//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams 
// by KDarkwater 
//------------------------------//








She couldn’t figure out how things had gone so wrong so quickly, but she knew where to start.

The asshole that had just woken her up.

“Get up, you lazy little shit,” an angry, rough-sounding stallion rumbled as he burst open the door to “his” room (as he continually referred to her temporary quarters for the duration of her “debt work”).  “Just ‘cause the sun don’t shine don’t mean you get to sleep in every morning.  You got thirty minutes of missed work to make up for already.”

An unmistakable curse of exceptionally foul proportions escaped her lips, though he chose to ignore it (or didn’t hear it).  “...in a little bit,” she groaned angrily, forcing herself off of the stiff mattress on the floor that served as a very poor bed.

“Not ‘in a little bit’,” he shouted back quietly.  “Now.”

“It’s either the outhouse or your floor,” she hissed back, furiously rubbing the sleep and bits of crust out of her eyes with her left foreleg.  “And I’m not asking for permission, asshole.”

His throat became a cauldron of garbled, unspoken threats as the smoke gray stallion turned and stomped back out, but he stopped screaming at her, at least.  She’d done it the last time he tried this, and while the black eye and broken rib had not been pleasant, he didn’t dare try to dictate when she could and couldn’t relieve herself anymore.  She wasn’t his godsdamned pet.

Even if he kept trying to turn her into one….

With the immediate threat of violence upon her deflected, she slowly stumbled out of the room, seeing herself out of the inn through a flight of stairs at the end of the hall on her left.  The town bathhouse was only two buildings down, and she wanted this done quickly before he could find an excuse to tack another hundred caps on top of her “debt”.  Fortunately, this late after “sunrise”, most folk that could afford to splurge for the rare bath once in a blue moon had done so, and the place was devoid of souls save for the head mistress and two of her assistants.

And Mistress Glossy Shine had a soft spot for downtrodden fourteen-year olds in need of a pick-me up.  “Rally!!” the pink-haired, pastel blue coated mare squealed with excessive happiness the moment she barreled through the front door.  “You look absolutely terrible, how long has it been?”

“Too long, Miss Shine,” she groaned sleepily.  “….little filly’s room working?”

If a pony’s face could blush, she was certain Glossy Shine’s cheeks would be a deep beet red right then.  “O-oh, yes, of course dear, go on ahead while I prepare the water.  I assume you’re on a time schedule today?”

“According to Mister Dickless I’m already a half-hour late, so yes, a quick wash will have to do.”

Glossy Shine’s face scrunched up slightly at her language, though she never once seemed to disagree with her choice of words for her current “employer”.  “My dear, even five minutes here will have you smelling like roses and lilac.  Your worries will simply wash away!”

The eternally happy mare seemingly bounced away towards the back rooms as Rally lumbered onward towards the restrooms, the door politely opened up for her by the lanky-legged assistant Remedy in an inviting tease.  It wasn’t just any place in the prairie that had a working commode, after all.  They had a right to flaunt the facilities.

With her business tended to, the lukewarm, soapy shower that followed unfortunately proved Miss Shine’s rather poetic words to be fairly accurate.  Two weeks’ worth of accumulated grime and filth were washed off and scrubbed away in a matter of minutes by the combined efforts of the mistress and her dutiful assistants, and within eight minutes of her walking in she already felt like an entirely new pony.  Her “payment” for the morning bath would be to work a half-day in the bath house, after “Mister Dickless” was done with her for today, since she had trouble holding onto any caps his bar patrons saw fit to tip her with.  Jackass kept stripping them right out of her apron, said it was going towards her “debt”, but as much as he was extending it every time she did something he didn’t like (which was fairly often), and tacking on room and board while he was at it, she was starting to doubt that he even intended to let her go.

Given that she’d never even meant to stay in this little shit town, that was a problem that had to be taken care of, somehow, someway….and soon.  Before they tracked her down, if they hadn’t already.  How this jerk hadn’t wound up swinging from a dead tree with the way he treated everypony around him, she couldn’t fathom.  She wanted to murder him with her bare hooves as it was right now.  She had it all figured out, too.

She just needed a good enough reason first.  Apparently, even in an age of endless strife, bloodshed, and near-complete lack of anything resembling law or government, strangling a widely acknowledged asshole in his sleep required something a little compelling than “I didn’t like him” when two-thirds of the town had the same motive.  She prayed, endlessly and fruitlessly, that each day she woke up in his “service” would be the last, that he would finally screw up and talk down to the wrong soul, or piss off a Runner passing through.  She’d heard he’d gotten on the bad side of a couple of ‘em, a while back, but nobody in town would say anything about it to her.  Probably didn’t want to get caught up in that kind of a mess, and she couldn’t blame them.  “Good-natured” as they were, as mercenaries went, the Runners weren’t known for putting up with anybody’s bullshit for very long.

The bullshit she was laden with, at least today, was still more of the same.  She’d hardly bumped her way into the back kitchen of her “boss’s” inn when she found herself being roughly shoved into a pale yellow server’s apron—

“’Bout damn time,” his voice seethed impatiently, his rough, dark charcoal hooves scratching across her freshly-bathed coat and threatening to turn her pink-and-blue mane back into a disheveled mess.  “You take a shit for two?”

“Wanna find out?” she threatened back with a glare at his hateful eyes.  They should have been black, like his heart, but noooooo, they just had to be green….

“Out on the floor, already got a half dozen souls waiting,” he spat back, turning around and leaving her to tie the apron on in peace, for once.  “Customers looking for some leisure time, send ‘em to Willow or Ginger.  Unless you’ve decided to take on some of the work yourself.”

She had to clench her mouth shut to keep from spitting on his backside out of contempt.  “I’ll stick with getting idiots drunk and fat with greasy leftovers.”

His only response was a sharp snort as he disappeared around the corner, into the bar proper, and probably on his way to his “office” for a hit of whiskey himself.  She hoped, anyway.

Tugging on the warmer wrapped snugly around her right foreleg, she weaved her way through the kitchen and the three cooks that had yet to quit on him—a gray unicorn stallion, a yellow earth pony mare with a disturbingly familiar meat cleaver for a cutie mark, and a grizzled female griffon with a noticeable limp in her gait—and slipped onto the bar floor, pausing at the doorway to take in her impending work and any potential problems.

The bar, as it was, was probably one of the few in the west side of the prairie that actually was a bar back in the War.  The bar counter itself was kinda smashed up on one end, but the rest of it was in decent enough shape to actually put drinks on and still had a few stools left for it.  The bar floor itself had…fifteen tables on the floor and ten and a half booths alongside the walls, if anybody still counted the shattered booth in the front left corner as useful.

And at the moment, there were only six folk sitting at three different tables—one couple, a lone mare, and three griffons huddled around a single table near the far right corner.  Ginger was already making his way to the griffons, which left her wi—

“One of these days the boss is gonna knock yer block off, kid,” she heard Willow’s raspy voice wilt into her ears from her left.  “Which would be a real shame, ‘cause yer the only foalsitter my little runts ain’t run off yet.”

“Guy’s a jackass and a major creep-o,” Rally shuddered visibly.  “Keeps jacking my debt up over some bullshit every week.”

“Quit pissin’ him off and he won’t have a reason to.  Now go on and get to work before he sees us yakkin’ like this.  Anybody lookin’ for company, just send ‘em to me or Ginger and don’t say nothin’ else to ‘em.  It’s just like any other day, kid.”

Sure, she didn’t say, a soft sigh huffing through her lips as she lumbered onward towards the closest occupied table, the lone mare with her attention focused on her tattered map and what looked like a working compass.  Any other day in the service of a wanna-be slave owner…

“Mornin’,” she called out gently when she reached the mare’s table, causing the pale turquoise unicorn to briefly look up at her.  “Need a drink?”

“…just some Sparkle-Cola, if you have any,” the mare replied hesitantly.  “Not the carroty-flavored stuff, hate the taste of it.”

Oh sweet, I thought I was the only one!  “That makes two of us,” Rally cooed in approval, quickly jotting down the mare’s request on the back of what looked like a shipping invoice paper from an old war-era company.  “Plain-flavor soda it is.  Got two more customers to check on, then I’ll be right out with that drink.”

The mare said nothing and merely went back to her map, for whatever reason, and Rally was keen to leave the thing in peace.  She’d already had a bad start to her day and she didn’t want to add to it.  Fortunately, the couple at the table proved fairly amicable—just some biscuits, fried hashbrowns, and water, which was actually more expensive than a soda since the town’s water talisman was not doing too well at the moment.

With her immediate concerns seen to, she went back to the kitchen to give the cooks their first order of the day, snagged an unopened bottled of plain Sparkle-Cola and filled two fairly clean-looking glasses with water from the working tap, and floated the drinks out with her as she ventured back onto the bar floor—

—felt her jaw drop at the sudden appearance of an additional ten souls filtering their way through the front door, many of them clad in the distinctive dark blue of a trader’s garb and web gear.

“….buck me,” she spat at her sudden turn of luck.  “Caravan came in.”

“No shit,” Willow grumbled in sullen agreement, grabbing her own work apron from the wall rack.  “Whole town’s gonna filter through here any minute.  It’s gonna be a long morning, squirt.”

Another foul curse bounced around inside her head as Rally sauntered onward, dropping off her drinks before splitting off to cover her corner of the bar floor.  Willow tended to work the center on busy days, and Ginger looked after little bits and pieces here and there in addition to the right half.  But when it was really slow, Willow was content to just stay back and let Rally and Ginger do most of the work.  One of the perks of being the boss’s top whore, she supposed.

And for a while, she was kinda right.  It was like most other days, with the exception of it getting really busy up until the early afternoon, when anybody looking to trade with the caravan had come through and gone back to whatever it was that they did to subsist in the wasteland.  Bounty hunting, trading, salvaging, scrap hunting, or….or whatever.  She wouldn’t really know, she spent most of her time in this bar or the bath house nearby.

