Fallout Equestria: Renewal

by ElbowDeepInAHorse


Chapter 6: Flight

The radstorm fell apart as it meandered east. Patches of the far sky glowed with the dim flickers of lightning, the thunder rumbling in halfheartedly. As with the passing of every storm, a few of Junction City’s residents would claim to have seen the true sky peek in between clouds. A clean, sparkling expanse that stretched well beyond the limits of impenetrable brown cloud layer that capped their world. The same social phenomenon played out across all of Equestria after any period of great unease. Spotting the sky, true or not, was a way to bring ponies away from the edge of violence with a promise of better days ahead.
Aurora didn’t want to look at the sky just yet. She sat with her back against the wainscoting underneath a window overlooking Junction City’s crossroads. Ginger’s first aid kit lay open at her side. Her right hind leg throbbed from the second row of stitches that crisscrossed over the ones she’d torn fighting off Cider. The scrape along her chin hadn’t been deep, but it had taken Ginger the better part of a half hour to pick the gravel out of. The stink of antiseptic so close to her nose had thrown her into a ragged coughing fit that aggravated the ugly bruises that showed through her gray coat like a dark collar.
Once she stepped inside, she’d agonized over whether she should approach Ginger or go upstairs to find Roach. Ginger had made the choice for her when she turned to look into the office and saw Aurora’s blood-soaked hooves. She barely knew Ginger, but she felt a stab of guilt when the unicorn gasped and her tools clattered to the floor. She couldn’t remember all the questions Ginger had asked her but they had all revolved around concern and reassurance. It wasn’t long before Roach was clattering down the stairs and launching into his own line of similar questions.
It was overwhelming. The two ponies were barely more than strangers to her and yet their shared concern was startling in its intensity.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happened to you?”
“Cider jumped me.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Under the outhouse.”
“Is he alive?”
“No.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Roach and Ginger pitched the same questions at different angles, trying to knock loose details Aurora was clearly withholding. She dug in her hooves whenever they asked her to explain how she escaped Cider’s magic. Roach had given up first, seeing the situation for what it was. Ginger was more persistent, clearly wanting to know how a pegasus had seemingly dispelled a fellow unicorn’s magic without a weapon. She let the question drop unanswered when she realized Aurora’s stitches needed to be resewn.
They had led her upstairs to the divan but Aurora had insisted on sitting on the carpet under the window. Roach sat next to her while Ginger commented on the state of Aurora’s new injuries as she administered magic and medicine to them.
At some point she awoke to Roach roughly shaking her awake by the shoulder, but the concern washed from his face when Aurora’s irritated expression made it apparent that she had only fallen asleep and hadn’t passed out. She drifted off for the third time that night and slept like a stone.
She woke up to the smell of strong tea and whispered conversation.
“I still feel the better choice is to leave him down there,” Ginger said. “Let them search if they like. They won’t find him.”
Roach grunted. “First place to look for a corpse is a hole in the ground, and he’ll float.”
Aurora inhaled deeply and stretched, mindful of the tightness under her bandaged leg. Her wings scraped along the wainscoting and shuddered under the exertion. When she opened her eyes she was looking at the open first aid kit, the back of the lid with its pink trio of butterflies facing her. A light breeze blew over the top of her mane. The metal storm shutters were open, letting the hazy morning light warm the tips of her ears.
Ginger tied a bow on the end of her conversation with Roach.
“If they do find him, I’ll make it clear to them that he slipped and drowned. It can happen to anybody, really.” She turned her attention to Aurora and slid a tin cup from the coffee table toward her. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”
Aurora sat up and accepted the cup in her wing. She sipped and winced. It tasted like grass and orange skins, among other flavors she couldn’t place and could barely swallow. She managed to do so and gently set the cup on the carpet next to the first aid kit.
“Sore,” she said, her voice still marred with the edge of a rasp. Her brain gently nudged her to get up so she could take the lift down to Mechanical where the coffee pot percolated twenty-four-seven. It took her several seconds to bridge the gap between where she was and where her morning routine began. She closed her eyes and let the back of her head thump against the wall. “You don’t have any coffee, do you?”
She saw something pass between Roach and Ginger akin to an inside joke, or maybe a lost bet. Ginger delicately swept Aurora’s cup back to the table and hopped down from her divan. “I’ll see what I can find downstairs.”
