with a sort of pleading hope in his voice.

“Yea, but keep it down,” Sky chided him.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” he sighed in relief, “now, if you would be so kind as to release me from my bonds, I’ll be on my way.”

“Uh, we’re going to deal with the rest of the raiders in here while we’re here,” Sky told him as she grabbed a rather large knife from the tabletop with a wing.

“Oh, well, I can wait I suppose.” Sky raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’ve got a gun on you still, pal. And we’re not cutting you loose so you can run off on your own.”

“Yea,” I chimed in, “stick with us!”

“Oh, as much as I appreciate the offer to keep me safe, I assure you I can handle myself. I’ll just meet you outside, after-”

“Hey, Basset,” I interrupted him, “if you try to run off on your own, I’ll break your legs. Seriously. You’re the towns fucking deputy, so step it up!” Goddesses, that Ganger wasn’t kidding when he said this guy was a coward.

“Oh... well, I guess I’ll stick with you. If you insist,” he said, a hint of fear in his voice.

Sky cut the ropes around his hooves with a bit of effort, and a few cautions from Basset. After she was done, he stood up and stretched. “Sure feels good to have those off. I assure you, this captivity was certainly the low point of my career. Anyway, if you’re really going to go after these Crystal Gangers, I should warn you that most of them are in the room out there. Most of them just have nine millimeter pistols and wheel irons, but there’s one with a-” he suddenly stopped talking as his verdant eyes stared out the door as his mouth hung open. I could see sweat starting to form on his face.

“With a what?” Sky asked.

“This,” another voice, deeper and quite thicker than even the NCR soldier’s was, answered. Sky and I stood up immediately to see who had said it. What stood in the doorway, armed with a bizarre, massive weapon I couldn’t recognize, was no pony. What I momentarily mistook as a tan coat was in fact feathers, and claws were in place of hooves. What the hell was this creature supposed to be? His face was a white color, stained in several places by blood. He had a beak in which a cigarette was lit, and his eyes looked as though they could stare you down from miles away.

I glanced at the intricate weapon he held in his talons, a large metal... thing that was almost like a cannon in appearance. At it’s base was a large tank, of which I started to piece together what it was filled with.

“GET DOWN!” Sky screamed as she flew to the doorway we’d entered in, drawing her pistol. The inequine beast lifted the weapon off the ground and took aim right at me. Before I could react, a bright light shined and I felt a strong impact knock me off my hooves. I wasn’t quite winded from the impact, but something felt wrong with my chest.

Oh. It was on fire. That might be it. Scrambling to get the burning flames smothered, I noticed they were being fed by some kind of adhesive that was stuck to me. The flames weren’t actually burning me though, perhaps due to whatever that ghost in my head had done. I couldn’t feel any pain from it, and the fire wasn’t charring my hide or even burning my coat. Whatever the reason or case, I got back up. Basset started to run toward the door Sky had taken cover behind.

“Not runnin’ today, coward,” the monster’s voice sounded as he shifted aim towards him.

“No!” I screamed, but too little too late. The light shone again and knocked Basset into the refrigerator behind him. He began to scream, not having the same immunity to fire I did. I rushed to his side and tried to remove the adhesive from his coat. Doing so only pulled searing flesh with it. Through it all, he was still screaming one single, droning yell that went on longer than any scream had the right to. “Basset! Help me get it off!” I yelled at him. He wasn’t listening, only screaming.

After a few seconds, his scream finally died. It took me a moment to realize that he died with it. I’d failed... I promised I’d get him out... and I got him killed instead. Now Sky and I were in deep shit, and I had yet another corpse on my hooves. Only this one really was a townspony; I had actually killed one of the people I came into Prim to save. The sticky gunk was still burning on his hide, and his mouth was still open from his dying shout. I fought back tears in my eyes as I stood up and turned to face that beast that had just slain him.

“I wanted to be nice...” I growled, feeling my anger coming to a boil. “I wanted to let those two at the door go. But the one just had to try and kill me. I wanted to let Clamp live, but he just had to draw a knife on me.” I turned to look at Basset one last time. “And I wanted to just get him out alive, not even bring any of you down. But you...” I walked toward him. He fired another one of those balls of burning fuel at me, causing me to stagger, but I didn’t fall. The fire burned where it streaked down my coat, but it did no actual damage. The monster showed panic in his eyes. Good. He would know fear by the time I was done with him.

“You just had to do this. You sick... sadistic motherfucker...” I kept walking forward. “Sky,” I looked over at her, staring with a frightened expression at me, “I told you I didn’t want to kill anypony... well, thank the Goddesses that the fucker who killed Basset isn’t a pony. Stay there, Sky,” I turned back to face the monster again, “he’s mine.”

Footnote: Level up!
Quest perk added: Enkindled: Your strange burning touch is more than just good for offense, it’s also good for defense! You are immune to flamers, flamethrowers, and fire in general!

Chapter 4 - The Distance We Travel

Chapter 4 - The Distance We Travel
“No offense, but you look like you’ve traveled a long way down some bad roads.”

“No...”

“Oh, yes,” the shopkeeper chuckled at my bewilderment, “caps for this, that, ‘n the other thing too!” The standard currency... was bottlecaps. Seriously? Why was that a thing? Who even came up with such a dumb idea?

Talley, the general store owner with whom I was now perusing all manner of items with, had scoffed at my offer of “pre-war junk money” when I asked to purchase a set of leather barding. Apparently, it wasn’t worth too much except in bulk. But... how did they get by with bottlecaps for money? There was nothing to back it! And the damned things were everywhere, so it was obviously a weak currency. I resisted the urge to facehoof, settling for a mere sigh.

“Okay... how many caps is it?” I asked, pointing to the leather barding again.

“Eh, it’s in pretty good condition... it’d go for around two-fifty,” he said matter-of-factly. Two-fifty... as in two hundred fifty? That was five times what I had!

“Uh... heh... got anything for a bit less?” I asked. Talley pondered this a moment.

“How much ya got on ya, anyways?” he questioned.

“What can I get for, say... fifty caps?” I put on my best smile. He didn’t return it.

“Ya can get out.”

* * *

I took another sip from the Sparkle~Cola Ash had given me (thankfully for free) as the clock ticked ever onward, second by boring second. Skydive had all those caps she’d found in the Buffalo Chief, as well as all the stuff she ‘scavenged’ from the dead Gangers. If we sold it to the stingy little shopkeeper, we might have enough for that leather armor. Sadly, I had to wait on an old couch waiting for her to come back.

Mirage, it seemed, was a rather long journey from here. Around three days, if we made no detours and kept good pace. Skydive had thus decided to go back to New Trottingham and say her goodbyes, since she hadn’t expected to be gone for an extended period. I refrained from bringing up her theft of Crutches’ pistol again. Unfortunately, that meant she’d be gone for at least another few hours.

“Li’l whippersnapper,” Ash muttered next to me, taking a swig from his flask of whiskey. “Just you wait, when yer mare gets back, Ah got a feelin’ he won’t be so inclined ta try ‘n rob ya no more.”

“I told you, we’re not like that,” I droned for at least the fifth time since he started drinking. I sighed as I realized that, for as nice as company was, Ash wasn’t exactly the best. I ran through my Pipbuck’s item sorting list and looked to see if I had something to read. The book I’d found in the hotel was all that was present. Well... it beat listening to the ramblings of an inebriated old stallion.

* * *

“How’d shopping go?” Sky asked as she walked through the door at last. Her timing couldn’t have been better; the last sentence of the rather short book passed through my vision at that moment.

“Awful,” I answered, “Ever try listening to a drunk guy complain for hours?” She shook her head and gave me a curious look. “Take my advice: don’t.” I pointed a hoof at the now-asleep Ash, lying blacked out on the couch opposite me. Skydive stifled a laugh.

“Did Talley give you any trouble?” she asked, though her voice betrayed that she already knew the answer. I sighed and nodded.

“You could’ve told me that you ponies use bottlecaps to trade! That’s why you were picking them all up in the hotel, isn’t it?”

“Oh, before I forget, we use bottlecaps to trade,” she deadpanned. After a moment, she added, “I thought my picking them all up in the Buffalo Chief would’ve been hint enough that they were at least important.”

“How do you even... you know, nevermind. Just... just help me grab that leather armor from Talley. You only left me with fifty caps.” She rolled her eyes.

“Before we get going, the doctor wanted me to give this to you,” she pulled a small object from a front pocket on her newly acquired barding. I hadn’t quite noticed it until now; it was practically the same leather armor Talley was selling. If anything, it appeared to be in better condition. My attention returned to the strange item she had given me. “It’s a message,” she informed before I could even ask, “you’re supposed to plug it into your Pipbuck. I think... there.” I took the data recorder in my mouth and fit it into the slot she’d indicated.

I followed her out as I read over the message. ‘Sky tells me you are off to Mirage, and she’s decided to come with you. It’s good to know you might get some answers rather than losing your memories forever. Good to see Sky spreading her wings a bit as well; she needs to get out and see the world some. Thank you for giving her the opportunity.

‘I think you should know that I’ve discovered something about those bullets I pulled out of you. All of them were 9mm rounds except for one. Particularly the one I pulled out of your head. It was a revolver round, most likely from the gun I sent you before. What caught my attention was, despite the damage to the bullet, there are inscriptions of some sort clearly visible. It was enchanted. It may mean nothing, but... I’m going to look into it further, see if I can’t find something out. The recorder Sky gave you also made an uplink to your Pipbuck so I can message you from here, so if I get anything, I’ll make sure you know right away. Good luck on your journey. And please, keep Skydive safe. -Crutches’

The thought of my apparent enemies showering me with memory-wiping, enchanted bullets added a whole new level of unease to this whole event. What had I done to draw the attention of ponies with weapons like that? Was I seriously about to do so again? I was about to voice my concern when we entered the shop.

Talley gazed up at me as the bell on the door chimed. “Look, I told ya th-” he cut himself off as he noticed Sky. “S-Skydive! When, uh... when did you drop by?” His eyes darted back to me curiously.

“Oh, a little bit ago. I was hoping to do some shopping,” she replied casually and started perusing the shelves. This seemed to calm Talley, who was now visibly sweating.

“O-oh. Well, I’ve probably got what you’re lookin’ for.”

“Yea... got any barding?” Sky asked casually. He shot me another look, this time one of suspicion.

“Sure. What, uh... w-what kind ya lookin’ for?” he asked nervously. What had Sky done to scare him this much? I really wanted to know.

“Just some plain old leather like mine,” she answered, now staring him in the eyes. He swallowed hard.

“O-oh, uh... l-lookin’ to do some repairs?” he questioned as he fished around for the barding he’d shown me earlier. Soon enough he pulled it out and set it on the counter.

“Maybe. If so, I would have liked to have done it back home. Explain to me, Talley, why I had to come here to get it myself?” she asked dangerously. The look on his face as he once again glanced up to me was priceless.

“H-h-he’s with-” Talley began to stammer as Sky cut him off.

“Yea, he’s a friend of mine. We kinda just saved your town and all, if you heard. Mostly him, really.” His eyes widened a little more at that. “So... why wasn’t he able to buy this again?”

“H-he, uh... he didn’t h-have enough...”

“Not enough caps? How much is it? I swore I gave him enough to buy something around this quality.” Now he was looking quite angrily at me. I smiled and shrugged, eliciting a quiet growl from him.

“H-he had nothing t-to barter with, is what h-he told me. Didn’t even kn-know what bottlecaps were,” he answered semi-truthfully.

“Hey,” Sky called to me, “how much ya got on you?”

“Fifty caps.”

“Toss ‘em here.” I obliged. She pulled out a few bottlecaps of her own. “Here. This should cover it.” She set the small bag of caps on the counter. “I assume he was a little bit short, I’ll take fault. You couldn’t be charging too much more than that, sixty caps seem about right?”

“Ah.. I, uh..” he tried to reply, perhaps haggle a bit. He couldn’t.

“Good! Good to see you still remember to price fairly. Honestly, anymore would be like... highway robbery,” she commented darkly.

“O-of course! Happy to do business with ya, Sky!” he quickly blurted.

“Good to hear. Cya around, Talley.” She picked the armor up in her teeth and gave a wave as she walked out the door. I began to follow her out, barely restraining a bit of laughter, when Talley pulled me back by the shoulder.

“Look,” he hissed quietly, likely so Sky wouldn’t hear, “I don’t care who ya try to sic on me. That was 250 caps of barding right there. You owe me, you hear? I’ve got ya pinned for 190 caps, hear me? 190!”

“Hey, you comin’?” Sky called from outside. Talley quickly shoved me toward the door. I started to laugh as I trotted out. ‘Keep Skydive safe’ indeed. She seemed to handle herself far better than me, Doc... I don’t think you have any need to worry.

* * *

“Okay,” I began as we trotter further south down the old highway, “spill it. What’s up with you and Talley?” We had long since put Prim behind us and were heading toward Mirage. The sun was past it’s height and just beginning to set in the sky, but continued pouring down blazing light and ubiquitous heat. Thankfully, Ash had sold us plenty of water. I took a sip from my half-empty bottle.

“What about him?” Sky called back casually. Even she had not been immune to the baking temperatures. She chose to stay grounded rather than fly, claiming the exertion would leave her worse off despite the cooler air higher up.

“The guy was terrified of you. What’d you do?” I asked again.

“Nothing,” she replied with a sigh. “Nothing good, anyway.”

“Sky, I just beat a griffin to a bloody mess. I seriously doubt you could have done much uglier or worse,” I persisted. “Not like I’m going to think less of you for it.”

“I suppose not. I just don’t like to talk about it. As much as he deserved it, it still doesn’t feel right.” She sighed again and began to tell the story. “A little less than a year ago, Talley was a caravaneer. He did business with whomever he came across; be it other caravans and wanderers, or towns and tribes,” she paused for a second and grumbled, “or slavers and raiders.

“Well, one day a group of ponies decided they liked what he had to offer, but didn’t feel like paying. I was nearby and saw the fight break out. There were at least a dozen of them, and only one of Talley and Gold Rush - another caravaneer he worked with. They clearly weren’t about to keep their wares, or their lives if the robbers had gotten their way. I… well, I decided they weren’t getting their way. I have a… a bit of a thing when it comes to robbers and raiders. Most ponies weren’t quite used to worrying about pegasi coming from above yet then, so I took them by surprise.” She sounded almost disappointed. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want her to stop speaking the recollection.

“They thanked me for the help, but insisted on continuing about their business. I chose to keep an eye on them, in case any more of that group were still around, y’know? Well, while I followed, they came across a poor old mare who had apparently suffered the same event they just had, only without anypony around to help. She tried to buy a gun off of him so she wasn’t completely defenseless. To my greatest disbelief, he wouldn’t sell it to her. She had 200 caps to her name, and the little bastard decided it wasn’t enough. The gun was in awful condition, too! But he refused to sell it for less than 350 caps.

“As far as I was concerned, highway robbery is still robbery. I told him as much after I trotted over, took the gun out of his brahmin’s pack, and shoved it down his throat. A few minutes of begging on his part and force on mine, the mare walked away with fifty caps to spare, a gun, and plenty of bullets for it. Talley, on the other hand, walked away with a warning: if I ever caught him trying to extort his customers again, I’d repeat the whole event. Only next time, I’d pull the trigger.” Concluding her speech, she looked back at me shamefully, as if expecting me to scold her for being too violent. Instead, I gave her a smile.

“What’s so bad about it? You helped a pair of ponies out of a seriously dangerous spot, and when one of them decided to take it for granted and have no sympathy for somepony not so lucky, you gave him what for. Seems completely fair to me,” I assured her. She smiled back weakly.

“Wish I saw it like that…” she muttered before looking away from me again. I now decided against mentioning the tab Talley placed me on.

“Not to bring up something sensitive, but now I’m curious… if you’ve got a ‘thing’ against robbers, why do you keep stealing Crutches’ pistol?” I asked, not wanting the conversation to die out. We had another day’s journey ahead of us, and it was likely to be boring as well as miserably hot.

“That’s different,” she justified boldly, “I only borrow the doctor’s gun, with the full intention of returning it.”

“When do you intend on doing that?” I questioned. “You’ve still got it on you, and we’re not gonna be back for a while.”

“I asked permission to keep it at least for as long as I’m helping you, and he consented. So the answer to that is whenever I come home.” The last word brought my previous worries back to the front of my mind.

“You know… you’re leaving a lot behind for me. A home, people who care about you… and…” there was a pregnant pause as I searched for the right words and the courage to say them. “We might not make it back.” Skydive kept walking despite that I stopped. After a few moments, I figured she had no intention of doing so and started after her again. She didn’t say anything for almost a minute.

“You’re right. I have a home in New Trottingham. And there’s the doctor and Ice Pack there too. Maybe I’m stupid for risking it all on somepony who all I know about them is that they’re dangerous. But… you don’t have a home. Or anypony who cares about you to go back to. And if that’s what’s waiting for you in Mirage, then that’s great. But if it isn’t, or even if it is, you still need help.” I smiled warmly at the thought that I had earned a friend as compassionate as Sky. “Besides, I’ve been told I need to stretch my wings a bit. This is as good an opportunity as any.”

“You aren’t even flying,” I pointed out with a chuckle.

“Fine, that I need to stretch my legs, then,” she replied, returning the laugh. We continued walking for a bit in silence. I was still concerned that I was going to end up getting her hurt, maybe even killed. I didn’t know what to expect when we arrived in Mirage, but I figured it wouldn’t be a warm reception. It might be more griffins with those wicked napalm cannons. Or it could just be a small town like New Trottingham, a few ponies here and there. Maybe they just decided they wanted me gone like New Trottingham did, only they took more extreme measures. Whatever the case, they likely still had those enchanted bullets. I shuddered at the thought of causing Skydive to lose her memory. At least she was safe while we were on the road.

“So sure about that?” an annoyingly familiar voice asked. Oh, great… he was back again. “I don’t think she’s safe anytime you’re around.” I bit back a retort; Skydive would be confused. I settled for quietly directing my anger at him. I smirked as I recalled my conversation with… well, with myself, knowing that this voice could tell what I was thinking.

“Found him, did you?” he asked in a slightly irritated tone. I simply replayed him telling me about this voice’s limits in my memory several times. “Well… isn’t that annoying.” I just smiled contentedly, knowing there was no real harm he could do on his own.

“Hey,” Sky called from ahead of me. I hadn’t noticed when she put that much distance between us. “Check this out.” I picked up my pace and headed over to her. What had caught her eye was a small, black chest on the side of the road. It wasn’t very well covered by the scraggly bush it was under, so either this road was rarely travelled, or it was placed there recently. It was lined with a silvery metal around all of its edges, and the black color came from some kind of fabric. Sky grabbed the chest with her forelegs and, with several flaps of her wings, pulled it out of the sand and onto the road.

“Hey… doesn’t this belong to someone?” I asked tentatively.

“At some point,” she replied, “but nobody would leave something like this lying next to the road if they had any intent on coming back for it. And if they do… well, let’s just see what’s in here at least.” She turned the decorative container around. Two things caught my attention as she did. First, a large metal symbol that appeared to be some kind of glyph within a pentagram was used as the handle. Second… the chest was unlocked. As Sky opened it, the strange handle fell off the chest and clattered to the ground. The interior was completely covered in velvet, acting as a cushion for its sole content: a pink orb of some sort.

“Well,” Sky muttered disappointedly, “certainly not what I expected.”

“What is it?” I questioned, curious as to what made the little pink sphere so important.

“A memory orb. Unicorns can use them to view the memory somepony stored in them, supposedly. They don’t mean much to you and me. They have to use magic on them or something like that.”

“Must be a pretty important memory to be stored in such a lavish case,” I pointed out, trying to puzzle out what it would be like to be in somepony else’s memory.

“Or not, to have been left unlocked and ditched on the side of the road,” Sky replied. I shrugged.

“Should we put it back, then?”

“Dunno,” Sky answered, sounding a bit unsure herself. “It might be worth a fair bit of caps to a unicorn who collects them. The case is too heavy to lug along with us, but I’m certain it would be worth a small fortune. Even if we put it back, the odds of whoever owns it coming back for it before somepony else takes it are slim to none. Here, up to you,” she said, tossing the the orb at me. “If you want to, you can-” whatever she said afterward was lost as I reached out to catch it… and the whole world collapsed around me!

~oooOOOO~ ~OOOOooo~

What was going on!? What happened? Where was Skydive? Hell, where was everything? Why wasn’t I saying this out loud? Why couldn’t I say this out loud? I tried to open my eyes, and immediately began to panic (further) when I couldn’t. I couldn’t move any part of my body whatsoever, in fact. Okay… really, what was happening to me?

I felt my body shift, not by my own will, and stand up from its position on the ground. My eyes slowly opened as well. Now I was seriously scared; it wasn’t… he couldn’t control me though! It couldn’t be him doing this to me. Could it?

“No, I’m afraid not,” the rasp answered. “I’m as confused as you are.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or all the more frightened at that. My vision began to clear as I involuntarily stared out at… the wasteland? No, this was different… I was in some kind of ruins. I felt my withers itch and desperately wanted to scratch, perhaps more out of desire to control my own body again than an actual urge to scratch, but I couldn’t. Every muscle and bone in my body had stopped listening to me. As I(or whoever was in control) looked around, Skydive was nowhere to be found. Thank Luna…

I stretched and scratched my itching withers before finally stepping away from where I’d just woken up. As I stepped through what used to be a door, I saw a town lay before me… a town set ablaze. Bodies littered the lone street that passed through the small collection of ramshackle houses. Blood pooled all around the broken forms, and I felt the urge to be sick… but I didn’t even have my reflexes under my own control anymore. Instead, I felt myself… smile? It was brief, but I was certain I felt my lips curl into some wicked grin at the horror I was witnessing.

My legs suddenly shrieked in pain as gunshots rang out from somewhere. My head casually tilted down to see three bullet holes dotting my right foreleg. Another brief, almost unnoticeable grin played across my face. To all the greater horror, I watched as the wounds seemed to melt away. In only a moment, the holes ejected the bullets and closed up. What the fuck was even happening? This had to be a nightmare!

My gaze shifted to the corner of a burning home a little ways down the street. Almost impossibly, my vision locked on an old stallion with a pistol. How had whoever was in control of me seen him? My vision blurred for a moment before readjusting into sharp clarity… almost as though I was looking through a telescope. It had zoomed in and become extremely clear - I could count the beads of sweat on his brow. His face contorted in anger as he fired the remainder of his clip at me. Only a couple of shots hit, but each healed just as the first few had.

I felt myself frown. My vision returned to normal as my assailant clumsily tried to reload. My legs began to move… I was walking toward him. Slowly, deliberately, frighteningly walking toward him. What had happened here? Was this pony a Crystal Ganger here for revenge? And for the love of the Goddesses, why was someone else moving me?

“No…” I heard the voice speak. That tone was unmistakably frightened. “We can’t be… this… no! We shouldn’t be here!” I tried to ask, if only through thought, what ‘here’ was. The rasp never responded. Instead, I was forced to continue watching as I advanced, so slowly advanced, on the stallion in front of me. Why wasn’t he running? He lifted the low-caliber pistol back up and unloaded another clip into me. Being as close as I now was, every bullet hit. There was next to no delay between their impact and the terrifying healing process I seemed to undergo.

“Th’ hell are ya!?” he screamed, spitting the gun onto the ground and beginning to backpedal away from me. I didn’t pick up my pace.

“Me?” I questioned with silky, feigned innocence. Okay, feeling myself talk against my will… not a good feeling. “I dunno. I’d like to say I’m just another pony. But I don’t think I quite fit that description anymore.” The other pony stumbled over a rock and fell. Any distance he had put between us was shrinking. He scrambled to his hooves and began backpedaling again, but only got a few paces before stumbling over again. As I drew nearer, I noticed his hind leg was wounded fairly bad. It was bleeding and burnt. I was now right in front of him; the fear and hopelessness in his eyes should have made my heart wrench. As it was, my brow merely furrowed. “If you really want to know,” I muttered, my voice suddenly malicious and rife with anger, “I’m just plain pissed is what I am.”

I felt myself put a hoof down on the old buck’s throat, but my eyes remained firmly locked on his face. Horror and shock danced across it as he opened his mouth to scream. The effort was in vain, I was already pressing down on his windpipe. I wanted to stop, to look away, or at least just close my eyes! Goddesses above, tell me what the hell was happening!

“Y’know… there’s always one or two of ya.” I pressed my face against his and whispered, “I never get everypony the first time. One or two of ya always remain. But then… you do this stupid shit! You could’ve gotten away! Lived! But you just had to come back and get yourself killed. Why?” He merely tugged at my hoof, hardly able to breathe let alone respond. “Is that just how it goes?” I continued asking, not seeming to care that he couldn’t reply. “When the walls come falling down, you make sure to go down with them. Is that what I should have done? When I lost everything, I should’ve just died right there? Is that what I did wrong?” I felt myself pressing down harder. The stallion thrashed beneath me fruitlessly. “Is it?” I persisted. He could no longer breath; I felt blood spattering across my foreleg as he choked and tried desperately to get air. “IS IT!?” I screamed at him. At the same moment, I felt his neck snap beneath me. I stepped back from him only to see that his throat had been utterly crushed and had blood pooling around him.

I turned and began to walk away from the corpse and out of the destroyed town. “Fuckin’ idiot,” I muttered to myself. “‘No, I can’t just walk away from the pony who just murdered my whole town, I gots ta go get killed too’.” I spat in disgust, the mocking tone quite literally bringing up a bad taste in my mouth. I looked up to see a sign above me: ‘Welcome to Sunshine Valley!’. I huffed and looked back at the road ahead again. “Startin’ to wish I did that…” Darkness suddenly overtook my vision, and reality washed out from under me once again.

~oooOOOO~ ~OOOOooo~

Whatever I was lying on was both uncomfortably hard and very, very hot. My eyes shot open and I jumped to my hooves with a startled yelp. As a test, I blinked my eyes repeatedly and started to trot in place. Thank the Goddesses, I could move again! I started moving, simply milling about, trying to shake off the feeling of whatever just happened to me.

Then I remembered what just happened to me. I turned around toward… the road. This was the road I was travelling with Skydive… the chest was even still sitting here! Sunshine Valley was nowhere to be seen. My head began to ache terribly as I tried to puzzle out how I got from here to there and back again.

“Was it good?” Sky’s voice called from behind me. With a start I turned to find nobody was there. A memory of her following me in the night flickered in my mind, and I looked up to see her hovering over me.

“What?” I asked, summing up multiple questions I had at once.

“Well,” Skydive began as she lowered herself to the ground, “you kinda passed out when you touched the memory orb, so I’m guessing you got sucked into it somehow. Did you?” Wait… that was the memory orb? That’s all that was? I gave a loud sigh of relief and fell back on my haunches. Sky raised an eyebrow at the reaction.

“No,” I laughed disgustedly, “no, it wasn’t good at all. That was just a memory?” Sky nodded. “It was… it was so real…”

“What happened?” she asked curiously. I shuddered.

“Ever heard of Sunshine Valley?” Sky shook her head. I pointed at the memory orb and answered, “There’s a reason.” It took a moment for her to realize what I meant. She looked at me with a somber expression. I just turned my gaze toward the little pink orb that now lay on the side of the road. How could such an innocent looking object hold such a malicious event within it? From the corner of my eye, I saw Sky approach me. She reached a foreleg out as if to hug me. I leaned toward her for a moment before remembering a certain voice.

“Don’t!” I yelped, backpedaling away from her. She looked confused and more than a little hurt. “I-I’m, uh… it’s back. The… burning thing.” I mentally facehoofed at my awful conveyance. She seemed to understand though.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down at her hooves.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her, wishing I could explain the freak in my head whose fault it really was.

“The memory was,” she explained. “I shouldn’t have tossed it at you… you didn’t need to see that.”

“Oh. It’s fine, Sky,” I waved my hoof dismissively, “if I had no idea, you couldn’t possibly have.” She looked up at me with a morose grin. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously, who would’ve guessed I turn on memory orbs too? Hey! Do you think I can charge Spark Batteries too?” I asked jokingly. She gave a small chuckle. “Seriously, though,” I continued, “I could, like, go around like a mobile power supply! ‘Oh, your light bulb went out?’ Tap. ‘There ya go!’” Sky started to laugh, mirth returning to her smile. “I could go fix small appliances all across the wasteland! Re-energizing batteries the world over! Think of all the radios and toasters we could save!”

“Poking memory orbs and sending power into magic batteries aren’t the same thing,” Sky interjected, now laughing hard.

“Aww,” I said, laughing myself, “No repairing toasters for me then.” We stopped laughing after a bit, but the mood had been lightened. “So,” I asked, picking up conversation again, “what were you up to, flying around?”

“Making sure nopony, or whatever else might be out here, was sneaking up on us while you were out,” she answered.

“Find anything?”

“Yea,” she replied, her eyes shifting to what I assumed was the direction she’d seen it, “I found something alright. Come on, they should be down the road a ways.” Now she sparked my curiosity. If she was going toward them, they couldn’t be too dangerous.

* * *

We’d been moving down the road for a good ten minutes, and I was beginning to wonder if whoever it was had moved on. I voiced the concern to Sky.

“No, they were heading toward the road. In fact… I think they should be over there.” I squinted down the road, but couldn’t see anything. I panned my view across the nearby landscape, but nothing stood out. “Here,” Sky said, pointing toward a cliffside, “You might see them from there. Take these.” She fished around in her saddlebags and retrieved a pair of binoculars. That was… convenient.

