Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams

by KDarkwater

Chapter 18

18

I am not used to travelling alone, and I do not like it.

Julaya’s words haunted her into the opening gasp of dawn, when the blackened overcast skies shifted into a lighter gray that robbed her of hope with its mere presence. By luck or foresight, Julaya’s path had taken them through what seemed like an endless stretch of parched, cracked earth until they’d come up upon a lonely farmstead and what remained of its husbandry and agriculture equipment just before dusk the previous night. The barn was the only structure intact after ages of neglect—the small house had been crushed by an ill-placed grain silo just behind it, and when she’d taken a quick look through what remained she’d found portions of a pony skull and bits of rib and leg bone underneath the rubble that suggested the house’s original residents had been done in by their careless building planning.

It was also entirely possible the bones had belonged to a wastelander, born decades after the megaspells that burned the world, and that this poor soul had simply chosen the wrong shelter at precisely the wrong time. No one would ever truly know for sure.

But at least this departed soul had remains that could be identified as such. Kite and BJ had nothing. All that was left were the memories that others in the wastes had of them, if anybody even remembered. And with Light Tail having gained something of a thousand-yard stare and Rally seemingly afraid to look her in the eye, she tried to dive back into those memories and quickly gave up on the pursuit once she found herself hurting more from Kite’s absence than she wanted to believe. Memories were a poor substitute for the actual sounds and sights of the recently departed. It was then that she realized that she felt more alone now than she did when she lived in the Stable.

And like Julaya…she did not like it.

She would suffer almost anything short of Light Tail’s death or dismemberment if it meant getting Kite and BJ back. She’d even put up with another kiss or three….

….or four….

….or….four? she repeated to herself when the crude thought had struck her, almost unwilling to believe it. She didn’t see mares that way….or even Kite, for that matter. At least, she didn’t think so. But even now, silently bereaving over the absence of her only friend in this wasteland, thinking back to that moment in Galesville when that friend had just….thrown herself at her….

….oh, gods, she really did have it bad for me and I just…just, pushed it aside and….

No. No no no, she did not crush Kite’s heart, that mare knew it wasn’t going to be the way she wanted, she only did that on account of having been pulled out of the slave trade permanently, along with her colt, after what seemed like half a lifetime of being abused by it. She had to admit, that was a fairly good reason to give a kiss like that.

But Kite had always wanted something more. Something she knew she would not get from her….

….by the moon, maybe I should have let her…

….not that it would have changed anything, in the end. Might have made things worse, actually, but….but for all the hardships that Kite endured in her life, she deserved to have gotten something more out of her few weeks of true freedom than just a blue mark on her neck and the company of friends before being ripped apart and eaten alive….

“Perish the thoughts that harm your aura,” Julaya’s voice intruded into her personal space, jarring her out of her depressing spiral of anguished thoughts before they could start to overwhelm her. “…or I can give you something else to think about, but it will not be as desirable to you as it would be to me.”

Any other day, she might have groaned at the slight flirt flung at her. Today, however….she simply didn’t care. “….doubt that would work either,” she sighed into the air through the upper loft window overlooking the wasteland beyond. While the open stable space below was much roomier and open, she hadn’t liked the idea of them sleeping on ground level in a wasteland infested with mutated, pony-feasting wildlife, and none of them were rested enough to take turns standing watch. The best she could do was plaster smell suppression runes all throughout the barn and pray no nocturnal predators would come along as they slept, and by luck, the runes, or a combination of both, they had made it through the night unscathed.

She felt something thump into the wall beside the windowsill, and when she pulled away from the dimming view of the wastes for a quick glance she found Julaya’s striped forelimbs setting what looked like a shortened variant of a black M-series rifle, but sadly had only iron sights on it instead of an optic.

“…try this, then,” Julaya murmured softly, perhaps in deference to the children slowly waking up on the other side of the loft. “I last visited here a year earlier, when….when my love and I came back briefly to tend to affairs in her family. I made certain to stash one or two guns for her in some of my hiding places to compliment the pistol she always kept close at hoof. For this hideaway, I tried to find one whose bullets could be easily found….at least, I think they can, I am not a gun mare—”

Finally! she wanted to scream, though she settled for simply taking the rifle into a telekinetic spell field and began inspecting it heavily. She recognized it as being very similar to Ada’s rifle, even with some of the bluing having been worn off. The rounded handguards had some cracks along the surface, but still locked together tight. Pistol grip was likewise in decent shape, front sight was straight and undamaged, the rear sight embedded in the carry handle on the receiver was intact, and the telestock was fully extended, which she quickly corrected by pushing it as far in as possible to make it easier to handle with her magic. The 30-round magazine—the weakest point of the design—was thankfully serviceable, with straight feed lips and undamaged follower, though the magazine spring did seem a bit weak and would probably worsen if kept loaded for a few months, possibly less.

“…ah, but it seems you are,” Julaya’s voice laughed as she worked the bolt back and pulled it out of the receiver for a more detailed inspection. “This is like looking at a child receiving a cherished birthday gift! Perhaps I will spoil you with the extra clips I have stashed in one of the stables below, yes?”

“…how many?” she found herself asking with rapt anticipation, which seemed to play right into the zebra’s hooves.

Even in the dim, cloud-blocked light of the early morning, she swore she could see Julaya’s eyes light up in a mischievous glint, her grayish-silver mane splayed out all across her neck and skull. With a sly grin, the zebra turned and practically hopped down onto the ground floor, not even bothering with the ladder and simply using the dividers of the stable stalls below as landing points…and all on her rear hooves, no less. She even did a little flip when she leapt onto the ground, and the aerobatic display got enough of Light Tail’s attention that the filly’s head rose up and craned over the edge of the loft to peer down into the barn below, perhaps curious to see how the zebra would return to the loft without the help of a ladder.

Julaya spent no more than seven seconds on the ground floor, her jaws clamping down on a lunchbox crammed into a corner of a barn stall, and when she reached the middle of the floor she leapt up onto a stall divider once more, and then again onto the edge of the loft, hauling herself over onto solid footing with a single, seemingly effortless pull of her forelegs and dropping the lunchbox at Sling’s hooves.

“I don’t recall a precise number,” Julaya said with a slight huff, surprising Sling with what seemed like a rare use of a contraction in her speech. “More than one, less than ten, judging by weight.”

A quick dump of the box’s contents revealed a mostly-full box of 5.56mm ammunition and a pair of twenty-round magazines, with most of the finish worn down to the bare aluminum and some minor rust on the baseplate of one of them. But the magazine springs themselves seemed stronger than the thirty-round mag, and the followers didn’t have any gashes or nicks along the edges that would impede feeding. The little cardboard box of ammo itself had 18 rounds—most of the packaging art and lettering had faded out, forcing her to pull the rounds out to inspect them individually—

Oh, eff yes she squealed silently in delight at the sight of the faint, black-tipped bullet.

AP rounds. Eighteen of them, to be precise.

All eighteen rounds were pulled from the box and loaded into one of the twenty-round magazines almost immediately afterward, the cartridges almost sinking into the mag body like a water stream as they were fed in straight down. “Where did you say you got this?” she found herself muttering in mild disbelief as she spared a few seconds to check the bore and barrel. By her own admission Julaya was not a gun person, yet this rifle was in explicably good shape internally—

“I didn’t, but since you asked, a trader near Withercha,” the zebra answered happily. “This was the only rifle he had in his inventory, and seemed quite happy to be rid of it as he found it difficult to sell, for some reason. I had Ada look it over for me before I stashed it away. If she is to be believed, the barrel will not wear out for quite some time, and she shot very well with it when she adjusted the sights.”

For some inexplicable reason the rifle became a tad heavier in her spell field, though at least now she knew who’d last had their claws on it. Unfortunately, that also meant the rifle had probably been sighted in for a griffon’s eyes and not a pony’s. But at the ranges she was getting into fights at, for the moment she could live with it so long as she kept her shots on the body instead of trying any fancy, like distant headshots.

Two and a half minutes on weapon’s innards convinced her that all of the rifle’s critical parts would function properly, at least in the short term, and she carefully began re-assembling the rifle in whole. With all the practice she’d gotten maintaining their former stock of service rifles back in Union territory, she had the carbine back together and fully functional in about ten seconds, loaded up with twenty rounds of standard 55-grain FMJ rounds in the other 20-rounder. The thirty-round magazine, she loaded up with only twenty-five rounds out of deference to the weaker spring, and would just have to be ready to start yanking stuck casings out of the weapon if it started acting up.

“…sooo, got a rifle,” she whispered, setting the rifle down on its side next to her sleeping bag. “….that is awkward for a pony to use and may not be zeroed right. And that I don’t know how to shoot well. At all.”

“It is much harder than Ada would make it appear to be,” the zebra agreed in a pleasant tone, settling down next to her and getting perhaps a tad too close for her personal comfort….but she was simply too emotionally tired to care, and it wasn’t like she would try anything with the kids close by and in sight.

At least, she’d thought as much, until said children had finally allowed themselves to finish their sleepy breakfast, huddled together in a corner with the pups choosing to use the ponies for backrests while they gobbled on their own helpings of salt-preserved meat strips. She’d barely taken back the pile of wool blankets from Julaya’s outstretched forelegs when the zebra spoke again. “….tell me of this friend and her colt,” the zebra whispered gently.

Uncouth language threatened to burst out of her lips, but at the last moment her tongue articulated her displeasure into more polite words. “….not now,” she begged tiredly, slinging the carbine across her chest. “Please.”

Julaya did not seem to take no for an answer…or not right off. “I was not lying when I said such pain should not be carried alone,” she insisted. “By the looks of the pony yearling when you draw near her, it would seem she was subjected to anger she did not deserve. I am not looking to blame, I am merely offering an ear.”

Guilt welled into her chest and hung on, like an unwanted lead weight pulling her to the earth. “Not. Now,” she said again, her voice growing a little sharper.

As refusals went, that was probably one of the nicer ones she’d given lately, and the zebra seemed to know when it was best to quit before her attempts to be friendly backfired. “….another time, then. Though I would suggest mending your ways with the yearling in the near future.”

She watched the striped mare depart from the loft in silence, tracing her aerobatic route to ground level…and when she spotted El-Tee’s body deploying the loft’s ladder and slid down it in the next moment to quietly pester the zebra with whatever had just popped into her little brain, she found it very difficult to actually contemplate the advice she’d just been given.

If she was good at anything else besides killing people, it was hurting them when they didn’t deserve it.

The morning trek to their next destination was a fairly short one—twelve miles in all, walked in roughly three hours with a couple of breaks and a near total embargo on conversation of any kind. The silence was broken only when the distant black blur line they’d been staring at for the last thirty minutes finally began to break apart into separate blocks of black that looked to resemble houses, or the remaining framework of said structures.

