As I awoke the next morning, mercifully without any kind of embarrassment, the light falling through the hole in the ceiling was still pale. On the other hoof that most likely didn't mean anything, the light was always pale down here, the daytimes only differed in the paleness of the light. Except when it was dark, then there wasn't any pale light. It was dark. But still, it seemed early in the morning, because Angel was still sleeping, this time I was the one who had gotten up early.
My companion breathed slowly and regularly and I decided to act just as commendable as he had yesterday, trotting over to our saddle bags and plodded through their content, searching for something I could offer the grey buck for breakfast.
If I remembered correctly he had found some kind of cake inside one of those wastebins, but he didn't seem to mind, so I was okay with that. I pulled the carton out of the bag and, using both my muzzle and my wings, maneuvered it back to our campsite but realized that I hadn't any kind of plate to serve them on. Laying the carton on my bedroll I returned to our luggage in search for something like a plate but I didn't make a find.
I looked around: our room had only one door, locked with a magic trick by my companion himself, and since neither of my extremities had develop any metal-twisting abilities over night, I wouldn't get out, that was for sure. So the only things available were the ones inside this room: there was also a large desk at the end of the room and way to many filing cabinets behind it, something we hadn't salvaged the day before, even the size of Angel's saddle bags was limited.
So I sneaked over to the desk and pulled out the drawers. If fortune favored me the pony who had worked at this place over two hundred years ago had left a bowl or a dish inside his or her desk.
Upper drawer – nil return, empty except for some blank sheets.
Center drawer – sheets again, this time they might have been lettered a long time ago, but no plate.
Bottom drawer – still more sheets – Oh! Five caps, better than nothing – but no bucking plate.
I facehoofed. What had I expected? I could have searched the cabinets, having the same chance of success.
I pulled out one of the closest cabinet's drawers in frustration. "Celestia, I swear, if you grant me the wish of finding even one of those damn clipboards I will sacrifice my firstborn fo..." Oh goddesses, why do you hate me so much?
Inside the drawer lay not one or two but a whole packet of party plates, along with another two cartons of the prefabricated cake. "I didn't mean it." I whispered and took the plates out of the drawer. The filing cabinet's drawer. What had happened here before the war?
Shaking my head I trotted towards Angel again, placing the cakes on the dish and sat on my bedroll, the plate in front of me, looking at the sleeping buck.
Well, I guess it's waiting now.
To dawdle away I proceed to hum my foalhood's lullabies, later the Enclave's national anthem...
Risen from the scorched remains
Our homeland used to be
And with pride in our chest
We're greeting our princess three.
"Hey."
And while the earth below our hooves
is covered in the ancient dust
We endure the daily fight
To regain our race's former trust.
...and later to that I tried some of the songs I had heard in the early years of my life at some military parade, but couldn't remember precisely.
"Hello."
It was a nice memory. I remembered standing on a rostrum, holding a little flag with the emblem of Lunar Rock embroidered in my mouth, just as so many other pegasi forming the crowd in front of us. I didn't know the exact occasion anymore, maybe somepony had won something, maybe a sports event.
"He!"
Once they're gone you realize the true value of some things.
"Hello!!!" a voice called out next to me. I flinched and refocused my eyes and thoughts on the buck in front of me, still wrapped up in his bedroll, but his eyes were opened and he looked at me. "You seemed abstracted, are you worried about something?" he asked worriedly, but I just wagged my head and shoved the breakfast over to him.
"It's nothing, but I made you breakfast." I said self-consciously. "I've found a plate too."
The grey buck eyed the presented food mistrustfully. But I hadn't told him anything about my cooking skills the night before, he didn't know what damage I was able to cause by even touching food.
"Are those Fancypant's Snack Cakes?" he asked hesitantly. I glanced at the carton on my bedroll. Yes, FSC was written all over it.
"I... think so. Is that a problem?" Please, don't be allergic to any of its ingredients.
"No, no, I like them..." he shoved one into his muzzle. "I like them very much."
He cleaned the dish, eating any and all of the offered sweets. He looked almost cheerful while chewing, maybe I should try on of those later.
After annihilating his food Angel got up too, trotting over to the door good-tempered, his horn lit again and I heard almost the same clicking noise as the one yesterday. A squeak, a rattle and then my companion pushed the door open. I laid on my mattress, looking at another pack of cake staggeringly about what to do, but then Angel returned, walked towards our saddle bags and started fiddling around with them.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm packing." he answered. "We have to leave real soon, if we want to make it to our next station in time."
"And the others? Trifle? Steed?" I asked and raised one of the biscuits to my muzzle.
"They won't come with us."
"They won't? Why?"
"They're gone."
The small cake fell back into its wrapping. "Gone? How are they... gone?"
"Well, they're not here anymore. I think they've left us early in the morning already."
"But maybe they're just downstairs or they've settled over into another building. How can you tell anyway? You haven't even left the room for more than a few minutes!"
"Believe me, they are gone."
"How do you know!?"
"Because I know the indications of attempted burglary if I see them!" he had to shout to drown out my voice.
"Attempted burglary?" What should that mean? Was he implying...
"Well, somepony tried to pick the lock last night." Angel nodded towards the door. "And I found this. It lay right before the door."
A small piece of paper, teared out from something, maybe one of the clipboards, floated over to me.
"And what's that?"
"Read it." Angel said, almost demandingly.
Dear Whirling Feather,
Dady says we have to go. I don't want to go, but he says that it is very important and that
we can't say god bye.
He got up tonight and left me alone for some time and then he came back.
Then he said that we have to pack our bags very quickly. I stil wanted to say god bye, but
your dor was locked, that's why I'm writing this leter.
I don't know where we're going, dady says that it's far away, but I would like to say that I like
you and all the bad things the ponies say about pegasuses aren't true.
I hope I will se you again.
Trifle
P.S.: I like your wings
I stared at the sheet I was holding. It was a foal's hoofwriting, no doubt. But why should they leave? It was obvious that Steed didn't trust us, but we didn't do anything to him or his son, we promised it.
"What does that mean?" I asked Angel who had sat down on his bedroll again. "Why should they go? We haven't done anything."
"I know you don't want to hear it, but he maid it pretty clear that Steed tried to mug us while we were asleep."
"But why..."
"We're two adult ponies. We could carry loads of valuable stuff with us. Maybe he saw us eating to much or we talked about our caps a bit too loud. It's no fortune but it will pay for some meals for sure. According to the scratch marks on the lock, Steed tried to pick the lock and when that failed he tried to force it open. But that didn't work out either. And when he realized that he left to much evidence for us not to notice his involvement he most likely took fright."
He sighed.
"You know, anypony down her, anypony but you, would kill him for even trying to rob us. And his son would die for good measure, just because he belongs to him."
There was only one question, echoing in my thoughts again and again: Why?
"Why? Why he had to do that?" I grumbled sadly, more to myself than to my companion. "The first two nice ponies we meet out here and then... something like that happens and destroys everything. We should stay together, protect each other..."
Angel laid one of his hooves on my shoulder in a comforting manner. "I can see that it makes you sad. And I know you won't feel better when I say that this is life down here. Family and friends always come first and to Steed we were neither friend nor family. I don't endorse what he was trying to do, but I understand that he was worried about his son. He couldn't take a chance, he couldn't know how we would react. "
He was right.
I didn't feel better.
I had trusted those ponies, I still trusted Trifle, who hadn't known anything about his father's plan, and the elder stallion had repaid that trust with... that. It was devastating, but not anypony in this wasteland could be like him. It was impossible.
"Come on." Angel said after a few minutes and put some other things into his saddle bags.. "Eat your cake. You'll need it, our way is a long one and the weather doesn't look like it will be nice today."
"I'm not hungry." I answered bluntly and stared at my former meal angrily and in frustration, shoving it over to my companion, who looked back gloomy and levitated the box over to me again.
"Come on, please." he said encouragingly. "If we go now, maybe we take the same way they chose. We may find them and can reconcile us with them and so on. Trifle's still a colt, we could eventually make, given that we don't have to pause every half an hour for you to eat. So do it now and we can go."
I looked up to the unicorn and my mood lightened, just a bit. Sure, the probability of walking the exact same way the two others had taken was really really small, but at least I thought it was existent. According to my knowledge of reverse psychology it was quite likely that the two ponies would also travel towards the raider territory.
"Okay, okay." I said smilingly. "I'll do it. But only if you pack our bags more quickly, so we can leave soon. I can't be the only pony here saving time, can I?"
"So be it, Mylady." Angel replied with a smirk on his face and sped up, literally pulling the rug out from under my feet.
""")_x_("""
He had said weather might be bad today, but seeing and – further more – feeling the liquid falling from the sky and describe it as "bad" was hardly accurate, the word simply wasn't strong enough. Obnoxious or dreadful would fit better. Finding the others, even just chasing them, was made impossible by the constant rain, but it had mostly been a emergency starting move for my motivation to move along. But the only thing this rainstorm had in common with the ones the responsible pegasi made in the Enclave from time to time was that it was made out of water, I least I thought so. This water felt different, not light and refreshingly wet, but unpleasant soaking, oily and... heavy. The rain I knew didn't feel like being punched by horseshoes all the time.
"What is that?" I called out to my companion, both of us were soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes. Fortunately for him his short cut mane didn't fall down into his eyes like my did.
"What?" he answered over the roaring sound of the rain. "What exactly?"
"The rain!"
He didn't seem to understand and I had to accept that a proper conversation was impossible in the rain. We would have to continue it somewhere inside. Somewhere...
We continued walking in the rain and soon I felt every last bone inside my body. How was it possible that it got so cold in such a small period of time? When we had left the office blocks it, the sun had been shining, relatively, and it had been quite warm. That was hardly an hour ago.
My gaze turned towards the cloud cover above. If I had enlisted at the weather-control section of Lunar Rock and not the military and if the mass of clouds would have been just some of them and if I wouldn't be vaporised while approaching, which I would most certainly be, then and just then I would be able to fly up there and buck those rain clouds to pieces and switch off the rain.
