The burley stallion screamed like a little filly as the Hellhound hurled him bodily across the bar room, his shotgun clattering to the floor before he even had a chance to rack the slide.

Rose simply took another sip of her whiskey, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder as Cain choke-slammed a heavily-armored unicorn through a table. She did, however, glance over at Spit Shine, who was watching the brawl with a mixed look of horror and exasperation. “So, uh… same deal as last time? Double the cost of the damages?” she asked dryly. Between repeatedly paying for damages and picking up a new hunting rifle, medical gear, and a couple of grenades for Coyote, the group had already burned through most of the caps they got from selling off the slavers’ gear. A fact that she was not too happy about, especially as she heard what sounded like a chair breaking behind her.

Spit Shine, mouth hanging open in disbelief, could only nod. And cringe, particularly as the Hellhound picked up the filly-screaming stallion from earlier and threw him against the nearest wall, knocking him out cold. The entire building rattled from the impact, and then again as the mutant canine gave loud roar of dominance, sending the rest of the rag-tag mercenaries running for their lives, screaming and, in one case, sobbing incoherently.

The group’s plan to kidnap and sell the Zebra rumored to live in Wellspring had, needless to say, not gone quite as they’d hoped. With the situation resolved, Cain let out a low growl of annoyance, before returning to his seat. Rose continued to sip her whiskey, expression flat. Spit Shine simply continued to stare, jaw still hanging.

And when Coyote trotted through the front door a few seconds later, he wore a rather unamused frown. “That’s the third time this week.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Rose grunted, knocking back the rest of her drink, before sliding the glass to down the counter for a refill. She spun in her seat, turning to face the unicorn and give him a flat stare and a dour frown. “You should have seen this coming, y’know. You brought a Hellhound home with you. A Hellhound posing as a Zebra, sure, but that’s not much better. Worse in some ways, really. Did you really think there wouldn’t be trouble?”

Coyote looked over at the heavily-armored stallion weakly trying to crawl out of the wreckage of the table he’d been smashed through. “Uh…”

Rose threw a plate at the stallion, nailing him in the back of the head and knocking him out. She then turned her attention back to Coyote. “Seriously. You’re shit at thinking things through.” The grumpy mare suddenly put on a big goofy grin, and began to tilt her head from side to side. “Oh look at me, I’m Coyote! I can find cool stuff, but dammit if I can’t plan things out! Come on Rose, let’s go get our asses shot off by robots while trying to find counterfeiting tools, which we’ll get shot over if we survive the robots! Oh oh oh! Let’s make friends with a Hellhound, too, and tell everypony he’s just a Zebra, nevermind the fact that EVERYPONY HATES ZEBRAS!”

Coyote gave a meek shrug, grinning sheepishly. “Uh… well… When ya put it like that…”

Rose turned to frown at Cain, who had finished adjusting his cloak and resumed his seat next to her, once again trying to hunch over and pose an equine. “Why do I put up with him again?”

The Hellhound gave a low, throaty chuckle, before giving a Zebra-rhymed reply. “Aside from the promise of pay and protection, methinks your stay may also be due to… affection.”

Rose blinked a few times, trying to process what the canine had just rhymed. When it finally clicked, she blushed vibrantly – and began to slap the brute on the back. “Dammit you stupid mutt you take that back right this instant!” she snarled indignantly, smacking Cain’s back and shoulders repeatedly, while the Hellhound simply laughed. “I already told ya I wasn’t interested in him! Stop laughing!” she snapped, growing only more frustrated by the moment. Her green face was now bright pink with anger and embarrassment. “It ain’t funny, Goddess damn it!”

Ignoring the quarrel between his two friends, Coyote carefully trotted past the damage and unconscious ponies strewn about the bar, before taking a seat at the counter. “So, uh,” he smiled sheepishly at Spit Shine, “How much do I owe you? Eheh?” he laughed nervously.

Spit Shine started to calculate the damages, and Coyote began to mentally sob.

The flames of the campfire crackled and snapped, casting dancing shadows across the faces of the caravan members huddled around it. A half-dozen ponies, as well as a griffon, all sitting as close to the heat and the light as they could get. Some of them shivered against the cold night air, while a few of them whispered prayers to the Princesses. The griffon, a Talon with more than a few scars, and a few of the ponies held guns close, both to protect the caravan, and themselves.