Most days, unfortunately, weren’t always pleasant.  A couple of screwed-up orders, or the wrong drink getting to the wrong soul, or getting her tail chewed off because the order didn’t get there in a timely fashion or some shit like that.  She’d only been stuck in this dive three weeks, but that was all she needed to know that she didn’t want to wait tables for a living.  It sucked.  Too chaotic, and too many assholes she couldn’t do anything about.  Having to work for one didn’t help matters either.

At the end of the caravan and trader rush, when things had finally quieted down to their normal mid-day mild buzz, she was finally allowed a breather from her work and practically shoved herself into the bar’s old employee rec room, crashing onto the rickety couch and rolling onto her back for a short rest.

Willow wasn’t far behind, apparently feeling the need for a break herself.  “See, kid?  Just like any other day.  You get through it.”

“I had doubts at a couple of points,” she heaved into the air, absently rubbing at her right foreleg.  Something seemed…off, about it, right then….  “Shoulda known somethin’ was wrong when I was takin’ a plate of cooked meat to an earth pony….”

“Oh-ho-ho gods that was hilarious,” Willow chuckled lightly.  “Like, the color just vanished from his face like you’d just fed him a cousin or something.”

“Glad to have been of use to you,” she mumbled back, scooting herself up the couch until her withers were propped up on the arm rest.  The more she thought about it, the more she was certain something was up with her leg…

Pushing her mild discomfort aside, she gingerly pulled the leg warmer off, baring the leg to the outside world, and for a moment she felt her hindquarters cringe and tighten at the sight of the cold, cybernetic limb grafted into what was left of her right foreleg.  Even after nearly three years, she had trouble just accepting that it was there at times.  To not feel anything below the leg joint, yet be able to move it about as though the mechanical limb was a natural part of her…..

“….something wrong with your leg?” Willow’s voice queried softly.

It took a few seconds for Rally to work through the motions—moving and bending the joint with mere thought, the commands jumping through organic nerve to artificial wiring, curling the pastern downward and then flexing it back into its natural position….and then commanding the metal hoof to unlock its four individual, griffon-like talons, and then manipulating her new digits with a flexibility akin to an ancient ape, even twisting it around a little.  As artificial limbs went, she had to admit, it had its uses.

But all things considered, she’d rather have her natural leg back.  At least it didn’t need oil and regular attention from a bag of very specialized—and very rare—tools.

“….no, just the usual,” she heard herself answer sadly, working through the limb a second time to ensure that it was indeed functioning correctly and now believing her initial worries to be merely her everlasting unease with the damn thing.  It seemed to be in perfect working order, for the moment.  “Just wishing time would rewind and give me my leg back.  As it is, I’ll be having a new one put on on my next birthday….”

Her spine shivered at the thought, suddenly realizing how much closer that day was since the last time she bothered to remember the date.

With her leg worries more or less verified as just lingering discomfort and unease, she let the leg drop back to her side, her left foreleg curling up and over her belly to rest for a spell.  It would have been nice to have been able to just lay here and let the world go by her….

….but the boss wasn’t having that.  Not much of it, anyway.  Maybe ten minutes after she and Willow had slipped in for a short rest, the gray bastard was nosing his way in with that perpetually angry glare that for all she knew was permanently glued to his face.  “Having fun, slackers?”

“Just takin’ a breather, Puck,” Willow said back, though by now she had also taken to lying on her back on the other couch, and was probably talking to the ceiling more than the boss.  “First break in the crowd we’ve had all day.”

“Well, get back there, got a customer looking for some company,” he growled back.  “And Rally!  Get your butt up and cover her tables ‘till she’s done!”

His body disappeared back through the door, letting it slam shut behind him as if adding emphasis to how serious he was, and Willow took a heavy breath and slowly rolled off of her couch.  “Hope it’s not a griffon, still sore from the last one….”

Bleeeh, Rally’s mind retched in disgust, reluctantly pulling herself upright and hopping off her own resting spot.  Hate double-duty.  Hope Ginger ain’t busy too….

After putting the leg warmer back over her right leg, she followed the mare back out onto the bar floor, then nudged past her to take in the floor once more.  Didn’t look like anything had changed in the last twelve minutes—no customers in Willow’s area of responsibility aside from a single stallion that was probably her next “client”, and Ginger was, as always, keeping himself busy and amused busing back and forth from one side of the floor to the other tending to the other nine souls at their tables.

A couple of moments of shushed conversation confirmed her suspicions about the lone stallion, as he quickly fell into step behind Willow as the maroon-coated earth mare spun about invitingly and trotted on up the stairs.  How much of Willow’s eagerness was earnest or faked was hard to tell, and the mare wasn’t one to divulge too much about herself.

Probably for the best, really.  The second she found a way out of this mess, she was taking it.  Of course, finding that way would be the hard part.  Until then, she still had an afternoon to slog throu—

—the front door creaked open, barely audible with the low buzz of chatter going on around her, and while nobody else seemed to pay the newcomer any mind, Rally’s eyes were drawn to this teal blue-coated unicorn mare almost immediately...and then further drawn downward to the unmistakable presence of a working PipBuck on her left foreleg—

Shit me she’s got a lot of guns, her wary eye warned, sighting what looked like two revolvers and a black automatic stuffed into a small horde of holsters on her travelling saddle, along with some type of long gun in a scabbard on her left side.  Her saddlebags looked strange—while they were definitely storing things, she couldn’t see any of the items printing through the thick leather and canvas, and atop her back were a second set of bags and what looked like a well-maintained red and black scabbard and matching katana.  The mare’s face was partially obscured by her indigo mane (the back of which was tied into this impossibly cool-looking braided ponytail), mostly covering one side, though the other eye was scanning the bar, an—

A flick of the mare’s head as she shifted her gaze to her left whipped the front of her mane out of her face, revealing a pair of ragged scars running down the left side of her face from above the eye down to her cheek, though the eye itself looked fin--….

….no, not fine, she corrected herself mid-thought.  Her gaze, her body language, the way she carried herself….she might have been armed to the teeth, but she barely had the heart to even walk through the door.  The deep, sunken coat and flesh beneath her eyes suggested a dangerous or non-existent sleep pattern, and there was an…emptiness to her eyes, a lack of sparkle or something….like she’d just lost something important to her.

Barely a moment after she’d swept the room with her empty eyes, her left hind leg tapped the floor, and a small filly dragged herself in behind the mare.  Her coat was a lighter teal blue than the mare’s, and her indigo tail had this catching streak of electric blue in it that matched her eye color.  Her travelling saddle looked like a smaller version of the mare’s, and had a couple of guns on her as well….little sister, maybe.  Beside the little filly were a pair of husky pups a little larger than she was, and while she wasn’t nearly as good at reading dogs as she was ponies, the fact that they were walking with the filly without a leash or even verbal directions from either of their masters mean that they were either well trained or really smart and loyal….maybe even both….

And somehow, in the five seconds Rally took to look these guys over, she just somehow knew that a drink was the last thing on the mare’s mind.

She felt herself drawing closer to this gun-laden mare, slowly and carefully so as not to trigger some jerk-reaction quick draw or a burst of mana to the face.  “…e-excuse me, do you need anything?” she heard her voice ask, stumbling to find her voice for a moment before calming her nerves.

The mare’s face titled towards her, her empty gaze apparently trying to decide if she was looking at the floor or a fourteen-year-old yearling.  “…is this the Last Stand?”

Maybe someday Puck will actually put a sign up so folk stop asking me that.  “It is.  Are you looking for someone here?”

“…waiting,” the mare replied slowly.  “Need a room.”

Fu—of course I end up walking up to the one soul that actually needs to talk to that jacka—

Ginger, bless his gentle nature, overheard enough to interject himself into the task before she could spit a curse out loud, his hooves taking him further back towards Puck’s office.  “Ah, you’ll need to talk to the owner for that.  I’ll fetch him, but I warn you now, he’s…not nice.”

The mare’s eyes watched Ginger’s body until the stallion had vanished into the depths of the back rooms before speaking, mainly to herself.  “…whatever.”

“…he’s not kidding,” Rally spoke quietly.  “Puck’s an asshole.  Town hates him.”

For some reason, that suddenly garnered her the mare’s full attention…or as much of it as her defeated, exhausted mind could conjure up, anyway.  “…little young to be working in a place like this, aren’t you?”

“Nopony stays young in the wastes on their own,” she replied grimly.  “…been alone for years.  Got me here, of all places.  My advice, take the room and live with his jacked-up prices.  His “deals” will get you nabbed into his debt.”

Now the mare’s eyes were starting to wake up a little…and Rally didn’t like what she saw in them.  “Know from experience?”

“Something like that….”

Luna be blessed, there wasn’t that lingering, uncomfortable silence, because Puck was barging out onto the bar floor right then and eying his newest “catch” up and down…and the mare didn’t seem to like him eyeballing her.  “I’m told you need a room,” the gray stallion stated tersely, going so far as to budge Rally aside to stand in front of the mare.  Damn near stepped on her tail in the process, the jerkass—

“Assuming you have one to spare that’s not being used for…other work, sure,” the mare droned back dryly.

Puck’s eyes briefly swept over the little filly and the two mutts, his muzzle scowling slightly.  “The mutts housebroken?”

“They prefer working toilets, actually,” the mare replied with a scrunch of her face.  “But they’ll let themselves out if you show them where they can go, whether it’s a ditch or a commode.”

“Hunh,” Puck muttered with a slight air of surprise.  “….well, in any case, it’s thirty caps a day.”

“A bit steep.  Most charge ten to fifteen.”

“Most folk don’t have a bar and a working kitchen to go with the room either,” Puck returned, undeterred by the mare’s rather lame haggling attempt.  “’Course, a reduced rate can be had, in return for some extra work on the side.”

Instead of questioning him further on the matter, like most did when they heard his rather exorbitant rates, the mare simply pulled out a small bag and quickly filled the stallion’s belt pouch with what Rally assumed to be thirty caps.  “Need a room, not a job.  I expect to be here a few days until my contacts show up.”

If Puck was annoyed by her flat refusal of his scheme, he didn’t let it show in his face or voice, though he was never happy with customers that stayed too long without netting him more than the flat room rate.  “The word “contacts” suddenly has an imminently important bearing on how available that room stays.  My bar is not a hang-out for mercs.”