Yes, if... I could have made more out of my life...
But by the time I would be able to leave the surface again I wouldn't have to bother anymore.
"Is that a cave?" Angel shouted and ripped me out of my thoughts. Through the constant rain I saw how he raised a hoof and pointed it towards... somewhere, I couldn't see. But if he could, all the better.
Measuring up to the mound I came to the conclusion that "cave" wasn't the appropriate term to describe that sinkhole in the earth wall. "It's better than staying in the rain, isn't it?" was Angel's comment as we squeezed through the narrow entrance, it didn't seem necessary to say anything, of course it was better.
Inside the sinkhole expanded to a large cave again, the ceiling was high enough to stand upright and its end was lost in the darkness maybe twenty meters away from us. Our spot was illuminated by the grey unicorn's light orb and the dull light from outside.
"Well, at least it's dry in here." Angel said, deposited his saddle bags near the entrance and shook his mane and tail to get rid of the water. I did so as well and swept my still wet mane out of my face afterwards. "We'll stay here for a while, until the rain stops at least. You can bring out something to eat if you're hungry while I'll scout the rest of the cave, we don't want to encounter a dragon, do we?"
"No way!" I called out, putting down my bags as well.
"Exactly, I will..."
"There's no way you're going alone. I will come with you."
"No way!" Panic creeped into the unicorn's eyes and he shook his head repeatedly, his forelegs raised in defense. "It's too dangerous, you..."
"Please don't tell me what to do, Angel. I've got some recon skills too, I will be of use. And scouting the area will be done much faster if we unite our efforts, don't you think?" Whatever would come next, there would be nothing he could say to persuade me to stay here.
"You don't know what's back there..."
"And that's the reason I want to come with you. Neither of us knows what inhabits this sinkhole, that's why we're going to scout. I will come along, no back talk!"
Angel looked at me in desperation, then he sighed and nodded towards the dark end of the cave. Slowly we trotted over and into the darkness, his horn was still lighting our path as we descended deeper into the cave. His head was stuck to the ground, he was searching for hoofprints, while I was looking out for any threats that would engage us head-on. I would like him to do my job, from what I knew of me he would be much more competent to wield guns and shoot things that would pop out of the darkness, but the one thing I was even worse at than shooting wasteland monsters was read wasteland monster's tracks and that was the other task. So then it was shooting...
"What do you see?" I asked after maybe half an hour later, that cave was bigger than it hat seemed on the outside. The path of mud and earth had made way for material that felt just like the stone floors of the office building.
"It's difficult." he answered, stopping and then looking at the ground to his hooves more intense. "On the softer ground I was able to spot some tracks, but it was too sandy as well, so I couldn't dedicate them, could be anything. Well, I think we can eliminate some of the more dangerous threats, we would have noticed if this would be hellhound cave. You've seen any movements?"
I shook my head. The darkness outside the light cone had been absolutely motionless, just as darkness was supposed to be.
"I think we can go back. If there's something down in this cave I don't think it'll come out while we're resting, as long as we don't take the whole day and we have a watchful eye on the path in the front cave. If we're lucky the rain will stop soon and we can leave."
We turned around and walked back through the small natural corridor, but as we had reached the half-way again a clicking noise let Angel and me recoil, his guns darted out, I pulled mine too. The clicking continued and then it died away, unlike my companion's tension. He searched the entire area with the light his horn emitted and I followed him, but nothing was there except for more rocks. We kept moving back towards the start, but then my gaze felt onto a junction, no two junctions. A crossroad, so to speak, we hadn't seen at our first walkthrough, because they were slightly displaced into the walls around. And there was the clicking again.
"I think we've got to split up." I said and pointed my wings at the both the turnings in the darkness.
"Nowise! Not frigging way! Not under any circumstances!!" Angel shouted, but instantly he shut up, as the strange noise intensified. "No. I won't let you..."
"Angel, how often do I have to tell you again: I am of use, I think I'm sneaky enough to not to be seen in the dark. And despite that, how do you want to cover two ways that point in an entire different direction. You haven't bought me a gun and the ammunition just for the looks, have you?"
"But I won't be able to protect..."
"The gun is all the protection I gonna need. Oh, don't start. I won't let you do all the work, I've been trained for stuff like this for years now. I can handle myself, don't worry."
"Okay, okay!" he called out. "I see. I can't convince you otherwise." He sighed and levitated a magazine out of one of his coat's pockets. "Take this at least. It will power up your shots, incendiary rounds. But please, please promise me that you'll only scout, no shooting unless you're attacked, understood? You don't know what you're up to, what the weakness of the thing is you will face eventually. So, just scout, okay?"
"Yes, yes, yes. I'll be careful, don't worry." He was worrying way to much even for my liking. And I thought I was overcautious.
"And take this too." Angel added and pulled out another thing out of his jacket. Illuminated by the light of his horn it seemed to be a small red gemstone, a ruby if wasn't mistaken, edged into a small pendant with more straps to hold the gem in place somewhere on my chest or my foreleg. The pendant itself looked like two convoluted ponies, both with wings and horns. Both were stretching one wing out, while their horns met the other one's at its top. And that was were the ruby was edged into. "It's an angelic sunlight pendant. Of course that's just a name, it has nothing to do with sunlight, to the extent I know at least. It's an artifact from the time before the war, emits light when you touch it and illuminate your environment when needed until you touch it again. It's not as bright as my orb but it will fulfill its purpose. Please, don't ask me from where I've taken this, it was a long time ago and at a place very far away. Use it carefully, you're not the only pony that's able to see this light, its magic doesn't go so far."
I nodded and he strapped the pendant around my left foreleg, I touched it with my wing and it began to glow in weak golden light. I could see why it was named "sunlight pendant", for a pony like Angel, who had lived his whole life on the surface, it wasn't comprehensible but the light actually looked like the light of a warm and sunny day above the clouds.
"Okay then, time to split, isn't." I said each of us sneaked towards the tunnel he/she was about to investigate.
""")_x_("""
The pendant was quite helpful, I had to admit, I hadn't thought through my idea completely, if Angel hadn't given the light source to me, I would've been hamstrung. The clicking had returned every now and then, obviously I was heading into the right direction, but if that was good or bad I didn't want to think about. I held my gun in my muzzle and aimed at the dark before me, slowly moving through the tunnel.
And then again, nothing happened.
That seemed to be a habit of the surface.
Then there was the noise.
Not the clicking noise originating from whatever creature or thing was waiting further behind, but a low piping, accompanied by a tiny squeal. It felt... nice and... good and out of place in a cave like this, and even as it grew louder and louder, even reaching the sound level of a cracking thundercloud, it never felt unpleasant. And then, all of the sudden, there was a pony. But it didn't feel right use the word "pony" to describe what was standing in front of me: It was a unicorn, judging by the horn on its forehead, but it was different from all the other unicorns I had seen before, both in the Enclave and in the wasteland. This one was tall, it was head and shoulders above even Angel, even its horn was bigger, and it was of a pure white, that seemed as if it was shining through the... pony-shaped being, that stood in front of me in all its glory. I had thought that my hide was white, but the color I saw just now made said hide go green with envy. I was overwhelmed and then, as fast as it had appeared, the entity was gone, so was the ringing noise and all its light, no trace was left.
I still stood there, asking myself what the heck I had just seen, but then I shook my head. Confined spaces like this tunnel wasn't good for pegasi, my kind was meant to soar in the skies, not to crouch through muddy caves. It had been a illusion born from claustrophobia for sure, but still... it had felt nice, my feathers were still fluffed in relaxation. But then I heard the clicking again and something was moving in the darkness, but maybe it was just the noise that made my think I was seeing something. Anyways I broke my light and sneaked forwards cautiously.
I reached a large chamber at the end of the tunnel, my light wasn't needed, there was daylight shining through several small holes in the ceiling above. But as my gaze went downwards I wished it would've been dark on the outside: Inside the sink at the bottom of the cave there were several... creatures crawling all over the place. All of them were sickening green but their seize varied from pony-size to being the size of half a vertibuck. Way too many legs were sticking out their trunks, another two huge and scissor-like extremities at the front were quite intimidating as they sent out the now known clicking noise, just as their tails, that ended in a just as massive stingers.
I gulped. Angel had warned me that I didn't know what I was up to and he was right. Slowly I backed up to the entrance tunnel again, anxious not to make any noise myself. I doubted my gun would do any damage to monsters like these, even if I would use the special rounds my companion had given to me. One of them, a smaller one maybe, but not one the colossuses and much less the whole group.
Easy, Feather, you're sneaky. You're sneaky, you're sneaky, you... Knack!
Fuck!
Oh wait... that wasn't me!
I turned around and looked directly into the many black eyes of one of the massive green creatures that had obviously sneaked up from behind me.
I had been outsneaked by a wasteland monster easily four times as big as me!
The giant monster looked at me just as surprised as I did, at least that was what I thought it did since it didn't cut me to pieces instantly, its disgusting mandibles clicking just like its scissors. Maybe it confused me with a rock, that would be great, because I hadn't moved a muscle since the noise that had revealed the creature. Moving wouldn't make much sense as well, since the only way out I knew was the one now blocked my the monstrosity, the holes in the ceiling weren't much bigger than my head and if there was a way out somewhere at the other side of the cave I would most likely scare up the rest of the bulk. Yeah... I would scare them up...
But right now I had to deal with the one in front of me, that was still looking dazedly at the pony-shaped statue that was me and still blocking my way out.
My thoughts went to the pistol on my right foreleg, but I didn't believe I would find the gun and could shoot enough bullets into the beast's... body... to stop it from slicing and stinging me to death first.
Okay, Feather, don't move or breathe, maybe it will leave you alone...