I crouched a few paces back from the edge of the cliff, the binoculars were a bit of a hassle to work with. I suspected they weren’t made with earth ponies in mind. A pegasus could use both forehooves to hold them while flying, and a unicorn could make them float. Me, on the other hand, had to keep myself steady with at least one foreleg, and had no such magic to help me out. With a bit of effort, I was able to hold them to my eyes with one hoof.

I had to look around a bit before I spotted them. A pair of unicorns trotting perpendicular to the road. Both of them were gray, one with a charcoal coat similar to mine, the other a light shade of it. I watched them for a minute before asking, “Alright, what about them? Is it too uncommon to see friendly ponies around here?”

“What do you see?” Sky asked, ignoring my question.

“A pair of unicorns. What about them?”

“Oh? Is he not there anymore?” I sighed irately enough for her to realize I wanted an answer myself. “They had a pegasus with them.” I was about to point out that wouldn’t be too unusual, but as I backtracked for an example in my mind, I realized Sky was the only pegasus I’d met so far. “And that is rather unusual. Most pegasus ponies aren’t too friendly with the rest of the wastes.”

“Huh.” I acknowledged, still watching the pair. There was no pegasus to be seen with them. I gave the binoculars back to Sky, careful not to touch her directly. Apparently objects I touched didn’t get overheated, which was good. She lifted them to her eyes and scanned around, not seeing the pony she was looking for either. Suddenly, her jaw dropped.

“No… no way…” she muttered.

“What?” I asked worriedly.

“There’s just no way… it has to be something else. She couldn’t possibly…”

“What?” I asked impatiently. Sky didn’t say anything, merely passing the binoculars back to me. I sighed and lifted them to my eyes again. “No way in hell…” I echoed Sky’s reaction. The pair had stopped. The charcoal coated one was looking a bit confused and concerned. The light gray one, however, was what had the both of us in shock.

She was staring right at us. And she was waving.

Footnote: Experience required to level up: 50%

Chapter 5 - The Broken Home

Chapter 5 - The Broken Home
“This could be my home. Our home...”

Impossible.

I kept telling myself that as I trotted with Sky out to see the pair of unicorns. There was simply no way she could have picked us out from the scenery, especially from that distance. I had problems finding them with binoculars. The level or perception, even with twenty-twenty eyesight, that would require was… uncanny, to put it very delicately.

The lighter-gray one that somehow spotted us had started beckoning us over, and showed no sign of leaving until we came out. Sky agreed they seemed friendly enough (‘passive’ was her word of choice) to try. If only to ask how she could’ve possibly seen us, I figured we might as well. As we approached the pair, I tentatively waved a hoof. The lighter gray one smiled and waved back.

“Uh… hello there,” I called out, not quite sure what else there was to say. This wasn’t the urgent circumstance I had been in with Crutches, nor back at Prim with Ash. There was no ‘hi, I need this and kinda just saved your town.’ This was… casual. I decidedly didn’t like casual very much.

“Hi,” she answered. Sky said nothing, her eyes instead scanned the horizon, looking for the pegasus she’d mentioned earlier most likely. As well, the darker gray mare maintained her silence. I shrugged, assuming it would be just her and I talking.

“So… you… wanted something, I’m guessing?” I asked. Somehow was more like it. Before this was over, I was definitely getting an answer as to how she saw us.

“I did,” she responded, shooting a glance at her friend. The other unicorn gave a disgruntled, yet notably prim sigh. “We’re… a little on the lost side. You’re the first ponies we’ve seen in over a day, so I was hoping maybe we could get some directions?”

“Please, I doubt we need them,” the darker unicorn chimed in, “I’m certain it’s nearby.”

“You said that forever ago,” the steel gray coated mare retorted. “Just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s the best at finding things. Well, things that aren’t scavenged that is.”

“You know he’ll be mad you asked for directions,” her friend said, then looked out to the sky. They were talking about the pegasus Skydive was looking for, I figured. The light gray unicorn dismissively waved her hoof.

“Anyway… you’re from around here, aren’t you?” she regarded me again.

“Sorta… you said we’re the first ponies you’ve seen in over a day? There’s really no one else out here?” She nodded. “Huh… speaking of which… how exactly did you see us?” She paused for a moment, then laughed.

“Those binoculars of yours.” I tilted my head curiously. She saw me… through my own binoculars? What? “They reflect light, you know. Kind of easy to spot when it’s putting spotlights on a dark surface,” she explained, prodding her friend while doing so. The other unicorn gave a ladylike huff and continued to watch the skyline. Skydive mimicked her gaze.

“...Huh. Never would’ve thought. Anyway, uh, where is it you’re looking for?” I asked, getting back on topic. “I’m not too familiar with the area, but I might be able to help. Or Sky could, she’d know more than me.” Sky’s head jerked toward me when I mentioned her name, now realizing she was part of the conversation. I wondered how rare ‘friendly’ pegasi must be to have caught her attention so fully.

“It’s a small town, should be a few miles west of here, but our friend scouted ahead quite a ways and never saw a thing,” she replied. Her eyes glanced down at my foreleg. “You’ve got a Pipbuck? Can I see the map on it?” I obliged, bringing up the interface and showing it to her. She frowned, “Nope, not on here. Not much is… you’re travelling too, then?”

“I guess. It’s… complicated,” I answered truthfully.

“Huh. Well, maybe you’ve heard of it then. Sky, right?” Sky nodded. “It’s supposed to be a small little town, maybe a few dozen ponies. What was it called?” she asked, turning toward her friend again. I felt my blood turn to ice at her answer.

“Sunshine Valley.”

“...What’s wrong?” I didn’t notice she asked at first. I turned to look at Skydive instead. She simply frowned, not knowing the town’s fate to the extent I did. I felt myself shiver as I attempted to remind myself it was just a memory orb, that it wasn’t really me. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she repeated.

“I, uh… I think I know why you can’t find it.”

I regaled the two with what had happened to Sunshine Valley, after which I didn’t feel much like talking anymore. Unfortunately, my story opened up a slew of questions from the light gray mare, as well as speculation as to why and how it had been made it into a memory orb. Skydive simply sat and toyed around with the few pistols she’d looted from the Crystal Gangers.

“Okay, it’s bugging me, I need to ask,” the steel gray mare spoke up after a rather extended pause, “how did you see the memory orb, exactly?” I felt myself scowl; the question had been coming quite obviously. I didn’t exactly know myself, so it was going to be a chore to try and explain. “I mean, if it was a black opal… but you described it as a regular run-of-the-mill memory orb.”

I took a deep breath before beginning. “I really don’t know myself. Sky just tossed it at me, and when I caught it… whoosh. I didn’t exactly realize what happened at first, I thought someone was controlling me. When I came to, she told me what went down. If I had to guess… it might have something to do with my touch.”

“Touch?” the charcoal mare asked, her interest piqued. Sky gave me a cautioning look before returning to whatever she was up to with the pistols.

“Well… I don’t really know how to put it. When I touch things, namely other ponies, I… burn them.” This seemed to confuse her, though the more talkative one simply seemed impressed. “It’s weird, and I don’t understand it.” I looked back to see Sky seeming sufficiently distracted. “To be honest,” I lowered my voice, hoping Sky was far enough away that she couldn’t make out what I was saying, “it kind of scares me. I… I almost got her hurt. Maybe even killed.”

“Hey,” the more talkative one said softly, “she looks fine to me. I’ve nearly been killed out here more times than I care to count. It happens. You just learn and move on, and don’t make the same mistake again. Alright?” I sighed and nodded.

“It’s just… I don’t think… ugh,” I gave up on trying to find the right words. Whatever I said, Sky stopped fiddling with her guns and was now paying full attention to the conversation at hoof. “You say you’ve been wandering around. Perhaps you’ve been where we’re headed. Town called Mirage.” This evoked a less-than-assuring reaction from the pair.

“Do you live there?” the charcoal one asked, clearly not wanting to say what she had in mind if I did.

“No, I… I don’t think so.” I replied. She gave me a questioning look before telling me about the town.

“Wretched little city, Mirage. I don’t dare go near it; it’s practically a raider nest.” That made Skydive grimace. “We try to avoid raider types on… policy,” she concluded.

“The town’s pretty freaky. It’s got a lot more ponies there than you’d expect, but… it’s got a very weird kind of government going on.” Government? I thought raiders were just… crazy. I said as much. “Practically raiders. Not exactly. The ponies there are more thieves than crazed murderers. But if they can’t steal what they want from you, they tend to just kill you and take it. The government is what puts me on edge, though.” Ponies stole and killed freely, and the governing body is what had her worried? “They’re… off. They’ll bring citizens in, and supposedly they’re never seen again. The locals say they’re being sacrificed or something.

“The town is, of itself, a kind of dictatorship. Not a exactly a slave empire, but the people in the government are in complete control.” I noted her pointed use of ‘people’ rather than ‘ponies’. “I’ve seen one of the five that rule the town. She was…”

“Frightening,” her friend picked up the trail-off, “whatever she was, she was definitely not a pony.”

“What makes you say that?” Sky asked, finally entering the conversation.

“Ponies don’t have fangs.” Well… that put on a fresh layer of anxiety.

* * *

The two had decided their pegasus friend might be waiting for them, and Sky and I had to get to Mirage. It wouldn’t be too far away now, maybe another hour’s trot. Sky had finished packing away her pieces-parts of the guns she seemed to have disassembled for whatever reason, and we were getting ready to move. As we started back down the road, I felt a strange tug on my mane. Turning, I saw the steel-gray unicorn with a shimmering sheath around her horn.

“Need something?” I asked. She turned to see her friend, who had already started walking.

“There’s… something I want you to take. I’m not certain how my fairly cautious compatriot over there would react with me just… giving it away,” she practically whispered to me.

“If it’s important, then I really don’t want to-” I began, unable to get far before she interrupted me with a shush.

“Please. I know for a fact we can make more of these easily now. It’s just… what’s in it,” she half-explained. With a sigh, she levitated a book from her saddlebags. “Call it an act of faith. Do you think you can be trusted to keep this a secret?”

“Yes? I mean, I’m not certain I can stop someone from taki-” she interrupted me again.

“Do you think you can be trusted?” she repeated.

“Barring death and thieves, yes, I believe so. If it’s got something you really need to keep secret, though, it could get sto-” this time she floated the book in my face to shut me up. I scowled at the rude behavior, but allowed her to float the book into my saddlebags.

“You seem like you’re lost. And I don’t mean a lost your Pipbuck map can fix. This book… more or less, I think it would help you to see what’s in it. Think of it like… a light in the darkness to guide you. If you ever feel like there’s nothing good in the wasteland… read it. You’ll see.” Before I could reply or ask a question, she turned and galloped off to catch up with her companion once again.

“Thank you,” I said, despite knowing she couldn’t have heard me.

* * *

I could see why they chose the name. From a distance, Mirage looked like it might be just that: an illusion. A shimmering lie caused by the desert heat. What appeared to be a massive castle loomed imposingly over the rest of the town, and a huge wall of brick circled the lot of it. It was quite literally unbelievable. Sky had given an impressed whistle when she saw it.

Now that we were right outside, the walls were a good deal more than imposing, they were downright frightening. They rose easily fifty feet over my head, and were made entirely of brick. I questioned the actual defense it could provide against explosives, but that they withstood the apocalypse meant at least something. But what really boggled my mind was that, being made of brick, it was laid like brick. One layer at a time. How long it must have taken…

My thoughts drifted away as we approached what appeared to be a gate. Two guards stood watch; each had strange back-mounted guns, one of which appeared to be rifles, while the other had some kind of strange box-like weapons. I shelved my curiosity away for later. The two guards were eyeing us, and one took a slightly more defensive stance.

“What business have you here?” the rifle-armed stallion on the left asked. He wore what appeared to be very thick leather armor, much more so than Sky’s or my own (reminding me I should have put mine on before coming here.). The one to our right wore the same. Instead of questioning us, he gave a startled look to his companion.

“Augy… you’re kidding right?” he asked, actual disbelief evident in his voice. Augy remained silent and waited for myself or Skydive to respond. “Augy… oh, for the love of… why are we out here? Answer me, Augy, do you know why we are out here?”

“Of course I bloody know!” he replied. After a moment, he started looking me over. He must not have liked what he saw, as his light blue coat turned an alarmingly white color. “Uh… I…”

“He’s sorry,” the other guard interrupted Augy’s stammer before turning to face the gate. “Hey! Open ‘er up, we got guests!” The guard inside seemed to get confused at the statement, asking questions too muffled by the door for even the guard outside to hear. He shouted at the one inside the gate to hurry up and open the gate. I questioned how effective a locked gate was now that there were pegasi capable of simply flying over the walls. I imagined a small pegasus simply flitting over the walls if the guards refused to let him in, chuckling to myself.

A scream of metal pulled me from my thoughts as the gate opened. I cringed at the dreadful, ear-piercing sound. From the look of it, the guards didn’t much enjoy the noise either. After a minute, the gate mercifully stopped. I peered inside to see an elderly-looking stallion looking out curiously. I was beyond confused; wasn’t this supposed to be a town of ‘basically raiders’? I’d expected crazed murderers like Ditzy’s guide suggested. These guys were… just a bit crazy. Maybe those two unicorns were told a rumor or just mistaken. The old stallion grumbled something unintelligible and disappeared behind the wall.

“Gate’s up,” the rifle-armed guard said, his awkward stutters finally stayed. I turned to Sky, whose eyes were jumping between the two guards. Clearly she didn’t trust them.

“Sky, if things go wrong in there… if they try anything, I want you to leave.” She looked at me with a dissatisfied expression. “You can fly over the walls, and these two don’t exactly look like crack shots. I want you to get away. I…” I trailed off, not really knowing what else to say.

“You know I won’t,” she replied, “I don’t just run away from ponies in danger, least of all a friend. If they attack… I’m going to kill them.” I sighed. I was equally warmed and annoyed by that Sky was once again going to stick with me, no matter how bad things got. I was no longer concerned with her ability to defend herself, but… what we would be going up against seemed just impossible for any skill with guns to defeat. They were (allegedly) inequine monsters, and had enchanted bullets that could steal away your memory. I felt the blood in my breast run cold again, wondering how (and more importantly why) I was going to confront these people. I couldn’t possibly win against them if they chose to attack me on sight; the guards would turn on me instantly even if I somehow managed to defeat them. I didn’t even know how many there were! I swallowed hard, contemplating the terrifying odds that I was set up against. Taking into account guards, it was, at best, twenty to one.

Skydive brushed past me, only her tail making contact. She trotted calmly toward the gate, her stride completely unburdened by the danger she was moving toward. I opened my mouth to speak, to ask her to wait, but I couldn’t seem to find my voice. How did she have such confidence? What made her so able to move forward like this, despite her cautions and own moral restraints? Wherever I hesitated, she seemed to press on with ease.

I moved forward, despite myself. I began to follow her again, just as I always seemed to. This was terrain I should be far more familiar with this place than her, and this was even my own personal… quest, I suppose it should be called, that we were on! But I was the one who was frightened by what we faced. Not a moment ago, I was about to just ask her to leave altogether, and I would probably have left myself.

In that one, brisk motion, Sky had restored enough of my confidence to at least follow her lead. That slight touch reminded me both that she was at my side - that I could count on her whenever I needed help - and that I wasn’t defenseless myself. I had a strength that nopony would know about until it was too late. Both in my unnatural raw physical strength, as well as my even less understandable burning touch. Both of these were unnoticable just by appearance, and if worse came to worse, I at least had the element of surprise on my side to some degree. But more than that, she showed she was willing to take the lead when I faltered. If my own strength wasn’t enough to move me forward, she would use hers.

I increased my trot until I was right beside her. I wondered if she knew, for a moment. If she intended to bring back my own confidence, or if it was just my own thoughts turning from the dark places they were facing. As we passed through the gate, I managed to smile. From complete fear to a smile in ten seconds flat. I was changing emotional states almost as fast as Sky now.

“Thank you,” I told her. She raised an eyebrow at me. I chuckled to myself; I was just overthinking things.

...Or she was very, very good.

* * *

Upon entering Mirage, three realizations hit me. First, I’d never gotten those two unicorn mares’ names. Second, that they had never actually been to Mirage. Third, which was how I knew the second, was the only actually pressing realization. They, and I as well, had been entirely wrong about Mirage. It was no town. It was a fortress.

“What in Celestia’s name…” Sky muttered, clearly coming to the same conclusion. So much for pegasi flitting over the walls…

What I had mistaken for an oversized gate entrance was really a ubiquitous ceiling. The darkness was only barely driven back by a series of enchanted crystals that lined the outer walls and the winding pathways. Looking out, I could understand the misinterpretation that this was a town. It met all the requirements to be one; there were homes built inside, roads that connected them all, (and even went down to a second level below us!) and a fairly large looking population of ponies. All that was really missing from my original vision of the place was an open sky and the baking sun.

Thinking about it… maybe this was a bit better, after all.

A sudden gasp startled me out of my reverie. I looked to see somepony staring at Sky and I, having dropped… something… she had been carrying. It may have been the extremely dim light, but something seemed slightly off about her. Her mane and tail looked overly bushy and scraggly, like she’d suffered from some extreme case of bed-head, and her body almost looked out of proportion. I recalled the charcoal unicorn’s warning: Some ponies here might not really be ponies at all anymore, if they ever were. Before I could get a better look at her, she picked up what she’d dropped and galloped off down a street as quickly as she could. Sky shrugged and shifted her gaze along the multiple forks of road ahead of us.

“Which way should we go?” she asked, scratching her mane. I shrugged. Honestly, I didn’t quite know what we were looking for. Supposedly it would be an old ‘acquaintance’ of mine, but I truly had no idea who they were or what they looked like. For all I knew, they could be a griffin! As I was pacing around considering what to do I felt my hoof step in… something. Looking (squinting, due to the very dim lighting) down, I saw a small pool of blood. What appeared to be a little leg or paw of some sort was in the center of it. My stomach turned a bit as I realized this would be from what the strange-looking mare had dropped. It appeared to be a rat… she was eating it? Not only raw, but freshly killed? I shuddered and moved my train of thought along.

“Either she knew me,” I explained, “or she was afraid we would steal her… rat. Either way, we may as well see if we can find her again. At least, she might point us in the right direction. Let’s just take her path.” Sky nodded and started down the center road with me.

The small light crystals lined the walls of the stone houses, making the streets a little brighter than the entrance was. The green glow they emitted, however, seemed to make the ‘town’ all the more eerie. The citizens seemed more keen to keep to the darker parts of the road. Whenever we approached, they would scurry away like mice, some even seeming to panic when they looked at us. Everyone was constantly afraid… I really didn’t like this place.

If it weren’t for what light there was, I wouldn’t have noticed the wall before I bumped into it. A couple of guards stood outside the gated section of a curved wall, once again made of the same white brick. Like one of the guards outside, the one on the right was armed with those strange box-weapons, but the one on the left had something resembling the napalm-spewing weapon the griffin back in Prim had.

I began to ask if they had seen the mangy-looking mare come through as the pair, in practiced unison, bucked the gate open with a sudden clang. Looking over at Skydive, she seemed as utterly lost as I was. The pair were now… saluting me? What in the name of Celestia was going on here? The more I thought about it, the less it seemed to make sense. This place, at the very least, was home to someone or several someones who wanted me dead. That the guards were just letting me and Sky wherever we pleased was a bizarre contradiction to what I had expected. They should be keeping us out, if anything. Unless…

I motioned for Sky to follow me as I entered the gate. As the guards shut it behind us, I trotted down a now well-lit cobblestone path. The area inside the gate was some kind of garden; a complete inverse to the shady, menacing zone outside these inner walls. The paths were clean and evenly placed, and the light-emitting crystals gave off pure white light rather than the eerie green color of their counterparts. I quickly brought myself to a line of bushes beside the path, far enough from the gate, I hoped, that the guards couldn’t hear me.

“Does this seem off to you?” I asked Sky quietly.

“Pretty much. A clearly rich, gated portion of the city surrounded by obvious poverty? Fairly off for a city of thieves.”

“No, not that. Well… that too, but… why are they letting us in? For a place housing people who want me dead, the guards seem a bit eager to just let me go wherever, don’t they?” Sky seemed to be considering this. “It feels like they know. It feels like a trap.” She sighed.

“Alright, so what now, then?” she questioned. “If they’ve gotten us all the way here, and this is a trap like you said, do you think the guards will just let us leave? And even if they do, we’ll have come all this way just to bail out and ditch the only lead we have on someone who might know what happened to you.” She had a point… two, really. I was caught in a terrible position. Either risk walking into a deathtrap, or walk away and never learn of my past. As much as I hated it, though, she was right. If this was a trap, it was already too late. We really had no reason to turn back now.

“I guess we press on then,” I answered with a sigh. “Where do you think we are?” I looked around, once again taking in the anomalous garden. Why it was even here was a complete mystery to me; were people really taking the time to make this place into a pretty little patch of greenery rather than helping the ponies outside? The level of twisted their priorities were was disturbing.

“You would be in the courtyard, dear,” a reply came from behind me. Turning, I saw a stunning mare standing beside a small stone fountain. Her coat was such a clean white it practically shone, the light from the enchanted crystals seeming to radiate off her. Coupled with a vivid scarlet mane and sapphire eyes, she was just…

“Beautiful,” she spoke again. “They put so much effort into making this place so luscious and scenic, but it was oh so worth the effort. There’s really nowhere quite like this in all the wasteland…” I nodded in agreement, not entirely paying attention to what she was saying. The light seemed to just reflect off of every inch of her in just the right way…

Sky suddenly stepped in front of me. “Have you seen a strange-looking pony come through here?” she asked. “She may have been carrying a rat or something.”

“Hm? Oh… her,” she replied in her soothing, even melodious voice. “Yes, she should be inside. Are you lost?”

“Sure,” Sky answered quickly, “where’s the way in? We kind of need to find her in a hurry.” The snow-white unicorn turned and pointed behind her. “Thanks, sorry we can’t stay and chat.” And with that, Sky took off in a sudden gallop down the path. My gaze lingered on the absolutely beautiful mare in front of me. I wanted to just… stay. But I couldn’t, I had to get moving. I went after Sky, galloping myself to keep pace after a hasty goodbye.

“What’s going on, Sky?” I asked as she stopped in front of a large pair of doors. “Why’d you just take off like that?”

“I don’t like her,” Sky snarled. “There’s something off about her, and I don’t want to find out what.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked honestly. “She seemed… nice.” Sky rolled her eyes at my comment.

“I get it, she’s hot.” I felt myself turn a bit red and started to try and stammer an argument. “I don’t care that she looks as… admittedly gorgeous… as she does, it’s just… her voice.” Now I was even more perplexed.

“Her voice?”

“It’s hard to explain. It sounded… bittersweet. Every word out of her mouth was like a siren song to me, like she’s hidden some poison meaning under what she says. I don’t know, I just… she seemed off, alright?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, not wanting to get her flustered. She nodded thankfully. “Ready?” I asked, putting a hoof on one of the oversized doors. She replied by helping me push the (surprisingly light) door open.

The only word to describe the inside I know of is opulent. This was, point for point, the perfect opposite of the city-fortress-thing outside the inner wall. Tapestries and carpets in vivid purples and reds were consistently strewn about, decorating the well-cleaned white brick walls and marble floors. I huffed as I took in all the extravagance. A dictatorship is what the pair had called it. Were the ‘leaders’ of Mirage truly leaders at all? Or were they just the best thieves, with the most armed friends?

“Hey,” Sky called my attention away from the hallway around us. “You should put on your barding. Before we start anything.” Hadn’t I told myself to do that earlier? I brought up my Pipbuck’s inventory sorting menu and brought the armor up to the top. Pulling it out of my saddlebags, I fitted the straps around myself with some struggle. I definitely envied the unicorns’ ability to levitate things as I tried to keep the body armor steady so I could fit my head through. After about a minute, I more or less had it on. It felt a little loose, but strapping my saddlebags back on tightened it enough.

“I don’t recall asking you to come here,” a voice shouted at the other end of the hallway, “so get out! Can’t you imbeciles see I’m busy? Leave!” Sky and I both looked down the hall to see two ponies obscured by hooded robes (the same purple color as the tapestries, I noted) practically fleeing down a second hallway.

“How much do you want to bet that’s who we need to talk to?” I asked with a laugh.

“The ones in drag or the one yelling?”

“Whichever would be worse, I guess.” We started to walk down the hall, passing multiple potted plants that appeared to be taken from outside. I was very curious about the strange obsession with plants here; did they mean something, or were the ‘dictators’ of Mirage just flower fanatics?

A voice could be heard as we neared the end of the hallway. “...don’t care how much you want to deny it, that fucker just killed my boys in Prim! The ones that got away are certain it’s him! And now she comes in, saying he’s alive and kickin’ and right here in Mirage? You’re fuckin’ joking if you think this is a coincidence.” Clearly we were about to interrupt something. Yet another pair of guards stood outside a solid-looking pair of doors, these of average size but reinforced heavily. The guards here weren’t armed with the back-mounted weapons the others had, but rather large javelin-like poles tipped on both ends with crystals. Judging from Sky’s quiet gasp at them, they weren’t going to be fun to fight against if it came to that. The pair went wide-eyed at the sight of me. One of them immediately knocked a hoof on the door.

“This had better be important; I’m so very sick of distractions today. Enter!” the same voice that had shooed away the robed ponies called out. The pair of guards opened the doors and quickly moved to either side of the adjacent walls. I took a breath and stepped through, Sky at my side.

“See? There he is! I told you! He’s back!” an ecstatic voice yelped out almost immediately. I looked over to see the mangy pony I had seen at the outer gate. In the better lighting, I could see I hadn’t quite been mistaken. Her mane and tail were very bushy and seemingly overgrown, but her coat was equally outgrown and… mangy, for lack of a better word.

I quickly scanned around the room. No guards were present inside. There were currently three people inside excluding Skydive and myself: the mangy, excited mare who just spoke, a leaf-green mare (likely the source of the yelling voice) sitting on an ornate chair at the back end of the room, and a very rugged looking stallion in front of her. As the brief echo from the excited announcement of my appearance died out, the buck turned to face me.

He looked absolutely pissed. Not good.

“You’re the motherfucker?” he questioned menacingly. The mare behind him audibly facehoofed. His gaze shifted to Sky. “You’re the little bitch from that backwater shithole!”

“It’s dangerous to use one’s entire vocabulary in a single sentence, Fuse,” the green pony in the back mused. He pointedly ignored her. I saw Skydive extend a wing back to her holster.

“So, you team up with this freak ‘cause you scared, bitch? You think just ‘cause this motherfucker’s next to ya that you can just canter on out ‘n’ fuck with us? Huh, bitch?” he ranted, continuing on, heedless of Sky having drawn her pistol. I lowered myself into a defensive stance.

“Curb the language, Fuse,” she spoke again, “and watch your tone. I think you know better than to piss him off. If you want to settle this now, I’d be happy to let you both outside. I think we both know who’d win.” Fuse cursed under his breath before spitting on the floor.

“Y’know? Fuck this. I don’t need you. I know how to give a message on my own.”

“Go ahead, you unintelligent pig, say it,” Sky hissed at him. “See if I give a shit what you say to me.”

“Oh… bitch, you are begging me to murder your ass,” he growled back, completely unafraid despite Sky’s ability to blow his head off at any moment.

“Give it your best shot,” I stepped toward him, certain he was serious about his last comment. I wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was between him and Skydive, but I wasn’t about to let him try anything. “You’ll wish you never opened your mouth.”

“I got nothin’ to say to either of you fucks. I don’t need to say nothin’, bitch, I act, not talk. When I get a point across, when I leave a fuckin’ message, it’s louder than words.” With that, he stormed off out the door, cursing at the guards as he went.

“Come up here,” the leaf-green pony ordered. “All of you.” Sky holstered her gun and trotted up with me. The mangy, dirt-brown pony followed behind us. As we came up to her, I noticed her give a shivering sigh. “Well…”

“I told you! He’s back!” the pony behind us yipped, clearly glad to see… me. I was equally worried as I was slightly relieved that there was at least someone here who could tell me something of my past.

“Shut it!” the mare before us ordered. I could hear the mangy one whimper. I took note that the ornate-looking chair was much more than just that. It was gilded and studded with gemstones; this was a throne. This would be one of the dictators, then. She looked me over from behind the pair of tinted reading glasses she wore for several uneasing, quiet seconds. “For the love of Luna…” she finally broke the quiet, “Tamber. Work with him, and remember our discussion. Lily needs to hear about this.” She stood up and started past us for the door before quickly turning around to address me again. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t, sorry. I only just got here.” She immediately looked relieved at the answer, and continued for the door. I looked to Skydive, who merely shrugged as she met my gaze. “You’re Tamber, then?” I asked the bushy-coated mare left with us. She gave a huge, toothy grin that answered the question. I recoiled as I noticed what else the smile showed. Every one of her teeth were canines. Ponies don’t have fangs, the charcoal unicorn echoed in my head. I was ready to back away completely when she spoke out again, saying something I’d been waiting to hear since I woke up days ago.

A name.

“Welcome home, Cinder!”

* * *

Cinder… I tossed the name around in my head as I lay on the couch next to Skydive. We had been taken to what had been my personal quarters; it was a room that was locked and boarded over at the furthest end of the building. Tamber had simply ripped the boards from the wall before producing a key she had hidden. (Really, she just wore it as a necklace, but the overgrown fur of her coat concealed it completely.) Once inside, she told us to wait until she came back. I could hear her pacing up and down the hall outside, but I was honestly content to rest for a while and process everything that had just happened in the last hour.

