“Further east. There. Mark it.”
Aurora tapped a button on her Pip-Buck and a tiny green flag flashed into existence at the empty crossing of Highway 51 and a smaller unnamed back road stretching south. Before the war, nothing stood at the crossing worth mentioning on the map. Now Roach claimed it was the nearest trade hub between the Stable and their destination in Fillydelphia on the east coast. Junction City would be their first stop, and a crucial one at that.
Satisfied Aurora wouldn’t get lost should they be separated, Roach nosed open one of the trunks outside the tunnel where Blue still slept. He lifted two brown packages that rattled when he dropped them into his saddlebags.
“Medicines and chems tend to get a good price anywhere you bring them,” Roach said, closing the trunk. Aurora realized he was teaching her something and listened closely. “Junction City is no exception. The same goes for your apples. Fresh fruit is a luxury. We’ll be better off selling them and using the caps to get you kitted out so you can protect yourself.”
She nodded, not exactly thrilled with the thought of selling food that had taken a hefty chunk of bits to purchase but relieved to know there would be other sources of sustenance in the wastes.
Roach nudged open a small suitcase and moved two small boxes of shotgun shells into his bags. Aurora watched him press a release switch on the side of the shotgun strapped to his foreleg and catch the magazine as it fell. As he fished the loose shells out of the corner of the suitcase Aurora noticed the rail that attached his weapon to the heavy straps around his leg. The mechanical puzzle scratched at the base of her brain.
“Can you show me how that works?” she asked.
Roach followed her gaze and turned his leg so she could better see the weapon and its strange rigging. With a quick forward jerk of his leg the shotgun slid out along the rail, the muzzle coming to a stop well past the end of his hoof. The same motion released a slender hook of iron from behind the magazine port, a trigger ready to be pulled. With an opposite jerk, the trigger collapsed into the body of the rifle and the weapon slid behind his hoof.
Aurora slowly mimicked the gesture with her own leg and tried piecing together the rail’s design in her head. A frown creased her muzzle as she quickly thought of several ways the design could fail, some of them catastrophically.
She eyed Roach’s horn and the fissure that ran through it. “Wouldn’t it be easier to use your magic?”
Roach answered with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Easier isn’t always better,” he said. He plucked several shells from the suitcase and pressed them into the magazine with his hoof with practiced efficiency and slapped it into the base of the shotgun with a satisfying clack.
Easier isn’t always better. Aurora had probably espoused the same sagely advice to the pegasi she’d trained year after year in Mechanical. When faced with long hours, constant work orders and a limited variety of challenges that got old quick, anyone would be tempted to take shortcuts to make their lives easier. It took time and experience for a pony to learn that those shortcuts would come back to haunt them at the most inopportune times.
Aurora considered sharing that nugget of wisdom with Roach, but the look he’d given her suggested there was something she wasn’t seeing. Magic was something she’d only read about in books or heard about in stories from before the war. She couldn’t think of a reason to consider it a shortcut. Still her question had clearly tread somewhere unwanted. Reluctantly, she left it alone.
Roach didn’t say much else as he rummaged through the row of trunks and suitcases. He carefully considered his stock while Aurora’s attention drifted to the sleeping form of Rainbow Dash. From outside the room, she watched the ghoul’s chest rise and fall as she dreamed.
If she dreamed. Whatever peace she found now, it came from the empty golden necklace glinting between her hooves.
She waited while Roach snapped his saddlebags shut and stepped into the small room toward Rainbow Dash. He bent down, his muzzle tucked against her ear as he whispered something to her that Aurora couldn’t make out. Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened just barely, still fixed on the jewelry that once held her Element of Harmony, and slipped shut again. Roach kissed her on the forehead, a paternal gesture that tugged at Aurora.
“Ready to go?” Roach asked as he pulled the door shut behind him, the gas lantern swinging gently from his jaw. The door creaked on old hinges and clicked shut. He tried the handle, ensuring it was locked.
A sudden urge to protest rose in Aurora’s throat but she swallowed it down. The implication was clear. She could still hear that furious scream as clearly as if Rainbow Dash was standing over her again, eyes alight with an inner rage that seemed too large for the withered pegasus sleeping her immortality away in a darkened room. Whatever she was now, it was a far cry from the pony she’d once been. If the Stable doors opened a second time, the ponies who ventured over the threshold wouldn’t have Roach around to call her off.
Aurora shuddered.
“Lead the way.”
Aurora had navigated dust-choked ventilation ducts with more room to move than the tunnel Roach had burrowed into the rubble. Compacted soil and huge slabs of buried concrete hadn’t been dug out so much as dug around, forcing the tunnel to bend and arc around the unnatural geology of broken cement and immovable boulders. Here and there rusted lengths of rebar jutted out of the walls like bent fingers, pushing back the weight of the mountain above.
At first she assumed Roach had placed them there as shoring to keep the tunnel from collapsing. Now as she shimmied her way over a lip of cement that dug her back against a protruding metal rod, she realized they were just the byproduct of the landslide Roach had been forced to navigate through.
Roach’s back hoof slipped on a damp patch of dirt and flicked soil into her face. She blinked the grit out of her eyes and heard him grunt and apology, his voice suffocated by the porous walls. The gas lantern scraped and banged against the terrain, throwing an uneven light that cast his chitin in a silhouette that Aurora didn’t think could get any blacker.
