“Why can’t we just go back to Megaton and tell her we can’t deliver this letter?”
“If we find Ian and he’s dead, yes.” Megan stepped over the rubble that had fallen into the Potomac when the overpass bridge broke. “Besides, might find something useful. Haven’t been in any metro tunnels yet.”
“Wait. I thought you said we were going to a station.”
“And we are.” When Rarity kept quiet, the woman realised what was confusing her. “Oh. Before the war, Washington had a huge network of underground train tunnels,” she explained, waving an arm about to get across just how big it was. “I’m guessing more than a few people went down and tried to ride out the apocalypse there.”
“Huh. Underground trains. They obviously didn’t run on steam,” the mare mused.
“I don’t know what they ran on, honestly. Good luck finding one that still works, though,” Megan snorted. “I’ll bet a hundred caps that half the tunnels have caved in.”
As they made their way towards Northwest Seneca Station, Rarity looked around. The darkness made it very hard to see, and she had been forced to use her horn to illuminate her path, Megan using her Pip-Boy for the same purpose. The dim light threw the entire landscape into a mix of menacing shadows and eerie voids. More than once she had nearly walked right into a slab of concrete or a rod of rusty rebar.
“We’re nearly there.” Megan’s eyebrows rose up, though the gloom hid that. “Who the hell are they?” she asked, looking at the three figures huddled around a barrel.
“How am I meant to know?” Rarity asked quietly. “I know less than you do.”
Megan pursed her lips as she thought. “Stay here. Use your rifle and keep an eye on things.”
“Wait, what? You’re just going to leave me here?” Rarity hissed angrily. “You are crazy!”
“No, I want to keep you safe. They could be dangerous.” As Megan pulled her rifle off her back, Rarity tapped on her shoulder. “What?”
“What if they are dangerous?” she asked worriedly.
There was a small pause. “Aim for the head.” With those four words the woman walked carefully towards the group.
“So, what happened next?”
“Well, I found out just how lucky we were that the old man in Minefield didn’t hit us.”
“Kill the bitch!”
Rarity took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. The recoil nearly sent the scope right into her eye, and she almost dropped the rifle in shock. When she recovered and looked again, one of the attackers was on the ground, not moving.
The whole meeting had turned sour before it had even started. The three strangers had opened fire on Megan before she even had a chance to retaliate. Though Megan had managed to drive them back with her Flamer, two of the attackers had rifles, and Rarity had been forced to act.
“Sniper!” a second voice called out, his head swivelling around as he tried to find her. Fortunately, he stood completely still, allowing Megan to drop her Flamer, to one knee and shoot him herself. As the man fell, the third jumped out from behind the building he had been taking cover behind. He ran and tackled Megan, both of them going down in a tangle of limbs.
“Megan!” Rarity yelled. She dropped her rifle and galloped to help her friend.
“Get off me!”
“I’m gonna cut off your head and take it back on a fucking plate!” the man yelled. He was straddling Megan, one hand on her throat. “But not before I make you pay!” he screamed, punching her in the face repeatedly.
The man was so engrossed in causing her harm that he failed to hear the pony approach from behind. “Get off of her!”
He stopped to turn to the source of the voice, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a combat shotgun. “Oh shi- ”
Megan shakily pushed the corpse off of her, looking at the space his head had recently vacated. “T-thanks, Rarity,” she mumbled, rubbing her jaw.
“I just killed him,” the mare whispered, letting the drum-barrel shotgun fall to the ground. “I saw him hitting you, and I just- ”
“Rarity,” Megan said, picking up her rifle, “you heard him. They were trying to kill me. You saved my life.”
“When I saw him on top of you, when I saw you getting hurt, I just... I felt so angry.” Rarity looked at the gun she had just dropped. “I didn’t even think, I just... wanted to hurt him.”
Megan struggled to her feet and limped over to the mare. Bruises were forming all over her face, one of her eyes beginning to swell shut. Her right cheek was cut open, leaking blood onto the ground as it dripped down her chin. She leant down and pulled the pony into a hug. “You saved me,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“I have no regrets about what I did that night, though. Those men were evil.”
The other five looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Isn’t evil a bit... strong?”
“Usually, I would agree. But in this case, no. Evil is the perfect word to describe them.”
While Rarity had gone to retrieve her sniper rifle, Megan had taken it upon herself to dig through the men’s pockets. “Did you... find anything interesting?” In lieu of words, Megan held out a piece of paper. Rarity carefully took it and read it. “Holier-than-thou white knight? A thousand cap bounty? Is that a lot?” Megan nodded. “They want your head?” the mare asked, sounding disgusted.
“Don’t ask me why.” Megan limped to the one Rarity had headshotted. “Nice shooting, by the way,” she commented, poking the corpse with her foot.
The unicorn was very unsure how to feel about that compliment. There was no denying that her shooting had been very effective. But she was still uneasy about the fact that she was killing. “Why are you labelled a ‘white knight’?” she asked, trying to take her mind off things.
“I honestly can’t see why.” Megan looked up at the starry sky. “No, it can’t be Burke. He’s dead.”
“Burke?”
“That psychopath wanted me to blow up Megaton. I ended up killing him to protect the sheriff,” she explained. “Unless he had someone else there to... put the bounty on my head.” Megan groaned and put her head into her hands. “Great. Just what I need, a bunch of mercenaries trying to kill me. As if the Wasteland wasn’t making things hard enough already.”
As Megan’s speech devolved into a lot of profanity (Rarity almost couldn’t believe what she hearing), she walked closer to the body of the man she had killed with her sniper rifle. She almost threw up.
His face was almost entirely intact, the only sign of something being wrong the bottlecap-sized hole in his cheek. The back of his head, though, looked as though it had exploded, revealing to the world (and any hungry wildlife) the inside of his skull.
“Huh. This rifle looks different.” Rarity happily looked away from the corpse to see what Megan was talking about.
The woman was inspecting the magazine of the gun. “Definitely not American, but it uses five-fifty-six rounds. It looks like it fires the rounds at a higher pressure, too,” she added, pulling the bolt of the gun back to chamber a round. “Weighs a little more than the R91, though.”
“What does any of that mean?”
“Probably a Chinese gun, though what the hell it’s doing here I have no idea.” Megan just shrugged. “Not like it really matters, though. A gun’s a gun.” She straightened up, then promptly fell over, clutching her left thigh. “Rarity,” she groaned through the pain.
The unicorn had rushed over the moment the woman had fallen over. “What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly, her eyes running up and down her body to try and see what it was.
“Bullets. In my leg.” She rolled over and let go of her leg, her hand now dripping with blood. “Get it out, would ya?” she asked.
Rarity just stared for a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Use your magic and pull them out. I’d do it myself, but I can’t get a good angle.”
Rarity gulped and reached out with her magic. She probed each wound carefully, not wanting to cause any more damage, and found the source of her pain. “That feels funny,” Megan commented. “And I don’t mean - Argh! Watch it!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Rarity wilted under the woman’s glare. “I got one of them out, though,” she chuckled nervously, holding up the bloody metal slug.
“There’s two more, though,” Megan said with gritted teeth. “Just... hurry up.”
Two more pained grunts and two more apologies later and the bullets had been successfully removed. Megan finished bandaging up her leg and got to her feet. “Thanks, Rarity.”
“It was nothing,” she replied, still a little shaken by what she had just done.
“Let’s find somewhere to rest for the night. The letter can wait until tomorrow.”