"Now, just to be fair an' all." Applejack was looking to Stan. "You already on a job?"
"Always." Stan hiked a thumb. "What we were doin' before Giddyup caught the scent of ponies."
Skyline's ears twitched. "He can smell ponies?!"
"That is incorrect." Giddyup leaned in closer to Skyline. "But I am refining my auditory database with related sounds."
Applejack swatted Daffodil's back. "Which someone provided fer 'em. So how 'bout this, Courier, how fast they expectin' ya? Can ya spare a detour?"
Stan let out a little sigh. "Ponies seem to love causin' those." His shoulders gave a roll. "Each time I run into them, feels like."
"Sorry 'bout that. We'll make it worth yer while." Applejack began to turn in place, only to have Daffodil match, glaring at her.
"We don't need anything delivered. What is wrong with you?"
Applejack reached to nudge Daffodil, just to have the hoof swatted away. "Ignore her. We need that." She pointed at Giddyup. "Need 'em brought to a specific place. He's the letter. Once we get to read that letter, ya did the job."
Stan directed a wrinkled finger at Twilight. "Ah already did that, not to short myself or nothin'."
Applejack smiled, smug and confident. "Twilight's nice an' all, but to get it all, and to make sure we don't hurt Giddyup, we would want real professional supplies."
Twilight sat up at that. "You don't mean?"
Daffodil crashed to her belly. "Pretty sure she does!"
Skyline sat to direct a finger at each of the mares. "Out with it. Do ponies of this other vault always dance around the specifics?"
Applejack turned her smiling visage on Skyline sharply. "Oh yeah, we're gonna need you too, merc. Ya want money, don't ya?"
Skyline blinked softly. "I'm not opposed to it. What do you need?"
Applejack brought her hooves together. "Great! Then ah'll hire ya both. Skyline'll be a guard. That's what ya do, right?"
"Right on the money, there." Skyline nodded firmly. "Escort mission? Half up front, half when we arrive safely."
Twilight inclined her head at the strange partially-robotic pony. "You've done this before. You have your payment thoroughly worked out. I'm impressed." She looked back to Applejack. "But I still don't know where you're going with this entirely, but can guess, and they are all concerning."
"Speakin' of that. It's gonna be extra, makin' me run late on the other job."
Applejack met Stan's eyes. "'cept yer likely ahead of schedule, and 'late' is mighty figurative in the wastes. Things happen. So long as you show up, people'll be happy."
Stan narrowed his eyes at the pony. Of the ones he'd met up to then, she seemed to be the most 'worldly' of the bunch. "Pretty sure you'd be right displeased if I treated your delivery like that."
"Reckon ah would be." She pulled down her hat. "But so long as it got to us, we'd just grumble about it. That's how it works. Now, in this case... we're comin' with ya, so ah doubt that'll come up." She pointed the way. "We need Skyline and Giddyup."
"I need to be paid." Skyline wriggled a few metal fingers for emphasis.
Stan burst into laughter. "You've come a long way. Good on ya. Don't let 'em mess around with you on the job."
Twilight coiled on herself, drawing out a bag of jingling caps. "What is the going rate of this service?"
"That depends." Skyline leaned towards the studious pony. "What kind of resistance are we expecting? Super mutants? Deathclaws? Random bandits?" He rolled a metal hand with each example. "Makes a big difference. Also how far we're going."
Daffodil pointed at Applejack. "She's the expert, clearly."
"Thank ya for noticin'." She tipped her hat back up into proper position. "Alright then. Fifty caps to Skyline here, other fifty when we get there." Even as Twilight counted out the caps, Applejack's attention was more firmly on Stan. "You get paid when the delivery's finished."
"Shoot." That was more common than not. Didn't stop him from hoping she didn't know that. "Ah do have a demand, or we ain't going nowhere."
Applejack rolled a hoof. "Yeah?"
Stan slapped the back of Giddyup with a metal clunk. "He is my friend, not my cargo. He gets hurt, I get pissed."
"I would also be very upset," noted Miss Aunt, avoiding the use of such crude language. "And disappointed. I expect better from ponies."
Daffodil sat up, looking at Aunt. "Hey... You were from the other vault... right?"
"That's right, little thing," Miss Aunt agreed in the tone of a parent quite pleased that their child got a correct answer.
Daffodil prodded at Twilight. "She in the records?"
Twilight turned her Pipboy into view, her horn glowing as she prodded at it. "Um... Hm..." She pointed her free hoof at Miss Aunt. "They come from a different manufacturer than the Giddyups do."
"Now don't bring up that." Miss Aunt set a grapple unit on Giddyup's units. "There's no reason General Atomics International and Wilson Atomatoys can't get along, especially outside the boardroom."
Giddyup nodded strongly at that. "My place of manufacture only determines my initial parameters."
Twilight nodded with less certainty. "Right, but I only have Giddyup serial numbers here for Stable 2. Whatever other robots are from there, I don't know." She lowered her hooves to the ground, standing up. "What was your role in this?"
"I'm terribly sorry to report." Miss Aunt dipped forward a little. "But you aren't allowed to ask that. Or I should say, I'm not allowed to answer that. I was told this is fairly standard as vault procedures go."
