“It could be worse, guy.”

“Could it?” Panting and my armor still riddled with buckshot, I collapsed onto the floor. “We should have stayed long enough to paste the other pegasus first.”

We’d had to pull back and find somewhere to hide—the second floor of some sort of food establishment called “Future Burger”. The floor we were on was populated with space-themed chairs and tables, periodically punctuated by a trash can or a condiment station. Cute place. Futurey. Burger-ey, too.

It didn’t seem like there would be anything good left to loot around here, because a good portion of the drink and burger menus had been spray-painted with “future pee” and “future poo”. That, and why would I ever expect to find anything in a building abandoned for two hundred years?

Riverbed encouragingly patted my head. “You could be on fire. I could, like, probably not have a face.” She conked her helmet and grinned, showing off the big cracked dent in the side.

“She should be on fire,” Violet queasily gasped, then collapsed by a nearby trash can. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Nodding, Riverbed agreed, “Yeah, I could be on fire. See? Could be worse.”

“I’m going to be dead. They’ll call for their backup and a platoon will be upon us like a dominatrix. I’m toast,” I babbled, mostly to myself. “I’m going to be toast, and they’ll have the butter waiting for me.”

“Like, I almost got my face relocated. Chill, guy.” It took a second of fumbling with the straps, but Riverbed managed to tug off her helmet. “Dayum. This thing was new, too. At least that’s three-fifty to replace instead of six-fifty for armor.”

“Breathe, Frosty. Don’t panic yet,” Gale hurriedly reassured me. “Everything is fine.”

“Everything is not fine,” I snapped. “They’ll know where we are. They’re going to capture me and probe my butt.”

Comfortingly, Gale massaged my neck. It didn’t make me feel any less panicked, but it made me more comfortable. “What could possibly be up your butt that the Enclave will want?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed, throwing myself on the ground face-first. “Isn’t that what they say happens to deserters?”

“I’m just gonna…” I heard Riverbed quietly sidle away, her voice becoming fainter with each scoot. “Just gonna fix my helmet over there, Guy.”

The hoof stroking my head vanished and the firm grasp of a claw replaced it. “Think of the bright side, wimp. If the Enclave bring their friends, that’s more targets to kill. It’s gonna be fun,” Toasty enthusiastically chuckled.

But I didn’t want to kill pegasi that were following orders! A hunting party was one thing, but a clueless squad of grunts was another. “Y-you don’t know that,” I unsteadily stammered.

“Not with that attitude.”

“What?”

There was the tell-tale whap of a wing meeting the back of a head. “You’re scaring her,” Gale chided. “And that doesn’t make sense, so shame on you.”

“Yeah? What’re ya gonna do about it?”

I tried my best to ignore the sounds of an airsick unicorn and failed miserably. “Could you possibly vomit any louder? I can barely hear myself complain.”

“I’m sorry you fly like a maniac. I can see why Tangerine has developed a fear of heights,” Violet shakily shot back. “Although n—” Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by a particularly violent dry heave.

Which also brought up an interesting question: “When did you even find time to eat?”

Violet looked a lot better now, to her credit. “When did you?” she snapped back, clambering off of the trash can and wiping her mouth with a little rag that she’d levitated from her ratty robes.

That was a pretty good question, actually.

“Uh—” I started, but a trio of little red bars that had appeared on my E.F.S. stole my attention instead. “Shh! We’ve been followed.”

“You’re dodging the question,” Violet muttered, but I didn’t have time to deal with her.

Thankfully, Riverbed was already done patching up her helmet. “Riverbed! Rivvie!” I hissed, waving her over. She squeezed her helmet back onto her head and trotted over, a slightly perturbed grin on her face. “Quiet. Lock and load.”

“Are the fuzz here?”

I slowly turned my head and muttered, “…What?”

An embarrassed blush lit up Riverbed’s face. “Uh, forgot who I was talking to, guy.”

There were a few windows that overlooked the street, so I pressed myself against the wall beside one of them to keep a lookout on the red dots. As I readied my laser rifle, I caught sight of the charge indicator light and reminded myself to keep an eye on it. After my little experience with S.A.T.S. with the rifle, I had a shadow of an idea how it worked. Just in case, I ejected the old microspark cell and replaced it with a new one. Whether or not they had charge was anypony’s guess, since there was no indicator on the outside.

It was also a good thing that Riverbed took her own initiative and set up shop at the top of the stairs, using one of the condiment stands as cover. She even had her shotgun pointed down the stairway for good measure. This was as secure as we could get, considering Violet really couldn’t do much in the combat department.

Speaking of which, Violet had collected a few of the tables and built a little bunker to hide in. Too bad all she was using it for was to read in relative safety. “Psst! Violet!” I hissed. “Do you have a sidearm?” Violet looked up and arched an eyebrow at me. She slowly levitated her book into view, gently shook it, then lowered it out of view to continue reading.

With a reply like that, I wasn’t going to share. My neglected submachine gun was going to be staying that way.

“It’s your funeral,” I muttered under my breath.

The shuffling of hooves and badly-muffled fluttering of wings made me begin paying attention to our surroundings again. It sounded like the two pegasi were around somewhere, but the other part of the group might have managed to get into the first floor while I was distracted.

