//------------------------------// // CP. VI: The quick and the dead // Story: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (Stalker) Dirge of Equestria // by Hoghound //------------------------------// CP. VI – The quick and the dead “Hey champ… don’t mind the weapons pointed at your hide, nothing personal, just business… now if you please drop that bag of yours, just leave it on the ground… yes, yes, that’s more likely… good boy. Now turn around, hold into that piece of crud you call a life and trot your way back to the cordon… “Wounded again? Why I am even surprised?” I merely grunted in answer as the greymaned equine indicated one of the nearby beds. “Wonder how nopony took you for a deader and threw your crumbling ass on a cart for the butchery…” Patcher smugly remarked. “That leg of yours was thrown on a wood chipper or what?” I simply didn’t had patience for his jokes…”What can you do for me, doc?” “Well, apart from the minor scratches here and there, your main issue is that limb… it seems a tad pale with all the blood loss it suffered. A little injection or two will fix it right up; too bad the same can’t be said for your combat reflexes…” And he went on to search his medical bag. “Do you wisecrack on just every patient or I should pay extra for the VIP treatment I am getting here?” “Just on the ones that will live through their own stupid mistakes… have you ever tried wisecracking to a corpse? It’s no fun at all; they don’t answer back or anything...” He answered while retrieved needle, thread and a couple of syringes. Patcher stitched my leg in no time and moved on to the syringes. Just a few injections don’t seem that bad… I extended my hoof so that he could apply them. “Oh, no… I need to apply them on the vicinity of the wound or they won’t work.” And my eyes followed as he placed himself right behind me. “Wait Patcher, you can’t possibly mean…” “Yeah, don’t give me those dark almond eyes, stalker… just relax. The back door is often used by real stallions, or so I’ve heard… with all the colt-cuddlers these days, you’ll never know. I’ll be real gentle with you…” All feelings went numb and dormant as he quickly applied a tranquilizing shot… I couldn’t move. I just stood there, mentally cursing the medic and feeling especially violated. It was especially memorable when he rubbed a sponge and used alcohol to sterilize my plot, prospects weren’t good… “Now, this won’t take long, did it?” He said. Wait, what? I’ve felt… nothing. All this build-up and… “Patcher, did you just…” He applied an adrenaline shot, which slowly brought my movements back. “All done. Your leg will be fine in a week or so, you won’t win any iron pony competitions, but you’ll be able to sprint again. Now let me just see your other wounds…” And the aquamarine stallion followed on to checking my bandaged wounds. “Nothing too grave, just a bit shabby-placed bandages around. You know, if you keep hurting yourself like that on a daily basis, we could start a fidelity program or something… like, every time you pay for a procedure, you earn points based on the complexity of your wounds and such…” “That seems a tempting offer… like a mileage thing. Tell me more; what I could exchange those points for?” “Better treatment, what else? Be filled with two pints of blood instead of one; be treated with syringes that weren’t used on drug junkies, meds that aren’t expired relief aid that were supposedly sent to Zebraria, plushy pillows, hell , you might even be able to buy your spleen back…” I should have never asked… thankfully, Patcher’s medical skills far surpassed the pony’s talent for comedy. “This should hold on for a while, assuming you actually avoid getting shot.” I handed over some bills for the treatment; they were promptly accepted by the earth pony. “Patcher, do you sell any meds? We’re short on antirads and stuff…” “Nah, that Tinder’s area. Actually, anything that can be sold IS his area. That shifty puppy would even sell his mother if he could get a good offer…” And he turned to the door. “Next!” Still a bit groggy, I left the improvised clinic, blinking to the burnt mare that was waiting her turn. “When you’re done, meet us down at the bar.” She smiled in response and trotted inside the clinic, I even heard Patcher’s typical greeting before the door was closed. “I like a hot tanned mare just as the next stallion, but that’s just ridiculous.” She would take a while there… and we should do some grocery shopping. I softly banged against the armored mare that was sitting nearby. “Huh, what? You’re done?” I nodded. “Lielle will take a while there to be healed as well… I have to get some supplies; you can stick around or come with me if you wish…” “I’d be pleased to. It has been a while since I don’t…” And she fell silent. I understood and simply signalized for her to follow along. ==========================[><]======================== “Hmm… I don’t know, I’ve seen irradiated shit in better shape than these.” I rolled my eyes. The weapons were relatively intact; it was Tinder’s fucking businesslike personality that was speaking through him. Moonbreeze was at one of the corners of the store, curiously eyeing everything with a mix of both amazement and disgust, since both daily goods and weapons were exposed. “Cut the small talk, how many bits are these worth?” The trader shifted his blue eyes and looked at the merchandise thoughtfully. “I don’t know… how much are you asking for them?” “How about two th…” At that point, I felt a hoof patting my back… Moonbreeze… “It’s nothing really…” She began. “But do you mind if I… do the negotiations?” The mare spoke. “Nothing personal, I just think that I can get a bit more off from it.” I shrugged, doubting that she would fare any better with Tinder, the trader was as shifty as it was, besides, I didn’t needed the money that much, I was simply selling so that I wouldn’t have to haul that junk anymore. If this makes her happy, why deny it? I backed off from the counter, allowing her to pick up the negotiation. “So, you’re the so called Iron Maiden…” The trader gave his most charming smile. “The guys told me about you, I thought they were trying to pull a fast one on me… well, just you look at that, hehe.” “And you must be the “legendary” Freedom trader, Tinder…” “The first and only! I got the best merchandise, the best prices, the best customer service…” “Then, how much could you give us for these weapons? They might not be mint-new, but they are certainly battle-worthy…” “I don’t know… how about you name a price and we work from there, sweetie?” “How about you give them a price, instead? After all, an arms trader with a stellar reputation such as you probably knows how to evaluate a weapon properly.” The freedomer looked disconcerted, but quickly recovered. “One thousand bits.” The mare imposingly struck her hoof into the counter, making it shake in response. “These are worth at least three times that amount! You can’t simply expect us to take that offer seriously…” “One thousand bits or nothing!” The trader raised his tone, narrowing his eyes at the mare. She said nothing in turn; instead, she just packed the loot and nudged toward the exit. “Come, there are some ponies who just won’t listen to reason” Well, what does she plan to do? Let’s play along… When we were almost leaving, Tinder called back. “Hey Stalkers, wait up!” We both turned back to the diminutive stallion, his former cutthroat trading attitude was replaced by an awkward smile. “On second thought, we could always work something out… perhaps I need to take a second glance at your merchandise…” The mare returned the goods to the counter, and a few minutes bargaining and tweaking the negotiation, she was able to get three thousand bits , half a dozen of antirads and four medkits for all the weapons… not bad. As an additional prize, I had the pleasure of seeing Tinder cringe his teeth… that cunning bastard finally met his match. After packing our spoils, I leaded the mare toward the BnB. “Moonbreeze… that was just amazing! How did you do that? That sniveling cunt already shafted me twice…” “Oh, that? It was nothing, really… just some applied economics I’ve put to good use. It’s my special talent…” Hmm… perhaps she wasn’t so bad after all… I guess I should give her the benefit of doubt; I’ve been a bit rash on my previous thoughts about that mare… ==========================[><]======================== I sighed before taking another sip from the bottle of vodka. The taste was the same as before, but… it wasn’t the same. It didn’t gave that same blissful numbing that went through my pained senses, it didn’t comforted as much as back then, nor filled me with blessed warmth… I guess that my body got used to it… My lazy eyes drifted from the bottle to the barkeep… Wavey busied himself cleaning a glass with a dirty rag, only dirtying the glass even further with his efforts, but he didn’t noticed such… it seemed that he was focused on the motion, not on the result itself. He didn’t have much to do, we were the only remaining patrons, it was late night and the rain hadn’t weakened a bit… crazy backwards Zone weather… I asked Moonbreeze if she needed anything ten minutes ago, and she politely assured me she was OK, just like the other two times I’ve asked… that armor of hers surely took care of everything. I wasn’t on the mood for small talk with that mare, and just dialogued with her out of pure civility. “Hey guys, why the long faces?” I turned around to face my other companion. She reeked of some sort of ointment, and there were some sections of her fur where it was completely burnished, such sections were completely sheared, giving Lielle a rather unfamiliar appearance. I guess that the fur will grow in due time… at least, she wasn’t sad about it. “Come on, we just completed another job, one more star on our books! We should celebrate to that.” And without delay, she ordered some hay fries. In a couple of minutes, Wavey placed a plate full of steaming hay before the mare. She wasted no time on stuffing herself, paying little regards for table manners. “You guys should definitely eat something… “She spoke with her mouth full. “Mmmm, this smells great” I couldn’t help but notice Moonbreeze downtrodden a bit when the earth pony mentioned the smell… being inside that weaponized tin can, the mare probably didn’t had anything to smell but her own sweat… had I been in her place, I’d probably give an entire hoof to smell some manure. I couldn’t help but feel some pity for her, after all, it wasn’t her fault for ending up inside that thing… It wouldn’t be her fault either if she killed me… That realization made me hate her with an intensity of thousand suns. I knew she wouldn’t attack me voluntarily, it WOULD be an accident, she WOULD genuinely mourn my death, and she WOULD have no responsibility at all, and yet, she WOULD feel sorry, but neither of those WOULD bring me back. You know, it’s easy and nice to hate bandits and other scum: they hate you back, they try to kill and rob you, they are, in essence, equine scum. Moonbreeze was the polar opposite… she was a perfect moralist noncombatant, it didn’t felt “right” to hate her, an innocent mare… and yet, the whole sense of wrongness by which she would always be the victim, despise the fact I died, made me hate her even more so… this was fueling a vicious circle of depth hatred… I shouldn’t be thinking about these things after a bottle. I pulled my thoughts aside and gazed at my other companion, who was finishing with her fries… she seemed so carefree, so happy… I guess we look at things differently… “Wavey, how much do we owe you? Also, we need some rations for the road…” “You’re in luck, pal… I’ve just got these” and he pulled a box from under his counter. “Not many buyers for them, but eh, I can make a discount price if you want’em…” I raised an eyebrow as he opened it… the cardboard box contained many, many rectangular shiny packages which looked like candy bars… The Pegasus offered me one; the package depicted a hulking minotaur posing for the camera. The “food” consisted of compressed cereals (mostly whey) on the form of a bar… it seemed like a stupid idea, how that thing was supposed to go with milk? You can’t have cereals without milk. I took a bite from it… it was stale, tasted like old rubber when gnawed my way through it. That thing must have been expired for several years now… “Eh, I’ll stick with my regular food.” “Thought so” The barkeep answered with a disappointed smile as he put away the cereal bars. ==========================[><]======================== “No point on leaving during this storm, you should get some Z’s…” The mare advised as she tested one of the beds. I simply raised my eyes from the PDA and nodded, I was already bunkered at one of the beds, while Moonbreeze, being too heavy for them, lay silent on a corner. As I put away my PDA, I took a good glance at my rifle… I kept it ready, even though I was on a relatively safe area… you’ll never know. If the PDA was right, the AK had been designed on Stalliongrad, but it was manufactured on Zebraria sweatshops to cut costs. Ironically, it was better than the toy guns developed by the monarchy equines of Canterlot, the NETO weaponry, as they named those… in comparison with, the AKs and other weaponry were sturdy, reliable, cheap, light and easy to operate, although being less powerful. Well, if there’s one lesson that earth pony weapons developers consistently tend to ignore, is that simplicity is often a better choice. After checking if the rifle was loaded, I placed it by my side and fell asleep. ==========================[><]======================== “You know what to do with them, put him on the corner, with the others…” The dark walls trembled heavily, confining and constricting my movements… a cage. I had been captured. On one moment, trotting happily though Canterlot… on another, being bagged and brought to… well, I had no idea. The trip was sickening, the cage-box itself moved on and forth, sending me against its walls… Why? Why me? When the cloth covering the box was removed, the only vision I had from the outside was a small peeping hole… Not far from me, an ochre earth pony was slouching lazily on a chair, absorbed on reading a newspaper. I could actually make out some of the headlines… “300% rise on the price of apples, food prices over the roof due to new taxes instituted for funding anti-insurgent efforts.” “Ponyville mayor implicated on the Hoofer dam fund embezzling scandal, more details on page 7” “Canterlot foalnappers still at loose, Wonderbolts still baffled.” The stallion let out a gruff laugh. “If they only knew what we do this for…right, boss?” At that, I moved my eye to scan the rest of the room, stopping at a second pony… from my position, I could only spot his hooves, coffee-colored hooves… “Are they ready?” He asked stoically “Almost, almost… we are just waiting another shipment.” The ochre one answered. “What I don’t get is why you need to speak with them before… you know” The other one sighed. “Her orders… which I am not to question. Such a regrettable choice to do this, but we need to.” The stallion coughed. “After all, if everything ends up as planned, we may have a second choice, one that could avert the whole insurgency straight from the root… assuming that my project ends up as planned.” “If that’s the price to safeguard the monarchy and everything we love, it is a fair trade” The guard spoke. “Indeed it is, my friend” His boss replied. “We are just beginning here. When I’m done, these foals will be our future.” ==========================[><]======================== What, just what… happened then? I gasped heavily, filling my lungs with the nightly air, my head spinning , trying to make sense out of those memories, while rain still echoed outside... it was around eleven o’ clock now. I thought about going back to sleep, but it was no use… I felt restless. After packing my belongings, I treaded toward the exit… “Thinking about leaving us?” The mare rose from her bed within a few moments, not groggy at all. “You ever sleep?” “You always make such a ruckus when packing your gear?” She asked in the very same tone. “So, you’re going to the valley… all by yourself, on a dark, rainy night.” “Yep…” I answered dispassionately. “Sounds fun… I’ll tag along” She commented as she readied her own stuff. “Just a sec while I wake up Moonbreeze.” Half an hour later, we were trotting through Hoofstok’s main gate, the rain pouring right through the armor and chilling me to the bone, while the echo of the rain mixed itself with numerous sounds which reverberated through the night… dying mutants, screaming stalkers, and all the myriad of creatures suffering horrors beyond imagination… Just another night on the Zone. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to travel during a rainy night. Our flashlights only produced a diminutive beam of light, barely allowing us to discern the way… good thing I had the PDA to indicate the way. It told us to go east, towards the northeastern corner of the garbage. After a short walk, we reached a transition zone, where perching hills only offered a small passage from the garbage to the valley. My eyes rolled as I spotted a few “radioactive area” signs. The whole Zone was a big radioactive dump, there was no point on labeling here or there… Also, some anomalies blocked the path. I held a hoof for the others to wait, drawing my bag of bolts to check the area. As soon as I walked a few steps… BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP… A quick check on my Geiger counter confirmed it. A radiation pocket… every second I spent there allowed the environment radiation to build up into my body. I swiftly backed off, holding the fireball artifact to dampen the radiation. “We have to go through…” I answered the gaze of curiosity that the mares gave me “No time for a detour.” And I followed on by throwing the fireball to Lielle, Moonbreeze would be fine inside her armor. “I’ve packed some antirads for myself, you two keep behind me and walk softly, especially you.” And I pointed to Moonbreeze. “If you end up on a whirligig, you won’t be able to trot out of it, not inside that thing… you’ll be spinning, spinning and spinning until you die, understood?” She gulped. “Yes, I wouldn’t wish that…” “Alright, on me…” I spoke, tossing a bolt on an arch toward the area. It landed on the ground, quickly disappearing under the wet mud. The rain just made everything harder… “Heighten your senses… visibility is terrible.” I yelled as I tossed another bolt. It struck on a springboard. I threw a third bolt, diagonally across the anomaly… safe. Taking a small break to check my Geiger counter, I saw that my level of radiation was already halfway of a lethal dose. I was beginning to feel sick. That only stopped when I swallowed a hooffull of antirads, the radiation counter dropping to zero, but steadily building up again. I had to leave the radioactive area. “Come on, just a bit more…” I pushed on; trotting beside a fallen tree… the Geiger counter fell silent at that point, signalizing my success. I felt a tremendous relief as I opened my pack and chugged another dose of antirads… they may taste like piss, but they keep your radiation levels where they should be: on zero. As I was helping myself of it, the girls caught up with me. They followed the very same path that I came through. No point risking an alternative route when mine was already clear. “Well… the PDA says that it’s a free way to the dark valley now.” The earth pony spoke. “Guess I won’t need this anymore…” and she tossed the fireball back to me. “About those mercs, any idea how they may react?” I asked “Nope… from what I heard, they can be your best friends, until it stops being profitable… but if Carmelia vouches for this particular detachment, I guess we’re fine.” “We should be going… I’m almost catching a cold.” I spoke, sneezing loudly afterwards. “PDA says that we should go north… go over that hill and get us a visual.” Lielle ordered, fidgeting with her PDA to find our whereabouts. And so I obeyed… I trotted up that hill and drew the binoculars to make our surroundings the best I could in that murky, wet night... The valley sure had a gloomy atmosphere… it was almost like the darkness crept into it by magic or something… I could barely spot things out… just vast expanses of plain fields, covered here or there by some silhouettes of bushes and trees, the most crooked and unnatural ones I’ve seen so far. Enormous hills stretched to the east of my position, obscuring the view… with effort, a few abandoned buildings could be spotted here and there, with the spotlight going to the northernmost one… a large compound of industrial buildings which included a warehouse… it could only be the mercs’ base. To the southeast, something of interest… a big orchard glistened through the night due to various electro anomalies under the trees… a second look at it revealed that those were zap apple trees… Somehow, the electro anomalies were reacting with the trees; making those bear fruit of abnormal proportions… zap apples with the size of watermelons! And not only this, the tree aided the anomaly in turn. When its fruit fell, it attracted reckless striders, which bodies could be seen stretching over the electric anomalies… those would certainly crystallize onto artifacts. Moving my binoculars to catch a better look at it, something else caught my attention. Tiny spots of light that marred Luna’s purple cloak of darkness. A while later, I was able to tell them apart… bandits. There was no doubt of it… their own black clothes blended with the night, and there were others with them… slaves. They were pushing them into the electro-ridden orchard, no doubt to harvest it for artifacts. Tell about overtime… “Strange, I thought that Carmelia said that the valley was the mercs’ turf” The redhead pointed out when I told the mares what I saw. “The bandits weren’t supposed to be there, mercs hate competition more than anything else… why they haven’t toasted them yet?” “Beats me… we know that Greyhoof is one of the bandit bigshots that set its sights towards the valley, but to piss off an highly specialized and trained combat unit, armed with top-notch weaponry is something else entirely… personally, I doubt that they had the muscle to root out the mercs, but who knows? Could be other bandit crew, for all we know.” “Anyways, the mercs could have moved, or aligned themselves with the bandits, or fallen victim of another enemy…” “True… what we know for sure is that bandits are roaming through the valley and probably are posted at the mercs base. Only seems logical that they would hitch an already fortified area instead of fixing one from scratch.” “ Bandits… we need to thing this through.” Moonbreeze spoke. “I mean, we can’t go in just shooting them, perhaps we should just talk with them and…” It would be stupid if it weren’t so funny… the prospects of entering a scum-infested base and gently convince the bandits to part out with their intel about the mercs’ fate… my charm is too rusty for these kind of things. That mare was delusional if she believed that approach would work… “Alright, alright… since we aren’t getting any dryer by standing around, plan time.” I spoke. “Yaaay.” The cobalt mare cheered with false enthusiasm, a deadpan over her face. “According to the data provided, the base has two entrances, one to the west and another to the east…” “So, let me guess… we should split up… how original.” The redhead said with the same tone of irony. “Exactly. We split up and attack them in a two-way offensive. Their contingent is already crippled since they had to send out guards to supervise the slaves. With this low-visibility setting, we will be able to surprise them and…” “Why does it always come to violence?” The armored mare voiced angrily. “Couldn’t you just think about something else? I don’t know, something LESS extreme.” Damn easy for her to say that, since she is under layers and layers of almost invulnerable armor… “In the event you’re unsatisfied with my approach, I could always try to have a conversation with them… all the three of us. Me, the bandits, and my gun.” “I won’t kill anypony and neither should you. It simply isn’t justifiable! You shouldn’t even be considering that…” “This isn’t exactly magical kindergarten, lady…” I voiced hoarsely. “The bandits won’t think twice before pounding lead into the heads of anypony else who doesn’t bend over to them. Plus, they’re going to die sooner or later, won’t them? If not by me, by somepony else. Why bother?” “It’s still not right. Every creature has the right to live, the most sacred right that was granted…” She replied angrily. “Okay, okay… I get it. You dislike harming other ponies. You have no qualms about distracting and scaring them, do you?” “Come again?” The mare questioned. “Well, a big, strong and armored mare lugging around an arsenal and firing it wildly is bound to cause an impression… although it won’t get you any admirers, it should be a more… “merciful” option than killing them. You just get as much attention as you can while I go through the other entrance and enter the base while they are all over your position. You should just be careful not to shoot them.” The mare fell silent for a few moments, considering the plan. “That seems more appropriate… I’m just going to give them a scare, right? A harmless, foolish scare…” She muttered. “Sure you will.” “Hey, what about me?” The azure mare demanded. “Where do I go into that plan of yours?” “Glad you asked. You’re tagging with Moonbreeze… you two should blend just like glue and rubber. If there’s one thing you know, is being distractive… besides, she could use some moral support and pointers about shooting and strafing around anomalies. That’s where you go.” “We should sync in our offensives… I’ll radio you in when we are in position.” The earth pony said. “This way, we can make the most out of it.” “Alright… just radio me when you two get into the position, alright?” “Alright…” The mare answered back. “Now get to movin’, pal…” I didn’t need to hear it twice. “I’m out, good luck.” “Just a second…” Moonbreeze spoke. “Please, just try to not hurt anypony… it would mean a lot to me.” “No promises.” I replied coldly and trotted away before she could talk anything else. Rain kept pouring on my back, seeping its way inside my bones… so cold… If weren’t for that armor, that mare wouldn’t last one fucking day inside the Zone… it was a twisted joke, a pacifist which had enough power to obliterate a small army… it was like giving ICBMs to monkeys. I couldn’t possibly think of something more pathetic… But all in all, I guess that my tactical choice was alright: to put together the pacific oaf and the buffon, getting them outta my back for a while… with luck, Moonbreeze will end up accidentally blowing up one of Lielle’s limbs, that would surely bring the mare to her senses about having a heavy-duty war machine in our party. After a while, trotting on a muddy terrain over torrential rain tires the fuck out of you, especially when you got a limp leg. My hood was fucking soaked by that moment… dumb water-retaining fabric… GLREAARARARARA!!!! BARK!!!BARKBARKBARK!!!GRRRRR!! I stopped short my trot, ducking into the grass and shutting the light. Damn mutants… a pack of hounds chasing off some strider. It was best not to interfere. I kept a low profile until the abominations moved away in their chase. I slouched away from the area and kept my course towards the decrepit factory which was now an impromptu base for general equine vermin…when I was around a hundred meters away from the entrance, I turned off the flashlight once more. If only I still had my NVG! I hope that bloodsucker rots in the tartarus. Despise overwhelming darkness and a wet armor weighting a ton, I made the last meters to a tree overseeing the main gate. From the distance, I could spot out two dots of light, two sentinels. I simply sat and waited for the girls’ signal, no point on rocking the house and give away my position on a silver tray. So, I unpacked the radio and adjusted it to my companion’s frequency. “Come out Lielle, over!” Nothing but dead static in response. Dammit! The storm must be interfering with the signal. I sighed… now, how the heck I would know when to strike? Spotting out the guards strolling around the gate, I picked the binoculars to take a closer inspection upon them. The two sentinels were chatting under an awning, their weapons down… also, the two of them were mares. Amateurs… two-bits-for-hour thugs. Well, better early than late… besides, each second I spent under the rain increased the odds of catching pneumonia. After packing the radio and the binoculars back, I took off my AK and a little something extra I’ve bought… A silencer. This ought to synergize well with the modified bolt mechanism I’ve bought off from Dominic as well… from what he told me, it should make the AK twenty per cent more accurate. Let’s make good use of my bits, then… I intended to sneak up onto the guards… with this rain, they won’t see it coming… I thought so as I attached the silencer on the rifle. Yeah, with my screwed leg, sneaking into unsuspecting bandits was definitely a better option. I glanced at the leg, still rather sore, covered in small wounds and wet bandages… oh well, what was even more atrocious was my LS-3 armor. The grey coloring was now marred with all sorts of things: several tones of brown mud , layers and layers of dirt, tree sap, stains of blood and all kind of foul-smelling , unpleasant substances… not to mention that the armor was shredded and ripped at several sections that were already sewed over and over into a rather pathetic attempt to deny the obvious… that I was wearing a bunch of old rags, with cracked and rusted plates protubering from the back and raw leather, which, due to the rain and other unsavory weather conditions, was deteriorating much as well. All in all, it was little more than a hefty burden than actual protection, but hey… better this than going naked. I’ll care about it later. I trotted along, circumventing the bandits so I could end up right behind their field of vision… of course; this meant crawling through muddy grass, with rain at my back. Eventually, I made it… my heavy breathing muffled by the rain allowed myself to drop close to the guards. One was a pegasus with a hooded magenta jacket and slate black shoulderplates, while the other one was a unicorn which sported a tactical vest over a white jumpsuit, while her face was covered by a three-slot baklava. “… but then again, Typhoon wasn’t much the one for strategy… luck, luck and luck all the way.” The pegasus could be heard. “Not luck, Shatterwing, he simply overpowered the REA at that point. The reinforcements didn’t appear coincidentally at the moment, he had it all along. But I agree, he isn’t the brightest bolt on the bag.” The other mare replied. “Not like I’m complaining, but hey… I’d rather have the dude who pays my check still kicking… you know how much of pain it is to get the dough when the command chain is culled.” Rain was mixing with my sweat, I readied the AK, aiming for the kill… “True, those bonafide adventurers never learn… they may kill one or another bandit lord, but that one will only be replaced by a crook twice as much twisted as the first one… natural selection at its finest.” “Shhesh, again applying evolutionist theories to social situations?” The pegasus shook her head . “I told you a million times, free will voids any attempt to cipher interactions between…” PLFFFTTTPLFTTTPLFTTTTTT!!!! Five swift bullets left my own rifle, meeting their destination at the unicorn’s head and neck. It was so quick that the mare was shocked by the suddenness of the strike, looking dumbfounded at her companion… since I had the advantage of the preemptive preparation; I was able to strike once more. PLFFFTTTT!!!!PLFTTTT!!!!PLFTTTTTT!!! More shots, these one striking the pegasus’ ill-protected chest, bringing her down almost instantly… in minutes, her own blood being indistinguishable from the jacket’s coloration. I shook off some of the rain and moved towards the gate without much of a second thought. No time to check their pockets, that would consume time, it could bring me out of sync with the girls’ offensive. As I was crossing the gate, a short cough was captured by my ears. The pegasus mare… Shatterwing. She wasn’t dead. Apart from being gunned on the chest, she was breathing… she was gasping for her life, spitting blood… her face was contorted in utter pain. I approached her. Despise her condition, she had a pretty face: pinkish fur, an emerald mane, amber eyes… every feature complementing another nicely. That didn’t last much. I smacked that face of hers with my rifle, sending her teeth flying and bringing her demise on the quickest way I could make do. No witnesses, no errand bandit scouting out for reinforcements before we could wipe this gang. Before I even crossed the gate, a siren boomed through the base’ intercoms. RUAAAAAAAARUAAAAAAAARUAAAAAAAAAA Dammit! Too soon, too soon, girls! As I made my way inside, I did my best to avoid bumping into opposition. Well, it wasn’t too hard. The bandits were mostly moving towards the opposite entrance, undoubtedly after the girls… plus, they weren’t keen on checking unsuspecting dark corners and dense bushes… such a bunch of reckless dweebs. BOOOOMMM!!!! RATTLERATTLERATTTLERATTTLERATTTLERATTLE!!! BOOM!!BOOOOOMMM!!! Would you look at that… Moonbreeze had absolutely no qualms about causing severe propriety damage. From the set of gunfire and explosions I could hear, the two were locked in savage combat with a whole load of bandits (well, as much as pulling big guns and being louder in order to make them pee on their undies and run to their mommies could be considered actual combat…) It doesn’t matter… that distraction wouldn’t last forever. I’d better make it count. Now that the goons had left their positions to fend off the imminent threat, the