> Fallout Equestria: Big Business
>  by Gallant Aegis
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 0 Introduction
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

War, war never changes. 

Regardless of what any pre-war ministry, washed history or psychology books tells you, since the earliest days of equestrian society, conflict was a part of everypony’s life, and ponies were never the fun loving, innocent, and peaceful individuals that those books made them out to be.

Ponies fought, waged wars, killed and enacted countless horrible events lost to the forgotten pages of history, both to others and to each other, and almost all of these wars were waged over resources. It is known to all that ponykind had battled the “aggressive” carnivorous griffins in order to keep their homes and family safe, it is also known that ponies had a long and bloody war with the zebras, the modern world itself still has proof of that, but, few know that in the days before the rule of the Princesses that ponykind also fought and killed each other in the days when resources were scarce, and each pony race formed their own societies and kingdoms. There are also legends of a powerful northern ruler that through the use of black magic, managed to enslave the entire Crystal Empire. While it is unknown if the conflict between the Princesses and the opposing party also involved military action, it has simply been placed down to being lost and underplayed in the history books. Nevertheless it was all real.

After the bombs fell, and the world took its familiar form, there was no shortage of conflict from individuals fighting each other for any bit of scrap that they could find, to Ponys who would just not let old hatreds die, or to the sick people who killed, raped, and tortured just for the fun of it. These stories are innumerable, with almost all of them were forgotten, and probably for the best. These were numerous, but incredibly small in scale, however recently to the all too long list of long bloody conflicts that the world saw, written in blood and in all capital letters two new big names were added, NCR and Germaneigh. Two nations, in the truest sense of the word, that through diplomacy, scare tactics, bribery, and let’s not forget violence unified huge parts of the world under one banner. Two ever expanding powerhouses, whose borders were destined to collide, and collide they did, a few years ago at the river Rein.

Thankfully, both powers quickly realized that their policies of ‘if we cannot get what we want peacefully, we shall send in the troops’  would not work against the other, since both of them possessed both large amount of pre-war equipment, the people to give them to, and the caps, to make them die for a cause that most of them did not actually believe in, or wanted to be a part off, so in the still between the two giants they decided to keep a cold war, a war of insults and monied interests.






"Oh goddesses...what...why did you...?" 

The words fell out of my mouth. I didn't feel anything when I hit the ground then there was the blood... so much blood staining my blue coat... getting into my mane, my beautiful mane!

So this is it, then. Dying. The feeling of the warmth being drained out of me.

Why'd he do that... why did the kid hit me with that spell... why'd he try to kill me?

I tried to save his worthless hide.

They shot first.

"he-lp" 

I think I hear hoof steps... is he coming to finish the job... it may have been him as my vision began to swim...

"Gallant! hold on!"

That's not the kid thats not solance... sounds like... 

How did it come to this...
> Chapter 1 Once Upon a time in Germaneigh
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Once upon a time in the magical land of Eques-”

“Wait, wait, wait...” the yellow-ish green filly interrupted the narrating mare. “Everypony already knows that story.”

“No, I don’t think they do. I am sure of it. Now, would you be so kind as to be quiet and let me tell my story, pretty please,” again the mare facehoofed as she realized she was trying to use the sad puppy eye technique against a blind person.

“You did it again, didn’t you?” the filly asked with a deadpan expression.

“Shut up, White-eyes,” one of the worked said. “Let the mare tell her story.”

“Yeah, shut up,” the rest of them joined in. “Carry on miss.”

“Thank you.” she cleared her throat before continuing with the story.

“So, as I was saying…”




Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria, or at least the northern part of it, in what could possibly be considered the northernmost NCR settlement, the small city of Haliflanks, a small company was undergoing a recruitment drive.

“Blue Rail Caravans is now looking for skilled ponies for both scavenging of pre-war resources, hauling of pre-war resources, and the guarding of the ponies who are busy with the scavenging or hauling of pre-war resources. Large groups welcomed, experience is a plus, but not a must.

Safe work, good pay, easy hours, free meals, apply now!

See Blue Rail Caravans recruitment headquarters, Haliflanks, NCR.

Bring your own guns and ammunition.
Signed, Management.”

These messages were all over bulletin boards, nailed to dead trees, and could be found plastered at seemingly random locations across multiple NCR towns all over the region, as well as on the sides of the roads, on pre-war billboards, on the sides of ruined carts and rusted vehicles, basically everywhere and anywhere somepony might come across one of them. Whoever made them invested a considerable amount of caps into advertising, so they clearly had the caps to keep their promise. That was at least what most ponies that came across the flyers thought. 

On the day of the recruitement, the town of Haliflanks was flooded with people who wanted to join, or who came here to take advantage of them. Some believe that more than two hundred ponies arrived on that day alone.

You had your standard mercs, and professional scavengers, who left quickly after they arrived, unhappy with what would be their cut, and of course the pickpockets who only came there to make these unhappy ponies even more so. But, the vast majority of ponies who came, and actually stood in the long lines, patiently waiting to reach the ponies that were in charge of signing everypony up, were your average wastelanders. Ponies not affiliated with any group or company, with little to no training, no jobs, no prospects, no caps, and the few of them who were actually armed, had either you standard wasteland varmint rifle, or some sort of small caliber pistol or SMG, most of them in need of repair.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. But out of the dozens of ponies there, there were a few of them armed with actual decent weaponry, some shotguns, and even some exotic weapons like an actual sword, a crossbow, a laser pistol, or even a recharger battle saddle. And one could see even a few pieces of actual armor amongst the scrapings and rags.

One by one the ponies moved in an orderly fashion toward the company ponies, a few basic questions were asked, like what’s your name? why do you want to join? do you know that you might be away for a couple of days? or do you accept these conditions, or this salary? All very standard stuff for a NCR business.

In charge of one of the lines, behind a desk and an ever growing pile of applications stood a greyish blue mare, with a black and white mane and tail, that for over an hour was forced to ask the exact same questions, and receive, for the most part the exact same answers, probably thinking to herself that she would kill for a little distraction. Sure there was the odd pony, like a pegasus dashite, or a white and pink feathery hippogryph, and a few unicorns, but most of the candidates that she had to signup were scrawny earth ponies with earthly colored manes, tails and coats, and even some unicorns that shared the same color scheme.

“Next pony, please,” the mare said after she finally finished signing up the dashite, who, apart from name, Optic, her dashite mark, and the fact that, to put it in her own words, she can shoot things really well, she was just as bland and uninteresting as the rest of them.

“Name?” she asked, not lifting her muzzle from the piece of paper sitting on her folding desk.

“Solance,” a somewhat masculine voice replied.

The mare lifted her gaze to eye the pony, but all she could see was a tuft of yellow hair and a purple horn at the other side of the table. She stood up, just to make sure that the boredom was not affecting her vision, or she was going insane, she was not.

As she saw in front of her stood a purple unicorn colt, a bit on the chubby side, with a golden mane and tail. To his sides two very big magical energy weapons were mounted on a heavily modified battle saddle, that if it was any larger it would be bigger than the colt. Backpack on his back and a miner’s helmet tied to his neck, which was odd yet didn’t compare to his clothes - a pair of very tight boxers, with a very distinctive pattern more fitting for a gentlepony of the night, or a dancer in one of the more “special” places in the NCR, and a pair of sunglasses.

“Are you sure you are in the right queue, kid?” the mare asked, not exactly knowing how to react to the pony in front of her.

“Pretty sure,” the colt replied, looking up at the mare. “Blue Rail Caravans recruitment right?”

“Right...” the mare trailed off before sitting down. “So… what’s with the getup?”

“Huh?” The question caught him a bit off guard. 

“Oh, these… I was told that people would pay more attention to me if I wore them,” Solance said with an innocent enough smile on his face. “Do they work?” he asked looking at the mare, and then at the ponies behind him.



“Now I personally wasn’t there, and this has happened some time ago, but legend has it that that conversation made so many ponies uncomfortable that after Solance signed up, only one more person stood in line after him.”

“Everypony noped away at the speed of nope,” the filly, White-eyes said, barely contain her laughter. “Clever way of making sure you get the job, make sure no one else who is sane sticks around, cause the crazy ones get turned down by the ones in charge. Brilliant I say!, Brilliant!”

“Shut up!” everypony but the storyteller yelled out.

The filly just pouted, and did so.

“Now as I was saying...”




“Right… Um… I really don’t know what to say to that. Maybe?” the mare shook her head in an almost childish manner before carrying on. “Just put your mark here [2], and go over there.”

“Sure,” he said grabbing the pen with his telekinesis and writing his name on the sheet of paper before returning it and trotting in the direction the mare pointed him in.

“Next pony, please,” she could not help but follow the colt with her gaze, mostly out of curiosity and confusion than anything else.

“I guess that would be me...” a voice with a bit of an odd tone.

Turning toward the sound of the voice, the mare noticed a rather odd looking griffin walking towards her, no other pony anywhere in sight. The griffin, or hippogriff to be precise he had back legs were those of a pony, except for the feathery tail, had white feathers with bright pink tips,  and a baby blue coat covering its pony side, and I say its because it was really hard to tell if it was a he, or a she. While its mannerism, and colors may have made one believe she was a mare, its body structure and voice seemed male, though it was almost like it tried to make its voice a bit higher pitch to disguise the fact, so just to not make it awkward lets just call it a he.

“Bright Flush sweety,” the griffin said towards the mare, “former mercenary if you can believe it. So how about you just give that little clipboard over so I can fill it out. These things are a little bit more useful than your cute little mouth.”

While there was nothing particularly naughty in the words, there was something in the way they were said that caused most ponies to stop what they were doing and just look at the two. The mare turned a hot pink, mostly from the stares of everypony, while the griffin was just busy filling in the form, before passing it back to her.

“See... I told you, my claws make short work out of anything~”

The mare coughed nervously as she took the clipboard back, and made herself busy going over the information. A few snickers, sighs and whistles came from all around, making the pink mare even pinker, while the griffin only huffs and ruffled his feathers.

“Anyone of you lovelies know a place to stay?” he asked everypony.

Grabbing all her files and pretending to be in a hurry, the mare made her way towards the main building, but not before telling Bright Flush, as well as everypony else that they can use the company barracks for the night.

Inside the barracks there were about forty double military bunk beds, and roughly that many lockers and footlockers, but only a little over a dozen ponies and one hippogriff, with so many beds and so few people to sit in them, ponies could just sleep wherever they pleased. Everypony, and griffin, just chose a bed and made themselves comfortable, for many of them it probably had been days, maybe even months or years since they slept in an actual bed.





“Now again I wasn’t there, and the details are a bit sketchy, but there are some accounts of the existence of a jewel encrusted… toy…” the mare said with a blush, “present in the possession of one of the individuals, but it was never mentioned, or talked about...ever...again.”






The night was pretty uneventful, the ponies there got to know each other a bit, but rarely were more than a hoof-shake, claw-shake, or hoof-bump  and a name were exchanged, the ponies there knew each other in only the broadest definition of the word.