“…well, shit…”

The expletive that normally escaped her mouth surprised her when she finally realized it had come from someone else’s throat instead. “....wrong town?”

Julaya’s striped foreleg rose up to point accusingly at the distant town. “…no, no, we are where we should be. But I have few fond memories of the infernal place.”

Dark thoughts began creeping into her brain. “....please don’t tell me you owe somebody money or favors in there.”

“Nothing of the sort,” the zebra spat with disdain. “The souls who live here are simply…more unsavory than most. They do not care much for tribals.”

“…tribals?”

Julaya’s throat grunted softly in affirmation. “Most folk were not lucky enough to be at a Stable when the world burned. Many perished in the megaspells. Countless more fell victim to the chaos and the fallout that came after, but enough were left afterward that life survived. Civilization was erased, and so many groups of survivors simply…began again, as it were. Tribals are mainly ponyfolk and zebras. Some are superstitious folk who believe more in old mare’s tales than anything else and can be quite hostile to strangers wandering too close to their camp. Others are lucky enough to possess guns and knowledge and would actually integrate quite well with a more…civilized settlement, some might say? A few are versed enough in self-sustainment to have something to trade should you encounter them. And a few other tribes are scavengers, lacking the skills to survive on their own. The scavenger tribes are unfortunately the ones that most are familiar with, because they can act like raiders at times. One of them is more mercantile and willing to trade for what it cannot take by force, but the others will take live prisoners as slaves for their camps, and have a habit of attacking caravans. One common element of all the tribes is that they never stay in one place permanently. Their camps are always moving, lest they be found by raiders or roaming wildlife.”

The Union is starting to look a lot better than it did a week ago. “So what does this have to do with you?”

“Because I am tribal myself,” the striped zebra clarified. “…or I used to be, in my eyes. And my tribe had some….unpleasant customs, which is the reason I no longer count myself among them. But tolerance and understanding are not words the wasteland understands very well, and this place can be even worse. We may be better off simply moving on.”

“No, we need more water if we’re going to go much further. I’ve gotten lucky finding places with working talismans so far, but I bet the next thing you’re going to tell me is that my luck just ran out.”

Julaya’s hoof came up to her face and brushed at it in absent thought. “…I would, if you had not guessed it correctly already. Some towns are lucky and have a ground well. But most depend on water caravans, and there aren’t enough working talismans in the west to get water to all who need it. So the Union will send caravans of their own over the valley, and they do not charge more than the western carriers for it despite the far greater distance they travel. It is the only Union-sourced trade good that the Runners will make effort to protect.”

“…that sounds like a suspiciously easy way for the Union to get more influence over here—”

Light Tail’s voice finally came alive with some sign of that bright, perceptive mind of hers that had been sorely missing in life of late. “One thing at a time,” she cut in sharply, her head swiveling about in a cursory scan for unseen threats or trouble, though she quickly settled for the darkening skies in the distance that weren’t quite this close earlier in the morning. “That storm in the distance is a lot closer than it was this morning and it’s too late to turn back. We don’t hurry up and we’re gonna be arguing about this soaking wet. Unless you want to fill all our canteens with rainwater that might make you sick.”

Both adults could not help but stare at each other in slight shock that the child had seen the storm clouds coming long before they had, to the point where the little one had to point it out to them before they noticed. “….getting indoors sounds good.”

“Very good, yes,” Julaya agreed heartily, even zipping ahead of them to take the lead. “I will buy you a Sparkle-Cola just for being smarter than the dumb mares who are supposed to know better, little tail of light.”

“Light! Tail!” her daughter shouted back as she began trotting along in the zebra’s wake. “And I’ll pass on the soda, I don’t feel like peeing all day!”

A dark-gray and white blur flashed past her, morphing into Mona’s filly-sized body rushing to catch up to her favorite pony…

….but Rally was not so quick to join in the parade towards the town. If anything, Sling thought her somewhat apprehensive of it.

Or her, given that the teen could hardly stand to look at her after yesterday morning. Couldn’t really blame her for it, either.

“….something wrong?” her mouth forced itself to speak after a couple seconds of uncomfortable quiet. Besides me, anyway?

Rally’s eyes never found their way to hers, too focused on the town ten minutes ahead. “….been here before,” she replied flatly. “Rough place, actually, the zebra’s not kidding on that. Not….not safe for a little girl on her own.”

I don’t think such a place exists in the wastes, actually. “Anything in particular we should be wary of?”

“The usual,” she answered immediately. “Town this small, the bar’s the main gathering point for the residents. Think it used to be an auction house for the farms around here, before the megaspells, so it’s pretty spacious, even had a bunch of conference rooms on one side. Anything worth doing is done there. Trade, bounties, jobs…whatever. The auction floor was turned into a dancer’s stage years ago…and I don’t mean ballet. It’s walled off from the rest of the bar, and the animal stables in back got turned into the backstage area for the dancers and organizers. Whole operation’s guarded, only way in peacefully is through the door the bouncers are guarding with MEWs…and that’s where the more lucrative business and jobs tend to be. It’s…it’s where I got the job to fix that MEW stockpile, months ago.”

Sling felt her stomach flipping over itself in disgust, her heart sinking at the thought of a child finding her way into such a seedy and vile place out of sheer necessity. “….you…you weren’t….trying to go on-stage, were you?”

“….the wastes can wear your morals down to dust, if you live long enough,” Rally mumbled, her voice hollow and haunted as she finally found the energy and willpower to move forward. “I…almost did it. But something in the world, some….some higher power, or maybe fate….every time I get close to tossing my dignity aside just so I can eat and get some water, something comes along to snap me back. Here, I’d convinced the boss of the place to let me take to the dance stage, and I was halfway through the door to the back rooms when that trader pulls me aside and asks me if I know how to fix MEWs, ‘cause he saw my cyberleg and figured I knew how to keep it running on my own. A year before that, I was waltzing up to a brothel in Trotpeka’s red light district to ask about work when a sergeant on patrol snatches me up and drops me in front of his CO, and I get sent back over the valley with enough food and water to get me to the more decent towns in the west after fixing up a couple of laser rifles in his platoon’s arsenal. Miiiiiight have been the mild dehydration talking at that point in time...among other things.”

Oh god, no wonder she freaked out yesterday morning….shouldn’t have bit her head off to start with, but with all that in her life…. “….I…I’m s—”

“Don’t,” Rally’s voice fired off crisply, but then quickly settled down into a steady, calm volume. “…it’s not like I was all honest with you to start with….”

“…given what you’ve endured to make it as far as you have, on your own, in a world that would gleefully toss you to barbarians to use as they please…no, you had every reason to keep to yourself…”

“…and you had every reason to want to know what you were really getting into….I didn’t think it mattered, in the end…”

Up ahead, Light Tail’s body began to rear up and poke at Julaya’s side to grab the zebra’s attention, and while she did get it, Julaya did not slow down her pace in the slightest. She could see her daughter’s mouth moving, as if asking her something, but they were too far away for her to hear it clearly given that she was busy trying to patch up the trust she’d torn up with Rally. “…it probably doesn’t. It just….look, getting through Trotpeka…it was hard on us.”

“Anybody lookin’ at you two can tell that right off.”

“….I…am not great with people. I’m…I’m not trying to be a bitch, it just…turns out that way sometimes. We could probably both stand to be a little more patient with the other….”

Rally’s nose snorted at her in a half-sneeze. “….answer me something, and I’ll consider it.”

She got a sneaking feeling what the question was going to be…but at this point in her life it didn’t really matter to her anymore. “Depends on the question.”

“….when did you have Light Tail?”

Knew it. “….for my fifteenth birthday, I treated myself to a night with a colt I thought I loved. A month before my sixteenth, the foal I birthed became the only family I had left, because almost everyone else practically cut me out of their lives. So…yeah, not great with people. Be thankful El-Tee doesn’t take after me.”

“…no shit,” Rally’s voice mumbled in slight disbelief. “….damn, you’re not even old enough to be my mother….”

“…closer than you’d think. But foaling at twelve would be exceptionally dangerous, and much more likely to be fatal.”

“…I…think that’s enough talk of babies—”

Talk of any pleasant kind came to a harsh and inconsiderate end as Mother Nature injected her own “thoughts” into the matter with a sudden, blinding flash of lightning and a roll of thunder that seemed to echo across the world itself. Two pairs of eyes followed the sound upward, dismayed to see that the dark storm clouds Light Tail had pointed out were now sporting random flashes of white lightning amongst them. Sometimes it peeled out and slapped into the ground, and other times it simply remained within the clouds.

But the storm was coming. And she was starting to wish they’d stayed at that barn in the middle of nowhere instead of hoofing it all the way out here.

“….dammit, it really is too late to go back, isn’t it?” Rally’s voice asked fearfully. “…because that upper loft in the barn was actually kinda cozy and the roof was mostly in one piece where we slept…”

“Waaaay too late.”

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

The little tail of light was an annoyingly…inquisitive creature.

The filly had been mostly behaved for much of the last twenty-four hours, content to simply wallow and suffer in her grief alone. Even went as far as to huddle into a corner in the barn loft and stay there, and with those pups choosing to bed down next to her, it became almost impossible to find any sign of the filly’s coat in the sea of black and white fur.

She knew something was terribly wrong when she saw that. Dogs could be exceptionally perceptive of their masters’ feelings and moods, provided they were of the right disposition. And these two pups, probably four to five months old at the least, somehow sensed the filly’s internal distress…and chose to stay as close to her as possible when she set down somewhere. It was as if their physical presence was intended to chase away her sorrows, or at the very least give her enough peace of mind to find restful sleep and wake up in slightly better spirits for the day ahead.

And judging by the way the filly was quietly badgering her even now, as they drew near the shoddy, tiny settlement that the ponyfolk called Rust Burrow, the dogs’ efforts were not entirely wasted.

“…coat’s so pretty,” the little filly whispered quietly, even going so far as to reach up and touch her side briefly. “Are…are you white with black stripes….or black with white stripes?”

She dared a look behind her, to see if this manner of contact was sitting well with Sling. Parents could be rather protective of their young when they attempted to mingle with strangers, but for the moment it seemed the crazy stable pony was more preoccupied with the yearling than with her own offspring. One of the pups—Max, she thought—had chosen to hang back with the stable mare, while the other one stayed by its favored master’s side.

“…could be either, or both,” she whispered back. There was little harm in humoring the filly’s questions, though she felt something was off about the entire affair. She would have thought the child would have a great deal more energy and enthusiasm towards a non-pony sentient being she had never met before. Or maybe the little one had seen enough of the wastes to know when to rein in that enthusiasm. “I see me as being…me. A zebra. Not one thing with stripes, or the other. Just me.”

