Chapter 1: Irony

Chapter 1: Irony

Anemic light filtered through the holes of a makeshift home as the sun, far and away above the omnipresent layer of grey clouds, shone what weak light it could manage onto the wasteland below. This light, which I grumpily tried to remind myself was a miracle in this day and age, managed to deposit itself right onto my sleeping eyes.

Lethargically, I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes with a fetlock, looking around the room still half asleep. Dreams fading and reality still just starting to assert itself, I was sorely tempted to lie back down and likely would have if not for the vague feeling that today was very important, though I couldn't yet remember why.

Grudgingly accepting that I would have to begin my day sooner-or-later, I put one hoof on the floor and almost immediately knocked over a small stack of books. Damn. I was still sleepy, but I couldn't help smiling in spite of myself. Heh, most ponies wouldn't use that word to describe it, I thought as I lifted some rather hefty tomes in a haze of magic and put them on another, already rather precarious, pile.

My already humble abode of rusty sheet metal and wood was made even smaller by the books, papers, and priceless artifacts of Pre-War Equestria that covered almost every available surface and much of the floor as well. Sure, everypony else in town thought it was a bunch of useless junk and trinkets, but I saw them for what they were. Though I would greatly appreciate some real artifacts, I thought to myself. Yawning and stretching, I wrapped my magic around my glasses and a simple vest and put them on.

"Wait!" I said, entirely to myself. "Today is that day!

&-*-*-*-&

Everyone in the village had heard stories about the wasteland, but it had been around for just long enough that even the youngest adults had never seen it. It was technically part of the Equestrian Wasteland of course, but its survival for so long was mainly due to the fact that it was off the beaten path, so to speak. Or at least that's what we were told. I'd read enough of what remains from the war to know that it was a brutal affair on both sides, but I knew what Equestria was like before all of that. Friendship, compassion, and harmony were what defined it, and even if those values were temporarily forgotten I couldn't believe they went away. That's why I remained skeptical when the few who have been outside tell stories about bloodthirsty raiders committing unspeakable acts for fun! Sure crime is probably rampant, and I'll admit there is likely some truth to the accounts of the wasteland, but could ponies have really changed that much? And the more fantastic stories of radioactive monsters? Well, looking around our town I found it hard to take seriously.

&-*-*-*-&

Walking out of my home and magically closing the sheet-metal door behind me, I blinked in the (relatively) bright sunlight for a second before my eyes adapted. The sounds of ponies going about their daily lives were all around. Two foals chased each other playfully between the dilapidated buildings, and their parents chatted on the other side of the narrow street running through the town. Nearby I saw a large, familiar stallion loading stone and wood into a rickety wooden cart.
"Good morning, Mr. Hammer," I greeted him cheerily.

He made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a grunt. "Hasn't been morning for hours, Tome. Some of us work for a living," he said.

I started in a mock-offended tone, "I will have you know that administrative tasks are essential to ensuring that things around here move smoothly!"

That almost got a smile from the older stallion. "So you keep telling us," he said.

"Besides," I continued, "after today nopony will be able to say I don't pull my weight around here."

He looked suddenly uncomfortable, one of his front hooves scraping at the cracked, brown, earth, as he said, "Yeah I, uh, heard about that. Just be careful out there, alright?"

"You'll see, I'll be perfectly fine, but thank you," I replied.

He didn't seem very reassured, but that was alright. Even if anything went wrong, which I very much doubted would happen, I wouldn't be alone anyway. On that note, I bid him farewell and trotted away to find a certain somepony.

Even if I had to search the entire settlement, it wouldn't have taken me very long to find her. For all its rustic charm and friendly neighbors, the village was not exactly a match for the majestic towers of Canterlot, or the urban sprawl of Manehattan. At least, from what I'd read about them that is.

Yes, except that those places no longer exist, the thought came unbidden to my mind. I hadn't been entirely fair. My life until this point had been good, but I wanted to see the world outside, or at least what was left of it. Which was why I was so excited that I would have the chance to do so today, at least in a small way. In my reverie, I almost walked right past the mare I was looking for.

Moving down the road in the opposite direction was an earth pony mare, wearing scrap armor and a rifle slung at her side over a very fitting gunmetal grey coat. On her left foreleg was a StableTec Pipbuck, weathered by its time in the wasteland, but still almost entirely functional. It was one one of the few we had, and all of them, much to my dismay, were owned by members of the militia. Her sienna mane was cut short, and her expression was as it often was, determined and utterly serious. The sort that belied a sense of commitment to duty, regardless of how mundane her task. If she was happy to see me, then her expression most certainly did not show it.

I fell into step beside her and started sheepishly, "Morning, Callie."

"We leave at 0930. Be ready by then," she said shortly.

"Look, I realize you're still upset about-," I started to reply before being cut off.

"You know it isn't personal, Orphic. This is a military operation, and it should be left to military personnel," she said briskly.

I was tempted to remind her that by "military" she meant "village militia with cobbled-together armor and scavenged weapons", but thought better of it. She may have been my closest foalhood friend, but I knew she wouldn't forgive me for that comment. I decided to be a bit more diplomatic about the matter.

"I see where you're coming from, really, but the Elders feel that I should be allowed to go with you. I promise I'll do what you say without hesitation," I said.

She let out an exasperated sigh and said, "You better. Mistakes out there get you killed. We aren't sightseeing."

"Yes, yes, I've heard the lecture from mother, and Crack Shot, and practically everypony else as well," I replied with a hint of annoyance slipping into my voice. At that she shook her head, but declined to continue the same argument we'd been having since I first made my request weeks ago. She left to continue some task elsewhere after reminding me again to be ready to leave soon. I bid her farewell and began to walk back home.

On the way I couldn't get her comment out of my head. She had taken every opportunity to try to impress upon me just how dangerous the wasteland outside of town is, but she'd always come back in one piece hadn't she? Only very rarely had somepony been injured or even killed on one of their scavenging outings. I realized it must be dangerous, however simultaneously I was able to feel a bit offended at the implications that I wouldn't last an hour out there.

It wasn't about my pride though. Whenever one of the teams came back from a successful run, which wasn't every time, they brought some practical item leftover from the past. The many long years of protracted war had shaped Equestria into an industrial power whose collective unconscious was fixated on the idea that at any moment the terrifying Zebras of omnipresent Ministry propaganda posters could descend on their homes. Buildings were built with bomb shelters, food was made to last almost indefinitely, and companies like Stable-Tec represented this idea taken to its logical extreme. In short: when Pre-War Equestria built something, it was built to last. Because of this, High Caliber and the others could find ruins of civilization and bring back edible food and sometimes usable equipment as well. The problem was, that's all their practical minds thought to look for.

I shuddered to think how many priceless propaganda posters, newspapers, and worst of all, books had been left behind! And so I approached the two Elders who more-or-less ran this settlement, my mother Sophic Tome, and Crack Shot who ran the militia. I asked that I be allowed to join the next excursion into the Wasteland, to evaluate the potential historical value of any artifacts we found. After weeks of convincing, they decided to grant my request. Needless to say, this was the day of that excursion, and High Caliber was the pony I would accompany.

&-*-*-*-&

Deep in thought, I almost walked past my destination. Again. That tended to happen sometimes, when I was deep in thought and lost track of surroundings. I opened the door to my home and walked inside. What to bring, what to bring? I made my way through the small space, carefully avoiding any precarious piles this time, and lifted some of the objects I deemed essential in a field of heliotrope: some pre-war clothes which had been patched in places, but which were still otherwise well-preserved, saddlebags, some books for field-identification purposes, and other small things that might be useful.

Floating the assorted items with me, I trotted into the cramped bathroom and slipped on the light shirt, and dark-green checkered sweater, and put the rest into the saddlebags. Then turning the mirror- or what passed for one anyway: a sufficiently polished piece of metal attached to the wall -and thought, Now there's a nice look for official wasteland business, half-jokingly. From the surface of the mirror stared back a fairly young stallion with a deep indigo coat surrounding two olive eyes. And a mane of light chestnut that was in severe need of a brushing...

With all of that taken care of I trotted out towards the edge of town, where the others would see myself and Caliber off. I practically bounced as I traveled down the road, this was going to be so exciting! However as I neared where they would no doubt be waiting, I tried to put on a serious expression. Anything less than absolute seriousness would surely lead to a lecture on the dangers of the outside world and cast aspersions on their perception of my readiness for this.
As I turned a corner around a short building, I saw the three of them waiting for me. High Caliber and the two Elders that ran the town, the militia commander and my mother, Sophic Tome. The former two looked on impatiently, while the latter at least greeted me happily. "Orphic, dear! How are you?"

"I'm fine, ready to get underway. How are you?" I asked in reply. Alright doing well so far.

He sneered at that. "Hah. The only thing ya look ready for is a leisurely stroll. See Lieutenant Caliber?" I looked over to my friend in her usual barding. "That's how ya dress for the wasteland," he said. Even without her facial expression changing, I could feel smug satisfaction radiating.

"Well," I replied, "I don't normally have overmuch use for armor. Besides isn't that why she'll be with me anyway? In case something goes wrong?"

"Fine, suit yourself," he said with an irritated sigh. "At least you'll have a sidearm,"

I blanched at that. "Er...well, no, but-"

At that mother had to jump in, "Orphic Tome," Oh no, I thought, "you are lucky that we're allowing you to leave at all. I will not allow you to go out into that hellscape unarmed." My ears folded down and I felt a rush of embarrassment at being scolded like a colt. As soon as we left, my traveling companion was going to have a field day with this.

"Sisters above, boy, are ya trying to get yerself killed out there?" He levitated the large pistol from a holster on his shoulder towards me, grip first. I held it with my magic by one corner and dropped it into my saddlebag. I think it was a 10mm, but couldn't be sure. Firearms weren't really my area of expertise. In fact, I'd hardly even used one outside of the few times Callie had tried to teach me.

I thanked him briefly and with that settled, we were almost ready to leave. Although we would almost certainly be back before nightfall, mom was understandably emotional at the situation. She looked at me teary-eyed and hugged me, saying, "I'm so proud of you, and he would be too."

Knowing she meant my father, I returned the hug and simply said, "I know, thank you,"

She took a step back and placed a hoof on High Caliber's withers while turning to look at her. "And you too, dear. He thought of you as the daughter he never had."

Her stoic expression softened upon hearing that. She gave a slight nod and said, "Thank you, ma'am."

After finishing our farewells, we left through the gate and began our walk out into the wasteland.

&-*-*-*-&

No less than ten minutes after the beginning of our wonderful journey, I began to wonder how much longer it would take. Normally I wasn't so impatient, but so far the scenery hadn't been as interesting as I had hoped. Dead and twisted husks of trees surrounded us in all directions, in what was once surely a lovely forest. Really, it shouldn't be so unnerving. After all, these are the same trees I'd seen all the my life, the only trees I'd seen. But they weren't the ones I knew.

The ones I knew only existed in books and pictures. Beautiful, living, things with rich brown trunks and full of vibrant, verdant green leaves. Other ponies never understood why I couldn't let go of things that hadn't existed in generations. My mother used to say that I was born in the wrong time, I guess that's as good an explanation as any.

I was jerked out of my thoughts as my front left hoof caught on a root and I almost lost my balance. Woah, Orphic, watch where you're going. There were no roads leading to our village, as that would have defeated the purpose of keeping hidden, so we walked slowly through the closely spaced trees and uneven ground. High Caliber looked back at me questioningly. I shook my head and said, "Oh nothing, just lost my footing. How much further is it now?"

"Few hours yet," she replied tersely.

"Hours?!"

She continued walking and replied evenly, "Hours. This area was rural before the war. Closest ruins are a small town twelve klicks east of here."

Alright, I can certainly wait that long. It'll be worth it, no doubt.

&-*-*-*-&

It was hours as she said, until we came to the edge of the forest and could see the open wasteland stretch out before us. Under a sky of grey, it stretched in every direction: a field of browns broken only by the occasional mountain of stone or metal. Everywhere, and to each horizon were the colors of dead earth, rust, and ruin.

Not far from where we stood just outside the trees, were a few clustered buildings on either side of a dirt road. The rotting wood and general state of poor repair indicated that the buildings were from before the war. It didn't look like they suffered damage directly from the war, and from my maps there didn't seem to be any population centers or military installations worth bombing around here anyway, I thought while examining the buildings from afar. Rather, decay and entropy were the likely culprits.

