//------------------------------//
// Keypad 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Skyward 
// by romantis 
//------------------------------//



I woke to the crackling of flames, aching all over. It took me a couple of seconds to work out where I was and what had happened. I wasn't on the road any more, so somepony must've moved me. The bruises and grazes I was starting to feel supported that theory, because I didn't remember getting them. I shifted and felt a dull pain in my legs.

"Hey. Morning."

The voice came from the other side of the fire. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, and was shocked to see dried blood on my leg. I tried to say "hey" back, but my throat was dry and made no sound.

"You okay, like?" the mare said. Her grey face was illuminated by flickering orange light, and she wore a look of mild concern beneath her hood. Her eyes were a little obscured, mostly by her black mane, but from the looks of the bags under them I didn't reckon she'd slept.

I swallowed. "Do you have any water?" I managed to ask.

Her horn glowed green for a second as she floated a large canteen over to me. I grabbed it, twisted the cap off and drank. The water tasted weird but I was too thirsty to care. After a few seconds we made eye contact and I realised she probably didn't want me finishing it, much as I wanted to, so I passed it back. 

"Sorry," I said, and she frowned at me.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Backlight. It's- I'm Backlight."

"Hmm. Cool. I'm Spiral."

I broke eye contact first and looked around. There was the road, I reckoned. And the ponies.

It was hard to isolate the individual sensations, but a stinging at the side of my neck drew my attention. I looked down, but the angle meant I couldn't see it. Wishing I had a mirror or something, I felt at it with a hoof, and it stung some more. There was blood on my shoulder.

Spiral saw what I was doing. "I poured a little healing potion on it, like. You were so lucky."

"What?" I asked. The words didn't parse.

"When that raider shot you?" She pointed at her own neck, but the action was kind of buried in her hood. "If it had been a little over to the left, like... but it only grazed you."

I thought this over. "What happened?" I finally asked.

"What, after you, like, smashed that raider's horn and fainted?"

...No. But that was a place to start, I supposed. I nodded, and my brain decided to treat me to a perfect recollection of the mare - the raider, as Spiral called her - dying right in front of me.

Spiral glanced towards the road. "Um. I tried to wake you up, but you didn't, so I carried you over here where we'd have a bit of cover. Saw that you were bleeding and used the potion, like, and then it got really cold so I lit the fire. Like, that's it, I guess. I dropped you a couple of times, so... sorry about that."

I shrugged, and pain flared in my right shoulder. The flames were kind of hypnotising, and by the time I realised I should've properly replied I felt like it was too late to say anything. So I sat and idly wondered how much time she'd spent looking for firewood, considering there weren't any trees around. It was all dried grass and twigs, so it was giving off a lot of smoke.

Eventually, I felt like saying something.

"She was going to shoot me."

"Yeah?" Spiral said. It wasn't really a question, though. "Like, I mean, she did shoot you."

"Yeah. So when she was distracted I just... went for her. Her or me. I wasn't aiming for her horn. I was just aiming for her head."

She gave me a look. Not the sort of look I was expecting. "Oookay." She looked... sad?

I dropped it. It didn't seem like she knew what to say, and I didn't really know why I was talking about it in the first place. I watched as she took a stick out of the fire and poked at the embers.

After a while, she broke the silence again. "Sorry, but, like, while you were asleep I was thinking... before all that, before they saw you, like, what were you doing up there?"

"I don't know," I replied. Well, maybe I did know. If she was asking what I thought she was asking, then I'd been about to run away. But I didn't want to say that.

"Yeah," she said, putting the stick back in the fire.

"Yesterday wasn't a good day," I mumbled.

She seemed to catch my words. "Yeah. For me neither."

The sky seemed slightly brighter than it had been. I really had been out all night.

Spiral took a swig from her canteen and changed how she was sat. "So, Backlight, where are you heading?"

"Um. Skyward. I guess."

"You don't sound so sure."

I thought about explaining that I was lost, that I'd been trying to find civilisation, but decided against it. "Guess not," I shrugged.

"Cool. Well, that's where I'm headed." She wrinkled her nose and looked up at the sky. "Probably gonna get moving soon?"

I'd almost died.

Not seeing any response from me, she continued. "Listen, like... I don't know what your deal is, but I'm pretty sure you'll die if you stay out here. Sorry."

I shook my head. "No, you're right." I didn't really feel like moving. "We should go."

