Really, besides the wind chill and a growing headache, nothing really happened between the trip from the Seahorse to Watershed.

If anything, there was that the roads were shorter and perhaps better kept, with less obvious signs of decay, probably due to generations of scavenger’s than anything else. No signs of life, wild or not, but I supposed I needed to take what I got, and I suppose everyone needs a bit of quiet after a long series of events that would make anyone question there grip on reality.

Really, the only thing I noticed was that the roadsides were increasingly being cluttered with the remains of old campsites, some fresher than others. I dearly hoped I wasn't going to deal with any bandits or anything. It seemed as if my trip into the savage wastes was going to be rather peaceful, as far as things go.

"Wake up, Blueberry." I said, gently prodding her in the shoulder with a finger.

I pointed in the direction of the armed ponies a few feet outside our destination, who was still aiming for at my head.

"It's time for you to convince ponies that I am not about to go on a killing spree."

Blinking slowly, she shuffled out of blanket and onto the ground with a thud, and looked at the pair of ponies standing right in front of us, just a brisk walk away from the town gates. Both were armed and woe nasty looks on their faces.

"Excuse me, sir's, is there a problem here?" she said carefully after waking up fully, batting her eyelashes as she walked over to the guardponies.

The one on the right snorted, and shifted his weight slightly, so that his remarkably armed battle-saddle was shown off. I never realized there was a need for a gun to have four different barrels. "There's a monster outside the gates, miss. I suggest you hurry inside before he gets restless."

"I was coming down the road, and I felt something go past my shoulder. Apparently, it was a shotgun shell." I said, barely keeping my own indignation in check. I didn't like the idea of being shot at, frankly.

Turning around, she huffed and walked over the guard on the left, a smaller stallion who was clearly less comfortable holding a gun than his trigger happy friend.

"Look, are you going to let us in or what? We have stuff to trade, but we can always just head back." Blueberry said all too happily, showing off too many teeth. The younger stallion gulped.

"Hey, Redwood, the mare might have a point. It's not like th-the big guy has done anything. I mean, he's probably a hired hoof or something." the meek guard stammered.

The taller stallion. Redwood apparently, grunted and turned his gaze to Blueberry.

Blueberry nodded. "Yes, yes he is. He's loyal to me and my caps. He's no issue."

"Fine, ya'll can go inside. Make a bad move, though, creature, and you will be dead quicker than you could blink." he said, apparently upset that I was allowed to live.

At that, Blueberry huffed, and trotted past the stallion with her nose upturned and her head raised high, which would have been effective if he wasn't about three times her size. I just gave my best impression of a friendly smile to the younger guard, who returned it to Blueberry earnestly and to me hesitantly.

Once inside the town, I realized something: Watershed was big, containing more ponies in one place than I have ever seen in my life. Not as big as my home, but close, and it was far louder. Most of the buildings seemed to be at least a story or so, and it seemed most of them were shops and other such things before the bombs, with some eve. I almost felt small in it, which was quickly stopped by nearly every pony in sight stopping to gawk at me, which reminded me, yet again, I was bigger than anyone else in here on virtue of being a minotaur.

Annoyed and embarrassed at the attention, I leaned down and tapped Blueberry on the shoulder.

"We need to find a place to stay, and quick. I don't like my chances out here." I said, only half joking. Blueberry nodded, giving me a cheerful grin, and pointed a hoof at a moderately intact building on the far end of the settlement with a small brown sign hanging off a ledge that declared it to be open.

"I am utterly sure that's an inn we could stay at." she said, certainty in her voice.

Wondering what a 'inn' was, I just nodded my head and kept walking with the cart, trying my best to ignore the stares from onlookers.

""I'm amazed people trust you enough not to attack me, Blueberry." I huffed as I set the cart in front of the inn. "How about you go in and get a room, I will wait out here and guard our stuff."

Blueberry, after laughing slightly, took one of the bags off the cart and trotted inside the building.

I leaned back on the cart, folded my arms, and after settling down on a fluffy bag, looked around.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, exactly, but as it turns out, pony eyes are even creepier when a few dozen pairs of them were just staring at you.

"What?" I said to no one in particular, voice slightly strained. At that, everyone seemed to go back to whatever they were doing before, thankfully. Pony eyes were far too big, and it amazed me that they don't get hurt more from all the debris floating around in the wastes.

