Fallout Equestria: The Light Within

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 19: The Concrete Jungle

Chapter Nineteen: The Concrete Jungle

Crate City, it turned out, was about as far west as you could go and still be in Vanhoover. The settlement had been constructed in the city’s harbor from the cargo left on the ships that would never put out to sea again, hence the name. It would be a long journey, through hostile territory—the southern half of Vanhoover was infested with raiders, in part displaced from the north by the Crimson Tide—but it was a journey that would need to be made. I had to track down Mr. Bucke, and Record Breaker had nothing more to tell me about the stallion than that ponies in Crate City would know more.
Rare Sparks and I would make the trek to the coastal settlement, but there were more immediate matters to attend to first.

We’d freed the slaves, but there were plenty of slavers in the area who would love to recapture and sell them. Granted, it would be more difficult this time, since many had armed themselves with their former masters’ weapons, but there was no point in taking chances, especially if the slaver who’d fled brought a larger force back with them. As a group, we made our way to Burnside, Rare Sparks and I keeping guard over those who were still too terrified and scarred to use a weapon in their defense. It was dark by the time we arrived at the former prison, but the stunned guards let us in anyway. Well, most of us. Like before, Rare Sparks had to stay outside.

It was difficult to wrap one’s head around the situation. Slavery was legal in Burnside, even if it went under the name of “indentured servitude.” It was likely that the very slavers Rare Sparks and I had killed had done business here before, and yet, there was no hostility toward us for our actions. They had enslaved a Burnside trader, which was something you would think would get the town in an uproar, but there was little outcry against it than to say, “Well, if they’d still been in business, we’d refuse to work with them, but now that they’re dead there’s nothing to do. Oh well.” Overall, the reactions to Rare Sparks and I saving the slaves was lukewarm at best. The ponies of Burnside really didn’t seem to care, other than to consider how the destruction of the slaver company would affect the markets. At least the slaves would likely have a chance to get along better now. Caps drove everything in Burnside, and they had caps to spare, liberated from the dead slavers. Just as the ponies of Burnside didn’t care that these ponies had been enslaved, neither did they care that they were former slaves, as long as they could pay.

I also had received a boost to my finances from the slavers’ coffers, though I’d insisted that the slaves take larger portions, since I still had a decent number of caps in my saddlebags from before I’d started on my quest to find Mr. Bucke. I wondered how long they’d hold out, and if I’d be able to track the murderous pony down before I had to take on a few odd jobs in order to afford fresh ammunition, food, and a place to sleep. For the moment, though, I didn’t worry about it, and booked a room in Burnside for the night. I felt a little guilty about sleeping in a warm (if ancient, sagging, and badly stained) bed while Rare Sparks had to stay out beyond the farthest Burnside militia palisades, but she assured me she would be able to find a safe place to hunker down in her armor, and that it was adequately heated.

The Strategic Arcane Solutions building had had running, non-irradiated water, so I’d managed to clean myself before and after the Flankorage simulation, but life in the Wasteland, as it so often did, conspired to undo that work almost immediately. As such, I sank into a bath to wipe away the blood and grime I’d picked up. I also set to patching up my clothing with some aid from the Stable-dweller’s Survival Guide, including my Yellow doctor’s coat. Though it was nearly invulnerable, it wasn’t completely indestructible, and had suffered some wear. The patches of cloth I repaired it with were far less sturdy, but with no knowledge of how the coat had been created and enchanted, it was the best I could do; patches would still be far better than a hole, as I’d recently learned.

Before going to bed, I looked at the box I’d taken from the SAS vault. In all the excitement around the Republic of Rose’s destruction and Mr. Bucke’s disappearance, I’d nearly forgotten about the immediate prize I’d been allowed to take from the Steel Rangers. The memory orbs shimmered in the room’s lights, and I allowed myself to wonder about them again. My previous experience with memory orbs had not been particularly pleasant, and I hoped that Shining Armor had kept these because they were happy memories, though I knew the likelihood of that was not great. For the moment, they could wait for me to get some more information. With my magic, careful not to disturb the nearby memory orbs, I pried the datatape out and slotted it into my PipBuck. My hope that it would contain information on the memory orbs, or at least in an immediately accessible form, proved unfounded. All the datatape contained was a long list of audio recordings, arranged in chronological order judging by the file names. With no other obvious course of action, I played the first recording. From my PipBuck’s speakers, with a quality that clearly demonstrated it had been recorded on inferior technology and ported over later, came the voice of Shining Armor.