If she was at any risk of feeling claustrophobic, it had come and gone. She blew the air out of her lungs and squeezed through the tight gap, feeling it hug at her ribs until she slid forward into a space barely large enough for her to inhale again. The forward joints of her wings kept thumping blindly against every obstacle Roach led her past. If they weren’t bruised yet, they would be.
Roach’s saddlebag snagged on a length of rebar and hooked him to the wall. He cursed and shifted, trying to see where he’d gotten hung up.
Aurora thumped her hoof quickly against his hind leg and said, “I got it. Stop moving.”
She squeezed her hoof between the dirt and his hip and pulled the satchel of his saddlebag toward her and off the rebar. His chitin had more give than she expected, like pressing on broken china floating over skin. She pushed the bag between his hip and the rebar so it wouldn’t snag a second time and tapped his leg twice when she finished. He said something that sounded like “thanks” and resumed his forward crawl. She followed close behind.
They eventually came to a thick metal bollard embedded at an angle in the dirt, rust visible where yellow paint had flaked away. Aurora pressed herself under the pole and realized the dirt was waterlogged. It squelched and soaked into her coat as she pressed through it. The air was thick with the rich odor of mud.
She could hear a steady crackle coming from her Pip-Buck and stopped crawling. She reached her leg forward and wiped the mud off with her cheek. The needle of its radiation gauge hopped above the zero marker where it had always rested.
“Roach, I think…” she started, but fell silent when she realized there was no place in the tunnel to turn around. She tried to ignore her chattering Pip-Buck and pushed past the heavy bollard, following the incline that the tunnel had begun to take.
Rubble gave way to pale roots that fell behind Roach like a veil. Aurora pushed through them with the top of her head and heard a hollow thump. She looked up and watched him push a wooden board away from the end of the tunnel.
Diffuse light streamed in around him like a halo as he lifted himself up and through the opening. Aurora sidled forward and grabbed the edge of the boards with her hooves. As she pulled herself up out of the ground, she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by what she saw.
Roach had led her to the inside of a dilapidated wooden shed. It was significantly smaller than her compartment and twice as empty inside. A broken pegboard hung on her left while a rodent-eaten sleeping bag lay crumpled in the corner to her right. A picture frame lay propped against the plank wall next to the sleeping bag. Two brightly colored stallion pegasi beamed behind a layer of clouded glass. Behind them, a modest cabin sat on the edge of a placid lake. The shorter of the two held a key with his wingtip.
Aurora lingered on the photo before turning her attention to the weathered walls and ceiling of the structure itself. The entire thing was nailed together with old boards of different shapes and shades of lumber as if they’d been salvaged from several other structures and assembled here.
“If I could get this house into the Stable, I could retire twice over just by selling off the wood,” she said.
Roach tore himself away from the framed photo on the floor and looked at her with a puzzled expression. “It’s a shed, not a house.”
Aurora shrugged and squinted up at the construction of the sloped roof. Hazy light filtered between some of the boards, moving in tune with a soft breeze outside. “It looks like a house.”
Roach rolled his eyes, or the best approximation of it for a pony without irises, and nudged the trap door back into its frame. The uneven lengths of boards slipped into place with a thud, blending seamlessly into the floor. He turned the knob on the battered and muddy lamp, dousing the flame before setting it atop the hatch.
Roach turned and beckoned Aurora to follow him. He worked the door’s simple latch and held the it open for her.
The rustling breeze outside pulled at her. She stepped across the old wood floor and, hesitating briefly, stepped onto the dry soil of Equestria.
Her heart leaped into her throat. “Oh my goddesses.”
Aurora stood at the edge of a high wall of trees that stood taller than anything she’d seen before in her life. Thick branches swayed against each other in a steady breeze that coaxed soft thumps and creaks into the open air. Most of the trees were dead, held up by the clusters of living neighbors they’d become entangled in. Those that survived wore crowns of yellow-green leaves that shaded large swaths of underbrush beneath them.
“I thought all of the forests were…” she whispered, and fell silent as her eyes looked past the tops of the trees at the impenetrable ceiling of clouds high above. Her mind railed against the vastness of it.
Aurora’s world had been defined by walls and ceilings, doors and hallways. A world of wing guards and elevators and stairs. Where they breathed recycled air and drank recycled water. Proximity meant safety but it also meant everything had to be shared. Even the food they ate grew from the graves they rested in. Aurora stared up into the chasm of a cloud-choked sky and felt something she’d never felt before.
She felt robbed.
High above her, impossibly far away, she watched the formless gray mass of clouds flow like a silent river.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Roach grunted, his ragged voice not agreeing with so much as simply acknowledging her. He closed the door to the shed behind him and walked past Aurora toward the forest of dying oaks. “It’s something. Let’s get going.”
Aurora frowned and trotted to catch up. Desperate Times thumped against her side, the overmare’s heirloom providing some comfort despite its lack of ammunition. As she walked, she looked back at the old shack that concealed the path to Stable 10 and the slope of rocks behind it which buried its true entrance. The old landslide had been reclaimed by scrub brush and a few struggling saplings. Above it, the worn hillside of a small mountain stretched skyward.
She opened the map of her Pip-Buck and zoomed in on the thin triangle that showed her position. The mountain she stood at the foot of had once been named Foal Mountain. She placed a marker on that spot and typed in a name: Home.