“We’re not alone out here, guy,” Riverbed whispered at me through the radio.

I rolled my eyes. “Really? I didn’t realize,” I dryly responded.

Crunch.

Clack.

“Ow!” A female voice, slightly annoyed.

“Shh!” Angry rough male voice, sounded like the ghoul.

Scraape.

Shooting a glance at Riverbed, I realized that the window was less of a problem than what was downstairs. “What’s your stock on tac nades?” I lowly hissed.

“Smoke. Red smoke. Flares. Lucky HE nade.”

“Flashes?”

“Go fish.”

I blinked. “What.”

“Got any threes?”

“Now is not the time!” There were what, five of them? Only four of them were combat-effective, so at least we had that. They still had the advantage with their three shotguns in a close combat scenario. I had a shitty markspony laser and Riverbed had her own sawn-off and a plasma rifle. The second that the one with the PipBuck tracked down where us little red bars were hiding, we were dead.

If everything went to plan, dropping a smoke grenade to block the stairway might give us enough time to jump out of the window and cover our escape. “Stay quiet and wait for my go. Prep smoke.”

Riverbed stared right at me, shotgun in mouth and plasma rifle pointed down the stairs. “Me and what hooves, guy?”

“Just sit down and use them!“ If this upcoming kerfuffle didn’t kill her, I probably would out of sheer frustration.

Glancing down, she noticed the same thing. “Oh. Right.” She began to fumble with her gear, somehow managing to both keep watching and fail to locate her grenade.

I peeled myself away from the window and hovered to the opposite side of the stairs, allowing me to look directly at to the foot of the stairs—a blind spot that would go unnoticed because of Riverbed’s attention-attracting barricade.

The soft ping of a pin being removed meant Riverbed was prepared. “Ready, guy.”

“Pop smoke on my mark. Engage if you have a solution.” I alighted on the railing and aimed my rifle at the foot of the stairs. “One…”

Hesitantly, I pulled back the trigger on my rifle and felt the whole gun tremble as the capacitors charged up. Quickly glancing at the indicator light, I noticed that it actually switched from red to orange. “Two…”

Movement out of the corner of my eye made me whirl around, putting me nose-to-scythe with the unmaimed gray pegasus from earlier. There was something in her pale blue eyes that looked a lot like recognition. “Winds?” she breathed, frozen.

Without breaking eye contact, I shouted, “Wait!”

Right on cue, the pegasus was knocked out of the air by a violent projection of pre-war bits from Riverbed’s shotgun. Out of surprise and fright, I unloaded a laser bolt into the ceiling.

Note to self: figure out how to uncharge a shot.

Turning on Riverbed, I hissed, “I said wait!”

Riverbed let her shotgun fall from her mouth and dangle from its strap. “Oh, so now it doesn’t imply three,” she snarked.

That pegasus had recognized me, and there must have been a reason that she hadn’t killed me when I wasn’t paying attention. “No! I mean yes? You know what I mean!” I fluttered to her side and looked her over. Thankfully she had been sensible enough to have some kind of body armor, and the makeshift shotgun ammunition hadn’t penetrated it.

Angry stomping hoovsies from down below reminded me that her friends were probably not too happy. “Like, make up your mind.” Riverbed casually flicked the spoon off the smoke grenade in her open hoof and let it roll down the stairs. “To three or not to three, guy. It’s a number. Can you not, like, count to it?”

“Ceasefire! Ceasefire!” I shouted. Throwing all grace aside, I slapped the dusty gray pegasus across the face to try and snap her out of the impressively shocked state she was in. “Hey, call your buddies off. I want answers!” How did she know me? Why didn’t she take me down when she had the chance?

“Arc! Brass! I’m fine,” the gray pegasus coughed. She didn’t seem too badly hurt, but I still helped her to her hooves. “It’s okay.”

“You want plasma burns? This is how you get plasma burns,” Riverbed taunted—presumably at the ponies down below.

“No! No plasma burns! Riverbed, stop it.”

“Are we damn friendsies, then? Yeah? Let us up these damn stairs and we can talk.” It was the female voice again, but I couldn’t place any distinguishing accent. “Or did you mean ‘talk’, as in how you talked to Shroud?”

“He was asking for it!” I defensively shot back.

It was silent, and for a frightening moment I realized I shouldn’t have said that. “Okay, I can sort of see your damn point. He’s got a sort of slappable face,” the voice jovially replied.

Oh good, she had a sense of humor. I firmly stated to Riverbed, “No disintegrations. Let ‘em up, but be prepared for anything.” Letting them up would at least give us the upper hoof if it came time to turn them into paste. Their numbers should count for naught in the stairwell.

Riverbed stared down the stairs, then shot me a questioning look. “Whatever you say, guy.” She took a few steps back and sardonically waved her hoof forward, inviting the other ponies up. “Ast thou pleases, lady and hog jerky. Thy employer awaits.”

The mare with the broken shotgun appeared, aforementioned weapon strapped to her back. For a nearly safety-orange unicorn, I wasn’t really sure how I managed to miss her. It did bother me that her double-barreled shotgun was actually two shotguns glued together and their pumps merged into one super-pump. Or something.

And then there was the walking pile of meat also known as a ghoul. Again, armed with a shotgun and just as ill-mannered as the mare he was following.