“-kay, I think it’s recording now.”

“How can you tell?” distantly replied the voice of a mare I’d never heard before, “I can’t make heads nor tails of this thing.Are you sure Aurora will have use of it?”

“Certainly,” Shining Armor said confidently, with weird distortion probably caused by him speaking too close to the microphone, “It’s the newest technology. She’ll be able to dictate notes and lessons, and send us personal messages. If we get one as well, we can even send them back! I don’t know if I’d trust the Equestrian postal system that much, but it’s a thought.”

“If you say so, dear,” the mare replied patiently, “Isn’t it recording right now?”

“Oh, right!” Shining Armor said frantically, “Um, sorry about the preface. Midnight Aurora, this is your father. I wanted to make a permanent record for you expressing how proud I am of you on this momentous occasion. Not only are you graduating from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, but also moving on to educate others. I’m so excited for you, and the adventures you’ll have at Luna’s new school instructing the next generation of talented unicorns. I know that you’ll be successful wherever life takes you, so long as you continue to believe in yourself. And never forget how much your mother and I love and support you. Good luck, honey! Alright, how do I stop this thing?”

***

The next morning, I joined back up with Rare Sparks, and together we made our way west. For a while, things were familiar to me. I had traveled through part of southern Vanhoover before on my way to Burnside, and though it was still rife with raiders and ghouls, I avoided the subway this time. We weren’t truly in south Vanhoover until we crossed the river that split the main city, however, a task that was currently looking to be difficult.

Bridges were the key problem. Though many bridges had once spanned the rivers that ran through Vanhoover, few of them had stood up to the megaspell detonation, not to mention the past century and a half of neglect and outright attacks from raiders. Crate City was built off the coast of an island that bordered both north and south Vanhoover, divided only by waterways. The only standing bridge, however, was on the south side, which put an end to my plans of getting there through the safer region policed by Crimson Tide mercenaries, even if it was a bit longer of a route. There were also very few bridges left standing that connected the northern and southern halves of the city, limiting our options ever further.

We had managed to locate an intact bridge, but it was not defended by the Crimson Tide like the Manticore’s Gateway.
Word about Burnside was that trade with Crate City had dried up in the last few weeks, and I think I knew why. The bridge that traders would cross to reach it, and the area around it, was now occupied by a massive raider gang. They had erected their scrap metal barricades and hovels at both ends of the bridge, and on the bridge itself. There would be no crossing here without dealing with them, and there were no other bridges nearby that hadn’t collapsed into the river.

“What do you think?” Rare Sparks asked as we observed the raider town from a safe distance.

Normally, I’d be inclined to find another way, any other way, to get across. I’d been fortunate in the past facing groups of raiders larger than myself (despite my PipBuck’s assessment of my luck as that of a sickly albatross), but this was pushing it.
My (what I now realized as suicidal) obsession with taking out the Bloodlarks had nearly gotten me killed. The only reason I hadn’t died in that attack was due to the timely intervention of a squad of Steel Rangers. That wasn’t likely to happen this time, but I did have one Steel Ranger with me.

“This is the only known bridge for leagues in either direction,” I said, “It’s either this or try to ford the river somewhere, and it is interfering with trade.”

From what I’d seen of Rare Sparks’s abilities as a Steel Ranger, we had a good chance of getting through. It wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but my last walk in a park had ended in feral dogs, a mare with a flaming chainsaw, and a burned-out Stable, so maybe that was a good thing. The one issue would be that, like the raiders we’d encountered outside Burnside yesterday, some of these were holed up in buildings. Rare Sparks would be able to enter them, but her movement would be restricted within, and she wouldn’t be able to use either of her weapons without risk of killing me or burying herself in rubble.

“Let’s go,” she said before putting on and securing her helmet.

The street leading to the bridge had largely been cleared of obstacles, but none of the raiders on guard at this end seemed particularly alert. While Rare Sparks went ahead, I unslung my sniper rifle and peered through the scope at the raider settlement. My strategy of taking out the leader and disorganizing my foe first, which had worked so well lately, wasn’t going to work here. For one, I couldn’t see much of the raiders without climbing on top of a nearby building, and the buildings here were in too sorry a state to climb. Also, of the raiders I could see, I had no idea which one was the leader; they all looked pretty much alike.