For a brief moment I thought the green one would do just that, loosing its interest in me and crawl away to its companions, as it bend down – as far as this was possible for a creature like that, maybe lowering would be the better word – then it reached out with one of its big frontal limbs. But before it could touch me in any way I saw, what the lowering process had caused: for the monstrosity not standing as high as it had before, it didn't cover the whole tunnel I had come from anymore. A small pass was now accessible over its left shoulder-thing and if I hadn't been a pegasus in that moment I would've been goujoned in a few seconds.
But I was one and in a matter of winks I spread my wings and half jumped – half flew behind the massive creature, stunning it again. But not for too long. Just as I overflew it I felt a short pulling sensation on my tail that disequilibrated me enough to make me drop into the tunnel's ground face first. I jumped up immediately, looked around and much to my despair I saw the massive monstrosity turning around. I had hoped that it would be, somehow, too large for the small tunnel, but... obviously it wasn't.
I screamed as it reached out with its scissor again and started to gallop through the empty tunnel, back to the crossroad, hopefully. Keeping to the right I hoped that there was not other sideway I just happened to overlook, because I would take the first way I would encounter. Looking over my shoulder from time to time I saw the giant monster still chasing me. Celestia damn it, that thing was fast for its size.
And then, just as I thought I had become lost in the underground hollows, my wing felt a turning to my right, I galloped past and...
...and I slammed into something, something growling in agony. Something grey growling in agony and lighting the environment with its...
"Angel!" I yelled, lying on the ground due to the massive force of the impact.
He looked as if he had galloped as well, his mane was a mess and his two guns were floating at his side.
"What happened? Did you encounter..."
"I don't know what it is, but it's green, huge and it's chasing me!"
As if my command the weird clicking noise flared again and Angel jumped around the corner, shooting wildly at the creature. Then he came back, but the clicking was still there.
"Get up! Run. Run!"
Together we ran back, I followed my grey companion, trusting him to know the right path, and then he suddenly shouted: "Watch out!" But it was too late. I managed to slow my gallop but it still hurt brutally as I my forehead crashed into a piece of stone that was outstand from the ceiling. My vision blured, more than usually while running over the last while, and then it went dark for a moment.
"Are you okay?" a voice asked from far away and I shook my head. I wasn't okay, I just galloped face first into a stone! "You've to keep moving. Just a few meters and it's done." the voice of probably Angel called out through my veil of pain, and I felt him dragging me into his direction.
As my vision cleared again, I saw his face over mine, his guns floating over me and his hooves were holding mine as well. I fidgeted for a moment to signalize that I was conscious again, he let me go immediately and jumped over me. As the sound returned I heard gunfire and the clicking noise. The beast wasn't gone. As I turned my head I saw the huge green creature that was... stuck behind the low rock I had crushed into.
"Are you okay?" Angel asked again and this time I nodded. My forehead still hurt as hell but I could see clearly. I drew my weapon just as my companion had done it and together we marched towards the massive monstrosity.
"Go for the eyes." was the only thing Angel said as we started shooting.
""")_x_("""
"That was... intense..." I breathed heavily as I looked down at the giant smoking corpse that was now blocking the tunnel. The creature had reacted poorly to our special bullets, the incendiary rounds had finished it off, every inch of its shell was perforated by our shots and green sludge was pouring out of every hole. It had taken a few minutes of battle until the monstrosity finally fell. "But what... what was that?"
"That was a RADscorpion. Remember asking me what a RADscorpion looks like, well that's it. You're satisfied?"
Uah!
"You're right. There's no way you could've describe it in terms I would have understood, but I would've appreciate it not to encounter my first one while it was chasing me to death. Or while we're killing it." My companion handed me over a small set of healing bandages for my forehead. My injury was painful, but he assured me that it felt much worse than it actually was.
"Large ones like this are very rare around here. I guess I was pure bad luck for you to encounter one, my way was totally clean."
So, bad luck again?
"That's not the only one. I've seen..." I tried to remember how many of these scorpions I had seen, but it didn't come to my mind. It had been so many. "...a dozen at least. Smaller ones but also two or three or so of his size."
"I thought so." Angel sighed but nevertheless he holstered his guns. "But we're quite lucky under the circumstances. It blocks their way up to us now, so as long as we don't remain here for too long I doubt the others are going to reach or even find us."
Suddenly I stumbled and went down to the ground. Everything blurred again.
"Are you hurt?!" Angel's voice cracked in fear as he dived to my side and held my head up with his hooves. "Did that thing... did it hit you with its stinger? Because if so we have to..."
"I'm alright. I'm just a little fuzzy-headed. The stone and..."
Wait a second! That pulling sensation back when...
My head turned around, I looked at my hindquarters and what I saw made me shriek. My flanks and hindlegs were intact, they were dirty and dusty, but I could see neither cuts nor other wounds, but the thing between my hindlegs was shocking me:
My tail, once of the same golden blond color as my mane, was simply gone. Well, at least a large part, maybe half of it. What I was now staring at was a bloody stump of a former beautiful tail. Or it would've been bloody if it had been more than hair. But despite this: It was gone! Half my tail was gone! That Celestia and Luna damned scorpion had cut it off!
"So... you're not hurt then?" Angel's ignorance hurt. Couldn't he see... on the other hoof, that new tailcut didn't look that bad. Sunshine once had a close-cropped mane with a matching taildo, many years ago. Not that I envied her for her mane but... it had looked damn good. Short and military-like, fitting our upcoming duty at the academy.
"No, I'm not. Just my... nevermind, you wouldn't understand. But how did you do it?" I said, bluntly changing the subject away from my fashionable thinkings and back to our survival/battle-issues.
"How did I do what?"
"I've examine that scorpions corpse and every last one of its eye-thingies was perforated. And not by any incendiary bullets, those leave a small burn mark around the bullet hole, but by yours."
"Pure luck?" the grey buck shrugged. But after I gave him my "don't pull that luck-thing again!" stare he added. "Or it's the daily fight for survival. When you're stuck inside a big lethal trap labeled "Equestrian Wasteland", where you have to be ready to use your weapons every single second of every single day, a certain talent comes all on its own. Plus, a unicorn like me is always superior when it comes to weapon control, but don't be sad, you can fly in return."
I nodded in acknowledgement and trotted slowly towards the chamber with our exit inside, Angel accompanied me after he had disemboweled the dead scorpion, a task I wasn't eager to witness. To be an earth pony down here had to suck, considering the lack of wings or first-hoof magic. The old stories told that earth ponies were able to do their own kind of magic, but it would be more subtle, like growing things and stuff. Well, good luck with that. But if Angel, despite everything just a "ordinary" unicorn, could do such things with his pistols, what else were the surface dwellers capable of? The thought made me shiver and I was glad that unicorns and earth ponies weren't gifted with wings, that I would be in a save distance in a little while and everything would be fine again.
Well, I wouldn't see Sunshine again, would I?
Damn it, I was thinking of her again. And I had suppressed my thoughts so well for the last days...
By Luna, I didn't even know whether to wish her to go well or not! Between her being a dashing Dashite and me being lured into a trap, willingly or unwillingly, for chasing her, she was still one of my oldest friends... Screw that, she had made her decision and whatever I was thinking or feeling now, it wouldn't make her magically reappear. I had to accept that she was gone!
"Do you know how long the rain will last?" the grey buck next to me said much to my surprise. The question itself seemed rather pointless to me, but every possible talk was better than sitting here and thinking about facts I couldn't change anymore.
"Why are you asking me?" I replied and looked over to him, who was taking on his saddle bags again."You're the one born down here, you know more about the surface's weather habits than me. I'm enduring this for the first time, remember?"
"You're the pegasus. I thought, maybe you've something like a, you know, "sixth sense" concerning stuff like this."
He turned his head away and went silent again, not what I had planned. I trotted over to my own bags and reorganized their interior, thinking wildly about what to speak of next. Silence wasn't what I wanted to hear right now.
"Is it always like this? The rain, I mean?"
"Is it supposed to be different?" Angel answered. Quite understandable, he had never felt something else. The question was silly, but if I managed to revive our talk this way, it wasn't all bad. "Is the Enclave's rain any different?"
I had to contemplate for a second or two. The only aspects to compare of the rain here and the one above the cloud cover were that both kinds of rain were coming down from the sky in liquid drops and were made out of water, but I wasn't sure about the last thing. "Well yes, it's different. At home it feels... nice, nicer than this one, and refreshing. It doesn't last as long as well, but in return it doesn't hurt when you're hit by the raindrops, which are, by the way, also smaller. And it doesn't feel all oily, left alone the color."
For a while the grey buck seemed to think about what I had just said. I wasn't satisfied with my description at all, but explaining such a common matter to another pony was... difficult. He obviously came to the same conclusion and shook his head. "I'm sorry, I can't imagine it, but it has to be great. But if you don't like the rain, there're some good news for you: Downpour like this doesn't happen too often around here. But the further you go north the worse it gets, I've heard the area around Hoofington's under water all the time, but don't worry, that's far away."
As if it had heard that it was needed somewhere else, the rain stopped.
"At least it doesn't last too long and ends abruptly, don't know why." he said casually while my jaws were still dropped open at the ground. "Come on, we should leave before those scorpions catch up." He left the cave without even looking for rain anymore and so I burdened myself with my bags too and followed him.
If I hadn't learned that even we pegasi weren't able to control the weather in that scale I would have thought our weather factory had simply cut off the water. "I only know the basics of how the weather works, but even I know that this is impossible." I grumbled and stared at the skies, but I could resist to ask "How is that possible?". A question I had asked myself and others too often in the last couple of days for my liking.
"Are you coming as well?" Angel's voice sounded from the nearby trail, that the rain had made was barely visible. Now it was little more than a mud track, only sticking out of the remaining dirt by being less muddy. I shook my head and flew over to him. A long time since I'd been flying for the last time, all the jumpy scary takeoffs didn't count. The last time I really flew I had been chasing Sunshine... dammit!
