Watershed was far enough away for the two of us to not make out what or who were fighting each other, but I did make out a few large shapes moving in the sky and what ponies I did notice seemed, to my mild horror, to be wearing power armor.No matter who or what was fighting, there was at least forty or so total armed individuals, not counting the one's in the sky I couldn't make out, and it made me slightly ashamed that I didn't hear the distant sounds of carnage.
"I didn't think Talon's worked up this far north." Blueberry said mildly as she looked up to get a better view of the former town turned battlefield. "But those ponies in power armor couldn't be Steel Rangers, cause-"
"They got forced out of Tauronto years ago." I finished, causing her to give me a puzzled look.
"I heard it on the radio." I said simply.
Moving her head back in forth, as if I said something crazy, Blueberry walked down the steep staircase outside and turned to me.
"Come on, let's go."
Blinking once, I glanced at the minor war happening a hundred or so feet away from us and then back at her.
"Are you insane?" I said. "You want to go to the town we barely survived last night to go fight for..." I tried to think of what she could possibly gain from joining the carnage before us, and failed, "no reason at all! There's even airborne fighters! I don't want to die!"
Blueberry sighed exaggeratedly. "We have to get to the bridge to leave anyway, right? If one of the groups over there want are help, and they probably will when they look at you-"
I gave a little huff at what she was implying, and she gave me a shameless grin before turning around to get a better glance at the battlefield.
"Anyway, if we need to get on someponies good side, and this might be like, our only chance before we hit Tauronto. There's only one or two settlements before we arrive there, anyway. Actually..."
She motioned to me, and pointed to her left near a fallen building relatively close to us.
"You see that pony standing over there?"
I had to squint to make out the shape she was motioning towards, but I did, eventually. He, and it was probably a he, going by his general posture, was a small pony wearing something black and loose, and he was standing on a small hill between the town and us, seemingly overseeing the fighting at a good length away.
"Yeah. I guess you want to talk to him?" I said, less than sure of her logic.
Blueberry trotted a few feet away from the dock building. “I mean, if you don't want to risk getting shot at, you can stay here."
I wasn't sure what her voice was laced with, but I didn't like it. "Blueberry, do you know why I was attacked in Watershed last night?"
She quickly turned to me at that, and after brushing her hair out of her face looked at me with a thin smile. "It was the guards, right?"
I said nothing, and just gave her an unappreciative look. I didn't remember telling her that.
"Okay, well, that's one mystery solved, even if it's a old one! Come on; let's see what's going on!"
I was going to protest and make her elaborate about the fiend that attacked me, but I realized that it would have been pointless, as she was already trotting towards the hill, bags in tow.
Snorting in disbelief at her utter arrogance, I never less played the part of a nice bull and followed her, if grudgingly.
Luckily for us, or me, anyway, there were no bullets shot our way or ponies trying to kill us, and we crossed the area between us and the hill easily. The pony on the hill was quite visibly surprised as he saw us coming, but rather than greet us or say anything he continued to watch the carnage going on below. I was having a rougher time climbing up then Blueberry was, as the ground was still wet and the hill, while small, was steep, so I took my time. As such, Blueberry took the lead in introducing ourselves.
"Why hello there!" Blueberry said to the stallion after she stopped huffing her way up the hill, sounding rather cheerful considering the circumstances.
The pony turned to us, and Blueberry let out a yelp of surprise. He, or perhaps she going by the snout, was a ghoul. A rather nasty looking one at that, with little on the flesh department, its nose completely missing and one eye socket only filled by a dim yellow light. What little hair was left was grey-green, and her skin was leathery and black.
"Ah, hello friends." the ghoul wheezed, voice creaky and resembling a dry breeze but was unmistakably feminine. "I see that I am not the only on who wishes to have a good view of this place. Please, I insist."
Blueberry was visibly shaken, but didn't move away from the ghoul. "Thank you, mam. And your name is...?"
"Bright Day." the ghouless (?) breathed. " My name is Bright Day. I once fit it, I assure you. Used to be a model."
I moved closer to the top of the hill, if only to hear the creature better. "My name is Ever Watchful, and my companion is Blueberry Cream. If I may ask, do you know what has happened in Watershed?"
The ghoul looked startled as best as it could with its fleshless lips. "W-well, Ever...Watchful, was it? Well, as it turns out, that town down there seems to have attracted bandits. I am just waiting for there little rampage to end."