Morning came rather quickly, and unknown by those who slept, some ponies came in and woke up only particular individuals, gesturing to them to grab their gear, and not make a sound as to not wake everypony else up.

Somewhere around eight in the morning, the mare came in to wake up her group. Maybe she complained to her bosses, or just had the luck of the draw, but somehow she ended up with the most colorful group of individuals, or maybe she was the lowest on the company totempole and she just ended up with the weirdos, we may never know.

Inside the room were probably five of the strangest individuals the Wasteland would ever see. First you had a white unicorn with a red mane, that went by the name of Rapid Repair, he wore a mechanic outfit, as well as a hoodie that kept his face mostly hidden, and carried a crossbow on his back as well as a quiver with barely a dozen bolts, he was either the best shot in the world, or did not plan too far in the future. His cutie mark was a stretched out retractable ruler.

Secondly there was a unicorn mare, Black Tea, just like Rapid she was pure white, but her mane was black, just like her namesake. She wore a black pre-war businesspony outfit, that was rather well kept, despite being over 200 years old, and a matching fedora and sunglasses. All painstakingly chose to accentuate her already attractive physical characteristics. Her weapon of choice though did not make any sense, or maybe it did and no one could piece it together, but regardless the mare carried around with her a silenced .22 SMG, a rather heavy weapon, but small, subtle and with very little kick. A steaming tea cup was her cutie mark.

Optic, the dashite mare from before had a grey coat, and a dark blue mane and tail, sporting a duster on top of a military flak vest, and a pair sunglasses. Just like Black Tea, she was also rather attractive looking, the fact that she was a pegasus only adding to her charm. She carried a rather simple scoped varmint rifle  as her primary means of protection. Obviously any trace of her cutie mark was removed when she was branded, but according to her, it was a snipers crosshair, and she was, again according to her, one of the best damned snipers the Enclave had to offer, and when she left their entire sniper division cried.[3]

Bright Flush wore a tribal armor, and assorted helmet, that was clear for everyone that weren’t his to begin with, but has since made his own, and carried a particularly long .357 revolver, and a sword that somewhat matched his outfit. Surprisingly enough, despite being a griffin he had a cutie mark, and a complicated one at that. It could be best described as being a blend between the typical male and female symbol, with a heart instead of a circle, in rainbow colors, and with sparkles around it [4].

Then there was Solance, the blond colt that somehow scared away almost everypony from joining. Lantern helmet and sexy underwear, magical energy battle saddle, recharger rifles to be more specific, and no cutie mark on his flank whatsoever.

And lastly there was the mare that was supposed to be in charge of them. Gallant, as she introduced herself, wore what could be best described as typical mercenary attire, with a fade, worn out patch haphazardly attached to it, a bandoleer across her chest filled with extra ammo for her heavily modded .32 rifle that she wore on her back. With a utility worker’s lantern helmet on her head, and a pair of binoculars tied around her neck, she looked by far the most competent and well equiped out of the lot.

“Good morning, everypony,” Gallant said as they were getting out of bed. “And congratulations, you are now fully fledged members of Blue Rail Caravans, your official company designation is Team 4, I am Gallant Aegis and I have been chosen to lead you for the foreseeable future.” She was trying to act cheerful, but it sounded more like a well rehearsed speech, this was not the first time she was in charge of ponies.

“Since this is your first day on the job, it is my job to inform you about the more important and sensible particulars about the mission we are about to undertake together. But before I do that let me remind you that you all signed confidentiality agreements and copies have already been sent by night courier to the NCR central government for validation.”

Everypony looked a bit confused at the mare, but before they could voice their questions or concerns she continued.

“Now then, about the mission at hoof. Until recently the journey towards the city of Tailgrund, as well as the city itself was extremely dangerous because of the multitude of raider groups that inhabited the area, and used to call that city theirs. However, we have it on good authority that they finally killed each other and the city, and all its valuable pre-war technology and knowledge are just right for the picking, and we, at Blue Rail Caravans, are going to extreme lengths to have first pickings. According to our sources, we have about four to five days before the news spreads to our competitors, and about two more until they can organise a massive expedition. Now, this is where you come in. We are… were, in need of ponies to do the scavenging, as well as protect themselves from any danger  that may show itself. Even if the raider menace is gone, there are other dangers in the wasteland. Alright then, we are the last group to depart, so lets try to hurry up, and show everypony else that group four is the best.”

Her little pep talk was met with a general, meh, attitude, as everypony was just busy dressing up and making sure they did not forget anything.

“Great, now that everypony is ready, lets move out.”

The more she talked the clearer it became that she had some sort of an accent, but nopony could place it.

“Say,” Rapid asked after about an hour or two of walking. “Where exactly is this Tailgrund place?”

“Oh, right. Getting from Haliflanks to Tailgrund is easy,” Gallant replied almost instantly. “You just have to follow this road, it shouldn’t take us more than a full day or so of light trot. There are a few places along the side of the road, some pre-war diners and rest stops, but they hold no interest to us, and have been picked clean a long time ago.”

“A whole day of walking?” Bright Flush asked, his voice showing traces of annoyance. “If I knew it was that far away I would have worn something lighter.”

The rest of the group shared his annoyance of the long journey they had to undertake.

Some minor chit-chat happened between them, but the only thing worth mention would be Black Tea’s attempt at asking Gallant if they couldn’t be closer than friends, to which Gallant promptly replied with a clear nope. Let just say judging by her attitude, people rarely said no to Black Tea, especially when she asked if they could be more than friends.

“Apparently not everypony is up for fun and games this morning I guess,” Optic added with a snicker to the even more annoyed Black Tea. The group made good time even with Black Tea’s huffing and puffing, as she tried to move as fast as her little sexy flank would take her.

After a hastily eaten lunch, they resumed moving at the same speed, and made it to the rest stop with time to spare, where they spent the night. From the location designated as their campsite, one could easily see the tips of the skyscrapers that Tailgrund was famous for, tallest among them, Hoofway Tower, a testament to the strengths of pre-war engineering and technology, a monstrous, by comparison, building that stood well over 2500ft tall [5].

Their destination in sight, the group went to sleep happy that, because they made good time, they would be getting some extra hours of sleep.  Things couldn’t be better...
> Chapter 2 Welcome to Tailgrund
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun rose to signal the start of a new day, an act that which only five years ago would have filled the world with so much wonder, and hope, now, especially for the younger of the group, was just another early summer morning, and early it was.

Since they had made good time, everypony expected that they could use it to get extra hour or two of sleep, but that was not the case. Bright and early, at six to be more precise, Gallant was already dressed, her gun swung across her back, and was all too eager to wake everypony up so that they can get closer to the rest of the teams, who had a great headstart from the beginning, and whose team leaders were probably pushing them just as hard, if not harder.

Moans and groans came from the ponies as they slowly complied and got up. A short breakfast and in less than half an hour they were already on the road.

The second part of the journey was significantly shorter than the first, and if they had kept to their planned schedule they should have reached the rendezvous point in less than twelve hours. Thanks to Black Tea’s attitude, they made it in nine and a half.

With each step the group took, more and more of the city revealed itself, and, it goes without saying that, for most, a city that was designed to house about half of a million ponies, and provide them with working spaces, in industry no less, as well as all the creature comforts a pre-war Equestrian citizen expected, it was a sight to behold. And the scale of their mission, scavenging such a place came quickly into view, and it never seemed more Emence, or Difficult.

After traveling through the suburbs for a bit, just blindly following Gallant, since she seemed to know where she was going, they heard the very thing that no one wants to hear when one is in a completely new environment, relying on the guidance of a pony they know little to nothing about.

“Something doesn’t seem right.” Gallant said, not realizing she was thinking out loud. “Guess they must have walked at a faster pace as well,” she tried to reassure everypony. “Okay, listen up. The other teams have moved onto the secondary meeting place further inside the city, lets all take a short break and rest up before we go join up with them. We move out in ten.”

With Germane precision, exactly ten minutes later, Gallant told the ponies that it was time to go, and the group was heading to their new location.

Before they even began walking Gallant took this time to make sure they all knew what to do.

“Normally, Mister Deep Pocket would have briefed you, but since he is not here that responsibility falls to me. Like I said before we left Haliflanks there may still be some dangers here, especially now that we head deeper into the city. So, I would want all of you to be extra careful, and tell everyone if you spot anything that could be dangerous.”

The group just nodded in agreement and were on their way.

The suburbs of Tailgrund were weirdly designed, and felt just wrong, they were unlike any other post-apocalyptic Equestrian city the ponies were used to. The streets were unnaturally wide, so much so that all six of them could easily walk side by side down the street, with enough space between them to fit six more, the pavement was just as disproportionately wide by comparison to the rest of the cities in Equestria, and aside from that, almost all the houses had a rather large unfenced front yard. Literally the only things that stood in their ways were a few downed power poles and trees, not a vehicle or ruin, in sight, for the most part even the roads looked well. No dead bodies or skeletons of any kind, no rubble, almost no craters and no more bullet holes than anywhere else in the Wasteland. This city almost looked livable.

The ponies, for their part were vigilant, but from time to time their curiosity got the better of them, and split away from the group to investigate one thing or another, but only for the briefest of moments. They were curious, not stupid, never mind suicidal, unlike other curious ponies that the Wasteland seemed to punish their curiosity with cruel and sadistic pleasure.

During one of their minute detours, the hippogriff, Bright Flush, called everypony over, because, for the first time since they entered the city he had found a corpse. Well three, corpses actually. Three freshly killed corpses that were stripped bare, and seemingly moved out of sight to what could be described as a random building, and it was only because of the roll of the die [6] that he chose that particular house to look into.

The group headed over there to take a look, and to a certain degree, in a kind of sick and twisted way, were reassured that even this place has a drop of normalcy. The illusion of this place shattered, and everypony returned with their hooves firmly planted on the ground to reality. A few dead bodies rarely shocked anyone those days, and even the colt did not seem phased by it. But Gallant, Gallant was shocked by what she saw, and urged that the ponies would stop wasting time staring at the corpses and just get a move on.

Nopony paid any mind to her reaction.

After a few hours of walking through the suburbs, one identical empty street after another, the group was actually a bit surprised when, from the distance, they could hear both the sound of rushing water, and the more familiar sound of ponies talking. The ponies there, a dozen or so in numbers, seemed quite agitated and shaken up, as they seemed to be arguing about something, right beside the river.

Knowing who they were, ponies recruited by the company for this particular job, they approached them. As soon as someone from the larger group spotted them everypony turned towards them, guns within hoofs reach.

“Who the fuck are you?!” one of the ponies shouted, his voice a bit shaken, and his tone hostile.

Nopony answered.

“Gallant you are in charge, you take this,” Solance said poking her.

“I asked who the fuck are you?!” the same pony asked again, his voice a lot more hostile and confident.

“We are with the company!” Gallant replied.

“That’s what a raider would say!”

A very confused look appeared on everypony’s face from the smaller group, and, while no one said it, the question in everypony’s mind was “the fuck?”

“We’re not raiders,” Gallant tried to reassure them.

“That’s what a raider would say!” was their reply.