First: I was a member of a group of five (now six; I had been replaced under the assumption I was dead) leaders of Mirage. Mirage was once a raider fortress some time ago, until the five of us that would come to ‘own’ it cleared them out. Afterward, ponies came to the superstructure in search of salvage and loot. When they realized that we lived there, many elected to stay and build stable lives for themselves under our protection. Unfortunately, it meant many unsavory types - namely thieves - flocked to the place in droves, finding the budding town an easy target. When caught, their punishment was forced labor in order to rebuild the various damaged sections of the fortress. Once that was finished, most of the convicts were allowed to stay and become residents themselves. Over time, this led to Mirage’s reputation as a haven of criminals. While much of the rumors were unfounded, theft and even murder are still present more consistently in Mirage than just about any other ‘civilized’ city in the wastes.

Second: I had just met Lit Fuse, the de facto leader of the Crystal Gangers. According to Sky, he ordered small groups of his men out to raid caravans and settlements. He had sent several of these groups after New Trottingham while she was there, and it was often her that stopped them. Dynamite, it seemed, was very ineffective at hitting a flying target. Now, however, Sky and I had slain several of the Gangers at Prim. When the ones I had scared off returned to their base, he immediately came to Mirage to demand my death. That was when I walked in.

Finally: Lamia, the green mare I had spoken to and the current supreme leader of Mirage, was up to something. Something I wouldn’t like, according to Tamber. Those robed ponies were members of a growing cult in the town, a cult dedicated to worship of their five leaders. To me, it sounded like Lamia was just full of herself and felt like having attention. Tamber said she believed it was worse than that, but refused to talk about it then.

I sighed, rubbing my forehooves against my aching temples. So much had just happened all at once. My head was throbbing as my brain tried to come to grips with it all at the same time. In just one hour I learned a fair amount of my past, I was given a home, a group I belonged to, and a name(finally!). As much as it was what I had hoped to find… I felt like I was unprepared for it. At least, all of it in such short order. Regardless, I was elated to have learned all I did, and to know I was getting answers after all. If only I knew what to make of them…

The door opened and Tamber entered looking quite pleased with herself. “Right, no one’s around, Mistress Lamia is with Lily in her quarters. Good!” She quickly paced in a small circle before sitting down on the floor. Skydive’s eyes jumped between Tamber and the chair behind her before giving me a confounded look. I smiled and shrugged.

“Before I start… do you really not remember anything? Anything at all?” she questioned, a horribly sad expression on her face.

“Yes,” I replied for the third time since Lamia had left us with her. She whimpered(were ponies supposed to whimper?) dolefully.

“I guess that’ll have to do,” she muttered to herself as she reached into the oversized satchel she carried with her. It was curious to see her dig around in it with her muzzle; I briefly wondered if that would be what I would have to do if it weren’t for my Pipbuck. I sent a silent thanks to Crutches for letting me use it. When Tamber finally returned from the recesses of her bag, she brought a small glass ball with her.

Scratch that. A small memory orb. It was, unlike the previous one, a dark charcoal color with odd, swirling red wisps. The pattern was mesmerizing.

“You said to give this to you,” she said, spitting it onto the closed satchel, “if you came back. Well… specifically, if something weird happened and you came back. Or to just watch it on my own if you were gone for more than a few weeks. I kept it safe and hidden, just like you asked!” Skydive pulled it to herself with a forehoof and lifted it onto the couch.

“Uh… thanks,” I said, still slightly entranced by the (mildly saliva-coated) bizarrely patterned orb. “Should I?” I asked Sky, wanting her opinion before diving into it. Even if it was my own idea in the first place…

“You’re perfectly safe,” Tamber piped up again, not really giving Sky a chance to answer. “You said to make sure nopony but you knew about it, even after I gave it to you. I’m supposed to bar the door back up until you knock. I’ll be right outside!” Looking back to Skydive, she sighed.

“We don’t have much else going on right now. You may as-”

“Shush!” Tamber yelped suddenly. Sky shot her an angry glare, but Tamber wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she was… sniffing. Her head went straight up and proceeded to turn to the door. She got to her hooves and slowly opened the door. “Hey! I thought I told you to go to the gate!” she yelled. I heard a guard pony stammer a response fruitlessly. “I don’t care if there’s two on watch already, scram! Get!” The guard audibly galloped down the hallway and out of earshot.

“Sorry,” she said, once again clearly elated with herself. “It might not be as uncrowded as I hoped. I can shoo them all away while I’m out there, though!” I looked down at the orb Sky held. I knew there would be some answers in there that I wanted. There had to be for me to leave a message in case something like… like all this happened. But I also made it clear I wanted absolutely no one but myself and Tamber to know what was in it. As… reliable… as Tamber seemed, I didn’t want to risk it.

“I’m fine, Tamber. I can look at it later, where there’s certainly nobody around to walk in on me. Thank you, though.” She seemed to want to argue at first, but the ‘thank you’ elicited a smile so wide (and freakishly toothy) she could have torn her face. “Sky, can you hold on to that? I… don’t want to touch it.” She nodded and buried it in her own saddlebags. “How long of a wait do you think we have before… what are we waiting for, exactly?”

“Mistress Lamia will send someone when she knows what she wants to do. But… be careful. I don’t trust her when it comes to you. She was a little too eager when we heard you disappeared, and… well, she hardly seemed surprised is all. You told me yourself you didn’t trust her either.” I nodded. It seemed we could be here for a while. Skydive elected to return to messing with her disassembled pistols. I suddenly recalled she’d drawn one of them against Fuse. Had that fight escalated, she wouldn’t have been able to actually use it.

I didn’t want to delve too deep into that right now. I needed to take a break from all the sudden drama; I was starting to stress out. I opened my saddlebag to retrieve a bottle of water when my hoof brushed against something. Something with a sharper corner than anything I remembered putting in here…

I yanked out the object along with the water bottle. It was the book… I remembered the steel-colored unicorn floating it to me. ‘A light in the darkness to guide me’ huh? Well, there was no better time than now. I flipped open the cover and looked at the first few pages. There was no title, I noticed, and immediately jumped into some sort of prologue. Curiously, it was some article about Pipbucks…

In a flicker of memory, I recalled the mare’s warning to keep this a secret. My eyes darted to Tamber. She was sitting on the rug again, staring at me. Very intently staring at me. “Uh… I’m just gonna read this until something happens. You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to.” She shook her head at the comment. “Well… can you not, uh… stare at me? It’s a bit creepy. Sorry.” This time she nodded and got up. She paced around in a circle again before sitting back down on the rug, and promptly laying the rest of herself down as well. There was a chair open, as well as a bed in the corner, but she chose to sleep on the floor? I just sighed, refusing to confuse myself further by trying to explain it to myself. Instead, I just turned my attention back to my book.

* * *

“Your presence has been requested by Miss Lamia; you are to bring Cinder and his companion with you,” a gruff voice called from the other side of the door. I reflexively closed the book, cursing myself for not marking the page I was on. Tamber immediately sprang up to her hooves, startling Sky and I.

“On it!” she called back. She turned to face us on the couch. “Well, I guess it’s time to move. Are you ready, Cinder?” I nodded. “And…” she trailed off looking at my friend beside me.

“Skydive,” Sky finished for her with pointed annoyance.

“Right! Sorry! Well, anyway,” she turned and pulled the door open, “after you.” As I stepped out behind Skydive, I caught Tamber staring intently at something on the wall.

“Are you alright?” I asked, trying to discern what it was that had her attention. She lifted her other forehoof and pressed it on a small black spot on one of the bricks. Pulling it away, she grimaced at the squashed remains of a spider that was left.

“Yea… nothin’ to worry about.” She closed the door and took the lead to guide us. We walked down multiple identical hallways en route to wherever this Lamia elected to call us to. Guards were posted every now and again outside of doors, and each one carried the same metal pole weapon. I catalogued it away with my numerous other questions to ask later. The list was sadly growing much faster than it was shrinking.

After a couple more minutes of trotting, we arrived at a very different pair of doors than the ones seemingly cut and copied all up and down the hallways. These ones, while not reinforced like the ones into the room we first encountered Lamia in, looked fairly sturdy if only due to their size. The pattern of barring was identical to the others, but this time the bars were of gold rather than iron and steel.

The guards on either side pushed the door open to reveal a large dining hall. A long table, placed horizontally to the door, spanned the majority of the room’s length; at least a solid twelve feet. Lamia sat at the table opposite the three empty chairs clearly reserved for Tamber, Sky, and myself. To her right were two ponies in the same gaudy purple robes we’d seen earlier, and to her left was one more.

“Please, come and sit. Dinner should be here shortly,” she addressed us and beckoned us over to the chairs. As we sat down, she spoke up again. “I’m so sorry about the wait, Cinder. There were just… several preparations to make.”

“Preparations for what?” I asked, Tamber’s caution still fresh in my mind.

“Why, a celebration of course!” she answered cheerily.

“Celebration?” Sky asked, not content to just listen to the conversation this time. I hoped her pistols were put together again properly, if only as a precaution.

“Absolutely! Cinder here went missing almost a week ago, you see. We were so concerned when we lost track of you.” According to Tamber, that was a lie. “But you’ve returned. And, as unfortunate as the circumstances are, I believe that’s cause for a celebration! Of course, I had to make preparations for it. Get this room set up - it’s hardly used, you know - and get somepony to cook us up something to eat. And, of course…” she telekinetically lowered the glass she had been drinking from onto her plate, making the slightest of pinging sounds. At that moment, the robed ponies all removed their hoods.

Skydive gasped loudly, or perhaps it was the combined volume of both of us. Each of the three robed ponies - no, they were anything but ponies. The one to Lamia’s right seemed semi-normal, like Tamber, only her coat was matted and striped unnaturally. I couldn’t discern any eyelashes or eyelids on her either. To Lamia’s left, however… the one furthest from her had eyes that were completely white, and even seemed to glow! His mane was wispy and seemed to billow in a nonexistent wind. Of all of them, the one between him and Lamia was completely frightening - he had a second fucking head! The pair of faces twirled about in a motion that made me horribly queasy. While one seemed to smile contently, the other merely scowled.

“...I had to invite the family,” she finished, licking her lips with a forked tongue. “Welcome home!”

Footnote: Level up!
Quest perk added: He's Got the Touch: You seem to have magic flow right through your veins; was your great great great great grandfather a unicorn? In any case, that magic touch of yours seems to apply to memory orbs as well, so watch out! Physical contact with a memory orb will immediately pull you into them.

|It’s been a while, readers! I wanted to say thanks again for following this story. I’d like to also give a wholehearted thanks to my editor once again for the extra help pushing this chapter through; I needed it more than you know. And, before I forget, happy Nightmare Night!|

Chapter 6 - The Burdens of the Present

Chapter 6 - The Burdens of the Present
“She couldn’t be right. I was better than that. I had to be better than that.”

Fear.

Fear is powerful. Fear can consume all rational thought, all identity, and all of your senses in an instant. Fear is a reaction to something that threatens you; it’s a response when you’re in danger. Fear, for some, can be a motivator - if they fear something resulting from inaction, they can use it to drive themselves to do what, under normal circumstances, they could never or would never even attempt. Fear leads you to either flee or act. In that way, fear is simple by nature.

What I felt, beholding the sight before me, was not fear. Fear seemed almost a welcome change that I would embrace, had I the choice. But no, I had no fear to drive me to either take Skydive and run, or immediately attack what was in front of me. I had no fear to shut away my thoughts and frantic fantasies about how the creatures I was looking at were even possible. Instead, what I felt rooted me in place and prevented me even closing my eyes. What I felt…

...was terror.

* * *

“So… from what I’ve been able to understand, you have no memory of who we are. Is that so?” I didn’t reply. I didn’t even nod.

“He can’t remember anything,” Tamber replied once she realized I wasn’t about to. My eyes lingered on her mouth full of wicked-looking canine teeth. What was she? What had she gone through to become… this?

“I asked him, not you. Quiet,” Lamia scolded with a nasty tone. Tamber seemed caught between an angry glare and a look of shame. I heard a shaking sound from the chair beside me, partially breaking my frightened stupor. Skydive was shivering, though not terribly, with her gaze locked on the endless white of the not-a-pony in front of her’s eyes. Shock was clearly being no kinder to her than it was to me.

“Cinder?” Lamia called, still trying for an answer from me. I swallowed hard, trying to use the distraction I had from Skydive to stave off the overwhelming terror I couldn’t seem to break myself from.

“N-no, I… I don’t,” I choked out. I could hear another tremor from Sky.

“Hm. Oh, where are my manners…” she said with a chuckle before turning to a doorway at my right. “We need water,” she called out to whatever lay beyond the doors. “So sorry, you must be simply parched after all that time out in the desert.” After a few moments, a purple-robed pony trotted in carefully, balancing a dish with several glasses of water on her back. I leered at the hood, worried of what abomination this one could be. As she slid the platter onto the table, nudging it toward me with her muzzle, I only saw a regular pony’s face. A light orange coated mare peered up at me cautiously before dropping her head to face the floor again. “You may go,” Lamia instructed, levitating one of the elegant-looking glasses of water toward herself. The mare quickly backed away and went back through the doors, closing them quickly behind her.

“Here.” Lamia levitated a glass to Skydive and I, then to each of her companions. I noticed - trying to stave off the paralysing fear as best as I could - that she hadn’t passed a glass to either Tamber or the white-eyed stallion Sky was still staring at. Lamia made it fairly obvious she either disliked or had no respect for Tamber, but why keep a glass from the creep to her left?

I heard Skydive mutter something unintelligible. Turning, I saw she had finally averted her gaze from the pupilless stallion and to her glass. I glanced down to it only to find the water was beginning to freeze in the glass. Sky wasn’t shivering from fear, (or at least not entirely) whatever that freak in front of her was doing was actually freezing her!

I quickly grabbed the nearest leg of Sky’s chair and pulled it around my own, slotting her between Tamber and I - notably away from Mr. Freeze. Skydive didn’t seem to react whatsoever, as if she didn’t even notice.

“Are you alright?” Lamia questioned. There was some kind of hidden spite under the innocent-sounding tone of hers. I think I understood what Sky meant about the (admittedly hot) mare out in the garden…

“I think-” I began, only to cut myself off as I looked back up at her. Her own glass was frozen, and the mare to her right’s seemed to have tiny shards of ice floating in it. Lamia paid no honest attention to me, she was glancing between all the glasses. And smiling. For some reason, I lost my nerve to speak.

Tamber darted her eyes between Sky and myself before hesitantly speaking, “I think he wants to-”

“Cinder can answer for himself, for the last time!” Lamia interrupted angrily. “Cinder… is everything al-”

“No.” Lamia seemed a bit startled that I cut her off. “I think Sky and I will be leaving.” I kept my eyes firmly locked on anything that wasn’t the group on the other side of the table. The moment I looked back over at Lamia… something was wrong here, and I did not want to find out what it was the hard way.

“Dinner hasn’t even arrived yet, and we have so much to catch up on… are you sure?” she questioned in her poisonously innocent voice.

“Maybe some other time,” I claimed - an offer I had no intention of following through with. Under my breath, “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

* * *

I slowly walked Skydive down the halls toward my room. She was still out of it, only occasionally muttering unintelligible noises as if she was asleep. For all I knew, she might be. Tamber was supporting her since I couldn’t risk lifting her myself. I grimaced - despite all she’d done for me, I couldn’t even help her stand without hurting her. This was complete garbage, and I felt no better than that.

At least it seemed like I’d found someone to trust in Tamber. She was willingly helpful (beyond belief), and Lamia seemed rather poorly dispositioned toward her. If I hadn’t trusted her in the first place, and she didn’t like Tamber, then Tamber was likely on my side. As for the rest of those creeps… they’d already hurt Skydive. It would take a lot to convince me they weren’t enemies, no matter how ‘polite’ they tried to act.

“All these nasty terms… ‘freak’, ‘creep’, ‘abomination’... since when were you so ‘normal’ that you could judge?” an unwelcome rasp made an appearance in my head. Fuck off, I growled inwardly. Of all things right now, the last I needed was his input.

“Oh, they’re fairly scary, I won’t deny it. That two-headed one especially. But really… you’re so frightened by something that could be much, much worse. To the point of labelling them freaks before you even know them, even. That’s a terrible way to make friends, you know.” As if you would know the first thing about making a friend. You’re a voice in one pony’s head, and all you’ve done is piss him off, I retorted, trying hard not to accidentally start talking out loud. It was harder than I thought it would be.

“I know plenty on the subject. But that’s not a conversation you deserve to have.” I huffed. How arrogant can someone in a position as low as his possibly get? “But really… you should stop insulting them so much. After all… you are one of them, remember?” he trailed off laughing. I… no, no, I was not one of those… things! I palled around with them, but I wasn’t whatever they were. I was a pony - regardless of my burning touch - through and through! If I was one of them, why did I look exactly like a pony instead of being deformed like they were?

“That’s what I mean. You think you’re that much above them, that you’re ‘normal’ compared to them. Just because you look different doesn’t mean you are different.” No… no, you’re wrong, I argued internally. “At least you can tell with them! They actually look like the monsters they are. It could be worse… they could be like you.” I couldn’t even keep stammering in my head to drown him out. “Your little ‘friend’ Skydive was oh-so-terrified when she saw them. Just wait until she realizes she just can’t see it in you.” I bit my lip, trying to hold back a scream for him to shut up. My gaze shifted to Sky. “You’re what could be worse, Cinder. Just as much of a terrifying, threatening monster… but she won’t be able to tell until it’s too late…”

No… he was wrong… I… he was wrong! She knew! She… she knew, and she accepted me despite it! I wasn’t the same as them, and I never would be! Even if I had the same power for the same reasons, we were… we were different fundamentally. I had control, and I exercised it. I kept the worst of what that stupid bastard of a voice could do at bay. If I had this burning touch for the same reason they looked like they did, then I had the reins on him; I was able to keep my own appearance. He was wrong! He had to be wrong… if he wasn’t, and I was just another monster…

...he had to be wrong…

* * *

Skydive was fast asleep on the bed. She was no longer cold, but we layered on some extra blankets just to be safe. Now, Tamber sat in a well-preserved felt chair in the corner of the room beside the bed, while I lay on the same couch from before.

“Alright,” I broke the silence. Tamber turned to me with devoted attention. “I have to know… what the hell were they?” She sighed.

“I still can’t believe you really don’t remember anything… it must be so hard. Well… Miss Lamia refuses to tell me very much; what I know I’ve had to get from her muttering to herself or writing down somewhere. I’m guessing you mean why we look… different?” I nodded. “Well… you’re right if you guessed we’re not exactly the standard definition of ‘pony’ anymore. Miss Lamia calls us Subjugators. Well… them; she mostly just calls me ‘mutt’ or something. Whatever that means… anyway, we’ve all gone through some kind of event or process or something like that which got us like we are now.

“From what she actually told me, we’re all a hybrid of sorts. We’ve been… ‘mixed’ somehow with other animals and creatures. For example, I’m part wolf.” That explained… a hell of a lot, actually. “Ben - the two-headed guy - is part Hydra. He’s real nice, by the way. Just don’t talk to Mal… he’s a jerk.”

“Mal being…?”

“The other head, the nasty one that’s always got an angry look.” I nodded, not certain I wanted to talk to either of them. “Let’s see… Lily - err, Vena… she’s got some spider in her. Honestly, she’s really creepy… I don’t know why Miss Lamia likes her so much. She has these little pet spiders, and it’s just plain freaky, y’know? And the damn things are everywhere. Like little spies or something… I make a point of stepping on ‘em when I see ‘em.”

“Doesn’t that piss her off?” I asked, wondering if this was how Tamber may have gotten on Lamia’s bad side. Tamber shrugged with a grin.

“You never seemed to care.” Right… maybe that’s how both of us got on her bad side.

“What about the white one, the one that was… whatever the hell he was doing. What’s he?”

“Oh, Rime? I… I really don’t know. Neither does Ben; if Vena did, she wouldn’t tell me. He’s only been here for a few days, actually. He’s why I’m a bit wary about Miss Lamia, he suddenly appeared rather quickly after you vanished. And he looks a lot like one of the Orchid guys.”

“Orchid guys?” I asked, wishing she would realize that no memory meant no memory. I wasn’t about to recognize little terms she, or perhaps I, used to use.

“You’ve seen some of them, I’m sure. They go around wearing those silly purple robes? They’re like a cult or something; Miss Lamia seems to enjoy them, so she lets them stick around. I’m not exactly sure what they do, but Rime looks way too similar to one of the members. I think they’re called the Amaranthine Orchid. Sometimes their members up and vanish, and the guy I think Rime looks like went missing not too long before Rime made his sudden appearance.” I recalled the steel-coated mare mentioning something about sacrifices… if she was right, this just got very freaky.

“So… how do you all go about turning into… Subjugators, exactly?” I jumped back to the original topic.

“I don’t know,” Tamber replied disheartenedly, “I don’t remember, I mean… the earliest I can remember is waking up in some sandy part of the wasteland nearby with Miss Lamia staring at me. I think she remembers how it happens, and you. Or… you used to…” I heard Tamber give a whiny sigh. “Vena wouldn’t bother telling me if she did, and Rime hasn’t said a word since he’s been here. At least, not that I’ve heard. As for Ben and Mal… well, no offense to ‘em, but they’ve kinda hardly got half a brain to themselves. If they know what happened to them, I doubt you’d understand it if they tried to explain.”

“...Right… so, am I really…” I trailed off, the recent internal conversation still weighing down on me.

“Yep. Just like us.” I withheld a shudder at her phrasing. “Well… not exactly. You always seemed a bit different; it was completely fascinating to Miss Lamia. I’m sure you noticed you don’t look different like we do.” I nodded. “Well… Miss Lamia used to go on about how you were some ‘perfect version’ of us or something. She got the name Subjugator from what she says we do; we ‘subjugate’ the animal half of ourselves. Apparently, you do a better job of that than the rest of us… I don’t really understand any of it. All I really know is that it means you’re the biggest and baddest of the group, and that made you the boss!”

“Wait… what? I… isn’t that Lamia, I figured? If not all of you? I thought Mirage was controlled by all of you together.”

“Well… no, not really. It used to be like that, when you were around all the time. Before we found this old fort, we just kind of… wandered. Wherever you went, Lamia, Vena, and I followed. You seemed to know what you were doing. Eventually, we saw this place and started to poke around. Lots of raiders, lots of fighting. I told you before.”

“Then, do you know… what I am?” I asked nervously. I didn’t know if I was ready for the answer. What manner of creature burned what they touched? I doubted it could be anything good.

“Hm… you told me once a while back. You never really liked to talk about it. Um…” she closed her eyes and seemed to struggle to remember. There was a soft moan from under the bed sheets. I immediately jumped to my hooves and pulled back the blankets over Skydive.

“What happened?” she asked, her voice soft and hoarse.

“I don’t know; you need to get some rest. That Rime person, he did something. I intend on finding out what, and what the rest of those… ponies,” I chose my word carefully, “...are capable of. So far, I really don’t like them.”

“Aren’t… you…” Sky was already falling asleep again quickly. Whatever Rime had done had drained all the energy from her. I sighed heavily, knowing exactly where she was going with her question.

“Yes… I’m no different than they are.” I heard a raspy chuckle in the back of my mind. “Maybe worse…”

“N-no… you’re… fine…” I pulled the blankets back over her, careful not to brush my hoof against her.

“You need to get some sleep. What would Crutches say?” That got her to smile, if only for a moment.

“Not fair.” With that, she closed her eyes again. This wasn’t fair. She’d brought me all the way here, somewhere I was supposed to belong and be safe and… and this is what she got. Every time… all I ever seemed to do was get her hurt, over and over again. My eyes burned with tears that never fell.

“Cinder?” Tamber called out. I turned to face her. “Oh… are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I muttered dejectedly. “You were saying what I was?”

“Eh… I really don’t know. I’m sorry… it had something to do with fire, lots of fire. I’m really sorry… are you sure you’re okay?” She looked genuinely worried.

“I’ll be fine,” I replied, rubbing my eyes. “I think I just need sleep.”

“You haven’t eaten anything yet,” Tamber informed me. “It’s probably best you have some kind of dinner first.” As if on cue, my stomach rumbled loudly. I sighed, conceding the point. I pulled up my Pipbuck’s inventory sorter and skimmed through my items. Among my choices were a few slabs of gecko meat, some fresh-looking carrots, and a few boxed lunches - courtesy of Ash. Looking at the gecko meat, I began to regret bothering to take it… I had no intention of eating it raw, but I also had no idea how to cook it. (I realized Ditzy Doo never mentioned it in her guide, now that I thought about it.) On top of that… it was going to smell very nasty if I didn’t do something with it quickly. I pulled the hunks of meat out of my bags, setting them aside before pulling out one of the boxed lunches.

“You’re not going to eat those?” Tamber asked, her head tilted in curiosity. I shook my head as I also pulled out the Sunrise Sarsaparilla that had been in my bags for a while now. I figured I may as well try it now, before it goes bad or something. If it even could. From the corner of my eye, I could see Tamber grinning and staring at me like a fool.

“Are… you okay, there?” I questioned tentatively.

“You didn’t so happen to bring those for me, did you?” she asked, the (absolutely creepy) fanged grin not leaving her for a second.

“If you want ‘em, take ‘em. I thought I said-” I was cut off by Tamber’s sudden lunge toward the hunks of gecko, only barely able to get out of her way. I grimaced as she tore into them, literally as well as figuratively. A bit of gecko got stuck to my cheek. Wiping it off with a brief shudder, I picked up the lunchbox and Sarsaparilla bottle and sat down on the chair beside the bed - pointedly away from my voracious friend.

“How did you know?” Tamber asked with her mouth still full of (eww, raw) gecko meat.

“Know what?” I questioned back, trying to concentrate on eating the trail mix and salad that were in the box.

“I love gecko! It’s my favorite!” she answered, thankfully after having swallowed first. Glancing up as I tried to pull the cap off of the Sarsaparilla bottle, I noticed she’d actually already finished all three hunks of meat. ‘Voracious’ wasn’t a strong enough description…

“Well… you’re welcome? I just kind of had it with me; I already told you I had no idea any of you even existed until just today.” About a hundred times, I wanted to add on. Instead, I took a drink from the bottle.

Despite being lukewarm, the sarsaparilla maintained its fizziness and completely delicious flavor even 200 years after it was made… why had I not tried this before? Ash had given me a bottle of Sparkle~Cola before, but it paled in comparison to this. I lifted the bottle to my lips and took another drink. I needed more of these…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The tongues of flame danced and licked at my legs, but I no longer felt anything from them. It was official: I was used to creepy. I laid down on the non-existent floor and closed my eyes, too tired to deal with the voice in my head tonight. I began to wonder if I could fall asleep here… what would happen?

“You’re already sleeping,” the rasp answered for me, “there’s not much reason for you to do it a second time.” Damn. That would’ve been interesting. I lifted my head and looked around. There was nothing to see save the flames. I frowned at the continued absence of my mystery head voice.

“Tamber is a wolf… Vena is a spider… and Ben is a hydra,” I recited what Tamber had told me. “What are we?”

“Why would I tell you?” he questioned back. I sighed; why did he always have to be so difficult?

“I don’t know, I was hoping you’d explain. Maybe I could understand why you’re like you are, why I can do the things I can… anything.” I honestly hadn’t expected him to tell me, but it was worth the chance. I laid my head back down and closed my eyes again. There wasn’t much to do until I woke up.

Time marched on very slowly. And there was no way to tell if I’d been lying still for minutes or just a second. This was truly a boring place to be. I opened my eyes again, wishing that something would happen, be it waking up or something to appear and just be for a moment. A burning void was hardly a good dream to have night after night.

“You said you wanted out,” I spoke, deciding even the obnoxious conversations the rasp provided would be better than nothing.

“Yes. What of it?” I was surprised he actually chose to respond.

“What did you mean? I’m going to guess you’re… whatever my other half is. Is it even possible to get you out? What’s the whole deal with that?” There were several moments of silence from him. I was fairly sure he wasn’t going to give me an answer.

“You’re… actually thinking about it?” he finally responded. “Hm… there is a way. I don’t know if you could find anyone able to do it, but yes, we can be separated. As for what comes next, I believe I would be wholly reformed. Otherwise, I would likely die immediately.” I wasn’t sure he liked the possibility of the latter. “I would be better off than in here,” he asserted.

“So, are you something I can just get removed? What are you right now, if anything?” I asked, praying for a straight answer rather than his usual dance around the question.

“I have no clue. I don’t think any simple surgery will solve our problem, though.”

“Well, what’s the way you know about?” He maintained silence for a while, clearly debating whether or not he wanted to answer me.

“If you see it, I’ll let you know. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.” I began to raise the question of how I was supposed to find whatever it was without knowing anything about it, but I felt a tug on my conscious. I was waking up.

I was never going to learn anything from this voice…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked Skydive for the third time as she slowly gathered her things back into her saddlebags. She was already up and going by the time I opened my eyes, having finished fiddling with her pistols. The end result of her toying, she informed me, was putting all the best-functioning parts of the spare pistols into Crutches’ to make it work better than before.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she responded, continuing on with her packing before letting out a sigh. “I… I’m worried about New Trottingham. Fuse seemed genuinely pissed off, and it was directed at me and the town. In case you couldn’t tell, pissing off a guy with a lot of explosives and a small army of idiots is a very bad idea.”