“She tastes like bacon / There’s no mistakin’,” Riverbed began to sing. “From the lovin’ to the oven / Yeah you know what I’m ba—” She abruptly stopped head-bobbing when she finally noticed the murderous look the ghoul was giving her. “What? Too soon?”

“That’s insensitive,” it growled.

Riverbed rolled her eyes. “At least I didn’t use the word ‘crispy’, guy. Touchy.”

On the other hoof, the mare was a lot more worried about the gray pegasus on the floor. “Name’s Brass. Bodyguard, all-around the damned best gun toting badass,” she snapped at me. “And gun for hire, but I’m on contract right now.”

“I like her,” Riverbed giddily whispered to me. “Like, reminds me of me.”

The gray pegasus weakly raised a wing and flapped it. “Blue Jay. Fastest clay duck in the Wasteland. Ow.” The wing flopped back to the floor and Brass rushed to her side.

“I’m Arclight Spanner. Back in my day, you reckless mares would have been flogged for reckless endangerment.” The gravelly grating of the ghoul finally made me take a better look at him. At the time, I’d dismissed him as an earth pony ghoul, but now I noticed the meaty chunks on his back—wings!

So this group had three pegasi, did it? That was no coincidence. “What’s the bounty on me then? Still paying in bits or is it caps now?”

“What in the damn blazes are you talking about?” Brass demanded.

It was a good thing that Riverbed had her guns ready, since Brass didn’t dare risk taking another step. “Don’t try to hide it. The Enclave loves to make Wastelanders do their cleanup work. It’s all about payback, isn’t it?”

“Enclave? Buck the damn Enclave. No, what we’d like is some damn payback for what you damn mercs did to Shade. There’s a damn hole through his damn leg!” Brass continued yelling about revengeance or whatever, but something about what she’d said caught my attention instead.

“We were just passing through, Winds,” Blue Jay coughed.

Buck the Enclave? But…

Pushing the more pressing issue aside, I asked, “Wait, did you just use ‘damn’ several times in one sentence?”

“What’s the damn problem?”

My hooves flew to my mouth. “Luna’s grace, you also have a speech impediment. That’s adorable.” It was more likely she simply liked to curse and swear, but I liked my interpretation better. Out of excitement, I tapped Riverbed and squealed, “I found your soulmate.”

“Guy. I’m touched,” Riverbed breathed, a tear glinting in her eye. “We could, like, totally be besties.”

I heard the ghoul to my left let out a groan of exasperation and shout, “Why are we even talking about this?” By the time I had turned to address him, he was already halfway to me in mid-lunge. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Shade!”

Meat Stallion body checked me and tackled me to the ground before my brain caught up to what was happening. I tried to get up, throw a punch, kick, do anything to fight back but I was thoroughly pinned underneath an undead body. I snapped and struggled as the ghoul rotated his body and pointed his auto-shotgun at my face.

I watched the belt feed of shells advance and I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the end.

It didn’t come.

At least Rumcake would have one less thing to worry about if my face got redecorated.

So far, everything was going exactly as planned. Sodapony hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary yet—besides her offhoof comment of “You’re looking a lot better”—and Frosty’s little coltfriend was neatly tied around my hoof. Hopefully that was me being the suave little changeling I was and not me breaking Frosty’s character.

Speaking of which, the paladin himself trotted alongside of the bedroll I was lounging on. “Hey, quick question: where did you go with Sparkle last night?”

To my annoyance, in the time that I had replaced Frosty we still hadn’t left Stronghold except for a quick jaunt to the most defended whorsehouse in the Wasteland. “I’m honestly not sure. I let Sparkle carry me around because I got too drunk to fly.” In truth, I used that excuse to try and reforge a new friendship with her. Crazy was possible for me to pull off, but not Frosty-grade insanity. “Why?”

Rumcake popped off his helmet and dropped it next to me, sighing, “Sparkle caught balefire crotch.” I winced and shuddered just thinking about it. “She can’t stop scratching, and last I checked she was basically humping everything for relief.”

“Ew.” A fate worse than death, perhaps.

Similarly, the stallion by me shifted on his butt. “Yeah. Her bits glow a little, which is sort of funny.”

Suddenly, I developed an irrational fear for my own privates. “Wait. Do you have balefire crotch?” Getting balefire crotch would be doubly shitty for me and both of my genitals, morphed away or not.

Taken aback, Rumcake instantly denied it with a resounding, “No! Of course not!” We stared at each other in stunned silence until he asked, “D-do you?”

Pumping a little bit of mesmer into my gaze, I snapped, “No, and don’t ask stupid questions.”

“I—I’m sorry. I was just checking?” For a split second, Rumcake’s eyes flashed green, a sign that he had accepted the suggestion. “Just, uh—making sure that Sparkle didn’t hump you as well. Yeah.”

And then on the off topic of sex, “Real talk. What kind of pony goes ‘yep’ during sex? I mean, come on!” It had been nearly impossible for me to siphon his love earlier just because it was so distracting, but suffering through it had left me so happily stuffed with love that I couldn’t move. And, heh, stuffed with something else.

“Habit.”

“Well, stop it.” With a lot more force in my mesmer, I insisted, “I’m sure you can get over it.” I didn’t want to risk burning him out too quickly, but I really couldn’t handle his yep’ing every time I wanted to do it.