“Look at us! Do we look like raiders?!”

“That’s. What a raider. Would say!”

The more the two of them talked the more on edge everypony got, the words “itchy trigger hoof” would be a fitting way to describe everypony’s mood. As ponies got ever closer to the point where the only next logical step would have been open fire and the side that was left would decide who was right, Solance took it upon himself to try to disarm the situation, literally.

At a point where any small move could have resulted in a bloodbath, one tiny purple unicorn, thought it was a good idea if the other’s group weapons would just be yanked out of their hooves by magic. A quick scan of the group and a pretty clear picture came to mind.

Out of twelve ponies, one was armed with a shotgun, three of them had rifles, one had some sort of SMG, while the rest of them had either some sort of low caliber pistols or simple melee weapons, mostly knives and clubs.

“Listen,” Solance whispered to the mare standing beside him, Black Tea. “This may get out of hoof really soon, if we act now we can take them by surprise and take their weapons, then they would have no choice but to listen. So if i take the big gun and the rifles, can you take the SMG and some of the pistols?”

Black Tea nodded in approval before focusing her entire attention towards the ponies in front of her, more particularly the guns they had.

On Solance’s cue the two of them gathered their magical strengths, and put their plan in action. Now, telekinesis is a powerful spell, very versatile, and is one of the easiest spell a unicorn learns, for most it comes as natural as flight does for griffins and pegasi, but not many unicorns use the spell for lifting, and wielding, more than one, maybe two small objects, and rarely is it used against an opposing force, so even if it was a simple plan, that used a simple spell that both of them were familiar with, the task itself was hard, and, as with anything else one does, failure is always an option.

Solance on his end did alright considering his age, out of the four weapons he sought to remove from the other ponies reaches, he managed to take all but one of the varmint rifles, however Black Tea failed, and failed miserably in her endeavor. For some reason, stress most likely, she failed grabbing the guns, her telekinesis grabbing instead the hoofs of the ponies who she was trying to disarm.

No sooner had the first pony realized what has happening, that four shots echoed through the air, and one of the ponies fell down, his clothing no match  for the three .32 caliber rounds that hit him straight in the chest, leaving was dead.

“What the?!” the four ponies that suddenly found themselves grabbed shouted in unison, causing the rest of them to reach for their guns. A few realized quite quickly that their weapons were now floating a short distance above their heads surrounded by a glowing purple aura, the very same aura that enveloped the purple colts horn, and of course, that one of them was now bleeding out on the ground, well beyond saving.

At the very same time, Solance’s horn’s brightness intensified, and in the blink of an eye a thin, see through purple magical film separated the two groups, he was too late with the cast to stop the bullets. The shield, although large enough to protect most of them, it was not big enough to span the entire wide gap of the street and sidewalk they were on.

“Are you retarded?!” he snapped towards Gallant, after the split second it took him to notice the smoking gun. “You blew our only chance of talking them down!”

“They were going to shoot us, you fool!” Gallant yelled back, her voice betraying a rather distinctive accent.

Not waiting for their new “enemy” to get a chance to fire back, and possibly not used to fighting beside an actual magic wielder, Optic took to the sky and landed on the angled roof of a nearby building, using it, and a chimney stack as cover, pulling out her rifle and taking aim. While Rapid dove for cover behind a chest high brick wall, instantly pulling out his crossbow, and without even bothering to aim, fired it blindly into the crowd, hitting a pony in the shoulder, before hiding himself completely behind the wall and reloading his next bolt.

Scared, and now panicking, most of the wastelanders shot wildly towards the group, a few stray shots grazed Rapid, but of the shots were directed towards the four people that only had a soap bubble between them and bullets that were looking for blood.

What came next, shocked all but the colt.

Something many of you might not know about magical shields, especially unicorn ones. Their decent against heavy weapons, however they are beyond amazing against small arms fire and weapons designed to put a large number of low caliber rounds down range hoping to hit something, or a weak or unarmored part of the target. Some of you might have heard stories about the magical shields of alicorns that stop all but the most powerful of weapons, unicorn shields are not like that, they work not by stopping shots, but by slowing them down.

Out of the dozens of rounds that were put down range, barely a hooffull passed through the magical shield, and a few of the ones that did had so very little momentum left that they just blinked harmlessly off what little armor the ponies behind it had. Some shots did connect, especially the rifle ones, and they did pierce, however all injuries were superficial, on par with some of the more nastier scrapes and bruises.

Bright Flush flapped his wings and in a moment he was airborne a couple of feet above the battlefield, just high enough to get a birds eye view, and to chose his target, the riflepony, but before he could dive and slice his head off with his sword his train of thought was interrupted by a loud sound, and his attention was now on the relatively small house on the other side of the wastelander group.

Pouring out from its doors and windows a horde [7] of raiders emerged, thinking clearly even in the midst of combat, Bright Flush dove towards a raider, knocking him to the ground, and slashing him over the chest for good measure.

Still charging, the raiders were trampling everything, yelling and screaming obscenities, as well as describing in great detail what the plan on doing to the corpses of all the group.

The air crackled as two superheated laser beam fired from Solance’s saddle, the surrounding air becoming hot, but the shots, aim towards the charging raiders were off, hitting a wall behind them, the next pair of shots just scorched a nearby tree. Not actually accomplishing anything he returned back to the safety of his shield, giving the guns a chance to recharge.

Black Tea’s horned flared again, this time her magic focused on the very wall Rapid was hiding behind. She knew what she was doing now, and the spell worked like a charm. The brick of the wall became like putty, and molded by her magic, created a personal bunker for her to hide behind, which she did. From a little gap she intentionally left in the wall to use as a firing slit, she aimed her SMG towards the SMG wielding wastelander, took aim, fired, and no sooner than one bullet left the barrel, that the all too familiar and hated click was heard. Her gun jammed.

“Fuck,” she said as she took cover and tinkered with her gun.

Moving towards the edge of the shield, Gallant took aim, four more bullets fire, took down one more wastelander, reloaded, as if it was nothing, just like shooting bottles on a fence.

“My goddess!” Solance yelled “Your company hired these ponies!” His words fell on deaf ears, all were focused on the battle and did not have time for anything else.

“The company is dead,” Gallant replied plainly.

The raiders reached the wastelanders and began to hack and slash at them, as the scared wastelanders, now shot at from one side, and assaulted from the other, were being forced to rout, and just take wild shots at whomever they could. Their weapons fared decently against the raiders, but any shot directed at the magical shield just fell to the ground harmlessly.

I would like to say it was an epic battle, but for the most part it was a lot of the same.

Black Tea and Gallant fired shot after shot at the wastelanders,  the latter taking down one or two of them before needing to reload, while Black Tea quickly discovered that there is a reason why SMG’s a very niche and not often used weapon, as time and time again, it either missed wildly, or jammed.

Bright Flush, engaged the raiders in melee combat from their rear, and fared quite well, it helped a lot that except for a few stragglers, the raiders were focused on killing the weak wastelanders, and not dealing with the actual competent griffin.

Solance maintained the shield, and took shots at the raiders with his saddle, but only hit once or twice the entire battle, but when he did, the smell of scorching raider assaulted the snouts of those around the fighting. While Rapid took his time aiming his crossbow and got some good hits in both raider and wastelander alike, even putting a few of them down.

Between the savagery of the raiders and the accurate shooting of Gallant, the wastelanders did not last long. One of the last surviving ones made a mad dash for the river, hoping to at least stand a chance of survival, when the sound of a high power rifle, rang out, and the pony’s head exploded, chunks of it were sent flying to shore.

With them dead, the group’s attention focused towards the raiders, the shield is dispelled, only to appear a moment later, cutting off three raiders, from the rest of the group imprisoning them. The remaining raiders were dispatched with surprising ease shortly after. Several times the raiders broke the shield, but Solance just casted the spell again, and eventually the raiders just gave up.

The battle now over, most of the group wasted no time scavenging the corpses, looking for valuables, and considering if they should bother keeping the crappy weaponry the wastelanders and the raiders were using. 

In a stroke of genius, probably caused by the pain of the few shoots he took, Rapid went about stripping the raiders and the wastelanders, and de-raidefing the raider armor. First he removed the blood, gore and guts, as well as any other pony bits a raider might have decided to keep as trophies or integrated it into their armor, bones and skulls, particularly unicorn one, or at least the horns, ears and teeth, or fangs from other creatures, and so forth. He then wiped it clean for good measure, before proceeding, to tie, sew or just have them held in place with nuts and bolts and wishful thinking, pieces of regular clothing. He might have picked it up from an earth pony mechanic sometime before coming here.

However Solance seemed a bit out of it, and for some reason he just seemed to be staring towards Gallant.

“So,” Rapid said while he was still busy thinkering, “what should we do with these raiders?”

“I don’t know,” Bright Flush answered as he was busy wiping the blood of his sword on a body, “kill them?” He seemed to be putting less of a show now, and his voice seemed more masculine, and less forced.

“I think...” Black Tea started to say, but was rudely interrupted by a scream, followed shortly after by the sound of glass shattering.

Everypony turned their head towards the place the scream originate from, and caught a glimpse of Gallant, her body filled with a dozen magical knives already vanishing from sight, falling backwards and breaking a window, Solance besides her, horn glowing, rage clearly visible on his face.

“You MURDERED them,” was all he said before walking away and leaving the pony to her death.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Rapid yelled dropping what he was doing. Everyone just stared at the scene for a while, not knowing exactly how to react.

“What the fuck!?” Black Tea shouted at Solance, before breaking into a gallop to aid Gallant.

When she reached her, she saw Gallant laying unconscious in an ever expanding pool of blood and glass shards, with ten deep stab wounds spread across her entire body, bleeding profusely.

“She murdered them,” Solance said to her, in a low, almost monotone voice, but Black Tea did not care for his words, she was more busy trying to administer first aid to the dieing mare.

“Someone bring me a healing potion!” she yelled out, “magical bandages, fuck there is so much blood! Anything!”

Everypony looked at each other, but it soon became clear that nopony had any medical supplies on them, nor did they find any on the dead.

“Hurry!” Black Tea yelled again.

Rapid just took a pile of rags he had laying around to be used for the armors he was working on and rushed it over to Black Tea, who used what little medical knowledge she had to at least stop the bleeding, and keep her alive, even if for a little while longer.

“She is stable for now,” she said after finishing bandaging up Gallant. “But without actual healing, a potion or some bandages, I don’t think she would last long.”

“Where the fuck are we supposed to find a healing potion?” Rapid asked. “We’re in the middle of a city we know nothing about.”

While they were busy arguing and brainstorming where they could possible find medical supplies, Solance walked up to the trapped raiders, who have long since given up trying to break out, and had a front row seat to the violent magic show that the colt put on just a couple of feet in front of them.

“Push your weapons towards the edge of the shield,” Solance yelled at them.

They did just that, and with a flicker of his horn, the shield shunk, separating the raiders from their weapons.

“Who sent you?” he plainly asked the raiders.

Normally one would expect the raiders to speak nonsense, or curse, or talk using only screams and threats, one does not expect to have an actual conversation with a raider.