Looking at my left, I got my first good look at the oddly named body of water known as the Donk, flowing sluggishly under what seemed to be a patchwork of wood, rocks, and cardboard that counted as a bridge, iron-grey and splashing lightly against it. I never knew that so much water could exist in one place, and the sound of it sloshing around was making me slightly unnerved.

"Ow!" I said, clutching my nose to make sure it didn't break. Thankfully, it wasn't broken, but it still hurt.

Looking downward, I noticed a giggling group of pony children, one of which was holding a rock with magic.

I growled. After a series of shocked gasps, the little ponies scrambled off on stubby hooves off to somewhere else, and when I turned around, I noticed some of the onlookers giving me appreciative looks.

"Hey, we have a room. Lucky us, it has two beds!" she said happily as she turned to me.

Glad that I did not have to see the reactions of the ponies around us to that, I brought up another issue that had crossed my mind.

She grinned. "There's a storage area in the back where merchants can keep there stuff."

I shrugged. "Merchant and bodyguard is fine." Better than sociopath and handler, in any case.

The interior of the inn was sparse, if not clean, mostly wood and iron with decent lighting overhead. There was only a few ponies inside, and the only one that really caught my attention besides the one behind the counter was a lax-looking pony with combat armor leaning close to the door.

However, my initial fears proved unfounded when he simply lowered his head back into his magazine and the pony behind the counter hurried me and Blueberry down the hall to our room. After fumbling with a key ring in her mouth for a few moments, the mare unlocked the door and ushered us inside it in a hurried manner.

"Well, Blueberry, you picked a winner." I muttered as I put down our stuff along the wall closest to the door and walked further in after I got a look at the room.

Indeed, while, at one time, the room might have been a decent place to live, the peeling paint and the stale smoke in the air was enough to kill any happy thoughts in my head. The only thing that looked interesting was a barely flickering terminal off to the side of a desk at the far end of the room under a window. which caught my interest.

My small companion, on the other hand, just snickered and plopped on her oversized bed with gusto.

"Oh, relax already! Aren’t you tired yet? You haven't slept in a day, and I am ready to pass out right now! Get some sleep!"

Her words had some truth in it. I never saw myself as an endurance walker, or a endurance anything, for that matter, and as it was my knees were killing me. While I couldn't really feel my limbs, let alone my face, thanks to the chill breeze outside, I was probably visibly exhausted. As such, I just mumbled in reply and put my own stuff on the desk near the window. Two strange messages, a chainsaw-knife, and a handful of the pre-package meals. I actually had forgotten about the combat armor I had, and when I found it under a fat pile of bags I nearly kicked myself. My rebar club, seeing that it was a deadly weapon on par with my also neglected machete, was on the cart as well, which was apparently in a shed out back.

Blueberry only brought two things, which consisted of the grey blanket and her own ranger robes. When I asked why, she said that one should never use the blanket that was already on a hotel bed, which made sense after I realized that it was actually, at one point, colored white.

"Hey, Watchful, I have a question, but I don't want to be invasive." Blueberry asked me quite suddenly, after a few good minutes of silence.

I couldn't help but raise a eyebrow as I sat down on the bed, not entirely prepared to lay down on it. "Blueberry, I am completely open. I thought we agreed to not keep secrets?"

He cheerful expression darkened for a few moments, but she simply waved a hoof around and scooted around the bed a bit to get comfy. "Well, it's about your home."

To my own distress, I had to give her question some thought. It was generally accepted that everyone had to know everyone, but it was never said you had to like anyone. Really, there was only Brass and Copper Pot, and both of them were pretty distant company.

"There was Brass and Copper, they were those two who were at the gate when you first arrived. I thought we have talked about this?"

Slightly baffled at where she was going with this, I continued. "Brass is pretty rough around the edges, but she's nice. Copper is a bit odd, but he's good company."

She propped her chin up with a hoof. "Is Copper the one who asked me where I got my stuff?"

Blueberry looked at me for a few moments, looking puzzled, but quickly put a hoof over her mouth to stop herself from...laughing?

"I thought...female minotaurs...." Blueberry paused to breath, face flushing purple, "had...udders. Like brahman."