This time, Rumcake actually shuddered and blinked. “Uh, yeah. I could get over it.”

“Excellent.” I reached out and stroked his chin. “Now come here and cuddle.”

“HELLO.”

My eyes snapped open. Time around me had frozen—Riverbed was in mid-lunge, Brass and Blue were stuck shouting, Violet was… well, being Violet. “Am I dead?”

“YOU’RE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE.” Mort the skele-pony sort of glided to the ghoul’s side and tugged the shotgun’s belt feed backward just a bit. “Also, I’m dropping by to give you a convenience call. Time’s running out.”

Even if time wasn’t moving, that didn’t mean I could comically pick up the ghoul on top of me and leave. “I don’t know what to do, guy.” Catching myself, I groaned, “Aaugh, I’m turning into Riverbed.”

“YOU’VE NEARLY RUINED EVERYTHING I HAD PLANNED BECAUSE YOU’RE JUST SO SLOOOOW.” Comically, his intoning, echoing voice raised to a whining pitch. “YOU’RE NOT EVEN GOING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU SPLIT OFF WITH YOUR OTHER GROUP.”

Fixing my gaze on the skelepony, I growled, “I’m working on it.”

The little motes of light in Mort’s skull slowly drifted toward me. “Are you sure? I mean—”

“I’ve got it under control,” I firmly snapped.

Mort glided backward and sagely nodded. “If you say so.”

Then I noticed that he wasn’t wearing his dumb green suit anymore. “Hey, whatever happened with your jury duty or whatever it was, anyhow?”

“What? When did I…?” The lights in his eyes suddenly shrank in realization and he quickly snapped, “SAY NO MORE. THE FUTURE IS NOT TO BE MEDDLED WITH.”

“Huh? But I thought—”

“I AM NOT BOUND BY YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF TIME. I mean, ponies die every minute. How else do you think I do my job?”

I dumbly laid on the ground and cautiously answered, “Uh… quickly?”

“No, not—well, okay I’ll give you that one. Do you want the long version or the short version?”

“Short.”

“I am a time traveling skeleton in a cloak. And I sometimes collect souls.”

I blinked. “You know what, I can live with that explanation. So, the last conversation I had with you… hasn’t happened yet?”

“THAT, OR IT HAPPENED SO LONG AGO I NO LONGER REMEMBER IT.” A tiny pocket watch on a gold chain appeared in midair, urgently ticking at Mort. “I HAVE TIME AT MY WHIMS BUT I CANNOT DELAY MEETING WITH THE IN-LAWS. The clock is ticking, friend. Good-day, Frostivus Kay Winds.”

“Wait!” I reached out toward the edge of his departing cloak. “Before you go, can you raise your hooves in the air and cry, ‘nyaah’?”

“…why?”

With the assistance of Filly Frosty, I channeled the most adorable face I could muster. “Pweeease?”

Mort heaved an airy sigh. “Frosty, I have things to do. Maybe another time.” He promptly vanished from sight without another word.

Of course, that meant time caught up to me. Ghouley’s shotgun instantly jammed, and Riverbed knocked him off of me before he had a chance to fix it. The other two ponies screamed something or other—I didn’t catch much of it. Hysteria broke out a breath later when Riverbed slammed herself down on top of the ghoul’s chest and started to whale into it. Brass dashed in to break up the fight, but Blue decided to limp over to me instead.

“Winds, you’ve got a weird idea of company.”

The free-for-all brawl across from us had escalated enough so that Violet abandoned her bunker and joined us in spectating. “How do you know my name?” I asked her, adding a doubtful glance in her direction.

“Don’t you remember?

“No. My brain isn’t as good as it used to daisy sandwich.”

Blue tilted her head. “I was an assistant for a one Captain—ah, it’s old news. I know it was a while ago and we didn’t really talk so much as interact, but—”

Ugh, not again.

I found myself standing in a semi-circular conference room in front of five other pegasi. Four of them were seated at the nicely polished wood table in the center of the room, while the fifth stood slightly behind one on the left. The insignia on their collars were very high-ranking, which began to worry me.

The standing pony was none other than Blue Jay, sporting a uniform about a size too small and looking nervously uncomfortable. Her light blue mane did actually look a lot better in a bun rather than the giant braid she had it in earlier. Why was she here?

There was a sigh from my left. “Thankfully, the surgery has not appeared to have left any lasting effects. Nopony will notice the scar once her mane grows back in a slight bit more.” I couldn’t see the pony speaking because he was standing next to me, and I couldn’t turn to look for whatever reason. Out of the corner of my eye I could tell he had a pale orange coat from the shade of his nose. “However, we’ve run into a… slight… snag.”

“Stars above, you better not have burned through your funding already.” One on the left—a second lieutenant—snapped, leaned forward and slammed his hoof on the table. For some strange reason, I couldn’t make out anything about him. Focusing on him only created a fog that obscured him further. “Again.”

“No, it’s… we haven’t been able to work flexibility into the initiative. She’s good at following orders, but figures of speech will go right over her head,” the pony to my left answered.

Taking that cue, I glanced upward. One of them chuckled in response.

“That, or she might try to do it literally,” the decidedly sciencey pony to my left sighed.