“What in the world was that?” one of the raiders asked in a quite eloquent tone, catching Solance off guard.

“Wha...” was all he could manage to say.

“Your camarade, why did you use such a gruesome spell on her?”






“Bwahaha...” White-eyes just burst into laughter completely killing the mood and breaking the flow. “Really?! Really? Really! Gentlecolt Raiders? Really!?”

“They prefered the term Shirespearean Raiders [8] in all honestly.”

“Shirespear? The pony that said: To squee... or not to squee. That is the question? That Shirespear?”

Everypony looked at the filly.

“I can tell you are all staring at me. Stop it!” she said defensively. “I read… Or at least I am read to.”

“Right… carrying on...” 






“Why did you use such a gruesome spell on her?” the raider asked Solance.

“She deserved it, she killed ponies, innocent ponies.”

“So did we, and you only shot at us, and even spared us three until now.”

“But you are savage raiders, no one expects anything else from you.”

“Hey, we take offense to that,” one of the raider said.

“Yeah, just because we’re raiders that doesn’t mean we’re savages,” another added, while the last just nodded in agreement.

“My apologies then,” Solance replied. “I thought all raiders were bloodthirsty, murderous, rapists.”

“Oh, we are bloodthirsty and murderous, and while some of us are rapists, we are not savages. We only do it because it is the best way we know to survive.” The other two nodded in agreement.

“Right… So… what are you doing here, I heard that the raiders killed each other out and the city is now safe.” 

They just chuckled at the notion. “My dear boy, you were either given false, or misleading, or maybe even falsely misleading information.”

“Either that or they could have just interpreted the evidence wrong.”

“Quite true, quite true. Yes, that might just be the case. Hmm… gentlecolts I think we might be able to get out of this certain predicament.”

Everypony, including the one’s that have been listening in to the conversation for a while, raised an eyebrow.

“We could not help but overhear your current situation, your desperate need for medical supplies to aid your injured friend, and your life-threatning lack of local knowledge. We can provide you with both, but before we discuss this any further, we would like to know something. If there were to say, raiders between you and the medical supplies what would you do to them?”

“Kill them,” Black Tea said, voicing the opinion of all.

“I see… very well. First to clarify a few things, we did not kill each other, we stopped fighting because we joined forces. Most of the lesser raider factions were coerced into joining one of the larger ones, bolstering its strengths, and causing a chain reaction that made more and more tribes join. So, to put it bluntly, we, and by we I mean we the raiders, control this city. Now, for your other, and more pressing problem, we know of an encampment just a short distance away, and if you are willing to release us, we will be more than willing to take you there.”

“What’s the catch?” Black Tea asked, again acting like the voice of the group.

“No catch, the deal is exactly, as stipulated we tell you where you can get medical supplies, you grant us our freedom. Simple. No catches. No strings attached.”

“Right...” Solance said looking towards the rest of the group, they shrugged.

“What are we going to do with Gallant?” Black Tea asked.

“Well if you give me some time, and some materials, I could fashion a stretcher,” Rapid replied.

“Umm… I could carry her,” Solance said, surprising everyone. “I can grab her with my magic, keeping her completely immobile.”

“Fuck no!” Black Tea exclaimed embracing the unconscious Gallant, gently stroking her mane. “We ain’t lettin you anywhere near her”

“Look, you said time is of the essence, so why wait till we can gather the right materials, and then for him to make the stretcher, than carry her the old fashioned way, where every little bump in the road would worsen her condition.”

“Okay, you little psycho, talk. First you wanted to kill her, and now you want to save her?”

“I wanted to kill her, yes. But she did not die, even if she should of. So if some higher force wanted her to live for now, who am I to go against that. Look, I am offering you my aid. You can take it or not. It matters not to me. But it may matter the world to her, it may be the most important decision for the rest of her life.”

“Fine,” Black Tea said after a moment. “But I am keeping my eye on you.”

> Chapter 4 Our Suburban Nightmare
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the ruined corpses of the Raiders strewn across much of the blood soaked ground, the battle was now officially over.  Solance quickly set about healing the wounded however he could, wrapping those with relatively light injuries in bandages and those who were more worse for wear, wrapping them up ever so slightly tighter.  Seeing as the young colt had the barest of knowledge in the medical field, the whole notion of wrapping a wound in some slightly dirty cloth came quickly to him, surprisingly enough.

A rather large pile of guns, caps, and a lot of raider armour was just amassed in the room where the injured ponies were recovering. A lot more than the group could ever hope to carry. In true wastelander fashion, Rapid and Solance were keeping busy by taking everything apart, seeing what pieces were still usable and just using them to repair the rest of the guns, same with the armour. In the end they were left with a rather good arsenal of low caliber guns, and an even greater pile of raider armor.

Rapids little project came to fruition and he, Solance and Black Tea were now sporting actual protective clothing that only remotely resembled that of raiders. Bright Flush decided to keep his own gear, while Gallant was still out of it.

“Ugh,” she eventually said as her senses slowly began returning to her, accompanied by all the physical pain that she felt. “You!” she yelled, pointing her hoof at Solance, before instinctively reaching for her gun, luckily for him somepony had the foresight to at least keep it out of her hoofreach.

“Calm down, lovely,” Black Tea said, making Gallant realise that she had been resting her head on her lap. 

She blushed, embarrassed by the whole situation, and tried to get up, but the loss of blood made her immediately regret her decision and fall back down.

“You stay away from me,” she plainly said.

“Gallant,” Bright Flush said, walking close to the two mares. “A lot has happened while you were out. How about you come with me, have a drink and I will tell you all about it.”

“Fine…” Gallant tried getting up again, but this time Bright Flush was there to catch her and the two of them walked out of the building, she leaning against him, with the annoyed look of Black Tea following them till they entered the warehouse and were out of her sight.  She sighed in exasperation.

While the two of them were away, Rapid tinkered with raider garb and some flattened tin cans, Solance was busy checking the Butchers, his attention focused on the freezer which seemed to actually be running, while Black Tea moped about, unsure of exactly what to do then other then possibly contemplating and re-evaluating her life choices.

About half an hour later the two of them returned, a rather obvious smile on both of their faces, and what was even more reassuring was that Gallant was able to walk on her own.

“So what do you think?” Solance asked Rapid, as the two of them were looking through an open panel inside the freezer. “Do you think we can remove it?”

“I don’t really know, I’ve never worked with magical talismans before, but the rest of the machinery seems simple enough.”

“True, true, so… do you think we could remove it?”

“Maybe... maybe… we could try.”

“I think we should try, this thing might be rather valuable, I think somewhere around a couple of hundred, or maybe a few thousand caps to the right buyer.”

“So shall we?”

The two of them started taking pieces of plumbing and wiring out of the wall, trying to get towards their prize, a still functioning ice talisman, or cold talisman, it wasn’t really clear. However, it proved to be more complicated than they had initially thought, with systems,  but when removed would shoot out icy cold air, forcing the would-be talisman liberators to put it back in its place.

“Take out that pipe!”

“No, remove that wire first!”

“No, that’s wrong! That would cause the whole wall to freeze.”

“They've been at it for ten minutes,” Black Tea said aloud to anypony in particular. “I don’t know what they’re up to, something about a talisman or something.”

It only took Gallant a few moments to realize what the two of them were arguing about.

“A cold talisman, huh,” she said out loud. “I think they're on to something. Right, I think I will try to help them, they clearly can’t manage on their own.”

“You go do that,” Bright Flush said, slapping Gallant over the flank.

“Eeek!” Gallant was caught a bit off guard by his gesture, but smiling, she turned her head back towards him. “You’re lucky I am partial to spankings” she said with a wink and a sly smirk.

Black Tea just sighed again, completely disappointed by the entire situation.

Between their combined intellect, skill, and technical know-how Gallant, Solance and Rapid, managed to remove the part of the cooling system which contained the talisman, but their eagerness, stubbornness, and the slight communication issues between Solance and Gallant caused the three of them to mess it up, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“Fuck!” they all collectively shouted looking at the broken shards of talisman. “Well this sucks.”

After a few moments of crying internally, the three of them headed in the main room to join the rest.

“So now what now?” they asked each other.

“Well we can’t stay here,” Solance informed the group.

“Why the fuck not?” Black Tea asked sounding a bit annoyed.

“Look, we came here at the advice of raiders. They know we are here, they are alive, and they may come here with some of their friends.”

“Good point,” Gallant said, annoyed that she is having to agree with Solance.

“I personally think our best bet would be to huddle up in a random house some distance away from this place.”

“Just pick a random house?” Rapid asked.

“Yep,” Solance replied. “We don’t know of any friendly locations, or a way out of this town. So a random house would be our best bet.”

“I, don’t know what to say to that. I guess that could work. Does anypony have a better idea?”

Everypony shrugged. “Not really.”

“Right then,” he continued. “Lets pack up what we have, put some distance between us and this place and find somewhere to rest for the night.”

Not really paying attention to where they were going, the group ventured deeper into the city, getting as far away from the raider camp as possible on hoof, eyes and ears wide open, searching for a place to camp for the night.

After a few hours they had come across two possibilities: one was a two story brick house which was boarded up and showed some signs of previous fighting in the form of bullet holes, while the other option was a partially collapsed Mega Mare Supermarket.

Lured by the promise of possible food, and thinking that the supermarket was an easier place to defend, the group chose to go there. They walked up to the front door, slowly opened it up, and entered a small room. The paint was peeling off the wall, a bulletin board, which had a few weathered pieces of paper on it, likely advertisements from a long time ago now long since lost. But the most interesting thing, apart from two sets of double doors that lead into what they guessed was the main room, was a single, lonely, busted, pre-war, sparkle cola vending machine.

Gallant’s face instantly brightened, all pain and suffering gone from her mind and body at the sight of the wondrous machine and at the treasures it held inside. Her muscles tensed as every step she took towards it seemed to take an eternity, but in the end it would all be worth it. Slowly she kneeled down, lifted the sleeve of her mercenary outfit, and gently shoved her hoof into the small compartment where once, glorious ice cold bottles of sparkle cola once fell, and with a technique perfected over the years she skillfully slid her hoof through the mechanism, reaching ever so further away, and yet ever so closer towards her potential prize.

Then she felt it. The all too familiar texture of the sparkle cola bottle. There it was. Right. Out. Of. Her. Reach. A few inches, just a few more inches and sweet, sweet, the gloriously refreshing bottle of sparkle cola would be in her grasp, then with a single motion she would twist off the cap, that glorious liquid would once again be felt by her lips and mouth, then that cooling sensation would make its way down her throat and into her stomach, then… well she didn’t really care what would happen to it after that, but right there and then only one thing mattered, and that thing was just a few inches away. But try as much as she wanted, wish as much as she did, the damned bottle still chose to defy her and stay just out of her reach.

Her calm and serene expression changed to one of anger and frustration, and nothing, not even the shaking of her flank got her any closer to that elusive bottle.

“May I help you?” Black Tea asked, while everyone was busy taking in the spectacle. Except for Solance who had his ear firmly pressed against the door, listening for something.