“….and this…tribe thing? Is that really necessary? ‘Cause…’cause it’d be a lot easier to survive if everybody stayed together instead of fightin’ each other…”

“It would, truly. But life is so much more complex and involved than simply surviving. Ideologies, beliefs….interests, and tolerances, it is simply impossible for every living thing to be able to get along all the time, and it would be quite boring if everyone acted the same way, little tail of light. Even so, there are some like me who prefer life among the ponyfolk.”

She heard what sounded like a little growl from the filly’s throat, probably at being called “little tail of light”, but she just couldn’t help it. That electric streak in her indigo tail was just so….so bright, when her tail swished, it was like a little bright light all on its own. And the fact that it matched her eye color only doubled the cuteness factor. “….ponyfolk? Are ponies so blind that they blame the zebra for all this and keep them out?”

Oooooor maybe I may have offended her unintentionally…. “…I do not mean ill by my words. But by and large, Equestria was the land of ponies. Griffons, zebra, minotaur….all came from other lands. I suppose in some way we still see ourselves as strangers in this land, even though our ancestors have lived in the ashes of Equestria ever since the last day of that horrendous conflict. For as long as any of us can remember, many zebra have simply preferred to stay together and roam the wastes. My tribe in particular was most content away from the ruined cities and tried to avoid ponyfolk when they could. There have definitely been times when I felt out of place in a crowded market square, even though most folk pay me no more mind than they do the ponies next to them.”

The child’s next question was not a surprise to her. “So why’d you leave?”

Brief memories of events and horrors best left forgotten filled her vision, but were quickly pushed aside. “…it was…necessary to leave. My reasons for leaving are my own. I am better off for it.”

“…don’t you have family that you miss?”

For the first time in recent memory, she finally allowed a touch of her frustration to slip into her words in an effort to get the child to back away from a subject she had long since put behind her. “They are not my family anymore. Please, let it be.”

Her rebuff had the intended effect of steering the filly away from the subject, though when she deigned to stay silent afterward Julaya began to regret saying it at all. Now she had no real means of getting the child to speak of her pain—it would be quite hypocritical of her to try, when she refused the child’s own efforts to do the same for her. Perhaps later, if the little thing’s grief came back to her an—

Her thoughts were abruptly and rudely interrupted by the presence of Mother Nature, who chose to abuse the souls beneath her by blasting their ears with thunder more akin to an explosion than to a natural act of the environment. The lightning was also becoming much more frequent. Sometimes it erupted from the clouds and lashed at the ground in anger, and sometimes it just stayed in the clouds and was content to light up patches of the sky. Even little Light Tail jumped in place at the deafening crack that rumbled across the earth.

“…well, Mother Nature is certainly eager to ruin our day,” she contemplated out loud, not really expecting any kind of an answer.

And the little tail of light made sure that an answer was not what she was given. “…does that happen a lot? The rain, I mean? It’s…it’s really pretty and awesome with all the lightning, but….it kinda makes travelling a pain.”

“The weather seems to do whatever it pleases,” she answered freely. “Sometimes it will rain without pause for days. Sometimes you will not see a drop of water for weeks. And sometimes the winds grow bored and begin making tornadoes to throw at the earth, like a foal with a bag of marbles. It is really very unpredictable.”

The little one did not seem to find that very comforting, given the slight nervous tic that crept into her voice. “…unpredictable usually means dangerous…”

She had her own thoughts on the subject, and on others subjects regarding the ponies’ seemingly innate desire to have complete control over the natural world they lived in, but this was a rather poor time to be engaging in philosophical debates with a ten-year-old. “We will be safe enough soon.”

“…will we?” the little one dared to quip, though in the next moment her concerns would prove to be fairly valid. “The only plan we had when we came out here was to get here and hope we can find clean water. No thoughts on what we’d do afterward. Go north? West? Stick it out a bit here? With those snake guys looking for us we can’t keep going from one place to another on a whim, but we can’t stay put too long either. We gotta think a bit. This storm’ll buy us a day, at most, and that’s if they don’t wanna walk in the rain any more than we do.”

By the ponies’ Sisters, this child is far too bright for her age. With no immediate ideas for what Sling and company might want to do, she quickly beckoned for the stable mare to join her with an impatient wave of her left foreleg. The child was right—this had to be figured out, and quickly.

“…is she bothering you too much?” was Sling Shot’s first question the moment the stable pony drew near her, which made Julaya wonder if the filly’s penchant for questions had once been a more…exhausting problem than she was currently experiencing.

“…on the contrary, she is scaring me,” the zebra replied. She tried to sound assuring, but she didn’t think it worked too well. “She does not recall a specific plan for what we would do once we arrived here, beyond acquiring water. And given that you are all wanted by the Pythons for various and unkind reasons, it would be prudent to have one before you go further, if you don’t already.”

When Sling’s immediate response was a still silence, she began to realize that the little filly beside her was probably more responsible for direction and guidance than she was comfortable with. “….the plan is a work in progress…that I’m still working on. It all depends on if—or where and when—we run into the Pythons here.”

She stopped in her tracks almost immediately, and the tail of light’s hooves skipped to a halt beside her very shortly afterward. “I thought you wanted my help in avoiding their attention.”

“On the roads,” Sling returned flatly. “Rally cost them a great deal of caps and firepower. The group that shot up Puck’s bar the other day were not the only ones they sent. I’m almost certain they’ve got others in the settlements to the north and south, as well as scouts watching the roads to warn them when she’s spotted coming their way. By coming into town through the wastes instead we’ve hopefully bypassed their lookouts and the Pythons here don’t know we’re coming, which means the group here would have no reinforcements. Beyond that, I’ve got nothing. We do it right, and we disappear from their radar for a while with enough water to make it to the next town. We screw up, and they’ll know from which town to pick up the search and sniff us out a lot faster.”

Inwardly, she cringed. She knew of at least one place in this seedy den of debauchery where she would expect to find the caravan master for a water convoy, and she was not looking forward to it. But she also recalled what she had told Ada weeks ago, after the stable pony had brought an old bathhouse down on top of one of the most vicious griffon slavers she’d ever known.

She hadn’t expected to be making good on that remark so soon, but…these Pythons needed to be found and eliminated. And the extra caps on the side wouldn’t hurt either, since they would essentially have if Sling’s search for a water merchant came through.

“…I have a clue where to find one or two water merchants,” Julaya murmured softly. “Perhaps procure us some caps in the process as well.”

“….procure, how?” Sling asked next, her voice growing slightly apprehensive.

“The how is my decision, not yours….though I would appreciate some…back-up, when I do. The children should not be near, either.”

The request was more for her comfort than the stable pony’s, and she seemed to pick up on the unspoken message as well. “…..Rally, is there…somewhere you can wait with El-Tee, while we do that?”

“…we’ll be out of the way,” the teenager mumbled, her voice slightly disheartened. “Close enough for you to help us if we need it, but far enough away to not be near your work. If we think the Pythons are closing on us, what do you want us to do?”

“Whatever you have to. If it comes to it, come to us, we’ll fight our way out from there.”

Little Light Tail was quick to catch on to what was happening without her input, though she didn’t quite understand some parts of it. “…what is it, exactly, that you’re gonna do, that you want me and Rally somewhere else, but want my mom’s help when she’ll already be busy doing somethin’ else?”

“Grown-up stuff,” Rally said quickly, before either mare could take too long to come up with a convincing lie (and she was starting to believe the filly would see through it regardless). “We’d just get in the way. They’ll be fine. Just stay close to me and keep to yourself.”

“….I’m not gonna get much of a choice about it, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” Sling assured her strongly. “Don’t ever get out of each other’s sight, both of you.”

She heard what sounded like a quiet, aggravated grumble out of the little filly, but she paid it little attention as they approached what looked to be a watch tower of sorts missing the one component critical to its intended purpose—an actual guard. Not one sign of life could be seen anywhere nearby.

“….helloooooo?” she called out, likely for naught, but she wanted to be sure that somebody wasn’t just sleeping on the floor of the tower before strolling by. If nothing else, they could at least pretend to be polite when they arrived at new places, which sometimes included checking in with whatever passed for security. “Stripy zebra and three unicorns wish to ennnnteeeeer….”

A gust of wind from the approaching storm sailed through, buffeting their bodies with its chill touch and lightly dusting off the wall and gate. But no one rose up from behind the tower’s barricade to answer her call.

“….great defense system,” Rally sniped at the unseen or absent guards. “Nobody’ll ever sneak past with such watchful eyes on duty.”

“…maybe they’re on break?” Light Tail’s voice pondered aloud, though she didn’t sound all that convinced of her own theory.

Before anybody else could offer any other useless theories about why the guard tower was failing in its only purpose, a shimmering indigo glow gently pushed into her hindquarters and urged her forward from the ground. “Maybe they don’t post people here 24/7. Let’s go,” Sling’s voice insisted firmly.

With a quick breath to gather her wandering wits, she followed the urgings of the stable mare’s magic and pressed forward into the settlement. Much of it had fallen into ruin and disrepair over the long decades, and the seemingly random mismatch of long, curvy streets intersecting with the more organized grid pattern of a commercial district was little more than a series of asphalt blocks separated by large swaths of earth and cracks. But these twelve blocks of shops, businesses, and large parking lots filled with old farm and construction machinery were all that the residents here had to call home, so they made do.

To no one’s surprise, the streets themselves were barren of life—any soul with sense in them would have simply stayed indoors and let the storm do as it pleased, and it seemed that everypony had seen fit to pass the time at the local watering hole. The shouts, the roaring laughter, the dull, but brain-pulsing thud of what was passed off as “music” in the dance floor section of the bar made it abundantly clear that while the rest of the town might have been dead, there was plenty of life (and vice) to be had here.

She had little fear of the little tail of light inadvertently finding her way into the back half of the “bar”, such that it was. They had hardly passed through the front door and into the lobby of the old auction house when the yearling took charge of the filly and her pups, breaking away from the mares and ushering the child and animals on ahead of her. “Most of the old conference rooms in this place got combined into one large one to make the actual bar, off to the left. That’s where we’ll be. If I happen to spot a water merchant I’ll send him your way. I’ll try to get as close to a corner in the back as I can, make us easier to find when you’re done.”

“You sure about that?” Sling warned her. “You’ll be boxed in if those mercs show up like we’re afraid they will.”

Rally’s right hoof unlatched into its uncomfortable-looking griffon talon, closing the claws into a fist which tapped the holstered revolver on the gun belt slung over her torso. “That’s the idea. Only one way to get to me, and I’ll see it coming. If they want me that badly, they’ll pay in blood for it. Might make the survivors easier for you to pick off afterward too.”

A light chill passed through her spine at how casually the yearling had boasted of killing those who sought to get too close. There was no bravado, no smugness, only a conviction borne of experience and a strong desire to live to tomorrow. She prayed that this orphan of the wastes had not been stumbled upon too late to save what remained of her.