A captain who was sitting on the right side of the table calmly drawled, “How does this affect the initiative moving forward?” Just like last time, trying to make out anything about him only made him blur more. Leaning back, he slapped the pony standing behind him. “Staff Sergeant Jay, make a note to grab expenditure sheets.” She nodded and did exactly that, fishing a small notepad out from somewhere.

“Uh…” Lefty pony nervously clopped his hooves together. “Out of our current pool of subjects, Ms. Winds is the first who hasn’t lost cognitive functions post-operation. We’re working on re-imprinting her again, which has set us back by several weeks. We know the program works so it shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

Secondey pulled a small stack of papers toward himself and leafed through one specific file. “What’s keeping us from using the Batch Three list? I mean, some of these recruits are pretty good. This Dust Devil looks like a good contender.” Tossing that aside, he picked up another one and glanced at it. “Even this Tailwind pony looks great.”

“We haven’t even started on psych evals yet, not to mention clearance or issues of red tape,” Lefty insisted.

“Is it safe to discuss in front of her? I mean, this is much higher than her pay grade will ever be,” the captain interrupted.

“For all she knows, she’s asleep in the janitor’s closet. We conditioned her to associate a song to sleep.” I felt a tap on my nose, courtesy of Lefty. “See?”

“Is she working right now?” a first lieutenant cautiously asked from the left side of the table. “As in, er, you know…”

“She should. She hasn’t said a peep, and that’s a sure sign she’s still receptive,” Lefty replied.

Reclining backward, the captain ordered, “I want a demonstration.”

Lefty gently tapped the back of my head. “Well, first we’ll have to make sure she knows that she can take orders from you.” On cue, I turned my head and blankly stared at Lefty. He was the shining example of what every science nerd strove to be—thick-framed glasses, unkempt coarse red hair, and eyes that didn’t entirely know what the definition of teamwork was. “Frosty, you are to take orders from Captain Silver Lining.”

I looked at the captain again and was strangely reminded of bananas. Odd. “Negative,” I emotionlessly droned.

Lefty sighed. “Hang on, I can do this. Frosty, Captain Lining is cleared to issue orders to you. Because he’s a captain. And he outranks you.”

All I apparently managed was an even more blank stare. I could feel the dead fish look starting to seep in.

Firstie scooted a little closer. “Is something wrong with her?”

“Think of Frosty like a cat. She obviously understands what she’s told, but sometimes she doesn’t know what to do about it.” Lefty pulled a little flashlight out of the front of his lab coat and shined it in one eye, then the other. “Or she’s lazy.” He frustratedly grabbed me by my collar and mashed his face into my chest. “Why do you do this to me? Why, why, why?”

I heard Captain Lining hum to himself, then dictate, “Airpony Winds, this is Staff Sergeant Blue Jay. I am ordering you to obey her commands. Do you understand?”

Immediately, I turned myself to face him and saluted. “Yes sir.”

At my side, Lefty sounded like he was having an aneurysm. “Go on.” The captain slapped Blue’s flank and gestured at me.

Still looking a bit flustered, Blue trotted around the table and firmly planted herself in front of me. “Okay, Airpony Winds. We’re going to run parade drills.” She cleared her throat, then yelled, “Atten-shun!”

I planted all four hooves on the ground and clicked them together.

“Left face!”

Dutifully, I took a step with my right hooves and pivoted, putting me facing left.

“Right face!”

I reversed the steps and complied. More orders trickled in and I followed them to the dot.

“Left face! Left face! About face! Right face! About face!”

Captain chuckled and clapped. “That’s good, that’s good. Make it harder!”

Blue coughed and took a breath. “By the numbers. Left face.”

Following the rules, I didn’t do anything. I simply stood there and waited for the numbers to come in.

“One.”

I took the first step with my hoof and kept it there, waiting.

“Two.”

I pivoted on the spot.

“Three.”

And then I clicked my hooves together again.

“At ease, Winds.”

“As you were, sir!” I shouted back.

This time, Secondey muttered, “That usually gets the recruits.”

Seemingly having recovered, Lefty added, “Frosty should do everything by the book. Unfortunately, that also limits operational flexibility.”

“I am entertained.” Captain chuckled. “I’ve seen enough. If it’s funds you need, by all means you’ll have them.”

Taking the cue, Blue said, “Cancel by the numbers. At ease, Winds.” Then she quietly added, “Okay, how do you make her stop?”

“Uh… cancel parade drills?” Lefty suggested. “I’d dismiss Frosty, but that might actually make her return to whatever she was doing before.”

Firsty called out, “Sudo follow me.”

I fixed my dead fish gaze on him and took one step forward. “Yes sir. Take the lead.”

Bolting upright, Firsty exclaimed, “Oh shit, that worked.”

“What?” Lefty gaped at him.

“Took a programming class in Penguin for credits back in academy.” Firsty scooted out of his chair and trotted toward the door, which I desperately tried to follow but the table kept getting in my way.

“…Why does that work? What did you do?” Lefty trotted to the table and shoved papers everywhere. “I could have sworn… uh, I’ll uh, I’ll work on it.”

“Come along, Airpony Winds. Let’s march thirty laps into the electric fence.”

“Yes sir.”