I lined up my rifle on one of the raiders at the outer barricade, who looked a bit startled to see a single Steel Ranger marching up the street toward her. As she scrambled for a weapon, I took the shot, which dropped her satisfyingly. A guard suddenly dropping dead with a hole through her head didn’t go completely unnoticed, and some of the other raiders spotted Rare Sparks. The Steel Ranger let loose a trio of missiles, completely annihilating the raiders’ barricade.

Chaos broke loose in the raider camp as they rushed toward the explosion. Rare Sparks’s minigun roared, cutting down the raiders foolish enough not to pay attention to cover. Through the smoke, I sniped a few more raiders before moving on.
Rare Sparks was forging ahead, cutting a wide swath through the raiders, while their weapons had little effect on her. At the edges of the bridgehead were a few of the fiends she had missed, or those that had managed to find a safe place. A mare with a shotgun was trying in vain to harm Rare through her metal exoskeleton. Ducking back inside her shack, she reemerged with a metal apple. Casting SATS, I slowed time and fired at her with my magical energy rifle. I’d been aiming for her head, but a shot struck her metal apple instead, vaporizing it and leaving her stunned. I was stunned as well, but not so much that I forgot to keep firing my weapon, and she soon fell with several holes burned through her.

I ducked as a bullet whizzed over my head from the opposite direction. Spinning around and crouching low, I fired in the general direction the shot had come from, honing my aim as I spotted my attacker. Two raiders were on top of a makeshift watchtower, one with a rifle, the other apparently unarmed since he was throwing scrap at Rare Sparks as she advanced. As I fired at them with my magical energy rifle, they ducked down into cover to avoid the beams of light. I took the opportunity to gallop toward the tower and ascend the rickety stairs. The raiders were waiting for me and I took a hit from the rifle at the same time that I took out the raider who’d fired it with my SMG. I dodged the toaster thrown at me and emptied the rest of my submachine gun’s magazine into the other raider before sitting down to remove the bullet and drink a healing potion.

I’d climbed down from the tower and was making my way to the bridge when a missile streaked down in an erratic path from a building across the river. Rare Sparks was well ahead of me by now out on the bridge, and the missile was intended for her. With all the clusters of raider dwellings, she had little room to maneuver, and though the missile didn’t strike her, it did land near enough to knock her off her hooves. Crouching among the burning wreckage of her passage, I drew my sniper rifle and found the pony with the rocket launcher on the roof. He was trying to reload, and barely noticed when my first shot missed. The second sank into his foreleg and he fell to the ground, surely noticing now. At last my third shot finished him off, blowing the side of his head out.

Rare Sparks was trying to get back to her hooves, and I rushed past her, firing my SMG wildly to fend off the raiders closing in. During our rampage through the northern bridgehead and half the bridge, the raiders on the other side had not been idle. A minigun placed to protect against attacks from the south had been turned around, and the raiders behind it began to fire at us before we could stop them. Rare Sparks shuffled into cover and activated her suit’s repair function, feeding it scrap metal, which was in abundance.

I found my own cover, behind some heavy crates that would hold up, at least for the moment. Leaning out to try to take a shot would be suicide, even with SATS. I could attempt to levitate a weapon over the crates, but the chance of me hitting them blindly from this distance was miniscule. Instead, I pulled several metal apples from my saddlebags, noticing with concern that my supply was getting low. Pulling the stems from all of them, I rolled them down the bridge. One bounced off the wall of a raider dwelling and exploded far short of the minigun, erasing a few red marks from my EFS all the same.
The other two rolled all the way before going off, one nearly directly beneath the minigun.

I rolled out from cover across the pockmarked asphalt, casting SATS as I did so. I managed to take out two of the surviving raiders with my magical energy rifle before time snapped back to normal. I continued to fire my rifle until I had to replace the microspark cell, remaining on my belly on the ground to reduce my chances of being hit by the raiders firing back. The sound of a minigun nearly deafened me as Rare Sparks trotted past, and I rolled back behind the crates.

Soon the bridgehead on the south was empty of raiders as well, but a few red dots still darted around on my EFS. I accompanied Rare Sparks as she thundered along, keeping an eye on the windows on the side of the street her armor didn’t shield me from. A raider popped her head out and threw a Maretov cocktail down at us. I blindly fired a shot from my magical energy rifle at her before darting toward the building. The Maretov cocktail landed right where I’d been standing a second earlier, and Rare Sparks was surrounded by a pool of fire. Calmly, she trotted right through it and loosed a missile at the building across the street, where several raiders had shown themselves to take advantage of the attack.