“Fuck off,” Gallant said to her, struggling not to shout at the pony who was distracting her from the most pressing of matters. “I’ve got this. If only I had something to make my leg a bit slippery then maybe...”

*Fizz! Gulp, gulp, gulp. Ahh...*

Gallant’s ears immediately perked up at the all too familiar sound combo, and immediately turned her entire body, zeroing in at the place that sound had originated from, not caring that her hoof was still inside the machine.

Her was leg bleeding slightly now, but it mattered not. What actually mattered were the four… make it three, bottles of sparkle cola that were now levitating mere inches above her head. One bottle was empty, but signs of its consumption clearly visible upon the unicorns muzzle.

Immediately her head snapped back toward the machine, and her anger only grew as she noticed that the metal plate that guarded the precious treasure inside was neatly folded away, just like it was nothing more than a flimsy sheet of paper, and the treasure she struggled so hard to retrieve had been snatched from literally within her grasp, by a stupid unicorn with her stupid magical horn.






“Poor mare,” one of the workers, an earth pony stallion said. “You unicorns have it so easy.”

Everyone, including the blind filly, was now staring at him.

“I mean you have magic, you don’t have to do anything, you just think about it and poof there it is.”

“You clearly don’t know how magic works,” the mare and the filly said in unison.

Surprised, they both looked at each other, and couldn’t help but chuckle.

“If I were to start explaining everything that is wrong with that sentence, I would have to ask somepony to build me a house and see about starting a garden. So, since I am not in the mood to start farming, I will just go on with the story, if you don’t mind.”

“But the filly gets to interrupt you,” the stallion mumbled to himself.

“Did you say anything?” the mare asked, in a rather commanding voice causing the stallion to tense up.

“No ma'am,” he quickly replied.






“Want one?” Black Tea casually asked the pony that was more or less laying on the floor.

The look of anger in her eyes quickly changed to one of defeat as she simply answered “yes, please.”

“Sure, but only because you asked nicely,” she said with a wink as she levitated two bottles over to her, and put the last one into her saddlebag.

“Thank you,” Gallant replied, taking the two bottles, carefully putting one in her saddlebags, and drinking the other in one breath, and the releasing an exaggerated, almost seductive “ahh….” causing everypony to blush, except for Solance, who could not help but look at her with annoyance.






“Now, I’ve kept saying Solance was a colt, and the ponies in the story have kept calling him a kid, but, at that time he was about 12, maybe a bit closer to 13.” [10]

“And he was still a blank flank?” White-eyes asked, visibly surprised.

“Yes, however keep in mind that he neither acted like a child, and because of the barding he was wearing his flank was not always visible.”

“I guess...”






“Would the two of you just shut up?” he said in a hushed tone. “there are ponies in here. Maybe raiders.”

Everypony moved up and pushed the side of their head against the door, trying to hear something.

“Ugh,” a muffled voice was heard. “Tell me again why are we in this shithole?”

“Nevermind that, why are we so far away from the path?” another asked.

“Must I spell it out for ya?!” a third said. “Caps, you dumbasses! Caps!”

Everypony on the other side of the door leaned in closer, and pressed their faces even harder against the door, seeing how the pony said the magic word, twice.

“Look,” the last one said in a more calm manner. “Look, its simple, the…”

*Thump*

“What the !?” Everypony in the room said as they turned toward the door to see a small pile of armed ponies just laying flank up, face pressed against the ground.

“Fuck,” a muffled voice came from within the pile, and almost immediately a few rays of purple light could be seen emanating from underneath the mass of flanks, limbs and feathers as a magical barrier formed between the wall and a shelf.

“Shoot ‘em!” one of the ponies yelled, as everypony dropped what they were doing and reached for their guns.

The pile quickly found its hooves and untangled itself as ponies headed for cover, or went towards the sides of the shield that Solance conveniently enough made small enough to allow ponies to shoot from the sides, but wide enough to not allow any of the other ponies to move around.

Shots were fired from both sides, but the shield took the blasts quite effectively, the enemies for the most part were armed with 22 pistols and SMG, weapons of such a low caliber that could barely pierce the shield, same with the 9mm guns.

The other side however, by firing around the shield had no trouble hitting and killing their foes. While Solance, Gallant and Bright Flush were busy exchanging shots with the ponies they could only assume were raiders, Rapid decided to sneak around the rows of shelves in order to take cover behind a more sturdy looking counter, so he could snipe without a care. Unfortunately for him, not only did he leap before he looked, but somepony else had the same idea, and poor rapid came face to face, or muzzle to barrel to be more precise with a pair of shotguns.

In a split second, four things happened. The word “fuck” was said, his horn flared grabbing the shotguns with his magic, the shotguns were moved away from his face, and the raiders pulled the triggers.

Five feet, Rapid flew through the air a whole five feet. Never in his life was he happier that he found some tin cans only a few hour earlier, the assortment of material that made up the raider armor, and the pieces of tin cans he riveted in place underneath it, however uncomfortable they felt rubbing against his coat did in the end save his life. He was still bleeding heavily, and had passed out from the blast, but he was alive, if just barely.

With an almost maniacal grin on her face Black Tea was clearly taking pleasure in using the flamer she recently acquired to inflict great pain and suffering  upon these bad ponies. But, unlike the previous owner she was not foolish enough to get up close and personal with her targets, opting in return to levitate the weapon up to them and then telekinetically push down on the release lever. Pony, after pony, after pony was set ablaze by the superheated gas, but she decided to try to set everypony on fire rather than completely burning one to the bone, and the plan worked, until one pony had a bright idea, and just bucked the flamer out of her grasp and out of her sight, before diving after it.

As the fight continued, the raiders were slowly chipping away at the shield, and one of them actually put the flamer on, and rushed them planning on getting payback for her fallen comrades. She got a bullet to the back of her head for her troubles, and the flamer was once again in Black Tea’s hooves.

By the time they managed to completely destroy the shield, out of the dozen or so raiders, only two were left alive and when they noticed it they, surprisingly, did the smart thing and bolted out the side door, Solance and Gallant giving chase. 

Each of them took a pony in their sighs, Gallant in the more conventional way since she wielded a rifle as opposed to a saddle, took aim, and started firing at them. It wasn’t easy hitting a running target, especially when they were moving through a parking lot, but if one puts enough bullets, or laser beams, down range they are bound to hit their target eventually, and that was exactly what happened. After about half a minute of firing, they both managed to hit their targets, killing one, and turning the other to ash.

As the two ponies were making sure there was no one left alive to tell anyone where they would be setting camp for the night, Black Tea managed to stabilize Rapid using one of the bandages they soaked in healing potion, while Bright Flush was picking the raiders clean.

To his surprise, the more he shifted through their belongings, the less it looked like they were actually raiders. Their weapons were adequately maintained, their armour, if one could call their clothing armour, was in decent condition as well, clean, maintained, rather similar in design, no tire parts, or pony parts mixed in. Their coats were decently clean, as were their manes, if these were raiders, then they were the fanciest raiders anypony ever saw.

“Hmm these guys don’t seem to be raiders” Bright Flush said thinking out loud, “Well we got the stragglers” Gallant called out across the supermarket as Solance floated the bodies of the two fleeing ‘raiders’ inside, “Shhh! Everypony listen!” Bright Flush said as he urged everyone to be quiet. “I think I hear something.”

They did, and true enough muffled noises were heard coming from the back room. In an actual competent manner, Solance, Gallant and Bright Flush got ready to storm the room, and after the hippogriff kicked the door open, the three of them went in guns at the ready.

And there, right in front of them stood something they never expected to ever see [11]. In front of them, bound and gagged, with his face on the ground and his rear hoisted high in the air pointing towards the door, stood an orange feathered griffin, with dark hair covering his behind, dressed in what could be best described as medical garments that seemed to be lifted over his head, revealing his tail.

The muffled sounds were coming from him.

The three of them, three of the most mature and serious ponies in the wasteland struggled really hard to not be both curious about the position the griffin was in, and to keep in their chuckles.

From her belt sheath Gallant pulled out a bayonet and cut the griffin lose, removing the gag on his mouth.

“Danke, dass Sie verpassen” he said to the pony that unbound him with a thick accent. “Sklavenhändlers,” he said before spitting on the ground. “Ich kann mir nur vorstellen, Freund” Gallant responded.


Turning towards the two still sitting in the doorway he noticed the expression of confusion on their face.

“Entschuldigung… Ich… I mean sorry,” he started speaking in common Equestrian, but retained his accent, it did not seem that Equestrian was his first language.

“Kein problem,” Gallant whispered to the griffon as she helped him get up.

“Seeing that you freed me, and not yet knocked me out, can I assume that you are not slavers?”

“That would be right friend. I am Gallant, this is Bright Flush, and the two ponies outside are Rapid Repair and Black Tea,” she said as she stretched her foreleg out, gesturing to the griffon to make his way towards the main room.

“My name is Gravenclaw, and I thank you all for releasing me. But please call me Graven,” Gravenclaw introduced himself in front of everyone.

“No problem, Graven.” 

“I see that your friend is injured,” he said looking towards Rapid. “May I?”

Black Tea moved away letting Graven Approached the bandaged pony.

“All right friend, let us have a look at you. Hmm… Shotgun shot to the chest, close distance.” He used his claw to peek under the bandage at the wound.

“Oh no, this won’t do!” he exclaimed as he started removing the bandages. “You have to first remove the bullets before bandaging up.” He took a whiff of the bandages. “Healing bandages huh? They are good, but no substitute for a potion or an actual medic. Now you continue to remove these things and put them on the counter over there while I go grab my tools.”

Everypony gave him room as he moved past them and onto an adjacent room. Inside there was a locked footlocker, that he just took his claw toward and cut the rusty padlock off. From within he took out a metal box with a serpent coiled around a stick as well as a canteen and a small stone, as well as a small pistol that he pocketed, a pair of oddly looking pieces of metal, and a red beret with a pink feather on it as well as a pair of glasses that he put on.

“Now then,” he said as he returned to Rapid. “Yes, just as I though, the wounds have already begun to heal. How unfortunately. I’m sorry to say herr Rapid, but this is going to hurt.”

From what we quickly found out was a field medical kit, he produced a leather belt, folded it twice and told him to bite on it. A loud gulp was heard from Rapid, but the good pony followed his doctors orders and did just that. 

During that time Graven focused on the piece of stone as he rubbed the tips of his talons onto it causing everyone, Bright Flush in particular to cringe at the sight, as well as at the sound it made.

“Now then herr Rapid, you should lie down. And please try not to move to much, I would hate to have to cut too deep.” 

Rapid’s eyes were wide in surprise, but before he could say or do anything Graven was already holding him down with one claw, while cutting into him with the other right where the wounds just started to heal, inserting two talons into the wound in order to grab the little metal ball.

“There we go,” Graven said after as he held the tiny ball between his bloody talons. “See it wasn’t so bad, only two dozen more to go and we can see about bandaging you up again.”

Surprisingly enough the whole ordeal lasted less than a few minutes, but it may have seemed a little more for Rapid.

