Two days. It had been two days since we left Manever behind. Even though I knew I was never going back there, the pool still haunted me. Three days ago, I had been perfectly fine being alone, I even enjoyed it. Nearly walking into that pool changed everything.
I needed company. I needed someone real to talk too. Not about the horrors we’d blundered into. About literally anything else. I needed to push those memories aside, and focus on… Well, something nice. Or a mystery.
Obviously, I had someone to talk too. Wander was leading the way to Sire’s Hollow. Traveling companions were supposed to talk with you. That’s how all the stories go. Unfortunately, Wander didn't seem to read the same novels I did. She was a very quiet pony.
I hadn’t noticed how quiet she was before. Wander didn’t seem to enjoy talking, or socializing unless it was necessary. Normally, I would be fine with that. Hay, I hadn’t noticed it at all for the first few days we’d been together. But now that I felt the need to talk about anything other than what we’d just gone through, well…
Trying to get her to just talk for the sake of conversation was like pulling teeth, assuming you were a dentist and the pony had come to get a tooth pulled. But I didn’t want to just talk about anything. Not with Wander. I wanted to know why a pony would choose to wander from town to town for hundreds of years to make her living playing ancient melodies.
Trying to get Wander to talk about her past was also like pulling the teeth... but instead of a dentist, you were the tylwyth teg of Crystal Pony folklore, the monster who broke into ponies houses to rip out their teeth. And the pony knew you were coming for them that night.
“Come, on,” I begged, as I trotted around yet another ancient husk of a dead tree.
Wander sighed and shook her head as she decided to climb over a boulder. Probably to make me have to go around and thus get a few lengths of space between us.
I frowned, and put on my best Sweetie Eyes™ to plead with Wander, even though she had already created the boulder. “Please?”
“No!” the ancient ghoul snapped even more harshly than the last two times I’d even remotely approached the topic.
I must have needed more practice with Sweetie Eyes™… Why did they call them that anyways?
I sighed and followed her over the top of another hill. “You already know a ton about my deep personal secrets! It’s only fair that I know something about you.”
Wander grunted irritably. “Get used to disappointment.”
I narrowed my Sweetie Eyes™ into a glare configuration as my own irritation reached critical mass. All I wanted to know is what that show she’d quoted was! “If you won't tell me I’ll just have to puzzle it out, like you did with me!”
“Good luck,” Wander sighed, her tail flicking back and forth.
“Really?” I sighed and hung my head. “You won't tell a friend—”
Wander stopped dead in her tracks and spun around so quickly I couldn’t even maintain the glare configuration.
She glared into my eyes and leaned forwards, managing to loom over me. “I. Don’t. Have. Friends!”
I stood there, completely still as she turned around and resumed walking down the hill towards the road in the distance.
”The buck was that about?” Imaginary Dad asked, clearly more shocked than I was.
Hay if I know! I saved her life and she doesn't think of me as a friend?
”She’s also okay with you not being a meat-pony… Ugh, mares!”
That too!
I shook my head clear and then pointedly cleared my throat. “Excuse me!” I demanded.
Wander silently kept walking past what looked suspiciously like a burial cairn.
I grit my teeth in irritation and galloped forwards, passing Wander then pivoting to block her path. That got her attention. She took a deep breath and then turned and stared into my eyes with an uncomfortable intensity I could only compare to watching mom look at the dates in her diaries.
“I’m not explaining that,” Wander informed.
“The hay you aren't!” I said, reasserting my glare configuration as sharply as I could and activating my eye-laser just enough to make my pupil glow for maximum intimidation. “I saved your life the other day! You really believe I’m a person! We bonded! That makes us friends, or so I thought! What is your problem with me?”
Wander closed her eyes tighter and growled. “I don’t have friends, okay?!”
“Then what are we?!” I demanded, jabbing at her patchwork covered chest with my left hoof.
Wander winced. “Ow! Easy. We’re an employer and employee. I work for you because you’re offering me something I can’t turn down, and you’re being a fair boss. It’s more than I deserve.”
Deserve? An interesting choice of words.
I nodded slowly, softening the glare configuration and switching my eye-laser back to standby. “I get it… You don’t think you deserve to have friends.”
Wander took another deep breath, turned, and walked around me. “Because I don’t.”
I wheeled around to follow her, making sure to keep pace at her side. I could feel my systems starting to warm up. I’d lost enough coolant to no longer have the mechanical endurance I was used too. If Wander kept this pace up, I could only stay neck and neck with her for a few kilometers at best.
Is this how normal ponies and zebras felt? That’s awful! Mom should fix everypony's endurance!
“That’s not for you to decide,” I insisted. “Other ponies decide who to give their friendship to. You don’t get to just decide on your own that you’re not worth their time and care.”
Wander’s ears lay back fast enough for me to see the movement under her cloak. She wanted to say something, I could tell, but she was holding her tongue for dear life.
”She called you her boss,” Imaginary Dad reminded coyly.
She did! How exploitable.
I cleared my throat and sped up enough to draw alongside Wander again. “Well, if you’re my employee, then you have to do what I say, right?”
Wander shot me a dirty look. “Nice as a way to stay sane forever would be, I can quit this gig any time I want.”
True, but something told me she wouldn’t hit her quitting point if I carefully paused at the very edge of her problem, rather than going right for the core. I could work with that. Whatever it took to get her talking.
Anything to take my mind off of the thing in the heart of Manever.
“Oh, I’m not going to be that kind of a jerk,” I said as soothingly as I could. “I do, however, demand to know what it is you’re trying not to say.”
Wander huffed, her scarf fluttered violently as she exhaled. “Fine…”
She stopped walking and turned to look me in the eye. “Every other pony who ever counted on me for anything would warn you to keep your distance from me, Whirling Gears.”
