Fallout Equestria: Renewal

by ElbowDeepInAHorse

Chapter 8: Gliding

September 2, 1074
My name is Teak Birchbark and my mom says I have to write in this stupid journal at least once or I’m grounded for a week. Dad bought it for my birthday and I didn’t even ask for it in the first place. They knew I want to get my lip pierced and they keep saying I can’t. It’s so stupid! I’m fourteen now! All my friends have piercings and it’s not fair that I have to wait a whole year until I can get any! Mom can be such a bitch.

November 21, 1074
Sagebrush called me a zeeb today. I pretended that I didn’t care but I kinda do a little. I wish I didn’t have to live in Ponyville. Nobody talks to me here. There’s only one other zebra at school named Acacia but we’re not friends. She calls me stuff too because dad’s a pony and mom’s a zebra and she says that it makes me neither. If she keeps saying things about mom and dad I’m going to tell Principal Cheerilee that Acacia sometimes smokes fireleaf in the mare’s room.


November 23, 1074

I hit Sagebrush in the nose during study hall and I don’t care if mom says it gives ponies a reason to hate us. He deserved it and if he calls me a zeeb again I’ll hit him harder next time. They can suspend me all they want. It’s not my fault I have stripes. Daisy Cutter thinks my stripes are fashionable, Daisy knows fashion. She says she’s going to be the next Rarity and I think she’s right. I hid my journal under the mattress so mom can’t read it anymore. I got grounded last time. Daisy says zebras are naturally sneaky, so that’s what I’m gonna be.

November 27, 1074

I had to go back to school today. My teacher gave me six assignments I have to make up. At least Sagebrush didn’t laugh at me for it. I think he’s scared of me now. Journals aren’t so bad but I won’t tell mom or dad that I’m writing in it. I still want to get my lip pierced. Dad told me that before I was born, mom lived in a tree. Like an actual tree in the Everfree Forest! I told him he was pulling my tail but he has actual pictures to prove it! He said that mom used to live all alone and made everything from roots and mushrooms and stuff. She looks so funny with her mane up all straight but dad says it’s tradition where she came from. I wish I could visit Vhanna. The newspapers say it’s primitive there and there are lots of comics that show zebras blowing themselves up with Equestrian missiles. Mom showed me pictures from the village she grew up in in south Vhanna. It looked really pretty even if the roads are all dirt and there was no electricity then. She says Vhanna is more modernized now and that I shouldn’t believe everything I read in the papers. Dad doesn’t like to talk about the stuff going on in Vhanna. He says it’s because he’s a Royal Guard and they have to be careful what they say but I think it’s because he doesn’t want to make mom angry.

December 8, 1074

Me and Daisy went to the Ponyville Theater and saw Ice Station Zebra. It’s about two ponies and a zebra who have to work together to find a top secret satellite that fell out of the sky north of the Crystal Empire. Sapphire Sandhoof played the zebra and they did a really good job painting stripes on her. I love Sapphire Sandhoof movies. She’s beautiful! I want to style my tail like her but mom and dad think short tails are “indecent.”

December 19, 1074
The Ministry of Peace mailed new posters today. We're supposed to hang them up but Mom and Dad never do. The ministry never comes to check. Everyone in Ponyville loves the ministry mares. Even Daisy. I don’t know if I like any of them. All they talk about is how we shouldn’t trust zebras and that Vhanna wants to destroy the Equestrian way of life. Mom says she knew Twilight Sparkle and her friends back when they were younger. She says I shouldn’t be mad at them because their jobs are really hard. I’m still mad at them. Fluttershy is the only one trying to stop us from going to war. The rest of them just do things to make ponies hate zebras even more. The Ministry of Peace poster just says WE CAN DO BETTER on it. I hope she’s right.

Aurora woke to a tickle on her foreleg. She ignored it at first, but it persisted with a quiet chirp that part of her reluctantly recognized to be her Pip-Buck. She stretched her hind legs as far as they would go with a quiet, satisfying squeak. Second shift must be having trouble if they were sending her a notification this early.
She pushed her sheet down but there was no sheet. Confusion muddled with disappointment. The comforting fantasy of waking up in her own bed faded and was steadily replaced by the reality of having left that world behind. The musty smell of the leather couch filled her nostrils as she inhaled a waking breath.
“Hmmgh…” she muttered. She opened her eyes, wiped the crust from them with her hoof and rested her leg on the couch with her Pip-Buck a few inches from her face. She looked at it through half-lidded eyes. A green cartoon pony, a trademarked mascot of Stable-Tec, winked at her above the message