“He was also after me, I think,” I added.

“Well, yes, but he’s far more likely to send the high explosives straight to New Trottingham. If he wanted a single pony dead, all it would really take is one pony and a gun,” she retorted, then paused. “...Usually, anyway.” I chuckled.

“I’m going home,” Sky let out after a small silence. “When… if Fuse so chooses to actually put some bite in his bark for once, New Trottingham needs me there to defend it. Plus… I think you’ve finally found home.” I shuddered a bit at the comment. This place hardly felt “homey” to me. She continued without enough pause for me to raise objection. “I’m sorry to be this… abrupt about it, but I didn’t expect something like this to come up. I really need to leave as soon as I can if I’m going to get to New Trottingham before Fuse and his gang do.”

“You said it like he’s made this kind of threat before,” I brought up when her unsteady goodbye lulled, “has he?” She nodded. “And he’s not gone through with it?” Sky started to bring up an argument as I continued, fairly certain of the answer already. “Then don’t let it bother you too much. I know he looked serious, but still. Don’t get too worked up over it; everything’s going to be fine.” I gave her a reassuring poke - making sure to keep my hoof on the thicker parts of her barding, (for some reason, the burn of my touch seemed to ignore the leather barding.) “Especially since you’re there to protect them.” Skydive blushed a bit and smiled.

“Thank you.”

*** *** ***

Sky walked out of the large twin doors at the front of the keep, bound for New Trottingham. For home. I doubted this was the last I’d see of her… I was determined to make regular trips to the town. I still wasn’t so sure about Mirage… the place had a vibe I just couldn’t shake off, no matter how hard I tried. And as per my “family”... I had mixed feelings. As if on cue, Lamia appeared around the corner, trotting down the hall distractedly at a brisk pace. She nearly bumped into me before her eyes left the parchment she levitated before her.

“Oh? Is your little pegasus friend leaving?” I nodded silently. “Hm. Well, it was good I ran into you,” she continued, clearly uninterested in Sky in the least. “I just received this rather… obnoxious… piece of parchment from an unfortunately valuable friend of ours.” She turned it around to show me.

“It’s a list,” I pointed out, returning the same uninterested tone. My eyes returned to the gate Skydive had now vanished behind. I was going to miss her… despite the weird social habits she had.

“Yes,” Lamia continued, breaking my reverie before it had a fair chance to begin, “a little ‘shopping list’ courtesy of Avarice. She dropped this off just before you arrived.” I still didn’t see what the problem was. There were four things on the list.

“Why is a list this small a problem,” I asked as I pushed it back toward her, “and why does it concern me?”

“It’s a problem because the things on this list are horrendously specific! A piece of technology allegedly found in some rotted-out Stable, a page torn from one specific book… they’re senselessly stupid and exact. The damned thing gives exact locations!”

“That makes it easier, I’d think,” I retorted, still curious as to why she intended me to take care of the stupid thing for her. Lamia herself seemed to think the items were meaningless; why did she actually want someone to go get them anyway? Or was this just to try and get me away? Perhaps killed, again?

“Except the locations are all over the place! The Stable is relatively close to here, but the factory she specified is almost at the damned border to Mustangia!” She spat a curse before muttering, “Close enough to the damned wall they could do it themselves…”

“Alright, why should I be the one to do this? Isn’t there someone else, someone more… suited to this kind of thing?” I asked, curious to hear whatever she came up with.

“Unfortunately not. Typically I’d send Ben or Tamber out, but at least one of these pieces of junk will require actual social interaction; Ben’s already out of the question. Tamber, on the other hoof, is already off doing something Vena sent her out for. Who knows when she’ll be back. Myself and Vena need be here to watch over Mirage, and Rime… he’s not well. I’m still trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. So, to my dismay, the task falls to you.” I snorted. “I realize you only just got here, but sadly, we can’t ignore a request from Avarice. We owe the bitch…” I grabbed the list and stuck it in one of the pockets in my barding. Clearly, I wasn’t allowed to decline the task.

“Oh? When did you get that?” Lamia asked, eyeballing my Pipbuck as I pushed the note snugly into place.

“It was a gift.”

“Very convenient… let me see it for a moment. It has a map function if I recall. That makes things a fair bit easier…” I sighed as I lifted my foreleg and let her toy with the device. This was going to be a pain.

*** *** ***

This Avarice had asked for the strangest odds and ends in her request. An “advanced model of an Arcane Resonance Disruptor, likely to be found within Stable 57”, along with “any pages from ‘the Se-Alligans chapter’ found in the Dawn’s Rise settlement”, and one “ANLRCDD schematics copy, located in the MAS Arcanotech Facility ruins”. I didn’t have a clue what any of this stuff would even be. Schematics would probably be easy to spot, but how was I supposed to tell which book pages were from that one specific chapter, and what book was it from? Or for that matter, what the hell an “Arcane Resonance Disruptor” was supposed to be?

I blinked the harsh sunlight away from my eyes and continued trotting. The closest place mentioned was Stable 57; strangely enough, I had passed it on the way from Prim to Mirage. It was supposedly off to the side of the very road Sky and I had taken. I kept my pace quicker than normal in hopes of perhaps catching up to her.

Several minutes later, I found myself directly west of the Stable on my Pipbuck map. I felt my heart sink a little at not having found her. I shouldn’t have cared; we’d already said our goodbyes anyway. It was probably better that she believed I was (relatively) safe and sound in Mirage, and not out wandering again already. But still…

I turned and trotted off the paved roadway and headed for the Stable. Though they didn’t make up the roadside entirely, the consistent and large dunes the sand formed were much harder to keep my hooves steady on. I pressed through, trying to avoid them as much as I could. Stable 57 wasn’t too far off the beaten path, thankfully. I was quite close to the marker on my map when I caught a glint of light glaring from the small cliff face ahead. Lamia had mentioned a “big metal door” when she described what a Stable would look like. If I had to guess, this would be it.

Approaching a chasm in the wall, I found what reflected the light: a group of metal crates piled in a corner. I opened them, fairly certain they were abandoned, and looted the contents - two packs and one carton of cigarettes. I didn’t exactly want to pick up the habit of smoking, (something my broken mind decided to enforce was bad) but if nothing else, I was sure I could trade them to someone who already did for some food. A warm gust of air blew the lid of one of the boxes away, further down the small crevasse, before landing against the rocky wall with a loud, metallic thud.

“Whoa!” a startled yelp sounded from nearby the lid. It was a mare’s voice. I turned to the source of the voice, waiting for them to show themselves. Now that I was thinking, it was a rather familiar mare’s voice…

The vividly blue tail caught my eye just as I was about to ask.

“Sky?” I called out. Another small yelp as she jumped back to see who was there.

“Wha- Cinder?” she returned. “Why are you here? Aren’t you staying in Mirage?”

“Yes. Well… no. Actually… kinda?” I scratched my mane as I searched for the right words to explain. “I am, I think, but apparently Lamia had a job,” I put as much sarcasm in the word as I could muster, “she so happened to have that only I was capable and available to do.” Sky frowned, probably coming to the same conclusion about the task that I did. “What about you? Aren’t you going home?”

“I am. But I got… distracted,” she turned back toward where she had been. “I really didn’t think you’d want to see this, but… well, since you’re here anyway: I found another one.” Skydive pointed behind her, near a bush. I trotted around her only to find yet another metal crate. This one was markedly different from the others. Black colored, with gold trim around the edges. And a very familiar golden pentagon symbol for a handle.

I pushed the lid open. Just like the chest on the roadside; a velvet interior that sheltered a memory orb. This time, it was a misty dark gray color rather than the pink of the first. “What… is this the same person?” I asked, realizing we weren’t horribly far from where the chest had been.

“I would guess. Same look on the box and everything. But why leave this one all the way out here? If he wants to hide these, then it makes sense, but the other one was just on the side of a road.” I shrugged. I was equal parts frightened and curious about what this memory orb could be of. Was it Sunshine Valley again? After he left, or before he’d destroyed the town? Or… while he destroyed the town…

I wasn’t so curious anymore.

Still… I wanted to know. But now was not the time to take a look. “Could you put the orb in my bag for me, Sky?” She obliged, carefully placing it to avoid breaking the seemingly fragile glass. Maybe I would view it later, along with the one I left for myself. Maybe when I was done looking for the arcane… thing in the Stable.

“Hey,” I spoke up again while I had my train of thought going, “have you seen a big metal door around here? Should be close by.” Skydive shook her head. I frowned and pulled up my Pipbuck map to check the marker. If what it said was correct, I was right next to it. I looked up and turned in a circle, looking for anything that looked like the door that was described. When nothing relevant appeared, I sat down on my haunches with a sigh. “Dumb map.”

The small carved-out section of the cliff was a fairly nice place to sit, at least. The gusts of warm wind were walled off from us for the most part, and the surrounding walls were just high enough to keep the sun away. Skydive decided to join me.

“So,” she started, looking for a conversation to grasp, “learn anything… interesting? Maybe about those ponies in Mirage? Or whatever they are.”

“Subjugators. At least, that’s what Tamber said.”

“Yea, yea, I heard all about that. Like, animals and stuff, right?” I nodded. “Gotta wonder what that one guy is. Rime, right?”

“What happened to you, by the way? You kind of looked at him and just… zoned. You looked like you were freezing.” Skydive didn’t answer right away. She seemed to lose herself for a minute, like she was reliving the experience.

“I don’t know,” she finally spoke up. “It was so strange. I stopped hearing things you were saying, and just got lost in his eyes. Just endless white… and I was shivering badly. I wasn’t scared of him; I think I was cold.” I nodded, but she just looked at me blankly. After a few moments of seemingly expectant silence from her, she picked back up. “Well… if I’m feeling cold, it’s a very bad sign. Pegasi don’t usually get ‘cold’ like other ponies. I mean, we live way up in the clouds, and we - or at least we used to - make the snow fall for the winter. I mean, we can’t exactly sit around in a blizzard all day and be fine, but we naturally resist cold. And even in those conditions, I probably wouldn’t feel anything for several minutes. In front of that guy, though… it was different.

“I don’t know what it was, exactly. I mean, I saw that he was freezing the water, so it was definitely cold all around us, but it didn’t feel like ‘cold air’ cold. It felt more… direct? I don’t know how to put it. And then…” she trailed off. She started to mutter things to herself, like she was debating what to say.

“What?” I asked when she didn’t seem to stop.

“Well… did you… notice anything? Maybe hear something?” I shook my head. “It was kind of like someone was talking. It wasn’t somepony’s voice who was talking at the table that I could remember hearing, but it was like someone was whispering and muttering. It sounded angry.” She looked into my eyes, with a grimly serious expression on her face. “Whoever it was, they really didn’t like you.”

“Maybe it was Rime? I don’t remember him saying anything, so the voice might have been his. What did it sound like?” I asked.

“I couldn’t really tell. It sounded all raspy and scratchy.” I felt my heart almost stop. She heard him? He hadn’t even been talking until we left the room! How… he wasn’t able to talk to others, I thought.

“No,” the rasp in question joined the conversation, “I can’t. She shouldn’t have been able to notice me.” I calmed down a bit, hoping he wasn’t just feeding me bullshit to throw me off. “Rime… what is he? Even as a Subjugator, he shouldn’t be aware of me. Let alone be able to make others aware of me. Unless…” Without warning, the voice burst out in raspy laughter. What, I asked internally, what is he? “No, it’s nothing,” he replied, “there’s no way it could happen.” I prodded him further for answers, but the voice never spoke up again. I frowned in annoyance. Coming and going whenever he pleased… I hoped he knew how irritating that was.

“Are you alright?” Sky asked. I realized I had been silently conversing with someone she didn’t even know was there.

“Yea, sorry,” I answered quickly, “I was just thinking.” I stood back up, looking around once more for the non-existent Stable door.

“What are you looking for, anyway? Just a big hunk of metal?” Sky questioned.

“Well, a door specifically. It’s supposed to be the entrance to something called a Stable. Not exactly sure what it looks like, only that it’s big and metal.”

“Geez, she’s throwing you into a Stable? Those things can be downright deadly a lot of the time.” Good to know Lamia withheld that little tidbit. “And… actually… that might make sense.” Sky got herself up and walked toward a small but bushy plant behind me. Pulling some of the leaves aside, she revealed an old, decrepit wooden door.

“Not exactly big and metal,” I pointed out, still stunned at how well the bush so happened to hide it.

“No, but if your map says the Stable is right here, then it might just be back here,” she retorted as she pulled the swinging wood open and went inside. “What are you waiting for?” I quickly followed her in.

The narrow, rocky cavern was hardly wide enough for the both of us to fit inside. Looking ahead, the cave was mainly lit by sunlight streaming through the door. Much of it was dark, but there was another source of light showing from further ahead. Skydive slowly paced in its direction with myself not far behind.

I heard a soft chittering from ahead. Glancing to my Eyes-forward Sparkle, there were red bars right in front of us. Sky had already drawn her pistol, having seen whatever it was before I could warn her. Two quick shots later, the red light had winked out.

We crawled out of the cave and into a rather spacious metal room (the source of the light) after stepping over a rather freakishly large praying mantis corpse. Much of the fully-metal interior was very rusted and aged, much like the door behind us. There were a pair of terminals on a table, one still active while one was completely destroyed. What really caught my attention, though, was the quartet of pony corpses laying in a small circle. They each had matching bulletholes in their skulls. Blood soaked the floor, dried, but the bodies were hardly decayed at all. This happened rather recently. Several pistols lay beside the bodies. One for each…

“What do you think happened?” I asked Skydive, who seemed more or less disinterested in them. They all wore the same type of clothes; blue barding with a bright yellow 57 on their backs and shoulders. Were there ponies that lived here?

“Not sure. Whoever did it was a pretty good shot, by the looks.” She picked up one of the bloodstained pistols, gave it a good look, and stowed it in her saddlebags. The other three followed. I wandered past her and up a small set of rusty metal stairs toward the terminal. Looking up, I saw what appeared to be a monstrous, somewhat-rusty gear. On it was painted, in the same (albeit very faded) yellow as the dead ponies’ barding, “57”.

'A big metal door' Lamia had said…

In spite of my unnatural strength, I seriously doubted I had the ability to push or pull it open. There had to be some other way. I moved over to the terminal to see if there was something on it that could help. Turning it on, there was only one accessible thing there. A security log audio file. There weren’t any speakers on the terminal for me to play it from, though.

“Hey, Sky,” I called out as she climbed the stairs after me, “did you put any tools for this Pipbuck in my bags when I left? That little manual said I can plug it into a terminal if I have some wire.” Sky poked at the Pipbuck with a cynical smirk. I looked to see a small pouch… with several wires in it. Right… duh.

Plugging the wire in, I downloaded the audio file and began to play it through the built-in speakers the Pipbuck thankfully had. Stable-Tec really thought these things through.

“You all can’t be serious. After all that… why? There’s no point!” The voice was panicked, and clearly upset. Sky and I listened closely.

“You’re right. There isn’t a point. That’s exactly why,” a second, female voice responded. Unlike the first, her voice was steady and certain. I looked back toward the bodies. Sure enough, one was a mare. Was it the same one?

“You’re all insane,” the first voice spoke up again. “We’re here! We can leave! This is the exact opposite of what Stable-Tec wanted for us.”

“If you ask me, that just makes this all the sweeter. Stable-Tec can go fuck itself. They did all this… the least we can do is ruin ‘what they wanted for us’.” This time it was another male voice, deep and equally as steady as the mare’s.

“Yea. At this point, kid, I’m pretty sure whatever Stable-Tec wanted for us is officially the worst option,” a fourth voice piped up. Male, once again.

“But you heard what they said; we could bring all we’ve done and learned with us! The whole world could learn from what happened here!” the first voice argued.

“Seriously? I’d rather nopony ever even know we existed. This kind of shit should be kept in the dark,” this… was a fifth voice? Yet again a stallion. Five voices were on this recording, but only four of them died.

“This is the most illogical thing I can imagine,” the first voice moaned, the panic in his voice giving way to defeat.

“Let’s just get it over with,” the mare spoke up. “I’ll start.” After a second of silence, a gunshot blast sounded, followed quickly by three more. Meaty thuds succeeded each. A disgruntled whinny came through after several more seconds of silence, followed by a beep marking the recording’s end.

What… did I just hear? I turned to look at the bodies once again. “They killed themselves?” I asked, despite having just listened to the recording that proved it. “Why…” Skydive looked toward the group of corpses as well, clearly now feeling some sympathy for them having heard their end.

“Who knows… it sounds like this Stable was really messed up. Who knows what went on down there. Well… I guess we’re going to find out, aren’t we?” Sky walked over to a small panel near the massive gear-door-thing.

“We?” I questioned. “I think you’re supposed to be heading back to New Trottingham. Who knows how long it’ll be once we go down here. You’ve got home to worry about, Sky.” She seemed to ignore my comment.

“These things, Cinder? Stables? Like I told you: death traps. And this one was bad enough to drive four ponies into group suicide after they got out of it. You definitely can’t do this alone,” she argued, flipping a switch on the panel. An ear-shattering whine of metal grinding against metal burst into my ears as the gear was corkscrewed inward and rolled aside, revealing the Stable within. It took a few moments for my hearing to come back. “Besides, if I fly my way back to New Trottingham, I can make it there way faster than Fuse can trot. They can live without me for an hour or two. You, on the other hoof, really can’t.” I sighed; if she really wanted to, I guess I couldn’t argue with having some company.

“Fine. But if we both die, I told you to leave. No complaining.” Sky laughed.

“Deal.”

Footnote: Level up!
Quest perk added: Subjugation: You are a peculiar little pony… but you’re not quite a ‘pony’ at all, are you? You have a multitude of special perks (marked with an asterisk*) that stem from this. (Current Subjugation perks: Burning Touch*, Enkindled*, He's Got the Touch*)
Perk added: Toughness: You’re made of sterner stuff than most. You gain +3 to your Damage Threshold permanently.

Chapter 7 - The Sins of the Past

Chapter 7 - The Sins of the Past
“You should not apologize for what ponies who are not you did long before you were around to stop them.”

Small.

That’s the best word I could use to describe this Stable. It was very small. The space behind the door was wide enough for Sky and I to walk side-by-side, but only with barely any room to spare. The ceiling rose perhaps twice our own height above us, making the entire area seem little more than the same cave we’d come through to get here, only metal. And very gray. A light flickered ahead of us; the whole hallway was lit across the ceiling, and the lightbulbs provided a constant, almost eerie buzz.

We were a minute inside, and I already didn’t like the place.

A metal door opened abruptly as we passed it. Inside was a (comparatively) large room filled with tables, booths, and stools at a bar. “Cafeteria,” read the sign above the door. Trotting in, I first noticed that there was some food still on the tables. Salads, soft drinks, glasses and bottles of water, a sandwich here and there. Oddly, most of it didn’t seem all that spoiled… one of the sandwiches looked fairly edible still, despite having been out on the table for at least since the incident at the Stable entrance.

The fridges appeared to have been ransacked of much of their food. Some cans of beans and the like were scattered on the floor near them, as if whoever took them was in a hurry. “Or tried to grab more than they could carry,” I mused aloud, picking up one of the cans. An expiration date on the back read as over 200 years ago. And the ponies in here still ate it? I began to worry slightly about the canned food we’d received from Ash.

A small ping came from behind me; Sky took a startled step back from the machine she had poked. It looked like a toaster, turned so that the top was facing whoever used it. I trotted over to find that in the slot lay a perfect sandwich like the one from the table. I lifted it from the tray, only to flinch as the device quickly snapped the tray back into place. Skydive gave me a helplessly confused grimace. I was certain I matched it.

“P-007-15 Sandwich Dispenser” read the label beside the device. There was a machine… that printed out sandwiches. We were three minutes in, and I was already astounded by how insane this Stable was - in more ways than one, now. Sky and I both gave a start when half of the ‘W’ fell to the floor with a clang.

“How about we… keep moving…” I suggested as I turned to leave the cafeteria. Skydive nodded, her eyes lingering on the abnormally random machine a few moments longer as she followed.

*** *** ***

The Stable felt far more like the deathtrap Sky had before claimed it to be than the life-preserving shelter she said it was now. I could vaguely recall that a war had left the world the wasteland it is now, but nothing past that.

“Then it all ended. Megaspells fell like rain from the sky and tore the whole world to shreds. And then left it covered in lethal radiation and worse - bad enough that it’s still around a couple hundred years later. Everyone loses.” The Stables somewhat made sense, then. Nothing would’ve survived on the surface; anyone alive today most likely came from a Stable like this. Or at least their ancestors had. The door at the bottom of the stairs rushed open to greet us as we approached.

And brought a horrid stench with it. The first thing to be seen in the second floor hallway was a body. Blood caked the floor around it, as well as some of the walls. It clearly wasn’t as fresh as the corpses at the entrance, but it wasn’t that much older either. And, looking further down the hall, it wasn’t the only one. No, not it… she. This was a living pony at one point - one very recent point - not just an object. Skydive turned the mare’s corpse over. She’d been shot several times in the chest.

“Did they just start fighting?” I questioned. Sky trotted to the other body and turned it over, a stallion this time. She gave a disturbed gasp and immediately turned away. He had been sliced nearly to bits - his front legs were only barely still attached to his torso, which had what few ribs it had left exposed. I realized there was a lot more than just blood splattering the walls and floor. I turned away myself, trying to keep the contents of my stomach from joining the stains of the hallway.

“I really doubt it,” Sky quietly answered.

We both trotted down the next hallway, trying to get the image of that poor stallion’s body out of our heads. Even for a medical pony, that had to be extremely sickening. I only hoped that whatever had done that wasn’t still here. Doors opened on either side of us. The sign above one read “Maintenance”, while the other had a sign that claimed both the atrium and medical bay lie beyond it.

The stairs leading down the Maintenance wing had flooded entirely, almost up to the door. The water had a sickly green color to it; we definitely weren’t going that way. I turned and headed down the other. As we walked, I felt glad there were no other bodies - the smell was bad enough on its own. We came to a fork, a sign indicating the atrium and medical bay were in opposite directions.

“I’ll check the med bay and see if it’s down there, you head over to the atrium,” I instructed.

“Uh, why are we splitting up?” she questioned with concern, “Big metal death trap, remember? Probably best to stick together, in case of… anything.”

“If it isn’t in here or the atrium, we head back up and check the rest of the rooms - which there seem to be quite a lot of. Personally, I’d rather search quickly and get out of here as soon as possible,” I argued. “Besides, don’t you have somewhere to be as well?” She scowled at the comment, but conceded my point and headed down toward the atrium.

“Just don’t get yourself killed,” she called behind her. I was only heading to a clinic, what was the worst that could happen?

The doors to the medical bay opened, revealing… kind of what I expected, actually. The room was clean to the point of shiny (if still very gray) and highly organized. There was a spot for patients to lay down and an assortment of medical supplies in the shelves. The place looked a lot like the room I woke up in back at Crutches’ house.

“Good day!” a metallic voice suddenly appeared, nearly giving me a heart attack. “Doctor Clover is absent today, so only routine scans can be performed at this time. If serious medical attention is needed, Doctor Clover will be notified immediately. So sorry for the inconvenience!” A robot about as large as I was rolled toward me. A robotic assistant for their doctor. Convenient. “Performing routine medical scan,” the machine informed me.

“You do that,” I muttered, pushing past the robot. If there were any files or terminal logs in here about that arcane thingy, that would seriously help to speed up our search. The less time we spent in this creepy place, the better. I turned on the terminal; the filing cabinet didn’t seem to actually have any files. I suppose it was more simple to keep ev-

“Immediate medical attention requested!” the robot assistant sirened in its droning, metal voice. I jumped back from the terminal, turning to see what was wrong with it. “Messaging Doctor Clover: serious, unknown mutations detected! Patient must be quarantined! Serious, unknown mutations detected! Patient must be quarantined!” A syringe appeared from the side of the robot, clearly intended for me. Oh no it didn’t!

I shoved the robot aside and galloped toward the door… only to have it slam shut in my face. Shit! I faced the wailing robot, my eyes not leaving the needle of the syringe. What did it see in that scan? An alteration caused by me being a Subjugator?

“Please remain calm, I am here to help!” the mechanical voice spoke. Like hell I was letting that thing near me. “Severe medical attention requested! Serious, unknown mutation detected!” it repeated, continuing to approach me slowly. Once it got close, I turned and bucked it back away with a satisfying clang. I heard a tearing sound as well.

The syringe had caught on my saddlebag and torn a hole in it. It didn’t matter right now; I needed to get this door back open! I pounded on the manual button to the door’s side, but it refused to open it. Damned quarantine! I needed out!

The sound of glass hitting the floor turned my attention away from the door. The robot was already right behind me again. I shoved it to the side and tried to get to the other side of the room - maybe the terminal had an override for the quarantine lock on the door. All I had to do was-

I slipped and fell to the ground with a thud. Oooh, I was going to feel that on my shoulder later. I looked back to what had gotten underhoof. A small glass ball… a memory orb! That’s what the glass sound was - it had fallen from my saddlebags. It rolled toward me, bumping into my hind leg. Shit shit shit! My consciousness was starting to slip away, and I couldn’t fight it. This was very, very bad…

~oooOOOO~ ~OOOOooo~

It was very dark wherever I was. I - or, rather, the pony I was inside of - slowly got to his hooves. His legs were horribly sore, and it hurt just to put weight on them. He neither groaned nor complained. Batting his(our?) eyes, they started to adjust to the dark.

Okay… that was a lot of blood. And several bodies to go with it.

My… what was he? A ride? Host? Whatever he was, he passed a glance over all the bodies around him. I could feel that tightness in his chest, the same one I felt when Basset had died. The guilt that threatened to crush you. He sighed and shook his head slowly. I felt his eyes burn, but tears never came. Slowly, he got around to each body, taking… some kind of necklace from them, and wrapping them around his foreleg. Whatever they were, the burning became a little worse with each one he took.

My host peered around the room until he found a door. He gave one last glance at the bodies of what I assumed were his friends before going through it. On the other side was a short stretch of hallway leading to a rather long staircase. Faint voices sounded from above, too muffled and quiet to hear. Something about them drove my host’s heart to beat quicker, as he lowered himself to a crouch.

Carefully creeping up the staircase, they became clearer. Their voices sounded… exotic. They spoke in a strange language that I couldn’t understand. Nearing the top of the stairs, I could feel my host’s brow furrow and his muscles tighten. Two equine creatures stood beside each other - the source of the exotic voices. Beneath their cloaks, their coats were both patterned by stripes. Zebras.

He slowly crept toward the pair, their backs turned to us and preoccupied with their conversation. With every silent step, more and more tension built in my host’s muscles. His pace was a brisk trot, but - somehow I couldn’t fathom - his hooves never made a sound, until we were right behind the zebras.

There was a sharp crack as he snapped the first zebra’s neck. Before the other could properly react, my host pounced on him, pushing all of his weight - and a clear amount of anger - down on the zebra’s throat. His flailing kicks and sputtering coughs only lasted a few seconds.

Part of me wondered: why? Why had he just murdered those two? There was such a furious drive in the act; what had driven him to it? But another part of me, more quiet and repressed was… content. Certain that they had well deserved what this pony had just done to them. But why? What had they even done?

With hoofsteps silent as a ghost, we passed across the room and over to the next door. The rage had died down somewhat, but his blood still simmered under his skin. The corridors that met us were winding, but my host navigated them with practiced ease.

After a couple of minutes of silence, another voice sounded from behind a door to our left. A zebra seemed to be ranting about something in her strange language. My host only paused briefly before starting to move on… and immediately turned back to the door. Swiftly he pulled down the sliding, metal door before rushing down the zebra behind it. Three gliding steps was all it took to cross from the door to the other side of the room, before tackling the zebra and setting down on her throat. She clawed her slender hooves at my host’s, but could do little to deter him. In seconds, she choked out.

A pony’s body lay below where the zebra mare had stood. Her corpse was in the same state as those from the room we had woken up in, except bruised and broken in several places. Like she had been kicked and stomped on repeatedly.

I no longer had any sympathy for that particular zebra.

My host reached down and pulled the necklace off of her with the same gentle contrast to how he’d acted otherwise. It was her dog tag. Private Lavender. He wrapped it around his foreleg with the and proceeded out the door, eyes still burning tearlessly.

Another flight of stairs led us outside. It was a pitch black night, with equally dark clouds blocking the sky completely. Another zebra guarded the door in. My host quickly changed that with another choking tackle. This time, the zebra’s struggling kicks managed to strike my host’s hind leg directly in the knee, causing the already strong pain to flare wildly. After he was sure the zebra was dead, he let the leg give out and collapsed to the ground. The burning in his eyes was becoming worse; I started to wonder if it was the lack of tears, or something worse.

He slowly limped his way away from the building, hopefully heading in the direction of somewhere he knew was safe, not just out to the forest ahead to die. It struck me that I could be watching this pony’s last minutes alive… but who would put that into a memory orb and why? And how did it end up in that box? My mind swam with a million questions and no answers to any of them.

A voice to my left - our left - startled me out of my congestion of thoughts. “Yikes,” the male voice called out. My host reflexively jumped back and faced the sound’s direction, dropping to a combat stance. The pain in his leg felt at least as bad as when the stalker had bitten me, but he just gritted his teeth and beared it.