Even Sling seemed a little unnerved, watching them depart in silence until they had left hearing range. “…not even fifteen and she already sounds so old…”

She wasn’t certain she wanted to dwell on the subject too long, given what she was about to do in the near future. “As orphans go, she would be. Most do not make it to her age on their own. Fillies in particular are exceptionally vulnerable….the wastes are full of the sick-minded who would toy with them until they broke them. The things she must have done to avoid such a fate are not things I want to imagine.”

Particularly when they are things I already have an understanding of….

Their path to the “dance floor”—the old auction block itself in the back half of the building—took them through a hall on the right side of the lobby entrance, which split off to the left about fifty yards later…and was devoid enough of other souls that Sling found just enough time (or nerve) to try and dissuade her from what was necessary—

“You don’t have to do this,” the mare’s voice pleaded softly. “We…we can find another way. Sniff around the place a bit, or just mingle in the crowd ‘till we catch their attention, wherever they are….anything other than this—”

“Did I mention that the last time I did this I raked in close to six hundred caps in one evening?”

Sling’s mouth audibly worked itself through the motions of trying to speak, emitting only silence for a couple of seconds before her voice remembered how it worked. “….what? Six hundred, from a crowd you said hated tribals to start with?”

“They only know that if I tell them. And I imagine it had more to do with my….exoticness, at least to the eyes of ponyfolk, than any physical assets of mine, though I am told I am quite fetching to the eyes of many. We may talk more later, when I am done.”

“…you’ll be doing it alone. I’m not going up there.”

“That is good, because I planned on dancing alone!” she laughed back, shuffling her katana off her back and setting upon Sling’s. “The trick is to give you enough breathing room to try and discern if there are enemies in the crowd while you search for a water merchant, as I suspect their attention will be on me. And when you find them, remember them, but do not cause trouble. It will do great things for my nerves onstage if I do not have to worry about errant bullets hitting me in the ass. I am rather fond of it.”

“It’d do great things for my nerves.”

“Such a violent stable pony!” she found herself giggling as they passed by the customer entrance to the “dance floor”, guarded by a pair of unfriendly-looking griffons armed with what she presumed to be MEW long arms, and continuing on past them towards the entrance to the animal stables at the end of the hall that had been re-purposed into the back rooms and dressing stalls for the “performers”. “There is more than one way to discard your stress.”

“So I hear,” Sling growled back.

Another rolling chuckle escaped her lips as she let her tail flick about in the stable pony’s face, unable to resist a chance to ruffle her mane a little. “Take a little peak at the stage later, if you can, and you may see as well.”

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

This was a mistake.

It wasn’t because it was a bar that didn’t like little fillies like her. The mean stallion who ran the last bar she was in didn’t like her being there, but Mom shut him up over it really quick and he never said one word to her the whole time they were there.
It wasn’t because she didn’t feel safe, either. She figured the last bar was as safe as any other in the wastes, and in the end she wasn’t proven entirely wrong when that same stallion got killed in what Mom called “crossfire”, when those snake ponies showed up looking for Rally, Mom, and herself. Mom once said that she didn’t think there was such a thing as a safe place in the world anymore, and it was starting to look like she was right.

It wasn’t even because of the crowd. Bar or not, the world seemed destined to be filled with rough, violence-leaning folk, whether they were ponies, griffons, zebras, or whatever else walked the earth. As things went, a bar in the wasteland was probably one of the safer places one could be despite the rough crowds, because everybody was looking to rest, get drunk, or whatever, and not cause trouble while they were there….most of the time.

It was a mistake because it felt like they were walking right into a trap, and she was still trying to figure out where it would come from. She pondered it over and over as she followed her new “foalsitter” to the other side of the building. Pondered it, mused on all the possibilities and outcomes that horrified her as she did her best to avoid being stepped on by the larger adult ponies that were intent on ignoring her. She pondered and picked at her brain for every little stray thought about this place that she could think of in the hopes that she might figure it out. Were those snake ponies waiting for them in this stupid bar? Were they waiting at the edge of town along the highway? Had they already spotted them and set up camp outside to ambush them the moment they walked out of this place?

…crap, I hope not, she concluded nervously, when she and Rally had finally taken their seat in a booth by the corner. The one-piece, continuous half-circle chair was kinda neat, though it meant anybody sitting in the middle was sort of stuck there unless somebody on the edge got off the chair to let them out. Max and Mona contented themselves to sitting right under the table, though, and she and Rally got to have the chair to themselves so that wasn’t a problem.

Gave her plenty of time to take a little look around. See if she could figure which ponies in the crowd might be Pythons, or just really well-armed travelers like Mom. See if she could eliminate at least one of her ambush scenarios.

“….so what happened to your leg?” she asked, knowing it was in vain, but it got some manner of conversation going, and anything was better than being left alone in silence. Bad enough that she woke up this morning and almost said something to BJ before she remembered that he wasn’t there anymore….

“Lost it,” Rally answered back, her right leg resting on the table, probably so she could reach her gun real quick if she had to. That patched-up leg warmer kept the cyberleg hidden, mostly, but anybody that looked at the hoof knew it was there. She probably just wore it so nobody would see how it was fitted to what was left of her real leg (and that did make her cringe whenever she saw it). “Never did find it.”

“Har har. Seriously, what happened?”

“Lost it,” Rally said again. “Don’t wanna talk about it. Painful enough the first time.”

Painful…and she wasn’t willing to talk about it right off. Meaning she lost it in a fight, or an explosion, and not cut off ‘cause it got too infected and sick to be saved. And she kept it hidden under that blue leg warmer all the time. Rally didn’t look like she would’ve spent any great amount of time in the wastes if she could help it, and probably stayed in the towns and settlements for as long as she could manage. That meant she would have been mostly around ponies, who traded in all sorts of stuff. Guns, bullets, knives and crude swords, bombs and explo—

…explosives, like…

“…landmine?”

Her leg twitched. Very slightly, but it twitched the moment she said it.

“…landmine,” she repeated, suddenly growing a more solemn understanding of the cyberleg on the table before her. The moment she thought of the word “explosions”, she’d thought to an old journal in her stable, from a war veteran, at how some folk had lost limbs to landmines on the front line and for some reason though it suddenly had merit…

Rally’s leg curled in towards her, though it remained on the table even as she took to trying to hide it with her other foreleg. “….dammit, how’d you guess that?”

“If you’d lost it ‘cause you got sick or somethin’, I’d think you’d be a little less angry with it and not want to hide it under that leg warmer. You can’t stand to look at it sometimes, like it reminds you of somethin’ you’d rather forget. I can’t imagine you getting into a lot of fights, it’d be a lot smarter and safer to not fight, and you’re a really smart pony. So that leaves….a bomb. One that only ruined part of one leg, and not the rest of you, if you were anywhere close to my age when it happened. And the only thing I could think of, was these old journals in my stable that talked about the war, and how some soldiers on the war front lost parts of their bodies to landmines….”

The hint of a sad smile began to creep into the teen’s jawline, her eyes falling on her covered cyberleg. “….smart my ass,” she spat at the table. Or her leg. Probably both. “…I knew better than to go with ‘em, but I did it anyway. Needed the caps, and the ride to Stifla.”

“…so what happened?”

“…I was…maybe a few months older than you, when it happened,” Rally said sadly, her other leg now poking at the cyberleg, like she was making sure it was still there, or maybe she thought she could still feel her old leg there. “It was a caravan, making a run from Syrup Mound to Stifla, transporting some assorted spare parts goods, munitions, and explosives for the Union’s trooper corps. They needed a couple extra sets of hooves to work inventory and keep everything together, and I thought I got lucky by convincing them to let me do it. Not hard work, all I had to do was make sure the total inventory count stayed the same the whole trip. A day after we set out, we hit a really nasty crack in the roads that almost sent a couple of wagons on their side, really made a mess of the cargo. I was told to go check one of them, count everything up and put it back best that I could. Mostly junk stuff, and some dried leather and things like good screws, bolts, nuts, things like that…”

She didn’t really need any more information from there. It wasn’t hard to figure out, given what she’d learned already. But she let Rally talk, mainly because while Rally was busying talking, she had a few seconds to take another look around the room, just to see if she could spot anybody that could be one of those Pythons. If they were smart they’d take their armor off so they could hide in plain sight….

“….a landmine had gotten mixed in with one of the crates that had turned over, probably before we left Syrup Mound, which….I set off, when I reached my leg up over the back to pull myself up. I remember feeling the trigger plunger click when my leg came down on top of the mine, and I had just enough time to let go and almost get away from it when it went off, and…and took about half my right leg with it.”

Light Tail felt a terrible tremble in her own right leg, and tensed it up so that it would quit, but it didn’t really work. The thought of having a part of herself blown up was…unsettling. And Rally had suffered it at…eleven?

“….probably lost your hearing, too….”

“…nah, got lucky on that one. I was napping a while before that, used some ear muffs and plugs so I could sleep easier. It was the road bumps that woke me up, and I was too sleepy to think of taking them off, or being more careful in checking out the wagon before I tried to climb in. Now and then, I get this little ringing in my ears, but it never lasts long, and only every other month or so. It was the leg that was…traumatic.”

Roughly half the bar’s tables had souls sitting at them—ponies, griffons, and even a few zebras, but none stood out particularly well since everybody was minding their own business and ignoring the two children in the corner…for now. No armor, either, like she’d thought. Probably have to start looking at their guns. “…so how’d you get the new one?”

“…the caravan master wasn’t supposed to hire me, by Union rules. No idea how he planned on getting past Stifla’s perimeter without declaring me and my status…might have been planning to dump me on the side of the road a couple miles out with nothing but my coat and mane, or he might have been looking to try and sell me off to a slave caravan on the way. A Union patrol was doing its rounds in the wastes nearby when they heard the explosion and came running, caught the caravan trying to leave me behind to bleed out—”

El-Tee’s heart stopped briefly. She hadn’t thought anybody would be so cruel as to leave an eleven-year old filly bleeding to death on the road, terrified and in great pain, especially when it was their stuff and bombs that had hurt her to start with. But in a sickening sign that she was growing too used to such evil things…she wasn’t terribly surprised by it either….

“…bet they got in real big trouble,” she sighed, taking another look around the room, starting from her left like last time.

“…I wasn’t privy to the details, but in general, if you screw up and the Union catches you at it, it’s not a good ending. Me….Union was good enough to give me a new leg, out of the stable in Stifla, which has the best medical facilities in their territory, since I got hurt working a caravan that wasn’t supposed to have hired me in the first place.”

That little tidbit did surprise her, and she couldn’t hide it, not when her head snapped back at the teen with a shocked glare before she could stop it. “….they…they actually did that, without askin’ for caps or nothin’?”

