We left everything at Harmony Tower just as it was, the bodies of the first generation pondroids scattered around the building. Harmony Tower was a frequent stop for traders passing into or out of Stalliongrad from the east, so somepony was bound to stumble upon it eventually and figure out what had happened. For Rare Sparks, Ache, and I, we just wanted to put it behind us. Ache assured us that the pondroids were dead for good and would never again plague the wastes. I hoped she was right; I trusted her, but she openly admitted that she was having trouble accessing certain memories, so the possibility remained that there was something she didn’t know. In any case, it didn’t seem worth it to bury them or even burn them, since that would only mean burning the flesh they’d stolen.

With the pondroids taken care of, we were now turning back to the mission we’d come to Stalliongrad for. Mr. Bucke was out there somewhere, but to find him we’d need to find (and probably dismantle) the Northern Lights Coalition. The NLC haunted both Stalliongrad and Vanhoover, though it seemed to be only starting out in the city where I’d begun my journey into the Wasteland. There were certainly settlements around here that were part of it, as well as many, many raider gangs, but wandering through the ruins of Stalliongrad to find them seemed like looking for trouble. We already knew of a settlement that was definitely part of the NLC, and I’d been treated well there before. Timbervale was our destination, where we’d hopefully find more answers about this mysterious organization with advanced technology that brought together settlements, raiders, and slavers alike. Timbervale was in Vanhoover, though, and we had some business to take care of in Stalliongrad first.

At the advice of the pony behind the sprite-bot, we’d headed for Harmony Tower immediately after exiting the Stalliongrad Stable network, so Chairpony Peach Cream still didn’t know that we’d completed our mission to kill The Beast. Ache was a new addition, so she had no visitor pass and had to wait in Traders’ Lane while Rare and I entered the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. We hadn’t been in the Western Block long before PRS soldiers met us and asked me to come with them to Stable 124. Rare Sparks was asked to stay behind, since Chairpony Peach Cream only needed to speak with one of us to find out how the job had gone. They’d made an exception before because they’d needed both of us to take care of The Beast, but they were (somewhat reasonably) wary about letting a Steel Ranger into the heart of their city. While she returned to Traders’ Lane to keep Ache company, I followed the soldiers to Stable 124.

“I must admit, I’m surprised to see you,” Peach Cream said from behind her desk, “It’s been more than a day since you left, and we expected you to return through the tunnels.”

“After killing The Beast, we followed Mr. Bucke’s trail out through a side passage that led beyond the walls,” I explained, “We then continued to pursue him until we lost the trail.”

“And you didn’t return here,” Peach Cream said with annoyance, “Oh well, you’re here now, and The Beast is dead, so I have little grounds to complain. We’ll have to make sure that other entrance is sealed up so nopony can sneak into the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad once we reopen the Stables.”

“Is that all you wanted to speak to me about?” I asked, anxious to be on my way back to Vanhoover.

“Actually, no,” the Chairpony admitted, “Your help with the Ministry of Morale Hub bears more fruit all the time. From the information we’ve picked through, we’ve learned many things, including that Stable-Tec somehow managed to get their hooves on a seeding megaspell. I would like you to retrieve it for me.”

“Find you a megaspell? No way!” I said incredulously. My only experience with megaspells that hadn’t been detonated over a century ago had ended with an entire town being wiped off the map thanks to a stallion I was still trying to bring to justice for the act.

“It isn’t a weaponized megaspell; it’s agricultural in nature,” Peach Cream said haughtily, “The only megaspells anypony cares to remember are the ones that destroyed the world in balefire, but that isn’t the only thing they were good for. Sure, that’s where all the focus went during the War, but a megaspell is simply a regular spell that’s been modified to be far more powerful. Just as there are spells that destroy, there are others that purge the earth of radiation and disease and cause plants to spring up. This is something we need. We have cleared fields to the north of the city, but even our best spells can only do so much, and not very quickly. We need more food to sustain the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad, and for that we need more fields, and fast.”

“Where is this megaspell?” I asked, intrigued by the prospect of something that was commonly seen as evil being used for good.

“We don’t know exactly, but it was transported to one of the Vanhoover Stables,” Peach Cream said, “Does this mean you’re interested?”

“Perhaps,” I said, even more intrigued now that I knew it was in a city I was already planning on returning to, “I have my own plans, though, and I can’t always be interrupting them to run errands for others, not without compensation.”