“Your bar is where I was sent because it’s the closest one to Trotpeka, not because it was liked,” the mare answered testily.

“’Liked’?  Exactly who was it that sent you to a place they don’t even like?”

The mare’s response was curt, but unflinching.  “Coupla Runners, name of Ada and Leon.  We met three days ago, they just told me where to wait for ‘em while they finished up some business in Union territory.  The way they described my destination gave me the impression they don’t have fond memories of you.  Might be best to just leave it at thirty caps a day and call it an afternoon.”

Puck’s face sank inward somewhat, suddenly visibly uncomfortable with what the mare had just told him, and when he spoke, his voice lacked the vigor and fire it had held earlier.  “….Rally, room 5,” was all he said, and he turned away from the mare and retreated to the darkness of his office in the back of the bar.

A brief respite from the bar floor was always welcome, particularly after seeing the rare instance of Puck being reduced to a quivering colt of a pony.  “….is there anything else in town you need to do before you head up?”

“Not yet,” the mare sighed.  “….any co-workers of yours busy up there?”

To a passer-by, they would probably have understood that she meant “a whore at work”.  But to the little filly behind her, barely able to look at anypony around her as she struggled not to burst into tears over whatever it was that was bugging the both of them, it would probably register as little more than an innocent inquiry about cleaning duties or something.

Rally deigned to let that illusion stand.  “….yes, but it won’t disturb you.  Sound suppression runes keep it nice and quiet upstairs, so nobody bothers each other.”

“….after you, then,” came the mare’s quiet surrender.

Grateful to have at least a few minutes where she didn’t have to do any real work, she loped on up the stairs, latching onto her rusted keyring in an absent thought of magic and fishing through the keys until she came upon one with the number “5” scratched into its bow.  True to her word, though Willow’s “working room” was occupied—as evidenced by the closed door with a blue ceramic insert set into its nameplate to indicate it as such—no sounds could be heard coming out of it as they passed by it, and the mare did not pay the door any further attention than was warranted.  

Room 5, just past the mid-point of the hallway, was not one of the largest rooms available, but it was enough for a mare, a filly, and two-filly sized puppies.  The room’s two beds were spread apart from each other, one against each wall, and the windowsill was boarded up from the outside with what looked like a metal plate.  The dresser, sitting in the far left corner on three intact legs, was missing a couple of drawers but was otherwise serviceable.  The floor itself was swept clean—one of her many work duties, though she’d had no time for it just yet today.  Didn’t look like the place needed it anyway.

She did a quick look-around as the mare and filly lumbered past her to ensure that no remnants of the previous occupants remained—used chem syringes were the worst, and she was pretty sure the last renters weren’t shooting themselves up with the crap, but it never hurt to be careful.  Beds were the first place to loo—

The filly unceremoniously dropped her saddlebags onto the floor, right next to the right side bed, and when Rally’s ears hear a curious rattling of metal and plastic she looked down at the bags, and nearly squealed in exquisite delight at the sight of what looked like a Lightbringer 2000 series laser pistol—

“Something catch your eye?” the mare’s voice jabbed into her brief fit of joy, though even her dark suspicions couldn’t drive her away now.  Not when that was sitting right there in that little filly’s pistol holster!

“….where did you find that?” Rally had to ask out loud, her left forehoof pointing at the laser pistol as her brain began to break down all the possible sources or reasons for the unhealthy metallic clattering she’d just heard.  Busted crystalline board, damaged array, or maybe the focusing lens and crystals themselves were wrecked and filling the interior with bits of arcane gem with every rattle.  “Ya hardly see those anymore.”

“Do you even know what it is, kid?” the mare challenged back, though her tired voice suggested it was more of a plea that perhaps the little fourteen-year-old wouldn’t know and be defeated by the question, and hopefully go away.

No way in hell was she going to walk off without at least getting a look at it.  “Lightbringer 2000, F1.2 version by Ampere Industries out of Vanhoover from the Before,” she rattled off without even bothering to consciously recall the data from her brain.  “Effective range of a hundred and fifty meters if you install an enhanced arcane emitter system.  Tightens the beam and gives it some extra oomph, just the thing to cut through the thickest armor the slavers or the Union can throw on.  Only laser pistols that can match that are the latest AE variants that came out in the heyday of the Great War.  Those later AEs were more like weapon frames with an absolutely unbelievable block mod program of parts.  Stocks, grips, emitters, the laser module barrels and capacitors themselves could be switched out and modified to extend the ranges, or modify the laser for strong single shots or a rapid fire automatic like those classy-looking RCW models—”

“All right all right, you know what it is, I get it,” the mare surrendered quickly before Rally could lose herself in a flood of data points and a giggling voice.  “Jeez, where’d you learn that kind of stuff?”

With a half-hearted sigh, she sat on her hind legs and lifted her forelegs up off the ground as she pulled the leg warmer off of her right leg through her magic, revealing part of the cybernetic limb to the mare and filly.  “….kinda had to, after I got this,” she explained softly.  “Only way to keep it running smoothly is to make sure I know how to take care of it.  Got into MEWs alongside it, just to develop a skill set I could make caps off of, but there aren’t a lot of folk with beam weapons around so that kinda went south on me real quick.  But the things are just so freakin’ cool I can’t help it when I see one, I turn all girly and gooey!  What’s wrong with it?”

“….maybe you can tell me,” the mare offered gently, an indigo field enveloping the weapon and removing it from the filly’s travelling saddle, and Rally had to bite herself on the lip to keep from squealing as it was floated up to her.  “Guns and magic are my thing, but a MEW’s beyond me.  Haven’t found a soul that could fix it in the two months I’ve had it.”

Without waiting to be bidden or otherwise encouraged, Rally’s right hoof unlocked into a talon and grabbed hold of the pistol’s grip as she began to visually inspect it.  Battery cell chamber was empty, weapon itself had no power and was in incredible visual condition, only a few nicks and light scratches along the silvery surface.  But with every tilt and upward movement, she could hear some very delicate parts in the forward section of the barrel rattling about, and she brought it up to her ear for a clearer shot at its inte—

“Crystal array’s shattered,” she commented when she heard the tell-tale sound of crystal chinking against the inside of the barrel.  “I can hear bits of it bouncing around in there.  Only bad thing about the Lightbringer, the original factory crystal array’s housed in a rather soft steel, can’t take the abuse that the military-grade AEs shrug off.  Upgraded emitter arrays use military-grade anodized aluminum or titanium to fix the problem.  Gun must have taken a hell of a fall.”

“….that sounds like a very specific and specially manufactured part,” the mare uttered in soft breaths.  “One that probably can’t be made.”

“…not easily.  But you’re in luck!” Rally beamed with a gleeful smile.  And she couldn’t help but smile!  She finally had what she’d bitching about getting these last three weeks—a way out of this place and away from Puck the Eternal Asshole.  “In my efforts to become a wandering MEW repairpony, I happened to assemble a collection of spare parts.  One of which is that enhanced emitter targeting system, which requires replacement of the crystal array to one rated for the additional output and heat generation.  I can get this little puppy back to barking armor-piercing lasers that’ll turn slavers into glowing kitty litter inside their own armor by morning!”

A short, but loud snort from the bed that sounded something like a laugh briefly distracted Rally from her exquisite tirade, and looking over she saw the filly’s mouth curl into a very slight smile as she tried to doze off, where before the poor thing had just been universally dour and sad and really unhappy.  “….funny,” the filly said, her high-pitched voice coming out rather hoarsely and softly, still laden with grief.  “…in a morbid way….”

“….what you do want in exchange for the work?” the mare asked next.  “I can’t offer caps, a good deal of what I have left is going to this high-priced room and I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

Rally’s heart crashed a little.  She’d thought the mare might had more caps on her than that, but…but then, she had warned her to just live with the price instead of risking getting pulled into one of Puck’s schemes, so she would probably want to try and stretch out her caps as much as possible.  But there had to be a way to turn this into an out, there had to be….

“….as you might have already figured out, I warned you about Puck’s generous offer to reduce your rate in exchange for a job, because that’s how I wound up working for the jerkwad,” she began, turning her eyes back towards the Lightbringer to examine it further.  Must have come out of a stable to be in such good shape.  “He keeps a small brahmin herd in a field outside of town, mostly to sell them to caravans needing replacement beasts.  I was supposed to help tend to the herd, only when I got there there was a pack of mongrel dogs tearing into the blasted beasts.  Three got killed before I could drive them off, and the bastard dinged me two hundred caps per lost animal the morning after along with my gun.  I didn’t even have a hundred on me, and now I’m stuck here trying to work off the debt, which he keeps raising every time I break something else in here while charging me room and board too….”

It was the filly, surprisingly, that spoke harshly of her “debtor’s detail” first, though Rally didn’t doubt that the mare’s thoughts were quite similar.  “….that sounds an awful lot like slavery….”

“…I suppose it is, in some ways.  Don’t change the fact that I’m stuck with no way out anytime soon—”

“You’ll get out,” the mare said, her voice growing dark with a suppressed anger.  “If that’s your price for fixing that MEW, you’ll get out.”

There, she cried silently.  That’s my out!  My ticket out of this mess!

And yet, she couldn’t help but wonder…if the mare couldn’t pay off the debt for her….

“….how, exactly?” she asked, turning to face the mare fully.  “I mean, you just told me you don’t have the caps, and I’ll take any help I can get, but—”

“Ada and Leon,” the mare answered before she could finish.  “The Runners I’m waiting for….they might be able to help out, once they arrive.  The only thing they even told me about this Puck wasn’t in any kind of a positive light, so it shouldn’t be too hard to talk them into it.  Ada, at the least, seems to have a soft spot for kids, she’ll probably do it on principle alone.  If Puck owes them any kind of money or favors, they can probably spring you out in exchange for forgetting that debt he racked up on you.”

“…and if they can’t?”

The mare’s body shrank with a heavy sigh, her eyes falling onto the floor.  “….then we’ll try something else.  Lemme sleep on it a bit.”

“….I’ll stop by for the gun later, after I’m done working for the day,” Rally said, sliding her leg warmer back in place before trotting towards the door.  “It’ll probably be late, I stashed my spare parts elsewhere in town and I don’t want Puck finding them or I’ll lose them the same way I lost my gun.”