Apparently unwilling to wait for my train of thoughts to end, Caliber had already started approaching the ruins. She looked back at me. "You coming?"

Yes, I'll admit, the sight of the wasteland staggered me. It didn't diminish my curiosity though, and I still could not wait to see what sort of precious things I could find in these untouched caches of-

"Orphic! Come on!" she yelled back, again without stopping to wait.

Oh, there I go again. I suddenly came to the realization that she was leaving me behind, and she was the one meant to fend off the vicious monsters that supposedly populated the wasteland...not that I was ready to believe in such things of course.

A branch behind me creaked, and I broke into a full gallop after her.

It was outside the nearest building that I caught up to her, trying unsuccessfully to play off the fact that I had just ran after her like a scared foal running after its mother. She looked at me from the corner of her eye, and the corner of her mouth raised in what threatened to be an actual smirk.

The building we stood outside seemed to be the remains of a General Store of some kind. "So, are we going in there?" I asked, while gesturing with a hoof.

She walked past it however and answered, "No, we've picked that one clean. We need to go further."

Again? I suppressed a sigh and continued to follow. Thankfully we didn't need to go overmuch further. A few buildings down she stopped in front of an old one-room school. This town was clearly too small to have warranted anything bigger.
She turned around to face me, her face bearing its normal no-nonsense expression. "Alright, Orphic, here it is. I don't see anything on EFS, but there's no way to know for sure from out here. I'll go in first, you'll follow. Stay low, and stay quiet, until I know it's clear. Questions?"

I believe she expected me to ask about the EFS, or something that she felt should be similarly obvious. Well, technology may not have been my forte, but I knew that much at least. The magical spell-matrix of the Pipbuck that allowed the user to identify threats or important locations, I thought. Time to show her I can handle my self.

"No, I understand," I answered with false confidence.

"Good," she replied simply and faced the door, "And for the Sisters' sake, Orphic, draw your sidearm."

Oh.

Annoyed at myself, I took the pistol out of my saddlebag with my telekinesis and followed High Caliber through the door. Inside was dark and dusty, and most of what little light there was disappeared when I closed the door quietly behind me, and the rest came only from cracks in the wall and filtered through windows covered in centuries of dust and grime. She crouched down against a wall across from the door which blocked the rest of the room from view. I ducked against the wall behind her as she turned to whisper, "One red mark, 2 o'clock."

I was glad then for the darkness, so my friend wouldn't see when I was sure the color had drained from my face. I was sure we were about to be eaten by some irradiated wasteland monster in a cruel cosmic joke about my doubts.

Alright, think, Orphic, 8 o'clock is straight ahead...2 is to the right through the wall then, I tried to overpower my terror through thought.

It didn't help. My breathing quickened. Callie readied her gun and leaned around the corner.

With a visible sigh of relief, she slung the gun back around her trunk and stepped behind the wall. "It's alright, Orphic, you can come out."

Upon hearing that I followed her around the corner. Then I saw what had set off the EFS. I would very much like to say that I didn't scream and back against the wall. Unfortunately...

"GAAHHH, what the hell is that?!" I yelled and gestured frantically from my spot curled-up on the floor at the enormous insect skittering towards High Caliber. It moved so quickly with all its legs, and its dark carapace shone in the dim light as it let out a hiss.

She looked at me with a bemused expression as she nonchalantly stomped on the Radroach threatening to bite her ankles. This time she couldn't help herself and bursted out laughing at me. "Hahaha, really? It's just a Radroach."

Rare and lovely though it may have been, I much preferred to hear it when it wasn't directed at me. "That's a Radroach?!"

"They said they were big, not gargantuan! It's the size of a dog," I said still trying to calm myself.

Her face changed to an expression of incredulity as she replied, "A small dog, Orphic. Heh, that almost made it worth bringing you out here. When they hear about it back home..."

What?!

"Come on, Callie, nopony needs to hear about it," I pleaded while getting back on all four feet.

But they were going to.

Even without seeing her face I could sense the cruel smirk. "You would not!" I said.

She definitely would. I gave out a small sigh, resigned to my fate of undignified mockery. Well at least somepony is enjoying themselves.

As it turned out, the schoolhouse did not hold anything in the way of valuable salvage by either of our definitions. We had to check another building, a house this time, before we found anything of note.

Rifling through broken buildings, looking for once mundane treasures from a world long gone. A toaster? Two hundred years ago it was nothing special, but now? It's a relic from a time long past.

"It's a toaster," she deigned to inform me as I cradled the appliance in my front legs.

"It's an artifact!"

"It's just a toaster," she repeated, almost derisively.

My brow furrowed and my excitement waned as I replied, "I know you don't exactly share my love of the past, but you'll usually at least humor me..."

"You know how I feel about these expeditions. We risk exposing ourselves to the enemy every time we come out here. No time for junk," she said tersely as she looked instead at a gunmetal grey box on the shelf in front of her.

Oh yes, the enemy, like that radroach, I thought, just barely restraining myself from saying as much to her for the second time in a day. This was another age-old argument that I wasn't going to win against her. And now was certainly not the time to remind her of the tired disagreement.

I stood by as she set her two front hooves on the rusted shelving unit and leaned up to reach for the box. Normally, most earth ponies became proficient in dexterously manipulating objects with their hooves and mouths, but, well, sometimes there's no replacement for magic. Still staring blankly, I watched as my friend overbalanced and tipped the light shelf over onto herself. I started, but it was apparent only her pride was wounded. Quickly I turned around and pretended both to have not noticed her trouble and that I was certainly not suppressing a snicker.

The icy feeling on my crest told me that she wasn't buying it. I looked back just long enough to see that her trouble earned her a small pile of junk: a few bottlecaps, some bobby pins and some scrap metal. The grunt and muttered curse accompanying the sound of a metal box being kicked was my cue to start examining the other side of the room.

After making my hasty retreat, I founded myself looking at one of the walls in another room. Again, the combined forces of the war itself, centuries of exposure, and periodic scavenging had left little recognizable, let alone valuable. Wait. Suddenly, I drew in a sharp, excited, breath. Apparently something survived, as I saw a scrap of color under the accumulated dirt and grime.

Igniting my horn, I took a small brush out of a saddlebag and began brushing away the covering. As I wiped the bristles back-and-forth gently over the surface, the picture revealed itself and my heart beat faster.

A spot of cerulean under the dirt, then another. Two eyes watching from the sky, enormous and disembodied, but their body well-known to any who saw them. Eyebrows arched in authoritarian survey, the Ministry Mare of the pre-war Ministry of Morale watched in judgement. A Pinkie Pie pantocrator sat above the silhouette of a dark and lanky zebra carrying some sort of case in a stylized cityscape. The words "MoM KEEPS YOU SAFE" were printed in a large font near the bottom, and the balloon logo of the Ministry was in the lower corner.
I gasped and took the poster off the wall in my magic. I couldn't believe I'd actually found something of value so quickly! Gingerly, I rolled it up and set it into a saddlebag. This most certainly made up for earlier's embarrassing incident. I opened my mouth, but closed it without saying anything. I could show her later, when she was in a better mood. Happily I trotted back to see if she was ready to move on with our search.

&-*-*-*-&

With our saddlebags nearly full and the day growing short, we left the building and began towards home. Suddenly High Caliber stopped in her tracks and held up a hoof.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Another mark on EFS," she replied.

Not another one. "Another radroach?" I asked more tentatively.

"No. Green this time," she answered, as if she expects me to know what that means. At least it isn't red... I hoped it was a good thing anyway.

To put my fears to rest I opened my mouth to inquire after an explanation, but she cut me off.

"Get your gun. You can never be too sure."

I dug through my saddlebag for the weapon for the second time that day. Shifting through the things I had brought, and trying to ignore the feeling that I was the target of a particularly unamused look, until I found it back at the bottom. By then she had moved into cover between the two nearest buildings and was waving for me to do the same.

We waited in a small alley between the house we had just left and one directly next to it. Without a Pipbuck I was practically blind from our hiding spot. I became uncomfortably aware of my heart beating. I knew the thumps were coming faster than normal, yet each one passed more slowly. Incessant reminders that I could see nothing of whatever was on the other side of the walls. I stared at High Caliber, searching for any sign of relief or fear or action from my friend.

She peeked out past the wall, looking past where I could see. By then I could hear a faint sound: that of wooden wheels on a road. She let out an almost imperceptible breath and began to stand. Keeping her voice just above a low whisper, she said, "It's a stallion hauling a cart full of supplies. I can't tell what from here. EFS says he's friendly."

I let out a much more perceptible sigh of relief and stood up on my hooves as well. After brushing off some of the dirt, I said, "Well then, a friendly pony is nothing to worry about. Likely he's simply doing the same as us."

"He's an outsider, Orphic. He can't be trusted," she said. "Besides, a wastelander shouldn't be out this far..."

"Well unless you plan to shoot him outright, we may as well introduce ourselves," I walked past her out into the street to greet the new pony.

The pony stopped in his tracks, his wagon coming to an abrupt halt as he saw me come out into the open. It only took a second before his reflexes kicked in and he said in a gruff voice, "I don't want any trouble ya hear?!"

I stopped likewise and sat on my docks with my front hooves raised in the air, in what was hopefully a placating gesture. "Neither do we. My name is Orphic Tome, we're just here seeking salvage."

The other stallion narrowed his eyes, but was still calm enough at least to not be reaching for his gun. Good, that's progress, now to just keep it that way. He opened his mouth to speak again, "Who's we? How many of ya are there?"

In response I looked back to the alley and said, "It's alright, Caliber, he's friendly."

Earlier she had been irritated, now she was angry. The difference in her gait, her posture, and her facial expression would have been too slight and too similar to her normal impassive one for most ponies to notice, but I did and it terrified me. She walked into the street with her rifle slung across her chest and a look that said she couldn't believe what I'd just done.

"Why?! What would make you think it was a good idea to give our position away to any fucking wastelander that wanders by?" she shouted as she walked towards me. I reflexively took a few steps back and sank lower to the ground under the withering criticism. "I swear," she continued, "for somepony so smart, you can be a real dumbass."

That was the final straw. I could not restrain it anymore, couldn't stay polite this time. "Oh, am I? Well then, where are all the monsters? Where's the deadly radiation, and the death? I haven't seen any evidence to convince me that the horror stories are anything other than exaggerations. Keep playing soldier if you so desire, the only thing you need to 'protect' us from are the radroaches," I said, turning away from her and kicking a hoof in frustration.

The merchant had been waiting while we argued, and stood scratching a hoof back-and-forth in the desiccated ground, not quite looking at either of us. As the silence between the three of us stretched on, and threatened to continue doing so, he opened his mouth to add his two bits, so to speak. "Yuh should listen to yer friend there, son. Wasteland's a dangerous place. Y'all two seem like decent enough folks though. Tell ya what, if ya found anything of value around here, I'm willing to trade for supplies."

I was clearly outnumbered, and saw no chance in arguing further. I looked over to Caliber with my head tilted to the side towards the trader. She was still smoldering, but shook her head slightly in response to the unasked question. I could apologize to her later, in private. Turning back to the unnamed merchant, I replied, "We're terribly sorry, and certainly appreciate the offer, but sadly we haven't found anything worth trading."

"Hehe, it's just like my Pa always used to say, everything's worth something to somepony. But suit yerselves I guess. I'll be on mah way then." He began to turn in a wide semicircle to to guide his wagon back onto the road, when he turned his head to look back at us. "By the way, big group o'raiders was headin' westwards a few hours ago. Y'all watch out if yer going thataway."

&-*-*-*-&

As soon as the words came out of his mouth High Caliber was galloping back towards home. Absentmindedly I thanked the trader before taking off in pursuit. I never even learned his name. The thought came and left as my hooves pounded over the dry ground between the ruins and the treeline.

By the time I entered the remains of the forest, she was far ahead of me and barely visible for the twisted trunks between us. My gallop was slowing to a canter as I fought the growing stitch in my side and the dry burning in my throat. Even with all her equipment, she was outpacing me by a sizable margin, which was growing as the minutes passed. I was not a pony very used to physical exertion, and that lifestyle was coming back to haunt me at that moment. I could have yelled for her to slow down, but it would have been no use, even if she heard me. Nothing now was going to deter her, no doubt fearing the absolute worst and replaying the grisliest atrocities related to her in hushed stories of the raiders. Stories.