“Why?”
Wander narrowed her eyes dangerously. “Don’t push it.”
I narrowed my eyes right back. “I need to know who's working for me if I want to be able to trust them.”
Wander grit her teeth. “Buck! Fine! You get this one, okay?”
I nodded. Time to go full boss mode! “That’s fine for now. I really think I should know why my guide thinks that every single pony she ever met would tell me not to trust her.”
“I left them all to die. Twice,” Wander muttered as she hung her head in shame.
That wasn't remotely like the excuses or half truths I had expected. “I— Wait, what?”
“My old friends, the ones I mentioned…” Wander said, her voice nearly a whisper. “I… I could have saved them. My Stable pass was for my family. I got a plus one on top of that, and so did everypony in my family. I could have let her join me in the Stable… I could have made sure my wife and my friends were all safe with me, but just because I was mad at them and wanted to get away for awhile, I didn’t let them come with me… Then the world burned… I killed them, Gears. I killed them by leaving them to die in a cataclysm I knew was right around the corner.”
Well… horseapples!
I reached out and pulled Wander to my chest with one foreleg, doing my best to give her a hug. She pushed me away and turned around.
“Then… After the world burned, the guilt ate me up. I had to know if they were okay. So, I left my Stable… If I hadn’t left, it turns out I would have saved everypony I left behind. There was a… a malfunction. I had the technical expertise to fix it. In my search for a way out of the Stable, I’d even figured out its secret. I knew exactly what the problem was. I didn’t say a thing about it to anypony. I just left.”
Wander fell silent and stared out over the horizon. For a heartbeat, I thought that was all she’d say. I wondered if I should try giving her another hug. If she blamed herself for her friend’s death, she would definitely blame whatever happened to her stable on herself too.
Wander turned around and looked me in the eyes for a moment before turning back to look out over the horizon. “A whole Stable, some of Equestria’s brightest…” she murmured. “I thought Shadowhorn could fix things on her own. She was the Stable’s actual Chief Engineer. If I figured it out when I was messing with the system to try and find the ‘doorknob’, she had to have already known something important was busted, right?”
I nodded with a frown on my lips. “That seems reasonable.”
Wander shook her head and sighed, then chuckled bitterly under her breath. “Nope! I was wrong. She had no clue. They all died. I could have warned them. Instead, I left! I thought that if they found out I wanted to leave, they’d make sure I couldn’t. I left, and killed a thousand ponies.”
Wander stood up and turned, walking down towards the road which ran down the valley ahead. “I felt like a monster with just four innocent ponies lives on my conscious, Gears. You will never understand what I felt when I came back to my Stable.”
“I’d like to try,” I said with a sympathetic droop of my ears.
“You’re pretty good at imitating feelings, but you’re not that good,” Wander said, her barbed insult falling flat as she couldn’t put any real venom into it.
I snorted. “I’m not a robot without emotions. Try me.”
Wander sighed. “If I tell you, you don't get to ask me anything else about my past. Ever. Okay?”
I nodded. “I won’t ask.”
“I died,” Wander said quietly. “I broke down and went feral for a while. Not… Not from brain rot. Any living pony could lose their mind like I did. When I came back… I decided that the old me would stay dead. Old me had friends, family, fortune, and fame. She didn't deserve any of it. She was a selfish, evil, monster. I still am. I’m not redeemed yet."
Wander took a deep breath and stared off into the sky. "I’ve been working at redemption for centuries.”
My heart went out to the poor mare. That’s the kind of pony who needs friends!
“I hate to say it, but you sound like you need a friend to help you finish healing.”
“Yes,” Wander agreed with a nod.
I blinked. “Really? You agree with—”
“Thing is,” Wander turned and looked over her shoulder. “I don’t deserve one yet. Boss.”
I nodded slowly. “Alright, if that’s how you feel,” I said with a frown.
Silently adding, then I’ll drag you out of that pit of yours by the tail, if I have to.
I looked up to see how much further we had to go. The road wasn’t very far away now, and I could see the river a few kilometers down the way. We’d be in the next town soon.
I’d have to get a certain ghoul a gift. I’d have to call it an employee benefit to make sure she didn’t turn it down. Wander believed I was a robot, but still saw me as a person. I wasn’t going to let some two-hundred-year-old trauma stand in the way of earning my third friend.
☢★★◯★★☢
In Zebrica, town names are meaningless non-words. For example, the ancient center of alchemy, Cesthnass. On the surface, a nonsense sound. But, if you knew the legends of the city, you’d know the name was a mispronounced contraction of its older name, Castellum apud Confluentes, which meant “The Fort Where the Rivers Become One.”
Sure enough, the city of the alchemists had been built around an ancient fort located right at the tip of the wedge of the mountains, where two of Zebrica’s mightiest rivers joined to form the Spirit's Path.
The shortening of names from sentences into a single word was a trend seemingly everywhere but Equestria. Equestrians tended to name things with wordplay, usually a pun, rather than just a description of what the place is masked by layers of contractions, slurs, and linguistic shifts. That trend is why I half expected Magebridge to be the name of a town built around a bridge made from magic.
In the moment I could first see Magebridge on the horizon, I wasn’t sure if that might actually be true.
Magebridge wasn’t a town built around a river crossing. It was a town built across a river! Specifically, it was all built atop a huge bridge, one which had eight separate rail-lines, two covered two-lane roads, and three hoofpaths, one centered on the bridge’s deck and one on each of its edges.
The size of the bridge made sense, given where it sat on the map. Before the war, this had been one of Equestria’s three main river crossings. This is the bridge which every single item shipped from Manehattan would need to cross to then be sent anywhere west of Canterlot. What did not make sense was how any bridge, even this colossus, could support the weight of an entire pony town atop it!