“You’re actually alive?” The pony behind the voice stepped out from the tree he hid behind. A bright-white coated stallion whose coat practically shone in its contrast to his surroundings. I saw a ruffle at his sides - my host caught it to. Pegasus wings. “That’s… decently impressive. There had to have been upwards of a thousand rads in there.” He lifted his foreleg toward us. There was something wrapped around it… a Pipbuck! It looked older than mine, but practically the same. I heard a rapid clicking sound as he flinched his hoof back. “Whoa,” the pegasus laughed, “practically glowing, aren’t you? You’re not gonna last much longer.” My host huffed, his throat extremely dry and aching.

The white pegasus gave my host another look over. His eyes caught on our foreleg. “I guess you’re the only one, then.” I heard a faint jingle as my host held up the tags. Seven of them in all. Finally, the burning eyes turned to tears. Crimson, stinging tears. Something was very wrong with the pony I was following, and no amount of grit-and-bear-it attitude was going to keep him going for more than a few minutes at this rate.

The stallion pulled something out of his jacket. A plastic packet filled with some weird blue fluid. “You may yet be in luck…” he spoke up, waving the packet at us. “As it turns out, somepony like you is needed.”

“Explain,” my host managed to choke out hoarsely. His throat was less dry now, but judging from the coppery taste, that wasn’t a good thing.

“Well, you’re tenacious as all hell by the looks. You’re still alive after a radiation bomb got set off right over your head. Exposed to at least a thousand and a half rads… and not only did you get up and walk away, but you actually dropped an entire task force of zebras to do it.” My host didn’t waste his scarce breath to respond. “...and nobody even knows you did it. You’re dead to the world as of now. There’s an organization being put up, protecting the more… relevant figureheads of Equestria. Kicker is, nobody but they are allowed to know. That means no family, no friends, no one to miss you when you ‘disappear’. According to the official statement that’ll be written, you just died. I believe I can fix that for you, if you’d like the job,” he said, waving the packet around again.

“If I… say… no…?” my host spoke, coughing violently afterward. He could barely see with the bloody tears staining his eyes now.

“Well, I did say no one else was allowed to know…” he said, pulling the packet slowly back into his coat. Bastard had more snide confidence in that statement then I liked. He was toying with this pony’s life, and using it to blackmail him.

“Fine,” my host sputtered between bloody coughs. His eyes were squeezed closed now to try and keep the bloody tears out. A hoof picked up his head.

“Then drink this fast. It’ll keep you alive.” The pegasus dumped whatever liquid was in the packet down my host’s throat. It was disgustingly chalky and thick, and I could feel him gag on it. Immediately, his throat felt relieved of the soreness. He opened his eyes and blinked away the red tears, which didn’t seem to return.

“The hell is that?” my host asked, his voice still hoarse from whatever had happened to his throat. “It’d take a lot more than a Rad-away to drop my rads that much…” The pegasus gave a hearty laugh.

“Some kind of purgative for radiation old MAS has been working on. Still in development. Does the job alright, you should be out of immediate danger, but uh… it’ll hurt like a bitch. Side effects may include convulsions, vomiting, and monster headaches.” He trotted beside my host and laughed again. “So, uh… thank me for this one later.” With that, he struck my host hard on the back of his neck. We hit the ground in a stunned heap, and his vision started fading quickly. “Name’s Avalanche, by the way,” the pegasus said casually as reality slipped away for both of us.

~oooOOOO~ ~OOOOooo~

Everything hurt. Albeit not as bad as the pony from that memory orb had, but I wasn’t going to simply wake up from this pain. I slowly opened my eyes, remembering how I had got sucked into that memory orb in the first place. I lifted my head and tried to open my eyes, only to close them as the once-dim light suddenly felt blinding. For some reason I couldn’t seem to move my hind leg under me…

I batted my eyes and let them adjust to the light. I was still in the room, but I was on top of a patient’s bed now. I tried to get up, but I still couldn’t seem to get my leg to move when I wanted it to. The door to the room suddenly opened. Skydive walked in, a bag in her mouth. She looked at me and dropped it.

“Oh! Oh, Goddesses how long have you been up?” she asked in a panic, rushing to a table.

“Just… just a few moments. Why, what happened? How long was I out?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Well, long enough for me to turn off the quarantine,” she responded frantically, sorting her way haphazardly through a series of syringes lined up on the table.

“What happened, Sky?” I asked again, refusing to let her dodge my question. The hind leg I couldn’t move was really feeling sore… the stalker bite was probably acting up again. I wondered if I pulled the muscle it had cut up, or if that stupid little robot had done something to it.

“Well, uh… what do you remember before you fell into the orb?” she replied, still dodging my question.

“I think I was trying to get away from a robot, and it cut my saddlebags open. The memory orb must have slipped out or something. Skydive, tell me what that stupid medical bot did.”

“Um, well… first, it poked you with a syringe,” she said, playing dumb as she lifted a needle off the table. “Like this one!” she claimed with a sigh of relief.

“Skydive…” I was getting impatient. “Stop that. And what was in that thing anyway?”

“...Med-X,” she lied obviously.

“Dammit, Sky, stop screwing around.”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “It’s a sedative.” She jabbed the needle into my side suddenly.

“Ow! What the hell, Sky?” I yelped.

“Sorry! Really! But you really don’t want to be awake for this. Your leg kind of, um…” she waved a hoof toward it. I glanced down at it, and-

Oh. Oh sweet Celestia… it was sliced wide open, and there was blood everywhere. Goddesses, I could see the bone! What the fuck had that robot done to me!? What… I… the sedative was starting to hit me. I was blacking out fast.

“Don’t worry, I can fix it! Just go to sleep for a bit, okay? You’ll be fine. Promise,” Skydive assured me as I lost consciousness.

*** *** ***

It had been an empty rest. A black, dreamless sleep that felt like it went by in moments. Perhaps it was due to the sedative, or maybe that’s how sleep was supposed to feel, but in any event it felt nice. My eyes fluttered open, trying to shutter out the light after however long of darkness they’d just had. I saw Sky looking perplexedly at something I couldn’t see. She muttered to herself as her eyes darted from one thing to another.

I noted immediately that my leg was no longer hurt. I looked down to see that it had healed completely under Sky’s care, and only a bit of missing coat and a little caked blood remained to tell that the (horridly nasty) wound had ever existed in the first place.

“Wow,” I said quietly. Sky turned quickly to see I was awake again. “You’re damn good at this. How long was I out?”

“A couple hours. Not very long…” she said cryptically as she turned back to whatever she was looking at. “If you’re gonna try to stand up, take it slowly. Last thing we need is you falling and hurting that leg again.” I took her advice as I lowered myself off the patient’s bed (it was more like a table, really) and onto the floor. My previously-injured leg felt completely fine. I moved it around and shifted my weight on it a bit to be certain, and sure enough it felt like it had never been hurt.

“It’s perfect,” I told her, “you’re brilliant, you know that?” She muttered something along the lines of a thanks, but never averted her gaze. I trotted over to see what had her so enthralled. “What are these?” I asked. There were X-rays and photos of what appeared to be my leg, but also several graphs I couldn’t decipher the meaning of.

“A complete diagnostic and biological scan of your leg, courtesy of the medical drone that cut you up.” She gave a frustrated sigh and leaned her head down onto the table. “And none of it makes sense.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I questioned, growing concerned yet again.

“Well, where I thought you were just toughing the pain out like the stubborn thing you tend to be, it turns out that your leg had actually ‘healed’ the bite from that night stalker. And it’s completely impossible. Look,” she pulled over a picture of my sliced-open leg that the robot had taken, “See the bone there?” I nodded regrettably. I was disturbed enough to see it the first time. “All the little strands of red you see criss-crossing it here, that’s not blood. That’s sinew and muscle. Your muscles actually regrew themselves around the shattered bone and acted as cartilage to support your leg.” I just nodded emptily. Muscles regrowing sounded freaky to me, but aside from that, I didn’t see quite what she was getting at.

“That just… doesn’t happen. Ever. I’ve never seen or heard of anypony being able to do this before. I mean, it’s excellent, don’t get me wrong. But it’s just so strange. On top of that, some of the muscles seem different as well.” She pointed a hoof at the red strands wrapping my bone, “They’re frayed in several places, almost like they were ripped or burnt or something.” I had an idea of how that actually happened now. But why would he heal me…

“What really gets me are these, though,” Sky cut off my train of thought before it could get anywhere. She pulled over the pair of graphs, riddled with numbers and percentages beyond my knowledge of meaning. “What these basically say is that your body has a massive chemical imbalance, and what the machine seemed to conclude was that it stemmed from an extraneous organ.” Again, she somewhat lost me.

“I’m… not exactly versed in biology. Explain?” I requested.

“Um,” she sighed, thinking of a way to put it. “You have an extra organ hiding somewhere in your body that’s producing all sorts of extra chemicals and hormones that should be throwing your body way out of whack. It doesn’t really explain the off-and-on-again burning touch - in fact, it raises more questions than it answers - but it could be where your strength is coming from, like how come you can stomp the head clean off a gecko. But it should entail other… adverse… effects as well, none of which I’m seeing in you. In any case, the only troublesome part of this is why the drone chose not to try and remove it. If I had to guess, it either thought it was benign - unlikely, since it got all these readings - thought it was vital to keep in place, which I doubt is the case, or it might be too close to one of your vital organs to risk operating on.”

“It’s not gonna kill me, though, right?”

“No,” she answered, “no it won’t. The worst effect it could have - should be having - is that it’d make you hungry pretty much all the time. As it stands, you don’t eat much more than me.”

“Well, then there’s nothing to do about it. If it’s not doing anything, we can wait until we find out how to get rid of it.” I stood up and headed toward the door. “Shall we continue? We’ve had enough delays as it is.” Skydive rolled up the graphs and pictures and put them in her bags.

“I did find something while I was out there. You know, a whole minute before you set off sirens and started getting dissected by a robot,” she mocked. “Anyway, you’ll want to see what’s in the atrium.”

Walking felt strangely better than it had in the days past. All the dull aches were gone - the ones that were prominent, such as the stalker bite, as well as pains I only now realized had been there in the first place. As we headed toward the atrium, I began to wonder: how much pain was I actually in? Physiologically, I was different from a normal pony. But I woke up in this state without any memories of past experiences. This state of being was all I knew; for all intents and purposes, I could be in complete agony and not even know it.

Worse yet, according to those scans, I had an ‘extra organ.’ My body was all kinds of fucked up and I knew it, but just how deep did the alterations go? Was I still a pony at all, even on a fundamental level, or was I something else altogether? I burned who I touched, regenerated my muscles to help mend my bones, and I could shatter somepony’s skull with little effort. Being a Subjugator meant part of me was an animal, which was likely the explanation for most if not all of these problems. While I didn’t have the visible physical changes like Tamber, I faced a different issue: the animal part of me was intelligent. Highly so, and had a thirst for inflicting as much misery upon me as it could. Simply by being, it made me a threat to anyone around me.

The atrium doors opened, and I let the thoughts die out.

The room was actually big! Likely accounted for by the fact that it took up two floors, but the open ceiling that showed the floor above felt like a breath of fresh air in the otherwise claustrophobic space.

Tables ringed the room’s walls, each displaying something different. Large, white boards stood upright at each table, littered with pictures, graphs, numbers, and all kinds of information. I stepped over to the closest one: The Thermovore read the top of the data-ridden board. “Autonomous battery charging unit will utilize intake geodes to consume superfluous heat - biological, electrical, or otherwise - and recycle it into Spark Batteries.” I got the gist of it, but the wording was so needlessly complicated it made my head hurt. Looking at another table, all the information was displayed in the same fashion.

“The Stable had a science fair?” I asked. Several of the tables still held prototypes of their respective inventions. There had to be at least fifty tables in here. If the upper floor was the same way… how many ponies in the Stable did this?

“Something like that I guess,” Skydive replied, turning on a terminal in the back. I trotted over to see what was on it. The green flickering screen showed several options, the top of which being a list of previous submissions into the fair. I asked Sky to open it. The list was massive! It had more than I could have imagined in it - radio devices, refrigerator upgrades, several weapons, even that crazy sandwich machine we saw upstairs. Some of the things listed here made even that seem commonplace: a mechanical mouse designed to explode and rebuild itself definitely took the top of my list.

Looking further down on the catalogue, one entry caught my eye in particular: Arcane Resonance Repetition and Absorption Disruptor Upgrade. It wasn’t exactly what was listed on my Pipbuck, but it was too close to be a coincidence.

“This,” I pointed to the item. Skydive selected it, opening further information on it. It had been installed into the Stable’s security software… which, of course, wasn’t accessible from this room. “Is anything else about it on here? I’m pretty sure this is what Lamia sent me after.”

“Let me check,” she replied, backing out of the inventions log and back to the main screen. Nothing else relevant to the inventions seemed to show up; judge panel roster, absences, and… “Last place entry?” Sky read aloud as I got to the last option on the terminal. “Seems a bit harsh. They don’t even have the pony who came in first listed here, but they’re calling out the one in last.” She opened the menu. “New Stable 57 Overmare to be appointed: Steel Heart for last place entry of Reforming Rodent.”

“What,” Sky blurted. I mean, I had somewhat assumed (perhaps ‘hoped’ is a better word) that the self-destructing mouse was the least sane or useful thing here, but was there something worse she’d seen?

“What’s wrong?” I asked, her astonished expression not fading.

“They chose their Overpony as whoever came in last. The most important pony, in charge of every life in the Stable, was the one who contributed the least useful thing.” Oh. Wait, they put exploding mouse girl in charge of their damn Stable? “Who the hell came up with that idea?” Sky spoke my thought for me.

“The log said that the Arcane Disruptor thing was installed into the Stable’s security software, but this terminal can’t get to it. Any idea where there might be a terminal that can?” I asked, hoping to stay on topic so we could try and ignore this Stable’s clear lack of sanity. Clever inventors they might have been, but this Stable’s inhabitants were all out of their minds.

“Probably in the security wing, if not the Overmare’s office. The way this Stable is turning out, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was back up in the cafeteria.”

“Let’s head to security then, see if we can just get the thing and get out of here already.” Skydive nodded in agreement.

*** *** ***

More bodies. We’d moved down to the next floor after looking through all the other rooms. The hallway here was littered with corpses and caked with half-dried blood. The smell had me gagging and struggling to breathe as little as possible.

The multitude of bodies weren’t in nearly as grisly of state as the one upstairs. Most if not all of them seemed to have been shot. I noticed one of the bodies wearing something different than the others. He was armored - ‘security’ was printed on his barding. A pistol lay beside him. Looking him over further, his barding was burnt in several places. Patches of his coat were missing where the armor didn’t cover, revealing burnt flesh. Had the Stable’s security turned on it’s own people? Or was he running from the same thing everypony else was?

My attention was pulled away from the dead security pony at an unfamiliar noise. It sounded like the robot from the medical bay, rolling along on powered wheels. It was heading toward us. Skydive heard it as well, quickly drawing her pistol. As the robot rolled around the corner ahead of us, she took aim to fire at it.

It turned to the blood spatter on the wall, completely ignoring us. A brush emerged from the center of the machine and began to scrub at the wall. Sky and I both sighed in relief. Whatever it was that had caused those burns and the horrific injuries upstairs was still down here somewhere, and the longer we spent here - the further we explored - the more likely we were to run into it. I could only pray we had at least this much of a warning if we did.

As we proceeded down the next hallway, one of the doors on the right was open. Peering inside, it appeared to be a storage closet. Bottles of glue and rolls of tape lined a couple of shelves. A lone terminal sat on the desk in the back. In spite of everything, curiosity got the better of me; I opened one of the messages on the terminal.

“Getting sick of the overmares/stallions ‘losing’ the keys to the office. Steel Heart just came up to me for the seventh fucking time about her key having ‘vanished’. (Clever bitch had it dissolved in acid, I could still smell it in her room.) I’m done reforging these keys, we don’t have the metal to spare as it stands. I’m making myself a copy as well, and if she destroys hers again, she won’t be getting another. Luna knows that office only really has one use anyway…”

Exploding mouse pony continued to confuse me more and more with everything I read or saw about her. I selected the second log.

“Getting called down to the maintenance wing every couple of days now, it seems. Damned pipes are leaking all the time now. Today, every single one of them burst completely. And, of course, who do they call when something gets fucked up? What’s the point of having more than one pony in Maintenance if I’m the only one who does anything? I swear, this time I’m making a machine to repair these fucking pipes for me for the damned contest. I’m so tired of cleaning up water and welding pipes back together because we’ve got no ‘spare’ metal. May as well live down there at this point.”

The rest of the messages on the terminal were missing. A small notice at the top of the screen informed me they were automatically deleted after a few days. There was nothing entirely useful laying about in the room, unless we needed an excess of glue or tape for anything.

“Cinder,” Skydive called from further down the hall. I stepped away from the terminal. She had found the Overmare’s office… and it was locked. It used the same door as every other room thus far into the Stable, but this one refused to open. The terminal beside it asked for a password; like we could ever guess what it was. I spotted a small slot beside the door. “Manual lock,” read the label next to it. Huh, maybe that closet was useful.

“Do you know where the maintenance wing is?” I asked, “I think I might be able to get the door open.”

“Back down the hall near the Atrium. It was flooded, remember?” Well shit. Still, we needed the key to keep going. If that maintenance pony was anywhere to be found, it was probably in that wing if not already “cleaned up” by the robots still roaming the halls. Looks like we were headed for a swim.

*** *** ***

The water in the maintenance wing was up to the top of the stairs. Eventually it was going to put the whole Stable underwater at some point, assuming the leaks were still present. I cringed a bit at the somewhat green color.

“You’re on your own for this one,” Sky informed me. “My wings will slow me down too much in the water. Who knows how much hallway is between you and the key you’re looking for.” I nodded. Drowning wasn’t on either of our agendas; I hoped it was very close.

“I’ll be alright. Hopefully,” I said with little confidence. After the medical bay, I wasn’t so sure anymore. I stepped down into the water, only to have my Pipbuck start making noise. A crackling click sound started coming out of it and a warning popped up on my EFS.

It was irradiated. Perfect.

I proceeded down into the disturbingly green water. Having my eyes open in it stung horribly, but I needed to see where I was going. At the very bottom of the stairs the door was shut. I slammed the manual switch beside it, praying it would open despite being submerged for some time. I started to sigh in relief as it opened up without a hitch, realizing quickly that it was a mistake.

Breaching the surface, I gasped for precious air. My lungs weren’t used to this. My eyes burned terribly and I could taste the disgusting, irradiated water. If I accidentally tried to breathe under the water, it would almost certainly damage my lungs badly. Skydive stood at the base of the stairs looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” I assured her, pulling my dripping mane out of my face. “Door was shut, had to open it first.” I gave myself a few moments to catch my breath. “If I’m not back up in twenty seconds, get ready to come get me. Twenty-five, and I’m in trouble. I don’t think I can hold my breath that long.” She nodded. One deep breath, and I went back under. I didn’t want to stay in this irradiated filth a second more than I had to.

Through the door was a (thankfully) small corridor leading to a room much like the closet downstairs. A pair of terminals sat on either end, destroyed from the water getting into their systems no doubt. I spotted a body in the water, giving me a start and almost causing me to choke on the water. As quickly as I could I searched over the body, praying this was the maintenance pony, that he had the key. I felt my lungs burn and cry for air as an agonizing pressure built in my chest.

My hoof brushed against something metal inside one of his pockets - a keyring! With no time to waste, I pulled it away and began to swim. My chest felt like it was a moment from exploding, I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. I passed through the door and into the short hallway… and my lungs gave in. I coughed out what little air was in them and reflexively inhaled the stagnant, radioactive water. My legs flailed in all directions as I struggled to get up to the surface, but there was only the ceiling of the hallway above me.

Everything was going dark quickly. My head kept hitting the ceiling, trying to breach the surface for a breath of air, but my lungs were already filled with water. Something tugged on my foreleg, pulling me toward it. There was little I could do to resist, even my panicked flailing had died down. The force dragged me through the murky green before pulling me up - into air again! My ears were ringing loudly, and my body had all but given out from being starved of oxygen. Vision blurred as a sharp pain hit my chest, causing me to cough violently. And again, forcing water out of my lungs.

I sputtered as the water kept getting forced from me until there was none left in my lungs. Violent fits of coughing racked my body, but I was breathing again. Thank Celestia, I was breathing again…

For a while I sat there, taking shuddering breaths and coughing painfully. My throat felt raw and burned, no doubt the radiation in the water doing a bit of damage. Eventually I opened my eyes, blinking away the blurriness to see Sky standing over me. She watched me with careful concern, water dripping from her mane and unfurled wings.

“Sit for a while. Catch your breath - and keep coughing, it gets more of the water out of your lungs.” It wasn’t like I had much of a choice in the matter. I tried to thank her, tell her I was grateful that she ignored me when I asked her not to come with me down here. I couldn’t. Every time I tried, it just provoked another coughing fit.

“I know,” she said after a few failed attempts. “You’re welcome. Let me grab some Rad-away from the medical wing quickly, I heard your Pipbuck clicking. Seriously hope that key card thing still works, Cinder.” With that, she trotted off into the medical bay. I looked down at the key I dragged up with me. The tiny piece of metal - which looked nothing like a key - had the same width as the slot next to the Overmare’s office door. It had to be the key. I closed my eyes again, smiling as I coughed again.

*** *** ***

Celestia and Luna had some mercy after all.

The door to the Overmare’s office whooshed open a moment after I slotted the key in. The room inside was larger than most of the rest I’d seen, save the Atrium - which it had a window looking out toward. Shelves lined one of the walls, filled with books from end to end. A large, semi-circular desk sat in the center, dominating the room.

Skydive trotted over to the desk, going straight to the terminal. I instead turned to the shelf full of books. The ones near the back of the room caught my eye - they weren’t cleanly bound like the rest, and seemed to be a lot more worn. “Sundancer,” read the first one I picked up. I opened it and leafed through a couple of pages. It was a journal from one of the Overponies.

“This is all wrong. I didn’t want this, nopony wanted this. Why are they doing this? This Stable was supposed to save us!” The rest of the pages, cover to cover, were scrawled on with panicked drawings and sentences too scribbled-over to read. I picked up another journal, but it didn’t have any pages left that weren’t ripped to pieces. Another. “SAVE ME!” was all that was written on the first page. Only one journal among them was actually readable: Steel Heart.

“Idiots! The lot of them! Imbeciles, morons, asinine curs! Why should I be punished for their short-sighted witlessness? It was a concept! A fucking concept! I was denied the materials I needed to make a functioning model, so I used what I had. It wasn’t supposed to be a stupid mouse, it’s not my fault they wouldn’t read the fucking display!” Drawn beneath was a sketch of a strange looking robot. Beside it was the same robot being blown apart by a pony wearing Stable 57 barding (labeled ‘fucker’) with a missile. Below the two, it was back together again - killing the pony that blew it up. I turned the page.

“I won’t let them have their way. I’m getting out of this. They can’t punish me for their mistakes! They’re going to learn what happens when they cross somepony far more intelligent than themselves, the hard way.” Skydive looked frustrated as she kept working at the terminal. I turned the page again.

“It took them two weeks to fix the lock to the door. They’re still trying to repair the key. Too bad I ruined the datacrypt, it’ll never work again. They created a spare, but I can get rid of it too. I shouldn’t push them, though - I need time to work with some of the wires. It won’t do any good to get them sending guards in here to check up on me.” Sky was muttering to herself now as she kept fiddling with the terminal.

“Slipped up. One of the guards caught me messing with the door. He saw the wires and immediately overrode my terminal, disabled the bios and reset my password. The fucking idiot changed it to ‘ruffles’, his mother’s stuffed cat. When I claimed higher intelligence, I didn’t expect this large of a gap. In any event, I can now lock the door from inside. Time to raise hell.”

“‘Lost’ my key in some of the cleaning fluid from storage. Who would have guessed that Abronco, some bleach, and a bit of Wonderglue could make such a potent reaction? Oh, hah, me. They’ve put guards outside my room 24 hours a day now. They think that they’ve solved all their problems now that I can’t leave. The day is coming fast… I don’t have much time. But I don’t need much time, either. I only have to be late by a short while, and I win.” She was making less and less sense with each page.

“Dammit,” Sky shouted, hitting the terminal. “I can’t remember how to try and cheat the password out of these things, and it won’t let me in without it.” She looked distraught, and went back to typing away at it.

“Try ‘ruffles’ and see if that works.” She sighed and typed it in. Judging from the look she gave me afterward, it worked. She looked like she was going to say something, but then just shook her head and started going through the terminal. I went back to the journal.

“They’re coming early. I had to lock the door already, and there’s still an hour left before the deadline. I doubt they can cut through it or create another key in time, but they’re trying to get that little piece-of-shit kid to break the door open for them. I can’t… I can’t, I can’t let them do this to me. I only wanted to help! It’s not my fault they couldn’t see what I had really made! IT’S NOT MY FAULT!” Tears stained the page and made it hard to read. I turned to the next one.

“That fucking maintenance bastard made a second key already. He’s coming. There’s no way out. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, I was supposed to make this work! No, no, there’s one way out. I still have that stupid example I made. I can still do this. However pyrrhic, I will still succeed.” There was only one thing written on the last page.

“ROT IN HELL!”

“Oh… oh, Celestia, that’s…” Skydive backed away from the terminal. I set the book down and trotted over to her quickly.

“What’s wrong?” She just pointed at the terminal, at a loss for words. I moved over to it and started reading down the list. Overmare instructions, list of security updates, access commands for the Stable armory (sounded like a place we needed to visit), emergency Stable security programs, and…

Open sacrificial chamber. “Son of a bitch.”

That explained all of the panic in the journals. Hell, that explained just about everything up to this point. They were sacrificing their own people to the Stable. Why? What kind of fucked up place would promise to save ponies from the death outside, only to make them send their friends and family to die once they’re locked in? I was beginning to see what drove the few who escaped to suicide.

I checked the emergency commands tab, on the verge of smashing the terminal before I could get the information I needed. I preferred the Stable when it was messed up in a strange way. The thought of all the ponies in here competing to see who they would give up. Who had to die for everypony else. There was such a mix of emotions in me, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to find whoever decided this was a good idea and drag them into the Stable, make them see every single pony they killed with it. I wanted them to be killed and fed to the damned Stable, and I wanted their deaths to be agonizing. But just as badly, I wanted to go to the ponies of the Stable who perished and help them. I could have gotten them out before this happened if I’d been here sooner, just a few days sooner if the dates on the terminal entries were right.

“Stable emergency access disabled, mainframe access required. Please log in from mainframe below.”

“I don’t remember seeing a mainframe set up anywhere,” Sky spoke, reading over my shoulder. “I must have missed it. The stairs are on the other side of the floor, I think.” I closed my eyes and sighed. That wasn’t what it meant.

“No they aren’t,” I muttered. I was going to regret this… I hit the button anyway. The desk trembled and groaned before parting in two and rising. I walked around it and stared into what lie beneath - a set of stairs.

“It doesn’t have to be down there,” Sky voiced worriedly, “I might have just missed it back down that way. We don’t have to go down there.” I shook my head and started down the stairs. “Cinder, who knows what’s down there waiting? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t forgotten the pony upstairs with his body in pieces. What if whatever did that is down there?”

“Sky.” She stopped. She was starting to panic, and if she was scared to go down here… well, it stood to reason that I should be too. But I came too far to stop without making sure. I didn’t hardly care about the tech Lamia was after anymore - I felt I owed it to the Stable’s ponies now. To make sure I knew what happened, make sure they weren’t forgotten. They went through too much to be lost to the desert before they could even leave.

“The Stable wanted them to stay,” I explained. “It was designed so they would continue throwing away their lives. Whatever threat they were under should they stop, what would the point be if they could just leave? On that thought, where better to put the key to the exit then the last place anypony would dare to go?” Skydive frowned morosely.

“I know. I just… I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. But this is it; we go down there, check the mainframe thing for what Lamia wanted, get it or don’t, and we get the hell out of this nightmare. One last room. Do you think you can make it?” She closed her eyes. A few moments passed in silence before she started to shake her head… then stopped, and nodded slightly.

“Thank you,” I told her as I opened the next - hopefully last door.

The hall on the other side was horrendously bright, surrounded on both sides by high-powered lights. I was forced to squint, my eyes already sore from before. On top of that, a disconcerting static kept crackling through speakers all around us. Occasionally words would get through, but it mostly skipped and buzzed like a broken record.

Skydive had clenched her pistol in her teeth, fully loaded and with an extra clip in easy reach. Whatever it was down here, it was going to be scarring. Physically, I suspected, as well as mentally. I shuddered to think of what happened to the ponies after they were thrown down here.

At the end of the hall, the lights finally dimmed down. A decently large room sat before us, empty save for the shattered remnants of a glass screen hung from the wall, as well as a broken piece of plastic and metal hanging down from the ceiling.

The static picked up in volume, and words came through more coherently than before. “krrrzt- for the- zzzztzzzt- sad, or scared- brrrzzzzzzzrt-” Sparks came from overhead. Whatever was supposed to be happening, the system had been destroyed by something.

The door behind us slammed shut suddenly, and I heard the thunk of a lock falling into place. Shit! I galloped to the door and smashed the button but it refused to open. Sky groaned and rolled her eyes. To either side of us, the walls shuddered and moaned with the sound of metal grinding against metal.

They parted slowly. Behind them was just about everything I was afraid would be. Machines filled the smaller side-rooms, and red lights blinked to life on my EFS - somehow they had been blocked by the walls before. Large guns were mounted to the ceiling on either side, three apiece. I could barely hear the gasp of panic from Skydive over the walls finishing their retreat into their pockets. To our left was a terrifying sight - a hovering robot equipped with all of a chainsaw, blowtorch, clamp, and several loose appendages the use of which I couldn’t begin to fathom.