main hangar laid unguarded… such a golden opportunity. As I walked inside, the stallion stench struck through my nostrils… the dirtbags used every available corner and opening to place their stuff: campfires, bed rolls, piles of dirty laundry, mounds of trash where several species of bugs and disease-carrying rodents procreated… in sum, the bandits occupied the building as if it were their own home, disorderly so and with no regards for hygiene or personal space either… it was a dumphole even for the Zone standards, which weren’t exactly high on this regards. If they wouldn’t be killed by the bullets of other stalkers, their own ill habits would eventually be their demise, leading them to inculcate a disease or, at least, a diarrhea every now and then… I trotted alongside the wall and climbed the stair set at the back of the room, it ended up on a brick corridor, going afterwards on an “L” corner towards the north, further inside the hangar. RATTTLERATTLERATTTLERATTLLLEEE!!! As an involuntary reaction to the gunshot, I ducked instantly… however, no bullet whistled over me. So, I dived for the corner. That’s when the second spread was heard… RATTLERATTLLLEE!!!!RATTTLERATTLERATTTLEE!!! By now, I figured that the shooter wasn’t aiming at me… however, he was close by. I quietly trotted around the corridor, turning my head at one of the unadorned brick rooms. That’s when I spotted the bugger. A bandit firing his scoped assault rifle through a window, no doubt he was trying to fend off a hostile (most likely the girls) from afar. Being so focused on his efforts, he never noticed me. I drew my knife and dug it through his neck for the kill. One stab and it was all over. As I left the corpse to rot, having Celestia’s own star as the catalyst and witness for such fate, I cruised my way onwards the dark corridor, reaching a new set of stairs which made me go down one level and continue in the northeastern direction… Clack, clack, clack… Hoofsteps! A patrol up ahead. I stepped inside the first room I saw, another one of those raw brick rooms which had never been completed, with naked walls and devoid of almost any adornment. From the shadows there, I could safely observe my target: a patrolling bandit. He was easily discernible due to the huge-ass print on the back of his white jacket: a black equine skull with two protuberant dark wings. Yes, I could take that sucker out… but to do so without alerting his comrades was something completely different. I stood there, observing the patroller going back and forth… I have to find a way to circumvent or trick him out of… SNOOOUURCHHH I almost jumped out of surprise! Mother of Celestia, that room wasn’t empty as I first thought… a sleeping bandit eventually snored on his corner, a dirty blanket covering him. How the fuck someone can sleep when there’s a goddamn gunshot outside, at less than a hundred hooves away? As an answer to my question, several empty bottles of vodka were stacked under the bandit’s foot, near a blue iron chest which was cracked open… his own personal stash of booze. As out of habit, I instantly aimed for the head… a kill as easy as that doesn’t come every day. However, my brain started to work quickly, conjecturing a devious plan instead… At first, I doubted that anypony in their right mind would fall for it, but then, reason told me that bandits were not ordinary, reason-moved soldiers… they were much less than that… they were hoof-picked EXACTLY for not being competent soldiers, so that they could be pushed around , toyed and replaced by their master. They were run-of-the-mill average thugs: stupid, prone to carry orders without questioning and willing to work for minimum wage… all in all, they were just pathetic excuses for stalkers, nothing more than cheap knock offs which could be easily dispatched when dealt individually by an half-assed stalker such as me. PLFFFTTT!!!PLFTTTT!!! Two silenced shots to the chest later, the bandit was dead. He would never wake up ever again, Gratefully, he didn’t squeal, yelled or made any other sound that would alert his friends. I set him upright and covered his wounds with the blanket… from this angle, it seemed that he was still sleeping peacefully, the blissful sleep of the innocent, heh… Afterwards, I rummaged through his trash… luckily; I’ve found a bottle that still had some vodka inside. Resisting the urge to slug it down my throat, I spilled the booze over the floor and on the bandit, making a small trail from him to the chest. Then, I closed the now half-filled bottle and placed it inside the chest, remembering to close the lid. Now, for the bait, I levitated one of the empty bottles and placed it on the corridor, where the patroller would certainly be trotting... sooner or later, he would… Cracksth!! “Fucking moron! What’s the great idea?” The bandit shouted as he approached the room. I was quick to position myself behind a pile of bricks, where I had a good vision of the show. “The hell you are doing sleeping, Rothide? We are being fucking invaded and Typhoon needs all his crew to protect…” At that point, the guard quieted down and picked a particular scent… “Vodka…” The patroller voiced as he ducked to better discern it. “Stupid cocksucking drunkard drunk himself to sleep… it’s no use.” The stallion then directed his flashlight to where he was stepping on: a faint trail of vodka. “Dumbass wasted his booze, well… my gramps always said it was a shame to squander alcohol…” Like an obedient puppy, he followed the trail towards the chest, granting me a clear view of his back… I readied my weapon, focusing on my target. I had to score a one-shot-kill. “Hmm…” The stallion grumped as he lifted the bottle from the chest. “Not much left, but eh…” And on a single motion, the earth pony flipped the bottle, gurgling the heavenly liquid… PLFFFTTT!!!PLFTTT!!!PLFTTT!!! Bullets struck almost point-blank at his back, piercing through his fancy coat, bringing his death… the bottle fell to the floor, crashing and spilling what little vodka was still inside. Now that the way was clear, I gave one last melancholic look to the wasted booze scampered around the floor and moved on… Trotting for a while more on that corridor lead me to another set of stairs, allowing me to either go up or down. Deciding for the first alternative, I trotted upwards and followed on another corridor which brought me to a big room: two vertical stairs led to the lower floor of said room, with only a hoofrail standing between me and the lower floor… as I stealthy approached it, I could view the whole thing better: cubicles, sleeping bags, campfires, thrashed shelves… the bandits occupied the lower floor as much as well as the hangar. There were around half a dozen of them there… I should try the other way, a corridor that was directly after the aforementioned stairs that led to the floor I was on. I should try to sneak up towards said corridor, using the hoofrail as cover… “You! Yeah, you… fuck you!” I raised my head to spy on whose voice was that. The booming voice belonged to a sly earth pony, one clad in a black jumpsuit with a grey tactical vest and a dark gasmask… upon his arm, the bandit insignia could be seen. That was a merc armor… so, the mercs sided with the bandits ? “You…” He spoke, pointing to another one of his underling. “Fuck you, and you, fuck you, and you, fuck you… and you… you’re too stupid to even get that right.” And he pointed back to the first bandit he insulted. “You, go fuck him after you fuck yourself” The merc sighed. “If you guys want to screw me over, at fucking least kiss me first! Don’t you dimwits get it? If somepony gets to the antennae before we can set it right, we’re all screwed, royally screwed! Its already bad enough that we’re unable to call reinforcements due to that goddamn rain.” “Er, so boss…” a unicorn in a much more modest attire risked speaking. “What do we do?” “The fuck you want next, kid? For me to hold your hoof, do your fucking job for you? Newsflash… PROTECT THE DAMN ANTENNAE AND SLAUGHTER ANY OPPOSITION, COCKSUCKERS!” He shouted. “Why the fuck I am always surrounded by idiots? Is that simple enough for your pathetic minds? Do I need to spell it out for you maggots?” “No Typhoon, we get it…” One of the bandits replied. “Then get to it, you bunch of dorks! I want two stallions upside to fix the goddamn antennae, two to patrol this floor and two more to secure the upper floor. We are lucky that the rest of our crew is able to fend off the attackers for this long… “ I had to do something… if a guard spotted me, I’d lose the surprise element. That would be deadly if all the pack of bandits were within earshot. Hmm… I guess I’ve milked stealth as long as I could. If I am going to lose it, I’d best as well get a preemptive strike at all of them. With that in mind, I removed the silencer from my AK and reloaded it. I dashed to one of the stair, hoping to pull out a curtain of lead over the bandits… On the middle of my trot, a pungent pain struck, making me fall almost instantly on the cold floor. Just a look revealed what happened: the effort made the stitches on my leg break off. I forced my wounded leg too much. I was on a world of hurt, and there was only one instant relief for such pain… “SON OF A HINNY!!!” “They are here!” Typhoon boomed. “Battle positions now, take out the lights, NOPONY GETS TO THE ANTENNAE boys… stay sharp, they are going to pull out on us on any second…” I had to hail my own wounded ass back to the corridor, shitting my pants that one of the bandits might be searching around. Stupid, stupid, stupid… why did I had to run? After what seemed like an eternity slouching back to safety, I bumped into no hostiles… the fuckers were playing it safe, holding their positions. I moved to a corner, where I could safely turn on the flashlight and bring a medkit to tend the leg… there was no time to do a proper job, so I simply smacked up bandages over the wound and stitched the worst deal of it, following on by swallowing the painkillers to drown the pain. Grasping my AK and slouching back to the now bleak dark room, I had no choice but to leave my flashlight on. I was a sitting duck, worse… a crippled sitting duck. “Second floor, you two, go check!” The bandit lord’s voice was heard. A pair of underlings dashed upwards, one armed with a pistol and the second with a sawn-off. The first one turned the corner toward me, but he was going too fast… momentum didn’t allow him to aim properly. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG! RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTTLE!! Multiple bullets struck over his chest, making him bleed his life out… I tried to ignore the bleeding resultant from his two bullets that hit my chest. I was moving slowly but steadily... PWOOT, PWOOT!!! A load of buckshot ricocheted on the wall, missing me by just a little… Instead of falling back, I trotted onwards as much as my leg allowed… sawn-offs only have two shots before a reload, that’s their biggest flaw… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLEE! Leaving another corpse on my wake, I made it to the stairs… flashing my light down, Typhoon’s silhouette was revealed to me. The fucker was waiting for me. “So, this is it…” He grimly spoke. “The black maned merc that Greyhoof whined about.” He voiced, pointing his own AK at me. “You caused him a lot of trouble, kid… what you lack in cephalic mass, you sure make it up for in guts… coming her a second time, well, it’s your funeral.” “We’ll se about that…” I found myself speaking back to him “and about Greyhoof… never was much of a big fan of him…” “Too bad…” Typhoon snickered. “He sent his best regards, now open wide, COCKSUCKER!” I lunged to the right as Typhoon propelled a grenade towards me. FWOOOMM……BOOOOOMMMM!!! The decrepit floor crumbled as it fell victim of the explosive, unleashing a vast cloud of dust and bringing part of the structure down… along with me. “Finish off whenever is left of him, boys. Don’t let nopony get to the antennae or I’ll serve your asses as mutant breakfast!” He barked while trotting upside, using the only intact stair to reach the upper floor and, sequentially, the antennae. He was followed by two of his boys… smart fucker… I shook off the dust and hoofed through the pile of debris, look for my AK. RATTLERATTTLERATTTLERATTLERATTLE!! PWOOTCH!!! PWOOTCH!!! Bullets roared past me, closer and closer… I’ll be on deep shit unless I get my shooter… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLERATTTLE!!! A rifle bullet pierced my armor, stinging my belly… I kneeled bringing out the bandages on a desperate wish for survival… Before I begun to treat my wounds, a shiny gleam caught my eye: the AK, buried under some concrete debris! Dropping my bandages, I used my magic to pry my rifle free from there… I was dropping blood and sweat from the effort… it was taxing as fuck, pent up adrenaline didn’t helped much. RATTLERATTTLERATTTLERATTLE!!! I paid no heed to the enemies’ fire. It was more important to get the offensive back on. There… using all my remaining magic, I floated the rifle, aiming back at the hostiles… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! The bandit sought cover as I returned fire, giving me a small window of opportunity to pick the bandages and patch my wounds. RATTLERATTLE… As soon as I heard his AK roaring back on, I fired mine as well. RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!! The bandit looked surprised as he gazed upon his own chest, blood dropping like a fountain… A few seconds after his stand, he drew his last breath. Thanks Celestia for that accuracy update… I wouldn’t be able to hit him with a regular weapon, not on the condition I was… The momentary break allowed me to waste a medkit and a few more bandages to stifle the pain. PWOOTCH, PWOOTCH!! Slugs flew over my head; I dived for cover behind the pile of debris… PWOOTCH, PWOOTCH!! The bandit’ hunting rifle fired two more slugs, digging up the concrete pile and leaving me a little more exposed… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! The shots smacked useless against a pillar, the bandit’ cover… he wouldn’t leave there soon, and I couldn’t cut out the gap quick enough due to my leg… only one option left. “Have a grenade, DUMBASS!!” I yelled as I nudged the explosive towards the bandit’s hiding place. “You gotta be fucking kid…” was all that could be heard from him. BOOOOOMMMM With the first floor cleared up, I trotted on to the second, on Typhoon’s hoofsteps. As I treaded into the corridor, a lone bandit awaited at the very end of it, near another set of stairs. I pulled the AK to properly greet him. RATTLERATTTLERATTLERATTLE!!! Due to the distance, my bullets missed the target, ricocheting along the corridor instead. The bandit climbed up the stairs, yelling at the top of his lungs. “HE IS COMING, HE IS COMING!!!” I trotted on upon the stairs, hot on pursuing the crook… “Here’s a gift for you, moron!” And he dumped a fucking grenade over me! I barely had enough time to float it away… BOOOOMM Although the explosion didn’t hit me, some of the shrapnel flew on my direction. Having covered my face with the hooves out of surprise, most of them struck onto my front hooves, making small rivers of blood trickle from them, marring my “grey” armor even further… Nevertheless, I persevered on. I had fucking worse… As I reached the top of the stairs, a hail of rifle bullets welcomed me. RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! Ducking instantly, I averted most of it, returning it back on seconds… RATTTTTLEEERATTTLERATTTLE!!!! The enemy took cover behind a wall… he was outside, over the roof, where the rain still raged. I slouched to the doorway, catching a surprised bandit while he was aiming for a second assault. I smacked his rifle upwards with my own rifle, making the dumbfounded grunt shoot wildly towards the sky, as he attempted to punch me with his hooves… A wimpy strike, softened by a layer of leather. Besides, he forgot about my weapon. I only needed a few moments to unload it on him. RATTLETATRATTTLETATLE!!! Stepping aside from the deader, I made my way over the slippery roof, embracing the cold rain again… I didn’t care… only defeating the enemy matters. The surface of the roof was covered by a 3x3 square grid of industrial chimneys, having the antennae at the center of said grid. Hoofrails separated the room from a three-story fall. “Worthless, worthless, worthless!” Typhoon raved to the bandit working on the antennae “Can’t you do anything right?” “I’m trying boss…” The bandit pleaded pathetically. “But it’s cold and wet, I think I’m sick and that isn’t my expertise…” “EXCUSES, EXCUSES!!! SHUT UP AND FIX IT ALREADY, YOU WORHLESS WASTE OF SPACE!” RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!! My bullets pierced the antennae and the grunt working into it. Another sorry excuse for a soldier was out cold. “This is it then…” Typhoon calmly stated. “ You and me, mano a mano…” And he pulled his AK. “Have at