“….door will be open,” the mare said back.  “Try to be quiet, mutts may be dozing by then.”

Said “mutts”, as the mare called them, seemed content to stay by the filly’s side as the kid tried to pass off into dreamland herself, though the little thing did kinda wave at her with a sleepy forehoof as she left in a really cute way.  A definite improvement from the lifeless, almost robotic behavior she’d been showing a few minutes earlier.

Somebody died on them, she mused sadly as she trotted back downstairs to the bar floor.  Hard to say if it was family or friend, but somebody very important to both of them died and they’re barely comprehending it.

Which meant, in Rally’s world, “stay away”.  Grieving folk were not always keen to have company when they were hurting that bad, and she could oblige them.  Getting her hooves on an actual, partially intact Lightbringer was an exceptionally rare opportunity.  She couldn’t wait to get it in her room and pulled apart, see how it ticked.  The two she’d seen up to this point had been all smashed up and little more than battered steel and plastic housing a pile of shredded, broken bits of circuit boards, wires, and crystal.

Her anxiousness, in fact, made the remainder of her afternoon such a mind-bogglingly slow chore that she swore she’d aged three days in three hours, and barely remembered any part of it.  She only recalled that at the end of it all, when she was slithering into the rec room to shed her work apron and move on to Miss Glossy Shine’s bath house, Puck was waiting right behind the door to take it off of her and empty its pockets out of the seventy-three caps in tips she’d racked up over the course of the day before shooing her out of the bar entirely.  He’d let her back in after nightfall, when he closed up shop.  This way, he kept her from trying to scoot on out of town.  No weapons, no supplies, no caps, meant she wasn’t going anywhere, couldn’t buy or barter her way into a ride to the next town, and couldn’t try to hire a merc or two to rough him up and get her out of his “debt”.  All she had was the bag of MEW parts she’d kept stashed at Miss Shine’s place, and she was reluctant to even go near the things for fear that he’d find them and steal them as a “down payment”.  She was taking enough of a risk fixing that mare’s gun as it was.  But if it worked, if she really was friends with a couple of Runners whose mere names turned Puck into a scared little colt, she’d be free of all this bullshit by next week….

….well, all the bullshit she’d racked up here, anyway.  But she’d figure that part out later.

Miss Glossy Shine, blessedly, was a far better pony to be working for.  The work was….difficult, at times.  Applying water, soap, and the rare lathering of shampoo was not hard, but some ponies were not comfortable being bathed by another, much less a teenager.  The reward, aside from working off the price of her morning wash, was the opportunity for a more thorough bath for herself at no charge, which she gladly took.  This was really the only thing she’d miss about this town, and she didn’t enjoy the prospect of living without regular access to bathing water or soap once she was out of here.

It was the work afterward that proved to be the hard part.

Miss Shine kept her stuff in her personal office, under lock and key inside a safe, by mutual agreement.  Miss Shine had had just enough run-ins with Puck to know how persistent the bastard could be when pursuing what he thought was owed to him, and agreed to hide her collection of rare MEW parts and work tools on the condition that they not leave the safe until she’d worked off her debt to him.

And so when Miss Shine looked up from her burnished, splintered husk of a desk as Rally pushed herself through the office door, the very first thing to cross the mare’s mind wa—

“….Rally, how much more do you owe Puck now?” the tired-eyed mare asked gently.

“….still the same, Miss Shine,” she answered with a level voice…or she thought she did, anyway.  “…I….I need to get a couple of parts from my stash.”

Miss Shine’s violet eyes blinked a couple of times, but remained passive and soft.  “…are you intending to sell them to Puck?”

“No…I…I need them for a job.  A mare and a filly rented out a room today….they have a MEW that needs work, which I have parts for.”

“….Rally, if you think Puck is aggressive with your debt management now, it will only get worse when he finds out you’re doing work without cutting him in on it,” Miss Shine warned her gravely.  “No matter what that mare promised you, the trouble is not worth it.”

“She didn’t promise caps, she….she said a couple of Runners were coming to see her and that they might be able to help me out.”

Miss Shine’s eyes and face took on a pained, almost tortured look.  “…y-you don’t honestly believe that, do you, dear?  I know how you get when you see a MEW, especially a rare one.  You were probably gushing at the sight of it!”

Rally felt a slight blush flow into her face.  “….o-okay, so maybe I freaked a bit when I saw it, but—”

“Rally, that mare could be playing you into fixing the gun up for next to nothing!” Miss Shine shot back sternly, briefly stunning the light-pink coated teen with her sudden change of demeanor.  Like….like she’d suddenly hit the switch labeled “Parent Mode” or something.  “You’ll get yourself in deep water with Puck and next thing you know that harlot is skipping town laughing her tail off at your desperation!  She’s using you!”

“Everypony in this damned town has been trying to use me since I got here,” Rally sneered back, feeling her ears flattening in anger.  “That creep of a pimp at the edge of town, the blacksmith across the street, Puck keeps trying to push me into…into things I don’t wanna do and I’m getting scared I won’t get a choice in the matter if I stay much longer!  I don’t wanna end up like Willow!”

“Willow does that willingly, and Puck is not so crazy as to push a…a child, into that work.  Town would string him up and quarter him!”

“They got plenty of reason to do that now, what more would my situation do to push them into it?  This is the best shot I’ve gotten at getting out from under that bastard’s hooves, I gotta take it—”

“Dear, the Runners aren’t the law, they’re just mercenaries!” Miss Shine shouted back forcefully, hushing the teenaged filly into temporary silence with her sharp tone.  “…better than most, yes, but at the end of the day they still expect payment for their work and they don’t do it for free!  If those idiots hadn’t riled the Union up with that pointless war we could have been swimming in business and trade now, it is a miracle that any caravans from the east come this way anymore!  You’re making a mistake, a big one, and you’re going to get hurt!  Just…just go back to your room and tell this mare your spare parts went missing or broken or something!  Don’t do this!”

“….I didn’t come here to argue about stupid wars,” Rally forced herself to say calmly, despite the slight sting that Miss Shine’s words had inflicted on her already.  “I just came here to get a couple of parts for a job I agreed to do.  Can I get them or not?”

For a moment it looked like Miss Shine was going to say, “No, dear”, and turn her away from her bath house entirely and leaving her empty hoofed.  But to her relief, she reluctantly gave in, and silently trudged over to the safe crammed into the corner of the room behind her desk, working the lock open and pulling out a compartmentalized, heavy duty saddle bag with her teeth.

What little joy Rally felt in her verbal victory crumbled to dust when she caught sight of what looked like a tear in Miss Shine’s left eye, which went a long way towards explaining the wilted, downcast ears.  “….I do this, so that you will understand afterward why you shouldn’t be so quick to trust people,” she bemoaned softly…perhaps the first time Rally could recall her looking or sounding even remotely sad or hurt.

Try as she did, she couldn’t help but feel hurt herself as she dug out the needed equipment and parts from the saddlebag and closed it up.  Miss Shine had probably been the only pony in town that had been nice and decent to her out of principle (Willow didn’t count, though she was fairly decent for a whore).  She’d have thought Shine would have been happier to help her get out of this mess she’d gotten into with Puck.

Maybe she’d gotten a little too attached to her?

Whatever the case, she had what she needed, even if she wound up feeling like she’d lost in the end anyway.  She left the bath house without another word, lest either of them wind up saying something they would quickly regret, and once outside in the black of night she found herself face to face with the next obstacle in her plan.

Getting back into her room without Puck taking her stuff from her.  Sure, she could probably punch his lights out with her cyber-leg, but that would only make her situation worse when he came to.  She wasn’t sure how willing that mare was to look out for her and she wasn’t about to drag that crushed little filly into the middle of it all.  Poor thing was still in some sort of emotional shock, a violent fight was the last thing she needed to see.  She briefly thought of sneaking it in somehow, but she’d never really been good at that sort of thing and only got worse at it when she got her new metal leg, so that was out.  Bribery was limited to favors she had no intention of ever carrying out, which left….

….luck.  Somehow or another, whether she got to re-enter Puck’s bar without getting robbed of her few possessions depended on whether or not he was anywhere in sight when she walked in.  That fire escape door she took to get out earlier in the morning only opened from the inside…..

….in….side….

Oh screw me sideways I’m an idiot!! she insulted herself with a giddy squeal as she turned off into the alley between Puck’s bar and a junk store she’d never gone into.  I’m a freakin’ unicorn, I can just open the door from the outside with a push of magic!  Just drop the parts off in my room, then slip back out and come in through the front so he don’t suspect anything!!  Idiot little girl, I am!!

She happily—and calmly—bounded her way up the fire escape stairs, pausing at the door and setting her tools and packaged parts down just long enough to will a telekinesis field into existence on the other side of the door, gently pushed it open, and then scurried inside with soft, light steps…or as soft as she could make her right foreleg move.  The candlelights in the hallway barely illuminated the hallway, but it was just enough to allow her to make her way to her room and carefully set her stuff down on the floor by her mattress.  With that done, she quickly retraced her route back out the fire escape door and down into the alley, and then began a leisurely-paced walk out into the street, turning right and allowing herself to pass in front of the bar’s front windows in vain hopes that maybe it would be Willow or Ginger letting her inside this time instead.

She was only mildly disappointed to see Puck’s gray body within the walls of the bar, visually inspecting his tables and chairs for damage or nicks, and both ponies snarled with hatred at the sight of the other.  Puck’s body promptly thundered to the front door, hastily unlocking it an—

“Another five minutes and you’d be sleeping in the dirt,” he growled angrily at her.  Still.  She began to wonder how a pony could always be that angry, all the time, and not tire themselves out.  Maybe he wasn’t really a pony, but some ancient and grumpy golem construct of a mad sorcerer.

“Given the quality of the room you’ve provided to me at my expense, I really can’t tell the difference,” she sassed back.  “Do I get to sleep with walls around me today, at least?”

His mouth opened and closed in a silent curse to her face, but he nonetheless stepped aside long enough to let her in, and then slapped the door shut behind her.