Roach stood and stretched his legs, having still sided with resting on the carpets rather than the odd couch. His joints crackled underneath broken chitin. “Actually, I was thinking we should get back on the road before the rest of the town wakes up. Get some miles between us and what happened last night before anybody has a mind to start asking questions.”
Ginger paused before descending the stairs. “Then coffee will have to wait. Aurora, come with me please. I need to check the fitting on your rifle before you go.”
He held a hoof out to Aurora and she grabbed on, letting him pull her to her hooves and stirring up a mob of new aches and pains along her back and shoulders. She pulled up the map on her Pip-Buck and felt worry chewing at the back of her brain. Fillydelphia was still several days to the east and she already felt like she’d been pulled through a meat grinder.
She put on her saddlebags and followed Roach downstairs to the shop where Ginger had already taken her place behind the worn counter. Aurora stepped to the other side and couldn’t help but admire the way the aluminum panels reflected the dim morning light all the way to the back of the shop. Despite her soreness, she found herself smiling at the simple ingenuity. It faded when her eyes fell on the gap where one panel was missing.
Aurora turned back to see her rifle - the overmare’s rifle - hovering in a bronze field of magic next to her wing. Two beautiful curves of metal bent from the right side of the stock. The leather strap swung idly under the weapon. A sturdy iron buckle fitted midway down its length and a series of identical metal grommets at the end of the strap allowed it to be loosened or tightened more confidently than the fragile metal clip it originally sported.
“Tell me if anything feels uncomfortable,” Ginger said.
Aurora’s shoulders went rigid as Ginger’s magic gently enveloped her right wing and drew it forward until her primary feathers pointed at the wall just over Ginger’s shoulder. The rifle drifted into alignment with her extended limb, the strap sliding over her shoulder. Aurora watched as the pair of modified hooks settled slowly over the top of her wing and Ginger’s magic vanished, letting the full weight of the rifle settle into place.
The tip of her wing dipped with the sudden weight and it took more effort than she was used to for her to level it out. Roach appeared at her side, directing the muzzle of the rifle away from Ginger and turning Aurora until it pointed at the rear of the shop. She gave him a thankful glance before paying attention to how the rifle felt. It was heavy, but not too heavy to hold aloft. It took more work to keep her left wing from lifting into the air, the muscles in her shoulders relishing the unusual exertion after a lifetime underground.
Frustratingly, the muzzle still wandered despite her effort to keep it steady.
“It feels good,” she decided, earning a smile from Ginger. She dipped her wing out of the hooks and let the rifle hang at her side. “I’ll feel better once I know how to use it.”
“We’ll sort that out once we’re out of town,” Roach said. His eagerness to leave was infectious and Aurora felt the weight of her bags grow heavier the longer she stood still.
Ginger looked to the front of the shop where an earth pony walked past the front door, silhouetted by the morning light. Aurora followed her gaze. Across the street, a covered wagon bearing the F&F Mercantile logo stood unattended. She wondered how long it would be until Cider’s entourage realized he was missing, and what Ginger would do if they found him.
She remembered something Cider said while he had her pinned against the bricks.
“Last night,” she started, watching as Ginger began lifting organized stacks of caps onto the countertop. She watched Aurora as she worked. “Cider said he sent a messenger out. He said he was blacklisting you.”
A roll of caps stuttered to a halt inches from the counter.
Ginger’s expression darkened like a bed of embers being doused with water. Her eyes flicked to the countertop and bore through it like a welding torch. She closed them, inhaled deeply, and jabbed the stack of caps against the countertop with a sharp clack. Her magic lingered around them like a fog.
Ginger spoke carefully. “Are you certain those were his exact words?”
Aurora hesitated before nodding.
Quick as a gunshot, the stack of caps collapsed like a can in a compactor. A single flame boiled up from the wood trapped beneath the disc of glowing hot metal. Ginger’s face twisted while a slowly expanding ring of charred wood formed beneath the pressure of her magic.
“That little shit,” she hissed, then saw the growing concern on Aurora’s face and looked down at what remained of the ten caps. Smoke puffed up from the desk as the newly minted coin cooled. Her eyes shone for the barest of moments before she blinked the unwelcome moisture away.
“He had no right,” Ginger said bitterly. She looked at Aurora and saw the question in her eyes. “Cider is - was part owner of F&F Mercantile. They own most of the trade routes east of Canterlot Ruins. Cider has a reputation for not taking no for an answer, least of all from a capable mare.”
Aurora winced inwardly. Ginger was too incensed to notice.