“Ah, yes, compensation,” Peach Cream said, scrunching up her nose, “You may have contributed much to the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad, but you are still an Outsider, and don’t follow our ways. If it is compensation you desire, then you shall have it, be it in the form of bottle caps, ammunition, or whatever else is a commodity out in the Wasteland.”

“It’s just that contribution credits aren’t worth anything anywhere but here,” I explained, “I’ll need supplies to go after this megaspell, and that means I’ll have to buy them.”

“Yes, of course,” the Chairpony said dismissively, “Someday we shall move past this barbaric bartering. Very well, what is your price?”

“Twenty-thousand caps? Twenty-thousand caps?” Rare Sparks asked to be sure she’d heard me correctly, “How did you ever manage to convince her to pay that?”

“It seemed a reasonable price for a megaspell,” I said, even though I had the feeling I probably could have gone higher if I was more confident in my bartering ability, “The Steel Rangers offered a bounty not much less than that for my capture, as you well know.”

“Wait, what? Which Steel Rangers? Why?” Ache asked in confusion.

Though I’d only been traveling with Rare for less than three weeks, I’d already told her everything that had happened since I’d woken up in Stable 85, and she’d been there for the rest. It was easy to forget that Ache knew very little about my past, and I had the feeling much of the trip back to Vanhoover would consist of Rare and I telling our stories. On the way from Harmony Tower to the PRS, it had seemed more important to explain to the pondroid what the current situation than to tell her everything that had happened in the last couple months.

“The Vanhoover Steel Rangers, of which I am a member, were looking for a pony with a PipBuck to operate an advanced virtual reality simulation, and resorted to putting out a bounty on anypony with such a device. Normally we wouldn’t have stooped to something like that, but we were desperate to find somepony, and it all worked out in the end,” Rare explained, “The Stalliongrad Steel Rangers have no such qualms, and they broke off from the Vanhoover contingent because of these ‘differences in opinion.’”

The warning would be almost immediately applicable, since we were headed to meet the Stalliongrad Steel Rangers. On Rare’s suggestion, it would be much quicker to find the megaspell that Peach Cream wanted if we knew which Stable we had to search. I knew of five Stables in Vanhoover already, and none of them had the seeding megaspell. There was no telling how many more were hidden among Vanhoover’s crumbling buildings or how long it would take us to search for them. The Stalliongrad contingent of the Steel Rangers was based in a Stable-Tec factory, which was likely to have information on the region’s Stables so the parts could be shipped to the right locations. All that stood in our way was convincing the Steel Rangers to let us have a look at the factory’s maneframes, a feat that was easier said than done.

“You probably also shouldn’t let them know you’re a pondroid,” I warned Ache, “They might want to disassemble you.”

“That seems like a good practice in general,” Ache replied, “Fortunately, I can blend in without attracting attention, unlike my-”

Ache’s speech stopped abruptly, and Rare and I turned to look at her. Her face was in a grimace, but that soon passed, and she seemed right as rain again.

“Sorry, corrupted memories,” she apologized, “Felt like my head was full of static there for a second.”

“Will you be okay?” Rare asked.

“I should be fine once everything clears itself up,” Ache said as she trotted on ahead briskly, “For the moment, I just need to avoid thinking about certain times and topics. I’m working on creating a map of dangerous areas and walling them off until I have time to tend to them.”

Before leaving Traders’ Lane, we had outfitted Ache with the gear she’d need out in the Wasteland. Protective barding now covered her frame, and a submachine gun was holstered at her side. She also had saddlebags, which weren’t entirely for her own supplies. She’d be carrying her own ammunition and personal possessions, but most of the food she’d have was for Rare and me. Though she needed to eat, it was required far less frequently than for either of us. It was amazing; she looked like a normal Wastelander now (albeit a well-equipped one), and it was hard to believe she wasn’t just a normal pony.

“Alicorns!” Rare called out a warning.

There were two of them in the distance, flying among the ruined factories, one blue and one maroon. They were too far for EFS to detect, so we’d received no advance warning. We ran to a pile of rubble and hid behind it.

“Do you think they saw us?” I asked as Rare pulled on her helmet.

“Oh, I think so,” a voice said from dangerously nearby.

An alicorn with a jet-black coat appeared next to me, her invisibility field bleeding away. I drew my combat shotgun, but she knocked it away with her magic before stabbing her incredibly long horn at me. Ache jumped in the way, and the horn pierced her body instead, jarring to a halt as it struck her metallic skeleton. She already had her submachine gun out and fired at the alicorn, striking her in one of her eyes. Uttering curses, the alicorn pulled away and cast her invisibility spell, but Ache’s blood on her horn and her own flowing from her eye were still visible, hovering in the air.