She nodded, and threw dirt onto the fire. I idly wondered why she bothered; we were in the middle of nowhere. She got to her hooves, dusting off her cloak, and I did the same.

Spiral didn't really talk much, and neither did I. I felt pretty uncomfortable with the silence and had no idea whether she did too, but was glad that she wasn't asking questions. It gave me time to get my story straight, so to speak. 

What did I really have to hide? I'd woken up in some facility with no idea how I'd gotten there, and that was about the extent of the strangeness. If I told her, would she believe me? Would she think I was crazy? What were the actual consequences of that? I didn't want to keep secrets.

"I've got some questions I'm kind of hoping you can answer," I started.

"Sure."

"They're probably gonna sound like stupid questions, but just bare with me and I'll explain."

She looked at me and frowned. "Okay."

I thought for a second. "How long ago did the war end?"

It took her another second to reply. "Wow. Okay, you weren't kidding, um, like, two centuries ago?"

Two. Centuries.

In my head I'd known it'd been years. That much had been clear. Tens of years would be concerning, but not surprising. Hundreds, though?

"Oh," I said. Spiral inhaled like she wanted to say something, but just held her breath instead. "Did we win?"

"...No. Listen, I-"

"Hang on. Just- just give me a second?"

I didn't really know why I'd asked. The landscape sure didn't look like that of a victorious nation. 

Spiral gave me a second, then spoke. "You're, like, a Stable pony, right?"

Stables. I supposed the underground bunkers had turned out to be useful, after all. If I was interpreting her question correctly, they'd worked, but not everyone out here came from one. Like me. I shook my head.

"Right. Like, you're clean like a Stable pony, but you don't have the uniform."

The blood was mostly flaking off my legs. "Yeah, no. I'm from... before all this."

"What, like, before the megaspells? I mean, sorry if it sounds like I don't believe you, like, but you don't look like a ghoul."

"I don't know what that is," I said, feeling the weight of the word ghoul. Ominous.

She gave me a look like I was crazy. "So how can you be from back then?"

"I woke up in some mirrored room yesterday-"

"-Mirrored?"

"Yes, the walls were mirrors. Don't ask me how I got there because I don't remember. Point is I woke up there and I had to break my way out and here I am. Everything's gone."

"Okay," she said. I didn't really have anything else to add, and eventually she asked, "Where is this place, like, exactly?"

"The room was underground. There was a small building with a parking lot, and the road joined the highway, and I was walking for hours."

"Right."

I didn't know if she believed me, but she didn't ask any more questions and neither did I. Later on she let me finish the last of her water, and we talked for a while longer after that. It was hard to tell whether she was just naturally taciturn, or whether she was wary of me, but I found myself reluctant to press her for details on what exactly had happened during my two-hundred-year-long lie-in.

We spotted the building at basically the same time. It was the afternoon by then and I wanted nothing more than to stop and rest, but Spiral had insisted that the going would only get harder every time we did that. Regardless, with the water gone and a good distance still to go before we'd get to Skyward, we decided to stop and explore. It took another hour from when we spotted the chimney to reach the point where the road peeled off. It came to a chain-link gate, left open just enough for a single pony to slip through to the parking lot on the other side. I was reminded of 'site two', and I hesitated while Spiral went straight in.

So quiet. That's what bothered me. Every noise we made was amplified in contrast. 

I followed her. The factory consisted of a single rectangular building made from concrete and corrugated iron. Its exterior was dotted with thin windows, too high to see through. Every single one in sight was smashed. The chimney looming over us had once had a large logo printed on it, but it was faded to the point where I had no idea what it was supposed to say. Despite its ruin, the whole building felt imposing.

The parking lot seemed to be a loading bay more than anything, with three large shutters providing access to the inside of the building. Spiral got to one and glanced over it. She tried to push it open and it rattled, but it didn't seem built to be opened from the outside. "Nope," I heard her say. She ignored the other two and went to the double doors further along.

"There might be a side entrance," I suggested.

"Yeah, I know, like..." she said, pushing the doors. "Can you like, pick locks?"

"No," I said, perhaps a little more defensively than necessary.

"Okay, c'mon." She led the way around the side of the building, past some dumpsters, and sure enough we found a metal door with a keypad. It was locked, so Spiral entered what I presumed was '1-2-3-4' and tried it again. "Ugh."