While the bridge was made from stone supported by steel trusses and was, in fact, four separate quarter-kilometer long trestle arch bridges with a suspension system linking all four segments, it well… It also had three blatantly impossible drawbridge segments.
A super-long bridge (or series of individually impressive bridges brilliantly fused into a singular glorious structural unit) designed to have bits that moved in the middle shouldn’t be capable of supporting a post-war town so overbuilt that they had built a platform over the whole first level of the place and put a whole second row of buildings up on that new tier. I even saw a crane starting work on what might be a third tier above that.
Magebridge was like an open face sandwich. The bridge was the bread, the lowest level was the cheese, and the topmost layer was the veggies.
From a kilometer or so off, it was a bit hard to see much detail on the first deck of the town, especially with the sun right overhead casting the entire place into deep shadows, but I could make out the shapes of tall buildings made from sturdy things like train cars, shipping containers, stone, and scrap-iron.
Everything on that first level was robust. It had to be, it was all load bearing. The second deck was… less impressive.
Magebridge’s upper platform was made from something I didn’t think I’d ever have thought to build with. Opus caementicium. In Equish, it’s just called Zebraican Concrete.
The materials needed to make it could be found almost anyplace. A lot of ponies thought alchemy was required, and that the ancient material was tougher than modern concrete. Neither of those things were actually true, though modern concrete was only just barely better than the ancient recipe from the builders of Cesthnass.
Water, fly ash, some gravel, and whatever old bits of broken ceramic stuff you can sweep up. Mix it all together and you get a surprisingly sturdy concrete.
There had to be a few Zebras living here. Nothing else could explain how they had known the recipe, and also known that to make a strong floor with it you had to put a grid of sticks or metal rods in the middle of the concrete. I could see bits of the supporting gridwork sticking out of the edges. Ponies wouldn’t have known to do that. They still thought it was a magical material!
Further proof that the deck was Zebra made was just how lightweight everything up there looked. I could see large cloth structures I graciously decided to call pavilions and not tents. They were made from scraps of tarps, oilcloth, and shipping blankets, and poked up everywhere between the other buildings! The other top floor buildings were made from wood, siding panels of old pre-war buildings, mats of thatch, and even a few bits of cloud in gaps and along edges.
Assuming that until fourteen years ago all but a hoof-full of pegasi were living up in the clouds, the second story had to be very new. It was nice to see a young community doing so well that it could expand… But why expand it upwards? Why not simply construct the newer buildings on either end of the bridge, at the shoreline?
A possible answer hit me like buckshot to the leg. Security. Defensively speaking, Magebridge would be damn near impossible to take on hoof. You either had to cross through the choke point at the ends, or make the swim through deadly waters and then climb up a dozen meters of equally defensible vertical pylons just to get to the lowest floor. Suicide either way. I gave the builders a nod of respect when I realized just how soundly they’d secured themselves.
I raised an eyebrow and looked around. The riverbank was kind of nice. There were patches of grass and a few groves of young trees growing along the side of the river, and the highway we were trotting down was dotted with small plants which poked through the crumbling blacktop. The very flat, open, entirely deserted blacktop.
The flat open blacktop which lacked any cover whatsoever.
Snipers could easily keep the town secure, but… If wagons went through here, shouldn’t there be soldiers patrolling to keep bandits at bay?
I turned towards Wander with an uneasy look on my face. “S— Shouldn’t we be able to see at least a few guards?”
Wander nodded slowly. “Yeah… I was about to say the same thing. I don’t like this. When I came through here two weeks ago they had two squads of NCR troopers on patrol here.”
I nodded and activated my link module. My battle saddle hummed to life. After the wasps, I wasn’t going to let myself get caught up in any more of the Wasteland’s traps.
“Can you see the upper deck?” Wander asked as she squinted at the not-very-distant town. “Are there any snipers stationed up there?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Oh come, on!” Wander groaned. “You have robot eyes. I've seen them! Don’t they have a zoom function?”
I sighed. “Mom was sort of stopped halfway through building me by balefire,” I explained.
“So… she put in an eye-laser before optical zoom?” Wander asked incredulously as she reached under her cloak with her magic to draw Bad Trip.
And also remove a long, slender, black plastic case marked with the letters MoA in fading pearlescent paint.
“To be fair, she put in a toaster slash bread knife first,” I muttered as I strained to try and make out any sign of the snipers Wander asked about.
Wander’s head rotated rather awkwardly to face me. “You… Have a toaster? Where’s the slot?”
I couldn’t help but notice she was eyeing my plot when she said slot… Celestia’s fetlocks! Why did everypony always come to that conclusion!
I groaned and managed to suppress my face hoof. “The laser is the toaster. It was originally for slicing and toasting bread at the same time. I took it out and made it into a weapon. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe, and I never modified any of my own parts again… Look, I don't see any snipers, but I mean, if they were good snipers I wouldn’t see them anyways. Right?”
Wander nodded, opened the case, and levitated out an oddly bulky rectangular scope and put it up to her eye like a spyglass. She looked over Madgebridge for a moment then sighed. “Nope. No one up there… At all. This isn’t good.”
I nodded in agreement. “Definitely not. So… We’re going to walk through a town that’s probably just been attacked. What’s our plan?”
Wander floated Bad Trip up to her face and slid the scope onto a rail which ran atop the weapon’s barrel. A buttstock and barrel extension module came out of the case next, which Wander attached to her weapon to convert it from a pistol into a rifle.
“Take point and blast anything that's not happy to see us. I’ll cover your Swordmare pinup plot from behind,” Wander ordered as she stowed the weapon accessory case away.