But if they had credence to them? I hardly had time to ruminate on that, as my fatigue continued to grow to exhaustion. The same trees I criticized before now looked to be very inviting spots to rest. I couldn't stop though. There was the chance, however slight, that I could be wrong, and the thought was growing stronger. In a centuries-dead forest, a seed of doubt was growing.

My stride listed and slowed again to a trot, before I fell against a tree and sank to my knees gasping for breath. I couldn't take in enough air to sustain my pace itself, let alone with the cognitive dissonance surrounding enclosing my thoughts, encroaching on my attempts to calm myself. Bloodthirsty nigh-feral ponies wandering in bands across the wasteland, and now one of these was said to be heading for our village. If I was wrong all these years to think the elders had embellished, then I was horrendously wrong. My friend, guide, and only form of protection, was long gone if I stumbled across any wildlife I knew to exist here. There was one small island of rationality that kept me from succumbing to panic; the only way to know for sure is to keep moving on. I pushed myself to get back on all four hooves and set off again for town.

The way leaving town was long and rather boring, but coming back was solitary, urgent, and excruciating. It easily felt twice as long this way. Eventually, though, I knew I had to be getting close. Far off through the trees I could see a tiny orange glow, and began to hear sounds that were still too far away to identify.

Suddenly, a dark shape emerged from behind a tree ahead of me. I gasped and jumped, before realizing that it was another pony, and a familiar one at that. "You fell behind. We need to hurry," High Caliber said in a carefully neutral tone. This was her in her on-duty demeanor, and hearing it was not helping my calm. True, it was practically her normal one, but this told me that she now considered this a combat situation. I still clung to the belief, quickly bleeding into a hope, that it was a false alarm. She began moving off in a direction askew of the village itself, in a more paced canter.

I wouldn't have been able to keep it up forever, but the slower pace was a respite, and allowed me to fall into step beside her. "Where are we going? Aren't we going back?"

"We need to assess the situation first. There's a contingency for this," she replied without slowing down or turning to look at me. "We're heading to higher ground."

Since when did the two of us switch places? She always could restrain her impulsiveness when it came to tactical matters, but now? "Don't we need to go back and help?"

She skipped to a stop upon hearing that. Turning to face me, she walked up until her muzzle was almost pressed against mine and spoke in a voice just barely keeping it together, "Don't you think I want to?! I'm fighting every damned fiber that says I should run into town and start shooting these wasteland assholes!" She slammed a back hoof into a tree, and stared me down through ragged breaths. Her focus beginning to reassert itself, she continued, "The plan exists for a reason. We aren't going to help anypony by getting ourselves killed. Or worse."

With driven strides, she continued in the direction she was moving before, faster again. "If we can help, we need to know now. So come on or get left behind."

We reached the hill after a scant few minutes of travel. Just outside the town, but on the wrong side of the mass of dirt ahead of and above us, we could hear clearly the horrible sounds from within the crude palisade before we could see what was happening. Exhaustion was overcoming the limits that adrenaline pushed me to, as I almost dragged myself up the slope. My other senses were cruelly hinting at what I would find when I reached the hilltop. The unmistakable cracking, whooshing sound that accompanied the orange glow that silhouetted the hill, the pounding gunfire staccato, louder than it had any right to be. And the screaming.

The screaming was the worst of it. Moans, cries, shouts, belying unspecified agonies. The sounds of hatred, and of suffering. Hearing it tore at my insides, and compelled me both to continue up to where I could watch, and to run far and hide. The former was stronger, though only barely, and now I was nearly at the top.

I lifted my legs, heavy as if they were made of metal, for the last few dragging steps it took me to reach the small summit. Finally I could see the town, or what remained at least. I thought the sight might be some small consolation; no longer being in the dark, being able to know for sure what was happening, was better than the alternative wasn't it? I thought so anyway...

I was so very wrong. My metal legs turned to mush, yet I hardly felt them give out, leaving me on my haunches with my front legs threatening to do likewise. There was no reserve of energy left for them, and no concern in my mind for anything beside the scene in front of me.

The first thing I saw was the fire. The shapes of individual buildings were hard to make out between the glowing, roaring blaze and the stark shadows they cast upon each other. Soon enough though, my eyes adjusted enough to let me see some of them. Numbly I looked at the scorched wreck of a small shack that was a mare's fruit stand. She was a nice pony, with a mutfruit cutie-mark. Always wearing that necklace her mother left her, and a smile. Her body lay not far away, still burning.

My eyes followed the path I may have walked down the road on any given day. Bloody charred corpses were already strewn about the dirt path. I'd never seen this sort of death before, and the experience was surreal.

More pounding gunfire expanded my tunnel-vision slightly. Further down the street a group of ponies I didn't recognize, though it was hard to tell from where I laid, were firing at something I couldn't see. Their cruel jeering shouts added to the cacophony, and as they moved past a blazing edifice I saw them more clearly. With barding covered in filth and viscera, they yelled and laughed as they trotted through my town. There was only one word for the reaving near-feral creatures in front of me: raiders. Straight from the stories I scoffed at. I was wrong.

There were other groups spread throughout the few streets, now that I looked at them as well. A militia pony, Callie probably knew his name, fell in a spray of gunfire. Another group looked to be surrounding a corpse, as one grabbed a crude blade from their side and began cutting into it. I hope it was a corpse. I saw another group of them around a prone figure, and finally I looked away, as my stomach knotted in on itself. I couldn't watch what was going to happen.

I cannot bring myself now to relay the full horror of the things I saw there, but let it suffice to say that not all of them had the good fortune to die immediately.

I still couldn't think about what was in front of me. It seemed so far from me, like I was divorced from the brutal reality unfolding there. I watched and could do nothing to alter it, as if this atrocity were happening on a scale beyond anything I'd ever experienced, and its existence was now a fact that would be regardless of what happened next. In my eyes my home burned, in my mind I couldn't remember a time when it didn't, or imagine one where it wasn't.

It had only been a few moments of this when a sudden clarity came over me. In my shock, my mind had blanked, but now a horrible chill washed through my body and my breath caught as the personal gravity of the situation became clear. Mom.

It didn't take conscious effort for my legs to start, and I got to my hooves, starting down the hill. Thoughts about what I could or couldn't do left my mind. All that mattered was making sure she was fine. Maybe I can sneak inside and get her out, I thought desperately. Unfortunately that's as far as I got.

Before I even reached the downward slope, a pair of arms wrapped around my barrel and threw my back. I hit the ground, hard. And looked up at the shape standing over me. I had forgotten that she was with me, seeing the same destruction.

I could have tried to get to my hooves and push past her, but it would have been a waste of time. I was breathing heavy, trying not to direct all of the anguish I was feeling at her, but the truth was at this point she was standing between me and my only chance of saving the only family I had left. And the fact that I knew that physically there was nothing I could do if she wouldn't let me go made it that much worse. I took the only recourse I had, trying and failing to restrain my tone. "Let me go! I have to go find Mom!"

She didn't move an inch, but her tone was enough to restrain me temporarily. "You'll get yourself killed, nothing more. That won't help anypony."

I stood this time and walked a few paces toward her. "I'm not just going to sit idly by while-" lightning fast she had a hoof up under the collar of my vest and pulled me dangerously close. I cowered, my own hooves starting reach up to protect myself, before I saw her eyes. There was something that made me stop struggling, something I'd only seen once or twice before. Tears. Regardless, her voice was unwavering, but rough, as she said, "Listen,-" as she held me up by my collar and stared directly at me from inches away, "there's nothing we can do here. Nothing. There's exactly two ponies we can save right now and one way to do it."

"What...what do we do then?"

She sighed, and looked at the town briefly, before turning back to me. "I told you there was a plan. There's a supply cache not far from here. If we get to it, we should have enough food and water to last a week or so, and munitions."

"It still feels wrong..." I said defeatedly.

She lifted me up tighter and it looked like she was going to snap, but she released me, dropping me to the ground, and let out another sigh. "It's a shitty situation, Orph. Nothing we could have done." She started walking in what I assumed to be the direction of the cache, stopping only long enough to look back and see if I was going to follow.

My house was already gone. My mother's still burning. If there was any resistance left from the townsfolk, I couldn't see it from where I was. Tears were falling silently off my muzzle, no energy for sobbing yet. I looked over to her with resignation, and moved to follow.

She led me down from the hill, in a direction away from the town. I followed, resigned. The terrible sounds faded, too slowly. After some time walking through the trees, we came to a rock-face. Caliber stepped towards a boulder with a few mostly-bare bushes beside it. She cleared away the dry foliage and behind the rock was a small opening, wide and tall enough for a single pony to crawl through. It wasn't especially well-hidden, but this far away from other settlements that must not have been much of a concern. Anyone walking past probably wouldn't have noticed anyway.

"Stay out here," she ordered.

I didn't mind the tone as I dropped down onto my dock and slumped. Why even bother now? What were we going to do? No home left, nowhere for us to go, and anypony who might have helped us was...

No, I couldn't start down that path right now. There wouldn't be any-

-"Fuck!" I heard her yell from inside, accompanying the sound of a metal crash. I crawled over to the opening and went through. The cave was dark and my eyes had not adjusted yet. After a moment the dark shapes came into focus and I saw Callie, huffing, standing over a toppled shelving unit. I would have asked if she needed help getting something off this one too, but it would have wildly inappropriate considering the circumstances.

"It's almost fucking empty!" she yelled at me. My eyes could see now in the small cave, and the floor around the shelf was empty as she said. Shakily I got to my hooves and looked at the rest of the room. It was a small space, only a few bodylengths deep or wide, and most of the rest of the counters, shelves, and boxes around the room looked to be mostly empty at first glance.

She continued cursing and kicking up dirt as she looked through some of the boxes. I moved to the opposite side of the room and mechanically began to look for anything left behind as well. Having something to keep my mind blank was a blessing.

"They must have found it earlier. Fuckers probably used our own ammo against us." I barely heard her, which was just as well. She probably didn't expect a response. I realized that I'd been looking at the same shelf for a few minutes now. There was a dirty cardboard box labeled Sugar Apple Bombs, with a cutesy drawing of a Shadowbolt wing dropping bombs on a group of zebra caricatures. I stared at it a little longer, starting to feel nauseous . I had never seen a bomb go off, the sort they used in the war or otherwise, but my mind conjured up the closest thing. A flash of burning destruction passed through my mind, and forced me to look away. I put a hoof on the shelf to steady myself for a moment before floating the box into a saddlebag.

"What did you find?" she asked, walking up next to me.

"Just a little Pre-War food," I replied.

"That puts us at a week or so of food. Not enough water. Low on ammunition."

"It's not enough, is it?"

"We're wastelanders now. There will never be enough."

After splitting the meager supplies between us, we were left standing there. Neither of us wanted to acknowledge the full impact of what just happened. Even if either of us had fully absorbed it yet. It was the sort of thing, in retrospect, that would hit later on. Just when we thought we were fine, and were going to be fine. But, for now, we stared in different directions. It was I who spoke first.

"What now then?"

It took her a moment to respond, but she did, in a carefully normally tone say, "We can't stay here. We need to keep moving."

I couldn't argue with the reasoning. Even if I felt like arguing with my friend...my last friend-No! I couldn't yet. I couldn't start with that here. If I started thinking those thoughts I would never leave this cave. Or I would by Callie dragging me out by my tail.

Unless she left without me.

It was starting already, these fears and terrors closing in. I had to say something before they started in full. "Alright," I choked out in a small voice. She nodded and began to walk to the entrance, but stopped before leaving.

I got to my hooves slowly again. My eyes were too used to the dark now, and the light from outside seemed blindingly bright. I had spent so long in the dark, in this cave, and it turned out to be empty. Shadows of food and live-giving supplies, while the real thing would be out there somewhere. I stepped towards the entrance, fighting the urge to lie down and stay in place. She nodded when I reached her, and I took my first step in the weak daylight.

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Orphic Tome
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Perk Gained! - Swift Learner

High Caliber
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Perk Gained! - Intense Training

Chapter 2: No Plan Survives...

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Chapter 2: No Plan Survives...

I watched as Orphic crawled back into the world through the entrance to the apparently empty supply cache. With all the shit going on right now, I did not need to find that the only contingency we had was empty! I kicked at a shelf behind me with a hoof, denting it, but not accomplishing anything productive.

This is bad. This is really fucking bad. Until then I hadn't had the chance to stop and think about the situation, but now it was increasingly harder to push the enormity of it to the side and focus on the here and now. I scraped a hoof on the hard, stone, floor of the cave and took a deep breath. Okay, practical concerns, my line of thinking began. I brought my left arm up and glanced at the Pipbuck's clock, trying to figure out how much time had passed. The way the day turned out had distorted my sense of it beyond where I could give an accurate guess.