I was thankful for the magical pulling at my now shortened tail as I brought my back down to earth.
"Ahhh, we're heading this way." My companion pointed a hoof to the... uh, I didn't know which cardinal direction it was exactly, but I wasn't the one I was flying towards. "If you continue your path that way you'll reach the zebra lands in maybe one or two weeks, if they still exist..."
"I'm terribly sorry." I answered, altered my flight course by 180°, landed next to the grey unicorn and together we started walking again. "It's just that I wasn't really airborne for some time now, I'm getting... kinda itchy, you know? Another pegasus affair, nothing serious."
"No need to be sorry, I fully understand. My horn was injured once too, it's been an age since then and it was barely a scratch, but I wasn't able to cast magic for a week or so and it... wasn't pleasant. To be unicorn without its magic is strange, it's a cruel thought, just as a pegasus with its wings broken." He shuddered. "Is this possible? Can a pegasus... break its wings?"
After he had finished his question I shuddered as well. Questions like this always made my legs prickle, and not in a pleasant way. "Yes." I answered hesitantly. It was nothing I liked talking about, no pegasus enjoyed doing this. "I'm no doctor, but basically a wing isn't any different from other limbs. Just like a leg they're composed of bones, muscles and cartilages. The difference is that a wing's much more resilient compared to a leg, which is pretty stable as well. So in order to break a pegasus' wings or disable them somehow else you'd need a good deal of physical force. But if some pegasus manages to loose its ability to fly or, but that's very uncommon, is born without this ability then that's usually the end for said pony. Without your wings you're basically trapped on the one cloud you're borne on, since we can't afford our vertibucks to fly from cloud to cloud every day, so, yeah, they're finished. Most of the affected pegasi choose suicide to..."
"Please, stop. You don't have to tell me more." The grey buck said with an appeasement gesture and gazed into the distance once again. "There're things I don't want to think about, unicorns without horns and pegasi without wings are among them. The wasteland causes enough mutilation and mutation every single day, so that I don't want to fill my spare time with such things. Those things, flying and magic and so on, are what makes us special, but the wasteland tends to take what makes you special away from you, so hang on to it, as tight as you can. For that reason, at our next stop there's a large underground gymnasium, I think you can let off your steam there without catching the attention of everypony around."
"How long?"
"Considering the time we've lost because of the rain? One, two, maybe three hours at the maximum. We should reach our destination in the late afternoon."
"A chance that we encounter other scavengers like Steed?" I didn't know what answer I wanted to hear. Some more friednly faces or just another bundle of betrayed trust?
"There's always a chance of meeting some other ponies inside pre-war ruins, scavengers or travelers just like us. But I don't think so. The area we're heading to is located near an offshot of the Bloodhoof raider territory. No merchant or traveler would walk this way and since it's just a couple of old school buildings, no scavenger would go there as well, it simply wouldn't be worthwhile. Office blocks, okay, sometimes there's something valuable inside those, factories are always highly coveted for their spare parts, something anypony needs. And police stations or even military bases you can forget a priori. If they were not destroyed in the war or are tainted or contaminated with radiation and if neither raiders nor bandits nor RAD skropions or other vermin decided to make themselves a home there, then they're mostly likely occupied by the Talon Company, the Steel Rangers or those Fillydelphia Slavers. But school buildings... there's nothing valuable to them, no weapons, no technology, no spare parts, nothing worth a single bottle cap. Thankfully most of the time those groups come to the same conclusion, resulting in us being the only ones around there, save and hidden. And there're also plenty of good spots to sleep, most of the pre-war bunkers underneath the buildings are still intact. And the best part..." the grey unicorn's chest was swollen in pride. "...I don't think there's anypony except for me who knows of this place."
An abandoned school then...
I couldn't understand why nopony was eager to save the knowledge inside those buildings, even if this knowledge was only basical stuff, it would be valuable, not just in a financial sense, but further more in a cultural one. But for the majority of the surface dwellers the problems down here seemed to be too pressing for them to be solved by simple basics out of books, that had most likely crumbled into dust years ago.
"So you were there before?" I asked my grey companion. Whatever I was thinking, he could draw on lifelong experience, if he said that it was save, then it was save.
"Yes, it's been a while since then and the last time it was just a short stop with one of my caravans I had recommended this route. We came out all in one piece, no raiders, just a few scorpions, but the small ones. And if none of the buildings has collapsed since my last visit, I even know a pretty campground."
"Collapsed?!"
"These are over two hundred years old buildings, sometimes something comes down."
"And how are we supposed to know that the ceiling won't come down tonight? I would appreciate not be crushed by pre-war rubble." Thinking of which... that would be a rather extraordinary end for a pegasus. Fallen from the skies, trapped at the surface and finally dying underground, buried by stone. Almost poetic. I would've something to tell, if I this story wouldn't need me to die in the process.
"Don't worry, I can calculate what's and what's not save to use. And if that one room isn't good enough anymore, then there're plenty more to use. So we won't get buried underneath the collapsing ceiling." His gaze turned towards the horizon. "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. And now come on, once we reach the top of those hills over there you should be able to see the school buildings. It will still take a while from there, but we can see our destination room there, that's at least something, isn't it?"
""")_x_("""
The afternoon sun already began to set as we reached said hills and just as Angel had said I could see a couple of buildings in the far distance, hidden away inside a small valley. Easy to miss at least if you were just cluelessly walking around.
"Can you see it yet?" my companion called up to me, I was flying a few meters above the hilltops, my gaze fixated on the buildings. They looked pretty much intact, but I was still asking myself why anypony would build a school out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe some kind of boarding school, I had heard of those, somewhere in the Enclave should be some too... Angel watched me landing next to him with questioning look and after I had told him that I hadn't seen anything to worry about we marched down the hills again.
"I still can't understand why they've build it out here. I mean, if you look at it from above, and I think that was quite common before the war, you have to ask yourself: why should anypony come to attend this school? And from where? There's nothing around here, no town, no village, not even some... pffh, how got ponies transported before the war again... railroads."
"Maybe it looked different then." the buck answered, but he didn't sound too convinced either. Obviously that was nothing the surface ponies thought or cared much about.
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. I've seen the skeletons of a pre-war city before, and this looks nothing like it. There're no ruined buildings or devastated streets. It's just... nothing."
"The pre-war ponies had many secrets." my companion said in a voice as if he was about to tell a scary Nightmare Night story. "Maybe this has been a secret training ground for Equestrian Special Forces or a laboratory for chemical weapons or a ministry hub, disguised as a school."
Ah, the ministries... those six organisations, appointed by princess Luna to win the war in its last years, when everything started do go downhills. Of course that hadn't seemed that way back then, but... hindsight is always easier than foresight, isn't it. The ministries of Moral, Image, Wartime Technology, Arcane Science, Peace and Awesome. For the Enclave only the last two were of historical importance, since they were the two that were run by the most important of all pegasi: Fluttershy, the mare in charge of the Ministry of Peace, known for her kindness, even towards the enemy, and Rainbow Dash, an idol for both heroism and betrayal. A heroine in battle, loved by the Equestrian citizens and feared by our zebra opponents, the leader of the Ministry of Awesome, who abandoned her home by the times the balefire had already obliterated our capital and the lands below, thereby generating the crime of turning dashite, committing the same act the ministry mare had committed all that time ago...
"Whatever it once was, the Last Day put an end to their work or they covered up their traces really good before." Angel continued while we were drawing closer and closer to the school buildings. "Last time I visited it looked like an ordinary pre-war school, its top quality location didn't save it from the bombs though, but due to that there're few who know about it today."
I turned my head forwards again. I was thinking too much, the pre-war Equestria hadn't been a country full of conspiracy and secret facilities, this was most likely just a simple boarding school, built to keep rich pony's foals away from the war.
"Are there no maps which show places like this?" How could a location be "secret" after all, considering the pre-war ponies' mania for mapping everything they could see, resulting in very detailed surface maps in the Enclave's museums.
"What gives you that idea?" Angel asked back and his map floated out of his bags again. "I've got a map and there're several locations marked on it."
"Yes, but this map is hoofmade by yourself. I'm speaking of official pre-war maps, like the ones we have back home, maps on which everything is drawn on. How is it possible that the knowledge about places like this is lost when a pony just has to look on his or her map to see that there are several unknown places in the wasteland."
"You know, there are some things down here that are more valuable than a whole mountain of caps and a pre-war map is one of those, since most of them were incinerated in the fires of the war and the ones that are still existent, be it by luck or because they were saved inside arcano-tech devices, then the Steel Rangers most likely got their hooves on them. Ordinary ponies' maps, like mine for example, are based on experience. While we travel through the wasteland we see some interesting places and when they're interesting enough we mark them on our maps. The result is no exact map of course, unless said pony happens to be a pegasus, and since the adventurers hardly ever exchange their views there are those "secret" locations."
So, no accurate maps...
Somepony would have to gather all those bits and pieces and create a true wasteland map. It would be a great improvement for sure.But this would be another pony's task, I wouldn't have to worry about surface dweller's pathfinding problems once I was back home.
"Soon we will arrive at the school, I'll show you our campsite and then the gym. Sounds good, doesn't it?"
I nodded.
Indeed, I had been looking forward to this since the first time the grey unicorn had brought it up.
""")_x_("""
The school buildings themselves were beautiful to look at, apart from the cracks in their facades, but that was nothing anypony could do something about right now, time and war hadn't gone by without leaving their signs all over the place. Three large buildings, neither of them the gym according to Angel, since that one was build underground for some reason, were arranged around a wide, but dead by now, meadow. The buildings were either two or three stories tall and there was no sign of any physical connection between the houses. The remains of a old playground were scattered all over the places, along with remnants of more grownup ponies fields for playing, but blessedly no remains of equine origin.