I nodded and began to trot towards the city, eyes peeled and ears scanning. I was about to go through a very shadowy place which would likely be teeming with things that wanted to hurt me for fun. Just like delivering the mail back home!
We began to creep forwards, one slow step at a time. I knew deep down that we could be killed at any moment if the attackers had posted their own guards. There was no cover, and raiders would happily shoot at travelers from the sniper platforms if they had taken control of Magebridge. On the other hoof, if the town had just repelled an attack, they might just as well fire on two ponies advancing on their town with energy weapons drawn.
Step by tense step, we advanced. Slowly, steadily, moving in a straight line. Always forward. Always into danger.
A few hundred yards into our march towards death, Wander cleared her throat. I didn’t take my eyes off the town, but I tilted an ear her way.
“Where are they?” I asked quietly.
“I don't see anything… But it’s seriously distracting me, now. Why did your mom give you a laser to toast and slice bread?” Wander asked with the sincerity of somepony who genuinely couldn’t think of anything else.
Great! One of my design oddities had my sniper too distracted to cover me.
“Because originally she was going to put her own brain in here, and she really loves her toast,” I said quietly as I continued to scan the shadowy edge of town. “She’s a little crazy, and she thinks I eat. Which means she must have thought she would still eat if she had been in here instead.”
“Oh,” Wander said, seemingly satisfied.
Then, five steps later. “Wait!" Wander exclaimed in genuine surprise. "That means you’re a robobrain!”
I took a deep breath. “Please focus on the possible firefight ahead of us.”
“But…” Wander said with a confused twinge in her voice. “I’ve seen robobrains! They use wheels, and none of them have fur. Not unless you count old carpeting that got stuck to their chass—”
“Wander! Mission! Danger!” I hissed, my left eye twitching angrily.
“Sorry,” the ghoul apologized. “It’s just, well, you fly in the face of everything I know about the wasteland, and I know a lot about the wasteland.”
”Tell her everything so she won't get you killed, please,” Imaginary Dad ordered politely.
“I’m the laboratory prototype of the Robobrain Mark III, mom’s last project for the Ministry of Arcane Science. There’s only one of me, and I can support an equine brain while retaining all higher cognitive functions. The Mark three therefore let robobrains be much smarter, since you were not limited to animal brains for ‘ethical reasons’. My design was intended for espionage and infiltration of Zebrica. Pop an MoA agent’s brain into one of my model and boom! You have a pony who can infiltrate the Empire without getting their cover blown by anti-transformation magic countermeasures.”
I paused for a moment to make sure Wander was following everything. She didn't say anything, so I continued. “I’m able to mimic a zebra thanks to being constructed from a mix of cybernetic and robotic parts with real living zebra tissue wrapped over my endoskeleton that’s preserved by magic which is probably necromancy if we’re being honest but I’m hoping is really just a very experimental healing talisman. Now, please, focus!”
“Oh. Good to know,” Wander said, her voice holding a twinge of concern. “Also, we don’t have to be on full alert. I can see corpses but don’t hear looting. They're long gone.”
I blinked as the reality of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. Wander had a scope. She could see everything up there right now, and probably for the last few minutes, too!
Un-bucking-acceptable!
I wheeled around and met Wander’s eyes with the fiercest glare configuration I could muster. “You— You knew it was clear for the whole conversation and used implied mortal peril to get me off guard so you could pry at my personal life!”
Wander cleared her throat and looked away from me awkwardly. “Uh… Well, yes. But only because, I mean, you said somepony else was going to put a brain in you! I can’t just ignore that!”
“Horseapples!” I countered with a glare. “You started with wanting to know about my mother’s laser toaster!”
Wander nodded and sighed in defeat. “Yeah, fine, you caught me… Like I told you, I really don't deserve friends.”
I shot her a hurt look which rode on a wave of boiling anger. Intentionally or not, that little statement proved to me she was intentionally trying to make me dislike her because I was getting friendly with her. Well, as soon as I wasn’t angry we’d see who would win that little game!
“So, you can pry into my life, but I don’t get to pry into yours?” I demanded, my ears laying back against my head.
“You can,” Wander said with an odd, almost apologetic, flick of her tail. “Just not my pre-war life. That mare is dead. The other seventy-five percent of my life is free game for questions.”
Aha! I smirked. She felt bad about trying to push me away. Hello, whatever your name was. The dork in there who quoted some old nerdy show to prove to me she’s not anti-robot. I like you, but the self-loathing persona that's consumed you has got to go.
I will drag you out of your grim self-deprecating shell, and you’ll thank me for it!
“Look, just because you don't hear anything doesn't mean they aren’t still here. We should still move in carefully,” I said, hoping to dismiss both her attempts at sabotaging a budding friendship, and let go of my own anger in the same stroke.
Wander frowned and nodded slowly. “Fair… Though both bandits and raiders tend to be noisy while looting to scare survivors away.”
It kinda worked. Mostly because I hadn’t been familiar with that particular wasteland tactic. Lithin bandits were always quiet, so as to slip away unseen for long enough that their tracks in the snow wouldn’t betray them.
Wander and I resumed our silence and crept forward once more. Magebridge was almost in hoof’s reach when I saw the bodies Wander had spotted before. The town’s entrance had a small stone fence made from rocks piled one atop the other, and the bodies of the guards were draped over it.
Twelve uniformed corpses lay on the fence as a grim sign of what had befallen the town. Their tribes were concealed by their tan long coats, olive green helmets, and silver gas masks. I couldn’t tell if their uniforms were made pre or post-war, there was too much blood, too many holes, and far too much burning to ever tell if any part of the uniforms had been new before today.
I winced as I looked over the carnage at the gate and into the town itself. The first line of buildings was pockmarked with bullet holes and laser burns, with a scattering of broader scorch marks near doors and windows and silvery glints of shrapnel peppering everything.
