• Published 9th Apr 2012
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Fallout: Equestria - Memories - TheBobulator



One crazy pegasus, one roboleg, a contingent of Steel Rangers, and an adventure of infinite detours. Put all that together and what do you get? A rip-roaring mosh pit wrecking its way across the Wasteland, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake.

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Chapter 20: Whose idea was this, anyway?

Chapter 20: Whose idea was this, anyway?

“Sometimes I dream of cheese.”


“It’s not possible. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE!” Tangerine’s laser continued to unsteadily point at Ice Storm. “You don’t exist. You can’t exist!”

I glared at Ice as well, but stayed silent. If everypony was having hallucinations, maybe I could pass him off as one. Lacking that, maybe she was seeing someone else instead. The last thing I wanted was Tangerine telling Rumcake how bad my crazy was getting.

“You… you were in the front row. I remember you because you winked at me.” Tangerine slightly lowered her laser. “How…”

Ice stood up and placed his fedora back on his head. “Don’tcha worry about it.” He placed his hoof on Tangerine’s lips.

“Mph?”

“Sleep it off. It’ll probably make more sense later.” Ice gently pushed Tangerine, who fell onto her back and immediately fell asleep. “Whew.”

Ice sighed once she was out and slightly drooling on the bed. “What the hell was that about?” I quietly demanded.

Ice attempted to produce a cigarette from his crumpled cigarette box, but he found out that it was empty after a few shakes. “I feel like you deserve an explanation, especially after all this time.” He turned it upside down and shook it just to make sure.

I must have snorted hard enough to dislodge ceiling tiles. “Damn right.”

“Well, let’s start with this—I’m not one of your crazy partition personalities.” Ice took a seat back in the armchair. “I’ve been trying to get them to trust me this entire time while still doing my thing.”

“So there was something going on under my nose the entire time.”

“It wasn’t going to be a moustache.”

Dammit, another joke I didn’t understand. “Huh?”

Ice sighed. “Under your nose? Moustache? Come on, it’s not that hard.”

That joke deserved a facehoof. “Just get back to explaining.”

“Fine, fine. Sheesh, you military types don’t have a sense of humor.” Ice settled himself in the chair. “I’m a spirit from an era long, long, gone. After what happened over… I don’t know, over a thousand years ago now, I guess? I ended up being thrown into the world without a friend to keep me company.”

Wow. That sounded dreadful. “…What happened?”

“Let’s say the last pony I hung around with may have overreacted to a petty argument and got sent to a faraway place,” Ice carefully responded. “A while later, we came back and more bad things happened.”

“Like…?”

I received a cold, well, icy glare from Ice. “I’m not going into any more detail. Bad. Things. That’s it.”

Based on just that story, I was somewhat skeptical about his motives and his impact on my mental health. It wasn’t like I could do anything about it, though. I was stuck with Ice for the foreseeable future.

“Hey, but at least I found you. You’re a nice mare, but truthfully—you’re not my type.”

It was my turn to glare at him. “Wow, thanks.”

I heard a groan from my left. “I’ll just pop out now. Something about that watch or this place messed up my selective vision spell, and I really want to know what. I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.” With that, he vaporized in a hasty pile of pale blue fog before I could ask him any more questions.

Tangerine sat up and stretched, releasing an adorably squeaky yawn in the process. “Ugh… I just had the strangest nightmare… WAIT.” She noticed her laser pistol on the floor where she’d dropped it before.

Uh… “You started yelling about somepony or something and then you drew your pistol. I panicked, and I might have accidentally knocked you out,” I hastily lied. Great job, me.

There was a really good chance that Tangerine wasn’t buying it. She gave me a weird look along the lines of “right, I’ll believe you for the moment” as she tucked her laser pistol away. I gave her a reassuring grin while I folded up my bipod.

“Let’s just find that laser so we can leave. This place creeps me out.” Tangerine shuddered. “Seriously, if I’m seeing things we have problems.”

The mare made a point, even if she had been slightly wrong. “Yeah, I’m not doing good as well. After that giant bug and the noises, I just really want to get out of here. Heck, I’ll fly us to the bottom too. Buck that damn elevator.”

A pillow bounced off my head. “No. We’re taking the nice and safe elevator. As much as I trust you, I’m not going to let you fly me to the bottom of this building and risk the chances of me pancaking all over the dirt.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

The same pillow lifted off the floor and slapped me about the other side of my head. “Shut up and find the roof access.”

To the roof it was. Tangerine wandered off back to where the elevator was while I stared at the hole that I’d blasted into the ceiling. Maybe if I had some explosives, I could widen the hole just enough so that I could shove Tangerine through it.

“Assuming the laser is really on the roof, wouldn’t blowing up the roof be a bad idea?” Gala Frosty asked as she curiously examined an empty glass box built into the dining room wall. “And you don’t have the explosives, don’t you?”

Damn you, common sense. “Well, maybe if we blow it up really carefully, we won’t need a ladder,” I responded, hovering close to the ceiling.

I heard something metallic and heavy hit the ground somewhere, followed by loud wrenching noises. “You’re not –ngh– blowing anything up, Frosty.”

Play it cool, Frosty. “Aww come on! Please?” I whined.

There was a lighter metal on floor contact sound. “No means no. I think I got a way up to the roof, anyway. Could you give me a hoof? I can’t get any good leverage at this angle.”

I continued to stare at the hole I’d made. “I’m telling you, if we used just a little—”

“No! Just get over here!”

Depressing gray clouds floated just out of reach right on the other side of the hole. “How about if we jus—” I stopped as something grabbed my right ear and dragged me off in the direction of where Tangerine was standing. “Ow! OW OW OW!”

I stumbled into the elevator lobby by my ear. Once I noticed the wisps of magic dissipating from Tangerine’s horn, I became more annoyed that she’d dragged me around like a foal. The elevator doors were open again, curiously enough without the actual elevator. On the other side of the yawning pit, there was an old rusty ladder with an even more rusty hatch above it.

An iron monkey wrench floated next to Tangerine. “I can’t get a good angle on the screws holding that hatch’s hinges on. I hope the architect that designed this place fell down a flight of stairs and into a den of flaming pit vipers. Seriously.”

Since Tangerine had gone through all the effort of forcibly bring me back to the elevator lobby, I felt like I had no choice but to help. “Fine, Let’s see…” I carefully weaved my way around the old rusty wires and examined the hatch carefully.

“Do you need the wrench?” Tangerine called up to me.

Where had she even found it, anyway? That issue aside, the head of the wrench was too large for the small space. Although now I could see how she couldn’t get a good angle on the screws either.

The hinges looked like they had been weakened by centuries of rust—weak enough to probably break at the drop of a feather. “Nah, I probably won’t need it.” I tapped my power armored hoof against the hinges, loosening a sliver of rust.

Tangerine began to mutter to herself. “Stupid architects.” I imagined she started to bob her head as she mimicked voices. “Why do you have a ladder in an elevator shaft? To fix the elevator! How do you get to the ladder? You take the elevator that doesn't work! Who thought this one up?! Unbelievable.”

I was trying to figure out how to buck the hatch on the ceiling while still maintaining a stable hover. There wasn’t room to safely hover upside down, nevermind pull a daredevil-esque sideways hover and a three-inch buck.

“Aww buck it, I’m taking the easy way.” I landed back in the elevator lobby so I could get Philomena’s touch on.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Tangerine noticed. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“I’m about to open that little hatch into next week.” I flew back into the elevator shaft, placed my claw against the frame of the hatch, and swung my special power hoof as hard as I could.

On hindsight, it was sort of a bad idea. Not only was I going to have to wash all of the rusty flecks out of my mane and off Dad’s hat, but I managed to launch the hatch right off its hinges and into orbit. Before I could announce my success, an impressive amount of gravel and debris poured down the hole. Thanks to my smart decision of not wearing a helmet, some gravel managed to make it inside my armor.

I kept my mouth and eyes closed until things stopped falling on me. “Yeah, I think we should have thought this through a bit more.” I rattled my way back into the lobby.

“We?” Tangerine huffed.

“Shut up.”

Rocks and whatever else was accompanying my lower neck and shoulders made it incredibly uncomfortable to move. What was worse, every time I took a step or even moved at all, more of the rocks in my armor dropped farther into every possible space they could.

“Get this armor off me. I’ve got rocks in my collar and rocks in my mane…” I groaned, tossing my head to dislodge a rock in my ear. At least shaking myself shook off most of gravel trapped on my armor.

Tangerine ignored me and instead peered up the empty elevator shaft. “Well, at least you got it open. Now I need to figure out how I’m going to get over there.”

After a bit of fumbling, I managed to undo my chestplate and sighed contentedly as a modest collection of gravel poured out. Once I was sure I had as much debris out of my armor as possible, I managed to replace everything on my own for once.

I peered into the elevator shaft. “Wow. That’s a really long ladder.” The giant rusty ladder ran from the top of the shaft all the way down into the deep dark depths.

“If you expect me to jump across and snag the ladder, you can think again,” Tangerine added, peering over the edge with me.

“Hm.” A devious idea wormed its way into my mind. “Maybe you can find something to bridge the gap. Or maybe we can call the elevator down to the floor below and use it as a platform.”

Tangerine stepped back and consulted the mess of wires that was the elevator control panel. “Well, it shouldn’t be that hard…”

Chance! In the moment that Tangerine had been distracted, I wrapped my forelegs around her midsection and easily picked her up. Thanks to her small size as well, I managed to swoop us around the big steel cables and prop her hooves up on the rungs of the ladder without any problems. Well, problems for me, anyway.

“AAAAAAAAAHHH!” Tangerine belatedly screamed.

“Yes, I’m aware,” I winced, flattening my ears against my head.

To the disappointment of my ears, Tangerine continued screaming in sheer fright. Why did her voice have to be so high pitched? I made sure that I had a good hold on her before reaching around and forcibly shutting her mouth by clamping my claw around her muzzle.

Tangerine squirmed in my grasp. “If you keep moving and screaming, I’m going to drop you. I’m sure you don’t want that,” I warned her. Immediately, her struggling stopped.

I gave Tangerine a chance for her to grab the ladder now that she wasn’t completely scared witless. I continued to flap in place, suddenly realizing that flying into the shaft so quickly was a terrible idea. Not only was the space not as large as it appeared, I could have clipped one of my wings on something!

Concerns aside… “I’m going to take my claw off your mouth, and you’re going to stop screaming. Okay?” I felt Tangerine nod, so I shifted by claw down to her waist.