I came out of the memory with a lurching gasp, and a wave of nausea washed over me. My head hurt, and it was more from disorientation rather than how confused I was by what I had seen. “That was way too many revelations in a very short amount of time. I-I need a minute to think.” I unsteadily tottered to one of the chairs and sat down in it, throwing my head into my hooves.

Hooves clopped closer and stopped. “Uh, what now, guy? You okay?”

“I need time to think,” I groaned into the table. “Leave me alone.” Curiously enough, the fight had died down and its contenders were recovering.

Somewhere farther away, I think I heard Blue ask, “Not to ruin this beautiful moment you’re having, but why does the bathroom door have ‘THE FUTURE’ sprayed on it?”

Somehow, Riverbed had managed to defuse the situation and managed to convince the other group to depart without much more than a few caps and healing potions to make it up to their injured friend. The memory from earlier was still bothering me, and it wouldn’t stop nagging at the back of my mind. It bothered me more that they weren’t even after the Enclave bounty, if it existed anyway. Riverbed insisted nothing was wrong, but I had a nagging feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of them.

“I’m still mad you beat the ghoul up with his own jaw bone.”

Riverbed guffawed and snorted. “Aw, guy—you should have seen his friend! She was like, ‘that’s not physically possible’, guy, as I was beating him off with his own jaw.”

The sound of pages flipping abruptly stopped and Violet asked, “Beating him up, you mean?”

“Sure, sure.”

Changing the subject, I grumbled, “Does anypony actually know where we’re going?”

Before I had even finished saying that, Violet answered, “Check your map.”

The only way I managed to accomplish that was randomly cycling through functions until I stumbled onto it. “Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing in here.” All I managed to do was zoom the map all the way into the far right corner and get stuck there.

Riverbed gave me a nudge. “Guy, don’t you read? We’re here.” To prove it, Riverbed pointed at the worn sign I was standing right next to, then at the small fenced complex behind it.

The cracked stone stairs led up into a squat two-story building overrun with dead shrubbery all over the walls. “Wait, where’s Violet?” I slowly realized, since there was suddenly only two of us out here.

“Oh, she went inside while you were playing with your PipBuck,” Riverbed smartly replied, almost happily so.

Great. Just great. Now I had to go find her and figure out why we were here in the first place. With Riverbed—predictably—at my rear, I made sure my claw-shotgun was still loaded and then tromped into the dark, frightening, cold dark darkness full of dark. And debris.

A shrill wail from inside cut into my heart, a guttural moaning echoed through the deserted halls, and my blood froze solid.

…And full of scary monsters.

If I wasn’t the badass mare I was, I would’ve peed myself a little. “Nope. Nope. Abort field trip. Nope. Nuh-uh,” Riverbed blurted, her hooves clopping on the weathered hardwood. “I will murder for fifty bits and a can of corn. I’ll do your dirty work for one hundred and an ice cream bar. But no way in fifty thousand shades of hay am I going to fight creepy deaky ghosty things. Nuh uh.”

Thanks to Riverbed, I was getting a little unnerved as well. “It’s… uh… the wind. Yeah, it’s probably just the wind or something.”

This time, a series of echoing sobs and cries made the two of us throw all sanity out the window and cling to each other. “Okay, maybe you have a point,” I whimpered. “Screw this place.” The feel of a pair of hooves sliding down my back then shoved me back to reality. “And stop feeling me up!” I regained my senses and pushed her away; she wouldn’t stop trying to grope my butt through my armor.

Gale strolled into view and chuckled. “Like it or not, you still have to go find Violet.”

“What do you mean by, like, you, guy?” Riverbed demanded. “You’re coming with me, like it or not.”

Creepy abandoned building? Crying noises? If we had an evil-banishing camera, then we’d have the winning combination for a horror game. Or movie. More importantly, why had Riverbed even answered Gale in the first place? That was directed at me, wasn’t it? “I’ll wait right here and cry in a corner, thank you very much.” Then pointing at Gale, I added, “And you shut your trap! You know how scared I am!”

“Guy, there’s nopo—oh, right.” Catching herself, Riverbed nervously pranced in place and peered into the darkness “C’mon, guy. We can do it, right?”

I groaned. The last weird creepy building that I had been in was a surreal enough experience for me, especially with the epic mass hallucinations. “Okay, if you start seeing freaky things then we’re leaving. Violet can probably take care of herself,” I responded while trying my best to gather my courage.

While I was doing that, Riverbed asked, “What about you, guy?”

A few calming breaths later, and I was ready to take the plunge into a dark and probably haunted research facility. “I think we both know that my mental health is invalid. For all I know you’re a figment of my imagination and this is actually some sort of post-apocalyptic alternate universe that I’ve made for myself.”

“If it is, then this is a shitty AU. It, like, doesn’t even have smut,” Riverbed nervously chuckled, readying her own weapons.

There was a certain possibility that I could use my submachine gun, but I couldn’t be bothered with finding it. “Let’s sweep from room to room. Violet couldn’t have gotten far.” That was the best I could come up with, since my E.F.S. wasn’t going to tell me anything useful. My collar told me otherwise, because it was nearly searing hot.

Riverbed began to say something in response, but I didn’t catch it. The sensation of something violently pulling on my burning collar made me scream in fright. My stomach twisted, my vision flashed white, my breath caught in my throat, and then I met the floor at a particularly high speed.