I looked over the keypad, hoping to see something she'd missed, but the printing had weathered off the buttons entirely. Spiral started to move on. "Do you have a screwdriver?" I asked, and she stopped.

"Yeah, one sec," she responded, to my mild surprise. She produced a folding fabric case from a saddlebag and passed it to me. I was further surprised to find that it contained a wide selection of small tools with varying degrees of specialisation, from simple screwdrivers all the way to PipBuck keys.

"Hmm," I murmured as I selected a flathead of the right size and started unscrewing the keypad's casing.

Spiral moved closer to watch what I was doing. "You know how to hack keypads?"

"Not really. Never done this before." The last screw came free and I removed the front panel, giving myself access to the circuit board behind it.

"Then why...?"

"Special talent," I said with an edge of sarcasm. I shifted my raincoat and saddlebags so she could see my cutie mark: a green printed circuit board very much like the one I was now faced with. "My intuition's usually pretty good when it comes to working out how things... work." This circuit was straightforward enough. I pulled a wire free from where it was soldered in place. "I reckon if I use this to bypass that chip, that should be the right signal." 

I replaced the wire and the light on the keyboard flashed from red to green. "Nice," I said, pleased with myself. The thing with special talents, in my experience, was that there was always somepony who could do your talent better. I wondered if that was still the case.

"Shit, dude," Spiral said. With her shotgun drawn and pointed inside, she pushed the door open. "Stay close to me."

We stepped through onto the factory floor. Meagre sunlight passed in through the windows above us, dull rays filled with shimmering dust outlining machines in the gloom.

The green glow from Spiral's horn suddenly intensified to a bright cone, illuminating our immediate surroundings.  She glanced over her shoulder and almost blinded me. "Gah!" I complained.

She looked away. "Sorry!" 

"Neat trick," I commented as we looked around. The production line was made up from a variety of inscrutable metal boxes with conveyor belts leading between them. Nothing of use for us there. Smaller rooms were stacked two-high along three of the four exterior walls, with a metal balcony running around the edge to provide access.

"You don't know any spells? Like, just TK?"

"TK?" I frowned, but then I remembered. 

"Telekinesis," we said at the same time.

I got blinded again as Spiral turned to grin at me. "Stop doing that!"

"Sorry! Not used to, like, y'know."

I didn't know, but left it. "No, I can float stuff around just fine but that's all. For a while I was trying to learn how to-"

"Shhh!" She froze.

"What? What is..." I trailed off as she waved a hoof. Then I heard it - a sound I now recognised. Scuttling. A lot of it, all around us.

A brief glance over my shoulder at the door gave me a glimpse of something moving. "Spiral..."

"Shh!" She hadn't moved a muscle.

I looked over my shoulder again and my heart skipped a beat. Forget mantises - in the light from outside I could see an actual giant scorpion creeping towards us. I drew my crowbar. Spiral's cone of light moved to point at the scorpion, and it recoiled slightly. It wasn't alone, though - there were movements in the shadows around us.

Our exit was blocked, but the path ahead to some stairs looked clear. I liked the idea of getting to higher ground. 

"Spiral, there," I pointed, nudging her to get her attention. She jerked at the touch as if she'd been stung, a reaction which seemed reasonable upon reflection. Still, she nodded.

We bolted. The stairs were metal, the kind with gaps between individual steps, and our hoofsteps clanged loudly as we ascended. There didn't seem to be any scorpions already at the top, and through unspoken agreement we darted through the nearest door. Spiral slammed it shut behind us and leaned against it. Neither of us said anything; instead we took the time to glance over the room for movement. We were in a security control room - like a budget version of one I'd once seen in Pendulum. Only one swivel chair and four monitors arranged in a line along a desk. A single large plant pot sat in one corner of the room, filled with very dry-looking soil. I had a brief, crushing moment of hope when I saw the water cooler. But it was empty; all the water had leaked away long ago. I spotted a light switch by the door and flicked it - to my surprise, the bulb in the ceiling flickered on.

"What the shit," Spiral said, dropping her spell.

"Is every animal out here like that? Big and... big."

She cracked a hysterical smile. "Pretty much, like, yeah."