“Was it too hard for you to ask first?” Tangerine started climbing up the ladder very slowly with me hovering up behind her, in case she lost her footing. I’d already released her at this point, by the way. “You know I’m afraid of heights.”

“That’s why. Pretty sure you wouldn’t have agreed to it, so I decided to take action first,” I proudly replied. “Watch those edges, by the way.”

I continued to protectively hover at the top of the shaft as Tangerine climbed out onto the roof. “I swear, one day I’m going to get you back for every single time that you’ve scared me.”

“Good luck with that.” I snickered.

Tangerine pulled herself out and immediately got a corner of her robe caught on what was left on the hinges. I unsnagged her robe and climbed out after her, right into a gust of wind that whipped my rusty mane into my eyes. The roof wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. No obvious giant death laser, only big rusty box things and some kind of broken machine along the edge of the roof.

“Well, this is a bit disappointing.” I looked around for anything that could be a huge laser.

The two of us performed a slightly more in-depth examination of the roof. It turned out that the big rusty boxes were only air conditioning units, and the machine was a busted window-washing unit for non-pegasi. How disappointing.

“It’s supposed to be right here!” Tangerine whined, stomping the gravel beneath her hooves. “And I had my hopes up, too.”

“Did the memory orb tell you anything?”

Tangerine shook her head. “Whenever that memory was captured, the laser was ‘in progress’, whatever that means.”

I looked around the roof again. Unless there was some sort of super-secret hiding place for a laser, it definitely wasn’t here. “Maybe they moved it at some point,” I suggested.

“A laser that big? Not possible.” Tangerine pawed at the gravel surfacing the roof.

As I cast another baleful look around the roof, I idly realized that anything that complicated would have gotten destroyed by the weather. Well, that or whoever owned the hotel must have had a personal brigade of pegasi to manage the weather for them. Think, Frosty. If I was a superweapon on the roof, where would I be? I noticed a glint of steel where there should have been concrete under the layer of gravel.

Officer Frosty stood next to me. “I’d be under the roof. Safety, and it’s a good excuse to install a super-secret roof hatch.”

I stared at her. “Hold on, since when do you provide commentary?”

“Hey, don’t discriminate. You’ll get your commentary whether you want to or not.” Officer stared at the broken window washing unit. “Hey, maybe you can send the scribe down in that.”

“Looks like a death trap,” I remarked.

“Exactly.”

“You’re a dick.”

Officer snickered. “Joke’s on you. You just called yourself a dick.”

I faceclawed. “Ugh. I hate me.”

I felt a hoof pat my head. “Don’t worry. I hate you too.”

Tangerine trotted up to me. “What are you muttering about now?”

“I got an idea that there might be a super secret blast door on the roof.” I mulled my own words over in my head. “Wow, that sounded a lot less stupid before I said anything.”

Tangerine gave me her very familiar ‘Frosty-you’re-an-idiot’ look. “Whatever gave you that idea? Don’t get my hopes up.”

“Let’s just say I have an idea.” I swept gravel and dirt away from the metal sheet, which revealed itself to be much larger than expected.

There definitely was something. A reinforced cable ran from one corner of the metal sheet in the roof to one of the rusty air conditioning units. Tangerine re-examined that particular unit and jumped back in surprise when a panel opened and a miniature terminal hit her in the face. She rubbed her nose in annoyance as she went back to the face-ramming terminal to examine it.

I peeked over Tangerine’s head while she did her complicated sciencey things. Neon green words started to filter onto the screen and I didn’t understand any of it. Something about activating, some other things about nonessential something or other, and all-around boring stuff. Still, it was kinda interesting watching her magically type away.

“So… what’s all of that mean?” I asked, pointing at a passing “access denied” warning.

After taking a few seconds to angrily hammer something into the terminal, Tangerine huffed, “Like any responsible pony, there’s a password on the entire system.” A buffet of wind threw her hood back, which she pointedly ignored.

“Did you try ‘password’ yet?” I helpfully suggested. Tangerine glared at me again, then levitated her hood back into place.

“What kind of stupid pony makes their password ‘password’? I mean, it’s like making your locker combination ‘1-2-3-4’.”

I took a step back and nervously looked elsewhere. “Hah! Yeah, what kind of—eh, heh heh.” My response petered out as Tangerine stopped in her technological sorcery to gape at me. “Hah?”

When Tangerine didn’t respond, I daintily took half a step forward and closed her mouth for her. I grinned and proceeded to hide my face under the brim of my dad’s hat.

“Goddesses, you really are that stupid,” Tangerine finally exclaimed.

My face instantly heated up to boiling. “Hey, I don’t have to change default codes! They’re easy to remember and nopony ever expects it!” I retorted, still trying to hide behind my dad’s hat.

“I’ve lost all of my respect for you.”

“Shut up and get back to doing…” I waved my claw at the terminal. “Whatever that is.”

Her taunting finished, Tangerine went back to fiddling with the terminal again. I, in the meantime, decided to cool my head by flying a few circles around the roof. Once I was sure there weren’t any threats in the area and she wouldn’t be ambushed, I launched myself off the roof.

I let myself drop for a few seconds before opening my wings and climbing back up to roof level. A few powerful pumps of my wings gave me enough speed to rocket around the perimeter of the roof at a pulse-pounding gliding speed. I relished the slight adrenaline coursing through my body and the wind ruffling my mane.

“While you’re up here, maybe you should listen to some calming Enclave tunes,” Officer Frosty suggested, flying right along my right wing.

What was her deal with the radio? “No. I just want to fly in peace so I can think.”

“Check those tunes sometime.” Officer performed a smooth bank turn and soared out of my peripheral vision. Hm.

I really wanted to take all of my armor off so that I could actually enjoy the cool breeze like Luna intended it to be. Too bad we were in a potentially hazardous area and doing so would really lower my already low chances of survival. At least I wasn’t wearing a helmet and all this flying was very slowly removing all the bits of rust in my mane.

Flying made me feel more at ease in my current predicament. I didn’t need to worry about anything except feel the thermals beneath my wings and not crash into a wall. So peaceful. I used this opportunity to breathe deeply and just let my worries disappear.

“Frosty! Down here!” Tangerine broke my calm train of thought. “What do you know about energy weapons?”

What didn’t I know about energy weapons? “Hello, Enclave training! Sure, I know enough,” I replied, swooping toward the roof for a landing.

In the time that I’d zoned out and flown a few laps around the building, Tangerine had figured out how to open the roof up. Turned out I wasn’t as crazy as I thought! Sure enough, there was a large turret-like device slowly elevating from horizontal to vertical. If that wasn’t a super-laser, I didn’t know what was.

“Wow. That’s a big laser.” I marveled at the complex pre-war weapon in front of me.

Tangerine trotted around the edge of the open blast doors. “According to the control console, it’s missing a lot of components. There’s almost no power, for starters. The adjustment panel is completely rusted out, and it looks like one of the components hasn’t been installed.”

I pulled up next to an open service panel and peered inside. “I’m assuming this is just a really large laser rifle, so let’s see…” Good thing one of the only classes that I paid attention was weapon maintenance.

“I know a group of Steel Rangers that might want a fully operational battle station.” Tangerine endearingly tapped the outer case of the laser.

Yeah, that wasn’t close. “I’m afraid this battle station isn’t even partially operational.”

“A mare can dream.”

“The alignment rod is bent. It’ll have to be replaced, but at least I think you can use anything as long as it’s as straight as possible,” I immediately observed. “There aren’t enough crystals to power a device of this size, unless the crystals are overcharged and power output is exponential in relation to size at this point as opposed to logarithmically.”

I smirked when I saw Tangerine’s dumbfounded face. Excellent, everything was going to plan. “Whaaaa?”

I reached in and carefully unplugged a small cylindrical device. The tube was transparent and held a crystal attached to some kind of circuit board. A few of these were attached in a ring formation around the tube, so I could only assume it was some kind of oversized capacitor. To my slightly professional opinion, those actually looked okay if they were wired up correctly.

“The heat sinks aren’t in optimal position since they’re nowhere near the cooling vents,” I added, peering down into the bottom of the laser. “Actually, the heat sinks aren’t even in a good place at all. Some of the energy couplings are missing as well. Good luck finding enough raw copper and tungsten to make giant wires.”

“How do you know all of this?” Tangerine sputtered.

Who was the one laughing now? “There were two things that I paid attention to, it was stuff about energy weapons, marksponyship, and bartending.”

“Two?”

Weapons, shooting, drinks… whoops. “Math was obviously not one of my strong suits.” Yet another double facehoof moment.

“So… how viable is this laser?” Tangerine gazed at me with a hopeful expression.

I flipped myself over and stared up into the top end of the laser. “In theory, most of the main components are fine. You should be able to repair it if you find somepony else that actually knows how energy weapons work. I just know enough to fix and diagnose problems.”

A rock bounced off my armored wing. “So will it work or not?”

The fuse box I was staring into didn’t even have any fuses in it. “I’d say you’ve got a twenty percent chance of actually getting it working. There’s a lot of design problems and a lot of parts are missing.” I backpedaled in the air to get my head out of the laser.

Tangerine kicked the side of the air conditioner unit holding the hidden terminal. “Damn. I wasn’t expecting it, but thanks for your help.”

I pumped my hooves in the air. “I am so smart! S-M-R-T!” I singsonged.

“You missed a letter.”

“That’s the joke,” I grumbled. However, I wasn’t going to let it bother me because I was having a better time just having shown Tangerine that I was better than her at something.

Before I could properly bask in my glory, my radio burped to life. “Fros… where… are, pull… Rally… ign and pull out… found Violet and… o good news.”

I tapped my earbloom. “Did not copy. Say again, did not copy.”

Nothing but more static and unintelligible speech. “Well, all I got was regroup somewhere. It’s always the repeat that never makes it through.” I stared accusingly at the radio mounted on my shoulder.

