Today officially sucked. Not only had my mother, the only parent I had for years after my father left me and Mom in the middle of the night, died, but I was also getting kicked out of the caravan due to my ‘unpredictable behavior’. “Unpredictable my ass,” I muttered as I kicked a small pebble along the seemingly dead grass. Everything looked dead in the wasteland. Even the rocks looked dead if that was even possible.

“Well, Cataclysm. It probably wouldn’t have hurt if you hadn’t looked into that chemistry book you found.” The voice in my blindsight sneered. I blew my mane out of my eyes making a mental note to cut it at some point. Without the bright blue lock of hair blocking my vision, I could see the owner of the offending voice.

“Shut up, Peace.” I seethed at my red and black-maned twin beside me. “You got us here in the first place.” One too many times I listened to this demon of a pony beside me. I stopped for a second and slowly started tapping a hoof against my chin. Actually, he was more like a fey than a demon, a tad bit more trustworthy but still a tricky bastard. Catching myself, I shook my head slightly before plodding along the small but well-used trail I had found a few hours back. Why do I do this? I stop everything and start analyzing one particular thing for no reason. Just yesterday I was staring at a wagon wheel wondering what kind of wood would be the best for said wheel and where the caravan could look to find it. Such thinking was only okay if you were in a safe location with others who were preferably not scheming against you. Phasing out like that could get me into some serious troub-
Thunk!

“Hmm. Dirt, dead grass, the occasional live plant. Say, doesn’t this look familiar Cataclysm?” Peace snarked. I huffed as I pulled my hoof out of a small hole in the path. All the wasteland looked the same to me but did take note of what he was saying. Actual dead grass was a rarity as plants have regrown in the two hundred years since the war, even if they did look half dead all the time. The only places that still had dry grass were either still irradiated or were corrupted by taint. Due to the absence of both giant bugs shooting needles at me and the magical rainbow-hued solution itself, it was probably just a radiation storm that had gone through not long ago. While rare in most parts of Equestria, these storms were fairly common in the north-western parts of Equestria and were extremely common and severe near the ruins of Cloudsdale, whose cloud factories had been irradiated and running for as long as anyone could remember.

I looked down briefly, a deep frown spreading across my face. The grass was of the thick and short variety. Perfect emergency food if it wasn’t dead. The only problem was that it was bone dry. Like the grass had been dead for much longer than I thought. A gentle breeze caressed my cheek, blowing just hard enough to rustle my mane out from in front of my eye and giving me a direct line of sight to a large clot of clouds in the cloud wall. The clouds were rolling into and over each other in a green mass that almost seemed alive. Wait. Green?

“Goddesses Dammit,” I growled. Green clouds meant that a radiation storm was brewing. I quickly rescanned the area. Nope, no shelter. “Shit.”

Two hours later and my bad day had officially gotten worse. “Shit, Fuck.”

“Nigerian Human?”

Um, what? “Damn it Peace.” I breathed annoyedly. “We talked about this.”

“So?” Peace returned. “I am my own person and fit to make whatever jokes I please, whether they belong to this dimension and time or not.” I could only sigh for the millionth time.
“And speaking of dimensions, in about fifteen meters on our z-axis, I think I see a hole.

I raised an eyebrow but continued plodding along. Sure enough, there was a hole, a hole just deep enough to wait out a rad storm and not suffer major radiation poisoning. I wouldn’t feel too well afterward though.

“Dug-out ex Machina my corporeal friend.” Peace said as we crawled into the cramped dirt cave. I couldn’t even turn my head around to give him a proper quip.

Footnote: Not even enough xp to level up... sad

New Companion! Of sorts… Peace!
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