The only inhabitants of this place were several "small" RADscorpions, half a dozen or maybe a few more, but they fell prey to our guns really quickly, obviously their shells weren't as thick as the giant one's had been. While we were disposing of the vermin I noticed the uneasy look on the face of my unicorn companion, just as he was expecting another assault. But nothing happened.
"It looks nice here." I said to end the awkward silence, but the answer I got was a nod and a continuation of the glacial staring. "Like the pictures in the storybooks, if you ignore the debris and the dead grass." He still didn't react, something was bothering him, that was obvious, but I also doubted it were animals or creatures, he didn't seem to worry much about them since I knew... well "knew" was the wrong word... since I was traveling with him. "Is something not right?" I finally asked. But what should happen at the worst? "Is there anything wrong with this place?"
His gaze wandered about the scenery several times again, before answering. "Yes... no... I don't think so. Something's hampering me, but I don't know..."
Suddenly he spun around and I heard another bang as the entrails of another RADscorpion were spilled all about the walls of one of the school buildings a few meters away.
"I... I think that was it." Angel said hesitantly, but he was still observing the area around us. So, more monsters then? "Let's go inside."
But he didn't act like it was it.
""")_x_("""
Flying! I was flying again! For real!
After we had entered the middle building and proceeded quickly to the underground cellars, past a large number of doors, which, according to my companion, led to even more bomb shelters, Angel had shown me a room hidden behind a pile of boxes and after he opened the heavy door I found myself in a large and spacious room, with cots mounted to the walls and multiple shelves with tinned food inside. In my imagination bomb shelters were tiny little cabins, in which a pegasus could barely stretch its wings, and the ponies would be packed together as if they were clouds, but this was nothings like that. According to the cots on the walls, this room was meant to house ten ponies, fifteen at its maximum capacity when the second layer of cots above the first level ones were occupied. And given the wide underground tunnels the individual shelters were diverting from, nopony would be in danger of an immediate claustrophobic panic attack. Even the lights were still working, much to my surprise, at least the lights of the room we left our saddle bags behind in, the underground corridors had to be illuminated by Angel's horn as he was leading my towards the promised sports hall.
It was amazing how the single buildings were connected to each other. But it was even more amazing to see the – even in comparison to the rest of the building and its subsurface rooms in special – massive gym. It was approximately twenty meters broad and easily five times as long. And completely underground!
Whoever had built all this all those years ago, they had spared no expense to preserve it for all eternity. The lighting was functional again and after a couple of minutes we even found a tolerably functioning shower block. Angel wished me fun and left a small bag with an orange liquid inside next to the shower, it was meant to be consumed after the showering for a reason he obviously didn't care to explain, and then he bolted away, probably to take a closer look around.
To fly again was exactly as liberating as I had expected it to be. Hard to believe it were only – how much? - five days since my last flight. Two of which I had been unconscious.
While I was working through my rounds, my thoughts were revolving around my strange unicorn companion, who had never justified his actions towards me. Of course I was most thankful to the goddesses for my rescue, but there were so many suspicious things about the grey buck, starting with his super-friendly behavior towards me – well, most of the time – opposite to his willingness to attack everypony else in sight, to his strange cutie mark and him being the most precise shot I had ever encountered, beating even all the famous military marksponies who had visited the Lunar Rock academy now and then. While he had answered the latter in a very evasive way it came to my mind that hadn't asked him yet about the first one. And whatever his reasons might be, I doubted that they were "too personal" to tell. Maybe I should ask him this evening during dinner, yeah, that sounded like a good plan, he would've no way to get away, figuratively spoken.
With this intention enrooted in my head I set off towards the shower block. Just as the rain prior this day, the water felt strange and oily and it didn't smell good, but for two centuries old and thereby stale water that wasn't too surprising. And it was better than nothing.
By the time I had finished my shower, was wearing my clothing again and stroked my still wet mane out of my face – it had been a deuce of a task to dry myself off, but due to "misuse" of my black undershirt I manged to – I took a look on the gym's big clocks, only then getting aware of my fallacy: the clocks had stopped working a long time ago and I had lost my sense of time during my flight session and I was struck by a mild panic. We may had not agreed on a fixed time I would return, but if he was hungry now and only waiting for me...
I hit my sunlight pendant and rushed back through the otherwise dark corridors, hoping I would take the right turn, the one that was leading back to our camp site.
After bursting into the wrong room three times I finally recognized the pile of boxes next to the door of our bomb shelter. There was no smell of food or fire in the air, meaning either that Angel hadn't started the fire yet or that the vault door wasn't transparent for smells, which would make sense, since it was the door of a bomb shelter.
As I crouched to the door I found it unlocked – which I had expected – but also ajar. That was no good sign. I could hear no voice or other noises that indicated the presence of a pony behind the door, no good sign either. And I was unarmed. Great!
What if the scorpions or any other creatures had found their way inside and down here and were going for our supplies right now? Or thieves? Or those raider ponies?
Glancing through the gap between the reinforced door frame and its interior I found my worries unjustified: although it was empty there were no traces of any recent fighting, our saddle bags lay at the exact same position we had left them behind. There was no Angel, but no hacked to death corpse either, that was good... somehow. I dashed over to our baggage, slung the holster of my gun around my foreleg again and sneaked up to the surface again.
The night was as black as the underground tunnels of the RADscorpion cave had been and to cap it all the light emitted by my pendant was fading. Was it in need to recharge? Could a magically enchanted gemstone be recharged or recharge itself at all? I couldn't see a trace of my companion up here too, no light was shining out of any window I could see – or not see on that score. Three possible options concerning his disappearance were crossing my mind: either he was investigating the buildings on his own without saying anything to me, maybe he was searching for something, in this case I would spot him by the light of his horn. Or he had been attacked by the scorpions again, but they hadn't seemed a problem before.
Or he had abandoned me, but... that wasn't a possibility, was it? His whole stuff was still located at our camp site and he had helped me so many times before, it wouldn't be worth it. So, then it was search for him or wait for him...
By the time I entered the first of the school buildings I regretted my decision not to curl up in front of the campfire and wait for the unicorn. It may seem impossible, but in here it was even darker than at the outside. I had tapped out my light, hoping it would regain its strength soon and was now guided by my sense of touch alone, without my torch I had to grope my way alongside the walls, hoping to notice Angel by some kind of noise or light or anything like that. But the building was dead silent, so maybe he... no, forget it, Feather, he's still here!
Tripping through the darkness I cursed this construct's creators. Why couldn't they make their corridor lighting as durable as the gym one's? Just because this stupid little megaspell blast, that destroyed the world? They should really get clear of that weakness. And the litter ploughing service hadn't run through this building quite a while now, the could have at least set up a trip hazard warning sign for those damn soda bottles and tin cans I was nearly falling over every two steps. Okay, maybe there was a danger sign – but the lights didn't work to let me see it!
I worked my way through an entire floor of the house and had climbed the stairs to the second as I noticed a glowing light at the end of the corridor to my right. No unicorn's glowing horn, that was for sure, it was flickering to much, and its color wasn't as colt as the magic light Angel emitted. I took a wild guess: fire. So there had to be somepony, a fire doesn't lit itself, not even on the surface. Sneaking up to the door, eavesdropping for any kind of noise that would indicate a living being inside the room, I found its door just as open as the one sealing our camp site. Not willingly to take any risk I cautiously knocked at the door and waited a few seconds for something to move. Then I knocked a second time, waited a few seconds again and finally entered the room, already thinking of an excuse to interrupt whatever I would be interrupting.
A really good one involving weird coincidences and a legendary bloatsprite was just coming to my mind when I discovered that there was no pony inside I could present it to. I would've been sad if it hadn't been for the upcoming concern about what had happened to whoever had been resting here and, even more pressing, what had happened to Angel then. It was clear by now that he wasn't the only one who knew about this place, so who else had been coming for it?
I decided to take a look around, maybe the pony who had set up his or her camp at the end of this room, next to the blackboard, was just hiding from the oh so awesome and dire pegasus that had entered the room seconds ago. My first glace fell on the light source that I had mistaken for fire. Well, not entirely mistaken, but would you describe a stained lamp as a fire, even if it was powered by it? Anyway, since the fire was still burning I doubted its owner could have been gone for long and considering the mess that were the former residents saddle bags I also doubted he or she went away voluntarily. They were rifled through, ransacked and partially torn apart, the pony or maybe creature which had searched them obviously hadn't cared about any further use, the interiors, boxes, bags and what I assumed were empty magazines were scattered all over the illuminated area of the room. Even as few as I knew about hoof-to-hoof combat I could see that there had been a fight in this place not long ago, an hour or two at least.
Okay, there was a desk at well... make that several desks, some turned over to build something like visual or actual battle cover, though I doubted its efficiency, it was wood after all and what good were plastics and wood against bullets or magical plasma charges?
"Somepony at home?" and other things I called out as I was looking under the desks and in the dark corners for a living being to answer, but nope! - nopony home. While I was walking around my look fell on a grey box lying in the darkness of the visual cover, obviously fallen from one of the desks either in battle or simply because it had been standing on one of the pushed over desks, and there was a soft green gloom coming out of one of its sides. Drawing closer to the fallen object I suddenly remembered where I had seen such a thing the last time – okay, before I woke up at Duct Tape's: that was a terminal, a pre-war arcano-tech device, sometimes referred to as a "computer", used to interact with the just as technical systems connected with it. We had such in the Enclave too, the surface wasn't so so alien, was it? Waiting in line, technical devices such like this one, no carnivorous pony-mutants...