Rare fired a grenade in the alicorn’s direction, but only managed to get one off before she was bowled over by another alicorn. This one had a yellow coat and was moving almost too fast for the eye to follow. I was the only one in our group with a chance to hit her, so I cast SATS and watched her move at what was still a brisk pace while I brought my magical energy rifle up. Magical energy beams flew through empty air as I tried to adjust for an opponent that was moving faster than the spell was calibrated to handle. I couldn’t take advantage of the targeting components of the spell and had to use the time-alteration alone, but by the time I figured out how I had to fire to hit my target, the spell was burned out and I had to wait for it to recharge.

The yellow alicorn wasn’t going to wait for that and charged me while I was still unable to react. Her horn impaled me, Ache too busy firing at the invisible alicorn to save me this time. Rare turned her minigun on the yellow alicorn, but she yanked her horn out of me, sending me tumbling, and was gone before any of the bullets could hit her. I rapidly used a magical bandage to staunch the bleeding before drinking a healing potion to repair the hole the alicorn had left in me. Ache was still fighting with her wound, though it looked like it was beginning to close up already, no doubt some advanced ability of her synthetic flesh.

The two alicorns we’d originally spotted were joining us now, the maroon one throwing up a shield as Rare Sparks fired at her. The blue one’s horn glowed, and the nearby pony-hole covers burst from their positions as columns of radioactive sewage propelled them upward. He held the sewage in place for a moment, before sending the pillars down at us. We got out of the way in time, but temporarily lost sight of our enemies in our frantic rush.

The black alicorn was now well aware that her invisibility wasn’t helping her, and her body appeared around the flowing wounds Ache had inflicted. She charged the pondroid, using a beat of her wings to propel her along, but Ache ducked out of the way and fired her submachine gun at the alicorn’s rear. The alicorn spun around and knocked the gun from Ache’s mouth before charging in with a raised hoof. Concrete cracked as she brought the hoof down, but Ache’s escape hadn’t taken her far from the point of impact. She swung her own hoof around, shattering the alicorn’s foreleg. The alicorn stared in bewilderment, overwhelmed by the fact that a mere pony had done something like that to her. The black alicorn died, still bewildered, as Rare’s minigun cut through her.

Rare brought her weapons around toward the blue alicorn next, who was summoning up more foul liquid from beneath our hooves. As she fired grenades at him, Ache retrieved her submachine gun and fired at the maroon alicorn as I joined her. Ache was knocked aside by a streak of yellow as the third alicorn zipped by. I tried to fire at her without the aid of SATS, but it was no use. She was able to deftly dodge my shots and ran along a wall as if to taunt me, showing me how powerful she was. Rare’s grenades killed the blue alicorn, and the sewage became inert again. The maroon alicorn, tired of being shot at, summoned up her magic and levitated a building behind her, tearing it from its foundations.

SATS returned as the building floated toward us, and I cast the spell immediately. The yellow alicorn was zipping toward me with intent to kill, but the maroon alicorn was preparing to squash us with the uprooted factory. The maroon one still had shields up, however, and Rare and Ache were already fighting her, so I turned my attention to the unnaturally fast one. This time, I managed to hit the alicorn a few times, magical energy beams singeing her flesh.

As the spell neared its end, I noticed that the alicorn was moving sluggishly, as if she were a normal opponent and not one who could move faster than we could usually follow. Time returned to normal, and the alicorn came to a halt completely. The maroon one was also frozen in place, her eyes glassy and unfocused, like we’d seen before, though her spell was holding up.

That ended as a missile flew over a nearby pile of rubble and turned the maroon unicorn into a fine red mist. The factory she’d been levitating fell out of the air, and the three of us ran to get out of its way. The yellow alicorn appeared to shake off whatever had paralyzed her, but by the time she did so, it was too late for her. She was crushed as the building struck the ground, sending up a dust cloud.

A few seconds later, Steel Rangers trotted out from behind the transplanted building. I hadn’t expected any different; who else would have a missile launcher and think to use it against alicorns instead of just sneaking away? According to EFS, they were friendly, though that was a relative term when it came to Stalliongrad’s Steel Rangers. The last time they’d saved us, they forced us to come back with them to their base (which is exactly where we wanted to go) and held Rare hostage to force me to do something dangerous in the PRS (which I didn’t care to repeat).

“You again?” the lead Steel Ranger asked, “And I see you’ve picked up one more Wastelander. Have you no dignity, Rare Sparks?”