This hadn't been bandits after an easy score, and from what Wander had told me about Heartland raiders, the lack of heads on pikes and flayed corpses nailed up to things like some kind of perverse pre-classical tapestry meant it wasn’t those, either. Untrained as I was in the ways of soldiering, this was clearly a military strike.
Wander trotted towards the wall and leaned down to inspect something. I wasn’t paying her any mind. I was too busy peering down the street, my eyes fixing on every shape in the shadows for the glint of a gun barrel.
Magebridge’s streets were… interesting. The centermost rail line had been left clear, but everything else had been built on, with just the hoofpaths and the leftmost pre-war road spared from development. There didn't seem to be any crossroads, just the main throughways and the occasional ally. One long, clear, straight, road through town. Another sniper’s heaven.
Great…
“Something broke through the wall here,” Wander said quietly.
I turned and looked to where she had wandered off to. Sure enough, something big had pushed its way through the stone wall, making a new entrance just a few meters away from the still-closed gate.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn't they just knock down the gate?”
“No idea…” Wander murmured before sweeping Bad Trip up and looking down the street through her scope. “Oh. They had something with wheels. I can see some muddy tracks down the road. Maybe it wouldn't fit through the gate?”
“No way! This gate’s meant for cargo wagons. It’s six ponies wide, that hole is five ponies wide,” I pointed out with a worried frown.
Wander took her eye off the scope, looked to the gate then back at the hole. “Shock and Awe then… Great. This was a military strike. The Herd did this!”
I decided to hunker down alongside an intact portion of the wall. “Ponies keep mentioning the Herd. Who are they?”
Wander took a deep breath. I wasn't sure if she was angry, or just getting ready to dump a lot of information on me as quickly as possible. After all, if another nation had done this, we were in the middle of a war zone and time was of the essence.
“Back when the NCR was just starting to take shape, they didn’t have the pony power to help everypony who joined them,” Wander remarked as she took cover as well, but continued to scope out the street ahead. “Most citizens were normal ponies, so they prioritized growing more food. Pouring vital resources into planting gardens was okay, for the first eight months. Then Pip located her remaining two Bearers, the Gardens were activated, and the land was swept clean. Suddenly, every ghoul and alicorn started to get sick, starve, and in a lot of cases, die.”
I winced. If the NCR’s ghouls were mostly living at the edges of their nation now, that meant there had been a mass exodus to the borders at some point.
“Let me guess, the Herd is a bunch of ghouls and alicorns who decided they’d be better off on their own?”
Wander nodded slowly. “Mhm… Zeebs, too. It was hard for ponies to ditch old world feelings about Zebras. A bit too hard for most, including a few of the ponies elected in the first and second terms of the NCR’s council. When the alicorns and ghouls decided to make their own country, with blackjack and hookers, the Zebras mostly up and joined them.
“They were migratory for a long time, so the NCR’s brass called them ‘The Herd’. The name stuck even after they settled way off to the west. They found the edge of the Gardens effect and moved along it till they found a pre-war city that was half clean, half irradiated. Apparently, they talked the hellhounds already living there into letting them settle, and just about half the hounds in the west joined them.”
I hummed to acknowledge I understood everything. “And they decided not just to leave, but to pick fights the ponies who had prioritized the majority over the minority?”
That sounded a bit too petty to be true... Which, knowing ponies, meant it was completely factual. Didn't it?
“Nope,” Wander corrected as she shifted her aim. “They would have bucked off for good… And the NCR would have liked that just fine, if the Herd hadn’t’ decided to take all their stuff with them. At first, ponies here thought it was good they were leaving. Then they realized they had an even worse labor shortage and now an equipment, tool, weapon, and money shortage on top of it. So, the NCR was always a bit hostile to the Herd.
“The story goes that when President Gawd, same one as in the ballad, heard that the Herd was going to strike a trade deal with Los Pegasus for ammo, she ordered her troops to go make Los Pegasus a part of the NCR by force if needed, just to prevent the Herd form being able to wage a real war.
“That… Well, that didn't go over so well. The Herd was already there when they arrived, fortifications were dug by both sides, there was a month-long standoff, somepony shot an NCR Officer, there was a battle… Long story short, the only reason we weren’t at war with the Herd until now is that Los Pegasus’ rangers opened fire on both sides from the city walls and just indiscriminately cut down everypony they saw until they both signalled for a truce.
“Prince Silverlight, uh, he’s Los Pegasus’ ruler, he basically said that if everypony didn’t get the buck off his lawn and sign a peace agreement, he’d stop supplying ammo to anyone other than his own citizens. Ninety percent of the bullets in the wasteland have been made in Los Pegasus ever since the megaspells dropped, so everypony backed down.
“Thing is, that agreement was for five years. It wasn’t long enough for either side to really cool down. We’ve had nine years of border skirmishes, clandestine operations, and what the NCR believes is mercs the Herd pays to disrupt their trade routes…”
“Then,” I said apprehensively, “You think the Herd decided to take a lukewarm war and make it hot?”
Wander nodded. “Yeah. I do. I know I was a bit wordy just now, but you need to understand that we’re going to walk into a town that was attacked by a bunch of mutant super soldiers, ponies with centuries of combat experience, Hellhounds who aren't usually peaceful with normal ponies, and zebras with a generation’s worth of bones to pick with an entire nation they see as racist bastards. We’d have seen them if they were occupying the place by now. Expect the entire place to be boobytrapped, probably with toxic waste spread around so normal ponies can’t occupy it… How many rads can your shell take before your brain starts to cook?”
“That’s not a problem for me,” I said without thinking.