Aurora yawned and tapped a button with her wing. Her Pip-Buck chittered as it booted. A familiar physical diagnostic menu flickered to life, showing her the live state of her health courtesy of the suite of sensors built into the cuff clamped snugly below her fetlock. Other than a small amount of radiation from the radstorm a night before, it reported her to be in good health.
A thought ran sluggishly through her head. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hoof and squinted at the device. Suspicion mounted and she sat up fully.
Ginger slept against the opposite arm of the couch. She lay with her hooves tucked under her chest, her nose absently keeping the pages of the journal she’d found open. Her left ear flicked the air when Aurora moved, but Ginger was sleeping too deeply to wake.
The cabin was still dark. Through the front window she could just barely make out the predawn silhouette of the forest. She dialed down the brightness on her Pip-Buck to avoid waking Ginger and narrowed her eyes at the screen. She tapped a button until it brought her to the tab marked RADIO. For a moment she thought her eyes hadn’t adjusted to being awake and she blinked hard to clear the fuzz from her vision. All her life, there had only been one frequency. Now there were two.

She glanced at Ginger, then turned her Pip-Buck’s volume down to its lowest setting before tuning into the new station. Music whispered through an uneven haze of static. She could make out the smooth, crooning male voice singing a cheery, bouncing tune about picket fences and rambling roads. Aurora didn’t know what picket fences were or how a road could ramble, but she got the jist. She switched the radio off and idly tapped her thigh.
Her Pip-Buck had downloaded an update from somewhere. Several updates. If Hightower Radio wasn’t the source, it had come from somewhere else.
She sighed and opened up the map. It automatically focused on her location; a featureless patch of nothing several miles north of the thick green line that denoted Highway 51. She zoomed out until a marker drifted in from the west marked “Home.” She felt a pang of heartsickness at seeing how much distance already separated her from the place she was trying to save. She only had to zoom back a little more until Fillydelphia was visible. They were almost halfway there.
Much closer, to the southeast, sat a marker that hadn’t been there before. Blinder’s Bluff sat in the center of a shrinking ring of topographic lines just south of Highway 51. Judging by how long it had taken them to get to the cabin, Aurora guessed that they were less than a day’s walk to the settlement.
She toggled the screen off and set her hooves in her lap. The fire had burned out while she slept, scenting the air with rich wood smoke. The dim line of light on the horizon was a little brighter now. Aurora rubbed her eyes. Bits of sand fell free from the corners, too much to be from one night’s sleep. She grimaced as she remembered how last night ended between her and Ginger. She couldn’t decide if she was more embarrassed or relieved.
Ginger lifted a hoof to her nose and scratched it before going still again.
Aurora watched with bemusement and decided she was alright with either.
The sun rose behind the clouds, painting the sky in muted crimsons and golds. She watched the sky brighten. Something small flitted through the branches outside. It was quick, like a silhouetted bit of lightning, then it was gone.
Roach was the first to wake. She heard his hooves thump against the floor and the bedroom door creaked open. He looked at her with thick bags under his eyes and offered a slow nod, the universal good morning for those who weren’t quite awake yet. She smiled and aimed a hoof toward the window. She spoke softly.
“You missed the sunrise.”
Roach followed her hoof to the brightening sky and inhaled a waking breath with a shrug. “It won’t happen again, officer.”
Aurora gave him a confused look and he waved it off with a tired smile. “Before your time.”
They chatted while Roach stirred the coals in the fireplace. He retrieved his saddlebags and set about preparing what beginning to amount to breakfast in the wasteland: potable water and cured meat. Aurora’s gut rumbled in protest. She was determined to hold a grudge against the butcher in Junction City until her mane turned gray. In the rush to get out of the city and ahead of anyone keen on collecting on Ginger’s bounty, they hadn’t restocked on food or water. Aurora dreaded the long walk to Blinder’s Bluff.
Roach held out four strips of meat, two of which were for Ginger. She leaned over and nudged Ginger with her wing until the coffee mare wrinkled her nose and grumbled a little. Ginger cracked her eyes open, saw the rising sun and grumbled a little more. She accepted Aurora’s offering of jerky and started gnawing on the end of one.
As they ate and drank the last of their supply, Aurora told them about the little shadow she’d seen in the trees.
“Sounds like you saw a bird,” Roach said.
“Nonsense,” Ginger countered. “All the birds died out after the bombs fell. The radiation did them in.”
Roach shrugged. “Well if the geese survived it...” he hedged.
Ginger waved her jerky at him. “Geese are immortal bastards of the sky who cannot be killed.”
Roach laughed. A deep, throaty laugh that rumbled into wet, ragged coughs. Aurora sat up a little straighter but he waved off her rising concern. Ginger smiled patiently toward the window until he was able to stop.
“Sorry,” he said and cleared his throat. “One of the many perks of ghoulhood, along with longevity and dashing good looks.”
Ginger stifled a laugh and shook her head at the bad joke.
Aurora smiled at the floor. For all the lonely decades he spent waiting outside the Stable, Roach still had a healthy paternal streak. She supposed that had something to do with staying close to Rainbow Dash all those years. He had found something to hold onto while he watched the great cogged door slowly rust. Something to anchor him while the descendants of his husband and daughter grew up and had foals of their own. Her smile faded.
She remembered the unguarded panic in his voice when she stepped out of the Stable. A cold tingle washed up the back of her neck. The memory of feral hooves skittering toward her from the darkness chased by Roach’s cries to seal the door twisted at her gut. Even though she had know way of knowing some of her neighbors might be distant relatives of a ghoul posted outside her home, she felt a pang of guilt for having opened the door so recklessly.
Roach slapped his hoof against the arm of the couch, startling Aurora out of her fog. He chuckled and looked at her with a blend of humor and concern. “You’re brooding,” he said. “Brooding is my job.”
A weak smile crossed Aurora’s muzzle. “Just thinking about home,” she said.
Roach’s smile softened. He stood up and invited the two mares to do the same with a tip of his head. “We should get going. We’ll want a head start if we plan on getting into Blinder’s Bluff before the gates close for the night.”
One by one they got up and collected their things. Aurora found herself stretching more than once. Her calves ached from the last two days of walking and weren’t looking forward to a third. She picked up the overmare’s rifle… and it occurred to her that it was her rifle now. Delphi’s death had changed her. She was sure it changed every pony in the Stable once they heard the news. But the cutting edge of that memory was beginning to dull. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Aurora slung the leather strap over her shoulder, rechecked the empty chamber and draped her wing over the weapon. Their hooves ticked across the old slate floor. They filed out onto the porch, Aurora trailing them. It was so quiet out here. So different than the chaos of wrangling machines and answering work orders. Stepping out onto the old porch was like being able to breathe for the first time. She looked over her shoulder at the empty cabin and wondered if, one day, anyone would mind if she came back to live here.
She made sure the door clicked as she pulled it shut behind her.