"How didn't we see them when we walked in?" I asked, and she shrugged in response. I knew the answer anyway, at least for me, because despite everything I still hadn't really been expecting to find anything alive inside. The room had a single wire-glass window next to the door, and I went up to it to peer out. Scorpions were practically pouring up the stairs, filling the floor outside. Small scuffles were breaking out, the arachnids locking claws and swiping at each other with stingers, and some were getting pushed right off the edge. One came right up to the window and lashed out with its tail. The barbed end thudded against the glass and I stepped back. Celestia, they were awful. "What should we do?"

"Can you pass me your crowbar?" Spiral asked, propping up her shotgun against the wall and going over to the window to look. She stared at the scorpions for longer than I did.

"What for?"

Spiral waved a hoof at me. "Just give it!" I did as she asked, and she took it in her telekinesis. She twirled it once in the air, testing its weight, making it look easy. "Okay, I'm gonna need you to like, open the door a little bit."

I could see what she wanted, so I used my magic to turn the handle and open the door a fraction. Immediately I could see the press of appendages outside, fighting to get in. I felt them too, through the telekinetic field - unsure of whether or not it'd prove strong enough, I added my own weight against the door. "Are scorpions usually this... aggressive?"

"Dunno," Spiral said, jabbing the flat end of the crowbar through the gap like a spear. I couldn't tell if she'd hit anything. She kept jabbing, keeping her distance from the opening.

"This isn't going to work," I said. "There's too many, and they're not all gonna get close enough to the door for you to stab them."

She glanced at me. "Do you have a better idea?" A stinger flailed into the room, and I slammed the door on it in surprise. Partially crushed, it spasmed away. "This is working. This is fine. Like, even if we don't get them all, we can kill enough so we can leave."

I wasn't sure what exactly what she meant by 'leave', but I took it to mean abandoning the factory and continuing to Skyward. "We can't leave until we've had a look around."

"Uh, yes we can."

That wasn't right. I didn't want to run away - but I didn't really have a proper reason as to why. I felt like I'd put us in danger by getting us into the building, and didn't want that to be for nothing, even though - paradoxically - getting hurt was the most likely outcome of staying. The pressure on the door had eased somewhat, and I glanced around the room. Again, my eyes fell on the cooler.

"They'll have replacement bottles," I realised aloud.

"What?" Spiral swung the crowbar again. "Can you, like, keep your eye on the door?"

She had a point. This wasn't time to lose focus. "The cooler," I started. Briefly I wondered if ponies still used coolers. "You load in replacement bottles at the top when it- when they run out. They're bought in bulk. So there'll probably be a couple of old ones in a storeroom somewhere, still sealed."

"That's true. Hmm."

"I mean, the water might have gone bad already, I don't know-"

"-No, like, I don't think so, not if it's been treated properly and it's still sealed. Close the door a sec." I did so, and felt corpses being pushed out of the way on the other side. Spiral propped the crowbar at an angle against the wall, next to her shotgun. "That was actually working pretty well, but they're being more, like, wary now?" She pulled the swivel chair away from the desk and sat in it, slowly spinning herself around.

I went to look at the monitors, turning on the terminal without really having to look. The curved green-tinted screens came to life, displaying four camera feeds. I hit a key and the feeds were replaced by different ones. I hit the key a few more times, letting them cycle past. No sign of any water, but there was no way they'd put cameras in every room, and I couldn't see any more scorpions either. The feeds that weren't focused on the factory floor - which was still crawling with the things - were focused on the hallways, offices and control rooms in its periphery.

"You seeing these?" I asked. Spiral wheeled herself over. One feed caught my eye - a fancy-looking office in a state of disarray. It was hard to see in detail, but I could tell that decayed files were strewn over the heavy desk and around the floor, along with what looked like paper money. Spiral had briefly explained wasteland economics to me, so I knew that the old currency was worthless. Apparently bottlecaps were in use instead, which- well, whatever. A painting on the back wall was hanging out at an angle. "Is that a wall safe?"

Spiral craned her neck to look. "Could be."

"We have to go check that out," I enthused. I knew that wall safes like that had been something of a fashion among - well, among ponies with possessions valuable enough to be worth locking up - but I'd never seen one myself.

"Yeah, okay." She pushed herself away from the desk, spinning again as she did so. I glanced back at the feeds again, cycled idly a couple of times. Spiral got to her hooves. "Water first."

"What are we going to do about the rest of the scorpions?"

She picked up the crowbar and the shotgun, and passed the crowbar over to me. It was wet, and bits of carapace were stuck to it. "I don't think they like my light. If we keep moving, like, don't let them get close, we should be okay."

