//------------------------------//
// 5 - The City on the Shores of Hell 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Operation Star Drop 
// by Meep the Changeling 
//------------------------------//

A slab of dull green rusting metal towered over me, its face marked with ancient words which had long since lost all meaning to anypony. Long ago, the design would have told travelers that Manever was the city they could see on the hill five kilometers up the highway, the speed limit was 120 kilometers per hour, and there was a bit of tourist info reminding ponies to visit the Botanic Gardens.

The sign’s text had recently been crudely painted over in a dull blue. The new writing was Equish, but the lettering was very poorly done. The painter had used straight lines instead of the curves and loops of each character, and the lack of serifs made knowing the correct pronunciation impossible. If I hadn’t been told was pronounced as “Jutlandver”, I’d have assumed the sign read “Justice Land” thanks to the crude font.

Given how intolerant ponies typically were of Hellhounds, I’m surprised the wastelanders were using the Hellhound name for Manever.

I looked up the hill at the ruins and shivered. This city was sick. The buildings, the land they sat on, even the streets. The spirits dwelling in every last part of the city were... Tainted. I could feel it as clearly as I could feel clumps of infernally humid air coiling around us.

Whatever weapon had struck Manever, it hadn’t been balefire. It couldn’t have been. Balefire didn’t do… This.

The sky around the city was a clear blue, ‘perfect for a picnic’, as the saying once went. The sky above the city, on the other hoof, was piled high with rolling black thunderheads which swirled and oozed over and through one another, while muted bolts of green lightning flashed through them, and occasionally hammered one of the dozens of decaying skyscrapers.

The buildings didn’t stand tall, either. They jutted up from the ground like crooked fangs. The topmost floors had all been carved into jagged spires of rock and metal over the centuries by that visibly toxic lightning. The fangs also seemed to be moving. Not much, just enough to make a zebra wonder if angry spirits dwelling among the ruins could possibly have enough power to take a bite with teeth like those.

The hill the city sat on wasn’t faring any better. I’d gotten used to the Heartland having plants growing in little patches here and there. Flowers. Grasses. Trees. Bushes. The land was finally recovering from Armageddon.

But not here. Not around Jutlandver.

Here the land oozed and bubbled. The hill was covered in a thick purplish mud that shimmered and glistened as if covered by an oil slick. It reeked of decaying meat.

I turned to Wander, my ears plastered back against my head as I felt an urge to vomit so strong that I was starting to wonder if I could actually throw anything up. Wander looked back at me through the clear faceplate of an old gas mask. My ears flattened even more.

“When the buck did you put that on?” I demanded with a stamp of my rear-left hoof.

I saw Wander’s cheeks twist behind the mask. “An hour ago,” she said, her voice muffled by the mask. “Surprised you didn’t notice.”

“I was too busy looking at Hell!” I countered, pointing to the maelstrom of enraged weather spirits with one leg. “And smelling it! Do you have another of those?”

Wander shook her head. “Nope. Can you turn off your nose?”

I shook my head. “Nope… What even is that smell?”

Wander began to walk towards the city. “The mud. It uh, it just kind of stinks. They say it’s full of bodies, and the mud’s slowed down their decay so much they’re still rotting… I don’t think that’s right. Even a city’s worth of meat would have rotted away a century ago. Preservation in a peat bog is kind of all or nothing.”

I nodded in agreement and began to follow her. “Are we really going to walk through that city? I know you’re blind to spirits, but… Come on! Look at that!”

I thrust one hoof up at the clouds again, managing to time my gesture perfectly with a flash of lightning. “Can’t you see something is terribly wrong here?”

“Oh, I can see it,” Wander agreed. “But you know what’s worse?”

Wander swept a foreleg across the field of purplish mud around us. Just a few hundred meters ahead, the mud oozed right up the the edges of the road, and I could see that it was eating away at the asphalt, leaving behind sections of road which appeared to be melted plastic rather than pavement.

From that point on, the caustic mud spread out to consume the whole horizon to either side of the city ahead. I sighed, seeing the problem immediately.

“There’s no easy way around, is there?” I asked dejectedly.

Wander shook her head slowly, careful not to jostle her gas mask. “If we go east, we’ll have to cross the Celestial River. Nothing but rapids for… Well, about a week. We’d have to walk back north and go around its source up in the mountains. If we go west, it’s a week’s walk through irradiated wasteland to get around. I came through here not too long ago. Every shipment out of Two Bits goes through here too. It’s fine.”

I bit my lip and trotted forwards to gently take Wander’s head and turn it so she was looking at a patch of the clouds on the edge of the unnatural storm. “See that?”

“Yes… Let go of me,” Wander said firmly.

I let go immediately and pointed to the spot I made her look. “Right there, at a glance, I can see a tangle of at least three dozen Spirits of Air trapped in that one cloud. At least they were Spirits of Air. Once. I don’t know what you’d call them now, but I can feel them from here. They are angry… No, enraged. Whatever hit this place mutated them just like the Windigos! We are looking at a literal cloud of spirits that are as warped from what they once were as a ghoul is from ponykind… No offence. I just… I don’t want to go near that. And that’s just the one cloud! There are thousands up there.”

Wander chuckled and swished her tail hard enough to make her cloak sway. “None taken. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that zebras have steered clear of this place ever since the Last Day. It’s not just you. But for real, I’m telling you we’ll be fine. I know the pack of Hellhounds who live here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You mentioned Hellhounds in Pip’s ballad.”

Wander nodded. “Mhm.”

“As the things that killed Steelhooves.”

“Yep.”

“Who was a Canterlot Ghoul, like you.”

“He was.”

“While he was in power armor.”

“Look, Gears, babe,” Wander said with a weary sigh as she turned around. “Hellhounds aren't a threat to us. I’ve played for this pack for so long that any hounds we run into had grandparents who sat on my lap as pups. My rep alone would keep us both safe even if the hounds were not on such good terms with Ponies these days.”

I took a deep breath and gave Wander a pleading look. “Please… Is there any other way that won’t cost us a week?”

Wander closed her eyes for a moment, then to my surprise, she rolled up her sleeve and switched on her pipbuck. The ancient device made a rather concerning pop as it switched on. Wander flinched slightly as the device protested.

The poor thing had a spark gap! One bad enough to shock Wander when it was powered on. I made a mental note to take Wander to mom’s workshop once we were back in Pomare. That poor pipbuck needed some TLC.

As soon as the ancient leg terminal was done humming to life, Wander’s horn lit up and she began to quite expertly work the dials, switches, and buttons with the blue glow of her magic. She scrolled through the menus, brought up her map, and examined it for several long moments before sighing and waving her pipbuck around with an irritated look on her face.

“Come on, pip… Download the map update already…” Wander muttered to herself.

I held my breath, waiting for her to say something like ‘yes, there’s a small trail that winds around the hill to our left, and…’ Unfortunately, that simply wasn’t to be.

The pip pinged.

Wander refocused and looked closely at her map, then shook her head. “No. Double no on going through the wasteland. It’s not just still irradiated, somepony marked the place as crawling with old robots about two weeks ago. A second memo says that a squad of Applejack’s Rangers went to clear it out, and they tagged that mission as failed. That’s not a thing they do often.”