Righting the terminal and laying down in front of it, I hoped it wouldn't be encrypted or locked somehow, like the Enclave's ones often were to prevent unauthorised pegasi from messing with the system, or would cause any harm when used incorrectly. I wasn't exactly what one would call a computer whiz, other pegasi were trained to deal with administrative, life-sustaining or even military terminals, all of which this one hopefully wasn't. While I wouldn't have made Lunar Rock explode in rainbows and storm clouds by simply touching one of this arcane things I also doubted I would have accomplished anything by doing so. Touching – not exploding of course! But since this terminal didn't seem to be weird to a weather bomb, I dared to give it both a look and a hooftap, neither resulting in me getting blown up. The dull green monitor came to life, its screen was now of a less dull green color, and I could see several entries listed under a whole screen of introduction to this product ("This terminal is brought to you by: EQTech Inc. – Equestrian technology for Equestrian ponies"), copyright issues ("Any attempt of copying or stealing this product or related hard- or software will result in bonded labor, zebra scum!") and an acknowledgement ("Thank you for using equestrian technology, citizen"). All of the entries were provided with a date and by what I knew about time, they were very old, possibliy from before the war, except for the last few and a corrupted file, which wasn't dated. They were knew, recently written, I guessed, maybe by the former resident pony.
Pushing one of the bigger keys, that I had learned was the confirm-key, - even I wasn't entirely unaware of certain functions – after using some cursor keys to select the first new entry, the screen flashed and a new one appeared, thankfully with text on it:
22...97#6
I'm one lucky unicorn.
I was just traveling, minding my own business and then, out of nowhere -bamm! - there's this valley. Yeah, cool enough that it isn't overrun by those damn RADroaches or the even more damned scorpions, no, at its end there were some buildings, a few critters around, but Nightmare Moon may care. The buildings are mostly intact and untouched and from what I've seen so far, there's pretty much to loot. I hope there's still some food left, my supplies dwindle.
22...97#7
This place is amazing.
Looks like a school, isn't a school, at least not a normal one like all the others I've encountered so far. Under the surface there's a huge system of bunkers, not roach- or scorpion-infested I want to add, and its just unbelievable: there's light, constant water – mildly radioactive, but nothing RADaway can't fix - breathable air and more tinned food than I can carry along.
22...98#1
Found an armory today.
An armory... inside a school with a bunker beneath. Hell yeah! Most of the good stuff's gone, but there are some batons and smaller firearms left, along with fitting magazines and - to top it all – there're even a few magical energy weapons. Energy weapons, by Celestia's hindlegs! Despite the fact that I don't know how to use such a thing, what I know for sure is that they'll make me goddesses-damn rich once I'm back in Appleloosa.
I'll be rich! I'll be rich! I'll be
The writing ended abruptly.
And I got into a conflict of what to be surprised at first.
The fact that there were at least two other ponies in this building apart from Angel and me, that there was an armory inside a school – looted, but an armory nonetheless – or that my caring unicorn companion had allowed me to shower in radioactive water! Okay, mildly radioactive, I hadn't liquified during the last hours, so yeah...
Or that a pony had written something like this in the first place. It made no sense to me, who was he or she writing to? But maybe writing was a way for those ponies to relief themselves. Absentmindedly I selected the corrupted entry, not really caring about what a pony would write who had a fully stacked armory located in their school's basement, whether it was readable or not.
File corrupted – Error 09
[L33T]...24(H4X0R)4
I doubt anypony will be smart or stupid enough to read this, but in case I forget, there's a secret safe behind the book shelf next to the door. I bunkered the good stuff I couldn't carry with me there, and since I've no idea of the code to reopen the save I just left the door ajar. I really should figure out how to pick a lock, it can't be that hard... though I haven't seen anypony doing it yet...
Okay, now I knew what to wonder about first:
About a pony who gave away its secret hoard in a non-encrypted file. If I would have been a thief or something this would be... awesome for me. But whoever had taken the author of this notes, they had been too stupid to read this special entry, since said shelf next to the door was still on its spot while everything else was looted.
For a second I thought about taking whatever was left, but... in case I would be able to rescue this pony, what would I say?
"Hello mister Stranger, I just happened to come by to free you from your misery. Oh, don't mind, I've taken the reward already, we're even."
But on the other hoof, what if there was a magical energy weapon inside the save? Triggering the firing mechanism of a projectile weapon within my muzzle and the resulting recoil wasn't exactly pleasant, a plasma pistol wouldn't recoil... Shaking my head I decided to leave this room alone for now, once I was reunited with Angel, he could decide what to do, he was the wasteland grunt after all.
I entered the dark corridor once again, touching my sunlight pendant with my wing. Much to my delight it had recharged and was emitting its golden light again. The floor was still littered with garbage of all kind, but with some light it was much easier to avoid tripping over it. No other room was illuminated like the one with the lamp and the terminal and I didn't hear anything so after another eternity of searching I decided to abandon plan A – like "active search" – and proceed to plan B – like "bonfire", meaning I would return to our camp site and wait for Angel, just as he would appreciate it.
But just as I had climbed down the stairs again and was on my way towards the exit I heard laughter. Definitive male laughter, although I hadn't heard it that loud until now.
Maybe it truly was Angel, who had... found a funny cartoon? Anyway, not taking any risk I crouched and tracked the source of the noise the old fashioned way – with my ears. It was coming from my right – no – from down under? Turning my head I saw another case of stairs leading downwards into the bunkers. I was in luck, the laughter repeated itself every few seconds so I could trace it through the underground corridors and ended up in front of a door, but not a heavy one, just a normal wooden door, with an untransparent window up its top half and a keyhole at its middle.
I wasn't sure I wanted to... no, mind you the reason for the laughing was still unknown to me, I definitely was sure I didn't want to interrupt anything... private going on inside this room. No, brain, not today! After successfully fighting down the upcoming pictures in my mind, I decided to knock at the door first to avoid any kind of delicate situation, but merely seconds before my hoof struck the wood a voice from within the room made pause.The pony was laughing too, but this wasn't Angels kind of laughter as well.
Okay, Feather, don't knock, not yet.
I bowed down in front of the door and took a look through its keyhole, because that's what keyholes were made for.
On the other side I spotted a buck, definitely not Angel, lying on a mattress and looking at something I could not see, but I could say for sure it was what made them laugh. His brown body was wrapped in heavy leather armor, which covered his chest and a large part of his back up to his flank, and his red mane was cut short. But the thing that really made me shiver was the picture on the buck's flank. I had thought with the slavers' I had seen the strangest and most extreme examples of surface cutie marks, but now I was proofed wrong. Compared to the bloody piece of razor wire their cages and batons seemed almost harmless. Though I had imagined them a little bit more... evil, I was sure the pony I saw in front of me was one of the infamous raiders.
While I stood there, stunned by the buck's appearance, it totally slipped my mind that there was another male pony inside this room I hadn't yet seen. And just as I remembered that fact, my look got blocked by a green chest, the door opened from the inside and I found myself face to face with the of the monstrosities Angel had warned me about.
"Oh, look at that..." the raider began, after we had stared at each other for a few moments, he seemed to be just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. "Folks, we've got a visitor!"
I backed away and against the wall behind me as I saw how the brown pony rose from the mattress and drew himself up to his full height. He had seemed smaller lying there.
Much smaller.
In a presence of mind I hadn't trusted myself to be capable of I drew my weapon off my foreleg and pointed it towards the two bucks.
"Nopony moves! You. Back into the room!" I shouted as impressive as possible to compensate shivering legs. By Celestia's mane, one could smell my fear throughout the whole bunker complex.
"Relax, sweety." the slimy green buck in front of me said with a just as slimy sounding voice. "We don't want..."
"Back into the room!" I shouted again, but I guess it sounded like a squeal. But despite like what it sounded, the gun pointed at his face made the the raider take a few steps backwards, until he stood next to his boofy companion, who had done nothing but staring at me. Unlike me he wasn't sure if I would fire my weapon.
"Listen, baby, why don't you lower your gun, there will be no..."
A twitch of my gun's barrel silenced him.
"You would like that, wouldn't you?"
By the time I had followed him into the room and the light fell on my whole body the green buck blew a whistle.
"Oh, see what we've got us. It's a pegasus. That's something new indeed. And since you're one civilized pony, I think you should put away your weapon, so we can talk like the grown ups we are. We are civilized grown ups, aren't we, Brute?"
The massive brown one seemed not to understand his partners opening, he just stared at my wings.
"Eh, boss, if she's one of those enclave-freaks she might not be alone. They say that there's always a whole flock of them."
"You're right, Brute. Maybe we should ask here about that, shouldn't we?" The brawny buck nodded stupidly and his green boss, obviously the brains of this team, addressed me again. "So, pegasus: you're alone or is there backup of your's out there?"
Maybe there was a chance of getting out of here unharmed. If they were afraid of enclave soldiers.
"Yes, yes,of course!" I answered instantly. "There's an whole vertibuck filled with battle-tried pegasi at the court and they're waiting for my orders to charge in here."
What's the idiom? A lie never lives to be old. Or is it a liar...? Don't act like you're in panic just because you're in panic, Feather! You're a professional!
"So I dare you, don't do anything stupid, or... or I'll turn your brain into paste."
For a while the boss just looked at me appraisingly, then he slapped on his slimy smile again.
"If that's the matter, I very much apologize for our rudeness and of course the two of us will let you go in peace, if that's what you want."
He nodded to the door behind me and I slowly started walking backwards and towards it. Even if my lie had persuaded them not to attack me, I didn't want to turn my back on them. However this had worked didn't matter now, what I had to do now was finding Angel and get the hell out of here. Eventually even this dumb brute would figure out that I had been lying and then there would be nothing to hold them back.
As I passed thee door frame my hindquarters hit something soft that hadn't been there before and after I turned around I faced three more earth ponies, all of them wearing the same kind of reinforced leather armor. In fear I jumped a few feet backwards into the room again and spun around again as the green buck yelled: "Get her, Brute!" With a speed I considered possible for him, the massive Brute reached out for something under his mattress and then – bamm!
Pain flashed through my body as a bullet smashed right through my right foreleg. I lost my balance, plunged to the ground, holding my left hoof protectingly over my wound, and cried in pain. Throughout the veil of pain, tears and fear that was clouding both my hearing and my vision I heard the green leader yelling at his muscular companion: "Are you nuts, Brute! We want them alive! Especially if they're as high-prized as this one. "
"But... but, boss... you said "Get her!" so I got her like the unicorn before, you said "Get him!" too then and you weren't angry after I whacked him."