A twig snapped in the darkness. Ears perked up. Eyes glanced around nervously. Two of the guards stood up.

Silence followed. Silence, and the gentle crackle of the flames. After a moment, the two guards sat back down.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake…” a hoarse voice whispered from the darkness.

The guards jumped to their hooves, brandishing their weapons. The rest of the ponies – settlers and merchants, not soldiers by any measure – huddled together, clinging to each other for protection and comfort. A mother tried to keep her colt from crying, lest he draw further attention to them.

“Clap your hooves…”

The Talon racked the slide of his shotgun, and brought it to bear on the whispering void.

“And make your last mistake…”

“So run this by me again one last time, just so I can make sure I understand,” Rose said dryly as she trotted along behind Coyote. “We’re going where to do what and die how?”

Coyote sighed, while Cain snickered. “We’re goin’ to a hospital,” the stallion explained for the umpteenth time. “And we’re gonna check to see if it’s still got stuff worth lootin’.”

“But we’re not actually looting it ourselves.”

“Nope.”

Rose frowned. “And why is that again?” She was not too keen on the idea of going on a three day hike, wearing uncomfortable leather armor and carrying a saddle-bag full of gear, just to see that something of value was there for somepony else to take and enjoy. Coyote didn’t seem to mind wearing armor and galloping around in for days on end, but Rose was already starting to find it rather uncomfortable and annoying. But at least it didn’t chafe. Yet.

Coyote gave another sigh, slightly more exasperated. “Because unless you know how to use an X-Ray machine, I don’t think the stuff we’re lookin’ for is gonna be too valuable to us. And I sure as hell ain’t cartin’ said X-Ray machine home on my back, especially if I ain’t got no use for it. But some of the hospitals in New Neigas pay really good caps if you can tell ‘em where to find working medical equipment. Finder’s fee sorta thing.”

“What about potions? Healing bandages?”

“We can snag those for ourselves, sure, if there are any left. But the main thing we’re lookin’ for is old medical gear that still works. X-Ray machines, stuff that reads vital signs an’ stuff, surgical gear and machinery, so on and so forth,” Coyote explained.

“There is a catch,” Cain stated factually from beneath his hood.

“What?”

“You heard the dog,” Rose deadpanned. “There’s always a catch. You haven’t mentioned it yet.”

“There ain’t a catch,” Coyote muttered.

“There’s a catch,” Rose and Cain both grunted in unison.

Coyote frowned, and paused his trotting. Adjusting his hat, he let out a beleaguered sigh. “Okay, okay. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a small catch.”

Rose began to look around for a rock to throw at the scavenger. “What sort of catch?”

“There may be raiders.”

Rose began to look for a really big rock. “That’s, uh, some catch, Coyote.” The trader frowned deeply. “Quite a big catch.”

Coyote turned to flash a familiar, sheepish grin. “Hey, like I said, there might be, but there probably won’t be. The fella I got the map from said all the raiders there were dead when he and his buddies got done clearing it out. They were doing some bounty hunting, and they tracked the psycho they were lookin’ for back to the hospital. Shot up all the raiders, and left most of the medical gear behind since they didn’t have any use for it.”

“Probably because the gear was shot to hell while they were clearing out the raiders,” Rose commented dryly.

Coyote opened his mouth to say something, before closing it. He worked his jaw thoughtfully for a moment, mulling over that prospect. Cain turned to Rose and simply stated: “Your impersonations of Coyote and his lack of foresight were not incorrect.”

Rose simply resumed trotting, a rather dour frown on her face. “I hate both of you.”

Chop-Chop wasn’t afraid of anything. He was one of the roughest, toughest, craziest raiders around. He ate colts for breakfast and dined only on the tears of deflowered fillies, or so he liked to boast. There wasn’t anything in the Equestrian Wasteland that scared him, especially when he had his trusty fire axe by his side.

And he was holding that fire axe particularly close as he slowly crept down the dark hallway of the hospital’s long-abandoned psych ward. A rather ironic home for a psychotic raider such as himself, he normally felt quite happy and content within its blood-smeared walls. But today was different. Today the walls of the psych ward offered him no solace as he tried his best to not make a sound, his armor-clad hooves slowly stepping over long-forgotten medical restraints and charred bones.