The forest swallowed them. Roach’s leg-mounted shotgun clacked lightly with each step he took on the uneven terrain. Aurora found herself having to watch where she placed her hooves for the first time in forever. Thick roots curled up out of the ground where dry brush wasn’t obscuring divots in the soil. Her frustration slowly built as she found herself stumbling in spite of herself, self-conscious of the sound of her own hooves scrabbling to stop her fall. Roach passively observed but didn’t stop to help. It was like working under Sledge all over again. A mentor watching to see if his apprentice will learn from her mistakes or continue making them. She bit down her irritation and paid closer attention to her footing. The dull throb of her hind leg faded behind the deeper burn of unused muscles.
Aurora nearly fell again when her ears caught the familiar sound of dry metal squeaking on a neglected hinge. She tracked the noise and spotted a brown lump of rust off to their left, a heavy door swaying back and forth in the light breeze. Further ahead, another rusting hulk lay enmeshed in tree roots. The more they walked, the more of the large hollow objects they passed. When they drew close enough to one to justify a detour, Aurora veered off to take a look. Roach stopped, sighed and turned to follow.
“It’s a carriage,” he said.
Another bit of vocabulary from the historical record came to life in her mind. She peered inside the carriage. Scraps of cloth and foam clung to the rusting frames of four seats inside. Attached to the front of the carriage were two long metal rods that were deformed as if they’d been stuck into a forge for too long. It took her a moment to realize that they were the traces for a harness.
She looked at the trees around them and frowned. “Why are they in a forest?”
Roach scraped at the forest floor with his hoof, drawing Aurora’s attention. “Once upon a time, this used to be a road.”
A few inches below the surface, a dark gray stone appeared. Aurora looked at the other carriages and realized they drew a straight line through the trees. Here and there she spotted more asphalt lifting out of the forest floor. Remnants of a road that led back to the tunnel of Stable 10 and which Equestria’s forests had gradually fought to reclaim.
Roach led her back to the trail and the carriage shrunk into the distance only to be replaced by others. Some fared better than others. Flecks of paint stuck to rust where the wind hadn’t been able to reach. Many still held the bones of the ponies who had ridden inside.
“These were earth ponies,” Aurora said.
“Shelter is shelter,” Roach answered, holding up a low branch as Aurora passed. “Even if that shelter is exclusively for pegasi.”
She felt a twinge of shame, unsure how to feel about that. When the Stable door closed, it sealed out hundreds of pegasi. Many of them had spent fortunes acquiring a ticket. The rest had simply been selected for reasons known only to Stable-Tec. All of them had been locked out for the simple crime of arriving too late. To a degree, it even made a little sense. The door couldn’t stay open forever.
Yet as they passed another rusted carriage protecting the bones of its owner, she couldn’t help but wonder why it was that only pegasi had been offered protection in Stable 10. Earth ponies clearly knew the Stable existed. Did they know they would be turned away at the door when they arrived?
Too many questions, not enough answers. She pushed them out of her head and focused on the walk.
Gradually, the forest thinned around them and opened up to an even more desolate vista. Barren hills rose and fell toward the horizon speckled with patches of hearty scrub grass that grew out of deep cracks in the soil. Away from the canopy of trees, the rolling ceiling of clouds were darker and slid ominously across the sky in great smothering sheets. The beauty she’d seen before withered.
Not far from where they walked a shattered strip of concrete drew a pale line in the dirt from east to west. Dozens more carriages lined the road like broken teeth, evidence of a failed evacuation toward the rumor of safety.
They followed the remains of asphalt across what had once been a field until it met the cracked and uneven concrete of Highway 51. Roach climbed atop a nearby carriage. The rusty roof crackled under his hooves. Aurora watched him peer down the western stretch of road for several seconds. Then he scanned the other direction. Satisfied, he hopped down from the carriage and started east.
“The roads are dangerous, even when they don’t look it,” he said. “Always keep your head on a swivel and don’t trust anyone out on the roads. If somebody thinks you might have something they need, they’ll put a bullet in you if it means they can get it.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Personal experience?”
Roach’s voice hardened. “I’m serious, Aurora.”
She flinched. “Sorry.”
The ghoul shrugged and led her through a mangled pile of carriages. All of their doors had been forced open decades earlier. Pieces of luggage rotted in the dried ditch beds alongside the road. Aurora tried not to look at the crumbling white chips peeking out of the packed dirt.
“We all had to learn the hard way in the beginning,” he said. “All of the laws of your Stable? All the rules, the values and whatever rights you might have as an individual don’t mean a thing out here. In the wastes you’re either alive or dead, and there are ponies who will disagree with you on which they prefer you to be.”
Aurora looked at Roach and saw the pinched expression of somebody who lived long enough to have scars on top of scars, but who also had enough time to accept the reality of where they had come from and why. The reality of the wastes was a bitter pill he’d learned to swallow not because he cared for the flavor but because it was the only thing the world would give him.
The rifle strap dug into her shoulder like a yoke. In Mechanical, Aurora was a force to be reckoned with and she prided herself in her ability to break unruly machines over her leg until they performed to her standards. Out here, she felt like a yearling playing at a game where the rules were being made up on the fly by the older ponies. It didn’t sit well with her.
“When we get to the city,” she said, eyeing the overmare’s rifle, “I want to learn how to shoot.”
Roach’s expression softened by a few degrees. “It’s on the list. You’ll need to have your rifle modified to fit your wing so you can actually use it, but I know a pony who doesn’t mind working with pegasi for a few extra caps.”
“Caps?” she asked.
“Bottlecaps,” he clarified, “Currency, like bits used to be. Sparkle Cola and Sunrise Sarsaparilla, mostly.”