“All done,” he added after he cleaned his wounds with clean water from the canteen, and reapplied the magical bandages he removed.

“Now then,” he continued. “Anyone.. I mean anypony else has any injured they want me to take a look at?”

Everypony’s answer was a resounding “no!”

“So… have you’ve been a slave your entire life?” Black Teas asked causing everypony in the room to stare at her. Except Rapid who was too busy sobbing after the ordeal he went through.

“Nein fraulein, I mean miss,” Graven corrected himself. “I have just been recently captured by those… slavers.”

“These guys?” Solance asked pointing towards one of the nearby bodies, then taking a look at the griffin continued. “How the fuck did they managed to capture you? But more importantly why did they leave you with your armor on?”

“Huh?” everypony said surprised, then, after turning to look at Graven noticed the military flak vest he was wearing underneath his coat.

“Ah, keen eyes little one. As for your questions, yes these were the ponies that captured me. As for how, sadly I would have to admit that they have caught me unaware while I was sleeping. And lastly I think the reason they left my keep my armor was that they probably consider me valuable.”

“Or they were incompetent,” Solance added.

“While that may be a possibility,” Graven said wiping his glasses. “I would prefer to believe they considered me a valuable prisoner, rather than them being incompetent, it makes my capture far less embarrassing, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I guess so. So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Valuable,” Solance clarified.

“My dear boy, I am a skilled medic, a rare skill in this world no matter where you are from.”

“Right, well anyway, unless anyone has any problems, Graven, I would like you to spend the night with us. There is safety in number after all,” Gallant spoke for all of them.

“I have no problem with that,” Bright Flush quickly added.

“Neither do I,” Black Tea said as Solance and Rapid just nodded in agreement.

“As far as safe places go, this place is pretty safe, so I will go search the office. Maybe I will be in luck and find some mattresses or moldy pillows,” Solance said as he headed towards the other side room.

After hearing that, Gallant subtly nudged Bright Flush when she thought that nopony was paying attention to them. Bright Flush was paying more attention to the rather muscular griffin who was washing up after the minor operation that he did on Rapid, than he was to the mare beside him. Eventually, after noticing that at one point Bright Flushed was licking his beak seductively, she couldn’t help but be annoyed at him. A rather forceful “friendly” hoof to the shoulder, brought his attention back to her.

“I think they had some sleeping bags with them,” Graven told Solance. “Maybe we are in luck and they are there.”

Bright Flush looked towards Gallant, who just stared back with an angry, albeit deadpan expression.

“Oh, come on!” he just told her.

“I don’t think he is interested hun,” she somewhat calmly said.

“Hmm?” Graven turned towards them. “Did you wanted to ask me anything?”

“Actually...” Bright Flush started before finding himself with a hoof in his mouth.

“No, not really… We were just...”

“Found them!” Solance exclaimed, saving Gallant from having to finish that sentence. “Six of them, under the desk. Oh, and some food. Sweet.”

The prospect of a bed to sleep in, and of food to eat got all their attentions, as Bright Flush was getting ready to head over, Gallant stopped him, and gestured that they had to talk. The two of them took a couple of steps into the room where they found Gravenclaw and closed the door behind them.

“One can still try, right dear?” Bright Flushed asked.

“You can try, but it will be your fault if you fail.”

“Oh, but you know he can’t say more than no,” he replied with a cocky smile.

“We just met the guy, are you sure we should ask him?”

“You need to stop worrying so much dear. What the worst that can happen? Look, I still have a little bit of it left,” Bright Flush said taking out a half empty bottle of whiskey.

“Later when the kiddies are asleep, and Graven had a little to drink, when he is a bit more… open minded, we’re going to let him in on our little secret, and maybe, if were lucky, we’re going to have ourselves a little bit of fun,” Bright Flush said with a devilish smile.

“Maybe...I’m just a little unsure” Gallant gently pushed the bottle down. 

“Look, we’ll just ask him. If he isn’t interested, then no harm done eh?”

“Alright.”

“Okay then,” after taking both a metaphorical and physical step back, he went on. “I’m sure it’ll be fine ” His tone was a lot calmer and softer. “As long as you're okay with it we’ll give it a go, if he’s not interested then we can have a go at it.”

He took a few steps towards the door when he felt Gallants hooves wrapped around his neck in an embrace. “Just...be...subtle.”

Bright Flush just nuzzled her neck. “I will be, a little... like... this...” he said as he moved his claw through her mane, down her back, moving it lower and lower.

Gallant stiffened up, her face a bright read, her breaths shallow.

“Sorry Bright Flush, not now… but maybe later,” she said in little more than a whisper, trying to catch her breath.

“Could have fooled me,” he said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, could have fooled me as well.” She chuckled back, and both of them returned to the rest of the group, big smiles on their face.

“Anything good happened?” Black Tea asked, noisier than ever.

The two looked at each other for a bit, then in unison turned towards the mare and answered, “maybe.”

Everypony received a sleeping bag, and Gallant even volunteered to cook up some of the canned food they found from the slavers. Warm, 200 year old noodles with some iguana bits and some pieces of canned baby carrots never tasted better.

They talked a bit during dinner, got the boring stuff out of the way first, like who would stand guard, Solance got the middle shift, with Gallant and Bright Flush the first two, but after that the discussion, headed off in random directions.

They talked a bit about Graven, and how he was from Germaneigh, hence the accent and the odd words he was using, Gallant admitted that she was from there as well, to their surprise both Rapid and Black Tea were from Central Equestria, around the greater Manehattan area to be more precise. While Bright Flush and Solance both answered that they’ve been traveling most of their lives so they’re not from anywhere in particular. They did not know who seemed less believable, but if they did not want to talk about it then that was their choice.

And sometimes the conversation sailed into really weird waters.

“I’m telling you, there are ghouls on the moon!” Bright Flush said as he took another sip from his bowl of noodles. “They forgot the last astroponies up there when the war started.”

“What?” Gravenclaw asked, not knowing what to believe.

“What are you… what?”

Gallant was just laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, while Solance seemed to not be paying any attention to anything the ponies were talking, he was just staring at the flickering  light bulb that was illuminating the room.

“They never confirmed nor denied it,” Black Tea said jokingly, adding more fuel to the crazy fire. “But I want to believe.”

“Yes! Yes! Solar radiation is not that different from magical one!”

Gravenclaw just put down his bowl, grabbed Bright Flush’s head between his claws and checked him for any apparent wounds. “Sadly there is nothing I can do for him...”

“Any time now we are going to look up and see that they painted it pink!” Rapid joined in as well.

With the most serious face he could muster: “No, purple. And they will write Sparkle Cola on it! Big enough to be visible from anywhere in the world.” Nobody would ever play poker with him.

“I think he may be delirious,” Gallant tried to seemed worried.

“I didn’t see any concussion,” Graven said, actually being serious. “In my profesional opinion he is either drunk or mad.”

“Give him a potion damn it!” Gallant told the medic.

“I don’t think a potion would help him...”

“You guys can’t really tell when someone is joking, can you?” Bright Flush asked with a grin.

“We weren’t joking, you mad,” Rapid quickly added.

“No we couldn’t,” Gallant said continuing the ruse.

“Not from your tone,” Graven mentioned, serious as ever.

Bright Flush just rolls his eyes, then turns towards Graven. “I’d still like a potion or some fixer uppers though.”

“Unfortunately any potions I had were used up by my more than competent captors.”

Gallant just rolls a potion towards Bright Flush, much to the shock and confusion of everypony, except for Gravenclaw, and Solance, and Bright Flush, so only Rapid and Black Tea were confused.

“Where did you get that?” Rapid said.

“Warehouse,” Gallant answered plainly, “in the safe.”

“What safe,” Solance asked. Apparently he was paying attention to what the ponies were talking about. “There was no safe in the warehouse, I checked.”

“Well then you clearly didn’t check well enough. There was a safe underneath the mattress in the office.”

“Office?” Solance turned to actually look at Gallant. “What office?”

“Second door on the left, right next to the bathroom.”

“I see,” then turning towards Bright Flush. “Anything you would like to share with us?”

“Umm… I don’t know what to you are talking about...”

“You searched that side of the warehouse, and skipped mentioning anything about a bathroom or an office.”

“Oh, for the love of… Look there was nothing there, a bloody mattress, a safe underneath, a chair, and a ruined desk. The desk was empty, and in the safe there were a few bits that we left, a healing potion that we took, and a bottle of whisky that we drunk. Oh and a few cigarettes that we smoked, happy now? or do you want us to say how many cigarette buts were laying on the ground?”

“I’m sorry I asked,” Sollance said as he got up and walked toward the darkened window and just stared outside.

Gravenclaw gets up as well and walks beside him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Solance,” he replied. “My name is Solance.”

“Pleasure to meet you Solance. Now I could not help but notice your flank...”

Everypony in the room stopped what they were doing at looked towards them.

In olden days, before Equestria became the Equestrian Wasteland, ponies had all the time in the world to find out what their special talent was, and by doing so get their cutie mark in the process. But even then most ponies get it around the age of eight, ten if they are a late bloomer. But, in the world they are now ponies discover what they are good at a lot earlier in life, or die trying. But Solance looked like he was twelve, maybe even a bit older than that, however he did not act his age in the slightest, and yet his flank was still blank. That was surprising in its own right, but as everypony know, not having your cutie mark is a touching subject for fillies and colts, more so when somepony brings it us, and Gravenclaw, he wasn’t even a pony. 

So, knowing all too well that the colt had issues, everypony was getting ready to go for their guns, or for the healing potions.

“What about it?” Solance asked without turning around to look at Graven.

“I noticed that you have some recent bullet holes, as well as some older injuries that did not heal quite right. I could take a look at them, and make sure...”

“Look, doctor, I know what you are trying to do, but I do not need any healing.” Then in a quieter tone  he added, “we are low on medical supplies already, and if I were to waste a potion or a bandage for every small cut, bruise, gunshot or laser burn, I would have been dead a long time ago.”

“But...” He tried to say something before Solance cut him off.

“Take it like a colt!” Gallant yelled from across the room. 

“Or are we afwaid of the big bad doctor!” Black Tea added.

Solance ignored the mares.

“If you would ever fight beside me you would understand. I am fine, really.” He still spoke in a low voice, but there was conviction in his voice.

Graven just nodded. “At least let me take them out, they don’t seem to be nowhere near as deep as the ones in your friend. And do not worry, I will not use any medical supplies, I will just take out the most recent ones, I won’t even use my claws,” he said with a reassuring smile.

Solance nodded as well.

“More for me then,” Bright Flush said as he chugged the potion.

Graven gave him the stink eye, but said nothing about it. He just walked over to his kit, took out a pair of tweezers and returned to Solance’s side, before starting pulling bullets out of his rump.

Bright Flush licks his beak and burps loudly, then blushes, and covers his beak with both of his claws. Gallant just shakes her head with the typical “boys would be boys expression” on her face before going back to nuzzling him. He returns the sentiment, as well as the nuzzle, then raising an eyebrow asks: “Again?” with a cocky smile on his face.