"Well...ug, they have...there must be something else we can talk about. Anything besides...that."

Blueberry stretched out on the bed, and the sound of cracking joints filled the air. Wincing, she pouted lightly and gave me what passed as a pony's puppy-eyed look.

"Well, if you don't want to talk about your home, well, I guess there is one thing we could do."

At that, for whatever reason, she scooted herself over to the edge of the bed, lowered her head so that her hair started hang off it, and a comb levitated out of some unseen pocket in her robe and floated out to me.

I couldn't see Blueberry's face, but I had no doubt she had a big stupid grin on her face.

"You owe me for this." I said as I got a decent grip on it between my thumb and my forefinger. It was surprisingly heavy and felt like enamel, which made me wonder what it was made of.

Slowly, but surely, I dragged the five-pronged comb across her hair, perhaps a little roughly.

Lifting my arm away from her, I just shook my head. "I would think it would be 'heavy handed'."

Groaning, she snatched the comb out of my hand and used her magic to brush through her hair in surprisingly even strokes.

"Really, Watchful? You know, I was just wondering about how you grew up and all, and it's not like you have been really open about it. You don't talk much about it, either. Don't you miss it?" she pressed.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I do, I admit. I just know that there's no point in talking about it."

Sighing, but smiling, Blueberry crocked her head over to the green-flickering terminal, and to me, comb still working it's way through tangled dark blue strands of mane.

"Hey, Watchful, would you mind seeing what's up with that thing?" she asked, not bothering to raise her head to face me. I wasn't sure what creaked more, the bed or me, but either was Blueberry giggled at my plight.

The terminal was a odd one, thinner than the one's I was used too, and I wondered if it was broken. The blue-green screen was overtaken by a block of seemingly random letters and numbers, and nothing I clicked worked at all. It also seemed like random letters were highlighted, which was undone when I toggled them myself.

iQFCcLkvCd
iNtYCE7IFw
eZWYrltdcW
PepYgpqsol
viYzpskMBk
mnZTJvBPgK
30WzAfBnLM
rR3LFET7uG
rSp1KfKolX
KS8iwTgsHq

Enter?

She let the comb drop on the bed and climbed up on the desk chair, and squinted slightly as she tried to see the letters within the glow. The squint was quickly paired with a frown.

"Well, no wonder Watchful. This thing seems to be locked down hard. There's a encryption on here to prevent ponies to even enter in a password.Now I have to see what's on here."

Tapping a hoof on the desk lightly, she prodded a bit on the keyboard, which resulted in the screen looking like a even bigger mess.

iQFCcLkvCd
iNtYCE7IFw
eZWYrltdcW
PepYgpqsol
viYzpskMBk
mnZTJvBPgK
30WzAfBnLM
rR3LFET7uG
rSp1KfKolX
KS8iwTgsHq

Enter?

Staring at the increasingly eye-watering screen, I began to understand why ponies trained others to work with them. They probably didn't want to deal with them themselves.

"Well, normally, a password for this sort of thing would be a date or a name. But this is different than what I am used to, frankly. This must be Belle or Caldonian made or something, it's a portable modal." she said, huffing slightly.

I understood her frustration, considering that she was a Steel Ranger. Technology was half the reason for their existence, the other half most likely being specism.

She gave me a dubious look, but she pushed the chair out of my way with her hind legs.

Leaning down, I realized that, as it was, there were patterns in the mess of letters. Clicking on all the highlighted letters and numbers to return them to there original state, I stared at the screen for a few moments, cracked my knuckles, and picked out letters that formed the only word I saw on the screen.

iQFCcLkvCd
iNtYCE7IFw
eZWYrltdcW
PepYgpqsol
viYzpskMBk
mnZTJvBPgK
30WzAfBnLM
rR3LFET7uG
rSp1KfKolX
KS8iwTgsHq
Enter?

Motioning Blueberry over to look at the screen, I realized that the sound of ponies sputtering in disbelief was funny.

Wordlessly, she clicked Enter, and then the screen simply went to a series of individual file names, some more interesting than others.

-------------------------------------------------------
Under Investigation
-Canterberry Common's Chaotic Commotion Planning

Looking at the top title, it was clear that this little screen held a lot of information. It seemed that the terminal belonged to a pony named Greenwell and that he belonged to the Ministry of Moral, and that this was his personal files. And what files they were!