Wander switched off her pipbuck and rolled her sleeve down as the glow of its screen faded. “Our options are: One, swim across a river with rapids so bad only Celestia herself is known to have swum across and survived. Two, walk back north for a week, hike up mountains for three days, then back down for a week just to get two days walk from where we are right now. Three, attempt to cross a stretch of land covered in Assault-Ponies—”

My eyes widened. Assault-Ponies. Zebrican mechanized infantry. A machine spirit given a body and orders to murder any pony it ran into as violently as possible. Their name is their function! 

“W— What?!” I sputtered. “How are there Zebrican constructs this far north? The Badlands are literally a continent away!”

Granted, they would probably ignore me like they would any other Zebra, but Wander would be ripped to shreds, vaporized, and/or beaten into a pulp. 

Wander shrugged and swished her tail irritably. “I don’t know! I’m just telling you what was tagged. Option Four, you transform into an airship and fly us across the river. Or, Option Five, we go through Jutlandver and you don’t look up.”

I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. “I can’t fly.”

Wander turned her head to make sure I’d watch her playfully raise her eyebrows. “But you can transform?”

My deadpan glare informed her that no, no I could not. But I felt the need to say it anyways. “No.”

Wander winked playfully and waved for me to follow her. “Come on, let’s go. Option five won't take more than two hours, tops.”


☢★★◯★★☢


Jutlandver was a city of constant wind. Ill winds. I could taste the hatred in it. I could feel the way the unnatural currents ripped at my clothes, as if it wanted to tear them off my body. Strangely, the gusts were not cold. Not all of them. The winds alternated between distressingly warm, as if coming from a fire, to servo-chillingly cold.

I could have handled that on its own, but when combined with the moaning and shrieking of the winds as they howled through the crumbling concrete jungle… Well, I walked quickly, with my head down and my ears constantly searching for any sign of danger beneath the oppressive blanket of noise.

The further into the city we walked, the more nervous I became. We had abandoned the highway a short distance into the city. Somepony, or perhaps some hounds, had built a ramp out of shipping containers, billboards, and scrap plywood which let wagons move up onto the elevated highway which had once bisected Manever with a stack of roadways three stories high. That highway collapsed centuries ago. The city was split in two, with a river of rubble separating the halves.

I stood at the edge of the highway for a little while. Long enough to see the crater right in the middle of the city. It hadn’t been balefire that murdered Manever. Balefire was a flash of emerald flame and a pulse of necromantic radiation and then nothing but hot ash and cinders. It left behind a scar on the spirit realm and a clean hole in the earth.

The crater at the heart of Manever was a perfectly spherical hole in the world that had become a lake two kilometers wide. A lake full of a viscus, bubbling purple liquid. The longer I stared at it, the more I swore that sometimes, for just a heartbeat, pony sized shapes would move within the slime.

They came up with the bubbles, as if a great many pony-sized creatures were trapped inside and desperately trying to claw their way out of the pit.

As I retreated from the edge of the highway, I’d never been more glad I didn’t sleep or dream in my life. I would have had nothing but nightmares about that lake for a week if I could dream. Maybe even a month, if the sky above it found its way in.

Whatever weapon had made that, the Gardens weren't able to clean it up, and I had no idea what it could be.

I wasn’t fully trained as a Shaman. Many very skilled Shamen had tried over the centuries to help me unlock my potential, but I just couldn’t do anything more complex than apprentice work and potion brewing. On the other hoof, I’d read everything we still knew about the Spirit Realm and how to influence it.

I also knew many of the old tales, the oral traditions of the original Zebrican Shamen. Of course, I also had my own unique insights to rely on, too.

Balefire, Pink Cloud. Everyone knew those names. I knew more. A few things which had been left as blueprints or lab proposals which mom and I found in old ministry files. 

And yet, for all that I knew, nothing could tell me what that megaspell had been! It must have been radically experimental, because if it had existed for any real length of time before the Last Day, I’d know its name. 

The crater lake wasn’t in sight any longer, but I could still feel it. It pulled at my very being as if there were a noose about my neck. It had to be what corrupted the spirits that had been in Manever on the Last Day. What other explanation could there be?

The thing in the ooze wanted to devour me. Every step we took through the rubble strewn streets made that more and more painfully clear. I could scarcely think of anything other than the way the buildings loomed over us, casting unnatural shadows which grew ever more umbral as we moved towards the city center. That, and quiet click of my hooves on the asphalt.

The way they echoed. Like a heartbeat. Or the rhythmic popping of the bubbles in the crater.

It was affecting my walking speed! This had been a terrible terrible idea!

I shivered as we rounded a corner and began to climb up a rubble pile. Wander was in front of me as always, scrambling up the broken chunks of concrete, furniture, filing cabinets, and other assorted office building contents like she’d been born a biped. I did my best to follow where she’d stepped, but I couldn’t always gain any purchase.

This place wasn’t worrying her. It wasn’t trying to eat her. Had the megaspell been engineered to disrupt the spirit realm itself? Was it a Zebrican countermeasure for the stolen zebra magic Equestria had been slowly reverse engineering?

That made too much sense.

I began to climb up the rubble pile. Somewhere, stones clattered as if sliding down a mountain. Wander and I immediately looked up, but there was nothing. Some other building had crumbled just then. Not this one.

I winced as I heard the rubble crash to the ground nearby, out of sight. The spirits here knew where we were. They were in nearly everything. The ponies who built this city had placed so much care, love, and skill into constructing each and every last building. Of course spirits had moved into the homes ponies had built for them.

If they had wanted to kill us for entering the dungeon this place had become, they already would have. They were trying to warn us away. No. Not us. Wander wasn’t even a little nervous.

They were trying to warn me away. From the crater… No, from the liquid inside!

What could it be? I needed to know. We would be at the crater in just a few more minutes. This was officially an emergency!

I closed my eyes tightly and did my best to open myself to the world around me as it truly was. Even though I wasn't very good at making much use of zebra magic, my inner sight was perfectly clear. The source of the spiritual corruption all around me was like the brightest of lights, and it tore away the shadows of the physical world.

For a fraction of a second I saw Manever as it had been before the war. A newly founded city, a place of business, banking, and academics. Ponies filled the pristine streets, trotting along happily, talking to one another, their voices overlapping and merging into a dull buzz.

Everything was fine. Everypony was happy. Then, the war came.

The city changed. The streets were now dirty, no longer being swept clean. Dirt, dust, and litter piled up everywhere. The streets were still full, but not with ponies going about their day. They were angry, and hungry. Their coats had lost their luster. Their ribs stuck out from their chests.

They argued with one another, and while they all had different things to say, everypony spoke of food shortages. Food shortages had affected the poor for nearly a year, and now hunger was clawing its way up to reach even the city’s wealthy elites.

Everypony was starving.

Their own military was taking the food, though not by force. Farms that wanted to stay in the Ministry’s graces simply had to divert most of their produce to the front lines. Soldiers needed to eat, and some logistical error had shifted too much of the disparity onto the ponies of Manever.

While interesting, this isn’t what I wanted to know. Why was I seeing this echo of the past? Why was this something the spirits around me wished me to know?