“Now I’ve been cut out of that trade entirely, all because that walking, talking inferiority complex couldn’t handle a little embarrassment. He’s killing my business because he wasn’t stallion enough to broker a deal.” Ginger spat a curse and looked at the place in the ceiling she had torn a tile from. “Goddesses, maybe I did cross a line yesterday.”
Guilt pressed on Aurora’s shoulders like a heavy yoke and she found herself looking away, toward the clusters of displays in the half-lit sales floor. Strangely as many of the mannequins were dressed, there was real passion poured into their designs. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for bringing so much misfortune to the unicorn’s doorstep.
Roach cleared his throat, his expression telling Aurora that he was deep in the same line of thought as her. He nudged the hot bit of metal out of the divot it had burned into the countertop with his hoof and tamped the embers it left behind. A thin trail of smoke coiled up from the blackened surface and quickly dissipated. “I’m sorry, Ginger. I know how much you love this place,” he said.
Ginger regarded him for a long, silent moment. Then she chuffed out a breath and looked out at her shop, shaking her head. “Don’t be. Cider knew the rules. I shouldn’t have let him get the best of me in my own shop.”
“He didn’t strike me as the type to give a pony a choice,” Aurora said.
“No, I suppose not,” Ginger agreed. She watched as a denizen of Junction City walked to her front door and hesitate at the door before continuing on. “It doesn’t look like he wasted any time telling the town before he got himself killed.”
Aurora’s eyes dropped to the floor.
Roach shifted on his hooves. “That could be a problem for you if they realize he’s missing.”
“That’s less a question of if than when, once ponies put two and two together. Even if the math is wrong, they’ll think I killed him.” Ginger pressed the tip of her hoof into the char mark on the countertop and pushed flecks of ruined wood out of the divot. She drew in a breath, blew out and shook her head. “Goddesses, once Cider’s sister hears about this, the bounty alone… she’ll have me killed.”
“Autumn always did hold a grudge, that goes without saying,” Roach agreed. “So come with us. We can protect each other.”
Ginger looked at Roach like his head was on backwards. “Absolutely not! I can defend myself perfectly well enough on my own. If I’m seen travelling with you two…”
“As opposed to them already knowing that we spent the night here?” Roach interrupted.
“He was waiting for me outside.” Aurora added, pushing aside her irritation at the flickers of sympathy playing over their faces. “What are the odds that Cider didn’t tell his people where he was going, or that they won’t think of it once they figure out he’s missing?”
Roach looked from Aurora to Ginger, his expression setting like concrete. “He thought Aurora was from the Enclave, and the merchants already know she was accompanied into town by a bug.” He held up a hoof before Ginger could protest the self-deprecation. “Perception is reality. Cut it however you want, but the three of us are going to have crosshairs on our backs for the foreseeable future. We should stick together.”
Ginger’s bit the inside of her cheek as she swept the charred flakes of wood off the countertop and onto the floor with her hoof. Aurora half expected her to produce a broom and begin sweeping it up, stubbornly embedding herself into a routine that had been pulled out from under her. But she didn’t.
Her voice grew somber. She looked up at Roach for a moment before looking out at her shop. “Sometimes I wish I lived in the world you used to tell me stories about. It always seemed fairer than this one.”
It was Roach’s turn to look away. “Not all the time,” he said.
Ginger sucked on her lower lip, her attention fixed on the covered wagon that on the other side of the cracked display window. Her voice was rough when she spoke. “You’re right. About sticking together, I mean,” she said, clearing her throat. Her eyes went to Aurora. “And besides, there are more lives than just our own to consider.”
Roach followed her gaze to the dapple gray pegasus from Stable 10. “That there are,” he agreed.
A lump formed in Aurora’s throat at the same time that a shiver of pride rustled up her spine. She didn’t trust her voice to speak. When she had crossed the threshold of her home, Aurora thought she would be alone. There had been a gnawing fear in her gut that Equestria would be empty and she would have to turn back, empty-hooved. Instead, she had two new friends willing to help her save her home.
She couldn’t help but love them a little for it.
“Well then, I should pack a bag,” Ginger said, turning back toward the office door. “If there’s anything on display either of you would like, please take it.”
Aurora exchanged looks with Roach.
With his help, Aurora picked out an assortment of armor pieces that offered a modest amount of protection. It had meant disassembling one of the mannequins in the display window and fighting with more than one buckle, but she left the shop feeling like she could take on the world.