I didn't really like that plan, but saw no alternative except to sit where we were and wilt. "Okay," I echoed her.

"Okay, cool." She looked away, re-cast her light spell, and opened the door. I followed her outside and tried to work out where the scorpions were - Spiral used the butt of her shotgun to knock one off the balcony - but we were moving quickly enough that it didn't really matter. We made it to the other corner of the U-shaped balcony, where there was a heavy two-way door, and barged through, only to be faced with stairs leading down. "Should we?" she asked, glancing behind us. I nodded my assent.

I had my suspicions that the stairs would lead down to the storage area on the other wise of the shutters we'd seen from the outside, and that turned out to be the case. "I guess you're used to all this," I commented as we started to search the piles of palettes and boxes lining the room. We stuck close.

"Hmm?"

"Isn't this what you do? Spelunk old buildings and stuff?"

"Oh. Um, yeah..." Spiral wrinkled her nose. "Not used to the scorpions though."

"Ha, yeah." Circuit boards... metal housings... packaging... I wondered what was being manufactured here, and if it still held any value.

"Shit, that's it, isn't it?" Spiral said suddenly, pointing. I looked. Sure enough, a shrink-wrapped palette was poking out from underneath a pile of crates. Together, we managed to clear the way. I used my crowbar to tear the shrink-wrap, and Spiral pulled one of the bottles free. She turned it over in the air, inspecting it for damage. "Looks sealed to me. I'll try some first, my stomach can probably handle it better if it's bad."

"Yeah, probably," I vaguely agreed, not really having an opinion. I watched as she unscrewed the cap and peeled the plastic seal away, then glanced around the room. There didn't seem to be any scorpions in this part of the factory - I presumed that they struggled to open the doors.

Spiral tilted the bottle and took a sip. She hesitated for a second. "Ah, fuck it," she said, "tastes fine." She tipped it further and drank. "Pretty good actually."

I pulled another bottle from the palette, but didn't open it. "How valuable exactly is clean water?"

"Around these parts? Like, not very. It rains a lot, and when it rains it pours. Most places have some way of collecting it. But like, this time of year, you can't rely on it raining."

"What about radiation and stuff?" I asked.

Apparently finished, Spiral wiped the bottle's neck and slid it over to me. "It's so weird that you don't, like, know this stuff." To my taste the water was a little off, but I was thirsty enough that I was able to trick myself into thinking I didn't care. "So like, this area didn't get a direct hit, so the radiation's mostly subsided. Even the groundwater is fine if you're desperate, so long as you're not too close to the river. The river's bad, yeah. But like, the pegasi keep the clouds in good shape, so-"

"Pegasi?" I stopped drinking to ask.

"Shit, yeah. So like... the pegasi, the Enclave, they're still up there, above the cloud curtain."

I tried to wrap my head around that. "What, all of them?"

"Pretty much all of them, yeah. Never seen one myself. You done with that?"

I nodded and wiped the neck like she'd done, then slid it back over to her.  She started filling her canteen. "Sooo... now that we're good for water..." I said.

"Yeah, yeah, let's go look for that safe. Probably upstairs." She screwed the caps back onto the canteen and the bottle.

By the time we'd made it back up to the second floor some more scorpions had found their way onto the balcony. There was one waiting right on the other side of the door. Surprised, I swung the crowbar at it and missed. The red piece of metal clattered to the floor as the scorpion lunged, and I was momentarily deafened by Spiral firing her shotgun next to me. "Thanks," I said, staring at the remains. 

"You gotta be more careful, like," Spiral said.

"It caught me off guard," I said in return, before realising that was exactly what she was saying.

Spiral just shook her head, and the shadows shook too. "You think the room with the safe is this way?" She pointed down the length of balcony to our right.

"Yeah, or on the other side."

Spiral took a few steps and batted away a small (relatively speaking) scorpion that was lingering in our path. "Well, let's go then. Don't know what you're expecting to find."

"I don't know," I echoed her.

We found the office behind the fourth door along the balcony - a small plaque labelled the office as once belonged to the factory's "chief manufacturing executive". It had been left ajar, and a scorpion had found its way inside. Spiral took care of it without firing another shot.

The office's thick red carpet was decaying, as were the papers strewn around, and the air was musty. The green light certainly didn't help the place's look. I spotted the painting right away and went over to investigate, moving it further out on its hinge as I approached.