Probably because I am a terrible shaman and they misunderstood me when I asked what was wrong with the city.

I strained myself, pushing at the walls of the world with what little power I had, trying to bend things to see the city as it was now, not as it had once been.

The vision shifted once more, only this time it plunged me into hell.

I was in the pool. Not physically, but mentally. I could see it in its entirety, the spirits were glad to show me what it was. It had been their goal… Everything before was simply context.

It was a mass of liquefied ponies. Every single last soul who had been in the city. On the streets, in their homes, at work, on the highway. Everywhere. It didn’t matter.

When the megaspell hit it, they liquefied, flowed towards the center of the blast, and did not die. Their souls swarmed in the liquid, screaming, in agony, crying out for help.

No, not help.

Revenge.

Revenge on zebras. Revenge on spirits. Revenge on everything even tangentially related to the War, and the creation of the eternal hell in which they swam, merged, fragmented, and even reproduced in!

Every day, more and more minds were plunged into that hell as splintered fragments grew into unique minds of their own. Minds which would be tortured forever in this... Pocket-afterlife created by the blast.

That’s what this megaspell had done. It was a spiritual weapon. A way to literally send people you hated to hell. Forever.

The damned within the boiling pool were consumed by two thoughts. No! No, three thoughts!

That’s why the spirits had shown me the prewar conditions. The pool was not merely restless souls enraged and tormented for centuries. They all died while there had been a food shortage. They were starving tormented vengeful souls.

Yay… That’s so much better.

Revenge, food, and obtaining a suitable vessel to take them away from the pool to have their revenge.

I strained even harder, pleading with the spirits to be as exact as they could possibly be. What was a suitable vessel? I had to know.

They answered me as bluntly as could be.

Oh, shit! I was a suitable vessel!

The spirits were not corrupted by the megaspell! They had done this to themselves as the world’s metaphysical immune response to the thing in the pool!

The oppressive gloom as you got closer to the crater. The unnatural storm centered right over the bubbling pool. The corrosive ooze surrounding the city was the work of Earth Spirits, a way to kill anything trying to enter the city before it reached the pool. The spirits were trying to keep everypony away from the crater.

Whatever lurked in that pool was so evil that the very spirits of the land wanted to keep things away from it. Especially me! They made that abundantly clear!

Coming here had been an incredibly bad idea!

This is why mom didn't come here when we were searching the ministry hubs! She developed tech using captured Zebrican blueprints and enchanted items. She’d have known about this… Prototype hellmaker. This damnation.

Damnation… A fitting name for this particular megaspell, if there was one. Hopefully there had only been one of these, and it had been launched simply because everything else was being fired.

Damnation… If I got too close to the pool, that’s what I would bring to the wasteland.

I need to tell Wander. Now. It’s important.

Suddenly, the whispered images the city's spirits sent me were pushed aside by a million enraged voices. They spoke as one

<C̷O̸M̧Ȩ!> the Pool demanded.

I screamed, snapping myself out of the vision.

Wander spun around when I screamed, Bad Trip floated in front of her, ready to fire. I couldn't see her eyes behind the glare on her visor, but I knew she was looking at me.

“What is it?! Where are they?!” Wander demanded as she hunkered down to minimize her profile atop the pile.

My body shook as I looked over her shoulder, to the right. That’s where the pool was. I could feel it trying to pull me in, even from this far away.

“No. I— It’s not an— We can’t keep going. We need to leave!” I said, still trembling.

Wander lowered her weapon, slowly returning it to its holster as she stood up. “I didn’t know zeebs could get even paler! Is the storm overhead bothering you that much?”

I shook my head again and pointed over her shoulder. “No! The pool. It’s the pool! We need to leave! It wants me!”

Wander froze for a moment then leaned towards me incredulously. “It… Wants you?”

I nodded twice. “Yes! I just had a vision. I needed to know what caused this storm. The spirits did this to themselves. It’s a warning! We must not get anywhere near the crater in the center of town! I can feel it trying to pull me in, even from here. It’s— It’s angry! So angry! It wants a vessel and it wants revenge. And I am a vessel! It knows I’m here, we have to leave right now!”

Wander turned her head slightly, looking at the way I was trembling in place, how my tail was raised in alarm. “You’re panicking. Okay… We’ll move away from the crater. Will it be okay if we move along the edge of the city?”

“We can’t go further towards the pool or it will get stronger. Just… Away from it. If we get too close something horrible will happen!” I insisted before pointing in the direction the rubble had fallen from. “That building crumbling! That was a warning! Whatever messed up the spirits here is in that pool, and if I get too close it will wake up and eat me!”

Wander held up her forehooves, managing to somehow balance on her hind legs like she was meant to stand that way. “Hey, Gears, relax. It’s okay. I said we’ll leave!”

Wander began to climb down the rubble pile. I began to tear up. When she reached the bottom I wrapped my forelegs around her in a tight hug. “Thank you…”

Wander returned my hug then gently pulled my legs off her shoulders.

“Easy… It’s okay,” Wander took a look over her shoulder for a moment then shivered. “If that pool has you this spooked, I don’t want to go near it again either. Come on, I’ll take us through here as fast as I can.”

Wander began to trot away, moving down the street away from the evil lurking in the heart of Manever.

“Thank you,” I whispered again.

”You should still tell her what you are, sweetie,” Imaginary Dad’s voice chided as I began to follow Wander up the street.

I like having friends, Dad.

”You’re putting her at risk. If that thing can claim you somewhere else… Say, in a storm drain, or the sewer, or a fountain… You know, places that a big gaping hell-anus’ creampie might seep into.”

I bit my lip. Imaginary dad was right… But if I told her everything about me I’d lose a friend.

”If she hates you because you’re adopted, well, buck her with a bucking anchor!”

Imaginary Dad had a point… But it was more than just the way I got my pony parents.

Wander lead the way towards the edge of town. I followed her. Silently. Just, letting reality blur and fade away. I couldn’t bear to think about the thing that wanted to devour me who— 

<NͅͅO͉͇̞ͅ!͏̝̟ ̺͕͈͢C͢O̝̕M̨E̸̩̫͎̙!̻̱̣> The pool screeched, pleading, screaming, enraged, all at once.

The last thing I remembered was screaming and running down the street as fast as my legs could carry me.


☢★★◯★★☢


I couldn’t remember how long we walked through the dead silent streets of Manever before we found Jutlandver. I was far too shaken to be paying attention to little things like time. All I cared about was putting distance between me and the pool.

On the off chance we found an undetonated balefire bomb one day… I’d have to see if Her Majesty would let me detonate it in that pool. It needed to die. This is why my people had made balefire. I understood now. Somethings were too terrifying to be allowed even the tiniest chance of survival.

If only they hadn't been mistaken about Princess Luna still being Nightmare Moon…

Shaken as I was, I didn’t get to take in very much while we had been in Jutlandver. I remembered it being built well above the street level as a series of walkways connecting the middle floors of ten skyscrapers. Everything had been made from salvage. Metal barrels filled with concrete had been stacked to make support pillars. Old furniture had been piled up into walls. That sort of thing.