The glowing green utilitarian numbers read 1900. Was it really that late already? Our first priority then, was to find somewhere to sleep. This location would be concealed normally, but under the circumstances I couldn't take the chance that they'd come back and find us. After that we would need to take inventory of our supplies, ration out food and ammunition, and then...

I exhaled, and rubbed a fetlock across my face. I couldn't think what to do afterwards yet, still determined to take things one step at a time. Silenced and buried by a cool collected exterior and the calmness of training was the knowledge that there was nowhere left for us to go now.

A voice from outside, a familiar one thankfully, jarred me out of those thoughts. “Are you coming?” my new charge asked timidly. I straightened up and my face fell back to its familiar neutral expression. I could make it out on my own, but Orphic wasn't a survivor. If I was going to keep him from getting himself killed, I needed to give the impression that I knew exactly what I was doing.

“Yes, I am now,” I replied quickly, as I moved over to the short hole in the wall. It was time for me to re-enter the wasteland now; to have my years of training to pay off as I stepped back into the fading daylight and became a real soldier. I wasn't sure where I was going, or how I would get there, but one burning missive remained. No matter what had to be done, I would keep the two of us alive long enough to make them pay.

I got to my hooves, my muscles weary and barely obeying anymore. Orhpic stood nearby, watching expectantly, trying not to shake like a leaf. He was looking at me with eyes begging for direction, but too tired to ask. I addressed him as I began walking. “We don't have much time before nightfall. We need somewhere to sleep.”

“But what about here?” he asked.

My patience was wearing very thin with him already, and that didn't help. I couldn't yell at him again after what we just saw, not now. But at the same time, I had to repress the urge to do so. “Too risky. They might come back,” I answered in a tone that I meant to brook no argument.

Normally, that wasn't easy to do with him. He wasn't the most confrontational pony aroun...really he was downright passive most of the time. But get him in a debate that he thought he was right about, and all bets would be off. Not this time at least. His slumped posture and broken gait as he began to follow was all the reply I needed, or that he felt like giving. In the long run, low morale wouldn't be efficient for survival, but for the time being, I could take some small solace in the knowledge that his despair meant he would defer to my judgement.

It was the smart choice. With some luck, it might just keep him alive.

I can admit it in hindsight, I had no idea where we were going. Briefly, I considered dragging us back to the ruined town we'd scavenged earlier in the day, whatever it might have once been called. That would have taken far too long though, and put us at risk of having to go near home-...what was left of it, I winced and retreated mentally from that-, which could have meant a run-in with raiders.

Slowing to a trot, I held up my Pipbuck and checked the local map once again. Thankfully, I'd been in the area before, so even though I couldn't remember the trees and rocks themselves, the greatest survival tool I could have asked for did it for me. If only that feature was more useful right now. There was nothing around that would serve as shelter for the night, just as there was nothing the last two times I checked. The gesture was honestly partially for Orphic's sake. At least I could let him think we were on the right track.

But for those of us actually trying to make sure of that, the Pipbuck was being less than encouraging. We'd already walked for an hour, by now almost completely in the dark, and I was still mostly hoping to be able to find some shelter from the elements and the wildlife. One of the rules of wasteland survival was against us in this though. Being out after dark even in the safest places was dangerous, between mutated animals and other things I'd heard come out at night, but there was a simpler concern as well: light. With no Moon or stars to provide light, it was all too easy to lose one's path and wander around in circles for hours, at best. At worst, you'd trip on a rock or fall down a hill, breaking a leg.

Even with the small light and map on the Pipbuck, I'd been taught that it wasn't a good idea if it didn't need to be done, so it was important right now that we find somewhere to safely get our bearings, and fast.

It was ten minutes later and with ten minutes less daylight that I saw the first promising sign. Just at the edge of my vision, nestled in the trees ahead was a large, boxy, shape. Checking my map, it was likewise in the dark there. Apparently we'd gone further in this direction than I'd been before.

Halting, I lifted my right hoof out to the side in a silent signal to my companion. Needless to say, he didn't get it.

“Why are we stopping? Is there something up ahead?” he asked tiredly, as he walked up beside me, leaned forward, and squinted into the twilight.

I facehoofed. “Yes, Orphic, there's something ahead, and this-” I hissed at him and waved my foreleg in his face exaggeratedly, “means I wanted to approach, silently.”

He replied indignantly, at a conversational volume, “How was I supposed to know?”

“SHHHH, keep your voice down. I'm going to go take a look. You sit right here until I get back,” I whispered, straining to keep it that way. “Actually, no, see that tree? Go sit behind it.”

In response he glared for a few seconds, but said nothing as he walked over to do it. Good, I thought, that will make this easier. Hoping that if there was anypony, or anything, in the shack that it hadn't seen that display, just now, I lowered myself and began walk in a slow spiral that would bring me behind the structure. Carefully, I moved from tree husk to tree husk, avoiding the dead foliage and dry branches that could give away my approach, and watching the small building draw closer. As I got closer, I could see more details of its construction. Even in the low light, it was apparent that the shack was the sort of scrap metal and corrugated sheeting home that made up the town, so it had to have been built after The War.

I wasn't here for history though, and it wouldn't do me any good now. Another feature that was much more apparent and important to me drew my attention: the single red mark on my EFS. By now I was ten meters or so away, behind an especially thick tree, ready to move up to the house itself. Peeking out from cover, I could see no light coming out through the window, but that didn't tell me very much. I crawled along the ground, and stopped against the wall of the hut, trying not to make a single sound. Switching the safety off on my rifle, I took a breath and steeled my nerves, before slowly standing to peek through the window.

There was no vicious raider or dangerous wildlife inside that I could detect, yet the red mark remained on my EFS. A moment later I heard the skittering sound and saw a small dark shape run across the floor. Letting out a sigh of relief, I stood and walked around to the door. Pushing against it with a hoof, it came open easily and I switched on the flashlight mounted on my wrist. The radroach inside scurried away from the sudden, bright light, but once it saw the pony behind it, came back hissing.

Unimpressed, I smashed the butt of my rifle down on the overzealous creature, crushing its shell and leaving it twitching, but no longer a threat. Orphic told me once that ponies before the war thought that roaches could survive anything, and expected that if the world ended, they'd keep on going. I chuckled, they live through Balefire bombs and yet you can just step on them.

With that taken care of, I waved the light around the room, examining its contents. The radroach moving in suggested that whoever might have owned the makeshift cabin hadn't been around for a while. The whole thing was just the one room I could see by the Pipbuck light, and even that was sparsely decorated. A rusty bedframe with a dirty mattress in the corner, some counters, and what looked like a few pieces of junk. Nothing useful on first sight, discounting the bed and the shelter itself, but I would need to take a closer look once we settled in.

Satisfied that the immediate area was secure, and the building, generously calling it that, would serve our needs for the night, I turned around and walked back to find him.

Proving its usefulness for the third time in a row, the green marker on my EFS led me back quickly to where I told him to stay. Thankfully, seeing as I would have been stumbling around in the night, blind as a bat if it weren't for it. With me trotting over to him, no longer trying to disguise my approach, he must heard me coming, and just before I reached the tree in question, a dark purple head leaned out from behind it. “It's clear, come on,” I informed him.

Nearly as soon as we entered the room, I heard a gasp from behind me. Sighing, I began to reply, “It's just a dead rad-,” is as far as I got before a blurred shape pushed past me and shot into the room like an equine bullet. “What are you-,”

“Look!” Orphic yelled from across the very small room, sitting in front of a square wooden box with a metal horn sticking out of the top. “This is an authentic Pre-War phonograph! By the time the war started, they were being replaced by arcanotech methods of media storage, so they're especially rare. This is a treasure,” he said, looking at it with something like a cross between a foal opening a Hearth's Warming Eve present and a pony who'd struck gold.

“I thought it was junk.”

“Junk?!” he physically recoiled with a look of disbelief edging on disgust. “Do you even understand the signifigance of something like this?”

“Nope. Play with it if you want, but I have work to do,” I replied flatly.

He harumphed and looked back to it. “I will examine it, thank you very much,” he shot back, trying his best to sound serious instead of excitied.

I shrugged, and kicked the door shut behind us. Whatever keeps his mind off things. Sitting down on my haunches, I took my saddlebags off with my teeth and set them down on the floor, emptying them to take stock. Meanwhile, Orphic was turning the thing and craning his neck to look at it from every side possible. I shook my head and turned my attention back to practical matters. Spreading the items out in front of me, I began accounting for them; combat knife, four extra magazines for my rifle, some rope, a canteen full of water, and three more bottles of it, though those were likely conaminated with radiation. In terms of food, there were five boxes of pre-war food, loaded to the brim with enough preservatives to make sure it was still good two centuries later. Probably on purpose knowing them. And finally the meat from the first radroach earlier.

Remebering that, I picked up the knife in my my mouth, stood, and walked over to the second one I'd dispatched a few minutes ago. Putting a hoof down on the corpse to steady it, I plunged the knife into it and began to cut away at the inediable exterior to get to the meat. Orphic looked up from his contraption with a quezy look that said he wasn't planning on eating it, but quickly looked back to his work, igniting his horn to cast some magic at it.

Wrapping the meat in the with other chunks from before, I put in my saddlebags along with the other tallied supplies. The smell drifting up from the knife made me wrinkle my snout and I immediately started wiping it off. The odor the roachmeat gave off was worse than its taste. And it tasted like shit. “Aha! I knew it, three hundred years...” I heard him say to himself, still fascinated by the discovery.

Even with the meat and the small amount from the cache, there wasn't enough to go around. At most, we would last a week if it was rationed carefully. And that wasn't to mention the more pressing concern: potable water. Without more of that, we would dehydrate long before we starved. Assuming we lived long enough to do either...

With shoddy weapons and limited ammunition, running into some of the meaner inhabitants of the wasteland would be a death sentence. I hadn't seen any of them myself, but I'd heard more than enough about manticores and other things that just got pissed off when you shot them.

Suddenly a sound came from the corner of the room, where Orhpic and his contraption were. A small scratching sound followed by what was undoubtably some sort of pre-war music. Orphic's grin at getting the old thing to actually work faded as we listened to the music. I couldn't say what any of the instruments were, but it was a happy song. No words, only an upbeat swinging tempo and lively rythym. I didn't need a history book or to know anything aout music to tell it was the sort that was meant to be danced to. Not a graceful dignified dance, but a care-free one they used to forget their troubles. That made it all the worse.

Neither of us made any move to turn it off. As the song kept going, he slumped further, after a minute lying completely prone on his haunches with his muzzle downcast, facing away from me. We sat there, waiting for the music to end, unable to bring ourselves to stop it before its time. Not too long later, the swelling song ended on a flourish and faded away. For a moment neither of us moved, but after a few beats, Orphic began to lift himself to his hooves, and pulled the arm off of the spinning disc with his magic.

Still facing away from me, I heard him ask in a small voice, “What are we doing?”

“I've been tallying-”

“That's not what I meant!” he stomped a hoof as he spun around to look me in the eyes. His were red and full of silent tears, and his voice lowered again as he started such that I had to strain to hear him. “What are we going to do?”

“We're going to survive, Orph. There are other towns out there. It won't be the same... Not at all, but there's somewhere for us.”

We were both silent for a while after that. Eventually he must have drifted off on the bed, before we could set up watches. I sighed at that. We would have to the next day, but for that night it looked like I'd be staying up for a while at least. I sat down against one of the rickety walls with my carbine laid across my legs and my eyes on my EFS. It'd already been the longest day of my life, and the prospect of sleeping wasn't something I felt I'd ever do again anyway.

I woke with a start the next morning. Apparently at some point I had given up my watch and fallen asleep, though I couldn't remember doing it now. My joints cracking and sore body protesting, I stood up from where I had drifted off the previous night, laying against one of the ramshackle walls. Following the sound of soft snoring, I saw Orphic still asleep, somehow resting on the filthy mattress we had found the night before. I guessed he was too exhausted to care then.

I held up my hoof to check the time, and saw the display give out the hour, impersonally. The Pipbuck clock had no opinion on the matter, no regard for the concerns of those reading it. Of course not; it was a machine, and a near perfect one at that. It had ticked by every single second of the last two and a half centuries, undeterred by ponies cursing it for moving too quickly or slowly, and by apocalyptic war as well. That clock currently showed a time of 0845, much to my chagrin.