A raider with a bat jumped out of the building right in front of me, and I hit him with my magical energy rifle, hoping that it hadn’t damaged any internal electronics. Dropping the rifle, I drew my sharpened machete and sank it into the raider’s neck before he could pick himself up off the pavement. Another raider jumped out through the door, metal apple in her mouth, and I swung my machete around into her face. The stem came loose as she fell, and I jumped away, snatching my magical energy rifle, before the explosive went off. I was thrown by the explosion, but landed relatively unharmed near a broken display window.

Red marks danced in the building next to me and the one across the street, which Rare Sparks was raking with minigun fire, gradually wiping them away. Plenty of the raiders on this side of the street wanted a chance to take her out before she finished, and it was my duty to prevent that. I made sure my SMG was ready to go before jumping through the display window and hurdling a couch.

Another raider was trying to leave through the door the previous two had just come through, and I fired a burst at her, changing her plans. The mare was wounded, but not badly, and jumped behind a sofa. I found my own couch to use as cover (there was no shortage, as this store seemed to have once sold them, as well as quills for some reason) and it absorbed the shotgun blast of a second raider as she entered the room. I levitated my SMG over the couch, and was satisfied to see one of the red lights wink out. A metal apple arced over the couch and landed next to me, stemless. I could run, but instead I grabbed it with my magic and threw it back, praying it wouldn’t go off before it was safely away from me.
The couch rocked from the detonation, and the raider who’d thrown it was no more.

Rising from behind the couch, I looked around to see if any of the pips on my EFS belonged to raiders on this floor. I crept around the couches until I was sure there were no more raiders here with me, and found the stairs. Missiles continued to fly and Rare Sparks’s minigun continued to roar outside as I carefully ascended the stairs. The moment I reached the top, however, I was hit from behind by a shotgun blast. My helmet and doctor’s coat protected me from the worst of it, but I still felt some of the shrapnel find its way into my flesh. The flash from my SMG lit up the dark room as I fired it behind me and took out my surprise attacker.

Wincing as I trotted along, I entered a room where two raiders were, one at the window with a machine gun propped on the sill, and the other crouching behind a piano with a kitchen knife. The kitchen knife raider leapt to her hooves as soon as she saw me, and I fired my SMG at her until she fell, the knife spinning across the floor. The other raider moved away from the window, allowing her weapon to fall outside, and grabbed a pistol in her mouth. I tried to run behind the piano, but didn’t make it in time, and one of her bullets lodged itself in my side. We continued to exchange fire, her with her pistol and me with my submachine gun, but she didn’t manage to hit me again. Once she collapsed with several holes in her neck and chest, I removed the bullet and shrapnel still in me and drank a healing potion.

Through the door I’d previously used came a raider wearing a flamethrower battle saddle. Not wanting to risk setting it off and incinerating myself, I drew my machete and cast SATS. It was odd using the slowed time and targeting spell to swing a weapon rather than shoot, but it did its trick, and I was able to cut the flamethrower’s fuel line and bury my blade in the raider’s neck before the spell wore off.

A raider with a revolver ran into the room as I pushed the one with the flamethrower aside. Her first shot hit my machete and sent it flying from my magical grip, burying it in a nearby wall. I retreated to behind the piano as the raider continued to fire at me. I drew my magical energy rifle and fired at her as soon as she was visible. Magical energy beams pierced her body, and her empty revolver fell to the floor as she was turned to glowing pink ash.

I yanked my machete from the wall and went searching for the one remaining raider.I searched the entire floor and the one above, but there was no sign of the pony that my EFS told me existed. Then it struck me where the raider was, and I searched for a way onto the roof, eventually finding a fire escape behind the building. After climbing the ladder, I emerged onto the top of the building, where the raider was attempting to put on the rocket launcher battle saddle from the raider I’d sniped earlier. He had it adjusted and was preparing to launch one at Rare Sparks, who had no way to dodge it at this range. I cast SATS, and the air around the raider was filled with beams of light from my magical energy rifle. A few burned through the raider, but the lethal beam was the one that passed through the rocket launcher, detonating the missile within.
The raider was blown to bits, and the edge of the building crumbled away as the rocket exploded in its pipe.