Aurora gave him a look of disbelief. “From soda. You’re kidding.”
He smirked. “It sounds silly, but I’d rather carry a bag of caps than a bag of gold coins.”
She lifted her Pip-Buck. “I’ll take digital storage over counting out physical currency any day.”
This time it was Roach’s turn to look at her with scepticism. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard of. Cut one cable and everybody goes broke? Pass.”
Aurora snorted and thumped him in the shoulder. “Remind me to show you how to use a punch press sometime. We’ll be millionaires.”
“After I teach you to shoot.” Roach chuckled. Aurora smiled and watched the thick clouds roll across the sky. “It feels good to have a conversation again. The ghouls I’ve met who still remember the times before the war tend to avoid talking about how strange things have become.”
Aurora stepped around a small sinkhole in the highway. The remains of a carriage sat at the bottom, slowly folding into itself as rust digested the frame. “What was it like?” she asked.
Roach took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled a long sigh. His eyes grew distant. “It’s not easy to put into words. Equestria was… more. Ponies were kinder, for the most part. They’d go out of their way to help one another. When I first came to Equestria, it seemed like there was music everywhere. They would celebrate just about anything and more often than not break into song because there was something to sing about.
“Spontaneous music,” he shook his head. “It drove me crazy at first. I nearly went back to the hive just to get away from it, but after a while it started to grow on me. It’s one of the pieces of the old Equestria that I miss most, now.”
Aurora thought about the songs she’d been taught to sing as a foal. Songs from a time she had no frame of reference for and whose verses had been things to memorize but never to fully understand. Songs about the end of winter, destiny and grand galas that were sung for ponies of a bygone age and meant little for a filly living underground. But Roach hadn’t grown up in a Stable.
“You came from a hive?” she asked. “Like a bee?”
Roach laughed, his torn voice startling her. “Sort of.”
Aurora let the silence stretch, urging him to continue.
He puffed a breath through his nose, realizing he was trapped. “Changelings are… we’re not ponies. Not exactly. My hive used to be in the Badlands beyond the southern mountains and for the most part we kept to ourselves. We had our own magic,” he said, indicating his black horn, “and we used it to disguise ourselves as the creatures we fed from.”
Aurora blanched. “Fed from?”
Roach nodded. “Emotions, mostly. Love was the most potent and most plentiful, but any emotion felt strongly enough could absorbed for food.”
He saw the revulsion surfacing on Aurora’s face and looked away. “We didn’t have a choice, especially when we were young. We served the Queen because it was what the Queen required. Believe it or not, individuality wasn’t a common trait in the hive. The ponies we chose didn’t know they were being fed on, and we rarely ever hurt them. Most ponies would fall asleep for a day or two and wake up feeling fine. I think they named a disease after it.”
Aurora nodded, thinking. “Are you feeding off of me?”
Roach recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “No. Aurora, the last time I did that was the morning the bombs fell. Even if I wanted to - and I don’t - I can’t. I left my hive because I hated it. Stealing emotional magic from ponies and delivering it to a monster who aspired to exterminate them wasn’t a life, it was a sentence. She was a warden that reaped the rewards of her prisoners.”
“So I flew away,” he said. “I disguised myself as a pegasus and came to Equestria. I found work wherever it was available and saved enough bits to rent an apartment outside Manehattan. I fed only when I had to and never took more than I needed. I lived in Equestria as a pony for almost ten years right until the end.”
He cleared his throat, frowning at a bit of gravel that skittered away from his hoof. “When the bombs trapped us in the tunnel and the radiation started leaking in, it did something to my magic. With everyone so afraid, it should have been easy to use. But it wasn’t. The radiation was like interference that corrupted my magic. It turned it into something I didn’t know how to use. Becoming a ghoul stole my wings and my magic. My disguise failed after a few days but by then it was just me and Blue left.”
A gentle wind pushed snakes of grit across the highway. It smelled faintly metallic. Aurora’s Pip-Buck ticked quietly on her foreleg but she ignored it. There wasn’t anything she could do about the contamination around her. When she was sure Roach was finished, she spoke.
“How did she react?” she asked. “When she saw you change, I mean.”
Roach’s cheek tugged his lip. “She asked me to do it again.”
She smiled. “Pretty on the nose for the Element of Loyalty.”
“It really was,” he agreed, and they continued on in silence.
They picked their way eastward until the bones of ancient carriages lay far behind them. Foal Mountain was nothing more than a distant hill now. To the north, the faded peaks of a high mountain range studded the horizon like hazy rivets, their snow capped peaks barely visible against the cloud bank. Desolated farmland rolled away to the south. Here and there a fallen barn or rusted tractor slumped into sprigs of hay that grew wild in the once-fertile soil.
Aurora found that she enjoyed the companionable silence. It felt a lot like the time spent in Mechanical on first shift. They could spend hours saying nothing as they sweat water as fast as they replenished it, buried in maintenance checklists or heaving on wrenches longer than they were tall to get into parts of the generator that needed to be gotten to. Occasionally someone would break the quiet to tell a trashy joke or recite an old bit of Stable gossip they’d heard a hundred times before, and then the silence would resume.
She occupied herself by lifting the overmare’s rifle in her wing and manipulating it with her primary feathers. It was heavy and well-balanced. Roach watched her press the butt against her shoulder as she walked, the muzzle bobbing madly in front of her like a conductor’s baton. It surprised her how hard it was to keep the tip of her wing steady with so much weight levering down on it.