The ceiling guns turned to face us. Several shots loosed from beside me - Skydive was already firing. One of them exploded in a shower of sparks as the rest began to open fire. Red streaks of searing light poured from them, sizzling as they struck the ground. Black burns marred the metal surface wherever they landed. I couldn’t reach them; I’d need to rely on Sky’s pistol for that. I prayed she could drop them all before she was hit.

A jet of flame crossed between me and her, startling me into focus. She could take the turrets, but I had to keep the other robots off of her while she worked. The nightmarish machine’s flamethrower washed over me, causing me to panic and backpedal into the wall. Eventually the torrent of flame subsided, leaving me facing the machine as it lifted one of its other limbs and aimed it at me. I jumped to the side, dodging what it fired at me. It was a sickly green color, whatever it was, and and left behind a disgustingly strong smell.

Tzzat! I staggered forward as something shocked me from behind. I had no time to react as flames burst toward me again. I felt heat, but not pain… I wasn’t burning. I had forgotten - I didn’t burn when I got coated in napalm, the case was the same with the flamethrower. I turned away, looking away from the blinding fire toward what had shocked me from behind. Another robot, this one moving by treads. It had a claw in addition to a small gun on its other arm. That had to be what shocked me. Another shower of sparks fell from the ceiling - Skydive was working as quickly as she could.

I felt as though time slowed as I began to take in what of the situation I could. I couldn’t afford to lose my head in this fight, but I could afford a moment, if only, to think. The machine behind me would switch to its projectile weapon if I got outside the flamethrower’s range. I couldn’t tell how quickly it was moving toward me - if it was at all - due to the flames clouding my vision. So long as I stayed within that range, I was ironically safe. The robot in front of me, I only knew of its shock attack. It had hit me somewhere on my hind leg; I had no idea what would happen should it score a more direct hit on my torso or head. It presented a more present threat than the one behind me.

Assuming the worst, the hovering robot hadn’t moved and I was just on the edge of its flamethrower. I’d need to be fast if that was the case, but I could bring down the robot on treads, or better: use it as a shield against the projectile weapon. All I needed was a weak spot…

It had a brain. Luna’s grace, it had a fucking brain in a glass case where its ‘head’ should be. Please, please don’t tell me that was one of the ponies’ brains, this Stable was already a horrid enough ordeal...

I didn’t have time to stay on that train of thought. It was most likely the best way to disable the robot. I braced myself for one last moment, time’s flow coming back to normality, and took off as fast as I could. I used my inertia to carry me into it as the robot fired off its electric gun again, hitting me square in the chest. I landed on it’s metal body awkwardly, losing control of my own for a second as I was struck. It was enough, however - I was greeted by the sound of shattering glass as we both crashed to the ground. I landed on my already-sore chest, grunting in the flash of agony.

The jet of fire had subsided before I collided with the brain-robot. The other machine was probably already aimed and ready to fire, I had to move now! I used my hind legs and lurched forward, still with my chest on the ground. I hadn’t regained control of all of me yet, I couldn’t stand. I heard a sizzling splat, the smell of rotten eggs and vinegar confirming that it had shot at me. I didn’t know how long I had before it fired again. I had to use the collapsed robot for cover until I could time it.

I felt something wet drip onto my shoulder, followed quickly by an intense burning. I rolled away from the downed machine and clutched my shoulder screaming. Some kind of green goo had fallen off of it - residue from whatever that nightmare of a robot was shooting at me. I wiped it away as fast as I could manage, moving so as not to be an easy target. The burning refused to stop even after I got rid of all of it.

I looked toward it, only to see it turning away from me. It was starting to aim at Sky, who was half-collapsed on the floor already. No!

I took off toward it at full gallop, causing it to turn its attention back to me. I leapt forward at it, only to have the clamp appendage latch onto one of my forelegs. I struggled to move, to get free of the crushing vice, but I couldn’t free myself from it. Instead I used my other foreleg and started to pound on it. It pulled the chainsaw toward me, making me flinch my leg back. So terrifyingly close, I craned my neck out of the way just before it thrust the whirring blade into my throat. I couldn’t keep maneuvering away from it with my leg caught.

In a fit of panic, I tried to throw myself forward. I intended to somersault forward, carrying it with me, but I only fell to the ground. I felt the bones in my fetlock being crushed by the clamp. Worse still, I felt the rush of air as the sawblade drew toward my caught foreleg. No no no…

The teeth of the blade started to dig in. I howled in absolute agony - there was nothing I could do to get away. As long as that leg was caught, I was at its mercy. If I was going to get away, I… I had to lose it. I… oh, Celestia, it was ripping me to shreds! I couldn’t even think straight through the pain anymore. I cried out, begging in my head for somepony to stop this - Sky, anypony! Goddesses themselves could’ve heard me at this point.

Again I felt a static shock, less pronounced - maybe dulled by the intense pain I was already in - but it covered me. In an instant, the sawblade stopped its gruesome spinning. The clamp released me, and the robot collapsed, myself along with it. A pair of faint gunshots resounded, Skydive hopefully killing it permanently.

I had no will left to stand up. I just let myself lie on the cold, metal floor. Tears streamed from my eyes, the pain having died down much from when I was actively being sliced apart, but with every heartbeat I felt the searing agony surge. I couldn’t stand it… I needed something to dull the pain. Or just knock me out altogether - what I wouldn’t give for that sedative again…

“Cinder,” Sky called out. There was pain in her voice. She had been hit, but she had the medical supplies. If she could get it, we might have enough to save ourselves. “I can’t reach my saddlebags. I got hit… I think I can shuffle them off, but I need to use something on my knees first before I can get to you. Hang in there, okay?” I grunted, I could hardly form words without crying out.

“I’ve got you!” another voice yelled out. Who was that? Someone else was here? I couldn’t turn my head to see them. I was blacking out from the blood loss… I couldn’t stay awake any longer…

Footnote: Level up!
Quest perk added: Forged in Flame*: Your crippled limbs will mend themselves over time, but only while they are “broken.” You’ll still want to use a healing potion or see a doctor to fix them fully.

Chapter 1 - The World on Fire

Chapter 1 - The World on Fire
“Burning hoof… oh, that means Littlepip is watching me.”

Burning.

It’s the earliest I can remember. I was burning. I could see flames everywhere, shrouding my body, consuming me. I felt the pain of flesh being incinerated and turned to ash. Smoke filled my lungs, causing me to feel as though as was also burning from within. Outside the ring of fire was pure darkness, a stark black emptiness that threatened to swallow my soul if I left my tormenting ring of flames.

It was an odd sensation. The fire charred my body, and I was in more pain than I’d ever felt before. At least, I’d hoped so. I couldn’t remember anything. But for as much as it hurt, I also felt… good. When I noticed, I stopped screaming; I hadn’t realized I was screaming until then. It felt so surreal when I began to think about it, trying to stave off the agony with the new sensation. It was as if, for every ounce of pain I felt, for every tendon of muscle and flesh that was cremated, the flames also burned away at my distress. It felt like the fire was taking away my old pain and replacing it anew, as if it were burning away at my sins and wrongs so I could start again. This fire was cleansing me. Of what, I couldn’t be sure, as that was when I woke up.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

“Easy now, easy!” A voice cooed as I sat up screaming again. Where the hell was I? Who just said that? Why was I layered in blankets when I was on fire? Oh… I wasn’t on fire, was I? “Easy, you’re okay. You’re just fine.”

“What’s… huh?” I managed to spit out. “Who… where… what happened to me…” I kept asking, almost incoherent in my speech.

“Well, as for what happened to you, ya got lucky,” the voice spoke. I slowly turned my head to see who it was. Huge mistake on my part. My head hurt, and it hurt something awful; like someone had driven a sizeable chunk of metal right into my skull. “Not many ponies survive so much lead.” Well, I was pretty close, wasn’t I?

“I survived… what?” Boy, I was certainly a master of conversation. But I couldn’t think of anything better to ask, what with just having a bullet or two tearing through my brain. I had an excuse.

“Yep, four bullets got stuck in yer noggin,” the stallion tapped a hoof to his head as he said it, “and several dozen all over the rest of ya. Now, I got all of ‘em out, but there’s something that concerns me about how I found ‘em.”

You mean there was something worse than finding lead in my skull? “What was wrong?” I asked, pleased to finally manage a solid question.

“There was a lot of blood in that there head o’ yours, let alone the rest of ya. You looked like a target dummy when you was brought in. I’d think anypony would’a died from blood loss alone, let alone loss of brain tissue and bone fragmentation. I ain’t sayin’ it’s a bad thing, but… how did you possibly live through it?”

“Maybe you’re just that good of a doctor,” I offered, grinning a bit. Hey, the bullets didn’t take away my sense of humor! Sweet!

“Yea,” the stallion said grimly, then turned away, “but I don’t think I’m this good.” As he got up, I got a good look at him. He was rather average in size, if not a little on the thin and elderly side. His orange hide bore a pair of crutches on each flank, and his yellow mane and tail each were starting to turn gray. The doctor turned back towards me with what appeared to be an x-ray image of a pony skull. It was bathed in a yellow glow from his magic, and his deep amber eyes looked into mine. “Care to explain?”

“Explain what?” I asked. “It’s a pony’s skull, right?”

“Not just anypony’s skull, yours,” the buck replied. “This was taken about an hour ago. Notice anything?” Not really. It was just what I said it was, an average pony… skull…

“It’s not all shot up,” I answered, slightly bewildered. But… didn’t he say I’d just gotten my head perforated? Along with the rest of me?

“Exactly. I’m completely stumped on just how you managed to heal so quickly, from mortal wounds no less. Do you have an explanation for it?” Explanation? I didn’t remember my own name, let alone why I had crazy healing powers! “Granted you’re willing to share, of course. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

I sighed. “Sorry, doc,” I told him, “I have no clue. About anything, honestly…”

“Come again?” He tilted his head curiously.

“I don’t remember anything… I mean, I knew what that X-ray was. I know what most of the stuff in this room is, in fact. But… I can’t remember who I am, doctor. Name, past, anything at all. It’s all gone...”

The scrawny buck hissed in what I could only read as contempt as he looked over at the glass jar on the rolling table next to the bed I was on. Inside were what appeared to be the bullets that got stuck in my brain. Ooh, even had a little blood left on them, how nice. “Just like I thought…” he muttered got up off his haunches.

“Do you know what’s wrong?” Oh, please know how to fix me!

“Yea, I know,” he muttered. Well, that was a good sign. “And you’re pretty much fucked,” he added on. Of course, of course I was. “Pardon my language.”

“So… I’m stuck without memories? Like, for life?”

“Well… I don’t know. But what I guess happened was – and this is only a guess – when your brain patched itself up, the parts of tissue that died took the memories with ‘em. And I don’t rightly know what to do ‘bout that,” he said solemnly. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” I tried to cheer him up, which was curious seeing as I was the one who just got his memories wiped via bullets, “you saved my life. You’ve done a hundred times more for me than I probably deserved.”

“Oh? And what makes you say that?” Hum. I didn’t really know what to say to that. I had to sit there a moment and think. Damn, I didn’t like getting outsmarted by my doctor. Well, no room to complain I suppose. If he was dumber than me, why would I want him screwing with my brain?

“Well, somepony wanted me dead. Or for this to happen, take your pick. I must’ve gotten them pissed somehow, and I doubt it was from being a nice pony.” I finally responded.

“Oh, you’d be surprised to know how often that’s the reason. The sun may be shinin’, but the people are just as dark as the cloud layer was. Especially them Enclavers, they ain’t none too happy ‘bout losin’ their homes and havin’ to cooperate with us surface folk.” Cloud layer? Enclavers? I faintly remembered a wasteland, one I lived in. But the image was the most I could conjure out of my busted mind. This really sucked…

“Wait… why did you help me?” I asked, finally coming to the realization that I could easily be a captive to this pony. My brain felt like it was running on sludge, but as I started thinking, my situation got less and less desirable.

“’Cause you were hurt,” he answered. Catching my ‘You-know-what-I-meant’ look, he sighed. “Really, though. When Skydive brought you in, you were bleedin’ something terrible and had a few holes in your head, not to mention everywhere else. And I’m not the type to leave a body where it lies if it can still be saved.”

“Really?” I asked with a skeptical tone.

“Really.”

“Well, thanks for being nice. I’d sure rather be mentally blurred than dead out… where, exactly?”

“This here’s New Trottingham,” The doctor said, checking my temperature with some bizarre apparatus. “You got all shot up a little ways outside.”

“And... do you know who shot me?”

“No clue. Never seen them around here before. They ran off before Sky went and brought you in.” He put a stethoscope to my chest, and pulled it away after he was satisfied. Wait… how did I know what a stethoscope was? “Well, no sense in keeping you in bed forever. Think you’re ready to stand?”

“As I’ll ever be…” I turned over in the bed and set my hooves on the floor. Ooooh, that was my head… but my legs stood strong under me.

“Good. Take it easy, but that’s good.” The doctor encouraged me.

“Uh, Doc,” I muttered, gritting my teeth at the monster headache bucking me in the face, “you’ve been on your hooves the whole time.”

“Yea, but I can safely say I’ve never had bullets put through my legs before tryin’,” he grinned casually at me. “Anything painful specifically?”

“Ugh… are you sure they shot me? It feels like they took turns winding up and bucking me in the face… there were about a hundred of them, right? Feels about a hundred…” I responded, lifting my left foreleg to cover my head.

“Having a headache after getting shot in the skull? Never would’a thought,” the doctor said sarcastically, grabbing a vial of… something. “Drink this if you can,” he levitated it to me.

“Headache medicine,” I said, drinking the whole jar down and immediately feeling the relief. “Glorious.” The doctor chuckled and glanced at the door.

“See if you can take a step to the door. Slowly now, ain’t a race.”

“Challenge accepted,” I said with a laugh as I trotted toward the door. Walking felt much easier after dulling that drilling migraine I had. I stopped when the door was in front of me and turned back to face him.

“Good, good. Tell me if you feel any pain anywhere,” the doctor said. I didn’t, save the dull throbbing still in my head; I felt great! I took a few brisk steps forward and took a leap toward the bed I’d been on.

“Not a thing, Doc,” I grinned at him.

“Well, that’s good. I’d expected as much, them shots never hit any of your bones, save your skull.” Ouch, killjoy much?

“Um…” a small voice came from the door. The doctor and I turned to look at her unanimously. “I’ll check back later,” she said quickly and turned to close the door.

“Oh, no, Ice Pack, what’s on your mind? Something you need?” Doc called back to her. The small navy blue filly turned back around, looking a bit worried.

“Oh, nothing, it’s just, um…” she muttered and scratched at the wood floor, not lifting her gaze from it. “I thought you might, y’know… the people in town, and…”

“The people in town? What… oh, Celestia save me, I forgot!” The doctor began to rush towards the door before stopping to address me, “Oh, some important business has come up; I’ll be back in a short while. You’re free to roam around as you wish. No sense in keeping you penned in here. Get to know Ice Pack and Skydive while you’re at it!”

With that, the doctor was gone. I heard him half-gallop down a hallway and out another door. “Well… pretty busy guy, huh?” I said to nopony in particular. Then I noticed the small filly still in the doorway. “Uh, hi there,” I said, startling her into turning around. She bumped into the doorframe as she did, and I couldn’t stifle a laugh. She looked up at me for a moment, after which her gaze dropped instantly to the floor yet again.

“I, uh… hi,” she practically whispered.

“Ice Pack, right?”

“Um… yea…”

“So… anything interesting to do?” She muttered something now entirely unintelligible as a response. I just sighed and shook my head.

“S-sorry, I m-mutter when I’m s-scared,” the navy filly looked back up at me, teal eyes looking me over my body, but never into my own eyes. Apparently the rest of me looked good enough though. Much as I trust the silent judgment of a random filly that can’t make eye contact, not to mention whom I woke up in a random house without memory to, I decided I’d really like to see a mirror. Specifically, myself in it.

The one in the far corner of the room looked fitting enough. Full-body sized. As I stepped in front of it, I took stock of my features. A bit tall, maybe four and a half feet; charcoal coat and slightly darker mane, save for a single red stripe curving to follow the curve my mane. Similar red stripes could be found around each of my hooves, but these in a wavy pattern. My eyes were a deep navy blue, a darker shade of the filly that now walked up beside me.

“S-sorry if I s-seem a bit of a s-scardeypony,” she stammered.

“Sorry if I’m all that scary,” I gave her a small smile. “So, is there anything really to do around here while I wait for the doctor to come back?”

“Y-you could talk to Sky. She’s always real n-nice to me. She should be up in her room upstairs,” Ice Pack replied.

“Well, let’s go say hi then.” Ice Pack just nodded and led me out the door. The house was entirely hardwood flooring; the stairs were no different. If somepony dropped a lantern in this house, it’d be done for. Wood here, wood there, and a bunch of wood everywhere. The second floor was a practical mirror of the first, but where the kitchen and whatever room I was in would’ve been were bedrooms instead. The one over the kitchen was Ice Pack’s, since she led me into the one over the room I woke up in. She knocked twice.

“Yea,” a mare’s voice came from inside. Skydive sounded a lot older than the filly I was with.

“’S’me,” Ice Pack responded. The door slowly opened, revealing the sky-blue pegasus who owned the previous voice.

“Heya, Icy, what’s-” she cut herself off when she saw me.

“Uh, hi,” I said and waved a hoof. The pegasus looked down at the filly, then back up at me. Her stare was hard, like she was trying to drill me through with it. Her eyes returned to Ice Pack, but her look softened.

“Hey, now what’d I say about bringing everypony the doctor heals up to my room?” Her voice was incredibly soft. The small filly still looked down, too shy to hold anypony’s gaze.

“S-sorry, Sky, I-I didn’t mean… I forgot, and…” Skydive just brushed her mane with a wing.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. How about you take the, “she looked up at me for a moment with the hard glare before finishing, “…nice… stallion back downstairs. I’m sure he needs some rest.”

“Actually, I’d asked her to bring me. Thought I’d say hello, y’know, and thanks for saving my life?” I told Skydive. She drove her hard stare into my eyes. Hers were a deep violet color, and her mane was a brilliant cobalt color. It lay out behind her in a smooth wave.

“Oh. Hello then,” she said, her voice indistinguishable between contempt and respect. Whatever the case, she certainly seemed dead set against me, and I had no idea why. Then again, I had no idea of anything. Life just kinda sucks that way. “Well, the state you were in when I brought you here, I suggest you get some rest while the doctor is out. Can you take him back downstairs, Icy?”

“Uh… yea…” Ice Pack tugged on my leg and walked back towards the stairs. Skydive motioned me to follow her. I sighed and turned away.

“Just lookin’ for something to do while the doc is out. Told me ‘feel free to roam’ anyway, but sorry to bother you,” I told Skydive. She didn’t respond. I turned back to face her again and asked, “Was I really that bad?”

“Yea,” she said, curiously in the same soft tone she spoke to Ice Pack with. She closed the door before I could ask more. It seems like I judge people by the tone of their voice, I don’t know why, but with all the different ways I just heard Skydive talk to me, I had no idea what to assume about her. She sounded like she hated me, respected me, and was afraid of me all at once.

“Yea… should’a seen what you did to the other guy, though…” Ice Pack said, interrupting my thought. It was the first thing I’d heard her say out loud, not just an under-her-breath mutter. Apparently, Sky noticed it too.

“Ice Pack!” Sky said, whipping open her door again. I knew that voice, don’t ask me how, as shock. The full spectrum of emotions, this pegasus was.

“Oh, I thought out loud again, didn’t I… I-I’m sorry, Sky, I didn’t mean-”

“Why… what would make you say that, Icy?” Skydive wasn’t using the same soft tone as usual, and Ice Pack looked scared.

“I-I was just thinking, and… you know how that happens… I’m so sorry,” she looked on the verge of tears. I stepped forward to break up whatever was going on, I wasn’t going to have a little filly crying because I asked her to show me this crazy Skydive mare, but then she extended a hoof and pulled Ice Pack into a hug.

“It’s okay, Icy, I know, I’m sorry I yelled,” she said, hushing the filly. I relaxed a little as the scene calmed down. Though, I did feel kind of bad now, as said scene was mostly my fault.

“If you don’t mind me askin’, what exactly did I do to the ‘other guy’?” If it was bad, this would explain why Skydive seemed so… off… around me. I must’ve knocked him for a loop before he cheated and pulled a gun on me. Yea, that’s probably what happened.

“Who knows, the body was pr-” Skydive shut Ice Pack’s mouth with a wing before she could finish. But, wait… body? I killed somepony? Well, that’d explain why I got shot in my face for sure.

“Ice Pack!” Skydive yelled, making the filly shrink back away from her. Sky opened her mouth to say more, but just sighed and closed it before turning to face me. “You wanted something to do? Roam around? Fine. Follow me. We’re going for a walk.”

* * *

Stepping out into the sun for the first (in my memory’s) time was a rather unpleasant experience. First, I was blinded by the sheer brightness of its light pouring directly into my eyes. A moment later, while rubbing my shuttered and wounded eyes with a hoof, the heat of it struck me like a hammer. The air cooling talisman in the doctor’s house sure had its work cut out for it. Air cooling talisman… why… oh, Celestia damn my stupid memory and its stupid selectiveness!

After I regained the use of my eyes, if only by squinting, I started to follow Skydive. The town we were in was rather modern looking. Should be, if the doc had an X-ray machine. But it wasn’t so much the buildings of the town that caught my attention, but the citizens. Not one of them moved, not one of them blinked, not one of them spoke. They all stood or sat where they were, having evidently dropped what they were doing, and stared.

At me.

I kept following Skydive, and looked around at everypony as we trotted out. If we ever got too close to somepony, they shrank back; in the case of one young colt, took off in a full-fledged gallop. Ice Pack had mentioned a body I left behind, and Skydive had hushed her like it was some secret, a skeleton in the closet. Big secret, every single pony in this town knew.

Every single pony in this town hated me. And I was denied the memory why. Only the doctor seemed to bother about trying to look like he cared about me, and that could easily be some clever ruse. I was forty-five minutes into my life, and I hated it already.

This was going to be fun.

* * *

The sun kept shining its fierce, harsh light down on us. I really hated that damned thing. I focused all of my loathing at it, hoping that some of the heat would get sent back. Futile, but a nice way to keep myself occupied. A distraction from the only other two things to think about; walking, and how hot it was.

“What’s going on?” Skydive asked for the umpteenth time. I swore to Luna, if she asked one more time…

“Same as the last time you asked,” I mustered a voice that sounded only moderately annoyed, “now will ya quit?”

“Sun must’ve really gotten to you,” she said with a snicker, “glare at it any longer and you’ll go blind for real this time.” I simply sighed and looked forward. How far out had she come to get me, anyway? Looking back, I could barely see New Trottingham from here!

“Are we almost there?” I asked.

“Almost.” Skydive flew ahead of me a bit. She looked neither tired nor affected by the heat. “Yea I can see it. About… oh, a hundred yards maybe.” I secretly hoped her wings hurt as bad as my hooves. Lucky pegasus…

We walked the last ‘hundred yards’ incredibly slowly. It felt more like a hundred miles. Honestly, how could it be this hot? One look at the ‘body’ Ice Pack mentioned, though, left me with no complaints.

“Sweet Celestia…” I muttered. The land around it was charred and the body nothing but blackened bones and ashes. A small revolver laid near the pony’s skull. Oh, for Pete’s sake, why did I know what a revolver was? Stupid defective brain…

“Yea. My thought’s exactly,” Skydive spoke, yet another tone of voice added to her list. She was furious, and scared. “So, tell me: what the fuck did you do?” Well, fury was certainly overriding anger now.

“Wha… I did this? This?” I reiterated with a wave of my hoof. It looked like Celestia herself pissed liquid fire on this poor corpse, and Skydive thought it was me? Wait… no… not just her… all of New Trottingham. The whole town; all of them heard about it. That’s why everypony avoided me like I had Cutie Pox! (Again, brain? Seriously? I don’t even know what that disease is!) Well, obviously it was the sun that baked this poor guy after I… offed him, somehow. I’d just explain…

Unless there’s a gun to my head. “Wha ih yoo oo?” Skydive repeated through the pistol in her mouth. Her tongue was practically pulling the trigger already. Something was off about this whole scene… well, aside from the emotionally confused pegasus trying to kill the memory-less earth pony. If I had to guess, she wasn’t actually going to shoot me. If she did, she’d just have the doctor patch me up again. Her eyes didn’t read ‘killer’ at the moment. Oh, great, I was reading eyes now too.

“You seriously think it was me? I just turned this pony into a skeletal pile of ashes on my own? You… how could you even see to here from the town? I certainly can’t see the town from here, and unless you’ve got a high-end telescope or binoculars just layin’ around…” I trailed off as she spat the pistol onto her wing, letting the wingtip curve around the trigger. Could she even fire it like that? …Did I really want to find out?

“How did we see you?” Sky repeated angrily. “Probably because you were lit up like a fucking candle! Suddenly there’s a massive ball of fire on the outskirts of town, and a hell of a lot of gunfire in the same direction? I flew out here as fast as I could to see what the hell was going on, only to find you bleeding out your skull and this poor son of a bitch’s bones still burning! When him and his buddies were at the bar no one had a Flamer on them, and nopony would bother to just carry yours away with them, so what the flying fuck did you do!?”

Did I mention she sounded incredibly adorable when she yelled? It was like listening to an angry butterfly. So fragile, so angry… but what she’d said hit me like a train. “They… you said they were in town?” The question set Skydive aback, realizing she let something slip she apparently wasn’t supposed to. “In town? What happened to ‘never seen ‘em before’? You all weren’t just hiding this shit from me, you were lying to me!?”

“No shit! How do you expect-”

“Enough!” A thunderous voice cut off whatever Sky was about to say. It nearly made me jump ten feet in the air, too! “Enough Skydive. The boy just got shot, there’s no need to pester him this way. And, don’t point a gun at him with the safety on,” the doctor added. So, now I knew why the whole scene felt off. Wait… did he just tell her to make sure she can actually shoot me? Great, thanks.

Skydive flushed and extended her wing out to give the stallion the gun. “Curiously enough, when did you notice us, Doctor?” How did she not suffer from emotional whiplash with the way her voice changed? Now she was on respect again. A sweeter voice, but not quite as adorable.

“When my patient went missing,” he responded, levitating the gun into a holster on his right foreleg. “What have I said about taking my things?”

“Say please?” She fluttered her eyelashes and gave him a wide smile. His stern expression remained unchanging. Sky let out a long sigh before amending, “Always remember to ask and tell, for thieving ponies shall burn in Hell.” Damn, that was a depressing way to think.

Now the doctor’s expression softened a bit. “Hmm…” he looked over at me, then at the ash covered skeleton. “I think some good may come of this little trek out here after all. Does the name Dune Thrash mean anything to you?” Dune Thrash? I didn’t know my name, let alone… unless…

“That’s my name, isn’t it?” The doc casually lifted one eyebrow at the question. “So, what else are you hiding from me,” my voice was rising as I spoke, “and what the hell’d you do to me? Huh?”

“I pulled a bunch of lead out of your skull after young Skydive here brought your half-dead body into my office. Poor Ice Pack’s still tryin’ to get the blood outta the rug,” the doctor responded, calm and collected. “Now, I’ve had some words with much of the town to stop treatin’ you like a wild hellhound, but it seems I must’ve forgotten somepony,” he gave a glare to Skydive, who looked like a hurt puppy. “Well?”

“Wha… you know that he-”

“Sky…” Damn, the doc had her wrapped around his horn like a ring. She didn’t even raise her voice when she tried to argue. I silently wondered how he was able to command that level of respect from her; silently only because I was still a bit pissed for such a casual question.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered nearly unintelligibly. Despite my anger, it was simply so damn amazing to watch Skydive change. One second ago, she was a crazy, screaming, vulgar, murderous psycho that was about to shoot me in the head. Well, she was bluffing about that, but no less. Now she was humble and, if only mildly, polite in front of the doctor. It made me want to laugh. But I didn’t, not now.

“You knew,” I spat angrily, “you knew them, and you knew me, but you decided to lie about it.” All I wanted was a name. Well, several names and a place to find them, but that’d be asking a bit much I assume. “Why?”

“Sorry to say I don’t know ya, stranger,” Doc said. Celestia damn him, I could see the sincerity in his eyes. “And I still believe I don’t. As per that gang what was in town, the only name our bartender caught was Dune Thrash’s. Unfortunately, he seems to be,” he waved a hoof at the bones, “unavailable.”

“Wait,” my mind still felt like sluggish, like it was working on sludge power, “if that’s Dune Thrash, then who…”

“Like he said,” Sky cut me off, “we don’t know you. All we know is that you-” the doc cut her off with another glare. I needed to know that trick.

“Now, I’m about sick of baking out here,” Doc wiped his brow with a hoof, “what say we head back before we all die of heat stroke.” A bit more calm now, I couldn’t agree more.

* * *

Nopony flinched at me when we came back into town. A young filly even went so far as to offer me a bottle of water, earning her a disappointed glance from her mother. I took it and gave her my thanks before guzzling half the bottle in one go. This got me a smile from the doctor and an eye roll from Sky.

I quickly learned that the townsfolk still didn’t like me. They would tolerate me, but they wouldn’t particularly enjoy my presence in town. Well, one step at a time, I suppose. As we entered the doctor’s office, the cool rush of an air cooling talisman washed over me. Praise the Goddesses, technology was wonderful!