Not only had I fallen asleep technically on watch, but overslept as well. I was almost glad Orphic was asleep so he couldn't see this. Unfortunately that would need to be rectified. I got to my hooves, stretching out my legs and torso, and walked slowly over to the bed. Pretending I wasn't going to take some small pleasure in this despite the circumstances, I stood over him, waiting for a moment, then prodded at him with a foreleg.

The slumbering form of the dark violet unicorn shifted slightly, but gave no other indication of waking. I showed him some small mercy, giving him a harder jab with my hoof. This prompted only a annoyed grunt and a sleepy plea for five more minutes. Alright, I gave him enough of a chance, time to get him up. I put one hoof under the thin, ratty, mattress on one side of him, then another on the other side, and flipped it clean over.

Immediately, I was rewarded by the stallion yelling some incoherent version of, I'm up! I'm up! while trying to sleepily lift the mattress up and off of him and scramble to his hooves. After calmly waiting for him to stop, he stood across from me with an annoyed, half-awake, frown. "What was that for?"

I replied flatly, "You needed to wake up. I'm going out, so you need to be on the lookout."

Orphic Tome rubbed at his eyes with a fetlock. "...going out?"

I gave a small exasperated snort without even meaning to. There was just no time for this. Waking up as he pleased and being ready to fight or flee was a luxury he could no longer afford. And yet, explaining that, while he was still in the process of waking up would have nothing but a waste of time. More so than at any other time at least. "Yes, out. Going to do some reconnaissance." In response his eyes started to close again, so I shoved a hoof to his chest and shook him. "You need to be awake in case somepony comes this way."

His eyes opened more at the movement, though he still had the expression of irritation that only somepony who's used to deciding their own easygoing sleep schedule can manage. "Alright, yes, fine I'll stay up."

"Good. If I don't come back in a few hours, assume I won't at all."

"There's a chance of that?"

"There are probably still raiders out there. It's a real possibility." The effect on his face was immediate; he started breathing heavily, his ears drooped, and his eyes took on a fearfully lost quality. Seeing his distraught expression reminded me that I had to make sure he wasn't going to have a mental breakdown. At least not until we were somewhere secure and defensible. "I doubt they'd find me though. Just a precaution," I intoned neutrally, hoping that by not trying to make it sound reassuring he would take it as a legitimate tactical assessment.

Orphic simply nodded unsurely and dropped to his dock, watching the door as I left. I closed the flimsy door behind me and took a deep breath to mentally prepare myself. Solitude never bothered me much, and frankly I'd move faster and much quieter alone. There was fear though; deep, small, and tempered by cold determination, but there nonetheless. Stories of raiders weren't the most exotic of the ones the elders would tell about the wasteland, but they were some of the most brutal, horrifying, and...common. Of course there were monsters one or two spoke about with fear, but every single one who had seen wasteland life had some story about atrocities witnessed at their hooves. And every one without fail knew someone who wasn't around to tell it. If it came down to being captured, I was always assured that turning my weapon on myself would be preferable. It wasn't a thought I looked forward to, and if that was going to happen it would be with my very last bullet. That raiders died just like anything else was my main consolation as I took my first steps back into the forest, and back towards whatever remained of home.

All around were the dead trees of the forest, which would thankfully provide cover for my approach.Now that the mission had begun I nixed the musings and kept my attention squarely on my path and the EFS. No room for distractions right now. As a side effect however, the trip wore on my mental state, despite its disciplined attunement to long stretches requiring focus. Watching the same trees pass over and over made it almost a relief when the Pipbuck map informed me that I would be reaching the town soon.

Though climbing the hill again would have given me a better vantage point, there was too much of a risk that one of them would see me up there. I stayed behind a tree within sight of the nearest buildings and reached into one of my saddlebags. From within I pulled out one of my greatest finds from salvaging: a pair of binoculars. They weren't military issue clearly; according to Orphic at the time, ponies used to watch birds for fun and they were likely for that, but regardless they were a very useful tool. Checking my EFS to make sure nothing was going to sneak up on me, I peered through the beaten binoculars.

From my low angle, not much was visible besides the sides of some houses. Only in the small spaces in between could I see beyond, and what was there wasn't promising. Blood still covered the street in splotches, though the bodies were conspicuously absent. I couldn't hear anything from where I was, but I needed to know for sure. To my left the tree-line extended closer to the nearest buildings, and I would have a better view from there. Very slowly, creeping from tree to tree, I moved around to there, and lifted the binoculars with my hooves. Closer now, I could see a few red marks somewhere in the town, and through the lens I had a better view from where I'd moved. Still, despite large spots of dried blood and remains of burned and broken homes, there were no bodies to be seen. Sweeping over to where the red marks were congregated, my vision came to a larger two-story construction. This one made of logs and stones as well as scrap metal; one of the newer buildings we'd made. It was meant to be a sort of meeting place and dining area, but now...

I turned my head and looked away from the grisly sight, but I could still see it. The façade I passed every day had been partially painted with blood. A coat of dark maroon had been smeared and brushed haphazardly over the wood. I suppressed my gagging at the picture that wouldn't leave. There were chunks in it...

It was just too much. I stared down at the ground trying to count and memorize the cracks in the dirt. Whatever I thought I might find here, it wasn't that. And I knew it was just the beginning of what I'd see if I could get closer. No chance of that now though. There would be no survivors, and if there were that would have been worse yet. This place was theirs now.

A sudden moving light in my peripheral vision tore me out of my thoughts as I jumped behind the tree to make sure I was concealed. Immediately I readied the rifle slung across my chest, and peeked out to see what it was. As soon as my head was around the trunk, I activated SATS and froze time to a standstill. With the targeting spell's magic my vision zoomed across the barren field between us and into a raider stallion walking out from around the building nearest the tree-line. Highlighted in the glow, there could be no mistake about what he was, even in different circumstances. His armor was cobbled together and adorned with sharp spikes and vicious decorations. The old blood of past victims stained his armor and his thin coat alike, and the stringy remnants of his tangled mane hung down over part of his face. The other half covered in scars and decades of unrepressed manic rage. This was the thing that paraded in equine form. My Pipbuck tempted me. Over a 50% to hit the head from where I was. It would be so quick, and the world would be improved by one infinitesimal increment.

Still myself frozen in the consideration afforded to me by the spell, I knew as soon as the thought emerged that I couldn't act on it. Only a one in two chance to hit, less than that it would be a lethal shot, and even if it was it would have accomplished nothing but bringing every raider around down on me. Reason and procedure won...as it usually did. I found myself almost wishing he was facing my direction and I could justify shooting him out of necessity. I broke out of the arcane targeting matrix and slid back behind the tree, cursing the raiders, the wasteland, and myself most of all. Waiting for him to safely pass took far too long, which only made my restraint more infuriating. I swore again that I would come back one day, while slinking back to inform Orphic of my findings. If it takes the rest of my life, I'll make them pay.

The trip back didn't seem to take as long as the way there did, at first anyway. Being unsure what I'd find had made it seem longer, for the second time in as many days. Now that I had a concrete answer, as terrible an answer as it was, time moved faster. No wondering or worrying, just emptiness for the moment. All I had to do then was walk back and explain to my friend that everyone he knew was dead and we could never go home again.

That brought out a sigh. Not an annoyed, indignant, gesture, but a deep one with all the air in my lungs. It was the only thing to do at the time. I marched on in a solemn way, as if to an execution, but not my own. When I reached the shack, it would be up to me to relay what I'd seen, and then come up with our next step. And I had absolutely no doubt that he was holding onto some hope that the raiders had moved on; that we would find survivors and rebuild and things would be normal again. I trudged silently through long-dead flora to an execution, and I was to be the executioner.

Fuck, now I'm getting poetic, I thought. It would have been a joke otherwise, but right now it was a bad sign. One that this was affecting me more than I could suppress. I brought the map up, hoping at once that I was almost there and still far away. Either way I'd have to go through something unpleasant, whether with Orphic or in my head. As it turned out, I was nearing the shack and would be there in just a few minutes. I put the hoof down and kept going.

As expected, it only took a few short minutes to come up on the small building. I knocked on the door. Immediately, I heard scrambling hooves and a familiar voice tell from inside. "Who is it?"

As if asking would help if it weren't me. "It's High Caliber."

The door opened instantly, and he stepped back to let me in, floating the pistol back into his bag. Can't fault him for that at least, I thought, very slightly reassured, but no more looking forward to what was next. I walked inside and set down my bags. "Bad news, Orphic."

"W-what...?" He sank down onto his dock and stared.

I shook my head, it would be easiest to just get this out. "They haven't left, and don't seem to plan on it."

"They won't leave?! What about everypony else?"

My stomach twisted. Why did he have to ask? I started slowly, and said as carefully as I could manage, "There is nopony else. Not anymore. They've stopped and we have no way to know for how long."

"Can't we do something?" There was blatant desperation in his voice and wide eyes.

I shook my head, pointlessly. We both knew we couldn't take it back. "We can live. There are other places in the wasteland."

His face twisted in a rare display of anger. "So that's it? We go somewhere else? What about mom, what about all our friends and neighbors?!"

"They're dead. If they're lucky."

The unicorn looked at me in shock, as if he couldn't believe I'd actually said it. He sank to the floor entirely and after a moment replied in a quiet voice, "That was cold."

"Yes, cold and harsh and pitiless. And if you'd listened to anything we'd ever been told about the wasteland you would know that's what it takes to get by."

"We're just going to give up on morality then? Do whatever to survive and forget about who we leave behind?" His tone was bitter and he still hadn't moved.

"I'll be as cold and pitiless as it takes to keep myself, and your dumb ass, alive. I'll leave the questions of philosophy to you." After that there was a silence. The two of us at each other for a solid minute, until finally he spat out a single word.

"Where?"

That was a relief. I didn't want to have to drag him out of there and wherever we were going next. Speaking of which, I still needed to figure that out. I pulled up my map to give me time to decide. The larger one had very few markers on it, a testament to how close to home I'd always been until now. One for there, not far from where we were now. Another one to mark the ruins we'd been searching yesterday. A prewar factory of some sort as well, but nothing promising. "We'll go back to the ruins and finish salvaging. There will be time to search everywhere now, so we may find more food."

All I got out of him was a sullen "Alright." Picking himself up off the floor and putting his bags back on he stood waiting for me to take the lead. I didn't want to waste any time putting as much distance between us and the raiders as equinely possible. Hard as it was to turn our backs on home. I nodded and stood as well, walking to the door, and leaving.

The walk went silently, with neither of us feeling much like talking after earlier. About an hour passed of walking through the leaf-less trees before anything of note happened. The shack we started from was somewhat closer to the ruins than town was, but the only route available took us closer to danger than I was comfortable with. Once again as we walked I saw a red mark on EFS, followed by a second one. Ducking behind the nearest tree, I motioned for Orphic to do the same.

He did, but slowly. "What? More overgrown insects?"

I was about to snap at him to get down regardless, when I knew for sure it wasn't. Radroaches and mantises didn't speak. Far off yet, I could hear mocking laughter in two voices, just before two raiders, a mare and a stallion, walked out from behind a thick bunch of trees. Without hesitation this time, I lifted my rifle and fired a short burst across the two monsters. I couldn't tell if the mare was hit, but the stallion clearly was and stumbled behind a tree with a shout of rage.

I didn't have time to make sure. Next thing I knew the mare was leaning out of cover with a submachine gun in her mouth. There was barely time for me to duck back, as the rapid-fired stream of lead pounded against the other side of my tree, not two entire feet from me. A few trees away, Orphic was huddled under his own tree. I could have used his support, but there was no way I could convince him right now.

Eventually the noise stopped, but immediately, one of the target marker behind me started moving. It could have been heading straight for me! Hefting the rifle I peeked out and immediately activated SATS. A bloodthirsty raider, terrifying as any other, was running out from behind his tree, but not in my direction. Apparently, I hadn't hit the stallion in the legs, and his armor, makeshift as it was, must have offered some protection against the ironically small projectiles. He was running away, back the way he'd came. It was strange behavior from I knew of raiders at least; stories told about near-feral animals attacking ferociously and without mercy or thought. I chalked it up the the confusion of being in the trees. Without the advantage I had, they probably didn't know how many enemies they'd stumbled on, or where they were. It wasn't something I could count on for long with just me, but he wouldn't have the chance to set the rest of the dogs on us anyway. I targeted his back right leg, just at the knee, and fired a single shot in slow-motion.