“Shit shit shit shit shit!”
Aurora had made a mistake.
The trio had been making good time across the rolling terrain. They chose to navigate around the rolling hills rather than struggle their way over the top of one after another. Following the shallow path of valleys and fields that picked around the higher bluffs worked better than any of them had expected. Aurora’s Pip-Buck showed them nearly halfway to Blinder’s Bluff by the time they came to a wide, treeless rib of a hill that gave them the choice of a short climb or ten miles to get around. They chose to make the short climb and stopped at the top for lunch consisting of their remaining water and plentiful conversation.
The east side of the hill slid gently into a wide bowl of grass and cracked soil surrounded by dead or dying trees. Roach told them that it looked like a sledding hill he used to frequent as a colt, and then had to explain what sledding was. The thought of sliding down a hill had piqued Aurora’s interest. As soon as they began to descend the hill, Aurora flung her wings wide and hopped into the air. She glided nearly ten yards before the hill rose up to meet her hooves, and without thinking she kicked off and launched herself forward.
She felt the brief tug of Ginger’s magic against her rear hooves but she slipped through it like greased soap. Exhilaration was quickly shoved aside by the realization that she was speeding down the slope too fast to land. Worse yet, she didn’t know how to land.
Dirt and grass blurred beneath her hooves. Wind whistled higher and higher in her ears until it became a roar. The leading edges of her wings cut through the air like knives while the bottom of the hill rose up to meet her. The rational side of her brain observed that she would shatter her legs if she hit the ground at this speed. Instinct screamed at her to lean back. To beat her wings as hard as she could.
Aurora went with instinct and reared back.
The flats of her wings billowed with rushing air and she shot upward like a rocket.
“Oh fuck!” she screamed.
The ground receded alarmingly fast. Her legs and wings flailed as raw momentum flung her into the air like toy on a rope. Her right wing caught the wind and she cartwheeled for several nauseating seconds before gravity finally stalled her ascent. She gasped at the sudden sense of weightlessness. Then it was gone, and she was falling once again.
Her wings clawed at the air like it was something she could grab onto. She didn’t know how to pull out of a dive. She barely understood how she got where she was right now! As the ground reached up toward her she remembered the moment when she thought she would be trampled by the crowd of pegasi outside the overmare’s office. Something about that memory clicked.
Aurora aimed her back legs toward the dirt and suppressed the urge to panic. Falling hooves-first toward the ground, she lifted her wings and threw them toward the earth as hard as she could. In that moment, the air was tangible. She’d held it in her feathers. She flapped her wings again and felt herself slow even more. Her body twisted as one wing came down faster than the other on the third stroke, but she corrected on the fourth and realized she was getting the hang of it. Her plummet slowed and a tentative grin spread over her face
Her wings found their natural rhythm. She looked down and saw Ginger and Roach galloping down the hill several dozen yards below her. They looked like toys from where she hung in the air. She saw that they were yelling something but couldn’t make out the words. Ginger looked frantically toward the south before looking back up, her eyes wide.
Aurora squinted in the direction of tiny-Ginger’s worry and spotted a faint gray curl of smoke bending out of the trees. At the edge of the trees stood three dark shapes. She wouldn’t have seen them at all if it weren’t for the flash of light that came from the one in the center.
She heard a bug buzz by her left ear and she instinctively jerked away. Barely a second later, a primary feather dropped from her wing like it had been clipped off. Confused, she watched it spin away on the wind.
The third shot slammed into her sternum like a hammer. The bullet batted her out of the sky like an afterthought. She fell like a stone, unable to focus on anything except the shrieking pain. Her lungs flared with agony as she tried to catch her breath but the she managed to take sips. She was distantly aware of the fact that hitting the ground was going to hurt even worse.
The world turned amber and Aurora felt herself slowing like the last moments of a terrifying elevator ride. She hit the ground with a thud instead of the expected splat. Her chest burned for air and she punished her lungs with a slow, wheezing breath.
She winced and rolled onto her side to see Ginger and Roach galloping toward her. Ginger was well in the lead and skidded to a stop next to her, the big knife from her former shop hanging in a cloud of magic.
“Shot…” Aurora took a slow breath. “Assholes.”