I headed over to the edge of the roof to make sure that Rare Sparks was still okay, and she waved up at me. Her armor was pretty dented and damaged, but I’d seen how well it had been able to repair itself earlier, so I wasn’t worried. No more red marks remained EFS, including across the street, where the building had been decimated, turned into a pile of rubble by Rare Sparks’s attack. I took a moment to survey our handiwork; no more raiders remained. The bridge would now be safe for traders to cross when traveling between Burnside and Crate City. First, however, we’d have to let them know, and that required finishing our trip to Crate City. Looking out over Vanhoover, I saw that there was still a long way to go.

***

We traveled through the streets for a few more hours, encountering only a few small raider groups, before camping for the night. Rare Sparks and I found an abandoned diner with no signs of raiders nearby and set up shop in the back. I rolled out a bedroll, and she sat down in her armor; this couldn't have been comfortable, but she had no way to take it off.

“Isn’t that a pain?” I asked as I finished off my last package of Fancy Foal’s Snack Cakes, “Having to stay in the armor all the time, that is.”

“It can be,” the Steel Ranger admitted, “We’re rarely away from base for more than a week or so, though, so you get used to it.”

“I suppose.At least you can take your helmet off and your armor still works,” I observed, “The Steel Ranger armor I wore in the Flankorage simulation couldn’t do that.”

“Oh, most Steel Ranger armor is the same way,” Rare Sparks said, shifting slightly and causing the steel plates to slide against each other, “Mine was too until I made some modifications to it.”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any other Steel Rangers trotting around in Steel Ranger armor without their helmets. Rare Sparks was able to control the armor with a complicated firing bit attached to her collar, but most Steel Rangers had the controls within their helmets, which I’d seen in the Flankorage simulation. She must’ve made those modifications herself so that she wouldn’t need to wear the helmet in order to use her armor, exchanging freer motion of her head and greater range of vision for the ability to use EFS.

“That’s pretty impressive,” I told her after thinking for a minute, “The only reason I’m even able to repair anything is because my PipBuck guides me through it.”

“Well, fixing and improving Wartime technology is my special talent,” Rare Sparks said, “My cutie-mark is a gear and stars, much like the Steel Rangers’ symbol, so my path was clear.”

“Were you raised among Steel Rangers?” I asked.

I hadn’t seen any foals at the SAS building, but it was also a temporary base for them. The Steel Rangers were a group highly dismissive toward Wastelanders, so in order to keep from dying out, they had to recruit from within their own community. Surely there were at least a few foals at their main base being groomed to wear the armor in the future.

“Actually, no. At least, not at first. My family were Wastelanders. The settlement we were part of had been dwindling for years when my parents decided it was time to leave before raiders fell on us. I was just a foal at time, but I already liked fiddling with Wartime technology. On our way, we became holed up in an office of the Bureau for the Regulation of Armaments Magical and Mundane, harassed by raiders. There was a broken magical energy rifle there I managed to piece back together. I got my cutie-mark for it, and it kept me alive . . . but my parents didn’t make it.”

“I was on my own for a short time. I found a factory and rigged up my own defense system to protect me. That was where I was when Manticore’s Fury—just a paladin then—found me. He took me back to the Steel Rangers and raised me as a squire despite Elder Gristle’s complaints that I was a Wastelander. I soon earned my keep, though, proving myself to be more adept at dealing with Wartime technology than any other pony in the Steel Rangers.”

“Whew, I guess I just told you my life story. I don’t usually do that, I promise,” Rare Sparks said with a laugh, “Well, I think it’s only fair now that you tell me your story. I don’t know much about you, other than where you’ve been.”

“Honestly, I don’t know much either,” I said, still a bit taken aback that she’d shared her past like that out of the blue, “All I remember is the last month and a half. I woke up in a Stable with no memory of who I was and had to flee when the Overmare tried to kill me.”

Now that I’d said it, I couldn’t believe how short my life as I remembered it was. Half of that had been recovering in the Stable 85. The other nearly four weeks had been out in the Wasteland, but it seemed I’d left the Stable so much longer ago than that.