Even with my practiced aim, the bullet-time magic accompanying the low, slow, boom only served to give me more time to kick myself for the miss. The bullet sailed past, missing him completely, and the world sped back into its normal speed. I ducked back seconds before the magazine clicked into the mare's gun and she ran to another tree. Her hoof beats mixed with those of the fading stallion's. Now we were on the clock. We had been passing close to the town now, and it wouldn't take him more than a few minutes to round up some friends and come back for us. The raider mare meanwhile still didn't have a sight on me, but her angle was better now. I leaned out again and squeezed the trigger for another burst at her current cover.

It stopped her from moving, but this was only wasting valuable time. The other raider would get closer to bringing the rest every second, and that would be it for both of us, if we lasted that long. I would need to reload soon, and between the two of us, a unicorn was going to win. There was one thing left to do that might get us out of this, loathe though I was to put our lives in his hooves. I stopped shooting just long enough to yell over to the cowering unicorn stallion I'd brought with me. "Orphic!"

His head peaked up, terrified, and his sidearm was still clutched shakily in his magic. In the brief time it took to do that, my opponent was aware, she was already leaning out and aiming at me. Time slowed again, this time mundanely as I looked at what could well be my death and threw myself backwards. As I fell, I had just enough time to wonder if it would be fast enough.

Bullets whizzed past in the air, my next thought was proof that I was fast enough, this time. While I was scrambling back to my hooves, more shots rang out, but these ones sounded different. A unicorn mare with her mane stuck into spikes to match the ones on her cobbled-together barding darted out from behind her arboreal cover. She wasn't fast enough this time. My shots riddled her torso, the mare dropping where she was and lying motionless. Immediately, seeing no other hostiles on EFS, I trotted over to check her body. Standing over her bleeding form, one thing was instantly clear: she wasn't dead. Things were never really that easy.

"Sisters above..." a voice behind me muttered. The next sound I knew was him turning away, yet I approached. Her breathing was ragged, and blood leaked from some places and spurted from others, and through it she weakly tried to move. Her forelegs reached up at me as I approached, but not for help, not for an embrace. Her mouth was foaming pink, and her face was a mask of impotent hate. Even now, if her limbs weren't failing the nameless raider mare, she would have tried to kill me. I snatched up her gun, and rifled though her bag for ammunition. Weak flailing limbs beat against my legs, but to absolutely no avail.

The firearm was in poor condition, but I may have been able to repair it, I figured at the time. Taking anything of value, I walked back to Orphic who sat against one of the trees. He looked up at me, and asked simply, "Aren't you going to do something?"

"No." I pointed a toe at the second-hoof gun I'd set before him. "Take that. We need to leave. Now."

It was ten minutes before we heard the sound of distant hoof beats. Fifteen before the sounds were loud enough that I knew we couldn't outrun them. The two of us had been walking all day, and it had its toll. Neither of us were going to reach the ruins. And what if we did? It was barely a town in life, its corpse wasn't going to hide us from a horde of crazed killers.

"We aren't going to make it!" the stallion running beside me shouted. It was old news to the one with the map. I pulled it up, remembering there was one other option left. To the north was a Pre-War Robronco factory. Even though it was closer than the nearest ruins, it hadn't been scavenged from in my memory. We were told in training to stay away from it, due to dangers of radiation and the building being especially unstable after all this time weathering the elements. Of course, that wasn't good enough for some ponies. There were rumors, or really more legends, that foals who went off to explore it never came back. Though that was likely to keep them away, and there were other stories as well. All the way from monstrous creatures to it being haunted by the ghost of a Ministry Mare. Just stories for colts and fillies. And right now it was our best chance. "This way!" I shouted over, leading him towards it.

By the time five more minutes had passed, we could see the mob behind us, and the factory looming in front. No more trees covered us here, and the raiders had started taking potshots at us as we ran across the pavement surrounding the factory. Occasionally a bullet would strike the ground and throw stinging chunks of rock up, only to ricochet off in perilous ways. It would only take one now.

I didn't think we were going to make it. By now the pounding of their hooves on stone was all around us. I fought the urge to look back, for fear it would slow me down, even for a moment, and that they would be even closer than they sounded. But the closer we got to the factory, the fewer jeering taunts and threats we heard. The sheer utilitarian edifice of the factory was right above us now, and we ran up the wide stone steps to reach the front doors. A clanging sound rang from the wall next to me where a thrown crowbar hit the side of the building. Pushing myself for a the last few drops of energy I could muster, I galloped up and threw the doors open, waiting only barely long enough for Orphic to dart in as well, and slamming the door shut.

A lone stallion pounded on the door frantically. "Come out, bitch! I'll cut you to pieces!" I twisted the lock shut, and toppled over a rusty filing cabinet, throwing up a small cloud of metallic dust, and pushed it in front of the door for good measure. I stood on top of the cabinet and looked out one of the high, small windows on the door. The rest of the group was standing away, looking more angry than scared, stomping and kicking.

One of them shouted to the one still pounding at the door. "Leave it alone. They're fucked now anyway." That seemed to convince him, after giving it a few minutes to sink in, anyway. I turned and stepped down, looking at our surroundings briefly. The only important part now being that nothing here was an immediate danger, despite the disconcerting sounds of metal scraping on metal and occasional clanging from further inside.

The violet unicorn with me stopped his wheezing and looked up to ask me, "What do you think they meant? They can't have heard about this place?"

I dropped to my haunches, eager to rest for a few minutes at least. "I don't know. We'll just wait until they leave."

We sat in silence then, gaining back what energy we could. Meanwhile, deeper in the building we'd ran to for safety, old things moved.

Chapter 3: In the Food Processing Receptacle of the Beast

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Deep breaths, Orphic, deep breaths... I repeated my mantra over and over, mostly to no avail. Those dreadful raiders had left a few minutes earlier, and I was still trying to catch my breath. Breathing deeply was no problem...it just isn't very calming when one is doing it so quickly he's like to pass out from hyperventilating. Now that the immediate danger had passed, and my mind was beginning to form rational thoughts again, the first that came to mind was, inevitably, a self-deprecating reminder; 'This is what you get for never lifting a hoof earlier'. Before yesterday, a strenuous workout for me was carrying a heavy pile of books, or walking across the village to find somepony to question so I could fill out a ledger. The terrifying beginning of light-headedness and my breath only slightly starting to even itself out as I glanced over to see Callie calmly and deliberately breathing, only added insult to injury.

A return to a state of nature, to spending days fleeing hunters just as my distant ancestors who adopted the prey-animal biology I carry today did, wasn't a prospect I enjoyed facing for the rest of my likely short and brutal life. The thought that this is what I would be doing from now on loomed up in front of me, threatening to send my tenuous calm spiraling back into a fit. I sorted that somewhere in my mind other than the forefront, and it joined the rest of the things that were going to break through like an overflowing river bursting an old world dam, as soon as we had the chance to stop and rest too easily. I let my muzzle sink into my forehooves, and would have sighed if I had the breath control to do so. I can't take this much running.

Callie ended up giving the both of us a few more minutes to rest before we moved on. She clearly didn't need it as much, even if galloping for our lives took some toll on her, but I wasn't in any position to put on false bravado at the time, so the break was appreciated. We started with the room we were in already; some sort of reception area with a large circular desk in the center, holding a few rusted and broken terminals on top.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the room was in a similar state of disrepair. A layer of dust nearly an inch thick covered nearly every surface, and made each breath, now that I was no longer taking them in out of chase-induced fear, tickle the throat in precisely that unpleasant way that makes one want to cough without actually causing them to. Even taking a step toward the dust kicked up clouds of it, probably mixed with rust and decrepit dust of paint peeled off the walls and ceiling. Knowing what they used to make paint probably wouldn't have made me feel any better.

...Nor did the realization that I was complaining about dust when I'd just barely escaped with my life and so man others hadn't. It'd already started then, and there wouldn't be a way to keep pushing it somewhere else. Simply, unequivocally, every soul I'd known save one, who was now under the desk crawling around in the dirt looking for an old tin of food or some such, was dead. Why should she bother? Why should I? The inevitability came down like a hammer blow. From now on every time I wanted to crawl out of the pit with some small victory, I'd fall back down and remember why I should have stayed down. I should have been home the other day, when they came for everypony else. She stood, putting her front hooves up on the warped desktop, looked at me, and spoke roughly. “What are doing, daydreaming? Go look around.”

“Why?”

Caliber's ears twitched, and she leaned forward very slightly, as if hoping I'd repeat myself and make more sense the second time around. “What?”

“Why, why should we bother?”

“I don't know about you, but I enjoy eating,” she said gruffly.

“It's not funny, this is a serious question!” I shouted back.

There was a metal clang, her shoving something aside and standing. “No, it's not funny. I'm trying to keep us alive and you're giving up.”

My first instinct was to disagree. I almost did, even getting as far as opening my mouth, but the words didn't come out as my train of thought distracted me. Was she even wrong? If any circumstances ever called for losing hope, these would be them. How could I even be asked to do otherwise? Everything the both of us new was gone now, ponies and our home. Just the other remained, and how long would either of us even have that much.

If anything had changed, personally, it was my idea of safety. Everything about the wasteland being a horrible place felt so far away. So distant from my own life. We were all so out of the way that we honestly believed we'd be safe. At least I did...

A hoof shaking me brought me out of the thoughtstream. “Can't have you shutting down like this. I'm not slowing down for you to get us killed.”

I brought up a hoof to sweep hers off my chest, irritably, but her foreleg was unyielding. It only had the effect of reminding me how weak I was, angering me more. I gave up and backed away a step or two. “I didn't ask you to!”

She turned on her rear hooves and went back to a filing cabinet. There wasn't any need to say what we were both thinking, as she tugged at the top drawer, opening it with a metallic crunching of rust against rust. I didn't ask her to slow down for me, no... but it was that, or leave me to die. We both knew the stakes, and which one of us was meant to be out here. Caliber moved down to the next drawer, apparently seeing nothing in the first. This one stuck, even after being pulled on. Grunting in frustration, she eventually slammed a hoof into it with uncharacteristic expression. The drawer relented then, barely held together as it was.

Her face going from slightly contorted back to neutral might as well have been a smile on somepony else. Cautiously, I ventured a quiet, “What did you find?”

Scooping something out of the metal box with a hoof, she held up a small glass bottle filled with a red liquid. “Healing potion.”

“That's good news. Hopefully we won't need to use it,” I joked weakly.

“Mmhmm,” I got in response, as she put the bottle into one of her saddlebags, then checked her PipBuck to verify. She stopped then and gave me a significant look. I thought it was significant anyway, or maybe that's maybe my mind playing tricks from remembering what she asked right afterward. “You ready to keep going?”

It took a few moments of pause before I could give her a nod.

&-*-*-*-&

With the reception area searched, we'd moved on along the only path available to us, a doorway to the left, leading to a series of offices. With nothing else to do, and her assurances that there were no killer robots in the vicinity, we decided to look through them one-by-one. Maybe I should have been keeping quiet, but talking to relieve my nervousness was better than staying silent and making the threat of being torn apart by soulless automatons seem that much more real.

"One large school of thought held that one would always have some alternative interpretation of one's mark and by extension, their special talent. However, their detractors accused them of wishful thinking." Callie for her part didn't look thrilled by my history on the philosophy of cutie-marks, but she was probably just looking out as always. This subject was absolutely fascinating, so that must have been it.

Without a change in expression to judge by, I continued on, "And thus we see how it applies to the raiders. For example, what is a pony with the cutie mark of a skull with a knife through the eye socket supposed to do with his or her life? Become the wasteland's premier eye surgeon?"

That got a response, as she stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a hoof help up. "Are you saying they aren't responsible? Because I'd say they should just not be fucking raiders."

"Well I'm not taking all of the ethical culpability from the, but it isn't quite that simple. What about the foals?"

"Foals? You think they have children and raise them?"

"That would be ridiculous, no. However, some must give into...carnal urges I suppose-"

"Shit, Orphic, carnal urges? Who talks like that?"

Continuing without the interruption, "Regardless: some raider mares must get pregnant and at least occasionally raise their children. What of them? Should they be blamed for the life they were raised into?"

"Why the fuck are you trying so hard to defend them?"

"I simply thought it was an interesting ethical quandary..." I said dejectedly. How can we live out here and not examine the implications of the things going on?