you, cocksucker!” RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!! I barely had enough time to seek out cover behind one of those chimneys… from the sound of hooves splashing over puddles of water, I assumed that Typhoon did the same. You know, there was a reason that he was a bandit lord: respectable combat prowess, not that it was hard to reach that level when you’re being compared to bandit dopeheads… “That’s it?” I shouted at him. “That’s the best the bandit faction has to offer?” “We are just getting started here, magical dickhead…” He replied. I trotted in parallel to the chimneys, circumventing the grid from outside. When I reached one corner chimney and peeked around it, more gunfire. RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! “It’s been a while since I had a duel… it’s refreshing, really…” Typhoon voiced as he backed on to reload. I cutted inside the grid, firing wildly while he was on defensive… RATTTTLERATTLERATTLERATTLERATTTLE!!! “Give up while you can bitch… you know, I’m just toying with you…” He appeared from a chimney at my left, his AK readied for more shots… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! More wounds… he is fast, I’ll give him that… Shifting my position, I trotted to the south easternmost chimney. Behind that cover, I used another medkit to suffice the wounds. “Come out, here’s something nice for you…” FWOOOMMM….. BOOOOOOM!!! The grenade turned the chimney into a pile of smoldering junk! One less place to hide… I had to get back on at him. RATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! This time, I caught him good! My bullets pierced through the bandit lord’ armor. As he received the wounds, he immediately retreated to patch em’ up, while I backed up onto my own cover to reload. “Not bad for a dorky loner…” He goaded from afar. “But you’re playing a game you can’t win, kid! I’m the top cat, you’re just tartar sauce!” He darted to the antennae, crossing to the other side of the grid… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! His projectiles flew closer to me… I had to shift my position again. Damn… I’m getting tired of this, and the rain isn’t helping at all… “You know… we aren’t so different, you and me…” He shouted at me from behind a chimney. “We all enjoy a good gunslinging here and then, we all love to find swag on a croaked stalker’s body… the only difference is that I’m better than you.” He is just trying to distract you, pay no heed to that idiot’s ranting! Focus on pumping lead onto him. “I am rubber, you are glue… “ “That’s your comeback?” Typhoon laughed. “Ha !I’ve fought striders who were brighter than you, kid…” I pumped up my rifle and shot at his position… RATTLEARATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! “I bet you would love to exchange that worthless dangling piece of meat over your head for a pair of balls right now, dumb unicorn!” It was clear what he was doing to me… Typhoon was wearing me out, playing his strength… as an earth pony, he could last longer without being fatigued and wipe me out once I were extenuated… smart bastard… I heard his hooves trotting across the grid again… RATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! My bullets missed the swift bandit… this game of mice and cat was getting me nowhere… “Stand still, dumb bandit!” “Alright…I’ll stick here for a while, HAVE A WHOLE MOUTHFULL OF AUTO!!!” BRATTLEBRATTTLETATLLETATTTLEBRATTLETATTLEBRAITTTLEBRATTLEBRATTLETATTLE!!!! One of his shots pierced through the chimney and struck right on my shoulder… I instantly dug the saddlebag for a bandage… “Dance for me, you little monkey! Circus is in town!” FWOOSHHH…. BOOOOMMM!!! Another chimney wrecked by Typhoon’s grenade launcher… I didn’t even had time to mend my wounds before escaping! If he continues to take them down like this, I’ll have nowhere left to hide… and with that leg of mine, I couldn’t possibly outrun anypony, especially an earth pony… “Perhaps if you were GREAT and POWERFUL, you’d SUCK LESS COCK!!” The bandit’s vivid bantering cracked from through the bricks… not even the rain muffled that bastard. How the hay was he able to guess where I was? The flashlight? My voice answering back his insults? Or, more likely… Of course… a crimson trail of blood and spent medical supplies was the main thing that gave my position to that damned bandit. Now that I am sure of this, perhaps I can… I yanked the flashlight off and moved to another chimney, dropping one of my worn bandages on the way in order to tip him off, and instantly trotting away to the opposed chimney. There, I dumped another bandage and my rifle, withdrawing my marekarov instead. After such, I kneeled under one of the burnished chimneys… Typhoon would never look there, and I had a good vantage point from that place. “Now I got you good, assface!” He yelled, emptying his freshly reloaded clip onto the chimney where the worn bandage lay close, believing I was still there… what a dope… RATTLEBRATTTLEBRATTLEBRATTTLEBRATTLETATTLE!!! Then, the bandit waited a while, expecting my incoming fire or my desperate dash for another chimney… when around five minutes of silence had gone past, he trotted to the chimney, expecting to loot my body. “The heck is this?” He exclaimed, seeing nothing there but the bandage. “Smart, but…” His head turned as his eyes searched the area. “Not enough to… fool me?” Typhoon’s voice vacillated as he came behind the chimney where I left my rifle. “How did he ran…?” The bandit muttered to himself “Nevermind the wussy loner, his rifle is probably worth a round or two of booze…” So, the bandit lord pulled his gasmask upwards and begun to grasp my rifle using his mouth, spending all his attention on such procedure… It was time. BANG!! BANG!!! BANG!!! BANG!!! Soon as he felt 9x18mm rounds drumming against his armor, Typhoon quickly spat out the AK and backed off to a nearby chimney. “Smart move, but not even enough to bring me down!” He proudly uttered. “Besides, you’re never gonna bring me down with that…” And he went silent. I knew much the reason for his sudden shyness… A loaded AK shrouded by a black magical hue… and the weapon had a clear, unobstructed view of him. RATTLERATTTLERATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLE!!! The bandit staggered around, suffering from massive bleeding… “Bah, suck it up, Typhoon… “The bandit voiced to himself. “You’ve had worse paper cuts than this…” “Why can’t you die already??” I shouted my frustration as he sought cover once again… curse them earth ponies and their overpowered racial resilience. If I allow him to heal again, we’ll have to dance all over again! I couldn’t let that happen, and I just had the perfect medicine for one’s stubbornness to accept their demise… “Hey Typhoon, think fast!” I grinned as I lobbed a pound of happiness over his hiding spot. BOOOOOMMMM!!! I beamed in joy as I saw the resulting blast send his lifeless corpse flying over the hoofrails in a majestic parable… plummeting the resulting mess in hard concrete after a three-story fall. I took my time to certify myself that he wasn’t kicking anymore, trotting my way back downstairs and checking his remains… as I’ve predicted, it was as pretty as a pile of parasprite innards, a pile of innards which was being marinated under torrential rain… however, it did not deviated too much from the usual deader… a vast number of bullet wounds, around a quarter of his body was burnished, and, as a special bonus, his knees bent and cracked due to the fall, not that it mattered anyways, since he was already seven feet under due to hemorrhage by the time… but his face was intact, mostly due to the gasmask, which was still pristine… heck, his whole suit was salvageable, I’d do it myself if I wasn’t in such a tight schedule… Instead, I sat back against a wall and spent more than a few medkits to treat my wounds, proceeding to loot Typhoon’s body for clues which would shed a light in the situation. My eyes went to his weapon, still attached to the bandit’s frame… It was a good weapon, it had been modified for and increased rate of fire, pretty much the same way mine was updated for better accuracy, but the polar opposite… the bolt mechanism of his AK was rigged so that it’d allow the bandit to increase his bullet per minute firing rate… anyway, it probably wasn’t worth carrying, since it was badly damaged due to the battle… instead, I simply took all of his ammo and detached the grenade launcher of the weapon… GP-25 Buckster, the name was engraved on the side of it… and lucky we! Typhoon had a grenade loaded into it, his last! He was probably too reluctant to waste it, as to save it for a “special occasion”. Well, if he hadn’t held his card up his sleeve, things might have ended differently, but alas… I relieved him of his mundane possessions, around 1500 bits in cash and his PDA. Finally, some answers. From: Greyhoof To: Typhoon Subject: RE:RE:RE: Overseer application Congratulation Typhoon, your performance on the presented trials has been satisfactory, your position on the fleecing charts is unparalleled… it’s time to dream big… you’ve spent enough time ripping wimpy loners, its about time we move you to where the real coin grinds, where we can put your interpersonal skills to a better use. I’m prompting you to assume the position of overseer of the operations currently in progress at the sector known as the “Dark Valley”. Your assignments consist of claiming a small factory compound to the north. Preliminary scout reports confirm that the building has long been abandoned by its former inhabitants, being replaced by others far less… educated. You must decimate the mutants and other wandering hostiles on the area and proceed to turn the building into a permanent base of operations, using an assigned contingent of equines for such task… remember, you must build defenses, maintain control over the area, eliminate mutant pockets inside or near the site, manage the slave labor, submit weekly reports to me and send over all the profit generated by the lucrative activities. Lastly, not to put pressure over your shoulders, but… if you are nurturing thoughts of crossing me, let me tell you a little story about your predecessor, my last overseer, Regalia… the bitch was helping herself of a cut of my profits on the side, off my books, took for herself a fair share of my hard-earned money gained off from the sweat of slaves, it took me a while to catch up with the little scheme of hers, bitch had a silver tongue, that one, could convince you that Hurricane was a shy mare, only posing as a testosterone-filled warmongering stallion, or that Celestia was an alien that came from outer space … she was able to pull it for a while, but eventually, she got too big for her britches. After I caught up to her game, I fed that lying tongue to my dog and kindly dumped her into the Whitetail Park, with orders for my guards to stick at the border of it for six hours and shot her dead if she tried to get back… she never did. Bottom point is, stand between me and my swag, and you’re toast. Don’t fail me, kid. From: Wildwail To: Typhoon Subject: Cleanup report Boss, we did as you instructed and cleared the section from mutant scum, we were also able to uncover items during our work, which must have belonged to the stalkers who were camped around these parts before us. The items are: - 3 (three) mercenary suits, complete with gasmasks and kevlar vests, which feature the mercenary crest stitched up. - 7 (seven) AK-74 assault rifles - 2 (two) Obokan assault rifles - 5 (five) marekarov pistols - 8 (eight) TRs 501 assault rifles - 1 (one) keycard of unknown function or purpose…by the way, the guys uncovered a closed vault under the hangar, with an opening console. Guess what: it doesn’t work there, the console there has an alphanumerical system… don’t worry boss, I’ve got the top dogs trying combinations to open it, should be open anytime now… - 4 (four) F1 grenades. On another note, the slaves work yielded a reasonable profit, more than we expected… we’re pulling around two or three artifacts a day, I’m sending what we scavenged so far. I recommend that you send everything, including the weaponry and armor, to Greyhoof. He will manage the resources and redistribute them according to the faction’s needs. PS: Inform Greyhoof that the slaves thanked him for their new horseshoes. From: Greyhoof To: Typhoon Subject: RE: Service hazards! Alright Typhoon, I believe that I have a solution for your little problem, anyways… Its about time I’ve been wanting to shift my main center of operations anyway, we’ve milked the garbage for nearly anything it is worth for. Here’s the thing: I can’t send over all the crew in one move, that would attract a lot of undesired attention, so I’m sending over a convoy consisting mostly of slaves, enough to replace the ones you’ve lost to the mutants and resume the scavenging operation back to full scale. I hired a couple of mercs to secure it, you are to pay them 1500 bits on deliver. Once we receive news that the convoy has arrived safely, we will start moving the rest of the gang. It’s going to be great to be able to breathe without having a fuckload of fuckers up our necks, watching up our every move… PS: Your lack of success in cracking open that vault door frustrates me… I thought you were supposed to be resourceful enough on your own. Keep trying, my gut tells me there’s something worth the effort in there. From: Whistlebone To: All bandit Overseer personnel Subject: Marked for death! By order of Greyhoof, a reward of 4000 bits is being offered for those who present proof of the demise of the following stalkers: - A grey-furred unicorn with dark brown eyes, black mane, gasmask cutie mark… wears a dirty grey hooded armor and wields an ak-74 - A dark blue earth pony, silver eyes, a long crimson mane on an unruffled cut. Wears a nondescript sunshine armor and, for some unclear reason, wields a scrapgun made out of recycled junk. Those two are accused of disrupting the convoy heading to Dark Valley, siding with the slaves and aiding them in their escape. Pass down this message to all able-bodied personnel. That was the last message of the inbox. Would you look at that… hunted by bandits. Just what I needed… Having skimmed through everything in Typhoon’s mail, I started to search his PDA for additional data… well, he wasn’t the type of equine that wrote a diary, but I’ve found something interesting… – Over the tree A little bird told me that a recently offed dutyer hid his backpack on the top branches of a pine tree on his clan’ turf. I’ll empty it next time I’m around the Agropony… That was it… I rested my body against the wall, just hearing the rain… it had been a rough night. I’ve waited ten or fifteen minutes before the girls were into sight. I waved to them. “Glad we could make it… you didn’t look too bad for the wear…” I simply smiled. I knew that was a blatant lie… unlike me, they didn’t had a scratch… Lielle still had her… “weapon”, the scrapgun… it had new welded parts all over, looking more like a cumbersome ballista made out of junk, crafted with a number of mishmashes random pieces assorted together with duct tape, including a scope… no doubt she asked Dom for refuse parts and put up that thing for herself… instead of railway spikes, now it fired sharpened stakes of solid iron…real subtle. Moonbreeze herself was fine, much as well… though silent. She busied herself glancing at the corpses… that does not bode well… “So, everything went smoothly?” “More than that… the suckers dashed their way as soon as we popped out the fireworks, didn’t you hear it? By the way, is everything alright with…” I gave her a dry look for an answer. A simple glance in my direction could tell that I was not OK… I only kept it together due to my roughly patched wound, and that only six or seven hours later after leaving Patcher’s clinic completely healed… life is a bitch when you’re on the Zone. The thought made me want to drink… crap, I knew I’ve forgot something… I’ve forgot to pack damn booze. Moonbreeze approached us. “I see you’re awake.” She spoke in a bittersweet tone. “I believe we have to exchange some words about this…” “What about it?” Was my disinterested reply. “Care to explain why it was ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, UNCIRCUNVENTALLY NECESSARY to bullet your way through every bandit pony? I thought you were supposed to be subtle and avoid resorting to unnecessary fragging!” She voiced in censure… great, that just made my day… “It couldn’t be helped… besides, it isn’t my fault if they jumped right at my bullets, doesn’t it? Now that’s cleared out, we should…” “Excuse me! That’s your answer, a jest? Can’t you comprehend that you just reaped the lives of another beings for NO GOOD REASON? And what is worse, you just shake it off like it isn’t a big deal at all!” “Because, in the Zone, it isn’t.” I voiced grimly. “People die everyday around these parts, and these bandits… they were Greyhoof’s boys.” “Greyhoof? What’s the deal with him?” “You see…among