“Given any thought to taking on that “extra” work?” he roared at her quietly as she made her way towards the stairs.  “Pays better than waiting tables.  Sooner you’re out of my mane, the better, honestly.”

“I’m not doing that,” she shot him down angrily.  “I don’t care how many caps I could rack up, I’m not selling myself, ever.”

“I had enough customers asking about your availability today to have taken a quarter of your debt out,” he countered harshly.  “And quite frankly, I’m getting tired of your shit.  Consider it carefully, while I’m still willing to let you keep a part of the caps for the work.”

She’d heard that little threat before, the first time he’d started badgering her into taking the work last week.  She’d heard it again the other day, and then this morning….

….but this time….this time, it sounded like he meant it….

Her tail quivered in fright as she hurried up the stairs, though she managed to keep the rest of her body mostly stable as she came upon the mare’s room and cautiously invited herself inside.  She hoped those Runners showed up soon, the—

“….awwww,” she heard herself mew quietly in awe, her eyes falling upon the little filly’s bed.  The squirt was wrapped in what looked like a couple of wool blankets, fast asleep on her right side and completely oblivious to the evil world around her as she hugged this filly-sized white fox plush doll close to her.  She seemed to be using a third blanket as a pillow, but it was the sight of the husky pups huddled next to her that had her heart melting at the cuteness.  One of them was curled up against the filly’s back, and the other one was resting against the filly’s hind legs with its head unconsciously trying to burrow itself into the filly’s body, hindered only by the plush fox in the little girl’s grasp.  “So cute.”

“If you say so,” the mare’s voice said softly, barely audible in the silent room.  Rally turned her head leftward to see if the mare had the MEW with he—

Oh, my, that’s a big gun, she cringed mentally when she caught sight of what looked like a rather large, matte-stainless revolver lying before the mare on her bed, its cylinder open and empty as a brass brush continually scrubbed in and out of the cylinder’s six chambers.  “….got the parts,” she said when she found her voice again.  “….where is it?”

The mare’s silent response was to simply wrap the broken Lightbringer in an indigo shimmer and float it out to her, and Rally took it into her own spell field with a careful slip of thought.

“….may take me an hour, tops,” she said, taking care in handling the gun so as not to disturb the loose bits of crystal and metal inside.  “…if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just give it back before I get some grub and Zs.  Trade caravan came to town today, one of the merchants might have some battery cells for it.”

The mare’s indigo magic wrapped around her saddlebags, opening one of them up and causing a brief flash of neon purple light to burst out from the inside as an olive drab package was lifted out and floated over to her—

“….we’ll call that a down payment,” the mare said, turning her eyes back to her big gun.  “Just tear off the marked end and let the tray out, it’ll cook on its own.  It’s one of the fresher ones I have.”

Though her stomach lurched at the thought of a military ration for dinner, it was still a somewhat humbling offer.  She couldn’t recall the last soul that felt they had enough food to spare to casually pass some off to a stranger like that…

“….t-thanks,” Rally managed to stutter as she turned back towards the door.

She’d meant it as a genuine ‘thank-you’, but the mare’s quiet, subdued laugh indicated it might have been taken as a jab against the ration (which would not be entirely untrue either).  “…it’s not a mil-rat, it’s actually edible.”

“Heard that lie before,” she laughed back, her body brushing against the doorway as she scooted through and shut the door behind her.

From there, it was just a few seconds’ walk to her room, and then it was all she could do to keep quiet as she hopped over to her mattress, plopped down upon it and went right to work.  Her body suddenly felt so much lighter and…and giddier, weirdly enough, but she had a right to feel weird things!  This was the first time she’d gotten to work on a Lightbringer and she couldn’t wait!  She laid the abused MEW down on the floor next to the mattress, setting her tools beside it as she flipped the ration package about in her magic, the tough plastic crinkling loudly in her grasp:





MEAL, READY TO EAT
MENU ITEM #3
GEMELLI PASTA W/VEGETABLES IN BASIL SAUCE, CHEDDAR FLAVOR RICE, SLICED PEACHES, WHEAT BREAD
STABLE #115 ISSUE






Her brain stopped working briefly when she read the last line.

Stable-issue.

As in, it came from an honest-to-Luna Stable.  The one-one-five, even.

….as in, she’d just gotten a Stable-made ration….

….from a stable mare?

In hindsight, actually, the PipBuck should have given that away, but it wasn’t unheard of for a soul to grab hold of one somehow—usually by taking it out of an abandoned Stable, or off a dead stable pony.  Rare, but not unheard of.  But….the rations were something else.  As far as she knew, none of the other found Stables in the prairie had ration stores that lasted more than a few years, and most of them had long since been emptied out.  The three that weren’t…well, two were in Union control, and the 115 was sealed up tight, not even magic could interact with its door.  The Union had tried before a couple years back, and supposedly a unicorn had died in the attempt.  The 115 only sent a pony out once a generation—anywhere between twenty to thirty years apart, depending on how they felt about it….

….but if that mare was from the 115, she couldn’t have been a scout.  The kid and pups would have made it really hard to scout about the wastes…

….ask her, when you take the gun back.

Gun.

….gun!  You’re supposed to be working on the gun, idiot!

No longer willing to let herself be distracted by idle thoughts or questions, she poured the remainder of her energy into her work…though even that proved to be challenging upon her first bite of the basil sauce-basted pasta.  Afterward, all thought of work and MEWs vanished as she savored every delicious, mouth-watering bite of the ration.  She’d had a military ration a couple of times, and remembered little more than an urge to gag upon every bite.  But this stable ration….by the gods, it was just too tasty!  Even the fruit flavor drink packet she mixed into her water canteen was unlike anything else she’d ever tasted.  The packet said it was a “cherry” flavor, and she had no idea what a cherry was, but it had turned her water into a sharp, sweet flavor that oddly made her thirst for it more with every gulp.

And it was a good thing she’d indulged in the meal first.  The taste, the actual sensation of a satisfied and full stomach made her repair work almost an afterthought.  Like it had put her into a sort of zen state of concentration and awareness.  Every thought, every movement, every tingle of magic flowed together into a careful, delicate ballet of technical precision.  The upper receiver housing came off as if it were made of air, the busted crystal array was unscrewed and pulled in a smooth, effortless motion, the loose bits of crystal, wiring, and arcane-based tech was picked out in meticulous fashion….and then came the fitting of the new crystal focusing array, and of the new receiver housing containing the enhanced arcane emission tightening system that was markedly different from the original silvery housing.  The nose end of the “slide”, as it were, was noticeably enlarged, with a pair of amber-colored crystal diodes to assist with the beam focusing on each side, as well as a red slotted light on each side of the front, encircling the barrel end.  Two pairs of additional cooling tubes in place behind the emitter nose on each side of the slide served to regulate the additional heat buildup, and a red ring-style light on each side was present, just behind the cooling tubes.  Out of pure aesthetics, she left the green diode light beneath the barrel muzzle in place, and changed out the plastic dustcover sheath with the upgraded tan-colored synthetic material sheath.  What it was for, she couldn’t fathom, as it was a griffon-designed variant of the Lightbringer and was not meant for a pony’s hooves or mouth-bit grip, but it did give the weapon a distinctive look…and perhaps that was its purpose.

She couldn’t help but squeal like a five year old girl when she’d set the last screw in place, holding the finished product up before her to take in in all its old world glory.  It looked bad-ass, to put it bluntly!  A lot meaner looking than the plain silvery look it had before…and a lot more durable.  Now that she finally had a chance to see what the end product looked like, she was desperate to find more Lightbringers to do this to!  She hadn’t been this excited or joyous in quite some time.

And in the midst of her celebration, she had forgotten the one constant in the wasteland—if it saw good tidings and great joy taking place, it would do everything in its unholy power to rip it away from a soul.

She had barely set her tools back into their pouch when the light from her lantern in the corner was blocked out by the presence of an intruder, and when she looked back towards the offender, she felt all pretense of joy and satisfaction drain out of her blood.

“The hell do you got there?” Puck’s voice demanded harshly, his body appearing almost coal-black in the lantern’s dim, dark yellow light.

…oh shit…oh shit oh shit….

“…..g-gun,” she replied softly, her hold on the Lightbringer beginning to weaken, and she carefully laid it down in front of her on the mattress before it could fall from her faltering magic.

Puck’s head cocked about the room briefly, pausing when he spotted the refuse from the ration.  “Looks like more than a gun.  Looks like you’re taking work on the side behind my back.”

F-bombs began bleating through her mind, though she offered them no voice.  “….n-no caps….just a ration….th-that mare, with the kid….”

“A mare with a broken gun wanted you to fix it and your price was food?  I ain’t buyin’ it.”

Her lips moved, almost to utter one of the silent curses pounding out in her head, but at the last second she managed to speak normally….or as normally as a scared little girl could sound.  “….it was all she was willing to offer….so I took it—”

“Behind my back,” he snarled, cutting her off with a menacing step forward.  “You went behind my back to rake in some caps when you still me owe me for three dead brahmin, this room and the food I’ve been feeding you with for the last three weeks…and with perfectly serviceable weapons parts you’ve been hiding from me the whole damn time?”

Rally’s body began to shake, paralyzed with fear of this increasingly dangerous demon of a pony stalking towards her.

“You owe me, little bitch,” his voice heaved angrily.  “And if you’ve got the time to pull in work on the side, you’ve got the time to make full use of yourself in my bar.  Come morning, Willow will talk you through the basics of your additional duties, specifically the pay and where it goes when you’re done.”

Oh my gods oh my gods this isn’t happening thisisn’thappening thisisn’thapp—

“N-no, please, not that,” she squeaked, her terror beginning to make it difficult to look him in the eye or speak calmly.  “I-I’m not even fifteen pl-please no—”

“It won’t be for long,” he growled, stopping mere inches from her.  “But you will learn, that when you owe a debt, you will pay it—”

Without warning, one of his forelegs lashed out, smacked her straight in the nose and filled her face with red-hot pain, blinding her to the world as she collapsed onto the rocky mattress.

“Or you will be made to pay it.”