“Oh, no, somebody had to pay for it. Just wasn’t me. My guess, the trade guild that sponsored the caravan got made to put up the caps for it. Only thing is, the leg has to be built to my size, and since I’m still kind of a growing girl, I kinda have to get a new leg every year around my birthday. Which means another operation, every year, and I do have to pay for those. I got lucky the last three times I needed to do this, found something worth just enough caps to cover it, but this time….I’m not sure….”

...right, all those MEWs you busted up when you found out they were gonna get sold to ponies you didn’t want getting them…..but you still got a few left…

“…I might have a clue, but it’d be better to tell you when there aren’t so many folk around us. And you probably won’t like it.”

Rally beat her to it…probably because the thought had crossed her mind already. “If you’re thinking what I think it is….then yes, that might be my only solution,” she said, her eyes taking a quick sweep across the room herself. “….but as long as they’re looking for me I can’t go anywhere near it. I don’t want them finding it.”

It was kinda hard to pick out people that could be a merc trying not to look like mercs. The lack of armor didn’t help. And a lot of the folks here had scars of some sort somewhere on their bodies, so she couldn’t use those to single them out. But the one thing she’d noticed over the last three months, was that the only souls that seemed to have full automatic weapons more often than not were either mercs or Union trooper ponies. Most of the other souls of the wasteland made do with blades, pistols, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles, but the rifles weren’t all that common. Same for the “service” rifles the Union ponies—and maybe the Runners—seemed to favor, even though most of them seemed to only shoot once per trigger pull. But the true “machine guns”, as Mom called them? Hard to find, even harder to feed with bullets since they could burp the entire magazine in about two seconds.

And only mercs and troopers seemed to ever have those on a regular basis.

“…then I guess we’d better lose these guys fast,” she said quietly. The tables right next to them were empty, but a little further out, maybe….twenty yards? Thirty? She thought she saw a potential Python. Griffon, male (maybe), pale gold coat and off-white feathered head and neck, talking with an earth pony mare wi—

….with a purple coat, like….

….it’s not her, she had to remind herself. To push past the memory, the pain, and look at this mare closely. It wasn’t her.

…so.

Earth pony. Mare. Green mane tied into a single long tail, and a shorter tail than most ponies. Had a saddle harness on, and on her left side was what looked like a skeletal chassis where a rifle would go, but there wasn’t one there. But she could see the front end of a barrel poking out behind the mare’s body, pointed upward, and the griffon seemed to have some sort of long gun that looked kinda like the bigger rifles from home that she’d only seen twice before that radroach outbreak. So…two potential threats. She wasn’t sure, though. They didn’t look like they were paying any attention to her or Rally, but she hadn’t been paying any attention to them before now either and she’d only just now noticed them.

“That who you’re looking for?” Rally whispered back, and while she did seem a bit annoyed, she was worried enough to at least be seriously listening to her instead of brushing her off, like most adults or older kids might have. “You don’t even know what they look like.”

“I know their gear will be better than most other people’s stuff. Full automatics or decent rifles. If they’re in here they already know where we’re at.”

Rally was pretty quiet for about seven seconds, which gave her just enough time to pick out what could have been threat number three—a bright yellow unicorn stallion sitting at the bar, brownish mane and tail, neither of which looked like it had seen a brush or an attempt at styling in months. She might have figured him to be just another wastelander, but he kept a long gun propped up against the bar. It kinda looked like a service rifle, but it was shorter and all black, and had some kind of scope on it and something Mom called a “suppressor” attached to the barrel muzzle. She didn’t know much about them other than what she learned from a couple of paragraphs from Mom’s firearms recognition book, but they were supposed to make the gunshot sounds quieter so that people from farther off couldn’t pinpoint where the shots were coming from. She’d seen some folk with stuff added to their guns like that, but not many.

She thought she might have narrowed a possible fourth threat—a tan-colored unicorn mare with silvery mane and tail like Julaya with what looked like a pair of 10mm pistols with really big magazines—when Rally’s brain finally caught onto what she was talking about, if her terrified cussing was any clue to go by. “….oh, shit, you’re right, I think we just walked right into them….”

Her heart started to beat itself against her ribs again. The way she said it, that little bit of panic in her voice….

“…yeah?”

“….we’ve been here…what? Twenty minutes? And not one soul has come to ask if we want anything for lunch? We’re taking up space a paying customer could be using and they’re ignoring us.”

It didn’t take her very long to figure out the implications and dangers….and when she did, she wanted to scream. It was such an obvious sign of something wrong that she’d missed it, trying as hard as she was to try and figure out who might’ve been a threat or just another wastelander passing through. Nobody coming to take their orders meant….they were trapped, surrounded, and couldn’t expect any kind of help from the guards, because the way it was looking now, it was possible they’d been paid or convinced to turn a blind eye to whatever plans the snake ponies had in min—

….or they paid off a water merchant to lead us into an ambush, was the next, horrifying thought to cross her mind. They were on the run, and didn’t want to stay in one place too long. They’d need water if they wanted to go anywhere. This was supposedly the closest town to Rough Port, and….of course they’d be waiting here, looking to take advantage of that.

And the second they took off to tell Mom and Julaya, they’d figure out they’d been made and would probably just try and catch whoever they could and escape, or hurry up and leave and watch them from a distance, ambush them the moment they felt their chances were best. But they had to try—she and Rally wouldn’t last very long on their own.

“….how bad is this adults only place that Mom and Julaya went to?”

“Bad enough that you’re not following me inside,” Rally snapped off, briskly hopping out of the chair and using a burst of magic to kinda push her into joining her. “Just stay close to me ‘till we get there and I’ll get them out, quick as I can. Shoot anybody that tries to get close to you, including the guards. They might have been offered a deal to either help catch us or turn a blind eye to any fights involving us—”

She felt her magic unlatching her holsters before Rally could finish—out of the corner of her eye, she could see that griffon and his pony partner casually getting out of their chairs, and the griffon’s right talon went straight for the grip on his rifle. And that yellow stallion at the bar, and the other unicorn mare on the far end of the floor started getting out of their chairs almost in lockstep with them.

Coincidence? Or was she right about these four being threats?

“Just go,” she said sharply, adding a pair of tongue clicks to get Max and Mona up and following her. “And hurry.”

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

Twenty minutes later, she found herself coming back to the world from a senses-shattering crash that left her stunned into a stupor, though this time she was able to come back to herself far more quickly.

Mostly because some misguided stallion had the audacity to outright proposition the both of them at her corner table the moment Julaya had returned from the back rooms, perhaps five minutes after the conclusion of her “performance”, and had the unintended effect of thoroughly pissing her off to the point where she felt like cleaning his brains of every dirty thought within them.

The hard way.

“Say that again,” she hissed sharply, pushing Grayhawk’s barrel right underneath his jaw and pulling the hammer back. “Just so we’re absolutely clear what I’m killing you over.”

The gun had the intended effect, as the stallion immediately began backing away from them without another word, then turned about and galloped away into the crowd gathering around the center stage, where another “performer” was making her entrance.

Having seen more than enough of the spectacle when Julaya had been up there, she turned away and holstered her weapon after lowering the hammer back down. “No amount of caps can be worth what you just put yourself through.”

“On the contrary, I rather enjoy it,” the zebra smiled softly, though a slight nervousness in her voice betrayed her true emotions. “….just not here. For whatever reason, the patrons here are….more uncouth than most who frequent these types of places, if that is even possible. They are not used to being teased. I could do what the others do, but I’ve found I rake in more caps when I do everything but what they expect. I tease, I insinuate…but ultimately, what they seek is just beyond reach and sight. They may get glimpses, but never more. Many patrons seem to enjoy it, but here it seems…unwelcome. I would be happier not seeing this place again after today.”

Torn between being disgusted, guilty, or completely unsure what to make of what she’d seen up there, she settled back into a more comfortable feeling of guarded caution and indifference, sliding Julaya’s katana back to her across the table. “So where are the caps?”

“They will be along shortly,” Julaya assured her, slinging her weapon over her back in a single practiced movement. “The owner discourages his customers from showering the stage with caps, and having to deal with little purse bags on top of performing is a fairly awkward affair, so the tips are dispersed to the bouncers surrounding the stage. When the mare of the hour departs the stage, the tips are gathered together and taken to the back. The owner takes his cut, and the dancer gets the rest. How much a cut he takes depends entirely on his mood, so I pray he is feeling generous today. I should get enough to at least rent us out a room for a couple of days, if necessary. I was lucky to be able to get onstage immediately. The mare that was supposed to go up was…not well, and the next one was not quite ready when I inquired about trying my luck.”

A shudder of thunder rumbled through the building, muffled by the walls and roof, but was otherwise ignored by most of the room in favor of the “festivities” taking place before them. “….when you said you would dance provocatively before strangers for their amusement and caps and give them to me, I didn’t think you were actually serious about it.”

A sheepish squeal managed to squeak out of Julaya’s throat. “….I was, but did not think I would be making good on such a promise so soon. But this is the most I will do in selling myself, so do not ask of more…personal endeavors of me for earning caps.”

“I don’t think I’d let you.”

Julaya’s mouth worked a bit faster than her brain—or maybe she just enjoyed poking fun at those around her at their expense. “Ahhh, keeping me to yourself, are you?”

Her body shot upright inside her chair, her forehooves locking into the table’s surface almost out of instinct. “Bite me.”

“Not my style,” the zebra merely laughed back quietly. “I prefer a little nibble here and there.”

“….you’re going to be frustrating to travel with.”

Julaya’s amused chuckle did not make her feel the least bit better, if that was the intended effect. “I wouldn’t be if you would let yourself relax when it is appropriate. You cannot be so serious and dour all the time, yes?”

A brief, hollow echo of Kite’s last words, and the terrible screams that came after, whispered into her ears and threatened to tear down the walls she had just managed to build over her memories. “…what do I have left to be happy about? My stable’s dead, I’m adrift in the wastes, hunted by slavers and mercenaries who want me dead and my little girl in their sick grasp for their amusement, and the only friend I had in all this madness got eaten alive by it.”

Julaya’s glee vanished in an instant, a flood of pity and sadness flowing into her face and eyes. “…you still live. Your little tail of light lives. And despite what you may tell yourself, in all your grief and self-hatred, you are still capable of feeling and caring, if your protection of the yearling is genuine. You are not lost to the wastes…but if you shut out the ones you care about, it will not have to work very hard to claim you. You will throw yourself to its cruelty willingly to escape your pain. Come to terms with it, make peace with it…and do so soon.”

A plethora of foul-mouthed curses threatened to burst out, stayed at the last moment by a very powerful desire to do anything but go back to that bridge, and the groaning, half-dead horrors that had broken her in ways she did not want to understand. “….I told you before, no.”

“No, you said ‘not now’, and I have respected that. It is now ‘later’. But we will speak when you are ready for it, not before…and judging by your response, that time has not come yet. So I will settle for simply annoying you and making you fluster on occasion.”