Giving a quick look at Blueberry, who was busy getting her hair in decent shape, I clicked the one directly below it, which caused the screen to blank out for a moment and reappear with a short blurb replacing the main files.

-CMTBG- Make sure MoAS get's funding within Tauronto, fuck with everything else.

I could only blink at the abruptness. For what seemed to be a official something, it seemed very informal. Clicking on a triangle-shaped icon at the far left of the screen got me back to the files page, and so I clicked the third one from the top.

Associates Of Carmine, Sable & White
---------------------------------------------------

Blueblood- 6 to 7 bastards running around, open secret. Funds heading to unknown goal. Possible affair with Rarity?

Sunny Skies- Griffon workers are paid half the bits of pegusi regarding employment at Sunny Windfarms. Also, tax evasion.

Fancy Pants- N/A Need's work. Seems to be a saint, so he must have a sex dungeon hidden somewhere or another.

Chieftan Blackhorn- Investigate connections with pan-Buffalo extremist groups.

Goldenblood-Possible Zebra ties? Hoofington tunnels require investigation. Actually, just investigate everything.

Twilight Sparkle-Investigate three-year period in which funds were funneled. Possible ties with Goldenblood?

Shining Armor- Possible infidelity, leaking of both Equestrian and Empirical military secrets? Secret-swapping between siblings?

Flim & Flam-Audit required. Tax evasion and poor working conditions also need investigation.

Doctor Sutetchi and Naifu: Illegal immigrants? Confirmed and to be tried for multiple cases for all of the following: One hundred and fifty-seven counts of medical malpractice, fifteen counts of aggravated murder (Naifu), seventy counts of extortion, twenty-two counts of patient abuse, one count of torture (Naifu), one count of assisted suicide without proper authorization, eight counts of preforming vivisections without anesthesia, one count of the abuse of a minor (Sutetchi to Naifu), twenty two counts of inducing magically triggered comas into patients without authorization, eight counts of the creation and distribution of snuff films, seven counts of assault (Naifu), and eighteen counts of equine experimentation. Also, she made Fluttershy cry. Note: See relevant file for full details.

Scootaloo, Sweetie Bell & Apple Bloom- Investigate connections with Ministry leaders.

Iron Will- Investigate connections with northern minotaur terrorists. Also pry into possible MoP funding irregularities.

The last name made me stare at the screen for a little bit. Presumably, the names on the file were all important figures, some more important than others, and the blurb about the ponies with the odd names made me wince several times. I clicked the little triangle at the bottom and found myself at the files page. I clicked all the other links, but nothing happened when I clicked on any other little blurb. Apparently, the files were either locked or the links were dead.

Getting up off my knees, I took to my bed, feeling sore as ever and now with a growing headache.

Her ears perked up, but her voice stayed even. "Oh, okay. I might look at it later."

For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the crackly noise of a half-working computer and my breathing.

"We might want to tell that mare up front. About the two-hundred year old half working terminal we just fixed."

I wanted to shake my head, but my horns were doing a number on the walls already. "Naw, why do we need to? And if she was interested in the thing, she would have moved it herself."

She waved her front in the air, which might have been more effective if she was not lying on her back.

"Nothing at all. Come on, let's go to a bar." she said, voice filled with cheer.

"Blueberry, it's still early in the morning. And I don't want to go to a bar." I said, slightly annoyed at her antics.

"What do you mean you don't want to go to a bar? Look, you sit down, you order a drink, and you try and have fun."

"I don't know how sitting around with a bunch of ponies drinking is fun, Blueberry. Neither are fun by themselves, and I doubt they go great together."

"Watchful, I really don't want to go by myself. I mean, I could bring something for protection, but I don't want to be the mare that reduced the town drunk to a pile of ashes."

I looked at her cheeky grin, and wondered just how much she remembered about how she me into this mess in the first place.

"Blueberry, I will go, but I refuse to drink." I said as seriously as I could muster, tired as I was.

After a few minutes of musing on the contents of the other folders on the terminal, so did I.

I spotted something like the curve of a horn, or perhaps a long fang on what might have been a head. Its limbs were not simply paws and claws but teeth and wet muscle and little rubbery feelers. Something that might have been a ribcage or a set of thick insectoid wings daintily flicked the air occasionally.