“Oh, so you finally made it.” Scratching noises from somewhere to my left gave me an idea of who was responsible. “Took you long enough.”

“Thank you, Violet,” I barely managed to choke out, hopefully in the direction her voice was coming from.

As I stumbled to my hooves, desperately trying not to vomit from the forced teleportation, the crying echo came back again. That got my head back in the game in an instant, and I blinked away the stars in my eyes. I had been forcibly relocated into the doorway of some kind of dark, dank, musty old storage room. Violet seemed to be more absorbed in rifling through one of the many bins of notebooks and paper in the room.

Without even turning around to reply, she mentioned, “Don’t worry about that, he’s mostly harmless. Just help me find Professor Double Check’s notes.” Either she had known what I was going to ask, or she was just being obnoxious as usual.

Hold on a second! “What do you mean by he’s harmless?”

“Yeah, there’s a colt stuck in a bear trap.”

“What?”

“Mhm.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s stuck in a bear trap.”

“That literally answers nothing.”

Violet let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s only his leg, and you’ve demonstrated that meat limbs are not only optional but fashionably outdated.” She gestured at the far end of the room. “Could you check over there? I’m getting the feeling that this place is organized by department rather than alphabetical or decimal.”

That sounded like a lot of work, but there was only one way to escape from all this paperwork. “I’ll go help what’s-his-face then. Where’s lucky mister bear trap?”

This time, gesturing with a floating box lid, Violet dryly responded, “Out, around the corner, past the stairs; you’ll know when you see him.”

So I did exactly that, sidestepping rubble and only losing my way once, because “around the corner” was a vague expression when it came to a three-way junction. I finally stumbled upon the navy-blue unicorn face-first on the floor, his right hind leg firmly clamped in a heavy-looking bear trap. It looked like it had been covered up with something to act as a trap, because there was a dead ghoul leaning against the end of the hall with a quite shiny curved knife thing tantalizingly buried in it.

The stallion began whimpering again, and I realized that all the noise had been coming from him. “Oh good, this one can’t get away,” Toasty snickered. Apparently she had snickered just loud enough, because Trappy the unicorn sat up and sort of spun around to face us. Although for the record, he looked perfectly average for a stallion and not actually like a trap.

“Are you gonna help me out of this thing or are you gonna continue staring like a twat?”

Toasty trotted around the stallion, examining him. “Mmm. You smell like my new best friend,” she purred, nudging his black cowpony’s hat to sniff his ear.

Curiously enough, all Trappy was wearing was some sort of ballistic vest-looking thing tucked full of smaller razor-sharp knife things. “I can give you something else to smell if you don’t shut your trap and help me out here.”

Whatever. “Well, with an attitude like that, I don’t think I want to help you.” It didn’t seem like there were any other traps around, so I got closer so that I could pop open his saddlebags. “And especially with your dumb purple mane. You look like a disaster. It doesn’t go with your hat or your eyes.”

Besides his hat and his knives, he wasn’t wearing anything else, so his sun and moon cutie mark was showing. What kind of cutie mark was that, anyway? Gale appeared next to me and examined the stallion’s butt. “Maybe it’s a tattoo?” And it was attached to a very nice butt, as well.

“Hey! What are you doing back there?” I wasn’t going to bother wondering why this unicorn didn’t just free himself, but free loot was free loot.

“Seein’ if you’ve got anything good in here.” The answer to that question was a resounding no. “What are you even going to do with this many bladed implements? Is that a fire axe or are you happy to see me?” I began to pull weapon after weapon out of his saddlebags, getting more and more confused with each item. Combat knives, little retractable knives, even a few of the cute little flippy knives that griffons had sometimes. “Dude, why do you even need all of these?” I extracted a particularly long serrated one and gasped, “Oooh, I like this one.”

“That’s a bread knife!”

I continued to hold it, then I cocked my head at it. “Seriously? That’s a pretty serious weapon to carve up some baked wheat.”

“Who said it was for carving baked wheat?”

I blankly stared at him. “Uh, you did.”

Suddenly, Toasty returned to my side and begged, “Hey, can he be our new best friend? Please?”

Just like me, Gale gaped at Toasty. “Wait, you were serious?” Gale asked.

Toasty excitedly nodded. “Yuh.”

“Uh.” I looked at the stallion, then her again. “I mean, we could always use more ponies on our team.”

“Who are you talking to?” Trappy nervously asked as he twisted his head back and forth, trying to get a better look at me.

“Aw, he’s cute,” Gale cooed. “He’s like an injured little puppy.”

Oh, I needed a name from him. “What’s your name?”

“Midnight.”

Seriously? Of all the stallions to run into in the entire Wasteland, it was one with a strangely edgy name? “Okay, that’s dumb. You’re gonna stay being Trappy,” I insisted.

“You mean I’m gonna stay trapped or are you naming me Trappy?”

Keeping him trapped wasn’t a terrible idea, and it seemed like he had enough random junk on him to sell for caps. “Well, let’s go for a bit of column A and a little of column B.” I mused, staring at his hat. “Depends. How attached are you to that cowpony’s hat of yours?”

“What?”