Her blood heated up to intolerable levels, spurring her mouth to begin hurling insults and angry demands, but she managed, somehow, to hold back those hateful words. “….do you ever act your age, stripes?”

Julaya’s eyes shifted and narrowed, the only hint of displeasure she had shown thus far. “Why should I, pony?”

“Oh, I don’t know, could be that maybe the world is rife with thievery, savagery, murder, slavery, and mutant animal and insect life capable of tearing you apart alive in seconds,” she snapped back briskly. “With the only stable form of law and order being either the guns you can carry into town or a combined force of merchants pretending to be a government and flooding the highways with heavily armed goon squads to collect “taxes” to feed their coffers. A world in which you can rake in obscene amounts of bottle caps that pass as money in exchange for….for what you just did on that dance stage! How can you be even the least bit cheerful over any of it?!”

Surprisingly, Julaya’s response was a soft, amused smile. “I am cheerful and immature because it does me no good to bitch and moan about the ills of the world like a foal, as you seem wont to do.”

She almost felt slapped by her words, as gentle and un-aggressive as the zebra’s tone had been in uttering them. But when she tried to speak, to shout back….

…nothing came to mind. Because she was right.

“I could scream for hours,” the zebra went on, still wearing that godsdamned smile on her face. “Take my sword and slice the nearest dozen slavers into a hundred pieces each, stab a gang of raiders to death dozens of times apiece until my forelegs ache from the effort, toss another bunch of miscreants into a piece of working farm machinery after beating them senseless—which I have done, by the way. Blow another one to bits with a bomb. Beat many more to death with my bare hooves, which I have also done in more fights than I can remember simply because I am no good with guns. I could be the angriest, most murderous soul to walk the wastes if I wanted. By the Sisters’ souls there is enough evil in this town alone to warrant it.”

“But you’re not.”

“…not out loud, no. Because even if I did all of these horrific things….what would change after? Slavers would still roam the lands for the weak to enslave. Raiders would still rob, pillage, and destroy. Orphans would still die of disease, dehydration, and starvation, or from the abuse heaped upon them by an uncaring world. The wrongs of the world would not be righted immediately, or even quickly. I would still be surrounded by all of these horrible things you mention. My rage would buy me nothing but blood and bodies, and neither of these things would make any difference to the world in the long run, only to those who had been wronged by whoever I killed that day.”

Her forehooves, still pressed into the table, began to ache from the pressure, and she reluctantly relaxed her death grip and allowed her forelegs to draw back to her body. “….so you smile, to avoid going mad? Like the punchline to a sick joke only you understand?”

“No, I smile, laugh, play, frolic, and fool around because I am alive,” Julaya replied, her tone coming off as though she were answering a confused foal’s question instead of the angry adult in front of her. “I do not want to waste my time and energy being angry at the way things are, when I have little power to change them on my own. I want to take pride and joy about what little difference I can make, and I want to make the best of my time in this hellish world because it is a rare thing to live long enough to grow old. I want to enjoy what little I can enjoy. I want to live. And part of living, is finding friends, cherishing family, and making potential lovers or casual acquaintances happy that you are merely right there in front of them, easing the burdens of the world with your love, hugs, and occasionally yourself, for as long as you are able to. And more often than not, at the end of the day, I go to sleep knowing that I have had a much more profound effect on others than if I had merely went and slain the raider gang threatening their food supply and their lives.”

By the time the seemingly insane zebra had finished her gentle rebuke, Sling’s rage had receded to a dull buzz of shame. For a third time in three months, she was gently reminded of what little she knew of true suffering and anguish, what it took to weather it….and now, what it meant to actually live.

This former highway bandit, who had robbed and killed Union caravans and slavers, who had scratched out her survival on scraps and the junk of the wasteland, knew more about making the most of her life than the stable pony who’d grown up wanting for almost nothing even after all the supplies rationing going on.

For better or worse, Julaya quickly proved to be perhaps as perceptive as a certain filly. “….you were not a well-thought of soul in your stable, were you?”

“…I think I’ve made more friends up here than I ever had in that damn stable.”

“Because you were still a child when you had yours?”

Worst year of my life, until recently. “…didn’t exactly get a helping hoof from anybody. Friends, family….everybody basically took a shit on me and walked off like the smell was getting to them. One…one friend stuck it out with me, and when the time came to repay the kindness eleven years later all I could think about was getting myself and my baby out of that hole before we got sealed in. I never looked back, until it was too late to go anywhere but forward….”

Julaya’s forelegs came together in front of her, her head dipping slightly as though she had just come to a revelation. “…ooooooh, I think I see now, what ails you so terribly….you…you are correct, this is not a conversation to have at this moment…”

Maybe not ever.

Fortunately for the both of them, one of the MEW-armed bouncers chose that moment to slip into their personal space and drop a light cloth pouch onto the table between them. “Great show, stripes,” he muttered quietly. “Too bad it’s not one that pays well here. A hundred caps total. Boss took thirty off the top, rest is yours, seventy in all.”

Julaya’s head snapped back up sharply, her mischievous nature nowhere to be seen. “Surely not.”

“You’ve done this before Julie, you know the drill,” the gray-feathered griffon snorted back as he turned around to resume his duties. “Show little, get little. Next time, maybe give the crowd the show they want and not the one you’re best at.”

She didn’t even wait for him to get out of earshot, cursing quietly as she shoved the pouch across the table. “....gorram hell. A cheap whore can make more than this in an hour.”

Sling barely noticed her magic pulling the caps pouch into her saddlebags. All that…for barely more than enough to find a clean bed for two days? “I actually feel dirty taking these caps.”

Julaya’s angry glare continued to stare out at the crowd gathered around the dance stage, perhaps painting targets onto each of their backs as they jeered and hollered at the prancing mare above them. “You? I’m the one who went up there. At least say you found the water you sought.”

“…maybe. Managed to find a water merchant, but it was hell getting him to take his eyes off you long enough to do business. He’s on his way to his caravan now, near the edge of town to the west. We should get the kids and get over there, get the water and find somewhere to wait out the storm.”

Julaya began spitting what she assumed to be curses in a foreign tongue she couldn’t understand as she hurriedly scooted herself out of her chair and began making her way towards the exit. “Then let’s be on our way. My vibes are not telling me great things about this endeavor, best to do it quick.”

Sling hopped out of her chair and followed her out, desperate to both get away from this place and to get back to El-Tee and Rally. But the pair had barely shown themselves back into the corridors when a pair of rapidly moving green hash marks drew her attention to her right, and spotted Light Tail and Rally running up the hall towards them—

“Mom, we gotta go,” the little one huffed with a quick breath. “Like, really bad.”

Of course you do now that we need to be somewhere in a hurry, she didn’t say. “…make it quick, we need to meet up with a water seller in a few minutes.”

Light Tail’s eyes briefly furrowed in annoyance. “….that’s…um….fine , R-Rally, where—”

“Somewhere between here and wherever we’re going will do,” the teenager groaned, taking it upon herself to lead the way for them. “It’s not like the world is swimming with facilities and such, so just deal.”

What sounded like a soft little growl filtered out through El-Tee’s throat as they followed Rally’s lead. In a little over four minutes they’d left the auction house behind for a cluster of little one-story buildings on a street corner (none of which had more than two walls left) with some alleys one could duck into for some semblance of privacy. The building at the corner looked like it had once been a…barbershop? The faded barber’s pole attached to the outside of the structure somehow still remained, but its red stripes were so faded they looked more like a pale pink. Of its four walls, only a portion of its front and side still stood, and the side wall had crumbled in some parts, to the point where it barely stood taller than the sidewalk at the back. Anything of value inside had long ago been stripped out, even the chairs and floor tiling, leaving only bare foundation behind. The remainder of the street block itself was rather empty, as all the other structures along the cracked street had long ago given in to age and weathering—some were just piles of rubble, and others were little more than crooked-looking slabs of brick waiting for their turn to become a pile of rubble and ruin themselves. Three blocks down, however, was a two-story brick building that was still standing with most of its walls still in place. Probably not a bad spot to set up camp for the evening…

Max and Mona seemed to view this as the moment to see to their own needs, as both pups quickly darted ahead of them to pick some random section of a wall for their personal use. “Okay, we can drop the BS now,” Rally announced, coming to a stop and plopping her haunches down to rest for a minute.

Oh no no no, not right in front of us like animals!

"Uhhhh, noooo, you're going to go around the corner and retain some degree of decency," Sling sneered.

Rally’s head turned back to face her with an irritated glare. “That's not what we meant back there.”

Light Tail’s expression, likewise, didn’t falter or flinch at her words. If anything, it only made her more determined to stand her ground, her face bereft of any levity or pleasantness. “We only said that 'cause we didn’t wanna tip the guards off in case they were in on it.”

Oh shit, she’s thought of something I didn’t…

As usual.

“In on what, little tail of light?” Julaya pressed gently, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What troubles you?”

She kept as much of her ears tuned to the conversation as possible as her eyes began to scour what few buildings were intact along the street. Her little night light was suspicious of something, but what….

“That we were there like, twenty minutes and not one waitress came by to even ask if we wanted a drink. We’re walking into an ambush and I don’t want us going into it, not after….”

….not after Trotpeka, she couldn’t say. But she didn’t need to.

“…the water merchant,” she said softly, her mind latching onto the possibility that before now had not even been considered as she began to study her surroundings much more intently. “….you think the water merchants might have been asked to lead us into a trap when we came into town looking for water.”

“Bullshit,” Rally scoffed almost immediately with a scruff of her hoof against the pavement. “Water merchants don’t do shit like that. It’s against their own rules. No profit in it.”

“Rules didn’t stop somebody from hiring you when they weren’t supposed to,” Light Tail shot back. “There’d be profit in getting a share of the reward that’s on your head, for what you did. And they know we wouldn’t get all that far without water, who better to lead us into a trap?! We’re practically gift-wrapping ourselves for them!”

“Listen to what you’re saying! The water merchant, stabbing us in the back for a share of a bounty? The one Union trade good that the Runners will actually protect over here? Just attempting that would be a death wish!”

“I must admit that such a scenario makes very little sense,” Julaya murmured thoughtfully. “The yearling is right, most of the water caravans come from the Union. It would destroy trade entirely if even one of them was found to be complicit in such a scheme.”

“Not if they were able to keep it quiet. Like, ooooh, I don’t know, making sure the ambush is set up away from anybody that would see it? Like where we’re going right now?!”

Her heart skipped several beats at the notion that for what seemed like the second time in a week, the child was able to perceive a potential ambush before the adults around her did. But even as she contemplated the idea of a firefight at the meeting point with the caravan, her mind stretched the scenario a bit further….

….what if the ambush was laid out somewhere along the trai—

….oh hell...