Tangerine was back at the terminal. “There’s a lot of interference up here. Give me a second to copy the software on this thing and I’ll follow you down.”

~~~~~

“We’re not taking the elevator,” I asserted, refusing to step inside the metal box.

Tangerine attempted to drag me into the elevator. “Come on, I really don’t want to ride you this far down to the ground.” I did my best not to make a disappointed whine or a questionably funny comment.

So maybe I’d given her a bad experience with her first few flights. “It’ll be fine. I promise there won’t be anything too drastic in the way of aerial maneuvers.” I stealthily shuffled my wings in a pegasus approximation of an obvious lie—also why I was bad at poker. Hey, I wasn’t going to give up the chance to dive this far straight down!

“I’m taking the elevator, and hopefully it won’t have to stop on every single floor.” Tangerine stood in the elevator and waited. “You coming?”

On hindsight, maybe dive bombing the ground was a bad idea. “Fine, fine. Just so you won’t be lonely on the ride down.” Grudgingly, I glided into the elevator.

The doors dinged and slid closed. My heart lurched when the entire elevator shuddered and groaned. After that slight hiccup, we began to descend at a painstakingly slow rate. The little readout along the top of the elevator slowly counted down from one hundred. Ugh. At least the lights on the floor selection panel had reset, so we weren’t going to stop on each floor this time.

Tangerine broke the silence. “So… know any cool tricks?”

Ninety one. “I have this one really cool party trick.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I can appear at parties I’m not invited to.”

Eighty seven. “I don’t get it.”

“Aww come on! Party trick? A trick that gets me into parties?”

Realization dawned on Tangerine. “Ooooh! I get it now!”

I had to faceclaw after that one. If this kept up, there was going to be a good chance I’d stab an eye out. Maybe the little scribe needed to get out more.

“What about you?” I asked, legitimately curious. Unicorns had to have really cool tricks with all their magic and stuff, right?

Seventy three. “Not really, no. Most of my spells are for practical use.”

“That’s boring. Can you even cast fireworks or something? Or like, sparkles?” She had to know something entertaining.

I noticed Tangerine shrinking into her hood and beginning to take interest in a corner of the floor. “W-well, not really…”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Go on…” I inched closer to Tangerine.

“Uh… let’s say when unicorns get really excited…”

Ooh. I liked where this was going. “Yes?” I scooted a little closer.

Tangerine looked amazingly uncomfortable. “And sometimes, w-we uh, do this thing…”

“And?” I was close enough so that I could almost feel the heat radiating off Tangerine’s face.

“Where, uh—” Tangerine’s voice broke off at a squeak.

I leaned in and breathily whispered into her ear “Does this happen when you cloooop?”

Tangerine sprang into the wall in what I assumed was surprise. “Yes. No! Nononono!” Her face was redder than an apple right now.

Just in case, I tucked that information away for later. “That’s cute.” I hopped back to where I was standing previously like nothing had happened.

Tangerine and I spent the next few dozen of floors standing in embarrased and smug silence, respectively. Every time she looked in my direction, I grinned and winked at her which caused her to blush profusely and stare at the wall again.

Floor forty-one. Rooms forty-one oh one to forty-one eighty.” This time, I gave Tangerine a more serious look and grabbed the first weapon in my saddlebag—the revolver with the striped and numbered cylinder. Good thing she understood and readied her laser pistol as well.

The doors opened and the two of us pointed our respective weapons out into the floor’s elevator lobby. There was nopony there at first glance. The carpeting was worn and torn, bloody marks adorned the walls, and there was a pile of bones right next to the hallway.

Since nopony appeared to actually be waiting by the elevator, I pressed the “close doors” button. “Hm. That’s weird,” I mentioned as the doors slid closed and the elevator began its descent once more.

“Hey, can I see that gun you’ve got?” Tangerine asked.

I pulled the revolver out of my mouth and gave it to her. “Sure. Why?”

Tangerine examined my revolver intently, even carefully taking it apart with her magic. “That’s really cool.” She spun the cylinder in her orange magic field.

Too bad the elevator was too small to effectively use my anti-machine rifle. “What is?” I asked, making sure to rearrange the contents of my saddlebag so that my submachine gun was on top.

The side of my revolver’s loaded cylinder was shoved right into my face. “It’s numbered like a roulette spinner thing! There’s also some kind of enchanted gem built into the center pin.” Once she mentioned it, the similarity was striking.

When Tangerine spun it one more time, a single bullet fell out because of the angle. “Floor twenty-seven. Rooms twenty-seven oh one to twenty-seven eighty. Spa also located on this floor.” My revolver’s parts flew together at lightning speed and pointed out the opening elevator doors.

I was caught off guard. There wasn’t anything there, so I couldn’t activate S.A.T.S. out of panic. My stupid rifle strap was getting in the way thanks to how I’d rearranged everything on my person.

A ghoul dressed in what probably used to be a very fancy ball dress suddenly appeared. “Eeeee! KILL IT!” Tangerine squealed. I heard the hammer on my revolver fall six times in a row, but there was no actual firing.

It’s a good thing that I was too distracted by trying to figure out what color the dress used to be. “That’s racist, you know that? And how’d ya get a gun in here, anyhow?” the zebra ghoul growled with its gravelly voice.

Tangerine urgently hissed at me, “She still thinks it’s the past! Quick, improvise!”

“Sorry! My, uh, cousin won it at the gift shop. It’s just a toy, see?” I hastily bluffed, taking my revolver back and pulling the trigger several more times into the floor.

The ghoul placed one of her rotting hooves in the doorway, preventing the doors from closing. “What’s with the getup?”

“Gaming convention?” I hopefully suggested.

“Hmm.” The zebra ghoul continued to stare. “Going up?”

“Down,” Tangerine quickly replied.

The ghoul withdrew without another word and wandered off, muttering about stairs. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid closed once again. The two of us sighed in relief. Disaster narrowly averted.

The two of us sighed in relief. “It would be the dirtiest zebra.” I chuckled to myself.

I examined the bullet that had fallen out of my revolver. Nothing special, but hadn’t there been six loaded in my revolver a moment ago? I checked the load on it and found it was completely devoid of bullets. Carefully, I picked up the bullet and slid it into one of the empty chambers and held back a surprised grunt when five other bullets materialized in the other vacant slots. Snapping the gun shut caused the cylinder to spin a few times before stopping.

“That’s really bucking useless.” I finally sighed. “At least it’s got a cool paint job.”

“Hm?” Tangerine was too busy waiting for the last eight floors to go by.

I showed her the tricky bullet thing. Seriously, who does that? One real bullet? With a function like that, this thing was completely impractical to actually use in combat.

“It’s a Lucky Punk Roulette gambling revolver with full fairness functionality! That’s why it’s so familiar,” Tangerine exclaimed. “They’re super hard to find, and, well… impractical.”

“Why don’t I just take out the magic part?”

Ground Floor. Casino floor and Front Desk. Bar is on the right.

Tangerine shrugged. “Probably compromises the gun’s integrity. Not sure, really. I mean, maybe—”

We were aimlessly walking into a random hallway that, according to the sign on the wall, led directly to the bar. “To the lobby,” I interrupted her. The lobby seemed like a reasonable place to have a rally point. “Anyway, continue.”

We changed directions and headed to the front of the hotel. “Maybe it’s possible to machine a new chamber for it. That’s as close as it’ll get, I think. Without proper tools I won’t know how far the crafting and spells go.”

“Hey! Double time, soldier!” I spied a familiar Steel Ranger helmet from behind a row of slot machines ahead of us. “Get those wings in gear!”

I was greatly confused. There was no immediate danger, so what was the rush? Multiple heavy hooffalls that weren’t my own meant that Sparkle was nearby. A lighter, softer set probably meant that they’d found Violet as well. Or maybe it was just Tangerine tromping along behind me.

Speaking of which… “You’re probably not going like this, but it’s our boss and my coltfriend giving the order.” Again, I didn’t wait for a response before performing a little bunny hop into the air and grabbing Tangerine as she trotted under me.

“Wait, no no no NO!” Tangerine screamed as I built up speed and weaved my way around and over slot machines, tables and small neon signs. “Stop!”

Deep down in the corner of my mind, I felt a little bad for her. “Keep your legs tucked in. Don’t want to catch them on anything,” I yelled down to her as I weaved us through the missing glass pane in dividing wall.

I caught up to Rumcake much faster than he expected as I dropped a protesting Tangerine onto his back. “Wah! Woah, you scared me,” he exclaimed, still galloping.

“She doesn’t like the way I fly, so you’re better off carrying her,” I told Rumcake, spinning around in mid-air to fly backward to keep pace and talk to him.

“You fly like a maniac,” Tangerine yelled up at me.

I shrugged. “Okay, maybe I might be a little more reckless when I’m in a rush. It happens.” A low wooden beam collided with the back of my head.

“I think I see why.” Violet grabbed me with her magic and pointed me in the right direction. “Watch where you’re flying and maybe you’ll be more careful.”

Needless to say, I was thoroughly embarrassed. “Hey, that doesn’t usually happen!” I rubbed the back of my head and flew with a little more direction by facing front.

The front doors of the hotel were in sight. Instead of stopping to open them, Sparkle opted to launch a few grenades into them. Bits of glass and metal debris flew everywhere, one of which managed to slice my lower jaw. I ignored the biting pain and sped up to swoop through the giant hole first.

The rest of the Rangers, and Violet, stormed out right after me and stopped a good distance away. “Okay, this should be a safe distance,” Violet panted.

“Someone want to explain why we just hauled ass out of a perfectly good casino?” I asked the collected group.

Violet pulled out a tiny device and squinted at it. “We made it out just in time. There’s nineteen seconds left on the timer.”

Timers were only good for two things—alarms and timed explosives.“You’re blowing it up? There’s still valuable tech in there!” Tangerine exclaimed in shocked rage.

“It wasn’t my idea. Violet comes up to us in mid-search and says ‘oh, I planted a bunch of explosives in the basement without telling anypony else’, so we had to run,” Rumcake angrily replied. “Mind explaining yourself?”

Violet calmly shook the dirt off one of her hooves. “There was an evil monolith focusing dark magic hiding in the basement. Dropping a building on it probably should break it.”

There was a muted explosion and the ground sort of vibrated under my hooves. Centuries of dust cascaded from the building’s facade and a few windows shattered. More sounds of breaking and cracking suggested that some of the structure’s integrity had been compromised and was falling apart as we watched.

When the hotel didn’t fall, Violet looked incredibly annoyed—as opposed to Tangerine, who sighed in relief. “I guess that room was more reinforced than I thought. Well, you win this time. You can keep all of your random old crap, but have fun with recurring nightmares and hallucinations. Oh, and ghouls.”

Rumcake stared at Violet. “Thanks for helping with those, by the way.”

“They could have been exploding ghouls,” I helpfully added.

“Fine, there were sparkly seaponies swimming down there and they were looking at me funny.” Violet defiantly glared back at Rumcake. “Feel better?”

They were muzzle-to-helmet at this point and it was up to me to come up with something to stop this silly argument because Sparkle was sitting right next to us doing absolutely nothing but being amused. “Whatever happened in there happened. Get over it and move the buck on,” I yelled.

“Granted, she could have blown up a lot of valuable pre-war tech,” Tangerine mentioned.

“And the Stable,” Sparkle also added. “Well, what would have been a Stable anyway.”

Tangerine quickly added, “And a giant laser.”

Immediately, Rumcake’s ears perked up. “Giant laser? I like giant lasers.”

I felt the need to elaborate. “Well, it’s more of a”—I made several air-quote motions with my claw—“‘laser.’ Maybe pointed at the ‘moon’.”

“There’s some sort of defense laser on the roof of the hotel, but according to Frosty here, it’s mechanically flawed,” Tangerine explained. “In addition to being in disrepair, obviously.”

Defeatedly, Rumcake groaned. “Why can’t anything go right? First the Stable, now this.”

I saw a chance to derail the conversation. “Speaking of which, how’d the Stable search go? I assumed you two would have found it first.”

Sparkle shook her head. “We were probably close, but we ran into a huge pile of ghouls on the way down. They had the numbers and we had to weld the door shut. It also happens that they don’t care about strobe lights and using a grenade launcher in a hallway is a bad idea.”

Violet clopped her hooves together. “So that’s why I couldn’t leave the same way that I came in from.”

“We had to go around through a few maintenance tunnels and a service shaft. Guess what? After all that, we only found a bucking boiler room. We backtracked a bunch and managed to find it out of sheer luck.”

“And?” I asked.

Rumcake stomped up to me and dropped a bottle right on my head. “We found a Stable, alright.” I fumbled at the bottle on my head and barely caught it.

The faded label told me that it was “Firegrass” branded whiskey. Not only that, but it was still sealed and in pristine condition. I took one peek into Rumcake’s armored saddlebags revealed more bottles and cans.

“It just so happens that Stable Sixty-Nine is a nightclub. A nightclub that just so happens to imitate the style of Stable-Tec’s stables. Somehow underground bunkers became a popular design back then,” Rumcake snapped. “When we get back, I’m going to wring somepony’s neck for wasting my time.”

Sparkle patted Rumcake’s shoulder. “Hey, at least you got—”

“Say anything and I’ll make sure you get a month of kitchen duty when we get back.” Rumcake immediately shot back.

Sparkle immediately backed off. “Alright, alright. Chill.”

It wasn’t every day that Rumcake got flustered, so maybe there was a great story I was missing. Maybe it was something hilariously embarrassing! “So, what now?” I innocently asked, mentally reminding myself to have Sparkle give me the juicy details.

Tangerine consulted her large fold-out map. “Well, it’s possible there might actually be a Stable around here somewhere. There used to be an old mining town a few miles away from here before the war. It’s possible that there’s still old-world tech in those tunnels.” With a bit of her assistance, she helped me mark the location on my map.

“Worth a shot. We’re close by and we might as well,” Sparkle responded.

Rumcake unwillingly agreed to it. “Sure, whatever. I’m just mad right now. Let’s keep a low profile and follow the road as far as possible. Assuming the rest of our intel is trustworthy, this area is teeming with scavengers and raiders.”

Violet snorted. “Nothing the three heavy hitters can’t handle.”

Something warm and wet was tickling its way down my chin and spattering onto the ground. I wiped the back of my hoof across it and hissed at the slight stab of pain. Right, I’d forgotten that I was bleeding. I stared at the crimson liquid staining my armor and suddenly felt a little thirsty. I gave in and began licking and sucking at what was there.

Violet, Rumcake, and Sparkle continued to argue about exactly what to do next. Tangerine, however, was intently staring at me. I raised an eyebrow at her as I continued to wipe my jaw and lick the resulting mess off my greave.

“You’re bleeding,” Tangerine reminded me, quietly pushing me aside so that I wasn’t facing the rest of the group.

If that wasn’t blood, then that meant I was full of cherry syrup. “I think I noticed.” Mmm… cherry syrup.

Tangerine stared at me in worry. “What are you doing?”

“Eh.” Annoyingly enough, my face was running out of blood to feed me with. “Not my fault I’m deliciously irresistible.”

“You need to stop that. It’s a bad habit. It’s also really disgusting.” Tangerine attempted to get me to stop rubbing at the wound.

I shrugged. “Fine, I’m not getting any more out of it anyway.” I allowed her to apply a small healing bandage to the cut on my jaw.

“It’s just a minor laceration. You’ll be fine if you don’t make it worse.”

“Thanks, I guess.” At least I’d gotten a nice drink while I could.

Rumcake tapped me on the shoulder. “Whatcha girls talking about? Woah, what happened to your face?”

“Wow, that’s polite.” I pouted.

“I-I didn’t mean it that way!” Rumcake stammered.

Of course he didn’t, but it was fun to see him sweat. “Just a little cut. I’ll be fine,” I replied.

Rumcake patted my cheek. “I hope so. By the way, what’s your range?”

“Range?”

“Yeah. How far can you fly, round trip?”

That was actually a good question. I’d really never found out or ever really needed to, since we had enough downtime between missions to be able to fly back . Otherwise, we’d all had heavy stress training and could push ourselves much harder than anypony else in case we needed to make an urgent escape.

“Uh… enough?” I guessed.

“Do you think you could check out the mining town before we get there? I need to know layout, population, anything that seems helpful.”

I sighed. “Fine, I’ll go scout. Keep ya posted.” I flapped my wings a few times to get myself warmed up again and then leisurely flapped into action.

As I flew out of earshot, I barely heard him yell, “If there’s any danger, you come right back or I’m turning this adventure around! D’ya hear me?”