“You’re right. How about you owe your life to me and call it even? That hat’s barely worth anything anyway.”

“What? No!” A few weak sparks burst from Trappy’s horn and he winced.

“Okay, whatever then. Have fun in your trap if you think you’re fine on your own.” I shrugged and continued to dig through his saddlebags regardless. “Just be careful when you free yourself or else you’ll bleed out when the teeth come out. Oh, and don’t forget to set your leg afterward—that’s definitely at least fractured.”

Trappy dejectedly glanced at his stuck leg and then at me. “Can you please help me?”

“No, because you have a stupid name!” I burst out, gesturing with some kind of bayonet-looking thing I had found tucked away with three others, each painted in a different camouflage pattern. “I mean, what sort of parent names their foal ‘Midnight’? It’s like somepony naming their foal ‘Tangerine’, or ‘Rumcake’, or ‘Violet Dusk’. Do you dirt-munchers actually just have a thing about dumb names?”

“What?”

A grin crept onto my muzzle. “Say what, one more time.”

I heard Gale facehoof. “Don’t you say it,” she warned.

“W-why?” Trappy stammered again.

I loudly sighed and groaned, “You’re supposed to say 'what' again.”

“Why?”

All I wanted to do was make a dumb joke and he’d ruined it beyond salvaging. “Can I kill him?”

“No. Stop.” Gale gently sandwiched my head between her hooves.“Stop trying to kill everypony we meet. You’re making a bad impression. How about I’ll help him out of the trap and you can angst with all his dark and edgy knives.”

Begrudgingly, I agreed and let Gale take over. She warmly smiled at Trappy and approached the bear trap clamped to his leg. “Okay Trappy, I’m going to try opening the trap. If it hurts too much we can stop if you’d like.” She placed our claw on the inner edge of one side and wedged our armored hoof into the remaining space. “I’ll start on three. Ready?”

Trappy hesitantly stared at us, then at the hunk of metal around his leg. “How about you not call me that? Just because I don’t have any magic left in me right now doesn’t mean I can’t shiv you.”

“Seeing as Frosty refuses to call you Midnight, I think we can compromise with ‘Middy’.” Gale shifted her stance and took a deep breath. “I’m going to open the trap now. Don’t move to suddenly—can you do that?”

“Mhm,” Tra—er, Middy whimpered and grit his teeth.

Gale grimaced. “Three.” She began to pry the jaws of the trap apart, and she was desperately trying not to stare at the blood and flesh sticking to the metal.

Of course, Middy screamed bloody murder and begged Gale to stop. It was a lot of incoherent pain noises, but I did catch my personal favorite a second before it started—“I mean really w…ho the buck starts at threeaaaaauuugh!” Gale didn’t stop pulling until the trap was nearly all the way open.

“Carefully move your leg—and use both of your hooves, quickly!” Gale commanded. It wasn’t hard to keep the trap open thanks to the power armor, but the two of us were getting a little annoyed by the mewling whimpering coming from Middy. When he didn’t budge, Gale rolled our eyes, sighed, and sarcastically despaired, “Oh no, I’m losing my grip.”

That got him moving, and he hastily—and much faster than he should have—heaved his leg out of the way with a pained scream. The bear trap snap shut and we plopped down on our haunches. “Whew, thanks for the help. What was your name?” He hissed in pain and clutched at his oozing leg.

“My name is Gale. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Midnight.” Gale flashed him a wry grin and continued, “Actually, I shouldn’t have introduced myself like that. Frosty would have preferred ‘My name is Frosty. Winds, Frosty,’ then realize she’d quoted it wrong again.”

If she wasn’t actually right, I would have snapped at her about it.

Middy gave me a weird pained look. “You wouldn’t happen to have a healing potion or a whisky or whatever, would you?”

Gale glanced at the stallion’s oozing, slightly crooked leg. “Perhaps we should set that first.” Why was she even being so nice to him? I mentally prodded her to stop immediately. “Hmph, Frosty doesn’t like me talking to you. Good luck with her, but I shall be a moment’s away if you need me.”

I was unceremoniously dumped back into control of my body and I nearly face-planted into the stallion’s exposed crotch. “Okay, fine. Since Gale likes you so much, let’s settle it at ‘you owe me your life’ and now you get to be my new butt slave forever.”

“…Butt slave? ‘Splain.”

“Well, our group is currently made of three mares. Adding you not only brings balance back to the force but also gender equality,” I smartly replied. “That, and I need a new stallion to call my own anyway.”

“I’m not going to be a slave!” A long-bladed, heavy knife appeared in Middy’s mouth, drawn from the sheath strapped to one of his forelegs. It had a forward bend at the halfway point, and the front of the blade had a huge leaf-shaped head to it. I nonchalantly slapped it away with my claw before the swing connected. Still, he defiantly yelled, “What makes you think I’ll listen to you anyway?”

Rolling my eyes, I grunted, “Fine, I’ll at least fix your leg. Can’t see why you can’t just walk it off. That enough for you?”

“Eat a dick sandwich,” Middy spat.

I brushed it off with a huff. “That’s not even your line.”

Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Unquestioning Loyalty – Orders given to you by a party leader grant you a bonus to combat skills.
Current Sub-perk: Diplomacy – Remember thy Charlamane. You gain +8 to Speech.