…along the trail….

….meaning….they could have walked into it alrea—

“Lie in wait for a pony with a PipBuck? I thin—”

She saw it almost an instant before she felt it—a pale yellow flash, from inside the second floor of the two-level building three blocks down, just as a surge of magic flowed out of her horn and shoved out at the three ponies passing her by, throwing them to the relative safety of the nearest building on the street corner as she began to rush forward in their wake—

—a white-hot pain stabbed through her left hind leg, just above the gaskin, and then seared into the meat of the other hind leg, turning her run into a forward tumble onto the ground. The pain flared and spread through her legs, her forelegs fighting to get back underneath her and hobble the rest of the way to cover, just as the sound of the gunshot finally reached her ears. She wished she’d had some sort of timer or something on her EFS, just to help her time the delay between the actual bullet hitting her and the sound of the shot itself, but it couldn’t have been more than a second, so….three, four hundred yards away?

That didn’t matter quite as much as the horrified, crying shriek that pierced her ears to the point of her hearing spell popping out of her horn on reflex to quiet the volume of it.

But then, Light Tail had plenty of reason to panic.

“Mom?!?! Oh god momma—”

With both hind legs too wounded to support her weight, she was forced to scrap her way across the pavement with her forelegs. She could see Rally scrunched up against it, holding a frantic Light Tail in place with her cyberleg, but Julaya’s body quickly obscured her sight line as the zebra rushed out to her, and on instinct Sling pushed herself up on her forelegs—

—Julie’s body skidded to a stop, grabbed hold of her rising torso and forced her fully upright, and then turned back and bounded back towards the kids, carrying the wounded mare further along than she could have gotten on her own—

—a hard snap clacked into the asphalt behind them, a harrowing sign of how close she’d come to taking a second bullet, though the initial one had done quite a bit as it was. And as she collapsed onto the ground, pushing herself up against wall and into the terrified, trembling grasp of her only child, it occurred to her that had she been half a second slower, that first bullet could have wound up plowing through her chest and killing her instead….

Despite the panic and the train wreck of emotions hitting her, Light Tail still somehow managed to stifle her shrieks into hushed whines as she began pulling at her saddlebags for the first aid kit. A brief flash of purplish signified the removal of the kit, and a moment later it was dropped onto the ground in front of her as a pair of hooves turned her onto her back for someone behind her to get a clean look at it—

Oh fu…

….her right leg….a chunk of her right leg had been blown off, attached to the limb only by the grace of a persistent strip of flesh. The crimson-drenched wound froze her on the inside the moment she saw it.

“….oh dear,” Julaya’s voice wretched in disgust, gently moving the dangling chunk of pony meat back into place and pressing it in slightly, which only made the pain worse to the point of having to nearly choke herself to keep from crying out. “….you have at least one potion, I hope….”

Light Tail’s magic pulled the object in question out not even a moment later, holding the auto-injection stim up where both mares could see it and the red-colored concoction stored within the tube. “….j-just two of these,” she stammered. “…an-and healing potions don’t work on Mom as well as it would us….”

Julaya’s face showed no change in expression as she studied the stim. “Then this is precisely the type of healing potion she should get. The syringe allows one to direct the potion’s effects to where it is needed the most. Start with a third of the stim, inject it just below the wound, and hurry.”

“Where did that even come from?!” Rally shouted back, having relinquished her hold on the filly in favor of her revolver.

Easy enough answer, and Sling found that conversation kept her eyes off the sharp needle approaching her mangled leg, so she indulged the yearling’s question. “Saw the flash, right up the road…that two-story building, maybe three or four hundred yards up…”

“I thought PipBucks could spot threats to your life, stable pony,” Julaya crept in ominously.

“Not that far out, they can’t. Focus on the road, we’re pinned in and they could be sending guys at us right now—”

A sharp stabbing pain introduced itself to her right hind leg, right next to the wound, and all her focus and energy went into trying not to scream like a 5-year old child as the healing potion’s effects took hold. It wasn’t like just drinking the thing down—it was actively working to repair and re-attach the severed flesh to her leg, and doing so at a very aggressive rate that set every last nerve ending in the wound on fire. As excruciating as that was, though, it didn’t last for more than a few seconds, and when she dared to open her tear-stained eyes and peer at her leg, she was surprised to see it back in one piece again, as though she had never been shot there. Only the fresh blood coating her leg remained.

She hoped it would be just as effective with the through-and-through wound on her other leg….

“Good, very good,” Julaya murmured in approval, giving her right leg a passing touch with a forehoof. “Now, the other one, same way as before. You may need to use the remainder of the stim for this one, the injury is actually much worse than the other one—”

A crack in the air, like distant thunder, echoed across the barren streets, though she had trouble discerning where it came from. Could have been thunder, or it could have been a gunshot. She hadn’t heard the bullet impact, tho—

The pain returned, this time in her left leg, and unbelievably worse than what she’d just suffered moments earlier. This time her efforts not to scream failed briefly, and so she just bit down on one of her forelegs until it passed, and then dared to open her eyes again and see if the wound had mended over as well as the other one had—

—four red hash marks popped up inside her EFS’s compass bar a moment later, almost in sync with Max and Mona’s sharp growls and barks—

—her 10mm sailed out of its holster as she rolled back over onto her stomach, risked a second’s worth of time to peek over the top of the collapsed wall and squeeze off three rounds at the first moving body she could sight on—

—twenty yards ahead in the street, in-between muzzle flashes, she saw what looked like a brown-furred griffon in forest camo barding collapsing into the shattered asphalt and three identically-armored ponies bolting away from her line of fire—

—Julaya’s forelegs ripped her back down behind the wall, barely a moment before a chunk of it was blown off and would have torn through her neck had she still been upright. The distant gunshot that followed a little over a second later confirmed her earlier suspicions about the sniper. Three hundred plus yards, and the bastard could pinpoint the bullet to her brain if he wanted to—

“Do not try that again,” Julaya’s voice warned sharply. “I am not a very good substitute parent.”

….no, the best souls I could trust El-Tee’s life to died in the stable and the fucking valley….

“….watch the alley,” she huffed back, her impromptu meeting with the ground having knocked her breathless momentarily. “Three split off from their friend when I shot him. Could be more—”

One of the Pythons made the fatal mistake of calling out to his surviving friends rather than using silent body language to convey his message, and it would prove to be a very fortunate mistake on her end. “—amn it, get his laser rifle quick, that’s a unicorn we just ambushed—”

At the word “quick”, Sling zipped her head back up over the wall just long enough to try and spot the griffon’s body in the street, and practically flung a telekinesis spell over him to drag him over to her, barely avoiding another sniper’s bullet in the process—

“…did that idiot just scream ‘laser rifle’ out to all his friends and enemies?” Rally begged to know.

Sling answered by dropping the body of the griffon down into their view, quickly stripping the corpse of his equipment and weaponry before tossing him back into the streets—

—and the last sound she expected to hear in the madness began to fill her ears.

The sound of an ecstatic, gleeful child looking upon a cherished and highly desired gift.

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

Even if two-thirds of the Pythons’ numbers had been charging down the street, ready to tear her limb from limb (among other unpleasant acts) for screwing up their grand plans to take out the Runners, she’d have found it exceptionally difficult to not freak out and squeal like a filly of Light Tail’s age, so she just let herself fangirl all over the dangling prize that Sling Shot had appropriated from her latest kill.

An AER-9 Mk IV laser rifle from the Ministry of Arcane Science’s MEW Block Mod 2 Improvement Program in the last couple of years of the Great War. Amazingly enough, it had been developed to completion and produced in enough numbers that one could be found here and there, though it was never as common as the standard frontline AER-9. To give soldiers on the front greater flexibility in their combat load and streamline logistics and maintenance needs, the MoA had developed a modular baseline weapon around which an incredibly diverse line of modifications were built for wildly different mission profiles. The base weapon was a redesigned pistol, with a much more ergonomic grip akin to a ballistic semi-automatic weapon and a “short barrel” diverter unit, basically making it just a much shorter laser rifle. The grip could be removed and replaced with a rifle stock, of which existed the curve-happy (and uncomfortable) standard stock, and two specialized stocks designed to aid a marksman’s aim or help with the recoil generated by the diverter when it discharged a beam.

The diverter unit could be detached from the weapon frame and capacitor and replaced with a longer unit for drastically increased range, or a strange-looking, triangular-shaped unit that was actually three separate diverter units designed to provide full-automatic fire by rotating sequentially during the firing sequence, like a minigun’s barrel trunk. A couple of the gun and science magazines she kept in her bags even had articles on an oversized diverter unit that could actually build up an arcane emission charge and let it loose in a single destructive blast at ranges of almost a thousand meters with no more than a three-inch spread, and the accompanying photos of said unit reminded her of a scuba tank. And the diverter unit’s focusing lenses and anodized titanium crystal array had been modified with a bracket mount to accept a variety of muzzle attachments. Nothing real fancy, just a couple of recoil compensator lenses and beam focusing units, though she’d seen reference to a beam splitter module that supposedly turned the weapon into a MEW-based shotgun in one magazine article as well.

The capacitor itself could be changed or modified to increase shot power and density, set targets on fire, improve the power draw from spark battery cells, the works. Even the string of optics developed bewildered her—the standard telescopic sights were there, obviously, but more intriguing to her were the reflex sights and the high-tech night vision scopes and the target-tracking scopes that could lock onto and track multiple targets within the scope’s field of view. She had turned quite a number of miserable days into passable ones just pondering how the tech even worked, and the only thing she could recall lusting for more than one of these rifles was this kinda cute colt a few months older than her that she ran into a few weeks ago, but her better judgement had won out on that venture and she just moved on down the road rather than throw caution to the wind.

And now, even with a sniper trying to blow Sling’s head off (along with whatever bounty had been placed on it) and Pythons slithering about in the streets looking for a way to get to her without getting shot to pieces, she found herself staring upon a slightly weathered, but fully functional Mk IV laser rifle, with an extended diverter unit and what looked like a recoil-compensating stock….and somehow completely forgot the dangers lurking around her and allowed herself to properly freak out over the thing in as polite a way as she could manage without being looked at like she was crazy.

They’d probably think that when she was done anyway.

“Oh, my, gaaaawd isthatwhatIthinkitis izzitizzitizzit—“

Her right leg was reaching for the weapon as her mouth began to slur her words into an incomprehensible jumble, the talon unlatching and attempting to grasp onto the stock, and as her eyes studied it further she found herself even more impressed with how this particular stock had been fitted. Apparently its former owner had been enamored enough with the pistol grip’s ergonomics that he’d left intact and simply found a way to graft the buttstock unit from a recoil-compensating rifle stock onto the grip, while leaving enough room for a griffon’s talon to slip around and grasp the pistol grip securely. The way the work had been carried out, it actually looked more like a factory part than a jury-rigged workaround by some jackass with an old workbench and worn-out tools. She didn’t think it would be as effective as a genuine rifle stock would have been, but it was definitely better than the standard skeletal-like stock she despised. And she was never truly fond of the long, claw-like trigger of a standard laser rifle in the first place.