“Now, for as much as I’ve said to them,” the doc – whose name I finally learned to be Crutches, like his cutie mark implied – began to explain as we all sat down, “the majority of the town still wants you gone I’m afraid.” Meh, I suppose I couldn’t blame them. Or maybe I could, and the heat was messing with my already busted brain. Or there might’ve been something in that water… “I can keep you here for tonight, but after that you’ll have to leave. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Skydive and I spoke in unison. She gave me a curious glance, and I a rather put out one to her. Crutches just sighed and shook his head.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Ohshitohshitohshit! I was on fire again! And it really didn’t feel good this time! The flames singed my mane and tail, and ate away at my hide. It was all I could do to run away. I had to get away from this fire! I was screaming again as I galloped, and I spotted the charred remains of Dune Thrash lying in front of me.

What the fuck did you do!?

The flames erupted in a wall in front of me; Then again behind me, and twice more on either side. I was boxed in, nowhere to run anymore. I could only sit there. Sit and burn.

“They want you dead,” I heard a horribly raspy voice say. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make any words come out. Of course I couldn’t…

“It’s all they want. You. Dead. Gone,” the voice repeated. If that was true, why did they save me? “Save you?” Okay, crazy psycho voice heard my thoughts. Grand, just grand.

“Of course I hear them, I’m you after all.” What? Wait, actually though, what the hell? “Hell… does this feel like it to you? Does it hurt?” Well no shit, I’m on fire! The scratchy voice sighed and spoke with a disappointed tone, “My how you’ve fallen… but you will remember yourself, in time. Will you survive that long?” Before I could say… think, whatever… anything else, the fire vanished. Now I was falling through empty darkness, just me and Dune Thrash’s bones. Skydive’s angry butterfly voice echoed again: What the fuck did you do!?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Cold! Very, very fucking cold! Sweet Celestia, I was just on fire! Why am I now a pony-shaped chunk of ice!? My body was going to explode from temperature shock at this rate!

“Doctor!” Skydive’s voice rang out. She was standing over me, holding me in the tub of ice water I just woke up in. I stopped flailing a minute as she tried to calm me down. Doc Crutches trotted in and grabbed something off the countertop.

“Hold still now, easy” he cooed as he held some kind of device to my forehead. After a moment it gave a soft beep and he levitated it close to him. “Oh, Sky, get him out of there. I think he’s starting to freeze.” Ya think!?

“Sorry,” Skydive said as she quit pinning me. I slowly rose out of the tub, soaking wet and clueless. The doctor floated me a towel to dry off with.

“What happened,” I asked as I dried out my mane. Friction helped me to warm back up again. After I dried off my face, I noticed they were both looking at me. Both confused, both just staring… at my mane? “Uh… do I look that good?”

“You see it too, doctor?” Skydive broke from her stare to ask.

“Yep… question is… what’re we lookin’ at?”

* * *

Going back to sleep was out of the question. If what had happened was sleep related, that was a no-go. According to the doc, in my sleep I’d started to get feverish. Over a while, my body temperature kept climbing. I’d reached 115 degrees before they put me in that tub of ice.

And I’d woken up in a tub of water. Sky said my mane had changed color during that time; that the red stripe became a glowing orange, and the marks around my hooves had done the same. When I’d woken up, the glow had slowly faded back to its natural deep red. They had been watching the change as I’d dried myself off and warmed up.

Speaking of which, I was still warming up. And I wasn’t cold anymore. I could feel myself continuously heating up, and it wasn’t stopping. Every moment, it got worse. I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d spontaneously combust and leave a me-shaped pile of ashes where it happened.

But that was my problem now. Everypony wanted me out. Gone. So I was leaving, and I was leaving now. Ice Pack gave a soft smile as I walked to the door. I swear I could hear her mutter “I’m sorry” as I went.

“Hold up!” I heard Doc Crutches shout as I pushed the door open with my hoof. He came at a half-gallop down the hall to meet me, a pair of saddlebags in his telekinesis. That, and… something I didn’t recognize. Hallelujah, my brain didn’t know something that wasn’t just my name! Take that, broken brain!

“This was yours… I assume…” he said between gasps. Age had seriously caught up with the old stallion. As he moved the saddlebags over to me, I noticed that they were emblemized with my cutie mark: a wisp of fire over a stylized X. He levitated the other mystery object over to me. “And I think you should have this.”

“What is it?” I asked as I set the saddlebags on my back.

“It’s called a Pipbuck,” he said as he levitated my left foreleg up a ways. He proceeded to clamp it around the leg, and I felt the ice-cold metal machine provide a little relief to my internal heating issue. “I grew up in a stable, see? We all had one of these. It’s a wonder of a convenience, but it’s honestly just collectin’ dust in here. Since you’re gonna be out there on your own, and all, I figure you need it more.”

My vision flooded with a plethora of images and data. A compass showed up in the lower left corner of my vision as well as a small bar above it, reading “Health”, and another to the right reading “AP”.

“Ah, it’s just settin’ up. If you’ll notice, it shows ya how injured you are, and what direction you’re facing. It has a million uses, but I’m afraid I can’t explain ‘em all. Not enough time...” he sounded angry as he spoke.

“I put a user’s manual in your saddlebags,” Skydive jumped in the conversation as she stepped down the hall. “A copy of Ditzy’s guide as well, and a few potions for the road.”

“Uh, thanks,” I managed to sound like I’d paid attention; I couldn’t just ignore all the notices and such things flashing in my vision. So I simply demonstrated my mastery over language again.

“I might suggest ya start readin’ right away,” Crutches murmured as he too walked back down the hall. Ice Pack must’ve slipped away beforehand. The flashy setup thingy stopped after a moment. There was nothing left to say or do, so I finished opening the door. After all, I needed to start reading like the doc said.

And from the way the entire town stared at me as I walked out, I needed to start walking too.

* * *

I’d settled with north as a direction. There was a small patch of clouds that way, and clouds meant shade. I desperately needed shade. The heat of the outside combined with whatever was warming me up inside was horrendously draining.

The Pipbuck that Crutches gave me certainly was great. It told me what was in my bags, I’d noticed, as well as how much it weighed me down and how much more I could carry. It even organized everything in the bag for me! So far, I’d only bothered a cursory glance at it, waiting until I found a place to rest before looking over it fully.

I used the inventory sorter to bring out a bottle of water. It was slightly warm, but still helped. Damn, the sun was kicking my ass…

I interrupted my thoughts when I noticed something in the distance. It looked like… a building! Well, like the ruins of a building, but close enough! I broke into a gallop towards it, praying it was abandoned. As luck would have it, it was. It was also completely destroyed, but the walls that still stood provided a barrier between me and the sun.

As I finished the water bottle and sat down, I dug through my bags to find the user’s manual Skydive had mentioned. My inventory display only showed two bottles of water, a Sunrise Sarsaparilla, and five healing potions; and I knew that wasn’t all that was there. The bags weighed more than that. After a moment or so, I found a small booklet labeled Pipbuck Basics near the bottom of my bags. Pulling it out carefully, I held it in my fetlock and opened it with my muzzle.

A beginner’s guide to Stable-Tec’s Pipbuck technology, it read. The first few pages were dedicated to the startup process that I’d already been through. Then it got into the Status menu, where I could check on how my limbs were and if I was injured anywhere. I could also check on my radiation levels, called RADS, and even see what effects were plaguing me. All that it said there was “Overheating, unknown source”. Helpful.

After a few tutorials on how to use the Items interface and check my map, I was told how to access radio stations. Well, may as well give it a go while I was in the shade still. I tapped the only available radio station, and the Pipbuck’s speakers crackled to life.

“Heya Equestria, I’m back again,” a stallion’s deep voice called out over the speakers, “your DJ in the wastes. And, as I’m sure you all guessed, that means it’s time for the news.” There was a wasteland news broadcaster? How interesting. I decided to turn it off and keep reading. As much as I hated the sun right now, traveling at night when I couldn’t see was all the less appealing.

Last but not least, as the manual read, was the use of S.A.T.S., which was an… auto targeting system? Okay, that was way too good to be true. According to the guide, I didn’t even need to access an interface for this. It was as if the device would know when I wanted to use it. Effectively, the spell would slow down time and allow me to select aiming zones that would vary per target. However, the spell only had a certain amount of charge (the AP bar) and would again vary, dependant on your weapon.

And with that, the manual was done. Now that I knew how to, I used the Items interface to file the book away under Misc. The data could also be found under Notes. Cool.

Now I cycled through the rest of my inventory. Under Weapons, I noticed it showed a .357 revolver. I pulled it out, and my Pipbuck registered it as equipped. It displayed that the condition of the gun was relatively alright, and that it had twenty-four bullets available, six of which were loaded. There was a note attached. “Found this near Dune Thrash’s body. Here’s hoping you don’t have to use it too soon. ~Crutches”

“Thanks, Doc,” I whispered to myself and smiled. At least he didn’t hate me. Maybe Ice Pack too, but she barely said anything. And she barely said it when she did! I put the revolver away and the information on it vanished from sight. Next, I checked Apparel. Nothing was on that list. Aid had remained unchanged, and Misc held three items: The Pipbuck manual, Ditzy’s Wasteland Survival Guide, and fifty bottle caps. Why did I have bottle caps? I also noticed that the top of the screen showed a bar reading “Caps: 50” displayed next to my theoretical damage threshold, which read 0. I figured they had to be of some kind of importance, so I kept them there and pulled out Ditzy’s guide. It was thick and slightly difficult to keep balanced in my fetlock.

Opening the pony skull cover, I flipped through the pages to find the index. Dangerous creatures, places to go, places to avoid, groups, tribes, and factions to know, and more. Dangerous creatures? That sounded like something I really ought to learn about. But first, I needed somewhere to go. It only just occurred to me that I was now walking an incredibly hostile wasteland, alone, and with no direction. If “places to go” wouldn’t work, I’d just have to go somewhere to avoid. Anywhere was better than nowhere.

Rummaging about the second section, I spotted New Trottingham on one of the first few pages. “A friendly town to stop and rest at. Must try Rusty’s Mutfruit Cocktail! Anypony in need of medical attention can find it at the Qwik-Kare run by Doctor Crutches. Not to be confused with Old Trottingham, which is Steel Ranger territory. (see page 134) Though a pleasant rest stop, New Trottingham is not a town to resupply at, as their store has only limited selections.

‘Also not entirely friendly to memory-less and injured ponies’, I felt Ditzy should’ve mentioned. I continued through the pages, looking for somewhere to go. Preferably somewhere within a day’s travel; if I could only go an hour and a half without guzzling a water bottle, more than a day was out of the question.

There was New Appleoosa, apparently the town Ditzy lived in herself. It sounded perfect, but when my Pipbuck chimed its location… that was a lot of ground to cover. Way more than a day, for sure. Wasn’t this a local copy of the book? Why would it show a town so very far away… unless Ditzy just wanted everypony to know of her home. If I ever went there, I’d have to ask.

Next on the list was a small town by the name of Prim. It wasn’t very large, but it had a place to rest and eat. My Pipbuck chimed once again, letting me know the town was…

South.

South, as in past the town that seemed ready to shoot me on sight. But it was also south as in about five or six hours south, and I’d be damned if I was going to pass up on the closest place possible to get out of this blistering heat!

Now that I thought about it, I no longer felt the internal buildup I had before. I checked my Pipbuck, but it still showed the overheating message. I was still somehow heating up, but now I didn’t notice it as much. If it wasn’t lethal – please sweet Luna don’t let it be lethal – it was certainly very curious.

Internal warmth issues aside, I had a direction now and could start heading out. But… what if I ran into something along the way? I’d want to know what it was, for sure, and whether or not I would have to fight it or run from it. It’d really suck if I kicked the bucket because I was in too much of a rush to read the guide Sky gave me… and on top of it all, I was still in the shade. Stepping out meant… the sun…

I opened the book without another thought and used my muzzle to flip through the pages. “Dangerous Creatures” the section read. Tell me, O wondrous guide, what shall eat me out yonder?

And the book answered: Large, mutant geckos that would gang up on me and bite at me until either I was dead or they were. Quaint. I could kill them and sell their hides, as well as cook their meat, granted I was willing to eat it. Well, why pass up a meal?

Bloatsprites were on the next page, along with radroaches. Both were considered nearly harmless, but radroaches would always scurry up to take a bite of you. Radigators were next. These were more dangerous than roaches or sprites, but because of their tendency to be aggressive only when approached, they were less worrisome than the geckos.

Now it got ugly. Ghouls, basically zombie ponies, would attack on sight, alone or in packs. According to Ditzy, not all ghouls were “feral”; several were rather pleasantly nice ponies to be around. “Try saying hello first!” Sounded like she had personal experience in that regard. Personally, if I saw a walking dead pony, I’d be trying to kill it again that instant. Especially if they rated a five on “Ditzy’s Danger Scale”.

A slew of baddies to avoid later, and I came to the last one on the list: Hellhounds. A ten on the scale, she labeled Hellhounds as the single most dangerous thing in the wasteland. They had the whole shebang: Wicked claws that tore through even Power armor – whatever that was – tunneling tendencies, proficient in use of both explosives and guns, and a knack for using magic energy weapons. On top of all that, they were very intelligent and always hunted – yes, they would hunt ponies – in packs. “To be avoided at all costs.” Well, I was officially screwed if I ever ran into those.

Now armed with knowledge of (I hoped) just about anything I could encounter between here and Prim, I closed the book and set it back in my saddlebags. After setting them on my back, I got up off my haunches and stepped out of the ruined building.

Reading, as it turns out, can swallow up multiple hours of your time and you’d never be the wiser. The sun was setting, and I had a five-ish hour walk from here to Prim. Well… better late than never! I started a quick trot south. I just had to hope I could catch whatever wanted to eat me before it did so, and now I wouldn’t be able to see.

* * *

I took a slightly longer route in order to give New Trottingham a wide berth. I didn’t want Skydive pointing guns at me anymore, especially with the safety off!

Though, ever since I passed the town by, I noticed a yellow bar moving around me steadily. Yellow bars were friendly; at least that’s what the Pipbuck manual said. However, even if I looked directly at the little line, I couldn’t see the entity it indicated. Was the dark impairing my vision that much? I didn’t let it bother me too much; if it was friendly I had nothing to worry about. I only needed to care if it turned red.

Like that bar over there. And the two flanking it. Well, fuck. I crouched down in hopes that, whatever they were, they couldn’t see me yet. Three more red bars showed up to their left. I turned to see if my friendly chaperone was still there. And the yellow tic was still there; next to five red ones. I was surrounded and horribly outnumbered.

I pulled the revolver out of my saddlebags and gripped it in my mouth, the way I’d seen Skydive do it. Then I heard rattling. Quiet at first, but it grew in volume quickly. Why did that strike me as a really bad sign?

Probably because I could see them now, too. Almost a dozen white wolf-like creatures with rattlesnake tails. I knew them from Ditzy’s guide: Night stalkers. A five-and-a-half on her scale, these always fought in large groups and had very good coordination.

“The rock,” a disembodied voice rasped, “get to the rock behind you.” I remembered that voice… it was that asshole from my nightmare!

“And you’re the bastard I’m trying to save, now move!” Well, higher ground seemed like a good idea anyway. Only… they stopped. All of the night stalkers just stood there, motionlessly staring at me. Occasionally one flicked its tail, but none of them stepped any closer.

“What, having a staring contest with them? Get to the higher ground already!” Alright, damn! I took a step toward the slanted stone. They all flicked their tails in unison the moment I lifted my leg. Then a few of them started to growl. “You may want to run,” the scratchy voice cautioned as a few of the stalkers took a step toward me.

I broke into a full gallop at the rock now. The pack didn’t miss a beat and charged after me. One that was already close to me bit down on my tail and yanked off several hairs. Thankfully, that was all it got as I made my way up the steep stone face. The rock was only wide enough for one of the night stalkers to climb it at a time.

The first one made its way up toward me with alarming speed, clawing and growling and rattling its tail. I turned my head and pulled the revolvers trigger with my tongue. A bright flash temporarily cost me the use of my eyes, the resounding crack of the shot doing the same to my ears. And the kick! It felt like somepony just tried to buck my teeth out!

After I stopped seeing spots, I looked down at the coyote-snake-wolf-thing I’d fired at. There was a rather large hole… in the stone in front of its feet. Oh, for fuck’s sake…

“Use S.A.T.S.,” ordered the invisible rasp. It sounded like the voice in my head could use a cough drop. “Do you even remember what that is?” Duh, it’s a… you know what? Screw your shit. I entered S.A.T.S. without even hitting a button.

Stable-Tec did some impressive work on this bad boy. I didn’t actually expect it to slow time! I could see and highlight parts of the creature’s body, and it even showed my chance to hit! This was a sexy program right here.

I lined up three shots at the lunging night stalker’s head, each shot calculating a fifty percent chance to hit. Crack! Crack! Crack! Time stayed slow as the first two shots missed completely, but the third hit home. Bone and flesh were jetted in all directions as the stalker’s head exploded.

Time returned to normal, the gore of the now dead night stalker splashed across me sporadically. The rest of the pack took notice of their fallen comrade. Another one of them began to clamber up the stone face after me, but the last two bullets in the gun scared it off. That gave me a moment to reload the chamber. Too bad I’d need several; this damn revolver had to be loaded one bullet at a time! Who makes a weapon like that, seriously!?

I put the bullets in the chamber one at a time, the gun fumbling a bit in my hooves. But for all the time I’d given them, none of the night stalkers dared to climb up after me. They couldn’t climb up after me. So long as I was up here, I was at least relatively safe.

Little did I know just how tenacious these little bastards were. Shortly after I finished loading my revolver, the pack came to a decision: If they couldn’t climb the rock, they’d jump it. First, one took a mighty leap toward me. It came up only an inch or two short. Had it not almost literally scared the shit out of me, I’d’ have taken the opportunity to blow it’s face off.

Now several more took jumps of their own. Two came up short, and one overshot. Okay psycho voice, what do? …The rasp in my head was silent. Of course it was! The little asshole put me in this mess and ditched me! Another stalker leapt, and this time it landed on the rock right in front of me. “Shit!” I screamed and jumped into S.A.T.S. again. I lined up the three shots that the spell had charge for and fired. Miss, miss, and… miss! Of course!

“To hell with this!” I screamed after throwing the gun off to the side. As the night stalker lunged at me, I raised my left foreleg and let it bite down on it. The razor teeth in the beast’s mouth shredded through my flesh and ripped the leg muscles something fierce. Holy hell did it hurt, but clearly not as much as sinking your teeth into a boiling pony! I’d completely forgotten that I was still heating up the entire walk.

“The stalker immediately let go of the leg, whimpering as it's mouth was burned horribly. Turns out, strange medical conditions are effective in combat! I took the opportunity I had while the night stalker was stunned. Rearing back on my hind legs, I brought all my weight down on it. I was rewarded with a bone-shattering crunch and the sight of a night stalker split in two under my hooves. The image was disturbing, and putting so much force into my wrecked leg hurt indescribably.

Through it all, I hadn’t noticed the other stalkers in the pack about to lunge at me. One landed behind me and bit down on my hind leg. Sweet Celestia, I could feel its teeth against my bone! Even the heat in my body didn’t make it let go. Another landed on top of me and dug into my back with its claws. I couldn’t tell its growl at feeling my burning flesh apart from my own scream.

“Heh,” I muttered weakly as my scream subsided, making a futile attempt to kick the one off my leg, “hope you… fuckers en… enjoy a hot meal…”

“Get down!!!” A scream pierced the growling and rattling of the night stalkers. It was punctuated by several gunshots, and ended with the two snake-wolf-things falling off of me. Another attempted to take their place, but an extra shot left it with its maw left open forever.

So, my mystery follower decided to save the day after all. Good… I wasn’t able to fight anymore. I noticed a small “LMB” appeared over my proximity-to-death bar. Damn that bar was small… and flashy… and dancing. Oh, that was my eyes dancing.

I could faintly hear a few more gunshots and the sound of the remaining night stalkers fleeing. All of it was followed by the whooshing of air as I fell of the boulder I’d stood on. Weeeee… thud. Mercifully, I barely felt myself hit the ground before I blacked out.

* * *

“Come on, snap out of it!” Skydive screamed at me as she poured what I assumed was one of my water bottles on my face. I coughed as it started to choke me.

“I’m up! I’m up!” I yelled back, spluttering water everywhere as I did. At least it felt somewhat refreshing, after having my legs torn apart. …Speaking of which, why didn’t I feel any pain? I looked at my left foreleg, nothing showing of the fight but a few places my coat was gone from. I lifted my gaze to look at Skydive. “How long was I out?”

“All night, obviously,” she pointed her wing at the sky. It was a brilliant red color, the sun only barely visible on the horizon. “You’re out of healing potions, by the way. Oh, and I had to use half this bottle to wake you up.” She tossed the water bottle at me.

“You woke me up by yelling at me, the water was just overkill. Couldn’t you have just poked me or something?” Skydive frowned turned her forelegs a bit. “What?”

“N-nothing, I, uh… yea, should’ve just given you a tap or something,” she stammered in response. Ooh, the liar voice didn’t sound good on her. What was she hiding?

“Thanks for saving me… again,” I looked into her eyes as I spoke, trying to tell what she was thinking, “I thought I was dinner.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sky laughed, “the doctor will kill me if he finds out I stole his gun again.” I looked around for something to talk about, to keep the conversation going until I could find out what she was hiding. I’d be damned if I was going to let her lie to me again, especially if it was about me. I spotted an empty bottle that didn’t look like a healing potion bottle lying on the ground beside her.

“What’s that?” I pointed at the bottle with my now healed foreleg.

“Huh? Oh, it’s antivenom. The night stalkers’ blood is great for general antitoxins. Figured I’d come out and get some; then I ran into you and, well…”

“Just ran into me by chance, then?” Skydive looked slightly worried at the question. I did my best not to smile; after yet another near-death experience, I needed a good laugh. I wanted to see just how much deeper she’d dig her grave.

“Uh, yep,” she replied, fiddling with the empty bottle. I took a long, obvious look around so that she’d notice.

“Strange, though, you’re the only yellow bar around.”

“The what?” Sky looked – and sounded – horribly confused. I raised my Pipbuck bearing leg. Dear Luna, I could have sworn she changed her coat color from blue to red when she figured it out.

“Did you miss me that much?” I laughed.

“Wha… I… I just… I bumped into you is all!”

“So who was following me last night? I saw… wait… that’s why I couldn’t see you, you were flying! Cheater!”

“I was not following you!” Skydive got off her haunches and stood over me, wings spread threateningly.

“What were ya up to, then?” I gave her my best one-eyebrow-raised questioning look, just like Doc Crutches did. If I was lucky, I’d discover how he made her so humble whenever he spoke!

“Well, I was…” Sky trailed off, “I just, y’know, needed to… I…”

I jumped up – discovering my back leg did still hurt a lot in the process – and gave her a big hug. “Aww, I missed you too!” I laughed.

“Fucking Celestia, AH! Get off me! Dammit!” Skydive screamed and shoved me away. I just chuckled again.

“Sheesh, sensitive mu-” I looked at where my forelegs had been as she cursed some more. Exactly where I’d hugged her, her back was bright red; the fur and skin all burned and peeling. “What… I… I didn’t do it! What… I don’t, I don’t know what just happened!” I started to panic and apologize, but Sky just brushed me off as she went through her saddlebags and produced another healing potion.

“Wanted to save this for the road…” I heard her mutter a bit louder than I expected she meant to. I took a look at the back of her forelegs, and sure enough, they were burnt as well. No wonder she didn’t just poke me…

“I-I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened. I’ve been heating up more and more and I just…”

“Yea, I know,” Sky said as she tossed the empty potion bottle aside. The burns healed, but the area still looked a little pink under her coat. “I think I’m starting to understand what Dune Thrash must’ve gone through…” Wow… I hadn’t thought of that. If I had some kind of burning touch, is that why Dune Thrash’s body was in its state? What… what if I did the same thing to Skydive by accident? Oh, I did not want to see that happen, especially after she saved my life twice.

“Look, I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m apparently burning whatever I touch, and I just pounded a night stalker into paste with one stomp. Please, just… just stay away from me. I really don’t want another Dune Thrash.” I was getting really scared. What the fuck was I?

“Oh,” she looked at me strangely, “you’re just gonna walk off then?” Okay, now she sounded cocky. Cocky didn’t sound good on her.

“Well… yea. Not like I don’t know where I’m goin’” I pointed out.

“And that is?”

“Prim.”

“That’s a bit of a walk from here,” Sky said slyly. Oh, that’s where she was going with this.

“I can handle it,” I started walking towards the city “See? I’m f-fuck!” I went down on my face. Sweet Celestia-on-Luna action, I could not walk on this leg!

“You’re Fuck?” Skydive teased, “I’m Skydive. And, Fuck, my friend, you look like you’ll need some help getting to Prim. I don’t recall putting Med-X in your saddlebags.”

“Ooh, you want to follow me openly now, eh?” I smirked. She slapped my injured leg with her tail. “Ow!”

“I’m doing it to make sure you don’t set anypony else on fire!” She yelled in her butterfly voice yet again. “And don’t forget it.” Dammit, I really needed her help to get to Prim, but I knew I’d end up hurting her again. The throbbing in my leg reminded me I really didn’t have a choice.

“Just… just don’t touch me, alright?” I pleaded. She just gave me an amused grin.

“Not a problem.”

Footnote: Level up!
Perk added: Hunter: You deal 75% bonus critical damage to wild animals.
Follower perk added: Heal with one hoof…: While Skydive is a follower healing potions restore limb condition better. Additionally, you deal more limb damage.
Quest Perk added: Burning touch: Unarmed strikes deal additional damage to targets not on fire. Unarmed attackers not on fire receive a small amount of damage.

Chapter 3 - The Beast Called Rage

Chapter 3 - The Beast Called Rage
“I was shaken to my core... and my core was furious.”

Anger.

That was the only thing I was anymore. A mass of anger and hate that was about to explode. I locked eyes with the feathered beast that had taken down the pony I came to save. I hoped my expression read certain death as clearly as his read panicked confusion. Flames licked at the air where his bizarre weapon had struck me, leaving a gooey, burning trail across my body. I turned to face Basset where he lie beside me, quickly coating my hooves in the burning adhesive that took his life. If that was what it was meant for, then it would be my weapon too.

Turning back to see a few other Gangers seemingly waking up to the sounds of combat start to group up, I held up a foreleg and pointed at the winged monster. Flames enveloped the hoof in front of me, but for a reason I still couldn’t fathom, it didn’t burn me. But it would burn the bastard in front of me. All the bastards in front of me; they were all the same... murderers! There was nothing for it, they would all die for this. The town sheriff had died... Basset had died... they all needed to... needed to…

“Die!” I bellowed as I charged toward the door. The beast snapped its wings open immediately and used them to propel itself backward, barely outdistancing my quick uppercut. The rest of the group, all ponies, didn’t quite react. They had definitely all been sleeping to be so lethargic, or else they somehow didn’t recognize me as dangerous. I’d make time for them... this monster had to die, and it had to die now.

The weapon it carried seemed to slow it down greatly, else it simply had a vastly less graceful flight pattern than Skydive’s. It flew slowly, only able to climb out of my reach rather than outspeed me. Tables were scattered throughout the room where the gang had been eating at some point. I leapt upon one and used it to springboard myself up at the fleeing beast. I reached out with my front hooves to grab it and bring it down with me. Less than an inch remained between my grasp and its leg... and I started to fall. Dammit!

The tiles around me cracked when I landed, jarring my whole body with the impact. I shrugged it off after a second and looked up to see the bastard had clung to a support beam near the ceiling with its talons and had a rifle (Where did it get that?) pointed at me. I barely had time to move before it began to fire. It could use a claw to pull the mouth-intended trigger, allowing it to fire very accurately as well as quickly; this I learned by having a bullet graze my foreleg twice as I ran. I knocked a table over and used it as cover, the dishes clattering upon the floor quite audibly.

The other ponies were starting to rouse, realizing there was a problem. I could smell the alcohol in the air, finally explaining why they were all so lethargic. It wouldn’t last long; I needed to take this monster out quickly. I heard a scraping sound as it adjusted position on the beam it now clung to, trying to get a better aim before it took more pot shots. Wait…

I peeked around the corner of my cover, only to have to jerk it back a moment later as it fired. That aim was scary... but I saw what I wanted to see. The beam the beast was perched on was wooden, and only had the one support holding it up. Judging from its previous flying pattern, I could ground it, if only momentarily, if I took down the beam it was using. Even if it reacted too quickly, I’d have at least forced it to stay in flight... then I could just wait until it had to land. It would get tired, right?

I quickly realized there wouldn’t be time for that. Multiple bullets started pinging the table and breaking up the tile around me. Shit... why couldn’t their hangovers be just a little bit stronger? I let out an angry sigh as I looked back down at my burning hooves. Basset’s scream echoed in my mind... that bastard was going to pay, no matter what happened.