Four brown wraps of heavy leather hugged Aurora’s lower legs on buckled straps from her fetlocks up to her knees, reminding her of the safety gear the Stable provided to the engineers who often had to crawl into awkward cavities behind walls and machinery. A larger garment swept down her chest, between her forelegs and up over her shoulder blades just ahead of her wings. Three buckles along her back kept the heavy fabric snug against her barrel, adding a layer of protection around her heart. Roach called it a tactical vest and explained how the ceramic plates between the layers of black fabric would stop or at least help slow a bullet should a pony decide to send one her way. The price tag on the vest sat haughtily in the four figure range. She decided to drop two additional plates into her saddlebag just in case, and chose not to dwell on the possibility that someone might shoot at her.
For his part, Roach walked around the mannequins but didn’t take any armor. He stopped at the display featuring prewar outfits and lifted a set of Equestrian Army saddlebags off the hips of one of the forms. After transferring the contents of his worn bags to the new ones, he slung them over his hips with his teeth and nodded with quiet appreciation for their comfort. When Aurora asked why he wasn’t taking any armor, he smiled and shrugged. “Can’t get much deader than a ghoul,” and he left it at that.
Ginger’s hooves thumped back and forth across the ceiling as they shopped, occasionally punctuated with a hard thump of something being dropped to the floor followed by frustrated muttering neither could decipher. Roach was peering outside through the display windows when they heard her coming downstairs.
She emerged wearing a well-fitted black leather jacket that at first glance looked unimposing next to the armored mannequins. A few suspect bulges at the sides gave away the ceramic plating that shielded her vital organs, and the short hilt of a blade peeked from under her lapel as it shifted with her gait. With the exception of a compact black pistol holster strapped to her left hind leg, she carried little visible weaponry.
Aurora found herself following the holster up to a curving, coffee colored hip devoid of a cutie mark. She blinked confusion and averted her eyes before Ginger could catch her staring.
“Traveling a little light?” Roach asked, noting her lack of saddlebags.
Ginger held a small ring of keys aloft in her magic and offered Roach a little shrug in response. “Old habits die hard,” she chirped.
She turned the deadbolt and opened the door. The bell above their heads jingled as the three of them filed out of Gussets & Garments. Ginger locked the door behind them and, after a brief pause, let the key ring hang from the door. If someone else wanted the business, they could have it. Whether she liked it or not, it was a closed chapter of her life now.
They stepped out into the street and Aurora marveled at how different the town was from the bustling marketplace she’d walked through the day before. The dusty road was empty save for a few errant carts stowed along the worn concrete lumps of what passed for curbs. An earth pony too busy to notice them stuck his head out of a corner store and set a broom against the side of the building before ducking inside for something else. Conversation trickled out of upstairs windows and the scent of morning meals wafted down to their noses. Aurora found herself smiling in spite of herself. Beaten down as Equestria was, there were still ponies that kept the old routines.
Old habits die hard.
Down the western stretch of highway, the same road she and Roach had just travelled, a short caravan of carts and ponies were already fading into the horizon toward Foal Mountain. The three of them waited to ensure the caravan was headed away before turning east. As they passed the covered wagon emblazoned with F&F Mercantile’s baudy logo, Aurora noticed the large square nut holding the front wheel to the axel. She slowed, then stopped and opened the flap of her saddlebag.
Roach bristled. “Aurora, what are you-”
She held a hoof to her lips and produced a modest pipe wrench from the tools she’d taken from Mechanical. With a few deft flicks of her hoof, she spun the jaws open and quickly set them around the nut. She stood on her hind legs and pulled hard. The wrench didn’t move. Then, slowly, a skin of rust crunched loose and the nut spun freely. Ginger caught the wrench in her magic as it clattered out of Aurora’s grip. Aurora grinned as the nut dropped from the axel and into her waiting wing.
Aurora stepped away from the cart, feeling the heft of steel in her wing as she twisted back and whipped the nut high into the air. It missed the rooftops by a scant few feet and disappeared from view. The three of them stared after it until they heard a faint thump.
She shuffled her wing against her side and faced Roach with a triumphant grin.
“Now we can leave.”


Behind the unbroken flow of dust-choked clouds, a hazy bright spot slowly rose toward the roof of the sky. Aurora found herself staring up at it from time to time until her eyelids rebelled and squeezed shut, leaving her with a strange blue afterimage of the sun in her vision.
Roach sighed. “Aurora, stop looking at the sun.”