“I’m not going to respond to that how I’d like since you did just save our flanks from alicorns again,” Rare said testily, “We were actually on our way to speak with you, Prism.”

“Elder Prism,” another of the Steel Rangers corrected.

“My apologies,” Rare said sarcastically, “I assumed we were speaking informally when the Elder didn’t address me as Inquisitor Rare Sparks.”

“Why have you come to speak to me, Inquisitor?” Prism asked wearily.

“We want to use the maneframes at the Stable-Tec factory to track down a specific Stable in Vanhoover,” I said after Rare motioned to me, “We’ll be out of your manes soon enough.”

“Absolutely not,” Elder Prism said indignantly, “As if we would let Wastelanders fool around with our maneframes. That technology belongs to the Steel Rangers.”

“I’m not inexperienced with computers,” I said, “You know I was able to hack the maneframes of the Ministry of Morale Hub, so I’m sure I could fully unlock everything at the Stable-Tec factory too. All that information would be yours, I just want to look through it for one specific thing.”

“It’s not a question of your skill; you are not one of us,” Prism huffed, “Besides, our scribes have already unlocked every piece of information on the maneframes. Letting you take even a brief peek at that knowledge is out of the question. Unless, of course, there really was something in this deal for us.”

I sighed heavily.

“What is it that you want this time?” I asked.

It turned out that what the Steel Rangers wanted this time was for me to steal information from Stalliongrad’s Ministry of Wartime Technology Hub. They resented the fact that they had not been able to make it their base of operations like the Vanhoover contingent had done. They resented the fact that the Steel Rangers hadn’t come to Stalliongrad before the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad was too powerful for them to challenge openly. Most of all, they resented the Vanhoover contingent and Elder Manticore’s Fury, but that was normal. Like the majority of the Steel Rangers in the Wasteland, they cared only about the acquisition and preservation of technology, and they’d chosen to leave when Elder Fury’s policies hadn’t meshed with that.

The MWT Hub (like most of Stalliongrad’s Ministry hubs) was within the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. Thankfully, it wasn’t in any districts that I wasn’t allowed into without an escort, but it was still dangerous to steal from it. I didn’t forget that the PRS had cameras everywhere, always watching. Most of them weren’t well-concealed, but there were certainly hidden cameras around, and those were the ones that worried me. If we were found out, we would certainly be punished, and I didn’t think explaining that I was doing it to get the seeding megaspell would be adequate to ensure a pardon. I could’ve tried to ask the Chairpony to give the information voluntarily, but I was certain I would be turned down and watched closely if I ever went to the MWT Hub. The Steel Rangers and the PRS were nearly as adversarial as the PRS and Railyard.

Ache once more waited in Traders’ Lane for us. I felt bad about leaving her behind, but she had no visitor pass, and it seemed a waste to spend the time getting her one when we’d (hopefully) be leaving Stalliongrad soon. Rare and I alone made our way to the MWT Hub, which was located at the northern edge of the Western Block. As we approached, I saw that it truly was on the edge of the district. It was part of the great wall that separated the Western Block from the Stacks, two-thirds of the building on this side of the barrier. Compared to the Vanhoover MWT Hub, they were nothing alike. It wasn’t a factory complex, but a skyscraper, albeit a fairly squat one. Still, the sign over the doors with the MWT (and Steel Ranger) symbol made it clear that this was the right place.

“Halt! Stop right there!” a guard ordered as we approached the building’s entrance, “What business do you have here?”

“I’m looking for work, actually,” I said, recalling my cover story in case they wouldn’t allow us to just waltz in.

“Then you should look for a labor allocation officer, not go poking around here,” the guard said, rather rudely.

“See, I don’t know if the job is something that a labor allocation officer would have on the books,” I spoke quickly, keenly aware that two ponies had their battle saddles pointed at me, “I was wondering if there were maneframes in there that hadn’t been cracked yet. MWT knowledge would be valuable, I reckon, and I could get it for you. I did a similar thing for Strict Step with the MoM Hub.”

“Strict Step? As in District Morale Officer Strict Step?” the second guard said mockingly, “Sure, I believe you. I don’t know what you’re trying, but you’d better get out of here now.”

“It’s the truth,” Rare Sparks said, the sound of her armor startling the guards as she took a step forward, “If you don’t believe us, just call him, and that’ll straighten everything out.”

“Sure, I’ll give him a call, and then you’ll be in for it,” the second guard sneered before trotting into the building.