A unicorn... whacked him... no...
I could barely see the boss tearing his mane.
"For fuck's sake, somepony turn her off! I can't think with that noisy brat screaming her lunge out!" he shouted at one of his other henchponies. Following his order one dirty white buck stepped closer to me, a heavy branch hold in his muzzle.
"If you kill her, you're the one to answer if our employer gets pissed! Understood?!"
Then the world around me went dark.
""")_x_("""
The first thing I did by the time my unconsciousness ended was to scream. I didn't try to move, nor did I take a look at my environment, I just screamed. Screamed both in agony and horror, because of what had happened to me and what would follow. My head ached terribly and the pain in my foreleg beat against a bloodstained rags somepony had mercifully wrapped around it. Yeah, mercifully... I didn't exactly know what fate my captors had planned for me, only that they wanted me to stay alive, and I wasn't sure about that being a good thing or not...
Every second I lay there and my heart pumped blood through my veins hurt. Being actually shot hurt so much, more than I had ever expected. Of course I had felt pain before, even some major injuries like pitching a wing under one of Lunar Rock's metal doors, the blow Sunshine had given me or the slamming face first into a stone earlier this day, and of course I read about it in some of my books, when a protagonist got injured himself, but it was all nothing compared to what I was enduring now.
Finally, after I had stopped the screaming due to my dry throat, I felt able to move my body again, but I found both my fore- and hindlegs tied together, preventing me from moving more than a few inches, even my wings were bound to my body by a rope. My gaze wandered from my own body to the room I was lying in. It was one of the underground bunkers, at least it looked just as the one Angel and I had set up our camp and the ones I had burst in on my way back, but apart from the improvised brass door I had no good look at from my current position and a small table-like construct there was no furniture, no cots, no shelves with food. Just one of those indestructible lights, that...no, that was none of the lights illuminating the gym, judging by the flickering the light source directly above was an ordinary light bulb. Not slightly as durable, efficient and complicated as the arcano-tech fluorescent lambs most of the Enclave's cities were lighted with, but they compensated that "defect" with the sheer number of which they had been recovered by the Enclave's troops before sealing the cloud cover. In its flickering light I could see parts of my equipment lying on the table, to make sure I looked at myself again. Yup, everything was gone. From my overall uniform to my holster, gun and even the pendant Angel had given to me. But apart from their absence and the beating wound at my foreleg I couldn't spot any other injuries and felt relatively unharmed too. Good, aside from the fact that I was captured, tied down and held in a underground room somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Raiders then...
The grey unicorn had warned me about them, told me to shoot them on sight. I had hesitated and now I would pay the price. "If raiders on the other hoof catch somepony and don't kill him or her instantly, than that's no mercy." he had said. "They're only taking prisoners to continue the torture and the killing." I was deep,deep down in the soup, if he was right. And Angel himself... he was most likely already dead if the boofy raider, Brute, had told the truth. And I couldn't think of a way or a reason he would've been actively lying to me.
"My, my, see who's awake again." a cold and familiar voice said as the door opened and the slime green earth pony buck entered. Then his attendance followed, but this time it wasn't just one ore two other bucks, no, this time it were easily ten of them, I couldn't count all of them. And the brute who had shot wasn't even with them, maybe he stood guard before the door to my cell. The leader planted himself maybe a meter away and bowed down to me, while his companions lined up around us at the bunkers walls. "Now, that you've gotten rid of your annoying little toy, we can talk like two sentient ponies, what do you think?"
"You killed Angel!" was the only thing that came out of my mouth as I threw myself against my fetters, trying to do... something. The fury or the despair or whatever it was that was fueling my body right now drowned the pain.
"That unicorn? Yes, Brute took him down a few hours ago. Not a pretty sight, believe me, but unfortunately we don't need ponies like him."
"Need? For what?"
"For our employer of course, the one who pays us. And he's not interested in unicorn buck's, so, that's bad for him, not for us."
"Interested in... in ponies?" I asked whisperingly. "Why would somepony be interested in... other ponies?"
He green one gave a laugh. "Why? Pffh, that doesn't matter. What does matter is, that our employer's rich as shit and that he'll be paying us whole lot of caps if we bring him somepony like you, that's enough reason for me. You know, earth ponies dwell the wasteland in profusion, way too much to sell them to a collector, unicorns are rarer, but there're still so much of them so nopony needs professionals like us. But a pegasus..." His eyes sparkled with greed. "...you can't imagine the amount of caps you and your wings will earn us. Maybe even more than a zebra."
"A collector? Who..." Why was I even talking to those... those raiders?
"A guy near Trottingham, maybe his brain's a little bit liquid, but as I said, he's damn rich and he's collecting rare specimen, like you. I don't believe he's eating ponies, he's paying to much, so this way everybody wins. You live, we're rich, you know... it's nothing personal, just business."
Before he could continue his horrible pleadings the door opened and Brute entered the room, a dark brown sack held in his enormous muzzle.
"Boss, what should I do with his body? The unicorn's?"
The green buck rose and turned towards his henchpony, I could nearly see how he was about to tear his mane again.
"I told you, Brute, we don't need his body, what we need is his head. Those tribals pay for unicorn horns, but only if they're fresh, so you..."
"I've already did it," he handed the sack over to his green superior and sat back on his haunches. "It's in there. I want to ask what should I do with the rest of him?"
My eyes widened in horror as he extracted Angel's head from the sack, laid it on the table, next to my uni-...clothing and started to examine it.
"Well done, Brute, that's a good job you've done there."
I tried to look away, but the image had already burned itself into my mind.
I nearly vomited. That... that wasn't possible... this couldn't be happening...
Looking up again I saw how the green on patted the brute's head, he was squeaking with pleasure.
"Well then, guys, we don't have all night to talk about funny business, we're out of schedule for some time now, the discovery of this complex was unexpected but it's definitely worth to remember. But nonetheless we have to go real soon, our account executive's not waiting for us. Ready our guest for transport, then come to the camp, we've got some packing to do. We leave in twenty minutes."
Unwilling grumbling.
"Oh, get a hold of yourselves, think about all the caps it's gonna earn us, it'll easily be worth this double shift."
Then, in the moment when I was abandoning all hope to get out of here somehow, I heard something I would have never thought to be so happy to hear: gun shots.
They were followed by a cry of pain, right in front of the room. I looked at the door as confused as everypony else, but soon they drew their own firearms, revolvers, automated pistols, even some submachine guns if I wasn't mistaken, and aimed them at the door, thereby crushing my hopes for a mysterious rescue. Whoever had been come to save me, willingly or by accident, would be perforated by the countless bullets my captors' weapons would shoot into him or her as soon as the door opened.
"You said there were only two camps." the leader growled at one of his companions, who just shook his head in confusion.
"It were only two, I swear it, by my sister."
For a while, nothing happened, the mysterious attacker seemed to pause, maybe he had heard the talking behind the door and thought over coming in again, and my gaze fell on the severed head the leader had left on the table, Angel's head. His grey hide, the light green mane...
Wait a second...
With a sudden bang the door got ripped out of its hinges and was flung into the room, another shot rang through the air and ripped apart the light bulb almost simultaneously, wrapping the world around me in darkness again.
"Goddesses-damn, fire! Off it!" one of the gang members around me yelled and promptly everypony around me wielding a gun in his muzzle follow the order.
The shooting lasted one second, two seconds, three...
Then there was silence.
Absolute silence.
"You think we got him?" somepony whispered in the dark. Heavy breathing was replacing the breathless silence. "Did anypony hit him?"
"We have to. Everything's coming through this door should be a fucking sieve by now."
"Can somepony light the light, please. I can't see shit."
"I'm no unicorn, pal."
"That's enough!" the leader of the group shouted, at least that was what I thought by the voice I heard. Could have been one of the others as well, but this made the most sense.
"Brute and I're going back to our camp, we get some torches or something else and then we'll come back. You others keep an eye on our guest, I don't want whoever this is to..."
Suddenly three grey glowing spheres appeared in the center of the room, from were the green boss pony had been talking to me, exactly in the middle of the grumbling, cursing and mildly panicking stallions. One of the spheres surrounded a horn and the other two...
The shots that rang through the air as my savior fired his dual-wielded guns weren't deafening as I had expected, I had heard guns being fired before, even in close proximity, but this sounded nothing like them. It sounded a bit the the usual rat-tat of a submachine gun, but the noise was nearly silent, a bit like when a silenced weapon was fired in one of the few archived movies we had in the Enclave. In the light of the muzzle flashes I could see how one after another the raiders were mowed down by precise bursts of fire, the two pistols switching position every time they successfully struck down one of them, while the horn remained at the same place all the time.
The whole action lasted only several seconds, but they seemed like eternity to me.
There was utter silence and complete darkness again, only the three spheres cast weak light on their surroundings, then a bright blue light emerged out of nowhere, blinding me and as me eyesight returned I could see Angel, his ghastly face glowering at the fallen bucks to his hooves, two pistols floating next to his head. but this weren't the firearms I had seen him using earlier today, the ones he had killed scorpions and bloatsprites, they looked not home-made or two centuries old like his other guns or the weapons the raiders had used.
This pistols looked like preserved work of an artist from before the war: the frame shined black in the light of the unicorn's horn, one of the slides was black, the other one silverish, a reinforced frame, which also extended their barrels by a quarter, was added to them and their muzzles were ornamented with a extending pointy right-angled triangle that covered the lower half of the barrel. I couldn't see any kind of a mouth grip, the weighted magazines, each with a gemstone edged into its base, were stuffed inside shafts at the back end of the guns. Apparently their firepower was only available to unicorns.
"Are you... are you alright?" Angel asked worriedly, the stern expression on his face faded instantly as he bowed down to me and loosened the bonds around my legs. "Did they harm you in any way?"