He wasn’t alone. He could feel it. Something was in here with him. Not one of his fellow raiders, whose screams of terror and agony he’d heard echoing all through the hospital over the last few hours. No, there was something else in here with him. Something that wasn’t a pony, or anything even remotely equine. There was something-

-right behind him!

Or so he thought as he spun around and swung the fire axe with all his might, brutally decapitating absolutely nothing with the powerful swing. For a moment he sat there holding the axe in his hooves, panting slightly from the effort. After steadying his nerves a bit, he let out a small sigh of relief. “Guess it was all in my head. Must be goin’ crazy. Heh. Crazier. Heh heh.”

“Maybe you should see a therapist about that?” something softly whispered in his ear.

Chop-Chop’s shrieks were louder than any of his victims’ had ever been.

Three days of travel and quite a few arguments later, Coyote, Cain, and Rose were almost to their destination. They’d managed to avoid any serious obstacles or dangers, aside from the occasional scorpion or wandering ghoul. Cain had easily dispatched most of the threats, his diamond-sharp talons making short work of the mutant arachnids and zombified equines. Coyote had made quite a few quips about the advantages of having a Hellhound traveling companion, and Rose was forced to agree.

As the trio made their way along a rocky trail surrounded by boulders and prairie grass, Cain suddenly stopped and rose to stand on his hind legs. Pulling back his hood and taking a deep sniff of the air, the Hellhound’s ears pinned back. Slowly looking from side to side and studying at the craggy landscape around them, he let out a low growl. “Coyote?”

Coyote turned to look back at him. The stallion’s horn flickered with magic, and his pistols slipped from their holsters to hover aloft beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“The scent of blood is heavy upon the wind,” Cain said, almost poetically. He narrowed his eyes, gazing at a bend in the road further ahead. “Half a dozen lives lost. Ponies.” He took another deep sniff of the air. “A griffon, as well. Much blood and rot.”

Rose shifted her weight uncomfortably, trying not to look nervous. “Raiders?”

Cain shook his head. “No. Something else. Another scent, not of pony or griffon. I do not know what it is.” He took a moment to rub a paw against his dark muzzle. “It smells… wrong. I cannot describe it.”

Coyote frowned. “Let’s just stick to the road, and stay close together.”

“Wait, we’re going forward?” Rose asked, looking a bit unsettled about the prospect of heading towards whatever may have killed half a dozen Wastelanders. “Not back, or around?”

Coyote shook his head. “Going off the road makes us easier targets, and I’d rather not go home empty hooved, especially since we kinda need the caps from this job to pay off all the damages to Spit’s bar. Besides-“ he pointed at Cain with a grin, “We have a Hellhound.”

The mare looked back and forth between Coyote and Cain a few times, before shaking her head and starting to trot again. “It is nice to know I am deemed a valuable tactical asset,” Cain grumbled, before dropping to all fours again and resuming his trek along the road as well.

“Quite valuable!” Coyote beamed. “Now, let’s all hush up. The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better.”

The trio fell silent, walking along the rocky path as quietly as possible. They managed to keep their noise to a minimum for several minutes – until they rounded the bend in the road, and saw what was on the other side.

Rose screamed. Coyote paled and gagged. And beneath his cloak, even Cain grimaced at the sight before him.

Strewn about the road and surrounding hillside where the remains of a several ponies, mangled beyond recognition. Most of them were far from intact, their limbs and organs scattered about the bloody landscape. The remnants of a campfire were smoldering nearby, several eviscerated and dismembered corpses scattered closely around it. The stench of blood and death was overpowering.

Coyote lost the battle with his stomach, and turned to puke on the roadside. Rose buried her face in her hooves, whimpering and muttering what sounded like a prayer. Cain took a few steps forward, sniffing the air. “Over a day old,” the Hellhound gutturally observed. “Some manner of mutant or abomination. Some were consumed. Others, merely torn apart. We should-”

A soft, timid voice, like that of a foal, whimpered from nearby. “H… hello?”

Cain’s ears pinned further back, his head swiveling towards a cluster of rocks. Coyote and Rose both looked up, and the mare took a cautious step forward. “Is somepony there?” she cautiously called out.