“I know,” Ginger said. She crouched down and made quick work of the fabric straps holding Aurora’s vest together. Roach crouched low next to Ginger, his eyes locked on the frayed hole in the center of the black fabric. The vest peeled back after she cut the last strap free. The interior lining bulged but hadn’t broken. The bullet hadn’t pierced the plating.
Before they could breathe a sigh of relief a fresh round slapped into the dirt only a few feet short of Ginger’s leg, spitting soil into her eyes. “Raider shits!”
“We need cover!” Roach said.
Ginger glared at him with one bloodshot eye. “I’m a little busy!”
Roach looked around for options and saw none. They were exposed. The raiders had them dialed in. There was no time to warn them. They wouldn’t be able to do anything if he had. He knew with terrible certainty that the next bullet wouldn’t miss. They needed cover, now.
Roach lit his horn with pale green light and the soil in front of him flowed upward as if filling an invisible mold. Muzzle flash flickered from the raiders’ position and the round skipped harmlessly off the rising edge of Roach’s wall.
“Roach, no!” Ginger yelled.
Aurora grimaced. Everything suddenly smelled and tasted like metal. She heard a quiet hiss coming from her foreleg and looked down at her Pip-Buck. The needle of her radiation meter hopped and stuttered in and out of the red. Aurora dialed up the volume and the hiss became an unearthly crackle. She looked up with horror at the green glow surrounding Roach’s horn and the several square yards of soil standing upright barely three steps away from her.
He means to say 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’s face was a mixture of deep concentration and apology. Except it wasn’t his face. Not entirely.
It was like staring into a mirage. His black chitin gave way to a sleek coat the color of cracked wheat only to fade back to charcoal skin. She caught a flicker of mossy green mane that grew paler as it traveled down his neck. A curl of it hung over honest-to-goodness eyes. His irises were a gentle, muted jade. She blinked and the illusion had moved on. She chased the illusion as it ebbed and flowed like light off disturbed water.
When Roach’s horn finally went dark, the illusion died. Aurora’s Pip-Buck chattered a little less frantically, but didn’t go silent. Questions tumbled over one another on their way to her lips. Chief among them were Who was that other pony? and How many rads did we just soak up?
Ginger got up and punched Roach in the chest, hard. “Are you insane?!” she railed at him. “We don’t have RadAway, Roach! You could have killed us!”
He accepted the blow with a wince. The wall was just high enough to shield them if they lowered their head while they stood. He didn’t meet her eyes as Ginger stared daggers into his. He looked at the divot at the top of his wall where the sniper’s round had skated off course. “The radiation will kill you in a week. That bullet had you pegged for today. You’re welcome.”
Ginger followed his eyes to the damaged edge of the wall. Her face went pale.
Aurora pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the dull pain in her chest and the taste of copper on her tongue. “Argue later. We need a plan now.” As if to emphasize her point, another bullet sank itself into the far edge of the wall. She lifted her rifle onto her wing and held it out to Roach. “Can you use this?”
“With magic, yes,” he offered. The implication of more radiation hung on his words.
“Which I’d like to avoid until we can purge the radiation we’ve already soaked up,” Ginger added, her tone humbled. “I’m useless at long-range, but if I backtrack up that hill I can use it as cover to get behind them.”
“You’ll be making yourself an easy target,” Roach said warily.
Ginger shrugged. “Aurora will distract them with her expert marksmanship.”
Roach and Aurora exchanged looks.
“It doesn’t matter whether you hit them,” Ginger added. “Just make yourself a threat by getting close. If they’re raiders, they’re not going to waste ammunition on a fleeing mare with nothing to take.”
She shrugged off her jacket and dropped it to the ground along with the pistol holster around her hind leg. They hit the dirt with a heavy thwump. Her knife, the same blade Aurora had noticed in Ginger’s lounge room, hovered to her right. It pressed flat against her ribs where their attackers had no chance of seeing it.
“What if they’re cannibals?” Aurora asked.
“Then I hope you’re a good distraction,” Ginger said.
Roach nudged Aurora with a hoof that held their last box of .308 rounds. “It’s a plan,” he said.
Aurora took the box and topped off her magazine. It clacked into the rifle with a decisive finality. Nobody needed to say they were in agreement. They simply were. Aurora winced as she slid the barrel of her rifle past the right side of the wall. A few strands of grass were her only camouflage. She could only guess at how far the treeline was. She arbitrarily doubled her scope’s elevation and a thousand rifle enthusiasts cried out in psychic pain.