Without his partner, the first guard looked overwhelmed. He’d never expected to have to hold off a Steel Ranger, and he looked incredibly nervous, turning to point his battle saddle at me and Rare Sparks in turn. I motioned Rare to take a step back; I had no intention of this failing because a nervous guard made a mistake and shot at us on accident. After a few minutes, the second guard returned, looking even more nervous than his companion.

“Strict Step says you’re to be allowed inside, and to give you any help you need,” he said to me, sweating, “The Steel Ranger must stay out here, though.”

“Why?” I asked; though I knew the reason, I wasn’t comfortable stealing from the PRS without Rare there to back me up. I’d done it before, but it had been a nerve-wracking experience.

“We can’t allow a Steel Ranger into the Ministry of Technology,” the guard said, nervously watching Rare as he began to speak more quickly, “Everything they want is inside. It’s not my order. It’s what Strict Step said to do.”

“It’s fine,” Rare said, and some of the tension left the guards, “You go on in and do what you have to do.”

Nodding my understanding, I followed the second guard inside while she waited patiently where she was, continuing to make the first guard uncomfortable. Much like the Ministry of Morale Hub, I was led quickly through the building, not allowed to see anything for more than a moment as we passed by. I wondered what it was that the PRS was using the MWT Hub for. So far as I could tell, the MoM Hub was being used exactly as it had been during the War, to spy on ponies, so maybe they were working on new technologies here. More likely, though, they were just working on restoring old technologies. I hadn’t seen genuine invention in the Wasteland apart from Rare Sparks, and even she was just improving upon the old.

The maneframes, as usual, were located in the building’s basement. There were great rows of them, even more than under the Ministry of Morale, and I wondered if I was really going to be able to get this all to the Steel Rangers. Terminals were attached to each of them, but each cluster had a master terminal in a nearby alcove along the wall. After pointing out which maneframes had yet to be hacked into, my guide turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” I asked. Not that I didn’t want him to leave, I actually preferred it, but it seemed strange and suspicious.

“Strict Step told me you weren’t to be disturbed while you were working. He also said the last time you did this, there was poisonous gas,” the guard gulped, “I’ll be back to check on your progress now and then.”

It was too good to be true. Without the guard watching my every move, it would be much easier to steal the information here. First, though, I had to do the job I’d said I was here for. The maneframes weren’t particularly difficult, especially compared to the ones beneath the Ministry of Morale. There were plenty of tricky traps, but I was able to easily bypass them.

Once I was certain that no more surprises stood in my way on the surface level, I began to poke around where I shouldn’t have. As I’d suspected, there were cameras in this room—eight, to be precise—and there was nowhere I could download the files without being seen. All information from the cameras would be sent back to the MoM Hub, but I was able to get in the way of that and intercept the cameras’ communication on a local level. Finding a suitable span of time, I set the cameras up to transmit me working at the terminal over and over.

Now that the cameras weren’t recording what I was actually doing, I began the true task I’d come here for. The Steel Rangers had escorted us back to their base, where they’d retrieved a special experimental drive for storing large amounts of data. At first, I wondered if it was like the magically compressed datatape that Velvet had made back in Stable 85 (and was still in my saddlebags), but it was nothing like that device. This was a completely new technology that Stable-Tec had been working on at the end of the War. Perhaps it had been based on the PipBuck’s technology, since the foreleg-mounted device could also store ridiculous amounts of data (though not at this level), but the Steel Rangers had been tight-lipped about the matter.

It helped that I could access multiple maneframes at once through their cluster’s master terminal; otherwise, it would have taken me much longer to copy everything over onto the drive. Even so, it still took considerable time, and I watched the door anxiously. The guard could come back at any moment, and there would be no hiding what I was doing. Files could only transfer over as quickly as the port allowed, though, which was far too slow for me. Every time a cluster finished transferring, I breathed a sigh of relief, then moved on to the next cluster and started all over again.

The guard must have been truly worried about poison gas, for he didn’t come back until I was well done. I had time to transfer over every file on the maneframes into a drive that baffled me with its storage capacity. I was also able to reset the cameras and doctor the records so that nopony would know anything had been copied from the maneframes here. As I thought about this, it caused me to chuckle. I was doctoring things, just not in the way one might expect from a doctor.

“Is it finished?” the guard asked as he peeked through the door.

“All done,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “You can tell whoever’s in charge, if they haven’t figured it out already, that everything here is accessible to them now.”

“You didn’t … read any of the files, did you?” the guard asked suspiciously.