“I have no idea who I was before I was found in the Stable,” I continued, marveling at it now that I was saying it aloud, “After leaving, I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive to look for answers, I guess.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Rare Sparks ventured, “You’re not the pony you were before, and you’ve been the pony you are now for long enough that it would just seem strange to find out you used to be somepony else. There are plenty of ponies in the Wasteland who wish they could have the opportunity you had, to leave behind all their past mistakes and start with a new life.”

“I guess so,” I admitted, “I know I’m a different pony now, but I still wonder, you know? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to completely stop wondering until I know who I was, and how I got to where I am.”

“Well, I wish you luck in your quest.Hopefully you’ll find the answers you’re looking for someday,” Rare Sparks said, and it sounded amazingly heartfelt.

“Thanks,” I replied, thinking about my strange past more myself, now that I’d brought it up.

***

As we continued on toward our goal the next morning, we found the city thick with raiders. It wasn’t just that there were many camps of them, though there were, but we also encountered packs roaming the streets, several with missile launchers handy. Some of them even had radio-like devices with them, making me wonder if they were organized and searching for us. If they were, then they weren’t doing a very good job. Rare Sparks and I had no problem cutting through them on our way to Crate City.

An ominous lull fell after a while; no more raiders were seen for a good hour or more. Camps lay abandoned and the usual sounds of raiders fighting became distant. After all the trouble they’d put us through thus far, it seemed suspicious that they would suddenly disappear, unless they were frightened. More likely, they were planning something worse. As it seemed, they had been frightened away from the area, but not by us.

We were nearing the bridge to Crate City’s island when my EFS began to act funny, amber lights appearing for only a moment before vanishing. I motioned to Rare Sparks, indicating that something didn’t seem right, and we observed our surroundings. One side of the street had all the doors and windows sealed up with doors and shutters or piled over by scrap. On the other stood a hospital: Shattered Hoof Memorial Hospital proclaimed the sign flanked by logos of the Ministry of Peace. The interior was pitch black, though I thought I spied movement within for a second.

“We have to go back,” Rare Sparks said tersely, drawing my attention to a line of crackling energy mines laid in a line across the street in front of us, blocking our path.

I started to back away, but a commotion behind us caused me to whirl around. A line of energy mines were now behind us as well, blocking our retreat and boxing us in. The ponies who had placed them galloped into the hospital. I fired my magical energy rifle at the trailing one, but only managed to strike his tail before I was thrown off my hooves by an explosion. One of my hindlegs snapped as I rolled across the pavement, and I searched for cover. There were no auto-carriages, or piles of scrap, common sources of cover cleared away in the creation of this trap for us. The only thing that hadn’t been moved was a mailbox, which I crawled behind to reset the bone and drink a healing potion.

The ponies ambushing us hadn’t had the decency to wait for me to heal myself before pressing their attack. The hospital had three floors, and many windows on the upper floors now had ponies leaning out of them with weapons aimed at Rare Sparks and me. My Steel Ranger companion was more concerned at the moment, however, with where the explosion that had thrown me had come from. Out of the hospital’s main entrance trotted a pony with Steel Ranger armor. It wasn’t as advanced as what Rare Sparks wore, or even as what I’d worn in the Flankorage simulation, but it still packed a punch. A grenade-launching minigun was attached to one side, its ammunition fed to it from a pod on the armor’s other side. The pony within had their attention fixed on Rare Sparks, and the two of them did a deadly dance, exchanging grenades, missiles, and minigun rounds.

Rare Sparks was having a difficult time keeping up, with attacks coming from above as well, and needed me to come to her aid. Not all the ponies in the hospital were firing at her; some had their sights set on me, which limited my options. My mailbox cover would not hold up forever and didn’t even protect me fully, a fact I was reminded of as a bullet snuck beneath it, sinking into my flank. I couldn’t risk exposing myself, but luckily I had magic. My EFS was still not functioning correctly, so I had to sneak the briefest of peeks to make sure the power-armored enemy was where I thought they were before taking one of the precious metal pears from my saddlebags and throwing it at them. The pony was reduced to slag and burnt meat as the metal pear detonated in a flash that momentarily blinded everypony looking at the street.

I had not been one of those ponies, and took advantage of this to leave my poor excuse for cover and limp my way as quickly as possible toward the hospital. I was cuffed in the face immediately by an armored foreleg as I attempted to enter the building the same way I’d seen the mine-placers enter earlier. My SMG was out, and I fired it at my attacker’s body, but, to my surprise, he was encased in a full set of military combat armor, and my attack had little effect. I was cuffed again, and felt the welt rising on my cheek. I was thankful that he was unable to use his magical energy rifle while I was so close, but I had the same problem. I quickly drew my machete and aimed for his unarmored face.