Staring at the creature, I eventually blinked. But when I opened my eyes, I simply saw blackness.

-----

I, unfortunately, discovered that there was nothing past my chest, the rest simply gone.

Sea Salt looked at me, her huge head taking up the entirety of the far side of the bed, smiled, and slurped the leg that was hanging on the side of her mouth.

-----

Something that might have been a pony once, two hundred years before the war, looked at me. Glazed over brown eyes looked at me questioningly, and the dry corpse took its rot-slimy mouth off my chest and stared at me.

-----

The little creature cleared its throat, and propped itself on its two rear legs.

It then began to stretch sinuously, never gaining any mass but shifting it's form and features until it was slightly taller and far more twisted. Its face melted into itself and suddenly stretched into a muzzle, and a single horn, thin and curled, grew out from the left side of its head. One arm grew thin, with three red wispy thin talons from what was once a paw, and the other was a dark grey and bulked until it was far thicker and more ursine. Its legs were different as well, with one resembling a beige ponies, while the other being a mottled white-black brahmains. Its tail was still that of a scorpion, however, albeit far longer and colored a glossy black.

I stared at the creature. It looked at me with two miss-matched eyes, one pale pink and ovoid and the other slanted and green. Both were filled with carefree mirth.

"Mine now." it said, giggling girlishly at it pointed to my side. My right, to be exact.

-----

Waking up, I felt oddly tired, even after a decent sleep. I honestly never enjoyed dreams, and at this point I was prepared to throw in the towel. That was, by far, the most freakish experience of my life. I probably needed help, or at least some sort of medication. I mean, really now, a tiny draconequus? A tiny little fun-size god?

The corpse hooker of dubious gender and Sea Salt wasn't pleasant either. Which reminded me that I did, in fact, see a big building far downriver that seemed like it was what the sea pony was talking about.

Grunting, I rolled over to my side, at which point I needed to catch myself on the desk beside the bed so that I didn't fall on the tiny pony-made bed.

Feeling somewhat upset myself, I responded gruffly, trying to get comfy on a bed that was far too small for me to get comfortable in. "Yes?"

"I...I have been thinking, and I just had this really weird dream...and you don't have to come with me, if you want."

The silence in the room was incredibly sad; to me at least, as both of us knew something was wrong and refused to take note of it.

"Blueberry...what was your dream about, exactly?" I said, hoping that, perhaps, the food we ate before was bad from two hundred years of existence and we all just had a bad trip on slightly moldy protein bars.

"Well," she said, shifting her head onto the pillow more, "I was home. And there were other ponies with me. And I just walked away from home, and it got blown up, and then everyone followed me, but they..." she breathed in hastily "they just kept dying. From griffons, but they really weren’t griffons, but they had wings and beaks and guns, and that really is beside the point." She choked slightly. "It was eventually down to me and my mom, in front of this big set of iron doors, and then she went inside, and it was filled with dead ponies, and... and then a big griffon came down from the sky and..."

"Do you...have issues with griffons?" I said, questioningly. I spared a look at my right hand. The little mark, to my surprise, was gone.

Blueberry breathed in deeply. "I don't...I don't have issues with them personally, I mean, I'm not...like that, Watchful, for shame, but a lot of Talon mercenaries fight for Red Eye, and they carry the best guns out of all his troops. They have killed more ponies in the Rangers than I would think any other group has." she said, sniffling slightly.

I nodded. I was always told griffons were the only creature in the wastelands who could take my kind in a purely physical fight, if only because of there claws and beak.

She blinked with weepy eyes, looked at me funny, and broke out into a little fit of laughter. I really didn't see what was so funny.

"Oh, Watchful, you know, you really are silly, trying to help me." she said, face mostly blank despite the smile on it. For a moment, I was reminded of Sea Salt, and not in a good way.

I paused, feeling slightly...angered? "Blueberry, I am not going to leave, and I am going to try and help you."

"You know, you really are something, not saying anything about sharing a room with a little mare like me."

I knew she was trying to change the subject, but I yielded and played the dumb act. "What do you mean?"

Slightly surprised, she looked at me from the floor, looked at the door a few feet away, and broke out into another bout of laughter.