By the time he had untied me I leaped up and flung my forelgs around his neck, pulling him into a close embrace and started weeping weakly, not in fear or pain, but in relief to see him again.
I regained control about myself not until the grey unicorn had lifted me on his back and had carried me all the way back to our own shelter room. And along with the control the pain in my foreleg returned.
"I'm so so sorry." Angel gasped while he laid me down on my bedroll. "It's all my fault."
I shook my head. "That's not true and you know that. You could've never know they were here and you looked around quite well, I'm sure of it."
"Well, if I had looked around a bit more well, you wouldn't have been hurt! I felt ill at ease from the very beginning, when we arrived here, but I thought it were only those damn scorpions. I should've known better... Oh, goddesses, what happened to you?!" He started to remove the bloodstained rag from my wound with a painful pulling sensation that made me clench my teeth. His controlled facade was fallen out of his face completely by now, and his eyes were filled with fear. Fear to loose me...?
"I... I was searching for you." I replied through my teeth. "I returned from the flying thing and you weren't there, I thought you might be inside one of the other buildings, so I went out to...ah!"
By now Angel had unwrapped my poorly bandaged right foreleg completely and as the air touched the flesh below, it made me hiss.
"A gunshot wound? That... that wasn't me, was it?"
"No. They were it. I couldn't find you inside the building I sifted through and was about to leave as I heard noises coming up from the underground. I though it would be you, so I walked downstairs and... looked through the keyhole of the door separating me from the noises." While I was talking the grey unicorn examined my wound and nodded from time to time to show that he was still listening. "Then I saw a buck, laying on a mattress and looking at something. And his cutie mark stunned me."
"Stunned you? Was it something uncommon?"
"It was a bucking bloody piece of razor wire! What kind a pony gets a cutie mark like that?!"
He just shook his head silently. "You don't want to know. There're many things you don't want know about the surface."
We paused for a few moments, then I continued.
"I was about to chicken off as another one of them opened the door right in front of me. I kept them at bay with my own gun, but then... things got messy. I got surrounded somehow, the giant one shot my leg and another one knocked me unconscious."
I paused as he stood up, trotted over to our saddle bags and returned with a small flask filled with red or purple liquid.
"Then I awoke in that cellar and the other came in. They... they told me cruel things. I though... I thought you were dead! They had a grey unicorn's head with them. A Head! And they showed it to me!"
"Slow your breathing down or you'll faint. Everything's alright, they're gone and can't hurt nopony anymore. It's over."
"I... I should've shot them on sight, just like you said." I whispered, more to myself than to my companion.
"Yes. You should have, but there's no disgrace in not doing so." I was staggered by hearing him say this. Especially after I remembered him yelling at me before, the first time I tried to talk to Steed. I had expected him to be angry, to shout at me for being so careless and unaware of the danger. But he didn't. "You may have thought you could talk sense to them, you could've never known that this wasn't the case. And instead of killing a potentially innocent pony you chose to let them go, even if they didn't let you. It was... kind of you, something I would never be capable of. Your behavior speaks of the innocence so many ponies lack down here." One of his hooves patted my head tenderly. "You've done the right thing, I just resolved the matter."
I began to feel better. Not in a physical matter of course, my injury still ached too much for that, but I was glad he wasn't angry at me.
"However," he continued. "I've examined your wound and I guess you were quite lucky under the circumstances..."
"I hate this idiom."
"...the bullet went right through your leg, without shattering any of your bones."
"And how's that good?"
"It's good, because I can simply give you that." He levitated the purple flask up to my face. "A healing potion. The clue's in the name, it'll heal your injury in a matter of seconds, but despite that, you should rest until morning, you've been through a lot."
I reached out with one of my wings and downed the liquid. A pleasant warmth spread out inside my body and I saw in astonishment how my with hide closed over the exposed flesh. It tingled.
"Why wasn't one of them administered to me after my crash, it would've been much easier and cheaper for you that way, instead of putting me into care for a few days."
"Those potions should be used only for minor or simple injuries. I think Duct Tape simply rated the damage on your body as too severe to be treated with a potion. He's the doctor."
"And you're sure he didn't want to clean you out?"
"No, I don't think so, he's not that kind of pony. He's different from other wasteland doctors, he offers medical treatment for a fixed price, not depending on the severity of the injuries of the offered pony. In another way he would make more caps for sure, but he rejects that. He says it's his policy." He stood up, turned around and trotted towards the door.
"Why, Angel?" I asked. "Why did you do this?"
"I want to search the building again, make sure that there're not other of those buggers or captured ponies."
"No, that's not what I meant. Why're you helping me?"
He cocked his head and looked at me enquiringly, then he sighed.
"It's nothing worth mentioning."
"Oh, I don't think it's nothing. You and your caravan carried me through this wasteland for three days, you paid hundreds of caps to set me on my hooves again and get my clothing repaired, you accompany me at a journey to raider territory and now you're charging into a room full of armed ponies, just because they might've got me captured. You wasn't even sure of that. So now..." I took a deep breath. "...I want to know it: Why are you doing all this? Why are you helping me."
No muscle moved on Angel's face, it looked just as questioningly than it had before my question. Call me crazy or maybe a little fuzzy-headed due to the healing potion – I didn't know what was in there – but I thought I saw my father's old sorrow manifesting behind his eyes. "You... you wouldn't understand... you couldn't understand it." he stammered. "It's a... I made a promise a long time ago."
"Why shouldn't I understand a promise?"
"It was a very special promise to a very special somepony."
And with that he vanished into the darkness behind the heavy metal door that sealed our room. I couldn't hear anger in his voice, but yet I still felt as if I had hurt his feelings.
A special promise to a special pony. I was immensely curious now, but I had a hunch that pushing this topic any further wouldn't affect our relationship in a positive way.
So I decided to do exactly what Angel had told me to do: just lay down in my bedroll and let the healing potion do its work. And before I could take another thought my eyes closed. The whole day had been exhausting indeed.
""")_x_("""
I felt well rested again as I awoke. I had no clue about what time it was, it felt as if it was past noon already, but Angel hadn't woke me yet. Speaking of, I couldn't see the grey unicorn anywhere inside this room, but his own bags and his bedroll were still laying on the spot. So he hadn't left me with suppressed fury due to my uncaring questions earlier.
With a quick glance I made sure the healing potion's power lived up to Angel's statement about it, and for real: the margins of my wound had closed entirely, no scar or exposed flesh was left, the hurt point was only recognizable by a a little bit darker spot in my fur where it hadn't regrown to its full strength yet. Cautiously I stood up, not wanting my legs to slip away from under me again like they had at Duct Tape's clinic, but they worked totally fine, so I laid down on my back and stretched all my six extremities.
After I had finished doing so I spotted another hint at the presence of Angel: one of the small party plates with something on it, no Fancypant's Cakes or whatever they were told and none of the tinned beans either, the thing presented to me looked like an apple. No story book apple, this one had some dents and some parts looked overripe but there was no way this fruit was two hundred years old, it tasted to fresh for that as I took a bite.
From where had he taken this one? A question I hoped he would answer, I heavily doubted he would react offended to that question.
I realized that apart from going to sleep again there was no other course of action than climbing the stairs out of the bunkers and looking for my companion again. Hopefully this time he would be just standing out there on the court and wouldn't still search the buildings for other dangers, but that would be silly.
After I had left the tunnels and the building itself I found myself standing in the sunshine of the high noon. The school buildings didn't look as scary as they had tonight anymore, furthermore they looked almost nice and inviting, maybe they had looked that way in the time before the war. As I had arrived at the central playground I spotted Angel through a gap between the buildings, just sitting there on the ground. He seemed thoughtful from behind, so I moved towards him as noisily as possible to call his attention, I didn't want to make him jump. As I drew closer and crossed the ten-meter-boarder his ears rose and he turned around to me. Now I saw that the color of earth to his hooves was a little bit different from the rest around us, as if it had been dug over somehow.
"Good morning." he said with weak smile. "Or to be exact: good midday. Could you sleep?"
I nodded. Surprisingly good in fact.
"Did you find any other ponies in there?" I asked and with a nod towards the school. "I found another camp earlier, though it seemed looted already."
"Yes, I stumbled across it as well, nothing to fetch there."
I told him about the safe, the other unicorn had mentioned in his journal on the terminal, but my companion only nodded slumberously and grumbled something about getting it later.
"And what's that?" I asked and pointed a hoof at the field before us.
"I spent the night burying the dead." he answered with a sigh.
"Bury the dead?"
Maybe it had something do do with his cutie mark, I couldn't draw a direct connection between it and his acting, but there was a lot I didn't know about him or the surface or whatever his cutie mark should symbolize.
"It's how we treat them down here, or rather, how ponies down here should be treating the dead. A little bit of respect for them, regardless of whether they were pony-hunting buggers in life or a poor but virtuous wasteland settler."
"How long...?"
"The whole night as I said earlier, or what was left of it." He yawned.
"But that means you didn't..."
"Please, don't worry about me, I don't need to sleep every single day. One day or two I can endure without any kind of sleep."
I looked at him in disbelieve, then my gaze felt on the round again. "I... I don't want to question your intentions, but... wouldn't it have been much less time-consuming if you had... simply... burned them? Because that's what we do back home." Above the clouds there were no ground to bury anypony in. Maybe the pegasi of old had burned their dead too, but nowadays it was most likely solely a question of space and hygiene.
"It would've been easier, but... I don't burn anypony, dead or alive, never. Call it... religious faith."
""")_x_("""
Level up: Level 6
Skill(s): Survival 35
New Perk added: Entomologist
"Considering you're coming from above the clouds, you've already gained precious insights into the local wasteland fauna."
Your attacks against mutated insects (including RADsorpions and Bloatsprites) run a chance of 20% do deal additional 50% damage. Critical hits affected by this perk deal the same amount of bonus damage.