It didn’t take long for her to become infatuated with the rifle’s scope. Squinting through it, the world rushed toward her. She had to stop walking to keep the distant scenery from blurring up and down. She turned back toward Foal Mountain and searched for her home. A grin spread over her lips as the mountain bobbed behind the crosshairs, close enough to touch. She looked up from the scope, swung the rifle back in the direction they were travelling and peered down the highway like one of the early Equestrian explorers in her history books.
A cluster of small buildings appeared in the distance. They were still too far out to see much detail but the small town was unmistakable. She took her face from the scope, blinked to adjust her eyes, and looked down at the map on her Pip-Buck.
“I can see Junction City,” she announced.
“We’re making good time, then.” Roach said and resumed walking.
She didn’t follow. Her eye was against the scope again, her brows knitted together. Halfway between the city and where they stood, she saw a large covered wagon being pulled behind a stout earth pony. Four ponies wearing what looked like hoofmade leather barding walked alongside the wagon in pairs, all of them unicorns and all of them carrying long weapons over their backs.
“There are ponies on the road headed this way,” she said, and swallowed. “They’re armed.”
Roach stopped and backtracked to her, concern edging his voice. “Let me see.”
She gave him the rifle and watched his face twist with irritation when he saw the other travelers. After a moment he gave Aurora her rifle and considered their surroundings. No cover whatsoever. He decided there was nothing for it and continued up the road, motioning for her to follow.
“Traders,” Roach said as she trotted behind him, “Or slavers. I’m not sure which. I didn’t see a collar on the one pulling the wagon, but they wouldn’t necessarily need one since they’re all unicorns and he’s not.”
“What do we do?” Aurora asked.
“Be polite and don’t talk to them,” he said. “And stow that rifle under your wing. Pre-war weapons in that condition are valuable. If they see it, they’re going to want it.”
Aurora did as she was told and slung her wing over the rifle, covering everything save for the end of the barrel. Roach released the safety on his shotgun.
As they drew closer to the travelers it became clear that they had been spotted. Two of the unicorns trotted ahead of the wagon while the remaining two kept close to the rear wheels where cover was more readily available. One of the lead ponies lifted a hoof in greeting and Roach did the same, hoping to keep their meeting amicable.
The travelers steered the cart out of the middle of the road and Roach nudged Aurora to the opposite, both ceding a lane to the other as they approached within yelling distance.
“Good afternoon, folks!” the lead unicorn called.
“Afternoon,” Roach called back, nodding at the group in a general greeting when they grew closer.
The stallion smiled pleasantly as he approached, his pale yellow coat strapped in pieces of protective armor that covered most of his chest, neck and legs. Aurora noticed the faint lines of blue and white pinstripes drawn into the armor with some kind of grease pen. The three other unicorns bore the same strange design over their own armor, all of them silent as they watched Roach and Aurora approach near the wagon.
“Headed to Junction City?” the professionally cheery unicorn asked, turning to put himself between them and his wagon as they walked by. “Not much there to trade for, I’m sad to say. We spent nearly every cap we had and I’m afraid we might have cleaned the place out!”
The unicorn gave them a practiced wink and waved a hoof at the wagon. “If there’s anything you’re planning to buy in town, I guarantee I can give you a fairer price right here. F&F Mercantile has no qualms about trading with changelings,” he said, and after eyeing Aurora’s wings, “or Enclave, for that matter.”
Roach shook his head and offered a polite smile. “We have everything we need, thank you.”
The yellow stallion was unfazed. He trotted - nearly pranced - a few steps ahead of Roach and addressed Aurora with a wink. “Why not let the lady speak for herself? The name’s Cider, by the by.”
Aurora bit back the first words that rose to her lips. Her wing pressed her rifle tighter to her side. “I don’t need anything,” she said.
Cider didn’t miss a beat. “A rare luxury, miss! Perhaps instead you’d consider making a sale,” his eyes dropped to her foreleg like a sprung trap. “It’s not every day that you see a functional Pip-Buck on these roads.”
Her neck stiffened. “It’s not for sale,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Cider pressed, his smile stretching too wide. “I’ve never met a pony without a price.”
Aurora regarded him with a withering glare. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
Cider’s smile tightened. He stopped pacing them once they were past the rear of the wagon and let them continue on alone. “There certainly is, miss. Safe travels.”
The wagon creaked into motion and before long they were barely a smudge on the road behind them. Aurora and Roach kept checking over their shoulders to make sure the group of ponies hadn’t turned to following.
Cider’s aggressive sales pitch stuck to the back of Aurora’s brain like a tick. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck and back up at the settlement on the horizon. An hour after their encounter, with Junction City growing larger, Aurora finally unlocked the clasp of her Pip-Buck and pushed it deep into the bottom of her saddlebag.
The breeze chilled the newly bare fur and she felt the ache of her injured hind leg rising back to the surface. With a foreign city ahead of her and unfriendly travelers behind, she couldn’t help but feel more vulnerable than ever.
Junction City was less of a city and more of a loose collection of repurposed storefronts and houses grouped around the intersection of Highway 51 and a two-lane road that led north and south. The tallest buildings of the town stood two stories high around the four corners of the main intersection. Wooden signs hanging under a few of the second floors advertised overnight housing for passing travelers. Smaller signage promised more private services for an additional fee.