She spotted the trio of ponies in the trees and for a split second she saw herself, Roach and Ginger staring back at her. The raiders were distracted, having grown comfortable under the lack of any return fire. Their prey cowered behind a wall of their own making and had gone silent. From the casual shrug of the right-most stallion, they seemed to be debating their best approach.
They didn’t know Aurora was watching. They would shortly.
“They’re not watching,” she said to Ginger. “Go.”
Hooves scraped against cracked soil behind her with no hesitation. Ginger hurled herself toward the base of the hill and up the long, shallow slope.
Aurora watched the leftmost raider frown and lift a pair of binoculars. He spoke quickly and the other two took notice. Righty, a battered orange stallion, lay prone behind a rifle. He dipped his eye to the scope and shifted the barrel toward Ginger.
Aurora pulled the trigger and Desperate Times slugged her shoulder. The round burrowed into the side of a tree well behind the raiders, but it had been close enough to make them jump. She saw their ears spin toward her as the sound of the report reached them. Righty’s rifle spun toward her.
“Fuck me,” she muttered as she adjusted the scope with her free wing. She ran the bolt, squeezed off another shot and the bullet might as well have vanished into another dimension. She had no idea where it landed.
The muzzle of Righty’s rifle flickered and dirt geysered a yard to her right. The strike made her jump and she could feel her heartbeat double. This wasn’t fun. This wasn’t shooting pickle jars at the cabin. Those ponies wanted to kill her. Specifically her, and especially Righty. He was the only one in the group with a rifle that seemed capable of reaching out and touching her. The other two goggled at her through binoculars, likely reporting where his shots had were landing.
She pulled the trigger and it didn’t budge. Righty’s muzzle flashed. The bullet slapped the dirt near her hip.
“Fuck you!” she yelled, knowing full well they couldn’t hear her.
“Eject the cartridge,” Roach reminded.
Aurora yanked the bolt back and slammed it forward. She glanced at the hill and saw Ginger was halfway to the top and looked every part the mare who had decided to abandon her friends to save her own skin. Aurora turned her attention back to the raiders who were enthusiastically trying to drop a bullet into her skull and fired again.
This time she saw the shot split the bark of the tree Righty was hiding behind. It had been a completely lucky shot and the bullet had impacted more than a yard above her target, but the sudden anger painting his face was priceless. She dialed down her elevation and racked the bolt.
A familiar buzz tickled her right ear and she resisted the sudden urge to empty her bladder. Her brain lit up with a colorful variety of profanity. She shoved them away and steadied her wing. Righty’s shit-colored armor drifted behind her crosshairs. She steadied them and slowly emptied her lungs as she squeezed on the trigger.
Desperate Times bucked against her. There was a brief moment of nothing. Then Righty’s neck exploded.
Aurora’s eyes went wide. Things happened to Righty’s anatomy that shouldn’t happen. The expression on his face was horrific and involuntary. He was dead before he touched the ground.
Don’t think about it, she told herself.
She thought about it.
Her stomach crawled up her throat and dumped itself out onto the thirsty soil. She heaved again and spat out a mouthful of bile. She did something she couldn’t undo. She’d taken a life. She’d murdered someone.
She looked up the hill. Ginger was nearing the top. She swallowed and looked through the scope. Mercifully, Righty’s body was partially obscured by the tree he’d hidden behind. To her dismay, Middle had taken position behind the rifle.
“No, no, no,” she moaned.
Middle was what could be politely described as lean. Her ribs showed clearly under her lavender coat. She flicked her silver mare away from her eyes and stared at Aurora through Righty’s rifle.
Aurora squeezed the trigger and Middle jumped. The round must have struck something behind her. Aurora let the crosshairs drift slightly away from the mare. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to see someone die like that again. Before Middle could compose herself, Aurora racked the bolt and fired another shot.
“Just put it down,” she muttered. She scooted back and tried to ignore the wet sensation of her own sick soaking into her foreleg. With a click, the spent magazine dropped and she began plugging fresh brass inside. It clacked into place just as a bullet thumped fruitlessly into Roach’s wall.
“Ginger’s over the top,” Roach reported.
Aurora looked up. Ginger was nowhere to be seen.
She looked at Roach. He was looking at her foreleg with quiet sympathy.
“I got one,” she almost whispered.
“I saw. I’m sorry,” he said, and winced. “You still need to distract them.”
Aurora closed her eyes and shook her head before shuffling out of the wet soil and into position behind her rifle. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