Somehow, in spite of the storm above and the caustic soil below, Jutlandver was quiet. The wind didn’t howl here, and I remembered the warm steady breeze turning a row of shabby windmills. It was what I expected a wasteland village to be like.

Aside from being filled with massive, hulking, mutant diamond dogs, of course!

Hearing about the three-pony-tall brick-shithouses with claws that could cut an armored pony’s head clean off in a ballad was one thing. Standing amongst them was quite another. I’d probably have been terrified if something a trillion times worse wasn’t unliving in their backyard.

I think they had been surprised to see me. I was pretty sure Wander explained that I was in shock because of the pool. A Hellhound might have mentioned another zebra who had come here and had the same reaction. It’s possible that I gave a puppy a ‘stripy-pone ride’.

I couldn't be sure of any of that. I’d been too scared for my memory to record more than just a few fragments here and there. I spent a lot of it near the windmills. The biggest one’s spirit was very nice. I think.

All I knew for sure is we stayed long enough for Wander to trade some of her medical supplies for an old police riot mask for me to wear. It was a nice mask. Two filters. Big clear visor. Just like Wander’s, only green instead of black. And mine had both filters installed.

I liked not smelling the corrosive earth. I remembered that very clearly.

Apparently, I’d also traded my broken goggles for a map of Manever. I only knew that for sure because I no longer had them on my forehead, and Wander was floating a map alongside her as we navigated the twisted streets.

“— tting too close to the dogs…” Wander mumbled as she squinted up at a half-rusted away street sign, then back to the map.

I blinked. The world had just sort of… Came back all at once. It was overwhelming.

“Huh?” I asked, in my most intelligible possible voice.

Which, as it turned out, sounded pretty bucking stupid.

Wander turned around and smiled at me. “You’re talking again. Good! Don't’ worry. We’re almost out of here… And the Hellhounds said that the other zebra who came through here was just like you so, yeah! We’re getting the buck out of here and never coming back.”

“Good!” I said a bit louder and more eagerly than necessary.

Then the facts of the matter hit me. I slid to a halt and turned to look over my shoulder. “We were talking to Hellhounds!”

Wander looked over to me and nodded slowly. “Yes… It’s okay. They are nice people.”

I nodded, my ears twitching nervously. “I know! I think I played with their pups. But, I— We— We need to warn them! About the pool! It’s evil!”

Wander trotted up to me and put a hoof on my shoulder. “Gears. Stay with me. Don’t snap again. You did tell them about the pool. Their medicine dog knew about the danger. It doesn't want them, and the spirits keep them safe here… Apparently, the pool is only interested in zebras.”

I shivered as I remembered the pool’s touch on my mind. “T— That make sense… Take revenge on them using one of their own… Okay… Was— Was their, um… Medicine Dog absolutely certain?”

Wander nodded firmly. “Yes. He was very specific. He even said some things that helped calm you down… I think he also gave you something to drink. I don't know for certain. I was trading for your mask.”

A drink? I didn’t remember that… But I think I tasted a hint of oil clinging to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t be certain. My sense of taste was… Well, not very good at all.

I reached up and touched the mask on my face. I’d almost forgotten I had it on… I needed to not think about the pool anymore.

“Thanks. How can the Hellhounds handle living here? Don’t they have a better sense of smell than us?” I asked as I took stock of our surroundings.

We were on yet another rubble strewn street corner filled with abandoned rusting auto wagons, totally intact but entirely bleached pony skeletons, and the occasional mound of junk the hellhounds had made into cairns while looting. It looked no different from anywhere else in this cursed city.

“I asked them last time I was here,” Wander commented as she turned her attention to the map. “They think it smells great.”

I blinked several times and titled my head. “They… Think it smells… Good?”

Error 422! LOGIC CANNOT BE FOLLOWED!

“Well, yeah! They’re carnivores, you know. This place probably smells like the inside of a Hayburger to them.”

Oh. That makes sense. Good!

I sighed and shook my head slowly. “Wander… I was around before the war, but not for very long. I have no idea what that is.”

Wander hummed and looked back up at the sign. “Oh, a fast food chain that went bankrupt just before the ministries came into power… I think they rebranded but… It’s been so long since I’ve ever cared about food I’ve almost forgotten all about that sort of thing.”

I nodded and trotted forward, looking at the map. It was hoof drawn, or well, paw drawn I guess. The detail on the map was incredible, in spite of it being made using a sharpened stick that was burnt and home-recycled paper.

Every building, every street, all were drawn as if from a birds eye view. Not in the usual format of putting boxes for buildings. They’d bothered to detail how the top of each building looked.

That was ingenious! The map made every skyscraper a unique landmark. If you couldn’t read the text on the map, or didn’t have a compass, you’d still be able to use it!

Note to self: Never underestimate Hellhounds. Especially not their scouts!

“What are we looking for?” I asked. “Are you trying to use the map labels? Because the building tops would probably be more useful.”

Wander sighed. “I’m trying to remember what used to be in this part of the city.”

“Why?”

“Because I performed here often enough to have known some of what was around town, and the map does not label pre-war structures by names that, you know, tell me what they actually were. I only read a little Hound,” Wander remarked as she glared at the map then down the street.

“The problem,” Wander continued as I remained silent. “Is that they warned us about wild dogs infesting this part of the city, and I want to make sure we take a safe route out of here that doesn't cross something like, say, an old power plant that might be patiently waiting to explode. Or anything else that’s just begging to give us trouble.”

I nodded slowly, frowning. “Wild dogs? As in feral ghouls that happen to be hellhounds?”

“No. Mutant dogs descended from the pets that managed to survive,” Wander corrected. “The hounds described them as, uh… Well, in Equish I guess it would be ‘bear-dogs’. As in, the size and strength of.”

I cleared my throat and squinted down the street. “Okay, I see… A post office, a library, and a police station.”

Wander’s face scrunched enough to make her mask move. “I… We’re not going past the police station. Twenty caps says its got a few sentinels that would just love to shoot at the ‘Zebra Spy’.”

My lips pursed in realization. I hadn’t thought of that as a danger in the Heartlands… I’d realized there would be malfunctioning robots, but I hadn't considered that even properly functioning robots could be a threat.

“Okay. Sooo! Where can we go that's not swarming with giant mutant dogs which are not friendly?” A shiver of dread slid down my spine as I realized we might have to get closer to the pool to go around the dogs.

Wander sighed. “Well… We’re boxed in by some fallen towers. We’re not going back the way we came, and we need to get around the towers to get out of the city. Either we go this way,” she said tracing a path on the map with a pebble in her magic as she spoke. “Which takes us closer to the pool… The pool I’ve now had two mystically inclined people tell me is literally liquid evil! Or, we go this other way, and risk getting a bit too close for comfort to where those dogs are supposed to be. Or... Well, I guess we could go straight ahead through the botanical gardens…”

I raised an eyebrow at Wander. “Why are we even hesitating? The gardens sound like the only choice we have.”

“Weeellll,” Wander said as she rocked back on her hooves nervously. “It wouldn’t be the first zoo or zoo-like place I’ve been too over the years… Maybe the eighth? It also wouldn’t be out of line to say that going into a zoo is just begging for there to be some sort of… Incident.”