From behind the rocks stepped a small colt, his bright blue fur stained dark crimson with dried blood, his eyes bloodshot from crying and filled with fear. “Are you a m-m-monster?” he whimpered, shivering with fear.

Rose immediate galloped towards him, half-choking on a sob. “No sweetie, we’re not monsters,” she said as she moved to embrace the foal.

“Good,” the colt said back with a small little smile.

The wind shifted, and Cain’s eyes widened in realization. “ROSE!!” he roared, lunging after her – too late to stop the mare from making her mistake.

The colt’s smile turned into a fang-filled grin far wider than was natural. “Because I am.” His grin spread wider, splitting his face in half as his eyes sank back into black pits of soulless hunger. Across his body flesh cracked and tore, talons and claws and tentacles bursting forth in a shower of red gore and black ichor. The colt-thing’s head split open to form a toothy maw, and with a hideous keening howl, the abomination threw itself at the mare in front of it.

Rose’s life flashed before her eyes. There was no time to run, no chance to escape. As scything talons and hooked tendrils reached out to flay her alive, she could only flinch and hope to die quickly.

Instead, she was treated to begin grabbed by Coyote’s magic, and hurled quite forcefully to the side. Being slammed to the ground and bounced several yards certainly wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than being eviscerated and eaten alive. The abomination’s talons and claws sliced through the empty air where she’d just been, and the creature let loose another ghastly howl of frustration and hate.

That howl was met by another howl, belonging to a rather pissed off Hellhound. Smart enough to know charging into melee with the thing would be suicide, Cain instead resolved to pick up the nearest rock and hurl it at the creature – quite forcefully. With the force of a cannonball, the small boulder slammed into the center of the writhing abomination, blasting clear through it and splattering gore and fragments of black flesh across the ground behind it.

The monster, however, seemed to consider the gaping hole through its squirming body a minor inconvenience at best. With another keening shriek, it charged towards the Hellhound, claws glinting and maw gaping with murderous intent. Despite its clumsy, shapeless nature, the create seemed almost unnaturally fast, quickly closing the distance and bearing down on Cain with blinding speed. The Hellhound barely managed to dodge the first swipe of claws, and snarled in pain and anger as a second swipe raked across his stomach, his tough hide offering little resistance to the blasphemous creature’s talons. The wounds weren’t too deep, but bled freely. Desperately throwing himself backwards, he managed to some distance between himself and the monster just in time to barely avoid being decapitated.

While Cain played a rather deadly game of tag with the shapeshifting creature, Rose staggered to her hooves, disoriented and in pain. Her head was spinning and her whole body hurt. Blinking tears of pain and fear from her eyes, she tried to look around to see what was going on. Cain was jumping from side to side, backpedalling away from the snapping jaws and slashing claws attempting to end his life. As for Coyote, he seemed to be hunkering down behind some boulders just off the road. Blinking her eyes properly into focus, Rose could see that he was levitating his rifle, though his aim didn’t seem to be directly on the monster. He also seemed to be levitating a-

Rose dove behind the nearest boulder, just as Coyote threw the item in question and yelled out a sharp order. “CAIN, DIG!” The Hellhound, barely avoiding another bad case of decapitation, did as commanded. He threw himself down, ducking under another snap of the bloodthirsty maw, and quickly dug through the rocky soil and into the earth below.

The abomination turned to see who was yelling – just in time to find itself face to “face” with a frag grenade. For a brief moment, just before Coyote pulled the trigger and sent a round through the explosive, the creature’s hollow eyes seemed to betray a faint hint of what looked like perturbed annoyance.

The resulting explosion, however, erased that look from its eyes. It also erased the majority of the creature itself, leaving nothing more than a smoldering crater and quite a few chunks of twitching flesh scattered around the surrounding area.

Jumping up from behind his impromptu sniper’s nest, Coyote quickly galloped towards Rose. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here!” he snapped, slinging the rifle back over his shoulders. “Ain’t no tellin’ if that actually killed it or not!”

The ground rumbled a bit beneath Rose’s hooves, and for a brief moment, she wasn’t sure if it was Cain, or another one of the monster’s tricks. However, as the ground next to her burst open, she found herself feeling far happier to see a Hellhound than she ever thought she would be. Her eyes quickly fell upon the bleeding gouges across his stomach though, causing her to gasp in shock and concern. “Cain, you-”

“Not important. Just flesh wound,” Cain growled, gritting his teeth in both annoyance and ill-concealed pain. “We need to move. I can patch up later.” Neither pony felt like arguing. The trio quickly took off, sprinting as fast as their hooves and paws could carry them.