“Sorry,” she chuckled, “it just doesn’t get old.”
“It’ll get old when you go blind, darling,” Ginger admonished, despite suppressing a smile of her own as Aurora darted her eyes left and right, crossing them on occasion and delighting in the simple pleasure of discovering something new. “I know a ghoul in New Appleloosa that would love you.”
Roach chuckled.
The joke went over her head but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She blinked away the fading sunspot and turned her attention back to the road. The terrain west of Junction City had gradually changed as they travelled. The gentle hills of abandoned farmland had given way to higher crests of land that formed into low lying hills and bluffs that studded the area around them like a mountain range in miniature. Dead trees trunks studded their slopes like stubble. Here and there she would catch a glimpse of a ruined cabin tucked behind stands of deadwood, far from the highway. Most had collapsed into themselves over the years. The remaining were on the verge of doing the same but hadn’t quite gotten around to it. All of them were abandoned.
The highway had been cut through the low hills rather than built over the top of them, creating shallow walls of granite that rose and fell alongside them as they walked. Aurora brushed the tip of her wing against the exposed stone, following the beautiful patterns of sediment with quiet curiosity.
Ginger fell back alongside Aurora, letting Roach lead. She followed Aurora’s primaries as they hissed across the stone. “It must have been comforting to live beneath all of that stone,” she said.
“We never really thought about it like that,” Aurora admitted, tucking her wing. “But yeah, it was.”
“I don’t think I could do it. Living underground, crammed together with all that earth above me.” Ginger shuddered. “Didn’t anyone ever get claustrophobic?”
Aurora shook her head, then reconsidered. “Maybe? I’ve never gotten it, but sometimes we’d heard stories about someone who did. I don’t think pegasi were meant to live underground.”
Ginger’s eyes went to Aurora’s wing, her lip pulled back wryly. “I can’t imagine why you’d think that.”
Roach snorted.
Aurora flushed. “Point taken.”
They walked in amicable silence for a stretch. Guard rails that were little more than ribbons of rust lined the right lane of the highway as the terrain dipped toward a low spot between the hills. A break in the rail led their attention to the remains of a carriage lying at the bottom of the valley. A faint trail led from the road down to the carriage where countless travelers had gone to check the wreckage for anything of value. The three ponies continued on without disturbing it.
As the terrain rose and the highway cut through another length of hillside, Ginger noticed Aurora looking up at the edges of the bluff above them. The rock face was barely five meters from the road surface. She glanced at Aurora’s wings and tilted her head.
“Aurora, have you ever flown?” Ginger asked.
Roach looked over his shoulder at the two mares, concern plain on his face.
Aurora cocked her neck back and shook her head. “Never,” she said.
The unicorn lifted her nose up at the low rock face and looked back at Aurora. “This may be a good place to learn.”
Aurora back at the carved granite, her wings shuffling nervously against her sides as she considered.
“Hold on,” Roach said, slowing until the mares caught up with him. “She can’t just throw herself off a ledge and hope for the best.”
Ginger regarded him with feigned confusion. “How else is she supposed to learn?”
Roach opened his mouth, closed it, then exhaled. “Literally any other way. She could get hurt.”
“I’m right here,” Aurora said.
“What do you think is more dangerous for her?” Ginger asked, her voice challenging without hostility. A strand of fiery red mane fell across her eye. “Learning to fly, or not being able to at all?”
Aurora rolled her eyes.
“How about breaking her legs in the middle of nowhere?” Roach rumbled.
She gently chided him. “Roach, I can catch her when she falls. There’s no risk involved, considering pegasus instincts…”
The two turned at the sound of hooves clanging off the top of the guard rail and crunching in the dusty regolith on the other side. Aurora’s mind was decided and she wasted no time finding an eroded patch of granite that allowed her enough purchase to climb up to the top of the cut. Tall yellowed grass rasped against her knees in the light breeze as she made her way to the edge and peered down at her two companions.
Roach’s opaque eyes were wide with worry, but he stayed silent. Ginger waited with open excitement.
Aurora opened her wings and felt a dormant part of her wake up at the sensation of air passing over her feathers. She shivered out of equal parts fear and excitement. Her mind went back to the crush of pegasi outside the overmare’s office. Bodies backing into her as more pressed her forward until her wings threw the air down beneath her and pulled her free. It would be like that. She knew it would. Her heart thundered like an unbalanced machine.
In the back of her head, Sledge’s voice scolded her. You’re overthinking this, Pinfeathers.