"Oh, goddesses, you really are just something, aren’t you? Come on, let's get drunk and cause a scene."

The Yodeling Dragon was just as run down inside as it looked outside, but was also crowded, which was something I was starting to associate with Watershed as a whole. At least two dozen or more ponies were sitting either at the bar or playing games, and yet somehow every one of them took time out of there efforts to look at the pair of us oddly. I ignored them the best I could.

After I bent down on my knees to walk inside, I followed Blueberry to the bar and the thought of why, exactly, I was here, struck my mind yet again. I didn't want to find out how many pony-sized drinks it would take to get me drunk, and while it wasn't like we were low on bits, from what I could tell, the whole possess of getting stupid was overrated and led to conflict.

However, if anything, I could find Blueberry struggling to get on the barstool funny. Taking a seat between her and a large grey stallion with a full beard, I realized I needed to put my elbows on the counter not to bump either of them with my arms. The stallion next to me, grizzled looking himself, looked at me wearily and downed his drink.

I turned to the barpony, smiling slightly to myself. Blueberry just looked at me questioningly, and shrugged.

"Okay, I really don't want to force you to do this, I mean, really." She said, waving a hoof around. "I mean, have you even had alcohol before, or..."

She rolled her eyes. "Watchful, if we do that, we are liable to get thrown out. Well, somepony will try to, for a few minutes, anyway. Do you want a mixed drink?"

I thought for a moment. "Okay, that sounds great, but let's agree to stop one another if one of us get's too drunk."

She nodded, smiled, and rattled something off to the barpony that involved cactuses and something called a Hellhound Leash.

"And daht ish why pones arsh the besht!" Blueberry said triumphantly, red faced and utterly smashed.

I boredly flicked the rim of my first and only glass, still halfway full of thick brown liquid. To be fair, Blueberry was just on her second one, but the drink she ordered seemed to be made mostly from lost dreams and bitter tears.

"C’mon, Washtfol, can't you chear up? Your shush a bore!" she put a hoof near my ribs, her magic on her glass still somehow holding it. "Live a little!"

Frowning, I looked at the rest of the bar. At this point, nearly everyone else was gone, and even the barpony was giving me a nearly pleading look.

"You knoush whuat Ia think?" she drained the rest of her glass in a single gulp. "Letsh talsh aboush our, uh, familsh! Not like we havent done that enough. Hah!"

Slamming the glass on the bar, it shattered all over it. The barpony, to my surprise, said nothing and just walked out of the room.

"Blueberry, you’re older than me. You can't be so attached to your parent's like this."

"You knosh, whean...whean Ish goash and play the...the other pones, she...." her face scrunched up, and she looked at the glass shards on the table carefully."She alwash shelped me, Watshful."

I sighed, and with a hand brushed all the glass off the counter and onto the floor on the barponies side. Blueberry giggled drunkenly.

"You knowsh, she told me...whan Ish whant borne...Ish was perfect....just a widdle, wilddle foal, and whan I shwod her stuff, I...I fixed, she sade that the onle thing that...I woald have been wreally good if I didn't haed a horn...than...than I coald be alike her!"

Hiccupping, she grinned at me, head swaying slightly as if off balance. I realized what she was saying, and scowled. However, I knew that talking to her while she was utterly drunk was a futile effort, and so in a swift motion I put her under an arm and began walking out.

"Heysh, shtap!" she said, distantly and annoyed, wiggling her limbs in a weak effort to be free from my tyrannical grip.

Standing, I looked around the bar, and felt rather uneasy when I realized that we really were the last one's out. Stepping over a abandoned glass and a puddle of something brown, I made my way for the door.

Hearing that, I broke out into a dash, turning a corner down the dark road, escaping the sound of whizzing bullets with a drunken pony under a arm.

Of course, I then found three other ponies out in the only lit part of the road, unnervingly close to the hotel we were staying, one holding a large hammer with magic and the other baring axes in there mouths. Each turned to look at me as I ran down the street, and I could tell they were grinning.

"This is for my big brother, beast." Redwood said, pawing at the ground with a forehoof and swinging his hammer in the air," I am going to enjoy this."

Fallout Equestria: Taking Life By The Horns

by Pokonic

Most Important Hotel Room In All of Pony-Canada