I left the blade buried in his head as I jumped away from another pony in the room. Glassware shattered as the shots from her assault rifle raked the top of the counter I dove behind. I crawled to the other end of the counter, wincing with each shuffle from the bullet still in my flank. She had anticipated my move, and no sooner had I stuck my head out to appraise the situation than I was forced to draw it back in to keep it from being lost forever. I levitated my magical energy rifle onto the counter and fired it in an arc, praying at least one of the shots would hit my foe. Casting SATS, I rose up and locked onto my target. My shots had merely wounded her, most leaving burn marks on the armor, but only one finding a weak point and cutting through. It was enough that she was distracted, and didn’t fire back when I shot her several times in the face, turning her to ash.

I pulled myself around the counter and propped my rifle up in front of me, aimed toward the door to the rest of the hospital. Painfully, I extracted the bullet from my flank and applied an enchanted bandage. The wound wasn’t deep, and I needed to slow my consumption of healing potions, lest I ran out. After the bandage began to work, I returned to my hooves and headed toward the door. Sound revealed that somepony in power armor was in the hospital’s atrium, but without EFS, I couldn't be certain that it was Rare Sparks and not another enemy. I made sure my last metal pear was easily reachable, just in case.

I trotted through, ready for a fight, but it was thankfully just Rare Sparks. Her headlamp illuminated the bodies of two more ponies in combat armor dead on the ground. Another armored pony galloped into the atrium from across the hospital, and I fired my magical energy rifle at her. After enough shots, her armor failed to protect her, and she fell to the ground, her magical energy pistol sliding out of her mouth. An assault rifle blared from the way she’d come, and Rare Sparks rotated her body before letting loose with her minigun. The hospital’s walls were torn apart, and the rifle fire ceased as its wielder fell into the hallway in a bloody mess.

“Who are these ponies?” I asked as I swept the atrium with my magical energy rifle, “They don’t look or act like raiders.”

“Mercenaries,” Rare Sparks grunted as she pulled her helmet on and fastened it in place, “The Black Skull company doesn’t usually operate this far north, though. This is very unusual.”

“Do you think Mr. Bucke hired them?” I asked, noting as we swept through the building that a black skull was painted on the helmets of the dead mercenaries, and recalling that the power-armored pony outside had had the same symbol.

“It’s possible. If so, he has considerable wealth and clout,” Rare Sparks said uneasily.

We confirmed that the ground floor of the hospital was clear and found a way out through the back that wouldn’t require us to cross a line of energy mines. We couldn’t just leave, though, no matter how close to Crate City we were. That would put the Black Skull mercenaries behind us, a discomforting prospect in case they weren’t done with us. Without EFS, though, we had no idea how many were here still, or where they were, and the search would be nerve-wracking and difficult.

As we returned to the atrium (where the stairs to the next floor were located), we were forced to retreat at once. Somepony with a grenade launcher was above us, and the atrium’s tiles exploded around us. Rare Sparks fired off a few missiles, but without a clear target to seek out, all they did was cause the grenade fire to stop for a few seconds. I crept carefully forward, keeping to the walls and corners, until I could see the mare with the grenade launcher, illuminated only when she fired. It was still incredibly dark, but SATS assisted me, and she never saw my sniper shot coming as it went through her head.

There was a second mare at the top of the stairs, and at the death of her companion, she activated a floodlight revealing me in the atrium. I galloped for any cover as she began firing at me, but Rare Sparks trotted into the atrium now that it was safe for her and ended the mercenary’s attacks with her minigun. Another pony with a grenade launcher galloped into position, but he didn’t have enough time to prepare himself before he too was wiped away by Rare Sparks.

Before anypony else could take advantage of the atrium as a killbox, we hurried up the stairs and into the room beyond. Its occupants were lying dead outside, but voices from radios clipped to their armor told us that there were likely still some of their compatriots alive in the building. We swept through the hallways, until we encountered a pair of mercenaries exiting a room near the street side of the hospital. Minigun fire from Rare Sparks at the door they’d just come through deterred them from retreating, and they ran toward us before darting into the next available room, breaking down the door in the process.