stalkers, there is a certain degree of debauchery, profligacy, corruption and general lack of equine decency which is dumped straight away as most crooks cross into the Cordon... and then, there’s scum who reach even lower standards of morality and ethics… those are what you might call the usual bandits… and even lower than those, there are dweebs that sunk to even less…” “Spare me the lecture. “The mare rudely interrupted me. “You’re gonna say that Greyhoof and his gang are at the bottom of this chain as justification for killing them, won’t you?” “WRONG!!!” I uttered to her in ecstasy. “I mean, half-wrong… the thing is… I can totally tolerate bandits who descended to any depth of corruption and perversion … at first, I was like you too, but then I saw it: stalkers see it coming when their enter the Zone, its one of the risks of their line of work… that’s okay with me as long as it is fair game… which it isn’t by Greyhoof’s methods.” “What do you mean by that?” “I mean that Greyhoof is the one who made a game out of this kind of depravity, backing off his own greed with a drapery of hierarchy: he purposely trains his people to become such monsters, promoting them and collecting all the profit generated by them… it’s like a competition to see whoever squirms the weaker stalkers for most cash, where he is the stepping stone for such madness.” “Even then, descending to his level isn’t going to solve an…” “Look people, can’t you do this later? In the case any of you didn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a mission here!” The redhead interjected, interrupting our discussion. “She is right… we’ll talk later.” I voiced to the armor-clad mare. “So much blood…” She whispered, looking sideways to Typhoon’s body. “How can you even sleep at night..?” “It’s about the blood, then?” I questioned. “You can’t stand it? Then, what goes when you have a period, you simply faint through it?” “Has anypony ever told you that you are a horrible person?” She voiced her disgust. “That was totally uncalled for and you have the maturity of an eight year old foal. We’re talking about it later.” I simply shrugged. My point remained… one cannot go through the Zone without shooting… then, what next? Seasoning himself for the mutants? I couldn’t sympathize with anypony who didn’t understand the beauty of it… the beautiful melody of bullets drumming and lead pounding through the body of an enemy, the excitement of each battle, the drive of two ponies to best one another, betting their lives on it… Words can’t do justice to such thing. We continued the rest of the way in that awkward silence I knew far too well, descending a couple of levels through the abandoned structure and finally reaching the rectangular, double-layered vault door. From the looks of it, the bandits extenuated every mean of opening it… a number of electronic gadgets laid near the door, darkened explosive blasts could be seen… whoever built that thing knew exactly what he was doing… I trotted to the console and imputed the code given to us by Carmelia. The machine produced a soft beep in answer, and the door begun to whirl slowly, as the locking mechanism unlocked to allow passage to the underground vault… Inside, nothing but unfathomable darkness and that familiar smell of rot, dust and aged decadence which was perfectly seasoned to its apex inside the cozy vault. I turned on my flashlight and begun the descent, the girls following close by, our weapons ready. It ended on a long corridor, where we spent around 10 minutes transposing it… according to the PDA; we weren’t under the compound anymore, but under the valley itself. Finally, said corridor ended on a rusty metal door. A simple buck was enough to send it down. After it, a small room with another corroded door to the north and other vault door on the right. On the wall near the rusted door, an enormous dusty flag stood as the only decoration of the room: it depicted a stylized blue eagle head, the mercenary crest. “It’s busted…” Lielle informed after trying the vault door. “Probably needs a key of sorts…” and she eyed the console nearby, one with a sensor meant for personnel badges or something like that… “Leave it for later. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the key for it…” “Alright, lead on.” She voiced back. I nodded and moved to the deteriorated door, turning around to place another buck to bring it down… I almost delivered the punch, but something made me stop… “What’s the matter?” The redhead asked. “I thought I’ve… heard something.” “Like what? Nothing out of the usual sounds exploring a decaying building.” She spoke. “You heard anything odd, Moonbreeze?” “Not at all. Look, we should really get going with this…I don’t like this place.” “Just give me a couple of minutes…” And over their perplexed glances, I placed my ear against the door. I waited patiently, my ear glued to the cold door… yes, I did hear something… thought it might be just my… It was a very unclear sound, like a reverberated, dying echo of the actual sound, having trailed so long and hitting so many obstacles that the original sound was tampered. It sounded like… scraping. As in, a knife scraping a metal place, but not smoothly… it scraped for a while and then stopped… only to begin again after a while. I had no idea of what made that sound… could be nearly anything, three or four things already popped to mind. I probably shouldn’t worry too much about it… could be worse, like the sound of a bloodsucker’ howl. “Nothing… just my mind, girls… I guess I’m hearing things…” and I laughed nervously. The two exchanged concerned looks, and the huntress circled a few loops around her head using her hoof. Dismissing the fact that she just called me a cuckoo, I bucked that frail door and moved on. It brought us to an annex room: a crashed wooden table, burnished shelves and crushed chairs with missing legs could be seen scattered around… broken items and books torn beyond readability… Something didn’t sit well with that. Then, the sound. It started slow, then it stepped up the pace… like additional knives joined the first on the task of scraping metal, it was clear as crystal now… and came from the other side of the next door… “I hear it now…” Moonbreeze voiced, and Lielle nodded in agreement. “Whenever is doing that, its right across that door…” I spoke, lifting my AK and pointing it at the door. “You’re not thinking about busting it open, aren’t you?” The redhead questioned. “Damn, you ARE thinking seriously about that…you’re a lost cause…” “Unless you have a better idea or the innate ability of seeing through iron, I see no other way to know what the hay is behind mystery door number one…” “For Celestia’s sake… you have absolutely no clue of what is behind that door… could be anything, and yet, you look forward to crack it headlong... this is a bad idea in so many ways…” “As much as I wish that there’s an alternative, we don’t.” “You could always lob a grenade and blow up whenever might be behind it…” The azure mare told me. “It’s safer than busting your hooves and exposing yourself.” “Yes, I could… but you forget we are inside a precarious underground structure… explosives don’t mix well here, since they might damage the foundations and send the whole thing collapsing over us.” “You got a point…well, then… be my guest, go ahead.” And she proceeded to cock her shotgun ready KA-CHINKA! While Moonbreeze, by her turn, materialized an assault rifle on her armor and pointed it to the door. “Ready… just get over with it.” She added. Here goes nothing… WHAMMM!!! CLANG!!! I jumped back and emptied a whole clip into the room. RATTLERATTLETATTLETRATTLERATTLE!! PWOOT! PWOOT! Nothing in response… no squeals of pain or screams… only bullets ricocheting through the walls. Something was not right. I poured light into the opened room, trying to make out what was inside, what was making that maddening sound I’ve heard before… After crossing the doorway, debris and more debris was everything that filled my field of vision… I was on a ruined pantry or something… That’s when I saw them hiding among the rubbish. Rabbits. As I flashed light over their position, it reflected on the creatures’ amber eyes. They were just as clueless as us. Four or five sprouted nearby, brown-furred creatures… except for the belly, which was colored red… vivid red. I’ve never heard of such coloration before on these critters… I aimed my AK right at them… the creatures didn’t even flinch. They probably weren’t used to… “Hey, what’s the big idea? Just leave em’be, you big bully!” After putting away my rifle, I turned around to face an aroused blue-furred mare. “Don’t you see they are just as scared as us?” “Yeah… sorry about that, just force of habit. You ever heard of those?” “Come to think of it…” She stopped to reflect about the question. “No, not at all… but that’s no reason to go out blasting anything that moves… I mean, how much damage could they cause, even IF they were hostile?” “Hmm… alright, let’s move on.” Was my grumbled answer. “Such precious little creatures…” Moonbreeze cooed, much to my disgust… something about that overly sugary tone. “I wish I could snuggle them.” To which I just rolled my eyes. A few minutes ago, she was dying to leave this place… “Let’s not waste any time on get…” I froze my hoof on the middle of the air; one of the critters was standing on my way. I simply moved it to the right and… Well, the dagnabbit thing just hopped back into my path. I trotted to the left, and he intercepted me again. So, I just thought about using my hooves to keep him outta my way. As soon as I approached my hoof to hold him away, the critter began smelling it… As soon as I saw those amber eyes widening at me, I knew I was doomed… In seconds, the “rabbit” opened its maw… instead of the usual arcade of teeth, inside lay a grotesque display: full rows of tiny, sharp-edged, carnivorous teeth… and that terrifying vision closed up… right on my bleedin’ hoof “GET OFFA ME, OFF ME!!! GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!! AUGHAAA” I screamed in agony, just like a little filly… now, I tell ya… I’ve suffered a lot of punishments during my stay on the Zone: bullets, anomalies, claws… guaranteed that those were painful in their own way… but that thing… that bite… it was just the worst. The more I tried to yank it away from my hoof, the more the rabbit tightened its mandible’s grip onto it. Those teeth were made especially to thrash through flesh, and that’s what exactly that they did, insidiously festering upon my hoof with tremendous viciousness. While my two friends were dazed by that display of mayhem, I was able to, out of pure desperation, make my way toward a nearby wall and swing the rabbit against it, cracking the critter’s diminutive skull against solid concrete and loose his deathly maw from me… Problem is, popping his whole body against the wall made the entire blood of the creature sprout over me. And that was just the signal to the rest of the pack that I was a prey… I saw with stricken terror as over a dozen of more of those things pulling out of frenzy by that sight, their rabid maws oozing foam insanely… They swarmed through the room and over me like a bunch of raving parasprites… unstoppable, vicious, dangerous… and hungry, very hungry creatures. As I vainly tried to keep my ground against their rising numbers, the girls had their hooves full, fending more of them bunnies at bay. PWOOT! PWOOT!! PWOOT!! RATTLETATTLERATTLERATTLERATTLETATTLE I tried to escape out of their reach as more and more of those monstrous bunnies poured at me, far outnumbering myself and feasting upon my back, ripping away what was left of my poor armor. “Stop fighting them!”PWOOT!!! “It’s hopeless; just get out of there before you…” PWOOT, PWOOT!! Thanks for the heads up, lady… if weren’t for you, I’d never see it coming… nevermind that I have a broken leg and a hooffull of mutants crawling through my back as you speak, while I try to swing my rifle and whack them away from my precious flesh. RATTLERATTLETATTLERATTLERATTTLETATTLE!!! Most of the pack focused solely over me… of course, chow down the bleeding one, the juicy, juicy prey… I’m just a piece of undercooked meat for you, aren’t I? Through immense effort, I shook off the thick of the pack from my back as I trotted away from that spot, bashing over some outrunner’s face with my rifle’ butt. RATTLERATTTLETATTLERATTLERATTTLETATTLETATTLE!!! PWOOT!!! PWOOT! PWOOT! PWOOT!!! I knew it was a worthless effort, that I was on a doomed last stand. The rifle begun to get insupportably heavy, and I had to drop it out of exhaustion… the bunnies, in turn, were just more relentless on preying over me, their teeth digging deeper and deeper… PWOOT!! PWOOT!!! PWOOT PWOOT!! The sound of Lielle’s shotgun punching shells into the mutants’ tiny bodies was the only comfort I had while I was being devoured alive. “Help him out Moonbreeze!” The mare shouted. “I don’t know how much longer he will be able to live through…” PWOOT! “I can’t get a clear shot from here, might hit him as well as the bunnies!” PWOOT!!PWOOT!! “His life is on your hooves!” She yelled to our armored companion… “I… I don’t think I can…” Moonbreeze softly whispered back, her voice trembling; terrified…it was slowly fading… I could barely hear anything through the sound of teeth chewing, as the pile of monstrosities dug their way through fur, leather and flesh… if I hadn’t bought those leather reinforcements, I’d be dead now… not that’s such a great consolation, they will simply make me suffer a longer period to rip me apart. I felt tears trickling through my face… I don’t wanna die… not like this, not today. CLACK!CLACK! CLACK!! CLACK ! SQUATCH!! CLACK!! SQUATCH! SQUATCH SQUATCH!!! CLACK!!! I couldn’t open my eyes, but I felt the ground tremble underneath me… one by one, all the pests were smacked out of my back, like being cleansed of massive, bloodthirsty ticks. After opening my eyes, I caught a glimpse of my savior: Moonbreeze was using her metal-clad hooves to trample through the critters, stomping over them and culling their numbers to nil. When she was done, I was still shaking out of fear… bunnies, even bunnies! To the hell with the Zone! “Just take it easy… it’s over now.” Lielle whispered as she trotted nearby. “We’ll just take a break and…” “No-n-n-NO breaks!” I spoke, my voice trembling... cold, it was so cold… “Let’s… let’s just end this already…” “Are you out of your mind?” The redhead shook me vividly. “You almost expired out there, fella… I bet you are barely holding your marbles together now. We should at very least…” “I said… we-we… end this… job, asap.So I can d-drink this over.” “For Celestia’s sake… you’re mental, you know that?” She opened my pack and begun administering my medkits and bandages. “You’ve lost more than a few liters of blood in that little mess of yours.” “Least… we k-know what we’re up a-gainst now.” I moved my head as she slapped a few bandages over my neck. The bastards… they gnawed their way into me, ripping away my fur, my armor… the teeth ripped, shanked and sank through it… now it was nothing, nothing… just scraps barely held together. I was beginning to suspect I was born under a lucky star… how else I could make it alive through that kind of ordeal? I took a sideway glance on Moonbreeze’s direction… she was quietly eyeing her blood-muddled iron hooves, likely pondering about just having killed a hooffull of little creatures. “Er, this should keep you in one piece… mostly.” The earth pony spoke. “At least until we end this job.” I tried to stand up; only being able to do such after a few tries… I was on a world of hurt; it was a sacrifice just to slouch… “Although there’s not much we can do for your armor… you’d best stay on the rearguard now.” I couldn’t agree more, nodding to her statement, buckling my saddlebags again and taking my position behind Moonbreeze. My AK was lying on the floor nearby, covered on critter blood. I tossed it onto the pack, withdrawing the marekarov instead. Holding the pistol was less of a burden to my telekinesis. PWOOT!! PWOOT|!!! The readhead’s shells pierced through the rotten wood, bagging the few rabbits that were still hiding around. Moonbreeze… why did she helped me? After I was such a douchebag… she cares about me more than I about her… she was right, I’m such a horrible pony and a lousy friend. I guess that I can live with that kind of guilt… better than being a deader. As my eyes got used to the darkness, I could make out the pantry… Any food that was stocked here before was long since rotted away or devoured by vermin… now, only it’s broken shelves and cupboards remained, being used as home for those bunnies… that room was leaving me nauseated… you couldn’t take three steps without stepping on rabbit dung, plus, assorted bones and flesh were around… the spoils from their hunts. Three vertical small holes could be seen on the eastern wall, along with only one on the western wall of the room… their purpose was clear: a direct