A second blow whacked the side of her head, and right then the world seemed to stretch out for a million miles, her thoughts slowing to a glacial crawl.  Darkness began creeping across her vision, though she stayed conscious just long enough to see the bastard clutching the laser pistol in his jaws as he pilfered the weapon for himself and left her to her pain.  As the last shred of consciousness slipped away and plunged her into a dreamless sleep, her last fleeting thought was a muted question on whether the warm streak carving across her face was blood or salt-water tears.

The next conscious thought seemed to sparkle into her brain an eternity later.  It was a singular thought, instinctive and urgent; awaken.  Her body, however, was dead to her.  No amount of thought or insistence on the part of her primal thought could entice her lead-weighted limbs to so much as stir from whatever warm cocoon had taken her prisoner.  Her body was of the opinion that things were fine right where they were, and that the brain needed to pass off to sleep with the rest of her.

And yet the brain persisted.  The primal, singular thought grew, gradually stirring more complex thoughts and processes to the forefront of her mind.  She soon came to recognize the feel of a slightly rough fabric draped over her, and the almost fluffy-bodied surface cushioning her body from below.  This surface seemed to conform to fit her shape, adding its own voice to the constant chorus demanding that she stop moving or thinking, and return to her dreamless world.  And it was a very appealing idea.

She was pulled from the powerful grasp of sleep by an outside force….one she did not expect.

A cold, wet poke to the face.

The icy shock, planted near her eye, sent a chill through her brain, and she reflexively turned her head away from the offending object before it could poke her again.  “….stoppit….”

A quiet, animalistic whine answered her plea, and a weight she’d not even noticed vanished from her immediate presence, replaced moments later by a much heavier one—

“Rally?”

The foreign, warm voice whispered her name softly, gentle logs pulling at her body to stir her from her warm, fuzzy trap…..

When she opened her eyes, the exceptionally blurred world beyond stunned her with its bleak, drab brown colors, in which a somewhat brighter teal blue shape stood out against it, looming over her like a small mountain.  A moment later, a black and white blur popped up from beneath the teal blue shape, morphing into a stationary and wolfish-shaped blob—

—a blink of her eyes wiped away some of the blurriness, refining her world image and giving detail to the shapes.  The black and white blob became the head of a four-month old huge husky pup poking over the edge of a bed, its mouth parted slightly as it stared at her.  The teal blue shape became an indigo-maned mare with dark lines scraping down one side of her face—

“Rally?” the warm voice whispered again, now clearly coming from the mare’s moving mouth.

A fleeting moment of confusion began to set in.  She didn’t recall falling asleep anywhere ne—

It came back to her in a pulsing flash, briefly re-visiting the pain inflicted on her head, and then she understood.

The mare had come back for her gun, and stupid little Rally didn’t have it.

Her mouth moved, stammering slightly as she spoke.  “…m-miss, I’m sorry…y-your g—”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” the stable mare shushed her gently.  “…are you sick?  Does anything hurt?”

Rally’s brain pushed and pulled with itself, trying to figure what the stable pony meant.  Physically?  Did she mean physical pain?  Or….or did she think….

Something in her eyes, or on her face, must have betrayed her thoughts, because the stable mare was very quick to dissuade her from those thoughts.  “H-hey, it’s okay, I….I’m no expert, but when I found you, you looked…untouched, in that regard, and the doc didn’t find anything wrong there.  Just looks like you got beat up.”

Oddly enough, the moment the mare mentioned it, Rally could suddenly recall with crystal-ball clarity the hoof that had smacked her nose and likely broken it….and yet she felt no pain in her face at all….

“….m-my nose….was it broke?”

“Pretty badly,” the mare whispered.  “Had to convince the town doc to turn my last three healing potions into injection stims, I didn’t want to risk you choking on it.”

Her dead-weight limbs began to stir at last, her left leg sliding up and unfolding within the trappings of what felt now like a wool blanket…

“….you found me?”

“…well, you said it’d take you an hour at most to get the gun repaired,” the mare’s voice answered.  “I gave you ninety minutes, then went looking for you.  Room was open, found you on a slab of rock passing as a mattress, or something.  Your face was covered in blood….what happened?”

Rally didn’t answer right away, stumbling over the fact that the mare had actually come looking for her when she didn’t come back when she said she would.  Most folk just figured she’d blown the appointment off and forgot about her….

“….P-Puck,” she stammered, shivering slightly underneath the blanket as she forced herself to relive that last minute of terror, though she was silently grateful that the beating was all he’d done to her.  “….it was Puck.  Had the gun all fixed, was about to get it back to you when he showed up.  Maybe he heard me working on it through the floor, maybe he had….other ideas….but, when he found me with the gun…..he wasn’t happy.  He…he took the gun, beat me senseless….I…I-I’m sorry, I d—”

One of the mare’s forelegs came up over the edge of the bed, gently pressing against her snout to stay her apologies—

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” the stable mare soothed gently….

….though Rally couldn’t help but detect a hint of forced pleasantry in her voice.

“….no, it’s not,” the teenaged filly moaned sadly.  “You won’t get it back now.  Not without paying my debt or picking a fight.  And he keeps a couple of mercs on retainer as muscle.”

The mare seemed to almost gloss over that last fact, her eyes briefly lost amidst her thoughts as she mulled it over.  “….two?  Armed?”

“…one is.  The other prefers his bare hooves.”

The stable mare’s response was an absent grunt as she pulled away from the bed, walking to the other side of the room, and Rally gingerly raised her head to follow her path—

The mare’s body stopped at the bed on the other side of the room, hefting her travelling saddle up after unzipping the saddle bags from the sides, and strapping it across her body with practiced ease and smoothness—

—followed, very quickly, by a small collection of weapons that had been sitting on the desk next to the bed.  That big revolver, a smaller black one that looked like it fired rifle rounds, and then a shotgun with what looked like an extended shell tube and a cut-down stock….

Her final weapon, a blocky semi-automatic, she left out, briefly ejecting the magazine before pulling the slide to inspect its chamber.  Seemingly satisfied with its condition, she slapped it back in and sauntered back to her.

“…my daughter went out a few minutes ago, should be back any time now,” the mare said, setting the pistol down near Rally’s body, along with what looked like four spare magazines, all loaded.  “….you know how to use one of these?”

“….I’m okay with it,” she answered hesitantly, her head craning about to take in the blocky automatic.  “….but I prefer a revolver, really.  Found a really good one, months ago, but lost it when Puck dinged me for those dead brahmin.  Don’t know if he sold it or kept it….”

“….left a ration out, if you feel like eating,” the mare said, her body moving towards the door.  “We’ll talk some more after I come back.  Shouldn’t be long.”

The promise of a second meal consisting of real food, as alluring as it was, was still not enough to dissuade her from trying to at least poke at this mare’s brain a bit further.  She was already tying with Miss Glossy Shine for the title of Most Helpful Pony to Poor Rally, and yet she didn’t even know her name—

“….where are you going?”

The mare’s answer, though brief, sent a dull chill through her bones with its slightly furious edge.  “I’m going to pick a fight.”






--------------------------------------






Much of the week had been an agonizing nightmare she could not wake up from.  The screams still haunted her, somewhere in her head.  Never overwhelming, but she swore she could still hear them.  The pain, the sorrow….the unrelenting horror of being torn apart and eaten alive.  Sleep had become a foreign subject to her.

And then there was Light Tail’s pain.  For the first time in her little life, the poor thing had gone ballistic on her.  Screamed at her, tried to punch her lights, crying and howling all the while.  And when the child had exhausted herself in her mad grief, she just…shut down.  For much of the first day she just laid in one place, unresponsive, and when she did show signs of life, it was to simply cry into her forelegs.  Day two was more of the same, with the occasional added movement to another part of the shop with no discernable purpose or aim.  It was only on the third day that she showed any sign of being willing to walk any great distance, but communication was still not very high on her list of priorities, no matter how much Sling tried to coax just two words out of her.  To be virtually ignored like that in a time of great pain and grief broke her confidence as a parent, but she knew in her heart that even if El-Tee had felt like saying anything, she would not be able to offer the filly any relief or insight into the nature of death and emotional heartache.  How could she, when her only response was to shut it out and focus on her only child?  It had been her response when they left the Stable, left her only friend behind to die along with over eight hundred other souls.  Shove it aside.  The child was all that mattered.

To the child, everyone mattered.  Even the murderers and cannibals.  And now she was wrought with grief at the loss of two dear friends who were no longer in her life….a loss caused in part by bad ponies, and was probably well aware that her mother had inflicted this kind of pain on plenty of others given all the lives she had taken in the last three months, if raiders and killers could feel such things.  How could the mother possibly offer any advice or consoling words about loss when she had no qualms with taking others from those who cared about them?  How?

Sling would have argued that the killers, the thieves and crazed, sadistic raiders, did the things they did because they didn’t care about anybody but themselves and their own desires.  But when she looked at the things she’d done, the number of souls she’d forced to take an early exit from the earthly plane, and her singular desire to ensure that Light Tail survived at any cost, even her own life….she began to wonder if there was any real difference between herself and all the lives she’d taken.  She didn’t even think twice about it anymore.  She just did it.  Knife, gun, her bare hooves, or, more recently, a destructive surge of magic, whatever could kill her foe the quickest, she did it and she no longer hesitated.

She wasn’t sure she ever had, honestly.

So without any answers for her child, or relief and solace for herself, Sling was left to deal with her own maelstrom of powerful, primal emotions in some other way, and more than once had brought herself to the brink of vomiting her meager meals at the overwhelming thoughts and feelings flooding her every sense.  Kite was only the second true friend she’d had in her life…and yet the loss stung so hard she couldn’t fathom it.  Was it because she’d had to hear her final, terrifying moments of life as she was ripped apart by the victims of the Great War?  Was it because Kite had come to value her and El-Tee so much that she had willingly….let go, to certain death, just to ensure they would make it away from the slavers?  Was it because she had let go, so close to her end goal of the western prairie, her just and earnestly deserved salvation from all the abuses and hardships she’d been forced to endure?