Aurora noticed several mares and stallions loitering outside the storefronts, their tails cut short or wrapped high with decorative lengths of cloth that left little to the imagination. Her cheeks burned hot and she averted her eyes to the hoof-worn pavement.
They walked into the center of town where dozens of ponies milled outside open-front stores. Salesponies called out their wares to passers-by like a bazaar. Roach attracted far more attention than Aurora had expected, little of it positive. She felt no small amount of sympathy as eyes and conversations fixated on him as if he were a wild animal escaped from its cage. The thick air of mistrust didn’t seem to faze him at all.
He led her to a store where various cuts of cured meats from creatures Aurora didn’t recognize hung above a glass countertop, the shelves beneath the glass filled with various cutting implements that ranged from pre-war to recently made. A lithe stallion leaning under the storefront awning watched Roach pass with open disdain, and turned his attention elsewhere.
The rotund unicorn behind the counter regarded the changeling ghoul with resignation as Roach parked himself in front of the display, staring.
“Thought you were dead,” the unicorn muttered. “Since when did you start eating food, Roach?”
“Around the same time you stopped,” Roach answered. “We have some things to trade.”
The unicorn crossed its hooves over the countertop and shrugged, clearly unimpressed with the insult and the offer. “I don’t trade with ghouls. Especially asshole ghouls.”
Aurora cleared her throat and the unicorn turned to look at her as if he hadn’t noticed her standing in front of him until just now. “He’s not trading, I am.”
She opened her saddlebag and produced one of the ripe apples from the Stable gardens in the tip of her wing. The unicorn regarded the fruit with suspicion. A faint blue glow shimmered around the apple and it drifted up over the counter where the unicorn plucked it out of the air with his hooves, scrutinizing it from top to bottom.
“When was it picked?” he asked, his voice dropping into the low derision of a well-honed haggle.
Aurora offered her best estimate. “Two, maybe three days ago at the most.”
The overfed unicorn set the apple down and looked at her. “Which is it? Two or three?”
Her back stiffened. “Three.”
“Horse shit,” the unicorn barked. “There ain’t no orchards within a week’s walk of here that puts out product like this.”
She raised her left wing, keeping her rifle obscured under the right, and gave him her best are you blind stare. He scowled.
“Yeah, no. You didn’t fly here to sell apples. Two caps apiece,” he stated flatly.
Aurora felt a tap against her leg and looked at Roach who was watching her with a blank expression. He tapped her leg again, five times.
“Five caps is a fair price,” she said.
The unicorn snorted. “An apple is an apple, lady. Three caps. Take it or walk.”
“Four caps or I will,” she countered, lifting another fruit from her bag. “You and I both know these are the best apples you’ve seen in years. You’re not going to turn this away for one lousy cap.”
Roach coughed. The unicorn’s eyebrows closed in over his forehead. “Listen you Enclave shitbird. You’re not the first pony set up a grow room. This area’s lousy with them. You are, however, with the bug. So you get bug prices. Three caps.”
She felt her hackles start to climb but Roach interrupted before she could give the vendor a teardown built for Sledge.
“It’s a deal,” he said, and quietly to Aurora. “It’s fine.”
Aurora clenched her jaw, stared at the waiting unicorn and finally filled her wing with just shy of a dozen perfect apples. The unicorn levitated them away and lined them up neatly on the shelf of his display case. He ripped something behind the counter and Aurora watched as a roughly torn bit of paper glided alongside the newly displayed fruit: 20 CAPS.
A small stack of thirty caps clicked on top of the counter. The unicorn smiled as Aurora snatched the metal away and jabbed it into her saddlebag.
Her ears lay flat against her skull as she stalked away from the shop. Roach steered her away from the center of the road as a wagon rolled in front of her. He steered toward the next vendor like a father guiding an angry foal.
“He swindled me!” she snapped.
“He did,” Roach agreed. “That’s his job.”
“I hopes he chokes on it,” she muttered, not sure what it was just yet but feeling a little better for having said it.
Roach chuckled. “It was your first trade and you got an extra bit out of it. Call it a win and learn from it. We have a few more trades to make, then we should look at finding a room for the night.”
The sky was beginning to darken and she could feel the muscles in her legs aching for a rest. Her injured leg throbbed, causing her hip to drop as she walked. Aurora looked at the second floor windows of the combination inn and brothels and groaned with disgust.
“Can’t wait.”
Roach led her to an apothecary’s stall where he sold his boxes of chems for nearly ten times the caps Aurora had earned for her apples. At one of the many weapons vendors he traded a salvaged pistol for two boxes of .308 ammunition and a smaller pile of caps, hefting the lesser over to Aurora while the caps trickled into his bag. The boxes were surprisingly heavy for their size and the brass rounds jingled in her bags with every limp.
Finally, Roach led her across the road toward a storefront with two worn pony mannequins posed in the cracked front window. One wore a set of polished metal barding that looked like it weighed half a ton. The other sported a simple set of leather shoulder and leg armor held together by expertly designed straps. The store’s name was stenciled onto the window with the long crack dividing the name as if it were an intentional feature.
“Gussets & Garments?” Aurora muttered as Roach pushed open the front door. “What’s a gusset?”
A polished bell tinkled on a bend of metal above the door as they walked inside. The shop was narrow, barely wider than the front window but several times deeper. Decoratively stamped aluminum ceiling tiles stretched from one wall to the other, reminding Aurora of the corridors of the Stable. They reflected the waning light that came in through the window, illuminating the patterned green wallpaper and making an otherwise cramped store feel much more inviting. Worn hardwood flooring creaked under their hooves as the door closed behind them with another ring of the bell.