I ran ahead, keeping an eye on the door and counting on Rare to cover me. Once I was outside the room the mercenaries had fled into, I grabbed a metal apple from my saddlebags and tossed it inside. I jumped through a moment later, my SMG at the ready. To my surprise, other than a hit from Rare Sparks’s minigun during their original retreat, the mercenaries were unharmed. They’d tipped over a heavy hospital bed, and it had served amply as a barricade against my metal apple. I cast SATS immediately as they fired back at me. A few of their shots hit me in slow motion, but the spell held, and I fired back, sweeping my submachine gun across their unarmored faces, turning them to a pulp. As time snapped back to normal, I slumped to the floor, blood soaking into my already bloodstained Stable jumpsuit.

After removing the bullets and drinking down a healing potion, I was right as rain, and rejoined Rare Sparks in the corridor.
She was firing her minigun at the room the mercenaries had originally appeared from, and, once she was close enough, loosed a missile. The rocket just barely missed, striking the doorframe instead of entering the room. Medical equipment was thrown everywhere as a hole was opened in the wall, through which I could see several ponies in combat armor. I fired my magical energy rifle through the smoke, taking one of them out before we were even in the room.

I darted into the room and cast SATS, letting me get a better look at the situation. There were two more mercenaries in the room, one in the back corner cradling an assault rifle. The other was in the center of the room, wearing a sturdier set of combat armor than the rest—probably the leader—with a magical energy rifle battle saddle. What I didn’t realize until he started firing was that his magical energy rifle was repeating, and beams of energy rapidly lanced out at me. I didn’t want to risk even a single shot at him, lest my hesitation ended with me turned into ash, and jumped behind a table in the near corner while I still had SATS on my side.

Scorch marks appeared on the wall, and I could hear the table behind me sizzling as he fired at me. Meanwhile, Rare Sparks managed to orient herself in the hallway so that she could fire her minigun properly, and it roared as she poured fire into the room. The mercenary captain’s combat armor held up surprisingly well, but it was still no match for concentrated fire from a Steel Ranger’s weapon, and he was torn to bits. The entire room was torn up as both the mercenaries were killed. In the onslaught, a device on a table in the center of the room was also hit, and my EFS returned to normal. It must’ve been a jammer like what the Crimson Tide used.

“Behind you!” I called out to Rare Sparks as I spotted a red pip moving in on her from behind.

She swung around rapidly, her armor-clad tail smashing through a wall, and fired down the hall at the shocked mercenary.
Picking myself up, I headed to the other side of the room and poked my head out into the hallway. The remaining two mercenaries were right where EFS said they would be, emerging from the stairway to the third floor. They didn’t spot me immediately, and I cast SATS, firing my magical energy rifle at them. I managed to kill one, but the other took cover, only to have Rare Sparks fire through a wall at him, taking advantage of her own EFS.

With EFS restored, we no longer had the need to sweep the rest of the building to make sure we hadn’t missed any mercenaries, but we did so anyway. It was better to be safe than sorry, and it also allowed us to loot the hospital of anything that hadn’t already been taken. I was able to restock my supply of healing potions, which had taken a beating in the trek through southern Vanhoover. I also managed to find a restorative potion, locked away in a safe with far less impressive Rad-X. From the Black Skull mercenaries, I also liberated a piece of their combat armor for my right foreleg that hadn’t been damaged in our fight.

After stripping the Shattered Hoof Memorial Hospital of everything of value, we exited through the back and continued on our journey. We only had a block and a half to go before we came upon the bridge to Crate City’s island. The settlement itself could be seen in the distance, floodlights over the ramshackle buildings turning on as the day’s light faded. I needed answers, on many subjects, including my missing past. For now, though, I would settle for answers about Mr. Bucke. I hoped that Crate City would hold those answers.

Level Up
New Perk: Pumping (Scrap) Iron – Your time in the Wasteland has improved your physique, +2 to Strength.
Apparel added: Black Skull Combat Armor (Right Foreleg)
New Quest: Come and Gone – Question the ponies of Crate City about Mr. Bucke.
Strength +2 (3)
Barter +1 (20)
Energy Weapons +4 (52)
Explosives +3 (48)
Lockpick +1 (47)
Medicine +3 (49)
Melee Weapons +2 (30)
Repair +2 (24)
Small Guns +3 (94)
Sneak +1 (57)