path to the valley, so that these mutants could hunt for food and bring it to their lair. A closer inspection on the western wall revealed that there were a second hole there… only that it was clogged… by a pony skeleton. The marks and scratches over it showed that the mutants dug through the flesh, leaving aside the empty carcass of a poor stalker and its torn sunrise armor. One could wonder… was he still alive when he was brought in? Nopony deserved a death like that, nopony… PWOOT!!! PWOOT PWOOT!! “I guess that’s the last of them.” The earth pony voiced, lowering her shotgun. I slowly nodded, pain still numbing my senses… The back of the room offered two ways: east and west. Pointing to the west direction, a sign saying “Dorms” Dormitories… the thought of a cozy, warm bed... that seemed extremely appealing to me. Cozy, warm, comfortable… just like the womb of a… “Girls… do you mind if I… just check something?” The two looked at each other, confusion sprouting on their eyes. “I don’t think that’s a good idea…” Lielle begun. “It’s just for a second… just wait over here. If I take more than two minutes, storm inside.” “We don’t have much a choice, do we?” The redhead voiced her displeasure. “Alright, go rub on dirt or whenever you wanna do…” So I did… I trotted inside that room, instantly flashing my light to the broken bunker-beds, approaching them and lifting a bunch of rags that someday were blankets… “What do you think he’s doing there?” Moonbreeze asked her friend. “Don’t you think it is just a little bit odd that he…” “Nah… probably nothing important. By the way, how you fought those mutants, girl… that was some amazi…” “Hey Lielle.” I voiced while sprouting my head from behind the door. “Do you mind seeing something here?” “Just a second.” She answered back to me. “I’m just gonna see whenever he found, then we can get over with this.” And Moonbreeze just nodded as she saw the redhead trotting inside the room. “What’s about it? Don’t tell me there are more of those things around…” “Kinda…” I spoke, approaching the bunch of rags. “We’ve left out a few.” And I pulled the clothes aside. The mare gasped at the sight: A number of tiny, brown-furred baby bunnies, nibbling on a piece of flesh. They haven’t even grown their teeth yet, being almost indiscernible from regular bunnies… however, I knew what kind of demons were those things. “The offspring… they’d leave it on the most secluded, most protected section of the lair.” The huntress spoke. “As to guarantee that the next generation will make it.” “Right. And which is why I asked Moonbreeze to wait outside.” “I see… she wouldn’t have the stomach to watch. So, I presume you wanna cull the pups.” “Yes. Look, I know this isn’t pleasant for you either, but we should do this… we can’t let these things run amok through the valley… you’ve seen what kind of damage they can do when fully grown.” I sighed. “Just hold em’ down for me, please…” She just nodded, strangely stern-faced. Once she had made sure that the bunnies couldn’t run away, I withdrew my knife. None of those things could be left alive. I enveloped bunny after bunny on my magic, pulling their necks towards the levitated blade… a few left off a small squeal as their lives slipped by. I dropped their little bodies over the floor, and repeated the procedure over and over until there was none left. The mare remained silent as she corralled the critters, so they wouldn’t escape. “Done here.” I voiced as I sheathed the blood-covered knife. “They won’t bother us again.” And Lielle just nodded in response. She knew I had to do that… “How did it go? Found anything interesting there?” Moonbreeze asked as we trotted back into the pantry again. “No, just a false alarm.” Lielle answered her. “At least we just have one more place to search” And she pointed to the door at the east direction: after it, a set of stairs which descended to a small, narrow corridor… It led us to another enclosed room… our beams of light revealed a rusty footlocker on the left, while a pile of ruined beds and some broken furniture laid by the right wall, while the northern one was filled with broken monitors, all of them powered off… they were part of some odd device that occupied the whole wall, a mishmash of colored cables could be seen sprouting from such big device, most of them chewed… I had an idea of who were the culprits for such… I turned my attention to the footlocker: locked, just my luck… a quick flick from my skeleton key will solve… Crack!! Damn cheap stuff. I tossed away the broken key, searching my bag for the last one… BRLALAGUUUKKK!!! We threw our lights on unison to the source of that unearthly sound. What I thought that was a pile of debris… it stirred! It stood on two feet, pushing the trash away… and it faced us! Mother of fuck! It was one of those bunnies, but bigger, a much bigger one… white fur, demonic magenta eyes and clacking teeth, big as butter knives… and eleven times sharper… The creature was tall, it’s ears folded at the ceiling when it stood up. There was no way that thing could leave the room through where we came from… I could only presume that it was brought here as a pup, being fed by the other bunnies and growing up inside its iron cage, never able to leave… The dire creature let out a bellowing roar, the scent of death reeking from inside its maw. GRAAAASHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAGHWAKLAA!!! I trembled as I tried to aim my pistol at that… at that thing… I knew it wouldn’t be much use, but I wasn’t looking forward to end up as mutant meal. At least the girls were at my side, readying their weapons as well… BANG!!! BANG BANG!!! BLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLANGBLAN BLANGBLANG PWOOT!!! PWOOT! PWOOT! PWOOT!!! It seemed like the monster wasn’t immediately aware of the attack, only when he saw his pristine fur marred by blood, it had woken up from its stupor. It descended on all fours and charged against us. BANG BANG BANG!!! PWOOT PWOOOT!!! The hulking brute assaulted a violent headbutt against Moonbreeze, sending her through the room, only to have her brief flight interrupted by a hardy wall. The mare stood on its crash site, seeming dazed… that this was too damn powerful! How the buck can I expect to bring it down? “Boshan, move off while I try to…” And I saw the panic on her eyes… CLANK, CLANK, CLANK, WHAM!!! It wasn’t so bad once you were thrown… it’s the landing that kills it. Having my already injured body hitting a concrete wall like a pitiful ragdoll wasn’t on my plan… I felt my nervous system burning inside out in agony, the message that I knew so well: pain, pain, pain… I could do nothing but stay there on the wall, leaning against a spat of my own blood… the world seemed increasingly blurred, out of focus… was there a fight or something? An earth pony left against a giant carnivorous bunny… colors begun to lose their shine, sounds begun to be suppressed into nothingness, just muffled echo. Thoughts begun to fade… My eyelids felt so heavy, I felt so unbearably tired. I’m so sorry, my friends… I couldn’t help you. ==========================[><]======================== “Hey, wake up sleeping princess… it’s time you wake up from your little nappy-time.” Every breath was a fight… I was barely holding it together. The world slowly returned into vision… I was still rather dazed, a ringing sound echoing inside my skull… “See? I told you he was going to make it.” The blue earth pony voiced to the armor-wearing mare. “It needs more than an oversized mutant to bring down a seasoned stalker.” “Well, he is a resilient one… I thought he was done, for sure…” Moonbreeze spoke back. “He doesn’t seem too well, though…” I eyed my surroundings: a number of discarded medical supplies were around me. I had a rough one… I needed rest… rest and plenty of booze. “But… but…” I mumbled “How did you…” “Using my brains, of course… what else?” The redhead answered. “You see… I’ve pissed off that thing so bad…” and she pointed to the corridor where we came from. Now it was stained crimson red “That it tried to chase me outta the room, and it got stuck! And after that… like shooting fish on a barrel.” She proudly indicated her shotgun. “Though the difficult part was flaying that thing to get back in.” “Then, I guess we should get to finishing the quest… after all… we’ve came so far.” I feebly voiced, receiving one nod from each mare as answer. I reached onto the footlocker and used my last skeleton key to open it. CLINK! Inside the container, a bag with two thousand bits, a PDA and a weapon case… It contained a sniper rifle or sorts… it was a rather cumbersome and bulky weapon, with wooden furnishing and a synthetic stock, the name “Truesight” was etched on the weapon. Perhaps the most jarring thing about it was the weapon’s scope… it sure had one scope inbuilt into it, but the case also included two similar additional scopes… I thought they were spare ones, until a closer inspection showed me that they were made to be used in tandem with the stock scope… as in, they could be piled up on a triangular fashion, attached to the inbuilt scope… but I wonder, why would anypony want to do that? Unless it was made for a three-eyed mutant, there was no reason for such. “Nice shooter…” The redhead could be heard behind me. “A modded Dragunov, I see…” “You gals don’t mind if I get dibs on it, right?” I asked. “Since you don’t have a frame for this kinda’ shooter and Moonbreeze… well, she isn’t a gun enthusiast…” “Knock yourself out.” Was the huntress’ answer, while Moonbreeze silently nodded her approval. All that I needed to pocket the encased rifle on my saddlebags. Then, I moved on to checking that PDA. Diary entry, 1 of 8 The Zone… what I can tell about it? Well, we’re here now, not as much a golden mine as I’ve expected, but I suppose these things take time. All I gotta do is get a few contracts here and there and ka’ching! I mean, if a precocious neer-do-well merc wannabe such as Fleabag is rolling in dough, any idiot can prosper in this post-nuclear paradise. Sure that my boys aren’t exactly looking forward to work inside the Zone… having heard some of the nutcase stories that locals seem to sprout to scare off tourists… like, ponies with octopus tentacles as faces which can turn invisible, or former stalkers that turned mad and run around preying on flesh and leaping two-stories heights… sounds like a load of bull cookies to me. Anyways, I guess I should give them a few days to ponder it over… eventually, they will get to their senses… they always do when there is money on the line. Diary entry, 2 of 8 And another contract successfully completed. On this pace, I’ll have enough moolah for an early retirement in no time. Of course, on the past few days, there had been a few losses… expendable personnel, mostly… they can find their way into shooting any kind of enemy, but when it comes to watching their step to avoid those anomalies and radioactive pockets…they are as helpless as little foals. I can’t blame them: they trained years to excel their combat capabilities, years to hone up their marksman skills… the very same training that alienated them to spend so much attention on their enemies, on their guns, that they end up stepping where they shouldn’t and wind up dead at those environmental traps. I guess we aren’t habituated enough to know our way out of some of those things… that comes with time, that’s those stalkers’ forte. I need to think of a way to transpose this obstacle; otherwise things might be not profitable enough for the hassle. Diary entry, 3 of 8 I thought about a new lease in life… as our external contracts are starting to run dry, I guess its time to settle down and start doing jobs for those stalker’ fellas… they sure got themselves a hoofful of problems, and most of them can be solved by offing the right kind of people. Also, they got the cash to back up our services, with the entire artifact smuggling business around…. So, as the first step in being successful in the well-compensated freewheeling business provocateur and long term people-dealing business, we set up shop in one of those abandoned structures that are around the Zone, there are plenty to go ‘round, and my boys need a place to rest and drop their stuff from time to time. That’s what this compound is going to serve for us, now that we kindly relocated the former pests from here. But the main attraction isn’t the compound, oh no… it’s just what lies underneath it: a bunker! Complete with a security-coded door, vents and other kind of life-support thingamajigs! Crosswire was able to bring the underground generators back online and recode the door to serve our needs, also, he was able to get a keycard-locked door inside the bunker back into working state… anypony who was here before, sure was paranoid about security... well, more to our gain. I’ll dump the spare weapons and any other sensible things into there and hold into the key myself. Diary entry, 4 of 8 Now we officially got a few jobs on our belts, the boys gotten used to the atmosphere round these parts… its kinda nice after you spend a few days in this big radioactive dump called “the Zone”… and the money is not bad either, not a shortage of people needin’ of our skills either… today I’ve met some representatives of a bigshot clan that roams through the Zone, called themselves Freedom… Apart from the head of some of them being a few whiskers’ short of a full bag of cats, they’re friendly enough after you’ve gone past listening all their crap of communing , love and tolerance… funny thing is, that doesn’t apply to their dealings with another clan of stalkers… Duty, or whenever is called… going on, we were able to get in a consensus for them: we run a few undesirable jobs every now and then for them Freedom chumps and they provide us with Zone intel and field experience bout’ dem anomalies, radioactive pockets and mutants, since their contact network is much more deeply rooted than ours. Ah, on a side note… another interesting piece of technology was found on the lower level of the bunker… Crosswire said me that everything suggests that it’s some sort of ancient monitoring device, possibly set by either insurgents or the monarchy a fuckton of time ago, to spy the surrounding area. I’ve got to see if he can get some of it into working order… having some sort of thing like that would surely give us an edge in our business. Damn… Hyena is screaming his lungs out again, I can’t for the love of Celestia figure out what is wrong with that dude… If he is doing it on purpose… Diary entry, 5 of 8 I’d say we’ve got ourselves over the proverbial dry meat: Crosswire was able to hitch some of the monitoring device back into functioning order, allowing us to get live feeds into some parts of the garbage, the valley and the swamplands to the south. We’ve already been preying over bandit squads every time we see that the are carrying something nice… haha, the bastards are pissed off outta their minds, and yet, clueless. Just yesterday, the guys took this dragunov sniper rifle from them… according to them crooks, they’ve stole it from some old geezer huntin’ at the Whitetail park. It’s gonna be a nice weapon for me once I get used to shootin’ it. Our dealing with Freedom are going along pretty well, aside some minor problems… like that commander of theirs, Halftrot… guy was all trigger happy while we were culling some snorks, got caught up on his own excitement and got himself too close on those leaping abominations… if weren’t for my boys covering his ass and me pulling that moron outta there, he’d be a goner… I seriously hope that he learned something outta that experience. Diary entry, 6 of 8 Things are going as planned… a few days’ worth of monitoring that underground structure have paid off: now I am aware what the hell that is: an subway station which was filled up with the radioactive junk pulled out by the monarchy… more so, a group of stalker old-timers was able to dig their way inside that station and use it as their own base of operations, unaware that I have a direct link to their prattling and ramblings… it’s a wonder that the bandits haven’t found their base by now yet… but then again, I guess that’s expecting too much from them… besides, they aren’t digging up that particular pile too much, since is the one closest to the Freedom base. I’ve yet to see if their quartermaster, Carmelia, is interested in buying the cords to the stalkers’ lil’ irradiated hole. I suppose I’ll hold into it for now. Attached file: Garbage subway station entrance coordinates. The things I’ve been able to get from this group of stalkers so far: And the PDA showed a photograph: it wasn’t colored, but rather, showcased in different tones of blue… my guess is that’s the way the monitoring device captures images. Three figures were discernible on that photograph, all of them climbing a huge pile of junk: The one on the left was a big earth pony, equipped with the burdening mishmash of both heavy-duty kelvar protection and servomotors