One of the gangers suddenly appeared from around the table. Reflexively ducking down, his knife clipped a bit of my mane off my head. I grabbed him by the neck with my forehooves, the flaming, viscous material coating them quickly adhering to his own hide caused him to let out a yelp that was cut off almost instantly when I crushed his windpipe. He pawed at my hooves much like the Ganger from the entrance had, but once again to no avail as his body went limp. I threw his body aside and-

No, I tried the throw his body aside. It stayed on my hooves. I shook him around a bit, and started rapidly swinging his body back and forth to no avail. Damn stuff was like super glue! I leaned back against the table, the shooting stopped as they witnessed me attempting to pry their friends body from my agglutinant hooves, and set my non-coated back legs against his flanks and began to push. Very slowly, he pulled away from my forelegs before suddenly jolting out of it and several feet in front of me. I panted from the effort and strain of simply unsticking the pony after that. To my disgust, a large patch of his coat (and some skin, ick...) was still in the adhesive. My hooves were thankfully separated from each other; having to unstick them too would’ve gotten me killed for sure.

Speaking of which... why hadn’t the Gangers just come around and killed me already? I peeked around the corner, prepared to jolt my head back once again, and saw all of them staring at the body completely flabbergasted. “What?” I called out, “This shit is sticky!” They seemed to be confused all the more that I would actually talk to them during this whole event. Well, nothing else was happening!

A sudden shot nicked the table right next to my head, marking the resurgence of combat. I jerked my head back and kept it down as the Gangers unloaded clip after clip into my cover. It wasn’t going to last long. I needed a way out; I needed an opening in their fire. It wasn’t coming, though, as their bullets sprayed the table unceasingly. I pounded my hooves to the ground (noting that the gel didn’t seem to adhere to it) in frustration. Why couldn’t a solution ever just stare me in the face?

Unless... it kind of was. The dead Crystal Ganger’s eyes stared vacantly into my own. But I wasn’t paying much attention to his eyes, rather, I had my own fixated on his barding. A small red tube was nestled in one of his pockets, a stark contrast to the dark brown of his armor. I lightly pulled it out with my mouth, careful not to get my hooves stuck on him again. After I set it down again, I got a better look at it. It had glittering dust apparent on one side in the center of the red tube, of which I couldn’t tell the material. Protruding from the side with the dust visible was a string, maybe an inch long. I rolled it over a bit with my muzzle to see writing on the tube. ‘Caution: high explosive’. I slowly grinned as defective memory came into play. Dynamite.

I searched over the rest of the corpse to find the lighter, all the while still being oppressed by the Gangers’ fire. A bullet-sized hole was now visible in the table; I need to move now. But... I couldn’t find the damned lighter! Who the hell carries a stick of dynamite without one? Seriously? I stomped in frustration again. Wait... I held my hoof, still coated in burning adhesive, up to my face. If I wasn’t afraid of getting it stuck, I’d have smacked myself with it. I was really bad at noticing the obvious…

I grabbed the dynamite with my teeth and held the fuse to one of the small fires. A sizzle began to sound and I eyeballed the support holding up the beam the monster still sat perched on. I noticed a second tipped-over table to my right as well, close enough that I might be able to get to it on the trip. No time to think now... only act. I darted out from behind the table, catching most of the Gangers by surprise. The beast up above didn’t miss a beat, immediately taking shots. I whipped my head toward the support pillar and let the dynamite fly. I finished my gallop and slid into the new cover, feeling a bullet bite into my hind leg. Thankfully, not the injured one.

Another grin spread on my face. “Eat it you bitch!” I yelled, fury letting me project my voice clearly over the gunfire. A second later, a blast not unlike the one from the mine I’d detonated sounded, and wood shrapnel pelted my cover audibly. Several Gangers howled in pain as their mostly unprotected bodies were sprayed with splinters. One seemed to have lost one of his eyes, judging from what he was screaming between curses. A loud groaning noise began to resound, resulting in silence from everypony (save some more cursing) as it grew louder and louder. I risked poking my head out to see what was going on. The support pillar had a huge hole blown in it... it was coming down! My grin began to die a bit as it started to fall…

Right over my head! I scrambled to my hooves as fast as I could, dashing away from the falling mass of wood. I caught the winged monster caught on it, trying to move out of the way. The hefty weapon it carried weight it down too much, and as it tried to fly, it was caught beneath the beam. It crashed down to the ground, a deafening shockwave of sound as it splintered and cracked from the impact.

The dust began to clear. I could see a large spot of blood flowing from underneath it, accompanied by a foreleg that informed me I hadn’t been the only one in the crumbling pillar’s way. As well, another form lie near the pillar... the beast was stuck, the pillar having crushed its wing. I spat, my anger boiling once again now that all the excitement had passed. Now it was time... a little payback was in order. I trotted toward it as it struggled to stand. Eventually, it took notice of my presence and drew yet another gun, a small pistol much like Crutches’. I didn’t care anymore... I’d just been through enough bullets in the last two days to care about a few more. I raised a foreleg to shield my face, but otherwise kept advancing. It began to fire, its claw able to pull the trigger much faster than a pony’s tongue. Much of the bullets got caught in the flammable resin that coated my legs and hide, but a few bit into my exposed hide. I barely felt the pain.

Its clip ran dry after a moment. I lowered my leg as I now stood looming over it. Staring down, I merely snarled at the bastard. It returned the expression. The fear had seemingly vanished from its eyes, though. A cold acceptance of its fate seemed to emanate from its gaze now.

“What the hell are you?” it growled at me.

“Pissed,” I replied quite honestly.

“Very funny,” it grumbled, trying once more in vain to lift itself. “Fuck...”

“You seem a bit stuck,” I commented. Its eyes flicked up to me. “Here,” I said, wrapping my forelegs around its neck and torso as best I could, “let me... help!” I strained every muscle as I pulled on the monster as hard as I could. It screamed horribly as the flesh and feathers of its wings were pulled apart. After several moments, it came loose. Inertia carried both it and I further, the both of us landing on our backs. Its screaming died down slowly, but never fully stopped. I got to my hooves quickly, making sure it couldn’t get the jump on me. I saw the ruination of what was once its wing lay drooping on the ground. “Ouch,” I said mockingly.

“I’ll rip your fucking heart out,” it threatened in it’s gravelly, growling voice. I laughed a single, sarcastic laugh.

“The hell you will,” I growled back. I set a forehoof down and pinned its claw, confusing it for a moment. Long enough that I could raise my other leg and smash down on it. I felt bones crunch under my stomp. It yelled out in pain again. “How’re ya gonna rip my heart out if your claws don’t work?” It didn’t respond, only continued to groan in pain. I struck my hoof across its face. “Where’s all that confidence you had when you killed Basset, huh?” I raised my voice. “I haven’t seen it since you noticed that big hunk of junk didn’t hurt me. Is that the only time you’re happy, then, when you’re killing somepony? Is it?” I stomped on the claw again, eliciting another pained yowl. “Well? Answer me!”

“Rot in hell!” it yelled back at me. I reared up and smashed down on its chest, ribs cracking like twigs beneath my inequine strength. All it could do was scream.

“You first!” I screamed, smashing down on the monster again... and again... and again. I let out all of my frustration, my anger at everything. In two days I’d been nearly killed multiple times. Crunch. It screamed. I had a town kick me out for reasons I couldn’t even remember! Crunch. It cried out. There was a Goddesses damned voice in my head that could take control of me! It almost killed my only friend! Crunch. Its howls only got louder. I kept needing that friend so save my ass because I was so worthless! Crunch. I had promised to get Basset out alive! Crunch. They killed him! They fucking killed him! Crunch. Why!? Why was everything so... so messed up? Why was I like this? What was I!? Crunch. Why... why was it so quiet?

I opened my eyes, never even realizing I’d closed them in the first place. It’d stopped screaming... when had it stopped? Blood was oozing out from places I’d pounded its body to the point of rupturing it. Its eyes were closed, its face a permanent mask of agony from its death. Just like Basset... I had my revenge. Why, then, did I still feel so... bad? I felt sick and angry and sad, but I’d just gotten the revenge I wanted. No... scratch angry, I was just sick now... sick and sad. I felt my eyes watering and my stomach churning. What was I going to do now? Go after the other Gangers? Did I even have the heart for it now?

Wait a second... the other Gangers! I looked up from the grizzly corpse I’d left. Even the convict that had injured his eye was silent now. All of them were staring at me, all of them still as statues. Mouths hung open in shock and pupils shrunk in fear. This wouldn’t go on for long; if they came to their senses, I was dead. I stood up and glared at them, trying to summon any piece of wrath I still had left. “Run...” I muttered, “you should be running. You all want to end up like this? Huh?” They still stood, too stunned by what they just witnessed. I did the only thing I could think of in my quickly deteriorating mental state: I inhaled deeply and roared. Suddenly, the Crystal Gangers were very eager to vacate the room. The primal bellow kept on, even after they left. Slowly, it faded... and devolved into tears.

What was wrong with me? I won... and once again I was having the wrong reaction! My legs were trembling underneath me so badly I could hardly stand. First I panicked, now... I was crying? I let out a tear-choked laugh; I’m sure I looked real scary now. Good thing I’d gotten the Gangers away when I did. My vision was getting blurry now. I noticed the mattresses the Gangers had been sleeping on in the corner of the room and slowly walked there. I had to pause every few moments to keep my quivering legs underneath me. Eventually I found my way onto one of the beds and simply collapsed onto it.

Why did I have to be like this? Nopony (or whatever that freak I just killed was) I’d seen so far had any problems killing whatever they needed to. Why was it me? What was wrong with me that I broke down whenever I killed someone, even if I had to? Even if they deserved it? Why was I so weak? I didn’t have time to... to be so pathetic! If this kept up, I was going to get myself killed. Or worse, I was going to get Sky killed because of me…

I felt a hoof prod my shoulder, but I just ignored it. My every breath was shuddering now, and I had squeezed my eyes shut to keep the salt in my tears from burning them. After a moment, it poked me again. And again. I turned over and opened my eyes. Skydive stood over me, looking... I couldn’t even tell with my vision this blurred. Why was I always reading faces?

“You were shot,” she said calmly before pulling a healing potion out of her saddlebags. I merely shut my eyes again. I felt a something damp, likely a rag, rub over the spot a bullet grazed my back leg. It immediately felt better as the healing potion she must’ve soaked the rag in took effect. She checked me over and found several similar wounds, each of which she swabbed with the soothing rag. “I can’t see any bullets still lodged in you, so that should do it.” I nodded; I was still shaking, but my tears had stopped for the most part.

I felt a shift in the mattress. A moment later, a leg reached around and held me. Followed by a wing. Sky was careful not to get herself caught on the adhesive still coating me. “You’re okay,” she said in the same gentle voice I’d heard her use with Ice Pack. I just kept shaking, not responding to her. I was too caught up in my own thoughts. “You’re okay,” she repeated. I felt the tears coming back as my racing thoughts came back to what just happened. Pounding... crushing... oh Goddesses it was horrible…

“Everything’s fine,” she spoke softly. How... how could she be this calm? After what I just did, why was she even still here? Why was she helping me? She should just go back to New Trottingham already! I told her... I told her at the overpass to go home, why…

“Why...” I repeated my thoughts aloud. “Why...” Skydive simply continued to hold me and repeat that I was okay and everything was fine. I felt like a foal, sitting there bawling while Sky just held me. It made me feel stupid if nothing else. But, for a minute, I enjoyed her embrace. Knowing she still cared, for whatever insane reason she must have had, was comforting. Enough so that, by the end of that minute, I simply fell asleep.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Here comes the field of... grass? Wait, what? Where was the giant ring of fire? Was he just trying to confuse me again? I called out for him, but never got a response. Curious... maybe he was asleep? Did evil bastard voices even need sleep? It might explain why I wasn’t burning with my touch anymore.

I was in a large, grassy plain. The sun shone though I felt none of its heat, and there was a single cloud drifting along lazily in the sky. Scanning around me, there was nary a tree in sight. All empty plains as far as the eye could see. Except... something. I could see something to my left, something standing amidst the otherwise empty grassland. Well... I had nothing better to do. I started a brisk trot toward the unknown object.

After what felt like a few minutes, I finally arrived at it. A house. Not like the ruins I saw everywhere, but much like Crutches’ home. Perhaps a bit cleaner and free of wear and tear that time and the apocalypse had caused it. Again, I had nothing better to do in this strange lucid dream. I knocked on the door. No answer despite the lights being on. I shrugged, this was my dream, I doubted I’d get in any relevant trouble if I walked in. I opened the door and did just that.

I was in a kitchen, not much unlike the Buffalo Chief’s that I’d just been in. Nobody was here, though there was a glass of water with ice still floating in it. Someone was here not too long ago. I stepped away from the kitchen, through a door on the right. There were stairs immediately on the other side, making up an effective wall of the living room area I’d just entered. A couch along with two chairs adorned the room, all of which surrounded a low coffee table. What caught my attention, however, was what was on that table. A piece of paper folded to stand upright was left there. On it, in large letters, read ‘Take a seat’. Well, why not? I trotted over to one of the chairs and sat down on my haunches. It was extremely comfortable!

“I’ve been expecting you,” a voice called from nowhere, startling me for a moment.

“Ugh,” I sighed, “another voice? Come on, that’s already old with me. Not to mention pretty cliche.” The voice laughed, an eerily familiar laugh.

“I suppose,” it replied.

“Wait... expecting me? You knew I would be here?” I asked. “I figured I’d be in the ring of flames for the rest of my sleeping life.”

“Oh, yes,” it answered, “I just didn’t know when. This meeting has been a long time coming.”

“A long time? Hey, I only remember the last two days of my life, so you’re gonna have to fill me in.” I told it.

“Only two days?” it sounded surprised. “It feels like two years at this point... I suppose time moves pretty slowly when you’ve got nothing to do but sit and wait. Besides, days never really end here... that sun hasn’t moved since... well, two days ago apparently.”

“So you got here when that other voice took over, then?” I asked.

“Indeed. That feels like ages ago, like I said. So to me, it has been a long time coming, this meeting between you and I.”

“So, who are you?”

“Well,” it paused a moment, and a shimmer appeared in the chair opposite me before a pony materialized in it. A sort of cloak with a gemstone on it fell to the ground. My jaw dropped as I saw the pony before me. “I guess I could say ‘between you and you’, but that’d just be confusing.” I stared into my own eyes as he... as I spoke. “For the sake of this discussion, let’s just consider me another party, hm?”

“Wha... okay, what the hell? No, you know what? I don’t even-”

“I’m your past,” he cut me off. That caught my interest explicitly.

“Okay. I do want to know. Talk.” I... he chuckled.

“I’d love to,” he explained, “but I don’t have all the time in the world. You have to tell me what it is you want to know. Make sure it’s important, as well, because I don’t know when we’ll be able to meet again.” Well... that made it hard. There was so much I wanted to know! My whole life, in fact! I sighed.

“Alright... why am I here?” I asked. “Why here and not the field of fire I’m disturbingly used to?”

“Good question. It’s because he messed up,” he replied.

“Who is he? And how did he mess up?”

“He... is my mistake. Our mistake. We’re the reason he’s here,” he explained, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more.”

“Can you tell me his name?” I requested.

“Sure,” he laughed a bit. I saw him move his mouth, but he never spoke.

“What?”

“Funny, isn’t it?” he asked.

“You never said anything.” I replied.

“Oh? I said it was...” once again, he moved his mouth soundlessly. I gave him an annoyed look. “You can’t hear it?”

“Unless you’re messing with me,” I commented.

“Why would I ever mess with myself? That wouldn’t do me any good. He must have done something to prevent you from hearing it from me. How unfortunate...” he frowned. The fact that even when he wasn’t present he was still being a nuisance irked me a bit. “As for how he messed up... you remember what he did last, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

“That was his mistake. Trying to take control of a body that wasn’t his. He can control you, but it takes far more energy than the old bastard’s got in him. He wore himself out trying to do it, and now he has to recover. It won’t take very much longer before he’s back, I’m sure.”

“That’s why I’m not burning the people I touch anymore, then?” I asked.

“Correct. Now, is there something else you want to know?”

“Only everything,” I muttered. I thought for a minute before my eyes fell back on him. “What’s the deal with that?” I asked, pointing at what he was wearing. It was a type of barding, clearly hard leather and dyed to match the dark grey of his coat.

“Ah, my barding. It came with the job. Back in the old days, you were a bodyguard.”

“For who?”

“Somepony important,” he said, “I’ll get to whom when it becomes relevant. Until then...” A glare shone through the window behind me. I looked out to see the sun setting rather rapidly. Turning back, the other me was frowning disappointedly. “I fear we only have time for maybe another question.”

“Is he coming back?” I questioned worriedly.

“No, not yet. But we’re about out of time. Hurry, now; if there’s something else you’d like to know, now’s the time.” I panicked a bit. What was the most important thing I could ask? Where did I come from? No, that was clearly Equestria... who shot me? But I couldn’t find them based on a name... name…

“What’s my name?” I asked quickly. My heart sank a bit when I saw him look at me with an expression as full of pity as they came.

“There’s many for you. A birth name, a nickname or two, or even a dozen. I figured you’d ask, but not for a last question... I’m sorry, truly I am, but that’s something you need to find yourself.” The sun fully set at this point, and the house began to fade around us. The other me stood up and put his cloak back on. “Your name is who you truly believe you are. You will find the names you’ve had, I promise. It’s up to you to decide which is really yours.” He tapped the blue crystal that held the cloak together and vanished before my eyes, the house soon following. “Remember, it’s your decision, nopony and no thing else’s!” And with that, the world dissolved into the night sky around me.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I opened my eyes slowly, not exactly wanting to wake up yet. That had been the first good sleep I’d had in memory. My tired mind slowly caught up with events, letting recent events flow back into the front of my thoughts. I felt the cold surge of panic swell in my chest again; this time, however, it was noticeably weaker than before. I wasn’t breaking down again, but I still felt uneasy.

The blur of sleep clouding my vision was wearing off quickly. I turned my head to Sky still sleeping next to me, her hoof still over my shoulder. That she was still there made me forget that cold panic, if only for a moment. She didn’t leave despite everything that should drive a pony to run away from me. I was mildly insane, clearly some form of monster pony, and had breakdowns after violently killing things. Yet here she was, making sure I was okay.

As gently as I could, I moved her foreleg off of me and quietly moved away, careful not to get her caught on the resin still coating me. It occurred to me that if either of us had moved in our sleep, we’d be having quite a bad time. As silently as possible, I moved over to the kitchen area. A pang of guilt hit me as I saw Basset lying dead in the corner. I needed to tell Ash about him... but for now, I turned my attention to the sink. There was a hoof-held scrub brush in the basin. Perfect.

I turned the faucet on, wet the brush, and began to scrub the adhesive off of myself. It didn’t hurt when it peeled off, and didn’t seem to take very much of my coat with it(thankfully). It was a hassle, but after a few minutes I had pretty much all of it off. I threw it in the nearby trash can to make sure it didn’t clog the sink; I still had one last thing I wanted to use it for. I leaned over the sink and ran a forehoof under the warm water. It was likely irradiated, but it would get the job done. I took the scrub brush in one hoof and began to scrape the other with it. The blood washed out fairly easily, but it took some effort to get all of it out. The water ran red off my hooves as I worked, finally getting the crusted reminder of Clamp and... whoever this thing was off of myself. I switched hooves and repeated the process. A minute or so later and I was clean. Well, mostly, but it was close enough for me. I set the brush in the slightly red-tinted sink and gave a relieved sigh.

“Feel better?” Sky asked from behind me, startling me a bit.

“Yea,” I answered, “quite a bit.”

“Good.” Her eyes wandered over to Basset in the corner and she gave a sad sigh. “I’m so sorry you couldn’t save him.”

“Don’t be,” I told her, “it’s not your fault.”

“It isn’t yours either.” I contemplated the comment for a moment. She wasn’t wrong, but... I still felt responsible. I said I’d bring him back, and I failed. Mixed feelings fought each other for dominance over the subject, leaving me with a sort of hollow feeling. I’d have to sort it out with myself eventually.

“Did I wake you?” I asked, changing the subject.

“No, no, I woke up on my own. I heard the sound of water running and figured it was you, just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Thanks. You know, I don’t really understand why you do it, but it means a lot that you’ve stuck with me,” I said. “If you weren’t here after... that... I don’t know what I might’ve done. So, thank you. Especially for last night.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” I caught Sky blushing a bit as she replied, “you looked like you needed somepony there.”

“Yea,” I admitted. I checked my Pipbuck to see it was about eight O'clock. “I think we should get moving. Ash probably thinks we’re dead at this point. Anything you want to do before we go?”

“Yes, actually. I’m running low on ammo, I want to see if there’s any around here.”

“Alright. Maybe try that old gift shop, there was stuff lying everywhere,” I suggested.

“Yea. What are you gonna do?” she asked.

“I’m going to get this gunk off Basset. I told Ash I’d get him out, and I’m going to do just that. I’m not bringing him back looking like this, though.” Skydive nodded silently and trotted off. It was a lot more work to get the adhesive off of Basset’s body since it wouldn’t cooperate with me. Scrubbing it off seemed to leave his hide intact, but when I tried to just pull it off, (after his foreleg slipped out of my fetlock for the fifth damned time) it peeled coat and skin with it. As I worked, I heard Sky poking around in the large room behind me. She seemed to be checking the Gangers’ corpses. It seemed rather rude, but I doubted she would do it if it was really frowned upon. Besides, it isn’t like we owed them any courtesy anyhow.

“Hey,” Sky called out to me, “when you’re done over there... I think you need to see this.” I was basically finished anyhow. Setting the now adhesive-free Basset back down, I check over him once to make sure all of it was gone. He stared up at me with his ever-empty eyes. I sighed and pulled them closed with a hoof. If I didn’t know better, I might have believed he was asleep. If only…

I trotted out to see what Skydive had mentioned. She was staring at a piece of paper that, since she was standing over it, she had pulled from the monster’s body. She seemed puzzled, and more than a little worried at what she was reading.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, getting a bit worried myself. Sky didn’t seem the type to easily upset.

“Read this,” she passed me the small piece of paper. Looking at it, the writing was a bit hard to understand. It read: ‘Look, a lot of the guys are heading north. The rest seem to be staying at the warehouse. You really should just stick with one of those two groups. Plus, a certain somepony - if the word even applies - made it pretty clear she wanted us away from that little town down south. A certain somepony from out in Mirage. You’re playing a dangerous game being that close to it, and if any of your guys fuck around in that town... you remember what she did to Barbed Wire. If you insist on striking it out down there, just wait ‘til she takes care of that freaky torch of a pony. If you stick your beak in it, you’ll get killed for sure. Or worse if that flaming maniac gets a hold of you.’

“Freaky torch of a pony, flaming maniac,” Sky repeated what was on the note after I set it down, “if a big patch of burnt land and a charred skeleton are any indicator, I think this note is talking about you.”

“I’m not a maniac,” I retorted. Then I remembered whose corpse the note came from. “Not... usually.”

“Maybe not now, but you might’ve been before. And what are the odds there’s another pony who burns what he touches near here?”

“Well...” She had a point. But... it didn’t really matter now. “What about it? He’s already dead, whoever wrote this had his fears realized, so...”

“So,” she picked up immediately, “look at what it says! Somepony out in Mirage, right?”

“The one who wanted me dead and had these guys frightened? What about her?”

“They seemed far more scared of you than her,” Sky commented.

“No, they were scared of who I used to be.” This paused Skydive for a second. “I’m not the flaming maniac they were talking about, not anymore anyways. That was someone else.”

“But that pony in Mirage knows you! She could tell you about your past,” she argued.

“Right, because she seemed to have such a good disposition toward me, what with getting me shot in the head.”

“You changed, though. You said it yourself, you’re different now!”

“How different am I? You saw what... what I did just last night! Look at what’s left of this... thing! Whoever this pony is has every reason to think I’m still a monster. Hell, New Trottingham does, and they didn’t even know what I used to be!”

“Well I don’t!” Neither of us had noticed we were shouting until this point. “I don’t,” she repeated quietly. “You might have freaky things happen to you, you might be scary when you’re angry,” she glanced down at the ruination of the body that had held the note, “but you don’t ask for it. And you do one thing no ‘monster’ or ‘maniac’ ever does: you regret. You don’t want to do the stuff you’ve done. I’ve seen ponies to the cruelest, most horrible things you can imagine and worse, and they don’t regret a thing. They love it! Those ponies are monsters, not you.” I... didn’t quite know how to respond.

“I... uh... thanks? I guess?” She rolled her eyes but smiled. “But... I still don’t see why we should go talk to her. Even if all that’s true, she clearly wanted me dead. Probably believes I am. Why go stir her up and risk her coming after me again?”

“So you can learn who you were! Doesn’t it hurt, not knowing anything about yourself?” she asked.

“Well... a bit. It’s more aggravating than anything, but...” I trailed off.

“But?” she persisted. I sighed.

“What if who I was was... really bad? Like one of those ponies you just mentioned? I said it to Crutches, I doubted she wanted me dead because I was nice.”

“Then you were, and it’s a good thing you changed,” she explained. I still didn’t want to risk it, getting somepony who wanted me dead hunting me down and probably Skydive just for associating with me. “If you don’t want to go,” she picked back up suddenly, “don’t. If you’re afraid of discovering a lifetime of wrongdoings and evil, I won’t blame you for not wanting to.”

“It’s just... I don’t know. It’s also that I don’t want to have somepony hunting me down. And it doesn’t feel... right, I guess. The more I travel, the more stuff like this,” I waved a hoof at the dead beast, “is bound to happen.”

“Give it some thought,” she said, “I know you want to do what’s right by others, but I think this would be doing right by you. You have to take care of yourself too, y’know.”

“Yea, yea,” I resigned. My attention returned to the kitchen area, where Basset lay peacefully on the table. “But I have to take care of someone else first.”

* * *

“Figured y’all were dead,” Ash drawled when he saw Sky trot in. I followed soon after, Basset lying still on my back.

“No... not us,” I replied. Skydive gently lifted him off my back with her forehooves and flew to a nearby table to set him down.

“Oh, no...” His voice was sad, but not particularly upset.

“We’d gotten him untied when a griffin came in with a Flamer. Basset tried to run, but...” Sky trailed off in her explanation. She’d explained to me the winged thing I’d killed was called a griffin. ‘They’re half eagle, half lion, and all creepy’ she’d claimed.

“Always on the run... boy couldn’t fight to save his life. Well, obviously... but if he weren’t talkin’ he was runnin’. Told ‘im law duty wasn’t for ‘im,” Ash drawled on. “Don’t y’all feel none bad ‘bout this, it was bound ta happen eventually. Ain’t yer fault he got himself caught in that mess.”

“I tried,” I spoke, “but... I couldn’t get him out alive. I’m sorry.”

“All that matters is ya tried. That’s more ‘n’ most folks are even willin’ ta consider these days.” I nodded. “Well,” he picked back up, “Ah reckon this means we need us a new lawpony. Ah heard the raiders haulin’ their behinds outta the hotel, ‘n’ I won’t ask why, but we got nothin’ ta stop ‘em from just comin’ back in a few days. Or any other group lookin’ fer a weak town ta exploit.”

“Anypony in mind?” Sky asked.

“Hm... ya could get the NCR to help out, take the town under their wing so ta speak. They’ve been pretty useless so far, this branch, but they’d keep the raiders away. Y’all are travelers, a’int ya?”

“I guess,” I answered. It was the closest thing that we were that I could think of. Well, Sky had a home in New Trottingham, but I at least had nowhere to call home.

“Well, if it a’int too much a worry, would ya mind gettin the NCR to help us out? Else, look fer somepony able ‘n’ willin’?”

“If I ever come across anyone, I’ll try to send them this way,” I told him.

“Would be much appreciated, stranger,” he thanked me.

“Can you excuse us for a moment?” Skydive asked suddenly, not waiting for a response before tugging me toward me toward the corner. “If you’re not chasing after that pony in Mirage, why not settle down here?” she questioned. “You could be the sheriff here! You can clearly handle yourself, so long as you’re not being too reckless.”

“And I’m not angry, and there’s only a few of them so I don’t get shot when I freak out afterward,” I added. Sky sighed and nodded. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t think I’m exactly sheriff material.” Sky walked back over and started chatting with Ash, mostly stuff about the NCR and reasons they might have for not having acted yet. I stayed where I was and thought for a while. That voice would be back soon, if what past-me (I had to call him something) had said was right. I wanted to stay here, maybe live alone so I wasn’t dangerous in my sleep. But... what I was still wouldn’t change. I’d have problems with the voice being a jerk, burning ponies, and being an outcast in general. On top of it... past-me had said I would find my names, and I would decide which one was truly mine. The whole of it was fuzzy and far too philosophical for my tastes, but... I couldn’t very well find out my name just by sitting in this town. I needed to look for it.

“Hey, Ash,” I called out when the two stopped in their conversation, “I need to get a few bottles of water for when I hit the road. Got any for sale here?”

“Well, yea. Ah’m sure we can set you up. More than just water too, ya need any bullets or guns? Maybe somethin’ to eat?” He replied.

“Well, Sky said she needed some ammo. Something to eat would be nice as well.”

“Alright, anythin’ else?” he asked.

“Hm... yes, actually,” I answered. “What’s the fastest route to Mirage?”

Footnote: Level up!
Perk added: Travel light: Lightly armored means light on your hooves. You run 10% faster while wearing light or no armor.

| Thanks goes out to Jon “Bazaro”, the only editor in the world willing to tolerate my lack of sanity, and of course, anyone and everyone who reads this story. Seriously, thank you. I know the story has been extremely New Vegas oriented, but I’m stepping away from it for a while. Also, it came to my attention that many people dislike exceedingly long chapters (Coughs and looks at Chapter 2) so I’m going to try and cut down on the word count. Once again, thank you everyone who takes time out of their day to read this. You’re awesome. | ~Nightrein