~~~~~

The mining town was a hell of a lot farther than it looked on the map. Many times I was tempted to ask “are we there yet?” but there wasn’t anypony but me to annoy. Dust, hills, dirt… yeah, nothing interesting. I’d spotted a small collection of ramshackle huts and some kind of tower that could possibly be a small settlement in our way.

For a brief moment, I wondered whether I was in radar range. I was a lot closer than I should have been, but I was high enough that I would probably blend into the cloud cover. There was no way they’d have one anyway, so I passed them and continued on the heading that I’d been given. Not a few minutes later, a two-floor building poked over a hill. I pulled up to get a better view over the terrain that was in my way.

A quick peek at my PipBuck told me that I was right next to where I wanted to be. Mining towns definitely looked simple, if this one represented all of them. There was a large main street flanked by varying buildings. The mine itself was a reinforced hole in the side of a much larger hill that used to have a cart track leading up to it.

Movement! I unslung my anti-machine rifle and made sure the magic scope attachment was securely in place. There was one pony limping down main street, one of his saddlebags were torn and the pistol clenched in his teeth looked like it was broken. I wanted to say he was a scavenger, just because he wasn’t decked out in raider gear.

I lowered my rifle and continued to observe. “Hello? Anypony here?” the scavenger called out.

Nopony ever looked up, did they? I continued to gather information just in case. The scavenger dragged himself into one of the small buildings—maybe a commissary, judging by what was left of the sign out front. Besides that, there were no other signs of life.

So just one pony wandering about, negligible threat. More than likely he had friends, but they weren’t around to back him up at the moment. Yet.

There was a sudden explosion from inside the commissary. Toxic-looking green sludgy smoke began oozing out of the doorway and cracks in the building. When he didn’t emerge again, I mentally crossed the pony off the potential danger list.

“O-kaaay… traps and biohazards.” Now that I knew, I double-checked my saddlebag for healing potions. “Good. To. Know.”

I caught sight of movement once more. A small pony—maybe mid-teens, androgynous in build—wearing some light combat armor darted into the building. Before he’d dashed in, I noted the muzzle-only gas mask and the diving goggles. A pale green-yellow horn protruded from under a black bandanna sporting an indiscernible white pattern.

Moments later, the mystery pony scrambled out with the scavenger’s saddlebag, dragging it back into an alleyway while sickly smoke trailed him. What the pony didn’t notice was the trail of empty shells and caps he was also leaving behind. One more note to go into my report back.

Thwip-thwip-thwip. What was that noi—?

Something thick, heavy, and ropey tangled itself around my left wing. By how much it knocked me back and destabilized me by its weight alone, it could have probably broken something if I wasn’t wearing my armor. I attempted to regain control and flight, but the primitive device wrapped around my wing was weighing me down.

“Shit, shit shit!” I continued to flap erratically in my best attempts to escape.

I was losing altitude, but at least I wasn’t about to slam face-first into the ground. At a survivable distance from the ground, I ceased my struggling and raised my forelegs to protect my head. I hit the ground at a speed that knocked the air out of my lungs, but at least I survived the impact.

My nose wasn’t broken, so that was a welcome consolation prize. I’d crash-landed in a former park-like thing, which meant there was little in the way of cover. A look at my left wing told me that I’d been taken down with bucking bolas. It was simple arrangement of ropes and heavy weights on the ends. I mean, really?

I rolled onto my belly and deployed the bipod of my rifle just in case. If the heading of the gas mask scavenger was any indication of a base, they were bound to come in from the right. I pre-sighted the corner where I thought they would be coming from, but I kept a sharp lookout with my peripheral vision just in case.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to check behind me. The barrel of a gun pressed against the bruise on the back of my head and I had to bite back a violent twitch in case it was the last thing I did.

Whoever was holding me up was a heavy chain smoker—I was annoyed that I hadn’t smelled him coming first. “Don’t move, ya winged rat,” snarled the angry stallion standing behind me.

Too bad S.A.T.S. wouldn’t let me get a guaranteed kill on him. “That’s not polite,” I hissed back, careful not to make any sudden moves.

My rifle was surrounded with a dark green aura and it floated out of my grasp. Against every nerve of my being, I resisted the urge to snatch it back. The gas masked scavenger crept around the corner, similarly illuminated with dark green light. I’d recon’d myself right into a trap.

“Me an’ my associate are gonna relieve you of yer stuff, and we’re gonna split. Got it?” the chain smoking scavenger dictated at me.

I felt the weight on my back lessen when my saddlebag was removed from my possession. “S’ry. Nof’n pr’snal,” the gas mask scavenger muttered. Restraints tightened around my limbs, regardless of my struggling.

“Oh, it’s about to be.” I chuckled. “Expect raiders to follow your asses around until both of you are dead and your heads on their spears.”

Chain Smoker laughed. “I’d like to see ya try.”

“Hrr? T’k a lookit dis.” Gas Mask yanked Dad’s hat off my head and showed Chain Smoker the badge pinned to it. “Ifn’t dat…”

The gun touching the back of my head faltered. “Hard Heads. Shit. Those buckers are violent and un-bucking-stoppable.”