that composed the hefty, custom-tailored exoskeleton armor which was produced in some clandestine factory. The pony on the center was probably a unicorn, that or he was either wearing a helmet made for one… he was wearing a SEVA suit: a lightweight bulletproof vest that covered his whole body combined with an integrated close-cycle breathing system and anomaly suppression devices, the suit was produced by specialized institutes outside of the Zone, meant to be sold for the professional, cash-swimming stalker who desired to last longer than a few days. So, as I told, the helmet was especially made for a unicorn: the dome helmet had an opening for the horn, where some sort of protective, green-colored fabric, coated it. Like some sort of horn condom… while it probably wasn’t as protective as the rest of the curtain helmet, it allowed the use of magic while providing some degree of protection. The last stalker on the picture was another unicorn, though this one was wearing just a worn trenchcoat, his fur sprouting from the coat’ holes. The PDA captioned the picture: From the left to the right: Mimiric, the muscle, Searinor, the big kahuna and Blurweaver, the group’s spellcaster. From what I was able to dig from their conversations, they’re been around the Zone for a while now, running odd jobs for folks and running incursions to the depths of the Zone, I’ve got to keep my eyes open at them. Diary entry, 7 of 8 Our cams picked out something neat: a pile of oldworld potential shiny-thingies, just lying around on the swamplands: a derelict weather factory which has crashed many, many years ago, and probably brimming with interesting stuff inside, just waiting for us… the stalkers say its cursed and other load of bullshit about it… they just wanna hog the treasures for themselves, I know that. It’s most likely just filled with regular mutant chumps, more than enough to chow down those wimps who just made it from the Cordon, not a threat to REAL stallions who got enough brass in their balls to stick around into the Zone for a while, like us. I’ll lead myself a group of scouts tomorrow, to decide if the site’ exploration is worth it or not. Diary entry, 8 of 8 Wading through my previous entries had shown me… how blind I was, and how everything is so clear now. Filling my life with futile pursuits… nothing of that matter to me anymore, it’s like everything had been a previous life of mine, ever since I’ve found out the truth. Celestia… she lives. I saw her, I saw our holy ruler… I saw her with those old, tired eyes of mine. And I believed… she picked me, me and two others who were deemed worthy enough… the others weren’t in such an enlightened state to withstand her vision, and so, were cast into terrible madness, followed by tremendous pain… of which, the swift veil of death was a relief. But this shouldn’t be a day for mourning, oh no, for Celestia has spoken into my heart and into the heart of those who upheld her call much as well. She asked me to lead a pilgrimage to her… to Canterlot, so I may properly glorify our goddess. Most of my former associates thought I was off my rocker when I returned from the trip… from the trip which has purveyed all illusions I had about life so far. It’s understandable. They weren’t there, they didn’t saw her… if they could only have seen what I saw and been where I was… in due time, they will be converted from such petty ignorance. When I spoke my mind about going past the brain scorcher, only my two friends, the ones which were there and were fervent believers such as me, wished to accompany me. The rest of them… scared… by old legends, fairy tales, slander and lies…all of them, nothing but rats! Cowards! True faith leaves no room for fear! Nor such lowly emotion befits a true believer! I’m leaving this diary and all the traces of my past life behind, for posteriority… so all may know the truth and follow me into the one true path. I’m also leaving my rifle behind, it’s no use to me where I’m going, only my Black Bronco will suffice fending off those pesky creatures who live in her shade. It’s a shame I have to leave my boys, but, as I came to know, there are more important things in life… I put the PDA away and packed it along with the cash and dumped both things into my bags. Sure that those entries pointed the way to me, but in turn… I wonder, what happened at the derelict weather factory with the merc to change his attitude so much? And why only three ponies survived that incursion, what happened to the rest of his scouting party? Why do I even care? It’s not my business if a stalker digs religious crap and goes on a suicidal trip… I turned myself to lift up and leave, but I saw something else inside that footlocker… Crumpled inside a corner, a photograph, a colored one… It depicted six mares, all of them with various lively fur colors and two of each race: unicorn, pegasus and earth pony. I’ve never seen those gals before… As I turned the photography, I could make out something written on the back: elements of harmony, monarchy’s last, best hope of salvation. And a monarchy seal after that sentence. Hmm… “So, you know any of those?” The earth pony asked me. “No idea. You have any clue, Moonbreeze?” “Well… I’ve read a bit about the elements of harmony…” She started. “But I must say… the books weren’t very clear about the hosts of such elements after Celestia’ and Luna wielded them into battle.” “And what do the elements of harmony do?” I questioned. “According to the legends, they are some sort of magical-reality-harmonic-stabilization-device… in essence; they pretty much make the things back the way they were into a peaceful state…” She voiced dreamily. “Of course, that’s just a foal naptime history nowadays, the elements have been long since lost and the hosts’ identity are shrouded in mystery… they are probably dead, having met their demise before they could pass on the elements to a new set of hosts.” “Not much we can do for them, huh…” I spoke while taking a second glance to the photograph. I felt like that photograph was a piece of some puzzle… a puzzle which I wasn’t building, but somepony else was… I guess I shouldn’t leave it just lying around, it could just mean something important. With that in mind, I stored the photograph into my bag. “I figure it’s nothing important, just echoes of the past that hold little to no effect in our current situation.” I voiced to the girls. After all, now that the mess is done, the elements don’t matter anymore. “Yeah, you must be right…” The redhead spoke in turn. “Now that we’ve got that intel of yours, we can go home now… or rather, the closest thing from that…” And she began to pick her stuff. “By the way, you look terrible… you should take it easy for a while…” “I second that… we shouldn’t stick around now that we found what we’ve came looking for.” The armored one voiced afterwards. “Then lead on, ladies… I’ll be there in a minute, just lemme pick my gear…” After I grabbed whenever was left of my stuff, I trotted after the girls. Each move was a fucking torture, sore wounds and ugly scratches marred my complexion, reminding me that being alive on the Zone meant either withstanding massive pain or keeping off the worst kind of scum, animal or pony, beneath the barrel of a gun. It was no way to live… Chances are that I’m not smelling like a bucket of roses either… more like “Eau of weathered hound” or something along that line… “…I told you we could pull it over.” I caught a glimpse of Lielle’s conversation with Moonbreeze “Hardly…” Moonbreeze replied. “Tell about borderline success…” And so, we trotted past the vault, returning the way back into the surface… Now it was strangely silent, with the rain having stopped and everything… surely by now, the bandits would have returned from… “Hey guys, that isn’t good for us…” Moonbreeze spoke, pointing to the nightly sky. I turned to see what she was pointing to… oh dear Celestia… RUTHARUTHARUTHARUTHARUTHARUTHARUTHARUTHA A REA chopper… just what we need now, a bunch of soldier boys with orders to shoot everything down. “Cut the lights off!” I’ve heard the redhead shouting over the engine’s cacophony. We needed to get out of there before they fly close enough to nail the entire compound with machinegun fire. Even without the lights, we could clearly make out the helicopter’s bright silhouette… they were flashing the valley with the machine’s searchlight…, searching for bandits to dispose of. My guess is that the chopper was the reason because the bandits haven’t made it back yet… too damn afraid or dead already “We have to scram before those morons make it to our position…” She spoke again. “Just follow my voice, you two… I’ll use the NVG to guide us through the other exit.” “Alright… just be quick about it.” I replied, my heart beating like crazy… we’ve came so far… to ruin everything now was unthinkable of. So, Moonbreeze and I trotted behind Lielle, making our best to avoid unnecessary noises and shifting our eyes every now and then to check on the chopper’s position. We couldn’t afford to engage in combat, in my current condition, even a little filly could smack me. “Look sharp, this is the place where we found ya, Boshan…” The redhead spoke. “Just a few more meters to the east and...” The place they’ve found me… wait a second. “Girls, just stop a little… I gotta catch something.” “Not again…” The huntress’ displeasure could be noticed. “Aren’t you aware they are this close to pumping us with enough lead to build a foundry?” “Shaddap and help me out here…” I hoarsely spoke. “This is important… now where did he land…? Ah there’s our winner…” Typhoon’s body, what else? I trotted to it and begun to strip him out of his armor. I needed it, since mine couldn’t stop even BB rounds… “We have no time for that… you can always buy a new one…” She insisted on dissuading me from the whole thing… Moonbreeze’s silk voice also resonated through the nightly air “Listen to her, the REA is gonna catch up unless we get out…” “Just a few more minutes…” I mumbled as I roughly stripped Typhoon’s kelvar vest… he was dead already, it doesn’t matter to him. I should have done this before… At this point, the machinegun of the REA’s flying contraption begun to roar… BRATTTATATATATATATATATATTTTBRATATATTATATATTATBRATRTARTARTRATRTABRATATATATATATABRATATATATAT They were indiscriminately firing against the compound… they oughta hit something after a while. Thankfully, I was able to relieve the last strap of the armor, stuffing it along with the gasmask into my bag… I’ll retrofit it when we have enough time to. I just tossed my old rags over Typhoon’s yellow fur and shouted to the girls to trot on. “And where we should go to?” Moonbreeze questioned as we trotted through the eastern gate, exiting the compound. “They likely got the exits covered.” “You can bet on that.” The redhead smugly remarked. “Those REA thugs don’t do half-assed jobs.” “We’d best go south until we hit the Cordon…” was my suggestion. “I mean, they can’t just have every exit covered. Sides’ they are after the bandits.” After that, we spent a long way trotting to the south: Lielle was leading the group, flinging bolts for oncoming anomalies and scaring off the occasional mutants. I was right behind, using the PDA to check if we were on the right route, while Moonbreeze covered the rearguard. Once we were within a distance, I dared a last glance into the bandits’ base. The chopper was now unleashing rockets round’ the area. More countless minutes trotting through muddy terrain into the night (we purposely avoided the road, as not to attract unwanted attention) We saw a small group of lights fading into the horizon: flashlights. They belonged to a number of ponies who inhabited another set of abandoned buildings: a degraded real estate, possibly a farmhouse. “It’s no use hiding.” The blue pony whispered to us. “They probably saw us already, no point on denying we’re here.” And she turned her own flashlight on. Moonbreeze and I quickly followed on the gesture. “Er… do you think it’s a good idea to speak to them?” Moonbreeze’s voice was of doubt. “I mean, how can we be sure they aren’t bandits or something?” “We have no choice.” Was my short answer. “If we trot away, they might take it the wrong way, besides… they can’t be worse that the REA.” As we approached the farmhouse , a dilapidated wall came into vision. Lying over it, a stallion waved to us. A loner… “Howdy ho, fellow stalkers…” He cheerfully greeted as we trotted within earshot. “You three picked up a terrible night to be wandering around… the REA is pounding the fuck out of the bandits and just about anypony they can find around who isn’t wearing army fatigues.” “Yes, we just saw that…”I spoke to him. “Any chance we can spend the rest of the night with you guys?” “Absolutely.” The loner grinned and pointed towards the farmhouse. “Just make yourself at home… we stalkers need to stick together, look for each other, you know… it’s the only way we can stand up to those army chumps and other retards running amok through the Zone… just remember to return the favor to a fellow stalker if the need ever arises…” “Sure will…” I couldn’t control myself of contentment. “Thanks buddy, we owe ya… we owe ya big time.” After thanking the guard a few more times than it was necessary, we strolled inside the large farmhouse. The main floor consisted only of a large communal room… the stalkers tore the farmhouse’ rooms walls apart to create one large cozy room., while the second floor still kept its walls, being used as usual dorms for those too tired or who weren’t in the mood to chill by the campfire. Said campfire had several stalkers gathered around it, occupying themselves on cleaning their guns, reading their PDAs, playing the guitar, sharing dirty jokes, trading, or stuffing themselves. I simply sat around the campfire, letting my saddlebag aside and allowing the fire to warm my bones, allowing me to forget this night events. I dug my saddlebag for a can of oatmeal and begun chewing on it. Lielle sat by my side, while Moonbreeze found herself a corner a bit far from the campfire… I guess she couldn’t feel the warmth of it, or wasn’t exactly pleased by the place’s patrons. “Those are some ugly wounds you got there, sonny…” I raised my eyes to see who spoke to me, my gaze meeting a set of tired black eyes and a kind smile, wrapped on a face under a battered purple hood. My interlocutor was a respectable donkey, one carrying one of those precision frames and an equally old rifle. Both the weapon and his owner looked like they had seen their share of action back then. “Uh-huh…” I mumbled back, retrieving Typhoon’s armor for my pack. “You get quite a load of these fighting those blasted mutants… even more so those rabbits…” I voiced, stopping momentarily to cut away the bandit patch from the armor and toss it into the campfire. “Do you say… rabbits?” The old one held his head thoughtfully. “They shouldn’t be around these parts…” “You know’em?” I asked, attempting to sew over some bullet holes. “I fought those damned things back in the day… terrorbunnies are quite the pesky bunch… and might I just say, it looks like you fought off a whole pack of them.” “You got that right, old timer…” And I pointed to my friends. “Me and my pals cleared up their lair just a while ago, couldn’t say it was exactly pleasing…” The old donkey lazily scratched his back. “That’s a good thing… world is better off without those spawns of tartarus roaming around. Kinda makes me miss the times they were just around Whitetail and region…” “Why that has changed?” I asked. “Why’d they leave their hunting area and move off closer to the borders of the Zone?” “Ah, that’s just it, stalker…” He answered. “The brain scorcher, that’s what happened… in those old good times, you could just walk around it through Whitetail, only backing off when you started to feel lightheaded and all. Yet, for some reason, the field of that thing…it grew. It engulfed the whole area, nopony goes in, nopony goes out. Since then, without stalkers to provide a steady flow of food, the terrorbunnies simply moved to whenever the food is, that is, toward us.” “You seem to know quite a load about them, old one…” “Had a few run-ins with them during my time…” He voiced, then pulled off his hood, revealing his wrinkled complexion. His right ear had a visible wound in the exact shape of a mouth’s arcade, like something had bitten it off. “As you see, I have no love for them… the bastards took my ear, but I was able to avenge my loss.” He proudly spoke. “If weren’t for my trusty ol’ Swagloader here, I’d be a stinkin’ corpse.” And he showed us his special weapon, an amazing specimen of a bolt-action rifle… “You see, my friend… they just don’t make these anymore.” The donkey remarked. “It might not be as modifiable or quick-firing as the fancy rifles you kids got these days, but this weapon… it packs quite the punch, and you can put your life on it, trust it like a brother, and also, it can withstand a whole lot of things too, I had this