She racked the bolt. “They need to run away.”
“They won’t.”
Aurora jerked the trigger back just to hear the rifle bark. “Fucking raiders,” she spat. She settled her cheek against the rifle and saw a flash. The bullet missed her head by inches. It punched through the tip of her ear instead. She instinctively ducked and threw herself behind the wall with a yelp.
Roach’s eyes were wide with worry. “Are you hit?”
“Yes I’m hit! My fucking ear!” She held her ear against her head with her hoof. Blood oozed into her mane and down her face. Roach moved her hoof away and didn’t seem nearly as horrified as she thought he should be.
“It’s barely a cut,” he said, his voice beckoning for calm. He saw the worry in her eyes and glanced at her rifle. “You’re okay. Take a break. I’ll take over.”
Aurora’s Pip-Buck crackled anew as Roach’s magic lit around her rifle. Her heart skipped a beat and she stabbed a hoof against her weapon, pressing it back to the ground. “Stop,” she said, then more urgently, “Stop.”
His horn dimmed. He grit his teeth and blew a frustrated breath through his nose. “Aurora…”
She cut him off. “I can do it. Just… give me a second.”
Roach held up his hooves and looked away. His face was a mixture of shame and irritation. Aurora felt a similar twinge for having smothered his attempt to help her, but she set it aside. Her ear stung like a burn. She ignored that, too.
The gaunt mare at the edge of the woods had her dialed in. She’d be ready to shoot as soon as she saw Aurora poke her head out. Her options were carved down to one: get her to waste her shot and shoot back before she could reload. Aurora steeled herself before diving behind the rifle. As soon as she landed she lurched away. No sooner was she clear than a bullet ripped through the air where she’d been like a furious insect. A chill ran up her spine as the gunshot cracked the air behind it.
She dove back onto the rifle and dropped her cheek behind the scope hard enough to hurt. She found Middle and leveled the crosshairs on her. The lavender mare was swapping out an empty magazine for a full one. It occurred to Aurora that if they got out of this that she should buy a second one. She fired and the face of the tree Middle hid behind scattered bark in all directions. The mare fumbled the magazine and sat up to see where it had fallen.
As Aurora ran the bolt back, she saw a silver streak flicker under the mare’s chin. The streak slowed enough for Aurora to recognize Ginger’s hunting knife. It pivoted, blade aimed at the dumbstruck mare, and plunged into her temple. The raider’s eyes lost focus and she crumpled forward onto the rifle.
Aurora felt numb. She couldn’t see where Ginger was hiding, but the bronze magic surrounding the knife as it snaked toward Lefty was hers. Lefty’s binoculars were glued to his eyes. His mouth moved as he spoke to the dead mare a few yards away from him. Ginger sank her knife into his temple and his mouth stopped mid-sentence. He fell face-first into the dirt.
The knife glided into the woods toward a fallen tree. Ginger stood up and hopped up over the log, meeting the knife halfway and wiping the flat of the blade clean against her flank. She squinted toward Aurora and Roach, lifted a hoof to her mouth and yelled something that neither could hear but the meaning of which was inevitable: It’s safe, they’re dead now.
“Ginger got the other two,” Aurora said. She didn’t look at Roach when he grunted acknowledgement. She was soaked with adrenaline and had nothing to burn it off on. It felt like punching in for her shift with a gut full of coffee and finding out she couldn’t do any work until someone on the other shift finished cleaning up.
She dropped the magazine, topped it off and slapped it back into the rifle hard enough for her wing to kick up a little dust. She could feel Roach’s eyes on her as she flipped the safety to ON and threw the strap over her shoulder as she got up. The sour smell of her sick stung her nostrils. The mud that stained her foreleg was rancid with it. She dragged the sludge against the corner of Roach’s wall, ignoring the slight uptick of chatter from her Pip-Buck as she made contact with the irradiated surface.
She and Ginger had killed three ponies. Four, if she counted Cider, but she didn’t. She hadn’t left the Stable to kill anyone. She hadn’t left to be groped or shot at. All she wanted to do was find an ignition talisman, take it home and close the door behind her. Her fantasy of living a quiet life in the cabin evaporated as quickly as it had formed. She picked up Ginger’s jacket, threw it roughly over her back and started walking toward the treeline and the wispy tail of smoke beyond it.
Roach picked up Ginger’s holstered pistol and followed close behind.
“It was us or them,” he said to her back.
“I don’t want a pep talk right now.”
“You’re not getting one,” he said. “I’m telling you that if you two hadn’t killed those ponies, they would have killed you.”
Aurora scowled at a patch of passing grass. She could still taste bile on her tongue and spat. “It doesn’t make it right.”