“And guess who’s in charge.” In a moment of extreme bravado, I sat up and snatched Dad’s hat back. “Give me back my stuff, right the buck now and you might live to see tomorrow.”

Gas Mask exchanged a panicked look with Chain Smoker. Speaking of which, the reason Chain Smoker stank of smoke was probably because of the flamethrower mounted on his battle saddle. He also had a red-barreled shotgun levitating at my face, but it didn’t look like he was about to use it. He was a ruddy dark red color, and he’d somehow found an intact firepony’s suit to wear, complete with shielded helmet. The magic surrounding his horn and my saddlebag was orange, just like his eyes. I found that kinda interesting, for no good reason.

“Heh, I bet.” Chain Smoker snorted, shifting his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. “Cute bluff, but I don’t care. Hey, wanna hear a story?”

As interesting as it could be, I really didn’t have time for this. “No,” I flatly replied.

“A few months back, Pestilence’s town pissed off some raiders. Not long after that, the Hard Heads showed up an’ ransacked the place. He was the only survivor, thanks to your other boss guy.” Chain Smoker comfortingly patted Gas Mask—Pestilence’s head. “Those degenerates demolished my scavenging team for trespassing on your territory. If you’re one of them, maybe it’s time for War to get a little petty revenge.”

Pestilence made one. Chain Smoker was two. War made a third. “So, where’s your third hanging out, huh? Or is he just chicken?”

“Hfm?” Pestilence incomprehensibly mumbled.

Rancid smoky breath blew into my ear. “There’s only two of us, birdbrain.”

Oh, so I was just really stupid. “You’re War.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know you sound like an idiot when you speak in third person?” Then something clicked in my mind. “Wait, if you’re Pestilence and War, where’s Famine and Death?” Ha! I’d learned something at one point in history class.

War and Pestilence exchanged an awkward glance. ”We had a Conquest with us at one point, but she’s dead now. Prob’ly for the best.” Great, so there used to be more of these idiots.

“Those aren’t your real names. If they are, your parents were idiots.”

“Hey. At l’st m’name makes s’nse,” Pestilence grunted, pulling out what looked like a refitted land mine.

It wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before, that was for sure. The main casing of the mine had been taped shut with silvery tape because there was a large pair of vials containing black-green sludge protruding from the ends. Wires and cable ties poked out here and there, and the big orange button usually found on mines had been replaced with a black square plate.

Pestilence proudly showed off another one. “T’xic gas.”

“Kid, I’m having a hard time understanding you behind that mask.” I rubbed my forehead with my hoof.

Pestilence reached around behind his head and loosened the straps holding the mask to his face. As it fell to loop around his neck, I immediately regretted my decision. Even with what I’d seen and done, his face was nightmarishly horrifying. Based on his occupation, I assumed what were chemical burns along the right side of his mouth. The left side was partly missing, showing scarred flesh and bone. If I mentally blocked everything below his eyes, maybe I could keep whatever was in my stomach down.

“I make poisons, toxic gases, corrosive explosives, et cetera,” Pestilence bragged. “Diseases are a little out of my league until I find a really stocked lab.”

War hefted his flamethrower and returned his shotgun to the sling across the front of his chestplate. “I burn things.” The fuel tank on the right side of his battle saddle sloshed noisily.

I unsuccessfully tried to untangle myself from the bola. “Whose idea was this, anyway?” I asked.

It turned out that War had really good reaction time. “Mine.” He took the opportunity to smugly untangle me from them.

“You’re a cruel, evil, sneaky pony,” I complained. “I mean, really? Who even uses bolas anymore?”

“I do.”

Enough was enough. “Protip, you two—get the heck out of Junction while you can. The rest of my group are on their way, and they might not be nearly as nice as I am. Now untie me and scram.”

Pestilence snickered. “Ha, that’s not going to happen.”

Similarly, War didn’t find my threat to be—uh, threatening. “I gotta agree. We’re just trying to live our lives here. If you think you’re going to make us leave, think again.”

“Aww, it would be a shame if I had to kill the both of you right now.” I began to try loosening the rope bindings around my limbs while surreptitiously searching for places to take cover from a flamethrower.

“And we were about to be such good friends,” Toasty chuckled using my voice.

What was more worrying was that Pestilence wasn’t actually armed with any visible weaponry. That was definitely more dangerous, especially because he was slowly inching off to the side. War leaned his head off to the left and lit the pilot light of his flamethrower with the cigarette in his mouth. What a badass!

“You’ve got home court advantage. You can serve,” Toasty confidently taunted, using all our strength to snap my bindings like they weren’t even there.

Immediately, I lost track of Pestilence when War charged me with his flamethrower. I easily dodged the first two gouts of flame he fired by swooping backward and throwing bits of gravel at his face on the way. After that weird thing with S.A.T.S. earlier, I really didn’t want to use it just yet. I gained a bit of altitude before firing off a shot at War’s fuel tank.

War was uncannily fast. My shot only managed to graze his back, only damaging his battle saddle. He retorted by quick-drawing his shotgun, but I was ready for a counterattack. I raised my forelegs in front of my face, and I nearly screamed when an even more intense heat scorched my forehead. I lowered my forelegs just in time to catch him pumping his shotgun. Seriously? Fire bullets too?!

“Cheating asshole!” I spat, dodging and weaving with renewed vigor. “Eat this!”

Of course, I wasn’t going to land a hit in mid-flight. I air-braked to gain a whole second of stability and fired my rifle at War again, this time leading him and anticipating a move. “Gnh! Lucky hit, ya bitch,” he grunted, stumbling from the gaping wound on his left hindleg, right above the ankle.

I was more amazed that his leg hadn’t come off from that hit alone. He must have had some armor on under that fire suit, because there was no way an impact like that would do so little damage. Hm. Maybe I needed something sharper and lower velocity.

“Oooh, choppy choppy time? I love choppy time. Can it be choppy time?” Toasty begged me.

The safety of a rooftop seemed to be a great place to hang out while War lamely limped at me. I slung my rifle and drew my repossessed combat axe and prepared to put him out of his misery. Just in case the settings on it actually meant anything, I switched the fire selector to “Moa Dakka”. Heck, maybe it made me swing faster.

“Ready?” I asked Toasty.

“Always,” Toasty cackled, taking control. “Let’s show him what this is good for.”

My vision ran red as Toasty vaulted over the lip of the roof and landed on War’s back right before he was about to enter the building. “What th—” War managed to stammer.

Toasty dropped the axe into our waiting claw and chopped at War’s battle saddle. The first swing severed half of the firing line. The second and third swings only caused superficial damage, but the fourth swing severed the bundled power cable and fuel line for the flamethrower. Now he was one weapon down.

That was all the damage we were able to inflict on War. “No free rides!” he yelled as we were thrown clear of him.

War attempted to open up with the flamethrower as Toasty attempted to recover from the fall. “Well, shit,” he muttered when there was no pegasus-toasting fire from his left and instead resorted to opening up with the shotgun again.

“Ha! I have you now!” Toasty triumphantly yelled while she dodged flaming buckshot at nearly close range. “Die!”

Toasty took one step forward and we heard a click under our hooves. “Mine!” I shouted, and dove us as far as possible from the chemical explosive.

We’d gotten lucky. Whatever had been in that mine didn’t have anything corrosive in it, but there was gas instead. We’d only inhaled a little, but my lungs were already burning and I couldn’t see properly. I felt like vomiting.

“Ngh… pain is… weakness! Leaving the body!” Toasty raved. “I feel no pain!”

“Can’t see…” I muttered.

Toasty grabbed our neck and briefly throttled us. “I can see just fine!”

With our vision problems apparently taken care of, Toasty flung the axe at War, but he dodged too quickly again. She took advantage of his dodge by rapidly closing the distance, reaching forward and yanking the shotgun right out of War’s holster using her claw.

“Checkmate.” Toasty awkwardly pulled the trigger of the shotgun using the our claw and snarled in rage when it didn’t have the desired face-vaporizing effect she was hoping for.

War chuckled. “What’s the matter? Feelin’ empty?”

Toasty dashed to where the axe had buried itself in the ground and yanked it out. “Shut up!” she roared, breaking into a flying gallop with the ramshackle weapon in her claw.

At least War didn’t have any more weapons besides his hooves. Toasty swung at him, but he was able to simply back up out of range. Fuel still leaked from the severed hose from his battle saddle, but I didn’t have any flares left to light him on fire with. Too bad he’d also dropped his cigarette at some point.

My axe suddenly flew out of my claw and the shotgun followed shortly thereafter. “That’s enough of that.” War smirked, twirling both weapons in the air with his damn magic.

“Give it back!” Toasty roared, unwilling to do anything but brandish our claw at War. “Don’t make me rip that horn from your face.”

I watched War load more fire shells into his shotgun. “Come an’ get it.” He dangled my axe right over our head.

That was all War needed to goad Toasty into flying into the air after the axe. She was so distracted by getting our axe back, she didn’t notice the shotgun being leveled at her. I attempted to wrest control back to dive out of the way, but I wasn’t able to in time.

The first shell that War fired tore into our left wing and knocked us out of the air. Our feathers were on fire and there was too much pain to continue flying. His next few shots missed, but I managed to force us to land in order to at least put the fire out.

That cauterized wound wouldn’t bleed me out, at least. “Ngh… cheap trick,” I groaned after I put the fire out.

“Evened out the playing field.” War loaded and pumped his shotgun again.

We were forced to keep our injured wing folded and armor-side up so it didn’t get more flaming buckshot embedded in it. That also meant Toasty had to back up and weave from the next few shots from War’s shotgun.

The ground slightly gave way under one of my hooves and my heart leapt into my throat when I realized I’d trodden on another mine. Luckily enough, I managed to stumble out of the way of the cloud of choking gas that exploded out of the ground.

Toasty smartened up and covered up our mouth and nose with the crook of our leg, hopping and dodging backward. Annoyingly enough, War had gotten smart and at some point he’d donned a rebreather so he could ignore Pestilence’s toxic gas mines. Every few steps I’d back up and step on a mine, and have to waste precious time and distance escaping traps. The moment War was in spitting distance, he’d open up with his shotgun.

“Stop runnin’!” War followed up that command with a flaming shell. “You’re makin’ this a lot harder than it has to be!”

Instead of running, Toasty complied and rolled toward War instead. “Fine. Let’s see how you like this!” She swung our improvised combat axe at him and managed to cut through part of the fireproof barding around his neck and draw blood.

“That’s more like it, bitch.” War pressed the material of his barding against the wound to staunch the bleeding and grinned. “And I thought this wasn’t going to be fun.”