"Hold on, I'm going to get this corpse out of here," Spiral said, grabbing the scorpion by the tail and out onto the balcony.

A grin spread across my face when I saw that I'd been correct. The safe on the other side of the painting was already open and turned out to be mostly empty, though it still contained enough loose cash to make my eyes water. Resting atop the money was something that struck me as perhaps being more useful in the new world - a magical energy weapon.

"Yep, there's a safe, and there's something inside," I said to Spiral as she re-entered the room.

"Oh, cool!"

"Looks like a gutted laser pistol. Don't think it looks like it'll work."

"No, I think it's just been modified, look-" Spiral levitated it out of the safe. "-these parts don't belong."

"Huh." I used a hoof to nudge around the money in the safe, checking if there was anything else beneath. There wasn't. I turned around and assessed the rest of the room, and the only thing to jump out at me was a terminal sitting on the  desk. "Maybe there's something on that about it," I said, pointing. Spiral shrugged, putting the gun down for a moment while she drank some more water. I sat myself at the desk and tried turning on the terminal. Its screen looked to have scorch marks underneath the dust, which seemed strange to me. Surprisingly, it powered up and green text began to scroll.

"Think I should try, like, firing it?" Spiral asked. The light from her horn intensified slightly as she used her telekinesis.

"Uh-huh," I said, reading the text. My mind processed the question, and I looked up to see the gun floating next to her again. "Wait, no. Maybe. Don't point it at anything important."

"Duh," she rolled her eyes at me. I was already glancing back to the terminal. Now that it was fully loaded, I could see that it had been wiped at some point. Disappointing. I leaned back in the chair, and regretted it when a cloud of dust rose from the back cushion. "Okay, here goes," Spiral said, moving in front and to the side of the desk and aiming the gun at the back wall.

I was blinded by a flash, and the accompanying bang practically made me fall out of my seat. "Gah!" I yelped. "What- was that lightning?" I blinked a few times and my vision returned, spots of colour slowly fading.

Spiral was too busy laughing to answer. "Hoooooooooly shit. Dude, I'm sorry, did that hit you? It looked like it hit you. Like, it definitely hit the terminal."

My heart was pounding as I got to my hooves. "You just fired a lightning gun at me." The terminal was apparently still working, though I could see that part of the housing was blackened on one side where it hadn't been before.

The smile on her face was fading. "I didn't fire it at you, I fired it at the wall, like. It just... arced. And you're still like, alive, so either it didn't hit you or it's not powerful enough to do anything."

"Can I try?" I asked, holding out a hoof.

"'Course, but aim it, like... away from me." 

"Yeah, yeah." Our telekinetic fields briefly merged into a turquoise glow around the gun as she passed it to me. I crossed the room and pointed it out through the door, hoping it would arc to the railing and being careful not to step onto the metal flooring. "Just pull the trigger, right?" I glanced at Spiral for assurance, and she nodded.

I took a breath and pulled the trigger, and a bolt of actual lightning forked and arced to the balcony and the metal doorknob. Despite knowing roughly what to expect this time, I jumped, my telekinesis breaking. The gun clattered to the floor.

"Who made this thing?" I wondered aloud, picking it back up. "I mean, I've seen stuff like it, but this is something else." I sighed. "I guess whoever it was died two hundred years ago." After a moment's hesitation, I turned on the spot. "We should try it on one of the scorpions."

"Yeah, for sure." Spiral held out a hoof and gestured for me to pass the gun back, but then changed her mind and gestured for me to keep it. "Actually, you shoot with that, and I'll like, get 'em with the crowbar if it doesn't kill them."

"Okay."

We crept out onto the balcony again, glancing around. I spotted one scorpion crawling up the stairs nearest to us, and I pointed, but Spiral seemed to already have seen it. We weren't really in any danger - between the range of my telekinesis and the range of the lightning itself, Spiral would have plenty of time to react while the scorpion crossed the distance to me if the gun didn't have an effect.

By the time we were close enough, the scorpion had reached the top of the stairs and spotted us. It approached slowly, claws raised. I let it get close to the gun before pulling the trigger, to lessen the chance of the bolt arcing to the railing again.

Nothing happened. I pulled the trigger again. Nothing. The scorpion burst forward, but Spiral speared it with the crowbar.

"I'm getting way better at dealing with these things," Spiral commented. "Why didn't you shoot? Or it's not working?"