Mannequins stood in display-perfect clusters of threes throughout the store, each grouping advertising a unique theme. Aurora passed a trio donned in prewar military fatigues that had been cut, fitted and given leather trim that matched a set of saddlebags and ammo belts each form wore over their hips and chests. Another set advertised a mishmash of leather and metal-spiked armor while yet another displayed heavy pieces of white plastic sewn into various warm weather coats.
She looked at the mannequins with skepticism and followed Roach further into the store, toward the muffled noise of a machine she didn’t recognize.
Tucked against the left wall was a wide wooden checkout counter. A single unicorn mare stood behind it, bent over a cast iron sewing machine on the far end of the counter that looked as if it doubled as a workspace. The unicorn’s walnut coat was offset by a short-trimmed strip of red-orange mane that swept over the left side of her face like a fiery veil. She leaned into her work, pressing a thick strip of worn leather under the machine’s heavy needle.
Her ear flickered at the sound of their approaching hooves but she didn’t look up. “I’ll be with you in a moment, darlings.”
Aurora followed Roach to the counter and noticed the tiniest smile playing across his face as he watched the unicorn work. The antique black sewing machine slid a dense cord of thread in and out of the dark leather, creating a tight seam that gently puckered the material as it passed through. The machine barely made a sound except for the soft pecking of the needle through the thick hide.
The sewing machine had to have been an antique even well before the war. How this pony kept it working, she couldn’t fathom.
Aurora was impressed.
The mare pursed her lips when she realized her customers were hovering nearby and found a place to stop. “This stitch will be the death of me,” she sighed, and looked up with a practiced smile that broke into an elated grin. “Welcome to Gussets and… Roach!”
Roach beamed as the walnut mare galloped around the counter and snared her hooves around his neck. “It’s been years!”
“Good to see you too, Ginger,” he rumbled.
Ginger leaned back and looked him over as if trying to assure herself he was real. “I thought you’d left! How have you been?”
“I’m doing alright,” he said, pulling away from the embrace so she could see Aurora. “We’re just passing through, but I hoping you could help my friend with a few things before we head out.”
“Oh? Well, I’m always happy to help a friend of a friend,” Ginger said, her ocean blue eyes turning to Aurora with new curiosity. She placed the tip of her hoof against her chest. “Ginger Dressage. And you are?”
The sudden attention from the unicorn caught Aurora off-guard. “Aurora Pinfeathers,” she said, before quickly adding, “Ma’am.”
Ginger chided her with a soft smile. “Just Ginger, thank you. I’d like to live another twenty years before anyone has to call me ma’am. What is it you need help with, Miss Pinfeathers?”
Aurora blinked, the formality strange but not entirely off-putting. Carefully, she lifted her wing and shrugged off the overmare’s rifle with her foreleg. Ginger’s eyes darted down to the weapon and seemed to understand it was being handled by inexperienced hooves. She politely stepped to the side, away from the barrel.
“I need to have this fitted for my wing,” she said, hoping the parlance Roach had used made sense coming from her mouth.
Roach added, “She’ll need armor too. Something lightweight.”
A bronze aura surrounded the rifle as Ginger lifted it away. She tipped the barrel toward the floor and the bolt slid back with a hard clack showing her an empty chamber. The empty magazine slid out of the bottom and hovered nearby. The aura brightened around both ends of the weapon as she pivoted it in the air, looking over the wooden stock and polished barrel.
“A Reinlander Model 700. It’s in remarkable condition for its age,” she commented. A frown played over her face as she touched a cream hoof to the stock. “It would be a shame to mar it with a wing fitting, darling. The rear mount would need to be drilled directly into the wood. Are you certain?”
Aurora watched the rifle float, the simple act mesmerizing.
“Miss Pinfeathers?” Ginger prodded.
“Sorry,” she said. “How many bits for the modification?”
Ginger looked at her with curiosity for a moment before resigning herself to causing the antique some minor damage. “With time and materials, normally four hundred caps. But since you’re a friend of Roach’s, I’d be happy to quote you for three hundred and fifty.”
It amounted to nearly all of the caps they had earned with the day’s trading. Aurora felt the sting of embarrassment return from being swindled at the butcher’s counter. She turned to ask Roach for advice and was surprised to see him already setting his caps on the smooth countertop.
“Simple enough, I suppose,” Ginger said, and set the rifle next to the caps. She trotted to the opposite side of the counter and began tallying the caps. Aurora chewed her lip, wanting to contribute something, but the transaction had already been decided. The bell tinkled at the front of the store. More customers and less opportunity to debate with Roach whether it was worth spending all of their money on a rifle she didn’t know how to use.
Shadows moved across the silver ceiling as a set of hooves clicked toward them. Aurora glanced to the front of the store and immediately recognized the yellow stallion in blue pinstripe armor. Cider’s eyes bore down on her like a predator that had sighted its prey. Outside the window, two of his associates stood watch.
“Little miss,” Cider grinned, “I feel like we got off on the wrong hoof earlier today and it wouldn’t sit well with me at all if I didn’t give this another try.”
Roach’s throat rumbled with a low warning. “Aurora, behind me. Now.”
Cider’s horn glowed green for barely a second. Roach’s shotgun spat out its magazine and ejected the shell from the chamber. The magazine hadn’t stopped spinning on the hardwood floor when it vomited the shells like a tilted pinball machine.