I could already see we were in trouble. Toasty didn’t want to listen, so I had no choice but helplessly watch while she got us corralled into a corner. Little black spots stood out in the dirt where there were land mines buried in the ground. When did that little brat have time to turn this place into a minefield?

Toasty took hesitant steps left and right, and snarled in rage. “You coward!”

“Looks like you’re trapped. Don’t move, an’ this won’t be too painful for you.” War calmly leveled his shotgun at my face.

Why was Toasty so adamant on melee combat? And why was she so easily baited into reckless actions? Most importantly, why wouldn’t she just use one of my many guns? If I survived this, we were going to have words. Even stranger, she started to madly giggle.

War did what confused mercenaries did best. “What’s so funny?” he suspiciously asked, slightly lowering his shotgun.

“You’re the one that’s trapped here with me.” Toasty withdrew a small syringe full of thick orange liquid and immediately injected it into my neck.

As my heart rate skyrocketed and my pulse pounded in my ears, I realized it was the syringe that Doc had given me a long time ago. If I recalled, the last time that I’d used it I’d nearly gotten killed by it. Hopefully with this unnecessary power boost, I’d be able to wreck War’s ass in a timely manner and move on to finding Pestilence before my heart gave out. I dropped to my knees to wait out the hammering and pounding.

“You’re crazy.” War snorted and raised his shotgun again.

Toasty glared at him with bloodshot eyes. “That’s what I do best.” Without caring about where the landmines were, she leapt up and charged forward at War.

When War witnessed Toasty literally smash a mine to pieces under her hoof, he panicked and fired a shot into my face. He didn’t miss, but while I was under the effects of Doc’s potion, the flaming buckshot broke apart against my upper cheek and continued to burn without consequence.

Toasty snarled and lashed out with the axe in a fit of excessive rage. Finally, she landed a solid blow, burying the axe all the way down to the handle in War’s left shoulder. He roared in pain and staggered sideways, right into a gas mine.

The mine exploded, spraying its toxic payload into War’s face. He attempted to stagger out of it but before he could get clear of the gas, Toasty ripped his rebreather off and shoved him back into the green gas for added effect.

Even if we were invincible, we were still knocked back from War’s heavy-hitting punch to our jaw. He stumbled out of the toxic gas, coughing and clutching at his eyes. Now that Toasty was without a cutting implement, she swung a shotgun-claw attack right to his face. Thanks to unfortunate luck for one party, War staggered right out of the way and managed to escape with a flesh wound.

Toasty pumped our shotgun claw again in annoyance. “What are you good for if you won’t stand still either?” She swung again and missed when War opened his eyes just in time to hastily hit the deck and even sweep our legs out from under us.

I rolled onto my back just in time so that we could dodge War’s poorly timed ground slam. He did, however, follow that up with a blind flaming shotgun blast at close range. My armor stood no chance against firepower at this range and I felt lances of heat stab at our upper chest and neck.

War stood over me, grimacing in pain and barely able to stand. “What th’ hell kills you, bitch?” He staggered and groaned as he yanked my axe out of his shoulder.

“Absolutely nothing.” Toasty leapt to her hooves and yanked the axe out of War’s magical aura. “Thanks for getting that out for me, by the way.”

The look on War’s face when he realized he’d effectively sealed his own fate was amazingly satisfying. “Shit,” he muttered as he hobbled backward.

Toasty seized War by the leg and spun him around into a right-legged headlock. She picked up the axe and hovered just high enough to make his hind legs dangle off the ground. He struggled and kicked, and even tried to levitate the axe right out of her claw until she gave his horn a good whack with the hilt of the axe.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Toasty bellowed. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if I have to make this little piggy squeal?”

I was starting to feel tired and exhausted, which meant that Doc’s super-serum was wearing off. Pain was creeping to my brain from my injured wing, which was also slowly becoming a problem. I could hear my ragged pulse pounding away at my brain. Good thing Pestilence didn’t know that yet.

Right on cue, an assault rifle appeared from around a wall, followed by Pestilence himself. “Don’t hurt him!” Even so, he decided to keep the worn rifle aimed at me.

“It’s a little late for that,” Toasty darkly chuckled. “Put down your guns, and your little buddy here might live to see another day.”

Threateningly, Toasty pressed the edge of my axe against War’s throat hard enough to draw blood.“Don’t do it!” he still managed to choke out.

“Drop ‘em!” I yelled.

“Little cuz…” War coughed. Plink. “Just remember…”Plink. “I love you, an’ I’ll be with you forever.” Pestilence started to back up, solemnly nodding. Plink. “Even after I TAKE THIS BITCH ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL!” Plink.

I quickly realized what that sound was. Several grenades suddenly appeared around me, all missing their pins and all glowing with orange magic. Pestilence turned tail and ran, quickly looking back one last time. All at once, every grenade shoved itself either against me or into spaces in my armor. Just to make sure I couldn’t escape, War wrapped some kind of binding field around me so I couldn’t push him away or throw him.

Toasty reacted like anypony would react when unwillingly strapped with grenades. “Let me go, freak!” she screamed in panic.

“Sayonara, bitch!” War fanatically chuckled, right as the first grenade blew.

In the matter of moments, it was like I was at the center of a sledgehammer fight. Shrapnel and meaty chunks scratched and tugged at my face, and pieces of my armor crunched and failed under the relentless onslaught of explosives. I was thrown into the ground by the force of the explosion.

A little cartoon colt appeared in the upper right side of my E.F.S., looking all sad with his little x’d out eyes. His head, torso, left wing, and left hind leg were all made of dotted lines, which probably wasn’t good. Some of those must have been high-explosive—frag grenades couldn’t have hurt this much, especially with armor.

At least War was dead, I glumly noted. Flaming pieces of debris and chunks of distinctly pony-shaped parts lay all around me, and what was left of my armor had been liberally coated with a combination of soot, shrapnel, and blood. I’d been lucky enough to have the tail end of Doc’s super-serum, but only judging by the searing pain everywhere, especially in my chest and throat, it might have worn off already.

I looked around for Pestilence. “Never leave a job unfinished,” I barely managed to breathe, duly nothing that several things felt broken.

There he was. All the way down at the end of the street, maybe on the way to the mineshaft. Like anypony with a lack of common sense, Pestilence was running directly away from me, the crazy pony that also happened to be armed with a long range destruction device. You should always fly perpendicular from a faster enemy—that’s what I’d learned in basic.

Pestilence was just barely visible, right at the edge of my blurry vision. Very painfully, I sat up and tried to haul my anti-machine rifle off my back. I pawed at my back a few times, then realized that it must have been thrown clear in the blast. Panic set in and I frantically began to scour the surrounding terrain for my valuable rifle. Thankfully, it had landed in the dirt not too far away, strap broken and looking very worse for wear. Cursory examination showed no signs of damage to critical components, so I raised it to my shoulder and wrapped my right leg around my claw to create a stable firing position.

I felt like I’d only get one shot at this, and I wasn’t leaving any of it to S.A.T.S.-based chance. I held my breath and focused on the fleeing target in my sights.

Th-th-th-thump.

Normally, I would listen to my heartbeat to count and calm my nerves, but this absolutely wasn’t helping.

Th-th-thump.

I nervously swallowed the metallic liquid pooling in the back of my throat and attempted to concentrate.

The unicorn was rapidly sprinting out of my weakened sight and began to stumble up the mountain path in extreme slow motion. “Focus on your target. Block out all distractions,” a calming voice reassured me.

Under direction of the voice, I took another deep breath and did my best to blur out the agony coming from my entire body. “What’s the wind?” it asked.

“Uh…” I gauged the wind tickling my ears and my feathers. “Barely southeast. About a klick or less.”

“Good. Did you lead the target?” the voice reminded me. “Keep in mind the velocity of your weapon.”

I double checked my aim. “I don’t need to lead him too much. Even a graze at this distance should take a leg off.”

“And why not go for a headshot?” the voice wondered. “A true professional gets a headshot.”

No, that wasn’t smart. “Too much chance for error, and a hit to the neck is just as good. With this caliber, a body shot should instantly kill as well. It’ll just make a mess.”

“Good girl. Remember what I taught you—one, two, exhale, fire.” I nodded and mentally counted, ignoring my errant heartbeat. “Focus only on your objective.”

I drew another breath to prepare myself for the shot.

One. The barrel of my rifle dipped downward.

Two.

I let my held breath escape through the corner of my mouth and squeezed the trigger. The stock of my rifle kicked against my shoulder and I barely maintained a sitting position. Off in the distance, there was a spectacular spray of blood and a foreleg sailing away. Oh good, at least I hit him.

“Nice shot, sugarpuff. Real proud of you.”

Wait. “…Dad?” Pain was no longer a factor—I had to see.

I flipped myself around and flared my wings in surprise, expecting… well, I wasn’t sure. I just wanted to believe, I suppose. Instead, I found Gala Frosty standing behind me, a shamefully embarrassed look plastered on her face. My wings drooped and a cold heavy weight settled on my heart.

Gala bowed her head. “Sorry. You looked like you needed some motivation or something, so I managed to pull up an old memory for you.” At least it had worked, so I wasn’t too upset—just disappointed.

Up on the hill, Pestilence began to drag himself away—sans leg, of course. “Right, this asshole refuses to stay dead. Damn, and I was hoping he’d die from shock or something first.” I sighed and proceeded to stagger all the way over to him. His body wasn’t going to loot itself after all.

Progress was slow because the servos in my left hind leg were shot, my legs felt like jelly, and things in my chest didn’t feel right. My wing still hurt too much, so flying was out of the question as well. I’d get him eventually, and, lacking that, Pestilence would bleed out by the time I got there so I could loot the body.

Stomp. Stomp. Scraaape. Stomp. I was at the bottom of the path up to the mines, and already blood was creating a little stream beside the path. Just a short ways away, Pestilence’s leg slowly rolled down the hill in a way that I found extremely comical. All things considered, he did have an admirable amount of staying power. I mean, he still hadn’t bled out, and he’d lost a leg!

Every time I moved my left hind leg, a sharp jolt of pain would shoot up to my hip.“You’re not looking so hot,” I heard Officer Frosty remark from my side.

“You try getting blasted and shot multiple times, and throw in some goddesses-damned hellfire to the face, too. I’d like to see you try getting out of this without a scratch or ten,” I snarled back a bit too violently, making something in my wing stab back at me. “Ngh… hurts.”

Finally, I made it to where Pestilence was lying. The massive puddle of blood surrounding his body definitely meant he was almost out of blood to lose. He shook and whimpered to himself, all the while pawing at the swampy crimson muck with his one remaining foreleg. At some point, he’d dropped all his headgear and thrown off his saddlebags as well.