She jumped.
She flew like a stone.
For a brief moment, she was flying. Wind rushed beneath her wings and she never knew something could feel so right. It felt like the first seconds of rest that came after a double shift. A thing she had endured without for so long she had forgotten how good it would feel once she had it. Pegasi weren’t meant to be tied to the ground. They belonged in the sky.
Aurora was ecstatic. She let out a whoop even as gravity snatched her out of the air and dragged her down toward the pavement.
A warm aura wrapped her body and slowed her descent. Aurora’s heart skipped a beat at the familiar sensation of being handled with magic and her excitement was abruptly shoved aside by a rising sense of dread. But as her hooves neared the worn concrete, she could feel a difference in Ginger’s magic. There was a reassuring gentleness to it that allowed her pull herself away from the edge of panic. She touched down in front of Ginger and the aura faded.
Ginger beamed. “You forgot to flap your wings, darl-”
Aurora swept her into a tight hug that nearly knocked the wind out of the unicorn. Her wings draped over the mare’s back as she squeezed her eyes shut, unable to find the right words to show her appreciation. She had flown. Very briefly, and very technically, but she’d felt it in her bones and it counted.
Ginger struggled to turn her neck around far enough to shoot Roach a startled look that amounted to help me. The changeling wrinkled his nose in mock consideration before shaking his head with a grin. The encumbered unicorn stared daggers at him.
After several long seconds, Aurora loosened her grip and stepped back. She didn’t catch the fleeting moment it took Ginger to compose herself, her mind already tracking back to the road ahead and the many cuts that it gouged into the hills. Her blue eyes glittered at the sight of the higher cliffs and the prospect of putting more wind under her wings.
“I’ve got to try that again!” she blurted. Her wings shivered with anticipation as she danced in place on her hooftips.
It took Ginger a moment to realize she was being asked permission. She couldn’t keep the amusement off her face. “Maybe use your wings this time?”
Aurora felt like a filly and she didn’t care one bit. She kept up with Roach and Ginger as they continued down the highway, climbing up anything resembling an embankment in order to reach the next bluff. She leaped and Ginger caught. She flapped her wings and discovered she could slow her fall, but not exactly stop it. It took several attempts before she bolted off the edge of a high cliff at speed and discovered gliding.
“Holy shit!” she laughed. Her wings cut through the air as she descended toward the opposite side of the highway, stopping short of the rock face with the help of Ginger. Sweat shone against her hips as she spun on her hooves and attacked the next path up the ridge.
“Now you’ve started something,” Roach chuckled, his concerns set aside for the moment as he watched Aurora throw herself off yet another cliff. She glided for several meters before losing momentum like a paper airplane.
Ginger laughed soundlessly as she lowered Aurora to the ground, only to watch her shoot back toward the path uphill. She cracked her neck and eyed the sky for the next jump. “I’ve never seen anyone this happy before,” she said, careful not to let her voice carry up to the ridge looming high above them.
A flicker of wings and a sudden gout of dust exploded off the edge of the cliff preceded Aurora’s outstretched hooves. Ginger prepared her magic for the descent but Aurora pumped her wings as she crossed overhead, propelling her out Ginger’s reach and sending her shooting across the other side of the cut. They heard a panicked curse, the crunch of underbrush and then nothing.
Roach’s ears pinned back and his eyes went wide. “Aurora!”
Ginger seized Roach by the barrel and all but hurled him up the cliff face. Roach uttered an indignant noise as he clamored to get his hooves on solid ground and galloped through the high grass. He saw a wide gray wing lift out of the grass and slap back down at it, throwing dust his way along with the sound of laughter. Aurora had come tumbling to a halt atop a wilted shrub with her legs aimed skyward.
Her eyes lit up when she spotted Roach. “Did you see that?” she yelled victoriously. “I flew! I ate dirt but I flew!
Drunk on euphoria, she shot all four of her hooves out and whooped at the clouds before dissolving into a fit of giggles. Ginger was winded as she slid to a stop next to Roach, her short mane a frazzled mess that hung over half her face. Her fear evaporated once it was clear Aurora was fine.
Roach hooked his foreleg around Aurora’s and pulled her to her hooves with a grunt. A few broken bits of twig clung to her backside as she checked herself over. She flicked them away with her tail and flashed them a toothy grin.
“You’re a natural,” Ginger managed, winded from the exertion of catching the pegasus over and over again. “Maybe we could stick a pin in it for now? I haven’t used this much magic in years.”