“Ah,” I slowly touched the map with the point of my hoof, enjoying the warmth that radiated from Wander’s magic aura while I pointed to the route that would take us closer to the pool. “We’re not going this way.”

Wander nodded. “Yeah… “ She turned and look into my eyes. Her twin red pupils contracted with fear. “I camped by that when I first came up here… I— I saw nothing other than bubbling liquid. The medicine dog said he can see ponies under there… Trying to get out.”

“We’re never coming back here,” I said adamantly.

“Or using that route,” Wander agreed.

We only really had two choices. Unknown danger, or huge vicious dogs that people who could claw through power armor thought of as a problem.

I cleared my throat. “So… Do we fight through a pack of feral bear-dogs, or take a chance with the garden?”

Wander took a nervous breath. “I want to say the dogs… But if Hellhounds are afraid of them…”

“Let’s take a walk in the garden,” I said as I began to trot across an oddly clear intersection.

I frowned as I took note of that oddity. Why was this part of the road clear when everywhere else was full of old cars and junk piles?

Wander trotted up next to me while I thought through the puzzle. I knew the piles were made by the hellhounds, and if they were worried about dangerous animals here, maybe they didn’t scavenge here, and therefore we didn't see any of their reject piles.

But then, why were there no auto-wagons?

Had they scavenged them, but left everything else alone? For metal perhaps?

No, that made no sense. The Hounds would have taken wagons from safe areas first if they wanted them.

That meant there had been no wagons driving here or even parked in the garden’s lot when the megaspell hit the city. 

But why?

The street remained empty as we walked down it. Nothing at all but the crumbling buildings towering above us, the cracked and faded asphalt, and the looming wall of the Gardens ahead… And a few piles of chalky rubble laying in the street between us.. And… The… Wa… Ohhh…

Those were not rubble piles. That was a street literally paved with bones.

Hundreds of ponies had died in the small parking lot the street opened up into. Among them lay old wooden signs which the elements had long since rendered unreadable. Protestors. At the gardens. Who had been in the open when the city was hit and everypony’s soul and flesh had been cast into the pool.

Poor bastards…

Wander stopped walking for a few moments to take the sight in with me. As her hoofsteps stopped clicking and echoing, I could hear a faint voice coming from something electronic. A recording… But where from? And what was it saying?

I resumed waking and made my way towards the mass grave, following the sound. As I approached the garden’s gates I saw a small portable loudspeaker tower. It had been tipped over somehow, as the years went by. It was resting at an angle against the garden's three story high brick wall, with its base in the middle of a sandbag semicircle around the wrought iron garden gates closed with loops of heavy chain.

The sandbag fortification was surrounded by pony skeletons wearing shreds of riot gear. I saw a mask just like mine. Police officers, here to ensure the protest didn't get out of hoof? Or had they been here to put an end to it?

The recorded voice was audible the moment I stopped walking again.

“— your homes! None of the garden’s plants are best used as food. These plants serve vital medical purposes. Please, disperse and return to your homes. If you do not disperse within ten minutes, we are authorized to use teargas on y— What in tartarus is that Oh, buck! Everyone! Take cover!.”

A loud but surprisingly dull boom rumbled from the speaker. Then the recording crackled, hissed, and sputtered as an indescribable shimmery, oozy, ripply magical noise scratched form the speaker. The sound of the megaspell…

I shivered.

“Return to your homes!” The speaker repeated, looping back to the start of the recording. “None of the garden’s—”

I tore my attention away from the broken speaker endlessly looping through a dead stallions’ last word and turned around to face the crowd of long dead protesters. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I felt a little guilty that I couldn’t ever know what being hungry was like… These poor ponies had died trying to get a meal of whatever random weeds and flowers they thought there must have been in the garden.

I turned to look over my shoulder at the remains of the officers. They must have had it even worse. There’s no way they hadn’t been starving too, and their job had been to keep their fellow hungry ponies from having a terrible meal… Which they themselves couldn’t eat either.

Poor guys… Was there any metaphysical or doctrinal reasons not to hug a skeleton out of sympathy?

“Hey!” Wander called from a short distance away, snapping me out of my thoughts.

The ghoul was standing next to the base of the loudspeaker. I trotted over to her, taking care to not step on anypony’s remains. The poor ponies were suffering enough as it was…

Somepony needed to find a way to destroy that pool. They had to be freed.

“What?” I asked Wander, hoping I could force the pool from my mind again.

“The gate’s chained shut, my keyfinding spell is pointing into the gardens, and the wall runs to the buildings on either side of the garden… Our only way in is to climb up the loudspeaker,” Wander said nodding at the tower. “That’s the bad news. Good news is my peek through the gate says once we’re in we can jump from that tower there onto the roof of a greenhouse, then we can just hop between the greenhouse roofs clear to the other side. It’s not that far!”

I checked my saddle’s straps, tightened them up a little, then nodded in agreement. “Sounds like a plan.”

Climbing up the tower was easy. While slightly rusty, the pyramid lattice of ladder-like support struts had managed to remain intact enough to take my weight, which meant Wander was completely safe. After all, the gaunt meat-pony was definitely much lighter than the voluptuous metal and silicone mare.

The moment I could see over the wall top, I froze. Wander had been right. The garden was definitely dangerous.

It was full of giant mutated carnivorous plants.

I didn’t know much of anything about botany, but I knew about meat-eating plants. What zebra didn’t? We had a whole category of cooking called Revenge Entrees which were made using such plants after they had eaten a zebra. Most of them were tastier chilled.

The garden was overgrown, and filled with pitcher plants that had huge thorns on the inside of other larger pitchers, perfect for holding prey inside their acid-filled ‘jars’. There were massive fly traps too, or should I say bear-dog traps? One of them, which was closed, still had a huge canine leg and paw sticking out from between the wooden teeth of its maw.

The ground itself was covered in an odd leafy plant that I thought was a fern at first until I noticed the ‘fronds’ were moving, curling around anything they touched, leaving slight burn marks on other plants stalks before letting go…

Wander reached the point next to me and looked down. “Oh… That, uh… That’s how the entire garden is.”

“Yep…” I agreed with a nervous flick of my tail.

“Sooo, want to buy a ticket for the nope train to buck this and try our luck with the dogs?” Wander asked just a little hopefully.

I sighed and shook my head. It was time to tell her a little about myself.

“Wander… If you get hurt, you regenerate.”

She nodded. “Yep. I know you don’t, but I have some stimpacks. If you get bit—”

“If I get bit,” I interrupted, “the only pony who can fix me is about three weeks travel north of here. I don’t need doctors, Wander. I need a cybersurgeon… Or, well, I guess a roboticist would do in a pinch.”

Wander mmmed nervously and looked down into the garden again. “They don’t appear to have grown up to the tops of the green houses… I don’t like that, but it is still a clear path.”

I nodded again and ran a weary eye over the slowly lashing acid-ferns below. They covered the floor, but every surface above them was similarly choked with an angry red creeper. Vines like that should generally grow all the way up the sides of things. What was keeping them away from the upper levels? “Yeah… Want me to go first? I’m heavier than you. If the glass can take me, it can take you.”