“Of course not,” I replied.

It was the truth. While I was always curious what the ponies of the world before the megaspells had recorded, it was too dangerous to do that here. Besides, most of what was recorded here was probably technical blueprints and documents I wouldn’t understand anyway.

“Good, good,” the guard said with relief, “I’ll take you to the building’s director, so she can assign you the correct amount of contribution credits.”

“Lead the way,” I said, feeling the drive full of secrets shifting in my saddlebags as I rose from my chair.

“One collection of pilfered files, as requested,” I said as I passed the drive over to Elder Prism, “Now, for your end of the bargain.”

“First, I’ll have to have my scribes go over these files to make sure everything is in order,” Prism said as she passed the drive to another Steel Ranger.

“We had a deal,” Rare Sparks said indignantly.

“I didn’t trick you with the Ministry of Morale snooper, why would I lie to you about this?” I asked, trying a more diplomatic approach, although I was just as indignant as Rare at the idea that they would go back on their deal.

“Fine,” Prism said with annoyance, “You make a good point. Paladin Dale, take them to the map room.”

The first Steel Ranger we’d met in Stalliongrad led the way while other Steel Rangers murmured discontent that Wastelanders were allowed to walk around their base freely. I would be glad to get out of here, the sooner the better. There was no guarantee that some of the Steel Rangers might not turn on us at any time, deciding to hold us as prisoners instead or take all our technology and throw us helpless into the Wasteland. I’d found it puzzling when Prism had said we were to go to the “map room” when I’d asked for access to the maneframes, but I hoped it was the same thing. Maps would certainly be helpful for finding the Stable where the megaspell was stored. There was also the possibility that “map room” was code for taking us out back and killing us, but we were in too deep to turn back now, and EFS still marked Paladin Dale as friendly.

The map room turned out to be a narrow chamber in which one wall was taken up by a large glass screen. Beneath it was a console with a terminal monitor, a keyboard, and several controls of unknown use. Dale pressed a button on the console, and a light came on behind the screen. Two pairs of metal rods crossed the screen, one pair vertically and the other horizontally. Tiny motors along the edge of the glass whirred into action and moved the rods across the screen, forming a small square in the center where they crossed each other.

“Well, get to it,” Paladin Dale commanded, “Remember, I’ll be watching to make sure you don’t try anything.”

I approached the keyboard and began tapping away, relieved to see that the terminal monitor behaved as normal. After a little searching, I began to figure out how the system was arranged and learned how to navigate it. The system stored information on every Stable in Equestria, arranged numerically. I was tempted to take a look at the entry on Stable 85, but Dale was watching, and I didn’t want to raise any suspicion. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go through the entire list to find the Stable I was looking for. There were other files that stored Stables that shared certain characteristics, such as the city they’d been built in. Dale objected when I began entering the numbers of the Vanhoover Stables into my PipBuck, but after I explained what I was doing, he harrumphed and let me be.

I was able to narrow the search even further by eliminating the Stables I already knew about. Stables 85, 57, 50, and 109 were eliminated since I’d already been to those locations. Stable 71 was likewise removed from the list, since I saw no reason for Stable-Tec to send a seeding megaspell to a Stable that had been built to test weaponized audio on zebras. The remaining Stables I glanced over, aware that Dale was getting impatient. My focus was on the equipment lists, and I finally found one that listed MR-10XX Seeding Megaspell (Agricultural).

“Stable 65,” Ache read off the screen.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Rare Sparks commented.

I looked for where Stable 65 was located, but it wasn’t listed anywhere. There was an option to View Location, but the monitor remained unchanged when I selected it. The screen over the console didn’t remain uninteresting, though. I saw now that the screen was actually two layers of glass with a clear plastic sheet between them. The sheet slid by, and maps of various Equestrian cities scrolled over the screen until stopping with the familiar map of Vanhoover. The rods crossing the screen then began to adjust themselves until they came to a stop, forming a square around a point in downtown Vanhoover. Squinting, I could just barely make out the label, partially obscured by the rods.

“Vanhoover Botanical Gardens,” I read off the map, “I guess that’s our destination.”

Level Up
New Perk: Strong Swatter – Unarmed attacks with your forelegs do double damage. If Paralyzing Buck has also been taken, then unarmed attacks with your hindlegs now do 2.5 times damage.
New Quest: Paradise Lost – Find the seeding megaspell in Stable 65.
Barter +5 (35)
Energy Weapons +4 (81)
Medicine +2 (59)
Sneak +4 (74)
Speech +5 (62)