Twilight groaned in defeat, admitting that she did indeed know of such infuriating rules when it came to vaults more often than not. "Alright. Applejack?"
"Reckon we have everythin' worked out." She started back into the bushes the ponies had come from originally. "Let's be off then. Just a little hike and we get paid and everypony's happy."
Stan raised a brow at that. "And the not-ponies?"
Applejack turned an ear back. "Ah, right. Everycre... No that don't work neither." Robots were not creatures. "Everything'll be happy."
With that settled, they moved as one ungainly mob, with far too many equines than one expected in any given wasteland party.
Daffodil moved to Stan's side. "Applejack seems to think you're different. What makes you different from any other human ever?"
Stan gave a thoughtful hum. "Well, first." He extended his pointing finger. "Couriers are like merchants, willing to go wanderin' 'tween the settlements, which means they're used to danger." The next finger went out. "Second, unlike a merchant, we're not trying to find a nice cushy route. We go new places all the time." Out went the next finger. "Third, we're alone as oft as not, but we still get there. That means we don't go down easy." Out went the fourth finger. "We can be trusted to be impartial, unless we're paid to take a side. You need someone to give an outside view, there we are. And we'll not burn your house down so much as say hi, unlike raiders."
He brought his hands together. "The last one's a bit of tradition, if ya ask me. The mail always gets where it's goin'. That's a promise we couriers been makin' since before the bombs dropped. We haven't abandoned it. Ya gotta respect that kind of dedication, from generation to generation. Ya'd have to back real far to not find a courier, making a delivery what need makin'."
"Huh." Daffodil's expression did not imply she entirely got it, but enough that some of the edge wore away. "Do you consider your job a sort of... religious thing?"
"What am ah, a tribal?" Stan grunted at the idea. "It's a job, but it's a job ah take seriously. Ain't failed to deliver yet, and don't plan to start."
"There he is!" bursting from the bushes ahead and to the left came two bulky forms, their miniguns warming up as they marched.
Skyline dove, hitting the ground low, but immediately into a scramble in a feat only a quadruped could manage easily. "They're after me," he hissed. He had made no friends of the supers over the years.
"Shit." Stan decided against raising his gun. That minigun was already preparing to fire, and no single bullet from him was going to convince the super not to proceed. He dove instead behind a rock barely large enough for cover, but the largest he could reach in a hurry. "Duck, ponies, if ya wanna see tomorrow."
Applejack didn't need to be told. A loud bang filled the air. She was already running the other way from Skyline, a clang of metal against metal as her bullet knocked the gun away from her and the others from the vault.
Twilight and Daffodil scrambled in other directions, scattering the equines on the battlefield away from the supers. Not that this stopped them from advancing. The gun was brought back down, the other swerved, trying to focus on Applejack. Both began to belch bullets faster than anyone there besides them would have wanted.
Daffodil grabbed for the gun hanging at her side, not nearly as fast a draw as Applejack, and even that attempt was aborted as the bullets came too close to her and she veered away from Applejack all the more.
Skyline drew his blades mid-gallop, hopping up to his hinds and jumping against a tree. Bounding between it and its neighbor, he rapidly ascended even as holes punctured through the poor innocent trees that hadn't ever hurt anyone. He kicked off both trees, sending them crashing away from the supers as he was propelled towards them. They hit the ground with a thunderous crash of splintering wood, but Skyline was paying that no mind.
The more important part was that his angle was changing fast enough that the super was having a hard time keeping their bucking weapon directed at the incoming batpony.
Giddyup only then moved. None of the shots had been directed at him, and Stan was, relatively, safe. "Safe routes detected. Are we using them?"
"No can do, pal. Get yourself behind somethin'. Ah swear." He snapped off a quick shot, sending a spray from the super's arm. Not that it seemed to care much, other than throwing its aim off a little.
Still, that was enough for Daffodil to get enough time to get her gun out. "Bloody Tartarus!" She fired wildly at the mutant, still backing away. There was no rock or wall close enough to even dream of covering her, so moving was the second best option she stuck to.
Twilight set her hooves down firmly. "Time to experiment." Her horn glowed as wires came into view, running along the horn as she turned on whatever that was. "Let's see how effective it is." She fired a blast, thin, long, and slicing. The super suddenly didn't have an arm, falling to the ground like a small felled log. The gun came after it a moment later. The super mutant began to scream, that much enough to teach it pain.
Twilight flopped backwards. "That was... too high..." She listed over, unconscious and flopped across the ground, victim of her own machinations.
The other super gaped at what had become of their friend. "Horses are..." A word to encompass it didn't come to mind. He grabbed the still attached arm of his friend, yanking him away. "C'mon!"
Stan lined up his shot, but never got to take it. Skyline had arrived, blades flashing with the sound of metal meeting flesh in a meeting that went poorly, at least on the flesh's side. The great fist of the super smashed into the ground in a spray of dirt, but Skyline was already not there, slicing at the injured super's front before catching the other blade across the throat. Skyline was splattered with the result, but there was suddenly only one combatant.
"Cole!" The other mutant grabbed for the top of his gun, aiming to end the battle in a hurry.