I stood over him. “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.” Pestilence shifted his head and stared at me in plain fear.

“Wh-why are you d-doing this?” Pestilence begged. “Why?”

The spreading pool of blood began to create a new river that ran right into my right hoof. I glared down at him. “You tried to kill me for ‘petty revenge’. Those are the exact words your friend used. I like the sound of that.” I scratched at the tickle on my cheek with the back of one of my talons and wondered where the bandage had gone.

Pestilence stared at me. “We… we didn’t w-want any trouble…” he choked out.

“Let me tell you a story.” I sat down next to the dying Wastelander and ignored his choking gasps. “Once upon a time, you died. And I lived happily ever after. The. End.”

“Bul-llshit.” Pestilence coughed. “That’s a terri-rible story.”

I grinned humorlessly. “Just like how your story ends. Badly.” The blood flowing around my hoof was distracting, so I shifted myself back a little.

Pestilence coughed violently and cringed. “Ah, buck it. We did our best.” He sighed, rolling onto his back.

“Only losers whine about their best,” I pettily snapped back.

I was getting more and more impatient that Pestilence hadn’t bled out yet. Although I really didn’t know why I was just sitting here and waiting for him to die…

Looked like it was time to put Pestilence out of his misery. “Alright, as a somewhat respectful soldier, I’ll let you have your last words.” I began to take out my new roulette revolver, then decided against it due to its completely random nature.

Pestilence’s dying wish took me by surprise. Much faster than I anticipated in his condition, he reached into a pouch strapped to his upper thigh and ripped a tiny derringer-like device out of the hidden quick-draw holster there and pointed it at my face.

Reflexively, I brought my hoof to cover my face and wildly swung with my claw. “Get down with the sickness!” Pestilence weakly yelled.

Before he could pull the trigger, I claw-shotgunned him in the face and sent him off to the big emu farm in the great beyond. “You dishonorable little twat. That’s also a shitty one-liner.” The tiny gun skittered away and landed in the bloody dirt.

Now that Pestilence’s jawless and semi-dismembered body no longer had any life left in it, it was time to loot the corpse and steal all his stuff. Out of contempt, I dug his derringer out of the bloody muck and decided to take it with me. I shook off the gunk coating it and examined it a little more closely. The handle was barely long enough to have a trigger attached to it, and there was a simple two-slot chamber that acted as a barrel as well.

I shoved the tiny gun into a reinforced pocket on my right foreleg. “Mine now,” I muttered to myself.

Now all I had to do was loot his bag. The bottle caps became mine, the ammo was mine, and I took his last three gas mines. Other than those, I didn’t find anything else really worth the weight. I did drink his soda on the spot, though. It made me feel a little better immediately and momentarily took my mind off the aching throb in my chest.

Unfortunately, now I had to trudge all the way down the hill and all the way back into the town just to loot what was left of War’s body, if there was any. As I got closer to where the skirmish had been, I realized exactly how difficult looting a collection of meaty pony chunks was.

I morosely dragged myself through the carnage. “If only there was a way to take somepony’s belongings regardless of whatever state they were in.” Something abruptly tightened in my chest and made me momentarily choke. “Be still, my beating heart. Loot awaits.” Luckily, War’s shotgun had mostly survived with its red-barreled glory so now it was mine.

Cursory examination showed that the only thing interesting about the shotgun itself was the painted red barrel. Obviously, the next step was to unload its remaining four shells and revel in their custom-packed glory. To my untrained eye, the shells were packed with what smelled like phosphorous. I ejected the last empty shell from my claw and loaded War’s special ammunition into it. And for looting’s sake, I broke down his shotgun down into its parts and stowed them away wherever they fit.

At the moment, I really needed a nice, strong, pain-numbing drink. I hastily uncapped the bottle of Firegrass whiskey that Rumcake had given me and immediately took a long, comforting draw from it. For good measure, I opened my injured wing and liberally splashed the alcohol all over the wounds just in case they were infected. I had to bite back a good amount of swearing from the sterilizing burn alone.

“Well, that’ll have to do.” I gently waved my wing back and forth, savoring the cool bite of evaporating alcohol (was that how science worked?) on my wound. “Don’t hurt to keep a drink going, either.” The tightness and pounding in my chest felt less like a prison riot and a bit more like a caged animal after a few draughts of whiskey.

“Heh. Alcohol—wha’ can’t it solve, amirite?” Drunk Frosty slurred from on top of an old water trough.

“You bean besides alcoholism?” I coughed after an excessively large gulp.

“Weeeell, maybe… you’re… uhh…” Drunky thought about it while stammering some sort of comeback. “Yer a butt.”

I blinked, unable to quickly formulate a witty response. “I’m a butt. Well, thanks for that.” The bottle felt so nice pressed up against my burning forehead.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You really look beaten up—seriously, at least let me take a look at our wing.” Gala Frosty nervously hovered nearby and continued to tap her hooves together. “We shouldn’t use healing potions until we know all the buckshot is out and the bones in the wing aren’t broken.”

A few test flaps caused a little pain, but I wasn’t sure whether the it wasn’t that bad or I was inebriated enough to ignore the most of it. Sure, it looked bad—the feathers were burnt and scorched around little bloody holes in my wing—but it didn’t feel like anything was broken there. However, I’d been wrong before.

“I’m doing just fine.” I sighed, taking another sip of whiskey.

Gala sat down in front of me and crossed her forelegs. “If anyone asks you how you’re doing, you almost always say you’re doing ‘just fine’.” She pouted.

I located a sturdy-looking set of steps and leaned against them, uttering a barely audible grunt. “I am fine. I just… just… need a nap or something.” Either the dirt was excessively soft, or I had the most comfortable butt in the world. “Oh jeez, Rumcake’s gonna pee himself being mad at me now.”

As the world drifted away and my head began to slump against the rotting wood post next to me, I was dimly aware of Gala, Toasty, and Filly all crowding around me. Whatever they were yelling and complaining about… I couldn’t focus on it. It was nap time, and possibly food time right after nap time.

X~~~X

If I wasn’t the patient hyper-intelligent unicorn I was, I probably would have called this group a complete and utter waste of time. If only mother could see me now… following around a veritable lunch box across the Wasteland. We had the armored cake, who wouldn’t stop worrying about his precious marefriend; the equally armored soda, who couldn’t decide between silence or humming questionable music—none of which sounded like any of the classics I was familiar with. And, of course, there was the cloaked fruit, who knew just enough about magic as to not get on my nerves just yet.

Although the only reason I continued to persevere was because of that intriguing pegasus that had managed to evade all explanation. “I’d hate to interrupt your banter, but can we take a break? My hooves hurt.” Of course, I was ignored once again—the fifteenth time so far.

“I’ll bet you anything that Frosty’s off doing something a lot more exciting than walking along a dirt path,” Soda groaned. “It’s so booooring.”

No doubt the pegasus was compulsively seeking excessive danger as opposed to doing what she should have been doing. “I’m worried that she’s gotten herself in trouble again. We’re not too far away from the town, and unless her military training is a lot different from ours, she should be back by now. Scouting doesn’t take this long, does it?” the cake fretted. “I shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have sent her on her own again.”

Tangerine, the lone fruit course of the party, had to toss in her two caps on the situation. “Maybe she got lost? Frosty barely knows how to use the map function on her PipBuck.” She made a point—I’d observed that the pegasus was bad with anything not dealing with guns in the time I had spent with them.

Perhaps the compendium of knowledge hovering in front of me might be able to help. “Could we discuss this around a campfire or something? Or at least not walking?” I loudly suggested, only for it to fall on deaf ears.

I clearly remembered writing down details about military strategy and formations at one point, but where was it? Pages flew by while I attempted to find the clear definition of “scouting” or, at the very least, “reconnaissance” for these poor uneducated jarheads. Let’s see… knots you should learn… Equestria’s final hours… the many uses of catnip… how to conjure a trap beam and the many variations of…

“Contact ahead, coming down the road,” Cake notified us while checking the belt feed on his ridiculous minigun. “Get ready for a fight, just in case. Rangers would have hailed us already.”

What he didn’t know and I didn’t mention was that we were on a known trade route for caravans and merchants. For whatever reason, dessert and company hadn’t bothered to bring updated maps with them on their journey.

Imagine my complete lack of surprise when four heads and a wagon appeared from around the hill to the west. The old beardy one with the scraggly gray coat and the rags that hadn’t been washed in years looked like he was the caravan’s merchant. That meant the huge burly armored stallion with the combat armor and a helmet/facemask combination helmet was the guard. On the bright side, his assault rifle couldn’t compare to all the firepower that the lunch squad was packing.

Which brings me to the two-headed abomination of what approximated to a pre-war cow. According to a farming almanac that I’d read in the past, cows didn’t have two heads until after the bombs fell. Every time I looked at one of these “brahmin”—as somepony once decided to call them—I always felt like I was going to be ill. In those rare moments that I had to communicate with them, I didn’t know which head to be looking at. Safe to say I did my best to avoid them.

“Ahoy there, Steelios!” the merchant called out in his disgusting back-country accent. “Lookin’ for a da-gum fiiiine gatlin’ laser?”

I groaned in aggravation. With the ponies I was making company with, I swore I could feel myself becoming stupider. As everypony else stayed put and patiently waited for the caravan to get closer, I busied myself with reading up on the first topic that I flipped to in my magic book. “How to Create a Simple and Sustainable Farm in Five Easy Steps” seemed like a nice reading topic for the moment.

Of course, I wasn’t actually paying attention to the words on the page. I was just looking for an excuse to escape socialization with these lowlifes. “Hey, we could definitely use a gatling laser back at base, Rumcake,” the fruit exclaimed.

“I’m curious. Let’s see see if this guy has anything interesting on him.” Oh good, so the cake spontaneously decided to buy things from a shady merchant.

My book continued to levitate in front of my face like a shield from stupidity. By the time I got through farming and made it all the way to “How to Construct a Fire-Based Blasting Rod in Three Easy Steps”, the lunchboxes were in the midst of trading and getting ripped off. Every now and then I picked up bits of conversation between them and the merchant.

“I like how your advertisement has absolutely no correlation with the actual product,” remarked the fruit, complaining about something that should have been expected of a Wasteland trader. “There’s no crystals in it, the entire rotary assembly is broken, and somepony replaced half of the heat sinks with pre-war bits glued together!”

“Li’l girlie, I’mma just sayin’ that it costs two hunnred caps.”