“Good plan. Go for it,” Wander said with a nervous swish of her tail.

I turned my attention to the greenhouse nearest the wall. It was huge, easily the size of a small condominium. I’d be able to live in there with at least eight families, if none of them minded a communal kitchen and bathroom. On top of being huge, I couldn't see through the glass. Years of filth covered the once clear panels, blocking almost all of the light from passing through the glass panes…  And something was filling up most of the space inside the greenhouse.

Hopefully, it was just full of a huge pile of mulch and fungus left over from dead medicinal herbs.

”You know damn well they are full of the plants’ stomachs. Or some kind of hybrid plant-pony monsters. Or… I don’t know… Mutant rats the size of the whole greenhouse, which is actually their shell, like a hermit crab!” Imaginary Dad chastised. Excitedly, for some reason.

Please don't jinx me from beyond the grave, dad!

I looked ahead of me, towards the edge of the greenhouse. There was a three meter gap between the end of the loudspeaker and the beginning of the greenhouse. The greenhouse’s metal support frame was painted blue, which meant it shouldn’t have rusted much. The supports were also fairly thick. I’d try jumping for one of them.

After all, just because the glass might handle my weight standing on it, it didn’t mean it could handle me crashing into it.

I carefully maneuvered into place on the very end of the loudspeaker. The aging metal creaked and groaned under my weight. It couldn’t hold me for long. The endlessly looping recording seemed to quaver and hiss in protest as I stood nearly atop the speaker itself.

I jumped. I’d never been very good at jumping.

The greenhouse grew larger and larger in my vision. I spread my legs wide, not wanting the sharp point of a hoof to strike the glass and—

CRUNCH!

I saw stars as I slammed barrel first into the support beam. The greenhouse shuddered under the impact, but did not buckle. Glass creaked and squealed in protest, but did not crack.

Thank, Celestia!

I began to slide down the roof. I scrambled for purchase, and my rear hooves found a lip of metal between the glass panes to grip onto. I was safe.

I slowly stood up and began to walk across the greenhouse roof, moving towards the greenhouse next to it. The greenhouse creaked and moaned with each step, but it seemed to handle my weight just fine.

I smiled and turned around, waving for Wander to jump too.

She backed up a few paces on the tower, managing to maintain her balance atop the groaning structure as she took a running leap towards the greenhouse. She sailed through the air, her cloak billowing behind her... 

Giving me the first look I ever had at what was under it.

She had her holster on her rear left leg, a tiny little bag on a leather strap over one shoulder, and a bandoleer sewn to her jumpsuit with marked bottles of Aqua Cura slotted in where 60mm grenades should go.

That was it.

How the buck did she fit her guitar in that bag?! My bags were bigger on the inside too, sure, but the things in them still had to fit through the opening!

Wander landed on the green house with a wumph and a crack. The glass beneath her spiderwebbed around her hooves as she landed. I yelped and lunged towards her, managing to grab her cloak with my hoof as I landed on my belly.

The glass didn’t break. We both let out a sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” Wander said quietly.

“Don’t mention it.”

Wander dusted herself off, even though nothing she’d done would have gotten her dirty. I was glad my gas mask hid my smile as I watched her literally try to brush off the non-accident.

“Maybe I should jump first, if the glass is this brittle,” Wander proposed as she took the lead.

“Just don't land on your hooves. Glass is like crystal, it doesn't take hits well from anything heavier than a pebble. Land on your belly.”

Wander groaned and turned to look into my eyes. Her red orbs pleaded with me, begged for something. Once I realized what worried her, I nodded. “I won’t ever tell anypony about this.”

“Thank you,” Wander murmured as she set out to make the jump to the next greenhouse.

There were seven more greenhouses between us and the end of the garden. I could see the caustic mud-field through the buildings on the other side. We were almost out of town! Thank Celestia! I never thought I’d be so glad to see meat-reeking metal melting poison mud!

We ran across the roof, and made the first jump. The second greenhouse was sturdier than the first. It didn’t shake when I landed on it, though the loud wumph made Wander wince and call out. “How much metal is in you?”

I blushed and squirmed in place before standing up. “Uh… That’s a little personal.”

“Not when we’re jumping onto glass panels over greenhouses full of mystery-danger!” She pointed out with a twinge of real fear to her voice.

That was a very good point… Whelp, here’s where the end starts.

“I weigh two hundred and thirty seven kilograms,” I answered quietly. “Make a fat joke and I’ll pin you down and scorch your taint off with my eye laser.”

“Woah!” Wander triple blinked behind her visor. “That’s almost three times what I weighed before going on the balefire diet!”

I reached up and started to slip off my mask so I wouldn’t melt a hole in it. Wander held up her hooves defensively. “Easy! Not a fat joke! Just wondering how many implants you even have in there… And also now completely okay with walking on any glass that can support you.”

I nodded and lowered my mask back on and let out the breath I had been holding. No way was I going to breath in any of that stench if I couldn’t help it. It smelled like it might corrode my insides…

If only breathing was as optional as eating or drinking… But that would have gone against mom’s orders relating to my design.

We made our way to the edge of the roof and made our jumps again. My hooves made an odd dull ‘wumph’ sound as I landed on the glass. I frowned and looked down, trying to see what was different this time. While I was looking Wander landed next to me, again making a dull ‘wumph’ that seemed to come from inside the structure.

“The hay was that?” Wander asked reflexivity as she began to slowly cross the rooftop.

I wiped some of the grime from the glass and squinted hard. There wasn’t any light reaching the inside of the greenhouse. It was entirely filled with something… Grayish brown… Papery… And ribbed.

I had seen something like this in a book, what was it?

“Come on!” Wander called. “They said the bear-dogs get more aggressive at night. I’d like to be a few clicks away from the city when that happens. Especially because they’ve seen them running on the ooze without a care in the world.”

I shivered. If those ‘dogs’ could withstand acid strong enough to eat away at stone, my LAERs would probably have a hard time putting them down. I nodded and turned to move to the next greenhouse.

“Sorry. Just, you know, that sound was really—”

Wander’s next step brought with it the distinct sound of shattering glass. The pane she had stepped on must have been cracked. She plunged downwards with a terrified yelp.

I ran towards the edge of the hole, eyes wide, nostrils flared, dreading the sound of a sickening crunch. A wet splat met my ears.

What? But… But she’d only fallen about ten meters tops. That wasn’t long enough to become pavement pizza!

“Ew!” Wander shouted from within the hole. “What the buck is this stuff?”

Thank goodness, she’s okay!

I trotted up to the edge of the hole, bracing my weight on the metal crossbeam so I wouldn’t fall through any compromised glass. “Need a hoof up?” I asked as I peeked into the hole.

A hole that was filled with more of the papery stuff and a viscous yellowish-greenish muck that smelled, well, delicious! It was probably pure poison.

Wander was stuck in a blob of it roughly twice her size, slowly sinking down into the liquid-ish mass.

Wait a minute… Was that… Honey?

Wander yelped as she looked up to reply to me. The yelp was in pain. “Get me out! Something is biting my hoof!”

That’s when I saw movement in the shadows around wander. Huge, insect shaped, shadows. And not the changebuggy kind. A massive, truly hideously oversized, black and yellow chitinous exoskeleton clad face slowly moved out of the shadows.