The salespony met the ghoul’s glare with a plaster smile and closed the distance to Aurora.
“Cider,” Ginger warned, “There will be no violence in my shop.”
The stallion sidled to a stop inches from Aurora’s muzzle. Aurora backed up a step, her ears flat. She could feel the heat of Cider’s breath as he spoke.
“But Ginger,” he said, his eyes never straying from Aurora’s, “I was recently informed that there’s a first time for everything.”
All of the formality drained from Ginger’s voice, replaced by something more final. “I am in the middle of a transaction. Leave before I make you.”
Cider ignored her. He reached out to Aurora with his magic and wrapped it around her newly bare foreleg. Her other hooves locked to the floor like vices. He chuckled with something like pity, lifting her leg into the air like a rabbit he’d caught in a trap. “Where’s your Pip-Buck, little miss?”
Aurora’s eyes flickered from his, to his horn, and back. She could feel herself shaking but couldn’t do anything to quell her nerves. There was a cold promise of something worse behind his eyes if she tried to pull away. Her mind ran and her heart raced. Adrenaline flooded the veins of a cornered pony who had no way to burn it off. She shook hard.
“You’re trembling. Did you sell it?” he asked, the strain of his smile pinching the corners of his eyes. They drifted to her hips and stared at her saddlebags. “No. You hid it.”
Hooves on hardwood turned her ear toward the counter. Cider’s grin faltered and the magic around Aurora’s leg vanished, causing her to stumbled backward and fall. Everything happened within the span of a breath. A copper glow flashed in the corner of Aurora’s eye and the yellow magic surrounding Cider’s horn blew out like a snuffed candle. An aluminum tile tore out of the ceiling above Cider’s head and sheared itself in half like a torn slip of paper. One half clattered to the floor while the other glowed with Ginger’s magic. The razor-sharp sheet of metal blurred through the air behind Cider and came to rest gently under his tail. The stallion froze, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
Ginger walked between Aurora and Cider, her magic forcing the stallion’s neck to bend low until his ear brushed against her lips.
“If you don’t leave my fucking shop right now,” she purred, “I will geld you.”
She held him in place for several long seconds before her magic evaporated. The shard of decorative metal clattered to the ground between his rear hooves and he staggered away from it. For a brief moment, Cider stared at the makeshift weapon and back at Ginger who waited with a pleasant smile.
“Try it,” she said.
He spat a curse and walked away. As he did, the flap of his saddlebag lifted open and a stream of caps floated out and toward the counter. Cider watched wordlessly as they ticked together in organized columns until his bag was empty.
“Handling fee, darling,” she sang.
The stallion shoved the door open and stalked out. The bell tinkled happily as his entourage followed.
Once she was sure Cider was gone, Ginger levitated the two halves of ceiling tile behind the countertop and turned to Aurora, her hoof extended. Aurora allowed herself to be helped up but said nothing. She could still feel Cider’s magic pulling on her foreleg. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered.
“You’re shaking,” Ginger said. She led Aurora back to Roach who put a leg around her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I have tea in the back,” Ginger said. “Just a moment.”
Roach gave her a squeeze and watched Ginger disappear into an office behind the counter. She returned with a dented green thermos and three shallow cups floating ahead of her. Roach’s caps and Aurora’s rifle slid apart as she poured an amber drink into each cup.
“Drink. It’s chamomile,” she said, nudging a cup toward Aurora with her hoof. “It’ll help calm your nerves.”
Aurora took the cup and sipped. The flavor reminded her of the gardens.
“Thank you,” she said.
Ginger capped the thermos and set it aside, taking her own cup with her magic. “Don’t thank me, dear. I should have neutered him.”
Aurora’s cheek turned up a little. Roach shifted uncomfortable on his hooves.
Ginger sipped and set down her cup. Outside the shop, the sun had begun to set. “I hate to pry, but it is getting rather late and I don’t trust either of you outside while Cider nurses his ego. Have either of you made sleeping arrangements?”
“That was next on our list,” Roach said.
“Check it off,” Ginger said. “There’s plenty of room upstairs for both of you.”
Roach opened his mouth to decline but Aurora elbowed him, shaking her head again.
Ginger nodded gratefully to her and regarded Roach through her fiery mane with a placating smile. “Consider it payment for allowing that oaf to set hoof in this shop. It’s my fault he got as far as he did. A safe place to sleep isn’t much to offer but it’s what I have at my disposal.”
“I could use some rest,” Aurora said. Her muscles ached from walking and a deep throb pulsed under her bandaged hind leg. “And I’d like to get off of this leg for a while.”
Roach sighed and nodded his thanks to Ginger. She dipped her head politely and gathered their cups with her magic. He bent down with a grunt and started picking up the scattered shells on the floor. “Stairway still in the back room?
“They aren’t known to move around, darling,” she said with a smirk. “I’ll take your friend up to the guest room if you don’t mind locking front door before you come up.”
He dropped a shell into his bag and nodded before searching the floor for the others.
Ginger beckoned Aurora to follow, leading her into the back office where a simple stairwell led to the second floor. “Don’t worry about your rifle, it’ll be safe in the shop. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at that wound. It’ll give us an opportunity to talk.”
Aurora winced as she limped up the stairs. Her hind leg radiated angrily as the chamomile pushed the adrenaline out of her veins. “Talk about what?” she grimaced.
Ginger gave her a knowing look. “After everything that just happened? Darling, where do I even begin?”