Roach scanned the sky. “It’s almost noon. Let’s take a break and figure out where it is we’re going.” he said. He lifted his chin toward Aurora. “Congratulations.”
Her wings shuffled against her sides and she couldn’t help but smile as they made camp at the top of the ridge. They busied themselves with the simple acts of living; routines which felt both foreign and welcome to Aurora. Roach retrieved four shriveled strips of what resembled cured meat from his saddlebag and offered a two to each of the mares. Aurora tucked her nose into her pack and withdrew three plastic bottles of water. Roach declined the water but Ginger took hers eagerly, taking a moment to appreciate the clarity before removing the plastic cap and taking a sip.
“You’re not thirsty?” Aurora asked Roach.
He shook his head politely. “One of the few perks of being a ghoul.”
“Roach, quit being cryptic,” Ginger scolded, and turned to Aurora. “Ghouls don’t need to eat or drink. The radiation keeps them alive.”
Roach bowed his head deferentially.
Ginger nibbled the end of her jerky and downed it with a swig of water. “Speaking of, you should be checking your exposure more often,” she said, gesturing to Aurora’s Pip-Buck. “You haven’t looked at it since we left Junction City.”
Aurora held a strip of probably-meat between her lips and tapped the button on her Pip-Buck that brought up a display of her general health. Several notifications stacked atop one another with heart rate and blood pressure warnings. She suppressed a grin and cleared the messages. At the bottom of the screen, a thin bar that tracked her radiation exposure had filled by a scant few percent. The radial gauge to the right of the display showed only the faintest background radiation. Aurora leaned toward Ginger and showed her the screen.
Ginger squinted at the dosage meter and made a noncommittal face. “The Rad-X you took yesterday is helping, but keep an eye on it.”
Roach leaned forward to look at her Pip-Buck. She turned it so he could see it better. “We’ll need to pick up some RadAway at Blinder’s Bluff. That’s our next stop, about two days east if we stick to the road.”
Ginger made a noise that had nothing to do with the strangely sour taste of Roach’s jerky. “Blinder’s Bluff,” she said with open disdain. “Why the Steel Rangers let a raider settlement continue to operate is beyond me.”
“Because every cap they save not fighting raiders is a cap they can spend pushing against the Enclave,” Roach said.
“Who?” Aurora asked around her jerky.
Roach paused for a moment and looked at Ginger, who only tilted her head with a shrug. He had the floor. The changeling pondered before venturing into an explanation. “The Steel Rangers are… complicated. They started showing up across Equestria shortly after the bombs fell and their mission from the start has been to seek out and secure any prewar technology they can get their hooves on. What they don’t use to spread their influence they lock away, and whatever they don't lock away they destroy to keep other ponies from using. The Rangers like to claim that it's to keep us from repeating the same mistakes as our ancestors, but most ponies are bright enough to recognize that they're doing it to eliminate competition.
“As for the Enclave,” Roach’s muzzle wrinkled like he’d eaten something sour, “They’re the descendants of the pegasi who betrayed all of us at the end of the war and continue to claim to be the last surviving arm of Equestria’s prewar government. They’re the reason nobody has seen the sky in over two hundred years. The pegasi drown it in clouds in the name of self-preservation while the ponies stuck on the surface get barely enough sunlight to grow food. They also have a quasi-religious fixation on "purity." Everything the war created - ghouls, mutants, weird strains of corn, you name it - they seek to eradicate in the name of cleansing Equestria. The only reason the Steel Rangers haven’t knocked them out of the sky is that the Enclave beat them to the punch by finding stockpiles of Equestrian military tech.
“Both sides have been at a stalemate for over a century.” Roach scanned the ground around him until he found a dried stick. With the stick held between his teeth, he scraped the grass out of the dirt between the three ponies and drew a rough square in the soil. He drew an arrow indicating north and scraped a hole in the center of the square. He looked at Aurora and indicated the hole. “Canterlot,” he said.
Ginger frowned at the crude map but kept her criticism to herself. Aurora opened the map on her Pip-Buck and zoomed out as far as it would allow. She offered Roach the map but he waved it away. “This is quicker,” he said, though she doubted it.
Roach drew a wide circle around Canterlot, encompassing nearly a third of the map. “This is a simplified version, but the Enclave controls most of the territory surrounding Canterlot,” he said, tapping the circle. “Outside of that, the Steel Rangers tend to search for tech in the coastal cities and some of the prewar population centers further inland. The Enclave keeps the Rangers away from the seat of government and the Rangers keep the Enclave away from the metropolises. The lines barely ever move anymore and most ponies know not to openly declare for one side or the other.