Black and yellow stripes. Clicking mandibles. An excited buzzing. Bulbous compound eyes that appeared to glare into your very soul. Wander had fallen into a giant mutant wasp hive!

Wander made a distressed sound I couldn't even begin to describe, then shrieked. “HELP! HELP NOW! NOW HELPING, PLEASE!”

Very few things can make a pony move at what feels to be light speed. Giant wasps is one of those things.

Before I knew it I had opened my bags and retrieved a small grappling hook I carried to retrieve anything I might drop down a crevasse my strider couldn’t traverse. I clipped the hook to my saddlebag buckle and threw the end of the rope with hoof grips down to Wander.

She bit down on the rope before winding her forelegs around the rope securely. I immediately began to run. I didn’t think wasps made honey, and based on how hard it was to make those first few steps, they didn’t. They made quick-dry cement!

Giant. Mutant. Wasps.

Giant mutant wasps that vomit quick-dry cement.

NOPE!

I heard Wander get free with a loud squelch and pop. The next thing I heard was the thrum of insect wings. Hundreds of them. Followed almost instantly by two screaming mares.

One of whom was me.

I felt the rope go slack as Wander hauled herself out of the hole and let go of the rope to sprint across the roof and jump to the next greenhouse. I could see a large hole in her cloak. And the tip of a black and purple stinger sticking out of it.

”Defend yourself, you idiot!” Imaginary dad screamed in my ears.

He was right, I could hear the swarm closing in on me. I switched my link module online. My battle saddle hummed to life… And then I remembered it could only shoot things in my front facing arc.

I raced towards the edge of the roof, prepared to do something stupid, and jumped. I soared through the air, my hooves clawing at my riot mask, pulling it down around my neck to free my mouth. I expected the foul stench of the mud to assault my nose. Instead, the garden’s air smelled sickly sweet, like candy which had somehow gone off.

I looked down as I reached for my holster with my teeth. For a moment I could see the plants below me. Their gaping maws pointed upwards, almost drooling as they hoped I would fall short of the roof.

Then my teeth closed on my pistol’s grip and I could see behind me. The sky was wasps. Just wasps. Hundreds of them. They surged out of the hole in their nest like water from a broken pipe.

I drew my pistol. The vacuum tubes on top began to glow as it charged. I’d forgotten to pre-charge it this morning.

We were so bucked…

I hit the roof shoulder first with a crunch. The glass beneath me began to crack. BUCK THAT!

I scrambled off the cracking glass like my life depended on it, which it probably did. Milliseconds after I got off the glass I felt a rush of air above me before a stabbing pain spread all across my back once, twice, three times, all in the span of a heartbeat!

The pain was horrible. The wasps’ stinger couldn't pierce my armor, but its venom melted my hide, making it bubble and sizzle. I screamed around the gun in my mouth, twisted my head, and fired a burst of laserlight into the swarm. Dad’s old gun screeched as it sent half a dozen rays of emerald light into three wasps. The liquid in them boiled instantly, making them pop like balloons and scatter neon orange hemolymph everywhere.

EW!

I managed to stand up. A wasp the size of a foal slammed stinger first into my shoulder, knocking me down again. Melting a hoofball sized patch of my flesh off again… I could feel my clothes burn and sizzle along with my hide. My saddle’s enchantments would protect it, but not for long. I turned, trying to move the bag with my deliveries away form the wasps.

Then, the swarm was on me.

The world became nothing but buzzing, black, yellow, and pain.

I screamed.

A bolt of blue light streaked past my head. I heard Wander yell something. I think she wanted me to run.

I stood up, doing my best to ignore the pain of my entire coat being melted off. Not an easy task by any stretch.

I ran forward, broke free from the swarm, and jumped on instinct. I was glad I had. If I hadn't I would have run straight off the edge of the roof into a pitcher plant.

Wander was standing on the next roof over, firing into the swarm to cover me. Her head snapped up as I landed on the roof next to her, without a shred of fur on me, covered in a mixture of wasp venom and leaking coolant.

“LUNA’S ENGORGED TITS! WHAT THE BUCK? IS THAT WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE UNDER—”

I turned my head and fired everything my pistol had into the swarm. “RUN, STUPID!” I shouted around my weapon

“Right!” Wander agreed instantly.

We ran as fast as we could. The swarm flew as fast as it could. Wander’s telekinesis let her fire blindly backwards as fast as she could. I could hear wasps pop as the magical energy blasted through them. The swarm only ever grew louder and angrier. It didn’t care if we hurt parts of it.

“Oh come on!” I shouted as we reached the next roof and the angry buzzing grew even louder as still more wasps flooded the sky. “Changeling swarms are twice your size and half as scary!”

Wander laughed maniacally. “Canterlot wedding planners beg to differ! RUN!”

The swarm parted and began to flow around us in two wide arcs… They were going to cut off our escape! Oh buck the hay no!

Not while you're in my forward firing arc!

My LAERs jumped to attention. I willed them to fire, and bolts of purple-tinged lighting streaked through the sky. I focused on the swarm to our left. Bolt after bolt of lightning blasted wasp after wasp. The air became little more than a cloud of orange bug-guts and wasps, but still the swarm didn't falter.

It just got even angrier.

Wander and I jumped again and again. Her bolts of terrifying-seizure-death focused on the right side of the swarm in a futile attempt to slow them down. There were just too many. If I was hearing them correctly, each greenhouse was in fact a thin glass shell around a mutant wasp hive.

I almost wished our only route out of the city was a swim in the pool.

Suddenly, the greenhouses ran out. The garden’s far wall loomed ahead of us. And above us. Somehow, neither of us had realized that the wall was slightly taller than the greenhouse roofs. We had no way out!

So I made one.

A full-power shot from both my LAERs blasted a large section of the wall into a cloud of brick dust and twisted ironmongery. The wall above it collapsed in a shower of bricks. I didn’t even think, I dove for the new opening. Wander jumped along side me. We sailed through the gap as wasps flowed over the wall, understanding we were escaping their unholy wrath.

Wander landed on her hooves with a crunch and screeched as one of her legs snapped and folded under her. The magic aura around her pistol vanished as the pain broke her concentration. The weapon went skidding across the street, stopping well out of her easy reach.

I landed with a loud metallic thunk and began to fire my pistol into the swarm. Automatic weapons are better for aerial targets. My pistol was automatic, but did next to nothing compared to my LAERs. In this case, the sheer number of wasps demanded more dakka than their semi-auto could supply.

Wander began to recover almost immediately. She stood up. Her leg twitched and bulged once, snapping grotesquely back into place as the bone healed itself within seconds. She growled angrily and whipped her guitar out from under her cloak with a bellow of, “ENOUGH!”

A wasp stung her left flank four times, making her scream and curl up in a ball.

The hay did she think her guitar would do?! Make for a good flyswatter?

I continued to shoot into the swarm while trying to look through the wall of what were clearly tartarian tormentor wasps for a doorway we could try to duck through to escape them. Six different wasps tried to sting me, their stingers skipped off my armor, each one sending a fresh jolt of pain through my body.