Surprisingly, she was able to wrest the weapon out of Sling’s spell field without any resistance whatsoever, allowing her full (if temporary) possession of it and truly begin examining it. Great weight balance even though it was almost too big for her, her talon was able to grip into the stock just right and bring it up to her chest, the padding on the buttstock didn’t claw at her face….eh, sights were a bit crude, a bright dot on the front post and a bare rear sight with no dots or lines, just a notch, but she could fix that with some time. Diverter look good, no dents or cracks in the housing, the lens bracket at the muzzle was tight and not going anywhere, focusing lens itself was clear w—

“….umm, Rally?” Light Tail’s voice squeaked quietly and fearfully, somehow managing to break through her thoughts and bring her back to reality, if only for a moment. “…you okay there?”

Her jaw moved silently for a couple of seconds before her throat would work properly and emit words instead of silence. “Y-yeah, yeah, fine. I’m good. This is fine. I’m fine holy EFF ME this thing is just divine—“

Even the sound of Sling’s pistol popping off two shots wasn’t enough to break her mesmerized state of mind, though the mare’s irritated tone did a good deal more to bring her focus back onto immediate survival. “Rally, quit it, we’re being shot at here!! Is that thing working?!”

Rally’s reply was one of action, as she simply snapped the rifle up into firing position, throwing the stock into her collarbone and sighting in on a distant target three blocks down the road they’d come in from—a faded billboard advertisement for some junk food brand way back when, with a light blue mare and her shit-eating grin, proudly directing all eyes towards an oversized red box of some cereal or something. The box even had these rays of white streaking out all around it, like some holy divine light or something. She had no idea what it was, because the top third of the billboard had eroded away and taken the advertisement’s words to the distant wasteland grave, but that mare’s fake smile and rows of pearly white teeth were oddly insulting. She settled the crude front post dot on her face and gently squeezed the trigger back after looping her left foreleg into the carrying sling to steady her aim. The sharp pop of the diverter’s discharge seemed overly dramatic when she considered the mild recoil that tapped her, but when the energy scatter from the shot impact flittered away and showed a glowing hole where the mare’s left eye used to be, she decided it fit the damage quite well. The orange-hot ring quickly faded away as the hole began to cool down, barely a second later.

“Oh yeah, it’s working!!” she squealed in delight, sliding the safety catch on and briefly hugging the weapon close to her chest. She didn’t think she’d get to see another one of these again anytime soon, and now Sling had found one that was actually better than the one she’d stolen and stashed away. “Hooooomagawd I love this thing!”

She thought she could see one of the zebra’s forehooves making a lazy circle beside her head, but she paid her little mind. All that matter now was that she had the second-most awesome MEW in the wasteland within her grasp…and with it, a chance to help them claw their way out of this mess.

“Idea forming!!” she half-giggled, titling the weapon forward to see what the capacitor’s readouts where showing on the battery cell.

Sling’s 10mm popped off another shot, though from the way she was silently cursing it didn’t seem like it did any good. “I’m not sure you’re in the right mind to be giving ideas right now.”

“I’m serious, the focusing lens hasn’t a chance to heat up, it’ll be like, pin-point accurate for another four or five shots before the impact point starts wandering, and there’s no bullet drop to worry about! I can tag that jackass sniper from here or at least keep him from shooting again—”

And I can do that like, right now!! she cut herself off—the moment she aired the thoughts aloud they sounded like the best idea they were going to get in the next ten seconds, and since there was only one two-story building down the road she knew right where to shoot. With a hop and a twist of her body she put herself right beside Sling, shoving the laser rifle out in front of her to cradle it on top of the crumbling wall and settling the sights over that second story window, right where Sling said it was—

It was a good thing she’d just went and done it. The way Sling was reacting, asking for permission first would have just gotten her nowhere. “N-no, Rally stop get back g—“

She squeezed back the trigger, letting the sharp, slightly buzzy pop of the rifle’s discharge be her answer, and true to her hopes, the bright red beam lanced out and found its way to that window, right where the sights had been centered, though the slight kick into her shoulder as the diverter and capacitor accelerated the energy to coherently visible levels was a bit more than she’d expected. She had to tilt the weapon back down and to the left to get the sights back on target, fairly close to their last position, and fired again about a second later.

Sling said something—or angrily cursed something or someone—as she abruptly leapt over the wall, her new black rifle floating out ahead of her, and Rally felt something cup her ears and muffle the world around her a split second before that rifle started touching off single, aimed shots at a rapid clip even as Rally took a third shot at the window—

—this one seemed to sail a bit over the top of her aiming point. She either threw it, or the focusing lens was starting to heat up enough to affect the accuracy. Either way, it proved to be a fortunate accident, as she saw the interior of the room beyond that window briefly light up in bright orange before fading out quickly, and she knew what had caused it.

Instant incineration from a laser hit. She had yet to figure out the why of it, given how inconsistent it was, but sometimes the AE-series of laser weaponry would just outright render a victim into ash. Not nearly as gruesome as some of the earlier plasma guns, but still somewhat unsettling. She hoped it was a painless death, at least…

A high-pitched shriek from the right managed to get through that muffling barrier around her ears, and she quickly turned about in that direction, allowing herself to fall onto her hindquarters and try to get the laser rifle onto whatever had just caused Light Tail to freak out—

One of the Pythons had managed to get past Sling, cutting through the alleys on the street corner and coming out of it right between herself and Light Tail…and he seemed to realize he had made an exceptionally unwise decision, because his eyes were zeroing in on herself, but had found Julaya’s coiled body waiting for him right in front of her, her right foreleg hooked into the cuff on her sword—

—the zebra’s movement was so fast and sudden that she had almost no memory of it actually happening. One second, she was standing there her on her hind legs, one foreleg hooked into that cuff and the other one held up in front of her chest, and then her body was twisting to the left, that right foreleg now somehow swinging out in that direction as well….with the hoof and pastern of her right foreleg gripping her katana through the hoof cuff affixed to the grip, and the edge of the blade coated red as the Python’s body continued to run right on past her, seemingly oblivio—

—her stomach churned in cramped, uncomfortable ways as her eyes swept over the light gray stallion’s head.

The bottom half of it that was still attached to the neck, anyway. She thought she heard something splattering back down the alley he’d come from, and she didn’t want to know what it was—

—Julaya’s body moved again in impossibly fast and complex ways—she had done a complete twist, coming back around to wrap her right foreleg around the partially-decapitated merc’s barrel and having somehow shifted her sword to her left hoof in the process, and a moment later she was hurling his still-running body back into the alley he’d came from with an angry roar that was almost as loud as Sling’s rifle down the street. The body vanished into the darkness, out of sight…and particularly Light Tail’s, who a couple seconds ago had been watching the merc burst out with murderous intent.

The zebra’s twisting turn continued for another second, her rear hooves scraping across the sidewalk as her right foreleg came back down to help slow her movement until she came to a stop, her body now slanted almost equally towards herself and Light Tail on the other side….

….and dammit all, she just stared at this zebra with equal parts fear, horror….and a star-eyed bewilderment at how freaking awesome she looked just standing there on three legs, her left foreleg gripping her sword out parallel with her body and the blade pointed out behind her and the front bangs of her silvery mane swaying and bouncing about in front of her face.

It was entirely possible that Light Tail would have no conscious or visible memory of having been witness to such a quick kill. It had all happened in like….two seconds? Two and a half? She wasn’t sure.

She hoped Light Tail would never be sure.

“…holy shit,” she heaved in a heavy breath, barely registering the gun fight happening twenty-plus yards away. “You’re like some…some really awesome comic book character or something….”

Just speaking to her seemed to break Julaya out of her murderous focus, as the zebra’s eyes lost their hard, narrowed glare and morphed into a calm, warm outlook that drew attention to her bright ice blue eyes. “Hrm? I—o-oh…oh, yes, that. I um….I am very quick when angered. Or threatened. Or…well, just about anytime, actually….”

“….what…was that?” Light Tail’s voice squeaked from behind the zebra’s body.

The striped mare’s head turned off to her left, her ears wilting slightly as if she were a bit ashamed of what she’d just done…but more likely, ashamed at having done it right in front of a ten-year old who was already traumatized from the recent death of dear friends. “….I….I am sorry you saw that, little tail of light. Do not wander into the alley, just stay where you are.”

Light Tail surprised both of them with how casually—or how well, she hoped—she seemed to be taking the swift death that had just been delivered before her eyes. “…I…I meant…y-you just moved so fast, I didn’t see what you did….”

“….then let’s leave it at that,” Julaya sighed in relief, removing her left foreleg from the sword cuff and reaching around for a strip of cloth she kept tied around the scabbard along her back. “Stay put, I think your mother is almost finished with her foes.”

A furious spat of gunfire erupted in the streets for about four seconds, with Sling’s 10mm being the last weapon to bark its fury into the air, and the deathly silence that came afterward worried her enough to make her take her eyes off the awesome zebra and take a peek down the road—

—Sling was stomping back up the road towards them, her magic latched around one of the Pythons’ bodies and dragging it across the asphalt, with a very angry look to her face that actually made Rally jump a bit the moment their eyes met.

Oh shit she’s pissed she’s gonna yell at me again—

Sling’s magic dropped the body about twelve feet shy of the group, and as the stable mare closed in on her, her mouth began trying to find something to scream out at her, but nothing came out besides a few wordless gasps and failed sentences. She quickly gave up on it after a couple of tries and just focused on the others. “…anybody hurt?” she seethed through her teeth.

“…no one that we care about,” the zebra answered calmly, the cloth in her left hoof and pastern wiping the blood clean off of her sword. “Though I could do without you dragging the corpse of your foes about like that.”

“This “foe” was the so-called “water merchant” I talked to earlier. There’s no water caravan anywhere near here.”

The world lit up with a bright white flash, followed quickly by a clap of thunder that sounded like it had come from just a block away from them. “….we can talk later, when we’ve sheltered down for the storm. I know a place nearby that will do. Five blocks to the north, a rather larger diner with a fully intact roof and lockable doors. Has a big sign of a mare atop it, it cannot be missed.”

Sling’s eyes whipped down to her left foreleg as she brought her PipBuck up, her magic pulling at the dials and toggle switches embedded into the casing around the screen. “Take the kids and head over there quick, I’ll get what I can off these mercs and catch up.”

Julaya dropped the blood-drench strip of cloth to the ground and re-sheathed her sword, abruptly turning about and hiking her way past Light Tail. “Come, then, girls. Quickly, the storm is eager to greet us.”