Looking out for trouble was an unspoken rule. Then again, raiders felt the need to shout about trouble every ten minutes. At least, that’s what the colt Tilaso assumed he had heard in the shouting. He was too busy galloping away from the crazy bastards. It was a strange blessing that the tainted junkies were shooting wildly and hitting their own members.
Tilaso was no raider. He was a convict in the eyes of the Republic, if it could even be called such. Some time ago, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment for stealing medicine from a military-protected town. There was no trial. He wound up in a correctional facility several miles away.
More recently, the colt had overheard a plan between some of the other convicts. Part of their mandatory labor at the facility involved clearing rocks away with dynamite. The ponies overseeing the facility didn’t even notice a stick or two going missing. Apparently, soot-covered prison garbs were the perfect hiding place. The plan was to gather as much dynamite as possible and make a break for it in the confusion.
The plan worked a little too well. Tilaso didn’t even know where his explosive was going. After lighting a fuse, he just kicked the darn thing as far away from himself as possible. Several explosions later, and all of the guards were dead or paralyzed. Those that weren’t caught in the blast soon found their own firearms getting pulled out and finishing the job.
Half of the convicts stayed behind to use what was left of the facility as a home base. Tilaso joined the other half, the colts and stallions that moved as far away as possible. He ended up partnered with one stallion that yelled in his floppy ears and yanked on his shirt collar a lot.
Today, he was out looking for supplies: food, ammunition, anything really. His impromptu boss had stayed behind in a makeshift tent to keep an ear to the radio. One of the pros of Tilaso going out by himself was that he was a smaller target. Unfortunately, the downside was that if he failed at a task, there wasn’t any pony to back him up.
Hence, the colt was running for his life. His pursuers were practicing their philosophy of “spray and don’t pray”. He could have sworn there was a fire under his tail. After what felt like miles but was probably only half that length, the gunshots finally echoed down in the distance. The raiders were either reloading simultaneously or had given up the chase.
The colt sighed as he spotted his boss’s tent. He braced for an inevitable slap in the face for screwing up a supply run. Instead, he was shushed as the boss turned up the radio’s volume. According to the station, some pony was bold enough to drive some convicts out of a nearby trader town. Speculation was that a member of the Unity descended and had blessed the town with her presence, except the princess had taken some injuries in the defense.
Tilaso’s eyes went wide. Then, he heard his boss chuckling. Surely, he couldn’t think of challenging one of the alicorns directly! Every pony knew how dangerous a single one could be. Magic shields that could be summoned faster than a pistol fire, absorbing radiation like it was a shot of Hydra, magic to rival an entire unicorn squadron… all were reasons to run the other way. Yet his boss wanted to try his luck?
This was a terrible idea.
…
Tilaso ended up following his boss along the road. Boss had the better gun, Boss was the bigger stallion, and Boss had the louder voice. That was all that mattered for ponies without a code of law.
Looking into the distance, Boss chuckled. When Tilaso finally caught a glimpse, there were some cazadors lying on the ground. Standing in the middle of the mutant insects was an alicorn pony, panting for breath and clenching her teeth. It seemed even members of Unity were not immune to a poisonous swarm.
Boss clicked his gun. The alicorn’s ears perked up and she immediately looked straight at the two. Tilaso found himself unable to breathe. His legs shook underneath him. But Boss was already opening fire.
By the time Tilaso remembered how to breathe, the alicorn had already rushed over. She whipped a dagger out with her front hoof and sliced right through Boss’s neck. Under her other hoof, she crushed Boss’s gun into an unsalvageable mess. Tilaso trembled in the alicorn’s shadow. He slowly looked up into the eerie green eyes, slit like the eyes of a dragon.
“Get lost,” she told him.
The colt turned on his hind legs and fled. He didn’t know where to go. All he knew for sure was that he needed to be anywhere but here.
…
The young convict wasn’t sure how long he ran. After a while, he stopped next to a rock to catch his breath. Nearby, there was a cactus with a few flowers. He didn’t have a knife handy. So, he pulled out his pistol and shot a couple holes in the side. He gulped down a couple times before coughing on the juice. It was too bitter.
He slowly trotted along the road again. Maybe he could find an independent town and scrounge for stuff when they weren’t looking. It was all he could hope for at this point. He wasn’t looking forward to a night out in the cold.
His hooves carried him to the top of a hill. Down below, he could see several red tents. He pondered for a moment. If this was a tribe with uniformed tents, he’d stick out like a sore wing. There was no way he could just walk up and ask for food and a sleeping roll.
If there was at least one pony per tent, then he was looking at a minimum of ten potential threats. They may not have been alicorns, but that was still too many enemies for Tilaso to handle by himself. Maybe he could distract them with something, run into their supply stash, and gallop away before the tribals knew what hit them.
He took a deep breath before fishing out a stick of dynamite. Setting a light to the fuse, he kicked the red cylinder as far away as he could. It clacked along the dirt just on the far side of the tents.
*Ka-boom!*
Several garbed stallions ran out of their tents toward the noise. Tilaso wasted no time sliding down the hill. Once at the bottom, he scampered to the biggest tent and opened the flap. His muzzle came within an inch of a tribal’s spear.
Quickly, the colt backed up out of the tent. A shout rang out behind him in a language he didn’t understand. He looked around, finding himself surrounded by twelve different stallions in reddish-brown pads. Ten of them were holding spears, while the other two had laser pistols aimed at his head.
The rest of Tilaso’s night was spent with his hooves tied up. The owners of this camp had placed him on the ground with his back toward the campfire. He wondered how long they would keep him there.