"It didn't work." I frowned and brought the gun closer to examine it. Nothing immediately jumped out at me. "Cell might've run dry. To be honest I was surprised to see it had any charge left after two centuries."

"Well, with cells, like, it depends on what kind of circuit they get left in. Some do discharge, but generally they last for ever. May I?"

I passed the gun to her, and she pointed it at the railing and pulled the trigger a couple of times. I idly wondered how she knew so much about cells, because as far as I could tell she didn't own anything that used them.

"Might be some spares back in the office or somewhere," I suggested. She nodded, and we backtracked.

I was searching the second drawer of the desk when there came sounds from downstairs. Heavy, regular. Metallic. I startled and looked over to Spiral, and she looked spooked. "What's that?" I asked quietly. It sounded like machinery, something barely familiar.

Spiral stood, frozen. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, no, shit-" She darted towards the door, pushing it shut and pressing herself against it. After a moment she caught my eye and she laughed sharply. "Oh, Celestia, fuck. Can't fucking believe this," she whispered.

"What's that noise?" I backed away from the door, and from her.

"Uh, shit. I, like- like- I lied. I lied, like, about- well, it like, I just didn't tell you, like," she stammered.

Seeing her go like this was freaking me out. "You lied? About what? What's the noise?"

"Power armour," she said, and my mind finally made the connection. Hoofsteps. Hooves clad in metal. Power armour, the result of the combined efforts of the Ministry of Wartime Technology and the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. Back then, the suits were used by the Equestrian military. Who was using them now? "Steel Rangers," Spiral continued, as if she'd read my mind. The name was reassuring - in other words, it was still the Equestrian military. So why was she so spooked? How was she on the wrong side of the military?

"What's wrong then?" I asked, and she looked at me with a strange cross between desperation and accusation in her eyes. 

The hoofsteps stopped momentarily, and I heard a door swing open downstairs. A voice boomed. "-around outside, cover the exits and await further instruction. The rest of you, follow me. Eyes up, they could still be in here. Looks like radscorpions too." At that, there was a burst of gunfire. Machine guns. "EFS is useless."

Spiral reacted to the voice, moving away from the door. "Shit, it's him," she whispered. Something in her expression changed, and she looked at me. "He doesn't know you. I can hide, like, and you talk to him. You're alone. Yeah. You need to lie to him. I'll explain everything later. Whatever you say, I don't exist, like, got it?"

"What?" I hissed, heart pounding. The gunfire continued, and another whooshing sound joined in.

"Go, go, I'll hide, you'll be fine, like, just talk to them, lie to them. Go," she stressed, gesturing at the door. After a moment's hesitation, I went. She was leaving me in the dark, and my mind was starting to fill in the gaps on its own.

I opened the door and waited for a pause in the gunfire. I saw a burst of orange flame, heard another whoosh. "Hey-" My voice caught in my throat. "Hey! Don't, uh, don't shoot."

Slowly, I approached the railing of the balcony. The power armour clanked as whoever was below turned to face me.

I'd seen Rangers before, sure, and all told these didn't look much different. A little rougher around the edges, perhaps. It was the context that had changed, and the Rangers were far scarier in the new context than the old. They each stood maybe a head taller than your average pony, encased mane to tail in dark steel. The combination of respiratory apparatus and narrow visors left them appearing almost wholly inequine. Each had heavy weaponry mounted on their armour - machine guns, flamethrowers, something I couldn't identify - and each had a spotlight mounted on their helmet. The spotlights almost blinded me.

The one in the middle, the one with the weapon I didn't recognise, had armour with something more of a polish to it and more intricate detailing around the helmet. I took that one to be the leader, and was proven correct when he spoke.

"Who are you?" he asked, taking a heavy step towards the balcony.

His voice was loud, augmented by a spell or something in his helmet, but he spoke with clarity. What was that weapon? A rocket launcher? The way it had been integrated into the armour obscured its outline.

"Don't make me ask again, wastelander."

I swallowed. "Backlight! My name's- I'm Backlight."

"Very well. Why don't you join us down here?"

For a moment I was rooted to the spot, but then I nodded. My hoofsteps rang out as I made my way to the stairs, and down.

"What brings you to these parts, wastelander? Salvage?" the leader asked, and I nodded. "You're travelling light."

Something in his tone made me feel a little more confident. "Oh, no. Didn't know exactly what to expect - with the shooting - so my stuff's, uh, put away for the time being." I mentally kicked myself. That wasn't how I'd wanted to word it.