Or had that half-crazed, out-of-the-blue kiss of pure joy been more than just a spontaneous decision made mere minutes after being bought of the slave trade by the efforts of a mare she’d known for barely two months?  Had it been an inkling of desires and feelings that Kite herself didn’t know about, emotions that amounted to more than simple infatuation and adoration?  Even though Sling herself had no conscious memory of that moment, at times she could still see snippets and little flashes of what she could only assume to be her perspective of that kiss, and strange phantom tendrils of movement across her tongue that she couldn’t place.  And when she gathered the courage to look at these strange, seemingly planted memories within herself, she usually came to the conclusion that Kite herself was probably only vaguely aware of what she was doing….but she was aware of it, and that was more than Sling could say for herself in that moment.

It didn’t make the poor mare’s violent, gruesome end of her life any easier to absorb.  And then there was BJ, mere inches away from her the whole time…she couldn’t even bring herself to contemplate what the poor colt had suffered in his last few moments.  It was too much.

She struggled to even comprehend her pain, for over four days now, with the answers no clearer or closer now than they’d been before.  She’d struggled for something, anything, anything at all that would somehow explain it to her, or at the very least give her something to focus on that didn’t drain her of all her hope and will to live.

And then the luckless teenaged filly slid into her view on her four rather lanky legs, her light pink coat adorned in a dirty apron covered in dozens of stitched-on patches and a worn blue leg warmer concealing much of her cybernetic foreleg, and suddenly Sling had what she wanted.

Something to focus on.

Something to focus on….that was also painfully familiar.  An abused soul, forcibly indentured to another, desperate for a way out...and whose brief window of brevity at the sight of her broken laser pistol reminded her so much of her daughter that she felt a strange, compulsive stirring pushing her into action without thought or contemplation of what trouble it would entail for her.

It was like meeting Kite and BJ all over again.  And this time, she would do it right.  She would do what she should have done the first time, and help the poor thing when she needed it most.  She could only hope that Kite, wherever her soul was now, would understand…and that it would bring her peace.

It quickly became apparent to her that the way to help was to find her a way out of her forced service, and if Leon’s brief advice for dealing with Puck was any indication, he and Ada would have been the best route for doing it without having to shoot anyone.  It was child’s play to bring it up, and while she felt slightly guilty for getting the kid’s hopes up, it was worth it for the chance to get her laser pistol fixed and give her hope—real hope—that she would see an end to her debt slavery.  If she was as talented and intelligent as she claimed, it would be worth it a thousand times over.

So when Rally failed to return the pistol to her in the time frame she’d quoted her….when Sling found the teen battered and bleeding on the floor of a bare-bones hotel room with little more than a rock-solid mattress, left to possibly suffer brain damage or lethal blood loss….

…the molten-hot, familiar poison of exceptional rage began to boil within her.  It had been a miracle that she’d not torn the entire building apart like she’d wanted to, to find the child’s attacker.  But she’d promised herself that her attacker would be found, and dealt with.  Harshly.  She wouldn’t say it aloud, but she was virtually ecstatic when the kid named her abusive “employer” as her assailant.  Now she could get her out of his heartless clutches without having to wait for Ada and Leon.  

The bastard had no idea what he’d just unleashed.

Her slow, deliberate march down the stairs to the bar floor did not have the look of a pony looking to murder and maim.  At a glance, she looked to be simply making her way to the bar for a drink or a bite to eat.  Much as she wanted to give her quivering anger some manner of release, she didn’t want to tip off his hired protection just yet.  She didn’t even know what they looked like, and if they saw her before she could pick them out they could catch her off guard.  She wanted to deal with them alongside her prey, get them all out of the way at once when she could surprise them.

Much of the mid-morning crowd had settled in for their daily routine by the time she’d reached the bar, her eyes locked on a cream-shaded earth pony stallion busying himself sorting through the various bottles of booze stacked on the display counter behind him.  What was his na—

“Ah, hello there,” the stallion said with a crisp, pleasant tone, apparently recognizing her on sight despite only having seen her for a few minutes in the last twenty four hours, and that’s when his name finally clicked in her head.  “….Rally okay?”

“….physically, yes,” she replied carefully.  While Ginger seemed to be the nicest of Puck’s two prostitutes, she had no idea how much he valued his job in the bastard’s employ and didn’t want to risk a fight just yet.  “….where’s your boss?  I have words to share with him.”

Ginger’s face lost much of its mild pleasantness, falling into a slight gaze of despair.  “….Puck is….unhappy, at the moment.  Best to avoid him, he and my sister have been arguing half the morning.”

“He run out of whiskey or something?”

“No, no,” he said, his head turning to his right briefly before he went on.  “….look, I heard some things between them earlier….apparently Rally was to be….joining us in our “extra” duties—”

Sling’s hold on her anger suddenly became much more precarious.  The kid hadn’t mentioned that part….

“….I don’t think Rally would ever agree to anything like that.”

“…even if she was willing, Willow and I wouldn’t let her,” Ginger’s voice spoke quietly, as if afraid his words might reach the wrong ears.  “….but we don’t get much of a say in anything around here.”

“He doesn’t get a say in the matter either, he just doesn’t know it yet.  Where is he?”

Seeing that his polite (if weak-willed) attempts to convince her otherwise would not work, he sadly pointed a foreleg at a shadow-veiled doorway just past the bar counter.  “….through that door.  Take a left in the kitchen, his office is at the end of the hall.  And…remember that I did warn you.”

She promptly trotted away from him, following his directions and sauntering into the kitchen, and then quickly ducking through the door to her left, entering a dim, candlelit hallway that turned right behind the kitchen.  Ignoring the other doors and rooms, she made straight for the end of the hallway, and as she neared the final door on the left side of the hallway a pair of voices hashing out a very heated argument began to grow louder—

—she unconsciously switched her PipBuck on, her vision bracketed by the EFS and the appearance of three green triangles embedded inside the compass bar—

“—king asshole, you could have killed her!” a raspy mare’s voice screeched sharply.  “How the hell did you expect her to work all messed up like that?!”

“I didn’t, I expected one of you to get her back on her hooves and in that room upstairs paying off her debt,” Puck’s hoarse, deep voice countered coldly.  “Come to think of it, why are you even here?  You need to go back upstairs and get that damn brat schooled and ready for her first customer.”

“I ain’t doin’ shit,” the raspy voice shot back instantly.  “She’s fourteen, for Luna’s sake!  You don’t do that to kids, not even in the east!”

“This ain’t the east, this is my bar,” Puck growled darkly.  “She will pay her debt if I have to take it out of her myself—”

Her blood-boiling anger began to give her tunnel vision, and that was as far as she was willing to let this argument drag on.  She pulled on the doorknob and invited herself into the room, a rather stuffy office with a non-functional ceiling fan, an old wooden desk, and two debilitated bookshelves.  A maroon-coated mare with an unkempt blueberry mane and tail stood in front of the desk, her angry glare rapidly turning into confusion at this sudden intrusion.  Puck’s charcoal-gray body sat behind the desk, his cold green eyes already promising unpleasant threats to her, and in the corner by one of the bookshelves was a tan-coated earth stallion with a candy-cane color mane and a deep cross-shaped scar on his face….and he wasn’t armed, either.

She’d have to settle for two opponents.  Get the third later, if he became a problem.

Her eyes were quick to sweep the room for its occupants, and then found themselves drawn towards the sight of a laser pistol on Puck’s person, though its slide housing was much bulkier and adorned with additional red and amber colored lights near the barrel, and what looked like a couple of small tubes along the sides.

“You have something of mine,” she stated calmly, her ears focused on any advancing movement in her direction while her eyes were locked on Puck.

Puck’s hard eyes never wavered away from her.  “Ain’t yours anymore.  You don’t hit up my workers for free favors, or cut me out of caps for work done in my bar.  If you weren’t friends with those Runners you’d already be out on your ass in the street.  Get out of my office before I forget that.”

“Ada and Leon are not who you should be worried about today.  You have something of mine.  I want it back.”

“…hell with it, then.  Twister, get rid of her.  Her brat too when you find her—”

Sling’s horn flared to life, ripping Grayhawk out of its holster and immediately squeezing off two rounds of .44 Special into each of Twister’s front legs.  Despite the cramped, tight confines of the room, however, the shots themselves came out strangely muffled, though Twister’s brief screams of pain seemed louder by comparison.  She didn’t even recall consciously casting that hearing spell.  A second flash of magic wrapped around his head, slammed it into the floor as she grabbed Puck’s head with her forelegs and smashed it into his desk, face first—

—her knife came out next, seemingly of its own free, and pierced clean through his right foreleg as he tried to draw it towards himself and the holstered laser pistol, pinning it to the desk surface and eliciting a deep, mane-curling scream from the dark hearted stallion—

—the office door slapped against the hallway outside as the maroon mare bolted out, her voice alternating between brief words of disbelief and quiet screams—

—Sling took a brief moment to swing the door back shut, flipping Grayhawk’s cylinder open and extracting the four spent rounds and two live ones in exchange for a full load of .44 Mag, then closed it back up.

With Twister seemingly out cold and more or less neutralized as a threat, she put her attention onto Puck, and her EFS’s compass bar, watching for rapidly-moving marks closing in on her.  “This is mine,” she spat at his writhing face, her magic pulling the laser pistol off of him and back into one of her remaining empty holsters.  “And I have words to share with you about what you did to that little girl last night.”

Another flash of telekinesis ripped the knife out of Puck’s leg….and straight into the other one, filling the walls with his screams once more.  Trails of blood began to seep out from underneath his legs, staining the ancient desk’s surface into a darker shade of brown-black.

“You make me sick,” her voice roared darkly, ripping the knife out and bringing the blood-drenched tip to within an inch of the corner of his left eye as she held his body down against the desk.  “Breaking her face, damn near smashing her skull in….you could have killed her.  But to force her to…to sell her body, her dignity….to let others use her like a toy for a sack of bottle caps?!  You surface folk are disgusting—”

“C-crazy, bitch,” Puck gasped through his pain.  “You are dead in this town—”

The knife sank into his leg again, and this time she left it in, keeping the leg pinned down as she took to slamming his face into his desk a couple more times when the urge struck her.  “I once crushed a hedonistic sadist of a griffon under five tons of brick and plaster for threatening to force himself on my child.  I wiped out a slaver hit squad with magic and the guns on my body in eleven seconds for having the gall to try and kill me because they thought I sicced a Union major on them.  I could shit a bigger problem out than you.  You have one way out of this, and I’m going to give it to you.  Are you listening?”