“I’ll give you three caps, and that’s generous.”

“Two hundred.”

“Three.”

“Two hundred five.”

“I’m not sure you know how this works.”

“Two hundred ten.”

Angry stomping probably meant one of the lunch warriors was getting aggravated. “You should be lucky I’m not about to turn you and your little operation here into scrap for this,” Soda threatened.

Oh right, I forgot exactly how touchy they can be with old tech. Although in this situation, I would have probably done the same. Gatling lasers were hard to find in this day and age and they were impossible to find in perfect condition. One that broken was probably a lost cause, but still, who let such a fine piece of weaponry deteriorate this badly? Ugh… these Steel Rangers were rubbing off on me too much.

“Hoooold on a sec! What’cha say ‘bout a brand spankin’ new puh-laaaasma gun?” The merchant began to toss bits of scrap and miscellaneous items out of the bags strapped to his brahmin and finally flourished a heavily dented plasma pistol.

An outraged girly scream. “That’s nowhere near new at all! Junior Paladin Sparkle, flatten this heretic like the scum he is!

Weapons, most likely Soda’s, rapidly unfolded. This was a good time to think about where this conversation was about to go. Somewhere in this book, I had a muting spell written down. Although, if memory served correctly, I added it in simply because the “Cone of Silence” spell that I tried out didn’t really work. Hmmm… how did that spell go again? Imagine a circle on the ground around you, and pull all the edges to your horn or something? I began to flip through my book to go look for it while everypony around me began a frenzied firefight.

Since I wasn’t a complete numbskull, I quickly flipped to one of my bookmarked pages—the ever-so-useful force field spell while Fruit cast her own spell. “Eat magic missile!” As I channeled energy into my horn, I took a step back to dodge the incoming projectile just in case.

The protective bubble formed around me just in time to deflect a burst of rifle fire. “I cast actual missile!” one of the Steel Rangers bellowed.

Muting spell, muting spell… I did my best to tune out the skirmish happening around me, but explosions that shook my entire body did not really help me focus at all. A large chunk of wheel and axle bounced off my shield and caught me off guard for a moment. I had to pause in my searching to focus a little more energy into my shield.

I made a note to myself to bookmark more than just quick combat spells and simple useful spells. Around me, the shooting and extreme overkill had finally stopped. That meant I could probably safely release the force field spell. Just to make sure, I peeked over the top of my book to observe the snack squad picking through the carnage. Good, it was safe.

“Sparkle, let me emphasize this one more time: no disintegrations,” Cake insisted. “It’s a bit counterproductive if you blow up the things we’re trying to reclaim.”

Overkill soda Ranger shoved half a brahmin corpse over in case there was something under it. “He was asking for it. You saw what he did to that tech!” Typical Steel Rangers.

The cake sighed. “Yeah, I did, but restrain yourself next time. Sweep the wreckage and burn the bodies.” Sparkle saluted and began to carry out his orders.

I sensed somepony attempting to edge up alongside me and I immediately slammed my book shut. “Hey, Violet. So, what’s really in that book, anyhow?” Kumquat… wait, what was her name… Orange? No, uh…

“Tangerine, I would really appreciate it if you didn’t pry.” I protectively floated my book around to the side away from the mare in question. “I’d also like it if you just gave me a little space. You stink.”

That comment prompted the decidedly not citrus-scented mare to surreptitiously sniff herself and her hood. “Aww, come on. What, are you writing a book of your adventures and it’s not done yet?” the fr—Tangerine guessed.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. Right now it’s about a smart unicorn, the stoic knights she travels with, the crazy pegasus, and this asshole,” I sarcastically replied in full deadpan, ending with a dirty glare at the merchant who was making his best “coating of paste” impression on the ground.

For whatever reason, the lunch scribe seemed a bit annoyed. “You’re being sarcastic,” she flatly stated.

As smart as this fruit was, she really didn’t show it all too well. “Whatever gives you that idea?” I continued to sarcastically drone.

“Come on, what’s the big deal?” Tangerine whined.

I heavily sighed. “If I tell you, do you promise to keep it to yourself?” She nodded, and even though I didn’t really think she would, I decided to tell her the bare minimum.

“This tome holds a vast collection of knowledge that I have compiled over the years.” To illustrate my point, I quickly flashed the rapidly flipping mismatched pages at her before slamming it shut again. “For reasons I refuse to disclose, it’s very special to me and that’s why I’m very possessive about it.”

This time, the scribe before me seemed a bit disappointed. “I was expecting something more along the lines of ‘ancient cursed book of dark magic and forbidden practices’.” There was only one book that came to mind, but I didn’t know where that particular book had disappeared to thanks to the ambiguity of location references in pre-war literature.

Armored cakebutt attempted—and failed—to discreetly edge into our conversation. “Hey Tangerine, I think I’m going to need your help with the plasma rifle. I’d like to have it working just in case we run into anything that needs to be slagged. As much as it pains me do it, scrap the gatling laser for its useful parts. The rest of it isn’t really worth the weight.” Typical useless stallions, always asking us for help.

Turned out that Fruit might have had the same thought. “Fine, I’ll see what I can do.” She snatched the weapon away from Cakebutt using her barely competent telekinesis.

“Oh, and by the way?” Cake added, obviously preparing for a follow-up jab.

Tangerine turned around. “Hm?”

“Leave the orders to me next time. I know you didn’t mean it, but you know how important the Chain That Binds is. Do not let it happen again, or I will deliver the punishment myself. Do you understand?”

Typical bossy stallions. “S-sure, sorry!” And then Tangerine scampered off to go do whatever fruit did with plasma weapons.

“Violet, can you cast some sort of locating spell?” Cake asked me. “I’m really worried about Frosty. It’s been four hours, it’s getting dark, and she’s still not back.”

The way Cake cared about that insane pegasus was cute to an almost nauseating degree. “I’ll try. I’ll need something of hers—fur, hair, feathers, stool, or blood. I’ve got a spell that might work.” Conveniently enough, I had several different locating spells bookmarked for all my searching needs.

I could tell I was getting a blank stare from behind that expressionless helmet. “Is it not possible to just to locate the nearest pegasus in a ten-mile radius?”

The impossible amount of stupidity speaking to me forced me to slam my book into my face. “You really don’t know how magic works, do you?” I groaned into the patchwork cover of my spellbook. “Goddesses, I can feel my IQ dropping.”

That had the desired effect. The big dumb confectionary backed off, muttering about something called “doing his best”. How laughable. Although I actually did need to go find our quirky pegasus companion, since she was the only reason I was following the… darn, I’d run out of funny names for Steel Rangers. Note to self: come up with more puns.

In the inevitable case that no Frosty bits could be recovered for the framework of a locating spell, I began to study the four or five spells available in case there was an alternative that was just as good. I retrieved my pegasus feather quill out from a small pocket on the inside of my robes.

Wait.

I stared at the feather that I was levitating right above the page, poised for note-taking. “Great. It’s already happening,” I chimed.

Using the carefully detailed instructions that I’d copied down, I set up the framework for a precise locating spell focused on my crazy pegasus feather quill. “What should happen is the feather will want to be together with Frosty’s wing due to the Theorem of Arcane Entanglement, so by channeling the spell into the feather, it will lead us to her,” I demonstrated and explained, only to find that everypony had very quickly lost interest.

“My talent is wasted on this ungrateful swine,” I muttered, waiting for the feather to stop spinning and glowing. “Any day now, magic.”

Eventually, the enchanted quill stopped spinning and drifted into my outstretched hoof. It bobbed and danced for a few more seconds before deciding on a very definite forward-and-right direction. I gently pushed the feather and watched it bob back into pointing the same way. Good, so at least the spell worked for pegasi.

“I have a direction on Frosty,” I proclaimed, holding up the gently glowing feather. “That way.”

Right on cue, the feather began to erratically bob and pitch. “Is it supposed to do that?” the drink asked.

Unfortunately, no. “The only reason it would be doing that is if the target is moving as well,” I replied with the only explanation I had. Even though it wasn’t looking good, I continued watching the feather in case it stabilized and decided on a direction that wasn’t into the air and all over the place. However, if it was telling me to go into the air that meant Frosty was in flight.

Suddenly, the feather pointed nearly straight up and dropped to my hoof. “Well, that’s weird.” Thankfully the answer showed itself in a timely manner by spectacularly crashing into the ground a short distance away, slightly trailing smoke.

The first to break the awed silence was the scribe in charge of stating the obvious. “Is that Frosty?” She then immediately did the second dumbest thing, which was trotting over to the probably comatose pegasus and prodding her with a stick.

I was waiting for Frosty’s inevitable snappy comment as the pile of fur and armor began to unsteadily stand up. Something seemed wrong, though. Normally, she was uncannily graceful in the way only pegasi could be. Now, she could barely get onto her hooves and crawl out of the shallow trench she’d created. Her movement could be called unsteady, at best.

The pegasus settled for a haphazard sprawl on the lip of the furrow in the ground. The initial shock wore off and solid metal cake moved in for assistance. All she did was heavily breathe and groan, which was worrisome, but I was more curious whether she was still going to be alive in a few hours.

Even if we did live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, it was good to know that chivalry was still barely scraping by on life support. Rumcake had Frosty dramatically draped over his back, her creepy griffin leg wrapped around his neck for safety. If only we were on a hill, maybe a backlight over there next to that twiggy brush, and some sort of inspirational backdrop, this could have easily been a pre-war propaganda poster. Maybe in big bold font: “Defend Equestria!” or something equally gallant.

The bedraggled pegasus managed to lift her head and look around. “I think I fractured my motivation,” she managed to drowsily choke out.

Took her long enough.

After making sure her witty remark had been acknowledged with a round of confused utterances or expressions, she promptly decided that passing out was the most sensible plan of action.

END OF ACT TWO


Almost to standard level cap. Crossed Hearts additional content found. Rising Storm additional content found. Continue with additional levels from the Rising Storm DLC?

>Yes | No

Level cap increased to 30.

Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Blast Deflection – Explosives deal reduced damage if heavy or power armor is equipped. Cannot be combined with the Heroic Dodge perk. Damage reduction cannot exceed 45% with other bonuses.
Current Sub-perk: Bloodthirsty – Blood for the Blood God! You gain +8 to Unarmed.
Achievement Progress – Master of the Apocalypse (2/4 complete)

Special items from Rising Storm acquired (3)

14 × “Brimstone” 12 gauge shotgun shells
1 × “Mosquito” pistol
3 × Wide-dispersal “Cane Toad” mines

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