Wander raised an eyebrow. “You’re a robobrain.”
Buck! I nodded slowly. “Yes. Don’t worry. My braincase is... fully shielded. My power core is pretty radioactive, so it has to be.” Not really a lie.
“Oh,” Wander nodded and returned to scoping out the street. “I don't see anything that screams landmine… Let’s go. We need to get out of here and past the front lines as soon as possible.”
I nodded in full agreement. “Definitely! I can think of about three ways to dissolve that slab up there with alchemy… And if I can, that means a real shaman could whip the same thing up with a charm to collapse the whole roof on us the moment we get to the middle of the bridge.”
Wander had begun vaulting over the wall halfway through my frightened ramble. She’d somehow managed to bring herself to a dead stop halfway through her motion. “Uh, wait, what?”
I cleared my throat and slipped into the town through the hole in the wall. “It’s okay. I’ll see the charm well before it triggers, if there is one. I don’t have any experience with mines, can you keep an eye out for those?”
Wander nodded and landed next to me with a sharp click. “No problem.”
The two of us began to walk through the town, and the story of the fight unfolded before our eyes. It was told in corpses, shell casings, and bullet holes. A rather large group of ponies had attacked Magebridge. So many that the soldiers guarding it had clustered at the western gate to hold the position. They failed, and were driven back into the streets.
The streets were where the real fighting had taken place. They were covered in spent shell casings. More bullets than I had ever seen in my life had been fired on this bridge. Strangely, most of them were the same sizes.
Every few paces there would be two neat piles of massive brass shells, easily thirty or forty to a pile. I couldn’t fit more than two of those huge rounds in my hoof if I’d tried. I didn’t want to imagine what monstrously large weapon fired those things in automatic bursts.
Clustered between the giant cartridges were smaller, more reasonably sized spent shells. Some I recognized as 10mm, a smattering of .32 caliber, and even a few odd 7.62 rifle rounds. The handgun shells’ open sides faced mostly towards the east. The rifle shells faces mostly towards the west.
The defenders had the rifles, their attackers had pistols and the one massively terrifying heavy weapon. Which, on the off chance it had been left behind, was going to be my new coltfr-- Uh, I mean, gun.
I looked around, partly to try and get more of the story and partly to check for any spirit-based traps on this extra shadowy section of road. None of the NCR soldiers I could see had rifles. Their attackers had taken them.
Then, I saw something that made me squeal in fright. A single NCR trooper, a pegasus. I knew he was a pegasus because his trenchcoat had been roughly cut in two, along with his body. His wings were spread out on the ground behind him, nailed down to a railroad tie. He hadn’t been cut in half cleanly, it had been done by bullets. Or shells. I wasn’t sure if the 20mm rounds were considered cannon shells or just really big bullets.
He’d been gunned down by whatever carried the heavy weapon, then shot several more times in the face and chest with smaller guns. Then nailed down… and somepony had painted ‘Traitor’ across his helmet in his own blood, either before or after painting x’s across his eyes.
Wander heard my squeak and flipped Bad Trip around to cover me, only to gurgle as she fought to keep down her lunch. “Oh! I… Uh…”
“So… about getting clear of the Herd’s battle lines,” I said as I began to hurry down the street past the corpse with a determined canter.
Most of the street ahead of us was blocked from view by an overturned wagon. I’d been dreading approaching it this entire time, it was the ideal ambush point… Hopefully, the Herd's troops would know that and not use it, assuming we’d just grenade the crap out of it before going past.
Wander turned and joined me with a nervous laugh. “That’s not the Herd, that’s raider shit! Looks like they are hiring mercenary—”
We rounded the edge of the cart and froze in our tracks. All of a sudden, it obviously wasn’t the Herd who'd attacked Magebridge.
Up until now, there had only been the bodies of soldiers. Now we had corpses belonging to the other side, and also civilians.
The street ahead of us was literally filled with bodies. Ponies had been pulled from their homes, rounded up here, presumably given demands, then been gunned down… With the 20mm cannon. The monstrous shells formed huge piles right behind the wagon, where someone might stand to address the assembled crowd. There was enough brass in the piles to cast a life-size statue of a foal.
Not every shell had been used to mow ponies down. Whoever had been firing had turned their weapon on Madgebridge’s upper deck, collapsing a large section to crush many of the poor ponies beneath literal tons of concrete, rubble, and their own belongings.
There were a few NCR troopers dotted amongst the slaughtered civilians and rubble. While trying to see if they had been attacking during the speech, a bit of green protruding from under some rubble caught my eye. A pony in a green flak vest. One which I found terribly familiar. My eyes narrowed in hatred.
The bandits who attacked me in the Woods of Woe! That was what they had been wearing. They did this!
After seeing the first one, I quickly found more. Nearly two dozen, by my count. At least the town had taken some of the bastards with them.
“Celestia…” Wander gasped, her jaw hanging open in shock.
The horror before me was enough to make any mare sick, but the branded bandits had more to give. My eyes widened in terror as a little fact slipped into my mind, courtesy of Imaginary Dad.
”They don’t stink yet. It’s a hot day, and they don’t stink yet. It’s been less than four hours since they were killed. It takes an army several hours to loot a place like this, and every door on this street has been opened. They left minutes ago, an hour at best, and their rear-guard has probably seen you already. Run! ”
I whipped my head around, taking a look at every last building to my left and right as quickly as I could. Dad was right! Every single door had been kicked in or otherwise opened! All of them! There were hundreds of buildings on this street alone, with two more streets on this floor alone.
Thank you subconscious for providing me with this info courtesy of my imagination!
I turned to wander, my ears flat with terror and hissed. “Wander! They don't stink. We’re only smelling the blood. There’s no rot!”