After putting the group had few miles between themselves and the ghastly ambush, Coyote began to slow down. “Alright, I think we’re safe for now,” he panted, finally stopping for a moment to try to catch his breath. “Besides, need to patch Cain up. Blood trail might make us easier to track.”

Cain gave a small growl of annoyance, but knew not to argue. Coyote had a point. As Rose started to dig through her saddlebags for some medical supplies, she couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of what they’d just been through. “What the hell was that thing?” she asked with a shudder.

With a scowl and a cautious look back over his shoulder, Coyote gave a simple, grim response. “Something that’s supposed to be just a damn legend.”

“A legend?”

“Mhm,” the stallion frowned. “Never heard of a Changeling?”

Chop-Chop galloped through the pediatric ward of the hospital, sobbing not unlike one of the foals that would have once sought treatment there. As he rounded a corner to head down another hall, he nearly plowed into another raider – Spine Snapper. The hulking brute of an earth stallion was covered in armor and tattoos, and served as the de facto leader of their little raider group. “Oh fuck, boss! Boss it’s you!” Chop-Chop exclaimed, staggering back a bit and grinning with relief.

“Who else would it be?” the burly raider deadpanned. “What’s got you so spooked?”

Chop-Chopped looked around, paranoia written clearly on his face. “That thing. Thing thing got ‘em, boss.”

“Got who?” Snapper growled, frowning in annoyance. “Who did it get? I only just got back from scouting, and I heard you screaming like a little bitch.”

Chop-Chop gave Snapper a wary look. “Scouting? I don’t remember you planning to go scouting.”

“I felt like going for a trot, alright?” Snapper growled. “Now, what got who?”

“I dunno,” Chop-Chop shivered. “It tried to come after me, but I outran it. It kept changing its voice. I heard it use Blood Rain’s voice, but then I found her. Or… w-what was left of her,” he said with a shudder. “I think… I think it… might be a-”

Spine Snapper leaned in closely to Chop-Chop’s face, his eyes staring coldly into the smaller raider’s own. “A Changeling?” he asked, a faint smirk tugging at his scarred muzzle.

Chop-Chop let out a small whimper, and nodded. “Y-yeah.”

Snapper’s smirk deepened. “You mean one of those things from the old legends? That steals souls, assumes the identity of its victim, and then preys on the victim’s friends?”

Chop-Chop gulped nervously. “Uh huh.”

Snapper grinned. “Really now? Well…” He stared at Chop-Chop for a long moment, almost eerily, before laughing and turning away. “Come on then, we’d better get out of here. If we see anybody else, shoot ‘em. Can’t take any chances, right?”

“Right,” Snapper’s own voice replied from right behind him.

The burly stallion spun around, and rather than the terrified face of Chop-Chop, he found looking at his own scarred visage. The eyes of not-Snapper held an almost playful look, as they flashed a crooked grin. “Hi,” not-Snapper said rather cheerfully, before slamming a massive hoof into Snapper’s jaw.

Reeling from the sucker punch, Snapper collapsed to the floor. His head spinning and his vision blurring, he tried to stagger back to his hooves. Another hoof slammed into his face, and he collapsed limply to the floor. “Wow, you put up even less of a fight than that last fucker,” not-Snapper idly mused. “I gotta say, this has been the easiest buffet I’ve ever been to. Granted, you all taste like a mix of ‘hate’ and ‘crazy.’ I’m probably going to be sick for a week after I finish feeding on you, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers,” the doppelganger shrugged.

Barely clinging to consciousness, he vainly tried to crawl away from himself. “What… what…” he rasped, confusion and fear in his eyes. “What the hell are you?”

Green fire spread across the face of not-Snapper, fur and flesh burning away like ash to reveal smooth black chitin. A pair of glowing blue eyes soon stared down at Snapper, a playful smirk on the creature’s face as it slowly loomed over him. As the rest of its disguise burnt away, the Changeling let out a coquettish little giggle, before providing a cheerful answer to his question.

“I’m hungry~”

-Coyote has gained Experience Points!