“I can’t help it, your feathers are soft,” she said as she made herself more comfortable.

“Thanks,” he replied, before pulling her sleeping bag over them.

A short exchange of glances and everypony knew that the watch order was changed.

“Lets just hope none of us encounter an alicorn with a grudge,” Bright Flush said, wanting to end the day on a funny note.

“Do you know of any alicorns with a grudge?” Graven asked, serious as ever.

The hippogryph just sighed in defeat. Humor really eluded this griffin.

Gallant and Bright flush took the first watch spending sometime with Graven but disappearing as soon as there shift was over, they disappeared leaving Graven to take the next shift, letting Graven decide who would take the next shift.
Hopefully their first night in Tailgrund would prove to be a boring one.

> Chapter 6 A Town Down Under
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Who the fuck are you?!” one of the ponies asked, his group raising their weapons in unison with his voice.  In the time it took them to realise what was happening, two turrets also came online and were now pointing their guns towards them.

Worried about their chances of winning, and running away did not seem like a good option, there was nothing but a straight tunnel behind them, it seemed like there was only one good choice.

“Don’t shoot!” Solance and Gallant yelled out at the same time.

“Hush now, I’ve got this,” Gallant said causing the unicorn to glare daggers at her.

“If this turns into another bloodbath, so help me Celestia...” he said in a hushed tone making sure that the others, none of the others could hear him.

Clearing her throat Gallant continued.

“Don’t shoot!” she yelled out again. “We’re not raiders! We’ve came down here to escape them...”

“And to trade,” Rapid offered a hint to her.

“And to trade!” she repeated his words so that the ponies on the other side of the minefield could hear them.

“We’ve got guns and bullets to sell, and caps to buy with!” Rapid tried to help.

“And we are not raiders!” Black Tea added.

The ponies tensed up at the sound of that word.

“That’s what a raider would say!” one of the ponies yelled back.

“Oh, for the love of Celestia, not this shit again,” Solance complained. “Look, guys, you want proof we are not raiders? Fine we have proof. Over the past two days we killed over two dozen raiders and took their weapons and armor. We have them with us, the raider blood on them is probably still wet. And if that isn’t good enough for you, then just tell us to fuck off, and we will leave you alone.”

The ponies were a bit surprised by the colt’s language and by the bluntness of his words.

“Also if we were raiders shouldn’t we have attacked you by now,” Rapid said, mostly to himself causing the rest to glare at him.

“So what is it going to be?” Solance asked out loud. “Let us in, let us leave, or shoot us!?”

The ponies just looked at each other confused, both groups did.

“Don’t move!” one of the ponies cried out. “I’m sending someone to clear a path.”

True to his word, the pony that was doing most of the talking, an earth pony stallion, most likely in his late thirties,  gestured to one of the others to do just that. The pony saluted, surprisingly enough, and followed the stallions orders and made it so the group could pass through the minefield without blowing up.

“Don’t cause any trouble, you hear!?”

“Weren’t planning on it,” Black Tea replied.

After taking a few steps away the pony in charge stopped them.

“Wait! How the fuck did you make it past the ghouls?!” he asked, his eyes widening, surprise causing him to blurt out his words.

“Huh? Oh, we killed them,” Rapid replied.

“I see… Wait what? You killed them? There were over fifty of them! And you killed them all?”

“Umm… Yes?” Black Tea replied, a bit confused about the questions. “I mean, maybe we left a few of them, it’s not like we counted...”

“Forty-eight,” Solance said making the everypony turned towards him. “Sixteen at the top of the stairs, thirty-two at the bottom. I counted.”

“You what? Why?”

“No reason...” he replied, but nopony believed him, the little colt was a horrible liar.

“So let me get this straight, you six...” the stallion said pointing towards the group. “You six killed fifty ghouls?! On your own?!”

“Forty-eight, but yes, yes we did.”

“Fuck, it took us nearly three months to round them up...” He sighed. “Move along...”

“Wait, you rounded them up?!” Solance asked the stallion, shocked by the notion that ghouls could be, in lack of a better word, herded.

“I said move along!” he snapped back rather angrily.

They complied to the angry pony’s demand, and continued walking the short distance that lead to the metro station. Station, that to their surprise had been converted into a rather nice little wasteland-esque town.

The boutiques and pre-war stores were converted new homes and trading posts, there were  huts for living in that were made out of an assortment of readily available materials formed a little area where the ponies lived, though the theme seemed to be ‘ruined plaster wall and corrugated iron roof’. Sheet metal, and various other types of metals seemed to be the building material of choice, but brick and wooden planks were a common sight.

As they expected, the metro lights were long since dead, and spark battery powered floodlights tried to illuminate the entire station, and somehow managed to do their job. From place to place some building, a food court, or maybe a store belonging to one of the richer ponies had better lighting thanks to a generator that, undoubtedly, they acquired at great cost, and kept really well hidden.

There was a rather peculiar smell to this town as well.

Now, the Wasteland smelled. It smelled rather badly. Death and decay were common, rott, filth, and stench were common occurrences, but at least the Wasteland was big, and wide, and windy. This town had all the smells of the wasteland, as well as a little bit of stale water smell, all cramped into a small area, with little to no ventilation.

They noticed the heavy smell rather quickly, and reacted accordingly. The cocktail of repulsive smells made their stomach churn, and what little food they had on the previous day quickly made it way back the way it came, but the all of them were strong enough to hold it down.

It wasn’t much, but at that point it was the best thing they could have hoped for. 

A town, a small town, a tiny town, but still, a town, with guards, and shops, and ponies that weren’t thinking about murdering and raping them, well... even if they were thinking it, they weren’t planning on doing it, well... even if they were planning it, they wouldn’t have done it, maybe.

They only took a few steps away from the guards and into the town, before noticing something was wrong, there seemed to be fewer of them.

“Bright Flush?” Gallant asked looking around for the hippogriff until noticing him just staring into the distance, seemingly at nothing at all. 

“Bright Flush!” she called out to him, snapping him out of his trance-like state.

“Huh?!” he replied.

“You coming?” 

“Huh?!” 

“You coming Bright Flush? To sell the stuff we gather so far.”

“Umm… Sure… Let’s do that.”

“Okay everypony, so, how should we do this?” Black Tea asked. “Should we each sell what we are carrying? Or should we try to divide them a bit more equally?”

They did not actually get around to thinking about that.

A little bit of trial and error, and they quickly discovered that most of them had no clue how to haggle. Well, except for Gallant and Black Tea, for whom it came almost natural. Stepping on their pride and admitting their shortcoming they quickly decided that the only way they would actually make any caps would be if a pony who knew what they were doing did the sales.

Bright Flush nominated Gallant, while, confident in her own skills, Black Tea nominated herself. The rest of them did not care one way or another, so in a true democratic fashion Gallant was elected with two voted for, one against, and three abstained. 

“So how did we do?” Rapid asked after about an hour or four of them just walking from store to store.

“Not really that well,” Gallant replied, a bit disappointed by her performance. “Nopony wanted to buy the armour, so I basically had to give them away for free to got a decent price for the weapons, but in the end it was kind of bad. Between all the weapons, the armor, and some of the random stuff we had on us, I managed to get about five hundred caps, total.”

“That’s… actually not that much.” Black Tea told everypony. “That’s what? About eighty caps, each. Plus the caps we found so far we should all be at around a hundred caps, give or take.”

“Give or take,” Gallant accentuated. “So what now?”

“Food and medical supplies should be top priority,” Solance shared with the rest of the group making them all focus on the colt. “So… do you want to contribute equally, or each pony should be responsible for their own supplies?”

“Um... ” they said, thinking on the manner.

In the end they decided that it would be best if all of them payed for the food and for the medical supplies equally, while all of them should be responsible for their own gear and ammunition. But the most important thing they decided was that everypony should carry as much as the loot as they can. Some ponies, like Solance and Gallant would carry less since they were not the strongest, while some, like Bright Flush and Graven would carry more.

But, after seeing how easily Rapid and Bright Flush were conned out of their caps by ammo vendors, Gallant took it upon herself to do the shopping for both of them, and since she was doing that she decided that doing the shopping for everypony was not a lot more of a chore, although she chose to keep her personal feeling towards helping the the colt to herself.

“So… anypony see a place we can sleep tonight?” Gallant asked, exhausted after literally hours of trying to haggle the prices down from some of the most determined ponies she ever had the displeasure of meeting.

“Not, really...” Black Tea said. “So far I only saw a couple of shops and some bars… but nothing that rents rooms.”  The consensus was the same amongst the others of the group, none finding a suitable place to settle.

“Any ideas Bright Flush?” she asked.

“Huh? What?” Bright Flush had been staring at a some rather well maintained guns that a pony was displaying.

“Any idea where are we going to sleep tonight?” Gallant repeated herself. 

Bright Flush just shrugged before returning his gaze towards the guns.

“Umm… Well do you need any of those guns?” Gallant asked him.

“Hmm… I was thinking of getting a shotgun, but I can’t decide.”

“Let’s see…” Gallant said as she picked up a combat shotgun. “I would recommend one of these, it has amazing stopping power, Equestrian made from what I can see, has most of the original parts, but time did take its toll on it. But the 20 Gauge are easy to come by, and even if it tends to eat up ammo for a bit, the 12 shell drum can keep you going for a while.”

The vendor was a bit surprised by the mares knowledge of firearms, and visibly pleased that this pony was basically selling the gun for him.

“But...”  she added causing the smile to disappear from his face. “It would require a bit of work to restore it to its former glory, and these have a reputation for being notoriously unreliable.” 

“But for the right price...” After she took a look at the price tag, five hundred caps, all she did was give the vendor a stare, put the gun back, and simply said: “No.”

As she was putting the gun back, another one caught her attention.

“Oh! This is nice,” she exclaimed as she picked up a .44 Revolver. “Really nice.”

She carefully examined the gun, opening and closing it for a couple of times, before lifting it up to her ear and giving the cylinder a rather powerful spin.

“Really nice,” she repeated herself. “Almost mint condition. If I were to venture a guess this gun was only fired a few times in its lifetime, and its previous owner took really good care of it.”

She continued to examine the gun further until her eyes stopped upon the price tag again.

“Oh, come on. Five hundred caps again?! I know this is a nice looking gun, but still...”

The vendor said nothing.

“I don’t know…” Bright Flush managed to say before Gallant managed to start a fight with the pony because of his ridiculous prices. “I think I am going to sleep on it.”

For this entire time, Black Tea and Rapid were just sitting there quietly staring at them, completely oblivious to the fact that while this was going on Solance and Gravenclaw snuck away.

“Right, right, that was exactly what we were talking about,” Gallant quickly recapped for him. “We were trying to figure out where we would be spending the night. Did you happen to notice such a place while we were walking around town?”

“Not really, no,” he replied. “But it’s still early isn’t it?”

They looked at each other puzzled by the question.

“I… I don’t actually know,” Gallant said. “I have no idea what time it is.”