“We’re all sinners out here. Sometimes you have to kill bad ponies to stay alive.”
“I hate this,” she said for the second time.
Roach trotted alongside her. “That’s the difference between you and a raider. Try to remember that.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched Roach’s hooves lift and fall. “And Ginger?”
It took a moment for Roach to catch her meaning. She looked at him and tried to hide the worry in her heart. This hadn’t been Ginger’s first time killing. Far from it. The way she snaked her knife into the two raiders betrayed practice and precision that didn’t come from an amateur.
“Growing up in the wasteland leaves scars,” he said as if that answered her question. When he saw that it didn’t, he added, “She’s seen the worst this world can offer and came out the other side a better pony than most. You can trust her.”
Aurora could see Ginger moving between the three ponies and pursed her lips.
“Hey,” Roach said, bumping her wing. She looked at him and he tipped his chin skyward. “Congrats, by the way.”
She flushed. Her glide-gone-wrong had been the start of this whole disaster, but she couldn’t help but admit it had felt amazing to hang suspended in the air under her own power. She recalled how the horizon had opened up around her like an endless disc of hills and clouds. Her wings felt warm. She’d flown.
“Thanks,” she said.
As they approached the trees, Ginger waved them away from the place where the three bodies lay and toward the spot where they had made camp. Three tattered bedrolls lay in a clearing around the smoldering remains of a cook fire. Playing cards lay scattered around the bedrolls. Aurora looked over her shoulder and saw the top of the ridge clearly between the trees.
Ginger dropped a bloodstained bundle of brown cloth next to the fire ring. Aurora tried not to focus on the wet edges of what had once been a shirt. Ginger pulled the bundle open with a broad smile, displaying the loot she’d pulled off the raiders.
Two pairs of binoculars, three dented canteens, and a small, half-full pouch of underripe berries lay in a small heap. Aurora picked up one of the canteens and it gurgled in her wing.
“Anything else?” Roach asked. He turned one of the binoculars over in his hoof before depositing it into his saddlebag.
Ginger made a face. “Two of them had pipe pistols, the other had a customized rifle that looks ready to fall apart. Beyond that and some ammunition, this is it. They traveled light.”
“Must have been out looking for places to scavenge,” Roach observed.
“Mmhm,” Ginger hummed. She dropped one of the canteens into Roach’s saddlebag and hung the other over her neck by its strap. Aurora held out her leather jacket and Ginger smiled her thanks as she slipped it on. She eyed Aurora’s bloodied ear and clucked her tongue. “Here.”
She tore a strip of cloth from the shirt on the ground and wet it with her canteen. Aurora bent her head as Ginger folded the cloth over her ear, letting the water loosen the already tacky blood so she could wipe it away.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
Ginger gave a reassuring shake of her head. “Not bad at all. You’ll have a notch in your ear. Something to show the stallions when you get home, I suspect.”
Aurora snorted.
“It’ll be distinguishing when it heals,” Ginger continued. “Which reminds me, how’s your leg been treating you?”
Aurora watched Ginger’s attention shift from her ear to the filthy bandages wrapped around her hind leg. It occurred to her that she hadn’t noticed the ghoul bite hurting since yesterday. She held out her leg while Ginger’s magic peeled the pad of bandages back from the wound.
“These are ready to come off,” Ginger said. Her knife appeared next to her and she carefully lifted the bandages away from her skin and into the blade. Aurora bit back a frown upon seeing the blade.
The strips of cloth fell away and the warm air felt strange across her sweat-dampened coat. Black thread neatly crisscrossed four inches of pink skin. The redness from two days ago had subsided. She flexed the muscles in her leg and watched the stitches shift with her skin. She’d never had stitches before.
Ginger put a hoof on her leg and pressed it toward the ground. “Don’t fiddle with it. Magic or not, stimpacks need time to work. I want to get another one in you once we get to Blinder’s Bluff before I trust those stitches to come out.”
Aurora let herself smile a little. “Yes, doctor.”
Ginger smirked back and pointed a hoof at her nose. “And don’t you forget it. Now let’s pack all this up and get moving. The sooner we get to Blinder’s Bluff, the sooner you and I can get some RadAway in our systems. And Roach?”
Roach glanced at Ginger. He stood still, his face carefully neutral. She stepped around the shirt laying between them and drew him into a tight hug. “You saved our lives. I’m sorry I yelled at you for that.”
He cleared his throat. His stoic mask softened and he allowed himself a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll try to warn you next time I’m feeling heroic.”