Wander frowned and sniffed the air. “Yeah. So w—” I watched her eyes shrink as she realized what I had. “Oh, buck me right in the nose…”
Wander looked around her, and floated one of the 20mm shells to her nose to sniff the casing. “Still some burnt scent clinging to it… Yeah, we need to go.”
“Quietly,” I agreed as I started to turn around.
Wander reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “No. This is the largest group of these guys I’ve ever seen, and they’ve never attacked a settlement before. Mark my words, there’s going to be the entire rest of their gang coming down that road to meet up with the vanguard any minute now. We’re going east.”
I nodded in agreement and turned back around, then tilted my head as I took notice of an alleyway. Why, of all things, the narrow passage between a plasma-scorched brick restaurant and a collapsed house full of cannon-shell holes caught my attention when there was an entire bridge full of dead ponies in front of me, I had no idea.
But I wasn’t about to ignore it.
I held up a hoof and pointed to the alley to guide Wander’s attention, twisted to take aim at the center of the ally’s darkest shadowy patch with my rifles, and began to slowly walk towards them. Step by careful step I advanced on the alley, ready to fill it full of magical lightning at a moment’s notice.
As I drew closer, I could see a shape in the shadows, a pony, leaning slumped against the collapsing house’s wall and propped up by an old dumpster which could have given him cover if he wasn't well past needing it… The dead have little to hide from.
He had a hole through his chest, and his uniform jacket was absolutely drenched in blood. More blood than could possibly have come from the single small hole in his chest. It took me a moment to figure out why that was, mostly because it took another two steps to spot the red cross painted on his right sleeve.
I shuddered and closed my eyes for a moment. What kind of monsters kill the medic? … Why am I asking that when they also slaughtered civilians?
Wander hummed and trained Bad Trip on the corpse for a moment then lowered it. “His mask glitters a bit. That’s probably what caught your eye.”
I nodded. “Yeah… Probably. Let’s… Let’s pass by him and take another street, okay?”
Wander nodded in agreement, looked up to check that the ally was clear, then slipped past the dead medic and began to walk to the other side of Magebridge. I followed her, slipping into the ally and squeezing myself to one side to avoid touching the corpse.
Unfortunately, being a bit wider (okay, a lot wider) in the flanks than Wander, I couldn’t quite squeeze by and my right hind hoof bumped against the poor pony’s hip. I winced, hoping that he’d moved on and his soul wouldn’t haunt me for the insult.
The corpse's head tilted back and looked up at me. “H… He...lp…”
My filly-like scream echoed off the ally walls. A bolt of blue-white light streaked past me as Wonder reflexively fired a shot over my head. The not-quite-dead-yet-medic gurgled and clawed at his mask with one hoof.
“Oh-shit-he’s-alive!” Wander yelped, rushing back into the alleyway.
The stallion’s feeble pawing at his gas mask clued me in on what he wanted. Suppressing my terror as much as I could, I reached out and pulled his mask up, accidentally knocking his helmet off as I pushed it onto his forehead.
He looked up at me and gasped something I couldn’t make out. Presumably, a thank you.
He was an earth pony. The extra hardiness granted to his tribe was probably all that was keeping the poor pony alive. He had a wonderful jet black coat of fur that seemed to glisten and shine even in the shadowy ally… As well as one of the most handsome faces I’d ever seen.
His gold eyes looked dull, and I could tell by how little color was left in his cheeks that he was almost dead.
He gasped again, and this time I was able to make it out. “Water… Please.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any,” I said, hanging my head apologetically. “I— 'm out.”
No need to tell him I never carried any… Why? Why didn’t I realize I should carry some for others?
“I’ve only got the irradiated kind,” Wander added as she pulled a small cloth bag out from under her cloak. “But I do have stimpacks and assorted meds. Hold on. We’ll get you back on your hooves.”
The medic shook his head. Well, twitched it slightly. “Won’t… help…”
“Sure it will!” Wander said as cheerful as she could. “Just one quick little prick and normal ponies push bullets right out of their wounds like a Canterlot Ghoul.”
Wander’s a sudden shift in attitude weirded me out until I realized she was attempting to do a proper bedside manner. A cheerful pony can help a patient recover better than a stoic one.
Wander took the safety cap off the auto-inject needle and moved to inject the dying stallion with whatever blend of healing potions and mundane or arcane stimulants it happened to contain. The medic gently pushed her hoof away, taking seemingly all of his strength to do so.
“N— No…” He gasped. “Save… it. Not many… left in.. wasteland.”
“I know,” Wander said calmly. “You’re dying. We need to know what happened here. Let me save you, please.”
“N— No… Won't work,” He said, taking a sharp, painful breath that to even my untrained ears was a clear sign of a collapsed lung. “P— pneu… mothorax. And… Pulmonary... edema.”
Wander frowned. “I’m not a doctor.”
The medic smiled. “Drowning… in… own… blood,” he slowly spelled out. “Potions… can’t help. Not even… i—”
I winced and steps back as the poor pony spat up a mouthful of blood, gurgled for a rather distressing couple of seconds, then choked the blood back down and gulped for enough air to finish speaking. “Even i… mixed with… stims.”
Wander nodded and recapped the needle solemnly. “What can help you?”
“Too late…” He muttered, then smiled. “Where… pretty mare… get… pre-war… millit— drugs?”
Wander blushed slightly at the compliment, I blinked in surprise.
Stimpacks were rare here? We could make them!
Also, while Wander may be pretty in a certain light, she had some major personality issues to work on before she’d be a catch, mister medic… Oh. Also she’s gay. So… Mmm, it was probably for the best the poor pony was dying.
Why by Celestia’s mane am I shipping a dying pony with my soon-to-be-friend instead of trying to save his life?!