Mom, why do I have to feel everything attached to me like it’s a body part? Some things shouldn't have touch, mom!

I managed to peer through a gap in the wall of wasps for an instant. No door. Just a sign.



Manever Community Botanical Gardens, home to Equestria’s largest hive of Mexicolt Honey Wasps!



Buck you, pre-war ponies! BUCK YOU RIGHT TO TARTARUS!

This was why mom hadn’t come here! It wasn’t the pool. This was wasp country! She had known about this!

I was going to die here… The wasps would keep my hide from regrowing, I’d keep bleeding coolant. I’d overheat, slag my systems, and die.

As the wasps’ incessant wrathful buzzing began to block out every other sensation I had, I felt my systems attempt to cry, even though I didn’t have tear ducts at the moment.

Mom, Katydid, Feature… I’m so sorry!

”What about me?”

You’re me and also dead!

”Rude…”

My last thoughts were weird!

Wander shook off the pain and stood back up. She yanked the stone tooth off her neck with a savage tug from her hoof and glared at it.

“Life or death time is now time!” She shouted at the tooth.

What?

Something in the tooth stirred. A spirit! One I hadn’t been able to sense. It was either very old and skilled, or horribly injured. Nothing else explained how I hadn’t been able to sense it before.

Wander raised the tooth along with her guitar and struck a sharp chord. The tooth shimmered, emitting a faint white light. I could watch the magic flowing through Wander’s telekinesis as it was absorbed by the tooth, feeding it… Only to be spat back out as a burst of blue-white light which poured off the guitar strings and washed harmlessly over me, pushing the wasps away.

A shield! She was using a talisman to make a shield!

Where the buck had she found a zebra talisman? You know what, I don’t care!

“Keep that going! We can hide in,” I looked around again, this time spotting an open doorway across the street. “In there!”

Wander nodded and struck the same chord again, then again as she started to play an upbeat rock and roll tune I found vaguely familiar.

I began to slowly move towards the open doorway. The wasps started to sting the shield bubble, making it sparkle and pop. Wander groaned with each strike, and I could see the spirit in the tooth drawing on more and more of her magic to maintain the shield with each hit.

Wander would fall unconscious before long… And we’d be back to square one. Dying to wasps in the street.

I knew what I had to do. Stripy-pone back rides!

I dove between Wander’s legs and sprang to my hooves, forcing her up onto my back in a smooth motion before bolting towards the open door.

The wasps raged around the shield, stinging it so much that parts of the shield wore thin, and stingers managed to slide through the small gaps. Yeah. That talisman was definitely broken.

Wander began to sing, her voice sounding pained and out of breath, meaning she was definitely singing expressly to keep herself active.


“I say we can act if want to, If we don't nobody will.
And you can act real rude, and totally removed,
And I can act like an imbecile.
I say we can dance, we can dance everything out control!
We can dance, we can dance we're doing it wall to wall.
We can dance, we can dance. Everypony look at your hooves.
We can dance, we can dance. Everypony takin' the chance.
Safety dance!”


She had a zebra talisman that made a shield when you sang the Safety Dance. Whoever made that talisman deserved a hug. Then a bap on the nose.

Her song carried us across the street and through the door. I turned and immediately slammed it shut behind us. Wander collapsed off my back with an exhausted moan, her shield falling as she dropped her guitar. A stinger instantly erupted through the wood as a wasp slammed into the door. I looked around in a panic, the door was the only way into this room that I could see. The windows had been boarded up.

I turned the door’s lock and backed away from the door, dragging Wander as I went. I felt my entire body itch as my healing talisman finally began to regrow my pelt, or at least the parts where I wasn’t too covered in caustic venom for it to regrow.

Time for a status check.

Pelt, regrowing.

Weapons? All here.

Clothing? Melted to nothing. Buck.

Saddle? Fine.

Strider? Fine.

Bags? Pristine.

Coolant? Running low.

I hadn't lost too much coolant, but I’d still be running hot, which wasn’t good at all. Upside, I wasn’t dead now and if I could just find some alcohol, salt, and water, well, I could fix low coolant issues just fine.

I heard a wet squelch and wheeled around, nostrils flared, ready to fire at the wasp. It wasn’t a wasp. It was Wander pulling a stinger the length of her foreleg out of her back.

“You’ll regenerate from that, right?”

Wander looked up at me and whimpered. “Tooth… Can’t loose… Tooth…”

I nodded, gulped at the thought of heading towards the sound of raging insects outside, and 
trotted over to her dropped guitar, and the tooth. I picked both up and brought them over to her. 

Wander nodded wordlessly and then pointed to the door with a shaking hoof. “They… Poison. Poison still hurts me… Not stung badly enough. Been… Here a lot. Death’s futon. I need, sleep. Will sleep this off… Be fine in… A night or so. We… Rest… Here… Okay?”

My ears lay back in anger. Not at her, but at the situation. I was going to have to be near the pool for a night. This was not okay… But I’d do it. Wander was my friend.

I nodded. “I’ll cover you.”

“Good robopone,” Wander murmured as her eyes fluttered shut.

“Cyborg,” I corrected. “My pelt’s organic.”

Wander’s cheeks wrinkled behind her mask as she smiled. “You look really robot… With that armor… No fur… Besides, Red Eye… Cyborg… That slaver king. You know. Sang about him.”

Figures that one cyborg does something bad so we’re all hated forever. Stupid racism! Why do you work the way you do?

I nodded. “I remember. I’m… I’m not like him.”

Physically, or mentally.

Wander tried to laugh, but was so tired it came out as a quiet wheeze. She spent a few long moments regaining her breath, then grinned at me. “I... Didn't say you were. I was as good as dead back there, but you didn't hesitate. Far as I'm concerned, that makes you a good robopone."

“Cyborg,” I corrected again. “I’m bleeding! Come on, you can see that.”

Wander opened her eyes, sat up enough to take a look at my still healing, still dripping chassis, sniffed the air, then smirked. “That’s… Salted vodka. Can’t fool me. Know my vodka.”

Damn it… Why hadn’t I added red dye to my coolant?

“Okay, fine! It’s alcohol based coolant, but I’m still bleeding!” I protested, stomping a hoof on the old rotting floor.

“Yes,” Wander murmured quietly. “Bleeding robot blood. You robot, you!”

“Cyborg!” I protested. “Do I look big enough to fit a Crusader Mainframe into? I’m a person! You can’t code something that complex in a package this small!”

“Robopones are people too! Season three, episode sixteen,” Wander held her trembling hoof out in an odd gesture which resembled a salute. “Never give up! Never surrender!”

The exhausted, toxin addled mare slumped over face first on the floor, falling into a deep, fatigue and poison fueled slumber. I gently rolled her into a more comfortable position. Half for kindness’s sake, half to make sure her heart was still beating.

It was.

I turned around and aimed all of my guns at the door. Nothing was going to hurt my friend on my watch. Not even what was hopefully not infinite wasps.

I kept my vigil through the night. The wasps left after just a few long minutes. Dogs scratched at the door and howled. Something unknowable and evil whispered things I refused to listen to as the moon set.

We were never, ever, coming back here. Not for all the coal in Zebrica.