Blueberry looked somewhere between unconvinced and annoyed. "Bandits? Sorry, but what kind of bandits have power armor?"
The ghoul probably tried to roll its good eye, and if it wasn't a glazed over shrunken ball of leather, it would probably have been an impressively sarcastic gesture. "Purebreds, kiddo, and there lackeys. Bunch of Steel Rangers work for them now that those idiots got blasted to nothing by the good sirs in the Reavers."
Blueberry's ambiguous look of distant annoyance gave out to a flash of pure hatred towards the unwitting ghoul. "They did what?"
"Oh, yeah, it was good times. Mr. Ed himself gave the order to string up a bunch of the bastards off the roof of the Caledonian Tower with a rope around there necks, and the few that were left joined up with the Pure because they were going to end up dead if they didn't." the dried up mare said casually. "Haven't been to the city in a while, but their probably still up there right now. No one screws with the Reavers and gets away with it, heh heh."
I was disgusted by the ghoul's conversational tone about the casual killing of Blueberry's kindred, but Blueberry herself put on a big cheesy fake grin to keep up appearances. "So, this Ed fellow is the leader of the Reaver’s ?"
"Uh huh. Keep's the Tower in running order. Supposedly he was some sort of pre-war big shot or something. Dunno myself, I came up here from Glow a few years ago."
Blueberry smiled lightly, and suddenly I was getting a bad case of déjà-vu.
"Oh, you’re from the NCR? You know who Charnel is?"
The ghoul suddenly looked around; as if there was a chance something was listening in our conversation on the top of an open hill. "Yeah, I know about ol' Colonel Cook-Cook all right. What do you want to know kiddo?"
I was surprised at how easily Blueberry was taking the ghoul's mistaken idea about her age, but then again I was surprised at how she wasn't screaming at me. "Well, why did she quit?"
"What do I look like, a tour guide?" the ghoul deadpanned.
A dozen caps somehow found there way out of Blueberry's saddlebag and onto the ground on a small pile in front of the ghoul. Staring at the pile for a few moments, the ghoul scooped up the pile into a hoof and placed it into a pocket on her robe.
"Well, she only got where she was because she was damn good at killing Minotaurs. No offence err, Ever..."
"Watchful." I grunted.
"Right." the ghoul said quickly."Anyway. From what I heard, she showed up when she was young enough to barely have her cutie mark and passed all the tests to get in to the army. She fought in the worst places on the front and survived long enough that they put her in the special forces, and, well, the only reason she wasn't put up on a tribunal as soon as possible was that she's a vet who's also a war hero, and even after she got a horn in the gut the brass only had a excuse to kick her out of Dise after she beat the living shit out of a dancer."
Blueberry raised an eyebrow. "Really, she beat up a hooker in some casino and she got reassigned?"
The ghoul shook her head. "I don't think you understand. Pretty sure the mare she beat up lost a eye and most of her teeth; she shoved one of her cigars into her eye and forced one of those big wide whisky bottles down it's throat until the sides of the poor thing's mouth ripped open."
I felt a little chill run down my spine, and Blueberry stammered slightly. The ghoul had a sour look as she continued.
"Yeah, real nasty piece of work. Apparently, she sharpened her teeth so she can eat meat better and I heard she once nicked the throat of a colt she had tricked to her bed and came along while he bled out, if you know what I mean. Real sadist, apparently she kept a mini cooler filled with blood packs on a bedside table and had a ring made of a minotaur's molar."
"Yuck." Blueberry said, face slightly green.
The ghoul just nodded, causing her one eye to rattle in its socket.
"Yeah, only reason the brass didn't just have a few of her comrades off her was that she had a bit of a following with the solders and the rumor that the minotaur’s saw her as some sort of evil spirit or something." the ghoul rambled slightly as she spoke, as if wishing to get the topic over with. "Pretty sure she got sent to Braymont to get her as far away from the main camp as possible and she quite because she knew that there was not a snowballs chance in Tartarus that she would ever get to fight on the front again."
After finishing, the ghoul gave me an odd look. "You looking to kill her, sonny? Papa died fighting her or something? Couldn't blame you for that."
I had a feeling this was going to be a recurring topic when it came to the mare.
"No, no. I am from Equestria, I am not from that group of minotaurs."
The ghoul looked somewhat relived, and turned to look at the ruins that was once Watershed.