Callie snorted, and kicked the box open, starting to rifle through it. "Yeah, well I have enough bullshit on my mind without your quandaries."

It was silent for a while after that, save for the noises from somewhere else. The sounds of creaking and grinding metal had never stopped, but they seemed to be getting slowly louder now. Whether that meant they were getting closer, I couldn't tell, but hoped not. It was probably just my imagination, worried and intent on making me feel never safe.

The room contained nothing of value, it seemed. A few pieces of twisted scrap metal, and clipboards and mugs, strangely untouched by the entropic force of two hundred years of radiation and decay. I wondered whether I could find the spell used to treat them. Now that would be something worth recovering. A real step towards civilization.

"Nothing here, Orphic. Let's go," she said while standing back up to her hooves. A low buckling sound came from overhead, and my perked up as I shifted over towards the nearest wall, staring up. The ceiling gave no sign of giving way after a few moments.

"...Callie?"

"Nothing on EFS. The building's old. That's it," she answered in a neutral tone after making an effort of sweeping her eyes back and forth over the surrounding walls.

"It could be structurally unsound! It could collapse on us at this rate!" It's true yes, the ponies of Old-World Equestria engineered everything with the assumption that it would need to stand up to an attack by Zebras at any moment, but I wasn't sure I could trust their work would be expected to last centuries!

She gave me a flat look with, dark wasteland-brown eyes. "Rather take your chances outside?"

"Touché. But...what about the robots?"

Now, her face took on a tiny note of smugness. "I thought you didn't listen to stories about the wasteland?"

"Quiet. I've started. There could very well be robots left over, that's what this factory produced during the War after all."

"I've been watching for them, but nothing yet,” she answered. That much at least I could be assured of. She'd never been the sort to let her guard down unnecessarily, always watching out for the next sign of hostility. High Caliber was sadly unusual that way. Of the hoofful of ponies in the village's makeshift militia, she was one of a very small few who'd taken it nearly so seriously. The others would wander in a lazy patrol most days, knowing nothing was likely to ever be out of the ordinary. There were even occasional grumbles that there was no need for dedicated guards in such a small community, and that those who chose the job weren't pulling their weight. Though, that accusation was leveled at myself on occasion as well, though never to my face. Whereas her gun was practically shining, and meticulously maintained, the others were fine with carrying rusty ones that were visibly pieced together from scrap and held in place with duct tape. It served perfectly well for the occasional bout with wildlife, but against intelligent and violent raiders... well, the events spoke for themselves. A nagging thought at the back of my mind wondered whether harsher discipline and training might have made a difference, but I sent it away. It was an awful thought, to blame the dead for what happened. Regardless, one of the mares treated the task with unwavering sobriety, and if I were in a grateful mood at the time, I would have thanked my lucky stars my friend was the one I'd been with that day.

Of course, that's not the sort of thing one just says out loud. I kept it to myself, not appreciating that a part of me thought I was being unfair, and knowing she wouldn't openly return the sentiment regardless. We continued down one of the longer hallways, sadly not differentiated from the others except that most of the doors were blocked by rubble where the ceiling above had collapsed . Stepping our way carefully over the piles of stone and old plaster, progress was slow, and more than once I nearly slipped and cut one of my legs on jagged bits of stone. If I had known I would be thrust out into the wasteland the morning before... well, I likely would have dressed in the same pre-war clothing. It's not as if I owned anything resembling armor... a fact I was likely going to regret at this rate.

My right ear twitched just then, hearing a faint, mechanical whirr from up ahead, too far to see in the gloomy hallway. I didn't even get to worry if it was a robot before two hind hooves slammed into my chest with an audible thud, knocking me down and into a recessed doorway. My back legs buckling at the impact, I fell backwards and slammed my back into the wall. I sat there moaning at the terrible pain, as my assailant leapt into the alcove with me, the spot where she'd been standing against the hallway erupting with chips and dust in a hail of gunfire. “Owww...” I rubbed a hoof on my back, sticking close against the wall. The gunshots were concerning of course, but I had to make sure my back wasn't broken.

“Alternative would have hurt a lot worse,” she replied without looking over. Too busy unslinging her rifle, and checking that the safety was off. See, I recalled that step, I wasn't entirely hopeless. The satisfaction was cut short by a wince as I shifted into a sitting position. Caliber sat with her back against the wall, apparently unconcerned that it was still under a barrage of lead, or at least not showing any concern. She moved her gun around the corner and fired blindly, a few metal-on-metal pings rewarding us with the knowledge she'd hit something.

That something possibly being a robot that might not care very much about being shot! I tried to sit up more, but couldn’t move from the small space for fear of being shot. “W-what is it?!”

“Turret,” she snapped back, not looking to bother wasting focus on the distraction. A moment later, there was a halt in the shooting, and without wasting a split-second of her window of opportunity, she leaned out enough to see and became perfectly still. Her trigger hoof moved, firing three short bursts at the turret in mechanical succession, without even moving when the machine starting again and grazed her between her second and third shots. After the third burst, a small explosion sounded, and along with the cessation of eardrum-shattering gunfire, let us know the threat was over.

She blinked and let out a breath, visibly coming out of the targeting spell-induced fugue. When I came to Pipbucks, that much was a sell-point I was aware of, from her demonstrations and an old Stable-Tec pamphlet I'd once found, that advertised the feature. Now that the danger was passed, I stood on wobbly legs, leaning against the wall to help me up, and peeked out at what was shooting at us. “Ow!” I lifted my foreleg where it'd caught a light kick from my friend. “What?”

“Did I say it was safe?” She accompanied the surely-rhetorical question with a look I was beginning to associate with the emotion of Why do you have to make keeping you alive so hard?, and I sat back down contrite, my ears falling. She hadn't said, and for all I knew there could have been two. It was... unpleasant to think that at this rate, I might likely die from some very casual, very stupid mistake. Not to mention embarrassing for somepony used to being the smartest around, now being scolded, rightfully.

High Caliber sighed, a small sound, but obviously intentional and pointed. It means more coming from somepony one knows isn't prone to making gestures of disappointment like that, and was enough to add insult to injury. Disappointment always has hurt more than anger. She didn't say anything else on that topic, but instead put a hoof to her right shoulder gingerly and muttered. “Damn...”

I perked up, curious. “What's the matter?”

“Grazed,” was the laconic reply.

Worried now, I moved closer and concentrated on forming a spark of magical energy at the tip of my horn. It was a simple light spell, effortless to manage, and the light came on a moment later, shining like a lantern in the small space. Where she'd indicated, I looked and saw the truth of it myself. One of the bullets had passed in between two plates of armor separating her upper foreleg and shoulder, and blood seeped slowly but surely out of the wound. I had absolutely no medical training, but sense enough to know not to take chances with something like this. “You need a potion.”

She lifted her left hoof and tapped a button on her PipBuck, turning one of the dials, then shook her head. “I only have the one. We can't waste them on every cut and scrape-”

“-No, listen,” I interrupted, raising a hoof. I could endure the withering glare for this. “If we don't use it for this, then what? What if it gets infected, hmm? We both know-” my damnable voice cracked slightly on the word, “-how difficult it is to find medicine for that.”

Callie stared for a moment, but relented, moving a hoof to unbuckle her saddlebags. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “Fine. Sorry.”

We were both sorry that it had to be brought up, but there was no use dwelling on it then and there. I gave her the potion, which she drank without further argument. Not long after, we continued, salvaging some bullets from the turret, but finding nothing of significant value in the surrounding rooms... an unfortunate trend here.

&-*-*-*-&

A few more of the rooms were the same, in having practically nothing of value to them. After working our wall down the hallway though, one of the office doors we found was locked. The nameplate had long since fallen and turned to dust, but the rotting wooden door stubbornly refused to do likewise, and no matter how I turned the knob, it wouldn't budge.

"Done yet?" Caliber intoned from behind me. I sighed and backed away, exaggeratedly waving my foreleg in welcome for her to try.

"It's locked, or stuck maybe. It won't open." She didn't even try to handle, glancing at it before she turned around and bucked the door. It cracked and shifted visibly, throwing out clouds of dark brown and orange dust, but stayed closed. I opened my mouth to say 'I told you so,' but halfway through the thought she dug her forehooves in and kicked out again with her back ones. With a small crash the door flew open, now with the addition of a few hoof-sized dents.

She hardly even looked back, but there's no way I didn't notice that ghost of smirk. I must have loosened the door a little. Inside the office was dark, and Callie went in first, turning on the Pipbuck light so she had some light to see by. A second after she entered I heard scuffling hooves and a quiet, "...shit...You might wanna wait out there."

Well, of course there's no way that wasn't going to pique my curiosity, so I followed her in anyway. She really needn't be so overprote-"AHHH!"

I hit the ground and already started crawling-no, dragging-myself out out the room and away from that! A skeleton in tattered pre-war clothes swung from the ceiling. From in the room somewhere I hardly heard the obligatory "I told you to wait."

"Quiet!" Is all I managed to eloquently attempt in reply. Of course, shaking and terrified, it likely didn't come out coherently, or sound very intimidating if it had. Obviously, I had seen death before, or rather, its aftermath. Elder ponies had passed peacefully, and my own father had as well, though not quite so easily as from old age...I shuddered to think of that time again now, or my more recent brush with lives ended in front of me. I didn't particularly care at the time whether she'd warned me! Two centuries old or not, the point is I'd seen far more corpses than I ever needed to for the rest of my days already!

The thought sounded defiant and rang with conviction for only a moment, before the hollow echo became apparent. Like words chosen carefully to hurt someone who'd wronged you, it was satisfying for a moment before it sunk in. ...Everypony I'd known was gone, all but her, and this was to be the rest of my life now, wasn't it? Scrounging around in buildings that would have been condemned in a better time, crying like a foal at the inevitable corpses strewn about. Sinking down, I laid my head on my tired forelegs, too worn out to even scold myself for my embarrassing display. I hardly paid any mind to the rattling and dragging sounds behind me.

When I broke from my thoughts in a few moments, I noticed she'd left the small office and was standing over me. Towering, not through a menacing demeanor but through a sheer difference in size and build. Even as foals, the difference was easy enough to see, she was built for strength and labor, me for sitting inside and reading books. In those days any game of ours involving an element of physicality put her at a distinct advantage, which may have influenced why I spent more time indoors as well. Part of her build could be chalked up to being an earth pony. A legacy of a time so long ago it's difficult for even what passes for a historian in the post-apocalypse to comprehend, far, far more distant in time to the ponies during the War, than we were to them. A time when working the fields was the sole domain of earth ponies, before machines and industry began to replace the labor of hooves. With that said, I'd always admit that even if she were a unicorn, I'd still be slim in comparison.

When I looked up at her face, she'd just finished saying something...which I had missed entirely. "Um...pardon?"

Shifting very slightly, her expression changed from restrained care to restrained care tinged with slight annoyance. The sort of facial movement that said without words, 'I'm tryin' real hard to be nice here, don't make it harder on me.' In what way, she did clarify with words, though a typically laconic string of them. "I moved it."

There was no need to ask what she meant. The terrifying pile of dusty bones had to be moved for the sake of my fragile disposition it seemed. “That was utterly unnecessary,” I said with a small 'hmph'.

She just shook her head slightly and turned to walk back into the room. We both knew it wasn't true. Me cowering out in the hallway with the dirt and the crumbling plaster was proof enough of that. Contrite, I lifted myself to my hooves and slowly walked into the room. Little more had survived here than anywhere else. The ceiling had a hole leading up to the next floor, though neither of us had any way to get up there. The room was mostly taken up by a wooden desk, which itself was covered almost fully by a boxy, machine that I recognized as another personal terminal. Callie could have at that. Besides that, a very long-dead pot for a plant, and a few cracked frames that had fallen to the floor, the room was sparse. Besides the bones piled in a corner behind me.

I tried to keep my eyes forward, despite being drawn to look at the unceremoniously-treated remains. If I looked too much and too far, I'd begin seeing them as my own. No, those thoughts couldn't be allowed to come up again. Staring at a spot on the wall in front of me only barely let me resist the pull of the bones, but thankfully the clacking of hooves on a keyboard provided a distraction.

She was way ahead of me, already sitting at the terminal and tapping away, no doubt trying to get past whatever security that poor pony had protecting his workspace. That practically summed up my understanding of the process though. I was never any good at electronics in general, and found myself disinterested in any machinery more complicated than a watch or a toaster, Pre-War artifacts or not. Sure, I'd rather they be preserved for that if nothing else, and the information inside them was certainly valuable, but when it came to accessing it...well, give me a good book any day.