thing for quite a while now and I wouldn’t exchange it for any sum of money on this world… “ I simply continued to admire the weapon’s interesting craftspony beauty, the rough dark wooden furnishing, the scratched barrel… that rifle had quite an appeal to the eye which you can’t really describe into words… “But I bore you, don’t I?” The veteran’s voice brought me back from my trance. “Oh no, I’m just teasing you…” He smiled warmly, seeing my attempts to apologize. “Here, youngster… have a cold one on me for clearing out that terrorbunny den.” And the donkey stuffed a bottle of vodka into my hooves… that was the kindest gesture I ever witnessed, what a nice guy! “Enjoy, it’s the good stuff…” And he let out a yawn. “Now if you kids don’t mind, I’ve got to rest these old bones of mine… see you around.” My eyes followed the old donkey as he climbed the stairs towards the upper floor. I slowly opened the bottle of booze, enjoying the heavenly aroma and experiencing every second of bliss from the experience. As I spilled the cold, yet throat-burning liquid down my throat, every mundane pain was rapidly dimmed into nothingness. That was probably the only way to endure life on the Zone. I turned around to check on my companions, Moonbreeze was paying attention on the buzz going around and the redhead was stuffing herself. After she finished her can of hay, she was ready to devour a generous loaf of bread… “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you…” A voice soared from the group of stalker The mare found herself looking dumbly at the group of stalkers. “Eat what? Bread?” She questioned. “I intend to, I’m starving around here…” “Don’t tell me…” And a loner set himself apart from the group, a skinny, starkly orange-furred earth pony with mischievous eyes. “You’ve never heard about…” And he paused. “The “bread”?” “Bread, this, you say?” And the mare pointed to her loaf of bread. “I don’t see what is so special about it, being made out of flour, water…” “Of course you don’t know…” The shabby loner continued. “That some bread may have an additional ingredient… an ingredient which the likes of aren’t so, well, edible…” “Just what is this ingredient?” The huntress asked. “I’ve never heard of such thing… inedible bread…” “Oh nevermind… you’re probably safe with it… just forget that I’ve ever said anything…” And he slowly started to walk back to his place… “Wait!” The mare voiced. “Tell me about it, I wanna know more!” For a second, the loner’s face was embezzled with a sly grin… no doubt that his fish just pulled the bait. “You see…” He began. “There is bread… and there are “Bread” He said while making air quotes at the second mention of the word. “A long time ago, this city some kilometers to the north… Ponyville, it was a blossoming metropolis: filled with people and all that crud you read in history books… so, when the accident happened, everypony just abandoned their activities on the fly as their heard the sirens, the bakery included… the bakers left the dough as they escaped the city… it had been left sitting there for Celestia knows how long and…” “Eh crowbar, spreading your stupid fairy tales as usual, I see…“ Somepony at the back yelled. “Why don’t you go do something usef…” At that point, the other loners shushed to the one interrupting Crowbar’s tale, making him shut his muzzle… they were clearly interested on crowbar’s history. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, the dough was left sitting on the bakery, being left to withstand the elements of nature and the first raw wave of biomagical waste that encased the Zone… what was the first interlopers’ surprise as they found the dough still relatively intact… somehow, the dough caught enough radioactivity to change its essence, being able to grow like a living being for years, without getting bad or stale… stalkers say it was able to take over the whole bakery in a matter of a decade, not only that, it evolved… mutated to adapt to the Zone… they say that it used its scent to attract small animals, and when they were busy chewing onto the dough’s mass, it would engulf them, choking the creatures and using the nutrients on their corpses to grow even bigger, it begun to overwhelm the bakery, grow past it, consuming every bit of flora or fauna that it found in its way… it grew so big that it begun to detach little portions of itself, as to send its excess to grow by itself on other buildings…” “And so, why isn’t Ponyville a big mass of raw dough today?” The huntress asked. “I tell you, we aren’t facing a bread-clysm nowadays thanks to the efforts of a valiant group of stalkers… having found the bakery being taken by a huge, bubbly mass of dough complete with an fine-looking crust, they had no doubts of what to do with it: burn the whole damn thing to the ground. They played safe, you know… they went on eradicating any pockets they could find of the “bread”-thing, not knowing if it was dangerous or not… the damn baked goods could be sending maddening mental waves or poisoning them by osmosis for all they knew…so, anyway, the tale tells that little loaves of the “bread” survived, not being caught by the overzealous stalkers that took down the original entity… without it to guide them, they were left to a life of solitude, hunting whenever prey they could attract.” Crowbar stopped, eyeing his audience… stalkers were digging each word that he spoke. “But this isn’t the end… someday, careless stalkers found loaves of the “bread” and passed them on, or even worse, ate them… this is why one shouldn’t eat bread of unknown precedence, even better, not eat bread at all… “ “And…” The mare looked at his loaf with newfound fear. “What did happen to the ones which ate the “bread”?” “Ah, I’m glad you asked…” Crowbar happily answered. “I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was friends with another guy, a loner whose brother ate a seemingly harmless loaf of bread… told me that said stalker frequently complained about tummy aches, and around a week later, was having trouble breathing… on another week, he was found dead, wheat sprouting from his mouth…” “So, what you mean is that…” “The “bread” grew within the stalker’s stomach… once he consumed it, the “bread” attached itself to the stomach wall, feeding with whenever the stalker ate and fermenting itself while it digested the food… it sprouted a mutated wheat plant, which was able to live inside the stalker’s stomach, even though the lack of light there… it grew towards his trachea, absorbing some of the oxygen produced by the stalker’ lungs, ergo his difficulty to breath… eventually, the sheer size of the thing ended up choking its host, whose carcass was a fertile ground for the plant to take over… “I’m pretty sure that isn’t even remotely biologically possible…” Moonbreeze spoke from her corner. “Do you happen to have a master in biology, canned peach?” Crowbar grinned to her, taking Moonbreeze’s continued silence as a negative answer. “Believe whenever you want, the last guy who thought that is seven feet under nowadays…” “You know…” The redhead eyed her snack with distrust. “I’m not really THAT hungry anymore…” I saw a smile on the corner of Crowbar’s mouth when the mare carelessly tossed the baked good through a window. He waited good five minutes before exempting himself from our presence, saying he was going for a nightly trot… no doubt that he was going to recover the bread and gobble it by himself. I did nothing to stop him from doing so. Technically, he did nothing wrong, and his tale was entertaining enough. He quite deserved the treat… Aside from that little “incident”, the rest of the evening was pleasant, we laughed together and shared storied by the fire… As I enjoyed the loners’ company, a rather distinct fuzzy feeling begun to grow into across my chest… and it wasn’t from the vodka, at least, not all of it… Could that be… friendship? ==========================[><]======================== Greyhoof casually eyed the gruesome display of gore that lay near his hooves, corpses from both the REA forces and his bandits. The pegasus felt nothing as his gaze pierced through the deceased beings. To him, underlings were nothing but pieces of a chess games, only useful to the extent that the player uses them, and ultimately, expendable. Still, he was a tad disappointed to see to how much extent his thugs sucked. Already being informed of who were the culprit of such carnage, the cold-hearted equine spat on the ground. The loner… he really came out of his way to push Greyhoof’s buttons. “Whistlebone, enough loafing ‘round. Present me the current situation.” He voiced towards his hoof-radio. A few moments later, his right-hoof exited the main hangar and presented himself to Greyhoof. “Most of our boys have been wiped out, as you know already…” And he pondered carefully on what to say next. “Those two-sided loners, with another unidentified equine which aided them… but still, we have a few survivors, enough to fend off the deployed REA squadron.” “I’ve heard there was a chopper going around…” Greyhoof remarked as he directed a sideways glance to the damaged structures… some parts of it still presented a coat of ash, result of being bombarded by rockets. “What was made of it?” “It went through an airbound anomalous pocket, a burner…” Whistlebone answered. “The chopper caught in flames and the crew had to forcibly maneuver it downside... we have no idea if they made it alive.” “I see… and what about Typhoon?” “He is over there.” And Whistlebone pointed out to a pile of corpses. “What is left of him, anyway… we are gonna take a while to clean up this mess and…” But Greyhoof wasn’t listening to him; instead, he approached to check his former overseer. Undoubtedly, it was Typhoon… however, with multiple bullet wounds and broken legs, also, pretty much dead. The bandit lord just shook his head negatively… another failure, massive failure… he wondered why his underlings kept screwing thing s over… “Stupid…” He whispered to the lifeless body. “Er boss…” Whistlebone spoke softly. “I don’t thing he is gonna listen to you…” “Stupid!” Greyhoof shouted, bucking the body with his heavy exoskeleton-clad hooves. “Worthless!” He cussed while breaking Typhoon’s ribs. “COCKSUCKER!” The stallion yelled as he unleashed another heavy blow to the corpse, the cacophony of bones being broken sounding like music to his ears. “So, should we bury them or…?” “Burying? That’s doing too much for these good-for-nothing fuckfags…” Greyhoof’s voice was filled with spite. “Leave em’ to feed the dogs once we set up camp, don’t forget to empty their pockets before…” Greyhoof entered the compound as Whistlebone recalled their forces to occupy the area. He did too much to secure this area, he couldn’t afford to simply just let it go… After a while trotting through the underground vault’ empty corridors, Whistlebone joined the pegasus again. “A beauty, isn’t it?” The bandit lord spoke. “When we set up some decoration, sweep the place a bit and get some air freshener around here, it will almost be like our old home.” “Speaking about that…why’d we leave it? Boss, why leave the garbage when there was still so much to milk there?” “Its about time we leave Freedom and Duty to suck each other’ cocks without we standing between them” Greyhoof answered in turn. “Hmm, these loners really were through in rooting this place out of terrorbunnies…” And he pointed to the mutant corpses scattered around. “Yes, most fortunate to our ends…also, there’s still an enclosed door…” “You mean that one by the flag?” And Whistlebone nodded in response. Without saying anything, Greyhoof trotted back to the flag room. “Isn’t that a terminal?” He asked. “Perhaps, just perhaps…” And Greyhoof searched his bag, hoping that he still hadn’t discarded it… He finally came up with a keycard, the same that one of Typhoon’s scouts had delivered to him along with the items they claimed from the facility. “Just show me what you’re hidin’…” The bandit lord softly whispered as he slit the card toward the terminal. The rectangular steel vault door begun whirring and creaking until it was fully opened… As Greyhoof and Whistlebone looked inside the unlocked room, they were aghast with surprise by what they just found… Weapons, many, many weapons… top-notch weaponry and armor… enough to field a small army. Quite likely the lootroom-slash-armory-slash-arsenal of the mercs… “Jackpot.” The bandit said, unable to conceal his glee. “With these… I might be able to build a sizeable force, get some respect ‘round these parts and pound them damn prattling loners into oblivion! Perhaps even make our way towards the center of the Zone…” “Again with that plan, boss?” Was Whistlebone’s dispassionate reply. “I thought we had…” “BOSS, BOSS!” An underling scampered into the room, stopping right in front of the bandit lord and his right hoof. “Pipe down, kid…”Greyhoof voiced as he directed to the lowly bandit. “What’s the ruckus all about?” “The REA, boss! We picked up an SOS distress signal coming from them, looks like some of the soldiers had survived the helicopter crash, they are relaying an SOS message, saying that they have stumbled upon a snork in the woods…” The underling simply looked expectantly to his bosses as he awaited for an answer. Whistlebone simply grinned malignantly, while Greyhoof had the very same smile under his tactical helmet and gasmask. “Then, I believe we should give them the proper help…” The bandit lord finally spoke. “Release two packs of hounds upon them. Today, my doggies feast onto the living!” He boomed, and then broke in laughter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PDA entry: The zone encyclopedia #/filefolder- bestiary #/filenam – Terrorbunny Thanks to documents recovered during a recent stalker incursion, today we know that these creatures are the result of genetic experiments targeted at creating a species of rabbits that weren’t such picky eaters, though, it’s still rather unclear what was on the mind of the one who thought it was a good idea to splice together genetic material from rabbits and piranhas… The terrobunnies were the most successful batch of that particular set of experiments, though, a bit too successful… after breaking free from the facility which gave birth to them, these mutants quickly adapted to the Zone’s harsh conditions. Appropriating themselves of abandoned underground buildings and tunnels to use them as lairs, terrorbunnies plague the northern reaches of the Zone, mostly Everfree, Ponyville and Whitetail, although there’s a crescent rise on sights of these creatures on areas closer to the borders of the |Zone out of late. They are easily discerned from ordinary bunnies if you make out their teeth and red-furred bellies. Although these mutants are technically omnivore, they have a very visible preference towards meat, combining the most deadly features of the two creatures, as in, the bunnies breeding habits and agility and the piranhas’ viciousness and speed, terrorbunnies make out for prime hunters. They will almost always strike in groups: either as enormous swarms that ferociously defend their lairs and bring much bigger prey down in a wave of onslaught and death, or in hunting packs of three to six individuals, which tend to be opportunistic predators: stealing other creatures’ prey, preying on the weak or sick, stealing food from careless stalkers and such. A single terrorbunny is able to fully consume a live, subdued prey three times his size in the matter of minutes, though they would prefer to bring it down to their lairs and share with the others of their kin, since underfed packs tend to turn to cannibalism. In live combat, they tend to use their razor-edged arcade of serrated teeth, capable of insidiously gaping through flesh without rest at a terrifying pace, using their numeric advantage to swarm the poor prey like a bunch of rabid locusts, turning even more vicious once they pick the scent of blood. The best way to deal with them, as with every other mutant, is picking them from a distance. In the event such approach is impossible, we recommend the use of pistol against them, since such creatures have rather frail bodies which can withstand one or two bullets and due to the fact that a pistol or other weapon with limited dimensions is more easily maneuvered on the very likely scenario that they will overwhelm you. On a small sidenote, some stalkers speak of a special kin of terrorbunny, describing them as “white and larger than your average mutated carnivorous rabbit”. The validity of such claims is yet to be attested. My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic Intellectual propriety belongs to Hasbro All S.T.A.L.K.E.R. installments Intellectual propriety belongs to GSC game world I do not own, neither lay claim to the intellectual properties that this fan-fiction is based on. This work was made entirely for entertainment and appreciation, and should not be distributed for profit This is a My little pony : FiM fan fiction Made by Hoghound.