"Ah, didn't know if I was offending you. It's just that Charnel is one of the worst ponies I know of, and that..." the ghoul's dry eye widened somehow, and gave me a panicked look of fear. "Wait, you said you came from down south? Does the name Bitter Truth mean anything to you?"
I was slightly surprised, but I shrugged. " Actually, yes. He's my father's father. Why?"
Blueberry shared the ghoul's expression of shock, and gave me an almost betrayed look.
However, I was more concerned by the fact that Bright Day had began to scramble down the southern face of the hill, screaming. Eventually, after a few moments, the sound of her screeching was lost to the cacophony of the fighting happening a quarter mile away.
"I didn't expect that." I said slowly, unsure of what set the ghoul off. Blueberry didn't even seem to notice that the caps that she gave the ghoul were lying on the ground, and just poked me in my shin, looking somewhere between being surprised and sadly amused.
"You never told me the old guy with the nice stuff was your grandfather, Watchful." she said, voice a little quieter than normal.
I gave her a smart look, lips turned upwards and eyes slightly wide. "I didn't think it was important, really."
The stare Blueberry gave me was almost undecipherable. "I would have thought that the fact that the huge old minotaur with the laser minigun who was really, really nice to you being your granddad would have been, I don't know, a conversational topic?"
I looked down at her, which was something I really did try to avoid but had little choice at that moment because of her eyes. "No really. It's just a matter of fathers and stuff, Blueberry. Why would it matter if he's my father's father?"
I didn't expect that to make her eyes water. I also didn't expect that to all but force me on my knees with her hooves and give me a hug.
"Uh, Blueberry-"
"You poor, poor thing. You don't even...oh, goodness, you don't even know why that's messed up, do you? You don't even know why. Oh, Celestia help you..."
Blueberry didn't sound sad, or even angry. If anything, she sounded...comforting?
" What's the matter, Blueberry?"
"You really don't...you really have no idea. I am so sorry, Watchful. I am...I promise that the first thing we do when we get to Tauronto is to get permanent housing for the two of us. I.."
"Blueberry, it's okay." I finished. "I thought we agreed to this?"
She stopped sounding so weepy after that, and backed away from me slowly, a sad little excuse for a smile on her face.
Ponies are bewildering sometimes.
"Okay, Watchful, okay. Now, do we want to go down there, or what?" she said, voice not entirely clear of emotions.
"Well, Blueberry, I would say that we stay here and wait for the fighting to die down. At least until..." my words dropped out of my mouth when I noticed a small red-green shape rise up behind Blueberry.
"Excuse me, but can I follow you?" Candy Cane said, somewhat bashfully, looking at the ground as she stood in front of me.
Blueberry was more than a little surprised at the little filly, but put on her best matronly smile as she put her head down to the little filly’s level, which was less than a foot.
"Excuse me, little one, but what's your name?"
Candy Cane gave Blueberry an unamused look. "My name is Candy Cane, Miss Blueberry!"
At that, the blue mare gave me a surprised look, but turned back to Candy Cane with a big smile on her face.
"Who told you to follow us, little Candy Cane?" she asked sweetly.
Candy Cane looked indignant at being called little. "Hey, I'm not little!" she protested, voice cracking a bit. "And miss Batsy told me to."
Blueberry frowned at her not mentioning any parents, but I frowned for a different reason entirely.
"Can I see 'Miss Batsy'?" I said very, very carefully, which caused Blueberry to giggle a little bit.
"Oh, no sir, she's sleeping right now, but she said she might meet you again soon!"
Those few words upgraded Candy Cane from cute to extremely creepy, or at least in my eyes. Blueberry apparently thought that this "Batsy" was some sort of imaginary friend to make up for no parents, going by her soft smile at the fillies words, while I knew that it was very real and was probably going to try and kill me.
"Well, that's nice, Candy Cane." I said, trying to sound amiable.
"Hey mister Watchful, are going to help those ponies down there?" the little filly said a little too excitedly.
I slowly looked at Blueberry, who shook her head in protest.
"Candy Cane, I am going to see if there's any pony down there who I can help. Now, you stand here with Blueberry until I get back."
Blueberry looked somewhere between surprised and annoyed at being shoved to the side, but quickly gave in to Candy Cane's general cuteness before I started making my way down the hill to Watershed.
Stopping for a few moments before I got off the hill entirely, I gave a quick glance up to Blueberry, then at the bridge where Sea Salt was probably waiting under, and stepped into the outskirts of the ruined town itself.