Callie, on the other hoof, somehow excelled at this solitary class of intellectual pursuit.

“You might want to look.”

To: Oiled Gears, R&D
From: Profit Margins
CC: Nopony
Subj: Apple-bot

What the fuck are you doing down there? I just saw the memo from Legal; you still haven't changed that Sisters-damned robot's chassis? Let me make this absolutely clear: a senior MoT official has directly told us that while the Ministry Mare approves of the concept, we're not authorized to use her image. Do you even understand what you're doing? Don't give me that bullshit about your personal project either, it's a marketing gimmick and we both know it. Have it changed by Monday or I swear you're going upstairs and explaining to the boss why the government is suing us in the middle of a war!

I wanted the see the next entry, and clicked a few buttons tentatively. None of them did anything. “Um...”

With a small groan, she stopped looking through one of the desk drawers and deftly tapped a few keys, bringing up a new block of text, before going back to what she was doing. “...Thanks.”

To: Profit Margins
From: Oiled Gears, R&D
CC: Nopony
Subj: Apple-bot

I can absolutely assure you, that the EHDS is not, as you say a “marketing gimmick” or my “personal project”. I find both insinuations quite frankly insulting. Once the kinks are ironed out, the Ministry will be impressed enough to reconsider their stance, however in the face of your doubt, I will alter the appearance of the automaton after my work on the EHDS is complete. That will have to suffice for the Legal department.

Okay, even I would have a difficult time conveying that much pompousness through text. I tapped my hoof on the button that was supposed to go back... and nothing. Groaning I stood up, not about to fight with it again. “Well, I do wonder what that was all about.”

“You won't have to much longer,” she answered, looking at one of the frames on the wall.

“Hmm? And why's that?”

She tapped on the glass. “Look.”

I walked over to oblige, casting a simple light spell to make it easier to see. Apparently she'd found a map of the facility. A single one of the office was marked in red, and from that and the general location of it, far from the front entrance, I could surmise that it meant to show where we were at present. Which meant... my eyes followed the path out of the room to a nearby hallway a short walk away, which led to what was labeled as the factory's laboratories. That would be the best place, I had to agree, to find something of value. ...And answers to new questions.

Shortly after, we left to head straight there. Even being trapped there for the time being, I don't believe either of us wanted to spend too much more time than was necessary poking around. And from what the map seemed to say, the laboratories connected to a different section of the factory, which had a back entrance to the complex. Getting there would mean finding another way out, on the other side as the raiders. Just in case they hadn't given up yet.

Thankfully, no more of the robots accosted us on the short walk to the laboratory entrance. Though, along the way, we still moved slowly, and could hear scraping and clanking from nearby. The sounds would draw nearer at times, before dissipating, and so on. It was clear by that point that however many were left were probably aware of our skulking through the complex. That fact simply made our need to get through the laboratory and out to the back entrance more pressing. ...And hope nothing was in the way of that.

Despite the harrowing noises, we advanced through the hallways, leaving some doors that might have been still usable unexplored. Eventually the sounds faded again for a time, and the plaster walls gave way to tiles and what looked like time-eaten stone. The room we were in had a high ceiling, to serve as a vestibule between the offices and the research section. A collapsed desk sat off to one side, and across from it, on the opposite wall, was what looked like a bulky statue. Stepping closer to examine it, I saw that very little could be seen of the original metal, under a solid coat of rust. I was afraid that if I touched it, it might have collapsed entirely. Afraid, because despite the same decay that covered everything in the building, its significance was readily apparent. Though the plaque under the statue had eroded too much to be legible, the bulky, treaded shape was vaguely suggestive of an Equine form; enough to show that this was a very early Equestrian robot, or a faithful replica of one.

I let out a little gasp involuntarily, and started looking at it from different angles. How it worked wasn't of any particular interest to me, any more than any other machine, but it was a genuine artifact. It had to have been at least two centuries old. My companion stopped and waited without a word. Normally, despite her quiet nature I would expect her to ask me to stop wasting time...

…But there's a certain drive that comes with a special talent. I would not be able to blame Callie whatsoever, if we were to find an enormous gun somewhere, were she to express the feeling that she had an uncontrollable urge to use it. It's a cruel pony even today, especially today, that denies a pony access to what their cutie mark is telling them. So despite her no doubt growing impatience, and the feeling of her eyes watching me, I continued undisturbed in my examination.

I didn't know enough about robotics to judge when exactly this piece was from, but thankfully, I had an alternative to that. One of my simplest and most useful spells, and the one that earned me my cutie-mark. My horn glowed with a violet light, marshaling the focus and magical energy to produce the effect. The glow shifted to the lighter shade as it flowed from my horn to the antique machine and connected the two. A moment later, the thought came to my mind as a vague impression. Centuries. Another few moments brought another: Two hundred years. And a third again, Two hundred and five years. I looked back excitedly at the mare. “It's just as I surmised. It's from near the beginning of the war! This had to be one of the early experiments in Equestrian robotics.”

Raising an eyebrow, she answered with a simple, “Yeah?”

“Oh yes. If I had more time to analyze it, I could get down to the month...maybe more exactly. Composition, maybe even a few images...” If I had the time. Her expression gave the impression that I would stretch the limits of her patience were I to attempt it. And in her defense, there was some reason to believe the statue's descendants were violently opposed to our unintentional trespassing. “I suppose we should continue,” I admitted reluctantly.

She nods immediately. “Let's go,” the mare intones, gesturing toward the lab entrance past the foyer with her head. Without further hesitation, probably silently resenting the 'wasted' time, she began to creep there, staying near the wall. Not fully trying to move silently, but showing the same caution she had since the first turret. She tilted her head back to look at me from the side, if only to ensure I was coming along, and must have caught the wistful last look at the ancient work of art. I didn't hesitate any longer, walking after her.

Unexpectedly, she waited for me to come up alongside her, and as if grudgingly, started to speak. “Uh...so, what were robots before the war like?”

Little as it was, I was delighted to spend the next twenty minutes telling her every iota.

Disappointingly, the labs fared only very slightly better than the rest of what we'd seen so far. As much as, at this point, the biggest thing on my mind was leaving this place, it still might have been nice to find something of value. We'd walked past broken and bare laboratories, largely empty supply closets, and even one room on the outside that was labeled as some sort of "Terminal Mainframe", yet when we opened the door, only seemed to be a tangled forest of rust, adorned with wire thorns.

Eventually, we came to the central lab, and after Callie checked for anything uncouth with her Pipbuck, we opened the door to the long, rectangular, room. The ceiling was low, and the room stretched out with benches on either wall and in the middle of the space as well. At one point, this must have been extraordinarily impressive to the technically-minded. Both of us walked along the benches toward the other side, curiously leaning in to examine the things that hadn't simply been reduced to scrap over time. I saw some small tools, some of which were familiar, some sort of battery, and a glass... Nope! Backpedaling instantly, my rump bumped into the counter behind me. Whipping her head in my direction, Callie gave me a look with an unasked question, which I answered by meekly pointing a forehoof at the offending disturbing object.

She walked over and brought her muzzle near to look at the jar, bringing up the Pipbuck light. "... the fuck?" Inside, in a viscous, clear fluid, floated a disembodied equine brain, wires connecting the tissue to the bottom of the jar. I still had no desire to look after my first glance. "Why?"

I swallowed a lump in my throat and took a breath. "I have no idea. It's... sick."

She turned to look at me, though I wasn't facing her way. "Hey, you're not going to need a bag, are you?"

"No, I'm-" I paused to let a wave of nausea pass. "-I'm fine. Excuse me." Focusing on the other side of the room, I walked there, not thinking about the pony they got that brain from. No, not thinking about that, just focus on the wall, or the floor. The wall opposite the doors we entered through seemed to be a good place to distract myself. Most of that wall was taken up by a raised, circular, platform, which came up to about my knee, and above which was a technically pony-sized door. I write technically, because it seemed only barely tall enough and wide enough for a stallion of average height to pass through. Strangely as well, there didn't seem to be a handle of any kind, on that side at least.

To either side of the platform were more benches, with the left-hoof one containing a still-active terminal. I raised a hoof off the floor, looking back. “Um...” Unfortunately, my friend was busy rummaging through a cabinet, and didn't hear me, or react. Well, how hard could it be? I poked a key with a hoof and was met by an angry-sounding beep. Immediately, I withdrew it, then leaned closer to the screen. The screen flickered, and I began to read, scanning through a list of lines containing strange symbols not recognizable as Equestrian writing. Only the last entry was legible, and I gingerly poked the large key that seemed to be right here. The screen changed, and suddenly new text appeared.

Oiled Gears, Head of R&D
Log #22

Unbelievable! Absolutely unbelievable. Those myopic corporate Luddites cut our budget, AGAIN. They cited 'misallocation of resources', but it's undeniably meant to be punitive. My vision is that every farm in Equestria has one of our Apple-Bots to help harvest and protect our food supply, and they constantly whinge about legal concerns and minor bugs.-

From behind me I heard the sound of glass suddenly shattering, and jumped nearly to my hooves, before looking behind me and seeing Caliber reaching a booted hoof into a case mounted to the wall, and retracting it upturned, with a vaguely apple-shaped object resting on top.

"Spark grenade,” High Caliber said in what she likely thought was an explanation. She seemed pleased with the find, so I offered a polite smile and nod before slowly turning back to the screen.

The Emergency Homestead Defense System is integral to the automation! Once every Equestrian farm has one, our food supply will be that much safer from stripe sabotage. Granted, its inability to currently distinguish a pony from a zebra is problematic, but entirely surmountable. Once that minor issue is corrected, The Ministry of Wartime Technology and Applejack herself will welcome the resemblance to her.

I tapped the key to go back, slightly pleased that this terminal thing wasn't too difficult after all, and looked for any more entries. I have to admit that reading the correspondences gave me some investment in the ponies who'd written them. Pre-war primary sources and dreadfully rare, and pleasant ponies or not, I wanted to know what happened to these ones. ... besides their obvious ultimate fates, of course.

To my disappointment, the log I'd just read was the final and only usable one visible. I supposed, sobered, that the dusty skeleton we'd found would be the only semblance of closure to this story that I would come across.

... something else was on the screen however, and noticing it took me from my sad reverie. I began to read the next few lines with a chill creeping up my neck, as my friend came over to look over my shoulder at the screen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
EHDS_test: ENABLED
AB_status: UNKNOWN(ERROR#AB03)

AB03: ROBOT MISSING FROM STORAGE CASE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

"We might have another predicament..."

&-*-*-*-&

“And it has no chance of harming a pony?” I asked again, just to be absolutely sure.

She snorted. “No. Again, no. It's the point of a spark grenade. It works on machines like robots and turrets, and nothing else.”

“Well, excuse me for being hesitant about you having something with the word 'grenade' in its name ready to toss at a moment's notice, indoors.” I cast a look askance at the roughly spherical object hanging from the front of her armored vest, with a blue stylized lightning-bolt painted on its side.

“You'll be glad I have it when we run into that thing they talked about in the lab.”

“Don't say it as if that's inevitable,” I chided nervously, looking over my shoulder back down the hallway. Since we'd left the lab, I'd had a knot in my stomach that was growing by the step toward our exit. I wasn't nearly as sure as I pretended to be, that our confrontation was anything but inevitable. We'd seen it missing from its spot, and of course, if there was one more thing that could go wrong today, it would be that. It didn't help my nerves that every few minutes she would duck into a side room and have us hide, in case any of the red marks only she could see happened to be near us. ...Apparently, Stable-Tec did not consider some indication of range to be a worthwhile investment.

At least after today, I would have a new subject for the occasional moments where I'd fantasize about what I would say to famous ponies during the war, given the chance. I'm still sure that everypony does that as well from time to time, despite their denials.

“It just about might be,” she commented, coming to a halt with her hoof lifted out to her side. I stopped behind it and got ready to respond, before she pointed forward to a closed set of double doors. Looking at her PipBuck, she confirmed, “Exit's on the other side of that room. Something is in there, and it's not friendly.”

"It could be somewhere else in the building, couldn't it? We would need some truly awful luck..."

And so, of course it had to be true.

Fallout Equestria: In Defiance

by Convalescence

Prologue

Chapter 1: Irony

Chapter 2: No Plan Survives...

Chapter 3: In the Food Processing Receptacle of the Beast