"Well, we mean you no harm." I noted that those around him made no move to point their weapons away from me.

"Yeah," I said. Part of me rankled at his voice, the way they were acting, but a smaller part of me was relieved to find something closer to the way things had been. Not like the raiders. I realised I probably should've said something more, but by then it was too late.

"My name is Paladin Oatey Porridge, but I suppose that 'sir' will suffice for you. You know who we are, I assume?"

"Steel Rangers," I replied, but didn't elaborate. From how Spiral had been behaving, I could only assume that the organisation had changed somewhat while I'd been asleep. Besides, I didn't trust myself to seriously address somepony whose name I'd just learned was 'Oatey Porridge'. Some ponies were cursed with those sorts of names, through no fault of their own.

He approached. "Yes, yes. I take it this is the first time you've crossed paths with us? How much do you know about our mission?"

That threw me through a loop. "Not much. Perhaps you can better explain it to me."

The armoured pony chuckled deeply, the laughs distorted by whatever he was using to amplify his voice. The effect was subtle, and I guessed that his voice was just naturally loud.  "We are custodians, primarily. We safeguard the artefacts of the old world, keep them out of the hooves of those who might use them for harm. Oh, but... it is of no consequence to you." He paused, barely a metre from me. "The shotgun blast, earlier... that was you, I suppose?"

"Huh?" It was a non-sequitur, it didn't make sense. Then it did, and the understanding hit me like a bucket of cold water. I shivered. He'd known, he knew. I tried to lie anyway. "Yeah, that was me, the scorpions-"

With one lazy motion, before I could move away, he reached out and hooked me around the neck with a single hoof and pulled me close. "Don't lie to me," he commanded, before pushing me past him into the centre of those gathered. "Backlight, was it?" He raised his voice. "Whoever else is hiding up there - you have five seconds to join us if you want to see Backlight here alive again. Four-"

Whatever he thought, I had no intention of dying there. "Wait!" I protested, "Please, no, she's-"

"-Three-"

Spiral called down from the balcony. "He's not involved."

"I'm sure I'll be the judge of that. Do my ears deceive me, or are you exhibiting some spine, Scribe?"

She stepped out into view, and the look in her eyes was pure hatred.

When she didn't speak, Porridge continued. "Theft. Assault. Desertion. That was just the last fortnight. More than enough for a court martial, wouldn't you say?"

Spiral didn't say anything. She broke eye contact with him.

"I suppose you have the right to remain silent. Ever a relief, to be spared your stuttering." Any hint of cordiality in his voice had long since disappeared altogether. Porridge chuckled again, and paused before continuing to speak. Lighter. "We're just heading into Skyward. A few warehouses remain across the river, and we thought it was worth a look." He paused once more. It was eerie how he was the only pony in the room speaking - there were four other Rangers with him, but they may as well have been statues. When he spoke once more, it was in icy tones. "I'm sure you remember the last time we visited the city. The question, then, is... why are you so eager to return?"

I didn't understand. I had no context. I was just a bystander. I didn't know what "Scribe" meant, if it was a title, or... was Spiral even her real name? The lead Ranger pontificated like- like a supervillain, but his words were clearly having some sort of effect on her.

"You'll join us, for the time being, as we have expended too many resources getting here to turn back now. Your hearing will take place once we get back, presuming nothing happens." He spoke that last part lightly, not lingering on it for a moment, but it stood out nonetheless. It took me a couple of seconds to process the implicit threat. "Collect your things. We'll leave at once."

She didn't move at once. She just stood there, and I saw her eyes move from Ranger to Ranger, looking for something. She didn't look at me, but instead turned and went back into the office.

"What did she tell you?" Porridge said, the words reverberating in amusement, and it took me a moment to realise I was being addressed. I elected not to respond. He chuckled.  "You can come or stay as you wish."

Stay. On my own, again. Or dead, part of me thought, interpreting the option altogether more darkly. Surely that wasn't what he meant. What would I do? I tried to picture it. I'd wait at the factory awhile. Go to Skyward after, back to my tiny apartment. I supposed it wasn't my apartment any more.

I could see the contempt he held for me - held for everypony, it seemed. Still, I looked at him, and nodded.

"You're quiet, aren't you?" he said. Just like that.

I wanted to put a hoof through his visor.