“It’s why raider settlements like Blinder’s Bluff can keep chugging along like they do. The Rangers and Enclave need working settlements to feed them tech and the smaller factions need assurances that their claims will be enforced,” Roach said.
Ginger rolled her eyes and snapped her last bit of jerky in two, popping the smaller half into her mouth. “Your version is a little sanitized, don’t you think?”
Roach shrugged and checked the sun.
“So where do we stand,” Aurora said, gesturing at the dirt map, “in all this?”
“We don’t,” Ginger said. “Both sides are poison and they’re much larger than what we’ve set out to do. The best course of action is to keep our heads down and let the titans pit the little factions against each other like they always have.”
Roach leaned forward and tapped the outer ring controlled by the Steel Rangers. “From here to Fillydelphia, we’re in Steel Ranger territory. We don’t need to worry about the Enclave.”
“Except that most ponies will assume Aurora is an Enclave pegasi and the Steel Rangers would rather see your head on a spike than on your neck,” Ginger pointed out.
Aurora felt indignation rising in her chest. She finished the last slug of water in her bottle and said, “But I’m not Enclave.”
Roach held up a placating hoof. “Don’t worry. If the Rangers wasted resources assuming every pegasi was Enclave, they’d have emptied their coffers decades ago. As long as you don’t walk around claiming you are Enclave, nobody will bother you.”
“I’m more concerned about you, Roach,” Ginger said. “The Steel Rangers don’t take such a pragmatic approach with ghouls or changelings, or in your case both.”
“It is what it is,” he said, wiping his hoof over the dirt until the map was scoured away. “If push comes to shove, I can become somebody else for a little while.”
Ginger and Aurora frowned at him for distinctly different reasons.
“You said you lost your magic when you were trapped in the tunnel,” Aurora said.
“I said my magic changed,” Roach corrected, his eyes planted firmly in the dirt between them. “It never went away.”
“He means to say,” Ginger said pointedly, “that his magic has a tendency to dose everything around him with lethal amounts of radiation, which is why he doesn’t use it near his friends.”
Roach remained still, but his jadeite eyes flickered annoyance at Ginger. “Thanks,” he said.
Aurora shifted uncomfortably in the grass. The conversation had darkened quickly and she couldn’t help but feel trapped at the center of it.
“Listen,” she said, tamping down her own misgivings that Roach had kept quiet about the danger his magic posed, “if we’re going to do this together, we need to be honest with each other. If not, we might as well pack up and go back to where we came from.”
She saw Ginger look away, the corner of her lip pinched between her teeth. Roach stared past the dirt at some distant point below.
“That doesn’t mean we need to tell each other everything,” she added. The two ponies visibly relaxed. She dipped her head to the side and caught Roach’s eye, “But I kind of don’t want my grave to glow in the dark, you know?”
Roach snorted despite himself, and Aurora heard a quiet puff of levity from Ginger.
“If it’s any consolation…” Ginger began, but was cut off when Roach lifted his hoof in the air. For a split second she considered laying into him but before she could start, her ear twitched down toward the road. Aurora’s did the same and she turned to better hear the strange noise that strummed up from the road.
From the roadway, the quick jaunt of a deftly played guitar rose to their ears. The three ponies cautiously approached the ledge, just close enough to see the eastern stretch of road from which the music was approaching.

No one dared to ask his business, no one dared to make a slip.

The stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip.

Big iron on his hip.

Bobbing toward them a few hooves above the broken road was a lone metal sphere with an array of antenna splayed behind it. Streaks of rust marred the robot’s dull finish but it didn’t seem capable of caring. It broadcast a steady stream of music from its single, tinny speaker.
“Spritebot,” Roach said with relief. “They’re mostly harmless unless they’re broadcasting Enclave propaganda.”
A bright dent on the top of its shell suggested someone had taken a pot shot at it recently. The little robot passed through the cut in the road oblivious to its audience.

Now the stranger started talkin’, made it plain to folks around.

Was a Marizonia ranger, wouldn’t be too long--

Pop.

The music cut off like a switch had been thrown and the little spritebot stopped below them. It didn’t turn to acknowledge them, but the voice that flowed from its speaker was feminine and dulcet.
“Hide,” it said.