She kept her forelegs locked around his head, using her magic to slowly twist the knife place for a couple of seconds to emphasize just how serious she was (as if it wasn’t already obvious).  With a quiet scream in his throat, Puck’s face contorted into a mixture of fear and pain, and his eyes were no longer willing to look into hers.

But he managed, at the least, a single, brief nod of acknowledgement.

“Rally is no longer your problem,” she started with a deep, furious howl.  “She no longer owes you so much as a spit wad.  You will not touch her, speak to her, or even look at her.  She will not be your slave, your barmaid, nothing.  She is her own pony again, and for her safety for the rest of her time here she will stay with me in the room you will now lend to me at no further cost, because I spent all of my caps getting her the medical attention she needed after you broke her nose and left her in a pool of her own blood.  You will do this quietly and with no fuss.  You will treat me and my daughter as if we were Rally because if I even think you’re trying to get at my little girl I will come back, and when I’m done what’s left of you will fit in a tool box after I take a piss in it! Is there any part of this you don’t understand?!”

She waited, angrily, for a response, and when he failed to even shudder a yes or no through his body language, she took hold of the knife and began to tug it towards herself, eliciting another short scream out of him—

“Nnnnggaaaah allright all right juststoppit I’ll do it—”

She promptly pulled the knife out, cringing slightly as the scream managed to pierce her hearing protection spell slightly, and watched as he sank down behind the desk while she worked to clean the blood off of her knife with a strip of cloth she found lying on the desk.  “One last thing.  She said you took a gun from her, when you first pulled her into your debt slavery.  Do you still have it?”

With a fearful grunt of pain, he began flailing at a drawer in his desk, blinded by pain and blood, and she took the hint and pulled it open, throwing her magic around the first gun-shaped object she could feel through the spell field—

—and came out with what looked like one of the nicest looking .357 magnum revolvers she’d seen in the wastes, slung inside a hardened leather holster fitted specifically to this gun and attached to a gun belt.  Looked like a heavy frame Ironshod model, six inch barrel, and though its blued finish had faded considerably over the last two centuries it was still remarkably intact with no apparent surface rust.  The intricate, checkered side panel cocobolo grips showed only a few nicks and gouges on the surface, and the top strap of the frame was noticeably larger and thicker than a standard Ironshod.  Nowhere near as thick as a Phoenix Rising model, but combined with the reinforced forcing cone, it was enough to take a constant diet of .357 rounds without accelerated wear.  The full-barrel, rod-shaped underlug gave the gun enough forward heft to tame the recoil a bit, and the raised, bladed front sight had a red bead-shaped arcane crystal imbedded in it, and was easy to pick up through the adjustable rear sight’s white outline.

“….this is Rally’s?” her surprised voice asked of the hideous pony-shaped lifeform cowering behind the desk, to which the creature only nodded in quick accession to her query and tried to pull himself away from her presence.

Sling took the weapon and gun belt into her personal space, keeping it close to her chest as she turned and trotted on back into the hallway.  It wasn’t until she passed into the kitchen, into the stunned, mouth-agape presence of the three cooks that she realized that her little “talk” with Puck was probably not as isolated or private as she’d intended it to be—

“L-let her go, get back to work,” the maroon mare’s voice commanded with a terrified stutter from the bar doorway.  “….seriously, just let her go.  Puck had it coming.”

The cooks slowly turned away from her, and returned to their meal preparations with a seemingly renewed and intense interest, allowing her to pass out of the kitchen in peace and rejoin the maroon-coated mare at the bar counter.

That left one last possible threat….

“He has two mercs on retainer.  Where’s the other one?”

“He quit earlier in the morning, when he caught wind of what Puck and I were fighting over,” the mare said softly, likely in deference to the seven souls quietly minding their own business throughout the bar floor.  “….said he was hired to guard a bar, not a child abuser.  Twister was never really that smart….”

She felt years' worth of tension and anger fade away, returning her to her previous state of mind—lost, and hurt.

…had to fix that.

“....they’re still alive,” Sling said.  “And Rally’s done working off Puck’s bullshit debt.”

The mare’s mouth spat a silent curse, but left her displeasure at that.  “….help was nice while it lasted…..ju…just watch yourself now.  Puck never forgets a wrong done to him and it sounded like you messed him up pretty good.”

“Convince him to make an exception,” she warned gently as she pushed past the mare, heading for the stairs to the second floor.  “I won’t be that gentle again.”

She marched on upstairs in seven brisk steps, and trudged back into her borrowed room a few mindless moments later, finding Rally lying upright on the right side bed with what looked like pure ecstasy plastered on her face, while Light Tail’s body was sprawled across the back end of the bed with the pups, content to simply watch the room in silence.

“Oh, my, gods this hashbrown casserole is awesome!” the pink-coated filly squealed with delight as she swallowed what looked like the last of the ration tray’s contents.  “Is that what real food tastes like?!”

“Close,” Sling replied, her voice growing slightly wistful as thoughts of warm, doughy pancakes laced with blueberries taunted her taste buds.  A gentle burst of magic floated the gun belt and its contents down next to her on the bed, and the weight pulled down on the wool blanket beneath her enough to draw her attention to it.  “You’re done with Puck.  Got this back, even.”

Though part of the kid’s left eye was obscured by her mixed blue and purple mane, the right eye lit up like a light bulb, and a faint shimmer of light blue reverently extracted the revolver from its holster.  “Oh buck me I thought I’d lost this,” the girl cried with a soft laugh, the cylinder swinging out to reveal four rounds of .357 inside.  “Wow, he never did anything with it, I only had four shots left when he stole it from me.  Must have been asking too much for it.  Where are those blasted speedloaders—”

The revolver settled down into the bed near her, her magic pulling at a pouch attached to the gun belt and drawing four empty speedloaders into view.  “Ah, there they are.  Should get ahold of that dude in Fleeceville, might still have those extra loaders the last time I went through there.”

“It’s a nice gun,” Sling commented absently, her eyes scanning it over once more.  “And in insanely good condition, given what most guns I come across look like.  Re-blue it and polish it up, and it’ll look almost brand new.  Where’d you find it?”

“In the back of an abandoned gun store in Withercha,” Rally answered freely, taking hold of her gun once more and beginning a thorough visual inspection of it from barrel to grip.  “Safe was air-tight and sealed up, but the lock was broken, which explains why it was the only thing left in there worth looting after two centuries.  Took me most of a day to get it open, and I came close to wrecking my metal leg in the process.  My best guess is that it belonged to the store owner in the Before, and that he never made it back to retrieve it after the megaspell event.  I don’t really know anything about it other than that it’s a .357.”

Sling’s brain filtered through her memories for all of a second and a half to find the information she’d memorized a lifetime ago.  “Looks like a high-end Ironshod model to me.  Could be what they called the Deluxe Officer’s Magnum meant for highway patrol units, supposedly they were pretty weighty.  When I first picked it up I thought it was a .44 Mag.  Mine doesn’t weigh too much more than that one and it’s got weights in the underlug.  How do you shoot something that heavy at your age?”

Rally’s mouth broke into a mad grin as she pulled her leg warmer up to expose her cybernetic leg.  “With this,” she cackled, the metal hoof unlocking and coming apart, then rapidly forming into what looked like a mechanical griffon’s talon, the four individual digits flexing and flicking about like an ape’s fingers.  “One of the few benefits of a cyber leg is that the strength of the leg itself makes the recoil of a .357 child’s play, and I can get the hoof custom-tailored to work like this for grabbing and using things.  Comes in pretty “handy”.”

El-Tee’s nose burst into a mild snort, her head shifting about over her forelegs.  “…that was lame.”

“Well I thought it was funny.”

Sling’s eyes locked onto the mechanical talon, her thoughts growing morbid as she tried to comprehend how the kid could have gotten so badly injured, if she was taken to thinking her way through problems rather than charging in.  “...and yet you thought yourself powerless to get out of Puck’s control?”

Rally’s brain worked faster—and smarter—than her own brain did at the kid’s age.  “…don’t misunderstand, I’d have loved nothing more than to knock him senseless.  Would’ve been easy, one right hook and POW!  One jerkwad of a pony out cold on the floor and a little girl laughing herself silly.  But then where would that leave me with his on-call bodyguards?  One’s got a gun and mine was locked up somewhere, and I’d have to leave all my stuff behind if I wanted out of here without getting beat up…which meant running into the wastelands with no weapons, no food or water, no med supplies….that’s a death sentence.”

“…well, like I said, you’re done with him.  You’re free to stay in here with us until my contacts show up, or you decide to strike out on your own.  Try to stay clear of Puck, he was…unhappy, when I was done talking to him.”

Unfortunately for Sling, Rally wasn’t quite buying that little white lie.  Something in the girl’s eyes, the way she looked at her….she wasn’t convinced it had all been solved with a little “talk”, given what the girl knew about the bastard.  “….how unhappy?”

“One more mistake will be his last,” was all she was willing to say.  “…know anybody in town in need of an extra set of hooves?  I spent all my caps getting those healing potions converted.”

“….depends on what you can do, and what’s needed,” Rally answered carefully.  “….if I’m really not working for Puck anymore, I kinda need to hit the bathhouse down the road myself.  The head mistress there…she has all my stuff, helped me hide it from him, and she’ll probably let me work for a few days for some pay, at least to get me started on the road.  She might be able to point you somewhere where you can pull in some work, I never really got to get out of this place much.”

The promise of getting clean for perhaps the first time in two weeks seemed to be enough to rouse her little night light from her quiet slumber.  El-Tee began to force herself to stand up, calling the pups up to their paws with a couple of clicks of her tongue—the most life she’d shown in four days.  “….guess we could use a wash…”

…yes, she told herself.  Maybe in doing right by Rally the first time, she might find some peace.

Or at the very least, find the Light Tail that she’d lost four days ago.