January 1, 1075
Principal Cheerilie canceled school today because Sugarcube Corner blew up during the new year celebration last night. A lot of ponies got hurt and Ms. Cake got taken to Canterlot Hospital. Mr. Cake died. Mom says there was a gas leak in the bakery, but the neighbors keep saying it was a bomb. Everyone’s really scared.

January 4, 1075

Dad won’t let me watch TV or listen to the radio even though it’s homework! I have to write a paper on the EASA rocket test for science class tomorrow and now I’m going to get an F! Mom said she’s going to write me a note to give Mr. Skies but she doesn’t get it at all. I’m going to have to give the teacher a note in front of everyone and I know Sagebrush is going to say it’s because I’m a lazy zebra. I hate Sagebrush. He keeps telling everyone lies about me and nobody tells him to stop.

January 5, 1075
I learned how to whittle today. Mom taught me after school and I’m pretty bad at it. It’s kind of fun but holding a knife makes my teeth hurt. I found out why Mom and Dad wouldn't let me watch the EASA launch. Mr. Skies said it wasn't aired at all because of a riot in Manehattan. A bunch of zebras got arrested by the Ministry of Image and a lot of ponies got mad about it and started breaking windows and burning stuff. Mom and Dad didn't want me to see it and get worried but guess what, I'm worried anyway.

January 7, 1075

Pinkie Pie came to visit Sugarcube Corner today with a bunch of jerks from the Ministry of Morale. They said she wanted to see it before what's left gets demolished. They wouldn’t let Mom talk to her even though they’re friends. Pinkie looked so lonely. Mom says it’s because none of her friends came down with her. Lots of ponies keep looking at me funny.