”Because I never trained you in first aid, and you can still tell he’s too far gone for help now.” Imaginary dad said with a sigh.
Oh. Right...
“I picked up a case in Canterlot just after the war. These ones are adrenaline, standard health potions, and a tonic that should dissolve any foreign body in you… You sure you don’t want me to try one?” Wander answered as she reached into her bag to replace the needle.
The medic nodded.
Wander’s face fell with more distress than I’d seen her show before. “I have painkillers. Do you want some?”
“Don’t have time… for them… kick in,” the medic gasped. He paused for a moment, his face contorting as he visibly fought for more air.
I wished I knew what I could do to help him. Unfortunately, my medical knowledge was pretty much limited to “keep anything red inside the body at all times”.
The medic stopped moving, spat up more blood, then began to speak slowly, deliberately, and very painfully. “Rainbow Raiders… Not real name. Call th— Called Tainted. Fifty attacked. They had support. R— Re… Real, support. Big robot. Huge pony… power armor. Just, just one power armor, but… four guns. Huge! Never saw anything… like… it… Tainted wanted a water... talisman being shipped to— to… Two Bits.”
Wander nodded and gave his hoof a squeeze with her own. “I’ll make sure the NCR knows what happened here. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”
I cleared my throat and nodded. “Y— Yeah. We’ll make sure.”
We’d killed him. This was our fault. If we weren't talking or debating with each other and had just marched into town we would have been in time to save him.
The stallion shook his head slowly. “No… Not that... Don’t care— NCR. Oak. Oak’s alive… made it out. There were… some survivors. They took the talisman with... Squad retreated to... Sire's Hollow. Took… civilians. Ran. They don’t know, army’s following. The town’s in danger. It’s been… twenty minutes. Save them. Please… Might catch up… if you go now. Two ponies faster than… cart carrying… an... Ultra…”
He slumped down, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth and nose. His eyes didn’t close. I’d always thought they closed when a pony died. Instead, he just… stopped.
Buck…
I reached out and gently closed his eyes. It felt like the least I could do. No, it wasn’t the least. I felt I had to do more for him. More for the ponies massacred here. They deserved a measure of revenge.
I turned to look at Wander. “We’re going to catch up with them.”
Wander frowned. “Excuse me?”
I stood up as straight as I could and adjusted my saddle’s straps. “We’re going to catch up with them. You have a sniper rifle, I have some good weapons. We’ll catch up with them, and kill them all before they hurt any more ponies.”
Wander shook her head almost violently. “Absolutely not! You heard what he said, they have power armor and a robot. We don’t even have regular armor!”
“Yeah, and both those things are powered by spell matrixes. Guess what LAERs are designed to fry?” I said as I began to walk out of the ally.
I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. We had the element of surprise on our side. If I ambushed the armor jocky I could probably short out his suit’s matrix with a few seconds of sustained fire. The robot would fall the same way. Wander could pick off the goons.
“Granted, you have anti-mech weapons,” Wander conceded with a sigh. “But he said they had fifty ponies to throw at us. I counted about twenty of their dead. We can’t take thirty armed ponies on and win! Not even though ambush.”
“We would have allies,” I pointed out. “A squad of NCR troopers.”
Wander groaned to herself. “Gears! They just had their ponuts kicked in! They’ll be dragging wounded, they may even be out of ammo.”
I shuddered at her crass imagery and kept walking, not even bothering to turn around as I turned down the street. “I’m going, Wander, and you should too.”
Wander jogged out of the ally after me, catching up in order to look into my eyes with a grim frown. “Gears, listen to me! This is a terrible idea. We’ll get killed.”
As Wander held me in place, an idea took shape in my mind. A mean idea, but an idea that would definitely get her to do the right thing.
I gently pushed a hoof into Wander’s chest. “You begged him to let you save him,” I said bluntly. “I think I’ve figured you out. You think you need to save as many lives as you feel you took before you’re not a monster anymore, don’t you?”
Wander’s serious look instantly melted into one of distress. Yep. I was right.
“I… It’s not… Not just that…” Wander murmured slowly looking down at the asphalt beneath us.
“Sire’s Hollow is a farming town, you told me,” I reminded. “A major one. A breadbasket for the whole NCR, you said, right? You can’t do that with a few ponies. It’s got to be a large settlement. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand ponies live there, right?”
Wander nodded. “Yes… They have a militia. They have troopers, they’ll be—”
“They’ll lose a lot of ponies trying to stop somepony in power armor who has multiple 20mm autocannons!” I snapped, narrowing my eyes angrily. “Would your wife be proud of you for letting them die when there’s a chance we could stop their big guns?”
Wander’s distressed look boiled over into pure rage. She grit her teeth and raised her hoof to slap me, then froze, let out an enraged growl and turned around and punched the collapsed building behind her.
“No… She wouldn’t,” Wander wheeled around and shot me another glare. “Don’t you, bucking ever, bring my wife into things again!”
“We don't have to kill all of them,” I said with a slow nod. “We just need to stop the power armor and the robot. They’re after a Water Talisman. If they had more ponies to spare, they would be here. If we take out their big guns, that town’s safe.”
Wander closed her eyes and growl-groaned before shaking her head. “I said I’ll do it… But when we’re lying in the grass, bleeding out, you’d better use the last of your zebra magic to let me tell my friends I’m sorry I bucking failed!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Failed what?”
“Our deal! I’ll bucking fail our deal…” Wander growled before wheeling around and galloping down the bridge towards Sire’s Hollow.
Oh. Right. Running.
We had to catch up with them, and I was low on coolant. I sighed and gave my barrel a tap where a zebra’s left lung would be.
“Sorry about this…” I said to my poor secondary coolant pump as I took off at a full sprint.