“It’s almost eight,” the vendor told them as he started getting ready to pack up his stuff and close shop. “So, do you want to buy anything?”

“Not today, thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, pulling down the metal shutters of his store.

“So… anypony has any idea what are we going to do?”

“Well we could leave town and search for a place to sleep in the city, I’m sure we can easily find an empty house.”

“That’s a horrible idea Rapid,” Gallant told him. “Why leave a perfectly safe town and sleep in a random house in a raider infested city.”

“It was just an idea.”

“A bad one at that,” Black Tea interjected.

“Then you come up with a better one!”

“Stop it!” Gallant yelled at them. “This arguing is getting us nowhere.”

“Then what should we do?”

“I really don’t know...”






For a couple of minutes Gravenclaw and Solance were walking past the town stores in silence.

“So...” Gravenclaw eventually spoke up. “Why did you want to leave?”

“Honestly, I doubt that they would get anything done, so...”

“You wanted to get it done,” he finished the colts sentence.

“Pretty much.”

“So, you were thinking you were going to find us a place to stay, and make everypony dislike you less, and you needed me to keep you safe while you were doing that?”

“One out of three, not really that impressive Sherclop.”

“What?!” Graven asked, surprised by Solance’s statement.

“Look Graven, I did not call ask you to come with me cause I needed somepony… somegriffin to babysit me. I am more than capable of taking care of myself thank you very much. I asked you to come along cause I thought it would be faster if I had a second pair of eyes with me, but hey, if you have better things to do, by all means. ”

“Did you know you can be rather annoying at times?”

“So, I’ve been told.”

Graven just rolled his eyes at the statement.

“Hey!” he said surprised when Solance took a sudden turn and went behind a store. “Where are you going?”

“I think I found where we would be sleeping tonight.”

“Huh?”

In front of them stood a door that was barely hanging on to one of its hinges.

Solance’s horn glowed and it opened to reveal an old room. The floor was covered with dust and various trash, mostly empty boxes and tin cans, a single, lonely, decrepit table was pushed to the side some time ago, and a few filing cabinets were overturned and long since looted.

“Really?!” Graven asked, rather surprised.

“Yep.”

“But there is nothing here. Just a table and trash.”

“There is a roof over our heads, one way in one way out, and we would have something to barricade that with. But most importantly it is free. Also, honestly, I really don’t think that a town that is so trigger happy and makes it so hard for ponies to get in has places to rent. To me this seems like a small, self sufficient, tightly knit community. And I am rather sure that they rarely get any visitors. If ever.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“So, we could try to find a place that would rent us a room, but I doubt it. Or we could hope that somepony would be willing to take us in their house, but...”

“Welcoming six random and heavily armed individuals into your home is not something one would do.”

“Exactly, so our best bet would be to just find an empty place and sleep there.”

“Right. When you put it like that it would make sense.”

“So, Graven, what do you think?”

“Well like I said, now that you explained your thought process to me it makes perfect sense.”

“And we do have the sleeping bags.”

“And we do have the sleeping bags, so, yeah, this can work for tonight. So, shall we head back and talk to the rest.”

“Yes, we should do that, but first would you mind if we took a small detour?” “There was something I thought I saw at a store that I wanted to buy. ”

“Umm…. sure?”

“Great,” Solance said as his horn lit up again and the door closed. “Let’s get going.”

“Mind if I ask what you saw?”

“Huh?”

“What is this object you saw and you want to buy? A new gun? Some better armor? Food? Or maybe...”

“A canteen.”

“A canteen?!” Graven asked, not believing his ears.

“Yep, a simple canteen.”

“What for?”

“Umm… to hold water in? I really don’t get what you meant by that.”

“Why would you need a canteen for? I mean there are plenty of empty bottles, literally just laying around everywhere.”

“Well, a canteen can hold more than a bottle, its more comfortable to hold, and the strap it has makes it a lot faster to find, rather than having to dig through my saddlebags every time I wanted a sip.”

“I guess… But won’t that cost you a lot? I mean a canteen is rather big, and water is expensive.”

Solance smiled.

“I saw a leaking pipe on our way here, and the water was neither green nor yellow, so...”

“You plan on filling your canteen from there, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

It took them about five or six minutes to find the vendor Solance was talking about, buy two canteens, Graven decided to buy one for himself, and then return to the rest, just to find them exactly where they left them, exactly as they left them, talking about where they should sleep tonight.

“... But that would not make sense either,” Black Tea said, shutting down another idea.

Solance and Graven took a look at eachother, then, after a subtle nod, Graven spoke up.

“I think I might have found a place for us to sleep in.”

They paid him little attention as they were too focused on each other and on the argument they would having.

“Hey! Listen up!” he yelled with a rather commanding voice, making them shut up and shift their attention towards him.

“Danke. As I said I found a place to sleep. It’s not much, but it is safe, and best of all, it is free. Mind you, we would still be sleeping on the concrete floor in our sleeping bags, but at least we can be sure that nopony would disturb us during the night.”

“Well done Graven,” Gallant congratulated him, “and, why do you have two canteens around your neck?” she asked looking towards Solance.

“I was going to go fill them with water.”

“From where?” Black Tea asked. “I did not see any water vendors since I entered this town.”

“There is a leaking pipe next to one of the stores, I’m going to fill them from there.”

“Take us there right now,” Gallant demanded, realising the potential of free water.

“Alright, it is on the way towards the room anyway.”

“Black Tea, go and buy canteens for all of us,” Gallant said trying to take control, then turning towards Solance she asked, “how much were they?”

“About seven caps each,” he replied.

“Right, everypony give seven caps to Black Tea so she could buy canteens for all.”

While not being really happy that they were being bossed around, they all complied, and Black Tea left with their money, mumbling something to herself.

“Right, now, take us to where you found that pipe.”

Walking on the same path they took when they were searching for a room, Solance took them to a small space between two stores. There, a puddle was clearly visible on the concrete floor, but the flow of fresh clean water that Gallant expected to find, was nothing more than a very small, very small drip from a tiny hole in the ceiling.

Disappointed beyond belief she turned towards the colt.

“How the fuck do you expect us to fill six canteens with water from this!?”

“Well, in all honesty I wasn’t. I was expecting to fill mine in maybe three-four hours.”

“And what about us?”

“What about you?” Solance asked back.

“Do you expect us to be here for two days just to fill our canteens?!”

“No, of course not, that would be a stupid waste of time.”

“Then...”

“Hey, you wanted to come here. You told Black Tea to buy canteens. You told everypony to give her the money to do that, not me. I did absolutely nothing.”

“Why you little...” Gallant said, but before reaching for her gun, she took a moment to calm herself before doing something brash. “Graven, could you please take us to our room, and lets leave this one alone with his retarded ideas.”

“Fine by me,” Solance replied, as he levitated one of the canteens from around his neck and placed it in the puddle to start collecting the slow dripping water.

“Celestia, what did I ever do to for you to punish me like this,” she said in a low voice.

About a few hours later Graven returned to that place, only to find Solance with his eyes closed just sitting on the floor, using his magic to play with some torn up tin cans, stacking them on top of each other before taking them down, and repeating the process all over again again, following some sort of pattern [15]. He seemed quite focused on the task at hoof, so much so that he paid absolutely no attention to Graven, even when he was just a few feet in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Graven asked, startling Solance and making him lose his concentration. 

“Ah!” He screamed as the five tin cans he was holding in his grasp were completely crushed by his magic. 

“Graven, you scared me!” He was trying to catch his breath and calm his heart down.

“Sorry Solance,” Graven said apologetic. “I did not notice you were so focused, but now that I have your attention, mind telling me what you were doing?”

“Huh? Waiting for the canteens to fill...”

“No, I mean with the cans. I mean I saw a few chicks doing something similar back home, but, um… it required um… talons.”

“Huh? Oh, right. Yeah, actually I saw this being done by some griffin performer a while back and I thought it was a good way to work at moving multiple things at once, oh, and keep myself entertained.”

“So… you were playing?”

“No, I was training.”

“Right… You were training… I just came over to see how you were doing , its been a few of hours.”

“Almost done,” Solance said as he got up and stretched before turning towards the canteens.

“Look, I appreciate that you are doing this for me, but you should get some sleep...”

“It’s fine, I’m almost done here.”

“Done?” Graven asked confused. “Didn’t you said it would take three to four hours to fill a canteen?”

“I did, but that was before I had time to take a closer look.”

Gravenclaw just raised an eyebrow, waiting for the colt to elaborate.

“When I first saw the drip, I did not know if it was runoff from the river, or condensation, or just a leaky pipe, fortunately for me it was the latter. And even more fortunately it was that the pipe was close to the concrete. So I took a tin can, flattened it and made a makeshift knife out of it...”`

“A shiv.”

“Huh?”

“A small, makeshift knife is called a shiv.”

“Aaa… did not know that, thanks. But anyway, so I made a shiv, and started scraping at the ceiling hoping to reveal part of the pipe.”

“But the ceiling almost twenty feet tall, how did you… You levitated the tool up there didn’t you?”

“Aha, so after scraping the ceiling and revealing the pipe, I did the same to the pipe, removing the rusted bits and making the hole bigger, Although there wasn’t that much rust to begin with so the water pressure did not increase by that much, but still… I managed to fill a canteen in almost half the time.”

Graven took a look at the ceiling, and just as the colt said the slow drip was now a rather constant drizzle.

“This should do it,” Solance said as he twisted the cap on the second canteen. “Let’s get going.” 

The two of them made their way through the barely lit pathways and reached the room. After informing them of the increase in water pressure, they decided to send Rapid to fill the rest of the canteens while everypony else decided to get a good night's sleep, except for Black Tea, who was busy looking through some books.

“What do you have there?” Solance asked, truly curious.

“A few books, I found them in an old storage room,” she said flipping through the pages of one of them with little interest.

Solance’s horn lit up and he lifted the other two books to get a closer look at the titles.

“Equestrian Economics 101, and Buzz Buzz Lazer Gunz, an Illustrated History of Magical Energy Weapons,” he read out loud.

“Hey, give them back!” Black Tea yelled out as she tried to grab them out of Solance’s telekinetic grasp using her own magic. They did not budge, but the colt did let go of them before the mare embarrassed herself too much.

“What?!” Rapid yelled as he instantly got up at the sound of her voice, his own yell waking everypony else. “Who is attacking us?!”

At that the ponies, and griffins, rushed to get out of  their sleeping bags and grab their weapons before the non-existent assailant could kill any of them, or steal any of their stuff.

“Calm down, nopony is attacking us,” Black Tea said stopping everypony dead in their metaphorical tracks. “This little… guy, was… taking stuff that did not belong to him.”

“Ugh, kids, this is why...” Bright Flush groaned and mumbled mostly to himself. “Just give whatever you took back to Black Tea so we can get some sleep.”

“I already did,” he quickly responded.

“Only because I took it from you,” Black Tea added.

Not wanting to start an argument Solance said nothing, but a short half-assed “sorry” before heading to his sleeping bag, crawled in and closed his eyes.

 “I wonder what that book was about,” he thought referring to the book that Black Tea was looking at.